The Wise Man's Fear: The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day Two, by Patrick Rothfuss (2011)

A couple of months ago, I was talking to one of my friends about how it would be nice to read some whimsical escapist fiction as the world economy crumbled. Heroes fighting along clearly-defined roles of good and evil might take away some of the ambiguities surrounding global politics and financial policies. Some sort of Indiana Jones or James Bond of the fantasy world. After a week, my friend handed me The Name of the Wind. This is its sequel.


The Facts
Length: 994 pages.
Publisher: DAW Books, Inc.
This is Rothfuss's second novel. It is part two of three.

Quick Summary
His name is Kvothe.

Okay, okay. Sorry. There's more to it, but that sentence seems to capture this series perfectly. The story is told in two parts: the overarching frame (third person) includes a character by the name of the Chronicler recording the life story of the mysterious and powerful Kvothe, lying low as an innkeeper after faking his death. The main storyline concerns itself with the actual past itself (first person); the "interludes" into the present are short, merely spanning a couple chapters at the beginning, the end, and a couple in-between. As well, Wise Man's Fear takes place in a sword-and-complicated-spells world, so watch out if the fantasy genre makes you sick. That said, I only noted a couple of times when generic high fantasy writing intruded unexpectedly.

The Bad
Rothfuss needs his editor to watch dialogue more closely. In the dialogue, it's not infrequent for a character to say something like, "I'm sorry Bast." Note the lack of a comma after "sorry"? I do. It happens often enough for it to be a problem, and it drags me out of my immersion.

The second thing I tended to notice more after it was pointed out by a friend of mine. I was telling him how great this series was becoming, specifically after Kvothe spends time in the Fae. This friend told me he had heard it was a good series, but the author tended to Mary Sue a lot of the sex scenes. And it's true. Kvothe is a virgin until the Fae, but after that he seems to entrance the female folk with a wave of his arm or a smile behind his beard. And then he simply leaves, no better or worse off. I suppose the author attempts to taint this with the knowledge that Kvothe might not be the most reliable narrator (there are snippets when we learn Kvothe fails almost as much as he succeeds), but it still bugs me, and wore on the realism of the text.

With that in mind, it might also be necessary for me to point out something that only struck me when reading the second novel in this trilogy. Kvothe astounds everyone with his intelligence and resourcefulness. But he starts to gain diminishing returns on episodes of profound skill. When reading the first book, I was simply awed; now, however, I find myself asking (note: perhaps rarely), "Really, Kvothe? You've enchanted and befriended these people, too?" I mean, hey. Kvothe is still one of the coolest cats around. But does his one-upmanship ever get old? Maybe.

At least he could beat the snot outta that Potter kid.

The Good
Finally. I've been waiting to get to this part. Because frankly, I loved this book. It's 900+ pages and there wasn't a lull in the whole novel. I love the whole basis of the first-person fantasy novel. I love the stress of poverty Kvothe goes through (if you've ever been scrambling for simply a dollar, you'll be able to relate). Kvothe as a young man (rather than a boy, as in the first novel) is incredibly fun to read about, and his skill with magic and Calling the Wind and his decimation of an entire troop of bandits is, well, just amazing.

What makes this book truly great, however, is perhaps the shadow of the overarching plot: Kvothe as innkeeper. You'll notice this about me, perhaps: I'm drawn to the absolutely broken characters. And present Kvothe is exactly this. He'll tell a wild story of how he's charmed the God of Desire, called down lightning and used a body for a link, and learned the remarkably effective fighting style and philosophy of the mysterious Adem.

And then, in the "real world", he'll get beaten to a bloody pulp by two thugs.

It's strange, and sad, and it simply makes me want to read more. Is Kvothe an unreliable narrator - did he actually accomplish his feats, or merely hope to? Is he only fabricating this story? Was there ever a Kvothe, or only an innkeeper who could spin a tale?

