Ender in Exile, by Orson Scott Card

Around 23 years ago, Orson Scott Card published Ender’s Game, a YA novel about a boy trained as a soldier to fight in a war against an invading alien species. The novel launched an extensive series of books that followed, across solar systems and centuries, not only the original protagonist, Ender Wiggin, but several other major characters from that first novel. Now, in a new story set immediately after Ender’s stint as a battle commander, Card returns to the subject of the teenage soldier and explores the years in which Ender grows into a full-fledged adult.

SPOILER ALERT! If you’ve never read Ender’s Game, and you plan to, stop reading this review now. There’s no way to discuss Ender in Exile without exposing certain plot points in Ender’s Game. So just move along. There are plenty of other reviews to hold your interest on this site. Better yet, step away from the computer, go to the bookstore or library and get yourself a copy of Ender’s Game. Let me assure you it is a far far better novel than Ender in Exile anyway.

The cover describes Ender in Exile as "The All-New Direct Sequel to Ender's Game" but it is really an expanded retelling of the final chapters of Ender’s Game, when after destroying the “Buggers” (or, more properly, the formic species) Ender departs with a shipload of colonials to establish a new human colony on a former formic world. While on this new world, he discovers hidden there a cocooned larval formic queen and establishes a psychic link with it to learn why the formics attacked humans in the first place and why they allowed Ender to destroy them. He then writes an influential work called The Hive Queen and the Hegemony and establishes himself as a sort of pseudo-religious figure called the Speaker for the Dead who reveals the truth, good or bad, of a person’s life after their passing as part of the mourning process for survivors. In Ender’s Game, all this is glossed over in just a few pages and not much of it is explored in other books in the series.

So it ought to be fresh and interesting material for a new novel. But in Ender in Exile, Card explores almost none of it, and when he does, very little is illuminated. Instead, the first fifty pages of the novel are a collage of letters and discussions between various characters trying to determine whether Ender should return to Earth. Everyone attempts to manipulate everyone else, until a great deal of tedious blathering leads us to understand that pretty much no one, not even Ender himself, thinks that his return is a good idea. Instead, at the tender age of thirteen, he will be appointed governor of a new settlement planet named Shakespeare Colony. His sister Valentine volunteers to go with him. The next several hundred pages (or is it several hundred thousand?) log the colonists two year space flight (because of relativity, the Earth and those who live there will have aged 40 years in this time). Much of this flight involves conniving and counter-conniving between Ender and the ship’s captain who hopes to steal Ender’s governorship from him once they reach the distant planet. This is all done through endless formal dialogue in which characters pretend to be nice to each other and debate about what’s appropriate speech and behaviour for various ranks and ages of military and civilian personnel (it’s like while Card was writing Jane Austen sneezed on his laptop keyboard). There’s a timid ship-board romance between Ender and one of the colonists that never threatens to go anywhere and there is a significant amount of paper dedicated to describing a production of The Taming of the Shrew that the colonists engage in to amuse themselves. A lot of people point out, over and over again, in praise and in disgust, that Ender is only a young teenager.

What is most disappointing about the book, overall, is its lack of vivid imagery. Ender’s Game is a memorable book because it is full of images that sear themselves into the reader’s mind. There are the brutal encounters of Ender’s childhood, the stark descriptions of Battle School, the range of Battle School students, the glimpses of the Buggers themselves, and the strange and vivid dream-like landscape in Ender’s leisure-time escapist video game (to name but a few). Ender in Exile, by contrast, almost manages to avoid creating any visual images at all for most of the book. Card doesn’t even give us a decent picture of the colonists’ ship. Finally, about two-thirds of the way through, we’re introduced to an intelligent grub which metamorphoses into a metal mining beetle. Ender hones his telepathy by speaking to these beetles, which prepares him for meeting the hive queen. That part is kind of cool and there are a few other surprises in the waning chapters, but, unless you have an extreme tolerance for the tedious, you’ll never get there.

