Dreaming detectives and more nails in steampunk’s coffin.

Dear friends,

Have you noticed any of these books over the last six months? Have their bright covers and intriguing synopses* tempted you as you walk past your local book purveyor? Have you lain awake pondering whether they are worth your precious time and attention? Have countless minutes elapsed while you shifted from foot to foot in the shoppe aisles, hefting one and then the other in hand, comparing their relative densities, paper quality and font choice**? Would you like to know which of these five are nominated for the Nebula award for best novel***?

Friends, I have read all of these books. I am here to assist you.

Read on for scathing criticisms and ranting delight.

*Do not, under pain of death, read the back cover synopsis of The Manual of Detection. It is both factually wrong and riddled with spoilers.

** Boneshaker is printed in brown ink. BROWN.

*** Hint: four out of these five are nominated, all in the same category. Apparently, the nomination committee lives behind my bookshelf.

The City & The City China Mieville. May, 2009.

Nominated for the Nebula award.

The skinny: Those familiar with Mieville were slightly bemused to hear that his 2009 release was not another sprawling epic set in his meticulously built world of New Crobuzon, but instead a pot boiler mystery. City is the story of a fictive Eastern European city that is completely bisected, a world where two cultures and histories live shoulder-to-shoulder without touching. We’re not talking Berlin wall, though: two completely different cities exist on top of each other, one in our mundane world and the other in a different reality. They sit like two threadbare blankets in a stack, realities bleeding into each other at every stoplight. A series of crimes are committed in one city, then the other, and a detective must traverse the two—and what lies between them—to solve them.

The result: With a set-up like that, how could this book lose? Well, in some ways, it manages to. Mystery is far outside the realm of Mieville’s usual oeuvre, and it shows. While the mashed-up cities are wonderfully written, the nitty-gritty of the police procedural is dry and stilted. For a sci-fi/urban fantasy reader, it’s too mundane and procedural. For a mystery reader, it is too weird.

Finch Jeff Vandermeer. November, 2009.

Nominated for the Nebula award.

The skinny: Another detective story by a fantasist. Apparently, this was the year for genre-breaking for established authors. Like Mieville, Vandermeer veers away from his comfort genre of highly-literate new-weird to tackle a detective story. Unlike Mieville, he attempts to wedge it into the site of his previous works, the fungi-clad city of Ambergris. The real skinny is that Finch is the third in a loose trilogy, and shouldn’t be read without the first two books. Oddly enough, that fact is barely acknowledged by the publishers and promoters, and I’m sure there are a host of rather confused readers tackling Finch without prior introduction.

The result: As the final setpiece to the Ambergris city series, Vandermeer undermines the story by sticking to the detective/noir conceits he arbitrarily assigned. As none of the other work set in Ambergris is remotely like Finch it ends up being an awkward coda to an otherwise spectacular cycle. The events set in motion are mind-blowing—the execution is disappointing.

The Manual of Detection Jedediah Berry. Jan, 2010.

The skinny: Yes, it’s a third mystery/fantasy novel. (There was something in the air this year, no doubt.) This debut novel from wonderfully-named Jedediah Berry is—once more—a detective story with fantastical elements. But, stick with me! In a rain-slicked metropolis, an out-of-his-league detective must deal with some very slippery criminals who will stop at nothing to turn the city upside down with some nefariously creative means. Our unhappy protagonist must also decipher the mysteries that run rampant at his own detective agency, a bureaucratic monstrosity whose motto, “Never Sleeping,” hints at some dark secrets of its own. Bonus element: creepy carnival and equally creepy carnies!

The result: With wonderfully arch writing, clear and precise settings and a host of intriguing characters, Detection does what City and Finch did not: successfully combine urban fantasy with mystery tropes. Anyone looking for a straightforward mystery will abandon this book as it becomes increasingly fantastical and relies on dreams, visions and powers; but fantasy readers should adore it. And don’t read the kottamn back cover!

The Windup Girl Paolo Bacigalupi. September, 2009.

Nominated for the Nebula Award (and 99% likely to come home with it.)

The skinny: The seas have risen, the oil is gone, our food is genetically modified and so are the famines that plague our diminishing crops. It’s the future in Thailand, and that future is bleak. Onto this stage come characters from every walk of life: a jack-booted thug in the Thai government whose corruption may be a brand of heroism; a slippery Calorie Man from the American food monopolies; a vulnerable ex-geisha with designer genes; a refugee with one eye on the door and one hand on his boss’ safe. By the end of Windup Girl, a rollercoaster of violence and survival, some will be dead, some victorious and others utterly changed by the events.

The result: Bacigalupi’s debut novel was eagerly anticipated by those who read his superbly dark short stories in Pump Six and Other Stories. He delivers in a huge, punishing, and sometimes disturbing way. In Bacigalupi’s grim future, we waited too long to develop alternative energy sources, forcing a global contraction, and simultaneously didn’t keep a close enough eye on what substances were going into our food (and who controlled them.) The end product is mesmerizingly dark. Readers may find the world easier to comprehend if they pick up Pump Six which includes two stories set there: Windup drops you into this near-future without much explanation before the fireworks begin.

Boneshaker Cherie Priest. September, 2009.

Nominated for the Nebula Award, and god help us if it wins it.

The skinny: Seattle, 1860s. In an attempt to cash in on the Klondike gold rush, an engineer builds a crazy drilling machine which ends up burrowing a giant chasm into downtown Seattle. A strange gas begins to seep from the wreckage, turning folk near it into flesh-craving monsters. A giant wall is built around the downtown core, while the rest of the depressed populace scrapes out a living outside its contours. Also, there are airships.

The result: Maybe it was the excellent cover, maybe it was the tons and tons of hype, maybe it was the fact that it takes place in Seattle, maybe I’ve been huffing chasm gas, but I actually thought there was a chance this zombie-dirigible-steampunk mess would be good. To all of you who laughed at me at dinner last week when I showed you this travesty: you were right. However, the fact that I may or may not have been huffing zombie gas does not explain how someone—anyone—involved with the Nebula awards thought that this was good enough for a nom. I mean, you know, after actually reading the thing. Fun fact: did you know that the 1860s was not the decade of the Klondike gold rush? The author knew, too, but chose to stick with it regardless. Yep.