Khalil by Yasmina Khadra

First published in France in 2018; published in translation by Doubleday/ Nan A. Talese on February 16, 2021

Written in the first person, Khalil is an impressive examination of the key months in a young terrorist’s life. Yasmina Khadra imagines how a man whose mind has been twisted by religious zealotry might respond when his mission of destruction goes wrong.

Khalil was raised and lives in a suburb of Brussels, along with his twin sister Zahra (whose husband repudiated her after a brief marriage) and his older sister Yezza (who works in a sweatshop). Apart from Zahra, Khalil resents his family. Yezza has mental health issues that may have been exacerbated by an exorcism, or perhaps by religious traditions for which she is ill-suited. Khalil views his parents as parasites. He considers his buddies to be his family, the streets to be his home, the mosque to be his private club. He happily dropped out of high school with his best friend Driss. Under the tutelage of a man named Lyès, Khalil found a path that gave his life purpose: “to serve God, and to avenge myself on those who had reduced me to a thing.”

As the novel begins, Khalil is in Paris, one of four suicide bombers who have been chosen to attack the city. Driss will blow himself up after joining the crowd leaving a soccer stadium; Khalil will explode his vest while standing in a crowded line to board a train. To Khalil’s shame, something goes wrong and his vest does not detonate. He spends much of the novel trying to understand what happened; the explanations he receives leave him puzzled.

The reader is encouraged to understand why Khalil is a terrorist, despite being surrounded by Muslims — including Rayan, another childhood friend — who deplore terrorists. He does not want to reveal the crime he tried to commit, but he occasionally argues with people who have a very different view of what their mutual religion teaches about love and violence. Rayan tries to persuade him that “God’s not a warlord, much less the boss of a criminal organization” and that the Quran teaches “that if someone kills a human being, it’s as if he’s killed all humanity.” Yet Khalil rejects Rayan for marrying an infidel, choosing pleasure over restraint, and abandoning God. Whether Islamism is Islam is a question that pervades the novel.

Khalil offers a serious look at how a terrorist might be created and how, faced with the unexpected consequences of a terrorist act that hit close to home, a terrorist might begin to question his own dogma. Khalil isn’t a likable guy — apart from contemplating mass murder, he’s incredibly judgmental about most people, particularly women who don’t cover their faces — but the story is intended to make us understand Khalil, not to admire him. The novel builds tension as Khalil positions himself for another suicide assignment. Khalil is young; whether his destiny has been written is a question the reader will ponder until the last page reveals a satisfying answer.

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Relentless by Mark Greaney

Published by Berkley on February 16, 2021

Action thrillers with shootouts and fist fights and Middle Eastern terrorists usually range in quality from mediocre to bad. Mark Greaney’s novels are a happy exception. He’s produced ten Gray Man novels since 2009. The protagonist, Court Gentry, hasn’t changed much over the course of the series — apart from falling in love and stressing about feeling vulnerable because of it — but Gentry doesn’t really need to change. He’s an action hero. His job is to save the world and to entertain readers while he works. Thanks to Greaney’s ability to link action scenes together like cars on a runaway train, Relentless is another thrill ride.

Gentry starts the novel in a hospital bed, recovering from stab wounds and a nasty infection. That doesn’t stop the CIA’s DDO, Matt Hanley, from giving him a new assignment after being assured that Gentry might live for at least a week if he’s unplugged from his IV. Gentry is an off-the-books deniable asset, one of a few who are pressed into Hanley’s service when he doesn’t want an operation to leave American footprints. Another off-the-books asset, Zack Hightower, went to Venezuela to interrogate Clark Drummond, an NSA computer scientist who left his job, taking with him a database of every spy in the world and new facial recognition software that will tag the spies whenever they are captured by a camera. Unfortunately, Hightower was tagged by the software so it’s Gentry’s turn to track down Drummond.

A couple of gun battles later, the task is finished, but not before Gentry discovers that he’s not the only person looking for Drummond. An elite team of mercenaries working for an Israeli-owned company has been hired by the United Arab Emirates. They confront Gentry in Venezuela, not quite knowing why Gentry is there. They’re soon chasing Gentry around the globe as their mission expands.

