The Devil in the White City is a departure from most of the books I read, but I had read a number of excellent reviews and so was interested in finding it. First of all, it's non-fiction, using primary sources to describe the 1893 Columbian Exhibition (also called World's Fair) in Chicago. The challenges that the Fair's planners had to meet and overcome (a lot of which they put on themselves) were tremendous. Erik Larson does a fine job describing the run-up to Chicago's selection as the host city, as well as describing the nature of the city itself as it took on the challenge. But what Larson truly excels at is describing the principal people involved in the decisions and preparations by using their own words. Larson has apparently scoured letters, articles, and books by and about such people as Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, and Frederick Olmsted and then used his findings to add depth to his history of the Columbian Exhibition.
That Larson is an excellent researcher is apparent; the notes section of the book is extensive. And his decision to let the words of the actual participants carry a lot of the story-telling weight is sound. Larson acts more as a bricklayer, mortaring and shoring up the foundation for the quotations he uses, and providing the connections between them. To be honest, a lot of the connective material is supposition based on his readings, but I could find nothing that seemed obviously wrong or felt like guessing. And the book is a fascinating read about personalities surrounding an important event in American history—I could barely put it down. But some of the decisions Larson made for his book just felt a little off to me, weakening my enjoyment of the book minimally.
First, there is the Devil in the title, serial killer H. H. Holmes. While Holmes lived mere blocks from the gates of the Columbian Exhibition while it was running, his story is only tangential to the larger story of the Exhibition itself. In fact, Holmes's killing spree began before the Exhibition opened and went on after it was over, and he didn't use the Exhibition as part of his modus operandi. He had no interaction with any of the principles of the Exhibition. It's important to note that Holmes's story is worth telling; he was apparently one of the first, if not the very first, serial killers in the United States. He was a psychopath and apparently extremely intelligent, especially as he describes himself in the quotes provided in Larson's book. He is a fascinating study of evil and sickness. But he has nothing to do with the main thrust of the story of the exhibition. There are far fewer chapters about Holmes than there are about the Exhibition and its builders, and just as the momentum of the main story gets going, we are interrupted with more supposition about Holmes and his activities.
The second biggest flaw is that Larson spends a great deal of time describing the enormity of the work done for the fair, but provides little detail about just how big it is. Unless you are used to thinking in such terms, knowing that the fairgrounds were a mile square means very little. Describing one of the buildings as "the largest ever attempted" means very little without numbers to back it up. And I understand not using picky details because they could easily get in the way of a narrative flow. But without numbers, please provide pictures. There are only eight illustrations in the book, and only two of those offer any real scope of just how huge and beautiful the fair turned out to be. And one of those photographs suffers from extreme foreshortening, causing the Court of Honor to appear very much smaller than it actually was. So, fascinated by what little detail I had, I started doing some research. The front page of the Illinois Institute of Technology's Web site (http://columbus.gl.iit.edu/) gives a far better picture of just how large the fair and its buildings were. Digging further into the Web site, one can find a map of the fair with links to pictures for locations on the map (http://columbus.gl.iit.edu/dreamcity/grounds.html). In fact as much as I am recommending The Devil in the White City, I am also recommending the Illinois Institute of Technology Web site. I spent a couple of hours looking over the pictures and I could easily spend several more.
I thoroughly enjoyed Larson's book, flawed as it might be. Larson wisely keeps out of the way of the story he is telling, and it is much to his credit that the stories of both the Exhibition and H. H. Holmes be told. I think much more can be made of either story, and Larson has provided the perfect gateway to learning more about both.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Witch World
This is a selection for my book group, so I'm not going to go into very much detail here.
