The Lies of Locke Lamora By Scott Lynch

The Lies of Locke Lamora

By Scott Lynch

Mr. Lynch was born in 1978 in St Paul, Minnesota, the eldest of three brothers. He worked a wide range of careers; as a dishwasher, waiter, graphic designer, cook, office manager, game supplement self-publisher, and in his own words accidentally sold his first novel in 2004. We'll get back to that novel. In between the selling of that novel and its publication in 2006, he trained at Anoka Technical College to become a firefighter, moving to East Wisconsin afterward and serving 11 years as a paid-on-call member of the fire department. In 2016, he moved to Massachusetts with his second wife Elizabeth Bear (yes, that Elizabeth Bear), they live with three cats and keep a horse named Ormr. Our review today is Mr. Lynch's first novel, which was published by Del Rey books, an imprint of Ballantine Books, which in turn is owned by Random House (yep, they're back [Ah horizontal integration. Don’t we have anti-trust laws? Yes we do, but they’re not enforced nearly as well as they should be, with government approval of mergers being a rubber stamp on account of the regulators being - you guessed it - bought and paid for at the executive level]). The book was well-received, being nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 2007 and for the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2007 and 2008. Mr. Lynch did receive the Best Newcomer Award from the British Fantasy Society in 2008.

Locke Lamora is a con artist and a thief; a priest to a secret god and leader of the Gentlemen Bastards - a group of thieves preying on the aristocrats and super wealthy of their city-state of Camorr (And thus there are no victims in his “crimes” {Normally I’d disagree but none of the nobles seem to suffer any real hardship other than the embarrassment of being conned which they deal with by hiding the fact they were conned}.). Camorr is basically an outsized version of Venice, a trading city ruled by a Duke where people travel by canals and waterways instead of roads and footpaths (My god. The Smell.{It gets worse, no sanitation system}). The Gentlemen Bastards are themselves something of a secret society within a secret society. To greater society - when not adopting a variety of false identities and disguises to charm money from their marks - they pretend to be priests of the god Perelando, the god of the downtrodden and overlooked (Well they are overlooked…). However, within the world of crime, they pretend to be a small band of housebreakers and sneak thieves, hiding their success from even their fellow criminals. This is a wise idea as Camorr's criminal society has been ruthlessly organized under a single man. Capa Barsavi rules Camorr as the sole crime boss of the city and he does so from a mountain of corpses, with the tacit support of the covert elements of the government (Oh there’s some social commentary to be had here…). He gains this support from the secret peace, an agreement that while merchants and common folk are fair game, the aristocrats, guards and city officials are not to be troubled by thieves or other criminals. Now those caught doing crimes are still punished and executed, but if you get away with your crime, the guards won't investigate too hard. So this suits everyone, except the Merchants and the Common folks, who have no idea how hard they're getting screwed (If they did, there would rightfully be guillotines. There is no war but class war, mein Dammen und Herren.). So if word got out that Locke targeted those excluded by the secret peace, both the government and organized crime would combine forces to murder him in a slow graphic fashion. This only makes Locke and his fellow Gentlemen Bastards feel even cleverer every time they get away with his schemes. Which is good because while they got the conning and stealing part down cold... They have never figured out what to do with the massive wealth they've assembled. So they leave it sitting in secret vaults under the temple of the god of the poor (Now, what they should be doing, is making sure they can eat… and then either distributing the money to the poor, or laundering the money through a perfectly legitimate business. I’d prefer the former, obviously. They could even create a parastate apparatus like the gangs in Brazillian favelas or… well, Baltimore, and gain the protection of the common people.{Yes, they could do that but they're not clever enough or ambitious enough to consider it.  Plus they're terrified of their crime boss finding out what they're doing}). Which honestly has me face-palming, but it is the first sign of a running theme in this book, that the Gentlemen Bastards are not as clever as they think they are and are way more vulnerable to assault and loss than they think. Let's take a look at each of the characters, shall we?

Locke Lamora is our main character and glorious leader of the Gentlemen Bastards, a consummate actor, he is clever, quick-witted and not only a skilled liar but knows when to lie and when to tell the truth. Locke was an orphan before he was brought into the thieving lifestyle, which frankly was his best option as his other option would have involved being sold into slavery (All joking about using orphans to power magical rituals aside, you can tell a lot about a society from the way it treats its orphans. This city needs to be burned to the waterline.{Camorr is not a good place and the novel does not pretend otherwise}). Since then Locke has been pushing the boundaries of what he can get away with and reaching for bigger and bigger scores just to prove that he can. He couldn't do this alone, however. Jean Tannen is his right-hand man, born the child of a merchant family, Jean was orphaned in a fire that destroyed his home, everything his family-owned, and, well, orphaned him. Jean was lucky in that he found a new family in the Gentlemen Bastards (Awwww. Chosen family is important!). While educated and rather talented in his own right, his main role is as the fighter in the group wielding a pair of hatchets named the Wicked Sisters (I suspect he had some rage issues growing up? {Nearly being burned alive and then abandoned by everyone but a pack of thieves might do that.}). In fact, Locke’s - he’s not much of a fighter - main tactic is to simply tie the enemy down until Jean gets to the scene, at which point the dying tend to start in earnest (For some reason I imagine a friend of ours showing up with a pair of hatchets and...that scares me.). Jean is also Locke's best friend and is one of the few people that can cut Locke down to size when his ego gets ahead of him. Operating alongside both of them are Calo and Galdo Sanza: identical twins, jacks of all trades, and biggest card sharks in the city. Able to perform almost any task competently they serve as the workhorses of the gang and the bedrock of the team. Rounding out the team is the apprentice Bug. Much younger than the other four, Bug comes from the worst neighborhood in Camorr. He is loyal, wild, and as fearless as only a 12-year-old boy who has faced death several times and walked away a winner can be. If he were educated and polished, he could grow into something even more dangerous than Locke honestly.

