Reading roundup
Still on a reading kick, as a means of not thinking about all the other crap.
24. Cinda Williams Chima, The Warrior Heir -- This was a random YA book I picked up just because I felt like some YA fantasy, and I was actually pleasantly surprised (although, admittedly, my expectations going in were pretty low).
It's an urban fantasy of the "hidden world of magic in our midst" kind, but the exact nature of that magical world is bit different from anything else I've seen -- a fairly dystopian hierarchy of wizards, sorcerers, enchanters, soothsayers, and warriors (one of these things is not like the others, but, OK). It's not a particularly *believable* hierarchy, but it is an unusual and interesting one.Jake, the protagonist is not a particularly memorable character but an adequately likable one for the duration of the book -- his reactions to what is happening to him are fairly believable. The high school setting of the first part of the book is quite cliche, but Jake's friends (solid Will and brainy Fitch) are nice -- actually, I would've liked to have seen more of them -- seem to have lives that don't revolve around Jake, and were generally an asset to the cast. Can't really say the same thing about love-interest/competitor Ellen -- and I figured out her dual role long before Jake did, and even after she explained the apparent coincidence didn't quite buy the story. The main and secondary villains are boring and cliche, but the "good guys" adults are more interesting -- manipulative aunt Linda and *especially* Lee Hastings, who is a rather rare character, in my experience -- a genuinely morally ambiguous mentor figure. People who think Dumbledore is manipulative ought to meet Hastings.
I did think the plot resolution was way too tidy and not really believable, the whole "waking the sleeping dragon thing" made not very much sense, and I didn't buy the dynamic of crowds and public opinion in the tournament, even though quite a bit of effort was spent on justifying it.
All in all, an enjoyable and not cookie-cutter read, though not great literature by any stretch. Door is definitely left open for a sequel, though the book doesn't require it -- if there is one, I intend to look it up. Actually, I just did -- The Wizard Heir, newly out in hardcover. OK, will wait for it to show up at the library, I guess.
25. Terry Pratchett, Hogfather -- So, yeah, my first time reading this book, although I was familiar with a lot of the better-known quotes from it (like, "Real children don't go hoppity-skip unless they are on drugs") from elsewhere. I was a bit apphrehensive about reading it, because it shows up on many people's "favorite Discworld book" lists, but the premise sounded rather similar to Reaper Man which, to be honest, I hadn't liked all that much. Well! Having read Hogfather now, I can certainly see how it can be a favorite. I don't know that it's on *my* list of all-time favorites -- need a bit of distance for that -- and there is one kinda-big issue I have with it that I suspect will prevent it from becoming a full-fledged favorite, but it is quite a powerful and affecting book.
Here are a couple of reasons that it worked a lot better for me than Reaper Man: Death (whom I prefer in cameo appearances rather than as the center of action) has a foil here in Albert. The scenes that worked best for me in this book were those where Albert and Death are talking, like the whole thing with the wooden horse Albert wanted as a kid. The wizards are toned down a bit in this one, and while I'm still not a huge fan of them as central characters, I *love* Ponder Stibbons, especially for this line: "Hex worried Ponder Stibbons. He didn't worry how it worked, but everyone else assumed that he did," 'cos I can certainly sympathize with that feeling. (Although, how big of a dork does it make me that, when Ponder thinks that he "can find the square root of 27.4" in his head, I had to actually go an
work it out to two places after the decimal?) And I love Hex, and found myself, to my surprise, genuinely moved when it asked for a Hogswatch present. And the acronymization was hilarious to me, because I work at a place where I find myself on occasion uttering sentences that consist, in their entirety, of acronyms. The interaction between Ponder, Ridcully, and Hex throughout the book was just perfect. (I don't believe I've made the connection before, but Ridcully reminds me a whole lot of Modest Matveevich from Pondeljnik, down to the shouting.)
The running humour is both deeper and better integrated in this book (than in Reaper Man and other early Discworld books), like the "'nk you" thing that starts out as a running joke and then reappears with a twist in the peasant / king on Hogswatch interlude. That scene was actually a perfect example of one of the things I find most impressive about Pratchett -- that he can be both profoundly moving and really funny at the same time. But I also appreciated just the purely funny, fairly low-brow bits, like all of the kids pointing out to Death that his "piggy did a wee". Although the eyeball jokes got kinda old...
