Fiction: The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer’s debut novel is, in all ways, a beautiful book. The cover evokes a steampunk version of Metropolis. The pages are beautifully designed and deckled-edged.

Palmer’s writing, too, is beautiful. From the first, The Dream of Perpetual Motion (St. Martin’s Press) is lyrical, even haunting. It may be Palmer’s first novel but you know right away that you’re in the hands of a master craftsman. An idea that is not injured by the knowledge that Palmer holds a Ph.D. in English literature from Princeton. From The Dream of Perpetual Motion:

In the morning, when the sun is rising, the building that houses the Xeroville Greeting-card Works is eclipsed by the long, yawning shadow of the Taligent Tower. The Tower is the uncontested dominant piece of architecture in the city, the defining element of its skyline, and it is owned by Prospero Taligent, reclusive genius, the richest person in the known world, the inventor of the mechanical man.

Our hero is Harold Winslow, a greeting card writer who has for a while suspected that the stories he once dreamed of telling are not within him. Or not anymore. As the story begins, we learn that Harold is imprisoned in a zeppelin, alone but for the crazed shell of the only woman he ever loved and the cryogenically frozen remains of her father, Prospero Taligent.

The Dream of Perpetual Motion is the story of these three, but it is also the story of the world as it has come to be in the book: an early 20th century with a definite steampunk twist: it is not a world that any of us would recognize.

I really wanted to love this book and was sure, going in, that I would. I didn’t. And why not? I’m still not sure. As I said, the writing itself is fantastic: taken line-by-line, this is a flawless work. But, somehow, the story never gelled for me. Palmer’s distant, polished voice seems to keep the reader at a distance, as well. At least, it did with me.

I’m willing to entertain the idea that the fault lies with me and that your experience of the novel will be entirely different. I hope so because, on paper, this is one terrific book. I found it bloodless. It’s possible that you will not.

New Today: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith

A full year into the phenomena some would say ripped the heart out of Jane Austen forever, a part of all of us would just like to see it disappear. And with a flotilla of also-rans and wannabes floating out into the wake of 2009’s surprise mega-hit Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, there’s an awful lot of crap competing with a standard that, despite its glaring schlock qualities, nonetheless set the bar pretty high.

And then along comes Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls (Quirk Books), a prequel both hideous and hilarious, to explain what was missed in the original Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: just where the heck did all those zombies come from and how did Elizabeth Bennet gain her zombie-slaying skills? Dawn of the Dreadfuls takes a stab at explaining both, while wrapping it all up in an engaging (though certainly not believable!) plot.

If the book is successful -- and I think that it is -- it’s due to author Steve Hockensmith’s quirky and humorous eye. We already loved his Holmes on the Range mystery series. It really can’t have been such a leap to add zombies and an Elizabethan beat.

A part of me wonders where all of this might be leading us. But another -- and very real -- part does not care. Dawn of the Dreadfuls is not high art, nor does it pretend to be, but it’s silly, well conceived and brilliantly executed fun. Sometimes, that’s enough.

Biography: Tupac Shakur: The Life of an American Icon by Tayannah Lee McQuillar and Fred Johnson

While the death of Tupac Shakur may not have a universal “Where were you when you heard the news?” sort of reverberation, for some people it was as intense a moment as the death of Elvis, JFK or Michael Jackson might have been for others. That is to say that a great many people remember exactly where they were and what they were doing on September 13, 1996 when they heard the news that Tupac Amaru Shakur had been killed by an unknown assailant in Las Vegas.

Fourteen years on, there are those who argue that Shakur was bigger dead than he would have been alive. Five posthumous albums and eight top ten Billboard singles -- not to mention some faintly weird tribute albums -- after his death cemented his position as one of the most important voices in contemporary urban music. To me, sometimes it still seems impossible to think that that voice has been stilled forever.

Though authors Tayannah Lee McQuillar and Fred Johnson have the right creds and background for this to be an astonishingly good book about Shakur’s life, somehow Tupac Shakur: The Life of An American Icon (Da Capo) falls short. McQuillar is the author of When Rap Music Had a Conscience and Fred L. Johnson is Associate Professor of History at Michigan’s Hope College. In some regards, this seems like a dream team for a book not only about Tupac Shakur, but on the impact his life -- and death -- have had on the type of music the artist made and on his various communities. But that isn’t this book. Instead we have what is a, for the most part, stiff and ponderous retelling of the life and death of Tupac Shakur. His significance is commented upon, but most often this is seeded within passages of McQuillar and Johnson’s irritatingly careful prose. The result is a book that, while informative and well enough researched, never lifts us beyond the place we have been lifted. While Tupac Shakur: The Life of An American Icon is certainly far beyond your standard unauthorized celebrity bio, it’s impossible not to feel that it could have been so much more.

New This Week: Oath of Fealty by Elizabeth Moon

A steady string of fantastic books since her debut in the 1980s has earned ex-marine Elizabeth Moon a place at the very top of the SF/F stratosphere. Including collaborations, Moon has written over 20 books and won the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award and the Robert A. Heinlein Award.

Oath of Fealty (Del Rey) is the fourth novel in Moon’s tremendous Paksenarrion novels, the first one to be added to the three existing books in this series since 1989’s Oath of Gold.

The Paksenaarion series has drawn many comparisons to Tolkien: for world-building, sharp characterizations and the spellbinding military detail that has marked this author’s work. A new entry to the series is a treat. And the treat goes on: a fifth book for the previous trilogy is planned for spring 2011.

January Magazine’s 2003 review of Moon’s The Speed of Dark is here.

New This Week: Jade Man’s Skin by Daniel Fox

Just in time for Chinese New Year and with the perfect cover to help celebrate the Year of the Tiger, the second book in Daniel Fox’s series will please the many fans who were sharply enthusiastic about book one.

I know that after reading the first installment in this series, 2009’s Dragon in Chains, I was very much looking forward to Jade Man’s Skin (Del Rey). While I wasn’t disappointed by the second book in the series, I wasn’t swept away. And I wanted to be swept away in this dragon-fueled, China-based feudal fantasy.

What was a civil division has escalated into civil war, the dragon that patrols the sky is the only thing keeping things under control, but even her freedom might be threatened. Once again, Fox’s prose is lyrical, his touch light. Don’t, however, expect a hard and fast conclusion this time out. There are lots of loose ends: book three is due about this time next year.

New Today: Blackout by Connie Willis

Though I’m not much on novels of alternate history, Connie Willis’ latest epic, Blackout (Spectra), is really something more. A time-traveling thriller with cultural and scientific implications. Blackout is big, muscular, thoughtful and altogether terrific: a novel quite worthy of the eight year wait for the latest words from the six-time Nebula and 10-time Hugo Award-winning author.

In Blackout we meet the same time-traveling Oxford historians first encountered in Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog. This time they pop from the mid-21st century they call home to London and area during The Blitz where they become stranded at the worst possible moment.

Blackout, then, becomes the novel that shouldn’t work. The book with something for everyone that ends up working on every level. It is adventure. It is history. It is science. It is, indeed, thrilling. And it is unforgettable.

SF/F: El Borak and Other Desert Adventures by Robert E. Howard

Don’t get me wrong: I’m confident that 2010 will be filled with fantastic new books and even new voices in the twinned genres of science fiction and fantasy. Even so, I think it’s going to be tough for me to get as excited about another book as I am about Del Rey’s release this month of El Borak and Other Desert Adventures by the tragic and doomed Robert E. Howard, the prolific pulp writer-of-all-trades who, in 1936, died tragically and by his own hand when he was just 30.

That alone gives me pause. When you consider both Howard’s incredible output as well as the legacy he left, it’s very sad to think what he would have achieved had been given -- had he taken -- another 30 years. Our loss.

