The alchemy behind The Alchemy of Stone

Ekaterina Sedia's novel, The Alchemy of Stone, is unlike anything you've ever read. Simultaneously a fantasy, a steampunk, a tale of minority empowerment and a look at the destructive nature of love, it builds on the promise of her last novel (The Secret History of Moscow) in ways that not even that neat story anticipated.

Mattie is an automaton, an artificial person made of gears and metal instead of circuits and software. She's been emancipated by her maker Loharri, except for one thing: he still possesses the only key that will wind her mechanical heart. While she plies her trade as an alchemist, hired by the city's protective gargoyles to find a way to stop their turning to stone, the city itself begins the inevitable slide toward revolution. As trouble brews, then breaks out, Mattie must decide where her loyalties lie and come to grips with her own nature.

Mattie is one of the great literary characters I've had the pleasure of discovering. She, like the city itself, is described only as much as necessary, so that the image in the reader's mind is almost entirely constructed from his or her own preconceptions, much as Maddie herself was done by Loharri. Loharri is far from a one-dimensional ex-maker spurned by his creation: he both encourages Mattie and limits her, repairs her without question and yet refuses to give up the literal key to her heart. Their tapdance around questions unasked and unanswered provides the book's emotional core.

The rest of the tale is equally compelling. Again describing only as much as is necessary, Sedia creates a city-state with a fully-realized history, social structure and belief system. The conflict between the various castes is believable and sadly inevitable, and provides a vivid, if subtle, commentary on our own technology-beholden world.

The Secret History of Moscow was fascinating for its crossing between realism and fantasy; The Alchemy of Stone is just as mesmerizing within its own fantasy world. Mattie will feel like a kindred to anyone who believes they've managed to successfully fit in, only to realize a single misstep can undo everything. Teenage boys, filled with emotions their society often insists they choke down, will understand her all too well. And in Maddie's struggles for both self-reliance and the comfort of a relationship, I suspect these same boys, in the privacy of their own hearts, will see themselves behind her porcelain face, no matter the implied gender difference.

Top of the Heap -- Erle Stanley Gardner Hard Case Crime, #3

Joining the Hard Case Crime book club was the best $6-a-month investment I made last year. (It was also the only one I made, but I'm confident that if there'd been others, it would still be on top.) Sometimes the books are reprints with awesome new covers, sometimes they're original publications, some of them are stronger pieces of writing than others, but they've all been entertaining. They make me happy. If you enjoy the crime genre and aren't offended by the un-PC (especially in regards to how the ladies are treated), they're well worth a read.

Since I jumped in somewhere in the late-40's, I have, of course, been worrying about what I missed. So I decided to go back to the beginning and read their releases in order. Of course, two months in and I'm already off -- my copy of #2 hasn't arrived yet, so I had to skip ahead.

Top of the Heap was originally published in 1952 under the name A. A. Fair. Erle Stanley Gardner is most well-known for the Perry Mason series, but Top of the Heap features a different hero: Donald Lam, of the Cool & Lam Detective Agency. (I have mixed feelings about the disembodied heads on the cover of the book. On one hand, I kind of love them. On the other, they freak me out. I keep waiting for them to zoom in and out at me.)

The book starts off with a voice as classic as classic can be:

I was in the outer office, standing by the files, doing some research on a blackmailer, when he came in, all six feet of him.

He wore a plaid coat, carefully tailored, pleated slacks, and two-tone sport shoes. He was built like a secondhand soda straw, and I heard him say he wanted to see the senior partner. He said it with the air of a man who always demands the best, and then settles for what he can get.

Awesome, right? I love that last line. Turns out, Mr. Secondhand Soda Straw is looking to track down a couple of young ladies he spent the night with earlier in the week -- but he doesn't know their names. Don Lam is on the case -- but from minute one, he knows that there's something fishy about Soda Straw's story. He follows the case wherever it leads, from a failed assassination attempt of a gangster and a missing gangster's moll to a questionable mining operation and an illegal casino. And, of course, murder. Multiple murders, in fact.