Or did something darker happen to him? He's lost his ability to use sympathy; he's lost his ability to fight. And the worst part is - after he tells his tale and you're pumped up on how awesome Kvothe is, he starts to believe it, too. But it's all a lie: he's lost something, and the only thing he gets back from telling this story is a false hope that he can find it again.

So he gets robbed, and the faith is shaken once more.

Final Thoughts
Like Super Sad True Love Story, this one won't keep you bored. I burned through this book incredibly fast. It is, frankly, an artistically beautiful premise, and I can't wait the four or so years it'll take Rothfuss to write the final segment. Seriously.

Arbitrary Score: 4.4 out of 5.

Next book: Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart (2006)



Special Note: Although the image for this novel included "A Novel" in the lower left-hand corned, it seems my actual copy substitutes the above for "The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day Two." They're finally learning! ;_;

Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart (2010)

[I feel so completely computer illiterate right now. The original blog post reviewing this novel was overwritten and lost to the seas of the world wide web. I apologize. In lieu of a full-out rewrite, I'm just going to tell you to check it out.]

Arbitrary Score: 4.0 out of 5. 

Sorry, Short Fans...

Won't be getting around to reviewing Apricot Jam, like I promised. Got halfway through before giving up on it and moving on to Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart (2010) - which I most definitely will be reviewing next.

Not sure what I was expecting when I started Apricot, but it ain't as recent as I was lead to believe (from where I decided to read it, I'm not so sure). Solzhenitsyn originally published these short stories in 1994 when he returned to Russia; this collection, then, is a recently published translation - hence the 2011 publishing date. S. died in 2008.

My most honest excuse was that I was given a glimpse into the world of Shteyngart's Absurdistan (which I'll hopefully be reviewing at a later date) before embarking on Apricot Jam, and I was driven out of my skull with boredom. Some of them have interesting premises that ultimately go nowhere, but the influx of names and ranks - never explained - just boggled my mind.

If you like reading about the failure of the Soviet state, or have heard of The Gulag Archipelago, definitely check it out. As for me, I took a year-long course on Soviet history, so this isn't really anything new - well, in fact, most of the references I remembered from my University days are what sparked some lights in me, but...

...on to Shteyngart!

The Assassin's Song: A Novel, by M. G. Vassanji (2007)

I picked up The Assassin's Song while waiting on other holds; a trip to the library, a walk through the small fiction section, and a cover that isn't unbearably terrible resulted in my next subject of review. Vassanji has won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, one of Canada's most prestigious fiction awards, twice, so I figured it'd be at least better than Cross Currents. This novel was, apparently, shortlisted for the aforementioned prize.


The Facts
Length: 314 pages.
Publisher: Doubleday Canada.
This is Vassanji's sixth novel.

Quick Summary
This novel is told from the first-person perspective of Indian-born Karsan Dargawalla, heir to the Shine of the Wanderer, which his father reigns over. Karsan forsakes his eternal and holy duty by escaping to America, and later Canada, but the death of his father forces him to return in middle-age to reconsider his path. Most of the novel is told through flashbacks and moves between three narratives: the surreal, medieval India of Nur Fazal, the Wanderer; the childhood of Karsan, beginning in the 60's; and present-day (2002) Karsan, returning home.

The Good
Reading legitimately good writing after Cross Currents was a sigh of relief, especially because I had never heard of Vassanji before (supposedly, one of Canada's current top writers) and this was a blind pick off the shelf. The story starts of slowly, without any real primary conflict or action. Antagonism is found, hesitantly, in the presence of a police officer, investigating the whereabouts of Karsan's brother, but even Karsan's relationship with the officer isn't directly oppositional. As Karsan delves deeper into his own reflections, the story picks up; I found myself reading in larger increments as I continued throughout the novel (this might be less pleasant than it sounds: in the later half of the novel, Karsan has integrated himself almost completely into North American societal norms, whereas the first half is very much traditional religious India).

