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Best of the Year Books
Speculative Fiction
Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, (the "Liveship Traders" series).
After years of domination by embarrassingly bad Tolkien rip-offs and silly
comic novels, the heroic fantasy genre has finally attracted some
seriously good writers doing top-of-their-form work. The best of this
good lot is Robin Hobb, who, under the name Megan Lindholm,
published one of the best contemporary fantasies of the 80s, The Wizard
of the Pigeons. In a way, her switch to a new name and a more
commercial genre might have represented a surrender -- what would
attract this fine, deep, persuasive storyteller to the genre of Eddings and
Brooks! -- but in fact she is not doing anything that remotely resembles
a Tolkien imitation. As with George R.R. Martin and David Farland, her
fantasy world owes more to Graustark than to Middle Earth, and like
these two writers her technique owes more to science fiction than to
fantasy.
The premise of the book is that on a dangerous coastline between
rival empires, a colony called Bingtown and its hidden sister colony on
the Rain Wild River have become prosperous traders, with the best of the
trader families sailing in "liveships," which, constructed of a magical
wood found only on the Rain Wild River, become imprinted with the
memories of the family and come to life, sporting a figurehead that can
talk as the ship voluntarily joins in with the enterprise. The Vestrit
family's liveship, the Vivacia, is ready to come to life as the story begins.
Almost at once, however, the family is torn asunder by pressures arising
partly from their own family dynamics -- a rivalry between sisters, one of
whom is married to a domineering foreigner -- and larger world events
that are undoing the foundation of Bingtown trader prosperity. The next
generation also has its problems -- one of the sisters has a son who
wants only to be a priest, not a sailor, and a daughter whose ambition
and loyalty to her unworthy father make her dangerous to everyone. Add
to this a pirate who plots to unite the pirates and runaway slaves of the
uncharted coast into a nation with himself as king, and you have the mix
that makes this a compelling yarn.
Paralleling this family saga and national epic is the mystery of sea
serpents who are struggling to maintain their memories, and even their
intelligence, long enough to reproduce. For a timespan that should have
marked generations, they have returned to their spawning grounds only
to find that "She Who Remembers" has not met them there, and so they
return to the open ocean without having accomplished anything. Indeed,
what emerges is an ecological pattern as fascinating within this fantasy
universe as anything Frank Herbert did with Dune. So many fantasy
series by women tend to be about costume changes and romance;
certainly those elements are present, but they are never extraneous,
always revelatory of culture and character. In short, this series rewards
the best expectations of both traditional male and female fantasy
audiences -- and of readers like me, who had been driven out of the
fantasy genre by unbearably bad writing and shallow, redundant, empty-headed storytelling.
One reason Hobb's story works better than, say, Martin's or
Farland's (which are both very good and together are a new benchmark
in heroic fantasy) is that there is no filler. If Robert Jordan had
advanced "Wheel of Time" with the same economy as Hobb uses in
"Liveship Traders," he would have finished the thing in one book. You
cannot skim these books. You cannot miss one section of one chapter.
Everything is in there for a reason and moves the story significantly
forward. And, again unlike the Martin and Farland series, Hobb's middle
book is not a let-down. In fact, astonishingly enough, most of the
mysteries are answered by the end of the second volume. And yet the
reader is still left panting for a third volume in which the characters will
resolve the unfolding tragedy of cross-purposes. Far from causing
frustration as most "middle" books do, The Mad Ship brings the series to
a new and higher level.
Hobb combines the epic quality of Tolkien, the gritty realism of
Fergusson, the quirky imagination of Goldstein, the science fictional
sensibility of Herbert -- and she writes characters and families that I
wish I'd created. There is no better writer working in speculative fiction
today.
Mystery
James Lee Burke, Heartwood
Burke is already well-known for his Dave Robicheaux mysteries, which
began as only slightly better-than-average New Orleans pot-boiler
mysteries but grew up into richly characterized, magic-tinged southern
gothic novels that made Burke, along with McCrumb and Mosley, one of
the prophets of a new kind of mythic mystery. The traditional hard-boiled-detective and police-procedurals traditions also are reaching new
levels of excellence with writers like Block, Crais, McBain, Parker,
Paretsky, Connelly, O'Connell, Jan Burke, Rendell, and of course
Grafton, and nobody holds a candle to Saylor in the milieu-mystery genre
(OK, Hillerman does, but nobody else). Still, I must admit that my soul
resonates most strongly with the work of these mythic writers.
Furthermore, I am one of those heartless readers who is not
interested in the moans and complaints of series-detective novelists who
get tired of their most popular characters and long to write "real" novels.