Given that you are not an absolute die-hard Ender fan, I’d say it’s safe to avoid this latest installment. If you’ve read every other book in the series and you want to make it a clean sweep, pick this novel up and see how far you can get before you are driven mad. It’ll make for a new kind of Ender’s Game.

The Six Million Dollar Gossip Girl

Halfway through Robin Wasserman's novel Skinned is a passage that may be the most frightening thing I've read in ages. I don't mean "scary" in the sense that monsters or violence are scary; I mean terrifying in its implications, both for the characters in the immediate story and the society they live in, which is our society pushed forward a few nudges.

Lia Kahn (although the name is vaguely ethnic, it's clear from both the cover and description in the text that this is a blonde, white beauty) is the elder daughter of a wealthy businessman in the near future. When she is horribly injured in an accident, her personality is downloaded into an anatomically correct android body, and she becomes a "skinner," one of a growing subculture of similarly recreated teens. Some, like Quinn (left physically ravaged by an accident when she was three) embrace this new existence and turn it into a typical teenage clique, modifying their artifical bodies to denote their independence from "orgs." And of course, religious fanatics claim these beings are abominations and protest their very existence.

As part of her recovery, Lia attends a group therapy session with other skinners. One of them, Sloane, had attempted suicide and says this about her current condition:

"They [her parents] let their daughter die, I'm just some replacement copy. And if I do it again, they'll make another copy."

My life has been directly touched by suicide, and I have strong feelings about it. What I don't believe is that anyone, parents or otherwise, should have this level of power. In a way, the thought of being forced to live is almost as awful as being deliberately killed. This is the core idea at the heart of Skinned.

But I can't recommend the book whole-heartedly. It has the same central flaw I see in a lot of YA books: the assumption that their target audience is only interested in stories about rich, beautiful teens. Lia is a daughter of privilege as both a human being and a skinner, and all her worries are separated from any sort of concern about day-to-day survival. As I read, I could only think how much more powerful the story might have been had it happened to a daughter of the middle class, or even the child of a monetarily poor family. What if resurrecting their daughter wiped out the family's income? What if they had to make payments, and she could potentially be repossessed? This opens a wide vista of ways to comment on our current society, but Wasserman instead gives us a Bionic Gossip Girl, watering down the premise with the implied assumption that Lia, no matter what, will be taken care of. It's The Hills crossed with Monster Garage, with those shows' same sense of entitlement. There is a subplot about the first skinners, black inner-city kids given Caucasian bodies because that's all the corporation makes, but the "rich white girl learns the sufferings of the dark-skinned poor" trope is as trite as they come.

Still, the heart of the story remains utterly, totally frightening. And Wasserman, a prolific author of YA novels', nails the character's voice and mileiu with broad strokes and telling details. This is the first of a trilogy, and I'm intrigued enough to check out "Crashed" when it appears in the fall.

As for whether guys will like it, that's a tough call. It's a traditional girl's book, and not just because the hero is female. The issues are primarily emotional, and there's no real plot. Not that there needs to be; I was actually delighted that it didn't turn out Lia was secretly created to be a super-powered weapon, or that some conspiracy wanted her for nefarious purposes (although there's a hint that future books may, alas, take that cliche'd route). Wasserman writes as realistically as the story allows, and this works in its favor. But it's a book to make you think, not excite or thrill you.

Or, in my case at least, to terrify you.

Last Exit to Normal -- Michael Harmon

Three years ago, Ben Campbell's dad announced that he was gay and the family imploded. Ben's mother walked out and Ben was left with a father who, in Ben's eyes, selfishly destroyed the family. For two years, Ben did everything he could to drive his father crazy: he smoked pot, dropped acid, got drunk, got arrested, skipped school, smoked more pot... and was always truthful and open about his activities.

One year ago, Ben cleaned himself up. For almost an entire year, he didn't get in trouble at home or school, stopped smoking pot and was, as he said, "somewhat civil". Everything was going pretty okay. Until, that is, the incident that resulted in his father and his father's husband packing themselves, Ben, and all of their belongings into the family minivan and moving the three of them from Spokane to The Middle of Nowhere, Montana (population 400), to live with Ben's dad's husband's mother.