I love the way Pratchett writes children or about children, and this book was satisfying in that regard. I feel no real attachment to or emotional investment in Susan as a character, but she gets to think some good lines. I really like Teatime as a villain -- that's a difficult kind of character to pull off, making him both really very creepy and powerful and yet not infallible and yet, through to the very end, even defeated, still deeply creepy. The way the minor "bad guys" are humanized with a deft line or two is also really impressive -- and that brings me to my main complaint about the book:
Tha Auditors. They don't work for me, as a villain. They didn't work for me in Reaper Man and they didn't work for me here, and they never will, I'm guessing. There are two reasons for this. The first one is literary and the second is philosophical (if you wish). One of Pratchett's main strengths, for me, is that his books are emphatically not black and white. His bad guys, if they may be called that, are interesting if not redeemable (I'm thinking here of Reacher Gilt, for instance, whom I can't help but admire a little for the choice he makes at the end of Going Postal, or, say Coin the boy sourcerer, or the Deep Dwarves in Thud!). But the Auditors are *boring* -- I know that's the *point*, but that still makes them an ineffective oppositional force, speaking from a narrative perspective.
But that's the secondary reason. The primary one is that while I can easily accept an anthropomorphic personification of Death or Hogswatch or whatever you want, I cannot believe in the Auditors the way they are presented -- as the force in charge of the universe ('making rocks move in curves and atoms spin') that wants to destroy all life. Because I can't think of life as something separate from atoms spinning and things moving in curves -- it's all the same *stuff* -- atoms and photons and quarks and the various forces of attraction -- they govern "life" just as much as they govern inanimate objects and you can't have life without them. Yes, humans have imagination and make up stories, and I'll happily concede that 'the sun rising' is different from "a mere ball of flaming gas [...] illuminat[ing] the world" (although I must quibble that the word "world" is itself too emotionally invested to be used properly in the second phrase) -- and I loved how that distinction was set up! -- but even the human imagination, everything that drives us to make up those stories for ourselves, is, ultimately, made of and governed by the same things and forces that keep rocks moving in curves and atoms spinning. Because there's nothing else for it to be made *of* or governed by. So, that presentation of the order of the universe being oppositional to life really annoys me. Because, actually, DISorder is pretty much the order of the universe -- my favorite law of thermodynamics, and, yeah... I'll shut up now, but this really bugs me.
Also, I must mention that I saw the first half of the Hogfather movie before I read the book. So, my mental image of Teatime was the one from the movie, though it really didn't influence anything else.
26. Martin Millar, The Good Fairies of New York -- I picked up this book for two reasons: intriguing title and a blurb/introduction by Neil Gaiman in which Neil compares Millar to Vonnegut, Pratchett, and Douglas Adams. Well, this book certainly hasn't got that confluence of poignancy and multiple levels of humour that I was extolling Pterry for up above, and it hasn't got the mad scope and multi-layered yet internally consistent zaniness of Hitchhiker, and I'm pretty sure it's got a long ways to go before hitting the depth and relevance of Vonnegut's work, but, eh, I can kind of see how the somewhat disjointed, simple yet manneristic narrative can be reminiscent of Vonnegut and the whole "modern fairies" done as humour/satire conceit play in the Discworld sandbox, and so forth. And it was an incredibly easy read -- a short book, but every time I would sit down with the intent to read only 10 pages, next thing I know I've read 40. It just keeps flowing.
I liked the central premise, part sitcom, part Shakespearean comedy of errors, better than the execution, actually. Probably the main reason for that is that I never warmed up to Dinnie (the "worst violinist in New York") or Heather, the Scottish fairy that is playing match-maker for him (for ulterior motives). I don't know, in fact, if you're *supposed to* warm up to Dinnie. He starts out the book as a loud-mouthed bigoted jerk, ne'er do well slob who's never had a girlfriend, that sort of thing. And, although Heather's ministrations and Love do change him for the better over the course of the novel, he still ain't a prize catch or even a particularly likable human being at that point. For me, it was a case of too little too late. And Heather just comes across as a total idiot, much less likeable or interesting than her friend Morag.
