Fortune's Bastard

I rarely read a book more than once, even some of my favorites. But this one has so much fun in it, I needed to read it twice.

I had this book given to me, but I would have happily paid (used price only) for it. Yes, it's really two novels, two storys: the thoroughly-flawed protagonist's self-powered post-it flagged descent into a personal hell presided over by a sneering bitch and back-stabbing former colleagues and his coke-powered launch into Spain in no way prepared him for an encounter with a crippled circus troupe in backwater Florida, who, had Dante known them, might have given them a special hell of their own. This is black humor at its sickest. Don't give it to your Mother, unless she's already written her will.

Alive. This is the last word in Chalmer's first novel, the otherwise well-written Who's Who in Hell. It is also the main theme of the cover work for Fortune's Bastard, and indeed, the theme of the book itself. Where as horror and Gothic writers have a love affair with death, Chalmer's seems to love contrasting death with being alive. Fortune's Bastard is the story of Edward Miller, the editor of a Daily Mail-like racist, fascist tabloid that remains unnamed throughout. Miller himself is a hardcore racist and while his paper supports the Conservatives, he's such a caricature of the anti-PC set, he probably votes for the Nazi party. He's a hard-liner, a neo-con, a right-winger, and much like the recent Republicans of Note, he's diddling he's secretary, and much like our favorite conservative lackey, Miller gets caught. From the moment our womanizing hero steps out of the closet where he's been banging his assistant and steps into the cafeteria, his life as he knew it is officially over. As the title suggests, from here on out, he is Fortune's Bastard. (One should note, Fortune's Bastard is the American title for the book, and represents a great step forward for Chalmers in how he titles things, as the title now reflects the overall theme of the book. "Who's Who in Hell" referred to a book that Linnel only briefly works on and has no other meaning or representation within the story. The same goes for the original UK title of Fortune's Bastard, "East of Nowhere" which refers to a short part of the novel that seems to be more of a short story that never went anywhere than anything else.) The biggest problem with Fortune's Bastard is that, as has been pointed out before, it seems to be two halves of two separate novels. The second half seems to be the beginning of a sequel to his first novel and that, when that sequel ended after a hundred and fifty pages, he decided to do a find and replace for "Daniel Linnel" and change it to the hero of two other short stories he was working on. Then, he changed a few minor details, made strange tentative connections, and wrapped it all up in a nice package of Alive-ness. The other problem with Fortune's Bastard, as is the problem with Who's Who in Hell and indeed most modern novel, is that it doesn't wrap things up properly. There are lots of unanswered questions, hanging threads, and red herrings that are never investigated but simply thrown about like a strange mixture of hastily written story, which adds to the feeling of being a part of a different story. Overall, however, the story is good in pacing and momentum, though it could use with a bit of a re-write: grammatically it is atrocious. As I was reading it after proofreading Synchronicity Killed the Cat for David R. Williams last week, I was tempted half the time to attack the thing with a red felt pen and send it to Chalmers with an little frowny face sticker on the cover. You know, the sort you got in grammar school when you wrote atrociously. The m

Very interesting book. There are twists and turns you wouldn't expect unless you read the back cover first. And we come to why it's only 4 1/2 instead of five. The back gives it all away! It does compare to "Geek Love" (a book that should also be picked up if your stomach can take it) but in a more appealing way. You could read this in almost three sittings as we go over the three stages in his life we get to witness. My suggestion; read this then "Geek Love" and don't read the back cover!