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| # | cover | title | author | isbn | isbn13 | asin | num pages | avg rating | num ratings | date pub | date pub (ed.) | rating | my rating | review | notes | recommender | comments | votes | read count | date started | date read |
date
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date purchased | owned | purchase location | condition | format | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0345351959
| 9780345351951
| 3.90
| 642
| 1988
| Jan 12, 1988
|
None
| Notes are private!
| none
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1
| not set
| not set
|
Aug 30, 2012
| Mass Market Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 9993795704
| 9789993795704
| 3.74
| 1,030
| 1974
| 1974
|
None
| Notes are private!
| none
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1
| not set
| not set
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Aug 29, 2012
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0375856110
| 9780375856112
| 4.02
| 58,065
| Nov 08, 2011
| Nov 08, 2011
|
As the Goodreads description indicates, this concluding volume of the series sees the epic battle between good and evil, freedom and tyranny, come to...more
As the Goodreads description indicates, this concluding volume of the series sees the epic battle between good and evil, freedom and tyranny, come to its powerfully-depicted, awesome conclusion. But the struggle against Galbatorix isn't the only significant issue here, though it's certainly the central one on which everything else hangs. Win or lose, who will survive the showdown --and who won't? Can the races of Alagaesia learn to live in harmony? What is the future of magic, and of dragonkind? Are Eragon and Arya destined to be together? And have you forgotten the blood debt that Birgit thinks Roran owes her? (Paolini hasn't.) Our author wraps all these strands up here, in a grand tapestry that's as well-written and compelling in the fourth volume as it was in the first; his mastery of style, characterization and world-building has remained remarkably consistent all the way through. (As a result, many of the general comments in my reviews of earlier books in the series apply to this one as well.) It's hard to discuss some of the specific elements here without resorting to spoilers (though readers who know much about my general tastes in fiction will garner some conclusions about the ending from the five-star rating itself! :-) ) But I can say that we get to encounter Galbatorix in person here, and he's a vivid, fully-human character, not just an embodied force of evil (although he is evil) as Sauron, for instance, is in the LOTR series. He's also the kind of tyrant who, at a conscious level, is wholly convinced that he's good for the kingdom and that his opponents are the dangerous bad guys; and he's able to articulate his attitude in rhetoric that's eerily parallel to claims we might hear from politicos who want power over us in the real world. Personally, I give Paolini high marks on both grounds. Moreover, IMO, every aspect of his plotting is excellent; it frequently surprises, and yet you feel, on reflection, that yes, this is exactly the way things needed to happen. He looks unflinchingly at the high cost that doing what's right sometimes carries, and readily affirms that it's worth paying. And he's not afraid to depart from expected convention in the realistic way that his story ends. (view spoiler)[The ending itself is superbly crafted, poignant and powerful --one of the most moving closings to a piece of modern fiction that I've read, with an elegaic, bittersweet quality. (hide spoiler)] A word can be in order here about Paolini's resolution of the debate over theism that's cropped up in places over the course of the four books, since Eragon is directly asked at one point if he believes in the gods. The conversation there arises naturally, and it's a short one (in contrast to the long lecture on the subject that we get at one point in Brisinger). While not embracing the elves' atheism, Eragon's stance remains agnostic and secular; he's not certain that the gods exist, doubts that they care about people, believes morality should be practiced for its own sake, not fear of punishment, and isn't sure he wants immortality (though, as a dragonrider, he's apt to live for centuries). Before Christian readers react too negatively to this, though, it's important to recognize that in the context of his world's pagan polytheism, these aren't unreasonable attitudes. "Gods," in Alagaesia, are entities whose existence is vouched for mostly by nothing more than ethnic traditions (which conflict with each other); they have never acted in verifiable history, never sacrificed or suffered on behalf of people, don't offer an eschatology or teleology, nor a standard for critiquing an unjust social order, and are not supported by anything resembling the body of Christian evidences that exists in the real world. None of the various cults in Alagaesia contribute constructively to the world in any obvious way (that of the priests of Helgrind is obviously pathological). And an embrace of goodness for its own sake, not from fear of punishment, is the whole goal of Christian sanctification. So as a Christian reader, I'm not offended by Eragon's self-distancing from Alagaesian religion. To be sure, Paolini as an author may have no clue (indeed, probably doesn't) that Christianity has any different characteristics than Alagaesian paganism. (We assume that everybody in "Christian" America knows what Christians basically believe; but the reality is that vast numbers of Americans have almost no knowledge of our beliefs.) But for those of us who know that it does, this is both a window into the perceptions of others and a way for us to better understand our own unique faith by contrast --thus better equipping us to communicate the difference. Predicting what works of contemporary literature will stand the test of time is a chancy business. But I'd hazard the guess that Paolini's Inheritance Cycle will be recognized in succeeding centuries (if the world endures) as one of this century's more significant contributions to the fantasy genre.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Jun 07, 2012
| Nov 21, 2012
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Jun 07, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| B0050DESNM
| unknown
| 5.00
| 6
| May 10, 2011
| unknown
|
In the serious fantasy tradition, dragons tend to be evil, malevolent treasure-hoarding entities who eat beautiful virgins and basically exist in the...more
In the serious fantasy tradition, dragons tend to be evil, malevolent treasure-hoarding entities who eat beautiful virgins and basically exist in the story only so that a virtuous hero can kill them; while unicorns are noble figures of purity and virtue, embodiments of supernatural good. In humorous fantasy, though, they may be much more individuals who step way outside traditional models. The latter is exactly what Bodreau delivers in this quick and easy, wickedly funny yarn, which shows what might happen in a fantasy world where a dragon and a unicorn (both pretty much regular guys who a lot of guy readers in our world can easily relate to --except for the scales and the horn, and that sort of thing!) make a precarious living staging fake battles to the death for tourists who think it's real. (And the similarity to our world, with its tendency to reduce the numinous and fantastic to the stuff of media exploitation fodder for profit, imparts a subtle bite to the satire.) If you can enjoy your fantasy shorts firmly tongue in cheek and delivered with dry gallows humor, this might be one that you'll like! Chantal Boudreau is a fresh voice in contemporary speculative fiction, and definitely a writer to watch. This is the second of her stories I've read, and it won't be the last! (Required "full disclosure" --my electronic copy of this story was a generous gift from the author herself.)(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Dec 02, 2011
| Dec 02, 2011
|
Dec 02, 2011
| Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||||
| B0058ON61S
| unknown
| 4.81
| 21
| Jun 28, 2011
| Jun 28, 2011
|
Added note, Nov. 4, 2011: My copy was a gift from the co-author.] Though I haven't read all of them yet (there are quite a few, and the number keeps gr...more Added note, Nov. 4, 2011: My copy was a gift from the co-author.] Though I haven't read all of them yet (there are quite a few, and the number keeps growing --I plan to add to it soon myself!), I've become a fan of Giovanni Gelati's "Author's Lab" story collaborations. These are mostly humorous (the humor is usually of a zany variety) and tend to feature the authors as characters; this one follows that pattern, except that co-author and fantasy writer Miller doesn't himself appear in the story. Other than that, though, the series doesn't have a formula; the collaborating authors write in a variety of genres and styles, and the G-Man lets them be themselves. (The stories in the series also tend to have frequent cross-references to each other, which enhances the fun for those who've read more than one; but they can also stand alone.) Here, Giovanni's looking for a really special anniversary present for his wife --something that can even top his usual thoughtful gifts of something like 30 rolls of toilet paper. (Hey, he believes in spending big when it's for the love of his life. :-) ) A strange shop with an odd assortment of wares, that appears and disappears by magic, might just have what he wants; but then, travel to a fantasy world can be unpredictable. With a cute premise, a plot that comes from two authors but dovetails smoothly and satisfyingly, likeable characters, and chuckle-worthy humor, this was my favorite series entry so far!(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Jul 09, 2011
| Jul 09, 2011
|
Jul 09, 2011
| Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||||
| 160096401X
| 9781600964015
| 3.99
| 2,868
| 1858
| Jul 01, 2008
|
While I read this book several years ago (the 2006 date is a "best guess"), I'd actually started it back in 1990 and didn't finish it at that time. It...more
While I read this book several years ago (the 2006 date is a "best guess"), I'd actually started it back in 1990 and didn't finish it at that time. It gets off to kind of a slow start, and one element in the storyline was initially off-putting to me (but no spoilers here!). However, I'm glad I decided to give it a second and fairer chance; it proved to be a solid three-star fantasy that I enjoyed. Basically, it's a coming-of-age tale in a fantasy setting; and it's perhaps the first example in the modern tradition of a child/youth from the real world finding his way into a fantasy world. (Knowing that MacDonald was a favorite author of C. S. Lewis, it isn't hard to see the influence of this work on the idea behind the latter's Narnia series.) There are actually no explicit Christian references in the book, but the author's Christian worldview underlies the strongly moral tone and messages here. Of course, this is a 19th-century work, with Victorian diction throughout; readers who find that problematic will probably enjoy the book less than those of us who don't mind that!(less)
| Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Jan 2006
|
May 07, 2011
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 161215915X
| 9781612159157
| 4.33
| 15
| Feb 28, 2011
| Feb 28, 2011
|
(Note: Scott Stabler and I are Goodreads friends, but he did not give me my review copy of the book. He did, however, generously donate a signed copy...more
(Note: Scott Stabler and I are Goodreads friends, but he did not give me my review copy of the book. He did, however, generously donate a signed copy to Bluefield College's Easley Library, which is grateful to him and the many other authors, over the decades of the library's history, who have honored us with similar kindness.) This is, IMO, a strong start to a promising series! If I could give half stars, I'd have given 4 1/2; I rounded down rather than up only because this doesn't equal some of the previous five-star fantasy series I've read, such as LOTR, and because of a few stylistic flaws noted below. But it's a very good first novel with a lot of strong points, and I'm definitely on board for the whole series. (The ending requires at least a sequel, and there are internal hints that the completed work will be a trilogy.) Stabler recognizes Tolkien as an inspiration and influence, and it shows (as it does in almost all post-Tolkien works of English-speaking fantasy). Emah, the Lord of Sorrows, reminds one of Sauron the Dark Lord (both are off-stage malignant presences with malevolent designs for world domination, making their evil influence felt through their vile agents). Our setting is a pre-modern, low-tech fantasy world; elves and dwarves here are, like most in modern fantasy, recognizable variations on the Tolkien model. But the raw materials for that model go deep into European folklore before Tolkien, and the same is true for other fantasy tropes here that are common in the genre: supernatural power attached to physical objects; the figure of the seer, the unlikely hero entrusted with a great quest. And the plot does not, unlike that of some other fantasy novels, simply rip off the LOTR saga; Stabler is his own man, with his own plot and vision. (Unlike Tolkien, he's no philologist, and didn't devise whole new languages for his work; but while humans in his world have a "common tongue" that also serves as lingua franca in dealings with other races, many place/personal names and other translated phrases come from an older language that's apparently Elvish. And, as Scott was nice enough to explain to me in a personal message, about 90% of the terminology there derives from Hebrew and Greek, a touch that adds interest for readers who can pick up on that.) Comparisons to C.S. Lewis' Narnia series are also apt, though again Stabler's treatment is distinct. Like Lewis, though, he employs symbolic features that present the Christian Gospel; although he does this on a larger scale, where the whole story has parallels to the Judeo-Christian salvation history (this is not an allegory, but it can be said to have allegorical features), and the parallels are much more obvious than they are in the Narnia series. On the plus side, this emphasizes the eschatological message of the New Testament in a sound way that actually stresses the central truth of the concept, not the morass of bizarre interpretations of supposed end-time events and chronologies so popular in some modern Christian circles. (Along the same lines, the treatment of the elves' intention of forcibly taking back their long-abandoned homeland, settled for centuries by humans --with its obvious real-world parallel-- is a refreshing departure from the all-too-usual attitude in contemporary evangelical fiction; it's more like the stance of most Christians before the rise of dispensationalism, and of Orthodox Jews before 1948.) And although the call for individual personal decision is very clear here, Stabler puts it in the context of a cosmic struggle between Adon and Emah in which everybody needs to play his/her part, and which concerns us all; there isn't the tone of solipsistic sole concern with "MY eternal future, MY well-being, MY individual fire-insurance policy" that so often seems to dominate modern evangelism to the exclusion of any general concern for others and the big picture. The call for personal decision to place loyalty in the destined-to-return King is forceful, uncompromising, and crystal clear (though, because of the fantasy context, it lacks an appeal to Christian evidences). For more than a few non-Christian readers, it might come across as something of a hard sell, possibly as "preachy" (others might not connect the world of the book with our own and draw the parallels, but I think they're fairly obvious). But the author is clearly going for clarity of message, and achieves it. Message, though, doesn't swallow up story; there are several plot strands here involving very disparate and realistic characters that you come to like and care for (only one or two of these strands have anything like a resolution at the end), eventful and often intensely suspenseful story-telling, and many of the plot elements that attract readers to epic fantasy. (The good-bad lines between characters don't necessarily strictly follow religious affiliation, either; not all non-followers of Adon are bad people, and not all of his enrolled knights are good people. And "good" characters aren't necessarily perfect.) This is a self-published novel, apparently not edited by anybody but the author. (He also apparently did the proofreading, which I can testify is hard to do with your own work; there are some typos that he didn't catch, though not enough to be majorly problematical.) On the whole, he handles language well --much better than many first novelists I've read. He does sometimes, though, fall into the trap of trying to use big words to dress up the prose where they aren't needed, and they're sometimes used inappropriately or incorrectly (as in the twice-repeated use of "emancipated" when he means "emaciated," for instance). There are also a few places where I would say he overwrites: where character's mental angst in certain situations, or the degree of physical challenge in something, is elaborated with more verbiage than necessary, with the idea more repeated than developed. But these are relatively minor quibbles; this is a good addition to the tradition of Christian epic fantasy. If Stabler continues to develop as a writer, the succeeding volumes should be even better!(less) | Notes are private!
