A hero vs a not-purely-terrorising terrorist

Thriller | Strike Back | Chris Ryan

So, the blurb on the back of the book says:

What would you normally make of this? That Sir Peregrine is definitely a bad guy of some sort, and John Porter is going to get a life back?

Dynamite! How clever of you!

John Porter's first live mission in Beirut ended with the hostage rescued, but his three buddies dead. All because he didn't kill a young Arab with a cleft palate. Now, the self-same Arab has kidnapped a media star. John is the only one who can get her, because the Arabs acknowledge debts.

A nice adventure story for insular Englishmen. Not quite so much for, say, an Arab, even though the villains and heroes are all mostly English. It's that objectification thingie.

 

Nice enough yarn if you suspend disbelief. Fast paced and frothy.

A cure for meekness

Suspense | Mice | Gordon Reece

The book starts off by describing meek 16-yo Shelley and her meeker mother shifting into an isolated cottage after Shelly has been bullied to within an inch of her life in school, and her mother has been divorced by a husband looking for a trophy wife.

They are struggling on. The book covers a lot of ordinary, everyday scenes, which establish for us how much the mother and daughter love each other, and how very very meek they are.

And then a burglar breaks into their house one night. High on drugs, he ties them up and starts picking and smashing. As the blurb on the cover says, “If she and her mother are not mice after all, then what are they?”

There is a murder. Will the police solve it or will it remain one of those perennial mysteries? It's up for grabs right till the very end.

I'm not going to give any spoilers, so you have to content yourself with this much.

Do I recommend you read it? Yes. Will it be made into a movie? I doubt it, but I'd go watch if it is. Age group for readers? Fifteen plus.

What if Mars really had canals and Martians?

Science fiction | Old Mars | Edited by George RR Martin and Gardner Dozois

As George RR Martin says in the introduction, this is the 'old' Mars, the one in the imaginations of Percival Lowell, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ray Bradbury. The Mars with ancient canals so wide they are visible from Earth. Not the real Mars of barren lands and atmospheres thinner than ghosts. Short stories to evoke that utterly fictional Mars.

Let me go story by story. But to start with, I was greatly disappointed. The first stories are very much close to the tenor of earlier stories: all-male. As the book proceeded, though, I revised my early impressions. Which is good for you. I think.

Martian Blood by Allen M Steele is about an Earth researcher going into the tourist-ridden cities on Mars, looking for some Martian blood to prove or disprove his hypothesis that Martians and Earthers are ultimately descended from the same genetic pool. The Martian natives (no other word quite fits, sorry) are reclusive and hostile, likely to be violent. The researcher's hired guide is left to make world-changing decisions. Is it deliberate that the Martian aborigines' word for themselves is shatan?

The Ugly Duckling by Matthew Hughes could have been written by Bradbury. Fred Mather, an archaeologist, smuggles himself to Mars, marsquerading (I can't help myself) as a miner. Miners on Mars have quotas to fill. Martian cities are made of bone, and pulverising them and shipping them is hugely profitable. Nobody to record the cities, or the Martian culture. Fred offers to scout and lay the laser finders for the big machines. This way, he gets to see the city before it is demolished. He finds an amphitheatre, and the Martian script suddenly and telepathically makes sense to him, as he finds himself immersed in a Martian entertainment/history. The boss miner finds him lost to the Martian madness, in which he thinks himself a Martian, and has to save himself from Fred's attack. For some reason, ancient Martian 'masks' have value. Go figure.

In The Wreck of The Mars Adventure, Captain Kidd is rescued by the King of England days before he is due to be hanged, under condition that he leads an expedition to Mars. On a sailing ship equipped with hot air balloons. And accompanied by the eccentric scientist who has designed the equipment. Off they sail, through doldrums and storms between the planets. (Yeah, exactly!). Finally, they crashland on Mars, where their trade goods help them for a short while, to trade with suspicious Martian princes. The scene in which the Martians solemnly eat a Bible and the horror of the scientist at this blasphemy was quite funny! David D Levine certainly gets a good flavour of 100-year-old science fiction, Victorian without being steampunk, and utterly unscientific.

