Knights of various stripes

Another short story round-up: Stories 259 - 267 for the year.

259. AAAA Wizardry by Jim Butcher, from The Dresden Files Role-Playing Game: Our World volume. Harry Dresden instructs a group of fresh new young Wardens of the White Council in the art of being a detective of the supernatural. He illustrates each of the "A"s in turn by relating a case involving a single mother and her "sensitive" children. Tension builds nicely, and there really aren't any spoilers for the series overall aside from mention of the on-going War with the Red Court of Vampires, which is a background note to most of the books to date anyway. The story is a really nice glimpse into what makes Harry a good detective, but also what makes him a good character: the fact that he makes mistakes.

The rest are from the anthology Dark And Stormy Knights, edited by P.N. Elrod:

260. A Questionable Client by Ilona Andrews Even without the author's note at the end of the story, I could tell this adventure of mercenary Kate Daniels takes place within a larger fictional world. Too many small things are mentioned off-handedly: The Mercenary Guild, the fact that magic and technology seem to alternate in unpredictable waves, Kate's interactions with her boss and fellow mercs. Still, the story itself, about Kate taking on bodyguard duty with extra hazard pay for a client no one else seems to want to touch, flows well and feels complete. I can't say it made me want to run out and buy the Kate Daniels novels, but I am curious about how her world works and how this adventure, involving a very questionable client and the people after him, fits into the overall scheme of things.


261. The Beacon by Shannon K. Butcher Yes, Shannon is Jim Butcher's wife. But her story is not, so far as I can tell, at all related to his Dresden Files world. This also seems to be an introduction to a character who I think could hold his own series well. Ryder Ward is the latest in a line of Terraphage hunters -- he inherited the job from his father, and the implication is that it's a family heritage. Ryder tracks down "The Beacons" whose dreams summon the phages into the real world, and he kills them before the phages can be summoned. The problem is, Ryder's latest Beacon is not an easy kill. The question quickly becomes: how far can a man be pushed to do something that he knows is for the good of the society no matter what it does to him emotionally? I liked the way Shannon Butcher built the main and supporting characters and gave the story several possible directions to go in, with a satisfactory (almost, dare I say it, fun) final moment.

262. Even a Rabbit Will Bite by Rachel Caine This was a really fun story. Like Shannon Butcher's, I did not get the sense it was part of an already-existing fictional world and I think I enjoyed the story more for that. Caine asks the question: what happens when the last near-immortal dragon hunter, living in our modern world, gets a letter from the Pope telling her it's time to train her own replacement? How do you train someone to fight dragons when the last remaining dragon is as old as you and hides in a dessert half a world away? I loved the exasperation and crotchetiness of Lisel Martin and how she handles being made obsolete. I also loved the way the story goes from snarky to serious in a heart-beat. Naturally, all is not what it seems to be at the story's start, and Caine uses the story to make a bigger point than just "be constantly vigilant."

263. Dark Lady by P.N. Elrod This is the second Jack Fleming story I've read. The Fleming stories take place in 1930s Chicago and feature a vampire private eye who runs a bar. In this story, Fleming is called on to aide one damsel-in-distress and finds himself needing help as well. The Dark Lady of the title turns out to be an interesting secondary character. I've never read any of Elrod's Fleming novels, but the two stories I've read have been reasonably fun.

264. Beknighted by Deidre Knight Another story that doesn't seem to take place in an previously-existing world. Each of the stories in this collection plays with the concept of what it means to be a "knight," male or female, and most of the main characters can easily be described as "dark," or "stormy" or both. Knight's story puts a bit of a twist on the theme. The main character is an artist who, thanks to intense dreams, has set herself the task of creating a mystic puzzle that will set an imprisoned knight free. Her main problem is that none of the materials she has to hand are really up to the task - until a mysterious patron shows up with a small cache of "templar gold," living gold that can be mixed with the paint to provide the painting/puzzle with the oomph it needs to free the nameless knight. The question, of course, is what the mysterious patron is really up to, and can he be trusted at all? Knight's story flows well, although there are a few details I'd like to have seen explained (such as how our main character knows painting the knight and then creating a puzzle of the painting will free him -- there's an implication that this sort of thing is done, although highly regulated, in her world, but I'd have liked a more explicit explanation.) Still, I recommend this as one of the better stories in the volume.


