June/July book reviews
A song I recently rediscovered:
Jewel - Down So Long
Yeah, yeah, I know. Jewel's Spirit album has some seriously vom-inducing songs on it ("if I could tell the world just one thing, it would be that we're all okay" -- REALLY?), but this song is all growly and cynical. It could easily slot into Fiona Apple's When the Pawn album. Love it.
Also: hey, guys, HEY. I've been busy renovating my new flat (manual labour = turns out, I am not good at it :|), but I have been planning many fascinating LJ posts in my head (How Parks and Rec Succeeds Because of its Thoughtful Character Development), which I may or may not find time to compose.
Anyway, here's some book reviews from the last couple of months:
The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome - Tony Attwood (non-fiction) (***)
Ooh, you’re always setting yourself up for a fall when you call your book The COMPLETE Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome. You may as well call it the ONLY Guide or the BEST EVER Guide. *wince* Maybe I should cut Tony Attwood some slack; the title was probably his publisher’s idea.
Nonetheless, I found this book slight lacking. One might even say... incomplete. *rimshot*
It’s particularly poor when it comes to strategies for dealing with Asperger’s. Almost all the suggestions are aimed at children (“draw a cartoon strip to help you understand your feelings!”) and therefore laughably simplistic. I specifically picked up this book because it was one of only a few on the market not titled Parents’ Guide to Asperger’s or What to do if your child has Asperger’s. And yet the book still deals overwhelmingly with children who have Asperger’s. Not particularly helpful if the Aspie person in your life is an adult.
Those gripes aside, there is a lot of useful information about Asperger’s contained within this book. If you’re trying to understand Asperger’s better, this makes for a decent read. There’s a slight ‘textbook-drone’ quality to Attwood’s prose, and I think it could have been more effectively restructured, but nonetheless, it’s an accessible, interesting guide. It’s just not a complete one, IMO.
The Baby Name Wizard: A Magical Method for Finding the Perfect Name for Your Baby - Laura Wattenberg (non-fiction, writing) (*****)
In The Baby Name Wizard, Laura Wattenberg uses computer modelling, historical/social research and good old-fashioned critical thinking to analyze baby naming trends and sort names into ‘types’. Evelyn is ‘antique’; Finn is ‘brisk and breezy’; Hayden is ‘androgynous’.
Wattenberg’s advice on naming is thoughtful and perceptive; she doesn’t disparage any names, but she does give food for thought. For parents-to-be, the main draw is the ability to assess the popularity of your favoured name (whadaya mean, my rare name choice is actually a rising star?), and the ability to find names that are “sorta like X, but not so well-known”.
However, I don’t use this book as a parenting reference; I use it as a writing tool.
I was sorting through some old notebooks recently and I found in one of them pages and pages of names. I must have compiled this list of names when I was about 12. It’s not because I was baby-crazy or desperate to be on ‘16 and Pregnant’. I was just a budding writer with lots of characters to name.
Truth: writers spend way more time obsessing over baby names than expectant parents, because parents might have 2, 3, 4 kids, but writers ‘Christen’ dozens of babies every year. So don’t let the adorable baby on the cover put you off; this is an indispensible writing tool.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve started a new writing project, begun to sketch out my characters and then got stuck on finding a name. The problem isn’t solved by picking up a name dictionary and opening it on a random page. If my heroine is sharp and sarcastic, I can’t call her ‘Lucy’. This is the sort of situation where Wizard becomes indispensible. If you know you want a brisk, one-syllable name, just look up that ‘type’ and find a whole selection to choose from.
Wizard is also great for avoiding anachronisms, because it includes charts of each name’s rising/falling popularity. If your hero was born in 1980, he shouldn’t be called ‘Braeden’. That’s an obvious example, but a lot of names we assume were popular during a certain time period actually weren’t.
The ‘brother/sister’ suggestions that come with each name are also incredibly useful - although not necessarily for brothers and sisters. If you’re going to spend 100,000 words writing about best friends or lovers, it’s helpful that their names “go together”. Who wants to end up writing “Amethyst and Jack walked down the street… Amethyst and Jack went to the shops… Amethyst and Jack were in big trouble”?
