Three books.
Christopher Priest - The Separation
Priest, you may note, is the author whose rant about the Clark Awards resulted in some notoriety recently. Having not read any of his work prior to that, I decided to see how it was. It's not bad - but I'm not sure I would class this book as science fiction. Spec fic, certainly, but there's no science here.
The premise is this - Stuart Gratton is an historian. He is famous for his histories of World War Two, which draw heavily on first person interviews - oral history. He is doing research for his latest work, focusing on a singular mystery - one J.L. Sawyer, who was both a conscientious objector and a bomber pilot. Gratton has found a reference to this in some works by Winston Churchill, and decides to track down the mystery.
It soon becomes apparent that J.L. Sawyer is two different people, twins, with the same initials. (This is all on the dust jacket, so I'm not going to tag it as a spoiler - it's only really a mystery to Gratton). It also becomes apparent that Gratton is not writing history in our version of reality, because in his reality, the war between Germany and England ended in a peace treaty in 1941. (Germany and the US subsequently slug it out over the Soviet Union; Germany voluntarily de-Nazifies, and the US plunges into a lengthy depression. But this is largely unimportant.) As we read further in the book, we learn that the brothers exist in both Gratton's history and in ours, with the key difference being that, in our history, the bomber pilot survives a plane crash, and in Gratton's history he does not.
So far, so good. Were this science fiction, there would be some effort to resolve this rift, but Priest doesn't do that. Indeed, at the end of the book, matters are much more muddled than they were at the beginning. This is a shame, because it makes the book feel unfinished (or worse, finished in a rush), and the rest of book is entirely delightful. Priest's writing is clear and light, his historians sound like historians, and his historical figures sound like historical figures - all very good. Ending the book in an unresolved way may be avant garde (or something), but it spoiled the work for me.
Terry Pratchett - Snuff
Pratchett presents the topic of slavery in his own particular style. Goblins feature. It's a Sam Vimes novel. I haven't really loved the Vimes novels since Night Watch, which was phenomenal and deeply moving. Since then, the books have focused too much on Vimes and not enough on the Watch - a shift from a police procedural to a lone detective type situation. This book wasn't bad, but it wasn't radiant, and that's a shame.
I think there were two flaws, primarily. I think the book took too long to get to the action, and then took too long after the action was done. However, the action was very good, the jokes were funny, and the writing was, for the most part, pretty strong.
A final thought - Pratchett is dying, which is very sad. I think everything by him suddenly gets dropped into the context of "if this is the last novel by Terry Pratchett, will I be happy?" Which isn't really fair, because I certainly don't apply that metric to any other author, but it's entirely possible that any novel I read will be the last novel a particular novelist produces. Hmmm. Anyway, if this is the last Pratchett novel ever, I'm a little sad, because it isn't as strong as some of his less recent works.
Quentin Dodd - Princess of Neptune
This book was zany. The whole thing felt like one of those round robin works, where the story is passed from author to author, which each author trying to leave the next author in the most awkward position possible. It features a punk girl drummer, her bratty brother, some highly dubious scientists (their motto is "Knowing Things is Good!"), giant cockroaches from the moon, and a whole host of aliens from all over the place. And a talking fern. And a battle of the bands. On Neptune. Because, why not? It was good fun, with some slap-stick action, and it was zany. Good for after some heavy works - otherwise, too fluffy for words.
Showing posts with label Pratchett. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pratchett. Show all posts
Friday, April 27, 2012
Friday, March 11, 2011
Friday Review, 3/11/2011
Andrew Lane - The Death Cloud
This is the first of Lane's Young Sherlock Holmes books. The series is approved by the Doyle family, which adds a little something to the experience, perhaps. At any rate, Lane set out to piece together Holmes' adolescence from the hints that Doyle had presented. He writes about the exercise here, and concludes that, for the most part, Holmes' childhood cannot have been a pleasant or comfortable one. Given that, I had expected that this book would be rather more dreadful than it was.
Lane has set himself an interesting challenge - we know, of course, how Holmes turns out; more importantly, we know what skills he has. Doyle, of course, presents us with a preternaturally competent man with a wide array of interests and abilities. Lane has to do two things. First, he has to show us a young Holmes gaining those skills and interests, and second, he has to tell a story worth reading at the same time. I think he succeeds entirely at the first part, and does a pretty good job at the second part, although there are some places where the whole exercise goes somewhat off the rails. Mostly, Holmes inserts himself into situations that he (as an adolescent) has no place inserting himself into. This is, of course, the meat and potatoes of the adolescent detective novel; the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, the various books of Enid Blyton (The Secret Seven, The Famous Five, and the Adventure books), even Encyclopedia Brown; all hinge on children and teens inserting themselves into matters which are entirely beyond the scope of the average young person. I have no idea why it bothers me here, but it does, a little.
The story turns around the summer that young Sherlock spends with his uncle, since his father has been sent to India with his regiment. Sherlock's brother, Mycroft, newly hired by the British Government, ensures that Sherlock has a tutor for the summer. The tutor, as might be expected, is somewhat non-traditional in his approaches. Against the better judgement of the tutor, Sherlock solves a mystery involving the defense of the realm.
In the end, the whole thing was fun, but not particularly deep.
Grace Pundyk - The Honey Trail
Here's the food ethics book for the week. Pundyk, an Australian free lance writer, sets out to explore the world of honey. Starting in Yemen, she travels to Australia, New Zealand, Borneo, Russia, The United Kingdom, Italy, Turkey, the United States, and China. In each country, she seeks out honey producers and honey sellers. She reveals the twisted history of honey. Honey bees of one sort of another exist natively on every continent except North and South America (the honey produced in the Americas is made by transplanted European bees.) - despite this, Argentina is one of the world's biggest honey producers (only China produces more). Each country makes a slightly, or indeed wildly, different type of honey, depending on the flowers the bees visit, and the species of bees being kept.
The book is fascinating. Honey is deeply complicated. The plant life needed to keep bees is under pressure all over the world - bees are kept in some of the most sensitive ecosystems, from the leatherwood forests of Tasmania (under threat of logging) to the wetlands of Borneo (under threat of being converted into palm oil plantations) to the midwest of the United States (where drought and agricultural monocultures are having a significant and negative impact on bees and honey.) In Australia, Pundyk finds bee keepers who argue that the government is not doing enough to protect forests - and other bee keepers who argue that the government is doing too much. By keeping them out of national parks, the government has significantly impacted the territory of some Australian bee keepers, who must keep moving around the country in order to expose their bees to new flora on a regular basis. In Borneo, she works through a local NGO devoted to turning bee keeping into a viable business in order to keep plantations out of the sensitive land - the NGO works to teach traditional honey hunters more modern techniques, so that fewer bees are killed in the process of harvesting the honey.
Honey is also big business. Pundyk talks a little about the fact that honey has been shipped all over the world since the very earliest of civilizations - there are reports, for instance, of Chinese traders acquiring honey from Borneo, and there are temple paintings of honey trading in Egypt. Honey is, in addition to being a relatively easy to acquire sweetener, highly valued as a medicine. Different honeys are often attributed with different medicinal qualities, and so trade across national borders makes sense.
