The Violent Century – Review

The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar. Tachyon edition ARC reviewed for Netgalley.

Let’s say there really were super heroes. That some event created people with powers far beyond any of the rest of us, all over the world. And then the world went to war. What would that be like? What would change? Would the men and women with these powers be human, like the rest of us?

This is the central idea of The Violent Century, the exploration of that great “what if”. It asks the questions, explicitly, what makes a hero? What makes a man? I am not sure that it answers them, but it goes deep. It digs and gouges, searching for something. For meaning.

This book is more than another take on the “man behind the mask” trope. It is a paean and an elegy, a love letter to heroes, and a lament at the painful need for them, especially in this last century-the violent century.

Lavie Tidhar is Jewish. This is important. This is important because many of our greatest heroes were born of the Second World War, and were born of Jewish artists, some of whom themselves fought in this war. Stan Lee. Jack Kirby. Jerry Siegel and Joel Shuster. Jewish men in America who created heroes to fight enemies that seemed unstoppable. Some of these men actually appear in the novel, and speak of the need for heroes. This is not subtext. It is text. Europe needed Heroes. It got men and women, who might have been heroes of a sort. And millions died.

The heroes in this story are also men and women. They drink, they weep, they cry and fail and die. They have extraordinary power and extraordinary responsibility and still mess it up sometimes. But they try. And they go on, and sometimes they get to find a thing that might make a man. They find some love, perhaps. This might be an answer.

Then there is the structure. The Violent Century is not written like a Novel. It is a comic book with no pictures. The sentences are short. Broken. Sections are cut into scenes rather than chapters. Descriptions are vivid and dynamic. There are no quotation marks. The dialog runs into the narration because there are no speech balloons to mark it. Again, this is not subtext. It is text, explicit in the story. Eventually.

It is effective.

This book is haunting, and challenging, and exciting. I read it and I will read it again. I am grateful for the chance to review it for Netgalley, but I will buy the book and I will try to see if answers are to be found within, because I think I would like to know what makes a hero and what makes a man.

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The Unnamed Bears Favor – Review

The Unnamed Bears Favor by J. Lyon Layden

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Unnamed Bears Favor
by J. Lyon Layden

Disclaimer-I received a free review copy from Netgalley.

This is the story of an unnamed boy who yearns to be named a man in his stone-age (?) tribe. The story begins when he is chosen to join a group of mystical hunters, who offer him just that chance. However, he must go on a journey fraught with peril and haunted by magic and mystery.

This novella is a lushly worded, tightly paced journey into mystery, in the most traditional sense of the word.
The author evokes the worldview of a paleolithic person in a way that feels authentic, although we can never know what authentic actually means here. The world built in this compact story is unknown and unknowable, dangerous and beautiful and enchanting. I wish there were more.

One of the things that I find most compelling here is the author’s reluctance to explain. Things are left unsaid, and things that we, the readers, do not understand are taken for granted. The characters do not explain things that they already know, just as would happen in real life, so the reader is left to wonder. What was real? What was confusion, or hallucination, or actually magic?

The use of language is also well wrought. The differences in dialect, hinting at connections beyond the tribal level, are interesting and fun. I found some parts where the language was perhaps a little too overwrought and got in the way of comprehension in a way that felt unintentional, though, so that line is a fine one.

I also spotted some basic typos, but such things are often unavoidable and so I didn’t find them to detract overall from the story.

My only drawback, and the reason I’m not going for 5 stars, is that the ending felt rushed and vaguely flat. I felt that this might actually be enough of a world to merit a full novel, if a short one to maintain that mystery.

Overall, this was a genuine pleasure to read. I am grateful to the author and the publisher, Aurelia Leo, for the review copy on Netgalley.

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Lesath – Review

Lesath by A.M. Kherbash

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

*Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book from Netgalley.

Lesath by A.M. Kherbash is taut, eerie, and disconcerting. It’s a modern creature feature of a book, which embraces tropes of Gothic literature, psychological horror and X-files style secrets to create a surreal journey through… What? A prison? An asylum? A mad scientist’s laboratory? All three? It never becomes entirely clear.

Indeed, not a whole lot does become entirely clear. The protagonist, Greg, an aimless man living from his car apparently decides to investigate a mysterious old manor in the woods for his podcast. He ends up trapped inside and the only explanation he’s given, that he is identical to an escaped inmate, might actually be true… Or it might be a delusion?
Things, of course, take a dark turn very quickly. People die. “Things” come out of ducts. More people die. And so it goes…

Many times reading this book, I was reminded of the greasy, oddly quiet scenery of horror games like Psycho-break or The most recent Resident Evil. Things are clearly bad. There is books on the walls, inexplicable mild and black ichor. You know something is coming. But lots of the scenes are just walking around checking doors and drawers.

