People Do Not Die of Little Trifling Colds!
I has a Bear and he makes me feel better. Especially when he comes in from New Jersey at 10:00pm at night to bring me soup and some snuggles.
This work week is passing by in fits and starts being as I missed last Friday, Monday, part of Tuesday, and yesterday. I was practically at death's door for the better part of six days. My healthy lifestyle may have buoyed me through a terrible flu season but apparently my immune system can't recover from a few busy, extraverted weekends. Dammit. Was I laid low by some horrible consumptive disease? No. Instead I got pwned by a particularly nasty rhinovirus.
My health is much improved although now I sound like I'm on death's front steps instead of its door. I'm still congested and I have an impressive chest-rattling cough but my boss told me that I apparently have "some colour back" in my face which is heartening. Hopefully a small rest-cure at my parents' house this weekend will help.
Being sick sucks, but I did manage to blow through three new books and reread one enormous tome during the six days I was dying. I went through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows again to see if I liked it any better the second time around.
The answer was no.
On a slower reread, I rediscovered why exactly it was I loved J. K. Rowling's work in the first place: her clever, whimsical world-building. Little gems would pop up here and there that I overlooked the first time around because I was plowing through the book to see how it would end. The pacing still sucks, but on the second read I didn't mind as much because I had time to savour the little details of the wizarding world. But these little details can't make up for how bad the book is. I say this objectively: as a book, Deathly Hallows is bad. Badly structured, badly executed, and badly written.
I can reconcile myself to more things now than I did on my first read. The plot, with all its unwieldy girth and unnecessary diversions, is fine. Interesting even. Just poorly done. Character assassinations? Hated them, but whatever, they're hers to do with what she likes. But the bit that kills every last good feeling I might have had about this book is the epilogue. Aside from being completely irrelevant, it also shows us that nothing has changed. Slytherin is still considered the "evil" house, house elves are still treated like crap, and none of the main characters marry Muggles which furthers (however subconsciously) blood prejudice. Teddy Lupin is actually the shining example of how apparently everything repeats itself in the wizarding world despite everyone's attempts at changing the status quo. His parents died fighting a racist bigot just like Harry. Starting with Gryffindor and Slytherin themselves, to Dumbledore and Grindelwald, and through to Harry and Voldemort, the issue of blood prejudice and genocide will always rear its ugly head. Harry's seven year journey has been in vain and therefore my reading of the series has been for naught as well.
I read the conclusion to two other series as well while I was ill: The Golem's Eye and Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud and A Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray.
While I enjoyed The Amulet of Samarkand immensely, I felt the next two books were a bit of a letdown. I can't quite put my finger on the exact reason why, but perhaps I will stumble across it as I review the two books individually.
The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud
At the end of The Amulet of Samarkand, Nathaniel and the djinni Bartimaeus have defeated an overly ambitious magician intent on staging a coup in the government with little more than their wits and some luck. Nathaniel appears to be headed for a great career and Bartimaeus has been dismissed from his captivity. All is well and good.
The Golem's Eye picks up a few years after the end of The Amulet of Samarkand with Nathaniel, now operating by his magician-name John Mandrake, as the youngest member of the British magical government. He is investigating a series of crimes and vandalisations that have occurred throughout London by an underground group of commoners protesting magician rule called The Resistance. A largescale attack that happened in Piccadilly appears to have the mark of The Resistance, but Nathaniel suspects a far more sinister magic (commoners do not wield magic because they do cannot summon djinni or other assorted "demons" to do their bidding) at work. Meanwhile, Kitty Jones, a commoner in The Resistance, attempts to make life better for herself and her fellow oppressed citizens.
Nathaniel summons Bartimaeus to help him deal with The Resistance problem, as well as figure out what is behind the largescale attacks. The book alternates between Kitty's, Nathaniel's, and Bartimaeus's points of view to tell the story. Which felt a bit...muddled. I had a hard time deciding who was the main protagonist in this story; in The Amulet of Samarkand, it was clearly Nathaniel, but I wasn't so sure in The Golem's Eye. I think, but am not quite sure, that it's still Nathaniel. I don't mind books with multiple protagonists but usually multiple protagonists are fighting for the same cause, and Nathaniel and Kitty are on opposite sides and Bartimaeus acts as a sort of...neutral middle viewpoint. But not really. He is working for Nathaniel but hates every moment of it.
