Thursday, July 31, 2014

Bitter Seeds

Ian Tregillis's first novel is World War two + X-Men + Cthulu.

Now that I've convinced folks to go read the book, let me say that I find the writing good, the plot interesting and the concept... well the concept is a lot of fun. Nazi super-science makes electrical powered mutants, which allows them to crush France, and defeat the British at Dunkirk. England falls back upon it's warlocks, who during Operation Sealion, make the whole channel shift out of phase with reality.

The plot is fairly straightforwardish, but the interesting parts were the discussions of the origins and ethics of magic and science, who cares, and why, and who knows about the existence of such powers, and how they react to these challenges.

The next book is a Cold War spy thriller.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Dark Days

Sergei Lukyanenko's second watch book, Day Watch, retains the three part story structure of the first novel, and if anything is more disjoint than novel one. While Night Watch had Anton as the main thread, Day Watch follows two different dark magicians, and then a third person narrator following a tribunal looking into the events of the first two sections. By the end, the common thread has been teased out, and unlike Night Watch, we see our protagonists start pulling on strings themselves, but again the plot itself isn't the interesting part of the book, and frankly shouldn't you go read it yourself?

Like Night Watch was about truth, Day Watch is about love, or maybe Love. It's not a romance, although there are romantic elements throughout, instead it's a practical look at love and conflict, love and power, love and loss, and ultimately love and morality.

Part one lays the groundwork for much of what comes later, but it also drives home one of the main points from the prior book: unbalanced power within a relationship destroys love, or prevents it from accruing. This appears throughout the books and while it's Lukyanenko does not appear to demand equal types of power, he certainly doesn't believe that a love can overcome a power imbalance over time. At the same time, the protagonists throughout the series to date act out of their desire to love and be loved. While a great schemer can accomplish the goals of their ethical affiliation at the same time, those less 'other' are left choosing between duty and love or survival and love, depending on their light/dark classifications.

Part two continues this theme, centering again around a choice that Anton will have to make regarding Sveta, himself, and a dark other new to town, while making the dark one the center of the narrative. This provides us with a good continuing look at the organization of the Day Watch and how it mirrors the Night Watch in nearly every way. There is a chess metaphor running quietly through the book, and while not used (it would have been ham handed to say it) it's obvious in the mirrored structures of the watches, and the way that they act regarding their opponents.

Part three highlights this parallel even more, by following Anton and his opposite number as they travel to Prague for the Inquisition's hearing, and listening in as they move through the same questions, thoughts and conjectures from their own sets of data and their own concerns. Their informal meetings highlight their similarities more than they show their differences. We're left with the impression that they would have been right at home with "The Arrangement" come up with by Aziraphale and Crowley in Good Omens, and gone on reporting successes to their superiors while having quiet lunches in beer gardens and comparing notes on the insanity of their bosses orders.

This happens to lead into book three, which will be up later.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Everything isn't Awesome

When you're part of the Night Watch. Sergei Lukyanenko's first novel in his magic as good and evil series comes in three parts, linked but which could stand alone. The format was the more interesting part so I'll address plot briefly. The plot is good, the concept is fun, good and evil magicians/vampires/werewolves/etc. have a pact of non-intervention with human morality, and this pact is guarded by the Night Watch (good), Day Watch (evil) and Inquisition (who watches the watches). We follow a Night Watch man Anton as he deals with truth and Truth within these parameters.

Minor problem: the translation leaves enough hints of the underlying Russian to make me wish I had an affinity to speak other languages. Alas some things are beyond me. I suspect that I'm missing some idiom and experience that living in Moscow would fill in.

The structure of the novel though was interesting. It's three almost independent short stories, in chronological order, that touch on major events in Anton's development and understanding. This works alright for the plot, but it leaves behind the interludes, and I suspect that a lot of character development happens in those interludes. I'd like to have had a better glance at those interactions, you get hints of them, but they are only echoes. I'm not sure if that is a layer in the book, which is certainly full of those.

Read it, it's good. If you read in Russian, let me know if it's better like that.