Question Quest, by Piers Anthony

It must be rare to find negative comments on an author who has been around for this long and has this much of a following. He has a website, merchandise, used to go on tours regularly, worked at conventions (which he doesn't like all that much), and everyone who is a reader of fantasy fiction has at least heard of him. Yet, sometimes a main character and recurring themes I dislike are enough to remove me as a fan from an author or series, and this book has both of those. I'm also fairly certain that, if the man himself should somehow chance upon this blog, he wouldn't care one whit of what I have to say.

Question Quest starts with the narrative of a "boring" character Lacuna, who felt that her life was blah, so she went to the Magician Humphrey to ask a Question and try to change it. She gets two chapters, and the rest of the book is about Magician Humphrey. This would have been fine if I found the Magician likable, but he came off to me as an egotistical, grumpy, and philandering. I disliked how female characters are dropped into his lap as obstacles, or "business partners" to help him keep house. The author's portrayal of female characters ruined the book for me. If this isn't obvious by now, I must say: I am a feminist.

I enjoyed other books in the Xanth series before this. Unfortunately, no matter the medium, sex sells. This doesn't change that I enjoy Piers Anthony's play on language and his endless puns. The world of Xanth is very well built, and actually, it would make a great role playing game. Video games are another genre whether women are portrayed less than intelligently, but that goes beyond the scope of this post. Piers Anthony should speak to some women fantasy writers and learn from them about what works without giving into fan service incessantly.

There's also the possibility that this just wasn't marketed towards my demographic. I presume that Magician Humphrey is a white male, since the Information Systems industry in 1991 when this book was published would be dominated by white men. Readers of this book may have been middle school students and above, though Piers Anthony's books are generally found in the adult fiction section of the library or of bookstores. If this character is a satire of the people in the technology, then it is outdated, because I'm currently in the technology industry, and the people in my office are fairly diverse, though we can still probably hire more women.

The stereotype that people in the technology industry are egotistical dolts who refuse to explain the process is also changing. While we still have clients who don't want an explanation and only want the solution, we explain the details to anyone who asks. Actually, this is part of good customer service, which - for better or worse - is an integral part of American capitalism. Piers Anthony is not good at customer service, which readers will see if they bothered to read the Author's Notes or Acknowledgements pages at the end of the book. He was, perhaps sarcastically, discouraging fan mail.

The gist of it is that I disapproved of the way Lacuna's happiness depended on having a man and a family in her life. I also disapproved of the deal struck by all of Magician Humphrey's wives. The rest of their lives were not mentioned except in relevance to Humphrey. This is very limiting for the female characters of the book. I suspect that Lacuna's arc was to make up for this partially, but she didn't get nearly enough pages. I also objected to how there was one chapter in which there was a summation of two other books! What if I wanted to read those two books in the future? Way to ruin that possibility. I hope Grey Murphy makes a much better Magician than Humphrey. He seems kinder, at least.

Sleeping Around: A Couch Surfing Tour Around the Globe

Brian Thacker, the author, strikes me as an adventurous party animal. Either that, or alcohol is one of the only ways that all the cultures around the world can relate to each other, because he drinks with his hosts in every country. It's something I both envy and don't care for, because I'm sure that alcohol tastes different depending on the chemicals and the various ways it's made, so it really is a cultural artifact, but I can't drink, so it's not something I can partake in.

Still, aside from the drink connoisseur-ism of this global trek, there's also the different ways in which a couch surfing host can entertain his guest, and vice versa. To be a good guest, Brian must relate to the stories that his hosts are telling him, and sometimes try foods or practices that he may not be a fan of. There was that rancid shark from Iceland, which smelled bad and didn't taste great. There was also the practice of speaking of women as barter items in the poorer parts of South Africa.

This was easy and relaxing to read. He narrates his experiences with a witty sense of humor that most people versed in English would relate to, and he speaks of the different versions of English you can find in England, Australia, America. There are also other countries that have English as a second language, and therefore would also have their own versions of English simply due to some cultural barrier that can create hilarity or gross misunderstandings. I've been through some of that.

As travel writing goes, I think he makes each country he visits sound welcoming, even though he stays honest about the experiences that he'd rather not go through again. He also touts couch surfing as a great way for citizens of the world to connect, and while I agree with him, the world is probably safer for some citizens rather than others. Still, maybe one day I'll do something like this with a friend in mid life or after retirement.

Brains and Consumption

World War Z has been the latest dish on my menu. There's a movie of the same book coming out soon, so I picked it up to see if the movie will match up later. Not everyone deserves multiple awards and a whole franchise based upon the idea of zombies, but Max Brooks does. The book is set back in post-World War 2, just after the US was just starting to enjoy its world superpower status. Each chapter is formatted in the form of interviews, with the author being the listener and questioner, while the interviewees tell their elaborate story, often consisting of painful and horrifying memories of their parts in the Zombie War. In that sense, it's like a big book of short stories bound together by a central plot event.

All good books should make readers think and relate it to our world, and so World War Z has spawned the following for me. Could the zombie virus be a metaphor for the way people interact - the way vibes fit together to make a larger atmosphere - like the way a good musical artist's strong personality and stamina makes for her fans' night through an awesome concert? Or maybe it could be the way ideas can go viral if everyone buys into it enough - which, ironically, was how the more developed nations suffered the most in the book, because those people who saw it happen first didn't tell other people about it, in efforts to keep their own reputations intact and make it go away by pretending it wasn't happening?

For me, the book was a good commentary on the way information travels or doesn't travel, because I've recently taken a real interest in the information technology field, where systems are so specialized that what helps or functions in one doesn't really function in another. This may be akin to the way that consumers find technical support for any given company so frustrating, mainly because the technical supporter can only troubleshoot based upon what little information he can fish out of the person at the other end of the telephone line, who may not be trained to really understand the problem is enough to even give the right information or ask the right questions.

It's also a good commentary on how we as a human race - especially in developed countries, where each human only really needs to fight for a good honest living - are completely obsessed with the destruction of the world as we know it. We like to imagine these things, because we'd like to think that if it ever comes to that in our lifetimes, we'd be prepared, at least somewhat psychologically, to much more literally fight for our physical well beings and gather all resources in order to survive. This phenomenon is also true for any robot wars or giant monsters or natural disaster films.

Because zombies like to consume other people to either make more zombies or just to eat brains and kill things, I thought it was analogous to - final analogy, I promise - the way people learn and take in information. Every day, I see the teachers in the school I work for prepare their curricula for their students to consume, and the more the students are willing to consume, the more successful they are. Just momentarily thinking of this in video game form, why were there no super zombie bosses? Haha. People's brains take in information no matter whether people want them to or not, and only the more educated people are more discriminate about what they want to take in. This morning, I realized I could only stomach nature documentaries and children's shows - especially if they are geared towards middle schoolers and high schoolers - because I only really enjoy educational media. In the case of chick lit, though, that's more of an emotionally affirming media.

Anyway, yay for learning to be an information sponge! Now to continue consuming ...

Coming Home to Myself, by Marion Woodman

The subtitle says "Reflections for Nurturing a Woman's Body and Soul". That's accurate, as the words in the compilation of poems inside this little book encourage the female reader to be both more forgiving and much harder on oneself than the average person would generally be. She should be forgiving when others judge her too harshly, in worship of a false sense of perfection. Yet she must push herself harder to find out what she really wants, because soul searching is actually the most emotionally painful work a human being will ever do, short of stubbornly holding onto grief or unrequited love.

