How long have I had The Silmarillion on my shelf? The copy I have is a bookclub edition printed in 1977. Why did I wait 29 years to read this book? It’s silly, really. I was so enthralled by The Lord of the Rings and JRR Tolkien that I wanted something of his to look forward to. It was like a sweet treat that I tucked away for a rainy day…and then eventually forgot about.

And now that I’ve read it…well, the candy accumulated bits of dirt and lint along the way, because, (I can’t believe I’m going to say this) it wasn’t that good. I mean don’t get me wrong, the stories and the mythology are wonderful, but the tales included aren’t written in a particularly good narrative style. It’s all told as a mythos, with very little dialog. We’re always hovering over the world, looking down at what is happening. And you can tell it was written to act as a kind of bible. As part of the creation myth for Middle Earth (actually, that is exactly what the first parts are).

I am glad I read it, but frankly just because now I know the myths myself. The actual act of reading it wasn’t particularly enjoyable (though I will say, it gets better the farther in you get). Rather than one big story there are a few separate volumes under one cover: Aunuliundale (The Music of the Ainur) starts it and is the tale of how the world was created. Valaquenta (Account of the Valar) is about the Valar and Maiar (gods and godlings, roughly) and of the one Valar, Melkor, who fell and was later called Morgoth. Among his servants was a Maiar named Sauron, and we know what ended up happening to him! These are both short works.

Next comes Quenta Silmarillion (The History of the Silmarils) which takes up the bulk of the volume and is mostly about the Elves. But…these elves are just as petty and impressionable as men are in The Third Age and it was rather disheartening to see them all squablling and going to war with each other and being manipulated by Morgoth. They weren’t very likable, most of them. Galadriel and Celeborn are in this story, not that they play a huge role, but it’s astounding to think of how long they’ve lived. Elrond appears near the end, too.

Then comes Akallabeth (The Downfall of Numenor) [forgive me for not chasing down all the appropriately accented characters here] which tells of the fall of the Numenorians as they, too, squabble and grow petty and allow themselves to be manipulated by Sauron. Last is Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age which very briefly tells the same tale as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings only again, without dialog or characters to speak of.

This last bit fills me with awe. I imagine (and I’m probably wrong) that Tolkien wrote out his creation myths and then started telling stories based around them, starting with Of the Rings of Power… which he turned into Lord of the Rings. I just imagine what Quenta Silmarillion would’ve spawned if Tolkien had lived long enough to tell that tale in a more narrative format.

The Simarillion is of course required reading for devoted students of Tolkien, but the rest of you can safely pass it by and not worry that you’re missing out on anything nearly as wonderful as The Lord of the Rings is.

I turned the final page of The Blood Knight and looked up to see the horizon brightening. I glanced at the clock: 5:00 am.

That should tell you all you need to know. Greg Keyes has hit his mark again and in fact these books (The Briar King and The Charnal Prince came before this one) just keep getting better. All our favorite characters have returned, but the plotlines continues to twist and turn back on themselves like one of the mythical beasties who’re tormenting the world.

In fact it really struck me how, well, non-linear these books are. Characters do return to places they’ve already visited, rather than the typical fantasy motif of starting at point A and heading to point B where the story ends. These wanderings make the world seem very real to me.

It also struck me that just about everything that Cartography did wrong, The Blood Prince does right. There’re made up words and slang but they never throw you. The meaning of them tends to be evident from the context and they help to make the world feel unique. There are many plotlines with different chapters being devoted to different characters, but somehow they all come together to feel like a cohesive whole.

Be warned, though. This is not the final book in the series, and since it came out in hardcover just last month, I suspect we have a good long wait for the next one. That said, Keyes is a master of tying up enough plotlines to make the book feel like it has a satisfying ending, while leaving enough dangling to keep the reader hungry for more.

I’ve loved this series so far. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Michael A. Stackpole is a frustrating writer. At least, that was my first thought upon finishing Cartomancy (Book 2 in The Age of Discovery series). I just think he is sometimes too clever for his own good.

Like The Secret Atlas this is a complex book with many different plotlines. I normally devour this kind of book. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series is a great favorite of mine. I’m a reasonably intelligent person and can keep all the plots and names straight in most books.

But not here and I’ve been trying to decide why. The first reason, I think, are the names. In particular, the two opposing princes here are Cyron and Pyrust. Maybe its just me, but I get them confused constantly, and I think its because they both follow the same pattern. An initital consonant, “yr” then a vowel and soft consonant ending. Now in my mind I pronounced Cyron as “SII-ron” and I’ve heard Stackpole talk about his books and he pronounces the name “KEE-run”. In fact listening to him speak, it took me a long time to figure out who this Kirin he kept mentioning was.

But it isn’t limited to these two. So many of his names just feel like they came out of a random name generator to me: Nimchim and Gachin are military leaders in the same force. There is a god named Wentiko (which always makes me think of Wendigo – a Bigfoot-like mythical creature) and a place called Wentokikun. Perhaps the place is named after the god, but that isn’t at all clear. Rislet Peyt is a person and Tsatol Pelyn is a place. Junel is a bad guy, Jorim is a good guy. It goes on and on.