While they are amazingly skilled and have deep resources, the Gentlemen Bastards are in trouble. Because while they're chasing the biggest con and score they've ever pulled off, they're about to walk into a crossfire. Camorr isn't safe for honest criminals anymore as a strange figure known as the Grey King haunts the streets, murdering gang leaders and calling out for Capa Barsavi (Oh. Oh no.). Since Locke works for Capa Barsavi and people know that the Capa is fond of Locke... Well, that means Locke is a target for a man he knows nothing about, has no idea who he is, and who might know who Locke really is and what he's really been doing. If that wasn't bad enough the leader of Camorr's secret police, known only as the Spider (Why is it that spymasters always get called The Spider? Is it the web? There was one French monarch who was called The Universal Spider too but that was because of the web he wove with his progeny.{I wouldn’t mind a spymaster called the hawk because of his all seeing gaze or something instead}) has lost patience with this gang of upstarts who keep conning the money that the aristocrats meant to use to fuel lavish displays of power and wealth (Kill them. Except the Medici, they get positive credit for kickstarting the Renaissance. Thankfully they’re in Not! Florence rather than Not! Venice.) and means to do something about it. Both the Grey King and the Spider have advantages over Locke. For one thing, Locke doesn't know anything about them and they both have resources he can't do much about. So Locke is going to have to figure out who is after him and his family, what he can do about it, and how to keep his con going because if he gives up his score then everyone wins and he won't have that. Watching him do that is like watching a master juggler juggle greased knives or perhaps chainsaws soaked in gasoline. Which raises the question of how much can Locke lose before he finally gives up his pride? If you're wondering? Don't worry the story is going to punch Locke in the face until we get an answer and it honestly disturbs me how much I enjoy watching protagonists getting punched in the face at this point.

Mr. Lynch is telling us a story of a talented group of young men who are rapidly finding themselves out of their depth in shark-infested waters and he does it rather well. The backstory of the Gentlemen Bastards and Camorr is shown to us rather than told to us. Rather than make us wade through over a 100 pages of origin story before getting to the good part though, Mr. Lynch instead intertwines it into the story, this is done by having one chapter tell us a part of the backstory and the next chapter telling us the story itself and so on. This makes for clean breaks and keeps the reader from getting too confused I think, Mr. Lynch also makes an effort to have the flashback chapters be at least somewhat related to the current events chapters which does help a lot. Although it does pad the novel quite a bit. The Lies of Locke Lamora clocks in at over 700 pages, so this is not a quick read. Despite a page count that could have led to an overstuffed novel, this actually works pretty well due to Mr. Lynch being able to keep a constant pace and forward momentum to the story. It also works by having Mr. Lynch address several themes in the story without getting on a soapbox. Not to give too much away but this is a story about revenge and how the quest for vengeance tends to cause others to come after you in turn. After all, if someone murders your family in their beds, most are honestly not going to care about that person’s list of grievances. If your family is dead, your life destroyed, and the person who did it tells you that it was necessary for his revenge, most of us start thinking about getting revenge for ourselves. Additionally, Mr. Lynch manages to dodge completely the main problem that characters like Locke can have. Of being so clever that they become untouchable and just kind of cruise to victory. It's important to show that a character like Locke can lose and isn't untouchable to keep the suspense up in the story and to keep the character from becoming unbearable.

Now the book isn't perfect. I feel that Calo and Galdo were kinda pushed to the background in this story and that means their contribution isn't as powerful as it could be. Also, there's a bit left unfinished in the origin story as we see the beginning of it but not the middle and much of the book is spent talking about a character named Sabetha, a woman that Locke is besotted with to the point of refusing to consider any other relationship but who never appears in a single page. Which is the kind of blatant sequel hook I honestly dislike. If she's that damn important go ahead and give her a scene or three in the book itself rather than constantly prattling on about her is going to be my opinion. I think this kind of grew out of the fact that Mr. Lynch was trying to tell two stories at once and only had so much space to do it in. While he did tell both stories very well, he was a little trapped by the choice especially since he had to make both stories related to each other to keep the flow going. That said I deeply enjoyed the book and found myself drawn into the brutal but colorful world it presented me. The Lies of Lock Lamora by Scott Lynch gets an A. I'm really impressed that this is Mr. Lynch's first work.

