Jack by Connie Willis

First published in 1991; published by Subterranean Press on April 30, 2020

Nominated for both a Hugo and a Nebula, Jack is a novella by the incomparable Connie Willis that Subterranean Press has reissued in a signed, limited edition. It is one of many stories that Willis set in London during the Blitz. Some of those are time travel stories, but Jack is more a work of horror than science fiction. The Blitz is the novel’s true horror; nothing a lone man could do can compare to the carnage of war. Willis has a knack for conveying the terror of being present at a time when falling bombs and crumbling buildings caused indiscriminate death.

The narrator is named Jack. He works as an air-raid warden, helping rescue people who are buried under the rubble after the bombs fall. Jack tells us about another man named Jack who has recently come down from Yorkshire to do the same work. Jack Settle is particularly adept at finding people who are trapped. Another person in a different ward with the same talent is called a “bodysniffer” and claims the ability to read the minds of the people who are trapped.

So can Jack Settle read minds? Can he distinguish the scent of the living from the dead? Is his hearing exceptionally acute? Narrator Jack begins to understand how Jack Settle finds so many bodies, why he refuses to eat or drink, and why he disappears (supposedly to go to his day job) before the sun rises.

Jack Settle’s quirks will suggest an obvious explanation to fans of horror novels. Jack the narrator comes to that conclusion and regards Jack Settle as a monster. Maybe he is, but how should the reader balance Jack Settle’s nature against all the lives he saves? Is Jack really such a bad guy when compared to the men on both sides of the war who drop bombs that set cities on fire and tear children to pieces? Is he worse than the shopkeepers who keep young women working until closing time, even after the air raid sirens blow, forcing them to run through the blackout in the hope of finding shelter? People do what their natures compel them to do; whether that makes them monsters is a matter of perspective.

Willis gives life to a half dozen characters besides the Jacks, the names of whom will be familiar to readers of a famous horror novel. They are ordinary people whose ordinary lives are disturbed by the extraordinary forces of history. The characters are transformed by their experiences, in ways both big and small — a wallflower gains self-confidence, a man who always wanted to write produces a newsletter, a delinquent makes his father proud by earning a medal in the RAF. Even Jack Settle is transformed, because he finally has an opportunity to use his nature for a worthwhile purpose. As always, Willis takes a deep and meaningful look at what it means to be human, even when she writes about a character who might not be.

RECOMMENDED

Take Me Apart by Sara Sligar

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/MCD on April 28, 2020

Take Me Apart is the story of two mentally ill women. Had Sara Sligar generated sympathy or created empathy for their plights, her concept might have been developed into a good book. Instead, Sligar offers too little reason to care about either woman while placing them in a contrived plot that never builds suspense.

Kate is an out-of-work copy editor who either quit or was forced out of her job after she reported sexual harassment (the truth of her departure from employment is concealed until the final third of the novel). Her aunt in Northern California recommends her services to Theo Brand, who wants an archivist to organize his mother’s papers.

Miranda Brand was a celebrated photographer whose mental health issues contributed to her fame. “Art is supposed to make you afraid,” she thinks, an emotion she hopes to evoke with photographs of blood-covered women. The circumstances of her death, when Theo was only eleven, triggered rumors that still persist in the  community where Miranda lived.

Miranda was married to a painter named Jake whose art earned less money than Miranda’s. Both artists were represented by the same agent, who now hopes to cash in on photographs that Kate might find while sorting through Miranda’s stuff, as well as the archive of documents that Kate compiles.

We learn about Miranda at the end of each chapter. The chapters begin by recounting Kate’s archival work and her interaction with Theo and his two children. Chapters end with excerpts from the material Kate is organizing: Miranda’s diary entries, medical records, media clippings, and cryptic notes scribbled on the backs of photographs.

