Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Saturday, 12 April 2003

# 8 PM

fun science fact

If you microwave a CD but you have a glass of water in the microwave at the same time, nothing happens. Presumably the water absorbs enough of the radiation to stop enough current from being induced in the CD.

book reviews

The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox (Barry Hughart): This is an omnibus edition of Mr. Hughart's three mystery novels set in "an ancient China that never was." Bridge of Birds, the first, is brilliant; the other two, The Story of the Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen, are not on the same level but still good. I am a little peeved with the author for pulling the exact same plot twist in all three books. Bridge of Birds is, or was recently, in print as a singleton volume; you'll never find the other two except in this omnibus. Also features cover and interior art by Kaja Foglio.

M. A. Foster's Ler series: Warriors of Dawn, The Gameplayers of Zan, and Day of the Klesh. That's publication order; by internal chronology Gameplayers is first. The conceit goes that an attempt to genetically engineer a superhuman race produced a species, the ler, which is other than human, but not necessarily better. The three books are snapshots of the history of this species, taken at widely separated intervals — I think at least two thousand years between each. Gameplayers is a work of genius; Warriors is only decent; Klesh is skippable, although it does tie down a loose historical thread from the other two. All three suffer somewhat from what I suspect is a general tendency of 1970s-era authors to put in sex scenes just because they could.

Tim Powers' Last Call. This is a really good book with a back-cover synopsis that totally put me off it for years, despite being almost entirely accurate. Specifically, I thought the protagonist had played poker with the devil and was now trying to get his soul back, which falls into the category of "done to death." Not so. The devil does not appear in this book, and it's the title to his body that the protagonist is trying to recover. Very well written, hard to put down, and who else could make the climax of the book be an adrenaline-pumping series of poker games? One might be confused by the concept, introduced midway through the book, of "buying or selling" poker hands. Notionally, if you lose a round of poker, you have bought the hand of cards you were playing with, and if you win a round, you have sold that hand. This has magical implications.