D3's Booklog

The past, they say, is a foreign country. One might even go so far as to say that it is another world full of strange wonders and people who both fascinate and repel. I imagine that is why history so intrigues me and I definitely approach the subject with a heaping portion of romance as I in no way attempt to diminish the veneer and lustre which the intervening ages bring to previous eras. Despite this fascination I generally find myself of two minds when it comes to historical fiction. While the subject matter fascinates me and the promise of even vicariously visiting that foreign country, the past, is a powerfully attractive one I often find myself somewhat unimpressed by many of the books I have sampled in the genre which, for one reason or another, often fail to capture my interest. Sometimes I am critical of the anachronisms (real or perceived) that seem to litter these books as the writer attempts to make the past perhaps a bit too relatable to our present world. Other times I am simply unimpressed by mediocre writing (I imagine it is no more prevalent in this genre than any other, but somehow it particularly grates when I find it here). Then again, sometimes I am simply not interested in what turns out to be more a history lesson than a story with blood and life to it. I was glad therefore to have found Mary Renault’s _The King Must Die_ which proved to be both well-written, full of particular human interest, and displayed the wonder and strangeness of the past in all of its glory. I also consider it something of a return to the love affair I had in my youth with the Hellenic myths which seemed to fall to the wayside as I grew older and other interests crowded them out.

Renault takes as her subject the early Hellenic expansion among the Greek archipelago when the ancient chthonic mother-goddess religions of the autochthonous peoples (the “earthlings”) were being displaced by the more patriarchal sky-god religions of the invaders. The title of the book itself refers to the ancient tradition that the year-king married the goddess (or more accurately her avatar the high priestess) and would then be killed as a yearly sacrifice to the Great Mother in order to ensure the bounty of the harvest and safety of the people. Into this tradition she incorporates the story of Theseus and his rise to fame and power. The son of an unknown father and the daughter of the king of a tiny Hellenic kingdom, Theseus has grown up believing himself to be the son of the god Poseidon. Theseus comes to learn that some of his preconceptions about his birth may not be literally true, though he never loses the sense that there is a deep connection between himself and the Earth-shaker. I like how Renault handles this aspect of her story. The power of the gods and goddesses of the ancient religions permeates the story and is never simply disproved or denied, yet she also doesn’t make them explicit characters in the story and go fully into the realm of fantasy. There are indications of the ways in which these divinities interact with the world, and it is up to the characters (and the reader) to decide for themselves how to interpret these strange and seemingly coincidental events.

To make a long story short Theseus grows in knowledge and confidence and eventually leaves his tiny home in order to find his fortune, and his earthly father, in the wider world. His journeys take him across the wild and bandit-infested Isthmus of Corinth first to the goddess-ruled city of Eleusis and ultimately to Athens. From his early victories and society-changing actions Theseus is finally driven to the event that will cement his name in the history and myths of his people forever: the yearly tribute of youths from Athens to the kingdom of Minos in Crete. Again Renault does a superlative job of taking what is, on the face of it, an utterly fantastic story and bringing its details down to earth without divesting it of its magic and mythic allure. The Minotaur may not be a true half-man half-beast, but he is no less a fascinating power against which Theseus must stand. The bulk of the novel concentrates on the time Theseus spends in Crete at the labyrinthine court of Minos as leader of a team of bull-dancers. These bull-dancers hold a special place in the hierarchy of Crete, on the one hand they are slaves destined to die at the hand of the god’s creature, the bull; on the other they are sacred and popular athletes who, so long as they survive, are showered with praise, gifts, and glory and are an untouchable segment of the populace, forever kept apart.

All of the elements of the myth are here: the brutal and savage Minotaur looming in the background, the decaying and decadent reign of the monarch known to the world as Minos, the labyrinth built by Daidalos through which Theseus must creep guided only by a thread, and the doomed love of the hero for the unfortunate maiden Ariadne, but they are all subtly transformed. Renault’s transmutation of them in some ways brings them closer to us as they become more plausibly human and understandable as ‘real’ events, but she does not go so far as to allow them to lose the lustre that gives to all true myths the shine and glory which make them everlasting. Of course this is a Greek tale and thus tragedy is a prevalent thread throughout. The tale ends as the first phase of Theseus’ rise and adventures are coming to a close and sets the stage for the final phase of his story in [b:The Bull from the Sea|67693|The Bull from the Sea|Mary Renault|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348588710s/67693.jpg|2077262] to which I look forward (with suitable fear and trembling on behalf of the man unfortunate enough to be the ‘hero’).

Also posted at Shelf Inflicted

Rudyard Kipling’s _The Jungle Book_ is an enjoyable read. A collection of short stories, all of which revolve around the lives and troubles of different animals and the people who interact with them, it has a surprising amount of depth coupled with rather pleasant prose. The most famous of these stories are probably those that revolve around Mowgli, the jungle boy raised by wolves in India whose adventures with Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther against the machinations of Shere Khan the tiger are fairly well-known (even resulting in a typically watered-down Disney movie from many years ago).

All of the stories are notable for their fairly even handed treatment of the interactions between animals and men. The tragedy and pathos of the tribulations and abuse animals often have to suffer at the hands of man are not glossed over, but neither is it implied that all interactions between mankind and the animal kingdom are destructive or unwarranted. The animals are presented as having languages and customs of their own and Kipling generally does a pretty neat trick of managing to straddle the line between having his animal characters behave too much like humans and having them fall into unrelatability by being purely ‘animals’. The most significant contravention of this occurs, I think, in the story “Her Majesty’s Servants” in which, in my opinion, a group of animals serving various roles in a British regiment shade a bit more towards taking on the roles of their all-too human handlers. That quibble aside I enjoyed these morality fables and adventure stories, with those centring on Mowgli and his lessons in the Laws of the Jungle topping the list. Good clean fun with enough meat to the bone to give you something to think about.

Gene Wolfe’s third volume of the Soldier series is divorced from the first two in several ways. The most obvious is the fact that it was written 17 years after the last volume, leaving quite a cliffhanger for contemporary readers (and actually no indication that there would even be a sequel). The other is the fact that even in-story the events occur at a significant remove from those that transpired in [b:Soldier of the Mist|322067|Soldier of the Mist|Gene Wolfe|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1173746321s/322067.jpg|1408393] and [b:Soldier of Arete|630402|Soldier of Arete|Gene Wolfe|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1176493516s/630402.jpg|19201593]. As Sidon opens we find that Latro has been living back at home, apparently with his wife, for some time (though given that this is a Gene Wolfe book I’m not sure if I quite believe that everything is exactly as it appears) though his condition is no better than when last we saw him and he tends to sit despondently in front of his door where the word “Riverland” (aka Egypt) is written (apparently he believes that going to this distant country will enable him to heal himself…we’ve heard something similar before I think). Latro is visited by an old friend, the Persian ship captain Muslak who is one of the few remaining links to the previous two volumes, and his friend promptly decides to bring Latro with him as he just so happens to be taking a shipment of goods to the Nile delta.

What follows is an adventure similar to what we have already seen Latro undertake, though this time the setting is ancient Egypt and Nubia and the secondary cast of characters is different. In a nutshell Muslak’s ship is commandeered by the Persian satrap of Egypt to cruise down the Nile and discover anything that may be of use to him from the countries to the south. Travelling in this band are a Persian magi and his Egyptian priest-scribe, an Egyptian sorcerer-priest, two “singing girls” (aka temple prostitutes who become the “river wives” of Latro and Muslak), an Athenian wine-merchant, several eldritch familiars, and various sailors and soldiers. As before Latro is pulled in several directions by the machinations of the various gods and supernatural creatures he is able to see, as well as by the all-too human people who want to make use of him for their own ends. Aside from the new locale I have to admit that I didn’t notice a lot of difference between this volume and the others and little, if any, final resolution is forthcoming from Wolfe. Still, I enjoy being in Latro’s company and seeing the ancient world (both natural and supernatural) through his eyes.