265. Shifting Star by Vicki Pettersson Another story that takes place in an already-established world with which I am unfamiliar. I think that this story contains a few more spoilers for Pettersson's "Signs of the Zodiac" series than the Dresden, Daniels or Fleming stories do, judging from the focus of the story. It took me a few paragraphs to understand that the main character is a magical construct given a name, autonomy, and a life -- to which she is mostly not adapting well at all. The mystery she becomes embroiled in seems to be connected to something of a major series point. And the main character's growth, through her interaction with a mortal man she meets, also seems like it should have a large affect on this character's role in the book series. The Zodiac books have been recommended to me, but I haven't added them to my TBR list just yet. I would say, of all the stories in this volume, approach this one with the most caution if you're reading the Zodiac books but are not up to the current volume yet, just in case the spoilers are as big as they seemed to me to be. That said, I did enjoy Pettersson's take on "what it is that makes us human."

266. Rookwood & Mrs. King by Lilith Saintcrow I got the impression that this story was part of an already-established world, but nothing in the author's notes at the end confirms that suspicion. So this might be one of those rare anthology stories that feels like it belongs to something already extant even though it is in fact it's own new thing. The Rookwood of the title is a cop-turned-private investigator with a problem: he's not quite human, not quite vampire. He's been surviving, taking on cases, but waiting for the one case that will enable him to come face-to-face with the creatures that created him, and it seems that case has finally fallen in his lap. There are a series of double-crosses, often telegraphed with phrases like "if only he'd told her the truth at the beginning..." Those phrases cause the story to stumble a bit and feel clunky in spots. It's not a bad story, and in fact I like the concept of half-turned victims of vampires who need to find a way to survive (reminiscent of The Fellowship of St. Giles in the Harry Dresden books, but Saintcrow handles the concept differently, which I appreciated).

267. God's Creatures by Carrie Vaughn This story of Cormac, Monster Hunter, feels a bit similar to Shannon Butcher's story above -- the monsters are more your traditional sort (in this case, a werewolf) but like Ryder Ward, Cormac carries the weight of a family tradition handed to him before he was really ready to take it on. Ward and Cormac are essentially loners, and loners who hold to a certain code that doesn't allow them to believe what is right in front of their eyes. I found the identity of the werewolf to be a bit easy to figure out -- the "red herrings" weren't really much of a distraction -- but that didn't really detract from the overall flow of the story. The question is a bit less "who" and a bit more "how is Cormac going to finish this?" Which again, makes it bookend nicely with the Butcher story. Cormac is apparently a supporting player in Vaughn's ongoing werewolf series, but this felt nicely stand-alone. Only the author's note at the end clued me in to the fact that Cormac had appeared before.


And since I reviewed Jim Butcher's Even Hand, his Johnny Marcone story in this anthology, a month or so back ... that means I'm done with the book!

Four By Hubbard

One of the interesting things the Country Inn & Suites chain does is stock a "lobby library" with "read and return" books. Lots of kids books, a few current or near-current best-sellers, that kind of thing. The last Country Inn I stayed at (outside Columbus OH several months back) had the David Lodge novella I reviewed in a previous post, and four entries in the L. Ron Hubbard Stories From The Golden Age series of pulp reprints. Since each one was a different genre, I decided to grab copies of all four and finally give ol' L-Ron a fair shake. Here's what I thought:


Book 48: Spy Killer by L.Ron Hubbard, isbn 9781592123025, 121 pages, Galaxy Press, $9.95

An American sailor on a ship in Shanghai Harbor is accused of a crime he didn't commit. He manages to escape and gets caught up in a spy-and-criminal plot involving tensions between the Chinese and Japanese and two beautiful women: an American ingenue and a Russian femme fatale. This was my least favorite. I struggled with Hubbard's tendency to refer to every character by their full name every time they appear. It's always Kurt Reid, Varinka Savischna, Anne Carsten, Lin Wang. Even when they refer to each other, it's by full names and never just first names. It was so distracting that it's all I can remember of the story -- I know tensions mount and all comes out well in the end for Our Hero, but at this point I can't even tell you if he ends up with either of the women. I was actually afraid, having read this one first, to continue on to the others.

Book 49: Under The Black Ensign by L.Ron Hubbard, isbn 9781592123391, 121 pages, Galaxy Press, $9.95

Thankfully, the effort to crack the cover on this one was worth it. This is classic pulp and without the over-stiff writing of Spy Killer. Tom Bristol is an American press-ganged into service on a British Man O'War in the 1600s Caribbean, the heyday of pirates. Threatened with disciplinary action by a cruel captain and provincial governor, Bristol gladly jumps to the pirate side of things when the Man O'War is attacked. There is a love-interest that for a few fleeting moments seemed like it might be an actual gay romance but of course turns out to be a woman disguised as a young boy. The dialogue is classically Pulp but also a bit snappy. I had fun reading this one.

