Yes, the characters have minor goals that they may or may not have met at this point.  Yes, Luthar wants to win the Contest, but he’s sort of a whiny bitch about it.  Yes, Logen has made it to his preliminary goal, though that still doesn’t tell us much about where he’s actually going or what he wants.  Yes, we know Glokta is suffering but has a glimmer of human in him somewhere.  All this has served to do, to my mind, is to establish the characters as they are.  They haven’t grown (and granted, it’s early for that) and I have no idea where they might be going, or how they all connect.  And I feel that, at 20 percent in, there should be some sense of direction.

It’s just a little frustrating, because I want to enjoy the book, but to this point it has not given me any real reason to continue reading.  There’s no urge to know what’s going to happen next, because nothing of consequence is happening.

I’ll keep with it.  I’ve read slow starting books before and managed to hang on until things start happening.  Only once have I been annoyed enough (and invested little enough) to put the book down with no intention of finishing (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell).  I just wish they’d get to the story already.

Now, I am an avid reader.  I devour books, sometimes at a startling pace.  However, there are very few books that I find the time to re-read at all, let alone multiple times.  And I have read Austen multiple times.  I have read each of her books at least three times, and a couple much more than that.  Of her six complete books, I have duplicate copies of three and electronic copies of two.  I have seen, to my knowledge, every movie version of her books.  Yes, even the horrible ones.  While I watch the worse ones, I complain, but I am still enthralled.

This last surge of interest happened because Lifetime showed "The Jane Austen Book Club" which has been on my to-watch list for an age.  (Cute movie.  Starts uneven.  Middle is very strong.  Finishes decent.)  Even though I read that book a couple of years ago, I didn’t remember some of the opinions they express about why Austen did this or that with these characters, how the movie of Mansfield Park mangled the story (though I love it anyway), or what she was trying to show us.

I have had the newest rendition of Emma on the Tivo for a few weeks and hadn’t managed to find the time to watch it.  Last night, I sat down and watched the entire two hour first episode.  And I started reading Mansfield Park again.  And I started reading Persuasion again.  (One is the physical book at home and the other is the Kindle version on my iPod.)  It seems silly to juggle three stories at once, but I can’t choose to do otherwise right now.  I am, again and always, enthralled.

And yet, I still cannot put my finger on why.  I can tell you what concepts most attract me, but I’ve seen these in other books and I don’t have the urge to read them repeatedly.  Her writing is difficult for a modern reader at first, until you re-adapt to the period terminology and colloquialisms, so it cannot be because they are easy to slide into in that sense.  Is it something about the story itself?  I suppose some of them read like a Regency fairy tale, but there is as much a sense of harsh reality of a woman’s lot in that time as there is any joy at finding true love.

Maybe that is it, though — it is like a fairy tale for grownups, set at a time distant and different enough to be enchanting, but in a world real enough that we can empathize and be in the protagonist’s skin with only a little stretch of our imaginations.

When I finished the book last night, I set it down, walked out to my husband and said that I hated it.  I then went on to explain that I didn’t really mean that, that it was an excellent book, and that I loved it, but that it was also very dark and sometimes difficult.

If you’re looking for typical heroic fantasy, where the protagonist rises above his faults to win the day and save the world… this is not that book.  Yes, there are elements of that, and if I felt like playing devil’s advocate, I could probably make a convincing argument for it based on some few bits, but that isn’t what the book is about.

(Minor spoilers below.)

The book is about one very human, very fallible, sometimes selfish and stupid teen’s journey.  I hesitate to even say it’s a journey to adulthood, because I don’t think, even at the end, that he really gets it.  He may be the type of person who never will understand that searching for happiness outside yourself rarely works.  His girlfriend certainly accused him of that, and I think she was spot on.  Instead, he just sort of shuts everything out, then goes along with the flow, never really growing past a certain selfish (and very human) point.

You’d think that would make for a terrible book, but it doesn’t.  Quentin is so real and it it so easy to empathize with him.  What would happen to you if you learned that magic was real?  That other worlds were real — especially the worlds you read about and loved as a child?  I think that Grossman’s take on this what-if is particularly realistic.  I love that it feels as if he got it so very right, while part of me is also lamenting that fact and wishing for the light and hope that’s usually prevalent in fantasy.

Regarding the more concrete elements of writing style, I felt like the book moved slow at times, almost dwelling in elements of character development more than events.  It felt as if there wasn’t really a goal to strive for or a climax that was being built toward until the last quarter of the book.  Where this might usually irritate me, it seemed to work well for these characters and this story.  It may sound like a criticism, but it is more a compliment.  Grossman took a pacing that I usually don’t care for and not only made it work, but made it work excellently.  I felt more in the characters’ skins than I have with many books, and I’d guess this choice in pacing and focus has much to do with it.

I also felt like there were threads that were inadequately explored (or mentioned too much, lending them an importance early on they shouldn’t have truly had.)  Quentin’s relationship with his high school friends seemed a strong focus early on, but it sort of just fades away early on in the book, and is only picked up briefly (and not to a satisfactory resolution, though to an adequate one) later on.  That may be the point, really.  After all, that is often what happens when teens go off to different colleges.  Explaining it may not be necessary.

Overall, the writing is excellent.  It carried me along, if not exactly happily, and I had a difficult time putting it down until I was finished.

The book is often dark and depressing.  I’ve heard others call it “gritty” and I imagine that’s accurate too.  It is also excellent and beautiful and real, and I adored it when it wasn’t making me cry.  I would easily recommend it to anyone well-versed in the variants of fantasy literature as I think those will be the people who get it most, and on who it has the biggest impact.

So, I had a baby and she’s six months old and beautiful.  She has her own blog.  Ask me for the link if you want it.

I’ve hardly had any time to play games for the last six months.  I just reinstalled Diablo 2 this last week once they announced Diablo 3 was coming out.  I finally managed to get some time to install the expansion for NWN2 as well, but then decided to finish the main campaign first, since I’m so close and someone totally lied about the expansion not following after the main campaign.  It totally does!

I’m also waiting eagerly for Fallout 3 and Spore.  I’ll link to my Spore page later if I can figure out how to do it.

I’m also also re-reading some classics from my tween years right now: I’m about halfway through “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” and “The Grey King” (Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series).

Oh, yeah, and I took up knitting.

More comprehensive updates will hopefully come later, as I think I’m turning the corner on being able to find the time to type up a thing or two.

I remember a strong love for mythology and fairy tales, which is probably where my current love for fantasy comes from. That love for fantasy expanded into an interest in science fiction. There may have been some familial influence there as well. My mother is an avid reader, mostly of speculative fiction and mysteries. My maternal grandfather was the same, an avid reader and especially of speculative fiction. I remember him giving me all his cast off Asimov’s Science Fiction/Science Fact magazines in my late teens and early twenties.

My interest in classic literature came from a peculiar place. I was involved in musical theater, at least peripherally through my mother, through most of my childhood and teenage years. When I was in high school, Les Miserables was the rage with everyone, and I fell in love with the music and then the story. When I first heard the London cast recording (as opposed to my earlier exposure to the Broadway recording), I realized that there was more to the story than I’d heard before. Curious about how much was the invention of the composers, and how much was the original story, I dug into the book and found that I loved it. It’s a difficult read. Hugo was a political writer and so he tends to go on about his politics at length — politics that have little point of reference for a 17 year old American. His characters had so much depth and history that I really became involved, actually rereading the book after searching for a different abridgment (I still haven’t managed to attack the full unabridged version) which focused more on the characters. From Hugo, I jumped to Dumas, and then (oddly perhaps) to Austen who is still my very favorite.

So now, most of what I read is science fiction and fantasy. I love exploring different perspectives, and that seems to be most prevalent in speculative fiction. I’ve flirted with suspense and non fiction a bit, and am still actively seeking out classics that will draw me in as much as Austen and the others.

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It’s not a problem with the writing style. The author’s prose is wonderful. It’s just… so much angst, it seems… something like that. It’s almost hard to put my finger on.

I guess it’s that we’ve spent half the book establishing the roles of both sides of the conflict, and the blah personality of the person caught in the middle of the conflict. (And really, she’s not very interesting other than that she’s caught in the middle of this situation — though I think that’s the point. She’s ordinary, caught up in the extraordinary.) And everything I read is just more of what I’ve been reading for the last couple hundred pages, it feels like.

This book was highly recommended and very well reviewed. I’m wondering what I’m missing at the moment. It’s not that I’m not enjoying it… I just keep wondering when things are going to start happening.

Technorati Tags: Books Fantasy Literature Elizabeth Moon

There’s the Benandanti, who are saying that the Goddess awakening will bring chaos and darkness and all that, and you think they’re the good guys at first, especially since the Goddess seems a bit on the bloodthirsty side.

At the same time, you find out that for thousands of years, these men have barely tolerated women at all, and have done all they can to squash anything, religious or secular, led by women.

So, I’m halfway through, I’m intensely into the book, and I have no idea what’s going to happen next. I guess that’s a sign of a good book.

Technorati Tags: Books Fantasy Literature Elizabeth Moon

Needing something to read during lunch at work, I grabbed “The Birthday of the World” off my shelf. I’d started it at one point, and it’s a collection of science fiction short stories, so I was able to pick it up and just make sure I was at the beginning of a story. Perfect lunch reading.

I had forgotten how absolutely incredible LeGuin’s writing is. I of course read the Earthsea books fairly early on. Most fantasy readers I know did the same. As I was reading this book, though, I was just constantly amazed at her world building skills. She makes the familiar seem strange. She makes the alien seem familiar. These stories are almost all of different cultures colliding, or how one person reacts when immersed in a different environment, or of how our perception of what is real and right can shift depending on our circumstances (or all of the above). These are all my favorite sorts of things (which is why Sheri S. Tepper is my favorite author — it’s a favorite subject of hers as well) and I knew that LeGuin wrote about these things, but I suppose it never really hit me until I was reading Birthday.

So what did I do when I was done with Birthday? I went right out and picked up “Changing Planes” which is LeGuin’s newest book, another collection of shorts where multiple worlds and cultures are viewed through a very human (Earth human) lens. And it’s turning out to be just as excellent.

[tags]Books, Fantasy Literature, Le Guin[/tags]