What I liked: well, the central conceit, as I mentioned. I liked Magenta, the shoe-polish-addled bag lady who thinks she is Xenophon, and then uses ancient Greek strategy/tactics to help the "good" fairies win the war. I liked Aelric the revolutionary fairy emulating Chairman Mao. I liked the random and quickly-shifting alliances and enmities between the fairies -- it's a bit hard to pull off in a "modern" book, but rather reminiscent of mythology and the real fairy stories, and I thought that worked really weel. I also liked that the running phone sex commercials thing turned out to actually have some kind of point in the end, which I hadn't expected. I also liked that the mere recovery of the mystical poppy was not enough to secure victory in the Community Arts festival for Kerry, that it actually took fairy love magic and coincidence to do it. A proper ending to a fairy story!
I didn't like: Dinnie, as previously mentioned; that the action went from funny-ridiculous to really-STUPID-ridiculous at times, like when Heather and Morag tie Wee Maggie MacGowan's shoelaces together and similar moments. And I found it a bit hard to believe that until the English and Scottish fairies had shown up, the local New York fairies -- Italian, Chinese, Ghanan -- had so little interaction among themselves. The characters were, by and large, fairly unbelievable too, in a slapstick way, which was OK for reading this book on a fun surface level but doesn't really support anything deeper, like empathy or actually caring about what happens to anyone.
But overall it was an enjoyable book and a very quick, fun read.
27. Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light -- I picked up this book on _grayswandir_'s rec, after having passed over it multiple times in the library. The cover blurb refers to it as "Zelazny's single most brilliant achievement" and "the greatest example of Zelazny's genius," and I'm wary of things like that. But I went and read it and -- it was good. Very good, even, and probably the best stand-along Zelazny I've read (not that I've read all that much -- a bunch of short stories and Roadmarks and at least one other novel that I don't remember which it was -- _grayswandir_, if you've got more specific recs, I'm game!) -- though I didn't love it as much as Amber. Not surprising, because I do prefer fantasy to sci-fi (even really *odd* mythological sci-fi like Lord of Light), and the setting of the Amber books, being Eurocentric-like, is something I'm more at home with than the Hindu-pantheon-reimaged world. (I was briefly obsessed with the Hindu pantheon, and the idea of the Trimurti, and especially Shiva the Destroyer back in high school, but that was a long time ago and it didn't actually help me with any of this theological stuff.)
I liked this book, but I found it a bit difficult to read, because of the insertions of philosophy and bits from the Upanishads (which always make me think of the talking mirror in Ponedeljnik), and the odd "holy-text-like" language. I don't know if the odd language made the book more effective by keeping the air of religion about it, sometimes in effectively incongrous ways (like when Sam leaves a message for the gods to come see him in Hell), or it would've worked just as well/been easier to get into without it. The philosophical digressions mid-dialogue certainly didn't help me.
Actually, all the theological and philosophical stuff was kind of not my cup of tea, and I spent a long time trying to figure out Aspects and Attributes and which was which and what they were for and what the difference between with and without them was. But I loved the more mythological/epic bits -- the story of Rild, beginning to end, and his fight with Yama; the description of demons and what I'm quite convinced is the best description of demonic posession ever written: "There were times when he saw, not through the eyes of the body that had once been his, but saw as a demon saw, in all directions, and stripped flesh and bone from those among whom he passed, to behold the flames of their beings, colored with the hues and shades of their passions, flickering with avarice and lust and envy, darting with greed and hunger, smouldering with hate, waning with fear and pain. His hell was a many-colored place, somewhat mitigated only by the cold blue blaze of a scholar's intellect, the white light of a dying monk, the rose halo of a lady who fled his sight, and the dancing, simple colors of children at play." The random bits and digressions that aren't terribly important to the main story, that crop up here and there and give it an authentically mythological feel, like the page-long description of Videgha (the prince whose palace the demon/Sam takes over), and the offhand references to past feats and foes. Speaking of which, the mere *name* of the "Mothers of the Terrible Glow" creeped me the heck out -- best name for mysterious adversarial creatures EVER.
