Yukikaze – Chohei Kambayashi
I've had a special interest in East Asian culture for quite a while, so when Haiku Soru started to translate Japanese fiction I instantly picked up a few of their books. So far the books I've bought from them have ranged between good and amazing. Yukikaze is the latest book I've read from them, and it is leaning closer to the amazing end of the scale.
From the cover, and the short blurb at the back, I thought Yukikaze would be a pretty straight forward, fast paced action book. That turned out to be completely wrong.
The book is divided into a series of short stories. Each story focuses on Rei Fukai and his fighter plane, a Super Sylph named Yukikaze. They are part of a special air force fighting against an alien race on their home world, Faery. Faery is an inhospitable place where ground travel is impossible, so everything there is focused around the various fighter squadrons they have deployed. Among these the Super Sylphs, which of Yukikaze is one, are the most advanced machinery created by humans.
We never learn much about the aliens they are fighting. The war has lasted for thirty years, but humans have never had direct contact with them. The closest they have come are the dog fights above the skies of Faery.
To learn more about the aliens the Super Sylphs role in combat is to observe what is happening, and then return home at any cost. Even if that means leaving the other pilots behind to die. The effect this has on the psyche of Rei is one the main themes of the book. He starts to care more about Yukikaze than his comrades, while the advances done to Yukikaze slowly makes Rei's role on flights less important.
The big turning point in the story, when the story went from a fun action book to a book that got me thinking, was when Rei was asked why humans were needed to fight the JAMs and he could not come up with a good answer. Yukikaze could do everything without Rei, but still he wanted to sit in the cockpit when the plane was out flying.
From that point on I realized how the question of how humans and machine were different was relevant throughout the whole book. What makes us human? Is a man with a robotic heart human? If he is, how much more of the body must be replaced before he becomes a machine? Or the other way around, would an AI count as human if it lived in an human body?
None of those questions are ever answered throughout the book, but it was the thoughts they left me with that ensured that this book moved from being a good book into being a very good and interesting reading experience.
The lack of answers is probably the main drawback in the book as well. Leaving the big questions open for more thought is a great thing, but I prefer it when more of the plot questions are answered. Luckily there is a sequel out, Good Luck, Yukikaze, that might answer those questions.
The Dresden Files – Jim Butcher
Over the last couple of months I've read the 11 first books in the Dresden Files. Now I'm dreading finishing the two I have left and having to wait for the 14th book.
The Dresden Files are crime novels set in urban fantasy setting. The main character in the books is Harry Dresden, a private investigator and wizard. We follow him as he works to protect Chicago's inhabitants from the world of magic that surrounds them.
Throughout the books all kinds of magic and fairy tales are drawn into the plot. Vampires and werewolves stalk the night. The Summer and Winter courts of Fae wage their continuous war in the Nevernever, while holy knights battle fallen angles.
Listed like that it all seems a bit too much, but taken over the course of the series each element fits perfectly into the setting when it is introduced. None of the magical beings seems forced into the setting, and each of the factions have their own goals that bring new depth and complexity to the world.
Even with a setting like that it was the characters that drew me into the story. Jim Butcher once said the Dresden files was started when he set out to write a formulaic, genre novel. I think that approach to the beginning of the series had a great impact on how he created his characters. Harry Dresden is the stereotype of an private investigator, but as the story progresses Jim Butcher adds enough depth and details to his background to make the stereotype seem natural on him. This adherence to the stereotype is seen in other characters as well, but again the stereotype feels natural once you learn more about the characters.
The story arc of each book is never very complex, something I think is another remnant from the genre novel approach that Jim Butcher had when he started the series. Each book has a very defined story that everything circles around, usually around a supernatural crime that needs to be solved. The complex story of the characters and the power struggles of the supernatural world are never the main plot in a book, but as the story progresses you can see the simple story arcs from each book form a greater, and much more complex, arc that spans the whole series.
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby is one of the classical novels that I have been meaning to read for a long time. Last year I got a copy for Christmas, and this month I finally found the right time to dig into it.
The story follows the life of Nick Carraway as he settles into life in New York during the summer of 1922. His neighbour is the elusive Gatsby, a man that throws great parties where no one really knows the host and very few people are ever invited. We see how Nick gets drawn into the social circles around Gatsby, and how he ends up dealing with the fleeting experiences they seem to live for.
This is my first time reading a book set America during the 1920's. I enjoyed getting a small glimpse into the excessive life style that the well off people indulged in during these years. In many ways it reminded me a of what I usually find in books set in the high society of late 19th century England.
I think the book did a very good job on portraying how a life can be fashioned around a dream and how it all can come tumbling down in the end. Knowing the history of the 1920's it is almost impossible not to see the correlation between the shattering of the dreams in the book and the shattering of the American Dream when the Wall Street crashed in 1929.
The protagonists somewhat passive role worked nicely in this novel. He gets a bit too sappy at times, but it never got to the point were it really annoyed me. His role was to observe how the other people shaped their lives and to give us an idea of how society viewed the splendour he found himself in. If he had been too active I think a bit of the magic that surrounded the setting and the other characters would have disappeared.
Once I got started the book was a very fast read, both due to its' short length and the easy language used. The easy language was especially noticeable in the dialogues, were the naivety and the main characters' strange view of life really shone forth.
After having finished the book I was left with mixed feelings. It was a very good book, but it did not quite live up to all the praise that I have been hearing about it.