The joy in this one, for me, was in the dialogue between Lam and the young ladies -- all of the young ladies. He and his secretary flirt and spar throughout the book, which I loved, and there was a conversation between Lam and a woman he questioned about the case that I dare you to read without picturing Bogart and Bacall. I had their voices ringing in my ears after that chapter. Bertha is another story, but she's one you need to experience for yourself.

I really liked that although Don Lam narrates like a hard-boiled tough guy, he isn't really all that hard-boiled. He bluffs his way through some dicey situations, and he isn't afraid of getting beat up, but he isn't always super cool. He gets scared. And he's not much of a fighter.

The mystery itself, I wasn't particularly interested in. It was so convoluted -- though unlike The Big Sleep, by the end you know who killed who, so that's something -- that I stopped trying to keep track of it and just enjoyed the ride. There were a few parts near the end where Don Lam goes on for pages explaining who did what to who and why and how he figured it out and so on -- I admit to glazing over a bit.

Overall, his voice was a kick and the action and dialogue made even the eye-crossing bits worth it. Apparently, Erle Stanley Gardner wrote almost thirty books about Cool & Lam -- Hard Case has only republished this one, but I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for the others.

_______________________________________________________

Previously:

1. Grifter's Game, Lawrence Block

_______________________________________________________

(cross-posted at Bookshelves of Doom)

Books on the horizon

Several new books coming out down the line that look like they will appeal to GLW readers. Here are few to consider.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen. I wrote about this one at my site earlier this month. It's an illustrated novel which I always find appealing. The description makes it hard to resist (although I do admit there is no small degree of "whimsy" involved here):

When twelve-year-old genius cartographer T.S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious Baird Award, life as normal — if you consider mapping family dinner table conversation normal — is interrupted and a wild cross-country adventure begins, taking T.S. from his family ranch just north of Divide, Montana, to the museum's hallowed halls.

T.S. sets out alone, leaving before dawn with a plan to hop a freight train and hobo east. Once aboard, his adventures step into high gear and he meticulously maps, charts, and illustrates his exploits, documenting mythical wormholes in the Midwest, the urban phenomenon of "rims," and the pleasures of McDonald's, among other things. We come to see the world through T.S.'s eyes and in his thorough investigation of the outside world he also reveals himself.

Look for it the first week of May (and also hopefully in my Bookslut YA column with other "road trip" titles in August.)


Car aficionados should take a long look at The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Automobiles by Giles Chapman. From the pub:

This chunky format, retro-feel encyclopedia reviews 150 of the most incredible cars in motoring history from the earliest to experiments for the future. Each automobile is illustrated and accompanied by informative text, a colorful quote, and a specifications box. Distributed generously throughout the book are delightful photographic spreads showing cars that are typical of their era. The chapters trace the story from the first steam-powered vehicles and the Ford Model T, to favorites such as the James Bond amphibian car, the holder of the supersonic land speed record, and right up to the latest Air car, which has been hailed as the true car of tomorrow.

This one is also due out in May.

Scott Westerfield has a new trilogy debuting this fall, and as usual he is at the forefront of the new cool in YA lit; this time it is steampunk.

"It is the cusp of World War I and all of the European powers are arming themselves for combat. The machine loving Austro-Hungarians and Germans have their big steam-powered Clankers loaded with guns and explosives. Inspired by the discoveries of Darwin, the British have fabricated animals into warships. Their mothership, the Leviathan, is a marvelous whale dirigible."

Leviathan is due out October 6th - there's no cover available yet although the catalog pics are awesome.

Rick Yancey (of The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp) has a new series starting this fall also. The Monstrumologist is due out September 22nd. The current description is short and sweet: "A monster-hunting doctor and his apprentice face off against a plague of monsters."

Okay, what's not to love in that one? (Also apparently set in Victorian times and perhaps with steampunk influences as well.) (I swear, steampunk is THE new big thing this year.)

Alas - no cover on this one online yet either.

