Book Review: Orfeo by Richard Powers

I'm Hearing the light from the window... 

 I'm Seeing the sound of the sea...  ~Michael Nesmith "Rio"

I've never read a book so in tune with what a musician feels, what he or she sees, when playing symbols from a page, contrasting the diaphragm, sounding the notes which would set angels to attention.  I've never read a book that says what it means to love music, to be enthralled with every passage of sound in one's life.  And never have I read a book that contains in its pages its own soundtrack.  But it's here, and it's here.

I don't think I have to say that any musician will love this book, as the division between someone who simply listens to music while jogging or cruising down the block and the person who hears the music, the notes fill up every corner of the air around him, has never been so aptly described.  I have often said that Mozart or Beethoven would weep and render their clothes asunder if they knew that their most famous works are now used as cell phone tones, heard in grocery stores as an irritant, rather than praises to God, or messages to Life, Death, and Time itself.  I want to grab the earplugs of the people around me and yank them out, saying, "Listen!! The music is all around you." Would they miss the trumpets of Gabriel for the autotuned babble of One Direction?

But this book contains all this, and a story as well.  It is the story of Peter Els, a prodigy child musician (on the Clarinet, no less), and an outcast from the rest of the social order, as he spends his time listening to music and seeing inside of the notes what Kant would have called the Noumenal World.  He sees the notes as the pure Forms, outside the cave, that other people can but dance to, shake their hips and gyrate.  (No, I see nothing of this person in me at all..............) He sees in mathematics the numerical order of the musical world, and in Chemistry, the underlying tones of the Universe.

But, alas, he is torn to choose between chasing after standing on the mountaintops and gazing out at Paradise and real life, love of a woman, and the constant pressures to understand to his professors' ideas of music theory in the Twentieth Century.  The book transitions back and forth between his life story, his past, the events of the 1940's on (reaching the present), and the point where the story begins, where FBI agents raid his home after finding potentially deadly homegrown bacteria.

Els becomes, perhaps, a mirror of Willie Loman, as well as the defiant character found in Faustian legend.  All bound together in a work of literature that may not ever get the acclaim it deserves.

I say this because a reader who is not a musician probably will have little patience with the verbal description of long works of music composition.  The reader will tire of little plot in the present and too much back story.  A reader not familiar with Post-Modern literature will not understand that the journey throughout the book, in time and mind, is the story worth telling.

I've told my own story about singing, about belting notes in my car, where no one could hear, of singing Art Garfunkel's "Skywriter" in the grocery store parking lot, late at night (and this was before the days of iPods and mp3 players, where every bagger is totally deaf to anything going on around them because they're too busy listening to the rot in their brains.) I've told why, even though, to my parents, I had a great voice, but never used it.  And I feel a kinship with Peter Els.  The last thing he wanted to do was to actually publish a work, and he hated every time he did it.  To face the criticism of the expression of the Music of the Spheres as Peter heard them, I wouldn't want to publish them either, but rather hold them close to my chest and hear the notes late at night, rotating around my room, illuminated by the lamp post outside.

Book Review: Safehold by David Weber

It is truly an astonishing sensation to be delivered into the playground of someone's mind.  To watch as the person takes the dough, shapes a world, creates everything in that world, molds it into existence.  In essence, he is emulating God.  I know I've used that idea many times, and it is no more true than reading David Weber's Safehold Series.  The first book is titled Off Armageddon Reef.  I actually purchased the audiobook a few years ago and just sat it on my shelf, never really getting around to it.  It languished there, moving from shelf to shelf just to get it out of the way of other books I collected and haven't read yet.  And then last year, when I needed something to keep me awake as I drove to Dallas, Texas to an interview, to begin a new chapter in my life, I brought along the 25 CD set and immersed myself in the scenery of the interstate, and the scenery of Safehold.

Briefly, Safehold is the last remaining planet that is home to the Human Race. Destroyed by an alien race called the Gbaba, who could detect any technological power sources coming from any planet mankind should try and hide in, the Terran Federation decided that the only way to survive was to create a world where technology would be non-existent.  In other words, mankind would be put back into medieval times.  In order to keep things this way for the centuries needed to make sure the alien race would leave Terran space, the creators of this world made a religion (with themselves as Gods and Archangels) that specifically forbid innovation.  It is to this world that Merlin Athrawes awakes from a 900 year old hibernation.  He becomes, basically, Martin Luther, and challenges the Church of God Awaiting, albeit more subtly. 

As I said, Safehold is David Weber's playground.  He has written many more novels that take place in other worlds, in other universes, with other authors, but this one he's written alone, and I get the feeling that this world is his to become a Clockmaker God.  In other words, he created Safehold, with the rules and religion and people and circumstances, and then he lets it run.  The action comes as he sees it, as would happen naturally.  The conversations and innovations come slowly, over time, and he's done a magnificent job so far.  There are currently 7 books, with book 8 coming out September 8th, 2015. I can't wait for book 8 to arrive, so I can continue the journey through Safehold.

So now that I've gushed about the series, which is great for Sci-fi, Fantasy, Historical, and Military book lovers alike, here are the problems with the series.  First off, the series is *his* playground, so there's no editing of lengthy and sometimes boring conversations about weapon builds, historical and religious descriptions of the character's ancestors, etc... but while reading the books, you must realize that this is *his* world, and that to change it to suit his readers would go against what I feel is almost a work done as a writing exercise.  I think that Weber creates some of his other books to make money, to exercise his craft, to share his worlds with others, but for Safehold, it is Weber's world to tinker with, and we are simply along for the ride.  The main evidence I see of this is in the book structures.  There are no typical climaxes and then resolutions of each book, simply a continuation of the world from one book to the next, as if you could combine the whole saga into one long tome.   Most authors have these worlds, ones where you can exist inside the world if you want, but it's the author's work, and he or she will do whatever it is they want to do.  For Anne McCaffrey, Pern was that realm, although she had others.  Tolkien always had Middle Earth, and that was his sole realm-creation.  Even for fantasy writers, where they might have more than one series, I think there's always one that they feel most at home.  I know I could easily live inside Pern, or Middle Earth, and now Safehold.

The second major problem is that, having seen the inside of the books, I couldn't read them anyway. I say this because David Weber has a very annoying habit in this book of replacing vowels with "y's". For instance, the antagonist of the book is "Zhaspahr Clyntahn" and his second in command, "Wyllym Rayno." The names, only having looked at them in the book, would kill me.  I can't stand reading Fantasy novels where, by the time I've read the jacket and seen all the weird names, my eyes have glossed over and I can't stand to finish reading even that. Thus is it most fortunate that I have "read" all 7 books as Audio Books.  It is good to consult the maps in the books (they are online as well) from time to time, but I've taken to "reading" them on the way to work, or on long trips, or just sitting in my apartment with no television on.  In fact, I've gotten along quite well without cable TV because of my Audio Books.  I can be entertained without paying $100's to the cable company.  So, if I were to go into detail about the characters, I would write them as I have heard them pronounced. "Jaspar Clyntan" (the problem here is that without the Y, you read Clinton, and think of the past president.) and "William Rano"

One other note, if you decide to "read" the books as Audio, which I wholeheartedly recommend.  The narrators change, which, when book 3 came along and the person was different, I had myself a minor conniption. All of them, save one, does a fair job.  The British narrator for book 5 did a fair job, although he muffed the pronunciations somewhat ("Charis," instead of "Karis," as every other speaker had done).  But I could overlook that.  It's book 6 that drove me nuts.  The narrator did a wonderful job with female roles, and children roles, but when he started yelling "FIRE" during the battle scenes, it was funny.  The guy simply couldn't do battle scenes, and it made a war hilarious.  But if you can overlook that one, the rest are magnificently done, and kept me awake all during my travels.