What a fascinating mish-mash of science fiction and fantasy! Our hero Simon Tregarth finds himself on the run from gangsters in present-day America (well, 1960s) and travels through a fairy circle to a world that somehow meets his fondest desires. The world he ends up on has elements of highest fantasy--with witches guiding their soldiers into war after preparing their way with their supernatural powers--and speculative fiction or planetary romance. The valiant Estcarpians (Estcarps?) with whom Tregarth settles find themselves at battle with what at first appear to be an army of the undead, a fitting foe for the witch women. But it turns out it is not magic that has removed the minds of their foes but instead some horrible science this is beyond anything that Tregarth has ever experienced before.
Unfortunately, Andre Norton only hints at the possible technology until the last few dozen pages, so she is unable to exploit the dichotomy very far, and I can only hope that it gets further explored in the many many novels that follow Witch World. But in those final battle sequences, the culture of Estcarp, apparently somewhere near our Middle Ages, finds itself at battle with an enemy using aircraft and submarines. The nearest thing I can recall to the battle is William Forstchen's Lost Regiment books, featuring a Civil War regiment versus nomadic tribes. Unlike Forstchen, Norton appears to play favorites in the battle, or perhaps she is just advising on the benefits of going into battle fully prepared.
What a fascinating mish-mash of science fiction and fantasy! Our hero Simon Tregarth finds himself on the run from gangsters in present-day America (well, 1960s) and travels through a fairy circle to a world that somehow meets his fondest desires. The world he ends up on has elements of highest fantasy--with witches guiding their soldiers into war after preparing their way with their supernatural powers--and speculative fiction or planetary romance. The valiant Estcarpians (Estcarps?) with whom Tregarth settles find themselves at battle with what at first appear to be an army of the undead, a fitting foe for the witch women. But it turns out it is not magic that has removed the minds of their foes but instead some horrible science this is beyond anything that Tregarth has ever experienced before.
Unfortunately, Andre Norton only hints at the possible technology until the last few dozen pages, so she is unable to exploit the dichotomy very far, and I can only hope that it gets further explored in the many many novels that follow Witch World. But in those final battle sequences, the culture of Estcarp, apparently somewhere near our Middle Ages, finds itself at battle with an enemy using aircraft and submarines. The nearest thing I can recall to the battle is William Forstchen's Lost Regiment books, featuring a Civil War regiment versus nomadic tribes. Unlike Forstchen, Norton appears to play favorites in the battle, or perhaps she is just advising on the benefits of going into battle fully prepared.
Friday, March 14, 2008
The Bank Job
I never really thought about it before, but I think I've determined I'm a fan of the caper movie. Looking back, I really like things like The Great Escape, The Italian Job, and The Ladykillers. And don't forget The Sting, one of my favorite movies of all time. I don't think it's a stretch to throw the TV series Hogan's Heroes in there also; while it is more about comedy than capering, it was the perfect entry point into the whole idea of convoluted plots to achieve a beneficial effect (I really really wanted a rotted out tree trunk that would lead into my secret cavern of goodness when I was a child). And so it was that Mrs. Speculator and I went to see The Bank Job. I admit, I had no huge expectations for the movie; frankly the Mrs. loves Jason Statham, and I enjoy pretty much everything he does. But the movie exceeded my low expectations into quite a nice thriller period piece, and Statham turns in a strong role in a minor film that hopefully promises something more from him down the road.
One of the treats of this film is that it is a period piece, set in the late 60s. The film doesn't go out of its way to make references to the 60s; instead it is very realistically done. Cars, music, language, and even lifestyle reflect the time period without calling attention to themselves beyond setting the timeframe. In less able hands than director Roger Donaldson's, you would probably see gags about the 60s and implicit references to the difference in the times. In that regard, the only thing I found to be truly distracting were the pastel patterns that one of the female characters kept showing up in. The result is that the film is centered and confident, not relying on other issues to sell the movie.
