Gene Wolfe's THE LAND ACROSS

Gene Wolfe novels should come with a set of cheat codes, I sometimes think.* For The Land Across (a literal translation of the storied place name of Transylvania, kind of, except I think a better translation of that name would probably be The Forest Across, but hey), the text would then be full of useful hints embedded in the text like "this is probably Dracula" and "whoa, do you think that's the disembodied hand doing stuff again?" and "hey, dummy, if you haven't guessed, this guy's name pretty literally means town of the Count so he might also be Dracula or a close relative."

So yeah, in lots of ways, The Land Across is Gene Wolfe's Dracula story. And that's reason enough to run and go get it right away, right there. But there's more.

The Land Across starts out threatening to seem like a Kafka pastiche/homage. Our (as usual, unreliable) narrator is (supposedly) a travel writer who has decided to write the definitive guidebook on a tiny, unnamed, formerly Communist Central or Eastern European country that no one from the West has really visited yet (damned hipster!) but who gets arrested on an unknown and never explained charge right at the country's border, whisked off his train and forcibly billeted on a local married couple whose lives are to be hostage to his cooperation and good behavior. For good measure, the town (called Puraustays, a name I'm still reckoning with) has no street names and these nameless streets are not exactly straight and there's not much in the way of transportation aside from the good old shank's pony unless you're the cops, which, get ready for the cops in this story by the way.

And that's before things get weird. Because remember, Dracula is involved, although to what degree the individual reader will perceive his involvement/to what degree Dracula is supposed to actually be involved is, I think, going to vary wildly with the individual reader and the amount of interpretive work, discussion and digging he/she is willing to do for the sake of seeing just what the hell ol' Pringle's Face is up to this time.

Soon our narrator is involved in several efforts to unravel several conspiracies, some involving the police/secret police, some involving allegations of Satanism, some involving a long-ago murder that may have had direct consequences on our daffy, impatient narrator's own personal life, some involving the creation, dissemination and marketing of various voodoo supplies, and possibly some involving the overthrow of the government, or of Dracula, or of both because Dracula and the government might well be one and the same, or maybe Dracula is trying to stage a coup d'etat? Maybe? Kind of?

Further confusing matters is a whole new level of Wolfe messing around with language; if the reader is to believe the surface interpretation of the narrative, our narrator is an American abroad, writing in English for an American audience and just doing his best, as he relays the speech of the characters he has encountered in his adventures, to convey the flavor of their speech and the effect said speech has on his doubly-translating brain. The other characters mostly talk in their own language or German, and our narrator has tried to preserve the cadence, word choice and order of their speeches, resulting in things like "that would be most good" instead of "fine", for instance. That's a paltry example of what is saturating this novel and making it a strange read even before the dual ideas of the narrator not being who he claims at all and of machine translation are introduced. We might, in other words, be reading an extensive propaganda piece, imperfectly translated into English by a mystical or mechanical gadget. Oy.

Then there is a whole 'nother theme of possession. We meet one important character who, it turns out, is an exorcist, and lots of passages might sneak by the inattentive reader until he or she realizes that our protagonist doesn't always seem to be in control of himself, fearing, for example, to fall asleep at one point because he might shoot the lady he's in bed with if he does. Um, whut? But you know, what's a voodoo/vampire tale without a little of that here and there?

So, big surprise, this looks like another book that is going to reward careful re-reading. Just like all the rest of Wolfe's stuff. I'd better start researching longevity therapies, because I need a whole lot of time yet. Hurry up with those cheat codes, children.

*And if you think that would spoil the fun, well, don't look at the cheat codes, dur. Cheat codes aren't for everyone. Cheat codes are for people who want to experience the game's story fully but who lack the manual dexterity/time/skill to jump through all the hoops and overcome all the impediments (driving levels are my Achilles' heel, personally) to get to the end in their own lifetimes. Or who have a lot of other books to get through before the bucket at the end of the list gets kicked, yo. But yes, I like figuring some stuff out for myself also. So I took great pleasure in SPOILER ALERT seeing the possible metacommentary inherent in the name of one of the novel's many cafes, Cafe Tetrasemnos, being as it's located near the Church of St. Barachisius. Tetrasemnos basically would mean "four revered things" and St. Barachisius was martyred for refusing to worship four things: the sun, the moon, fire and water as the King of Persia commanded. I haven't had that much fun with researching weird religious ish since my first time reading Foucault's Pendulum, yo.

