Customer Reviews

Bookman (Angry Robot)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I really have difficulty reviewing this book. It was a struggle for me to read The Bookman all the way through, only having spent money on it persuaded me to continue. Let me say that I don't think this is a bad book by any means, in fact it might be a good book. The Bookman just isn't the book for me. I didn't much care for Orphan, he never seemed to be his own man, as a character he was just a pawn in everyone else's game. He undertakes the adventure to save his beloved but the path from beginning to end is so convoluted that I found it hard to follow. There are a lot of literary references and historical figures which would probably be of great enjoyment to some readers. I personally felt like The Bookman tried to be too clever for its own good. The whole book felt really superfluous, the pseudo-steampunk setting was intriguing at first but it never really developed into a fully realized idea.

I feel like I should have more to say about this book after giving it a 2 star rating but I'm at a loss for words. The Bookman probably offers a unique experience to a different type of reader but to me reading it felt like a hassle.

I first started this book with rather low expectations. It had several mixed reviews on Amazon, and I wasn't so sure about some of the concepts, such as lizards as the current royalty. However, I ended up really enjoying this book!

It was an strangely absorbing take on a revolution, complete with robots fighting for independence and equal rights, alien invaders, a love story, and strange but enjoyable appearances of well known people and characters. Jules Verne, Karl Marx, and Moriarty all show up, to name a few. The plot is, to put it bluntly, extraordinarily weird at parts, but somehow that doesn't get in the way of the story (which, by the way, is wonderfully full of twists and turns). Plus, Tidhar writes beautifully, with a distinct and very refreshing style. I disagree with another reviewer who said that Bookman was 'nothing new'. I thought it was very original. I read a lot a books, and I've never read one like this. While that's normally a bad thing, it was a great thing here.

I'd recommend it to steampunk fans and fantasy fans alike.

I had high hopes that I would enjoy this book when I began reading it but at the end I can not give it more than two stars. The author has created a rich if rather strange world but overall it sometimes felt like it was written by committee and without discussion. The hero is an extremely passive figure who is a pawn in intertwining schemes by various factions and the reader is often just as confused as he is. The "lizard villians" are never really fleshed out. There are many enjoyable historical and literary references which will bring a smile to the knowledgeable reader's face but which also appear thrown in as an after thought. The conclusion seems patched together at the last minute and not well thought out. We are expected to believe that a human royalist underground just springs up without any prior discussion. I also found the overall "feel" of the book to be difficult. It is clear that Mr. Tidhar is not an American writer. This is not an objection. He is enormously imaginative and skilled but I think I am more comfortable with a more linear and direct writing style.

I like to try out books I've never heard of. Since steampunk-ish type things have been my sub-genre du jour, I thought I would try out the Bookman by Lavie Tidhar.

It centers around one poor poet named Orphan and his quest to bring his girlfriend Lucy back from the dead. To do this, he has to first find and then run an errand for the mysterious figure of the Bookman. Meanwhile, England is under the rule of a bunch of alien lizard people and there is a lot of talk about revolution. There are a lot of factions at play. There are the police, the Bookman (who functions as a boogieman for a lot of these groups), Les Lezards, and at least a couple of of different revolutionary groups that seem to have different goals but intersect in a few places in their ideology.

While all of this should have been interesting, the story latches on to Orphan and more or less stays there the entire time, even when he isn't doing something remotely interesting. It wasn't that he was a boring flat character as much as if the book is focusing on a singular character, shouldn't that character have a really active part to play in the story? While I did find the later part of the book well worth the wait, it does bother me that it took a long time and at least two false starts before getting there. The other thing about Orphan that I found a little irksome was that he didn't seem to have reactions to most of the events around him, like finding out where his mother came from or realizing that one of his friends is an automaton. It also would have been nice to seen his goals get farther than "I want to bring my girlfriend back to me," especially considering the amount of time spent with him and given that at least a few of his friends are part of one of the revolutionary factions. I'm all for characters having concrete goals, but if there's a ton of time spent with them, some more nebulous ideological goals would be nice too. Orphan's a poet and as such is would not be amiss for him to have some nebulous ideals at play too. There was certainly the framework to explore it, I just didn't see it happen. I understood that for much of the time Orphan was a leaf on the wind, but it seemed like he might at least wish for a breeze blowing in some direction or other, regardless of if he could change it or not.

