“Awakenings” by Edward Lazellari (Reviewed by Mihir Wanchoo)

Official Edward Lazellari Website

Order “Awakenings” HERE

Read An Excerpt HERE

Watch the Book Trailer HERE

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Edward Lazellari graduated from the Joe Kubert School of Art with a degree in illustration, narrative art, and sequential storytelling and also has a BA in English literature from Rutgers University, with a focus on Creative Writing. He has previously worked as an illustrator and graphic artist, doing projects for Marvel Entertainment, DC Comics, and Jim Henson Productions. His short story, “The Date,” won Playboy Magazine’s prestigious college fiction contest in 1999. Awakenings is his first novel.

PLOT SUMMARY: Cal MacDonnell is a happily married New York City cop with a loving family. Seth Raincrest is a washed-up photographer who has alienated even his closest friends. The two have nothing in common—except that they both suffer from retrograde amnesia. It’s as if they just appeared out of thin air thirteen years ago, and nothing has been able to restore their memories. Now their forgotten past has caught up to them with a vengeance.

Cal's and Seth’s lives are turned upside down as they are stalked by otherworldly beings who know about the men's past lives. But these creatures aren't here to help; they're intent on killing anyone who gets in their way. In the balance hangs the life of a child who might someday restore a broken empire to peace and prosperity. With no clue why they're being hunted, Cal and Seth must accept the aid of a strange and beautiful woman who has promised to unlock their secrets. The two must stay alive long enough to protect their loved ones, recover their true selves—and save two worlds from tyranny and destruction.

FORMAT/INFO: Awakenings is 352 pages long divided over a Prologue, twenty-one chapters, and an Epilogue. Narration is in third-person omniscient and features Cal MacDonnell,  Seth Raincrest, and Daniel Hauer as the major POV characters, while minor POVs include Catherine “Cat” MacDonnell, Colby Dretch, Lelani and Dorn. Awakenings is largely self-contained and comes to a reasonable conclusion, but it is the first book in the Warriors of Aandor series and leaves a few threads to be explored in the sequel.

August 30, 2011 marked the North American Hardcover publication of Awakenings via Tor Books. The cover art is provided by Chris McGrath.

                                                                                                                                              

ANALYSIS: If not for Robert, I might have missed out on Edward Lazellari’s debut novel, Awakenings. After all, the synopsis only provides a small picture of what Awakenings is all about, so reading the book was a surprising joy.

Starting out, Awakenings introduces readers to the book’s cast of characters which includes Colby Dretch, a detective who has been having problems with the local law enforcement; Dorn who hires Colby for a seemingly simple task; New York policeman Cal MacDonnell and his wife Cat; Seth Raincrest, a smut photographer who is having a hard time keeping hold of his friends; and Daniel Hauer, a thirteen-year-old kid who comes from an abusive home, but wants to do right by his family & friends and to make something good out of his life.

Once the character introductions are over, the author quickly engages the reader with a mystery-driven plot involving Cal MacDonnell, Seth Raincrest and beings that do not seem to be of this world. A separate plotline follows Daniel Hauer as he goes through school and his private life, trying to be a good person but finding trouble at every turn. From here, unexpected plot twists, tantalizing clues about what’s happening, and the tribulations of the characters will keep readers hooked all the way to a reasonable conclusion that is smoothly executed, but leaves many threads left dangling for the sequel.

Of the novel’s two main storylines, I was most enamored by Daniel’s thread, which is heart-breakingly tragic and was the emotional core of the book. The other thread is more action-packed while providing background information and laying the groundwork for future sequels, but it largely pales in comparison to the riveting emotional context of Daniel’s story.

Characterization as a whole is very rewarding with various personas—a New York cop, a teenager from an abusive home, an anti-social photographer, etc.—admirably brought to life by the author and put into situations where their normal lives have been yanked out from under them. The sense of vertigo each character experiences when receiving shocking new information about their identities and so forth was particularly impressive. Meanwhile, Edward Lazellari’s prose is quite skillful, especially for a debut, which makes an already strong tale even better.

Awakenings does suffer from a few drawbacks however. This includes plot threads that take a while to converge, a mish-mash of genres that may disappoint readers who are expecting a certain kind of novel, predictable plot developments that can cause a lessening of tension, and an unfulfilling finale.

