by Patrick Ogle

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi is a horror book that isn't really about scares. There is an understated sense of humor here and multiple points to make (some of which I am still sorting out). It modernizes the Frankenstein story and gives it a new purpose. To me this was a book about consequences and about the futility of vengeance but it is about more than that. This book is also  a lot more than just a retelling of Frankenstein. In fact it is linked to the original story in only a handful of ways. I leave you to draw those lines for yourself. One theme that kept coming back to me while reading was; who do you trust? Why do you trust them? When you hear many different explanations for something what seems credible?

Frankenstein in Baghdad truly puts you in a place and a time. I have read academic books whose sole focus was to teach about a place and an era that fail in this goal. Saadawi achieves it.  This horror book really makes you feel like you are in post-Iraq War Baghdad and gives you a sense of the anxieties faced by actual people there (plus, there is a monster...). I cannot say for certain that this IS what it was like there only that it SEEMS real and that is partly from the details that are outside the plot--where people live, their habits, their dress, what they eat and drink. I think this sort of attention to detail and building up of characters is a key part of making something supernatural really work in a novel or short story. 

There is no specific "bad guy" in this book. Some people do sort of bad things (including the monster) but if you are, as many Americans do, waiting for everyone to "get theirs" you will keep waiting. I was thrilled much of what I expected to happen did not happen. I was thrilled that this thriller was like real life. Some people are spared and some people suffer and there is often no rhyme or reason to it. Of course now I am off the track a bit but that is what I'm trying to do writing these things down; I want to get at how a novel makes me feel.

This book gives you some anxiety. It makes you care about even briefly mentioned characters because they seem real, they require empathy. This is a book I am likely to read again later to see what I’ve missed.

This book won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014. It was also a Booker Prize Finalist.

Murderbot is back and it is a kinder, gentler Murderbot (well sort of). Platform Decay by Martha Wells shows a new side to the cyborg killing machine (well, sort of). This series really has me wondering what is coming down the road for the ever expanding number of characters and the universe they "inhabit". Some series, even ones I LOVE, like the Slough House books, wear me down a little as they go one. There is a repetitiveness by the parameters based on the sort of story being told. Spies spy. Detectives detect.That is true of these books too but there are hints of changes to the galaxy they all live in. The file for sec units to hack their governor modules is spreading; what happens when it is everywhere? There are all sorts of dramatic possibilities there.

But that isn't this book. 

This is another "old friend" (well an enemy) appearing as a sort of client. This is another story about people putting Murderbot into uncomfortable positions. Yet there is also an evolution of Murderbot itself.

Don't read this if you haven't read the others. Previous books have tried harder to be accessible to new readers, not all of them but some anyway. This one dispenses with that. You won't know what the hell is going on or who anyone is if you haven't at least read some of the previous books.

I am waiting for the next one...chop chop Ms. Wells!

by Patrick Ogle

Until recently I didn't often read books in long series. Sure, the odd trilogy but ongoing series? Not so much. Enter the most recent Slow Horses book, Clown Town by Mick Herron. 

I am officially hooked on this series. I bought all the previous books but this one I grabbed at the Chicago Public Library. No reason for that, I just recently signed up for a library card. 

I have read all nine Slow Horses books, the novellas and one of the three related stand alone books (The Secret Hours--a favorite). 

Ive at least LIKED all the books and LOVED most of them. There is something interesting about the basic plot device of the "Slow Horses" being screw ups the service is trying to shed; this hems in possible plot lines. They cannot be sent out on secret missions. They cannot be in Russia or the developing world. Why would you send screw ups there?

Herron is often compared to John Le Carre and that makes sense given genre and nationality. Yet, I don't remember any Le Carre books being as funny as Herron. I remember most of them being dead serious. And Le Carre doesn't write about screw ups. Sure, there are incompetents in his books but not THIS level of incompetent.

So these books, getting near double digits in the series, seem to have similar plots. Bad guys who are ex spies,be they English, Russian or American, pop up and threaten the gang. Yet the similarities remain just that, similarities. Each book is different and takes a slightly different tone (to me anyway). Herron  manages to throw in twists and moments where you stop reading and think "Holy SHIT." As it goes on and we find out more and more about the characters. He adds layers and makes them real to us. Just when you think you know what each is capable of they change.

And none of that is out of the blue. It is part of their development.

Every time I finish one of these books I think --"Dammit, now I am going to have to wait for the next one."

by Patrick Ogle

A Summer of Drowning by John Burnside.

Like most John Burnside books this one makes you work. You have to put on your thinking cap and focus to keep up with what is going on.  You wonder; is this all supernatural or is it perfectly natural. What is “natural” can certainly be strange and disturbing. This isn't the sort of disturbing that is graphic or bloody. It is a much more subtle type of unease he calls forth.

