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🎶”Oh, take me down to the Nightside City / Where the grass is rock and the girls are implanted with symbiotes…”🎶

Okay, that’s not too catchy. But it is an accurate description of the setting for this neo-noir cyberpunk detective story.

Carlisle Hsing is private investigator who is down on her luck and down in the dumps. Quite literally, because she lives in the slums at the bottom of a giant crater. Also, it’s always night, because the planet it’s on, Epimetheus, doesn’t rotate. Naturally, the place has become a tourist trap; a Sin City on a par with Vegas, with the added attraction that it will be destroyed someday.

Because the planet doesn’t quite not rotate. It rotates, but very slowly. So eventually, Nightside City will be in the blistering hot sunlight, and will then stay there for a long time, becoming an unlivable irradiated hellhole.

Hsing is hired by some slum-dwellers to investigate a mysterious effort to buy up their properties on the dingy outskirts.  Why someone would be buying land on a place that is soon to become uninhabitable is anybody’s guess, and that’s what makes Hsing take the case. That and the fact that she desperately needs money.

And so, she plunges into a web of conspiracy, intrigue, backstabbing, lying and cheating, in a world populated by persistent surveillance drones, sentient taxis, and augmented cyber-decadents, with only her wits, her own cybernetic enhancements, and her massive gun to help her survive.

In a weird way, the book made me think of Chuck Litka’s stories. Both in the ways it was like them and in the ways it was profoundly unlike them. It resembled his in that the mystery was low-stakes, and, Hsing’s aforementioned massive gun notwithstanding, is pretty low on actual violence. All that ever gets shot is one of the surveillance drones.

On the other hand, it was unlike a Litka book in that the tone is dark, and gritty, and many of the people are rather nasty. Although there isn’t much actual violence, there are numerous threats of violence. Anger, greed, lust, vanity, pride… all the standard sins are featured here. And while stupidity isn’t a sin officially, a number of the denizens of Nightside City indulge in that as well.

But the story isn’t stupid. Far from it; some of the details about planetary motion and gravity were like an intro physics class. Fortunately, Hsing’s sardonic wit makes these bits of background information interesting.

This is pretty much everything you could want in a cyberpunk story. It’s clever, biting, prophetic, and ultimately morally ambiguous. Not everyone will find the setting of a cyberpunk dystopia compelling, of course. (Though you might want to start… you’re living in one. 🙂 ) But anybody who enjoys what I have occasionally called “Techno-Decadence” will certainly want to pick this up. And that cover! Just an absolute work of art. I miss covers like that.

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Can there be such a thing as a cozy legal thriller? I’ve heard of cozy mysteries, and I’ve heard of legal thrillers, but both at once? Well, I am here to tell you that there is such a thing, care of the great C. Litka.

This is another of his Redinal Hu stories, and in this one Red gets a chance to demonstrate his legal acumen, as well as his less cerebral skills.

Hu is hired to act as the bodyguard of Constance Darma, the new head of House Darma, whose life is under threat from members of her family seeking to acquire her fortune. Mz. Darma, however, is unfazed by the increasing danger she and Red find themselves in; for she has a plan to thwart her would-be killers: she is going to alter her will to cede her inheritance to a member of a rival House.

As ever in Litka’s stories, even in matters of life and death, people are almost unfailingly pleasant and polite. The nice thing about this world is, when you walk into your house to find an enemy agent lying in wait for you, there’s no need to act like Jack Slater in Last Action Hero; you just politely tell them you’re not interested in whatever they have to say, and bid them good evening. You might even have a cup of te with them.

Speaking of that enemy agent, there’s also a bonus story, The Pawns’ Game, that fleshes out a bit more about these agents and how they operate. I don’t want to spoil too much, but I love the idea of a sort of “henchmen guild” that Litka plays with here. I’ve often joked about how villains in movies and TV shows seem to have an endless supply of people willing to do their dirty work for them. Litka offers a sound in-universe explanation for how this might actually be arranged.

All told, these two stories make for a fitting conclusion to the Redinal Hu saga… which is not to say I wouldn’t be pleased should Mr. Litka reconsider and decide to write more of them.

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Do I really need to review this book?

If you’re a long-time reader, you know I’m a Carrie Rubin fan. And there’s a pretty good chance you are too. In fact, you probably already are planning to read this book, no matter what my review says. At most, all I need to say is that it’s everything we expect from one of Dr. Rubin’s books, and that alone should send you running to buy it.