CONCLUSION: As a whole, I enjoyed reading Edward Lazellari’s debut. Awakenings features a nice mix of genres that will certainly surprise readers, especially those who go in with no preconceived expectations. Admittedly, the novel is a little rough around the edges, but Edward Lazellari’s talent is obvious and I definitely want to see what happens next...

"Dancing with Eternity" by John Patrick Lowrie (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

Official John Patrick Lowrie Website
Order Dancing with Eternity HERE or HERE (multiple format ebook)

INTRODUCTION: "A 40th-Century drifter follows a beautiful woman across the galaxy. A funny and thought-provoking novel that challenges our traditional beliefs about love, sex, immortality and spirituality."

When I saw the blurb of Dancing with Eternity which is published by the new Camel Press, I was intrigued so I downloaded the 20% Smashwords sample and I read it and was so impressed that I immediately bought the ebook. The more I progressed through the novel, the more impressive it became and while I will explain some of the reasons later, I will say that Dancing with Eternity turned out to be the first mind blowing 2011 sff novel I did not previously know about.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Dancing with Eternity stands out in three areas: world building which includes both natural philosophy and strange societies, voice and characters.

It is the 40th century and Mo aka Mohandas born on Mars in the 22nd century and named for the famous 20th century Indian leader, has been a lucky man. Born on the cusp of the great revolutions that transformed humanity for ever - the understanding of mind which led to the "net of human minds" and then to effective immortality and ftl by harnessing the power of minds traveling near light speed - he became a relatively famous architect, wealthy enough to afford the very expensive immortality treatments and weather the three centuries of turmoil when humanity adapted to this radical change.

Led by the amoral but efficient multinational corporations known today as "syndicates", the human race's ruthless expansion into the universe created enough wealth to afford everyone's "rebooting" - as the immortality treatments came to be known - at a price though. And Mo has not passed unscathed through the turmoil, so despite becoming even wealthier, from the stabilization of the 25th century on, he started drifting through life, exploring the ever expanding human reach, mostly as a musician or actor with occasional "domestic lifetimes".

Two other major events disrupted the continual expansion: the brutal "gender war" of the 30th century - the millennial anniversary of its cessation has been celebrated some five decades before the start of the novel and was partly the impulse motif of the book's plot - in which the worlds of the Pleiades tried to secede under the Yin radical feminist movement, expelling all males under the "new gender laws" and creating their own "net". The main human polity, now known as Draco from the humanity's expansion in that direction, responded with armed intervention and the ensuing war was terrible, finally ending in a truce under which the Pleiades remained politically independent but repelled the gender discrimination laws and reintegrated into the original "net" - this last being crucial since the net's effectiveness depends on the number of minds logged on.

Even scarier was humanity's "first contact" in the 35th century with a mysterious alien civilization on what is now named Brainard's Planet. Despite the best efforts of the expedition led by the aforementioned Brainard, humans could not initiate contact with the natives, but instead a mysterious "plague" destroying all Earth originated lifeforms at cellular level - and with rebooting accelerating the destruction, the death is final unless the personality is stored on the net and the body cloned from earlier genetic material, happenings that are not computationally feasible on a large scale - started to spread with the return of the expedition to human space. Only the brutal quarantine of several planets and the ensuing billions of deaths spared humanity. Today Brainard's planet is under strict quarantine and orbital observation, though nobody is insane to go there anyway, while five hundred years of observations produced some startling results and even more mysteries...

So back to the late 40th century and Mo now an actor with a lizard-like scaly body form gets marooned on a resort planet 350 light years from Earth over a tax dispute with "the system". Not only that but he is kicked off net and has to practice daily to keep up in shape, while providing "physical comfort" to a local shopkeeper for shelter and food.

When a mysterious beautiful woman going by the nickname of Steel makes him an offer to pay his back taxes and take him to space in return for him completing her seven member starship crew and being able to go ftl again, Mo cannot refuse and the adventure starts - as mentioned ftl aka freewheeling happens by the melding of minds at near light speed and each starship has a required minimum crew - here there is a little niggle since I would expect that each starship to have an "extra" just in case, the way today's airplanes have copilots, though maybe the all around existence of the "net" made that seem unnecessary.