| The
|
1
| Jan 27, 2012
| Feb 24, 2012
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Apr 08, 2011
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| B004K1F7IA
| 3.82
| 430
| Feb 01, 2011
| Feb 01, 2011
|
This isn't really a book; it's a short story, available online or via an e-reader. Because it's very short (about three pages), I made an exception to...more
This isn't really a book; it's a short story, available online or via an e-reader. Because it's very short (about three pages), I made an exception to my usual practice and read it online. At first glance, it's a story about teen girls, perhaps 14-15, and their pet magical unicorn ponies, cute creatures with wings who can fly and talk. But be warned --there's absolutely nothing cute or heartwarming about it. It's an unsparing look at the lengths people (especially pubescent kids with unformed standards; but, if the truth be told, many adults too) will go to in a desperate hunger for validation by peer-group acceptance and approval, lengths that include cruelty and betrayal of real friendships in the pursuit of false ones; at the sick viciousness that lies at the heart of the clique mentality of trying to build yourself up in your own and others' estimation by putting somebody else down; and at the degree to which even victims can be willing turn on other victims just to get that crumb of approval from their "superior" abusers. And it's a look at what happens when you throw away your heart and your conscience in order to set some person or in-group up as an idol that can tell you what to do and how to think. For certain, it isn't a "feel-good" story; it's a feel-BAD story, in spades, which will break your heart, make you angry, and maybe even make you cry. Sometimes that's what we need to get moral lessons to stay with us. This one's going to stay with me, for a long, long time.(less)
| Notes are private!
| My
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2
| Mar 07, 2011
| Mar 07, 2011
|
Mar 07, 2011
| Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||||
| 038070613X
| 9780380706136
| 3.97
| 7,361
| 1987
| Jan 01, 1990
|
While the above Goodreads description of this book reads like it was a publisher's book-jacket blurb (and it probably was!), the basic description of...more
While the above Goodreads description of this book reads like it was a publisher's book-jacket blurb (and it probably was!), the basic description of the premise of this series opener is correct --and aside from its overwrought language, the implied assessment isn't far off the mark, either, as my rating shows. (If I could give half stars, I'd probably have added one.) That isn't to say that there aren't eye-rolling flaws here. Atlantis, according to Plato (who apparently created the legend out of whole cloth), was destroyed "9,000 years before Solon," or ca. 9600 B.C. In this book, Atlantis was real, but was destroyed in the late 300s A.D. (the mention of the Roman emperor Theodosius near the end of the novel anchors that date). This has something of the same effect produced in the various episodes of the old Xena, Warrior Princess TV series, in which Xena could encounter everybody from the biblical Abraham to Julius Caesar. (And anybody in between --Trojan War? David and Goliath? Sure; easy as pie!) In itself, that strains credibility like a rubber band, and it creates serious problems of internal consistency. The kind of cataclysm that destroyed Atlantis, for instance, would certainly have caused tidal waves in western Europe on the scale of the Asian ones of several years ago, but they don't happen here. And while Atlantis has trading relations with places in the Roman Empire like Phrygia, King Avallach apparently has heard of the "Roman tribe" only vaguely; and though Atlantean seers know about Mithraism and the cult of Isis, they haven't heard of Christianity. To put it bluntly, that's not believable. (It's also not realistic to portray Christianity as relatively new and unknown in Western Britain at this time; Theodosius had made it Rome's state religion in, I think, 380, but it had been widespread long before that, even in western Britain; St. Patrick came from there, in this era, and was already a third-generation Christian. And Isis was not the "female aspect" of Mithras; the two religions were completely unrelated, the one being Egyptian, the other Anatolian.) Atlantean culture, as the author depicts it, is a sort of grab-bag of elements from Greece, Crete (where he gets the "bull dancing" that plays such a large role) and the Semitic East, from which he gets the worship of Bel --though Bel or Baal was actually a sky/rain god, not a sun god as he is here. Lawhead also takes chronological liberties with his title character, who was a real person attested in actual Welsh sources, but really born around 530 A.D. While I'm nit-picking, I also don't think an infant could be wrapped in a water-tight bundle, as Taliesin was here, without suffocating! All of that said, Lawhead's storytelling ability here draws you in and enthralls you early on, so that you leave those concerns lurking in the background (or, at least, I did!). :-) The two alternating strands of narrative, Charis' and Taliesin's, which will finally intertwine, are eventful and attention-grabbing; the characterization is sharp (Charis was initially hard for me to relate to because her age in the first part of the book wasn't specified --I eventually deduced it to be 12 or 13-- but she grows into a splendid heroine); the Atlantean and Celtic worlds are vividly evoked, and some key scenes are drawn with great power. There's human drama here that grows out of believable human interrelationships (the magical element is muted; it takes a back seat to the natural events, or sometimes blends with the idea of spiritual reality); we have chaste romances that would warm any heart, violence and treachery, love and loss --and the powerful lesson that what we need for psychological wholeness is the guts to love in the face of loss, here in a world that's not perfect yet by a long shot. Some characteristic features of Lawhead's work are easily discernible: his strong female (and male) characters; his fascination with things Celtic; concepts like the Otherworld, the "time between times," the genuine creative power of music, and Druid mysticism in general. His evangelical faith shines through clearly as well (he reconciles it with the pre-Christian Celtic background in a way that C. S. Lewis, who was clearly one of his literary influences, would doubtless have approved!). Blended with the latter is a view of the coming Dark Ages, and Arthur's coming role in withstanding the darkness, that invests these with a cosmic spiritual significance. No spoilers here, but the ending of this novel is one that I did not see coming; and the quality of the writing in the last pages reaches a level that, so far in my reading life (and I'm 58) I've seen equaled, but not bettered. To conclude, I picked this book up only because it was a common read in a group, but it proved to be well worth the time. And if I don't rush to add the sequel to my to-read shelf, it's only because there are too many books there already; eventually, I would like to follow up on this series.(less) | Notes are private!
| It
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1
| Jan 31, 2011
| Feb 25, 2011
|
Jan 31, 2011
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0375851178
| 9780375851179
| 3.98
| 103,645
| Sep 20, 2008
| Sep 20, 2008
|
The Inheritance series was originally supposed to be the Inheritance trilogy, with this as the concluding volume; but Paolini decided that he wanted t...more
The Inheritance series was originally supposed to be the Inheritance trilogy, with this as the concluding volume; but Paolini decided that he wanted to, in his words, "explore and develop the character's personalities and relationships at a more natural pace," so he made this into a sort of transitional volume between Eldest and the final climactic conclusion. But this isn't purely a time-marking exercise; significant things happen here. A dwarf king will be chosen (and the stakes, and tension, will be considerable). The Varden will take the offensive. The question of whether or not Katrina and Roran will be reunited will be answered. A magic-endued sword will be forged. Major secrets will be revealed: about Eragon's parentage, and about the dragons --and the latter will hold the possible key to Galbatorix's power, and (maybe) how to overturn it. And possibly not all of the major characters will survive until the end.... Some of my Goodreads friends, in their reviews of this book, expressed some frustration with the slow pace. That's always been the converse of the author's attention to highly-detailed world building and character development, which are as rich here as ever. It's probably fair to say that the pace is slower here than in the previous volumes. That didn't strike me personally as a major problem, partly because I read this out loud to my wife, in bits and pieces as we had opportunity, over a period of more than a year; under those conditions, ANY book will seem to be slow-paced. :-) I was pleased that the lecture against religious belief put in Oromis' mouth in the second book wasn't repeated here; indeed, there were a couple of passages that subtly hinted at a more positive assessment (and at least showed that Eragon was thinking for himself in that area, rather than trying to be an uncritical clone of his mentor). As a friend also noted, we don't see as much of Arya the elf or Angela the herbalist here as we do in the previous books, and they're missed when they're not around, since they're two of Paolini's best creations. (Hopefully they'll be more on center stage in the final book.) As partial compensation, Roran comes even more into his own here. In summary, this is a strong continuation to the series, and a must-read for anyone who enjoyed the first two. (It would not stand alone well, nor be as easily appreciated if read first; this is one series where I'd say it's particularly important to read the books in order.) So, now it's on to the concluding volume, Inheritance!(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| May 26, 2011
| Jun 06, 2012
|
Nov 25, 2010
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0886774861
| 9780886774868
| 3.92
| 315
| Sep 03, 1991
| Sep 03, 1991
|
This anthology of 22 original stories is one installment of editor Bradley's long-running series of Sword and Sorceress collections, the first of whic...more
This anthology of 22 original stories is one installment of editor Bradley's long-running series of Sword and Sorceress collections, the first of which appeared in 1984. (My review of that one is here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... .) This is the second book of the series I've read (they stand alone, and can be enjoyed in any order). Virtually all of my general comments about the first book apply here as well, and two of the contributors to that volume, Diana L. Paxson and Jennifer Roberson, are represented here as well. Like John W. Campbell in the heyday of Astounding Stories, the late Bradley had her "stable" of writers who contributed frequently to her Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and to this and other long-running and one-time anthologies she edited, and whose careers she in many cases launched; several of them authored stories for this book. There's a good mix here of established writers like Mercedes Lackey and Josepha Sherman (and some who would go on --this was published in 1991-- to be much bigger names, such as Laurell K. Hamilton), and less known writers, some like Margaret Howes making their first sale of a story here. Three of the contributors are males. Besides the fact that they're all swords-and-sorcery tales with female protagonists (warriors, sorceresses, a thief, etc.), the other common denominator of the collection is quality. Most of the stories are serious, often evoking very strong and complex emotional reactions and making you think; a few are rife with situational humor. But there isn't a one of them that's weak or poorly written; the craftsmanship here is uniformly high, though some selections are more substantial than others. All the stories have the trappings of fantasy; magic works in their worlds, for instance, and dragons may be included in the fauna. Edged weapon action, and/or lethal magical duels, may be a key part of the plot. But at bottom, most of these stories are really about people, and human concerns that are the same in any world: good and evil, right and wrong, personal growth and identity, coming of age, family and marital love, growing older, questions of what really matters in life. Several of the heroines could be called rough-edged; you might not approve of everything they do, or have done, and you aren't necessarily expected to. But none of them are bad human beings; they're all women I could understand and respect, and whose choices and safety I came to care about. (As in life, not all of these tales have unambiguously happy endings.) A few of the protagonists are series characters, like Lackey's Kethry and Tarma from her Valdemar series, or Paxson's lesbian warrior-woman Shanna. Their stories here have a basic level of completeness in themselves; but you'd probably appreciate "Wings of Fire" better if (unlike me) you've read previously in the Valdemar books to have more understanding of the world and the magic system, and "Ytarra's Mirror" definitely feels like a bead on the necklace of Shanna's story arc. I'd also say that Paula Helm Murray's "Kayli Kidnapped" has enough complex back story, and leaves enough unresolved issues, that it could work very well as a chapter in a novel. (But I still liked all of these!) Some of the most wrenchingly evocative stories here include Rima Saret's "Marayd's Escape," Cynthia Ward's "The Opal Skull," Jere Dunham's "East of the Dawn," and Sherman's "The Price of the Wind." Hamilton's "Geese" is a fine story that doesn't descend into the porn that the author later became known for (it has some sensuality, but not in a bad way.) Picking favorites here is really hard to do, but (besides any already mentioned) some I could designate as such are Roberson's "Fair Play," Howes' "Retirement Plan," Dave Smed's "Trading Swords," Vera Nazarian's "Beauty and His Beast," and Linda Gordon's "Stained Glass."(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Aug 22, 2012
| Sep 05, 2012
|
Aug 15, 2010
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0812564626
| 9780812564624
| 3.55
| 6,005
| 2003
| Oct 01, 2004
|
Throughout most of the preceding books of the series, Alvin's ultimate goal has been to understand how he's supposed to bring into being the "Crystal...more