Howard was one of the most influential pulp authors of the 20th century. He is credited with the creation of the sword and sorcery sub-genre. In El Borak and Other Desert Adventures we are treated to a really terrific collection of Howard’s stories, highlighted by one of his best-known creations, the Texan adventurer Xavier Gordon, known as El Borak and set on adventure in the deserts of the east.

Almost as special as this resurrection of some of Howard’s most important stories are the illustrations that have been created for this volume. The art of Jim and Ruth Keegan and Tim Bradstreet are well known in SF/F and the inclusion of specially commissioned work here contributes to making this volume feel like much more than the republication of Howard’s stories: it feels like a respectful celebration of his electric, irreplaceable voice.

Fiction: Evening’s Empire by Bill Flanagan

In the world of rock n’ roll novels, Bill Flanagan (A&R, New Bedlam) has got the most butt-kicking blurbs. Ev-ah. Dream up the two most perfect blurbers for this book and you won’t pull these two names. Ready? Bono (who says the book “feels truer than what really happened”) and Bob Dylan. You don’t need to go further than that. (Even though Flanagan does, with a blurb from book-writing, history teaching rock journalist, Sean Wilentz.)

Evening’s Empire (Simon & Schuster) looks behind the Faustian deals of the music industry and exposes a generational-saga-like tale of 40 years of life behind the curtain with fictional rock band, the Ravons, and their manager, Jack Flynn, our narrator on this journey.

We follow Jack and the Ravons from London in the sixties right through to the inevitable present day reunion tour. Oddly enough, though, it’s just not as fun as it sounds. This has nothing to do with Flanagan’s voice -- which is assured -- or his knowledge -- which is complete. It’s just that Evening’s Empire is a little... relentless. Where Flanagan’s landmark 2000 novel, A&R, had a certain raw energy and an undeniable muscularity, Evening’s Empire -- which in some ways covers similar ground -- is sometimes dark and dreary enough, you just want to throw up your hands or close your eyes. For me, this comes from the place Flanagan has chosen to stand in order to tell this story. Admittedly, it’s a place that might really work for some readers, but it did not do it for me at all.

Flynn narrates as though he were telling a rock biography. And not the kind of rock biography that makes you think you’re reading a novel, but the type penned by non-writers who have somehow ended up with a book contract to tell someone else’s story from a place that is nearby. I suspect that this rock biography voice is part of Flanagan’s art: that it’s a choice he’s made but, again, I found it distancing. I like the lines between fiction and non-fiction well-defined. I don’t ever want to have to wonder, or be lulled into thinking I’m reading something I’m not. In fact, if those lines are to be blurred, I’d prefer if go the other way: I sometimes like lyrical, poetic creative non-fiction. But fiction should sound... well... fictional. It should be a story that I ride away.

All of that said, those who enjoy seeing behind closed doors in the music industry will like Evening’s Empire. I might quibble with the way Flanagan has chosen to tell this story, but on every page of his novel, you know that the notes this author has hit are authentic and that the story he’s chosen to tell engages at a lot of the important levels.

New This Week: Catalyst: A Tale of the Barque Cats by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Let me be honest, since this is essentially a book that features cats in space, if Catalyst: A Tale of the Barque Cats (DelRey) had not had Anne McCaffrey’s name on the cover, I would most definitely have given it a miss. But there is always, with McCaffrey, the possibility for real magic. And, of course, with her never-ending and impossibly enduring Dragon Riders of Pern series, McCaffrey has proven herself -- beyond doubt -- to be capable of forging moving and believable relationships between animals and humans.

And so here we are again, at the beginning of a journey, some 43 years after the first time McCaffrey partnered a dragon with a human. This time even describing the book makes me feel silly though, to be honest, it does not take long to get carried away by these characters and their connections.

Two of the reasons for this come from the authors. McCaffrey, of course, we know: one of the most significant, important and respected SF/F authors still working today. Her body of work is magnificent. I can honestly say I have never embarked on a literary journey with McCaffrey at the helm that I did not thoroughly enjoy.

McCaffrey’s co-author on Catalyst is a significant author in her own right. Washington State-based Elizabeth Ann Scarborough won the Nebula Award in 1989 for The Healer’s War and has co-authored 10 other novels with McCaffrey.

If you have loved McCaffrey’s work through the years, you will like Catalyst. Here we find specially bred Barque Cats assisting humans on their interstellar travels by controlling vermin, helping keep moral up and alerting crew to certain environmental hazards. Genetics being what they are, a single strain of Barque Cats prove even more superior. This line is kidnapped, put in danger and -- ultimately -- placed in a position where the fate of the universe depends on their furry shoulders. See? I told you it sounds silly. Yet somehow, it is not.

Cats is space. In other hands, perhaps, ridiculous. But this is McCaffrey and an able and talented cohort. This is magic. Escape. And, in some strange way, science fiction at its most primal and its best.

Holiday Gift Guide: A Guide to Fantasy Literature by Philip Martin

Author, editor and folklorist Philip Martin knows his fantasy literature. The newly published A Guide to Fantasy Literature (Crickhollow Books) is a reworking of The Writers Guide to Fantasy Literature, first published back in 2002. This new work reorients Martin’s take, opening it up to a broader audience of writers and readers. It was a good idea and it works.

In addition to talking about specific authors and works, Martin addresses the genre in new and interesting ways:

By and large, this field of literature is a lot of new wine in old bottles. Fantasy is a form of traditional culture. Like all vibrant, living traditions, it allows a tolerable amount of experimentation, adaptation, and acceptance of new forms over time.

Though in some ways, Martin’s work is a scholarly one, he never seems to lose sight of his readership, bringing interesting, learned and accessible thoughts on all aspects of fantasy fiction, from the history, through patterns, places, characters and so on. A Guide to Fantasy Literature is a very good book. Anyone with a strong interest in fantasy literature will come away from Martin’s guide knowing more than what they arrived with.

Holiday Gift Guide: The Indie Rock Coloring Book by Yellow Bird Project

This is not so much a review as a mention: a great project for a great cause that makes a great gift!

The Yellow Bird Project is a Montreal-based non-profit organization who have, since 2006, worked with a number of indie rock acts to create T-shirt designs that, in the end, benefit a wide range of charities.

The Indie Rock Coloring Book takes it to the next level, offering up 28 coloring and activity pages by created for the project by UK-based artist, Andy J. Miller. Each page represents an indie icon, including Rilo Kiley, Devendra Banhart, MGMT, The New Pornographers, Broken Social Scene and a bunch more.

A quibble (seems like I can’t not do something reviewish each time out): like the T-shirts, it would have been nice to have seen at least some of these illustrations created by the indie artists themselves. Some of them are multi-talented and would have been up to the task. It’s a small quibble, though: Miller’s illustrations are mostly bright and innovative and would be lots of fun to color.

A foreword, hand-lettered by Rilo Kiley’s Pierre de Reeder sets the tone and the intent: “This wonderful coloring book,” writes de Reeder, “is yours to enjoy and be inspired by, and is a great example of how you can turn your love for music and art into something that can really help.”

The Yellow Bird Project Web site is here.

New This Month: House of Reckoning by John Saul

After a couple of books that had some fans wondering if this author had lost his touch, bestselling author John Saul proves himself still in good form with his 36th novel. And while House of Reckoning (Ballantine) doesn’t even pretend to be high art, it’s every bit as compelling as the best of Saul’s work that started with the multi-million copy selling Suffer the Children in 1977.

In House of Reckoning we meet 14-year-old Sarah Crane, trying to recover from the loss of her mother. Things get worse when her grief-filled and booze-soaked father kills a man, leaving him in jail and Sarah in foster care.

A teacher set on mentoring the young girl brings Sarah to her ancestral home, Shutters, where House of Reckoning spins along on a sort of Shining-Meets-Carrie trajectory. Make no mistake: despite the obvious comparisons, Saul isn’t Stephen King, nor has he ever been. But, at its best, his writing is compelling, entertaining and frightening enough to keep those pages moving rapidly and House of Reckoning is certainly among his best.

