Reviews: Anansi Boys and Banner of Souls
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman has a lot to answer for. I started reading American comics when I was seven, and continued until I was in my thirties. Then I went cold turkey for ten years, during which time I bought exactly one comic book. (That is, one issue, and that was because the artwork brought me to a screeching halt in 'Forbidden Planet.') After those ten years I picked up a remaindered copy of the second Sandman collection ' A Dolls' House , fell in love - and suddenly was hooked again. So it is ALL NEIL GAIMAN'S FAULT.
I just wanted to get that off my chest, but the comment is relevant to Anansi Boys. This is the very first of his novels - or at least his adult novels - that reads to me like one of his comic books, with the archetypical characters that are also real personalities, the scholarship and the humour and the tricksy plotting, with lots of meat underneath. American Gods was huge and adult and dark and wild. Anansi Boys' though tackling much the same area (the old Gods and their children living among us) is shorter and lighter - though it has its dark moments - and much more domestic. It is also a book that covers late 'young adult' to old biddies like me.
Fat Charlie, the main protagonist, has many characteristics we can all identify with. He gets embarrassed easily, he's clumsy, he prefers to go unnoticed, and things never go right for him. You feel you need to invite him to a Convention. Unfortunately for him, he is also the son of the Spider God Anansi, and his brother, Spider, is not only as irritating as only brothers can be, but also controls of some Anansi's power and is quite unrestrained about using it. It's not long before Spider is muscling in on Charlie's fiancée, and has managed to put him under suspicion of embezzlement and worse. All this is interesting and enjoyable enough but, to be honest, a wee bit slow. However, when Charlie attempts to hit back (and, of course, messes up) the book explodes into page-turning action and incident.
It is also, like much of Sandman a book about storytelling. Gaiman, in the tradition of Kipling, has the ability to make up stories that sound like real folk tales, and that you cannot, without research, tell from the real folk tales he also weaves into his story.
I'm in love again.
Banner of Souls by Liz Williams.
You know where you stand right from the start with this book. Its opening sentence
Dreams-of-War was hunting the remnants of men on the slopes of the Martian Olympus when she came across the herd of ghosts.
will either grab you by the throat or make you throw the book down in disgust. This is not a book that anyone is ever going to attempt to classify as literary mainstream or suggest is "Not really science fiction."
It was also a real surprise to me. The only other book I have read by Liz Williams was The Ghost Sister which I found mildly interesting but vaguely unsatisfying. This had a lot to do with a plot that ambled in all directions and was never really resolved, some extremely dodgy 'New Age'-style 'science' and the odd feeling that I was being preached at; not so much a militant feminist sub-text as a militant feminist up-front text. However, Banner of Souls was well reviewed, I'd met Liz and liked her, and I decided on a second go.
I'm very glad I did. This is a rich book; alien, complex and detailed and satisfying. The comparisons that spring to mind are Vance and David Lindsay and Terry Dowling (and coming from me that last is high praise indeed.) None of the protagonists are particularly likeable, and all of the societies intensely dislikeable, but you care deeply what happens to them.
Sometimes the language is almost too rich (rather like Patricia McKillip's later work) but the story is strong enough to carry it over even the purplest patches, and a bit of overwriting can be forgiven when there are more gloriously felicitous phrases than winceable ones.
That story takes place in a far future where most intelligent creatures - one finds it a bit difficult to call them 'human' even when they think of themselves as such - are made and grown rather than born. Males have been eliminated except in genetically spliced creatures that hunt the more 'civilized' creatures like the amphibious kappa or the people who think of themselves as women. Earth is ruled by a militant Martian matriarchy. But travel through the solar system and beyond is made possible by 'haunt-tech' - from the mysterious planet Nightshade.
A Martian warrior, Dreams-of-War, is sent to Earth to guard a newly-created infant, Lunae, through her very short childhood. A kappa - from a seemingly slave race - is called South to be her nurse. A woman of Nightshade is sent, along with her strange insectoid male companion, to kill the child. Lunae herself is gifted with the ability to shift through time. All are pawns in warring plots that will decide the fate of their worlds. There's a great deal of action and lots of strange tech toys and stranger creatures and societies, with so many ideas that a lesser writer would have spun them out into half a dozen books.
I am now going to go and work backwards through Liz William's body of work.
