The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N, K, Jemisin

Fantasy writing often seems to get down and wrestle with some of the big questions, life, reality, why we are here.  Things normally left to priests, physicists and philosophers with their often radically different approaches.  I am always left wondering if it works.  A good example would be a writer I absolutely could not get enough of as a teenager, David Eddings.  Eddings wrote about the gods.  He wrote about the creation of the universe. He wrote about the reason for it all.  And quite frankly, to me now, it was a bit crap.

You see I think I am in some ways a bit jaded.  On a personal level, wrestling with life and beliefs I find it so incredibly hard to get away from the simple fact that we, the human race, are less than a pimple on the face of reality.  We are in fact so unimportant, negligible and unnoticeable that we would not make the rank of pimple, on a pimple on a pimple, on the face of reality; and I for one am OK with that.  So when fantasy frames gods and realities in historical superstitious terms I am ok with that.  I buy it.  When fantasy tries to talk about a reality like ours, when it posits the birth of stars, galaxies, quasars and super giant black holes with the same mass as ten million suns and then has that reality depend upon the actions of some sex obsessed human being, I kind of have a problem with it.

That is what Jemisin does quite well in this work.  It's about the gods.  It's about the creation of a whole universe much like ours.  The scope of our reality.  She then has it all depend upon political intrigue of people.  The nature of reality depends upon people.  Her writing was good.  It was a bit sexy at times.  The plot moved forward and characters developed.  Me?  I could not get beyond the fact that the main character was screwing the origin of the universe.  Should you read it?  Its fun.  Will I try other stuff by her?  yes, but from the library when inspiration fails.  Another beef, that is probably not her fault but the editors.  Probably one of the worst titles ever, no real connection to anything remotely important in the novel.

In music they have the term easy listening.  Music that is easy to listen to.  In fantasy I think they should have something called easy reading.  There are so many fantasy writers out there who manage to write escapist stuff that is like brain chocolate.  At least for people like me.  E. E. Knight is another writer that falls into this category.

Dragon champion is more than just brain candy though.  The basic idea of the book is that it is a fantasy from the perspective of a dragon.  A dragon who has to survive being hunted by cruel elves, reckless humans and uncaring dwarfs.  Knight manages to capture this very well, the character development of the dragon, and its perspectives on events and people is really quite wonderful.  You find yourself rooting for the dragon one minute and then stopping a few seconds later asking yourself, "Did the protagonist I care for really just bite off a child's head and chew it.....with gusto?"

The writing is absorbing, E E Knight writes really well.  The plot is fairly straightforward, but in many ways more compelling because of that.  The ending is of course, like any great work in fantasy, a beginning and I expect ( I  have not looked yet ) to find at least a trilogy.  What kinds of readers will like this?  If you like your fantasy simple, and in many ways traditional, you will enjoy this book.  I will read more by this man, who I think is great after one book.  I will add him to my list.

Patrick Rothfuss "A Wise Man's Fear"

This is the second book in a series.  This book, and the book that came before, "The Name of the Wind" is complete and utter genius. I will repeat that if you did not hear it the first time, complete and utter genius  I should have reviewed "The Name of the Wind', but had read it before I started reviewing such trivial things as works of great fantasy.  The thing is, it took an age for him to write this second book, which I first read away from a computer, and we are still waiting on further instalments.

What makes it genius? I hear you cry.  For me it is the character development.  You keep thinking you know the lead character, Kvothe, but then he does something, and even though you did not expect it, it fits, both the character and the story.  The scope is epic, huge.  Kvothe is telling his own tale and is clearly much changed from the young man he describes, knowing that he is going to get to where he is now puts a limit on the story but also tells us that the author has a ways to go and books to write before he puts this one to bed.

Rothfuss breaks a rule, which is really a guideline, when it comes to explaining his magic system.  He spends a great deal of time on the details of how the magic works, but he does it well, never pedantic, always as part of the plot, and he still leaves much unexplained.

This tale has magic, music and mayhem.  It has love.  It has mystery.  Adventure leaps from the pages and your heart is bound to both leap for joy and cry in sadness.  It is a hard one to put down, and both tomes are just that, tomes.  If you love a long book rich in detail, deep as a calm lake at midnight this is for you.

I just wish that he wrote a wee bit faster!  Come on man, you have a duty to create.