I like the way, throughout the Soldier series, that Wolfe is able to make the gods into a real living and breathing element of the civilizations that spawned them. They don’t come across merely as archetypes or placeholders (though they do indeed serve those purposes, at least partially), but they are also not just humans with superpowers. There is something distinctly ‘other’ about them that seems equally tied to their roles as both stewards of particular elements of creation and embodiments of basic aspects of the human psyche. Within this ‘god-as-archetype’ role, however, they still retain distinct personalities that elevate them beyond being mere ciphers. The gods of Egypt seem different from those of Greece not only in their physical forms, but also in that they seem to have a less vested interest in Latro. I got the sense from the first two volumes that the Greek pantheon had a specific purpose in mind when they ‘recruited’ Latro as a pawn to their internecine fighting, but while the Egyptian gods are more than willing to make use of him, they seem to be doing so for much less personal reasons. Of course I still have no idea what exactly those reasons were for the Greek pantheon, so the jury’s still out on that one.

As in the other volumes Latro is once again led by prophecy to visit various temples along his path, this time following the Nile river to its source. Various gods and powers meet him along the way and help or hinder him as they see fit. He overcomes a variety of vicissitudes including enslavement, betrayal, and abandonment; he also meets an unexpected old friend in a time of great need, but ultimately ends this phase of his adventures perhaps worse off than he was when he started and on the verge of yet another seemingly hopeless quest. One hopes that this cliffhanger will be resolved in a subsequent volume and that the wait won’t be another 17 years.

Also posted at Shelf Inflicted

Latro continues his journey across ancient Greece in search of his memory in Gene Wolfe’s second entry in the “Soldier” series _Soldier of Arete_. As implied in my review of [b:Soldier of the Mist|322067|Soldier of the Mist|Gene Wolfe|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1173746321s/322067.jpg|1408393] I am finding this series to be the easiest for me to ‘get into’ of all of Gene Wolfe’s work that I’ve read thus far. I think it’s because many of the elements Wolfe employs in nearly all of his fiction really seem to make sense here. Latro is naïve and ‘unreliable’ as a narrator, but he’s suffering from memory loss due to brain trauma…I can accept that a lot easier than I can the apparent naïvete of characters like Severian (an apprentice torturer and would-be saviour), Silk (an annoying man-child saint)or Able (a young boy transported to a fantasy world, but a boy who seems to have grown up in some kind of very sheltered ‘Leave it to Beaver’ childhood…he certainly never seemed to have the experience I would expect of even a ten-year-old from the modern era). When those characters ‘leave something out’ of the tale they are telling it seems willful to me, Wolfe purposely obfuscating the narrative via his narrative tool, but when Latro does it I can accept it as a natural part of the story due to the fact that he just can’t help it, he really does try to be the best reporter of the events going on around him that he can. Of course this is all really just smoke and mirrors: Latro is just as much the ‘narrative tool’ of Wolfe as the others and giving me a ‘plausible’ excuse for accepting unreliability from him as a character perhaps doesn’t really mean that he has any significant difference from Wolfe’s other protagonists, he is still performing the same ‘sleight of hand’, but somehow it does make a difference to me. I'm willing to accept Latro for who he is and I find that much more difficult with Wolfe's other protagonists.

Wolfe’s ever-present erudition is also on full display in this volume (as in the previous) and we are immersed into the world of ancient Greece at the time of the Graeco-Persian wars. As is usual with Wolfe he pulls no punches and much is left for the reader to make sense of on their own, though Latro’s own need to explain some things to himself in his scrolls, as well as my own interest in the civilizations of this era, made the often frustrating obfuscation and explanation-by-way-of-implication endemic to Wolfe less of an issue for me here. Be warned that spoilers for [b:Soldier of the Mist|322067|Soldier of the Mist|Gene Wolfe|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1173746321s/322067.jpg|1408393] follow.

The previous volume ended in a cliffhanger: upon leaving the besieged city of Sestos Latro was tricked into a battle that seemed likely to kill him. Although he managed to survive (he is touched by the gods after all) and met a dying soldier who seemed to recognize him, calling out the name “Lucius” only to expire before he could enlighten him beyond this, Latro seems to be no closer to finding his home and identity than he was before. Latro is once again thrown into companionship with some old friends (and enemies) and this time journeys across Thrace, through Athens, and finally to Sparta guided both by the hands of the gods and those in whose company he finds himself. It becomes even more obvious here that Latro is a pawn, both of the gods and the other people with whom he must live. I’m still not sure what the end game of the former group is, or why they view Latro as such an important tool. The human players are much easier to read as they jockey for political and personal power and see Latro’s abilities (both as a soldier and as one who can see the invisible world) as useful tools for reaching their objectives.

It is interesting to see that a character like Latro, one who loses the memory of each day as it recedes into the past, is actually still capable of growth. I would definitely say that the Latro of Arete is a slightly different man from the Latro of Mist and the sorrow and perplexity of his condition are truly beginning to weigh on him. It is also touching to see the way in which many of the people around him truly care for this man (though he would be, and is, horrified at their pity of him) and much of the manipulation of Latro is done with the best of intentions, “for his own good”. Deep down in his heart, though, Latro appears to know better what it is that he needs and how he ought to live and thus, in the end, he makes his own decisions about what he shall do and where he shall go…perhaps to his own detriment, but even a man with no memory wants to feel that he has made his own choices, however well-intentioned the choices made on his behalf by others.

The ending of this volume is an even bigger cliffhanger than the one in Mist and the last chapter is even told in slightly confusing poetic prose by a character other than Latro…a flourish of Wolfe’s that no doubt left the readers at the time of publication thoroughly frustrated (these readers would be forced to wait 17 years for the final volume of the series, a volume that they perhaps never even expected to appear). While this could be validly considered a typically Wolfean ending to a series loaded with ambiguity I am glad that I have the third volume at hand and can see where Latro finds himself in the final fragment of his story without further delay.

Also posted at Shelf Inflicted

3.5 to 4 stars

Perhaps I’m finally growing into Gene Wolfe. There are still a lot of things about his writing that irritate me, but now that I’ve got a fair number of his works under my belt (some even read multiple times) and have a clearer idea of what to expect I am finding myself more able to accept most of these elements as challenging rather than offensive. I’ve come to expect several things from a book by Gene Wolfe: an unreliable narrator of course (this narrator tends to be a ‘hero’ with exceptional abilities granted either through birth or the blessings of the gods and is usually irresistible to the opposite sex, a bit of a pill personality wise and often follows some version of the ‘innocent fool’ template mixed with the more traditional martial hero and who tends to be less interesting than the secondary characters around him); a puzzle-like narrative that obscures more than it reveals and implies more than it states; erudition that can be somewhat oppressive in its range and obscurantism; the encroachment upon the mundane by the supernatural in both physical and immaterial ways (often in the guise of the inexplicable interference of gods or godlike beings with an agenda for the outcome of human affairs…water gods and nymphs are an especial favourite); and finally a favourite chestnut of Wolfe’s is the inclusion of some kind of vampire-like creature and/or a shapeshifter. _Soldier in the Mist_ certainly partakes liberally of all of these.

I might go so far as to say that Latro, the main character in _Solider of the Mist_, is pretty much Gene Wolfe’s wet-dream of a protagonist. Here we get a narrator so unreliable that he has to sift through his own words each day in order to make sense of them, never mind the poor reader! In this Latro is pretty much the polar opposite of Severian, Wolfe’s hero from the New Sun series: where the young torturer-apprentice from the last days of Urth was cursed with an eidetic memory (which he still parsed to his own convenience) Latro is cursed with a loss of short-term memory that makes him unable to remember anything that happened to him on the previous day. This state of affairs was brought about by a head injury suffered by the mercenary in (as we find out through the course of events) the battle of Plataea as he fought for the Persian King Xerxes against the Greek Confederacy. The resulting story follows a format not altogether unlike the movie ‘Memento’ in which a character in a similar situation was forced to rely on post-it notes, journals, and tattoos to help him remember who he was and that he was on a path of vengeance. For his part Latro has been writing out the events of each day on a scroll and is forced, at least at those times when he is lucky enough either to be reminded by others or happens to read the injunction to “Read This Every Day” that is emblazoned on the outside of his scroll, to go back and read his own composition in order to understand where he is and who everyone around him might be. Like I said…the perfect Gene Wolfe narrator. The reader of course participates in this attempt to make sense of strange and inexplicable events at the same time as Latro does.