I hope the above tidbits about the superb world building of the author intrigued you to try the sample at least, but I want to discuss the characters starting with the narrator himself. Mo's voice is very distinctive and sounds pitch perfect within the universe of the novel and as one of the oldest humans around, his experience and store of odd knowledge comes in handy on occasion also. Here he is at a party "celebrating" a local woman who goes to pay for her needed "reboot" the usual way:

"Everybody started somewhere. Most of them were between six and ten ’boots old, products of the Great Expansion of the early thirties. They’d all been hatched by the corps or syndicates to be used as labor to hew habitable worlds out of the raw material of creation. And for most of them that’s what they’d done every other life. It’s what they would do.
...
Somebody said, “How many verses?” and I replied, “Nineteen.” A kind of ripple went through the crowd and I looked around to see if I could find Steel or Yuri or Marcus. I spotted them; they were all in one of the gazebos. They’d evidently been following the action, or they’d heard the crowd hush. They were all looking at me, looking for the groove, trying to match my energy. I realized that, even though I hadn’t said anything yet, I’d already started. My silence was the beginning of my first verse. I saw Matessa smiling at me and I didn’t want her to be lonely before she left simply because I wasn’t in the habit of letting people know who I was. Even so, it was hard to start. What do I tell them, I thought, who are so much younger, who had not experienced the world before the net, before re-booting, before freewheeling, before...

“I wasn’t started. I was born—”"

Of the other seven members of the crew, Steel aka Estelle the mysterious rich captain starts being the focus, but slowly we meet the other three main characters: Archie of the Yin, the Pleiades doctor/life scientist, Yuri, the tech/hard science wizard with a continual teenager like personality of the geek/genius that hides a painful secret from his early life in the terrible war of a 1000 years ago and Steel's protege, Alice who seems to be very young or to have had a very traumatic last reboot since she seems to be aware only of very recent events. And since for more than a thousand years, humans have not been born anymore, only being artificially brought up by the syndicates when/where labor was needed with the promise of the second life and capital in return for the first life of labor - one of the hard prices humanity is still paying for eternal life - Alice is indeed a mystery for us and for Mo.

Dancing with Eternity flows very well on the page and both the universe and the characters are revealed slowly with moments of tension, adventure, desperate situations and escapes, while twists and turns abound. The novel so impressed me that I had to reread it immediately after finishing it and then I appreciated even better the little tidbits whose full import the reader won't realize until much later.

Overall Dancing with Eternity (A++, top 10 novel of 2011) is a stellar debut that shows why science fiction is still the most interesting genre of today.

“The Revisionists” by Thomas Mullen (Reviewed by Robert Thompson)

Official Thomas Mullen Website

Order “The Revisionists” HERE (US) + HERE (UK)

Read An Excerpt HERE

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Thomas Mullen is the author of The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers and The Last Town on Earth, which was named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by USA Today, was a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, and was awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. He lives in Decatur, Georgia with his wife and two sons.

PLOT SUMMARY: Zed is an agent from the future. A time when the world’s problems have been solved. No hunger. No war. No despair.

His mission is to keep it that way. Even if it means ensuring every cataclysm throughout history runs its course—especially the Great Conflagration, an imminent disaster in our own time that Zed has been ordered to protect at all costs.

Zed’s mission will disrupt the lives of a disgraced former CIA agent; a young Washington lawyer grieving over the loss of her brother, a soldier in Iraq; the oppressed employee of a foreign diplomat; and countless others. But will he finish his final mission before the present takes precedence over a Perfect Future? One that may have more cracks than he realizes?

FORMAT/INFO: The Revisionists is 448 pages long divided over thirty-six chapters. Each chapter is narrated by a single POV. Three of the POVs—Leo Hastings, Tasha Wilson and Sari—are narrated in the third-person. The other POV, Zed, is narrated in the first-person. The Revisionists is self-contained. September 28, 2011 marks the North American Hardcover publication of The Revisionists via Mulholland Books. The UK version (see below) will be published on the same day via Mulholland UK.

