Engage, Maverick, Engage!

So I read The Name of the Wind, a recent highly promoted fantasy novel. I will dispense with a review, if you like very large fantasy novels, and especially if you dislike the darker trend of recent fantasy novels, you will enjoy this one. The plot moves in unexpected ways, and with one glaring exception, is expertly done.

Still, I have some complaints of which I think you should be aware. Biggest is the notion that the book somehow reinvents fantasy, as some of the blurbs say. This one is about as templated as you get. Young, poor guy discovers great destiny and faces adversity. That's it. Sure, there is a framing device where we learn our hero has withdrawn from the world (at the worst possible time!) but we have seen that before as well. It's well written enough that you don't care, but don't expect mind blowing originality or deconstruction of archetypes.

OK, maybe this is a bigger deal. Where are the monsters? There aren't any good ones. On the human side, the main foe is a limp rich guy/Trickster figure. Boring. On the animal side, we have an angry herbivore. Scary! Yes, it is the first of the trilogy, but Tolkein gave us the Balrog AND the Nazgul in his first book. Mieville only had one in Perdido Street Station, but that was the slake moth, which is better than most.

Sure, sure, there are no monsters in the Martin books (or almost none), but the villains! Oh they are so good. What's more, it may be that they are really the heroes, at least in Jamie and Tyrion's cases. The villain here is mostly his circumstances, which are fine, but not that exciting.

I have complained a lot about this book, because it lies outside my fantasy novel sweet spot (realisitcally bleak society, monsters, evil) but it does what it does well. Aside from a bizarrely weak finale, the story is very well told.

Should I read The Blade Itself?

I had heard all manner of praise for the fantasy novels of Joe Abercrombie, so I wishlisted and eventually received the Blade Itself. So far (page 40 or so), it feels pretty so-so. I am thinking of switching to the Name of the Wind. Good call or no?

The Wheel of Time rolls on, and on, and on....

Back in the early to mid-90s, I could not get enough of the Wheel of Time series. Sure it was a Tolkein ripoff, with small town heroes emerging to fight a nasty Sauron like dark force, but it was a story well told with its own flourishes. Hey, why not bring the Fremen like Aiel into the picture?!

Then the books kept coming and the story got thinner and thinner. By the time I stopped reading them, the plot had moved forward an inch in about 700 pages. No thanks.

Robert Jordan died before completing the series and Brian Sanderson was brought on board to wrap it up. For some reason I had it in my head that he would just write a single volume, which would be fine with me. Nope, he has THREE more books for the series, which will bring the total to FOURTEEN books by the end. Yes, yes, Patrick O'Brien had more than that, but those were models of concision by comparison.

Anyway, the first one comes out next month and Tor.com has the first chapter available online. You have to log into the site to read it.

Tor.com also has a guest blogger writing about the series, chapter by ever-loving chapter. So far, the blog is through the still readable volumes. Soon, the hell begins. How will the blogger deal with it?

The Issues of Red Seas Under Red Skies

I'm in the happy position of owning a large number of unread very large fantasy novels. I've been watching the pile grow, but getting The Blade Itself for Father's Day made me decide I really had to tame the beast. I chose Red Seas Under Red Skies for the next one. Short review: Good read, but no Lies of Locke Lamora.

More on that later, but I have to mention a fundamental problem with these books. The main characters are thieves who happen to be as good with a weapon as they are with a cheeky quip. They are just too nice to be thieves in the nasty world that author Scott Lynch portrays. Lynch has a town where bored aristocrats pay money to watch the poor publicly tortured. Assassins are everywhere and the powerful are venal to a person. Danger is everywhere.

The thieves just don't act like the worn down people they would have to be. They regularly spare people, even people who were just trying to kill them. At one vexing point, someone tries to cut a rope that if cut, would lead to a violent death. They escape and let the fellow go, with a mild beating. This was done no doubt for plot purposes I have yet to see, but it is simply unbelievable. In another scene, a young man loses a contest and dies for it. Locke Lamora goes over to say a little prayer for him. Really? I know he wants us to like the guy, but come on.

