The newer books have a different cover, but this has always been my favorite version.Doctor Rat is a cunningly well constructed, heartwrenching, horrible wonderful book told from the point of view of an insane rat, thereby reinforcing my theory that odd povs may add to, rather than detract from, good fiction. Be aware: this is a novel about animal experimentation and it pulls no punches.
Doctor Rat witnesses the experiments being carried out on his fellow animals, wandering through a laboratory and speaking to us in a way that makes it clear whose side he’s on while showing how brutal the details of this book can be:
I should now like to sing “Three Blind Rats.” It’s part of the experimental program of music that’s being channeled toward certain rats, to make them more docile and sweet. Several of them are indeed beginning to nuzzle up to each other, one of them even executing a light-fantastic tripping of his tail, in time to the beat.
In the cage beside him, we actually have three blind rats. In fact, we have twenty-three blind rats, part of a magnificent new experiment initiated by a very ambitious student, who I’m featuring in this month’s Newsletter. He’s a sensitive chap and it was his exquisite sensitivity that caused him to dream up the item that’s become the latest rage here at the lab: the fabulous removal of eggs from a female rat’s body and the grafting of them to different parts of the male rat’s body — to the tail, to the ear, to the stomach. And for the past twenty-three days he’s been grafting them to their eyeballs! So now it’s time we all sang that promising young scientist a song.
Doctor Rat is not all horrifying detail though. There’s a lot of sweetness to it, including a moment where a human orchestra plays music in order to warn whales of approaching whalers that makes me cry, every time, while read silently or aloud. The amount of emotion it manages to stir in me is visceral. I wish I knew how Kotzwinkle accomplished it.
Which brings me to another reason by I think this is a good book for writers to read: this is a book that manages to be harrowing and uplifting all at once. It’s the sort of book that a writer confronting a real evil produces, a look that is cynical and despairing and yet tinged with a dark humor that lets you know there may be a glint of light somewhere. This is the sort of book you should read through once in order to experience it for the first time; then go back and see how the writer accomplished that experience. Doctor Rat looks at difficult, political things in a way only the greats manage.
Kotzwinkle is still around and is a prolific of both adult and children’s books. The child in me is compelled to note that the latter includes the “Walter the Farting Dog” series.
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Media Consumed in August
I had plenty of travel time in August, so yay for reading. My primary focus this month was to read as many of the Dragon Award nominees as I could before voting, but there were a number I just didn’t get to or did not finish. I had read some before, luckily, and am particularly pulling for D.B. Butler’s Witchy Eye, which I loved.
Works that are bolded are ones I found particularly outstanding or otherwise remarkable and would recommend.
Robert Aickman, Cold Hand in Mine
Peter S. Beagle: Summerlong
Betsy Cornwall: Mechanica. I wanted to like steampunk Cinderella, but it didn’t feel very new.
Nathan Crowder: Ride Like the Devil (lots of fun for fellow Seattleites)
Pippa DaCosta, The Heartstone Thief
Robert Dugoni: The Trapped Girl (could have done without the complaints about the various restrictions the legal system places on police officers) Patrick Edwards: Space Tripping A.W. Exley: Ella the Slayer (I really did not expect to like Cinderella + zombies).
Kate Elliott: Court of Fives, The Poisoned Blade Ruthanna Emrys: Winter Tide. If you like Lovecraft novels, you need this one.
Carrie Fisher: The Princess Diarist
Eric Flint: 1636: The Ottoman Onslaught
Amy S. Foster: The Rift Uprising Theodora Goss: The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter FABULOUS and is the 19th century equivalent of Cat Valente’s The Refrigerator Monologues)
Brian Guthrie: Rise
Renee Carter Hall: Huntress (loved this, but book is structured in a frustrating way) Elizabeth Hand: Aestival Tide, Icarus Ascending
Faith Hunter: Blood of the Earth Shirley Jackson: Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings. Not enough writing on craft, but what there is, is solid.
Dennis Lehane: Prayers for Rain Alison Littlewood, The Hidden People
Gabrielle Matheiu: The Falcon Flies Alone. Modern melodrama that pulls from all over the place in a way that is unexpected. Robert McCammon: Gone South. McCammon is the frickin’ BEST at this sort of novel. Delicious.
Brian Niemeier, The Secret Kings
Richard Paonelli: Escaping Infinity
Lucian Randolph: The God in the Clear Rock (has my vote for most attention paid to a point of view character’s breasts in a book)
Delia Sherman: The Porcelain Dove (very pretty, but the structure makes it feel as though the book evaporates away just as you hit the end)
Shayne Silvers: Beast Masters Dale Ivan Smith: Empowered: Agent
Safari Spell: Long Live Dead Reckless Arkadi and Boris Strugatski: The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn
Anne Tyler: A Spool of Blue Thread
R.R. Virdi: Dangerous Ways Martha Wells: The Edge of the World
Stuff I’m Watching: Big Brother (yes that’s my guilty pleasure and I don’t know which I loathe more, Josh or Paul), The Defenders, Orphan Black Season 5, Rick and Morty. Watched BRILLO BOX (3¢ OFF), which was an intriguing documentary if you have any interest in Warhol. Also Extraordinary: The Stan Romanek Story, which I thought was pretty silly.