To add to the confusion for the modern reader (and really, it wouldn’t be a Gene Wolfe book if he wasn’t trying to confuse you now would it?) is the fact that we are placed squarely in the ancient world and Latro tells us the names of events, places and characters in a literal, and sometimes misconstrued, translation of their name. Thus, for example, Athens becomes “Thought”, the island of Achaia is “Redface Island”, and Corinth becomes “Tower Hill”. I have to admit that I found this aspect of the novel to be something that added to the flavour of the text for me as opposed to one that jarred. I suppose I felt that in adding to the strangeness of the names of places that would otherwise seem too familiar to me from other sources I was better able to approach the world of classical Greece in a new and interesting way. The final layer of confusion and obfuscation is added by the fact that in this world the gods and eldritch beings of classical mythology do indeed walk amongst men and are ever ready to utter a gnomic phrase or attempt to further their own mysterious ends by manipulating mere mortals. They are usually invisible to those who walk only in the mundane world, but as strange things begin to come visibly to the fore as we read it becomes apparent that a bizarre side-effect of Latro’s injury is an ability to see this invisible world clearly (though of course it’s always possible that Latro is just having hallucinations). Sometimes these supernatural beings attempt to aid Latro with cryptic guidance while others seem inimical to whatever actions he attempts to take. Either way it becomes apparent that he is a pawn in their great game.

In essence the story is about Latro’s quest to be healed of his malady, or barring that to at least find out where he comes from and return to his native land. Of course, even with a prophecy from the Shining God to guide him (or perhaps because of it) things are not that easy. We follow Latro across the land of the Hellenes as he attempts to follow the path laid out for him by the god with the aid of several new friends and allies he picks up along the way. We are treated throughout to a view of the Greek Confederacy during the time of the Graeco-Persian wars from the point of view of a true outsider. We also glimpse many of the gods and supernatural beings with which their country appears to be densely populated and learn that more often than not human events appear to have been driven by the will of the gods and reflect wars that, while perhaps more grand in their scope, are no less petty in their motivations. I especially enjoyed Wolfe’s characterization of the gods which seemed to be partially Graves-ian in the anthropological and geographical emphasis he placed on their names, powers, and nature, but which didn’t lose its eldritch character for all of that. These are not the relatively clear-cut (though all-too human) versions of the Greek gods most readers may be more familiar with. Beneath the veneer of civilization and regal glory the chthonic hearts of these gods are dark and dangerous indeed. The world of ancient Greece that Wolfe presents is a fascinating one and the struggles and wars of the gods that impinge upon the world of mortals is intriguing, he seems to have a real flair for the numinous and its impact on human life. I think having just finished [b:The Iliad|1371|The Iliad|Homer|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309201311s/1371.jpg|3293141] was a distinct advantage for me in coming to this book. Not only was I still ‘in the mood’ for the world of ancient Greece, but I was even able to see some of the same concerns (and many of the same characters) even though the events portrayed in _Soldier of the Mist_ are happening centuries after the fall of Troy. I also didn’t get the feeling that Wolfe was simply writing modern characters into an ancient setting, his characters were relatable and all displayed familiar aspects of human nature that rang true, but they also seemed to be uniquely suited to (and representative of) their own milieu. I quite enjoyed this book and dove immediately into the sequel [b:Soldier of Arete|630402|Soldier of Arete|Gene Wolfe|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1176493516s/630402.jpg|19201593]. I haven’t lost all of my reservations in regards to Wolfe’s method and madness, but overall I think I’m becoming more willing to sit back and enjoy the ride…I just make sure to stop and look around a lot more than I might feel is needed for another author.

Also posted at Shelf Inflicted

My 5 star rating of this book really reflects my feelings on how I think Davies masterfully wrapped up the Deptford trilogy than it does an individual rating for this volume itself (don’t get me wrong, it’s great, but I think [b:Fifth Business|76896|Fifth Business|Robertson Davies|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1170899762s/76896.jpg|603433] is the strongest, and best, volume in the trilogy). I guess I’d say that the individual books themselves range from around 3.5 to 4.5 stars, but the series overall is a five star read. As with all of the Deptford books _World of Wonders_ is a personal memoir that gives us further insight, from yet another angle, into the lives and motivations of the characters we met in earlier volumes, most of whom hailed from the small Ontario town of Deptford. The ‘problems’ of the memoir style itself (the inescapable desire to make oneself into the hero, the inability to really understand the motivations and actions of others from one's limited point of view, the unreliability of looking back onto the past from the vantage of the present) are perhaps brought even more to the fore in this volume than they were in the others as we sit back and listen to the harrowing tale of the life of the mysterious magus Magnus Eisengrim, né Paul Dempster.

Magnus, along with our old friends Dunstan Ramsay and Leisl Vitzliputzli, is in the midst of starring in a film in which he is portraying the legendary conjurer Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin. During the course of filming, and in a completely characteristic attempt to demonstrate his own personal greatness and provide a ‘sub-text’ to the film, Eisengrim decides to reveal to his friends and the filmmaker’s entourage the details of his life that led to his becoming, in his own words, the greatest conjurer that has ever lived. It is certainly not a story that bears any resemblance to the romantic ‘biography’ fashioned by Ramsay as a piece of propaganda for Eisengrim’s Soiree of Illusions. What we are instead presented with is a tale of abuse, loneliness, and fortitude as we see young Paul Dempster kidnapped from his awful home in Deptford only to have it replaced by an awful purgatory in the travelling carnival Wanless' World of Wonders.

Eisengrim (only the last in a long line of many aliases) is truly a ‘self-made man’. As he himself mentions, the treatment and conditions under which he lived from the age of ten onwards were of a kind that would either have killed him early or strengthened him beyond expectation. Luckily for Paul Dempster the latter proved to be the case. We see how a lonely, frightened boy could be transformed into the monster of ego and talent that was Magnus Eisengrim, and once again observe how the ripples of effect from one small action (the throwing of that fateful snowball on a cold winter day in Deptford in 1908) helped shape yet another life. Eisengrim, for all of his suffering, is not a sympathetic hero (though hero he is, in all of his outsized grandeur) and once again it is fascinating to see the same characters and actions from the previous volumes of the trilogy as viewed through a completely different lens. Luckily (in my opinion at least) we once again have the voice of Dunstan Ramsay, that clever old schoolmaster and saint-hunter, though in a decidedly minor key. Eisengrim is certainly not going to let anyone interfere with his own personal hagiography, but Ramsay’s caustic tongue is given some range of expression and his scholar’s eye is always on the look-out for ‘the truth’(at least inasmuch as he is able to perceive it).

We discover in this tale the final pieces of the puzzle in the coming together of Magnus, Leisl and Ramsay and the production of that great work of illusion and art, the life of Magnus Eisengrim (as depicted in his own Soiree of Illusions), but I will leave the details of Paul Dempster’s ‘hero’s journey’ to you. Rest assured that the culmination of it is a thoroughly entertaining, one might even say enlightening, tale that takes us very far indeed from the environs of little Deptford but still manages to come full circle and comment on the series that was born there as a whole. Boy Staunton, that unchallenged giant and yet largely obscure figure in the lives of others, makes his final appearance and we can now look back on the many stories of the Stauntons, the Ramsays and the Dempsters in order to get a much fuller (though still never really complete) picture of those intertwined lives that affected each other in such significant ways. So, I would guess, do all of our lives (knowingly or unknowingly) intertwine and create an inextricable web of story and interdependence, whether we realize it or not.

I wavered between demoting this to a 3 star (really 3.5) and keeping it at a 4, but I think it deserves a 4 even if it isn’t near my favourite of Davies’ work and is, I think, the weakest of the Deptford trilogy. We were first given an account of the small town of Deptford, and the players who would be the major cast of characters in the series, in [b:Fifth Business|76896|Fifth Business|Robertson Davies|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1170899762s/76896.jpg|603433] under the guiding hand of Dunstan Ramsay. Now we see things from a different angle: David Staunton, the hard drinking criminal lawyer son of Deptford’s golden boy magnate Boyd Staunton, has come to a crisis. His father has just been found dead, possibly murdered, and this is the last straw of the many pressures on his life. After shouting out the query “Who killed Boy Staunton?!” in the theatre (at Magnus Eisengrim’s performance of the Brazen Head no less) he hurriedly bustles himself off to Zurich for psychoanalysis. From here we get his account of not only his own life but the lives of his father and Dunstan Ramsay (amongst others) as they intersected with his.

