Degrees of Freedom by Simon Morden

Published by Orbit on May 31, 2011

It has been about a year since the Americans destroyed Oshicora Tower and buried the Artificial Intelligence known as Michael beneath a pile of rubble, an event that occurred in Theories of Flight, the middle novel of the Petrovich Trilogy.  World governments revile Petrovich, regarding him as a terrorist because of his conduct in that novel and the first, Equations of Life, while the residents of the Freezone regard him as their de facto leader, if not their savior.  Now the Freezone’s actual leader, Sonja Oshicora, is at odds with Petrovich, who has discovered what appears to be a nuclear bomb in the Freezone, apparently an undetonated device installed by the Armageddonists decades earlier.  (At last, the trilogy’s readers are given a meaningful glimpse of Armageddon’s cause.)  Petrovich soon discovers that neither the bomb nor Sonja’s actions are what they appear to be, leaving Petrovich once more to take on the task of saving the Freezone’s residents from internal and external forces that threaten its destruction.  Fortunately for Petrovich, he’s not acting quite so single-handedly this time, having assembled a loyal cadre of friends during the course of the first two novels, not to mention his wife, a deadly ex-nun.

In addition to the interesting question of how one builds a functioning, beneficial government that actually serves its people in the aftermath of Armageddon (a creative and intriguing problem I haven’t often seen science fiction address), Simon Morden takes on a more familiar theme, one that science fiction writers have tackled since at least the days of Asimov:  what is the difference between a human and an artificially intelligent machine?  Petrovich decides that Michael will have to convince the Catholic Church that a machine can have a soul.  I thought it would have been fascinating to see that conversation play out; unfortunately, it all happens offstage.  That disappointing omission makes the story seem incomplete, but that’s one of my few complaints about this surprisingly satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.

Morden delivers a nice blend of drama, action, and comedy in this novel.  Where the second novel seemed to feature violence for the sake of violence, the action scenes in this one are more purposeful.  The comedy that was overdone in the first novel and perhaps lacking in the second is more carefully balanced in this one:  funny little bits pop up here and there, my favorite being a character (Tabletop) who amuses herself by molding Petrovich’s plastic explosives into animal figures.  I was also fond of the character Valentina, a Russian whose zeal for revolution leaves her itching to foment an uprising against the Freezone’s oppressors (she makes sure her followers are supplied with red flags, because it’s the “traditional color of such occasions” and “doesn’t show blood”).

It’s not that often I come to admire a fictional character, but Petrovich is a truly admirable creation:  a self-sacrificing hero, an idealist who refuses to be seduced by power and fame.  Petrovich is the kind of unwilling leader we wish for in the real world:  someone with the wisdom to exercise power nobly for the betterment of society before standing aside to let everyone else do their part.  He’s a character of sufficient complexity to experience guilt about the consequences of his actions without feeling remorse for doing the right thing.  He gives a speech toward the novel’s end about how he’s changed because of the events described in the trilogy, how he’s learned to be unselfish, to value his friends and to be a reliable friend to them, but it’s clear that Petrovich had integrity from the start, and it’s his integrity, his consistent refusal to take the easy path when he doesn’t feel it’s morally correct, that makes him so interesting. 

Perhaps us Yanks should be disturbed that Petrovich characterizes Americans (or maybe just the members of the administration that rose to power after Armageddon) as “a bunch of nuclear-armed fundamentalist xenophobic psychopaths” but there are, after all, some American politicians who fit that description (and some Brits as well).  I don’t mind that Morden made the United States the baddest power on the planet, but Morden’s version of an American president made whacky by religious zeal is a stereotype we’ve seen many times.  That’s a minor quibble, though, and I actually liked the scenes in which Petrovich gets payback against the United States in a relatively nonviolent way.

Ultimately, I think this is the best novel of the trilogy.  I doubt it will make such sense to readers who haven’t read the first two, and so (despite my criticisms of the second novel, a book that in restrospect seems like filler designed to bridge the first and third) I recommend reading them all.  It’s great fun and not quite like anything I’ve read.  If Morden wants to give us more Petrovich stories, I’ll read them.  (Minor point:  If Morden does publish another Petrovich novel with Orbit, he needs to convince Orbit to lay out some cash for real cover art.  The geometric designs Orbit came up with give me a headache.)