The themes were interesting, if a bit too explicit in the story. I was put in mind, from the start, of Trudno Bytj Bogom [Hard to be a God], the brothers Strugatsky's "soft"/social sci-fi novel which also deals with the interaction between a pre-industrial world and more technologically advanced outsiders who might as well be gods next to them. (I actually should look up where Strugatskys' "progressors" novels fall relative to Lord o Light (1967), and what, if anything, they thought of Zelazny in general. OK, having looked it up on The Source of All Knowledge, TBB (1964) predates LoL by a couple of years.) I thought the various implications of body-switching technology were very well explored, social and psychological aspects, gender and age changes (Brahma, Yama), brain damage due to "transfer effects", and, of course, Sam getting beamed into Nirvana).
As far as plot, I liked the attempted crosses and double-crosses, shifting alliances and people acting "from beyond the grave", which are all something Zelazny does very well, obviously. I hadn't realized that 5/7th of the book actually takes place in flashback, which was odd, because, of course, you know Sam is going to die, you just don't know at what point, and it did that same thing that the Amber books did, which was making me want to go to the beginning and re-read once I had more background and could understan references and relationships better.
My favorite part, and what elevated this book for me above other stand-alone Zelaznys I've read, were the characters. I liked Sam, and I liked Kubera, who really does seem like the kind of guy it would be really good to have as a friend. I liked the undercurrent of relationships between the First, that everyone else is, apparently, oblivious to, and how it comes out when they start calling each other by their real names. (Having Kali's name be Candi was kind of wonderful...) I wish I knew more about who they *were*, passengers or crew, and what they did -- other than Olvegg being the pilot and Renfrew/Nirriti being the chaplain, do we learn what any of the others were? (And, speaking of Nirriti, I think it's kind of awesome that it's the *chaplain* who raises an army of zombies...)
But the character I liked best was Yama. He is just so awesome, and I mean that in every possible way. And it's so often that you find a character like that as a villain -- he is, essentially, an evil genius, only without the evil -- and it's refreshing to have him be a "good guy" (in as much as a book like this can have any), even while he is still on the side of Heaven. He is the only one of the gods, other than Kubera, who seems to care about other people at all in ways that are not exclusively self-serving. When he kills Rild (in flashback) and when he kills Mara (in real-time) he shows clearly -- not remorse, and sadness is too vague, but a definite sense that he is sorry it had to come to this. And, of course, there is his devotion to Kali. He really is an idealist, as Sam puts it, and that's just awesome, to have an idealistic -- yet incredibly deadly, in Aspect or without -- Death. Not to mention that he and Kubera seem to be the only gods doing any actual *work*, since, between them (and Vishnu, I guess...), they appear to have made anything of value. Also, I'm not sure what it signifies, but Yama appears to be the only character with real physical presence (separate from his ASPECT) in the book -- he is always yawning and stretching and smoking -- well, not *always*, obviously, but nobody else seems to do it at all, so that stands out. Just like a chaplain with an army of zombies, it is rather awesome to have Death be the one bringing vitality to a book... But, yeah, as much of Yama as there was in this book, I wished there were more, and more book for him to be in; him and Kubera interacting, preferrably.
Also, totally randomly, yay for quotes from Wilde (Yama: "each man kills the thing he loves") and Paradise Lost, almost (Tak: "If thou beest he -- then oh, how changed!"). I do wonder why/how they know Earth Western literature and scripture, though -- I could see Tak the archivist having professional knowledge of it, and, of course, the First, but not sure why Yama would, unless he is just one of those people who read everything they can get their hands on, even if irrelevant to his true passion for making deadly mechanical things. (Speaking of which, I really liked the reflection that Shiva's chariot "seemed to be somehow incomplete, although the eye could not fault its lines. It held that special beauty that belongs to the highest order of weapons, requiring function to make it complete.")
Being Zelazny, there were all these stylistic flourishes, and some of them worked better for me than others. I really liked the "All things considered, it was thorough as well as impressive, the death" and the other sentences structured in this manner (although I rather with the "death" one was the last rather than the "wedding" one, as "death" is the more powerful one); but some of the other repetitions or inversions or weird things didn't work for me as well. And of course he still does the "so this thing was done" thing, but that's nice, it's like waving at an old friend.
Having finished these, I'm reading, concurrently, two sci-fi/fantasy anthologies (a "best of" for last year and an older pnh-edited one).
