So, after about two weeks, I finally finished Michael Riedel's tome covering much of the history of Broadway. Razzle Dazzle: The Battle For Broadway is one of the rare non fiction books that I read, and wow, it became quite emotional reading towards the end.
Problem being it takes a few chapters before it really gets interesting. The intro is great, we start with an investigation into Broadway finances in the early 1960's following a phone call to a State Attorney from an "Angel" concerned that their contribution to a producer for a show wound up buying the producer a new boat, but they hadn't seen any return on investment. This leads into the investigation of "ice", which would likely be considered scalping in this day and age. Essentially, the box office sells the tickets to brokers for much more than face value, and the brokers in turn sell the tickets for even more. Only the face value sale gets reported, while the proceeds get passed up the chain and trickle down to people who don't have a stake in the show. Which leads tho things like the show losing money while people are getting quite rich on the extra money made from sale tickets. Or, as Richard Rodgers found out when Annie Get Your Gun! was in Philadelphia, there are no tickets available, but the orchestra seats are empty.
As the investigation winds down (and almost nobody get punished severely, although new laws and regulations go in place to keep it from happening), we then go back in time to Syracuse, New York, and the three Schubert brothers, JJ, Lee, and Sam, who essitially go from rags to riches working in the local theater, then buying local theatres. Eventually, they buy property in Manhattan, which runs them afoul of The Syndicate, a loose association of theater owners who pretty much run the live theater industry nationwide. (It started off as a good idea, it made sure shows and tours proceeded in orderly fashions, and everyone was happy. Sadly, over time, it turned into "If you want the show to open or play, you will play by our rules.")
The war with the syndicate goes on for quite some time, particularly after Sam dies, and a truce is thrown out the door under the pretense of a man named Erlanger telling the surviving brothers that he doesn't honor contracts with dead men. When the market crashes in 1929, the Schuberts buy out the Syndicate. Not that it matters, towards the end of the depression, the Schuberts wind up putting most of their theaters on the market, then buying them back since no one else had any money to buy them. Whne the last brother dies, the empire falls under the auspices of a governing board and foundation, nominally under the control of a drunken nephew who spends most nights drinking and womanizing. There's also the small matter of a lawsuit over JJ's two wives and which one should inherit the state.
Long story short, the lawyers Shoenfeld and Jacobs end up staging a coup to get rid of JJ jr. and get themselves and a third partner in charge of the company. (The third partner, Irving Goldman almost manages to wreck the company later due to doing things like making productions and theaters buy supplies from companies he either owns or has investments in.)
(Yes, I'm summarizing quite a bit of detail here. Deal with it.)
We discuss the near failure of Broadway during the late 1960s and early 1970's. The author points out that while rock music was popular, Broadway musicals were mostly old fashioned. That and Times Square, in the aftermath of White Flight and the collapsing economy of NYC, was pretty much a very seedy section of town that most folks didn't want to set foot into after dark. (Side note here: my trip there last year has seen Times Square transformed from "The Deuce" into something closer to Vegas. I literally had to use my hands as blinders to get past the number of giant television billboards advertising shows. Compare that with a High School trip in 1992, when we stayed at the Edison. While the district was safer than described in earlier time, there were 3 peep shows and a few adult movie houses right across the street from the hotel.)
Somewhere in here, in the narrative of the clean up, we start getting into shows the theaters were producing. We also meet Jimmy Nederlander, who came from Detroit to Manhattan, who's houses are mostly run down, although improving.
The book really shines when we get to the shows. (And when you get to this section, load YouTube. While the shows themselves aren't there on demand, many of the iconic moments discussed are.) For instance, when 42nd Street is in tryouts, a malfuntioning curtain leads to the rather wonderful opening number when the curtain rises just enough for the audience to see nothing but a chorus of feet tap dancing away. (As 42nd Street is one of the first shows I ever saw performed professionally, I let out and excited noise reading about it. Also, the YouTube clips of "Lullabye of Broadway" include Jerry Orbach singing.)
We here about Michael Bennett directing and choreographing A Chorus Line, as well as a rehashing of the story behind the story (although here they go in to the move from the off-Broadway Public Theater into a Broadway theater.) We meet Tommy Tune, who is also a legend in his own right. We hear about Nederlander's major entrance into Broadway power with a little musical based on an old Depression era comic strip named Annie. (Funniest story in here is how the lady playing Miss Hannigan, Dorothy Loudon, allegedly told the child actors that if they stepped on any of her lines, they wouldn't live to see the curtain call.)
Mixed in to the early 80's is Schoenfeld's goal of continuing to clean up Time Square, which includes tearing down 3 theaters to put up a hotel with a theater in it (in which Nederlander ends up owning the theater). The backlash about that comes to the fore during the 1983 Tony awards when Bennett's Scubert financed Dreamgirls goes up against Tommy Tune's Nederlander financed Nine. The discussion of that year's broadcast is hysterical, as we first hear about Cher's cover of Cole Porter's "My Heart Belongs to Daddy". (YouTube this. It's well worth watching just for the whole "What did I just watch?" factor.) While Dreamgirls did end up taking home 9 Tony's to Nine's 6, Nine did get Best Musical, partially due to the backlash against tearing down the 3 theaters. That rivalry also ends the friendship between Bennett and Tune. (Which, given Tune opened Nine on the last day for Tony eligibility is sort of understandable.)
We go from there to the new British Invasion involving producer Cameron Macintosh and Andrew Lloyd Weber. While I will say I wasn't a huge fan of CAT$, here, reading about how they marketed the behemoth into what it is today was fascinating.
There's also two chapters with a chapter on Phantom of the Opera between them about one of my favorite musicals, Chess. The first chapter covers the actual writing of, and the West End production, which ran ito horrible trouble based on Bennett's dropping out halfway through rehearsals. (He publically stated it was due to chronic angina, but people close to him report it had to do with the Karposi Sarcoma lesions that were spreading from his foot to his forehead. This of course leads into a discussion on how many theater folks were dropping like flies in mid 1980's, including a tale of a group of 8 folks who figured that since they were all healthy, they would survive if they only dated each other. And none of them were alive a few years later.) Trevor Nunn ended up taking over the show and tried to mix his vision with Bennett's, to mixed reviews. When it comes to New York, Nunn throws out most of Bennett's work and does it his way. It fell apart. Evidently, there's a newer version that mixes the best of both worlds, which is probably the version I saw in 1993 at Wright State.)
We run in to AIDS again in the 1990's, as Howard Ashman and Alan Menkin move from off Broadway (Little Shop of Horrors) to Hollywood to help revive Disney's moribund animation division with The Little Mermaid. During the writing of Beauty and the Beast, Ashman dies in Greenwich Village. His music lives on, particularly given the success Disney has had moving their animated movies to Broadway.
In the end, the book is like a more musical version of Game of Thrones, as almost everyone is dead by the end. (As of 2015, Nederlander is still alive. Shoenfeld and Jacobs both died. Most of the producers, directors and choreographers asre dead, their torches passed on to new people.)
By far the biggest issue I had with the book is that, due to the nature of the narrative, he keeps jumping back and forth in time to show us where this person came from, what was going on in New York that lead tro this show opening, etc.
The other problem I had was that the book mainly focused on the Schubert shows, with them taking up probably about 75% of the narrative, Nederlander comes in with about 20%, and the last 5% goes to the indies, including Disney.