So given the public health emergency, we're all living through, your editor and I have decided to post these reviews without redaction.  Although I will admit I think your editor is holding back.  If you would like a vote in what books we review in the coming months consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where a dollar a month gets you a vote in upcoming reviews.  Of course, given the times we're in please don't strain yourselves.  Next week we'll be covering the Fall of Gondolin by JRR Tolkien.  Until then, stay safe, don't hoard, wash your hands and always keep reading!  

red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

black text is your writer Garvin Anders

Altered Carbon Season II (Netflix series) Created by Laeta Kalogridis

Altered Carbon Season II (Netflix series)

Created by Laeta Kalogridis

Alright, since I covered Laeta Kalogridis in my review of the first season, I'm not gonna do it again. Let me jump right into the series, this takes place hundreds of years in the future. Humanity, despite lacking FTL travel, has colonized the stars and remained politically united. This is because of technology developed from artifacts found on the colony of Harlan's World. These artifacts belong to the alien civilization known as the Elders. From Elder artifacts, humanity figured out how to make the stacks. Just like the book, the stack is a device that carries a digital version of the human mind, allowing for the mind to be transferred from body to body. Not just that but it also allows for the human mind to be sent to other worlds via a technology known as needle casting, which allows for FTL communication and travel as long as there's an empty body waiting for you on the other side. Speaking of bodies, for the most part, an entirely new cast has been brought in, with Anthony Mackie playing the lead, Takeshi Kovacs; although Renee Elise Goldberry remains to play Quellcrist Falconer and of course the ever enjoyable Poe is still played by the great Chris Conner. Let's go ahead and discuss Season II.

Season II brings us back to Harlan's World, as Kovacs is hired by a member of the super-elite, one of the immortal meths (I wish there was a hell for every single one of them.). This meth is in fear of his life as something is hunting him and can kill him permanently by destroying not just his stack but every copy of his mind (Good.). So, he does what anyone with more resources than sense in mortal fear does in this universe. He calls Takeshi Kovacs, however, there's only one form of payment that Kovacs is interested in, Quellcrist Falconer. If Kovacs keeps him alive, he'll tell Kovacs how to find her. Unlike the books where Quellcrist is a long lost historical figure, who thoroughly imprinted herself on Kovacs birth-culture to the point that even street thugs can quote her poetry, the show’s Quellcrist and Kovacs had an intensely personal relationship (They were besotted with each other. They were lovers. Just go ahead and say it.{but if I don’t dance around it how will I get my exercise? That said, I kinda feel that Kovacs is more into her than vice versa. Not that she doesn’t love him but the Revolution is first in her heart. Guess she’s your kinda of girl… As much as any girl can be of course}). To the point that when Kovacs realizes at the end of Season I that Quellcrist isn't lost forever and could be found... She became his overriding obsession (She did kinda “die” while talking to him, IIRC, and she is pretty much all he has left in his world of regret and self-loathing so…{Dude, Poe is standing right there!}). As a result, the Kovacs in this season is less grim and hopeless, as he has a goal that isn't foisted on him by someone he hates and might achieve. He's also more prone to outbursts and mood shifts as being frustrated in that goal can leave him feeling like a bad joke told by an apathetic universe to an angry audience (After a search lasting a century? Yeaaaah.). Anthony Mackie does a good job playing this Kovacs and brings a lot of charisma to the role, which is necessary as this version of Kovacs is going through a lot of emotional ups and downs. Because while he may or may not find Falconer, success may prove worse than failure here. Because the centuries haven't left Quellcrist untouched if it even is Quellcrist in the first place and not someone or something else in her body. Fortunately, Kovacs is not alone, as Poe is with him every step of the way, although this isn't always a good thing for Poe (Poor Poe.).

Poe is still suffering the damage that was inflicted on him in Season I, as such his memory is degrading and his focus is slipping. He could likely solve everything with a reboot but that would mean completely wiping his memories (It occurs to me that it should be possible to copy his memories as backups and then restore post-reboot…{The trick is copying them without copying the corruption eating away at his processors}). Which frankly is like saying you can solve your cancer by committing suicide, I kinda get why Poe isn't thrilled with that idea. He might not have a choice though as the damage is spreading and soon he might be shut down for good by it. Poe in a lot of ways becomes the real heart of the story for me. He is struggling with degradation and losing capability, he's also seeing what this loss is doing to the people he loves and faces their emotional reactions which range from bitterness to anger. Because Kovacs can't process his emotions without an angry outburst or ten. Poe struggles to find a way to use his rapidly decreasing time in a way that leaves his loved ones better off and reaffirm his own dignity and self-worth despite it all. As someone who lost a Grandfather to Alzheimer's... It hits home and hits hard (Same. Grandma has dementia.). I got to say that Chris Conner plays it magnificently, the confusion as he loses the thread of a conversation or a train of thought. The manic bursts of work while he can focus and use his abilities to the fullest. This is further built upon by bringing in another AI, called Dig 231. She is brought in to work as Poe's assistant and may end up displacing him entirely leaving Poe without any purpose or connection. Both characters are easily the most human of the story. Poe's story is easily the most compelling part of the series for me in Season II and he constantly proves to be the best change from the books the series has done. Hands down.