In modern times, honey remains an important commodity. Pundyk discusses the struggle that smaller producers have in maintaining their local product. For instance, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the United States have all raised significant tariff walls against Chinese honey, both because it is much cheaper than locally produced honey, and because there have been some serious problems with chloramphenicol - an antibiotic. Australia and New Zealand both have very stringent import laws - Pundyk is concerned that her honey will be confiscated as she enters these countries (although, actually, it is only as she arrives in Sweden, en route to the UK, that her honey is confiscated. Not, as she feared, because of import laws, but rather as a part of the prohibition against liquids on planes.) Despite this, Australian honey has been found with high levels of nitrofurans - a different antibiotic, used in Argentina, but not in Australia - keeping honey "pure" is harder than it looks. The ban on Chinese honey resulted in the near collapse of one of the major honey producers in the UK - the honey they had been selling was largely Chinese. Other honey companies capitalized.
Argentina ships a vast amount of honey to the US - most of the honey sold in the US is a blend of honey from the US, Canada, and Argentina - but how much of each sort of honey is in the blend is hard to tell. Bee keepers in the US chapter complain about the competition from Argentina - and yet, Pundyk has a surprisingly hard time finding honey, either domestic or imported, in the stores she visits in the US. This leads to a short discussion of food deserts - as she drives across the American South, she is amazed that she sees so little fresh produce on grocery shelves.
In addition to writing about bees, Pundyk writes about herself, about travelling, about finding a home, about falling in love, and blues music, among a great deal else. The books rambles all over the map, just as Pundyk does. At times, this is a little distracting; at other times, it is endearing. In the end, the book is a fascinating meander through a vastly interesting topic, and a nice way to end the Honey Month.
Terry Pratchett - I Shall Wear Midnight
This is the fourth of Pratchett's Tiffany Aching novels. This series is a young adult series, and serves, perhaps, as an independent introduction to Pratchett's Discworld. Tiffany, a young witch, wanders through environments which will be familiar with existing fans of the Discworld novels, but which are presented in a new and fresh way in these books. The books are delightful, regardless of whether you've read any of the rest of Pratchett's work or not - but, there are some grace notes which will enhance the books if you are already a fan. This novel features a cameo appearance by a very old character - Eskarina Smith, the central character of Pratchett's much earlier novel, Equal Rites
. If you haven't read the earlier novel, it doesn't matter, but if you have, there's a strong Aha! moment when you recognize Miss Smith, which is nice.
Pratchett plays with metaphors in all of his writing. Here, Pratchett is writing about inclusiveness and interpersonal relations. He is also writing about witch hunts, both literal and figurative - it wouldn't be hard to see this as a novel about the way in which, people of, say, Middle Eastern extraction are treated in Western society. Despite that, the novel is not at all preachy. Instead, it is a romp; entirely delightful. If you are already a fan, this is a must read. If not, I'd say start with The Wee Free Men
. My wife contends that the Tiffany Aching books are not necessarily a good place to enter into the Discworld, because Pratchett writes them much differently. Notably, the Tiffany Aching books have chapters, and a relatively small cast of highly developed characters, while the rest of the novels have no chapters, and have vast hordes of characters with somewhat differing levels of development. Pratchett novels are a cumulative thing - the character of, for instance, the witches, evolves quite a lot between Equal Rites (the first appearance of Granny Weatherwax) and Carpe Jugulum (which I reviewed earlier, as part of the vampire thing). The same is true of the members of Ankh Morpork's Night Watch. I think Tiffany Aching is as good a place to start any any other, probably - if you like these, you'll probably find a great deal that you like in the rest of the books.
This is the first of Lane's Young Sherlock Holmes books. The series is approved by the Doyle family, which adds a little something to the experience, perhaps. At any rate, Lane set out to piece together Holmes' adolescence from the hints that Doyle had presented. He writes about the exercise here, and concludes that, for the most part, Holmes' childhood cannot have been a pleasant or comfortable one. Given that, I had expected that this book would be rather more dreadful than it was.
Lane has set himself an interesting challenge - we know, of course, how Holmes turns out; more importantly, we know what skills he has. Doyle, of course, presents us with a preternaturally competent man with a wide array of interests and abilities. Lane has to do two things. First, he has to show us a young Holmes gaining those skills and interests, and second, he has to tell a story worth reading at the same time. I think he succeeds entirely at the first part, and does a pretty good job at the second part, although there are some places where the whole exercise goes somewhat off the rails. Mostly, Holmes inserts himself into situations that he (as an adolescent) has no place inserting himself into. This is, of course, the meat and potatoes of the adolescent detective novel; the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, the various books of Enid Blyton (The Secret Seven, The Famous Five, and the Adventure books), even Encyclopedia Brown; all hinge on children and teens inserting themselves into matters which are entirely beyond the scope of the average young person. I have no idea why it bothers me here, but it does, a little.
The story turns around the summer that young Sherlock spends with his uncle, since his father has been sent to India with his regiment. Sherlock's brother, Mycroft, newly hired by the British Government, ensures that Sherlock has a tutor for the summer. The tutor, as might be expected, is somewhat non-traditional in his approaches. Against the better judgement of the tutor, Sherlock solves a mystery involving the defense of the realm.
In the end, the whole thing was fun, but not particularly deep.
Grace Pundyk - The Honey Trail
Here's the food ethics book for the week. Pundyk, an Australian free lance writer, sets out to explore the world of honey. Starting in Yemen, she travels to Australia, New Zealand, Borneo, Russia, The United Kingdom, Italy, Turkey, the United States, and China. In each country, she seeks out honey producers and honey sellers. She reveals the twisted history of honey. Honey bees of one sort of another exist natively on every continent except North and South America (the honey produced in the Americas is made by transplanted European bees.) - despite this, Argentina is one of the world's biggest honey producers (only China produces more). Each country makes a slightly, or indeed wildly, different type of honey, depending on the flowers the bees visit, and the species of bees being kept.
The book is fascinating. Honey is deeply complicated. The plant life needed to keep bees is under pressure all over the world - bees are kept in some of the most sensitive ecosystems, from the leatherwood forests of Tasmania (under threat of logging) to the wetlands of Borneo (under threat of being converted into palm oil plantations) to the midwest of the United States (where drought and agricultural monocultures are having a significant and negative impact on bees and honey.) In Australia, Pundyk finds bee keepers who argue that the government is not doing enough to protect forests - and other bee keepers who argue that the government is doing too much. By keeping them out of national parks, the government has significantly impacted the territory of some Australian bee keepers, who must keep moving around the country in order to expose their bees to new flora on a regular basis. In Borneo, she works through a local NGO devoted to turning bee keeping into a viable business in order to keep plantations out of the sensitive land - the NGO works to teach traditional honey hunters more modern techniques, so that fewer bees are killed in the process of harvesting the honey.
