No, The Expanse is not Game of Thrones in space. (And that's a good thing.)

[Alert: Minor spoilers for James S.A. Corey's "Expanse" book series, and presumably the show as well.]
When you're trying to get someone interested in a new series of books or TV shows, it's natural to try to compare it to something they already know. When Breaking Bad was new, it was often compared with Weeds, though the two shows have nothing in common besides a regular person who starts dealing drugs. When I tried to get people to watch Sons of Anarchy, I often called it "The Sopranos with motorcycle gangs," though again the connection was tenuous except for the fact that they're both based on organized crime.

So it is natural that even before SyFy began adapting James S.A. Corey's The Expanse series, beginning with Leviathan Wakes, people trying to convey the scope and power of the series compared it to the best-known non-YA speculative fiction series out there, The Song of Ice and Fire series, known on TV as Game of Thrones. From a distance, they seem very similar. You have a long series of doorstopper books. You have brutal and underhanded struggles between competing powers in a sprawling world, or in the case of TE, solar system. You have violent battles, different points of view, and even a kind of zombies in a particular scene on Ceres. But though these are both engaging and powerful series of books (and TE is now a TV series as well), TE is at its core nothing like SOIAF. And that, I argue, is a good thing.

So how are the different? Here are a few ways:

1) Real heroes and happy(ish) endings

The main reason that the SOIAF series was such a significant was that it has no real heroes and no happy endings. The two characters that are closest to being heroes in SOIAF are Tyrion and Daenerys. They are both engaging and wonderful characters, and morally they are better people than most of the other characters we encounter on Westeros. But that's a pretty low bar, and they're both pretty morally flawed. Most of the other characters SOIAF set up as heroes, especially when it looks like they are winning, have a Red Wedding-level event to look forward to.

Though the heroes of TE can also be pretty morally flawed, (especially Detective Miller, who is even more corrupt in the first episode of the TV show than he was in the book), in the big picture the central characters usually are pretty consistently fighting for the right thing. This is especially true of the four characters that become the crew of the Rocinante, James Holden, Naomi Nagata, Alex Kamal and Amos Burton. Holden, especially, is pretty much a traditional old-fashioned speculative fiction hero, who continuously goes out of his way to do the right thing, even when it's completely inconvenient for himself and everyone else. And while things don't work out well for everyone, each book pretty clearly ends with a sense that the good guys won. That doesn't mean there's no moral complexity or poor choices on the part of the heroes, but it's much closer to a traditional adventure story than the SOIAF series.

This is a good thing, I would argue, because unlike SOIAF, TE is showing us a vision of something that could actually happen (up to the point they start encountering alien artifacts, at least). This is distinct from most science fiction we've ever seen before as well, which usually feature teleporters or warp drives or other technology we're unlikely to develop in the next few hundred years. This means this series has the potential to inspire space exploration in a way sci-fi has not in a very long time. But to do that, it needs to make us believe that the future we're working towards isn't just a Machiavellian hell.

2) Far fewer and more traditional point of view characters

Another way that SOIAF was distinct was the enormous number of POV characters. GRRM is a master storyteller and was mostly able to make this work (though it gets a little out of hand later in the series, if you ask me). I have encountered too many authors lately that have tried to emulate GRRM in this way, too often resulting in too many interchangeable people I have no connection to or interest in. Because GRRM was able to succeed at this, we found ourselves having interest in the stories of otherwise pretty unsympathetic people, like Jamie Lannister, who tries to murder a child in an early part of the first book.

Though TE has multiple POVs, they are mostly pretty focused on the heroes of the book. The main POVs of Leviathan Wakes are the Rocinante's crew and Detective Miller, all of whom are soon revealed to be tracking down the same mystery. The TV show introduces Chrisjen Avasarala in the first episode, though in the book series that character doesn't even appear until Caliban's War, the second book in the series. I suspect the showrunners introduced the somewhat Machiavellian Avasarala at least partially to add a little more Game of Thrones-y morality to the show, as can be seen by the way she's engaging in the torture of an OPA spy in the first episode. But the direction of the book series is going to make it necessary to focus more and more on the adventures of the Rocinante's crew as the books do, especially starting from Caliban's War.

