I was very disappointed by Gail Carriger's Soulless, probably my fault for not reading the reviews thoroughly enough. Billed as an Austenian comedy of manners with werewolves and vampires, it's actually a romance. Which would be okay, but the romance angles takes over in the dumbest places; one time, even in a jail cell, while the two main characters are waiting to be experimented on.
In a more serious vein, I've started on War and Peace, and am also dipping into a massive retrospective of Gene Wolfe's short fiction. War and Peace is, of course, famous for being very long and having a huge cast of characters. It was certainly daunting at first, because the opening takes place at a party where it's hard to even know which people will turn out to be important and which ones are just window dressing. But after that, it settles down, and I'm finding it very readable. Tolstoy takes us from Russian high society to the battlefield to an isolated farm estate, and it's all enthralling. (Although the size of the novel is certainly off-putting -- my kindle tells me I'm 18% of the way through, and I've already read a normal novel's worth of text).
The Gene Wolfe retrospective is a great way to become (re)acquainted with Wolfe's short fiction. Although I usually think of him as a novelist, because his themes tend to be so complicated, his short fiction is usually top-notch, whether at the three-page length or the fifty-page length. In some cases, I'm revisiting stories I've already read and loved, like "The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories," which is an amazing story; it's even more amazing to see that it came so early in his career. In other cases, there are stories which I've heard of, but had never gotten around to reading, like "The Fifth Head of Cerberus," which absolutely deserves its classic status. And then there are a few which I'd never heard of, and which provide a very different glimpse of Wolfe's writing, like "The Recording," which is not even science fiction. Of course, there are a few duds, but this is a fine collection (and I'm only 1/3 of the way through)
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Friday, April 8, 2011
Tevye Stories, Cursor's Fury, Pretty Monsters, Aeneid
I recently read all of Sholem Aleichem's "Tevye the Milkman" stories, and I gotta admit that I didn't think they were so fantastic. I liked them well enough, I suppose, but that was as far as it went. One always hears that Yiddish is hard to translate, so maybe that's the problem...
I just finished listening to Jim Butcher's Cursor's Fury, third in his Codex Alera. Just like in his Harry Dresden books, he managed to pull me in, despite a repetitive style (characters are constantly arching eyebrows, something I don't see a real-life person do once in a year. Characters call each other by names like "Aleran" or "Calderan" after knowing them for more than 5 years -- this would be like my calling my friends "Kansas-guy" or "Chicagoan"). He knows how to keep the pot boiling enough that it distracts from his stylistic infelicities.
Kelly Link's Pretty Monsters, on the other hand, is all about style. She's incredibly adroit, writing in a high fantasy mode in one story, horror in another, and so on. I've written before about how she writes about characters who are on the periphery of the story. Here, most of the stories are like that as well -- one that I particularly liked was an alien contact story that stops just before the aliens actually make contact. She also has a more traditional story about wizards that didn't really impress me the same way. Overall, it's a top-notch collection, even though two of the stories were also in Magic for Beginners.
I've begun book II of the Aeneid, which talks about the Trojan horse being brought into Troy.
I just finished listening to Jim Butcher's Cursor's Fury, third in his Codex Alera. Just like in his Harry Dresden books, he managed to pull me in, despite a repetitive style (characters are constantly arching eyebrows, something I don't see a real-life person do once in a year. Characters call each other by names like "Aleran" or "Calderan" after knowing them for more than 5 years -- this would be like my calling my friends "Kansas-guy" or "Chicagoan"). He knows how to keep the pot boiling enough that it distracts from his stylistic infelicities.
Kelly Link's Pretty Monsters, on the other hand, is all about style. She's incredibly adroit, writing in a high fantasy mode in one story, horror in another, and so on. I've written before about how she writes about characters who are on the periphery of the story. Here, most of the stories are like that as well -- one that I particularly liked was an alien contact story that stops just before the aliens actually make contact. She also has a more traditional story about wizards that didn't really impress me the same way. Overall, it's a top-notch collection, even though two of the stories were also in Magic for Beginners.
I've begun book II of the Aeneid, which talks about the Trojan horse being brought into Troy.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Sandman Slim, St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim starts out as if it's going to be a Count of Monte Cristo take-off. Our hero has escaped from Hell, where he was unjustly imprisoned for 11 years, to seek vengeance on the circle of mages who trapped him there. But Kadrey switches gears several times, and the result was a novel that surprised me a few times, even if it never rises above total pulp.
I expected to like St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves very much, since the short stories are very much in the vein of Kelly Link's -- fantasy stories which leave you wondering what happened, and seem to stop before the actual end of the story. Instead, these stories showed me how much art is in Link's choice of where to stop -- they often feel like they're stopping at an arbitrary place, but feel complete anyway. Karen Russell, on the other hand, often seems to just peter out, like the story just ran out of gas. This isn't so true of the last three stories, and the last one in particular feels absolutely complete, so if the stories are in chronological order of writing, I guess it's something she worked on.
Other than the endings, the stories are great. Moody, beautiful writing, well-realized characters in a very short space, everything you could ask for. If only she had better endings...
I expected to like St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves very much, since the short stories are very much in the vein of Kelly Link's -- fantasy stories which leave you wondering what happened, and seem to stop before the actual end of the story. Instead, these stories showed me how much art is in Link's choice of where to stop -- they often feel like they're stopping at an arbitrary place, but feel complete anyway. Karen Russell, on the other hand, often seems to just peter out, like the story just ran out of gas. This isn't so true of the last three stories, and the last one in particular feels absolutely complete, so if the stories are in chronological order of writing, I guess it's something she worked on.
Other than the endings, the stories are great. Moody, beautiful writing, well-realized characters in a very short space, everything you could ask for. If only she had better endings...
Monday, April 4, 2011
A Question of Upbringing
A Question of Upbringing is the first volume in Anthony Powell's massive 12-volume Dance to the Music of Time. The series as a whole has been on my "books to think about reading" list for a long time, but it seemed daunting to even begin. Amazon solved that problem for me by selling the volumes individually for the kindle and making the first a freebie.
So I dove in and was surprised at what the book wasn't, as much as by what it was. First off, it's not really a novel in the normal sense. There are four semi-connected sections, each of which takes up a few a days in the life of the narrator, Jenkins. Also, although the series covers a large span of time and a large cast of characters, it's not really panoramic; instead, each section could almost be an individual short story (it reminded me a little of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in this).
Powell's style is gorgeous; I think this is the best-written of all the kindle freebies so far. Different parts are funny or wistful or lyrical. You get the sense of a narrator looking back over a long time, sorting through his memories to find ones that present people at some moment that epitomizes them, or finding particular turning points that solidified his attitudes toward them. In each section, the characters jump out; even ones who are only introduced for a few pages feel vivid.
At this point, I guess I'm in for the long haul, looking forward to reading the next 11 volumes.
So I dove in and was surprised at what the book wasn't, as much as by what it was. First off, it's not really a novel in the normal sense. There are four semi-connected sections, each of which takes up a few a days in the life of the narrator, Jenkins. Also, although the series covers a large span of time and a large cast of characters, it's not really panoramic; instead, each section could almost be an individual short story (it reminded me a little of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in this).
Powell's style is gorgeous; I think this is the best-written of all the kindle freebies so far. Different parts are funny or wistful or lyrical. You get the sense of a narrator looking back over a long time, sorting through his memories to find ones that present people at some moment that epitomizes them, or finding particular turning points that solidified his attitudes toward them. In each section, the characters jump out; even ones who are only introduced for a few pages feel vivid.
At this point, I guess I'm in for the long haul, looking forward to reading the next 11 volumes.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Abhorsen
Abhorsen is the second half of the story begun in Lirael. I didn't like Lirael as much as I liked Sabriel, feeling that Nix spends too much time on his two protagonists' doing that teenager thing of "nobody understands me; I'm different to everyone else; etc". In Abhorsen, Nix is back in fine form.
One thing I loved about Lirael was the lyrical writing. In Abhorsen, Nix has Lirael go on a long journey through the lands of death, and I felt that his description of the journey was very effective; the nine areas that Lirael travels through feel disparate, yet unified. Her showdown with Hedge in the last of these didn't come down to a test of strength, which would have felt silly, but instead grew out of the way Death has been presented to us over the course of the books.
As a side note, I thought it was pretty clear that the Destroyer, the main bad guy of the series, is actually a personification of an atomic bomb. It's housed in two metal hemispheres that set off a chain reaction when brought together, starting with a pillar of fire.
One thing I loved about Lirael was the lyrical writing. In Abhorsen, Nix has Lirael go on a long journey through the lands of death, and I felt that his description of the journey was very effective; the nine areas that Lirael travels through feel disparate, yet unified. Her showdown with Hedge in the last of these didn't come down to a test of strength, which would have felt silly, but instead grew out of the way Death has been presented to us over the course of the books.
