The Prodigal is a martial arts flick based on the Biblical parable of the prodigal son, but set in the modern day. Instead of wishing to eat corn husks, our hero finds himself surrounded by his drug dealer pals with the most pschyo of them about to torture him to death.

The martial arts is A calibre, and the movie is worth watching just for that. But it has an added layer as the hero struggles between his rage and his faith (and at least once they seem to work together).

They do some interesting camera tricks which mostly help.

The actor does a very good job of portraying someone with deep wells of berserk fury. He might be good as the source for the CGI for the next Incredible Hulk movie. Too bad that he is black, or he could play Bruce Banner as well as he does a fairly credible mild manner as well.

The setting is primarily a Southern backwoods town which is another bit of added interest. The story as a whole is not too surprising, but what they do with the bits and pieces, the interesting variations they work are good. Its a movie made of nothing too shockingly different, but each bit is different enough, clever enough that it adds up to something quite cool indeed.

And of course, the last bit of humor, you need to watch into the credits for, definitely.

I am pleased and a bit flattered to receive and to read Richard H. Jones’ book, Time Travel and Harry Potter:  Time-Turning in the Prisoner of Azkaban and its Place in Time-Travel Fiction.  For one thing, Jones argues rather strenuously for a version of replacement theory, rejecting both the fixed time and the divergent dimension theories advocated by many physicists.  For another, it happens that he cites Temporal Anomalies in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, naming this author both in the bibliography and in the text.  I received a copy of the book because of my contribution in making that available to him, and my promise to review it was incidental.

Jones is to be commended for the scope of his coverage.  He admits that prior to reading the third book of the Harry Potter series he knew neither the physics nor the philosophy of time travel and had no interest in the subject, yet his work introduces many of the prominent names in both fields.  He attacks the determinism of fixed time theorists and the absurdity of infinitely diverging dimensions.  He recognizes the critical element in the Azkaban problem, which is how Harry manages to survive the dementor attack so as to be able to travel back and save himself from it.  Further, he provides a plausible solution to this problem.  Overall, it is a commendable book.

However, I hesitate to recommend it.

The work meanders to a significant degree.  Having dealt with a particular aspect of the problem, he returns to it later to give much the same arguments again, leaving the reader with the feeling that that has already been covered.  It clearly has been forged from the debates arising on fan forums and web sites, where Potter fans attempt to explain time travel based on “how time really works” (something of which I might be accused, but that my notion of how time really works is consistent with Jones’).  Thus the feeling that he is repeating himself may arise from the fact that in such forums one usually does.  Yet in saying what it already said–mostly that the “Potterverse” has a malleable history–it fails to say what we most want to know.

What he covers inadequately is his own explanation for how the problem is resolved, what he calls the Patronus Paradox.  He provides a solution for Harry’s survival, suggesting that Dumbledore saw the dementors on the grounds, drove them away, and then made a secret trip with Harry back one hour, explained the situation, and had Harry cast the patronus that saved his counterpart; then Dumbledore obliviated Harry’s memory, put him to sleep, and dropped him back in the hospital wing to awaken in time to make the trip with Hermione.  What Jones fails to explain is why Dumbledore follows this elaborate plan–taking the evident risk that Harry might not save himself–after having himself resolved the problem.  Certainly if I consider it long enough I can devise possible explanations, what matters is that Jones does not offer one, supposing that the fact that it could have happened this way makes it unnecessary to justify it doing so.  However, it is not an impossible scenario, and for my part I had decided (without thorough examination) that the book’s version was not resolvable.  His solution works; he fails in making it credible.

Jones also at times fails to grasp, or at least to convey a full grasp of, the nuances of the concepts and authors he is discussing.  At one point he says that there is no “grandfather paradox” in Potter because Rowling created the world such that such a paradox could not exist.  However, a “grandfather paradox” is a description of a temporal problem in which a future effect has a past cause which undoes the future effect.  One might as well say that addition does not exist in a particular fictional universe because the author never says it does–there will still be circumstances in which objects are combined with objects to create a greater number of objects, even if the author never calls it addition and the characters never consider the matter.  The book does include such paradoxes in the comment that some time travelers have killed their alternate selves.  What matters is how such problems are resolved, not whether they exist.  Jones proposes a (somewhat dubious and awkward) solution not found in the text, but does not realize that he is attempting to resolve a paradox he has already claimed does not exist.

He has much the same problem with block universe theory, failing to understand that for adherents of this theory the experience of history is akin to constructing a tile mosaic:  the order in which the pieces are placed is not relevant, only whether in the finished product they provide the complete picture.  I fully support his objections to that conception of time, and I agree that the story told in Azkaban does not fit it, but at least I understand it.  His arguments on this lack cogency because they fail to recognize the nature of the position.

It appears, too, that he misunderstands my own discussion of the film version, saying that I claim four “previous trips” akin to his own proposed previous trip by Dumbledore.  My proposal is, rather, that the one trip that is made by Hermione changes history from an original through two intermediate variant forms (in which Harry joins her at the end of the first altered history to participate in the remaining ones) to a final version shown in the film.  There are no erased and forgotten trips, merely erased and forgotten histories arising from the changes which impact the one trip.  His guesses about what would happen if someone failed to make a trip in the second history he already made in the first also seem to miss the complexities of the problem; his theory of time is not coherent.  This is the more unfortunate, because those incoherencies are mostly about peripheral matters–Hermoine’s self-duplication for classes during the school year, the casual mention that some time travelers have killed their alternate selves–which can be resolved otherwise.  (For example, if the Ministry of Magic is aware before the moment of departure that a time traveler killed his former self, it would be reasonably plausible to nest a second trip within the first which prevents the incident, provided that such trip also inform the Ministry of the necessity of making that trip.)  it is sloppy around the periphery, giving poor answers to the minor questions which spoil its interesting idea for the major ones, and failing to give adequate support for the solution it proposes to the major problem.