For basketball fans The Shooting Stars sounds like something special. It's due from Penguin this fall and as there is nothing yet online, I'm going to give you the full catalog copy:

The Shooting Stars were a bunch of kids— LeBron James and his best friends— from Akron, Ohio, who first met on a youth basketball team of the same name when they were ten and eleven years old. United by their love of the game and their yearning for companionship, they quickly forged a bond that would carry them through thick and thin (a lot of thin)and, at last, to a national championship in their senior year of high school. They were a motley group who faced challenges all too typical of inner-city America. LeBron grew up without a father and had moved with his mother more than a dozen times by the age of ten. Willie McGee, the quiet one, had left both his parents behind in Chicago to be raised by his older brother in Akron. Dru Joyce was outspoken, and his dad was ever present; he would end up coaching all five of the boys in high school.

Sian Cotton, who also played football, was the happy-go-lucky enforcer, while Romeo Travis was unhappy, bitter, even surly, until he finally opened himself up to the bond his teammates offered him.

In the summer after seventh grade, the Shooting Stars tasted glory when they qualified for a national championship tournament in Memphis. But they lost their focus and had to go home early. They promised one another they would stay together and do whatever it took to win a national title. They had no idea how hard it would be to fulfill that promise. In the years that followed, they would endure jealousy, hostility, exploitation, resentment from the black community (because they went to a “white” high school), and the consequences of their own overconfidence. Not least, they would all have to wrestle with LeBron’s outsize success, which brought too much attention and even a whiff of scandal their way. But together these five boys became men, and together they claimed the prize they had fought for all those years — a national championship.

I'll be sure to mention when it comes out; I'm impressed by the description and the fact that the co-author is Buzz Bissinger of Friday Night Lights.

And finally, Conan fans should note that Subterranean Press has Crimson Shadows: The Best of Robert E. Howard Vol. One due out in August. What you're getting here is a sample of everything else Howard wrote about beyond the Barbarian he is famous for. From the Sub Press site:

Robert E Howard is best known as the father of “sword and sorcery” fiction, an exciting blend of swashbuckling action and supernatural horror epitomized by his characters King Kull, barbarian usurper of the throne of fabled Valusia, and Conan, who wanders the Hyborian Age “to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.”

But the young Texas author was far more gifted and versatile than many readers know: in a career that lasted only twelve years before his untimely death, he wrote some 300 stories and 800 poems, covering anastonishing variety of subject matter—fantasy, boxing, westerns, horror, adventure, historical, detective, spicy, even confessions—running the gamut from dark fantasy to broad humor, from brooding horror to gentle love story. In this volume, and its forthcoming companion, editor Rusty Burke, with help from his fellow Howard fans and scholars, has selected the very best of Howard's work from most of these genres, enabling newer readers to discover the richness of Howard's varied oeuvre, fans of his fantasy tales to sample his other work, and long-time fans to reconnect with old favorites.

Crimson Shadows is illustrated with both color plates and b/w illustrations. It is a spendy, but if your going to invest in an author than Howard is one to look for. (And hopefully, with the limited edition coming out another pub will pick up an affordable trade paperback edition later.)

Favorite Poems from Male Poets

In honor of the second national Poem In Your Pocket Day (which is technically tomorrow, Thursday, April 30th, 2009) I wanted to share some of my favorite poetry written by guys.

The Mouse's Tale as published in the classic story Alice's Adventures of Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is a wonderful example of emblematic verse. You have to see it to believe it. No, really. See? It's structured to look like a mouse's tail!

The poem in Carroll's original manuscript, Alice's Adventures Under Ground, was completely different, but it too was emblematic. Click here to check it out.

I've posted about The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald at both Bildungsroman and GuysLitWire. But Fitzgerald didn't only write novels and short stories; he also wrote poems. My favorites include On a Play Twice Seen, in which an audience member connects scenes to memories, and the beautifully haunting We Leave To-night, which was printed in This Side of Paradise.

