What I'm Reading: Roundup

I've fallen behind on updating the blog. I have a couple superhero movies to add, but let's start with the reading I've been doing lately--a pair of middle grade novels.

The Unwanteds This is the first in a series of seven by Lisa McMann. It's a favorite book of my kids' and we listened to the book on tape during a recent car trip. In this book, the highly-militarized kingdom of Quill every year sorts its thirteen-year-olds into three groups: the Wanteds, the Necessaries, and the Unwanteds. The Wanteds move to various desirable positions in the Quillitary or the government administration, the Necessaries take on menial labor jobs, and the Unwanteds are driven to a spot just outside the barbed wire-surrounded Quill territory where they are supposedly to be executed.

The main thing that makes someone Unwanted is to have shown creativity. In the hierarchical and rigid society of Quill, creativity is considered a threat, while a sort of Spartan disregard for one's own feelings and others' is admired. When Alex Stowe and this year's batch of thirty or so Unwanteds (the biggest group ever!) arrive at the place of execution, the executioner, Mr. Today, leads them off...and into a hidden magic kingdom named Artime, existing side-by-side (but invisibly) with Quill. Artime is  a place where creativity and imagination are valued. All the kids are assigned artistic specialties to study, such as painting, drama, or singing. What's more, in Artime, they learn to use their artistic skills to perform magic--perhaps singing a spell to put someone to sleep, or painting a door to escape through. This will prove very useful, for if Quill ever discovers that Artime exists, it is sure to declare war on the nearby threat.

I got a strong Harry Potter-vibe from the Unwanteds. Kids at the beginning of their teenage years whisked off from their mundane existences to a fantastic land where they study the magic arts? Yeah, sounds familiar.  However, where I had mixed feelings about Harry Potter--finding it to have a subtle humor and charm in its writing style and a fun first half, but a by-the-number fantasy plot in its second half (I reviewed the first Harry Potter book here)--the Unwanteds struck me as fresh throughout. Harry Potter relied on well-worn fantasy tropes like trolls, dragons, and magic mirrors, while the Unwanteds consistently came up with original and interesting magic creatures, spells, and so forth. I liked its use of art as a basis for magic, and its healthy encouragement of creativity.

So, if your kids (or you) like Harry Potter, here's a book that's similar in a lot of ways, but that I found to have fresher ideas and a nice over-arching message. Having said that, I didn't like it so much that I feel the need to read the whole series.

Elephant Secret This book, by Eric Walters, is just fantastic. It's truly when of the best books I've read in the past year for any age group. It's aimed at middle schoolers but I think anybody who likes animals would enjoy reading it.

Sam Gray is thirteen years old and lives with her dad at a 200-acre elephant sanctuary with a herd of a dozen elephants. There's tons of work and not much money involved, but that's okay, because Sam has grown up with the elephants and relates better to them than to other humans. Still, it would be nice if the sanctuary had the funds to buy a new tractor, because the old one keeps breaking down and when it's on the fritz, that means Sam and her dad have to exhaust themselves pitching the hay out of the barn by hand. Maybe the sanctuary's mysterious new backer, who provides a much-needed infusion of funds every few months in exchange for being allowed to have the sanctuary's female elephants artificially inseminated, will be willing to spring for a new one.

Sam has some other problems too--like her father's girlfriend, a lawyer who he's getting serious about, much to Sam's dismay. Or the sanctuary's newest arrival--an abused elephant who is currently in the isolation pen because he killed man at the private zoo where he previously lived. And after the elephant Daisy Mae dies giving birth (in the saddest scene I've read in a long time), Sam and her dad are so busy bottle-feeding baby elephant Woolly every couple hours there's hardly even time to move Daisy Mae's carcass.

Still, it's pretty special having a baby elephant. And when the mysterious back finally shows himself one day, he reveals that Woolly is even more special than they thought.... Okay, I'll stop here. This is a book that's tough to discuss too much because giving away the main twist would really spoil it. Suffice it to say, if what I've written so far sounds at all intriguing, you are likely to love this emotionally powerful book.