Speaking of mercenaries, Gentry’s girlfriend, Zoya Zakharova, a former Russian spy and another of Hanley’s deniable assets, has infiltrated Shrike Group, a mysterious company that has recruited operatives from espionage agencies around the world. She begins working on a project that monitors Iranian activities in the EU. Zoya assumes that the client is Israel but Shrike doesn’t let its employees know anything about its clients. We eventually learn that any assumptions made about Shrike and its clients are likely to be false.

That setup all occurs early in the story. Greaney throws a lot of information at the reader before going turning the action up to 11. Gentry learns that Zoya has likely been outed to her former Russian masters so he goes to Berlin to watch her back. What seems to be an Iranian plot to attack the American embassy in Berlin sets the stage for a more sinister plot by someone who isn’t technically an American enemy. Gentry and Zoya team up, eventually bringing Hightower back into the story, and chapters are filled with flying bullets and exploding drones as our improbably unkillable heroes take on an army of terrorists and mercenaries.

I appreciate the fact that in most of these novels, Gentry is fairly apolitical. He goes after bad guys without demonizing them because of their nationality. He avoids killing innocent people because he doesn’t see humans as collateral who can morally be sacrificed as part of a risk assessment. He trades quips with Hightower and worries that Zoya, who appreciates fine art, is too good for him. In short, at least in recent books, there’s no reason not to like Gentry. That makes it easy for an action novel fan to like the Gray Man books, regardless of the reader’s politics.

Gentry’s career has gone through an evolution, from agent to outlaw who was unfairly hunted by his agency to independent contractor. The end of the novel changes his life again. It’s good to keep a series fresh and, so far, the Gray Man series shows no signs of growing stale.

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The Mission House by Carys Davies

Published by Scribner on February 16, 2021

“Why is it a condition of life that we are made to love things if we are only to lose them?” Hilary Byrd asks himself sad questions throughout The Mission House. Whether he will find satisfactory answers to any of life’s riddles is the question that drives the reader’s interest in Byrd’s unremarkable life.

The reader is not told much about Hilary Byrd, but we know that his life was touched by tragedy during the Troubles. His sister Wyn may be his last friend, but even that relationship is strained. Byrd is in his early 50s. He spent half his life as a librarian in the UK.  Byrd particularly enjoyed the library’s alcove of dictionaries in multiple languages and was disheartened when they were replaced by computers. He was fond of discovering words that had fallen out of use and felt saddened by their demise. His favorite forgotten word of the Norn language is dagw’’ilj’’ (pronounced dag-wall-gee), a word that means “to work continuously with poor result.” The unwanted dictionaries and forgotten words (particularly dagw’’ilj’’) might be symbolic of Byrd’s life.

Now Byrd is traveling and has made his way to India, a country that is much too hot for him. Taking a train to the mountains, where the heat is reputed to be less oppressive, he meets a kind Padre who offers him a good rate on a bungalow near the Padre’s church. The cottage was last occupied by a Canadian missionary named Henry Page.

Byrd is happy with the simple life that the cottage offers. He engages a fellow named Jamshed to drive him to the village each day in an auto rickshaw. Byrd uses these excursions to purchase food and browse books in the village library, where he learns how British rule has affected the town and the Toda people who are indigenous to the mountain region. Byrd occasionally converses with Jamshed but usually ignores him. Jamshed keeps a journal of his interactions with Byrd and fantasizes about having an enduring friendship with the man.

Jamshed’s nephew is Ravi, who works as the town barber and dreams of becoming a country-western singer. He has acquired a Stetson hat and a horse named Stephen. Ravi might also be hoping to acquire Priscilla, the young woman who lives in the presbytery with the Padre, who hopes to one day find her a suitable husband, suitable meaning “a good Christian man.” Priscilla has a short right leg and no thumbs, disabilities that, in the Padre’s view, might make her unmarriageable.