New Today: Inklings by Jeffrey Koterba

The debut work of writer, musician and political cartoonist Jeffrey Koterba is published today. Inklings (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) tells the author’s own story with the aid of strong graphic elements, without the maudlin self-pity often associated with works of that genesis.

In his bio, Koterba tells us that “during the summer of 1978 [I] was struck by lightning and lived to tell about it.” He makes it sound like an advantage -- a thing to have survived and gained strength from, rather than a horrid obstacle which had to be overcome.

That pretty much describes all of Inklings. Koterba’s inky stylings are luminous, yes. But so is the spirit that drives them. Inklings is an almost rabidly optimistic look at a difficult childhood and coming-of-age from the hands of a fiendishly talented artist.

If Inklings is just the beginning, I can hardly wait to see what is yet to come.

Art & Culture: Best Music Writing 2009 edited by Greil Marcus

2009 marks the tenth anniversary of the Best Music Writing anthologies edited by music journalist and scholar Daphne Carr and published by Da Capo. As befits an anniversary edition, this anthology is stunning with contributions from some of the very top names in music writing, and letters, as well.

As guest editor Greil Marcus points out, Best Music Writing 2009 is not meant to be an almanac:

It is not a record of the best or worst or most important what-happened-in-music of 2008, the year from which all of the pieces here were drawn …. I distrust the notion that something has to happen in any given year that in the future we will look back upon as a portent of something or as an example of something else.

What we have, instead is, quite simply, the best. The most passionate, the most deeply felt, the most well-crafted and stated and sharply rendered. Over 30 pieces reflect all aspects of the music business and all types of music. You’ll recognize some of their names. Jonathan Lethem. Aidin Vaziri. Carrie Brownstein. David Remnick. Stanley Booth.

If you appreciate reading about music, you’ll enjoy Best Music Writing 2009. It does not get better than this.

New This Month: The Midnight Guardian by Sarah Jane Stratford

On the off-chance that you’re not yet totally sick of vampires, debut novelist Sarah Jane Stratford serves up an interesting new take on the blood-sucking mythos. A sort of alternate history, with vampires, The Midnight Guardian (St. Martin’s Press) opens on Hitler’s Germany, right at the bloody center of the Second World War. By 1940, Hitler has managed to kill all the vampires in Europe and Britain’s vampires are outraged and incensed and determine to disrupt the Nazis from their course of destruction.

Stratford’s fiction clearly owes a debt to the most senior of vampire lore weavers: both Bram Stoker and Anne Rice though, certainly, her creations show little resemblance to the Twighlightish teens of recent efforts by others. This may be in part due her education: Stratford holds a Masters degree in medieval history from the University of York and the depth and clarity with which she approaches these aspects of her material really come through. You get the feeling that, in building her particular lore, Stratford is on very solid ground.

Stratford’s story is tight and she can certainly write but one just wonders if -- really? -- the world is ready for still more vampires after we’ve seen so very many. Still The Midnight Guardian is a worthwhile and in some ways thought-provoking book.

New Last Week: John Dies at the End by David Wong

At a time when many writers are pushing at the edges of the novel, trying to redefine what the word means and what it is, David Wong sort of does. This comes in part from the publication history of his first novel, John Dies at the End (St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne), one of those weird Internet success stories you hear about. In fact, this might be one of the best yet.

John Dies at the End started out as a Web serial in 2004. The story appeared in book form for the first time in 2007, as a paperback from “Horror and Apocalyptic Book Publisher” Permuted Press, an independent publisher whose area of specialization you can pretty well guess at. John Dies at the End would have fit right in with their line.

The action in John Dies at the End all centers around soy sauce, a mysterious and fairly unstable drug that alters not only the mind, it seems to have an effect on time and eventually opens a portal to a pretty hell-like place. After you take it, Wong tells us, “You might be able to read minds, make time stop, cook pasta that’s exactly right every time. And you can see the shadowy things that share this world, the ones who are always present and always hidden.”

The story is a first person narrative from the viewpoint of the author who actually isn’t David Wong, but says he is throughout the novel. In real life (and it’s not even a secret) he is National Lampoon contributor and Cracked.com editor-in chief Jason Pargin. That CV might make you think that John Dies at the End is hilariously funny. And sometimes it is. But sometimes it’s deeply disturbing and even horrifying. And then it’s funny again. In between there are some starkly -- and even surprisingly -- human moments. And all of that sounds like too much for one little debut novel to hold up under, but wait: this is a book that reportedly had over 70,000 downloads when it was free on the Internet. Since it was free, you might think “big deal,” but think again: try to give away 70,000 of anything on the Internet. I promise: it won’t be as easy as it sounds.

And so, is John Dies at the End high art? Not exactly. Or maybe, not even. But it’s interesting, compelling, engaging, arresting and -- yes -- sometimes even horrifying. And when it’s not being any of those things, it’s funny. Very, very funny. Next stop for David Wong (or maybe he’ll be back to being Jason Pargin by then), who knows? But, whatever it is, I feel very confident that a lot of people are already waiting to see what he dreams up next.

Art & Culture: How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘N’ Roll by Elijah Wald

It’s important to know going in that How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘N’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music (Oxford University Press), doesn’t really have much to do with the Beatles at all. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that it has everything and nothing to do with them.

What the book really does is take on everything we think we know about popular music because, as author Elijah Wald tells us, “the past keeps looking different as the present changes.”

In many ways, Wald looks at music from a new and surprising place: the various spots where it is seen and felt. From those who make it and those who, individually, groove to it. This passage explains the title -- and in some ways the book itself -- most succinctly:

If you are not aware of the Beatles, you cannot hope to understand any music of the 1960s, because they are ubiquitous and affected all the other music. Even if some musicians remained free of their influence, those musicians were still heard by an audience that was acutely conscious of the Beatles. They were the dominant, inescapable sound of the era.

And though you might disagree with those words -- or, at least, some of them -- the fact that they are worth arguing is... well... inarguable.

Wald is a musician and writer who has authored six previous books on music including Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues and Global Minstrels: Voices of World Music. How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘N’ Roll is highly readable. Wald adds something new to a field most of us thought had been over planted. The book is lucid, innovative and richly worthwhile.

Graphic Novels: The Color of Heaven by Kim Dong Hwa

The Color of Heaven (First Second) is the third book in a coming of age trilogy by celebrated Korean manhwa artist, Kim Dong Hwa. In an interview with Newsarama earlier this year, Hwa said that he was deeply influenced to tell the mother-daughter story in his Color of Earth trilogy by the aging of his own mother:

Since I was very young, I’ve been interested expressing the growth and change (mentally and physically) of a girl in manhwa form. I consider the process of a girl becoming a woman one of the biggest mysteries and wonders of life. And one day when my mother was sleeping in her sickbed, I looked down at her wrinkled face and suddenly realized that she must had been young and beautiful once. Then I started imagining her childhood and youth. What would she have looked like in her 60s, 50s, 40s and etc.? These thoughts inspired me to put my hand to the plow. Ehwa is the result of tracing back my mother’s youth.

Delicate, poetic and sometimes deeply -- though obliquely -- sensual, The Color of Heaven concludes the story of young Ehwa and her own mother. Older in this third book -- she’s a young woman now -- Ehwa is anticipating a love of her own and softly rebelling against the boundaries and realities her mother is trying to set.

Reading, one understands the thorough esteem with which this artist is regarded in his own country. It’s a delight to be able to all three books in the 2003-published trilogy -- The Color of Earth, The Color of Water and The Color of Heaven -- in their English translation.

New This Month: A Princess of Landover by Terry Brooks

A Chicago lawyer, brokenhearted after the loss of his family, buys a magical kingdom for a million dollars in an attempt to escape his wretched reality. Then -- wonder of wonders! -- the magic is real and the dreams begin to come true.

