REVIEW: Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

Equal Rites 
by Terry Pratchett

“She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.” 

I'm sorry this is going to be a bit of a slapdash review of a book that is fading in my memory. Grad School has taken up all of my writing brain power.

So, Equal Rites. A wizard finds a blacksmith (who is a seventh son) whose wife is about to give birth to a seventh child. He bequeaths his powers to the child and dies before anyone informs him it is a girl. There has never been a female wizard before, and Granny Weatherwax, the no-nonsense village witch, is determined there never will be. Wizard and witch magic are too different. Wizard magic is all about flashy power and equations and making things happen. Witch magic is about rhythms and nature and asking for things to happen. Women shouldn't be wizards, just as men should not be witches. So Granny Weatherwax trains Esk (the girl) as a witch. Helped by the dead wizard's forcefully opinionated and loyal staff (the stick, not the group of people) Esk and Granny soon realize that wizardry might be Esk's only option if she wishes to not wreak havoc.

This book had all of Pratchett's wit and charm with very little of his meandering. He pretty much kept with Esk and Granny's story, and their journey to Ank Morpork to the Unseen University, and their ensuing battles. I quite enjoyed its simplicity!

It actually seemed like a little story-let. You have the origin story, the journey to the magic school, and right when you think the training montage is going to begin, Pratchett drops the final battle on you.

I think I liked Granny Weatherwax's transformation more than Esk's. Granny starts out very set in her ways, thinking cities were dens of iniquity, and always wearing black simple clothes. After a while, she begins to loosen up, and then ends up having the most fantastic battle of them all! Very Sword in the Stone. And her ensuing relationship with her opponent is one of the delights of the book.

Esk, and her compatriot Simon, have a weird, metaphysical, philosophical final battle that I still don't completely understand. About how not using magic is the real magic. No idea.

Any Granny Weatherwax fans should definitely read it, though! This is her first appearance in the Discworld series.

REVIEW: The Magician King by Lev Grossman

The Magician King

by 

Lev Grossman

“Quentin had an obsolete sailing ship that had been raised from the dead. He had psychotically effective swordsman and an enigmatic witch-queen. It wasn't the Fellowship of the Ring, but then again he wasn't trying to save the world from Sauron, he was trying to perform a tax audit on a bunch of hick islanders…” 

The Magician King pretty much picks up where The Magicians left off. Quentin and his friends are kings and queens of Narnia-- I mean Fillory. Everything is pretty much perfect, and there is not much for them to do. Quentin longs for adventure, but the best he can come up with is an unnecessary trip to collect back taxes from an island territory. From there, the book is basically The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, with some side excursions and the mysterious Julia (self taught witch friend of Quentin)'s back story woven in.

Well, Lev Grossman does his brilliant and frustrating thing again. He lets the story meander leisurely. There are some frustrations along the way, but nothing too big. People live their lives. You come to love them, and the world they inhabit. You know something horrible is going to happen because that is what Grossman does. However, in this book it takes so long for something horrible to happen that you think, maybe this time it won't! You come to love the natural rhythms of the story, and accept the Narnian logic of things. And then within the last 100 pages, he takes everything you love, locks it in a house, and burns it to the ground. Metaphorically speaking. And damn it, it is satisfying.

It differs from The Magicians in a few ways, though. First, Quentin is no longer a dick. He has grown up into a decent person, still a little haunted by the events of the last book. Second, Julia (a minor character in the first book) comes into her own in this incredible journey of power, addiction, and transcendence as she teaches herself the magic denied to her when she failed the Brakebills exam in the last book. Third, Grossman seems to trust in Fillory just a bit more. It really comes into its own as Narnia, the land you love and long for, rather than a cardboard cut parody of Narnia. The scenes where Quentin is sailing on the ship are saturated with peace mixed with salty adventure, exactly what you wish for in a Fillory adventure.

It really takes a long time for Grossman to pull the rug out from under you, but when it happens he nails you not once, not twice, but three times in quick succession. Just when you think everything is safe (though you have a small voice telling you it might have been too easy) he will get you, but never in a way that you expect.  The ending is desolating and painful, but strangely right. Almost like Eustace scratching away at his dragon skin to become a new man in Dawn Treader. 

