Who Says Words Will Never Hurt You?

Lexicon
by Max Barry
Published by
3 1/2 Stars

Are you a cat or a dog person?

In the world of Lexicon, your answer reveals everything they need to know about you.  Who are "they"?  They are the poets, people who are hardwired to resist persuasion and to use language as a weapon against the rest of us.  Studying linguistics, personality and psychology, poets have the ability to subvert free will and compel us do as they wish.  The most powerful poets are given pseudonyms that appropriately demonstrate their mastery over language and, thus, over society:  T. S. Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, W. B. Yeats, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf.

Lexicon tells the story of Emily Ruff, a homeless teenage grifter who shows promise as a poet, and Wil Parke, a man who unknowingly survived an apocalyptic event in Broken Hill, Australia.  As Emily is recruited by the poets and sent to an exclusive school to cultivate her gifts, Wil is on the run from would be assassins for reasons unknown.  As their stories intertwine, Barry explores the power of words and the sway they hold over us.

Lexicon is a clever exploration of modern society.  In our media saturated culture, we are surrounded by words from a variety of sources, most of whom have a vested interest in persuading us to adopt their viewpoint or engage in action that is beneficial to them.  What are politicians, corporations, pundits, and advertising executives if not "poets"?  And, more often than not, they succeed in manipulating and coercing the American public.  There is so much spin that it's often hard to tell where the truth ends and the fiction begins--even more chilling is that many people don't even care, content to let the bias of others "think" for them.

While I enjoyed the premise of Lexicon and was certainly drawn in by Barry's fast-pace, the sense that it could have been more nagged at me.  Its premise is one that could lend itself to a more complex, nuanced examination of the ability of speech to influence, but Barry keeps it at surface level.  While Barry's intent seems to have been to write a fun, intelligent thriller, I would have readily signed on for something more substantial.  For example, the purpose of the poets and the intricacies of their organization is never revealed, and the specifics of how their influence works is given only a basic "nuts and bolts" explanation.

However, I was still set to give this a 4 star rating just for its inventiveness and the fun I had along the way, until the unsatisfying end.  No spoilers here--I'll only say that, for all the originality of the premise, the ending was underwhelming and predictable.

Required Cyberpunk Reading

Snow Crash
by Neal Stephenson
Published by Bantam Books
3 Out of 5 Stars

Snow Crash is definitely unlike anything I've ever read. The novel is fast paced with moments of dialogue and original writing that made me laugh out loud (okay, perhaps just chuckle quietly in appreciation). I appreciate the book's originality and can only imagine how surreal it must have been to read when it was originally published in 1992 (by today's standards, the technology that plays an integral part throughout the book is eerily familiar, especially given the book's context). 

While I was sometimes lost during the technical discussions among the hackers about how computers work, I was still able to piece together what was going on (albeit, probably not at the level that someone with more knowledge about computer programming could). To me, the truly fascinating part of the novel involved its incorporation of Sumerian mythology and the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, providing a creative explanation as to the relevance of these ancient stories to a modern and technology based culture. While I enjoyed the novel, parts of it felt disjointed and it suffered a bit from the hype that surrounds it as this resulted in my having certain set expectations before I began reading the book. Otherwise, it was an enjoyable read that I think would be better served by a second reading. 

What Happens in Lost Vegas (Is Dull Enough to Stay in Lost Vegas)

Lost Vegas
Written by Jim McCann
Illustrated by Janet Lee
Published by Image Comics
2 Out of 5 Stars

Lost Vegas was a limited series from Image Comics (normally a safe-bet for unusual, creative, and intellectual comics) that started with serious promise and ended with a serious letdown. 

The premise of Lost Vegas is that Roland, a gambler who stacks the deck in his favor whenever possible, is forced into indentured service on the pleasure ship, Lost Vegas, when a card game goes wrong. Lost Vegas offers all the thrills, pageantry, and adult pleasures of its earthly namesake. Roland, however, is the type of man who makes his own luck and it's not long before he cooks up a scheme to escape, along with a rag-tag band of misfits (aren't they always?), that inadvertently draws him into a high-stakes game of intergalactic politics.

The concept behind Lost Vegas isn't a new one, but its futuristic, outer-space setting had incredible potential. The characters could have been intriguing, the plot could have taken some maddening twists and turns, and the story could have ultimately proved memorable. So the problem? It told a minimum 12 issue story arc in 4 issues. The end result is a "wham, bam, thank you, m'am" experience for the reader; the canvas simply isn't big enough for character development, clever world-building, or proper pacing. In addition, there are some glaring and obvious typos in the final issue. 

The bright spot here is the lush and neon-splashed artwork by Janet Lee. While bringing the Lost Vegas in all its hedonistic, bacchanalian glory to life, her efforts aren't enough to revive the story line--its the equivalent of watching someone perform CPR on a corpse. You have to admire the attempt, but, damn, that sucker's dead.

A Frightening Future

Oryx and Crake
by Margaret Atwood
Published by Nan A. Talese
4 Out of 5 Stars

I've read a few of Margaret Atwood's poems and short stories, but this is my first official Atwood novel (I now imagine a collective gasp from all the hardcore The Handmaid's Tale fans . . . not to worry, that's on my reading list as I've already procured a copy). I've always heard people rave about how wonderful Atwood is and I can now say that I finally know what all the fuss is about. 