All of that is the central premise behind Terry Brooks’ Landover series, less well known than his epic Shannara series and, in many ways, so much more fun! In fact, it almost seems as though fun is one of the points of the whole Landover creation. Don’t get me wrong: this series is every bit as well conceived and written as anything we’ve seen from this bestselling author. But Landover is special. It’s lighter than the world of Shannara and, all-in-all, it’s an incredibly pleasant place to pass time. With that in mind, it’s impossible for me to tell you why Brooks has waited 14 years to give us a new installment in what I understand was a bestselling series when initially released. However, that is the case: the series’ first volume -- Magic Kingdom For Sale -- SOLD! – was published in 1986. Books two through five were published in a fairly regularly pattern between 1988 and 1995. And then nothing. Until now.

The new book is sufficiently sweet, charming and skillful to fit nicely into the Landover world. In A Princess of Landover (DelRey) our businessman’s headstrong half sylph daughter (the princess of the title, of course) must be taught a lesson. Magical highjinks ensue.

A Princess of Landover is an enjoyable journey; a helluva ride.

Biography: The Supremes by Mark Ribowsky

As a culture, we just don’t seem to get sick of epic Motown girl group, The Supremes. We’ve had movies and television shows and, of course, books and books and books. None of this diminishes the pleasure of author Mark Ribowsky’s The Supremes (Da Capo). Nor, in some ways, does it diminish Ribowsky’s hubris: for himself and his chosen subjects. “[The Supremes] are the most important modern American music act after Elvis Presley, and this may well be the first real biography of them,” Ribowsky writes in his Introduction. Fair enough. Especially as he points out that this might have something to do with “the geology of female acts and gender-based assumptions of what is a ‘serious’ subject matter.”

As hinted at in these words, Ribowsky’s biography is no lightweight fan fluff. Rather, this is an intelligent biographic retrospective, worthy of any university press, but arguably more gripping. This is, after all, good stuff. From the girls’ 1960 audition for would-be starmaker Barry Gordy, to playing the Apollo and “living their dream” to the famous -- infamous -- riffs between the Supremes themselves that eventually led to their break-up.

As Ribowsky points out, “the Supremes’ saga has produced a good many fables, a convenient fallen dream girl in Diana Ross, and a heavy in Barry Gordy.” Good stuff, well handled. The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal is a terrific book.

New this Month: Hitler’s War by Harry Turtledove

There is something vaguely comforting about a Harry Turtledove alternative history. Turtledove has written many, many books and a lot of those books have been set in familiar times, but where some -- or even several -- of the elements have changed. To Turtledove, it seems, the world is a constant Sliding Doors of possibility.

Change one thing.

Turtledove’s books are deeply inventive and well thought out but, on a certain level, they are not deeply different from each other. Therein lies the comfort. One can rely on Turtledove. He writes well and with confidence. He develops strong plots. Delivers well considered storylines.

Take the most recent entry, Hitler’s War (DelRey). The novel is predicated on a single question: what would have happened if Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had refused to allow Hitler to annex the Sudetenland? Again, change one thing and, like a kaleidoscope, everything looks different. One piece falls another way and all things are altered.

I enjoyed Hitler’s War. It is solid writing and classic Turtledove. The book didn’t move me greatly, but I didn’t expect it to. I’ve seldom been moved by this writer’s work. But Hitler’s War did make me think and I enjoyed all of the time I invested into this large book.

Turtledove hits it once more.

Biography: Black Tooth Grin: The High Life, Good Times, and Tragic End of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott by Zac Crain

Unsurprisingly, Black Tooth Grin (Da Capo) begins at the end. December 8, 2004, 24 years to the day that John Lennon died. “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott killed onstage, mid-song. The founder of the metal cover band Pantera, Abbott was not well known outside of his own metal community. However according to author Zac Crain, no one who knew the musician ever wondered why so many people called the act “the 9/11 of heavy metal.”

Of course, Black Tooth Grin doesn’t just tell the story of Abbott’s death. Much more time and detail is spent on the doomed musician’s life. Does D Magazine senior editor and music scribe heavyweight Crain sometimes move Black Tooth Grin towards the maudlin? Maybe only slightly. For the most part, though, Crain seems to hit all the right notes, skillfully blending fact with educated fancy, filling in the blanks and also imagining the what-might have beens and the nearly-weres.

Metal fans will, of course, find Black Tooth Grin to be a must-read but even those who had only barely heard of Abbott will find Crain’s book compelling. It’s a portrait of the music industry exactly as you always suspected it was… and yet entirely different. Fascinating.

New in Paperback: The Islamist by Ed Husain

More than two years after its initial publication, Ed Husain’s The Islamist comes to us in a sleek new paperback from Penguin.

The Islamist is riveting. This is partly due the extraordinary subject matter and partly to Husain’s calm and stately voice.

Though this is a topic that can invite strident voices to either side, Husain is all the more compelling for never really going there. Instead, he tells his tale simply: born in a Muslim but largely non-political London suburb, recruited to fundamentalism at 16 and swimming with extremists for five years. When he was in his early 20s, Husain rejected what was on offer, did his own research and found his way back to a more traditional form of the faith in which he had been raised. Much of The Islamist consists of this spiritual and physical journey and the view from inside is both frightening and enlightening, as is Husain’s personal journey back.

Since The Islamist was first published in 2007, it was nominated for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the PEN/Ackerly Prize for Literary Autobiography as well as several other prizes.

If you’ve ever wondered about Islam and how it fits into the modern world, you’ll find The Islamist to be a worthwhile starting point as well as a deeply interesting read. Highly recommended.

New This Week: Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

If you love SF/F and have not yet encountered Brandon Sanderson, you can forgive yourself: the whole thing has happened pretty quickly. That said, don’t stick your head in the sand on this one. He may be relatively new, but expect him to be around for a while.

Sanderson is a writer with talent, vision and chutzpah, a combination that put him into awards line-ups and bestseller lists almost from before the first moment. This because Sanderson was hand-picked to write the conclusion to Robert Jordan’s epic Wheel of Time series after Jordan’s death in 2007. Being heir apparent to one of the genre’s most legendary writers did nothing to detract from Sanderson’s reputation, but when you read his work, it’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t have gotten there on his own. He is a writer that not only can write, but does. He’s so good, he makes it look effortless, to the point where Warbreaker (Tor) was more or less written online. Sanderson explains on his Web site:

And so, I did something crazy. I went to Tor and asked if they'd be okay with me posting the entire version of Warbreaker AS I WROTE IT. Meaning, rough drafts. The early, early stuff which is filled with problems and errors. They thought I was crazy too (my agent STILL thinks this project is a bad move) but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do something that would involve and reward my readers. For those who are aspiring novelists, I wanted to show an early version of my work so they could follow its editing and progress. For those who are looking to try out my novels, I wanted to offer a free download.

And that’s just what he did. The book published this month is much more than an intact testament to Sanderson’s great online experiment, it is a book that grows out of this author’s involvement with his community. Not a bad starting point at all.

The book itself is... well, it’s wonderful. Sanderson is one of those world-building authors who replies heavily on strong characterization to convince readers of the viability of the environments he creates. This is not a technique that can work for writers who are short on either skill or imagination and Sanderson has lots of both.

New this Week: The City & the City by China Miéville

Having waited quite a while for the latest effort by China Miéville, the author of Perdido Street Station and Un Lun Dun, I’m disappointed in myself to have been disappointed by The City & the City (Del Rey), a book that I know is better than I think it is.

Let me explain.

Since he arrived on the scene under the splendid weight of King Rat in 1998, Miéville has been the one to watch. Just 25 at the time, King Rat announced this arrival with a force and passion that was undeniable.

After a book like that debut, there’s always the fear: will he be able to follow it up? And Miéville did, in wonderful style, with a book that is -- arguably -- already a classic: 2000’s majestic steampunk Perdido Street Station.

