Warren Rochelle's Blog, page 20

A Short Review of The Fish Prince and Other Stories: Mermen Folk Tales, by Jane Yolen and Shulamith Oppenheim

The Fish Prince And Other Stories: Mermen Folk Tales by Jane Yolen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Everybody has heard of mermaids--Hans Christian Andersen's The Littlest Mermaid, and various others, such as the star of Splash, and the sirens luring men into the sea, and the list goes on.

But what of their male counterparts, the mermen? "Long before mermaids emerged to people our inner seas, long before they established their restless, inviting niche in human fantasy, there was the merman" (x). There are 27 stories of mermen from around the world here, as Jane Yolen and Shulamith Oppenheim take a reader on a tour of many cultures, from northern waters to Russia and other Slavic countries, to the British Isles, to Asia, and the Pacific Islands, and the New World.

Despite the wealth of stories, the merman "might be called Legend's Forgotten Man. In the Standard Dictionary of Folklore, the section on mermaids is four times as long as that on mermen." The authors argue this might because Nature is "most often considered female, and "the sea and water itself [is] a reflection of man's vision of the feminine element" (xi). They argue the men were here first and should be remembered.

The bibliography will lead the reader to more stories, about mermen, and folk tales in general, and the mythic.

For the scholar and for the writer.



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A Short Review of Heart in the Right Place,by Carolyn Jourdan

Heart in the Right Place by Carolyn Jourdan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Yes, a beautiful and rich memoir with an old theme: can the exile come home? As the book jacket asks, "How does a smart, ambitious female attorney living a glamorous life in Washington, DC, wind up in rural Tennessee, manning the desk of a small town doctor's office?"

Carolyn Jourdan comes hope to help out her father, after her mother's heart attack. She thinks it is going to be for a week. A week becomes weeks become months, then a year and she has to decide who she is and where she belongs.

A very funny book, as her father's patients are quirky and eccentric and just plain odd. A sad book, as patients who are friends die. A thoughtful book: where is the right place for heart?



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A Short Review of 2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I am a fan of Kim Stanley Robinson. I loved the Mars Trilogy and the Science in the Capital series and Antarctica. I really liked this novel, too, set in the 24th century in a plausible future.

Humanity has spread out from Earth to the Moon, aka Luna, Mars, and Mercury and Venus and throughout the system, as far as Pluto. There are sunwalkers on Mercury, and its city, Terminator, rides on a railway around the planet. Terraria have been built in asteroids to preserve the flora and fauna of Earth, where global warming has changed many coastlines and inundated many great cities. New York is now like Venice.

We have changed ourselves: there are wombmen and gynandromorphs. The "principle categories of self-image for gender" has expanded beyond masculine and feminine to include "androgynous, gynandromorphous, hermaphroditic, ambisexual, bisexual, intersex, neuter, eunuch, undifferentiated, gay, lesbian, queer, invert, homosexual, polymorphous, poly, labile, berdache, hijara, two-spirit" (230). Truly this novel addresses what I have always considered to be the driving question of SF: what does it mean to be human.

How gender affects the two main characters, Swan and Wahram, is a major theme and narrative thread, if not the main one. However, there is more going on here in this novel of ideas, of the imagination, of a possible future. What happens if the lines between humanity and the quantum, the electronic, is blurred? If we accept such into our brains, are we still human? Does our perspective on being human change? When what first seem to be random disasters occur, humanity has "confront its past, its present, and its future" (back cover). Can Earth be saved, can he damages of the 20th and 21st century be mitigated? Can the animals be returned?

This novel is indeed a "sweeping space opera" of a "magnificently realized, meticulously detailed future" that is a "capacious and marvelous future-history" (back cover).

My one quibble: the ideas, which are amazing, are stronger than the characters.

I kept turning the pages.



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A Short Review of Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale, by Marina Warner

Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale by Marina Warner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A fine addition to the corpus of fairy tale scholarship, and I recommend it, especially to those who are just embarking on this academic and intellectual adventure--and to those who just like fairy tales. I am reading as someone who belongs to both groups, and a third, one of those who is exploring the fairy tale through retellings.

The chapter titles almost do the job of discussing the book's value and purpose and intended audiences: The Worlds of Faery: Far Away and Down Below; With a Touch of Her Wand: Magic & Metamorphosis; Voices on the Page: Tales, Tellers, & Translators; Potato Soup: True Stories/Real LIife ...you get the idea.

A few sample passages from this book written by an award-winning scholar of fairy tales and mythology (including the superb From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and their Tellers, 1994) would also do the job:

".... the Ocean of Story ... encircles the earth since recorded time... We swim, float, or navigate this fluid and marvelous body of water as a matter of course; mass media television, game shows, video games, and every kind of popular entertainment trawl it daily to bring up plots and characters, animals and motifs" (xx).

"... the historical reality that can be excavated from fairy tales does not carry the memory of extreme horrors, specific tragedies, or individuals, but rather dramatizes ordinary circumstances, daily sufferings, needs, desires-and dangers especially of dying young" (91).

"This is the way fairy tales should be: like the splinter from the spindle, they can enter you and remain for a hundred years of dreams" (112).

"Fairy tales are stories that try to find the truth adn give us glimpes of greater things--this is the principle that underlies their growing presence in writing, art, cinema, dance, song" (178).

I could go on.

Recommended. Excellent list of titles for further reading.



