Book review

Canada’s forgotten battle: Hill 70

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I first became aware of the First World War Battle of Hill 70 when researching the 107th Capturing Hill 70“Timber Wolf” Battalion for a couple of short stories I was working on a number of years ago, which were “A Deeper Echo” and “The Wolves of Vimy.” Compared to the treatment of other battles Canada fought in during the First World War — such as the Somme, Vimy, and Passchendaele — it’s almost unheard of today, and I only stumbled across mention of it because the 107th played a part in it. However, as the contributors to the new volume Capturing Hill 70: Canada’s Forgotten Battle of the First World War, edited by Douglas E. Delaney and Serge Marc Durflinger, show, at the time it was seen as equally important as those other battles. I had the opportunity to review the book for the Winnipeg Free Press (presented below in slightly longer form).

Etched in stone on the war monument on Winnipeg’s Memorial Boulevard, along with SOMME, VIMY and PASSCHENDAELE, are the words HILL 70. Yet while Vimy and Paschendaele loom large in Canadian awareness of the First World War, Hill 70 has been forgotten.

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Canadian cli-fi: Harold Johnson’s Corvus

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Not too long ago I got the chance to interview Canadian author Harold Johnson about his new sci-fi novel Corvus. I loved the way it handled how different things might be by the end of the century, the way he portrayed different aspects of Canadian society — the haves, the have-nots, the differences between how Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities might be in the future, and, of course, people’s use of and relationship with technology. 

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Corvus coverHarold Johnson’s fifth novel Corvus is set in an imagined late twenty-first century, in which climate change and war have dramatically changed Canada.

The idea for Corvus came when Johnson heard David Suzuki, Al Gore, and James Lovelock discuss climate change. Gore asserted climate change could be fixed. Lovelock said it was too late; climate change is the new reality. He advised Suzuki to move north and build nuclear reactors for electricity.

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Lagoon, Signal to Noise, and other great books I’ve read lately

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As part of a determined “read things for fun” kick (as opposed to “read for review/story research/copy edit” which had become most of my reading) as well as an attempt to read more diversely, I decided to stop adding things to my To Be Read list and start TBRing them. And thanks to many good recommendations and things like K. Tempest Bradford’s challenge, I got to read some awesome books.

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Werewolf Wednesday: Benjamin Percy’s Red Moon

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I really wanted to love Red Moon. I asked the Books editor at the Free Press months in advance whether I could review it, and was thrilled when the ARC showed up. However, as much as I enjoyed Benjamin Percy’s writing and his narrative voice, there were elements of the story and the background world of his werewolves that just didn’t hang together enough, in my opinion.

This was touted as a hot book long before it hit shelves earlier this month — if you’ve read it and disagree, I’d love to hear about in the comments.

Evocative tale of werewolf ‘terrorists’ fails to deliver

Red-MoonTHE werewolf has often embodied our fears of what is wild in nature or within ourselves. In Benjamin Percy’s Red Moon, the werewolf is cast as terrorist in what could be a provocative analogy, but it ultimately fails to deliver.

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Metal Monday: Ace Frehley’s No Regrets

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NoRegretsAs the founding guitarist for KISS, you’d expect Ace Frehley to have some pretty good war stories — if he can remember them. A self-confessed party animal, Frehley has been open about his addicitions to alcohol, cocaine, and painkillers.  But as he shows in No Regrets, his memory for a lot of things is just fine.

Frehley and original KISS drummer Peter Criss have been largely written out of the band’s official history over the years — at least, to hear Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley tell it. So it’s refreshing to hear the story of the band from Frehley’s point of view.

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Why you should read Walt Simonson’s entire run on Thor

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MightyThorOmnibuscropIn the 1980s, superhero comics were in the process of reinventing themselves for a more sophisticated audience, and one of the creators who took advantage of that was writer/artist Walt Simonson when he took the reins at Marvel Comics’ Thor.

Chris Clarememont and John Byrne had made their mark on The Uncanny X-Men; Frank Miller and Klaus Janson had overhauled Daredevil into something epic. (Byrne and Miller, of course, later revolutionized Superman and Batman, respectively.) But Simonson, who had worked on The Mighty Thor in the late 1970s, already had mythic material to start with, and when he returned to the title he built it into a world-shattering story.

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