Other books followed, with Miéville seemingly pushing the boundaries of whatever form he opted to follow. Mark my words: he is a very real talent. And the joy of it: seven splendid books in, Miéville is still only 36 years old. He has time to push at every edge of form that he wishes.

He’s done that again in The City & the City, pushing at the boundaries of both speculative fiction and classic 20th-century noir. Set in a somewhat recognizable world with a starkly Eastern European feel, the two cities referred to are Beszel and Ul Qoma, two cities that happen to be in the same place at one time. Citizens of both places are forbidden to see each other or acknowledge each other’s presence, even though there are circumstances where denizens of both places can be seen. At those times, it is both law and etiquette to unsee the other party and never to say you’ve seen anything at all.

Now clearly, a murder investigation under such circumstances is going to be a challenge. For one thing, there’s a whole city of potential suspects right over there and you may not ask them where they were or what they’ve seen.

While the premise is deeply fascinating, it never quite works for me. The writing, once again, is fantastic. Miéville writes beautifully. Few can come close to his way with both meter and metaphor. He seems to hit the dark and gritty noir tone effortlessly and -- aside from the weird circumstances of the city -- his characters are believable and even pleasantly flawed. I felt distanced from the story in a way that I could not bridge but, as I suggested when I began, the writing is so good, the premise so well thought out, I can’t see how the fault could be Miéville’s and, certainly, other reviewers have liked it much better than I did.

I plan to read The City & the City again in a few years. I’m hoping it will all gel for me then because, as I said, I suspect this book is better than I thought it was. I can’t, after all, see any reason for the book to be less than the sum of its parts.

New Today: A Day in the Life by Robert Greenfield

Through much of A Day in the Life (Da Capo) I kept getting the same uncomfortable feeling I got while watching Requiem for A Dream (2000), but not in a good way. There was a similar feeling of inevitable sinking and incoming tragedy. A similar feeling of wanting to shake someone and make them see.

Robert Greenfield (STP, Exile on Main Street) relates the tragic story of Tommy Weber and Susan “Puss” Coriat. Beautiful, aristocratic Londoners when they wed in the early 1960s, they are sucked into the vortex that the 60s became for many people and, by story’s end, both have been basically ruined by sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. Puss dies by her own hand in 1971 and Tommy in 2006 after decades of self-abuse.

In between the golden beginning and the ignominious end, the couple have two children -- one of whom would grow to become the actor Jake Weber -- fall in with various nefarious rock n’ rollers and just rip their golden life to shreds.

A Day in the Life reads, at times, like a novel, but like one of those torrid little romances you’d rather no one see you with. And after you finish reading? Well, I just wanted to have a shower.

A Day in the Life is not a bad book, but it’s a sad book. I’m not sorry I read it, but I’d certainly never read it again. Fans of music history and 1960s culture will feel differently, I’m sure. This book is just stuffed full of the kind of juicy tidbits that lot likes best.

New This Month: Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V.S. Redick

Though he’s been compared to George R.R. Martin and Philip Pullman, I don’t really see it. Other than the obvious, of course: fantasy writers who sell a lot of books. But certainly in Red Wolf Conspiracy (Ballantine) I’m most put in mind of Robin Hobb and her excellent Liveship series.

Whether or not this first book in a projected trilogy is destined to become one of the “classics of epic fantasy” as promised by Redick’s publicists I really couldn’t say. Classics have a way of keeping their own council until the deed is done. But, certainly, Red Wolf Conspiracy is a meaty and enjoyable read. An ancient vessel with a precious cargo: a royal bride who will connect two uneasy monarchies. But there is a conspiracy planned for this voyage and all sorts of trouble set to brew before the 600-year-old Imperial Merchant Ship Chathrand successfully completes her journey.

This is a substantial book and, at times, it is somewhat too dense. Redick’s touch is thorough, but it is not light. Even so, those who enjoy classic fantasy will like this ride and will hope that the next book in this series is not too far behind.

New this Week: Shadow Valley by Steven Barnes

Readers familiar with Barnes’ work before 2006’s Great Sky Woman (released in paperback just last month) will have an understandable challenge in knowing what to do with Shadow Valley (DelRey). On the one hand, Barnes is best known as a genre writer. That’s actually an understatement: Barnes is an esteemed and much awarded author in the twinned worlds of science fiction and fantasy. And since he’s also married to yet another esteemed author of speculative fiction -- Tananarive Due -- it’s a sort of familial thing. We have our expectations of Barnes. But does he deliver? Well, yes. But in unexpected ways.

Like Great Sky Woman, Shadow Valley holds not the merest thread of SF/F. No matter how hard you try to find it, it just isn’t there. This is straight up historical fiction, but more Jean Auel than James Michener: this is creation historical fiction. Or maybe most accurately prehistorical fiction. In Shadow Valley we go way back to ancient Africa where Sky Woman and Frog Hopping -- first encountered in Great Sky Woman -- are dealing with life beyond the devastating eruption of Father Mountain that concluded the last book.

This is exciting stuff. Epic, page snappingly thrilling, not to be missed. The literati have a way at holding their nose when they sense the faintest whiff of SF/F nearby. My hope is that Barnes’ literary pedigree won’t overshadow the excellence of this work. It’s a worthwhile book that has the potential to help a lot of people gain an understanding of their distant roots.

New This Month: Gladiatrix by Russell Whitfield

In their review, Publishers Weekly came up with an elevator pitch for Gladiatrix (St. Martin’s Press) that eclipses almost anything else that might be said about the book. “Think: girls gone wild -- with swords.” Really, what more need be said?

Nineteen-year-old Lyssandra is a Spartan priestess with martial training. Oh, and she’s super hot. As Gladiatrix opens, she’s in the arena performing as a female gladiator. Her life as an arena slave is short-lived, however. She is scouted by the successful and beautiful gladiatrix, Eiranwen, who takes the young slave into her school and -- ultimately -- her bed.

Gladiartix is occasionally so overwritten, I had to avert my eyes. Take these two lines from the very first page:

The roar of the crowd was a living thing as it assaulted her and she staggered beneath its violent intensity. Row upon row of the screaming mob surrounded her, the ampitheatre stuffed full, as if it were a massive god gorging upon base humanity.

You don’t have to go far to find lines like that, either. These are from the first page, but I could have just opened the book at random.

But then, this is not high fiction. No one is going to be rushing in with any literary awards for debut novelist Russell Whitfield on this one. But if you like this sort of stuff at all, you’ll probably enjoy Gladiatrix. Intense action, gore, sex, Gladiatrix has it all. Could a movie be far behind?

SFF: The Temporal Void by Peter F. Hamilton

Looking back on it, much of the time I spent reading Peter F. Hamilton’s The Temporal Void (Del Rey), I was in a daze. And the book is 700 pages, so it was a significant amount of time. What dazzles me is the breadth and depth of Hamilton’s imagination. The world he has created for his Commonwealth Saga is... well... dazzling. I found it eye-popping when I first encountered this world in 2008’s The Dreaming Void. If anything, I am even more blown away this time. The Temporal Void is a significant accomplishment that bristles with the author’s shining ideas.

The dreams implied by the titles were created long ago by a human astrophysicist named Inigo. Inigo’s dreams were inspirational and were shared by hundreds of millions of people, resulting in a religion: Living Dream. Now, however, the dream has grown darker and time is running out. The fate of humanity rests in the hands of half a dozen people that we come to know in The Temporal Void. This is a fantastic, alien, complex series. Hamilton can’t write them quickly enough to suit me.