At some point, you will ask yourself; how reliable is the narrator? If you go back through this book you will find that narrator contradicting themselves–or at least second guessing their conclusions. Which may seem confounding but in actual life we ALL do this constantly.

A Summer of Drowning may be a bit more accessible than other Burnside books I’ve read–The Glister and The Devil’s Footprints but it has been some time since I read those. This book is dark but those were even darker but there is a beauty to the language. Burnside is also a poet which isn’t surprising because there is something different about his work.  I started to write that it is “poetic” but that is more than a bit unimaginative. I would  say that it leaves options for the reader to choose what to believe, to choose what arc of the story to believe. Even before I KNEW he wrote poetry I knew there was something unique about his style. This isn’t me being clever either. I am not special. Most folks notice this when reading his work.

You will hear “prose writers cannot write poetry” (or visa versa). This is nonsense, of course, it is likely more that poets and prose writers CHOOSE to write what they are most comfortable with–and Burnside is a master of both. I’ve read three books and each stayed with me for some time after finishing. 

I immediately started looking for something else by the author.

by Patrick Ogle

Murderbot Diaries--Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry and System Collapse by Martha Wells are the last of the currently available Murderbot books (excluding some online short stories). I was going to read these slowly and in a measured way, alternating with other books.

Then I just said "fuck it" and read them all in a row. This may have been a mistake.

First of all Network Effect, the fifth book, is the first to be unassailably be a novel rather than a novella. Yes, I have seen, and am indifferent to, the arguments over what is a novella and a novel. Who cares? The first four books are relatively short, concise and therefore move at a quick pace.  Network Effect moves at a more deliberate clip. It is significantly more detailed and involved than the other books. It may even sometimes get a wee bit ponderous. This isn't to say it is ever less than entertaining. It fills in gaps and lets us know more about the important characters (and brings back some that most of us Murderbot aficionados missed).

But it is different from the first for books. Different isn't bad of course but I was slower reading this one. The story is more complex than the previous books and that is a good thing. To me not BETTER than the first four. Simply different.

Fugitive Telemetry is set on a space station that is familiar to Murderbot fans and reads more like a detective novel than the other books. It is another different direction--an interesting new direction for the series. I'm not sure I'd be thrilled if it KEPT on this trajectory (it doesn't as we will see when I get to the next book). But it is a fun, self contained, story. 

It is a good idea to, more or less, read these books in order but if you read this one after book one or two it wouldn't throw you off. It actually seems like it would fit after book one or two in some ways.

System Collapse is basically a direct sequel to Network Effect and feels almost an excised part of the earlier book. It adds together a couple groups of Murderbot's humans (as he calls them).  What that means is even more characters in a crowded book that goes back to the short format of most of these books. It basically works but is a bit less than "action packed." This story relies on suspense; what's going on in Murderbot's head? or what's around that corner?

At least to me the book provides a satisfying ending to the plot. I wonder if there isn't a bit of me wanting different things to happen going on in MY head with these last couple of books. But there is definitely a change in the pace in Network Effect and System Collapse.

Nonetheless, the series continues to impress and, to me, is sort of essential reading. It is all so smart and it tells stories fast for our newly Tik Tok shortened attention spans, while still providing intelligent writing and compelling stories.

by Patrick Ogle

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clarke was a gift. I love books as gifts--especially from people who know the sort of books I like.  In this case it was from my son who always NAILS it.

This one is a supernatural thriller set in the post World War I American South. As you might expect from the time period (a horrible time in American history) and the cover art the Klan is involved. But what is behind the Klan in this book is a little different than what history tells us.

To me it seems...plausible but then I am baffled by virulent racism (this is a joke for those who are literal minded).

I just mentioned, in my discussion of the Murderbot books, how I am a sucker for writers who can create an alternate world. Clarke is such a writer. His topic made me think of the film, Sinners, and how Ryan Coogler could make an ass kicking movie out of this. Of course, he may want to do something a little different....but...still. I was also reminded of a number of writers, chief among them Victor Lavalle and Matt Ruuf, who write horror books with an American twist. They take the real horror of racism and combine it with the fantastical.  Clarke's novella is as good or better than the efforts of these two excellent writers.

This book also calls to mind the lofty work of African writers like Ben Okri and Ngugi Wa Thiongo in their shifting between the world we live in and a mystical realm. I don't want to put too fine a point on this assertion as Clarke's book is a much simpler version of this than either Okri or Ngugi sometimes employ and the writing styles of all three authors are wildly different. But I did think of it. I wanted more of the other world part of this. In truth I just wanted MORE of this book.

I also don't really want to give anything away about this book. Just read it. It is a novella length read. I look forward to a sequel. 

There better be a sequel.