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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| Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | Dogland | Aristoi |
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling (2003), 870 pp (hb).
Those living under rocks or in a cave for the last five years or so will be unaware that this is the fifth volume of the immensely successful Harry Potter saga. Everyone else, of course, will be perfectly well informed about Pottermania and the arrival of the newest book. I was originally going to resist grabbing this up on opening weekend (trying to put my slavering fanboy instincts firmly behind me, or some such bosh), but it happens that my wife enjoys the books as well, so when, in a moment of weakness at the local Borders I caved and suggested picking it up, far from holding me back, she actually encouraged me. She even let me read it first. What a gal!
I hasten to add that I'm not a Potter fanatic or anything. I don't think they're great literature; on the other hand, they really do have a certain something that makes them really entertaining to read. I thought the last installment (HP and the Goblet of Fire, for the cave-dwellers in the audience) got off to a slow start, and as it happens I think this one also gets off to a bit of a slow start...but no matter. At almost 900 hefty pages (easily the longest volume yet), it has plenty of space to hit its stride, and it eventually gets going pretty well.
A common complaint, or at least observation, of the earlier books has been that Harry is a bit of a cipher in the personality department. If he needs to be brave, he's brave...if he needs to be cautious or unsure, he's cautious or unsure, and so on. I think in this book, he gets a bit of a personality transplant. Now unfortunately, it's mostly of the angsty, pissed-off adolescent variety, which some might not consider an improvement, but I actually welcomed a bit more definition in Harry, even though as a general rule I have a fairly limited appetite for angsty adolescent antics. At any rate, as usual, Harry's supporting cast is at least as interesting--probably more interesting--than he is himself.
Things are definitely getting darker in the Potterverse...the danger from He Who Shall Not Be Named (Voldemort! Voldemort! Voldemort! Nyah, nyah, nyah!) is growing quite serious, particularly since in this volume, the fools, dupes, and collaborators in official wizardom (aka the Ministry of Magic) resolutely refuse to believe that he's back in the flesh as of the end of the last book. The eponymous Order of the Phoenix is the group of Dumbledore-allied wizards who are working undercover to impede the forces of darkness. Our heroes, in their fifth year at Hogwarts, aren't allowed to officially join, so naturally they end up at the center of everything, anyway.
This volume takes the "lack of communication in order to drive the plot forward" device to truly aggravating lengths. On the other hand, I was really tickled to see that the young protagonists decided to take matters in their own hands and start their own Defense Against the Dark Arts class on the sly, and even more happy that their devotion to drills over the course of the novel ended up paying off--somewhat at least--when the have to go toe to toe with the Big Bads at the climactic showdown. All things considered, an entertaining ride. If Rowling manages to keep it up, I don't doubt that the concluding two volumes will be a lot of fun as well.
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Dogland, Will Shetterly (1997), 445 pp (pb).
Will Shetterly is one of those authors who can't seem to avoid making a bit of a putz of himself whenever he shows up on-line. As near as I can tell, and unlike some other authors, he doesn't seem to be setting out to be willfully obnoxious; he just kind of ingenuously ends up that way. At any rate, I suppose that doesn't, or shouldn't, matter when discussing a novel (so why do I mention it? Good question).
I've only previously read one of Shetterly's books, Chimera, which I'd describe as interesting, readable, but not particularly original near-future sci-fi detective noir. Dogland, on the other hand, is the book that most people speak of when pointing to Shetterly's biggest achievement. It's a pretty good book.
In its simplest terms, Dogland is the story of the Nix family--mom, dad, and three kids--told from the recollections of Chris, oldest of the children. In the late 50s, they load up all of their possessions and head to rural Florida to fix up an abandoned roadside diner and make it a new tourist attraction called "Dogland," the idea being to have examples of all the different breeds of dogs for visitors to tour around and see. In the process, they land in the middle of what is, for them, a new culture, with all of the racial strata and tensions of the pre-Civil Rights era South.
There's more going on in Dogland than just this, although it's subtle and easy to miss until near the very end. There's a strand of myth and magic that runs through the narrative if one is looking for it--as when, for instance, the All-Father and his gang (not explicitely named, but recognizable nonetheless) drop by to visit the Heart Tree growing in the yard. It's the sort of thing that makes Dogland an interesting story with real depths.
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Aristoi, Walter Jon Williams (1992), 448 pp (pb).
Aristoi is a nice little entry in the "far future super-human" sub-genre. Thousands of years in the future, human society is ruled by the Aristoi, a group of highly advanced technologists; entry into the ranks of the elite is seemingly by merit, done by passing a set of stringent exams. Each Aristos then runs his or her domain, which consists of one or more planets, asteroid colonies, etc., pretty much as they wish. The story focuses on Gabriel, one of the Aristoi, and his realization that there is some sort of problem brewing with the cozy little structure that all the Aristoi have built for human society.
Much of the attraction of these sorts of stories is the chance to see what sorts of nifty bells and whistles the author has managed to toss into his world-building. At this stage of the game, we've seen the garden-variety flying car a hundred times, and we need a little bit more to impress us. Fortunately, Williams has some nice ideas for his future utopia, chief among them being the innovation of daimones, which are fully developed personality types that the Aristoi and their upper-level servants carry around in their head, each one embodying a different focus on a given trait, such as aggression, mysticism, pure rationality, etc. As a result, the characters in the book run around holding extended conversations with a full suite of voices in their heads.
One of the weaknesses of this type of story, on the other hand, is the risk that the super-humans in the future society will be so, well, super that a story about them won't be all that interesting. I caught myself at a couple of points almost thinking "yes, yes, the ennui of the ultra-powerful, blah, blah, blah." Fortunately, though, I think there's a good story at the core of Aristoi, and Williams manages to create enough conflict to make it interesting.
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