Priestess of the White

Mar7

Priestess of the White by Trudi Canavan is not a small book. It’s the first part of a trilogy and is a massive 650 pages. The first hundred or so of these pages made me feel that finishing it would be a chore. It didn’t turn out to be, but I can’t say it turned into a real page turner either.

Priestess of the White is an epic tale of religious war between the good White and the evil Black sorcerors from the south. Problematic. I tried very hard not to draw conclusions about who was supposed to be good and evil, but in the end I was left with the idea that the author was deliberately employing stereotypical symbolism. White equals good, kind, just, true and right. Black equals evil, trickery, cruelty, lies and wrongness. These days I’m not comfortable with these racist constructions.

Compounding this are the inevitable religious parallels. Again through the use of familiar symbolism White is associated with christianity (good) and Black with paganism (evil).

I don’t know if this was deliberate on the part of the author or whether this was a case of lazy worldbuilding. Much fantasy is based on historial societies and transfers the insitutions, economics and social dynamics wholesale. Done well (e.g. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch) this can provide a solid base for a recognisable and believable world. I think that a lot of care needs to be taken that the fantasy world is more than a thin veneer.

Done badly, it becomes hard for the reader to immerse themselves in the fantasy world. I was wondering if it was meant to be allegory and thinking that if it was, it wasn’t clear what Canavan was trying to say.

Characterisation was okay, in some respects quite superficial but better than some stuff I’ve read recently. The same goes for the writing. It was unsophisticated but not the worst I’ve read lately. It did pick up as the story got going. By and large, Canavan avoided big chunks of exposition, which was nice. Overall, I felt that it lacked depth and in a book of this length that’s a real problem.

I think I will read the rest of the trilogy at some point because there were some ambiguities in the ending that suggest that Canavan is preparing to subvert and confound the assumptions she’s set up. I would really like to see that.

The non-fiction interlude was Mauve: How One Man Invented a Colour that Changed the World by Simon Garfield. This was fascinating, full of lots of interesting things to know and less of a biography than an exploration the impact of the discovery of synthetic colour.

Eleven Hours

Mar6

Eleven Hours by Paullina Simons was my second pull from the book drop at the office. There was no non-fiction interlude between this and City of Beasts as I wasn’t organised enough. The book drop doesn’t contain vast amounts of books that I would jump at reading, so I just went for something lightweight and entertaining to tide me over until I got home to the collection of books that I desperately want to read. On the surface, Eleven Hours appeared to be a pretty standard thriller, heavy on plot, fast-paced, simple writing.

What a delightful surprise this book was. It is a fast paced, plot-heavy thriller and it is so much more. The characterisation was extremely skillfully done. The main character, Didi, endures an eleven hour abduction. I didn’t like her much, but she was very real to me and behaved in exactly the way I thought such a woman would. Even down to the extent that when she was being taken from the car park with threats of violence she never actually said no. Because many women can’t and don’t say no.

Another main character was presented to us with a single mention of his race. I mention this because often it seems that the defining characteristic of black characters in books written by white authors is that they are black and the adjective is used constantly. It is a measure of how impressed I was by the writing in this book that I was disappointed when this character was introduced as ‘a black man’ and so I subsequently was alert for how many times that was used as an adjective. I was pleased to note that it wasn’t.

I was also pleased with the ending. Although Didi’s husband and an FBI agent are chasing after her to rescue her, ultimately Didi rescues herself and then gives birth unaided. Her efforts are nothing short of heroic and even though she is so passive in nature, Simons’ writing is utterly convincing. I really enjoyed this.

This time I was prepared and my non-fiction interlude was The Work we are Born to Do by Nick Williams. This was lent to me by a friend years ago and I have often thought that I shouldn’t have kept it so long. Well, I’m glad I did because I gained a lot from reading it.

City of Beasts

Mar5

I haven’t read Harry Potter. Sometimes it seems like I’m the only adult in the world that hasn’t and the reason is that I’m not a child and therefore I don’t read children’s literature. Plus, I have an uncontrollable contrarian streak that prevents me from partaking in mass cultural crazes, which is why I don’t have an ipod either.

Any how, sometimes it is really hard to tell what is YA and what isn’t, especially if you’re not in a bookshop where they’ve conveniently categorised everything for you. At my office there’s a book drop where people can pick up and leave books. Handy when I unexpectedly finish a book on the way in and then have nothing left to read on my hour and a half commute home.

