Review: Summerlong by Peter S. Beagle (2016)

Gardner Island off the coast of Seattle is home to a quirky, aging couple: Joanna Delvecchio, an energetic flight attendant; and Abe Aronson, a gruff professor emeritus. Once a wild pair, they have settled into a comfortable life with each other, their hobbies, and their shared concern for Joanna’s passionate, adult daughter, Lily. Into their vividly human world steps Lioness Lazos, an unobtrusive yet utterly captivating young waitress who appears at the local diner as though she has always been there. Upon learning she has no home, no possessions beyond her dress and her bicycle, Joanna and Abe offer her a place to stay. Lioness has a way of brightening everything she touches, and even the sea and the seasons of Gardner Island seem to offer her special hospitality. Yet throughout the impossible summer she brings, the horizon hints at trailing shadows of the past from which she has escaped only temporarily.

Beagle’s special mastery is his ability to step into any of a variety of genres and pull from them the fundamental elements of human experience. In this book there is a mythos I found vaguely reminiscent of Neil Gaiman, though subtler, as Lioness is kept a mystery for the better part of the novel. The human interweaves with the eternal in a way that is not immediately noticeable, although it does draw our attention. Fantasy takes a back seat; more entrancing than the supernatural details are the quirks of each character that make the reader gradually fall in love with each one. Joanna shoots hoops to burn off energy and is torn between motherly and disdainful feelings toward her junior flight attendants. Abe annoys everyone with his harmonica and loses himself in primary accounts of thirteenth-century politics. Lily hides her feelings from her mother and endlessly falls for narcissistic lovers who are even more lost than she.

This effect of genre illustrates a crossroads I’ve reached in my own writing, and one that factors significantly into the worldbuilding of speculative fiction. For my whole life, my own fantasy stories have been set in medieval or pre-medieval civilizations, following the mold of my favorite authors, including Tolkien, Lewis, Le Guin, Donaldson, and Jacques. This stereotype of setting is important because it evokes the connection to the eternal we seek in fantasy; if the story feels like our myths, it feels that much more eternal. Yet few authors can peddle fluently in the human details of premodern civilizations, even if they’re classical scholars or geniuses of the human condition. Perhaps I can invent a profound character, but if I don’t know how she brushes her teeth in a kingdom without manufactured toothpaste, I’m missing an aspect of her that she accesses every day. I can make up a solution, but without good information I’m liable to fall short.

Thus one role of fantasy is to bring the modern into the realm of the eternal rather than the other way around. This is nothing new; Shakespeare’s lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream did not go into the ancient past to encounter Titania and Oberon. They merely went into the woods. The building of ancient-seeming worlds totally separate from Earth is actually primarily Tolkienian in origin, and he himself was actually trying to retroactively invent a mythology for England, one better to his tastes than the Arthurian legend with more Welsh and French blood than anything else. Many have followed less grandly in Tolkien’s footsteps, including most recently George R. R. Martin. Others have had other approaches. Le Guin, like Beagle himself in The Last Unicorn, minimalizes the minutiae of her worlds in a way that emphasizes their grandness. Savant-like authors like Susanna Clarke are able to weave pastiches of specific, real civilizations. But Beagle’s method of painting Summerlong like a photograph of gods dancing in my own backyard is one that increasingly tempts me to try it out.

The bulk of the story is character-driven rather than plot-driven, but when there is plot, it happens all at once, with hurricane force. A signature of Beagle’s is that change is irrevocable and when it happens, nothing ever goes back to normal. Even despite knowing this from page one, I was unprepared for just what the changes were and how they came about.

Summerlong is one of Beagle’s more adult works (there is little violence but sexual themes throughout); beyond this, I recommend it to anyone looking to be entranced by a medium-length novel. The prose, though poetic, is extremely accessible in a Fitzgeraldian way. And the true theme, which shows its face only after the plot-twisting climax, is one that none of us can live without.

Review: History in English Words by Owen Barfield (1926), and a Sapir-Whorf glimpse at fantasy

Owen Barfield, long-time member of the Inklings (the legendary Oxford University book club whose members included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis), liked words.

He liked them so much that he drew from them a detailed history of Western Europe's epistemic development.

History in English Words is a plunge into etymology that claims that the words we use contain a pattern that impacts more than language hobbyists. The basic thesis is this: if we know our history, and know which English words are borrowed from which other languages, we can put two and two together to trace the introduction and evolution of concepts we as a civilization now consider given, but which we did not always know. Thus we can gain a new lens through which to see our cosmology and learn from it.

Fascinating, right? If you're not a fan of etymology, linguistics, or history, don't worry; I'll have another science fiction review up soon. My recommendation of this book is simple: if you like etymology, absolutely read it; if not, give it a try, but don't feel bad if you don't get all the way through it.

For my fellow word nerds, this is an important book. First of all, most of the book is a detailed walkthrough of the various periods and categories of English's lexical history, beginning with its oldest known (to Barfield) ancestor, Indo-European. Different chapters give us windows into subjects like Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian doctrine, to name but a few. His sequence is mostly chronological. Most of the subject matter consists of specific examples of words we use every day, many of whose present meanings have escaped completely from their original metaphor or intention.

Speaking of metaphor, there's a sub-theme to the book concerning the creation of words that is relevant to anyone who seeks to write creatively. I've said before that it's our responsibility to take an active role in the maturation of the language we speak, but only here did I learn that this action is actually metaphor at its root. Barfield's example is the word "prevaricate," which a modern dictionary defines as "to speak or act in an evasive way," but whose Latin roots mean "to plow in a furrow." Barfield argues that we can't actually conceive of new ideas in any way other than building on concepts we already possess. So if you can't just point to an object and place a new word on it, the only way you can create it in an understandable way is to compare it to something which it actually is not: a metaphor!

While I'm here, I might as well point out the implications of this conclusion on fantasy. G. K. Chesterton, from whom the name of my blog is ripped off, has written that "the test of fairyland [is that] you cannot IMAGINE two and one not making three. But you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail." This reminds me of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity, which basically says that the language we learn to use influences the concepts we are able to envision. I propose that how we write, read and accept fantasy, a genre naturally experimental with metaphor, indicates what we are able to conceive as a culture, and by omission what is unimaginable to us.

I may revisit this hypothesis, and I hope those of you who decide to read Barfield are as delighted as I am with both his adventure into our language and with how far our imagination can take us.

Where the Sun Sails and the Moon Walks: About Tolkien's Eagles

There comes a time in the life of every reader when he's re-reading his favorite book for the twenty-seventh time and he comes across a plot hole. This is the final test of a book: whether it can withstand the self-doubt of a reader's dedication. It forces you to be introspective, to decide whether you can still see yourself in the story you love, or loved.

A famous hole has been pointed out in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings since almost immediately after its publication. Don't worry: I won't spoil the ending here. The argument concerns the giant eagles who live upon the peaks of Middle Earth. They're smart, they can talk, and they sometimes help the protagonists out of sticky situations by carrying them away on their backs.

The plot of The Lord of the Rings is this, in oversimplified terms: Frodo, our protagonist, has possession of the Ring of Power, the greatest weapon of the tyrant Sauron. Sauron is ready to take over the world unless Frodo destroys the Ring, which can only be unmade where it was forged: in Mount Doom, a volcano in the heart of Sauron's territory. So Frodo and eight companions must travel by foot to Mount Doom, while every step brings them closer to danger and every day sees more people killed by Sauron and more allies become his devoted slaves.

