Graceling by Kristin Cashore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars “Mercy was more frightening than murder because it was harder” Eighteen-year-old (or so) Katsa is a Graceling, possessed of a special gift (Grace) like a superpower in X-men or Heroes, in her case, a preternatural ability for killing. She is far less subject to fatigue, pain, hunger, thirst, cold, sickness, injury, and so on than normal (Graceless?) people and far quicker and stronger and more dexterous, resourceful, and creative etc. in fighting, hunting, swimming, etc. Not having any parents, she has been exploited for several years by her uncle King Randa as his attack dog-thug, being sent on missions to intimidate and physically punish any lord or commoner who dares cheat or diss the King. But lately she’s started chafing at that service, refusing to harm basically innocent people for Randa and starting the Council, a secret society spreading throughout the Seven Kingdoms to protect powerless people from the powerful. And such is the virtue of her cause that she has brought into the Council King Randa’s own spy master Oll, his own son Prince Raffin (a cool possibly gay guy into science, medicines, and his assistant Bann), and one of his most important young lords Gidden. When the first novel in Kristin Cashore’s Graceling Realm series, Graceling (2008), begins, Katsa is on a Council mission (unknown to King Randa) to rescue this Lienid grandfather prince from the dungeon of the King Murgon, so we get a good glimpse of her formidable fighting skills as she easily knocks out several dungeon guards and a dozen or so castle guards—until she almost meets her match in the person of Greening Grandemalion (call him Po), a handsome, be-ringed young Leinid prince not much older than she and apparently Graced with fighting ability (because he sure knows where each of her lightning-fast blows is going to land and act accordingly to avoid them…) The novel will develop the relationship between Katsa and Po in rather convincing, interesting, and moving ways as the plot (full of concise world building, exciting action, surprising reveals, complex romance, grueling adventure, and a boss villain with a scary Grace) puts them through the wringer and challenges Katsa’s understanding of herself, her Grace, and her lover. Interestingly, although the novel was published in 2008, the audio book version didn’t get made til 2022, so it is another example of a book that was first published before audio books were so popular and that has benefited from the popularity of audiobooks. Reader Xanthe Elbrick really enhances the story. The novel recalls Robin Hobb’s earlier Assassin’s Apprentice. A young highly trained, skilled, and effective killer for a king; the conflict between doing the dirty work for a demanding master and wanting to be free to live your life; the ethics of killing; etc. But of course Katsa is a she, and everyone knows what she is and what she can do, which is part of why they shun her, while in Fitz's case it's because they know he's a bastard without having any idea he's a highly trained spy assassin. And Fitz doesn't start his own "Council," but stays more a tool of the Farseers. It also reminds me a bit of The Murderbot Diaries, because although Katsa refers to herself as a monster, she’s really a human survivor-savior. Cashore’s novel indulges in a bit of YA Special Princess Heroine Overkill, in that Katsa is a beautiful orphan, she complains of having no friends but really has several good ones, she has a really cool love interest, she’s basically not one princess but two, she’s a great fighter (the best in her kingdom), and (so far) her unique Grace is countless Graces rolled into one. Because there is (so far) no explanation for the Grace system, where the abilities come from, how they actually work, who gets one, why it manifests as it does in a person, why Graced people have one eye one color and one eye another (apart from being cool), and so on. This permits Cashore to come up with any kind of Grace with any kind of rules needed to suit her plot. And the climax is over too quickly. However, I had such a great time listening to the audiobook, which was funny, exciting, suspenseful, moving, surprising, and so on (and has some great stuff re to marry and have kids or not and how it'd be to be close to someone who can basically read your thoughts), so that I really had to kind of flog myself to find flaws because I just wanted to enjoy the ride to the end. I also appreciate that apparently each Graceling book can stand by itself. Will I go on to listen to other books in the series? Hmmm…… View all my reviews
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The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Comical, Scary, Sublime, and Imperfect Fantasy The heroes of E. Nesbitt’s fantasy novel The Enchanted Castle (1907), Gerald (Jerry), Kathleen (Kathy/Cat), and James (Jimmy) are three British West Country siblings who go to unisex boarding schools and can only meet on the weekends at some house where they can't play (“You know the kind of house” says the narrator). Luckily one thing leads to another, and the boys get to spend the holiday at Kathleen's girls’ school in Littlesby while all the other girls are gone. The kids are wanting an adventure—Kathleen even suggests writing a book, but the boys refuse that fatiguing work—when out hunting caves in the woods they stumble upon (and into) one that leads to what appears to be an enchanted castle with an enchanted garden with an enchanted princess lying there waiting to be kissed awake. Princess, garden, and castle all turn out to be not exactly enchanted in the way the kids (and reader) were expecting. The ensuing plot has the kids making a good new friend in Mabel Prowse, the daughter of the housekeeper of Yalding Towers, the estate the kids found, and getting to know through increasingly fraught trial and error the properties of what turns out to be a tricky magic ring. Is it a ring of invisibility? Or a wishing ring? Or whatever one wants it to be? Like certain other later more famous magic rings, this one has a tendency to drop off your finger at unexpected moments and to seduce you into using it the wrong way. **You can see the influence Nesbit must have had on C. S. Lewis here: two boys and two girls having fantastic adventures driven by magical artifacts, marked by the interface between the “real” world and fantasy, and flavored by pagan deities (though Nesbitt blessedly is not writing Christian allegory). There’s lots of fantasy in the novel! Comedy scenes, like Gerald disguising himself in brown-face to become an India Indian conjurer at the town fair (this is offensive today). Disturbing horror developments, as when an audience fashioned from coats, pillows, broomsticks, and hats comes to life as “Ugly-Wuglies,” or as when to prove a point Mabel (foolishly!) wishes the ring made people four yards tall, or as when Kathleen (foolishly!) wishes she could be a statue, or as when James (foolishly!) wishes he were rich. Interspersed through the disturbing moments shine sublime ones, like a celestial picnic featuring