The Lies of Locke Lamora
Author: Scott Lynch
Publication Date: 6/27/06
Publisher: Bantam

Blurb(GR): In this stunning debut, author Scott Lynch delivers the wonderfully thrilling tale of an audacious criminal and his band of confidence tricksters. Set in a fantastic city pulsing with the lives of decadent nobles and daring thieves, here is a story of adventure, loyalty, and survival that is one part Robin Hood, one part Ocean’s Eleven, and entirely enthralling.…

An orphan’s life is harsh–and often short–in the island city of Camorr, built on the ruins of a mysterious alien race. But born with a quick wit and a gift for thieving, Locke Lamora has dodged both death and slavery, only to fall into the hands of an eyeless priest known as Chains–a man who is neither blind nor a priest. A con artist of extraordinary talent, Chains passes his skills on to his carefully selected “family” of orphans–a group known as the Gentlemen Bastards. Under his tutelage, Locke grows to lead the Bastards, delightedly pulling off one outrageous confidence game after another. Soon he is infamous as the Thorn of Camorr, and no wealthy noble is safe from his sting.

Passing themselves off as petty thieves, the brilliant Locke and his tightly knit band of light-fingered brothers have fooled even the criminal underworld’s most feared ruler, Capa Barsavi. But there is someone in the shadows more powerful–and more ambitious–than Locke has yet imagined.

Known as the Gray King, he is slowly killing Capa Barsavi’s most trusted men–and using Locke as a pawn in his plot to take control of Camorr’s underworld. With a bloody coup under way threatening to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the Gray King at his own brutal game–or die trying.…

Review:
I’ve seen a few readers refer to this book as “fast-paced” and my honest opinion is that this book is anything but.  This story wanders; it spends time on the small details; it reveals itself slowly.  Reading this book is like standing nose to tile with a mosaic and backing away one tiny step at a time.  We’re given a tile here, a tile there…one from the past, one from the present, a piece of random history, a side-note about one of the characters.   The completed picture isn’t visible until you’re a good distance away – until you’ve reached the end.

Finishing this book is like waking up to the realization that you’re actually surrounded by several floor to ceiling mosaic frescoes.  This writer quite obviously has a lot more planned for this cast of characters.  And unlike the authors of some series, I have absolute confidence that he has a firm grasp of where everything is going.  He probably knows the intimate history of every single character he’s ever written (even the minor ones): what they were like as children, who they’ve been with, what they had for dinner last night.  His imagination is clearly a force to be reckoned with, but the challenge for him (in my humble opinion) is one of editing.  It takes a very precise, steady hand to leave in enough detail to achieve that brilliant panoramic atmosphere, without going overboard into slow-as-molasses territory.

And actually, I think that he’s largely successful.  There were only a few times where I felt like…really? Did that detail really need to be in there?”  Even then, I was by and large so charmed by his hilarious/sarcastic dialogue that I didn’t much care.  And I love the entire cast!  I love that the “hero” Locke Lamora is short, non-descript, and scrappy.  He’s a brilliant con-artist (perhaps too brilliant) but his cons sometimes fail - spectacularly.  And his merry band of grifters stole their way into my heart one by one.  

Still, I would only recommend this one to those who don’t mind a bit of meandering – to those who are willing to trade off break-neck speed for a lot of interesting depth.  His writing reminds me quite a bit of Guy Gavriel Kay, with added heists, disguises, sleight of hand, gore, and plus about a million percent more f-bombs.  This book is hilarious and sometimes silly, but it’s never light.  He’s not afraid to hit you with real tragedy.

My only other comment is: Sabetha needs to make an appearance pronto!

4/5 Stars

Trainspotting
Author: Irvine Welsh
Publication Date: 6/17/96
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Blurb (GR): Irvine Welsh's controversial first novel, set on the heroin-addicted fringe of working-class youth in Edinburgh, is yet another exploration of the dark side of Scottishness. The main character, Mark Renton, is at the center of a clique of nihilistic slacker junkies with no hopes and no possibilities, and only "mind-numbing and spirit-crushing" alternatives in the straight world they despise. This particular slice of humanity has nothing left but the blackest of humor and a sharpness of wit. American readers can use the glossary in the back to translate the slang and dialect--essential, since the dialogue makes the book. This is a bleak vision sung as musical comedy.

Review:

This is why I love reading challenges - they allow me to discover books I would have never picked up on my own. Let's face it, would I ever intentionally seek a book about Scottish low-lives - junkies, thugs, and prostitutes? Don't think so. But alas, the fate threw Welsh's "Trainspotting" my way and I ate it up like hot cakes.