As a side note, I thought it was pretty clear that the Destroyer, the main bad guy of the series, is actually a personification of an atomic bomb. It's housed in two metal hemispheres that set off a chain reaction when brought together, starting with a pillar of fire.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Sharpe's Trafalgar
In Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe ends up at the Battle of Trafalgar, where (as Cornwell himself admits) he has no business. So, on the one hand, the book is a great look at the famous battle, letting the reader really feel like he might have been there. On the other hand, it's not a really good Sharpe book, because Sharpe himself has almost no role to play; his expertise is on the ground, not ship battles.
There's a romance between Sharpe and noble-born lady which was OK, but also seemed to be out of character for Sharpe; he hasn't up till now seemed like the kind to fall distractedly head-over-heels for someone the way he seems to here, to the point where he doesn't notice the plotting of the antagonists.
There's a romance between Sharpe and noble-born lady which was OK, but also seemed to be out of character for Sharpe; he hasn't up till now seemed like the kind to fall distractedly head-over-heels for someone the way he seems to here, to the point where he doesn't notice the plotting of the antagonists.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
The Road, Pirates in an Adventure with Napoleon
Gideon Defoe's Pirates series is uniformly hilarious; I think he's one of the consistently funniest writers since Wodehouse (Jasper Fforde is very funny, too, but more hit-and-miss). Pirates in an Adventure with Napoleon is no exception. Unfortunately, talking about humor tends to kill the joke, so I'll just move on.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road, on the other hand, begs for analysis, to its detriment. Most of his oeuvre works on a symbolic as well as a literal level, but The Road falls on the far side of the allegorical spectrum. The characters don't have names (the only character to use a name also tells us that it's not his real name), the situation is allegorical, and the characters are types. Unfortunately, as short as the novel is (240 pages in my edition), it's still too big for the limited area it encompasses.
The story is about a man and his son traveling through a post-apocalyptic landscape, the man trying to protect the boy. It's a dog-eat-dog world, and so the two avoid any contact with other people, even the most run-down specimens. The boy wants to reach out and help the run-down folks, while the man (understandably) wants to protect what little food they've got. Much of the book consists of conversations, especially between man and boy.
There are two running conversations that I think provide the key to the novel. First, the man tells the boy that they're the "good guys," and the boy increasingly questions him. The man also tells the boy that he (the boy) is carrying "the fire." In the end, when the man dies (of TB or something like it), the boy is picked up by another family who seem to have been shadowing them for a long time, but were afraid to make contact. It's pretty clear that the fire the boy carries is his goodness. Although the man says over & over again that they are the "good guys," in fact the path he's chosen leads to destruction -- he would never join with other people to create a new community. He's not an actively bad person, but his actions lead to a bad result. He has to die (his physical disease mirrors his spiritual sickness) so that the boy can carry the fire forward.
I felt that the novel lacked the moral complexity of McCarthy's earlier work. His prose is still beautiful, and the book isn't bad by any means. But if someone had never read any McCarthy before, this isn't the book I'd point them at.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road, on the other hand, begs for analysis, to its detriment. Most of his oeuvre works on a symbolic as well as a literal level, but The Road falls on the far side of the allegorical spectrum. The characters don't have names (the only character to use a name also tells us that it's not his real name), the situation is allegorical, and the characters are types. Unfortunately, as short as the novel is (240 pages in my edition), it's still too big for the limited area it encompasses.
The story is about a man and his son traveling through a post-apocalyptic landscape, the man trying to protect the boy. It's a dog-eat-dog world, and so the two avoid any contact with other people, even the most run-down specimens. The boy wants to reach out and help the run-down folks, while the man (understandably) wants to protect what little food they've got. Much of the book consists of conversations, especially between man and boy.
There are two running conversations that I think provide the key to the novel. First, the man tells the boy that they're the "good guys," and the boy increasingly questions him. The man also tells the boy that he (the boy) is carrying "the fire." In the end, when the man dies (of TB or something like it), the boy is picked up by another family who seem to have been shadowing them for a long time, but were afraid to make contact. It's pretty clear that the fire the boy carries is his goodness. Although the man says over & over again that they are the "good guys," in fact the path he's chosen leads to destruction -- he would never join with other people to create a new community. He's not an actively bad person, but his actions lead to a bad result. He has to die (his physical disease mirrors his spiritual sickness) so that the boy can carry the fire forward.
I felt that the novel lacked the moral complexity of McCarthy's earlier work. His prose is still beautiful, and the book isn't bad by any means. But if someone had never read any McCarthy before, this isn't the book I'd point them at.
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