SF/F: The Stranger by Max Frei

Before I say anything else I have to tell you that I’ve never looked forward to the publication of a book more than I did Max Frei’s The Stranger (Overlook). It’s been such a long time coming. I’ve been hearing about it for years but, in retrospect, it felt like whispers of things. Rumors from other lands. Something well imagined that could not possibly be true. Because both The Stranger and its almost iconic author, Max Frei, have taken on mythic proportions. All right, I’ll cop: in some circles, not so mythic. But in those circles, The Stranger -- and the books that come after -- had become almost the Holy Grail of books. If only, we said, Frei’s work could be translated into English, nothing would ever be the same as it had been.

And then, of course, it was. And nothing ever will be the same, but not in the way we anticipated. See: it’s simply not possible to come to a book with the expectations I owned and not be disappointed on some level. And, in certain ways, I was. I am. But I do understand that you simply can’t run out and translate a Russian novel and expect it to play perfectly in English. And I’m talking any novel here. But with something as chewy and nuanced as The Stranger, you can amp all of that up considerably. This isn’t just a book, it’s an event. Clearly, that’s a little tough to live up to.

The Stranger is epic fantasy on a quirky philosophical level. But if those words bring Terry Pratchett to mind, just clear your head: Frei’s work is nothing like that. In The Stranger, even the author is a fictional character. It has come to light that the actual author of Max Frei’s books is a woman named Svetlana Martynchik. Max Frei, the quasi author, is also at the center of his tales, which begin in The Stranger with Book One of the Labyrinths of Echo.

It took my tightly honed North American sensibilities quite a while to pick up the rhythm of Freis’ writing: the alternate universe of dreams, the fact that he is a sort of magical secret agent who must stop a murderer from our world from getting his way in the new one.

North American readers will find themselves slogging through at first: this is not your grandmother’s fantasy. But stick with it: all becomes clear after a while, as well as the density of wit we’re unused to reading English language authors.

The Stranger is a fantastic book and the first of many to be published in English. If I don’t miss my guess, reading it now will put you in the vanguard.

Pow Wow edited by Ishmael Reed with Carla Blank

Pow Wow (DaCapo) is an important book. Edited by the incomparable Ishmael Reed -- novelist, poet, playwright and essayist -- with help from Carla Blank, a writer and artist whose work you will be hearing about soon, Pow Wow’s subtitle offers a broad overview of the book: “Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience -- Short Fiction from Then to Now.” As that subtitle implies, the reader is in for the journey of a lifetime.

The contributors represented alone make Pow Wow a collection of interest. Russell Banks, Cecil Brown, Stanley Crouch, James T. Farrell, Benjamin Franklin, Ellen Geist, Chester Himes, Langston Hughes, Bharati Mukherjee, Ty Pak, Grace Paley, Gertrude Stein, Mark Twain and more and more and more besides. In all, 63 pieces represent a diverse view of American writing over the past 200 years.

“In assembling this anthology,” Reed tells us in his foreword, “I have read over four hundred short stories written by American writers of all backgrounds. It is a journey I recommend for all readers who want to know where American civilization has been and where it is going.”

Pow Wow sets us on that journey in a collection intended to mark our consciousness and our hearts.

New this Month: The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz

Considering how the last year or so has gone, Jacqueline Novogratz left her job in the financial sector just in the nick of time. That wasn’t what it was about. From the front flap of The Blue Sweater (Rodale): “Jacqueline Novogratz left a career in international banking to spend her life on a quest to understand global poverty and find powerful new ways of tackling it.”

The result was a journey that would have far-reaching results. For Novogratz herself, obviously, but also for the people whose lives she touched and who touched her and now, with The Blue Sweater, she touches ours, as well because, as empowered as she is and as powerful she has, in a way, become, Novogratz can also write. In The Blue Sweater she brings us along on her personal journey of transformation.

Part of the power in The Blue Sweater comes from Novogratz’s own urgency. “Today, I believe more strongly than I did as a young woman that we can end poverty,” she writes at one point. “Never before in history have we had the skills, resources, technologies, and imagination to solve poverty that we do now.”

Novogratz is the piper. The stories she tells here are her music. And it’s difficult to even want to do anything other than follow along.

New This Month: The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett

One of the things you hear from new writers is how they’d have X number of novels inside them, if only they could find the time. But time is one of those funny things. Sometimes, the more you squeeze it, the more seems to pop out. At least, so it seems, because there are an awful lot of extraordinary time-squeezing stories in the publishing world.

The latest of these belongs to Peter V. Brett, long-time rider of the F train from Brooklyn to Times Square. It was on this daily commute that Brett wrote 90 per cent of The Warded Man (Del Rey), the first novel in a series so vast, so sweeping, it’s difficult to comprehend that it was composed mostly on the subway, a realm as far from that as inhabited by the legendary demon-fighter, the Warded Man, as can be imagined. Oh: and I did not mention, Brett accomplished this amazing feat while thumb-typing. That’s right: The Warded Man was composed on a Blackberry. The mind reels.

These are the things you think about as you begin The Warded Man. You don’t stay there long, though. While the Publishers Weekly review was a little simplistic, it did point at one of the things I really like about The Warded Man. While it’s not strictly true that “Brett’s gritty tale will appeal to those who tire of sympathetic villains and long for old-school orc massacres” it’s true enough to get to the heart of the matter. This is old-school storytelling, plain and simple. Brett’s characters grapple with issues of morality, with black and white, right and wrong. In the process, a lot of evil stuff gets dispatched. Quite often, there is blood involved.

This is hearty, muscular fare. There is no formula here and little to remind you of other writers. Brett has found his own way to his own world, on the F train. We’re glad to be along for the ride.

New in Paperback: Farewell, My Subaru by Doug Fine

One of the things that’s struck me about the green movement: it can be a little dour. And, actually, I get it. Really, I do. There’s a lot of serious stuff going on, after all. Climates changing. Polar icecaps melting. Food supplies dwindling. It’s all enough to put you in a really bad mood. As a result, a lot of Earth save-related stuff is strident. Unsmiling. You get the feeling you better put up or shut up: the planet is not going to save itself. If you’re not going to do something about it, you’d better stand aside or get trampled in the angry green parade.

Farewell, My Subaru (Villard) isn’t like that. The first hint, of course, is that title. A perfect title, when you think about it. A little bit romantic. A little bit evocative (the whole fossil fuel thing). Certainly a little bit fun. The title hints at all the things this book is and means and accomplishes. But it’s not an idle reference either. In fact, you meet the late, lamented Subaru at the very beginning of the book. The car is dying. And it’s not dying well. And author Fine watches it happen while wondering how much he actually cares. The opening lines of Farewell, My Subaru:

As I watched my Subaru Legacy slide backward toward my new ranch’s studio outbuilding, the thought crossed my mind that if it kept going -- and I didn’t see why it wouldn’t -- at least I would be using less gasoline.

NPR contributor Fine’s print work has appeared in The Washington Post, Wired and Salon. His voice is gentle, his humor sharp, his message clear. Farewell, My Subaru is an easy, enjoyable read. And that’s a good thing, because this is a book that everyone needs to read.

SF/F: Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox

The story goes that Daniel Fox traveled to Taiwan and became obsessed, to the point of learning the language and writing about it every chance he got. He was, in essence, filled with the place.

When he was sufficiently filled, what ultimately flowed back out was Dragon in Chains (DelRey) a compelling and epic tale set in some alternate mediaeval China where the youthful emperor must flee to an island -- a lightly disguised Taiwan -- where, with his richly varied court, he repairs to get ready for his own destiny.

Fox recently described what was in his heart when he wrote Dragon in Chains:

Partly it was that classic image of the tiny island bristling at the vast mainland, bristling with weapons; partly it was the experience of the native Taiwanese, invaded by a vast northern army and living under military dictatorship. Marry those two together, and there’s a novel. But I’m a fantasist, I have small interest in mimetic fiction. I wanted to recast the story into feudal China first - an emperor in flight, the dynasty at hazard -- and then into imagination, put magic in jade and a dragon in the strait.

