A tree of immense girth grows from a tufted shoot; a terrace of nine levels rises from a clump of soil; a journey of a thousand miles begins under the first tread.
--Laozi, Dao De Jing, ch. 64
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| 2002 Retrospective | ||
| Here Be Dragons | Summerland | Crossroads of Twilight |
| Lanterns for the Dead (LW&C VI) | Black Wind (LW&C V) |
Here Be Dragons, Sharon Kay Penman (1985), 700 pp (tpb).
I think it's fair to say that although I don't have a fanatical craving for historical fiction, I'm at least well-disposed toward the genre and its various permutations. Some of the best pieces of fiction that I've read in the last decade could comfortably be afforded the tag, after all. I'm thinking of things like Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles and House of Niccolo, and even the recent works of Guy Gavriel Kay, such as The Lions of Al-Rassan and The Sarantine Mosaic. All of which is prelude to my observation that this book just really wasn't for me. It may be that Penman suffers in comparison to the aforementioned writers, or perhaps she does deserve the high reputation she enjoys and I just lack the faculty to fully appreciate what she's doing. I do recognize that there's respectable craft in what she's constructed here, but it failed to really engage or interest me.
Here Be Dragons is set in England and Wales in the second century after the Norman Conquest, during the waning years of Richard the Lionheart's reign, and on through the reign of King John (forever immortalized in my mind, sad to say, as the cowardly, oleaginous lion in Disney's cartoon movie Robinhood). The protagonist is Joanna, bastard daughter of John, who early in her father's reign is married for political reasons to Llewellyn, rising star and soon to be primus inter pares among the fractious, often fratricidal princes of Wales. Llewellyn is dedicated to preserving and extending as much of Wales's tenuous de facto independence as he can, which calls for a delicate balance between acknowledging the de jure sovereignty of the English crown, while making clear, via border raids and low-level provocations, that a full-scale war of suppression and conquest would be too uncomfortable an undertaking for the English to want to bother with. Joanna loves her father, comes to love her husband, and feels torn between the dual loyalties.
One of my problems with the book is that it reads to me very much like a textbook of historical narrative. It covers a period of several decades, so it tends to outline an important meeting or confrontation in one chapter or section of several pages, and then in the next chapter segue immediately into the next historically relevant meeting. This is good for learning history, no doubt, and I feel confident that Penman's research is probably solid, although she is unavoidably inventing dialogue and motivations. I know a lot more about the reign of King John than I did before (but then, that was an astonishingly low bar to hurdle). But as fiction, it's not what I'm primarily looking for. I could never get interested in the characters themselves, their lives or cares. Joanna's travails of the heart and divided loyalties left me unmoved. As I said, I must not be the audience for this type of writing. It strikes me as solid, workmanlike, respectable, but not terribly interesting.
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Summerland, Michael Chabon (2002), 500 pp (hb).
I loved this book. No, really, it was just a tremendous amount of quality fun to read (which phrasing is an attempt to distinguish it from guilty-pleasure fun, like, for me, most military sci-fi). I've had Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay kicking around my list of things to read for months now (NB: I've since read it), so it's mildly ironic that a pristine stack of new Summerland copies on the display rack at the local branch library seduced me into reading this first. It would be a real shame to have people put off from reading it because it's nominally a children's book, since like other fine works that get tagged with the Child or Young Adult label, what matters most is not the category, but rather the quality. It's got a layered, engaging story, and Chabon can flat-out write. There is a scene near the middle of the book where our band of intrepid questers, travelling in their family sedan cum airship named Skidbladnir (you have to read it for details), are unexpectedly captured by a Frost Giant named Mooseknuckle John, and it's such a magically constructed scene--tense, wildly humorous, energizing all at once--that I had to put the book down for a minute and chuckle with delight as I savored it:
"Now, Mooseknuckle John," he said in his soft, clear voice. "We're bound ta urgent bidness, and awful far from home. Do us the kindness ta let us alone, just this once, won't ya, now?"
"WANT THE TOY, MORSEL," said Mooseknuckle John. He let go of Skid with one hand and with an enormous index finger flicked the taut gas envelope, as you might thump a melon to hear if it is ripe. It throbbed like a drum. "LIKE IT."
"Thing is, John, we'd be happy ta make it a present ta ya, if only we didn't need it so urgentlike."
"DON'T NEED IT NO MORE, DO YOU, MORSEL?" The giant's voice was not a growl so much as a deep sonorous ringing, as of an enormous bell. He was extremely ugly, his face at once smashed-looking and bug-eyed, but Ethan supposed that was how it was with giants.
