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It’s so long since I’ve written a book review that I’m bit concerned that I’ve forgotten how but I am on a reading jag at the moment and have already built up a bit of a backlog (13 books and 7 films) with no sign of slowing down the reading/watching process, and I’m determined to catch-up before it all gets out of hand, so apologies in advance if your feeds etc. get swamped over the next week or so. Though some of the reviews may be fairly short given that I am known these days for having a poor remembery and some of this stuff goes back to May.
Let’s start with The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll. This was one of my reads for Carl’s Once Upon a Time challenge which finished on 21 June so well out of date in recording my thoughts. Carroll is one of those authors that I’ve been meaning to try over the years, as other bloggers have recommended. We already had this one in the house as part of the Book God’s Fantasy Masterwork collection so it seemed a good place to start. And it’s a book about books; well, a book about stories and their power and the obsession that readers sometimes develop with particular writers, especially writers that may have influenced during their childhoods.
The main characters in this story are Thomas, a school teacher who decides, along with his equally obsessed and fairly recently acquired girlfriend Saxony, to write a biography of the late and much-loved children’s author Marshall France. Previous attempts had failed under the apparently malign influence of France’s daughter Anna who still lives in her father’s house in the small town of Galen. Thomas and Saxony decide to move there in the hopes of persuading her to help. And that’s when things get weird.
This is one of those books that I wasn’t sure whether I liked or not until I had actually finished it, but it really stayed with me, especially the idea that the magic of writing could seep out into the real world. Elements of the story are really quite disturbing and it’s one of those fantasy novels that almost but not quite slips into horror. After a few months my considered opinion is that this is a really clever, slightly scary and distinctly odd book with a very original take on the imaginary becomes real theme and one that I may very well re-read.
And I’ll never look at bull terriers in quite the same way again.
To my shame I have never read any Gene Wolfe before now and decided to start with Peace, partly because of the beautiful cover (yes, I am that shallow) but also because the blurb on the back of the Fantasy Masterworks edition I have sounded intriguing and not at all fantasy like, and the book itself reinforces that view because it reads very much like an ordinary memoir of a man’s life, but it is implied that there is a lot more going on here.
Which is where I have to confess that I had a bit of a problem, because I clearly missed a lot of the subtext around death (not giving too much away as this is mentioned on the back of the book) and I was aware but possibly didn’t entirely understand the timey-wimey stuff until close to the end. This, I hasten to say, is totally my failure to appreciate what Wolfe was doing with this story.
Peace is beautifully written, engaging, with believable characters that I became very fond of, especially our hero Alden Dennis Weer’s Aunt Olivia and her various suitors.
Because I was aware when I got to the end of the novel that I had not really got underneath the skin of this novel, I went off to the world-wide webs to find out what others have said with the result that I am definitely going to read Peace again to see if I was just being particularly dim or if it is as ambiguous as it appears.
All of that sounds like I didn’t enjoy Peace but I really did like it very much. As I said, the writing is super. There is a female character who is rumoured (on apparently no basis at all) to be no better than she should be, the other ladies around her considering all the rumours to be true because she is so fit
For to them a physical pliancy implies moral accommodation
There is also a lovely quote which made me think more about the process of writing than I normally do. Our narrator talks abut doing something between the last sentence he had written and the one he is currently writing, and says
have you never thought as you read that months may lie between any pair of words?
Reading back this is a very fuzzy and disjointed review of what is clearly an important book in the fantasy genre. But I was confused and can only leave you all with the quote on the cover from Neil Gaiman:
a tricky, deep and remarkable novel
I may have missed some of the points but I am very glad that I read it.
This was my first read for Once Upon a Time VII.
Where has the year gone? it seems like New Year was only yesterday and here we are at the end of March, nearly Easter, and it’s time for Carl’s annual Once Upon a Time challenge, now in its seventh year. My record in recent years has been a bit poor but it’s such an interesting area of reading to be diving into that I always want to have a try even though I might not read as much as I would like.
So I’m aiming to take part in the general reading category which doesn’t commit me to any specific number of books. But I have still pulled together a bit of a reading list to help, accessing the Book God’s collection of Fantasy Masterworks:
- The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip – I actually started this for last year’s challenge and found the writing rather to ethereal for my taste, but I’ve decided to have another attempt at finishing the book
- Fevre Dream by George RR Martin – the Book God pushed this in my direction partly because, despite my love for the TV adaptation of Game of Thrones, I’ve never read any of his work and this comes highly recommended
- Peace by Gene Wolfe – shamefully I have also never read (as far as I’m aware) any of Wolfe’s work so really looking forward to this one
- The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson – I had good fun with another of Anderson’s books in an earlier OUAT challenge and this sounds lovely and Norse
- The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll – another author I’ve wanted to read for ages
I’ll also be taking part in the Stardust read-along which I talk about here. So let’s see how I get on. It will be fun, I’m sure.