Honey is also big business. Pundyk talks a little about the fact that honey has been shipped all over the world since the very earliest of civilizations - there are reports, for instance, of Chinese traders acquiring honey from Borneo, and there are temple paintings of honey trading in Egypt. Honey is, in addition to being a relatively easy to acquire sweetener, highly valued as a medicine. Different honeys are often attributed with different medicinal qualities, and so trade across national borders makes sense.
In modern times, honey remains an important commodity. Pundyk discusses the struggle that smaller producers have in maintaining their local product. For instance, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the United States have all raised significant tariff walls against Chinese honey, both because it is much cheaper than locally produced honey, and because there have been some serious problems with chloramphenicol - an antibiotic. Australia and New Zealand both have very stringent import laws - Pundyk is concerned that her honey will be confiscated as she enters these countries (although, actually, it is only as she arrives in Sweden, en route to the UK, that her honey is confiscated. Not, as she feared, because of import laws, but rather as a part of the prohibition against liquids on planes.) Despite this, Australian honey has been found with high levels of nitrofurans - a different antibiotic, used in Argentina, but not in Australia - keeping honey "pure" is harder than it looks. The ban on Chinese honey resulted in the near collapse of one of the major honey producers in the UK - the honey they had been selling was largely Chinese. Other honey companies capitalized.
Argentina ships a vast amount of honey to the US - most of the honey sold in the US is a blend of honey from the US, Canada, and Argentina - but how much of each sort of honey is in the blend is hard to tell. Bee keepers in the US chapter complain about the competition from Argentina - and yet, Pundyk has a surprisingly hard time finding honey, either domestic or imported, in the stores she visits in the US. This leads to a short discussion of food deserts - as she drives across the American South, she is amazed that she sees so little fresh produce on grocery shelves.
In addition to writing about bees, Pundyk writes about herself, about travelling, about finding a home, about falling in love, and blues music, among a great deal else. The books rambles all over the map, just as Pundyk does. At times, this is a little distracting; at other times, it is endearing. In the end, the book is a fascinating meander through a vastly interesting topic, and a nice way to end the Honey Month.
Terry Pratchett - I Shall Wear Midnight
This is the fourth of Pratchett's Tiffany Aching novels. This series is a young adult series, and serves, perhaps, as an independent introduction to Pratchett's Discworld. Tiffany, a young witch, wanders through environments which will be familiar with existing fans of the Discworld novels, but which are presented in a new and fresh way in these books. The books are delightful, regardless of whether you've read any of the rest of Pratchett's work or not - but, there are some grace notes which will enhance the books if you are already a fan. This novel features a cameo appearance by a very old character - Eskarina Smith, the central character of Pratchett's much earlier novel, Equal Rites
. If you haven't read the earlier novel, it doesn't matter, but if you have, there's a strong Aha! moment when you recognize Miss Smith, which is nice.Pratchett plays with metaphors in all of his writing. Here, Pratchett is writing about inclusiveness and interpersonal relations. He is also writing about witch hunts, both literal and figurative - it wouldn't be hard to see this as a novel about the way in which, people of, say, Middle Eastern extraction are treated in Western society. Despite that, the novel is not at all preachy. Instead, it is a romp; entirely delightful. If you are already a fan, this is a must read. If not, I'd say start with The Wee Free Men
. My wife contends that the Tiffany Aching books are not necessarily a good place to enter into the Discworld, because Pratchett writes them much differently. Notably, the Tiffany Aching books have chapters, and a relatively small cast of highly developed characters, while the rest of the novels have no chapters, and have vast hordes of characters with somewhat differing levels of development. Pratchett novels are a cumulative thing - the character of, for instance, the witches, evolves quite a lot between Equal Rites (the first appearance of Granny Weatherwax) and Carpe Jugulum (which I reviewed earlier, as part of the vampire thing). The same is true of the members of Ankh Morpork's Night Watch. I think Tiffany Aching is as good a place to start any any other, probably - if you like these, you'll probably find a great deal that you like in the rest of the books.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Friday Reviews, 2/11/2011
More blood, but also some laughing this week.
Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt - Dracula, The Un-Dead
A sequel to Dracula. Ambitious, and a deliberate attempt to address an issue with US copyright law - because Bram Stoker did not cross every t and dot every i, Dracula has been in the public domain in the US since 1899. That means that, when people noticed that the story was pretty good, round about 1912, and started adapting for film, they did not have to ask permission. As a result, most of the film versions have taken rather a lot of liberties with the original story. So, part of the purpose of this sequel was to get something called Dracula out into the market with the Stoker name on it. This is, perhaps, commendable, and is also evidence of the best part of the book - the short essays at the back about the history of Stoker's novel and the decision to write this novel, and the explanation for the liberties that were taken with the original text to make it conform to the sequel.
Wait, what? The essays complain about the liberties taken by film makers, and yet the authors take liberties of their own? Indeed. Stoker and Holt made a conscious decision to merge the narratives of the original novel with the most popular elements of the film version. In the original, for instance, Dracula can go out during the day, he is only greatly weakened by sunlight. In the sequel's version of the original, sunlight is anathema to the vampires, as has become widely accepted in the years since Stoker's book. Many of the movie versions have some sort of romantic relationship between Dracula and Mina Harker - Holt and Stoker incorporate that, even explaining where it might have slipped into Bram's original. These alterations and others were included, say the authors, so that people who had only experienced the story through the movies could still connect with the sequel.
Leaving aside the possibly faulty logic of that assertion, the authors also changed some other things for their own narrative purposes - most notably, moving the action of the original novel backwards in time from 1893 to 1888, so that it coincided with the Jack the Ripper case. This allowed them to set the sequel in 1912, which allows for a cameo appearance by Bram Stoker, while still having Quincy Harker be old enough to logically participate in the action of this novel. This, I found to be somewhat more dubious than the inclusion of alterations from the film versions - was it really necessary to have Bram in the novel? For that matter, would 5 years really have made that much difference in re: Quincy? I'm not sure that his age was every definitively established, but if we assume that he was born in 1888, or even 1889, he would be 23 or 24. Surely 18 or 19 is entirely old enough to participate in a monster hunt - perhaps even more logical, given that Quincy's role is to be headstrong, naive, and brash - characteristics more suited to late teens than early twenties.
Anyway. The foundation of the novel is shaky, because of the changes that Holt and Stoker felt necessary to include in the original, and the rest of the novel rests uneasily on that shaky foundation. Once you've altered the setting, changing the characters is not too much of stretch, and so that stretch is made. I felt that the decision not to use letters and diary entries as the primary narrative form was a mistake as well - granted, a more conventional (by today's standards) narrative form allows the authors to fill in narrative gaps that letters and diaries are prone to, but to completely leave the element out of the sequel seems like a mistake. (I know, I complained about the letters and diaries in the original - surely there is a happy balance between all epistolary and not at all?)