RECOMMENDED

Blood Red Road by Moira Young

Published by Margaret K. McElderry (a division of Simon & Schuster) on June 7, 2011

Blood Red Road is a young adult novel and, as an old adult, I’m not part of its target demographic.  I thought I might like it anyway; I still enjoy the Heinlein juveniles I was reading as a kid and I’m generally a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction.  Blood Red Road is apparently a post-apocalyptic story (we’re told that reading and writing have largely become lost skills) but the nature of the apocalyptic event is never revealed.  Although the characters seem human enough, it’s not even clear to me that this story takes place on Earth; I can’t imagine any sort of apocalypse that would produce giant carnivorous Dune-style sandworms (recast as “hellwurms,” these have legs and claws).  Too much in this novel is left unexplained, perhaps because no credible explanation could be concocted (e.g., what kind of weapon is a “bolt shooter” and how does it work in the absence of a power source?).  The gaps in narrative logic are one of many reasons the novel just didn’t work for me.

Eighteen-year-old Saba has always blamed her nine-year-old sister Emmi for their mother’s death during childbirth.  When their father dies while trying to prevent five horsemen from stealing her twin brother Lugh, Saba suddenly finds herself in charge of Emmi’s welfare.  She twice tries to dump Emmi on the only responsible adults she can find so that she can rescue Lugh, but she can’t rid herself of Emmi that easily (after all, the conventions to which the novel adheres require Saba to learn to love her kid sister).  Saba undergoes a couple of ordeals that test her mettle as she tracks down her brother’s captors.  She also falls in love with the guy she keeps pretending to hate.

My most significant gripe about this novel is its utter predictability.  Saba’s adventures are predictable, the love story is predictable, and Saba learns predictable lessons like “nobody asks to be born into this world” and “never give up.”  The story is too shallow to generate interest, much less dramatic tension.  Although Saba lives in a violent world, the violence she experiences is so far from graphic that it’s difficult to take seriously.  That’s probably a plus for impressionable young adults but the muted tone robs the story of its potential power.

Another complaint:  there are elements in the story that border on fantasy, from a “heartstone” that grows warm when Saba is “near her heart’s desire” to a pet crow that might be the smartest character in the book.  So is this a realistic story of a post-apocalyptic future or a fantasy romance?  I think it tries to be both and doesn’t succeed very well at either one.

I give Moira Young credit for having her characters speak in a consistent voice, but I found the voice troubling.  It resembles the language spoken by the less educated characters in a TV western crossed with the language spoken by TV hillbillies.  (In fact, Young’s characters sound like they’re imitating the characters on Firefly -- a wonderfully funny show that exploits that style of speaking for comedic effect.)  Language would change after an apocalyptic event but it would evolve into something new; words like “britches” that have all but disappeared from our vocabulary would not make a sudden reappearance.

In short, I thought the novel was predictable, unoriginal and unconvincing.  On a positive note, the story moves along at a quick pace and Young’s writing style is lively.  For those reasons, young readers might enjoy it -- particularly those who haven’t been exposed to truly well-written examples of post-apocalyptic fiction and who might not realize that Blood Red Road suffers from comparison.  To be fair, the marketing materials claim the book is appropriate for readers who are 14 or older.  To a 14-year-old looking for a post-apocalyptic love story, I might recommend the novel; to other readers, not so much.  As an adult who reviews novels for other adults, I have to rate this one:

NOT RECOMMENDED

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on June 2, 2011

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead is very different from the other two Sara Gran novels I've read -- Come Closer and Dope -- but like those novels it is quirky and engaging. This novel is playful where the other two were serious. If you're looking for a straightforward detective story, keep looking: this isn't it. Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead resides somewhere between strange and bizarre. That's what I liked about it: I enjoyed its offbeat nature.

Claire DeWitt is the world's greatest private detective -- just ask her -- although her failure to find a friend who went missing when they were both teenagers has been a lifelong frustration. Claire is hired to find Vic Willing, a New Orleans prosecutor with some inherited wealth who disappeared after Katrina. He's been declared dead but his nephew wants Claire to find out what happened to him. Her first "clue" is a business card she finds on a restaurant floor that has no apparent connection to anything. This turns out to be consistent with Claire's unconventional detection methods, which include consulting the I Ching, divining personalities from fingerprints, and denting her rented truck so it will fit in with her surroundings. She rivals Sherlock Holmes in her deductive ability although she seems to pull clues from the ether as much as from close observation.

As Claire endeavors to solve the case, she gets involved with a drive-by shooting, wonders about people messing with electrical transformers atop utility poles who aren't wearing utility company uniforms, ponders the obscure advice about detecting proffered in a French tome on the subject, gets high (because drugs take you to places where you can find clues), is shot at (repeatedly), and reminisces about her mentor, Constance, who taught her most of what she knows about sleuthing while trying (unsuccessfully) to get Claire "to see something better in people, something that would lead us up a little higher."