And then there are the italicized made-up words. kwajiin, jaecaiserr, chadocai, vhangxi, jaedun, xidantzu, vanyesh, vrilcai, vrilri, mai, vrilridin, thanaton, xingna, maicana, centenco, quor. Having read two books in the series, I still can’t tell you what some of these mean. Mai is essentially magic or ‘the force’ and maicana is one who can manipulate it. quor is a unit of measure… like a bushel or a ton…not sure which. Athanaton is a machine. Jaedun is, I think, magic, but how it differs from mai isn’t clear. Jaecaiserr is someone who uses jaedun… or do I have the two confused?

Anyway, the book needs a glossary and a dramatis personae, badly.
Continue reading “Cartomancy”

At long last I have finished with The Writer’s Digest Handbook of Short Story Writing and I have to say this is a book that you can safely pass by.

The problem, basically, is that it’s an old book. The original copyright is 1970, and the world of fiction, I’ve learned, does not stand still. Some of the problems are obvious and kind of interesting, like the article on submitting your work that urges you to clean the keys of your typewriter and install a fresh ribbon before typing up your manuscript for submission. The same article tells you to put your social security number on each page. Kind of made me long for those simpler times when we didn’t have to be quite so paranoid.

A lot of the book is angled toward selling your story to a general interest magazine, but how many magazines still publish fiction these days? Perhaps I’m wrong, but is Redbook even still published? Does Ladies’ Home Journal still print fiction?

There’s still some value to be found here, but I just think there must be more current volumes that can teach you the same things, plus more. Or just get a subscription to The Writer or Writer’s Digest and get current advice every month. Handbook… is out of print in any case, and not really worth searching for.

I finally got around to finishing V For Vendetta the other day. I’d wanted to read it before seeing the movie…how long ago did that come out?

Anyway, I have to say, and sorry comic book fans, but I didn’t much care for it. The story was just OK. In a nutshell, V is the name of a vigilante in a near-future England. There’s been some kind of limited nuclear war that’s left England pretty much an island unto itself (har har). The government is a melange of Nazi and Orwellian Big Brother regime, and V is trying to topple it. Heavy stuff for a graphic novel, and I bet the movie was pretty good.

But for me, it was the visual presentation that disappointed me. The art style felt muddy and out-of-focus. There were a lot of places where the details were so abstracted that I wasn’t sure which character was being represented. There were lots of expositional narrative ‘balloons’ but it often wasn’t clear who was narrating. If it was one of the characters’ voices or just an unbodied narrator. Sometimes these bubble would connect to dialog bubbles, but it didn’t make sense for the narrative and the dialog to be coming from one character.

Perhaps the problem was in the printing? Maybe the original comics were in a larger format and so things were more clear. Whatever the reason, though, I would steer you away from this print of V For Vendetta.

I’m still going to watch the movie though.

I stayed up much too late last night finishing Greg Keye’s The Charnel Prince. This was book 2 in the series started in The Briar King (see a couple posts down). Here’s my review: I LOVED IT!
Heh. Seriously, it was as good as Briar King, which I mean as the highest of praise because I truly loved that book. The story is getting rolling now. The Briar King is still out and about, and some evil clerics are trying to awaken some ancient and apparently evil saint. The law of death is broken. The princess is on the run. One of the new characters is a court composer, and it just blew me away what a great job Keyes did of turning him into a hero without him ever lifting a sword.
Some old friends have returned, others are gone forever. There are still a bunch of threads to follow but Keyes keeps things moving such that you don’t lose your place, or at least not very often. (Of course the fact that the book is hard to put down means that I devoured it in big chunks, which also helped.)
Its times like these that my lack of any kind of book reviewing skill frustrates the hell out of me, because I want to inspire you to go out and buy these books because they’re wonderful! And all I can manage is “OOOOhhh! SHINY!”
The next book is out in July. I can’t wait. I’ll be there the day it hits the store shelves (if I can figure out when that is)!

And once again I finish a book only to let it fade from my memory before reviewing it, or whatever you call what I do to books here. Brave Men Run by Matthew Wayne Selznick is a self-published book that gives me faith in the whole concept of self-publishing because it is a *really* fun read. It takes place in an alternate version of the 1980’s when, for all intents and purposes, super-heros come out of the closet. The protagonist is high school student who has always been a bit of an oddball, but now realizes that he is one of these people with special powers. And his classmates realize the same thing.

So think of it a bit like the beginnings of the X-Men.

Except its more a coming of age novel than anything. Nate Charters is in love for the first time, finding out his mother isn’t infallible for the first time, finding that other people aren’t always what they seem. In short, he’s growing up, and quickly. We get to go along for the ride. The special powers are more a catalyst for rapid change than the point of the book.

Now I listened to the podiobook version. It is read by the author and he does a great job of breathing life into his characters and evoking the feel of the ’80s. It doesn’t hurt that he uses Peril Dance’s Perfect World for intro and outro… it has a very strong 80’s vibe.

You can also buy the book from Amazon or Lulu.com. Links can be found at the Brave Men Run website. Brace yourself… Mr. Selznick is a wonderful writer and a talented storyteller, but he pretty much sucks as a web designer, and the cover of the book is about as appealing as a mud-pie.

But please don’t let that slow you down. There’s a sample chapter for you to read at the site, and the Podiobook is *free* to listen to, though donations are accepted. I was happy to drop $10 in the tip jar, and sent a print copy of the book to a friend.

Self-published books worth reading need our help to get the word out. I really, really enjoyed Brave Men Run and if one person finds it because of this post, I’ll be happy. Leave a comment if you give it a read or a listen. I’d love to hear what other folks thought of it.