In the final assessment, I did not really like this book. It was a bold idea, and had a great deal of potential, but the authors were timid where they should have been bold and inclined to blaze new trails where hewing to the original would have been a better idea. I did finish the novel. I think I would be inclined to say that, were it not a sequel to Dracula, but rather a vampire novel in its own right, it would have worked quite nicely. The reliance on the Stoker name and the desire to write a sequel were, I think, a mistake.
After the serious Dracula business of last week, this week I went for something rather lighter: vampires as comedy. I started with:
Brian Meehl - Suck it Up
This was not as funny as I thought it would be. There were several cutely amusing bits - names of characters, little character quirks, things like that - but the novel was quite serious, and increasingly so as I made my way through it. Meehl understands something that Holt and Stoker seemed to have forgotten - vampires work very well as metaphors, and less well as protagonists. Here, the vampires are a stand in for many other minorities in society struggling to get their justice and full citizenship. Meehl tells a strong story about the desire of the majority of vampires to leave the selve obscura (the dark woods) and enter the daylight world as full and equal partners with "lifers." He has carefully thought out the implications of vampirism, and kept the bits that make sense in his narrative while discarding much of the rest - his vampires, through careful training, can walk in the daylight, for instance.
The plot: Morning McCobb, 16 year old vampire and brand new graduate of the International Vampire League academy has been chosen (for a series of highly logical reasons) to be the first vampire to publicly reveal himself - the "Jackie Robinson of the Vampire League", as he is called several times. With the assistance of a savvy PR director, McCobb gets his 15 minutes of fame. Some old vampires, who don't want to live peacefully with humans, try to stop him. Moderate mayhem ensues.
There were two things I didn't like. First, there is a fairly significant plot point in which McCobb acts completely against type, which was explained, but still troubling, and I'm not sure it was necessary. Second, Meehl in his author's note thanks "all those politically correct producers in children's television [Meehl was a puppeteer for Sesame Street, and wrote for Between the Lions] who, over the years, have saved me from ignorantly offending minorities I was unaware of." While it's possible to read this as straight thanks, it felt a little off to me - to easy to put a tongue in cheek spin on, too much like "gosh, those easily offended minorities." I dunno, perhaps I reading something there that I shouldn't, but it seemed ... off, given the content of the book.
Despite that, a surprisingly deep and complex narrative, I really enjoyed this one. It was a quick read, the characters were engaging, the action was good, there was a touch of romance, and a happy ending.
Christopher Moore - Bite Me
and You Suck
These are, respectively, the third and second of Moore's vampire trilogy, which starts with Blood Sucking Fiends, which my library didn't have. I read them in the above order, and I think the experience was better for it.
Moore is a comic author, and his books are quite genuinely funny. There were several places where I was literally laughing out loud through these books. They were a rollicking good time, a romp even. Jody and Tommy are two young folks, in love, in San Francisco. They are also freshly turned vampires, trying to figure out what that means. They are surrounded by a complex cast of wacky characters, from Abby Normal (goth/valley girl, and blogger), their minion, and her friend, Jared (goth, also), to a group of Safeway night stockers (stoners) who seem intent on hunting Jody and Tommy down. There's a fairly significant role played by a man claiming to be the Emperor of San Francisco (and his two dogs), and there is a pair of homicide cops who would really like to retire and open a book store. In the second book, there is a Las Vegas call girl whose schtick is that she's dyed blue, and a truly ancient vampire (who turned Jody in the first book) who is stalking San Francisco. This cast interacts, they misconstrue things, they get in each other's way, they jump to conclusions, they fail to pick up cues, and, ultimately, hilarity ensues.
There are two problems with Moore, though. First, the comedy is often fairly shallow, based on character traits and stereotypes. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't make for particularly satisfying novels - popcorn, rather than steak. Second, he has a nasty tendency to write himself into corners, and then introduce powerful new characters with a solution to the corner in the last 1/3 or 1/4 of the book - deus ex machina, largely. It's like he hasn't properly figured out how to get from his initial starting point to his ultimate conclusion before he sits down to write, and doesn't go back to pull his later arrivals more neatly into the narrative. As a result, Bite Me is, mostly, a more satisfying novel than You Suck (although I found the ending of Bite Me to be a bit of a down note in an otherwise up novel).
Additionally, trigger warnings for references to cutting, suicide, eating disorders, and, possibly, broad gay stereotypes.
Terry Pratchett - Carpe Jugulum
Mr. Pratchett, as is often the case, proves that a novel can be both truly fantastically funny, and also very deep and philosophical, often at the same time.
King Verance and Queen Magrat of the tiny Discworld country of Lancre, have had a baby. To the christening (although, is it a christening in a world where there is no Christ? Hard to say, actually.), Verance invites neighboring dignitaries, include the Count and Countess Magpyr and their children - vampires from nearby Uberwald. This was, it turns out, a bad idea. The attempt by the Magpyr's to take over Lancre is thwarted by the resident witches, Nanny Ogg, Agnes Nitt, Magrat (the Queen, yes), and Granny Wetherwax. They accomplish their task with a great deal of funny puns, footnotes, innuendo, and sheer bloody mindedness. En route, Pratchett delivers a simple and delightful meditation on the nature of faith and religion - "sin is treating people as if they are things."
Here, incidentally, the vampires are both a metaphor (for dictatorial governments, perhaps, or multi-national corporations, or, possibly, a mindless desire to advance without retaining any traditions - or something else, that's the wonder of metaphors, really) and satisfying characters, at the same time. The humor is of a highly British sort (I firmly assert that most British humor comes from placing characters in situations where they absolutely fit, and then intensifying their natural predilections to hilarious effect. American humor comes from taking characters and putting them where they do not fit at all, and watching them flail about, trying to make sense of their new environment.). This is also, I think, the first appearance of the Nac Mac Feegle pictsies - Pratchett fleshes them out and makes them somewhat more comprehensible in the Tiffany Aching series, but the broad strokes of the characters are here, the fighting, the drinking, "the snaffling o' coobeasties," the swearing (Crivens!). I had forgotten that they were in this book first.
That was it. Next week, vampire romances, which might be funny, but not on purpose, perhaps.
Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt - Dracula, The Un-Dead
A sequel to Dracula. Ambitious, and a deliberate attempt to address an issue with US copyright law - because Bram Stoker did not cross every t and dot every i, Dracula has been in the public domain in the US since 1899. That means that, when people noticed that the story was pretty good, round about 1912, and started adapting for film, they did not have to ask permission. As a result, most of the film versions have taken rather a lot of liberties with the original story. So, part of the purpose of this sequel was to get something called Dracula out into the market with the Stoker name on it. This is, perhaps, commendable, and is also evidence of the best part of the book - the short essays at the back about the history of Stoker's novel and the decision to write this novel, and the explanation for the liberties that were taken with the original text to make it conform to the sequel.