There are the usual number of typos for a first edition paperback, and the one image (a chart reminiscent of my own turned ninety degrees) might have been of better quality, but the book was an easy read and easy on the eyes.  I enjoyed it, mostly from the fact that I agreed with so much of it.

My wife recently commented upon seeing me with yet another of C. J. Henderson’s Teddy London books that they all have really good titles.  I, who have always struggled with titles, had to admit that she was right.  This is an excellent example.  The first of the Teddy London novels is called The Things That Are Not There, and not only is that a really intriguing title in itself, it is an excellent title for this particular story.

Henderson writes in many genres, but prior to the Teddy London stories he was best known for his hard-boiled detective Jack Hagee, the kind of guy we expect Humphrey Bogart to play.  Theodore “Teddy” London might have been a Hagee clone, but that his life took a sharp left turn one day when his office was completely destroyed by a freak storm and sweet young Lisa Hutchinson came into the midst of the soggy mess looking for someone who might help her.  She believed that she was being followed, but she was not certain whether she could answer the question of who was following her, because of that awkward pronoun who.  As London is trying to piece together what this twenty-something runaway from the Canadian border hiding in Manhattan is trying to tell him, suddenly something falls through the temporary plastic sheets loosely taped over the open smashed window frame of the office, and London is in a fight for his life against something that should not even exist, let alone be stalking outside the thirteenth floor window of an office in New York City.

After emptying his gun and losing his knife in the flesh of this monster, he is out of options when the building maintenance supervisor Paul Morcey comes to his rescue wielding a fire axe.  Once cut in two, the winged reptilian humanoid finally stops fighting, and London agrees to take the case, if only to find out what is really happening here.

What is really happening is that a Cthulu-like monster from another dimension has tricked Lisa’s father into sacrificing his daughter to open a path for this fake god to bring about the end of the world.  In the bargain, some of the man’s followers have been transformed into these potent creatures.  But London has to use some detective skills to get that far, finding people who know about supernatural mysteries such as Professor Goward of Columbia University and psychometrist Lai Wan.  Together with a few others London knows they work to stop the end of the all things.

Henderson has said that he tried writing Cthulu horror, but every time he did his characters surprised him by fighting back against the madness and the monsters.  That’s what London and his company do, using everything they have to save the universe.  It is hardly giving away much to say that they succeed–I have, after all, already posted a review of The Sleep that Rescues, so it’s obvious that both Teddy and the universe survive.  That survival is at great cost, as the world takes casualties in the battle, some of them close to London’s heart.

This is the book that hooked me on the London stories.  To my mind, it is still the best of those I have read.  Its hero is human, stumbling into a struggle that draws him into a supernatural world of dream planes and distant dimensions, human monsters and alien forces, all clawing at his sanity.  Its action reaches near apocalyptic levels at the climax.  It is the sort of adventure I’m itching to run in one of my games, but know we could never do it justice.  Henderson has quite a book here.

There is some vulgarity, although considerably less than in the hard-boiled detective genre generally.  Christianity takes some hard knocks.  The chief human villain is a deluded country preacher expecting the second coming of Christ, and the Roman Catholic cleric to whom London goes for help falls apart when faced with the notion that secrets he read in dark books might be happening.  The truth behind the universe turns out to be a New Age hash of multiple dimension physics and psionic abilities.  Professor Goward regards Christianity and Judaism as faiths that misunderstand the stories in their own scriptures, seeing Solomon as one of several past deliverers who used powers available to them to prevent this same invasion millennia before.  That does not detract from the power of the storytelling nor the feeling that the supernatural is real, even if the explanations and impressions of that supernatural owe more to Lovecraft than to history or reality.  It is worth reading, particularly if like me you find Lovecraft a bit dull and implausible and enjoy a good action film.

The older London books were originally published under the nom de plume Robert Morgan, because the original publisher thought readers would be confused by the strong differences between the Hagee stories and the London stories.  They are now being re-released under Henderson’s name, and are available through his web site.

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I have over the past year or so reviewed a couple of C. J. Henderson’s books, mentioning that I know him through sharing panels at Ubercon.  I have also mentioned my fondness for the Teddy London stories.  The Things That Are Not There is still the best answer to Lovecraft I have encountered.  The sequel, The Stench of Fresh Air, was also excellent, with an innovative take on the concept of vampirism and a significant development of the characters, and particularly the hero.  Knowing that there were additional books in the series which had gone out of print but were slated to be republished, I occasionally nagged him about when the next would become available.

Whether for my nagging, or for my complimentary reviews of Lai Wan:  Tales of the Dreamwalker and To Battle Beyond, I have been rewarded.  Henderson has penned a new London story under the title The Sleep that Rescues to insert between The Stench of Fresh Air and whatever was the original third tale in the series, and while his publisher struggled to bring the book to print he favored me with a preview, an opportunity to read in draft form that for which his fans are eagerly waiting.  I promised in turn to have this review ready by the time the book went to print, which was an easy enough promise to keep, as the book is another page-turner which kept calling me back to learn what would happen next.  Not only did I finish reading the draft and writing this review in plenty of time, I also had time to go back and re-read the two previous entries in the series, and to drop him a note about this review, and to wait for him to greenlight the posting.

