Distant Sons by Tim Johnston

 

Published by Algonquin Books on October 17, 2023

Distant Sons is the story of two young men following the same path, men who meet by coincidence or fate. They are both on the move, both trying but failing to leave their pasts behind, both uncertain they should allow that choice to be dictated by others. The crimes that underlie the plot — three boys who went missing forty years earlier, a women who has been dead ten years — lurk in the background, but the story’s suspense surrounds the choices the young men will make as they move forward with lives that have suddenly intertwined.

Sean Courtland is a carpenter. He has driven into Wisconsin from Minnesota when his car overheats. A man who gives him a ride to a mechanic tells him about an old man named Devereaux who needs a carpenter. Devereaux wants to build a first-floor laundry room because he’s become too old to walk up and down the basement stairs.

Sean gives Devereaux a call. He takes the job despite rumors that connect Devereaux to three boys who disappeared forty years earlier. Sean expects the project to take about a week but realizes he might need to help to get it done within that time frame.

Sean offers a ride to a young man named Dan Young. They chat a bit and Sean offers Dan a job helping with the plumbing on the Devereaux job. Dan left his truck in Minnesota after someone put a bullet hole in it. Dan is suspected of causing a woman’s death ten years earlier. The suspicion is probably unfounded, but who knows?

Dan notices something odd about the carpentry in the basement. Sean has noticed that Devereaux’s dog whines whenever someone goes into the basement. While this isn’t a supernatural thriller, Dan has visions that make him wonder whether Devereaux or his creepy uncle or both are responsible for crimes that have long gone unsolved.

Setting aside ancient crimes, Sean intercedes when he sees Blaine Mattis bothering Denise Givens, a waitress in a tavern where Sean has been eating his meals. Sean accidently smacks Denise’s face she he tries to punch Blaine but Denise tells the investigating officer that the blow was accidental. Sean ends up dating Denise and even does a small home renovation that will help her father navigate his wheelchair through a doorway. Denise gets a restraining order against Blaine but he isn’t the kind of guy who cares.

Distant Sons unfolds over the course of an eventful week. It is a bad week for both Sean and Dan, arguably a bad week for everyone whose lives intersect theirs. While Sean blames himself for being a harbinger of doom, Denise’s father reminds Sean of Shakespeare's observation about “wills and fates” that “contrary run.” Maybe Sean made life worse for some by coming to the small Wisconsin town where he meets Dan and Denise, but maybe he made life better for others. In the end, balancing good and bad is beyond Sean’s power. He can only do what he thinks is right and hope for the best.

Tim Johnston captures the quiet eloquence of capable men who feel deeply but say little, men who don’t vocalize their thoughts unless the effort of expression seems worthwhile. The mystery of the missing boys is ultimately resolved, but this isn’t a story about heroic efforts leading to a serial killer’s capture. It is a simpler story of people poking around the edges of mysteries, people whose lives are at risk for reasons they cannot reasonably anticipate. It is a powerful and surprising story of fates that run contrary to wills.

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A Stranger in the Citadel by Tobias S. Buckell

Published by Tachyon Publications on October 17, 2023

A Stranger in the Citadel is set on a human world of the far future, one that still recalls legendary names like Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Some more recent legends have become gods: Washtun (the god of honesty and transparency, in whose honor cherry trees are planted); Elv (who is honored by music festivals and blue suede shoes). Much knowledge of the past has been lost, largely due to the destruction visited by the archangels.

The story begins within the walled city of Ninetha. The Lord Musketeer protects and rules the city with the help of his musketeers, although he is clearly protecting the interests of the affluent. His ancestors likely built the wall so that the blessings of the Cornucopia — a machine attributed to divinity that manufactures medicine and food and most other things people might want, apart from weapons— are kept from the peasants, who eat a bland daily diet called vittle.

The musketeers are purportedly the children of the Lord Musketeer, but they are raised and trained by a warrior named Kira who is also a religious zealot. The religion’s most sacred principle is that books are evil, that writing is sinful, that “thou shalt not suffer a librarian to live.” People believe their ancestors made a contract with the gods — renounce books and you will not go hungry.