animated statues of pagan gods and a moment of total revelation and understanding outside time and space and without need of words, when it seems “that the whole world lay like a magic apple in the hand of each listener and that the whole world was good and beautiful.” Throughout all of the fantasy, Nesbit runs her “realism,” which involves giving plenty of money and food details, demystifying or mundaning certain fantasy elements (like sleeping beauties and enchanted castles) while freshly and imaginatively utilizing others (like magic rings), and frequently addressing her readers to for instance challenge them to do things like make their own Ugly-Wuglies to see how scary they can really be and generally to pose as a real person who’d met the siblings and gotten their story from them (she archly tells us that she believes everything she’s been told, including the story we’re reading). She also uses relatable similes, like “... looking as unreal as the wrong answer to a sum in long division.” And she has her kids use then current British slang, like “I've had a rum dream,” and “What a ripping book!” and refer to then popular literature like Sherlock Holmes. She also inserts at one point an American millionaire who, suitably, likes saying “great” and shooting his gun (which he lovingly carries on his person). Gerald is a neat character, good at currying favor with adults by being attentive and polite to them, a natural born general who takes charge of the other kids and bucks them up when their morale flags, an articulate lad who likes narrating their activities as though he’s the narrator of an adventure novel as well as its hero, with the other kids being his minions. The other kids are not as interesting but still individual enough. There are points where they do unbelievably stupid and out of character (the kids are anything but stupid) things with the ring to create suspenseful complications. Johanna Ward gives a fine reading of the Audiobook. Unfortunately, Nesbit shoves into the story an unconvincing and excrescent fairy tale-like romance involving the French governess “Mademoiselle” who’s supposedly keeping an eye on the kids during their holidays. And, like Gerald posing as an Indian conjurer, some things don’t wear well today, as in lines like, “Even though you’re French you must know that British gentlemen always keep their word.” But the novel is worth reading for psychologically interesting and true moments like when the kids reveal their awareness that grownups play with them to please them without knowing that kids play with them to please them, and for some potent fantasy writing, like this: "There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs forever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real. And when once people have found one of the little weak spots in that curtain which are marked by magic rings, and amulets and the like, almost anything may happen." And like this: “The two little girls kissed in the kind darkness, where the visible and the invisible could meet on equal terms.” View all my reviews
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Perfect Picture Book I’ve been teaching Where the Wild Things Are (1963) here at Fukuoka University for over twenty-five years now, and almost every time I learn something new about how it works and enjoy it again. Maurice Sendak had some false starts making his classic book, one in 1958 called Where the Wild Horses Are, a book about an inch in height with wide pages, and then one in 1963 with the final title but fashioned too small (about the size of his Nutshell Library). And then when he’d found just the right size and title of the eventual book, he had to de-clutter the words (the text being overwritten) and pictures (the initial pictures having too many objects and details). Anyway, he did finally make a perfect picture book. In the compact and potent story Max is wearing his “wolf suit” pajamas and going violently crazy at home (torturing his stuffed animal bear, hammering a nail in the wall to hang a string to make a blanket lair, chasing his dog down the stairs with a large fork, threatening to eat his mother up, etc.), so his mother calls him, “WILD THING!” and sends him to bed without supper, whereupon his bedroom changes into a forest and an ocean, and he sails off in a boat to Where the Wild Things Are, where he tames the monsters and becomes their king and plays with them, until he finally is sated and realizes he misses someone who loved him most of all and returns to his bedroom to find his supper waiting for him. To tell that story, the pictures and words do interesting things, separately and together. Sometimes the words add details absent from the pictures, like Max’ mother, whom Sendak never draws. One sentence goes on for about eight pages! But he uses “and” skillfully and ends each page at a pause-able point so as to make it easy and fun to read the book aloud. There’s even a neat touch whereby he puts the time words when Max travels to Where the Wild Things Are in an order increasing from small to large (night, day, weeks, year) only to reverse them (year, weeks, day, night) when his hero returns home, giving the impression of time travel (though then how is one to explain the full moon in his bedroom window at the end of the story when it began with a crescent moon?). Sometimes the pictures add details absent from the words, like the nature of Max’ mischief, the picture on the wall of a wild thing that Max has drawn, the presence of the moon throughout, the way the moon changes size to match Max’ changing moods, the items in his supper, the diverse and chimerical composition of the wild things, and so on. Sometimes the illustrations provide a pleasing balance or symmetry, as when Max and the wild thing with human feet are sitting like mirror images in the same pose. Sendak’s extensive cross-hatching makes the pictures solid and substantial but also dreamlike and nocturnal. Sometimes the words and pictures work together, as when Max is “lonely,” and the picture shows his melancholy face. Sometimes the words and pictures work against each other, as when “mischief” seems an understatement for the mayhem Max is unleashing, and when “terrible” repeatedly describes the wild things, but they look more silly or cute or ugly. Sendak also cleverly uses layout, as in the way the pictures at first appear on the right hand pages with big white margins around them, while the words at first appear on the left hand pages, but as Max’ wildness grows, the pictures grow across the pages as the words and margins retreat, until in the wild rumpus climax there are three consecutive wonderful wordless two-page spreads where the pictures go from edge to edge (it is now that the moon is finally full, too). Then after Max expresses his wildness and fulfills and exhausts himself, the pictures start retreating as the words start advancing, till the last page has no image at all but only the words, “and it was still hot.” A wonderful touch to represent the degree of Max’s wildness by the presence or absence of words (more civilized) and pictures (more primitive). It must