Books

Cross-post­ed on Goodreads, sans footnotes.

Every time I read a John Scalzi nov­el, I’m remind­ed what a good writer he is.* This one’s no excep­tion. He han­dles the big pic­ture and the small, per­son­al details with equal deftness.

After I fin­ished the epi­logue, I jumped back to the pro­logue. With the knowl­edge of every­thing else that hap­pens in the book, it was fun to see how this lit­tle piece of the sto­ry — large­ly uncon­nect­ed to the events in the remain­der of the nov­el, fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters we would­n’t see again — still added to the whole.**

When I start­ed read­ing the book, I was­n’t sure if it was a stand-alone nov­el or the launch of a new series. When I got to the end, it was pret­ty plain­ly the open­ing vol­ume in a mul­ti-vol­ume set. (Don’t get me wrong — the nov­el is com­plete in itself, but the end­ing indi­cates there’s more to come.) Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, I’d have felt a twinge of irri­ta­tion at this, but in this case I was relieved. I want more time with these char­ac­ters, and I want to know just how they’re going to deal with an empire in collapse.

The Col­laps­ing Empire, by John Scalzi

• McNal­ly Robin­son Booksellers
• Indigo.ca
• Amazon.ca
• Or, if you live in the West­man area, the Bran­don branch of the West­man Region­al Library has a copy.

One final note: Peer review is impor­tant. Read the nov­el and you’ll see what I mean.

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* In a lot of ways, John Scalz­i’s writ­ing reminds me of Joe Halde­man, who is one of my favourite writers.

** A note on pro­logues: Elmore Leonard famous­ly want­ed writ­ers to avoid them, and gen­er­al­ly speak­ing he’s right (IMHO). But any list of “rules” of writ­ing are real­ly guide­lines, and usu­al­ly reflect what works best for the author writ­ing the list of rules. I’ve read a lot of Elmore Leonard’s detec­tive nov­els, and I can’t recall ever run­ning into a pro­logue there.

I don’t skip pro­logues when I read, but I do notice when they real­ly don’t con­nect at all to the sto­ry. When that hap­pens, I agree, it would have been bet­ter to excise the pro­logue entirely.

The Col­laps­ing Empire’s pro­logue was fun enough — and con­nect­ed enough to the over­all sto­ry — that I read it twice.

Fel­low Bran­don author Craig Rus­sell recent­ly had a new nov­el pub­lished, titled Frag­ment. I went to the book launch at McNal­ly Robin­son Book­sellers and bought myself a copy.

I fin­ished read­ing it last night, and I must say, I enjoyed it. It’s a short novel—not much over 200 pages—but it packs a lot into that space.

The Story

Thou­sands per­ish as ice over­runs a research/tourism base at the south end of the world. A mas­sive sheet of Antarc­tic ice—the Fragment—breaks free of the con­ti­nen­tal ice shelf and drifts into the ocean. Three sci­en­tists, sur­vivors from the destroyed base, must try to get the mes­sage out: This is a dis­as­ter. The Frag­ment threat­ens thou­sands, pos­si­bly mil­lions, of lives.

Stand­ing in their way is the cap­tain of the nuclear sub­ma­rine that res­cued them, under orders to run silent, run deep. Also, the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States isn’t thrilled about the sit­u­a­tion, since it looks like it’ll be bad for his polls in the run-up to re-election.

And Ring, a blue whale, tries to warn his peo­ple of the dan­gers pre­sent­ed by the Frag­ment. But he’s only one voice in the vast ocean.

The Good

The sto­ry is cap­ti­vat­ing. Rus­sell¹ does a good job of flesh­ing out his cast of char­ac­ters, espe­cial­ly the ones we’re going to spend a lot of time with. Ring in par­tic­u­lar felt like a well-devel­oped per­son, who just hap­pened to be a whale.

The stakes start out high and get high­er all the time. I could­n’t stop turn­ing pages, espe­cial­ly in the last half of the book, which I read in a sin­gle sitting.

The “Needs Improvement”

The end­ing, while com­pelling, felt like it could be fleshed out some­what. Sev­er­al dis­as­ters involv­ing the Frag­men­t’s unstop­pable force vs. an island’s immov­able object were deliv­ered in a few para­graphs, and it felt rushed.

The Verdict

Buy it. Read it. It’s an eco-dis­as­ter nov­el with polit­i­cal over­tones, and it’s a first-con­tact nov­el, all in 200-and-a-bit effi­cient pages.

 

Get in Trou­ble by Kel­ly Link
My rat­ing: 5 of 5 stars

Kel­ly Link writes sto­ries like no oth­er. Every one is dif­fer­ent, but they’re all linked by a curi­ous mag­ic and a sense that you have no idea where you’re going, but it’s going to be worth the ride.

View all my reviews

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OK, that’s the short ver­sion. I’ve had time to digest, and so here’s a bit more.

I sus­pect that Ms. Link is a pantser, like, say, Stephen King. (Edit: She evi­dent­ly is not.) She invents ful­ly-formed char­ac­ters, then sets them loose in set­tings as var­ied as the hollers of the south­ern US, a sleep­er ship on its way to Prox­i­ma Cen­tau­ri, a hotel host­ing two con­ven­tions, and an island wed­ding. Then she sits back—in a man­ner of speaking—to see what happens.

The open­ing sto­ry, “The Sum­mer Peo­ple”, was a beau­ti­ful thing. I’ve been work­ing my way through the last sea­son of Jus­ti­fied, and I kept imag­in­ing actors from the show in the roles of the two girls in the story.

“Secret Iden­ti­ty” is a long email writ­ten by a young woman (almost six­teen!) who almost got involved with a man near­ly twen­ty years her senior. It takes place at a hotel host­ing two con­ven­tions, one for den­tists, the oth­ers for superheroes.

“The Les­son” felt trag­ic and beau­ti­ful and creepy.

“Two Hous­es”, a col­lec­tion of ghost sto­ries on board a space­ship, was every bit as spooky and spacesuit‑y as you think, and it had echoes, as you’d expect, of Ray Bradbury.

Every sto­ry in this col­lec­tion is worth your time. Every sto­ry dumps you into a sit­u­a­tion that you don’t under­stand, that you can’t yet under­stand, and then feeds you the infor­ma­tion you need to make sense of what’s hap­pen­ing. (It took me quite some time, for exam­ple, to decide if the super­hero con­ven­tion was a cos­play con­ven­tion, or a gath­er­ing of hon­est-to-God super­be­ings. I’ll let you read it so you can decide for your­self.) Every sto­ry is a lay­ered trea­sure, unfold­ing slow­ly or quick­ly, till the gem at its heart is revealed.