Battle of the 2012 Books, Bracket Eight, Championship Round :: Osama by Lavie Tidhar vs. Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines

We have arrived at the championship round of our current bracket of the Battle of the Books. In one corner we have Osama by Lavie Tidhar. In the other corner we have Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines. Two fine competitors. I (Aaron) have read through Page 200 of both these books, and the novel I most want to continue reading to the end will be the champion of Bracket Eight of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the 2012 Books.

Osama: Solaris, October 2012 (published in UK by PS Publishing in 2011), 302 pages, cover art by Pedro Marques. Lavie Tidhar is an Israeli writer now living in London. Osama won the 2012 World Fantasy Award. Osama made it to the championship by overpowering The Steam Mole by Dave Freer in the first round, by defeating Beyond Here Lies Nothing by Gary McMahon in the second round, and by pushing past The Diviners by Libba Bray in the semifinals.

The setting of Osama is an alternate universe where Osama bin Laden is not a real terrorist, but the hero of a series of pulp novels, the plots of which parallel actual terrorist attacks from our world. Our hero Joe is a private investigator hired by an enigmatic woman to find the author of the Osama books, who writes under the pseudonym "Mike Longshott." In the first 100 pages, Joe tracked down the publisher of the books in Paris. Most of the next 100 pages take place in London, where Joe believes he will find the author. But Joe repeatedly encounters interference from people who do not want him to find his target. One clue leads Joe to an opium den, where he has a vision of another world like his own, but more frenetic and computerized. It's a world that seems strange to Joe, but not to us.

Libriomancer: DAW, August 2012, 305 pages, cover art by Gene Mollica. Libriomancer is the first volume in Jim C. Hines' latest series, Magic Ex Libris. Libriomancer made it to the championship by easily beating out Dead Religion by David Beers in the first round, by defeating Untimed by Andy Gavin in the second round, and by overcoming A Pretty Mouth by Molly Tanzer in the semifinals.

The protagonist of Libriomancer is Isaac Vainio, who can reach into any book he has read and pull out objects described in the narrative. The trouble is, if he draws on this talent too often, he starts to lose himself in those fictional narratives. In the opening 100 pages of Libriomancer, a large-scale struggle broke out between supernatural beings. Isaac fears that the world's first libriomancer, Johannes Gutenberg, is behind the conflict. In the second 100-page section, Isaac tries to trace the rogue libriomancer causing the trouble. This effort prompts a dangerous visit with his dryad companion Lena to the underground lair of a great colony of vampires.

The Battle: One thing that becomes very clear doing the Battle of the Books is that there are many different ways to tell a good story. Osama and Libriomancer are awfully different but both excellent.

Libriomancer is a hoot for any lifelong reader of science fiction and fantasy. I can often identify the books Isaac is drawing objects from before Hines even names them. Hines works through the underlying magical system convincingly. And in the second 100 pages, he gives us a clue about the nature of the villain Isaac is facing that I won't spoil for you, but I found it a terrific surprise.

Meanwhile, notwithstanding the consistently elegant writing, Osama has the feel of a well-paced noir mystery. But the mystery isn't really about Mike Longshott, the author of the Osama bin Laden books, but about how the universe of those books relates to our protagonist Joe. Why do people who know something about the bin Laden stories refer to Joe as a "refugee" or a "fuzzy-wuzzy"? The closer he gets to Mike Longshott, the less Joe understands about his own place in the world:

Joe looked up from the book and drew a deep breath. This was insane. Longshott's obsessively neat facts and figures seemed designed to snare him, entrap him: names, times, street addresses, hobbies for the dead men. London. He thought: fuzzy-wuzzies, and giggled. Was he searching for Longshott, or was Longshott searching for him? The pulp writer was leaving him a trail of crumbs to follow, and he was following, and the world was slowly unravelling around him, a threadbare tapestry that could no longer quite comfort him against the chill.

The Battle of the Books is not about making a case that one book is objectively better than the other. I'm not even saying one book is better in my subjective opinion. I decide the battles on a single subjective criterion: which book do I most feel compelled to keep reading?

Libriomancer is a lot of fun. I enjoy it every time I pick it up. I expect I will enjoy reading the sequels. But when I put it down, I stop thinking about it pretty quickly. When I put Osama down, it stays in my mind. Tidhar's language continues to resonate. I keep thinking about the book's tough but ultimately lost protagonist, the shifting boundaries between his universe and mine.

I don't know that Osama is better than Libriomancer. I don't even know if I'm enjoying it more. But I know I find it tremendously intriguing. And if I had a fire tonight and both books burned up, I know which one I would immediately have to replace so I could finish reading it.

