Imperial Purple

Liz Williams
Snake Agent
Night Shade Books 2008 (original edition 2005)

Inspector Chen is a police detective in "Singapore Three" – one of a series of artificial islands. His special responsibility is for crimes involving the supernatural and for liaison with Hell. His wife is a demon who has a pet badger-spirit disguised as a teapot.

Young girls are dying and their spirits are not ending up in Heaven as they should be but are cropping up in some very strange places in Hell.

Enter Zhu Irzh, a demon officer with Hell’s Vice Squad. Some influential characters in Hell have caused him to stop promoting vice and work out what is going on with these young girls. He and Chen must work together and fight their way through the labyrinthine bureaucracies of Hell and back.

I enjoyed this book in parts. Williams’ vision of Hell as warring bureaucracies of mind-boggling inefficiency is entertaining and amusing. The ill-matched buddy story of Chen and Zhu Irzh works quite well also.

However, I wasn’t completely convinced by the Chinese cultural aspect although I am no expert here. The sinister demon hunter didn’t really go anywhere and in any case lost a certain credibility when the teapot bit his ankle and Chen’s wife pushed him into the harbour.

The supernatural part had a slightly pasted-on feel. The story could pretty much have been the same if we were talking the criminal underworld rather than the demonic one although the chrome would have been different. Substitute kidnapping for spirit-stealing, rival gangs for rival bureaucracies, weapons and lockpicks for magic and there you are.

Nevertheless not a bad read for train, plane or rainy day. Williams has written lots of other stuff since this book was first published in 2005 and I suspect that subsequent Inspector Chen outings will be better. I’d certainly give them a try. Three stars.

Lisa Lutz
Curse of the Spellmans
Simon and Schuster 2008

Curse of the Spellmans is the sequel to The Spellman Files which was published in 2006. I didn’t review the original (Imperial Purple didn’t exist then) but I enjoyed it a lot. As well as being smart and sassy it had a surprising amount of real human feeling in it – particularly in the relationship of the central character (Isabel (Izzy) Spellman) and her little sister, Rae.

I am happy to say that Lutz has kept up the good work. Possibly spending two years on the book rather than rushing it out in a year has helped. Certainly it has a polished feel to it.

The Spellmans are a disfunctional family of Private Investigators. They compulsively spy on each other, record each other’s conversations and follow each other around, eager to acquire whatever is needed to blackmail the other before being blackmailed in turn. Izzy has noticed suspicious things happening with her family – her Dad is going to the gym and eating tofu, her Mom sneaks out in the night to vandalise motorbikes, her big brother David has abandoned his law business and sits around all day drinking and her little sister Rae is pestering a policeman old enough to be her father and has just run him over with her car. Oh yes, and her best friend has run away and refuses all contact.

All this is nothing compared to the suspicious behaviour of their new neighbour. What else can you say of a man who keeps his office locked, even when he is the only one there; who shreds his correspondence and puts different parts of it into the garbage separately thereby making it impossible to reconstruct; whose very household waste has nothing suspicious in it? Women he contacts just disappear. Is he using his cover as a landscape gardener to hide the bodies?

Izzy is determined to work it all out. Nothing, not even being arrested four times (twice at the behest of her own family), is going to stop her. You’ll have to read it yourself to get the plot details – I’m not going to spoil it for you – but suffice to say that all is revealed and wrapped up exceedingly well.

A worthy successor to an excellent first book. Go and buy it. Four stars.

Pamela Freeman
Deep Water
Orbit. 2008

Disclaimer: same as for Blood Ties

Deep Water is the second volume of Freeman’s Castings Trilogy following Blood Ties. I gave Blood Ties four stars and Deep Water is better. The Australian edition is available now – the rest of the world must wait until September.

It continues the stories of the four main protagonists – Ash, Bramble, Leof and Saker – but their paths have diverged and each follows his or her own destiny. Clearly their paths will converge again but it will be in the third volume (Full Circle) for which we will have to wait another year.

Saker, the enchanter, continues to bring back the ghosts of the original inhabitants who were massacred by the invaders. As he gains in strength, purpose and knowledge the attacks become more dangerous and the major town of Carlion is invaded and many of its terrified citizens killed. As for book one, most of Saker’s actions occur off stage but his influence on the stories of the others is even stronger in this one.

