Laith
And here I was worried that January would open with 3 duds. Not the case. Not the case at all. What I got is one of the best fantasy novels I've ever read. Night's Master is a unique blending of different traditional mythos, a little Abrahamic religion, a dash of Greek gods, and for added spice it's written in the style of Arabian Nights. It's high fantasy and weird, it's also progressive as fuck for 1978; I loved it.This book is a lot of firsts. This is the first book in the Flat Earth series, it is also my first Tanith Lee novel. Oh, and I almost forgot: this is my first 5-Star read of 2024 (meaning it's also the first book I have bought in physical print this year).Well, shucks, I guess I spoiled the review. Just pretend I didn't say anything.Night's Master is high fantasy, it's about as high as fantasy can get if you ask me. I've only read one other series that comes close to taking such a lofty approach to its story telling, and that's [b:The Shadow of the Torturer 60211 The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun, #1) Gene Wolfe https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1329650008l/60211.SX50.jpg 762497], which I'll come back to later. This is the first book in a sequence of stories that chronicle the Flat Earth, a mystical time when the Earth was flat and sandwiched between the demonic under-earth and the mysteriously silent heavens. This entry follows the master of the under-earth, the prince of demons, Azhrarn. What Night's Master is, is a series of interwoven stories that connect in some way to the deeds/misdeeds of Azhrarn. This book is NOT a protagonist-centered narrative. What we get is the mythology of an entirely imagined world, something similar to the Homeric Hymns and the Epics of the Epic Cycle. It's more accurate to say that those themes are mixed into the delivery of Arabian Nights, with each story leading into the next across the ages. This is written in a style similar to the epics, not really in terms of morality or density and inscrutability, but rather it captures the episodic and dreamy vibe of stories of the oral tradition. You could easily imagine the contents of this book being read out by a bard or crier to the illiterate inhabitants of some nameless tavern. It's Lore, and it's good Lore. I mentioned Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun earlier. I don't want this whole review to be compare and contrast between these works, but Wolfe is the only other person who writes like this. BTNS is a reimagining of the (far future) worlds' mythos in the style of the Testaments. It's wacky and weird, but also ingenious and anachronistic to a time that does not exist. Wolfe's work is a bit of a Christ allegory, and the prose carries a lot of that trademark biblical density. Those characteristics mean the narrative adopts a more traditional story structure to offset just how alien its prose and story beats can be. But we're talking about Night's Master here, right? Well, this book is similar to Gene Wolfe's work, it assumes the character and style of Arabian Nights and old fairy tales and curates a careful mix of uncaring gods and vicious demons playing the games of Greek tragedy upon humanity. This book is taking the grandeur and imagery that Greek and Christian myths have, and it weaves this flowing tale that borrows from those tropes and stories but without any of the moralism, none of the preaching. I really dug Night's Master, this book has politics that I agree with and prose that's 5/5 for depth and clarity. I actually preferred this to TBNS because of how fantastic the prose was. Not to leave it at that-I understood this book cover to cover on my first read, it seems to me that Lee went for clarity in prose given the winding nature of the narrative, and that's never been the case for Wolfe's work. I've to say that if this is just how Lee writes, I need to read more Lee.This book is nearly 50 years old, so I won't say much more. If you're interested, but I haven't sold you, feel free to check out some other reviews by much better critics (I think you'll end up adding this to your TBR). If you are a fan of Romantasy/faerie courts books, I would highly recommend this, especially if your main draw to those books is the lore and world building.