100 Books #21 - Anetta Ribken's ATHENA'S PROMISE

I was pretty much primed from the beginning to enjoy this book, early chapter drafts of which I was privileged to see because the author is a good internet friend of mine -- but not only because of that.

Set in a hotel on the edge of the questionable part of town, Athena's Promise concerns the struggles of its front desk manager, Pallas (and the naming is no coincidence, there, but I'll get to that in a minute), made all the more difficult as the story kicks in by two unwelcome events: a murder that has taken place in one of the guest rooms, and a new, unlikable and unpleasant "guest services manager" imposed on the hotel by its owners to beef up the "numbahs" and make sure it retains its corporate flag.

This new guest services manager, by the way, is a werewolf.

And he's far from the weirdest thing in this hotel or this world, for Athena's Promise is, in addition to being what is termed a "cozy mystery", an exploration of what life would be like if somehow the old Greek gods and goddesses came back (she doesn't bother explaining how that has happened, just refers to "The Crossing" and leaves it at that) and brought the whole stable of mythological creatures along for the ride. Thus one front desk clerk at Traveler's Haven is a pixie and the night auditor is a vampire, the hotel manager is Medusa (yeah, that Medusa) and the housekeeping staff consists of a lot of very kind-hearted and well-behaved and hard-working zombies. Zombies, of course, being all of those things naturally, at least before they "Turn" and become the shambling brain-eaters of familiar lore.

And the guests make the staff look plumb dull: randy centaurs flashing trashy bling and showing up demanding rooms by the hour, the better to ravish their too-willing groupies; Elementals for Environmental Protection in town to supervise work on cleaning up the Mississippi River (the city of St. Louis is never explicitly named as the locale for this story, but it is Ribken's home and the novel has the feel of St. Louis throughout); and mermaid divas who travel from city to city and strip club to strip club putting on shows and mezmerising men who then abandon wives, families and girlfriends to become the mermaids' too-devoted followers and, incidentally, steady guests at motels like Traveler's Haven.

And that isn't all, for Pallas herself, bustling around trying to maintain order AND solve the murder, is not an ordinary girl, either, and her mystery is expertly teased out in little doses throughout the novel, complementing and beefing up the neatness of the main plot.

She is, too, the narrator, and it's her unique, fierce, feisty voice that really makes this novel enjoyable. Her protectiveness towards her staff, especially the much-misunderstood zombies, her impatience with the foibles of centaur studs and barely competent cops and Guido the cheesy werewolf who thinks he's the boss of her, is wickedly fun to read, and even if you think you know her secrets from reading between the lines and applying your own meta-knowledge of Greek mythology, you really don't, not quite, but it all works very well.

This is a self-published paperback and it does have a few flaws in formatting that might bother some: the page numbers on the left-hand pages are in the wrong corner, and there are a few passages of text that, bizarrely, are centered instead of left-justified, but I urge anyone who thinks he or she might enjoy a story like this to forgive these. Ribken is a one-woman operation (except for her cover artist, Rebecca Treadway) and an original, amusing voice in fiction writing who deserves to be read.

Bring on Athena's Chains, the sequel to Athena's Promise!

100 Books #20 - Bernard Cornwell's EXCALIBUR

With this third and final book of Bernard Cornwell's Warlord trilogy, the jig is up: the warlord these chronicles are really about is narrator Derfel Cadarn, the Saxon-born spearman in Arthur's British armies who rises to equal and in some ways surpass Arthur in terms of military prowess, wisdom, the attainment of domestic (if not marital) happiness and pretty much every other way but actual fame. And the fame given to Arthur is really kind of given to him by Derfel, in these novels, to whose lot it  has fallen in his waning years to write what he hopes is the definitive chronicle of the British-Saxon standoff in which both men are supposed to have been instrumental -- a chronicle that sets the record straight, he maintains, that demystifies and de-romanticizes all the tale's principal figures without diminishing their importance or their worth.

Except for that of Derfel himself, too modest, we are led to understand, to make much of his own achievements, which, he insists, are nothing beside those of his charismatic hero, Arthur.

Much of the action in this final book centers on a legendary battle, that of Mount Baddon, or Mons Badonicus, to which Arthur is supposed to have managed to rally most of the kingdoms of southern Britain to make a stand against a pair of invading Saxon hordes, one of which is headed by none other than Derfel's father, Aelle. The build-up to this battle is a bit agonizing; some 75 pages go by before the shield walls clash, but within that slow burn is an extraordinary accomplishment: Derfel, and by him, Cornwell, made me like Guinevere. This has never happened before!