As part of Carl’s annual Once Upon a Time Challenge (more of which tomorrow) he has delightfully set up a group read of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust and although my record on read-alongs (I refer you to the Wolf Hall debacle) I am going to have a go because it is a short and hugely enjoyable (and did I say short?) book.
The schedule for the group read will be:
- April 1-9th: Prologue through the end of Chapter 5.
- April 10th: Discussion over first half (roughly) of the story
- April 10th-16th: Chapter 6 through the Epilogue.
- April 17th: Discussion over the second half of the book and wrap up.
I’m then going to try to watch the film version which I have had for ages but not got around to watching.
Should all be great fun.
Seeing Redd is the second volume in Frank Beddor’s Looking Glass Wars trilogy (my thoughts on volume one are here), and expands on Alyss Heart’s story now that she is (Spoiler Alert) back in charge of Wonderland having defeated her Aunt Redd and regained her Queendom.
Of course, things are not going smoothly as she tries to consolidate her rule, not only having to contend with those members of her kingdom who supported Redd during her rule but with the machinations of King Arch from a neighbouring kingdom (who doesn’t believe women should rule) and her growing attraction to her now-grown-up childhood friend Dodge.
This is very enjoyable but I didn’t find it quite as compelling as the first book, although it still has many things of interest: Redd’s wonderful dress made of living toothed roses, her assassin The Cat (yes, that cat), and the rather nasty sidekicks of Arch (especially Blister) and the whole concept of The Millinery. Redd’s appearances on Earth are also very spooky and disturbing.
I think it suffers a bit from being the middle volume of a trilogy; if builds on the outcome of the first but is clearly designed to set us up for the big finish in the third volume. Still enjoyable and I do want to know how it all works out.
I absolutely love HP Lovecraft; I gave a bit of background to my adoration when I reviewed one of his short stories during an ill-fated challenge to read 100 short stories in a year, and that still stands. He got to me young and I haven’t even tried tear myself away from the eldritch world of Cthulhu and the Elder Ones.
At the Mountains of Madness is probably my favourite Lovecraft novella and I was excited when the Book God pointed out that a graphic novel of said tale had been published and of course I had to get it. Rather good it is too, capturing the horror of the ill-fated Miskatonic University expedition of 1930 without being too gruesome.
At the same time I came across a short e-book called Ice Cores, a set of essays on ATMOM which look at the influences on Lovecraft which may have had an impact on his writing of the novella , as well as the context in which he was
writing, and a bit on the story’s publication history. The author links fascination with the polar regions right back to Frankenstein, some of Poe’s stories (Arthur Gordon Pym for one) and in turn some works that Lovecraft himself influenced. An interesting diversion, though much of what he covers is necessarily speculation. Gets you thinking though.
All of this makes up a tiny bit for my disappointment that, for the moment at least, it doesn’t seem the movie version of ATMOM planned by Guillermo del Toro and set to star Tom Cruise will be made. Let’s hope that changes soon; I would love to see what he might do with this atmospheric tale.
Rather unfairly, I feel as if I had been reading this book for decades, and that’s a shame because (a) it was really very enjoyable in many ways and (b) I have the other two books in the trilogy still to read so am taking a break and trying very hard not to not read them.
If that makes sense.
Because both the Book God and Silvery Dude enjoyed the story (SD has I believe now read them all) and I am not one to give in when the recommendations of bookish cohorts are causing me trouble (not that it’s a competition, no of course it isn’t, don’t be silly).
But it took me AGES to get through this. It’s not that I wasn’t having a good time with the lush prose and the melodrama and the plot twists and the villains, alliances made and lost and made again, all with some naughtiness to boot.
It was just a reluctance to pick the thing up; it was HEAVY in hardback, though undoubtedly a pretty book – what you can’t tell from the picture is that this is a white hardback with transparent blue plastic overlay (which I was always anxious not to damage, so that didn’t help) and an embossed black mask – masks are very important to this story. And it was tiring to read – something about the prose style which was so over the top (though it suited the story) that it was at times exhausting. But I struggled on through all these hardships because I liked the three main characters and I wanted to know what was going to happen.
So you have Celeste Temple, a young woman in a strange city who has just been dumped by her fiancé; Cardinal Chang who is a hired killer whose intended victim has already met foul play; and Dr Svenson, a medical man looking after a rather unpleasant prince engaged to be married to some poor girl. The stories of all three become intertwined with a far-ranging and diabolical conspiracy involving a mysterious painting and, of course, the glass books themselves. Which are blue.