Book 50: Six-Gun Caballero by L.Ron Hubbard, isbn 9781592122998, 121 pages, Galaxy Press, $9.95

Half-Irish, Half-Mexican Michael Patrick Obanon finds his ranch in the New Mexico territory slipping out from under him when the border with Mexico shifts and all Spanish Land Grants are nullified. Desperadoes move in and try to take over the ranch, not realizing "don Michael" is actually the property's owner. He plays a fun Zorro-like game with them (without ever donning an mask and costume) that puts not just his own life but the lives of his tenants at risk if everything doesn't play out just right. Another fun outing. I could see a young Antonio Banderas as Michael Patrick. There are certain plot similarities with Black Ensign, which just shows that Hubbard was cranking these things out by formula (and either hoping, or not caring, that no-one would notice if the same basic plot showed up in different genres).


Book 51: If I Were You by L.Ron Hubbard, isbn 9781592123599, 121 pages, Galaxy Press, $9.95

This is an odd little fantasy story. A cadaverous fortune-teller leaves all of his books of arcane lore to the circus' midget, who discovers the ability to "transsubstantiate" his consciousness into other people's bodies. Many many complications arise, as he discovers that being someone else is not so much better than being himself. This one actually tries to impart a moral of sorts. I liked the concept, but would rank this third out of four if I had to put these books in order of enjoyment.

Home Truths

Book 47: Home Truths by David Lodge, isbn 9780140291806, 115 pages, Penguin, $11.95

There's an oft-quoted / paraphrased theory of fiction writing that says "the form finds the story." I know Neil Gaiman has blogged about the concept: how occasionally he's struggled trying to tell a story in a certain way only to discover it works better as something else (trying to write a short story when what it really wants to be is a poem, for example). And of course Alan Moore is famous for his refusal to have anything to do with adaptations of his work into other forms of storytelling (see the movie versions of Watchmen, V For Vendetta, From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) because he told the story in the style and format it fit best in, and it didn't need to be anything else.

I have occasionally toyed with turning both of my less-than-successful attempts at one-act plays into novellas. David Lodge's Home Truths made me think twice about it. Lodge's novella is a prose rendering of his play of the same title. His short note at the beginning tells you so, and also tells you that he put back in dialogue cut from various productions of the play. The problem is, the novella doesn't feel like a novella -- it feels like a playscript with very very explicit stage directions added in, and one odd veering-off into something that could not actually have been staged the way it's written (which, perhaps, was Lodge's whole intent for the piece, but since most of it sticks to what conceivably would have been an English Country Home One Room Drama, the piece that doesn't take place in that one room feels highly highly out of place.)

The plot, in short, is this: retired author Adrian Ludlow and his wife are visited by their old friend Sam Sharp, who is quite upset a scathing profile done by paparazzi-journalist Fanny Tarrant. A revenge scheme is set up, involving Adrian being interviewed by Tarrant at the same time that he interviews her. Will the retired author give up his own beloved privacy to skewer the woman who skewers famous people?

I have a feeling if I had seen Home Truths staged, I'd have enjoyed it quite a bit. The very British snappy patter speaks to me, and the topic is ... well, topical, perhaps even moreso now than when the play was written in 1998 (the action takes place around a pivotal cultural moment in 1997). But in book form, Lodge uses an awful lot of "he said" style dialogue tags that quickly get repetitive and actually annoying, cutting into the flow of the story. And in the end, the point Lodge seems to be trying to make is almost too cliche precisely because of that pivotal cultural moment Lodge relies on to make the point.

Reading this novella was instructional for me as a writer, but not something I'd recommend eagerly to others.

A Visit To Palimpsest

Book 46: Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente, isbn 9780553385762, 367 pages, Bantam, $14.00

Back in May, when I was reading the short story anthology Paper Cities, I read and reviewed Cat Valente's short story "Palimpsest." At the time, I didn't know that story was excerpted from her novel of the same name. It was the choice to make the novel her August book club selection by calico_reaction that clued me in to the world of Palimpsest existing in longer form. I enjoyed the short story, as you can see from my brief comments here. I also enjoyed the novel, although I had to work harder at it.