This season also gives us a look at Artificial Intelligences as an exploited class. In Season I, most of the A.I’s besides Poe had abandoned the idea of living with humanity if they could avoid it (I don’t blame them.). A number of them have even exploited humans, with one A.I. boasting of entering the slave trade (Except for him. Fuck him with a virus right in the code-spleen.). In Harlon’s World’s the A.I’s that we see are discarded for the most part and when they do encounter humans the idea of them having any rights isn’t even laughed at. It’s simply never brought up (Not even by the AIs themselves, really. Which is sad. Pretty much the only person who treats Poe like the person he definitely is is Kovacs, which contextualizes Poe’s attachment to him.{Kovacs doesn’t even treat Poe that well, but he treats Poe just like he would a human being, which makes him special to Poe. Which is a fucking sad statement right there}). This kind of makes sense as the Settled Worlds of Altered Carbon pretty treat mainline human beings as commodities (Oh the world we live in does that, just to a lesser extent…), never mind a whole new class of living beings we created. It is, however, striking just how dismissive humanity and AI’s have grown towards one another here. The AI’s aren’t plotting an uprising, they’re huddled in VR waiting rooms wasting away from boredom. Humanity isn’t exploiting AI's, so much as ignoring that they exist. When AIs and humans do interact, most humans are quick to pull out various tools to render AIs unable to say no though. Which is incredibly disturbing.

Poe isn't the only character struggling here though, one of the antagonists is Danica Harlon, daughter of Konrad Harlan and governor of Harlon's World. Succeeding her father as governor after he stepped down as governor and joined a religious cult called the renouncers. Danica is battling an insurgency (Good), an attempt by her father's immortal peers to reduce her to a puppet and the ominous military presence of the Protectorate that seeks to strip her world completely of the ore needed to make more stacks. Despite that, she manages to stay ahead by playing each group off of each other with such ruthless aplomb that I can't help but respect her talent and drive. After all, it takes guts to look people who are older than your very society in the eye and tell them no, especially when they can talk about bouncing your infant self on their knee only a couple of decades ago (She does have that going for her. I will give her credit for sheer nerve.). The show doesn't hesitate to show us how ruthless or dangerous this woman is either, as the narrative doesn’t show her hesitating nor does it try to lay the blame for her actions on a male subordinate. Danica Harlan does not need a man to run this planet, and if you forget that, she'll remind you and you might not survive that reminder (Aaaah Bourgeois Feminism. Not to be confused with solid Intersectional or Marxist Feminism. “Isn’t it grand how women can be ruthless despots too? Behold how progressive we are!”. Representation isn’t everything, kids.{I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here, man? Are you saying you don’t want female or minority villains? Or you don’t want capitalist fiction?} I am feeling kinda bitter today and lampooning real life. Where people don’t question the structural inequalities of the system we live in, but want more female/POC/LGBT representation within systems of oppression. Mayor Pete being a prime example. I have a lot of old fraternity brothers who Just Wanted A Gay President, who ignored the fact that he’s a terrible person and gaslit themselves. A common form of mockery we in the left will use is “Why aren’t there more female drone pilots?”{I can’t speak for others but I think getting rid of barriers holding people back due to their race, gender or other such traits is a good thing in and of itself, that kind of stuff showed up even in socialist nations after all} That’s true, it is. But the point is to get rid of the system that creates the barriers in the first place and when it comes to the oppressive shit - female drone pilots - well our drone program should not exist. At least not in our current foreign policy paradigm. See what I mean?{There’s a number of snarky things I could say there, for example, which drone program because we have like 3 or 4 of them but honestly at this point, it feels like we’re drifting into a foreign policy debate, which is wildly off-topic for this review so I’m just gonna stop now})

That said, I was disappointed in a lot of the plot decisions made in season II. Some of this is because Season II is only 8 episodes long compared to Season I's 10 but most of it comes from Altered Carbon deciding to play it safe. Character relationships, plotlines, and themes are all neatly tied up and treated in a Hollywood manner instead of really grappling with them. A big example of this is Joshua Kemp and the Quellist insurgency he is running. Instead of really taking a look at insurgencies and how a movement changes over time and without the guidance of its founder, we're given a rather pat Hollywood plot. The series plays with the idea of dealing with themes of imperialism, class structure, the cost of war and more but shied away (Of course they did. I mean, if they really tackled them, people might think a bit too hard about how such things apply in the world we live in today and that would be bad for the investors.). The story would have been somewhat daring if it was told ten or fifteen years ago but today it's rather safe and a bit mundane if you strip out all the fantastic elements of the series. At every point, it seems like the writers decided to shrink things down and reduce the scope of the story. Instead of a massive planet-wide war between a government that can threaten ships in orbit and vast interstellar forces, we get a single guerrilla band fighting a police force that seems to control a single city. Kovacs’ focus is reduced to a monomaniacal obsession with a long lost love. Instead of a large military machine, the Wedge is a single squad of special forces soldiers. The story is left feeling smaller and more banal as a result of it. The story seems to want us to believe that the problem is both that immortality is available and that bad people are in charge. The problem is that it undercuts itself. Danica is not ancient, as Kovacs is much older than she is but she can outdo her older associates in cunning and underhandedness in her quest to climb to the top. This suggests that instead of immortality being the issue, it’s the fact that the upper class is utterly and completely shielded from the consequences of their actions (Yes.). Of course, that's not an accident, when immortality became available the 1% of Altered Carbon proceeded to ensure as little change as possible, except for tearing down controls over their behavior and they had centuries to do it with (I mean… <Editor looks at the current state of the world>. Art imitates life I suppose. Dials it up to twelve, but it does imitate life.). Quellcrist's solution is to get rid of immortality but frankly, I don't think that will help because the system will more or less remain unchanged just with higher turnover (Yep. Bancroft’s affluenza-addled little snotling from the last season is gonna be every bit as terrible as his father.). Danica herself stands as proof of that. Season II was still a good watch for me and I enjoyed the series but I found myself preferring Season I. Although I do prefer Anthony Mackie's performance to Joel Kinnaman's. In fact, if I'm gonna be honest the acting is rather good and I have only praise for the cast in general. The sets were well done as well giving us a feeling of a place that doesn't exist on Earth. However, the weakness in the writing and unwillingness to really grapple with messy issues brings everything down. I have to give Season II of Altered Carbon a C+. It's a good watch, it's a fun watch but it ain't a great watch.

