"Dance" is Dragging

Title: A Dance with Dragons
Author: George R.R. Martin

Rating: 2/5

Reality can be harsh to happy endings. Evil is not always defeated, the hero does not always get the girl, and nobody ever really lives happily ever after. That’s fantasy.

Take, for example, the tale of a plucky fantasy author, battling to finish his life’s work, who overcomes a six-year-long bout of writer’s block to at last complete the fifth installment in his epic. It would be nice to think that the book thus produced was worth the wait. That would be the happy ending. But reality can be harsh to happy endings. “A Dance with Dragons” is not the book I waited six years to read, and to wish otherwise would be fantasy.

George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series was never mere fantasy, but with each new volume, it is becoming more and more a daytime soap opera.

Mr Martin famously spent the second half of the 80s working in television, and if I may jump to unwarranted conclusions, this experience seems to have helped him break new ground by infusing fantasy with some of the best aspects of TV—sharply-drawn, sympathetic characters, crisp, witty dialogue, and intricate plotting.

He’s also made clever use of catchphrases and personal mottoes to provide a kind of leitmotif to each character’s story and give a sense of continuity and cohesion to the tale: “A Lannister always pays his debts”, “If I look back, I am lost”, “You know nothing, Jon Snow.” More famously, he’s gotten good mileage from his willingness to kill off seemingly key characters at surprising moments.

Maintaining such a high standard of writing for even one book would have been an impressive feat. Mr Martin managed it for three, stumbled on the fourth, and after 20-odd years working on the series, the fatigue is beginning to show.

The personal catchphrases continue to get good airtime, with “a Lannister always pays his debts” featuring five times, “If I look back, I am lost (or doomed)” six times, and “You know nothing, Jon Snow” an impressive 13. However, much of the other writing has become simply repetitive and lazy. The phrase “words are wind” also pops up 13 times in various character’s mouths, “much and more” (meaning “a lot”) gets used as hefty 30 times, but this is pipped for the number one spot by “(s)he was not wrong”, at a teeth-gritting 33 times. These phrases have become less a leitmotif, more a pianist banging the same three chords over and over again.

As part of the series’ gritty image, Mr Martin has never been shy about including sex in his stories, but now he appears to be shoehorning it in, simply for its own sake. One character spends the night before a siege having graphic sex. Another pays a surprise visit to one of his generals—and interrupts the latter mid-coitus. A description of a man being burned at the stake takes time out to tell us what happens when the fire reaches his genitals.

The habit of killing off characters has likewise devolved into self-parody. Having already killed off most of the expendables, Mr Martin spends most of “A Dance with Dragons” only appearing to kill off characters, but not really. One is apparently executed, but isn’t. Another appears to drown, but doesn’t. Yet another seems to be beheaded, but—well, you get the idea. The effect is a bit like the boy who cried wolf, and cheapens the book’s finale, in which two key characters appear to die, since by then the reader doesn’t believe for minute Mr Martin will actually follow through.

The other major drawback to the wholesale slaughter among named characters is that Mr Martin spends much time introducing a slate of new characters in much the same way that the old Star Trek series used to introduce new red-shirts.

What is left? Plot, but not much of it. Most of the characters spend their time somnolently staggering from A to B. There are sporadic bouts of frenetic action, to be sure, but the story itself continues to plod along, fairly aimlessly as far as I can see. With no resolution to any of the major plot lines anywhere in sight, it’s increasingly hard to care about any of the latest crop of characters, knowing they probably won’t live much longer than halfway through the next book (when and if it is ever published). It’s only in the handful of chapters that “Dance with Dragons” shakes off its lethargy and wraps up in a number of cliffhanger endings.

I would like to believe the series will get better, that all questions will be answered, all the plot lines will come together, but if there’s one thing Mr Martin has taught me, it’s not to believe in happy endings.

