The Annihilation Score: Not Quite the Crescendo

I’ve intimated in past posts that I’m skeptical of long-running series. I’ve borne with a couple of them – Honor Harrington, the Dresden Files, and enjoyed both. But stringing them out eventually reduces them to echoes.

And I’m a little worried that another favourite series might be heading the same way. But I’ve not given it up, or I’d not still be here.

I was pleased to welcome back Charles Stross’ Laundry Files: the exploits of the British secret department in charge of preventing incursions by supernatural alien intelligences and the humans enthralled to them.

After the last two books, I was getting a little annoyed about how the bigger context of the impending cosmic alignment disaster – known in-story as CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN – kept getting stalled in the interest of telling smaller-scale stories that seemed to be sideshows both for characters and for the main mythology events.

While a certain amount of this is true for the new book, the Annihilation Score, it manages to have a lot of interesting stuff going on all the same. Not least because, quite unexpectedly, the point-of-view character is no longer Bob, the geeky computer sorcerer. It’s his wife.

Dominique O’Brien – Mo to most people – a philosopher, violinist and combat epistemologist has been, since the second Laundry book, the custodian of a sinister violin. Molded from human bone and empowered by the agonies of the victims sacrificed to build it, it is nevertheless a powerful weapon for the Laundry to drive back the creeping horrors from beyond. However, the cost to her sanity and the changes wrought on Bob by the events of previous books have, combined with the incredible stress and trauma of their duties, severely damaged their marriage.

At the same time as she copes with this, Mo is thrust into a new challenge. The effects of the sea change in the fabric of reality are becoming impossible to conceal from the general public. In particular, a lot of people are showing signs of unusual powers – superpowers, in fact. And keeping the lid on it is out of the question as a result. But, rather than operate openly, the Board of the Laundry puts Mo in charge of a front organization in charge of recruiting superheroes to aid the police, or to deal with the ones who won’t. Thrown together with some persons who have had entanglements with her husband, and a dashing police chief, Mo’s greater enemies, more than any wannabe supervillain, are her own trauma and psychological damage, the violin tempting her further into darkness, and a dastardly conspiracy within the British…

Oh, no, not again.

See, the perennial problem with the Laundry Files lately is that they keep reverting to the ‘enemy in our own ranks’ plot. Four of the books and two of the novellas have already done this in one form or another. It’s getting to the point where it seems like Britain is in more danger from itself than from Nyarlathotep.

At the same time as it keeps repeating itself, the novels are also wandering from what made them so effective. Evoking the Lovecraftian mythos, speaking of alien intellects and the ghosts of civilizations millions of years old, lurking at the edges of reality, made the books seriously scary. But the buildup of that mythos – a ‘hierarchy of horrors’ to use a phrase from the Fuller Memorandum – sort of plateaued out during the Apocalypse Codex. Ever since then it seems like the threat remains small groups of supernaturally-enhanced people. People just aren’t scary the way cosmic alien deities are scary, simple as that.

If it weren’t for that, it wouldn’t matter so much that the books also aren’t as funny as they used to be. Stross writes very witty dialogue, but seen through Bob’s or Mo’s deteriorating mental health, the collision of supernatural weirdness and workaday procedure and form-filling just isn’t very funny anymore either.

Having said all that, I could scarcely put this book down. The Cosmic Horror element is preserved somewhat by the violin – Lecter, as Mo calls it – getting inside her head like a combination of Cthulhu and the One Ring. The problem is that the main mystery gets put on hold for a long time while Mo deals with personal trauma and on-the-job stress, so the ambience of chill creepiness has to be built up very quickly in the run-up to the climax.

That’s not to say that Mo’s personal trials aren’t good reading: her PTSD, flashbacks, nightmares and workaholism are very persuasive and sympathetic. At the same time, her strength and professionalism in the midst of it makes her an admirable character. Her anger and resentment at the way the Laundry runs people ragged and the way she and other professional women are treated is intense and moving – a bit more feminist propaganda to add to the heap, one hopes. There’s a certain amount of humour surrounding public relations, superhero tropes and office politics, though not an awful lot.

It’s kind of interesting the way that Mo is put in charge of a primarily female team – there’s even a mention of the Bechdel Test in dialogue – in a way that suggests a theme about the tribulations of professional women. Mo’s tribulations aren’t over yet, although there’s a promise of her work expanding in scope in stories to come. Hope is also lent for hers and Bob’s relationship as she starts reaching a level on par with what he reached. Too soon to know for sure though.

I quite enjoyed the Annihilation Score – it made good use of groundwork laid in previous books, gave us something new and a fresh perspective by putting Mo front and centre. That said, I feel like the personal/political drama and the Cosmic Horror story keep jockeying for space against each other, so that it isn’t clear which is the A or B plot. Still, nothing deal-breaking has happened. And as I’ve said in the past, the Laundry Files tend to demand a few re-reads before you can make sense of them, so my first impression may improve.

