owlmoose | Entries tagged with speculative fiction challenge

This is one of those books I've been meaning to read for many years, because it's a book about cats and what's not to love about that? But I never got any specific recommendations for it, so I never got motivated until now.

It was good. Not earthshaking, but enjoyable. It's a first novel, and it shows -- I found the writing in the Otherland series to be much more polished, and the ending is pretty much telegraphed with a microphone -- but there are enough twists on the epic quest formula that it kept me engaged, and I thought the depiction of cats and other animals was spot on. ("Rikchikchik" is such an awesome word for squirrel, I can't even tell you how much I love that.)

And with that, my participation in the Speculative Fiction Challenge comes to a close. One book I loved, three I really enjoyed, one I'm glad I read so I can say that I read it, and one that I love to hate (and one that I was finally able to get rid of without finishing and with a clear conscience). I'd say I did pretty well. Now, back to the to-read pile!

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: "Quartet" - Chess (Orchestra Version)

I have always been intruiged by the Arthurian legends, and by all the stories that derived from them. So when I was pulling together a list of fantasy books to read, I thought this would be a good time to finally sit down and read The Once and Future King. I have a feeling that I picked it up several times when I was younger but never got around to actually trying to read it -- it wasn't at all familiar, and it's pretty heavy going, so even if I started it I probably didn't get very far. This time I made it through. But it was something of a slog.

This book was published in several parts, and it shows. The first segment, a fairy tale about Merlin's education of young Arthur and his eventual coronation as king, is lighter than the rest, both in tone and in prose. The second "book" (there are four), shifts into seriousness so suddenly that it's almost jarring, although the story of King Pellinore, which is woven throughout, is more like the first. Then we get to the third book, the longest of the four by far and almost entirely about Lancelot, to the point that I would argue that he's the main character of book as a whole, even more so than Arthur. All the shifts in tone and in viewpoint give the book a somewhat jerky feel -- I was never really able to lose myself in it. This was exacerbated by T.H. White use of Arthur and his time as a metaphor for World War II (the first three books were published in 1939-40; the last didn't appear until 1958). A good percentage of the book is given over to discussions of war, violence, questions of right and wrong, and the use of force. There's a whole chapter in the second book that's basically a socratic dialogue among Arthur, Merlin, and Sir Kay about the question of just war. But it's not just the characters who have these discussions; White inserts them in the narrator's voice throughout, even in the lighter segments of the first book. (One of the most memorable: a discussion of feudalism, and why that system really wasn't so bad. No, seriously.) Between all the philosophical ramblings and the long segments of story told via indirect narration, the book reads more like a textbook than a fantasy story.

Another thing that bothered me throughout the book was the timeline. Most writers set stories about King Arthur at around the time the Romans left Great Britain. But White pulls everything forward by several centuries, setting Uther Pendragon's reign during or around the time of William the Conquerer. (The timeline is weird, though, because Merlin refers to Uther as "The Conquerer" more than once, implying that Uther led the Norman invasion, but in later segments, William the Conquerer is also brought up.) Robin Hood is a character in the first book, and the resulting mish-mash of English legend didn't sit well with me at all. Otherwise, the story follows what I know of Arthur's story pretty closely. White assumes that his readers have also read Malory (which also adds to the textbook feel), so he skims over quite a lot. As it happens, I haven't read Le Morte d'Arthur but I know enough of the basics from reading other books that I was always able to follow along.

So, not my favorite book, but now at least I can say I've read it. If you're looking for a good Arthurian yarn, I'd recommend the Mary Stewart version, or The Mists of Avalon (even if MZB's "Christianity bad, paganism good" refrain gets heavy-handed), or my favorite retelling by far, Queen of Camelot by Nancy McKenzie.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: "Triad" - Enya

It's hard to know what to say about this book beyond heaping superlatives on it.

But I guess I have to try, so. The easiest way to describe this book is to compare it to the Arabian Nights: a girl is held captive (by a curse, in this case), and the only way for her to save herself is by telling stories. She lives in the palace garden, and a boy who lives in the palace is the audience for her tales. That's the framework; the meat of the book is the stories she tells. And what stories: each tale contains a dozen others, stories within stories so intricately that I'm amazed at how well it holds together. Each character in the main story has its own story to tell, and often there are other stories within that story, nested four or five layers deep. It sounds confusing now that I try to explain it, but it's really not like that when you're reading it -- Valente holds each thread with great care, weaving them together into a seamless tapestry.

The prose is gorgeous and rich. In the hands of a less capable writer, it might have turned too purple, but Valente skirts the edge perfectly. It helps that the lush, dense language suits the story very well; it adds to the mythic atmosphere.

Thumbs way, way up. I recommend this book to anyone. And everyone.

Current Mood: enthralled
Current Music: "Home" - Barenaked Ladies

I did something that I almost never do. I opened a book, I started reading it, and I put it down with no intention of ever picking it up again.