Drafts being drafts, they usually have errors in them; that’s the point of sending drafts to editors, and although that was not the point of sending a copy to me I did drop him a note with the few problems I would have corrected.  I say few, and indeed, these were surprisingly few.  I have read published books which were less well edited than this draft, and I expect whoever is doing the real editing will have caught the same few typos as I.  Even if not, the craft in Henderson’s art is quite good.

I also feel compelled to mention that some of my readers might be disturbed particularly by the opening chapters here.  It took me a while to find exactly the right word to describe what is not only several key scenes but also an undercurrent through several others.  That word is erotic.  It is not pornographic, and indeed there is no literal sex in this book (there was such an encounter in the early sections of The Stench of Fresh Air)–hugs and kisses the limit in the real world.  However, the events that connect to an out-of-control emotional relationship spill into the dream plain, and although again there is no sex, the combination of nudity and intimacy would gain the story an R rating were it rendered to a movie screen.  For those who find such eroticism discomforting, I should say first that once it reaches its early peak it remains subdued thereafter, even mostly evaporating as the story unfolds, and second that it becomes a necessary aspect of the story, not only for its impact on London’s relationship with the ever-faithful and supportive Lisa Hutchinson but also for the ultimate resolution of the primary story.

The antagonist is another Lovecraftian horror from another dimension, a monster trying to fight its way into our world to enslave and devour the entire universe starting with humanity, this time via the dream plane.  Yet Henderson again surprises.  It is not cultists who are unlocking the doors to admit the horror, but a scientist, an engineering researcher in a video game development company who thinks he has taken the next step in total immersion gaming but whose test subjects keep dying.  The police are baffled, but being made aware of London’s involvement in fighting the inexplicable, they involve him in finding the cause of death of a large number of mostly young men whose comas baffle the medical establishment.

Those familiar with London will be pleased to see the usual cast of characters.  In addition to unconsummated love interest Lisa Hutchinson (whom he rescued from the horror from another dimension for which her father intended her as sacrifice), we have the faithful sidekick Paul Morcey (former maintenance man who saved London in his first encounter with the inconceivable); psychometrist Lai Wan (whose very tense relationship with London balances her realizations that he usually causes her and everyone else a great deal of trouble against that he does it incidental to saving the universe); Professor Goward (expert in ancient beliefs about the supernatural); and Pa’sha (powerful Jamaican mercenary whose team of Murder Dogs are always ready to destroy anything that needs destroying).  New characters also find important roles here, including the Pirate Queen, Joan de Molina, an international cat burglar who gets entangled quite by accident but stays to complicate London’s life.  Captain Cantalupo also debuts in this book, although he has appeared in connection with Lai Wan in previously-published later stories.

The hero’s abilities are expanding.  This at first unsettled me.  In the beginning of the series, London was very much an ordinary private investigator sucked into an extraordinary case, and he was forced to rely on mostly ordinary people to assist him.  However, his brushes with the supernatural have impacted him, giving him power and helping him realize how to use it.  This began in The Things That Are Not There with the discovery that having been attacked on the dream plane he could track his enemy there.  It continued in The Stench of Fresh Air, as he realized he could sense and know things he could not before, and that the millions who were now dead at his hand (collateral damage in the salvation of the universe in the first book) could speak to him.  He does not hear them now, but he has begun learning how to control his use of the dream plane, similarly to but not the same as Lai Wan.  His efforts create trouble for him more than once, as he is still a novice, but gradually he improves.  It should not surprise that someone who brushes against the supernatural as frequently as he does will start to understand it and even to integrate his own efforts into it.  In this connection, he also introduces Paul Morcey to the use of the dream plane, so we might see more supernatural accomplishments from him in the future.

It is not just that this is a great adventure, though.  Henderson crafts his words well.  Quite a few times I was taken by a particular turn of a phrase, a way of saying something that was both clever and clear.  I was tempted to steal some of these; better, then, that you should encounter them in the text itself, and enjoy them for yourself.  The only thing worse than a movie trailer which gives away the best parts is one that gives away the story; let this review not do so, but instead alert you to the fact that there are some excellent lines you may wish to steal yourself, tucked into a story well worth reading if you enjoy stories of Lovecraftian horrors being resisted and repelled by human efforts.

What will be most interesting for me to see as a writer will be how well this story integrates in this space before the next one.  Morcey is just one example of people and things changing in significant ways.  The relationships London has Lai Wan and Lisa Hutchinson have advanced.  Henderson has here written a piece that should fit between two existing pieces; to know how well he has accomplished that, I will have to await a copy of the next story.

On the other hand, he has again written an excellent adventure, in which unimaginable horrors meet determined humans, and the humans manage to pull through as the winners.  If for some reason you have not had the pleasure of reading The Things That Are Not There and The Stench of Fresh Air, this book stands well on its own, adequately providing the pieces needed to understand the histories of its characters.  I continue to enjoy this series, and to look forward to future entries.

Henderson’s work can be found wherever he manages to make an appearance; I hope to pick up a copy of the now published version of the story when I see him at Ubercon XII.  For those unable to catch him in person, The London Agency Official Home Page is his web site, complete with a store in which to find all the books mentioned here.

At the time this went to publication, the book was not yet listed on the web site store.  Henderson is limiting his attendance at Ubercon this year to Friday night, November 6, 2009; other appearances are usually announced on his web site.

Not so long ago, someone whose name, Adam Reimenschneider, I did not recognize made an open appeal on a forum I frequent, seeking anyone who would write a review of his novel, Kingdom of Ashes.  It was his hope that the novel would help promote the game on which it was based.  My sympathies were touched.  I, too, have written novels in the hope that they would help promote the game.  My impression is that it does not work terribly well that way; rather, it gives you two products to promote to two audiences who do not overlap as much as might have been hoped.  However, remembering how important reviews are to me as part of the promotional package, I responded favorably, and he mailed me a copy of the book.