The million dollar question is this: why did the journey have to be on foot? Gandalf, the wizard even non-Tolkien fans know and love, is a friend to the Eagles, and even calls them to rescue him at one point. Couldn't he ask the Eagles to fly them to Mount Doom? Shouldn't the Eagles want to help out, since Elrond and Gandalf make it clear that Sauron is trying to conquer absolutely everybody, which includes the Eagles on their lofty peaks?

I wouldn't give this criticism time and energy if it weren't a reasonable one. Now, perhaps you've read or heard my theories about the division between high fantasy and sword and sorcery. Read carefully: this question encompasses the entire divide between the two, as well as many other ideologies. I'll have to divide my reply into two parts: what the question misunderstands about Middle Earth, and what the question misunderstands about the Earth we all inhabit.

There are several reasons for the Eagles to withhold their services. The first and grittiest is that it's not their job. Elrond makes sure to say that only those who freely decide to take the quest must accompany Frodo, and the Eagles don't show up. I don't think that this is because, in Dungeons and Dragons mentality, Gandalf forgot they were in his inventory. Rather, the Eagles prove themselves quite capable of knowing what's going on and responding to it when they choose to do so.

Equally importantly, we're specifically kept from seeing exactly what Sauron can do on his own. My generation's audience, which has forgotten that a hidden monster in a book is scarier than the gory reveal provided in IMAX special effects, is also prone to forget that a character may have been able to do more things than they showed in the movie. Sauron's un-Ringed form may look like just a big, red eye, but Tolkien and even Jackson indirectly let you know that he's still the most fearsome person in Middle Earth. It's more impressive, not to mention less anal-retentive, not to tell you exactly how. As far as the Eagles are concerned, those key critics fail to notice that the Eagles only enter Mordor airspace after the Dark Tower has fallen (well, I guess there have to be some spoilers). To do so beforehand could have meant anything, because unlike the modern know-it-all, the Eagles weren't going to underestimate the man whom everyone fears will conquer the world. Flying over his wall would have been the quickest way to tip him off, especially since, because he is an eye rather than anything else, the only thing we have to know about Sauron is his ability to see threats coming. And since, if he had gotten his Ring back, he would have been unstoppable, our favorite Dark Lord could have considered this surprise air mail.

No, careful reading of the book tells us that the quest had to be in secret, carried out by the lowliest people in the most unlikely way, in order to avoid Sauron's all-seeing Eye. But even this wasn't the issue Tolkien took with the question of flying the Eagles.*

Tolkien called the Eagles a 'dangerous machine,' and why not? It would have been so easy to end his story about seven hundred pages earlier by flying the Ring to Mount Doom, and the book would not have been worth reading. "'Nine Walkers' and they immediately go up into the air!" he says to this suggestion. To him, the essence of the story was not the fact that good wins in the end, but the struggle that good must undertake to get there. Hence he needs "a long and arduous journey, in secrecy, on foot, with the three ominous mountains getting nearer." It is, quite literally, a journey toward the thing most feared, requiring the utmost courage because of its slow, dangerous way. If the matter of the story lay exclusively in its resolution, then the action would do nothing but appeal to voyeuristic thrill-seekers and narcissists. Instead, it speaks to people interested in actual courage to see the Ring in the hands of Frodo, a small, peaceful person who has no place in war.

I must stress again that the whole difference between high fantasy and cheap action lies in this question, and that it's a distinction that plays into every day of your life. You don't have to change what you read. Just understand that the world isn't quantified into what we can see; money, science, power, and all other numbers don't dictate another person's usefulness to you. Without these barriers you may discover what ominous mountains are on your horizon, and whether you, too would fly toward them without the slightest idea what awaits you there.

'I will take the Ring,' he said, 'though I do not know the way.'

Elrond raised his eyes and looked at him, and Frodo felt his heart pierced by the sudden keenness of the glance. 'If I understand aright all that I have heard,' he said, 'I think that this task is appointed for you, Frodo; and that if you do not find a way, no one will... Who of all the Wise could have foreseen it? Or, if they are wise, why should they expect to know it, until the hour has struck? 

-The Fellowship of the Ring

*Quotes here are taken from #210 of the collection of Tolkien's letters.

Review: A Man Rides Through by Stephen R. Donaldson (1987)

You may have read my take on a high fantasy novelist writing middle-quality romance. This, friends and fellow readers, is the sequel and conclusion to that story.

Terisa Morgan, a young woman transplanted from her "real" world into the fantasy kingdom of Mordant, has just watched her only friend, the bumbling nobleman Geraden, escape into a mirror after being framed for murder. This escape, though miraculous, leaves Terisa defenseless against a castle full of people who believe that she aided the criminal's flight. Tensions are high, because two marauding armies are racing to that same castle, knowing that whichever takes it first will hold the position to conquer all of Mordant. Meanwhile, old King Joyse refuses to raise a hand in defense of his kingdom. It is up to Terisa alone to escape from her desperate captors and reunite with Geraden, who is her only hope of discovering how an alliance of rogue Imagers (wizards who can pull anything imaginable out of mirrors) are able to translate alien horrors anywhere they please, and whose sinister influence is behind the war that stands at Mordant's door.

I was underwhelmed with the first book; it's not nearly as awe-inspiring as Thomas Covenant, it's too complicated to be a page-turner, and it's not bad enough to be funny. This trend continues into A Man Rides Through. Many, many plots are going on at the same time; after all, Donaldson wrote these two right after the sixth Thomas Covenant, when he was at his peak in terms of subplots. The man is a hydra in that for every subplot he resolves, he creates two more. And he never leaves a thread hanging. This sounds fascinating but is really so only if the story is worth the commitment, and in the Mordant's Need plot, you need a special interest in the characters or the mirror fantasy to feel so involved. Alone, the drama does not justify itself.

Then something incredible happens. About halfway through the book, all the plots take a turn and begin to converge again. The result is like listening to a middle-grade concerto which suddenly reveals that all its disparate melodies, when played at the same time, form a cohesive harmony. It's a load of ordinary devices that fit together with uncanny precision. For a few hundred pages near the end, it's a nonstop hurly-burly of characters picking up Chekhov's guns, only to discover that their targets were wearing Chekhov's bullet-proof vests, but in turn those characters had paid for their vests by borrowing money from Chekhov's loan sharks... It goes on. Every previous action of named character is somehow justified until the plot collapses down to the climax which is a singular event.

To me this instantly makes a fantasy book worth it, but obviously there's more to a novel than structure. Terisa becomes less annoying than in the previous book, but in doing so she loses the better part of her individuality as a character. It frustrates me because Donaldson can write women brilliantly, but Terisa's function is to be a bit shallow. If ever I were to name a problem with this author, it would be his ability to intentionally fall short of his stylistic potential in order to achieve that unerring symbolic consistency.

Overall, the story is entertaining. I enjoyed the various experimentation with monsters created out of mirrors. They're a silly compromise between something grounded in the laws of reality and something from a carnival nightmare. As usual, it takes a stretch to suspend belief of some of the physics, because the magic is symbolic in function. But to me this is refreshing when done right, rather than as a lack of better imagination.