The story centers on a "villain," which I gather was a 60s British slang term for low-level crook, named Terry Leather and played by Statham. Leather is approached by an old neighborhood friend, Martine Love (played by Saffron Burrows) with a proposition for robbing a bank that has been left curiously unguarded over the course of a weekend. Of course, Leather doesn't know that Love has been blackmailed by an unnamed intelligence group into setting up the bank robbery. The goal of the intelligence group is to get incriminating pictures of Princess Margaret out of safe deposit box of a radical black leader who is using those pictures to keep from being tried for various crimes he has committed. As all of this is being set up, we also get some apparently tangential threads involving a pornography ring and a brothel. All of it makes a fascinating study of the period underground, and slowly those tangential pieces get pulled into the main story.
The movie really can be neatly divided into two halves. The first involves pulling the caper itself off, as we watch Leather pull together his band of irregulars and very low-level crooks into a job that would normally be over their heads. This first half has some amusing moments, including the members of the intelligence group actively pulling for Leather and his gang to succeed in their mission and the dumbest of the gang members, David Schilling (played by Daniel Mays) having take-out chicken delivered to the storefront the gang is working from. Even more ridiculous is the gang's use of walkie-talkies that are picked up by a local ham radio operator, who then calls in the police. Our view of the robbery then splits into external and internal views while the police try to figure out which bank is being robbed as the idiot robbers tell their listeners everything about what they are doing except their location. Just as funny and suspenseful is the robbers neatly stepping through a trap laid for them by the police when they accidentally destroy one of their walkie-talkies. This first half of the movie is cute and suspenseful, and our accidental heroes succeed beyond their wildest imaginings, except that Leather watches Love go directly to the pictures she is looking for and puts together that something about the whole deal is very very wrong.
Actually many things go wrong. There are more things in the vault than the robbers realize, and none of their owners, including the violent radical leader and the pornographer, like having their valuables looted. And suddenly the gang finds themselves on the run from very bad people who want their property back and want the gang dead for their temerity to rob the vault. And it falls upon Leather's shoulders to save not only as many of his gang members as he can, but also his own family members. Suddenly things are not quite so funny as gang members we've grown to like are disappearing from the street. There are a couple of scenes of torture that are disturbing, and we find that while Leather is a lovable loser, he's also a leader who will do everything he can for those who work for him. And there are heart-wrenching scenes when Leather's wife (played by Keeley Hawes) finds out what he has done, and Leather explains why. Usually the excuse that a crook is thinking of other people when he performs his crime is trite and generally untrue, but Leather means it and Statham sells it—he may be a low-life but he really cares about his family and friends. And so it falls to him to slice the Gordian knot he finds himself in, using a set-up straight from the best caper movies.
The movie is tightly scripted and shot—barely anything is wasted. And it is a tense story, though the kind of tension changes after the halfway point. Best of all, all of the actors put in a good job, Statham especially. These are believable characters and the viewer gets to see the rounded nature of Terry Leather. At the same time, the movie does not shirk from showing the truly evil nature of some its characters either, which in turn makes the depiction that much stronger.
As we walked out of the theater, I told Mrs. Speculator that The Bank Job is a tight little movie. That remains my opinion, and the more I think about it, the more I like it. It's no The Sting but it's a good two hours of entertainment. And best of all, it's all based on true events, which just adds another frisson of tension to the goings-on.
One of the treats of this film is that it is a period piece, set in the late 60s. The film doesn't go out of its way to make references to the 60s; instead it is very realistically done. Cars, music, language, and even lifestyle reflect the time period without calling attention to themselves beyond setting the timeframe. In less able hands than director Roger Donaldson's, you would probably see gags about the 60s and implicit references to the difference in the times. In that regard, the only thing I found to be truly distracting were the pastel patterns that one of the female characters kept showing up in. The result is that the film is centered and confident, not relying on other issues to sell the movie.