I soon found myself in an awkward position.  To say that I did not enjoy the book would be understating the matter seriously. I was still a couple chapters from the end when I wrote a very negative review in which I went so far as to say that I did not care how it ended; indeed, I read the rest because I generally do finish books I start reading, and I believe I ought not write a review without having read the entire book.

At the same time, it seemed to me that it was not a bad book.  It was a good book, and a good fantasy book.  It was well written.  Reimenschneider has a solid command of language, painting vivid images and compelling plotlines and credible varied characters woven together in a coherent story.  The editing was commendable.  No book is perfect, and there were still a few knots in which my own fine-toothed comb snagged.  A few of these appeared to be vocabulary problems, where Reimenschneider had heard an expression but used the wrong word in putting it to paper–tenants where he meant tenets, low instead of lo.  Most, though, were the sort of simple typos that can evade an author’s or editor’s eyes for years–the wrong correction made by a spellchecker, or to instead of the, or a dropped word.  For the length of the book (251 pages in small but sharp legible print), the number of problems was not significant.

Thus my own dislike for the book bothered me, and I had to step back and consider what it was that I did not like.

Reimenschneider has painted a very dark world.  In the midst of all this darkness shines another darkness.  We can divide the world into three groups, but we cannot find any hope for the world in any of them.

The first group is aptly named The Order.  These are supernaturally gifted beings who have chosen to use their power to make themselves the de facto rulers of the world; they are united with each other, and combine supernatural abilities with their complete control of everything that matters to mold public opinion in the direction they favor.  In this world, there really is a right-wing conspiracy.  The government works for The Order.  All major corporations and banks are controlled by them.  The media reports what the Order tells them.  Whatever suits the Order, that is what the world believes.  They have even created a completely fictional rebel group, performed acts of sabotage and carnage, and reported in the news that their fictional group has claimed credit for it, and that public opinion favors a tightening of security protections, curfews, travel restrictions, invasions of privacy, and the mobilization of paramilitary units to patrol the streets to protect the citizens against this non-existent dangerous group.

Against them we have a confederation of supernaturally gifted beings whose unifying feature is that they are all opposed to the Order, but most of whom also oppose any order, structure, law, regulation, or restriction whatsoever.  They are against the order because they want to be permitted to do whatever they want, without regard for how it affects anyone else.  These are ostensibly the heroes of the book, and I will have more to say about them.

The third group is the functional equivalent of Harry Potter’s muggles.  These are the mundanes, the vast majority of humanity, having no supernatural gifts and completely unaware that such gifts exist.  Unlike the muggles, though, this is the group that the supernaturals want to manipulate and use for their own self-gratification.  They are sheep.  If the supernatural factions had been vampires, they could hardly have viewed the mundanes worse–at least vampires recognize that they need ordinary people for food.

In fairness to Reimenschneider, he stated in his original message that the book if made into a movie would have an “R” rating, due to violence.  Violence does not generally bother me, even if it is gory, and this rarely approaches gore in its descriptions (although it might if rendered to the screen).  The statement that someone was sliced in half and bled out on the ground reads to me like a factual statement of the injuries; a considerably more vivid image would have to be created to offend my sensibilities there.  However, the Motion Picture Association of America might have a hard time justifying anything so mild as an “R” rating based on three other factors, all of which did bother me.

The first factor was the language.  It has the virtue, if it can be called virtue, of being realistic–a realistic representation of the mode of speech of the seamier elements of society.  It may have been George Carlin who said that a certain particularly offensive word could be used as almost any part of speech, noun, verb, adjective, adverb.  Reimenschneider’s characters seemed to expand that list to include preposition, conjunction, and several others.  If people used language like that in my house, I would ask them to have more respect or leave.  These, though, are the heroes of the book, the people we are supposed to like.  I had a difficult time getting past their language.  I felt like the people I was supposed to like were crass, crude, and rude to the point of incivility.

The second factor that would almost certainly have pushed the rating was the sex.  I don’t expect, as Woody Allen described it in The Purple Rose of Cairo, “we kiss, the screen fades to black, and we’re off making love in some perfect place.”  However, the descriptions in some of the scenes would have found a home in online pornographic literature, and any director attempting to bring this to the screen in something below an A-17 rating would have had a very rough time here.  Further, these pieces, although not exactly gratuitous, serve primarily to develop the characters of the primary players, to show us that they are the sort of people who use sex in these ways.  That makes me think that they are not only crass but shallow.

The third factor with which the Motion Picture Association of America would have had problems was the pervasive emphasis on drugs.  It was not merely the background, that these were being used at the parties which formed the setting for a number of meetings (where there was also ample gratuitous sex in a background of drunken debauchery).  That is undoubtedly an effort to recreate a setting alien to me but familiar to a specific minority of mostly young urbanites.  It reached beyond this, though, as drugs were part of many of the rituals used by the heroes and their allies in their efforts to achieve their objectives, and the use of these was justified not as a bad means of reaching a good end, but as a good tool for doing so.

I had problems with the characters.  The stars in this story are the sort of people I find most alien to my notions of “good people”.  This is apart from the repeated emphases on the fact that they are smoking and drinking at every turn.  I suppose that I have too many negative experiences with such people–people who have robbed me and those I know, people who have destroyed their lives with alcohol and drugs, people who have cruelly hurt others while putting on a pleasant face–who fit the images of the heroes of this book, and I could not buy them as heroes.