So, like Mo, I’ll keep calm and carry on.

 

Mogworld and Jam: Yahtzee Double Feature

To explain that rather incoherent title: I started the Library of Alexander nearly a year ago after several times being told I was good at recommending books. I always like to tell people, as articulately as possible, the merits of books I have been reading, films I have been watching.

This little double feature is in recognition of the novels written by the individual by whose example I owe this project of mine: therefore, Mogworld and Jam, by Yahtzee Croshaw.

Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw is the authour of Escapist Magazine’s online video series, Zero Punctuation, where he reviews video games in a rapid-fire, vitriolic and breathtakingly vulgar fashion. If you’re a gamer or just appreciate clever and uproariously funny humour, do go watch a few, but best not to do it where your boss or your children will hear you!

More recently, Yahtzee has produced novels, deriving inspiration from his area of expertise – video games – and from the humorous style of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, authours whose work he is well-aquainted with.

First, Mogworld, the story of a young student of the magical arts named Jim. Killed during a war between his and a neighboring kingdom, he is unexpectedly resurrected, along with his crypt-mates, by a sorcerer and forced to endure a life, undying, as one of his workaday minions.

When a mysterious force descends on the castle and erases the sorcerer and his castle entirely, Jim and a few survivors flee, Jim trying to reconcile his survival instinct with his craving for demise, and together they’re caught up in a series of bizarre entanglements with blockheaded adventurers, mad cultists and bizarre entities that ends with the discovery that, in fact, the world in which they live is being mangled by overworked programmers trying to get the kinks out of their new Massive Online Game.

Mogworld is a study in Yahtzee’s brand of humour. Puns, snark and satire abound, and the sheer absurdity of the situation, from the civil-service way the zombies run the castle to the simple fact of the fantasy-undead-sorcerer protagonist named Jim, is all a massive send-up of fantasy in general and online multiplayer games like World of Warcraft and Age of Conan in particular.

Jim and his much-resented companions wandering aimlessly into peril is highly amusing, and forms the links in a chain of themes about the concept of heroes as opposed to protagonists that comes up periodically, and the comedy of some of the basic nature of multiplayer games taken to its logical conclusion.

While a great showcase of Yahtzee’s sense of humour and grasp of gaming, the story holding it together is a bit muddled. Perhaps this stems from the fact that the big twist, that the whole story occurs in an MMO, is, as my revelation implies, declared up-front on the back cover. This makes the story lacking in any verve and turns it into essentially an elaborate joke book. The characters are sympathetic and have a charming arc, but it isn’t built as solidly as it might be as the plot seems to consist of trudging around a great deal. So it’s funny and clever but not as structured as might be.

Jam, coming out a year and a bit later, is best described by Yahtzee himself: “It’s about an apocalypse. With Jam in it!” It derives specifically from a reference Yahtzee made in a review of one of the many zombie apocalypse games he was called on to review:

“Honestly, at this point you people just won’t be able to cope if civilization ends any other way, will you? If the @#%*ing Daleks invade or the entire world gets covered in carnivorous jam, you’ll have to make papier-mache zombie facsimiles just to get through the day.”

He took this one of his many bizarre throwaway remarks and ran with it. Travis, an unemployed nerd and his roomate and neighbours wake up to find Brisbane covered in a layer of three-foot-deep strawberry jam, which devours any organic matter it comes in contact with. Thrown together with a pair of suspicious American military officers, they navigate the silent city and the sea of spread, tangle with the various deranged survivor cults that arise, and try and discover the origin of the jam and the fate of civilization.

Jam flat out fixes most of the shortcomings of Mogworld. The story has a clear direction, and the characters are more varied and have stronger arcs that reconcile humour with satirical realism. The humour is more precisely applied, whereas Mogworld seemed determine to cram a joke into every sentence, so I found myself laughing more often. The scenery is also more vivid, possibly because Yahtzee lives in Brisbane and doesn’t need to make it up, save only the jam.

The time with the survivor cults is funny but the plot gets bogged down in places, just making jokes for their own sake. They represent doldrums of the narrative which ultimately serve a purpose but often feel like asides.

In general, Mogworld and Jam both feel like great ideas with too little structure. Remove the extraneous stuff and both would end up being dreadfully short. Given Yahtzee’s manifestly busy life as gamer, reviewer and columnist, one suspects that he had limited time to dedicate to editing. With more time invested, Yahtzee could be the match of Douglas Adams or Neil Gaiman.

Given my high regard for his work, it seems odd to find myself somewhat let down, but his own example is to always point out the flaws, the better to see them someday improved upon.

Both are fun, but unless you are a gamer, only Jam is likely to commend itself. It is, in any case, the better-written and conceived of the two, as well as being extremely funny, but unlike some of the Zero Punctuation videos, neither is burdened down with sexual innuendo or swearing. Definitely light, but definitely fun.

