The books of 2003

1. Dawnthief - James Barclay

Talk about apocalyptic fantasy! I think this was one of the most intense fantasy novels I've read. Many writers of fantasy get stuck in to much talking and to much exposition, without getting either characterisation or a better developed world. Barclay have written a story that is filled with action but also with a lot of memorable persons and a story that I cared about. Basically a story about a mercenary band, The Raven, and their hopeless talk in the midst of a major invasion and a looming threat of an arcane nature. It made me feel like reading more Black Company books but I think I'll wait some time as to not spoil that good read for myself but letting my impressiosn from both intermingle. They are both worth savouring. Really a fun book. It made me what to get some more time gaming fantasy roleplaying. I mean that as praise, this isn't D&D crap fiction we're talking here!

2. Spegelbilder av det forna Japan - Thomas Warburton

I was struck by a deperate thirst for reading about Japan. In this small book aspects of Japan during her closed centuries is revealed. Popular stories is retold, fragments of everyday life, arts and the history of one of the major roads in middle age Japan gets its share. Excellent piece about Japan during one of her most fascinating periods. The author really knows what he writes about and his love of the land and its culture is shining through. Nice, short and concentrated. Now I know a lot more about Japanese drama than I did before. Just what I wanted.

3. Espedair Street - Iain Banks

What can I say, a nice book. It's a terrible thing to say really, nice! Iain Banks is a good writer and this is a good book. Period. I really liked it, but I can't come up with anything clever to say about it. It's just a story about a guy being nobody, being famous and then being nobody again. I guess it's also a novel about getting your act together and act responsible, handle your grief and guilt. But that would sound so pretentious to say. So I don't.

4. The Stone Canal - Ian MacLeod

What can I say? This book is good and I like it. But something is flawed. The composition is a little bit strange. Some parts are set on earth during the 1970:ies and other parts on a far off world. One character, Jonathan Wilde, and his friend/enemy David Reid plays the central roles in the novel. The history of earth unfolds and some fairly unbeliveable developments change the political map of the earth. How people choose to position themself in this political climate seems to be the driving force for most of the plot. I for one finds some ideas just silly. World War III starting and ending after exchanges of some tactical nukes? Britain taken over by militaristic royalists? Libertairian futurians inventing the space age? I really feel like the plot is unlikely at best. If the scenario hadn't taken place in a place like I know so well, Europe and Earth, I might have felt more lenient. Now I have a hard time beliveing it. Apart from that, and the fact that people feel very much like plot devices without much really understandable directing them, I think the plot is fun and entertaining. AI emulation of humans, up- and downloading of minds is fast, fun and cool. Reids transformation from socialist to psychopathic capitalist is less fun. OK, it do reminds me of some of our leading social democratic politicians here in Sweden, but apart from that... The story might not be beliveable, but is fun. Some very cool weaponry and techno gadges is used and the idea of exploring nonconvetional experients in social engineering at extra solas colonies is nicely done. I'll read next part in the series, The Cassini Division and then make up my mind if I like these books or not. At least MacLeod is entertaining. He has his book filled with in-jokes and references to other books. He makes you feel smart and knowledgeable and who can resist such flattery?

5. Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald

6. Punsch - Historia och kuriosa (Arrack punsch - history and curiosities, [my translation]) - Carl A Andersson

The most Swedish of all culinary experiences must be our arrack punsch. Arrack, being brewed on Java by Chinese, is imported to Sweden mainly for being the centerpiece in a punsch. Lemons, suger, tea and hot water is the other traditional ingredients. In other countries the word punsch lives on as a mixture, containing various drinks. In Sweden the word in now only used for that special blend. The book tells the history of the drink, it's peculiar place in the lives of the Swedish bourgeoisie. Nowdays it's almost only drunk ice chilled to coffee, but from the late 1700 to 1920 it was drunk warm at almost any occasion. You learn a lot of other interesting facts about the drink in this book. It's a nice book, and it made me thirsty.

