Books: The Gates By John Connolly (2009)

Three years ago, I picked up John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things. That 2006 release was the authors’ first attempt of joining the literary world of YA fiction (Connolly is known mostly for his mystery thrillers that have supernatural overtones to them) that exploded in the wake of the Harry Potter franchise. And while some might consider it more adult (and when Borders was open, it was shelved in the Sci-Fi section) due to some of its themes, I enjoyed the book, but have not read anything of his since. Then I was at the library returning a book and wandered around to the new releases area and saw The Creepers by him. I looked through it and thought I this would be a fun, light read as the year is closing out. But The Creepers is the third book in a series, so I wandering over to the fiction section of the La Verne library, I found the first two books, The Gates and The Infernals. Long story short (too late, right?), I checked out all three books.

And I was not disappointed.

“Young Samuel Johnson and his dachshund, Boswell, are trying to show initiative by trick-or-treating a full three days before Halloween, which is how they come to witness strange goings-on at 666 Crowley Road. The Abernathys don't mean any harm by their flirtation with the underworld, but when they unknowingly call forth Satan himself, they create a gap in the universe, a gap through which a pair of enormous gates is visible. The gates to Hell. And there are some pretty terrifying beings just itching to get out.... Can one small boy defeat evil? Can he harness the power of science, faith, and love to save the world as we know it?”

Connelly’s premise is not earth shatteringly original, but it’s in his execution that book becomes brilliantly hilarious. He’s able to balance some great characterization with droll, sometimes slapstick, humor along with explaining particle physics and alternate/parallel universes.

And while Samuel and Boswell are great, it’s the demon Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities, who ultimately steals the whole book. He’s hapless demon, stuck in his Wasteland with nothing to do and keeping away from the Great Malevolence (what the devil is called here). But fate takes him from his lonely throne and puts him into the middle of conflict that, ironically, could put him –along with Earth- in great danger.

There is plenty of humor -at times, it’s very Douglas Adams like in tone, or for more modern readers, you could consider Terry Pratchet and Eoin Cofler - for both kids and adults (who can either read it themselves or to their kids), and Connolly brings enough whimsy to his old-fashion tale that book speeds along fast -which is good, because the book does take time to get going (the author –in both the main body of the book and in footnotes at the bottom- goes on about quantum mechanics, wormholes, black holes, dark matter, the big bang, the Higgs boson "god particle" and Switzerland's Large Hadron Collider. 

While this series seems to be geared towards the YA audience, my library shelved them in fiction. I'm curious if this was intentional based on his adult books (and I'm thinking that Borders shelved it in Sci-Fi as well). Just curious. 

Books: The Deaths of Tao by Wesley Chu (2013)

The Prophus and the Genjix are at war. For centuries they have sought a way off-planet, guiding humanity’s social and technological development to the stage where space travel is possible. The end is now in sight, and both factions have plans to leave the Earth, but the Genjix method will mean the destruction of the human race.

That’s a price they’re willing to pay. 

It’s up to Roen and Tao to save the world.

By far, The Deaths of Tao outshines its predecessor. Partly because most of the World Building that author Chu need setting up took place in the first book; this enables the story to hit the ground running.  Also, this is a deeper realized book, even though at times I felt there was too much downtime between the action set pieces. 

Chu has also created a good villain in the form of Enzo (with his Zoras Genjix). He’s basically every James Bond body guard to main Bad Guy–big, muscled, blond (or as they’re called Adonis Vessels) - but with a brain. And the human character is so arrogant and so consumed with what he’s trained to be since birth, you often times just wanted to slap the SOB for being so rash (which is a nice departure from fictional villains –he acts more than talks).

Unlike the first book, where we basically got only Roen and Tao’s point of view, this book opened the world to other viewpoints (plus, three years have passed since The Lives of Tao, which was a very interesting and creative way of setting up the back-story of Roen’s domestic issues coming into conflict with his duties to Prophus). But by doing this, we get a deeper and better view of how the Quasing’s have been influencing Earth’s past since the dawn of time. 

As noted, I do believe the book could’ve been whittled down a bit. Chu’s desire to show everything in great detail reminds me why I’ve put aside the George R.R. Martin Game of Thrones books –I get bored with all this ennui. I’m sure it’s important to the writer to show –in book form- how long training takes, but too much can slow down the book (even though I read this quicker than the first –but I admit I jumped around the page, finding stuff that I felt moved the story along).

Though, I’m guess, some find this detailed look into various martial arts history fascinating, I thought a time jump here and there would’ve made the story move even faster.

Finally, according to the author’s acknowledgements at the end of this book, The Death of Tao was moved from summer 2014 release to fall of 2013 due to the success of the first book. Which was great, because I could read them back-to-back, but does that mean book three will be out next summer or out in 2015? For me, such long delay between releases gives me a chance to move on to something else. And while I’m not the only reader on the planet, I am aging like an over ripe banana. I don’t have the time to wait and build that anticipation anymore. Next summer would be fine, but beyond that I may never want to read a book three if Angry Robot delays it until 2015.

