So Many Books...
Jun. 7th, 2009
03:11 pm - Mortal Engines, Philip Reeve
Another not-very-lengthy write-up for this one, as a) everyone else has probably read it already and b) I've only got a few minutes on the computer as mine isn't working right atm.
It feels odd to have read Reeve's Here Lies Arthur, Larklight and Starcross but not this so far, but at least We were represented by Becca, who read the trilogy a long time ago. (Oh, sure, having one or other articulate daughter who's read a book is almost the same as having read it yourself!) Anyway, I both loved it and felt it had some weaknesses, which appear to be the opposite of the weaknesses other people found in it. The story, as in the set-up and detail of the future world, was brilliant, of course, and the lack of simple good guys vs bad guys shoot-em-up morality as expected. I loved Hester, but really thought the -- oh brother, put it down 10 minutes ago and have already forgotten the names. Shriker. Sticker. Iron man guy, anyway! That part was a bit clunky, I felt, and didn't add much, with the 'But they're not supposed to have feelings!' shocked reaction to him. I also felt that Kate was a bit too obviously paired with Hester, and being her inverse with an equally obsessively naive belief in Valentine went on too long to feel her ending quite worked. (Now, there's a lovely sentence. I have lost my ability to do anything other than flail.)
But those are not weaknesses that spoil the many, many good things in the book: I loved, and was surprised at how witty it all was, given the bleakness. Reading backwards (in Reeve's oeuvre) as I was, it seemed as if all the wit from the Larklight books was added to the bleak, grim view seen in Here Lies Arthur, of the many ways people with power can do appalling things without seeming to bother their consciences in the slightest. (Though they may have started with a germ of an idea of doing something neutral or even good.)
My computer time is up for now, so it's on to Kelly Link's Pretty Monsters!
10:10 am - The Game, Diana Wynne Jones
Finished Monster Blood Tattoo last night and will write it up -ish, in a bit, but just finished The Game and want to polish that off first.
Won't take long, unfortunately, as it seemed to be merely one very nifty idea (the mythosphere) wrapped up in some fun bits and then everything it had achieved ruined by one of the weakest endings of all her books. Push this star here and make all the stories - or all the stories relating to this set of characters, at least - suddenly turn eternally happy. Plink Plunk.
Can't say I was terribly disappointed, as I hadn't been expecting very much, but again, if I had the brain power atm it would be interesting to compare - contrast - the use of characters from myth in other books, including Eight Days of Luke, The Owl Service and ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
steepholm's Death of a Ghost.
Jun. 6th, 2009
10:14 am - The Demon's Lexicon, Sarah Rees Brennan
Well. THAT was intense. Like 'I can't stop reading this though I'm already wrecked and don't want to be too tired to enjoy the 48 hours' intense. More significantly, it was 'Oh my. Everything I thought was a quibble about the book up until this point turns out not to have been the book anyway'.
Phew, start more coherently. The protagonist is Nick, a 17-year old living with his older brother Alan and his mad mother. (No, seriously. Not funny mad. Not got-a-mental-illness-sympathetic mad. In.Sane.) It starts with them living in Exeter, but they're always on the run, because of the magician trying to get back a charm Nick's mother stole years ago, who doesn't just come calling to sort out the whole sticky situation nicely. In this very dark, fully-developed setting, magicians can call demons into our world in a win-win situation. For the magicians and the demon, but not so much for the human intermediary. Demons want more than anything to be in our world, and will offer power to the magicians in exchange for the brief time they can stay in some poor human's body. Possession? Very, very unfun. And then the human will die, as the body can't bear the inhabiting by the demon for long.
The thing is, Nick's my least favourite kind of protagonist, as he's angry, seriously, blazingly angry, with the kind of anger that can only be satisfied (some) by killing something. (Something evil. Mostly.) He's not great at understanding Alan's tenderness and concern - for their mother (yeah, but he's got reason!) or especially for the two 'tourists' who come to Alan looking for help for the boy, Jamie, who's got himself marked by a demon. Mae, Jamie's sister, he can almost respect, and also fancy, which is a bit of a problem, as he knows Alan likes her. But the narrative is very carefully balanced so that the reader goes bouncing back and forth between finding Nick's coldness repelling and feeling deeply sympathetic to him. Bounce, bounce. Even Alan, who is Nick's opposite in almost every way, occasionally shows signs of the willingness to kill that makes for a deep sense of moral ambivalence at times. Not an easy read!
I'd have given the book many, many points for the Goblin Market alone though - that is just made of awesome. Both in the vivid description of the sellers and the fruit and dancers, and in the shadowing darkness underpinning it too. And Mae and Jamie are great - both doing a parallel ride to the reader's - between aversion to Nick (who usually wants it that way), and attraction, however reluctant.
There are blurbs from Cassie Clare and Holly Black on the book cover, and not coincidentally, I thought of both as I was reading. I didn't find the book at first as sure-stepping as the Mortal Instruments trilogy, though that might have been my preferences only, and certainly didn't find the 'wit' Clare (and others) see in it. If I had the time, this would be a good place for a bit of a meander down that lane: why does the humour work so well (for me, this being intensely personal) in the Mortal Instruments and in Maggie Stiefvater's Lament, and why didn't I feel once like laughing at this?
Can't say anything more about the ending (many clues, got some, missed some!), but I found it very moving. And I was pleased to see that the sequel will be out next year and will centre on Mae. It may be every bit as intense, but at least the reader knows the whys and wherefores of this world and has sympathies accordingly aligned. Right? Or maybe not...