The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry

Here is yet another novel that blurs across genre lines and is hard to categorize. My library had it shelved with the mysteries, but I think that it probably works better as a fantasy. It is set in a nameless city where it is always raining, in an indeterminate time, where men still routinely wear hats and typewriters are still common.

The protagonist, Charles Unwin, is a clerk at a large detective agency. He has done it for 20 years, and likes his job. He is the clerk for Travis Sivart, the agency's most famous detective, and he knows the details of the cases intimately, as it is he who takes Sivart's case notes and transforms them into clear, factual reports. Unwin is a careful man, a man whose life follows deeply ingrained routines. He likes it that way.

So he is quite startled one day to be informed that he has been promoted to detective and, being the sort of person he is, Unwin assumes that it's a mistake that can be quickly straightened out. Unfortunately he is wrong, as Sivart is missing, his superior has been murdered, and he is the prime suspect. Unwin sets about trying to right things in his life by finding Sivart Familiar as he is with the details of Sivart's activities, he knows where to start looking, and is soon in way over his head. The first half of the novel is dreamy and nonsensical--nothing makes sense (it felt like I was reading a Robert Rankin novel for a while, and I do not consider that to be a good thing). As a regular reader of SF I am used to being thrown into a story without explanation and assumed things would eventually snap together and begin to make sense, but it took a lot longer than I expected.

The story eventually breaks down into a struggle between chaos and order, and both sides look fairly unpalatable. I should probably explain why I think the novel is a work of fantasy rather than a mystery, but that would spoil the story. Suffice to say that it involves sleepwalkers, and phonograph records, and chapter eighteen of the detectives' handbook, the Manual of Detection. Many of the characters are cartoonish, most of the first half of the novel seemed arbitrary and nonsensical, and it really did remind me rather unfortunately of a work by Robert Rankin. However it pulled itself together in the second half and became a pretty entertaining read. The Manual of Detection is a strange, whimsical take on the hardboiled detective novel, and I think I liked it.

The Affinity Bridge by George Mann

The Affinity Bridge is an alternate history steampunk detective novel. Set early in the twentieth century in London, Sir Maurice Newbury is an agent for Queen Victoria, who is kept alive by a life support system. Sir Maurice is an anthropologist by day and crime-fighter by night. He is investigating a series of murders committed, apparently, by a glowing, ghostly policeman. Then he is pulled from that case and instructed to investigate a deadly airship crash. All of the passengers died, and the robotic pilot is missing.

With his new assistant, Miss Hobbes, Sir Maurice tracks down clues, from foggy alleyways to upper class parties. Along the way they encounter zombies, robots, and the glowing, ghostly policeman. It's a fantastically fun adventure. If I have any criticism, it's that the action scenes are rather long and over the top. But lengthy action scenes never work well for me--it's just a personal quirk of mine.

Otherwise, it's a heck of a lot of fun, and I look forward to future works by this author. Highly recommended.

The Hotel Under the Sand by Kage Baker

I bought this one from Tachyon Press at Worldcon. I did not examine it in any detail at the time, merely noted that it was by Kage Baker and didn't involve The Company, so I bought it. What I did not note at the time is that it is a children's book--not YA, but actually a kids book.

The heroine is Emma, a 9-year-old who lost everything in a manner unspecified. She finds herself washed up, alone, on a sand dune, where she meets a ghost named Winston. Together they find the Grand Wenlocke, a grand hotel that has been buried underneath the sand of the dunes for a century, and they decide to re-open for business. They have adventures, and Emma is happy in her new home with her new friends.

I'm not going to be very specific about the plot, as it isn't really that important. The story has a deliberate illogic that makes it dreamy and unreal, and yet comforting, as you know that nothing too terrible is going to happen to them. I am certainly not the target audience for this book. It's a quick and pleasant read, but not particularly my thing.

Still Life by Louise Penny

Following my vacation in Montreal, I wanted to read something Canadian. I started and abandoned Ice Lake by John Farrow (for the second time--it's very familiar and I'm certain I tried to read it once before), and then picked up Still Life.

Set in a quaint little town in Quebec, with a likeable detective from Montreal called in to investigate the death of a well-liked spinster, it's quite cosy. It's also fairly awful, for so many reasons. There is the unnecessary drama with the young officer who wants to impress and fails to do so. There is the pop psychology about people who lead quiet lives being dangerously immature. There is the fact the police are stunningly ignorant about archery, and therefore need everything explained to them, and the book then gets some of the details wrong. And, of course, the crime is eventually solved by a highly intuitive artist who follows her gut, tries to mislead the police about the killer's identity, and then goes to confront him alone. Oh, and dismal plotting like: No, the police can't see inside the murder victim's home until it's convenient for the plot. A judge has ruled that they can't go inside, even though that's not what the law says and such a judgement would never really happen. But for the plot's sake, they need to be barred from entry for a week.

Gag.

Alive in Necropolis by Doug Dorst

Alive in Necropolis is one of those novels that squats across genre lines. It has ghosts. The protagonist has a showdown with them at the end. And yet mostly it's not a fantastical novel. In fact, I think it would not change substantively if the ghosts were removed. It feels more like general fiction to me than fantasy, despite the fact that Mike sees dead people.