This is good because, first of all, SOIAF's sprawling cast of POVs is almost impossible to do well, and second, now that it has been, really doesn't particularly need to be again.

3) Way less creepy sex stuff

The GOT series on HBO often gets called out on its "sexposition," excessive nudity, and unnecessary rapiness. But let's be clear, this level of creepy sex is not a departure from the books. Yes, there were a few rapes in GOT that weren't in SOIAF, but believe me, there were a lot more that were in SOIAF that GOT left out. Mostly SOIAF and GOT both portray a world full of sexual exploitation and unhealthy sexual relationships. It says something when one of the healthier sexual relationships in your books is between a brother and sister (though it's not so healthy in the show).

Though it's clear that there is prostitution and probably exploitation happening in some of TE's space stations like Ceres, this is never really central to the plot. The main sexual relationship that occurs in TE is the one that develops between Holden and Naomi, which, though it has its bumps, is pretty normal.

Do I need to explain why this is good? Hopefully not.

The main difference between The Expanse series, both in the books and hopefully on TV, is that unlike SOIAF and GOT, they are guardedly optimistic. And since these are portraying a future that is at least partially available for us, we really need that.

Westeritis: A dangerous new epidemic in fantasy fiction?

So I was incredibly excited to read Elizabeth Bear's new book The Steles of the Sky, the third book in the Eternal Sky trilogy. Since I've begun it, however, I have found that I just can't get into it at all. I'm sticking with it and hoping I'll get over it, but it's a real slog and I keep putting it down for more engaging things, like Clash of Clans. The problem is, there are just too many storylines and each one is too complicated, so I can't keep track of who's who. It may not be fair, but I am tempted to blame George RR Martin.

Anyone who's either read the Game of Thrones books or watched the TV series knows that you practically need a spreadsheet to keep track of all the characters. If you've read the books and you watch the show with someone who hasn't, you'll find they keep asking you, "wait, who is that again?" I haven't watched all the shows, just part of the first season, and when I read recaps of them I don't remember half the people they're talking about.

Is it fair to say that Bear is imitating Martin in trying to balance all these storylines? Does the Eternal Sky trilogy have a case of Westeritis? Certainly it's not that simple. Martin was far from the first person to make fantasy series that sprawl all over the place. But perhaps if the world of Westeros hadn't set the example her editors might have told her to trim things back a bit.

One might say that this kind of thing works for someone like Martin, but not as well for other authors. But honestly is it true that it even works for him? The main storyline is incredibly engaging but it's hard to care about every single one of his characters. This was revealed starkly in A Dance With Dragons, his most recent of the series, which disappointed a lot of readers by focusing entirely on what most people would consider secondary characters and giving us little time with the people we want to know the most about. Part of Bear's TSoTS's book's problem is that it's been a long time since I read the previous book and I don't remember who everyone is. I anticipate a similar problem when Martin finally stops giving us dribs and drabs of The Winds of Winter and finally puts the book out.

For other fantasy authors overcome by the urge to fantastic sprawl with countless pov characters, I prescribe a two aspirin and a dose of Patrick Rothfuss, whose Name of the Wind is as sophisticated and complex a fantasy book as there is out there with only one pov character. The third book of the trilogy is not coming for a while, but I will have no trouble remembering who Kvothe is.

Monsters, anonymous: Helene Wecker's The Golemn and the Jinni

Must we be who we are?

We like to think we make choices all through our lives, but mostly we make the same choice over and over again. So many of our inclinations are baked into us from before we can remember, and we either surrender to our nature or struggle against it our whole lives. In Helene Wecker's The Golem and the Jinni this dilemma faces not only the eponymous monster protagonists, but the Jewish and Syrian immigrants of turn-of-the-century New York they find themselves among. 