A dystopian novel, Oryx and Crake is set in a not-so-distant apocalyptic future in which mankind has been eradicated by the jealousy of one man, Crake. We soon learn that Crake was the childhood best friend of the narrator, Jimmy (aka Snowman). While I don't want to give too much away regarding the how and why of this catastrophic event, it is Jimmy's fate to live on so that he can care for the "Crakers," a race of genetically altered human beings that have been modified by Crake to be docile herbivores, existing like animals in a natural habitat and never plagued by petty human concerns. 

For all the inventiveness of Atwood's imagined future (video games, the increasing power of the Internet, genetic splicing, biotechnology, etc.), this is not so much a story about the end of humanity as it is a story about Jimmy, his life and the destructive love that brought about his castaway status in a future he couldn't have imagined. Atwood doesn't offer answers and is never didactic--she simply tells a story and that story speaks volumes about what may be the future of humanity.

A Bleak Utopia

Galapagos
by Kurt Vonnegut
Published by Random House Publishing Group
3 Out of 5 Stars

As a fan of sarcasm, cynicism, pessimism, and nihilism (yup, I'm fun at parties), as well as an absurdist plot, I'm a smitten-kitten when it comes to Vonnegut. However, I'm not in love with Galapagos. In deep like? Yes, but, for me, the gold standard when it comes to Vonnegut is Cat's Cradle, followed by Mother Night. I did, however, like Galapagos better than Slaughterhouse-Five.

Galapagos is set one million years after 1986, when the world as we know it ended and, through a series of fluke events, one man and several women are stranded on the island of Santa Rosalia in the Galapagos. The end of civilization was brought about by mankind's "big brains" (although not necessarily by man himself, as man is fundamentally good--just led astray by his inability to control his thoughts and his imagination), along with the help of a bacteria that leaves all the women of the world sterile. However, on the secluded island of Santa Rosalia, the female castaways still young enough to produce are spared and, with an unwilling sire and a little help from a high school biology teacher, they are all impregnated. Thus, life continues to flourish on Santa Rosalia. Not only that, but after millions of years, mankind has evolved so that they have smaller brains, flippers for hands, and a lifespan of 30 years (at which point we're easy prey for sharks and killer whales). Welcome to utopia! With our Darwinian advancements, we no longer have the ability to lie, cheat, steal, etc. We also lack the capacity for simple thought or creativity of any kind. (Admittedly, it's a shit utopia, as far as utopias go, and I myself would gladly just swim out to meet the sharks.)

If you think I've just divulged several plot spoilers, I haven't. You learn all this at the beginning and the rest of the novel circles itself like a dog chasing its tail as these events are told over and over again, but new details are added with each retelling. This structure could become repetitive for some readers, but didn't really bother me. As with most Vonnegut works, fragmented and nonlinear narrative is to be expected, as is the theme of "people are dumb asses." However, there is hope in this cautionary tale--if we learn to rein in our big brains, then maybe we'll be spared the evolutionary chain of events that lead to the utopian existence of lounging around on a beach somewhere, clapping our flippers together while chewing seaweed cud and hoping for some seal-like lovin' before the sharks come for us. And I think that's a lesson we can all learn from, don't you?

And I Am Outta Here

I Am Number Four
by Pittacus Lore
Published by HarperCollins
1 Out of 5 Stars

You know the most suspenseful, well-written part of I am Number Four? The cover: "Three are dead. I am number four." Pretty kick ass, huh? I certainly thought so, which is why I read it. Now I wish I had just left it on the shelf and let the power of those two lines remain my only association with the novel. 

I'm about to point out several flaws to which many people will say, "Yeah, but it's young adult fiction." To them I say that just because a novel is labeled as "young adult" doesn't excuse sloppy writing, simplistic plotting, and stock characters that make the cardboard cut-outs of Will Ferrell at the local movie theater look three dimensional, complex, and full of depth. There is some damn fine young adult science fiction out there (I offer The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins or theChaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness as prime examples of intelligent, well-written young adult fare), but I Am Number Four should not be listed among them. 

The initial premise is that Number Four (aka John Smith) is an alien from Lorien who, along with nine other children, was sent to earth as a small child to escape the destruction of his planet by the Mogadorians. The plan is for the children to survive and later return to repopulate the planet. Knowing the Mogadorians would hunt the children down, they are bound together by a charm that prevents them from being killed out of their numeric order. When one of them is killed, a spiral scar is seared into the leg of the remaining Loriens, signaling the threat level to the next in line. So far, so good. This is, unfortunately, when the whole thing starts falling apart:

1) Lorien was a planet that was being destroyed by pollution and mistreatment of natural resources by its populace. Fortunately, before it was too late, the Lorien people got their collective act together to save the planet. As a thank you, the planet gave powers known as legacies to some of the citizenry. These legacies begin to manifest as a Lorien becomes a teenager and, guess what?, if you save your planet right now, you don't just get one superpower, you don't even get two superpowers, you get a whole shitload of superpowers! These include hands that glow like flashlights (lame), the ability to communicate with animals (meh), a fireproof body (getting better), invisibility (now this could be something worthwhile), and telekinesis (Yahtzee!). The overt environmental message here is blatant and didactic: save your planet and your planet just might hug you back by giving you some really cool shit.