This is my first criticism of the novel. There is a lot of compelling grotesquery and tension, but far too much of the book is taken up by sudden scenes of nothing much. The nature of the story, I think, is such that the reader is supposed to be confused by unexpected scene changes, as a way to emphasize the precarious nature of the protagonist’s mental state. But often times, the breaks don’t actually lead anywhere, and structurally seem to lose effect after the meeting of the book.

My other, and main criticism, is that a lot of the language used in the book simply didn’t mean what it’s supposed to mean. The author send to be struggling for an elevated register to evoke the Gothic tradition. The problems with this are twofold: first, sure this is a modern setting, the dialog is modern, and the clash between the elevated narrative and modern dialog is so great as to be almost comical. The second is that the register becomes so high that I dear many readers, and the author as well, don’t be really understand the words.

Phrases like “after observing the prevalent silence…” Or “he expressed a contented sigh” or the extremely frequent use of “discern” (13 times in 159 pages!) Feel like thesaurus abuse, and indeed incorrect usage at times.

Which is not to say that the writing is poor, it isn’t. It’s often well phrased and interesting. The dialog can be snappy and fun, too. But it can also be a bit messy and overwrought. I think a bit of time with a developmental editor could make the creepy story at the core of this novel shine.

I burned though it because I did want to see what happened, and the ending was fittingly unsettling and slightly confusing. I did enjoy the book, and appreciate the chance to read it given by the author, A.M. Kherbash.

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Mindscape – Review

Mindscape by Andrea Hairston

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This surreal, intricately woven book deals with an earth that is fundamentally changed by the appearance of a phenomenon called the Barrier, a web of mysterious energy that divides the land into regions that can only be left via seasonal corridors through the Barrier, or under the guidance of mystics who can commune with the Barrier to open pathways through.

The zones thus divided have grown independently, with divergent cultures and technologies, and more than anything, values. And these values lead to conflict.

It is beyond me to summarize this book. It is a fever dream, a mesh of languages ranging from German to Igbo to variations of English and more, a refusal of mere plot, arc or story. It shifts in perception and reality and detail until it becomes less about what is happening, and more about the language itself. There is a beginning, and there is an end. There is a journey here, but the value is in each individual footstep along the way, rather than the destination.

It is a challenging read, and confusion is to be expected, but the value in engaging with the challenge cannot be denied.

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Resurrection Fireplace – Review

The Resurrection Fireplace by Hiroko Minagawa

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Resurrection Fireplace by Hiroko Minagawa, Translation by Matt Trayvaud

In 18th Century London, a group of anatomy students and their professor get caught up in murder, fraud, and confusion as deception piles on deception in this whirlwind mystery.

This is far and away one of the most intricate, convoluted plots I’ve read in recent years. There are lies within lies, plots within plots, and crimes both real and imagined. The villains are revealed, then changed, and finally, when all is made clear, the light comes on and you realize the clues were there all along… Or were they?

It’s a trip, and one well worth taking.

This is the rare Japanese novel that doesn’t revel in its Japanese-ness. It does a wonderful job of evoking the grime, corruption and class heirarchy of Georgian London without exoticizing it, although there are certain times with the exposition of cultural norms can feel heavy for people familiar with the setting (as most Japanese audiences definitely aren’t).

The overall pace is smooth and fast, and the characters are well-drawn. The misery of the underclass is played out without pandering, as well. I quite enjoyed the irreverence of the anatomy students at their grisly work, but there are definitely sections that might turn off the squeamish. The violence is not gratuitous, but anatomists in 1700s London dealt in rotting flesh and death. It’s not pretty.

I will say that the last section, where everything was tied together, felt a bit rushed and entirely over-complicated, but it seems to fit the overall tone of the story well. I was genuinely taken by surprise by one or two turns, but it was not confusing at all.

Let me say one thing about the translation: This was masterful. I am a professional translator of Japanese to English, and the mere thought of some of the challenges this book brought (the use of original Middle English poetry?! Translated from Japanese?! Holy moly…) makes me dizzy. The language is natural, and the characters have clear voices, and the translation never gets in your face as “translation.” It’s outstanding.

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