ann's quick reviews

ann's quick reviews

**the new review**(Updated 10/24)
**Bookstores and so forth**
**home page**what has ann done?**where is ann going?**
**Ann's Fiction**

Hey - do you need a quick fix? You know what I mean - a really good book to chase those megrims away and send those doldrums flying! On this page, we'll look at some of my favorite books, old and new, and sometimes a movie or two. We'll also check out some real stinkers: books that for some reason have caught the public eye, though they should have plopped straight into the compost heap.

I'll warn you: I'm not much for Neo-Nazi elves (or most other kinds of elves), scientist characters who are such stiffs that their nametags should read "Dr. Kevorkian," or authors who have decided that the world can't get along without yet another science fiction-romance--usually combining the worst of both genres. I rarely like series of anything written by several different authors, although I have been known to wolf down the odd single-author trilogy. And I am not amused by future fiction in which Baddies can be recognized by the fact that they eat meat ! (I've run into several of these lately. The vegetarians are gaining on us. . . .)

You'll see what I like by reading these pages. Have a recommendation for a good book? Drop me a line at amjordan@gte.net. And good reading!

and now, the news and reviews:

The Blue Plate Special: Pratchettiana

Terry Pratchett leans over his demolished salad, ignoring the Riverwalk's splash and convention-goers' echoing chatter in the food court across from San Antonio's Convention Center. Small, shrewd eyes behind small round glasses take on a manic gleam, above a close-cropped gray beard. "And do you know what?" he hisses.

Startled by the renowned British novelist's vehemence, my husband and I shake our heads. Pratchett leans closer. "You're not fat!" says this author of dozens of fantasy novels. "And you're dressed like adults!"

We stare at Pratchett, who sports safari-like khaki shirt and pants, then down at ourselves--the Spousal Unit in slacks and sport shirt, myself in jeans and linen blazer. We stammer something polite: we love Pratchett’s books, he’s really famous--and we’re not, quite.

We are attending the 1997 World Science Fiction Convention, LoneStarCon 2, over Labor Day weekend, and though I feel bound to defend my fellow Americans, it's not hard to catch Pratchett's drift. A number of ill-advised conventioneers have decided to beat San Antonio's oppressive heat with a minimum of clothing, whether they can carry the look or not. Uneasily I wonder if Pratchett's observations extend to all Americans. After all, he hails from a country where the really unaffectionate name for Americans refers to a toupee--for a body region not usually exposed to public view.

But the question goes unanswered. With a wave, Pratchett excuses himself--he's scheduled for a reading from his newest novel, which won’t arrive in the States for at least another year--and we're left with the story of how a pair of unknowns waylaid one of the best-known authors in England and got to buy him lunch.

But then, affable accessibility is a Pratchett hallmark, as well as straight speaking. He regularly drops in on <alt.fan.pratchett>--an Internet newsgroup where his Discworld fantasy novels are parsed and debated with a fervor once reserved for the Talmud--and he seems to thrive on the thousands of fans who throng the international SF conventions and book signings he attends every year. He even answers (polite) fan e-mail.

So what sort of fiction inspires such zealotry? Why do Terry Pratchett’s fantasy novels outsell the Booker Prize winner each year, though he’s still known mostly in SF circles in this country?

Pratchett is best known for his Discworld novels, richly comic fantasies set on a flat world which sails through space on the back of the great turtle A'tuan. That his characters speak in the accents of working-class England is no mistake. Pratchett is mining the centuries-old vein of the wisdom of the common man, stomping along in the footsteps of The Twin Menaechmi, Bernard Shaw's Alfred Doolittle and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Pratchett's cover blurbs twitter excitedly about how his novels are "a direct descendant of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," yet there's less of Douglas Adams in there than P.G. Wodehouse.

Pratchett's characters are unique yet universal, many of them now memorialized in a swiftly-selling figurine line. They are people you know, only more so: his wizard-professors at Unseen University are the same idiot savants who lectured you on Tacitus and permanently misfiled your degree plan; his wizened witch-grannies make really awful tea and take no prisoners. His Luggage has teeth and pursues the hapless wizard Rincewind like a grim chaperone; his Death wonders if he's in the right profession. Pratchett's theme is the chaos and idiocy of daily life in a fantastic setting, and recognizable to anyone who's spent any time in the real world.

That said, let me also say that his more recent Discworld novels can be confusing to the uninitiated. After all, it's hard to cram the back-details of umpty-ump books into your latest without making it simply a caterwauling pastiche of all that's gone before. But some of Pratchett's earlier pieces such as Mort, Reaper Man, and Wyrd Sisters are stand-alone gems, and perfect examples of his lunchtime comment to me that serious fiction and comic fiction are not, by any means, mutually exclusive.

