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So, despite Christmas and birthday gifts I still apparently felt that there wasn’t enough to read -n the house and got involved in a little retail therapy when things got a bit tense at work this week, coupled with a late birthday present and a freebie from a publisher.
Confession time:
- Iris Murdoch: A Writer at War edited by Peter J Conradi – combining two of my favourite things, diaries/letters and digging into the background of favourite authors; didn’t even know this was coming out
- Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages in Literary London 1910-1939 by Katie Roiphe – sticking my nose into private matters once again, this includes amongst others the Bells, the Morrells and the Wells’s – almost rhymed too
- Barking by Tom Holt – a present from Silvery Dude, not an author I’ve read before, this has a cast including (apparently) unicorns, vampires, werewolves and lawyers…..
- The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge by Patricia Duncker – a free book from the lovely people at Bloomsbury, religious sects and death in France
And with this on order, I couldn’t be happier!
So here we are, another birthday; I am 48 today, and can remember when that seemed impossibly old! No matter, I’m still 17 inside my head and have had a lovely birthday weekend, only slightly spoiled by Andy Murray’s failure to won the Australian Open.
I always try to do something special around my birthday, and this year it was a trip to the theatre to see War Horse, based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo, and recommended by my good friend the Silvery Dude. It’s a simple story of a farm horse sold to the army and sent to serve in World War One; what makes it exceptional is the puppetry used to bring the horses (and other animals – I became particualrly fond of the goose) to life on stage. Really enormously clever and so convincing in movement that I pretty much forgot they weren’t real. There is a DVD about the making of the production which is apparently well worth watching.
And of course with birthdays go presents and the Book God was generous as always and gave me several books:
- Howard’s End is on the Landing by Susan Hill – because I love books about books
- Seeing Redd by Frank Beddor – because all things Alice in Wonderland are significant at the moment
- Anything Goes by Lucy Moore – a biography of the Roaring Twenties
- Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton – dragons!
And now that the major project that I’ve been working so hard on since last February looks like its nearing fruition, I think 2010 might turn out to be quite a good year…..
So I was trying to think how best to describe Bryan Talbot’s Grandville; hummed and hawed about steampunk, alternative history, anthropomorphic animals, played about with a few sentences but couldn’t get it quite right.
And then I thought “wonder what it say on the back of the book?” And that sort of solved my problem for me, cos what the blurb says is:
Inspired by the work of the nineteenth-century French illustrator Gerard, who worked under the nom-de-plume JJ Grandville, and the seminal science fiction illustrator Robida – not to mention Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rupert the Bear and Quentin Tarantino – Grandville is a steampunk masterpiece in which Detective Inspector LeBrock of Scotland Yard stalks a gang of ruthless killers through the streets of belle époque Paris.
And you know it would be very difficult to improve on that as a description; the only thing I can add is how wonderful the artwork is, how convincing the animals as characters are, what an interesting perspective it takes on terrorism, and that it’really is quite enjoyably violent in places. There’s a reference to a “hairless breed of chimpanzee that evolved in the town of Angouleme,” menial workers known as “doughfaces” , obviously humans, which adds a little bit of depth to the world Talbt has invented.
I absolutely loved this, devoured it in a sitting as you do, and can recommend it to anyone interested in Bryan Talbot’s work.
This is my first read for the Graphic Novel Challenge 2010.
So The Kingdom Beyond the Waves is sort of a sequel to The Court of the Air (which I reviewed here) in as much as it takes place a few years after the events of that book and features some of the same characters but that’s as far as it goes. It’s possible, I think, to read this as a standalone novel, and a very enjoyable piece of steampunk it is too.
What we have is an adventure-quest-type story. Amelia Harsh, she of the gorilla-sized arms who appeared briefly in the first novel, has a bit of an obsession with the lost land of Camlantis, a perfect society blown into the sky to be hidden rather than fall prey to the barbaric hordes seeking to destroy it. She is funded in her search by the wealthiest man in Jackals, Abraham Quest, equally obsessed. She heads into hostile jungle territory on a submarine with a crew of liberated prisoners and a mercenary army of extremely effective female warriors. It becomes clear, however, that she has not been told the whole story, and there is danger and treachery aplenty before she reaches the end of her search….
As I said, this is very enjoyable, although I will be honest and admit that it took me longer to get into, mostly because I found it difficult to immediately engage with any of the main characters. But once again the world of Jackals and the other societies that surround it are so wonderfully imagined and constructed that I persevered, and there came a point when all the subplots and the main story came together and everything clicked in such a way that I was really keen to find out how all this was going to be resolved. Great stuff.
I think I found out about this from Neil Gaiman’s blog, but of course I can’t find the reference now and it’s entirely possible that I’ve made the whole thing up and picked this up from somewhere completely different, so if it was you that pointed me in the direction of Gunnerkrigg Court then thank you because it’s absolutely brilliant.
So this is ostensibly a classic boarding school story; Antimony Carver (known as Annie) has just started her first year at Gunnerkrigg. Her mother is dead, her father isn’t around, and she is an odd and self-contained girl with some interesting knowledge and unusual talents.
This first volume is about her settling into the school, her friendship with Kat, and the strange, sort-of-Gothic things she comes across, including a Minotaur (possibly the Minotaur), demons, robots, shadows, mythical creatures, Gods and demi-gods.
