Ben PeekCritiques

I've been babbling about this since I read it -- I really enjoyed this. Keeping in mind that I don't read much epic fantasy to begin with, this is like epic fantasy for fantasy veterans in that it breaks a lot of the expected tropes in half. It's political and working itself up to something more dire, but philosophical and thinking about the connotations and consequences of a world whose gods have died but where their power hasn't quite faded. It was good. I think Malazan fans would like it. The second book just came out in the US today (yesterday?) and I may have to pick it up in the near future.

Really a 3.5. Good enough to read the sequel; but not an OMGILOVETHIS book. Interesting premise. Refreshing lack of sexism and racism. I feel like he's trying to make a Point wrt religion and I don't yet know what it is, which prevents me from just getting into the plot.

Love the diversity, love the power-and-responsibility themes (how do the mice play when the cats are all dead, shades of Max Gladstone) but I just couldn't get into the narrative style, so setting aside.

Took a while to get in to this book. Lots of concepts to get your head around. Enjoyed it when I finally managed to do this! Library only had book 1 though, so...

4.5/5. I did an In Lieu of a Review over at Book Frivolity! Because it's how I roll.. :)

3.5 Stars

“Fifteen thousand years have passed since the War of the Gods and their corpses now lie scattered across the world. When men and women awake with strange powers derived from their bodies, some see it as a gift – others, a curse”.

One girl who finds herself in just such a predicament is Ayae, one of the three central characters and we meet her as she is waking up with her emotionally distant lover Illaan in the land of Mireea. He is a soldier who is recovering from recently seeing the burnt and cooked bodies of those he knew, only to wake to, what he thinks is, Ayae’s eyes on fire.

‘It felt as if Illaan were barely in her life lately, a crease in sheets that could be straightened.’ I just loved the imagery in this line and had to share it.

She is a young cartographer’s apprentice who has been sent to Mireea, a settlement that is part of the Mountains of Mireaa, near the Spine of Ger, a fallen God, whose corpse now defines the landscape. She herself has been having bad dreams, often about fire, and blames herself for the death of the matron at her orphanage who casually mentioned ‘the room always seems warmer when you are in it’ before being burnt to death in an accident a few days later. So…der… the lady has a thing with fire, and with the blurb telling the clues and as much in the opening, it is hard not to be anticipating her discovery of this untapped well of power.

Mireea is under attack from raiders and it is through this we are introduced to Bueralan Le, exiled baron and Captain of ‘Dark’, a group of mercenaries hired to help limit the attacks. He and Dark have just done a very dirty job, one that pushed them and their sense of morality to it’s limits and after losing one of the group they are all searching and desperate for something lighter. It’s hard not to like him as one can almost assume the any exiled nobility has probably been exiled for doing something unfathomably noble but simply not becoming his position, and despite mercenaries of the time authorizing novels and plays to shout out their exploits, he prefers to keep things quiet and contained, being a hero to his men is enough. He is a saboteur and his job is to find out why the army marching on Mireea is in fact doing so.

When a living corpse sets fire to the map shop she works in, and brutally throws Ayae into the fire, she is rescued unharmed and unburnt by Zaifyr, a mystic of sorts, and discovers she has inherited latent powers from the blood, breath and bodies of the old dead gods that permeate the environment, and thus finds herself ‘cursed’. She has the power to light stuff on fire, and she herself cannot be burned. Suddenly she is treated like an outcast, abandoned by her former partner and made to feel a stranger in a town that she has called home for a long time. Zaifyr is also ‘cursed’ with the power of immortality and has been alive a very long time and knows more than he is letting on. Seen as a God himself at one stage he has taken on many personas over the years and has a wider world scope than any other character.

We also have two delightfully disgusting characters in Bau and Fo who too are ‘cursed’, one a healer, one the disease. One has a healing factor like Wolverine, the other spends his days experimenting on animals in a bid to find out everything about decay and infection. They show us what can go wrong with those that inherit the powers of the Gods in that they start to believe they are Gods themselves and so start to view humanity with a vapid detachment.

The Godless moves at a quick pace. The chapters are quite short which, in the beginning, works well to draw the reader into the world, but midway though, becomes more of an interruption. It looks to keep everyone happy by giving us a nice array of characters, who are all quite different from one another but I often felt that just as I was getting into one part of the story we were off and I’m left half way between committing to this next piece of the story or reading to get to the part I was just interested in. When a chapter is only five pages long you know you don’t have to wait long for the next moment to come along but it stopped me hitting a flow and this happens consistently through the book. It is a strange choice and one that I became more at odds with as chapters went from five pages to two pages to single pages as the action heated up.

Peek has created an immersive and well thought out world and delivers on a great fantasy tale that has hints of everyone from Gemmell and Feist to Terry Brooks. Readers will enjoy the political intrigue, a wonderful lack of clumsy erotica, a talking bird and much more. I could have used some more action sequences but those in the book are handled very well, in fact it’s such a strength, I am a little surprised it is not utilized more. This is a big lead in to a trilogy that shows huge potential but personally I really hope they chapters are a bit longer and we get time with each character before we are whisked off to the next scene. That time would allow for some more thorough development leading to a more distinct voice for each character which would help the reader immensely in those later sequences.

