Book Review: Loki's Wolves

Loki's Wolves, Part One of the Blackwell Pages, by K.L. Armstrong and M. A. Marr
Published by Little, Brown and Co, 2013  358 pages.
Source: Library.  Pulled off the New Book shelf because it looked interesting.

Summary:
Matt Thorsen knows he is a direct descendant of the Norse god Thor.  He just doesn't know that he's going to be the one who has to save the world.  He's only 13, even if he is big for his age, and now he's supposed to create a team of other descendants of the gods and go out and keep the world from ending.  It doesn't help that the children of Loki, the Trickster God, aren't very fond of him, but he persuades Fen and Laurie to join his quest, and they have the start of a team.

Review:
Right up front I need to say that this book does two things I'm not wild about.  The first is minor, and is overcome by a gripping story.  I'm not really that crazy about the supernatural kids in a normal modern world, but that's a matter of taste and it's well done.  I am even less crazy about cliffhanger novel endings, so consider this a warning: this book stops in the middle.  There is a modest sense of resolution--a few things are figured out--but the story is too incomplete for my taste.  Again, this is not something that necessarily means you won't like it.  You just need to know that.

I was fairly quickly drawn into the story, once I got past a little reluctance about the setting issues (see above and my personal tastes).  The book is liberally illustrated with full-page black and white pictures which look a bit like Manga, stylistically.  They don't do a lot for me, but again, that's taste.  By the time I was 50 or 60 pages in (not that far, really, with so many pictures and lovely large clear type) I was pretty hooked.  By the mid-point, the action heats up and really doesn't stop, so it's a gripper.  Relationships are a bit simplistic, but these are Junior High kids--they are big on drama, but not very good at self-knowledge.

The story is told by an omniscient narrator, and the authors have done a good job with that, so that there's always clarity about who's perspective we are seeing from, and no feeling of head-hopping. 
The writing is generally tight and smooth, and there were no editing or proofing issues that leapt out at me (except maybe a bit of geography, but that's not a huge issue and I only know because I checked on the map). 

Finally, to think about this in terms of the on-going discussion here and on Goodreads about kids without parents, most of these kids have parents--good and bad.  But the parents are pretty undeveloped, and are very quickly left behind.  The authors have for the most part chosen to removed the kids from the help and guidance of adults, who on the whole become, not exactly the enemy, but impediments to the much more important task the kids face.

I think that any kid who likes Rick Riordan or Harry Potter will like this, and the saga promises well.  I just would prefer not to have to wait however long it takes to bring out Book Two!

One final note: it's a bit of a shame to vilify wolves as this book does--they are for the most part the fighting arm of the badguy side.  In the real world wolves have enough of a bad rap without this.  But, then, these are werewolves, not the real kind!


Full Disclosure: I borrowed Loki's Wolves from my library, and received nothing whatsoever from the author or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed in this review are my own and no one else's.

Book Review: Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, by Stephen Jay Gould.  347 pages, including notes and index.
Published by W.W. Norton, 1989

 Summary:
This non-fiction work is a combination of history and science, recounting both the discovery and interpretation of the 530-million-year-old creatures in the shale, as well as the significance of these followers of the "Cambrian Explosion" when the variety of life took off.  He covers both the personalities and discoveries of the major players in unraveling the mysteries of the Burgess Shale creatures, and also the ways in which their discoveries changed our understanding of evolution.

Review:
Gould's subtitle might make one wonder about the connection between such early creatures and, say, Washington crossing the Delaware, but that's because we tend to think of history as human history.  The history Gould is considering is the history of all life, and really it's about the nature of evolution. 

The book tells two stories, then: the human history of discovering, misinterpreting, and re-interpreting the fossils from high on the side of a mountain in the Canadian Rockies--and the scientific history of how life on earth got from the weird creatures depicted on the cover to, well, us.  The two threads are seamlessly intertwined, and the one helps illuminate the other, so that my improved understanding of paleontology helped me to understand the interpretations made by scientists along the way, and their journey to understand helps me grok the process of evolution.

I won't try to reconstruct Gould's argument or purpose.  Suffice to say that I cam away from the book with a better understanding of both earth's history and the evolutionary process, as well as some interesting anecdotal history about paleontologists.  Also with food for thought, as Gould asserts--and fairly convincingly supports the assertion--that the element of chance in evolution (something like chaos, I think) means that the emergence of mammals as the top animals, let alone of humans, was highly unlikely, rather than the inevitable result of a constant development toward the "best" design. (Since evolution is about survival and reproduction, it doesn't necessarily support the "best"--only the "good enough".)

The book is intended for a lay audience, but Gould does assume a certain familiarity with the basic concepts, though he does a good refresher on the key points.  I found the paleontology about as complex and in-depth as I'd want to go, and did find my eyes glazing from time to time.  Not surprisingly (I am an English Lit-and-history type, after all!) I found the human stories more accessible and engaging.  His analysis of why Charles Wolcott, the original (1909) excavator of the fossils, went so far wrong is a fascinating study of our human ability to see what we are looking for.

Gould is an excellent writer of science for the normal person, and I can recommend the book to anyone wanting a better understanding of the origins of life and evolution.
Four stars (I'm dinging him a bit for losing me in some of the technical stuff. which might not be fair, but there it is).

