Category Archives: Fantasy

I Am a Zombie Filled With Love

by Anna

by Isaac Marion

A friend sent me a link to a short story available online, which she found from The Bloggess:

I Am a Zombie Filled With Love is the sweetest, zombie-perspective love story you will ever read! It isn’t very long, so jump over there and read it right now! I was thrilled to read at the very end that it has become a full-length book called Warm Bodies that will be available in the U.S. in March. It is definitely going on my to-read list. I can’t wait!

Amended: It is out right now! It is being shelved at my library at this very moment, according to their website! I’ll have to run over there as early in the morning as I can drag myself out of bed (which probably means right at the crack of noon). I’m usually pretty frugal in my use of exclamation marks, but I’m just so excited!

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

by Kinsey

I loved The Magicians.  As I said in an earlier entry, I had not been interested in reading it and knew basically nothing about it when I started, but I was sucked in within a few pages and read like a madwoman until I finished. It was engaging and full of magic and fantasy, but also felt grounded and modern. Calling it Harry Potter Says Motherfucker is really quite a good summary.

I don’t want to go into many details, because I went into the book blind and really enjoyed seeing things unfold, but it’s a very Harry Potter-like set up: a normal teenage boy discovers there is magic in the world and enters a magical boarding school. However, it differs from Harry Potter in some significant ways. First, it is an adult book and there is a fair bit of sex and drugs and violence. Second, things are far less cute than at Hogwarts; learning magic is presented as a real slog, like trying memorize endless complicated multiplication tables, and it’s made very clear that magic can’t fix everything and can’t make someone happy. And third, Grossman doesn’t let things end at graduation, so there’s a real exploration of leaving school and transitioning to the “real world.”

The other thing I really liked about the book was that for me the tone and the writing fell somewhere in between young adult and adult. I worry that this sounds like a criticism, and it’s not. It’s just that as much as I love (LOVE) young adult fantasy books, they tend to be somewhat heavy on the fantasy/moral lesson side of things (Narnia, Robin McKinley, Harry Potter himself). Adult fantasy books, on the other hand, are often so dark that the wonder of magic seems tamped down by the MISERY and UNENDING PAIN OF EXISTENCE. The authors that come to mind here are China Mieville and Octavia Butler; I like both those authors, but when I finish one of their books I generally feel the need for a stiff drink and some restorative episodes of How I Met Your Mother. The Magicians does a nice job of balancing the idea that parts of life are sad and miserable but other parts (including magic) are awesome. It also uses a traditional YA template (magical boarding school, parents who don’t understand, real evil in the world) to talk about the kind of adult issues that come up in every hipster literary novel: “Why do I do such stupid stuff sometimes? What am I doing with my life? What does it really mean to be an adult?”

Abigail Nussbaum, who I mentioned last week, hated this book. I don’t personally agree with her take–she seems to ascribe a lot of socio-economic and religious themes to what I read as primarily a coming-of-age story–but she makes some really interesting points. (Note that her review includes a lot of plot details, so you may want to wait to read it until after you’ve finished the book.)

And finally, while doing some Amazon research for this, I stumbled upon the page for The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. This is fairly recent children’s chapter book about a china rabbit that made me cry and cry. You think The Velveteen Rabbit is touching? That rabbit’s got nothing on Edward. This book is too much for me to ever read again, but everyone else should–it’s a surprisingly layered story about love and ego and heartbreak and personal growth. It’s got nothing to do with The Magicians, I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew it was out there.

Fables

by Anna

by Bill Willingham

Photo: Book Cover of FablesSo, I’ve watched the first two episodes of “Grimm,” one of the two new fairy-tale-themed tv shows this season; I’m not convinced yet that I even like it that much, but I’m not ready to completely give up on it, either. It stars a kind of doofus detective, but has a very funny Big Bad Wolf as a supporting character. While watching the second episode, I thought, “I really wish the Big Bad Wolf was the main character.” Which promptly reminded me of the graphic novel series, Fables, and how much I enjoyed them when I read them several years ago, borrowing the first 5 or 6 volumes from my neighbor.

That weekend when browsing a used bookstore, I ran across and promptly purchased the first issue of Fables. (They also had issues 3 and 5, which I might go back for, continuity-be-damned.) In the series, one of the two central characters is the Big Bad Wolf (named Bigby Wolf now), and he is a hard-boiled sheriff helping keep Fabletown under control.

Quick backup: the basic premise is that an enemy named only as the Adversary has conquered the magical world in which all the fable characters lived, killing many of them and forcing the rest to escape to our world (the Mundane world, i.e. New York City), and set up a hidden community there.

The first graphic novel introduces the reader to many of the characters, gives us the background history, and explains some of the nitty-gritty details of trying to run and control a secret community filled with disparate characters, all while being a clever detective story.

The other main character is Snow White, who is the Director of Operations of the new Fabletown, and is a strong, competent, ambitious businesswoman, which isn’t overwhelmingly common in the comic book world. All the other characters are fun and interesting twists on many traditional fables.

Anyway, the point is, I wish “Grimm” was Fables instead, or that they would make a tv show of Fables, or even better, a high-budget Lord-of-the-Rings-like movie!

The Shining (Part III)

by Anna

Cover Image: The ShiningAlright, I know this is shamefully late, but here is the rest of the book in one long dump. I’m just so, so grateful to be done and moving on to other books!

Maybe I haven’t been giving Stephen King enough credit; perhaps he has been realistically recreating for the reader the sensation of being stuck in a miserable hotel for months on end with horrible people.

Anyway, here’s the final installment of my journal through The Shining (with spoilers, of course):

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The Shining (Part II)

by Anna

Cover Image: The ShiningI’m halfway through the book now, and this is the point where I’ve started fantasizing about the light, funny book that I’ll read next, with characters I actually like and am interested in. I’m even starting to wish I’d chosen a different Stephen King book, though still not The Stand. Here’s my the blow-by-blow account of the second quarter of the book, with spoilers:

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“Jenny Pox” by J. L. Bryan

by Rebecca

The cover of Jenny PoxJenny Pox
by J. L. Bryan
(2010)

I thought about not reviewing this book because I do not want to give it additional name recognition. But such is procrastination from my work: I not only read the book, I am now gong to tell you all about the experience.

The book’s premise is a high school drama with a few magical powers thrown in. It seemed like a fun quick read.

After reading it, my final conclusion is that if this is common for young adult fiction, I can see why so many people like Twilight. I didn’t like Twilight but it is orders of magnitude better – in writing style, in characterization, and in plot – than Jenny Pox.

Despite being relatively short, Jenny Pox reads like three books. Not complete books, no, but three sections that have very different writers with very different opinions on character and style and plot. It starts off quite well and is enjoyable for about the first third of the book and then doesn’t so much go down hill as fall off the edge of a cliff and hit bottom a long ways down.

And because I think it was awful and not worth reading, I have no compunction about give spoilers.

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The Shining (Part I)

by Anna

Cover Image: The ShiningOoh, you guys are in for a treat (you are not in for a treat). This is perhaps the longest book review in the history of books! It is not as long as The Shining itself, only because that book is very, very long (it’s not actually hugely long, but it sure does read like it is).

I’ve always thought that I just don’t like Stephen King’s books, but to date, I’ve managed to only read his two most commonly disliked books, Dolores Claiborne and Thinner (actually I only read the first third or so of Thinner). Fans assure me that I need to retry King with one of his more famous works. In fact, several people have recommended The Stand, since it takes place in Boulder, but I’m not reading a 1000+ page Stephen King book.

This year for Tom’s* birthday I made us reservations for a night at The Stanley Hotel, where King was staying when he was inspired to write The Shining. (They also play the Jack Nicholson version on loop on one of the tv channels, leading me to rewatch it and scare the bejeesus out of myself on what was supposed to be a romantic weekend.) Watching Shelley Duvall sob and shriek her way through the movie, I was curious as to whether the novel has more nuanced characters, and decided to give it a shot.

Since The Shining is definitely going to take me more than a week to read, I thought I’d give semi-live-blogging a shot. This is a journal of sorts of my progress (absolutely with spoilers):

*I related a story to Tom in which I referred to him as “the dude I live with,” to which he took some exception. However, Tom is the dude I live with.

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A Discovery of Witches

by Kinsey

This is not exactly my proudest admission, but the number one place I get my book recommendations is the Entertainment Weekly Books section. It may not be the New York Review of Books, but EW’s book section tends to include a good mix of literary fiction, genre fiction, and nonfiction, and the reviews generally manage to assess the book without giving away the whole plot. They also tend to be pretty stringent with their grading–they have no issues giving C or D grades to big names or wildly-praised books such as Run by Ann Patchett  or Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross. Which is why I was excited to read their review of A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. EW gave it a B+ and the review made is sound like a solid, well-written book with believable characters that just happened to feature witches and vampires–in other words, exactly the sort of urban fanstay based in the modern-day world that I love.  I knew going in that it wasn’t Faulkner, but I had high hopes that I might have found another genre book that incorporates the supernatural while not being trashy or badly written. Which is why I was a little dismayed to realize that it was basically Twilight for grown-ups.

Without giving too much away, the basic plot is that witches, vampires, and daemons are all real, but they live fairly normal lives alongside oblivious humans. (Side note: is it just me, or did the His Dark Materials series pretty much take over that spelling of daemon?) Diana is witch, part of powerful and famous witch family, who is trying to distance herself from her powers by living a quiet life as a graduate student at Oxford. Then she accidentally does something that attracts the attention of the supernatural community, she meets a dangerous yet irresistible vampire named Matthew, and her whole life starts racing away into adventure, danger, romance, etc.