Chava, a golem, was made to be the obedient and faithful wife of a European Jewish man named Rotfeld. But Rotfeld died less than a day after bringing her to life on a boat to America, so she soon finds herself alone in the Jewish community on the Lower East Side. Her nature is to serve and obey, and without a master she is assaulted by the needs and wants of everyone around her. She is only saved when the kindly rabbi Avram Meyer recognizes what she is and brings her home.

Ahmad, a Jinni, springs from a lamp when it is repaired by the tinsmith Boutros Arbeely in the now-vanished Little Syria in the West Village. After more than a millennium of imprisonment under circumstances he can't recall he finds himself in a weakened state, bound by an iron band around his wrist to an unknown master. This goes against his nature, which is to drift in freedom above the desert, with no allegiance to anyone. 

Every monster in a book is at least partially a metaphor for something else. Godzilla was partially the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Lestat was partially a gay man in the time of AIDS. Chava and Ahmad are partially newcomers to America, dropped in a bustling city that is only a little bit stranger to them than to the thousands of other immigrants around them. Among other things, this book is a well-researched portrait of its time and place, reason enough to enjoy it. 

But every monster should also be a monster, something other than human, and Chava and Ahmad are. Even their names are simply conventions to allow them to relate to the humans around them; neither being feels especially attached to this central identifying aspect of the human experience. It is a challenge particular to the author of speculative fiction to create a being that is not human but nevertheless possessed of will and desire and needs that engage the reader and drive the plot. And this is Wecker's real strength.

The golem and the jinni have desires and needs, but they are not people's desires. Neither, however, are they stereotypical straightjackets, for each questions and struggles against their urges, just as all the other characters struggle with their own. They each have superhuman strengths and weaknesses, and they fight not to be confined by them. Most of all they live in danger of their inhuman natures being revealed.

Ahmad, a being of fire, can melt metal at a touch, quite a useful skill to the the tinsmith Arbeely. But he has an artistic temperament and struggles against the boredom of day-to-day craftsmanship. His free spirit constantly leads him to put himself in danger of being discovered as an inhuman being, for example when he seduces an uptown socialite.

Chava, a being of clay, has no such urges. She has a boundless work ethic and endurance and puts it to work as a baker and a seamstress. She has to resist the urge to work all night, which would reveal her own superhuman nature. Her drive is to serve and obey anyone, and she instinctively knows what everyone wants. Worse, she has the potential to go into a killing golem rage which would be catastrophic given her superhuman strength.

As the book progresses Ahmad and Chava find their stories intertwined with each others and many other people, among them a demon-possessed doctor, a passionate social worker who has rejected the faith of his rabbi father, a mysterious rabbi-magician and a mute orphan. In addition to being a portrait of its time and place the book engages us in the life of each of its characters, while also plotting them tightly into a fast-moving adventure which unfolds with mysterious secrets about the past of each monster.

The balance that keeps the book alive is that neither of the monsters is entirely bound by their nature, but nor do they entirely escape it. And in that way they are human after all.

When narrative is stronger than reality: "Up" and a new definition of magic

Today I watched the Pixar movie Up with my students for the important educational purpose of shutting them up for the last two days of school. As I was watching it, I came to an important new definition of magic, as well as a deeper understanding of how it should be used in fantasy. Is "Up" a magical fantasy? Well, it's not science fiction. It's true that a bunch of helium balloons can lift heavy objects, and in a few instances people have actually flown this way in lawn chairs and such. But it's safe to say that if you have a scene where you float an entire house this way, let alone lift it from its foundations exactly along the line where the floor meets the ground, then you're talking about magic, whether you call it that or not.

People who've written or extensively read fantasy knows there's a special art to including magic in a story. If, at a climactic scene of your fantasy novel, a protagonist who's fallen off a thousand-foot cliff is suddenly able to fly when you've never given any reason before to expect he has this ability then you've used magic poorly in your narrative.