But, I would hardly be upholding my reputation as a writer of long-winded reviews if I didn’t add some corroborative detail. We’ve got the catacombs of Paris, rumors of sinister activities within them, and our heroine, Kelly Burke, a student working as an au pair with the very same family that had previously employed the titular missing woman, Erin Fenton.

Driven by the loss of another friend, Kelly is obsessed with finding Erin, no matter what obstacles stand in her way. She is assisted by her friend and fellow student, a young man named Wayne, who sticks by Kelly even as her obsession with finding the lost woman pushes her to run greater and greater risks.

That’s the plot. But the setting is just as important, 1980s Paris comes to life, drawn from the author’s recollections as one who herself was an au pair there at that time. While I’m not one to insist that a writer must experience something firsthand before writing about it (tricky for an author of science fiction 🙂 ), there can be no doubt that having experienced that time and place lends a feeling of plausibility to the entire story.

All these little touches make the book feel real, and like something that could plausibly happen. Of course, that doesn’t include the darker aspects of the story… I’m sure things like that could never happen. Right? Well, anyway, I certainly hope not. I don’t want to spoil the whole thing, but let’s just say the plot involves some of my favorite fictional tropes, which is yet another point in the book’s favor. I wish I could say more about this, but I just can’t without spoiling the story.

I’m tempted to say this might be Carrie’s best book yet. It’s difficult to choose, of course, and I’ll always have a soft spot for The Seneca Scourge, with its sci-fi twist, as well as for the dark psychological mysteries of Broken Hope and the Liza Larkin series. Everyone has their own preferences, but this one is surely top tier, in no small part due to the extremely likable protagonist, who is easy to root for from the start.

It occurs to me, as I put the finishing touches on this review and WordPress’s deeply unhelpful AI assistant offers to provide suggestions, that an AI could never write a book like this, drawn as it is from the author’s personal memories. What makes a good story are all the little pieces of themselves the author puts into it, and only Carrie had the exact combination of experiences necessary to write this book. That’s what makes it such a pleasure to read.

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There’s nothing like a good redemption story. And if that redemption story also happens to feature space pirates and interstellar battles, so much the better!

Sol Linocass is a divorced dad down on his luck. His attempts to win back the favor of his ex-wife invariably seem to go sideways. He can’t hold a job, and he’s an alcoholic. His life, in short, is going down the tubes, and his dream of a better future thanks to his skill as a pilot from hours in simulators doesn’t seem likely to materialize any time soon.

But one day he stumbles across top secret information hidden in some scrap he hauled in from the junkyard. Sol may not be the best decision-maker in the world, but he is wise enough to know just what the government would do to get their hands on such data. So, he decides to flee as fast as he can, by joining up with his sister Trudy and her rag-tag crew of space pirates.

Trudy is the opposite of Sol in many ways; competent, organized, and in command of her life. She makes it very clear to Sol that once they leave port, he’s not her little brother, he’s just a member of her crew. She stops just short of making a “row well, and live” speech, but it’s very clear who’s in charge here.

I’m not usually one to want prequels or retellings or things like that, but I would love to read the story of this book told from Trudy’s perspective. She’s a fantastic character, especially once you know the whole story, and can appreciate all the different concerns she’s required to balance.

What follows once Sol joins the crew is a spacefaring adventure full of danger, intrigue, political-machinations, and double-crossing. It reminded me a little of Frank Herbert’s sadly neglected novel The Dragon in the Sea, about a submarine crew where everyone suspects everyone else of being a double agent. With everything that’s at stake, Sol never knows who can be trusted. (In the sage advice of Natalie Portman in My Blueberry Nights: “You can’t even trust yourself.”)

But in the end, everybody has to put their faith in something; and ultimately that’s the decision Sol is forced to make under the highest pressure imaginable.

There are so many things I could praise in this book: the obvious points are the compelling and twist-filled plot, and the vivid, memorable characters. It reminded me of a Carrie Rubin novel in that regard. (And yes, there is even a bit of a medical subplot to it.)

A less obvious, but equally important quality is how Holtschulte handles the world-building. World-building is key in a science fiction story since, you know, it’s set in a different world.

Tall Boy Sun contains a bare minimum of world-building. It conveys just enough information about the setting that we can follow what’s happening, and not a bit more. There are no info-dumps or long-winded expositions here, which is perfect.

