I’m having a bit of a dilemma. What should be my focus when reviewing a book?

Jennifer Fallon’s Medalon is the cause of my cundundrum. I can’t help but think if she submitted it to a workshop or something, it’d be torn to pieces by writers who’ve learned all the rules, as I have (or am trying to). There are some very strange feeling point-of-view shifts, and the story jumps back and forth in time in a way that can be distracting. There are little details that don’t work, like people swimming out to a ship and throwing a grappling hook up over the rails to board (can’t be done). So technically, it has issues.

And yet I sit here in a sleep-deprived fog because the book had me up until 6am and 3am respectively, for the past couple of nights. I loved it. Couldn’t put it down. So what matters? That I could see some rules-breaking, or that I enjoyed the read?

Happily I’m just a dumb blogger and I’m not getting paid to make these kinds of decisions, so I’m going to go with that fact that it was a really fun read.

Medalon is a small country ruled by “The Sisterhood of the Blade,” an athiestic governing body. Oddly, none of the sisters carry blades, instead they are supported by The Defenders, the all-male army of Medalon. To the north is Karien, ruled by The Overlord, who prays to the god Xaphista, aided by a cadre of zealous priests. To the south lie Hythria and Fardohnya, both of which worship the Harshini and the ‘pagan’ gods.

It’s an interesting world. Existing somewhere between the gods and the people are, or were, the Harshini, a magical race who can see and speak to the gods. When the Sisterhood came to power, they wiped out, or drove out, the Harshini. Karien and Medalon have an uneasy treaty, one condition of which is that the Sisterhood wipe out any pagan worshippers that might show their heads.

As our story begins, rumors of coming of The Demon Child are spreading. This child, half-human, half-Harshini, is suppose to herald the return of the Harshini and gods to Medalon. Pagan cults are springing up all over Medalon, and Karien is threatening to cross the border to stamp them out if the Sisterhood doesn’t do it themselves.

Enter R’Shiel and Tarja, the son and daughter of the ambitious and ruthless Joyhinia, a member of the ruling Quorum of the Sisterhood of the Blade. Medalon follows their story.

And, if you’re in the mood for a complex novel with intertwining storylines, Medalon isn’t it. The book is pretty strongly focused on R’Shiel and Tarja, and while there are of course sub-plots, this isn’t the next ‘Song of Ice and Fire.’

But Fallon delivers a rich and interesting world and characters who are likable (or hateable in a good way, as the case may be). The pacing is brisk and every chapter leaves you hungry to know what happens next. Even though some parts are quite predictable, the ride is still enjoyable, and none of the characters are stupid. No one is going down into the dark basement to check on that odd noise while the homicidal maniac is on the loose, if you know what I mean. Some of the characters accept huge challenges to their belief system a bit too easily, but again, that’s one of the ‘problems’ with the book that would get it poor marks with a literature professor, but which really didn’t get in the way of me enjoying the hell out of it.

Fallon’s extremely enjoyable Second Sons trilogy was a ‘bigger’ and more ambitious tale, and had a more ‘professional’ feel to it. As a wannabe writer, it has been interesting for me to compare her first work to her later novels. She’s gotten better than she was when she wrote Medalon, but that doesn’t prevent me from giving Medalon two big thumbs up. Fallon is on my short list of ‘must read’ authors and I expect to enjoy everything she produces. We’ll see.

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)!