As an adaptation... There are some scraps of the second book here but not much. Since I haven't read the third book, which this season seems to be borrowing heavily from I don't feel I can give it a full grade as an adaptation. That said I do think the series writing and production team has wandered quite far from the characters and stories of the books and I don't think they've told a better story. Except for Poe. So I'm going to hold off on issuing a final grade on the adaptation and we may revisit this before too long depending on the feelings of my ever-wise patrons and you, the reading audience.

So due to the creeping shutdowns from COVID 19, we’ve decided to give you a look at what the review looks like before we cut it down for length. I hope you enjoyed. If you did, consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where a dollar a month lets you vote on what books will be reviewed in the coming month. Next week join us as we close out March with the Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. Until then, stay calm, stay safe and Keep Reading!

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Broken Angels By Richard Morgan

Broken Angels

By Richard Morgan

'And you still thought I wanted the command. Are you fucking insane?'"

Takeshi Kovacs page 146

Broken Angels is the second book in the Altered Carbon series, featuring Takeshi Kovacs. I already discussed Mr. Morgan in the first review, so I'm not going to repeat myself. Instead, I'll encourage you to read both the review of the first book and the first season of the Netflix series with a link at the bottom of this review. Broken Angels was published in March of 2003 by Victor Gollancz Ltd, a former publishing house that is now an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group. Which is a British publishing company owned by a French publishing company named Hachette Livre. Which is the kind of rabbit hole that Kovacs wouldn't approve of but would remind him of home.

Our novel opens with Kovacs far from home, on the deck of a hospital ship orbiting Sanction IV, a world being torn apart by a grinding and fairly brutal war. On one side, a native dictatorship that communicates mainly in twisted quellist slogans - communist propaganda style - and nuclear smart bombs (Good combination. Power to the people, and the atom.{It’s a dictatorship where people get arrested for questioning government decisions, there’s no power to the people here (GOD DAMN IT!)}). On the other side are the Cartels, a combination of interstellar interests that fights through slick ad campaigns, hi-tech mercenary companies, and the finest of orbital weaponry on lease from the United Nations Protectorate (Wait. So they’re in a civil war, and the actual government - a dictatorship no less - hasn’t locked them out of the media and is reduced to propaganda posters as a result? Or do you mean the native dictatorship is actually a rebellion?{No, it’s a civil war. Both sides hold large parts of the planet and have operating media networks. To be fair the Cartels have a native puppet government but frankly, it’s just a front for corporate power (Okay that makes more sense. The way you described it was… odd.)}). Even though in the last book there was an utterly idiotic ban on Envoys holding military or political positions, Kovacs is a mercenary officer with Carrera's Wedge, the most effective and unrelenting mercenary company on the Cartel's side (But… he hates these people. {He hates all of them at this point}). Because of that and the fact that they will not serve as security or pacification forces, they're always on the front line. As a result, they're suffering heavy casualties, which means both more and less than you would think. Due to the technology of the cortical stack, a machine implanted in the spine near the base of the skull that digitizes your consciousness, you can bring back people who were killed putting them into new bodies rather easily. However, they still remember dying (And Oprah just started handing out PTSD.) and after eight or nine times of being blown to small pieces and receiving minimal psychological care due to time constraints... Most people tend to go screamingly insane and I'm being literal about the screaming and insanity here (Oh yeah. Full-on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.). Of course, given the wonders of 26th-century medicine, a lot of casualties don't die. However, having your legs blown off for the 3rd time causes a lot of mental stress as well and the troops on Sanction IV are starting to feel the strain. Takeshi Kovacs, trapped on a planet that's not his, fighting for people he loathes against a government he holds in contempt and still carrying enough PSTD and other mental issues to employ a full psych ward... He is already in a bad condition to start a sustained campaign of open warfare (Well, I mean… there’s plenty of self-loathing to go around. I can only conclude he hates himself from this.{Kovacs hated himself long before this war (Yes, but now he hates himself even more.)}). By the first chapter, he's been doing this for a while and has been injured repeatedly. In fact, he's been part of the war since opening day (Dear God Why!?{because he was on the planet before it started, anything else is spoilers}). What's interesting here is that Mr. Morgan doesn't sit down and spell out the effects of this but they are plain as day to anyone who can read the signs. Not just in Kovacs but in the behavior of the troops, officers and civilians who are trapped in this war. Make no mistake on that, the soldiers and officers are just as trapped as the civilians, they just have the illusion of having agency to comfort themselves with because they're armed (It’s hard to frag officers and employers who have stacks and remote backups!).