The other thing that bugged me to no end was the rampant name dropping. Seriously, I got really tired of how many names from other works popped up (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle character names were the most obvious offenders, but there were others... so many others). I don't know if they were supposed to be "easter eggs" in book form instead of film, but by the time a flask showed up with the initials "S.H." on it I vehemently wished that someone had done a "find and replace" search on most of the names. The one exception to my annoyance was Jules Verne showing up, because he is awesome, he had the Nautilus and it fit in with the story.

There were things that I liked about this book. As soon as the plot started moving quicker I liked it a lot more. I just disliked the interludes, but they did get shorter and shorter as the book went on, thank goodness. When the events started picking up pace, Orphan had to take a more active role in the events around him. That was a very good thing, because passive main characters are rather dull. I also liked Orphan a lot better when he started trying to do things as best he could, rather than sitting in his friend's bookshop.

I really, really liked the Bookman and the Binder and how they fit in as manipulators of events. The Bookman made a great antagonist and I really wish there had been more shown from his perspective. I found both his name, his form his hideout and his mission delightfully ironic.

The automatons were also, really, really good. The way they moved through the story and how they were perceived (or not perceived as the case sometimes was) by those around them. I was almost going to set this book aside as a "did not finish" until the Turk chess player automaton had his conversation with Orphan. Then I had to keep reading. It was by far my favorite scene in the entire book. I did see how some of the chess metaphor was carried out through the rest of the tale, but it does get more interesting when the pawns can be cloned and change sides.

All in all, I did find the later portion of the book worth slogging through the beginning. I just wish the beginning had been less of an uphill climb for me.

This is a series of three novels set in a "Steampunk" Universe that includes a large population of Nineteenth Century fictional and historical characters. By `large,' I mean that I lost track during the first volume and merely took occasional notes during the later volumes. For example, Chief Sitting Bull appears in the same volume as Erich Weiss, aka Harry Houdini and Irene Adler is a Scotland Yard Inspector, keeping her eye on Fagin and Oliver Twist. The three volumes in the series are, respectively, "The Bookman," "Camera Obscura" and "The Great Game." All three volumes are, more or less, stand-alone publications. On the other hand, I have a number of questions after completing the third volume, so all of the answers are definitely NOT included in the books.

The main theme of the series revolves around Mycroft Holmes and his Intelligence Organization. Many other Sherlockian characters appear as well as an unruly mob of other personages. One really needs a scorecard to keep track. The author also has a habit of making readers work for understanding of the environment. Every once in a while, some character will summarize a part of history, either recent or ancient, so that readers can orient (not `orientate') themselves. Mostly, though, the characters talk about more immediate concerns as do people involved in active lives so readers are left to catch up on their own. I found this aspect more interesting than most fictional settings because it makes a reader think. Meanwhile, the action continues and events keep happening.

The three volumes occur in 1888, in 1893 and in 1899. Many characters appear in all three volumes and some explanations are offered. I retain a number of serious questions, such as "What happened to Smallpox" and "Where did Amerigo Vespucci learn to pilot a ship?" There are also open questions about who is on which side of what. There seem to be more `sides' than players and there are a real ocean full of players. Needless to say, the action takes place all over the place and even in some unexpected places.

At base, this is an action series. Agents, counteragents, retired agents and secret agents wander in and out, change sides, switch masters and shoot it out with each other at the drop of a hat. It is difficult to bring up any subject without revealing some of the mysteries that are part of the story. As an example, there was a revolution in France in the late eighteenth Century. It was called "The Quiet Revolution." Doctors Frankenstein and Jekyl are working together, sort of. Milady DeWinter and the Comte de Rochefort are still (or again) in business, working for the French Government, in between other clients. One hint, when the author talks about a "Vespucian" you can translate that as "American."

This is a fun series. There are lots of interesting characters, stolen from everywhere, as much action as can be kept track of and a whole slew of questions left unanswered. Familiar characters pop up in the oddest places for even odder reasons and familiar places all look just a little bit odd. If you can figure out what actually happened, please drop me a note. I'm still a bit puzzled.

