Terminal State

Like most series fiction, some of Somers' Avery Cates books are better than others. On his fourth outing, we find Avery conscripted into a cybernetically augmented military and then sold to the highest bidder. Since Avery rarely gets anything other than the short end of the stick, he winds up working for two of his worst enemies. Oh, did I mention that they have the ability to kill him with the touch of a button? They can.

The plot revolves around a job, to kidnap (or maybe kill) a man who has created the ultimate cybernetic implant, maybe. The world is being ground into small pieces by the ongoing civil war between the military and the system cops, so Avery and his minders set off to travel half-way around the ruins of the world to infiltrate a city full of enemies. Sounds like suicide, but then again that seems to describe most of the jobs that Avery has done in the past.

This is definitely the strongest volume in the series since The Electric Church. Here, Avery is in his element: he has little to gain and nothing to lose, no friends, and no future. Somers is at his finest plotting the meat grinder that serves as Avery's life. A fine read.

Wizard Knight

I took my own sweet time getting around to reading these books. I'm not much of a fan of fantasy, so the titles alone turned me off. I picked them up last month on a whim and dug in. They're massive. Two heavy books full of Wolfe's typically dense prose. I powered through them, often not wanting to put them down, and still it took me weeks to read them.

Knight is a classic hero's tale. A boy falls into a faerie world and finds himself on the path to a great destiny. This strange many-layered world that he finds himself is cast from the myths from across European cultures. The gods in Skai bear more than a passing resemblance to the Aesir, and the denizens of Aelfrice are drawn from the faerie. Our boy hero, who calls himself Able, travels the realm of Mythgarthr, a world that could be drawn from the heart of Arthurian legend with a dash of the brothers Grimm.

The first book builds to a climactic final battle, the seeming apex of Able's journey, yet there is more. The second book branches some, following the adventures of some of the people most touched by Able, but always returning to the hero and the great trials that befall him.

There is little that I could say about these books that would not pale in comparison to simply reading them. Wolfe's prose is elegant and moving. More than once I shed tears of joy for Able. Read them.

Trial of Flowers

I don't read a lot of fantasy, and when I do, I tend to be drawn to worlds built on very non-Tolkien lines. Jay Lake's Trial of Flowers is definitely my kind of fantasy. A densely woven story of a place called the City Imperishable and the three men who will save that city from itself in a time of bloody crisis.

The City Imperishable is a cruel place that struggles under the weight of its past, a legacy of dead gods and empty thrones. Imago is a swift-tongued dandy who hatches a plot to escape his debts by rising the to the long-vacant post of Lord Mayor. He gains the support Bijaz the dwarf and Jason the factor. The city is marching toward war and death as the streets are menaced by old magics and barbarian armies march towards the gates. Each of the three has their own reasons, but all three wish to save the city from the coming doom.

The story builds with dread and mystery. We ride with the characters as they struggle to understand the cthonic forces that plague the city, rising from a dark past that is mostly forgotten and rarely acknowledged. This is good stuff. It will stick to your ribs. Passages will make you flinch. I only finished it today, but I know that when I read it again in a few years, I will find more and more in the reading. Oh, and there is a sequel that I am looking forward to reading.

Reading

I've been reading a lot lately. Thanks to anxiety, I'm powering through a backlog of books on my shelves that I hadn't read. I figured that this was the perfect excuse to start writing a blog about books. So without any further preamble, here are some lightning reviews of my recent reading.

  

This series has been on my radar for a couple years now. I'm a big fan of Orbit, and they publish a couple of my favorite authors. I read these three books in the space of a week.

The series follows the career of a Gunner, basically an assassin, by the name of Avery Cates in a dystopian future. The nations of the world have consolidated into a single bureaucracy called the System, dividing the world clearly between the rich and the disenfranchised. Cates scrapes his way through a series of world-shaking capers, fends off nearly unstoppable enemies, and survives. He doesn't win. He survives when others die.

Somers is crafting classic noir. A flawed hero (nearly anti-hero) struggles through a world of moral grayness peopled even more moral grayness. His writing is good, though the second book sags a bit and I sometimes found him a bit repetitious. The world is crafted with a deft hand and doesn't get in the way of the action. I highly recommend them.



This was a fast Saturday read. It's a neo-noir science fiction crime novel. Detective Tom Wilner lives in an America besieged by terrorists, economic failures, and permanent entanglement in foreign conflicts. It's a familiar place taken to a paranoid extreme. I won't spoil the plot with details, but my biggest problem with the book it that the main character is too fantastic. He's so good looking that every woman in the book flirts with him. He was such a good soldier that he was awarded numerous medals. His only 'failing' is that he is willing to break the law to see justice done.

That said, the book was great. The plot carried well, revealing layers of truth and conspiracy, that while not particularly surprising, were still satisfying. I look forward to the next book.



I'm a huge fan of Charlie Huston. He's a great writer that is barely getting the recognition that he deserves. I've had this book lounging on my shelf for a while and I can't believe that it took me so long to get to it. HBO is going to do a series based on it, so I pulled it down and devoured it in a day.

Mystic Arts follows a young man named Web who has been hiding from life, living off his best friend and being an asshole. Circumstances, namely poverty, force Web to take a job as a crime scene cleaner, and quickly he finds himself rubbing elbows with other people with dark pasts in the nasty underbelly of Los Angeles.

Huston writes amazing dialog. His characters are diverse and believable in their absurdity. The tale of crime and murder that follows is perfect in its human flaws and failings. This is a pulpy novel, but one that I'd be glad to put in the hand of any crime fiction fan. Do yourself a favor and pick it up.

That's it for now. More later.