 

Discworld: An Introduction to Sir Terry Pratchett’s Masterwork

Great A’Tuin carries the Discworld

Probably the best-known fantasy setting is Middle-Earth. It’s formed the basis for nearly every fantasy world since, from Narnia to Alagaesia.

But there is another world, and a mirror of worlds, as it is described.

The Discworld is the brainchild of Sir Terry Pratchett. It is, per the name, a world with continents and oceans and cities, but it lies on a Disc. And the Disc moves through the universe, followed by its own circling sun and moon, on the backs of four elephants. The elephants in turn ride on the back of a vast star turtle, Great A’Tuin.

Now, when this was first explained to me, I regarded it with skepticism. It sounded like a serious stretch of willing suspension of disbelief in the pursuit of the silliest common denominator.

This is a perfect illustration of the principle ‘never judge a book by its cover.’ The Discworld series is one of the funniest, wisest and enjoyable series I’ve ever read. And happily, there’s plenty of it. As of 2012, the books number 39. Besides which, the Disc exists as a place for Pratchett to tell his brand of story, but its actual nature hardly ever enters into the story, so disbelief is hardly an issue at all. Discworld is called a ‘mirror of worlds’ because each book parks itself in a particular genre, be it High Fantasy, Fairy Tales or even Detective Story, and then proceeds to hold up a mirror to all the conventions and tropes of those stories to see which ones hold up and which ones scream and run away.

Fantasy is no stranger to long-running arcs, though it’s been said that few of them maintain their quality. I’ve never had the energy to embark on such multivolume epics as Wheel of Time or Dark Tower. Discworld novels, though more numerous, are a different animal though. Rather than be a single, epic arc following the same set of characters, Discworld has multiple arcs, multiple groups of characters in multiple parts of the world – although many have the adventure city setting of Ankh-Morpork and its quirky and subtle ruler, Lord Vetinari, in common

Find here a rundown of the various arcs of the Discworld.

Rincewind the ‘Wizzard:’ Failed wizard Rincewind is an archetypal Hero of epic – up to a point. He is forever being confronted with quests that take him from edge to edge of the Disc and into the greatest of perils, no matter how hard he tries to run in the other direction. Rincewind was introduced in the first novel, the Colour of Magic, and has subsequently appeared in the Light Fantastic, Interesting Times and the Last Continent, plus the occasional cameo. His books are usually sendups of the Hero’s Journey and other aspects of High Fantasy. He also serves as a kind of Arthur Dent figure, and what he learns the audience learns about the Discworld. Having said all that, I find him the least interesting character in the stories I’ve read that feature him, and while his cowardly nature is funny, it makes him sufficiently unlikeable to put me off his stories.

The Lancre Witches: Beginning with Equal Rites, and continuing through Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Maskerade and Carpe Jugulum, the Kingdom of Lancre is a land populated by all the elements of classic fairy tales. This being Sir Terry, when somebody’s going gooey-eyed at the dreary notion of ‘happily ever after,’ there’s somebody on station to smack them around the head. Her name is Esme ‘Granny’ Weatherwax, a good witch with a wicked wit. Witches are respected in Lancre as healers and midwives, and Granny is among the best. She’s also cold, abrasive, and a master of manipulation (or, as she calls it, ‘headology’). Along with her lifelong friend and headache, the jovial, bawdy Gytha ‘Nanny’ Ogg, their adventures deal with the balance between the value of a good story and real life. While I find the plot can be hard to follow in the Witches stories – they tend to be the most densely written Discworld novels – the wit and wisdom and the repartee of Granny and Nanny make it worthwhile. They’re the definition of healthy cynicism, and you’ll come away with at least one good comeback to keep in reserve the next time you’re having an argument.

Death and Susan:  The character of Death has been with Discworld from the word go. He turns up at least once in nearly all the books, usually to collect a character who didn’t make it through the story. There has also been an arc of novels that focus on him, including Mort, Reaper Man, Soul Music, Hogfather, and Thief of Time. Starting with Soul Music Death stars alongside Susan, his estranged granddaughter-by-adoption, who is committed to living a normal life despite the very nature of her family and the Disc. Though Death has existed alongside life from the very beginning, humanity is something a puzzle to him, which he tries to decipher while he and Susan are defending its very existence from the callous and bureaucratic Auditors of Reality, and various other sinister powers. Death, despite his job, is weirdly compassionate, quite friendly and fundamentally a tragic figure. His unique insight into how life works and his coldly rational mind make him the source of some of Sir Terry’s most profound pearls of wisdom, and Hogfather is probably my favourite Discworld novel. Anyone who’s ever ground their teeth in frustration at the unfairness in life and society will get satisfaction out of the teachings of Pratchett’s Death.