And here I was worried that January would open with 3 duds. Not the case. Not the case at all. What I got is one of the best fantasy novels I've ever read. Night's Master is a unique blending of different traditional mythos, a little Abrahamic religion, a dash of Greek gods, and for added spice it's written in the style of Arabian Nights. It's high fantasy and weird, it's also progressive as fuck for 1978; I loved it.This book is a lot of firsts. This is the first book in the Flat Earth series, it is also my first Tanith Lee novel. Oh, and I almost forgot: this is my first 5-Star read of 2024 (meaning it's also the first book I have bought in physical print this year).Well, shucks, I guess I spoiled the review. Just pretend I didn't say anything.Night's Master is high fantasy, it's about as high as fantasy can get if you ask me. I've only read one other series that comes close to taking such a lofty approach to its story telling, and that's [b:The Shadow of the Torturer 60211 The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun, #1) Gene Wolfe https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1329650008l/60211.SX50.jpg 762497], which I'll come back to later. This is the first book in a sequence of stories that chronicle the Flat Earth, a mystical time when the Earth was flat and sandwiched between the demonic under-earth and the mysteriously silent heavens. This entry follows the master of the under-earth, the prince of demons, Azhrarn. What Night's Master is, is a series of interwoven stories that connect in some way to the deeds/misdeeds of Azhrarn. This book is NOT a protagonist-centered narrative. What we get is the mythology of an entirely imagined world, something similar to the Homeric Hymns and the Epics of the Epic Cycle. It's more accurate to say that those themes are mixed into the delivery of Arabian Nights, with each story leading into the next across the ages. This is written in a style similar to the epics, not really in terms of morality or density and inscrutability, but rather it captures the episodic and dreamy vibe of stories of the oral tradition. You could easily imagine the contents of this book being read out by a bard or crier to the illiterate inhabitants of some nameless tavern. It's Lore, and it's good Lore. I mentioned Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun earlier. I don't want this whole review to be compare and contrast between these works, but Wolfe is the only other person who writes like this. BTNS is a reimagining of the (far future) worlds' mythos in the style of the Testaments. It's wacky and weird, but also ingenious and anachronistic to a time that does not exist. Wolfe's work is a bit of a Christ allegory, and the prose carries a lot of that trademark biblical density. Those characteristics mean the narrative adopts a more traditional story structure to offset just how alien its prose and story beats can be. But we're talking about Night's Master here, right? Well, this book is similar to Gene Wolfe's work, it assumes the character and style of Arabian Nights and old fairy tales and curates a careful mix of uncaring gods and vicious demons playing the games of Greek tragedy upon humanity. This book is taking the grandeur and imagery that Greek and Christian myths have, and it weaves this flowing tale that borrows from those tropes and stories but without any of the moralism, none of the preaching. I really dug Night's Master, this book has politics that I agree with and prose that's 5/5 for depth and clarity. I actually preferred this to TBNS because of how fantastic the prose was. Not to leave it at that-I understood this book cover to cover on my first read, it seems to me that Lee went for clarity in prose given the winding nature of the narrative, and that's never been the case for Wolfe's work. I've to say that if this is just how Lee writes, I need to read more Lee.This book is nearly 50 years old, so I won't say much more. If you're interested, but I haven't sold you, feel free to check out some other reviews by much better critics (I think you'll end up adding this to your TBR). If you are a fan of Romantasy/faerie courts books, I would highly recommend this, especially if your main draw to those books is the lore and world building.
We've all read books that we couldn't put down, this is one of those books. Well, it might be. It's only 133 pages, so I didn't really have a chance to put it down. Days later, I'm still not sure what to make of this book, it's been very hard to tell what it was trying to say. It's alien, non-conforming, and obtuse. I would normally say, “I loved it,” at this point, but I didn't; this might just be me failing to digest the book, but it seemed to be confusing on purpose. I'll give a bit more of the context that helped to explain some of the artistic choices in this book, but I should make it clear that I definitely see this book primarily as art as opposed to entertainment (my thinking being, all entertainment is art but, not all art is entertainment).
I classify The Employees as an experimental SF art novel. This book is framed as a series of non-linear interview statements with the crew of the Six-Thousand Ship. The ship is corporate owned and orbits around the planet of “New Discovery”; its crew are a mix of humans and humanoid robot/AI constructs. In advance of the story, the ship's crew discover a series of Objects on New Discovery, which they collect and place aboard the ship for study and care. The Objects are truly bizarre and possibly alive, they emit aromas or some type of aura that begin to affect both the human and humanoid crew alike. We are reading their statements to the corporate representatives onboard the ship.
Before I go further, I think it's important to note that this book was conceived as a companion piece to a contemporary art installation. The objects in the story are meant to correspond to the objects in the installation. The installation itself, Consumed Future Spewed Up As Present, is a commentary on form, presence, and the body. That tracks with me. The Employees struck me in part as an exploration of the difference between a human being and a thing; the objects fill the role of metaphors for the variety in the human form. In both works, the objects, their presentation and accessories serve to define different facets of the human form as well as the ways in which visual/sociological context can at times alter the perception of those facets. The statement ultimately amounting to: Humans come in all shapes and sizes and modes of dress and modifications- the definition is not fixed to body or form.
