Wool Omnibus

Previously self-published e-books Wool, Wool 2, Wool 3, Wool 4, and Wool 5, make up this 500+ page compilation by author Hugh Howey. It is no small undertaking to read; however, it was well worth it. After piddling slowly through the first book (originally a 40 page short story), I got a notice from the library that it was due and could not be renewed, so I read all day yesterday until 2:30 this morning to finish. In a post apocalyptic future, several thousand people are living in a cement silo that bores nearly 150 stories into the ground. Goods and information and bodies are all moved via a single spiral staircase. The various levels contain a handful of administrative offices (mayor, sheriff, deputies), a few cafeterias, clinics/nurseries, hydroponic farms, animal pens, fabrication facilities, IT, and in the lowest levels is "Mechanical" where are found the oil well, the mines, the generator, the pumps, and the people who maintain them. We open the story with a ritualized death by Cleaning. No one is allowed to say anything about the outside--wondering about it or voicing a desire to go there. The only view of the bleak and utterly desolate remains of earth (presumably) come from sensors that extend above the ground. Large screens on the top floor of the silo show this view in the cafeteria, and in the holding cell of the jail. Whenever someone is convicted of any crime, they are given wool pads, a suit to protect them from the toxic air, sent outside to clean the sensor lenses. In living memory, no one has ever returned from this task. the view of the sere brown hills, and the skeletal city remains in the distance is punctuated by the decomposing bodies of those sent out to clean. When a popular and long-standing sheriff volunteers to go "out," the Mayor and deputy sheriff seek a mechanic from the "down-deep" to replace him. Reluctant new sheriff Juliette is obsessed with finding out why Sheriff Holston voluntarily went outside to his death. Since it turns out that IT, not the popularly elected Mayor has secretly been running the whole show in the silo, they quickly determine that Juliette is a menace and must die. Before she is sentenced to clean, however, she figures out that IT has been engineering the deaths of people and through close friends in Mechanical she gets a suit that does not fail and walks out of view over the hills where she discovers another silo. This is a well-developed plot with interesting characters, and my only niggling complaint is that we are supposed to believe that it gets colder the further down you bore into the earth--probably not! Otherwise, the science seems realistic and the resolution is satisfying. Other post-apocalyptic novels I have enjoyed include The Postman (Brin), Into the Forest (Hegland), and A Gift Upon the Shore (Wren)--almost all set in the Pacific Northwest. Now there is something to ponder.

The Circle

I was intrigued by the NYT book review as well as a post on the Powell's Bookstore newsletter; here is another review from the NY Review of Books by Margaret Atwood.  This only slightly futuristic novel by Dave Eggers is--or should be--extremely unsettling. Given recent events surrounding the revelations of NSA electronic snooping, there are apparently still some powerful voices that can make themselves heard around intrusions on privacy. But I suspect that, as in this book, there are those who would say, "what's all the fuss?" Sick and tired of the dead-end job at the utility company, which was the only work she could find after college, Mae has called upon former roommate Annie--a few years older and now working for one of the hottest hi-tech companies in the world, The Circle. The Circle's founder came up with online services that simplified people's lives by consolidating all the various online activities in which they engaged and providing a single identity. No more lists of passwords to remember, now there is a single personal profile, "TruYou," which links you to shopping, financial services, health care, and more. But they are just getting started. And once Mae has drunk the kool-aid, she becomes their biggest advocate and their public face, a position she finds intoxicating--millions of viewers (for in the end she wears a camera around her neck nearly 24 x 7) who hang on her every word and product endorsement. She alienates her ex-boyfriend and her parents to the point where they cut off contact, but she rationalizes this by saying they are just not understanding the immense power and benefit of these social networking tools which make everyone's life fully knowable. Even Annie eventually opts out in her own way. There are so many ominous and somewhat obvious patterns that send up red flags, for example, the fact that politicians who refuse to become "transparent" always seem to end up being publicly disgraced by the revelation of some illegal or immoral online activity. There is a mystery man at the Circle Mae hooks up with for sex, but in spite of all the discovery tools at her command, she is unable to identify him. I was surprised to find out who he was, but perhaps you won't be. I kept reading 'til the end because I kept hoping Mae would come to her senses. Let me cut to the chase--she doesn't.