Reviewed by: Philip K. Jones, February 2012

The concept and storyline behind this book were fantastic. Other reviewers have pointed out the likelihood (or lack thereof) that all of these famous historical figures would be present and so concentrated in the storyline of this novel.

Given this fact, I would say that the author's skill at developing a set of characters and fleshing them out well would have in my mind eliminated the need to lean so heavily on the use of actual people from history in their tales. One or two sprinkled here and there would have been more than sufficient as this is a fascinating read which is eminently capable of standing on its own two legs without the awkward prop of being heavily laden with famous people from history.

If you can get around this, then by all means get this book as the pacing and the storytelling are worthy of getting for a great fun read.

Read enough steampunk and you'll notice authors tend to recycle the same ideas - dirigibles, steam power, etc. - to the point that the genre risks becoming stale.

However, when a novel like The Bookman is published it has the possibility of revitalizing the genre. Yes, The Bookman has many of the same tropes as other steampunk books, but it twists those tropes to squeeze out fresh, new ideas. Add a few Royal Lizards, and you have the promise of much fun.

For imagination, I give The Bookman five stars. For plotting a four. But for the mechanics of writing, I have to score the book a two. By mechanics I mean two elements that kept me from truly immersing into the world Mr. Tidhar so painstakingly tried to create.

#1 - the overuse of flashbacks to tell the story.

A little flashing-back is often a necessary literary device to relay backstory and important details. However, Mr. Tidhar abuses flashbacks to the point they become a nuisance.

He often stokes the tension to a boiling point, leaving the reader breathless with a nail-biting cliffhanger ... then, he moves onto a different topic. The next chapter will be totally unrelated to the cliffhanger. By the time the reader is tearing his hair out wondering what just happened, Mr. Tidhar presents a quick flashback to summarize the conclusion of the prior action. If this had happened only once, I could have lived with it, but the entire book is written in this format. The overkill drains an otherwise fun story of its immediacy.

#2 - the overuse of 'seem'.

Most authors have favorite words that make an appearance repeatedly in their works. For Mr. Tidhar, that word appears to be 'seems'. It felt as if the word was on every page. The story could never say "It was hot". It always said "It seemed hot." Personally, it either is hot or it isn't. There is no uncertainty about it. Therefore, 'seem' is a weak word that leads to weak writing. The abuse of 'seem' made Orphan, the protagonist, come across as a wishy-washy character, and it hurt the readability of the book.

Some will say I'm nitpicking, but these two issues diminished my enjoyment of The Bookman, and are a fair warning to others.

In conclusion, I do recommend the novel for readers of steampunk, because of its impressively unique ideas. Maybe you won't be as bothered by the constant flashbacks as I seemed to be.

The Bookman, a mesmerizing tour-de-force, refreshes Steampunk, while adhering to its basic elements and demonstrating the author's encyclopedic knowledge of the genre and his endearing love of literature. Its major theme is myth; however, its subsidiary theme is books or, more, precisely literature. Structurally, it is a quest novel, situated in a Steampunk-like setting, but hiding a Childhood's End-like mystery. Ultimately, it is a novel about novels with the overarching theme being myth. As the character Gilgamesh says: "Oh Orphan. This is the time of myths. They are woven into the present like silk strands from the past, like a wire mesh from the future, creating an interlacing pattern, a grand design, a repeating motif." Succinctly it is a mystery set in an alternate history of England during a steam age in which automatons, giant lizards, and humans equally abide, while an orphan braves danger in order to find his lost love.

The genre known as Steampunk, strictly speaking, if that is even possible to do, concerns a period of English history from June 20, 1837 to January 22, 1901, or, more precisely, a period that runs from the birth of Queen Victoria to her death, and incorporates elements of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history and speculative fiction. Accordingly, Steampunk harkens back to the scientific romances of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Mary Shelley and emulates, or imitates, their style and content, while concentrating on certain identifiable memes and grand themes of the Victorian age: the industrial revolution, colonialism, revolution, nationalism, science, particularly biological science--Darwinism-- sociology, and the rise of the novel, as well as the flourishing of poetry and art, especially in France. The Victorian age also saw the emergence of the gentleman scholar in England and the rise of capitalism. With all these disparate but potent forces at work, the period is ripe for incorporation into the mise-en-scène of modern artists.

