Given this, I spent most of time in the book looking for the places where the wool was being drawn over my eyes. When Irving mentioned that the records of a gallery which allegedly purchased some of de Hory’s fakes are no longer extant, it rang the same alarm bells in my head as the clumsy conman trying to derail suspicion by airing first. When a car rolled down a hill and burst into flame, I was tempted to cry aloud, “Aha! Fiction!”

Unfortunately, the meta-textual aspects of the book were perhaps its most consistently compelling. Elmyr de Hory’s story might’ve made a great long article for The New Yorker or Harper’s, but there’s not quite enough there there to sustain a whole book. The catalogue of de Hory arriving in some city, peddling his wares, wearing his welcome out, and moving on is too repetitive, and Irving’s approach — working hard to convince us that this is fact, not fiction — is too flat, too reportorial.

Irving only flirts with concepts that could have given his book weight beyond de Hory’s personal tragedy. He never suggests complicity on the part of any of the gallery owners who bought de Hory’s forgeries — he only provides circumstantial evidence, alleged queries as to whether the “small, private collection” which de Hory is allegedly liquidating might “happen to have” a work matching the interest of a specific potential buyer. And Irving observes but doesn’t analyze (or even judge) the strange climate that briefly allows de Hory to prosper: new money trying to legitimize itself by purchasing works of art it knows nothing about.

Irving doesn’t even go so far as to shoehorn de Hory into one of the classic plot arcs: de Hory rises, but not very far, and falls, but not very far. Irving brings the curtain down on his book before (but not much before) de Hory brings his own curtain down, after several previous botched attempts. Perhaps Irving even has some slight complicity in that, as the notoriety accompanying Irving’s book must have destroyed the only livelihood de Hory had ever known.

I learned about de Hory and Irving watching Orson Welles’ odd, fascinating/infuriating pseudo-documentary F for Fake, and I wonder if Welles’ interest might have been sparkled by this phrase in the book:

One must imagine swift cuts between shots, rapid pans of the camera and certain herky-jerky quality in the movements of the two heroes

Ironically, if sadly predictably, there is now enough interest in de Hory’s forgeries that they themselves are forged.

needs more demons? a bit.

I expected clunky prose, and found plenty of it (with all the ultra-this and super-that occasionally becoming unintentionally humorous) — but I didn’t expect it to be so rough I actually couldn’t tell what was going on. In First Lensman’s mining disaster sequence, Smith mixes wholly invented (I’m sure) miner’s argot with (I think?) some real-world-but-unfamiliar-to-me mining terminology such that I had only a vague idea what the characters were doing.

It was way more bloodthirsty than I was prepared for. I expect space opera to have a high body count as a rule, but I also expect the baddies (colorful evil leaders and direct henchmen aside) to largely be as evil and faceless as Star Wars‘ stormtroopers. Smith’s Lensmen cheerfully toss off remarks like, “In emergencies, it is of course permissible to kill a few dozen innocent bystanders,” which is probably pragmatic, but not exactly heroic or noble. They’re also pretty hard on combatants who are not actually evil or villainous, and may even become staunch allies a chapter or two later. In Triplanetary, Conway Costigan employs tactics against civilians that would be labeled terrorism today.

They were racier than I expected them to be, including descriptions of skimpy outfits, lurid (if unspecific) threats of fates-worse-than-death at the hands of sadists and/or sex-obsessed aliens, an instance of implied bisexuality, and a smidgeon of actual smooching.

But on the other hand:

• I was struck by how un-xenophobic these novels are. Alien races are often described as having “monstrous” appearances, but still worthy of inclusion in the ranks of civilization’s defenders — even, sometimes, if they have decidedly un-human mores.
• You couldn’t by any stretch call these novels “feminist,” but they’re not quite as sexist as I expected — several of Smith’s women are intelligent and self-directed, not just props for men to wrangle over, or insignificant background characters.
• I found it positively eerie to read about First Lensman’s slim poll margins, electoral dirty tricks and counter measures here in the twenty-first century — Smith is almost spookily prophetic.
• It really is astounding how much even modern science fiction draws on Smith’s tropes. I totally buy Lensmen as a key inspiration for Jedi, and Smith’s rays-vs.-shields space battles use the same fundamental rules as everything from Star Trek to Star Wars — and this before the invention of the laser. Star Trek’s plethora of inscrutable super-advanced alien races also seem to owe a debt to Smith’s Arisians.

needs more demons? I wouldn’t presume to say so. But it does help to bring some historical perspective.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth opens in a small village of humans surrounded by a forest filled by the Unconsecrated (better known as zombies). Between them the Sisterhood and the Guardians keep the village under tight strictures. As far as the villagers know, they are all that is left of humanity. The village and the forest comprise their entire world.