It is like he wants a brutal world like China Mieville's while populating it with happy go lucky Oceans 11 characters. I felt the same way about the first book, but I was willing to let it slide because the plotting was so good. The less well crafted sequel makes the fundamental problems more glaring.

Anyway, it is good enough to continue. I will see if he can rescue the book.

Mieville on Tolkein

Check out China Mieville on why Tolkein is awesome. Strange, I didn't think he liked Tolkein. Anyway, it's all good, but I particularly like the bit posted below. He hits the nail on the head that the partially described, vaguely nightmarish monsters are often the best.

3) The Watcher in the Water

Dude. That totally was cool. I mean, say what you like about him, Tolk gives good monster. Shelob, Smaug, the Balrog...in their astounding names, the fearful verve of their descriptions, their various undomesticated malevolence, these creatures are utterly embedded in our world-view. No one can write giant spiders except through Shelob: all dragons are sidekicks now. And so on.

But the thing about the Watcher in the Water is WTF? Here the technique of under-describing, withholding, comes startlingly to the fore, that other great technique for communicating balefulness. We know almost nothing about the many-limbed thing in the water outside Moria. Some think it's a giant squid: me, I say not, given that it lives in fresh water, has too many tentacles, and that those tentacles have fingers. Which squids don't have. But we know three things. It is tentacular; it is badass; and it is weird. And that uncertainty is what makes it rock.

Big bads

Borders now has a scifi blog. The posts are VERY short, but still worth checking out. Right now Brian Sanderson, best known as the one chosen to complete the Wheel of Time, is writing. Here he asks people to name their favorite dragon. That's a good question. I am little more interested in the notion of favorite big scary monster. I think for me it is either the Shrike (he's made of razors!) or the horrifying slake-moth from Perdido Street Station. Thoughts?

Another fantasy giant gone

Via Citizen Reader, I see that David Eddings has passed. While I would not rank him with my favorite fantasy novelists today, he is the author that hooked me on fantasy novels*. I gobbled up the Belgariad in middle school and high school and then followed it up the Mallorean into my college years. Looking back, I am surprised that the last one of those came out in 1991. By that point, I thought I had transistioned my loyalties to the initially thrilling, but ultimately disappointing Wheel of Time saga. Looking back, the Belgariad, while more understated, is probably the more successful series as it manages to tell its story without collapsing under its weight.

Thinking of Eddings and 1980s fantasy novelists, I thought of Terry Brooks known for the Sword of Shanara and many follow on novels. While nearly all fantasy novelists (excepting of course Tolkein hater China Mieville) borrow from Tolkein, Brooks seemed to cut and paste directly from the Lord of the Rings. The book concluded with a battle that may as well been called the Battle of Minas Tirith. It sold fine, so I guess fantasy fans don't mind, but I am curious if people still read Brooks.









*Lord Foul's Bane was my first fantasy novel but that one didn't work for my pre-teen self.

Domino Men

I've just finished an odd sort of book. Domino Men is Jonathan Barnes follow up to Somnambulist. I say follow-up rather than sequel as it is set in the same universe as the prior book but doesn't continue the story or use many of the same characters. Overall the book is weaker, with less interesting characters, increased pointless violence (if you recall the jarringly brutal execution of the first book, expect a lot more in this one) and a tighter, if less interesting story line.

In this one we find that the shadowy government organization the Directorate is fighting a surprising enemy for the life of London. Those familiar with English political history will have some inkling as to who that enemy might be, but I'd rather not spoil it all the same. The main character is a milquetoast loser whose claim to fame was his youthful stint on a sitcom where he always uttered an inane line. His filing clerk days fall behind him when the Directorate swoops into his life.

Barnes is Oxford educated and writes for the Times Literary Supplement. Nothing out of the ordinary about that, but little literary jokes in the book make me wonder if this book isn't meant to be a joke, or at the very least a turning of the tables, on genre fans. He sharply contrasts the humor of his deft use of language with terrible images and little hope for his characters. I get the sense that he is asking if readers of escapist, apocalyptic fiction really enjoy it. It reminds me of Joe Hill's excellent "Best New Horror" short story which indirectly asks fans of horror why it is they like this stuff.

Clever bit of literary theater or not, the book is fun to read for most of it and then becomes less so. The last few sentences of the book imply another in the sequence, but one that would be futuristic in nature. I am quite curious to see where he takes it next.

Books for the road

I will soon be off for Spring Break, for a few days at least. This means I must consider my book load. I will certainly be bringing Neal Gabler's large Walt Disney biography. I will also have Stephen Millhauser's story collection, Dangerous Laughter (in preparation for Citizen Reader's Book Menage) and may have one of Lee Child's books in case the need for light escapism strikes.

I may also bring the heaviest of escapist books, Toll the Hounds by Steven Erikson. This is book eight in a ten book series. Unlike George R R Martin's incomplete epic, The Song of Fire and Ice, there are only a few people to whom I would recommend this book. The sort of person who wishes Lord of the Rings was twice as long so as to tell tales of the Southrons and Easterlings or to allow the Fellowship to travel to alternate planes to find ancestors of an earlier age.

The readers also have to deal with an overwhelming amount of world creation. Lots of writers create rich worlds (Martin) or with bizarre pronunications (Bakker), or complicated politics (Mieville.) Erikson does all this with a dizzingly complex layer of demi-gods and gods battling over a number of continents, each with a distinct mix of polities and sub-wars involved in a meta war that only becomes understood (and then only partially) a few books into the series.

To enjoy these books you have an excellent memory for detail or be willing to simply not understand what is happening for pages on end. Erikson will pull out characters from over 1,000 pages before without any reintroduction. He also introduces a new set of characters with each book, so you really have to work with it.

So why on earth would you want to read these books? He writes the best war scenes I have seen in any fantasy novel. Because he is writing about so many characters and nations, he has little problem in eliminating characters, including quite major ones, which creates excellent suspense. He has also created some of the best fantasy badasses of all time. This is fantasy at its geekiest and if you are the sort of person who does, or ever has, made a D&D joke, then you might want to give these a try.

Thursday Next

If I have ever read a more raucous and joyful ode to reading than Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, then I have long forgotten it. Set in a fantastical alternate Britain, the series heroine is the titular Next who is a member of the Literary Detectives, a government organization that combats book crime, such as, say, the unlawful editing of books. How can such events occur? Well as it happens, what is written in books exists in it own dimension and if you were to enter that dimension, you could say, leech all the comedy out of the Thomas Hardy books and make them terrible tragedies, as some nasty did in these books.

Did that last bit make you chuckle or leave you confused? If it is the former, these books are for you. In addition to being entirely about books and reading, these stories are marked by an unrelenting tide of jokes. I can think of few books that I want to read that I can also call "madcap," but this is certainly one. One scene features a Beatrix Potter character conversing with a Ming the Merciless clone, over tea. It is a mark of Fforde's skill as a writer in that he can be so incredibly silly, while also sucking you into the (often nonsensical) story.

His latest book in the series, Thursday Next, First Among Sequels, may be his most enjoyable yet. Flinging from one crisis to another, Next deals with (as usual) threats to the BookWorld, the universe, declining read rates, her family and to her pet Dodo (genetically re-engineered, wouldn't you know). The pacing is among the most relentless in this volume, so that if one joke or encounter leaves you a bit dry, you will soon find another.

While I won't stoop to spoiling, I will say that this is a series that can read out of order if you so chose. Yes, certain personages fates will be known to you, but like as not, they have changed in bizarre ways, so that you will be surprised nonetheless. The fun here is in Fforde's seemingly bottomless invention and literary referencing. If you are an inveterate reader, then you need to try these books.