The cover also says "Marion Woodman with Jill Mellick". While one woman wrote all the poems, the other woman interviewed and analyzed them, taking them apart so as to choose the best and the most relevant for the messages that they both want to convey. There are blue watercolor pictures between all the chapters, perhaps as a meditation on how the soul can be like a body of water, flowing and deep and mysterious.

Each poem uses a lot of symbolism. They are drawn from mythology, drawn from the author's dreams, and can be as simple as two lines, or can be almost a prose poem, going on for three pages about a scenario involving more than one person. Everyone is intertwined, and that is very scary when not all goes well.

My favorite part of this work in its entirety is its tone. It's so very comforting. It's like if someone were to hold me, wearing soft warm cotton, in a friendly way with words. Some may argue that it is a bit preachy, but I don't mind it so much if it's in verse, open to a trillion interpretations, reaching across every culture. It captures the depth of a woman if she looks within hard enough.

Game of Thrones, by R.R. Martin

A good number of people told me that Game of Thrones by R.R. Martin was good before I decided to check it out. I was skeptical because I lost my patience with Lord of the Rings, liked but was not a huge fan of either Star Wars or Star Trek, and lost interest after about five books of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series. However, since this book series was made into a close-fitting television series and is still going strong, I thought maybe this one was worth a better chance.

There are five books so far, and I'm only at the beginning of the second one. I've made the decision to only blog once about a story if it's a series, instead of a single blog entry for each book that I've read like I've done before. This is also because, with so many sites to monitor, I'm barely keeping up - what with my 2-10pm teaching job (with occasional Saturdays, as it turns out). Maybe I'm just having trouble managing my time.

Martin gives each character a very distinct voice while rotating them around. He's also famous for killing characters off mercilessly, so there's plenty of room for new characters all the time. His descriptions are well balanced with his dialogue and action scenes, though sometimes the humor is a bit dark and it feels like everyone is laden with angst. The choices he gives his characters are very life changing and dramatic, so sometimes they take a while thinking everything through. It's still very plot driven though.

Even though it's clearly fantasy and there's mention of dragons, they only appear at the end of the first book, and that makes me wonder if they're going to play much of a big role in the rest of the books. The psychological atmosphere of each character is usually fairly and understandably anxiety ridden, and it's rare when a person or two gets a mental break and feels serene for once. An example was when Catelyn was watching her son Robb Stark prepare for battle - she loves him, she's worried but she has huge faith in him and so was determined to stay strong for him. Arya is another character who's somewhat lighthearted, if only because she is so young. I tend to favor the direct but bitter humor that Tyrion Lannister or Jon Snow gives off.

This is not a book I can read well when I am tired, because the dynamic and intrigue between all the characters either demand nearly my full attention or I'm bound to miss something. They're somewhat subtle and very politically oriented. No one seems honest if they want to survive in such a world. Martin doesn't flinch with blood and gore, which should be evident with his merciless killing of characters. He also doesn't flinch with making them mad as hatters, and sometimes it's hard to follow someone's train of thought - like Danearys. She is fascinating because, while it's easy to be sympathetic with her, it's hard to tell what she's thinking sometimes. Because this is a fantasy series, there's a possibility that Danaerys and Bran - both characters that have a lot of dreams - are youth infused with magic, and the way nothing makes sense yet is just waiting for an exposition in a later book.

I think Martin's strongest point is that, while these are fantasy books - they are fantasy books for adults, with a variety of very strong characters who make difficult and strategic choices. This is appealing because so far there's not much out there in the fantasy genre that appeals to only adults, without having the good and evil dichotomy that Star Wars and Lord of the Rings have. While the ideas of good and evil exist in this series as well, there are many grey characters. Ned Stark was a purely good character, and he was the first to die off. The Others are pure evil, but they haven't made solid appearances yet.

Parched, by Heather King

Parched is the first book that I've read from the genre of autobiographies involving the struggle against addiction and alcohol. I'm happy that this genre exists, because people need to know that others who suffer the disease and have mostly overcome it are out there. I also thought it was rather ironic that this was one of my first books to read in South Korea, where alcohol is not only dirt cheap, but also a way for colleagues to connect with one another. The other unrelated but interesting background circumstance is that I read this book in conjunction with the Way of Korean Zen which has a drastically different voice. Comparatively, the vulnerability in this narrator seems much more human than the hardy insistence on psychological resilience in that one.

The narrative begins with the woman just waking up and already having a hangover, trying to remember what happened before she blacked out. She seems chipper enough, though she realizes that she has a problem but didn't know where to start doing something about it. I can somewhat relate to that in my past bouts of depression, but my troubles have never been mixed with substances so I can only imagine what it's like. She packs and prepares for the road quickly, because there's going to be a family reunion, and that starts off on a chapter or two where she recounts many memories from her childhood involving her family.

While I didn't have nearly as many siblings, I related to fighting with my one sibling for almost no reason other than the fact that we were supposed to coexist within the same house. Then there was the way one parent was more attentive and forgiving than the other one, but maybe that happens in all families. Her style of writing is very talkative, and it's like she's in front of you having a conversation with you - haha - over a drink. I have never met her, but I imagine that her speech would be peppered with all sorts of hand gestures and lively body language. The way she uses words reveals a kind of personal charisma that makes sure that I can't help but like her.

She also seems to really value people, because every time she mentions someone, she never has anything bad to say about them and seem truly grateful for their existence in her life. This is true even of the people who she would make fun of because they may have been somewhat unkind to her in some way at some point. She mentions everyone, even a few former lovers. She never quotes these people, though. There were also religious quotes beginning almost every chapter, but the ones I agreed with the most were the nonreligious ones - the words about fighting one's own mind, and the ones about the way it's much harder to love someone through one's actions than to entertain the idea of love. This was a foreshadowing of what Heather's salvation was going to be - part of it will have to do with Christianity.

Her sense of humor is somewhat dark, but not as dark as Kurt Vonnegut's. She didn't see millions of people die in a senseless war, but she still knows what poverty is like, what it is to consistently need a comfort object or substance, and the long unforgiving hours of retail labor. So she makes allies in that way, sometimes relying on friends to survive. I did laugh out loud several times when reading. I may have related to the sense of humor also because she spent a few years in Boston, which is where I grew up. It's true that if you're in the right neighborhood, there are plenty of bars, which would make it tough for an alcoholic to go several hundred yards without being tempted by the poison. The idea of substance abuse because a person is spiritually unfulfilled is not new, but I also thought there were other forms of salvation than religion.

The way it ended didn't seem all that interesting to me. I'm glad she found her happiness and became clean, but in terms of the story, it just felt too mundane. Of course her friends realized she had a problem, but she wouldn't listen. Of course her family had to eventually corner her and stick her into a rehabilitation program. She found that because she sometimes blacked out, she wouldn't remember appointments and bits of conversation she had said, so that upset a lot of people. It was like writing this book was her way of purging herself psychologically - to discover when it began and how it progressed, which was part of defeating it. Fortunately for the sake of the book as a whole, the way everything ended didn't really take away from any of the earlier moments in the autobiography - it was still very readable, very relatable and pleasant.

Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

This historical fiction novel is sweet. Vonnegut tells his tale through Billy Pilgrim, and the narrator's voice is very soothing, despite the horrendous happenings that it describes. Of course war is a terrible thing, but it feels muted through this voice. I imagine that the muted effect is from several factors: it was told in third person, Vonnegut's severely dark but very funny sense of humor, the time travel and the episodes with the Tralfamadorians. A reader can't help but like Billy Pilgrim for his perceived ineffectualness, and then pity him for his bad luck and all the memories that made up his life.

