It's a got a groovy beat and I can totally dance to it, I'd give it a 92
It's got a groove, but it kinda slides into noise towards the end, I'd give it an 83
This is how I imagine myself rating this book to a Dick Clark who's younger than he was at my birth on a show I've only seen in reruns
This is my first Stross novel, and it's good. And, there is a lot going on. It's set in the future for starters, a really convincingly constructed future if I do say so myself. And it revolves around virtual reality games. I haven't played a video game since Atari, and other than a very hung over Saturday in 2002 when I laid on the couch and watched two friends play Grand Theft Auto for 5 hours waiting for the pain to go away I haven't seen one either (I don't get out of my box much). I can imagine if I knew more about the games in general the novel would have been even more impressive. Stross is amazingly convincing in his depiction of both the game and the future.
Stross gets a lot done with his setting alone. There is all kind of social and political commentary on our present just under the surface of his seemingly innocent references to the places in the story. The characters, at first, had me worried: pushy, loud, CEO; mousy, with potential, forensic accountant; schlubish super programmer guy; tough as nails police chick. However, Stross manages to give each one of those cut outs enough to make them human and compelling and impressively surprising in moments. There is on relationship that you know is coming but it emerges at a pace that seems suddenly rushed three quarters of the way, as if a nearing plot point required the relationship more than the characters.
I hate books that wrap up with neat little endings as a rule. And this one wraps up, but it's not necessarily neat and the information withheld until the final 20 pages doesn't drop out of nowhere, another thing I hate.
Overall I'm leaning more with side one of my brain as I finish this review, maybe it's not noise so much as just a single instrument out of key.
End of the World Blues - Jon Courtnay Grimwood
This is a fun read.
It's a whodunit disguised as a sci-fi. And, I hafta say, the sci-fi element is key. Not that it isn't a good whodunit, but the sci-fi part is just a good trippy distraction in the places where my brain would have gotten tired of trying to follow all the little leads. That might be my problem with whodunits, I bore of the procedure quickly - but not so much when someone is traversing time.
The main character is Kit, who starts out not entirely likeable and ends the same way, even though his character evolves through the novel. I respect that about this book. Kit isn't redeemed entirely, nor is he let off the hook. He is true to character and makes some better decisions later in the book than he did early. Totally respectable in that department. The fact that those decisions tie everything about the whodunit off so neatly a little less so.
Enter:
Nijie, a street urchin in Tokyo is the other significant character and the source of all things supernatural in the book. She takes on the identity of Lady Neku as a cos-play character and manages to save Kit's life twice in the opening 50 pages of the book. Her loose ends, not so tied off. She's from the distant future - a not very bright one - and she and Kit are tied together though an object. I've read that her future is existence is too underdeveloped in places and it is ambiguous, but by the time you get to the end it works. She's a kid. What we see of her future world reflects her childish understanding of it, her memory of it and her trauma in it. It sounds exactly a lot like what my nephew sounds like trying to describe something weird that you've never seen. It totally worked for me.
It's a whodunit disguised as a sci-fi. And, I hafta say, the sci-fi element is key. Not that it isn't a good whodunit, but the sci-fi part is just a good trippy distraction in the places where my brain would have gotten tired of trying to follow all the little leads. That might be my problem with whodunits, I bore of the procedure quickly - but not so much when someone is traversing time.
The main character is Kit, who starts out not entirely likeable and ends the same way, even though his character evolves through the novel. I respect that about this book. Kit isn't redeemed entirely, nor is he let off the hook. He is true to character and makes some better decisions later in the book than he did early. Totally respectable in that department. The fact that those decisions tie everything about the whodunit off so neatly a little less so.
Enter:
Nijie, a street urchin in Tokyo is the other significant character and the source of all things supernatural in the book. She takes on the identity of Lady Neku as a cos-play character and manages to save Kit's life twice in the opening 50 pages of the book. Her loose ends, not so tied off. She's from the distant future - a not very bright one - and she and Kit are tied together though an object. I've read that her future is existence is too underdeveloped in places and it is ambiguous, but by the time you get to the end it works. She's a kid. What we see of her future world reflects her childish understanding of it, her memory of it and her trauma in it. It sounds exactly a lot like what my nephew sounds like trying to describe something weird that you've never seen. It totally worked for me.
Exit Ghost - Philip Roth
Sometimes I read a book and regardless of whether it's any good or not, or I liked it or not, there is an image that stays with me. Sometimes for months. When the narrator describes his young son playing the in the sprinklers in Marilyn Robinson's Gilead, the tooth pulling scene delivered so matter-of-factly in Listening for Small Sounds, and Temple Drake's skin inching up her frame in Sanctuary come to mind. And for me, in this novel, I'm just going to want Jamie to have never spoken at all. If only. There is something about her voice that is so jarringly false - to the point of distraction - that for this reader it went a long way towards ruining a perfectly enjoyable read.
Exit Ghost is Nathan Zuckerman's swan song of sorts. A virtual recluse for the last 10 years, he returns to New York city to have a procedure done that is meant to control his post-prostate cancer incontinence - it's a return likened to Rip Van Winkle (I kid you not - this is Roth right?) In the city, Nathan, on a whim, answers an ad for a house trade for a year. Two young authors, one of whom is rattled in post 9/11 New York city, are looking to escape for a year. Nathan, feeling invigorated and hopeful answers the ad and meets the two young authors. Ridiculous, puppy-dog loyal David, and his ever-so-lovely, 30 year-old, more talented (although one publication 5 years prior is the only evidence of this) wife, Jamie.
Nathan becomes involved - more so imaginatively than really - with this couple, the "friend" of theirs who hopes to write a biography on a now-deceased friend of his, and a couple of one-time friends in the city. An author himself, Nathan imaginatively reconstructs many of his exchanges in NY in an effort to work on (most probably) his final novel. As the novel progresses, we learn that Nathan's facilities, mental as well as physical, are less and less reliable. With the introduction of the young seductress, Jamie, Nathan laments the loss of his youth anew.
There are moments where the story fires on all cylinders. There is a secret, a new look at the past, a possible untapped potential - elements that propel the story convincingly. Nathan is sympathetic and compelling. His interactions, while occasionally somewhat polemic, are nonetheless entertaining. At moments the dialogue is so good you feel like you're in the middle of the conversation. This is especially true with Nathan and Amy, or Nathan and Kliman. But then there is Jamie.
I don't know if the author fell in love with the character himself or what, but nothing about her rang true for this reader after the first introduction. She is so idealized that even the moments that are suppose to flush her out as a "regular" girl on some level fail miserably. By the middle of the novel, it felt as though there was a cardboard poster with "insert perfect fantasy woman here" filling the space from which we should have been able to hear Jamie's voice. It's reasonable that Zuckerman fell so in love with her, was blinded by need, want, desperation etc. and in his memory of her we understand that. However, in the real time exchanges, his POV can't account for "That's how we got so devoted so quickly - they provided us with delightful tales of horror and mirth" or "I told you: he is adventurous. He's drawn to daring ventures. What's wrong with that?" All I can think is, who talks like this. Really. Or rather, what tolerable person talks like this, let alone one who would inspire the cloying adoration of a husband, an ex and an old man who figured himself well past the point of being interested in much of anything at all?
Ultimately, the story kind of peters out at the end. I felt like there was more build up than delivery, but at the same time I did really enjoy parts of the novel. That must be what the problem is for me, I so enjoyed the parts I enjoyed that it made all of the Jamie business so damned disappointing. I actually groaned aloud driving home from the mountains when a particularly infuriating Jamie scene followed a phenomenally strong one with Amy. I wanted to punch her out, just so she'd shut the fuck up.
Exit Ghost is Nathan Zuckerman's swan song of sorts. A virtual recluse for the last 10 years, he returns to New York city to have a procedure done that is meant to control his post-prostate cancer incontinence - it's a return likened to Rip Van Winkle (I kid you not - this is Roth right?) In the city, Nathan, on a whim, answers an ad for a house trade for a year. Two young authors, one of whom is rattled in post 9/11 New York city, are looking to escape for a year. Nathan, feeling invigorated and hopeful answers the ad and meets the two young authors. Ridiculous, puppy-dog loyal David, and his ever-so-lovely, 30 year-old, more talented (although one publication 5 years prior is the only evidence of this) wife, Jamie.
Nathan becomes involved - more so imaginatively than really - with this couple, the "friend" of theirs who hopes to write a biography on a now-deceased friend of his, and a couple of one-time friends in the city. An author himself, Nathan imaginatively reconstructs many of his exchanges in NY in an effort to work on (most probably) his final novel. As the novel progresses, we learn that Nathan's facilities, mental as well as physical, are less and less reliable. With the introduction of the young seductress, Jamie, Nathan laments the loss of his youth anew.
There are moments where the story fires on all cylinders. There is a secret, a new look at the past, a possible untapped potential - elements that propel the story convincingly. Nathan is sympathetic and compelling. His interactions, while occasionally somewhat polemic, are nonetheless entertaining. At moments the dialogue is so good you feel like you're in the middle of the conversation. This is especially true with Nathan and Amy, or Nathan and Kliman. But then there is Jamie.
I don't know if the author fell in love with the character himself or what, but nothing about her rang true for this reader after the first introduction. She is so idealized that even the moments that are suppose to flush her out as a "regular" girl on some level fail miserably. By the middle of the novel, it felt as though there was a cardboard poster with "insert perfect fantasy woman here" filling the space from which we should have been able to hear Jamie's voice. It's reasonable that Zuckerman fell so in love with her, was blinded by need, want, desperation etc. and in his memory of her we understand that. However, in the real time exchanges, his POV can't account for "That's how we got so devoted so quickly - they provided us with delightful tales of horror and mirth" or "I told you: he is adventurous. He's drawn to daring ventures. What's wrong with that?" All I can think is, who talks like this. Really. Or rather, what tolerable person talks like this, let alone one who would inspire the cloying adoration of a husband, an ex and an old man who figured himself well past the point of being interested in much of anything at all?
Ultimately, the story kind of peters out at the end. I felt like there was more build up than delivery, but at the same time I did really enjoy parts of the novel. That must be what the problem is for me, I so enjoyed the parts I enjoyed that it made all of the Jamie business so damned disappointing. I actually groaned aloud driving home from the mountains when a particularly infuriating Jamie scene followed a phenomenally strong one with Amy. I wanted to punch her out, just so she'd shut the fuck up.
A Spot of Bother/mark Haddon
I dare say I can't even begin to say anything about this book without first saying: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a tequila book. You know how when you say the word tequila, at least half your listeners will go "awww" caught momentarily in some horrific tequila memory? It's almost universal. This book elicits a similar response with the exception that the memory is no NO WAY horrific. It's just that good.
So, for a girl who prides herself on her expectation management skills, having just finished some stellar Garland, I truly feel like I am tempting the fates. So, I really hunkered down and told myself as long this book did anything short of sucking I would be happy.
For anyone whose ever felt darkness coming (and who hasn't?) this is your novel.
A Spot of Bother is a novel about George, his wife Jean, their son Jamie, daughter Katie, and the necessary peripheral people that come with each. Jean is having an affair, Jamie is a (gasp) homosexual, Katie is about to marry a man she doesn't love, and George is slowly, relatively gracefully going insane. Which among them is craziest is totally a matter of opinion.
The novel covers about an eight week period after George first discovers his "cancer" at a suit fitting for the funeral of a friend. George, of course, keeps his cancer (and his crazy) secret, which really isn't that difficult when you are surrounded by some of the most self-absorbed people on the planet. To the point where I am a little surprised I was not more wholly annoyed with all of them, George included.
It's the humor that saves it. Haddon's story is damn funny. The perspective changes seamlessly between each of the family members. Often times specific events are narrated from Jean's perspective, only to be completely repeated from Katie's or George's in the very next pages. Initially, it highlights the total self-absorption of the characters, but as the novel progresses it demonstrates the evolutions of the various characters and at the same time illustrates how easy it is to miss the point - for all of us.
As the book progresses, each of the characters has to come out of themselves, to varying degrees. Jamie is probably the funniest and most methodical about it. After a anti-climatic break up and the requisite self-serving wallowing, Jamie decides he wants to fix it. He does so mostly because he realizes he's in danger of becoming one of those people "who cares about furniture more than other people" which would mean he would spend all of his time with others like him, which means they would care more about the furniture than they care about him. You see how this is going. The interior conversations Jamie has with himself about how to go about caring about other people and what it means to him on his way to actually caring about other people is priceless.
So, it's a really funny sad book. All of the "comic caper" reviews had me expecting something a little lighter to be honest. There is real sadness in this book. Sadness about what real life is really like and what it eventually becomes, expectation, fear. It is definitely funny when a grown man of a certain position in life finds himself lying in a ditch to avoid relatives on the street, except that it's really not. Part of the gift of this writer is that he can make us laugh about it, but at it's core it's a comedy about a whole lot of things most of us don't find very funny.
I would call this novel a success. It's not as tight as the previous, but c'mon. There are moments where the characters (Jean especially, I think) become grating to the point where you just don't want to hear it anymore, or you want to slap them upside their heads; however, as soon as you loose patience Haddon somehow turns it around by making you laugh or making you realize you're like that too.
I'm relieved. It's far better than I dared hoped.
So, for a girl who prides herself on her expectation management skills, having just finished some stellar Garland, I truly feel like I am tempting the fates. So, I really hunkered down and told myself as long this book did anything short of sucking I would be happy.
For anyone whose ever felt darkness coming (and who hasn't?) this is your novel.
A Spot of Bother is a novel about George, his wife Jean, their son Jamie, daughter Katie, and the necessary peripheral people that come with each. Jean is having an affair, Jamie is a (gasp) homosexual, Katie is about to marry a man she doesn't love, and George is slowly, relatively gracefully going insane. Which among them is craziest is totally a matter of opinion.
The novel covers about an eight week period after George first discovers his "cancer" at a suit fitting for the funeral of a friend. George, of course, keeps his cancer (and his crazy) secret, which really isn't that difficult when you are surrounded by some of the most self-absorbed people on the planet. To the point where I am a little surprised I was not more wholly annoyed with all of them, George included.
It's the humor that saves it. Haddon's story is damn funny. The perspective changes seamlessly between each of the family members. Often times specific events are narrated from Jean's perspective, only to be completely repeated from Katie's or George's in the very next pages. Initially, it highlights the total self-absorption of the characters, but as the novel progresses it demonstrates the evolutions of the various characters and at the same time illustrates how easy it is to miss the point - for all of us.
As the book progresses, each of the characters has to come out of themselves, to varying degrees. Jamie is probably the funniest and most methodical about it. After a anti-climatic break up and the requisite self-serving wallowing, Jamie decides he wants to fix it. He does so mostly because he realizes he's in danger of becoming one of those people "who cares about furniture more than other people" which would mean he would spend all of his time with others like him, which means they would care more about the furniture than they care about him. You see how this is going. The interior conversations Jamie has with himself about how to go about caring about other people and what it means to him on his way to actually caring about other people is priceless.
So, it's a really funny sad book. All of the "comic caper" reviews had me expecting something a little lighter to be honest. There is real sadness in this book. Sadness about what real life is really like and what it eventually becomes, expectation, fear. It is definitely funny when a grown man of a certain position in life finds himself lying in a ditch to avoid relatives on the street, except that it's really not. Part of the gift of this writer is that he can make us laugh about it, but at it's core it's a comedy about a whole lot of things most of us don't find very funny.
I would call this novel a success. It's not as tight as the previous, but c'mon. There are moments where the characters (Jean especially, I think) become grating to the point where you just don't want to hear it anymore, or you want to slap them upside their heads; however, as soon as you loose patience Haddon somehow turns it around by making you laugh or making you realize you're like that too.
I'm relieved. It's far better than I dared hoped.
Remainder - Tom McCarthy.
The premise of this book is that a unnamed, 30 year-old narrator was the victim of an accident where an unnamed "thing" fell from the sky injuring him badly. When he awakes from his coma, his life is irrevocably changed for many reasons. The two major ones being that "[he has] to understand things before I can do them" and his "settlement." That first one, although it seems somewhat innocuous on the surface, well let me not get ahead of myself.
The book opens with a first person account of our narrator getting news of the settlement that's been dangled in front of him throughout his PT. As he re-learned to walk, feed himself, dress etc nurses and doctors constantly referred to his settlement and all the comfort it would buy him. Then he receives 8 1/2 million pounds. THEN, he invests it in a fund that replaces it almost as fast as he can spend it, and spend it he does.
Our narrator now has 8 1/2 million pounds to finance his crazy. Think about that for a minute. Having the money to finance whatever brand of crazy you have. Right?
Our narrator has a moment of deja vu after receiving his settlement and remembers a place where he felt whole - or mostly remembers it. The first thing he sets about doing is recreating that place. Not just the apartment in which he lived though, he wants the same views, the same neighbors, the same smells, the same conversations etc. He hires Naz, a project planner of sorts, to help bring his vision to fruition. It starts out a plan to help a displaced man feel at home again, excessive but understandable. But the problem is, if you feed crazy it will grow.
The crazy spreads, oozing into other parts of his life. He ventures out of his new domicile rarely, but when he does so he ends up wanting to recreate every experience he has. Actors must be hired, locations found and reconstructed to match the places where the original occurrence happened. The re-enactments then take place round the clock so that the narrator can come and watch or participate at any time. Eventually, there are re-enactments of events that didn't happen to the narrator but interest him, and eventually the re-enactments kind of sort of take over the real, as you can imagine well-financed crazy would.
It's a good read. For the most part it speeds along except for when it intentionally comes to a crawl. The first person narration is more effective than I originally thought it might be, but as the story progresses maintaining the unnamed narrators perspective is key to accepting the events that take place in the final act of the novel. The only complaint I have about the book is that there are times where the descent into the narrator's thought process that is so key to his crazy goes on for too long. It isn't funny or scary, it flirts with boring, like the person you get stuck next to a party that wants to give you all the finer details of having planted a tree in their front yard this morning.
Ultimately, for me, what worked so well in this novel was the opening conceit: having to understand before you can do. The novel illustrates the things the narrator can eventually understand and do and those he can't and the things he thinks he does and doesn't and things he does but doesn't realize it. You get the picture.
The book opens with a first person account of our narrator getting news of the settlement that's been dangled in front of him throughout his PT. As he re-learned to walk, feed himself, dress etc nurses and doctors constantly referred to his settlement and all the comfort it would buy him. Then he receives 8 1/2 million pounds. THEN, he invests it in a fund that replaces it almost as fast as he can spend it, and spend it he does.
Our narrator now has 8 1/2 million pounds to finance his crazy. Think about that for a minute. Having the money to finance whatever brand of crazy you have. Right?
Our narrator has a moment of deja vu after receiving his settlement and remembers a place where he felt whole - or mostly remembers it. The first thing he sets about doing is recreating that place. Not just the apartment in which he lived though, he wants the same views, the same neighbors, the same smells, the same conversations etc. He hires Naz, a project planner of sorts, to help bring his vision to fruition. It starts out a plan to help a displaced man feel at home again, excessive but understandable. But the problem is, if you feed crazy it will grow.
The crazy spreads, oozing into other parts of his life. He ventures out of his new domicile rarely, but when he does so he ends up wanting to recreate every experience he has. Actors must be hired, locations found and reconstructed to match the places where the original occurrence happened. The re-enactments then take place round the clock so that the narrator can come and watch or participate at any time. Eventually, there are re-enactments of events that didn't happen to the narrator but interest him, and eventually the re-enactments kind of sort of take over the real, as you can imagine well-financed crazy would.
It's a good read. For the most part it speeds along except for when it intentionally comes to a crawl. The first person narration is more effective than I originally thought it might be, but as the story progresses maintaining the unnamed narrators perspective is key to accepting the events that take place in the final act of the novel. The only complaint I have about the book is that there are times where the descent into the narrator's thought process that is so key to his crazy goes on for too long. It isn't funny or scary, it flirts with boring, like the person you get stuck next to a party that wants to give you all the finer details of having planted a tree in their front yard this morning.
Ultimately, for me, what worked so well in this novel was the opening conceit: having to understand before you can do. The novel illustrates the things the narrator can eventually understand and do and those he can't and the things he thinks he does and doesn't and things he does but doesn't realize it. You get the picture.
Tesseract/Alex Garland
First, I love, love, loved The Beach, not the DiCaprio abomination put on large screens all across the land, but the novel in all it's "game over," weed smoking, traveling beauty. There I said it. I should have stared with: First, I wanted to hate the beach, because I did, but I didn't and so you have the first that I wrote first. Then, I read Coma. I was not as immediately stuck by that novella; it crept up on me slowly. It took me almost a week to love it. Enter The Tesseract. I know better than to expect much. Two novels I love by the same author in order with no offending trite bullshit (I'm looking at you Oates) in between? I sat it on it for months. Pulled it out and moved it around on my desk every few days. Read and reread the glowing reviews and thought, yeah, well you can't very well turn on the author of the fist great novel of Generation X now can you? (No shit, reviewers said that about TB) Then, I had to take a trip for work, one that I knew would be unfathomably noxious, so I threw it in the bag. I guess I just outed myself as still hopeful, but I promise my expectation management (something at which I EXCEL) was in full force.
I was almost all the way through page six and almost wholly apathetic, but then the novel took off. "Everything weird was the bottom line, and Sean had reached it quickly." Really? How does it take that little for the hair on the back of my neck to come to full attention and for me to be unabashedly ecstatic for what's to come? I mean really, what kind of whore am I? A sated one I am happy to tell you.
The Tesseract is a story in three parts. the primary action covers about a sixty minute window on the streets of Manila where a British seaman and a Filipino gangster are set to hash out protection payment issues. The culmination of this meeting brings together the characters from the other two segments of the story, but not before the narrative dissolves into back stories for both. It has no doubt been compared to Pulp Fiction in it's delivery. The novel does a stellar job of weaving the current moment for the three different stories with the necessary back stories as well as keeping them thinly related to one another real time. That means nothing feels cheap, no coincidence that makes your teeth itch, not little tid bit kept from the reader past the second where they should know. It's straight up, honest story telling.
The same voice narrates each of the three stories and so there is a consistency of tone regardless of the age, sex, background of the character. More importantly this allows for each character to be drawn not just from the perspective of the narrator and what the narrator knows, but from what the narrator can report about those around the central characters and their interactions. This is, for this reader, a huge part of the success of the novel. The development of each character in starts and stops from a myriad of viewpoints results in living breathing people on the page. Once you accomplish that, the rest is just easier. If characters are compelling, believable, relatable creations then everything they do becomes interesting even if it isn't. And, of course, everything that happens here is interesting.
Each of the "main" characters spends a fair amount of time in their own head, and I can appreciate the Coma-esque moments that Sean in particular experiences in his panic. The interior monologue gives the reader a glimpse into the how and why easily avoidable events aren't. It also heightens the thrill of the novel even though it makes some of the events even more predictable.
The best part of the novel though, are in these little, almost lost moments where the truly peripheral characters shine. One of the "main" characters is Rosa, an accomplished physician in Manila. Her father is deaf due to an accident. Amid the chaos that is the crescendo of her back story they share an exchange that is both heart wrenching and grounding. She has a similar experience thirty years later in a park with an unnamed stranger. These moments exist for each of the "main" characters, making their lives seem more ordinary, but at the same time more valuable.
He's done it again.
I was almost all the way through page six and almost wholly apathetic, but then the novel took off. "Everything weird was the bottom line, and Sean had reached it quickly." Really? How does it take that little for the hair on the back of my neck to come to full attention and for me to be unabashedly ecstatic for what's to come? I mean really, what kind of whore am I? A sated one I am happy to tell you.
The Tesseract is a story in three parts. the primary action covers about a sixty minute window on the streets of Manila where a British seaman and a Filipino gangster are set to hash out protection payment issues. The culmination of this meeting brings together the characters from the other two segments of the story, but not before the narrative dissolves into back stories for both. It has no doubt been compared to Pulp Fiction in it's delivery. The novel does a stellar job of weaving the current moment for the three different stories with the necessary back stories as well as keeping them thinly related to one another real time. That means nothing feels cheap, no coincidence that makes your teeth itch, not little tid bit kept from the reader past the second where they should know. It's straight up, honest story telling.
The same voice narrates each of the three stories and so there is a consistency of tone regardless of the age, sex, background of the character. More importantly this allows for each character to be drawn not just from the perspective of the narrator and what the narrator knows, but from what the narrator can report about those around the central characters and their interactions. This is, for this reader, a huge part of the success of the novel. The development of each character in starts and stops from a myriad of viewpoints results in living breathing people on the page. Once you accomplish that, the rest is just easier. If characters are compelling, believable, relatable creations then everything they do becomes interesting even if it isn't. And, of course, everything that happens here is interesting.
Each of the "main" characters spends a fair amount of time in their own head, and I can appreciate the Coma-esque moments that Sean in particular experiences in his panic. The interior monologue gives the reader a glimpse into the how and why easily avoidable events aren't. It also heightens the thrill of the novel even though it makes some of the events even more predictable.
The best part of the novel though, are in these little, almost lost moments where the truly peripheral characters shine. One of the "main" characters is Rosa, an accomplished physician in Manila. Her father is deaf due to an accident. Amid the chaos that is the crescendo of her back story they share an exchange that is both heart wrenching and grounding. She has a similar experience thirty years later in a park with an unnamed stranger. These moments exist for each of the "main" characters, making their lives seem more ordinary, but at the same time more valuable.
He's done it again.
Last Dragon/JM McDermott
Man I dig this book. I mean really, really dig.
It's confusing as all hell. I'll say that right up front. You're actually expected to read!?!?! There are no "markers" for the narrative. You know what means? None of those annoying conversations between characters to sum up the action thus far, no dates or times at the beginning of chapters, no establishing of age or location overtly. Halle - fucking- lujah. I'll trade three parts confusion for no parts being led by the nose any day of the goddamn week. Make that every day...
The whole novel gets delivered in short (3 page max) vignettes told (mostly) from the voice of Zahn, now an old woman, assumed to by dying. She is retelling her experience as a young warrior charged with hunting down her own grandfather and killing him. Of course nothing is ever that easy and a task that like that can't be accomplished alone.
One of the things that impressed me about this novel is that the narrative effectively mirrors (what I can believe are) the near death ramblings of a once great warrior. The non-linear, hazy feel of the novel reinforces this initial conceit from beginning to end. On top of that, the narrative is well-paced and some of the descriptions are fantastically compelling, to the point where you start to realize the parts most important to the now dying Zahn are far more colorful than those warrior Zahn might have highlighted then, which is a sign of pretty rich writing in my humble. It's not all perfect. There are some language issues that are distracting scattered throughout the novel. The vocabulary available to second language speakers in short order is often times unrealistic, especially when considered next to the language struggles described on other occasions. Also, the terms aren't always consistent or convincing, but these are small complaints.
I don't read a lot of fantasy, which is to say almost none. I've read other places that this novel breaks form with a lot of fantasy writing and has not been especially well received. Not knowing much about the genre it's hard for me to comment, but I will say for a reader with zero in terms of expectation I really enjoyed this book. The characters for the most part "pop" and remain true to form throughout the novel. Even the unlikable are compelling and the maze of secrets that underlie much of the story are reasonable and well-delivered.
I don't know, this doesn't make it sound all that likable really, does it? And yet, I really like it. There's something about it. Clearly, I can't put my finger on it, but it was wholly worth the read.
It's confusing as all hell. I'll say that right up front. You're actually expected to read!?!?! There are no "markers" for the narrative. You know what means? None of those annoying conversations between characters to sum up the action thus far, no dates or times at the beginning of chapters, no establishing of age or location overtly. Halle - fucking- lujah. I'll trade three parts confusion for no parts being led by the nose any day of the goddamn week. Make that every day...
The whole novel gets delivered in short (3 page max) vignettes told (mostly) from the voice of Zahn, now an old woman, assumed to by dying. She is retelling her experience as a young warrior charged with hunting down her own grandfather and killing him. Of course nothing is ever that easy and a task that like that can't be accomplished alone.
One of the things that impressed me about this novel is that the narrative effectively mirrors (what I can believe are) the near death ramblings of a once great warrior. The non-linear, hazy feel of the novel reinforces this initial conceit from beginning to end. On top of that, the narrative is well-paced and some of the descriptions are fantastically compelling, to the point where you start to realize the parts most important to the now dying Zahn are far more colorful than those warrior Zahn might have highlighted then, which is a sign of pretty rich writing in my humble. It's not all perfect. There are some language issues that are distracting scattered throughout the novel. The vocabulary available to second language speakers in short order is often times unrealistic, especially when considered next to the language struggles described on other occasions. Also, the terms aren't always consistent or convincing, but these are small complaints.
I don't read a lot of fantasy, which is to say almost none. I've read other places that this novel breaks form with a lot of fantasy writing and has not been especially well received. Not knowing much about the genre it's hard for me to comment, but I will say for a reader with zero in terms of expectation I really enjoyed this book. The characters for the most part "pop" and remain true to form throughout the novel. Even the unlikable are compelling and the maze of secrets that underlie much of the story are reasonable and well-delivered.
I don't know, this doesn't make it sound all that likable really, does it? And yet, I really like it. There's something about it. Clearly, I can't put my finger on it, but it was wholly worth the read.
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