Wait, what? The essays complain about the liberties taken by film makers, and yet the authors take liberties of their own? Indeed. Stoker and Holt made a conscious decision to merge the narratives of the original novel with the most popular elements of the film version. In the original, for instance, Dracula can go out during the day, he is only greatly weakened by sunlight. In the sequel's version of the original, sunlight is anathema to the vampires, as has become widely accepted in the years since Stoker's book. Many of the movie versions have some sort of romantic relationship between Dracula and Mina Harker - Holt and Stoker incorporate that, even explaining where it might have slipped into Bram's original. These alterations and others were included, say the authors, so that people who had only experienced the story through the movies could still connect with the sequel.
Leaving aside the possibly faulty logic of that assertion, the authors also changed some other things for their own narrative purposes - most notably, moving the action of the original novel backwards in time from 1893 to 1888, so that it coincided with the Jack the Ripper case. This allowed them to set the sequel in 1912, which allows for a cameo appearance by Bram Stoker, while still having Quincy Harker be old enough to logically participate in the action of this novel. This, I found to be somewhat more dubious than the inclusion of alterations from the film versions - was it really necessary to have Bram in the novel? For that matter, would 5 years really have made that much difference in re: Quincy? I'm not sure that his age was every definitively established, but if we assume that he was born in 1888, or even 1889, he would be 23 or 24. Surely 18 or 19 is entirely old enough to participate in a monster hunt - perhaps even more logical, given that Quincy's role is to be headstrong, naive, and brash - characteristics more suited to late teens than early twenties.
Anyway. The foundation of the novel is shaky, because of the changes that Holt and Stoker felt necessary to include in the original, and the rest of the novel rests uneasily on that shaky foundation. Once you've altered the setting, changing the characters is not too much of stretch, and so that stretch is made. I felt that the decision not to use letters and diary entries as the primary narrative form was a mistake as well - granted, a more conventional (by today's standards) narrative form allows the authors to fill in narrative gaps that letters and diaries are prone to, but to completely leave the element out of the sequel seems like a mistake. (I know, I complained about the letters and diaries in the original - surely there is a happy balance between all epistolary and not at all?)
In the final assessment, I did not really like this book. It was a bold idea, and had a great deal of potential, but the authors were timid where they should have been bold and inclined to blaze new trails where hewing to the original would have been a better idea. I did finish the novel. I think I would be inclined to say that, were it not a sequel to Dracula, but rather a vampire novel in its own right, it would have worked quite nicely. The reliance on the Stoker name and the desire to write a sequel were, I think, a mistake.
After the serious Dracula business of last week, this week I went for something rather lighter: vampires as comedy. I started with:
Brian Meehl - Suck it Up
This was not as funny as I thought it would be. There were several cutely amusing bits - names of characters, little character quirks, things like that - but the novel was quite serious, and increasingly so as I made my way through it. Meehl understands something that Holt and Stoker seemed to have forgotten - vampires work very well as metaphors, and less well as protagonists. Here, the vampires are a stand in for many other minorities in society struggling to get their justice and full citizenship. Meehl tells a strong story about the desire of the majority of vampires to leave the selve obscura (the dark woods) and enter the daylight world as full and equal partners with "lifers." He has carefully thought out the implications of vampirism, and kept the bits that make sense in his narrative while discarding much of the rest - his vampires, through careful training, can walk in the daylight, for instance.
The plot: Morning McCobb, 16 year old vampire and brand new graduate of the International Vampire League academy has been chosen (for a series of highly logical reasons) to be the first vampire to publicly reveal himself - the "Jackie Robinson of the Vampire League", as he is called several times. With the assistance of a savvy PR director, McCobb gets his 15 minutes of fame. Some old vampires, who don't want to live peacefully with humans, try to stop him. Moderate mayhem ensues.
There were two things I didn't like. First, there is a fairly significant plot point in which McCobb acts completely against type, which was explained, but still troubling, and I'm not sure it was necessary. Second, Meehl in his author's note thanks "all those politically correct producers in children's television [Meehl was a puppeteer for Sesame Street, and wrote for Between the Lions] who, over the years, have saved me from ignorantly offending minorities I was unaware of." While it's possible to read this as straight thanks, it felt a little off to me - to easy to put a tongue in cheek spin on, too much like "gosh, those easily offended minorities." I dunno, perhaps I reading something there that I shouldn't, but it seemed ... off, given the content of the book.
Despite that, a surprisingly deep and complex narrative, I really enjoyed this one. It was a quick read, the characters were engaging, the action was good, there was a touch of romance, and a happy ending.
Christopher Moore - Bite Me
and You SuckThese are, respectively, the third and second of Moore's vampire trilogy, which starts with Blood Sucking Fiends, which my library didn't have. I read them in the above order, and I think the experience was better for it.
Moore is a comic author, and his books are quite genuinely funny. There were several places where I was literally laughing out loud through these books. They were a rollicking good time, a romp even. Jody and Tommy are two young folks, in love, in San Francisco. They are also freshly turned vampires, trying to figure out what that means. They are surrounded by a complex cast of wacky characters, from Abby Normal (goth/valley girl, and blogger), their minion, and her friend, Jared (goth, also), to a group of Safeway night stockers (stoners) who seem intent on hunting Jody and Tommy down. There's a fairly significant role played by a man claiming to be the Emperor of San Francisco (and his two dogs), and there is a pair of homicide cops who would really like to retire and open a book store. In the second book, there is a Las Vegas call girl whose schtick is that she's dyed blue, and a truly ancient vampire (who turned Jody in the first book) who is stalking San Francisco. This cast interacts, they misconstrue things, they get in each other's way, they jump to conclusions, they fail to pick up cues, and, ultimately, hilarity ensues.
There are two problems with Moore, though. First, the comedy is often fairly shallow, based on character traits and stereotypes. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't make for particularly satisfying novels - popcorn, rather than steak. Second, he has a nasty tendency to write himself into corners, and then introduce powerful new characters with a solution to the corner in the last 1/3 or 1/4 of the book - deus ex machina, largely. It's like he hasn't properly figured out how to get from his initial starting point to his ultimate conclusion before he sits down to write, and doesn't go back to pull his later arrivals more neatly into the narrative. As a result, Bite Me is, mostly, a more satisfying novel than You Suck (although I found the ending of Bite Me to be a bit of a down note in an otherwise up novel).
Additionally, trigger warnings for references to cutting, suicide, eating disorders, and, possibly, broad gay stereotypes.
Terry Pratchett - Carpe Jugulum
Mr. Pratchett, as is often the case, proves that a novel can be both truly fantastically funny, and also very deep and philosophical, often at the same time.
King Verance and Queen Magrat of the tiny Discworld country of Lancre, have had a baby. To the christening (although, is it a christening in a world where there is no Christ? Hard to say, actually.), Verance invites neighboring dignitaries, include the Count and Countess Magpyr and their children - vampires from nearby Uberwald. This was, it turns out, a bad idea. The attempt by the Magpyr's to take over Lancre is thwarted by the resident witches, Nanny Ogg, Agnes Nitt, Magrat (the Queen, yes), and Granny Wetherwax. They accomplish their task with a great deal of funny puns, footnotes, innuendo, and sheer bloody mindedness. En route, Pratchett delivers a simple and delightful meditation on the nature of faith and religion - "sin is treating people as if they are things."