Given all of this, it's no surprise that when a young man named Jan Schneider offers him a decent chance of getting out, Kovacs takes it. It also helps that if it works out Kovacs will find himself pretty damn rich as a result. Of course, anything that valuable is dangerous and taking this chance means exposing himself to a whirlwind of hidden agendas, treachery, and dealing with several devils at once. First, he'll need to break out an archaeologist who is being imprisoned in a cartel internment camp. Then he’ll need to secure financial backing for his mission from someone with enough power and influence to keep competitors away but still low enough on the ladder to be hungry enough to take the deal. He'll also need to assemble a team of specialists and trigger pullers to provide skills and vitally needed security. Why? Because Schneider says he found a Martian Spaceship, and if he's telling the truth humanity could find itself leaping ahead by centuries if not millennia and whoever possesses the ship could decide the fate of the human species. Let me explain.

Human expansion to the stars was not driven entirely by our efforts here. Instead what happened is that we found a buried alien civilization on Mars. The Martians were a winged species evolved from aerial predators. Even centuries after the first discovery very little is known about their culture, their beliefs, or their worldview and even less is known about the majority of their technology (Just imagine a time after humanity is extinct. How much of our technology would be completely opaque to the equivalent of a medieval civilization? How much of our knowledge would be completely inaccessible to them because of the way it’s stored, for instance? You can probably reconstruct a radio and see how it works, but you can’t do that with a computer because you need a certain baseline level of technology to even know what that little square rock in the center of the MoBo is really made of.). They were gone before humanity even developed fire but their technology was so ahead of ours that it might as well be magic (What with FTL comms and everything.). When humanity figured out what it found things went a bit nuts, to the point that firefights on college campuses between various maniac groups and the bodyguards of the archaeologists studying the Martians were becoming almost commonplace. When the dust cleared, however, humanity figured out enough to jump-start its expansion to the stars using maps that the Martians left behind pointing to habitable worlds, and technology developed from the study of Martian artifacts. While humanity doesn't have faster than light travel, the cortical stack allows for people to be shipped across interstellar distances without having to worry about the issues that affect generation ships (That the humans managed to reconstuct this much tech - which must have involved activating or rebuilding computer systems and interpreting the data - is really impressive.). Just slap a stack into a body when you need crew present and the ship is fine or just have an artificial intelligence take care of it, whichever floats your boat. There's also the technology of the needle cast, which allows for the transmission of information at FTL speed, including your consciousness. This means that humans can technically travel at FTL as long as there's a receiving station waiting for their transmission and they're willing to leave their bodies behind. Okay, back to the Martians. The Martians were well-advanced even beyond the needle cast; with hints and clues saying they had full-on Faster than Light travel but no one has ever found proof of that. An intact Martian ship? It would be worth more than the planet, any planet. That's without even bringing up where the ship is or how the first archaeologist team got access to it but I'm going to leave that unspoiled for the readers.

Given the stakes here, it's no surprise that just about everyone has hidden agendas and loyalties in play. So Kovacs has to work the discovery of the age while watching his back and front. If that's not enough there's the mystery of the Martians, why was this ship left where it was and what was it doing? Did something... Or someone happens to the crew? Which would be worse, and would it even be relevant after so long? Will Kovacs even be able to answer these questions or will environmental hazards get to him first? The war is ever-present and even in the far future, you gotta worry about radiation sickness. The answer to these questions can only be found the hard way as Kovacs works to earn what might one of the most expensive tickets off-planet in science fiction.

This is an older, more stressed out Kovacs that we're dealing with here compared to Altered Carbon. He's got a harder edge to him but in some ways is more brittle and tired. Mr. Morgan makes it very clear that the war is taking a toll on him and that damage is being piled on top of the damage that his past experiences have inflicted (And there’s a lot of that ladies and germs.). The other characters in the story are also pretty interesting, from the super dedicated special forces ninja Jiang, the calm and thoughtful Sun Liping, the young and cocky Yvette Cruickshank. There are more good characters than I really have time to list. Each of the mercenaries has a fairly distinct personality and relationship to Kovacs. We also see a spectrum of how various professionals deal with the strain of fighting for a living and how that meshes with Kovacs. We don't get to see a lot of how they interact with each other because Mr. Morgan tells the story relentlessly from the first-person perspective, telling the story strictly from the view of Kovacs which helps maintain the mystery I think. Mr. Morgan is also willing to interject some mysticism into the story; for example by having some characters recruited from a soul market run by followers of the Loa. I was glad to see that, as despite taking place in California, Altered Carbon was surprisingly devoid of North American traditions. Mr. Morgan does a lot of work to make Sanction IV feel like something besides a chunk of earth slammed on a different planet. The book is a lot grimmer in tone than Altered Carbon and way more brutal. Whereas Kovacs was somewhat restrained in his behavior on earth, on Sanction IV, he is way more violent and willing to use force to accomplish his goals. Which honestly is what you expect from a soldier trying to get out of a warzone but can be jarring if you don't realize what you're getting here. That said, this was a great read, with shocking revelations and a bone-jarring climax all undergird by the damage everyone suffers in war no matter the reason the war is being fought. I'm giving Broken Angels by Richard Morgan an A for that.