Perhaps it can be viewed as a strength, but in some ways I think Davies’ decision to couch this novel in the form of the psychoanalytical treatment undergone by David was perhaps more of a weakness. I think I prefer when his Jungian obsessions come in through the side door as it were, and this blatant explication of the Jungian method was perhaps a tad on the heavy-handed side. David is also no Dunstan Ramsay. Ramsay was certainly not always sympathetic, but David is downright unpleasant: a drunk with daddy issues whose many decisions in life seem to have all been calculated responses to the perceived slights visited upon him by others (especially his family). I’m being a bit harsh perhaps, but David certainly won’t be winning any personality contests. He is, it must be said, unwaveringly honest (with others and himself) and certainly he grows, as is the point of psychoanalysis, so he is far from an uninteresting character. Thus we are treated to a ring-side seat of David Staunton’s life. We see more of Boy Staunton than was the case in Ramsay’s reminiscences though even here he is more of an overarching shadow cast across David’s life than a fully realized person (indeed the more I think of it, the more Boy Staunton seems to hold a very special place in the Deptford trilogy: he is a central figure to the action who looms large in the lives of all of the other characters, but we never see things from his perspective or get a full picture of him as a real person as opposed to a foil for others). Ramsay is amusingly portrayed as the somewhat eccentric schoolmaster as seen by a child who may also share a deeper relationship with the child than either of them would want to admit. It is often a pleasure of serial works to be able to see the same characters and situations detailed in another work from a different perspective and that pleasure is on full display here. Characters from Deptford, both major and minor, are portrayed either with more or less detail than before, but certainly show other sides of themselves than we had previously been privy to. They in essence become more fully human, not to mention subtly transformed, from their first appearance to us.

I must admit that I by far enjoyed the final section of the book the most where we encounter old friends and some resolutions to outstanding questions are provided. This is not to say that David’s memoir of his life, as recounted to his analyst, is without interest, but he is certainly a character who lacks the flair and je ne sais quoi of Dunstan Ramsay. This book is a good read (I haven’t yet come across a dud by Davies) but even though Davies’ books can stand alone quite well I definitely recommend that you start your journey through the streets of Deptford (and Toronto) with [b:Fifth Business|76896|Fifth Business|Robertson Davies|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1170899762s/76896.jpg|603433].

David Zindell’s space opera books, that started with the stand-alone [b:Neverness|2030987|Neverness|David Zindell|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336192264s/2030987.jpg|2035642] and continued with his “Requiem for Homo Sapiens” trilogy (of which this volume is the conclusion), always scratch that itch I have for Dune-like space opera. You’ve got the baroque world-building of a far, far future of humanity in an interstellar diaspora that combines elements of medieval and pre-industrial societies with ‘magical’ technology and gleaming ships that fold space; you’ve got bizarre human enclaves (sometimes almost reminiscent of Jack Vance, though with less obvious caustic humour) so that societies of warrior-poets, pilot-mathematicians, scientist-philosophers, autist-savants, and priest-kings all rub shoulders in a bewildering and colourful throng; you’ve got philosophical ruminations on the purpose of life, the tragedy of love, and the power of hate; all-in-all its heady stuff that hits that sweet spot in my belly that little else seems able to satisfy.

I’m at a bit of a loss for how to appropriately review this book though. It’s the third book of a trilogy (the other two of which I have not reviewed) all of which are built upon the initial stand-alone book [b:Neverness|2030987|Neverness|David Zindell|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336192264s/2030987.jpg|2035642]. I can’t say much about this volume’s plot without rehashing much of what came before and thus committing spoiler to the Nth degree. Perhaps plot-wise it is enough to say that our hero, Danlo wi Soli Ringess (the son of [b:Neverness|2030987|Neverness|David Zindell|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336192264s/2030987.jpg|2035642]'s hero Mallory Ringess), has returned from his great quest into the Vild carrying not only tidings of hope, but also of possible doom for the cosmos. Not only is a rogue star-killer ship searching for the ancient homeworld of the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Seekers of the Ineffable Flame in a quest of vengeance, but the very gods themselves (super entities of moon-sized brains and ‘bodies’ that stretch across solar systems) are at war with each other, some vying to destroy, others to save, the galaxy. To top it all off Danlo’s oldest and dearest friend (also his greatest and most dangerous enemy) has taken control of the Way of Ringess, the religion that worships Danlo’s father as a god, and threatens the balance of the universe with his own mad scheme. So far, so epic, right? Well, the book more or less lives up to this potential as we move into the final phase of the story that Zindell built up over two other volumes (three including the initial story of Mallory Ringess himself).

This final volume of the story reminded me most strongly of Herbert’s work in [b:Dune|1685995|Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)|Frank Herbert|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311873074s/1685995.jpg|3634639]. As in the Dune series there are many ruminations on a ‘Golden Path’ for humanity and the dangers of prescience when applied to human action (though Zindell seems to have a much more optimistic take on its uses than did Herbert). Also, like Herbert’s Muad’Dib, Zindell’s Danlo (and Mallory before him) partakes of the traits of both god and man. The travails of this power, along with the ability to turn the multitudes of humanity loose in a religious frenzy upon the galaxy, are examined in Zindell’s work no less than Herbert’s (though in ways that differ enough to make this an interesting examination instead of simply a rehash). This does mean, however, that there are often times when Zindell slips too far into his pseudo-philosophical/mystical ruminations (as Herbert did himself) as Danlo finds himself continuing his own personal quest to near-godhood. I imagine it’s hard to deal with these themes, especially within the grand scale of space opera, without falling into the trap of excessive explication and over-extended internal monologues from time to time, but be aware that they are here in case that kind of thing annoys you. All in all, though, the tension of the many threads of the story is held together by a fairly quick-paced plot and world-building that truly seeps out of the pages. There is more than enough tragedy in this series to sustain several epics, and the sheer scale of the possible (and actual) destruction on display screams “SPACE OPERA!” in flashing neon...but that’s a plus in this genre. There are times too, when Zindell’s creation of a pacifist hero, while interesting in itself, can grate on the nerves (for me at least). While Danlo’s devotion to the principle of ahimsa (“Never to kill or harm another, even in thought”) may be noble, the ends to which he is apparently willing to take this principle sometimes stretched my credulity…but then maybe I’m just a cynic. Still and all if you’re in the market for truly epic space opera that tackles trans-humanism, galaxy spanning star-faring, wars to end all wars, planetoid computers, and hints of man’s progress towards godhood (and yet still manages to ruminate on things at a truly human scale: tragedies of life and death, the intertwining elements of love and hate, and the conundrum of violence vs. pacifism) then crack open the first stand-alone volume, [b:Neverness|2030987|Neverness|David Zindell|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336192264s/2030987.jpg|2035642] and see what you think of the universe Zindell has created. If that wets your appetite then I would urge you to continue on with this truly kitten-squishing epic of galaxy spanning philosophical adventure.