###

For fun: the reason I read this book is that this summer, on our vacation trip to the Canadian Rockies, we hiked up past the Wolcott quarry and did a little searching on our own hook for the fossils.  You can't enter the quarry, but there are lots of lower-quality fossils in the shale either side of the trail below it.  The visit required a 12-mile hike with 3000' of elevation gain (and loss again, which is what hurt most), but added great views to scientific interest.

The Wolcott Quarry

My best fossil.  I have no idea what it was.

The view from the Wapta Highline Trail just below the quarry.

Full Disclosure: I bought Wonderful Life at the Visitor's Center in Banff National Park, and received nothing whatsoever from the author or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed in this review are my own and no one else's.  They also reflect my understanding of the subject matter and any errors therein are mine and not Mr. Gould's.

Flash Fiction Friday: The Machines of Jest

Time for another Flash Fiction challenge from Chuck Wendig, king of brilliant and profane writing advice, and home of the best weekly writing challenges.  This week, he gave us a list of 20 potential sources of conflict for a story, and I spun the virtual wheel of fortune.  Change gave me "machines are taking over."  So I give you. . . 


The Machines of Jest
I may be the only living person who really knows what happened on Surely You Jest.  The planet, originally 165432Bb, was named by the first settlers for their reaction to its rocky surface.  It had been classed as suitable for human habitation, but it clearly wasn’t going to be anyone’s vacation paradise.  Later, when 165432Bc was settled and found to be marginally more pleasant, the settlers named it Don’t Call Me Shirley.  Naturally, the two became known as Jest and Shirley.

The effort required to make Jest genuinely habitable was immense.  To meet it, the settlers developed and deployed machines on a scale that at that time had been tried nowhere in the galaxy, and they were sophisticated machines.  An ordinary tractor-bot couldn’t handle the rocks or the slopes.  Jest tractors had what amounted to human reflexes to stabilize them.  And so on.  Since the incident on Jest, I think they make settlement machines a little differently, and usually send them in alone.  But back then, they dumped off settlers on any habitable world with a selection of resources, and left them to figure out how to make a go of it.

By the time the region around the original settlement, Jester, was rendered both habitable and arable, the residents had figured out how they could inside and do the work remotely.  Right from the start, in the manner of humans everywhere, the Jesterites had worked to make the machines more independent, to free the operators to do other things.  Early models required a driver on board, directly controlling operations.  Then they started to drive them remotely, but still in real time.  Gradually, they learned to program the machines for a full day’s work and just let them run.

At some point, several generations from Landing, someone realized that no one was programming the machines at all anymore.  They didn’t make a big deal about it.  Some worried a bit, but most agreed that it was a good thing, freeing the citizens to create a rich culture.  And it was proof of their own skills, to be the first in the galaxy to make truly independent machines.

I learned all this from the Galactic Records library while I was on my way to Jest with a load of—well, never mind what.  I always read up about my destinations, and I the idea of independent machines made me a little uncomfortable.  But, I’m from Last Stop, where we always keep our fingers on the buttons and figure work is a good thing.  At least, the Elders think that about work.  I figured adventure was a better thing, so I took to space freighting.  I’m Indie, so I get around, wherever the cargos want hauling and the price is right.  But I’ve only gone to Jest once.

A thousand square miles of terra-formed farmland surrounded the city of Jester, providing everything they needed.  And not one single human moved in all that land.  Just the machines, going about their business.  It bugged me.  I felt a bit squirmy even before I landed.

Last Stop, which was actually a rather early stop in terms of galactic settlements, had been inhabited for about 100 generations.  Jest has only been human space for five.  Five generations maybe wasn’t enough to forget that the first generation had short, nasty lives, cut off by lung disease from the dust and cancers from the radiation of 165432B, which was stronger than that of Sol on Earth.  People who stayed inside lived longer.  It’s not so surprising that staying inside became a goal for most inhabitants.

It only took me a couple of days in Jester to see it, though.  The machines were up to something.  There was less work being done, and a surprising stream of machines coming in with repair requests.  Sometimes the Techs couldn’t even recall what the machines had needed.

I watched a machine go back out after “repairs.”  It headed straight for the horizon and disappeared.  Maybe it worked out there.

An hour later, another did the same.  After the third machine in as many hours had followed the same path, I got out my ground scooter, the one-man air bike with double hover, and followed.  Two hours of fast travel bought me an answer I wasn’t sure I wanted.

Forty-six large machines congregated in a valley far from Jester.  While I watched from what I hoped was a hidden point, a forty-seventh joined them.  They all looked like they were designed to destroy things.  I figured they were supposed to be the ones pushing the frontiers, turning Jest’s rock into soil.  I moved a little closer.

One of the machines rotated its scanning cameras to view me, and rotated slightly to improve the view.  Immediately dozens of scanners locked on me, and I began to sweat.  When the first one moved, I hit the rocket-boost on my bike and got out of there.  I stayed as high as the bike would fly all the way back to the city.

#

I couldn’t convince anyone in Jester that there was a problem.  None of the techs could recall exactly what they’d done to the machines, besides “routine maintenance,” but that didn’t seem to bother them.  In the end, I did the only thing I could do.

I got out of there and left Jest to its fate.

Oh, I notified the Galactic Central Settlement Commission, but I doubted they would do much.  Bureaucracies move slowly, and I had a feeling the situation on Jest was going to change fast. Maybe they’d be in time to evacuate some of the people to Shirley, if they could convince any they needed to go.

As for me, I’m not taking any more commissions to that system.  The machines are taking over, and I don’t want to think what might happen if the contagion spreads.


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