Beyond those themes, The Employees is also a workplace satire. If the title didn't give it away this is a workplace novel, and like the narration at the start points out, the testimonials we are reading have been collected in the interest of, “reduction or enhancement of performance, task-related understanding, and the acquisition of new knowledge and skills.” There's a hierarchy between the humans and humanoids that exists but is not defined, and there is tension and envy that builds between them as the novel goes on. But there's a third group, faceless and cold, and that's the representative(s) that are taking these statements: Management. The satire is in the form, as the employees make increasingly more emotional statements, the focus and presentation does not shift at all, nothing changes regardless of what the employees say (This clicked immediately as a corpo drone myself). The employees are secondary to the stated corporate interest, and the more you read, the clearer this aspect becomes as more and more of the story is cut out of the statements.
So yeah, this book is mad artsy, and sometimes you sacrifice for your art. I think that's the case here because the narrative forms around the Objects; what the book gains in the context and grounding of the installation, it loses in out on in its standalone form. I imagine it's quite rare for a book like this to break out on its own, and it's a testament to how well written this piece is that it manages to escape the orbit of its artistic roots despite not being a traditional novel. Divorced from the art, this book has its own anxious and looming energy, we don't often know who is speaking or what the text is speaking on. Ravn is stingy with the delivery of the plot details: there are stirrings of a revolt, the absence of (what I surmise to be) the chief scientist, and some type of corporate tribunal is occurring far in the background. Working within the testimonial format, it's actually very impressive that we get so much characterization and plot and imagery without any heavy lifting from the narration/narrator/thematic framework.
What this book amounted to was a series of eerie visuals that give the distinct sense that something has been obscured or censored from the reader. This is the magic of the book, it appears hollow on first inspection, but the further you go, the more obvious it becomes that something is excising anything not related to the Objects and worker efficiency. What are the add-ons that some humans wear? What about the child holograms, what on earth are those? What became of the chief scientist? There's something stifling about how precise this novel is with its visual focus, and how purposeful it is with obscuring the rest. So yes, this novel works, and it's kind of incredible exactly how it works, it's so cool to me that you can tell a story by not telling a story. But it's not really all that fun of a read because of how much is obscured from the reader, I'm all for a puzzle, but I'm not going to solve the Riemann Hypothesis just for fun.
TL;DR: This is one artsy book.
We've all read books that we couldn't put down, this is one of those books. Well, it might be. It's only 133 pages, so I didn't really have a chance to put it down. Days later, I'm still not sure what to make of this book, it's been very hard to tell what it was trying to say. It's alien, non-conforming, and obtuse. I would normally say, “I loved it,” at this point, but I didn't; this might just be me failing to digest the book, but it seemed to be confusing on purpose. I'll give a bit more of the context that helped to explain some of the artistic choices in this book, but I should make it clear that I definitely see this book primarily as art as opposed to entertainment (my thinking being, all entertainment is art but, not all art is entertainment).
I classify The Employees as an experimental SF art novel. This book is framed as a series of non-linear interview statements with the crew of the Six-Thousand Ship. The ship is corporate owned and orbits around the planet of “New Discovery”; its crew are a mix of humans and humanoid robot/AI constructs. In advance of the story, the ship's crew discover a series of Objects on New Discovery, which they collect and place aboard the ship for study and care. The Objects are truly bizarre and possibly alive, they emit aromas or some type of aura that begin to affect both the human and humanoid crew alike. We are reading their statements to the corporate representatives onboard the ship.
Before I go further, I think it's important to note that this book was conceived as a companion piece to a contemporary art installation. The objects in the story are meant to correspond to the objects in the installation. The installation itself, Consumed Future Spewed Up As Present, is a commentary on form, presence, and the body. That tracks with me. The Employees struck me in part as an exploration of the difference between a human being and a thing; the objects fill the role of metaphors for the variety in the human form. In both works, the objects, their presentation and accessories serve to define different facets of the human form as well as the ways in which visual/sociological context can at times alter the perception of those facets. The statement ultimately amounting to: Humans come in all shapes and sizes and modes of dress and modifications- the definition is not fixed to body or form.