That's right. I said Montana.

The real stand-out in The Last Exit to Nowhere is Ben's voice. He is angry, sarcastic, argumentative, extremely bright, curious, honest, rash, stubborn, romantic, depressed, heroic, funny and honorable -- sometimes all within the space of two pages. Although a couple of the plotlines felt a bit overly dramatic/TV-movie-ish to me*, the heart of the book -- Ben's relationship with his father and his own coming-of-age -- felt nuanced and emotionally real. His relationships with the other characters, the aforementioned TV-movie plotlines aside, rang true as well, as did the interactions between the secondary characters. It's a quick, easy read, but unlike a lot of quick, easy reads, Michael Harmon didn't forgo depth for readability. There's a lot to think about here.

Highly recommended to fans of Chris Crutcher.

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Cross-posted at Bookshelves of Doom.

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*And contrary to what one of the characters says, I don't think Dwight Yoakam has ever covered Pink Cadillac, though he does cover Dave Alvin's Long White Cadillac**. If I'm wrong, let me know -- I'd love to add to my collection.

**Dwight is wearing what might be the world's tightest pants in that video. Scary.

Book Review- 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Clay Jenson comes home one day to find a mysterious box full of 7 cassette tapes, each side with a number 1 to 13. After putting one in his dad's old cassette player, he's surprised to hear the voice of Hannah Baker, who had committed suicide just a few weeks prior. The tapes detail her descent into suicide, and Clay spends the rest of the day and majority of the night listening to each tape and going to the places that she describes in them. Each tape talks about 1 of 13 different people, adding up to thirteen reasons why Hannah decided to end her life.

In Jay Asher's spectacular debut, he goes back and forth in the narrative between Clay's thoughts and dialogues with others and Hannah's voice on the tapes. The book in and of itself is a brilliant premise, and Asher follows through with a great storytelling skill. Vivid details, even in Hannah's tapes when she talks about each of the reasons, and a raw realism really catapult this novel to becoming one of the best novels of 2007. I highly recommend everyone pick up a copy. It is a very powerful book.

Note: I wrote this review back in late January 2008 for my myspace blog. I am posting this review here now because of two reasons: 1) I recently listened to the audio tape version and wanted to discuss it a bit and 2) Little Willow and I are planning on doing our next He Said, She Said about it, which will be posted sometime this month.

Anyway, the audio book version is fantastic. The guy and girl who did Clay and Hannah were wonderful in their respective roles. Hannah especially was exactly how I pictured her talking when I read the book- sort of this raspy, sarcastic kind of voice. I also have to say that listening to the audio book was much more powerful than reading the book, which is quite a feat since the book itself is quite powerful. Listening to both of these characters go through their journey is heart-wrenching and emotional, especially toward the end when Hannah is nearing the end of her reasons and tapes. I was seriously about to cry, which would not have been good since I was at work at the time. I felt this tightening in my chest as I continued to listen. Like Clay with the tapes, you just can't stop listening. You need to keep going and listen to them all with very few breaks.

That's all I've got for now. Look for the next installment of He Said, She Said soon!

Into the cold

While the name Robert Scott might be known to teen readers, it is unlikely that they have read about some of the more successful aspects of his fateful 1909 journey to the South Pole. As he explains in the preface to his new book, Emperors of the Ice, author Richard Farr was particularly taken with the “Winter Journey” portion of that expedition. Later recounted by Apsley Cherry-Garrard in his bestselling narrative The Worst Journey in the World, the trip to collect Emperor penguin eggs nearly killed “Cherry,” Dr. Edward Wilson and Lt. Henry Bowers. As it turned out Wilson and Bowers did not survive the race to the Pole with Scott and it was only Cherry who was later able to provide the first person account of Scott’s dedication to science. Unfortunately, Cherry’s book is a bit of a “doorstop” as Farr puts it. A lot of readers might be intimidated by its size (almost 600 pages) or its age. This is most true for teen readers for whom the adventurous aspects of the book would otherwise be very appealing. So Farr wrote about the journey in an easier format. Heavily illustrated with maps and photographs from the expedition, Emperors of the Ice is exactly the sort of book that readers eager for the unknown will adore.