Every time someone or a group of people dies, Vonnegut writes, "So it goes." It becomes this stark deterministic acceptance of death, like it's something that just happens so it's nothing to become upset about. Even when Billy Pilgrim is put into situations where he must be angry at some point, and describes the characters around him in negative terms, it doesn't seem like he's blaming them. It's like the war removed him from any emotion except heavy depression, and it's probably mostly post traumatic stress disorder that the narrator sounds so numbed all the time, but it makes the story seem even more believable and objective.

I'm not so sure that this novel is scary enough to be antiwar. Yes, it tells about the people dying, all the sufferings and indignities that people suffered at the hands of people in power, who almost randomly decided that one group of people are unforgivable, so another group of people go to kill them for deciding the first group of people are unforgivable, but the book doesn't decry anything. Everyone in the book seems rather stupid, including all the people in power who decided all these random things, and maybe the book decries their stupidity and stupidity in general, but there's no anger in it, no outrage. Taking a step back, I'm not sure why I assume anger and outrage should be in an antiwar book - maybe that's because those two emotions are what I'm used to from people who claim to stand up for a cause.

Anyhow, the time travel and Tralfamadorians illustrate his inability to tell reality from his imagination at the end, but he doesn't even seem to mind. Reality is as unreal as any science fiction book in his mind, apparently, and not even a well written science fiction book, since the series that Krout wrote was to be found in a porn shop decorating the window and helping it pretend to be a legitimate bookstore. His juxtaposition of that scene with digging up and burning bodies is very transcendental and Buddhist, even - the idea that people are just bodies, whether they are dead or alive. That is also true of the Tralfamadorian idea that people who ever lived will always go on living in some form or another.

Other war books and movies speak of the act of war removing the humanity from a person. Maybe it's because Billy Pilgrim wasn't a real soldier - he never actually killed anybody, and that's why it doesn't seem like his humanity was ever removed. He feels very detached from everything - "unstuck in time", as he says - but his telling of this story reveals that he's still very much human despite not feeling the same as he did before, despite being completely unable to relate to anyone except for others who were in the war and not seeking glory, like O'Hare. He's broken, dead inside, but still human.

It was an easy read. Vonnegut uses such simple language. I would say the only difficulty in reading this book is that, after hearing his numbed voice in my head for hours at a time, I would lift my nose away from the book and feel his numbness for a while even after having closed the book. That's the only thing that prevented me from finishing the book in a jiffy, because it made me feel temporarily as dead inside as Vonnegut had been feeling for decades after the war, probably all the way up to his death a few years ago. So it goes.

The Way of Korean Zen, by Kusan Sunim

This book took a very long time to finish. It's not for the casual reader, because it has a very authoritative and stark voice. The material is aimed at those who are truly interested in Zen Buddhism, and all other readers may find it a bit dry and textbook-like. The book is divided into two parts: the first illustrates the history of the ideas of Zen Buddhism, along with tales of men who have lived their lives according to these ideas, and the second part talks in detail about the ideas themselves.

I bought this book during the first part of my stay in South Korea as an ESL teacher (refer to my other blog Lily Internationally) and I have to say that these ideas really helped me to accept more ideas in the Korean culture than I could have without this book. After all, Zen Buddhism is about changing oneself to attain enlightenment. Changing oneself often involves accepting oneself, which indirectly leads to the acceptance of many situations and people in one's surroundings as well. Judging by the author's English name, I dare say that the original must have been in Korean, which explains the somewhat awkward language at times, and why it seems so dry as well.

The chapters on the history of Buddhism and the life of a monk in Korea were necessary because, whenever an aspect of culture travels some place else, it changes. That is also true of Buddhism - you would not find the same Buddhism in India as in China, nor in China as in Korea. Or even between South and North Korea. Korean Zen Buddhism relies heavily on the Buddhist community, where if you become a monk, the only people you would interact with from that day on - except to beg for alms or to lecture about Buddhism - are other Buddhist monks. They also eat only vegetables, and no meat is allowed. It is a life based upon discipline: all activities are purely utilitarian, including sleeping and waking, meditation, copying texts, cleaning and traveling.

Aside from the Spartan lifestyle, the other reason this book may be a bit dry is because it's meant to be a user manual of sorts for those interested in becoming a monk or nun, to live their lives for this religion. It doesn't lie - becoming a monk or a nun, having to give up all that a layman is used to and dedicating one's life to the study of attaining enlightenment, is not easy. There are instructions on how to meditate, and it distinguishes between focusing on hwadu (which means mental and spiritual silence) and the mind (we assume that this means one's thoughts and sometimes mental noise) as well as the Buddha (which means the deity, as well as a person's purest soul).

There are plenty of metaphors and poems to illustrate the author's points, and those can be hard to understand at times. The idea here is similar to the reason I write, where if you see a situation in a certain way - and poetic verse is kind of like portraying a situation and rearranging it as a puzzle - then it may be easier for you to understand, and therefore accept. Or even the other way around, accept and therefore understand.  Most of these poems use natural scenery and events in nature to illustrate the point, which makes for beautiful pictures in people who have a versatile third eye. It also tries to say that reality is often made of circumstances that people cannot change, and therefore the only thing that a person can change is his or her mind. In that way, a person's perception becomes an adaptive tool instead of a defense mechanism.

That being said, I am nowhere near agreeing with everything that was said in this book. For example, it emphasized the soul over one's body, and I feel that a person should take care of her body first, because otherwise hunger and illness get in the way of a person taking care of one's soul. It also encourages people to give up their families and lives to become Buddhist monks or nuns, and I tend to think that a person should be able to adhere to a faith while still living their own lives. There's also the not eating meat - meat is delicious. Of course there can be substitutes for the protein like beans and tofu, but it's not the same. Anyone who's ever enjoyed barbecue can tell you that. Also, there is no discourse on how to become a nun, or actually anything about being a religious woman in this book at all - women just exist as wives who prevent believers from being faithful to Buddhism, like distractions.

I agree with cultivating a strong mind which can accept reality. However, this book would probably not convince me to go to a Buddhist nunnery and try that life, because enlightenment and being detached from the world doesn't seem to be worth it to me. However, if you are interested in Buddhism - and particularly Korean Buddhism - you should still read this book to see if this cultural viewpoint of this particular faith suits your idea of happiness and or enlightenment. It's an informative read.

Microthrills: A Life of Small Highs, by Wendy Spero

Like any good comedian, Wendy Spero uses a lot of self deprecating humor. It's both her best strength and potential biggest weakness in this very talky autobiography. The way she describes the situations that she ends up in reminds me heavily of Arrested Development, even though she is by no means similar to the hilariously incompetent characters on that show. It just seems like she likes to focus on them for the sake of the self deprecating humor - which unfortunately leads my train of thought to the one time I heard someone somewhere say that comedy is in essence humor and fun based upon someone else's suffering and awkwardness. I don't like that quote, because it makes me feel mean and implies that most human beings are. Since I'm mostly an optimist, I completely dislike that thought.

