[books: gunslinger, fionavar tapestry]
I've been reading voraciously lately - knocking down 3 or 4 books a week - and so you guys get more book talk. Hooray! (Plus, new icon, specifically for talking about books! Hooray again!)
So I've never read the Dark Tower series. People are generally appalled when I tell them this, because they have always been something that should be right up my alley. I love Stephen King hugely, but I much prefer his horror to his fantasy - bloodlossgirl loaned me Talisman back in October, and it must have taken me a month to get through it, whereas I'll rip through his standard horror novels in three days. But my friends list is all ablaze with talk about Song of Susannah, and last weekend when I had brunch with sylvia101 we got to talking about them, so when I went to the library later on Sunday, I picked up The Gunslinger, mostly out of curiousity.
I enjoyed it, but I didn't find it totally mindblowing or enthralling the way the press about the series lead me to believe I would. I thought that King's tendency to refer to both the man in black and the gunslinger as "he" and "him" - oftentimes in the same fucking paragraph - was nearly impossible to parse, and it's very clear that, as he says in the afterward, the book was written over a period of ten years, because it's horribly choppy. But fascinating, and good enough to make me want to read the others. I've heard that they get better, and they need to, because if they're all as mediocre as this one, I may very well not finish the series.
sylvia101 loaned me this one; she thought it would be right up my alley and she was absolutely right. I think if I hadn't been to Toronto this spring, I'd have found the opening harder to get into, because it's full of tiny references to locations and streets and landmarks, and because of the trip, I had a helpful map in my head to make sense of things. This is, perhaps, not important to other readers, but when an author goes out of his way to name landmarks of real cities in his writing, I feel obligated to know what he's talking about.
But that's not the point, it was just a lovely little bonus.
This book is quite good; for me, it bore a strong resemblence to Lord of the Rings at first read, what with the unkillable evil being trapped until something releases it and the immortal woman sacrificing her life for the mortal man's power, but ultimately there really aren't huge similarities, and frankly, there was a lot less walking in Kay's book and thus it did not bore me out of my mind the way LOTR occasionally does.
The two things I loved best about the book were the legends, and the main characters. The legends - and oh, they're lovely - aren't related in the opening chapters expository style, but rather pieces of them are told to each of the 5 main characters over the course of the novel. I thought that this was a lovely way to explain the mythology Kay had set up for this fictional world, and it really forces the protagonists to eventually rely on each other - none of them have the full story. Just a gorgeous device for exposition without making it heavy handed, and absolutely my favorite part of the book.
I also adored the five main characters, who are university students in Toronto at the start of the book. And what I liked best is that their lives in Toronto ultimately have affected their paths and behaviors in the other universe. The central focus of Rachel's death for Paul's character, regardless of whether he was in Toronto or Brennin, just about slayed me. There's a very real edge to Paul and his friends, and it made it very easy for me to care about them, and what happens to them. And it makes the book eminently readable.
First in a trilogy - and I can't wait to get my hands on the other two books.
Now I'm on to a collection of May Sarton's letters to Juliette Huxley; I've read all of Sarton's journals, and when I finished the last one, I was heartbroken that there weren't more. Her journal writing has always been terribly inspirational to me; Journal of a Solitude was a huge influence while I was at Carleton. Anyway, I've read all the journals, but happily this collection of letters is reasonably new and I can read that. Less interesting to the general public of LiveJournal when I finish it, but certainly wonderful for me.
So I've never read the Dark Tower series. People are generally appalled when I tell them this, because they have always been something that should be right up my alley. I love Stephen King hugely, but I much prefer his horror to his fantasy - bloodlossgirl loaned me Talisman back in October, and it must have taken me a month to get through it, whereas I'll rip through his standard horror novels in three days. But my friends list is all ablaze with talk about Song of Susannah, and last weekend when I had brunch with sylvia101 we got to talking about them, so when I went to the library later on Sunday, I picked up The Gunslinger, mostly out of curiousity.
I enjoyed it, but I didn't find it totally mindblowing or enthralling the way the press about the series lead me to believe I would. I thought that King's tendency to refer to both the man in black and the gunslinger as "he" and "him" - oftentimes in the same fucking paragraph - was nearly impossible to parse, and it's very clear that, as he says in the afterward, the book was written over a period of ten years, because it's horribly choppy. But fascinating, and good enough to make me want to read the others. I've heard that they get better, and they need to, because if they're all as mediocre as this one, I may very well not finish the series.
sylvia101 loaned me this one; she thought it would be right up my alley and she was absolutely right. I think if I hadn't been to Toronto this spring, I'd have found the opening harder to get into, because it's full of tiny references to locations and streets and landmarks, and because of the trip, I had a helpful map in my head to make sense of things. This is, perhaps, not important to other readers, but when an author goes out of his way to name landmarks of real cities in his writing, I feel obligated to know what he's talking about.
But that's not the point, it was just a lovely little bonus.
This book is quite good; for me, it bore a strong resemblence to Lord of the Rings at first read, what with the unkillable evil being trapped until something releases it and the immortal woman sacrificing her life for the mortal man's power, but ultimately there really aren't huge similarities, and frankly, there was a lot less walking in Kay's book and thus it did not bore me out of my mind the way LOTR occasionally does.
The two things I loved best about the book were the legends, and the main characters. The legends - and oh, they're lovely - aren't related in the opening chapters expository style, but rather pieces of them are told to each of the 5 main characters over the course of the novel. I thought that this was a lovely way to explain the mythology Kay had set up for this fictional world, and it really forces the protagonists to eventually rely on each other - none of them have the full story. Just a gorgeous device for exposition without making it heavy handed, and absolutely my favorite part of the book.
I also adored the five main characters, who are university students in Toronto at the start of the book. And what I liked best is that their lives in Toronto ultimately have affected their paths and behaviors in the other universe. The central focus of Rachel's death for Paul's character, regardless of whether he was in Toronto or Brennin, just about slayed me. There's a very real edge to Paul and his friends, and it made it very easy for me to care about them, and what happens to them. And it makes the book eminently readable.
First in a trilogy - and I can't wait to get my hands on the other two books.
Now I'm on to a collection of May Sarton's letters to Juliette Huxley; I've read all of Sarton's journals, and when I finished the last one, I was heartbroken that there weren't more. Her journal writing has always been terribly inspirational to me; Journal of a Solitude was a huge influence while I was at Carleton. Anyway, I've read all the journals, but happily this collection of letters is reasonably new and I can read that. Less interesting to the general public of LiveJournal when I finish it, but certainly wonderful for me.