As far as I'm concerned, they are writing real novels, and most of them
who stray from their series heroes do second-rate work, mostly because,
deprived of the tools of the genre they have mastered, they have not
acquired the tools of the genre they're attempting. And even when they
set out to start a new series, they usually create a character that
parodies the original. (The only exceptions I can think of offhand are
Lawrence Block, who has two equally good and very different series
characters, and Robert Parker, who is starting a new series -- with a
female hero -- that may resemble the Spenser novels a bit too much, but
has the great virtue of never requiring us to read a conversation involving
Susan Silverman.) So when I saw, with Cimarron Rose, that James Lee
Burke was starting a new series, I dreaded the worst.
I was wrong. Billy Bob Holland, a defense attorney in the dry
Texas town of Deaf Smith, is far more interesting and morally complex
than Dave Robicheaux ever was -- and that's saying a lot. Because the
family stories are so intertwined with the mysteries, everything is
personal to everybody -- and I'll confess, my own experience with writing
complicated fictional families and communities makes me very respectful
of other storytellers who handle this most complex of storytelling feats,
not just adequately, but brilliantly.
With Heartwood, Burke creates a masterpiece of a novel that also
happens to be a mystery. And you know what? I'm not going to try to
summarize the plot because that's not what hooks and holds you
(though it's quite good, involving an old flame who is now married to the
devil, more or less, and old injustices coming home to roost). It's the
characters that win you over, heart and soul, and I'll let Burke tell you
about them himself when you read this book. You don't have to have
read Cimarron Rose first. But once you've read Heartwood, I guarantee
you'll not be content until you read the other Deaf Smith book, and then
you'll be as annoyed as I am that those are the only two that exist.
Biography
Tom Nolan, Ross Macdonald: A Biography.
OK, so maybe the reason I chose this as my biography of the year is that
it's the story of a writer and a lot of what he went through resonates with
me because of my own life and experiences. Or maybe it's because I'm
such a fan of his work -- despite the claims of Dashiell Hammett and
Raymond Chandler, it was Ross MacDonald who, with his Lew Archer
novels, brought the hard-boiled detective from two-dimensional male
wish-fulfilment to fully realized character.
But recognizing my biases, I still think that Nolan has done a
triumphant job of making the tale of a real life both fascinating and
truthful. Writers generally have nothing to do with great world events,
and MacDonald was such a private person that there's little of the
gossipy scandal that often drives celebrity biographies. Instead what we
see is the struggle -- and, often, the failure -- of a decent man to
reconcile his artistic ambitions with his genuine devotion to and hopes
for his family. Indeed, in the end it is his tragic family life, not his ironic
career (he achieved the long-sought public acclaim and financial rewards
just as Alzheimer's first weakened, then ended his literary career), that
remain with me most powerfully after reading this book.
History
Robert B. Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor
First, let me make this clear: Both Stinnett and I have no doubt that the
US definitely needed to enter World War II, and that FDR was right that
he had to overcome the isolationism of the American people and win
public support for the US to join in the struggle against the Axis powers.
This is not a book that in any way suggests that the US should have sat
it out.
The issue here is not whether, but how. Because this book makes
the claim, and then documents it so thoroughly that it cannot be
doubted, that FDR not only knew well in advance that the Japanese were
going to attack Pearl Harbor, but also deliberately provoked the attack
and just as deliberately made sure that the American forces in Pearl
Harbor were utterly unprepared for it. He did it by knowingly moving the
Pacific fleet into a vulnerable and provocative position, removing officers
who resisted his course of action, by withholding crucial intelligence from
-- and only from -- the Navy and Army commanders in Hawaii, and
finally by covering up these actions with deception that continues to this
day.
The conclusion is inescapable: At any time prior to the Pearl
Harbor attack -- and I mean any time, since he knew of Japanese
actions and intentions every step of the way -- Roosevelt could have
prevented the attack, or made it a fair fight, or at least saved American
lives by moving the fleet. While it is probable that he did not realize how
devastating a carrier attack would be and thus did not realize how many
ships would be lost and how many sailors would die, he knew he was
putting American forces in harm's way without their knowledge and
without preparation or warning of any kind, and he was doing it so that
the American people would be shocked into supporting American entry
into the war against Hitler.
If you believe that the end justifies any means at all, then this book
won't bother you a bit. Indeed, the kind of mindset that the American
Left has always shown, from the days of defending Stalin's pact with
Hitler to the ludicrous-to-contemptible defenses of Clinton and attacks
on his accusers, will undoubtedly pooh-pooh this book as being "old
news" or Buchanan-like historical revisionism. After all, FDR was of the
Left and was getting us into a just war -- therefore to criticize his actions
is tantamount to supporting Hitler, right?
Wrong wrong wrong.
