Three Miles Down by Harry Turtledove

Published by Tor Books on July 26, 2022

Harry Turtledove often writes alternate histories. Three Miles Down might fit within that classification, or it might be taken as a previously unknown historical episode. The novel makes no dramatic changes in the world’s history, save for the discovery of alien life. If that discovery has an impact on the world, it isn’t explored. While the story involves first contact with aliens, most of the plot revolves around politics and the Cold War at the end of Nixon’s presidency and early in Ford’s.

Jerry Stieglitz is a grad student in oceanography. He’s writing a dissertation on the sounds made by whales. He also dabbles in writing science fiction. He’s about to get married but wonders if the downside of living with a woman is likely to be offset by the upside of regular sex. He also wonders how he will respond to the need for marital compromise, but that concern might be academic as his future wife seems intent on running the show.

Jerry is offered a good chunk of money to join a crew on a vessel engaged in undersea mining. He is required to keep the ship’s true mission secret, under penalty of death. He believes the vessel will be raising a Russian nuclear submarine from the ocean floor. While that was its mission at one point, the mission changed when the search for the sub discovered another vessel on the ocean floor. This one seems to be an alien spaceship.

Jerry is recruited because (1) he speaks some Russian, (2) he knows something about oceans, (3) he’s given some thought to how whales communicate (which might facilitate communication with aliens), and (4) he writes science fiction and therefore has greater insight into space aliens than the CIA agents and technicians who seem to be the mining ship’s primary crew. There are probably hundreds of people more qualified than Jerry to make first contact, but the reader needs to buy into the premise to enjoy the story.

After the spaceship is lifted, Jerry uses his knowledge of Lord of the Rings to gain entry. Jerry and a friend poke around for a while, object to the CIA’s attempt to chisel material from the hull, and are booted out of the project. The rest of the book follows Jerry as he tries to avoid assassination by the CIA. That was easier before surveillance cameras lurked on every corner.

Jerry’s references to Heinlein and other classic figures of science fiction are fun, as is the CIA’s decision to replace Jerry (who is something of a hippy and therefore unreliable in the CIA’s view) with Jerry Pournelle, a classic sf author whose politics were quite far to the right. Pournelle died a few years ago, so it’s impossible to know whether he would have been honored by his inclusion in the story. He seems to have had a big ego so I’m guessing he would be secretly pleased while finding something to gripe about.

A reader might question whether Jerry’s choices are smart, but Turtledove keeps the story moving. His prose is straightforward. While the narrative isn’t particularly suspenseful, it at least left me wondering what would happen next. The ending only resolves part of the story and might leave room for a sequel. Jerry is a likable guy, although he seems a bit flighty. His comments about his soon-to-be wife ring true for the early 1970s but might be seen as less than PC by current standards. I thought they were moderately entertaining, regardless. I had the same reaction to the book as a whole.

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Denial by Jon Raymond

Published by Simon & Schuster on July 26, 2022

What an interesting and unpredictable story Denial tells. The novel takes place about 30 years in the future. A climate catastrophe brought people and nations together. They placed 33 corporate executives on trial for profiting from the planet’s destruction. Eight of the executives fled before trial, making new lives with new identities. They were tried in absentia.

Jack Henry, a reporter, tells the story from his first-person perspective. A friend tells Jack that he saw Robert Cave in a museum coffee shop in Guadalajara. Cave was one of the defendants convicted in absentia. Outing him would be a big scoop. Henry hopes to find him, confirm his identity, and then confront him on camera, a confrontation he calls “the Donaldson” after a technique perfected by Sam Donaldson.

Jack stakes out the coffee shop. He reads Huckleberry Finn to pass the time. After a few days, Cave enters the shop. Jake gets behind him in line, hoping to strike up a conversation so he can record the man’s voice. Cave notices Jake’s book and pulls out a copy of Tom Sawyer. They bond over books, the old-fashioned kind made out of paper. Cave seems eager for American company. Jack spins a cover story before he leaves. After another “coincidental” meeting in the coffee shop, the two men appear to be working toward a friendship.