When you read an exposition-heavy section in a character-driven novel, it has the effect of taking you out of the moment, and reminding you that you are just reading a story. For comparison, imagine reading a novel set in the present day: if it weighed you down with a bunch of needless backstory about politics and history of our own world that wasn’t relevant to the story, it would be distracting and even a little confusing. You would be asking, “why would the author need to tell me this?”

We accept more explaining about the world and setting in sci-fi or fantasy novels, but how refreshing it is to read one that feels like it really is of a piece with its setting! Tall Boy Sun‘s world is so well-built that it ceases to feel like it was built at all, and feels as if the writer truly inhabits the world being described, and simply penned a novel set in it.

There are many more praiseworthy things in this book, such as Trudy’s colorful crew, and the sinister antagonist Gilbert Bane, who is a mixture of Boba Fett, the Red Baron, and the Dread Pirate Roberts. But, it’s more fun if you can just discover the world and denizens of Tall Boy Sun for yourself. I highly recommend this book, even if sci-fi isn’t one of your typical genres. It is first and foremost a book driven by its characters, who are as well-crafted and memorable as any you’ll ever meet.

Now if we can only get a spin-off about the adventures of Captain Trudy…

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Andrew Crowther posted about this book the other week. I shared his reservations, but as a longtime Marxist of the Groucho School, as well as a fan of offbeat books generally, I had to give it a try.

The book is narrated by… some guy. Frank Denby, I think, or something like that. And he’s a reporter in 1930s Hollywood. But he’s just filling the role of the Poor Nut, to use Stephen Leacock’s phrase. Nobody’s reading this book for him. No, they’re reading to see how the author manages to turn Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx into a detective.

Well, all told… it’s a mixed bag. Groucho, as depicted here, is certainly witty and gets off plenty of good lines. Moreover, I don’t think they’re just recycled gags from the movies; at least I didn’t remember most of them. The author appears to have gone to some effort to mimic Groucho’s style while furnishing him with original material.

Less impressive is the mystery itself: a starlet is found dead, and the authorities rule it a suicide, but Groucho knows better. He suspects foul play by shady characters in show business.

And, lo and behold, it turns out that it is indeed foul play by shady characters in show business. Granted, there are enough of them that figuring out exactly which ones did it is something of a mystery. But not really enough of one.

Again, though, is anyone reading this because they expected a mystery to rival one by Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie? Or are they reading it because it’s an amusing novelty? Exactly. It is the literary equivalent of a gadget play. And for what it is, it succeeds well enough. My favorite scene is the one where Groucho, disguised as his brother Harpo, narrowly avoids assassins sent by some of the villains. Groucho’s press conference afterwards is particularly amusing.

Fans of the Marx Bros. will probably enjoy it. Fans of mysteries will find it fairly predictable. But to me, the acid test of a book like this can only be: what would Groucho himself think of it?

My guess is he would say something complimentary, and then immediately add something else that would reframe his initial comment as an insult. Then he’d waggle his eyebrows, take a puff on his cigar, and walk comically away to his waiting vehicle, which Harpo would drive away without him.

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You remember the other week when I reviewed that “biography” of Baron Ungern-Sternberg and talked about how it was cool to read a book that didn’t over-explain things to the reader? Well, this book is like that too, only it’s an alternate history story rather than a biography.

You can tell things are different in this world. The story is about the Energy Wars of 1994, when terrorists of unclear affiliation attacked the Johnson Space Flight Center.

General Gus Grissom, who apparently did not die (I think–see below) in the Apollo 1 program in this timeline, is heading the response to the attack. Under his command is the narrator of our story, Peter Caudell, with the framing device of Caudell telling the story many years later to his daughter.

It’s a very short book, taking only about ten minutes to read, but it packs a lot into those ten minutes. Mostly raising more questions than answers. Which is good if you’re like me. My motto is that the best books are the ones that leave you questioning what’s even real.

Still… it would have been nice to have things a bit more fleshed out. The author does include an Afterword which explains some things, but even the explanations raise questions. For example, there’s a note about where the clones of Stalin are located in this alternate world.

This is why I included the parenthetical note about Grissom above. There are multiple references to clones throughout the story, in a way that suggests they’re important, but I could never figure out exactly what the deal was with them.