A librarian named Ishmael makes his way from New Alexandria to Ninetha, carrying his library on his back, hoping to gain and spread knowledge. He is captured and is about to be killed when Lilith, the youngest muskatress, intervenes. Her desire for mercy is sacrilegious to Kira but Lilith knows a secret that even Kira doesn’t know — her father has a book.

Lilith’s knowledge eventually sparks a religious revolution that brings down her ruling family. Much of the novel consists of Lilith in flight, following Ishmael to the top of the world, pursued by Kira and later by a slow but relentless archangel. Lilith finds that other communities resent Ninetha for keeping the benefits of its Cornucopia for the upper class. One community has adopted a power-sharing structure that causes Lilith to question the privilege with which she was raised.

The story of the archangels is a bit muddy, as is the novel’s ending. Perhaps the archangels are robot travelers from space who have their own religion to spread. The archangel’s explanation of a human death ritual is a bit puzzling.

Lilith is the kind of young protagonist whose mind is open to discovery, perhaps making her appealing to fans of YA fiction. The ignorant book banners who make parts of America deplorable might have inspired the novel, but the lessons Kira learns about books were made in more compelling terms by Bradbury, to whom the librarian alludes. Despite its worthy but not quite successful attempt to be something more, A Stranger in the Citadel works well as an adventure story in which a religion of banned books happens to form a background.

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The Exchange by John Grisham

Published by Doubleday on October 17, 2023

Mitch McDeere is the protagonist in John Grisham’s The Firm, a novel most readers seem to like more than I do (the movie, I thought, corrected the novel’s weak ending). Mitch McDeere is back in The Exchange, another novel that suffers from a disappointing ending.

Mitch and his wife fled from Memphis to avoid a revenge killing for bringing down a corrupt law firm — the story told in The Firm — and hid in Italy for a time. When the coast seemed clear, Mitch took a position in the New York office of the nation’s largest international law firm. Now it’s 2005, fifteen years after The Firm, and Mitch is a well-paid partner who travels the world litigating various business disputes, usually in an arbitration forum.

The firm’s Italian office represents a Turkish construction company that built a billion-dollar bridge over nothing in Libya, an ego-stroke project of Ghaddafi in which the dictator lost interest after the failure of a corresponding plan to divert a river so it would flow under the bridge.

Libya still owes the construction company $400,000 and isn’t paying. The head of the Italian office brought a claim against Libya in an international arbitration forum, but that lawyer is dying of cancer. He brings in Mitch to take over the case and persuades him to assign his daughter Giovanna, a young lawyer who works in the London office, to help him.

Mitch and Giovanna travel to Libya to rack up billable hours gazing at the  bridge. Giovanni is kidnapped on a field trip. The drivers and security specialists who accompanied her are beheaded or hung or otherwise executed in gruesome fashion.

Mitch is fortunate to have avoided the kidnapping/execution, but his convenient illness (doctors apparently never know why he alone got food poisoning, if that’s what it was) and his decision to send Giovanna to do his bridge gazing made little sense. I thought Grisham was setting up a deeper mystery that never materialized.

The novel begins with Mitch’s brief pro bono assignment to a death penalty appeal in Tennessee that ends when the prisoner commits suicide. I was hoping this might be a death penalty novel — that’s Grisham’s strength, in my view — but the opening quickly gives way to the story in Libya. I again thought Grisham was setting up a plot twist and the novel would circle back to Memphis. Again, I was disappointed.

Instead, the story is a fairly ordinary thriller about someone (maybe terrorists, maybe not) who kidnaps a dual citizen of the UK and Italy and threatens to kill her if a $100 million ransom isn’t paid. Mitch spends most of the novel flying here and there, trying to raise the ransom money from governments that pretend not to negotiate with terrorists but do so for the right hostage. Some of the novel’s best scenes involve Mitch’s frustration with the management committee of his law firm, which won’t risk taking out a line of credit to fund a large chunk of the ransom because that might reduce the firm’s quarterly profits.