Jack’s editor reviews the recordings and surreptitious videos. She confirms Cave’s true identity. To Jack and likely to the reader, Cave seems like a decent man. Unless he is putting on an act, he has accepted that climate change caused a crisis and that profit-seeking corporations were largely responsible for it. The novel suggests that people are capable of changing and encourages the reader to wonder about the fairness of taking freedom away from a man who is living a new and harmless life. A cameraman notes that other people who have faced the Donaldson also turned out to be friendly, likeable people. The same can be said of most criminals — we often like the ones we know and despise the ones we never meet. At the same time, Cave avoided the punishment that was imposed on the other executives, and it isn’t fair to let him escape responsibility for his actions.

This might be the stuff of a dramatic moment as Jack decides whether to ruin Cave’s life, but Jon Raymond eschews obvious drama to tell a smaller story. Denial does not explore climate change in any depth. Nor does it explore the wisdom of placing a few corporate executives on trial, although it recognizes that culpability extends far beyond those executives. Every person who chooses not to reduce a carbon footprint, every politician who votes against clean energy, every sham scientist and TV talking head who denies global warming shares fault for the destruction that climate change is already causing.

The story builds tension indirectly. Jack’s relationship with his girlfriend seems troubled when he brings her to Mexico to witness a solar eclipse. Jack becomes ill during that quick vacation, perhaps too ill to execute the Donaldson. The real drama comes from Cave when he realizes that his new life might be coming to an end. Raymond doesn’t overplay the scene. Cave’s reaction is surprising for its understatement. It seems all the more real and sad for its lack of drama.

Perhaps Denial could have been a bigger, more powerful book, but it isn’t fair to criticize an author for not writing a different book. Denial tells a simple, very personal story. I enjoyed it for what it is, even if it could have been more.

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The Last Paladin by P.T. Deutermann

Published by St. Martin's Press on July 19, 2022

P.T. Deutermann writes novels about naval warfare during World War II. I’m a particular fan of his submarine stories. The Last Paladin is set on a destroyer escort rather than a submarine, but the shhip is tasked with sinking Japanese submarines. The story is loosely based on an actual ship.

Mariono de Tomasi relies on his Sicilian heritage to explain his single-minded quest for vengeance after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — an attack that nearly killed him and that took the lives of men under his command as Japanese airplanes strafed sailors who were swimming for their lives. Tomasi is the commanding officer of the USS Holland, a destroyer escort that is geared out for detecting and sinking submarines.

The CO’s executive officer is a bright young electrical engineer named Ephraim Enright. While Tomasi has experience, Enright is full of knowledge and good sense.

Having worked alongside the British to hunt German submarines in the Atlantic, the Holland is ordered to join the fleet in the Pacific. Tomasi’s arrival is delayed by circumstances beyond his control. The commodore running the show at Tulagi is displeased with Tomasi’s tardiness. The commodore is expecting 800 ships in the Pacific Fleet to show up and doesn’t have much use for the Holland. Tomasi receives ambiguous orders that amount to “get lost.” Tomasi decides to use his talent at hunting submarines to look for a rumored picket of Japanese subs that might be awaiting the arrival of the Pacific Fleet so that advance warning can be given to Japan.

Operating pretty much on its own, the Holland enjoys unprecedented success in locating and destroying Japanese submarines. The job almost feels too easy. Although the story moves quickly and is always interesting, the tension that Deutermann brings to his other novels is absent for much of The Last Paladin.

Deutermann redeems himself in the later chapters. The Holland is attacked by torpedoes and later by Japanese aircraft, giving the story the kind of suspense that makes me eager to read Deutermann’s novels.

Tomasi and Enright are a bit one-dimensional, but this isn’t a character driven novel. As was true in Deutermann’s last novel, the intense hatred and stereotyping of Japanese culture is discomforting. I recognize that people felt that way during the war, so Tomasi’s attitude is historically accurate even if it is cringeworthy. The stereotype of Sicilians as creatures of vengeance adds to the sense that Tomasi is not a particularly likable man. Still, he doesn’t pretend to be. And even unlikeable heroes can tell a good war story.

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The Pink Hotel by Liska Jacobs

Published by MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux on July 19, 2022

The Pink Hotel is a luxury hotel in Los Angeles. The color, location, and history suggest that it is the Beverly Hills Hotel. The manager points out locations in the hotel that were favored by Sinatra and Madonna and hundreds of other celebrities. Many of the hotel’s guests and residents are living lives of waste and leisure, having been born into money that they have not yet managed to squander, although they are doing their best.