This is the book in which we learn about Acton, the man who led the invaders through Death Pass a thousand years earlier, causing the formation of the eleven domains and the system of warlords which has controlled the domains every since. In Deep Water he is no longer the shadowy, larger-than-life legend of Blood Ties. Bramble is forced to re-live parts of his life seeing him always out of the eyes of his companions. She sits uncomfortably inside the minds of others, unable to communicate but seeing and feeling all that they see and feel. As more of Acton’s life unfolds she is forced to confront that fact that one-thousand-year-old legends are not a reliable guide to what really happened.

The first book ended with Ash and Bramble about to see Safred, the Well of Secrets. It is Safred, to whom the gods regularly speak, who informs them the key to dealing with the enchanter lies with Acton whose ghost must make reparations to the ancient dead. They reluctantly agree that they must do something and Bramble agrees to try and find Acton’s bones. Safred believes that Ash knows the songs that can raise Acton’s ghost but he has never heard of them. Ash sets of to find his father and discover why he was never taught them.

Leof, meanwhile, struggles with his conscience as he continues to serve the rapacious warlord, Thegan. Thegan is planning to become warlord of the entire eleven domains and doesn’t much care what he has to do to get there. Saker’s army of the dead throws his plans awry but, with the cunning of a true opportunist, he tries to turn it to his own advantage. By the end of the book he discovers that defeating the dead is harder work than defeating the living.

Unlike many epic fantasies we have not left world-building behind with the first installment. We continually learn new things about the world and the unseen forces which hold it together. The local gods are not, we find, all-powerful and all-knowing. There are greater powers that barely acknowledge their existence.

Enriching the world are more of the short stories of the common people, interspersed with the main narrative. These were one of the main strengths of Blood Ties and once again give the sense of a larger world around the main narrative – a world inhabited by real people, not just a backdrop of trees, villages and a cast of extras.

Deep Water ends on more of a “cliff-hanger” than Blood Ties. Major issues are left tantalisingly on the edge of resolution leaving the reader impatient for the final volume. It should be a cracker but we will have to wait until next year to find out. Four and a half stars.

Robert B. Parker
Stranger in Paradise
Quercus. 2008

When you buy a Robert B. Parker novel you know what you are getting. The protagonists will be strong, internalised and with no respect for position, only for person. Spenser and Hawk are the most famous but there are others and probably the most successful of these is the Paradise series starring Jesse Stone.

Jesse Stone fits the mold. Fired from the L.A. cops for being drunk on the job he has found redemption as the Police Chief of a small town in Massachusetts called Paradise. He fits in like a barracuda in a goldfish pond but the little fish come to appreciate his strength and, on occasion, ruthlessness. This is the seventh book in the series.

A self-proclaimed Apache warrior named Wilson Cromartie (Crow) is Jesse’s main opposition. We saw him as one of the bad guys in Trouble in Paradise where his one redeeming feature was an odd chivalry towards women. Ten years later he has returned and is looking for someone. He and Jesse are of a type and the mutual respect they have transcends, up to a point, their good-guy/bad guy relationship. For Spenser fans, think Hawk and you won’t be too far out.

The plot is predictable but then you knew that when you bought the book. Parker’s style gets sparser and sparser the more he writes but it is a paring down of an already sparse style, not the style of an author who no longer cares. After ten years Jesse seems to be finally getting the sometimes tedious on-and-off relationship with his ex-wife under control which I, for one, appreciate.

The book doesn’t break any new ground but it delivers on Parker’s usual promise – a fast-paced, well-written story about tough guys and what they do. I read it and enjoyed it and moved on. Three stars.

Iain M. Banks
Matter
Orbit. 2008

Quite a lot of years ago now I remember a friend raving to me about the virtues of Iain M. Banks. He seemed very keen so I went into the local bookshop and picked one of Banks’ books at random off the shelves – it happened to be Use of Weapons. Unfortunately I found his central premise about the use of weapons rather silly and this put me off the whole book. I have not read any of Banks’ work since.

I mention this because I am of necessity reviewing Matter as a standalone book – not as part of the “Culture” series. As far as I can tell it stands alone perfectly well although I may be missing some of the finer points.

Matter is set in a shell world – a massive artificial planet built in concentric layers. Each level is over 1,000 kilometres deep with several artificial stars illuminating them. Each level contains a different species – some water-breathers, some aerial and so forth. Levels 8 and 9 contain humanoid species at an early industrial revolution level of technology.

Much of the book is concerned with these species and their discovery, in level 9, of an ancient city. And we mean ancient – we are talking more than a billion years here. Eventually a mysterious object is uncovered which turns out to be not what anyone expects and gets out of hand spectacularly. Everything gets very exciting at this point.