Dragon in Chains is the first in what is meant to be an epic saga. If another book were never to follow in this series, this one would be enough. As much as I want to discover what comes next in Fox’s carefully created world, Dragon in Chains stands alone. Fox is not only a wonderful storyteller, he has a poet’s heart and ear. Dragon in Chains is a beautiful book.

Biography: Poe: A Life Cut Short by Peter Ackroyd

To talk about Poe: A Life Cut Short (Doubleday/Nan. A. Talese) is to talk about Peter Ackroyd’s “Brief Lives” bite-sized biographies, because this latest entry falls into that series. But even that description -- “bite-sized” -- trivializes something that, though small, is actually quite grand.

Poe: A Life Cut Short is no Coles Notes biography: no abbreviation of a richer story. Rather it is an eloquently told biography in its own right, created by an author who knows his way around this world, having written internationally acclaimed biographies of William Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, Charles Dickens and others. To demonstrate, I offer up the beginning of Chapter Two, where Ackroyd’s subject is offered up in sketch form:

Edgar Allan Poe has become the image of the poète maudit, the blasted soul, the wanderer. His fate was heavy, his life all but unsupportable. A rain of blows descended on him from the time of his birth. He once said that to “revolutionise, at one effort, the universal world of human thought” it was necessary only “to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple -- a few plain words -- ‘My Heart Laid Bare.’ But -- this little book must be true to its title.” Poe never wrote such a book, but his life deserved one.

Obviously, I pull that quote now because Ackroyd here might be seen to be attempting to live Poe’s advice. Does Ackroyd add to the knowledge of this tragic, talented writer? I’m no Poe specialist, but I do not believe there is actual new material here. However, he slices Poe’s life with expert precision and the insight of one who is accustomed to looking at distant facts and having them line up in a sensical way.

Poe: A Life Cut Short is an enjoyable and surprisingly detailed biography. Published in the United Kingdom in 2008, the book saw light in North America in January of this year, just in time to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth.

New this Month: Rifling Paradise by Jem Poster

It sounds like hyperbole but I don’t care: Jem Poster’s sophomore effort, Rifling Paradise (Overlook) is as near perfect a book as I have encountered in a very long time. It is a work of historical fiction and the history here -- Australia in the Victorian era -- is pitch perfect. Rifling Paradise looks like a book, but it is not: it’s really a time machine.

The story finds minor English landowner, Charles Redbourne, heading to Australia to make an impression as a naturalist, at a time when that was a weirdly competitive field. If Rifling Paradise was just Redbourne’s story, it would be interesting enough: it would be a good book. But when Redbourne’s specimen collecting takes a terrifying turn, we find ourselves with a page turner on our hands.

So what is Rifling Paradise? Is it historical fiction? Literary fiction? Is it a psychological thriller? Or the portrait of an age? Well, actually, it’s all of those things. And more. A wonderful book.

Non-Fiction: Love in 90 Days by Diana Kirschner

This time of year, the pressure to be paired is almost palpable. And whether or not society is supportive of singles seems to be a cyclic thing. Sometimes the pendulum swings one way and everyone is looking for a reason to justify both unpairing or even just celebrating your single state. But that’s not the cycle that we’re currently in. In Love in 90 Days (Center Street) author Diana Kirschner makes this abundantly clear:

Love is life’s golden ticket. It brings in the brightest of colors and the rich high and low notes. There is no mistaking it; you know when you have love. And you definitely know when you don’t. The big question is, What are you doing about not having love in your life? Are you going to risk being alone and lonely, missing out on all that love can give?

So, okay: no pressure, right? But wait, it gets worse. It turns out there are health benefits to being in a relationship, too:

Study after study has shown that love relationships have a huge impact on our psychological, economic, and physical well-being. Having a life partner can create a higher sense of self-worth, provide intimacy and emotional support, which fulfills the deepest need for human connection, and lead to greater wealth and economic stability.

So much for accepting your single self as you are. If you thought you were happy alone, think again. Doctor Diana makes it clear: single sucks. But here’s the problem: what’s a guy to do.

In Love in 90 Days, Kirschner offers up all the answers. And that’s not tongue-in-cheek, either. After all, the subtitle is The Essential Guide to Finding Your Own True Love. That’s a tall order, so Kirschner doesn’t spend too much time on making potential readers feel bad about their partnerless state: she snaps us right to work.

Unfortunately, I was well into Love in 90 Days before I realized that the book is completely not aimed at me. What was my first clue? Try this chapter heading: “Field Report of DUDs and STUDs.” And though some of this advice could work for either gender, Love in 90 Days is most obviously (obvious to anyone but me, I guess) a book aimed at helping women find their ideal man. So I can not tell you if the book works. I can tell you this, though: it’s a 13 week program that takes a sensible and pro-active approach to helping women zero in on their “own true love” in less time than the average sitcom season. Works for me.

From everything I can see, the book is doing very, very well and getting Kirschner a lot of attention. And that’s good, because here is what I hope: she’ll do so well with Love in 90 Days that she’ll write a follow-up, and that follow-up will get me going on finding my “own true love.” There are worse things to hope for.

SFF: The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan

Back in 2002 when Richard K. Morgan’s first book, Altered Carbon, hit the shelves, both readers and reviewers went nuts. In January Magazine’s Best of 2002, gabe chouinard made the book one of his picks for best of the year. “If Raymond Chandler had ever spent any amount of time wallowing in the cyberpunk movement of the 1980s,” wrote chouinard, “I’m pretty sure he could have written Altered Carbon, an absolutely stellar first novel from Richard Morgan.”

It was a feeling that was echoed throughout reviewerdom and has been echoed since in subsequent books and which, in fact, is bound to be echoed for The Steel Remains (DelRey), another stellar novel, and one that takes Morgan into a new-for-him world: epic fantasy which, in his hands, is darkly gritty, violent and entirely gripping. And from the book’s opening paragraph, we know we’re back into territory that chouinard described so well: Chandler on hard drugs. Or maybe, Chandler on synth drugs, rather than the hard booze he was known for.

When a man you know to be of sound mind tells you his recently deceased moth has just tried to climb in his bedroom window and eat him, you only have two basic options. You can smell his breath, take his pulse, and check his pupils to see if he’s ingested anything nasty, or you can believe him.

If you have thus far missed out on Morgan’s work, do yourself a favor and try whichever one of his six books strikes your fancy. It might be good to know that a couple of Morgan’s books -- Altered Carbon and Market Forces -- have been optioned for film. Also homophobes might want to brace themselves for The Steel Remains, intended to be the first book in a new trilogy. Whatever you’ve heard about him, you’ll be hearing more soon.

New Yesterday: What Obama Means by Jabari Asim

If timing is everything, Jabari Asim, formerly an editor at The Washington Post and currently editor-in-chief of The Crisis -- the magazine of the NAACP -- has it all figured out.

The author of 2007’s The N Word: Who Say It, Who Shouldn’t and Why approaches Barack Obama’s new presidency from a cultural perspective in What Obama Means: For Our Culture, Our Politics, and Our Future (William Morrow). Asim uses his talent, his training and his observations about his own culture to help understand how we came to this point and where we might expect to go from here. It’s a thoughtful and enjoyable ride. You might not agree with everything that Asim posits, but he states his various cases eloquently and he writes so well, it’s enjoyable to follow him on this journey of thought:

With the heyday of Parisian exile long gone and journeys back to Africa exposed as mostly implausible, race men and women have nowhere else to go. There are too many bodies in the earth, and you can’t, as Toni Morrison once wrote, just up and leave a body. Those bones belong to the land, the land belongs to us, and we don’t need to wear lapel pins to prove it.

Asim is a wonderful writer, sure. But he’s also something of a philosopher and, on moving with him through his thoughts on how this moment in history became possible, it’s enjoyable to follow his mental calisthenics.