Summerland is built on a sub-structure of largely Norse mythology (which I always preferred to the Greek stuff, anyway). It's not necessarily labelled as such, but it's there to pick up if you know where to look (example: the catastrophe our heroes set out to avert is always referred to, with no further explanation, as "Ragged Rock"; only if you've read a bit of background will the term "Ragnarok" immediately spring to mind). Ethan Feld is just about the suckiest eleven year old baseball player on Clam Island, a little chunk of land in Puget Sound where he and his father, an inventor, have moved following the recent death of his mother. Ethan ends up getting scouted by some rather interesting individuals looking to throw together a team to oppose the plans of Coyote/Loki (pick your preferred trickster god; he's meant to represent all of them) to end the world. Turns out that the game of baseball has an exalted status among the various realms of existence, and everyone, good, evil, and amoral, are happy to use a hard-fought game as a proxy to settle disputes. Meanwhile, Ethan's father has been kidnapped/recruited by the other side to facilitate all that end-of-the-world stuff, so things start to look not only urgent but downright personal for Ethan. He gathers a couple friends and away they go, picking up new recruits as they head out into the realms to head off disaster.
I'm a lousy recapper, and I haven't done the book justice with the above. I'm not a big baseball fan, but it's really not a prerequisite to enjoy this book. There are some baseball related scenes, but they're not nearly as central as it might sound. The real heart of Summerland is its great characters, fine writing, and an absolutely first-rate story. Enthusiastically recommended.
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Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan (2003), 680 pp (hb).
I almost feel like the appearance of this book here should be accompanied by an apology or something. Oh, not so much for reading Jordan; I stumbled onto his Wheel of Time fantasy series back when I was still an undergrad, around 1991 or so, and back then, it was a sprawling, epic, exciting, even compelling bit of work. Never great literature, but a lot of fun to read and suss out clues and portents and foreshadowing. It kept its momentum up until the fifth or sixth book (I forget exactly where the rot set in--it's seemingly a different point for everyone, anyway--and I've long since lost interest in re-reading the earlier parts of the series), after which it started to head downhill. For whatever reason--inertia, arrogance, desire to flog the cash cow--Jordan at some point lost the ability to make overarching plot progress, and with it, a very large chunk of what made him interesting in the first place. He's been spinning wheels mightily for at least three books now, so I feel more than a bit sheepish. Not over having read this latest installment (the tenth, if it matters)--which I think can be defended on the basis of a completist sort of argument--but rather for having gone out and gotten it as soon as it was released, just like I used to do back when the series was still actually good. I knew I was likely to get swindled, and I went ahead and did it anyway. Chalk it up to nostalgia or habit or sumpin'.
At any rate, I don't know, maybe something actually happened in this book to advance Our Heroes a bit closer to the Last Battle--I'm pretty sure it did, anyway--but boy was there plenty of wheel spinnin' to be had, too. I'm just going to do a quick run through of the various plot threads, so that 1) when the next horse-choking installment rolls off the presses in another 2-3 years, I can look back and maybe muster up the resolve not to offer my woolly back up for shearing quite so spinelessly, and 2) if I do succumb, I'll be able to sort of remember who's where and thinking about doing what (it's too much to hope that they actually would, you know, do it, whatever it happens to be).
All sorts of peripheral characters, who mostly don't show up for the rest of the book, cavort through the Prologue, which, I'm sorry, I'm not even going to bother re-capping because a) prologues that run to page 94, roughly a seventh of the entire book, are obscene, and b) prologues that are peddled in an e-text version for $5 several months before being published with the entire book only compound the obscenity. Enough said about that nonsense. The first chunk of narrative is devoted to Mat, easily the most interesting and readable of the main characters. He and his eclectic crew of hangers-on and kidnappees are still hanging out with the circus a few miles outside Ebou Dar. Three chapters of kvetching about Seanchans and the Daughter of the Nine Moons (heir to the Seanchan Empire), one of said kidnappees.
Next we move to Perrin. Perrin turned into a boring git several books ago, and I'm sorry to report he's still mostly a boring git.He's still looking for his bloody wife, and lord don't we wish she'd take a dirt nap soon, because she's fighting hard for the title of most annoying character on the good guys' roster. Perrin and his rag tag army are puttering around the forests, trying to find the Shaido Aiel that have stolen his wife Faile. They finally locate them around about pg. 250 or so. Then we get a snippet of the travails of Faile in captivity. Don't care. From there, we move to Elayne, still flouncing around the palace of Andor and absorbed in her stupid plots to claim the throne. There's some machinations involving the Sea Folk, some more with the Darkfriends at court, a few more with the challengers to the throne who are trying to beseige the capital city.
