Reading in April

April was a rather slight month for me when it comes to quantity. In part, that's due to the length of some of the books, but, more, it's the result of me reading a large number of magazines (Weird Tales, Asimov's, Analog, and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine) in the middle. In an attempt to make my short story coverage more sensible, I'm no longer going to keep track of the magazines so much as the stories themselves, something that's taking far longer to do than I thought and will have to wait till next month to debut. But enough about things that nobody besides I and my I-should-be-using-Excel word documents care about. Let's get to some books…

Cold Hand in Mine was my first experience with cult horror author Robert Aickman, and it wasn't a disappointment. Aickman writes understated but magical stories, tales that aren't horrific in the slightest but are, instead, unsettling and profound from start to finish. Review coming up.

Great Expectations surprised me. Though I've often heard Di-ckens described as a clever writer, I was still expecting a dry "classics" read. Instead, I got prose that sang with wit, even if it was often bogged down. I found that the middle dragged fiercely, but the book was still quite enjoyable over all.

This is the conclusion to the Malazan series, a series that – as longtime readers know – I have quite an affinity for. I would not say that The Crippled God is my favorite volume, nor would I even say it is particularly close to that honor, but I did find it a quite satisfactory conclusion, filled with the grandeur, tension, awe, and depth that I expect when I begin one of Erikson's tomes. If there were to be no more Malazan novels, I would be sad but would not feel cheated. I will be rereading Malazan in the future, and will be covering it in some fashion, though I'm unsure exactly what shape that coverage will take.

Kiernan's writing is dark, lurid, and vivid. Her stories are composites of desire, lust, and decay, and they're filled with lush imagery that begs to be savored. Review coming.

The Wise Man's Fear functions in much the same way as The Name of the Wind. The prose is lyrical and fantastic, the story is as involving as could be, and the plot stutters and staggers over little ground. Review coming.

As always, Scalzi is amusing here. The novel is a mixture of wit, pulse pounding action, intrigue, and insightful social commentary. All that being said, there's still something holding me back from fully loving Scalzi, and I don't think it's a quantifiable thing. His writing and ideas are slick and enjoyable, but they're not something that I can fall for unreservedly. Still, this is recommended and, I think, highly unlikely to disappoint.

The Other is a powerfully written and involving horror novel. The characters and setting come to life through Tryon's prose. The reveal in the third act, and the climax, are breathtaking, though the tension before that does, perhaps, rise too slowly to be wholly effective. Still, this is an interesting and powerful read that's well worth checking out if it sounds interesting to you.

Ian C. Esslemont - Stonewielder

Stonewielder is Ian C. Esslemont’s third novel in the Malazan series. His first novel, Night of Knives was an acceptable entry into the mythos, but far from extraordinary. His second effort, Return of the Crimson Guard, was more successful at creating the epic world of Malazan, but was plagued with crippling flaws. Stonewielder is perhaps the most epic Esslemont effort to date. Like Erison’s Midnight Tides, Stonewielder seeks to bring to light an entire continent (albeit a smaller one), and it’s a continent filled with different factions, a continent host to not one but two Malazan armies, one renegade. This is, without a doubt, Esslemont's best work – which isn't to say it's necessarily a successful book.

Despite bearing Greymane’s title on the cover, Stonewielder is not focused on the man. Greymane himself is only viewed from the periphery, and even Return of the Crimson Guard’s main character Kyle is now primarily seen from the eyes of others. This works well for Kyle; the man is far more interesting when seen from the side. Greymane, however, is off-screen for so much of the read that it’s hard to really feel his importance, and his key role in the climax comes as almost a surprise. Still, the Malazan versus Malazan aspect of the book is by far the strongest thread. The renegade’s position is believable and interesting, and Ussu – a mage for the renegade Malazans – was probably my favorite character of the book. On the Malazan side, Stonewielder’s salt of the earth point of view, Suth, is rather bland but not unpleasant. More exciting, Esslemont’s skill with large scale battles is undiminished here. The book’s highlight comes about halfway through in a massive naval confrontation. The stakes are high, the viewpoints scattered and busy trying to survive, and the overall picture we get of the scene is epic in every sense of the word.