The Swords of Zar-tu-kan feature the first woman in the book, and high time. SM Stirling has populated both Venus and Mars with aliens, and this story is placed in that world. A biologist arrives on Mars, and is taken under the wing of a resident Terranan. Unfortunately, he is promptly kidnapped. Like many a Larry Niven character, the Martians have great respect for contracts. Also for debts. Sally Yamashita ropes in an old comrade, the Professional Practitioner of Coercive Violence, Teyudza-Zhalt. The duo find the missing biologist—but of course—with very satisfactory shenanigans on the way. A nice mix of Japanese culture and Mister Spock's alien logic, not to mention a talking 'optimal canid' named Satemcan. There is also a very good reason for the kidnapping. This story is one of my favourites in this book.

So I continued reading the book.

Shoals by Mary Rosenblum also explores the miners vs. dreamers trope. Maartin's mother was killed in a blow-out of a dome when miners after shoals of Martian 'pearls' undercut it. The miners are greedy for the vast riches that attend the finding of a shoal. People see wonderful visions with these 'pearls'. Except, Maartin sees them all the time, direct access to ancient Martians stored virtually. The virtual Martians still have a few tricks up their dusty sleeves, though, to save themselves and the farming city that Maartin's family is a part of.

In the Tombs of the Martian Kings by Mike Resnick features an Earthman named The Scorpion, who has a lion-sized Venusian 'dog' as a companion. Two pages in, we find the Venusian is telepathic. A Martian hires them to help him find the mythical lost Tombs of the really really ancient Martian Kings, who may well have been superpowered aliens (aliens to Mars, that is), worshipped as gods by primitive Martians. Our gun for hire helps the Martian, named Quedipai and called Cutiepie. Very Raiders of the Lost Ark. Lots of fancy traps and monsters to protect the Kings. A book with an invocation to awaken the last King... ok, you can guess how it goes.

Out of Scarlight by Liz Williams could well be placed on Earth in any fantasy world. Zuneida Peace pretends to be a man named Thane. She saves the adventurer Nightwall Dair from a sorcerer on her way to the Tribes, to get clues on finding a Martian slave girl stolen by a sorcerer from a lord of Cadrada, and whom he wants back. Scarlight is the name of the last town before the Cold Deserts. Zuneida/Thane finds the priestess, gets the clues, evades the attentions of Dair, gets caught by the sorcerer, rescued, and does some rescuing. All very confusing. Who is after what. But tied up neatly in a bow at the end.

Howard Waldrop has a 'modern' Earthman follow the old trek of an ancient Martian, writing a diary detailing the old diary. A short and whimsical story, The Dead Sea-Bottom Scrolls.

James SA Corey describes another story based on sea pirates. In A Man Without Honor, we have an American-spelling story about a subject of the King of England, explaining the circumstances under which he killed the King's Governor. The pirates attempt to loot a derelict, find it still under attack, and rescue the damsel with the treasure. But she's a Captain herself, of a spacecraft. She's getting some chemicals from Earth to help her Martian race (very human-like) to save themselves from tentacled Martian tyrants of another species. Bravely, the pirates and the heroic humanoid Martians ally, as do the greedy Governor and the Martian monsters. Will the good guys of Mars be saved?

Written in Dust by Melinda M Snodgrass, too, has the ancient Martians accessible through stored memories, and under risk of demolished cities. In this one, a teenager reaching college age on Mars finds her two fathers' marriage being torn apart by her control-freak Martian grandfather (all humans here). There is family adventure. And of course the access to Martian dead—perhaps human dead, too?

