Winterlong by Elizabeth Hand

Winterlong

Once again, this review is going to suffer some because of how long ago I read this book. I'll be caught up to myself soon enough.

Elizabeth Hand is generally hit or miss for me, but on this one it was pretty much all hit. I'll be honest, most of the action revolved around violent death and wrongful sex, but this still managed to be a beautiful story. Artsy fartsy for sure, but splashy enough to pull me through it at a run.

Sex, knowledge, skill, death - each of these being traded back and forth by the survivors of our civilization reborn in darker shades. I'm kind of a sucker for any kind of sacred prostitutes in a narrative. All religions have to deal with sex somehow - to pretend that huge driving force can be overcome with prayer always strikes me as knowingly dishonest. Of course, children raised from birth to be the playthings of the powerful is as evil as it gets, and I admire Hand for making them more than victims and revenge fodder.

I would have more to say about this, but I loaned my copy out twice now and haven't got it back yet from the second time. That right there should tell you something.

too close to home

The one thing that most perplexed him was that there could be a dictator seemingly so different from the fervent Hitlers and gesticulating Fascists and the Csars with laurels round bald domes; a dictator with something of the earthy American sense of humor of a Mark Twain, a George Ade, a Will Rogers, an Artemus
Ward. Windrip could be ever so funny about solemn jaw-drooping opponents, and about the best method of training what he called "a Siamese flea hound." Did that, puzzled Doremus, make him less or more dangerous?

Then he remembered the most cruel-mad of all pirates, Sir Henry Morgan, who had thought it ever so funny to sew a victim up in wet rawhide and watch it shrink in the sun.

(Sinclair Lewis, "It Can't Happen Here")

Ever watch W's face when he talks about torture or war or the death penalty? It's that everlovin' smirk that worries me most.

the reality of the situation

In an island prison camp for 6 years, detained without trial or voice, not knowing either the specific charges against you or what evidence your captors might say they have, while rich men in the Land of the Free publicly debate whether you even have the right to claim your innocence.

"Some people view Guantanamo as a symbol of American aggression. I view it as a symbol of American resolve. So long as it remains a vital tool to keep America safe, I will fight to keep Guantanamo Bay open."
- Mitt Romney

Sometimes, folks, you just can't make this shit up.

Elvissey by Jack Womack

Elvissey

Any time you set a book in the possible future, you have to deal with how you feel language would change between now and then, based on the way everything's turned. A bad writer will come up with unreadable dialogue that bogs down the plot and adds nothing to our understanding of the culture. Womack, on the other hand, twists English just enough. His people speak an English that makes perfect sense in their corporate-ruled experience, an almost lyrical cousin of newspeak in ways.

You know, a future as a survivor of the planet after war or disease, as long as the world's isn't poisoned, is one I can see as hopeful and worth living. But a future as just another cog, as a commodity used up and tossed out by big business, just sounds like Hell. Corporations do not care about you. In fact, that's the whole point - build up enough layers of management and red tape, and no one person has to take the blame for the death and misery they (we) collectively cause.

As to the Elvis-as-Messiah trope, stranger things have happened.

final thought: This won't be the last Womack novel I read.