24. Cinda Williams Chima, The Warrior Heir -- This was a random YA book I picked up just because I felt like some YA fantasy, and I was actually pleasantly surprised (although, admittedly, my expectations going in were pretty low).
It's an urban fantasy of the "hidden world of magic in our midst" kind, but the exact nature of that magical world is bit different from anything else I've seen -- a fairly dystopian hierarchy of wizards, sorcerers, enchanters, soothsayers, and warriors (one of these things is not like the others, but, OK). It's not a particularly *believable* hierarchy, but it is an unusual and interesting one.Jake, the protagonist is not a particularly memorable character but an adequately likable one for the duration of the book -- his reactions to what is happening to him are fairly believable. The high school setting of the first part of the book is quite cliche, but Jake's friends (solid Will and brainy Fitch) are nice -- actually, I would've liked to have seen more of them -- seem to have lives that don't revolve around Jake, and were generally an asset to the cast. Can't really say the same thing about love-interest/competitor Ellen -- and I figured out her dual role long before Jake did, and even after she explained the apparent coincidence didn't quite buy the story. The main and secondary villains are boring and cliche, but the "good guys" adults are more interesting -- manipulative aunt Linda and *especially* Lee Hastings, who is a rather rare character, in my experience -- a genuinely morally ambiguous mentor figure. People who think Dumbledore is manipulative ought to meet Hastings.
I did think the plot resolution was way too tidy and not really believable, the whole "waking the sleeping dragon thing" made not very much sense, and I didn't buy the dynamic of crowds and public opinion in the tournament, even though quite a bit of effort was spent on justifying it.
All in all, an enjoyable and not cookie-cutter read, though not great literature by any stretch. Door is definitely left open for a sequel, though the book doesn't require it -- if there is one, I intend to look it up. Actually, I just did -- The Wizard Heir, newly out in hardcover. OK, will wait for it to show up at the library, I guess.
25. Terry Pratchett, Hogfather -- So, yeah, my first time reading this book, although I was familiar with a lot of the better-known quotes from it (like, "Real children don't go hoppity-skip unless they are on drugs") from elsewhere. I was a bit apphrehensive about reading it, because it shows up on many people's "favorite Discworld book" lists, but the premise sounded rather similar to Reaper Man which, to be honest, I hadn't liked all that much. Well! Having read Hogfather now, I can certainly see how it can be a favorite. I don't know that it's on *my* list of all-time favorites -- need a bit of distance for that -- and there is one kinda-big issue I have with it that I suspect will prevent it from becoming a full-fledged favorite, but it is quite a powerful and affecting book.
Here are a couple of reasons that it worked a lot better for me than Reaper Man: Death (whom I prefer in cameo appearances rather than as the center of action) has a foil here in Albert. The scenes that worked best for me in this book were those where Albert and Death are talking, like the whole thing with the wooden horse Albert wanted as a kid. The wizards are toned down a bit in this one, and while I'm still not a huge fan of them as central characters, I *love* Ponder Stibbons, especially for this line: "Hex worried Ponder Stibbons. He didn't worry how it worked, but everyone else assumed that he did," 'cos I can certainly sympathize with that feeling. (Although, how big of a dork does it make me that, when Ponder thinks that he "can find the square root of 27.4" in his head, I had to actually go an
work it out to two places after the decimal?) And I love Hex, and found myself, to my surprise, genuinely moved when it asked for a Hogswatch present. And the acronymization was hilarious to me, because I work at a place where I find myself on occasion uttering sentences that consist, in their entirety, of acronyms. The interaction between Ponder, Ridcully, and Hex throughout the book was just perfect. (I don't believe I've made the connection before, but Ridcully reminds me a whole lot of Modest Matveevich from Pondeljnik, down to the shouting.)
The running humour is both deeper and better integrated in this book (than in Reaper Man and other early Discworld books), like the "'nk you" thing that starts out as a running joke and then reappears with a twist in the peasant / king on Hogswatch interlude. That scene was actually a perfect example of one of the things I find most impressive about Pratchett -- that he can be both profoundly moving and really funny at the same time. But I also appreciated just the purely funny, fairly low-brow bits, like all of the kids pointing out to Death that his "piggy did a wee". Although the eyeball jokes got kinda old...
