Cadfael Chronicles Prequel: A Rare Benedictine by Ellis Peters

Read: 30 August, 2008

Overall, I didn't like it quite as much as A Morbid Taste for Bones. I think that Ellis Peters might just be one of those authors who is better suited for the longer narrative format. That being said, these stories were still great fun to read.

I love that Brother Cadfael doesn't always wrap up his cases by catching the perpetrator and turning him/her over to the authorities. Sometimes, he decides that the crime is legitimate and helps the criminal escape. Sometimes, he doesn't reveal who did it at all. In other words, he solves the mystery and makes things right, even if that means being on the wrong side of the power structure (and, sometimes, especially if it means going against the power structure). He's a great character and far more complex than the usual detective who just wants to restore order, whatever the moral situation.

I had expected stories that showed Cadfael before he joined the monastic order. Instead, only one story fits that, and I found that the Cadfael character didn't come through very clearly until the end of that story - once he had decided that he would join Shrewsbury Abbey. The rest of the short stories are like the novels, following an already established brother of the abbey. So we never get a good look at Cadfael in his previous life (in fact, I got more of a sense of that life by reading A Morbid Taste for Bones!) and we never get to see him learning about the abbey and trying to fit in. It's a whole area that would have been great to read, so it's a shame that it was skipped over.

Either way, these were great stories and I highly recommend them for any Brother Cadfael fan. I would also like to say that the illustrations in my copy are absolutely beautiful. They are drawn in the medieval style, but have something of the modern to them - it's hard to describe. But they did add a great deal to my enjoyment of the book.

Vampire Chronicles #3: The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

Read: 26 August, 2008

In some ways, I'd say this was the worst of the three. In other ways, I think it was better than The Vampire Lestat. The story was more interesting, certainly, but the writing style was fragmented and annoying.

I think that Rice is much better at writing in the third person. That being said, the whole multiple narrators thing was infuriating. Every time I'd get really into one narrative, she'd rip me away and into a story I wasn't all that interested in. This was especially true near the end where novel kept bouncing back and forth between Lestat's experiences with Akasha and Marahet's legend of the twins. I desperately wanted to hear more about the twins and I would read those bits ravaneously. Then, I'd be thrust into Lestat's whining: "I love Akasha, she's evil, I love her, she's evil, I'm tempted by blood, I love her, she's evil, mmmm, she's so tasty!" Booooring.

This was made doubly frustrating because it was a good opportunity to explore whether or not Akasha was right. Lestat is never tempted by her plan. He is only tempted by her - even then, though, I never really got the feel that he loved her (beyond how tasty her blood was) until after she had died and he had to mourn. In fact, most of the arguments characters brought up against her plan were as irrational as the plan itself! "But but... it's so mean!" No one mentioned the simple fact that Akasha's world wouldn't work and that she herself was proof! As a female, while still human, she had ordered the torture of Mekare and Maharet. So why does she think that all other women would be all nice and friendly? As a vampire, she was commanding the mass slaughter of all men - proof in and of itself that women would be just as capable of genocide, if they had the chance, as men! But does anyone bring this up? Of course not.

Rice also seemed to experience with syntax in a really annoying way. "With leather straps they'd been bound [...] Naked to the waist they were." It breaks up the flow and is just a pain to read.

There were also inconsistencies between this book and The Vampire Lestat. For example, the final portion of Lestat describes the concert, which would have meant it was written after the book it was included in was published. If we assume this was added later, that would have meant that it had to be written right about the same time as The Queen of the Damned. Despite this, Lestat never mentions Jesse at the concert (instead, it has an anonymous biker jumping on stage). Considering how important this becomes, it should have been mentioned - if only as "and then a really nice looking red-head jumped on stage!"

And, finally, the names annoy me. Why would two women with names as Egyptian-sounding as Mekare and Maharet name their daughter something as Semitic-sounding as Miriam? Why would someone from Sumeria be named Akasha, which clearly has Indian roots? Why does Enkil's name not fit phonetically with Egyptian names? If names had been chosen a little more carefully, it would have made this whole series a great deal more readable.