2) Not every Lorien receives powers. Those who got the planetary shaft in this deal became known as "cepans" whose job was to train and protect those with legacies. Why? If you have magic powers, why do you need a bodyguard? When the Lorien nine were sent to earth, each was given their own cepan to help raise and protect them until their legacies became evident. This makes a little more sense, but also raises the question of why didn't they send young adults whose powers had already matured to earth? Instead, Lorien is basically destroyed by the Mogadorians and the fate of the Lorien race is put on pause while they wait for their saviors to stop drooling and shitting themselves. Apparently, "intelligence" was not one of the legacies bestowed upon the Loriens. 

3) There's not a single authentic character in the entire novel. John is bland vanilla-ville. He complains and whines his way through the novel. Sarah's sweetness is gag-reflex inducing and, despite the inevitable romance between the two, there's absolutely no chemistry. They seem to have fallen in love in the span of 5 nanoseconds and then spend the rest of the novel swapping the vapid sweet-nothings typical of a couple in a Valentine's Day commercial for Zales. 

4) For two people who have spent the last several years hiding and trying to survive long enough to return to Lorien, John and his cepan, Henri, seem intent on getting their asses handed to them. They both know that the three other Loriens have been killed, they know the Mogadorians are closing in, and they know John is number four. So what do they do? John openly uses his powers and draws more attention to himself than a neon light outside a strip club, Henri goes and stirs up a nest of Mogadorians in a town two hours away, etc. However, do they get the hell out of Dodge? Nope. John manages to convince Henri every time that he's tired of moving and he's finally in love, concerns that are legitimate IF YOU'RE NOT FREAKIN' NUMBER FOUR! I would think all of these would take a backseat to the fact that John's number is literally up. 

5) Simplistic writing with only the vaguest descriptive touches. The one that really killed me was "It's a great house. A classic family home with bedrooms on the second floor, an attic where one of her brothers has his room, and all of the living spaces - the living room, dining room, kitchen and family room - on the first floor." What teenage boy has walked into a house and thought, "You know, this really is a classic family home? I love the layout. Very traditional." 

6) A flaw unrelated to the book: I've seen the movie previews and noted that Timothy Olyphant plays Henri (I won't lie--this, too, initially drew me to the book). Dear God, do not let this connection forever ruin Raylan Givens for me. 

I could go on, but I won't. Basically, the author has taken equal parts Superman, X-Men, and Twilight, blended them together in a concoction as delightful as swill and served it with a heaping side-order of teenage angst, a la "I feel so out of place and no one understands me. Maybe it's because I'm really different. Special. And not the short bus special, but really special special." Having said all of this, pre-teens and teens may love the book--in fact, many of my 10th grade students think it's the most awesome thing ever. I'm in favor of anything that gets them to read, but this is too predictable for most adults or teenagers with more literary sensibilities.

Shusterman Envisions a Strange Resolution to the Abortion Debate

Unwind
by Neal Shusterman
Published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
3 Out of 5 Stars

I'm a little on the fence about this one. Shusterman has created a fully realized future, and that's definitely part of the genius of this young adult novel. When authors write about the not-too-distant future, the world about which they write is completely unrecognizable (too many new gadgets, too many new species from outerspace, too many shifts in cultural view) which is fine but, for me, it sometimes causes a disconnect. I can't really empathize or identify with the characters because I can't relate. Shusterman's future is at once recognizable and vastly different from our own, which only adds to the horror of Unwind. 

In the novel, children who are unwanted at the age of 13 (for a variety of reasons: they're juvenile delinquents, they're not artistically talented enough, they fail to show intellectual prowess, or they have simply been abandoned) can be "unwound" for spare body parts. Because medical science has perfected a process that allows for every part of the unwind's body to be grafted onto the recipient's body and because the unwind never "dies" (the unwind is awake and conscious through the entire process), then this practice is acceptable because it saves the lives of others without technically ending a life. Medical science no longer bothers with trying to cure disease; they simply replace affected body parts with healthy young ones. 

In addition to this fascinating premise is the shift in religous thought. Parents who are zealous in their religious beliefs begin tithing their 10th child to show their piety to God and, in this world, it's easy to attain 10 children as the practice of "storking" is acceptable by law. Storking is the law that allows the mothers of unwanted children to dump their children on the doorstep of an affluent house, so long as they are not caught in the act of doing so (even this act is religiously based; the law cites the story of Moses as the first "storking"). The "storked" family is required, by law, to take the child into their own family--thus, tithing also becomes a socially acceptable way of getting rid of children one does not want. Tithed children are raised from birth knowing that they will be unwound and are accordingly treated like martyrs.