Throughout most of the preceding books of the series, Alvin's ultimate goal has been to understand how he's supposed to bring into being the "Crystal City" he saw in the vision he had as a child. Here, the pieces of that puzzle will fall into place, bringing the series to a satisfying ending point, though not a tidy HEA to wrap everything up with a neat bow --in this world (and in our real one! :-)), Card makes clear, life and its challenges are an ongoing story. One of my Goodreads friends who reviewed this series, rather worn out by its 6-volume length, was pleased that this book seemed to be consciously shortened, as if the author were deliberately trying to bring the saga to an end with minimum delay. I had the same perception in places, but I didn't view it as a plus; I wasn't as bothered by the length of the series as a whole, because I thought the detailed world-building and the interrelationships of the characters added depth and texture to the story as a whole. Some of that was sacrificed here, I felt. For instance, the trip to Nueva Barcelona isn't described directly, even though it produced some incidents with real significance to the plot; these are referred to retrospectively, but I'd have preferred to have the book begin there. Card's Mexico --still Aztec-ruled; in this world, the Aztecs (called "Mexica" here) succeeded in overthrowing and driving out the Spaniards, and continue, in the 1820s, to practice large-scale human sacrifice-- is one of this series' most intriguing settings, but he doesn't develop it as much as he could have. And plotlines such as the relationship between Verily and Purity could have been profitably explored much more. That accounted for the rating of four stars here, rather than five. Nevertheless, the book was still both enjoyable and profound. The plot took on an epic cast; Card's writing remains lyrical in places, and humorous in others (my wife not infrequently laughed out loud over it); and his moral and psychological insight doesn't falter. His characterizations continue to be marvelous: it's fun to see Arthur Stuart growing up, Calvin is as infuriating as ever, new fictional characters La Tia, Marie d'Espoir, and "Papa Moose" and "Mama Squirrel" are masterpieces, and a young Abe Lincoln heads the cast of real-life figures here. (Texan history buffs, and Alamo enthusiasts, may not like the portrayals of Stephen Austin and Jim Bowie.) And the message is ultimately a good one, and thoroughly relevant to real life --like Alvin and Measure, all of us are called to "love the Making," to spend our lives using what we've been given, what we are and what we have, to build up and create something good that makes the world better, instead of tearing down and destroying. That message is certainly compatible with a theistic, religious view of the universe, but it's cast in essentially nonsectarian, secular terms. This could be said of the series as a whole. In this book, the rescue of the slaves and the downtrodden from Nueva Barcelona, their wilderness wanderings, and their crossing of the Mizzippy (Mississippi) parallels events in the history of ancient Israel (also escaped slaves). But though La Tia says "we the book of Exodus, us," Alvin doesn't claim any Divine mandate and doesn't bring any religious message. He believes in God, and characters give thanks to God at some points; but any participation by God in the narrative is veiled behind secondary causes, implicit rather than explicit, and without any direct revelation. Indeed, not all the characters are Christian; Tenska-Tawa and La Tia draw their spirituality from Native American and African, not biblical, roots. The name ultimately picked for the main building in Alvin's city is the Tabernacle; but it's not a place of worship or preaching, and he explicitly says it isn't intended as a church. It's made of crystal the surfaces of which will show visions; and two of the characters invest it with a religious significance ("instead of you go and a priest pretend to be God, we go inside and find out where he live in our heart! ...In the Bible, the tabernacle was a place where only the priest would go.... But our tabernacle, everybody's the priest, everybody can go inside, man and woman, to see what they see and hear what they hear"). But the contents of the visions described are of a practical, not theological, character; and even the quotations above (which Alvin himself doesn't make, or endorse), while they certainly express a kind of theological viewpoint, certainly don't express one that's recognizably Mormon --indeed, it sounds much more characteristic of Low-church Protestant evangelicalism than of hierarchical, clergy- dominated Mormonism. Also, the dates and biographical details of Alvin's life bear no similarities to Joseph Smith's (beyond sharing the last name Smith, and the location of the Crystal City in what would be, in our world, Illinois, where Nauvoo was built); the social and demographic makeup of Alvin's following is nothing like Joseph Smith's, and as noted in reviews of earlier books in the series, the social messages here have no similarity to those of 19th-century Mormonism; and there is a total absence in Alvin's teaching of any attempt to found a religious movement, or to proclaim any Mormon doctrines (readers will look in vain for any suggestion of plurality of gods, polygamy, long-buried ancient scriptures, etc.). As I've said before, I think that in this parallel world, Alvin Smith does replace Joseph Smith. But replacing him isn't at all the same as duplicating him; and I think the above facts establish that this series is not, per se, about Mormonism, nor is it veiled Mormon propaganda as such.(less) | Notes are private!
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| May 29, 2010
| Jun 22, 2010
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May 29, 2010
| Mass Market Paperback
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| 000710653X
| 9780007106530
| 3.98
| 10,017
| 1977
| 2000
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None
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1
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Mar 14, 2010
| Paperback
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| 0375840400
| 9780375840401
| 3.89
| 132,881
| Aug 23, 2005
| Mar 23, 2007
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This is a strong continuation to Paolini's Inheritance series, and it isn't (unlike the second volumes of some series) just a time-marking exercise be...more
This is a strong continuation to Paolini's Inheritance series, and it isn't (unlike the second volumes of some series) just a time-marking exercise between the beginning and the conclusion; significant events happen here, which move the plot in major ways. All of the strengths of the first volume continue to be present here: brilliant, detailed world-building (we get to see much more of the society of the dwarves, and especially the elves), fully-realized characterization, attention to relationships and ethical issues, vivid action scenes, and high- quality prose. I particularly liked the fact that the Urgals are revealed here to be NOT simply vicious, degraded animals genetically incapable of decency; there's a really valuable lesson there about ethnic and other prejudices. The addition of another (exciting!) plot strand involving Roran and the Carvahall villagers, and the deft way that Paolini cuts back and forth between them, enhances the storyline. However, I did rate this book a star lower than the series opener. This was due to just one short section --a little over two pages, though it seems much longer when you read it, as I did, in short bits spread over several days!-- where the author sets up a lecture, using the elf Oromis as an authority figure to be his mouthpiece, for Atheistic Materialism 101. All writers reflect their worldview in their writing, especially if it's srongly held, and they're entitled to; but it's most effective, both in a didactic and a literary sense, when it's allowed to develop naturally in the events or symbolism of the story. A straightforward sermon, on the other hand, using hackneyed old chestnuts that have been bandied about (and rebutted) for centuries as if they were fresh revelations, and delivered in Oromis' cocksure, know-it-all style, complete with straw men and an interlocutor to pose half-hearted objections as set-ups, has about the same effects as the worst didactic passages in Neoclassical fiction (though Paolini spares us the ponderous Neoclassical diction). I think even many atheists would honestly be somewhat bored by it. :-) It is, though, brief --and won't stop me from going on the next book!(less) | Notes are private!
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| May 26, 2011
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Sep 05, 2009
| Paperback
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| 0375826696
| 9780375826696
| 3.72
| 485,206
| Feb 01, 2002
| Apr 2005
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With Eragon, the first volume of the Inheritance series, teenage author Paolini established himself as a force to be reckoned with in the fantasy genr...more
With Eragon, the first volume of the Inheritance series, teenage author Paolini established himself as a force to be reckoned with in the fantasy genre! This is an exceptionally well-written and well-conceived first novel, which far outshines the efforts of many much older writers. This is epic fantasy, fully comparable in scale to Tolkien's LOTR series. Contemporary fantasy, of course, is a crowded field, in which it isn't easy for a given work to stand out from the pack. Like much modern work in the genre, this book certainly owes much to the influence to Tolkien; the conceptions of elves and dwarves, for instance, no doubt trace their literary lineage to him. And like the LOTR series, this one boasts a clear conflict between accurately-assessed good and evil, with the fate of a world in balance between oppression and tyranny vs. freedom and justice. (Though unlike Tolkien's, Paolini's vision is not necessarily grounded in Christian terms, and such religion as exists in his Alagaesia is a vague polytheism.) This is a struggle in which force has to be met with force, and untried regular people have to answer a call to heroism and sacrifice. With a teenage farmboy as hero, the novel also has in it a strong element of the coming-of-age archetype, as do many fantasy tales. However, the plot and characterizations here are not so clearly a Tolkien knock-off as was, say, Brooks' Sword of Shannara. The action here, for instance, does not revolve around any quest for a magical artifact. Brom, the title character's older mentor, is not a virtual Gandalf clone (unlike Brook's Alanon). Like Sauron, the villain here is an unseen figure, a magically-powered tyrant pulling strings offstage on a geopolitical scale; but King Galbatorix's human background and character are sketched in a way that gives him more depth and personal reality than Sauron ever comes across as having. And Tolkien is not the only literary influence here; Paolini's conception of dragons is drastically unlike the greedy, dull brutes of Tolkien's (and Lewis') works. Intelligent, moral, possessed of a sense of humor and deeply affectionate to the human she bonded with upon hatching, Saphira much more resembles the dragons created by Anne McCaffrey in her Dragonriders of Pern series, as does the telepathic relationship of dragon and human Rider. (My wife is a fan of the latter series -which explains her attraction to this one. :-) ) But to his credit, Paolini does not (at least in this novel) copy the link between dragon and dragon Rider sexuality that is --to me, at least-- the least attractive feature of McCaffrey's picture. Finally, unlike most fantasy writers before him, Paolini has given thought to creating a distinct, rule-bound explanation of how magic functions (it isn't an all-purpose deus ex machina). Contrary to some claims, not ALL fantasy fans will love this work --as evidenced by the wildly divergent ratings just within my friend circle! Paolini is bent on telling a long, BIG story, and he tells it at a careful pace that intersperses occasional scenes of fast, violent action with stretches of character development and world building (and in the latter area, while he's not equal to Tolkien --nobody ever will be!-- he's very, very good) that are essential to making us fully enter into the experience of this world and these character's lives. He's also a highly visual writer --he makes you genuinely SEE the scenes he describes. This makes for very long books --and the next one, Eldest (which Barb and I have already started) is even longer. Some readers find this daunting; and some would prefer a faster narrative pace and more compressed style. Personally, though, I didn't have a problem with this --I felt there was a payoff in every sentence he wrote, and that the length of the journey was worth it. In many cases, I don't finish series I start reading; I often feel that the first book offers all the literary satisfaction of the author's concept and that the following books are just cash-producing filler. This is a series that I plan to finish!(less) | Notes are private!
| My
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| Jun 27, 2010
| Oct 20, 2010
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Sep 05, 2009
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| 0312850530
| 9780312850531
| 3.68
| 8,738
| Sep 1995
| Sep 01, 1995
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Card continues his top-notch storytelling in this fourth volume of Alvin's saga. One of my Goodreads friends was distinctly displeased with this insta...more
Card continues his top-notch storytelling in this fourth volume of Alvin's saga. One of my Goodreads friends was distinctly displeased with this installment, complaining that it brought the series no closer to its resolution, and introduced characters and subplots only for the sake of lengthening the story. My take on these points, though, is quite different. The characters and subplots don't simply lengthen the saga; they add depth and complexity to it. You can tell a great (in the epic sense) tale --and what Card has in mind is indeed an epic tale, the story of a life-work of monumental moral significance-- at short length, like a condensed, thin-volume overview history of the Civil War; and such concise overviews serve an educational purpose. In real life, though, that kind of process isn't short and neat and linear; instead, it's more like a kaleidoscope with a lot of different people's contributions and a lot of messy subplots, all of which add to the total picture, and the people living through it don't experience it as something hurried through. Although Card's is a fictional history in an alternate America, his method of story-telling is the kind that would more accurately reflect reality as it's lived --to keep the Civil War analogy, it's not a concise, 150 page overview, but more like Shelby Foote's monumental narrative in three massive volumes. :-) Nor is it correct to say that this volume doesn't advance the plot of the series as a whole. True, when it ends, Alvin doesn't know any more about how to build the Crystal City of his vision than he does at the beginning. But his method of trying to learn how will change in this book; an important issue will be resolved; and he'll gain two new companions whose roles will undoubtedly be pivotal. In this book, too, the character of Alvin's brother and rival Calvin will come into its own, as a major present (and future) force in the plot. And not to include any spoilers, but this installment of the series will be epochal in Alvin and Peggy's relationship. Along the way, Card will show us glimpses of the best and worst of human behavior, and the muddled intermediates of fallible, confused humans; depict moral redemption in the most apparently unlikely individuals, and testify to the power of forgiveness in one of the most luminous passages of the series. His world-building fascinates, and sweeps us from frontier America to London and Paris; his characters live and breathe (his portrayal of Balzac has me intriguied enough to be resolved to read Pere Goriot!); and the alternate-history riff on real historical events, in a world where things unfold in a way that's the same but different, both sometimes in surprising ways, never ceases to delight --at least for me; that's one of the chief things I like about alternate history, and that draws me to it. :-) Not surprisingly, I'm eager to go on to the next volume, Heartfire!(less) | Notes are private!
