jeff eaton

I haven't read much fantasy, to be honest. My few experiences with it were probably the kind of cliche stuff that causes real fantasy lovers to cringe and wince and start pulling out lists of the stuff that one should really read. The equivalent of over-wrought space opera in the scifi world.

Just as literary scifi is starting to gain traction, though, there seems to be a new wave in fantasy building up steam. Over the holidays I finished China Mieville's excellent Perdido Street Station, and enjoyed it quite a bit. The writing is fluid and evocative, with a curiously unfolding plot and complex characters. The book's heaviness, though, made it a bit of a slog at times. The writing and China's relentless creativity pulled me through, but I kept wanting to shy away from the grinding that his downtrodden characters had to endure. It's like eating four pounds of high quality sushi -- eventually, you have to walk away and take some time to recover.

That's why Looking for Jake, his collection of short stories, hits the sweet spot for me. Fourteen unique dishes, most top notch, and none so long that the flavor overpowers. Most skirt the edge of fantasy/horror, carefully ircling themes of otherness and disaster. Several are apocolypses -- tales of humanity's twilight as people vanish from the streets of London, or are conquered by creatures reaching through mirrors. That last story, The Tain, is one of the longest in the book. It's a perfect example of Mieville's writing: a fascinating premise that unfolds into an unsettling, horrific mystery. If it were any shorter, the story would be unsatisfying, but if it stretched out even a chapter or two longer, the nature of the story would be, well... really depressing.

It's good stuff, this book. I know I'll be foisting it on Benson and Jason in the near future, and I'm pretty sure others would like it as well.