Here, incidentally, the vampires are both a metaphor (for dictatorial governments, perhaps, or multi-national corporations, or, possibly, a mindless desire to advance without retaining any traditions - or something else, that's the wonder of metaphors, really) and satisfying characters, at the same time. The humor is of a highly British sort (I firmly assert that most British humor comes from placing characters in situations where they absolutely fit, and then intensifying their natural predilections to hilarious effect. American humor comes from taking characters and putting them where they do not fit at all, and watching them flail about, trying to make sense of their new environment.). This is also, I think, the first appearance of the Nac Mac Feegle pictsies - Pratchett fleshes them out and makes them somewhat more comprehensible in the Tiffany Aching series, but the broad strokes of the characters are here, the fighting, the drinking, "the snaffling o' coobeasties," the swearing (Crivens!). I had forgotten that they were in this book first.
That was it. Next week, vampire romances, which might be funny, but not on purpose, perhaps.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Friday Review, 2/4/2011
There will be 3 posts today; this post, a vampire post, and a Honey Month post. This post will address the books I read at the end of last month.
Kathryn Stockett - The Help
This is a lovely historical novel about life in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. It focuses on the fraught relationship between white middle-class homeowners and their black servants - the "help" of the title - at the height of the Civil Rights movement. The book was often funny, and just as often painful. The plot centers on a project to document the lives of the servants - a sort of anthropological tell-all work. Historically accurate for the most part (Stockett notes a few minor details which she moved around historically, like the introduction of Shake and Bake), and all in all a satisfying read. My mom recommended it, and I'm glad she did.
Terry Pratchett - Wee Free Men
This is the first of a quartet (thus far) of YA novels set in Pratchett's Discworld (mentioned earlier, see the Christmas Eve post). Focused on the actions of a young witch-in-training, Tiffany Aching, as she saves the world from an invasion by the Elf Queen. This book has much of the characteristic humor that we've come to expect from Pratchett, with perhaps a few considerations for the YA market. Unlike much of Pratchett's work, for instance, this book has chapters, which make it much easier to stop reading periodically. The protagonist is younger than in most of Pratchett's other works - 9 years old - and she approaches the world from a fairly straightforward YA sort of perspective.
The highlight of this book, and indeed the series, is the Wee Free Men of the title. Pictsies (so, basically, little Scotsmen), they approach the world with their own sort of straightforwardness - if it can't be eaten, drunk, stolen, or fought with, they are not interested in it. They believe that they died in an earlier life and are currently in heaven - with an abundance of good things to eat, drink, steal, and fight with, where else could they be?
Highly recommended for the 9-15 year old, or the adult with good contact with their inner young adult.
Kit Whitfield - Benighted
As I said when I brought this one home, I know Kit a little, which makes reviewing her book a little touchy - what if I don't like it? Thankfully, this is not the case - this was, for the most part, an excellent book. The premise - a world in which 99% of the population are werewolves (or, rather, "lunes," as they are called in the book), focusing on the 1% of non-lunes, as they struggle to survive as second class citizens - was interesting. However, what made the book such a satisfying read, and one which I heartily recommend, was the characterization. Ms. Whitfield has done a fantastic job of making her characters fully and believably human, and they are a delight to read.
That is not to say that they are likable - although I loved the characterization, I didn't particularly like the characters. Non-lunes have a very important role in Whitfield's society. They are, almost to a person, members of the Department of Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activity. (DORLA) On full moons, they make sure that society continues to function by rounding up stray lunes who might injure themselves or others, and (it is suggested) by keeping the basic functions of the military running, so that no nation is able to attack another while the majority of the population is in animal form. In that capacity, they basically act as a medieval inquisition - indeed, the historical scraps that Whitfield provides state that the organization began as an inquisition. Lola May, the central character, is not a nice person, and she is not doing a nice job. Over the course of the novel, she grows as a character, and, given two or three more books, might turn into a nice person (or, alternatively, very much not), but she was exceedingly difficult to like in this book. And, because she was so well written, that didn't matter.
A note on Whitfield's lunes - they are not wolves. This is fascinating - there has been some effort by authors over the past couple of decades to make werewolves into people who become wolves, and thus live like wolves, even when in human form. Werewolves, in this construction, form packs, and act like wolves - that sort of werewolf would never run amok, or madly attack humans, or anything of that nature. Whitfield's lunes are not wolves who become human, they are humans who, in beast form, are stripped of all the human inhibitions without gaining any of the animal instincts - they are the sort of beast who would destroy livestock, or attack a human without thinking, or damage themselves.
The combination of utterly bestial lunes and the inquisitional nature of DORLA really dictate the tone of the book - this is a dark novel, which deals with dark and painful matters. It does what all good speculative fiction does - it forces the readers to confront their own world (where people behave in a bestial fashion towards each other with the excuse of lycanthropy), while maintaining an enjoyable narrative. This is not an easy book, and, in places, it's not even a particularly pleasant book, but it is a very very good book.
Kathryn Stockett - The Help
This is a lovely historical novel about life in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. It focuses on the fraught relationship between white middle-class homeowners and their black servants - the "help" of the title - at the height of the Civil Rights movement. The book was often funny, and just as often painful. The plot centers on a project to document the lives of the servants - a sort of anthropological tell-all work. Historically accurate for the most part (Stockett notes a few minor details which she moved around historically, like the introduction of Shake and Bake), and all in all a satisfying read. My mom recommended it, and I'm glad she did.
Terry Pratchett - Wee Free Men
This is the first of a quartet (thus far) of YA novels set in Pratchett's Discworld (mentioned earlier, see the Christmas Eve post). Focused on the actions of a young witch-in-training, Tiffany Aching, as she saves the world from an invasion by the Elf Queen. This book has much of the characteristic humor that we've come to expect from Pratchett, with perhaps a few considerations for the YA market. Unlike much of Pratchett's work, for instance, this book has chapters, which make it much easier to stop reading periodically. The protagonist is younger than in most of Pratchett's other works - 9 years old - and she approaches the world from a fairly straightforward YA sort of perspective.
The highlight of this book, and indeed the series, is the Wee Free Men of the title. Pictsies (so, basically, little Scotsmen), they approach the world with their own sort of straightforwardness - if it can't be eaten, drunk, stolen, or fought with, they are not interested in it. They believe that they died in an earlier life and are currently in heaven - with an abundance of good things to eat, drink, steal, and fight with, where else could they be?
Highly recommended for the 9-15 year old, or the adult with good contact with their inner young adult.