I would not put Peeks on par with the likes of Abercrombie, Lawrence or Sanderson but he certainly has potential and has delivered a fine book.

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The Godless caught me off guard a bit, as it ended up not being the kind of book I was expecting at all. Mainly, it doesn’t read like it was meant to have a traditional story plot, and I don’t doubt that could be the reason for the many reviews I’ve seen describing it as confusing or difficult to summarize. Books like these are generally not my cup of tea, but The Godless did manage to hold me rapt with its epic world and fascinating mythology.

Thousands of years ago, the gods warred. After their conflict, the dead or dying ended up scattered across the world, becoming part of the forests, mountains, and other features of the land. Since then, men and women have awakened with strange and spectacular powers that are derived from the fallen gods’ bodies. The Godless takes place mostly in Mirea, a city built by a massive stone wall that spans a mountain range which houses the body of one of these gods, Ger.

The book follows the lives of several characters: Ayae, the young apprentice of a cartographer who discovers she is “cursed” after emerging completely unharmed from the flames that devoured her shop; Bueralan, an exiled baron who leads a team of mercenaries hired by Mirea to sabotage Leera, a neighboring enemy kingdom; and Zaifyr, a mysterious, centuries-old mystic who teaches and advises Ayae after the emergence of her powers.

The Godless is indeed a bit difficult to describe, as I found it overall heavy on ideas and history while coming in on the lighter side when it came to plot and character development. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Even though books like this aren’t typically my cup of tea, they are chockfull of potential if written well. To its credit, The Godless did keep me interested, but it didn’t have the momentum I desired. While the concepts of the gods and the individuals with special powers are nothing short of extraordinary, I couldn’t help but feel that something was missing from the story, a lack of a unifying thread tying it all together which would have made this one a truly engaging read.

The characters themselves are well-formed with very complete backstories, but their personalities seemed muted somehow. I felt no particular affinity towards any of them, and despite the time spent with each character, I regarded them from an emotional distance. The Godless also isn’t something I would call fast-paced or a page-turner, though it does have its moments at the beginning and towards the end. There’s a lot of detail to take in in between, meant to be absorbed and savored, so I wasn’t surprised this one ended up being a slower read.

I think I went into this expecting something akin to a heroic fantasy, but that wasn’t how it played out, and it was through no fault of the book or the author. By design, the narrative seemed more interested in emphasizing the complex philosophy and theological ideas, the political history between Miera and Leera, as well as the lore and mythology behind the gods’ war and the Cursed.

It’s a compelling read, and there’s no denying that. This first book is a great introduction to a series with a boatload of potential. Still, while I enjoyed reading about the world of The Godless with its diverse peoples and cultures, its rich history and politics, my own priority would be characters and story. But obviously, we all have different tastes. If the sort of world building I described in the above paragraph is something you enjoy, then this book would be perfect for you.

Dead Americans and Other Stories by Ben Peek is a collection of short and long stories. Mostly on the longer side, really. They were an odd bunch and some of them went a bit over my head for various reasons (see below) but several of them did involve dead Americans, as promised in the title. (Somewhat unusually, the collection is not named after one of the story titles.)

My favourite stories, looking back over them were, in order of appearance, "The Dreaming City", which was the only Australian-flavoured story, "Johnny Cash", which was pretty funny, "The Souls of Dead Soldiers are for Blackbirds, Not Little Boys", and "theleeharveyoswaldband", which was a relatively straight forward, albeit it definitely speculative, tale.

"The Souls of Dead Soldiers are for Blackbirds, Not Little Boys" along with three other stories, "Possession", "The Funeral, Ruined" and "Under the Red Sun" were all set in the same world. They were set in very different parts of the world, so that it wasn't until I got to the third story, which referenced both of the two before it, that I realised. I am fond of short stories expanding on the same world. In this case, all the stories dealt with death and life after death, both in the religious sense and in the sense of coming back as a cyborg. I liked the way in which Peek touched upon, for example, the war that affected different aspects of the world, without centring the story on the war itself, just some of its ramifications. And the different attitudes that different people had towards cyborgs were broadly explored throughout the stories.

I have to admit that some of the stories went a bit over my head, I suspect as a result of not being familiar with the right part of American culture. Especially "John Wayne". I caught some of the social commentary, but definitely not all of it. Similarly, I enjoyed "Octavia E Butler (a remix)", but I am positive that there are references to that author's work which I missed on account of not having read any of it (I know, I know, bad me, I'll get to it eventually).

Anyway, as usual, comments on individual stories are below. Peek's writing is well developed and I highly recommend this collection to fans of speculative fiction, especially the kind tending towards the weird, and horror. Also, aficionados of the short story (well, up to novella length, I think) will find much to appreciate here.