Next up, Egwene and her rebel tower, who had just moved through Gateways to beseige the White Tower at the end of last book, are now sitting outside Tar Valon twiddling their thumbs. Despite the presence of an acknowledged military genius leading their army, they lack the mother wit to have utilized their tactical strengths to press forward a victory. So we get a long chunk of Aes Sedai politics and bickering, which once upon a time was at least intermittently entertaining--back when it seemed like it might actually matter--but has lost it's luster by now. A short interlude with Alviarin, who returns to the Tower to find that her tame Amyrlin (Elaida) has regrown a spine and ousted her from power in her absence. In compensation, she gets to see Mesaana humbled by Shaidar Haran. Then it's on to the good guys' (nominally) cabal in the White Tower, who are still timorously poking around for members of the (hushed tones) rumoured Black Ajah.
Two chapters of Rand and his posse, which is just enough to save him from becoming Sir Not-appearing-in-this-book. They're doing the incognito thing, taking some R&R following the whole cleansing of Saidin feat from last book. Back to Perrin, who is consumed with logistical problems, and has a weird episode in a sort of literal ghost town. He gets to have a hard-ass scene, where he chops off a Shaido's hand to compel information of Faile's whereabouts. Back to Mat, and his attempts to court his future (or maybe even present) wife, Tuon. She mostly acts like a stuck-up bint, but I guess she's entitled, since she is kidnapped and all. Whatever. Back to Egwene, who gets captured by the Tower when she sets off on a hare-brained commando raid to block the Tar Valon harbors with an unbreakable chain of cuendillar. Epilogue: Rand receives news that the Seanchan have agreed to meet with him to negotiate.
Okay, I've hashed on it throughout, and for good reason, but it wasn't actually painful to read. These are characters that I've (somewhat sad to say) invested some time with over the years. But good heavens, I wish Jordan could move it along a bit. It's no longer a real pleasure, just something to find out how it ends.
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Lanterns for the Dead (LW&C VI), Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima (2001), 286 pp (gn).
This volume has another five episodes. One features a troop of con artists who stumble over Ogami's system for picking up contracts (a picture of demons is posted, and interested customers lay out military map symbols to indicate the place for a rendezvous) and insert themselves into negotiations by pretending to be Lone Wolf and Cub. That turns out to not go so well for them when the real thing shows up. Another one has a sad twist, as Ogami trains a puppy to be able to dodge arrows shot at him and then uses him to lure out a corrupt nobleman who happens to be obsessed with ritualistic type dog hunts. The sad part is how Daigoro, a stoic little fellow most of the time, bonds with the puppy, who ends up getting killed at the end. The last couple stories are linked: in the first, Ogami undertakes to stand up for retainers of a small province that has been targeted by a strategem of the Shogunate. In the second, suffering from burns he got in the previous episode, Ogami nevertheless rises from his sickbed to wipe out the remnants of the ninja forces looking for him.
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Black Wind (LW&C V), Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima (2001), 286 pp (gn).
Ogami Itto and Daigoro return for more rockin' adventures in Tokugawa Japan. This volume has five episodes; two of them involve the Yagyu, the clan behind Ogami's downfall. His exploits of the last couple years as he's walked the assassin's road have made the head of the Yagyu nervous, and despite his vow to leave Ogami alone if he stayed out of Edo, the clan chief is looking for surreptitious ways to get around his oath and dispose of Ogami. Needless to say, he doesn't succeed. One of the other stories has a group of ronin, whose young master was beheaded by Ogami back when he was the Shogun's executioner, stumbling across the travelling pair, and is notable mostly for its application of samurai logic. The group manages to snatch up Daigoro, and threaten to kill him if Ogami doesn't turn over all his money to them; Ogami assures them that they can do what they like, but killing Daigoro will get them nothing. They immediately accept this, let Daigoro go, and fight anyway. The concluding story is interesting because it revolves around the place of guns in the Tokugawa system: the right to provide guns to the Shogun's troops is extended to a tight monopoly of five gunsmiths, who have ossified in their positions of privilege. Ogami is hired by them to take out a rogue smith who turns out to be devoted to "the way of the gun", that is, he is dedicated to innovation, and has just perfected a multi-barreled, simultaneous-fire gun. He and Ogami have a nice little philosophical chat, and the smith passes on his plans and blueprints to Ogami before Ogami kills him.
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