ANALYSIS: The Revisionists is described by the publisher as a “fast-paced literary thriller that recalls dystopian classics such as 1984 and Fahrenheit 451”. A fairly accurate description considering that Zed—one of the novel’s main characters—is from the future. A future that may seem ‘perfect’ because of the way war, crime and racism has been largely eliminated, but in reality is an Orwellian society where all history, even the physical evidence of recently deceased loves ones, is controlled by the Government.

Zed is a Protector of this future, this ‘Perfect Present’. As an agent of the Department of Historical Integrity, his job is to go back in time and ensure that certain Events are not altered by historical agitators (“hags”). Assigned to the Disasters Division, Zed must protect such Events as 9/11, Nazi concentration camps, the bombing of Hiroshima, and, in his latest mission, the Great Conflagration which will be responsible for killing billions of people across the world. This concept of going back in time to protect history from changing is slightly reminiscent of Félix J. Palma’s The Map of Time, but Thomas Mullen never explains how time travel is possible in this future, and instead focuses on the moral complications involved with time travel, while ruminating on such matters as existentialism and fate:

“What is predetermined, what spontaneous? You get to thinking about such things after this long on the job. You start pondering options that most people don’t even realize are there, seeing secret paths and hidden escapes. Or the opposite happens: you see the larger forces that guide you against your will or without your knowledge. If you are what you do, then what does it mean if others make that decision for you?”

Despite all of this talk about time travel and the future, The Revisionists is more of a contemporary drama/thriller in the vein of such movies as Fair Game and Syriana than it is science fiction. How so? For starters, the book is set almost entirely in present-day Washington, DC. Secondly, the novel’s three other protagonists are ‘contemps’, i.e. not from the future. This includes Leo Hastings, an ex-CIA agent currently gathering intel for a private contractor; Tasha Wilson, a corporate lawyer angered by the death of her brother, Lieutenant Marshall Wilson, and the vague details surrounding what happened to him; and Sari, an Indonesian maid/nanny employed by a South Korean diplomat and his abusive wife. Third, The Revisionists features a heavy dose of espionage, while whistle-blowing, entrapment, left-wing politics (anti-war, mainstream media), racial animosities, dictatorships, urban gentrification, privatized intelligence, civil rights and other topical issues are thoughtfully examined in the book. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, there is Zed. As the novel progress, the author starts dropping hints that maybe Zed is not an agent from the future after all. That maybe he is a deluded individual who became mentally unhinged after what happened to his wife and daughter. It’s a compelling argument either way, one the author never clearly answers, injecting the book with an ambiguity that reminded me of Blade Runner, Memento and Inception.

Regardless of what classification The Revisionists may fall under, there’s no debating the impressiveness of Thomas Mullen’s accomplished writing. Sympathetic characters with fully developed backgrounds; engaging narratives written in both the first and third-person; a plot that never loses its way despite a complicated tangle of myriad threads, twists and revelations; the clever ambiguity surrounding Zed and his past; the realistic depiction of Washington, DC . . . Thomas Mullen excels at all of this and then some. Admittedly, the author occasionally goes a little overboard when writing about politics or describing aspects of a character’s background, but for the most part, The Revisionists contains a level of writing that most people can only dream about.

CONCLUSION: The Revisionists is my first Thomas Mullen novel, although I had heard of the author last year when The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers was released, a book which intrigued me, but not enough to actually purchase a copy. What convinced me to read The Revisionists was a description that seemed to promise a thought-provoking science fiction novel in the vein of 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. A promise that is only partially successful because of Zed’s ambiguity and the novel’s emphasis on contemporary issues. Then again, much of the novel’s best qualities can be attributed to these same factors. That and Thomas Mullen’s brilliant writing. So even though The Revisionists was not the science fiction novel that I was hoping for, I very much enjoyed Thomas Mullen’s new book, which offers readers a smart, relevant and engrossing reading experience...

Interview with Barry Eisler (Interviewed by Mihir Wanchoo)

I was introduced to Barry Eisler when I picked up his debut novel, Rain Fall, back in 2003. Rain Fall introduced a half-Japanese, half-American assassin called John Rain and was well-received. Over the next few years, Mr. Eisler wrote five more John Rain thrillers before taking a break to write a couple of books focused more on the American political spectrum. Earlier this year, the author made headlines with his decision to self-publish his work. In the following interview, Barry Eisler expounds on his decision, discusses his new John Rain book, talks about moral & political ambiguities; and much more...

