I’ve kicked off a new read — instant classic The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. I’ve caught wind (ahem, see what I did there?) that this is big hit of a book among fantasy readers. And, the wife recommends it. So, I dived in while flying back from New York last week. So far, it’s intriguing, although I find the main character, Kvothe, a little too perfect for his own good. Yes, yes, I get it. He’s a super genius and knows all. My wife assures me he finds trouble anyway. I’ll be curious to see if it lives up to the hype.
I just spent a couple days on the road on business – a jaunt to Manhattan. While the trip delayed some development here on the new blog, I did manage to finally finish up my print copy of The Pale Horseman, by Bernard Cornwell.
It’s the second in Cornwell’s Saxon series. I read the first, The Last Kingdom, late last summer. Despite that book’s slow build to an exciting finish, I found the narrating main character, Uhtred, fascinating, even endearing. He’s a spirited warrior, a Saxon from northern English lands, who is captured at a young age and raised as a pagan Dane. Uhtred’s skepticism, passion, and boldness are refreshing. But, it’s his violent nature and reckless spirit that not only gets him into all kinds of interesting trouble in his adventures, it also complicates his moral nature for readers. Cornwell’s writing historical adventure here, with heavy emphasis on adventure and action. It’s well suited for an escapist read with a root in historical context, but has a slight taint of machismo. I find myself cheering for Uhtred in the series, but then realize some of the awful things he participates in, namely violence and a sketchy treatment of some women in his life.
In The Pale Horseman, Uhtred’s tale continues. He’s quickly saddled with the complicated life of a married, landed nobleman despite his wishes to be free of his obligations and beat the invading Danes at their own game. Cornwell captures that excitement quickly as Uhtred raids Cornwallum, finds a mysterious pagan lover, and ransacks a major Dane warlord.
But, as Uhtred abandons his obligations for a time, he suffers for it. He faces accusations at the court of Alfred, the king of Wessex, this historical king of England now known as Alfred the Great. Before he can finish trial by combat, Danes invade Wessex, and Uhtred escapes. Unwittingly, he rescues Alfred himself, and the core of the book is Uhtred’s reluctant effort to improve his standing with Alfred. Sequestered in a swampy domain, Alfred and Uhtred gather a rag tag band that soon swells to an army of Wessex, and underdog effort to repel the Danes from Wessex once and for all.
Throughout it all, Uhtred retains his pagan beliefs, despite the highly pious Alfred and several other Christian warriors and women. I’m fond of this tension, especially between Uhtred and Alfred. Uhtred constantly seems like the wiser skeptic, but Alfred manages to find fortune in his beliefs at nearly every turn.
The climax of the book is, again, a large battle between Saxons and Danes, a press of shield walls and bloody mayhem. Here, the battle is more prolonged than the similar ending of The Last Kingdom. Cornwall appears to be falling into a formula a bit. It goes something like Uhtred loses everything, meets a mysterious and sexy woman, then recaptures glory with his heroics and passion in battle, despite losing his woman in the process.
Still, as I said, the series is endearing. Uhtred isn’t a gallant. He has his flaws, but remains captivating. Meanwhile, his rough and tumble companions are amusing, often tough exteriors with tender-hearted interiors. But, they aren’t much more realized that that. For all his sanctimony, Alfred remains the best realized character in the series, and the only one with any growth and depth.
The Pale Horseman is a good read, a historical romp with enough viking color to delight. I’ve not read Cornwell’s other works, but am pretty familiar with the formulas of his famous Sharpe’s series. He’s at it here, too, crafting a slightly formulaic but entirely enjoyable adventure yarn that’s enjoyable far outside the British isles.
The Pale Horseman: B
Tags: B+, Bernard Cornwell, Review, The Pale Horseman
I’m still digging around for a better theme for the blog. Bear with me as designs change over the next few days.
Electronic fiction really is booming, and I’m finding a vast universe of people, publishers, blogs and more out there. Today’s discovery is Angry Robot Books. Starting December 1,the British based publisher will launch an online store selling short fiction in ePub format.
Dubbing the short fiction “Nano Editions,” Angry Robot will bundle stories for less than $1, or selections of 10 pieces for under $6. Content will be DRM-free.
Get full details in Angry Robot Book’s Nano Editions announcement.
I’m eager to see this in action!
Tags: Angry Robot Books, ePub, short fiction
And the winner is ... Kindle
I spent the day shopping with my son. He’s only 6, and recently discovered the joys of reading, mostly Captain Underpants. He reads the series over and over again, giggling his head off every time. I’m proud to say he was probably more interested in the ereaders we examined at Best Buy than me. I’m not as proud to say he figured out how to use the Barnes & Noble Nook before I did.
I’ve been researching various devices recently. It really took that trip to the store to handle the devices, mash all the buttons, and especially see the displays to get a real sense of how they match up.
I prefer the Kindle, although the Nook Color has me very intrigued, especially for reading any graphic novels or comics.