Hearts of Darkness

Title: Matterhorn, A Novel of the Vietnam War
Author: Karl Marlantes
Publisher: Grove Press

Rating: 4/5

The real horror of war is not that it is horrible, but that it is horribly banal, taking rage, murder, filth and despair and making them commonplace. That it is neither more nor less stupid and senseless than everything else the human race does. That it repeats itself ad nauseam, like tinnitus after an explosion, or a single act of homicide on an endlessly repeating loop.

In "Matterhorn", a semi-autobiographical story of the Vietnam war, first-time author and ex-Marine Karl Marlantes brings this message to vivid, messy life, focusing on a futile battle in a futile war.

Marching along death's mobius strip come 2nd Lieutenant Waino Mellas and the Marines of Bravo Company, as they spend several exhausting weeks building an artillery base on a hilltop code-named "Matterhorn", only to be told to abandon it and march through the jungle—beset by hunger, disease, wildlife—to another hill to set up another base. This, too, they soon quit, before being ordered back to attack Matterhorn, which has in the interim predictably been occupied by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).

"It was all absurd, without reason or meaning," thinks Mellas just before the attack, a sentiment that could serve as a coda for the entire book. "People who didn't even know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about."

For most of the book though, the NVA prove enemies more in theory than fact. Far more deadly are the hatreds between black and white soldiers, the petty office politics between the commander of the battalion and the leader of Bravo Company, the callousness and greed of rear-area personnel. "'No matter where you go, it's still high school'" says Mellas. After being wounded, Mellas suffers more at the hands of kleptomaniac orderlies than he ever does at the hands of the NVA. It is almost a relief to return to the front lines and his unit.

The book ends shortly after, but you already know what will happen next—another march, another hill, another battle. There is no catharsis or epiphany, only resignation. "It was another cycle, another wearying convulsive rhythm, and if it wasn't Mellas it was (his friend) McCarthy, and if not McCarthy someone like McCarthy, forever and forever, like an image in facing mirrors in a barbershop."

The writing feels raw rather than polished, despite the novel's reported 30-year gestation period. Tension builds, then suddenly evaporates. The team scales a mountain, deadly vulnerable to enemy fire, when... they reach the top, unscathed. The characters too are prone to sudden shifts in personality, here nervous newcomer, here swearing old-timer.

In a way though, these rough edges work to the novel's benefit. War is not a story arc, but a staccato series of incidents, and so the plot feels like a true reflection of the experiences of Mellas and his men. Characters do not develop so much as dissolve, individual tics erased under a barrage of four-letter words, but this too feels believable, and you can easily imagine after months of combat those around you blurring into an undifferentiated, swearing, sullen mass.

In the tradition of James Jones's "Thin Red Line" or Wofgang Petersen's "Das Boot", this is a work that leaves you emotionally numbed but intellectually charged. The pointlessness of it is the point. "He knew all of them were shadows," thinks Mellas. "The dead, the living. All shadows ... changing the pattern of things as the moved but leaving nothing changed when they left."

And that, above all else, is the true horror of war.

Under Whelming

Title: Under Heaven
Author: Guy Gavriel Kay
Publisher: Roc

3/5

It's a bit like opera, really. Majestically overwrought melodrama, populated by breast-beating, scenery-chewing actors emoting their hearts out over their tragic loves and losses. It's also quite brainy beneath all that, but despite some nice interplay between the characters this book is weighted down with a leaden ending.

Did I mention to happen to like Mr Kay's books? I should, before we go too far. Been a fan since 1984's "Fionavar Tapestry", unfairly dismissed as "Tolkien lite" by critics who looked no further than the first line of Mr Kay's resume ("1974: Edited J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Silmarillion'--in your face, suckers!"). Despite some derivative story elements, Mr Kay displayed an aptitude for shamelessly playing your heart strings, most especially to the tunes of loves and losses.

After the pure fantasy of "Fionavar" Mr Kay has settled into a long run of works labelled "historical fantasy"--historical events with the names changed and a few magical notes added. Thus, "Tigana" was renaissance Italy, "A Song for Arbonne" medieval France, "Lions of Al-Rassan" reconquista Spain, and so on.