Review: Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie (2010)

Luka is a boy who lives for two things: the lively tales of his imaginative, storytelling father, and video games. One day at a circus, he curses the tyrannical ringmaster to lose control of his animals, and to lose his tent in a fire. Nobody is more shocked than Luka to discover that both of these take place within the day. Two of the freed animals, a dog named Bear and a bear named Dog, become Luka's steadfast friends. But evil cannot safely be used for good; the ringmaster is entitled to a return curse, which he uses to claim the life of Luka's beloved father, Rashid Khalifa. The agent of this transaction is a being called Nobodaddy, who looks and acts almost exactly like Rashid, but who, Luka suspects, is a monster inside. Nobodaddy allows Luka the chance to save his father by transporting him to the World of Magic to steal the Fire of Life. For this task, Luka will need all of his wits, as well as friends he can only imagine, to overcome the immense obstacles in his way, and to learn just what Nobodaddy and the World of Magic really are.

In case the name Salman Rushdie rings a bell, you may have heard of him as the guy who angered the entire Muslim world with a controversial account of Mohammed in his 1988 book The Satanic Verses. The book was banned in twelve countries, and Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran, even issued a fatwā against him, or a mandate for his execution. So he hid out in the UK for a while. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

If all this sounds intense, you may be surprised to learn that Luka and the Fire of Life is a children's book comprised of good, old-fashioned fantasy. Most of the characters in a negative position are purely of Rushdie's invention, although he makes Aphrodite and Ra the Supreme look a little silly, among others. I guess he hasn't shaken off the tendency to explore religion on his own terms. In a case like this, I can say he's engaging in healthy inquiry, though of course I haven't seen what he thinks of my own religion. His gods can be a little flat for an adult audience, even while the rest of the story thrives for all ages. In fact, I'm interested that he heaps so much mythology into the story when he's able to invent such rich characters of his own.

I heartily approve of the broad plot structure and the themes used to carry it. Rushdie paints solid themes in such a fresh, new way. One of these themes is childhood interest in video games, to which I'll accept objections. But for the rest he uses imagination, consequence of actions, vanity, time, religion, and friendship to great advantage. No matter how silly the characters, they have some way of linking the themes to values. Thus the memory birds, giant ducks with elephant heads, are Luka's conscience when it comes to his consequences on time and the past, and the Insultana of Ott keeps him humble.

The villains are wonderful as well. Aag is a great example of frothy wrath, the kind of person who can't see reason. The Aalim are characterized so well before we even meet them. Nobodaddy, the bogey behind the whole mess, is no Sauron, but not every villain has to be. I suppose that's my greatest praise for the book: it does what it can without bringing the same old story out of the essential themes. Life, after all, carries the same values no matter whose it is, and everyone's experience gives him a different way of discovering these universal adventures.

Review: Against All Things Ending by Stephen R. Donaldson (2010)

I've already written a little bit about the Thomas Covenant series, of which this is number nine out of ten. Consider it bias, or don't, but just assume that this review will be somewhat more positive than the mark.

Against All Things Ending picks up where Fatal Revenant left off: Linden Avery has just linked the magic of three powerful artifacts to summon the soul of Thomas Covenant from the Arch of Time, back to a human body. But in reviving her lover and the Land's savior, Linden has activated two unforeseen consequences. First, in becoming incarnate once again, Covenant goes nearly mad shedding millennia of personality and experiences because they don't fit into a human mind; he's back to being a deranged leper. And the combination of wild magic and Law to reach past the boundaries of death and time has shifted the balance of the earth and awakened the Worm of the World's End, an unstoppable monster that will now consume the earth in only a few days. Even Covenant himself, were he in full possession of his mind and his complete power, could never out-muscle the Worm. Faced with apocalypse, Linden leads her companions in search of her possessed son, whose talent for inter-dimensional contraptions could be the only way to trap the Worm and save the world. But her trip, effected by costly bargains with many magical beings, brings her within reach of She Who Must Not Be Named, a slumbering titan as old as Lord Foul (the main antagonist) himself, who embodies all the fear, grief and rage of a world betrayed...

For those of you who even read that paragraph, you probably figured out to start with the first book. Hell, this is my favorite series, and I struggled to figure out what was going on.

But guess what: it was worth it.

No, this wasn't the best Thomas Covenant book for me. It has neither the cohesion of Lord Foul's Bane nor the climax of White Gold Wielder. And somehow it manages to be more melodramatic than either, without the payoff. Consider this: the book is about apocalypse, but it's not the last in the series. I'm not spoiling anything by telling you that the Land is still intact at the very end of the book.

This is more than can be said for most of the characters. Donaldson has never squeamish about killing his main cast (which he's done to Covenant twice now), but this book takes it a step higher. The real tension of the book, much greater than the threat of armageddon, is the fact that the book begins with a lineup of characters whose abilities and stories make each of them crucial to the defense of the Land... but one by one they die horribly. It's like a cosmic game of Jenga, which, now that I think of it, is a great way to describe Lord Foul's plans to someone unfamiliar with the series.

Donaldson never drops a storyline without finishing it, and it's incredible to see the way he continues to weave the threads together, even while creating new ones. For certain, the real reason for all the deaths is probably to untangle the knot a little bit. He also picks up dozens of Chekhov's guns, including some he dropped a full eight books ago. If you give it the time and space in your brain, it's a dazzling act of juggling, but it gets confusing if you're distracted for even a page.

One feature that gave me mixed feelings is that by now everyone has superpowers. It was nice back in Lord Foul's Bane when everybody knew a little bit about Earthpower, and Covenant's wild magic was still locked away. Now, aside from Lord Foul, there are three villains (Joan, Kastenessen, She Who Must Not Be Named) trying to tear apart the world with their bare hands, even if you don't count the Worm, which seems to be succeeding. The Insequent are wizards who can teleport, travel through time, and defeat armies singlehandedly. Linden has even more firepower than these, and can heal any wound. Roger Covenant can shoot lava from his hand, and he seems to find armies to serve him the way you or I would order pizza. The Elohim all have powers like Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan, and Esmer has all their magic plus the ability to negate Thomas Covenant.

It becomes a little overwhelming.

This is why to me, the only two pervading important trends are Covenant's mental lapses and Linden's encounter with She Who Must Not Be Named. I think that's what Donaldson was going for with She Who Must Not Be Named: a character he could definitively say was top dog (except for Covenant, Lord Foul, the Worm, Horrim Carabal... never mind) in order to get our minds off of searching for a deus ex machina already hidden in everybody's Superman complexes. Sure, it's not quite as good as her fear of death in the Second Chronicles, but part two of anything is rarely as exciting. As for Covenant, anything but a relapse of leprosy would have thrown away his credibility as our grouchy protagonist.

This may be a wasted post, because those of you who read eight Covenant books were going to read the ninth, or you weren't. But this is a story which, I firmly believe, receives too little attention, so go ahead and introduce or re-introduce yourself to the darkest dream you'd ever give your life to save.

Review: A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle (1960)

Compared with the Resurrection of Christ, Tolkien's Return of the King, or Grover Cleveland's second election, my return to internet regularity is duly humbled. Nevertheless, I'm back! If you look, you'll notice there's something different about me: I now have a bachelor's in English literature. Thus I come triumphantly down the mountain to do the only thing for which this degree qualifies me: writing this blog.

Into the fray comes Peter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn, one of the cornerstones of my pantheon of fantasy books. I present A Fine and Private Place.