On the other hand, the book is probably as close as any of us will get to sitting down with the movers and shakers in the theater world and hearing their stories. Also, much like The Devil Wears Prada does with fashion, Razzle Dazzle provides an excellent overview of the business of theater. Also, it should be mentioned that no one is portrayed as a villain twirlling a mustache or a sainte polishing a halo. Everyone comes off as human, capable of both very good things while doing very bad things.
And in the end, I walk away with several 11 o'clock numbers ringing in me ears, and a few tears shed over characters whose art has had sunch influence over my life.
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
It's 2AM, the fear is gone
So, I just finished reading Christopher Golden's new novel, Dead Ringers. Which was....interesting.
We actually have a prologue to start, in which a man named Frank Lindburgh reflects on his horrible like, slowing drowning in booze much like his father did. He's lost his job as a reporter, with internet killing off print journalism. We hear of his downward spiral, and endure quite a bit of his backstory until he hears a noise in his kitchen. Going to investigate, he finds a man wearing his face who promptly beats the stuffing out of him.
From there, we center on Tess Devlin, who's introduced as she starts cussing out a man who looks exactly like her ex-husband Nick. Problem being Nick's in New Hampshire with his new girlfriend, not in Boston being verbally assaulted by his ex. Tess's best friend, Lili, goes to an art gallery, only to be mistaken for the featured artist. Frank, as it turns out, has been handcuffed to a post in his basement while his double goes out and leads a better life than anything Frank's accomplished in recent memory. And then there's Audrey, the married lesbian psychic who's wife is pregnant. Audrey's first encounter with the strangeness involves a run down to the beach and being assaulted by a filthy man dressed in rags and a look like Oedipus at the end of Oedipus Rex.
As the week passes in book time, we begin to get glimpses of what links all these characters, why there's a Psychomanteum in a fancy hotel restaurant, And the very real existential question of who is the real person.
The book has some genuinely creepy moments, like Tess's first encounter with her double, which happens when Tess wakes up in the middle of the night to her double standing over her bed and Tess's double pretending to be Tess's daughter's mother. Also, when we see what the Raggedy Man is actually doing, it's a terror inducing moment.
Unfortunately, when we get the real picture on what's been happening about 2/3 of the way through the book (which most readers will have figured out a few chapters earlier), the reveal plays out like the end of a Scooby Doo episode. I fully expected the revelation to end with "And I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids and your dog!"
At its best, which thankfully is the majority of the book, it's a bit like reading a Twilight Zone episode. (Specifically "Shatterday" from the 80's reboot, which wiki says was based on a Harlan Ellis story.) At its worst, you can hear the canned laughter and incidental music in the background.
We actually have a prologue to start, in which a man named Frank Lindburgh reflects on his horrible like, slowing drowning in booze much like his father did. He's lost his job as a reporter, with internet killing off print journalism. We hear of his downward spiral, and endure quite a bit of his backstory until he hears a noise in his kitchen. Going to investigate, he finds a man wearing his face who promptly beats the stuffing out of him.
From there, we center on Tess Devlin, who's introduced as she starts cussing out a man who looks exactly like her ex-husband Nick. Problem being Nick's in New Hampshire with his new girlfriend, not in Boston being verbally assaulted by his ex. Tess's best friend, Lili, goes to an art gallery, only to be mistaken for the featured artist. Frank, as it turns out, has been handcuffed to a post in his basement while his double goes out and leads a better life than anything Frank's accomplished in recent memory. And then there's Audrey, the married lesbian psychic who's wife is pregnant. Audrey's first encounter with the strangeness involves a run down to the beach and being assaulted by a filthy man dressed in rags and a look like Oedipus at the end of Oedipus Rex.
As the week passes in book time, we begin to get glimpses of what links all these characters, why there's a Psychomanteum in a fancy hotel restaurant, And the very real existential question of who is the real person.
The book has some genuinely creepy moments, like Tess's first encounter with her double, which happens when Tess wakes up in the middle of the night to her double standing over her bed and Tess's double pretending to be Tess's daughter's mother. Also, when we see what the Raggedy Man is actually doing, it's a terror inducing moment.
Unfortunately, when we get the real picture on what's been happening about 2/3 of the way through the book (which most readers will have figured out a few chapters earlier), the reveal plays out like the end of a Scooby Doo episode. I fully expected the revelation to end with "And I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids and your dog!"
At its best, which thankfully is the majority of the book, it's a bit like reading a Twilight Zone episode. (Specifically "Shatterday" from the 80's reboot, which wiki says was based on a Harlan Ellis story.) At its worst, you can hear the canned laughter and incidental music in the background.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Next on Iron Druid, STEAK!
So, after quite a bit of a wait while he pursued other projects, Kevin Hearne finally released book 8 of the Iron Druid Chronicles. (well, book 8, if you don't include 2 novellas that take place between books. And to be fair, he's still writing faster than George R.R. Martin.)
Staked improves on a few problems that happened in the last volume, namely, by the climax of the book, all three druids are in the same place and working together. While this takes a while, it's well worth the wait.
We'll start with Atticus, who's busy trying to fulfill his job of ridding Poland of vampires for the Zorya coven while also trying to get rid of the oldest vampire, who was one of the progenitors of the Druidic purge by the Romans. Atticus's travels take him to Toronto for another fight with the arcane life leech, Svartleheim (accompanied by Bhrigid) to deal with the Aesir's war with the Dark Elves, and finally Rome for the climax. Along the way, Oberon gets introduced to poutine.
Granuaile starts off in Asgard, removing Loki's brand, moves to Poland to get a cloak to prevent her from being scryed upon, grabs Perun to find a Slavic horse that can predict the outcomes of battle, starts a private war with her stepfather, then winds up in Rome for the climax.
Owen...Gah. Owen gets asked by the Werewolves of Arizona to turn their non-lycanthropic children into druids. He also is the one to find out Fand has escaped from her imprisonment with help from Mannan Mac Lir. He too winds up in Rome for the climax.
And in Rome, we get a rather fun climax, involving Jewish Kabbalists verses Hermetic Kabbalists (wherein animated beards take on animated tonsures), pretty much most of the elder vampire population on Earth, and more than a little heresy against several ancient mythologies.
Mr. Hearne has stated there's one more book in the series, which will hopefully wrap up the prophecy of the sirens and Ragnarok. And not require tracking down another novella to fill in gaps between books.
As I've stated before, I rather enjoy this series. Yes, it gets a little silly, as the battle of the follicles suggests, but much like Simon R. Green, I'm having so much fun reading it that I don't notice the issues.
Staked improves on a few problems that happened in the last volume, namely, by the climax of the book, all three druids are in the same place and working together. While this takes a while, it's well worth the wait.
We'll start with Atticus, who's busy trying to fulfill his job of ridding Poland of vampires for the Zorya coven while also trying to get rid of the oldest vampire, who was one of the progenitors of the Druidic purge by the Romans. Atticus's travels take him to Toronto for another fight with the arcane life leech, Svartleheim (accompanied by Bhrigid) to deal with the Aesir's war with the Dark Elves, and finally Rome for the climax. Along the way, Oberon gets introduced to poutine.
Granuaile starts off in Asgard, removing Loki's brand, moves to Poland to get a cloak to prevent her from being scryed upon, grabs Perun to find a Slavic horse that can predict the outcomes of battle, starts a private war with her stepfather, then winds up in Rome for the climax.
Owen...Gah. Owen gets asked by the Werewolves of Arizona to turn their non-lycanthropic children into druids. He also is the one to find out Fand has escaped from her imprisonment with help from Mannan Mac Lir. He too winds up in Rome for the climax.