You can access a lot of Wizard’s features (popularity charts, for example) from its accompanying website, but the book’s more in-depth and it’s a handy reference to have within easy reach when you’re writing.
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua (non-fiction, memoir) (***)
Amy Chua’s memoir - and it is a memoir, not a treatise that you need to get worked up over - is funny and thought-provoking in places, but it feels unfocused and ultimately becomes a little dull.
If Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother were a 10,000-word essay, I’d give it a solid four stars. Indeed, the beginning is entertaining and insightful. If you’re a geek for cultural differences, you’ll enjoy Chua’s reflections on trying to raise her American-Jewish-Chinese children “the Chinese way” - rote learning, no playdates, hours and hours of musical practice.
You don’t have to agree with Chua’s methods to get some food for thought from her ideas. Especially interesting is Chua’s assertion that Chinese parents assume their children are strong - able to withstand criticism and gruelling hard work - while Western parents assume their children are fragile.
The problem is, Battle Hymn doesn’t really know what type of book it wants to be. For a life memoir, it feels scant on details of Chua’s life. For a parenting memoir, however, there’s too much of her life included. Chua tells us about not one but two of her relatives who suffer wasting diseases. Were these experiences harrowing for Chua? Undoubtedly. Do they have anything to do with parenting or her “battle hymn”? Nope.
The book ultimately breaks down like this:
Beginning: entertaining; brisk intro.
Middle: slow; lots of piano/violin recitals; wasting illness.
End: more wasting illness; family dramaz; rambling non-conclusion.
(Side note: wow, piano/violin recitals are boring to read about.)
All in, the result is an interesting yet unfocused book. I can’t help wishing that Chua had waited until her children were grown before she wrote this book. It would give the book more of a ‘shape’ and it would also be interesting to (a) get the kids’ side of the story, and (b) find out whether they become the perfect doctors/lawyers that Chua envisions.
Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher (fiction, teen) (*)
Meh.
Oh, sorry, were you looking for a longer review?
I’ll try again:
Thirteen Reasons Why is a high-concept teen novel. Shortly after the suicide of his schoolmate, Hannah, all-around good guy Clay receives a package of tapes. They’re from Hannah; a suicide note of sorts that points the finger at 13 people who helped cause her suicide.
Unfortunately, Thirteen is so high-concept that its concept clobbers every other aspect of the novel to death. First of all, we must suffer contrivance after contrivance in order to prop up the faulty premise. Why would Hannah, in 2007, record her suicide note on cassette, when every computer/mp3 player/phone allows you make an mp3 voice recording? Who even plays cassettes these days? Well, wouldn’tyoubelieveit, Clay’s best friend still plays cassettes!
Anyway, the mysterious romanticizing of cassettes aside, the premise of the novel - Clay’s reaction as he sits and listens to Hannah’s tapes - ends up making Thirteen really difficult to follow. It’s tiring to switch back and forth between Hannah’s POV and Clay’s POV. If Jay Asher were a better writer, he might have been able to minimise the problems of mixed POV, but his prose is clumsy and repetitive, which only makes the situation worse.
The stream-of-two-consciousnesses narrative also means the characters remain flat and unconvincing. Clay is, according to Asher’s thin characterization, the nicest guy ever to have walked the planet, but whether he has any hobbies, interests or character quirks, I could not tell you. Hannah just seems… angry. And that’s another problem with the premise right there.
Are suicidal people angry? Are they, like, steaming mad… vindictive… wanting to fuck over all their enemies? Are they really like that…?
Surely suicidal feelings are characterized by depression and apathy towards life. I got none of that from Hannah’s character voice. She seemed far too fired up to go and lie down somewhere with a stomach full of pills. Asher creates a fighter of a character completely at odds with his own premise.
Asher also sets himself up for a very big fall: he promises to tell us why people commit suicide.
Gulp.
Did Hannah get a raw deal from her high school experience? Yes. Did I finish Thirteen understanding why she would want to kill herself? No.