The story centers on a "villain," which I gather was a 60s British slang term for low-level crook, named Terry Leather and played by Statham. Leather is approached by an old neighborhood friend, Martine Love (played by Saffron Burrows) with a proposition for robbing a bank that has been left curiously unguarded over the course of a weekend. Of course, Leather doesn't know that Love has been blackmailed by an unnamed intelligence group into setting up the bank robbery. The goal of the intelligence group is to get incriminating pictures of Princess Margaret out of safe deposit box of a radical black leader who is using those pictures to keep from being tried for various crimes he has committed. As all of this is being set up, we also get some apparently tangential threads involving a pornography ring and a brothel. All of it makes a fascinating study of the period underground, and slowly those tangential pieces get pulled into the main story.
The movie really can be neatly divided into two halves. The first involves pulling the caper itself off, as we watch Leather pull together his band of irregulars and very low-level crooks into a job that would normally be over their heads. This first half has some amusing moments, including the members of the intelligence group actively pulling for Leather and his gang to succeed in their mission and the dumbest of the gang members, David Schilling (played by Daniel Mays) having take-out chicken delivered to the storefront the gang is working from. Even more ridiculous is the gang's use of walkie-talkies that are picked up by a local ham radio operator, who then calls in the police. Our view of the robbery then splits into external and internal views while the police try to figure out which bank is being robbed as the idiot robbers tell their listeners everything about what they are doing except their location. Just as funny and suspenseful is the robbers neatly stepping through a trap laid for them by the police when they accidentally destroy one of their walkie-talkies. This first half of the movie is cute and suspenseful, and our accidental heroes succeed beyond their wildest imaginings, except that Leather watches Love go directly to the pictures she is looking for and puts together that something about the whole deal is very very wrong.
Actually many things go wrong. There are more things in the vault than the robbers realize, and none of their owners, including the violent radical leader and the pornographer, like having their valuables looted. And suddenly the gang finds themselves on the run from very bad people who want their property back and want the gang dead for their temerity to rob the vault. And it falls upon Leather's shoulders to save not only as many of his gang members as he can, but also his own family members. Suddenly things are not quite so funny as gang members we've grown to like are disappearing from the street. There are a couple of scenes of torture that are disturbing, and we find that while Leather is a lovable loser, he's also a leader who will do everything he can for those who work for him. And there are heart-wrenching scenes when Leather's wife (played by Keeley Hawes) finds out what he has done, and Leather explains why. Usually the excuse that a crook is thinking of other people when he performs his crime is trite and generally untrue, but Leather means it and Statham sells it—he may be a low-life but he really cares about his family and friends. And so it falls to him to slice the Gordian knot he finds himself in, using a set-up straight from the best caper movies.
The movie is tightly scripted and shot—barely anything is wasted. And it is a tense story, though the kind of tension changes after the halfway point. Best of all, all of the actors put in a good job, Statham especially. These are believable characters and the viewer gets to see the rounded nature of Terry Leather. At the same time, the movie does not shirk from showing the truly evil nature of some its characters either, which in turn makes the depiction that much stronger.
As we walked out of the theater, I told Mrs. Speculator that The Bank Job is a tight little movie. That remains my opinion, and the more I think about it, the more I like it. It's no The Sting but it's a good two hours of entertainment. And best of all, it's all based on true events, which just adds another frisson of tension to the goings-on.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Sun of Suns
My last blog entry was a stream of consciousness ramble on the various facets of writing that lead me to have an opinion about it. It was by no means the last word in such considerations and really personal, though I'd like to think that with what academic training I have had, it has some roots in critical scholarly thought. As you may recall, I decided that The Lies of Locke Lamora was just a plain old fun read.
And then I picked up Sun of Suns, also a highly regarded novel from 2006. While it has a really fun action-driven plot, what really grabs the reader about this book is its setting and how well the author, Karl Schroeder, has thought out the intriguing possibilities of it. Imagine a bubble of air some 3000 miles in diameter, floating out in space in the Vega system. And then imagine that that bubble is filled with rocks, animals, and miniature suns all providing resources for a human culture that exists in a completely gravity-less environment. Structures and ships within the bubble have to create artificial gravity through centrifugal force, so that "aircraft" rotate as they travel. Cities spin on an axis, as they would if they were satellites, but they are open to the "sky."