The book is a large one – nearly 600 pages in my edition. The exciting bit unfortunately does not happen until after page 500. A great deal of the book is concerned with the petty, and ultimately irrelevant, military and political details of the humanoid culture. Somewhere around page 350 you start to get an inkling of the greater story but it is a long wait. Many people I have talked to had given up on the book well before reaching this point.

This is my major criticism of the book. It has a sweeping majestic scale with a plethora of interesting aliens, planets the size of solar systems and Artificial Intelligences with brains the size of a planet, all of which are classic SF tropes and which I enjoyed. But, the book is the wrong way round. Instead of spending 500 pages on the background story and 100 on the exciting bit I would have preferred the opposite ratio.

This emphasis on the background story meant that the last 100 pages were unsatisfactory. It all ends very suddenly when a single Special Circumstances agent manages to take out a billion-year old machine with planet-busting abilties. A machine which had resisted all the efforts of a contemporary culture with mind-boggling technological skills to take it down all those years ago.

I’m sorry. I just didn’t believe it. This should have been the massive scale stuff. We had the opportunity for a stupendous encounter between the highly advanced races of the Culture and the might of an ancient but powerful machine. Instead it all ends with a bit of a whimper.

You don’t even really find out what happened except for some general hints in a short epilogue tucked away behind the glossary. You can’t help but feel that Banks was forced to write this epilogue by the publishers. His heart didn’t seem to be in it.

I can’t completely pan this novel because it does have redeeming SF features and will no doubt be enjoyed by Culture fans. But I’m afraid I am still left where I was before – unless someone can convince me otherwise I don’t see any particular reason to read any more of Banks’ books.* I’m giving it two and a half stars.

*Several days later: I’ve thought more about this statement and it’s not completely true. Banks can certainly write – his prose and dialog are both good and the ‘Culture’ in general is interesting. Perhaps someone can recommend one to me – preferably one which doesn’t suffer from the problems I noted above.

Shaun Tan
Tales from Outer Suburbia
Allen & Unwin 2008

In a previous review I gave Shaun Tan five out of five for The Arrival. Tales from Outer Suburbia does not quite achieve such heights but it is still an excellent book.

It contains fifteen stories, all set more or less in the suburbs of an unspecified city and all told in Tan’s gentle and often surreal style. The off-beat nature of his vision serves to increase rather than diminish the humanity of his subjects. His artwork is, of course, superb.

In any book of stories there will be some you like more than others. Some, such as Broken Toys and Stick Figures are downright creepy. Some, like Our Expedition and Grandpa’s Story are little slices of life – not perhaps completely within what we would call normality but insightful. Eric is a beautiful, poignant little story and I loved The Water Buffalo.

There are lots of others to love but there were a few I felt didn’t work so well. When he strays into satire with The Amnesia Machine and Alert but not Alarmed he loses his sure touch although I did like what people did with their ICBMs in the latter. With Wake he lets anger take over and for me this did not work as well as his normal oblique approach.

Because of these (for me) little glitches I can only (!) give it four stars. I do recognise that others might disagree with me and think it should have been four and a half and I wouldn’t object at all. It is not the work of genius that is The Arrival but it is a damn fine book. A worthy addition to any library.

Diana Wynne Jones
House of Many Ways
Greenwillow. 2008

House of Many Ways is set in the same world as Howl’s Moving Castle and is described as a sequel to it. It isn’t really a sequel although Howl, Sophie and Calcifer do appear in it. I enjoyed seeing Calcifer again – I have missed him.

The central character Charmain is a young girl who is a chronic bookworm. She is sent to look after the house of Great-Uncle William (aka Royal Wizard Norland) while he is away being cured of sickness by the elves. She has led a privileged existence until then and has to cope with her ignorance of matters domestic.

Unexpectedly someone called Peter, the Wizard’s new apprentice, appears. He too has manifest areas of domestic imcompetence with which they must cope. They must both also cope with the Wizard’s house where doors lead to unexpected places and with a bunch of recalcitrant blue kobolds.

The story winds along with Charmain working in the Royal Library part time. There she meets Howl et al who are looking for the Elfgift (although no-one knows what it is) to stop the kingdom falling apart and coming under the iron fist of Prince Ludovic.

It has all the elements and is well written as Diana Wynne Jones always is but I found it a bit disappointing. The story sort of meanders along with no particular sense of tension. Every so often there are dangerous encounters but they just sort of happen. Calcifer seems a lot less dangerous than he was, using his undoubted powers cheerfully to help out with problems.

