Category Archives: Reviews

Songbird: A Steampunk Fairy Tale

Professor Zebulon Volt receives the assignment of a lifetime: to create a mechanical nightingale that will pull Queen Victoria out of her depression.  The real world calls out to him as he pursues his obsession with creating artificial life.

A steampunk riff on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Nightingale.”  I’ll give you three guesses whether Texas is its own country in this world, but that doesn’t matter.  Songbird is gorgeous.  I was surprised how much dance was incorporated into a performance that was billed as a play.  The machines, the toadies at court, even the prostitutes on the Victorian streets all swirled around each other like the players in a ballet.  And the costuming, of course, is beautiful.  One of the tenets of steampunk aesthetic is attention to detail, from the Professor’s artificial hand down to Queen Victoria’s brooch.

The show’s still running until the 25th, so if you happen to be in the Twin Cities area, check it out!  Upright Egg Theater Company for more information.

Imajica: What.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a book review on Steam Trains, but this one’s another doorstopper.  It’s the dark fantasy epic Imagica, and I almost don’t know what to say about it.

The plot is … well … the plot is not the point.  This is Clive Barker we’re talking about.  It goes something along the lines of there are other dimensions out there other than our own, and our hero and heroine (and our third character who is an it – it’s a long story) must go on a quest to save the cosmos from being ripped apart.

But the plot is most definitely not the point.  You read Clive Barker to immerse yourself in his weirdness.  Imagica is a disturbing rhapsody of magic, doppelgängers, bizarre sex, murder, theology, and oceans that make men pregnant.  Oh, and God is an evil fetus-city.  What?

The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield

A reclusive, bestselling author commissions our heroine to write her biography.  The two women come to loggerheads about how the story should be told almost immediately.  Margaret, the biographer (no relation to me) thinks there is more to Vida Winter than meets the eye and is determined to get to the root of the mystery whether Winter likes it or not.   What is Winter’s real name?  Where did she come from?  And where is the thirteenth tale, Winter’s fabled short story that was never published?

The first thing you will notice on starting to read this book is the Gothic use of language.  Margaret is a moody and shy lady who spends almost all of her time working in a bookshop.  A couple of pages into the book, Margaret takes a couple of paragraphs to describe a billboard by the road.  What is this? I thought.  Is Setterfield trying to write a twenty-first-century Jane Eyre here?

The answer is yes.  Big, old British mansions abound in this book, alongside ghosts, storms, madness, intrigues with the servants, illegitimate children, and, of course, a fire.  The Thirteenth Tale is an homage to the greats of the nineteenth century, which it references throughout the text.  Vida Winter’s favorite book is Jane Eyre.

That ultimately causes The Thirteenth Tale some problems.  It’s a good story, with a nice mystery and a satisfying surprise at the end.  But when you position yourself that close to Jane Eyre, how can you possibly measure up?

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Anathem is one of those books.  A tome.  A doorstopper.  An epic.  It clocks in at a couple of pounds and nearly 1,000 pages, complete with notes on the pronunciation at the beginning and a glossary and three mathematical proofs at the end.

But this is Neal Stephenson.  What were you expecting?  The premise is simple: math monks.  In a universe eerily similar to ours, society decided it would be a good idea to cloister its scientists and mathematicians in “concents” where they live ascetically and get to see the outside world every 1, 10, 100, or 1000 years, depending on their order.  Erasmas, a young fraa of the decennial order, is about to celebrate his first open house since he joined the concent ten years ago.  But as the day of the opening approaches, strange things begin to happen.  He and his scientist monk buddies have to sneak around the Wardens Regulant and the Inquisition to investigate the deepening mystery.  Many gratuitous Platonic dialogs ensue.  The reveal is just too cool to spoil here.

The characterization is decent, but in true Stephenson form, where the story really shines is in all the extra goodies he manages to pack into the text.  Like the title.  In our world, the words “anthem” and “anathema” are not etymologically related.  But what if they were?  What if they both stemmed from the same root, some ancient word still in use by monks who don’t get out much?  When one of the scientists is excommunicated from their concent, the bells ring anathem.

Puns abound.  A smattering of Latin will help you to get the most out of this book.  A good grounding in ancient history, philosophy, geometry, and physics wouldn’t hurt, either.  And don’t miss the reference to Star Trek.

If you’re up for some mental exercise and you don’t mind a rambling “plot”, check this book out.  Stephenson’s little bonuses are well worth it.

 

The equivalent of Jews in this world is the IT department.  I … can’t explain.  You’d just have to read it for yourself.

The Salty Tart in Midtown Global Market

This is me struggling with a new digital camera.

The old one was in a purse along with a water bottle that sprung a leak and … oh, you don’t want to hear the details.  You want to hear about The Salty Tart.  It’s this unassuming little bakery in the heart of Minneapolis that has this reverential following among baking fans.  The lady who runs it has a James Beard award, for one thing (kind of like an Oscar for bakers).  Her ingredients are local, her cakes are all adorable, and people go on and on about the macaroons.

The wonderful Vu in front of a couple of cakes.

I know, I know, cupcakes are supposed to be like bell bottoms now, but I’ve been wanting to try a fancy-pants cupcake from a fancy-pants bakery, so I ordered the Surly’s Chocolate Cupcake (and split it).  And … yeah.  It tasted like beer.  The sweetness of the malt went well with the chocolate.  Good, solid chocolate cake on the bottom and good chocolate frosting on the top, and a little bit of buttercream filling.  All around, it was a good cupcake.

I forgot to take a close-up of the cupcake, but you can see it in the distance there.

The Difference Engine

“A classic – something everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” – Mark Twain

And that’s about all I have to say about The Difference Engine. William Gibson was supposed to have almost single-handedly launched the steampunk genre with this book (though some people would make arguments about Morlock Night).  The Difference Engine is for steampunk what The Lord of the Rings is for high fantasy.

But while Tolkien is more awesome than any of his imitators, Gibson feels like he’s dealing in clichés, even if he did invent them.  There’s the plucky young woman who defies Victorian gender mores, for one.  And the hotshot computer engineer.  I quit around page 30 when I found out that in this alternate history – gasp! – Texas is its own country.

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Not going to be coming out with another review for a while.  I’m onto Anathem now, and if you know anything about Neal Stephenson … this is going to take me a long time.

Iron Angel

Before turning novelist, Alan Campbell worked on developing Grand Theft: Auto for a living, and it shows.  Not that this is a bad thing; I quite liked Iron Angel.

Campbell’s debut Deepgate Codex trilogy (Iron Angel being the middle book) is punk something or other.  Steampunk?  Gothic punk?  Dieselpunk?  None of these categories quite fits.  It’s the story of a deep, richly imagined world where life sucks.  For some deific political reason that is not fully explained (yet), the goddess of Heaven has closed her gates on the world.  If you’re dead, you’re screwed, because everybody is going to Hell now.  If you’re alive, you’re screwed anyway, because Hell is planning to stage an invasion.  Iron Angel describes the movements of the ordinary and some not-so-ordinary people who have gotten caught in the crossfire.

Campbell’s descriptive power reminds one of the work of Mervyn Peake and Clive Barker.  And if you know who those two writers are, then you should be very, very afraid of this book.  Like the bit with Cinderbark Wood.  Good Lord.  There’s a lot of brutality and you might say that humanity is in a bit of a tight spot, but it’s not all doom and gloom.  Amidst all the villains, there are some characters who are quite definitely good people, and they know how to fight.  Recommended.