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| Jan 20, 2010
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Jun 09, 2009
| Hardcover
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| 0441080383
| 9780441080380
| 4.06
| 984
| 1968
| unknown
|
In creating the barbarian soldier of fortune Fafhrd and his partner, the short-statured swordsman known only by his nickname the Gray Mouser, and the...more
In creating the barbarian soldier of fortune Fafhrd and his partner, the short-statured swordsman known only by his nickname the Gray Mouser, and the fantasy world of Nehwon that they inhabit, Leiber was influenced by his sword-and-sorcery sub-genre predecessors, notably Robert E. Howard and E. R. Eddison. But he also wanted (according to his preface for this novel) to create "fantasy heroes closer to true human stature" than the likes of Conan. He also approached their stories with a sense of humor that's usually lacking in the work of the first generation of writers in this tradition --this isn't "humorous fantasy" as such, and people and animals can die violent and sometimes very unpleasant deaths in it, but it does have a comic leavening at times that ably relieves the tension. Concerning his pairs' moral qualities, Leiber also wrote that they "are rogues through and through, though each has in him a lot of humanity and at least a diamond chip of the spirit of true adventure. They drink, they feast, they wench, they brawl, they steal, they gamble, and surely they hire out their swords to powers that are only a shade better, if that, than the villains.... yet I don't think they're touched with evil as [two Eddison antiheroes:], rather they're rouges in a decadent world where you have to be a rogue to survive...." They're also brave, loyal to each other, and honorable in their own way; they don't rob the poor or bully the weak, and at various times Leiber shows one or the other of them rescuing an innocent at risk to himself, showing kindness and consideration, or being willing to forgive a wrong suffered. The author depicts (and implicitly condemns) genuine evil very clearly in his sadistic, power-mad, treacherous villains; and when the chips are down, this is the sort of evil that Fafhrd and the Mouser instinctively line up against. As a prose stylist. Leiber is the equal of any writer that I've read; his descriptions and narration are full of sensory appeal and telling details that ably limn a scene or a character, create a mood, or evoke the reader's emotions. In this novel, he created what has to be one of the most original premises the fantasy genre has ever known; and he develops it, and the other details of his fantasy world, with a richly exuberant imagination. IMO, on the strength of this work alone, he shows himself worthy to stand in the very first rank of sword-and- sorcery authors.(less) | Notes are private!
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| Mar 28, 2009
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Mar 12, 2009
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| 0765356155
| 9780765356154
| 3.74
| 70,447
| 2004
| Aug 01, 2006
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When I visited Australia in the summer of 2007, I wanted to take along a very thick book for the long plane flights; at over 1,000 pages in the paperb...more
When I visited Australia in the summer of 2007, I wanted to take along a very thick book for the long plane flights; at over 1,000 pages in the paperback edition, this one fit the bill. Of course, that was risky; a dull book of that length would have been torture. But there was never a reason for worry on that score --this book was a delight from start to finish! Many fantasies have, to varying degrees, a considerable amount of commonality in conception, characters, and plot; but in this novel, Clarke has created something genuinely unique. As noted in the description above, the setting here is early 19th- century England in the grip of the Napoleonic Wars, the mannered, class-conscious world of Jane Austen; but this is an alternate England, in which the northern portion, for 300 years during the Middle Ages, was ruled by the Raven King, a powerful sorcerer who learned his art in the Faerie realm, and who created a tradition (though it has become moribund) of English magic. (The magic here is strictly of the incantational, not the invocational, sort, though it can involve traffic with the ruling powers of Faerie --something the title characters learn has the decided potential for more harm than good.) Against this well-realized backdrop, Clarke depicts the revival of practical magic with an assurance that makes the reader feel that, yes --this is exactly the way such a thing could have happened, if it were possible! Her characters are well-drawn, brought to life with a rare degree of artistry; and even when they're involved in fantastic situations --this is, after all, a book where people can travel, through this and other worlds, by stepping in and out of mirrors, and where a city can be magically transferred to another continent-- she makes their experiences plausible. The 19th-century flavor of the style won't be to every reader's taste, but to me it was a perfect fit for the setting; and the numerous "historical" footnotes not only created an illusion of verisimilitude, but helped to elaborate an extraordinarily detailed achievement in world-building. Clarke evokes both wonder and dead-pan humor with equal facility. While she has a moral framework --and definitely some evil characters whose comeuppance the reader longs to see (but no spoilers here! :-)), the primary conflict here is not between good and evil people, per se, but between flawed and fallible people who have conflicting perspectives and make mistakes, and, sometimes, learn something from them. Yes, it's a story about magic --but it's also, more basically, a story about friendship and rivalry, about the difference between what really matters and what we think matters, and about having the courage to find your destiny and be who you're meant to be.(less) | Notes are private!
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| not set
| Sep 2007
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Dec 28, 2008
| Paperback
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| 0060855924
| 9780060855925
| 3.91
| 92,269
| 1983
| Sep 13, 2005
|
Having recently read Swords of Lankhmar, I was able to recognize a marked influence of Leiber on this opening volume of Pratchett's popular Discworld...more
Having recently read Swords of Lankhmar, I was able to recognize a marked influence of Leiber on this opening volume of Pratchett's popular Discworld series. Like Nehwon, the Discworld is a swords-and-sorcery flavored fantasy realm where the social environment is generally not a benevolent one; Pratchett's corrupt and decadent city of Ankh-Morpork has certain similarities to Lankhmar, and Bravd and the Weasel here are very reminiscent of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Potentates on the Discworld even use albatrosses like carrier pigeons to transmit messages to each other, like their counterparts on Nehwon. But Pratchett provides some original touches all his own, especially in the Discworld's cosmology --as some primitive peoples once imagined the Earth to be, this fantasy world actually is flat, resting on the backs of four super-giant elephants who in turn stand on the carapace of an even more gigantic turtle, circled by a small sun and moon and slowly drifting through space in an alternate universe of flat worlds. (Pratchett suggests that different universes have different Creators/ pantheons, a literary conceit he uses to establish that the Discworld's panoply of not-always-nice "gods" --another feature it shares with Nehwon-- isn't intended to have any theological message for our world.) Most of Pratchett's readers probably first encounter his work with this series. My first acquaintance with his fiction, however, was through his excellent Bromeliad Trilogy; and this novel suffers by comparison, and by comparison to Leiber. The Bromeliad novels are exuberantly humorous, but they have serious messages as well. Swords of Lankhmar has its humorous aspects, but it's kept within the bounds of the psychologically possible; and while you can laugh at, or with, Leiber's heroes at times, you can also respect them. This book is often literally laugh-aloud funny, but the humor here is virtually always satirical or gallows humor with a cynical tone, and it swallows up the whole book --it isn't leaven for the story, but rather the whole reason for the story's telling in the first place. Also, the quality of the humor, and the characterizations, is much more cartoonish than Leiber's (barbarian warrior Hrun, for instance, has to pause and move his lips to subtract one from three); the book is essentially a parody of swords-and-sorcery fantasy, rather than a serious example of it. Unlike the Bromeliad books, it has no serious message; it's more in the nature of cotton candy or funnel cakes for the brain --everybody enjoys the latter for a treat, but probably not for an exclusive diet. And unlike Leiber's heroes, Rincewind inspires no admiration; he's a coward and opportunist solely concerned with his own interests and saving his own skin. (Twoflower actually engenders more respect, but his calm unflappability usually stems from a total naivety about the situation.) Rather than being divided into chapters, the book is broken down into four major sections. In each of these, Rincewind and Twoflower are introduced to new characters and situations, which makes the plot rather episodic and disjointed. (My wife, to whom I read the book out loud, complained that we just get used to one set of circumstances and people before Pratchett pulls us away to another.) Apart from that flaw, the writing is vivid and interesting, the plot busy and eventful, and Pratchett's imagination wildly fertile (the idea of the Luggage was absolutely inspired, but there are other ideas here just as original). In keeping with the author's comedic intent, the violence here usually isn't lethal; there's not much bad language, and while Pratchett's humor can occasionally be a bit off-color, there's no sex in the book. Since the second volume of the series continues the adventures of the tourist-wizard pair, both my wife and I plan to keep our eyes open for a copy!(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Apr 11, 2009
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Oct 20, 2008
| Paperback
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| 1841490326
| 9781841490328
| 3.64
| 7,220
| 1998
| 2001
|
This fifth volume of the series finds Alvin and Peggy now married, and expecting the birth of their first child, but separated for much of the book by...more
This fifth volume of the series finds Alvin and Peggy now married, and expecting the birth of their first child, but separated for much of the book by separate missions far apart geographically. His continuing quest for understanding of how to build the "Crystal City" of his vision will take him and his small group of companions to New England, to observe a model human community founded on solidly moral and religious principles. But this is a New England where the Puritan theocracy never fell, and which still hangs "witches" --including anybody who has any visible supernatural knack. Meanwhile, Peggy still hopes to emancipate the slaves AND prevent the looming bloody war over slavery that all the possible threads of the futures she foresees tell her is impending. That will take her on a journey to Camelot (known in our world as Charleston, SC) to seek an audience with the King-in-exile, a mission as dangerous in its own way as Alvin's. And in the background (and sometimes the foreground) is always the wild card posed by Alvin's jealous younger brother Calvin, possessed of significant but untrained powers as a Maker himself, but capricious, vain and lacking in morals and maturity. A lot of the trademark strengths of this series are evident here, including Card's strong storytelling skills, sometimes singing prose, and attention to ethical and psychological verities. The latter underlies his outstanding characterizations, both of his wholly fictional characters --new ones here include the slave girl Fishy, the confused and conflicted Purity, and the malevolent witch hunter Micah Quill (whom you want to reach into the page and strangle)-- and the ones who are counterparts of real people in our world, with the same personalities but their situations changed by the changed circumstances here, including Honore de Balzac, John James Audubon, Denmark Vesey, and an aged John Adams. (Readers should remember that this is a version of history in which Adams and Jefferson didn't reconcile in old age; so the jaundiced view of Jefferson that Adams expresses, and the ideas he attributes to him, don't necessarily reflect Card's own view.) And a strong point of his characterizations is the recognition of the mixture of good and bad, saint and sinner, that can live in us all. "There's no one who doesn't have memories he wishes he didn't have," Peggy says at one point. "And there are crimes that arise from --from decent desires gone wrong, from justified passions carried too far. Crimes that began only as mistakes. I've learned never to judge people. Of course I judge whether they're dangerous or not, or whether they did right or wrong, how can anyone live without judging? What I mean is, I can't condemn them. A few, yes, a few who love the suffering of others, or who never think of others at all, worthless souls who exist only to satisfy themselves. But those are rare. Do you even know what I'm talking about?" (I think I can answer that with an affirmative, from my own observations of life!) This time, though, I didn't give the book the five stars I gave the preceding series volumes. That's only because I felt Card dropped the ball by not paying attention to some significant details, both in his world-building and his chronology. The previous book was explicitly clear that Appalachee had been admitted to the U.S. as a slave state (in fact, Jackson, who was from there, became President in that book). But at the outset here, we're told that the question of Appalachee's admission to the U.S., and the continuation of slavery there, are still moot points (and a serious bone of contention between the U.S. and the Crown Colonies). For a reader who takes the details of the alternate world seriously, and regards Card's attention to alternate history as a strength of the series and a key part of its appeal, that kind of sloppy mistake is a defect of craftsmanship that bulks large --and should, because I think readers should demand attention to detail from writers! Also, in the earlier part of the book, Card appears to forget that given the chronology here, Arthur Stuart is only twelve years old --his voice wouldn't be changing at that age nor, probably, would he have been interested in girls (kids in that era weren't fed on hormone- drenched meat, and didn't suffer from precocious puberty as a result). But those flaws didn't keep me from really liking the book! A major interpretive issue with this series is the role Card's Mormon beliefs play into it, and to what extent Alvin is a clone of our world's Joseph Smith (not, IMO, a very big extent, though a comparison exists). The only indication of a direct influence of Mormon theology so far in the series appears in one place here, where Alvin reflects to the effect that God, having made the world, wanted the people in it to "be Makers with Him." (Alvin's magical knack involves considerable power to re-shape matter at the molecular level by "looking" into it and willing the small particles to line up the way he wants, but Card posits that people in general may have some talents along this line and can learn to exercise them by training and practice.) This line can be interpreted as a reference to the Mormon idea of salvation as (for men) eventual deification --and given Card's Mormonism, it's not improbable that he sees it that way. But it's one line in a 336-page book --and it can be interpreted (if you want to apply D. H. Lawrence's "trust the tale and not the teller" adage :-)) in a less extreme way. (From an evangelical perspective, there is a very real sense in which God does want us --and even equips us-- to be "makers" with him: he gives us talent, creativity and imagination that involves bringing into being a great many products of human craftsmanship, inventiveness and hard work that wouldn't exist without us, and that we can take satisfaction in.)(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Jan 20, 2010
| May 24, 2010
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Oct 20, 2008
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| 1841490237
| 9781841490236
| 3.74
| 9,958
| 1989
| unknown
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As the above description indicates, this installment of the series finds Alvin at a transitional stage of his life, learning how (and how not) to use...more
As the above description indicates, this installment of the series finds Alvin at a transitional stage of his life, learning how (and how not) to use his unique powers as a Maker, in the service of the vision of the Crystal City which Tenskwa-Tawa, the Prophet, showed him as a child. But it also marks a transitional time in the life of Peggy, the "torch" (seer) whose destiny has been entwined with his since she was a toddler five years old. Her visions of possible futures are manifold, depending on people's choices; but though she loves Alvin, almost all the potential paths she sees show him marrying her only out of duty and being deeply unhappy --unless she acts decisively and drastically to change that future. Despite its transitional character, IMO this volume does not exhibit any sign of the third-in-a-series slump one reviewer professed to detect. Card is not marking time here; both Alvin and Peggy's growth experiences are profound and significant. And just as the author, in the previous book, came to grips in his alternate world with one of the two basic defining moral challenges of real 19th-century American history (the treatment of the Indians), here he comes to grips with the other --slavery. This results in the introduction of a new major character, Peggy's little half-black foster brother, Arthur Stuart. And from start to finish, the machinations and hovering presence of the Unmaker are never far away. For me as a reader, the quality of Card's storytelling continues to please and fascinate. Peggy's departure from Hatrack River on the eve of Alvin's arrival doesn't come across as a cowardly flight, but as a courageous initiative to grab a better future for herself and Alvin, even if it takes effort and sacrifice. I like the fact that the battle with the Unmaker isn't primarily a physical duel of contending powers, but a moral struggle that Alvin has to wage inside himself. And unlike some reviewers, I don't have a problem with Card's use of frontier dialect in his narrative voice (modified to black African-influenced slave dialect in the scenes viewed through the eyes of Arthur's mother). To me, his command of the different dialects of speakers in his world makes it, and them, come more alive --much like the effect of the dialects in Avram Davidson's stories set in his imaginary British Hidalgo. And the down-home narrative voice, like that of Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John (here, the narrator isn't named, but the reader can recognize Taleswapper's speaking style) immerses one more in the story, where a 20th-century standard English voice could have been more distancing. Like the preceding book, though, this one has its moments of grim brutality that will --or certainly should-- horrify and anger you; no punches are pulled in showing what a fundamentally hideous institution slavery was, how dehumanizing racism is (for both racist and victim), or the extent of the moral deformation wrought by both. I'm eagerly looking forward to continuing the series' unfolding story!(less) | Notes are private!