Now available on Smashwords, "All the Pretty Little Mermaids," which originally appeared in Asimov's. You set the price! If you enjoy it, please leave a review.I spent a good chunk of my summer reading through a multi-volume fantasy series for the sake of completeness. The series will remain nameless, because I can’t in good conscience recommend it, but it did impact the amount of other reading I did. Most of these are particular to 2014, but not all.
Daniel Abraham came out with the most recent of his Dagger and Coin series, The Widow’s House, and it was just as enjoyable as the first three. Abraham has a gift for flawed characters that you care deeply about, whose dilemmas rack the reader to the heart even when they’re doing despicable things.
Carol Berg’s Dust and Light. Carol consistently hits it out of the ballpark when it comes to epic fantasy, and this start to a trilogy is no exception. If you like Sanderson, Martin, or Bujold’s fantasy, you will like Carol Berg.
The Hole Behind Midnight by Clinton Boomer is terrific urban fantasy with a highly original protagonist. Think of a mash-up of Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files with the Tyrion Lannister sections of Game of Thrones and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and you’re in the general vicinity.
M.L. Brennan manages urban fantasy outside the tired norm with Iron Night, the latest in her Generation V series. I will admit, her kitsune character has me totally captivated, but the vampires manage not to be cliche, and protagonist Fortitude Scott is wonderful, reminding me of Rob Thurman’s engaging Caliban series.
Stephen Brust and Skyler White’s The Incrementalists is urban fantasy taken in a different direction, with an ancient society intent on nudging humanity along in the right directions.
Harry Connolly’s Twenty Palaces series is still more urban fantasy. There’s only four of them, and I wish it were twenty-four. I really enjoy the flavor and wonderful, terrible magic that fills this books. Great stuff.
Caren Gussoff’s The Birthday Problem. Seattle and a plague of madness-inducing nanobots? Sign me up. This is a terrific short novel that should be kept in mind for award ballots.
M.C.A. Hogarth’s The Mindhealer’s Series, Mindtouch and Mindline, were lovely, charming reads about a friendship between two disparate but equally compassionate healers. Looking forward to more in this series. Also recommended: Even the Wingless (looking forward to that serial as well.)
Kameron Hurley’s The Mirror Empire, the first volume of the Worldbreaker Saga. Beautiful fantasy with all sorts of wonderful world-building detail and absolutely gripping characters. Highly recommended, and another to keep in mind for award ballots.
Elliott Kay’s Poor Man’s Fight and Rich Man’s War. I love books with an economic underpinning to them, and this far future military SF delivers wonderfully. Sometimes the villain is almost a little too cartoony, but if you take it as space opera, it’s pretty wonderful.
Meilan Miranda’s Son in Sorrow is the engaging second volume of her An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom. There’s a level of intrigue and sexuality to these books that reminds one of Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel books, with equally deft prose and dialogue.
Linda Nagata’s The Red: First Light was terrific military SF/political thriller with lots of engaging detail and a solid dash of cyberpunk. Good stuff, highly recommended.
Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers is lovely, and significantly better (imo) than the HBO series. It has a wonderful poetry to it that i will match against any lit fic by Paul Auster or T.C. Boyle.
Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria was beautiful, reminding me at times of LeGuin’s Earthsea books. Samatar is burning up the charts lately with awards, and this was no exception.
Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy is tremendous. Often unsettling, eerie, and always striking, like playing a massive multi-player game where no one else is logged on. Highly recommended, also award ballot material. Wayne read these while we were in Costa Rica and liked them just as much
I also reviewed Jo Walton’s My Real Children and What Makes This Book So Great for CSZ, and really enjoyed the heck out of both, though I know I’ll come back to the second much more than the first. As an inveterate re-reader, it’s highly satisfying to read someone else’s account and analysis of the practice, and I emerged from the book with both a to-read and a to-reread list. WMTBSG is highly, highly recommended for fellow genre re-readers.
Andy Weir’s The Martian was engaging as heck because of its protagonist, who is one of the most likable main characters I have ever encountered. A man is trapped on Mars – will he escape? It’s been done before, but rarely so well.
I greatly enjoyed the first of Django Wexler’s flintlock fantasy, , and the second, The Shadow Throne, was equally enjoyable. Engaging POVs that remain tightly controlled and well-plotted.
One Response
read the fan man over 40 years ago. still the funniest book
ever. I LOVE IT.