The Average
I'm hesitant to call anything about this book ugly, but maybe "average" better describes it. After I gave a friend a synopsis of the plot, she described it as a "story that's been told before." And she's right: the prodigal son returns to his pastoral home and serves as a symbol of a new and better future. And the worst part is that's about it. There's no real conflict or passion; the "hesitant antagonist" switches between the police officer looking for the brother, and the brother himself (resentful of, it seems, everything). Karsan and his brother do not reconcile. Karsan's own thoughts on the Shrine are unclear, even at the end of the novel. Karsan has moved from one romance to nothing, and there's hope for another, but that plays at the edges as well. The story feels unfinished.

There is a secondary plot. It revolves around the "secret" of Nur Fazal's identity. But it's swept almost completely under the rug for most of the novel, and only pokes its head during the final pages. Compared to the life story Karsan's just told, the revelation seems unfounded, unimportant, and annoyingly out of place. I'm still unsure what Vassanji was trying to do with it, and if can be any way related back to the main storyline. Is his brother the Spiritual Avatar of Nur Fazal? Or is Karsan? Why did you title your book The Assassin's Song, Vassanji? Why are the final pages (perhaps the most important) dedicated to this subject?

The Ugly
Subtitle.


The Good
Aged Karsan makes a great "Man Who Has Lost Everything." That's becoming an archetype, isn't it?

Final Thoughts
If Indian history for the past 40 or so years is an interest to you, then this book deserves at least a look, especially regarding Muslim-Hindu violence. Vassanji has a calming, traditional writing style, but perhaps that drives his plot into the realm of forgetfulness.

Arbitrary Score: 2.8 out of 5.

Next book: Apricot Jam, and Other Stories, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (2011)

Cross Currents: A Novel, by John Shors (2011)

I think I found this the same place I found Lawrenson's novel The Lantern: within Vancouver Public Library's (VPL) "New Fiction" lists, the likes of which I scour when I run out of novels to read. God, don't I learn?


The Facts
Length: 317 pages.
Publisher: New American Library.
This is Shors's fifth novel.

Quick Summary
Rotational third-person point-of-view on the various inhabitants of Ko Phi Phi Island. American Patch is on the run from the law and hides out at a resort of Lek and Sarai, trading room and board for badly needed skilled labour. However, Patch's brother Ryan (and Ryan's girlfriend Brooke) travel to the island in order to persuade Patch to turn himself into the authorities. In the midst of the 2006 Boxing Day Tsunami, however, the characters reveal their true selves (barf). The story is told in chapters, which describe each individual day leading up to the Tsunami.

The Bad
Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. This book is - extremely juvenile in its character development and plot. Somewhere in the middle of the novel I wagered on who would eventually perish in the Tsunami; I ended up being 100% right. I was never sure what the hell Conservative Ryan was doing with Liberal Brooke in the first place, and obviously Brooke would fall in love with equally Liberal Patch (Patch and Brooke never disagree on anything; their soulmate compatibility is disgusting). One character goes on and on about how things will be, hypothetically, when she eventually dies; I think you can properly guess what happens to her.

The writing is almost amateurish. "Watching her grin, Ryan thought about the differences between them. Their histories were as varied as water and sand. And yet, they were also connected."

Gross.

The Good?
Ok, ok, ok. So I was able to finish it, which must mean something, right? Two things I want to point out that I at least found decent about the entire novel (thanks for the subtitle, by the way): the recent reality of the tsunami, and Ryan's relationship with Dao. Like I said with The Lantern, it was refreshing to read about something real and present which I had witnessed during my lifetime. I wish Shors had somehow described it in greater detail. Perhaps wisely, the descriptions of the imminent chaos and destruction are given to the reader in a chaotic fashion; I had no idea what the hell was going on when the tsunami hit the characters. Does Ryan swim from one side of the island to the other? Where does all the blackness come from? Where does he tear his leg? I wasn't sure if it was superb writing or if Shors just throwing everything at us at once, or maybe a little bit of both.