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| Sep 13, 2009
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Oct 20, 2008
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| 0812524268
| 9780812524260
| 3.76
| 11,007
| 1988
| Jul 15, 1992
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Card continues, in this second installment of his Alvin Maker series, to exhibit the same literary artistry that was evident in the first volume, Seve...more
Card continues, in this second installment of his Alvin Maker series, to exhibit the same literary artistry that was evident in the first volume, Seventh Son (see my review of that title). There is no slackening of his excellent prose, credible characterization, and strong world- building. Where the first book revolved around Alvin and his family, however, this one finds him caught up in major events in his world. In our world, the leaders of Native American resistance to White expansion in the Old Northwest were Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet, one the political/military leader, the other the spiritual leader. Both are in Card's world as well (the former spelled Ta-Kumsaw; here, Indian personal and place names are often transliterated differently, while still recognizable); but here the author posits a basic philosophical difference between the two that didn't exist in the real world: while his brother advocates armed military resistance to the whites, the Prophet counsels pacifism and a strategy based on Indian mysticism and magic. (Beginning in the first book, Alvin and the Prophet played pivotal roles in each other's lives; here, Card begins his narrative back when Alvin is six, in order to retell that episode from the Prophet's perspective.) His goal is a different outcome in the relations of Whites and Reds than the one we're familiar with; but that isn't a foregone conclusion, for despite the better relations between the two in Card's U.S. and the independent state of Apalachee, the frontier still harbors influential whites like Andrew Jackson who call for Indian removal --and those, like William Henry Harrison, plotting genocide and using whiskey as an instrument for it. And French authorities in Detroit still claim the Ohio valley and pay Indians for Anglo scalps. (Meanwhile, Canada's governor Lafayette plots with Robespierre for a French Revolution; and the French king's ablest general, Napoleon Bonaparte, dreams of military glory in his new assignment in North America.) Unlike some Goodreads reviewers, I didn't find Card's Mormonism either obvious or intrusive in either book. The Prophet's spiritual message is centered in mystical communion with the land, without making any specific reference to Deity as such. In Card's alternate world, the bondedness of the Indians with the natural world is much more intense and real than it was in the actual world; and Card clearly sympathizes strongly with it, and with the Prophet's pacifism. Both of these are attitudes not characteristic of traditional Mormon thought, which didn't treat Indians very positively (the Book of Mormon regards their dark skin color as a curse imposed for spiritual shortcomings). Card, however, sees them as a virtual chosen race for stewardship of the New World, an attitude also evident in his story "America" in The Folk of the Fringe. If I have any criticism of this book, it would be that Card seems to dismiss any possibility that any way of life that deviates at all from that of traditional Indian culture (as he idealizes it) could ever hope to be compatible with responsible and sustainable care for the land and the natural world, and that whites are racially or culturally incapable of living in harmony with the earth. That isn't a viewpoint that encourages white readers to even try to incorporate a "green" ethic into their lifestyles! But even so, this is a really absorbing and rewarding novel, with a lot to say.(less) | Notes are private!
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| Jul 15, 2009
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Oct 20, 2008
| Mass Market Paperback
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| 0886776570
| 9780886776572
| 3.92
| 292
| 1995
| Jul 01, 1995
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Another reliable winner from Bradley's long-running anthology series, with a good mix of genre stalwarts and talented newcomers. For once, I read this...more
Another reliable winner from Bradley's long-running anthology series, with a good mix of genre stalwarts and talented newcomers. For once, I read this volume without interspersing it between other books, and read the stories almost entirely in order. In this case, the really outstanding stories tend to be clustered closer to the back; but most of the earlier ones are also solid, competently-told tales of their type. The one worthless clunker in the collection, IMO, is Carolyn J. Bahr's "Does the Shoe Fit You Now?" a cynical and predictable re-imagining of the supposed situation some time after the part of the story of Cinderella that we know, from an anti-male, anti-marriage standpoint. It preaches to the choir of women who've married self-centered drunks and given up on the male gender as a result; but like most tracts in the form of "fiction," it doesn't succeed well as either, unless the aim was solely to resonate with that audience. (And news flash: physical work is going to a part of ANY lifestyle, married or single, that involves earning one's keep and contributing to the world.) Nor does it really fit the collection theme: it has no fantasy element apart from the nominal "fairy-tale" connection, Cinderella is neither warrior woman nor sorceress, and stealthily running away from a bad situation without trying to change it (especially when that involves reneging on a commitment) is not a strong or "empowering" action. However, the other selections more than make up for that one. 17-year-old (at the time this was published, in 1995) Karen Luk and L. S. Silverthorne contribute good exercises in humorous fantasy with "A Lynx and a Bastard" and "Dragonskin Boots," respectively. Luk's title characters would make series protagonists that I'd enjoy seeing more of. (I can say the same thing for Kaitlyn and Alvyn in Patricia Duffy Novak's "The Lost Path" --and Novak was, at publication time, working on a novel featuring them!) "Though the World Is Darkness" by Lisa Deason pits her protagonist against a challenge more intimidating than fire-breathing dragons or pillaging hordes, and one far more obviously relevant to the real world --loss of eyesight. Heather Rose Jones' "Skins" is a new twist on the shape-shifter theme, and very well done. One of two male authors represented here, John P. Buentello, makes use of the craft of glassblowing in "Demon in Glass" to tell a satisfying tale, though exactly how the magic system works there was a bit murky to me. Mercedes Lackey collaborates with Elisabeth Waters here to produce, in "Dragon in Distress," another well-crafted yarn featuring Tarma and Kethry, whom I first encountered in an earlier volume of this series. (That's also a story with a humorous touch.) As usual in these volumes, a number of the stories struck me as truly outstanding, with a seriousness of tone and an evocative power that went straight to my heart. Several of these were by other veteran writers whose work I've also enjoyed in one or both of the earlier volumes in this series that I've read: Diana Paxson, Jennifer Roberson, Deborah Wheeler, Vera Nazarian. Like her earlier "Beauty and His Beast," Nazarian's "The Stone Face, the Giant, and the Paradox" explores the difference between physical appearance and moral worth. (The story here also pushes the limits of language to try to convey mystical experience that doesn't translate well to language, but manages to do it without alienating the reader.) Paxon sets her "Stone Spirit" in a still-pagan Dark Ages Norway, where things like trolls and draugs are real, and people think their lives are ruled by Wyrd (Fate); being of Scandinavian descent myself, that background strikes a chord with me. (Patricia Sayre McCoy, on the other hand, draws as successfully on ancient Chinese culture to create the world of her "Winter Roses.") Wheeler's "Silverblade," besides being a gripping story on its face, makes particularly striking use of symbol and metaphor to say things about challenges, obsessions, and parent-child relationships. One of my favorite stories here, "Garden of Glories" by Roberson, has very little fantasy element at all. The cultural-historical background is one we can't identify in the real world, and one of the two sisters depicted here has a talent for mending things that's more than figuratively magical, as one minor incident shows; but basically this is "just" a story about human relationships (sisterly, filial, romantic, marital), about choices, about being true to our nature, about growing and changing; above all, about caring and love. It could easily have been written as descriptive fiction --very, very good descriptive fiction! Two of our protagonists here (the title characters of "Chance" and "Amber", by Tom Gallier and Syne Mitchell, respectively), are assassins by trade, trained to be good at a morally dark and lethal profession, and whose lives haven't offered them much in the way of other options; but that doesn't mean that either of them are sadistic, nor lacking in a sense of honor or capacity for love. Chance in particular is one lady you won't soon forget, and her story is another of my very favorite ones here --but be warned, it's not a sweet and warm-fuzzy tale, and her path in life isn't an easy one. My comments haven't touched on all the 22 stories, but hopefully I've touched on enough to convey the flavor of the collection. In many of these selections, the quality of the world-building and character development cries out for expansion into a novel or story cycle. If swords-and-sorcery, or just good storytelling in the short format, is to your taste, then this is a collection well worth your time!(less) | Notes are private!