But Kindle wins on too many fronts. The current design is much more intuitive to me. I figured out I could change font size and even weight and width in about 3 seconds. That feature alone had me sold — the store display model showed Alice in Wonderland at its medium size, which I found far too big. I was turned off until I found the text settings and reduced the type to the smallest size. That was a key feature for me.
The e ink displays are startling, though I think I’ll need some kind of light for night reading in bed. Given recent experiences with my Droid X (where I may be able to read those color comics anyway), I’m amazed by Kindle’s battery power claims.
For the last few years, I’ve become increasingly interested in WW2. I’ve read some non-fiction books on the OSS. I drive my wife crazy with World War II magazine purchases at the grocery story. Naturally, I sought out the best I could find in WW2 fiction.
I found it in Alan Furst. About a year ago, I discovered his work and bought several novels. He has several mysterious and appealing novels. I even recently picked up on in audio CD.
For my first foray, I read The Polish Officer. The titular character is Alexander de Milja, an aristocrat who becomes an excellent spy as he traverses Europe in the wake of Hitler’s invasion of Poland. First, he oversees the smuggling of Polish gold reserves aboard a nondescript passenger train, which de Milja himself selected. The journey culminates in a shoot out with bandits and a mad dash to Romania. But, tellingly, the heroes are as much the Polish commoners aboard the train as they are de Milja. This appears to be a Furst theme.
De Milja later settles in Paris — often the centerpiece of Furst’s tales, I gather — to conduct espionage for the Poles and the English. The likable officer quickly becomes exceptional as a spy and handler. So good, in fact, he out survives his own operatives, like the memorable teenage radio operator whose demise from chomping down on a cyanide capsule matches the bomb with which she kills her SS nemesis. The scene is a wonderful, understated bit of black humor that Furst excels at.
De Milja also has love affairs — alluring, middle-aged European women who keep Alexander at a distance emotionally so that the inevitable partings ache, but only a little.
Finally, the Polish officer is assigned to the Eastern front, a veritable hell on earth. It’s a mission he enters knowing he won’t survive. But, then, de Milja learns to master life as a partisan, too. He completes his futile mission in rescuing a Pole, who later dies. Finally, it’s time for a desperate and cold escape with a Jewish woman whom he saves. Here, de Milja shows again his likable qualities as he sacrifices much to save her (and himself).
De Milja’s a wonderful protagonist — likable, smart, properly cynical when he must be. He’s a very Euro-styled James Bond in a much harsher milieu. But the minor characters surrounding him are just as likable and richly written.
If the novel suffers at all, it’s from its episodic structure. It works nearly as a collection of novellas rather than a novel structure. The train escape, taken alone, is a fine short work. The drama of the final book builds to a climactic prison escape, but then flattens out as de Milja and the Jewish woman flee. As such, the novel survives as a reflection on the troubling nature of war and espionage. While there are exciting scenes, the book is not a thriller. Furst takes his time in parts. In others, he’s wry and sometimes implies the dirty work of war and spying, making the reader understand the remains of violence in a confectioners shop, for one example.
Furst’s writing is rich and detailed, but not overwrought. He captures rich, European details — early war Paris comes alive in his prose. He has a legion of delightful and tragic minor characters, themselves also rich and quintessentially European. All is contained within a novel with a subtler structure than the usual spy thriller. The end result is superb, but will not deliver a quick fix or adrenaline rush.
The Polish Officer: A
Tags: A-, Alan Furst, Espionage, Recommended, Thriller, WWII
Midnight’s Children is a rich and fascinating book. Rushdie channels dreamy visions of Kashmir and Mumbai, but his real masterpiece is the cast of characters — mostly the narrator’s family. In a variety of magical realist encounters, Rushdie manages not to let that fantasy unravel the dysfunctional, tragic and sometimes touching human dramas surrounding his narrator.
The narrator is one of the Midnight’s Children, a child born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the day of India’s independence. These thousand babes grow to earn supernatural powers. The narrator can read thoughts, which accounts for much of his storytelling, and he assembles the thousand children into a kind of telepathic congress. He’s not alone — his “twin” has supernatural knees. Yes, knees, between which he can crush and kill.
The twin is actually a family friend, but there’s a critical twist. An English nursemaid switches the two boys at birth, and the narrator himself is born a bastard of a renegade Englishman and his servant Indian mother. But, because of the switch, he’s raised instead in a wealthy family of unusual characters. Meanwhile, the other boy grows in the poor family and becomes a violent killer then war hero, all hinted at a distance through the narrator’s tales.
That narrator is an untrustworthy fellow. He is — or claims to be — the catalyst of so many of the affairs and deaths and dramas surrounding him. The narrator often refuses to admit his responsibility, or to downplay his involvement. The effects are often tragic.
What his story crafts amid the web of magical realism and shady retelling is a strange and sometimes beautiful menagerie of tales that stab at the heart of India in the modern world. It’s not a subject I know much about, but Rushdie brings alive India of the 1950s and 1960s in personal detail, from the toothpaste brands to the wars in Kashmir. Mumbai in particular percolates with color and colorful characters.
It’s a challenging book, dense in its sometimes feverish prose and thick with layers of filtered tales. The book trails off into oblivion as modern India — and it’s pickled curries — grow beyond the reach of the narrator’s arms. He falls apart, literally, and the reader realizes there’s one thing he didn’t lie about: “To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.”
Midnight’s Children: A-
Tags: A-, Midnight's Children, Review, Salman Rushdie
In my experience there are two kinds of writer’s block.
The first kind of writer’s block is the dreaded blank slate. It’s that intimidating phase of creation where the entire universe of possibility is open before you, and you can’t write one shred of it because you don’t know where to even begin, perhaps even what to write at all.
I don’t often lack for ideas. But, even with some broad-storke notions of what to write, I still have to zero in on something concrete, something compelling.
The second kind of writer’s block is getting stuck in the middle of a story. You’ve got characters in some situation, and you may even have a general idea where you want them to be later in the story. But, as a writer you hit that wall and you’re not sure how to move them into the next step in the story. This kind of block has its own challenges and frustrations as a writer. But, at least you know you’ve gotten somewhere.
Right now, I’m working on a short story and I’ve hit that second writer’s block. It’s a turning point in the story. I even know where I want the characters to be. But, I can’t yet get them there.
Some writers have great advice about overcoming these problems. Some even publish about the topic. My advice is recognize a couple important things as a writer.
First, it doesn’t much matter if you’re a literary genius or a best seller. Even if you are, you aren’t going to write or sell nothing. Accept living in your own skin. Accept your own ideas as intrinsically worthy to the most important person in your life — you.
Second, don’t try too hard to look outside yourself for solutions. Take a break. Go live. Read and watch other media. Read. Do what you do to rejuvenate. Those things will get your brain working again. Don’t worry if you feel like you’re “stealing ideas” by reading other material. If you’re really into writing, your brain can’t help itself. It will think up ideas in your own way. That is creation.
Third, if you have the option, let someone read what you’ve written so far. Some people don’t like to do this. I’m mixed on it myself. But often, another reader will see exactly the corner you’ve painted yourself into. And, often, they’ll say something obvious that you can’t see, like “Why in the world would this guy say that?” Answer that question, and the dam’s likely to break. You may have to ask questions, and that’s ok. The notion that we are alone in writing our work, and that others don’t contribute to the creation is pretty foolish.
Now, if I can just get myself out of that corner I’ve painted myself into…
Tags: writer's block, writing
I’ve had sitting on my shelf for a couple years now an unread copy of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Much more recently, when Gentlemen of the Road caught my eye as another prospect, I was sold the minute I opened to the dedication. It said “To Michael Moorcock.” Moorcock’s a favorite author of mine since my high school days.
In an echo of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tales, Michael Chabon casts two very different sword-swinging wise-crackers. Both are Jews from disparate backgrounds. Amram is a hulking African who wields a Varangian axe and a command of languages far and wide (he’s served the emperor of Byzantium). His counterpart is Zelikman, a lanky Frank physician with a gloomly disposition. Both are wildly clever and ably skilled. Chabon makes both endearing, but Zelikman usually steals the scenes with his obnoxious hat and anti-hero antics.
Chabon writes one hell of an adventure tale. Each chapter is a fun twist and a healthy dose of cliff-hanging. The tale is almost effortless in its tidyness, yet somehow manages not to be predictable. After swindling some townsfolk, the pair get caught up escorting a prince who is not everything he appears to be, and yet is more. By the end of the tale, they’ve jaunted about the foothills of the Caucasus, allied themselves with elephants against Rus invaders, fought — and then recruited — Muslim knights, and ushered in a coup.
The banter is fun, the action exciting, and Chabon sneaks beneath it all some commentary on Jewishness (and Islam) quite relevant to today. His prose in the book is baroque and obscure, deliberately so. It’s a nod, I think, to the idiosyncracies of many admirable pulp adventure writers. It’s at once a joke and tribute, and it also manages to keep the text’s voice lively and smart. It works.
Wonderfully, the book includes a brief afterword cum apologia by Chabon explaining his forays into the lands of adventure writing. He more famously treads in, as he calls it, late-century naturalism a la Wonder Boys. He also explains his only slightly tongue-in-cheek working title for the book, “Jews with Swords.” The afterword is well worth a read for anyone on either side of that absurd divide between serious fiction and everything else.
Gentlemen of the Road: A-
Tags: A-, Adventure Fiction, Michael Chabon, Michael Moorcock
If you’re looking for books on writing, look no further than the one-two punch of The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner and What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter. Oh, and don’t let that subtitle fool you on Gardner’s. It’s the best text there is for any writer. Thing beginning writer maybe, rather than young writer.
Tags: John Gardner, My Fiction, writing
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