Michael Moorcock, you either love or hate, and I tend to sit on the latter side, but this was a cool story. The Lost Canal has future humans on Mars being contacted by close-to-today humans via a time machine. 'Your mission, should you choose to accept it' offered to the fugitive Mac Stone is nothing less than to save the planet. Mac has been making money and the rich people don't like it. There are killer robots, ancient bombs, a lost canal with a tremendous waterfall (that possibly goes to the centre of the planet), and only seven hours to save the world. The time machine gives him useful information and gadgets for super strength and anti-gravity. On the other hand, apart from killer robots, he's being hunted by a top assassin as well.

Phyllis Eisenstein's The Sunstone is set in the heroic savage mould. David Miller returns to Mars after being educated on Earth, to find his archaeologist father missing. He has gone to find one more wonderful city, to make tourist money off. David teams up with his father's Martian friend Rekari to go find the body. Rekari tells him his father was adopted by the last of a dying tribe, so that their memories could live on, and gives him a traditional sunstone to wear. The traditional Martians don't like that. Is David a true Martian or will he be unable to enter—or exit—the Martian repository of tradition they find beneath his father's body?

(These are all rhetorical questions, okay, you're supposed to guess the right and obvious answer.)

Joe R Lansdale's King of the Cheap Romance is possibly my favourite in this book. It has spacecraft (ok, aircraft, but Martian air is too thin to live in), a young protagonist left to find a way to save herself and the next city all alone. Angela King's Dad is killed in a crash while they are carrying vaccine to the local town. The 'cheap romance' is what her father calls adventure stories. She loads up everything including the body, onto a solar sled with limited battery power. She is chased by a persistent and deadly Martian ice shark. Then a climbing berg climbs out of the ice. These are rises of solid ice coming up from old old Mars. Full of living organisms that need air once in a while. This one has an ancient Martian ship embedded in it. Angela evades the ice shark and goes inside the berg, where she sees ancient Martian wonders. With the last of her consciousness, she does reach the city. With or without the vaccine? With or without the fever herself?

Mariner has an Earthman stranded on Mars. He gets there while attempting to sail around the Earth. A type of Martian captures him, and fortunately he is able to convince them he is air-breathing. Other Martian species all war with each other. The only commonality is that they all need respirators in air (to keep their gills moist). Jason becomes a pirate, then a pirate captain. What happens when he rescues a ship full of to-be-slaves, when he is already below quota on plunder? Chris Robertson writes a straightforward tale.

Ian McDonald doesn't. The Queen of the Night's Aria is the closest to a horror story in this book. Maestro Jack Fitzgerald, the famous singer from Earth, is on a downward economic spiral and refuses to accept it. He and his sidekick are reduced to singing for the Earth troops on the frontline in Mars. Mars had attacked, Earth had counterattacked. Earth has now occupied most of Mars. There are all kinds of exotic aliens and alien cities. During his performance at the Front, the Martians counter-attack. The Queen of the Martians is a fan of the Count. Things go downhill from there. It's more poignant than horrific, come to that. I mean, we're not actually suffering reverses on Mars, are we?

TL;DR? A good read for sci fi fans.

The 'national bird' of Punjab claims a victim

Detective | The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken | Tarquin Hall

Once in a while, one gets an Indian detective set in India, written by a non-Indian. Since getting Indian citizenship is one of the most difficult things to do, I suspect that Tarquin Hall, though married to an Indian and living in the NCR, is probably not an Indian yet, so I'm putting his book in this category.

The first Vish Puri book I read was The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing. In that, a debunker of mystics was stricken dead on India Gate lawns by a 20-foot effigy of the Goddess Kali that appeared and then disappeared. All the other members of his Laughter Club (there are plenty all over India, it's not as much fiction as you'd think) were unable to move from their places till the apparition had disappeared. Vish Puri of Most Private Investigators takes over the case and tries to sort out myth and reality. What I liked particularly about that book was the solution, down to earth and not the least bit Eastern-Oriental Mystic. Although it wandered into places I've never even heard of, let alone experienced. But it's a big country.

So, coming to this Vish Puri book, which is the third in the series. Vish (short for Vishwas) Puri attends a pre-cricket match party, at which the father of a rising star Pakistani cricketer falls dead after eating his butter chicken. He's been poisoned with aconite. I really didn't know it was that easy to get hold of aconite in India, but I'm prepared to suspend disbelief. After all, it is astoundingly easy to get acid.