Sun of Suns is the best hard science fiction novel I have read in years that isn't about the science of electronics and computers. The inhabitants of Virga, as the bubble is named, live in a very steam-punk world, rediscovering things like radar, while interacting on a level not much above the Old West or Victorian England. Schroeder had to have spent a long time thinking about all the repercussions of the setting he has created for his story. This is especially evident in the society (societies?) he describes, adapting to the unique conditions of their habitat and reflected in the individuals we meet. While those characters are often typical of action/adventure stories, their habitat and its history give them subtle variation that keeps them from becoming cliche.
The story follows Hayden Griffin from the loss of his mother in an invasion by a neighboring territory to young adulthood, where he tries to enact his revenge against the invaders and eventually learns that plotting is far more easy than performing. Along the way, we get to meet such diverse characters as the admiral of an invasion fleet, Chaison Fanning, whose many levels of character outweigh the grim military facade he seems to exhibit and the admiral's wife, Venera, whose stark simplicity of purpose is terrifying. We also get to meet Aubri Mahallan, an alien to Virga, with her own hidden depths. There is also a large cast of minor characters, as there often is in military books, which is what this ultimately is. But it also melds in some aspects of fantasy and steam-punk, just making this a romp across many sub-genres of speculative fiction.
And then I picked up Sun of Suns, also a highly regarded novel from 2006. While it has a really fun action-driven plot, what really grabs the reader about this book is its setting and how well the author, Karl Schroeder, has thought out the intriguing possibilities of it. Imagine a bubble of air some 3000 miles in diameter, floating out in space in the Vega system. And then imagine that that bubble is filled with rocks, animals, and miniature suns all providing resources for a human culture that exists in a completely gravity-less environment. Structures and ships within the bubble have to create artificial gravity through centrifugal force, so that "aircraft" rotate as they travel. Cities spin on an axis, as they would if they were satellites, but they are open to the "sky."
Sun of Suns is the best hard science fiction novel I have read in years that isn't about the science of electronics and computers. The inhabitants of Virga, as the bubble is named, live in a very steam-punk world, rediscovering things like radar, while interacting on a level not much above the Old West or Victorian England. Schroeder had to have spent a long time thinking about all the repercussions of the setting he has created for his story. This is especially evident in the society (societies?) he describes, adapting to the unique conditions of their habitat and reflected in the individuals we meet. While those characters are often typical of action/adventure stories, their habitat and its history give them subtle variation that keeps them from becoming cliche.
The story follows Hayden Griffin from the loss of his mother in an invasion by a neighboring territory to young adulthood, where he tries to enact his revenge against the invaders and eventually learns that plotting is far more easy than performing. Along the way, we get to meet such diverse characters as the admiral of an invasion fleet, Chaison Fanning, whose many levels of character outweigh the grim military facade he seems to exhibit and the admiral's wife, Venera, whose stark simplicity of purpose is terrifying. We also get to meet Aubri Mahallan, an alien to Virga, with her own hidden depths. There is also a large cast of minor characters, as there often is in military books, which is what this ultimately is. But it also melds in some aspects of fantasy and steam-punk, just making this a romp across many sub-genres of speculative fiction.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
The Lies of Locke Lamora
The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch, was one of the best-received books in 2006, though I don't recall seeing it up for any major awards. But it took me a while to get around to reading it, mainly because I don't like taking a shot buying a hard cover novel from an author I've never heard of. There's the cost, and while I can afford it, it would severely cut into my unallocated funds. Then there's the convenience factor--on the one hand, I like paperback books because I can carry them just about anywhere and they don't take up as much space. And (the real reason), they also don't take up much storage space. Even in our relatively new house, until (And even if) Mrs. Speculator and I start putting up built-ins, we don't have much shelf space. But here in our office, I have a half shelf of a standard bookcase still devoid of any literature, and I can stack paperbacks three deep in it. At the rate we are going, that's another three or four years of bookspace.
