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Friday, June 27, 2008

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cover of 'Summer Knight'

The fairy godmother that dogged Harry's footsteps in Grave Peril was forced to trade the debt-- Harry now owes a debt to Queen Mab of Faerie, and she is requesting him to look into the murder of one of the knights of the Summer Court of Faerie-- a person of great power, whom it would be difficult to kill, which may mean that it is one of the other Queens of Faerie. Mab wants Harry to prove that it wasn't her, in order to avert a war between the two courts of Faerie. There's also some wizard politics going on, fallout from encounters with the vampires in previous books, that forces Harry's hand and makes him accept Mab's offer even though he knows he should avoid entanglements with fairies at all costs. Harry begins the difficult task of investigating the other six Queens of Faerie (three for each of the Summer and Winter courts), and does his usual bang-up job of alienating people along the way. And, naturally, someone doesn't want him to succeed in his investigations and keeps sending warriors and beasts to try to stop him.

There are some clever, fun parts to this story. I liked the way Butcher worked in all the known names of the Queens of Fairies by giving the Summer and Winter courts each three queens-- sort of a past, present, and future queen, in a sense. I also liked the continuity from the other books-- the Alphas from Fool Moon are around, keeping an eye on Harry and helping him out of trouble, and eventually helping him out in the final showdown.

That final showdown is pretty exciting. There is a war going on in the heavens-- the beginning of a full on Faerie battle that, if left unchecked, could destroy the human world. Dresden and his allies climb up into turmoil and dark clouds over Lake Michigan in order to fight their way into the center of the battle and stop the unraveling that was caused on purpose, to upset the balance of the Winter and Summer courts of Faerie.

Title:Summer Knight
Author:Jim Butcher
Date published:2002
Genre:Fantasy
Series:Dresden Files book 4
Number of pages:371
Notes:borrowed from Garvey

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Monday, June 16, 2008

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cover of I Am Legend

This is a graphic novel adaptation of Richard Matheson's famous 1954 novel (which I haven't yet read but now want to). Robert Neville is the only uninfected, normal human left in a post-apocalyptic world (there are hints of bombs and dust-clouds in his flashbacks) where all other humans have been infected by a disease that basically turns them into vampires. The black and white artwork conveys beautifully the darkness and the utter loneliness of the world that Neville lives in. When the book opens, Neville has an established routine of the errands and tasks he does during the daylight (including repairing any holes in his boarded up windows, growing garlic in his hot-house, and stringing garlic around the doors and windows), but is always inside and locked up by dusk, usually playing classical music in attempt to drown out the noise of the monsters that congregate outside his house to try to lure him out. Eventually, Neville starts to move beyond this routine-- he starts researching the infected blood and reasons through how much of the vampirism is biological and what might be psychological (like fear of the cross and mirrors), and he starts hunting and killing as many vampires as he can during the day, while they are in their coma-like sleep.

There are great details here that make the whole world Neville inhabits much more convincing. For instance, on cloudy days he can't go far from home because he doesn't know how soon it will be dark enough for the vampires to come out. Or how a little thing like a watch stopping could mean death. Neville goes to abandoned stores for whatever equipment he needs and can salvage (like the microscopes he uses to study the infected blood), and he drives at high speeds, goes the wrong way on one-way streets, etc-- rules that were necessary in society become meaningless when he is the only man left.

What makes this story is compelling is the human element. Neville is tortured by the loss of his wife and child to the plague, and some of these experiences are shown through flashbacks. When Neville sees a thin, scared, stray dog in the daytime is nearly overwhelmed by the desire to have companionship. Over days and weeks he slowly, patiently gets the dog used to him, feeding him and moving closer to the food while remaining utterly still so as not to scare the dog off. Finally he manages to bring the dog into his house, and as night falls the dog is terrified because it can't get to its hiding place (and, of course, doesn't know that the house or this man is safe). Neville is finally able to touch the animal, and discovers that it is infected.

The other brilliance of this book, of course, is the twist of the title. Eventually (after three years of this existence), Neville discovers that the infected humans have figured out a way to live with their disease and are beginning to establish a new society-- and as he is dying, he recognizes that he has become to this new society what vampires are to us: the legendary, horrific monster that comes in while we are asleep and kills for no reason.