But some of the villagers have whispered stories to their children, knowledge not sanctioned by the sisters nor the guardians, about things that once existed — might still exist — beyond the forest. Mary’s mother told her of the ocean, and this vision compels her. Her restless, inquisitive nature inevitably brings her into conflict with the Sisterhood.

Like other writers of supernaturally themed or science fictional young adult fiction, Ryan explores her viewpoint character’s adolescent alienation. But what really set The Forest of Hands and Teeth apart for me is that Mary’s alienation is not literally manifested in some super power/curse or otherworldly heritage — Mary is just fundamentally a different sort of person from virtually all the villagers. Further, it’s remarkably cerebral for a zombie story. There are, ultimately, zombie attacks and some gripping action. But Ryan also establishes a compelling and odd blend of the pastoral and the claustrophobic, with the village tightly bound by the forest, and perhaps even more tightly bound by the Sisterhood. The Forest of Hands and Teeth reminded me much more of The Wicker Man than any zombie flick I’ve seen.

I found it creepy and (grimly) fun, although the dénouement felt a little rushed. Some readers might be impatient for the action to crank up, but that didn’t bother me at all.

needs more demons? no.

• The opening scene is set in a D/s club. It seems to be set there purely for presumed shock value; not only is it irrelevant to the plot, it doesn’t provide any insight into the characters (in fact, I thought it contradicted character development elsewhere).
• The device used to isolate the pool of suspects in this novel is Jones’ affiliation with a theatrical production. This worked much less well for me than the previous novel’s similar device of having Jones present for the unveiling of one of her sculptures at a bank. I think I know at least as much about theatres as I do about investment banking, and the notion that a theatre production would use an up-and-coming sculptor’s mobiles as set dressing was less credible than a young sculptor’s work being installed in a bank lobby. The presumption that suspects must be involved with the production also seemed flimsy.
• The exposition about the theatre’s fly system is unwieldy. It’s obvious Henderson wouldn’t spend as much effort detailing it as she does if it weren’t going to be a plot point. But since it’s mostly crammed into dialogue, it’s a little hard to follow. A diagram or two would have helped. (”Look, I’ll just draw it out for you,” Bez said impatiently, as he reached for a biro. [see Fig. 1]“)
• There are several characters with “H” names, including Hugo, Helen, and Hazel. Hazel plays Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the play being put on. Henderson also switches freely between referring to characters by their names, and by the roles they are playing. “Dream” is certainly a confusion-suffused play, so maybe this is deliberate — but it doesn’t seem to be applied to any particular thematic purpose.

On the bright side, there are some indications that it may be a transitional novel for Jones’ character. And the book really comes to life for me when Jones talks about the artistic processes involved in her sculptures. She even wonders if she’s compensating for a lack of success in some of her mobiles by making several that are fundamentally similar, so that they impress by quantity if not quality. It’s tempting (although possibly unfair) to read some artistic anxiety on Henderson’s own part into that.

needs more demons? Ayup.

I am Eleanor, and I, like this house, am haunted. I died when I fell from this tower, that window. It is sixty-seven feet from the sill to the stone on which my neck was broken. All a matter of record.

But Five Mile House manages some striking and unusual twists on the theme. Novak uses ghosts as an extended metaphor, mirroring and externalizing internal conflicts. The dominating presence of Five Mile House is not Eleanor, but Leslie Stone, who is haunted by several things, but chiefly by the act of vigilantism that ended her career as a police detective, and estranged her from her family. Stone is initially pretty resistant to the notion that she might also be haunted by a destiny that links her fate with Eleanor’s, perhaps because she doesn’t have room in her life for more haunting.

Whether or not she has room for them, Stone eventually finds herself in some unsettling and unpleasant circumstances. The classic horror fiction trope of the protagonist whom no one will believe arises very organically from the circumstances, as does the threat that motivates her. Stone refreshingly continues to act and think like a cop — if a damaged cop — as the level of weirdness rises around her.

While Stone’s present-day life is unraveling, Novak gradually peels back the century-old mystery of the titular Five Mile House, which turns out to arise from a substantially different mix of jealousy, insanity and revenge than is commonly supposed.

Five Mile House displays some of the weaknesses you might expect in a first novel. Some of the supporting cast are too thinly drawn to avoid cliché and I think there are indications that Novak is still evolving her prose style, but those caveats aside, this is recommended as a nifty, spooky read.

Needs More Demons? Not at all.