One interesting choice Farr made was to write the book from Cherry’s perspective. Relying primarily on Worst Journey for his text, Farr crafted a book that literally places the reader there with Cherry, Bill Wilson and Birdie Bowers as they struggled against enormous odds (and nearly died) in pursuit of the hidden secrets of bird evolution. While science has proven that Wilson’s thesis about the penguins was incorrect, the larger idea that birds and dinosaurs were related is true. But more amazingly, discovering that polar explorers actually risked their lives in pursuit of ornithological revelations is heartening in the best sort of way. They were brave and superhumanly determined and it was all for science. After so many books about winning it is wonderful to be reminded that Scott was in a race only because it was thrust upon him by circumstance; that his goal was always just to learn more. (Something that Richard Byrd and George Catlin would both understand.) Emperors of the Ice manages then to salute both men of adventure and intellect. There are action movies and video games and then there is what was accomplished at the bottom of the world nearly a century ago. This is thrilling writing and it will hopefully open up a whole world of polar literature to readers looking for something to believe in.

Cross-posted at Bookslut with review of other books for curious minds.

The Brimstone Network by Tom Sniegoski

Picture the X-Men, or the cast of Heroes. Now picture them younger, right when they are discovering and harnessing their powers, and you've got The Brimstone Network. It's an organization of warriors, sorcerers, and superpowered folks. Bram, a young teenager who is half-human, half-specter, inherited leadership of the group when his father, the original leader of the group, was killed in an attack that almost wiped their ranks out entirely. Now Bram not only has to find new recruits, he has to try to fill his father's shoes and keep the legacy alive.

The new and youthful members of The Brimstone Network have powers and abilities that fans of Heroes would love to have, like telekinesis and shapeshifting (psst . . . one of the main characters is a werewolf!) Some are tentative while others are tenacious. They must learn how to control and use their powers safely. Meanwhile, there are a number of villains who will stop at nothing to get what they want. For example, the second book introduces an evil vampire who can't be killed. Yikes.

If you are in the market for a new supernatural series for young readers, you've got to get this series. The Brimstone Network has lots of action and suspense, and it would be a really cool TV show or movie. I'm a sucker for stories with superpowers, and I really like how the different members of the Network struggle with their newfound abilities.



The first book in the line is simply called The Brimstone Network. The second book, The Shroud of A'Ranka, officially comes out tomorrow, December 30th, but it has already crept steathily into some stores. The third book, Specter Rising, will be released on January 27th. I can't wait to read it - and I really hope that Simon & Schuster lets the series continue!

In this series and others, Tom Sniegoski treats his young male protagonists very well. He lets them be boys, lets them be kids, even if they are in a hurry to grow up or have the weight of the world on their shoulders. His hilarious Owlboy series is for the same target audience as Brimstone, as is the magical OutCast quartet, which he wrote with Christopher Golden. There's also The Fallen, an angelic fantasy quartet which I highly recommend to teens and adults, plus his mystery novels for adults (A Kiss Before the Apocalypse, the forthcoming Dancing on the Head of a Pin) which feature Remy Chandler, an immortal, angelic private investigator.

For more information about the author and the series, visit www.sniegoski.com and www.sniegoski.com/brimstone I recently added a bunch of icons and wallpapers to the Brimstone site, thanks to the folks at Simon and Schuster, including illustrator Zachariah Howard and designer Karin Paprocki. Bram kind of looks like a young Indiana Jones on the second book cover, don't you think?

On Behalf of the Spirit

Yeah, so the Spirit is getting the living spit kicked out of it in pretty much every review out there. If you've read any of them, you've heard all the bad stuff already, but what none of them said was this: writer/director (and comic book re-inventor) Frank Miller has tried to distill certain mythic and aesthetic elements of the super-hero comic book into this two-hour movie and he's mainly succeeded. If you specifically love what super-hero comic books have to say and the way that they say it, then you will find a lot to enjoy about this movie.