Another brilliant book from Grossman. I can't wait for the third!

REVIEW: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

by Ransom Riggs

“And that is how someone who is unusally susceptible to nightmares,night terrors, the Creeps, the Willies, and the Seeing Things That Aren't Really There talks himself into making one last trip to the abandoned, almost-certainly-haunted house where a dozen or more children met their untimely end.” 

Jacob grew up listening to his grandfather's stories about how he escaped the war in Europe and hid from monsters in an idyllic home for children with strange powers. As he got older, he started to realize that there was probably no such thing as girls who could levitate, or boys who could pick up giant rocks, or the mysterious caretaker of the house, "The Bird" - Miss Peregrine. Or child-eating monsters with tentacles coming out of their mouths. He distanced himself from his grandfather and ignored his desperate phone calls, blaming it on senility... until his grandfather ends up brutally murdered, and Jacob sees a glimpse of a monster disappearing into the dark woods. After many visits to a therapist, Jacob embarks on a quest to find the house, find Miss Peregrine, and get some answers. He gets more than he bargained for. 

I have a problem with expectations. I expected that this book would scare me shitless. That it would be full of thrills and chills, and that I would not be able to sleep. Like a weird mix of X-Men and the Woman in Black. That is not at all what this book is, and I was kind of disappointed. 

Don't get me wrong, this is a great first book for Riggs! He has some fun prose, like "The sky was the color of a new bruise." The beginning is fantastic, setting up his listless life, the shock and horror of his grandfather's murder, and the aftermath where everyone thinks he is crazy. I love his initial investigations when he sleuths around the Welsh island. I got some minor thrills when he is exploring the dark, musty ruins of what once was Miss Peregrine's Home, trying to solve the mystery of their fate, while hoping their ghosts did not kill him in the process. The last 50 pages are chock full of thrills, murder, monsters and bombs. 

However, (spoilers) he discovers the pocket of endless summer that is "the loop," an idyllic haven for the peculiar children who are now in their 80s, but eternally in children's bodies, still approaching the world as children. This was less satisfactory for me than if their was some element of Claudia from Interview with a Vampire in there. Fun, fucked-up psychology of an 80 year old trapped in a child's body. Anyway, this is where the story stops dead for me. They go swimming, and fall in love, and yes there are interesting characters to be introduced to, and lots of explaining, but other than that, not much happens for a good 100 pages. 

One interesting fact about the book is that all the photographs are real. He pulled them out of archives, yard sales, and personal collections. Sometimes I felt he was writing to justify the picture's presence in the book, but other times they creepily supported and expanded upon the text. 

It is a charming book (which is not what I expected to say about it), and a well-written first part of a series. At least it reads that way. I hope there are more books coming that can get into the guts of the action, mystery and horror without the weight of exposition. 

I said the same thing about the last book. Am I growing impatient?

Regardless, here is the awesome book trailer:

And here is the making of the book trailer:

ARCHIVED REVIEW: The Name of the Wind (7/18/11)

The Name of the Wind

by Patrick Rothfuss

"It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story." 

This was one of those books that everyone told me that I should read, and that I would love. And they were right! But it was not what I expected at all.

The book intrigued me from the first page, a beautiful poetic construction which I won't spoil here. It begins with our hero as a humble innkeeper, trying to keep his head down. When trouble comes to him, I expected the story to explode, as he throws off his disguise and goes off to kick some evil ass. However that is not what happens. A Chronicler comes and the innkeeper, Kvothe, tells his life story.

It has all my favorite elements, a childhood in a group of traveling players, meeting an old arcanist (scientistwizard) and learning from him, urchin-ing on the streets of a city, going to a scientistwizard university. Training montages galore! He develops into a resourceful, powerful wizard with a flare for showmanship and a disregard for authority. He therefore becomes the most notorious arcanist in the region! At times, it seemed like the book should be titled "How to Succeed in Arcanist University Without Really Trying."

