The Alien Princess Book Reviews

Wilkie Collins’ classic detective novel The Moonstone (1868) was another one of my grad student book sale acquisitions. I had been meaning to read it for quite a while when I picked it up three months ago, so I’m glad I’ve finally gotten around to reading it now. One of the earliest examples of detective fiction, The Moonstone as a mystery is steeped in Victorian England’s social conflicts of class, gender, race, and religion. Narrated from multiple points of view, the mystery is a slow-paced, winding one, but nonetheless intriguing and captivating. It ends satisfyingly, but there were few dramatic twists and I was left wanting in that area. I give it a 7.5/10.

The Victorian tendency to provide exorbitant amounts of backstory and context has never been better exemplified than in this book, in my experience. The narrative opens with the story of the titular gemstone’s theft from its sacred place in India as spoils of war, “extracted from a family paper”. Then, we are jumped to 50 years later, when its possessor dies and it falls into the hands of Rachel Varinger, a beautiful young heiress, as a gift for her eighteenth birthday. By the next morning the priceless diamond has been stolen, and the investigation begins. This first part is narrated by Gabriel Betteredge, the household’s obsequious Robinson Crusoe-obsessed Steward.

I really liked this first half because of the narrative voice, it was so unique and there were many funny moments and snarky quips. Even though there was a lot of backstory infodumping going on, the old man’s rambling tendencies allowed the infodumping to be broken up by active scenes, keeping the narrative at a steady pace. After Betteredge passes the narrative over to Miss Clack, the novel began to drag a bit for me. Miss Clack’s narrative voice was annoying, and the other male characters’ narrative voices who took over after her were simply run-of-the-mill, nothing special to note. I do, however, really love the concept of this novel as an in-universe document, and the multiple narrative voices add a nice layer to that. The only other thing to note as a weak point in the novel is its reliance on letter-writing in the second half. It got very repetitive and boring, reading about characters writing and reading endless letters that described the action, instead of being immersed in the action itself.

Collins described the book as an “attempt made […] to trace the influence of character on circumstances,” and that can certainly be seen in the richness and complexity of the characters; the twistiness of the plot is directly shaped by their secrets, lies, hopes, fears, temperaments, and worldviews. It is very much like an Agatha Christie locked-room mystery in this respect, but without being confined to one location: the novel sprawls across England, touching on mainland Europe and, of course, India.

As I read through the novel, I found myself thinking the story could be ingeniously adapted into a 1940s noir tale because of the rigidity of the gender roles in both periods. The novel has a lot to say about Victorian gender roles and performance. It also comments heavily on class and Christianity, as mentioned above. It would be fascinating to do an in-depth reading on intersectionality in this text.

Overall, I quite enjoyed The Moonstone. It returned me to one of my favourite fictional worlds, the detective’s Victorian England. It has inspired me to get back to writing mystery, which is surely the mark of a good mystery novel. With a rating of 7.5/10, it’s staying on my bookshelf.

Work Cited
Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1993.

I picked up Gabriel García Márquez’s 1975 novel The Autumn of The Patriarch (trans. by Gregory Rabassa) at a grad student book sale purely on the merit that I recognized the author’s name from somewhere. I cannot recall where I’ve heard of Márquez before, but I had heard he was a good author, and that rumour was certainly confirmed upon reading this novel. The Autumn of The Patriarch is a winding, lyrical, hypnotic experimental novel that paints a vivid portrait of a nearly immortal Caribbean dictator, his corrupt and despicable actions, and the vivacity of his vulnerable nation. I give an 8/10.

The novel is only 250 pages long, but it feels much longer because there are no paragraph breaks, and indeed, hardly any sentence breaks. I would say it is very comparable to Samuel Beckett’s Malone Dies, especially in its musings on mortality and old age, but much more sensory, with lush and vivid language. Due to its near-absence of sentence breaks, the novel gallops along at a breathless pace that I found myself being sucked into every time I picked it up; I read it feverishly in the space of about a week. It has very interesting musings on the nature of power, of happiness, masculinity and femininity, and colonialism. It’s definitely worth a second read to see how all these things fit together – for instance cows are clearly a very important symbol, but I’m not sure of what.