Though his Discworld novels have made his reputation, Pratchett has not confined his work to that universe. He has produced several books for children, including a delightful trilogy known as the Bromeliad: Truckers, Diggers, and Wings. These books cover the adventures of a miniature Borrower-like people who have "always" lived in the walls of a great London department store--which is about to be torn down.

Other YA books include the "Johnny" books: Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny and the Dead, and Johnny and the Bomb. I haven’t read Johnny and the Bomb yet, and truthfully, I found Only You Can Save Mankind a touch derivative (though to younger readers who are busily cutting their teeth on Goosebumps, it will no doubt be a model of innovation). However, I would recommend Johnny and the Dead to a reader of any age: both funny and touching, it remained in my head when some of Pratchett’s other works faded into an amorphous mass.

But Pratchett's most successful non-Discworld book to date, from both literary and commercial viewpoints, is Good Omens, a collaboration with Neil Gaiman, author of the graphic novel Sandman series, and a new novel, Neverwhere. A "novel of the Apocalypse" set in modern times, Good Omens is the story of the angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley, both charged with overseeing the upbringing of the Antichrist--a young British boy who will remain unaware of his true nature until the onset of Armageddon. Except that, as in all facets of life, mix-ups do occur. . . .

The appeal of Good Omens was manifested at Worldcon by the number of fans inquiring when a sequel might appear. Unfortunately for them, Pratchett made clear that the novel, produced when he and Gaiman were "between jobs," will remain an only child. Still, Good Omens remains one of his best works, with Gaiman's darker worldview adding depth and pathos to funnyman Pratchett's gags. I often recommend this novel as an introduction to Pratchett's work--though always with the "Caveat" that appears on the copyright page: "Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home."

* * *

Want to know more about Terry Pratchett (or Pterry, as he's know to his fans)? Check out <http://www.us.lspace.org/> Or head to your local bookstore. . . .

DC

Last Call by Tim Powers

Although I first encountered Last Call some while ago--it was the first Tim Powers book I read--I picked up my own copy of Last Call only in the last couple of months, at the World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio. I had originally sought out his work from our local library in 1994, after I was chosen as a Writers of the Future winner--as Tim Powers was one of the judges who (brilliantly, of course!) had a hand in picking my work.

And boy howdy, was I blown away by his work. Only my Spousal Unit's stern admonishments kept me from "losing" the library copy, and the hardback was difficult to find by then. So when I stumbled upon the new trade paper edition of Last Call--well, let's just say there was little free will involved in the matter.

Tim Powers' works can be shoe-horned into two categories, though there are sub-categories as well. There are his Modern California dark fantasy novels (soon to become a California Suite, I suppose, with the October 1997 publication of his new book, Earthquake Weather), and then there are his historical dark fantasies. (Dinner at Deviant's Palace, while technically one of the ModCals, is far too baroque in feel to be classed with anything but the historicals.) Last Call is the first of his Modern California works, and the book that hooked me like a trout.

Tim Powers sets Last Call in Las Vegas and the surrounding desert, a surreal land of sudden violence and subtle magic. In 1953, five-year-old Scotty is the son of Georges Leon, a professional gambler and casino owner. Georges' great ambition is to eclipse the "King" of Las Vegas, Bugsy Siegal, in the struggle for ownership--both financial and spiritual, as it turns out--of that well-lighted city. Georges' instruments toward that end are a very special Tarot set--the ultimate gambling cards--and the sons of his body: Richard, the older boy, who has in some manner become a blank-faced idiot who does nothing but scan the skies. . . and young Scotty. When Scotty's mother realizes the role that Georges plans for Scotty in Georges' rise to power, she whisks the boy away to. . . another fate.

Fast forward forty years. Scotty is now Scott Crane: a former professional gambler, taught the business by his foster father, Ozzie. But Scott has been orphaned twice, in a sense: as a young man, he once insisted on playing Assumption, a Poker variation that Ozzie had strictly forbidden to him for reasons unknown. When Scott dragged himself home from that game, he found Ozzie's house quit-claimed to him and his foster-father and sister disappeared. Now, years later, Scott is a very recent, nearly-broken widower who drowns himself in Budweiser. When his nose is rubbed in the impending foreclosure of his house, Scott bestirs himself to make some quick bucks the only way he can: becoming a gambler again.

Unfortunately, though Scott had lost interest in gambling for a number of years, the gambling world never lost interest in him. At his very first Poker game, Scott's whereabouts are revealed by one of the other players to a mysterious phone bank whose role it is to keep track of certain--individuals. Leaving the card game, Scott finds that his foster father's paranoia wasn't entirely unjustified: for the first time in his life, someone takes a shot at him. And later, they throw a bomb at him. And later. . . .