So how do you make a character fly, and make it believable? Or more importantly when you're talking about fantasy set in a contemporary world, how do you change a character that can't fly into one that can? Just giving him a bunch of helium balloons will not do the trick. (In fact, I'd say this is the case even if you can do so in a completely scientifically plausible way; you're writing a story, not a physics textbook.) Since magic is by definition not realistic, the usual term to describe what we're aiming for is "believable."

The current conventional wisdom of how to make magic believable is that it has to have a "system." You have to plan out in advance what your magic can and can't do. You define all its limitations and requirements and necessary raegents. Then you demonstrate these in little ways all throughout the story, preferably in a way that is not totally obvious, so that when the magic is really necessary to advance your plot your reader is surprised and yet also convinced.

But the whole idea of establishing a "system of magic" has always bugged me. To begin with, in traditional mythological stories using magic there is rarely a system established. We don't need to know exactly how an evil sorceress can change Ulysses' crew into pigs, or how an evil fairy can put Briar Rose to sleep until a prince wakes her up. They just can. For that matter, classic fantasy novels don't really have systems of magic either. Can anyone explain to me what system of magic Gandalf was using? How about the White Witch in Narnia?

But more important, defining a magic system betrays a completely contemporary, non-magical way of thinking. Suppose I say that my character can fly if he's acquired three feathers of the Lost Eagle of the Mountain, said the appropriate ritual over a fire into which he's thrown a bag of the droppings of a Chromium Dragon and has spoken to his Bird Spirit in a dream. What I'm really doing then is simply defining an alternate form of technology that works every bit as predictably as the hard drive on my computer (probably a heck of a lot moreso). But magic is not supposed to be predictable. That's practically the definition: magic is when something happens that can't be explained. Clarke's famous dictum that technology sufficiently beyond our understanding is indistinguishable from magic is only true to a very limited degree. Indians who first encountered European "thunder sticks" might have seen them as magical the first few times they got shot at. But Indians were neither stupid nor childish, and realized very quickly they needed to get some guns of their own and figure out how to use them, which is just what they did. In no time the magic weapons just became advanced tech. Similarly, humans in a system such as I described above would very quickly create a breeding line of Lost Eagles, have entrepreneurial dragon-dropping patrols and a whole new profession of Bird Spirit Contact Therapists.

I suspect the whole "magic system" meme was a natural outgrowth of fantasy authors that grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons (like I did). D&D is a game, and a game operates by rules, or what's the point? Therefore, a +3 longsword always increases your probablity of inflicting damage by exactly 15%, and a Magic Missile spell can be cast exactly once by a first level "Magic User" (which has got to be least magical-sounding title they could have come up with for a wizard except perhaps "supernatural events technician").

By contrast, Up has no system of magic. In fact, the non-realistic events that occur are not even described as magical; they just happen. They can get away with this because it's an animation, and we're conditioned exempt cartoons especially from the laws of physics. But I'd argue that in traditional mythology made by societies who didn't have a clearly defined field of "science" from which to deviate, that's how magic was usually included. The word "magic" wouldn't even mean anything until it became an accepted norm that nature cannot operate outside certain very precise rules that we can define by observation (i.e. science).

But that doesn't mean that things can just happen for no reason. Almost from the moment we meet the character of Mr. Fredricksen as a child he's carrying a helium baloon. The baloon plays an important part in the meeting of Mr. Fredricksen & his wife; later, his job is selling balloons at the zoo. As if that's not hint enough, the cart keeps trying to float away whenever Mr. Fredricksen turns away. The movie has clearly established the balloon as Mr. Fredricksen's "magic item," something with which he has great power. The Popul Vuh establishes that the Maya Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque can do magical things with their blowguns, so when they hide inside the tubes from demon bats in Xibalba we're not surprised. And when Mr. Fredricksen blows cloud of balloons out his chimney, we're not surprised either.

