The broad strokes of Garet James’ story follow a familiar template (make allies/learn skills/face a rising evil) but the details feel surprisingly fresh. The husband-and-wife authorial team (Carol Goodman/Lee Slonimksy) offer a take on the fantastic in the modern world that draws on a number of mythic and literary traditions (the most similar recent fantasy I’ve read would be L. Jagi Lamplighter’s books about Prospero’s daughter, but Lee Carroll’s pacing is leaner and the protagonist is more congenial). Several of the New York environs are so vividly realized that I really want to visit them. The novel wraps up its primary conflict satisfactorily, and leaves a few plot threads unraveled for a sequel, which, for once, I’m really glad about.

needs more demons? no.

A small sample to whet your appetite:

It was a blue ‘64 Plymouth. A nice looking car with a stick shift, which you don’t often see a woman driving. I decided to pull the car out backwards. The highway patrolman stood up there directing traffic past. His car was parked in the berm with the red light flashing on top.
Then, when I was just working the log chain under the axle, Jim Boynton pulled up in his ‘59 Dodge, and yelled out, Hey Hanger, what you doin boy?
I turned around and glared at him, but he kept on with that Hanger business until I climbed out from under the wrecked Plymouth and said, This ain’t a good day for Chrysler products, Boynton. You better watch your step.

needs more demons? not a bit.

Holly narrates. Her voice is uncomplicated, but offers some oddball details, and rather a lot of passive voice: “Three days later it was Christmas. It was the first one without my mom and I went through the motions like a cheerleading zombie in one of my aunt’s movies.” The tone suggests early on that the Holly’s tale won’t end in a Shakespearean only-an-heir-survives bloodbath, but it’s not initially clear if the ghost is to be trusted/not to be trusted/not really there, or what the outright-borrow/vaguely-evoke ratio will be between Hamlet’s plot and the novel’s. I figured the answers out before Holly did, but then, I’m (apparently) better read. The dénouement was a bit more involving than I expected it to be, if a little pat/tidy; I was definitely emotionally invested enough to pull for Holly to make choices leading toward a positive outcome.

needs more demons? a bit.

Taken all together, there’s a slightly hermetic quality to these stories: many of the characters seem to be approaching the same decision from slightly different directions defined by their respective circumstances. The stories that seem like they might be farthest from Straub’s direct experience seem perhaps a shade too much like reasonable extrapolation from the known, without many of the startling details that real life provides. But all in all this is a very promising set of stories. I’m definitely looking forward to Straub’s debut novel this fall.

needs more demons? no.

h/t: Paula, whose review inspired me to put the book in my to-read stack.
Dept. of neither-particularly-here-nor-there: wikipedia insists on referring to the author by her married name, Barbara Comyns Carr.

needs more demons? decidedly not

Things I noticed this time around:

• Holy crap, I knew sort of vaguely that the Mars books were an acknowledged influence on George Lucas, but I didn’t realize how many near-thefts there are in the nomenclature of the Star Wars universe. The green men of Mars (Thark) sound kinda like “Darth”. “Jed” and “Jeddak” are ranks with no overt similarity to “Jedi” knights, but “padwar” is a junior rank not wholly unlike “padawan.” The Martian lion is called a “banth” (although Star Wars’s “banthas” more closely resemble Burroughs’ thoats). Carter’s trusty non-human sidekick “Woola” is a l’il bit like “wookie,” and in the third novel, Carter actually encounters a “sith.” It’s a giant flying wasp, basically, so it’s pretty evil, although Burroughs is vague on whether it channels the dark side of the Force.
• Somebody I follow on Twitter was wondering recently how the racism of H.P. Lovecraft compares to his contemporaries in the pulps, and I would very cautiously advance Burroughs’ Mars stories as significantly less steeped in racism than Howard P’s tales. Although Mars is marked by conflict along racial lines, Carter is happy to ultimately number green, red, black, white, and yellow Martians among his good friends, and near the end there’s even some “like to give the world a Coke”-type feel-good stuff about everyone living in harmony**. However, there’s still a lot that a modern reader may find cringe-worthy, “the black” did this and “the blacks” did that, and in one horrible instance the awful phrase “identical with the more god-like races of Earth” is used (in Swords of Mars) to describe people who look Caucasian. So I wouldn’t zackly call it “politically correct.” Likewise, for books written when most of the world’s women were not entitled to vote, they’re, well, not as sexist as they could be. John Carter does a lot of women-rescuing, but, he himself is rescued by women and men. Still, you wouldn’t mistake these tales for feminist tracts.
• Ye gods, John Carter is dumb. How dumb is John Carter? Let’s put it this way: if John Carter walks into a chamber with a freaking blinking neon sign labeled “obvious belabored clue!” he’ll stumble about for minutes, hours, or days bemoaning the lack of a clue before wondering if the sign might provide one.
• When JC starts describing how he directs the movements of troop columns on the ground, and, even more so, aerial combat stratagems, I kind of zone out a bit. I lack the patience to sketch these things out, which is what I think it would take for me to visualize them. Still, I have the distinct impression they wouldn’t work well against competent foes. In general, in fact, JC benefits hugely from his opponents’ lack of sentries, inability to penetrate specious disguises, inattention to detail, &c.
• It was interesting what I did and didn’t remember. The first and second novels seemed mostly familiar throughout, although I’d forgotten the specifics of the plant-men and much of the mucking-about-in-caves of The Gods of Mars. But I might have almost believed I hadn’t actually read The Warlord of Mars before, except that I vividly remember the final throneroom confrontation (John Carter is so, so dumb) and could have quoted the final sentence almost verbatim.

* Way back when I was a tween, one Christmas I received copies of the first, second, and fifth novels in the Barsoom series. In those days trips to bookstores happened at my parents’ pleasure, not mine, and it seemed like a long time before I got my hands on that third, cliff-hanger resolving volume.

needs more demons? No, but the modern reader will need some patience and historical perspective.

On the minus side, the viewpoint character Calliope Reaper-Jones reads like a younger (and whinier) amalgam of Candice Bushnell’s fashion name-dropping and Kim Harrison’s cartoonish sexualization of almost every male character in the novel (although to be fair, Reaper-Jones at least frets how appropriate her reactions are). Presumably Reaper-Jones will do a lot of growing up over the ensuing novels, but I was impatient for her to get on with it. I’m also impatient for Benson to fully realize her own voice and shake off some of the calculated-feeling genre hallmarks.

Aside: The book has one of those first inside page excerpts that are supposed to convince you to buy it. Because I read an ebook edition I thought that actually was the start of the novel, and I was disappointed that it wasn’t — I think it would have made a stronger start, and most of what came before could have been filled in as back story, making for a leaner, more compelling novel overall.

needs more demons? a few.

But mostly this is just an unabashed love letter to everything that was nerd-cool before nerdishness was cool. At times I thought it was a little heavy on exposition — dude, you can just say it looks like Rivendell, you don’t need to explain what Rivendell is — but then again, Cline was much more into giant flying robot shows than I was, so I appreciated some context there. I suspect that if you’re in the core demographic for this — i.e., you were a nerdy teen for some portion of the 80’s or early 90’s — there’s going to be a pretty fair amount of muttering “well, duh,” under your breath, and a handful of references that you do need some help with. I even found myself wondering why some key (to me, at least) aspects of 80’s geekdom had been left unreferenced; in one case the answer turned out to be that it had been saved for a major upcoming plot point.