However, I will say that I'm probably just over-thinking it. Wendy only talks about people she likes in this book, and in such a loving way that you know of all people she can't possibly be a pessimist or a cynic. Her style of storytelling is very talkative and flowing, so I can just imagine her somewhere in a bar or elsewhere with a crowd around her being the life of the party. Oh, and that knife selling company that she worked for and excelled in? I had that very same interview, but after reading a few negative things about the company afterwards, I declined the position for another wage paying, hourly position. I also totally envy her relationship with her boss, who seems to fill in partially for a father figure in her life.

Because the style is so talkative and friendly, it's a very quick read. The chapters are short. She has a very strong voice, very memorable, and the narrative is very straightforward. It makes me want to recommend this to one of my friends, whose immediate family situation is similar. Anyhow, aside from making a person laugh out loud, Wendy Spero also does that other thing that good comedians do: make true, thoughtful comments in a very uplifting way. A recommended read for everyone, no matter what your station in life, as long as you understand the English language.

A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby

So I realize this isn't my usual fare. There's not nearly enough supernatural stuff in it. But when you try new things, most of the thrill is not knowing what you're going to get, isn't it? Also, I think this book placed highly on the New York Times book list or something. And I like the cover - it's four people's feet floating in a sea of clouds, and that's just surreal enough to be both romantic and really absurd. And I think that's a good way of beginning to describe this book: romantic and absurd. Except that I might have to take back the romantic part later on - we'll see. Oh yea, this is another one from those four boxes of books.

The chapters are named after the four main characters, so there aren't really chapter names. Which makes me think that you could probably read the book out of sequence, except that then maybe it wouldn't make much sense now, would it? So they're called Martin, Maureen, JJ and Jess. MM and JJ. The only thing they have in common is that they wanted to commit suicide on New Year's Eve at the same place, and then they kind of got into each others' way. Then everything begins.

As you would expect with suicidal people, they each have a bunch of problems dragging them down. So it took some time and chapters before the whole character development thing came on. Before that, though, a lot of random stuff happened just because they didn't know what to do with themselves, and that's kind of a very human dilemma. The randomness of all these semi unchained events, as told by four different voices, is what would pull you in. That's a feat in itself - not many writers, certainly not me - can create such drastically different people on the same page and switch voices, just like that.

When they interact, which they almost always do, it's even stranger and more hilarious, because there are four unhappy unfriendly people insulting each other for the company, because they have got nowhere else to go. When you think about it, when an author writes a conversation between characters, and all the characters are part of that author, it's like the author's talking to himself. At least that's why it's so difficult for me, but you know, kudos to all the more successful authors and playwrights and screenwriters who can do great conversations, and Nick Hornby's certainly one of these.

Every time I read a book and finish it very quickly, I don't stop thinking like the voice of that book for a day or two. So I imagine that this is what's happening now, because I just finished this book, and I keep having this urge to type a sentence, put in a comma, and then ask a one word question, like "So this is how we do it, right?" I think this is because that's how Jess talks. A lot. JJ does that to some extent too, but he's a hipster and a musician, so he does that whole "Rock on, man" type of thing. And Martin pretends to be cultured, when he might be even more savage than Jess, who's really just thoughtless. I always go on like this with character commentary.

It's kind of like the psychological profile of four people, but smashed together into a giant mass, that somehow ends up being coherent and even inspiring. Or if not inspiring, then at least thought provoking, which is what most texts are supposed to do, anyway. I'm pretty sure this book is fiction, but it feels like nonfiction, because the characters could be real people. Like your next door neighbor or something. Without talking about the emotions specifically, the story comes out with a lot of heart. There is a plot, but it's not as structured as a science fiction or fantasy book, because this kind of story has a different point to it.

Anyway, I can see why Nick Hornby is an award winning author. My boyfriend said that he has High Fidelity, another book that this guy wrote, so maybe I'll look into that. But then, of course, there are the rest of the books from those boxes that I actually wanted to go into. And some more books I bought. It's like necessary for me, because I only seem to buy books, food and clothing. Well um, that's neither here nor there.

Eldest, by Christopher Paolini

Okay, so I take it back. I take it all back. Christopher Paolini worked really hard to get his name, and his parents could only have helped him so much. I hope he never reads my last post. Then again, no one reads this blog, a tiny dust mote in the vastness of the internet, right? Right. So let's move on.

Because the war against Galbatorix has begun, this book has a lot of battle scenes, and they are all very detailed albeit nodding a bit to the confusion of actual battle. In the first few chapters, I never believed that Murtagh was actually dead, but I was surprised anyway when he came back sometime at the end. Roran's story kept the entire book grounded, because it was a struggle of a normal human being without any special powers except his decisiveness and his charisma. This leads me to believe that he might become king of the land in the third book. I say it keeps the book grounded, because Eragon is no longer fully human as we humans know it - instead, he is half dragon, and half elf. There are so many expectations for him that the part of his personality that deals with expectations reacts like Harry Potter.

Aside from personally pleased that many strong women play roles aside from Saphira the dragon, I was amazed at how much the author had fleshed out the languages. There are complete alphabets somewhere in Paolini's office that he probably keeps as a reference. Most of us have enough trouble learning the existing languages, but he makes new ones. I have yet to decipher the specific differences between the ancient, elven and dwarf languages. The chapters have also gotten longer and harder to keep track of.

We are introduced to elf culture here, and it strikes me as very archaic. There are many rules, and many forms of courtesy with a strict hierarchy. Yet because of the existence of magic, most elves only need to do what pleases them - they don't need to really have a trade to have money or to make a living. I mean, they sing their homes out of trees, so there's no real estate industry, they sing their food out of plants, so there's no farming necessary. The only people who seem to do anything for society are the queen Islanzadi, her courtiers and the weapon smith, whose name escapes me, but who is also kind of a hermit and has no use for the mannerisms of the rest of elven society. Everyone else hones their magic, their fighting, does research and reads a lot - much like Oromis, except that Oromis has the additional job of making sure Eragon has all the skills he needs.

While the lessons Eragon goes through are difficult and detailed, and there's a lot of character development going on, he's just learning and so not much plot is going on there. So the part about plot has been delegated to Roran, who must make sure that his home - all the villagers - survives as well as go find Katrina, for the sake of his love and sanity. So he escapes for a while, and then comes back and helps everyone get rid of the soldiers, until the Raz'ac stole Katrina. Then he convinces everyone to be a part of the Varden, by demonstrating excellent oratory skills in addition to his warrior's prowess with a hammer. Is it bad that I feel our presidents should be selected more based on things like that rather than just oratory skills as in American democracy? While the way Roran came to power can't ensure that he's not evil, it's based upon trust and actions, not words, so I somehow feel that it's a lot more solid. It also brings up the question of whether the ends justify the means.

The other part of plot that Eragon has to go through is to deal with his infatuation with Arya. While everyone relates to this part because everyone has a first love, it just seems to diminish his character a bit - even though I agree with Saphira's words about how he's full of love and he's more so waiting for someone to receive it. I guess while Roran was leading humans, Eragon has to learn to lead people of three or four different races, if you consider the Kulls, so his job is more difficult. But Roran's journey just seemed so much organic, because they had to contend with things that humans are used to: poverty, starvation, sickness, sleeplessness and a race against time.

After Roran had to kill two soldiers at that port town, and had to raze a part of Teirm to escape, the part where they were sailing reminded me heavily of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. There was no albatross, though, only a giant whirlpool that everyone was afraid of. The way that Birgit kicked the balls of one random sailor and then held her knife at another against rampant sexism made me proud, and also reminded me of Dawn Cook's Decoy Princess duology. Duology is a word, right? Cuz bilogy wouldn't sound right. Or maybe it's just duo. And I was happy to see Jeod again, and that Helen loved him enough to make it to the ship on time.

