A few weeks ago, I read Salman Rushdie's latest Shalimar the Clown and absolutely loved it. It's a story of jilted Kashmiri husband turned terrorist motivated by revenge on the person who caused him the pain of his lost wife and how his life's unraveled story comes to be intertwined with his American half-daughter, named India. This book spoke to me in many ways, as Rushdie's books often do, and I can only guess the impact would be less so for someone who's not familiar with the combo of India, Islam, the West, and of course a healthy penchant for the present and past of diplomacy and terror. Rushdie writes chapters in many perspectives - from the young, lithe half-Kashmir, half-European India (and yes, the irony is intended), to her Ambassador father Max Ophuls, to her Kashmiri mother Boonyi, to Noman/Shalimar the husband of Boonyi and terrorist. Like many of his other books, the narrative's laced with enough Hindi and Kashmiri words and customs (and food) as to be enticingly exotic yet homey.
It'd be easy to write things like "Rushdie makes density feel diaphanous and subtle. It was a true joy to read the words written. The story was poignant, capricious, exciting and topical." but none of that really matters. The story is grippy and the guy's literally a genius (there's a redundant pun in there, struggling to come out). It was an easy read and wholly pleasurable, except for the mornings after the many nights up til 4am. The topicality of the book comes directly from the beautiful descriptions of Kashmir (where there was just a quake) and the Pakistani-Indian political relations centering around Kashmir, the obvious Islamist terrorist references in Kashmir, Afghanistan and Indonesia, and the modernesque descriptions of LA.
Then, most recently (ie today), I finished a book that I'd given Jack that, once he read it, insisted I read: Gene Wolfe's Shadow & Claw. Science-fantasy isn't my genre anymore and I was a bit hesitant. I find myself picking up non-fiction to force calm upon my ADD mind and lately, travel books. I'll occasionally pick up a fiction book, like Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (which I also gave my highest rating of "absolutely loved" due to a great many things, such as the dystopian setting and the slight mystery of the narrator's identity, though I didn't write about it) that'll make me less skeptical about the genre, or Daum's Quality of Life Report (which I found to be almost an utter waste of time and will probably be snapped up by Hollywood to be made into a coming-of-age-empowerment movie) that makes me never want to read fiction ever again (I can just go to the movies). Reading science fiction/fantasy as a genre of choice, though, had ended for me after Tolkien and Herbert.
To clearly explain this book, I'm compelled to use a metaphor. To ride a horse you first must not be afraid of it, for it will smell fear on you and buck you straight away. With Wolfe, he starts out clearly indicating that even though it looks and smells and acts like a horse, it's not, it's a destrier and that word substitution alone is enough for you to forget you're riding a horse-that's-not-a-horse until it's obvious you're already on it and trotting away. That's fine. The first half of the book (Shadow & Claw are actually two books in one, but I'm going to refer to the text between the covers as one) is an intriguing and well written (what I thought to be) Conan-story of cloistered journeyman Severian and his adventures towards the throne.
There's enough in the first half of the book - a first-person narration in an autobiographical style of the travails of a postmodern, postapocalyptic medieval Torturer - to hint not so subtly that there's a long mythological history behind so much of the odd language and words of the cultural phenomena described as Severian travels from his only known existence in the Torturer's guild to and through the vast city beyond. By the end of the first half, I was a bit saddle sore but quite pleased with the ride.
The second half of the book shifts gears wildly, which isn't inconsistent so much as jarring as shifting gears expectedly is. The problem, though, is that the IV-drip of background mythology is immediately turned up so that by the end of the book (Severian, who was, earlier on, tasked with traveling to a remote town called Thrax and does not end with Severian reaching Thrax, though, granted these two books are only the first part of a series) you're literally choking on the boluses of background myth coursing through the pages. Not to mention, the fantastical occurences are so wild yet so obviously part of Wolfe's world that I practically forgot that Severian was supposed to be going towards Thrax.
The guild of Torturers is explained in such a way, from the perspective of an insider and his views on how outsiders regard the profession of torturing, that the reflections and respect can't help but be juxtaposed with the current debate on torture and cruel and inhumane treatment. Being a science-fantasy book, the parallels are tenuous at best, but it did make me reflect for a short time until Wolfe started piling on the mythology into the furnace of the book and the not-horse shifted wildly into nuclear gear. In communicating with uncommunicative Jack (he's off playing "Who's Your Uncle?" with women and childfolk) I've many times used the word "crazy." Stunned as I am from the experience of reading this book, it's probably a pretty apt description. Ursula K. LeGuin (one of my favorite scifi authors) gushes (as evidenced by the use of the trope "ellipsis") on the back cover of this Nebula and World Fantasy Award winning book "Magic stuff ... a masterpiece... the best science fiction I've read in years!" No where in that does she mention that you're going to get bucked. Then trampled. Then bucked and trampled simultaneously. Not once.
There you have it, a two-plus book review gift. Remember, it's the thought that counts.