"Trainspotting" is a collection of short stories narrating scenes in the lives of a Skag Boys (skag = heroin) - Rents, Sick Boy, Begsbie, Spud, and various people around them - their families, lovers, drug suppliers, partners in crime, or victims. Mark Renton (Rents) is more or less is the protagonist, this is mostly his story, even though the stories are written from multiple points of view in 1st and 3rd person. The majority of them is also narrated in Scottish dialect, so some initial effort to understand is required.

The best thing about this book is that it takes you on a roller-coaster ride - it takes you from revulsion to uncontrollable boasts of laughter to tears of compassion. Considering that every other word in this book is a profanity, I think Irvine Welsh has talent.

"Trainspotting" starts off as a rather repulsive read - within the first 10 pages Rents is fishing out the drugs that he has just rectally ingested out of the filthy overflowing public toilet. The repulsive factor doesn't really go away as the story progresses, we are faced with psychopath Begsbie who is extremely abusive to everyone around him, including his girlfriends, or Sick Boy who is very popular with women and at some point becomes a pimp of a few of them, or Rents himself, who drunkenly has sex with a 14-year old girl or shags his dead brother's pregnant fiance in the bathroom during his funeral. The list goes on and on. But the thing is, in spite of all these depravities, Skag Boys are strangely relatable and, dare I say it, often likable. They are losers and addicts and criminals, but their emotional and moral struggles are real.

The book is, although very dark, at the same time hilarious, it is filled with Rents' sarcastic humor. This quote from the scene can give you a good taste of the writing.

Here Rents is held by his parents under the house arrest. They are attempting to get him off the heroin, Rents' mom is trying to feed him.

"The auld girl sticks us in the comfy chair by the fire in front ay the telly, and puts a tray oan ma lap. Ah'm convulsing inside anyway, but the mince looks revolting.
- Ah've telt ye ah dinnae eat meat Ma, ah sais.
- Ye eywis liked yer mince and tatties (potatoes). That's whair ye've gone wrong son, no eating the right thing. Ye need meat.
Now there is apparently a casual link between heroin addiction and vegetarianism."

In the latter part "Trainspotting" is no longer a repulsively hilarious read, it gets darker and darker, as we follow the fates of Rents' many friends, and it's not pretty - too many of them are dying - from HIV from sharing needles, from cancer, gangrene, heart attacks. Seeing this many deaths, 25-year old Rents attempts to kick his habit over and over again, but will he and his friends succeed?

I think "Trainspotting" is a remarkable read and I will definitely read more of Welsh's work. But is this book for everybody? Absolutely not. It is filled with human depravities, profanity, and written in Scottish dialect. This will turn off many readers. But if you are looking for a challenging (in many ways) read, give "Trainspotting" a try. You won't be disappointed.

5/5 stars

Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon #1)
Author: Chine Mieville
Publication Date: 2/27/01
Publisher: Del Rey

Blurb(GR): Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettos contain a vast mix of workers, artists, spies, junkies, and whores. In New Crobuzon, the unsavory deal is stranger to none—not even to Isaac, a brilliant scientist with a penchant for Crisis Theory.

Isaac has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique research. But when a half-bird, half-human creature known as the Garuda comes to him from afar, Isaac is faced with challenges he has never before fathomed. Though the Garuda's request is scientifically daunting, Isaac is sparked by his own curiosity and an uncanny reverence for this curious stranger.

While Isaac's experiments for the Garuda turn into an obsession, one of his lab specimens demands attention: a brilliantly colored caterpillar that feeds on nothing but a hallucinatory drug and grows larger—and more consuming—by the day. What finally emerges from the silken cocoon will permeate every fiber of New Crobuzon—and not even the Ambassador of Hell will challenge the malignant terror it invokes . . .

A magnificent fantasy rife with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and wonderfully realized characters, told in a storytelling style in which Charles Dickens meets Neal Stephenson, Perdido Street Station offers an eerie, voluptuously crafted world that will plumb the depths of every reader's imagination.

Review:
When we’ve turned this world into a dried up husk and have to resort to shutting ourselves in to life sustaining pods and “living” within some sort of virtual environment, I vote we nominate this guy to imagine and design our virtual
realities.  Sure, we’ll probably end up with some weird shit, like fire breathing iguana flowers and pulsating organic clouds that rain mucus and blood (he won’t be able to help himself) but we’ll get the most detailed, complete, panoramic world, and I can guarantee that it won’t feel imaginary. 

