“The Golden Tresses of the Dead”, by Alan Bradley

 

352 pages, Bantam, ISBN-13: 978-0345540034

*sniff* *groan* *choke* *whimper*

Well, the day I have been dreading for months has at last, sadly, arrived: the last of the Flavia de Luce novels, The Golden Tresses of the Dead, has been read, and I have no more tales to look forward to, for it would appear that Flavia and Alan are still enjoying that nice cup of tea – for seven years, as of this writing. But change has come to Buckshaw as a new organization – Arthur W. Dogger & Associates – has come into being in order to conduct “Discreet Investigations”…but we all know that it is Flavia who will be driving this bus (it was, after all, her idea, floated at the end of The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place).

And it begins with her sister Feely’s marriage to the long-suffering Dieter – and the discovery of a severed finger in the wedding cake. Soon after this inauspicious event, Flavia (or, officially, Dogger) get their first client in Mrs. Prill who asks the Detectives to find certain letters of hers that have been stolen. And so The Golden Tresses of the Dead gives us two mysteries almost right out of the gate and a mysterious client who is not all she appears to be. In many ways, this book felt like a return to the beginning of the series when it was fresh and new, with the added reimagining of Flavia & Co. embarking on a new adventure with her own detective agency.

Only…as much as I like Dogger, I like this book best when Flavia is on her own, as before; oh, I understand why the loyal Dogger has to be there – it would be difficult for a 12-year-old child to navigate the many places she needs to or to travel hither and yon as needs must, but Flavia seemed to manage a great deal of that before on her own and get away with it. And too often here she plays second fiddle to Dogger when, after all, the reason I read these books is to see Flavia’s chemical and detecting shenanigans and marvel at her chutzpah. If future books arrive after all that tea has been drunk, I hope to see Flavia take a more commanding roll, as before.

And I missed all the old gang from Bishop’s Lacey: Inspector Hewitt makes a brief appearance but then promptly buggers off for parts unknown (and never mind the other members of the constabulary, Detective Sergeant Graves and Detective Sergeant Woolmer, who have been MIA for several books); Mrs. Mullet is barely there; Denwyn Richardson, vicar of St Tancred’s, has disappeared, and the other denizens of this sleepy English village may as well never to have been. Hell, at this point I wouldn’t mind seeing Mad Meg again or Marmaduke Parr or whomever; one would think that Bishop’s Lacey has been evacuated and its inhabitants hidden with the mole men.

As for the future of Arthur W. Dogger & Associates, here’s hoping that other clients materialize and that Flavia will once again be given a longer leash to operate from. Perhaps her past associates – Aunt Felicity, Mildred Bannerman, Adam Tradescant Sowerby – will (as implied) reappear and assist Flavia in whatever mystery transpires. “If”, for Bradley’s 10-book deal has run through and we have had nothing new. I suppose I will have to reread and rediscover Flavia through her other adventures and cool my heals until such time as the teapot is empty and the denizens of Buckshaw stir once more to bring just a little justice to the world.

“The Corporation Wars Trilogy”, by Ken MacLeod

 

896 pages, Orbit, ISBN-13: 978-0316489249

I had never heard of Ken MacLeod when, utilizing some of the credit I have accrued at 2^nd & Charles, I picked up his The Corporation Wars Trilogy, presented here in an omnibus edition – which is probably a good thing for, reading his bio, I would have seen very little that would have enticed me: he was a Trotskyist activist in the 1970s and early 1980s whose mature work explores socialist, communist and anarchist political ideas, especially Trotskyism, extreme economic libertarianism, divergent human cultural evolution and post-human cyborg-resurrection…none of which floats my boat. But it turns out that The Corporation Wars is damn good hard science fiction that, as far as I can tell, pushes none of these ideas in obvious fashion.

The Corporation Wars occurs many years after the Last War on Earth in which robots are sent to another star to terraform a planet for human colonists to eventually enjoy – only to become self-aware. The corporations in charge of this development combat these rogue robots – or “freebots” as they term themselves – with computer downloaded personalities of fighters long dead, only to have the factions they once fought for long ago reignite old rivalries and battles. So there are many moving parts as corporations and factions and freebots and humans and so on fight and unite and perish and reboot, all against an interstellar backdrop in which ultimate “victory” is maddeningly elusive, even as it is difficult to quantify.

In Dissidence MacLeod delves into the psyches of Artificial Intelligence, Simulacrums (or not), humans (kinda), robots (both self-aware and no), hardware (of various types) and the space opera motif in general. You have to pay attention to the many characters and their particular form and function as it can get confusing; furthermore, a couple of times one character or another “gets it” but I had to reread it to “get it” myself – in short, this is not dumb Sci-Fi but deep, existential stuff in which Deep Thoughts are spoken and High Concepts are aired. Oh, and don’t fret the ending; its part one of a trilogy and is simply paving the way for the next books. So far MacLeod has come up with a smart and engaging premise and set an interesting cast to work exploring it.

With Insurgence we pick up right where we left off in Dissidence in which rival corporations are still trying to claim habitable territory for humanity, the robot uprising and Rax infiltration have complicated matters and the motives of Earth’s ultimate authority, the Direction, are cloudy, at best. There are plots within plots within plots here, delicate layers of organizational, personal and ideological motives, directed and constrained by the limits of resources, legal freedom and, above all, physics. I suspect that even as we think we figure out what’s going on there are hidden hands at work somewhere; much of what’s already happened might, actually, have been planned or at least foreseen. But by whom? And for what ultimate purpose?