The central character is in some ways the worst offender.  In a scene that seems almost incidental, he uses his supernatural abilities as a sort of psionic Rohypnol to get a girl about whom he once cared deeply to perform sexual acts believing that this was what she wanted to do–clearly a case of date rape, and the fact that the girl never realized she had been subtly coerced did not mitigate that.  He then admits to himself that he did it specifically to “get her out of his system”, so that he could use her and discard her and never think about her again.  This typifies the selfish nature of the character the book extols as its hero.  Yes, the “good” “chaotic” side has some admirable characters in it, but those who might actually be accused of virtue are kept on the fringes of the story and never explored, and for the best of those who are major supporting characters the highest praise that can be offered is that they did not seem to be as bad as the hero.

The best thing I can say about the hero of the story is that the end of the book sets up a sequel in which he will suffer some consequences of his undisciplined selfishness.  Although I would like to see that, I don’t imagine either that I would buy the sequel or that Reimenschneider will send me a review copy.

I’ve created a lot of worlds, and read about many others, but rarely have I encountered a world where it seemed a good nuclear war would be the best solution to the problems.  I am sure that there are people who will like this book.  It is a well-plotted story well told.  I do not think I know any of those people myself.  I wish Reimenschneider the best with his book, but I think his audience is going to be rather limited.  It’s a shame, really, because he is obviously a talented writer who probably could write something I would enjoy very much.  This, though, was not that.

My last review recommended C. J. Henderson’s Lai Wan:  Tales of the Dreamwalker; but I commented that it was one of two books I had picked up from the author last October, and that he was eager to know my reaction to them.  The other new addition to my collection was To Battle Beyond.  Interestingly, where the Lai Wan stories were a collection of short stories following a character who had previously appeared in a novel, this was a novel built around a character previously appearing in a collection of short stories, Chief Inspector John Legrasse.

Lovecraft fans might recognize the name.  He debuted in what is perhaps the quintessential Lovecraft story, The Call of Cthulu.  One of Henderson’s previous books was built around Legrasse, beginning with a reprint of the Lovecraft story and then taking the detective back to the mysterious bayous of Louisiana and elsewhere to face similar evils and ultimately to thwart the rising of Cthulu from the depths.  (I mentioned before that Henderson’s characters always fight back against the horrors which challenge them, unlike Lovecraft’s which simply collapse in despair.)  In that book one of the short stories, So Free We Seem, told the tale of an elderly man found dead in his locked home amidst hundreds of mouse traps and intricate scrawls on the floor, along with a journal in which he recounted tentacles invading and exploring his house at night.  That story becomes the starting point for this novel.  Seeking answers, Legrasse heads to New York.

At this point he is thrown together with three other characters who might have been familiar to the readers of pulp fiction, comic book heroes of the pre-comic book era.  Ravenwood is a mentalist, something similar to The Shadow, able to read minds and project illusions.  The Bat will seem most familiar to modern readers; he is undoubtedly the primary inspiration for Batman, a caped crusader with lots of gadgets, but also may have influenced the creation of Daredevil, in that he is a blind district attorney whose compensatory senses enable him to know where everyone and everything is in a dark room.  Lady Domino most resembles Electra, orphaned heiress with remarkable skills in gunplay and acrobatics, who also uses her stunning good looks to her advantage.  They are drawn together and immediately become targets, as they discover that the recent appearances of tentacled monstrosities from another dimension are due to the efforts of a secret Japanese project intended to cripple America and keep us out of World War II.  This allows Henderson to introduce a fifth member to the team, a modern ninja/samurai.

My one complaint about this book is in the editing.  There were enough annoying glitches to make me wonder whether it was a stylistic decision, whether the publisher wanted to capture the flavor of the old pulp adventures by incorporating as many typographical errors as those rushed-to-print paperbacks often contained.  That would almost excuse it, but still be annoying.  I know how difficult it is to catch every mistake in any book, and I know that I am perhaps more sensitive than the average reader (I tried to overlook the persistent use of split infinitives, a personal annoyance, knowing that I sometimes split them myself and it has become quite acceptable in American English to do so).  The mistakes here, though, were excessive.

That said, it is an exciting tale, and if one accepts the basic premises of the Lovecraftian-meets-pulp-adventure world, quite believable–my disbelief suspenders never snapped despite the mix of paranormal abilities, supernatural enemies, and incredible physical abilities.  Each character is well defined with his own strengths and weaknesses, each at some point saves the day, evil is thwarted, and the central character comes through as a hero.

It is in a sense a sequel to the other book, but it is not the sort of sequel that requires reading them in sequence.  Legrasse is an interesting character well worth following in his adventures elsewhere, but everything the reader needs to know about him is captured in the opening pages.  The other characters are also adequately introduced in part by Ron Fortier’s introduction.  Not even knowledge of the Lovecraftian cosmology is needed here.  The reader is drawn into the story and introduced to all the essential elements as needed.  Again, C. J. has written a book well worth reading.

–M. J. Young

C. J. Henderson and I often share panels at Ubercon, talking about the art and craft of writing fiction.  I have much admiration for him, for he is considerably more prolific and successful and in many ways skilled than I, and although I do disagree with him at times, I have learned much from him.  I also have read several of his books.  He does not give these to me; I buy them.  However, he discounts them (to everyone who buys from his table at the convention), and he always includes an e-mail address and the request that I let him know what I thought.