And in Rome, we get a rather fun climax, involving Jewish Kabbalists verses Hermetic Kabbalists (wherein animated beards take on animated tonsures), pretty much most of the elder vampire population on Earth, and more than a little heresy against several ancient mythologies.
Mr. Hearne has stated there's one more book in the series, which will hopefully wrap up the prophecy of the sirens and Ragnarok. And not require tracking down another novella to fill in gaps between books.
As I've stated before, I rather enjoy this series. Yes, it gets a little silly, as the battle of the follicles suggests, but much like Simon R. Green, I'm having so much fun reading it that I don't notice the issues.
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Who are the real monsters?
As sad as I am that Jim C. Hines' Magic ex Libris series is ending, Revisionary is actually a fun ending to what's been a great series. This is not to say it's exploring new ground, but it does so in a fun and inventive way.
At the end of the last book, Unbound, Isaac Vainio revealed the existence of of magic, libriomancy, and the Porters to the world at large. We pick up, as should be expected, with congressional hearings.
Whole Isaac's real intention was to provide the good things to the world, like draughts of Lucy's healing cordial from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe to kids with terminal diseases, certain governments are much more interested in weaponry and military applications, as well as making sure magic isn't going to unbalance the current state of affairs.
Of course, the realization that magical creatures exist isn't helping things all that much either, since find out early on about Michigan's solution for taking out the vampire nest under Detroit in the abandoned salt mines. Which mainly involved sealing, collapsing, and setting fire to the nest.
Isaac and the Porters in the US have developed a compound outside Las Vegas in order to work on peaceful application of magic named New Millennium, all while being supervised by various government agencies.
Which is good for his niece, who's part of the clinical trials to get her amputated leg back.
The plot really gets rolling though, when four separate but simultaneous assassinations play out across the US, including the death of the Governor of Michigan by angry Werewolves. An organization of supernatural creatures appears to be behind the attacks, thus leading Isaac and Lena to chase down Vanguard with the help of former libriomancer now Renfield vampire Deb. This chase leads several different directions, including to off shore Atlantic area as the Coast Guard tries to get rid of a Siren colony.
We delve deeper into off the record detention facilities for non-humans, where any semblance of rights are suspended. We find out Vanguard's basic principle is one of getting non -human entities to safety via Underground Railroad style techniques.
(I'm glazing over quite a bit, including several supporting characters, but I really can't talk about them without hitting serious spoiler territory.)
As the threads of the conspiracy start unraveling and we finally get a good look at what's actually going on, the true ugliness of the plot comes across and we, like in a quite a few other stories, begin to wonder who the REAL monsters are.
As I said, I'm sorry to see such a fun series end, but it's not as though the author is planning on retiring any time in the near future, so....
At the end of the last book, Unbound, Isaac Vainio revealed the existence of of magic, libriomancy, and the Porters to the world at large. We pick up, as should be expected, with congressional hearings.
Whole Isaac's real intention was to provide the good things to the world, like draughts of Lucy's healing cordial from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe to kids with terminal diseases, certain governments are much more interested in weaponry and military applications, as well as making sure magic isn't going to unbalance the current state of affairs.
Of course, the realization that magical creatures exist isn't helping things all that much either, since find out early on about Michigan's solution for taking out the vampire nest under Detroit in the abandoned salt mines. Which mainly involved sealing, collapsing, and setting fire to the nest.
Isaac and the Porters in the US have developed a compound outside Las Vegas in order to work on peaceful application of magic named New Millennium, all while being supervised by various government agencies.
Which is good for his niece, who's part of the clinical trials to get her amputated leg back.
The plot really gets rolling though, when four separate but simultaneous assassinations play out across the US, including the death of the Governor of Michigan by angry Werewolves. An organization of supernatural creatures appears to be behind the attacks, thus leading Isaac and Lena to chase down Vanguard with the help of former libriomancer now Renfield vampire Deb. This chase leads several different directions, including to off shore Atlantic area as the Coast Guard tries to get rid of a Siren colony.
We delve deeper into off the record detention facilities for non-humans, where any semblance of rights are suspended. We find out Vanguard's basic principle is one of getting non -human entities to safety via Underground Railroad style techniques.
(I'm glazing over quite a bit, including several supporting characters, but I really can't talk about them without hitting serious spoiler territory.)
As the threads of the conspiracy start unraveling and we finally get a good look at what's actually going on, the true ugliness of the plot comes across and we, like in a quite a few other stories, begin to wonder who the REAL monsters are.
As I said, I'm sorry to see such a fun series end, but it's not as though the author is planning on retiring any time in the near future, so....
Thursday, February 11, 2016
Opening the 19th Aethyr
So, we return to new material with Robert Jackson Bennett's City of Blades. Which, honestly, wound up being a very heavy road to plod through, but the effort was well rewarded by the journey.
We open with General Turyin Mulaghesh, last seen during the battle of Bulikov, enjoying a rather depressing retirement in Saypur, spending her days drunk on fish wine and generally trying to forget everything. As it happens, Shara, whom we met last time around, who is now Prime Minister, manages to convince Mulaghesh to go back out on an errand on the Continent again to investigate mysterious goings on. That she uses blackmail to get the General off her island shouldn't matter that much. (Something about not having the time in for a General's pension, therefore she must go "tour" Voortyashtan until her term of service is up.)
Of course, while she's in Voortyashtan, if she can check up on what's going on with a missing operative and figure out whether or not the miraculous thinadeskite has some sort of Divine nature to it... Well that would just be swell, wouldn't it?
Upon arrival in Voortyashtan, Mulaghesh winds up staying with the Dreylings rebuilding the harbor, since the fortress built by Saypuri forces isn't considered particularly safe. The Dreyling construction site is overseen by Signe, the rather estranged daughter of Sigurd, also last seen in the Battle of Bulikov. The Saypuri are overseen by General Biswal, whom Mulaghesh served under suring the battle of the Yellow River. The Continental overseer, Rada, also has connections with Mulaghesh, since Rada was buried in rubble after the battle of Bulikov and Mulaghesh's soldiers saved her from the rubble. Rada dies healing work as well as taxidermy in her spare time.
Thinadeskite, it seems, is a wonderful conductor of electricity, not losing charge as electrons travel it. Indeed, it seems to gain extra power when electricity travels its path. So what if those who have killed get visions of Voorta's soldiers doing her work while in the mines? For that matter, when Mulaghesh has a vision of Voorta herself using Her sword to destroy the mine, who cares?
All of this leads Mulaghesh digging deeper into Voorta's mythos, made more difficult by the fact that unlike Bulikov, the Voortyashanis don't particularly miss their Divinity. Voorta was the first killed by the Kaj many years ago, so how is she reappearing?
Oh so much to go through here! Voorta was the first Divinity to create an afterlife, mainly to encourage her followers to fight on her behalf. To do so, she became lovers with the Goddess of life, and then split apart from her. (I kind of wish there was more than fragmentary information on that myth in here, since the story is one of the best in here.) The Voortyashanis warriors believed that they would go to the City of Blades upon death, awaiting the night when they shall return and destroy the world.
In the mean time, we get more information on the Battle of the Yellow River, wherein Mulaghesh's company got separated from the army, wound up behind enemy lines, and wound up burning the supply lines to win the war. As Mulaghesh remembers more, we begin to see the atrocities committed by said company.