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A Short Review of Magical Tales: Myth, Legend, & Enchantment in Children's Books, edited by Carolyne Larrington and Diane Purkiss

Magical Tales: Myth, Legend, and Enchantment in Children's Books by Diane Purkiss

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Magical Tales is a book for the scholar of children's literature of fantastic, especially if one is interested in exploring its roots in myth and legend and in medieval literature. But, given that this book accompanied an exhibit of manuscripts and drawings of Tolkien, Lewis, and Pullman at the Bodleian Library at Oxford, it is also accessible to the museum-goer who may or may not be a scholar. However, given the references to so many works of children's fantasy, the editors, Diane Purkiss and Carolyne Larrington, and the authors of the individual chapters, are assuming these museum-goers are well read and fans of the fantastic, if not scholars.

I enjoyed it very much. The topics range from a discussion of books of magic (and books as magic), to a discussion of the influence of Northern or Norse mythology, the magical Middle Ages, once and future Arthurs, to early movable books for children.

Would I have enjoyed it as much if I had not read so many of the children's fantasies examined and referenced? Probably not, but this is not meant to be an introduction to such literature for those who haven't read it. There are other books for that purpose--or rather, go to the sources, the books themselves, and the myths and the legends, of the Norse gods, of Merlin and Arthur. True, this is an introduction, a survey as it were, but the Notes at the end, and the texts referenced and discussed give the interested reader direction as what to read next, or where to begin reading.

Books are indeed magical. These fantasies are, as "Lytton would have it, [be] 'Beloved as Fable' yet also in some important symbolic ways, 'believed as Truth' "(151).

Recommended.



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A Short Review of Heir of Starlight, by Nicole Kimberling

Heir of Starlight by Nicole Kimberling

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was a page turner. I loved the details of this somewhat perverse culture where souls are bought and sold, stolen, used to power weaponry and assist in magic, and the list goes on. A person's soul is not always his or her own. They are often trapped--as punishment, as a display of power--in animals and birds. Orangutans, gorillas, and little yappy dogs--are potentially inhabitable.

Karl sublet his body, to get money for his family-7 years of contracted indenture, while he inhabited an orangutan and he is the driver for Adam, met in the Sea of Stars, Book 1 (Ghost Star Night), once lover of Drake, Grand Magician.But when the contract is up and Karl goes to get his body back, it turns it has to be stolen. Adam seeks out Drake for assistance.

Drake can't refuse him. And the investigation uncovers a plot to destroy the kingdom.

Complications ensue.

A fun read, engaging and likeable characters, recommended.



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The Werewolf and His Boy

I am pleased to announce that forthcoming from Samhain Publishing Ltd.​, in September 2016, is The Werewolf and His Boy, by Warren Rochelle:
a dark romance, a love story, a tale of good and evil, of the magical and the mundane, and monsters and witches, and a werewolf and a godling.

https://www.samhainpublishing.com/

My story, "Finroc macFinniel Silmaire," just published.

My story, "Finroc macFinniel Silmaire," was just published in the inaugural issues of Empty Oaks. The issue looks great! Check it out:

https://emptyoaks.wordpress.com/issues/

A Short Review of His Sacred Bones, by Ginn Hale

The Rifter Book Three: His Sacred Bones by Ginn Hale

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Fans of Ginn Hale and her series, The Rifter, won't be disappointed in Book 3, His Sacred Bones, the conclusion to the series, a conclusion no less compelling than Books 1 and 2.

I am struck by three things here: Hale's building, the love story of John and Ravishan, and the parallel time tracks--a character can die in one and survive in another.

Basawar, this other world, a gate away from our own, is beautifully created in rich and satisfying detail. Basawar is believable. It is dark and murderous--young women are sometimes made into Issusha, "fleshless oracles." In a way, this world gives one a private tour of Hale's imagination and this is tour well worth taking.

The parallel time tracks took me a little while to sort out, but it is okay, I think, to ask a reader to invest time and energy into understanding a writer's world. That the heart of this book, and of the whole series, is the love story between John and Ravishan (aka Kyle or Kahlil). I am struck by the power of their love, even as it is tested and brought to grief more than once.

I would argue that this entire saga is just that, a love story, and a celebration of the enduring power of love.Their love affair is also about what it means to be human, as John is the Rifter, the destroyer god, and Kyle, or Ravishan, his divine companion. Can a god who can destroy a world have a human relationship?

Read this series.



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A Short Review of The Holy Road, by Ginn Hale.

The Rifter Book Two: The Holy Road by Ginn Hale

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Two caveats.
First, I'm a big Ginn Hale fan.
Second, I wish had had the chance to reread Book 1 of The Rifter saga, The Shattered Gates, before I read Book 2, as it took me a while to remember what had happened before and who the key players were.

Even so, this is one compelling book and it kept me reading and I found myself drawn into Hale's detailed and intricately drawn world of Basawar. Would John, Laurie, and Bill, survive in a world more violent and dangerous than their own? Will Bill and Laurie find true revenge in the "household of the exiled Lady Bousim?" And John, who has climbed the "Thousand Steps to monastery of Rathal'pesha," will he find what they most seek, a way home? Forbidden witchcraft and the possibility one of the three could somehow be the destroyer god, the Rifter, makes matters even more complicated.

If that's enough, add in the growing relationship between John and Ravishan--and that "such desire is punished with death."

This is an adventure with its heart, a love story, that of John and Ravishan. It is a tale of power and desire, and of religious warfare and rebellion. The second book in a trilogy can be tricky: can the writer sustain the story enough to keep the reader engaged with the characters and their world and their adventures, until Book 3. Will the reader stay engaged in what is essentially an alien world?

The answer here is yes, yes, and yes again. At times, I did find some of the nomenclature a tad confusing--but it is necessary and the glossary in the back helps. So, please, read this book and Books 1 and 3.





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