The movie quickly gets us to the destination of Paradise Falls through the "knocked out during a storm" convention (with some help from the Boy Scout Russell's GPS, which is then literally thrown out the window). But it's what happens to the house then that illustrates best how Up uses magic. The house becomes a combination of a burden and a crutch to Mr. Fredricksen, as does his traveling party, which quickly comes to include the giant bird Kevin and Dug the talking dog. He's on the ground but has the floating house by the garden hose, and won't let it drift away. He also can't climb up the hose to get back in, and neither can Russell. So he ties the hose to his back and walks to what he thinks the goal of his quest is, the Falls. The house lightens his load, so he's not carrying so much weight, and shields him from the rain. But it also drags behind him and bangs into things, and slowly it gets heavier and heavier as the balloons lose their helium. If it's not obvious already what this means, Mr. Fredricksen keeps talking to the house and calling it "Ellie." Because we know the house stands for something, the unlikelihood that its bouyancy would be exactly a few pounds less than Mr. Fredricksen's weight doesn't bother us in the least.

Again and again he is faced with choosing between loyalty to the quest he promised Ellie as a child that he'd fulfil and helping the new friends that he doesn't think he wants. Strictly from a narrative point of view it's a story where the protagonist thinks the goal of his quest is one thing (getting "Ellie" to Paradise Falls), but it's actually something else (rescuing Kevin the giant bird from the evil explorer Charles Limbergh Muntz). In a climactic scene he chooses to keep the house from burning up instead of helping Kevin escape from Muntz. Confronted by Russell, he yells "This is not my problem! I didn't ask for this!" having forgotten that the whole point of flying away to a mysterious part of South America is that you're asking for adventure.

From an emotional point of view, the story's entirely about building a new life after the person you built the old life with is gone. After he gets to the Falls and is essentially abandoned by those who tries to be his friend he finds that at the end of Ellie's Secret Adventure Book she thanks him for the adventure, and tells him to start a new one. He throws out all the things he put into the house with Ellie. We get a long shot of the two chairs they sat in together as the house flies away, now a maneuverable man-o'-war ready to board the enemy blimp and rescue Kevin.

This is magic to its core. Yes, the house is going to be lighter from the physical weight of things being thrown out, and we're aware of that. But what sticks with us is the emotional weight Mr. Fredrickson's shedding. No longer is he locking out the rest of the world so he can cling to the past. The core of traditional narrative is a character making a change. When Mr. Fredricksen lets go of what happened, he not only starts flying again, he flies faster than a motorized blimp and is more maneuverable than an airplane. Even his own age is overcome; a man who used to need a machine to go up and down stairs can now climb a ladder on the outside of a blimp balloon, and later can throw away his cane.

When narrative is on your side, it's quite easy to get people to believe in magic. Think of a con artist; he always has a good story. Similarly, every religion in history has a good story behind it; no one would believe otherwise. Fiction writers use the same techniques but "strictly for entertainment purposes" as they say on the box. Storytellers are like verbal stage magicians; we may not tell the crowd our tricks but we are honest about the fact that it's a trick. Humans are instinctively magical thinkers; the centuries-long battle of science is to overcome that tendency through rigorous observation and experiment.

In other words, the power of narrative makes people believe things possible that wouldn't have been before. When narrative overcomes the power of physics, of chemistry, of biology, of psychology, and even of regular common sense, that is magic.

The main rebuttal I can think of to this argument is that by defining magic this way, every good story is in its own way a little bit magical, and a little bit fantastical. This could bother some people. Me, I can live with it.

At least I'm still reading

Haven't been writing, haven't been posting. But at least I'm still reading, thanks to the long train ride to the Bronx. So what have I been reading?

