Books

This latest novel in Robert Jordan’s long-lived and long-winded epic fantasy series represents an improvement over his low point, now established as books 7-10. Important and long-awaited prophecies are finally being paid off; the plot is moving forward steadily. While there are many decisions that I would have made differently, and many, many wasted opportunities, there is at least progress in a forward direction.

This is not a book that is worth returning to the series if you have already abandoned it. There are two many wasted opportunities – more than one much-heralded prophecy is fulfilled herein in a manner that seems deliberately calculated to match the wording of the prophecy exactly while avoiding the careful and considered dramatic predictions of the rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan newsgroup (and other fan locations). In other words, the author is pissed that we figured out what he was hinting at and decided to write scenes with much less dramatic value simply to avoid being predictable.

Nine years after Dies the Fire , an unsteady truce reigns over western Oregon. Mike Havel’s Bearkillers and Juniper Mackenzie’s Wiccan clans, along with some other loose federations, are strong enough to have prevented the despot Norman Arminger from overruning them - so far. Occupying the rich farmlands south of Portland, these groups have quickly adapted to life after the Change, and have thriving societies with bustling economies.

Their cultures are starting to take root, too - the younger generations know nothing of gunpowder, electricity, or gasoline beyond stories from the adults. Most members of the Mackenzies have converted to the Wiccan religion, even though tolerance is still upheld as valuable anywhere outside of the Protector’s territory. The Bearkillers are finding more and more of J.R.R. Tolkein’s fictional traditions woven into their lives, even the elven language itself, thanks to a couple of young die-hard fans.

In my earlier review of Coyote , I described it as a fairly normal interstellar colonization story with a hint of politics in the background. Coyote Rising, the sequel, makes those politics somewhat more explicit, but they are still far short of actually driving the story in a manner similar to, for example, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. That’s not a good thing when the point of the story is supposed to be the politics.

Consequences is a Retrieval Artist novel. The series (with two previous books) is set in a universe where humanity interacts on a regular basis with many alien cultures of varying degrees of strangeness. Many of these alien cultures have strange laws or taboos that humans can be subject to horrible penalties for violating – whether they know that they are violating the alien’s laws or not.

This conflict of interest has spawned a small, but significant, industry: making people “disappear” for the purposes of evading the consequences of breaking an unjust (by human standards) alien law. Unlike typical criminals, the “disappeared” are usually respected and wealthy people who can afford to pay exorbitant fees in order to start life over – simply because those who are not rarely have the opportunity to violate alien taboos. The law doesn’t look too hard for them… but the aliens themselves usually do, and if found, justice is applied on the spot.

Cassandra Kresnov, the lovable combat android with an electronic copy of a human soul, is back. But her old masters, the League governments, want her dead, and they may just have left an off-switch hidden in some part of her electronic brain. When your own brain can be hacked over a wireless network, being almost as strong as Superman won’t help much. To thwart them, Cassandra will have to go into hiding while she searches for the enemies trying to turn her off permanently.

Ursula K Leguin’s EarthSea trilogy broke new ground in the fantasy genre, and has truly earned a place of honor. Unfortunately, as with many television adaptions, the Sci-Fi Channel’s attempt to bring that story to the television screen preserved almost nothing of that. Although the miniseries is less bitter and painful than Tehanu, it lacks the qualities that made the original trilogy such a wonderful creation. It also lacks the special effects to effectively carry out the magic that is such a vital component of EarthSea. Leguin herself has all but disowned the adaption, claiming that while she was offered a consultant’s role, the end result was a story she could neither recognize nor prevent.

Incubus Dreams is the latest Anita Blake book, and weighs in at a surprising 600+ pages; most of the prior books in the series have been 300-400 pages. The Anita Blake series has been having difficulty lately, with many of the fans hanging on desperately to the hope that the current trends – that is, towards more sex and less of everything else – will reverse themselves. Unfortunately for those with such hopes, the cover does little to suggest improvement; a woman in lingerie, blindfolded and bound to a chair.

In The Chronicles of Covenant the Unbeliever Donaldson wove a compelling tale of a fantasy world threatened by a malevolent being known as Lord Foul, and capable of defending itself ultimately through the intervention of one man – a man outcast from human society, a man whose survival demands that he abandon hope and forsake love, a man who does not even believe that the Land is real. In The Second Chronicles of Covenant the Unbeliever, he returned to the Land when it is threatened once more. In this, the first volume of The Last Chronicles of Covenant the Unbeliever, Donaldson once more transports us into a realm of supernatural vitality.

The Dark Tower is the final volume of Stephen King’s Dark Tower Cycle, a work that has taken over 20 years to complete. For fans of the series, this concluding volume comes with great relief as well as great joy; at times it seemed impossible to consider that the series could ever be finished. It must have seemed the same to King as well, for it was clearly his magnum opus, incorporating and unifying so many of his other words that told their own pieces of the tale.

Told in a particularly dry and witty voice, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel chronicles a brief resurgence in English magic, thanks to the queer friendship and rivalry between the two most prominent English magicians of the Napoleonic Era. Fiction is woven so well into the rich tapestry of legend, myth, and poetry that it is impossible to discern where one leaves off and the next begins. Exquisitely footnoted with tidbits of tangential information, this is a fantasy novel for historians, and a history book for fantasists.