Fire Update and Hal Duncan Promises Fires of the Apocalypse in Vellum · 24 October 2007
“A burning map. Every epic,” my friend Jack used to say, “should start with a burning map. Like in the movies. Fucking flames burning the world away; that’s the best thing about all those old films,” he said, “when you see this old parchment map just . . . getting darker and darker in the center, crisping, crinkling until suddenly it just . . . fwoom.” – From Vellum, The Book of All Hours
I continue to be impressed with the amount of information that the private news services are providing. All local stations are reporting on the fire and making sure that information on locations, shelters, insurance resources, and medical support are broadcast. For the first 48 hours, even the major networks were entirely commercial free (at least on the web). For this cynic, who actively spends time thinking of what I’d do in end-of-the-world scenarios, the response to the natural disaster has been quite heartening.
Yesterday additional mandatory evacuations were called, up to 513,000 residents from the 250,000 reported Monday. Today has been a mix of people being allowed to go back to their homes (mine included, huzzah!) and new people being evacuated, so I’m not sure where the numbers stand now.
I’ve been spending my time waffling between being glued to the webcasts and trying to get a minimum amount of productive work in. I had started reading Vellum: The Book of All Hours by Hal Duncan last week but despite the good news that my home will probably be safe, I wasn’t really in the mood to finish a story that seems headed for gloom and doom and the fiery apocalypse. I’m about halfway through the book, and since I’m still displaced and away from my usual compliment of blogging resources, I’ll offer a partial review here of Vellum.
The book starts with a treasure hunt, oddly reminiscent of the one from the movie National Treasure complete with generations of batty members of the Carter family searching for the lost Book of All Hours.
However, the apparent protagonist, Reynard Carter, disappears off the face of our earth and into a lost and lonely alternate reality quite early on in the story. Therein begins the meat of the book, as Duncan merges and mixes characters, telling the tale of the coming of a war between “good” and “evil” (yes, without capital letters and in quotes).
Duncan has taken his characters and turned them into archetypes in a deliberate manner. There are books in which characters have little personality and become mouthpieces for the themes that the authors are trying to get across. Most of the time this effect comes across as a cheap trick, a way to get themes into a story without the effort of creating a believable vessel for the them.
In contrast, Duncan has created a handful of characters that have more personality than seems possible for one soul or one body. He ties their lives, past, present, and future, together with the unifying concept of their “mark,” a distinguishing feature that causes these beings to behave similarly over time, and seems to doom them to repeat their mistakes over the millennia.
At the beginning of the book, myth and reality seem quite separate, but as the story progresses, they are merged together so that it seems that myth creates reality, which begets more myth. I’m sure this is all building up to some climactic showdown between the organized forces, but I’m really not sure what part the main characters are going to play in it. In a way, it’s very refreshing to read a book and not have a clue how it’s going to end.
Duncan has an amazing way with description and even though there are some sections in which I still have no idea what he’s talking about, it’s a great read, especially if you’re willing to take each segment as a myth or story unto its own. I’m really looking forward to finishing this one when my frame of mind shifts a bit. Until then, I’m vegging out with the remake of FFIII for the DS. The super cutesy characters are just the kind of entertainment that I’m looking for to keep San Diego’s smokey reality at bay.
Photographs of the San Diego Witch Fire are courtesy of vissago on Flickr via the creative commons license.
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Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko · 7 September 2007
I rode the metro for about six hours, switching aimlessly from line to line without any plan, sometimes dozing, letting my conscious mind take a break and my senses roam free. There was nothing going down. Well, I did see a few interesting things, but they were all ordinary incidents, tame beginner’s stuff. It wasn’t until about eleven, when the metro got less crowded, that the situation changed.
There begins the adventures of on Anton Gododetsky, Night Watch agent. Learning about what the Night Watch is, and more importantly how it carries out its mission, is part of the story that unfolds over the novel. What we do learn relatively quickly is that the world is populated by Others, a collection of creatures who are almost, but not quite human. The Others can enter the Twilight, a shadow of the world we see, and once there they choose sides, Light or Dark, good or evil.
We also learn about the Day Watch, the competing faction to the Night Watch. The difference between the groups is nicely summed up by the phrase uttered by the Night Watch who sees humans as their roots, while the Day Watch sees them as their food.
The structure of the book is more a collection of related and chronological short stories than a traditional novel. There are several vignettes, all of which feature Anton. He starts out as a fairly fresh recruit of the Night Watch, sent on his first field assignment. He’s learning the extent and the limit of his powers and his restraint, and as he tests them, we slowly grow to know the world that the Others inhabit as well.