The Korelri Stormwall is one of the book’s other key plot threads. A variety of viewpoint characters are gathered there, including several from the Crimson Guard, and the feel and desperation of the area is well established, even if the sections suffer from the importance of the characters involved; there’s never any doubt that Iron Bars, say, will be killed after so many pages have been devoted to his rescuers’ journey to him. Besides which, there’s the measure of the pile of plot holes that such a wall brings up, chief among them the burning question of why the riders don’t just go around the freakin' wall.

Some plotlines are far less successful. Bakune, an investigator trapped in a city of increasing religious fanaticism as the invaders draw near, seemed all set to have an interesting plotline. It was not to be. In Return of the Crimson Guards, one of my chief gripes was the lack of obvious character motivations. In their absence, it was almost impossible to tell where anything was going; we had important characters, but we did not have characters that drove the plot. Though a far better character than Kyle was, Bakune is far too passive to be interesting. He never does anything of his own volition; he is simply batted about by powers stronger than he is.

Ivanr, however, is the character with the dubious honor of most objectionable plotline. Basically, he’s a Toblakai who believes in pacifism. The character shares Bakune’s passivity, and the entire plotline around him is weaker than the rest of the novel, but what makes him truly infuriating is his hypocrisy. As I said, he claims he’s nonviolent. And yet he fights every chance he gets. He disassociates himself from the violence, takes no credit for it, and then wades into the bloodshed and endangers the life of everyone around him. Towards the beginning of the book, he beats an entire squad of mounted soldiers to a pulp with the back of his spear:

Dirt smeared the side of [the man’s] face from his fall. the eyes found their focus. “I thought you’d sworn some kind of vow,” he said, accusing.

“I swore that I’d never kill again – not that I wouldn’t fight. I think you’ll find that none of your men are dead. Though a few might die if you don’t them attention soon.” (p. 101)

Always nice to have a character who sticks to their principles, isn’t it? Suffice to say, I went through the whole book waiting for someone to realize how much of a pompous fraud the bastard was and stick a knife into him. It didn’t happen; I think that Esslemont was as enamored by his faux-Zen martial nature as the various sycophants that soon surround the character.

Still, even in the weaker plot threads, Stonewielder has one immeasurable advantage over its predecessors: Esslemont’s prose has evolved. I would not say that Esslemont is a master here, but his work is far ahead of the chunkiness exhibited in Return of the Crimson Guard. Stonewielder’s strongest scenes, especially those with Ussu and the renegade Malazans, have a palpable atmosphere, one that’s dark, oppressive, and expansive:

Borun stopped at a great iron sarcophagus some three paces in length lying within a metal framework upon the bare stone. He set his torch in a brazier, then took hold of a tall iron wheel next to the frame. This he ratcheted, his breath harsh with effort. As the wheel turned long iron spikes slowly withdrew from holes set all down the sides of the sarcophagus, and in the rows across its front.

When the ends of these countless iron spikes emerged from within the stained openings a thick black fluid, blood of a king, dripped vicious and thick from their needle tips. A slow rumbling exhalation of breath sounded then. it stirred the dust surrounding the sarcophagus.

Ussu bent over the coffin. “Cherghem? You can hear me?”

A voice no more substantial than the breath sounded form within. I hear you. (p. 135)

Esslemont’s grasp of atmosphere also serves to illuminate the scenes set at the Stormwall and, most of all, the scenes of Kiska’s journey through the warrens. Characters bumbling about in places they don’t understand is almost the series’ chief mode of storytelling at this point, but here Esslemont manages to both humanize Kiska and invoke the same sense of wonder that one gets throughout the more bizarre sections of House of Chains or the other mainline novels in the series.

In the end, it is, bizarrely enough, the sense that the events of the book aren't particularly crucial to the overall world that gives the work its scope. For the entire book, the reader is focused on Korel and its struggles, convinced that the events here are the true deciding events. Then  it becomes clear that what was happening here is only a part of the picture, and perhaps a small part at that. It's the feeling that the Malazan world is not only big enough to house an epic fantasy story but to house a half dozen of them running at once that renders it so interesting and monolithic.