In "Under Heaven", Canadian author Guy Gavriel Kay swaps the familiar harmonies of Europe for the more exotic tones of China, but the leitmotif remains the same--the power of personal decisions to shape world-shaking events.

Tang Dynasty China is here thinly disguised as the land of Kitai, where an ageing emperor grows besotted with his newest concubine and a barbarian general and aristocratic chancellor vie for power in the ensuing vacuum. The story follows Shen Tai, second son of famous general Shen Gao, who as the novel opens is observing a two-year morning period for his father's death by burying the dead at the site of one of the late general's battlefields. For this deed, he is rewarded with 250 horses by the wife of the opposing king.

This lavish gift sends Tai into paroxysms of self-doubt, and into the maelstrom of power politics in the imperial capital. The set up for this is nicely paced and features some vintage Kay moments, mostly in the nuanced interplay between Tai, his new female bodyguard, and an alcoholic poet. The imperial intrigues also have some nice moments in the rivalry between chancellor Wen Zhou and general An Roshan, underscoring Mr Kay's belief (stated in earlier books, especially "Last Light of the Sun") in the power of on-the spot decisions to change the course of history.

This is, however, as good as it gets in "Under Heaven", as the resolution to all this conflict gets described in the stuffy terms of an academic textbook. "Three historians of a later dynasty expressed the view...", "historians agreed" "historians wrote" "almost universally accepted opinions among historians"... On no fewer than a dozen occasions, we are informed of what future "historians" will make of the action. Which is of course so much more exciting than actually showing us what happened, right? No, perhaps not.

The constant referral to historians is apt, as the last quarter of the book follows history's score to each and every note. For example, An Roshan (the book's stand-in for the historical An Lushan) rebels, just as he did in history. He wins a battle in exactly the same manner, captures the capital in the same manner, and gets murdered by his son in exactly the same manner as his historical counterpart. The ostensible main character does little but trot about the countryside, fail to rescue his lover and wring his hands a bit. There's an equally pointless sub plot involving his sister, who gets shipped off to marry some chieftain on the steppe, but who instead rides around a lot before disappearing for 50 pages or so.

At least opera ends when the fat lady sings, but alas this story hasn't the sense to stop even at the death of the emperor's consort (Tang Chinese standards of beauty were, er, Reubenesque). The end is overly long, and a bit of a chore to sit through.

"Tigana" and "Arbonne" in particular remain some of the best fantasy books ever written, but "Under Heaven" is not up to their standard. Let's hope Mr Kay changes his tune for his next novel.

The beauty of science and the science of beauty

Title: Stories of Your Life and Others
Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher: Small Beer Press

5/5

Science can be beautiful, but you don't always have to be a scientist to appreciate its beauty.

Anyone can appreciate a mandelbrot set, the mathematical designs on a mosque dome, the earth-rise over the moon, the impossible staircases of MC Escher. Add to this list the works of Ted Chiang.



If you're already a science-fiction fan, likely Mr Chiang will need no introduction. Despite producing just 12 short stories in his career, Mr Chiang has amassed about a dozen literary awards and a cult following of enthusiasts. If you're not a fan, Mr Chiang is one of the best arguments for becoming one.

"Stories of Your Life and Others" is a collection of eight short stories, relentlessly inventive, wildly diverse in content but strongly unified in spirit. Whether he's talking about building the Tower of Babel or being able to predict the future, Mr Chiang builds rational, internally consistent worlds that unify scientific thinking with humanistic sensitivity.

The capstone of this construct is undoubtedly "Story of Your Life". In it, a linguist named Louise Banks learns an alien language, and this new frame of reference enables her to see into the future. Intellectually, the story is a marvel, as Mr Chiang concocts a plausible basis for foretelling the future, and a philosophical theory as to how fate and free will could coexist.

But the real punch is emotional. Banks is a mother (or was, or will be--it's complicated) and knowing the future gives a new twist to the questions faced by any would-be parent: Are we ready for this? Will our child be healthy, happy, successful? The kicker of course is that Banks already knows the answers.