Michael Morgan is a newlydead who wakes up in his grave to discover that Hades is not a netherworld of fire and physical torture, but the next stage of being in which the consciousness gradually forgets all vestiges of its past life. A stubborn narcissist at heart, he struggles with all his will to remain as human as he can, although only a few people can see or hear him. These include a sarcastic raven, a tragic young ghost named Laura, and Mr. Rebeck, a wispy little man who hasn't left the Bronx cemetery for nineteen years. Eternity is put to the test when Mr. Rebeck begins to flirt with Mrs. Klapper, a feisty woman visiting her husband's morgue. Michael and Laura work and talk to discover whether even death can span the abyss that separates people's true experiences from each other's.

The main thing that attracts me to Beagle's books is his ability to stand somewhere very humble and do great things. Not every book has to be Narnia or try to contain the entire scope of human morality within a single adventure. In plain words, the book's three themes as I see them--death, love, and human decency--look like impossibly high mountains of rich thought. But so many fantasy books try to leap such heights, and so many, that there's room only for a single one-liner for each. Not so with Beagle. The narrative perspective leaves the cemetery only a handful of times, and so little happens in the plot, that there's plenty of room for wisdom. But don't let the slow speed of the action fool you. The ongoing dialogue, especially its hopes and doubts, is better than a sword fight. To me, that's an art to which any writer should aspire.

Beagle also scores points in my book with the freshness of his writing. Each of the characters has a voice, and the voices dance with each other in a way that illuminates real conversation rather than setting it up as something quippy, narcissistic, and unrealistic, as modern movie audiences seem to want. Beyond that, his description is simple but catching. It makes you want to slow down and appreciate it.

Unless you're looking for wild adventure, read this book. It has neither real thrills nor spills, but it's as thought-provoking as they come and easy to follow.

Review: The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson (1986)

Close your eyes. Imagine that The Lord of the Rings is your favorite book. You've read it more times than you can count, and you remember more about Middle Earth than you could recite in a day. (For some, this isn't such a stretch.) Now imagine you've found another series by Tolkien, read by few, that takes place not in Middle Earth, but in an entirely new fantasy world. Ravenous for this new discovery, you pick it up and begin to read.

It's a romance novel. Not only that, but it's a mediocre romance novel.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the fantasy, mystery, bodice-ripper offered to the world by one of my biggest fantasy influences. It was one of my most bizarre experiences of 2012.

Terisa Morgan is a woman who almost literally has no life. She's quiet, submissive, and friendless. She lives alone in an apartment paid for by her rich, aloof father, and spends all day working for a soup kitchen without forming any bonds with the poor she serves. Her biggest fear is disappearing entirely without anyone noticing. This all changes one night when a strange man bursts through her bedroom mirror. His name is Geraden, and he comes from a land in which mirrors can create anything imaginable. Geraden is on a mission to retrieve someone to save his kingdom from destruction, and he believes Terisa to be that champion. With no reason to stay in the life she knows, Terisa follows Geraden into a fantasy world full of familial plots and political games. Amidst a background of danger and wits, Terisa must choose between the affections of Geraden, and a master Imager named Eremis, who is always one step ahead of the plots threatening the land of Mordant.

Donaldson thrives in a setting where ordinary-world people interact with archaic-speaking people who are differently complex: who have an eye for patterns and schemes but who are blind to different subtleties than we are. For example, many of his characters seem to perceive familial ties as something tangible, which makes them stronger than you or I, but we might be quicker to see how relationships might shift, and catch onto deceit more quickly. Even when a Donaldson fantasy character is skeptical, it's in a solid, direct way. This interaction between cemented values and our own subtle shades of gray is what powers the Thomas Covenant series, and it's what saves The Mirror of Her Dreams, but not by a long shot.

You'd think, perhaps as a joke, that your favorite author could pull off a silly romance. After all, the best writers usually know how to shift genres with some skill. The problem is that this is still a fantasy, and Donaldson's fantasy, as opposed to his other work, is usually highly methodical. He ratchets up the tension by revealing one thrilling detail at a time, getting quite a bit of mileage out of each aspect of the plot. This works wonders in Thomas Covenant. But in this novel, where half the details are repetitive flirtations, it gets boring quickly.

There's a fair amount of philosophic value diluted amid the sappiness. Although Terisa's fear of disappearing makes a bad metaphor, it creates some interesting avenues for existential questioning. A good amount of space is devoted to the question of whether Terisa existed prior to appearing in Mordant. Even she is unable to resolve them. The philosophy is relatively outdated, but it's still solid.

If you're a connoisseur of romance novels, try this one on for size. If not, don't make this your introduction to Donaldson. I plan to read the concluding sequel, A Man Rides Through, which I hope will be an improvement.

Review: The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey (2012)

In a hole in the ground lives Bilbo Baggins: a hobbit, that is, a small, peaceful little man who lives comfortably in a beautiful land called the Shire in the world of Middle-Earth. All this (except his stature, I guess) changes when the wizard Gandalf appears and volunteers Bilbo to accompany a group of dwarves on a quest to reclaim their ancient home, the Lonely Mountain, from the fearsome dragon Smaug. Although he is initially very reluctant, Bilbo learns to grow into the role of the adventurer, gaining the respect of his brave companions. In the meantime, a dark being with power over death awakens in the heart of Middle-Earth.

Chances are you've read the book by Tolkien. Maybe you've also read The Lord of the Rings, or seen the movie. Here's the first thing to accept, for better or for worse: this movie is nowhere near as close to its book as The Lord of the Rings. The fact that this, too, is a trilogy probably clued you in, but this should clear up any lingering doubts.

It's not entirely like the LotR movies, either, but neither is Tolkien's The Hobbit. Written for children, there's a lot more whimsy involved in Bilbo's tale than in Frodo's. In the book, trolls and spiders talk and joke while they're trying to eat the main characters, swapping some gravitas for humor in order to keep Bilbo's character light. He's not a serious character, but that doesn't mean he isn't significant. Unfortunately, one fair weakness of the film is its portrayal of Bilbo. He begins firing off snappy one-liners far too early, without the right kind of development to show how he became used to the adventures of the road. If the film is going to deviate from the book, it should have some sense of depth to those who haven't read the book; otherwise it's using the book's elements in the wrong order.

Other deviations were more fun. Radagast, in particular, is definitely jumbled together from what fans would like to see rather than from Tolkien's notes, but that doesn't stop him from fairly bursting with the raucous balance between silliness and magic that this film works to achieve. And Azog's storyline is blatantly non-canon, but he works very well as a foe for the stubborn Thorin Oakenshield.

In every aspect other than plot and character, the film succeeds overwhelmingly. The visual aspect is totally breathtaking, as if LotR were painted with brighter colors so that it could shine from every crevice. My only complaint about that aspect is that some shots were a bit dizzying, even for someone who isn't normally averse to helicopter shots or shaky camera. But the musical score is fantastic, even better than its predecessors. For days afterward I found myself humming the dwarves' theme song in empty public restrooms (which have quite good acoustics).

Even if you're a loyal fan of the books or the movie trilogy, I recommend this film. After all, if you can look past the fact that Jackson now has a different approach to adaptation, he still comes up with gold. It's fun, which is the only real reason to go to the theater, anyway.

Review: The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton (1904)

I was first drawn to this author by my campus minister, who remembers most vividly Chesterton's saying that he would rather be "a toad in a ditch" than be forced to participate in even the most glorious of democracies. Happy election night, U.S.A.!