Claire repeatedly says that we all have mysteries but we rarely want to solve them. Fear of the truth is one of the novel's themes. Clues are central to the novel but not in the usual sense. Clues in this novel aren't only the fruit of detection; they're the key to understanding life. We're told, for instance, that you can't change a person's life, you can only "leave clues ... and hope that they understand, and choose to follow."

The titular "city of the dead" is New Orleans -- a city in which it's "easy to die." Post-Katrina New Orleans plays a key role in the story. One of the characters says that there's "a lot to love" about New Orleans but "it ain't no place for happy endings." That's exactly how Gran portrays it. The novel takes a hard, honest look at the violence that endures in the spirited but tragic city. Gran realistically portrays what passes for a criminal justice system there: a dysfunctional alliance of police and prosecutors that was broken even before Katrina's devastation. Maybe the picture she paints of New Orleans is too bleak -- Gran hammers at the city's abysmal murder rate again and again, almost approaching literary overkill -- but I think the city deserves the spotlight she shines on it and I'm pleased to see the attention she focuses on a vibrant city that continues its struggle to recapture its glory. Gran clearly loves the city (a place where, Claire observes, "magic is real") and feels for the impoverished residents who were most affected by Katrina. There's a poignant moment in which a drug dealer talks about the anger that swelled within him in the aftermath of Katrina, anger that (as Claire points out) would be recognized as a symptom of PTSD under other circumstances or in a different place.

Claire does manage to solve the mystery of Willing's disappearance (she's the world's greatest detective, after all) although she fails to solve all the mysteries in her own life. The solution to the Willing mystery is a little sad, but remember: there are no happy endings in New Orleans. Within the context of this unconventional novel, it's nearly perfect.

I love the way the story is structured, I love the dialog, and I love the message. I hope Gran writes more Claire DeWitt novels.

RECOMMENDED

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson

Published by Riverhead on May 12, 2011

The Psychopath Test is fundamentally about the mental health community's obsession with labeling people -- an obsession that feeds into the nation's intolerance of nonconformity. Although The Psychopath Test is a very funny book, it touches on serious issues, including the increasingly common misdiagnosis of childhood bipolar disorder, the over-diagnosis of autism, and the delight that pharmaceutical companies take in the explosion of newly-discovered disorders.

Jon Ronson's entertaining romp through the mental health industry starts with an expensively produced book called Being or Nothingness (half the pages are blank) that puzzled recipients around the world. Investigating that mystery (and questioning the mental health of its author) led Ronson to wonder whether "madness was everywhere," which motivated him to page through the formidable Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (finding, as every honest person would, a few categories into which he might fall). Further investigation brought him to the Scientologists (a group that takes a dim view of psychology), who pointed him to an institutionalized individual who had been labeled (inappropriately, according to the Scientologists) a psychopath.

I think it's telling that when Ronson asked to interview Bob Hare, whose psychopathy checklist (the PCL-R) is widely used to "identify" psychopaths, Hare told him he could have an interview if he paid £600 to attend his seminar. The link between money and "the madness industry" (to quote the book's subtitle) is one of Ronson's stronger points, one that merits a book of its own.

It's ironic that Hare's initial research into psychopathy involved giving painful electric shocks to test subjects and that Hare feels he did nothing wrong (notably, a lack of empathy and lack of remorse are two of the criteria the PCL-R uses to label individuals as psychopaths). Hare also thinks that his research results are "a really big story" that could "forever change the way people see the world" (a grandiose sense of self-worth is another of the criteria). Interestingly, Hare would score himself only a 4 or 5 of 40 on the PCL-R while one of his critics would score him 29 or 30. Admittedly, both of the scorers are biased (the critic is a Scientologist) but that's the point: scores depend largely upon the subjective impressions of the scorers rather than scientifically measurable facts, rendering the PCL-R (like many rating instruments) of dubious value.

Seduced by the illusory clarity of the PCL-R, Ronson begins to pin the psychopath label on people he meets after momentary interactions. To be fair, Hare does the same. Hare tells Ronson that a hotel concierge who objected to Ronson's uninvited use of his telephone was a psychopath when it seems to me the concierge had a right to be upset.