I’m actually a great believer that high school genuinely sucks for most people. I think it’s a toxic, conformist environment that can make you feel suffocated and anxious. Bullying - even verbal bullying; especially verbal bullying - wears you down until you’re afraid of your own shadow. I remember those feelings from my own high school experience, but this book did not evoke them for me.
I actually feel that Thirteen was almost counter-productive. It made Hannah seem whiny and self-involved, rather than the true victim of a toxic society.
P.S. When I reached Reason Number Nine, my jaw dropped open and I screamed - actually screamed - FUCK YOU, JAY ASHER. Even if everything else about this book had been good, Goddamn Reason Number Nine would have still made it a one-star read.
Welcome to My World - Johnny Weir (non-fiction, memoir, figure skating) (**)
There’s a lot of myth that surrounds Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir; myth created from fanciful assumptions and media speculation. Johnny makes a drug analogy in a press conference - ohmygod, he’s a drug addict! Johnny poses half-naked in a pair of stilettos for a photo shoot - ohmygod, his life is all hedonism and debauchery! Johnny makes some snide comments about rival Evan Lysacek - ohmygod, he’s a diva bitch from hell!
This is very much a ‘setting the record straight’ memoir. The reality, of course, is that Johnny’s a self-confessed shy country boy, who, as a matter of fact, has spent the majority of the last thirteen years training training training. Because you don’t get to be a three-time (*cough* four-time */cough*) national champion by partying every night. In Welcome to My World, he also reveals that he’s a big romantic who didn’t lose his virginity until he was established in a relationship with his first boyfriend, Schrew Schmeekins.
Johnny provides a thoughtful, concise overview of his life to date. Most of the content will be familiar to any fan (or anyone who’s seen the excellent documentary, Pop Star On Ice), but there are a few unexpected anecdotes. Like the time Johnny injured himself during Grand Prix season by daring Evan Lysacek to a handstand contest in Russia. (Amazing.)
Although I have no doubt that Johnny was poorly treated by his federation, egregiously underscored by the judges, and misrepresented by much of the media, it’s hard not to suspect him of sanding some of the rough edges off his story and casting himself in the best light possible. There are some gaps, some truths he doesn’t seem willing to divulge (yet). I, for one, would have liked to read Johnny’s take on his ‘feud’ with Evan. How did they go from being friends during the Champions On Ice tour to being (apparently) sworn enemies? Was it all media hype? Johnny remains notably quiet on the matter.
Anyone who’s seen him interviewed knows that Johnny has a great sense of humour, but it seems curiously absent here. Maybe his humour doesn’t translate to the page; maybe he wanted to be taken seriously here. Either way, My World feels flat as a result. It’s not quite an exposé on the world of figure skating (although it contains plenty of appalling behaviour by the federation). It’s not quite a tell-all. It’s not even a rip-roaring good time.
I expected a few reactions to Johnny’s memoir, but “dull” wasn’t one of them.
A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1) - George R.R. Martin (fiction, fantasy) (***)
Grand in scale and filled with rich fantasy detail, A Game of Thrones boasts lots of world-building, but not enough story to warrant its extravagant length.
Thrones is a book so long that it makes J.K. Rowling and Stephen King step back and say, “dude, did you not think about cutting some of the fat?”
Part of the problem is the sprawling cast of characters, each of whom has their own lengthy backstory (some of which are, predictably, more interesting than others). Some of George R.R. Martin's characters are gems - fast-talking dwarf, Tyrion; plucky girl child, Arya - but we spend far too much time with our dry-as-dust hero, Ned Stark, who is so noble, so utterly unswayed by temptation, that he’s really fucking boring.
I’ll forgive Martin for his tendencies towards florid text - what is the point of writing fantasy if you can’t indulge yourself with some purple prose? - but the plotting is plodding and the scene construction pedestrian. All jest aside, not every one of those 800 pages is necessary. Martin lingers pointlessly on scene after scene that could be cut by 3, 4, 5 pages.
(Ironically, the only lean subplot, where time flies in the form of frequent summary narrative, belongs to forsaken princess, Daenerys. Ironic because hers is the most compelling storyline.)
An unacceptable amount of the plot requires multiple characters to cart round the idiot ball and then abruptly drop it when the time is right. I also dislike how much certain characters seem shaped according to the needs of the plot. For example, Catelyn, who seems perfectly lovely in every other respect, is absolutely vile to her husband’s bastard son, Jon. This seems far more in service of the plot - Jon has to feel that he can’t go home, because Cat’s such an almighty bitch to him - rather than a reflection of thoughtful characterisation.
If you like pseudo-historical drama - lords and ladies and knights, oh my! - tinged with the supernatural, you’ll probably find Thrones a fun sandpit in which to spend time. And, sure enough, I like Martin’s Westeros universe enough that I’ll be reading the rest of this (ridiculously, ridiculously long) series. However, I can only guess at how much better this book would have been had an editor taken Martin in hand.
2&1/2 stars and, for once, I’ll be generous and round that up to 3.
A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2) - George R.R. Martin (fiction, fantasy) (***)
I really liked the premise of A Clash of Kings, which features several self-anointed kings scrabbling for victory at any cost. This is warfare as a long, slow drudge through political quicksand. It’s all posturing, strategy and paper-thin alliances - groups gain ground only to lose it elsewhere. The novel’s best moments come as a result of game-changing manoeuvres on the (political and literal) battlefield.
Kings also boasts several enjoyable new characters (Asha! Asha is my new favourite!). Alas, inevitably each new character means we get to hear less from an established character (Robb, Robb, wherefore art thou, Robb?).
In general, the novel suffers all the same flaws as its predecessor, A Game of Thrones. It’s needlessly long and the bloated wordage impacts the pace badly. With so many different story threads, it can be upwards of 100 pages before we check in with a character’s situation. I would often find myself on tenterhooks to find out what would become of Arya or Jon or Whoever at the end of a chapter, but by the time the answer was revealed, so much reading time had elapsed that I simply didn’t care anymore.
Jewel - Down So Long
Yeah, yeah, I know. Jewel's Spirit album has some seriously vom-inducing songs on it ("if I could tell the world just one thing, it would be that we're all okay" -- REALLY?), but this song is all growly and cynical. It could easily slot into Fiona Apple's When the Pawn album. Love it.
Also: hey, guys, HEY. I've been busy renovating my new flat (manual labour = turns out, I am not good at it :|), but I have been planning many fascinating LJ posts in my head (How Parks and Rec Succeeds Because of its Thoughtful Character Development), which I may or may not find time to compose.
Anyway, here's some book reviews from the last couple of months:
The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome - Tony Attwood (non-fiction) (***)
Ooh, you’re always setting yourself up for a fall when you call your book The COMPLETE Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome. You may as well call it the ONLY Guide or the BEST EVER Guide. *wince* Maybe I should cut Tony Attwood some slack; the title was probably his publisher’s idea.
Nonetheless, I found this book slight lacking. One might even say... incomplete. *rimshot*
It’s particularly poor when it comes to strategies for dealing with Asperger’s. Almost all the suggestions are aimed at children (“draw a cartoon strip to help you understand your feelings!”) and therefore laughably simplistic. I specifically picked up this book because it was one of only a few on the market not titled Parents’ Guide to Asperger’s or What to do if your child has Asperger’s. And yet the book still deals overwhelmingly with children who have Asperger’s. Not particularly helpful if the Aspie person in your life is an adult.
Those gripes aside, there is a lot of useful information about Asperger’s contained within this book. If you’re trying to understand Asperger’s better, this makes for a decent read. There’s a slight ‘textbook-drone’ quality to Attwood’s prose, and I think it could have been more effectively restructured, but nonetheless, it’s an accessible, interesting guide. It’s just not a complete one, IMO.
The Baby Name Wizard: A Magical Method for Finding the Perfect Name for Your Baby - Laura Wattenberg (non-fiction, writing) (*****)
In The Baby Name Wizard, Laura Wattenberg uses computer modelling, historical/social research and good old-fashioned critical thinking to analyze baby naming trends and sort names into ‘types’. Evelyn is ‘antique’; Finn is ‘brisk and breezy’; Hayden is ‘androgynous’.
Wattenberg’s advice on naming is thoughtful and perceptive; she doesn’t disparage any names, but she does give food for thought. For parents-to-be, the main draw is the ability to assess the popularity of your favoured name (whadaya mean, my rare name choice is actually a rising star?), and the ability to find names that are “sorta like X, but not so well-known”.
However, I don’t use this book as a parenting reference; I use it as a writing tool.
I was sorting through some old notebooks recently and I found in one of them pages and pages of names. I must have compiled this list of names when I was about 12. It’s not because I was baby-crazy or desperate to be on ‘16 and Pregnant’. I was just a budding writer with lots of characters to name.
Truth: writers spend way more time obsessing over baby names than expectant parents, because parents might have 2, 3, 4 kids, but writers ‘Christen’ dozens of babies every year. So don’t let the adorable baby on the cover put you off; this is an indispensible writing tool.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve started a new writing project, begun to sketch out my characters and then got stuck on finding a name. The problem isn’t solved by picking up a name dictionary and opening it on a random page. If my heroine is sharp and sarcastic, I can’t call her ‘Lucy’. This is the sort of situation where Wizard becomes indispensible. If you know you want a brisk, one-syllable name, just look up that ‘type’ and find a whole selection to choose from.
Wizard is also great for avoiding anachronisms, because it includes charts of each name’s rising/falling popularity. If your hero was born in 1980, he shouldn’t be called ‘Braeden’. That’s an obvious example, but a lot of names we assume were popular during a certain time period actually weren’t.
The ‘brother/sister’ suggestions that come with each name are also incredibly useful - although not necessarily for brothers and sisters. If you’re going to spend 100,000 words writing about best friends or lovers, it’s helpful that their names “go together”. Who wants to end up writing “Amethyst and Jack walked down the street… Amethyst and Jack went to the shops… Amethyst and Jack were in big trouble”?
You can access a lot of Wizard’s features (popularity charts, for example) from its accompanying website, but the book’s more in-depth and it’s a handy reference to have within easy reach when you’re writing.
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua (non-fiction, memoir) (***)
Amy Chua’s memoir - and it is a memoir, not a treatise that you need to get worked up over - is funny and thought-provoking in places, but it feels unfocused and ultimately becomes a little dull.
If Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother were a 10,000-word essay, I’d give it a solid four stars. Indeed, the beginning is entertaining and insightful. If you’re a geek for cultural differences, you’ll enjoy Chua’s reflections on trying to raise her American-Jewish-Chinese children “the Chinese way” - rote learning, no playdates, hours and hours of musical practice.
You don’t have to agree with Chua’s methods to get some food for thought from her ideas. Especially interesting is Chua’s assertion that Chinese parents assume their children are strong - able to withstand criticism and gruelling hard work - while Western parents assume their children are fragile.
The problem is, Battle Hymn doesn’t really know what type of book it wants to be. For a life memoir, it feels scant on details of Chua’s life. For a parenting memoir, however, there’s too much of her life included. Chua tells us about not one but two of her relatives who suffer wasting diseases. Were these experiences harrowing for Chua? Undoubtedly. Do they have anything to do with parenting or her “battle hymn”? Nope.
The book ultimately breaks down like this:
Beginning: entertaining; brisk intro.
Middle: slow; lots of piano/violin recitals; wasting illness.
End: more wasting illness; family dramaz; rambling non-conclusion.
(Side note: wow, piano/violin recitals are boring to read about.)
All in, the result is an interesting yet unfocused book. I can’t help wishing that Chua had waited until her children were grown before she wrote this book. It would give the book more of a ‘shape’ and it would also be interesting to (a) get the kids’ side of the story, and (b) find out whether they become the perfect doctors/lawyers that Chua envisions.
Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher (fiction, teen) (*)
Meh.