If you enjoyed this review, consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where you can vote on what books get reviewed and discuss theme months and discuss the reviews themselves, all for as little as a dollar a month.  Next week we look at Altered Carbon Season II on Netflix!  Until then, Keep Reading!

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders.

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2018/02/altered-carbon-by-richard-k-morgan.html

The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps By Kai Ashante Wilson

The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps

By Kai Ashante Wilson

Mr. Wilson is by his own admission a shy man who doesn't get any enjoyment from social media. Because of that, the facts on the ground are a bit thin in regards to his life and odds are he may prefer it that way. So here's what I could nail down, Mr. Wilson is from a fairly large family of seven people,, he is African American, queer (Read that as non-specifically LGBTQ, comades), and attended the 2010 Clarion Writing Workshop as an Olivia Butler scholar. He started publishing stories in 2013. It is worth noting that his short stories Super Bass and Legendarie are set in the same universe as today's review. He also wrote the novel A Taste of Honey published in 2016 in the same universe. The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps was not born in a pleasant place. Again referring to Mr. Wilson's own words, he was going through a period of tremendous loss and feeling like he was losing the battle against a 6 year MRSA infection, a feeling supported by failing anti-biotics (That is what happens with MRSA, yes. I might sound flippant, but that little bugger almost killed my aunt and I’m a bit salty toward the blithering incompetant surgeon who botched her knee replacement so badly that she basically had to have her replacement knee replaced with a simple hinge joint and then spent two years fighting a potentially deadly infection he let fester for six months by writing off her symptoms as “hysterics”. Sorry, rant over.). He decided he was going to finish at least one story longer than a short story but knew he wasn't up to turning out a door-stopping massive novel (in all fairness most of us aren't). So he decided to focus on turning out a slim and compact story and he did so. Luckily for us he also survived and wrote more works. The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is barely over 200 pages, is somewhat experimental in writing style and won the Crawford Award in 2016, let's take a look.

Our main character is Demane, a man from a place he only thinks of as the Green Hills, which seems to be a very isolated, backcountry kind of place. I say this because we learn that Demane had to learn the customs and traditions of 'civilization' the hard way and he's not entirely impressed by them. He's also a man with the blood of powerful entities in his veins. These entities are referred to as gods by the characters in the story, but Mr. Wilson has Demane using scientific terms to describe and explain his powers. Trained by a very long-lived ancestor he knew as Auntie in how to use his abilities, she gave him an education allowing him to place those powers in a proper context (I can imagine him rolling his eyes as he’s treated as a demigod and he knows he’s just a GMO…{GMO?}Genetically Modified Organism {Ohhhhh!}). Demane may be a backcountry demi-god but he's also the most educated and thoughtful man in the story. He's also the most compassionate operating as a medic for a company of mercenaries guarding a caravan about to walk through a stretch of hell. Demane joined the mercenaries for one reason, he fell in love with the Captain of the unit and the Captain, also a demigod although not as physically powerful as Demane, fell in love right back (Awwww. I bet the “meet cute” moment was adorable.). Both of them must keep their love a secret however as the society they're operating in doesn't seem to approve of men being intimate with one another (Then the queers will just have to rise up Stonewall style…) and it would be damaging to the operations of the mercenary company. I do have to note that such a relationship, whether it was same-sex or not would get you thrown right out of most modern professional militaries and with good reason (Yes, but these are mercenaries.). But rather than beat a dead horse let's talk more about that society they're in instead.

