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Books

The Rook by Daniel O’Malley

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Myfanwy (pronounced like Tiffany, but with an M) Thomas lived in a world in which some people are born with supernatural abilities. Imagine the X-Men, but with a wider range of powers (some not altogether that useful) and no colorful costumes. Myfanwy’s employers, the Checquy, are a secret society that has been around for centuries and works with the British Government to protect the United Kingdom. Myfanwy was one of their best employees, having risen through the ranks to a position of relative power. However, Myfanwy Thomas no longer exists. Her brain has been wiped clean and a new personality inhabits the body that once belonged to Myfanwy. This is the world of The Rook, by Daniel O’Malley.

Without giving too much away, this new Myfanwy — for the new personality adopts the old inhabitant of her body’s life — has to learn both her role in this supernatural world and the reason the old Myfanwy was eliminated. During the course of her journey of both self- and world-discovery, Myfanwy encounters foes that are centuries old, that the Checquy has fought against before.

O’Malley has created an interesting world with “mutants” that are surprisingly fresh. I won’t reveal their powers here, but some of them are very inventive. O’Malley also has a way of bringing his characters and world to life. He has a way with words. At one point, describing the formation of the American counterpart to the Checquy — the Croatoan — he describes one of the first supernatural people to work in the Americas as being “condemned to a tedious backwater populated entirely by religious fanatics whose idea of fun was not having any.”

The world of The Rook, while built on a supernatural foundation, still connects to science in a strong way. The powers of the characters work in pseudo-scientific limits. The Checquy’s foes are rooted strongly in the biological sciences. The world O’Malley has created is one in which, yes, the supernatural is a strong element and people do have absurd powers, but they fit in the world, they aren’t out of place. Combined with O’Malley’s strong sense of pacing — The Rook reads like an action movie of sorts — this is an entertaining thrill ride in an oddly parallel world. The Rook is not the deepest reading in the world, but it is an exciting one.

Books

Brilliance by Marcus Sakey

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9781611099690_custom-9ba9bdb4ab35cd10ff6b1ac6d3ca5b74c98bf343-s6-c30The conceit of stories like the X-Men is that there are people who are born that are different than the rest of us, and that difference makes them both special as well as a potential threat. In the case of the X-Men, they have extraordinary powers — shooting eye beams, controlling the weather, walking through walls, turning into metal — that give them enormous advantages over the rest of humanity. In some ways, that is the same conceit of Marcus Sakey’s Brilliance, though here it is treated in a much more subtle and realistic manner.

Imagine a world where, instead of being born with the ability to fly, the special people do have extraordinary talents, but they are essentially ampped up versions of things all of us can do. Recognize body language, but so well that you can anticipate the actions of others. See patterns in the movement of people that you can walk through crowds of people without being noticed. Or identify patterns in computer code such that you can make the computer do whatever you want. People like this would be viewed as both an asset and a threat. Or both at the same time. At some point, it would be inevitable that the government becomes involved in the lives of these people. And some of them would rebel. That is the basic premise of Brilliance.

Some of these people, so-called brilliants, in an effort to make sure their lives are peaceful, have decided to work on the side of the devil, so to speak, working for the government to keep other brilliants in check. And keeping them in check means some heavy handed involvement by the government, including taking potentially brilliant children to special schools. One of these agents, Cooper, is on the trail of a brilliant terrorist. But, as he discovers, reality is quite a bit more complex and nuanced than his black and white view of the world.

My understanding is that this is the first in a series of novels developing and exploring this world of brilliant people. If the first one is any indicator, we are in for a dramatic ride that touches on themes such as individual freedom and responsibility, the role of government, and how we treat people who are different than ourselves.