And we get a really stunning dichotomy of what it means to be a soldier from Mulaghesh and Biswal. I'm sure older readers will read it as allegory to Vietnam, where as some of us younger folks will undoubtedly see Afganistan and Iraq reflected here. Even though in the end, the location matters little.
This volume is less heavy on the spy craft than the progenitor, but it honestly has much more things to say about humanity than Divinity than the first.
Really, I almost feel like digging up Piers Anthony's Wielding a Red Sword now as another vision of the meaning of war, but that would inevitably wind up with me reading all 8 Incarnations of Immortality again.
As a side note unrelated to this particular book, I have two more new books in my TBR pile. The issue I'm now running in to deals with the Main library being closed for a large remodel (they re-open in June) and the branch I've been frequenting in the interim getting ready to close next week to build a new location. (That branch has needed it for quite some time.) The problem being that this leaves me without really ready access to a library where I can wander the stacks looking for something to catch my eye. Also, the library's recommended lists that I used to get monthly no longer seem to be appearing at the same rate, and indeed, certain newsletters have stopped appearing at all. This does mean that re-reads will get reviewed on here more often as I try to catch up on stuff on the shelf.
We open with General Turyin Mulaghesh, last seen during the battle of Bulikov, enjoying a rather depressing retirement in Saypur, spending her days drunk on fish wine and generally trying to forget everything. As it happens, Shara, whom we met last time around, who is now Prime Minister, manages to convince Mulaghesh to go back out on an errand on the Continent again to investigate mysterious goings on. That she uses blackmail to get the General off her island shouldn't matter that much. (Something about not having the time in for a General's pension, therefore she must go "tour" Voortyashtan until her term of service is up.)
Of course, while she's in Voortyashtan, if she can check up on what's going on with a missing operative and figure out whether or not the miraculous thinadeskite has some sort of Divine nature to it... Well that would just be swell, wouldn't it?
Upon arrival in Voortyashtan, Mulaghesh winds up staying with the Dreylings rebuilding the harbor, since the fortress built by Saypuri forces isn't considered particularly safe. The Dreyling construction site is overseen by Signe, the rather estranged daughter of Sigurd, also last seen in the Battle of Bulikov. The Saypuri are overseen by General Biswal, whom Mulaghesh served under suring the battle of the Yellow River. The Continental overseer, Rada, also has connections with Mulaghesh, since Rada was buried in rubble after the battle of Bulikov and Mulaghesh's soldiers saved her from the rubble. Rada dies healing work as well as taxidermy in her spare time.
Thinadeskite, it seems, is a wonderful conductor of electricity, not losing charge as electrons travel it. Indeed, it seems to gain extra power when electricity travels its path. So what if those who have killed get visions of Voorta's soldiers doing her work while in the mines? For that matter, when Mulaghesh has a vision of Voorta herself using Her sword to destroy the mine, who cares?
All of this leads Mulaghesh digging deeper into Voorta's mythos, made more difficult by the fact that unlike Bulikov, the Voortyashanis don't particularly miss their Divinity. Voorta was the first killed by the Kaj many years ago, so how is she reappearing?
Oh so much to go through here! Voorta was the first Divinity to create an afterlife, mainly to encourage her followers to fight on her behalf. To do so, she became lovers with the Goddess of life, and then split apart from her. (I kind of wish there was more than fragmentary information on that myth in here, since the story is one of the best in here.) The Voortyashanis warriors believed that they would go to the City of Blades upon death, awaiting the night when they shall return and destroy the world.
In the mean time, we get more information on the Battle of the Yellow River, wherein Mulaghesh's company got separated from the army, wound up behind enemy lines, and wound up burning the supply lines to win the war. As Mulaghesh remembers more, we begin to see the atrocities committed by said company.
And we get a really stunning dichotomy of what it means to be a soldier from Mulaghesh and Biswal. I'm sure older readers will read it as allegory to Vietnam, where as some of us younger folks will undoubtedly see Afganistan and Iraq reflected here. Even though in the end, the location matters little.
This volume is less heavy on the spy craft than the progenitor, but it honestly has much more things to say about humanity than Divinity than the first.
Really, I almost feel like digging up Piers Anthony's Wielding a Red Sword now as another vision of the meaning of war, but that would inevitably wind up with me reading all 8 Incarnations of Immortality again.
As a side note unrelated to this particular book, I have two more new books in my TBR pile. The issue I'm now running in to deals with the Main library being closed for a large remodel (they re-open in June) and the branch I've been frequenting in the interim getting ready to close next week to build a new location. (That branch has needed it for quite some time.) The problem being that this leaves me without really ready access to a library where I can wander the stacks looking for something to catch my eye. Also, the library's recommended lists that I used to get monthly no longer seem to be appearing at the same rate, and indeed, certain newsletters have stopped appearing at all. This does mean that re-reads will get reviewed on here more often as I try to catch up on stuff on the shelf.
Monday, February 1, 2016
January re-read V: Last one, I swear!
OK, much like the Vampire one I wrote last, explaining the plot behind The Last Battle by Bill Bridges requires a bit of a recap of everything that came before. (Also, I promised that Gehenna would be the last re-read for a while, but I started this one on the way to the library and decided to finish it.)
Much like Vampires, Werewolves are real. Werewolf introduced the Triat, Wyld, Weaver, and Wyrm. Wyld was chaos, Weaver was order, Wyrm was balance. Somewhere way back, Weaver spun Wyrm into her webs to prevent it from destroying her beautiful creations. This drove Wyrm mad. Wyrm is less balance and now "I WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING SO I CAN GET FREE OF THESE WEBS!"
Werewolves are dying off. While not the only changing breed, they really don't get along well with others, which may have to do with them pretty much trying to kill off the rest of them back in prehistory. Werewolves divide themselves by tribes and Auspices, based on parentage and what aspect the moon was in at birth.
One whole long lot of really fun fiction later, we come to this, the time when the Prophecies play out, and the world of Werewolf: the Apocalypse ends.
We mainly center on Albrecht, Mary, and Evan, who were first introduced in the original rule book. Over time (and in the old RAGE CCG), Albrecht became Gaian King, wearing the Silver Crown of leadership of the non-Wyrm aligned tribes. Not that he doesn't have competition for this, but...
We also check in with the Silver River Pack, who's journey was the focus of the Tribe Novels; Zhyzach, the crazy wyrm aligned werewolf prophesied to kill the last Gaian King; and Antoinin Teardrop, who's following Zhyzach on her way to free the Wyrm.
Much of the werewolf population winds up in battle in the Umbra, the spiritual reflection of the universe.
The rest of the make their stand in the Womb of the World. Given this is the end, there's much noble sacrifice and death, and not really a lot of happy endings.
While I never liked playing Werewolf overly much (the mechanics were often unwieldy) the much more detailed world building behind the game was very good and quite fun to get sucked in to. Thankfully, Werewolf also made for some really engaging fiction. (The Tribe Novels made more sense than the Clan Novels, and Albrecht's pack's first novel, The Silver Crown, was wonderfully action packed.) While I wouldn't recommend this particular novel to anyone not familiar with the setting, it is a heck of a lot better than it had any right to be. It also well outdoes the game supplement that covered this same time period, that really didn't offer any satisfying conclusions.
Much like Vampires, Werewolves are real. Werewolf introduced the Triat, Wyld, Weaver, and Wyrm. Wyld was chaos, Weaver was order, Wyrm was balance. Somewhere way back, Weaver spun Wyrm into her webs to prevent it from destroying her beautiful creations. This drove Wyrm mad. Wyrm is less balance and now "I WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING SO I CAN GET FREE OF THESE WEBS!"
Werewolves are dying off. While not the only changing breed, they really don't get along well with others, which may have to do with them pretty much trying to kill off the rest of them back in prehistory. Werewolves divide themselves by tribes and Auspices, based on parentage and what aspect the moon was in at birth.
One whole long lot of really fun fiction later, we come to this, the time when the Prophecies play out, and the world of Werewolf: the Apocalypse ends.
We mainly center on Albrecht, Mary, and Evan, who were first introduced in the original rule book. Over time (and in the old RAGE CCG), Albrecht became Gaian King, wearing the Silver Crown of leadership of the non-Wyrm aligned tribes. Not that he doesn't have competition for this, but...
We also check in with the Silver River Pack, who's journey was the focus of the Tribe Novels; Zhyzach, the crazy wyrm aligned werewolf prophesied to kill the last Gaian King; and Antoinin Teardrop, who's following Zhyzach on her way to free the Wyrm.
Much of the werewolf population winds up in battle in the Umbra, the spiritual reflection of the universe.
The rest of the make their stand in the Womb of the World. Given this is the end, there's much noble sacrifice and death, and not really a lot of happy endings.
While I never liked playing Werewolf overly much (the mechanics were often unwieldy) the much more detailed world building behind the game was very good and quite fun to get sucked in to. Thankfully, Werewolf also made for some really engaging fiction. (The Tribe Novels made more sense than the Clan Novels, and Albrecht's pack's first novel, The Silver Crown, was wonderfully action packed.) While I wouldn't recommend this particular novel to anyone not familiar with the setting, it is a heck of a lot better than it had any right to be. It also well outdoes the game supplement that covered this same time period, that really didn't offer any satisfying conclusions.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
January re-read IV: Until the world ends
OK, given the book I'm reviewing today is straight out of a table top role playing game, I feel that I should do my best to summarize the setting before actually reviewing it. Bear with me here, the world building was huge with the setting. (I kind of wish Blogger had a "cyt" command so I could hide this section rather than make people familiar with the Original World of Darkness sit through a brief summary of several years and 3 editions worth of metaplot.)
Vampire: the Masquerade 's in game history starts in Genesis, when Cain (here spelled Caine) slew his brother. God delivered a series of curses to Caine that basically made him the original vampire. Some legends say he met up with Adam's first wife, Lilith, and she gave him some powers... Caine created 3 childer, vampires like himself. (The 2nd generation) They built a city, Caine destroyed it. Those three made 13 childer, who became the 3rd Generation, who are the clan parents of the 13 clans that exist in game. (Over time, bloodlines formed, who didn't have a clan parent or really stretch back much farther than the 8th Generation.) The 3rd generation became known as the Antediluvians.
Fast forward several millennia, a few of the Antediluvians are really dead, a few no longer particularly inhabit the plane of existence where they started from (or particularly inhabit what could be considered a physical body), one was diablarized (cannibalized to the point someone drunk his soul), one was almost diablarized, but it was found out he still existed in another form. None of this particularly matters that much, since modern vampires generally think of them as legends. (Regardless that one sleeps in Vienna, and everyone knows about him.)
Ugh, anyway, there's a whole series of prophecies that concern what happens when they all wake up. Most of those pretty much say they will consume their descendants and the world will end, but again, not amny particularly believe them. (Of the major factions in the setting, the Camarilla [who were pretty much the focus of the early additions] subscribes entirely to the idea that Gehenna is myth. The Sabbat, who allegedly killed off their clan founders [ed note: they failed], believe in Gehenna like some folks believe in Revelation. The Anarchs and the independents all seem to fall in between somewhere.)
Which should be enough background to start with the review of Gehenna: The Final Night by Ari Marmell. As one could guess by the title, this book concerns what happens when the Antediluvians wake up. We spend much of the book following Beckett (of Clan Gangrel, who's major power includes shape changing and who's founder, Ennoia, essentially became one with the Earth at some point) as he tries to understand why vampires exist. He's assisted in this by Kapaneus, a much older vampire Beckett meets in the ruins of Kaymakli. (Very long story short. Cappadocius, who founded the Cappadocian clan before being mostly destroyed by the Giovanni who took over the clan towards the end of the Dark Ages, got mad that his progeny weren't following directions, so he sealed them in a cave for eternity.) Beckett manages to break Cappadocius's seal on the entrance, thus waking up a few things that weren't exactly happy to be woken up. (Mind you, at the point this all starts, it's assumed Ravnos's founder had already woken up and been destroyed in Bangladesh, which was a whole other story told elsewhere.)
We also spend time following around Lucita (of Clan Lasombra, who killed her Sire back during the Clan Novels and has since taken over his place in the Sabbat Hierarchy) and Theo Bell (Clan Brujah. Theo is one of the Camarilla's main enforcers) who wind up working together as the Withering starts. The Withering is some sort of disease that affects the eldest vampires first, and gradually works its way down towards the youngest. It weakens the vampires affected, occasionally killing them. Some of the elders figure out that these effects can be treated by diablerizing other vampires, which is more or less what drives Lucita and Theo together.
And then there's Fatima (of Clan Assamite, the assassins out of the middle east. When the Final Nights start, the clan has had a schism caused by one of the oldest expecting the clan to worship the founder rather than Allah.) Fatima, who knew Lucita of old, basically shows up mostly to pass on vital information at key points, as does Anatole (of Clan Malkavian, who are all lunatics. Anatole died before this book, but that doesn't seem to have slowed him down much.)
We follow everyone around across most of the Western World, finding that the Tremere are all dead (Tremere was a clan formed right around the start of the Dark Ages by Hermetic wizards trying to preserve their magic. Finding vampiric society to be even worse than mage society, they basically ate their way to the top of the food chain) and the Tzimisce are all pretty much gone as well. (Clan Tzimisce came out of eastern Europe and got very involved in body crafting. Their founder is basically like the Blob, only it's resting under Manhattan and calling its descendants home for dinner.)
As everyone slowly begins to realize that indeed, the Final Nights have started, just about everyone wants to kill Beckett, and Holy Lord, what's the complete blackness that keeps swallowing the sky?!?, everything slowly resolves with most of out party meeting fates one way or another. Beckett finally gets his answers in the epilogue, not long after he figures out who Kapaneus really is.
Of the three world ending books in the trilogy, this is probably the best, followed very closely by The Last Battle by Bill Bridges. (That one concerns the end of the world for Werewolves, which is also REALLY GOOD. The last book, concerning the end of the world for Mages, Judgement Day by Bruce Baugh, is horrid. I don't even own a copy any more. Which is sad, since the actual game supplement they released for Mage was the best of all the series enders.)
While I doubt all of my readers are into Table Top gaming, the original World of Darkness was one of the best. Yes, some of the mechanics were terrible, but the focus was so much more on the story than combat. I realize the reboot fixed the mechanics quite well, but the new story line was beyond bad. The oWoD was also one of the few series where the sourcebooks were so much fun to read, since they often were written at least partially in character, making it much more like reading a story than a dry dusty tome of rules
I recommend this and the second book to anyone who enjoyed the games, and even to those few who are willing to work with contectual clues to figure out what they've missed to get into a good world ender.