Stonewielder is Ian C. Esslemont's best book so far. It's not a perfect by any means, but this is a novel that manages to be epic and engrossing throughout. For the first time, I can recommend an Esslemont novel as a worthy read on its own merits, not just to fill out the blind spots of a greater work. If Esslemont continues to improve at this rate, his upcoming Darujhistan novel might just do the city justice. Maybe.

Up and Coming (and Essential?) in January and 2011

The Hammer is K.J. Parker’s newest standalone, and it seems to be filled with all of what’s best in Parker’s prior works (rigorous and detailed worlds with accurate technology, great characters in interesting dynamics, etc). Fantasy Book Critic’s review, the only one that I’ve seen, is quite positive.

I loved The First Law trilogy; the books were snappy, cynical, and vivid. The ending was superb. Best Served Cold wasn’t quite on the same level (it was basically First Law v2), but I’m still quite excited about The Heroes, in part because it seems like a great opportunity for Abercrombie to write what he’s best at in new ways, particularly the focus on a single battle in a short time span. Early reports have been strong. 

FOR 2011

I thought it might prove interesting to post my most anticipated books of the new year and, at the end of the year, see how they fared compared to other releases.

Daniel Abraham - Dragon's Path

R. Scott Bakker - White Luck Warrior

Steven Erikson - The Crippled God
Felix Gilman - ???

Adam LG Nevill - The Ritual
K.J. Parker - The Hammer

Alastair Reynolds - Blue Remembered Earth

Brandon Sanderson - Mistborn: The Alloy of Law

Best Reads of 2010

I read 134 books in 2010. The following are my twelve favorites. For variety's sake, each author is limited to a single work, and books that made the previous Best Released list will not be considered here.  I’ll post my complete reading list for the year in a few days, so you know what I’m drawing from here.

In alphabetical order, we’ve got:

Review here.

Andreyev’s characters try and often fail to find meaning, their lives so well portrayed that the century’s gap between the tales’ writing and reading does not dim their impact in the slightest. This collection is often startlingly dark, with stories like The Red Laugh painting our whole world with their hellish brush, and other tales like The Abyss showing compassion and innocence defiled, destroyed, and left by the roadside. Andreyev is a master of pace, capable of making a man’s final night seem like years and of making the longest waits and isolations heavy with their inevitable ending. Though the exclusion of one of Andreyev’s best stories, Lazarus, is disappointing, Visions is still an incredible work.

Bakker’s debut is a work of powerful, vivid prose and thought provoking ideas, offering genuine insight while also succeeding at the standards by which mainline Epic Fantasy is judged. Though there are pacing issues, their detrimental effect was diminished on reread (this was my second time through), and those problems are ultimately inconsequential in the face of what’s presented. Bakker's characterization is deep, if miserable, and sympathetic, if deplorable. The various societies of Bakker’s world walk a fine line between recreating history and pure imagination, falling to one side or the other as their prominence dictates, and the magic here is innovative and excellently depicted. Highly recommended for any fans of fantasy.

The Master and Margarita crackles with vitriolic wit. Bulgakov’s writing is impassioned, outlandish, and brilliant. He can make you care for his characters. He can make you laugh at his characters. He can make you hate his characters. The Master and Margarita uses excellently realized fantasy to criticize and examine the oppressive world around it. This is a classic of genre and literature.

Malazan is a bizarre mix of larger than life fantasy and Erikson’s philosophical and social musings. The series is far from flawless, but Erikson’s large cast and powerful prose make each of the volumes satisfying and often exemplary. When it comes to balancing visceral entertainment and more cerebral pleasures, the early volumes often fell too far to the shallow-but-fun side of the spectrum, while Toll the Hounds almost wholly sacrificed plot for the sake of writing and theme. House of Chains is one of the few volumes in the series that manages to flawlessly blend the two elements. The volume features the introduction of Karsa Orlong, beginning with his extended viewpoint, and then takes us through the height of the Seven Cities rebellion. The new ground level perspectives introduced with the Malazan army that comes into play here are well done, and the battles are mixed with the atmosphere of other, imaginative scenes that take place in the farthest reaches of Erikson’s creation.

