After doing so many posts of simply putting out reviews of TV shows or movies when I have enough of them together, I figured I should do the same for the books I read. 2023 is proving to be a year of a lot of reading so far, and not just from all the Conan books I've been reading. So, breaking from the tradition of simply posting a massive article at the end of the year, I'll be reviewing the books I read this way as well. For this one, I've got a mix of spy thrillers, fantasy, and science fiction. Maybe I'll get around to something that isn't genre fiction, but for now, here's what I've been reading lately.
by John le Carré
After reading a handful of Conan the Barbarian books, I decided I needed a break from the macho fantasy and shifted gears to a British Cold War spy thriller. As I greatly enjoyed The Spy Who Came In from the Cold last year, I decided to follow up with the second book of that collection, which ended up being quite unrelated to George Smiley and The Circus. While we do get another information grind in an effort to find a defector, this time it takes place in the British Embassy in Bonn, Germany, adding extra layer of complexity with all the diplomacy and civil unrest going on.
The first major difference is that the main character, Alan Turner, is nothing like George Smiley. Turner goes all in, with a rather aggressive tone in his questioning, making each interview feel like an interrogation. However, given the circumstances, Turner's frustrations seem pretty understandable. When Leo Harting, a model employee in the British Embassy, disappears with some important documents, Turner's investigations make it pretty clear that Harting had exercised quite a bit of social engineering to get into everyone's good graces so that they would look the other way when he disappears. So Turner not only has to navigate the nuances of international crises of his circumstances, he has to mine through all the work politics that have built up around his target. From there, the intrigue builds, resulting in quite the political clash of ideals regarding, Britain, Europe, and the numbing nature of diplomacy.
I have to say that, compared to The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, this one has a lot more figurative language, as le Carré is trying to build this almost dream-like interpretation of what Bonn was like in the 60s: a miasma of fog from the Rhine, culture clash, and banality. He has a lot of sideways descriptions about the various places Turner investigates, while leaving the character depictions and personalities as subtext between all the dialogue. While he does have quite the web of characters, it ends up not being all that difficult to follow, mostly because everyone has their own weird connection to Harting and the things he's done. At first, it feels like a bit of a slog as Turner has to parse through the perspectives of multiple people to get a feel for Harting and why he disappeared. However, just when it feels like Turner is running in circles, he finally gets the connection he needs and is able to pull the facts from the fog. The book then creates this interesting tension between Turner's need for justice and the Embassy's desire for deniability and obfuscation. In the end though, the drama mostly seems to serve how even chaos can become mundane, and the human tendency towards complacency can be a dangerous thing.
Again, I found le Carré's writing to be compelling, as each moment seemed to lead into the next, even if they didn't make the most sense right away. However, Turner's pushiness helps things stay on track through the end, giving the book a spine to build around. While it may not seem all that compelling to read pages of characters talking, he writes it with a strong sense of urgency that it never feels dull or meaningless. It's certainly a fascinating story that turns the German city into some kind of fanciful morality play, without completely disconnecting from the reality that it's talking about.
by John le Carré
Once I finished A Small Town in Germany, I immediately dove right into the next one of that collection. Perhaps it's a little weird to have read these books in this order, given their years of publication, but that was the order they were in that three-in-one book I picked up, this one being third. Once again, we're back into the Cold War spy efforts of the United Kingdom, and while George Smiley and the Circus are there at the edges of the story, this one focuses on a different group of characters working for military intelligence section simply known as The Department trying to dig up this bit of dirt on their own.
However, the structure is very different. The focus this time is a questionable bit of land in Eastern Germany that may be hosting a number of powerful rockets, and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Department isn't eager to let England face their own showdown if they don't have to. The result is a story that follows three "runs" at information regarding this piece of land. The first was a fly-over that captured some film, which ultimately got lost when the handler suspiciously got hit by a car. The second run was an attempt at picking up the handler's body, hoping that the film was still among his remaining affects, but that backfires pretty badly. The third run then takes up the rest of the book and focuses on this department retraining an old spy named Fred Leiser and sending him in to the land itself, with the hope that he can clandestinely gather the information about what's really going on. The Department is keen on keeping this job away from the Circus, hoping their success will revitalize their own efforts and stature among the government auxiliaries. However, the Circus seems more than happy to let them have this, and curiously offer a lot of help, when they can.
At first, it's a bit strange. There's this strong sense of detail as le Carré's goes over many of the bits, piece by piece, especially with Leiser's training. The emphasis on procedure has a tendency to turn the book into quite the tedious work, filling the pages with descriptions and processes, as if each part needs its own time in the spotlight. There is also a very strong feeling of futility about a lot of it, as if what their doing seems to be for its own sake, and that any attempt at seeing this as another opportunity for glory comes across as daydreams at best and delusions at worst. In the end, as things proceed to fall apart, it makes for quite the harrowing read.
