vN by Madeline Ashby

Published by Angry Robot on July 31, 2012 

Jack’s wife Charlotte and daughter Amy are von Neumann-type humanoids.  The vN were created by religious folk who thought it would be nice for the unsaved to have some helpers after being left behind.  That’s an original premise, albeit an unlikely one --  given that those who aren’t called to God’s side during the End Times are by definition unworthy of salvation, are religious extremists likely to devote resources to making their sinful lives more comfortable?  If you can suspend your disbelief of that premise, the offbeat story that follows is full of entertaining surprises.

A less original premise (thanks to Isaac Asimov) is that a vN can never harm a human; a failsafe causes the vN to suffer if it sees a human in pain.  That premise is tested by Amy’s grandmother (Portia) and other members of her clade, who seem perfectly content to cause havoc in the human population.

Amy engages in an act of humanoid cannibalism, busts out of jail, and watches a male vN give birth to a baby -- all in the first couple of chapters.  Amy also contends with bounty hunters and rapidly emerging breasts while trying to ignore Portia’s ever-present nagging voice, which she has internalized for reasons that are (like many of the novel’s events) bizarre.  Later she meets up with a vN named Javier who has a history of giving birth to children before abandoning them.

At times vN has the flavor of a comic book, complete with a super-powered heroine.  There’s also an element of silliness -- maybe you could call it playfulness -- that pervades the story.  To some extent the story is a family drama, albeit one in which most members of the featured families (Amy’s and Javier’s) are mechanical.  To some extent the novel is a love story.  It is in part an action/adventure story, in part a comedy, in a part a science fiction story that is light on the science.  For all its strangeness -- including an ending that, like the rest of the story, I would never have predicted -- there is a poignancy that breaks through in the final chapters and comes to dominate everything else.  I was uncertain how I felt about vN in the novel’s first half, but it grew on me as the story progressed and as I came to appreciate the characters.

vN follows memes that are commonplace in science fiction:  whether intelligent sentience entitles a humanoid to human rights; whether freedom is simply the ability to say no.  It expands the last question in an interesting way by asking whether freedom for an AI is the ability to harm a human.  On the other hand, perhaps true freedom (for human and humanoid alike) is the ability to experience joy -- or love.

vN also touches on serious issues not frequently addressed in science fiction, including pedophilia and the perils of democracy (at least when tyrannical decisions are made democratically by vN).  Still, this isn’t a story that a reader is encouraged to take too seriously.  It is enjoyable, lively, and sweet, with just enough profundity to make the story worth thinking about after the fun ends.

RECOMMENDED

Broken Harbor by Tana French

Published by Viking on July 24, 2012

A family of four, attacked in their Broken Harbor home. The parents stabbed, the children suffocated. The Murder Squad assignment goes to veteran Dublin detective Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, partnered with rookie detective Richie Curran. Oddities at the crime scene include unexplained holes in the walls, a plethora of baby monitors, and a large animal trap in the attic. Before the novel's midpoint, it seems that a meticulous investigation has solved the crime, but life isn't that easy for Scorcher. The second half is strange and a little creepy (in a good way). While Broken Harbor works as a whodunit, it shines as a psychological thriller, an intense examination of the internal makeup not just of a murderer, but of murder suspects and the detectives who try to understand them.

In the universe of police procedurals, Broken Harbor stands apart. Everything about the novel feels authentic, from the detailed descriptions of evidence collection and blood splatter analysis to the subtle interaction of the characters. What seems tedious in similar novels is tense and immediate in Broken Harbor. Tana French keeps the story simmering in the first half, before slowly turning it up to a full boil. The smooth partnership that develops between Scorcher and Richie risks coming undone as Richie points out inconvenient problems with the airtight case Scorcher believes they've developed against their prime suspect.

Scorcher is opinionated and his opinions are far from politically correct. At the same time, he has a realistic view of crime and its victims. He views compassion as a liability that impedes dispassionate investigation. He has the same opinion of children ("they turn you soft"). His life is complicated by a sister who is about a half step removed from psychosis -- a more original character than the brooding wife or bitter ex-wife found in most police procedurals. His childhood is dominated by a melodramatic incident that at least serves to explain his brusque personality.

Scorcher's opinions make him interesting but his differences of opinion with Richie make the novel work. Scorcher thinks he has life all figured out, believes he understands how the world works, but Richie brings a different, conflicting perspective. Richie, unlike Scorcher, feels compassion for both victims and suspects, a difference that leads to a fascinating argument about right and wrong in the context of the case they are investigating.

In fact, apart from the curiosity the story arouses concerning whatever was going on in the attic and who the murderer might be, the evolving relationship between Scorcher and Richie is the key to the novel's success. Most of the novel's tension derives from their quarreling about the killer's identity, and the tension escalates late in the story when their lives become a tangled mess. It's not often that a thriller writer manages to combine an intriguing plot with strong, fully-textured characters, but French pulled it off.