The hotel is undergoing a renovation. Half the rooms are unavailable. The other half re in high demand, thank to wildfires that are threatening mansions in the hills. One of the bungalows is the permanent home of a survivor of five marriages, each new husband wealthier than the last. “They’re all dead now,” she explains. “Every single one. I’m all that’s left.” She relies on her pet monkey for companionship. Maybe that’s better than searching for a less reliable love.

The story is of a new marriage and its immediate disintegration. Keith Collins manages a small hotel and restaurant outside of San Francisco that has recently earned a Michelin star. Kit is a part-time waitress who fell in love with Keith. At Keith’s urging, she is studying to earn her certification as a sommelier. When Richard Beaumont and his bored wife Ilka visit the restaurant, Beaumont suggests that Keith might be the right material to work at his pink hotel. Keith and Kit are both gorgeous and Keith has the kind of superficial charm that plays well in LA. After Beaumont learns that Keith and Kit will be getting married, he offers them a deep honeymoon discount at his hotel and suggests that it would be worth Keith’s time to visit the place. The honeymoon offer is actually the idea of Beaumont’s wife, Ilka, who feels inspired by the couple’s young love. Once they are at the hotel, Ilka sets out to test whether their love is real — because, if it is not, then no love is real, including her own.

The guests and staff are amused by Keith and Kit. They clearly don’t belong among the elite. Keith has convinced himself that he belongs, but he feels a need to assure others that he recognizes Kit is “not cut from the same cloth as them.” He refers, for example, to her “hillbilly laugh.” Keith is clearly underselling Kit and Kit is not amused.

Since wildfires have left the hotel understaffed, Keith volunteers to perform various managerial tasks, expecting that his performance will lead to an assistant manager position at the hotel. Keith claims that he’s doing it for Kit, but Kit isn’t happy that she’s being ignored all day. For most of the novel, it isn’t clear whether Keith is even in the running for the assistant manager position. Beaumont might simply be using him as free labor in a time of crisis, or playing a prank on a middle class kid. Kit understands that he wants the job because of “the throbbing empty center of him, the void he tries to fill with expensive pretty things in the hope he will feel whole.” Kit would like Keith to make her feel whole, but he’s more obsessed with pretty things than his pretty wife.

Life at the hotel is frivolous. As Ilka observes near the novel’s end, “In this place, nothing real can survive.” Fires are devastating the hills surrounding Los Angeles, riots have broken out in the streets, but hotel guests are oblivious. They demand constant entertainment and endless supplies of Champaign and cocaine, anything to alleviate the boredom of wealth, to distract them from reality. Toxic twins have given their caracals the run of the hotel. The twins torment Marguerite, a spoiled teen who treats Kit like a new toy. Marguerite dresses up Kit in couture, changes her makeup and shows her off to her wealthy friends. By the end of the novel’s week-long timespan, the hotel has succumbed to the anarchy of its guests. Nothing real is surviving, but little about the lives of the hotel’s guests is real. In the end, they are no better than the protestors who riot outside the hotel, a class war fought without class or dignity on either side.

Love might be real but what is love in the Pink Hotel? “Love is a fantasy,” a hotel guest opines. Beaumont is having an affair with Coco, the hotel’s most competent employee who is nevertheless a glorified waitress. Since her husband is giving her no attention on their honeymoon, Kit is spending too much time with a hot construction worker. Keith reacts by responding to Ilka’s flirtation. This might be the stuff of soap opera, but it’s fun.

While mocking the wealthy is always a good time, the novel’s greater value lies in its dissection of the Collins’ marriage. Kit already feels like she has failed as a wife. She’s torn between love for her husband and a desire for the freedom she had before she became Mrs. Collins. When she tells Keith she doesn’t want to be a sommelier, that she might want to go back to school or become an artist, his response sends the message that he doesn’t believe she’s sufficiently smart or talented to make it in the world without his guidance. The honeymoon opens Kit’s eyes to the reality of her relationship. At the same time, Keith really does love Kit. He knows he should listen to her, knows that they should talk about their problems, knows what he should say to her. If Keith and Kit would just talk, their love might produce a middle ground that allows them to flourish independently and together. They both know that but the words never come.