The foolishness of aging men is a central theme of The Mission House. At first with fear and then with hope, Byrd wonders whether the Padre might be thinking of him as a suitable husband for Priscilla. As he warms to the idea, he searches his conversations with the Padre for clues and gives them an optimistic spin but is invariably disappointed when the Padre mentions other potential suitors. He fears being judged a fool if he expresses any interest in Priscilla, even as he considers purchasing an engagement ring. “As long as he held it all inside himself, his feelings and everything he is doing, it seemed to him as if anything was possible.” Priscilla thinks of Byrd as a kindly uncle because he is helping her learn to sew and make scones and read English. Whether she will return Byrd’s affection seems unlikely, but who knows what might happen?

Byrd’s longing for Priscilla builds the foundation for the novel’s gentle humor. Byrd begins to dress in Henry Page’s clothes in the hope that they will make him look younger. He begins to attend church (despite having renounced Christian faith) because the Padre thinks Priscilla should have a Christian husband. (Nobody has consulted Priscilla, who views religion with a jaundiced eye.) Jamshed’s fascination with Byrd and Ravi’s pursuit of a country music career add to the story’s comic appeal.

Despite its humor, The Mission House is ultimately an exploration of lonely people who are discouraged by life. In both the Bible and the fairy tales that Priscilla is learning to read, she sees “considerable suffering and occasional joy and people doing all kinds of ugly things to each other,” an observation that sums up life as experienced by most of the novel’s characters. Like Byrd and Priscilla, Jamshed and Ravi and Henry Page are all vaguely disappointed with their lives. But The Mission House is also a novel of hope. Byrd comes to realize that his trip to the mountains in India has changed him for the better. The changes are small, but he had new experiences, learned new things, and even experienced a new love. Perhaps embracing small improvements in life rather than obsessing about unfulfilled desires is the key to living a good life.

Yet living a good life might mean putting aside one’s own desires and making sacrifices for the benefit of others. The novel’s unexpected ending is inspired by the rise of a Hindu nationalist party in India and, like nationalism everywhere, an intolerance of different religions and people who come from other places. The ending isn’t quite out of the blue — it is foreshadowed by Byrd’s reading and by chance remarks — but it changes the novel’s tone in a way that is almost shocking. There’s no need to be put off by that warning because the ending is left open, giving optimistic readers a chance to believe that good things might ultimately happen to people who prove their goodness in unexpected ways.

Still, the novel is more personal than political. The depth of its characterization and the unanswered questions it poses are as nourishing as Carys Davies’ meticulous prose. The juxtaposition of decent characters and the indecent world they inhabit makes The Mission House a layered novel that springs a new surprise with every chapter.

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Snow Angels by Jeff Lemire

Published digitally by Amazon Original Stories on February 16, 2021

“Snow Angels” is an entry in Amazon’s series of original short stories. The protagonist is Milliken, a girl who is almost thirteen. She longs to be sixteen so she can embark on a rite of passage. As sixteen, she will be allowed to skate beyond the Bend and into the Forbidden Territory, where she will see the First Gift left by the Colden Ones. This sounds like a YA plot and Amazon has labeled it accordingly.

Matt Lemire recounts a mythology with which Milliken was raised. Long ago, the Colden Ones walked the ice. They used their giant tools to dig a trench for safety and then created the Trenchfolk from themselves. Milliken and the other Trenchfolk now dwell in the trench.

Having learned to hunt, Milliken sets out to see the First Gift because she’s a precocious tween and screw waiting. She discovers truths that will make her rethink the mythology with which she was raised. The meaning of what she learns isn’t entirely clear, due in part to the story’s limited focus. This is more the concept of a story than a fleshed-out product.

From browsing Amazon, I note that Lemire is creating a ten-issue comic book series based on the same concept. I imagine the story is a teaser for that series. I also imagine the series will be better than the story.

