The First Day by Phil Harrison

First published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on October 24, 2017

The First Day is told in two parts by two narrators. The first part is set in Belfast. Samuel Orr is a pastor who is married to Sarah with a son named Philip. He is having an affair with Anna, having courted her with gospel. After Anna becomes pregnant, tragedy ensues and Orr has a spiritual crisis, perhaps belatedly. His life changes, and then it changes again, as Orr makes an uncharacteristic choice that tears apart his family. Yet while Orr’s life changes, Orr seems to remain “his flawed, blunt self.”

What are we to make of Orr? Is he driven by the divine or is he a coward, hiding behind his religion to avoid sectarian responsibility? Is he a hypocrite who refuses to honor the values he preaches, or a sinner trying to find his way to redemption? Late in the novel, Orr counsels that fear and shame motivate almost everything we do, yet he understands that living in fear and shame does not make for a fulfilling life. The extent to which Orr feels either fear or shame is something of a mystery.

Anna, unlike Orr, is an easier character to understand and admire. She has an inner strength that allows her to hold true to her values. Anna is deeply introspective, a close observer of life who fearlessly internalizes its lessons.

The other key character in the first part is Philip, who at 15 has “turned his anger into a solid thing, a weapon” he wields as “a craftsman of hatred.” Orr and Anna are both the objects of his hatred, although as time passes, he seems to show genuine affection for his half-brother Samuel, Anna’s son with Orr.

The narrator of the first half tells the story in the present as it was told to him by its participants. The story builds to a surprising climax that occurs shortly after the narrator reveals his identity. The novel’s second half, now narrated by Samuel, takes place 35 years later. Samuel lives in New York and works as a guard at an art museum.

Samuel fills in his backstory, which includes a struggle to discover his own identity and to cope with his past. Events that force Samuel to confront his fears also build low-key suspense and anticipation as the reader wonders whether demons from the past will destroy or heal the Samuel of today.

Given that Orr is a pastor who sinned, it is not surprising that forgiveness is a dominant theme of The First Day. But the story is not simple. Orr’s opinions about forgiveness are rooted in his religion; they almost make it easy for him to be careless with others. His wife and family and lover never quite occupy his life in the same way that his own thoughts (of God or, more likely, himself) serve to fill his days. Philip does not seem the forgiving type while Samuel wonders whether forgiveness should be left to God (if God exists), and whether at the human level, some acts might not be forgivable.

Tension mounts as the story nears its resolution; the reader anticipates a confrontation of some sort, but the specifics cannot be predicted, only dreaded. The story is told in a restrained voice that underplays emotion without diminishing the novel’s drama. Anna is influenced by Beckett, who told writers to search for the honesty that lurks behind words. Phil Harrison has obviously taken that advice to heart. The First Day is an honest examination of intricate and evolving relationships between a flawed father and his damaged sons.

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Strange Music by Alan Dean Foster

Published by Del Rey Books on November 7, 2017

Strange Music in the latest entry in Alan Dean Foster’s series of novels about the human empath named Flinx and his empathic pet/companion, a flying bat-lizard named Pip. As the novel opens, Flinx and Pip are living with his Flinx’s wife Clarity on Cachalot, a world covered with water, populated by friendly cetaceans. The world’s few humans, including Flinx, make their homes on floating platforms.

Flinx receives an unexpected visit from a Thranx named Sylzenzuzex, who has come on behalf of the Church, and indirectly the Commonwealth, to recruit Flinx’s assistance. This is not the first time the Commonwealth has set aside its desire to give Flinx a good mindwipe in order to exploit his empathic talents.

Someone has been using forbidden technology on the remote, developing world of Largess. That violation of Commonwealth law is bad enough, but the same person has kidnapped the daughter of an important leader, an act that might disrupt the balance of power on Largess and set back the unification that would be necessary for the world to participate more fully in the Commonwealth. Flinx must get her back and catch the scofflaw.

Communication with Larians is possible only by people who can carry a tune, as their language is sung. The language makes clear (but only to Larians) whether the singer is being honest. Flinx can sing a bit, but his empathic abilities allow him to emulate the innate Larian ability to detect deceit. He is therefore a perfect choice to investigate the problems that are taking place on Largess.

