Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, Second Round :: Harmony by Keith Brooke vs. The Croning by Laird Barron

The second round of Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books pits Harmony by Keith Brooke against The Croning by Laird Barron. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 50 pages.

Harmony: Solaris paperback, June 2012, 413 pages, cover art by Adam Tredowski. Harmony (published in the UK under the title alt.human) got here by defeating Wildcatter by Dave Duncan in the first round.

Harmony takes place long after the occupation of Earth by multiple varieties of aliens. Humans live in "Ipps," Indigenous Peoples' Preserves. In the first 25 pages, our teenaged hero Dodge saved a young woman who, inexplicably, lacked any "pids," the personal identifiers the aliens have placed in all humans' bloodstreams. In the second 25 pages, he learns that a human community in another region has been entirely wiped out for unknown reasons. Sol, the leader of Dodge's Ipp, sends him to a nearby Ipp in hopes of joining forces to prepare for the possibility of another such attack. While there, Dodge spots the woman he previously rescued.

The Croning: Night Shade hardcover, May 2012, 245 pages, cover art by Cody Tilson. The Croning reached the second round with a win over Fated by Alyson Noël.

The Croning began with a dark reimagining of the Rumpelstiltskin story, then took us to 1958, where an American man named Don frantically searches Mexico City for Michelle, his lost wife. In the second 25 pages, Don's search ends badly but not quite fatally. Don does not understand his strange occult experiences in Mexico City, and it seems Michelle knows something she is not telling him. We then get a brief glimpse of federal agents investigating a shooting in 1980, before flashing ahead to the present day, as octogenarian Don takes Michelle for a romantic getaway to celebrate their sixtieth anniversary.

The Battle: I hope the Battle of the Books is successfully conveying to all of you how many excellent writers we have today doing interesting work in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genre. For once again, here is a battle which forces me to choose between two very well-written and engaging novels. Both novels have done a nice job of pulling me in by placing their characters in grave danger from the outset.

As I mentioned in his previous battle, Keith Brooke has a marvelous knack for conveying strangeness. The bizarre scenery of Harmony's occupied Earth makes for a fascinating setting. Dodge takes it for granted, for instance, that the aliens use scent to manipulate humans, and that humans have added alien clicks to their language to express emotions. Every page introduces an interesting nuance to Dodge's strange life in the future. The first pages of The Croning depicted a similarly strange world of the past, or at least the past of an odd and frightening fairy tale. The next chapters bring us into the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries, but with effective hints of something unfathomable lurking in the shadows.

I'm enjoying both these books and would be happy to continue with either. Forced to make a choice, it comes down to the characters. I liked the brooding "Spy" of the first chapter of The Croning, but I believe we're done with him. Now that we've switched to the present, I am not so attached to Don and Michelle. Don strikes me as a bit of a twit, and pretty much all I know so far about Michelle is that she has kept an important secret from her husband for over fifty years, which doesn't make her too sympathetic.

Meanwhile, in the opening of Harmony, Dodge has emerged as a very interesting and likable character. He inhabits an almost unimaginably strange world, but Brooke smartly also gives him mundane experiences to which his readers can relate. In a recent battle (ironically, the first-round battle that The Croning won) I made sport of a book's extremely lengthy description of teenagers kissing and groping. Here, in contrast, is a description of a teenage kiss that to me works perfectly:

Her lips pressed against mine, firm and cool, over in an instant. I flinched, surprised, and clicked, "!¡fear ǀ excitement¡!"

I reached for her but she had turned, stepped away, and almost before I could react she was pausing at the entrance to the villa, dipping her head to me in parting, and then she was gone.

I could taste her on my lips still. I could close my eyes and feel the pressure of her mouth on mine.

I care about what happens to Dodge, and I want to see more of Brooke's future world.

THE WINNER: Harmony by Keith Brooke

Harmony advances to the semifinals, where it will face Railsea by China Miéville.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, First Round :: The Croning by Laird Barron vs. Fated by Alyson Noël

The first round of Bracket Five of Battle of the Books continues with a match-up of The Croning by Laird Barron versus Fated by Alyson Noël. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

The Croning: Night Shade hardcover, May 2012, 245 pages, cover art by Cody Tilson. Laird Barron has been publishing horror short fiction since 2000, winning three Shirley Jackson Awards and receiving numerous nominations for the Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award, as well as a World Fantasy Award nomination. His short fiction has been collected in The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, Occultation, and the forthcoming The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All.

The Croning is Barron's first novel. The initial chapter is an elaborate and dark reworking of the Rumpelstiltskin story, as if told by H.P. Lovecraft. The tale is from the point of view of "the Spy," a miller's son and half-brother of the girl who became Queen when she managed to spin straw into gold. We soon learn that the Spy is the father of the child the Queen has promised to a strange Dwarf in payment for his help. The Spy is desperate to find the Dwarf, but his search leads him to a mysterious, evil conspiracy of followers of the "Old Leech." The second chapter skips ahead to Mexico City, 1958. Visitor Donald Miller(!) searches for his wife, who has disappeared, but the authorities to whom he turns for help seem to be toying with him. Through 25 pages, we have no idea how this relates to the Rumpelstiltskin tale.

Fated: Macmillan audio, May 2012, 9 CDs (also published in hardover by St. Martin's). Alyson Noël is the author, by my count, of 19 young adult novels, which have sold very well. Her books include the six-volume Immortals series, beginning with Evermore, and the four-volume Riley Bloom series, beginning with Radiance.

Fated is the first in a new Noël series, called "The Soul Seekers." The second book Echo is out, with at least two more planned, and the series has already been optioned for film adaptation. The heroine of the series is Daire Santos, a young woman with magical abilities she does not yet understand. In the opening chapters of Fated, Daire is in Morocco celebrating her sixteenth birthday with a young actor, when she has a series of strange visions that feature a great many crows and severed heads. She regains consciousness in a hospital, to learn that she attacked her actor boyfriend. The doctor has had Daire restrained, and orders her mother to get her back to the United States for psychiatric treatment. The back of the book suggests she will wind up in New Mexico with her grandmother, who we believe knows more about Daire's abilities than Daire herself.

The Battle: The only time I feel bad about the apples-to-oranges nature of the Battle of the Books is when I have to judge a book that is clearly targeted at an audience that ain't me. Alyson Noël is writing for teenaged girls, the Twilight demographic. So the opening chapter of Fated places heavy emphasis on the dreamy looks of Daire's heartthrob actor boyfriend, not very subtly named "Vane." Daire and Vane share a kiss, the description of which extends for over 200 words. I don't doubt that the scene gave shivers to many of Noël's young readers, but it didn't do much for me.

Meanwhile, I very much enjoyed the opening chapter of The Croning, with its distinctive mashup of fairy tale and Lovecraft and a modern voice——e.g., the Spy affectionately thinks of his half-sister/lover the Queen, "She'd elevated herself unto royalty by convincing the old King she possessed the secrets of alchemy, that she could spin flax into gold, or some similar horseshit." I don't yet know how Rumpelstiltskin ties into a 1950's disappearance in Mexico City, but I am eager to find out.

THE WINNER: The Croning by Laird Barron

The Croning advances to the second round, to face Harmony by Keith Brooke.

To see the whole bracket, click here.