I did enjoy it, though. I know I'm complaining a lot, but it was an okay read. I thought the climax was very well handled - or, at least, the resolution was worth trudging through all of the novel's flaws. I do think Jesse should have gotten a whole lot more page time, though. In fact, I would have liked to have had it all written just from her perspective and put as a "secret file from the Talamasca vault" or something like that. It would have made the multiple narratives more credible since she would have had her reason to collect data, while Lestat seems far too concerned with his own problems to have cared enough even to have bothered with the others.

The Encyclopedia of Witches & Witchcraft by Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Read: 17 August, 2008

Overall, I'd say that this book is fine if taken as fiction and read for pleasure. If you are interested in serious scholarship regarding the history of the occult, this book would really only serve to help you with modern/Wiccan perceptions of witchcraft. While it does touch on a number of older subjects, the articles are clearly written from a Wiccan perspective.

For example, "altar" is almost entirely defined in the context of goddess worship, never mind that plenty of patriarchal religions made use of altars in their devotion to male gods (Christianity being an obvious example). The book takes the theory that goddess worship was the norm before it was suddenly replaced by male-centred religion as a given.

Even the entries that don't display an obvious Wiccan/feminist perspective show dubious scholarship. For example, the entire entry for Patricia C. Crowther talks about her relationship with woman she had been in a previous life - Polly. Polly teaches her some spells. The book says that "Patricia had no knowledge of such spells, which experts determined were authentic." Well, that's just sloppy. Who were these experts? Were they experts of Elizabethan magical theory and could therefore say that the spells Crowther had learned did match up with what we know of what Elizabethan witches may have practised? Or were these experts in magic who could tell that the spells were true spells with real magical power? We are never told the type of expert and in what way the spells were deemed authentic, which would change the interpretation of the article a great deal.

And then there were some entries that I just have no way of explaining. For example, the entry on "Gypsies" explains that "their language, Romany, is related to Sanskrit," but it never says that the people themselves are not called "Gypsies." They are Romani. This is never mentioned in the entire entry - a very unusual little bit of bigotry for a book published in 1999.

This book isn't a waste in the sense that I did get quite a few story ideas from it. But if you are doing research for any purpose other than the writing of fiction, don't bother looking here. And, honestly, even if you are writing fiction, use it only as inspiration, not as an information source.

How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card

Read: 18 August, 2008

Overall, I'd say this book isn't terribly useful. It didn't present very much new information and I felt that I had read much of his advice before in a better form. In fact, the only part I was truly pleased with was his explanation of MICE. I also enjoyed the final chapter that brought down the all-too-common sense many amateur writers have that they can just sit around doing nothing and inspiration will come to them and make them great.

If you are considering writing for the first time (and, really, this book applies to any writing, not just Science Fiction and Fantasy) and have never before tried to learn anything about the craft, this book would probably make for a reasonably good starting point. If, on the other hand, you've been writing and reading about writing for a while, this book will largely be a waste of time.

That being said, it is a very short read (it took me about two hours to plough through) and something may resonate for you, so why not? Also, I really enjoyed the portion about MICE (found a little more than half way through the third chapter) and I would say the book is worth checking out from the library just for that part.

A Three Pipe Problem by Julian Symons

Read: 8 August, 2008

Nothing special. It's a fairly short read, so I suppose it's fine for a rainy day - that's assuming you can get through all the racism, sexism, and anti-modernism without bursting a blood vessel. Someone really needs to inform Mr. Sheridan Haynes (the main character) that the Victorian era was only wholesome and lovely if you were rich and male.

As far as the plot itself goes, there's not much to it. About 95% of the novel is an introduction to the character of Sheridan Haynes, a jerk who completely ignores his wife (she leaves him, but by the end she's realized that she loves him and comes back, finally learning to accept all the "quirks" that had made her leave), bullies and ridicules his colleagues, and thinks altogether too highly of himself. He's a bore to read about, especially since most of his lines consist either of "I hate cars! I wish the combustion engine had never been invented!" or "Sherlock Holmes is god. Anyone who doesn't worship The Master is a moron!"

There's no character development. Sher (as he is called) learns absolutely nothing. He loses his job because of the way he acts, but is immediately offered another. He loses his wife, but she comes back with no compromises. Everything is just handed to him and he learns nothing.