The first book I pulled out of the book drop was City of Beasts by Isabel Allende. On the whole, I enjoyed it very much but I found it took a while to get going. There’s a fair bit of exposition at the beginning and the language often feels a little stilted. Once into it, it’s a very engaging tale of a young boy travelling with his grandmother to the Amazon jungle and discovering a magical, strange city of beasts. It is quite fantastical and does raise the question about where the boundary between fantasy and magical realism lies. The structure is mythic and it has an old-fashioned feel about it – but in a way that is charming rather than patronising.

I googled the book because it’s been a few weeks between reading it and getting round to posting here, and I discovered that this is Allende’s first YA novel and that there are two sequels. I don’t think I’ll make an effort to read the sequels but I would certainly recommend it for teenagers.

Adventures in reading

Feb14

It’s been a while, but mainly because I’ve been writing a short story, so no apologies. Since I’ve been away I’ve cracked through lots of books and thus here comes a huge post.

Following on from the epic Martin Chuzzlewit I finished off Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, one of the many half-read books lying around my house. It had some interesting material but there are better examples of this type of book out there.

Moving on from there I felt that I wanted something light, so I chose A Wicked Liaison by Christine Merrill. It’s a Mills & Boon Historical Romance and quite far from my usual choice. I have it (and a few others) because my writing group did a workshop on writing for Mills & Boon and getting some examples was for follow up research. Anyway, I feel violated. On a content level, this offended me. On a writing level it does offer some interesting observations of what is missing from the book. What is there is well written, it’s just that there is so much that is left out. There is very little world building (as it is set in Regency London). We are offered little in the way of description, hardly any smells, sounds or kinesthetic input. The book takes place completely in the mind and we are entirely caught up in the thoughts of the two protagonists. This does make it very intense but the inner monologues are quite repetitious. Ugh. Did not like.

My non-fiction interlude was Earth Path by Starhawk, which I loved.

Then, due to an unscheduled trip to Doncaster, I read February’s book club book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. It was an interesting style. The author chose a monologue for the whole book and the writing was wonderfully tight. What was there was very well done but, for me, the style made it distancing. It felt like an intellectual novel not an emotional one. Disappointing, because it could have been much more powerful.

After my unpleasant toe-dip in to romance, I felt a strong need to return to speculative fiction, in the form of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick. I find that Dick’s novels are very much the fiction of ideas. I did notice lots of new words for not-so-new concepts and at one point it did feel a bit overwhelming. I loved the idea of stress being measured in units of Freuds. Having said that, the world-building was great. The book plays with the idea of reality, the nature of god and altered states of consciousness. I really liked it.

Following that I read The Introverted Leader: Building on your Quiet Strength by Jennifer B. Kahnweiler, which I found really inspiring and helpful.

Then I picked Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder (I’m noticing a lot of people using middle initials today). I think I’m going right off the use of the first person in the long form. The story had potential but the writing was unsophisticated. I couldn’t make up my mind up whether it was YA fiction or not; in the end I decided that even if it was, it could still be held to the same standards as anything else. There was too much tell and too much ‘Yelena had worried about/planned for/thought’ where we hadn’t been given that previously. The world-building and characterisation lacked depth. It also committed the cardinal sin (in my eyes, at any rate) of not being internally consistent with levels of technology, clothing, dialogue, etc. I couldn’t fix an historical period in my mind. Characters fought with swords, lived in castles and used magic but then had factories and used incredibly modern dialogue. For me, it was distracting and annoying. The dialogue as a whole was not well done; often I felt that the dialogue didn’t reflect the characters as they were described. The relationship between the protagonist and her love interest was pure Mills & Boon and was so creepy. Not good. And there are two more in the series.

Most recently, I’ve read Belching out the Devil by Mark Thomas, which is an exploration of Coca Cola’s activities in the world. I may not be able to drink pop again.

Martin Chuzzlewit

Jan23

I feel so virtuous. Like my mind has been on a marathon session at the brain gym!

Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens. I’m a bit ambiguous about Dickens. I had to read Great Expectations at school and I hated it. On the other hand, A Tale of Two Cities is one of my favourite books. But I have a sort of list of ‘books I should read’ which is traditional classics, fantasy & sf masterworks, key feminist and minority texts, and anything else that I come across that seems important.