Looking around at some information, I guess le Carré wrote this book as a response to some of the reactions to The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. He was frustrated that some readers saw it as a romanticization of the spy life-style, not a critique of it, so he set out to make something that was starker, more of a satire of spy stories rather than a celebration of it. I can certainly say he succeeded, to a large degree. While The Spy Who Came In From The Cold at least had a sense of mystery (as did A Small Town in Germany), this just becomes a depressing story about watching a group of men chase their own tails. Effective, but probably not as recommendable as the others.
by Ed Greenwood
While I have played many video games in the Forgotten Realms universe, I've never read any of the dozens of novels that have been written for the D&D universe before this one. However, earlier this year, I joined a D&D group at my local game store that uses the Realms as its setting, and then suddenly became the Dungeon Master, in charge of the game and its world. So I figured I should learn more about the Forgotten Realms, and this book had been sitting on my shelf as if waiting for this very moment. Written by the Realms creator himself, Ed Greenwood, I was expecting a good exploration of his world, and while I did get that, the plot is pretty much a mess.
The story starts out innocently enough: a teenage girl named Shandril, who has worked at an inn her whole life, seeks a life of adventure, and when an adventuring group suddenly lose their thief, Shandril is more than happy to step in. At first, it feels a little callous as the group take on the girl without too much remorse for their lost friend, but the book doesn't waste much time exploring her new group as they seem to get killed off rather suddenly (and off-camera). From there, she finds herself with a new group, featuring Narm, a rather handsome young wizard apprentice, various Knights of Myth Drannor, and the old sage Elminster, who recognizes that Shandril has the mysterious power of spellfire, making her the envy of many of a mage, both good and evil.
While the set up may be relatively standard, the book has some very odd and clunky pacing. At first, things feel like they're going too slow, with a lot busy work getting to where the story is going. However, the action scenes are a vague blur of action, with big things supposedly going on, but they're so poorly explained that it feels like homework to try and deduce what just happened. It also doesn't help to have so many names thrown around without being given much detail or description, making it hard to keep track of everyone, and there are a lot of characters. And then you have sections where a scene will start, and a handful of nameless characters will start fighting each other, and you have no idea who they are, what they look like, why they're fighting, or even why they're in the story at all! All of the faux-Shakespearean dialogue doesn't really help matters either.
It also doesn't help that the story doesn't really have a central villain, but a sequence of villains who either stumble into the heroes' laps, or end up just inadvertently killing each other. Eventually, the story settles on Shandril and Narm getting married and seeking out their own destiny in the face of a lifetime of being hunted, but it takes a while to get there. The end seems to try and wrap things up with a handful of deus ex machinas, but it barely holds together as all these random things just keep happening. Despite Greenwood having developed the Realms on his own for at least a decade up to this point, his first book stumbles about like kid too excited to show stuff off without any organizing his ideas first, making for a pretty unsatisfying read.
by George Lucas, Alan Dean Foster, Donald F. Glut, and James Khan
I've had this book for nearly as long as I can remember, but since I knew the films by heart, I never felt the need to read the novelizations. However, in my modern quest to read all the novels I own, I decided to sit down and read through these. I was also curious to see if there would be any differences, as the radio drama versions of these stories (a personal favorite of mine, actually) did tweak things here and there. Unsurprisingly, they're mostly faithful to the films, aside from a few extra lines of dialogue and some different descriptions of a few scenes and characters. The first one has the most extra content, starting much earlier in Luke Skywalker's story, but others are less willing to deviate from what was on screen.
As books, they're definitely on the weak side. Novelizations are always a bit of a rough read, but here, it's pretty clear that the writer was expecting the reader to already be familiar with the film, as a lot of stuff simply isn't explained; everything from world-building concepts to descriptions of monsters or vehicles is pretty brief. Still, this makes them some pretty brisk reads, overall, and perhaps that's appropriate, as it makes them more like the classic pulp fiction that inspired this franchise to begin with.
I don't know if there's much to say about the different authors. Alan Dean Foster (who ghostwrote the first book for Lucas) does okay, but gives us a much more emotional Luke Skywalker. Donald F. Glut tweaks some of the characterizations to try and get in their heads a little more for Empire, and James Kahn adds more than a few lines of purple prose to Return, making it a peculiar read of its own. Overall, though, they're largely underwhelming, especially for those who know the films as well as I do, and I can't imagine they would be a good choice for newcomers to the titanic franchise. Maybe, back in the day, as being able to see a given movie again after it left the theaters didn't really happen much, having the book version may have been the next best thing. Now, however, they're certainly relics of a lost age that unfortunately don't seem to have much purpose or relevancy anymore.
Well, that's the first for this year. I speculate I'll just have one other article that wraps up the rest of 2023 at the end, as I'm still slowly working my way through those Conan books (among other things). Still, these books have each been fascinating, in their own way, and given what I'm reading now, the next article should be another peculiar bunch of novels. At the very least, they're giving me something to write about for this blog of mine!
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