The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I

In spite of the rave reviews this series has garnered, I was not impressed. I would never peg myself as a Stephen King fan to start with, but I did like "The Green Mile" and the whole idea of a futuristic, sci-fi western intrigued me, so I gave it a shot. I read the newly revised edition of the first in a series of seven "Dark Tower" books. The present world the gunslinger, Roland Deschain, inhabits is a bleak one of deterioration, mutation, and despair. But when he was a boy, there was a civilization that sounds a bit Arthurian. He lived in a stone palace that was the center of culture. His father, also a gunslinger, was the ostensible ruler. Becoming a gunslinger bears similarity to becoming a knight--hard training under hard-handed masters. But gunslingers are esteemed in that world, just as knights were. Then the "world moved on" and the gunslinger is now on a quest to find "the man in black," who seems to be a sorcerer of some kind; for example, he can enchant a whole town into seeing the gunslinger as an evil spirit, so that he is forced to kill the entire population in self-defense. They sounded a miserable lot anyway, but YUCK. Then he finds a young boy in a deserted way station in the desert--no doubt another trap set by the man in black. And the gunslinger must betray this boy to his death in order to catch the man in black. It is all very grim, a little murky as to storyline, and, to my taste, somewhat boring. Don't think I will pursue the other 6 books in the series.

Cinder

It would be bad enough losing your shoe at the ball, but to lose your whole foot!--Now that would be seriously problematic. Marissa Meyer has written a futuristic version of Cinderella with a cyborg (human being augmented by mechanical/electrical parts) as her heroine, Linh Cinder of New Beijing. Set in a future after World War IV, the world has reassembled into 6 political units, with the Eastern Commonwealth being one of them. Cinder lives here with a nasty step-mother, two step-sisters, Pearl and Peony. Only Peony and the family droid, Iko, seem to have any affection for Cinder. Step-mother Adri blames Cinder for the death of her husband, who insisted they adopt Cinder after her life-saving surgery. But cyborgs are treated as 2nd class citizens on Earth, and in spite of Cinder's uncanny skills repairing anything mechanical or electrical--skills that provide the family's only income--Adri and Pearl are embarrassed about being associated with Cinder. Plans are underway to attend the annual palace ball when Peony contracts the plague that has been devastating the earth's population in recent years.  Cinder gets the blame for that as well, and Adri "volunteers" Cinder to be a subject for unfailingly fatal research on antidotes for the plague. But Cinder does NOT die, and a whole new set of problems now present themselves. Of course the parallel storyline is that the somewhat unorthodox Prince Kai has personally brought his royal droid to Cinder for repairs, claiming it is a matter of national security. The emperor has contracted the plague and if he dies, Kai will become Emperor. The Queen of Luna would very much like to get a foothold on earth through a marriage to Kai, but nobody on earth really wants that to happen. Then she offers a cure for the plague--the day after the Emperor dies. There is clearly a sequel(s) in the works, as Cinder warns Prince Kai of an imminent threat to his life, but forfeits her own freedom, and possibly her life, in the process.