Dresden

Jim Butcher's Stormfront : book one of the Dresden Files was one I long hesitated to pick up, mostly because of the prominence of the "Dresden Files." I have an aversion to series books that is based less on experience than it is a kind of fear that the books will be formulaic dreck. There may be a connection to the genre once called men's adventure in which an endless series of crypto-sexual (his gun spat hot lead at the Cuban) tales were presented to reader.

Anyway, the book turned out to be a lot of fun! The main character, Harry Dresden leans a tad goody goody for my taste, but I found him appealing nonetheless. I was also pleased that Butcher made Dresden inept with women. Main characters are often alter-egos for authors and far too many of these sorts of characters end up being hyper-studs.

The plot is nothing special, and won't surprise crime novel fans, but the story elements are a lot of fun. Butcher, in this first book, has laid quite a bit of groundwork for an interesting system of magic based in our modern world. He has a few surprises with the nasties he deploys and I even liked what he did with the ending, which is often a let down in suspense tales.

With the intersection of the supernatural and a thriller/crime novel plot chassis, these books are like Charles Stross's Atrocity Archives tales and Charlie Huston's Joe Pitt stories. They are just a lot less grimy and wicked. I like all of them, but depending on your tastes you might want to go one way or the other.

Jordan

Ross Douthat wrote this nice piece on Robert Jordan, his former favorite author. Jordan is also a former favorite of mine, although my fandom persisted through my twenties. Despite greatly preferring the George R R Martin and Steven Erikson fantasy series, I have not been able to generate the same level of excitement that I felt over the Jordan books.

It may be the Harry Potter effect. Back in the 90s, nearly every one I knew was reading the Jordan books at the same time and it was a constant source of conversation. With the Martin book and Erikson books, I haven't enjoyed the same shared experience. As Sam Anderson noted about the move to DVD on TV, we have left the era of simultaneity, where we all watch shows on our time. This was almost always the case with books, which makes the rare cases of simultaneity all the more exciting.

Impacted on the surface

I had seen a lot of Internet buzz about Scott Sigler's Infected, so I put a library hold on it. Sigler started as a horror story pod cast author and Infected is his first dead tree book. While I will give a book I purchased or was given about 100 pages to prove itself, library holds get 50 pages at best. I gave Infected about 50 and put it in the back to the library pile. While it has some inventive and gag-inducing gore scenes, the writing is middling (which puts it ahead of most horror, admittedly) and the characters are uninteresting. This one may please gore-hounds, but others should look elsewhere.

Another reason I put this one down is that among the opportunity costs was holding off on reading the second half of Steven Erikson's mammoth Reaper's Gale. If you have been anxiously checking the Web for updates on the next George R.R. Martin, you should give Erikson a look. While his books lack the characterization of Martin and the byzantine political machinations, they are better on exploring the role and uses of power. And there is lots more ass-kicking.

There is a future in Scalzi's dreaming

One thing fantasy writers need to pick up from science fiction writers is universe creation. Fantasy writers are great world creators, but they tend to focus on a single over-arching story line before moving to an entirely different world.

Science fiction writers have a long tradition, an early example of which is Heinlein's Future History, of creating a universe in which to set many sometimes related, sometimes unrelated stories. Iain M Banks has been writing Culture novels for decades, and just published a new one, called Matter. The insanely prolific CJ Cherryh developed a fascinating future history in her Alliance- Union books. Alastair Reynolds, Neal Asher and others continue to develop interesting future universes in their books.

At the end of the Last Colony, John Scalzi appeared to be putting aside his fascinating Colonial Union universe. In this universe, the galactic arm is jam packed with species competing for a handful of planets. Humanity has a number of tricks up its sleeve including taking bored retired people and turning them into bad-asses, hence the first book's title, Old Man's War. Like its two predecessors, Last Colony is excellent Heinleinesque fun that leaves you wanting to learn more about this universe.

In an afterword to Last Colony, Scalzi said he was putting the universe aside. Apparently he changed his mind, as he has another book called Zoe's tale coming this summer. He writes extensively about the book here. I hope he writes more.