Oh, sorry, were you looking for a longer review?
I’ll try again:
Thirteen Reasons Why is a high-concept teen novel. Shortly after the suicide of his schoolmate, Hannah, all-around good guy Clay receives a package of tapes. They’re from Hannah; a suicide note of sorts that points the finger at 13 people who helped cause her suicide.
Unfortunately, Thirteen is so high-concept that its concept clobbers every other aspect of the novel to death. First of all, we must suffer contrivance after contrivance in order to prop up the faulty premise. Why would Hannah, in 2007, record her suicide note on cassette, when every computer/mp3 player/phone allows you make an mp3 voice recording? Who even plays cassettes these days? Well, wouldn’tyoubelieveit, Clay’s best friend still plays cassettes!
Anyway, the mysterious romanticizing of cassettes aside, the premise of the novel - Clay’s reaction as he sits and listens to Hannah’s tapes - ends up making Thirteen really difficult to follow. It’s tiring to switch back and forth between Hannah’s POV and Clay’s POV. If Jay Asher were a better writer, he might have been able to minimise the problems of mixed POV, but his prose is clumsy and repetitive, which only makes the situation worse.
The stream-of-two-consciousnesses narrative also means the characters remain flat and unconvincing. Clay is, according to Asher’s thin characterization, the nicest guy ever to have walked the planet, but whether he has any hobbies, interests or character quirks, I could not tell you. Hannah just seems… angry. And that’s another problem with the premise right there.
Are suicidal people angry? Are they, like, steaming mad… vindictive… wanting to fuck over all their enemies? Are they really like that…?
Surely suicidal feelings are characterized by depression and apathy towards life. I got none of that from Hannah’s character voice. She seemed far too fired up to go and lie down somewhere with a stomach full of pills. Asher creates a fighter of a character completely at odds with his own premise.
Asher also sets himself up for a very big fall: he promises to tell us why people commit suicide.
Gulp.
Did Hannah get a raw deal from her high school experience? Yes. Did I finish Thirteen understanding why she would want to kill herself? No.
I’m actually a great believer that high school genuinely sucks for most people. I think it’s a toxic, conformist environment that can make you feel suffocated and anxious. Bullying - even verbal bullying; especially verbal bullying - wears you down until you’re afraid of your own shadow. I remember those feelings from my own high school experience, but this book did not evoke them for me.
I actually feel that Thirteen was almost counter-productive. It made Hannah seem whiny and self-involved, rather than the true victim of a toxic society.
P.S. When I reached Reason Number Nine, my jaw dropped open and I screamed - actually screamed - FUCK YOU, JAY ASHER. Even if everything else about this book had been good, Goddamn Reason Number Nine would have still made it a one-star read.
Welcome to My World - Johnny Weir (non-fiction, memoir, figure skating) (**)
There’s a lot of myth that surrounds Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir; myth created from fanciful assumptions and media speculation. Johnny makes a drug analogy in a press conference - ohmygod, he’s a drug addict! Johnny poses half-naked in a pair of stilettos for a photo shoot - ohmygod, his life is all hedonism and debauchery! Johnny makes some snide comments about rival Evan Lysacek - ohmygod, he’s a diva bitch from hell!
This is very much a ‘setting the record straight’ memoir. The reality, of course, is that Johnny’s a self-confessed shy country boy, who, as a matter of fact, has spent the majority of the last thirteen years training training training. Because you don’t get to be a three-time (*cough* four-time */cough*) national champion by partying every night. In Welcome to My World, he also reveals that he’s a big romantic who didn’t lose his virginity until he was established in a relationship with his first boyfriend, Schrew Schmeekins.
Johnny provides a thoughtful, concise overview of his life to date. Most of the content will be familiar to any fan (or anyone who’s seen the excellent documentary, Pop Star On Ice), but there are a few unexpected anecdotes. Like the time Johnny injured himself during Grand Prix season by daring Evan Lysacek to a handstand contest in Russia. (Amazing.)