The problem is that I no longer find Nathaniel sympathetic. I still like him because he's a prickly and arrogant bastard who is rather entitled to his self-importance because he actually is brilliant. However, Kitty is infinitely sympathetic and therefore I found her sections easier to read. The magicians, who were the victims of the first book, are now the villains. Sort of. So Nathaniel is now one of the "bad guys," which is fine, but it seems to me as though he's still intended to be the "hero," that is, "the good guy" and not "male protagonist." On top of The Resistance issue, there is another external conflict threatening the magicians, in which situation the magicians are supposed to be "the good guys." Complex relationships like this normally thrill me, and while I think Stroud writes fairly well, none of this coalesced into a coherent emotional storyline for me to follow. While Bartimaeus is always delightful, because he is a passenger in the events of the novel, I can't consider him a protagonist in the book because he isn't really an agent of his own actions.
At the end of the book, The Resistance is destroyed and the villain behind the larger external conflict is revealed, with all signs pointing towards a larger conspiracy closer to the magicians. It appears to be the mastermind behind the downfall of The Resistance and the golem destroying London are one and the same...cue ominous music. Fine, set up for the third book, moving on, yawn, yawn...
Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud
A few years after the events of The Golem's Eye, things have pretty much returned to what they were like in The Amulet of Samarkand; that is, magicians are in control of everything and Nathaniel is once again desperately trying to prove himself and survive in the snake pit that is London's government of magicians. It felt a bit like a "reset" actually, which annoyed me a lot. With the withering of The Resistance storyline, I felt very little connecting me emotionally to the events in the narrative. The problems I had with The Golem's Eye regarding the protagonists have multiplied hundredfold in Ptolemy's Gate. Nathaniel remains stubbornly unlikeable but also clearly the one with whom and with whose cause we should be sympathetic. His cause sucks! I don't want his side to win! Added to that problem is the fact that since The Resistance no longer exists, his side is kind of the only side.
Or not. I haven't forgotten the demons at all and we get much more of Bartimaeus's backstory regarding his beloved master Ptolemaeus and there are issues of demon rights and communication between humans and djinn, etc. But again, this all turns out very muddled and all the promise of world-building I saw in The Amulet of Samarkand kind of crumbles. Also, Nathaniel is revealed to be the sacrificial hero at the very end of the book, which echoed the first problem I had with The Amulet of Samarkand: Nathaniel's altruism seems rather forced and false to me.
Unfortunately, I am disappointed with how these books turned out although I will say that I still like Stroud's voice and his imagination, but instead of sharpening into a clearer narrative with each subsequent book, instead it just got more and more vague to me, despite the fact that all the events are easily understood.
Oh and the Uber Villain is kind of retarded. Just saying.
That being said, I thought The Sweet Far Thing was an excellent conclusion to the first two books: A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels. (I will say that I'm not a huge fan of the titles though, except for Rebel Angels.)
The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray
The best thing about Bray's books is that they get better with each subsequent novel. I wasn't terribly enamoured of A Great and Terrible Beauty. Nothing seemed to stand out about it: a little bit Gothic, a little bit Victorian mystery thriller, a little bit fantasy, a little bit girls' boarding school tale with four stereotypical Victorian schoolgirls (the bold one, the beautiful one, the plain one, and the one searching for her Place in Life). How they all got to be friends didn't exactly ring true with me but A Great and Terrible Beauty was eminently readable. Things vastly improve in Rebel Angels and I began to care for the characters deeply and I realised that by god, Libba Bray can write women and their relationships extraordinarily well.
The Sweet Far Thing does not disappoint me in the least. Things are coming to a head in this novel (which is HUGE): Gemma's imminent debut season, her deteriorating family, her tenuous hold on the magic of the realms, her social life, everything. Bray deftly handles these storylines without ever making the reader feel like she's being clobbered over the head with them. She builds the tension from all angles extraordinarily well and I will admit that I stayed up far later than I should have finishing the book when I ought to have taken a capful of Nyquil and slept off the remainder of my illness. Bray divides the book into a five-act structure and for the most part it works.
I actually have very few quibbles with this book. I've already discussed the fantasy element: it isn't the most compelling or fascinating. I thought there were at least five endings too many, but I suppose that's what comes about with having so many emotional threads to tie up. I will say that The Sweet Far Thing ends correctly. Not a single action or decision made by the characters is out of character and while the book doesn't have a traditional "happy ending," it is the most fitting and the most satisfying.
Brava, Libba Bray. You done good.
Last week I went down to the Union Square Barnes & Noble to place an order for the next two Attolia books. Megan Whalen Turner, you'd better than me for keeping your books on the shelves! Hopefully they are in today.