Also posted at Shelf Inflicted

3.5 stars

My first attempt to read _The Book of Lost Tales_ was made way too early in my life and made certain that my response was to put it on the shelf and decide that all of this background stuff, especially taken from this early phase in Tolkien’s life as a writer, was way too different from the Middle-Earth stories that I loved for me to waste any time on it. Looking at where the book mark from my first attempt still sat when I picked it up again, I noticed that I didn’t even get much beyond the first several pages of the introductory chapter “The Cottage of Lost Play”. I remember thinking that it was just altogether too twee for me, what with the Eldar of Middle-Earth still being referred to as ‘faeries’ and the, to me, bizarre structure of a wanderer coming to a tiny cottage (bigger on the inside than the outside) peopled by dancing and singing children and adults who primarily sat around telling tales and reciting pretty mediocre poetry. It wasn’t really Middle-Earth now was it? Well, at the time I put down the volume and decided that I’d stick with the ‘real’ stuff of LotR, [b:The Hobbit|5907|The Hobbit|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328953407s/5907.jpg|1540236] and [b:The Silmarillion|953403|The Silmarillion|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1281878908s/953403.jpg|4733799] and that, as they say, was that for probably about two and a half decades. Then it came about that I discovered my greatest love vis a vis Tolkien’s work was growing to be the posthumously published [b:The Silmarillion|953403|The Silmarillion|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1281878908s/953403.jpg|4733799] and [b:Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth|7329|Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1165611104s/7329.jpg|2961645], both of which contained some of the most beautiful and powerful of Tolkien’s writing. I looked at the corpus of ‘The History of Middle Earth’ with something of a new eye and decided that I might just dip into it and see what it was like. I consciously chose to first read those volumes that dealt with the matter of the First and Second ages of Middle-Earth and were latest in the chronology of composition thus presumably assuring that I was coming across ideas and stories that were closer in tone and content to the ones with which I was so familiar and that thrilled me with their mythic reverberations. I ended up loving what I found in [b:Morgoth's Ring|214173|Morgoth's Ring (The History of Middle-Earth, #10)|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1308532389s/214173.jpg|4992849] and [b:The War of the Jewels|214166|The War of the Jewels (The History of Middle-Earth, #11)|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1308532544s/214166.jpg|6561935] and decided that maybe this huge work undertaken by Christopher Tolkien to present the works of his father in toto wasn’t an altogether bad idea after all (especially given my hunger for more material regarding the tales as told in [b:The Silmarillion|953403|The Silmarillion|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1281878908s/953403.jpg|4733799]).

So now I find myself re-embarking on the journey from the beginning and tackling the very Book of Lost Tales (part one) that defeated me in my youth. I’m glad I came back. Pushing through past the point in the first chapter beyond which I never made it before I actually found a fair bit to like, even though it wasn’t the undiluted Middle-Earth vintage I had initially wanted. I was actually reminded a bit of William Morris’ medieval romances that so influenced Tolkien as I read about the journey of Eriol the mariner upon the Isle of Tol Eressëa and once the tales themselves began to be told I saw that there was a surprising amount of coherence between these earliest versions of the myths of Middle-Earth with what eventually came to be published in The Sil. The differences themselves were intriguing and I found as the chapters sped on the framing device didn’t bother me half as much as once it had. I will readily admit that much of the poetry in this volume leaves something to be desired. I am not one of those readers of Tolkien that skips over the poems, and I think that many of them are quite beautiful (esp. Bilbo’s poem of Eärendil sung in Rivendell), but the early ones showcased in this volume are not really my cup of tea (though one can certainly see Tolkien’s word-craft in them improving as time went on). The Cottage of Lost Play itself took on greater interest as well as I started to see some parallels between it and the ultimate development of Elrond’s house of Rivendell as “a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all’. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, and sadness.”

Eriol the mariner, a man from medieval England who has found his way to the magical isles of the west, sits in this pleasant house and has recounted to him many of the tales of the elder days when the Elves were alone in Middle-Earth, or mankind just arising from their ages long slumber. All of these tales are ones that a reader of [b:The Silmarillion|953403|The Silmarillion|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1281878908s/953403.jpg|4733799] will already be familiar with: the creation myth of the Music of the Ainur, the building of Valinor and creation of the Two Trees of Light, the battles against Melkor (here named Melko) and his initial imprisonment, the coming of the Elves to the blessed lands and their ultimate rebellion and return to Middle-Earth in pursuit of Melko, and the myth of the creation of the sun and moon upon the death of the two trees. Some of these are not very far from the more final versions that were presented in [b:The Silmarillion|953403|The Silmarillion|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1281878908s/953403.jpg|4733799], while others display drastic differences (such as the expanded legend of the sun and moon, the extensive bits that deal with cosmology and the make-up of the world, and the inclusion of Valar who mate and even include in their number some gods of war), but it is very safe to say that unless you have a deep and abiding love for Middle-Earth, and especially tales of the elder days, you probably won’t get much out of this book. I would agree with those who claim this is really only for aficionados of Tolkien’s tales who want more and who are interested in seeing the development of his mythology. It is indeed a fascinating peek over the shoulder of Tolkien as he writes his tales and we finally start to get a glimpse of the sheer magnitude of the effort that his son expended simply in producing from the jumble of inter-related texts about the legends of the Elves a volume as slim and relatively cohesive as [b:The Silmarillion|953403|The Silmarillion|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1281878908s/953403.jpg|4733799].

I’m looking forward to tackling Book II of the lost tales and proceeding with the history of Middle-Earth texts at least up to volume 5 to continue to get my fix and maybe even get a taste of some legends of the elder days that I haven’t already experienced in another form. Recommended for hard-core Tolkien fans who don’t mind critical apparatus and multiple versions of tales.

Am I really going to bother reviewing Homer’s _Iliad_? I mean, what am I going to say that hasn’t been said by generations of scholars, reviewers or readers? Does another drop in the ocean matter? Well, even if it doesn’t I’ll give it a go I guess. Reading the _Iliad_ was mostly done by me as a correction to a perceived gap in my education. I had always known bits and pieces about the poem and its heroes from various sources and the culture in general, but I had never read the poem itself. Given that it is a foundational text (perhaps *the* foundational text along with its sister epic [b:The Odyssey|333706|The Odyssey|Homer|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1330343752s/333706.jpg|3356006]) of the western canon it’s a pretty big gap. Well, I did it! I found myself both compelled and, I will admit it, sometimes bored by the text (though mostly only when we came upon the epic tradition of having the lineage of each character spelled out in gruesome detail before said hero was gruesomely despatched by an enemy’s spear thrust). Still, once I made it through Book II’s interminable catalogue of the Achaean heroes who came to Troy along with the number of ships and men they brought with them I knew that nothing could stop me.

My biggest surprise was probably the way in which the heroes, all seemingly spawned by gods, are not all that unlike superheroes in a comic book: forces of raw destruction whose primary wish is for glory and the mad rush of violence and battle. And yet even these great figures pale next to the gods who play them like puppets on a string watching events unfold before them and giving a nudge here and there when the outcome for their favored side is in doubt (indeed, for me some of the most humourous moments came about when a god would unceremoniously pluck a warrior from the ground and punt him into the distance in order to keep him safe like some giant hand in a gamer’s favourite RTS strategy game). It was these images and analogies, inadequate as they may seem, that kept springing to mind for me as I read of the epic battle between the Achaeans and the Trojans. It was, in that sense at least, a surprisingly modern text for me.

The poem is chock-full, on both sides of the conflict, of men who are larger than life. Of course the great exemplars of each side, Achilles and Hector, stand heads and shoulders above the rest, but both armies are lousy with seeming giants whose every action in battle is a superhuman carnage fest; the roll call of the Achaeans alone is impressive: wily Odysseus, prideful Agamemnon, wise Nestor, courageous Diomedes, and both the Greater and the Lesser Ajax. Of course, if you’re not a hero and don’t boast either a god or at least a royal personage in your near lineage, then you’re really just spear fodder whose primary purpose is to allow the real fighters to show off their skill in the art of death-dealing. Indeed fighting is all about the individual fighter's glory and his desire for booty...stripping the corpses is more important than pursuing a tactical advantage. Ego is all. This is a frightening vision of what a world of superheroes might look like with the lowly peons at the whim of their violence and glory-seeking. The boast and the taunt are also on full display. Each hero seeks to undermine his opponent with a war of words before the spear has even left his hand. Lineages are vaunted, or disparaged; deeds are proclaimed, or ridiculed; most of all threats are made and reciprocated. Old Spidey of the glib tongue has nothing on these guys. (“I too could battle the deathless gods with words — it's hard with a spear, the gods are so much stronger. Not even Achilles can bring off all his boasts…” – Hector)

The violence in the poem is explicit and all-pervasive, a veritable orgy of death and dismemberment. From the brains splattered inside helmets by a spear’s intrusion, to the “lethal hit that’s loosed [a body’s] springy limbs”, we are constantly presented with a panoply of violence that brings down the mists of death, a “dark [that] came whirling down across [their] eyes”, upon the stricken warriors. Homer was apparently no prude and was happy to indulge his audience’s apparent appetite for such scenes. The battle scenes are also truly cinematic, both in their colourful gore and in the superhuman skill displayed by the combatants, as foe after foe is handily dispatched in an almost balletic whirl of pure violence. Achilles is perhaps the most conspicuous in this, no more so than when he at last enters the fray near the end of the poem, maddened at the death of his friend Patroclus, and fells Trojans left and right:

Achilles now like inhuman fire raging on through the mountain gorges splinter-dry, setting ablaze big stands of timber, the wind swirling the huge fireball left and right — chaos of fire — Achilles storming on with brandished spear like a frenzied god of battle trampling all he killed and the earth ran black with blood.…so as the great Achilles rampaged on, his sharp-hoofed stallions trampled shields and corpses, axle under his chariot splashed with blood, blood on the handrails sweeping round the car, sprays of blood shooting up from the stallions' hoofs and churning, whirling rims — and the son of Peleus charioteering on to seize his glory, bloody filth splattering both strong arms, Achilles' invincible arms

Indeed the rage of Achilles is a primal thing. The seemingly excessive violence of his comrades and their enemies prior to his entering the fray is made to seem a pale, simpering thing in comparison. Achilles is a whirl of bloodlust, hatred and retribution whose only aim is the eradication of the Trojans and their great prince Hector as payment for the death of his old friend.