I think that’s China Mieville’s greatest strength:  his limitless imagination and 100% commitment to his ideas.  Reading this book feels a bit like watching this video; like living in a place where nothing behaves as you are
accustomed to, but somehow it’s all still graspable.  This is my third Mieville, and I keep feeling like, when is he going to run out of ideas?!!  I mean, everything that I’ve read from him feels completely original and new…and
this book in particular just has one new and original idea stacked on top of another ad infinitum.  At times I did feel like I needed to slow down.  It’s like driving 100 miles per hour through an abomination of the Emerald City:  everything’s flashing by and I just want to slow down and focus on one of the disgusting, hideous details but I can’t, because…here’s another one!

So yeah, maybe I should actually write something about what this book is about.  Just as in the other two Mieville novels that I’ve read, the environment is a major character in this book.  New Crobuzon is a putrescent, festering, melting pot of a city, with combustible tension between its highly varied denizens and the city’s leaders (both formal and illicit).  It’s a place with a long memory, inhabited by recent arrivals, desperate and ignorant, building their lives up on top of waste, pollution, and the corpse of a desiccated behemoth.

In addition, this book has a large cast of compelling characters, which is something that I felt was missing from The City & The City.  Isaac is naïve in the way of scientists: he’s insular and so focused on his own ideas that he doesn’t pay enough attention to their potential impact on the world.  He’s a bit of an antihero: he’s impulsive and rash, sometimes lacking in bravery and integrity.  I found Lin and Yagharek to be the most fascinating characters.  I think there’s some interesting mirroring between them.  Lin was born down in the filth and muck, and managed to lift herself out and find a new life, but she can’t help but miss her old home.  Yag was born free and powerful, and through his own reprehensible actions, brought himself down to the gutter, and now he can’t get out.  Yag is also the only character to be gifted with first person narration for a few passages throughout the novel, which are my favorite
parts.

Isaac and Lin are in love, which is difficult because they come from two different worlds, and their relationship is viewed as taboo and perverted.  Isaac worries and guards the secret, but Lin is less concerned, as she is already an outcast among her own people.  When Yagharek arrives at Isaac’s laboratory, desperate to regain his former power, and Lin is commissioned to create a life size statue of a grotesque underworld boss, events are set in motion which could lead to the destruction of New Crobuzon.

The writing is elaborate and ornamented with a surfeit of big big words.  For the most part it feels appropriate, like he’s using just the right word at the right time.  It doesn’t feel overdone.  However, he definitely has a few favorites that appear frequently enough that I took note:  palimpsest, vestige, palimpsest, exudations, ineluctable, palimpsest, autopoiesis, ichor, and uhh…did I mention palimpsest? I wonder; if these words weren’t so conspicuous (because of their big big-ness) would I have even noticed?  I mean, if he had used “layered” or “inevitable” twenty times I doubt it would stand out in the same way.

I just have one more thing to add:  I’m onto you, Mr. Mieville!  That climactic slake moth battle scene?  I know exactly where that idea came from.  Do you get all of your material from cheesy 90’s movies or what?

Perfect Musical Pairing

Bon Iver – Holocene

Because I listened so obsessively to the new Bon Iver album for the entire time I was reading this book that they melded and layered themselves together.  Parts of each were visible, but they had combined and concealed each other as well…they had become a blend, a…oh god, what is that word?  I know it…if I could only just remember...it’s on the tip of my tongue….
4/5 Stars

Tigana
Author: Guy Gavriel Kay
Publication Date: 1/1/1990
Publisher: Roc

Blurb (GR):  Eight of the nine provinces of the Peninsula of the Palm, on a world with two moons, have fallen to the warrior sorcerers Brandin of Ygrath and Alberico of Barbadior. Brandin's younger son is slain in a battle with the principality of Tigana, which the grief-stricken sorcerer then destroys. Years later, a small band of survivors, led by Alessan, last prince of Tigana's royal house wages psychological warfare, planting seeds for the overthrow of the two tyrants. At the center of these activities are Devin, a gifted young singer; Catriana, a young woman pursued by suspicions of
her family's guilt; and Duke Sandre d'Astibar, a wily resistance leader thought dead. Meanwhile, at Brandin's court, Dianora, his favorite concubine and--unknown to anyone, another survivor of Tigana--struggles between her growing love for the often gentle tyrant and her desire for vengeance. Gradually
the scene is set for both conquerors to destroy each other and free a land.

Review:
While reading this book over the past month, I thought a lot about the differences between youth and adulthood, between young beliefs and mature ones.  And I think that maybe our youth is the only time that we can hold simple, firm convictions.  Maybe it’s the only time that it’s possible to believe completely that love will conquer all, or that there are good guys and bad guys, or that if we try hard enough, we can achieve anything we dream about.  In our youth, we can say things like, “I would never…” and feel completely certain that it’s true.  I think that a lot of maturing into an adult involves being proven painfully wrong, again and again.