For the rest of us, this story is set in an ostensibly future England, in an urban world where all wars have ended and everybody praises the single empire under which they live. The king of England is selected randomly to ensure fairness, and the mantle falls to Auberon Quin, an imaginative prankster. He immediately sets about re-hashing the bureaucracy and its ceremonies into increasing self-parodies, and is delighted when nobody cares about how ridiculous they are being made to act. But from the formal chaos rises Adam Wayne, a young firebrand who is completely incapable of seeing the joke for what it really is. King Auberon has divided London into districts and enforced separate nationalism among each of them, and Adam Wayne decides to take his district, Notting Hill, to war against all the others. Wayne's seemingly insane zeal makes him a fearsome military commander, and as he confounds the rich bureaucrats who try to squash him, this Napoleon and his King are brought ever closer to a confrontation over the nature of what it really means to have human value.

Chesterton, to start at the beginning, is one of the most pompous authors ever to speak the English language. For example, this little number is the first line of the book:

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.

Self-renowned (that's right) as the anti-Nietzche, Chesterton filled his non-fiction with more one-liners and pithy pieces of wisdom than Groucho and Karl Marx combined. He was staunchly Roman Catholic and had a talent for analyzing people across cultures, usually erasing the difference between anthropologists and the people they study, or between historians and the past they analyze. However, sometimes he sets aside this talent unfortunately; I have to be skeptical when in The Everlasting Man he asserts that everything worth studying has happened relative to the Mediterranean Sea. And easily the biggest drawback of The Napoleon of Notting Hill is that it fails to include even a single woman. Maybe it's a future where men have learned to reproduce asexually and forgotten the feminine thought process. Got any better ideas?

Apart from these concerns, the book is mostly phenomenal. I retain some reservation because there are parts about which I don't have the slightest clue. A large chunk of thought is devoted to humor and the effects of taking something seriously or not. In Chestertonese, this means he's making fun of us, the readers. This is a consolation when you're reading something silly, but not when you find yourself agreeing with a philosophical point only to realize that you've been set up.

Here lies the main piece of brilliance of the novel. In terms of popular culture, Adam Wayne and King Auberon are closest to Batman and the Joker, respectively, but Chesterton did it first. The unstoppable, devoted idealist is going to triumph in the short term, but the prankster has removed all the rules from the game. It's a psychological contest, with each losing on the other's terms, and neither compromises. To top it all off, the two rely on each other: firm belief needs to be taken more seriously than anything else, and humor must have something taken seriously to subvert. So entrenched are Wayne's certitudes that, in a post-apocalyptic scene, the most poignant moment of the book, he is able to acknowledge this co-dependence without being able to let go of it.

This book is tricky to apply to life and literature, but it's worth it. The central theme is how seriously to take things, and as an English major in a liberal arts college, I've seen otherwise intelligent people damn themselves and dam their thoughts by taking this very question too seriously, never noticing the irony. They become parodies of self-awareness. Know that there are things worth involving yourself in, but always be able to put something down or take a step back. That goes for reading, thinking, and analyzing, so that you can go on living.

Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (2004)

"Unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years." So sayeth Neil Gaiman, the only currently-living fantasy author who is both a very famous celebrity and whose opinion I respect. All this adds up to unquestionably the finest English dust jacket quote of the fantastic written since who-knows-when, but what book is he describing? (The rhetorical question works better if you forget the title for a moment.) Everything written by Tolkien makes the cut, as do The Chronicles of Narnia. J. K. Rowling and Terry Pratchett are accounted for, as is T. H. White.

Now forget everything you know about fantasy. I find myself agreeing completely with Gaiman's quote, because the only two books I'd rank with it (Lord Foul's Bane and possibly The Last Unicorn) are American. I present Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

In the early 1800s, magicians still populate England. Unfortunately, magic itself has passed them by; the profession is populated by little more than street performers and stuffy scholars. One day, offended by the presumption done in the name of his craft, the stuffy old Mr Norrell decides to reveal to the world that he is the most powerful (that is, only) magician alive. He demonstrates his prowess by raising a young London lady from the dead, keeping it a secret that this particular miracle has come from a bargain with an ancient, powerful fairy king who then considers himself loosed upon London. Anxious both to secure his newly garnered respect and to keep any more unstable magic from threatening the people of England, Norrell sets out to collect any magical knowledge for himself and hide it away... until Jonathan Strange discovers a talent for magic that may surpass that of Norrell. Norrell takes the audacious young gentleman as his first and only pupil. Together, Strange and Norrell span an English cultural revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and a malevolent magical presence as they try to determine whether Norrell's bookish caution or Strange's stylish confidence will set the standard for the re-emergence of English magic.

The first thing to notice about this book is its complete devotion to the setting. The entire story is written in the style of early 1800's English romances, complete with alternate spellings like "chuse" and "surprize." Then comes the fact that Clarke's legendarium may surpass the size even of Tolkien's if you consider all the real-world references she weaves into the narrative. Not only is there a tremendous amount of fictional secondary material (she uses footnotes dozens of Mr Norrell's private books), but she also draws on figures of the time period. It takes a history lesson to tell some of them apart. My favorite is the intrusion of Lord Byron, who alternately bickers with Jonathan Strange and fuels Strange's melodramatic tendencies.

Now, since this is a blog interested in fantasy, magic ought to be an important focus. Magic is represented differently by every author, but there are several broad categories out there. Some authors (I'm lookin' at you, R. A. Salvatore) portray magic as a powerful weapon with no repercussions, and suddenly everybody is shooting energy blasts like super soakers. Others express the multi-functionality of magic, not just as a weapon, but as a tool for any aspect of life. Frequently these authors try to express the dangers of magic by linking it to the energy of the magician's body; that is, a character who does magic undergoes the physical strain as though he had done it by hand. Christopher Paolini's Eragon is a popular example of this. Personally, I find that this takes the magic out of magic. Nothing as mysterious and compelling as a fairy tale should be governed by such a bland, self-interested weighing of ends and risks.

Compare this to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Those two magicians can do nearly anything. At one point, Strange moves a city (a Dutch one, I think) to the modern-day Dakotas, picking up a handful of cowboys and Indians along the way. In her Austenian deadpan, Clarke quips that this is very inconvenient for the city's inhabitants unless Strange can put it where he found it, but it turns out that this is the whole point. Magic is not instructive if it's just a tool we've mastered already. It's the act of turning over stones, not knowing what might escape from under them. It's the act of opening doors to see what's behind them. Nobody, not even Clarke, captures it better than Peter Beagle when he has Schmendrick cry, "Magic, do as you will!" Only then do we realize that the world spins in ways the keenest instruments cannot meaningfully describe.

This is the heart of Strange and Norrell's quarrels. Norrell gets all his learning from books, yet he turns out to be a prodigious magician. He loves magic and himself enough to offer his services to his country, but this is primarily to gain respect and fear not only for himself, but for his craft. He then spends the rest of the book trying to stop anyone else from doing magic, no matter what or where. But the gentleman with the thistledown hair – that's our fairy villain – is already loose in London. The door has been opened, and the consequences are more than personal. On the other hand, Strange advocates active learning by as many people as possible, yet his audacity is no safer than Mr Norrell's caution, as certain casualties come to show. The resulting calamities resolve the way all calamities resolve: life goes on for some.

I love all of the characters in this book, including the ones I hate. Both the scoundrels and the gentlemen, most of whom overlap, are portrayed with powerfully realistic strokes. Both women and men are given complex, characteristic stories. They weave together in a masterful dance that combines poetic justice with the footsteps of real life. It's fitting, because these are the genes of magic.