What I'm Reading: Roundup

How to Be a Pirate We listened to this, the sequel to How to Train Your Dragon, on a recent car trip. It follows Hiccup, a Norse boy of around 9-10 years of age, who's rather sensitive and small for his age, and not at all the great Viking warrior his father, the chief of their tribe, envisions as his heir. Similarly, all the men and boys in the tribe have dragons, and Hiccup's dragon is Toothless, a wispy, cowardly, and not-at-all-fearsome creature--more of a winged lizard, really.

On this adventure, the Viking band comes across the coffin of their fearsome ancestor, Grimbeard the Ghastly, only for a character named Alvin to pop out of the coffin, claiming to have found a map with directions to Grimbeard's legendary treasure. If you guessed Alvin might not have the best of intentions at heart, you guessed correctly.

Actually, if you guessed anything about this book, you probably guessed correctly, because it's highly formulaic. I was not a fan of this. The humor was obvious and dumb, the characters flat, the plot paint-by-numbers. It's not just because I'm an adult and this is a book aimed at fifth graders--I recently reviewed The Reptile Room, a series book aimed at the same age, and found it full of sly humor with admirably-drawn characters.

If you are looking for a book for a late elementary-aged kid in your life, I recommend avoiding the How to Train Your Dragon series. Instead, if the child likes humor, try the Series of Unfortunate Events books, of which above-mentioned Reptile Room is the second, or the Incorrigible Children series. Or, if the child you have in mind prefers high adventure and for some reason won't read The Hobbit, even the Ranger's Apprentice series is better than this dreck.

Angelic On the other hand, this kid-appropriate graphic novel is one of my absolute favorite things lately. It follows Qora, a brave and curious pink monkey who lives in the ruins of a human city in a future world where humans no longer exist. Her band of monkeys speaks in a devolved English patois and follows a rigorous religious code that forbids exploration outside of their territory and requires girl monkeys of Qora's age to have their wings clipped and become good, obedient wives to a male they are assigned to.

Qora can't stand it! She's too curious, too smart, too full of life for that crap, and after an altercation when her antics get the tribe in a fight with their mortal enemies--robotic dolphins and bubble-encased flying manatees--she flees and finds herself paired with a fellow outcast from the manatee society. Together they search for a missing piece to the manatees' robotic god/leader so they can get some answers as to why their bizarre world is the way it is.

Written by Simon Spurrier and beautifully drawn by Caspar Wijngarrd, Angelic is a highly imaginative tale and Qora is a compelling (and adorable!) girlmonk who has too many asks to be anything but a naughtybutt. My son loved it and I have sent copies to a couple people I think would enjoy it, but really anyone who likes high-quality, all-ages fantasy should check out Angelic.

What I'm Reading: Perdido Street Station

Perdido Street Station is a book by China Mieville sent to me last Christmas by my brother, who's getting his Master's in English literature and recommended this highly. (I have previously, and quite positively, covered a comic series China Mieville wrote, here.) It's a little bit hard to describe the book because there's a lot going on in it, but I'll make a brief attempt to summarize it.

The book follows Isaac de Gimnebulin, a plump, middle-aged scientist of sorts who's been kicked out of the local university for conducting forbidden experiments and is dating a khepri woman (khepris have the bodies of humans but insect heads). You can probably tell this fantasy, and specifically in the sub-genre known as steampunk, where magic and industrial-era technology work side-by-side. The city where the story takes place, New Crobuzon, is a sprawling, polluted, Dickensian nightmare of factories, slums, and coal-belching railways.

When Yagharek, a garuda (a humanoid hunting bird) who lost its wings in a horrible way, comes to Isaac with a request for help in flying again, Isaac realizes that the problem could further his own research into crisis energy (sort of a link between magic and physics), and agrees to take Yagharek on as a client. Unfortunately, for his studies into flight, Isaac acquires a kind of caterpillar he's never seen before, one that seems to have psychic powers. When he finds the sort of stuff the caterpillar eats--a powerful hallucinogenic drug that's recently arrived in the city--it soon grows into a Slake Moth, a huge, dangerous, predatory insectoid creature that escapes and threatens all of New Crobuzon.

This is a good start to what happens, but this novel is so chockful--Isaac and his companions must travel through nearly all of the numerous neighborhoods of New Crobuzon throughout the book in their fight against the Slake Moth, encountering all the city's strange races and their varied customs, and every social stratum, from the poorest of the poor, to all the workers of its jobs, both wondrous and mundane, to the political elite, that it reads a little like a guidebook for the fictional metropolis.