be so fun for kids to read a story in which the little boy hero goes wild at home, escapes punishment by journeying to his ideal wild play place, takes command of giants like grotesque adults, gives them the punishment his mother has given him by sending them to bed without their supper, then returns home to his own still hot supper comprised of soup, milk, and cake. (The themes on using fantasy to express one’s anger and resentment and frustration are great.) And although in the last picture he has pulled down his wolf suit head to reveal his good boy’s head, he is still wearing the wolf suit, and he can go wild again any time, and the moon is full, and the wild thing on the cover is waiting for him. Finally, I’m impressed by Sendak’s emotional restraint in the book, which is unsentimental. Imagine if at the end, instead of the brilliant last blank white page bearing only the words, “and it was still hot,” Sendak had, for instance, forced on us a picture of Max and his mother hugging or of Max’s mother watching her son eating! (Contrast that with the ending of the 2009 movie.) This year the book is sixty, but it never feels old. View all my reviews
Hot Water Music by Charles Bukowski
My rating: 3 of 5 stars A Little Bukowski Goes a Long Way… Hot Water Music (1983) consists of thirty-six typical Bukowski short stories. They are mostly sordidly real but sometimes magically real and feature few epiphanies or transformations or triumphs but mostly endings where life in all its squalid glory goes on. The stories feature LA underbelly denizens like physically and or psychologically mutilated alcoholics, gamblers, writers, artists, editors, students, professors, prostitutes, fans, femme fatales, housewives, beggars, and bartenders. Many a first-person appearance by Henry “Hank” Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter-ego. And many of the third-person narration protagonists just happen to be alcoholic writers not unlike Chinaski. The stories may shift into fantasy, as when a jealous skeleton throws a drink in the face of a bar customer after a woman who claims to have seen Joan of Arc burn gives him a hot kiss, or as when a woman’s brother teleports into the protagonist’s home right when he’s in his bed about to climax-cheat on his wife with the woman, or as when a husband and wife spend the night shooting each other with their gun and are woken up in the morning by the police complaining about domestic quarrel situations. The suspense-pleasure in reading the stories lies in wondering what dirty sexy gross person or event or situation will manifest next in Bukowski’s deadpan, dry, drawling voice, perfectly channeled by audiobook reader Christian Baskous. The best stories are humorous, irreverent takes on poets and poetry readings and the writing profession. I really like most of the Chinaski stories, especially the two about the funeral of his father. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of unpleasant, unenriching stories. These feature graphic violence, sex, and political incorrectness, especially regarding women, as in a line like, “a local feminist poet who had grown tired of blacks and now fucked a doberman in her bedroom.” Though Bukowski loved women in his way, his male characters say things like, “A female seldom moves away from one victim without having another,” and “Of course women were all crazy. They demanded more than there was.” And some of the women are monsters preying on men, liable to do something like bite off a piece of one’s penis during oral sex or drive off with one’s wallet, clothes, and car keys while one is in the motel shower. Mind you, Bukowski’s men often deserve such treatment, and the line “What women and men did to each other was beyond comprehension” echoes through the whole collection. Bukowski writes vivid descriptions like “She tasted like old postage stamps and a dead mouse,” “It was a nice Southern California morning, smoggy, stale, and listless,” and “Her eyes were large, stricken, and stale.” And lines that ring with dry wit and raw truth, like-- “They kill people by the millions in wars and give out medals for it.” “There was nothing worse than a reformed drunk and a born again a Christian, and Meyers was both.” “Love is a form of prejudice… You love what is convenient.” “The waiting room was full of people with no real problems: gonorrhea, herpes, syphilis, cancer, and so forth.” “The only people who know what mercy is are those who need it.” References to Presidents Carter and Reagan, the Falkland’s War, and women’s lib date the stories, but on the other hand the sordid and hence vibrant human condition and cynical takes on America feel universal. As do references to the likes of Hemingway, Faulkner, Pirandello, Hesse, Chopin, and Camus. (Bukowski writes a funny riff on Camus’ existentialism being compromised by his elegant writing that reads like that of a man who’s just finished a rich steak dinner accompanied by fine French wine.) I mostly enjoyed the collection, but several Bukowski stories go a long way, and about a third of the way into the collection, I started getting jaded, and by the end I was ready for the end. View all my reviews
The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars No Eucatastrophe Here! Wow--The Broken Sword (1954) is quite a visceral experience. I liked Poul Anderson’s novel back in high school but had forgotten everything about it, so I wanted to try Bronson Pinchot reading the audiobook, and was very affected by the weird book. Raw Viking Faerie Power! Incest, fratricide, patricide, torture, rape, massacre, quests, sea and land battles and sieges, brutal violence with brains and blood and guts, heartless scheming old gods, prodigious hatreds and loves, a demon-possessed singing sword that has to kill someone every time it’s unsheathed including, ultimately, its bearer (inspiration for Elric’s Stormbringer). The story takes place in about the 9th century AD in England and environs, when the Danelaw is giving English lands to Viking invader settlers. A violent explorer called Orm comes to England, coveting the land of a local family, so he and his men surround their hall and set it afire, burning all the men inside. With Viking gallantry, they let a few women escape, one of whom, the mother of the immolated family, is a witch who goes off to brew revenge. Orm falls in love with a young local Christian lady, who’ll only marry him if he converts, which he finally agrees to do. While she’s pregnant, Orm goes off raiding (the new religion not sticking too deeply), and while he’s gone she bears the baby, but before she can get it christened an elf lord named Imric happens by-- An elf lord?! Wasn’t this a historical Vikings in England novel?! Well… wherever the new White Christ’s religion hasn’t horned in, Faerie overlays the human world, so that people never quite see it even though it’s all around them, other than, perhaps, feeling a spooky passing wind or seeing some eerie distant lights. In Faerie there are different immortal beings: elves (tall, slender, graceful, cold, supposedly incapable of deep love, technologically and magically advanced), the elves’ bitter enemies, trolls (shorter, wider, stronger, barbaric, also cold, also capable of magic), and then various other “peoples” lesser in power and culture, supporting actors in the never-ending conflict between elves and trolls: goblins, imps, Sidhe, leprechauns, half-gods (gods who used to be strong but have been partially displaced by the new god). Then behind all those and using them (and humans) as proxy chess pieces in a long Cold War lurk the Aesir gods (Odin, Thor, etc.) and their epic enemies the Jotun giants. When Imric begets a changeling by raping an insane troll princess kept for the purpose in an elf-dungeon for 900 years and substitutes the “baby” for Orm’s son, the contrasting and conflicting destinies of two identical alien “twins” are set in motion, that of the happy go lucky human Skafloc raised by elves as an elf, and that of the anti-social changeling elf-troll Valgard raised by humans as a human being. Anderson details their doomed parallel lives with relish, and when their paths finally intersect, the results are not for the faint of heart. Valgard is a worthy antagonist foil for the hero Skafloc, one moment glad about destroying his family and the next ravaged by guilt and a stunned incomprehension as to how he could do such things. Neither human nor troll/elf, neither fully himself nor only a shadow of Skafloc, lonely, pathetically believing that femme fatales love and understand him when they’re just manipulating him, evincing defiant bravery even in the face of assured doom (I’ll kill Skafloc and tread the earth under my feet: I am death!), Valgard is impressive in his giant, shield-biting emotions. Skafloc is (at first) the luckier doppelganger, having the best of both human and Faerie worlds, but also his nature is (at first) sunnier than that of Valgard. I like how Skafloc confuses his own brutal killer’s heart with that of his demonic sword, so that by turns he feels that he’s being used as the sword’s tool or acting in accord with his heart. The more Skafloc uses the sword to kill trolls, the more he starts becoming pitiless like Valgard. Anderson strips everything they love or need or want away from both men, leaving them as “heroes” for opposite sides, both fey, bleak, and bloodthirsty. There are no flat evil villains in this novel, but more or less flawed and feeling and fated people (or elves, trolls, etc.). Trolls are worse than Elves, but both sides have been performing atrocities on each other for millennia. Both sides are brutal. Humans are, too. So are the Aesir and Jotuns. Odin is a callous manipulator. The hate here is overwhelming! Valgard for Imric and Skafloc; Skafloc for Valgard and trolls; the witch for Orm and his line; elves for trolls and vice versa; Aesir for giants and vice versa; old gods and Faerie for the new White Christ and so on. Yet so is the love here, especially between Freda and Skafloc (beyond mores, religion, and fate) and even of Lea for Skafloc, giving the lie to the truism that elves cannot feel deeply. The moment when Orm’s raised ghost tells his widow to stop mourning him, because down in hell when he hears her crying it’s like vipers biting him, and she says, “Take me with you!” is weird and moving. A summary can’t do justice to the dark joys of language that Anderson revels in! His descriptions achieve an over the top, sublime beauty, as of the starry sky or stormy seas or massive clouds or terrific battles, and so on. Like this: “As if sound had frozen to death and the aurora danced above its grave.” He uses some archaic words like “ere” and “twain” and “fey” and “weird” and some old syntax, as in “bitter was the night,” and “I like not this rede.” Throughout, all sorts of alliteration and consonance. He even ascends to pseudo-Anglo-Saxon verse for intense moments as when Skafloc improvises poetry on the spur of the moment to express his love for Freda or his awe at stormy seas or his appreciation of a horrible battle. Both Tolkien and Anderson were inspired by Norse mythology and the Edda, but with different effects and aims and results. Anderson retained the grim fated hate filled feuding and god manipulating side of that source material, while Tolkien (in LOTR) wedded it to his Christian eucatastrophic consolation, removing all appearance of god or gods from LOTR, but leaving them (or God) behind the scenes. Anyway, there’s nothing in Tolkien like the troll princess Gora’s mad ramblings as she’s about to be raped to make a changeling: "The world is flesh dissolving off a dead skull. . . . Birth is but the breeding of maggots in the crumbling flesh. Already the skull's teeth leer forth, and black crows have left its eye-sockets empty. Soon a barren wind will blow through its bare white bones." Audiobook reader Bronson Pinchot relishes reading such lines, rampaging along the boundary between enhancing an appalling and exciting story and overdramatizing it. View all my reviews
The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Compact, Philosophical, and Funny Fantasy Adventure I’ve read The Book of Three (1964) many times, first by myself in junior high school and later with my Japanese university students in seminars over the years, and every time I’ve liked going on the journey with Taran and company. Taran, the Assistant Pig-Keeper of indeterminate age, parentage, and appearance (one reason why his hair ranges from gold to red to brown to black in the various cover illustrations done over the years), is an impatient and reckless boy who chafes at chores and runs away from the safety of his home and its 379-year-old wizard Dallben to pursue the panicked oracular pig Hen Wen into the forest and then finds adventures more challenging and uncomfortable than he'd read or dreamed about. If Taran remains rather humorless and featureless, the colorful supporting characters he meets are vivid and funny, like Gurgi the homeless and hungry dog-monkey who refers to himself in third person and likes rhyming and eating (“crunchings and munchings!”), Eilonwy the lonely princess who’s learning to be an enchantress from a wicked “aunt” and who likes making similes, Fflewddur Fflam the abdicated king who likes wandering as a bard with a magical harp that plays itself and breaks its strings when he exaggerates, and Doli the crabby odd-man-out dwarf who can’t make himself invisible and can’t stand a botched job. I like the way Lloyd Alexander works into his concise and fast-paced story plenty of messages for kids (and adults) to think about, like the world of human beings being a hard place for animals to live in; the three foundations of learning being “see much, study much, suffer much”; overcoming despair is a more vital part of being a hero than big muscles or swords; noble character being more important than noble birth; our homes being smaller when we return to them after a journey; and so on. Although he does some typical things with gender, making the enchantress Achren a by-the-numbers beautiful wicked witch, he also (for 1964) makes Eilonwy strong-headed and clever (Taran’s boss) and gives her a great riff on not wanting to be called a girl. And his refusal to give us what we expect or want in the climax of the novel is remarkable. (view spoiler)[Everything has been leading up to a big battle between the army of the Horned King and the army of the Sons of Don and to a Boss Fight between the Horned King and Taran or Prince Gwydion (the legendary Son of Don whom Taran meets and loses early in the adventure). Eilonwy has been lugging around this huge enchanted (cursed?) sword, and Taran finally gets his hands on it and circumstances are forcing him to finally draw it to use it to kill the Horned King, right? Instead, the boy tugs it a few centimeters out of its sheath and is zapped unconscious by the action, which interrupts the climax because he’s the point of view protagonist. And then in the resolution chapter Taran’s companions and Gwydion tell him what happened while he was unconscious! Thus, Alexander doesn’t depict the climax in real time. And there wasn’t a big battle because Gwydion just said the Horned King’s true name to destroy him, which made the enemy army melt apart without their leader. Alexander is trying to get us to appreciate the non-physical side of being a hero, especially the psychological and moral or ethical side, as in helping or being helped by anyone or anything (after all, aren't we all lame ants?) or as in transcending disaster by overcoming despair. Taran has begun to learn both lessons by the end of the novel. He has often been a pessimistic downer: he thinks Gwydion is trying to poison him when they first meet, that Gwydion is killed in Spiral Castle's collapse, that Eilonwy is trying to trap or trick him, and even in the end that he has waken up in Annuvin. So he's still learning to overcome despair like Gwydion in Achren's torture castle. Anyway, in the context of genre expectations Alexander’s avoidance of the big boss fight and big battle is a bold move perfectly in tune with the themes of his novel. (hide spoiler)] Finally, Alexander’s writing is fine, his concise evocation of mood, place, and character through word choice, sounds, and images first rate. As with these descriptions: --“Approaching the Eagle Mountains, Taran felt his burden lighten, as he inhaled the dry, spicy scent of pine.” --“Medwyn strode ahead, as slowly and powerfully as if a tree were walking.” --“They descended to a broad, sun-swept meadow. The morning had turned bright and warm; dew still clung to the bending blades of grass.” Despite its flaws, then, (view spoiler)[like the Horned King remaining a cardboard dark lord’s minion or Eilonwy getting a pretty RING when Gwydion hands out rewards in the end instead of, say, a book of useful spells for adventures (hide spoiler)], it is a fine, compact novel that moves speedily, has a lot of good messages for kids (and adults) and colorful characters, and is refreshingly different in some key ways from usual fantasy adventures. Although my favorite novel in the five-book series is the fourth, Taran Wanderer, The Book of Three is a great start. And James Langton gives a fine reading of the audiobook—doing distinctive and suitable voices for the various characters and enhancing the various moods of the story without overly dramatically “performing” the book and drawing attention to himself.</["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]> View all my reviews
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Would-Be Dominican Tolkien-- Oscar de Leon, AKA Oscar Wao (a mocking nickname given him when he dressed up for Halloween like Dr. Who but was said to look like Oscar Wilde) is sure no stereotypically aggressive, confident, womanizing young Dominican man! Instead, he’s a morbidly overweight uber-nerd, deeply and comprehensively into Dungeons and Dragons and sf and fantasy and anime books, tv shows, movies, and the like. His dream is to become the Dominican Tolkien, his fear to die a virgin. Junot Diaz' The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) relates Oscar’s story, as well as those of his potent and rebellious sister Lola, his potent and hardworking mother Belicia, his impotent and refined grandfather Abelard (a doctor!), and their roots and lives in the Dominican Republic in the past and in Paterson, New Jersey in the “present” of the historical fiction, moving around in time and place from the 1940s to the 1990s. Diaz also works into his novel the background and life of the narrator of the novel, Yunior de Las Casas, a well-meaning, weightlifting, and philandering Dominican who befriends Oscar and dates his sister (and who DOES become a writer). Because of Oscar’s interests and Yunior’s attempts to understand them, the novel is full of references to LOTR and a host of other fantasy and sf works, characters, and games (Dune, Watchmen, Akira, Gary Gygax, Gormenghast, Galactus, Jack Kirby, Stephen King, Twilight Zone, etc.), like “Oscar had like a zero combat rating,” and “… when Gondolin falls you don’t wait around for the balrogs to tap on your door. You make fucking moves.” And because of the Dominican characters and narrator etc., the novel is also full of English swear words and Spanish expressions, some of which are understandable from the context, some not, all of which give it an interesting spicy-Spanish-Nerd flavor, as in “Her name was Ana Obregon, a pretty, loudmouthed gordita who read Henry Miller.” The book begins with the "author" Yunior introducing the Dominican concept of fuku, a curse/doom that can nail a person or an entire country. He recounts Dominican history featuring the 20th-century tyrant Trujillo, “the Dictatingest Dictator who ever Dictated,” a leader for whom the country “was his very own private Mordor.” When you include President Johnson invading the Dominican Republic in 1965, the Vietnam debacle may be understood as a fuku coming home to roost in America. Anyway, in the novel the main target/victims of the fuku are Oscar de Leon and his family. **Note: we know from the title and other hints from the narrator that Oscar is going to die young; part of the suspense in reading the book lies in wondering when/how it will happen. I liked the book a lot, but I found the parts set in the Dominican Republic most absorbing and interesting, because I had been totally ignorant about the country and its history, starting with how the Spanish treated the indigenous people there and running up through the assassination of Trujillo (the Sauron of the DR, though his death sure didn’t lead to any kind of a utopia). The contrasts between the cultures of the Dominican Republic and of the USA are striking. The parallels between what Belicia and Oscar experience in the Dominican Republic decades apart from each other have a powerful and awful irony (Lola makes a terse and devastating condemnation of Dominicans at one point: “We’re ten million Trujillos”). By contrast, I did not care SO much for the parts featuring Oscar in Paterson or at Rutgers etc., because he can be too self-centered, self-destructive, self-pitying, and inveterate a nerd, and I could have done with maybe one or two fewer of his attempts at romantic relationships. I found myself much more interested in the plights of Abelard and Belicia in the Dominican Republic than of Oscar in Paterson. It's a funny but sad novel with a wonderfully distinctive voice. Lin Manuel-Miranda reads his parts of the audiobook splendidly (those with a male narrator), though I have a hard time picturing him as black. Karen Olivo reads her parts (those with a female narrator) well, too. And the interesting footnotes from the physical novel ARE read in the audiobook. View all my reviews
The Veiled Throne by Ken Liu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Cooking, Conversations, and Cross-Cultural Exchange The Veiled Throne: The Dandelion Dynasty Book 3 (2021) is a nearly 1000-page epic fantasy novel whose long set piece climax is a three-part cooking contest between rival restaurants that even the gods of Dara show up to watch. Although the novel does also feature infiltrations, massacres, and escapes, as well as a large-scale naval battle involving a gargantuan city ship, a submersible ship, a large-screen shadow-puppet show, explosives, hand-to-hand combat, cow-dragons, and whales, author Ken Liu seems most interested in cooking and conversations—about politics, love, philosophy, strategy, engineering, storytelling, truth, taste, drama, disguise, parents and children, teachers and students, literacy vs. orality, genius vs. nature, character-based writing vs. alphabet writing, accommodation vs. war, and more. The Dandelion Dynasty is closer to traditional sf than to traditional epic fantasy, in that the books are novels of ideas based on the concept that the universe is knowable, with biological/scientific explanations for the seemingly fantastic creatures (like the flight and fiery breath of the cow-dragon garanafin) and convincing cultures (art, religion, war, language, cuisine, ethics, funeral customs, gender roles, families, and foundation myths) extrapolated from different environments and histories. No magic. Although gods do play a role, at times trying to influence events, they generally fail to prevent the mortals from doing what they want to do and mostly serve as a chorus for the action. It has been called a silkpunk epic, with technology, devices, and inventions based on scientific principles, e.g., silkmotic (static electricity) lamps and lances, airships, submersible ships, programmable mechanical carts, a roller coaster, etc. The main plot starts eight years after the events of the second book, The Wall of Storms (2016). Two years remain in the uneasy ten-year truce between the “barbaric” Lyucu invaders of two Daran islands (Unredeemed Dara) and the rest of the “civilized” Daran islands (Free Dara), with Daran Empress Jia still wielding power as Regent for still “unready” to rule twenty-year-old Phyro, while mollifying the Lyucu occupiers by giving them tribute and ignoring their atrocities and attempts to use pirates to kidnap scholars and craftsmen from Free Dara. As usual, Jia is working on a secret scheme “to uproot the weeds of war and cultivate the plants of peace” despite knowing it will alienate her from her people and family. (To—unfairly—generate suspense, Liu narrates much of the novel from Jia’s point of view so that whenever we’re in her head she avoids thinking about the details of her it’s-fine-to-fight-evil-with-evil plan, apart from a highly addictive drug she’s developing.) The conquering Lyucu stuck on their two occupied islands are divided between their accommodation faction wanting to treat the local Darans as subjects rather than slaves and wanting to learn Daran writing and technology and to incorporate the Darans into their government and army and the hardline faction wanting to destroy the language, religion, bodies, and souls of the Darans to turn them into obedient slaves and their towns into pastures. The Lyucu ruler Tanvanaki is trying to strengthen the accommodators with the help of her righthand thane Goztan (whose son Kinri is secretly learning Daran history and language and culture from a Daran scholar), but the hardcore haters are persistent and potent. At the end of the second novel, Thera abdicated as Empress of Dara to sail on a desperate mission with about 1000 Daran soldiers and scholars and her husband to be, Takval, scion of the Agon (ancient enemies of the Lyucu) to the scrublands on the far side of the world across the Wall of Storms to make an alliance between Dara and the Agon which will (she hopes) end in the Agon conquering the Lyucu so they’ll be unable to send another invasion fleet with which to complete their conquest of Dara. In this third book Thera is discovering the unexpected costs of merging her Darans with the native Agon. Whew. Liu develops all those situations and sub-plots through a rotating array of compelling characters from various classes and cultures. Most of his villains have appealing qualities, as his heroes have disappointing flaws. One of my favorites is Rati Yera, an elderly, illiterate, wheelchair-bound, graverobber-inventor and the leader of the do-gooding Blossom Gang of street performers, but I also like the earnest Kinri, drawn to Daran culture despite being the son of an important Lyucu thane, and the naïve Princess Fara, aka Dandelion, who likes art and stories, unlike her martial, older brother Phyro who’s all, “Free occupied Dara from the yoke of barbarian oppression NOW!” It’s very much a novel of cross-cultural conflict and influence. Many Lyucu see Daran writing (“word scars”) as an evil force stifling the natural breath of the spoken voice, farming as soul-destroying, and Darans as cowardly, sneaky, scheming villains, while many Darans view the Lyucu as illiterate, savage, sadistic, treacherous monsters. As characters say, “In war you tend to become like the enemy.” Indeed, the Darans are working on raising Lyucu garanafin, while the Lyucu are working on adopting Daran military technology. Is it possible to merge with the other by sharing non-martial things like language and cuisine? Where should one’s loyalty lie when one has a parent from each culture? Will it all end up in an Adrian Tchaikovsky-like salvation via enriching cultural interchange or in a mutually destructive apocalypse? We’ll have to read the fourth novel to find out. Liu too often indulges in easy plot contrivance, moments where careful characters get sloppy with disguises, or shrewd characters get gullible with untrustworthy villains, etc. But there are also many more impressive scenes (like the cooking contest) and many cool lines like these: “To hold competing ideals might save your life.” “Why should we listen to the gods or to dead scholars? What do they know of being alive?” “History is always a story told through the present.” “Young people who haven’t experienced suffering easily romanticize the past.” “One of the best things about teaching is learning something new from one's student. Audiobook reader Michael Kramer does a professional job of enhancing the story. By the end of this book, Liu has set up situations with different sets of characters in different places, all of which ought to come together in a massive climax in the last novel, so I’m looking forward to the (41 hour, eek!) conclusion to the series, Speaking Bones (2022). View all my reviews
Mistress of Mistresses: A Vision of Zimiamvia by E.R. Eddison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars ‘When I kiss you, it is as if a lioness sucked my tongue’ OR A Renaissance Game of Thrones Featuring Four Eternal Lovers and a Bestial Machiavel After an odd “Overture” in which the narrator attends the funeral in our world of his great friend Lessingham, E. R. Eddison’s Mistress of Mistresses (1935) shifts to the Renaissance fantasy world Zimiamvia, where Lessingham is alive and twenty-five and the cousin/troubleshooter of Horius Parry, the Vicar. The Vicar is a noble but brutish Machiavel who wants to rule the land as Regent for the new eighteen-year-old Queen Antiope, the King her brother having recently been assassinated (the hand behind the poisoning rumored to have been the Vicar’s). Because the dead king’s bastard half-brother Duke Barganax (whose hobby is painting his gorgeous goddess of a lover Fiorinda and then destroying his paintings for failing to capture her essence) and his allies chafe at being ruled by the duplicitous Vicar, war breaks out, both sides claiming to support the Queen. Against the odds, Lessingham wins a big battle and then attempts to force a peace on the stubborn Duke and the enraged Vicar, after which he heads north to the court of the young Queen in Rialmar to shore up her defenses against the perennial enemy of the realm Akkama, ruled by the loathsome King Derxis. Will the Vicar accept the peace? If he starts scheming again, what will the Duke and Lessingham do? And what will happen when the consummate courtier and captain Lessingham meets the beautiful and clever Queen Antiope? And won’t Derxis, who’s been egregiously wooing Antiope, do something dastardly? And why does the old “logical doctor” Vandermast, a philosophical wizard, tell Lessingham he’ll be dead within a year or two? “What is fame to the deaf dust that shall then be your delicate ear, my lord?” The basic plot is like a compact Game of Thrones with far fewer players, far more metaphysics and romance, and no dragons or undead. But the plot is not where lie this novel’s charms and fascinations! These largely derive from Eddison’s splendid and ornate style, painterly descriptions, epic similes, dry humor, and pleasure in nature, architecture, music, poetry, beauty, love, etc. Characters occasionally lace their speech with Greek or Latin quotations—which fortunately they often translate. (How Sappho and Shakespeare made it into Zimiamvia, I don’t know…) Eddison’s “Elizabethan” prose is savory, e.g., “The horror and ugsomeness of death is worse than death itself,” and-- ‘Philosophic disputations,’ said Fiorinda, ‘do still use to awake strange longings in me.’ ‘Longings?’ said the Duke. ‘You are mistress of our revels tonight. Breathe but the whisper of a half-shapen wish; lightning shall be slow to our suddenness to perform it.’ ‘For the present need,’ said that lady, ‘a little fruit would serve.’ ‘Framboises?’ said the Duke, offering them in a golden dish. ‘No,’ she said, looking upon them daintily: ‘they have too many twiddles in them: like my Lord Lessingham’s distich.’ He writes great similes, like “Only there sat in his eyes a private sunbeamed look, as if he smiled in himself to see, like a sculptor, the thing shape itself as he had meant and imagined,” and-- “Again her eyes crossed with Lessingham’s: a look sudden and gone like a kingfisher’s flight between gliding water and overshadowing trees.” And evocative descriptions, like “The falcon was perched still on the crag, alone and unmerry,” and-- “So they had passage over those waters that were full of drowned stars and secret unsounded deeps of darkness.” The battles and duels here have neither magic nor the supernatural but are man against man with armor, weapons, numbers, and tactics. The novel does introduce, however, fantastic things: immortal shape-changing Hamadryads, a time-free garden and cottage, a leaf to open any locked door, and most provocatively the two pairs of lovers, sensual Barganax-Fiorinda and spiritual Lessingham-Antiope, vibrant, distinct individuals who at times merge into each other. Lessingham and Barganax gaze into different mirrors and see each other’s reflections, Lessingham’s voice and manner recall Fiorinda’s, and Lessingham looks at Barganax and sees Antiope. As the Duke muses to his lover in a letter, “My thoughts growe busy that some way there bee IV of us but some way II only.” All of this suggests interesting things about gender and love and identity. Although the real-politic world of intrigue, assassination, and war drives the plot, Eddison often seems more interested in the two-couple romance he’s writing. The main characters are larger than life—archetypes—Eternal Lovers prefiguring Michael Moorcock’s later Eternal Champion. Lessingham dies in our world and yet vibrantly lives in Zimiamvia; he says to Antiope, "I love you … beyond time and circumstance" and calls her “Mary,” the name of his wife in our world; and the novel closes with Fiorinda, Mistress of Mistresses, looking at her nude reflection in a mirror and musing on all her female identities, from Aphrodite to Zenobia. All that said, Eddison isn’t only writing metaphysical romance. The novel features heroic violent action: a few battles, a bath time brawl between the Vicar and his dogs, Lessingham’s horse ride down a two-thousand foot cliff, and so on. And it features plenty of life wisdom like, “There was often more good matter in one grain of folly than in a peck of wisdom,” and “That which can be done, ’twas never worth the doing. Attempt is all.” Just keep in mind that it's not The Worm Ouroboros (1922), Eddison’s more famous epic fantasy, which has much more action and much less romance. Mistress of Mistresses has a lot of conversation and description, and the ending feels rushed and incomplete, but I relished reading it for moments like this: “As a man awakening would turn back into his dream, yet with that very striving awakes; or as eyes search for a star, picked up out but now, but vanished again in the suffusing of the sky with light of approaching day; so Lessingham seized at, yet in the twinkling lost, the occasion of those lines, the thin seeming memory blown with them as if from some former forgotten life.” And this: “And now his bee-winged kiss, hovering below her ear, under the earring’s smouldering of garnet, passed thence to where neck and shoulder join, and so to the warm throat, and so by the chin to that mocking spirit’s place of slumber and provocation; until, like the bee into the honeyed oblivion of some deep flower incarnadine, it was entertained at last into the consuming heaven of that lady’s lips.” Eddison was an English civil servant?! View all my reviews
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Sublime SF and Human Choices, Changes, and Relationships Ken Liu says about The Hidden Girl and Other Stories (2020), “Rather than worrying about which stories would make the ‘best’ collection for imaginary readers I decided to stick with stories that most pleased myself.” Is that why I ended up preferring his earlier collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016)? The more recent collection makes a neat “meta-narrative,” as its nineteen well-written stories coalesce around ghosts, identity, memory, morality, technology, civilization, nature, and families, but the result is less varied than his earlier collection. 1. Ghost Days Three times, places, and protagonists: 2313 Nova Pacifica and a "human" girl bioengineered to suit her toxic world; 1989 East Norbury CT and a Chinese immigrant trying to fit in to high school; 1905 Hong Kong and an anglicized young man trying to understand his father. Past and future, parents and children, immigrants and aliens, story and authenticity: “Digging into the past was an art of comprehension, making sense of the universe.” 4 stars. 2. Maxwell's Demon During WWII, the US authorities force a Japanese American woman to “defect” to Japan to spy on Japanese scientists, one of whom hopes to find a “demon” to separate fast moving air molecules from slow ones to get more energy. Can or should Takako train the ghosts of Chinese slave laborers killed by the Japanese? “No matter what she did people would die.” 4 stars 3. The Reborn Aliens who conquered Earth are now seemingly benign immigrants marrying cooperative earthlings. The human protagonist’s job catching vengeful xenophobic humans leads him to upsetting questions about his past, memory, and identity. 3 stars. 4. Thoughts and Prayers A family falls apart when a mass shooter kills one of two daughters, and the mother has a VR documentary made about her daughter’s life, so internet trolls target her despite her digital “armor,” all highlighting memory, reality, technology, and American “freedom” and guns. 5 stars 5. Byzantine Empathy Virtual reality, crypto currency, human disasters, charities. Liu tells the story from the point of view of two women who were university roommates and now have very different ideas about how to make the world a better place based on empathy or reason. 4 stars 6. The Gods Will Not Be Chained Bullied at school, Maddie is missing her deceased father when she’s contacted via chat window and emojicons by his digitally uploaded consciousness. Will such post-humans be content doing the same work they did when human? (Liu imposes a dramatic limit on his digital mind stories: consciousness cannot be uploaded without destroying the original.) 4 stars. 7. Staying Behind A small number of mortal human beings refuse to have their consciousnesses uploaded to join the digital post-human colony of immortal minds. What happens when the mortal narrator has to deal with his daughter and her boyfriend making a different choice? 4 stars. 8. Real Artists Satire on the use of computers and technology in making movies that strike emotional chords with the audience. Are the movie makers artists? Or is the software the artist? 3 stars. 9. The Gods Will Not Be Slain An unseen digital war: resentful uploaded post-human gods decide to destroy human civilization by goading mutually hostile countries into starting wars, while some uploaded post-human gods like the father of Maddie from the earlier story try to thwart them. 4 stars 10. Altogether Elsewhere Vast Herds of Reindeer Real Earth reverts to flora and fauna as 300 billion “human beings” live in a data center as uploaded consciousnesses, communicating via thought and designing multi-dimensional worlds. A mother takes her daughter on an eye-opening real world day trip: “Anything real must die.” 4 stars 11. The Gods Have Not Died in Vain Maddie and her cloud-born digital sister Mist (“a creature of pure computation, never having existed in the flesh”) try to prevent the uploaded “gods” from returning to life, but life in a data center without bodies, death, or rich/poor is appealing after a world of scarcity. Aren’t we all just electric signals anyway? 4 stars 12. Memories of My Mother A strange and moving relationship: a 25-year-old mother with two more years to live makes time with her daughter last longer via lots of fast space travel, so that, while not really aging, she meets her daughter when she’s a little girl, 17, 33, and 80. 4 stars 13. Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts A wealthy hermit philosopher floats around on “Old Blue” (earth) above Sunken Boston after all the ice caps have melted and drowned most of the cities. Humanity’s capacity for adaptation to and exploitation of nature: “We dare not stop striving to find out who we are.” 3 stars 14. Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard In the far future, a midden-miner sifts through the detritus of the ancients like plastics and electrical circuits, until to save her brother she becomes a hero wererabbit in a world where godlike wereanimals abuse their powers as they rule over and exploit the common people. 4 stars 15. A Chase Beyond the Storms Not a story but a cliffhanger appetizer from the third novel of the Dandelion Dynasty: princess Thera of Dara and her fiancé prince of Agon make it past the wall of storms only to discover they’re being pursued by an enemy city ship equipped with flying dragon-cows. 2 stars 16. The Hidden Girl A general’s daughter from 8th-century Tang Dynasty China is stolen by a nun who trains her to be a multi-dimensional super assassin. Morality and power and ramifications. What will the girl do when told to kill a governor as her graduation test? 4 stars 17. Seven Birthdays The narrator’s relationships with her “mad scientist” mother and her own daughter through birthdays, from age seven to age 823,543 (!), when digital post-humanity has spread throughout the galaxy terraforming worlds and turning planets into giant solar-powered computers. “There is always a technical solution,” but there’s also always human darkness. 4 stars 18. The Message A father who’s never met his 13-year-old daughter Maggie (Liu’s third red-haired Maggie, including The Paper Menagerie stories) takes her to work with him, recording 20,000-year-old alien ruins and translating their message on a planet soon to be blank-slated and terraformed by humanity. The neat ideas on alien human “contact,” uranium, and parental responsibility cross into contrivance and sentimentality. 3 stars 19. Cutting A prose poem story: for generations some monks have been cutting “unnecessary words from their holy book so that over time it has come to look like lace, “like a dissolving honeycomb,” and only words like “experience,” “is,” and “forget” remain. 5 stars In his stories Liu pushes human boundaries and explores ways in which technology transforms society, relationships, and identities. What will happen to humanity if we abandon our bodies to become digital minds or expand throughout the galaxy terraforming planets? He views such issues from multiple sides, making it difficult to decide what we’d do. And his relevant ideas and sublime sf are grounded in human relationships (e.g., parents and children) and experiences (e.g., losing loved ones to time, work, or violence). The four readers of the audiobook are all fine. View all my reviews |
Jefferson Peters
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by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
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