(Spoilers in the proceeding section)

Ryan's relationship with Dao also peaked my interest. The implications of Ryan's last wishes regarding Dao felt like they needed to be explored one more step: I wanted to see the look on Dao's face when Patch told her of Ryan's fate, and what that means, monetarily, for her future. Unfortunately, however, Shors ends the novel prematurely, focusing entirely on Patch's resolution to change his ways and his own nascent romance with Brooke. We never get to see Dao's reaction to Ryan's death, nor her reaction to his gift for her education (such a large financial gift would've seemed inappropriate to me, considering Dao and Ryan had known each other for little under a week). It's disappointing because it would've been new, unlike the old rehashed crap most of this novel turned out to be.

The Ugly
I'm going to keep saying it until this practice stops. The subtitle. What the hell is up with publishers enforcing this redundancy?


The Bad
Previously, I mentioned my interest in the tsunami. I also mentioned how I at least got through this novel. The truth is, folks, that most of the reason I kept reading was because I wanted most of these characters to be wiped off the face of the planet, so I wouldn't have to keep reading the same old "We're poor!" dialogue from Lek and Sarai or "We're meant for each other!" dialogue from Patch and Brooke. And the 2006 Tsunami was a tragic natural disaster with heartbreaking consequences. Which makes me feel wretched for wishing it would've happened sooner in the novel's timeline.

Final Thoughts
Don't read it. Chick lit which is so chick lit it's almost making fun of itself. No character ever changes their philosophy, so it feels like they are simply driving into a great brick wall of terrible, repetitive dialogue. I'm frankly surprised this is Shors' fourth novel, but I mean, hey. At least his heart is in the right place, right?

Arbitrary Score: 0.5 out of 5.

Next book: The Assassin's Song: A Novel*, by M. G. Vassanji (2007)

*Really!?

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman (2008)

I'm going to let you know right now that I'm a fan of Gaiman. My friend introduced me to Neverwhere when I was just entering adulthood, and has since remained one of my favorite novels. His short story "Other People", found in his collection Fragile Things, is short, bitter, fantastical, and human (like all things Gaiman), and is one of the best short stories I've had the pleasure to read. But I had yet to read Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, and since it was one of his more recent works, I placed the library hold almost as soon as I remembered it existed.


The Facts
Length: 307 pages.
Publisher: HarperCollins.
This is Gaiman's eighth novel in Young Adult Fiction.

Quick Summary
Cryptic man Jack (the name "man Jack" is kept up throughout the novel; if you've read Gaiman before, you'll notice he likes this kind of repetition) kills an entire family except the baby, who climbs to apparent safety inside a graveyard. The inhabitants of this place - dead witches, dead doctors, dead teachers, werewolves, vampires, et cetera - protect the child, Nobody "Bod" Owens, through his journey towards adulthood. The novel is told of a kind of vignette/chapter-style breaking up of things; it reminded me of T.H.White's The Sword in the Stone.

The story is told in third-person.

The Good
What isn't good? Gaiman manages to get creepy correct right in the first few lines of the novel. The man Jack's just torn through Nobody's family, but it's the knife wielded that gets all the attention (it "had done almost everything it was brought to that house to do, and both the blade and the handle were wet"). The reality of the murder just gets me - an entire family decimated before the novel even began.

Gaiman seems to capture reality through unreality - working through the realm of fantasy and myth and half-remembered dreams in order to write about something we all feel. I mean, who doesn't fall in love with the ghost-witch Liza Hempstock, in all her plainness, and feel the pain when the romance between her and Nobody can never really develop?

Hell, I still get texts from ghosts.