I could–perhaps I should–extol his Teddy London series.  The Things that Are Not There takes the Lovecraftian conception of the universe, with ancient horrors attempting to cross dimensional boundaries to consume the earth, enticing humans into cultish practices with the promise of power, and brings hope to them.  As he has sometime said, he tackled Lovecraftian horror, but found that his characters when faced with these terrific evils fought back.  Detective Teddy London is drawn into just such a story, and in the end, at incredible cost, he saves the universe.  Then in the first sequel, The Stench of Fresh Air, London is drawn into yet another lurking evil, Henderson’s own take on vampires.  I eagerly await the re-release of additional volumes in this series.  The publisher keeps promising next week, next month, next year–a song with which I am all too familiar myself, but it keeps hope alive.

It also keeps C. J. writing fresh material, and this past October I picked up two volumes from him both of which were kin to books of his I had already read.  I enjoyed both, but am focusing today on the second I read, in no small part because it springs from the Teddy London world.  He created a character within those pages, a psychronomist named Lai Wan.  In his new book, Lai Wan:  Tales of the Dreamwalker, he compiles a collection of original short stories, some co-authored with authors he admires (John L. French, Bruce Gehweiler, Patrick Thomas, and John Sunseri, edited with an introduction by William Jones), in which this mysterious Oriental recluse faces a variety of supernatural and paranormal enemies.

Wan is a fascinating character in large part because her gift is her curse.  Awakening some years before from a near death experience, she immediately discovered her remarkable new ability in the worst way possible:  by experiencing all the pain that had ever been suffered by every patient who had ever lain on that same bed.  She does not leave the shelter of her New York home unless she perceives a very important reason to do so, and even there she is usually dressed in clothes that cover all but her eyes, to prevent her from coming into contact with any person or object that might flood her with unpleasant memories.  Anyone seeking her help must first find a reason why she should care enough to take the pain of others upon herself.  Yet such reasons are found, and she becomes involved in making a difference where she knows that only she can truly do so.

The stories are well written and interesting.  Further, the nature of her battles keeps changing.  In one place she is battling someone who uses the dreamplane to torture victims.  In another, she is playing a social game with a vampire who has been working to unleash a demon.  Yet again she is trying to get to the bottom of an experiment that has created monsters from drug addicts.  She searches for a lost child who disappeared under peculiar circumstances.  No two stories are quite the same, and within them she often reveals unusual ways of using her remarkable ability.  Henderson shows genuine thought in exactly what someone so gifted could do, and what it would cost her.

I don’t know how far from home he travels.  Attending Ubercon in north eastern New Jersey he commutes from New York City to keep costs down.  If you live in the New York metropolitan area, you’ll want to visit one of the conventions where he is giving advice to authors (even if you are not an author but a gamer) and pick up some of his books.  If not, stop by his web site, CJHenderson.com and take a look at his work there.  Mention my name.  It won’t get you a discount, but I’d like him to know someone reads what I write.

Call it a promise to a friend.  I became aware that Jim Aubuchon, whose book Heartstone I reviewed a couple years ago, was looking for someone to review his graphic novel Third Eye Shut.  I had enjoyed Heartstone and was looking forward to the sequel, so I offered to look at this and he sent me a copy.  I put it near the top of my reading list, and soon had the opportunity to get through it.

That was when I realized I was out of my element, and in several ways.

The most obvious is that I am not an aficionado of graphic novels.  It is not quite that I have not read them since they were called comic books.  I did read one by another friend, C. J. Henderson.  However, I still think of them as comic books.  I did not find C. J.’s graphic novel to be on par with his other books.[1]  I realize even comic books need to be taken seriously within the rules of their own genre, but my limited exposure makes it difficult to identify those rules.

Then there is the additional problem that the story is, at least to my eyes, clearly allegorical, but I know that I am missing bits of the allegory.  Aubuchon’s background includes an extensive understanding of occult practices which I lack.  Even the title, Third Eye Shut, is a reference to an occult concept of opening a third eye to see spiritual things.  The story asserts that to the degree our third eyes are open we are blinded by the illusion created by the enemy, and it is only by closing our third eye against that illusion that we can see reality as it truly is.  The spirits we see when we open our third eye to the spirit world are intent on deceiving us, and so the more we open that eye the less clearly we see reality.

In the end, though, on my first reading I could not find the point.  The story made a significant issue about how important the young heroine Amber is to the plans of “The Leader”.  However, we never see her do anything successfully.  She rejects the Third Eye Open teaching, learns to close her third eye, and sees the world as it really is, and then goes into training to fight with the forces of The Leader against the evil of “The Warlord”.  Next she is part of a failed mission to save her family, and then she attempts to rescue another of The Leader’s warriors from the fortress of The Warlord, and gets captured and is held prisoner for a long time until others rescue her, The Warlord is defeated, and she renews her promise to fight against The Warlord in other cities around the world–presumably in the next issue.  She never actually succeeds at anything that matters.

I was having trouble understanding the point.

I set aside the book, read something else, and after several months picked it up afresh.

To risk a pun, the second reading was a real eye-opener to me.  I realized that this was the point.  Amber is important not because she is going to bring down The Warlord or accomplish great tasks herself, but because when she fails and is captured she becomes the reason for the rest of the forces of The Leader to mobilize and destroy The Warlord’s fortress to set her free.  She is not the heroine in the traditional sense of the one who wins the victory, but in the sense of the one who inspires others to win the victory because she is in need.  In an excellent display of understanding of spiritual battles, Aubuchon has given his heroine the role we all take, the failure who needs salvation, for whom heaven is mobilized to deliver us.