Kate begins to wonder whether Miranda really killed herself. It’s really none of her business, but to satisfy her curiosity, she snoops through Theo’s house and interviews Miranda’s agent and a law enforcement officer who investigated the death. Naturally, she begins to suspect that young Theo committed the crime, but only harbors that suspicion once she begins sleeping with him. The decision to sleep with Theo follows on the heels of a good bit of gush that would have been better suited to a cheesy romance novel.

Kate is emotionally fragile and off her OCD meds. She probably deserves the reader’s empathy, but Sligar didn’t make me care about her problems, many of which exist solely to give the book a plot. Kate makes every wrong decision it would be possible to make, has only herself to blame, and eventually comes to the realization (spoiler alert) that she should have stayed on her meds. Well, no kidding. I’m not sure what insight a reader is supposed to take from that.

Nor did I care about Miranda’s mental health issues, which are apparently meant to parallel Kate’s, but their disorders are quite different. Mirands suffered from a sort of postpartum depression that made her fantasize about killing Theo after his birth.

Both women are portrayed as having been victimized by men. It isn’t anyone’s fault but Kate’s that she stopped taking her meds. I would sympathize with her as a sexual harassment victim if that were the novel’s focus, but the focus is on Kate’s manic behavior, which can’t reasonably be attributed to sexual harassment that she handled quite capably and that ended as a result of her complaints. Jake sometimes had sex with Miranda when she wasn’t in the mood, but Miranda was always in a depressed mood, and it’s not clear that she ever communicated her lack of desire for sex to her husband. Her underlying problem, like Kate’s, is her mental illness, not abuse by a man.

Not that the men are ideal characters. Jake may have been insenstive to his wife, but he was married to a basket case. He mishandles a delicate situation involving his son which might account for why Theo is screwed up. This is an awfully dysfunctional and self-pitying cast of characters. The question is whether Sligar did anything with them that might be worthy of a reader’s time.

The only reason to keep reading about these self-absorbed misfits is the mystery surrounding Miranda’s death. Sligar dutifully sets up a few suspects, including Jake, Theo, the agent, and a character named Kid with whom Miranda had something more than a friendship. Miranda’s theories and suspicions about the death seem to be rooted in her mania rather than facts an objective observer might find persuasive. The idea of a nutcase accidentally unraveling a murder might make a good story, but this isn’t it. The eventual reveal about Miranda’s death is underwhelming. A late, out-of-nowhere effort to add a plot twist involving a disappearing diary induced a shrug of indifference.

Sligar’s prose style is polished. As a debut novel, Take Me Apart shows glimpses of promise. It just doesn’t deliver a plot or characters that made me care about the outcome. Fans of predictable and cheesy romance might appreciate the final chapter, but that chapter and the novel as a whole were too unconvincing to hold any appeal for me.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi

Published by Tor Books on March 21, 2017

The Collapsing Empire is the first book in a trilogy. The last book was recently published. I’ll read it after I finish the second novel, which (like the first one) the publisher kindly provided for review.

Interstellar travel in the Interdependency trilogy is possible because certain places in the universe are connected by navigable streams (“rivers of alternate space-time”) called the Flow. Each stream moves in one direction but is conveniently paired with a stream that moves in the opposite direction.

Humans established a presence in a few dozen star systems by traveling to them via the Flow. In most systems, humans live underground or in orbiting habitats. The humans in each system trade with humans in other systems through the Flow streams. All the humans belong to the Holy Empire of the Interdependent States and Mercantile Guilds, also known as the Interdependency.

While the streams remain stable for a considerable time, they sometimes shift or disappear. The stream to Earth collapsed about a millennium before The Collapsing Empire takes place. Another stream collapsed a couple of hundred years later, causing the loss of contact with the inhabitants of that system. The remaining systems of the Interdependency rely on the Flow for trade, and none of those habitats have sufficient resources to enable their long-term survival if they were cut off from the others.

The human presence at the center of the Interdependency (where flow streams converge) is called Hub, while the habitat that is farthest from the others is called End, because future humans are remarkably unimaginative. End is the only place on which humans actually colonized a planet. If the Flow streams disappear, End is the last hope for survival of the humans living in the Interdependency.

