Parasite by Mira Grant

Published by Orbit on October 29, 2013

Parasite is hard to categorize -- and that's a good thing. It has elements of a corporate conspiracy thriller, a biotech thriller, a creepy science fiction/horror novel, and a mystery. It combines a low-key love story with an offbeat family drama. At its heart, Parasite is an "aliens take over human bodies" story, a staple of bad science fiction, but with the refreshing twist that parasites are substituted for aliens. Parasite will teach you more about tapeworms and other parasites than you might want to know, but it tells an innovative story and builds tension without resorting to car chases and explosions.

Sally Mitchell, brain dead and on the verge of having her organs harvested, opens her eyes. She awakens in a blank state, her brain wiped of its memories. Sally has been given a new life by virtue of a genetically engineered tapeworm called the SymboGen Intestinal Bodyguard. Six years later, she's relatively normal, but very different from the person she doesn't remember being before her accident. Sally copes with being reeducated, studied, and psychoanalyzed, while living in fear that SymboGen will stop paying her medical expenses if she isn't an appropriate guinea pig.

Sally's life becomes even complex with the outbreak of an apparent disease that turns people into dangerous shambling sleepwalkers. My initial reaction to this was "oh geez, Mira Grant found a way to add zombies to the story." Fortunately -- since the world really doesn't need another zombie novel -- Parasite takes off in a wild and unexpected direction. The mystery of Sally's true nature is telegraphed so often that the reveal isn't much of a surprise, but that doesn't detract from the story. Other revelations at the novel's end are more surprising, and they whet interest in the next installment.

Sally, her boyfriend Nathan, and the other principle characters are realistic, including Sally's parents, who provide fruitful family drama by being less than ideal role models. One of the characters is completely daft in a dangerously amusing way. Dogs play a critical role in the story, providing further evidence for my theory that every novel is made better by the inclusion of a dog -- particularly when a writer portrays them as sympathetically as does Grant. (Grant is also sympathetic to tapeworms, but I'll let that pass ... so to speak.)

Parasite delivers a crash course in parasitology but, by using fascinating examples of parasitic behavior, it never becomes boring. This is one of the better biotech thrillers I've encountered. I don't know whether it's credible, but Grant convinced me that it could happen, and that allowed me to enjoy the well-crafted story.

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Dinner at Deviant's Palace by Tim Powers

First published in 1985; published digitally by Open Road Media on July 30, 2013

"Deprogramming" -- kidnapping someone who has supposedly been brainwashed by a religious cult and coercing their abandonment of the cult's belief system -- was in the public mind during the 1970s. Tim Powers (one of the most underrated writers of speculative fiction) grabbed hold of the concept in his 1985 classic Dinner at Deviant's Palace, incorporating it into a story of a post-apocalyptic future. In his introduction to the Open Roads edition, Powers explains the novel's interpretation of the Orpheus myth (a connection I would have missed if Powers hadn't explained it).

Dinner at Deviant's Palace is a science fiction novel with elements of fantasy. You can always expect the unexpected in a Powers novel, and this one adds a strange creature called a hemogoblin to the standard description of America-turned-wasteland. The novel was written long before the current obsession with post-apocalyptic vampires, and the hemogoblin isn't a vampire in the traditional sense, but blood does play a central role in the imaginative plot. Powers is an exceptional storyteller who often adds horrific elements to the stories he tells, usually to shed light on some horrifying aspect of the present, but no matter the plot device, his true subject has always been human nature.

It's been a hundred years since the age of electricity, and California as it once existed is long gone. The calendar is based on a deck of cards, brandy is used as currency, and residual radiation renders some places off limits. Trash men run loose -- not quite human, not quite robot, a little like a talking vacuum cleaner mated with a barbeque grill -- and the San Berdoo army is threatening to invade Ellay.

Gregorio Rivas is a musician, but he used to perform redemptions. At one point he was a Jaybird, then he rescued people from the Jaybirds. The Jaybirds worship Jaybush (the name's similarity to Jesus is no coincidence), an entity described at one point as an "interstellar limpet eel." The Jaybird sacrament, if taken repeatedly, erodes the mind -- or maybe it opens the mind -- but Rivas is still sharp. Now he sings and plays the pelican and wants nothing to do with the man who wants to pay him a huge sum of money to perform a redemption. But when he learns that the girl under Jaybird control is Urania Barrows, the girl he once loved, he has no choice but to bring her back. Before Rivas became a Jaybird, he spent some time in the depraved city on the outskirts of Ellay known as Venice (home of the Deviant's Palace). It is to Venice he returns in his search for Urania, although he fears she has been taken to the Holy City of Irvine.

On its surface, Dinner at Deviant's Palace is the story of Rivas' attempt to save Urania, but it's really a story about a different kind of salvation. Rivas has become self-centered and self-indulgent, enjoying the fruits of a well-paid life. During his quest for Urania, he rediscovers his empathy for others. Yet empathy can be crippling when survival depends on dispassionate strength. Rivas faces a choice between regaining his confidence but sacrificing his new-found empathy, or remaining a caring person, however weak and uncertain that makes him. Powers also explores the nature of obsession -- with religion, with love, with distorted memories.

Trying to understand exactly what's happening in Dinner at Deviant's Palace sometimes poses a challenge, but by the end, the novel makes sense ... more or less. Its internal logic is consistent even if it isn't always easily understood. Complex characters and a fun story with a serious theme make the novel worth the effort.

