Saturday, May 27, 2017

Sigrud lives

Bit late writing this one up, since I technically finished Robert Jackson Bennett's City of Miracles yesterday. But since I wanted nothing more than a nice nap when I got home yesterday....

Anyway, this supposedly being his final book in the Divine Cities trilogy, I found it was less of a trilogy and more like a musical Rondo, as this book returns to many of the themes and scenes as the first book after a completely different second installment.

We start by meeting Sigrud in a logging camp several years after the events that ended City of Blades. What brings him out of his self imposed exile is news that Shara (former Prime Minister of Saypur, hero of City of Stairs, Sigrud's mentor) has been assassinated in Bulikov.

Sigrud takes it upon himself to find Shara's killer and bring justice to him. Which honestly happens fairly quickly, except for the fact that finding the killer leads him further into a much deeper plot involving things Aunt Vinya did prior to the start of the series, and indeed things that date back to the time before the Blink, when the Divinities died.

On the bright side, Mother Mulaghesh shows up a few times, now serving as opposition party leader in the Upper house of Saypur's parliament.

Much of what the plot revolves around in the idea that the divinities had children, either with each other or with mortals...leading to complications in the modern age, since Jukov, the trickster, made the children forget their divine heritage in order to protect them when the Divinities died. As such, one of the children, Nokov, the embodiment of the First Night, who was also tortured by Aunt Vinya in her misguided attempt to give Saypur a Divinity,  is running around, finding his Divine siblings and cousins and essentially eating them to become a full fledged Divinity.

It takes much of the book for the full scope of everything to become clear, most of which is Sigrud coming to terms with his own checkered past, and his remorse over the death of Signe, his daughter in the last book. Along the way, we find out what actually happened to him in the prison he was in before Shara rescued him and the greater meaning of the miracle that scarred him.

Along the way, we get exciting chase scenes, including an extended run along a fast moving people mover suspended by cables over the snow covered mountains.

Several themes get revisted here, the biggest of which seems to be Sigrud's personal "It's easy to find a cause to die for, it's much harder to find one to live for." We also get "How do we end the endless cycle of of pain inflicted upon each generation?" and "What exactly is Divinity?"

Phenomenal book. Phenomenal Series.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Ich bin ein Berliner

It's been a bit of a journey getting through it, but I finished Christopher Isherwood's autobiographical Christopher and His Kind, covering his life from 1929-1939, although technically the book ends in January of 1939 as he and W H Auden sail into New York City. But still, it's a decade spent partly in Germany during the rise of the Nazi party and around Europe and Asia.

We start with Christopher's arrival in Berlin, and his search for someone who can fulfill his fantasy of the "foreign boy". Which I'm not particularly kidding about. In a change from his fiction, here, the author is being honest about his homosexuality and how it propelled him through life. He describes in detail about how finding a boy who could be GERMANY in the avatar of a lover appealed to him, and so he met Bubi at one of the local dives. (There are a few long passages that precede this meeting discussing why the author didn't ever feel particularly comfortable in the UK practicing his homosexuality, and a few glimpses of college encounters ridden with guilt. It's a bit like reading Brideshead Revisited.)

Anyway, his romance with Bubi doesn't last long, particularly when Christopher's German improves, ruining the fantasy. H does move in with Frl. Schroeder, which is much like what''s described in Berlin Stories. Here though, she's a bigger than life character, one who doesn't care what happens under her roof as long as no one gets hurt. He talks of going back to Berlin later in life and visiting with her, hearing what happened to her during and after the war, as she lived in West Berlin.

He, as in the above mentioned book, does move in to the slummish attic with Otto and his family, although here we find out that it was not due to financial difficulties, but because he and Otto were shacking up. His description of his relationship with Otto is a bit odd, since to the author, it revolved around dominance and submission, with both trying to achieve the upper hand with the other. Or as described, Christopher gave Otto money and gifts, or Otto started looking elsewhere for attention.

As life in Berlin proceeds ever downward (Isherwood leaves right about the time Hitler gained the Chancellorship), we see the real people who populated Isherwood's Berlin books. Gerald, the lawyer who in time became Mr. Norris; Joan, who became Sally Bowles; and several students who had their own roles to play, some of whom survive, some of whom don't. We hear of the fighting in the streets between the three major political factions (those behind the current government, those backing the Nazis, and those who thing the Bolsheviks had it right and Germany needed to become a Communist nation), and how most of this is overlooked by the police.