Here's my main complaint with the novel. All of the above sounds like an intriguing premise, but I find fault with the catalyst for all of this social change. In the novel, the abortion issue becomes such a heated debate that it eventually leads to the Second Civil War, known as The Heartland War, in which the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice proponents literally go to war. After a prolonged battle in which we can assume many lives were lost, the process of "unwinding" is proposed as a compromise to end the war. Since a child can be retroactively unwound at the age of 13, the Pro-Choice side is appeased and, since the child never technically dies, the Pro-Life side is appeased. To which I call "bullshit." Because such a solution doesn't take into account the motivation behind each side of the issue. 

Granted, there are shades of gray all over the place when we talk about abortion, but, for Pro-Choice proponents, the issue is about a woman's right to have control over her body and not be forced into an unwanted pregnancy. So how would being able to unwind a kid later on appeal to the Pro-Choice advocates? If a kid is 13, they're now a separate entity from the mother and, in addition, the mother has already had to endure the physical part of an unwanted pregnancy. Kind of defeats the whole premise of the Pro-Choice argument, no? And as for the Pro-Lifers, I think it's safe to say most are fundamentalist Christians who would never be like, "Oh, so the kid doesn't 'die' since he or she is still alive when we slice and dice them? Well, golly gee, why didn't we think of this sooner?" If that were okay with them, then I think they might not be so vocal on the stem cell debate as, technically, that's what unwinding is--using one life to save another life. 

So in the final analysis, I think that's where Shusterman dropped the ball. Granted, it could be argued that both sides might be willing to consider such a flawed proposal simply to end a violent and bloody war, but I doubt it. Still, I would highly recommend the book for its intended audience as it presents an action-based story that's not didactic in its presentation of the issue and will motivate teenagers to think about it in new and different ways. 

This Knife Dulls by the Trilogy's End: Chaos Walking

The Knife of Never Letting Go

by Patrick Ness

Published by Candlewick Press

5 Out of 5 Stars

In a world where we're bombarded with technology, our senses are often overwhelmed by the amount of noise and it's becoming increasingly difficult to find true quiet anymore (especially since most of us just plug into our computer or iPod as soon as it is quiet). A constant stream of sound and images feed us information, prod us toward rampant consumerism, and entertain us. I've become increasingly aware that many of my students seem uncomfortable with simple quiet--always wanting some sort of noise to help them concentrate and focus. It's sad that our world has become one in which quiet is such a rare and undervalued commodity. And that, according to Patrick Ness, is the inspiration for The Knife of Never Letting Go.

Inventive and unlike anything I've ever read, The Knife of Never Letting Go is billed as a young adult dystopian but there's very little that's young adult about it other than a 13 year old protagonist. In fact, a lot of the language is violent, graphic, and brutal by young adult standards, but it has to be to capture the world that has been created by Ness.

Todd Hewitt is only days away from becoming a man by Prentisstown standards. Prentisstown is a town on New World, a planet that is being "settled" by the people of earth. What's unusual about Prentisstown, though, is that it's a town that consists entirely of men. The women were killed twelve years earlier when the Spackle, the indigenous alien race, utilized germ warfare in an attempt to win the war against the pioneers. The men, however, were not entirely immune to this germ. Instead of killing them, it made every man's inner-thoughts (both verbal and visual) visible to those around him. There are no secrets in the Noise. As a means of coping, some men turn to drink, others attempt to run away, and some kill themselves. Life here is bleak under the totalitarian rule of Mayor Prentiss and the bizarre radical teachings of the holy man, Aaron. As far as Todd knows, Prentisstown is the only place on the planet.

As Todd nears his 13th birthday, he finds something in the swamp that shouldn't exist--silence. Shortly after discovering this peculiarity and unable to find its source, he's forced to flee Prentisstown and go on the run with only his dog, a knapsack of supplies, a hunting knife, and a book written for him by his mother. To tell you the how and why for all of this would be to ruin the suspense that drives the entire novel. Todd struggles for survival and begins to unravel the lies that he's been told his entire life. During his journey, he discovers the truth about New World and about Prentisstown.

The novel is told in first person stream of consciousness, which really works because it's like we as readers are able to "hear" Todd's Noise just as the other inhabitants of Prentisstown would. It also means that we learn as Todd learns and, as his mind shies away to avoid truths that he can't yet accept, information is sometimes withheld from us. In addition, some of the words are written in dialect to help better capture how Todd sounds. There are some unusual narrative techniques used throughout, such as a different font to indicate the Noise of different individuals and animals (that's right--even animals have Noise; I particularly enjoyed the depiction of Todd's dog Manchee) as Todd encounters them. Instead of finding them gimmicky, I thought it a very effective way of visually demonstrating the intrusion of other people's thoughts into one's own.

In some ways, the novel reminded me of the television series Firefly, but only in that these space travelers are the new pioneers. While they have a lot of new technology, the struggle for survival is a very real one and never certain. The novel ends with one hell of a cliffhanger and I find myself for the first time in a long time wanting to dive right into the second novel of the series.