All of which is to fail to speak of the experience of the novel itself, which is certainly worth recognition.  Aubuchon weaves realities seamlessly.  The little old retired missionary widow across the street is also the powerful armored warrior when you can see the reality.  The apartment where Amber lives with her useless boyfriend is simultaneously a cell within The Warlord’s fortress.  The messages in television, advertising, school, and elsewhere are all ultimately about rejecting The Leader once the veneer of appearances is removed.  It is in many ways reminiscent of a master of the blending of realities, Charles Williams,[2] as city streets become battlefields against the invisible enemy using the invisible weapons.  Kudos to Rob Ewing, Atlantis Studios, Noval Hernawan, and Oscar Yanez for illustrations which captured this blending of worlds.  However, with the changing of artists, some of the characters were a bit inconsistent in appearance such that I once or twice had to check who was speaking.  Amber’s hair color and sometimes her facial structure changes according to who is rendering her, and some of the minor characters when they recur in subsequent chapters are only clearly identified by being named in the dialogue.  The lettering is always legibile, and although there were a couple of errors in the spelling these were rare and minor; overall it is an excellent book in that regard, for which again Atlantis Studios and also Khari Sampson, KJ Media, and Terminus Media share credit.

Overall, I wish to commend Jim for his very clever story and insightful execution, creating a fantasy world in the midst of our own, in which warriors combining elements of swords & sorcery, mecha, and video game are hidden from most of us by the illusion we call reality.  It is an excellent book.

_____

1  The Things That Are Not There is an excellent fantasy horror novel from him.

2  Descent Into Hell is probably his best in this area.

I was handed a reviewer copy of this book, Evil Star by Alexander Horowitz; it is billed as the second book in The Gatekeepers series. The first, Raven’s Gate, escaped my notice despite being on the New York Times’ Best Seller list at some point. (That has more to do with my inattention to such lists than with any lack of merit in the book.) It is entirely accidental that I received this book. It was tossed in the bag with my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, because the bookstore was celebrating the release of the book and looking for things they had around that they could give away. The person who gave me this book had no idea that I was a reviewer (he did know I was an author, and had read my novel), and no expectation that I should review it. However, I read it, and since it was a pre-release “early reader edition” copy I thought I would write a review.

I am sorely tempted to call this series, “Harry Potter Meets Cthulu”. The connections seem to scream at me.

The hero of the series, Matthew Freeman who prefers to be called Matt, is in this book fourteen years old; that makes him a bit older than Harry was in his second book (he had just turned twelve). It is not clear to me, however, how old Matt was in the beginning of the first book. Like Harry, Matt is an orphan, although it seems his parents really did die in a car accident and not until he was eight. That tale is told, apparently, in the first book. Like Harry, Matt has powers he does not understand and cannot always control; he was aware of the car accident before it occurred, and he sometimes has similar premonitions here. He also sometimes causes telekinetic events, but through severe emotional upset, not intention. He is even described as thin with unkempt dark hair and blue eyes.

The similarities to Harry don’t end there, though. We are told that there are seven gates, and apparently each book revolves around the effort to keep the next one closed. first grade math says that means there will be seven books in this series, just as there were in the Potter books. Matt is the hero, the focus of the stories; his friends, young and old, help him, but in the critical moments he is the one on the line.

In fairness to Horowitz, at least some of these are the tropes of the genre: fantasy books for adolescents have adolescent heroes. Cry of the Icemark was similar in some ways. Matt does not have a group of adolescent friends; he has the friendship of a young adult reporter, and the support of a secret international organization, but he is completely estranged from his peers. No one is helping him learn to use his powers. He is not exactly unique; there is much in the book about “the five”, of which he is the first to be identified, and he dreams about the other four trying to reach him. Still, in this book one of the others does reach him, recognizing him from his own dreams. He, too, has powers he does not understand, but they are very different powers.

As to Cthulu, he is never mentioned; however, the series revolves around a set of gates through which the “Old Ones” threaten to return to bring darkness to the word, and this book focuses on an ancient newly discovered book which tells how to open one of those gates. A wealthy reclusive businessman is the evil monster attempting to get the book and open the gate.

I did not feel that Matt was as familiar a character as Harry. It was a weakness of the book that I had trouble identifying with its hero. Harry stayed with family members who did not like him, but Matt had an insane former foster mother trying to kill him. Harry was alone at school but for a couple of friends, but Matt was alone on the streets of the Peruvian slums with a boy with whom he shared no common language. Harry meets creatures of fantasy and learns to control his power through the mentoring of those more experienced than he, while Matt meets Incan survivors and struggles to work through his own use of his powers. Where Harry’s powers made us feel that he was special, Matt’s powers make us feel that he is different; we want to be like Harry, but not like Matt. Even the fact that Harry goes to school in what seems a very ordinary way (despite it being a school for wizards) gives us a point of contact; Matt is behind in his education, because his life is constantly interrupted and he has to move to another school. It just never felt like Matt was a sympathetic character.

On the other hand, the author takes us on quite an adventure. Matt is the reluctant hero here; he wants to be a normal boy, but he’s not normal, and fate will not leave him alone. In his new school he is the outcast, and the fact that he pulls the fire alarm before the explosion that would have killed almost everyone only makes him less accepted. The Nexus, the organization that is fighting this battle, wants and perhaps needs his help, but he is trying to avoid getting involved–and yet gets pulled half way around the world and into the midst of the trouble as events unfold. It is not always clear who are the villains and who the allies, and more than once he flees from those who would have helped him. Scores, maybe hundreds, of people are trying to help him, but at the critical moment he stands alone but for the other, younger, boy.