The imperial dynasty for some time has been the House of Wu. The emperox has ruling authority throughout the empire, although the emperox is advised by an executive committee that represents the legislature, the church, and trade unions. The emperox dies early in the novel, making his illegitimate daughter Cardenia the new emperox. It is a job she doesn’t particularly want.

So that’s the background against which the trilogy is set. The background, however, is about to be disrupted. A physicist named Hatide Roynold concluded that the Flow streams would soon rearrange, establishing End rather than Hub as their nexus. Her research was privately funded by the House of Nohamapetan, which hopes to keep her findings a secret so that the knowledge could be exploited to the family’s advantage. Lord Ghreni Nohamapetan on End and Lady Nadashe Nohamapetan on Hub are the novel’s principal villains.

However, a physicist on End, the Count of Claremont, has been secretly funded by the emperox. Claremont, assisted by his son Marce, determined that Roynold was wrong and that all the streams will soon collapse, isolating each system from every other system. Hence, the novel’s title and the driver of the plot.

Nearly all of this novel is a setup for the story to come. It introduces key characters, including Cardenia, Marce, Lady Kiva from the House of Lagos (a family of traders), and the villains. Political machinations include a couple of attempted assassinations on Hub and a rebellion on End. We learn a bit about Cardenia’s insecurities, revealed largely in conversation with the computer-stored constructs of earlier dynasty members who held the position of emperox. A romance or perhaps just lust begins to blossom between Cardenia and Marce, while lust pretty much defines the personality of Kiva.

The novel is of no more than average length, which makes me wonder whether the story might have been better told as a Dune-length novel rather than breaking it into three books. The book does not work as a standalone because no self-contained story is resolved. That makes The Collapsing Empire difficult to review — it’s like reviewing the first third of a novel — given that whether the novel is a worthy read will depend on the success of the trilogy as a whole. I can say, however, that the novel held my interest, that it moves quickly, and that the premise is intriguing.

RECOMMENDED

The Good Killer by Harry Dolan

Published by Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press on February 4, 2020

The Good Killer is worth reading just for the epilogue. It balances a dark story with a message of healing, a suggestion that there is a path out of the darkness.

Sean Tennant joined the military with his best friend, Cole Harper. Cole’s brother Jimmy was disappointed that Sean didn’t talk Cole out of the military adventure. Cole lost a foot in the war, for which Jimmy blamed Sean. Later, Sean decided to pursue a theft that went sideways. Jimmy blames Sean for bringing Cole along. Now Sean is on the run from Jimmy. Accompanying Sean are Molly Winter and Cole’s ghost. At least, Sean carries on conversations with Cole, although to others, he seems to be talking to himself.

The victim of the theft, Adam Khadduri, lost cylinder seals valued at a few million dollars. He also lost Molly, or she lost him before telling Sean where to find his valuables. Like Jimmy, Khadduri is trying to track down Sean.

Sean and Molly have new identities and feel reasonably safe until Sean stumbles across an angry man in a mall who is shooting random customers to impress Rose, the woman who rejected him. Sean shoots the killer, saving Rose and earning the status of a folk hero. But since his picture, captured on security cameras, is now on cable news, Sean and Molly need to flee before Khadduri or Jimmy Cole find them.

After the shooting, law enforcement agents who know about his theft are also looking for Sean. He is occasionally recognized by people in small towns, but since Sean and Molly have attained the status of cult heroes, there isn’t much risk that anyone will turn them in. America loves its celebrities.

Some of this seems improbable and forced. In particular, I didn’t buy Jimmy’s vendetta. Khadduri has a stronger motivation to chase down Sean, so the story is at last partially believable. In the end, if a reader can buy into the premise, The Good Killer delivers a satisfying action story.