French turns some nice phrases (a woman means to give Scorcher "an imposing stare but came off looking like an electrocuted pug dog"), but her eloquent prose is never so showy as to distract from the plot. The story maintains a steady but unhurried pace, reflecting an investigation that is urgent but careful. The ending is sad but satisfying -- very satisfying. In short, for fans of thrillers that derive their entertainment value from human drama rather than explosions and shootouts, Broken Harbor is a winner. 

RECOMMENDED

Disappeared by Anthony Quinn

Published digitally by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Media on July 24, 2012 

Disappeared takes place in Northern Ireland in the aftermath of the Troubles.  For all the political intrigue that gives the novel its foundation, Disappeared focuses on a handful of characters engaged in a quest for the truth.  On a slightly larger scale, it is the story of citizens in a divided country striving to recover from events that tore apart their lives, their families, and their nation.

Oliver Jordan, an IRA member suspected of being a police informant, disappeared in 1989, the presumed victim of a kidnapping and murder.  Seventeen years later, Joseph Devine, a retired legal clerk and former police informant, is murdered.  Father Aiden Fee follows directions to the body and prays for Devine’s soul, as he does for all the informers in his parish who end up dead.  Inspector Celcius Daly, pondering the motive for Devine’s murder, finds himself wondering if the death is connected to the recent disappearance of retired Special Branch undercover agent David Hughes, an elderly man who suffers from dementia.  He finds another connection in the person of Malachy O’Hare, a firebrand solicitor who has made a career of representing IRA members.

The story begins to take shape when the reader learns the unusual circumstances under which Devine’s obituary was published.  The questions that Daly pursues are those that puzzle the reader.  Was Jordan killed because he was an informer or was he, as his widow insists, loyal to the IRA?  What does Jordan’s son, Dermot, know about his father’s past?  Why did Special Branch cover-up the details of Jordan’s disappearance?  What is the significance of Devine’s collection of antique duck decoys, to which the story makes frequent reference?  Are the ghosts that visit Hughes real or imagined?  The questions are answered in a convincing, tightly-plotted story.

While Disappeared has the elements of a mystery, it isn’t much of a detective story.  The novel’s greatest weakness is the information dump that comes as the story nears its conclusion.  The circumstances of Oliver Jordan’s fate are revealed not through detection but in a rambling (and rather improbable) confession that seems to come out of the blue.

To a surprising extent, the novel hinges on information more than emotion.  Despite the human drama that is at the story’s core, I felt detached from it all.  Like Dermot, I had an interest in learning the truth about his father’s disappearance, yet I cared little about the novel’s characters.  A couple of characters who initially appear to be central to the story all but disappear by the novel’s end, while the others failed to resonate with me.

Despite my failure to connect with the story on an emotional level, I enjoyed reading Disappeared.  Anthony Quinn peppers his prose with clever phrases and creates vivid images of the Irish countryside.  The ending is disappointing:  a belated attempt to turn the novel into a thriller is weak, and quite a bit is left unexplained.  When one of the characters tells Daly that he’ll have to live with a bit of uncertainty, that lesson might just as well be directed at the reader.  Notwithstanding those concerns, the engaging plot and colorful prose make Disappeared worth reading.

RECOMMENDED

True Believers by Kurt Andersen

Published by Random House on July 10, 2012

True Believers purports to be the memoir of Karen Hollander, bestselling author, law school dean, and former candidate for the Supreme Court who, as a child, obsessed about James Bond.  Hollander tells us all about the playful spy missions she and her friends undertook while building up to the terrible secret from 1968 that she means us to accept as true.  Hollander finally describes this troubling event about two-thirds of the way through the book, but I stopped caring long before the revelation arrived.

During the first half of the novel, Hollander is a preteen or young teen living largely within her own imagination.  Her secret crushes and James Bond fantasies make for less than compelling reading.  A 14-year-old white kid’s observations of the civil rights movement from her bedroom community in Chicago’s North Shore district are equally uninspiring, as are her predictable reactions to the world events (including the Kennedy assassination) she sees on television.  Shortly before the novel’s midway point, Hollander turns 17 and morphs into a female Holden Caulfield, condemning the phoniness of the world around her.  Unlike Holden, however, Hollander is driven by her growing political awareness.  Where Holden searched for truth by visiting a prostitute, Hollander joins the SDS.  You can probably surmise where the story goes from there.

Although the reader is asked to accept that True Believers is a memoir, it isn’t written like a memoir.  It is more the story of a person struggling to write a memoir rather than the finished product.  It certainly isn’t the kind of memoir a person like Hollander would actually publish.  Kurt Andersen’s failure to sell the premise, his failure to make the novel read like an actual memoir, is the novel’s biggest failing.