He does meet and fall in love with Heinz, who becomes his constant companion throughout life out of Germany. So about 1933 to 1937ish. This includes stays in Belgium, Portugal, Greece, and France, but never in Christopher's homeland.  This is due to problems with Heinz's passport, which lists his occupation as something akin to domestic help. When Christopher tries to get Heinz into England, he's not allowed in, since Christopher's rather bourgeois family would unlikely need a foriegn houseboy. Christopher and Auden complain that it's likely because the border agent knew Christopher was Heinz's lover because the guard was also homosexual.

That love affair eventually falls apart, as Heinz's attempts to change his citizenship keeps running into issues, and Hitler starts conscription. Eventually, forced to return to Germany for what's supposed to be a night, Heinz is arrested by the Gestapo.

Thankfully, Isherwood passes on that Heinz did indeed survive the war, and even ended up marrying a woman and having kids. Which isn't exactly a happy ending, but it certainly beats the heck out of the fates of others arrested under Paragraph 175.

While this relationship was the focus of much of the book, Heinz's fate is revealed with about a fourth of the book left to go. Which leaves us with Isherwood and Auden going to Asia to cover the Japanese invasion of China, and their eventual immigration to the US. Where Isherwood leaves us with a bonne mot about how his future lover was only 4 years old when Isherwood made it to the States.

This book was not exactly what I expected. Based on what I'd heard from others, I was expecting most of it to be set in Berlin, and Heinz to be more of a focus of the narrative. Neither of which is true. Then again, Isherwood leaves Berlin in 1933 and Heinz is arrested in the late 30's.

Early passages in the book, describing his realizations of his queerness echoed back to my own early coming out, trying to find a personal mythology to explain why the heck I was so different than everyone else around me.

One of the things that becomes quite clear after the Reichstag fire is that those who could, left Germany. Those who couldn't, stayed. And in the case of the landlady, had to perform enough lip service to the Reich to survive, even if she did vote Communist in the prior election. Something that we, here in the modern era, seem to forget when looking back at it. It also makes Max and Elsa a smidgen more sympathetic in The Sound of Music when they sing "No Way to Stop It".

I'm also kind of amazed by his account of Chamberlain's role in the Munich Agreement, or the Munich Diktat, depending on how one feels about appeasement. Isherwood makes it sound like Chamberlain knew he's failed. Then again, he also says the communist leader at the meeting was probably the only one who openly opined the entire thing was farcical.

About the only thing that really got on my nerves through the first part was his tendency to refer to himself in third person when discussing the past, while using first person when recalling various things in what was his present. It took a lot of getting used to, plus the occasional reference to his eventual conversion to Hinduism.

Really though, Isherwood's tale reminded me most of the character of James Whale (himself a real person) as portrayed by Ian McKellan in Gods and Monsters. Then again, both men were of a similar age and similar class backgrounds.

While I enjoyed the book, I doubt this will be one I revisit all that often. If only because a few things in here, particularly when he gets self destructive, made me want to reach into the story and smack some sense into him. (I mean this figuratively.)

Friday, May 5, 2017

Hands Across the Multiverse

So, during the recent library drought , I looked through goodreads recommendations and found that the library had one book out of about 15 that was recommended, looked interesting, and was available to check out. Which would be Mike Resnick's first John Justin Mallory Mystery (How goodreads labels the series, vs. the book itself which labels it "A Fable of Tonight"), Stalking the Unicorn.

The book is centered on a New York City Detective named, unsurprisingly, John Justin Mallory. We meet John on New Year's Eve, as he's behind on the bills, his wife has run off with his partner, and he's busy drinking whiskey out of a Mets coffee mug.

He's startled by the arrival of Mürgenstürm, an elf, who's willing to pay exorbitant cash if Mallory will help him find a unicorn before dawn. (That Mürgenstürm is responsible for the unicorn and going to be killed by his guild if he doesn't have the unicorn back by dawn would be his major motivation is hiring a down on his luck private dick.)

Mallory, like most sane folks, thinks the elf is a pink elephant. Then Mürgenstürm drags him across into HIS Manhattan.

Long story short, the unicorn got kidnapped by a leprechaun who also double crossed a demon who wanted it.

Along the way, we meet Captain Winnifred, the big game hunter; Felina, the cat girl; and Eohippus, a talking horse about the size of a chihuahua. Oh yeah, and Grundy, the demon who wants the unicorn for the ruby on its head that makes travel between this Manhattan and the one Mallory normally is in possible.

While I ended up liking the book, it does come off a bit like what would happen is Dashiell Hammett had written The Phantom Tollbooth.