Vampire: the Masquerade 's in game history starts in Genesis, when Cain (here spelled Caine) slew his brother. God delivered a series of curses to Caine that basically made him the original vampire. Some legends say he met up with Adam's first wife, Lilith, and she gave him some powers... Caine created 3 childer, vampires like himself. (The 2nd generation) They built a city, Caine destroyed it. Those three made 13 childer, who became the 3rd Generation, who are the clan parents of the 13 clans that exist in game. (Over time, bloodlines formed, who didn't have a clan parent or really stretch back much farther than the 8th Generation.) The 3rd generation became known as the Antediluvians.
Fast forward several millennia, a few of the Antediluvians are really dead, a few no longer particularly inhabit the plane of existence where they started from (or particularly inhabit what could be considered a physical body), one was diablarized (cannibalized to the point someone drunk his soul), one was almost diablarized, but it was found out he still existed in another form. None of this particularly matters that much, since modern vampires generally think of them as legends. (Regardless that one sleeps in Vienna, and everyone knows about him.)
Ugh, anyway, there's a whole series of prophecies that concern what happens when they all wake up. Most of those pretty much say they will consume their descendants and the world will end, but again, not amny particularly believe them. (Of the major factions in the setting, the Camarilla [who were pretty much the focus of the early additions] subscribes entirely to the idea that Gehenna is myth. The Sabbat, who allegedly killed off their clan founders [ed note: they failed], believe in Gehenna like some folks believe in Revelation. The Anarchs and the independents all seem to fall in between somewhere.)
Which should be enough background to start with the review of Gehenna: The Final Night by Ari Marmell. As one could guess by the title, this book concerns what happens when the Antediluvians wake up. We spend much of the book following Beckett (of Clan Gangrel, who's major power includes shape changing and who's founder, Ennoia, essentially became one with the Earth at some point) as he tries to understand why vampires exist. He's assisted in this by Kapaneus, a much older vampire Beckett meets in the ruins of Kaymakli. (Very long story short. Cappadocius, who founded the Cappadocian clan before being mostly destroyed by the Giovanni who took over the clan towards the end of the Dark Ages, got mad that his progeny weren't following directions, so he sealed them in a cave for eternity.) Beckett manages to break Cappadocius's seal on the entrance, thus waking up a few things that weren't exactly happy to be woken up. (Mind you, at the point this all starts, it's assumed Ravnos's founder had already woken up and been destroyed in Bangladesh, which was a whole other story told elsewhere.)
We also spend time following around Lucita (of Clan Lasombra, who killed her Sire back during the Clan Novels and has since taken over his place in the Sabbat Hierarchy) and Theo Bell (Clan Brujah. Theo is one of the Camarilla's main enforcers) who wind up working together as the Withering starts. The Withering is some sort of disease that affects the eldest vampires first, and gradually works its way down towards the youngest. It weakens the vampires affected, occasionally killing them. Some of the elders figure out that these effects can be treated by diablerizing other vampires, which is more or less what drives Lucita and Theo together.
And then there's Fatima (of Clan Assamite, the assassins out of the middle east. When the Final Nights start, the clan has had a schism caused by one of the oldest expecting the clan to worship the founder rather than Allah.) Fatima, who knew Lucita of old, basically shows up mostly to pass on vital information at key points, as does Anatole (of Clan Malkavian, who are all lunatics. Anatole died before this book, but that doesn't seem to have slowed him down much.)
We follow everyone around across most of the Western World, finding that the Tremere are all dead (Tremere was a clan formed right around the start of the Dark Ages by Hermetic wizards trying to preserve their magic. Finding vampiric society to be even worse than mage society, they basically ate their way to the top of the food chain) and the Tzimisce are all pretty much gone as well. (Clan Tzimisce came out of eastern Europe and got very involved in body crafting. Their founder is basically like the Blob, only it's resting under Manhattan and calling its descendants home for dinner.)
As everyone slowly begins to realize that indeed, the Final Nights have started, just about everyone wants to kill Beckett, and Holy Lord, what's the complete blackness that keeps swallowing the sky?!?, everything slowly resolves with most of out party meeting fates one way or another. Beckett finally gets his answers in the epilogue, not long after he figures out who Kapaneus really is.
Of the three world ending books in the trilogy, this is probably the best, followed very closely by The Last Battle by Bill Bridges. (That one concerns the end of the world for Werewolves, which is also REALLY GOOD. The last book, concerning the end of the world for Mages, Judgement Day by Bruce Baugh, is horrid. I don't even own a copy any more. Which is sad, since the actual game supplement they released for Mage was the best of all the series enders.)
While I doubt all of my readers are into Table Top gaming, the original World of Darkness was one of the best. Yes, some of the mechanics were terrible, but the focus was so much more on the story than combat. I realize the reboot fixed the mechanics quite well, but the new story line was beyond bad. The oWoD was also one of the few series where the sourcebooks were so much fun to read, since they often were written at least partially in character, making it much more like reading a story than a dry dusty tome of rules
I recommend this and the second book to anyone who enjoyed the games, and even to those few who are willing to work with contectual clues to figure out what they've missed to get into a good world ender.
Friday, January 22, 2016
Januaray Re-read III: It's the End of the World!
This should be the next to last entry in my January re-reads, it really depends on the library's alacrity in getting new releases to me starting January 26th. (Expecting 2 books not long after they come out the 26th, and a 3rd one early February. Another reason I'm trying to clear off my TBR pile, since they'll likely not have renewals.)
We start Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens somewhere in Genesis, as a snake demon stands talking with the angel set to guard the entrance. Thus introducing us to a 6,000 year friendship prior to the start of the main story. Most notable here is that the Angel gave Adam and Eve his flaming sword out of a bit of misplaced compassion.
Fast forward a few millennia, and we rejoin Crawly (now going by the name Crowley) in a graveyard, meeting with Hastur and Ligur. The senior demons hand Crowley (who's gone native) the Antichrist to deliver to a local convent/nursery. Wherein said Antichrist winds up in the hands of Sister Mary Loquacious, sister in St. Beryl's Chattering Order. (Which just happens to be a Satanist convent.) Sister Mary manages to screw up the baby exchange, meaning young Warlock is actually a normal baby going home with the American Cultural Attache, whereas Adam, the Antichrist, goes home with the Young family to Lower Tadfield, England.
Aziraphale and Crowley, not particularly happy about the world they've come to love coming to an end, set out to help train the Young antichrist, in hopes of preventing Armageddon. Which doesn't seem to go well, since they're helping raise young Warlock.
Which makes the upcoming war between Heaven and Hell that much more complicated.
Into this mix, we have Anathema Device, professional descendant, who has the only copy of Agnes Nutter's Nice and Accurate Prophecies, which are the only truly accurate ones out there. There's Newton Pulsifer, who joins England's Witchfinder Army, under the current head, Mr. Shadwell. Mr. Shadwell lives across the hall from the geriatric Madame Tracy, who does seances and prostitution.
And then there are the 4 horsemen: War (here, a female war correspondent for a tabloid), Famine (who invented haute cuisine and is now marketing diet food and fast food), Pollution (who took over in 1932 when Pestilence stepped down muttering about Penicillin), and of course, DEATH. DEATH resembles the same character who inhabits Discworld, but towards the end, gets revealled by another name.
All these stories don't so much coincide as much as they careen wildly around, overlapping, making snappy commentary, and generally being one of the best books ever written.
Really, I first read this after reading Gaimen's Neverwhere and attempting to read Pratchett's Feet of Clay. It wound up getting me to give Discworld another shot. And yet, particularly as fast as the narrative goes, I keep finding new things when I re-read this one.
Highly recommend this one to just about everyone as well.
