My full review at http://bit.ly/gKi8UI

In brief, this is a sad and funny bit of claymation awesome. Lots of sad AND lots of funny.

Its descriptions make it sound like a trashy, guilty-pleasure novel, and to a certain degree it is, but it’s also a weirdly moving character study. Full review here: http://bit.ly/guB25I

Fans of Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space series and his other vastly atmospheric space operas are in for a bit of a surprise in his latest novel, which owes more to China Mieville’s Bas-Lag books and Jack Vance’s Dying Earth stories than to the Clarke/Asimov tradition.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad, though — far from it! While the lingering disappointment that there will be no hyperspace chase scenes or stars being sung apart via mind-bogglingly ancient and malign intelligences never wholly leaves the die-hard Reynolds fan reading this book, if that reader is also a fan of steampunk, as I am, there will still be much to enjoy in the story of Quillion, a fallen “angel”, and his perilous journey across a barely-recognizable planet Earth in the extremely distant future.

Reynolds has long been classed in with China Mieville and others as part of science fiction’s “New Weird” movement, largely, I think, due to his taste for the baroque and the grotesque he shares with Mieville (the Melding Plague that forms — or deforms — so much of the Revelation Space universe still creeps and grosses me out). With Terminal World he draws much closer to Mieville, especially to the Mieville of The Scar, most of which takes place on a floating city of hundreds of ships and boats lashed together to sail the oceans of Bas-Lag. Reynolds’ counterpart is Swarm, the airship-based breakway military arm of Earth’s last city, Spearpoint. That’s right: a flying city composed of hundreds of airships (not blimps, as we’re disdainfully reminded several times by Swarm’s residents). I defy any steampunk fan not to swoon at the thought.

Quillion’s world has been the victim of a mysterious calamity, to create which Reynolds has taken the notion of a holographic universe and run with it to strange places. The planet is now riddled with zones of differing “resolution,” which only allow certain levels of technology to work. Spearpoint is the nexus of this crisis and as travelers descend its downward spiral they proceed from “Circuit City” (which seems to enjoy our own present level of development at least) to “Neon Heights” (which seems to be in the 1940s or 1950s) down to “Steamtown” (!) and even to the point of “Horsetown” where nothing more complex and sophisticated than animal muscle seems to work. How this state of affairs has come to be is never fully explained but it has something to do with Spearpoint’s original function as something radically different from just a corkscrewing platform on which to build a city. We learn only a little of this original function as it is lost, all but ancient history, close to completely forgotten.

If I give the impression that the world steals the thunder of the story and characters, that’s largely the case, but that’s not to say that there are not some compelling individuals populating the story. Curtana, female airship captain, can swash the buckler with any maritime hero of yore; Meroka, Quillion’s guide out of Spearpoint, is tough and complex, as is Quillion himself in a different way. While he is out of his depth for most of the story, and often kind of helpless, he is sympathetic rather than annoying, and more than earns his keep before the tale is told.

I like to see Reynolds stretching beyond the space opera-or sci-fi/noir genres he’s been comfortably writing in so far, and really wondering if there’s anything he can’t do. Do recommend

I came into reading this book without knowing anything about it except that the author is a hell of a nice guy and sings like an angel and likes to wear natty hats. The hats more than anything else were a clue as to what I was getting, but only a small clue.

And Then She Was Gone reads most of the way through like the influences it wears on its sleeve — great old hard-boiled detective fiction the likes of Hammett and Chandler — with just hints that there’s something much stranger than a kidnapping/murder/20th century-style crime polot going on, until wow, bang, surprise, there’s a dash of techno-thriller thrown in, like a dash of tabasco on a nice helping of perfectly scrambled eggs.

In Clarke Lantham, Sawyer has created the perfect 21st century counterpart to Sam Spade et al: an ex-cop, clasically trained in the detective arts but technically savvy to the hilt. From GPS tracking to data mining, Clarke is a stranger to no tool that could be used to solve his cases. Far from perfect, though, he has to roll with a lot of punches taken and live with a lot of mistakes made.

The language, too, fits right in the good old San Fran crime tradition, taut and witty and occasionally extraordinarily funny (“all shorts and no scrotum” “Coincidence is a hemorrhoid on the ass of reality”). Lantham is the kind of guy you want to knock back a few good strong drinks with, but you might end up snorting some scotch up your nose while you listen to him spin his yarns.