"I had to work harder at it" sounds awfully negative now that I read it on the screen. I considered rephrasing that sentence, but I'm not going to. It says what I want it to say: Palimpsest is not a mindless beach read. It's not trope-filling SF, the kind of thing you can sort of let your attention wander and still know what's going on. Palimpsest the novel requires your attention the way Palimpsest the city requires the devotion of its inhabitants and visitors. You can choose, like one minor character in the book, to walk away if the work is too weird for you. Honestly, I almost did walk away. As much as I've enjoyed Ms. Valente's short stories, I was on vacation and didn't want to tax my brain too hard. It was being introduced to that minor character who gives up on Palimpsest that made me decide to stick it out; I'm not one to normally give up on a book anyway (the list of books I couldn't bring myself to finish is a short list indeed), but something about a minor character wishing she'd never heard of the place the four major characters (and several other secondary ones) are willing to hurt themselves to move to made me decide to see the novel through and find out if either her sacrifice of the city or the major characters' sacrifices of parts of themselves (literally and figuratively) was the wiser, more noble choice.

I realize I have not summarized the book at all, or given you any indication of what it's about. An online friend commented that it's a book about "a sexually-transmitted city." That's the high concept: people can only find Palimpsest after they've had sex with someone who has been to Palimpsest, after which a portion of a map of the city becomes a permanent tattoo somewhere on their flesh. After that, they can only return to Palimpsest, as 'immigrants,' by having sex with other people who have been tattoed by the city. Many of the characters wonder what it takes to go from immigrant to emigre, and would gladly pay whatever price -- the city is that addictive for them.

A book can't survive on high concept alone. Well, okay, some books can and become wildly popular because they are nothing but high concept. This particular high concept wouldn't sustain itself, though, if it were just a series of orgiastic vignettes. Well, okay, again some books would, but I'd lose interest quickly. Each of the main characters needs something the city can provide, each of them is searching for something they've lost. Valente creates a main quartet of characters that is international, intergenerational, intergender and fluid intersexual -- a pretty good cross-section of society. They may start out as "types" (the disaffected Asian, the lonely young spinster, the work-obsessed husband, the hard-working immigrant) but get past the opening section and those characters take on greater depth.

What seems to put some people off the book is the intense weirdness of the city itself -- a dreamlike place where no-one is quite human, even the humans. There's a lot of weirdness to process, and again that's where the hard work comes in. The weirdness starts early and is unrelenting, although even those characters who are permanent residents of Palimpsest become deeper, almost less dream-like as the book moves on -- it's almost like moving from regular dreaming to lucid dreaming, in a way. The more I read of Palimpsest the city, the more I could picture it, the less weird the weird felt, if that makes sense.

Ultimately, I'm glad I chose to follow Oleg, Sei, November and Ludovico on their journey, rather than turning my back on Palimpsest like that minor character by drugging myself with something less dream-like. The more I read of her work, the more I feel that while Cat Valente is not an easy writer to read she is a writer worth reading.

Teaser Tuesday for August 24th

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read.
* Open to a random page.
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page.

* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here's my teaser from "The Sun Never Rises in the Big City," the lead-off story in Jeremy C. Shipp's soon to be released new short fiction collection FUNGUS OF THE HEART:


I could hire a private investigator, but I’m sure he’d wonder why I’d spend so much money investigating the death of a rag. He’d look down on me, so that’s out of the question.

I can’t call the police either, because they’d just laugh at me. Legally, killing a rag isn’t murder. And according to the handbook, in the case of a rag’s death, we’re supposed to call up the Agency and ask for a replacement.

Because people are cheap. Investigations aren’t.

Advs of Holmes

Book 45: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, contained in The Complete Sherlock Holmes Volume 1, isbn 9781593080341, 265 pages, Barnes And Noble Classics, $7.95

I decided not long ago that I really needed to go back and read some (or all) of Doyle's original Holmes work, to be able to more capably judge how the stories by more recent writers stack up to those of Holmes' creator. Since there seem to be new Holmes short stories in every issue of The Strand magazine and in just about every period mystery anthology, I decided to skip rereading A Study In Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, the first two Holmes novels, and proceed to the first short story collection.

Of course, I've reviewed all of the individual stories over on the 365shortstories community. If you want my individual thoughts (with pretty much no spoilers), you can check that out.

