Flight into Fantasy

This book, by one of the most proliphic science fiction and fantasy writers of our time, Jane Yolen, is an excellent start to a trilogy of novels. It tells the story of Jenna, who is believed to be a legendary figure of prophecy. Jenna is raised with a group of warrior women who teach her woodscraft and swordplay. When Jenna is thirteen, she sets out with her friend Pynt on her missioning, which is a type of growing up ritual. Along the way, she meets an exiled prince, who is on the run from the usurper king’s hunters.

This book is surprisingly dark. There are places that are extremely violent and gory, and Jenna, our main character, despite being super special and destined for greatness, is amazingly likeable. I also really liked that the book didn’t really make much of the fact that Jenna and her sisters were women. Jenna is just treated as if she is on a par with the men in the book.

There are also songs, legends, myths, and even historical references throughout the book telling what scholars in later days thought of that passage in the story. These are especially intriguing and give depth to the narrative.

The book is also fairly short, so it’s not the kind of sprawling epic you’ll be reading for weeks.

Over all, very highly recommended.

So far I have completely pwn3d my reading challenge to myself, and I’m about to do so again, because I just discovered that Stephen King published an omnibus of his first three novels, Carrie , Salem’s Lot and The Shining in one collection. Which means I need only order one book and it will count as three toward my reading goal.

In other book related news, you would think that I would not be enjoying Jane Yolen’s Sister Light, Sister Dark because already I have encountered an OMG superspecial baby girl that will save the world, and there are telepathic bonds involved. However, I’m actually enjoying this book. Yolen’s writing style is completely captivating, and she is telling a surprisingly grim story. We’ll see how I feel about the book after I get further in, but another thing I’m digging is the fact that Yolen includes faux-historical notes and academic documentation throughout, making it seem as though the story she’s telling really is part of a history of some other, fascinating place.

Sequels, as a general rule, suck. This book was no real exception. The first book was witty and charming and cute. This second one was cute, too, but the story was needlessly complicated, and I was bothered by the fact that it was obviously a sequel to the movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” rather than the previous novel.

That being said, the book wasn’t a complete wash. There were a lot of clever moments, and I love author Gary K. Wolf’s narrative voice. I just think it’s not as good as the first book.

So yesterday was obligatory Family Togetherness day. Which meant I could bring a book and pretty much ignore my family after a while. Which is a horrible thing to say, but our idea of family togetherness is watching a DVD with the volume cranked up loud so my father can hear it. Nobody actually talks during these outings, so it wasn’t like I was missing much.

Anyway, the result was that I could actually read Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf without interruptions. And I’m glad I did. I’m not really a fan of hard-boiled detective novels, but this one was kind of cute, and the mystery element was compelling enough for me to keep guessing. It was definitely a lot different from the movie, at least what I remember of the movie. And it’s very highly recommended.

Also attempted last night was a start on Poul Anderson’s collection of novellas, The Time Patrol. I’m assured this is all classic SF, but I couldn’t get into the first one, so I figured there was very littlehope for the rest of the collection.

I have no idea how I got through this book, except for the fact that it was only on 9 sides, which translates to 3 Library of Congress tapes. The book’s prequel, A Kiss of Shadows was 12 sides, so I think I was pleased at the book taking a third as long to read.

The thing about this second book is that I don’t have a whole lot new to snark about. I was just a giant pile of apathy as I read. And in some ways that’s a lot worse for me than hating a book outright. At least if I hated the book, that’s a strong emotion to associate with it. But I just mainly wanted to finish this book so I could move on to the next thing in my reading queue.
Next up: A couple of books by Gary K. Wolf, spoofs on hard-boiled detective novels, Who Censored Roger Rabbit? and Who P-p-plugged Roger Rabbit? which should be really quick and hopefully amusing reads. After which, I plan on reading Jane Yolen’s Sister Light, Sister Dark and White Jenna which I’ve heard nothing about, except that I’ve enjoyed what few of Yolen’s short fiction I’ve read. Plus, I saw nothing in the book descriptions about a Harem of Hotness or the presence of any cute talking animals. Which doesn’t mean they aren’t there, but I have hopes.

The bad: I got maybe an hour and a half of sleep last night. This is because my body hates me and is determined that I should suffer.

The good: Another really good online friend has an LJ.

The Snarky: Merry Gentry whines in this second book about how she’s never left alone because she always has one of the Harem of Hotness with her at all times. So, that begs the question: do the fey follow each other into the bathroom?

I took a break from Merry Gentry to read something completely different, and the result is a book I cannot recommend highly enough. The Spiral Dance is the first novel by a master of science fiction short stories, R. Garcia y Robertson. (Well, OK, maybe he’s only a master storyteller in my pointy little head, but this is my LJ, so YMMV.) Anyway, this book is set in Elizabethan England and tells the story of Anne Percy, countess of Northumberland, who receives a prophecy telling her she will journey to Durham, and then to Scotland, and to the ends of the earth. And sure enough, that's what Anne does.

Garcia y Robertson clearly knows what he's talking about in terms of English society, and he weaves fantasy and history marvelously while still making the book very accessible to the modern reader. And Anne Percy's character is wonderfully fascinating as she comes to terms with her destiny in life and of the powers she's been given. And there's a roguish Scottish werewolf who is drop-dead sexy in my opinion. And there's some lesbian subtext, too.

So, yes. Very highly recommended. The author mentions that there's a sequel, but I haven't read it yet, and would like to do so immediately.

So it would seem that on my huge request list that I keep on my computer when I order books from the library, the book on top of the list is by L. Ron Hubbard. Isn’t he the scientology guy, or some other brand of science fiction author whackjob? Has anybody actually read any of his books? The book in question appears to be Fear if that helps at all.