Beyond those themes, The Employees is also a workplace satire. If the title didn't give it away this is a workplace novel, and like the narration at the start points out, the testimonials we are reading have been collected in the interest of, “reduction or enhancement of performance, task-related understanding, and the acquisition of new knowledge and skills.” There's a hierarchy between the humans and humanoids that exists but is not defined, and there is tension and envy that builds between them as the novel goes on. But there's a third group, faceless and cold, and that's the representative(s) that are taking these statements: Management. The satire is in the form, as the employees make increasingly more emotional statements, the focus and presentation does not shift at all, nothing changes regardless of what the employees say (This clicked immediately as a corpo drone myself). The employees are secondary to the stated corporate interest, and the more you read, the clearer this aspect becomes as more and more of the story is cut out of the statements.
So yeah, this book is mad artsy, and sometimes you sacrifice for your art. I think that's the case here because the narrative forms around the Objects; what the book gains in the context and grounding of the installation, it loses in out on in its standalone form. I imagine it's quite rare for a book like this to break out on its own, and it's a testament to how well written this piece is that it manages to escape the orbit of its artistic roots despite not being a traditional novel. Divorced from the art, this book has its own anxious and looming energy, we don't often know who is speaking or what the text is speaking on. Ravn is stingy with the delivery of the plot details: there are stirrings of a revolt, the absence of (what I surmise to be) the chief scientist, and some type of corporate tribunal is occurring far in the background. Working within the testimonial format, it's actually very impressive that we get so much characterization and plot and imagery without any heavy lifting from the narration/narrator/thematic framework.
What this book amounted to was a series of eerie visuals that give the distinct sense that something has been obscured or censored from the reader. This is the magic of the book, it appears hollow on first inspection, but the further you go, the more obvious it becomes that something is excising anything not related to the Objects and worker efficiency. What are the add-ons that some humans wear? What about the child holograms, what on earth are those? What became of the chief scientist? There's something stifling about how precise this novel is with its visual focus, and how purposeful it is with obscuring the rest. So yes, this novel works, and it's kind of incredible exactly how it works, it's so cool to me that you can tell a story by not telling a story. But it's not really all that fun of a read because of how much is obscured from the reader, I'm all for a puzzle, but I'm not going to solve the Riemann Hypothesis just for fun.
TL;DR: This is one artsy book.
“So basically you're sticking around to watch us all fuck up ?”
“Yes. It's one of life's few guaranteed constants.”
I feel like I've summited Everest, one of my reading goals for the year was to finish the Culture series and it feels bittersweet. The Hydrogen Sonata is the last book in the series and it's quite fitting despite not being the planned conclusion for the series. Reading through this book I got the sense that this was something Banks wrote on or near his death bed, but that is not the case. It was after the publication of this book in 2012 that Iain Banks was diagnosed with gall bladder cancer, his condition rapidly deteriorated and he died in June 2013. It's fitting then (almost serendipitous) that this book is about the end of a civilization.
The story is centered around the Gzilt, one of the oldest civilizations in the galaxy, who are on the verge of performing the Sublimation, a mysterious process that would elevate them to a higher level of existence beyond the physical world. However, just before they can undergo the Sublimation, a question arises about the authenticity of their sacred text, the “Book of Truth,” and a Gzilt citizen, Vyr Cossant, is forced by circumstance to set out to uncover the truth. The “truth” just so happens to rest in the hands of the Culture's oldest citizen, the man who lives forever, Ngaroe QiRia.
Banks is revisiting and expanding on Sublimation, the transference of an entire civilization from the physical realm to a high-energy quantum state bordering on non-existence. Other authors may have struggled to describe just what exactly is going on but as usual Banks' writing style is engaging and immersive, and his world-building is unparalleled.
This story was a little different to read given the real life context around the book, I was reading this as the end of the series as opposed to contemporary readers treating it as just another entry. The themes on offer, the nature of existence, the value of tradition, and the limits of knowledge served to enhance the fatalist tone of the book for me. It was a real shock to learn that this was not in fact written on his death bed, I though for sure that the time-to (The Gzilt timekeeping devices that have replaced conventional watches, they instead tell the time-to sublimation day) concept was meant to parallel a cancer diagnosis-three months left to live.
I am happy to be at the end of the series, but I am sad that there will never be more. This was not my favorite culture novel but The Hydrogen Sonata is a must-read for fans of science fiction and the Culture series. It is a thoughtful and entertaining novel that showcases Banks' skill as a writer and his ability to create a rich and fascinating universe. That it serves as an appropriate capstone to the series is just one of life's small but appropriate coincidences.