And while I've got you here, check out Will Eisner's original Spirit comics; there's about a zillion collected editions around now (but this one's a fine place to start). If Jack Kirby gave comic books their energy and power, then it was Eisner who gave them their unique form of expression. It's been said that he invented the language of the comic book the way Orson Welles defined the language of cinema with Citizen Kane. And you better believe that this is the only place you are ever going to see the Spirit movie and Citizen Kane mentioned in the same paragraph.

Addictive holiday reads

Okay, I *am* visiting my girlfriend's family over the holidays, but it isn't this bad.

But that didn't stop me from packing what I hope are a couple of really fun books: 1) the graphic novel based on Prince of Persia (which David wrote about a couple months ago, and which I've been coveting as I've been contemplating getting PoP for my 360) and 2) Red Seas Under Red Skies, the sequel to the Lies of Locke Lamora.

When I was packing, I realized that's one of my personal holiday traditions (which I bet I share with many GLW readers): losing myself in a good book after the haze of food and presents and visiting--usually a fun, light book, and always something that keeps me turning the pages.

Here are a few of my favorite page-turners from past holidays:

• The Lies of Locke Lamora: This is fantasy, but it isn't Lord of the Rings. Locke Lamora is an orphan, an incredibly gifted grifter, and the leader of a gang called the Gentlemen Bastards. Think of it as "caper" fantasy--sort of like Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser crossed with Ocean's 11. I plowed through almost all 752 pages this Thanksgiving weekend! (Not surprisingly given its fast-moving plot, it's already being adapted as a movie.)
  
  
• Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds: This is a goofy, engaging space opera with highwire action and a Hitchhiker's Guide-style sense of humor (e.g., one of the protagonists' names is "Alacrity Fitzhugh"). The two follow-up books are equally worthwhile (Jinx on a Terran Inheritance and Fall of the White Ship Avatar), and this great author is also responsible for some equally page-turning fantasy and Han Solo stories.
  
  
• Fred Saberhagen's Book of Swords: I remember finishing this post-apocalyptic fantasy series over successive Christmas breaks in junior high and high school, and they're still some of my favorites. Saberhagen often starts with an ingenious "what if?" in his stories (much like in his famed SF Berserker series, with its self-replicating misanthropic robots), and the Book of Swords is no different. In this three-part series (with several "Lost Swords" follow-ups that'll have you combing through used-book stores), the gods have scattered twelve unique Swords of Power--with names like Coinspinner, Shieldbreaker, and Farslayer--across the world, as a game for mortals to fight over.

I'm obviously prejudiced towards SF and fantasy here, but if anybody else wants to share their ideas for good, light reads amidst the holiday daze, please add them in the comments!

Nexus - Best Comic Book Ever?

Here’s a Christmas treat for someone…
Nexus: The Origin, a fine comic book by Mike Baron and Steve Rude.
… to be given away to a deserving young reader.

Like Scrooge on Christmas morning, I throw open my shutter anxious to share the good things of life with others.
Now don’t get me wrong. This comic book -- or should I say graphic novella -- is not from my personal horde of Nexus comics. Heaven forefend!
However, I found it in a shoppe recently and thinking that it was a perfect introduction to the greatest superhero comic series ever written, I decided to scoop it up and make sure it got into deserving hands.
Yes, I’m giving it away to a lucky Guys Lit Wire reader. Keep reading for details…



What’s so great about Nexus?
It’s just one of those things where two great talents collide and create something more than a masterpiece, since after all any old master can make a masterpiece. This is rarer still.
The artist Steve Rude is simply astonishing. A designer of both pages and panels. An artist with wild new ideas and a love of old-school illustration. And a dude -- The Dude, he calls himself -- who is not above sneaking Kirk and Spock or something Seuss-ish into a book.
The writer Mike Baron is no slouch either, as they say. He’s got some big ideas and in Nexus he has found a way to turn them into a cracking good tale.