Despite the great power that each of these heroes displays, it is not necessarily an altogether innate function of the hero’s mighty thews and prowess alone, for it is made evident throughout the text that the real perquisite for success is the blessing of a god, regardless of the native power and skill of the individual fighter. The gods seem at first content to mostly sit on the sidelines, restricting themselves to aiding and abetting their favourite hero with a nudge here and a push there until, with the advent of Achilles and his killing rage, even Zeus fears that the outcome of the battle may change and the decrees of fate may be unbalanced by a mere mortal. He then lets the gods loose and they fight for their chosen sides in a free-for-all that is impressive in its violence and imagery where one telling things comes immediately to the fore: the gods are much less interested in maintaining the balance of fate for the betterment of the cosmos than they are at using this excuse to fight their own grudge matches against perceived and real slights from their divine rivals.

In many ways the gods are perhaps even more prevalent in the battle for Troy than are the human participants. This is fitting given the fact that a contest amongst the major goddesses, and the perceived slight of its result by the losers, were the direct antecedents to the war that would destroy a civilization. I’m not sure how Paris could have judged the beauty contest between Aphrodite, Athena and Hera in a way that wouldn’t have ended in bloodshed and mass genocide, but he certainly didn’t try very hard once the goddess of love dangled the prospect of Menelaus’ beauteous wife before him. This picking of love above worldly authority or wisdom and supremacy in war may seem like a purely pacific and even noble choice, but it often seems that even love as expressed in _The Iliad_ appears to be a fundamentally selfish thing. Helen, the human paradigm of beauty, and her divine patron Aphrodite, are both interested in ‘love’ not as something that expresses affection or devotion to another, but rather something that glorifies the self. Helen’s beauty is a great power and she uses it to glorify her own position. She deserts her husband and child for Paris and even this ‘love’ seems to be more a reflection of her own egoism and an expression of her power over him than any sort of true affection for the son of Priam. That being said there is one set of relationships that seem to look beyond the demands of heroic culture and the vanity of the self: these are primarily seen in the quiet moments of humanity in Hector’s love for his wife and child (and really for all of his family, even spoiled bratty Paris, and for Troy itself). One could also point to the love of Priam for his dead son, and the need to redeem his mutilated corpse at any cost (even unto walking into the enemy camp with only a servant and a cart full of booty), as another example of the love of others overcoming the love of self.

There were a plethora of great moments in the poem, but this review is already getting overlong, so allow me to simply name the ones that immediately spring to mind: the night raid of Diomedes and Odysseus into the Trojan lines, the lone stand and battle cry of Odysseus after the Achaeans run in terror from pursuing Trojan warriors, the coming ashore of the Nereids at the bidding of Thetis to comfort Achilles, Athena’s arming with the storm-shield of Zeus, the gathering of the Rivers in Olympus, Hephaestus boiling a river god in his own bed in defence of Achilles, and the empowerment of Achilles before his death-dealing drive amongst the Trojans to name but a few. In the end this was a greatly entertaining read that surprised me in many ways. Of course, it wasn’t all dismemberment and bloody glory, there was human suffering and despair (both at the hands of the ‘heroes’ and of the gods) and many questions raised about freewill versus one’s fate (Fate seems to have the deck stacked in his favour). I was constantly surprised at little touches made by Homer: Zeus being wooed by Hera so she could distract him from aiding the Trojans (in the course of which he enumerates the allures of his former lovers as part of his seduction strategy…what a charmer!); Hector deciding to leave his men to face death alone in a tight moment and the twin episode of Hector’s very real fear of death, such a great fear that he actually runs away from Achilles in panic before deciding to face his fate (not exactly the inhuman hero I was expecting to see); Agamemnon showing himself to be a blustering politician, attempting to save face and excuse himself at the same time as he tries to apologize to Achilles. The fact that the poem both begins and ends in medias res may leave some modern readers a bit baffled (we enter the fray ten years after the war’s inception and leave with the city of Troy still standing), but it truly is a tour de force of the poet’s art. Whether Homer was one man or many, whether he composed it primarily from an amalgam of the existing tradition of epic poetic devices or it came primarily from the mind of a genius it is a work that does stand the test of time and is well worth the time of any reader (or listener) ancient or modern.

Another series of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes as reported by his faithful biographer Dr. Watson and it becomes clearer than ever that the real draw of these stories is the fascinating character of Holmes himself. The mysteries are secondary to the enjoyment, though many of them do prove to have distinct elements of interest (otherwise why would the great detective have bothered himself about them?), but it really is in observing the fascinating character of Holmes himself that the reader is immersed in them. Indeed, this collection provides a rare treat for the reader in that we learn more about the detective and his early life and connections than has previously been the case. Thus it was that some of the most interesting stories here, for me at least, were those that hearkened back to Holmes’ youth and showed us the man he was and in which we can see the seeds of the man he would come to be.

The first of these in this book is “The Adventure of the Gloria Scott” – The primary interest in this tale comes from the glimpse it gives us to Holmes’ first ‘case’ (though the following tale, “The Musgrave Ritual” is really better classified as his first actual case, since the Gloria Scott comes across more as an intriguing mystery to which Holmes is largely a spectator) and the impetus for his decision to become a detective. We also get a glimpse at Holmes’ college days and of the only friend he made there (and thus far in the stories the only friend at all that he seems to have ever had aside from Watson). Finally this tale gives us a glimpse of a young Holmes still capable of emotion and surprise to the point that he cries out in horror at certain circumstances that, in later tales, would have left little other than a wry smile and remark of interest on his lips.

As noted above “The Musgrave Ritual” provides us with a look at what could probably be considered Holmes’ first real case in which another University acquaintance of Holmes’ comes to him, based on his youthful reputation, with an apparently insoluble puzzle that revolves around the man’s lothario butler and a bizarre family tradition. Holmes of course breaks the case and takes no small relish in recounting the strange tale of an event “done prematurely before my biographer had come to glorify me” to his friend Watson.

“The Greek Interpreter” continues in our discovery of the details of the mysterious past of Sherlock Holmes as we discover he actually does have a family and did not, as might seem more likely, spring from the brow of Zeus full grown. We in fact meet his older brother Mycroft, a man even more withdrawn from normal human society than his brother, but who also seems to possess even greater observational powers (a fact that leaves both Watson and the reader shocked to say the least). It was indeed quite amusing to see the two siblings spar with each other, each vying to outdo the other’s seemingly gnomic observations upon two strangers viewed from a window, and each gently chiding and correcting the other. This scene, nothing more a game of one-upmanship between brothers, does an excellent job at both making Sherlock seem more human at the same time that it exemplifies the peculiarity of his abilities and his subsequent estrangement from other ‘normal’ people. I also wondered in passing whether the germ for Nero Wolfe was planted in the mind of Rex Stout upon reading Sherlock’s comment about his brother: “If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an arm-chair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived.” All that is needed is Archie Goodwin to do the foot work, a brownstone in New York and we’re off to the races.

The Memoirs even show a bizarrely puckish aspect to Holmes’ personality when, in the second to last tale “The Naval Treaty”, Holmes plays a practical joke for his own amusement at the expense of the nerves of his already rattled client…something strange indeed (though perhaps not altogether out of character given Holmes’ obvious desire to showboat and his distinct streak of misanthropy).