There comes a time in your life when you need Fantasy worlds.  I don't know where I would be today if it hadn't been for J.R.R. Tolkien.  I have lived hours of my life in Pern, and I could go on living there, if I had to.  I would say the same for Safehold, and the times in my life when I could listen to the conversations between Emperor Caleb, Empress Charlean, and Merlin, plus a whole host of other really "good" good guys, were worth every minute.  I rather much like my fantasy stories where the good guys are good and the bad guys are stupid.  And being a Christian, much of the conversations with Archbishop Michael and the others, are as good sermons as you're ever likely to hear on a planet called Earth.  I guess I shall now be Awaiting book 8, and doing so with baited breath.    

Book Reviews: Auraria; Waycross and Winter, both by Tim Westover

I'd put the cover of the book on here, but it hasn't been made yet.  Tim Westover is a Medical Software designer and IT consultant who plays the banjo, has one of those daughters who makes every conversation a "Facebookable" one, and hikes across Georgia and elsewhere looking for the ruins of our recent past.  He finds the rubble of mills and walls covered over by vines and pine straw, the abandoned wooden sheds, the majestic waterfalls appearing out of nowhere and flowing down to make great rivers and lakes.  And he write stories. His first novel, Auraria, was an episodic romp into the supernatural world of the Appalachian Mountains. Briefly, Holtzclaw, a real estate developer in the pre-modern days (early 1900's? there's not really a date given, nor is it needed), is sent by his boss in Milledgeville to the area around modern day Dahlonega, Georgia where a resort town was to be constructed.  There he proceeds to buy up land from the residents, and finds them very odd, almost Alice In Wonderland-ish.  Ghosts play pianos and remain in the houses with their still living husbands, fish are caught out of thin air, and giant turtles sleep for eternity inside the mountains.  It is a wonderful book that I highly recommend, as it's the kind of book that I enjoy.  The plot isn't really the most important thing; rather, it's the experience of existing with Holtzclaw in this strange and wonderful world.  Is the book perfect? No, as I talked about in my review on Amazon, but it was a book that I enjoyed reading. Knowing the author, and going to one of his books signings (at Charis Books Atlanta, in which, sadly, the only audience was me and the people that worked there), puts me in a unique position of being friend and reader, in which reviews are read by the author.

So, when Tim announced he had finished his second novel, Waycross and Winter, at least, a good rough draft, he wanted those of us on his Facebook page to read it and help edit, give suggestions, give impressions. I downloaded it onto my Kobo and took it to work with me so I could read during my lunch breaks.  The interesting thing about reading a book that hasn't been fully completed, with every i crossed and every t dotted, is that it changes the way you read the book. Are you reading it as an editor, looking for grammatical mistakes? Or as a reader, absorbing the text and reading for context? 

I think that in reading the book, I became a book surfer.  If I hit a rock or a large wave, and I fall of my board, I'll become an editor and go investigate the rock.  I told Tim, among other things while reading the book [the block quotes are mine, edited from prior messages to Tim]: 

 Reading is a flowing motion, like swimming in the ocean (no, I'm not trying to rhyme...), and the ebb and flow of words are essential to a text, be it a book or a blog.  I was reading along fine, understanding the character of Waycross, and more importantly, the writing style, as something I would read in a 19th century Gothic book by Stevenson or Shelley (both of which wrote about doctors). And then, on page 3 of the text in my Kobo, I came upon the phrase "conscience wasting my time." I fell flat on my face.  The wave struck me and I got water in my nose.  I know what you mean, but a reader, especially not one familiar with 1800's literature, is going to feel it as a jolt away from the book. [I include this as an illustration of how being a reader and being an editor are different when reading. Tim changed the wording afterwards.] 

 The book tells the story of Aubrey Waycross, a doctor in the early 1800's Georgia, who travels from Savannah to the wild frontier town of Lawrenceville, Georgia to begin a practice.  For those who know the Atlanta area, you know right away that Lawrenceville is in Gwinnett County, near Discover Mills, and Sugarloaf Parkway, and all the modern day everythings that are suburban Atlanta.  But in this time, it was a town far away from anything resembling a city. Once there, he finds that people's medical needs are served by quack salesmen, like those who sell bottles of fizzy drinks that are now found in every vending machine in the nation. They are also helped by old wives' tales, the trial and error of herbal remedies, and, of course, witches. And so, with the righteous indignation of a Doctor fresh out of medical school, Waycross goes up to the house of the Winter Sisters to give them a piece of his mind. It's here that the story really starts, and I stopped worrying about editing, as the flow of that ocean became calm and peaceful.

Speaking of flow, the story starts on his trip to the Winters' residence, especially with the episode with the pigeons.  I could feel you exhale as the character came alive, fleshed out.  Before hand he was a stick figure, a stereotype of a haughty, over confidant doctor in the early years of this nation.  At this point, he becomes human, and I have enjoyed the story since then.  [Since finishing the book,  I realized why the doctor was who he is. Characters change, grow, as a book progresses. You grow to care about Waycross, especially when he grows to care about other people.]

The main problem I had with the story was the usage of so much human excrement when talking about the doctor's procedures on patients.  Of course, in these days, draining blood to calm humors, and using enemas as a way of draining toxins out of people were among the most common ways to cure people of whatever illnesses they might have.  The fact that I was reading while eating made me, admittedly, skim through some of these sections.  I did the same thing when reading Martel's Life of Pi, when he was talking about his waste in terms of his dietary condition while lost at sea.  And I mentioned that to Tim, and he wanted to know if he should take some of it out.  I thought about it for a long while, and actually finished the book before replying back.

I think the main problem with the excremental parts of the story is that I usually read while I'm eating.  But I don't want you to change that just because of my reading habits.  Orson Scott Card included quite a lot of vomiting in his book Lost Boys (which has nothing to do with Peter Pan or Vampires), but he was using it for a symbol of the real or physical world vs. the supernatural. It shows that both Sarah and Aubrey are rooted in the real world, at least, for the time that Aubrey was more interested in what the classic doctors said than the herbal and mental parts the Winter Sisters practiced.  There are strong reasons for leaving those parts completely as they are, but the opposite deals not with the story, but with the readers.  The people that read your book, are they going to stop reading it when they get to Sarah's story, or when cutting off the farmer's arm? The answer should be a simple one. You are the author, it is your creation.  God didn't leave out the gross parts of this Earth because he thought we might not like it. Pat Conroy could have left out the rape scene in Prince of Tides, would have saved a whole lot of challenging by conservative mothers wanting to ban books, but he didn't, because that was part of the story. 

When I finished the book, I began to see the layers of the story, the reasons for the rabid "creature" in the woods, the actions of the doctor when dealing with the supernatural, and when dealing with matters of his own mind and heart.  I questioned the existence of characters, wondering if they were just people in Waycross' mind... It was very satisfying, to see a story more compact than Tim's first novel, one that could be read and interpreted in different ways.

The other thing I enjoyed about the book was the literary references and the usage of themes that have been used in the greatest of literary works.  Aubrey Waycross is, in the context of the novel, part Dr. Faustus (Marlowe or Goethe), part J. Alfred Prufrock (Eliot), and part Candide (Voltaire). Now, this probably has to do with my own reading history, as for most people, you bring into a book the experiences of your life, and it helps to shape what you read. But in these cases, it's true.  It was refreshing to read something that, with a turn of a phrase, it connects you with a work, a twinge of recognition.  I won't give examples, because that would ruin the fun.

I look forward to the time when this book becomes available to the public, when I can hold the actual book in my hands.  I echo the dream of the author, to see Tim Westover's books on a bookshelf at Barnes and Noble, be able to pull it off the shelf, read the dust cover or description, and feel the book calling to me.  Or better yet, to have a bookstore worker be able to recommend the book to readers with the passionate zeal that I know they have (because I have it, too.) Amazon just can't do that, no matter how many reviews are below the price.