I don't quite finish every book I start, but normally that happens because I set it aside for something new that's come along, and I never get around to finishing. It's rare for me to make a conscious decision that I'm not going to give the book a chance to change my mind. But every instinct told me that the book was not worth my time. Sixty pages of densely written and confusing set up, it was failing both the Bechdel Test and the Frank Miller Test, I had no sympathy for anyone I'd met, and none of the mysteries were at all compelling.

So out it goes, into the "to sell" box. And good riddance.

As far as the reading challenge goes, I have sought and received permission to make a substitution. Now I will be reading The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente. I picked it up at the bookstore yesterday and just barely started it, but I can already tell that I made the right decision.

Current Mood: good
Current Music: "The Bridge of Khazad Dum" - LoTR:FTR Soundtrack

I actually got this book when I went to WonderCon with SE earlier this year, at the Borderlands booth. I had been browsing, and I idly picked it up, and the salesperson pounced on me with a strong, strong recommendation. Normally I'm put off by pushy salespeople, but something about his recommendation grabbed me, so I bought it. And then it sat on my to-read pile for a long time. True confession: I signed up for the Speculative Fiction challenge at least in part so that I would finally get around to reading it.

Well, I'm really glad I did, because this is easily one of the best books I've read this year.

The basic premise is that the world (our world; the book is set in modern-day Moscow) is populated by Others -- people with magical powers. All magic comes from either Darkness or Light, and all Others are predisposed to one or the other. The Night Watch keeps an eye on the powers of Darkness, and the Day Watch monitors the powers of Light. The protagonist is a Night Watch agent named Anton, who gets sucked into an epic battle between Good and Evil. This all sounds like the set up to a fairly cut and dried story, but it's not at all; the book raises all kinds of questions about morality and free will and what it means to be human, and I found it to be fantastically complex. Anton is a great character, and the supporting cast is well-rounded as well.

The book is translated from Russian, and there are a few places where the wording is clunky or awkward, but overall the language is pretty seamless. Given that the prose is smoother than several books I've recently read that were written in English, I find it hard to complain much.

Anyway, definitely recommended. Now I'll have to pick up the other two in the series.

( Very mild spoiler for something that happens in the prologue. )

Current Mood: good
Current Music: "It's Good to be in Love" (live version) - Frou Frou

I will be perfectly honest -- I would probably never have picked up this book on my own. I added it to my challenge list because

bottle_of_shine asked me to, because she wanted my take on it. I have a take, all right.

First off, this is an incredibly quick read. I opened it while waiting for the train to take me to the airport on Friday afternoon and finished it in the San Diego airport yesterday, and it's not as though I had a ton of time to read this weekend. It's faced-paced and a page turner, and I did find myself drawn in, wanting to know what happened next, invested in some of the characters. But oh, the characters.

( Mildly spoilery commentary and ranting. )

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: old eps of "Friends" in the background

I've gotten out of the habit of reading hard sci-fi. I read a lot of it in high school and college (as much as I read a lot of anything in college) because my dad and then my friends were fans of the genre, and although I enjoy reading it, I'm really more of a fantasy girl. But then, a few weeks ago R was talking about this book as though it were something that he assumed that I'd read, and when I admitted I hadn't, he recommended it highly. I bought a copy, and then I gave it to T because I was reading something else and he was complaining about not having anything to read. Then he finished it, and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to read something he'd read recently and picked it up.

I liked it, quite a lot, and would easily recommend it to science fiction fans, a little more cautiously to eveyone else. Vinge throws you into the story without a whole lot of preamble or even exposition -- the reader is left to figure out the universe's technology and backstory on their own, which I found an intriguing exercise for the most part but occasionally it was a little frustrating; there are things about the science that I still don't understand. But it's a compelling story, both on the "universe in peril" level and on the "what will happen to these characters I've come to know and love?" level. It's a thoughtful look at what an interstellar society might look like several hundred thousand years from now, and it presents one of the most fascinating alien races that I've ever encountered in science fiction; I hesitate to say too much, because figuring out what was up with them was an excellent "A-ha!" moment, but if anyone else has read it and would like to discuss in comments, I'm more than game.

Current Mood: good
Current Music: Beethoven - "Moonlight Sonata"

I've never done one of these before, but this one a) looks interesting, b) is being run by a friend, and c) will force me to clear some things off my to-read pile.

Speculative Fiction Challenge: Read six works of speculative fiction between now and Apri 1, 2008.

My list:

Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
Nightwatch by Sergei Lukyanenko
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
Noir by K.W. Jeter
The Once & Future King by T.H. White
Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams

Four books that have been sitting around my house for awhile (years, in one case), one that I've been meaning to read forever, and one that's just come to my attention. (Guess which is which?)

In theory, I'll also write about each of these, but since that's gone so well in the past :P I make no promises.

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters" - Moby