Archive for November, 2005
November 14, 2005 at 1:31 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay (Historical Fantasy)
To be counted as a truly great sequel, a book must not only meet but also exceed the expectations raised by its prequel. Lord of Emperors does this incredibly well. The pace is more intense than the in Sailing to Sarantium, and the events have wider-ranging consequences.
I truly loved Lord of Emperors; it’s one of those books that I know I’ll read over and over again.
[spoilers]
I was devastated by Lord of Emperors, albeit briefly. I really didn’t foresee anything that happened. The death of Valerius was upsetting, but not nearly so much as the destruction of the Crispin’s mosaic. It’s rare for me to identify much with book characters, but I cried about the mosaic. I was furious with Leontes; I wanted to hit him in his stupid, smug, self-righteous face. I knew exactly how Crispin must have felt. Such is Guy Gavriel Kay’s talent.
Like Crispin, I had forgotten Gisel; I was upset at Styliane’s triumph and worried about Alixana, and I overlooked her, just as everyone else did. Although I felt for Crispin, and even for Styliane, I couldn’t really regret her death. The end of Lord of Emperors was very satisfying. I badly wanted Alixana to survive, but I hadn’t really expected her to. Her reunion with Crispin was an unforeseen pleasure.
[/spoilers]
Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors are definitely on my top ten list.
Tags: Guy Gavriel Kay
November 14, 2005 at 1:31 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay (Historical Fantasy)
It’s been a long time since I read a book that I enjoyed quite so much. I was surprised at how much I liked it, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. After all, it is historical fantasy, combining two genres that I tend to enjoy very much.
Guy Gavriel Kay does amazing things with words; he really does. I was crying along with one of the characters during the prologue. Not that the book (or its sequel, Lord of Emperors) was particularly sad, but when the characters were upset, I was, too.
Kay also manages his huge cast of characters very well. A lot of authors make the mistake of using a large cast and a number of converging plot lines as a way of creating false suspense. Anyone who’s read anything by Mary Higgins Clark will know what I mean: there are six or eight characters whose stories are being told, and as soon as one approaches a climax, the author switches perspectives, leaving the reader with an annoying cliffhanger. Kay doesn’t do that. Rather than having competing plots, he uses each scene to build up a true picture of the main events of the novel, giving his story richness and depth. Rather like a mosaic, actually.
[spoilers]
The book is set in Sarantium, Kay’s fantasy/historical version of sixth century Byzantium. The protagonist, Caius Crispus, is a Rhodian (read: Roman) mosaicist whose wife and children have died in a plague. Much of the book tells of his journey from his home in Batiara to Sarantium; though he does not, as one might expect from the title, travel by water.
Instead, since it is too late in the year to travel by sea, he begins to walk to Sarantium, on a path that will take him through the sinister forests of Sauradia, in the company of a magic bird.
[/spoilers]
When I first bought Sailing to Sarantium, I decided not to read it until I could find the sequel in a matching edition. After I read it, I was glad that I already had Lord of Emperors. The thing I liked most about books was how easily I fell into the world they created; I was so absorbed that I finished both books in one afternoon. I just couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.
Tags: Guy Gavriel Kay
November 11, 2005 at 7:14 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Children's Literature, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman (Children’s Lit, Historical Fiction)
Of all three Sally Lockhart books that I’ve read (I skipped no. 3, The Tiger in the Well), this one is either my favourite or my least favourite. I’m having a hard time making up my mind.
I really enjoyed most of the book; but I wasn’t very fond of the ending.
[spoilers]
The sudden war was disturbing and a bit confusing for me; I’ve said before that Pullman isn’t afraid of death, and it’s true. In this book, I think he’s too willing to let characters die; he descends from authorial courage into ruthlessness, and it makes it seem like he doesn’t care about his characters as people. And if he doesn’t, why should I?
The death of Karl von Gaisner in particular bothered me. His name is merely mentioned in passing as being among those killed in the battle, and the book ends without any further references to him. It was a it shocking, especially since he was a fairly important character in the book. He was Jim’s closest friend in the country, and was the leader of Adelaide’s chief allies. He deserved better.
That said, The Tin Princess is exciting and fun right up until the climax. The mystery itself was absorbing, but the solution didn’t thrill me. The truth about Prince Leopold and his wife wasn’t what I had been expecting, and it was disappointing.
I also wasn’t fond of the romance between Adelaide and Jim. Perhaps I might have felt better about it if I’d seen some of Adelaide’s thoughts, but we never see anything of her feelings for Jim from her own perspective.
[/spoilers]
Still, Philip Pullman always tells wonderful stories, and this is one of his best.
Tags: Philip Pullman, Sally Lockhart
November 8, 2005 at 4:19 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Children's Literature, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman (Children’s Lit, Historical Fiction)
The Shadow in the North takes place six years after The Ruby in the Smoke. During that time, Sally Lockhart has been to Cambridge, although because she is a woman she wasn’t granted a degree. She has gone into a partnership with Webster Garland, Frederick’s uncle, and she has opened her own financial consulting business with the help of Mr. Temple. Aside from his work in the successful photography business of Garland & Lockhart, Frederick runs a detective agency with Jim Taylor.
Just as he did in The Ruby in the Smoke, Philip Pullman does a masterful job of capturing the tone of the period. He takes the events, attitudes and conditions of London in 1878 and produces a very Victorian mystery. Even Pullman’s criminals are villainous in the style of the period; even the most pedestrian thugs have a tinge of Victorian horror about them.
[spoilers]
Of the three Sally Lockhart books I’ve read so far, The Shadow in the North makes me care most about its characters. I was really rooting for the romance between Frederick and Sally. Frederick’s death was unexpected and tragic, and quite a likely thing to happen. Isabel as a suicide, unwilling to let herself be saved even though her resistance was likely to get Fred killed, didn’t surprise me at all.
[/spoilers]
Tags: Philip Pullman, Sally Lockhart
November 8, 2005 at 12:38 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Children's Literature, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman
I liked this so much better than The Golden Compass. It was so much more real; in some way I hadn’t realized, I hadn’t connected with Lyra and Will the way I did with Sally Lockhart.
Pullman’s writing is perfect for his time period. Victorian London is such a grim, dark, shadowy world, and he has quite a dark writing style, especially for a children’s author. He’s not afraid to let grim things be grim, or nasty people be nasty. Misfortunes, disappearances and deaths are all par for the course.
Actually, The Ruby in the Smoke is a book I probably would have loved when I was younger, too, around eleven or twelve. It’s one of those books that slips you some historical facts and a sense of the time period while you’re not looking.
[spoilers] (including some for The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman)
I found some parts of the plot a bit unrealistic; I can think of explanations for the things that trouble me (like Marchbanks keeping the ruby for sixteen years, or Ah Ling being the Dutchman,) but somehow they still don’t ring true. Still, this is a children’s novel, and my scepticism about some aspects of the story in no way hindered my enjoyment of it.
And I like Sally Lockhart, I really do. I never felt much for Lyra, Pullman’s other heroine, and I lost interest in her through the trilogy, particularly in The Amber Spyglass, which I felt was the weakest of the series. In The Subtle Knife, I was rooting for a romance between Lyra and Will, but when they had to leave each other forever in The Amber Spyglass, I didn’t really care.
In contrast, I really felt for Sally in the second book. But that’s another post.
[/spoilers]