7. Chasm City - Alastair Reynolds

It's slick, sleek and and gritty at the same time, a language made for futuristic fantasies. The universe of this novel, and others, of Alastiar Reynolds feel real and intense. He somehow manages to convey a sense of dark infinity space and the crawling and sprawling feel of both jungle and futuristic urban landscape. I like it a lot. In this book the protagonist is a mystry and what he is up to is a mystery. Layered as the proverbial onion, the plot unfolds to new and wider scope after every chapter. I very much like the gimmick he has of writing about the far past and the present and then folding those timelines together to make a coherent plot. Bascically it's a revenge story. "The Count of Monte Cristo", with a heady dose of biotech and challenging ideas about identity in a posthuman world. Oh, and you wont like any of the characters in this book, not a bit. They are disgusting all of them, but one. I really liked this one. I'll soon read more Reynolds, I almost can't wait...

8. Ceres Storm - David Herter[not finished]

This is a very strange book. It's apparantly set in a far future with hi-tech so highly developed it feels like magic. It's nano-tech in all it's glories. Too bad it's not explained anywhere who is who, what they are fighting for or what the gadgets actually do! After reading most of the book I suddenly felt it wasn't fun anymore. The author did his best to loose the reader along the way, and after a long fight with him I let him win.

9. The Cassini Division - Ken MacLeod

Fun. More action and futuristic strangeness from MacLeod. I still think his future history is sociologically flawed. Things happen in very odd ways and don't always make much sense. So, I communist utopia have been set up on earth? Yeah right, how did that happen? It's just as opaque as how his capitalistic utopia happened and whatever it was that started world war three. Yes you read correctly, he started world war three and I didn't even understod how it happened! But in this book there is a fast and furious plot and a race against time and cunning opponents. A world with nanomechanical computers fight against a post-human culture living in the Jovian atmosphere. Kind of neat. But the main protagonist is horrible! I don't like fanatics...

10. The Sky Road - Ken MacLeod

For some odd reason I didn't understand what was happening during the first few chapters of this book. It became clearer later on, even if I still find talking to others about it, that I have missed a lot. Now MacLeod's style is beginning to feel silly and a little bit camp. Every now and then a hint of a person, phenomena or other piece of popular culture leaks through. I'm beginning to think it makes the author sound a bit to proud of his ability to cram it in, not asking himself if it furthers the quality of the book. Anyway, it's a slower book than the first two were, and finally some of the loose threads are beginning to get knitted together. We get to know more about how the world in The Cassini Division came to be and it almost feels like it fits together. All in all, the series is fun and shows some promise as sociologically experiments, in that grand sf traditions. My problem is I just can't force myself to belive in it.

11. Shadow Games - Glen Cook

Murder, magic and mayhem. Cook writes fantasy that's dark in tone and feels like horror. I shivered more than once when some gruesome big baddie sorceror came back from the grave. The main character, Croaker, is a cynical pragmatist. That makes him a much more interesting fellow than most of those that populate the chrome shiny high fantasy so popular today. It's about how the Black Company travels south to uncover its past. Along the way sinister forces show up and many fights from before rears their ugly heads again. Only the good die young, all the evil seems to live forever. This is dark and gritty war. I like it, since it helps me escape the pain and anger I feel much better than any "chrome fantasy". That silly man who sits in the White House should read this book. You can't fight "evil" by pointing at it and and proclaiming yourself to be good. The only thing you'll know is that it will haunt you, forever, since dirt sticks on the proud and ignorant. Good and Evil, same shit for the little man!

12. The Silver Spike - Glen Cook

So, another dark horror from the past have been laid to rest. Quite a few old friends return in this book. It's once again time for a sorcerous threat from beyond the grave. This time it is The Dominator again, but just his shadow. That's bad enough, I can tell you! This book was gripping and scary and since the wizards of the Black Company wasn't in it, there were fewer moments of laughter. But if you like your fantasy dark and broody and with mud all over you, Cook is your man. There was more bleak vistas and burning cities in this book. Most of it is set in Oar after the Silver Spike containing the essence of The Dominator have been stolen. It's a distgusting place filled with rotteness. I liked it, but I think I'll read something less gloomy before I start with Dreams of Steel.