• Nothing with swords or dragons in the title or the cover
• Nothing with a map of imaginary places at the front

There are many counter-examples to prove the rules, and even more bad books not filtered by them, but they do eliminate a lot of books I’m pretty sure I don’t need to read (I’ve had my lifetime quota of lame Tolkien knockoffs, thanks). I usually think twice before picking up a sword-y or dragon-y book, and the presence of a map is not likely to sway me toward an impulse purchase. Fire Logic has a big sword on the cover and a map in the front. I’d also be inclined to add a rule about titles that define the context of a series: Fire Logic, especially once you learn a little about the set up, implies that Earth Logic, Water Logic, and Air Logic will follow. Poor Fire Logic had three strikes against it before I’d read even a word.

So why did I read it? The third volume in the series is published by Small Beer Press. I have great faith and trust in their editorial judgment; their track record of publishing the kind of books I like is virtually flawless. In their promotional material, clearly aware that their audience might be leery of a mainstream fantasy tetralogy, they went to some pains to assure potential readers that this was not a standard issue heroic fantasy.

And indeed it’s not. What struck me most about this novel was its sense of place. Shaftal, despite a name that still strikes me as silly, feels like a nation where people could really live, not a sketchy setting for events of import to befall heroes and villains. There’s no incarnation of evil bent on utter subjugation of the world; there are invaders and a resistance, and the readers sympathies — and many of the characters’ — are tugged back and forth by the choices that people make. There is magic, but it’s not of the gaudy, lightning-bolts-from-the-fingers variety. Marks doesn’t belabor the principles by which magic operates, but they nonetheless feel internally consistent (a neat trick).

Marks’ society is very thoroughly egalitarian, few of the central characters are heterosexual, and nobody in the novel makes a big deal over anyone’s gender or sexual preference. It makes many of the standard fantasy genre tropes look very reactionary. I’m no expert, but I certainly can’t think of any fantasy set in a pre-industrial society as gender-neutral as Fire Logic. (In Edgar Rice Burroughs’ day, heroes could of course stumble upon cities, islands, or planets ruled by women — but ultimately that seems just as non-feminist: “Oh look, Dr. Jameson! The women are in charge! How very queer indeed!”)

On the down side, much of the plot was a little too military-oriented for my personal taste, and while Marks’ characters usually emerge as well-rounded, I could wish they were fundamentally a little farther from standard-issue fantasy types in aspects other than sexual orientation. Marks’ dialog has a realistic flow and is blessedly free of faux archaisms, but that makes her prose look a little dense and early 20th-century by comparison. But the bottom line is that I liked Fire Logic quite a bit, and I look forward to reading the next volume.

Needs More Demons? Nope.

We’ve spent plenty of time since discussing our respective tastes in entertainment media, and I have a high opinion of his judgment. Enough so that when for Christmas he gave me a copy of what was obviously a novel about, among other things, a serial killer, I actually read it instead of just reading a summary on the Internets. (To be fair here, I gave him one more-or-less “serious” modern novel and in short order convinced him to read another one.)

And in fact, The Fiend in Human is an excellent example of the sort of serial killer fiction that actually appeals to me, not least because several of its characters actively question the role of the press in turning criminals into quasi-heroic figures, not to mention the risk of inspiring copycat crimes. Further, it’s set in a compellingly detailed Victorian London. It also has a dash of post-modern narrative “difficulty;” most of it is written in a present tense with vocabulary and sentence structures that often evoke 19th-century prose styles (”To Whitty’s surprise, the inert gentleman across the table speaks in a distant, weak voice; the open mouth does not perceptibly move,” but that also admit much more modern constructions, like the one-two-three punch that opens the first chapter:

There is something unspeakable in Whitty’s mouth. Is it a dead animal?
No, it is his tongue.

This odd marriage of styles is intermittently broken up with snippets of proto-yellow journalism penned by the protagonist, Edmund Whitty, which adhere more strictly to 19th-century prose conventions (like the dread, stilted, and infinitely conventional past tense).

One of the reasons I prefer “mysteries” to “thrillers” is that I like the puzzle aspects of whodunnits — I don’t much care for the novelistic device in which an early scene from an alternate viewpoint establishes the identity of the evildoer, so that the reader is in on the joke while the detectives flounder around. The Fiend in Human walks a tightrope between these styles; the reader knows a big piece of the mystery for certain before Whitty does; the astute reader will probably figure it out many chapters before, and the serious mystery devotee will probably catch a subtlety that eluded me.

Fortunately The Fiend in Human has much more going for it than a twisty plot; there’s some real depth to the characters, some real thematic depth to their actions, and the sheer brooding, grimy presence of Gray’s London is a marvel (his descriptions of the infamous London fogs were especially noteworthy).

I found a lot to like, and I was quite content to accept Marty’s loan of a sequel, but I also found it a little grim for my taste. Edmund Whitty and his seamy milieu are vividly drawn, but far from pleasant, and I think I need another escapist book or two before spending more time in John MacLachlan Gray’s hands.

Needs More Demons? Absolutely not; Whitty has plenty.