Gun Machine by Warren Ellis (Jan, 2013) Mulholland Books/Hachette

 W: www.mulhollandbooks.com

Review by Mark P. Williams

Warren Ellis writes astute, accurate fictions about the role of information in society.

He’s explored digital information’s possible and actual relationships to truth and deception through technology in the longer graphic novel series Transmetropolitan, about futuristic gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem, and in a more contemporary thriller framework through the episodic spy thriller Global Frequency. Now, in his second prose novel, he gives us a contemporary police procedural through which information flows in torrents in both electronic and more nebulous ways. Stylish and economically written, Gun Machine is part police thriller and part philosophy of information; it’s a darkly humorous and incisive meditation on the contemporary city scape.

All of Ellis’s fictions are structured by ethical questions about the implications of information networks for social relationships, whether that means the consequences for local people of global actions, or the feel of living in online worlds while trying to maintain offline relationships. Read more »

Rationis Defensor: Essays in Honour of Colin Cheyne Edited by James Maclaurin (Springer, €99.)

Reviewed by Charles Gibson

People often ask me what philosophers have accomplished in the last hundred years. The popular conception is that while science seems to be advancing technology and knowledge daily, philosophy is still a pastime for people who wish to relax in their armchairs and debate the existence of God. This portrait of philosophy is a false one, but convincing people can be difficult. So from now on when somebody asks me what philosophers have been up to, I can direct them to a copy of Rationis Defensor.
This collection of recent philosophical papers, edited by head of Otago University’s philosophy department, James Maclaurin, provides a nice selection of the current debates and crucial issues at play in philosophy. It includes a diverse sampling of philosophical disciplines addressing issues in epistemology (theory of knowledge), philosophy of science, metaphysics and philosophical logic.

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Next Year in Diego Garcia – Jean Claude de L’Estrac,
Translated by Touria Prayag (Elp: Mauritius, November 2011)

Review by Vaughan Rapatahana

The very best way to commence this review is to quote the very first paragraph from this important and well-researched book in its entirety:

This story is one of deceit, lies and cowardice. Perhaps worse; it is the story of the British Foreign Office admitting that large sums of money were at stake in Whitehall negotiations which led to the butchering of the Mauritian territory. The decision to rip the Chagos archipelago from the mainland was thus sealed as was the fate of its inhabitants who were forced to leave their birthplace to make room for the Anglo-American military base, Diego Garcia.

In fact what the Anglo-American conspiracy did to the Chagossians was and remains to this very moment, a major crime against humanity – which may well be the only legal recourse left for these displaced and distraught and brave people to fight with. The selfsame conspiracy has steadily forsworn them at every gain they ever made – culminating in the 20 December, 2012 European Court of ‘Human Rights’ further denying them any redress in terms of a chance to return to their now uninhabited islands, because they had already accepted the munificence of British recompense more than once over the years, commencing after a court battle in 1982. Although they did receive some pittance in 1978 from Mauritian authorities who had sat on that British ‘largesse’ for five years previously!. Case closed. Read more »

The Soul Seekers Series: Echo by Alyson Noel

Reviewed by Maria Robinson, age 14

What do you get when you mix romance, fantasy, magick, Native American spirit animal guides, a family of Richters, a prophecy, and forces of good and bad … with some seemingly ordinary teenagers who are determined to follow their destinies and protect the Lowerworld from evil?

The result: Echo, the second book in The Soul Seekers series by popular YA author Alyson Noel.

Daire is a soul seeker. Dace is her boyfriend, and twin of the villainous Cade. Cade and the Richters are trying to take over the Lowerworld; Daire and Dace want to preserve it. Read more »

The Islands by Carlos Gamerro, Translated by Ian Barnett in collaboration with the author; Introduction by Jimmy Burns (London: And Other Stories, 2012 £10)

Publisher: http://www.andotherstories.org/

Review By Mark P. Williams

Carlos Gamerro’s The Islands is, in all the best senses, an intense and fascinating reading experience.