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Bad Houses by Sara Ryan

Published by Dark Horse on November 12, 2013

I never thought much about (or paid any attention to) estate sales until I read this graphic novel. The contents of houses tell stories about their owners, the choices they made, what they held dear. People cling to possessions they don’t really want. Professional and amateur vultures devour the things left behind by the dead. One person’s junk becomes another person’s treasure, an endless cycle of acquisition and disposal.

Bad Houses is a story of ordinary people in an ordinary town (aptly named Failin). A bitter son puts his aging mother in a dilapidated assisted living center. He begins to date Danica, one of the center’s employees. Danica is a hoarder. Her daughter Anne feels suffocated by her mother’s obsession with the objects from her past. Anne begins to date Lewis, a young man who wants to escape his mother’s vice-like grip. Lewis works for his mother, conducting estate sales. He’s never known his father. In the midst of all this family drama, we learn things about relationships among the characters that they don’t know themselves.

Can people change their lives? One of the characters says that lives change all the time, and that’s true, but they don’t always change according to our plans. Some of the characters want to leave Failin but feel trapped by their circumstances. When should we hold on to things … or people? When should we let go? Sara Ryan examines these questions in a surprisingly moving, thought-provoking story.

The lives of the characters weave together in a graphic novel that is elegant in its simplicity, insightful in its complexity. The sketchy illustrations add nuance to the text.

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Border Angels by Anthony Quinn

Published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road on October 22, 2013

Borders and what they represent form the underlying theme of Border Angels. Women from Eastern Europe are smuggled across borders to work in Western European brothels, while a shadowy underworld populated by immigrants, legal and illegal, operates close to the borders in case the need arises to flee. Border Angels opens in a brothel in Northern Ireland, where a shady businessman named Jack Fowler promises to rescue Lena Novak from a life of prostitution. Before the rescue can occur, however, Lena's pimp drives her away from the brothel. The police become involved when they find the shell of a burned-out car and the pimp's charred remains. Lena's footprints lead from the car to the riverbank, where they disappear. The river marks the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, once a crossing place for terrorists (or freedom fighters, depending on your point of view).

Celcius Daly is called upon to investigate the pimp's death and, soon thereafter, Fowler's drowning. As was true in Anthony Quinn's previous Daly novel, a former IRA member plays a role. Ashe is trying to make a "journey away from violence" but the journey takes a U-turn that brings him back to Ireland. Lena is the strongest character, an empowered woman who doesn't need rescuing, who has the wits and the guts to rescue herself. Daly is relegated to the role of observer for most of the novel, caught between Lena's schemes and his Commander's wrath.

Unlike many modern crime novelists, Quinn tells a credible story and doesn't waste words doing it. He imbues his characters with honest emotions while avoiding melodrama. His thoughtful commentary on Northern Ireland never overshadows the story. While the story isn't particularly original, it's well told. Quinn develops Daly's character less than he did in the first novel, but I'd rather read a story with limited character development than a story with mindless action and needless padding. Border Angels left me looking forward to the next Celcius Daly novel.

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The Exodus Towers by Jason M. Hough

Published by Del Rey on August 27, 2013

Camp Exodus has been overrun by a militia of immunes commanded by a less than angelic Gabriel, stranding Skyler in the wilderness where he's at risk of being attacked by subhumans. But even worse than subhumans are a new breed of ... armored subhumans? That won't make sense to you if you haven't read The Darwin Elevator, and even then it might not makes sense. In any event, since The Exodus Towers picks up the plot where The Darwin Elevator dropped it, you won't get much out of the second novel in this trilogy if you haven't read the first.

The troubles at Camp Exodus occupy the first half of this lengthy novel. Much of it seems like filler. One meandering plotline focuses on Samantha Rinn from Skyler's old scavenger crew, who spends much of the novel on a sort of wok release from her imprisonment in Darwin. A better plotline focuses on the ongoing power struggle between Tania Sharma, who is in charge (more or less) of the Orbitals -- some of them, anyway -- and Russell Blackfield, who is in charge (more or less) of Darwin -- part of it, anyway. Blackfield is in a power struggle of his own with a dude named Grillo, who has mustered a private army of religious zealots.

The story derails for quite a long time as Skyler takes on the immune militia. Significant plot advancement is relegated to the novel's final quarter. While those events are worth waiting for, they bring us no closer to the resolution of the mysteries that drive the trilogy: Why did aliens build the space elevators? Why did they release a disease that killed most humans while turning most survivors into zombie-like subhumans? What do the aliens plan to do next?

It's a given that science fiction depends upon a willing suspension of disbelief. The Exodus Towers occasionally tested my willingness, particularly when a group of immunes decides to engage in strange genetic experiments involving subhumans. As was true in The Darwin Elevator, I'm not sure the whole subhuman subplot works very well, even though it's central to the story. Perhaps the final installment will explain why subhumans are central to the story.

Characters are the strength of the first two novels in the trilogy, although it's best not to get too attached to anyone because Jason Hough kills them off rather freely. Relationships between the characters are convincing. The Exodus Towers is always interesting, including the chunks that add nothing to the overall story. It's good enough to persuade me to move on to the final installment, but it would have been better with fewer words.

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