The only downside to this novel is the sheer volume of rape and violence against women. While this is to be expected from a novel about a monstrous dictator, the depictions of sexual assault were incredibly distasteful at parts and that really took me out of the novel’s spell. I wouldn’t say the novel fetishizes rape, but it does certainly downplay its horror and brutality. The victims are often portrayed as having pity and tenderness towards their attacker, and that really turns my stomach.

Overall, this novel was an incredibly addicting read and it’s staying on my bookshelf. I love experimental fiction and this really hit all the right notes for me, except the sexual assault, garnering it an 8/10.

Work Cited
García Márquez, Gabriel. The Autumn of The Patriarch. Avon Books, 1976.

I found this gem of a space noir, Harry Harrison’s 1961 novel The Stainless Steel Rat, in the sci-fi and fantasy room of a local bookstore, and it caught my eye because the title was so goofy-sounding. It’s actually part of a 3-novel volume called The Adventures of The Stainless Steel Rat, and it was shelved alongside many other books in the Stainless Steel Rat series. I’ll have to go back and buy some more after I finish this trilogy. The Stainless Steel Rat is a fun, campy tale about an interstellar outlaw who’s been recruited to the side of the law. It was a joy to read, with a quippy, noir-inspired narrative voice and seamless, fascinating worldbuilding. I give it an 8/10.

The novel opens with our narrator, the Stainless Steel Rat, James “Slippery Jim” diGriz, ending a successful con job when the cops catch up with him and escaping successfully to a different planet. However, then he makes a mistake: instead of laying low, he immediately robs a bank and is promptly caught and arrested by the Special Corps. Rather than throwing him in jail, however, they recruit him to track down other criminals, other stainless steel rats that have slipped through the cracks. His first assignment is to investigate the construction of a possible battleship. He uncovers the plot and catches the perpetrators, a man named Pepe and a woman named Angelina, but makes another mistake: underestimating Angelina, he lets her go, only to then find out she was the mastermind behind the whole plot. The rest of the novel follows The Rat as he becomes steadily more obsessed with Angelina, tracking her down across the galaxy, slowly falling in love, and trying to decipher her cold, calculating eyes and refined taste for murder.

I really enjoyed reading this novel. The Rat is an incredibly unique and memorable character: brash and overconfident, a chameleon of crime, a proud outlaw. Angelina was also a very fun character; the only thing I didn’t enjoy about her was her odd backstory (growing up ugly and then having many cosmetic surgeries to alter her appearance until she was unrecognizable) and the fact that it was never discussed again after it was revealed. The novel also ended on a somewhat abrupt note, never wrapping up the political revolution plot on the planet Freiburbad that it had been exploring.

I also really loved the worldbuilding. One thing I love about reading older science fiction is seeing futuristic technology imagined through the lens of the technology that was available at the time of writing. There are different classes of little helper robots, telegrams transmitted via psychic waves (“psigrams”), a computer-like instrument called a “thinkbox”, injections that change your psychology, and much more. I’m excited to see more of this world when I read more books in the series.

Overall, I enjoyed The Stainless Steel Rat and it’s definitely staying on my bookshelf. More reviews to come when I read the rest of the series, but for now, I give the first book an 8/10.

Work Cited
Harrison, Harry. The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat. “The Stainless Steel Rat.” Berkley Books, 1961.

Umberto Eco’s 1988 novel Foucault’s Pendulum promised a lot on its back cover when I found it browsing a grad student book sale: “an incredible journey of thought and history, memory and fantasy, a tour de force”; “an intellectual adventure story”. I found it did not live up to its exciting back cover summary, dragging its heels through the murky history of cults, the occult, and secret organizations. I give it a 6.5/10.

The novel begins, of course, at the end, with our main character, Casaubon, contemplating the Pendulum: Foucault’s Pendulum. (I am still not sure why Foucault is associated with it.) The Pendulum is the only fixed point in the universe, the hidden thing at the centre around which everything revolves. It is apparently very important, and it is also revealed that our main character is hiding from Someone, laying in wait for them in this big technological museum. Promising. Then we cut to a few days earlier. Belbo, Casaubon’s friend and colleague at a publishing house, calls him in a panic saying that They are after him, and, while he’s on the phone They get him. Very promising.