By that time, the battle had started, and it was time for Eragon to move out. I was glad he was using his new skills to help his leadership abilities, and wasn't sure what would happen to Carvahall, because they were too tired to just join in the battle with the dwarves and the Kull and other soldiers. Galbatorix's plan to rebuild the Riders had the same problem as the comic the Watchmen. In fact, when an elf said, "Who watches the watchmen?" I thought it was even a direct reference. Maybe they should have the dwarves and the Kull exposed to dragon eggs to see if they would be accepted to, as a weird case of affirmative action for the Riders. Yes, I know I'm being strange.

Everything came together very well at the end, and even explained the title. The only things that this book managed to resolve was the relationship between Roran and Eragon, and decide the fate of Carvahall. The rest would have to wait til the next book, which I will eagerly dig up or buy.

Eragon, by Christopher Paolini

While I've seen other people reading this book and was curious from time to time, I got this book through sheer luck. One of the people I met through working at Target decided to upend himself from Amherst, MA to go to somewhere in New Hampshire, and he didn't want to burden his family with extraneous items. So he gave all his books to the most avid bookworm he knew, which was me. Eragon happened to be at the top of the stack, out of four large boxes of books.

There was a map on the inside cover. That usually speaks of epic fantasy journeys through this made up map, and I wasn't wrong. Despite opening with three unnamed characters being attacked by villains when they're obviously on a mission, the language narrates in a very leisurely fashion. I guess it would have to, considering that the book is fairly thick. But then I noticed that each chapter wasn't very long at all. And Eragon was described as a simple farm boy, which means that there should be plenty of time for character development. It took a short while before the dragon herself was even introduced.

And then, when shit went down, so to speak, it was a semi realistic confusing mass. The emotions of grief were kind of handled swiftly and efficiently so that the plot can progress. And there was a lot of plot to progress. It was told more or less like a longwinded role playing game, because the protagonist had to train with Brom before anything got done, and Eragon was never really alone. Aside from the dragon, there was Brom and later, Montaugh (probably incorrect spelling) and after him, when they got to the secret hidden rebel base, there was the king of the humans, which was separate from the king of the dwarves, not to mention the elf in the prologue.

This heavily reminds me of either the Dragon Quest series or the Final Fantasy series. Given that the book was written when the author was sixteen, I would assume that's where he got some of his material (from video games). I thought it was also Harry Potter-esque, but it was not nearly as intricate and the list of villains hasn't gotten so long yet.

I read in the back that the book was first published by the guy's parents, and yea, it's all good, but I couldn't help being disappointed anyway. Because I mean, when I write my poems, I have to follow through with a series of hoops, you know, like a cover letter and such and all this other stuff, but the acknowledgments page just made it seem like all the marketing was done by the parents, and Mr. Paolini didn't have to go through this process of sending his manuscript to like a trillion places. Lucky duck.

But all the same, the dragon had strong characterization and so did Montaugh and the politics around Eragon, even though he himself wasn't developed enough to be interesting yet. So I was looking forward to the second book. Which, as I found out today, was also in the same box, so yay.

Black Magic Sanction, by Kim Harrison

One of the things I was really looking forward to before this novel came out was a scene of Rachel in the ever after, and it didn't disappoint. The other thing that all fantasy authors with a modern female audience seems to be good at is the construction of complicated and sultry male characters. This particular one of this series features Trent, billionaire city's son, and the dangerous and devious Algaliarept, demon mentor. Then of course, there's Pierce, heartbroken magical cowboy.

As with most series, a person - or 'a body', as Pierce would say - must read the entire series in order to get the full effect of the changing dynamics between the whole cast of characters. The three characters above seem odd precisely because the first two were fearsome villains in the first two books, while the cowboy just appeared in the last book, and at the very end at that, where he scarcely had a chance to make that much of an impression.

The plot twists are appreciative and many, and I also feel like the author lowered the sex quota here because ultimately, it's more a fantasy - even if there's some science behind it - than science fiction or romance. The one scene that there was, was really primal though.

The action was on par, but it was weird that the final political play was kind of a spoof, something for the fake tabloids to write about. Matalina, Jenk's wife and a total innocent, had to die right in the climax to balance that out. It was the emotional aftermath with Jenks that really made any impact - Matalina was rarely seen, even if she was more than a flat character. I'm curious as to the future dealings that Rachel may have with the fairies in the future, especially since they had the only action scene in the book, where Rachel helped make and pulled back a curse, but was otherwise powerless to do anything.

Among the people short-written this time around were Newt, Ivy and for the purpose of making fun of the enemy, Jonathan. Oh, and David. Finding out that Lee is actually not that much of a villain now is kind of weird. I understand the distinction they make in the line "That was business. This was survival" but it's never going to feel completely right. The new book gives the series a different feel, because after seven books of action, sex and ass kicking, suddenly there's this touchy feely take on politics and interspecies coexistence, with a statement against eugenics to boot. I guess I should have expected this, though - we went from thinking that demons are pure evil and the bane of existence to wondering if Rachel is a demon herself and having a demon mentor who's potentially interested in her. The primary villains this time around are the fellow witches who shunned her, all of whom practice white magic, and Nick, who sadly is the only representative for humankind aside from Glenn the FIB agent.

For the sake of the shippers - wait, Ivy and Glenn? Really? I mean, it was hinted at like two books ago, but I thought that Ivy was just checking him out and that that wasn't the same as him being blood bait. Wrong again. Are we going to hear more about this Krathion guy when we hear about Newt? Now that's a technique - setting up for the next book already in the first chapter. Looking forward to more to come, despite a few mixed feelings about this one.

Living Dead in Dallas, by Charlaine Harris

Very addictive. I finished this book in one day; it was a definite page turner, and I just couldn't put it down. There are two main plot paths, one where the character Lafayette was sacrificed and one involving Sookie being employed to help with vampire cases. The fact that the second one became more prominent surprised me, because the book started out with the discovery of Lafayette's body. Even though the second plot had a missing vampire, I assumed that vampires can generally take care of themselves and finding him felt less urgent to me.

There was continuity, which speaks well for book series in general. I remembered Lafayette speaking about or hinting at having attended some unconventional party in the first book, so the time line seems very linear. It almost seemed expected that he would die, in hindsight, because he was introduced in the middle or latter parts of the first book for a single scene, and we never really heard from him again. Then we got distracted by the second plot, and wouldn't find out later that the two plot paths have essentially nothing in common except for a new supernatural creature - the maenad.

A maenad is another surprising twist, considering the other supernatural creatures introduced were vampires and shapeshifters. Those two seem pretty spread across the board in terms of cultural reference and relevance, so a creature out of specifically Greek mythology was a tiny surprise. The vampires' agreement to give tribute to this creature, after declaring that it was nearly impossible to kill, set up an idea as to the hierarchy of supernatural creatures - maenads are apparently more powerful than vampires, who seem to display less fear than the underground shapeshifters.

More shapeshifters were to be found in the quest to retrieve that vampire. The quest led Sookie and Bill to the organization the Fellowship of the Sun, which turned out to be this group of religious fanatics who believe that all supernatural creatures are abominations against the Christian god. The way that the followers seem so very civilized, but let no discussion happen so that they won't have to acknowledge any dissenting opinions seemed very true to life to me. It is this kind of behavior among people that creates a cult atmosphere in the practice of some religions. The way the organization's name appealed to the sun also seemed Greek-like and paradoxically polytheistic, since there are other stars and planets, but they only sought the sun's destructive abilities as "proof" that vampires were abominations.