Because we have the example of George Bush. When Iraq invaded
Kuwait, every opinion poll showed that while the American people
thought Iraq was wrong, there was little support for American military
intervention. Yet Bush, who will yet emerge as one of our few great
presidents who was also a good man, did not shrink from the task of
genuine leadership. Both for reasons of international law and global
geopolitics, he knew that Iraq's seizure of Kuwait could not be allowed to
stand, and so he set about building an unbelievable coalition -- Muslim
nations joining the US in a war against a fellow Muslim? Israel
supporting this by deliberately not defending itself against missile
attacks? -- and openly persuading the American people. You may call it
propaganda, but you must remember that Bush never had the support of
the American press and still managed to build enough national support
to compel a Democrat-dominated Congress to go along with him in a
major and successful war effort. You can argue that he was wrong not to
"finish the job" -- I have my criticisms of the way he ended the war --
but what you must admit is that he did what no other president in this
century has done: by sheer persuasion, without deceit, he led us into a
war that by every rational standard was both necessary and just.
In short, it can be done.
But it can only be done by a president with political courage -- the
willingness to put what he believes in ahead of his own reelection.
Because he succeeded, we know that his poll ratings at the end of the
war were sky-high. But what we forget is how hostile both the public
and the press were to the Gulf War during that long autumn and winter
prior to the actual beginning of hostilities. If he had failed to bring off
the war, or, having launched it, failed to win, he would have been
politically destroyed, and he knew it. But he took the risk -- and trusted
in the American people enough to invite us openly to engage in the
struggle.
FDR had no such trust in the American people. Like Johnson with
Vietnam, and unlike Bush with Kuwait, he saw the high anti-war poll
numbers and decided that the only way to get the American people into a
necessary war was to trick them. At least Johnson had the decency to
fake the Gulf of Tonkin attack. FDR had no qualms about killing real
American soldiers and sinking real American ships. And by keeping his
machinations a secret (in a conspiracy of deception that became
embedded in the military culture and continues to this day), he made
himself the hero of an event that he deliberately precipitated and whose
outcome he deliberately made horrific.
He had his cake and ate it, too. And he did it by lying to the
people, to Congress, and to the soldiers under him who trusted him as
commander-in chief. He could have taken political risks and achieved
the same result -- American entry into the war -- by following the kind of
honest, open-hearted approach of a decent man like George Bush.
Instead, he followed the my-career-first, my-country-second, lie-to-the-ignorant-rubes approach that typified Johnson and, today, Clinton.
The career of Jimmy Carter shows the risk that FDR was afraid of
-- Carter's failed attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran was, by any
reasonable measure, the most crucial element in his defeat for reelection
in 1980. But Carter, also a decent man, was willing to take that risk and
absorb the penalty. FDR was not.
As far as I'm concerned, this book puts FDR on my list of worst
presidents -- not incompetent presidents, for he certainly was not that,
but actively evil presidents, evil being defined as being so self-serving
that the country that trusted him suffered great danger and, in his case,
great loss because of him. There are few presidents on that inglorious
list, though tragically enough we are in the final year of the final term of
the least mitigated of them.
But I guarantee you that this book will be savagely attacked by
those for whom FDR is somewhere between a saint and a god. They will
make specious comparisons to Lincoln's suspension of habeus corpus
during the Civil War (an act which killed no one) or the acts of generals
in wartime who have to knowingly put their troops or vessels in harm's
way. The most vicious of the attackers of this book will compare him to
holocaust-deniers, even though Stinnett is, by method and inclination,
the opposite of that class of revisionist.
What must remain in our minds when considering FDR's actions
concerning Pearl Harbor is that he was pursuing, not a military, but a
political objective. What he wanted was a political result achieved
without political cost, and he did it by a calculated expenditure of the
lives of soldiers that the American people had entrusted to his care. And
those who defend him merely confess themselves to be as morally cynical
as he was.
As to the book itself, I must point out that it is not well-written.
Stinnett knows that he is piecing together his story despite the continued
stonewalling of some government officials and agencies, and he knows
that everything depends on the weight of evidence he has assembled
despite that resistance. That leads him to make this book repetitive and
far too concerned with the provenance of every shred of documentary
evidence to make for entertaining reading. Knowing how he will
inevitably be attacked for revealing the undefensibly vile action of an icon
of the American Left (you think he hasn't been watching what happened
to Linda Tripp and Gennifer Flowers?), Stinnett is mind-numbingly
careful.
But that's why the book is so important and so good. Those of us
who actually believe in government by persuasion of a free people will
recognize what he has achieved. Those who believe that elite guardians
should rule, whenever necessary, by lying to the people will be outraged
and will attempt to trick the people into ignoring this book. Chances are
very good that if you hear about this book, you will hear only those who
are attacking it. I urge you to read it for yourselves, without letting the
rightness of our participation in World War II blind you to the murderous
and self-serving method FDR used to bring about that end.
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