Mitch’s wife becomes the contact point when the payoff instructions are delivered. The scenes involving Mitch’s terrified wife are tense and deftly executed.

Unfortunately, the rest of the novel feels like a half-told story. The kidnappers seem to know quite a bit about Mitch. Do they have a contact in his firm? Are they Americans seeking revenge for Mitch’s ratting out the Memphis firm? Who knows? Grisham seemed so set up several tantalizing possibilities, then leaves every question unanswered. The result is only a partially satisfying novel. I recommend The Exchange for its ability to build tension, but not for a story that feels like it should have been so much more.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Watership Down: The Graphic Novel adapted from Richard Adams' original work by James Sturm (text) and Joe Sutphin (art)

Published by Ten Speed Graphic on October 17, 2023

The novel Watership Down is a celebrated anthropomorphic adventure novel that was written by Richard Adams and first published in 1972. While the original book is classified as a children’s novel, it has long earned the praise of adult readers. This graphic adaptation captures the magic of the original work in a simplified form that makes the story accessible to children who haven’t mastered the ability to read. The story isn’t dumbed down so adults can enjoy it just as much as kids, either as a reminder of a book they read years ago or as a quick introduction to the original. A note of caution, however. Some parents might deem the art inappropriate for very young children as some of the scenes of rabbits biting and clawing each other are a bit bloody.

Weighing in at 385 pages, the graphic version adapts Adams’ novel without losing essential elements of the story. The primary characters are rabbits, although a bird and mouse play critical roles. Humans are largely represented through machinery or weapons.

Fiver is an ordinary rabbit, apart from his inconsistent ability to foretell the future. He has a vision of a disaster that will wipe out the warren if the rabbits do not flee. When the chief rabbit refuses to take Fiver’s warning seriously, Hazel leads a group of dissident male rabbits in an escape from the chief rabbit’s authority. Their best storyteller joins the group, telling stories of cunning rabbits that inspire the dissidents to be sneaky and cautious, even when the chief rabbit sends one of his rabbit goons to bring them back. The rabbits defy the goon and embark on a long journey.

The graphic novel makes judicious choices about aspects of the original text that deserve to be highlighted. For example, the graphic novel emphasizes the role that legends and storytelling play in helping a culture maintain an identity and preserve its values. The rabbits repeatedly turn to tales of courage and sacrifice in rabbit kingdoms of the past to guide their responses to current problems.

I see the story is an ode to freedom and a warning about the dangers of authoritarianism. In an early example of that theme, the dissident rabbits encounter a group of rabbits who offer safety in a large and comfortable warren, but those rabbits are willing to sacrifice some of their number in exchange for food and protection from predators that humans provide to them. Leaders who tell their followers that strong rulers will keep them safe by sacrificing the less worthy are common across the world. We’ve seen too many of them in the US.

Moving on, Hazel saves a mouse from a kestrel, an act of interspecies decency that will later be repaid. As the journey continues, Hazel helps a wounded bird who also repays his kindness. The rabbits learn that when they work together and accept the friendship of diverse members of the animal kingdom, they can overcome stronger foes. Even a cat can be chased away by rabbits working in concert.

The rabbit goon eventually reappears. He confirms the calamity that Fiver predicted. Humans, they discover, will callously kill rabbits, not just because rabbits ruin gardens but because rabbit warrens stand in the way of property development. The rabbits do not understand the strange ways of humans. That’s not surprising. Neither do humans.

Being male rabbits, the dissidents decide they need female rabbits to help them live their best lives, so they try to free captive does from a farm. I recall some feminist criticism of the novel as male-rabbit-centric because female rabbits don’t have much of a role except as breeders. I don’t recall females being mistreated (they certainly aren’t in the graphic novel) but I suppose readers who are sensitive to how female rabbits were portrayed in 1972 should be warned of those concerns. To me, this is a book that happens to be about male rabbits. I don’t think that demeans female rabbits.

The attempt to free the female rabbits requires a sacrifice, followed by a daring rescue. Other rabbits, hoping to recruit females, are taken prisoner by another group of rabbits who are governed by an authoritarian leader. More stories of daring and self-sacrifice ensue. The ending is touching.