The Islands is a novel where geopolitics is embedded in memory, compounding personal traumas within national ones. The narrative returns, through the histories of different characters to psychic territories of violence and loss, memory and denial. Set in Buenos Aires in 1992, it concerns the life of a Malvinas/Falklands veteran turned computer hacker named Felipe Félix, who is offered a sinister assignment by one of the most powerful men in the country.
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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Chronicles: Art and Design
By Daniel Falconer (HarperCollins, $60)

Review by Jim Robinson

There sure are a lot of beards in The Hobbit. Braided, looped, scraggly, lopsided, jeweled, regal — you name it, they’re all represented in fine, hairy form. Just as well, too. As explained in The Hobbit Chronicles, Art and Design, the distinctive facial foliage boasted by each dwarf and wizard helps movie audiences to tell the key characters apart.

Chronicles, Art and Design is the first in a planned series of books. It records the development of The Hobbit characters and scenes in fascinating detail. As well as hobbits, dwarves and wizards, there are pages and pages of ornate swords, clubs and armour; awful trolls, wolves and goblins; and imposing woodlands, mountains and castles. Read more »

Waiheathens: Voices From a Mining Town by Mark Derby, with Paintings by Bob Kerr (Atuanui Press, $30)

Reviewed by Alison McCulloch

As the year of the Waihi gold miners strike centenary drew to a close, Waihi was still a town divided over mining. And while the times and issues have certainly changed, the wounds often run just as deep.

Waihi’s 21st century struggle bears little resemblance to the labour versus capital clashes of 1912. For one thing, this time the union is firmly on the company’s side. “We have a well-established respectful Union/Employer relationship with the Waihi Gold Company Ltd,” the EPMU said in a submission on Newmont Waihi Gold’s latest expansion plan, “and have considerable confidence that they will deliver what they say they will.” Read more »

Easy Rider—A Kiwi’s Guide to Cycling, by Jon Bridges (Penguin, $40)

Reviewed by Jim Robinson

When he’s not working in television, radio, or comedy, Jon Bridges is apparently well recognised as ‘the guy who’s always riding a bike’.

He’s been turning the pedals since the 1970s (when he had the cool factor of ape-hanger bars and a banana seat). With about a zillion kilometres in his legs, he understands firsthand the ‘smugness’ of zipping past a queued line of traffic on the way to work; the ‘joy of self-sufficiency’ in bike touring; the ‘passport to being out amongst nature’ in mountain biking; the buzz of conquering a cycling challenge, and yeah, the ‘luxury of spending time for just you on the bike’. Read more »

What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel (Farrar Straus & Giroux, $33.65)

Reviewed by Steve Riley

There are those who say that New Zealand has become NZ Inc. What they mean by this is that New Zealand is being run just like a business. The government, and increasingly voters, are looking out for the best return possible.

To give just a few examples: wealthy tourists, identified by their ownership of a gold or silver frequent-flyer card with a Chinese airline, now have access to a streamlined visa process; there has been an abortive attempt to open up conservation land to mining companies; and labour laws are urgently changed by the government at the behest of film companies. Even critics of government policies get in on the act. It is not uncommon to hear the argument against, say, mining of conservation land in terms of the damage that it will do New Zealand’s ’clean, green’ image and, ultimately, the tourist dollar.
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New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani, translated by Judith Landry
Published by The Text Publishing Company

Reviewed by C P Howe

New Finnish Grammar received the Grinzane-Cavour Prize, was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Award, and comes with an impressive array of plaudits. The most prominent is featured on the cover: The Guardian’s Nicholas Lezard says, ‘I can’t remember when I read a more extraordinary novel, or when I was last so strongly tempted to use the word genius of its author.’ It is impossible to come to this book without high expectations and, for me, they were definitely met.

On the surface New Finnish Grammar has an admirable simplicity, but its strength lies in its many layers. Marani is a professional translator and there can be no doubt about his love of language. He invented Europanto, a mock European language, in which he writes newspaper columns. It comes as no surprise, then, that New Finnish Grammar is, at one level, about language. Read more »