I found myself rethinking the story after I read it. Most of my thoughts began with the question why. Why do families wait until children are sixteen to reveal the truth of their existence? What is the point of the mythology? The fact that the story made me think at all (granted, I was driving somewhere and didn’t have much else to think about) is probably a reason to recommend the story to a YA audience. The fact that I couldn’t arrive at satisfactory answers creates reservations about that recommendation. Comic book fans might want to wait for the graphic version.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Future Is Yours by Dan Frey

Published by Del Rey on February 9, 2021

The Future is Yours is an epistolary novel. Text messages, emails, Twitter threads, blog posts, magazine articles, and congressional hearing transcripts are among the documents telling the story of a technology company startup conceived by two lifelong friends: Adhi Chaudry and Ben Boyce. The technology makes use of quantum physics to allow a computer to connect to itself one year in the future. Adhi conceived the idea in a doctoral dissertation and stumbled upon a way to make it work while employed by Google.

The two friends plan to market a device that will allow everyone to see one year into the future, on the theory that if everyone can do it, nobody can use the news of the future to exploit people who lack the same access. They call their company The Future.

Theoretically, the same technology could allow the computer to connect to itself at a more distant time, but Adhi can’t make the tech see even two years ahead. Perhaps humanity will be wiped out in two years. Perhaps there its just a technical bug. Ben doesn’t much care because a year is sufficient to cash in on the technology.

The Future Is Ours raises questions that are common to time travel novels. Can the future be changed or is our fate written? Is there a benefit to knowing the future if it can’t be changed? Is there any reason to attend an NBA playoff game if you can watch it online before it’s played? Does knowing the future actually shape that future? For example, if everyone knows that a stock value will rise, does that knowledge cause investors to buy the stock which causes the price to soar? Do investors engage in insider trading if they invest based on knowledge of future stock prices? Probably not if everyone has the same information, which is what The Future hopes to achieve.

A science fiction blog entry argues that A Christmas Carol was the first time travel story. Scrooge saw the future and earned a chance at redemption, but what of Marley? His ghost will drag chains forever, perhaps because he was denied the same vision of the future that benefitted Scrooge. So is knowledge of the future a good thing or a bad thing? Personally, I don’t want to know when or how I’m going to die, at least if the future is immutable (unless I’m going to die in an extraordinarily pleasant way, which would give me something to look forward to). But I digress.

As financial thrillers should, The Future is Yours investigates the ethical implications of growing or working for a billion dollar business. Most tech startups fail, in part because tech giants like Google and Facebook and Microsoft do their best to acquire or crush potential competitors. Ben and Adhi manage to raise investor capital by saying “we’ve seen the future and you’ll be rich,” but they eventually develop different visions of their company. Adhi and Ben’s wife (the company’s corporate counsel) are concerned when the news coming back from the future suggests that the company’s technology will cause widespread harm. Ben is focused on becoming a billionaire and pushes aside less immediate concerns on the theory that glitches can always be fixed later. But can the future be repaired?

The relationship between Adhi and Ben deteriorates for other reasons as well, including jealousy and infidelity. Ben sees Adhi as the tech genius who has no head for business while Adhi sees Ben as the marketing genius who has no sense of ethics. Their partnership seems very real, as do the inevitable forces that pull the friends in different directions. It doesn’t help that Google sues Adhi for stealing ideas that he partially conceived while working for Google, illustrating the extreme but common view of tech companies that they own the thoughts of their employees. A conflict between Ben’s wife (representing The Future) and her lawyer father (representing Google) adds additional spice to the story.

The novel also raises intriguing questions about the extent to which technology that has the potential to help or harm us all should be controlled by either a handful of wealthy business owners or the government (not that there’s much difference between those two groups). Some of the novel’s characters echo the call for limits on information technology while others call for making critical technology the property of the people. The military and the NSA/CIA, for the usual reasons, want complete control of the tech. The concluding chapter suggests that the novel is a cautionary tale of how technology can change the world in ways its inventors may not foresee and that reasonable people cannot control.

As a novel of ideas, The Future Is Yours should interest most readers who care about the issues it raises. As a financial novel, The Future Is Yours tells an entertaining story. As a novel of relationships, the novel reminds us of how easily money can get in the way of love and friendship. As a blend of genre fiction, the novel will probably appeal more to sf fans than to thriller fans (it is more a novel of ideas than action, although Frey does introduce an apparent murder mystery into the plot), but it should have significant appeal to most readers.

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