Vish Puri has a whole team of helpers with quirky nicknames (we never get to know their real names) like Handbrake the driver, Tubelight the operative (tubelight is slang for a slow-witted person in India, so why Puri calls his top operative Tubelight is a mystery), Facecream the slick woman operative, Flush the computer whiz with the James Bond gadgets, and the like.

Vish Puri's English is quirky, but his mother's is downright weird. Oh, okay, there may well be Punjabis who talk like that; I'm sure T Hall didn't invent these people out of whole cloth. Yet, the language is not so much familiar as dissonant. I guess I should stick around some Punjabi friends more, but most of them who speak English don't mangle the language as much.

Vish Puri is also a member of a group of moustache aficionados, some of whose moustaches are being stolen by a midnight thief. I facepalm and think, Only in India. At any rate, Puri is unaware that his mother is stealing a march on him, as she's not only worked out the motive for the murder, but the most likely suspects. He, in the meantime, goes off on all kinds of chases into the murky depths of illegal betting on cricket matches. He goes to Pakistan, all a-tremble at stepping into enemy territory, and comes back with a different view of the country.

 

Tarquin Hall's view of Delhi, India, Gurgaon and Pakistan is very different from the average Indian's. More observant, more disinterested about the politics, full of authentic detail and yet described in words strange to an Indian. The books are published in the UK, and reprinted here. The delighted reviews are probably from Angrez reviewers who recognise a wittily turned out Indian caricature.

I watch the books about India by non-Indians like a hawk, hyper-sensitive to incongruence. Because it always exists. Pickles are not aachar, they are achaar. A Punjabi, creating a diminutive for a name, will not convert Vishwas into Vish. Vishu, Vishi, yes, but not Vish. That's what a Brit would do, like Kipling saying a mother would call her son Ashok, “Ash”. But even Indian authors, proofread by Indians, get it wrong often enough (see Ashok Banker's Ramayana series for an example of how he mangles amavasya), so that's fair enough. My main crib about Vish Puri is that he is a caricature. Quite what of, I'm not sure. Probably as much of a caricature of a Gurgaon-based Punjabi as Hercule Poirot was of a Belgian.

Let's leave it at that. Hall has just put too much turmeric in the curry. But it's nice and tasty despite that. Go easy on the cloves, too, sahib ji.

Sorry about the tininess of the image.

What if you woke up and found that you were dead and everyone else had disappeared?

Science fiction/YA | More than this | Patrick Ness

Patrick Ness is the author of the best-selling Chaos Walking trilogy, about which the resident teen says (in tones of stricken awe): “It totally ruined my childhood!” I have the nasty feeling that I have not reviewed all the books in that trilogy, but never mind. I'll sum up and say that it introduced true and mundane evil to readers through the adventures of two young teens on a different planet. There, men's and animals' (including alien animals) every thought is broadcast to all, while only women's thoughts are not. One man decides to eliminate women and rule the world. It's about responsibility, about integrity, about the reactions of people to repression and how easily populations can be subjugated and subdued, and where true resistance and courage come from, and about ends and means.

Before I come to this book, let me just point out a few coincidences. I've just told you about a book by Seth Patrick. Well, this book is by Patrick (Ness) about Seth (the main character). Howzzat?

As the blurb says, a boy dies. Drowns. All the way dead. And then he wakes up in his childhood home. Except that there is nobody else in the world. All the houses are empty and abandoned. There is old, stale food in cans, most puffed up and dangerous, and some water. There are hardly any animals. Plants have run riot. Abandoned cars and trains, and whole acres of burned-out city greet the weak and terrified Seth.

A typical teen nightmare (I've yet to write my own version of the story of waking up in a dead and abandoned world, so I presume all teens have this scary vision). 

Slowly, we find why Seth drowned through flashbacks of his life every time he goes to sleep.