Lavie Tidhar's steampunk universe is bit larger than the Victorian age. As we said above, it is a novel about myth but it is myth filtered through English or French literature. The exciting force and one of the chief images of the novel is Shakespeare's The Tempest. The ruling power of England comes from Caliban's island and they themselves are monsters in the sense that Caliban was a monster. Caliban is an apt image for Tidhar because he can incorporate through a type of shorthand all the wondrous tropes in Shakespeare's fantasy as well draw on the image of the magician, Prospero, whose powers rely upon books. Magic, after all, is only language spoken to control or change the world, and Prospero is one of the most potent images or symbols of that power. Remember, too, Prospero has a daughter and that The Tempest is a love story. So Tidhar's alternate history begins in the 17th century. At that time, an event occurs that creates the alternate history of the world: the appearance of an alien race. One of the major tropes of science fiction underlies the meaning of the novel. And this is just one of the thousands of threads within the novel. To describe each is to destroy its beauty and complexity. Suffice it to say that the book is worth several readings because the author's vast knowledge and love of literature is on every page. And in this sense the book is a meta-fiction.

The Bookman has not garnered the exposure it deserves. It is an intelligent, clever book, that creates a wonderfully complex secondary world. And most importantly, it is as well-constructed as a Swiss cuckoo clock and as readable as any genre fiction being written today.

This is a type of book I'm beginning to refer to as a Dog's Breakfast Novel; it's messy, there's a little bit of everything, and hopefully it's palatable to the tongue and not simply snouts and entrails. What I mean is, the author seemingly throws everything into the mix, and in order for it to work, it better have verve, style, and entertainment value galore, or it's going to be really sticky (Gord Zajac's recent Major Karnage is another such example). Luckily, Lavie Tidhar (of the gloriously weird The Tel Aviv Dossier) has style to spare, and his steampunk adventure novel echoes Verne and Wells while reviving the go-for-broke cliffhanger style of classic pulp fiction. Tidhar's narrative -- set in an alternative history Victorian England where automatons converse with humans, martian probes are being launched into space, and intelligent lizards rule the land --is a hodge-podge of indelibly cool ideas and gee-whiz enthusiasm, wrapped in loving affection for the genre and its progenitors. Tidhar has great fun mixing historical personalities such as Karl Marx and Jules Verne with fictional heroes of the time, and the pages are rife with in-jokes for the literary crowd. I cannot say as I fully understood the complexities of the plot (it gets sensationally strange at times), but as Orphan's adventures unravel, I found I didn't care. I'll be looking up the sequel Camera Obscura (Angry Robot) as soon as I can.

Read the full review on my blog at [..]

It was a happy coincidence that I started this blog at about the same time Angry Robot was making its bid for world domination; via Twitter, I kept hearing about this new imprint that was publishing all these brilliant works of speculative fiction and after checking them out, I was determined to become a minion of the Robot Overlords!

One of the first books from Angry Robot that caught my eye was The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar. I thought the cover was awesome and it was a "steampunk" book, a genre that I had just become interested in exploring...

One of the things that I find so fascinating about the Steampunk genre is how it twists the reality that we know and turns it into something new and exciting, yet still familiar; with The Bookman, Tidhar has created something wonderful. In Tidhar's world, a race of alien lizards known as "Les Lezards" have taken over Britain, both historical personages and ficticious characters from the Victorian era inhabit London, and a mysterious terrorist has cast his shadow over everything. In the midst of all this is Orphan, a young poet in love with the beautiful Lucy. But before the young lovers can marry, the Bookman strikes and Orphan's world is rocked to its core. He then sets out to find the Bookman and avenge his beloved.

This book is a gift and it will appeal to any reader, long time Steampunk aficionado or not. The writing is beautiful and flows so well you'll be farther along the journey than you realize when you finally come up for air. Tidhar had me engaged throughout the book; from the set up during the first part, where he introduces us to his alternate Britain and its inhabitants, to the rollicking excitement of Orphan as he seeks out the Bookman and finally, to the climax where answers to mysteries are revealed and the whole grand design is wrapped up in a big, bodacious bow.

The Bookman is an action packed, yet literary, Steampunk adventure. I loved it not only as a great read, which it was, but also as one more amazing stepping stone for me into the Steampunk genre.