The character Godfrey was fascinating to me. He seemed to be somewhat of a tragic figure, used for the organization's political agenda, until he makes known that not only did he agree to have someone burn with him in a spectacle - which is the supernatural rendition of a lynching - he also used to be a child molester and serial killer. A lot about his past was left unsaid, probably due to the gruesome nature of it, but I have to wonder what made him the psychopath that he was, how he got turned into a vampire, and what factored into his decision to turn himself in to the cult in an attempt at seeking salvation and redemption through death.

Speaking of which, I wouldn't mind seeing more child vampires. Especially since Bill's friend got burned with those aggressors in Dead Until Dark without a second thought. This preference is probably due to my taste when it comes to characters, and the fact that I watch anime.

When the minor character Bethany died - and characters seem to die like flies in Charlaine Harris's books, not to mention each book in this series has the word "dead" in the titles - I almost felt like it was supposed to be some fable or some sort. Watch who you hang out with, because the enemies of the people you hang out with might kill you just out of association. I'm sure I'm just overly interpreting this, but I also feel like people do sort of think of other people like that in reality, and it was a very unpleasantly limiting kind of unspoken judgment in society. An unhappy thought.

Down to the final arc in this novel, I thought the preparation for the events at the sex club were hilarious, more so highlighted by the vampire Eric's crooked sense of humor at everything. The orgy itself was nauseating, yes, but it just seems to be the literary fleshing out of another stereotype - that orgies mainly occurred in rural areas because there aren't that many things to do, and because a tight knit community sometimes leads to social pressures of the strangest sorts. There's a part of me that wants to defend this behavior, because if everything is consensual and everyone involved knows to keep their emotions in check, no one would really come to any harm, so the logic goes. The hard part there is for everyone to keep their emotions in check, though. Either way, I don't feel qualified to judge through lack of full understanding.

That doubtful sentiment gets amplified by how these characters who participate in the orgy get done in - by the maenad. It seems like poetic justice, given that maenads are worshipers of Dionysis and engaged in drinking, orgies and terrible destructive acts as well. In fact, the main differences between the maenad and these characters are that the maenad is now supernatural, she does the things she does for religious (and self righteous?) reasons, and that all maenads are female, as the legend goes. This particular maenad, Callisto, also seems to be modeled after Calypso, the witch who kept Odysseus on an island and turned all his men to pigs. I say witch for lack of a better term and clear understanding. Should I have said siren? Hm.

After all of this, I almost wish that Sookie slept with Sam instead, so that she wouldn't have to deal with the instinctive possessiveness that being with a vampire engenders. But then, the series would no longer a bunch of vampire novels, which was its main initial selling point. I have to admit that the sexual tension between Sookie and a handful of characters definitely gives the stories some oomph. One last thought: after Sookie and Bill fought over his not treating her like an equal, and the way the incident was attributed to pride at the end, made me wonder whether feminism has any standing at all in the Southern culture of North America. Oh well. Since this book was even more addictive than the pilot novel, I'm going to look for more.

Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris

This series was recommended to me by a coworker. I had also heard about its television adaptation True Blood, but I feel that the books are always better because my imagination is a personal space where it's just me and the author, and I don't have to accept the additional interpretations of the director and actors. One of my friends also started reading this series, but she didn't like the main character, and so didn't continue. With all of this background and input from other people in mind, I started reading this book.

My first thought was brain candy. It has the feel of urban fantasy but is set in a rural town, where the protagonist is a waitress who thinks that vampires are fascinating. I have this thought that Asians are the vampires of reality, so I read the fascination and fear associated with supernatural creatures in books as misunderstandings and racism. And Sookie seems like such a sheltered, unassuming character. I found her likable right away, especially since she got into a fight to defend the vampire just on principle, and that banished any notions put into my head that Sookie might be a weakling.

It's true that she cried a lot, but given the handful of deaths of loved ones and people she knows surrounding her, I think it's only justified. She certainly doesn't resemble most noir protagonists, but since this novel turned out to be a mystery, she qualifies. As the murders went down, the case was complicated by the long list of suspects, racism against Sookie for dating a male vampire, and the complexities of the relationship itself.

The villain was very well crafted. Since he defended Sookie a few times against people who were hitting on her and such, he was subtly mentally labeled "nice guy," even though she couldn't read his mind. Everyone had a handful of motives, and since it was all around a bar dash coffee place, so many people showed up and left in a day that it felt hard to keep track of. That, added to the way no one suspects someone close to them, even though the majority of all crimes is committed by someone known to the victim. So everyone was pretty much a suspect for a while, and it was hard to put down the book and actually think it over when it was written to be so action packed and fast paced.

Almost everyone was ambivalent about Sookie and Bill dating. Anyone who has ever been in an interracial relationship would relate to this. In fact, interracial dating was referenced by the cook, who happens to be a black gay human. There's the grandmother, who's glad that Sookie is dating at all, but her brother pretty much said something like, okay, if that's what you want. Some from the vampire community felt that it was wrong to mainstream, that it was betraying the culture, so they pushed Sookie around to provoke Bill. Others who intend to mainstream want to use Sookie for her mind reading talents and also think that psychics' blood is very tasty. It's no wonder that she felt so alone.

Meanwhile, Bill and Sookie have a hard time communicating, because of cultural - well, biological - differences, where they have to work around each others schedules because he doesn't come out during the day time and she has leeway, but generally sleeps at night. The first few dates were punctuated by the very different mating practices and the fact that she has next to no experience. (Why do vampire novels emphasize virgins? Is this more about that racism thing again?) I also related to the whole thing where a relationship impacts both parties, but in a heterosexual relationship, I invariably feel that the female is judged far more harshly.

It turns out that beneath all the interactions of the myriad of characters, there is more depth and commentary on society than just a plain old vanilla vampire book cum romance. The mystery, for example, leads to somewhat unusual detective work where instead of talking to people about where they were at a certain time and why, Sookie just reads their minds. The style has the feel of urban fantasy, but with home town and Southern accenting and culture. I also thought the author was very adept at describing vampires in their bloodlust, but that may be why she chose this particular supernatural creature to work with. I was also surprised that Sam was outed so quickly, though I was not surprised that there is a love triangle already, because romance seems to be a staple of many fantasy series for women.

Oathbound, by Mercedes Lackey

Mercedes Lackey has been one of my favorites since around high school. I feel as if I know Kethry really well since reading her in By the Sword more than a few years ago. However, both the author's writing style and I must have changed considerably, because Kethry is not nearly as tough as I remember. Then again, I may be just viewing her in a contrasting light against Tarma, who seems to be by definition as tough as door nails and paired with a harsh countenance for its sake, too.

The story starts out slow. The way it stays slow throughout the first half of the book disappointed me because I wanted something action oriented and plot driven, but the book ended up being something of a fable about the nature of a relationship and all the intricacies of care two people must bring into it. A little voice inside me tells me that I should relate more to this, having been in relationship after relationship - all of them long and serious - but the two characters are in essence trying to start a family and build a business, and I'm just not there yet.

Thankfully, though, there were moments when I still really enjoyed the book. I thought everything was really starting when the two women entered into a part of the forest after the Plains out of curiosity, and there was a sort of Wonderland-like setting where nature was so much alive that the plants can think and move. The arrival of the kyree Warrl - it's such a funny name, like a childlike noise, Warrl - was really what began the book for me. I was interested in why the giant wolf-cat shied away from the spelled sword Need, but oh well.