Q: Welcome to Fantasy Book Critic. To begin with, could you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

Barry: Well, I’ve had a variety of interesting jobs—a covert position with the CIA; attorney in an international law firm; in-house counsel at the Osaka headquarters of Panasonic; executive with a technology startup. These days, I write full time, and that’s the best of the bunch.

Q: Earlier this year, you created a huge buzz around the publishing world when you turned down a $500,000 book contract with St. Martin’s Press in favor of self-publishing. Could you explain the reasoning behind this decision?

Barry: Well, as you say, I had a $500,000, two-book offer, from St. Martin’s Press. And the tendency is to focus on that big, seductive number. But to understand what the number really represents, you have to break it down. Start by taking out your agent’s commission: your $500,000 is now $425,000. Then divide that $425,000 over the anticipated life of the contract, which is three years (execution, first hardback publication, second hardback publication, second paperback publication). That’s about $142,000 a year. This is a more realistic way of looking at that $500,000.

But there’s more. Some people have mistakenly argued that, for my move to make financial sense, I would have to earn $142,000 a year for three years. But this is one time when you don’t want to be comparing apples to apples. Because the question isn’t whether I could make $425,000 in three years in self-publishing; the question is what happens regardless of when I hit that number. What happens whenever I hit that point is that I’ll have “beaten” the contract, and then I’ll go on beating it for the rest of my life. If I don’t earn out the legacy contract, the only money I’ll ever see from it is $142,000 per year for three years. Even if I do earn out, I’ll only see 14.9% of each digital sale thereafter. But once I beat the contract in digital, even if it takes longer than three years, I go on earning 70% of each digital sale forever thereafter. And, as my friend Joe Konrath likes to point out, forever is a long time.

My previous publisher, Ballantine, managed to sell about 10,000 combined digital copies of my last two books at a $9.99 price point (a price point that was earning me $1.49 per unit sold, BTW) in the latest three-month period for which I have data. Call that 5000 of each book for three months, so 1,667 of each book per month. If I cut the Ballantine price in half and still only moved 1,667 units a month, at a $3.50 per unit royalty ($4.99 x 70% = $3.50), that’s about $5,833 per month. But unlike paper books and digital sold at paper prices, low-priced digital books sell steadily, so it seemed to me that I could make about $70,000 per year, per book on my own. Assuming nothing changes and digital doesn’t keep growing (and that would be crazy—Charles Cummings’ critically acclaimed spy thriller The Trinity Six sold three times as many digital copies as hardback in its first week), I figured I should be able to make $140,000 a year for the two books I could have sold in a $425,000 legacy deal, instead. $70,000 for the first year, then $140,000 for each year thereafter, when I’ll be selling two books instead of just one. So if I’m right about all this, and I’m pretty sure I am, I should be able to beat the contract about halfway through the fourth year. And again, all of that ignores the continued growth of digital, the way low-priced digital books reinforce sales of other such books, etc.

To develop some data to go with the theory, in February I self-published a short story, The Lost Coast, and then in April another one, Paris Is A Bitch, the first featuring of one my series characters, a very nasty piece of work named Larison, and the second featuring my assassin John Rain and his Mossad lover, Delilah. I priced them at $2.99, which is a premium price for a short story, just to see how my writing would do in the new environment and even with the handicap of a relatively high price. Each has earned me about a thousand dollars a month since I published them—not bad so far, and I intend to write more.

There was a lot more to think about, too.  Estimates of how much I could reasonably expect my paper sales to grow (they were growing through the first six books, then declined dramatically for the two I did with Ballantine, though still putting me on the extended NYT list). Estimates of how much more digital I could sell on my own (at a much higher per unit royalty, of course), and what not having a legacy partner would cost me in paper sales. Etc. All of which might sound like a lot to some writers, but from my first book back in 2002, I’ve always believed the writer has to be an entrepreneur and CEO, too, with all that entails. A few days of careful thought and examination can make or save you a hell of a lot of money, so I think it would be foolish not to invest that time.