13. The Thirteen Bracelets - Robert Lory

This book is just about everything the films of Mike Myers tries to be, but isn't. It's very camp, very much 1970 and furious fun. Bascially is it a treasure hunt, but it goes from point A to point B in a somewhat random fashion. Along the way it's occasionally pretty funny. Easy to read, enjoy and forget.

14. Decipher - Stel Pavlou

This is the most overwhelmingly global catastrophy I have ever read about! The Earth itself is at stake and archeological hints must be solved before the end of the week. It's a thriller with a truly global scope and nice hints about the True History of the World. It actually succeeds in being fairly cool, with great characters and stunning vistas. It could be a really flashy film one day. A page turner of first class! Recommeded if you like catastrophies!

15. A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin

16. Age of Iron - J.M. Coetzee

John Banville wrote in the Evening Standard "Little confort is offered, yet in the end one is conforted. That is the consolation of art". Maybe it is so. Maybe I just don't understand art. You see, this is one of the most depressing books I've read in a long time. It's about a woman who is dying from cancer. It's about her last days, and a lot about the dying South Africa where she lives. Say what you want about apartheid, but a funny subject it is not. Neither is cancer. Maybe it is a great tale, with powerful and grim subjects handled with a master wordsmith. I can feel the echoes of that master, but then I loose it in page long monologues of a dying woman. It's a human book. All to human.

17. The Star King - Jack Vance

This is the first of the Demon Princes series. It was a while since I last read a book by Jack Vance and didn't get dissapointed. For some reason, there is more intensity and focus in this story. Maybe it's just because it's written before Vance got old and lost his flair. The famous Vancian language is not present like it is in so much of his other work. Strange words do occur, but most of them are names for customs of slang in one of all the myriad cultures the author shows us. The story is a basic revenge story. A cabal of flamboyant, evil and devious criminals are to be hunted down and destroyed. During this we get to see a fascinating vista of explored space. Still, most of the time in this first book, the protagonist is travelling around space in an old tincan of a spaceship which gives everything a more gritty feel. This, the suspense plot and the constrained vancian language succeeds in laying down a feel for a universe that is both diverse and very colorful while remaining down to earth. Most of the hi-tech has aged pretty well, since it isn't in front of the stage - the hunt and the search for clues of the criminals whereabouts is. I like this one!

18. The Killing Machine - Jack Vance

The grim work continues. Now Kirth Gersen is faced with a new adversary. While the first one, the Star King, was an non-human monster this one almost feels a bit pale in comparison. I also felt the ending a bit lame. Suddenly he just kills the Demon Prince and it's over! But the parts about the kidnapping agency was wickedly fun!

19. The Palace of Love - Jack Vance

After two books, the hunt goes ever on. The search is beginning to be more interesting than the final confrontation, like in the previous book. The planet of the poisoners is strange, exotic and gives you the right sense of wonder. Financial and juridical means start to take a bigger and bigger part in the revenge. Gersen is beginning to show signs of weariness. This time the strange characters Gersen met and the odd genetic experiments by the Demon Prince was really well plotted and painted by Vance. Once again the end feel a little bit lame. The Prince was more of an obsessed monomanaic than the gradiose killer the title summons up in my mind. Still fun and a good read.

20. Så Tror Jag (Comment je crois) - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

This is basically a letter, send by Chardin to his supperiors explaining his peculiar heretical ideas. He tries to show how what he belives is for him very clear, logical and natural. Much is maybe far fetched, but still not in denial of church doctrine. I was interested in what the famous man thought, and felt that this short book ought to be a good introduction. I found his ideas most interesting. Much of what he says feels very much like what I've longed for, an explanation for the meaning and how the religion can show us a way of looking at the whole universe as a spiritual system permeated by the love of God. It's hard not to be seduced by his strong vision of a universe where everything has a place, a purpose and meaning. It's a mystical view of all creation while still based in the objective material world we can observe. I liked it a loot, and have gotten much to think about how I view the world.

21. The Face - Jack Vance

So, Gersen fights on. Now the story felt invigorated again, and more focused than in the last book. He hunts for corporate stock, fights in duels and does a lot of burglaries. The love story is no longer so contrived and since he no longer flies from world to world, Vance can develop the society he visits more. It's also more fun than the former books in the series. Now we get to see desert worlds and spicy foods, corporate wars and some gruesome battles. Not bad.