For stories with such strongly rational overtones, there is a surprising fascination with religion and faith in Mr Chiang's stories, and God pops up (or conspicuously fails to) in one form or another in several of the stories, the best of which is "Hell is the Absence of God". Here, Mr Chiang wrestles with the age-old chestnut, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People, by does so by making the mystical commonplace.

In this story, Acts of God, in the insurance sense, really are literal Acts of God, as every earthly manifestation of the heavenly host sets off lightning storms, tidal waves or hurricanes. Not surprisingly, some innocent people get hurt or even killed, and among them is the wife of the protagonist, Neil Fisk. Fisk then faces the impossible task of trying to love the God who killed his wife, and the story follows the increasingly desperate steps he takes to be reunited with his wife in heaven.

In lesser hands, such a story could come off as mere church-bashing, but here you get a strong sense of a sensitive man struggling to accept the random cruelty of existence, and the fact that "God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion."

That said, Mr Chiang's writing is somewhat hampered by his apparent discomfort with dialogue. Instead of getting the character's words verbatim, we often get stories related almost entirely by narrators. While in some ways this further underlines the veneer of rationality over these fantastical stories, it somewhat dulls the emotional impact. Also, in one or two stories, Mr Chiang manages the balance between head and heart, intellect and emotion, rather less well, and throws at you such complex concepts that the story becomes head-scratching rather than heart-warming.

Still, "Stories of Your Life and Others" is a literary accomplishment no mere harpings of mine can diminish. Art is not always appreciated in its own lifetime, but here's your chance to put that to rights.

Three strikes for Mr Smith

Title: Three Stations
Author: Martin Cruz Smith
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

1/5

Back in 2008, I read a fantastic article in National Geographic by Mr Smith, "Moscow Never Sleeps". In the article, he plays on the contrast between the outrageous wealth of Russia's nouveau riche and the sorrowful squalor of society's least fortunates, geographically embodied in the part of Moscow known as Three Stations.

"Three Stations", the novel, is basically that article turned into a book, minus the focus and editing, 30 times longer but many times less interesting. It's social commentary masquerading as a crime novel, and doing neither with any particular distinction.

The seventh outing for Mr Smith's Moscow police investigator, Arkady Renko, packs a surfeit of plots into its slimmish 240 pages. There's a runaway teenage prostitute, whose baby has been stolen. There's a pair of hired killers looking to bring her back to the whorehouse. A kindly teenage street gang. A murderer obsessed with ballet.

What there isn't is a coherent story line stringing all these plot points together. Characters are introduced, only to vanish for chapters on end. The abducted baby and a murdered ballerina fight for space, and as a result neither story line feels fully developed. Also missing is the coherent social commentary that marks Mr Smith's other works, including his National Geographic article.

Renko this time is almost a parody of the established character--still the only one who believes a crime has been committed, still fighting with his boss, still bemused stepdad to chess prodigy Zhenya, still hooking up with women in passionless encounters (his girlfriend of the last two books has conveniently disappeared, for reasons not immediately obvious). There are the odd glimmers of Mr Smith's trademark dark wit, but mostly this Renko feels locked in a holding pattern, like a car in a traffic jam on Moscow's ring road.

The end result is a bit like "Indiana Jones 4". Or "Blair Witch 2" or "Son of Mask". In short, a poorly-written sequel that does its best to kill whatever good memories you had of the works that came before.

If the plot is a mess, the editing is worse. Mr Smith keeps forgetting to tell us things. An old woman appears; "It was the babushka who had been suffering the crumbs of the priest"--but Mr Smith never said there was a babushka with the priest. A bad guy is nasitly disemboweled by a hero who magically appears in just the right spot--but quite how this feat is managed is never entirely clear.

"Three Station" was almost physically painful to read, especially since I have long been an enormous fan of Mr Smith and his Renko books (read my reviews of "Wolves Eat Dogs" and "Stalin's Ghost"). Read Mr Smith's earlier Renko books, especially "Wolves Eat Dogs", read the National Geographic article, but whatever you do, don't read this.