Other tales in the volume that were of interest: “The Crooked Man” which I found to be a rather affecting tale of retribution in the face of personal tragedy and “The Yellow Face” which, at the same time that it displayed some squicky elements of racism and abandonment, still managed to rise above them and display a story of ultimate familial devotion and personal love.

Of course one can’t leave off discussion of this volume without making mention of “The Final Problem” the story in which Holmes’ greatest adversary Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime, is born. Doyle had grown weary of the public clamour for more tales of his peerless sleuth and decided it was time to end it so that he could concentrate on other characters and stories. Well, as it turns out this was not to be, but what resulted was an exciting tale in which Holmes finds himself pitted against the greatest adversary of his voluminous career. After months of playing cat-and-mouse with Moriarty and his insidious league of crime Holmes finally has gathered the pieces he needs to crush the vast criminal organization and its most dangerous leader. Moriarty, of course, is not likely to take such a possibility lying down and thus we have a final chase across London and Switzerland that ends in an off-screen (and thus retcon-able) death for both Holmes and his adversary. Watson’s final realization of what has happened to his friend is moving, as is the typically dry (though sincere) letter which Holmes leaves for him on the edge of Reichenbach Falls.

All in all, while some of the tales may have been weaker than others, I can’t do anything other than give this collection a five-star rating due to the great interest of the many tales of Holmes’ early life, as well as the singular event of his “death”.

High 3.5 stars

_The January Dancer_ is a very good space opera…I wish it had tipped over into great. There is a lot going on here to love: a sufficiently deep future history created through the liberal use of allusion that references any number of existing earth cultures (heavily relying on Celtic and cultures from the Indian subcontinent) along with some pretty swell creations of Flynn’s own (the Hounds, ‘those of Name’, the Terran Corners, the Rift, the People of Sand & Iron, etc.) in which the diaspora of humanity has settled across the cosmos, making use of an intriguingly pseudo-scientific explanation for FTL travel; a cast of varied and interesting characters of disparate parts coming together, as though by chance, to solve the mystery of a powerful pre-human artifact; and perhaps most of all the well-crafted prose of Michael Flynn that provides a certain shine to what might have been little more than a bloated pulp epic in weaker hands.

And yet I just didn’t find myself utterly captivated by the story as I hoped I might. Somehow it felt as though I was being held at arm’s length from the narrative and I was unable to fully immerse myself into this world as I have done in Herbert’s Dune, Zindell’s Neverness, or Simmons’ Hyperion. Perhaps it was Flynn’s use of a dual narrative structure in which the main story was a tale being told by a character in another narrating arc, but I don’t think that’s it: I am not averse to the technique (indeed it’s not unlike that used by Simmons’ in _Hyperion_) and I don’t think Flynn did a bad job in making it work.

Perhaps the story was too much of an obvious set-up for the required sequels. There was a lot happening, but so much of it was seemingly to get the board into a state of readiness for the game to *really* proceed that it might have made the story of this volume itself seem weak, unable to support its own weight. Whatever the case may be, I did quite like the story Flynn had to tell, but I just wanted to love it more.

We follow the wanderings of a group of characters as they in turn follow the peregrinations of an alien artifact able to change its shape imperceptibly (and may have other, less benign powers) that was discovered by the tramp freighter captain Amos January (hence its name, The January Dancer) as it moves from hand to hand across large swathes of known human space. As various players from different factions come across the Dancer (or rumours of it) a race to attain the hidden power of the alien artifact begins. We are given a tour of many of the main worlds that make up the loose conglomeration of planets known as the United League of the Periphery (under the nominal control of the Ardry of High Tara and his specially trained police force, the Hounds) whose great enemy, the Confederation of Central Worlds (in which is held the lost home-world of Old Earth), lies watching and waiting across the great galactic rift.

The main characters (and even many of the secondary ones) are fairly well-fleshed out and have interesting motivations, the prose is very good, and the story moves along at a decent clip. Somehow though I just didn’t fall completely under the story’s spell. I have to admit, though, that the final reveal about the Dancer was pretty freakin’ awesome and well worth the lead-up. All-in-all a worthy read.

This was an interesting comic from back in the day when black-and-white was a big trend and various fantasy titles were hitting the market. The premise is pretty basic: a group of adventurers from a fantasy world use a portal to escape from their enemies and end up in modern America, in a bowling alley no less, and hilarity ensues.

The adventurers are very much a take-off of the basic D&D party: the dour spellcaster, slightly unhinged cleric, a do-gooder Paladin, the halfling and gnome thief duo, and they are all led by a pretty tough version of the fantasy princess (she brow-beats the owner of the bowling alley into selling it to them). Despite the heavy use of gaming archetypes the characters were all fairly interesting and had some pretty intriguing reactions to apparently being stranded in our world. Each of them obviously had a back-story that sometimes peeks through and it's too bad that the series only lasted a few issues and didn't have time to develop, I would have liked to have seen where it was going.

The art was very nice and black-and-white suited it admirably (not always the case back in the day). I also liked the humour in the book: upon noticing that somehow one of the thieves was caught in a pin-setting machine after their arrival the Paladin dryly asks "Why are you torturing the halfling?"...well, I thought it was funny.

Sadly just as things were getting interesting (in the form of some actual personal conflict and the appearance of a bad-ass sorceress-assassin) no more issues were produced. *sigh* The travails of an indie-comic lover.

A strong 3.5 stars

As with Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, the only other Eliot book I’ve read thus far, _Silas Marner_ shows off just how keen an observer of human nature Eliot was both in the adept manner she has at detailing the psychological motivations of her characters’ actions and in the more explicit authorial asides in the narrative in which she details her insights into how the human mind and heart work, and the justifications that we give ourselves for our actions. No one in her stories seems to be either good or bad, though they may fall further on one side of the spectrum than the other, and as is always the case they have justifications for everything they do, even if they are justifications that will satisfy no one but themselves.

Silas Marner himself is an excellent character study of a miser who is more than a caricature. Thrown down by injustice and succumbing to despair the titular Silas exiles himself from his birthplace and becomes an outcast on the periphery of the village of Raveloe where his solitary life as a weaver is consumed by little more than work and the amassing of a small golden treasure upon which all of his love is centred. This state of affairs is not to last and Silas goes through yet another trial, the loss of his small fortune, though this is soon replaced by the person of a small orphaned child. As with the Grinch, Marner’s heart grew three times that day! Still a taciturn and awkward man, Silas’ new charge brings him into the fold of society from which he had been outcast nearly all of his adult life and we see him grow as a person as he learns to care for someone other than himself.

Eliot once again paints a wonderfully vivid picture of provincial English life in her village of Raveloe and we see all of the varied aspects of human nature on display: greed, cowardice, rigid moral inflexibility, filial love, devotion, despair, and hope. Even those characters that take up little of the narrative have a verisimilitude of life to them and we can readily believe that Raveloe is a real, living place filled with the foibles, defeats, and triumphs of real human life. Some might consider the story a bit saccharine, but I think the reality of its characters saves it from that fate.

An enjoyable read, especially good if you’re feeling leery about human nature.

3 – 3.5 stars

I think I may have come to this book with excessive expectations given the consistently high ratings and voluminous praise in GR friends’ reviews. That’s not to say that this was a bad book, or that I didn’t enjoy it, but for me this book didn’t hit the sweet spot that it seemed to reach for most others.

Ree Dolly is a tough-as-nails adolescent living a hand-to-mouth existence in perhaps the worst possible conditions in the backwoods of the Ozarks, forced to care for her two younger brothers and mentally ill mother. Her father, a meth cook who’s gone missing and who has put up their house as part of his bond, provides the impetus for the plot and propels Ree into a world of suspicious kin, underworld honour, and ever-present danger. She’s got gumption, this girl, that’s for sure, but I don’t know if I’d say she “kicks ass” the way most reviewers do. I’d say she knows how to take a licking and keep on ticking. She’s also headstrong as a bull and won’t let anything, or anyone, stand in her way, no matter how intimidating. There’s a lot to love about Ree: her undying love for her family and fierce devotion to them regardless of her dreams to escape from what she knows is a dead-end life; her refusal to let others tell her when she needs to give up and let ‘what has to be’ shut her down; her willingness to make any personal sacrifice when it will better the case of others in her life. Other characters are also vividly drawn even if they only appear briefly in the story: Uncle Teardrop springs to mind, a man who is both exactly what he seems and something more; Sherriff Baskin, a lawman who straddles the uncomfortable line between the official and criminal worlds that seems to be endemic of places like the Ozark backwoods of tightly-knit outlaw families; the vicious loyalty and twisted sense of honour of Merab Milton and her sisters; the playful, but tragic innocence of Ree’s brothers Sonny and Harold.