Graham Joyce - Limits of Enchantment
When I first saw this writer's books at Powell's my first thought was that with a name like that they probably don't even read your manuscript first, they just send it straight to the printer. But in this author's case, that would be the right move. This is his third book that I've read, the first two being Indigo and The Tooth Fairy. Each book deserves a complete post, but I'll focus on Limits for now.

This is the best book about witches I have ever seen. Joyce never uses the 'w' word except once in the book, and then it's used in reference to another character in its derogatory sense, as a substitute for 'bitch'. But it's clear immediately that that's what Mammy and her young apprentice Fern are. Mammy is also a midwife who gives abortions, which isn't so popular in late-60's England. The story is really about the coming-of-age, sexually and otherwise, of Fern. But it blends ancient forgotten mysticism perfectly into the description of a time when the whole country was turning upside down.

To put it simply, Joyce understands how to use magic in a story. He understands that magic isn't science by a different system, and it's not run by a set of rules you learn at Hogwarts. It's mysterious, it's unpredictable, it comes from someplace you'll never fully comprehend and it does things that you did not tell it to do. Sci-fi Diplomat has had some problems with fantasy, and I understand why. If he ever decides to re-involve himself in the commonwealth, this book might change his mind.

Ian M. Banks The Excession
This is most certainly one of the strangest and most inaccessible sci-fi books I've ever encountered. Not that the premise is all that difficult, when you get to it. Basically, a galaxy-spanning Stage Three civilization encounters a piece of extra-Universal technology (the "Excession") that makes even their kilometers-long sentient superluminal starships seem like horses and chariots by comparison, and sends a diplomat named Hofoen to find the stored personality of a starship captain who may have seen it before. Subplots include a conspiracy among sentient starships, a 40-year pregnancy, and a war with a thuglike race of sadists who may not be so bad after all. Banks brings all these together, in a box-checking kind of way, but not in the sort of mind-blowing "Oh, that's why he did that!" sort of way that you want when you've got a lot going on in a book.

Banks must have read that business-motivational book "First, Break All the Rules" before he wrote this one, but it doesn't necessarily lead to a better book. He has the worst case of POV-hopping going on in this book I've ever seen; there must be at least ten major perspectives, including sentient drones and super-sentient starships, and most of them are not really that interesting. He devotes almost no time at all to establishing the science behind his tech; he has starships hopping around at hundreds of thousands of times light speed with no more justification than hand-waving references to "hyperspace." (Take that mundanists!) He fills pages of early chapters with incomprehensible techno-babble whose meaning is only revealed chapters later.

In truth, a lot of that stuff wouldn't bother me that much, though how he got it past the editor I have no idea. What bothered me a lot more was that the central, plot-closing relationship of the book was not even established except through a dream sequence three-quarters of the way in. To be honest, if 'The Algebraist' hadn't been so brilliant, I wouldn't have forced my way through this one, so read that book if you want to start somewhere with Banks.

Steve Cash, The Meq

This book reminds me more than anything else of Interview with a Vampire, which remains a stellar novel if you can ignore the rotting horse of its premise that Anne Rice's next 87 books have flogged to death next to it. Like Interview it's about a near-immortal race, seperate from humanity yet connected to them. It stretches across many years of history, and is full of half-forgotten mysteries and discoveries.

The Meq are a magical race associated with the Basque who only grow to age 12, then stay that way. They can live for millenia, and only mature past adolescence when they meet their Ameq, or true love, at which time they can 'cross over' and age and die like normal people. Zianno, or Z as he likes to be called, is a Meq who only learns what he is when his mother and father die in a train wreck. Of course Z is not just any Meq; he is the long-awaited 'one' who can uncover the curses and mysteries of the Meq, all in the process of finding his own Ameq and defeating a perverted evil Meq assassin.

Like Rice's work, the book flirts with the conventions of romance novels. It's full of faraway ports of call, mysterious strangers hinting at forgotten knowledge, secrets from the ancient mists of time, and villains with luscious names like Corsair Bogy and Fleur-du-Mal. Cash did enough research to write a historical novel, inserting historical characters like Scott Joplin and T.S. Eliot in peripheral parts in the book.