The City Watch: My favourite Discworld arc, consisting of Guards! Guards! Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, the Fifth Elephant, Night Watch, Jingo, Thud! And, most recently, Snuff. Commander Sam Vimes and his ragtag corps of officers are the Watch. They try to keep the peace in the organized mayhem that is the bustling city of Ankh-Morpork. While Granny Weatherwax represents cynicism that counters foolishness, Vimes stands for idealism in the face of the worst and most frustrating sides of humanity. As you might imagine, the Watch novels tend to involve crimes, and include elements of the detective story along with everything else. Vimes’ character arc has been the most noticeable of all Discworld protagonists. That and the ensemble cast means this is arc is best appreciated read in sequence, whereas you can get away without doing so with a lot of them. Vimes and the Watch also frequently cameo in other books set in Ankh-Morpork.

Moist von Lipwig: Recently, Sir Terry found he was running out of stories to tell in Ankh-Morpork because any conflict would naturally bring the Watch in, whereupon they’d take over the tale. He set out to produce a character who would actively avoid the Watch in the pursuit of his goal, and thus was born Moist von Lipwig, so far featured in Going Postal and Making Money, with a third book in the pipeline. Moist is a con artist, swindler and forger, facing execution. Instead, he is conscripted by Lord Vetinari to resurrect the city Post Office, in competition with the semaphore company that is currently bleeding the city’s economy for all it’s worth. In Making Money Vetinari transfers him to running the Ankh-Morpork Royal Bank, deteriorating under the weight of class snobbery and irresponsible management. Moist is not what someone would expect from a hero, but his flair, hilarious and devious internal monologue, and heartwarming character arc make him a great addition to the Discworld canon, and the kind of enemies he opposes in the stories gives them a lot of contemporary resonance.

Tiffany Aching: The newest addition to Discworld, Tiffany Aching inhabits a line of young adult novels, so far consisting of the Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith and I Shall Wear Midnight. Personally, apart from the protagonist being a kid, I can’t see much difference, although the dirty-joke index is noticeably reduced. Meet Tiffany Aching, a young farm girl with the land of her home in her very bones, an observational turn of mind, and a great aptitude for making butter. She discovers, to her satisfaction, that she has the potential to be a witch, and almost right away she finds that potential being tested when her baby brother is kidnapped by the fairy queen. But luckily she has the support of the Nac Mac Feegles, the little, blue, kilt-wearing and enthusiastically violent ‘Pictsies’ who live in the barrow-mounds around Tiffany’s home. I’ve only read the first book so far, but it’s classic Pratchett, both funny and wise, and functions as a junior version of the Granny Weatherwax style of stories – Granny even cameos in Wee Free Men. Besides that, the setting is strongly based on the downs of Wiltshire, where Sir Terry lives, and his deep-abiding love for the landscape is something he and I share in common. I look forward to reading Tiffany’s further exploits.

Standalones: Several Discworld books don’t connect specifically to any of the above character groups, dealing with other microcosms of Discworld. They include, among others, Monstrous Regiment, a study in the comedy and the drama of girls dressing up as boys to go to war, Pyramids, where Teppic has to leave school in Ankh-Morpork to assume his role as king of Djelibeybi, and bring a modern, Ankh-Morpork way of thinking to his dangerously traditional homeland, and the Truth, where the self-exiled nobleman’s son William de Worde meets the operators of the first printing press ever set up in the city of Ankh-Morpork. Practically by accident he founds the Ankh-Morpork Times, its first newspaper. A conspiracy to overthrow the tyrant Lord Vetinari is, as usual, underway, and William gets caught up in the plot as he investigates its more obvious manifestations for his newspaper.

As Douglas Adams got humour out of the tropes of science fiction, so Sir Terry gets it from the tropes of fantasy, and they both have a similarly sardonic view of humanity and skill at wordplay. That said, Sir Terry’s outlook is much brighter and even his most grim books leave me with an uplifted feeling. Sir Terry’s humanist spirit gives you a warm feeling inside. I suppose that the political statements that come through in the Moist novels and some of the Watch books may be off-putting for some, it just so happens that Sir Terry’s views and mine line up reasonably well. The plot of his earlier books particularly can get a little hard to follow in places, especially in the Witches and Rincewind novels. There’s a certain density to the writing that causes me to realize I haven’t taken in a single thing for the past few pages. Most of the other arcs don’t have this problem so badly, and it clears up pretty well after the first one or two books in an arc, once Sir Terry hits his stride.

Discworld is humour, first and foremost, but is a well-rounded experience for a reader and the richness and extent of the setting makes it very immersive. Sir Terry’s range of knowledge (which is immense) lends the stories a lot of substance, and the fact that one man has managed to sustain a series this complex for this long with, arguably, quality going nowhere but up, makes it worth checking out.