A DARKER PLACE.

Jack Higgins. 2009. Putnam. Hardcover. 337 pages. $26.95.

This book defies all conventional wisdom in the world of book publishing, and I’m trying to figure out what is going on with it. In August 2008, Putnam released Rough Justice, and the traditional wisdom is to wait a year between hardcover releases – especially in these days of $25-plus hardcover prices. But here in January, we have another entry in Higgins’ Sean Dillon novels – number 16 to be exact.

It starts with a great premise: Alexander Kurbsky is a celebrated novelist in Russia, an ex-paratrooper, and he’s tired of the game and wants out. He turns to Sean Dillon – through his current flame, Lady Monica Starling (sister of MP Henry Carter from Rough Justice, the last Dillon novel) – to help him get out of Russia and completely disappear into the West. However, in the spy world, things are never what they seem. Kurbsky has been persuaded by Putin himself to infiltrate Dillon’s group – the Prime Minister’s private army headed by Brigadier General Charles Ferguson – and destroy it. Putin is tired of Ferguson and company messing in his plans for returning Russia to its glory days.

To help in the persuasion, Kurbsky is promised by Putin that his sister, Tania (thought killed in a riot during the ‘80s), will be released from the Siberian gulag where she’s actually been kept all these years, if he cooperates. And Kurbsky has to make his defection look as real as possible. If that means killing a couple of his G.R.U. minders as he makes his escape, so be it.

While this is billed as a "Dillon" novel, Dillon and most of the rest of the private army are on the periphery. The novel mainly focuses on Kurbsky and the computer wizard of the group, Major Roper, a highly decorated and severely injured former bomb squad member. After all these novels, we are finally given Roper’s story: how he received his medals, how he was injured.

And, with mixed results, Higgins explores the motivations behind Kurbsky, in the end making him an honorable man.

The rest of the private army moves in and out of the scenes, but the stories of Roper and Kurbsky are the heartbeat of the book.

A Darker Place has the best and worst of Higgins. In some ways, it’s one of his best books in years. Kurbsky feels fleshed out and real – for the most part – and it’s nice getting to know Roper better. This has a much darker tone than many of Higgins’ books have had in years. And that’s a good thing. I was getting damn tired of Ferguson and company meeting the bad guys down at the Dorchester and toasting each other before the hostilities formally begin. Higgins is treading a thin line in trying to get psychological in his later years (something that hurt Louis L’Amour in final days). He hasn’t fallen over the edge into full-blown nonsense, yet, but one does worry.

The worst is that editors these days are absolutely terrified to tell a big name author when they get things wrong or strain credulity. For years I have wondered how it is that everyone in Higgins’ novels are dressed in the latest designer duds: everyone from a retired terrorist – Liam Devlin of the "The Eagle has Landed" and the "Eagle has Flown" – wearing Chanel slacks, to a university professor wearing Valentino. The cheap stuff from these designers is near $1,000 per piece. It jars me as unrealistic, and no editor has the guts to tell Higgins to get more realistic.

At the same time, it seems that Higgins has been introducing new characters to get shot up so that he won’t have to put his favorites in the crosshairs as much. This book has a fresher feeling than many of the more recent Higgins outings, but at the same time, the formulaic feel can’t be ignored.

This book has excited me more than any Higgins book in a while. He seems to be having a lot of fun for the first time in ages. I just hope someone can help him rein in the worst of his excesses.

THE WYRMLING HORDE.

David Farland. 2008. Tor Books. Hardcover. 319 pages. $25.95.

St. George’s resident novelist David Farland, a.k.a. David Wolverton, wrote the first Runelords book about 10 years ago and created one of the most interesting worlds and magical systems to see the light of day in fantasy writing in many years.

And to make him even more palatable as an author, he prefers tetrologies to trilogies (that’s four books in a series rather than three), and he hasn’t churned out book after book after book about the same characters. He did recognize that the world and system he created had endless possibilities, so what he did was finish the story arc begun in The Runelords, his first tetrology, and then moved onto the children of those people in his second.

Here, Fallion Orden, son of Gaborn Orden, the Earth King, has bound two worlds together, but he got it wrong. Now, the worst of the two worlds are combining to utterly destroy humanity.

The problem is Fallion is captive in the deepest dungeon in a castle built into the side of a volcano. Old friends of his – and newfound friends in the new world – are joining to rescue him. But how do they fight a fortress full of enemies?

Farland offers up interesting twists and turns on things he earlier introduced, and these all give the reader much to mull over.

Mining his own LDS theology, and general Christian theology, Farland presents deep concepts such as forgiveness, Christ’s suffering for the sins of all mankind, how to fight evil decisively without following the same path, and the desire for redemption. The topics he presents stay with you long after the book is finished. He does this side by side with some of the best battle and action scenes to be found in fantasy literature.

In the Runelords series, Farland has created the most ingenious system of magic to be presented in the world of fantasy literature in years.

Farland’s books are a delicious meal for the connoisseur of fantasy literature, or for anyone who claims that fantasists don’t deal with serious issues. Stunning, amazing, deeply rewarding.

ENDER IN EXILE.

Orson Scott Card. 2008. Tor Books. Hardcover. 369 pages. $25.95.

At the end of Shadow of the Giant, Card set things up for another Ender novel. (Ender played a major role only in Ender’s Shadow. The rest of the Shadow books followed Bean, and other Battle School graduates.) This book takes place between chapters 14 and 15 of Ender’s Game.

Fans of the Ender books know that the child genius Ender Wiggin saved humanity from the incestoid race called the buggers or formics. But after winning the war, Ender was not allowed to return to Earth.

Ender is obsessed with understanding more about the formics and hive queens, and he is isolating himself from his jeesh at the Battle School and even his own family. Eventually it is decided that he will be sent into space to become the governor of one of the new colony worlds. His sister, Valentine, travels with him, breaking her ties to their sadistic older brother Peter, and their parents.

The Ender books – Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind – were all books that contemplated the necessity of war and the damage it does to the warriors and society. The more recent Shadow books are more action oriented. Exile returns to the tone of the first series – a hardcore chess match. Ender is matching wits with the admiral of the ship that is taking him to his first colony. He is also trying to understand his own role in the death of the buggers, and rebuilding the relationship with Valentine.

As he puts in his stint as governor of his first colony, then moving on to the next – as a private citizen – Ender finally begins to understand and come to terms with the answers he needs as he moves toward becoming the Speaker for the Dead.

Once again, Card looks at what makes character and how even flawed people can do good things. Family life, with all of its pain and mistakes (sometimes brutal mistakes), again, is one of the main themes of this book.

While Card has said this is a one-off book, he has left the door open just a crack for further books if this one should prove successful enough. Definitely worth it for the dedicated Ender fan. And even for those not familiar with Card’s most enduring character, this is a solid book looking at real issues.

Rich welcomes questions and comments. You may contact him through this paper, or by email at 62rich@gmail.com.