This work week is passing by in fits and starts being as I missed last Friday, Monday, part of Tuesday, and yesterday. I was practically at death's door for the better part of six days. My healthy lifestyle may have buoyed me through a terrible flu season but apparently my immune system can't recover from a few busy, extraverted weekends. Dammit. Was I laid low by some horrible consumptive disease? No. Instead I got pwned by a particularly nasty rhinovirus.
My health is much improved although now I sound like I'm on death's front steps instead of its door. I'm still congested and I have an impressive chest-rattling cough but my boss told me that I apparently have "some colour back" in my face which is heartening. Hopefully a small rest-cure at my parents' house this weekend will help.
Being sick sucks, but I did manage to blow through three new books and reread one enormous tome during the six days I was dying. I went through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows again to see if I liked it any better the second time around.
The answer was no.
On a slower reread, I rediscovered why exactly it was I loved J. K. Rowling's work in the first place: her clever, whimsical world-building. Little gems would pop up here and there that I overlooked the first time around because I was plowing through the book to see how it would end. The pacing still sucks, but on the second read I didn't mind as much because I had time to savour the little details of the wizarding world. But these little details can't make up for how bad the book is. I say this objectively: as a book, Deathly Hallows is bad. Badly structured, badly executed, and badly written.
I can reconcile myself to more things now than I did on my first read. The plot, with all its unwieldy girth and unnecessary diversions, is fine. Interesting even. Just poorly done. Character assassinations? Hated them, but whatever, they're hers to do with what she likes. But the bit that kills every last good feeling I might have had about this book is the epilogue. Aside from being completely irrelevant, it also shows us that nothing has changed. Slytherin is still considered the "evil" house, house elves are still treated like crap, and none of the main characters marry Muggles which furthers (however subconsciously) blood prejudice. Teddy Lupin is actually the shining example of how apparently everything repeats itself in the wizarding world despite everyone's attempts at changing the status quo. His parents died fighting a racist bigot just like Harry. Starting with Gryffindor and Slytherin themselves, to Dumbledore and Grindelwald, and through to Harry and Voldemort, the issue of blood prejudice and genocide will always rear its ugly head. Harry's seven year journey has been in vain and therefore my reading of the series has been for naught as well.
I read the conclusion to two other series as well while I was ill: The Golem's Eye and Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud and A Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray.
While I enjoyed The Amulet of Samarkand immensely, I felt the next two books were a bit of a letdown. I can't quite put my finger on the exact reason why, but perhaps I will stumble across it as I review the two books individually.
The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud
At the end of The Amulet of Samarkand, Nathaniel and the djinni Bartimaeus have defeated an overly ambitious magician intent on staging a coup in the government with little more than their wits and some luck. Nathaniel appears to be headed for a great career and Bartimaeus has been dismissed from his captivity. All is well and good.
The Golem's Eye picks up a few years after the end of The Amulet of Samarkand with Nathaniel, now operating by his magician-name John Mandrake, as the youngest member of the British magical government. He is investigating a series of crimes and vandalisations that have occurred throughout London by an underground group of commoners protesting magician rule called The Resistance. A largescale attack that happened in Piccadilly appears to have the mark of The Resistance, but Nathaniel suspects a far more sinister magic (commoners do not wield magic because they do cannot summon djinni or other assorted "demons" to do their bidding) at work. Meanwhile, Kitty Jones, a commoner in The Resistance, attempts to make life better for herself and her fellow oppressed citizens.
Nathaniel summons Bartimaeus to help him deal with The Resistance problem, as well as figure out what is behind the largescale attacks. The book alternates between Kitty's, Nathaniel's, and Bartimaeus's points of view to tell the story. Which felt a bit...muddled. I had a hard time deciding who was the main protagonist in this story; in The Amulet of Samarkand, it was clearly Nathaniel, but I wasn't so sure in The Golem's Eye. I think, but am not quite sure, that it's still Nathaniel. I don't mind books with multiple protagonists but usually multiple protagonists are fighting for the same cause, and Nathaniel and Kitty are on opposite sides and Bartimaeus acts as a sort of...neutral middle viewpoint. But not really. He is working for Nathaniel but hates every moment of it.