In fact, my final impression after finishing reading, is that it's a love letter to urbanity, an ode to cities in all their grimy complexity, and how geography, industry, politics, crime, and recreation combine in endless combinations to make a distinctive urban environment. There's more than a little Victorian London in New Crobuzon, but it's more than that. When a woman at my son's fencing class was asking about the book, and I showed her the map of New Crobuzon at the beginning, her daughter exclaimed, "It looks like a brain!" And she was right--the map of the city looks like a brain, with its hundreds of connections and different functional areas. I think in the end, that might be exactly what China Mieville is getting at.

What I'm Reading: Roundup

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Cincinnati Reds Over spring break we went on vacation to Cincinnati. Hey, don't laugh, we had a great time! One of the things we did was take in a Reds game (lost to the Brewers 5-1), and I picked this book up in the great Reds Museum attached to the ballpark. This book was exactly what I was looking for, more or less a primer on the history of Reds baseball, written in a fun, accessible style.

The Reds were the first professional baseball team ever, dating from 1869. Those first couple "seasons" they traveled around the country playing local clubs, factory teams, and so forth, and going more than 80 games without defeat until they lost to the New York Atlantics in June 1870. While they haven't always been the winningest club since then, they've been to the World Series nine times and won five of those visits, most recently in 1990.

I was pretty familiar with the glory days of the Big Red Machine in the 1970s, but other aspects of team history were a surprise. I think I liked best learning about Ted Kluszewski, the Reds mountainous first baseman in the 1950s. Kluszewski was widely considered the strongest man in baseball, but was a gentle giant with a humble disposition. There are numerous stories of his feats, both tape-measure home runs and more irregular occurrences. For instance, a game with St. Louis nearly broke out in a brawl. When St. Louis shortstop Solly Hemus ran out of the dugout to join the developing fight, Kluszewski lifted him off the ground entirely and asked where he was going. "Nowhere, Ted, nowhere," was the answer, cutting the brawl short before it could spread.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone We listened to this in the car on the way to and back from Cincy. I had always had the impression that Harry Potter was little more than a mish-mash of well-worn fantasy tropes with the cliche-ridden writing typical of the genre and was not looking forward to hearing this. After actually listening to it, I'll admit I've upgraded my opinion a couple notches, although I still don't think it's nearly as great as its reputation.

As far as writing-style, it does use that high fantasy style, but adds a winking irony and subtle humor. Holy cow, J. K. Rowling is in on the joke! Parts of this book are pretty funny, and on a line-by-line and page-by-page level, the writing has a great deal of charm and is quite listenable/readable. The world-building, too, is remarkable. I think the main thing readers like in this book must be all the various details we see as we accompany Harry on his first visit to Hogwarts, the magical classes and teachers and stores and even candies. Plus, the great sequences with Quidditch, that comically complicated, high-speed broomstick-riding sport Harry excels at.

Once we actually settled into the plot of the book I was somewhat less thrilled, however. As we move on from Harry's initial encounters with a world whose existence he had never suspected, we enter a fairly by-the-numbers adventure in the second half of the book. Oh, trolls, dragons, and a magic mirror. Yawn. Plus, while I won't give away the ending (as if there's anyone besides me who hasn't read this yet), it was very much a deus ex machina-type resolution to the conflict.

Whether I recommend this book is beside the point--every kid who likes reading has already picked it up, I'm sure. It's definitely a fun read, but I don't think Hogwarts is going to join Middle Earth or Narnia as a place that kids will still be visiting in their imaginations decades from now.

What I'm Reading: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

My wife read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children when it came out in 2011 and thought I'd like it. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to it on my reading stack until now. Apparently it was released as a movie a couple months ago; I'm not sure what kind of reviews it's gotten. I liked the book well enough, but had some reservations.

Before I get to the book, I have to describe how the author, Ransom Riggs, conceived of it. He started collecting weird old black and white photographs at flea markets--things like children floating in the air, or young women in elaborate mourning clothes, or a man covered in bees. Some of them must have resulted from photographic tricks, others simply begged the question why somebody would take such a picture. At some point, he started wondering if he could make a story out of them, and the idea for his first novel was born. The photos are, in fact, scattered throughout the novel, and act as an interesting complement to the writing.