22. The Ginger Star - Leigh Bracket

This book I bought because Michael Moorcock once praised Leigh Bracket and her excellent space opera. Having read more about her, I now know she was considered the queen of space opera. Her books seems to have a common theme of long lost and decayed societies, of decadence and slumbering sophistication. It did remind me of a more controlled and low key Vance. You could easyly see some similarities, and I think that's no coincidence. The story in this book is a simple one, the hunt for a captive in a faraway castle and lots of hinders thrown up on the way. In the end the corrupt government falls, and the liberation of the world has begun according to the old prophecies. It's space fantasy and it's good fun. Well written and an easy read. I wouldn't mind reading more Bracket when I want some mood filled space adventure.

23. Shiva 3000 - Jan Lars Jensen

I had looked longingly on this book before I bought it. Since I read Lord of Light I have been facinated with fantasy and science fiction inspired by Indian cultures. This is just as colorful as I imagined it to be, but sadly the writing isn't up to par with the ideas. Jensen effectivly kills off him protagonist by halfway in the book rendering him meek and pointless when his genetic programming is disabled. Suddenly he doesn't want to go on the great quest he book was set up for, and frankly after that the book looses its main drive and focus. Sure, there is still the palace intrigue and the plotting to become the ruler of India after the death of the Sovereign, but it no longer has a main character as a focal point and the story loses critical momentum. I also felt that the main revelations of a greater science fictional backdrop came very late in the book. It's set in India in the far future, where some great wooden mecha roam the land! But even though these "gods" are clearly mechanical and much is very technical in feel it never feels like science fiction until the very end. Then it's almost pointless and when some great revelations unfold the protagonist goes away with his girl and that which might have been the focus of another book is just tossed aside. I think this is a litterary debut for Jensen. It's an excellent start, but I think he needs to learn hwo to structure and develop his ideas better. Enjoyable, but it could have been even better!

24. The Second Trip - Robert Silverberg

Being one of the "sixties" Silverberg, this book was bound to be good. Having read some of his other works of that era I kind of knew what was coming. Psychological phenomena and questions about identity is main themes in his excellent Dying Inside and likewise in this novel. It is short, it stops before page 200 and I almost feel it should have been developed a bit more. It is a tale about how a sadistic molester, a rapist and madman, has had his identity wiped out and his body taken by a constructed persona. I find this kind of justice interesting. No longer death penalty by killing the body, but the mind. Of course the old persona comes back. Now the question is, who has the right to the body, the memories and the life? I found it interesting and well written. Sometimes it shines in some moments of dense feeling and dizzying portrayal of how it is to be confined in your own head when somebody else is controllling your body. I can't really let myself go, though. Somehow it doesn't grab me by the throat. There is lacking some of the fire of some of Silverbergs other work. Even if I try to find fault with this novel, I can't find any. I guess it might be that having read so much MacLeod, I'm beginning to feel a little bit jaded and no longer feel the vastness of the subject and how artfully Silverberg pulls it off. It is a good book, and a tense drama which in its grimmer parts feels very much like the voice of an author I know and like very much.

25. The Final Programme - Michael Moorcock

I've read many stories about The Eternal Champion and other recurrent characters in Mike Moorcocks books. I've even seen the film made out of this book. Now, because me wife wanted to discuss this book with people, I at last got my act together and read that which started it all. It's very much about the sixties. It's very much Avengers and James Bond. It's a spy novel clad in the form of the Elric story "Stealer of Souls". Frankly, it isn't that good. Sure it is fun, and Jerry is very much an icon of the times. It's so much style it gets boring.

26. A Cure for Cancer - Michael Moorcock

The merrygoround keeps turning. In this chapter of the Jerry Cornelius stories JC is back. Now he is no longer part of that twinsexed beast that he became at the ned of the last book. Now is is photo negative! He's got black teeth for no reason I ever understood. It's very much a book about Vietnam. The horrors of the far east is positioned on the much more understandable home isle. More often than not I ask myself if we, born in the seventies even understand what the Vietnam war meant. The book is constructed very purposefully and the three million american "military advisors" in Europe is both hilarious and rather silly. The only thing that have been left in my mind is the image of Jerry Driving in his car while the armada of strategic bombers dump their paylod on London. To bad George W Bush made all this be something more than a farce. Once again.