The law enforcement characters have standard law enforcement personalities. Sean isn’t necessarily an admirable guy, but he at least feels remorse about his reckless behavior, which accounts for the ghost of Cole that he carries in his head. While taking out a mall killer might be seen as an act of redemption, I never entirely warmed to Sean. While I prefer conflicted bad guys to stalwart good guys, Sean seems more like an artificial construct whose job is keep the plot moving than a flesh-and-blood character. The “dead best friend in my head” theme has been done so many times that it comes across as a shopworn tool of the writing trade.

Although I didn’t entirely buy the story and wasn’t in love with Sean, Harry Dolan scores points by underplaying Sean’s ability. He is far from a typical thriller superhero. I was more intrigued by the characters of Molly and Rose, although they both play much smaller roles. In fact, Rose is a negligible character until the epilogue, when she reappears to give the story an emotional power that is absent until that point. The Good Killer is an uneven performance, but it does maintain an escalating level of tension, and its touching epilogue earned it a recommendation.

RECOMMENDED

Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett

Published by Del Rey on April 21, 2020

My objection to most fantasy novels is that writers too easily resort to magic (or godlike powers) to make things happen for the convenient purpose of advancing the plot. Robert Jackson Bennett, on the other hand, is scrupulous about creating rules that govern the universes he creates. Bennett's rules are the analog of the laws of physics in our universe.

In the Founders trilogy (of which Shorefall is the second installment), reality is affected by scrivings that trick objects into believing that the rules are something other than they would otherwise be. Objects float because they are told that gravity makes them rise rather than fall. Wheels turn without propulsion because scrivings convince them that turning is what wheels do. The instructions that give definitions to scrivings are stored in large devices known as lexicons. How mere humans came to learn about scriving is not entirely clear at this point, but the explanation appears to be unfolding.

Foundryside ended with its protagonist, Sansia Grado, facing a perilous future. The peril heightens in Shorefall as Crasedes Magnus — perhaps the first of the long-vanished hierophants and known to some as the Maker — travels to Tevanne, the city-state in which the Foundries operate. Crasedes plans to take control of the lexicons to restore his ability to remake reality to suit his purposes. To do that, he must overcome another godlike being, a powerful “construct” known as Valeria whose scrived permissions restrain her from confronting Crasedes directly. Crasedes gets an initial assist from Ofelia Dondalo, Gregor's conflicted mother.

Gregor's heroism in Foundryside finds new expression in Shorefall. Gregor’s mommy issues are reflected in other characters who have difficult parents, although the novel’s biggest surprise involves a key character from Foundryside who is dismayed to discover that he has a troublesome child. (You need to read Foundryside to catch the pun in the last sentence.)

Sansia, Berenice Grimaldi, Orso Ignacio, and Gregor Dandalo are the primary returning characters from Foundryside. Each grows in his or her own way. Each confronts adversity, gains strength, and finds a way to cope. The heroes in Bennett’s novels always remind readers of the need to place the common good ahead of their own desires — a message that resonates in these troubled times. While all the heroes in Shorefall risk their lives repeatedly for the welfare of the world they know, a couple of characters engage in acts of self-sacrifice that will change them, or end them, because they see no other choice. One reason I keep coming back to Bennett is that he makes me feel good about the human race, even if his humans live in a different universe.

There is usually a moral conflict in a Jackson novel. Shorefall presents two views of how power might be used. One powerful character wants to make the world a better place by taking control of humans and directing them toward pursuits that do not involve violence or corruption, a sort of benevolent enslavement. A competing powerful character wants to make the world a better place by taking away scriving, which would prevent the owners of lexicons from exploiting everyone else, although a few million people would die when everything collapses. Both powerful beings believe they have good intentions, but their laudable ends may not justify such destructive means.

Despite its philosophical underpinnings, Shorefall offers abundant action. I admire Jackson’s ability to create imaginative problems that can only be overcome by devising clever but dangerous solutions. Shorefall doesn’t exactly end on a cliffhanger, but the resolution creates a temporary lull in a larger story that will continue in the final novel. Jackson and his publisher made me wait twenty agonizing months for the second novel after the first one was published. I hope we don’t have to wait as long for the last one.

RECOMMENDED