Up until last night, American Gods was on this list. Then I read Sandman. This is a graphic novel of startling scope and imagination, with a grace of writing and presence of atmosphere that make it remarkable in any category. The sheer depravity of 24 Hours and the power of The Sound of Her Wings together managed to make Preludes & Nocturnes one of my favorite reads of 2010, and I’ll even say that Gaiman edged out Moore for my favorite Graphic Novel writer. And I hear that the first volume is the weakest of the series. Is that even possible?

Review here.

Gilman’s prose in Gears of the City is among the finest that I’ve read this year. His characters are theatrical masterpieces, cackling and monolithic in their flaws and triumphs, and his world is oppressive and immersive. I could try and rationally argue for its spot here, but I think I’d rather let Gilman do that for me and just give you another excerpt of the novel’s writing:

Later, as Arjun and Brace-Bel hid in the darkness of their bolt-hole, Brace-Bel would breathlessly recount his adventures in the Museum. He explained that he had always, in his strange life, been the villain, or worse, the laughingstock; but he’d ventured into the enemy’s lair in search of his true beloved like a hero of the highest and most chivalrous romance. His purpose had been pure as the purest knight’s, because he expected nothing from [her], nothing at all. He became what he was always meant to be. It was laughable, humiliating, but also superb… (p. 233)

Review here.

Joe Hill’s debut collection is a brilliant piece of horror, which also happens to examine just what horror is and how it works. Hill is capable of visceral darkness, as he proves again and again in tales like Abraham’s Boys and In the Rundown, but he’s also adept at moments of heartwarming melancholy that leave your world feeling drained of color in comparison afterwards, as he shows in Pop Art and the title story. There’s the occasional weaker story, but they don’t succeed in bringing down the power of the collection. Hill proves himself right out of the gate and doesn’t let up; 20^th Century Ghosts is masterful and self conscious horror.

When I reread The Shining in March, I said that it was the best novel by the greatest modern horror author. Now, having discovered Ligotti, the latter part of that statement is almost painfully off (especially when one considers King’s lamentable later work), but that does nothing to dilute the power of The Shining. This is pretty much a textbook example of how modern horror should be written. The characters are complex and sympathetic, their relationships organic in their development, and the horror comes from the characters and their relationship to the world. It’s true that the ending is a disappointment, but what precedes those last pages is so powerful that the ending’s weakness fails to damage the work. This is a must read for horror fans.

Thomas Ligotti’s work is hypnotically powerful and devastatingly depressing. The man’s prose is crystalline, flawless and ornate. His grasp of atmosphere is equal to Lovecraft’s, and those are not words I say lightly. Choosing whether to include Songs of a Dead Dreamer or Teatro Grottesco here was very difficult. I ended up going with the latter. It’s less outright horror, operating even more on a cerebral level than Songs… did. The stories here are crushing, but they’re so well written that they are, somehow, beautiful at the same time. Review coming.

McCarthy’s work is brutally, horrifically violent. Most action stories, whether prose or film, manage to make violence glorious and exciting. Blood Meridian does the opposite. This is a story devoid of sympathetic characters and understandable motivations. It is a story with no goal in sight. It is, simply, violence, brutal and uncompromising, unending and representing the entirety of the world. And the reader, mesmerized by McCarthy’s masterful prose, has no choice but to keep reading.

Moore’s work is dark, powerful, and multifaceted; his inclusion in this year’s Best Of was assured. But that still leaves the question of which of his works to show. V for Vendetta (review forthcoming) was very powerful and generally devoid of some of the flaws of Watchmen (the ending-from-nowhere, for instance). Still, I had to go for the later work. Watchmen was generally deeper, and the character of Rorschach and his ultimate decision is still present in my mind despite having been read months earlier. If what you think when you hear super heroes isn't a nuanced examination of the nature of power, you need to read this.

