Short Book Reviews: A Woman Police Detective Across Dimensions

 Marked, by S. Andrew Swann (DAW)

Reminiscent of Roger Zelazny’s Amber series, this “portal to another world” fantasy begins as a police procedural with a twist. Detective Dana Rohan’s life is filled with secrets. One is the intricate, tattoo-like Mark across her back that has grown in complexity and extent since the time she was found as an orphaned child. The other is what the Mark does. By an act of will, she can travel across time and alternate worlds. She’s been using this ability to solve crimes, at the risk of attracting the suspicions of the police higher-ups, even the distrust of her partner when she almost gets caught hiding a revolver used in a crime in a parallel world when one exists in police custody in this reality. Her problems quickly fade to insignificance when a series of bizarre encounters, including near-fatal assaults by zombie-like, cannibal “Shadows,” propel her from her ordinary life into a multitude of different realities. From formless, roiling Chaos to a world in which Napoleon III rules the Western World, her only hope of survival is turning the tables on the culprit behind the assaults.

I’m a fan of stories that start in the everyday world, often with a character with a mysterious past, and end up in increasingly more fantastic settings. I mentioned Zelazny’s Amber series, also Anne McCaffrey’s Restoree, and let’s not forget all the magical-door stories like C. S. Lewis’s Narnia. This one has the added features of a woman detective who is more than capable of defending herself, a slow-simmer romance, and the usual quirks of alternate histories. It’s fast-paced and full of plot twists and drama. All in all, a quick but satisfying read.

 

Short Book Reviews: From Sacrifice to Assassin

The Unspoken Name, by A. K. Larkwood (Tor)

I kept thinking of the worlds of Tolkien as I read this long, rich book. It seemed to be a series of related novels, each arc coming to a not-quite-resting place. The many worlds, linked by portals, were are much the focus as the characters themselves…until all the story threads were gathered together and then entire tapestry pattern emerged. I didn’t love every character or every world, but I was right with Csorwe, every step of the way.

“The Unspoken Name” refers to one of the many gods that inhabit the disparate worlds, in this case one whose name must never be uttered. Girls are brought to this god’s temple to study and serve in the hopes that one of them will become the Bride of the God, gifted with prophecy, living a pampered if drug-soaked life until she’s sacrificed in her fourteenth year. Csorwe is one such, fully prepared to die . . . until Belthandros Sethennai, a wizard who has petitioned her for answers, interrupts her journey to death with a question of his own: Do you want to die? Or do you want to come with me and create your own destiny?

Instead of complying with expectations, she runs away with him, accepts his training in martial arts, among other things, and ultimately becomes his bodyguard and hired assassin as he seeks to wrest control of his city from his usurper rival. That’s the initial movement in this many-act drama.

I loved that many of the characters aren’t human, Csorwe for example. She’s more orc-like, with “grey skin, grey freckles, yolk-yellow eyes, an overgrown mop of black hair,” … and tusks. Nobody from other races cares particularly. They just shrug and say, “She’s from Oshaar,” one of the many realms linked through the Serpent Gates. How great is that?

Short Book Reviews: A Jewish Homeland in Kenya

Unholy Land, by Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon)

I never quite settled into this highly praised novel. I really wanted to like it, but found myself reaching for something else to read. The review in Publisher’s Weekly said, “Fantasy Award winner Tidhar (Central Station) will leave readers’ heads spinning with this disorienting and gripping alternate history,” and I think that’s an accurate description of my experience. I could never tell which of many connected alternate worlds I was in, or sometimes which character’s point of view I was in.

On the positive side, I loved the premise: in another world, the Jewish people find a homeland in the early part of the 20th Century, not following the horror of the Holocaust. And not in the Middle East but in Africa, in Kenya. As in modern Israel, where Palestinians are exiled from the lands they have lived in for millennia, Africans are relegated to the other side of the (literal) wall and systematically disenfranchised. I appreciated the evocative parallels between this African Palestina and the modern American immigration debate or Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Our guide to this world is pulp fiction writer Lior Tirosh, returning home (to Kenyan Palestina) from Germany. At first the story reads like a murder mystery, alternating Lior’s discovery of a body (and so forth) with the first-person narrative of a police officer. However, the initial mystery is quickly superseded by others, eventually centering on the breakdown of the barriers between alternate worlds. That’s a pretty tall order for one book, and I found the switching of worlds and viewpoints (third, first, and even second, which just knocked me out of the story every time) to be confusing rather than intriguing.

Others may find Unholy Land to be a brilliant tour de force, but for me it was frustrating to be repeatedly baffled and to be thrown out of the story line just when things were beginning to make sense.

The usual disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book, but no one bribed me to say anything about it. Although chocolates might be nice.