(All of this brings up the eReader and Kindle as possibilities, but those things worry me because at heart I am probably a Luddite. I don't even have a cell phone yet, for heaven's sake....)
So, I sat down to read Lies with a happy heart because everyone likes this novel. And by the time I finished it, I liked it also; it just took a long while to get to that point. Meet Locke Lamora, someone who is purported to be a world-class thief, and yet he is really more of a con artist than anything else. And that's fine, but it is dross from the reviews (and the novel's own set-up) that has has to be worked through. Lynch sets the story up in two threads--one telling us of the current adventures of Locke and the other describing his rise to his position as feared thief. Interestingly, Lamora fails as many times as he succeeds in the historical thread, which of course is to be expected of young up-and-comers.
Also meet Camorr, another in a long tradition of epic fantasy cities, cities that take on a life of their own and become more of a character than a setting. Except that while the first half of the book sets up some fascinating questions about Camorr and its history (a good number of which are answered as the story goes along), a lot remaisn unexplained. Ultimately that's okay too, but until the story starts picking up its pace (about halfway through) those holes in the story leave the reader to ponder, that is, until the events of the story sweep all sense of proportion out mind.
So we follow Locke and his band of thieves, the Gentlemen Bastards, as they attempt to pull a con on a certain noble in Camorr. At the same time, someone is attacking the leadership of the confederation of thieves across the city. Lynch deftly sticks the Gentlemen Bastards between these two plot elements, in a most satisfacory vise-like manner. And the reader recognizes that the joy of the story, its crisis, is when our heroes barely win free of their problems to steal another day. And to his credit, Lynch sneers at such a cliched path and goes off somewhere on his own, which is just about the point where the book gets really exciting.
I've had some recent discussions with a new-found geek friend who likes to talk about movies, and together we have been advising a co-worker on which free movies he should select for his brand new Blu-Ray DVD player and LCD HD TV. And as I look at the lists that the new HD owner can choose from, I find myself saying things like, "You know, it's really a dumb movie at its heart, but I really like Con Air (you can insert also The Rock, Uncle Buck, and Empire Records here)." And when I say such a thing, I always feel a little guilty for liking things whose intrinsic value is not jumping out at me even though I am enjoying the heck out of them. And after I finished The Lies of Locke Lamora, I found myself with the same feeling--I ended up liking the book, but I couldn't figure out WHY I want to buy the next book in line. I went through the mental checklist--writing is average, nothing leaps out at me as particularly brilliant wordsmithing; the dialogue is okay, there is no brilliant wordplay like one finds in a Howard Hawks movie or Steven Brust novel; the setting is a little above average, but undeveloped; and the characters are fairly standard stuff (in the hopes of not spoiling anything, see earlier discussions about buddy novels and their relation to Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser). So why did I like the book. Why do I find myself watching Uncle Buck every time I see its on?
The plot. It's all about how the story moves. Even though I have no reason to believe the praise heaped on Lamora by other characters or even reviewers, I do find myself enmeshed in his crisis and wanting to know how he gets out of it. And since it becomes clear relatively early on that, despite his reliance on the tropes for all other facets of his story-telling, Lynch is more than happy to take his plot to other places, I desperately want to know how it ends. And then, before I started writing this blog entry, a little research revealed to me that Lies is the first of a planned seven-novel series, so the things that aren't resolved are likely to be.
And there it is--this is a fun book, the plot of which will take your breath away as it rockets along in its last half. And perhaps, as he continues to write, Lynch will be able to expand his repertoire in the other facets of writing, making his novels more developed and perhaps enjoyable for other reasons. It's a little immodest, I think, to believe that you are so good at your craft that you plan a seven-book series before you even sell your first novel, but I won't hold that against him unless things begin to fall apart as the series goes along.