Tarma's return to her Plains clans and Kethry's meeting them there spoke a little about bringing home an Outclan - fantasy speak for interracial - mate that matches reality in a fairly awkward and sad way, which is how these things usually play out. The pressure that Tarma faced in regards to having to have children to form a clan, despite the clans' own rules about being Sword Sworn and having to wreak vengeance on the destroyers of a clan, seem unduly harsh. I thought of it as a statement on the potential hypocrisies of traditional values.

When they left the Plains, the story line became kind of episodic, because they would go and solve cases according to where the spelled sword Need took them, which is usually to the aid of some woman. And again, I felt like there were many lulls, and the real plot only began with first the banishing of Thalkarsh the demon, and later again with the exiling of the bandit Longknife.

Here I wondered why the evil and suffering that the demon fed on must include sex, though it was probably because he took over people's minds and made them entertain him against their will. Still, the association gave sex a bad rep, and the author knew that the imagery for the villains was kind of cliched, but used the icons of cult practice and demon worship anyway. (Did anyone call the partying, orgies and revelry of Bacchus, the god of wine and debauchery, a cult practice? It's all perspective. Of course, nowadays, anything that takes too much money away from its practitioners is considered a cult.)

The twist here is that two major villains came back to get at our protagonists, and that Need is essentially a sexist sword, because it became powerless when Thalkarsh turned Landknife into a woman. When he was made into a woman against his will, he thought it was killing him because his identity was vanishing, but in my opinion, it was really just the dominance and privilege he missed, because that was what he associated with masculinity. It's his weak mind when it came to resisting base bodily pleasures that was mainly his undoing. Being small seems to be the one attribute that the villains kept imposing upon the two women, so that they were too weak to fight. Is this a commentary on modern media standards of attractiveness? Meanwhile, Thalkarsh thrives on the shock value of his deeds, which was why he was nonplussed when the orgies and decoration had no effect on the little priest when he came to talk to him.

When it came down to it, I felt like the plot had a lot of build up for a kind of sketchy and hurried resolution. It just seemed like the protagonists were lucky that Tarma was a friend to this Nemor, arch priest of the Anathei. He was a twist himself, because I thought that he would be a minor character given that at first he was not named. He also serves as a kind of father figure to the two women, especially when he calls them "child". The idea was that the priest somehow used the energy released when Warrl attacked Kethry to switch everyone back, and also to imprison Thalkarsh in Lastel's body. The image of Lastel herself is another stereotype: pampered, weak, blond and attractive.

There are many more subjects touched upon when readers stop to think about what the icons, actions and twists of the story meant. I feel that its message in terms of feminism is kind of vague and contradictory, but maybe that's because I feel so strongly about it that I'm a purist. By itself however, without an analytical mind, it's just a tale that has a slow start with some good buildup, that comes to abrupt finish. In my opinion, this book was not the best that Mercedes Lackey has to offer.

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow

Okay, I confess. I'm one of those people who can be attracted to a book merely because of its title (or subtitle), and this was how I was drawn into reading The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow. For something with a catchy title, this book ended up being very cerebral, since it's about the mathematical theory of randomness and the effects of chance just about everywhere.

The author has the best professor's voice I've read in a long time, simply because it's genial and conversational, even when he gets into the technical stuff with the numbers and calculations, and how people draw or don't draw conclusions from these equations or those test results. The text is also interspersed with graphs, and he had a small section at the beginning about how people only pay half attention when reading graphs (because it's ultimately a picture) and that could lead to them being fooled by data.

Roughly, the first four chapters are spent proving that many or most aspects of human life are governed by randomness. I generally think of myself as open to change, but my reaction to these chapters proved that that wasn't completely true, because I was downright discomfited. If almost everything is governed by chance, then does ability mean nothing? And does that mean that I have absolutely no control over my life? (I eventually comforted myself with the thought that, even if that were true, luck has carried me this far in my less than two-and-a-half decades of life.) If the reader doesn't stop reading right there because he feels that it's sacrilegious or reject it as utter nonsense, it may tell you something about his character.

Speaking of which, it's not all about math or statistics. He also goes into the psychology of our intuitive decisions, and why that process is not always logical. The most striking chapter to me was the one about how success is judged by the results all too often, and that is largely faulty because then we don't consider the coincidental factors that could have led to any individual's success or failure. All the academic and scary psychological stuff is peppered with Mlodinow's gently self deprecating humor, where he jokes about the chances of success his book has. He also has several tidbits about the role chance played in his own life, which makes him infinitely more relate-able.

Review for Silverthorn, by Raymond E. Feist

Each period in the lives of the favorite characters of Raymond E. Feist's books is marked by a series, and the series combined make for a continuous series: a saga. Despite not remembering whether I mentioned them here, I've read through Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master, stories which detail the life of Pug of Crydee, and the merging of two worlds.

Silverthorn takes place after these two books. Pug is still involved, but the cast of characters has changed and expanded since his boyhood, as is expected. This story continues the Riftwar, tying up some loose ends and revealing others. Personally, as someone who reads for both character and plot, I've come to really enjoy the presences of Arutha, Jimmy and Martin. They are well written, each with very distinct personalities, clear voices and decisive actions.

Because I was searching for this continuation, I actually went forward and read Krondor: Tear of the Gods ahead of time, not realizing that that book was later in the timeline than this one until well into the text. But that doesn't matter here, except to say that it was harder to get into that story - partially because I didn't read it in sequence - mostly because it was harder to care about most of the cast until Jimmy and Arutha appeared. I didn't care much for Jazhara at all.

When creating a villain, good writers know that they must create a close match, a good opponent for their protagonists. This was completed very well in this story, because Murmandamus - while a flat character who hates humans for seemingly no reason - comes up with very detailed plans and has the necessary (evil) charisma to gather millions of power hungry and greedy people across different species into his armies. He's also mysterious enough to make me wonder where he disappears off to when not orating to his subordinates, and that would keep me reading.

I wished that Aglaranna, the elf queen, were more involved, as well as Tomas, Pug's childhood friend and rival, and didn't like the explanation that they shouldn't leave their power base, but I understood that that was necessary in terms of how magic worked in that world.

I also wished that the Watchers in the north weren't also elves, because I was looking forward to another new, different species after Pug's brief encounter with the Thun. However, the Watchers' relation to the elves had been foreshadowed in the earliest pages when Aglaranna, Tomas and Arutha's party had a meeting about what to do for Anita, and the various history between the nonhumans of Midkemia. The semi-conscious reason for my wishing that the Watchers were a different species was because that ice spire reminded me of Ursula K. LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness, but similar architecture obviously does not indicate similar culture.

It was good to know that Laurie the bard as a character can fight, even though he served to be primarily comedy at the beginning, what with Carline's fishwifery and all. I understand that Midkemia culture is supposed to resemble somewhat medieval leanings in society, but my own feminist sensibilities were offended at Anita's sleeping beauty storyline as well as Carline's insistence upon marriage to the unhappily committing bard. There was also no female in the band of fighters, and I know the author tries to amend for this with Jazhara in a later book, but the attempt seems weak to me, and he couldn't really let go of having that female character need a significant other as well. That stood out to me a lot, especially in direct contrast with Jimmy's vagabond lifestyle and freewheeling habit of courting danger instead of women.