Alive in Necropolis is set in Colma, California, a smallish city near San Francisco, where the dead of San Francisco are buried. Our protagonist is Mike Mercer, in his late 20s and a new cop. He likes his job and is trying to find his place in the world. We follow him through a bad year in his life, in which he has relationship problems and health problems, and he tries and fails to solve an assault on a teenager who was left to die in one of the cemeteries. Mike struggles with pain and health problems, sinks into depression, and fails at relationships. Meanwhile the teenager he wishes to save is too messed up and teenager-ish to save himself. I had a few issues with the teenager, who was a little too willfully stupid to believe. I realize that there are many boneheaded teenagers in the world doing stupid things, but this kid is supposed to be smart and ambitious, yet he never developed a backbone or a brain.

I'm not sure why I expected Alive in Necropolis to be quirky and fun, perhaps it was the title and the cartoonish cover art (which I like, by the way). But it turned out not to be particularly quirky or fun. It got darker as it went along, as Mike's life, and several other characters', unravelled. Dorst was also pretty brutal with his characters--the number of injuries and drug overdoses was surprisingly high. And in the end, the showdown with the bad ghosts, which had been built up through the book, sort of fizzled and was unimportant to the story line. I didn't dislike Alive in Necropolis, but it certainly wasn't what I was expecting. And that explains why I hadn't heard of it before I saw it in the bookstore--I keep up with the genre and usually know what's out there, but I didn't know about this author, probably because fans aren't reading it or talking about it. I am unclear if it is intended to be YA or not. I don't think the content really is, but the cover art and the young protagonist trying to find his way in the world sort of seem aimed at younger readers. On the other hand, not everyone is as allergic to coming of age stories as I am, so perhaps I'm being too hard on it.

In summary, Alive in Necropolis is a sort of interesting book that probably shouldn't be shelved in the SF/Fantasy section (where I found it). It's moderately depressing and filled with characters who are unhappy and wondering if they're wasting their lives instead of living them. But the writing is well done, and the characters are believable to the extent that they aren't hypercompetent or self-assured. It's well enough done, just not necessarily a story I cared to read.

Back from Montreal

I am now home from Worldcon. I had a great time and, like everyone else who went, I've got to say that the food there is amazing. Every meal we had was good, even if the service wasn't always good. I tried Tim Hortons doughnuts, I had crepes and croissants, chicken pot pie and caribou pot pie, and we ate at Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai restaurants. It was all fabulous.

The convention itself was good, too. I bought a few books in the Dealers Room, attended the Hugo Awards, went to a bunch of panels, knit a sock, and soaked in the general weirdness of a large con.

On the other hand, driving four days for a vacation of four days, well...it was 1200 miles of forests and lakes and not much else. It was beautiful, but it was also an awfully long drive, and I'm glad to be home.

Worldcon

I'm at the World Science Fiction convention right now. I love wireless internet access!

It's a good con, and Montreal is a great city. My lack of French mostly hasn't been an issue, except today at lunch in a little Vietnamese restaurant at which I spoke neither French nor Vietnamese, and they spoke very little English. I'm still not entirely sure what all the seafood in my soup was, but it was very tasty. We are staying next to Chinatown, which is a fascinating place. The photo above is from the Montreal Botanic Gardens, which are large and fantastic. I am running out of positive adjectives, but suffice to say that so far I'm having a great time.

The Line of Polity by Neal Asher

The Line of Polity is the second in Asher's Ian Cormac series. I have read them out of order--the first and third, Gridlinked and Brass Man, were published in the US by Tor, but they apparently decided not to publish this one. I have since also read the fourth, Polity Agent, and a prequel, Shadow of the Scorpion, which came out last fall from Night Shade Books. But it has taken me a while to lay my hands on a copy of The Line of Polity.

I have to say, the books that follow now make a lot more sense to me. They keep referring the events in The Line of Polity, and I was lacking some context. Because events in this book are mentioned in later books I already had some idea what happened in this work, but still it was a great and absorbing read. In fact, I'll probably end up re-reading the whole series now. I did a quick re-read of Gridlinked because I didn't remember clearly enough all the events in that book, and I felt like I needed to refresh my memory to appreciate this one. Then I read The Line of Polity, and now I've started Brass Man again so that I can see how they fit together. I'll probably re-read the others, too, after Worldcon. Which I look forward to, because I like Asher's work.

Ian Cormac is an agent of Earth Central Security in the Polity, a future society in which humanity is spread across thousands of planets and things are mostly run by AIs. Not everyone likes this arrangement, and there is a human Separatist movement that seeks to free humanity from their silicon overlords. At the beginning of The Line of Polity, Cormac has been sent to track down and arrest Skellor, a scientist who has defected to the Separatists after the Polity AIs became concerned about his gruesome research. Unfortunately Skellor escapes, and they discover that he has some very dangerous and powerful alien technology that probably shouldn't be in the hands of a psychopath like him.

Meanwhile, on the planet Masada, which isn't part of the Polity, life is short and brutal for much of the citizenry. The atmosphere is not breathable, the government is abusive and exploitive, and the wildlife will kill anyone who wanders away from civilization. There is a sizable rebel population living in caverns underground, whose only hope lies in getting the Polity to intervene and subsume the planet. Naturally the current government has no intention of allowing that to happen.

And the space station Miranda is destroyed by alien technology that suggests the interference of Dragon, a treacherous and mysterious alien that Cormac has dealt with before. He follows Dragon's lead to Masada, where a war is about to break out.

The Line of Polity is a big book, but it does not drag. It follows several story lines, all of which are interesting, and there is lots going on. Like some of Asher's other works, The Line of Polity has extremely deadly alien fauna, bizarre and creepy parasites, and lots of violence. The future, in these books, is not a happy, safe place. But it's cool, and loads of fun to read about. Asher produces consistently fun and entertaining space opera. Recommended, but read Gridlinked first.