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Oct 20, 2008
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| 0451459644
| 9780451459640
| 3.29
| 34
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| Jan 06, 2004
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Nov. 24, 2012 Although the Goodreads description says this anthology of apparently original stories was first published in 1994 (the date of the Roc tr...more Nov. 24, 2012 Although the Goodreads description says this anthology of apparently original stories was first published in 1994 (the date of the Roc trade paperback edition) the back of the title page indicates that it was originally one part of a larger 1992 anthology from Unnameable Press, Grails: Quests, Visitations and Other Occurrences. Some time ago, I picked it up at our local flea market, intrigued by the Grail theme. Of course, the stories themselves are not necessarily from a Christian perspective; the medieval Christian legends of the Holy Grail are probably reinterpreted in many cases, and the basis of the legend itself is thought to be Celtic and pre-Christian. While Jesus and his disciples shared a common cup at the Last Supper, as would have been normal practice at a Passover meal, the New Testament evinces no interest in the cup itself (and certainly doesn't suggest that it was used to catch some of Jesus' blood at the cross). The whole idea of the veneration of physical relics for supposed supernatural properties is one that's foreign to the Biblical tradition, deriving from the Gentile superstitions of a later milieu. In the case of the Grail legend(s) in particular, it first appears in the late 1100s and early 1200s in the French-language Arthurian romances, which transport the 6th-century Celtic traditions about King Arthur into a high-medieval fantasy world; as such, it should be seen purely as a literary conceit. Fritz Leiber's very short and unilluminating Afterword (as usual, I'm not reading this material in order!) touches briefly on some of the above information, but it's mostly just an anecdotal account of his introduction (at the same time as his pen pal H. P. Lovecraft's) to the Grail concept through Charles Williams' novel, War in Heaven, in 1936-37. It's probably of more interest to fans of the Lovecraft/Weird Tales circle in the pulp era than to students of the Grail mythos. There's also no bio-critical information here about any of the contributors. So, the merits of this collection will stand or fall solely on the quality of its selections! There are 25 of these, but the cover reference to "25 stories" is misleading; the three shortest selections are actually poems. While I'm no poetry expert (and more of a fiction fan), I'd venture to guess that none of these will rank as major contributions to American verse, though all three have some beautiful language and evocative images. The connection of Lisa Lepovetsky's "Somewhere in Her Dying Heart" to the Grail concept isn't obvious to me, but she's apparently drawing on a strand of Celtic mythology that I'm not familiar with. (My knowledge of the latter comes mainly from a partial reading of a book on Irish myth from the library where I worked as a junior-college student --one of many books I don't list here because I can't recall the bibliographic information!-- and some research years ago into the Dagda, prompted by my reading of Lawhead's Song of Albion trilogy.) "Dagda" by James S. Dorr (which at a bit over five pages is the longest of the three, the other two consisting of just a few stanzas) obviously also draws heavily on Irish mythology, equating the Grail with the Dagda's cauldron, but attempting -not very successfully, IMO-- to also tie in the crucifixion of Christ and the Arthurian saga. The portrayal of the Dagda here is more reflective of the original legendary material than Lawhead's more sanitized treatment (which was considerably reinterpreted to make the Dagda the embodiment of primitive monotheism), and the marked earthiness is consistent with the folkloric material; but the poem is probably best appreciated by readers more familiar with Celtic mythology than I am. Finally, Jane Yolen's "The Question of the Grail" takes an entirely different tack, interpreting the Grail, in gender feminist fashion, as exemplified by the female body in its birthing and nurturing function. I'll move on to the 22 stories themselves when I next read in this collection. So, more later! Dec. 7, 2012 One of the nine selections I read this time around was still another short poem, "Quest Now" by Margo Skinner. That one proved to be, IMO, the best of the poetic pieces here, and the most accessible. Of the ten stories, three didn't work for me, but most did, with a couple being especially good. The three that didn't measure up were Brian M. Thomsen's "Reunion," Bruce D. Arthur's "Falling to the Edge of the End of the World," and Gene Wolf's "The Sailor Who Sailed After the Sun." In the first one, we have a homosexual Lancelot (which would have been news to Guinevere!), gifted with immortality by the Grail but now apparently dying of AIDS, a contradiction the author doesn't address; it came across as more of an exercise in "political correctness" than a serious attempt at storytelling. Arthur's story is SF, but the science didn't strike me as plausible enough to "suspend disbelief," and the ending came across as a muddled Deus ex machina exercise. Wolfe's short fiction, in my limited experience of it, has usually been rewarding, but this one is a surrealist tale that eventually gets SO surreal that it loses its link to reality (and lost me along the way). The latter two also have no actual reference to the Grail, which indicates something important about the editors' principle of selection here: as far as they're concerned, the idea of the Grail can simply be a metaphor that covers ANY story about characters seeking anything that they see as important. So in this collection, we actually have stories about the (Holy) Grail, or a Grail; stories that just allude to it peripherally or in passing; and quest-type stories that don't have the Grail as their object at all. Some of the ones in the latter two groups may be good (standouts, even!); but for a themed anthology, this one is definitely unfocused. Neil Gaiman's "Chivalry" is also surreal, with the Holy Grail turning up in a modern-day British thrift store, and an earnest Sir Galahad showing up to seek it. But here the surreal elements interact with the everyday world in a way that points out the possibility of the "magical' (broadly defined) and numinous in real life, and works in a way that the surreal in Wolfe's selection doesn't. "Invisible Bars," by Dean Wesley Smith, also has a modern setting, with a reinterpreted take on the idea of the genie in the lamp; it's effective and well-crafted, but while its message is thought-provoking, I'd say it isn't a complete picture of the truth of the situation. Traditional fantasy worlds are the settings for "The Gift of Gilthaliad" by Brad Strickland and the late Marion Zimmer Bradley's "Chalice of Tears," both of which concern magical cups. Strickland's millenia-spanning story, told mostly in straight narration, has something of the flavor of pseudo-myth in the mold of The Silmarillion; Bradley's is a simple, straightforward morality tale about judging by appearances. Andre Norton's "That Which Overfloweth" apparently depicts the Christian Holy Grail, in a far-future setting (I say apparently, because the author eschews any explicit reference to Christ or Joseph of Arimathea --but the description carries implicit hints of both). This is a grim and grisly, beautiful and uplifting, sweet and bitter story --and the first work by Norton that I've tried to read and actually finished and liked (if "liked" is exactly the right word). My two favorite stories in the book so far are Ilona Ouspenskaya's "Curse of the Romany" and "Hell-Bent for Leather" by Jeremiah E. Phipps. (The Romany or Rom people are popularly known as Gypsies; and from the author's last name, she might herself be from that ethnic background.) In the first one, the titular curse is lycanthropy, and this is a great contribution to the tradition of werewolf fiction. Phipps' story is another one with nothing to do with the Grail. It's zany, off-the-wall, and solidly tongue-in-cheek; I could also say sweet and nutty. (The last two adjectives sound like a candy bar, but this confection actually might be good for you as well as tasty.) A critic might accuse Phipps of wildly overusing coincidence, but this reader chalked it up to Providence. :-) (Anyway, critics wouldn't let their hair down enough to read this yarn --their loss!) As I often do, I've tended to mostly read the shorter offerings here first. In subsequent go-arounds, the stories read will tend to be longer (and some of the remaining ones are at the long end of the "short" fiction spectrum!). Jan. 28, 2013 Since my last update of this review, I've finished the book, and was really impressed by the quality of the selections I read this time around. There weren't any that I didn't like to some degree, and almost all ranged from really good to outstanding. We have stories here that touch on significant themes like family, doing the right thing, good and evil; written with a variety of approaches and settings, but with a consistently high quality of characterization, felicitous style, and (often) emotional impact. This anthology was one flea market purchase I made as a gamble, but definitely turned out to be a rewarding investment! Paxson's "The Feast of the Fisher King," is actually a masque in verse, originally performed at Mythcon XII in 1981 (according to an author's note) but with some narrative insertions added for this volume. The author has a longtime fascination with the Arthurian and Grail legends, and based this labor of love on Chretien de Troyes account of Percival's first visit to the Grail Castle. It would probably be best appreciated by readers familiar with that work and similar medieval poems; but even if (like me) you aren't, it still has a real power and fascination. The theme behind Mercedes Lackey's "The Cup and the Cauldron" is that Christianity and all other forms of spirituality are basically alternate descriptions of the same reality. That's not, obviously, a theme I endorse; but the author does write well and has created a finely-crafted story with engaging characters. "The Awful Truth in Arthur's Barrow," is one of the least substantial of the stories, being played entirely for laughs; but it's an absolute hoot, a real masterpiece of over-the-top, zany humor delivered in perfectly deadpan style. Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite writers; his contribution here ("Atlantis") is an SF story that alternates between the viewpoint of a protagonist living ca. 120,000 B.C. and a future researcher studying the past by means of technology that allows one to view (but not hear) past events, on a sort of screen, as they happen. It presents a speculation that the flooding of what is today the Red Sea at the end of the last Ice Age was the origin of the stories of both Atlantis and Noah's flood. Personally, I take the Genesis account more literally than Card does, which makes it harder to suspend disbelief; but taken on its own terms, he does present a compelling and meaningful story (and more plausible factually than, say, Jack London's Before Adam). And in any case, the real message of the story isn't the speculation, but the life lesson that the researcher draws from it. I've had Janny Wurts' To Ride Hell’s Chasm on my to-read shelf for ages, but my interest in it is even more whetted after reading my favorite story in the whole book, "That Way Lies Camelot," a masterpiece of depicting the everyday world touched by the magical. "Visions" by Lawrence Watt-Evans also shows the mundane world invaded by a touch of Divine grace, to good effect; it's a tale vastly superior to my only previous experience with his work, "The Guardswoman." Alan Dean Foster's "What You See" was my first experience with his work, and one of the best pieces of supernatural short fiction that I've read in a long time. "Hitchhiking Across an Ancient Sea" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an example of pure realistic descriptive fiction, with no speculative element at all (and no real connection to the Grail mythos, except a passing comparison by the protagonist to his situation), but it's an outstanding story, written with great psychological sensitivity and insight --one of my favorites here. Like humorist Lionel Fenn (the writer here who explores Arthur's barrow :-) ), several of the authors here are ones I'd never heard of; but these stories were excellent introductions. "Storyville, Tennessee" by Richard Gilliam makes excellent use of traditional zombie lore (not the cliched' "zombie apocalypse" model that's come to dominate the field); but Lee Hoffman and Rick Wilber also deserve high marks, respectively, for "Water" and the outstanding "Greggie's Cup." All in all, one of the best anthologies I've read in recent years!(less) | Notes are private!