So, just for the record, I don’t think Laurell K. Hamilton is the best. writer. eva! But I will give her props for hooking me with this book despite its shortcomings. Because, make no mistake, she had me from the first page, and I drooled all over the adventures of Merry Gentry and her erstwhile band of companions, despite my bitchery in an earlier post. Why? Well, first of all, urban fantasy is my favorite genre of literature. If you promise me things like fairies, goblins, and selkies in the modern world, I am already there like white on rice. This is why Charles de Lint has never yet published a bad work of fiction, just a few novels I thought were less good.

The other thing that hooked me was definitely the wish-fulfillment potential. I know I accused LKH of that in my last post, but I guess there is a part of me that would have liked to be a fairy princess, too. And then, of course, we have Merry's harem of teh hotness from the inegmatic Doyle, who is by far my favorite, to Kitto, who is just too cute, to Frost, who delivers teh angst. I mean, she was basically instructed to make herself a harem and have lots of sex. Some people should totally have her problems!

I do have to say that I wish the plot had been structured a bit better–I'd have liked a little bit more mystery and intrigue and a little bit less OMG look at my clothes! The last chapter was a serious let-down, because LKH introduces a whole other character that we don't get to meet at all, kind of at random. It was like she realized, 'Oh, crap, I'm at the end of the book. Um… So then we all went back home and lived moderately happily ever after until the sequel comes out, where there will be more of teh hot guyz for me to seduce. The end.'

Will I be reading future installments of the series? Probably, but I'm interspersing other books between them, and I'm on the waiting list from the library so I can get the third and fourth book in audio format.

I forgot to put down my thoughts on Ingathering an omnibus collection of Zenna Henderson’s stories about the People. Which is quite a shame since those thoughts are unashamedly positive and fangirly.

The compilers of the collection start out by saying how, yes, Henderson is unabashedly sentimental and mawkish, but that she tells a good story so you should all read her stories anyway. Which is quite true. There is nothing particularly hard or scientific about Henderson’s SF, but she does have a good feel for characterization, and I’m a sucker for characters I actually like.

The People, for those of you who don’t know, are an alien race that crashed on Earth in about 1890 or so and settled in the Southwest. They have nifty mental abilities, and are generally morally superior to most humans. But even the People have their flaws and are capable of pride, arrogance, anger, etc.

The People have to adapt to being on a new planet where they are not always treated kindly, and end up settling in several Groups, the most notable of which is at a place called Cougar Canyon, where we meet a few recurring characters over and over again in several of the stories.

What I really liked was that for an author writing in the 60's, Henderson tackles some pretty complex social issues. My favorite of her stories, “Angels Unawares” deals a lot with fundies, and how they use the Bible as a weapon which it's not supposed to be. Depression is also a major theme for one of the characters we meet.

Other favorite stories in the book would be “Troubling of the Water”, which is a companion piece to “Angels Unawares”, “Return”, because Glory, who is not one of the People, is just that cool and she resonated with me, and “Captivity”, because its sweet sentimentality just hits me at the right spot.

Some of her later stories I don't reallly like so much, the ones that don't really connect well with each other. “Michael Without” was particularly less good, but then, it was never published, and I can kind of understand why.

Aside from that, though, a thoroughly engrossing read.

So we’ll talk about the rest of my life tomorrow, when I’ve had sleep, but I figured you’d all care deeply about what I’m reading.

After finishing A Feast for Crows (which I loved except for the cliff hangers associated with a couple of storylines) I started on the first of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Merry Gentry novels. Knowing what more articulate souls than I have said about the mad literary sk1llz or lack thereof of Ms. Hamilton, I’m trying to read them as escapist fluff.

My impressions as of halfway through A Kiss of Shadows :

1. Laurell, sweetie, it was a very bad idea for you to hire a blind retarded monkey as your editor. I’m sure you’re one of those authors that’s just so good (read: really rich) that you don’t actually need an editor, but trust me, you do. The fact that you keep repeating yourself every five minutes is proof of that.

As this is an audio book, I can’t really provide examples, but one might be something like this:

“Doyle looked at me in abject disgust, and I realized what was happening. He was seeing me for what I truly was, the author’s wish-fulfillment fantasy, Mary Sue incarnate. All girls wanted to grow up to be fairy princesses, but here I was, actually one in real life. Sometimes it was good to be me.

“I think you’re the ultimate in Mary Sues, Merry,” Doyle spat contemptuously. “I mean, you’re obviously the embodiment of the author’s childhood wish to grow up to be fey royalty.’”

2. I suppose pointing out that Merry is obviously a wish-fulfillment fantasy and there is nothing whatsoever resembling a character flaw anywhere to be found on the woman would be unnecessary since I just said that. But it bears repeating, and the problem with characters like that is that it’s hard for me to totally get wrapped up in their story. If I know there is no immediate, true danger for the hero(ine) to overcome, it's hard for me to truly care about them. And unless something earth-shattering happens, I'm not seeing that Merry's going to change very perceptibly emotionally.

3. However, despite the retarded monkey on crack that's Ms. Hamilton's editor and despite Merry being an epic Mary Sue, I am still reading because I am hooked. Part of that is the fascination with train wrecks, and I have a feeling that I'll be spacing out the rest of the books so I'm not reading them all at once, but a lot of it is that beneath Merry's self-centeredness there is a really fascinating story being unfolded about fey culture, and I am a sucker for urban fantasy. And watching all the men Merry ever meets fall under the mad sway of her vagina is truly fascinating.