I feel like I lost a bit of my youth while reading this book.  Don’t get me wrong; I loved it.  It’s going on my favorites shelf and I’ll probably re-read it dozens of times.  But I hate it a little bit too, because it has now rendered so many of my favorite fantasy novels (some that I used to even consider grey and nuanced) flat and simplistic by comparison. 

This is the most adult fantasy novel I’ve ever read.  And I don’t just mean that in the sense that it contains sex, violence, and heads exploding like rotten fruit.  I mean that in the sense that nothing in this book is black and white, nothing is simple, nothing is held sacred.  Fantasy used to be a genre where I could sometimes comfortably escape into a few simple ideals, but this book has proven to me that even a fantasy novel can be gritty and realistic.  And now I feel like nothing less will do.

If this were a typical fantasy, it would be about a rag-tag band of comrades coming together to make a long journey and reclaim their home from the curse of some distant, evil goliath.  The foes battled along the way would be disposable creatures – orcs, giants, spiders, dragons – beings that are murdered with little compunction.  The final battle would end in a massive celebration and all would be right with the world.

But this is not a typical fantasy.  This book is about an entire generation robbed of its very identity.  It’s about the
children born to the losing side of a great war, and the terrible legacy that they must bear.  It’s about collateral damage – not just faceless creatures, but people with homes and families, friends, the one you love, yourself.  It's about how a fight for peace can necessitate horrible violence.  It’s about the never-ending nature of war. 

It’s about this:

“The lesson of her days, Dianora thought, was simply this: that love was not enough.  Whateverthe songs of the troubadours might say.  Whatever hope it might seem to offer, love was simply not enough to bridge the chasm in her world.”

And this:

“’The land is never truly dead.  It can always come back.  Or what is the meaning of the cycle of seasons and years?’  She wiped her tears away and looked at him.

His expression in the darkness was much too sad for a moment such as this.  She wished she knew a way to dispel that sorrow, and not only for tonight.  He said, ‘That is mostly true, I suppose.  Or true for the largest things.  Smaller things can die.  People, dreams, a home.’”

And this:

“He carried, like baggage, like a cart yoked to his shoulders, like a round stone in his heart, images of his people, their world destroyed, their name obliterated.  Truly obliterated: a sound that was drifting, year by year, further away from the shores of the world of men, like some tide withdrawing in the grey hour of a winter dawn.  Very like
such a tide, but different as well, because tides came back.”

The “heroes” are deeply flawed – capable of violence, enslavement, and the sacrifice of thousands of their own people in battle in the pursuit of their goal.  The “villain” is a very grey character and in the end, is just a man.  A man with too much power perhaps and too much grief, but still a man, capable of feeling great love and deserving of sympathy.

The relationships are intense and heartbreaking and I wept ugly tears more than once.  I love that we get to see the conflict through the eyes of the long-toiling Baerd and Alessan, but also through the eyes of the youthful and naively passionate Devin. And we get to see Devin mature in all the hardest ways
possible:

“Devin suddenly felt as if he could not bear it anymore.  Alessan’s quite acquiescence was as a final blow in his own heart.  He felt torn open, wounded by the hard truths of the world, by the passing of things.  He lowered his head to the windowsill and wept like a child in the presence of something too large for his capacity.”

Dianora broke my heart the most though, with her systematic destruction of her own self, her own happiness,
all in the name of this terrible legacy:

”She stopped and looked down at the flowers, their fragile petals shaken by the breeze; but her thoughts were back with Brandin’s fairy tale of the far away princess born under summer stars, cradled on such flowers. 

She closed her eyes then, knowing that this would not do.  And slowly, deliberately, searching out pain as a spur, a goad, she built up a mental image of her father riding away, and then of her mother, and then of Baerd among the soldiers in the square.  When she opened her eyes to go on there were no fairy tales in her heart.”

Obviously I loved the writing.  If I could find a way to include five or six more quotes in this review, I probably would.  His prose is powerful and lyrical and incredibly evocative.  This is a real, heavy duty, dense, you’re-going-to-need-to-look-at-that-map kind of fantasy and I hesitate to recommend it to those who only enjoy the “lighter” fantasies.  However, I think that if you enjoy capital F Fantasy even a little bit, this book is definitely not to be missed.

Oh, okay.  One more quote.

“His intelligence stretched her to the limits, and then
changed what those limits were."

5/5 Stars