The Paris Architect

Author Charles Belfoure is a real live architect so his perspective on German-occupied Paris during the early 1940's reflects his passion for the buildings and the structure of the city itself. Lucien, a struggling architect who sat out France's defense at the Maginot Line, which the Germans adroitly circumvented, does not consider himself to be a brave man or a fool. And only one or the other would choose to have anything to do with Jews at this point in time when the Gestapo are relentlessly hunting them down and shooting anyone who even lives in the same building as a Jew. When Manet, an aristocrat turned industrialist, comes to Lucien asking him to devise a hiding place that can't be found by the Gestapo, Lucien turns him down flat.  Manet, however, promises not only a sizable sum of money, but the opportunity to build his next big factory, which at this time in the war, would be providing armaments for the Germans. Lucien is a modernist, a fan of Gropius and the Bauhaus movement, hence much reviled in a city that reveres classic architecture. He agrees more out of a desire to get his big break and do something that will demonstrate his talent, although the money does allow him to buy scarce food on the black market. Swearing each time that it will be his last, Lucien continues to build cleverly disguised hiding places, outwitting the Gestapo, and so becoming their target. With his marriage already on the rocks, Lucien's wife leaves him, accusing him of being a collaborator--an architect who has sold his soul to the devil. His denial and revelation that he has been helping hide Jews only adds to her scorn. Even Lucien's beautiful mistress, Adele, has abandoned him in favor of a powerful member of the Gestapo who can get scarce fabrics to supply her fashion design business. Because of Lucien's activities, a Catholic priest who has been aiding Jewish children, brings a boy to him, ostensibly for a short time, but the priest is captured and disappears forever into Gestapo headquarters.  Lucien finds he likes being a surrogate father for Pierre. Bette, Adele's second in command, it turns out, is also hiding Jewish children, and when Lucien designs a hiding place in her apartment that saves their lives, she falls fully in love with him. As the noose draws tighter, Lucien's unlikely friendship with a German engineer buys him the resources to escape across the Swiss border with Bette and the 3 children. I thought the writing at times was a bit clunky, and the ending way too tidy, although goodness knows there was plenty of torture and violence prior to this. The book is most interesting for its portrayal of neighbor turning against neighbor when fear is expertly manipulated. There is a map in the front material so you can follow the action through the streets of Paris.

The Cuckoo's Calling

Robert Galbraith--apparently a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling--has written a private eye story with a somewhat curmudgeonly protagonist, Cormoran Strike. Cormoran is the illegitimate son of a famous rock star, for all the good it's done him. His mother died of a drug overdose and Cormoran isn't entirely sure it was accidental as ruled at the inquest. That might fuel his willingness to take on re-investigating the apparent suicide of mixed race beauty and super-model, Lula Landry, known as Cuckoo by one of her closest friends. Lula's brother, John Bristow (Lula was adopted into a wealthy family as a baby), hires Strike, ostensibly because he believes Lula was murdered. Strike is a veteran of the Afghan wars where he lost a leg. And now he has had a royal bust-up with on-again, off-again girlfriend, Charlotte, and is living on a camp cot in his rather dismal office. When a temporary receptionist shows up on Monday morning, Strike tries to send her away, but Robin has always secretly harbored a wish to be a PI and she won't leave, even though her fiancé is not happy about this assignment.
Strike sets out to interview anyone who knew Lula, which is often harder than it should be as people are hard to find or reluctant to talk. When one of Lula's stranger companions, a down and out young woman Lula once met in drug rehab, is found drowned in the Thames, Strike is more convinced than ever that Lula was murdered and now he has a good idea who the killer is. But convincing the police to take action before another murder occurs, especially after they have already ruled this a suicide, is an uphill battle, and Strike finally resorts to making himself the bait in a deadly game of cat and mouse. This is a sometimes slow moving book, and if you are expecting something like Harry Potter, you will surely be disappointed. But the characters are complex and competently drawn. The writing is visual and authentic and will certainly satisfy lovers of the genre who come with no preconceptions.

Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Quite unlike me to read two non-fiction books in a row, but this book by Scott Anderson received excellent reviews, including in the NYT Sunday Book Review. It is a fascinating story about four players in the Middle Eastern theatre of WWI, although mostly focused on T.E. Lawrence. The others were: the American  William Yale (yes THAT Yale family) who was manipulating events to get oil concessions for Standard Oil; Aaron Aaronsohn, a Jewish agronomist, who occasionally worked for the Turkish government, but whose driving goal was a homeland for the Jews--to which end he set up a Jewish spy ring informing the British; and Kurt Prüfer, German spymaster. Lawrence is a particularly complex character and yet seemingly the only one of the four who had any significant degree of understanding of and empathy for the native peoples of the region. The countries involved in this war, and those who made the big decisions, are shown as largely either clueless, incompetent, egomaniacal, racist, classist, self-serving or all of the above. Working for British intelligence services in Cairo, Lawrence repeatedly tried to guide war efforts to maximize on resources on the ground, and minimize losses. He was continually ignored. Gallipoli is one astounding example of total and continuing military incompetence that cost nearly half a million lives. Finally Lawrence began ignoring orders more blatantly, revealing secret information to his Arab allies about the Entente's multiple acts of deceit. He worked with the Arab approach to fighting to eventually become one of the most devastating destructive forces against the Ottoman Empire and the Central Powers in that part of the world. By many of the higher ups in the British military and government, however, Lawrence was never seen as more than an insubordinate meddler. 