We start Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens somewhere in Genesis, as a snake demon stands talking with the angel set to guard the entrance. Thus introducing us to a 6,000 year friendship prior to the start of the main story. Most notable here is that the Angel gave Adam and Eve his flaming sword out of a bit of misplaced compassion.
Fast forward a few millennia, and we rejoin Crawly (now going by the name Crowley) in a graveyard, meeting with Hastur and Ligur. The senior demons hand Crowley (who's gone native) the Antichrist to deliver to a local convent/nursery. Wherein said Antichrist winds up in the hands of Sister Mary Loquacious, sister in St. Beryl's Chattering Order. (Which just happens to be a Satanist convent.) Sister Mary manages to screw up the baby exchange, meaning young Warlock is actually a normal baby going home with the American Cultural Attache, whereas Adam, the Antichrist, goes home with the Young family to Lower Tadfield, England.
Aziraphale and Crowley, not particularly happy about the world they've come to love coming to an end, set out to help train the Young antichrist, in hopes of preventing Armageddon. Which doesn't seem to go well, since they're helping raise young Warlock.
Which makes the upcoming war between Heaven and Hell that much more complicated.
Into this mix, we have Anathema Device, professional descendant, who has the only copy of Agnes Nutter's Nice and Accurate Prophecies, which are the only truly accurate ones out there. There's Newton Pulsifer, who joins England's Witchfinder Army, under the current head, Mr. Shadwell. Mr. Shadwell lives across the hall from the geriatric Madame Tracy, who does seances and prostitution.
And then there are the 4 horsemen: War (here, a female war correspondent for a tabloid), Famine (who invented haute cuisine and is now marketing diet food and fast food), Pollution (who took over in 1932 when Pestilence stepped down muttering about Penicillin), and of course, DEATH. DEATH resembles the same character who inhabits Discworld, but towards the end, gets revealled by another name.
All these stories don't so much coincide as much as they careen wildly around, overlapping, making snappy commentary, and generally being one of the best books ever written.
Really, I first read this after reading Gaimen's Neverwhere and attempting to read Pratchett's Feet of Clay. It wound up getting me to give Discworld another shot. And yet, particularly as fast as the narrative goes, I keep finding new things when I re-read this one.
Highly recommend this one to just about everyone as well.
Thursday, January 14, 2016
January re-read II: The Gorilla Returns
Well, I've now officially re-read the Gumshoe duology by Keith Hartman, and now find myself cursing that he never wrote another one in the series. He did write on other novel (Murder Beneath The Buried Sky, which if I can figure out where I put it last time I redid my bookshelf might be up next), but as of late, he seems to be in Hollywood self financing fun movies. (Seriously. Go find copies of You Should Meet My Son and Real Superheroes. I guess he's still trying to get Vampire Strippers Must Die funded beyond a short film.)
Gumshoe Gorilla picks up in April 2025, roughly 6 months after the events of The Gumshoe, The Witch, and the Virtual Corpse. This time, we start with Jen ("The Psychic"), who's doing her darndest to inflict a bit of karmic retribution on her previous beau, who it seems was dating two other women and using the same cheesy lines on as he did with her.
We do return to Drew ("The Gumshoe") in due time, who is dealing with Laughing Bear constantly dropping off Ice-In-Summer's former wardrobe at Drew's apartment. We also briefly meet Natalie ("The Number Cruncher") who's basically feeding information from both the Baptist Broadcasting Network and the Christian Alliance to Roaring Grizzly ("The Tele-shaman"). We do gets hints that the three of them may be colluding, but only one is aware of all the players in the scheme.
We also meet Skye ("The Writer"), plot coordinator for CzechMates, which is currently filming in Atlanta. As plot coordinator, her job consists of making sure all the deviating plotlines from any edit of the show makes sense. Skye hires Jen and Drew to investigate what her boyfriend is doing, since she's sure he's in trouble. Her boyfriend is Charles Rockland, one of the 3 Rockland brothers working on the show. (The other two being Doug and Bernie. Albert works alone and is in Thailand, Eddie is busy keeping the tabloids in business.)
The thrust of that plotline works out to finding out Charles is trying to help Eddie out of a really bizarre blackmail scheme, which brings Drew and Jen back to working with Linda ("The Woman in Black"), who was last seen working for Justin Weir.
There's also a case Drew is working to try to figure out what's wrong with Daniel, his much younger call boy friend, who is indeed now dating a man named Vincent as Drew saw in a vision last book. Drew's concerns stem from Daniel getting arrested for possession of Bliss (think MDMA), and then finding out the Bliss is laced with heroin. This leads to a vampire sex club, and further down the rabbit hole into the camps where unwanted gay youth were housed in the years following the genetic test. We also find out more of Drew's past, like how he got kicked out of his parents house during his sophomore year when his genetic test showed he was gay, and how he worked for one of the escort agencies to get by until he joined the police later on.
Ultimately, these mysteries get wrapped up (including one introduced early on about a woman convinced her daughter's new husband is hiding something) satisfactorily, but again, one is left wondering what happens to everyone after the lights go down and everyone takes off their masks.
This one is also less focused on big ideas, and more so on little ones like individuality and the prices of fame. During one of Drew's Shamanic voyages, a mockingbird recites poetry on the latter, before being eaten by the asphalt.
As I stated above, I caught a few things I haven't noticed in previous readings (something Laughing Bear says near the end seems to register with something Skye says elsewhere earlier), which makes me really wish there was another Gumshoe coming out sometime.
Don't let that stop you. The book is still a damned good read.
Gumshoe Gorilla picks up in April 2025, roughly 6 months after the events of The Gumshoe, The Witch, and the Virtual Corpse. This time, we start with Jen ("The Psychic"), who's doing her darndest to inflict a bit of karmic retribution on her previous beau, who it seems was dating two other women and using the same cheesy lines on as he did with her.
We do return to Drew ("The Gumshoe") in due time, who is dealing with Laughing Bear constantly dropping off Ice-In-Summer's former wardrobe at Drew's apartment. We also briefly meet Natalie ("The Number Cruncher") who's basically feeding information from both the Baptist Broadcasting Network and the Christian Alliance to Roaring Grizzly ("The Tele-shaman"). We do gets hints that the three of them may be colluding, but only one is aware of all the players in the scheme.
We also meet Skye ("The Writer"), plot coordinator for CzechMates, which is currently filming in Atlanta. As plot coordinator, her job consists of making sure all the deviating plotlines from any edit of the show makes sense. Skye hires Jen and Drew to investigate what her boyfriend is doing, since she's sure he's in trouble. Her boyfriend is Charles Rockland, one of the 3 Rockland brothers working on the show. (The other two being Doug and Bernie. Albert works alone and is in Thailand, Eddie is busy keeping the tabloids in business.)
The thrust of that plotline works out to finding out Charles is trying to help Eddie out of a really bizarre blackmail scheme, which brings Drew and Jen back to working with Linda ("The Woman in Black"), who was last seen working for Justin Weir.
There's also a case Drew is working to try to figure out what's wrong with Daniel, his much younger call boy friend, who is indeed now dating a man named Vincent as Drew saw in a vision last book. Drew's concerns stem from Daniel getting arrested for possession of Bliss (think MDMA), and then finding out the Bliss is laced with heroin. This leads to a vampire sex club, and further down the rabbit hole into the camps where unwanted gay youth were housed in the years following the genetic test. We also find out more of Drew's past, like how he got kicked out of his parents house during his sophomore year when his genetic test showed he was gay, and how he worked for one of the escort agencies to get by until he joined the police later on.