The musical language makes the dialog in Strange Music fun to read. It’s like Shakespearean rap with a Bob Dylan influence. The story itself is fun but a bit fluffy. Strange Music is a simple adventure story that rewards the reader with simple pleasures. A new character pops in rather too conveniently at the end, but notwithstanding that small complaint, I can recommend the story to Foster’s fans or to any science fiction fan who wants to spend time with an unchallenging read.

I should note that a forward by Kevin Hearne suggests in veiled language that Foster’s fiction doesn’t have any of those creepy liberal ideas that right-wing or libertarian sf fans so deplore. This has become a point of honor among certain sf fans who fail to embrace the diversity of thought that has always been the genre’s strength. I wonder, however, whether the comment applies to Strange Music. The novel is premised on the notion that a world’s worthiness depends on the ability of its people to unify, rather than living in clans that war with each other because of their cultural differences. That decidedly liberal idea seems to have escaped Hearne’s notice. The same could be said of certain other themes, such as the evil of persecution by a dominant religion, the value of empathy, and the equality of women (exemplified by the new character who pops in at the novel’s end). Like most intelligent science fiction, Strange Music seems to me to accept the value of liberal ideas as a given.

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Devastation Road by Jason Hewitt

Published in Great Britain in 2015; published by Little, Brown and Company on July 3, 2017

The device that drives Devastation Road — a man wakes up in unfamiliar surroundings, having little memory of his past — has been used by many authors. The memory loss is meant to create suspense while leading to a surprising revelation when the protagonist’s memory returns. Jason Hewitt achieves the intended effect in a carefully controlled, moving novel that surprises again and again.

Owen wakes up on a riverbank, not sure how he got there or why he has a gun in his pocket. He has a vague memory of being on a trolleybus; he knows he is from England. He sees dead bodies in the river. He eventually meets a boy named Janek who speaks a Slavic language Owen doesn’t understand. Owen is able to piece together enough information to realize that he’s in a country he has no recollection of visiting, and that the year is 1945, about four years after the last year he remembers.

Finding a map on a dead soldier, Owen recognizes none of the place names, but feels drawn to the word Sagan. For lack of a plan, that becomes his destination, the boy his willing companion, although it soon becomes clear that Janek has an agenda of his own.

Fragments of memory return as Owen makes the journey with Janek. They are eventually joined by a Polish-speaking woman named Irena and her baby, apparent victims of war’s devastation. But Irena, like Janek, also has an agenda, and Owen finds her to be even more baffling than the boy.

As is customary in memory loss novels, Hewitt plants questions for the reader to ponder. What is the significance of the button in Owen’s pocket and the patch inside his jacket? Where is Owen’s brother Max and why does Owen feel that he somehow left Max behind? What was Owen’s relationship with Max’s fiancé? Owen’s background is mysterious due to his memory loss, but other central characters are also a mystery. Why is Janek searching for his Czech brother in Germany? Why is Irena so ambivalent about the baby she calls “it”? Unanswered questions drive the plot while sustaining the reader’s interest.

The questions are eventually answered in ways that are credible and unexpected. The plot is strong — it scatters enough dramatic moments to fill a trilogy — but the novel’s greater strength lies in its characterizations, its demonstration that it is impossible to truly understand other people, particularly when their behavior is a complex response to desperate circumstances, and that it might be just as difficult to understand ourselves. The powerful story and multidimensional characters make it easy to forgive the memory loss contrivance.

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Ironclads by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Published by Solaris on November 7, 2017

About 20 years after Brexit, England becomes an American territory, giving the U.S. a convenient military base and a stepping stone to Europe, where ideological conflicts are translating into military conflicts, primarily with the Swedes and Finns, collectively known as the Nords. Sgt. Ted Regan and his two buddies (Sturgeon and Franken) are asked by a corporate Scion to find the Scion’s cousin, who disappeared on the front, the weaponized armor that encased him having gone dark. Since the military does whatever powerful corporations ask, the three grunts are separated from their assignments and sent to the front where they will carry out a rescue mission.