With brief moments of shock and excitement, it is actually a very leisurely narrative. Yes, bad things happen, and in the first half of the book, life sucks for him. But by the second half, you know he'll get out of trouble through sheer dumb luck and cockiness. And he does. Every time. I almost wished something would blow up in his face once in a while. And I think it will, but that is for another book.

His female characters intrigue me. They are idealistic in the best sense of the word. These women are beautiful, funny, brave, and intelligent, and I want to be all of them. However, they have very few flaws. And there are so many women with whom he has a close relationship, that you have no idea who he will end up with. My hope is that he will get together with the delicate, elf-like, potentially-a-student-gone-mad girl who lives in the tunnels under the university and has a delightful way of looking at the world.

Often what struck me the most was his descriptions of love or women. I'll leave you with two examples, as they speak for themselves:

"My parents danced together, her head on his chest. Both had their eyes closed. They seemed so perfectly content. If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you're lucky. Even if it only lasts for a minute or a day. The image of them gently swaying to the music is how I picture love in my mind even after all these years."

"You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while."

All in all, it is an entertaining and well-written story, but, again, it read like the first half of a book. Actually, it reads like he ran out of paper, realized he had already written 662 pages and was only partially through the story, so he tacked on an ending and started Volume II. Which I am looking forward to immensely.

This story ends with them still in the inn, having told part of the life story. I am hoping the next book will have at least mentioned a king, if not killed him (as it is called the King Killer Chronicles), and I hope Kvothe will stop telling us about his life and start doing something about the demon spiders that threaten his town. Maybe even go fight the Big Bad evil. Something to get him out of the house.

If you liked this book, you may like:

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

ARCHIVED REVIEW: The Magicians (1/4/11)

The Magicians

by Lev Grossman

"For just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever." 

— Lev Grossman (The Magicians)

From the back of the book: "Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A high school math genius, he's secretly fascinated with a series of children's fantasy novels set in a magical land called Fillory, and real life is disappointing by comparison. When Quentin is unexpectedly admitted to an elite, secret college of magic, it looks like his wildest dreams may have come true. But his newfound powers lead him down a rabbit hole of hedonism and disillusionment, and ultimately to the dark secret behind the story of Fillory. The land of his childhood fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined..."

This was an excellent book for both die-hard, old-school honor-and-glory fantasy and for the modern urban fantasy cynics. It is stuffed to the gills with winks and nods to Narnia, Harry Potter,and a little sprinkling of the Wizard of Oz. Its both an homage to and a satire of these idyllic fantasy worlds. It examines the real consequences of what would happen if you take a depressed angsty teenager and give him incredible power, and then set him out in the world where there are no epic battles to fight, no quest to follow.

The Brakebills school section is charming and intricate. Magic is hard and complex and yet there is still the college atmosphere of late night drinking with a tight gang of friends, and warm days of doing nothing. There are dark threads that hint at the corrosion and danger to come, but the Brakebills part could be its own separate book.

The post-college section feels like Hemingway, or F. Scott Fitzgerald, about the now-graduated students, a group of young people who have all the power and money in the world but no direction. They inevitably spiral into sex, drugs, and self-loathing.

And then suddenly, out of the blue, one of them discovers their way into Fillory: the magical land of their childhood dreams. They will go on a quest and becomes kings and queens! Surely it will make all their hurt and meanness melt away, and they will become their better selves in the presence of Ember and Umber, the magical ram gods (Aslan in sheep's clothing). But Fillory is not like the books. Well, it is, but think about the paragraph long description of a battle in the Chronicles of Narnia, and what it is actually like to be there, to kill something, and to watch your friends die. Reading about it is a lot easier than doing it.

In Fillory, Quentin has to go through a crucible of spirit, and in the end, you are not sure if he is truly whole or healed, or even if he is on the right track. But you hope so, and you want to see what happens next.

Luckily, the sequel comes out this summer!

If you liked this, you may like:

The Chronicles of Narnia

Harry Potter

The Wizard of Oz