Review: Going Postal by Terry Pratchett (2004)

In the wacky fantasy city of Ankh-Morpork, Moist von Lipwig is the best swindler in town, until he's caught and condemned to death for a life of crime. But the local tyrant, Lord Vetinari, has other plans: he fakes the hanging of von Lipwig's alter ego in order to appoint the arch-fraud as the city's new postmaster. He even assigns him an unstoppable golem as probation officer, in case Moist has any plans of escaping. The Post Office is obsolete, having long been outstripped by a privately-owned network of signal messages, whose monopoly is beginning to frustrate the city. Armed only with his talent for fooling people, Moist decides to give the corporate pirates (whose chairman is an actual pirate) a run for their money in order to see who is better at conning the city.

This is about the sixth Terry Pratchett book I've read. So far, it's the least humorous, but it's also got the best plot. Go figure. It seems that unlike Vonnegut, Pratchett needs to give up plot consistency for the sake of his jokes, and vice versa. Perhaps it's a function of British humor, or perhaps because most of his jokes are literal gags, they drive the story haywire. Either way, the book doesn't suffer from lack of humor; it's just slightly less cram-packed with its usual.

I once saw an interview in which Pratchett described the premise of his Discworld universe, of which Going Postal is a part. Nowhere did he mention the fact that his books are funny, not once. That would be like implying that your book doesn't have characters, or a plot. As usual, go figure.

Going Postal stands out from the larger Discworld collection by its characters. Apart from Moist, we have Mr. Pump, his golem probation officer, Who Talks In Capitalized Words And Isn't Quite Sure What Happiness Is. Moist's love interest, Adora Belle Dearheart, is a chain-smoking cynic and the only person who sees through Moist's various tricks and shams. As long as I'm discussing details, I thought the dynamic between Moist and Miss Dearheart was one of the most original romantic relationships I've ever read. Their attraction isn't random, as it so often happens, and Miss Dearheart is critical to the story as more than just a love interest. In fact, the story wouldn't work without her, and Moist's flirting is just a well-fitting backdrop. Take note, fiction writers: women are more compelling secondary characters when they have interests other than the main character. This works especially well if your protagonist is full of himself (or herself), but try to avoid the trap of making the love interest preoccupied with taking the protagonist down a notch. That's still a kind of obsession.

Other fun characters include Mr. Groat, the disgusting old postman who takes care of the abandoned post office; Stanley, Mr. Groat's young assistant who is obsessed with collecting pins until Moist accidentally invents stamp collecting; and Reacher Gilt, Moist's pirate-turned-CEO-for-better-pay nemesis.

One of my favorite aspects of the book is its theme. Pratchett plays the mailman storyline to its full advantage. Because Moist can't resist fooling people with style, he eventually establishes himself as a mailman messiah, promising "deliverance." His several near-death experiences are punctuated with discussions of angels, from which the book draws on the theme of divine messengers. Tied up with these is the concept that words immortalize their speaker. This has always entranced the likes of Dante and Shakespeare, but Pratchett can't resist immortalizing junk mail as well. It's just wacky enough to make sense.

Review: Girl Genius by Kaja & Phil Foglio (2001-present)

Girl Genius is an ongoing online comic set in an industrial Europe where "sparks" are fanatic mad scientists whose prowess can break the boundaries of possibility. The plot follows the adventures of Agatha Heterodyne, a young university student who discovers that she has been hidden as the most powerful spark in Europe. As her skill quickly begins to blossom, Agatha is forced to choose which side of her lost family to emulate: her father, descended from a line of conquerors but himself the greatest hero in memory; or her mother, a shadowy manipulator whose inventions have toppled empires. Among the countless colorful characters Agatha meets are Gilgamesh "Gil" Wulfenbach, energetic heir to the Empire of Europe; Tarvek Sturmvoraus, a deceptive prince with access to Agatha's family secrets; and Emperor Krosp, Agatha's talking cat.

This comic is unique in a wide variety of ways. First of all, you're not going to find another webcomic of this quality that churns out three comics a week. Their staff is religious about deadlines; they always update at midnight, even on the occasion when the colorist had a heart attack. And the finished product looks fantastic. The brightness of the art, including the style that seamlessly fuses wacky cartoons with breathtaking landscapes, makes Girl Genius fantastic even from a purely visual perspective.


One of my favorite aspects of the comic is the way science and magic are fused. There's not a huge amount of technical description, both because the science is unworkable and because they probably want to keep it exciting. This makes almost anything possible. There's a huge amount of monsters, most of which are explained as genetic constructs, and many of the wizard-like characters are actually scientists who have adopted a magical style. Many people have called the comic "steampunk," which is frequently ambiguous anyway, but the creators have gently objected to this label, noting that nearly every imaginable power source, not just steam, powers the crazy machines. My favorite is a giant robot squid whose gas valve is labeled "unleaded."

The story is also amazingly intricate, especially for a project that has been going on for so many years. Against its credit, this can make it hard to keep track of the plot points. Many of the events currently happening are explanations for things alluded to years ago, which a reader would forget without going back and reading it again. For this reason, I'd recommend reading Girl Genius all at once, or at least volume by volume, to avoid being bored or confused. But do read it! It's at your fingertips, and it's unlike anything else I've seen.

Review: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (2007)

I'll be honest: despite what I say, there are times to buy the book at the front of Barnes and Noble. If I were the kind of snob who read only Hugo Award winners, I'd have no idea what anybody else is reading and thinking. You can argue that I have no idea anyway, but at least now that's irrelevant to what's popular.

The Name of the Wind is all about Kvothe (pronounced nearly the same as "quothe" (that's what the dust jacket says, but most of us who aren't Edgar Allen Poe have to think twice anyway)), a mysterious innkeeper who turns out to have a legendary past. Kvothe is discovered by an enthusiastic Chronicler who persuades him to tell his memoir in three days (one day for each book of the series). The Name of the Wind details his origins, beginning as the son of traveling players, continuing through his days as a homeless teenager in the big city, and concluding with his escapades at the University. At every turn, Kvothe is forced to make great sacrifices in order to pursue love and magical knowledge, but frequently he is pressed into choosing one over the other.

I'll start with something this book does right. For me, the best feature of the story is the stylistic completeness of the world in which Kvothe has adventures. Rothfuss is not shy about getting technical with anything, not just including magic: he explores politics, economics, music, archiving, metalworking, organized crime, dendrology–you name it. As someone without a Ph.D. in Everything, I didn't feel equipped to question the accuracy of his explanations, which did a good job of convincing me they were true. At the least, they were consistent with each other within the world of the story, which is all I needed to enjoy it.

The biggest problem with the book is Kvothe. It's blatantly obvious that Rothfuss wanted to make a cool character and designed the rest of the story around him. This is fine and even common, as seen in Beowulf, A Wizard of Earthsea, and everything in between. But Superman needs kryptonite to make his adventures a challenge, and a fantasy hero needs some kind of character flaw other than, darn it all, being just too awesome for his own good. This is a description that isn't convincing, and unfortunately, Rothfuss applies it to Kvothe. Kvothe is the best musician in the world, the best magician, the smartest... it gets tiresome. I think his studies in the University actually are leading him to a Ph.D. in Everything. He's the center of attention even when he's not narrating, and he doesn't seem to mind, which automatically makes me dislike him.

On a lesser note, I couldn't buy into the University, either. Academia is a useful place, but it's so unlikely to be a teach-all in your fantasy kingdom that I found it to be the most unrealistic part of the story. It's blatantly modeled after a modern American university. Good fantasy does more than translate something as a one-to-one symbol; it creates something new to explore a variant possibility grounded in human sense.