This is great stuff. I love the artwork, I love Antimony herself (and what a cool name that is), and all of the other characters are fascinating in their own way. I particularly like Reynardine and will be interested to see how he develops. For although this is the first part of the story to be published in book for, this began life as a webcomic, and the adventures continue here. Well worth a visit.
It’s always interesting to look at the graphic novelisation of a story to see what’s been left out, what’s been changed, do the characters look different to what you imagined and so on. I have to confess that although I have the novel I haven’t got round to reading it yet, but I do remember the BBC TV series from goodness knows when, so I have something to compare it to.
And it’s Gaiman of course so it’s bound to have a higher quality starting point than lots of other things.
So Richard helps a girl he finds in the street and gets dragged into a world below London which slightly mirrors what goes on above, but only slightly. There is a quest, there is betrayal, there are some rather unpleasant villains, there is a satisfying resolution (well I thought so anyway).
I enjoyed this; the artwork was cool, the story made sense, I liked the mythology of a London under London (I will never look at Knighstbridge quite the same way again) and the authors showed proper respect to Neil Gaiman without being constrained. And now I really must read the novel….
Oh, and this was my final read for the Dream King Challenge, though I feel the pull of Sandman…….
So last year I had a very simple aim, which was to read The Graveyard Book as soon as I could get my hands on it; the evidence here shows how well that went in practice!
And now we are seven or eight months further along and I have finally managed to find the time to savour this award-winning novel by one of my favourite writers properly and of course I’m kicking myself for having waited so long as, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a little gem of a masterpiece.
No need to set the plot up I suppose, but I’m going to anyway. Bod is taken in by the inhabitants of a graveyard when the remainder of his family is murdered; brought up by ghosts and with a guardian who is one of the undead (and I don’t think that’s a spoiler, just look at Silas on the cover and tell me what else he could be) with a witch as a friend and Miss Lupescu as an occasional governess, this is the story of how he grows up, how he learns from his friends and how he finally faces up to what happened to his family. And it’s absolutely fantastic.
I’m boringly recommending this to almost everyone I know , forcing the Book God to read it so that I have someone to talk to about it, because I read it days ago and it’s still in my head, in a good way of course. I love Silas, I love Miss Lupescu, I love the fact that whenever a new ghost is introduced they have a quote from their epitaph in brackets after their names (Dr Trefusis (1870-1926 , May He Wake To Glory), I even loved the bad guys.
I’m going to stop gushing now, but if you haven’t already read this then you must; seriously, you must.
And it contributes to my reading for The Dream King Challenge.
So, what to say about The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt, which was intended to be one of my reads for Carl’s Once Upon a Time III challenge but which I miserably failed to complete on time? Well, before getting into the meat of the plot, it’s worth recording that this is one of the best examples of steam-punk that I have read, and it’s a good introduction to that genre if you have never tried it before.
We are in Jackals, a pseudo-Victorian society with a parliamentary democracy of sorts, a nominal king (who has his arms amputated when he inherits the throne so that he can never take up weapons against his people) and an extensive secret police. We have two young people: Molly, who is an orphan in the Poor House and towards the beginning of the book is taken to work in a local bawdy-house; and Oliver, who is shunned by his local community because of the time he spent within the Feymist, from where people return dangerously changed, if indeed they return at all. A separate series of violent deaths lead these two to go on the run supported by a motley crew of helpers, before their paths cross as a mysterious, ancient evil foments rebellion, threatens civilization as they know it, and all the usual society-in-peril-waiting-to-be-saved-by-an-ordinary-person-with-a-hidden-secret stuff
This is a really good adventure story with a remarkably well-imagined world as its setting. Some of the other species (if that’s the right word) that Molly and Oliver come across are absolutely fascinating, my particular favourites being the Steammen, sentient machines with astonishing abilities and a well-developed society of their own. There is an extensive cast of characters but these are so well-drawn that there is little danger that a reader will get confused over who’s who, and the plot comes together well without those obvious coincidences that sometimes get in the way of a good tale.
I absolutely loved this; another one of those books that I got so wrapped up in that I nearly forgot to get off the train at the right station, and when I got to the last third of the book where things really get moving I basically gave up all thoughts of doing anything else and spent a happy Sunday morning polishing the thing off.
I can really recommend this, and am looking forward to reading the next book in the sequence, though not quite yet….
What did I think of the Other Mother in Coraline?
How dear to me was Cheri?
Did Star Trek boldly go, not once but twice?
How did Leo and Kate fare in Revolutionary Road?
Last Saturday – May 2nd – was Free Comic Book Day, so some questions around that topic:
- Do you read graphic novels/comics? I certainly do, love them to bits. I tend to read graphic novels simply because I am never organised enough to (a) find out about something in the comic world coming up before issue 1, and (b) even if I did manage that I don’t have the necessary geeky discipline to make sure I get every issue.
- And on that note, the only difference in my mind between comics and graphic novels is format. But that may be a bit simplistic.
- And for the friend who has never tried graphic novels? Well that’s a difficult one because it depends on whether they are into fantasy or not, because most of my stuff is in that genre. I started with The Dark Knight Returns and that’s what I’d give them, or anything Sandman, or what I’ve just lent to my friend The Silvery Dude, 1602. There’s Maus, of course. And Watchmen. Where to stop?
Bride of the Book God 