The men are either dashing or villainous and on occasion villainously dashing; the women are chaste but brave, or vampish in a dastardly way, but all have heaving bosoms and a tendency to use their womanly wiles to manipulate the other characters for good or ill. The plot itself cracks along but I’m not entirely sure I understood what the point of it actually was. But there are steam trains and mines and converted castles and airships and a body count of significant proportions and it would probably make a brilliant TV series, and I will read the others at some point.
Honestly.
So there’s a bit of a story to this one. I am a huge fan of Mr Aaronovitch after being introduced to his books by Silvery Dude; in fact the very first one, Rivers of London, helped get me through a particularly nasty cold back in the day. So when I realised that the man himself would be talking and signing books at the Waterstones in Piccadilly, well, I just had to go along, didn’t I? And because I’m a good friend * cough * I got a ticket for the Silvery One as well.
The evening dawned and after numerous “it’ll be fine” exchanges poor old SD couldn’t attend because of domestic (poorly small boy) circumstances so I had to go along by myself, a bit reluctantly I must admit because these things are often more enjoyable when you have someone to chatter with, but it turned out to be huge fun. Mr A is extremely entertaining and a pleasant hour passed as he talked about what bits of the London that appear in his books aren’t real (although it hasn’t stopped me looking for a particular building every time I go through Russell Square), the usual ‘where he gets his ideas from’ stuff and most importantly a hint about how many more volumes there will be in the series (very much a ‘keep going until I run out of stories’ vibe). And as you can see I got my book signed (and got one for SD as well to make up for his missing a night out – and his little boy is OK so smiles all round)
Whispers Underground itself is well up to standard; starts off with a bit of ghost-hunting on the London underground, followed swiftly by the murder of the son of a US Senator which has something whiffy about it and attracts the attention of the FBI and off we go on a really enjoyable story which as always takes in lots of interesting stuff about London and has a nice arc building up in the background.
It’s always tempting to compare this series with the Bryant and May books by Christopher Fowler (which I also adore) but despite the superficial similarities (police investigating odd things, London as a character in the books, lots of interesting facts) they are very different, the supernatural element being the most obvious, but most people I know who enjoy one author also enjoy the other.
So a series that is going from strength to strength and I can’t wait for the next one.
Since my last post to the Sunday Salon I have singularly failed to finish anything though I have been dipping in and out of a number of books.
And despite the imposition of an alleged book buying embargo, I have obtained the following new books since my last post (some paid for by a book token left over from my birthday so not quite as damning as it looks):
- Watson’s Choice by Gladys Mitchell – Sir Bohun Chantry’s party to celebrate Sherlock Holmes is thrown into disarray by the arrival of the Hound of the Baskervilles but luckily Mrs Bradley is there to put things to rights (as soon as I got this I added it to my Readathon pile and it is well and truly read)
- The Kings of Eternity by Eric Brown – ” a novel of vast scope and depth, yet imbued with humanity and characters you’ll come to love” and a recommendation from Silvery Dude, as is:
- The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan – “You’re the last. I’m sorry. The end is coming” Justin Cronin says its glorious so how could it possibly be avoided?
- Adorned in Dreams by Elizabeth Wilson – an updated version of a book on fashion and modernity which was first published in 1985. When it came out, Angela Carter said it was “the best I have read on the subject, bar none”
- Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan – I’ve left some clues for you. If you want them, turn the page. If you don’t, put the book back on the shelf, please.”
- Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel – the sequel to Wolf Hall, and a means of encouraging me to finally getting round to finishing it
- Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel – “Alison Hart, a medium by trade, tours the dormitory tons of London’s orbital road with her flint-hearted sidekick Colette, passing on messages from dead ancestors” Philip Pullman says this is one of he greatest ghost stories in the language
- A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel – I think i can see a bit of a pattern here – “a gripping epic and tour de force of historical imagination”
- The Saltmarsh Murders by Gladys Mitchell – Mrs Bradley once again, proving that “some English villages can be murderously peaceful”
- Foundation: The History of England Part 1 by Peter Ackroyd – just dipping into this on the way home in the cab was a joy; takes us up to the death of Henry VII
Not a bad haul; now if I could only get some of my current reads FINISHED…….
I am still working my way through The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. I’ve started a re-read of ‘Salem’s Lot as part of my own personal challenge for this year.
I also managed to finish a really fascinating non-fiction book, Last Days of Glory by Tony Rennell which covers the period immediately before and after the death of Queen Victoria in 1901; I thoroughly enjoyed this and read it in two sittings.
Only one new book arrived this week:
- Stonemouth by Iain Banks – “welcome to Stonemouth, home to a five-mile beach, gangsters, lost love and a suspension bridge”, and which has served to point out to me the backlog of Banksian reading that I have chosen to ignore
So far sticking to my embargo but still have a book token from my birthday to spend which I shall treat as an exception.
And I signed up for the 24 Hour Readathon on 21 April; looking forward to it very much.
Bride of the Book God 