The most important sentence in Ronson's book, I think, is this: "I now felt that the checklist was a powerful and intoxicating weapon that was capable of inflicting terrible damage if placed in the wrong hands." True enough, although I wonder whether anyone has the right hands. Hare does have the good grace to acknowledge that the PCL-R can be misused, pointing to the role it plays in the United States as a justification for labeling individuals as sexually violent persons. (It's actually the least important rating instrument used for that purpose; the others, supposedly more specific to sexual violence, are flawed and none have any predictive value in determining who will and who won't commit sex offenses in the future.) Of course, Hare's stated concern about the misuse of the PCL-R to label individuals as sexual predators doesn't stop him from coming to the United States to make money teaching psychologists how to use it for that very purpose.

The Psychopath Test does meander a bit. There's an amusing chapter on David Shayler's loony conspiracy theories and another that discusses a criminal profiler whose profile matched an innocent person more closely than the actual killer, leading to the innocent's arrest and prolonged incarceration while the criminal was left free to kill again. Exposing the goofiness of conspiracy theories and the myth that profilers can identify the guilty on the basis of glib assumptions about criminal behavior is useful but not on point with the rest of the book. Still, the tone of Ronson's book is light and chatty -- it isn't a polemic -- and he can be forgiven for straying off point for the sake of telling a good story. Those who are wedded to the efficacy of labeling individuals with mental disorders might be put off by this book, but I thought it was great fun.

RECOMMENDED

Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism by David Nickle

Published by ChiZine Publications on April 15, 2011

Eutopia is divided into two parts: nurture and nature. The first section (nurture) sets up what appears to be a terrific horror story, one with dynamic characters, a strong sense of place, and a variety of interesting but disquieting conflicts. The second section veers a bit off track with plot developments that are more silly than horrific, yet the story held my attention even when I was questioning its premise.

The setup creates the perfect atmosphere for a horror novel. Set in the fictional town of Eliada, Idaho, Eutopia begins in 1911 with the attempted hanging of Juke, a person (or perhaps a thing) with intensely black eyes. Juke survives the noose and Eliada's private police arrive in time to save Dr. Andrew Waggoner, the only black physician at Eliada Hospital, from the second half of the intended double lynching. The hangmen are wearing KKK garb and at least one is the brother of Maryanne Leonard, a seemingly deranged patient who died while Waggoner was trying to save her from injuries that apparently resulted from a botched outhouse abortion.

Joining the population of Eliada are Jason Thistledown, the only survivor of a mysterious epidemic that wiped out the town of Cracked Wheel, and Germaine Frost, a gatherer of information for the Eugenics Records Office. Jason and Waggoner soon discover that Maryanne isn't the only woman who suffered a grizzly death in the vicinity of Eliada. The other victims had similar injuries, but not all of them were pregnant.

Eliada's founder is Garrison Harper. His intent was to create a "stern Paradise," a "community devoid of strife and class warfare where men happily lifted their tools at sunrise and set them down again at sunset, not once tempted by Bolshevism or bad morals" -- in short, a 1911 version of Utopia. All the residents share common traits: the men are tall and strong, the women are "lean and comely," and none seem to suffer from a physical or mental infirmity. In contrast to Eliada's residents, many of those who live in the nearby woods are far from prime specimens of humanity. Neither is Juke, who lives in the hospital's quarantine building. Juke is a project of Dr. Bergstrom, who claims Juke is "beset by idiocy and infirmity. And certain -- irregularities in his anatomy." And then there are the mysterious Feegers, who seem to linger in the woods while worshipping ... something.

David Nickle's weaving of two real world horrors -- eugenics and racism -- into the novel's twin mysteries (the deaths near Eliada and the epidemic in Cracked Wheel) is ingenious. Nickle's writing style is at least a step above the ordinary. His prose is efficient; Nickle uses a few carefully selected words to set scenes that some writers would have wasted pages developing, a skill that allows the story to develop at a brisk pace. The mood and atmosphere are perfect for a tale of the supernatural. Nickle's writing, and particularly the sense of characters rooted to a particular place and time, reminded me of Joe Lansdale.

Much of the time, Eutopia has the feel of a conspiracy thriller: characters don't immediately realize they are in danger, and when they do, they don't understand why; puzzling out the "why" is the key to their survival. The nature of the threat is revealed about halfway through the novel, and (unfortunately) the story loses some of its zest at that point. The explanation (and the abilities manifested by Juke and his ilk) struck me as a little too silly to be truly chilling. In fact, the book might have been better without the supernatural element, although it probably wouldn't qualify as a horror novel at that point. Still, my dissatisfaction with the Juke/Feeger aspect of the plot didn't stop me from following the story to its surprising (and satisfying) conclusion. Nickle's strong writing and the carefully fashioned characters are reason enough to read and enjoy this novel.

RECOMMENDED