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There Is Something So Quiet and Empty Inside of You That It Must Be Precious — ok, the title of this story makes it even creepier; I had forgotten it while I read. I also went back and read through the chapter/section headings and they were eerie. A story whose creepiness creeps up on you (heh). The kind of horror with a drab and mundane setting that puts the fear in the commonplace.
The Dreaming City — I did not know, before reading this story, that Mark Twain had ever visited Australia (apparently he circumnavigated the world in his 60s). The story is told from several perspectives and time-frames. We have Mark Twain on his visit to Sydney and Mark Twain being spoken to by an Aboriginal spirit who shows him the past and, briefly, the future. There's also the point of view of an Aboriginal tribesman told from the landing of the first fleet to his death. That particular story is more of the "progress marches on" variety, whereas Twain's is (sort of) more neutrally observational. There are also some excerpts from the introduction to a more-or-less present-day travel guide, which talk about Twain and Sydney's history. It's a rich story with many layers and very different to the one that preceded it. There are even footnotes on a few historical points, explaining them further.
Johnny Cash (A Tale in Questionnaire Results) — This story was pretty funny and quite short, coming in at 50 answers. It is not about Johnny Cash. It is about Reagan, demons and blood sacrifices. And clean-up.
Possession — This story started a bit slowly but then improved. Shows us a glimpse into a desolate future and a look at a particular subterranean botanist's life. The future combines some sort of (post-) apocalyptic event and cyborgs as longevity-proofed humans (sort of). Really interesting once it got going.
The Souls of Dead Soldiers are for Blackbirds, Not Little Boys — Similar in setting (that is, subterranean) to the previous story and well placed for being so. Otherwise quite different. The title actually describes it very well. The world building was detailed and very much added to the foreign setting and mystical (sort of) story.
The Funeral, Ruined — Same world as the previous story, but a different country. And, actually, as I realised a little way in, they are both also set in the same world as "Possession". Addresses some of the personal social consequences of cyborgification from an entirely different perspective to "Possession".
Under the Red Sun — Same world as above. Set in a very different place to the previous two stories. I have a particular fondness for short stories set in the same world, and I enjoyed the windows into different societies in this set. This one deals with death (again) and the beliefs surrounding it from the point of view of people who can choose to come back as cyborgs but don't necessarily think that's the right thing to do.
John Wayne (As Written by a Non-American) — a story about John Wayne and Orson Welles. I don think I quite "got" it. Maybe one needs to know more US culture? It just seemed a little odd to me (ironic, given that some aspects were supposed to seem odd...)
Octavia E. Butler (a remix) — this was a really weird story. The opening confused me, because at first I thought it was going to be about the real Octavia Butler, like how some of the earlier stories featured real people. But as soon became clear, it was a science fictional story, set in a near future with a complicated (and, as it turns out, sentient) disease infecting humanity. Possibly, it was a reference/homage to a story the Butler wrote, but I haven’t read any, so that aspect would’ve been completely lost on me, if it did indeed exist. Beyond that, I’ll just add that it was a fairly depressing story, spanning many years and, more or less, the main character’s entire life.
theleeharveyoswaldband — OK, all the stories in this volume were a bit weird, and this one probably falls into the less confusing category. I quite liked it. Told by following a key character and through an interview with someone else in Rolling Stone, it was about a one-man-band's surprising rise to fame and the bootlegger who helped him get there.

4 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog.

After the really excellent November 2011 issue, this December one comes as a bit of a letdown. The first two stories fall firmly into the "nice but not particularly exciting" category - Ben Peek's "Sirius" merely presents an SFnal dressing-up of historical events, with aliens being the bad guys instead of European colonists; it is saved from being completely trite only by the way it is narrated, short point-of-view chapters forming an almost stroboscopic sequence. "In which Faster-Than-Light Travel Solves All of Our Problems" by Chris Stabback seemed rather pointless to me, and I am still undecided what to think of his almost wholesale inclusion of a story by Franz Kafka ("Auf der Galerie") into his text, but am leaning strongly towards "annoying". The third part of Catherynne M. Valente's "Silent and Very Fast" on the other hand was as much a joy to read as the first two installments - things finally fall into place here and the novella comes to a by no means happy but artistically brilliant conclusion.

For non-fiction, there is "Where No Human has Gone Before: Visiting Sci-Fi's Exoplanets on Earth" which reads much like a travel guide (and maybe was even intended as one). It has some pictures, too, but as I read this on my Kindle I cannot say much about them. Rounding things off is the customary interview, this time with Aliette de Bodard. Jeremy L.C. Jones really seems to have a knack for coming up with questions that his interviewees enjoy answering, And Aliette de Bodard does have some quite interesting things to say in her replies.

Peek takes the standard dystopian furniture, all the ubiquitous cameras and brainwashed grunts and creepy identical houses and small bands of idealistic rebels and the like, and at first he seems to be going down the standard dystopian paths with it. But then he takes several unexpected turns - first into Dick-esque paranoia, and then into a series of confrontations with the fact that the solution to our hero's dilemma isn't as simple as raging against the machine. In fact, there may be no solution at all....

More... (includes mild spoilers)