It’s a unique story among superheroes and Baron and Rude have found many ways to keep it taking new, surprising, even frustrating turns.
The hero, Horatio Hellpop, is tormented by dreams of mass murder. Dreams in which he feels the agony of every victim. The dreams don’t stop until he personally tracks down the killer and execute him.
To do this, Horatio has been given nearly infinite power. In most cases, the murderers stand no chance at all. In fact, in one of the finest stories, Horatio must kill a feeble old woman.
In this book, Nexus: The Origin, we see two of his first killings and two of the most interesting. In one we see Horatio -- now the all-powerful Nexus -- do some eye-ball popping, shazaam-tastic, comic-book blasting! But in the other, we see Nexus arrive to take down a horrible Nazi-ish figure. Like many of the Nazis, he’s no super-villain, just a bad, pudgy man.
Nexus come blazing in, like a million superheroes have done before. (Except drawn better.)
“Stand up and take it like a man!” he demands of his victim.
The man just cowers.
“NO? Then let your death be a little thing … quickly forgotten.”
He lays a finger on the man’s head. The murder is done.
And then the starving, tortured survivors crawl forth from the rubble. They need a place to go. Horatio decides to give them asylum, attempting to create a better society, but such a thing is never easy…

Once you’ve read this origin. You’ll be ready to plunge in. There are many issues of Nexus, several graphic novels and the occasional new book.
You’ll find many items at http://www.steverudeart.com/Comics_s/2.htm
or at TFAW, the amazon of awesome.
Otherwise, check your local comic shop or library.
One of our local libraries has a Nexus graphic novel in the Kiddie Comics section. Nope, this isn’t for kids.

If you’d like to get be the proud owner of Nexus: The Origin, send an email to sam@riddleburger.com with Nexus in the subject line and I’ll randomly pick a winner from all entries.

What It Is by Lynda Barry

Reviewed by Steven Wolk

I post my reviews on the 25th of each month. This review spot in Guys Lit Wire--the 23rd of each month--is normally the place for Dewey's book review. Tragically, Dewey passed away recently. I was asked this month to post in Dewey's spot. I did not know Dewey, who was an English teacher (and that tells me something about her), but I want to acknowledge that this is her place. I'm just a guest today. Rest in peace.

There is just one Lynda Barry. Artist, playwright, novelist, comic creator. Lynda Barry is an original, and as my Grandma used to say, they made her and broke the mold. Her book, What It Is, is a visual and creative marvel. Nearly every page is a mixed media collage made up of found images, original painting, found text, added text, manipulated text, and photos. Barry puts them all together to create a beautiful and stimulating image on each page. You can spend hours looking at all of the details and reading the bits and pieces of text scattered around the pages.

Separately, the pages are a feast for the eyes, but together they are meant to motivate and inspire the artist and writer and thinker and creator inside each of us. Barry offers writing workshops, and this is a book version of her workshop. Most of the collage pages center around a question: What is the past made of? What are we doing when we are looking? Do memories have mass? Can images exist without thinking? Do you wish you could draw? What is intention?

What makes What It Is especially interesting--and gives it a vital dimension--is a running autobiographical narrative through the book. Barry relates key periods in her life that either hindered or energized her creativity. From her mother to her art teachers to her own self-doubt, Barry tells a compelling story that shows how easy it is for the people and systems around us to obstruct--or even destroy--our creativity, curiosity, wonder, and our youthful urge to create. In a nation (and a larger belief system of schooling) that does not value art, imagination, or questioning the status quo, What It Is serves as a bright beacon to nurture and appreciate the artist and thinker inside all of us.

I assume some readers will be compelled to just flip through this book to look at the amazing imagery and read an occasional piece of text. While there is nothing wrong with roaming through a book--in fact, this book makes marvelous meandering material--I urge readers to actually read the book. When you finish it you will feel the power and the joy of this wonderful thing called imagination.