 Shelftalker review: Dr. Aubrey Waycross travels to the frontier town of Lawrenceville, Georgia to set up a practice, meeting quack medicine salesmen, flocks of pigeons, and the Winter Sisters. In layers of complexity, with scenes both graphic and hauntingly beautiful, Tim Westover blends the supernatural with the historical in a unique way. Readers of either will be right at home, and any reader will be pleasantly surprised.

Lessons learned on a Road Trip...

Recently I took a road trip to Dallas, Texas for a job interview.  It was an amazing trip, sort of one of my hikes on the trails around here, but on a bigger scale.  Now, granted, I would much rather see the scenery of this great land by foot, but since I haven't won the lottery yet (and won't, since I don't play), I saw the short, quick version.  Absolutely magnificent, and the lessons I learned while doing it are well worth mentioning.

Never take "Not Exactly."



And that's not just on Rental Cars.  The only thing that non-brand names are better and more
satisfying are the store brand jars of jelly.  And mayonnaise.  But not rental cars.  I understand that there's not an option sometimes, and cheaper is the only way to go.  Turns out, this time, it was definitely not cheaper.  I chose SixT Auto Rental (it's a European thing) because the online quotes were much cheaper than the more recognizable brands.  Turns out... that's because the other costs weren't even on the website... they added them later...

The additional fees made the rental the same price as those of the other national rentals, whose prices were clearly stated on their websites.  Also, the additional $250 deposit was not stated at all at the website.  Finally, the employees at the return/pick up lot were friendly, but not particularly professional, with one of the workers saying that the car they had picked out for me was one that she was going to use later.  The driver that brought the cleaned car to me stepped out of the vehicle eating a bag of cheetos, with all that orange dust on his hands.  Not at all what a customer wants to see.  The car was fine, as was the return process itself afterwards.  I still don't know how the deposit situation shook out, as the invoice said nothing about it, and the additional $100 I had to pay will have to come out of that, since the credit card I used only had what I thought I was actually paying on it.  Next time, I will not go with "Not Exactly."

Then, when I got to the motel (I used Super 8), the very kind front desk person informed me that the credit card I used wouldn't work.  So I pulled out my debit card.... it wouldn't work either :O (that's me making the big Macaulay Culkin shocked face!) Out of money in a big city 1000 miles away, and at Midnight.  So I call my brother (1:00 AM Eastern) and woke him up and explained the problem.  Fortunately, he was able to re-reserve the room and I walked into a musty, smoke-filled (it was not supposed to be smoked in) room which I cleared out by turning the AC on.  Unfortunately, the AC went into the curtain which blew out when I turned the air on.  And there was no way of keeping the curtain from doing that.  So I used, for once in my life, the Gideon's Bible to trap the curtain against the window (I'm going to Hell, I know). I went to sleep using my internal alarm clock (which always works) knowing that I'd probably have danishes and maybe even eggs in the breakfast room that was right next door to my room.  Next morning, I find cold cereal, pancake batter, and packaged cinnamon rolls.  I just took a pastry and went back to my room.

AudioBooks Rock!!!

By the time I reached Birmingham (after a wonderful breakfast buffet at the Shoney's in Anniston (everyone stop there on the way out on 20, keep the place in business!), my music had failed me, and I was feeling my eyes unfocus and me getting droopy.  So, I decided, that wasn't going to work, and I popped in the 1st CD of David Weber's Off Armageddon Reef I stayed awake throughout the rest of my trip, all the rest of the 1,721 miles.  I never thought that Audiobooks would keep me awake more than singing at the top of my lungs to my favorite songs, but it absolutely delivers.  It's a completely different part of the brain, and I could easily "read" while driving, keeping alert and focusing on the road while my inner "eye" focused on the images being formed in my head.  It kept the people chained to the cave wall busy while the real person traveled topside (Plato).

Book Review: Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber

The book itself is the start of a series that takes place on a island-covered world, post human destruction by a formidable, but slow, alien race.  David Weber constructs an entire sociological structure, religion, economy, everything, and while some people probably are going to criticize Weber for page after page of describing the tenets of The Church of God Awaiting, I found it fascinating. Pausing the plot to build a world makes the best books, in my mind.  Some of the books I've loved, I'd rather get rid of the plot entirely. See Neal Stephenson's Ananthem where the plot basically gets in the way of amazing philosophical dialogue. When I travel back to Dallas to begin my new job, I will put the sequel into my mp3 player and will stay awake the whole time.

Everyone! Go to Braums!

It has the best everything... fries, burgers, ice cream... because it's all fresh.  They only exist within a 300 mile radius of Tuttle, Oklahoma.  I won't deny that being in the "Braums Zone" had some influence on taking the job in Dallas.  And the food was as superb as I remember.  My friend C., whose house got flattened in the Moore tornado, is the head of Public Relations for Braums, which makes me insanely jealous, and is so ironic since her main love is training and running marathons across the country.  The nearest one is about 5 minutes from Brookhaven College, which is where I'll be working as the Assistant Manager of the Bookstore.

Dallas has it together!

The transportation system in Dallas is complex, and while things are constantly under construction, they have a plan to better the transportation around the city. The HOV lanes are actually on bridges above the interstates, and they have their own exits and such.  The buses run everywhere throughout the city, and passes are affordable (especially if you take into account gas prices nowadays).  With my apartment being next to various stores, I won't have to drive much of anywhere except 5 minutes to work, so it will save on gas, and if I want to go someplace, I can hop on the bus system and travel anywhere.  Or drive out to the lakes, the parks, or to any number of places in Texas and Oklahoma where my friends and family are living.  The Lakehouse my grandmother used to own is only 1.5 hours north, on the Lake of the Arbuckles.

Vicksburg, MS over the Mississippi River.

I'm so excited to be taking this new path in my life.  Everybody wish me luck, and I'll blog again on from the Lone Star State.  Farewell Georgia (which isn't true, it's only a 12 hour drive), and Hello Texas!!

Brothers; The Anything Box; No Spoilers

I'm catching up on some review work before the world warms up and it's too unbearable to sit in a messy bedroom and be on the computer when I can be outside, and what better than a rainy, cold, icky weekend than to do that?

Video Game Review: Brothers...

A tale of two joysticks...erm... sons.  It's almost impossible to find reviews online that don't spoil everything, and I will try not to.  You know how I've been trying to find video games that provide the same emotional experience as books or movies do.  I think there's a considerable medium available for artists who want to tell a story that is interactive and stimulating on multiple levels.  And there are many prime examples of this, Psychonauts comes to mind, Final Fantasy III (VI), Papo Y Yo.  With the critical success of the latter, and Journey, many independent video game makers are using the media as a canvas to create moving works of art.  The balance comes in making a game both enjoyable in technical and interactive aspects (in other words, what makes it a "game"), as well as blending in art, emotion, storylines, and theme.

The problem is that I think some video game designers have started making video games that are Emotional for Emotions sake.  As I said in my last blog, we've become a society that expects a constant pull of action or emotion, or we become bored with all of it. Take movies from times past, until today.  The subdued horror that is Hitchcock's Psycho uses camera angles, music, to create a bathtub scene that is shocking without being grotesque.  Today's audiences need much more graphic displays of violence.  I doubt that the Saw series would have even been possible in the 1950s or 60s, mainly because it would never have been thought of as something people want to see.  Now, there's no problem with visually torturing people on screen.  Death has never been so graphic, nor so banal, as it is today.