The Ask and the Answer

by Patrick Ness

Published by Candlewick Press

4 Out of 5 Stars 

**Some Spoilers Ahead for Those Who Haven't Read the First Novel**

I didn't so much read the first book in this series, The Knife of Never Letting Go, as inhaled it. Original and disturbing, Ness is not afraid to take some risks as he tells the story of Todd Hewitt, a boy about to become a man in Prentisstown--a town inhabited only by men. As we read, we find out that Todd lives on a colony planet so distant from Earth that it takes decades to get there. Upon arrival, the first colonists went to war with the indigenous inhabitants, the Spackle. In a desperate effort to defeat the invaders, the Spackle release a germ that kills all of the women. The men survive, but with a strange side-effect: they can hear each other's internal monologue. At least this is the story Todd was always told, but when he discovers a real girl in the swamp Todd is forced to flee for his life and learns that everything he thought was true is a lie.

The Ask and the Answer picks up where The Knife of Never Letting Go left off. Todd and Viola, whose uneasy truce forged a devoted friendship, are separated when Mayor Prentiss (the antagonist from the first novel) names himself President, quarantines the women from the men, and establishes martial law in New Prentisstown. As Mayor Prentiss exerts his power, a female rebel force known as the Answer rises against him, and Viola finds herself swept up by their cause. Meanwhile, Todd is forced to do President Prentiss's bidding in order to keep Viola safe. He's put in charge of managing the enslaved Spackle workforce being used to build the New Prentisstown envisioned by the President.

What is so fascinating about the novel is how Ness explores the brainwashing and mind games employed by each side as they use Viola and Todd as expendable pawns in their quest for victory. Viola struggles with the terroristic tactics used by the Answer against innocent civilians in the name of their cause, while Todd is forced to face his shame in killing a Spackle in the first novel as he witnesses the dehumanizing treatment of the thinking and feeling alien race. As Viola and Todd try to navigate the labyrinthine truths, loyalties, and beliefs that are relics from a war that occurred before either of them were born, they begin to question themselves and their trust in each other. This psychological complexity is heightened by the fact that the reader still isn’t sure who the bad guys and who the good guys are—if, in fact, there are any good guys. There are no easy answers and Ness forces readers to think through the complex issues of war, justifiable violence, and racism.

Monsters Of Men

by Patrick Ness

Published by Candlewick Press

3 Out of 5 Stars

If you read my reviews of The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer, you'll find that I was a smitten kitten with the Chaos Walking series. In the carbon copy world of young adult literature, these are inventive books with powerful themes resonating throughout. I have been anticipating the moment when I would finish the last book in the trilogy, expecting to savor the return to Todd and Viola's world. So what effin' happened that led to a tepid 3 star rating? I'm still trying to figure it out.

Maybe it was series fatigue or maybe I waited too long between reading books 2 and 3 (I hate getting locked into series books, so that is a possibility). For whatever reason, Monsters of Men never grabbed me in the way the first two books did. It felt repetitive. War with the Spackle, conflict between Mayor Prentiss and Mistress Coyle, Todd and Viola don't know what to do, and round and round it goes. Each time I picked up the book, I felt like it was Groundhog Day--I could have sworn I read the same damn thing yesterday. The war is somewhat anticlimactic and I never felt any real tension. I'm rather out of sorts about this because I feel as though I somehow let down the book instead of the book letting me down. Did I miss something? Is there something I'm just not getting? These are the thoughts that plague me because I wanted, nay, needed to love this book. And I just didn't. Todd and Viola's angst over being separated is irritating to me because I could not for the life of me understand why they insisted on being apart ("Just walk your ass up the damn hill, Todd," I kept encouraging him throughout, but he never listened), Mayor Prentiss doesn't seem like that big of a bad ass threat, and the one twist the novel is relying on is fairly predictable.

Despite this, I liked the addition of the narration from 1017's point of view. Told in the language of the indigenous people of New World, Ness does a good job of making the voice seem alien and foreign. These chapters are somewhat difficult to read in terms of adjusting to the syntax and invented phrases, but it added to my ability to believe in the Spackle as a separate sentient species from humans. Also, the questions raised (is there morality in war, what makes a terrorist, how do we know when we can trust our leaders, is violence ever justified) are all complex and worthy of our attention. Ness skillfully asks these questions without glorifying war nor necessarily vilifying it, which makes this an above average young adult read.

Across the Universe

Saga:  Volume 2

Written by Brian K. Vaughan

Illustrated by Fiona Staples

Published by Image

4 Out of 5 Stars

In the first 6 issues of Saga (which comprised volume 1 of the trade edition), Brian K. Vaughan threw in enough weird ass shit to keep me in a delightfully perpetual state of "what the hell was that?" So much so that I worried the inventiveness might eventually wear thin, begin to feel as though it's trying too hard (as I sometimes feel with China Mieville's Dial H), or simply create such a labyrinthine mythology that it's just not worth trying to puzzle it all out. The second 6 issues have definitely allayed those fears as they are as outrageous and genuine as the first story arc, losing none of the batshit craziness or heart.