The Questionable
Gaiman definitely has set out his realm, and through that, somewhat of a style. And the thing is he never really changes. Fantasy/reality (Gaiman is the version of the "magical realism" genre, or fantastical reality, or whatever) is where he rests. It's a great style, but there's a little lack of surprise that I find myself wanting. Maybe I just haven't read enough Gaiman.

On a related note, another thing I wasn't too keen on were the antagonists. The shadowy organisation of ne'er-do-wellers just seems rather blank and flat. The main man Jack doesn't change at all - he's still the same at the end of the novel as he is in the beginning, albeit with white hair instead of black. Furthermore, he's easily fooled: the first chapter highlights his nonchalance at murder, but then almost makes a fool out of him when he loses, of all things, a baby. I remembered, when I was reading, the commentary from Joss Whedon during the Serenity film - he had deleted a scene because he felt like he was making too much of an idiot organisation of "The Alliance." I felt Whedon's words here. The Knaves are intelligent and surprising and evil and ingenuousness, but you never see evidence of it.


The Good
It's tragic, really. The novel has a - whoops, spoilers - happy ending, as all YA fiction probably should, but throughout the novel there are two premises which Gaiman continually reminds us of: one, that Nobody's entire family has been brutally murdered, and two, that Bod, being "alive", can never be fully integrated into his graveyard home. He's stuck between two worlds. And sure, that's been done before, especially in YA fiction, but I haven't ever seen it as effectively delivered throughout the entire novel as in here.

It's haunting (pun intended).

Final Thoughts
Do you like Gaiman? Read it. Have you never read Gaiman before? Read it.
Are you tired of Gaiman? Don't. Does your child still not know what suicide, or murder is, and you don't feel like explaining? Don't (get it for them).

But all in all, it won't cost you much time. I read GB in just over a day. A quick read compared to what I'm used to - heavy Victorian lit - but still well worth the time, in my opinion.

Arbitrary Score: 4.0 out of 5.

Next book: Cross Currents, by John Shors (2011)

The Lantern: A Novel, by Deborah Lawrenson (2011)

A bit of a blind "buy" for me (thumbs up to local libraries). The only reason I know this book existed was because - I think - I found something about it on Vancouver Public Library recommendations, or a "New and Exciting Fiction" list somewhere. Tired, bored, and a bite curious, I decided to place it on hold.

The Facts
Length: 387 pages.
Publisher: HarperCollins.
This is Lawrenson's first novel.

Quick Summary
Protagonist "Eve" falls in love with the older Dom, and they move into a decaying but lovable house in a whirlwind romance. Set in Les Genévriers, France, in 2011, Eve soon suspects that Dom is hiding something about his former wife, whom he absolutely refuses to talk about, and Eve's idyllic romance soon shatters as winter descends.

Every chapter, the novel switches perspective to that of Bénédicte Lincel, a farmgirl born in 1925. Bénédicte takes us through her troubled relationship with her family, but the two narratives converge into one at the end of the novel.

The Bad
I think this might be "chick lit."

I've read maybe two novels that hands-down pandered almost entirely to female readers (I'm not including anything written in the Victorian era, viz. Brontë or Austen). One was about an ugly twin who was helping to piece together the disappearance of her more famous sister with the help of the latter's ex-husband, who also happened to have popped the former's cherry and is, in fact, her true love. The other was about something about a string of murders; anyway, the protagonist falls in love with the steamy cop next door. I never finished it. I got as far as I could in one beach day and then never read any of my mother's "summer reads" ever again. Entirely forgettable, but my mind was drawn back to them on the appearance of Dom, the mysterious and brooding Bluebeard of a romantic interest in The Lantern. He's got a dark past and Eve discovers inconsistencies in his life story. He refuses to talk about his ex-wife Rachel. His emotional highs often only showcase his boundless anger. His actions scream guilty, but we all know he's innocent. We've seen this guy before.

