100 Books 2008

[Debbie Moorhouse]

It's that time again. Has the Reading Sqrl reached her total of 100 books for 2008 or will you all be forced to sit through this again in August?

Let's see!

Reviews and possible spoilers below.

First up is a book I bought some years ago and never got around to reading until now. It's somewhat outdated, as KAL007's cockpit voice recorder was found, and a transcript has since been released. It seems to indicate that the crew had no idea they were being targeted by Soviet aircraft. A lot of questions are still unanswered, however--and probably will remain so.

Massacre 007: The Story of the Korean Airlines Disaster by Richard Rohmer

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars

I bought this book some time ago--probably secondhand--and rediscovered it when adding my aircraft books to GoodReads. So it's probably about time I read it.
Richard Rohmer tries hard not to be partisan, but the book is filled with Cold War rhetoric of a kind I haven't heard in years. It's actually painful. Rohmer does however make his best of the thankless task of trying to separate truth from lies in the story of the shooting down of Flight KAL007 in Soviet airspace in 1983.

He explains in detail how the South Korean crew could have used the 747's INS system to track the waypoints on which they faithfully reported as they flew off-course towards Seoul, while simultaneously using it to navigate their actual disastrous course.

Since this book was written, the recovered CVR tape has suggested the crew had no idea of the danger they were in. Whatever efforts the pilot of the SU-15 made to attract their attention were obviously unsuccessful.

And all this to save a few minutes of flying time and some fuel.

On to a book for Evil Editor's book chat--to be held in August. Not a book I would have chosen of my own accord.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair... by Erik Larson

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars

Here's how I imagine it went.
Larson: I wanna write a book about the architects who designed the World's Fair in Chicago. Also, pork.

Publisher: Nobody wants to read about architects. They're boring.

Larson: But the World's Fair--

Publisher: Boring.

Larson: The mayor gets murdered.

Publisher: When?

Larson: At the end.

Publisher: (yawns) Too late.

Larson: If I could find some juicy murders to spice it up...?

Publisher: We'd take a look.

This isn't so much a book about Mudgett/Holmes and his unpleasant habit of murdering women and selling their bodies, not to mention murdering children just for the fun of it, but rather a book about the World Fair and its architects and how it was all built and how wonderful it was that Chicago managed to go "neenah neenah" at France for having the audacity to, yanno, hold a fair and get some visitors.

At times, the childishness is breathtaking.

Behind that, and the endless trumpeting of how wonderful it is to pursue power and wealth while people are dying of starvation in the garbage-piled streets (after all, you need all that wealth to get your own children the hell out of there), there's a fairly interesting story about the World Fair, and its architects, and how they all almost got it ready on time despite wasting months choosing a site for it. About Olmsted and his vision for the future of Landscape Architecture. About the electric launches and the first-ever Ferris Wheel. About the woman who won the competition to design the "Woman's Building", who was paid a tenth of what the men got, didn't get to appear in the group picture and was eventually driven into a nervous breakdown by a society dame who wanted to fill the Building with junk...and then disappears from the story. We get to find out all about the mayor's funeral, but not if Sophia Hayden ever recovered.

This book isn't kind to women. It sets the tone by referring to cattle in the stockyards being "murdered". Yep, the callous killings of women and children are equated with the slaughtering of animals. Throughout the book, Larson emphasises how Mudgett/Holmes had an almost vampirical effect on women, yet fails to explain why he had to go out of state to find a suitable victim. I'm sorry, wasn't he surrounded by them? Similarly, Buffalo Bill has all the women at the Fair staring lustfully at him. Sometimes this book has a bigger ego-trip than Mudgett/Holmes's.

Overall, Mudgett/Holmes and his Murder Hotel feel like an afterthought in a book about architects.

Then, onto a freebie acquired via BookRabbit from a publisher who really doesn't like you saying ungood things about their books.

The Affinity Bridge by George Mann

My review

rating: 1 of 5 stars

The Affinity Bridge has an intriguing title and some of the most gorgeous cover art I've seen in years. Just look at that airship! Even the back cover blurb is enticing. Who wouldn't want to know why nobody ever goes near The Natural History Museum?
Unfortunately, we don't get to find out. Maybe the answer will be in one of the sequels, as this is apparently the first novel in a series.

Here, we're introduced to Sir Maurice Newbury and Miss Veronica Hobbes. Newbury is a Crown Agent who also helps out Scotland Yard, whereas Miss Hobbes is ostensibly his assistant at the museum (never conclusively identified, but possibly the British Museum) where his everyday persona works. In a day when almost all office positions were filled by men, Sir Newbury has a female secretary and a female assistant. This could reflect his progressive attitude, or a significant difference between this steampunk Victorian era and the real one, or a lack of research. Given some of the other issues with this book, I'm inclined towards the latter.

It's unfair of course to maul an uncorrected proof for errors that will probably be corrected before the book goes to print, so I shall refrain from going beyond suggesting that a global find of "may" and its replacement with "might" might (!) be a start. However, some mistakes go beyond mere copy-editing--the contention, for example, that both helium and hydrogen are inflammable gases. Better check Google for that one, somebody.

The plot is decent, if a bit lacking in satisfying twists. Newbury is called away from an investigation into the mysterious strangling deaths of male paupers in Whitechapel to look into the death of a cousin of Queen Victoria's in an airship crash. Yes, one of those airships filled with the flammable helium. Mysteries abound--why were the passengers tied into their seats? what happened to the automaton pilot? why should an apparently airworthy airship crash (more on why airships crash later)? We're off and running, while at the same time Newbury's friend Bainbridge is trying to discover who's doing in the paupers. The investigations run together in an interesting fashion, and the resolution is modestly pleasing.

Unfortunately, this book is just badly written. It drags. The dialogue is unnatural, overlong, and often plain dull. The narrative repeats itself, explains what doesn't need explaining, and dwells too long on justifying split-second decisions. Where we've already seen something happen in one scene, we don't need a long conversation in another scene during which other characters are brought up to speed--just gloss it and thereby keep the pace going. Nor do we need to be told what we've just been shown. More faith in the reader is needed.

It's a shame, because the author obviously believes wholeheartedly in what he's writing, and Snowbooks have thrown the weight of a considerable promotional campaign behind this book. Yet parts of it are actively painful. An airship with integrity, ie one that is not losing buoyancy, has no reason to crash. It's not an aeroplane; it's lighter than air (because of all that flammable...oh, wait, I already made that joke). It will just stay where it is, or possibly even rise, unless acted upon by other forces. If you cut the engines, the only forces acting on it will be gravity (nullified by the lighter-than-air thing) and the wind. So it might get blown about, but it won't crash. It could be brought down by windshear, but even then its tendency would be to reascend once the downdraught was past.

Airships are not aeroplanes. Discuss.

View all my reviews.

(I would note that the author has indicated that the reference to inflammable helium will be removed from the final proof.)

Those aren't all the books I read in July, but they are the books needed to bring up to the magical figure.

100!

Woot!