Small book with big ambitions

Title: The Art of Travel
Author: Alain de Botton
Publisher: Penguin

3/5

"Vacation" and "travel" have become so synonymous that in order to separate these words, we had to glue two others together to make "staycation". The question of why we feel this urge to spend our free time somewhere, anywhere but here, is at the heart of Alain de Botton's nerdy but entertaining book, "The Art of Travel".

Yes, nerdy. You will read few books so proudly, unashamedly in-your-face intellectual as "The Art of Travel". Mr De Botton is a social geologist, and to explain his take on questions such as why we are drawn to the exotic, to the countryside or to the monumental, he digs into the history of literature, of art and philosophy, and brings up parables drawn from the lives of Gustave Flaubert, William Wordsworth or Edmund Burke to illustrate his point.

This is a little book with big ambitions. In a series of essays on our motives for travelling, what we do when we arrive at our destination, and how it makes us feel, Mr De Botton trawls the lives and works of these classic authors and artists to try to explain first, why we are so often unhappy in our travels, and second, how we can become better travelers.

Despite such lofty goals, ponderous stuffiness is fended off--if only just--by a whimsical turn of phrase; Birds in Barbados "career through the air in matinal excitement" he says, going to to note the "democratic scruffiness [of] street furniture" in Amsterdam, and elsewhere he remarks that "man seems merely dust postponed" in the face of the bleak majesty of the Sinai.

Less successful is Mr De Botton's attempt to bolt his own travel experiences onto his exploration of universal themes. For example, he inserts an anecdote on his delight in the "neighborliness" of the u and i in the Dutch word "Uitgang" (Exit) into a description of Flaubert's travels in Egypt. In such cases, it seems a stretch to equate his experiences with the lives of the greats, or else he seems to be pushing too hard to make events fit whatever point he is trying to make.

The other limitation of Mr De Botton's work is his narrow definition of "travel". I started reading "The Art of Travel" after returning home from visiting relatives in Canada, and found it silent on the themes that mattered to me at the time, aspects of travel like "leaving loved ones behind". I finished it during a business trip to the Middle East, and again Mr De Botton had little to say to me. Mr De Botton's homilies on how to enjoy architecture or museums are nicely argued, but how about gastronomic travel? Shopping travel? "The Art of the Sightseeing Holiday" might have been a more accurate, though admittedly less catchy title.

Yet this is a book that rewards perseverance. I find myself returning again and again to Mr De Botton's themes, holding them up and examining them from each angle, trying to find what I believe. Strip away the ostentatious wordiness and awkward personal anecdotes, and you are left with some though-provoking insights, perhaps the greatest of which is that "vacations" and "travel" need not be the same.

Rather, in the words of Nietzsche, the key is to be the kind of person who "know how to manage their experiences ... who know how to make much of little". You might try starting with this little book.

The devil is in...

Title: Surface Detail
Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit

4/5
The devil is in the details. Actually, several are in Surface Detail, which is fitting, because the book itself is obsessed with details.

[I'm trying to cut down the self-indulgent crap, and answer the questions that actually matter]

What's it about?
Breezy dialogue (by either smart-arse AIs or idiots in over their heads), balls-out techno-blitzkrieg battles, and densely detailed, borderline obsessive-compulsive world-building. There's some stuff about virtual reality heavens and hells, a virtual war being fought to shut down the latter, and a reincarnated woman out for revenge on her murderer, but that's just to keep the cheap seats happy.

What's it like?
Spending 10 years in Banks's hyper-advanced Culture setting. Gives you an ever-escalating series of imaginative and outlandish settings, in a kind of literary tinnitus that fills each page with vision after stupendous vision. Catnip for the devotee, but bafflingly self-indulgent to everyone else.

Is it any good?
Mostly yes, but leavened with bouts of dullness, unless you like your SciFi chattier than Stephen Fry's twitter page.