In spite of all this, the plot is quite good, and I'm looking forward to reading the sequel. Rothfuss doesn't mess around with useless anecdotes. Every detail is relevant, and he leaves hanging threads in a way that the sequel will be able to pick them up. The climactic action scene is really a culmination of most of the stuff that happens previously in the book. And the villain behind the scenes seems like he will be very solid when he appears again.

Read this book! For a popular interpretation of the fantasy hero, it's pretty good, if not genius.

Is Genre Empty?

You may have noticed that this blog is mostly about the workings of fantasy, but it's worth noting exactly what that is. The implications of this question can reach as far as your worldview, politics, religion, and personal ethics. It can reach as low as to be a synonym for things I try to avoid when I'm searching for "fantasy art" on Tumblr. But as a writer, I try to focus on fantasy literature, which has a history, politics, and morality all its own.

Ursula K. Le Guin is the writer who tends to express this in my favorite terms, but I'm still going to try from my perspective as a guy 60 years younger, yet to move beyond self-publishing. Her gripe is with the division between "literary fiction," which is okay to be taken seriously, and genre fiction, which is banned from the privilege of valued criticism.

The difference can be seen on several levels. First, there's the level everyone has seen: the issue of sales. In a bookstore, it's easy to see the separation between genre fiction and lit-fic. Frequently at the front of a typical bookstore stand a couple of tables full of the recent bestsellers (or just what they expect you to buy). Genre fiction is frequently here: just think of the popularity of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, or Game of Thrones, and try to think of three works of realistic fiction, written in the last ten years, that have sold as well. These are the books that get the movies and television shows. But I know many people who consider genre to be contrived; perhaps this has a connection to popular, obviously-contrived reality television. People go to corny fantasy in order to escape, heedless of the fact that the true journey always involves a return trip.

This is closely related to the social problem of genre fiction. I'm talking about talking about books. How do you describe your reading habits to your friends? Many people don't, because they're somehow ashamed of what, how much, or how little they read. I have a friend who was genuinely surprised when I answered her request for a book recommendation, because most people hadn't given her a straight reply. It makes sense to use a person's literary preferences as a way to gain insight into his or her personality, but people want to look good, and genre can seem to indicate a loose grasp on reality. This is especially true because of trashy books like Game of Thrones, which are sold as a supplement to televised "reality" drama and then used as an indicator for all fantasy literature.

Here's an example from the history of this phenomenon. Peter Beagle, one of my favorite authors, describes a time when a publisher called him up to ask for a jacket quote for Terry Brooks' then-new novel, The Sword of Shannara. After reading the book, Beagle returned the publisher's call and told her that although he'd like to do her a favor, he had nothing good to say about the book and thought she'd lost her marbles before agreeing to publish it. "Trust me," said the publisher (and I'm paraphrasing from memory), "This will sell. There are people who read The Lord of the Rings forty-two times but can't get the energy to read it a forty-third... this will give them their fix." And she was absolutely right. This was the time when Tolkien-derived fantasy branched off into an offspring that was far more genre than story, which is how genre is most often considered today.

Here's a tangential disclaimer on which you can chew: I haven't yet read The Sword of Shannara, but it's not at the top of my list because I trust Beagle's opinion.

The academic side of this problem comes last because it takes the longest. The elevator on our ivory tower keeps jamming, and there are too many damned stairs. A large part of the problem has to do with funding. In recent decades, the legitimacy of the liberal arts has been called into question in entirely new ways, whereas it was untouchable for centuries. Like it or not, our new gods are science, statistics, and social justice, all pulled by the strings of who's got the dough. In order to justify its existence, college English departments have become, to paraphrase one of my professors, an amorphous monster that bites pieces off of other disciplines, or absorbs them entirely. Film studies? English! Drama? English! African-American voices? English! And since becoming a better person isn't as lucrative as any of these arts and crafts, the battle of wits and morals across literature tends to become marginalized. Now I can learn how to trace the plight of women writers since the 1960's feminist movements, but nobody's telling me what the hell I'm supposed to do about it.

The result of all this is that genre is pushed to the side because the widely-read books have no bearing on issues that are pushed as being contemporary, and the ones that actually deal with self-betterment (what could be more relevant to anybody?) are treating an outdated issue. If we fight for such truly fabricated ideals as the greater good and the future instead of learning to treat other people, things fall apart.

Here's some shameless advertisement: the fantasy trilogy I'm currently writing is all about what happens when one person has the responsibility to change the world, or when someone wants that chance but doesn't get it.

What fun! Here's what you can do about this: read everything. I believe that's the wisest thing I have ever had to say. Lots of responsibility comes along with it, such as the willingness to communicate what you've learned with other people, and encourage them to do the same. After all, most of the problems in the world, on whatever scale you decide to tackle them, have to do with a lack of communication, or with people who think they already know it all, or don't care. And unlike nihilist deconstructionist critics, I'm of the opinion that there is plenty to share with each other.

Review: On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers (1987)

Who knew that the fourth installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy... um, franchise, was based on a book? I didn't! And after reading both this book and the movie's summary on Wikipedia, I still don't, no matter what the publishers or Jerry Bruckheimer claim. But that doesn't reflect poorly on the book. The main thing in common between On Stranger Tides and the actual inspiration for Pirates of the Caribbean is that they're both roller coasters; I can't speak for the literal theme park ride, but Tim Powers' novel is certainly worth a try.

In the early 1700's, John Chandagnac is traveling to the Caribbean in order to regain an inheritance stolen by his shady uncle. As these things go, his ship is captured by pirates, who press-gang him into their crew and redub him Jack Shandy. Shandy begins to discover that the vodun (that's voodoo) superstition held by nearly everyone he meets may have a lot of truth to it; the eerie powers of this hemisphere have also led ex-professor Benjamin Hurwood to bring his beautiful daughter Elizabeth on a quest that crosses paths with Shandy. Together with pirate king Blackbeard and psychopathic physician Leo Friend, these characters embark on a quest for the Fountain of Youth, the consequences of which will decide which powers have the upper hand in the rising New World empires.

Adventure is the theme of this book. Shandy is no Jack Sparrow in that he's not a major cause of every problem that faces him; he's more of a blank slate for the reader to experience the supernatural world Powers creates. This can be bad at times, especially including his relationship with Beth Hurwood, with whom (you guessed it!) he falls in love for reasons that are never made clear. She's not a profound character, either; she's unconscious for most of the central quest, and she spends literally all of her limited time in the book as a damsel in distress. I was particularly skeptical of the fact that when Shandy sets out to save her for the last time, he hasn't seen her for weeks, still hasn't said more than a few lines to her (though it's implied they hung out for about a week while Shandy was helping to rebuild a boat), and what's worse, he could have begun searching for her at any point in those past few weeks. The resolution is kicker, but I don't want to spoil it entirely. No, kids, don't read this one for the romance.

All the other characters are pretty solid, however. Blackbeard himself is fantastic, both literally and figuratively. The magic can get pretty corny, resembling some sort of collaboration between George Lucas and Terry Pratchett, but it's tied together with strong vodun themes, so it's always interesting. Powers definitely did his research for this one. Every event and detail struck me as solidly based on historical and cultural research, even the creepy plant-monsters. And what's not to love about an ancient Ponce de Leon who talks to chickens?

I'd recommend this book to anybody who's looking for a solid adventure book with a degree of depth. Powers alludes quite a bit to the Odyssey, and that element comes off quite successfully. The sea's the limit for zany nautical adventures and forgetting to save your family and friends!