The same goes for video games.  Death in most first person shooters is as boring as Pong set on "Easy." We simply have no emotional connection to the characters, and even if we do, we know that they will reappear at the last save point.  The first actual death that created an emotional loss would have to be Aerith's death in Final Fantasy VII, one that provided an emotional shock much like the death of Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie in 1986 (nowadays, it happens every movie... it's expected, routine, even)

The makers of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons have created a game where death is immutable, where no magical twist of plot line is supposed to make it all better.  In the beginning (and this is not a spoiler), you watch as the younger brother tries to pull his mother into a boat, but is unable to, and she drowns.  The scene, and the following one, at the grave site, is sad, setting an emotional roller coaster for the whole game.  The two brothers must set out on a journey from the confines of a comfortable human village out into a fairy tale world where danger, puzzles, and acts of brutality and compassion take place around every corner.  They go to find medicine for their now ailing father.

The unique part of this game is that it's only for one player.  One controller (or the keyboard), two brothers.  It would be akin to playing the piano, where the fingers must do two different things independent of each other.  There were times that I had to connect a joystick up (in which each brother is controlled by the analog sticks) and then also use the keyboard.  To make things worse, the joystick is calibrated wrong, so "up" was actually "left," and so forth.  The puzzles in the game are simple, but difficult (because of the controlling) at the same time.  All the while, you are becoming more intimately knowledgeable of each brother.  They can interact with most all characters and objects in the game, scoring achievements in Steam or the PS3 along the way.

The sore spot for me is, of course, the ending. I didn't like it.  What I thought should have happened was this: (and this isn't a spoiler, because you find yourself wondering how it will end way before it actually does.  This is just a way it doesn't end.) I thought the the brothers would come back with the medicine only to find it too late, that their father had died, but with all the adventures the two brothers had had, the older brother was mature enough to build a family with just those two.  It would provide an ending that would be a sound moral exclamation point at the end.  But it doesn't end that way.

The best trailer I've found is on Steam.  Download the Steam program (you should do that anyhow, if you have a fast enough computer), and download the trailer from Steam.  The ones on Youtube are too short, and most reviews are filled with Spoilers).

Book Review: The Anything Box by Zenna Henderson

I'm positive that Zenna Henderson and Ray Bradbury were the same person... that's how good their short stories are, and how lyrical each one writes.  Of course, I know they're not, that's just silly.  I love finding a book in your stacks and reading it for the first time, even after you've had it for years on end, and your father before that.  My dad never liked short stories (as I've said before,) and so reading this collection was something different from what I normally do.  Zenna Henderson writes about "The People," in most of her works. They are aliens that have become stranded here on Earth and are trying to find their way back home.  The theme continues in this set of short stories, most of which are told from a teacher's point of view (that being the occupation of the writer).  The children the narrator's meet are strange, often with unusual abilities that seem to be quite normal to the kids themselves.  They feel like episodes of The Twilight Zone, each in brevity and theme, and I enjoyed most of the stories in this book.  Orson Scott Card attributes Henderson as being an inspiration growing up, and indeed, those who enjoy OSC's work will find themselves at home in the pages of this book.

Reviews: Bolaño's 2666 and Hanson's Anthem

Book Review: 2666 by Robert Bolaño 

So my Borders co-worker, Andrew, raved about a work of literature that he had just finished, insisting that it was a magnificent piece, and that I had to read it. Having just closed the page on the last book I had read, I said, "Sure, why not." So I picked up (online, as an e-book on my Kobo), the 795 page tome that is Robert Bolaño's 2666. And it is huge, a book you stand on to reach the cookie jar. (Well, since it was an e-book, standing on my Kobo would result in a cracked screen, but anyway...) First off, this book was supposed to be divided into 5 separate ones, published thus to cover the expenses of Bolaño's children after he died (of liver failure in 2003). His publishers decided, after conferring with his notes, to publish it as one novel. The novel opens with a description of three European literary critics and their love of the writings of one Benno von Archimboldi, a German writer hailed as the next Goethe or Kant. This interested me, as Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther was a major influence in my early reading. So I continued reading.

2666 has all the feel of a Post-Modern masterpiece. Imagine an author, having immersed himself into a world with a given set of circumstances, and thus decides to tell the story of each character, each painting, each event in that world. It would look like tributaries running into a stream, each twisting and turning, but invariably ending into a major river, and into a spot on the ocean. For this novel, the ocean is the Mexican town of Santa Teresa near the US border. Imagine the description of each dream the characters have, the other-worldly hallucinations at sunset on a deserted Mexican highway, the ramblings of madmen in asylums, the horror of Nazi officers and the decisions they make. And you, as the reader, must float down each tributary, knowing that you may (or may not) reach the conclusion. This is Post-Modernism.

I felt the same way about this book as I did with Neal Stephenson's Anathem, that I could keep reading forever, and a whole world would unfold before me, and it would swallow me up. It's not a book I would normally read, what with the graphic detail (I think people could easily call it a 21st century Joyce's Ulysses), but that shouldn't make you not read it, as their are parts of lyrical beauty, of fantastic writing, of arresting adventures in the outskirts of World War II. I would also compare it to David Benioff's City of Thieves, in the absurdist episodes surrounding the second World War. Also, Michael Nesmith's The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora with the mystic realms of literature and art being contrasted with the base world of pornography and worldly pleasures. So, all in all, it was a good book, and I recommend it to anyone who likes a more experimental form of literature, and an open mind.


Music Review: Anthem by Hanson

 Merge the darker undertones of This Time Around with the pop stylings in Underneath, you have Hanson's latest musical offering, Anthem. Hanson's last few albums have had spots of genius as well as mediocre filler. Shout It Out was a 6 song EP with filler in between (the EP is amazing, and well worth getting). This one is a solid record, and Taylor Hanson has learned how to fix some things. In the past albums, his vocals have lacked any enunciation, so that I have to look at the lyrics to understand it. This is a major roadblock to a good song. In this album, AutoTune and other technology have made their voices clear, concise, and understandable. Also, they have worked with their harmony, intertwining voices (with Auto-Tune, I expect) for new sounds. Some critics will say it's overproduced, much like they panned Matchbox Twenty's second album Mad Season. Course, I loved that album, too. In fact, on most tracks, I could easily hear Brandon Flowers of The Killers singing the lyrics, as it reminded me of the band's second album Sam's Town. I've always said that Zac Hanson needs to have more lead vocal songs on each album, because his tunes are so introspective, so different from Isaac's romantic ballads and Taylor's rock and pop tunes. A great album, from a great band, well worth supporting.



Not a part of the album, but I'd never seen the video before, and liked it.

Book Reviews: Two X Sci-fi

As much as Science Fiction told of mankind leaving Earth and exploring the universe, most authors spend as much time exploring the inner workings of the soul and consciousness.  The "science" in Sci-fi can relate as much to Psychology as to Physics and Astronomy.  To look at the unknown, the impossible as possible, takes not only a solid science education, but the mind and heart of a poet, the creativeness of the muses along with the empirical senses of the scientist.

For the many readers I have encountered that say, "I don't read science fiction, I can't stand all that "alien" stuff," I would rebuke them, saying that the unknown has always been a part of human literature, from Grendel in Beowulf to the White Whale in Melville's classic tale.  I would argue that science fiction has a direct line from the works of the greatest authors to the exploits of Luke Skywalker.  The same themes prevail throughout, the motifs echo through each work, whether the weapon be a sword or a lightsaber.  It is not beyond argument to say that David standing up to Goliath, with but the faith of God and some rocks, is not the same figure as Luke Skywalker standing up to Vader in Cloud City.

So it is that, needing books to read, and trying to stay away from the mindless babble of talking heads on Television, the dribble of escapist nothingness that espouses Truth but is not but useless trash flowing into the minds of today's people, I find myself drawn to the books filling my library.  I glance through the paperbacks, yellow with time, with sparse drawings of other-worldly beings and scantily clad women on the fronts, those with the "Bethany, Oklahoma Library" stamped on the sides, where my dad brought them home and somehow never took them back.  The science fiction of decades past, where the future times that men were flying to the stars has actually already happened (according to the book I finished, Man should already have a shopping mall on Mars, and a base on Mercury.), has an incredible draw to me now.  For I find that while the setting is futuristic and utopian, the themes are as classic as the works I have bound in leather atop my bookshelves.

