Books.

[dsrtao]

_The Anubis Gates_, Tim Powers
_The Draco Tavern_, Larry Niven
_The Devil is a Gentleman_, J.C. Hallman
_Heat_, Bill Buford
_Stardoc_ and _Beyond Varallan_, S.L. Viehl

I read Powers' _Declare_ a while ago, and decided I liked it enough to try another of his books. _The Anubis Gates_ is a study in misdirection: the book opens like a Crichton thriller, delves into Gaiman fantasy, carries on in Dickensian fashion, then ends with a set of Hitchcockian twists and an oddly telegraphed mostly-happy ending. None of it was much like _Declare_, but I'm happy with it.

Niven pulled together a collection of the short-short-stories set in the Draco Tavern, the Siberian bar that caters to aliens. None of them have much plot, nor do the stories join together to form Voltron. This is an extended run of a particular sort of scene that he's fond of dispersing through his novels. When integrated into a novel's plot, they serve as characterization; here, they just lie on the page.

_The Devil is a Gentleman_ is a non-fiction survey of American fringe religions, interspersed with a biography of William James. After the first few, I skipped the James bits. Two things stand out for me: first, most of these groups are just people with weird hobbies, not significantly different from anyone else. (Well, I hang out in weird circles anyway.) Second, the Scientologists are scary/nasty, but this was just a reconfirmation of previous assessments.

Two! Two non-fiction books in one booklog entry! Mwah-hah-ha! _Heat_ is a NYC journalist's multi-year voyage among Italian and Italian-influenced foodies. Notes to self: don't order pasta after the big dinner rush, and don't work in a kitchen. (Sorry, jpicon.)

Finally: Ms. Viehl (pbackwriter on BlogSpot) writes good stories with confusingly bad SF tropes in the background. Two examples: there's a structural material made out of sound. Almost all intelligent species can interbreed. Mnyeh. Also, the protagonist is a medical supergenius proscribed-genetech clone alien hybrid with self-confidence issues, father-figure problems, and a tendency to make friends easily while being hunted by humanity's government. Oh, and she falls in love with a sociopathic telepathic emotional cripple who is the galaxy's best linguist. I may be reading these books just to see how it ends, but I fear it won't.

Comments

[hungrytiger]

I'm a big fan of Tim Powers. If you liked _Declare_ and _Anubis Gates_, I strongly recommend _Last Call_. It's about poker players in Las Vegas, but that's like saying that _Declare_ is about Cold War spies or _Anubis Gates_ is about an english lit professor - the setting is just a launching point for Powers' usual brand of mystery. When I read Neil Gaiman's _American Gods_, one of my initial thoughts was that Powers' did that better in _Last Call_, which isn't quite true but both books do deal with mythic elements in America.

I just picked up his new book _Three Days to Never_ (about Israeli secret agents trying to change the past) and am hoping to get to it during our vacation next week.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

...delves into Gaiman fantasy...

Heh. Anubis Gates predates Gaiman's fiction career. I can see where bits of AG are similar to bits of Gaiman's work, but the causation (if any) is the other direction :-)

I second hungrytiger's recommendation of Last Call. It and AG are my two favorite books of his.

I quite liked the Draco Tavern stories, though they are admittedly slight.