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Oct 20, 2008
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| 0345458567
| 9780345458568
| 3.93
| 383
| Aug 01, 2003
| Nov 29, 2005
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May 28, 2009 In all, Anderson has collected 21 stories here, mostly by British authors --though American fantasy is represented, and Ludwig Tieck was o...more May 28, 2009 In all, Anderson has collected 21 stories here, mostly by British authors --though American fantasy is represented, and Ludwig Tieck was of course German. The arrangement of the stories here is chronological, and the editor contributes a brief introduction to the book and short historical/ contextual notes prefacing each story. An appendix gives mini-bio/ bibliographical notes for each contributor, and for a few other genre writers from that era. Only two of the stories here are ones I've read before: Frank Stockton's "The Griffin and the Minor Canon," which I heartily like --he's best known for "The Lady or the Tiger?" (which I view as a gyp of the readers), but deserves to be better known for this one-- and Tieck's "The Elves," which in its tone and treatment of the theme reflects the fact that it was intended for children, but can hold the interest of adult readers, too. So I'm looking forward to the rest, several of which are by authors whose work I haven't read before. More later! Some of these stories, such as Stockton's, ostensibly take place in this world (or at least aren't explicitly set elsewhere). But (at least in the case of the ones I've read so far) the nature of the plots makes the setting, in effect, a fantasy world, without a clear context in the real world, and with creatures like griffins, ogres and fairies treated as matter-of-fact parts of the fauna. Interestingly, Tolkien read MacDonald's "The Golden Key" at least twice in his life, with a very different reaction. In "On Fairy-stories," he praised the tale as one "of power and beauty" which "succeeded" in making the genre "a vehicle of Mystery." Rereading the work in 1964 as an elderly man, however, his critical judgment of it was the opposite; he now found it "ill-written, incoherent, and bad." (By 1965, he deemed MacDonald's whole corpus unreadable, and faulted the author for excessive preachiness.) Arguably, such a drastic 180-degree turnabout in Tolkien's reaction may say more about changes in his taste over time than about the story (and MacDonald, like E. H. Knatchbull-Huggessen in the following story, "Puss-cat Mew," was writing for children, not for adults in their 70s; both tales are British versions of the German idea of kunstmarchen). But my own judgment of this story would come closer to Tolkien's final opinion than his first. It certainly offers beautiful language and imagery, and originality; and the plot is clearly intended to embody a journey symbolism akin to that of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. But the metaphors are murky, we never get to know and feel the two main characters from inside as real people, and the telescoping of time in the fairy realm detracts from character development and ultimately (to this reader) makes the character's lives seem pointless. IMO, it is not the equal of the author's Phantastes (which I would exempt from Tolkien's harsh dismissal). "Puss-cat Mew," on the other hand, struck me as quite an engaging and entertaining story. The idea was suggested by a 19th-century nursery rhyme (quoted at the outset), but the novel treatment was the author's own. There is definitely some mayhem here (and the hero doesn't object to dispatching man-eating ogres and dwarves while they're unconscious or otherwise helpless --in one case, by bashing the victim's brains out). If you can tolerate that, however, the story offers flashes of dry wit (the tone is firmly tongue-in-cheek --especially since the unnamed narrator supposedly overheard the tale being told to a kitten by an older cat; he speaks animal languages, a couple of generations before Dr. Doolittle. :-)), the triumph of pluck, loyalty and virtue over mean-spirited malevolence, and a chaste romance between a couple you can willingly root for. (Here, as often in the actual folklore of fairies, the latter can be romantically interested in humans, and vice versa.) June 23, 2009 Since the last installment of this review, I've read 11 more of the stories. All of them are effective and well-written in their way. It could be argued that a few of these are out of place in a fantasy collection. Hodgson's surprisingly Christ-centered "The Baumoff Explosive" is science fiction --soft SF, but the agency of the protagonist's experience (which proves that it isn't wise for ordinary humans to try to relive Christ's spiritual-psychic experience on the Cross) is clearly natural science, not magic. And there is no clearly speculative element in Haggard's "Black Heart and White Heart: A Zulu Idyll," except for the minor one of a Zulu witch-doctoress who seems to wield some real powers; it's essentially a straightforward, excellent morality tale of adventure, rooted in a solid this-world historical context. (This was my first introduction to Haggard's work, though his major novels have been on my to-read list for a long time; I greatly appreciated his realistic evocation of his setting and his willingness to judge people by their character, not their skin color --the highly admirable hero and heroine here are black and the villain white.) "The Drawn Arrow" by Clemence Housman, though it's set in a historically and geographically unspecified ancient/medieval context, has no speculative element either; it's an emotionally harrowing tale of how absolute power and vanity can corrupt and warp a human being, but magic plays no part in the narrative. And Richard Garnett's "The Demon Pope" and Lord Dunsany's "Chu-bu and Sheemish" are set entirely in this world. In fact, though, this isn't strictly a fantasy collection --it's a collection representing works/writers who influenced (or may have influenced) Tolkien, who happened to write fantasy but whose reading was broader, and who was influenced in some ways by writings outside his own preferred genre. Understood that way, the selections make more sense. Andrew Lang's re-telling of "The Story of Sigurd" in modern English follows the outlines of the plot which I had read elsewhere; William Morris' "The Folk of the Mountain Door" (which is actually more of a vivid vignette than a plotted story with conflict and resolution) also evokes an early medieval, pre-Christian atmosphere, with the Old English-infuenced diction that characterizes his fantasy writings. "The Demon Pope" and "The Regent of the North" by Kenneth Morris also have a medieval setting. (The latter, set in Sweden on the cusp of the transition from paganism to Christianity, treats the former respectfully and sympathetically, while not denying the truth claims of the latter, and conveys an understanding of the psychology of some of the pagans who resisted the change, not necessarily for perverse reasons; his treatment of the Norse gods as real persons and Valhalla as a real place isn't incompatible with a Christian world-view, either --though his portrayal of healthy wolves attacking a human is incompatible with what we know about actual lupine behavior. :-)) On the other hand, Baum's "The Enchanted Buffalo," like all his fantasy, has a distinctly American --here, Native American-- flavor, bringing us into a realm of the supposed early world where anthropomorphic animals could talk, creating a tale reminiscent of the Indian mythology on which its clearly modeled; and Lord Dunsany's story takes place in an unspecified Third World milieu, probably Asian. (That story, too, presents pagan gods as "real" in a sense; the idols are sentient, and wield some power --but their power is so minute, and used in the service of such petty jealousy, that they come across as pathetic and ridiculous; and that's quite probably the perspective with which many ancient Hebrews, faithful to Yahweh, would have viewed them.) Buchan's "The Far Islands" (my first introduction to his work, too!) is set in the author's own time --but it suggests that beyond our everyday world, there are other dimensions that only some people are favored to see. Nov. 6, 2009 Of the last six selections here, the one by E. A. Wyke-Smith proved to be an excerpt from his 1927 novel The Marvellous Land of Snergs. I didn't read it; but I've now read the remaining five, and was thoroughly pleased with most of them. "The Coming of the Terror" is actually a condensed version of Machen's novella The Terror (1916; original title, The Great Terror), the version Century Magazine created for the first American printing in 1917. Machen himself, however, allowed that their shortening of the original, which I haven't read, was done "with a skill that was really remarkable;" and I would say that for achieving the effect of concentrated terror (it's well-titled, believe me!), the length here is perfect. It's not really a work of fantasy (it's set in England, against the brooding, paranoid backdrop of World War I, mostly in the mountain-hemmed, lonely country valleys of a remote Welsh county), but since the lethal goings-on are never definitively explained --that's part of the horror, of course, as Machen well understood!-- it's hard to define the genre; the narrator's preferred psycho-spiritual explanation doesn't involve magic as such, but is so mystical that science-fiction purists wouldn't be apt to claim it either. (It's certainly not in the "hard" SF tradition.) What it is, though, is a very effective work (more effective, IMO, than the better-known "The Great God Pan," my only previous introduction to Machen's work) of mounting, claustrophobic horror, with a good philosophical point at the end. David Lindsay's "A Christmas Play" is indeed a play (though not really about Christmas --that day just happens to provide the setting), but it can be read like fiction; written apparently in the 1930s but never published or performed before, it's printed here for the first time. It's a sweet, delightful modern literary fairy tale of moral testing and virtue rewarded, perfectly crafted by the author. (I never got far into his novel A Voyage to Arcturus, being completely unable to get into it; but this shows a whole different side to his creativity. In their different ways, the remaining three works all treat the theme of human man encountering female elf, with resultant romantic interest; but the authors' ways of handling this theme are very different. "The Thin Queen of Elfhame," by James Branch Cabell, is by far the least satisfactory of the trio; it's basically an expression of jaded total cynicism about the very possibility of fulfilling romantic or family relations, because it views the male nature as too inherently flawed to sustain them. But A. Merritt's "The Woman of the Wood" and the Appalachian-set "The Elf Trap" by Francis Stevens (whose real name was Gertrude Barrows Bennett, and whose work I encountered here for the very first time --hopefully not the last!) are powerful, beautiful, poignant and bittersweet masterpieces that fully realize the emotional possibilities of the motif. Altogether, this is an outstanding collection that I'd enthusiastically recommend! There's also a companion volume, Tales Before Narnia, which collects fantasy that may have influenced C. S. Lewis; I'm hoping eventually to read (and review) it as well.(less) | Notes are private!
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Oct 20, 2008
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| 9781568650395
| 3.81
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| Oct 1989
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July 2, 2011 Hartwell is a respected anthologist in the field of speculative fiction, so when I got a good deal on this collection a couple of years ag...more July 2, 2011 Hartwell is a respected anthologist in the field of speculative fiction, so when I got a good deal on this collection a couple of years ago, I grabbed it up. His objective here (set forth in his short Introduction) was to bring together a spectrum of quality works that were not often anthologized, and wherever possible to represent authors not usually associated with the genre, and works that stretch its conventions and definitions. (Indeed, his own definition of "fantasy" is pretty eclectic; I'd consider most of the stories I've read here so far to be what I call "supernatural fiction," because they're set solidly in this world, not a fantasy world.) Chronologically, the scope spans the period from the early 1800s to his own time (1989), with a pretty even mix of 19th and 20th-century writers. The above Goodreads description has never been edited to include all the names of the contributors (which I'll plan to do when time permits.) As it notes, there are 38 selections, by 35 writers; James Barrie is represented by three excerpts from his novel The Little White Bird, in which he created the character of Peter Pan, better known from the author's later eponymous stage play. (I don't plan to read these; and I'm not sure about the two Jack Vance selections, taken from his Cugel's Saga, part of his Dying World series. If those are novel excerpts, too, my preference with novels is usually to read the whole thing, not sundered fragments of it.) Most of the authors are British or American, but there are a smattering of works from other countries as well. Hartwell's arrangement, though, is neither by nationality nor chronological; he's grouped the material instead into five thematic blocs: "Enchantments," "Wonders," "Creatures," "Worlds," and "Adventures." Each author's work is preceded by a helpful bio-critical note about a paragraph long, but the exact dates of the selections aren't usually provided. I'd read four of the stories before (and have commented on at least some of them elsewhere), all of them good: Frank Stockton's "The Griffin and the Minor Canon," L. Frank Baum's "The Enchanted Buffalo" (which appears in Tales Before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy, Jack Finney's wonderful "The Third Level," and Edith Nesbit's "The Last of the Dragons," which I re-read here. The latter is Edwardian, but it shows that the contemporary sub-genre of reworked fairy tales with subverted conventions and tongue-in-cheek humor isn't a new idea; Nesbit's delightful sword-wielding princess (she insisted on learning fencing) and likable dragon would be right at home in, say, Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest. :-) On this go-around, I read 13 stories that were new to me. These varied widely in tone, from raucously or dryly humorous, through serious, to poignant and touching, to dark and grim. They were pretty consistent in high quality, though; the only one which didn't really work for me was Brazilian writer Murilo Rubiao's surrealist piece, "The Dragons." (I don't generally get into surrealism, so perhaps that's just me.) As usual, I'm not reading these stories in order. Since the effects of short stories often depends on their endings, they can be harder than novels to review individually without spoilers. Some of my favorites were George MacDonald's "The Gray Wolf," a wonderously atmospheric werewolf story that left me wanting more; R. A. Lafferty's "Narrow Valley," which draws on Indian magic in the author's native Oklahoma (his style of humor here distinctly reminds me of William Saunders), and a selection from Czarist Russia, Fyodor Sologub's "Turandina," in which, as in Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter, a mortal and a fairy princess fall in love --but Sologub's tale is quite different. Charles Dickens, best known for his novels, is represented here by a rare short story, "Prince Bull," which uses fairy tale conventions to wryly satirize real-life British bureaucracy and governmental failures during the Crimean War. Despite its title, "The Triumph of Vice," by W. S. Gilbert (one half of the famed Gilbert and Sullivan composing team), doesn't necessarily really show vice triumphant. (Like Osbert Sitwell's "Jack and the Beanstalk," this is another humorous fractured fairy tale.) In Margaret St. Clair's "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles," let's just say the Gnoles' house isn't one that you'd want to visit! "The Hollow Land" illustrates William Morris' medievalism; but in my opinion it's not his best work --it has a dream-like quality, in which reality and the characters' perceptions and motivations often shift unpredictably or are hard to explain, giving the narrative a surreal quality that's hard to follow. But it has some vivid imagery and powerful vignettes, and a thread of surprisingly explicit Christian content (though Morris himself wasn't a believer); it's also one of the few selections here that would actually qualify as fantasy by my own narrower-than-Hartwell's definition. German World War II veteran Johannes Bobrowski's "The Mouse Festival," has almost no speculative content; the personification of the Moon in the story can be taken as simply metaphoric language. But it is an evocative bit of general fiction, with its simple tale of an encounter between a Jewish shopkeeper and a young German soldier in the shadow of the impending Holocaust. Finally, Anne McCaffrey's "A Proper Santa Claus" and Avram Davidson's "The Woman Who Thought She Could Read" are the most thought-provoking selections thus far, and they are in one sense thematically related. (McCaffrey's corpus of short fiction is a mixed bag as to quality, but this one is decidedly high-end.) More later! July 13, 2011 While waiting for the interlibrary loan book that I'm reading now, I read five more stories from this book. The only one of the five I didn't like was Suzette Haden Elgin's "Lest Levitation Come Upon Us," which was not my personal cup of tea; explaining why would take more time and attention than the tale deserved, but suffice it to say that here Haden's usual demeaning reverse-sexist treatment of men (although it's there) was actually overshadowed by even more offensive issues. (I'm not a fan of Elgin's work in general, though her "For the Sake of Grace" is a fine exception to that.) Mark