Ultimately, these mysteries get wrapped up (including one introduced early on about a woman convinced her daughter's new husband is hiding something) satisfactorily, but again, one is left wondering what happens to everyone after the lights go down and everyone takes off their masks.
This one is also less focused on big ideas, and more so on little ones like individuality and the prices of fame. During one of Drew's Shamanic voyages, a mockingbird recites poetry on the latter, before being eaten by the asphalt.
As I stated above, I caught a few things I haven't noticed in previous readings (something Laughing Bear says near the end seems to register with something Skye says elsewhere earlier), which makes me really wish there was another Gumshoe coming out sometime.
Don't let that stop you. The book is still a damned good read.
Monday, January 11, 2016
January re-read
I sort of reviewed Keith Hartman's The Gumshoe, The Witch, And the Virtual Corpse (as well as its follow up, The Gumshoe Gorilla) way back in 2013, but a January slow down in library book has afforded me the opportunity to re-read the duology. (I have a few quintets I'd like to re-read as well, but quintets are much more of a time sink.)
The year is 2024, in a week that ends with a Friday the 13th. We start on a Sunday evening, with one of our narrators (Drew, who's chapters get listed as "The Gumshoe") on a case, trying to figure out if his clients fiance is gay or not. When the client shows up on the stake out, it gives us a chance to examine America in the mid-20's, with Atlanta being a microcosm of the nation. We hear of the genetic test for homosexuality, which leads to an uptick in abortions in all populations other than Catholics. ("'You gotta love the Pope. She may be a reactionary old cow, but at least she's consistent.'") Most populations have managed to segregate themselves, with the gays taking over midtown, and the Southern Baptists occupying northern Cobb County. The client's fiance works for Rev. Zachariah Stonewall, one of Georgia's senators from the Christian Alliance party.
As the scene plays out, with the client following Drew up to her fiance's hotel room in DC to see if he's doing bad things with Drew's sidekick Daniel, we cut to "The artist", James Calerant, an artist with a sordid past. In this section, Calerant is at a grant performace surrounded by other artists showing off what they did with their money. (This included Foy Kucu rolling around in frosting and sprinkles while screaming racial epithets.) Calerant's performance for the evening (before which we get an overview of artistic politics) involves an old painting he bought from a museum where it had been languishing in a basement for 50 years. He sets it on fire, giving it meaning by destroying it. Then we cut back to Drew, who's client has pulled a gun on her fiance after finding him in the act. Drew takes a hit to the head and starts seeing thing right in the middle of the ensuing fight.
And from there we're off. We meet Megan, "The Police", who gets woken up to investigate a vandalism case in a graveyard. Given she's Special Investigations, she resents this, until she gets there and finds out the case involves a corpse exhumed and set up in what appears to be a Satanic ritual of some sort. We meet Ice-In-Summer, "The Lunatic", Cherokee shaman who's looking for her replacement, as she approaches the courthouse for a hearing about Raging Grizzly's "Ghost Dance" that wound up in a shootout between the Cherokee and the Baptists. We meet Benji, "The Chosen One", a young Baptist boy who writes an underground comic. We meet Justin, "The Singer", who just one best Male Artists at the Christian Music awards, and who's trying to bring down Stonewall. We meet Holly, "The Witch", who writes for a Wiccan newssite, and who's daughter becomes involved with Benji.
The story gets more involved and interrelated as 3 murders happen as well as an act of terrorism at a family planning clinic. As the clock winds slowly towards Friday the 13th, tensions ramp up between all the communities and violence breaks out among them. We find out who Benji's real parents are and why he's being chased by Men In Black Suits, we find out why Ice-In-summer believes her time is nigh. We go with Drew on his shamanic hero's journey and enjoy his frustration with one of the archetypes he encounters on the way. (A giant turtle who tries to get him to journey over water and enter the underworld. Said turtle starts quoting Joseph Campbell before Drew finally takes matters into his own hands.)
And ultimately, we find out who started the Satanic Panic and why. And why "In order to save something, you must destroy it."
It's by far one of my favorite books of all time, one that I've bought for a few people and recommended to several others. I think the mix of Sci-fi, urban fantasy, magical realism, and just plain humor is a heady mix, frosted with themes that are close to my heart, was just what I needed to get 2016 off to a good start.
The year is 2024, in a week that ends with a Friday the 13th. We start on a Sunday evening, with one of our narrators (Drew, who's chapters get listed as "The Gumshoe") on a case, trying to figure out if his clients fiance is gay or not. When the client shows up on the stake out, it gives us a chance to examine America in the mid-20's, with Atlanta being a microcosm of the nation. We hear of the genetic test for homosexuality, which leads to an uptick in abortions in all populations other than Catholics. ("'You gotta love the Pope. She may be a reactionary old cow, but at least she's consistent.'") Most populations have managed to segregate themselves, with the gays taking over midtown, and the Southern Baptists occupying northern Cobb County. The client's fiance works for Rev. Zachariah Stonewall, one of Georgia's senators from the Christian Alliance party.
As the scene plays out, with the client following Drew up to her fiance's hotel room in DC to see if he's doing bad things with Drew's sidekick Daniel, we cut to "The artist", James Calerant, an artist with a sordid past. In this section, Calerant is at a grant performace surrounded by other artists showing off what they did with their money. (This included Foy Kucu rolling around in frosting and sprinkles while screaming racial epithets.) Calerant's performance for the evening (before which we get an overview of artistic politics) involves an old painting he bought from a museum where it had been languishing in a basement for 50 years. He sets it on fire, giving it meaning by destroying it. Then we cut back to Drew, who's client has pulled a gun on her fiance after finding him in the act. Drew takes a hit to the head and starts seeing thing right in the middle of the ensuing fight.
And from there we're off. We meet Megan, "The Police", who gets woken up to investigate a vandalism case in a graveyard. Given she's Special Investigations, she resents this, until she gets there and finds out the case involves a corpse exhumed and set up in what appears to be a Satanic ritual of some sort. We meet Ice-In-Summer, "The Lunatic", Cherokee shaman who's looking for her replacement, as she approaches the courthouse for a hearing about Raging Grizzly's "Ghost Dance" that wound up in a shootout between the Cherokee and the Baptists. We meet Benji, "The Chosen One", a young Baptist boy who writes an underground comic. We meet Justin, "The Singer", who just one best Male Artists at the Christian Music awards, and who's trying to bring down Stonewall. We meet Holly, "The Witch", who writes for a Wiccan newssite, and who's daughter becomes involved with Benji.
The story gets more involved and interrelated as 3 murders happen as well as an act of terrorism at a family planning clinic. As the clock winds slowly towards Friday the 13th, tensions ramp up between all the communities and violence breaks out among them. We find out who Benji's real parents are and why he's being chased by Men In Black Suits, we find out why Ice-In-summer believes her time is nigh. We go with Drew on his shamanic hero's journey and enjoy his frustration with one of the archetypes he encounters on the way. (A giant turtle who tries to get him to journey over water and enter the underworld. Said turtle starts quoting Joseph Campbell before Drew finally takes matters into his own hands.)
And ultimately, we find out who started the Satanic Panic and why. And why "In order to save something, you must destroy it."
It's by far one of my favorite books of all time, one that I've bought for a few people and recommended to several others. I think the mix of Sci-fi, urban fantasy, magical realism, and just plain humor is a heady mix, frosted with themes that are close to my heart, was just what I needed to get 2016 off to a good start.
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