I wish to review two books: The Dream Master by Roger Zelazny, and A Place Beyond Man written by Cary Neeper.
***

The Dream Master is the second full length novel written by Zelazny in 1966.  The title page informs the reader that it had been a serialized short story in a magazine.  Unfortunately, it reads like a fleshed out, stretched short story.  It becomes disjointed, a series of scenes seemingly unconnected and written at different times, so much so you can tell which parts are original, and which parts are added.

The main story deals with Render, a psychologist who has become known as a pioneer in the new technology of "Dream Therapy," in which he uses a holodeck type machine to enter people's dreams and control them, constructing and deconstructing (in every sense of the philosophical term) until the underlying causes, as Freudian as they may be, are exposed and can be dealt with outside of the sleep state.  Stepping outside of the boundaries his craft sets, he decides to help a blind woman, a professional psychiatrist in her own right, to "see" using dreams.  But, as things go when man tries to play "God," things rarely turn out well.  This is a book that would go along side Le Guin's Lathe of Heaven, Frank Bonham's The Forever Formula,  or Chayefsky's Altered States.  The latter most definitely, since they both deal with the idea of the collective subconsciousness, the idea that there are certain things we see and know that come from the primal state of our being, as a coding of our "form," embedded into our DNA.

Movie based on The Dream Master

Zelazny writes in spurts, in images, in hallucinatory frames, and I would imagine that, like so many other artists in the 60's (18 and 19), that some sort of stimulation was used to create the muse for these writings.  It would remind someone of Coleridge's 'In Xanadu, did Kubla Khan..." or T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland" (April is the cruelest month).  This is not to denigrate the story at all, rather, it rescues it from being unreadable.  In fact, Zelazny's usage of myths, whether we know them or not, of poetic fits in between sections of plot, is what makes this an actually good book to ruminate upon.  Masterful writing style, deep, thoughtful nuggets that you have to mine from the rocky wording, phrases that are pure gold, it makes the once award winning short story well worth reading, despite its obvious flaws. 

Amongst the flat characters are soliloquies of how technology has so placed us in a state of security, of peace, that we become bored, even to the state of having nothing, verily, to live for. He deals with the usage of stories, of myths, to recreate the heart-rendering sorrows that mankind has lost, and the sub-culture of role-playing that has surfaced so that man can actually face that danger, instead of being lost to banality.  This is a theme also taken on by Simak in A Ring Around the Sun, which was a masterful work. I doubtless will use some of Zelazny's thoughts in some of my future blog postings (giving credit, obviously), as they were truly amazing.    Having never read Zelazny's work before, I will certainly find others in my Dad's sci-fi collection pilfered from the Bethany, OK library so many years ago, and read them as well.
***

Having read Cary Neeper's second book, The Webs of Vorak prior to the first, it allowed me to first see the more mature creation before the beginning.  Tolkien, in his essay "On Fairy Stories" talks about the creation of mankind, the constant need for making something, in emulation of God.  Imagine taking a ball of play-doh, and, realizing that you could make anything you wanted, you set out to create a world.  This, as Tolkien calls it, is Faerie. In The Neverending Story, it is Fantasia, and in the PS3 game LittleBigPlanet, it is the Orb of Dreams.  But whatever the name, it is the molding by which we create our dreams, our novels, our gods (if you look at many of the myths from Greece, Rome, and elsewhere).  So Cary Neeper took the mold of her world and created Ellason and Vorak, and on them, she placed the diametrically opposite Vorakians and Ellls.  In 1975, she wrote A Place Beyond Man, which is the account of the first contact between the two alien species and human beings. You can tell that, in the beginning, the mold is forming, becoming the deep and solid world that Neeper wants us to explore.  Get there, she does, and it becomes a magnificent lesson in the humility man will have to have of himself to save the world he lives in and to venture forth into the universe, as so many sci-fi writers will want to have us do.

The fascinating part of the story is the character studies that each of the three main people present to us.  Conn, the Elll, is the personification of Dionysus, pleasure, enjoyment incarnate.  Orram, the Varok, is the antithesis, the voice of Reason, Apollo, standing firm with stolid emotions, using reason and logic to perceive the world.  (I reject the idea of other reviewers that Orram is simply a Vulcan rehash, even though there are similarities.) Thus, to follow Hagel's philosophy, Tandra, the human, is the Synthesis, the balance of emotion and reason.  But this is only one way to look at it. Another perception to each of the characters lies in the "widening gyre" of William Butler Yates.  Control of Orram's emotional states is only possible when the spiral is tight, compacted, governed by cultural and physical boundaries that are strictly enforced.  The same, remarkably, is the case for the Dionysian character Conn, who must stay grounded within the "school" of his amphibious culture.  Even Tandra, who must handle the first contact situation with a balance of emotion and reason, must keep herself in control of her faculties.   In all cases, the sprial unravels, and they must each help one another to return to the sanity which is inherent in their own species. In the strengths of their own characters, they can survive.

In the end, it is Tandra, and us as well, who must see that the first contact situation calls into question everything that we assume about ourselves as human beings, about our position in the universe, about the superior stance we take in the world, and in our own minds.  Tandra becomes much as Jodie Foster's character was in the movie based on Carl Sagan's Contact. There are few humans, as was seen in the movie, and as was rightly guessed by the Ell-Varokian team, that would have successfully reacted and adapted to finding other sentient species in the world, especially ones without the bi-pedal look of current Earth sentient beings (supposedly).

The original 1975 book, published by Dell (now Random House), is out of print, but was reprinted in 2011 by iUniverse.  Neeper is working on a revised edition of this book, which is scheduled for release in a couple of years.  I do recommend reading this book (before or after The Webs of Varok) instead of waiting, as it was a thoroughly enjoyable read, thought provoking, and great addition to the Science-Fiction cannon.  I only hope that more of the classic sci-fi books can be rescued from the shelves of obscurity and reissued to a public that needs to be reminded of just how amazing mankind is, what his potential is, and how fragile our world is, how dangerous it will be if the "centre cannot hold." 

Book Review: The Webs of Varok by Cary Neeper

The best science-fiction/fantasy novels are ones that lie outside the stereotypes of either genre.  I abhor reading fantasy just for fantasies' sake.  Why escape to another world when you return to the same world as the same person?  I like to have meaning in my books, something with meat on it, that I can rip away and take with me.  Certainly, there will be a few times when Anne McCaffrey's books will call to me, something light, but usually, I want something more along the lines of Orson Scott Card, where larger moral issues are addressed.  In fact, when I read and review books, especially of the sci-fi variety, my question always is, "How would OSC write this?" If I find the answer is, "Just like this," then I know I've found a good book.  And such is The Webs of Varok by Cary Neeper.

What surprised me was that this wasn't the first book in this series, but the second.  Neeper wrote a book about Alien first contact in 1975, called A Place Beyond Man (which was redone in 2011 as The View Beyond Earth). However, it's not completely necessary to read the other book to understand what's going on.  The prologue does an ample job of getting everything set.  Further, the forward tells us that what Neeper is trying to do is to create a society with a self-sustaining environment, incorporating population control, a regulatory business trade, and a Utopian system of government based on the idea that citizens are content to live their lives within the confines of regulations in order to prevent the previous cataclysms where ecological and economical systems spiraled out of control.  In fact, the book is more about this idea than anything else, leading one to believe that the plot means nothing and that it's going to be the author preaching at us the whole time.  This is very far from being true.