Feminist dissatisfactions aside, and I imagine there is a lot of that in the science fiction and fantasy community, which seems to be why many female writers write for primarily female audiences, it was a good book. The battle scenes are impressive as usual, the settings are well detailed, imaginable to the point of being mostly real, and the plot was a definite page turner. Now I know that there is even more to the Riftwar, and that by the time the Krondor series rolls around, the denizens of darkness become less flat, which is always something to look forward to. I should pick up more books from Barnes & Noble before going in to work for the day.

"A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" by David Foster Wallace

So while reading the "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" essay Jere recommended, I found both curiosity and a tired kind of solace in the author's pity for service workers - the same service workers who are making his cruise (for journalistic purposes) supposedly relaxing and fun, but being the objective reporter he is, he began to analyze and break it down, making it into one of the most existential text about a Caribbean cruise I have ever read.

While pity really does nothing for me, I related to his sympathy for those workers because my other life, when I'm not reviewing/critiquing various texts, is a Target Team Member, of all things. My service work is more emotionally tiring than anything else in the long run, but compare that to these employees who have to scrub disgusting goo and sea muck off the side of a ship, my job is a cakewalk in the park. David Foster Wallace, the author, also goes on to intensely poke through the layers of advertising and fantasy that the brochures and short programs evoke in consumers to lure them into spending thousands on a trip that lasts a week.

As a newbie compared to him, I admire his narrative, ironic and sardonic and cynical but compelling nevertheless, with a cruel sense of humor that I understand. His recollections of his fear of sharks and the ocean remind me of a friend who is also very afraid of sharks, but she takes the drug-using, partying approach against her personal fear of death - drown it out. I imagine that many people in this economy share the fear of death on similar terms as myself: the fear of having done nothing worthwhile for a very long time, which is why we hunt for jobs, and those of us with not-very-satisfactory jobs hunt for careers. It seems to be a hope that these ship cleaners don't get to elaborate on, save the waiter for Table 64, who wants to bring the money home to his family and start his own business of some sort.

Meanwhile, I got distracted by a note where David comments on how Bostonians and New Yorkers have no basic human decency, because I'm from Boston, and according to many people I've spoken to, this means that I was raised in a hell where filth line the streets and hate is strewn all over the air as much as the pollution from the mushroom cloud is. As with all generalizations like this one, there are always exceptions to the rule, and I've also spoken with plenty of people who happen to love Boston, for all its difficulties and quirks and flaws.

The other assertion that David makes is that marketing and its insidious way of telling people what to think is very sinister. I agree, it is very sinister. He backs it up by using how the 7NC's brochures used the author Conroy's "essay" to market itself. However, if one must interpret marketing in this way, then everyone is sinister, including the poor saps in this economy - like myself until recently - who are trying very hard to market themselves to find a job. If looking out for one's self interest is evil, then the entire world is evil, and only the most malleable and humble of personalities are for the greater good. Malleable and humble personalities, however, in my opinion, also generally are not all that ambitious and will not try all that hard for the sake of pride or misguided glory.

David also goes on to log and comment on all the various shows and activities that the cruise ship's programs provide, and how they all fit into the idea of Managed Fun. There were at least several moments during the read where I laughed out loud at the personas that he perceives, as well as his socially awkward tendencies to offend everyone on board the cruise ship who are not accepting of individuality and prefer to conform for the sake of not appearing absurd, even though the customs themselves are absurd. The specific times where he mentions the Alice-Mona dislike at Table 64 reminded me of the comedy of manners to be found in Pride and Prejudice. It sounded like the ship had many relatively rich people who like to measure their own wealth and skill against that of others, particular in the scene involving shooting skeets.

While I got bored at various points during the log because of its obsessive compulsive precision, and also distanced myself because I disliked David the most during the scene where he got beaten at chess by a young girl and then had to go redeem his ego by beating a DJ at ping pong for several rounds (as well as delighting when children got hurt in scenes of Jurassic Park for a day afterward), he regained my attention as the essay was closing because he actually grew more relaxed when the pampering to death is near over. The most memorable and likable scenario was at the end, as he described the hypnotist and his show, where the entertainer hypnotized cruisers for comedy while David hypnotized himself to get away from the entertainer. It brings back the wistful aspect of existential musings, and reminds us that perception has a great deal of power and that we are allowed to control that if our minds can handle it, which is a great turnaround of the beginning of the essay, where we see our surroundings - like the advertising for the cruise - sinisterly cloud us in a specific illusion. Very humanistic, after all.

Review for Hunter's Prayer, by Lilith Saintcrow

Hunter's Prayer has a handful of intricate plot devices, one within another, and then they all click together like a nicely made puzzle with a pretty picture. A good, satisfying read. What seems to be individual cases mesh to become part of a bigger, more intense storyline with higher stakes. There's a bit of offhand foreshadowing too; for instance, the scene where Jill had the class of rookies was to follow up on a seemingly offhand line in the previous book, to explain how Weres transform, and probably to hint at a future event involving one of these rookie cops in a later book.

Lilith Saintcrow again plays on her sense of irony when terrible things happen in church and to religious people. The relationship between Jill and Saul develops further, as par for the course in the romance portion of this heady novel - we will see in the third book whether the two get an actual vacation and get married, or whether a pesky hellbreed called Perry gets in the way. He develops as a character too, getting even more complicated - because of his vague intentions - and more interesting than even Saul as a character, though Saul is still hiding something as well. We still haven't found out what it is about Jill that Perry wants aside from her body, or why he wants to turn her into hellbreed.

The idea of blood sacrifice is very tribal and Mayan, though prostitution is definitely an age old practice. Having the pimps' cowardice and suffering of the whores around again pulls the book back from the fantasy realm, reminding readers that of the cops-and-robbers and noir element of the series. Jill's reaction to each woman that she meets also adds a feminist worldview to our first person narrative, something thrown directly at the adult female audience. There are such people as male prostitutes too, though. There seems to be many characters who are around just to be sources of information for Jill, the cops excluded. Having the spirit creature around to almost-kill Jill and mislead her, when no one knew what it is, seems to be a cheap trick unless the series lasts more than three books, and there are plenty more new made-up creatures to come.

Lilith Saintcrow got my attention when Saul wanted Jill to stay with Perry for the night, for her protection. When Belisa, the Sorrow who killed Mikhail, arrived, the atmosphere came closer to the revenge oriented mindset of kung fu movies, except that she ended up not being the main villainess this time after all. The appearances of Cecilia, and later, the other girls, reminded me of how early young women started dating today, pushed into the fashionable world by consumerism and television icons. The veritable contrast between Jill and these girls seem to illustrate a generation gap, or simply an example of the differences in fate between people for the sheer power of luck.

I think my favorite scene was when Saul, Perry and Jill were all in the same kitchen, being allies and talking over the case in a civil manner, even though Saul and Perry obviously despised each other. It makes for beautiful intrigue and a tense undercurrent, a very specific kind of drama that I enjoy reading about. The following scene, with all the dead bodies in a single room in pieces, reminded me of this really dark game I used to play, called Diablo. There was one demi-boss, the Butcher, that dwelled in a room with an entire floor of bloodied rotting corpses, some of which are held aloft in the air by these spears that were built into the ground. I doubt Lilith Saintcrow has a role-playing game background, but I wouldn't perish the thought.

While I wasn't impressed by Night Shift, Hunter's Prayer made up for it, and I'm looking forward to Redemption Alley, particularly the scenes with Jill and Perry.