The book is about a teen-ager named Jacob whose grandfather has always told him wondrous stories about his childhood in an orphanage on an island off the English coast where kids with bizarre powers lived separate from the rest of society. When his grandfather is killed by a monster that only he seems to have seen, Jacob is sent to a psychiatrist who recommends to his parents that Jacob should go to the island, where he can work out some of his mental issues. At summer break, his dad, an amateur ornithologist who himself wants to spend a few weeks on the island searching for a rare bird, takes Jacob. It's probably no surprise that Jacob discovers his grandfather's stories were not just made up....

It's actually quite a beautifully odd story, and the photos add something to the atmosphere. But they also take something away. When I read a book, I like to use my imagination, and I didn't need the pictures of the children. In fact, I rather came to resent the way the pictures dictated how I should picture the story in my head. I have to conclude that their use was a gimmick, and Riggs would have been better served using them simply as inspiration, and letting his story speak for itself. (Of course, he would have foregone a certain amount of publicity that's accompanied the use of the photos in his book, but that's a different matter.)

Another problem is that Riggs is clearly a writer who doesn't necessarily plan things out all the way, but just starts writing and sees where the story takes him. And that's great--that's the kind of writer I am, and I feel it lets characters breathe, and lets the story take turns that never would occur otherwise. But I do think there are one or two places in this book where Riggs writes himself into a corner and can only get out of it with plot twists that feel contrived. (I made a similar point about the Amber novels here, although in that case I felt the loose plotting worked a lot better.)

Nevertheless this was a fun and unusual novel, and quite easy to read despite some of its surrealistic touches. Any adult fan of fantasy literature would probably enjoy it.

What I'm Reading: Sabriel

Sabriel by Garth Nix is a YA fantasy novel with epic sweep, an intriguing setting, and great characters. Nevertheless, I found it a bit disappointing--but that's based almost solely on my own expectations. Garth Nix is one of my wife's favorite authors, and I had a read a glowing review of one of his books a few years ago. Those two things led me to believe this would be one of those rare fantasy novels to transcend its genre and be true literature, like Lord of the Rings or the Amber series. It's not quite at that level.

Still, this is fantasy of a very high quality. It follows Sabriel, an 18-year old girl who is about to graduate from an all-girl's boarding school. The school is located in Ancelstierre, where cars, firearms, and even movie theatres work, but is only a few miles from the Old Kingdom, where such technology will not operate but magic does. The school is in an in-between zone where magic is possible, but combustion as well, so long as the wind is not blowing from the Old Kingdom.

Sabriel's father is the Abhorsen, who travels the Old Kingdom battling the risen dead, and the necromancers who raise them. Once the Old Kingdom was a more peaceful place, but the ruling family was overthrown decades earlier and now it is a land of ever growing horrors. Sabriel's father has taught her some of the magic necessary to travel beyond the veil of death to the river of death, where nine river stages advance towards the final death beyond which souls are irretrievable.

Her adventure begins when a creature visits her from beyond the veil, one controlled by her father, who is somehow stuck in the river of death and has sent the creature to deliver his sword and his bandolier. The bandolier holds seven bells that allow the ringer to manipulate various aspects of life and death. Sabriel must take the sword and bells on a journey into the Old Kingdom, which she has not visited since she was a little girl, to find her father's body and discover what has caused him to become stranded in the river.

Soon, she discovers she is being followed by a Mordicant, a greater dead creature of great power. But at her father's house in the Old Kingdom, she also finds Mogget, a talking cat with knowledge of the ways of the Old Kingdom who can help her in her search. Together they set out, one step ahead of the Mordicant, with only a vague idea where the body of Sabriel's father lies and only a few days to find it before his spirit passes beyond the final river stage and he can never be revived.

This book shows tons of cool artifacts, spells, and creatures. The world is dense with fascinating details and it is a treat in nearly every chapter to come across new aspects of the world we didn't previously know about. I especially like Sabriel's bells, with their powers to cause listeners to sleep, to send listeners to the river of death or retrieve them, and so on. Garth Nix deftly avoids fantasy cliches while still providing the cool "stuff" fantasy fans love. Like I said above, it doesn't quite transcend the genre but I think anyone who's already a fantasy fan would love this.