The characters, Tandra, the human, Conn, the Elll, and Orram, the Varok, are all very well constructed, done with dialogue, much as OSC would do.  In fact, Neeper does an amazing job creating all of the sentient beings on Jupiter's hidden moon.  Ellls are aquatic beings who survive on land using clothing that remains wet.  They are sensuous beings, outgoing and social.  The Varoks, for whom the moon is named, were the main sentient beings until whatever cataclysm befell upon them (a biological war, as it turns out), ripping apart their sense of touch.  They have relied upon their development of mental communication, reading each other's minds.  In fact, this is the main crux of the novel, that Varoks cannot lie to each other.  This keeps the world in check, for no one is able to do anything illegal without being caught.  This is the same outcome of Clarke & Baxter's technology of wormhole usage in The Light of Other Days. Thus the world can operate completely differently than Earth.  The downside of this is that Neeper (as the characters in the book) would recommend using the same regulations of Varok here on Earth, in present day society.  This, of course, is impossible, because human nature will not acquiesce to total regulation by a government.  It was tried before, called Communism, and it didn't work, for precisely that reason.

I remember walking through the park here in Conyers, and trying to come up with a society that could live in harmony with the beauty that I was seeing around me.  And having read Ayn Rand and being against governmental control of the individual, I tried to overcome the weaknesses of Rand's world and our own.  The only way I could do it was with population control and economic controls that would forbid companies from making forced obsolescence a part of the economic system (see my blog on the forever light bulb coming from Clifford D. Simak's book Ring Around the Sun.  In fact, when I stopped thinking about it that day, I had come up with a society very similar to Neeper's Varok, but with the large problem of making people honest with themselves and others.  Only a biological or technological breakthrough would accomplish this.

I give The Webs of Varok 4/5 stars on the systems of Goodreads and others because of a couple of plot issues that happen late in the book that threw me off. It might be that something distracted me at the sentence where Orram's disappearance happened, or something.  It's not always the book's fault, but I can't reconcile it. I do recommend the book, even to conservatives who would find reading a book written with liberal ideas repulsive.  You'll like it.  You'll even agree with most of the ideas in the book.  They are ideals that conservatives and liberals must strive for (and the goals are usually the same, just arrived at in two totally different ways). I have the first book (75) version, and will get the '11 version, too, and see what differences there are.  It looks like the '75 book deals with the differences between the three species, especially those of social and sensual nature.  I hope that these books are done as well as this book.  I look forward to reading them.  

Book Review: The Isle of Shapeshifters by Otto Coontz

A daunting task lies ahead of me, one comparable to climbing Mount Everest or cleaning my basement... reading the books I have on my bookcases.  It's even more daunting because I'm adding more and more books every week.  Favorite authors, intriguing book covers, sizes and shapes, all of them crying out "Read Me!" like a piece of candy to Alice, before she inevitably shrinks or grows, or a cat meowing at an animal shelter.  So when I finish the last page of one book, I venture toward those bookcases and see which one meows at me the most.  Now, most of my books are stacked horizontally, so top ones get preference (cause I'm usually on the way to wait in a line or go to work.), and they're double stacked, so front also gets first shot.  So I pulled one off my shelves and took it to work.  It's a book called Isle of the Shapeshifters by Otto Coontz.

You certainly can't have a last name like "Coontz" and not be expected to write something akin to Horror.  Turns out, this particular book reminds me of Dean Koontz' writing, especially like his book The Taking.  It also is very typical of  the B-list horror movies that came out in the 70's and 80's.  The setting often becomes as much a character as any of the people.  It rains when bad things happen, wind, fog, earthquakes... a pathetic fallacy where nature becomes sentient, (although, in this book, it's actually controlled by the people living on the island.)  Mix that in with very well created characters, and description of the island that was amazing, and you have a great book.

After I finished the novel, I went to Google Maps and took at satellite tour of Nantucket Island, and it's exactly as Coontz described it in the novel.  Even today, so far removed from 1983, when the book was written, Nantucket is a desolate area with tourists and the local people living on certain parts of the island, but with an astonishing lack of resorts, casinos, and nature-wrecking buildings.  You could easily step back in time (as the book did) and see how the original natives of the island lived, as well as the fisherman that have made the place their home for years.



I certainly understood the ending, I just didn't have to like it. The main character, Theo, is on vacation on the island, as an invitation from the "fan club" of her vein soap opera star stepmother (typical stereotype, but it works). On the island, she meets Kip, who takes care of his elderly grandmother and whose dad works at the Oceanography center on the island. Together Kip and Theo explore the island, becoming interested in the Native American markings found on the rocks in the Moors and also on the strange pendent given to Theo by "the fan club." Little does she know it's an amulet that will draw the power she has inherited from her ancestors. Kip discovers the link, but can he save her before those that wish to use that power carry out their plans? The end doesn't tie all the ends together, as Theo leaves without even telling Kip good-bye. It feels like one of those Law & Order episodes where it ends without a satisfactory last note, like a song ending on something other than DO. It's why, when I put the star rating on this book, it only gets four out of five. Nothing I just said will spoil anything in the book, but you end up thinking, "A great book, if only...." This book is more than likely out of print, but it should be easy to find online or at used bookstores. I do recommend it for young adults, especially those that like things a little scary.

Book Review: The Man in the Maze by Robert Silverberg

I pulled this sci-fi novel from the depths of my bookshelves, looking for the magic that existed in the writings of the masters of the genre.  In so many science fiction books of the 50's and 60's, writers like Isaac Asimov, Clifford D. Simak, and Robert Heinlein concentrated on the ideas, the aspects of mankind progressing out of their own microcosm here and out to the universe.  Once in the stars, most sci-fi writers found that the universal themes they thought about were also at the very core of their own minds.  To go outward, you must go inward. Robert Silverberg did a fantastic job in combining Roddenberry with Jung.

Each of the main characters are introverted, brooding, well constructed men who decide the fate of the human race even while examining their own emotions.  Dick Muller, the damaged soldier who lives on the planet of Lemmos and its large, deadly maze constructed by aliens from a long forgotten civilization.  Charles Boardman, the confident manipulator of men, armies, worlds, whose weary nostalgia reveals an old man who tires in his actions even as he moves forward.  And Ned Rawlins, the naive, ideological crew member of Boardman who, as a child, knew Muller.  Boardman and Rawlins' mission is to retrieve Muller from his self-imposed exile in the maze which only he has mastered.

The maze is, of course, a symbol of the inner workings of a man's mind.  The maze is so well described by Silverberg, in direct prose that gives a vagueness of dimension and detail while allowing the imagination to fill in the rest.  (I say this because there are too many authors, like Terry Brooks, for instance, that will describe every tree in the forest. Sometimes it's best to let the reader's mind make some of it up.)  I also think that the 1978 Mass Market version which I have has the best cover, portraying the maze as an ornate, spiraling city of rooms and walkways, of endless deadly traps and machinations.

In chapters spread throughout are the histories of the three men.  What made Muller different, what the aliens he met did to him, and why he was shunned from the rest of humanity afterwards.  What desperate mission do they need him for, even to risking the lives of men who must go into the maze, knowing that one false move will send them into spikes, boulders, or lakes of fire.