The book is laced with some wonderful images, many of them descriptions of Peru from its ancient wonders to its modern slums. If there is a fault here, it lies in the interlacing of fantasy elements–a hidden Incan city, secret passages in those preserved wonders known only to the surviving Incans–with the hard facts. Even I am not certain where the facts ended and the fantasies began at times. That is only a fault because of the wonderfully clear portrayals of the realities of Peru, the author’s skill at bringing us into that place, and because (being published by Scholastic) it is targeted at a teen or pre-teen audience who will benefit greatly from the look at that society, if they can sort out the reality from the rest.

The copy I have has a number of errors in it which caught my eye as an editor, which may also have caught the eye of Scholastic’s editors before the finished version went to press. Most of these are minor typos, a wrong but similar word here or there. The mistake which most bothered me involved a description of the actions of a minor character, a truck driver on his way to be beaten and robbed. Before the incident we are told that he is thinking about asking a certain waitress at a certain truck stop out on a date; after the incident we are told that his wife was contacted and gave them important information. I prefer to think that the author overlooked part of what he was doing, rather than that he perceives married truck drivers commonly asking women out on dates; I hope, at least, that this was a mistake, and that it was corrected before the final copy.

I am tempted to attempt to obtain a copy of the first book. After all, it is often the case that one book in a series is weaker than the others, and this might be the weaker book. It is not a bad idea for a series; the Lovecraftian horror concepts are present but not terrifyingly so (although I’m probably not the best judge of that–Lovecraft has never frightened me). There is madness, there is betrayal, there are evil people working toward evil ends. Matt does not always emerge victorious, does not always make the best decisions, and is not always eager to do what he must do. However, he proves the hero through his efforts, and moves an epic story forward a significant chapter. I wouldn’t expect this to be the stuff of a best seller, but then, such things are determined by factors other than how they appeal to fifty-something author-reviewers.

Unknown Armies: Weep from Atlas Games

by Rick Neal, James Palmer, Greg Stolze, John Tynes, and Chad Underkoffler

176 pages / $22.95

From an academic standpoint, the position of roleplaying games is somewhat vague. The big question is: Are they worth “studying?” Fiction certainly is. Movies too. Poetry, political writings, and even comic books warrant a “yes” on the question. But RPG’s? They’re media. They’re in book form. They have a good deal of fictional elements and can, as some of my prior columns have attempted to point out, be filled with interesting ideological stances. But they’re games. In that respect, they sit on roughly the same level as Super Mario Bros. Add to this the fact that roleplaying games are, in the greater scheme of things, a niche product, and you’ve got something the world at large finds pretty easy to ignore.

As is probably obvious, I don’t agree with the popular assessment of our hobby. But it can be a difficult, uphill battle. For the most part, RPG’s do a good job of furthering their own trivial image. Dungeons & Dragons is silly fantasy. RIFTS is one or two steps below Rob Schneider on the intellectual ladder. White Wolf’s World of Darkness has become a self parody.

But then there’s Unknown Armies.

In much the same way Jared Sorensen’s Schism does it to super heroes, UA takes the modern occult genre and nails it so perfectly and with so much originality, that it effectively kills off the possibility of further work in the field. However, in the case of UA, I would argue that it goes an additional step and almost does the same to roleplaying games as a whole. Greg Stolze and John Tynes wrote the best RPG on the market today. It would be easy to label it the Best RPG Ever. UA displays intelligence, grace, thoughtfulness, and attention to detail far beyond nearly everything else it shares shelf space with.

It does this by getting to that fragile core of roleplaying: the fictional representation of the human in as much realism and awareness as possible. In the end, UA is not about the occult. It isn’t about magic or weird powers or secretive organizations. It is about humanity. It is about obsession and madness and the fine line that separates the two. It is about reality in the same way Grant Morrison’s Invisibles is: it takes the extremes and makes them so omnipresent as to reshape our means of perception. One comes away from UA noticing things.

What is truly amazing, though, is that, as they expand the product line, Atlas Games has kept a level of consistent quality that rarely (if ever) drops below the level set by the core rulebook. Weep is no exception. The front cover bills it as “six scenarios of woe and ruin,” but that’s a little misleading. Three of the six aren’t really adventures; they’re more like mini-sourcebooks, filled with wacky stuff to throw at players. I’m not going to go into too many details, however. To do so would ruin the surprise entirely, and UA is so much about surprise, about the unexpected, that I would be doing a huge disservice to both players and GM’s.

I will hit on one aspect of the book that stands out for me in particular. The first adventure, written by Tynes, brings together the best Unknown Armies has to offer. Without giving too much away, it deals with events that aren’t ever given an explanation. Instead, they are given meaning. I was discussing the scenario, called “A Few of My Favorite Things,” with a friend at a coffee house yesterday. She thought it sounded neat but wanted to know if the players ever figured out what was going on. The answer is no, but we came to the conclusion that that’s not the point. What matters is that, after the adventure is done and the dice are put away, the players are left with something to think about. Tynes has written the RPG equivalent of a fantastic short story. He built a complex metaphor about the state of America and let us play around in it. He has a message, a point to make, and that’s what’s important. I know that a lot of RPG players out there would have serious problems with such a setup. I know that I’d have to get a very specific group of people together to play it or else deal with constant griping about continuity and not having anything to do. This is not an adventure for “adventure gamers.”

But you know what? Screw ‘em.

Unknown Armies is to roleplaying games what Dave Sim’s Cerebus is to comics. (Though it definitely isn’t plagued by the silly misogyny Sim seems to dwell on so much.) UA is brilliant. It is intense and powerful and worthwhile. But it has to compete for space with peers that are everything but. Most RPG’s are embarrassing. Seriously.

Unknown Armies is a game we, the gaming community, can be proud of.

And Weep takes its rightful place in swelling that pride.