Review: "Hollow World" by Michael J. Sullivan

I almost didn’t want to read Michael J. Sullivan’s “Hollow World” ($15.95, Tachyon Publications).

Don’t get me wrong. I love Sullivan’s work. His tales of the Riryia are some of my favorite fantasy discoveries of recent years – the kind of rousing, old school adventure tales that brought me to the genre in the first place. Now, he suddenly shifts to science fiction, a genre that I don’t read often and am very picky about what I do read.

But the Riryia tales were too good for me not to give “Hollow World” a go, and, oh man, wow.

Ellis Rogers leads an unhappy life. He’s stuck in a loveless marriage and has been since the suicide of his son, a tragedy that he’s still trying to cope with. Now, he’s been diagnosed with a terminal illness and is looking at six months if he’s lucky.

During his years of misery, Ellis has secretly built a time machine in his garage. With the news of his impending death, he decides to go against his character, throw caution to the wind and crank up the machine for a trip 200 years into the future. He misses slightly.

Review: "Night Watch," by Terry Pratchett

In "Night Watch," Terry Pratchett treats fans to a fun trip into the history of the city of Ankh-Morpork through the eyes of everyone's favorite City Watch captain Samuel Vimes.

When Vimes pursues a criminal named Carcer, accused of killing two coppers, they find themselves locked in a fight atop Unseen University, the school for wizards. As a storm rages around the two combatants, a freak accident sends Vimes through the roof of the school and into darkness.

When he wakes, things are a little strange. He soon finds that he's been transported back in time to his very first days as a copper. He takes on the identity of John Keel, a watchman who took Vimes under his wing in those days. And indeed, Vimes meets the younger version of himself in Lance Constable Samuel Vimes.

The times are turbulent ones for the city of Ankh-Morpork. The current patrician is completely insane, and the man plotting a revolution to take his place isn't much better. The streets are about to erupt in violence, and the results are one of the last things Vimes wants to relive. Unfortunately, it appears he's going to have to, despite his best efforts to change history.

What's worse is that Vimes discovers Carcer has come through with him, and he has a plan to change history himself - by killing one of Vimes' selves.

If my count is correct, "Night Watch" is Pratchett's 28th novel set on his whimsical Discworld, and in all those books, neither the place nor the characters have lost their charm.

The story itself is perhaps not as funny as some of the previous tales of the City Watch, but there are still plenty of laugh-out-loud funny moments.

The real fun of this installment is getting a chance to see how things were before Vetinari took over as patrician and before Vimes overhauled the City Watch. Readers caught glimpses of it in Pratchett's first novels about Vimes, but never knew the whole story.

In "Night Watch," readers get to see younger versions of watchmen Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs, a Vimes who isn't nearly as savvy and cunning as the current version, watchman Reginald Shoe - before the unfortunate accident that made him a zombie - and a young, but skilled assassin named Havelock Vetinari. Oh, and there's also the birth of a legend, Ankh-Morpork's greatest salesman, "Cut Me Own Throat" Dibbler, who we find out actually got his catch line from Vimes - at least in this timeline.

Time travel stories can be tricky when writers let themselves get bogged down in the "rules." Fortunately, Pratchett throws all that nonsense out the window and just has fun with it. Of course, that's been Pratchett's trademark all along. He approaches everything about the Discworld with an anything goes attitude, and perhaps that's why the series has lasted so long without becoming stale.

Review: "Bones of the Earth" by Michael Swanwick

My introduction to Michael Swanwick came with his acclaimed novel "The Iron Dragon's Daughter," which took the conventions of fantasy and turned them on their heads. Now he's back with "Bones of the Earth" (EOS), a book that may do the same thing for the time travel story.

When Richard Leyster gets a job offer from a mysterious visitor, he scoffs at it. He isn't about to leave his prestigious position at the Smithsonian on the sketchy details the man named Griffin gives him. That is, until he opens the cooler the man leaves behind.

In the cooler, he finds the freshly-severed head of a stegosaurus. It's an invitation that he can't refuse.

When Griffin visits him again, Leyster becomes part of a team of paleontologists recruited from different time periods to study dinosaurs in their natural habitat.

When word of the ability to travel through time leaks to the general public, not everyone is happy. Radical religious groups see it as a threat to their beliefs and take steps to stop it - including sabotage from within. One arrogant and manipulative scientist uses the opportunity to further her own ambitions. But she finds an even darker secret waiting at the end of the line, in the form of the beings who gave us the technology.

With "Bones of the Earth," Swanwick offers a story that is part "Jurassic Park" and part Ray Bradbury's "Sound of Thunder." It mingles the wonder and fascination of a visit to the world of dinosaurs, but also explores the consequences of using the technology.

Swanwick tosses out many of the accepted "rules" of time travel that have become standard in science fiction. For example, not only can a person meet himself in the past or future, but as in Griffin's case, an older version of a person can be the younger version's boss.

All of this makes for a tangled web of a plot that twists, turns and sometimes folds back on itself. There's plenty of intrigue, mystery and backstabbing to go around.

Despite the fact that he's weaving a story with multiple time lines and multiple versions of the same characters, Swanwick keeps it easy to follow. The story is satisfyingly complex, but you won't get lost in the different threads.

I was also entertained by the some of the names applied to the newly-discovered dinosaurs. Swanwick works in tributes to other authors, as well as a few jokes. I was particularly fond of Cthulhuraptor.

Swanwick is one of a new breed of fantasy and science fiction writers who have a respect for the authors who came before them, but don't want to follow in their footsteps. With "Bones of the Earth," he continues to blaze his own trail - taking the elements that readers expect and twisting them into things that are a little different, but still engaging.

Review: "The Last Continent" by Terry Pratchett

I'm not sure if perhaps I'm getting a little bored with Pratchett, or if it was the malaise I was in when I was trying to read this book, but whatever the reason, I just didn't enjoy it as much as I usually enjoy Pratchett.

I'd been anticipating the return of Rincewind, one of my favorites, for a long time, and maybe I was expecting a little too much.

In this volume, Rincewind finds himself stranded on a continent much like our own Australia (Despite Pratchett's protests to the contrary, it is based on the land down under). It's pretty much a standard "goofy character dealing with strange people and customs" story after that.

Sure, I had a chuckle here and there, but for the most part, the humor in this book seemed a little silly. I know, I know, Terry Pratchett has always been a little silly, but in a good way. This book is silly in a Jerry Lewis kind of way, and that's not so good.

I'm ready for Pratchett to write something that makes me laugh like "Guards, Guards" or "Reaper Man" or "Sourcery" or countless others, but with the exception of the holiday novel "Hogfather," which I loved, his recent efforts have been pretty disappointing. Overall, I think this is probably the weakest volume of the Discworld series so far. Hardcore fans will love it, but those with only a passing interest in Pratchett should probably pick up one of his older books instead.