I had mixed feelings about the novel. The material Cline is paying homage to clearly defines the plot arc, so fairly quickly it’s clear that there’s no suspense around the outcome, only around how it is achieved. And “how” doesn’t always provide that much tension; at various points (deliberately, perhaps), Ready Player One has the feel of the “cut scenes” in video games after you clear a stage — little animated respites in which you sit back and watch the plot smoothly advance. (See, that’s the kind of exposition you probably don’t need if this book is all-caps FOR YOU. Duh, of course you know what a “cut scene” is.) I would probably have preferred sharper satirical teeth, and a less respectful attitude toward the more formalized elements of the works Cline draws on. But if I wished it had a little more heft, it was definitely a hoot, and I think it’s overall a strong showing for a first novel. Provoked lots of delighted little giggles when things like [SPOILER REDACTED] popped up.

I’m definitely left curious to see what Cline comes up with next.

needs more demons? I’ll go with “no,” not “maybe.” But a bit of a judgment call, that.

I was certainly entertained. If I thought it was a bit fluffy, it was also thought-provoking. The biggest provoked thoughts: there is no way I would want to look fifteen years into the future, even if it was conveniently malleable. I would apply the same fortitude I use to avoid pre-release streams or downloads of upcoming albums. And: fifteen years seems like a long view to Emma and Josh, maybe even to Asher and Mackler. But not to me. If I could have looked fifteen years ahead from my high school sophomore year, I could perhaps have made choices that led to being happier in my 30s. But that would have precluded getting to where I am now, which I can’t imagine trading for anything. In mathematical terms, a problem of optimizing for local maxima.

Aside: in addition to the blatheration above, I endorse virtually everything in my friend Janet’s review, which made me want to read this book in the first place. Thanks, Janet!

needs more demons? perhaps.

As an adult reader familiar with science fiction tropes, I thought The Hunger Games was way too front-loaded with exposition and backstory. It takes a many pages for the titular games to start, and I was a bit wearied by Katniss Everdeen’s blow-by-blow narrative: does she really need to describe every meal she eats after she gets to the Capitol? Cause I, you know, I got the bit about how she’s never had such rich, expensive food, and how her life to date has literally been a life-and-death struggle for food after the first few meals. Partly this is a mismatch between me and the book’s target audience, but I really think it could have been leaner.

Once the games finally get underway, though, Everdeen’s detailed diaristic approach makes more sense. Still a bit plodding, perhaps, but now colored by an oppressive grimness that I did eventually find compelling. I kept recalling the Jack London story about the guy freezing to death. Everdeen relates a lot of specific physical detail, but it all really does matter. It certainly kept me flipping pages, and yeah, I want to know what happens next. I’ll keep reading.

I struggled throughout with suspension of disbelief in two aspects. Usually to-the-death dystopian game stories have an obvious satirical thrust, this one really doesn’t (at least so far) and it’s a bit hard to believe that Everdeen’s society would actually function. Maybe more importantly, it was a little hard to believe in Everdeen herself. Her physical survival skills make sense, as does her almost borderline sociopathic analytical nature. In this context her obliviousness to some human interactions makes sense. But these collectively seem at odds with her awareness of and skill at media manipulation.

I do give it full credit for being really different from the recent spate of romance-y vamps and werewoofs young adult novels. It’s not completely without romance aspects, but they’re far from the forefront; even Everdeen’s internal conflicts are not centered around which guy she winds up with or why the right guy doesn’t like her. And if the milieu seems a bit familiar (I can’t shake the sense that somewhere along the book’s path to publication someone described it as Survivor meets Logan’s Run, but there’s also a clear debt to Lord of the Flies among other works) it not only bucked the publishing trend it emerged from, but — for better or worse! — created a new one.

I also give The Hunger Games credit for being so completely devoid of sexism that it didn’t immediately occur to me to think of it as “feminist.” Katniss Everdeen isn’t “tough for a chick,” “smart for a woman,” or “strong for a girl.” She’s tough, smart, and strong, period. And I didn’t have the sense that anyone else in the book was seeing her with qualifiers either. So that’s pretty rockin’, since we still, sadly, can’t take that for granted in life or in fiction.

needs more demons I’ll go with maybe.