Apart from its credibility issues, much of True Believers is dull for the same reason that many actual memoirs are dull:  reading about someone who is obsessed with the triviality of her own life is a tedious experience.  The attempt to jimmy a love story into the plot adds nothing of interest.  I would call the last quarter of the novel anti-climactic but for the absence of any real climax.

Hollander has a tendency to over-intellectualize life.  She equates Disneyland and pornography and megachurches, all of which prove Americans are “adorable and ridiculous” in their desperation “to immerse in fantasy.”  She strives to wax eloquent about the need to embrace “the flotsam and jetsam of life.”  All of it strikes a false note.  Her contrasts between life in the 1960s and contemporary America struck me as artificial.

Andersen makes some worthy observations about the hysterical nature of modern news coverage and the nuttiness/hypocrisy of popular political dogma, but those notions are far from original.  To the extent that the novel tries to say something profound about snitching, it fails.  In fact, I was never quite sure what Andersen was trying to say.

True Believers might have worked as a short story, without the trappings of a memoir.  The bones of a reasonably good tale are buried within the novel.  Sadly, it takes too much effort to uncover those bones.  They are better left interred.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Chimera by T.C. McCarthy

Published by Orbit on July 31, 2012

The war is over (or so it appears) but Stanley Resnick is still fighting.  His job -- the only element of his life that brings him joy -- is to track down and destroy rogue Germlines, the genetically engineered female warriors who have chosen not to meet their scheduled deaths.  The Germlines are designed to spoil like rotting meat after two years, but Germlines are starting to appear who, long after their expiration date, show no signs of spoilage.  Of course, you know that if you read Germline, the first novel in the Subterrene War trilogy (if you haven’t read Germline, you should, both to give context to Chimera and because it is an excellent novel).

Resnick is assigned to track down Margaret, a Germline last seen in Exogene.  The hope is that Margaret will lead Resnick to Dr. Chen, who is suspected of deactivating the Germlines’ safety protocols, thus granting them continued life.  The hitch:  Margaret has become a religious icon in Thailand.  Together with her protégé Lucy, Margaret lives under the protection of the Thai government, while Catherine (who died in Exogene) has achieved a status akin to sainthood.  Resnick undertakes the assignment with the help of Jihoon Kim, a linguist and analyst whose former job involved keeping track of borderline psychopaths like Resnick.

Chimera sharpens the conflict between humans and the Germlines (who consider themselves closer to God than the nonbred) while adding another sort of soldier bred in tanks, this one a creation of the Chinese, an abomination that lives its life within an armored suit, an enemy of humans and Germlines alike.  Margaret, in turn, has created a group of followers called the Gra Jaai -- nonbred humans who nonetheless revere Catherine and learn “how to get closer to God through killing.”  Nothing could be less human than the Chinese genetics, yet Lucy wonders whether they have a soul, while Resnick can’t imagine that Lucy has one.  As was true of the first two novels, questions of religion and the meaning of life and death pervade the story.  Chimera adds a new question:  whether humanity (whatever we mean by that term) is really worth fighting for.

T.C. McCarthy is a master of characterization.  His readers will not be disappointed by his newest creation.  Resnick is so acclimated to combat that crazy is normal.  Resnick no longer fits safely within civilian society -- not that American society, with its complete lack of privacy, is a place he really wants to be.  Everything is a war to Resnick because war is all he knows.  He finds it easy to kill Germlines -- he is, in fact, addicted to it -- and his ever-present anger is easily displaced, making him a threat to pretty much everyone.  Still, McCarthy never settles for a simplistic characterization.  Resnick is thus torn by conflict:  he loves and hates war; he feels the need to protect and to abandon the son he didn’t father; his instinct is to kill Margaret yet he questions that desire as he comes to understand her.

McCarthy has given careful thought to the geopolitics of the messed up future he’s created.  There’s sort of an Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness feel to the story, with Margaret playing the role of Kurtz, right down to the corpses staked to poles in her jungle compound.  The jungle has a life and a madness of its own.  As always, McCarthy's combat imagery is vivid.  Battle scenes are tense; the combatants’ fear is palpable.  Throughout the novel, McCarthy’s prose is electrically charged.

Each novel in the trilogy has its own strengths.  Germline has the most poignant character.  Exogene has the best action.  Chimera reveals the big picture and raises serious philosophical questions.  I’m not sure which of the three I like best (there’s plenty of characterization, action, and philosophy in each), although I had the strongest emotional response to Germline.  I recommend them all, not just to fans of military science fiction but to any reader who appreciates good storytelling. 

RECOMMENDED