I love the way Pratchett writes children or about children, and this book was satisfying in that regard. I feel no real attachment to or emotional investment in Susan as a character, but she gets to think some good lines. I really like Teatime as a villain -- that's a difficult kind of character to pull off, making him both really very creepy and powerful and yet not infallible and yet, through to the very end, even defeated, still deeply creepy. The way the minor "bad guys" are humanized with a deft line or two is also really impressive -- and that brings me to my main complaint about the book:
Tha Auditors. They don't work for me, as a villain. They didn't work for me in Reaper Man and they didn't work for me here, and they never will, I'm guessing. There are two reasons for this. The first one is literary and the second is philosophical (if you wish). One of Pratchett's main strengths, for me, is that his books are emphatically not black and white. His bad guys, if they may be called that, are interesting if not redeemable (I'm thinking here of Reacher Gilt, for instance, whom I can't help but admire a little for the choice he makes at the end of Going Postal, or, say Coin the boy sourcerer, or the Deep Dwarves in Thud!). But the Auditors are *boring* -- I know that's the *point*, but that still makes them an ineffective oppositional force, speaking from a narrative perspective.
But that's the secondary reason. The primary one is that while I can easily accept an anthropomorphic personification of Death or Hogswatch or whatever you want, I cannot believe in the Auditors the way they are presented -- as the force in charge of the universe ('making rocks move in curves and atoms spin') that wants to destroy all life. Because I can't think of life as something separate from atoms spinning and things moving in curves -- it's all the same *stuff* -- atoms and photons and quarks and the various forces of attraction -- they govern "life" just as much as they govern inanimate objects and you can't have life without them. Yes, humans have imagination and make up stories, and I'll happily concede that 'the sun rising' is different from "a mere ball of flaming gas [...] illuminat[ing] the world" (although I must quibble that the word "world" is itself too emotionally invested to be used properly in the second phrase) -- and I loved how that distinction was set up! -- but even the human imagination, everything that drives us to make up those stories for ourselves, is, ultimately, made of and governed by the same things and forces that keep rocks moving in curves and atoms spinning. Because there's nothing else for it to be made *of* or governed by. So, that presentation of the order of the universe being oppositional to life really annoys me. Because, actually, DISorder is pretty much the order of the universe -- my favorite law of thermodynamics, and, yeah... I'll shut up now, but this really bugs me.
Also, I must mention that I saw the first half of the Hogfather movie before I read the book. So, my mental image of Teatime was the one from the movie, though it really didn't influence anything else.
26. Martin Millar, The Good Fairies of New York -- I picked up this book for two reasons: intriguing title and a blurb/introduction by Neil Gaiman in which Neil compares Millar to Vonnegut, Pratchett, and Douglas Adams. Well, this book certainly hasn't got that confluence of poignancy and multiple levels of humour that I was extolling Pterry for up above, and it hasn't got the mad scope and multi-layered yet internally consistent zaniness of Hitchhiker, and I'm pretty sure it's got a long ways to go before hitting the depth and relevance of Vonnegut's work, but, eh, I can kind of see how the somewhat disjointed, simple yet manneristic narrative can be reminiscent of Vonnegut and the whole "modern fairies" done as humour/satire conceit play in the Discworld sandbox, and so forth. And it was an incredibly easy read -- a short book, but every time I would sit down with the intent to read only 10 pages, next thing I know I've read 40. It just keeps flowing.
I liked the central premise, part sitcom, part Shakespearean comedy of errors, better than the execution, actually. Probably the main reason for that is that I never warmed up to Dinnie (the "worst violinist in New York") or Heather, the Scottish fairy that is playing match-maker for him (for ulterior motives). I don't know, in fact, if you're *supposed to* warm up to Dinnie. He starts out the book as a loud-mouthed bigoted jerk, ne'er do well slob who's never had a girlfriend, that sort of thing. And, although Heather's ministrations and Love do change him for the better over the course of the novel, he still ain't a prize catch or even a particularly likable human being at that point. For me, it was a case of too little too late. And Heather just comes across as a total idiot, much less likeable or interesting than her friend Morag.