What I'm Reading: Roundup

You Can Date Boys When You're Forty The latest humor book by Dave Barry. My wife received this for Christmas, but I started reading it and had to borrow it. Barry brings his absurdist wit to topics like when his daughter can date (see the title for the answer), the differences between men and women, grammar, and his recent trip to Israel.

One good chapter, very relevant to my situation, is "How to Become a Professional Author." It includes the good advice to "plant yourself in front of your computer and perform the difficult--and lonely--task of writing a letter to a successful author asking for free advice. This is the only known way to succeed as an author." Good idea! I'll get right on that.

Art Ops A new comic series, written by Matt Brundage and drawn by Mike Allred. Follows Art Ops, a secret organization devoted to keeping art safe, which is a difficult task as (unbeknownst to the average museum-goer), art has a tendency to come to life and jump out of the frame when nobody's looking. After a slow first couple issues, the most recent one really picked up, with the Statue of Liberty rampaging through the streets of New York, the Mona Lisa joining a punk band as lead singer, and the guy in the Scream painting trying to scare little children. Mike Allred is a master of art that is somehow simultaneously cartoony and realistic. Not sure how he does that. The writing on this series is a little beside the point, you should really get it to see Allred's beautiful work.

Rat Queens Another comic series, this one written by Kurtis Wiebe. It bills itself as "Sass 'n' sorcery," a fitting description, as it's basically a game of Dungeons & Dragons played by your most smart-ass friends. The Rat Queens are a group of four lady adventurers who like nothing better than killing monsters, collecting treasure, and drinking, drugging, and romancing until the morning light, quipping all the while. It's an open question whether their quasi-medieval town, Palisade, sees a net benefit from their monster killing or a net detriment from the cumulative damage of their partying.

This one ran for a while starting in 2013 but then disappeared from the stands for a few months. I believe the artist had some sort of personal crisis but Wiebe has found a new artist and it's recently started up again. I find that issue to issue the quality can vary quite a bit, but overall it's a great read.

What I'm Reading: The Courts of Chaos

The Courts of Chaos is the fifth book in Roger Zelazny's Amber series of fantasy novels (see here, here and here for write-ups on previous novels in the series). I've previously described these as grown-up fantasy without the usual cliches, and that continues to hold true for this volume.

This is the final of Zelazny's original five novels and wraps up the story of Prince Corwin, who in volume three found himself unexpectedly ruling in Amber, the one true kingdom whose throne he had been fighting his siblings for, and who, in volume four, found ruling wasn't all it was cracked up to be. In The Courts of Chaos he travels to, well, the courts of chaos, where the final battle is taking place between the heirs of Amber and the Lords of Chaos, the two primeval realms of existence of which all the other worlds (including Earth) are but shadows.

I won't give away the ending except to say that it is wholly satisfying and yet, as usual with Zelazny, does not follow the expected fantasy path. In fact, Corwin's role in the battle is rather small though he has many other important tasks to take care of which bring him in contact with a variety of humorous and dangerous characters. Also as in previous volumes, though there is no lack of physical conflict, opponents are really just as likely to use trickery, seduction, wit, or even philosophic argument to achieve their ends.

I highly recommend this book to any fans of fantasy, or for those who think they might like fantasy but aren't interested in elves. I'll probably take a break from Amber for a while, as the next five books (all contained in my giant "Great Book of Amber" tome) form a separate story, started some years after Zelazny finished the first five.

What I'm Reading: Roundup

Some of my recent reading:

The Little Prince  My son read this book in his fourth-grade class this year for a class project, and since the book was lying around I picked it up. I probably haven't read it since I was his age! If you're not familiar with it, it's a child's fantasy book written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a Frenchman, and has a definite French flavor to it. It concerns the Little Prince, a boy who is visiting Earth on a visit from his own planet, a very small asteroid, and the man he encounters here, an airman who has crash landed in the Sahara desert. The boy is confused by the strange ideas of the man and some other adults he encounters, who busy themselves with figures, or drink, or ruling over others, when in his view the important things in life are flowers, sunsets, and friends. Quite a charming book and with a good message communicated to the reader in a subtle way. I had forgotten the ending is so sad!