So it’s readable and pleasant enough but it doesn’t compare to Howl’s Moving Castle or to many of her other excellent books. A three star read but could have been better.

Justine Larbalestier
How to Ditch your Fairy
Bloomsbury 2008

Well, the Advance-Copy-Of-Brilliant-Books fairy has struck again. In a manner most mysterious I have found and read a copy of Justine Larbalestier’s latest literary foray (due out in September) and I saw that it was good. In fact, it is her best novel to date.

It is set in a world where, like this one, our destinies are controlled by fairies. For many years when I was younger my life was made miserable by frequent visits from the Fuck-up Fairy resulting in disasters ranging from backing my parent’s car into a tree to drenching my girlfriend while trying to fix the toilet. Fortunately the FuF eventually moved on and my life improved.

Larbalestier’s heroine is cursed with the Parking Fairy. Many of us would, if not kill, then at least commit GBH to have a fairy that gives us perfect parking spots whenever we want them. But Charlie is still at school, can’t drive and is really tired of being bundled into cars for other people’s convenience. Why can’t she have the Shopping Fairy or the Fabulous Hair Fairy or something useful?

There’s only one thing to do. She has to ditch her fairy. But, as I know only too well from my time with the FuF, this is easier said than done.

I don’t want to say too much more because I’ll end up spoiling it for you. Suffice to say that Charlie’s increasingly desperate attempts to ditch her fairy are both touching and hilarious. And, as so often in life, things have to get much, much worse before they get better.

The only bad thing about this book is it’s not due out for another three months. Thank you Advance-Copy-Of-Brilliant-Books fairy. You’ve made my day.

Jennifer Rardin
Once Bitten, Twice Shy
Orbit 2007

I’m in two minds about this one. It’s another vampire book – I seem to be surrounded by them at the moment – and it’s quite well written with a well-paced story. On the other hand, it has many of the usual things that irritate me in vampire stories and I think the central character needs some extra work.

The central character, Jaz Parks, is a CIA assassin. Her partner is a super-powerful 300 year old vampire. The only downside to being dead and all-powerful is that he has to sleep during the day. Big deal. Countless shift workers can say the same thing and all they get is their pay packet and Vitamin D deficiency.

This is a bit of a personal thing but I’m very tired of vampires being essentially nocturnal supermen. There must be more to it than that. See, for example, Narelle Harris’ The Opposite of Life for a more thoughtful and interesting approach. Yet I am aware that countless vampire-novel fans disagree.

Anyway, the other thing I would like to have seen addressed is Jaz’s character. She is feisty, opinionated, loud and (as our American cousins describe it) ‘kick-ass’. I have no quarrel with this. She also kills without any remorse or consideration of the effects of her actions (other than the victim’s demise, of course). This is a characteristic of psychopaths. I have no quarrel with novels about psychopaths either but her motivations really need to be filled out.

I’m not a great fan of the these people are bad so just kill them and who cares school of diplomacy, however much support it may have at the moment. Either Jaz feels something and we should know what it is, or she should feel nothing and we should know why.

I think I’ll have to give up reviewing vampire novels. My personal tastes seem to deviate too far from those of the fan base so this review is hardly fair. Go ahead and read it – you’ll probably enjoy it a lot.

Jason Nahrung
The Darkness Within
Hachette 2007

This vampire novel has it all: vampires (well duh); young woman who does not yet know she is a powerful witch; young girl ditto, about to come into her powers; Cabal of evil magicians; villainous head of said Cabal who sucks blood from vampires (now there’s a twist); well meaning nerd who lives next to witch woman and is falling in love with her; insane mother who escapes from lunatic asylum; brother-in-law possessed by demon; and probably other things I’ve forgotten. The boy vampire is suave and devoted to the heroine; his sister vampire is evil and depraved and not nice to anyone.

So the elements are all there. The story isn’t a bad one either albeit not startlingly original. The problem I had was with the narrative itself.

The narrative slides rather oddly over the story in an almost frictionless manner. It has very little affect and makes it hard to get a grip on it. There is little sense that the characters are engaged with the world around them or even with their own internal lives. Also I was irritated with the heroine’s periodic lack of perception (should I believe this evil magician who is trying to kill me when he says not to trust the ‘good’ vampire?) although I will admit that this is a prerogative of heroines everywhere.

The book feels a draft or so short of publication standard. The author can demonstrably do better (the ‘nerd’ character for instance is reasonably successful) and a lot could have been fixed up with a little rewriting and a greater sense of engagement. Fans of vampire novels may still enjoy it but I found it disappointing. Two and a half stars.