Title:I Am Legend
Author:Richard Matheson (adapted by Steve Niles and Elman Brown)
Date published:1991
Genre:Graphic Novel, Science Fiction / Horror
Number of pages:244

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Friday, June 13, 2008

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cover of The Algebraist

The galaxy of Ulubis has been disconnected from the rest of the "meta-civilization" when its wormhole portal is destroyed by Beyonder terrorists, but now, because of something inadvertently discovered by Seer Fassin Taak, two separate fleets are racing through deep space to attack or defend Ulubis and retrieve the vital information they think Fassin stumbled across-- a transform to find and access the long-thought mythical Dweller List, a wormhole network set up by the ancient gas-giant Dwellers centuries ago. Fassin is a scholar of Dweller Studies, caught up in the politics and bureaucracy by the order of the Mercatoria. While all the preparations for war and defense are going on, he is sent back to the gas planet Nasqueron to try to find the information that everyone is fighting for. Most of the story follows Fassin, but we get other parts of the story through Fassin's flashbacks, his friends Saluus Kehar, a rich industrialist, and Taince, a military officer with the fleet racing to Ulubis' defense, as well as glimpses of Lusiferous the Archimandrite, the ruthless and vicious head of the fleet coming to attack Ulubis. Banks has created a rich, dense universe populated with fascinating creatures (so many ideas here just thrown into the background could be a full story) and a compelling plot with a pretty satisfying resolution.

One of the undercurrents to this book is the existence of AIs. The current reigning bureaucracy hunts them down and destroys them, and often people use technologies that are "dangerously close" to full-blown AI. In fact, I noticed early on that the few instances of first-person narration all seemed to be AIs; most of the book is in third person, so this is an interesting (and, no doubt, quite intentional) choice-- it's subtle, but it seems to underscores the "personhood" of the AIs. I hoped and suspected that AIs would play into the story, and was delighted when one of the most interesting and strange characters turned out to be one.

There are so many interesting creatures and ideas here. The Dwellers themselves are fascinating (although I can't quite picture them visually from the strange description); they seem childish and silly, but they are the oldest known civilization still living in the galaxy, spread to all gas giant planets billions of years ago, and individuals can live for centuries. Species are divided into Slow (like Dwellers) and Quick (like humans), both for how they sense time's passing and (more importantly) for how long their civilizations endure. Dwellers are impossible to coerce or bribe, both because they are basically indifferent to most of what goes on outside their planets (during the invasion of Ulubis, almost all of the news Fassin can find is about the "play" war the Dwellers are conducting on Nasqueron), but also because their only form of money is the "kudos" that they receive from each other.

There are many fascinating "by the way" ideas that Banks throws in just as background for this universe. For instance, aHumans and rHumans-- some humans were taken from earth and helped to develop so that when the "remainder" humans finally developed their technology and made it into space, they discover that they aren't the only or even most developed humans out there. Or the Morbs, death-obsessed races such as the bird-like Ythyn who roam space collecting and preserving the dead of all kinds. The water-worlder Sceuri, like a huge eel with a folding sail-wing on its back. Or the moment when Fassin finds out his family has been killed and contemplates revenge, and ponders the fact that so many were involved in the destruction (military commanders, the person who launched the weapon, the people who built it, those who started the conflict, etc) that he can't possibly identify who was actually responsible. Also compelling: the Machine War against the AI (centuries ago) ended not because the biologicals won, but because the AIs recognized they could wipe out all of the biologicals and decided not to, and instead went into hiding.

I was a good chunk of the way into the book before I had any idea what the title meant. The Algebraist is the title of an ancient epic poem about a space voyage-- Fassin traded with a Dweller for this book, and it was in a footnote of the first volume that others discovered a reference to the key to the Dweller List. Eventually, Fassin discovers the alien algebra that is the answer he was sent to look for, and first thinks it is a joke-- but eventually figures out the answer is simpler than anyone could have guessed (it seemed like the perfect, satisfying answer to me, drawing together clues from earlier, seemingly unrelated parts of the story). But it also seems to me that the idea of algebra also links to the AI, especially because the first use of the word algebra in the novel is by an AI in hiding that knows it will soon be discovered and destroyed, meditating on the idea of revenge,

... the price its enemies all deserved to pay-by any algebra of justice under any sun you cared to name-for their intolerance, their savagery, their generacide...

Caveats for the sensitive reader: lots of swearing (even Dwellers occasionally use the f-word, which seemed strange-- translated into human?), some sex scenes, and some gruesome violence (presumably to establish how horrific and amoral Luseferous is, but still quite disgusting).

Title:The Algebraist
Author:Iain M. Banks
Date published:2004
Genre:Science Fiction
Number of pages:434
Notes:recommended and loaned by Pete

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