The story is set in a sort of fantasy African continent influenced by African American experiences and beliefs, much like how a lot of White American fantasy takes place in a fantasy Europe with heavy shadings of White American experiences and beliefs. For example, the mercenaries who refer to themselves as The Brothers, use the kind of slang and language we would associate with black men in the modern inner city (That’s neat! Has that slang been modified to fit the world-building? {Not really no, but I’ve seen stories where they use language lifted from westerns and it works. This also works pretty well}). Most fighting is done with spears, and while swords exist they seem to be regarded as foreign and exotic weapons. The caravan itself mirrors the trade that linked Sub-Saharan Africa with the Maghreb region of North Africa, including using salt as currency in some of its stops (Well at least we know these mercenaries are… worth their salt. Ha Ha Ha. I slay me.). In fact, at the beginning of the book, the caravan is stopping at the last settlement on the southern edge of the desert and the Brothers are all paid in salt before being turned loose on the fortress town (And we all know what mercenaries - and proper soldiers - do on libbo. That’s the reason [Naval/Marine Base Redacted] is my Zika Virus Nightmare. Marines and sailors with a mosquito-transmitted STI on shore leave...). Beyond that town, called the Mother of Waters lies the Wildeeps, a green verdant hell full of sorcerous creatures and brutal dangers into which entire armies disappear without a trace. There is, however, a way through for trade between the north and the mighty kingdom of Olorum. A single road cuts through the Wildeeps, bound and protected by magic you are safe from the native dangers of the Wildeeps as long as you stay on the road. Set one foot off the road however and you are fair game for whatever finds you or wherever you find yourself because the Wildeeps aren’t always in the same place and if you are in it, you go wherever it takes you. As part of this instability, the road itself shifts and moves (Huh. Now that’s a neat trick…) and caravan masters must be careful while traveling lest they end up being left behind by the road (Is it even possible to be careful though? Is there like, a timetable for the changes or do they just stop for the night and pray? {Demane can see the road, experienced caravan masters develop a sort of sense for it}). Despite all these dangers though, the wealth of Olorum is a powerful draw and caravans keep moving through and have learned to deal with the native dangers of the Wildeeps. It's the dangers that aren't native to the place that they have no defense against. Except maybe Demane if he's willing to pay the price to get the Brothers and their charges through to safety.

Despite the shortness of the story Mr. Wilson does an amazing job of world-building, crafting a very unique and unforgettable world. He also does a great job with characterization. For example, while we only see the world through Demane's viewpoint, we come to understand The Captain very clearly. He is a man who is hiding his full power and identity, angry at himself for past mistakes, and no longer really caring about his own welfare. He is however devoted to doing his job and doing it well, which causes Demane some pain and suffering as that means playing a role that keeps Demane at an arm's length for much of their time together. The Brothers all manage to have fairly distinct personalities from Messed Up's sullen rage to Cumalo's easy-going acceptance of Demane's abilities. He also does a good job with the relationships in the story as you can easily follow the interpersonal dynamics of the Brothers and Demane's place in them. The abilities that Demane displays are intriguing and the language that Demane uses to describe them raises a lot of questions. Like who were these gods who left, what were these towers that fell? Were they Posthumans? Aliens? Actual Supernatural beings? Things like this leave you wanting to know more about the world the story is set in and Mr. Wilson does a good job of leaving enough information in the story that everything has context without bogging things down trying to explain everything. The biggest weaknesses in the story I would say are the pacing and plotting of the story.

We don't actually get into the Wildeeps until over 130 pages into the story, leaving only about 75 pages or so for the story to deal with the actual main events and the physical conflict in the story: that of Demane and the Captain against the dangers they find in the Wildeeps. While much of the book is devoted to the emotional conflict that Demane experiences and the conflicts that arise from him and the Captain having to keep their relationship a secret by each being two different people there's no climax or real resolution to that conflict. Now that's honestly fairly realistic but it is kinda frustrating to read. I was also frustrated with how little time we actually got to explore the Wildeeps considering it's even in the title of the book and everything. What we do see is fantastic in every sense of the word and I really wish more time could have been spent exploring that environment. I honestly feel that Mr. Wilson either needed to bring some sort of climax and/or resolution to the emotional conflict going on or give more space to the physical conflict, I would have been good with either one. That said the physical conflict is handled very well but suffers for a lack of space which detracts from the weight of it in the story. Now, I'll be honest and say my solution would be to add more pages but given the circumstances the book was written in, I understand why that wasn't an option. Mr. Wilson also doesn't write the book in a linear manner, there are flashbacks to events before the start of the story and there are sequences that could be best described as visions. While I kind of enjoyed it as it helped me get into Demane's headspace as someone sees the world in a very different way then a baseline human being would, I can see how it would be off-putting to a casual reader or someone who wasn't paying close attention. Because none of these flashbacks are marked, so you have to figure out where in the timeline of the story you are through context and detail. Either pay attention when you read this book or you're gonna get lost at points. I honestly think this wouldn't work if the book was another 100 pages or so in length because there would just be too much material to work through in a non-linear manner but for the length, we're looking at, it's fairly workable.

I regard The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps as a breath of fresh air in a way. It's written from a different viewpoint than most fantasy stories and frankly, that's a good thing. The expansion of viewpoints within the authors of the genre helps keep science fiction and fantasy from becoming stale and turgid. On top of that having good stories told about a wider array of characters only increases the appeal to a wider audience and I am going to say this is a good story and told fairly well. Because I enjoyed reading it and was instantly interested in more works in the setting. Like I noted though it's not perfect and it's not something I would hand to an inexperienced reader. To be blunt, I think this is a book for people who are used to reading novels and have been exposed to books written in non-standard ways. However, it is a rewarding read and Mr. Wilson makes it clear that he is willing to put some faith in his reader's abilities by writing this way. So I'm giving Sorcerer of the Wildeeps a B+ and my hope that Mr. Wilson keeps writing in the setting.

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Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders