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FICTION -- NON-FICTION -- GRAPHIC NOVELS
RATING SYSTEM:
BUYING A BOOK If you would like to buy any of the books reviewed below, simply click on one of the links below the book cover or at the end of the review, which will take you to the book at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk, whichever you decide. There you will be able to purchase the book and I will get a certain amount back from it. Every book you buy will help me greatly. Thank you. |
BLAZE BY RICHARD BACHMAN: Stephen King puts the questioners – including those who might be wondering why the name Stephen King is larger than Richard Bachman on the front cover – to rest in his introduction explaining his use of the pseudonym during the 1970’s. He also goes on to explain how when he originally discovered the manuscript for Blaze, he wasn’t that impressed with it, and left it to “mature” with time, perhaps. Recently, King decided it worthy for publication with a few minor modifications; Simon & Schuster is now calling Blaze “Fargo meets Of Mice and Men.”
Clayton “Blaze” Blaisdell is not a very clever fellow, in fact you might go as far as saying he is mildly retarded, due to his father throwing him down the stairs when he was a kid, cracking his head, gaining an ugly dent in his forehead, and spending weeks in a coma. Upon finally recovering, Blaze was considered a “special” person. He is currently very much down on his luck, flat broke, and looking to make some money fast, whatever it takes.
Blaze is essentially two stories about one man’s life. One story is of Blaze’s history, his childhood, his life-changing experiences, his time spent in foster care, the good times, and mostly the bad. The other story told concurrently with his biography in separate chapters, is Blaze’s plan to kidnap a baby from a rich family, hold the child for ransom, and then make bank on it. The problem is that Blaze is a con artist; he’s never been a very good con artist, because he used to have a partner – George Rackley – who was his best friend and always looking out for him. George got killed in one of their cons and Blaze is all alone now. Sort of. Because in his mind, he hears the voice of George, telling him what to do, how to carry out the kidnapping, how to cover his tracks, and how to make the ransom. Only, as I said, Blaze is a few sandwiches short of a picnic, actually make that a few cups of coffee short of the thermos too; so he keeps making mistakes. He also starts to really like looking after the baby and even becomes pretty good at it. And now the police are on his tail and he’s not sure what he’s going to do. The made-up voice in his head – which he knows isn’t really George – isn’t helping. He’s going to have to make a decision for himself, which he hasn’t really done before.
After the unpleasant disinterest I had with Cell, and the unimpressive Lisey’s Story, Blaze is a welcome return to classic Stephen King with a gritty reality that we’ve all come to look for in his work. The characters are interesting and well created; the plot while somewhat predictable, still riveting. Blaze will probably go on to become a favorite novel for many King fans, and will no doubt start attracting movie producers for option rights in the near future.
Would you like to get yourself a copy? Click HERE for Amazon.com. Click HERE for Amazon.co.uk.
YSABEL BY GUY GAVRIEL KAY: Ysabel is a different kind of novel for Guy Gavriel Kay, because instead of being about a specific historical period and culture like some of his past novels: Song for Arbonne, The Last Light of the Sun, and The Sarantine Mosaic two-book series; Ysabel is set in the present day, a feat Kay has never attempted before, and while I don’t believe this book is in his top three best novels, it nevertheless possesses much of the charm, character, and creative skill that Kay brings to all his books.
Ned Marriner is a fifteen year-old boy with raging hormones, hanging out with his father who is a world-renowned photographer working on a new coffee table book in the south of France. Ned is used to this situation, hanging out with his father and his father’s assistants: Greg, Steve, and the overly organized Melanie who he kind of has a crush on. Ned’s mother, a member of Doctors Without Borders, is currently helping the sick in Sudan; each day Ned and his father, Edward, spend their spare time worrying about the safety of their mother.
The first fifty pages of the book run kind of slow, as we get to know the characters in this very ordinary setting for Kay with talk of Google, Ipods, and cellphones; but it is well balanced with the amazing and ancient architecture of the cathedrals and other beautiful locations Edward is photographing in Provence. Kay, like all good authors who really go out of their way with the research, spent time in Provence and the south of France, getting to know the people and the places, and the feel, resulting in an honest narrative that makes the reader imagine they’re really there. It is at the cathedral that he meets the nerdy Kate, a girl of equal age from New York and they immediately hit it off as friends, with perhaps something more to come. It is here also that Ned has his first weird and “psychic” feeling of someone close by, watching, whereupon they discover a man with a knife waiting to attack them, but they manage to escape.
These feelings that Ned has continue to get stronger and stronger, to the point where he has an extreme migraine and discovers it is because he is standing at the location where a great battle was fought over two thousand years ago. He feels the pain and suffering of all those who died with this new ability that he cannot control. As the story grows it becomes evident that he is involved in an ancient Celtic love triangle that is continuously getting replayed throughout history. The Celtic woman in question is Ysabel. On the eve of Beltaine the ritual begins, as the Celtic ghosts appear from thin air in their all too familiar roles. Ned and Kate find themselves drawn in, to the point where Kate is almost selected as a “host body” for Ysabel, but then Melanie arrives at the last second and is chosen. Ysabel – transformed from Melanie -- gives her two ancient Celtic suitors three days to find her, with the one who finds her first becoming her true love, and the other being sacrificed. It then becomes a chasing game, as Ned and his friends and family – with the arrival of a long lost yet powerful aunt and uncle – must find Ysabel/Melanie before it is too late.
While this is a classic Kay novel with the characterization, pacing, and action, along with a familiar magical element; the overall plot leaves the reader wondering what was the whole point: a Celtic love triangle that repeats itself? Coupled with modern day scenery as opposed to the familiar historical world we are so used to with Kay; Ysabel is an okay novel, but I hope Kay gets back to his regular historical fantasy with his next book.
Would you like to get yourself a copy? Click HERE for Amazon.com. Click HERE for Amazon.co.uk.
SALLY’S HAIR BY JOHN KOETHE: John Koethe, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and the first Poet Laureate of Milwaukee, returns with his latest poetry collection, Sally’s Hair, now available in paperback. This slim but poignant collection takes you on a journey through Koethe’s past and present, his thoughts and philosophies; it also discusses and questions the fundamental nature of humanity’s existence: what’s it all for? Koethe is somewhat unique in being both a philosopher and a poet, where he is not only a master of the writing craft, but also the contemplative craft, presenting wonderful poems that also make you think and question your own reality.
The 96-page book is split into four definitive parts. The first part makes one feel as if they are sitting in a comfortable chair on a deck, the gurgling of a calming river in the background, as Koethe takes you through nature and its beauty, but also through the kaleidoscope of his life, his past, and what it means to him now. “To see things as they are is hard,/But to leaving them alone is harder;” he writes in “Morning.” In “Piranesi’s Keyhole,” Koethe leads you through his imagination, and what it means to have an imagination, to be able to disconnect from reality, but it leaves one vulnerable to questioning what reality is and how different is it from imagination? On this journey through the psyche, it is easy to get lost along the way, but Koethe guides the reader on through to the end where there is no definite answer, but a longing questioning which the reader is left with.
The second part consists of a single, extending poem called “The Unlasting,” where Koethe relives the important moments of his life, and he looks back on himself, questioning what it means. With this, he also discusses the meaning of death, the meaning of the end, questioning the different beliefs of people, their faith in the end that will supposedly continue with something. It forces the reader to not only enjoy this poem of Koethe’s life and eventual death, but their own, as they wonder philosophically what the end really means, when considering the whole from the past to the end. Again, there are no answers, but merely thoughts and ideas to expound upon.
In the third part, Koethe questions his life up to now, as he grows older. There is the discussion of age and the concept of accomplishment from a philosophical standpoint. While he never outright says it, he is ultimately asking: what does it all mean? This is best revealed in “Aubade”:
“It’s early, but I recognize this place.
I recognize the feeling, after an endless
Week of mornings in America, of returning
To the home one never really leaves,
Mired in its routines. I walk to what I try to
Tell myself is work, entering at the end of the day
The same room, like the man in Dead of Night –
The dinner, the DVD from Netflix,
The drink before I go to sleep and wake alone
In the dead of night like Philip Larkin
Groping through the dark at 4 a.m. to piss,
At home in the reality of growing old
Without ever growing up. I finally get up
An hour later, run, eat breakfast, read and write –
A man whose country is a state of mind,
A community of one preoccupied with time,
Leaving me with nothing much to do
But to write it off to experience – the experience
Of a rudimentary consciousness at 5 a.m.,
Aware of nothing but the drone
Of its own voice and a visual field
Composed of dogs and joggers in a park.”
With this discussion of age and time, the change from then to now, in the last few poems of the section, Koethe inevitable discusses the Iraq war and the pointlessness in its death and destruction. From “Poetry and the War”: “Some wars are fantasies. The bombs and deaths are real,/Yet behind them lies an argument played out in someone’s mind.” It is clear where Koethe stands on this point, but it also fits in with the questions he is asking when one reaches middle age in our current time.
In the final part of this collection, Koethe has traveled through his history, relived his past, and there is now an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. The moments of the past are over, never to be replayed, but to be mentally relived. In the title poem, “Sally’s Hair,” Koethe relives a chance encounter with a girl when he was young, which resulted in a one night stand that was fully enjoyed on both parts. “And then I never heard from her again. I wonder where she is now,/Who she is now. That was thirty-seven years ago . . .”
Sally’s Hair is a collection of poetry not to just be enjoyed, but to awaken hidden and oppressed feelings of nostalgia and remembrance of the past, to force the reader to “take a trip down memory lane,” but to also question what they have accomplished so far, where they stand, and how they see their lives from beginning to eventual end.
Would you like to get yourself a copy? Click HERE for Amazon.com. Click HERE for Amazon.co.uk.
THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION BY MICHAEL CHABON: Michael Chabon is a writer that many other writers are envious of: he’s young, he’s brilliant, and his books will undoubtedly survive long after his is gone. Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay aside, Chabon’s writing seems almost effortless, but is pure craft and magic. Unlike John Irving, who plots out the complete story beforehand, and then meticulously crafts each sentence and paragraph to be perfect (which is why he can take up to five years to finish a book), Chabon has both the story and ability from the start in creating his piece of art.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, like his other books, takes you to a place you never could’ve imagined. In this alternate reality, during the time of the Second World War, two million Jews are transported from Germany to Alaska, where they invented their own small civilization meshed in the bitterness of their treatment in Germany and their treatment in Alaska, a cold and distant place from the contiguous United States. The main city is known as Sitka, but there is little independence, and any whisperings of nationalization are immediately quashed. Yiddish is the primary language, with very little American spoken. Little happens in this people’s history from World War II to the present, other than a pathetic World’s Fair that now only retains the constant reminder of the reaching stone structure known as the Safety Pin. Sitka is not a happy place for anyone, as they dream of Zion and their return to their true home.
Landsman is our main character, a policeman who’s been in the service for many years but has little to show for it, apart from a trashed hotel room, a failed marriage, a dead sister, and his own depression over the state of his life. And it is then that he finds out about the dead body in the room nearby. A man has been murdered and the case begins. With his partner, Landsman travels around the area, picking up clues, and trying to piece the every-growingly complex case together. At the same time, his ex-wife returns to the precinct now as his boss, with the news that big changes are happening and all outstanding cases must be dealt with post haste. But as Landsmen digs deeper, he finds a larger plot taking place, involving more bodies, and more importantly the death of his sister. The pressure increases from important people in high places, as Landsman with the help of his partner and ex-wife, who he is growing close to again, gets closer and closer to the truth.
While my hope is that Chabon will return to this incredibly developed world in future stories, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is nevertheless a thrilling mystery; a Sherlock Holmes case with a Jewish twist, that keeps the reader hanging on until the end when the case is solved, and everyone seems happy. However, the state of Sitka and these many homeless Jews remains in jeopardy, to be resolved perhaps at a later date.
Would you like to get yourself a copy? Click HERE for Amazon.com. Click HERE for Amazon.co.uk.
SEED TO HARVEST BY OCTAVIA E. BUTLER: Collected for the first time are all four of Octavia E. Butler’s Patternist novels: Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay’s Ark, and Patternmaster. Now you get to see this whole unique world from its beginnings hundreds of years ago to its conclusion hundreds and thousands of years in the future. Seed to Harvest will delight and terrify you in a way only Butler can.
Our main character and quasi hero is Doro, who is more like a god or perhaps a devil in a way, instead of a human. He has a special power: he’s immortal, only to continue living forever he has to consume other people’s souls and become that person, inhabiting that body. He has been doing this for a thousand years, and lives his life as he does until one day he meets a woman, Anyanwu, in Africa, in the seventeenth century. She is a shapeshifter and has unique powers of her own, such as the ability to heal by a kiss, and with an incredible strength, she can defend herself against anything. Wild Seed is their story, as they meet and get to know each other, fall in love, and travel to New Amsterdam, where they will start their own family of gifted children. Along the way they find other characters with special abilities, which Doro believes is somehow linked to his history and his own powers. But Doro is also creating this family for his own personal survival, so he will have more victims to keep him alive and immortal. Wild Seed ends with the family now quite large, and Anyanwu unable to live with Doro anymore, leaving him.
Mind of My Mind is close to the present day, Anyanwu has changed her name to Emma, wanting to separate herself from her past, but unable to. Doro now lives in Forsyth, California, where his family continues to grow with new individuals and their unique powers. It is here that the Pattern begins to emerge of this large family that is all interrelated, and that is in constant struggle with the paternal master, Doro. The book ends with the final death of Doro, who is sealed in his current body, cremated and no longer able to take another, ending the line. But the Pattern is not finished.
Clay’s Ark is set in the twenty-third century and it is here that the spaceship, known as Clay’s Ark, returns to Earth with an alien and a sickness that begins to infect everyone. But at the same time a new race is formed out of the sickness, out of those on the spaceship, who become known as “Clayarcs.” And as time passes, they establish themselves as a formidable force on the planet.
Patternmaster is the mighty conclusion to the long series, where the Patternists and Clayarcs fight against each other in a distant future time where evolution has made them look barely human. This is a hostile and tough world, where only one race can triumph, the question is which one will it be?
While Seed to Harvest can be boiled down to a simple summary, Butler has weaved many emotions and issues that are ever present in the current world, on the subject of race and evolution, on what it means to be human. The book merely continues to prove that Octavia E. Butler was one of the best science fiction writers of her time.
Would you like to get yourself a copy? Click HERE for Amazon.com. Click HERE for Amazon.co.uk.
Click HERE for the first book in the series: Forty Signs of Rain
Click HERE for the second book in the series: Fifty Degrees Below
SIXTY DAYS AND COUNTING BY KIM STANLEY ROBINSON: Kim Stanley Robinson has released the conclusion to his trilogy, Sixty Days and Counting, just in time! The hardcover is out and the paperback will be out at Christmas, if not, early next year: just in time for everyone to buy it, read the trilogy, and decide who to vote for in the Presidential elections of November 2008. Again, Robinson is not look to wow and amaze readers with shocking sci-fi events, but keeping true to the close reality of his world.
The Gulf Stream is working well again, President Chase is just taking office, knowing that the absolute worse may have been averted for a little while, but that there is still very much to do. Selecting a cabinet composed of the many characters we have come to know over Forty Signs of Rain and Fifty Degrees Below, we know this administration is on our side and looking out for the world and its people. It is here Robinson really shines using his amazing knowledge of science and physics in coming up with ways to deal with the immense carbon dioxide volume being both pumped into the atmosphere and already there causing world temperatures to rise. The United States bands together with countries around the world, such as Russia and China, in the development of a fast growing lichen that will spread through a forest fast under the right conditions, and has an astonishing carbon absorption rate. Working in conjunction, the world slowly begins to heal itself. On a subplot level, Frank Vanderwal, who is now an assistant to a cabinet member, is looking for his quasi-girlfriend whose former husband was instrumental in a plot to rig the election that failed. It becomes a game of cat and mouse, as Frank and his girlfriend try to stay ahead of the chasing husband.
By the end of the book, some simple matters are resolved, while the world is a little calmer in their nonstop fight to “cool down” global warming. The one final consolation is the Tibet being declared independent once more from the Chinese and the close friends of the main characters who moved to DC at the beginning of the series because their island, Khembalung, was drowning due to rising ocean levels.
Robinson’s message is clear at the end: global warming cannot be completely stopped, and to slow it down will be a long and arduous struggle that will last through our lives and into our children’s and grandchildren’s lives, but there is hope for this planet, so long as we act now and soon. The series will make the next presidential election a very interesting time.
Would you like to get yourself a copy? Click HERE for Amazon.com. Click HERE for Amazon.co.uk
FIFTY DEGREES BELOW BY KIM STANLEY ROBINSON: Kim Stanley Robinson returns with the second in his trilogy on the current state of global warming and its possible ramifications. Robinson does a great job in making his world seem very much like our own, but his sequence of events are a lot more “down to earth” than The Day After Tomorrow.
Forty Signs of Rain ended with a flash flood drowning most of Washington DC and leaving the main characters to fend for themselves, having to travel around by boat. Some time has passed and the waters have receded and life is back to normal in DC. All that remains are faded muddy water lines on famous monuments to prove that the flood actually happened. But the mentality of the world is a little different now, as the weather begins to deteriorate: increased storms, hurricanes (with obvious similarities to Hurricane Katrina and that terrible Fall), droughts, and fluctuating temperatures. Meanwhile the main characters continue their plight to alert the world about global warming and to come up with ways to fight it, while the current administration struts blindly on, not caring.
Then the world changes. The crucial Gulf Stream that circulates around the Atlantic via the Gulf Coast, which keeps a balance of cold and warm waters, as well as setting an equilibrium of sorts with the weather, stalls. Having never happened before, the world is not sure what the results will be. Time slowly passes and nothing happens. Then the weather begins to change and the temperature drops and drops and drops. In the winter the western world is freezing, and DC reports a record temperature of fifty degrees below. Everyone’s lives are changed, as they accept the reality of global warming, even the current administration, soon to be out of office, accepts this fate, knowing they can do nothing in the immediate future to help. It is the National Science Foundation, working with different groups around the world, that comes up with a possible solution: dumping many of tons of salt in the north Atlantic to restart the Gulf Stream. It takes some time to mine the salt fields throughout the world and load the giant cargo ships with the precious material, but the plan is eventually successful and the catastrophe that would only have gotten worse is averted. But everyone knows this isn’t it, that there is more in store for the world at the hand of global warming.
Fifty Degrees Below ends with the successful election of Senator Phil Chase, the important environmental politician who the main characters have been working with the agenda to prevent global warming. It is in the concluding book of the series, Sixty Days and Counting, where all will need to be somehow resolved, and the new president will have to make some big changes to get the world back on its feet again.
Would you like to get yourself a copy? Click HERE for Amazon.com. Click HERE for Amazon.co.uk.
THE HEART-SHAPED BOX BY JOE HILL: One thing I admire greatly about Joe Hill King, son of famous bestselling author Stephen King, is that he didn’t get a leg up from his father like our President did. While I’m sure he’s had plenty of help and advice, Joe Hill has earned his own success through his own writing. Having won a Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection with his first book 20th Century Ghosts, he now returns with his first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, which was naturally making a tremendous amount of buzz before the book even came out. And the congratulatory quote on the back of the book from Neil Gaiman just made it that more popular.
Our main character, Judas Coyne, is a famous guitarist of a band that was once up there with Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, but after the sudden deaths of two band members, the guitarist is now a successful solo artist whose eccentricities range into the banal, naturally. His favorite is to collect items and trinkets of the most unusual – the weirder the better! So when Jude sees a ghost for sale on an auction site, he immediately jumps on it, chooses the buy it now option and soon has the package on its way. The single mother is very happy to get rid of the ghost of her grandfather who has been haunting her and her son for so long, and Jude now has his very own ghost.
The package arrives in a large black heart-shaped box and inside he finds an ancient but impeccable suit. Judas is impressed by it, closes the box and soon forgets about it. Then the haunting begins: strange noises and soon they see the ghost, walking around. Then things take a turn for the worse, as the ghost comes after Judas and his friends.
Sadly, when it is revealed where this ghost has come from the story kind of goes downhill. It turns out the ghost is the deceased grandfather of the sister of a former girlfriend of Jude’s who killed herself after he dumped her. While the supernatural element of the ghost remains, and it is on their tail trying to catch them, the reasoning behind it is weak and destroys the foundation of the plot. Nevertheless there is a darkness and depth within this novel that reveals a talented writer with a bold future ahead of him. Like Carrie, this is not the best first novel, but with the talent in Hill’s genes, we know there will be many more stories for him to tell that will be great and terrifying.
Would you like to get yourself a copy? Click HERE for Amazon.com. Click HERE for Amazon.co.uk.
LABYRINTH BY KATE MOSSE: If only Kate Mosse had published her novel not in 2006, but shortly after the astonishing success of the Da Vinci Code, it perhaps would’ve received the literary respect it deserves, instead of coming last in a slew of novels involving the subjects of the Holy Grail, the Knights Templar, and what they mean in the present day. The quote on the back of the paperback edition from the Kirkus Review really says it all: “A quickly paced adventure that wears its considerable learning lightly – and of higher literary quality than The Da Vinci Code, to which it will inevitably be compared.” And yet Labyrinth goes more than a few steps further, not just adding new and original twists to the myth of the grail, but adding a new depth and level that hasn’t been seen before. As for the truth behind it all, Mosse doesn’t offer a note of explanation, but leaves it to the reader’s imagination.
Labyrinth opens with one of the two main characters, Alice, working on an archaeological site in southern France, where she finds a hidden cave and two skeletons within. She also finds a unique ring bearing an unusual symbol: a labyrinth. Notifying the authorities of the discovered site, with the skeletons it suddenly becomes a crime scene, and the archaeologists are kicked off the site. The reader is then taken back in time to the thirteenth century, where they meet the other main character, Alaïs, a young girl held back by tradition and ritual in a chivalric society where the knight and the priest are strongest. For the duration of the book, the reader follows these two characters, as they live their lives in parallel.
As Alice returns to her hotel, strange things start to happen, as strangers contact her about what she found in the cave, police telling her to describe exactly what she saw and confiscating her sketches. Members of the dig go mysteriously missing, as people begin to die for unknown reasons. Finding pieces of evidence, Alice weaves together the story bit by bit, and as she does she discovers that she is intrinsically linked to it all, and most importantly to Alaïs. Her strange dreams of this unknown girl from the late Middle Ages are the least of her worries.
Alaïs finds herself caught up in the changing and challenging times when the pope launches a crusade against the Cathars, a declared heretic group who believe that while God is absolute and utmost, the work they do in their lives is by their doing and not God’s. It is a time when Christians are fighting Christians overtly because of their supposed heretical ways, but subversively because the northern French want the rich southern land of the langue d’Oc.
Wrapped in this dense plot is the story of the Grail, which every Christian of every group seeks, and it is only when the three ancient texts with the strange hieroglyphs are brought together, that the true way to the Grail will be shown. But the story of this Grail is not the one that we all think we know, but something deeper and more ancient that is tied in with this mysterious symbol of the labyrinth, and reaches back into Ancient Egypt and the founding of civilization.
While the last third of the book seems somewhat rushed, as Mosse forgoes the back and forth chapters through time, and relies on present day characters telling what they know of the past; there is an inevitable building that results in a climactic ending of not just character realization, but eye-opening shock on the reader’s part, as they finally know the whole story. Like the symbol, Labyrinth is a story that begins simple and straightforward, but grows more and more complex, until the denouement when all is revealed and finally understood. Check out www.labyrinthbook.net for more information.
Would you like to get yourself a copy? Click HERE for Amazon.com. Click HERE for Amazon.co.uk.
FLEDGLING BY OCTAVIA E. BUTLER: In Fledgling, renowned science fiction author Octavia E. Butler, who sadly passed away last year, reinvents the idea of the vampire and their existence in history, putting her own original slant on it. While the book is complete in its rounded story, one is left wanting more of this very original creation on an archetype.
The book opens with what can only be termed an uncomfortable situation, at the very least. From the viewpoint of the main character, Shori, who has been horribly disfigured by some terrible accident, the reader learns she is a vampire as the character comes to realize this herself, feeding off another, and healing incredibly fast. She has also forgotten everything about herself and her history, and with the reader, slowly learns about this. She then finds herself what is termed a symbiont, which is one who provides a regular blood source to the vampires known as Ina. The man, brought under the power of Shori and the hypnotic venom in her bite, essentially falls in love with her and their relationship begins at full steam, even though Shori appears no older than a ten year old black girl, and he an adult. The reader is left feeling very uncomfortable about this Lolitaesque relationship.
Eventually, when Shori confronts the place of her accident and meets other Ina, the full story is revealed. It is thought that she and her whole family of vampires and symbionts were all killed in this terrible attack. The reason was that she was the result of a genetic experiment to make it possible for vampires to brave the sun. The result was successful, with Shori being able to travel during the day – although she must remain fully covered and will suffer burns. Nevertheless, there is someone who feels that Shori is an abomination and must be destroyed.
It is when this second group of Ina are killed with two symbionts surviving, that Shori and her group flees to another Ina family in California where she finds further answers. And when this group is then attacked, but due to Shori’s preparation, thwarts the attack and captures three of them, all the answers are revealed. Behind the attacks are a large family in Los Angeles who have always hated the idea of meddling with the pure race of the Ina. The book pushes forth its message here with the idea that these ancient Ina are angry not so much at Shori for being black, but at her genetically engineered nature of mixing human genes and Ina genes; they no longer consider her Ina, no longer pure.
Then in a three-day ceremony that harkens back to every form of town government and religious ritual, a judicial gathering is convened with members of many families of Ina represented, while the complete family of those who are supposedly behind the killings are put on trial. The question is whether the jury will side with a small black girl who remembers nothing of her past and heritage, or with the proud and ancient Ina family who have helped so many.
Butler skillfully and subtly asks questions of race and genetic alteration: what it is to be human, or in this case Ina, and how we as people see that, and what value we place on it. In a time when a cloned and/or genetically engineered human is not so much a future nightmare, but a worry we all wait to read about in the newspapers every day, Fledgling certainly does its job in helping those who are unsure on these matters make decision.
Would you like to get yourself a copy? Click HERE for Amazon.com. Click HERE for Amazon.co.uk.
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AHAB’S WIFE, OR THE STAR-GAZER BY SENA JETER NASLUND: Ahab’s Wife serves admirably as a companion book to Melville’s Moby-Dick and having read both, I think I can safely say that if Herman Melville were to read Ahab’s Wife, he would be more than happy with the duty and accuracy Naslund devotes to the period, the prose, and its homage to Melville’s opus.
This is the life story of Una, the wife of Ahab – the peg-legged determined-bordering-on-insane captain of the Pequod in search of his white whale. The cover of the book depicts a Puritan-clothed woman on a harsh beach looking out into a rough sea, while further down the beach lies the broken hulk of an old ship. It creates images and ideas of a worrying woman left at home for years at a time to tend to house and children, while her husband is out braving the sea, fighting giants monsters in his man’s world. One would think this a book about her everyday actions, her chores, her repetitive characteristics, and while this is part of the book, there is so much more going on in Una’s life with her triumphs and tribulations, her loves and deaths, her dangerous adventures, and her happy times at home. This is what makes Ahab’s Wife a welcome companion to Moby-Dick, for while Ahab’s is a story of adventure and danger, Una’s is just as much so.
The book begins, as all life stories should, with a birth, only Una’s mother is all alone in a cabin and naturally it is a birth that almost kills her. Una’s life is a harsh one in Kentucky and before she is ten, her mother sends her away to her aunt’s. Una’s father is a devout Christian, while Una is an atheist from a young age, choosing not to blindly believe in what her father tells her to believe. Her mother fearing for her life, sends her to the distant coast of New England to live with her aunt and uncle in a lighthouse. And so begins the next chapter in her life, with a different family, in a different place. With the arrival of two men who come to upgrade the lighthouse, she falls in love with both of them – even though she is still young – knowing that one will be her husband one day. At the age of eighteen, she leaves the island and the lighthouse for the mainland of Boston and then Nantucket getting by on simple work until she finds the same two men whom she loves on a whaling ship. Disguising herself as a young boy she joins the crew and experiences the whaling life of her future husband. It is here that she first sees The Pequod and meets Ahab, who by then is an old man but still respectable and honorable. Ahab is the one to marry Una to Kit when her existence on the ship, love for that man, and her femininity are all revealed.
A whale stoves in the ship and Una spends many days on a small boat with the remaining crew reduced to cannibalism – harking to the story of Moby-Dick as well as the story of the whale ship Essex, which was the impetus for Melville’s story. It is on the return journey to Nantucket that the other love of her life dies tragically and her husband Kit essentially goes insane. Upon returning to land and leaving her husband due to his condition, Una’s life slows down and her relationship with Ahab begins until their marriage and happiness together. It is here that the story of Moby-Dick truly begins and the reader gets to meet the familiar characters of the classic book. But while Ahab spends years away from home, Una’s life goes on with the birth of a child and the struggles of her life. It is upon the return and meeting of Ishmael that Una learns of the doomed story of Ahab, his white whale, and his death.
The book could be considered technically over at this point, but this is the story of Una, who is still very much alive. The rest of her life is spent interacting with Ishmael and even meeting and interacting with the slave who fought for his freedom, Frederick Douglass. And while she never forgets her life with Ahab, she eventually finds another husband and in the waning years of her life is happy once more.
What makes Ahab’s Wife a truly impressive book is not just its intended mimicry with Moby-Dick with the crossing over characters, similar layout of the book with many chapters and illustrations, and actual scenes involving the same location in both books such as the church with the pulpit carved to imitate the bow of a ship which the same preacher from Moby-Dick climbs the ladder to the top and scream of hellfire and damnation; it is the prose and how Naslund writes that truly emulates the style of Melville, making this a truly important work of literature deserving a place in the shelves with Melville, James and Hawthorne.
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THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW BY CLIVE BARKER: In The Great and Secret Show, one of the greatest storytellers brings us the first volume of the Art Trilogy, taking readers to a place they’ve never been before. This book is not a fantasy book, not a horror novel, or a science fiction story; and at the same time it’s all these and much more. Barker takes you to a new plain of existence in The Great and Secret Show where you’ll laugh and cry, smile and scream; where unimaginable horrors and triumphs await!
Randolphe Jaffe is a loser who’s going nowhere fast, that is until he gets a job for the post office working in the dead letter room in Omaha, Nebraska – the nexus of the country where all lost and undeliverable mail ends up. Going through thousands of pieces of undelivered mail per day – money and everything of value is surrendered to his boss – he begins finding clues of an undiscovered power in existence beneath the realm of society. It takes time, but he puts the pieces together until he has a good idea of this power known as the Art, where he then receives a medallion, the very symbol of the Art. While it means little to him at first, he knows it is an important piece of the puzzle. Naturally, his boss wants the item and it is then that Jaffe takes the first step down his new path and kills the man in cold blood.
Collecting the important evidence together, with the medallion, he travels across America, living on the whim of the Art, letting it guide him where it will. Innocent bystanders are used by him, sensing the power of the Art and agreeing to whatever Jaffe tells them. It is in an alcohol- and drug-infused stupor that Jaffe conducts his pilgrimage into the desert and finds the Loop: a place out of time, and meets Kissoon, the last member of the Shoal. The Shoal was the group appointed to protect the Art. For the world is part of the Cosm, and beyond this is the Metacosm where the sea of Quiddity lies – a place visited by all when they are born, the night with their first love, and when they die – and within Quiddity lies the island of Ephemeris, the dream land. More importantly at the far edge of the Metacosm lie the Iad Uroborus, a great evil that is always looking to consume the Cosm. The Art is a way of getting to Quiddity. Kissoon tells Jaffe that he must occupy his body so he can leave the Loop and defend the Cosm. Jaffe suspects otherwise and flees, embarking on his own mission of discovery with Richard Wesley Fletcher as they research the Art in its entirety. Fletcher soon discovers a liquid form of the Art known as nuncio, testing it first on a chimpanzee who becomes a human with the ability of speech and thought, known as Raul. The nuncio will force the being to the next evolutionary step, but Richard also knows if Jaffe were to use it, it would focus on his urges of murder and revenge, making him a murder. But it is too late, for Jaffe discovers the existence of the nuncio and in a fight both are infected by it and become higher beings – The Jaff and Fletcher.
And then a great war is fought in the skies of America between these two gods of power until they are spent and plunge into a lake in Palomo Grove, California. There they both rest until four unsuspecting girls go swimming and are inseminated by The Jaff and Fletcher to create subjects to regain their power. And so the town is irrevocably changed for ever as the four girls are all changed forever, becoming pregnant, giving birth to the offspring of these deities. Only three survive: a son of Fletcher and twins of The Jaff, and it is when, years later, that Fletcher’s on and The Jaff’s daughter meet and fall in love at first sight that the gods are awakened and the town takes a turn for the worst. Using the life-force of a recent victim, The Jaff is able to regain his power and begin collecting minions that he calls terrata from the people of Palomo Grove, sucking out their souls and using their rage, evil and anger to fuel his creatures. Fletcher is left with the dregs and is barely able to leave the crevasse where the lake used to be and reveal what has happened to his son, then in a heroic effort, he gives up his life, spreading his power through the minds of the people of the town, who then have their dreams of meeting celebrities come true. These are the allies who must battle against the terrata in the mansion on the hill.
With help from a pulp reporter, Grillo, and his friend, Tesla, Fletcher’s son Howard with The Jaff’s daughter – who despises her creator – confront The Jaff and his son in the big showdown. Only the evil god takes it all to a whole new level when he rips a hole in the fabric of reality with the power of the Art, opening a widening doorway to Quiddity. Soon everything in the room is being sucked into this other realm, with only The Jaff, Grillo and Tesla making it out of the room alive. As the rest of the world comes to comprehend to catastrophic events taking place in Palomo Grove and take notice, a decision must now be made with how to solve this whole horrible mess, as the Iad Uroborus are on their way at high speed to pass through this rip and take over the world.
Time is of the essence, and Tesla – who has visited Kissoon herself – puts it all together and managed to move this trans-dimensional hole to the land of the Loop where time is stuck. Realizing that Kissoon chose Trinity, New Mexico – the location of the first detonation of the atomic bomb, where no one would think to check – she must kill Kissoon, who has already broken free due to his taken over of Raul’s (yes the evolved monkey) body, and with Raul’s body and Kissoon gone, all that remains in the Loop is Raul’s body. The only solution, which Tesla goes forward with, is for Raul to occupy her body: two spirits, two consciences in one body, but it works. The Loop collapses, time starts moving again and just as the Iad Uroborus begin spilling into this world, there is the bright light and giant mushroom cloud, and the world is saved this time, but the power of the Art is not over. The adventures of Grillo, Tesla and this crazy wacky and incredible world Barker has created continue on in the Second Book of the Art, Everville.
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A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA BY URSULA K. LEGUIN: If you call this a work of classic fantasy meaning it’s like every other fantasy series with its magic and wizards and made-up worlds, you would be wrong. If you call this a work of classic fantasy meaning it’s a great piece of work that set the foundation – like Lord of the Rings – for a lot of other series, you would be right.
A Wizard of Earthsea is the first book in the Earthsea series and as all fantasy series should, it begins with a young wizard, Ged, who knows nothing of magic and the ways of being a wizard, other than his innate ability promising him a career as a great wizard. First he lives with a wise mage, and learns much about the simple things in life and magic and that everything has a cost. He soon discovers this when he performs a dark spell from a book he shouldn’t have touched. A deadly shadow is summoned and then banished by his teacher, but Ged knows he will be facing it again.
Ged then travels to the isle of Roke where he spends years becoming a master wizard. Upon his graduation, he faces the dark shadow once more but is unable to hold against it and flees in terror. As a renowned wizard now, he travels around the islands helping those less fortunate, battling dragons and other monsters. Then again he faces the shadow and barely survives, fleeing once more. He returns to his old master, unsure what to do. The wizened wizard tells him he must face the shadow and in turn face his greatest fear. And so Ged heads out into the deep sea where none have gone before and there faces the shadow and wages a great battle, finally defeating him. The book ends with Ged returning to land with his friend, now a true and accomplished wizard with the thousands of islands of Earthsea before him.
What makes LeGuin’s fantasy series more meaningful than most is that all the magic performed here comes at a cost, which the main character has to deal with throughout the book. It requires time and energy, afterwards one is tired; to create illusions is much easier than to actually change or create matter. Unlike the world of Harry Potter, here there are rules; not everyone can be a wizard. Along with this is the magical world of Earthsea with the many many islands of different peoples, a lot of which know little of each other. And for a wizard to travel from one island to another is a great adventure. The next book in the series is The Tombs of Atuan.
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THE HISTORIAN BY ELIZABETH KOSTOVA: Welcome to a retelling of Dracula for the twenty-first century, only think much better and more interesting; less of the weak and pitiful women and demanding men; more history and research. Elizabeth Kostova, while no doubt being a very well off person who went to the best schools for writing, has nevertheless spent a long time researching and writing The Historian with the resulting book being little about vampires and undead and more about books and history and researching and following the trail; its an academic adventure novel.
Our narrator is a young girl in her teens traveling through Europe, following the letters of her father from his travels in the 1950s, who is following the letters of his mentor from his travels in the 1930s. While most of the book is in letter form – with speech quotes framing just about every sentence – Kostova forgoes the accuracy of the letter form and, like Bram Stoker in Dracula, makes the letters part of the novel with action, emotion, and character reaction – attributes that would not usually be in a letter, but for the sake of this book, they need to be.
The premise is that Dracula, or Drakulya, better known as Vlad the Impaler, who was killed in battle in the fifteenth century is still alive and well in the twentieth century. The three story lines of the narrator, her father, and his professor, all have an event in common: they each received a copy of an ancient book with an elaborate woodcut of a dragon, the symbol and emblem of Drakulya. Each of them travel throughout the many cities of Europe tracking Dracula and tracking each other through their letters; clearly Kostova herself traveled to each of this cities, for the book is partially a travel log of Europe, written in exquisite detail.
At the end of the book, when each person finally confronts Dracula in their time, it is revealed that Dracula himself is a lover of history and books and has been building up his library for hundreds of years with the hope of having every old book and important piece of writing in history at his finger tips, all he needs is a librarian to maintain it, of course they need to be turned undead so that their duties as librarian will last as long as Dracula is alive. The professor is turned and when this is discovered, is staked, while the narrator’s father leaves due to the loss of his wife – the narrator’s mother – thinking her dead. It is at the very end when the narrator finds Dracula, she also finds her father on the trail, and then her mother who all play a part in killing Dracula once and for all; the family united at last.
While this review may make The Historian seem trivial and “tied in a big red bow,” the author clearly worked very hard and long in her research of books and places; the result is a lengthy tome that takes you on a long journey through a well-described Europe, through old documents and books, to an adversary we have read and written about for hundreds of years.
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Click HERE for the second book in the series: Fifty Degrees Below
Click HERE for the third book in the series: Sixty Days and Counting
FORTY SIGNS OF RAIN BY KIM STANLEY ROBINSON: This is a series about global warming and what it might do to our planet, except it isn’t set in the distant future, like The Day After Tomorrow; this series is set a decade in the future at the most. While no date is given, the world is much like ours with its citizens enjoying the frivolities of life, the administration cares nothing about the planet, the Arctic is breaking up and melting while pieces of Antarctica are falling off into the ocean. Our main characters are Charlie Quibler, a Senate environmental staffer, and his wife Anna who works for the National Science Foundation.
Four fifths of the book are spent with the characters and their ordinary lives with their children. Charlie is a stay at home dad, working with a phone and an Internet connection, looking after young Joe who needs constant supervision, while Anna works hard every day in her office, using a breast pump to provide milk for Joe. As the book progresses the reader learns of our current reality: melting of the ice caps, rising sea levels, and increase in weather activity. In the last part of the book, the storms come to Washington DC with severe rainfall, there is flooding, the Potomac overflowing and soon the streets become flooded rivers and boats become the only form of transportation. The book ends with Charlie traveling home by boat with a great finishing line: “Are you going to do something about global warming now?” he says to his Senator.
What makes Forty Signs of Rain, especially for a science fiction novel, more enjoyable and realistic than most books I’ve read is the author make his characters constantly doing ordinary things like meeting new people, interacting with them, cleaning the house, shopping, the father looking after the children. The details of ordinary life that you and I go through every day are in this book and presumably the others in the series; it makes it very human. Robinson was mostly setting the stage in the book, making it seem much like ordinary life, and then with the onslaught of global warming, things are kicked into high gear and I can’t help but think when this big change or catastrophe is going to happen to us. With the Fall of constant hurricanes hitting the southeastern United States most notable with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and with the severely cold winter we’ve had here in California, as well as record breaking warm temperatures on the east coast for this time of year, I can’t help but wonder if we are not already in high gear. Perhaps these books will serve as a guide for when things really start to go bad with global warming. Next in the series if Fifty Degrees Below.
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THE EAGLE: THE CONCLUDING VOLUME OF THE CAMULOD CHRONICLES BY JACK WHYTE: Jack Whyte has come a very long way from the crumbling empire of Rome many generations ago to the man known as Riothamus – Arthur. In this ninth concluding book in the series, we finally get the full story of Arthur’s life, and what makes this series interesting is that while our hero is obvious, in the context of the series, he is but one of the many players on the stage of early medieval Britain. This is what Whyte is saying with this series: that it’s not about specific individuals, but – as is the case with all history – it is a series of events over hundreds of years that lead to the establishment of Britain as a country putting itself back together as a sovereign nation after its abandonment by Rome.
Continuing on from the Lance Thrower, our narrator is Clothar, known as “Lance” by his friends because of his skilled ability to throw lances with precision at the enemy – a feat no other man, not even Arthur, can master. In the first part of the book, Arthur forms his knights – a term taken from the Roman élite, all with their own specifically designed swords in the form of Excalibur. The knights are addressed by the term “seur” from a Frankish term meaning one of noble or high stature. Whyte is impressive in his interweaving of parts of the Arthurian legend and fitting them in a realistic setting in fifth century Britain. In the second part of The Eagle, it is learned that the girl who Arthur considered his soul mate in the Lance Thrower was in fact his sister and that an act of naïve incest was committed. At the same time, Clothar has his own personal problems to deal with in falling in love with a woman who is to be married. After a long night of sharing their love, they must accept their fate and go their separate ways. In the final part of the book, Clothar must go with Arthur’s élite cavalry to Gaul where he will train thousands more men both to establish the authority of Arthur and his cavalry, as well as to prepare for any invading forces. Word has begun to spread of these invading peoples from the distant east known as Huns, led by a man known as Attila.
While the fate of Gaul with the invading Huns is never fully revealed, the book ends, naturally, with Arthur’s death from a wound in battle, while his son Mordred is next in line to rule. The book ends without any great summation of the mighty ruler known as Arthur who united Britain and made it a nation to be reckoned with, but tapering out like a long burning candle. Whyte’s point here is that the saga of Camulod is over, its characters now all dead, but they have done much to change Britain from the abandoned land after the fall of Rome. Their part is complete, and it will be up to other people, other kings, and other rulers to continue making Britain into a great nation.
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THE RUINS BY SCOTT SMITH: For this book to be classed a mystery (at least it is at Borders) is a grave injustice to the genre community: The Ruins is outright horror, through and through; I mean it has a blood-sucking vine for crying out loud!
Scott Smith has written a most unusual book with The Ruins, starting off kind of slow with the necessary character set-up, but then suddenly kicks into high gear and goes from scary to crazy to outright impossible yet riveting. Our cast is a group of five twenty-something characters: two couples who went to college together (including a German and a Greek) hear about some ruins nearby while they are vacationing in Cancun. Following the paths, they end up on a plateau and find themselves trapped by a group of armed Mayans at the bottom of the hill who will shoot to kill if they come too close.
The next few days are an experimentation in the devolving of civilized humanity, as they soon find skeletons of past occupants in the area – all mysteriously stripped of any flesh. As water and food supplies dwindle, they must stick together and ration themselves to ensure survival, all with the hope that their friends back at the hotel will eventually come and find them. Then they discover that the dense green vine surrounding the camp area is not your usual foliage. As more is discovered about this plant, the story goes from bizarre to preposterous, as the vine eventually imitates sounds and smells, then their actual voices to pit them against each other. One by one, the vine gets them and causes a slow but painful death. Eventually there is one girl remaining who chooses to slash her wrists and die before she can feel the vine taking her. Three days later the friends arrive and the book ends with them being trapped in exactly the same predicament.
I have mixed feelings about this book, because there were certainly some good parts that had me wanting to keep reading on ahead, but near the end it really became far fetched from the emergency surgery that was performed – leg amputations and slicing open of bodies because of the vine – to the farcical nature of the omniscient vine that was actually speaking German to enrage the German character; though kudos are deserved for a book that dares to kill off all its characters. Nevertheless, no reason is ever really revealed for why the Mayans are keeping them there. One character hints that it might be that the vine is some sort of god that the Mayans have “sacrificed to” for hundreds of years, and this whole effort just comes off as racist.
But if it’s a blood and gore horror story you’re looking for that pushes you to your limits and makes you think how far you would go in this situation – even though nothing like this could ever really happen – then The Ruins by Scott Smith is the book for you. Now I’m just wondering why the slasher movie of this book hasn’t been made yet?
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LORDS OF THE NORTH BY BERNARD CORNWELL: In Lords of the North (coming January 23rd), the wonderful writer of great historical periods and characters brings us the third in his increasingly popular Saxon Chronicles series, as he tells the story of King Alfred the Great’s life and his work in unifying the many kingdoms into the country we know today as England.
We continue with our hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, who has just helped Alfred save and maintain control over the land of Wessex, therefore preventing the complete invasion by the Danes. Angered with Alfred’s piousness and making every decision according to God, Uhtred flees north to Northumbria, still hoping one day to defeat his uncle and take back his beloved Bebbanburg. It is here that he meets old Danish friends and before he realizes what’s going on, a deal has been brokered to maintain peace in Northumbria in return for Uhtred’s enslavement. With his blood-stained blade – Serpent-Breath – the many lords of the region are happy to get rid of this formidable warrior.
Uhtred, stripped of his title and power, then spends most of the book suffering the abuse and torture of a slave on a trading traveling along the Flemish coast, and back and forth between Britain and the mainland. On a number of occasions they face off again this “red ship” that is a trader like them. Upon returning to the original place where Uhtred was sold – so that more slaves can be bought – the red ship appears out of nowhere and beaches the shore. Foreign Danes stream out and Uhtred soon finds himself face to face with an even older friend who raised him.
Eventually he discovers that it is thanks to Alfred’s help that he has received his emancipation. With his title, weapons, and armor restored, along with more allies from the south forming a considerable army, they set out to defeat these lesser heathen lords and regain control of the kingdom of Northumbria. The book ends with the reader contemplating what is next for Uhtred in the further Saxon Chronicles: Will he regain control of his land? Will he remain a lone pagan among the many determined Christians? Sadly, we will have to wait another whole year before we can read more about Uhtred of Bebbanburg, slayer of the great Ubba Lothbrokson, and his adventures with the pious Alfred the Great.
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THE PALE HORSEMAN BY BERNARD CORNWELL: In The Pale Horseman (sequel to The Last Kingdom), Bernard Cornwell surges on with his series on the life of Alfred the Great, but not simply with a furthering of the plot, but some clear development in both story, character, and the whole point Cornwell is trying to make with this series.
In Pale Horseman we now learn that our hero from the last book, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, while just as skilled in his knowledge of languages, way with words, as well as his ability with his trusty sword – Serpent-breath – is actually not that great of a guy. When he has to spend time at home with his child and pious wife who wants him to be a good Christian, he treats them with disdain and instead goes off with his buddies on one of Alfred’s ships, kills a lot of people, and steals considerable amounts of wealth, as well as kidnapping his very own pagan sorceress. While the pathetic excuse for this case can be made that “it’s what men did back then,” I find it an admirable move by Cornwell to make the protagonist out to be a character that most would find at the least disreputable. But ultimately these facets of Uhtred’s character only serve to make him more believable, which is certainly a critique of the characters in Cornwell’s other works.
At the same time, he magnificently captures the feel of the period. Here you have the Saxons trying to defend their country (which they invaded just four hundred years before and occupied) against the Vikings and Danes who all but succeed in their conquering of Britain. Cornwell even goes on to say in his elucidating “author’s note” that if it weren’t for Alfred’s decision, when all seemed lost, to still fight back and win, that Cornwell would be telling this story in Danish. Whether you’re a Saxon, a Viking, or a Briton; identity was something both questioned and sought after in this melting pot of a country. Cornwell cleverly reveals this with Uhtred’s ability to speak many languages, as well as being often thought a Viking or a Briton, but not a Saxon, which he considers himself.
At the end when all that remains of Saxon Britain is a small area of marsh in Wessex, Alfred unites his people who end up banding together from all areas of the surrounding country, and manages to defeat and push the Vikings out of his land, making Wessex the one strong remaining Saxon place left in all Britain. It was with this victory that Alfred earned the title “great.” The book ends with the future knowledge and hope that Alfred the Great will begin taking back the rest of Britain and pushing the Vikings out for good.
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NEXT BY MICHAEL CRICHTON: I’m still trying to figure out how this manuscript landed in the hands of an editor and actually got the go ahead to be published in time for Christmas. I can’t help but think about all those dads that are going to be so disappointed on December 26th when they crack open the book and find a collection of plot lines with confusing characters and stories that seem to go nowhere.
In Prey and State of Fear, Crichton did what he does best in providing a well researched book with a riveting and thrilling plot, thought I felt the latter a little heavy handed with a viewpoint I didn’t necessarily agree with. Compared with Next, I seriously wonder what happened? The book seems barely half finished, even though if runs on for four hundred pages. There are around five to seven plot lines each with their own vague characters that the reader has to struggle to keep straight going on in their own seemingly inane direction. Near the end of the book a few of these plot lines cross over forcefully at the author’s hand, and then the book ends and the reader is left wondering where the rest of the book is. What happened to the basic rule of a story? Instead of a beginning, middle and an end, the reader gets a weak infrastructure of a beginning, with part of a middle which suddenly ends!
Combined with this is the overarching philosophy of this novel (which I hope Crichton doesn’t subscribe to himself) where every person is one who sees life only for personal gain, to be rich, and feel constant pleasure. The women are always bombshells to be used and discarded, while the characters in general will stop at nothing to satisfy their pathetic personal whims.
As for the learning portion of the novel – with Prey it was the risk of nanotechnology, with State of Fear global warming – Crichton is very heavy handed in the risks of gene therapy and engineering, running the gamut from talking (and by this I mean with extensive vocabularies) parrots and orangutans, to the risks of human cloning, to bounty hunters trying to kidnap and steal tissues from innocent people who simply happen to possess the same DNA as a family member who had his cells declared property of UCLA in a court of law. While Crichton is trying to make the blatant point of “Watch out, this is what can happen,” it comes off as over-the-top farce and tomfoolery. And if it wasn’t made clear for you, he ends the novel with his note about how patenting genes is bad, as well as a list of other matters involving gene therapy, followed by a bibliography, just to show he did the work, supposedly
It is sad really, for I’d hoped Next would be the return to the great author who gave us truly brilliant novels like Jurassic Park, Sphere, and The Andromeda Strain, but Next can’t really be considered an actual book now, because of its failure in the rules of a novel on so many levels.
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THE LADIES OF GRACE ADIEU AND OTHER STORIES BY SUSANNA CLARKE: While Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is not required reading for this short story collection, it provides a fuller and more complete background to the stories you are reading, nevertheless, one can certainly enjoy them and understand what’s going on without having read the aforementioned 600+ page book.
Clarke spent a decade writing Jonathan Strange, so it is not surprising that in her spare time she wrote some stories set in this magnificent world, which while not directly involved in the actions and events of her opus, do play by its rules and restrictions. Some of the stories may even have been cut from the massive manuscript that was Jonathan Strange and now find themselves in this collection, finally in print.
These eight stories run the gamut of what Clarke might want to tell about her world, from what a couple of ladies with magical ability must do (from the title story); to a tale of Mary, Queen of Scots; to a story involving the same Jonathan Strange of her book. What links all these stories together is the reality of magic, whether the characters in the stories choose to accept its existence or not. The result is a delightful, seemingly romantic, and entertaining change to the glut of fantasy filling the book world these days. Magic in Clarke’s world cannot be done by everyone; it is subtle, exhausting, and hard to do. Like the Bartimaeus Trilogy, Clarke’s magical world presents something new and therefore captivating in its own way.
While my complaint of Clarke is that she can often be long winded and due for some heavy editing – both in this collection and in her weighty novel – in the end one is left with the wonderful feeling that one has just read something special and will delight in reading it again some day. Not to mention Ladies of Grace Adieu also features mesmerizing black and white illustrations by Charles Vess (who illustrated Neil Gaiman’s Stardust), the book is a worthy addition to anyone’s library. The question remains now: how long will it be before Clarke publishes another collection or novel? Does she have a box full of cut stories and material from Jonathan Strange waiting to be viewed by a reader’s eyes? Only time will reveal this truth.
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THE INTERPRETER OF MALADIES BY JHUMPA LAHIRI: This collection of nine short stories won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1999. The author, Jhumpa Lahiri, is of Indian descent, born in London and currently lives in New York, so each story is a look into a different part of Indian culture or into Indian people and their way of life. The first three stories were great and the title story was my favorite. The man literally is an interpreter of maladies, who works at a hospital translating patients’ symptoms to the doctor and in this it is revealed he has a lot of power and obligation in telling the doctor exactly what the patient is suffering from so the correct diagnosis can be given. After this story, I found the rest of book slow, kind of boring, and the stories just weren’t as engaging.
What started to annoy me as a I progressed through the book was that here you had a no doubt rich and well treated Indian woman who went to very good schools, lived in a good home in England, went to a good writing school for her MFA – probably in New York – and proceeded to publish her work in prestigious magazines like the New Yorker, and yet she is writing about Indian life and how hard it is for most people, especially those not as well off, and it just really got to me that she had succeeded in this way writing about a way of life she’d never experienced.
Now, having finished the book, my thoughts towards Lahiri have changed a little. For with her upbringing she was never able to experience Indian culture as an Indian living in India. This was no doubt a big deal to her, and is to Indian culture. A friend at work, who is of Indian decent, but born here, told me the other day that Indians don’t consider him Indian because he was born here. I realize now that this was probably the very thing that changed my mind about this book. It helped me realize that in writing these stories, Lahiri is living the lives of these people, getting the experiences, that she was never able to, and in doing so is helping to define her Indian heritage better.
The result is a collection of interesting and unique stories – perhaps not quite deserving of the Pulitzer -- about Indian people trying to live ordinary Indian lives.
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THE LAST KINGDOM BY BERNARD CORNWELL: I’ve been working on a novel for the last four years or so that’s been going pretty slowly. I’ve been doing it in chunks, mainly because it’s historical fiction and involves a lot of research and I’ve essentially been getting stuck at some point and needing to research more before I can get started writing again. Now I’m at a point where I need to read a few books to complete the current research. The book was called The Ruin, though I recently changed the title to Wyrd, which is Anglo-Saxon for destiny. While the book is set in the fifth century in England and has characters that may turn out to be Arthurian (I’m not sure yet), the intention of the novel is to encompass the feel and texture of the Early Middle Ages, at a time when society was essentially beginning anew for this forgotten island.
When I started reading The Last Kingdom by one of my favorite authors I got the chilling feeling that Cornwell had done what I was trying to do with my book. And after finishing it, there’s a lot in it that I can see coming out in my novel, and yet Wyrd will go in different directions and achieve different goals. Nevertheless, The Last Kingdom was a great book for anyone wanting to get a feel of the ninth century and what it was like for the Anglo-Saxons living there and having to deal with the invading Vikings who were trying to settle and do essentially what the Anglo-Saxons had done a couple of centuries before to the Britons. While the main character, Uhtred, is but a boy at the beginning and the narrator, our hero is Alfred the Great (the only British king ever to be called “the Great”) and while I’m not sure how long the series is going to be, the reader will see Alfred grow up and become the great king that earned him the title. I’m quite familiar with Alfred’s history and life and how he emulated Charlemagne in a lot of ways, and it’s really enjoyable to see this fictionalized account from one of my favorite authors, which has been well researched, and to see these historical characteristics in the people in the book.
I will freely admit that Bernard Cornwell isn’t exactly the most in depth and complex historical fiction writers, and his characters aren’t always the fully developed real people they should be, but he still does the job well and gets his point across in giving the reader a look into this life, just as he did with his Grail series set in the Later Middle Ages, and his Arthur series. It’s also the kind of book that anyone can pick up and get fully sucked into without getting confused or lost along the way with heavy history and jargon. Cornwell is also sure to point out as much of the native languages as he can, with plenty of translations, to clarify it all.
Next I have The Pale Horseman to read in the series, with Lords of the North to come in January.
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JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL BY SUSANNA CLARKE: This was my second attempt at reading this book. I'd tried when it first came out, with the heavy intimidating hardback (though sometimes a giant hardback that I can't hold in one hand is the best thing ever!). Since it was a fantasy novel with magic and wizards and set within a historical period, I was expecting something fast paced and somewhat action packed. So when I got 200+ pages in and had yet to have a scene where something physical happened involving some sort of action, I gave up.
When the paperback came out I was unable to stop myself from purchasing it. This is a thing that's developed in me over the years spent in the book business. When I see a book that I think should be good and has a really great cover (since I have seen many bad covers, such as all the Robert Jordan books), I need to own it. I'd told myself that I'd give this book another try at a later date and so before I left Copperfield's I bought it.
About a month ago I started listening to it on audiobook, got about fifteen minutes into it, and while the voices were very good and English, I could tell from the well developed language of the book that it would be better and deserved to be read in the paper form. I sloughed through it this time, finally rewarded with a few actions scenes, and some very interesting plot. I still felt it went on a little too long and there could've been an entire book of the same size with all the stuff that didn't get revealed in the book. When you create a unique world, I like to know how it came to be and a lot of the details of why it is this way, and there wasn't as much of that in Jonathan Strange. It centered more around two kind of lame magicians, one of which is an old annoying selfish fart, and an egomaniacal fairy who wants to control the real world as well as that of Faerie. Near the end some of the characters did some weird things as well that I thought were unwarranted and kind of came out of nowhere, which really bugs me with long books that have the room and the time to set this up.
Nevertheless, I'm definitely glad I worked through it and read the whole thing and that I own it and maybe, in five or ten years, I'll give it a reread and see it in a totally different way.
I've discovered in my reading that it really depends on my current mood and state of what I can get from a book. I can be impatient and want something to grab me right away, which is why I didn't like the book at first, but when I tried again in a calmer state, I was able to enjoy it. It's all very weird and probably a little OCD in some way, but over the many many years of reading and the many many books read, I've become picky in what I read and what I want to read and how I want to read it.
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THE WHEEL OF TIME SERIES BY ROBERT JORDAN: I tried. I gave it over two years of my life and I still couldn't keep going till the end. Of course, the real end will probably be book fifteen or twenty or, heaven forbid, twenty-five and up. I'm talking about Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Currently there are eleven books in the series, the latest, Knife of Dream, came out last October. The first book, Eye of the World, started out really well and I felt like I'd discovered a great new epic fantasy series similar to that of Lord of the Rings. The first book proved this and I thought it was great; I was also very excited at the notion of there being so many books in the series, with the story still incomplete. The second book, The Great Hunt, while not as mind-mashingly great as the first book, was still a great read, as was the third, The Dragon Reborn, where we find out that the main character is the guy prophesied to save the world, essentially. Eight books from th ere and the big showdown still hasn't come, while Jordan has continued to drag out into the hundreds and thousands of pages scenes, descriptions, and characters bickering at each other about the same thing while repetitively employing their annoying habits, to the point where I feel like I'm reading a children's nursery rhyme. Then there's the whole deal with the main character, Rand, having his undeniable love for three of the women characters, which he is okay with, and which they are okay with, apparently, and are quite willing to share him amongst themselves. I may have kept sloughing through the series better if there'd been a lot less purple prose and books four to ten had been condensed into say books four to six, which would've made more sense and made the stories move along better. Around book five I began spotting the routine the books go through: a few hundred pages of sitting around talking, explaining and regurgitating what's happened in the past books, bitching at each other; then about four hundred pages of people painstakingly crawling from a starting point to a destination (and bear in mind that these people can "travel" through vortexes real fast), and then the last hundred pages is a big action scene. At book seven, Crown of Thorns, halfway through, I decided I'd wasted enou
