Tag: magic

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book reading reviews

Whispers Under Ground – Ben Aaronovitch

So book 3 in the Rivers of London (or PC Grant, opinions differ) series. It felt like a long wait before I got to read this. It was 3 books and 14 days. But all those books were perfectly fine (all 7s) and two weeks isn’t that long.

So we’re back with Peter Grant, Lesley May and Inspector Nightingale. Lesley is now also training to be a wizard (or a ‘practitioner’). Like the previous two books Whispers Under Ground has its own story – the mysterious death of an American art student at Baker Street tube station. Also like the previous books there’s more of an ongoing element. This time I suppose you could say it stretches back as well as forward.

I did really enjoy this book, but not quite as much as the other two. Whether that has anything to do with the fact that it took me a couple of weeks to read it – which was about being tired a lot not about the writing – I don’t know. It does have the trademark humour but either I’m getting used to it or the one-liners are less zing-y than they were. Also the separation between the story-of-this-book and the unfolding narrative is more clear cut. I guess that in book 1 that’s almost accidental because as events occur and discoveries are made you have no way to know whether it’s connected to the current story because you don’t really know until the end that some of it will carry on to the next book. However I also think the on-going story is given more time here. I think in two or three books time it will be the story of that book.

I think I enjoyed those elements more. Getting drip-fed more details about Nightingale’s past is tantalizing and the ‘Faceless Man’ is an intriguing villain. Also I think that the ‘A plot’ involves a lot of running around tunnels and sewers and under the ground generally and it didn’t grab me as much as the other stuff. I like the ‘nazareth’ though.

So now there is a long wait – June! – for book 4 to be published. And I believe book 5 has at least been commissioned. Lots of stuff on the TBR pile to be catching up with in the meantime.

8/10 – our favourite wizard ‘going underground’.

Speaking of TBR it currently stands at 252 down from 253 which is obviously good. The currently reading list is standing still at 10 but I hope to knock that down soon.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Expecting Someone Taller – Tom Holt (pages 6366- 6589)

I was ill this week, had a cold, which involved spending the best part of two days in bed. As such I didn’t do much other than sleep, eat and read. Also I wanted to re-read something I knew I’d enjoy.

So, Expecting Someone Taller, is comfort food reading for me.

I first read it when it came out which was whilst I was a student. I’ve re-read it a few times since, once in the last few years (but before the blogging of every book modern obsession). I have to say that the first time I loved it, at mostly because of the ending. Subsequent reads I enjoyed it but certain flaws jumped out at me. It’s thoroughly in the category of guilty pleasure.

Expecting Someone Taller is the story of Malcolm Fisher who hits a badger with his car one evening. As he watches it die he discovers that it’s not just a badge but a shape-shifting giant. The giant gives Malcolm a helmet that allows him to become any person he wishes and a very special Ring. This sets off a series of events where a catalog of mythical characters, apparently real, are after Malcolm and more especially the Ring.

This is very much a comic fantasy in the Terry Pratchett mould. It does for Wagner’s Ring Cycle what Discworld does for fantasy in general.

It’s basically a rom-com with the fantasy elements thrown in. Malcolm, a nobody who’s just been dumped by his girlfriend, is suddenly in possession of the most powerful magical item of all. How will he cope and will it help or hinder his (theoretical) love-life?

I’m not sure I ever found this laugh-out-loud funny but it’s definitely amusing and light and warm-hearted. The main character is likeable, most of the time. As a younger man I enjoyed the rom- part of it and the associated happy ending. I guess I still do though with a slightly more cynical eye – except when I’m ill in bed and wanting a comforting view of the world.

8/10 – mythical nonsense and jolly good fun.

Categories
6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, The Magicians – Lev Grossman (pages 5965-6365)

Lev Grossman’s The Magicians is a tricky book to review, at least in as much as it’s hard to know how much to reveal. One of the things that I have most to say on is something that is based on a turn of events about 2/3rds of the way through. On the other hand it’s mentioned (briefly) on the back cover.

OK so if you consider back cover blurb spoiler then don’t continue reading this review. Otherwise…

The Magicians has been called a grown-up Harry Potter and you can see why – the first section of the book concerns the hero, Quentin Coldwater, being selected for and training at a magical school, Brakebills. However he’s college age not pre-pubescent and the book doesn’t shy away from descriptions of sex, and drug-taking which you wouldn’t find in even the later HP books. Also, whilst graduating from Brakebills takes 5 years (a little less for Quentin as he gets put forward a year) we’re taken through it all in this book rather than the book-per-year of the Potter novels.

Having said that it being a magical school with exams, practical lessons and even a magical sport (Welters) it’s hard not to compare with HP. This is done knowingly and when one of the characters drunkenly refers to Welters as Quidditch and talks about Owl mail you know Grossman’s not unaware of the parallels.

So I think the HP comparisons are superficial and come almost automatically from having the very idea of a school for magic. Magic in this book by the way is another difference from the Potterverse. Performing a spell is a matter of mastering complicated and precise hand movements coupled with particular incantations (in one of several languages) and possibly strange ingredients. It’s also something where the exact manner of casting depends on the conditions – pointing your wand and shouting ‘Expelliamus’ might work in New York on a still day on a Tuesday in June but not on a windy Friday in London in December for example. So whilst it’s not a science, it’s a very finicky art-form that requires lots of practice, hard work and memorising of exceptions.