But in a way, this makes the story feel more authentic. I feel like clones were all the rage as the sci-fi trope of the 1990s. I know I was a big fan of clone-related stories when I was a kid. AI and robots and simulation theory are all right for these young people with their short pants and their comically oversized lollipops, but me, I’m from the Old School. Give me that old-time warehouse with rows of clones in test tubes. If it’s good enough for the Galaxy of Fear, it’s good enough for me.

Anyway, back to the story: it’s well-written but kind of incoherent. But I’m strangely okay with that, because it really does feel like reading a fragment of a dispatch from some other reality.

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Well, right off the bat, you’ve got to love the title.

I’ve been a fan of Andrew Crowther since I was a teenager. He was the world’s leading expert on W.S. Gilbert, and I was a kid who used a dial-up internet connection and an iMac G3 to read archived Savoynet discussions on the G&S Archive.

Well, times have changed, but Crowther is still the leading expert on W.S.G. Now I have faster internet and a MacBook Air, but I have never lost my appreciation for Gilbertian humor, which is to say, sharp wit and clever satire. Crowther’s book contains plenty of both.

Which is not to say he’s just imitating Gilbert. Far from it. His style is different; darker and starker, with a harsh edge not found in most of Gilbert’s works. (With important exceptions.) Crowther tackles the absurdity of the modern world by heightening it just enough, until the contradictions and hypocrisies become impossible to ignore.

Some of the stories verge on horror, most notably “Jasper” (which animal lovers may wish to skip), others, including my favorite, “The King’s Juggler”, are more in the Victorian satire vein, wherein we are invited to shake our heads and chuckle sardonically along with the author. And some are downright uncanny given current events.

You don’t see a lot of books like this any more. Short stories have been said to be dying for decades. Now, novels are said to be dying too, and indeed literacy itself may be on the way out. Therefore, I encourage you to rage, rage against the dying of the light by reading this collection. It’s just the right blend of Victorian and modern cynicism.

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Only Adam Bertocci could tell a story about a small high school chess club rivalry and turn it into a grand drama about life, art, the nature of genius, and the meaning of greatness.

Parker Sabatini is an accomplished chess player in her school’s casual chess club. One day, Ali Wolfhart, on leave from the cheerleading squad due to injury, stops by the club. At first, she seems like just a novelty. Until she starts winning. And winning. And winning. To the point that Parker begins to become obsessed with Ali’s uncanny gift for the game.

Like Salieri vs. Mozart in Amadeus, Parker struggles to comprehend why this divine fire of genius should have been bestowed upon a cheerleader, of all people. Her obsession turns to jealousy, culminating in a violent outburst at a chess tournament.

The book is told as a series of interviews with students and faculty at the school, narrating how the relationship between Ali and Parker evolved. Or, perhaps, devolved. (This style of narration foreshadows that used in Bertocci’s recent novel, The Sorcery of White Rats, which is also excellent.) In the course of these ruminations, the interviewees muse on all sorts of topics, ranging from educational philosophy to the meaning of life.

There’s been many a novel written that doesn’t tackle themes as heavy as these, but as always, Bertocci addresses these big questions with a light touch and economy of words. The book takes only about 30 minutes to read, and it leverages each word for maximum impact.

In the end, Ali’s genius remains enigmatic; as genius always must. Perhaps the best attitude to take towards genius is simply to be grateful that one is fortunate enough to have the opportunity of witnessing it. That’s certainly the attitude I take when I read one of Bertocci’s books.

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Imagine a biography. But not a normal biography. This biography starts out with the narrator—presumably the author, although we can’t be sure—describing how he doesn’t know anything about his subject. He wanders around for a couple chapters, talking to random people, including his girlfriend, about how he doesn’t know anything about this guy.

Some of the people he meets give him advice. Some of them tell him conflicting stories. Then he decides that since nobody has a really firm grasp on the facts, he will use literary license to fill in the details of his subject’s life. That is, he will just make stuff up.

Having told us he is going to do this, the second part of the book begins, chronicling the life of the subject as imagined by our author. You might think that, while what we are reading is not true, it will at least be clear.

But you would be wrong, because the author assumes you will be familiar with most of the details surrounding the main character’s life. Even though, again, he is making it up.

People appear and start talking with no introduction. Who they are and why they are there is not explained. The focus and perspective shifts abruptly without warning.

Also, it is translated from French.

You might say this sounds like it would be absolutely baffling.  Completely incomprehensible and impossible to follow. But wait! I haven’t told you the very best part yet.