27. Redemption Ark - Alistair Reynolds

This is how space opera should be! Nefarious plots, and destructive devices! Big starships! World shattering threats that must be averted! I like it. It is purposefully done as an homage to the space operas of yonder days. Reynolds tries to do old time space opera for the new era, and it really seems to be the fashionable trend amongst sf writers of today. He is good at it. Some of my friends find his writing style dull and to workmanlike. I don't agree. I think he subtly shows the vastness of space, and in the midst of those earth shattering events there are interesting beings to read about. But, it is entertainment and not very much analysis of state and society. It isn't what the author is focusing on. I really likes that he could steadily improve the tension and provide me with some thrills. The inhibitors are back and they are not interested in parley. Good fun.

28. Dreams of Steel - Glen Cook

I felt I had to read to the end of "The Books of the South". To be quite honest, I didn't think the last book was all that great. But, this one became better and more focused. I guess it has to do with it not just being about travelling across the continent. Some nice a devious conspiracies and decent fights. What was lacking, though, was the proper ending. It almost felt as if now Cook had at last the companu where they had to be for the next step in the saga to begin. I felt a little bit let down, and I'm not sure I'll read "Glittering Stone". At least not untill I know it has an ending. But I must confess I'm curious to what will happen to the Lady now...

29. Lånta Fjädrar - Erle Stanley Gardner

Time again for a mystery. Again, I have dug out an old Perry Mason story. It was a much more far-fetched story this time, and I think all the characters behaved rather much like place holders. They were "cool detective", "witty secretary" and not much of interesting persons. The mystery was intriguing, and to say the least, very complex. Fun and silly entertainment. I did like his newer book better.

30. Galärslaven - Jenny Robertsson

Reading this I felt like I was 13 years again! It's one of those books for young adults and children I read in those days. It's very much a christian book, and very much edutainment. For some strange reason I did like it! Even though it felt the roman world was a bit thin, and the "good" people behaving with extraordinary humility and compassion I did feel moved by it. Sometimes a book written to be simple is all that is needed to get the point through. The loving and caring characters didn't behave like people, but they did showed how we should behave, rather. It was a nice reminder of the silent love, for every living thing, we all should carry in our heart - to share.

31. Inverted World - Christopher Priest

Dizzying is the best word for this book. It felt a little like The Bridge by Iain Banks. It had that same claustrophobic feeling. The story is basically the life of a young man in a big artificial city, situated on a world with strange properties. Even after reading it, was it hard to understand the change of perspectives involved. It was a story about how to "grow into" the norms of society and how different views of the world make one behave in a way which seems absurd from another point of view. The novel is based on math and strange physics about the curvature of space, but it's the inner space that matters most. I liked it.

32. Appleseed - John Clute

Did I understand it? Could I decipher all the locks, mysteries and arcane knowledge this book hinted at? I'm not sure. One of the most eluding stories of the year, this was. Veils and layers of communication was the mortar and bricks of this book. A highly peculiar book it was. Only when I through a previously published snippet got a few lines of explanation from the author did I begin to understand. When I had gotten that enlightenment I realized that it had been obvious since the start. In this sprawling space opera most of the dialog is between the different masks that various AI use. It is a wild hunt for predecessor artifacts, with strange aliens that speak so strange and behave so very strange. The technology is both very pervasive and totally invisible. A space station is described in such a biological feeling and visually stunning matter I didn't for sure know if it was biological or technologcical. The odd figure called whole of humanity is portrayed as a symbol of procreation, of art and shaping the world. I do understand why Alistair Reynolds felt it was a inspiring book. The sleekness and silent beauty of the stark coldness and vastness of space is here, as in his books. The planet busting weapons too! I think book must be re-read to be wholly grasped. It's like the most flowery of prose, in the Vancian style, and the hints of hidden depths of Wolfe. And I mean that in a positive way!