Emergence, the final book, ties everything up in a satisfying, if rather too neat, ending. The battles between humans and robots and the Direction and the Axle and the Rax continue, but they are really not the point, for MacLeod has written a philosophical deep-dive into the nature of consciousness and reality, utilizing a dark wit. The theories delved into defy easy categorization, suffice to say that the themes are not flippantly introduced and then rapidly discarded; they are, rather, integral to the plot and their logical implications are typically followed-through to the end. If hard Sci-Fi and how a philosophical bar debate could trigger a gamified interplanetary war, The Corporation Wars these are the books for you.

“The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art”, by Sebastian Smee

 

432 pages, Random House, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0812985078

In his book The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art, author Sebastian Smee examines the relationships between four pairs of artists: Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon; Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas; Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso; and Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. The overarching theme connecting each of these pairs is that there exists “an intimacy in art history that the textbooks ignore”, and Smee attempts “to reckon with that intimacy”. Mostly, I liked the book…well, not the bits with Freud and Bacon, or Pollock and de Kooning – I think that most Modern “Art”, at least in its 20^th Century manifestation, is an intellectual put-on – but there are several nagging points to be made.

Such as the rivalries themselves: each seemed somewhat contrived and weren’t completely convincing. I mean, the book is well-written in a chatty sorta way, but it didn’t really seem to hold together that well, and I never did get a sense as to just why he selected these particular pairings to dissect. The stories are interesting, to be sure, but it all seemed rather a stretch as to why these four pairings of dueling artistic egos trumped any others. Even with extensive familiarity with these artists, they were a bit of a stretch, as he really seemed to transform these men’s mostly-admiring (though not always) companionships into something more than they were, something negative and maybe destructive, rather than challenging and mostly positive.

The Art of Rivalry definitely has its merits, for it is not often that a book reveals the stories behind paintings and their painters. It truly was interesting reading about the reasons why this painting was created or that painting was altered; about the trajectory of an artist’s career as compared to another, and why; and the way two artists were related to each other personally and professionally. I just didn’t think that the whole “rivalry” angle was merited between each of Smee’s pairings all the time. While these men no doubt butted heads from time to time, they also seemed to forgive and forget and just roll right on through life – as Men are wont to do. Not a bad book, just a rather contrived one.

“The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire”, by Nigel Rodgers with contributions by Dr. Hazel Dodge, FSA

 

511 pages, Hermes House, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1782143390

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire by Nigel Rodgers with contributions by Dr. Hazel Dodge, FSA (whatever the hell that means) is one of those big, splashy history books intended for the general reader or amateur historian wanting to know everything there is to know about ancient Rome up to the fall of the Western Empire; a coffee table book, as it were, assuming coffee tables are still a thing. Its full of pictures and maps and sidebars and so on, and is one of those great books to flip through on a whim and absorb this tidbit of information or that, not necessarily to sit down and read like a proper book. What it is not is a comprehensive, in-depth study of “the most important and influential civilization the world has ever known”. But that’s okay; it’s not meant to be.

The reason the authors gave their book such a grandiose and controversial subtitle is because, in their telling, Rome is with us still, at least in the West. The Latin language pervades all aspects of Western Culture, especially in the law; the contours of the Roman Empire influenced and affected the way in which the nations of Europe were founded and grew; Roman Art, with its emphasis on realism and showing the world the way it is, directed the development of Western Art right through to the modern day (it even affects those artists who turn their back on it); Roman politics and customs shaped the politics and customs of Europe to the point that All Things Roman became the watchword for the Great and the Good. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire is a great place for anyone seeking a starting place of this so-important dead nation

“How to Fight a Bear…and Win & 72 Other Real Survival Tips We Hope You’ll Never Need”, by Multiple Authors

 

255 pages, Portable Press, ISBN-13: 978-1-64517-115-7

How to Fight a Bear…and Win & 72 Other Real Survival Tips We Hope You’ll Never Need is rather like The Dictionary of Misinformation by Tom Burnam (or is it Tom Burnam’s The Dictionary of Misinformation?) in that it is not really one that you sit down and read cover-to-cover – unless you’re that type of person, in which case…have at it. Rather, it is one in which you dabble with, reading at your convenience or as the mood strikes you – or hell, if you really need to learn how to fight a bear and win (hopefully, not at a moment’s notice). Evidently, this was published before by the Bathroom Readers’ Institute, so it was rather designed to be read as I described it to be. It is all rather tongue-in-cheek but, with that said, I am looking forward to testing some of these out, such as How to Navigate Using Only the Stars, How to Swing from a Vine, How to Find Wild Caffeine, How to Eat Human Flesh…er, um…anyway – a fun little read.

“The Dictionary of Misinformation”, by Tom Burnam

 

334 pages, Ballantine, ISBN-13: 978-0060913151

 

The Dictionary of Misinformation by Tom Burnam (or is it Tom Burnam’s The Dictionary of Misinformation?) is not a book you sit down to read cover-to-cover, but rather to open now and again just to see what kind of fact jumps out at you…like these, for instance:

• The bagpipe was not a Scottish invention
• Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball at Cooperstown (or anywhere else in America)
• London’s Big Ben is neither a clock nor a tower
• Robert Fulton did not invent the steamboat, and the boat he built was not called the Clermont
• Cleopatra was not Egyptian
• Lizzie Borden was acquitted
• Scores of persons had flown nonstop across the Atlantic before Lindbergh
• No witches were burned at Salem
• Edison did not invent the light bulb
• Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes never said, “Elementary, my dear Watson”
• Mark Twain was not born in Hannibal, Missouri
• There is no such thing as an aphrodisiac (alack)

Entries are listed by chapter in alphabetical order, correcting various misconceptions, subject by subject. While the Internet has, by and large, replaced bathroom books such as this (it’s been out of print for a dog’s age, dating from the mid-1970s), the overall message of the book if read it from cover to cover is: don’t be naïve, check your facts first, statistics can be misused and “valid” doesn’t mean “true”. An interesting diversion, if nothing else.