THE WINNER: Osama by Lavie Tidhar

Osama wins Bracket Eight of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the 2012 Books. Congratulations to Lavie Tidhar as our newest Battle of the Books champion!

To see the completed bracket, click here.

We've crowned a winner for this bracket, but soon we'll announce a whole new bracket of sixteen books. Jackie, our new reviewer for Battle of the Books, will be judging the next bracket. This will give Aaron a break, to focus on some short fiction recommendations. Stay tuned for more book battles to come!

Battle of the 2012 Books, Bracket Eight, First Semifinal :: The Diviners by Libba Bray vs. Osama by Lavie Tidhar

Our first semifinal match in Bracket Eight of the Battle of the 2012 Books features The Diviners by Libba Bray going against Osama by Lavie Tidhar. The winner, the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 100 pages, will advance to the championship round.

The Diviners: Little Brown, September 2012, 578 pages, jacket illustration by I Love Dust. The Diviners is a young adult fantasy set in the roaring 1920's. The Diviners made it to the semifinals by soundly defeating Sharkways by A. J. Kirby in the first round, and by overcoming Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone by Stefan Kiesbye in the second round.

In the opening 50 pages of The Diviners, teenaged flapper Evie O'Neill arrived in 1920s New York, determined to make a splash. Evie is rather self-absorbed, but that's partly to mask her pain over her brother's death in the Great War. In the next 50 pages, Evie starts blending into the Manhattan social scene. She also accompanies her uncle, who is summoned to a murder scene as an expert in the occult. Using her strange ability to pick up thoughts from physical objects, Evie sees the victim's brutal murder and learns that an evil presence is loose in New York. Based on cryptic intelligence from her uncle, we suspect Evie will be one of the "Diviners" who will have to battle this presence. Another is Harlem numbers-runner Memphis Campbell, who had healing powers as a child, but abandoned them after they failed him when he needed them most.

Osama: Solaris, October 2012 (published in UK by PS Publishing in 2011), 302 pages, cover art by Pedro Marques. Lavie Tidhar is an Israeli writer now living in London. Osama won the 2012 World Fantasy Award. Osama made it to the semifinals by overpowering The Steam Mole by Dave Freer in the first round, and by defeating Beyond Here Lies Nothing by Gary McMahon in the second round.

Osama takes place in an alternate universe where Islamic terrorism occurs only in the pages of a series of pulp novels called Osama bin Laden: Vigilante. In the opening 50 pages a mysterious woman tasked our hero, a private eye named Joe, with finding the author of the Osama books. In the next 50-page section, Joe explores Paris and tracks down the books' publisher, despite warnings from some American thugs who do not want him to continue with his assignment. While in Paris, he meets another strange woman, who ends up vanishing from his arms, the most obvious of several signs that the reality of Joe's universe is rather tenuous.

The Battle: Judging the Battle of the Books gets difficult once we're to the semifinals, because the books that get this far are usually really good. Both The Diviners and Osama are well-written and mostly successful at everything the authors are trying to do.

Through the first hundred pages of The Diviners, the main protagonist Evie is engaging even though flawed. The narrative is funny when Libba Bray wants it to be, and genuinely chilling even to an adult reader when things get ominous. Bray effectively conveys the mood of the roaring 20s, with a narrative voice that nicely suits the period, for example in this scene where Evie's friend Mabel introduces her to a pair of elderly sisters residing in her building:

The Misses Proctor wore their long gray hair curled like turn-of-the-century schoolgirls. The effect was odd and disconcerting, like porcelain dolls who had aged and wrinkled.

"Welcome to the Bennington. It's a grand old place. . . . Sometimes you might hear odd sounds in the night. But you mustn't be frightened. The city has its ghosts, you see."

"All the best places do," Evie said with mock-seriousness.

Mabel choked on her Coca-Cola, but Miss Lillian did not take note. "In the seventeen hundreds, this patch of land was home to those suffering from the fever. Those poor, tragic souls moaning in their tents, jaundiced and bleeding, their vomitus the color of black night!"

Evie pushed her sandwich away. "How hideously fascinating. I was just saying to Mabel—Miss Rose—that we don't talk enough about black vomit." Under the table, Mabel's foot threatened to push Evie's through the floor.

That is a smart-alecky young heroine that I can get behind!

In Osama, Lavie Tidhar goes for a darker, more contemplative mood, but builds it just as successfully. His lush descriptions of a slightly altered Paris work very well. I love the contrast between Joe's noirish storyline and the excerpts from the Osama bin Laden: Vigilante books, which Joe and the other characters describe as pulp novels, but actually are narrated in a matter-of-fact style and are pulpish only in the sense that things often blow up.