A clever sequence of trying to break into Belbo’s computer, Abulafia, takes us back to the very beginning of this whole ordeal. From here the novel follows Casaubon as a young man, studying the history of the Templars, witnessing revolutions and spiritual orgies across two continents, and slowly being drawn into the trap that is the Garamond publishing press. With Belbo and another editor, Diotallevi, they begin to scam conspiracy-obsessed occult types, until they, too, become infected with the need to see everything fit together in a Pattern.

I really enjoyed this first half for the most part. There were, however, quite a few boring paragraphs of history that I skimmed. My favourite part was when Casaubon was in Brazil, it was really interesting to see the political issues of the time in a country whose history I don’t know much about. Also, I liked Amparo, his girlfriend at that point, I thought she was a very compelling character.

After this first half, the novel really began to drag. There were many more meandering paragraphs of history that I skimmed, and sometimes I couldn’t tell if it was real history or not. There was also a bigger focus on Belbo and his relationship with a woman named Lorenza, partially told through his diary entries in the form of surreal, inventive historical fiction. I liked these parts, but the main plot was taking far too long to get to the reason why They got Belbo and what was going to happen to him. When we finally got to it, it was appropriately intense but without any real provocation. The novel capped off with some sage wisdom (summarizing its message) from Casaubon while awaiting his own fate at the hands of Them.

While I thought the story was kind of clunky and boring at parts, I really enjoyed the writing style. There were many interesting and beautiful turns of phrases; its philosophizing wandered through religion, science, and magic and tied them all together with ease. There is a particular passage I like – (pgs 300-304) – that links spirituality and the body in the best way. I also thought Belbo’s musings about what it means to be an artist, a writer, a creator, and his own perceived failure to live up to that made a very compelling philosophical undercurrent.

Overall, I mostly enjoyed this book. I’m glad I read it, and it’s staying on my bookshelf. But it was too slow, confusing, and dull at parts to warrant a higher rating than a 6.5/10.

Work Cited
Eco, Umberto. Foucault’s Pendulum. Ballantine Books, 1988.

I found this pulpy little number, Norman Spinrad’s 1966 novel The Solarians, at my favourite local bookstore (along with The Void Captain’s Tale by the same author, review to come). The Solarians is a dramatic space adventure reminiscent of a Star Trek episode, so it perfectly suited my tastes. There were a few tasteless and sexist moments, as well as an overbearing heteronormativity – but that’s old sci fi, that’s just how it is. I give it a 7/10.

Our protagonist, Fleet Commander Jay Palmer, is fighting a losing battle against the Duglaari empire, who are slowly exterminating the human race as they colonize the galaxy. For centuries, humanity’s only hope has been the Solarians, a group of humans who split from the rest of the Human Confederation with the promise they would return some day to save them all from the Duglaari. That day comes when Palmer is meeting with the High Marshal, and the strange delegation takes an immediate interest in him. The delegates from Sol – a group of six: three men, three women – explain their plan to surrender to the Duglaari, and the unfortunate Palmer is assigned to the mission to keep an eye on these suspicious strangers.

Thus begins a steadily paced though predictable space drama where the conflict between Palmer’s suspicion of the Solarians and his desire to be a part of their Group underpins every tactical move. The Solarians are foreign and strange, and powerful, too – some able to read minds and perform telekinesis – but they are also open, accepting, and affectionate. Palmer's steady emotional beats of distrust and longing lead up to a sensational final battle.

The novel had some very fun sci-fi concepts, like a musical instrument that plays scents, or a cocktail that makes you feel like you went through a whole night’s binge in twenty minutes. The idea of the Group, as well, I found quite progressive, even if the whole “free love” concept was undermined by heteronormativity. It is very much Of Its Era; its philosophy of “one man can change the course of history” is very OG Star Trek.

Overall, I did really enjoy The Solarians and it's staying on my bookshelf. However, its sexism and heteronormativity grant it no higher than a 7/10.

Work Cited
Spinrad, Norman. The Solarians. Paperback Library, 1966.