I could easily ramble on here for days and share quotes from my favorite poems, plays, and songs. I want to make sure you read Fog by Carl Sandburg, which makes me think of cats and San Francisco. I'd like you to visit Robert Frost and let him introduce you to My November Guest and Fireflies in the Garden. I want you to discover what Hamlet wrote to Ophelia and run with the fairies over hill, over dale, as described by William Shakespeare. I urge you to consider the poetry of music and lyrics, such as those by Duncan Sheik.

Most of all, I hope that you hear and see the poetry in your daily life. In the words you speak. In the words that you hear. In the rhythm of your steps (to the beat of your heart).

In the rush, and the wind, and the silence, may the poetry always be there.

Who are your favorite male poets?

We all have to pass through that Phantom Tollbooth

I remember as a kid one of the readers they gave us at school. You know, the sort of book that has a mix of different stories, including excerpts from novels. There was this one excerpt that had such cool artwork and was a clever dinner party scene. I enjoyed reading it over and over until I just had to buy the book.

And that was my introduction to Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth...

This is definitely one of my favorite books to read. I found one of the early hardcovers and paid a ridiculous sum but as soon as I sat down and started reading, I was transported to Juster's enchanted world.

The story is one boy's quest, though at the start he has no idea that he's set out on a journey that will change his life. Milo is a boy who takes the world around him for granted. He only sees the mundane.

Then, one birthday, he receives a mysterious present. A box containing a tollbooth kit. For the first time in his life, Milo feels a sense of curiosity. So, he gets into the pedal car he was given years ago and never bothered using, and embarks through the tollbooth... and finds himself Someplace Else. Along the way, every good hero needs some companions, and so Milo is joined by the watchdog Tock (a literal blend of canine and clock) and the Humbug, who is a bit of bore but very loyal to the end.

This is a fantasy novel about discovering the joy of learning and thinking... a teacher's daydream. And before you think it would have to read like a student's nightmare, let me say that this is a most witty and clever book (on par, in my opinion, Dahl's many works). You just can't help smiling as Milo encounters the denizens of Dictionopolis (where one can truly eat his own words) or faces the demons at the Mountains of Ignorance.

I suppose when you're in your late teens learning can seem like the last thing you want to do on a sunny day. But experiencing life, meeting new friends, thinking new thoughts, is learning. And Juster's novel has always been the book that I can turn to, for a reminder that words have meaning beyond just an arrangement of letters.

I think this book will make you laugh and then pause and remember what it was like to be that boy with a book. Some times it can be lonely being that boy who loses himself in pages. But better to be him, to be interested in worlds, then be trapped as poor Milo was at Tollbooth's beginning. Trust me.

Btw, Chuck Jones, of Bugs Bunny / Warner Brothers fame, created an animated version of The Phantom Tollbooth. It's pretty good (though not the same as reading the book, of course) and worth viewing with much popcorn and friends.

The Blind Side by Michael Lewis

I had originally planned to write about another book today, until, late last week, skimming some headlines in Google Reader, I saw the name Michael Oher and decided it was time I revisited Michael Lewis' 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game instead.

In football, the blind side is most often the right side of the field, the side the quarterback cannot see and is therefore vulnerable to. The Blind Side the book is part biography, part football history, and altogether an engrossing read. It's an account of opportunity and necessity, how left tackles became so important to football teams and how one left tackle in particular, Michael Oher, suddenly appeared on the radar of every Division I football team in the country.

According to Lewis, there are two main reasons left tackles are so important: Bill Walsh and Lawrence Taylor. Walsh, because he developed the West Coast offense, in which precision passing (and hence, protecting the quarterback long enough for him to deliver the ball to his receivers) is of utmost importance, and Taylor because of the ferocity of his pass rush and his ability to change the outcome of a game singlehandedly with his combination of size and speed. The influence of Walsh and Taylor spread throughout the NFL, as other teams started to throw the ball more while trying to find some way to stop Taylor and the linebackers or defensive ends who had the ability to disrupt their passing attacks. The need for a skilled left tackle, protector of the quarterback's blind side, suddenly became paramount.