Neil Gaiman has a lot to answer for. I started reading American comics when I was seven, and continued until I was in my thirties. Then I went cold turkey for ten years, during which time I bought exactly one comic book. (That is, one issue, and that was because the artwork brought me to a screeching halt in 'Forbidden Planet.') After those ten years I picked up a remaindered copy of the second Sandman collection ' A Dolls' House , fell in love - and suddenly was hooked again. So it is ALL NEIL GAIMAN'S FAULT.
I just wanted to get that off my chest, but the comment is relevant to Anansi Boys. This is the very first of his novels - or at least his adult novels - that reads to me like one of his comic books, with the archetypical characters that are also real personalities, the scholarship and the humour and the tricksy plotting, with lots of meat underneath. American Gods was huge and adult and dark and wild. Anansi Boys' though tackling much the same area (the old Gods and their children living among us) is shorter and lighter - though it has its dark moments - and much more domestic. It is also a book that covers late 'young adult' to old biddies like me.
Fat Charlie, the main protagonist, has many characteristics we can all identify with. He gets embarrassed easily, he's clumsy, he prefers to go unnoticed, and things never go right for him. You feel you need to invite him to a Convention. Unfortunately for him, he is also the son of the Spider God Anansi, and his brother, Spider, is not only as irritating as only brothers can be, but also controls of some Anansi's power and is quite unrestrained about using it. It's not long before Spider is muscling in on Charlie's fiancée, and has managed to put him under suspicion of embezzlement and worse. All this is interesting and enjoyable enough but, to be honest, a wee bit slow. However, when Charlie attempts to hit back (and, of course, messes up) the book explodes into page-turning action and incident.
It is also, like much of Sandman a book about storytelling. Gaiman, in the tradition of Kipling, has the ability to make up stories that sound like real folk tales, and that you cannot, without research, tell from the real folk tales he also weaves into his story.
I'm in love again.
Banner of Souls by Liz Williams.
You know where you stand right from the start with this book. Its opening sentence
Dreams-of-War was hunting the remnants of men on the slopes of the Martian Olympus when she came across the herd of ghosts.
will either grab you by the throat or make you throw the book down in disgust. This is not a book that anyone is ever going to attempt to classify as literary mainstream or suggest is "Not really science fiction."
It was also a real surprise to me. The only other book I have read by Liz Williams was The Ghost Sister which I found mildly interesting but vaguely unsatisfying. This had a lot to do with a plot that ambled in all directions and was never really resolved, some extremely dodgy 'New Age'-style 'science' and the odd feeling that I was being preached at; not so much a militant feminist sub-text as a militant feminist up-front text. However, Banner of Souls was well reviewed, I'd met Liz and liked her, and I decided on a second go.
I'm very glad I did. This is a rich book; alien, complex and detailed and satisfying. The comparisons that spring to mind are Vance and David Lindsay and Terry Dowling (and coming from me that last is high praise indeed.) None of the protagonists are particularly likeable, and all of the societies intensely dislikeable, but you care deeply what happens to them.
Sometimes the language is almost too rich (rather like Patricia McKillip's later work) but the story is strong enough to carry it over even the purplest patches, and a bit of overwriting can be forgiven when there are more gloriously felicitous phrases than winceable ones.
That story takes place in a far future where most intelligent creatures - one finds it a bit difficult to call them 'human' even when they think of themselves as such - are made and grown rather than born. Males have been eliminated except in genetically spliced creatures that hunt the more 'civilized' creatures like the amphibious kappa or the people who think of themselves as women. Earth is ruled by a militant Martian matriarchy. But travel through the solar system and beyond is made possible by 'haunt-tech' - from the mysterious planet Nightshade.
A Martian warrior, Dreams-of-War, is sent to Earth to guard a newly-created infant, Lunae, through her very short childhood. A kappa - from a seemingly slave race - is called South to be her nurse. A woman of Nightshade is sent, along with her strange insectoid male companion, to kill the child. Lunae herself is gifted with the ability to shift through time. All are pawns in warring plots that will decide the fate of their worlds. There's a great deal of action and lots of strange tech toys and stranger creatures and societies, with so many ideas that a lesser writer would have spun them out into half a dozen books.
I am now going to go and work backwards through Liz William's body of work.