In the end, we see mankind's outlook on his world and his future.  The stoic, the cynic, the righteous, even the epicurean.  It made me wish the book was longer, that the days spent in the maze were longer, the delving into the maze that is the human psyche was more complete.  I felt as if there was something Silverberg was looking for, and it was he that could not finish the maze, and so had to leave it undone, damaged somehow.  At the end, when Muller returns to the maze (and by saying that, I'm revealing nothing), he goes to retrieve something he'd lost.  And maybe that was what Silverberg felt as well.
***

I will say one more thing about the novel, which to me meant absolutely nothing, as I've come to expect this from most sci-fi authors.  The women in the story are simply sexual tools, empty bodies with breasts and long hair.  They are the short skirted crewwomen walking down the halls of the Enterprise. And while this would make the modern reader bristle with politically correct righteousness, I do not think it takes away from the book itself.  When you read sci-fi from the 50's and 60's, you must realize that there are few if any women characters with strong character traits.  You have to look at works by Sherri S. Tepper, Ursula K. LeGuin, even Orson Scott Card, to find them.  In other words, you pick the book up recognizing that the main characters will be men, and you find the underpinnings of the man's mind to be such.  Enjoy the dark, brooding characters, and don't let modern ideas about writing come into play.  It would be same as criticizing writers of times past from putting in strong, liberated African-Americans, or removing the prejudiced feelings of Whites from older books.  You have to read these books about the future as works from the past.  And find, like so many other classic works of literature, that their are lessons even in the oldest of writings.

Death and Mass Production (A Book Review and Remembrance)

Book Review: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I must admit that when I saw this book in the stores, and picked it up, I realized it was the last thing I would want to read.  I mean, just another "kids dying with cancer story," depressing and melodramatic. My mind immediately leapt (the autocorrect doesn't have "leapt" as the past tense form of "leap.") to Death Be Not Proud, which most children have to read during high school at some point.  It's a matter of Pathos, I believe, to read these books where kids (or their pets) die, so that it says 1) "Quit Whining, it could be a whole lot worse. and 2) it prepares them for later traumatic experiences.  I swear I'm gonna rewrite Old Yeller , and make it actually have a happy ending.  Of course, you could always give it a sardonic twist, like authors are doing lately, and instead of a rabid fox biting the dog, you could have a mad werewolf biting the kid, so that the dog lives, but the boy dies.... anyhoo, I'm rambling now.  Back to the book.

But as I was saying, I didn't want to read another "Cancer" book.  My grandmother had just recently died of pancreatic cancer, and so why would I have to go through all that again in the pages of a book?  We want to escape reality, not live it over again.

Well, I was wrong.  Turns out that John Green actually realizes that, to twist a Bob Dylan line, "He busy dying goes through a lot of living." Because as I found out with my grandmother, dealing with death is best done as an affirmation, a recollection, of life.  There's no better way to surround the not-so-pleasant times of dealing with medical issues than to bring forth the humor that surrounds us daily.  My grandmother, as she was being prepared for her aneurysm surgery, was asked, "How do you feel?" She, in her wry humor, replied, "With my fingers."  It was the best thing she could have said.

So John Green picks up on this humorous thread and weaves it through the whole book.  He deals with the emotions of the teenage characters very honestly, with more depth than most Lifetime tearjerker movies.  Hazel, Augustus, and Isaac, (ironic that he's called Isaac, (eye-sic), since he's about to go blind) just roll their eyes at most of the attitudes of the adults in their lives.  They make fun of the "strong fighter kid who is always positive even while they lose his/her hair, limbs, etc....," even, when the time comes, they have to portray that image themselves.

Green picks up on the progression of cancer quite well, even talking about the "last good day" that seems to happen to terminally ill people.  I had one afternoon shortly before my grandmother died where she picked up her spirits and we sat there and laughed and she poked fun at me, before she went so far downhill we couldn't care for her at home.  He painted that scene so well in the book.  It was, to some extent, very cathartic for me.

That the title is based on a line from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (with all the foreshadowing that it implies), or that the book is filled with references to Eliot's "Prufrock" poem, or Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay,"  are added bonuses for those teachers who will inevitably put down the tired Gunther tome and teach this book to their 10th grade English students instead.
***

One part of the novel I found interesting, because it goes back to one of my other blog posts, was this fascination by Augustus about the Afterlife, be it a Christian based one or those suggested by any of the other religions, or nothing at all.  And it's fascinating because, if we are to believe that the philosophies of the 20th century and the secular material world have phased out the traditional Christian beliefs of Heaven and Hell, then this part of the book, and other references to the Afterlife (see Beetlejuice, or Paul Simon's song "The Afterlife,"  (go to my blog about the Afterlife for these examples.)
) is a desire to fill that void.  When reading this book and reflecting on it, I was pulled to  the band Death Cab for Cutie's song "I'll Follow You Into the Dark."


An amazing song that goes so well with the book, especially the line, "fear is the heart of love," something the singer rejects.  There's so many ways to incorporate songs, poems, TV shows....etc... into this book, it really would be a great teaching tool, if a little controversial.
***

Since we're dealing with these subjects, I wanted to put here that a good friend I had in high school died this past week. Johnathan Ashley Nix passed away from a massive stroke.  I always loved his wry sense of humor, his unique way of looking at things, his refusal to let all the normal people of Heritage High to get to him all that much, even while I shrank inside myself from bullying.  It was perhaps this that kept me from really making friends with, well, anybody. He signed my yearbook, my senior year, with a long, rambling diatribe about anything, writing it upside-down and right to left.  It took me holding it up to a mirror to read the whole thing.  In the middle is his tune about "Mass Production," a Henry Ford-esque march anthem, much like you would hear in Brave New World.  I still remember the tune he used to sing it.  I only wish I could have been friends with him longer, from when we met in the 6th grade...  He took me to see a truly horrible version of Hamlet at an Atlanta Theatre for school credit (the professor was friends with someone there, I suspect), and so he brought over a ton of Fantasy books that he didn't want.  Among them was The Quest for the Faradawn by Richard Ford, a British author.  Truly a magnificent work, and one of the few I've read where most of the main characters were animals.  Anyway.... I'm just telling the few points in my life where his "thread" touched mine, and so hopefully it will be made fuller and more complete.  Outside of any afterlife or immortality that our souls go into, the memories that we have here are what keep Ashley living on here, inside our own hearts.  I scanned my yearbook page and have it below.

Book Review: The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont

Everyone has a story.  Browse through the Memoir section of your local independent bookstore, and you'll find hundreds of them. They'll give you a slant, a spin, an angle of each person's life, the way they would have you see it.  Ask their friends, their business associates, and they'll give you a totally different story.  You could even sit down with the person in question and listen to their life story, and you'll almost have a picture of the entire life, from the high-crashing waves to the calm eddies that hide along the shore.  But always hidden deep within the cores of our being are the pearls of our lives, which we clamp shut, hold fast, and no amount of muscle will let anyone see it.   They are secrets, desires, the very foundations by which we see the rest of the world.  Every once in a while, a person will come along and dive deep down into our souls, and we will let them in.  We will tell them our stories, showing our pearls and the sand from which they came.

The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont is just such a novel.  It becomes a porthole into the inner lives of the characters, especially the main one, Jason Prosper, who, little by little, tell us all his story.  Each character is fully developed, fleshed out, with words that are worth reading completely, not skimming over as part of "something every author has to do."  The writing is lyrical, soothing, much like the seaside town that Amber Dermont is writing about.  The frequent forays into yachting, racing with the upper class New England town boys that seem to have no problems or cares in the world are done exquisitely, giving the reader an opportunity to experience the thrill of riding on the open ocean without the boring details that, ironically as he tried to do the same, Melville used in Moby Dick.  I think that if Dermont had written a book about the White Whale, I would have read enthralled from Ishmael to Ahab and through the Romantic landscape of the seas.  Most of all, I enjoyed the intimate contact between Jason and Aiden, and with Cal through his memories, and with Chester and the rest.  I do wish that we could have seen more of Jason showing Aiden the Pearls in his life, or the other times he let people into his inner "oyster," for lack of a better word.  But we have to be content with the side glances of these, as we should never see these ourselves, (one of the distinct advantages of writing in the 1st person) since Jason is telling the story himself.