Books: The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu (2013)

“When out-of-shape IT technician Roen Tan woke up and started hearing voices in his head, he naturally assumed he was losing it. He wasn’t. He now has a passenger in his brain – an ancient alien life-form called Tao, whose race crash-landed on Earth before the first fish crawled out of the oceans. Now split into two opposing factions – the peace-loving, but under-represented Prophus, and the savage, powerful Genjix – the aliens have been in a state of civil war for centuries. Both sides are searching for a way off-planet, and the Genjix will sacrifice the entire human race, if that’s what it takes. Meanwhile, Roen is having to train to be the ultimate secret agent. Like that’s going to end up well…”

Tan is the heart of The Lives of Tao; he’s tubby, socially awkward to the nth degree, and unmotivated to change it. Roen, like many of us, is dissatisfied with being a cog in the machine that runs corporate America. But now that Tao is residing within him, the Chicagoian now sees an opportunity to change his destiny. 

But, as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. Author Chu sort of forgoes the easy route of having Tan be a natural at his training. Instead, the young man gets beat up by all sorts people, including a senior citizen and a few women. His training takes up a good percentage of the book, even as Tao hands out the history of the ongoing civil war. There is a lot of humor here, as both Tao and Tan get off some great one-liners, but the author treats the women here –at times- by their looks. While the novel is geared toward men, I think women would get a bang out of it, but my be put-off somewhat by the fact that the women are defined first by their looks and then by their skill.

Also, the whole host thingy reminded me too much of the Trill on Star Trek, but nothing is new in science fiction. The books holds together fairly well for a debut and beyond a rushed ending, I enjoyed it.

Books: Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey (2013)

"For generations, the solar system -Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt- was humanity's great frontier. Until now. The alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has appeared in Uranus's orbit, where it has built a massive gate that leads to a starless dark. Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships going out to examine the artifact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding, with the destruction of Holden at its core. As the emissaries of the human race try to find whether the gate is an opportunity or a threat, the greatest danger is the one they brought with them."

The biggest problem I had with Abaddon’s Gate, the third book in James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse series, was how dull half the book was. While the authors continue to widen the franchise beyond the main character’s, introducing new ones with other perspectives on the ongoing issue with the protomolecule, but the action is slow and lots pages go by where nothing really important goes on, just a bunch of people talking and making leaps of logic that seem surprising. 

New characters like Anna were annoying (religion does get the short-shift in science fiction, it’s either not there or it’s usually just a group of extremist. And while it’s nice to see it presented in a somewhat even tone, the authors seem to be afraid to make them interesting then), and Clarissa, a women Hell-bent for revenge on Holden and his crew, is too much mustache twirling villain to be anything but dull. And the fact that towards the end her hatred vacillates back to sort of understanding the situation going on if the military –led by an even more scenery chewing military idiot named Ashford- destroys the Ring –the latest metamorphous of the protomolecule . It makes her forgettable, sadly. 

Meanwhile, I could not help but feel that this series is really Star Trek –if Star Trek did hard core science fiction and not made Earth and its surrounding planets a fascist utopia. In this series humans have moved past Earthly racism such as skin color, sexual orientation and other minor things, just like Star Trek, but xenophobia and distrust of others –the Martians, the ‘Belters and whatever the protomolecule really represents- has not gone away. So it does one up Trek there. But while we get glimpses into the origin of the protomolecule, whatever is truly behind them is still not fully revealed. They use, like the Wormholes aliens featured in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, dead detective Miller to give out sometimes useful, but always cloaked in hazy gauze, information (and the gateway to this "starless dark" is DS9's wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant). Thus I feel the authors painted themselves into a corner and used the only tool they could, the deus ex machina, to resolve the ending. 

But, surprisingly, I do like the series as a whole so far. So while I may nitpick some stuff, I did enjoy the first two books. So the third was not as good, but doesn’t take away from what the authors are trying to do. And with at least three more volumes to come (and a potential TV series), I’ll just say that I’m curious where the series will go from here.

Books: Two Boys Kissing By David Levithan (2013)

A kiss is just a kiss, as the saying goes. A kiss can launch ships, a kiss can heal a child’s wound and kiss can determined the fate of the universe. In David Levithan’s Two Boys Kissing, it becomes the catalyst for a group of young teenagers navigating a new world of freedoms, tempered triumphs and loss and, for one, a darkness of overwhelming self-hatred. 

