Books: Winter’s Gifts By Ben Aaronovitch (2023)

“When retired FBI Agent Patrick Henderson calls in an ‘X-Ray Sierra India’ incident, the operator doesn’t understand. He tells them to pass it up the chain till someone does. That person is FBI Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds. Leaving Quantico for snowbound Northern Wisconsin, she finds that a tornado has flattened half the town – and there’s no sign of Henderson. Things soon go from weird to worse, as neighbors report unsettling sightings, key evidence goes missing, and the snow keeps rising – cutting off the town, with no way in or out. Something terrible is awakening. As the clues lead to the coldest of cold cases – a cursed expedition into the frozen wilderness – Reynolds follows a trail from the start of the American nightmare, to the horror that still lives on today.”

Winter’s Gifts is another delightful novella linked to, but not central to, Ben Aaronovitch’s fun urban fantasy novels, the UK based Rivers of London series. Kimberley, as side character in other books, comes forward here in a well-paced, but not really deep tale about Native Spirits of Wisconsin and ill-conceived 1844 Marsh Expedition.  I like her, but at some point a British writer trying to write about an American women in the United States –and in Wisconsin to boot-, you get a bit distracted by some Aaronvitch’s failed attempts –deliberate or not- to sound like he knows what he’s writing about. But American writers make British characters all stereotypes, so why not a British author doing light urban fantasy? Like all winter coats are called parkas, everyone has guns and pulls them on visitors; coffee is brewed on a kettle on the burner, uses the word flashlight (instead of torches), but uses tyres instead of tires, frostbite into frostnip, and headlights into headlamps. There are other examples, but you get the point.

Still, nothing feels too off. I grew up in northwestern suburbs of Chicago, and my paternal Great Aunt lived in Waupaca, Wisconsin (where my uncle now lives), so Aaronvitch gets the basic aspects of the state correct. It’s also another avenue in the Rivers of London books to explore, which opens the series, as any series ages, it can become stale. He’ll do that again later in the year when The Masquerades of Spring novella is released and is set in New York at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th Century.

Books: Lincoln's Dreams (1987)

“For Jeff Johnston, a young historical researcher for a Civil War novelist, his reality is redefined on a bitter cold night near the close of a lingering, brutal winter. He meets Annie, an intense and lovely young woman suffering from vivid, intense nightmares (seems to be dreaming General Lee's dreams). Haunted by the dreamer and her unrelenting dreams, Jeff leads Annie on an emotional odyssey through the heartland of the Civil War in search of a cure. On long-silenced battlefields their relationship blossoms–two obsessed lovers linked by unbreakable chains of history, torn by a duty that could destroy them both.”

 

While Willis had been publishing short stories and novellas for years, Lincoln’s Dreams is her debut novel released in 1987. The book is about parapsychology, metaphysical speculation, death, and love. Willis explores the social sciences, something she would continue to do in latter works. she weaves technology. The book portrays a young man’s unrequited love for a woman who might or might not be experiencing reincarnation or precognition, and whose outlook verges on suicidal. The historical research is top notch. The Civil War scenes well drawn out, they felt intimate and personal. But some of the characters, especially Annie, come across too trusting of both creepy Richard and Jeff.

 

And the truth of the matter, nothing much really happens here –despite it being a clever and original idea. It runs rather smoothly, but I did expect something to happen. But nothing really does. Also, as another review pointed out, Willis was –maybe- being too clever:

 

“When you look at the fact that Traveller's (Lee’s horse) original name was Jefferson Davis, and the protagonist is Jeff, and as he says in the end, he is sold to Annie (the Lee stand-in) in a way, which gives the ending further echoes. But still. Too clever, too obvious. ”

Books: Rendezvous with Rama By Arthur C. Clarke (1973)

“At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama, after the Hindu god. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at an inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredibly, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence. It will kindle their wildest dreams...and fan their darkest fears. For no one knows who the Ramans are or why they have come. And now the moment of rendezvous awaits — just behind a Raman airlock door.”

 

A cornerstone of late 20^th Century science fiction, Rendezvous with Rama is a great book for what it really does not reveal. Sure, there are multiple conversations, philosophical conversations about the ship, where and why it’s here. These were the tropes that set off the imagination of writers during the Golden Years of this genre. What I appreciated from the tale was Clarke not going into great detail about how complicated it might be to get a ship to latch onto an alien one and time it would take to do it. This led to some fantastic exploration of the ship itself, with the of the Endeavour postulating of how such a spaceship might really work in terms of our Earthbound physics. Pondering things like how can it generate gravity, how could it travel? What would the aliens be like? What is the purpose a large body of water, and those featureless buildings on an island within?

Though published 51 years ago, I think the book holds up pretty well. Like all science fiction set centuries ahead, you can be cynical about what these “futurist” were thinking (like the ones published in the 50s that still had everyone smoking like chimney’s in the 21^st Century), like characters having two wives (one on Earth, one on the Moon or Mars). That seemed a weird choice for Clarke. I also appreciated the shortness of this classic take on First Contact (though not with any actual aliens, but the technology left behind). The arcs of the characters were satisfying and to the point, and everything was wrapped up (I guess) in 274 mass market paperback pages.

One interesting bit: the book was meant to stand alone, although its final sentence suggests otherwise:

“And on far-off Earth, Dr. Carlisle Perera had as yet told no one how he had wakened from a restless sleep with the message from his subconscious still echoing in his brain: The Ramans do everything in threes.”

Clarke denied that this sentence was a hint that the story might be continued. In his foreword to the book's 1989 sequel, Rama II, he stated that it was just a good way to end the first book, and that he added it during a final revision.

Still, he and Gentry Lee pen a total of four novels set in the Rama universe, including 1991’s The Garden of Rama, and 1993’s Rama Revealed (Lee would write two more novels set in the same universe without Clarke, 1995’s Bright Messengers and 1999’s Double Full Moon Night).