The woman with five dead husbands might provide the key to the novel when she muses: “Learning how to be so filled with anger and hurt, sadness and fear — all the horrors life can throw at you, and still somehow offer love. Because how else could any of this work? Love despite the monster. Without it there’s nothing.” The novel ends without resolving the issues that are pulling the Collins' marriage apart, but exploring those issues in such a chaotic setting is sufficient. Engrossing events that cause multiple characters to melt down, just as the surrounding world is doing, make The Pink Hotel a bizarre but strangely compelling story.

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The Big Dark Sky by Dean Koontz

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Published by Thomas & Mercer on July 19, 2022

Dean Koontz returns to horror fiction (or something close to it) in The Big Dark Sky. It is a welcome change from his Jane Hawk thrillers. Koontz gives himself an amusing plug by having one of the characters rave about Jane Hawk (twice), but Koontz is at his best when his goal is to make the reader afraid to turn out the light after closing the book.

Birth defects left Jimmy Alvarez unable to speak until he was possessed by an entity he identifies as the Thing. Jimmy was the secret friend of Joanna “Jojo” Chase when she was young. She thought it was special that Jimmy only spoke to her. He was kind and gentle and seemed to control animals, plenty of which inhabit the woods in Montana where Jimmy and Joanna lived. As an adult, however, Joanna has forgotten that Jimmy ever existed.

The novel begins with exploding houses and other attempts, sometimes successful, to eliminate people on Xanthus Toller’s death list. The government views those deaths as a national security issue — not surprising, given the way they are accomplished.

Ganesh Patel is part of a group tasked with stopping Toller. Ganesh and Artimis Selene know Jimmy’s Thing as the Other. The Other controls electronics as well as animals, although it has a limited range. It has been watching humans and probing their minds for 4,000 years. It was eventually drawn to the dark philosophy of Asher Optime, a disciple of Toller’s Restoration Movement. The Movement advocates restoring the planet to its natural state by wiping out humankind. Optime is writing a manifesto about the benefits of human extinction. The true purpose of the manifesto is to glorify Optime, but the Other agrees with the Restoration Movement’s goal and might have the power to achieve it.

Koontz serves up a collection of characters who each bring something of value to the story. Joanna’s tragic childhood encased her in an “emotional cocoon.” Through dreams and phone calls, Joanna remembers Jimmy and understands that he is asking for her help. Joanna and Jimmy are easily the novel’s most sympathetic characters, the purest of heart.

Ganesh is a powerful government contractor who has the ear of the president. Artimis is his AI, who was programmed with a female personality matrix to avoid the male drive for conquest and power. The novel’s ending suggests that female personalities can be just as dangerous, albeit in a different way. Maybe Koontz will explore that thought in a sequel.

Wyatt Rider is a private detective. A billionaire who has been acquiring land in Montana hires Wyatt to investigate a phenomenon near his isolated Montana home that he perceives as supernatural. Wyatt enlists the help of a computer specialist named Kenny Deetle. Kenny’s new girlfriend, Leigh Ann Bruce, rides to the rescue with Kenny and Ganesh when Wyatt needs help.

Optime captures people and tenderizes them with terror before killing them to advance his Restoration project. Two of his recent captives are a smart kid named Colson Fielding and a resilient woman named Ophelia Poole. Both play an important role when the characters eventually come together in Montana for a confrontation with Optime and the Other. Resourceful children and smartass women are the kind of likeable characters readers expect from Koontz.

As have other writers, Koontz ties Carl Jung’s theory of collective unconsciousness to quantum mechanics and the notion that reality does not arrive at a fixed state until it is observed. While the notion that people manufacture reality is fascinating, Koontz’s attempt to relate the theory to the plot is awkward.

Physics aside, Koontz is a gifted storyteller. His skillful blend of swift action and sympathetic characterization assures that the reader will never lose focus. None of the padding that impaired the Jane Hawk novels burdens The Big Dark Sky. The story does not depend on the supernatural, but it straddles the line between science fiction and horror as Koontz sprinkles in the kind of chilling scenes that defined his reputation as a horror novelist. While the plot elements are overly familiar, Koontz waves them together in a way that almost makes the novel seem fresh.

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