The Good
But before you chuck this book away, it has its moments. Published in 2011, it references "La Crise", the financial simmering that's been going on for the past three years. That took me by surprise (after all, I had just read Robinson Crusoe before this - modernity!? In my books!?). "La Crise" isn't a large portion of this novel, by any means, but it was still a relevant touch, especially in Eve and Dom's reaction to it.

The Questionable
I also found that Lawrenson did something I've never really seen before; she relies heavily on olfactory sensation to tell the story. One of the characters in the novel, for example, is Marthe Lincel, a blind perfume-maker (whose sense of smell has apparently increased with the decay of her sight, ala Daredevil). Because she's just so damn good at her calling, she can capture scents that other characters only subconsciously remember. But, like Bénédicte observes, it's almost impossible to pin down and describe scent. Frankly, I find that the theme of scent in The Lantern falls on its face (or nose!), perhaps for this very reason. But I've never stopped to smell the roses.

The Good
I loved the chilling, crime-scene Octoberish mood in The Lantern. Casual references by locals to "missing girls" never go unnoticed. Local hunters accidentally shoot joggers in the woods. Pierre, the brother to Bénédicte and Marthe, was freaky as shit (unfortunately, like Dom, perhaps a bit of a cliché). The fate of Bénédicte's father makes you wonder if the family is truly cursed, as rumored, or if there's some dark presence of human feeling at play, and which one is more frightening.

The Bad
The subtitle. I rage every time I see "A Novel."

Final Thoughts
I'd be hesitant to recommend this to readers used to crunching down on "finer" literature (Can you taste the elitism? Can you taste it?!). The story doesn't seem to be anything particularly new, and Dom's characterization as a watered-down Rochester leaves something to be desired. If I see Lawrenson again, however, she'd be a good enough writer to give a second glance. She definitely has the vocabulary (which, in my pea-brained head, seemed a tad overwhelming, at times - I mean "the effervescence of citrus zest"? What the hell?) of someone schooled in languages, and she did provoke thought on some more modern social developments (is Dom as morally "clean" as we might expect, after he reveals his full story? Where was the line in his dilemma?). I don't regret that I read it, but I wish there was more meat in it.

Arbitrary Score: 2.5 out of 5.


Next book: The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman (2008)

Thanks to...

The Creative Commons licensing at flickr. Photo of Vancouver Public Library by Kama Guezalova.

Testing the Waters.

Erg, this is nerve-wracking. Writing for an audience. Without, currently, anything to say. Only a small idea:

Writing about books. New books.

I was going to say literature, but the definitions of what is and what isn't literature have been debated enough elsewhere (English professors, book burners, 4chan's /lit/ board) that I feel like one can make his own decision on what is or what isn't good (I guess that's the implication of the word "literature", eh? That it's somehow worthwhile to read and not utter shit). I tend towards the view that anything that has multiple chapters is, for better or worse, literature. But I may eat those words.

This blog is inspired by an upcoming event: An Evening with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. Well, slightly. One of my good friends is quite the fan of the duo, and I've always been keen on Gaiman as a short story master, but I got to thinking that, well, other than Mr. Gaiman and Ms. Rowling, "modern" literature is something that goes a bit over my head. I know nothing of it.

(You'll find out, quite quickly, I really know nothing about a great deal).

And so I ask you to come along this journey with me. Now that I'm out of the bubble of school, I've found I can't get my hands on enough novels. I've actually read a substantial amount in only a couple of weeks. I don't think I've ever read any more in the same period of time. But for every "modern" book (I'm thinking within the last decade or so*) I read, I'll hope to post a little bit of information regarding what it was about, whether or not I found it a good read (and the dreaded why), and various other tidbits that possessed my brain in connection with it.

The first "real" post might not be up for a spell. I'm currently at the other end of the spectrum of the novel, reading Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Modern? It was one of the first novels ever published.

(And it shows. God, Defoe can't stop using commas.)

Until then, adieu.

*I'll probably be very relaxed in keeping up with this. Perhaps I should only require that the author of the title still be alive.