Harrow County  Emmy just turned 18 and lives on a farm with her father. She has never traveled far from her homestead and has little idea about the world beyond a handful of distant neighbors, but she is intimately familiar with the woods and marshes around her farm. Now that she's of age, mysterious men start visiting the house and talking in hushed tones with her dad. She's seen people hanging out by the big scary old tree she's supposed to avoid out on the edge of their property, too. And her dreams the past months have become vivid and frightening, full of witches and dead children. Out on a walk in the woods one day, she follows a path she's never seen before and discovers a "haint"-- something like a ghost. She's scared at first but when she realizes it's only the lost spirit of a little boy, she picks it up and takes it home. Harrow County is a new comic series written by Cullen Bunn and beautifully, and so, so creepily, drawn/watercolored by Tyler Crook.

What I'm Reading: The Hand of Oberon

I recently finished The Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny, the fourth in the series of Amber novels (see here and here for write-ups on previous novels in the series). Last month I also read the third book in the series, Sign of the Unicorn, but did not write it up. Alas, I've been extremely busy lately and have neglected this blog!

In SotU and THoO Corwin has finally achieved his goal of becoming ruler of Amber, though he has not had himself crowned. At the beginning of SotU he finds his brother, Caine, murdered and realizes he was set up to find the body so it would look like he committed the murder himself. And as designed, his other siblings do suspect him of the murder, despite his protestations, with only his youngest brother Random firmly on his side. This is very bad for him as he has so recently taken control of the realm, only for court intrigue to switch into a high gear. To figure out who did it, he decides to contact long missing brother Brand, who Random believes is still alive but imprisoned in some distant shadow realm. But when they do locate Brand and bring him back to Amber, his story brings up more questions than they answer.

Like the first two books, this plays out much more like a mystery than like a typical fantasy novel, as Corwin tries to figure out how committed the murder, framed him, and what their motives are. His memories now are fully recovered, yet because he was out of commission for so long he still has too little information on the histories and intentions of his siblings. His search for clues and information provide the narrative thrust.

Yet, the setting is firmly fantasy, as his search takes him to places like the the Courts of Chaos and involves artifacts like the Jewel of Judgment. This hybrid is masterfully carried out by Zelazny, resulting in suspenseful novels that are truly unpredictable and fresh writing. I would recommend this to any fantasy fan, and mystery fans may enjoy these slim, fast-paced volumes as well.

What I'm Reading: Roundup

Here are a couple things I've been reading lately:

First Book of Samuel  This was part of my Lenten reading this year. It's been a few years since I've caught up again with Samuel, Saul, Jonathan, and David, and upon rereading this remains one of my favorite Bible books. (I've discussed it before, here.)

I had forgotten that David doesn't even appear until halfway through--the book is really about the obedient prophet Samuel, who comes across as the most respected man in Israel, even to the point that the people go to him when they decide they want a king. Of course he warns them off, but they insist, and the Lord leads him to Saul. But when Saul is disobedient, the Lord ends his reign and chooses the boy who will grow to lead the nation: David. I get chills in the great scene when Samuel visits Jesse, knowing that one of his sons will be the one the Lord picks, yet surprised to find it is the youngest, a boy ruddy and beautiful.

There are plenty of other great scenes too, and lots of action, and emotion, and even humor. Never mind its religious aspects, this book truly is a prime example of world literature.

The Guns of Avalon The second novel in the Amber series by Roger Zelazny. (I discussed the first book, Nine Princes in Amber, here.) This book continues the tale of Prince Corwin, one of the heirs of the fractious ruling family of the kingdom of Amber. I made a mistake of reading a review of this book--now that other review dominates my thinking, making it harder to form my own view. So, I may as well recycle one of that review's opinions--the critic pointed out that Amber is high fantasy, but that Zelazny totally discarded the previous rulebook about how to approach fantasy, giving the Amber books a freshness rarely found in fantasy novels. I think that opinion is about right.