As NFL coaches moved to the college level, bringing with them their NFL schemes, college teams needed a left tackle who could do more than run block. And so college coaches would scour the country, looking for high school players to recruit, athletes who could successfully play left tackle in college.

Which brings us to Michael Oher, who grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. The bad side of Memphis, Tennessee, until a series of fortunate events landed him at Briarcrest Christian School. In telling the story of, to quote the subtitle of the book, the evolution of football, and left tackles in particular, Lewis also gives us the story of Oher, formerly a poor black kid, "one of thirteen children born to a mother who couldn't care for them, and so had more or less raised himself on the streets of Memphis," and the Tuohys, the rich white family who takes him in (p. 292).

I've read at least one article disagreeing with Lewis' account of football history, but The Blind Side is still worth reading. Fascinating, especially if you're a football fan, with great anecdotes from legends like Bill Parcells. The human interest side of the story is pretty good, too. Lewis has such a conversational way of describing events and a knack for capturing the little details in brief turns of phrase that tell you more about a person than other writers can manage in a paragraph, that you are immediately drawn into the narrative, and the intersecting lives of Oher and the Tuohys.

For more sports books you might enjoy, check out the Okay to Read without a Cup booklist here at Guys Lit Wire.

And as for Michael Oher, he was drafted on Saturday, in the first round by the Baltimore Ravens.

[cross posted at The YA YA YAs]

Duke Elric (Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melniboné, Vol. 4)

If you didn't know any better, you might glance at the cover of one of Michael Moorcock's "Elric" books and dismiss it as some ridiculously derivative sword-and-sorcery story. The only problem with that assessment is that Moorcock (a Nebula Grand Master and one of the godfathers of SF) was the guy who literally *coined the term* "sword-and-sorcery"--and it's the many books and cultural references that followed that are derivative of the ur-anti-hero and proto-goth Elric, the brooding albino emperor of Melbinoné and wielder of the soul-devouring sword Stormbringer.


A classic Michael Whelan cover.

Along with writers like Fritz Leiber and L. Sprague de Camp, Moorock defined the genre, continuing in the '60s, '70s, and beyond what Robert E. Howard had started way back in the '30s with his Conan the Barbarian stories.

The latest Elric collection just came out in paperback last month, and it includes the 1976 novella The Sailor on the Seas of Fate--which Michael Chabon calls a "minor masterpiece" in his enthusiastic foreword. Chabon praises the novella for "packing" in...

...such diverting fare as speculation on ontology and determinism, gory subterranean duels with giant killer baboons, literary criticism (the murmuring soul-vampiric sword Stormbringer offers what is essentially a running commentary on the equivocal nature of heroic swordsmen in fiction), buildings that are really alien beings, and ruminations on the self-similar or endlessly reflective interrelationship of hero, writer, and reader...

Duke Elric has a bunch of other stuff going on, too, including some cool classic art, the script for an Elric graphic novel, a story from the Metatemporal Detective, and a 1963 article in which Moorcock describes how he basically gets high from reading 18th and 19th century Gothic novels. You can read a preview here:




Or, of course, you can't go wrong doing what I did in high school and picking up Elric's story from the beginning. Michael Chabon has apparently been a fan since he was 14, and he sums up the appeal at that time perfectly:

"... I found profound comfort in feeling that I shared in the nature of lost and wandering Elric, isolate but still hungering for connection, herocially curious, apparently weak but capable of surprising power, unready and unwilling to sit on the moldering throne of his father's but having nothing certain to offer in its stead."

The Post-Operation TBD Post

Speaking of Operation Teen Book Drop -

The second annual event, presented by readergirlz, GuysLitWire, and YALSA, was held last Thursday, April 16th, 2009 in honor of Teen Literature Day. Over 8,000 teen books were donated to pediatric hospitals all over the country. People were encouraged to drop books anywhere - libraries, skate parks, coffeehouses, bus stops, subways - as lucky finds for lucky readers, with bookplates pasted inside such as the one you see to the left of this text.

This was the first year GuysLitWire joined up. I hope GLW will be rocking the drop again next year.