(All of this brings up the eReader and Kindle as possibilities, but those things worry me because at heart I am probably a Luddite. I don't even have a cell phone yet, for heaven's sake....)
So, I sat down to read Lies with a happy heart because everyone likes this novel. And by the time I finished it, I liked it also; it just took a long while to get to that point. Meet Locke Lamora, someone who is purported to be a world-class thief, and yet he is really more of a con artist than anything else. And that's fine, but it is dross from the reviews (and the novel's own set-up) that has has to be worked through. Lynch sets the story up in two threads--one telling us of the current adventures of Locke and the other describing his rise to his position as feared thief. Interestingly, Lamora fails as many times as he succeeds in the historical thread, which of course is to be expected of young up-and-comers.
Also meet Camorr, another in a long tradition of epic fantasy cities, cities that take on a life of their own and become more of a character than a setting. Except that while the first half of the book sets up some fascinating questions about Camorr and its history (a good number of which are answered as the story goes along), a lot remaisn unexplained. Ultimately that's okay too, but until the story starts picking up its pace (about halfway through) those holes in the story leave the reader to ponder, that is, until the events of the story sweep all sense of proportion out mind.
So we follow Locke and his band of thieves, the Gentlemen Bastards, as they attempt to pull a con on a certain noble in Camorr. At the same time, someone is attacking the leadership of the confederation of thieves across the city. Lynch deftly sticks the Gentlemen Bastards between these two plot elements, in a most satisfacory vise-like manner. And the reader recognizes that the joy of the story, its crisis, is when our heroes barely win free of their problems to steal another day. And to his credit, Lynch sneers at such a cliched path and goes off somewhere on his own, which is just about the point where the book gets really exciting.
I've had some recent discussions with a new-found geek friend who likes to talk about movies, and together we have been advising a co-worker on which free movies he should select for his brand new Blu-Ray DVD player and LCD HD TV. And as I look at the lists that the new HD owner can choose from, I find myself saying things like, "You know, it's really a dumb movie at its heart, but I really like Con Air (you can insert also The Rock, Uncle Buck, and Empire Records here)." And when I say such a thing, I always feel a little guilty for liking things whose intrinsic value is not jumping out at me even though I am enjoying the heck out of them. And after I finished The Lies of Locke Lamora, I found myself with the same feeling--I ended up liking the book, but I couldn't figure out WHY I want to buy the next book in line. I went through the mental checklist--writing is average, nothing leaps out at me as particularly brilliant wordsmithing; the dialogue is okay, there is no brilliant wordplay like one finds in a Howard Hawks movie or Steven Brust novel; the setting is a little above average, but undeveloped; and the characters are fairly standard stuff (in the hopes of not spoiling anything, see earlier discussions about buddy novels and their relation to Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser). So why did I like the book. Why do I find myself watching Uncle Buck every time I see its on?
The plot. It's all about how the story moves. Even though I have no reason to believe the praise heaped on Lamora by other characters or even reviewers, I do find myself enmeshed in his crisis and wanting to know how he gets out of it. And since it becomes clear relatively early on that, despite his reliance on the tropes for all other facets of his story-telling, Lynch is more than happy to take his plot to other places, I desperately want to know how it ends. And then, before I started writing this blog entry, a little research revealed to me that Lies is the first of a planned seven-novel series, so the things that aren't resolved are likely to be.
And there it is--this is a fun book, the plot of which will take your breath away as it rockets along in its last half. And perhaps, as he continues to write, Lynch will be able to expand his repertoire in the other facets of writing, making his novels more developed and perhaps enjoyable for other reasons. It's a little immodest, I think, to believe that you are so good at your craft that you plan a seven-book series before you even sell your first novel, but I won't hold that against him unless things begin to fall apart as the series goes along.
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