Here are my three main issues with this book:

1) The lead character falls totally, immediately, and completely in love with a vampire, despite his vampiric nature, in exactly the same way Bella does in Twilight. In an adolescent this is annoying, but somewhat understandable and forgivable. In a grown-ass woman, it just seems like bad decision making.

2) The book is 592 pages long and it ends on a cliff hanger. After I read the book I learned that it’s the first in a planned trilogy. Look, I love a good book series, but I also pretty firmly believe that individual books should stand alone. Sure, plot threads may carry from one book to another, but it makes me grumpy when a book just stops in the middle of things. I like to think of a book as an entity both physically and in terms of the story telling. If the author can’t figure out how to make a single book at least somewhat satisfying and functional in and of itself, I start losing trust in them. (See also: Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis.)

3) The witches and vampires and daemons in Oxford all go to a special hot yoga class together. HOT YOGA.

Don’t get me wrong, I read it and enjoyed most of it and it was definitely better written than Twilight.  I suspect I’ll read the next one, if only to figure out what happens next since there was certainly no closure in this book. And there were some lovely parts–Diana’s family has a haunted house that is both creepy and considerate (creating new rooms when company is coming), and the descriptions of Oxford make me want to book a trip there–but I just feel like I need to warn other people who might be looking for more literary fantasy. Twilight for grown-ups.

But I hear good things about the new Colson Whitehead zombie book Zone One. His book The Intuitionist managed to be beautiful and heart-breaking and thrilling while describing an alternate reality in which elevators are glorified, so right now he’s got my trust. (Yes, elevators. And it’s about racism. It’s great.)

The Peter Grant Books

by Anna

Midnight Riot and Moon Over Soho
by Ben Aaronovitch

The cover of Midnight Riot, Ben Aaronovitch’s debut novel (he has previously written episodes of Doctor Who), has a praise blurb from Charlaine Harris. I get that Charlaine Harris is a popular bestseller, and I sincerely hope that her quote helped Aaronovitch sell more books, but it inspired in me similar outrage as Roger Ebert giving Nicholas Sparks my current favorite author burn:

“I resent the sacrilege Nicholas Sparks commits by even mentioning himself in the same sentence as Cormac McCarthy. I would not even allow him to say “Hello, bookstore? This is Nicholas Sparks. Could you send over the new Cormac McCarthy novel?” He should show respect by ordering anonymously.”

Now, I’m not daring to say that Ben Aaronovitch compares to Cormac McCarthy, but he is a significantly better author than Charlaine Harris.

The praise blurb on the back of the book says, “Midnight Riot is what would happen if Harry Potter grew up and joined the Fuzz.” (Diana Gabaldon) I would say rather it is like if The X Files was British and funny. I’m not entirely clear on what the difference between those two is, maybe that the magic elements are addressed in a practical, scientific manner.

Here’s the highest praise I can give a book: the protagonist, Peter Grant (“rookie cop and magical apprentice”) catches onto plot twists as quickly as I do as the reader. Pretty much as soon as I start to think, “hmm, that other character seems kind of suspicious,” Peter Grant thinks the same thing and acts on it. It is extremely satisfying as a reader.

The third book in the series, Whispers Under Ground, is due out in May 2012, and I can hardly wait!

A Night in the Lonesome October

by Anna

Cover Photo: A Night in the Lonesome OctoberOne of my comfort books, A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, is an especially good read this month, of course, leading up to Halloween. I reread it just about every year. (This year I’m working through a Stephen King book in honor of Halloween; review pending, but so far it’s falling far short of this book).

A Night in the Lonesome October is actually all the nights in October; it is broken up into 31 short chapters, one for each day in October, and is narrated by a dog. The writing and structure of the book both make it read like a book for young readers, but the plot is full of intrigue and murders that may not necessarily be appropriate for all ages. The dog narrator belongs to Jack the Ripper, who is also the protagonist while still doing the sort of things Jack the Ripper would do (however, no prostitutes are harmed in the making of this story).

For me, it is the perfect combination of the whimsy of a children’s book applied to an adult plot, but it is such an unusual combination that I think it wouldn’t be every reader’s cup of tea. Additionally, if you really love Roger Zelazny’s other works, like the Princes of Amber series, you may not love this one. It is so unlike any of his other works that it feels like it is from a different Roger Zelazny. I myself read this book first, and was subsequently disappointed in all his other works, which are much more serious, convoluted, and adult (less narrating dogs, too).

As you may have noticed, I haven’t even touched on the plot of the book; I don’t want to give away even the most superficial plot points—just read it and have a happy Halloween!