After Dark is the story of a few almost unconnected characters in the early morning hours of Tokyo. There’s little to no overarching plot. Going in, I didn’t think that I would love this book, but Murakami’s prose made me an easy convert. This novel is beautiful, and I mean that in the fullest sense of the word. Tokyo is vibrant, alive, and bizarre, and the different characters came to feel as real as anyone I’ve ever met. Review’s on the way.

(THE DUBIOUS HONOR OF) WORST NOVEL

Review here.

This was no contest. Sheepfarmer’s Daughter was boring, and that's just about the worst thing that can be said of entertainment. The characters are uninteresting, the plot is uninvolving, the themes are occasionally offensive but generally unremarkable, and prose is wholly devoid of style. When reading is a chore best handled in fifteen minute increments, you know that something’s gone wrong.

THE WORKS UNCONSIDERED

When compiling this list, I left Shakespeare and Dostoevsky out of consideration for a variety of reasons. First, both are classic authors. You don’t need me to tell you that. More importantly, with Shakespeare, there’s the fact that I find it difficult to view his work in the same way that I do another author’s, and I’m not talking about quality here. Shakespeare is on such a pedestal, and his work has so seeped into popular culture, that one’s expectations going in are monolithic, and rare is (at least from what I’ve seen) the reader who, going into Hamlet (to pick a play at random) does not know the majority of the plot. If I had included Dostoevsky and Shakespeare, they would have both made the list (King Lear beating out Hamlet, for me), but that’s not to say that they would have been my favorite books on it.

The Ritual and The Crippled God [Cover Art]

I don't want The Hat Rack to become a vapid place filled with the newest images and jack shit in the way of commentary, and I'm aware that this double feature will bring the month's cover total up to four, so I've failed at that. I'll try and cut down, I promise, but, until then, we've got two new glimpses to drool at, starting with Nevill's third book. In my interview with him, he said that he thought the cover was: possibly the best cover I have ever seen on a horror novel. The Result?


Holy shit, he wasn't kidding. In fact, I'm going to go so far as to say it's the best cover that's been featured so far on the Rack (the limited time frame and generally random choices of what gets featured be damned). If the atmosphere in the book is as chilling as that oozing out of that painting, this'll be a great novel. And, judging by Nevill's past two works, the odds look to be in his favor. There's a teaser of this up here, for those interested. Blurb's as follows:

When four old university friends set off into the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle, they aim to briefly escape the problems of their lives and reconnect with one another. But Luke – still single and living a precarious existence – cannot identify with his companions any more. Lost, hungry, and surrounded by forest untouched for millennia, Luke figures things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

But then they stumble across an old habitation. Ancient artefacts decorate the walls; bones are scattered upon the dry floors. The residue of old rites and pagan sacrifice for something that still exists in the forest. Something responsible for the bestial presence that follows their every step. Death doesn’t come easy among these ancient trees . . .

Finally, there's this short story that just went up. Check it out, it's a very short and quite enjoyable read.

Up next is the concluding novel in the Malazan Book of the Fallen, The Crippled God:


Alright, it's not quite breaking news anymore, but still. It's a very epic cover, albeit perhaps a bit silly in just how epic it is. I think I might be the only one who enjoyed the cheesy as hell US covers (well, with quite a few exceptions - Gardens of the Moon, Memories of Ice, Midnight Tides, and The Bonehunters were awful. Alright, so that's most of them.), but these seem to be fitting.

And now I promise I'll try and cut back on the cover art.

Reading in August

When it comes to reading, August was an absolutely excellent month. Among those books are several for the Breaking New Ground challenge, both graphic and urban, but I'm not going to tell you what I think of them yet. Why not? Simple: the image of y'all practically salivating at the thought of knowing the results of my personal challenge is one that I find very amusing. Of course, it's not actually happening, but I intend to pretend. As for the rest of it:


Seeing as this was the first half of a monolithic super-novel, I wasn’t surprised to find the pace slower than usual for the first half. By the halfway point, though, the various arcs were all picking up momentum and, to my surprise, I actually thought that the cliffhanger ending was the perfect place to end the novel. At the moment, I’d say that this is my favorite Malazan tome behind House of Chains and Toll the Hounds.