How many of you participated? I'd love to hear which books you dropped, and where - Let me know in the comments below. If you have pictures, please share them!

Donating Books After the Storm

From the blog Justina Chen Headley, reposted with her permission.

Meet one of my writer-mentors, Nikki Grimes, a NY Times bestselling author and Coretta Scott King award winner. She is brilliant and fierce and 100% heart.

She called me last night to check in on me, shored me up with some solid advice, and then told me her chilling story. Just nine days after speaking at a school in Arkansas, the entire town was leveled by a hurricane. "Cherish every day," she told me. "Every day."

Nikki is a woman after my own heart. She is singlehandedly spearheading her own Operation Teen Book Drop by trying to replenish that school's devastated collection of young adult titles. So if you didn't rock the readergirlz drop and still have YA books lying around that are in need of a good home, consider sending a few of them here:

Jimma Holder
Literacy Specialist
Mena Public Schools
501 Hickory
Mena, AR 71953

Dope Sick by Walter Dean Myers

Reviewed by Steven Wolk

Recently I was inside a bookstore with my son. We were walking through the children's section, and standing before me was a large display of books, all by Walter Dean Myers. It would be one thing to comment on how prolific a writer Myers is. It seems he always has a new book out. Does the man ever sleep? But it is another thing entirely when you examine the scope of his writing. Fiction, non-fiction, picture books, poetry. His non-fiction ranges from Antarctica to Jazz, from Muhammad Ali to Malcolm X. The scope of his fiction is breathtaking: from basketball (Game, Hoops, Slam!), to race and crime (Monster, Shooter, The Scorpions, Autobiography of My Dead Brother); from war stories (Fallen Angels, Sunrise Over Fallujah), to short stories (145th Street, What They Found: Love on 145th Street); from historical fiction (The Glory Field, The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins), to Shakespearean novels written in verse (Street Love).

Are there genres Myers has not tackled? Yes. Fantasy, science fiction, dystopia. But now there is Dope Sick, a book that subtly moves Myers into the fantastical elements of fiction. He uses magical realism to tell the story of Jeremy "Lil J" Dance, a seventeen year-old heroin addict in denial – about his life, his loves, his drug use. This is a short, provocative novel that should get readers thinking. Magical realism brings fantasy elements to otherwise realistic books. Another terrific young adult novel with magical realism is Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan, about a gay high school boy whose town and high school celebrates homosexuality rather than condemns it.

Lil J is shot in the arm and on the run. After involvement in a drug deal gone bad that results in his friend shooting a police officer, Lil J is in a panic. Trying to get away he runs into an abandoned building. On his way to the roof, he comes across Kelly, a mysterious man sitting before a television. From this point forward, most of the book is a conversation between Lil J and Kelly, with occasional flashbacks to Lil J's life.

The magical realism involves Kelly's TV. That set (and his remote control), have the power to show scenes from Lil J's life, including – if set to fast forward – his horrifying future up on that roof if he chooses to go that route. Through watching scenes of his life and his back-and-forth with Kelly, Lil J gets some time to reconsider some of the decisions he’s made. This is often a painful, difficult, and courageous thing for anyone to do, let alone a young adult hooked on heroin with a gun in his pocket and a shot cop in the hospital. You don't have to be involved with drugs or crime to place yourself in Lil J's shoes. About halfway through the book a question popped into my head: If I could watch myself on TV and see some of things I've done and said before I did them, would I not do them? The answer is obvious. Absolutely. That's a rather chilling thought.

The ending of Dope Sick will be debated. I was intrigued as I zipped through the book about how Myers would finish his story. Once you bring magical realism into a book, even realistic fiction, anything becomes possible. So Myers had virtually limitless ways to end Lil J's story. I’d say that right now – with finishing the book still somewhat fresh in my mind – that I was unhappy with his ending. Something about it felt too easy. But Dope Sick is a quick, fascinating, and thought-provoking read that can encourage us to question the decisions we make and the actions we take each day as we work our way through our lives. Lil J may be on the run from the police and in denial about dope, but we can all benefit from Kelly's magical TV.