It took about sixty pages to get into the rhythm of Martin Chuzzlewit and that was hard going. It’s been a while since I read anything where the average sentence has more than three clauses. Anyway, once I got into the swing of it, I loved it. It was funny and I found myself laughing and smiling a lot. I loved the snarky portrayal of the characters and the swipes at broader societal hypocrisy. It’s a huge read – even by comparison with today’s epic fantasy novels – and covers the doings of a family of nefarious characters, anyone of which could have had a book all to themselves. It’s not an easy read, but well worth it.

Overused words and extending your vocabulary

Jan19

Starting in the year I was born, Lake Superior State University has been compiling a list of words that should be banished from use. I feel there must be some sort of connection.

The 35th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness was published this year. There are a couple I hadn’t heard and a couple I’m not that bothered about and a couple I wholeheartedly support. The use of the word ‘czar’ for political appointees has irritated me for a while.

I’ve also been conscious of extreme overuse (by me as much as anyone) of the phrase ‘in these economic times’ since I’ve been back in employment. Every comment about planning, forecasting or analysing results has to be qualified by a reference to the fact that we’re in/have been in a recession. You know, in case we’d forgotten. It’s almost as if it can’t be taken for granted or we’re apologising for presenting abnormal figures. We need to constantly refer to it. Which makes me think that the recession doth protest too much. The alphabetic complete list is here.

Like BeckySharper over at the Pursuit of Harpyness in her blog about the list I have a tendency to overuse the word really. Or sometimes very.

What words do you overuse? I plan to make an ‘overused words’ list as I work on Sacrifice to help strengthen my writing. What would be on your list?

A Gun for Sale

Jan17

I joined a book club at work. This month we’re reading Graham Greene’s Travels with my Aunt and A Gun for Sale. I read Travels with my Aunt ages ago and loved it. Graham Greene is one of my favourite authors.

A Gun for Sale was new to me and the first thing that struck me was how contemporary the writing felt. It is full of short, sharp sentences with a gritty, terse feel to it. The interior monologue occasionally sounds like telling, but otherwise it was amazing. There is a point in the middle when one of the main characters is killed and I found it incredibly shocking. It turns out later that she wasn’t actually killed and that is also a stunning reveal. I loved it.

I’ve also been reading Your Next Move by Micheal Watkins and Heart of Darfur by Lisa Blaker. The latter was very moving but I was disappointed that there was no attempt to explain what was going on.

I may be a while in posting my next ‘what I’ve been reading’ update as I’ve embarked on Martin Chuzzlewit and it’s 700 pages of tiny type. I may be some time.

Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero

Jan7

Ah, comic fantasy. There’s plenty of it out there, even if some people insist that Terry Pratchett is the only author in the genre. Humour is a very personal thing and my sense of humour is quite idiosyncratic, so I generally don’t read too much of it.

I picked up Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero by Dan Abnett in a post-christmas impulse shop in Waterstones. On this occasion I was swayed by an hot boy on the cover and an admirable commitment to voice in the blurb. I wasn’t expecting much, just a bit of fun.

And it was indeed fun. I laughed out loud quite a lot, which was occasionally embarrassing on the train. Abnett is a good writer and his elizabethan twenty-first century is an engaging world, although it did strain my suspension of disbelief somewhat that fashion and architecture wouldn’t have changed in all that time. However, the book is so entertaining that it really doesn’t matter.

There’s quite a bit of head hopping which I normally don’t like but as the narrator is kept well away from the action for the majority of the time, it works on this occasion. I think it is an indication of Abnett’s skill that he is able to do this.

The character’s are well-drawn, the dialogue is good, the world-building is good and all the loose ends get wrapped up tidily. Highly recommended – for those with a well-developed sense of the ridiculous.

What was your favourite book as a teenager?

Jan6

Inspired by Nathan Bransford, who asked the question on his blog. He gets hundreds of comments though and I didn’t feel like getting lost in the cloud.

My favourites were:
Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Bronte
The Dragonlance Chronicles by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis
Jerusalem Fire by R M Meluch

I wonder if it’s time for a re-read to see if they’re as good as I remember, or if that would spoil the memories. I did read Wuthering Heights again not so long ago; it was as good as I remembered and I appreciated it more, so maybe it’s the way to go.

What about you? What were you favourite books as a teenager? And have you read them again as a grown up?