Kit Whitfield - Benighted
As I said when I brought this one home, I know Kit a little, which makes reviewing her book a little touchy - what if I don't like it? Thankfully, this is not the case - this was, for the most part, an excellent book. The premise - a world in which 99% of the population are werewolves (or, rather, "lunes," as they are called in the book), focusing on the 1% of non-lunes, as they struggle to survive as second class citizens - was interesting. However, what made the book such a satisfying read, and one which I heartily recommend, was the characterization. Ms. Whitfield has done a fantastic job of making her characters fully and believably human, and they are a delight to read.
That is not to say that they are likable - although I loved the characterization, I didn't particularly like the characters. Non-lunes have a very important role in Whitfield's society. They are, almost to a person, members of the Department of Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activity. (DORLA) On full moons, they make sure that society continues to function by rounding up stray lunes who might injure themselves or others, and (it is suggested) by keeping the basic functions of the military running, so that no nation is able to attack another while the majority of the population is in animal form. In that capacity, they basically act as a medieval inquisition - indeed, the historical scraps that Whitfield provides state that the organization began as an inquisition. Lola May, the central character, is not a nice person, and she is not doing a nice job. Over the course of the novel, she grows as a character, and, given two or three more books, might turn into a nice person (or, alternatively, very much not), but she was exceedingly difficult to like in this book. And, because she was so well written, that didn't matter.
A note on Whitfield's lunes - they are not wolves. This is fascinating - there has been some effort by authors over the past couple of decades to make werewolves into people who become wolves, and thus live like wolves, even when in human form. Werewolves, in this construction, form packs, and act like wolves - that sort of werewolf would never run amok, or madly attack humans, or anything of that nature. Whitfield's lunes are not wolves who become human, they are humans who, in beast form, are stripped of all the human inhibitions without gaining any of the animal instincts - they are the sort of beast who would destroy livestock, or attack a human without thinking, or damage themselves.
The combination of utterly bestial lunes and the inquisitional nature of DORLA really dictate the tone of the book - this is a dark novel, which deals with dark and painful matters. It does what all good speculative fiction does - it forces the readers to confront their own world (where people behave in a bestial fashion towards each other with the excuse of lycanthropy), while maintaining an enjoyable narrative. This is not an easy book, and, in places, it's not even a particularly pleasant book, but it is a very very good book.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Friday Reviews, 12/24/2010: Special Christmas Eve Edition!
Terry Pratchett - Hogfather
Pratchett writes fantasy novels, mostly. For the most part, these books are set on the Discworld, a disc shaped planet carried on the back of 4 elephants carried on the back of a giant turtle. Once he hit his literary stride, Pratchett began using this clearly fictional environment to discuss far more real and pertinent questions of this world. These books are deeply philosophical, and also darkly amusing.
This book in particular deals with a familiar story involving a man in a red suit who travels around the world and delivers presents to the good girls and boys - the Hogfather. Pratchett slowly reveals that the Hogfather is a hold over from much older sacrificial rituals, in which a pig, or a man, might be sacrificed at the end of the year to bring the sun back. Anyway, this year, the Hogfather is missing - and Death takes his place. (Pratchett uses Death often; he's one of the most popular characters in the books. Death, oddly, is often the most alive character when he shows up.) There's a plot, you see, to kill the Hogfather. Death and his granddaughter (?!?) Susan foil the plot.
That's the story, but that's not what the book is about. Really, the book is about what makes us human. Pratchett believes that stories do. Pratchett clearly believes that the Hogfather, or Father Christmas, or Santa Claus, play an important role in explaining who we are as human beings. He places the explanation in Death's mouth (Death talks LIKE THIS in Pratchett novels):
The little lies which help us believe the big lies. I'm inclined to agree.
Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
I hate Charles Dickens. I really really do. In times past, I haven't been able even to read this, his most popular work. However, I gritted my teeth and plowed through it this year. Look, we all know the story. We've seen the Muppets do it, we've seen Mickey and Co. do it, we've seen Patrick Stewart do it (or, at least, heard him do it - and I must admit, I heard Stewart as Scrooge throughout this reading, which helped a lot). Perhaps my dislike of Dickens is a case of familiarity breeding discontent. But, it didn't kill me.
My petty gripes:
1) Dickens clearly states that the ghosts will visit Scrooge over 3 nights. They do not; they visit him in one night, and Dickens retcons madly in order to explain this - I think he just didn't want to describe Scrooge during the days in between ghost visits. 2) Scrooge has mended his ways by the end of the FIRST spirit, and the SECOND spirit seems to cement that mending - the third spirit seems overkill. I mean, for symmetry, the spirit needs to be there, but Scrooge seems resigned by that point - "yes, yes, you are the spirit of Christmas yet to Come, I'm going to learn something here, aren't I? Well, let's get to it...". 3) The transformation is too much. Scrooge is a caricature at the beginning, and a different caricature at the end, but I don't believe either of them. It's clear why he's fun to play - you get to play both the black hat AND the white hat in the same character.
Things I liked, despite myself:
1) Ok, ok - Dickens has a way with language, and I enjoyed many of his multi-claused sentences. I will probably try some more Dickens in the coming year (suggestions? I've started Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Pickwick Papers, and hated all of them...) to see if my dislike is only a passing fancy. (My wife suggests that this was an abbreviated edition - and listening to the Patrick Stewart reading, I find that it is, slightly.)
2) The book was fascinating as a window into Victorian era Christmas practices - no Father Christmas (although the Ghost of Christmas Present is pretty close), no Christmas trees (although Prince Albert, Victoria's husband, introduced the tree to England, so one might expect the practice to have trickled down), and the Cratchits are so poor they are forced to eat a goose instead of a turkey. (Bwha?) Bob Cratchit, on his way home on Christmas Eve stops to go sledding. All of the silly party games that get played by Scrooge's nephew. Fascinating stuff.
3) The temperance message at the end - Scrooge never touched spirits again after that - really?
Frederic Forsyth - The Shepherd
There is an old English tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas (Dickens did it, you know, and not just A Christmas Carol, and so did Robertson Davies
, although he was Canadian, of course.) and this is a fine example of that. Forsyth tells a story of a young man flying a single seater jet fighter home from Germany on Christmas Eve, 1957. Somewhere above the North Sea, the electronics in the plane fail, and a fog rolls in. Flying in irregular triangles, he hopes to attract the attention of a radar operator, who will send up a shepherd, a plane with a working radio to guide him home. Just as he is sure that no shepherd is coming, an antique Mosquito fighter shows up and guides him down. That's the story. It's very short, less than 100 pages, and the copy that I have is lushly illustrated with lots of pen and ink drawings - it's gorgeous. The whole book shouldn't take longer than half an hour to read - and Alan Maitland used to read it every Christmas Eve on As it Happens for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - here's a podcast. The descriptions are lovely, the story is simple, and it gives me chills every time I read it, simply perfect.