Tidhar does a wonderful job of suggesting through subtle cues that the reality of Joe's universe is fragile. For example, when a bartender says of the odd woman Joe keeps encountering, "She's not all there," we're pretty sure he doesn't just mean she's crazy. Later, when Joe catches up to her again, she says she doesn't know where the fat man who publishes the Osama novels lives:

"Would you tell me if you knew?"

The girl shook her head again. When she looked at him, he felt trapped: he could not move away. The large brown eyes examined him, stripping him down without emotion, looking inside, a doctor checking for tell-tale signs of a terminal disease. "No," she said. "Why should I? He never did us any harm. And he cares, Joe. He cares. Life isn't a pulp novel, Joe, and death isn't either." And she got up and threw her head back and downed the drink, the last drink, and put down the glass on the counter and walked away, and he watched her, and it was another ritual established, another pattern followed, agreed upon, comforting. They both needed comfort, not of sex or even drink but of a reason, any reason, and in the absence of that there were only empty rituals. And the door closed behind her and the couples danced, seeking warmth in each other's bodies, and the slow recorded jazz played on, and the smoke from Joe's cigarette formed Lazarus castles in the air, gray and insubstantial, and he thought, I never told her my name.

Judge for yourself, but so far the enigmatic style of Osama is working beautifully for me.

So how to choose a winner after 100 pages, when both books are well written and entertaining? I want to give you some insightful literary analysis as to why one book is better, but I can't. All I can say is, if I were to declare Osama the winner, I would stop reading The Diviners. But if I were to name The Diviners the winner, I would continue reading Osama; I would not be able to put it down now if I tried. Which is what the Battle of the Books is all about.

THE WINNER: Osama by Lavie Tidhar

Osama advances to the championship round to face either Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines or A Pretty Mouth by Molly Tanzer.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the 2012 Books, Bracket Eight, Second Round :: Osama by Lavie Tidhar vs. Beyond Here Lies Nothing by Gary McMahon

Our second match in the second round of Bracket Eight of the Battle of the 2012 Books features Osama by Lavie Tidhar doing battle with Beyond Here Lies Nothing by Gary McMahon. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 50 pages.

Osama: Solaris, October 2012 (published in UK by PS Publishing in 2011), 302 pages, cover art by Pedro Marques. Lavie Tidhar is an Israeli writer now living in London. Osama won the 2012 World Fantasy Award. Osama defeated The Steam Mole by Dave Freer to advance to the second round.

The setting of Osama is an alternate universe where Osama Bin Laden is the hero of a series of adventure pulp novels called Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante. Tidhar's narrative peppers in passages from those novels, which describe terrorist attacks that actually occurred in our universe. In the opening 25 pages, an enigmatic woman asks our protagonist Joe, a Western detective living in Laos, to find the author of the Osama Bin Laden books. In the second 25 pages, Joe travels to Paris, where the books are published. He asks a lady of the night about the books. She knows them, but when he seeks more information she bursts out, "They should leave Papa D alone," and promptly leaves.

Beyond Here Lies Nothing: Solaris, August 2012, 352 pages, cover art by Vincent Chong. Gary McMahon is the author of a number of books, mostly horror. Beyond Here Lies Nothing is the third book in the Concrete Grove Trilogy. Beyond Here Lies Nothing defeated A Red Sun Also Rises by Mark Hodder to advance to the second round.

After a prologue from a child's diary describing a bogeyman that goes "clikcety clikcety," the first 25 pages of Beyond Here Lies Nothing introduced us to Marc Price, who is researching the odd township of Concrete Grove. In the second 25 pages, Marc goes home with a strange woman named Abby, who he learns had a daughter who disappeared a few years earlier. We also meet a detective named Royle, driven to alcoholism by the unsolved disappearances in Concrete Grove. In a poignant phone call, we learn that Royle's pregnant wife has moved out until he can control his drinking.

The Battle: Here are two books with solid openings, both of which I genuinely want to keep reading.

Osama takes me to an intriguing universe where al Qaeda's terrorist rampage was somehow contained within the pages of a series of pulp novels. Beyond Here Lies Nothing introduces me to a memorably creepy section of London. Both books take the time for me to get to know their main characters, believable people with relatable problems.

Through 50 pages, I can already say that these are both strong novels well worth checking out. But the Battle of the Books rules devised by some idiot (me) require that I choose only one of the two books to keep reading. I know which one I have to choose, for a nitpicky reason and for a significant reason.