Yet, it's increasingly confusing where exactly he is now. There is stuff in his house that he knows for sure is in his new house half a world away.

And then he is accosted by two more people. One a teen a bit older than him, and one a foreign kid. All of them are being chased by a futuristic black van with The Driver in it, who seems to be interested only in tracking them down and attacking them with something like a lightning bolt generator, but worse. Not human at all. And why do the youngsters have lights under their necks?

The secret lies, it seems, in the prison behind the house. A place the Driver seems to be protecting. And all that the kids have on their side are theories and raw courage.

Have you ever felt that your life is not what you want? And there should be More Than This?

Read it. It's good. Though the resident teen is reluctant to further ruin the end of childhood, and refuses to touch the book with any bargepole. I hereby declare 'stupid teen' a tautology.

Dead men tell all

Sci-fi | Reviver | Seth Patrick

Sci-fi, after a long time. (Yay). Seth Patrick thought: what if you could revive the dead? And then, in true sci-fi style, proceeds to follow the paths that arise.

In the near future, one person begins to revive the dead. Merely for minutes, and mostly to be able to say goodbye to their loved ones. Others, too, turn out to have this talent.

One of the most capable ones of them all, Jonah, is part of the Forensic Revival Unit. These help detectives to find out who killed murdered people. Of course! That's an almost inevitable thing if such revival is possible, right? In Victorian times, detectives used to photograph the eyes of dead people, thanks to the belief that they retained the last image of what they had seen. Then, we have all these mediums that speak to the dead. (None of whom have anything useful to report other than platitudes). So, good idea, and from a rich heritage. The thing with new SF is, then, basically, what does the author do with it?

And then it all goes Christian horror movie on us. One of the dead says 'He is coming' in some terror. It's the Devil, or something very close to it.

Troubled Jason approaches researchers who had been disbanded, but are continuing their work in more limited fashion. He gets his revival-enabling drug dosage changed, and in his spare time, starts to investigate.

 

The discoverer and populariser of Revival, who is now a recluse, is then found dead. His best-selling books enable his daughter (what's with daughters of dead people teaming up with the hero as a trope??) to get Jason to help out in chasing down his killers. But she's wary of involvement.

Now, the other thread you should expect is anti-revival people, right? For whatever reason, most religious. They are willing to do absolutely anything to stop it, partly because they are fanatics that bomb places, and partly because, they, too, have found out the rumours about the Devil coming back. Yes, we always wonder, in the wee hours, what if the fanatics are right, after all?

But there is a rich man who sponsors the research to get this great power into the world, and hides it from the world (trope warning! Beep! Beep!) and is convinced that his work is good and for the benefit of mankind. Again, predictable, right? James Bond makes a living taking such guys down. 

Yes, you can surely tell it's not benign, can't you? You've seen the movies. And more than one character has shown signs of knowing the Devil is around. So that's another hint.

Only the hero can save mankind! Despite the misguided scientists, the military/FBI, and private guards. Isn't it strange how movies and books have these tough guys who phlegmatically follow orders despite apocalyptic scenes all around and every sign of the end of the world. I particularly wonder why the Umbrella Corporation retains security guards who are little more than gun-toting robots, and even more, why there are still promotions being worried about in the zombie endtimes. How experiments continue, and a profit-making culture is slavishly adhered to, in a total collapse of the world economy. And all the while Alice wears skimpy dresses and even skimpier expressions. It only makes sense in a video game, yet there is a thriving movie series.

But back to the book. Withal, well written, and Seth Patrick travels far enough into the thickets of thought experiments to show you how simple things can change the world, and inevitably get militarised along the line. Yes, somewhat predictable to the sci-fi crowd, but remarkably good for a first-time author. I can smell a serial from the end of the book, but it's complete in itself. The challenge for the author will be to keep the second book self-contained, rather than something only for the fans of the first book. I predict many more sales in his future, though.

I apologise for the camera flash in the picture, but the picture without the flash is even worse.