In the end, though, the book I decided to self-publish, The Detachment, will be published by Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint. When Amazon heard about my decision, they approached me with a very interesting deal, something that offers the best of the legacy and indie worlds. For more on that decision, I recommend a book I wrote with Joe Konrath, Be The Monkey:  A Conversation About The New World Of Publishing. It’s a free digital download, but whatever you do, don’t click on the monkey frog video links.

Q: After your Thomas & Mercer announcment, Tobias S. Buckell made the following tweet/comment: “So Eisler isn’t really going it alone, he exchanged one corporate master for another. Better terms, apparently, but not a revolution as such!” What are your thoughts on signing with Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint?

Barry: I don’t know why Tobias would think anyone is my master. I imagine he’s projecting, but that’s just a guess because I don’t know him. From my standpoint, my publishers work for me—I hire them to help market and distribute my books.

As for the rest, when I announced I was turning down the SMP offer to self-publish The Detachment, I was very clear about my reasons: (1) a dramatically better digital royalty split; (2) control over pricing and packaging; and (3) the ability to publish the book immediately without slaving the digital release to the paper. As it happens, Amazon offered me all those things, plus Amazon’s retail and distribution marketing muscle, too. As a pragmatic businessman, why would I turn that down? It was a better means to achieve my objectives.

For me, publishing is a business, not an ideology. But I’ve discovered this isn’t true for everyone, and for people for whom self-publishing isn’t a means toward other ends, but rather an end in itself, my decision to work with Amazon is troubling. For me, it’s just sensible business strategy.

Q: In your last few books, you’ve explored a number of subjects—torture, Guantanamo Bay, governmental power imbalances, privacy rights etc.—that are highly relevant with current events. Is there a certain statement you’re trying to share regarding these issues?

Barry: I’d put it this way.

Since the end of the Cold War, there’s been much discussion in the thriller world about whether the thriller, at least the contemporary version, is still a viable form. Despite then Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey’s admonition that “We have slain a mighty dragon, but now find ourselves in a jungle filled with snakes,” villains seemed scarce during the “peace dividend” years of the Clinton administration. Nine-eleven and the explosion of al Qaeda in the popular consciousness, of course, changed all that, and Islamic fundamentalism provided a new treasure trove of contemporary villains and plotlines.

For thriller writers interested in realism, though, the familiar “Islamic Terrorist Villain” plotline has a serious shortcoming:  terrorism, of whatever stripe, poses far less danger to America than does America’s own overreaction to the fear of terrorism. To put it another way, America has a significantly greater capacity for national suicide than any non-state actor has for national murder. If thrillers are built on large-scale danger, therefore, and if a thriller novelist wants to convincingly portray the largest dangers possible, the novelist has to grapple not so much with the possibility of a terror attack, as with the reality of the massive, unaccountable national security state that has metastasized in response to that possibility.

This is of course a challenge, because unaccountable bureaucracies—what Hannah Arendt called “Rule by Nobody”—make for less obvious villains than do lone, bearded zealots seeking to destroy the Great Satan, etc., etc. The trick, I think, is to create an antagonist who is part of the ruling power structure but who also maintains an outsider’s perspective—who personifies and animates an entity that, destructive and oppressive though it is, is itself is too large and cumbersome to ever really be sentient. This is Colonel Horton, probably the most ambiguous villain I’ve ever created (and therefore probably the most compelling).

And thus, The Detachment: a small team of lone wolf, deniable irregulars, each with ambiguous motives and conflicting loyalties, pitted against the relentless, pervasive, grinding force of an American national security state gone mad. It’s real, it’s timely, and it’s built on an unnervingly possible premise. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Q: Do you ever worry that speaking out about such incendiary topics as torture and Guantanamo Bay might affect your book sales?

Barry: People who refuse to speak out against violations of the Constitution and our laws, and against policies that erode our liberty and undermine our security, in order to sell a few more books or for other monetary gain, are so craven I wonder how they can live with themselves.

Q: While watching the movie Freakonomics, I noticed that you made an appearance in the film. How did this come about?

Barry: I was in touch a little with Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning writer, producer, and director of Enron:  The Smartest Guys in the Room and Taxi To The Dark Side, through my previous book, Inside Out. Alex knew I was living in Tokyo and asked if I might have a few thoughts for the sumo section of the film which his production partner was filming in Tokyo. I said of course, and that’s how it happened—it was a lot of fun.