The mystery itself is almost in the background. There's an overview of the murders in the first few pages and then a description of how they had happened at the end. Everything in the middle is just repetitive character exposition. Quite frankly, the resolution wasn't entirely satisfying either. "I kill people because my dog got run over, then I will help an actor solve my own crimes for no reason whatsoever" just doesn't do it for me. Cassidy could have at least made an attempt to throw Sher in the wrong direction or, if he really felt all that guilty about what he'd done, he might have tried hinting at it. But no, he plays out like a perfectly ordinary innocent character right up until his confession.

The writing style is really the only redeeming quality of the book. It's simplistic, but it gets the job done and at no point was it confusing. It makes A Three Pipe Problem a very easy and quick read.

Overall, I'd say the whole novel was just a 192-page excuse to use the term "nig-nog."

His Dark Materials #1: The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

Read: 3 August, 2008

Absolutely fantastic book! While I do think it would be fabulous for children to read (I don't think it would be appropriate for anyone younger than 10, though), it has more than enough content for adults as well. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I found it more complex and "intellectual" (quotes used because I hate that word) than most grown-up books I've read. And now for a lengthy list of some of the things I especially liked:

Lyra feels like a real kid. I've read many kids' books where we are told that the main character is a tomboy and so forth, but then the character never acts like that once the introduction of the story is over with. Lyra, on the other hand, wants to play and be a child throughout the story. She also thinks like a child. While most stories with children will pay some lip service to the idea of childhood, Lyra actually feels genuine. She is also afraid, she doubts herself, she moans and wishes that it could all be happening to someone else instead. She has real character flaws, not just insignificant details tacked on as an afterthought to make the main character seem like less of a super-human.

That level of characterization doesn't end with the main character. The other important characters were ambiguous. They had motives of their own that went far beyond "I'm, like, totally evil! MUAHAHA!" Right from the beginning, we think the master of Jordan College is evil because he's trying to poison Lord Asriel only to find out a few pages later that he was only doing so because he was trying to protect Lyra. This continues on throughout the story so that the characters feel real and can never really be pegged as either "good" or "evil."

Often, when I read children's novels, there will be bits that make me uncomfortable. A perfect example that comes from a grown-up novel is Lucky You by Carl Hiaason. The main characters are obviously supposed to be Good and they do their whole speech about how murder is wrong, then they leave the main Evil character to die on the island without any guilt whatsoever. Had an Evil character done something like that, it would be thought of as horrible - but because a Good character did it, it's no big deal. These sorts of things make me feel very uncomfortable when found in any novel, but most especially in a kid's book. I hate the thought of exposing my own hypothetical children to that sort of corrupt value system. The Golden Compass had no such moments. There were times when Lyra had to do things that, under ordinary circumstances, I would consider bad, but she always feels guilt about them. They are always acknowledged as being bad, though necessary. At no point did this novel offend my personal morality, and that's saying a whole lot.

I also liked all the positive lessons of the story - the triumph of Iorek among the bears tells kids that it's better to be yourself than to weaken yourself trying to be something else; Lyra is afraid, but she masters herself and perseveres anyway, showing kids that it's okay and legitimate to feel afraid, but that they, too, can master their fears. Lyra is also a very active protagonist. She initiates much of the plot in a way that is woefully rare for characters, female ones especially.

And finally, Pullman writes with a perfect balance of ideas and action, allowing me to enjoy my reading of the book immensely (I must say, I found myself holding my breath several times while reading) while also giving me plenty to think about once I put the book down. This is an all-over fantastic book that I can't possibly praise enough. I've now ordered the next two books in the series and here's hoping they come soon!

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Ships, Boats, Vessels and Other Water-Borne Craft by Graham Blackburn

Read: 3 August, 2008

This is a huge reference work that covers most time periods and geographical locations. The edition I read used a handwritten style that made it look like someone's notebook. I found this done in a tasteful and practical way (the writing was perfectly legible) and it added a certain amount of charm to the book.

There were many illustrations, all done in the same style as the handwriting. They were detailed, but still had that hand-drawn look to them. Again, I found it charming as well as useful. They were well labelled so that the areas they were supposed to show were quite clear.

Since the book is about types of ships, entries were quickly bogged down with nautical terms that sometimes made them a little confusing. There was a glossary at the back, but I found the entries to be somewhat short and didn't always answer my question. Really, this is the major flaw in the book - entries are short and don't provide a good level of detail. However, as a reference work, it functions well as an overview and jumping off point. Overall, well worth the time for anyone with a passing interest in ships, boats, etc.