The subject of our story, Baron Nikolai Robert Maximilian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg, sometimes known as Roman, is totally insane. Thus, everything he does, he does with no apparent reason or motivation. The main through line in his life is violence. Some kids dream about being doctors or firefighters; young Ungern-Sternberg dreamed about committing war crimes. Well, he achieved his dream.

What history does confirm about Ungern-Sternberg is that he was an anti-communist (“White”) general in the Russian Civil War. He committed many atrocities fighting in southern Russia and Mongolia. At some point, he decided he was the reincarnation of Genghis Khan and attempted to reestablish the ancient empire of the great warlord of the Asian steppes.

Even Pozner’s account, as fantasy-based as it is, agrees with later historical research on this point, although Pozner almost certainly took it upon himself to embellish Ungern’s rampage with extra horror. Because, you see, Pozner was a communist, and deliberately chose the Mad Baron as his subject to make the anti-communist side look as bad as he possibly could.

In that respect, he made a good choice, because the Baron’s reign of terror definitely does not make him a sympathetic  figure. Of course, Pozner left out many of the atrocities carried out by his own side. He’s far from the only chronicler of history to do that.

Now, here’s the odd thing: for as bizarre as this book is—and it certainly is way more bizarre than what I was expecting when I went looking for a simple biography of an obscure historical figure—it is nonetheless interesting, and held my attention in a way that a conventional history probably wouldn’t have. In the words of Benoit Blanc: “It makes no damn sense. Compels me, though.”

Books like this don’t get written anymore. Nowadays, books hold your hand, explain everything, often multiple times. In a weird way, it was refreshing to read a book that was like, “Here’s a baffling account of a little-known period in history, as seen through the eyes of a violent lunatic and described by a lying communist. You’re on your own, kid; have fun storming the castle!”

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What’s more important: having a good system, or having good personnel? Broadly speaking, this distinction can be used across many fields of endeavor, whether it’s debating what makes a superior NFL team or evaluating how to run a company. It can be applied to the study of history—think Carlyle’s “Great Man” theory vs. Marxist interpretations where economic and sociological factors are primary causes. It’s a major division across academic disciplines, i.e. “the Humanities” as opposed to “the Sciences.”

All Tomorrows is a work of speculative science fiction that seems to lean heavily on a systematic analysis of life itself; that is, evolutionary biology. It is framed as the work of a future alien xeno-biologist recording the history of humanity as it evolved and journeyed into space. Like Gibbon standing among the ruins of ancient Rome, the narrator is reflecting on all the trials and challenges faced by the many species that originally came from Earth.

The initial “next steps” for humanity as described in this book include journeying to Mars, and of course, the inevitable Earth vs. Mars war that follows. From there, humans begin breeding to become better adapted to space travel, and over the millennia turn into a variety of strange creatures.

Speaking of strange creatures, they eventually encounter a species referred to as “the Qu”, beings with a God-complex who remake other lifeforms they encounter in experimental ways, leading to some true abominations. The Qu have seeded other worlds with lifeforms based on dinosaurs from Earth’s past, and once they meet “the Star People”, they are disgusted with this upstart species, and remake them into a variety of abominations as punishment.

Eventually, the Qu depart, and evolution continues to take its course, eventually leading to the rise of a machine-intelligence based empire with no regard for biological life. This empire also eventually experiences its downfall, and over hundreds of millions of years, new species of intelligent life arise to take their place.

As the timescale implies, the scope and span of this book is huge and sweeping. There are no “characters” as such, unless we consider whole species as characters. Many of the creatures described seem disturbing and abominable, although perhaps if given the chance, they would say the same about us. Evolution produces many strange things.

Although the book appears to be heavily steeped in systematic thinking, at the very end, the limits of such thinking are revealed. I won’t spoil it, but the title has a significance that becomes apparent only in the last line. This is where the comparison to Gibbon feels most apt; even when discussing the evolution of life on a massive scale, the author somehow never loses sight of the particular, of those little details that we categorize as “human.”

The book is illustrated by the author with images depicting all the different creatures described, which offers us a glimpse of how deeply unsettling and bizarre they are. H.R. Giger would be proud.

All in all, the book is a great way to stretch your imagination and think in cosmological scales. I’d even go so far as to say it’s inspiring, because all the vast cycles of rise and fall imply many untold stories within them. Highly recommended to fans of science-fiction.