Q: In regards to the movie and your books, you talk about the dual concepts of honne and tatemae. Could you explain what these terms mean and how they relate to our day-to-day life?

Barry: Loosely speaking, honne means the real truth; tatemae is the appearance of truth. Both are important; neither is valid or invalid. But problems arise when a gap opens up between them. For example, if you’re a politician, what is more important to you: fighting crime, or that voters believe you’re fighting crime? When the former leads to the latter, there is harmony. But when a path opens to the latter that doesn’t involve the former, problems arise.

Most politicians care only about tatemae, and about honne only insofar as it serves tatamae. Voters ought to be aware of this dynamic.

Q: What is the main source of inspiration for your writing?

Barry: Probably the headlines! America is bleeding out from self-inflicted wounds, and what’s bad for America is good for thriller writers. Politicians give us unlimited source material we could never make up on our own—because no one would believe it.  Hell, people don’t believe it anyway, and it’s happening to them in their own lives.

Q: The title of your blog is “The Heart of the Matter”, which is also the title of one of Graham Greene’s most famous novels. Has Graham Green always been inspirational for you?

Barry: Yes. The Quiet American especially. Moral ambiguity makes for an interesting story.

Q: You recently released a communications manifesto for the Democratic Party. How did this come about? Will you be releasing more such pieces in the future?

Barry: Ah, The Ass Is A Poor Receptacle For The Head: Why Democrats Suck At Communication, And How They Could Improve. Something I had to get out of my system, but it won’t do much good. Most Democrats suck less by accident and more on purpose. When talking to voters, they blame the mean Republican boogeyman for all their failings; when talking to corporate donors, they wink and nod. The result is votes from dupes and money from the corporations the politicians serve. I could give party elders the best advice in the world (and The Ass’s advice is quite good), but they’ll never listen as long as Progressive voters will vote for Obama literally no matter what his policies because of how scary Michele Bachmann is. Why would Obama or any politician ever listen to you if he knows you’re going to vote for him no matter what?

Q: Nearly four years ago you wrote an excellent article about utilizing Myspace as a Business tool. Has this perspective changed any because of newer social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads?

Barry: My perspective is much the same. For commercial purposes, I think a strong online presence is important. I can see that just from how high my short story sales pop when I announce them on Facebook, Twitter, and my blog. The main thing is to use social media to build relationships, not to sell books. If you offer people value—entertainment, information—you’ll build relationships, and the sales will follow naturally. If you just try to sell, people will flee screaming in horror.

But I think digital self-publishing has shifted the value of an author’s time back to writing. I think the best marketing use of an author’s time lies in writing more stories. Not that social media and advertising aren’t useful; they certainly are. But nothing is as effective in selling a book as writing and publishing a new one.

Q: On a comical note, I was surprised to see your name crop up in the Jack Daniels books by J.A. Konrath. How does it feel to be a part of the Jack Daniels universe?

Barry: It feels… dirty. In a great way.

Q: In your Mistakes section, you encourage readers to point out any errors that were missed in your books, so you can have them corrected in future editions. What’s the silliest & most serious mistake you’ve ever made?

Barry: Silliest was probably a mistake I made about latex gloves. Most serious was probably putting Dox on a plane with a potential pneumothorax, which apparently could have killed him.

Q: What are you writing next?

Barry: Next up is a Dox short story, a Delilah short story, and probably a Rain prequel novel. A lot to look forward to. :)

Q: So far you’ve just written thriller novels. Have you ever thought about writing a book in a different genre like fantasy or science fiction? Conversely, what’s the one idea you’ve alway wanted to write, but couldn’t due to time constraints or other factors?

Barry: I just write what comes to me, and if a fantasy or sci-fi idea felt appealing enough, I’d certainly try to tackle it. There’s nothing I want to write but haven’t; it’s just a question of the problem of one book at a time.

Q: What are some of your hobbies?

Barry: I write about politics and language at my syndicated blog Heart of the Matter, and work out, and, when I’m very lucky, get to take a quiet walk at night.

And there’s nothing like a good book and a fine single-malt Scotch.