Still, all that said I found myself not really finding myself fully pulled into the story until the final third of the book. Prior to that there’s a lot of wandering amongst the backwoods and remembering of times past mingled with fears of times to come as Ree searches for her father, but it’s not until things start coming to a head that I really found myself compelled by the story. Add to that Woodrell’s over-wrought prose and things stayed at a ‘good but not great’ level for the most part for me. I mean, I’m as much of a fan of poetic prose as the next guy (probably even more so given who the next guy is likely to be), but I still winced at a fair number of Woodrell’s metaphors, and his overblown (and sometimes confusing) descriptions of nature sort of reminded me of some of the Romantics at their most over-heated and excessive. Woodrell is by no means a bad writer, but I do think his prose would have benefitted by being turned down a notch or two from time to time, if only to let those high-flown metaphors that did work shine all the more.

Still, a very good read. Hick-lit noir that generally delivers on its promise.

_Riddley Walker_ is the book that put Russell Hoban on the map (inasmuch as he is on the map…he is criminally neglected as an author) and will likely be the one work for which he will be remembered (sadly he passed away in late 2011). So far I have read three other Hoban novels and while I have thoroughly enjoyed all of them I must admit that I think this one is his very best.

Many, upon reading the first page, will dismiss the book as “gimmicky” (I am growing to hate that term as applied to books) due to the style in which Hoban writes. Admittedly his language isn’t easy to slip right into given that he has created his own broken, not quite phonetic, future version of English that is further complicated for many readers by being based on the Kentish dialect. Thus we have as our introduction to Riddley and his world:

On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen.

That’s definitely one of the easier passages and things get more complicated when words and phrases are elided or significantly changed when they refer to things from the deep past (our present), and concepts that people in Riddley’s day don’t fully comprehend or whose meaning has changed in their time. Still, for me _Riddley Walker_ is probably the non plus ultra of post-apocalyptic fiction. Sure there are many others out there that are excellent, and I have by no means read in the genre exhaustively (I still have to read classics like [b:The Death of Grass|941731|The Death of Grass|John Christopher|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309962069s/941731.jpg|797220] and [b:Earth Abides|93269|Earth Abides|George R. Stewart|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320505234s/93269.jpg|1650913]), but there is something about Hoban’s work that seems to define the genre for me. His ability to capture a world that is at the same time horrifying and homely, a world that shows humanity utterly changed and yet exactly the same as we’ve always been is superlative.

Our hero, the eponymous Riddley Walker, is a young boy just coming of age at a moment when his world stands at a crossroads, change is either going to sweep humanity forward or back into the dustbin of history. Riddley truly is the crux of the novel (both thematically through the role he plays in the plot and stylistically given that the narrative is his own first-person account), the centre around which it revolves and also the primary element upon which it succeeds or fails for the reader. For me his character is an unqualified success. He is an everyman who harbours within himself unknown potential. He is a realist not given to self-delusion and yet in him is a belief in the human spirit, a sense of the positive, that is uplifting without being cloying. Through Riddley we are given an effective melding of hopelessness and hopefulness: a picture of a world steeped in melancholy and loss that may be the dying gasp of humanity or its first step forward out of the ashes.

Riddley's world is a grey one, painted in the broad strokes of grizzled rain, decaying edifices of the past, and a hard life of scrounging amidst the muck and ruins in search of the bare necessities of survival. Despite this bleak setting Hoban still presents us with a fully realized world of warmth, humanity, danger, and loss. It is obviously a post-apocalyptic world that stands on the far edge of the fall: the ‘Bad Time’ of fire and destruction is now only a distant legend (as is the world that preceded it), as opposed to those ‘survivalist’ post-apocalyptic books that take place while the horror of loss and oblivion is still a fresh wound. As is to be expected Riddley’s world is not an easy one. He lives in an Iron Age society in an England that had been bombed back to the Stone Age and is slowly clawing its way back up the ladder. The old ways are starting to die out as the nomadic, foraging lifestyle is gradually being replaced by the more settled life of farming. The old tales and stories of our own lost time are perpetuated primarily through the existence of a modified Punch and Judy show. This puppet show is a government-sponsored propaganda machine wherein the main character is Eusa (a degraded and highly modified version of St. Eustace), a stand-in for the perpetrators of Armageddon, in which old knowledge and new superstition are mixed together to create a truly unique experience. Through the Eusa Show and the legends it spawned we come to see the hum drum aspects of our own age both through the eyes of wonder and awe, a sort of golden age when giants walked the earth, and through the lens of condemnation: how could those so wise have been so foolish? How could the god-like beings humans had once been have allowed Armageddon to have occurred? ”O what we ben! And what we come to!” laments Riddley at one point. These people are keenly aware of their loss. Whether it is through fluid medium of stories and legends or the more concrete witness of the ruins of burnt out cities and the hulks of dead machines, the ghost of the past lives on in Riddley’s present and is carried on the backs of those that remain as both a reminder and a deadly weight.

Government lackeys travel from place to place and perform their ‘Eusa Shows’ based on a memorized approved text, usually in order to give a government spin on recent events and enforce the accepted truths of what has been and what will be. In the midst of this endless round of ‘business as usual’ there is beginning to grow a renewed interest in the “cleverness” of the old ways and knowledge, especially that which revolves around power and destruction (known in Riddley’s vernacular as the “1 Little 1” and the ”1 Big 1”)…it’s a common theme in this type of literature: the human fascination with the worst side of our nature that seems inevitably to lead us to commit the same horrible mistakes time and time again no matter how harsh the lessons taught us (see Miller’s [b:A Canticle for Leibowitz|164154|A Canticle for Leibowitz|Walter M. Miller Jr.|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1329408540s/164154.jpg|250975] for another example of this; these two books would actually make for a good paired reading).

You can get jus as dead from a kick in the head as you can from the 1 Littl 1 but its tha natur of it gets people as cited. I mean your foot is all ways on the end of your leg innit. So if youre going to kick some 1 to death it aint all that thrilling is it. This other tho youve got to have the Nos. of the mixter then youve got to fynd your gready mints then youve got to do the mixing of the mixter and youve got to say the fissional seakerts of the act befor you kil some body its all that chemistery and fizzics of it you see. Its some thing new. Which ever way you look at it I dont think Aunty and her red eyed rat be too far from us.

Of course the huge stumbling block for this book is obvious, it jumps out at you once you flip to the first page: the language itself. Is this degraded form of English nothing more than a gimmick? There will I suppose always be those for whom the answer is “yes”, but for me that isn’t the case…or at least it could have been simply a gimmick if it didn’t work, if there wasn’t more to the text than a degraded phonetic spelling. Luckily the language is built around a great story with much thoughtfulness on the human condition and human nature. Who are we and why do we act as we do? What does it mean to be human at all? Why do we live, and what is the purpose of our seemingly unimportant little lives? How do we connect with each other, and what are the things in life that are truly worth cultivating? How much of our life is determined and how much is freely chosen? All of these questions and more are asked in the text and while precious few answers may be given the possibilities that are presented give much food for thought. The language also allows the required distance between our world and this one of the far off future to be built and emphasized. Perhaps most importantly it allows us to zero in on what matters as we are forced to pay close attention not only to what is said, but how it is said. The strangeness of the language forces you to look at the familiar in a new way, to see things with new eyes as you work your way towards an understanding of what exactly is being discussed or viewed. Finally it also lets us inhabit the mind of our narrator and protagonist Riddley (as well as his world) in a uniquely engaging way.

This book is one of my favourites and it is highly recommended. The labour expended in reading it will be amply repaid as we go “roading thru that rainy dark” with Riddley Walker.

Also posted at Shelf Inflicted