The problem is that I no longer find Nathaniel sympathetic. I still like him because he's a prickly and arrogant bastard who is rather entitled to his self-importance because he actually is brilliant. However, Kitty is infinitely sympathetic and therefore I found her sections easier to read. The magicians, who were the victims of the first book, are now the villains. Sort of. So Nathaniel is now one of the "bad guys," which is fine, but it seems to me as though he's still intended to be the "hero," that is, "the good guy" and not "male protagonist." On top of The Resistance issue, there is another external conflict threatening the magicians, in which situation the magicians are supposed to be "the good guys." Complex relationships like this normally thrill me, and while I think Stroud writes fairly well, none of this coalesced into a coherent emotional storyline for me to follow. While Bartimaeus is always delightful, because he is a passenger in the events of the novel, I can't consider him a protagonist in the book because he isn't really an agent of his own actions.
At the end of the book, The Resistance is destroyed and the villain behind the larger external conflict is revealed, with all signs pointing towards a larger conspiracy closer to the magicians. It appears to be the mastermind behind the downfall of The Resistance and the golem destroying London are one and the same...cue ominous music. Fine, set up for the third book, moving on, yawn, yawn...
Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud
A few years after the events of The Golem's Eye, things have pretty much returned to what they were like in The Amulet of Samarkand; that is, magicians are in control of everything and Nathaniel is once again desperately trying to prove himself and survive in the snake pit that is London's government of magicians. It felt a bit like a "reset" actually, which annoyed me a lot. With the withering of The Resistance storyline, I felt very little connecting me emotionally to the events in the narrative. The problems I had with The Golem's Eye regarding the protagonists have multiplied hundredfold in Ptolemy's Gate. Nathaniel remains stubbornly unlikeable but also clearly the one with whom and with whose cause we should be sympathetic. His cause sucks! I don't want his side to win! Added to that problem is the fact that since The Resistance no longer exists, his side is kind of the only side.
Or not. I haven't forgotten the demons at all and we get much more of Bartimaeus's backstory regarding his beloved master Ptolemaeus and there are issues of demon rights and communication between humans and djinn, etc. But again, this all turns out very muddled and all the promise of world-building I saw in The Amulet of Samarkand kind of crumbles. Also, Nathaniel is revealed to be the sacrificial hero at the very end of the book, which echoed the first problem I had with The Amulet of Samarkand: Nathaniel's altruism seems rather forced and false to me.
Unfortunately, I am disappointed with how these books turned out although I will say that I still like Stroud's voice and his imagination, but instead of sharpening into a clearer narrative with each subsequent book, instead it just got more and more vague to me, despite the fact that all the events are easily understood.
Oh and the Uber Villain is kind of retarded. Just saying.
That being said, I thought The Sweet Far Thing was an excellent conclusion to the first two books: A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels. (I will say that I'm not a huge fan of the titles though, except for Rebel Angels.)
The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray
The best thing about Bray's books is that they get better with each subsequent novel. I wasn't terribly enamoured of A Great and Terrible Beauty. Nothing seemed to stand out about it: a little bit Gothic, a little bit Victorian mystery thriller, a little bit fantasy, a little bit girls' boarding school tale with four stereotypical Victorian schoolgirls (the bold one, the beautiful one, the plain one, and the one searching for her Place in Life). How they all got to be friends didn't exactly ring true with me but A Great and Terrible Beauty was eminently readable. Things vastly improve in Rebel Angels and I began to care for the characters deeply and I realised that by god, Libba Bray can write women and their relationships extraordinarily well.
The Sweet Far Thing does not disappoint me in the least. Things are coming to a head in this novel (which is HUGE): Gemma's imminent debut season, her deteriorating family, her tenuous hold on the magic of the realms, her social life, everything. Bray deftly handles these storylines without ever making the reader feel like she's being clobbered over the head with them. She builds the tension from all angles extraordinarily well and I will admit that I stayed up far later than I should have finishing the book when I ought to have taken a capful of Nyquil and slept off the remainder of my illness. Bray divides the book into a five-act structure and for the most part it works.
I actually have very few quibbles with this book. I've already discussed the fantasy element: it isn't the most compelling or fascinating. I thought there were at least five endings too many, but I suppose that's what comes about with having so many emotional threads to tie up. I will say that The Sweet Far Thing ends correctly. Not a single action or decision made by the characters is out of character and while the book doesn't have a traditional "happy ending," it is the most fitting and the most satisfying.
Brava, Libba Bray. You done good.
Last week I went down to the Union Square Barnes & Noble to place an order for the next two Attolia books. Megan Whalen Turner, you'd better than me for keeping your books on the shelves! Hopefully they are in today.