I’ve often heard it said that Gaiman is a better short story writer than he is a novelist, so I was very interested in checking out this collection, and I’m glad that I did. Though there are a few weaker pieces, the entire thing flows beautifully, and Gaimans ideas are, as always, an incredible pleasure to be immersed in. Review on the way.


My first foray into Urban Fantasy for the challenge – and it went well, thankfully. Review here.


The first two thirds of this novel were absolutely impossible to put down, the self aware grace of 20th Century Ghosts put aside for a razor’s edge of cutting suspense and horror. And then someone popped the balloon and the tension zipped on out with the hot air. Review on the way.


Though I think that Ship of Destiny was, without a doubt, the weakest of the three Liveship books, it did bring the trilogy to a good conclusion in the end. More information (hopefully) coming in a review before too long.


Reading Thomas Ligotti was like reading Lovecraft for the first time, and that is not something that I say lightly. These stories were surreal, dark, metaphysical, beautiful, and terrifying on a level that few other things can ever be. I read a lot of books this month, but this is, hands down, the best of them. Well, except for maybe…


...this one. Yes, that’s right, I read this book twice. Back to back, the first time I’ve ever done anything like that. And it deserved it, and I grasped infinitely more of Ligotti’s genius and inner workings on the second read. Expect more content when I’ve stopped huddling in the corner and praying for the (non?)reality of my own existence.


Hmm, I wonder...


Yes, this is a graphic novel, but not one of the challenge ones. I picked it up on a whim because I was bored and because it was cheap. The tale was entertaining, and I enjoyed the framing device, but, like with pretty much every non-Lovecraft Lovecraft story (except for, debatably, some in that book one or two above this one…) Lovecraft’s ideals are mouthed and then forgotten in favor of a fun horror story. An okay read, but nothing special.


This is by far the easiest of McCarthy’s reads, but the quality doesn’t dip in tandem with the difficulty. Like everything else the man has written, this is highly recommended. Review forthcoming.


Yay, uh, mercenaries! Not the month’s favorite read, though it did have the distinction of having me read seven other books while in the process of reading it. Those aren't easy lengths for a book to push me to, you know. You’ve got to really grab someone for that. Review.


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I still haven’t found the novel that really sells me on Pratchett, but this one was quite enjoyable, nonetheless. Review.


Despite some similarities in theme and content, this was the opposite of Gravity’s Rainbow in every way. Often light hearted, and occasionally laugh out loud funny, this was a quick, though certainly not breezy, read that was quite entertaining.


A children’s book for adults? Alright, I’ve got to see that. To my surprise, is actually lived up to that concept, being decidedly hilarious at all three endings. That being said, however, I’m still not sure if a scant few minutes reading justifies the twenty dollar price tag on amazon. I guess everyone’s level of thing-under-the-bed love will have the determine whether they purchase their own copy.


This book has a gigantic polar bear that scared me shitless in a scene or two, but I think the best measure of its success is that the polar bear wasn’t half as scary as the omnipresent arctic. Oddly enough, it’s this, not Hyperion, that’s convinced me that I need to read everything that Simmons has written.


VanderMeer, as usual, makes the absolutely bizarre feel like something I run into every day and makes the most pedestrian of things absolutely ethereal. The Third Bear contains several of my new favorite stories from the man (The Situation, for instance, is excellent) , and, though I’m not sure if I’ll do a review of my own, the Third Bear Carnival is something well worth checking out for anyone who’s read the collection.


!?