I look forward to more of them!

A blood-sport winnin’ granny, why have there

Been few of these in literature? Thank

The genre gods: Mur Lafferty had care

Enough to fill this lack. Behold the swank

And cunning Heather, Red Granny, so sweet

At first, but a stone killer on the field

Of lunar battles! I’d have liked to see

More of her and her back story, but yield

To Mur, who may have more planned for this dame

(Let’s hope so!). As it was, this book was fun,

This Marco and the Red Granny (the name

Had had me sold since Balticon!). I’m done

With it now, but it left me wanting more.

A prequel, please? Red Granny Goes To War?

This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen anywhere. If you get a chance to see it, DO. Just do.

Imagine, if you will, what the offspring of Sandra Tsing Loh (or Amy Tan) and Chuck Pahlaniuk might be like. Imagine their daughter had a law degree and chucked it to write crime fiction, but kept the stiletto heels and Prada.

You’ve just imagined both Angela S. Choi and her debut novel’s protagonist, Fiona. Except Fiona chooses not to write crime fiction, but to abet crime itself, in a very strange way.

This is a pithy and highly entertaining read. Fi is not an adorable, likeable character, not a Hello Kitty (all cuteness, no mouth, no threat, no will of her own), but a smart, capable and sassy woman who knows what she wants — and, more importantly, what she does not. The story concerns her unorthodox but ultimately successful quest to achieve both ends in her own prickly way.

Her partner in crime, Sean, is less well-drawn and never quite comes alive, but perhaps he doesn’t need to. While Fi describes him as the love of her life, it’s obvious that she doesn’t mean this in the conventional or romantic sense: he’s her ultimate anti-fashion accessory, and on that level he’s just what the doctor ordered (and yes, he’s a doctor).

I wanted to read this as a curiosity. I love Edith Wharton. But this is her still imitating her models. She knew Italy well but every two-bit lady novelist of her day was writing this stuff. You can only barely see glimpses of the brilliance of what was to come from her pen. For me, that wasn’t reason enough to stick with Valley of Decision. I’d rather just reread House of Mirth or Sanctuary or Age of Innocence or Ethan Fromme.

I’ve finished, just right now, a book on work,

But more than that, in every respect.

It’s Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soul Craft,

One that has made me ponder how a trade

Can really differ from a job. I care

To make clear this distinction. What result

Will come of this? I hope it will result

In helping you, my readers, think of work

In new ways, and to contemplate the care

It takes to fix and build things, and respect

The shrewd and thoughtful men who chose a trade

Like fixing motors and make it a craft.

What really, though, makes of a job a craft?

The way it does engage one? The result

That something functions well? Who’d trade

That proof of effort for just busy work

And social nebulosity? Respect

Is given wrongly to those who don’t care.

What’s college for, if not to learn to care

About things quite beyond oneself? The craft

Of learning, though, is lost in this respect:

Mere training for a cubicle results

When students go to school, an eye on work

That better pays than mere ungenteel trade.

But find a man who truly knows his trade,

His engines and his wires and parts, whose care

Is given to what truly makes things work,

And you might find more wisdom in that craft

Than shown by office stooges, real result

Subsumed in process and unreal respect.

Divided souls who work but don’t respect

Or realize real things would often trade

For jobs that have some tangible result,

Says Crawford; might again begin to care

About just why they’re here, and thus to craft

Anew their souls while eyes and hands do work.

But it’s not just about work and respect:

While craftsmanship in trade is fine itself,

One taught to care is his own good result.

A clockwork universe is what I crave,

The most of all when fiction’s what I seek.

Machine oil, steam, and heroes who behave

Like gentlemen when helping out the meek.

These make me smile, so Adam Christopher

Was at a great advantage from the start.

In Devil in Chains mighty deeds occur

By men with a surfeit of brains and heart,

But nothing supernatural; they’re just

Men who use ingenuity to fight

A Lovecraft horror dwelling ‘neath the dust

On Britain’s Isle of Man. It’s a delight!

Oh how I love the romance of steampunk.

I want to fly next time. I’ve packed my trunk.