Erikson

About halfway through Steven Erikson's Bonehunters, I wondered if the Malazan saga was superior to Martin's Song of Ice and Fire. In the end I decided Martin wins over all with superior characters, writing, editing and emotion. Erikson is ahead of Marting on world creation, over the top plotting and action sequences, but he really needs to shorten these books.

The first 200 pages of this book elicited a number of "huh?"s and "what?s" as I tried to recall the backgrounds of the characters being referenced and the meaning of their various actions. Once the book clicked, it was excellent, but that was a really long ramp. (spoilers ahead)

This book makes clear that which was hinted in prior books. The conflicts among the human nations are really the manipulations of the gods as the pantheon is threatened by an enemy. The gods (and the elder races) begin to take sides and there is carnage aplenty. It is to Erikson's credit that he can keep this key development under wraps until after the half-way point in the series. I wish Erikson would provide some graphical representation of the relationships between the various factions as it becomes quite hard to follow just why so and so is sent on a mission to kill this other person.

Erikson also begins to answer the questions of which of his many badasses is the biggest badass. It would appear that Apsalar is actually the superior to Kalam in assassination. Icarium is looking like he may be the tops, although Karsa Orlong is certainly a contender. And what of Amonander Rake? These questions have raised debates in the fantasy fan world.

Geek test

You can tell how big a geek you are by how much you laugh at this page. Essentially the more you know about D&D, particularly D&D from the 70s and 80s, the more you will laugh. I suppose this is also a geek hater test. (via inconsequential ruminations)

The next George R R Martin

We have to wait a tad longer, Fall 08 at the soonest. Oh well, if you are pining for epic fantasy, try Steven Erikson.

A fantasy book trailer?

Well Felix Gilman's Thunderer is certainly getting some buzz. The Amazon Blog noted that three fantasy sci-fi behemoths were approaching in 2008. Two of themhave numerous classics under the belt, Iain M Banks and Peter Hamilton, and the third is debut novelist Felix Gilman. And now it has a book trailer. At the very least I will look to my fantasy book fall guys to tell me if this one is worth reading.

He's gonna be your number one

Midnight Tides, book five of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, is another excellent volume in what may be the best fantasy series being written today. Although it is not categorically superior to Memories of Ice or House of Chains, it improves the series in a number of ways.

Firstly it successfully balances the series bleak tone with effective uses of humor, in particular the relationship between the oddly broke financial genius Tehol Beddict and his oddly knowledgeable manservant Bugg. Their schemes and manipulations are truly amusing, a feat Erikson hasn't really managed before. The humor is appreciated as Erikson continues to serve capital-E-epic tales of the destruction of nations and families.

In this case, a family of Tiste Edur, including a character who appears chronologically later in House of Chains, and a family of human Letherii tragically interact with each other. This being Erikson you know some of them are going to die, but the varieties of magic allow for peculiar fates. He weaves the small scale personal stories quite well into the overall political struggle between the Edur and the Letherii, again an improvement. In some of his other novels, many of the plotlines have been either tangential or set-ups for future volumes. This is probably the best integrated plot yet.

This is the second book in a row where Erikson moves the overarching narrative to an entirely new set of characters. At first this is frustrating, as you miss the earlier characters and have to work to learn new countries, religions and so on. This switching is one way Erikson keeps the books so fresh. He does create new characters, but eventually weaves them back into the major plotline involving the battle amongst the gods.

Also new is the political context of this book. At a certain point, I was wondering if I was reading a fictionalized account of Cullen Murphy's Are We Rome? The nation of Letherii is clearly meant to depict the flaws of 21st century America, notably hubris, an addiction to military power as a tool, an overemphasis on firepower, expanding inequality and a crushing load of debt. The treatment of native Americans is also figures importantly. This might get the fantasy haters interested, but they stopped reading this in the first sentence.

Finishing the Wheel of Time

The Jordan books will be finished by Brandon Sanderson. Pat of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist isn't psyched. At least this way it will be finished in a single volume.