On Stagnated Timelines (Malazan)

There was a rather large discussion on Westeros a few weeks ago, focused on the improbability of Malazan’s timescale. While I don’t think it’s truly possible to say that it’s not slightly…inflated…to say the least, I think the following quote goes a ways towards explaining one of the biggest problems with the numbers, namely that it’s ludicrous for technology to have remained stagnant for so long:

“Without the gods, we’re on our own. And with us on our own- Abyss fend! – what mischief we might do! what grotesque inventions to plague the world!” (p. 165)

So, though whether it’s believable to you or not, I guess it’s clear that Erikson was using the hard-to-develop-while-being-magically-nuked style of technological advancement.

A Village in the Middle of Nowhere (Malazan)

I finished Dust of Dreams a day or two back, and I spent some time this afternoon going through the pages I marked as particularly interesting and either writing stuff down in my Quotes file, keeping it marked if it was a potential review quote, or removing the mark if I was no longer quite as enamored with it as I’d been. Partway through the process, I came across this:

Thirty leagues north of Li Heng on the Quon Talian mainland was the village of Gethran, an unremarkable little clump of middling drystone houses , workshops, a dilapidated church devoted to a handful of local spirits, a bar and a gaol blockhouse where the tax-collector lived in one of the cells and was in the habit of arresting himself when he got too drunk, which was just about every night.(p. 281)

It’s a totally new setting, complete with hierarchies and clashes, etc, a total change in perspective like Erikson unleashes…every few pages. The difference is, however, that it’s a random village in the middle of nowhere:

A village no different from countless others scattered throughout the Malazan Empire. Entire lives spent in isolation from the affairs of imperial ambition, from the marching armies of conquet and magic-ravaged battles. Lives crowded with local dramas and every face a familiar one, every life known from blood-slick birth to blood-drenched death. (p. 282)

Most fantasies stick with the heroes of the land, the nobility, the adventurers. Malazan has a plethora of ground based point of views, but, even so, almost all of them are involved, in one way or another, with world changing events. The everyman’s point of view – in which characters strive for something basic, simple, something within the confines of your average man’s life, as opposed to, say, ascending to godhood – is almost completely absent from Malazan. Oh, you’ve got a handful of examples (Crokus in Gardens of the Moon, for isntance), but it’s still rare enough that it’s almost more shocking to get one than it is to see an undead dragon, or what have you.

This isn’t a flaw of Malazan, mind you, just a style. Malazan is not about the common man; it is about those who have been swept up by a mythic tide, and it is about the kind of events that shape history for a millennia. And yet, every once in a while, you get something like the aforementioned passages that put it all in perspective.

Of course, the quote isn’t totally out of the blue. Deadsmell, a squad mage in the Bonehunters, has been a minor character for a while now, but it’s only now that we get his past:

Hounded by four older sisters, the grubby half-wild boy who would one day be named Deadsmell was in the habit of hiding out with Old Scez, who might have been an uncle or maybe just one of his mother’s lovers before his father came back from the war. (p. 282)

Over the following few pages, I felt like I’d lived for years in this town, sitting on the outskirts and untouched by the colossal events that we’ve spent so much time reading about, and I felt like I’d lived through Deadsmell’s life. This isn’t an essential scene, admittedly. The story could’ve easily gone on without it, and Deadsmell doesn't spring to the fore of the narration afterwards. All the same, I think the entire Malazan world is richer for its inclusion, and it was one of my favorite parts of Dust of Dreams.

There's A Sorrow in Catching Up (Malazan)

A few days ago, Steven Erikson announced the completion of the Malazan series:

GASP! That would be me, coming up for air. How long was I down there? About twenty years, from conception to completion. The Malazan Book of the Fallen is done. Sure, editing and all that crap to follow. But ... done. I don't know who I am. Who am I again? What planet is this? Three months of butterflies ... maybe this double whiskey will fix that. Hmm. No. Delayed reaction going on here.

It was an announcement that acquired both celebration and scorn, but my perceptions of the event were dulled by an 816 page (trade paperback) barrier. Now, however, I’m finally starting Dust of Dreams, nine months after reading Gardens of the Moon. It’s an odd time for melancholy, but I find that my desire to dive as deeply, and as quickly, into the book as possible is tempered by hesitation.