The nitpicky reason goes to the author's writing styles. The writing in Osama is, to my tastes, pitch perfect so far. If I had been in a writing group with Lavie Tidhar and had read this manuscript, I would have told him there's a typo on page 57 and had nothing else to say. The writing of Beyond Here Lies Nothing is also good, but I can find things to quibble with. There are some turns of phrase that don't quite work for me. (E.g., when Marc kisses Abby, "Her thin lips were hard; her large mouth was soft and wet" -- this throws me out of the story as I try to figure how someone could have hard lips but a soft mouth.) And there are several passages where a character perceives everyday places and objects as ominous, for instance:

The empty play park opposite looked different, as if subtle changes had occurred. The swings rocked slowly, the roundabout turned as if it had been pushed gently by an invisible hand; the climbing frame seemed as if it were tensed for movement, like a large spider waiting to pounce.

By itself, I rather like this passage. The problem is that there are a dozen other passages just like it, and for me a little of this sort of thing goes a long way. I prefer Tidhar's relative restraint, for instance pausing to describe airplane passengers as "like silkworm larvae in their soft cocoons" and then quickly moving on.

The more significant reason is that Osama has managed to draw me into the story slowly, taking time for strong characterization, while still giving me a pretty good sense of what to expect. This is a tale of alternate universes, where the bin Laden of our universe becomes a pulp hero in another universe. The sorry detective sent to get to the bottom of this is not going to like what he finds. I want to read that. Meanwhile, Beyond Here Lies Nothing also builds slowly with good characterization, but it hasn't given me a sense of the story's big picture. I know it is a horror novel where people, especially young girls, are apt to disappear forever. But I have no sense of what's behind it all, other than that it goes "clikcety clikcety." That's not quite enough to hook me through 50 pages. (Even so, it's made me want to seek out a copy of McMahon's The Concrete Grove, to try this series from the start.)

THE WINNER: Osama by Lavie Tidhar

Osama advances to the semifinals to take on The Diviners by Libba Bray.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the 2012 Books, Bracket Eight, First Round :: Osama by Lavie Tidhar vs. The Steam Mole by Dave Freer

Our third match-up in the first round of Bracket Eight of the Battle of the 2012 Books is Osama by Lavie Tidhar going against The Steam Mole by Dave Freer. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

Osama: Solaris, October 2012 (published in UK by PS Publishing in 2011), 302 pages, cover art by Pedro Marques. Osama takes place in an alternate universe (possibly based on an alternate history timeline), where Osama Bin Laden is not the terrorist we know, but the fictional hero of a series of pulp novels called Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante. Through 25 pages, the novel alternates between chapters from an Osama Bin Laden novel, which depicts fictional terrorist attacks that actually happened in our universe, and chapters from the point of view of a detective named Joe living in Laos. A mysterious woman gives Joe the assignment of finding the author of the Osama Bin Laden books. The author's name is Mike Longshott, but Joe assumes that's a pseudonym.

Lavie Tidhar is the leading Israeli author of science fiction and fantasy, although he now lives in London. Osama won the World Fantasy Award after its initial release in the UK.

The Steam Mole: Pyr, December 2012, 302 pages, cover art by Paul Young. The Steam Mole is the second in a YA steampunk series, after Cuttlefish, which competed in the Fall 2012 Battle of the Books. In a steampunk universe where the polar ice caps melted ahead of schedule, our young heroine Clara Calland has escaped with her mother to Australia, pursued by the British government, which seeks a scientific breakthrough her mother has made. They made their escape on the coal-powered submarine Cuttlefish, and Clara has fallen for one of its young crewmen, Tim Barnabas. The Cuttlefish is grounded for repairs in Australia, and when Clara's mother falls ill, she ends up at the mercy of some well-meaning but clueless natives, while Tim is stuck working on the huge tunneling machines called "steam moles."

Dave Freer is a South African writer living in Australia. He is best known for his fantasy in collaboration with Eric Flint and Mercedes Lackey, as well as his solo Dragon's Ring series.

The Battle: Through 25 pages, the strength of both these books is the setting. The battle comes down to a matter of degrees.

I like how The Steam Mole integrates a steampunk sensibility into a post-global warming world. There are some nice touches, like how reluctant Australians are to go into the sun during the day, but they'll gladly send aboriginals on errands. Most of the first 25 pages are spent summarizing the previous book, but the story starts to move in earnest as Clara realizes how seriously ill her mother is, and the reader realizes she was poisoned by agents of a London duke.

Meanwhile, through 25 pages, I love the initial set-up of Osama. The contrast between the pulpish chapters of Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante and the lush descriptions of Joe's home in Laos is terrific. There are fascinating hints in Joe's chapters that the reality he sees around him is fragile. I very much want to see him poke at the edges of his own universe and start to get an understanding of ours.

While I'd be happy to keep reading The Steam Mole, I absolutely do not want to put down Osama.

THE WINNER: Osama by Lavie Tidhar

Osama advances to the second round to take on either Beyond Here Lies Nothing by Gary McMahon or A Red Sun Also Rises by Mark Hodder.

To see the whole bracket, click here.