What I liked: well, the central conceit, as I mentioned. I liked Magenta, the shoe-polish-addled bag lady who thinks she is Xenophon, and then uses ancient Greek strategy/tactics to help the "good" fairies win the war. I liked Aelric the revolutionary fairy emulating Chairman Mao. I liked the random and quickly-shifting alliances and enmities between the fairies -- it's a bit hard to pull off in a "modern" book, but rather reminiscent of mythology and the real fairy stories, and I thought that worked really weel. I also liked that the running phone sex commercials thing turned out to actually have some kind of point in the end, which I hadn't expected. I also liked that the mere recovery of the mystical poppy was not enough to secure victory in the Community Arts festival for Kerry, that it actually took fairy love magic and coincidence to do it. A proper ending to a fairy story!
I didn't like: Dinnie, as previously mentioned; that the action went from funny-ridiculous to really-STUPID-ridiculous at times, like when Heather and Morag tie Wee Maggie MacGowan's shoelaces together and similar moments. And I found it a bit hard to believe that until the English and Scottish fairies had shown up, the local New York fairies -- Italian, Chinese, Ghanan -- had so little interaction among themselves. The characters were, by and large, fairly unbelievable too, in a slapstick way, which was OK for reading this book on a fun surface level but doesn't really support anything deeper, like empathy or actually caring about what happens to anyone.
But overall it was an enjoyable book and a very quick, fun read.
27. Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light -- I picked up this book on _grayswandir_'s rec, after having passed over it multiple times in the library. The cover blurb refers to it as "Zelazny's single most brilliant achievement" and "the greatest example of Zelazny's genius," and I'm wary of things like that. But I went and read it and -- it was good. Very good, even, and probably the best stand-along Zelazny I've read (not that I've read all that much -- a bunch of short stories and Roadmarks and at least one other novel that I don't remember which it was -- _grayswandir_, if you've got more specific recs, I'm game!) -- though I didn't love it as much as Amber. Not surprising, because I do prefer fantasy to sci-fi (even really *odd* mythological sci-fi like Lord of Light), and the setting of the Amber books, being Eurocentric-like, is something I'm more at home with than the Hindu-pantheon-reimaged world. (I was briefly obsessed with the Hindu pantheon, and the idea of the Trimurti, and especially Shiva the Destroyer back in high school, but that was a long time ago and it didn't actually help me with any of this theological stuff.)
I liked this book, but I found it a bit difficult to read, because of the insertions of philosophy and bits from the Upanishads (which always make me think of the talking mirror in Ponedeljnik), and the odd "holy-text-like" language. I don't know if the odd language made the book more effective by keeping the air of religion about it, sometimes in effectively incongrous ways (like when Sam leaves a message for the gods to come see him in Hell), or it would've worked just as well/been easier to get into without it. The philosophical digressions mid-dialogue certainly didn't help me.
Actually, all the theological and philosophical stuff was kind of not my cup of tea, and I spent a long time trying to figure out Aspects and Attributes and which was which and what they were for and what the difference between with and without them was. But I loved the more mythological/epic bits -- the story of Rild, beginning to end, and his fight with Yama; the description of demons and what I'm quite convinced is the best description of demonic posession ever written: "There were times when he saw, not through the eyes of the body that had once been his, but saw as a demon saw, in all directions, and stripped flesh and bone from those among whom he passed, to behold the flames of their beings, colored with the hues and shades of their passions, flickering with avarice and lust and envy, darting with greed and hunger, smouldering with hate, waning with fear and pain. His hell was a many-colored place, somewhat mitigated only by the cold blue blaze of a scholar's intellect, the white light of a dying monk, the rose halo of a lady who fled his sight, and the dancing, simple colors of children at play." The random bits and digressions that aren't terribly important to the main story, that crop up here and there and give it an authentically mythological feel, like the page-long description of Videgha (the prince whose palace the demon/Sam takes over), and the offhand references to past feats and foes. Speaking of which, the mere *name* of the "Mothers of the Terrible Glow" creeped me the heck out -- best name for mysterious adversarial creatures EVER.