Scott Crane is much in the mold of Powers' other protagonists: a pathologically reluctant hero, with an apparently obligatory yen for alcohol, who wants only to retain the anonymous niche he's carved out for himself. But the author seems to believe in the foreordained hero, the protagonist who, like Oedipus or Hercules, was indeed born to his role. This appears fatalistic and makes it difficult to identify with the lead character--until the reader reflects upon how much of his own life and personality were thrust upon him by family and circumstance. Most of us do the best with what were were given, be it a nice fat trust fund or hand-me-down AIDS. It's just that Powers' characters sure do get a lot handed to them on that circumstantial platter.

Last Call is packed with action, some of it horrific (when you read the book, you'll note how I've pussyfooted around the first chapter!), but the glue that holds Powers' work together is his characterization. His baddies are quite memorably demented, in their own very reasonable ways, and although his lead characters share certain characteristics (what is it with the alcohol?), you'll never find yourself confusing one with another. The other thing I find particularly appealing is the sense of unseen worlds, teeming around you. After a Powers-book marathon, you'll be convinced--well, until you sleep it off--that the world is, in fact, weirder than you ever realized. For instance, there's the matter of the Fisher King taking up residence in Vegas--now, is that connected with Elvis as King? And there's the guy in the Skinner box, and the true daughter of Isis (or was that Ishtar?) and the Mandelbrot man. . . .

Last Call is densely written, bleakly humorous, and hard as hell to put down so you can go to bed. I once told Tim that I liked to describe his work as Charles Dickens meets Stephen King. Luckily for me, he laughed. But I should have thrown in a bit of P.G. Wodehouse, or possibly John Cleese. I won't guarantee you'll like Last Call: my father, a very perceptive reader (and the guy who got me started on all this sf and fantasy foofooraw, darn his hide!) wasn't nearly as taken with Powers' works as I've been. But you really need to read Last Call as the proper intro for Expiration Date, which is really really cool (and features the ghost of Thomas Alva Edison as a main character. Need I say more?). And I hear that Earthquake Weather features characters from both books.

Ann says: check it out. --AMJ; 10/1/97

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The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz

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(under construction. . . .)

Bookstores and so forth:

A word about obtaining the reviewed books: I've tried to note pertinent info--publication dates, general availability, ISBN numbers. If you possibly can, please do patronize that small, privately-owned bookstore around the corner--it's dedicated folk like that bookstore owner that have, by sheer word of mouth, raised up deserving new authors from the remainder table and kept the science fiction and fantasy field from becoming one vast morass of Star Wars, Star Wars clones, and elfy-welfy quest stories. (Hey, I got nothin' against Star Wars. Let me tell ya, sugar-thighs, Mark Hamill just about sent me into fibrillation when I was--er, somewhat younger. But there is more to life than just Star Wars.)

But if you are stuck out in the hinterlands, where the only friendly faces you see are your cat and the UPS brown-shirt--then here's a couple of places to score some books. Just remember, about prices, shipping and so forth--double-check with store personnel in case policies have changed.

The University Bookstore:

Yup, there's lots of universities, lots of bookstores. This one is affiliated with the University of Washington in Seattle. They carry just about everything, including esoteric academic stuff (hey, they got me a copy of The Modern Pushtu Instructor!) and they have a great sf/f section, because they have a really knowledgeable and well-read buyer, sometimes known as Dwayne the Tall. (Hi, Dwayne!) Many well-known sf writers make it a point to drop by this bookstore for reading/signings, so odds are good this bookstore can get you a signed copy of that brand-new tome by your favorite author bwana--for the same price! Hot damn. And speaking of price, if you buy by mail, they don't charge shipping. Gift wrapping is also free. Ann says: check it out.

Tel: 1-800-335-READ; E-mail: www.bookstore.washington.edu

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Amazon.com:

You have heard of this place. I know you have--unless you've been cuddling up in the dark under a rock with a nest of rattlesnakes somewhere. (If you have, don't tell me, I don't want to know--but you should probably give Oprah a call.) Here's the good thing: Amazon.com often has significant discounts on books, from 5 to 40 percent. But they do charge shipping, which can add up for several books. If you're trying to pinch that buffalo, do the calculations--check out their price, then see if it beats the University Bookstore, which doesn't charge shipping. (But remember, UB can get it for you signed. I wonder if they've got Mark Hamill. . .?)

E-mail: www.Amazon.com

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Finally, let me say that the best way in the world to find "new" books and "new" authors is to hang out at a good used bookstore. Okay, I haven't published a book yet, but I think that those authors who resent used bookstores are missing the point. If I read a great review of some author's work, but the hardback is twenty-plus dollars--well, don't know about you, amigo, but I'm a starving and very damn cheap artist. The book may go on my Xmas list, but I don't shell out bucks for someone I've never read before. I'd expect you, my very discerning audience, to do the same.

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This page was last updated on 06/29/98.