Lukyanenko creates a striking portrayal of an alternate reality. The imagery he uses to describe the Twilight makes it sound alluring, but not idealized. Although the characters in the book have the potential for great power, Lukyanenko doesn’t have them flaunt it. Rather, he treats the Night Watch as exactly what it is, a job with a grave responsibility. Every member of the Night Watch lives with that responsibility in every action that they take, which makes for a superb dark fantasy in which the characters internalize their battles with their power in a way that is extremely natural and rational.
How fond the Dark Ones were of repeating the word “Freedom!” How often we explained to ourselves that freedom has its limits.
And that’s probably just the way it ought to be. For the Dark One and the Light Ones who simply live among ordinary people, possessing greater powers than they have, but with the same desires and ambitions, for those who choose life according to the rules instead of confrontation.
Anton is a classic beat-cop type figure. He must report to his superiors and follow their orders, though he often doesn’t understand them or agree with them. This type of character leads to some recurring motifs, as Anton is thrown into various missions for the Night Watch. On the one hand these motifs allow for the questions on the nature of the Night Watch to be asked and answered and lend to the strength of the book. On the other hand, Lukyanenko must reveal Anton’s process of coming to understand the true nature of his missions. He illustrates Anton’s “Ah ha!” moments to the reader by having Anton exclaim that he finally knows what is going on, but he doesn’t inform the reader as to what Anton has figured out.
I prefer a mystery style in which clues are gradually revealed and in which the reader and the character can come to the same conclusion together. In Night Watch, I felt like I had been left behind in Anton’s discovery process, and it was jarring to be moved from the position of intimate observer of the story, to cordoned-off outsider. Although Lukyanenko eventually brought me, the reader, back into the story, I found it awkward to read the parts in which Anton knew exactly what he was doing, and repeatedly told us he knew, but we didn’t. Despite the negative impact that this had on the pacing of the story, the strong world-building and sense of atmosphere prevailed, and I quite liked the novel.
I particularly enjoyed reading this because it was set in Moscow. It cracks me up to hear the Americans described as loud and uncouth, and I'm always interested in seeing a different perspective on fantasy. There were also references to the history of Russia and Europe and some distinctly non-American philosophies woven into the book. For those who feel like they’re neglecting their cultural responsibilities, this is a great book to get your fantasy fix while brushing up on a different cultural perspective.
Night Watch has also been made into a movie, which Quixotical discusses here as part of the R.I.P. challenge dialogue and Carl discusses here. I think this is a book that would be challenging to adapt into a movie, and because the reviews I’ve seen of the movie are so positive, I’m very curious about how the screenwriter and director managed it.
This book was reviewed for the 2007 R.I.P. Challenge.
Posted by fortrix
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Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik · 23 August 2007
So, as I hinted, my impressions of Throne of Jade were about the same as those of His Majesty's Dragon (my review of that book can be found here). Key differences between the books are the setting and the conflict. His Majesty’s Dragon is set in England and the conflict is the upcoming battle of Trafalgar in the Napoleonic Wars. Throne of Jade sees Laurence and Temeraire travel to China, and the conflict is more political than military.
The series seems well received in the fantasy community, and the first two books are fun reads, but they don’t have the engrossing feel of some of the superb books I’ve read in the genre.
Novik writes wonderful characters of which Temeraire is still my favorite, though in this book I missed the focus that was paid to him from the first book. Likewise Novik excels at describing scenes so that the reader can feel immersed in the world of the characters. She calls to mind the cramped quarters of a ship and the lush palaces of China with equal mastery. While skimming the book in preparation for writing this article, each small section reads beautifully. Novik has excellent control of the language and switches gears between styles as appropriate to the scene and the people in it.
The weakness in this book, and the thing that keeps it from being outstanding, is the handling of action scenes and the lack of a real sense of tension in the plot.
There was a particular scene, in which the characters were engaged in a battle that read a bit like “and then this happened, and then this, and then it was done.” Likewise, I had the same feeling I did in His Majesty’s Dragon where certain things were foreshadowed with the idea that they’d be exciting plot points, and they weren’t.
Throne of Jade includes adventure, intrigue, action, and philosophy, and has all the elements of an exciting plot. For some reason, they just didn’t come together in a way that had me on the edge of my seat as this type of story should. It was a sedate thriller, a measured mystery. Perhaps Novik is attempting to capture the feel of the English writers of the era and their deliberate manners. If so, she’s done it successfully; however, I think the topic of the book could have benefited from more modern pacing. Nevertheless, Throne of Jade is an enjoyable book and a quick read. I’ll be continuing the series to find out how Temeraire fares in his next adventure.
In related news, Subterreanean Press is releasing an illustrated version of His Majesty’s Dragon late this year or early next year. I was tipped off to that a preview of the first illustration has been released by Remy over at The Fantasy Review. The first illustration is not what I would have expected, but as Remy says, we’ll have to wait to see more.
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