Freakangels

Asa young man I loved comics, but I would never, ever spend my money on them.  I read too fast and there was never enough meat to make it worth it.  So I read other peoples, when I got the chance, but mainly stuck to books.  Web-comics though gave me a chance to get into the medium again, and this comic is a fine example of why you should be reading web based comics.

The story is a Science Fiction classic, a modern take on John Wyndham's Midwich Cuckoos.  Twelve young people have incredible mental powers and have basically destroyed England.  What follows is an in depth look at what they are and how they got there.  I absolutely do not want to go into any details because this piece is so good that you should read it for yourself, but I can give you a few reasons why.

First the artwork is stunning, and stands together wonderfully as a whole thing.  Second, they do not try to explain it.  At no point is there any explanation of why they have the powers they have.  None.  Instead the authors just deal with the events.  The history, without trying to explain it to the reader.  The reader just takes it in and moves on.  Third, the story is basically a human story, even though it is about super-humans, and so the we fall into it in the same way as we might fall into the story of Batman, or Spiderman.  It is the human side to the story that makes the superhuman interesting.

Like all good web-comics this one comes in print, and I am eager to get hold of it.  Unlike the other books I have reviewed I have yet to support the authors with a purchase.  So if my recommendation means anything, check it out yourself online, and buy your own copy.

I have actually read many books by Card over the years, and enjoyed a lot of them.  not all, but a lot.  The classic Card story, the one that really pushed him over the edge into sci-fi/fantasy stardom was Ender's Game, a must read science fiction, though the sequels start to pale very quickly.

Lost Gate was a new universe to me and was one of those books that you just inhale.  The basic premise was genius.  A beautiful idea.  And then Card wove a story within it.  Unfortunately it was not a story without flaws.

So what is this glorious idea that sucked me in?  he tried to do something that many writers have tried to do in the past, and often succeeded.  he tried to explain it all.  By all I mean History, religion, where we came from.  This is what Greg Bear does brilliantly in the Infinity Concerto and Serpent Mage, two of the best books ever written. Cards explanation idea is almost as good.  This is it. Gods were real.  All our stories of Gods getting involved, fathering children on poor innocent girls and leaving them with a little demi-god, all real.  But something happened that made them less than they were, and so no longer Gods the families have spent the last 1400 years spinning their wheels and dreaming of lost power.

What made them gods in the past was moving through something Card called a great gate from their home world to Earth, basically the Bifrost Bridge.  But no-one has travelled a great gate since Loki, the last gate wizard and member of the North family of Gods closed them all.  This story is the story of Daniel, the latest gate wizard to be born and his fight to survive, and to open a great gate.

Where does the story fall down?  Over explanation.  Card has done this before, he likes the quasi science of something so much he goes into too many details and really tries to explain it because maybe, it is real to him.  The problem is it just doesn't work.  In fantasy it is a god idea to know how stuff works in the world you envisage, but leave it mysterious and let the story hinge on the characters, and their oh so very human tales, rather than the intricacies of a magic system.

Card is still worth reading, hell I own most of his books, but in most of the stuff he does he moves from dazzling brilliance to humdrum.  But the magic is still there.

Douglas Adams "The Salmon of Doubt"

Its been ages since I posted anything, I have been far too busy, and indeed not reading anywhere near enough,but that is sadly no excuse.......  I actually first came across Douglas Adams when very young, listening to the radio series, the now famous "Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy".  I really do not need to say how shockingly good it is do I?  Anyway, as you may know he died tragically young, when he still had a lot to contribute to society. So, for me he is not a new voice, but up until reading the Salmon of Doubt I had never really heard him with his philosophers hat on.  I had only ever experienced the comic novelist.  So in many ways it was a new experience.
The Salmon of Doubt has a lot of content, comments on Adams from illustrious friends, pithy remarks, throw away one liners, funny stories and anecdotes, and some very deep, very illuminating discussions on, well life the universe and everything really.  I have not yet got to the section which contains the unfinished Dirk Gently novel, so I haven't even read it yet, but I am raving about it already.
If you like science, if you like wit, it you like or at least like being baffled by technology, you will like Douglas Adams.  Sadly reading, actually listening as I got the audiobook for the car, to him his htoughts made me feel profoundly unlucky because I never actually had the chance to sit down with him and steal one of his biscuits(In Joke).