I've read many debut novels recently, as an employee of Borders, and I have always been impressed with the potential in each of these authors to become better, to write truly great literature.  I look forward to reading the follow up to Ford's The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, but I realized, as I finished this novel, that Dermont is closest to achieving those masterpieces.  I look forward to those as well.  I only wish that she had taught the Creative Writing course I took in my small university in Georgia, as I would have learned much.  I thank you, Dr. Dermont, for giving a window into how you write, how the stories are meant to be told, and only hope that more people will witness the sea the way you have written it.

Short Review: If Dermont had written Moby Dick, I would have relished every word.  The foray into the world of New England boarding schools, with all the heartbreak and ecstasy, is done wonderfully. Jason Prosper navigates his way through love, death, and all the swirling eddies in between in this amazing debut novel.  I hope it finds it's way to the top of all the bookstores' "Staff Picks" displays.  I know it would mine.

Book Reviews: Magogs and Mither Mages

So what kind of books do I read in the break room of a Christian Bookstore?  Why, books about wizards, werewolves, and dragons, of course.  Not that this is anything different from what I read normally, except it's odd to suspend one's disbelief in a store where belief is required.  Fantasy literature and religion have often gone together, what with C.S. Lewis and Tolkien having founded the idea of modern day fantasy.  And interestingly enough, both the books I have recently read have touched upon the idea of the Christian church within a world where magic exists.

I first picked up Donita Paul's Dragonspell from Lifeway's bargain stacks.  The series centers around Kale, the perfect depiction of a fledgling soul, and her growth from slave girl to a keeper of dragons.  The book screams Christian Allegory, so much more than Lewis' Narnia series.  Aslan was the figure of Christ in the land beyond the wardrobe, and Paul does an adequate job of creating "Paladin,"  a human teacher with benevolent powers.  The story is enjoyable and well crafted, although I miss a more subtle angle that Lewis would have taken.  When an author takes it upon herself to be a creator of a world, the very role that God had in this world, everything must be created from scratch.  To place such an obvious character as Paladin in a fantasy world is to disrupt the total transformation of the world from a Fantasy realm to one constructed by an author just to make a point.  The world becomes secondary to a Sunday School teacher, using make-believe to illustrate a point.  C.S. Lewis was a master in balancing the two ideas, which is why the books can be read as Christian Allegories or as fantasy novels to entertain readers of any age.  Knowing that Donita Paul's works are Light Allegories with an obvious message and audience, it does not detract from the enjoying the books.  I look forward to reading the rest of her works, as I have found the rest in the bargain stacks as well.
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It's not often that you store your book in the same locker as the person who wrote it, and I have the pleasure of knowing Steven Warnock, who works with me at Lifeway and has written The Magog Gambit, a work with vampires and werewolves and hosts of undead creatures.  However, before getting an image of Taylor Lautner in your head, it is very much more than the silly brooding teenage tomes that have attracted so many readers today.  Warnock has taken the idea of Faerie, the parallel world of magic and wonder that co-exists with our world, and placed not only the elves and nymphs in it, but the modern day vampire and zombie as well.  Using the real world as a place of fantasy is both easy and difficult, as it gives the reader an obvious place to start out, in this case, Covington, Georgia.  The problem, however, arises when you have to explain all works of supernatural causes within the framework created.  Eoin Colfer did a great job in Artemis Fowl, and Steven has also managed to balance religion and magic in our own world.

The novel centers around Jordana, a college student going to a small college in Covington, and a professor, Gideon Shaw, who just happens to be much more than he seems.  Of course, a supernatual book would be nothing without romance, banter, and a ton of action, all of which this book has.  The thing that impressed me most was the pace of the book through dialogue.  Almost all description of characters and setting is done through the banter of the characters.  It is a skill that Orson Scott Card does tremendously well.  His book Speaker for the Dead is a clinic on character development.  It is this quality that Steven has done quite well.  The people are fleshed out and instantly empathized with, even the bad guys, which can be cardboard cut-outs of evil in some books. The dialogue moves along at a clip which made The Empire Strikes Back so interesting (well, if it weren't for the Degobah interludes), between Han and Leia.

Since Steven might read this, I found two parts of the book to be a little confusing.  So I'll criticize a little. The Prologue needs a little work, as I was confused in parts, as if there was a system, rules of "how things work" that I didn't know about, and that if it were a new author that I did not know (and knowing how self-published authors often are) I might be tempted to give up on it.  It would be a great shame for that flaw to keep readers from discovering such an entertaining work.  The second spot, and this is being picky, is the first fight in the park with Dark Word agents.  They're all named.  Every stormtrooper didn't have a name, and no one is expected to know Ensign Jimmy's name when he gets eaten by a carnivorous flower on Star Trek.  I felt it would have flowed a little better if only the main guy would have a name, and the rest just be, "the thug with the knife."

I've never read a book by someone I've actually known, and so there were some interesting parts of the story where I recognize someone from real life in the book, or where a character says something and I think, "That's something Steven would say," forgetting that he actually *wrote* the book.  I was reading a book by a good author, not "Steven's Book" or "a self-published book that only will be read by his friends." Because that's not the case.  It deserves to be given a wider audience, and when the publishers of those silly vampire novels get a hold of this one, they'll want to publish it, too.
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And speaking of Orson Scott Card, I then read The Lost Gate.  When it comes to reading OSC, I usually read his books in only a couple of days, and when I go to the kitchen to get food, I walk back wondering what amazing TV show I was just watching.  Then I realize that it was a book, and the images were in my head.  He is my favorite author, and I'm very eager to see how the filming of Ender's Game comes out.  On that side note, I've heard many different reactions on the casting of the characters.  Some have said that the actors are too old to play the parts (and this has always been a problem with books about children that are not always *for* children.  Take A Clockwork Orange, for instance. The main character was only 14 at the start, yet a very adult Malcolm McDowell played the main character.), while some of the rejected scripts had given Ender a girlfriend.  I happen to approve of the cast right now, and hopefully they won't butcher the story, especially since OSC had to approve the final script.  But I digress...

Perhaps it was the film that affected his book The Pathfinder, because his usual amazing work was flat on this one.  I couldn't finish it.  Which is why I hoped that his foray into the world of Faerie, of magic and wizardry, wouldn't turn out that way.  I waited a year or more before actually reading it.  Thankfully Card is back up to his usual brilliance with this work.

The challenging thing about a first novel in a series is how to create the world and portray it in such a way that the reader becomes comfortable with it.  With Crichton's Jurassic Park, I had to keep a list of who everyone was, so complex were the first few chapters.  I have never started reading Jordan's Wheel of Time series because I've heard from a lot of people that the first book is so painfully slow and difficult.  Now Card has to create a world, characters, a complete magic system, and make it into a story that today's readers, with their e-books and their attention deficit disorder lifestyles, will take the time to be familiar with.  I've had friends that never watched the original Star Wars movies because they were too slow, didn't hold their interest.  Orson Scott Card creates a book with two worlds, two different sets of characters, settings, a complex "gating" system, and does it with ease. Only at the end are their passages of complex magic theory that is a little difficult, but by then, we have the knowledge to understand it.  Critics will say that Danny, especially when he's in Washington DC, delivers soliloquies of moral reasoning, of a nature that most adults wouldn't do nowadays.  But readers of Card understand that his child characters are brilliant, and that their thought processes, which Card elaborates to a large degree, fits in with the story.  I thoroughly enjoy an author who will put his or her beliefs on the page, to merge ethical thought with fictional characters.  I guess that's why Ayn Rand's characters were so thrilling for me. 

As this is obviously the first of a large number of books, I hope that it will be as wonderful as the Memory of Earth, Alvin the Maker, and Ender series were to read.  I would even be up for this becoming a TV series, much like Martin's Game of Thrones is now on HBO.  But for now, I'll just wait for the next book to come out, and with baited breath.