Although I was in my twenties when I read Watership Down, I recall being very concerned about the fate of the rabbits. The graphic novel prompted those feelings to resurface. While the story might be less epic than The Odyssey, Adams told a compelling adventure story that touches upon adult themes in a classic tradition.

The art would be appealing even to kids who can’t yet read. Like real rabbits, some rabbits have a similar appearance, others are quite distinctive. Their facial expressions do not emulate humans, yet the artist made their emotions clear. The pastoral settings through which the rabbits roam — some pages are nothing but grassy fields beneath blue skies — convey a sense of tranquility that gives way to the violence of rabbits running from foxes or fighting each other. The purpose of a graphic version of a text novel is to create art that helps readers interpret the story. This one succeeds admirably.

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The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse by Tom Holt

Published by Orbit on October 10, 2023

I don’t read much fantasy, particularly the kind that involves swords and wizards, dragons, and epic battles. I make an exception for Tom Holt’s interpretation of fantasy. He seems to recognize that most stories in the genre are a bit silly. He exploits the silliness to wring humor from the genre’s tired ideas.

Dawson, Ahriman, & Dawson is a firm of commercial and industrial sorcerers, thaumaturgical and metaphysical engineers, and scholarly magicians. Their clients are primarily nations, planets, and huge businesses. Ahriman possesses fearsome power. He doesn’t usually work but he shows up at the office now and then to demand that the firm generate more money so he can cart it away. He doesn’t need the money but he likes to abuse his partners.

One of the partners, Edward Sunshine, probably doesn’t need to work since he can fill his palms with diamonds from his bottomless purse whenever the mood strikes. A woman who received a delivery intended for Alpha Centauri (the delivery notice says “left with neighbor”) brings it to Sunshine because a friend told her that “weird shit is what you do.” After determining that the object in the package is sentient and malevolent, Sunshine turns to Harmondsworth to help him deal with it. Harmondsworth usually lives in a drawer in Sunshine’s desk but sometimes moves his residence to a tea kettle.

Tom Dawson handles executive recruitment for the firm’s clients. He’s been hired by the planet Snoobis Prime to find a replacement for their god, who died. The not-quite-gods he’s interviewed clearly don’t have what it takes. He considers recommending Santa Claus, who has free time 364 days a year. Santa already has magic and it would only take worshippers to turn him into a god. The position interests Santa, assuming the health plan is adequate.

Brian Teasdale, the youngest partner, takes on the case of a wedding photographer who is troubled by the image of a woman who appears in every picture she takes. The partners eventually realize that the woman in the pictures has been trapped in an asteroid for four thousand years, where her ex-husband imprisoned her after a nasty divorce. Out of spite, she has taken control of the asteroid and has set it on a collision course with Earth. She expects the collision to free her from the asteroid as it destroys the planet that her husband received in the divorce settlement.

A few more characters round out the firm. Tom’s evil twin brother Jerry lives in a steel box in the basement, from which he is allowed to emerge to vote in partnership meetings. Tony Bateman is a shapeshifter. He might be a tree or he might be a toilet in the ladies’ room. Gina, who was once Queen of the Night, works as a sort of office assistant. The characters are considerably more fun than the typical swordsmen and sorcerers of fantasy who take themselves much too seriously.

The loose plot follows characters as they labor to save the Earth from the approaching asteroid, except for those who are interested only in saving themselves. Characters also engage in office politics as they try to undermine each other in their respective struggles to control the firm, or the Earth, or the universe.

Tom Holt excels at dry wit mixed with occasional moments of slapstick. Humor permeates the novel. Teasdale gets his morning coffee from a little caterer in Plato’s ideal reality, making it the best possible coffee. One of the firm’s clients is Consolidated Landrape. A mother creates a planet for her liberal young daughter to save and tells her, “now you really are the centre of the universe. What more could someone your age possibly ask for?” The plot is goofy but coherent, the characters are endearingly grumpy, and the laughs are plentiful. I would say this is Tom Holt at his best, but Tom Holt is always at his best.

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