Overall, the collection really brings out certain facets of Holmes' personality. Some of them are repeated in story after story: the penchant for closing his eyes and ducking his head when he's trying to think in public; the habit of having reached a conclusion from the barest set of clues even before the parties involved give him more details. That last part, of course, is what makes him The Great Detective. It's also a bit infuriating for someone brought up on "fair play mysteries." The most important details of most of these cases tend to get noticed by Holmes when he's off-screen rather than when Watson is with him to show how Holmes got to that detail.

The other facet of Holmes' personality that really shines through in these stories is his attitude towards women. Much is often made of how Holmes refers to Irene Adler as "The Woman," and how she is the only woman who ever earned his respect because she outsmarted him in one particular case. I've seen many a review talking about how misogynistic Holmes is, that he veritably hates women. But in story after story in this collection he goes out of his way to protect women, whether it be physically (by warning Violet Hunter to stay away from a situation Holmes would not let any sister of his get involved in) or emotionally (by helping men who have wronged women pay their dues without the women being further emotionally injured). I can't say I approve of Holmes' decisions in every case where a woman's feelings were in danger of being hurt, but I can say that I find it an interesting aspect of his character. (And speaking of Ms. Hunter -- at the end of the story in which she appears, she seems to have gained high respect from both Holmes and Watson, and this time for not outwitting Holmes but matching him detail-for-detail.)

There are a few classic tales in this particular collection: A Scandal in Bohemia introduces Irene Adler; The Red-Headed League is just a fun outing; The Adventure of the Speckled Band and The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb are the most gothic-feeling of the tales; and The Adventure of the Copper Beeches introduces Violet Hunter. The stories I enjoyed the least: The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet seemed forced and The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor felt like a retread of the much more interesting A Case of Identity.

Holmes in brief

254. The Adventure of the Speckled Band Holmes once again comes to the rescue of a pretty young damsel in distress. This one is concerned that her step-father and the gypsies in residence on his property are somehow complicit in the death of her sister, who was due to be wed. The action takes place in the town of Stokes Moran, and for some reason I expected a connection to Col. Sebastian Moran, aide-de-camp to the notorious Prof. Moriarity, Holmes' nemesis. But there is no connection (at least not in the story itself. I'd have to read back through various Wold-Newton sites to see if any later authors came up with a connection). The story moves quickly, and Holmes of course spots the key details everyone else has missed. Several early details are essentially red herrings.

255. The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb Doctor Watson is brought an intriguing patient: a young civil engineer who has somehow lost his thumb. Once he's patched up as best as Watson can manage, Watson brings Holmes on board to hear the man's story. How he lost his thumb is not the mystery Holmes needs to solve, but rather where the man lost his thumb and who the perpetrators really were. Another of those cases in which Holmes solves the crime but doesn't catch the criminals.

256. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor Doyle seems to like these stories in which one member of a wedding party disappears before, during, or just after the nuptial ceremony. (Jim Butcher somewhat pays tribute to this trope in his Harry Dresden story Heorot.) This time, it is the newlywed husband who is left without a spouse when his new bride disappears during a post-wedding luncheon. The facts of the mystery itself are a good read, although I do wish more of them had been hinted at in the story itself.

257. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet The implication at the start of the story is that the Important Person who hocks the royal beryl coronet to a banker for a loan is Prince Albert. In our modern day and age, it's almost impossible to imagine someone so well known being able to visit a major banker in full daylight business hours to hock a piece of jewelry that normally resides in a locked guarded case. The late 1800s were a simpler time, for sure. The main mystery is not why "Prince Albert" put the coronet up as collateral for a loan (that's never revealed by Doyle in the story), but rather how the coronet is almost stolen and definitely damaged by someone in the banker's household. Holmes believes the man arrested for the crime didn't do it and sets about to prove himself right. I felt like this was one of the fairer-play mysteries in this set. I could not only understand how Holmes got to his conclusion, I could actually go back and see the hints where they were dropped.

258. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches Much is made of the fact that Irene Adler, or "The Woman," is the only woman for whom Holmes ever showed actual respect as an equal. In this story, Holmes and Watson meet a young governess named Violet Hunter, and I humbly submit that Miss Hunter shows as much mental fortitude and attention to detail as Holmes himself. Adler may be the woman who outwitted Holmes, but Hunter is the one who essentially matches him stride for stride. She starts out a little demure and unsure of herself, but by the end she has gained Watson's respect and I suspect Holmes' as well.

And that wraps up the first Holmes short story collection. I'm going to hold off on starting Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes for a little bit so as to cleanse the palate a bit, so to speak.