Review: Brave (2012)

Look out! Spoilers! If you haven't yet seen this movie, you may not want to read further.


Brave, Pixar's most recent film, follows the adventures of the Scottish princess Merida, whose imminent betrothal drives her to a drastic attempt to break out of the fate imposed on her by society and by her mother, Queen Elinor. Because this is a primarily literary blog, I'm going to focus mostly on the plot and other elements that most directly affect the story. That said, the best way to summarize my opinion is to say that everything except the plot was nearly flawless. The animation, voice acting, music, and other elements I probably didn't notice all came together to make it a beautiful piece of cinema; that's unmistakable. It's a much bigger task to sort out the point of what actually happens.

Before seeing the movie, I had a plot predicted in my head. It was Brave as I would have written it, shaped by all the preview footage I had seen. In it, Merida begins as a stereotypical Disney princess: beautiful and strong-willed, but forced into a marriage she doesn't want. But she's made of sterner stuff than most Disney princesses, and rather than having her change handed to her by a ridiculous prince, she strikes a Faustian bargain with an evil witch, knowing full well that it will upset her kingdom, but not caring. Somehow her family is turned into bears, as the previews indicated, and the repercussions aren't as easy to face as she had anticipated. The climax of the movie would involve Merida, now having gained the knowledge of the consequences of her various actions, would learn to set aside her personal desires for the good of the kingdom. This could have involved a marriage, but preferably there would have been some other integral element.

The actual plot is much more haywire. To begin with, Merida is a lot more clueless than I had expected. In fact, she's downright idiotic. I'm aware that she's a teenager, but I think most of my high school class could have anticipated that, perhaps, the pastry brewed by the magical bear-themed villain might have something to do with turning the person who eats it into a bear! Lots of fairy tales involve hubris, but usually it's not nearly this specific or predictable. Many other parts of the film, including Merida's speech to the clan leaders, showed a similar pandering and lack of creativity. Pixar isn't usually a company that dumbs down its movies for a child audience, but I'm afraid that's what happened here.

Merida's parents, Queen Elinor and King Fergus, were very well done, and I especially enjoyed the Queen's personality when she becomes a bear. This middle part of the movie held me the most. Merida is aware of the damage she's done and is actively trying to repair it, and she and her mother are bonding in a creative way. It greatly helps this part that Elinor occasionally becomes "a bear on the inside, too," so that there's less silliness and more urgency.

The resolution was the sloppiest part. Things stop making sense in the last five minutes, after Mor'du dies. If legends are lessons, then the giant bear was the only thing keeping a sense of sanity tucked into this movie.

First: Merida completely forgets about the words the witch gave her to break the spell. If that was a message and not an incantation, it should not have been phrased that way, because it left the tapestry bit feeling like a cop-out.

Then she doesn't have to marry anybody, and all the clans go home happy. This means that there are no consequences, or in other words, that if you're angry about your betrothal, you can publicly humiliate your family by turning half of them into fuzzy animals and tricking your parents into trying to rend each other limb from limb. They will forgive you for everything, and all of your political allies will be too confused by the deus ex machina to remember why they sailed into the movie in the first place.

In the parting shot of the movie, one of our blue will-o-th'-wisp friends waves just to remind the audience that we have no idea of his motives. I guess this could be symbolic, but I'm not totally convinced.

There are plenty of core elements of this film that I enjoyed. The biggest one is that the plot is not driven by the machinations of a significant villain. This is true of fairy tales: the hero wanders into wacky events and leaves them having grown, as we do in real life. It was also primarily driven by women, which, though not intrinsically better in itself, is too lacking in the film world. And, of course, it was quite an adventure to watch, even while I remained skeptical of some of the plot devices. Even what I thought was flawed was enjoyable at the same time. I'd recommend this movie to anybody, as long as you're not looking for the same kind of moral weight Pixar put into Wall-E.

My Two Big Fantasy Influences, Part 2

Stephen R. Donaldson

Hey, look! It's an author of what ordinary people would call fantasy! Stephen R. Donaldson is most famous for his series The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, The Gap Cycle, and Mordant's Need. Of these, I've read only Thomas Covenant, but those books are inextricably at the top of my list of favorites.

Thomas Covenant is a leper who has lost everything and lives as an outcast in a midwestern American town. One day, he blacks out and wakes up in the Land, a world where beauty and health are tangible forces, like color or gravity. Covenant believes he is losing his mind, and although his experience is detailed and convincing, he tries to remain certain that he is trapped in an elaborate dream. But to the inhabitants of the Land, Covenant is the only living person who can defeat their immortal enemy, the Despiser. Covenant therefore must find a way to save these people without admitting they are real.

The first and best part of Donaldon's writing is his ability to think of scenarios like that. Instead of putting his characters in trouble by having them captured by brigands or chased by wolves (although his stories contain elements of these), he writes them into psychological obstacle courses. His short stories, as I've discussed, take these issues in hand, but Covenant is what really makes a masterpiece of it. Donaldson's short story "Gilden-Fire," originally part of book 2 of Covenant, was actually removed from that book because it accidentally implied a resolution to the question of the land's reality. His "real world" characters: Covenant, Troy, Linden, Joan, and Roger, are never let off the tightrope between accepting or rejecting the dream.

Does this sound familiar? Probably.

The criticism I read most often about Donaldson is about his verbosity. There are websites devoted to the archaic words that only he still uses. This kind of problem goes two ways. If you're not in love with the books, then the vocabulary is probably going to push you further away, because you won't be motivated to look up the word if it's not clear from the context. I strongly prefer it, and find it highly poetic. The problem is that I can't (and shouldn't) replicate it perfectly in my own writing, nor are my books the appropriate setting for that kind of language, so it's a challenge to emulate without copying.

Donaldson is able to get away with this style in Covenant and not quite in his short stories because of the concrete elements that make up the Land. What some science fiction writers and even a few of fantasy get wrong is the complexity of symbolism. Symbols tend to become less real as they become complicated, unless they're a direct analogy, like parodies or political satire. Dragons, for instance, can mean nearly anything unless they're hammered down in a certain style; Tolkien, for instance, gives Smaug the dragon the direct speech patterns of an upper-class Englishman of old money, so that his message is clear enough. But real symbols are much more than a one-to-one substitution that fits the text, and high school English classes aren't likely to admit this.

Take stone, for example. Stone in Covenant has substantial qualities than actual stone does. Giants can sing to stone and make it move or float, and some stones can harness the energy of the sun in order to perform ritual magic. This doesn't mean that Donaldson means stone to be a metaphor for jet fuel or something more powerful found here on Earth. Stone, in essence, is just a metaphor for itself. To respect the power of stone as part of the story is to notice a basic underlying pattern in the elements of our own world. This, too, is fantasy.

Thomas Covenant fans are sometimes described, even self-described, as hopeless masochists, because of the incredibly depressing course each of the characters follows. It's no mere thrill ride, however. Characters do not turn up dead for no reason, nor is Covenant battered with misery just to evoke an emotional response from the reader. If you are looking for a sob story, Covenant is not your man, largely because he's not very likable. Instead, the books are a great example of the wise advice of the late Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: "No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them–in order that the reader may see what they are made of." Thomas Covenant is neither sweet nor innocent, but through reading them and then looking around, I've seen what I'm made of, what people are made of, and what the world is made of. I can give a book no higher praise.