Hazel, the newborn daughter of Marko and Alana, continues to narrate the story of her parents from an unknown point in the future. Marko and Alana, both soldiers from two warring alien races, have a romance that reads like Romeo and Juliet on crack. On the run as fugitives from their respective races, they continue to search the universe for a safe place to live, love, and raise Hazel. But, alas, bounty hunters continue to plague them and, worst of all, the sudden appearance of ex-flames (an enraged Gwendolyn, Marko's one time fiancée) and in-laws (Marko's parents seek out their wayward child at the worst possible of times, complicating his escape with Alana).

This arc provides background on several significant characters, including how Marko and Alana met, as well as the history of the relationship between The Will and The Stalk, the star-crossed (and bad ass) bounty hunters hot on their trail. For those uninitiated to Brian Vaughan's work, however, be forewarned: there will be sex scenes, giants with pendulous scrotums, and enough deviant behavior to make Sodom and Gomorrah blush with shame. However, I also appreciate the maturity with which the relationships are portrayed--they're real without being romanticized. Saga works beautifully because of this and because of the huge debt the series owes to illustrator Fiona Staples. The work of any other artist could have made Vaughan's ideas too cartoonish, too over-the-top, but Staples's work is the right mesh of quirky and realistic that roots this world in an organic quality that gives it weight and authenticity.

In short, I can't praise Saga highly enough. It's a testament to what comics can achieve when writers and artists are let off the leashes of pre-conceived, "safe" concepts and allowed to chase after their most vivid, fevered imaginings.

I Think This King Guy May Have a Future in Writing

The Drawing of the Three

by Stephen King

Published by Plume

5 Out of 5 Stars

"What the hell was that?!!?" basically sums up my response to The Drawing of the Three. And I mean that in the best possible way.

As I opined in my review of The Gunslinger, I have avoided The Dark Tower for so long because it's a series and usually series books serve up a formulaic reheating of what happened in previous books. I usually enjoy the first book, like the second book, and begin to get that deja vu feeling that I've read all of this before somewhere around book three. Not so with this bad mamma-jamma. The Drawing of the Three couldn't be more different from The Gunslinger--and yet it works. The Gunslinger offered a bleak, apocalyptic world and a terse writing style to match as we followed the Man in Black along with Roland, the last Gunslinger. At the end of the novel, Roland is told that three people will be key in aiding his quest to the Dark Tower, leading into The Drawing of the Three.

In the second novel, the narrative begins with a shocking development in the first few pages that instantly causes us to reassess the character of Roland in terms of his abilities and his physical/emotional limits. Under considerable strain and a very real life-threatening situation, Roland begins to draw the three prophesied. As he does so, Roland breaks the barrier between his world and ours while discovering unlikely connections among the three people he encounters.

Unlike The Gunslinger, the writing here is more descriptive and King does a superb job of capturing Roland's awe with the plenty offered in our world in contrast with the world that has "moved on," as well as creating tension with the character of Detta Walker (I was as on edge during her scenes as Roland was; reading chapters with her was emotionally exhausting). In the first novel, Roland talked about how the Dark Tower was some kind of nexus holding worlds and times together and The Drawing begins to explore and clarify this idea more so than the previous book did.

It's very difficult to say much about the book without spoiling it, but King is to be commended for writing a book that varies in so many ways from the first novel and yet still seems a natural part of the world he created. If this continues, I may be one very happy series reader indeed.

Now I just hope that I don't order the Lobstrosities the next time I'm at Red Lobster. Seriously, I'll never look at lobster in the same way again.

Failed to Make a Dent

Embedded

by Dan Abnett

Published by Angry Robot

2 Out of 5

Embedded is set in a future where humans have begun to colonize other planets. Eighty-Six is the most recent settlement and it's where universe-weary, award-winning journalist Lex Falk has arrived to investigate rumors of political unrest and a military lockdown on all information leaving the planet. Falk's clout gets him embedded with the military, but it's not until he's approached by a clandestine party that can actually embed him into the body of Nestor Bloom, a combat soldier, that he gets the real story about what's happening on Eighty-Six.

Elmore Leonard famously advised "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip." If Dan Abnett had taken this approach, the novel could have been about 150 pages shorter and far more enjoyable. He has apparently never met a simile that he's not keen on rubbing up against.

The book is far too descriptive and I know many people might argue that such is necessary for believable world-building, a sentiment with which I might normally agree. If you're going to present me with an alien world, I want to see it. The problem here is that Eighty-Six isn't much different from Earth. There are no alien life forms, no exotic landscapes, no cultural clashes. And yet Abnett is always keen to tell us what shade of blue the sky is and what the green trees in the forest look like. Other than the existence of "blurds" (some form of insect/bird hybrid), there's really nothing unusual about the setting. And there's nothing particularly futuristic other than the ubiquitous presence of a poison called Insect-Aside and apparently inorganic foodstuffs that always end with the suffix "-effect" (such as chicken parmigiana-effect, which can be washed down with a can of tasty NoCal cola-effect). Even the tech through which Falk is embedded into Bloom is clichéd--Falk is suspended in a Jung tank, which is just a clever name for the science fiction trope of a womb-like tank in which Falk is suspended in a viscous, amniotic-like liquid. None of this is particularly bad, but none of it is particularly good--and it's been done much better before.