Although I have no doubt that Johnny was poorly treated by his federation, egregiously underscored by the judges, and misrepresented by much of the media, it’s hard not to suspect him of sanding some of the rough edges off his story and casting himself in the best light possible. There are some gaps, some truths he doesn’t seem willing to divulge (yet). I, for one, would have liked to read Johnny’s take on his ‘feud’ with Evan. How did they go from being friends during the Champions On Ice tour to being (apparently) sworn enemies? Was it all media hype? Johnny remains notably quiet on the matter.
Anyone who’s seen him interviewed knows that Johnny has a great sense of humour, but it seems curiously absent here. Maybe his humour doesn’t translate to the page; maybe he wanted to be taken seriously here. Either way, My World feels flat as a result. It’s not quite an exposé on the world of figure skating (although it contains plenty of appalling behaviour by the federation). It’s not quite a tell-all. It’s not even a rip-roaring good time.
I expected a few reactions to Johnny’s memoir, but “dull” wasn’t one of them.
A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1) - George R.R. Martin (fiction, fantasy) (***)
Grand in scale and filled with rich fantasy detail, A Game of Thrones boasts lots of world-building, but not enough story to warrant its extravagant length.
Thrones is a book so long that it makes J.K. Rowling and Stephen King step back and say, “dude, did you not think about cutting some of the fat?”
Part of the problem is the sprawling cast of characters, each of whom has their own lengthy backstory (some of which are, predictably, more interesting than others). Some of George R.R. Martin's characters are gems - fast-talking dwarf, Tyrion; plucky girl child, Arya - but we spend far too much time with our dry-as-dust hero, Ned Stark, who is so noble, so utterly unswayed by temptation, that he’s really fucking boring.
I’ll forgive Martin for his tendencies towards florid text - what is the point of writing fantasy if you can’t indulge yourself with some purple prose? - but the plotting is plodding and the scene construction pedestrian. All jest aside, not every one of those 800 pages is necessary. Martin lingers pointlessly on scene after scene that could be cut by 3, 4, 5 pages.
(Ironically, the only lean subplot, where time flies in the form of frequent summary narrative, belongs to forsaken princess, Daenerys. Ironic because hers is the most compelling storyline.)
An unacceptable amount of the plot requires multiple characters to cart round the idiot ball and then abruptly drop it when the time is right. I also dislike how much certain characters seem shaped according to the needs of the plot. For example, Catelyn, who seems perfectly lovely in every other respect, is absolutely vile to her husband’s bastard son, Jon. This seems far more in service of the plot - Jon has to feel that he can’t go home, because Cat’s such an almighty bitch to him - rather than a reflection of thoughtful characterisation.
If you like pseudo-historical drama - lords and ladies and knights, oh my! - tinged with the supernatural, you’ll probably find Thrones a fun sandpit in which to spend time. And, sure enough, I like Martin’s Westeros universe enough that I’ll be reading the rest of this (ridiculously, ridiculously long) series. However, I can only guess at how much better this book would have been had an editor taken Martin in hand.
2&1/2 stars and, for once, I’ll be generous and round that up to 3.
A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2) - George R.R. Martin (fiction, fantasy) (***)
I really liked the premise of A Clash of Kings, which features several self-anointed kings scrabbling for victory at any cost. This is warfare as a long, slow drudge through political quicksand. It’s all posturing, strategy and paper-thin alliances - groups gain ground only to lose it elsewhere. The novel’s best moments come as a result of game-changing manoeuvres on the (political and literal) battlefield.
Kings also boasts several enjoyable new characters (Asha! Asha is my new favourite!). Alas, inevitably each new character means we get to hear less from an established character (Robb, Robb, wherefore art thou, Robb?).
In general, the novel suffers all the same flaws as its predecessor, A Game of Thrones. It’s needlessly long and the bloated wordage impacts the pace badly. With so many different story threads, it can be upwards of 100 pages before we check in with a character’s situation. I would often find myself on tenterhooks to find out what would become of Arya or Jon or Whoever at the end of a chapter, but by the time the answer was revealed, so much reading time had elapsed that I simply didn’t care anymore.