defrog | I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (DECEMBER 2012 EDITION)

Book reports! For yr pleasure.

JUST FINISHED

Bloody Waters by Jason Franks

The debut novel from the writer of The Sixsmiths, which is equal parts urban fantasy, satire of the entertainment business and rock'n'roll manifesto. The premise may sound familiar – ambitious rock guitarist literally sells soul to the Devil – but the execution is anything but typical, starting with the fact that the guitarist is a woman, and she’s arguably the more ruthless of the two. And being a woman in the world of heavy metal, she has to be. Clarice Marnier’s not very likeable, but she’s incredibly well-written and believable as a protagonist. And her journey to the top is as good a send-up of the music biz as anything Carl Hiassen has come up with to date. While the ending feels a bit anticlimactic on first read, it’s certainly unconventional and thought-provoking. Anyway, it’s a good, entertaining read, and particularly recommended if you like Hiassen, Mike Carey and Lester Bangs.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m mentioned in the acknowledgements page, as I was a test reader for a couple of chapters. So it’s fair to say I’ve been waiting for this one for awhile.

JUST STARTED

The Void Captain’s Tale by Norman Spinrad

Continuing my explorations of Spinrad, this novel is set in the same universe as Child Of Fortune, but was written and published before it. As the title suggests, it’s the tale of a Void Captain – specifically, it’s about his forbidden affair with a pilot that puts his entire ship and its passengers and crew in jeopardy. Which – this being Spinrad – is a simplistic description of a more complicated tale. Stay tuned.

RECENT TITLES

The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The classic novel of migrant workers fleeing the Dust Bowl in search of work in the fruit fields of California, where they’re exploited by land owners and shoved around by the police. Steinbeck writes with equal parts beauty and anger, and there’s little doubt where his sympathies lie in an America where bankers and land barons have all the power. Whether you agree with him or not, what’s really striking is how relevant the book still is. The last two elections have rehashed most of the same basic class-warfare dilemmas presented in this novel – the rich people still get all the breaks, and the poor (and anyone who stands up for them) are denounced as Socialists and pepper-sprayed and Tasered by cops if they make noise. If you’ve never read it before, I highly recommend doing it now.

Robopocalypse by Daniel H Wilson

A fictional oral history of a robot uprising in the near future, when robots are commonplace, after a scientist creates an Artificial Intelligence so smart it develops self-awareness and decides to take over the world by downloading itself into every connected machine on Earth (robots, cars, cell phones, airplanes, etc) and turning them against us. The storyline of the actual apocalypse works pretty well, but once the humans fight back, it gets patchy. And by focusing on a small group of characters in the US, the UK and Japan, it never feels as global as it ought to. Even the “oral history” is unconvincing, as everyone seems to give their oral history of past events in the present tense.

The Vengeful Virgin by Gil Brewer

Hard Case Crime reprint of a pulp noir tale by Gil Brewer. It’s the usual set-up – a sap falls for a sexpot femme fatale and conspires with her to murder her invalid father for his money, after which complications ensue and the plan unravels. But Brewer really tells it well, from the obsessive web of lust that Jack Ruxton gets caught up in to his increasingly wide-eyed paranoia that wraps up in an explosive climax. Even if you see the plot signposts coming a mile away, it’s a gripping read.

Honey In His Mouth by Lester Dent

More Hard Case Crime, this one a previously unpublished pulp noir from Lester Dent (better known as the guy who invented Doc Savage) about small-time grifter Walter Harsh, who gets roped into a plot to impersonate a South American dictator in order to steal a million dollars in treasury funds after his planned “exile”. It’s a different tone from Dent’s hagiographic he-man vibe in the Savage stories, but Harsh is a typical Dent villain – petty, arrogant and just plain dumb. It’s a bit loopy, especially one of the plot twists near the end, but it’s a decent, fun read if you like villains too greedy and dumb for their own good.

How not to steal a million,

This is dF