I actually had to return the book or face a fine but will recheck it to finish the last few chapters I missed. Whether or not you are a history buff, this book is worth reading to increase one's understanding of how the rest of the world (Europe, England, Russia, the U.S.) has been, for the last 100 years, mucking around with the Middle East . No wonder they distrust, dislike, and even hate us; we have never acted in their interest, only for our own. I consider it a gross oversight on Anderson's part not to have had any discussion of Gertrude Bell, who was also a major player in the Middle East around this time, and had dealings with Lawrence.

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

David Quammen is a fine science writer and, in this book, has done absolutely heroic feats of research in order to discuss zoonotic diseases and the possibility of the next big outbreak or pandemic. Opportunity is the key. Many viruses and bacteria have evolved to live in their animal hosts without harm or mortal danger, but when humans push into the environments where these hosts live, they become opportunistic new hosts and the consequences are often not so benign.
Quammen provides both historical and current facts about many of the major outbreaks we have seen and heard so much about in the media (SARS, bird flu, etc). He interviews experts and often accompanies them into essentially "hot zones" where outbreaks are current or have recently occurred. For six years he traveled from Australia to China, to India, to Bangladesh, to many parts of Africa--all to talk to the people in the field trying to find out where these potential killers live and how they are passed to humans. In only one instance does this book, in my opinion, falter. He tells a possible but totally fictionalized tale about one fisherman to speculate on how the AIDS virus moved from remote African villages to more populous towns. What is most astounding in this section on HIV/AIDS is the current theory that the virus spread to pandemic levels because of well-intentioned, but unsanitary innoculation campaigns in the early to mid-1900's. Really a fascinating book and worth the read.

End Games

Anyone who watched the 3-episode BBC production of "Zen" starring Rufus Sewell will know why I felt compelled to grab this book from the shelf in a used book store. English born author Michael Dibdin wrote 11 novels starring Venetian detective Aurelio Zen and this was his last, published posthumously, as Dibdin died in 2007 in Seattle. Aurelio is that rare breed of detective who has not been corrupted by the system and seeks to find the guilty party, regardless of where it leads. His lack of political survival instinct means that, in this novel, he has been shunted off to serve as acting chief of police in the remote town of Calabria in southern Italy until the incumbent recovers from an accidental and self-imposed gunshot wound.
An American, who it turns out was actually born to a wealthy Calabrian family, is beheaded in gruesome fashion and the locals are keeping mute about what they know. Ostensibly an advance agent for a film company seeking a shooting locale, the dead man's murder was a mistake. The film company isn't really looking for good scenery but for buried treasure, and the deceased wasn't really the heir of the despised landowners. But everybody has something at stake and everyone is lying to Zen. He has to wade through distrust of the police, greed, and pure drug-fueled craziness to sort this one out.
The characters are superbly rendered, the setting is richly if unsentimentally placed at our feet, and the obstacles are all too believable. I feel inspired to revisit the BBC series and find the rest of the books to read.

Mink River

I won't pretend to be as talented as author Brian Doyle, but to give you a flavor of the book, I will alter my approach a bit. Lyrical. Tedious. Microscopic view. Unusual perspectives. Enticing. Provocative. Occasionally exhausting. Dense. Beautiful. Whimsical. Philosophical. Magical. Heartbreaking. Satisfying. Rich. Consume in small doses. Braided.
Characters primarily reflect either First Nations heritage (No Horses, Worried Man, Cedar, Maple Head) or Irish (Owen, Declan, Grace, Red Hugh). A coastal town in the Pacific Northwest where fishing and logging are in rapid decline. Every being has a story, including Moses the crow, whose caretaker, a nun, dies early on. Every being tells their own story, including the river. People are compassionate, evil, wise, a little mad, foolish--but ultimately engaging each and every one. The Department of Public Works is run by Cedar and Worried Man who have taken the department's role to new heights--now being concerned with the well-being of all people and places in the town. There are simply too many stories that weave in and out to try and summarize. So read it for yourself.