Q: Lastly, how do you feel about your growth as a writer and what kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?

Barry: Writing is a craft, which means the more you practice, the better you get—and I love that. My legacy? I hope memorable characters, great stories, and a few eyes I’ve opened about what’s really happening in post-9/11 America.

"How Firm a Foundation" by David Weber (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

Official David Weber Website
Order "How Firm a Foundation" HERE or as an Audiobook HERE
Read FBC Review of By Schism Rent Asunder
Read FBC Review of By Heresies Distressed
Read FBC Review of A Mighty Fortress
Read FBC Interview with David Weber

Listen to a Clip of the Audiobook of How Firm a Foundation



INTRODUCTION: "How Firm a Foundation" is the fifth installment in the Safehold Saga of David Weber and after finishing it I have to say that while Safehold has remained one of my top four ongoing sff series, it slipped a little down since this book while a solid David Weber offering is the weakest of the series for several reasons I will describe later, most notably the ratio depth/number of pages getting towards "extremely successful author needs to tell all details" levels.

While technically science fiction and indeed quite sf-nal in ethos, "Safehold" is much closer to epic fantasy in theme and world building. If Off Armageddon Reef had as main focus adventure and naval battles, By Schism Rent Asunder intrigue and revelations, By Heresies Distressed land war and consolidation, A Mighty Fortress faith and the second round of all-out naval battles, How Firm a Foundation is mostly a "lull in the action/setup" with a bit of "Empire Strikes Back" in it.

Since I talked at length about the setting and characters in my reviews of volumes 2 and 3 linked above, while the author talked at length about the series in my interview with him, here I will assume familiarity with the context and the main characters, so be aware of massive spoilers for volumes 1-4 below, volumes which will be referred by initials (OAR, BSRA, BHD, AMF) as is the usual when discussing a hugely popular author like David Weber.

ANALYSIS: "How Firm a Foundation" has an interesting structure in the series and while things happen I found it the least satisfying novel to date because almost all the great moments - and it has a lot of putative such - are repeats from the earlier four novels - for example we find out what the key is and it is not as mind blowing as Merlin visiting Saint Zherneau in BSRA, or the martyrdoms/Charisian retaliation, wrenching and satisfying respectively still do not compare with Eryk Dynnis and the Delferak hangings to which they are also very similar.

"How Firm a Foundation" has a high major characters body count, and I was shocked at least at one of the main character deaths which was really unexpected, though again in emotionality it did not reach Harahld's death in OAR. As series placement, the book is a clear first of the next stage of the series, so despite all, not much is decided in the end and we are left with a huge "to be continued" sign.

I think the main problem with the novel lies in its structure - OAR had a clear arc and ended at the best point possible with the invasion of Charis shattered, the schism opening and Cayleb taking over; BSRA + BHD are one huge novel split in two and again they solve their arc - the Charisian imperial reach is achieved with the alliance with Chisolhm, the defection of Emerald and the defeat of Corisande, while the Church is preparing their counterattack, which is of course the topic of A Mighty Fortress another one book story arc like OAR dealing with the second naval war between Charis and The Temple and the Charisians' overwhelming victory.

But at the end of AMF we had reached a lull and the first 200 pages of How Firm a Foundation reflect that and the book is very slow there. Things get going of course but due to the military realities, it is mostly intrigue, terrorism and mop-up on the seas until of course the last part where the proverbial **** starts hitting the fan and we get to the next stage and total war, however the novel stops there since it is already over 600 pages. So cutting the first 200 pages to 50 condensed pages of the same and expanding the last part would have done wonders.

This being said I still turned the pages and stayed way too late to read the novel and I still loved it a lot. As scenes go, as mentioned lots of great moments but we've seen them before so their impact is more muted, though there is one that truly stands out with Merlin at his inimitable cool deep in enemy territory. And Anzhelyk still rocks!

Overall How Firm a Foundation is still an A+ for the sweep of the storyline and its great characters - or if you want its epic-ness which is still there at the highest levels of sff -though a little short of the awesome novel I expected when A Mighty Fortress seemed to conclude the first part of the series. However the next novel should finally clear up the scene and move Safehold towards the decisive resolution we all expect with bathed breath!