The book takes forever to get going, developing characters and relationships that are promptly jettisoned as soon as Falk is embedded within Bloom. The actual embedding--the part of the story with the most promise--missed out on so many opportunities to explore the psychological issues of dwelling within another's mind. If Bloom and Falk had been inhabiting the same consciousness throughout most of the narrative, there could have been some really standout scenes. However, Falk is simply a repressed observer, a passenger, within Bloom until Bloom is shot in the head. At this point, Bloom becomes an unconscious passenger in his own body and Falk has to take over, a plot that still has some possibility as Falk is not a trained soldier. However, every time Falk gets into a jam, Bloom's muscle memory arrives to save the day, allowing Falk to blast his way out of every inconvenience with which he comes into contact. When Bloom is shot and his persona disappears, the book basically becomes a stripped down version of Avatar, only without the aliens.

Other issues include:

1. From what I can tell, the U.S. is now the United Status (no explanation is given for this) and the army with which Falk is embedded seems to be U.S. As a result, all of the British spellings for words seemed incongruous and often jarring. A minor pet peeve, I understand, but there it is.

2. So we're apparently centuries into the future, colonizing planets, and the two dominant powers are the U.S. and the Bloc, who speak Russian and whose military vehicles are all adorned with red stars. That's right--we're fighting a Cold War with the Communist Bloc in outerspace. I might forgive this in a piece of 1950's science fiction, but in 2013? We can't come up with a fresh new narrative for who the bad guys are?

3. It is never made clear as to how Bloom's body is still functioning after he's been shot in the head, right below the eye. The mental image I kept getting as Falk tried to will Bloom's body to do his bidding was Weekend at Bernie's in military garb.

4. The ending. What. The. Freek®. So, in the last 10 pages, Falk actually, against all plot odds, discovers something half ass interesting. But that's the thing--only half ass. We don't get the whole ass. What he finds is only hinted at and the repercussions are ambiguous. Basically, it took 400 pages to get to the real story and then it just stops. I wanted to hit something and hit something hard when I reached the end.

5. The whole use of Freek® as a linguistic patch that prohibits a person from using any expletive other than "Freek."

In the end, I can only offer this advice: read John Scalzi.

Have Gun Will Travel (to Other Worlds Than These)

The Gunslinger

by Stephen King

Published by Viking Adult

4 Out of 5 Stars

Recently, my comrades in literature featured a Dark Tower conversation on (prepare for shameless plug) Shelf Inflicted.  Unfortunately, I was unable to participate because I had not yet read the series.  It felt a little like being the uncool kid who gets picked last for  kickball.  I decided it was time to remedy this.  I was going to prove I could kick that damn ball.

Now I have made vague promises for years to them and to others that, yes, I would read the book and I was sure that I would love it.  Last summer I even went so far as to purchase a copy of the book.  That was as far as I got.  So what was the problem?  After all, I've read a few Stephen King books and enjoyed them.  The problem was that it was a series.  A series where the books become progressively longer.  And if I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times:  I hates me a series.  Because "series"usually translates to "sucking at the teat of the publishing cash cow for as long as possible."  Such novels often recycle the same premise over and over and over again until they have completely worn out that which began as unique and inventive.  They're the Lost of the literary world.  If you can't wrap it up in a trilogy, you have nothing to offer me.

But caving to peer pressure placed upon me by people I both trust and fear, I finally started The Gunslinger.  And so it has begun.

In a narrative as bleak and barren as its landscape, The Gunslinger follows Roland Deschain, the enigmatic gunslinger of the title, as he chases the man in black across a seemingly post-apocalyptic desert wasteland.  The last of his kind, the gunslinger is the ultimate anti-hero--a knight in tarnished armor with polished guns.  He's capable of extreme violence and single-mindedness in pursuit of his prey: 

he stood, screaming and reloading, his mind far away and absent, letting his hands do their reloading trick.  Could he hold up a hand, tell them he had spent a thousand years learning this trick and others, tell them of the guns and the blood that had blessed them?  Not with his mouth.  But his hands could speak their own tale (64).

However, he is also surprisingly tender to the helpless and hopeless who cross his path, like the young Jake, a boy plucked from 1970's America and brought to the nowhere through which Roland is traveling.  This place, while seeming like the frontier of the Old West, may be more than it appears to be as machinery is scattered throughout like so many fossils and everyone seems to be familiar with Hey, Jude.  The gunslinger himself is from New Canaan, a place like a medieval western (imagine A Game of Thrones with guns) where time has suddenly accelerated.  As best as I can tell, Roland's ultimate goal is to capture the man in black and make his way to the Dark Tower, a nexus of time and space, to seek answers as to why this is. 

The novel itself is a mash-up of all that is good:  sci fi, fantasy, western, horror, dystopian, legend, quest.  However, I can see where this book is not for everyone.  It's not a book that explains itself to you so much as happens to you.  If you don't like narratives that offer more questions than answers and leave you with no sense of resolution, then you might want to sidestep The Gunslinger.  I, however, am anxious to start The Drawing of the Three because destination is irrelevant to me at this point.  I just plan on enjoying the ride.

