Homeland is Cory Doctorow’s sequel to Little Brother, and book that won the Prometheus Award a few years ago. Tom Shippey at the Wall Street Journal reviews Homeland, which sounds like a mix of dystopian fiction and idealist politics. It’s high on my list of books to read this year, though.
Category: books (Page 14 of 19)
Zeuglodon is James P. Blaylock’s sort of indirect sequel to his 1984 novel, The Digging Leviathan, published by Subterranean Press in a limited and trade edition. The book is sold out, but if readers are lucky a trade/paperback publisher will pick up the book as a young adult novel and gain Blaylock the audience that the book deserves.
Zeuglodon follows the rich tradition of books by writers like Enid Blyton and her Famous Five books, Arthur Ransome‘s Swallows and Amazons novels, and other tales about kids who experience adventure, not to mention the various books that Blaylock acknowledges ih his brief preface. While The Digging Leviathan included a pair of teenagers in the supporting cast, that book focused mainly on the adult perspective. The narrator in Zeuglodon is young Kathleen Perkins, or Perkins as she generally is called in the book. Though nearly 12 years old, she seems wise for her years, and considers herself a cryptozoologist. Her cousins, Brendan and Perry (though very likely a coincidence, the names threw me for a loop as I kept thinking of the Dead Can Dance co-founder Brendan Perry throughout the novel), are a year younger and older, respectively.
Officially parent-less, they live with an uncle (Hedgepeth) who provides them with a unique education and lets them roam more or less freely. This benign neglect raises the ire of their busybody Aunt Ricketts, who believes children should attend school and not run around cliffs and beaches. She hires a certain Ms. Peckworthy, a “member of a very troublesome do-gooder society” to try to prove that the dangerous actions of the children makes their uncle an unquitable guardian, and thus they can be taken away and “raised properly.” At the same time they run into another person with strange intentions, whom they nickname Lord Wheyface the Creeper, or just “the Creeper” from his appearance. The Creeper is after something that their uncle takes care of, artifacts owned by Basil Peach and the Peach family, who featured in The DIgging Leviathan. Hedgepeth and his friends deduce that behind the Creeper stands Dr. Hilario Frosticos, the nemesis in The Digging Leviathan, who seems like a modern echo of Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, noted antagonist of Blaylock’s many Langdon St. Ives stories.
With the added ingredients of Ms. Peckworthy and the Creeper, the lives of the three kids and their uncle spins and accelerates toward something new. Toss in the arrival of Lala Peach, the young daughter of Basil Peach, and the adventure shifts from a sea-side California town to the Lake District in the UK, a confrontation with Frosticos, and the dreamworld of the Peach family that become all to real for those who visit it. Hedgepeth and crew assist valiantly, but the kids form the core of this novel.
Subtitled “The True Adventures of Kathleen Perkins, Cryptozoologist”, Blaylock’s novel hits the perfect tune as a young adult adventure. There’s no magic or boarding school hijinks, although there is magic in Blaylock’s words and wonderful narrative tone and humor. A mainstream paperback publisher needs to pick up this book and get more copies into the hands of young readers. That said, Zeuglodon is a book anyone can enjoy, and the 200 odd pages whizzed past almost too quickly. Hopefully there will be more tales from Ms. Perkins and her crew.
Gen LaGreca’s second book, a novel of the Old South, just published. Entitled The Dream of Daring, looks to be about technology, slavery, and power.
Received Tim Powers latest book, a novella called Salvage and Demolition. Read it almost in one sitting. All too brief, so brilliant and memorable. Not sure of Powers’ latest novel project, but years usually pass between his novels, and he just released one late last year. Hopefully we’ll get some stories more often.
Does it still hold true that women writers enjoy more general success when using a masculine or gender- neutral initials as their byline? This article certainly make the case, though by now when I see a writer with two initials and no first name I’m 90% sure that writer is female. But I do think the quality of the fiction matters more, at least to me.
In this collection of brief science fiction reviews at Toronto’s The Star, reviewer Alex Good takes a swipe at Cory Doctorow’s latest novel, Pirate Cinema, for it’s underlying messages. According to Good, the novel “has to be judged a very irresponsible book.” Rather than focus on any literary merit, Good attacks the content of the book:
[Doctorow] peddles a dangerous fantasy, especially for a YA title: Trent is a kid who runs away from home to the big city, where he is immediately adopted by a lovable street-wise buddy and gets to enjoy a comfortable life of petty crime, playing around on the Internet, casual drug use, and sex with a cute anarchist girl, before becoming an overnight hero and global celebrity by splicing together a bunch of video popcorn (apparently this is the only thing artists are capable of in our age of cannibal culture, where all human life is dependent on the Internet). The fact that Doctorow is a good writer with a large following only makes it more essential that he take a big step back and think a bit more about what kind of message he’s sending.
Perhaps we instead should devote efforts to sending in police to raid the computers of nine-year-old girls? I don’t care much for glamorizing piracy, but IP laws need to examined and gain a measure of sanity. And, oh yes, this is a work of fiction, meant to entertain.
Review of three Scottish crime novels.
I’m more of a paper than eBook fan, and I already have multiple copies of Jack Vance’s books, but owning them all on one device all of a sudden looks very tempting. The VIE Jack Vance collection eBooks are in production and distribution. What a neat way for new fans to discover his work.
In an interview at New Statesman magazine, Terry Pratchett reveals that his daughter, Rhianna, will take over the series after Pratchett is gone. I know I’m among a legion of fans who hope that day remains far away, but with his declining health it’s a fact we must face. Not sure if the interview will appear online, as the link in the brief article about the interview mentions how you can buy the magazine on November 15, which is to say, tomorrow.
Other news gleaned from the article reveals a TV series in production called, The Watch. Apparently it continues from the books, so doesn’t re-tell what appeared in the books from the start of the Discworld series.
Due to a busy touring schedule Discworld author Terry Pratchett apparently almost died in the back of a cab in New York city recently. I also found it interesting that his assistant’s last name is so very similar to Vimes’ multi-talented butler.
