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Book Reviews: 50 Books POC, #1-3.
Jan. 13th, 2010 12:04 pmSo, last year I joined the community 50books_poc, and I utterly failed to pay attention to what authors i was reading, dismally failing the challenge.
This year, I'm going to succeed. And while I've promised myself that I'll move on to other authors, right now Walter Mosley is holding all my attention.
The very first book I read this year was Mosley's Blue Light, a science fiction story set in 1960s California. In it, dozens of people are in some way empowered by beams of blue light from space, which seem to contain some sort of alien intelligences. As a discussion of religious revelation and social and moral upheaval, the setting was very appropriate, and the ideas behind the book were in many ways intriguing, but the book as a whole failed for me, in part because( Spoilers )
I had other problems with the book, but I've had a hard time figuring out how to articulate them, so if anyone else has read it, let me know; I'd like to discuss it.
Despite my disappointment in Blue Light, however, I wanted to read some of Mosley's crime fiction, because I trusted the taste of the guy who recommended it to me. Here, my expectations were wildly exceeded. I've so far read two Easy Rawlins novels, Six Easy Pieces and Little Scarlet, and have started on Fearless Jones, which is the first Fearless Jones novel, or so I have been lead to believe.
Here, the setting remains 1960s California, and Blue Light's ambiguity becomes a strength of noir-flavored detective stories rather than a liability in science fiction about the hippie movement. Having a detective who helps people because the law is more likely to harm them is a genre trope, but it's never been more appropriate than in the racially charged atmosphere of Los Angeles, where unlicensed detective Ezekiel Rawlins runs his "Research and Delivery" business to help his neighborhood. The feel of the time and place are very distinct, and, for a white guy born twenty years later, a very welcome culture shock. The steady backdrop of domestic life and continuity between stories - the notion that these cases are not the center of Easy's life, but an almost unwelcome intrusion into his work and his family - make the knotty problems extremely compelling to read about. The solutions Easy finds are practical, usually illegal, never satisfactory, but always the necessary ending, and the handling of contemporary racial politics is deft and uncompromising. I've seldom been so drawn in and so quickly addicted to a series of detective novels, and I'll be tracking down the rest of both the Easy Rawlins and Fearless Jones series as quickly as I can.
This year, I'm going to succeed. And while I've promised myself that I'll move on to other authors, right now Walter Mosley is holding all my attention.
The very first book I read this year was Mosley's Blue Light, a science fiction story set in 1960s California. In it, dozens of people are in some way empowered by beams of blue light from space, which seem to contain some sort of alien intelligences. As a discussion of religious revelation and social and moral upheaval, the setting was very appropriate, and the ideas behind the book were in many ways intriguing, but the book as a whole failed for me, in part because( Spoilers )
I had other problems with the book, but I've had a hard time figuring out how to articulate them, so if anyone else has read it, let me know; I'd like to discuss it.
Despite my disappointment in Blue Light, however, I wanted to read some of Mosley's crime fiction, because I trusted the taste of the guy who recommended it to me. Here, my expectations were wildly exceeded. I've so far read two Easy Rawlins novels, Six Easy Pieces and Little Scarlet, and have started on Fearless Jones, which is the first Fearless Jones novel, or so I have been lead to believe.
Here, the setting remains 1960s California, and Blue Light's ambiguity becomes a strength of noir-flavored detective stories rather than a liability in science fiction about the hippie movement. Having a detective who helps people because the law is more likely to harm them is a genre trope, but it's never been more appropriate than in the racially charged atmosphere of Los Angeles, where unlicensed detective Ezekiel Rawlins runs his "Research and Delivery" business to help his neighborhood. The feel of the time and place are very distinct, and, for a white guy born twenty years later, a very welcome culture shock. The steady backdrop of domestic life and continuity between stories - the notion that these cases are not the center of Easy's life, but an almost unwelcome intrusion into his work and his family - make the knotty problems extremely compelling to read about. The solutions Easy finds are practical, usually illegal, never satisfactory, but always the necessary ending, and the handling of contemporary racial politics is deft and uncompromising. I've seldom been so drawn in and so quickly addicted to a series of detective novels, and I'll be tracking down the rest of both the Easy Rawlins and Fearless Jones series as quickly as I can.