Twain's "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime of Connecticut," though, is an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek yarn about a conscience which is a little sentient being (though not nearly so likeable as Jimminy Cricket!), who takes on physical form to confront his human, who's clearly an alter ego of Twain himself --with results that, from the conscience's point of view, leave something to be desired. :-) As Hartwell puts it, the author "makes a moral point with an immoral tale;" the ending is wildly over the top, but that's simply a manifestation of the frontier tradition of tall-tale exaggeration. The real delights of this go-around, though, were the other three tales, all of them actual exercises in true, other-world fantasy, and all of them written by women authors who (at least here) blend vivid imagination, moral and psychological depth of insight and beautiful use of language to create a trio of stories that are each different in many ways, but each a delight to read. Like McCaffrey's, LeGuin's short fiction runs a wide gamut as to quality, but "Darkness Box" is a stand-out: a perfectly-crafted evocation of a world in which time essentially stands still in a looping cycle, and there can be no death --but also no progress, growth or change. Robin McKinley's "The Princess and the Frog" re-imagines the classic fairy tale as a clash of good and evil that breathes new life and fascination into the plot. And my favorite of the three was Patricia A. McKillip's "The Harrowing of the Dragon of Hoarsbreath," with its brilliant world-building, its highly original ice dragons (who normally breathe out blasts of freezing cold, not fire) and concept of dragon "harrowing," not dragon killing, two main human characters so real you could touch them, and a use of language that's among the most beautiful and wonder-generating that I've ever read. This was my first introduction to both McKinley and McKillip; they're both writers I'd definitely like to read more of! Nov. 4, 2011 Since my last update, I've read all of the remaining stories of this collection, and was highly pleased with most of them (even with a few that I didn't expect to like!) The only one in this batch that I didn't care for (and to be truthful, didn't finish) was Rudy Rucker's "Inside Out," which had some sexual content of what's essentially a menage sort, which for me is very off-putting. If rated individually, though, all of the other 10 selections read in this batch would rate anywhere from three to five stars. (It should be noted, though, that though these are "short" stories, several of them are at the longer end of that continuum: 40-50+ pages or so.) Two of these were set in the modern urban U.S. (New York City and New Orleans, respectively). Peter S. Beagle's "Lila the Werewolf" is a take on lycanthropy that focuses more on human relationships than on scare; while Harlan Ellison's "On the Downhill Side" (Stephen Sullivan, take note --this is an Ellison story I actually liked!) features two ghosts and a unicorn. Its metaphysics aren't the same as mine, but that's irrelevant; they're simply a literary conceit to set up a tale that's really about the redemptive power of love and vicarious sacrifice. (As Hartwell notes, it's not typical of Ellison's work, which of course is why I like it. :-) ) In "The Drowned Giant" (which has an indeterminate setting), J. G. Ballard trenchantly explores the modern rationalized, materialistic mindset's complete inability to respond to the wonderous and mysterious with any sense of wonder or mystery. Whether "Beyond the Dead Reef" by James Tiptree, Jr. (whose real name was Alice B. Sheldon) is science fiction or supernatural fiction isn't clear, and doesn't have to be to succeed; what is clear is that it packs a powerful cautionary message about environmental degradation and destruction from thoughtless polluting at the hands of humans. (The ugly reverse sexism of the author's "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" isn't evident here at all.) Hartwell's inclusion of "The Parrot" by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Graham Greene's "Under the Garden" is in keeping with his stated aim; but it could be questioned whether we're dealing, in either of these, with anything that's actually of a supernatural character. IMO, the likliehood is particularly strong with the first one that Singer intends us to understand the parrot's presence as naturally explained, and the "supernatural" aspects of the character's perceptions as delusive. But both are good, solid stories of a general fiction sort. The second one especially really does evoke the sense of wonder and strangeness that straight fantasy tales often aim for, and is a deep exploration of the haunting contrasts between memory and "reality" (or IS the memory the reality?), adult and childhood perceptions of the world --and the continuing power of the latter. All of the remaining four stories were fantasy "proper," and all were on the longish side (the shortest consisting of 31 pages). Both E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The King's Bride" and Fitz-James O'Brien's "The King of Nodland and His Dwarf" are written in typical 19th-century diction and literary style, which won't appeal to all modern readers. They're entertaining tales of their type, though, each with a somewhat humorous tone (more consistent in the former, and the humor of the latter tends to be of a politically satirical sort). John Brunner's "The Things That Are Gods" is the last of the author's several tales of the Traveller in Black; it can be appreciated by itself, but a reader would probably benefit from having read the preceding stories in the series (which I haven't). Finally (though it's the first story in the book --I tend to read longer stories in anthologies last), my favorite in this collection is John M. Ford's "Green Is the Color," set in the "shared universe" of Liavek, a fantasy-world city with some steam-punk features, a large and diverse population, and its full share of human vices and villany. (I first "visited" Liavek through a couple of Charles de Lint stories set there.) Ford's magical system is decidedly original; and while I found some of the exact crucial details of how the central magical plot here worked more than a little murky, that was more than made up for by the strong characterizations, vivid atmosphere and world-building, wonderful use of evocative language, and skilled storytelling. All in all, this is a collection that definitely earned its five stars!(less) | Notes are private!
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Oct 20, 2008
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| 0879977906
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| 4.06
| 1,112
| 1983
| Jan 03, 1983
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The common thread binding the nine stories (five previously published in various magazines) of this collection is that they're all re-imagined fairy t...more
The common thread binding the nine stories (five previously published in various magazines) of this collection is that they're all re-imagined fairy tales, and all of them are of high literary quality; but otherwise they exhibit a wide variety. Lee wasn't well-served by the jacket copy, or by the above description, both of which tend to sensationalize these stories, under-stress their emotional complexity, and paint an exaggerated image of grimness. Only two of the tales could justly be called "horrific," and Lee's fertile imagination isn't "fiendish," in any reductive sense --it embraces the upbeat and beautiful as often as the dark and tragic (and various outcomes in between), and her moral vision discriminates between good and evil, in favor of the former. She also writes (at least here) with very little violence, mild bad language only in a single story, and no sex; an element of erotic attraction is present in some stories, but not in any degrading or defiling sense. Her prose is sumptuous and evocative --a treat to read. Each of the chronologically arranged stories is fitted with a loose setting in history and geography, ranging from "Asia: The Last Century B.C." to "Earth: The Future." The last selection, "Beauty," is straight science-fiction; the title story and "Wolfland" could be considered supernatural fiction. (Those three are my favorites here.) "Black as Ink" really has no speculative element; it employs ambiguous suggestions of the supernatural, as in Hawthorne's novels, just for color. In most of the stories, though, the supernatural element is clear, and the setting is vague and removed enough from real-world reference points to make in effect a fantasy world. Several stories have religious elements, borrowed from various religions; these should be viewed as literary conceits Lee uses without literally endorsing any of the religions --including Christianity, though "Red as Blood" has very real Christian symbolism. (The reference to Satan as the brother of Christ there reflects a sub-Nicene Christology, not an exaltation of Satan, and the picture of Satan as used by God to serve His own ultimate purposes is actually biblical --though Lee's Satan serves these more willingly than the real one probably does.) "Paid Piper," on the other hand, is the most theologically flawed of these stories.(less) | Notes are private!
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Oct 20, 2008
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| 0380759497
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| 3.58
| 4,591
| Aug 15, 1992
| Sep 01, 1992
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This is another of Anthony's delightful, witty romps in the fantasy land of Xanth, whose physical geography resembles that of his adopted state of Flo...more
This is another of Anthony's delightful, witty romps in the fantasy land of Xanth, whose physical geography resembles that of his adopted state of Florida, but whose flora, fauna and human (and semi-human) geography springs wholly from his own zany imagination --assisted by a flair for puns and copious borrowings from classical and world folklore and legend, all with a humorous spin. (See my previous reviews of titles in this series.) Over the years, my wife and I have accumulated various volumes of this series by buying them at our local flea market, so we haven't always purchased and read them with an eye to following the order of the books systematically. Question Quest, the preceding volume which we don't have and skipped, focuses on the life of Good Magician Humfrey; it explains (so our daughter reports :-)) the many bizarre details of his domestic situation,some of which this volume references in passing. (So now, of course, we need to read the preceding book as soon as circumstances permit!) Despite the title and above description, this book isn't really risque'; Mela Merwoman's panties are often glimpsed only because she's innocently wearing a Freudian slip, an undergarment that often manages to embarrass its wearer. Xanthian characters are actually quite chaste, and the sight of female panties is about as frowned on as it would have been in Victorian England. Also, human babies (and those of most other human-like species) in Xanth actually are delivered by the storks --but the adult behavior for stork-summoning is a secret closely guarded from minors by the Adult Conspiracy. :-) It won't constitute a spoiler for Xanth fans to hear that Anthony wraps up everyone's quests here in his own inimitable fashion.(less) | Notes are private!
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Oct 11, 2008
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Note, Nov. 14, 2012: I didn't mention this at the time I wrote this review, about three and a half years ago (maybe the disclosure wasn't required the...more
Note, Nov. 14, 2012: I didn't mention this at the time I wrote this review, about three and a half years ago (maybe the disclosure wasn't required then), but my copy of this was an unsolicited gift from the author of one of the stories, Kim Richard. (It was an electronic copy that I subsequently printed out and read like a regular book.) There was no pressure to write a review; her gift was just an act of generosity. Dragons are staple figures of the fantasy tradition; but in much of the genre, they tend to be just menacing and villainous figures, as in The Hobbit, R. A. Salvatore's Spearwielder's Saga, or the movie Dragonslayer and its novelization, and they're usually secondary characters in terms of the plotting. But in the 15 original stories in this anthology, dragons often come into their own as protagonists or major characters; and while the writers' depictions of dragons vary widely, the draconic specimens here are not usually purely malevolent predators --though they may have an agenda that differs greatly from ours. Except for my Goodreads friend Kim Richard and for Karina L. Fabian, a rising star in the galaxy of Christian fantasists whose "Dragon Eye, P.I." is part of a broader corpus of work set in a near-future where our world interacts with Faerie, I'd never heard elsewhere of any of the 15 writers here (editors Acker and Dougal each contribute one of the stories). Probably the majority of them are fairly young writers at the early stages of their writing careers. But on the evidence of these stories, those are apt to be long and successful careers, because the quality of writing here is consistently high. Most multi-author anthologies are apt to have a few stories that are clunkers; this one doesn't --some are better than others, but they're all good! Portrayals of dragons here range widely --some are shape-shifters with a human persona, and some are not; some display a psychology much like that of humans and some are wholly other; a few prey on humans and many others are misunderstood or exploited by humans. The tone of the stories also covers a broad spectrum, from humorous to tragic and poignant --but even in the latter, the writers manage to strike a note of ultimate hope. (Another plus is the freedom from bad language and prurient sexual content --only Sarah Suleski's "Poison Bird" has some swearing and teen sex, and it isn't gratuitous there.) In these pages, you can feel the pain of a sentient species hunted to the point of extinction, the euphoria of flying with no aid but your own body, and the thrill a predator takes in the kill and tearing and eating raw meat; and you can savor well-crafted storytelling at its best. My comments on Kim's excellent story were already posted as a comment on her own review of the collection. Some of my other favorites are Fabian's contribution, a charming tongue-in- cheek rendition of the noir detective tradition in fantasy garb; Dana Sisson's "A Dragon's Dawn," Richard Bray's "Inside the Cavern," and "A Darkness of Spirit" by Eric Diehl. But there isn't one I wouldn't recommend!(less) | Notes are private!
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Sep 22, 2008
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| 0020228716
| 9780020228714
| 3.69
| 143
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| May 30, 1991
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Abraham Merritt was every bit as much a master of lush prose as his contemporaries Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (and, in this book at least, that is...more
Abraham Merritt was every bit as much a master of lush prose as his contemporaries Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (and, in this book at least, that isn't the only valid comparison to Howard; John Kenton has definite Conan-like qualities, and the level of sometimes gruesome violence is not for the squeamish) and had as original an imagination as either of them, which gives this novel its own distinctive quality. He also merits comparison with Burroughs in terms of the primitivism theme, for Kenton is a man drawn into a violent, low-tech world where his fight to survive will be the supreme test of his mettle. The world to which he is magically transported (he never understands the magic, and since he's the viewpoint character, it isn't explained to the readers either) is one on the seas of which sails a ship crewed by exiles from ancient Sumer, divided down the middle between those loyal to Ishtar and Nergal --the Sumerian deities, respectively, of love and death-- who are determined to wage an eternal strife aboard it. This premise lends itself to a work positing a dualistic conflict between good and evil, creation and destruction, replete with archetypes (of course, one reader's archetype may be another one's stereotype :-)). The story is told, and the characters and setting are evoked, in rich language that will captivate any reader who likes this sort of thing. (For instance, the commentary that accompanies Kenton's progress through the Temple of Seven Zones is virtually prose poetry.) Several of the characters come to life strongly and individually; Sharane, Ishtar's priestess, is a strong female character in a pulp milieu that often preferred its heroines weak and wimpy. There is a strong erotic (though not smutty) flavor to the whole work, but what it celebrates is true and committed love, not lechery. A number of the scenes in the novel are genuinely emotionally compelling. What cost the book its fifth star? Kenton's prior career and background are not developed to any degree; we don't get to know him in his own context before he's whipped into Sharane's world. Merritt's metaphysical premises aren't the same as my own, which hinders suspension of disbelief to a degree. Most importantly, Merritt has some ethical insensitivity that colors my reaction to the work. Kenton, though he does have more of a conscience than some of his friends in his new world, has no problem with exploiting chained, involuntary galley slaves; and he does some things toward the end of the book that are even more objectionable than that. But these factors don't spoil the book for me.(less) | Notes are private!
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| Nov 19, 2008
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Sep 19, 2008
| Mass Market Paperback
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