Did Michael Jordan’s success in the NBA contribute to Obama’s successful run at the White House? How about Sidney Poitier’s Academy Award and Michael Jackson’s Thriller? Now me, I would not have made those connections and, having read What Obama Means, I’m still not sure I’m convinced. But these are engaging mental exercises for this moment in time. Asim has written an entertaining, enlightening and thought-provoking book. Students of contemporary culture will want to put it near the top of their lists.

New This Month: The Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker

In a very short time, author R. Scott Bakker has proven that he is well on his way to building a universe that is arguably comparable with those created by the likes of Frank Herbert (Dune) and Isaac Asimov (Foundation). What Bakker does that -- again, arguably -- his contemporaries do not and that those SFF luminaries did was completely imagine -- from the ground up -- a universe so satisfyingly detailed you felt as though you could slip inside. The politics, the religion, the very ground beneath your feet. Many have tried but do not have that gift. But Bakker? Bakker has it, is doing it, will do it, or so I predict.

Barely into his forties, Bakker now backs up the first part of his story -- the three books of The Prince of Nothing series -- with a new series, The Aspect Emperor. The first book in this new series, The Judging Eye (Overlook) will be released later this month. It takes place roughly two decades after the events in 2006’s The Thousandfold Thought, where we find the Prince of Nothing himself now made Aspect-Emperor of a huge holding and claiming that he holds the key to a Second Apocalypse which is right around the corner.

The Judging Eye is released just two months before Bakker’s first thriller, Neuropath (Tor Books) will be released in the United States. (It was published by Penguin Canada around the middle of last year, but they seem to have been somewhat secretive about it.) In an admiring review, SFF World called it a “CSI-style thriller with a science fiction edge.” I can hardly wait!

New This Month: The New Annotated Dracula by Leslie S. Klinger

In 2004 he rocked us with The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, a look at the classic fictional detective that was closer -- and in some ways more intimate -- than any that had gone before. Author Leslie S. Klinger offered up an almost line-by-line commentary on the great work. In the process, he unearthed bits and pieces that had been left behind over the years -- a bit of literary archeology, if you will. Fans were floored at the offering of riches about the much celebrated Holmes. On the one hand, the book seemed to cover every possible corner of Holmes legend and lore. On the other, it brought it all together in a handsome volume worthy of gift-giving and collection. The only question left, really, was: What comes next? How do you follow up that sort of action? And with what? After all, not every literary icon is worthy of the Klinger treatment. But, certainly, there are a few.

Klinger found one worthy of his attention in Bram Stoker’s original Dracula. And here again, Klinger follows Stoker’s tale line by line, offering up trenchant observations and tidbits of all sorts of information about this classic novel. We begin with an introduction by Neil Gaiman. “Dracula is a book that cries out for annotation,” Gaiman tells us. “The world it describes is no longer our world.”

And Klinger responds, in a way, with his annotations: perhaps making our worlds collide. As he says in his own preface, “My principal aim ... has been to restore a sense of wonder, excitement and sheer fun to this great work.” He succeeds.

There is a fiction is Klinger’s annotations, however: he proceeds as though Stoker’s Dracula were a historical non-fiction. The device works -- adds, somehow to Klinger’s magic -- and while reading The New Annotated Dracula (Norton) you often feel transported, as though to a world that never existed, an in-between world where magic is real... and ever so frightening.

Ironically -- or perhaps not so much -- Eric Nuzum’s very successful 2007 non-fiction work The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula (St. Martin’s Press) is released this month in paperback. January Magazine reviewed that book favorably when it was published last year, but I mention it here because, while Nuzum and Klinger’s books are very, very different what we have here is not an either-or type of proposition. In fact, you may just find that one fuels the need for the other: there is no duplication between the two books, only an ever-broadening knowledge in a fascinating -- and fictional? -- field.

New Today: The Eleventh Man by Ivan Doig

There’s something sweetly sentimental in all the testosterone lurking not far beneath the covers of The Eleventh Man (Harcourt), a football novel that melds into World War II from Ivan Doig (This House of Sky, The Whistling Season). That would seem a contradiction in terms -- sweet sentiment. Masses of testosterone -- but somehow it’s not. Somehow it works in a book that manages to be epic in scope and fact.

The war licked its chops over the battle of Leyte Gulf, as it came to be called, with the inevitability from day one that history would speak of such a gang-fight of fleets in the same breath with the Spanish Armada, Trafalgar, Jutland, and Midway. Ben all but moved into the wire room at East Base to follow reports of the military struggle shaping up around the Philippine Islands. It proved to be like reading War and Peace standing up.

Ben Reinking is the 11th man, left behind to chronicle the exploits of his former football teammates as they make their way through various theaters of war. An exciting book with all the right stuff. The Eleventh Man might well be the very best thing Doig -- an acclaimed and respected author -- has done to date. I loved every word.

Biography: The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: A Memoir

For those not keeping score, Grandmaster Flash has been to urban music what Todd Rundgren has been to MOR pop. Clearly, both would exist without these important early purveyors, but -- and arguably -- the resulting genres would have been quite different.

In The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats (Broadway), Flash -- with the help of bestselling author David Ritz (Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye, Rhythm and the Blues) riffs through his early life and career with the aplomb one would expect from the man many consider to be the father of contemporary hip hop.

There are times he tells his story calmly: one word neatly marching behind the other in accepted fashion. Other times he shares his remembrances in rhyme and still others when he tells his story in a sweet blend of both. Here, for example, he shares the disappointing result after an early performance:

Maybe my speakers weren’t loud enough. Maybe the people didn’t recognize the jams. Maybe they weren’t in the mood. Maybe they just didn’t understand.

Whatever it was, you could have heard a pin drop in that park, and my stomach was starting to twist. I looked over and saw Miss Rose, Penny, Lilly, and Mom. They could tell I was crushed. I could see them hurting for me, but there was nothing they could do.

Career-wise, of course, things got better from there. Flash’s tale does not end with his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, but it’s close. And though the book concludes on a hopeful note, one gets the feeling a lot has been left unsaid. In some ways, though, that’s OK. On the journey he gives us a taste: the misunderstood talent, the larger-than-life success, the almost inevitable addiction followed by recovery followed by the reevaluation of a life that needs to be richly lived. If the latter years of The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash seem sketchy -- and they do -- it may just be that the book itself is a bit premature. This is a story still in progress with many chapters still to write.

Art & Culture: 100 Road Movies by Jason Wood

If I were to compile a list of road movies -- or any other kind, for that matter -- it would be tempting to try and make it a sort of best of. Filmmaker and writer Jason Wood resists that temptation in 100 Road Movies (BFI), something he explains in his introduction:

I would argue that one of the objectives of any kind of “list” or guide style of book is to stimulate debate, conjecture and hopefully, if only very occasionally, agreement.

And so you have the films you would expect -- Wim Wenders Kings of the Road from 1976, for example; The Grapes of Wrath from 1940 and Thelma and Louise from 1991 -- alongside movies you might not have expected or, in fact, would not have thought of or even known about at all. Rob Reiner’s The Sure Thing from 1984 numbered among these for me. If I’d ever heard of this film, I’d forgotten about it, and I’d surely never seen it. “A witty, 1980s teen variation of It Happened One Night,” writes Wood, “the affectionately regarded The Sure Thing was an early success for Capra-loving director Rob Reiner.”

The Sure Thing is notable, also, for the introduction of an 18-year-old John Cusack in the first of what would became a familiar role for him. He plays, as Wood puts it, a sour-faced cynic who still manages to charm and engage his audience.

Though Oliver Stone’s 1994 Natural Born Killers does not immediately jump to mind when you think “road movies,” in so many ways, it really is, and it’s here.

Obviously, I don’t have the space here to comment on any but a very few of Wood’s choices, but though the book is fairly tiny, it’s also quite excellent. And, just as the author desired, at least some of the 100 films he’s chosen to include are sure to spark some debate and conversations with fellow film buffs.