But the main difference is that because the characters are already more mature it deals with a more psychologically realistic view of the world. What it might feel like to be in this scenario. Not as an exciting schoolboy adventure but as something you’re doing because you can’t really find meaning in normal life. Well that’s true for Quentin any how. The other characters have different motivations and aspirations and distractions.

One of the ways in which Quentin’s inner life is demonstrated is through the Fillory books. These are the series of magical stories that he read as a child about a land called Fillory that a family of English children go to and have various adventures in. Whilst in the world of The Magicians nearly everyone reads the Fillory novels as children, Quentin never grew out of them and will re-read them as a kind of comfort food equivalent.

And it turns out Fillory is real and Quentin and his friends go there.

And it’s this section of the book that gave me most pause for thought. Because Fillory is quite obviously and deliberately a parallel to Narnia and so the time spent there can be read as either a parody, or a fairly scathing critique of those books. I guess it was wondering whether Grossman wanted me to take some kind of a message away about this that gave me some trouble.

In the end what I decided was that he was just taking a kind of Narnia-like world seriously and how that would play out with his characters and his rules about magic and the story he wanted to tell. So I stopped worrying about whether the books I loved as a child were being made fun of[*] and enjoyed the book.

There’s a couple of other sections to the book and an interesting ending that I won’t go into. What I will say is that again I went back and forth between two opinions – that the book was uneven in tone and that was a weakness or that yes it was but because different tones were appropriate to the different sections.

I’ve read other reviews which found Quentin himself too downbeat or melancholic a character. Personally I empathised with his struggles, with life, magic and relationships and it was him (and the other characters) that kept me interested through some of the ups and downs.

Finally all I will say because it’s probably not clear is that I did enjoy this book and will read the sequel (eventually).

8/10 – It’s Magic Harry but not as we know it!

[*]which is not to say I have a rosy-eyed view of those books now. I have a number of problems with them from varying degrees of subtle racism to “The Problem of Susan”. However I still, on balance, enjoy them.

Categories
writing

Writing as Magic

Writing as Magic

So last week I talked about writing as exercise i.e. takes effort but done regularly reaps rewards. But exercise has a certain mechanical, mathematical even, rule to it – if I do an hour’s worth of exercise I will burn a certain amount of calories. I can do it grudgingly. I can be in a bad mood. I can be unmotivated and only just manage it, or I can skip along happily. Doesn’t matter, do the work and the calories burn and a certain amount of progress has been made toward the goal.

Writing isn’t like that.

Not quite anyhow. Because it’s creative the goal is to produce something worthwhile. Perhaps not straight away and we can be patient about the level of quality but not all writing is equal. I can spend an hour writing and produce nothing but pages of ‘ideas’ and ‘brainstorming’ that aren’t anything that can be shared or published. Or I can spend the same hour writing a story that someone might read and enjoy.

But it’s not guaranteed. This is the scary part. Working hard or consistently isn’t enough.

However I kinda sorta don’t worry about that. My attitude and experience is that creativity will flow. When or how inspiration will strike I don’t know. But it does so more if I’m actually writing and it can only be turned into something shareable if I am actually writing. And an idea in my head is wonderful but it’s only something I actually write and finish and can share that really counts.

So you sort of have to have faith in the magic of it. You sit down. You’re tired, uninspired, in a bad mood and feeling lacking in any talent or confidence. Any you start to write. Anything. Ideas. Thoughts about themes, characters, words, phrases, scenes, visual ideas, snippets of dialogue. For me it’s most often writing about writing and then asking myself questions – how does this work? where does he come from? how does she feel?

And I write for my allotted time and maybe, probably for the first few sessions, I have nothing. But eventually, if I keep at it, the magic happens, the spark comes from where-ever it comes from and ideas start to flow. Better than that I actually start to like what I’m writing.

But it’s not guaranteed. I have no idea how it really works just that I do certain things and then it happens. A few days later, particularly if I haven’t written in between times or am working on a new project, I may be back to feeling like I have nothing. So I start over with my brainstorming and journaling and just typing whatever comes into my head. And hope/believe/pray that it happens again.

Repeat the ritual, keep the faith, wait for the fire to fall.

Reliable but unpredictable – magic.

Writing Done this Week

Well I was back at work this week and predictably that has meant I haven’t written as often or as much. I’ve only written on three of the last seven days. Each time though I wrote for 30mins and overall I wrote about 1565 words. Most of that was in the form of ideas though i.e. the kind of rambling I described above.

I did write the first draft of an idea for the TWI Monday flash, but the deadline was Friday 9pm and since I didn’t write at all that day I missed it. I may come back to the idea but it was very slight and to be honest it’s not one of my favourites.

I wrote some thoughts on how to do a sequel/re-write of a story I wrote a few years ago. M. told me it was her favourite of mine and that I should write something similar. I’m not sure how so I wrote about that (see above re: questions)

This evening I wrote mostly brainstorming ideas for Web Writer’s September challenge – which is to write a 3,500 word story called “Hunting Season”. Actually a lot of my thoughts were about combining it with “airship” and another idea I’ve had called “the purpose of flight” – these may still be three stories but may take place in the same world.