Once I finish Dust of Dreams, I’ll have read all of the published Malazan novels and will have finally caught up to Erikson. I won’t have to feel somewhat inferior whenever I talk about the books with someone who’s finished the series, always having that little but what if the next one’s shit, and they’re right voice.

Still, it marks a shift in how I perceive the books. Up until now, Malazan’s felt endless, the series seeming as vast as the world it portrayed. After this, though, I’m only going to be able to experience it a hit at a time, each new experience altered by the fact that I’m going to have to wait afterwards. What was once depthless, there to be experienced whenever I dared immerse myself in it will have a multi-month wait to mark its artificiality, and, during those months, the thrills of experience will turn to anticipation and prediction.

It’s not a huge change, probably not even a significant one, and undoubtedly an inevitable one, but it’s something that struck me as I turn the pages and revisit familiar characters and greet new ones.

Ah well, time to get on with the reading.

Reading in June

I was really looking forward to Donaldson’s Gap series, which seemed poised to deliver everything I was thirsting after in a space opera. The opening volume of the series, The Real Story, was something that I’d heard described as an exercise in slowly shifting the reader’s perceptions of the characters from villain to hero and vice versa. From that angle, it was a huge success. From a general reading angle, however, I had quite a few problems with the story. More information in the upcoming review.

There are times when I regret putting up every book I read. Those times are not when I read something really stupid, such as Pog Decides to Climb Mount Everest, because those are fun in a look-what-an-idiot-I-am way. Something like Crime and Punishment (or, later in this very article, Hamlet), however, is a far more awkward proposition. What the hell am I going to say about a novel that has been often proclaimed the best novel of all time? In this case, I suppose I could say that, though I don’t know if I can name it the single greatest, it’s certainly up there, but I’m not exactly being original there, am I? I suppose I could mumble briefly about the horrible believability of Raskalnikov’s decline, the heart wrenching character of Sonya, and all of that, but, really, this is something that you probably don’t need my recommendation for.

Somehow Form a Family is a collection of personal essays from the author of Here We Are In Paradise, Jim the Boy, etc. while I wasn’t as engrossed as I was while reading Earley’s fiction, I still enjoyed his writing throughout the volume.

I’ve always been having a bit of trouble spotting the decline that’s supposedly been upon Malazan for quite some time. Now, having read the supposed nadir of the series, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just an atypical Malazan fan, because Toll the Hounds blew me away. From a plot standpoint, it’s hard to argue that it’s a particularly good novel, being primarily concerned with fragmentary tangents and only coalescing after quite a bit of pages have passed, but the excellent prose and – yes, I’m going to say it – wisdom of Erikson’s words (I have a full three thousand words of quotes from the novel, which is, needless to say, slightly above the average) make up for that and then some.

Anansi Boys was a lightning fast read that made the tiring business of air travel go by in a flash. Like Neverwhere, the easiness of the read belies the power of its themes and the depths of the characterization found here. I’ve got to admit it: Gaiman is just as good as everyone says he is, and I can’t wait to get into more of his work.

Though undeniably the most bloated of the trilogy, The Naked God had me enthralled right up until the end. Which was even worse than I’d expected. All of which will be, of course, elaborated on in my review on Tuesday.

Hutton has a great sense of the rhythms and flow of speech, but I ran into problems with the play when, after the first act, I wanted to slap both of the characters, one for being pedantic and arrogant, the other for being…well, just arrogant. That combined with the hard to understand, and harder to forgive, colossal mishearing in the final act caused Last Train to Nibroc to not work for me, though it would, I don’t doubt, be different when performed.

I had high expectations for Banquet for the Damned after reading Apartment 16, and I’m glad to say that it lived up to them. Nevill’s debut is a balanced blend of classic and modern horror, with the strengths of both well intact. My review of the novel is forthcoming.

As I said when discussing Crime and Punishment, I just don’t think there’s much I can add here in the way of insight that hasn’t been said before, so I’m not really going to try. On a personal level, this was a bit of a revelation, as I can finally see why Shakespeare is so revered. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed both Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, but Hamlet feels like it’s on another level entirely from both of those.