S.M. Stirling - The Protector's War
Ummm, this one is totally not a Christmas book. Sorry. I started it at the end of last week, and I finished it this week while waiting for the Dickens to be free. This is the second of the Emberverse books, and it may well be my favorite. Stirling does a lot of interesting world building - one group of characters travel from Europe to the US, and that allows the readers to get a glimpse of what things are like outside of Oregon. It's clear why there is a community of fanficcers for this series - Stirling provides a lovely sandbox to play in, and then concentrates most of his attention on a single corner of the box (and rightly so). I love that Stirling has offered some sort of official sanction to the fic as well, since he has a page of links on his official website. He recognizes that he's only using a corner of the sandbox. Personally, I'd like to see something set on Newfoundland - if any group survived the cataclysm, it was the Newfies.
Anyway - I like the way that Stirling weaves three separate tales together here. I like the personalities that interact, I like the description of the difference between folks who lived through The Change and those born after it - it's easy to accept the status quo if you've never experienced anything like it before. I like that the characters are really only dealing with other humans - in the second series, the stakes are bigger because the players are less mundane. (I like that too, but this first trilogy is far more down to earth.) I like that Stirling seems to have restrained his desire to play with accents here - very well done.
So, that's it for this week. Tomorrow is Christmas, and I hope you all have a good one, those of you who celebrate. I'm expecting some books, and I'll tell you about them on Monday...
Pratchett writes fantasy novels, mostly. For the most part, these books are set on the Discworld, a disc shaped planet carried on the back of 4 elephants carried on the back of a giant turtle. Once he hit his literary stride, Pratchett began using this clearly fictional environment to discuss far more real and pertinent questions of this world. These books are deeply philosophical, and also darkly amusing.
This book in particular deals with a familiar story involving a man in a red suit who travels around the world and delivers presents to the good girls and boys - the Hogfather. Pratchett slowly reveals that the Hogfather is a hold over from much older sacrificial rituals, in which a pig, or a man, might be sacrificed at the end of the year to bring the sun back. Anyway, this year, the Hogfather is missing - and Death takes his place. (Pratchett uses Death often; he's one of the most popular characters in the books. Death, oddly, is often the most alive character when he shows up.) There's a plot, you see, to kill the Hogfather. Death and his granddaughter (?!?) Susan foil the plot.
That's the story, but that's not what the book is about. Really, the book is about what makes us human. Pratchett believes that stories do. Pratchett clearly believes that the Hogfather, or Father Christmas, or Santa Claus, play an important role in explaining who we are as human beings. He places the explanation in Death's mouth (Death talks LIKE THIS in Pratchett novels):
"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little ---"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUR LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET --- Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME ... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point ---"
MY POINT EXACTLY
The little lies which help us believe the big lies. I'm inclined to agree.
Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
I hate Charles Dickens. I really really do. In times past, I haven't been able even to read this, his most popular work. However, I gritted my teeth and plowed through it this year. Look, we all know the story. We've seen the Muppets do it, we've seen Mickey and Co. do it, we've seen Patrick Stewart do it (or, at least, heard him do it - and I must admit, I heard Stewart as Scrooge throughout this reading, which helped a lot). Perhaps my dislike of Dickens is a case of familiarity breeding discontent. But, it didn't kill me.
My petty gripes:
1) Dickens clearly states that the ghosts will visit Scrooge over 3 nights. They do not; they visit him in one night, and Dickens retcons madly in order to explain this - I think he just didn't want to describe Scrooge during the days in between ghost visits. 2) Scrooge has mended his ways by the end of the FIRST spirit, and the SECOND spirit seems to cement that mending - the third spirit seems overkill. I mean, for symmetry, the spirit needs to be there, but Scrooge seems resigned by that point - "yes, yes, you are the spirit of Christmas yet to Come, I'm going to learn something here, aren't I? Well, let's get to it...". 3) The transformation is too much. Scrooge is a caricature at the beginning, and a different caricature at the end, but I don't believe either of them. It's clear why he's fun to play - you get to play both the black hat AND the white hat in the same character.
Things I liked, despite myself:
1) Ok, ok - Dickens has a way with language, and I enjoyed many of his multi-claused sentences. I will probably try some more Dickens in the coming year (suggestions? I've started Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Pickwick Papers, and hated all of them...) to see if my dislike is only a passing fancy. (My wife suggests that this was an abbreviated edition - and listening to the Patrick Stewart reading, I find that it is, slightly.)
2) The book was fascinating as a window into Victorian era Christmas practices - no Father Christmas (although the Ghost of Christmas Present is pretty close), no Christmas trees (although Prince Albert, Victoria's husband, introduced the tree to England, so one might expect the practice to have trickled down), and the Cratchits are so poor they are forced to eat a goose instead of a turkey. (Bwha?) Bob Cratchit, on his way home on Christmas Eve stops to go sledding. All of the silly party games that get played by Scrooge's nephew. Fascinating stuff.
3) The temperance message at the end - Scrooge never touched spirits again after that - really?
Frederic Forsyth - The Shepherd
There is an old English tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas (Dickens did it, you know, and not just A Christmas Carol, and so did Robertson Davies
, although he was Canadian, of course.) and this is a fine example of that. Forsyth tells a story of a young man flying a single seater jet fighter home from Germany on Christmas Eve, 1957. Somewhere above the North Sea, the electronics in the plane fail, and a fog rolls in. Flying in irregular triangles, he hopes to attract the attention of a radar operator, who will send up a shepherd, a plane with a working radio to guide him home. Just as he is sure that no shepherd is coming, an antique Mosquito fighter shows up and guides him down. That's the story. It's very short, less than 100 pages, and the copy that I have is lushly illustrated with lots of pen and ink drawings - it's gorgeous. The whole book shouldn't take longer than half an hour to read - and Alan Maitland used to read it every Christmas Eve on As it Happens for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - here's a podcast. The descriptions are lovely, the story is simple, and it gives me chills every time I read it, simply perfect.S.M. Stirling - The Protector's War
Ummm, this one is totally not a Christmas book. Sorry. I started it at the end of last week, and I finished it this week while waiting for the Dickens to be free. This is the second of the Emberverse books, and it may well be my favorite. Stirling does a lot of interesting world building - one group of characters travel from Europe to the US, and that allows the readers to get a glimpse of what things are like outside of Oregon. It's clear why there is a community of fanficcers for this series - Stirling provides a lovely sandbox to play in, and then concentrates most of his attention on a single corner of the box (and rightly so). I love that Stirling has offered some sort of official sanction to the fic as well, since he has a page of links on his official website. He recognizes that he's only using a corner of the sandbox. Personally, I'd like to see something set on Newfoundland - if any group survived the cataclysm, it was the Newfies.
Anyway - I like the way that Stirling weaves three separate tales together here. I like the personalities that interact, I like the description of the difference between folks who lived through The Change and those born after it - it's easy to accept the status quo if you've never experienced anything like it before. I like that the characters are really only dealing with other humans - in the second series, the stakes are bigger because the players are less mundane. (I like that too, but this first trilogy is far more down to earth.) I like that Stirling seems to have restrained his desire to play with accents here - very well done.
So, that's it for this week. Tomorrow is Christmas, and I hope you all have a good one, those of you who celebrate. I'm expecting some books, and I'll tell you about them on Monday...
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