They are joined by a Brit named Lawes and a corporate tech guru named Cormoran who flies drones and hacks systems. Eventually they’re joined by a Finnish bioweapon named Viina. Needless to say, the mission is quickly FUBAR and the reader is treated to some battle scenes that are more intelligent than those served up by typical military sf. The soldiers struggle along until they discover just why they were tasked for this seemingly impossible mission.

Apart from the usual tech that attracts readers to military science fiction, there are some clever ideas here, including the notion of breeding and releasing millions of little bugs to block satellite views of troop movements and defenses. This is a relatively short, fast-moving novel, that tells an uncluttered story. Characters are adequately developed and Adrian Tchaikovsky’s prose is sharp.

The point of Ironclads is that most modern wars (and presumably future wars) are fought to advance corporate interests rather than national interests, and that politicians and military leaders are easily manipulated by corporations. That point has been made by other science fiction writers in more detail than Ironclads, but the theme is a good one, and it gives the entertaining story some bite.

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Darke by Rick Gekoski

Published in Great Britain in 2017; published by Canongate Books on November 21, 2017

Darke is the kind of novel that starts out being one thing and ends up being something quite different. The ending puts the beginning in perspective by casting the protagonist in a penetrating light that removes him from the shadows and illuminates his interior.

James Darke is a former schoolmaster. Now he has arranged his life so that he will never need to leave his home. He can no longer bear the presence of other people, “even to dismiss them.” He has no use for their opinions or jokes. He is intolerant of any preference that diverges from his own (the notion that some people might prefer green tea to coffee is proof of their stupidity and perhaps their Green Party membership). James has had enough and is ready to say no mas to the world like a defeated fighter. The novel is his journal, the thoughts of a recluse who explains how he came to reject humanity.

James does not limit his disdain to ordinary people. In some of my favorite moments, he savages T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Yeats, “that blubbery piss-artist” Dylan Thomas, “that dreadful gasbag” Kahlil Gibran, and Philip Roth, whose characters “speechify” for paragraphs at a time while always sounding like Philip Roth. James has spent years trying to write a monograph about Dickens, a writer he decides is “slobbery” by the novel’s end. Yet as a teacher, James encouraged his students to read literature with an open mind, to consider multiple viewpoints with humility, to “allow them gracious entrance however strident or discordant some of them may sound,” so that “each of these voices will become a constituent part of who you become, an atom of growing being.” Good advice, but James has come to reject his own counsel, having decided that “nothing assuages the pain of being.” In fact, he hates wisdom, and is engaged in the British project of searching for its antidote.

As much as he fears admitting it, James also suffers from loneliness in his self-imposed isolation. Thus he finds himself discussing Dickens with Bronya, his Bulgarian cleaner, who startles him with insights that had never occurred to him. It seems the old dog is capable of learning new ideas, even if he would prefer not to. But will he repair his self-imposed exile from a pained and loving daughter?

How did James Darke become so dark? Much of his journal recounts his past, introducing the reader to the highs and (mostly) lows of his life. The reason for his morose withdrawal from society eventually becomes clear, and the description of the events leading to that point are intense and painful to read. Knowing how his past has shaped his present allows the reader to understand the emotional overload that underlies James’ escape from the world of the living.

Darke is deft in its transition from light comedy to dark comedy to tragedy. Some of James’ humor might be described as socially incorrect; his rant about female tennis players who grunt when they serve is priceless. James also has strong opinions about what a novel should be; he skips past descriptions of trees and searches for “human content,” characters who are passionate or ironic. Which is very much a description of Darke. This is a novel that closely observes people, not the quality of sunsets or the shimmer of a rainy sky.

The novel’s ending, which explains and addresses James’ rejection of his daughter, is powerful. Rick Gekoski sets aside the jokes in favor of a gut-wrenchingly honest examination of a man who was forced to make an impossible decision and then to find a way to live with its consequences. The ending makes it possible for the reader to reinterpret James. He still might not be likable, but he’s sympathetic, a flawed but caring human who is doing his best to confront adversity even if, in his own words, his best isn’t very good.

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