A couple of book reviews.
Oct. 12th, 2009 12:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ashwednesdayI posted these on eljay, so I may as well share them here as well since I have not updated on dreamwidth in a while...
A couple of weeks ago I read Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood. This is the first novel by Grimwood that I've read, and I get the impression that he's a cyberpunk writer. There are certainly elements of cyberpunk in Pashazade; however, one issue I have with cyberpunk is that it's often very slick, very stylish, and quite cold, but this novel is a bit grittier and warmer.
Pashazade is the word for the son of a pasha, and the novel's protagonist, the blond and blue eyed ZeeZee, begins his journey in the story discovering he is supposedly the son of a pasha, and his name is Ashraf Bey. We first meet Raf when he is sitting at a cafe in El Iskandryia having a conversation with an imaginary fox, having been broken out of prison by a woman who claims to be his aunt.
El Iskandryia, better known to Westerners as Alexandria, is in this alternate reality of the near-future one of the world's most important cities. In this world the Ottoman Empire never fell, and the Islamic world is a great economic power. For me the real triumph of this novel is the atmosphere it manages to conjure of the Middle East/North Africa whilst creating a plausibly futuristic setting. Iskandryia is a city of serpentine alleyways snaking through crumbling buildings, of slick modern technology in white-tiled malls, of tea and hashish at street side cafes. Grimwood writes these details with a light hand, not labouring either the alternate history that led to Iskandryia being what it is, or pushing too hard at the juxtaposition of west and east.
Ashraf Bey makes for an interesting hero. He has those stereotypical cyberpunk qualities of being genetically upgraded, being streetwise and a comfortable acquaintance with violence. But Raf is more interesting than your common or garden Gibsonalike. He is teetering close to being unhinged, and his lonely childhood and dangerous late adolescence give emotional depth to his characterisation. The other characters are interesting, too, from the world weary detective Felix to the child-genius mouthy Hani.
Overall, this is really energetic, well crafted and intelligent sf. The murder mystery ends up actually not being that interesting, but that's not really the point. A reviewer says the book is "Raymond Chandler for the 21st century" and although it's a lazy sort of journalistic comparison, they have a point. Marlowe's stories often aren't about the denouement - they are about the drawing of a culture and a particular time, and following the hero's world-weary journey through it. Ashraf Bey isn't a gumshoe, and he's not as disillusioned as Marlowe, and Iskandryia isn't like sultry, rain-slicked LA, but Grimwood's evocative future noir and smart-talking hero are perhaps successors of a sort to the Chandler mantle. I am definitely keen to read the next two books in the Arabesk series.
As a complete contrast, I have also re-read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall recently. Anne Bronte is overshadowed by her sisters, but this novel is so brave and bold - and in places really rather funny. Charlotte is my favourite Bronte sister, but I prefer Anne to Emily. Wuthering Heights is a work of genius, but its central characters are (for me at least) so unlikable that it's hard to engage with their wild emotions. Tenant I would describe as an early feminist novel. Helen makes a very thoughtful decision to leave her emotionally abusive husband. She doesn't flee in hysterics, and her husband isn't beating her, and so she doesn't have either the excuse of "feminine emotion" or a need for safety to fall back on. She leaves, and she has utter conviction that it is the moral choice for her and her son, and at the time that the novel was written this was an incredibly bold thing to write. I think I'd like to read a biography of Anne Bronte and get inside her head a little more - I know a lot about Charlotte, but I think from reading all the sisters' novels that Anne may have been the most cool-headed and the staunchest in her convictions.
A couple of weeks ago I read Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood. This is the first novel by Grimwood that I've read, and I get the impression that he's a cyberpunk writer. There are certainly elements of cyberpunk in Pashazade; however, one issue I have with cyberpunk is that it's often very slick, very stylish, and quite cold, but this novel is a bit grittier and warmer.
Pashazade is the word for the son of a pasha, and the novel's protagonist, the blond and blue eyed ZeeZee, begins his journey in the story discovering he is supposedly the son of a pasha, and his name is Ashraf Bey. We first meet Raf when he is sitting at a cafe in El Iskandryia having a conversation with an imaginary fox, having been broken out of prison by a woman who claims to be his aunt.
El Iskandryia, better known to Westerners as Alexandria, is in this alternate reality of the near-future one of the world's most important cities. In this world the Ottoman Empire never fell, and the Islamic world is a great economic power. For me the real triumph of this novel is the atmosphere it manages to conjure of the Middle East/North Africa whilst creating a plausibly futuristic setting. Iskandryia is a city of serpentine alleyways snaking through crumbling buildings, of slick modern technology in white-tiled malls, of tea and hashish at street side cafes. Grimwood writes these details with a light hand, not labouring either the alternate history that led to Iskandryia being what it is, or pushing too hard at the juxtaposition of west and east.
Ashraf Bey makes for an interesting hero. He has those stereotypical cyberpunk qualities of being genetically upgraded, being streetwise and a comfortable acquaintance with violence. But Raf is more interesting than your common or garden Gibsonalike. He is teetering close to being unhinged, and his lonely childhood and dangerous late adolescence give emotional depth to his characterisation. The other characters are interesting, too, from the world weary detective Felix to the child-genius mouthy Hani.
Overall, this is really energetic, well crafted and intelligent sf. The murder mystery ends up actually not being that interesting, but that's not really the point. A reviewer says the book is "Raymond Chandler for the 21st century" and although it's a lazy sort of journalistic comparison, they have a point. Marlowe's stories often aren't about the denouement - they are about the drawing of a culture and a particular time, and following the hero's world-weary journey through it. Ashraf Bey isn't a gumshoe, and he's not as disillusioned as Marlowe, and Iskandryia isn't like sultry, rain-slicked LA, but Grimwood's evocative future noir and smart-talking hero are perhaps successors of a sort to the Chandler mantle. I am definitely keen to read the next two books in the Arabesk series.
As a complete contrast, I have also re-read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall recently. Anne Bronte is overshadowed by her sisters, but this novel is so brave and bold - and in places really rather funny. Charlotte is my favourite Bronte sister, but I prefer Anne to Emily. Wuthering Heights is a work of genius, but its central characters are (for me at least) so unlikable that it's hard to engage with their wild emotions. Tenant I would describe as an early feminist novel. Helen makes a very thoughtful decision to leave her emotionally abusive husband. She doesn't flee in hysterics, and her husband isn't beating her, and so she doesn't have either the excuse of "feminine emotion" or a need for safety to fall back on. She leaves, and she has utter conviction that it is the moral choice for her and her son, and at the time that the novel was written this was an incredibly bold thing to write. I think I'd like to read a biography of Anne Bronte and get inside her head a little more - I know a lot about Charlotte, but I think from reading all the sisters' novels that Anne may have been the most cool-headed and the staunchest in her convictions.