All of the major themes and ideas of the series are tied together here quite satisfyingly -- the conflict between the native Celtic paganism and the new Christianity (which is early Celtic Christianity, the pre-Elviran kind in which bishops still married and anyone they said was a saint, was a saint, and so on), the encroachment of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes that so changed the landscape and language of Britain, the power of oaths and the importance of kings as the embodiment and ultimate engine of all those oaths, the difference between remembered truth and romanticized history and myth -- all come into play as everything falls apart for faithful Derfel and idealistic Arthur, ambitious Guinevere and patient Ceinwyn, pure-hearted Galahad and fierce Sagramor and all the rest with whom one has spent over 900 pages and most of a lifetime. It's all so wonderfully melancholy. After all, all this Arthur ever wanted was "a hall, some lands and friends about him," * and that's very close to exactly what he never really got.

Indeed lot of reviewers have complained that this final book in the trilogy is a bit of a let down, the characters diminished or altered beyond recognition, the tone bleak and forboding, the fit with the other two books poor, but I ask what we could reasonably expect of a book detailing the decline of Arthur and his companions into old age and misery and illness and loss and defeat? Were they to remain heroic and awesome to the bitter end, that would betray the spirit of the legend, which is as much about this decline as in the flowering of Arthur and his knights of ladies, no matter what details one cares to incorporate or ignore. Every mythic golden age takes on its tarnish, that it might become something that can reasonably be thought to lead to our present in which it is celebrated.

So yes, Excalibur is a bittersweet book, but I was ready for that, and am anyway once again impressed with all of the rethinking Cornwell has done while still preserving the broad outlines of the mythology we know and love. So here, for instance, we have Nimue's betrayal and imprisonment of Merlin, rendered into a far more powerful and wrenching tale (indeed, rather horrifying, the scenes depicting this being some of the most vivid and memorable of the entire trilogy) than any mere story of a pretty lady luring him into a tree. Her reasons for doing so are compelling and terrible and utterly understandable, even if we don't share Derfel's love for her.

In addition to these amazing reinterpretations of Arthurian myth, these books have also given a fascinating look at Dark Ages, post-Roman British (especially Welsh) culture. I am no expert on same, so cannot pronounce on the historical accuracy here, but I can say that it feels right and plausible and while I'm pretty glad I didn't live then, I wouldn't mind visiting for a bit, or should I say, just for a spell. But then I would need to come back to our time to take a shower. Or two.

I hate to see this series end, but am also kind of glad, because now I'm finally free of its spell and can move on to all of the other books I have ready to go, you know?

But yes, I cried at the end.

*Which is all any sensible person wants, really, no?

100 Books 69 - Maurice Broaddus' KING MAKER

Man, I was as ready to like this as I've ever been to like anything. I even put myself into full delayed gratification mode -- I was originally going to save this book as my prize for finishing NaNoWriMo (see prior post). But in that I failed; I made it maybe a week into this month before I just couldn't resist anymore -- such allure, a cross between The Wire and Arthurian Legend! -- and gave in.

But -- you feel that "but" coming, don't you? -- I'm sad to say this novel didn't quite live up to its initial promise.

This is half of a fan-damn-tastic piece of balls-out amazing fiction writing, and half a messed-up, cliche-ridden mess, more or less. The first half is the former, vivid and strange and gripping, tripping with lines of the kind of weird and heart-breakingly poetic imagery and observation that this Wyoming girl only gets to hear at 5am on Saturday mornings when her local public radio station gives it over for Snap Judgment. The legend of Arthur and the formation of his Knights of the Round Table feels like it really could be re-enacted in the sad ghettos of Indianapolis, though perhaps the rib-digging character names (King, Lott, Lady G, Wayne, Green, Dred) aren't strictly necessary. My jaw dropped. Often.

What Broaddus did with Merlin, here cast as a crazy homeless man shambling through the projects in a tinfoil hat to which he keeps adding layers, struck me as especially fine, for instance.

But once the characters are established and the world (about 90% drug-slum realism, 5% TV cop show fantasy version of that realism, 5% epic fantasy, except the magical sword is a pair of guns, etc.) is built, the book kind of collapses in on itself a bit, so that by the time the zombies (oh man, really? Zombies?) show up I was bored and disappointed and scrolling back to earlier chapters, wondering how these two halves got sewn together.

Origin stories always suffer a bit from the formula thereof, though, so I'ma give Mr. Broaddus another chance. I already have the sequel, King's Justice, loaded on my various e-reading devices. I really hope it's more like the first half of this one than the second.