As a writer, I'm also struck by how loose the plotting is, and I'm sure Zelazny just started writing with only a vague idea where the story was going. I'm not a writer who likes to plan things out ahead of time, so I can recognize when others are doing it. At its best, this approach leads to surprise and unpredictability, as the writer goes where his characters want to, letting the story develop as it will. At its worst, the approach leads to a lot of loose ends and meandering plot threads. Well, Zelazny is a master and The Guns of Avalon is completely unpredictable, yet comes together perfectly in the final pages. (It's been long enough since I've read these--twenty years of more--that I can't remember the twists anymore.) I'm definitely looking forward to the third book in the series.

What I'm Reading: The Screwtape Letters

The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, is an epistolary novel containing the letters of a demon, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood. Wormwood is a tempter, assigned to lead a human being astray so Satan can take his soul, and he's having some trouble with his charge. Screwtape offers his nephew advice, mostly in the form of explanations of the human mindset and human behavior, and which strategies for leading a human astray might prove effective.

It's quite a clever book, and although we never learn the human's name we come to feel for him and his family. We learn a lot about the demons too, and the whole Infernal bureaucracy set up for capturing human souls. Although Screwtape's letters are exceedingly courteous, and he always signs them "Your affectionate uncle," we do get hints that there is not really love among demons and the relationship between Screwtape and Wormwood is really based on nothing more than self-interest. I also found it striking that the demons don't really understand God and his love for humans, and consider his offering them salvation as a pretext or elaborate deception, though to what purpose they can't comprehend.

We're not meant to take this literally, of course, but Lewis is making a larger point: how easily humans fall into sinful ways, and that evil forces have a part in doing this. But by depending on God, we are able to minimize our sin and receive forgiveness for when we do inevitably err. It's a great book for Christians during Lent, but really it's so well-written that I think even non-Christians would find it interesting, and there's no reason it wouldn't be suitable any time of year.

What I'm Reading: Nine Princes in Amber

Like the Dune series, the Amber series by Roger Zelazny is one I enjoyed greatly when I was younger and have decided to revisit. The first rather slim volume, Nine Princes in Amber, came out in 1970. I first read it in probably the 10th grade and immediately noticed it was different than other fantasy books I'd read. Although it does have kings and magic and such, it eschews the warmed-over Lord of the Rings-inspired cliches so often found in other fantasy books, as well as their flowery language. Indeed, its clipped, dry style is far closer to a detective novel by Hammett or Chandler than to Tolkien or Terry Brooks.

Its main character is Corwin, who wakes up in a hospital room with his memory gone, but realizing that he's being over-narcotized. Why? Probably somebody doesn't want to kill him outright, but doesn't want him waking up. He drags himself out of bed, rips out the IV, pushes aside the nurse and stumbles down to the hospital director's office, where he bluffs his way out with the threat of a lawsuit. But where to go from there? Indeed, after this first chapter we very easily could have ended up in a mystery.

But instead, as Corwin's memory gradually returns, he learns (and so do we) that he is actually one of nine princes of Amber, heirs to the throne of that kingdom which is the only real place in the universe. All other places are mere shadows of Amber, their realness and solidity dictated by their distance from Amber itself. Earth is a fairly important place for it is where several shadows cross, making it somewhat more real than most places and something of a crossroads for travelers through shadows.

Corwin discovers that during his stay in the hospital (and how long was he there, anyway...?), his brother Eric, a cruel and merciless man, has positioned himself to take over the kingdom and is in fact only a few weeks from his coronation. The book relates how Corwin gains his full memory of his true self, and his joining the tangled alliance of brothers who have decided to fight against Eric. But if you think you have already predicted the ending from what I've written, you are quite wrong. I meant it when I said this book eschews the fantasy cliches, and it ends up in quite a different place than expected, seemingly teasing the reader with certain fantasy tropes only to veer off in other directions entirely.

This book held up for me as an adult better than the Dune books. In fact, I'd say Nine Princes of Amber was full of pleasures. I've mentioned the writing style and the unexpected plot twists, but the characters also are superbly drawn: some have a measure of nobility but all have weaknesses and vices, and take time for the simple pleasures of food, beer, cigarettes, even walks in the woods or games of chess. All have mixed motives, complicated relationships with the other characters, and conflicting desires. This is the first of ten books, and I will definitely be reviewing the others over the coming year. I only ever read the first seven or eight of them in high school, but I have recently purchased The Amber Chronicles, which has all ten in one volume.