The novel is told in a sort-of third person narrative, a Greek chorus if you will, of all the people who have died of AIDS, all the ones who “were going to be your role models….to give you art and music and confidence and shelter and a much better world.” They died, paving the way for what we have today –a more open society that is coming to terms with their gay children. These voices of the book take us to Harry and Craig, who’ve have recently split-up, to Avery and Ryan who meet at the separate High School prom for LGBT students, to Neil and Peter, a committed high school couple and to Cooper Riggs, a bolt of self-hatred for who is and who spends hours trolling websites and hook-up apps in search of men who can fulfill his dreams of brutal sex. 

Despite breaking up, Craig and Harry remain friends. So much so that when Craig comes up with the idea of breaking the world’s record for kissing, Harry agrees. The boys set up in front of their school and with help from friends and supporters, what starts out as small event, blossoms over its 32 hours into millions of viewers over the internet as the world watches two boys kissing.

While clearly driven to the YA market, Two Boys Kissing can be read by older folks, especially the gay men who survived the Plague Years. Like parents who pass their legacy onto their children, those gay men who came before us had hoped to do that to those that would follow in their footsteps. But so many have died, so many have passed into the Undiscovered Country, that history of what they fought for is like an old black and white TV show, interesting to some, but boring to most. The voices in the book want to help, especially to Cooper who imbibes every self-loathing aspect many early generations had to deal with –though some of that still exists today. But the power between the past, the present and the unknowable future sometimes makes that help difficult.

It is a brilliant book for those teens that are coming out now (and so much more sooner than even 20 years ago), those youths who don’t know who paved their way to that early closet door busting. I mean, many gay men who survived AIDS are bothered by today’s gay youth lack of enthusiasm for activism. And with this book, perhaps Levithan can show them what was done to give them their bright present and future, for the novels chorus laments: “As we become the distant past, you become a future few of us would have imagined. We resent you. You astonish us.”

Books: Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed (2012)

Throne of the Crescent Moon is the debut novel from Saladin Ahmed. 

The Crescent Moon Kingdoms, home to djenn and ghuls, holy warriors and heretics, are at the boiling point of a power struggle between the iron-fisted Khalif and the mysterious master thief known as the Falcon Prince. In the midst of this brewing rebellion a series of brutal supernatural murders strikes at the heart of the Kingdoms. It is up to a handful of heroes to learn the truth behind these killings. 

Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, “the last real ghul hunter in the great city of Dhamsawaat,” just wants a quiet cup of tea. Three score and more years old, he has grown weary of hunting monsters and saving lives, and is more than ready to retire from his dangerous and demanding vocation. But when an old flame’s family is murdered, Adoulla is drawn back to the hunter’s path.  Raseed bas Raseed, Adoulla’s young assistant, is a hidebound holy warrior whose prowess is matched only by his piety. But even as Raseed’s sword is tested by ghuls and manjackals, his soul is tested when he and Adoulla cross paths with the tribeswoman Zamia. Zamia Badawi, Protector of the Band, has been gifted with the near-mythical power of the lion-shape, but shunned by her people for daring to take up a man’s title. She lives only to avenge her father’s death. Until she learns that Adoulla and his allies also hunt her father’s killer. Until she meets Raseed. When they learn that the murders and the Falcon Prince’s brewing revolution are connected, the companions must race against time to save the life of a vicious despot. In so doing they discover a plot for the Throne of the Crescent Moon that threatens to turn Dhamsawaat, and the world itself, into a blood-soaked ruin.

First, I was surprised how short the novel is, running just a mere 274 pages. It first reminded me of David Eddings The Belgariad, a five novel series that was anywhere between 300 to 350 pages in length. Those books were not overtly complex, and the story was rather straightforward. But Eddings, fully aware of the garden of thorns he was stepping into with his fantasy series (the early 1980s was the beginning of slew of fantasy novels by authors insprired by Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings), so he added a lot of humor into the dark universe he created. Thus he created a readable and quirky series (that eventually became 12 books) that set it apart from LOTR, but could still be appreciated and liked by those fans of that series.

Ahmed does that here as well, but the book feels too close to being an over-long short story than the first salvo in what appears to be a mutli-volume series. Unlike Eddings, the author story is too straightforward, filled with too much coincidence and convenience. As another reviewer pointed out, “the plot moved from one set to the next with very little difficulty, and the usual way of things was for one character or another to say something along the lines of, ‘Oh. Problem? No worries. I have a guy that can help us with that.’”

And this made me conflicted. I appreciate a writer who can tell a lean fantasy based series and not get bogged down in the ennui that caused me to give up on Robert Jordan and even George R.R. Martin (great attention to detail, but sometimes you got to cut this crap out), but the story is lacking because he did not fully create a sense of urgency with the characters or even the situation. 

And the dread deus ex machine showed up at the end, and I was not surprised by it all –Ahmed telegraphed it ages earlier. Still, he created a very real world -added a bit of diversity that is much needed in this genre- but all that goodness goes to waste on story that felt rushed and incomplete.