The themes were interesting, if a bit too explicit in the story. I was put in mind, from the start, of Trudno Bytj Bogom [Hard to be a God], the brothers Strugatsky's "soft"/social sci-fi novel which also deals with the interaction between a pre-industrial world and more technologically advanced outsiders who might as well be gods next to them. (I actually should look up where Strugatskys' "progressors" novels fall relative to Lord o Light (1967), and what, if anything, they thought of Zelazny in general. OK, having looked it up on The Source of All Knowledge, TBB (1964) predates LoL by a couple of years.) I thought the various implications of body-switching technology were very well explored, social and psychological aspects, gender and age changes (Brahma, Yama), brain damage due to "transfer effects", and, of course, Sam getting beamed into Nirvana).
As far as plot, I liked the attempted crosses and double-crosses, shifting alliances and people acting "from beyond the grave", which are all something Zelazny does very well, obviously. I hadn't realized that 5/7th of the book actually takes place in flashback, which was odd, because, of course, you know Sam is going to die, you just don't know at what point, and it did that same thing that the Amber books did, which was making me want to go to the beginning and re-read once I had more background and could understan references and relationships better.
My favorite part, and what elevated this book for me above other stand-alone Zelaznys I've read, were the characters. I liked Sam, and I liked Kubera, who really does seem like the kind of guy it would be really good to have as a friend. I liked the undercurrent of relationships between the First, that everyone else is, apparently, oblivious to, and how it comes out when they start calling each other by their real names. (Having Kali's name be Candi was kind of wonderful...) I wish I knew more about who they *were*, passengers or crew, and what they did -- other than Olvegg being the pilot and Renfrew/Nirriti being the chaplain, do we learn what any of the others were? (And, speaking of Nirriti, I think it's kind of awesome that it's the *chaplain* who raises an army of zombies...)
But the character I liked best was Yama. He is just so awesome, and I mean that in every possible way. And it's so often that you find a character like that as a villain -- he is, essentially, an evil genius, only without the evil -- and it's refreshing to have him be a "good guy" (in as much as a book like this can have any), even while he is still on the side of Heaven. He is the only one of the gods, other than Kubera, who seems to care about other people at all in ways that are not exclusively self-serving. When he kills Rild (in flashback) and when he kills Mara (in real-time) he shows clearly -- not remorse, and sadness is too vague, but a definite sense that he is sorry it had to come to this. And, of course, there is his devotion to Kali. He really is an idealist, as Sam puts it, and that's just awesome, to have an idealistic -- yet incredibly deadly, in Aspect or without -- Death. Not to mention that he and Kubera seem to be the only gods doing any actual *work*, since, between them (and Vishnu, I guess...), they appear to have made anything of value. Also, I'm not sure what it signifies, but Yama appears to be the only character with real physical presence (separate from his ASPECT) in the book -- he is always yawning and stretching and smoking -- well, not *always*, obviously, but nobody else seems to do it at all, so that stands out. Just like a chaplain with an army of zombies, it is rather awesome to have Death be the one bringing vitality to a book... But, yeah, as much of Yama as there was in this book, I wished there were more, and more book for him to be in; him and Kubera interacting, preferrably.
Also, totally randomly, yay for quotes from Wilde (Yama: "each man kills the thing he loves") and Paradise Lost, almost (Tak: "If thou beest he -- then oh, how changed!"). I do wonder why/how they know Earth Western literature and scripture, though -- I could see Tak the archivist having professional knowledge of it, and, of course, the First, but not sure why Yama would, unless he is just one of those people who read everything they can get their hands on, even if irrelevant to his true passion for making deadly mechanical things. (Speaking of which, I really liked the reflection that Shiva's chariot "seemed to be somehow incomplete, although the eye could not fault its lines. It held that special beauty that belongs to the highest order of weapons, requiring function to make it complete.")
Being Zelazny, there were all these stylistic flourishes, and some of them worked better for me than others. I really liked the "All things considered, it was thorough as well as impressive, the death" and the other sentences structured in this manner (although I rather with the "death" one was the last rather than the "wedding" one, as "death" is the more powerful one); but some of the other repetitions or inversions or weird things didn't work for me as well. And of course he still does the "so this thing was done" thing, but that's nice, it's like waving at an old friend.
Having finished these, I'm reading, concurrently, two sci-fi/fantasy anthologies (a "best of" for last year and an older pnh-edited one).