That Warm Fuzzy Feeling

Fuzzy Nation

by John Scalzi

Published by Tor Books

4 Out of 5 Stars

I have never read a John Scalzi novel before, but I certainly don't think this will be my last. Fuzzy Nation is apparently a "reboot" of an earlier science fiction classic, although that's a novel with which I am unfamiliar (so I can't offer any comparisons to how Scalzi's reimagining of the novel measures up to the original). What I can say is that Scalzi's novel is both humorous and thought-provoking.

Fuzzy Nation is set in a future where mankind has successfully managed deep space exploration to the point where we colonize other planets. Of course (and I don't think this is too far off the mark here because, as a species, we are avaricious bastards), our only interest in other planets is purely economic--we strip these planets of the natural resources we've depleted from earth and then we toss the planet aside like a banana peel and move on. This has led to the creation of mega-corporations, Zarathustra and Blue Sky, which make trillions off of their outer-planet mining industries. But ecologists have begun to take note and these corporations find their greedy little hands inconveniently bound by an ever-broadening range of EPA style rules and regulations, the most significant of which is that mining may not take place on planets that have been proven to have sentient life--at any stage in the evolutionary process.

Those who colonize these planets are migrant contractors and surveyors who move where the work is. Jack Holloway is one such contractor. Working for ZaraCorp, Jack is a misfit who seldom responds to anything appropriately, is purposefully antagonistic, and speaks sarcasm as if it's a second language. Jack is an asshole, a quality which I find endearing because he's amusing and you get a sense that, for all of his self-centered swagger, he's actually a moralistic asshole when it matters. The conflict of the novel centers on Jack, who has just discovered a seam of sunstone that could make him (and the generations who come after him) ridiculously wealthy. The problem? He has also just discovered the fuzzys, a cat-like animal that, as the novel goes on, may prove to be sentient. This pits Jack against his former girlfriend (the on-planet biologist), the corporation that must share the wealth with Jack (and whose ruthlessness may imperil Jack's life), and his own self-interest.

Where the novel goes depends upon whether Jack really is a good guy or not, a point that always seems debatable, which is why the use of an anti-hero as the main character is a stroke of genius. The reader hopes Jack will do the right thing, but can never be definitively certain that he will. The other bit of genius is that the evidence suggesting the fuzzys may be sentient is doubtful at best and this ambiguity also calls into question when and how do we decide that life is expendable and when it is not. Overall, I think Scalzi pulls off something very rare in fiction: a novel that makes you think about important issues without being overly preachy and also allows you to laugh along the way.

You Can Run, But There's Nowhere in the Universe to Hide

Saga

by Brian K. Vaughan

Illustrated by Fiona Staples

Published by Image

4 Out of 5 Stars

How to describe Saga? It's like someone took Firefly, coated it liberally in WTF, and sprinkled a little Quentin Tarantino on top. Yeah, it's some wonderfully messed up stuff.

The planet Landfall is at war with one of its moons, known as Wreath. The indigenous people of Landfall seem reliant on technology and sport some nifty little insect-like wings, while the people of Wreath have horns (they may be my favorites, as each of the characters in the later issues have horns varying from rhino, to antelope, to ox) and are adept at magic. The war between these cultures has become an accepted part of life, the hatred of the enemy deeply ingrained in both species.

Now enter Marko and Alana, from Wreath and Landfall, respectively, who are ex-soldiers in this war. Defying their cultures, they have fallen in love and the birth of their newborn child, Hazel, has marked them for termination by basically everyone in the universe. Both have known violence and are adept at using it to protect each other and Hazel. On the run from the numerous assassins tracking them, they banter away like a married couple and slowly reveal the history that brought them to this juncture.

And now for a convenient list of the absurdities that await the Saga reader, so you can gauge whether or not the "WTF" element is acceptable to you:

--a planet known as Sextillion that specializes in, you guessed it, sex
--prostitutes that consist of giant heads teetering on top of Rockette style legs
--a forest that actually grows rocketships
--a race of robots that have television screens for heads
--graphic sex scene featuring the aforementioned robots
--a topless assassin with the torso of a human (sans arms) and spider legs (all the better for gripping multiple weapons with) concealed beneath a ballgown style skirt
--the ghost of a teenage girl who must have suffered a gruesome death as she's nothing but hanging intestines from the waist down; naturally, she tags along as Hazel's "babysitter"
--and LYING CAT; my new favorite comic book character is a giant feline sidekick to The Will, one of the assassins contacted about offing Marko and Alana.  Lying Cat can detect whether or not others are engaging in a bit of creative truth telling and immediately reveals the falsehood to anyone within earshot

While the base storyline is one we've read before, the execution is unlike anything I've ever read. Vaughan gleefully injects new and intriguing absurdities into the premise and it's really difficult to get a fix on where this sucker is going--but that's part of the great thing. The ride is so much fun that I really don't care. The artwork by Fiona Staples has a raw and edgy quality that suits the storyline perfectly.

I've been getting the monthly issues, which have the added benefit of a letters section in which Vaughan responds to reader letters. The results are often hilarious and I find myself looking forward to this section with the same anticipation I look forward to the storyline.