The book has a few weaknesses. The biggest one is that it slips too easily into racial and nationalistic stereotypes for character-building. Solomon, a wise old German Jew who is Z's guide for an early part of the book, is also a money-counting merchant whose tag line is 'Zis is good business.' Later Solomon is protected by a Chinese man named Li, eternally loyal because - you guessed it - Li saved Solomon's life once and is bound by that old kung-fu movie cliche that only applies to character parts destined for early death. The Scottish guy is super-efficient and reliable, the Arabs are slavers trading in young white flesh, and so on. A more minor complaint is that the age the characters are stuck at, 12, is the beginning of sexuality for most people, but the Meq don't really seem to have any sexuality until they meet their Ameq, and even then it is sort of bolt-from-the-blue starry-eyed certainty rather than the messiness of actual early adolescence. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be, but if it is the kids aren't really 12, they're something else.

But if you can get around that, the book is engaging and fun and never gives you a break. Like Joyce, Cash also gets that magic is inexplicable and unpredictable, and he knows how to set up the plot dominoes and knock them down, an underrated skill that keeps me turning pages. I'm not done yet, but I am looking forward to my train ride tomorrow.

Conjugation of the Shwazzy, or Locke Lamora's biggest heist

I've been reading Scott Lynch's Lies of Lock Lamora, a story about a crook so outrageously larcenous that at the age of seven or so the master of the local thieves' guild kicks him out (and nearly kills him) for stealing too much. Lynch must know something about that, because it appears he snuck into China Mieville's house, and stole his world-building and plot-building skills.

I may be exaggerating a bit. I am simultaneously reading Un Lun Dun to my four-year old (yeah, the vocabulary is a little heavy, but this is not your average kid). To be fair, Mieville has built a pretty interesting world with UnLondon (get it?), a place where all of the trash from London drifts to be attached into house walls or crawl along like pets. (A similarly composed No York is briefly mentioned in the book, but I can tell you from personal experience that our crap doesn't drift into other dimensions nearly fast enough.) UnLondon is fun, but it's not another Bas Lag.

What's worse about Un Lun Dun is that the protagonists, so far, haven't really done anything. I mean, they have been on a grand adventure, but Zanna the "Shwazzy" (or choisi, French for "chosen") hasn't really done anything to advance the plot herself, except for turning a boiler wheel that popped her into the world of UnLondon. And she didn't even do that by choice, she was more just kind of possessed. When the origin of the term Shwazzy was revealed in the book, the conjugation was interesting. The teacher explained the conjugation in the form "choisi - you have chosen." This would be the infinitive, if I understand it right. But so far, Zanna hasn't chosen anything. As far as what's happened to her so far, it makes more sense to say Zanna was chosen by someone else.

Locke Lamora is another matter. He's not a cutpurse or a cat burglar. He is an insanely ambitious con artist, a Frank Abagnale for the D20 set. Purchased from slavery as a child by the Thiefmaker, the owner of a gang of thieving children, Locke is sold to the high priest of a church for thieves after he scams his own master. This leads to the formation of the Gentlemen Bastards, a sophisticated con operation, which as I am reading is in the middle of performing a sophisticated pigeon drop on a naive but greedy member of the nobility.

Camorr, Locke's hometown, is clearly inspired by Venice, and is a lusciously byzantine place where everyone is constantly stealing from everyone else, where the less-successful thieves hang in nooses from the bridges while the nobles drift around on expensive pleasure boats burning their throats on hot ginger cocktails. Jonathan McCalmont has problems with the novel's over-labrynthine and slow-revealing plot structure, and I might change my mind. But right now, I can't wait to get back to the book.

I'm still really hoping Mieville's book picks up, or that I find out he's bounced back with a scary-violent grown-up book in keeping with what I've come to expect from him. China, the world of high fantasy needs you!