“So basically you're sticking around to watch us all fuck up ?”
“Yes. It's one of life's few guaranteed constants.”
I feel like I've summited Everest, one of my reading goals for the year was to finish the Culture series and it feels bittersweet. The Hydrogen Sonata is the last book in the series and it's quite fitting despite not being the planned conclusion for the series. Reading through this book I got the sense that this was something Banks wrote on or near his death bed, but that is not the case. It was after the publication of this book in 2012 that Iain Banks was diagnosed with gall bladder cancer, his condition rapidly deteriorated and he died in June 2013. It's fitting then (almost serendipitous) that this book is about the end of a civilization.
The story is centered around the Gzilt, one of the oldest civilizations in the galaxy, who are on the verge of performing the Sublimation, a mysterious process that would elevate them to a higher level of existence beyond the physical world. However, just before they can undergo the Sublimation, a question arises about the authenticity of their sacred text, the “Book of Truth,” and a Gzilt citizen, Vyr Cossant, is forced by circumstance to set out to uncover the truth. The “truth” just so happens to rest in the hands of the Culture's oldest citizen, the man who lives forever, Ngaroe QiRia.
Banks is revisiting and expanding on Sublimation, the transference of an entire civilization from the physical realm to a high-energy quantum state bordering on non-existence. Other authors may have struggled to describe just what exactly is going on but as usual Banks' writing style is engaging and immersive, and his world-building is unparalleled.
This story was a little different to read given the real life context around the book, I was reading this as the end of the series as opposed to contemporary readers treating it as just another entry. The themes on offer, the nature of existence, the value of tradition, and the limits of knowledge served to enhance the fatalist tone of the book for me. It was a real shock to learn that this was not in fact written on his death bed, I though for sure that the time-to (The Gzilt timekeeping devices that have replaced conventional watches, they instead tell the time-to sublimation day) concept was meant to parallel a cancer diagnosis-three months left to live.
I am happy to be at the end of the series, but I am sad that there will never be more. This was not my favorite culture novel but The Hydrogen Sonata is a must-read for fans of science fiction and the Culture series. It is a thoughtful and entertaining novel that showcases Banks' skill as a writer and his ability to create a rich and fascinating universe. That it serves as an appropriate capstone to the series is just one of life's small but appropriate coincidences.
A nice little break from the mainline stories. This was a quick and light read, I thought that each short story was interesting and worth the time it took to finish. My favorite three:
1. The State of the Art- The titular novella, it's a neat little easter egg of a story. I can understand the urge to pull the Earth into the Culture Universe but at the same not wanting to impact the tone/canon in a Novel sized tale. I can see a desire for a little more Culture/Contact action, but I really felt gratified by how much Earth is featured, illustrated, and reflected upon. This is a tight story with a thoughtful take on determinism and cultural relativity. I think it's worth it to read the collection just for this story. Nice to get more Sma and Skaffen Amiskaw (Iain Banks really knows what the readers want).
2. Descendant - This is how you write a horror story in 6 pages or less. The prose reminded me of Cormack McCarthy. This is one of the shorter stories in the novel, but I thought it was a head above the rest.
3. Cleaning Up - The most meta story of the bunch, there's even a nod to the Satanic Verses. A foreshadowed ending buried within the agnst and commentary. I thought this the most direct and touching story, at least for me.
A nice little break from the mainline stories. This was a quick and light read, I thought that each short story was interesting and worth the time it took to finish. My favorite three:
1. The State of the Art- The titular novella, it's a neat little easter egg of a story. I can understand the urge to pull the Earth into the Culture Universe but at the same not wanting to impact the tone/canon in a Novel sized tale. I can see a desire for a little more Culture/Contact action, but I really felt gratified by how much Earth is featured, illustrated, and reflected upon. This is a tight story with a thoughtful take on determinism and cultural relativity. I think it's worth it to read the collection just for this story. Nice to get more Sma and Skaffen Amiskaw (Iain Banks really knows what the readers want).
2. Descendant - This is how you write a horror story in 6 pages or less. The prose reminded me of Cormack McCarthy. This is one of the shorter stories in the novel, but I thought it was a head above the rest.
3. Cleaning Up - The most meta story of the bunch, there's even a nod to the Satanic Verses. A foreshadowed ending buried within the agnst and commentary. I thought this the most direct and touching story, at least for me.
Answered a promptWhat are your favorite books of all time?
