5 posts tagged “highly recommended reading”
I've just finished reading Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams by Catherynne M Valente. This little novel is about a hermit-woman called Ayako who lives in the shadow of a five-layered pagoda on the side of a mountain, and dreams up other selves and existences.
Yes, this is one of Valente's "weird ones", in the best possible way that a story can be weird. As usual her poetic prose is richly sensual, thick with wonderful images, and the ideas she weaves into the story are just as wonderful -- Oedipus and the sphinx's riddles; quantum physics (which, yes, I can wrap my head around); the fall of Troy and of her village at the same time; a Babylonian creation myth that becomes her own story of creation/reshaping. And more, of course.
I want to know what could have been spun from the lumpy black silk... perhaps I already know.
I shan't share the true beauty of this novel, the line near the end that brought a smile of sadness and happiness to my face -- that lesson is there, waiting, for the interested to learn, and I shan't spoil it. Suffice to say that this is a beautiful, moving tale, one that shall stay with me for a very long time, and I highly recommend it to any reader who (a) was intrigued by my review (obviously; I aim to intrigue), and (b) wants something very different to what they'll find on a high street bookshelf.
Minor point of interest: The book
comes in two cover-colours -- red or blue -- with a small variation in
the texts of each. Mine was actually the blue one, but the
amazon-vox connection only gave me the red one.
I think I have been bitten by the Short Story bug. A year and a half ago, I had never written anything shorter than the opening chapters of novels. Just over a year ago I wrote my first short story - MCFUTURE - a work-inspired piece that, I'll be the first to admit, is far from original but was brilliant fun to write, though now I consider the quality of the writing rather sub-standard. Not long after that I wrote my second short story - FLIGHT - based on a reaction I'd love to have been able to give to my boyfriend's snooze alarm.
I was very proud of myself. Two short stories! I uploaded them to fictionpress and left it at that.
Then, earlier this year, I wrote STATUES for the Writers of the Future Contest and, while that story was 16k and definitely has more to be told, I think it started something. Because I have since written A SHADE OF YELLOW, TANSU, THE BEAUTIFUL COLLECTION and EMPIRES AND GLASS, as well as three short-short pieces (less than 1000 words, one of them less than 100 words) and a few more shorts-in-progress.
The latest addition to the menagerie of short fiction is A FAY OF STEAM, a steampunk fairytale that I'm writing to send to Cabinet des Fées. It's set in the city of Retyelnen, in which A SHADE OF YELLOW takes place, and is set before that story.
In all honesty, I quite like this bug. Not only will it hopefully net me some publication credits, but I've found that writing short stories is brilliantly fun. I can play around with different ideas that aren't developed enough to become novels, or that I don't have time to develop into novels, and with different narrative styles (like present tense and first person) that I wouldn't use in a novel. So bite on, dear bug!
.....And what is it that can distract a good bug? Only a good book, and I have found one in the wonderful The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M Valente. How good is this book? Let me tell a story:
Today I decided to finally get my arse in gear and head on over to the British Library to register, because a book I need to read is there and I'm sure I'll find it a useful resource for the rest of the year. It's about an hour's round trip from where I live, via the London Underground. When I reached the BL, I discovered that you required both proof of identity and proof of address, and I did not have the latter. I had wasted an hour. Normally I would be viciously pissed off at this, but not today. Another hour spent on the Underground meant another hour reading Catherynne M Valente's book. No other book has made me enjoy wasted time to quite that degree.
The book is about a strange girl who lives in the Palace Gardens, shunned by the court. A daring boy approaches her and she begins to tell him stories - fairytales, with stories within stories within stories, woven together and told in Valente's wonderful lyrical prose. It is an absolutely fantastic book, a feast for the imagination.
Read the opening - HERE!
Read her short story The Maiden-Tree - HERE!
Read her short story Bones Like Black Sugar - HERE!
Catherynne M Valente is a fantastic author, and I heartily recommend everyone to buy In the Night Garden.
Cleolinda Jones condenses ten blockbusters into hilarious 15-minute (or, in the case of LOTR, probably a bit longer) parodies. My personal favourite was Star Wars Episode 2, but they all had me laughing. This book's definitely worth checking out, just as bit of humorous, light reading for when you don't have time to read something more serious and in-depth. If you liked this, or want a flavour of her style before buying the book, check out her online parodies. Troy and V for Vendetta made my sides hurt.
My rating: 5 / 5
The book is set at the end of time, a decadant future where the few remaining humans possess the power, created by their ancestors, to do precisely what they want. There are no more technical innovations because everything has happened in the past; rather, they spend their time having fun, shaping parts of the world to suit their tastes, and collecting menageries of time travellers, aliens and prominent people from history.
Jherek Carnelian is one of these people, unusual for having been born the natural way but otherwise totally normal. That is, until he decides that he is going to fall in love with a time traveller from the late Victorian era, Mrs Amelia Underwood. He has to travel through time, witness the end of time and learn a heck of a lot before, at the end of the book, they are together.
What I like about the romance in the book is that it felt realistic. Mrs Amelia Underwood, a proper Victorian woman, refuses to succumb to Jherek's advances because she knows she should return to her era and be with her husband - even though she doesn't particularly like the guy. She doesn't instantly love the decadance and immorality of the end of time (they slept with anyone - Jherek tells her he slept with his mother first because she was the closest), but resists it right til the end. It made her a far more believable and interesting character. Jherek, meanwhile, has to understand the full range of human emotions, and comes to realise that love isn't a game. At the end, I felt they deserved to be in love, that they had been through enough and come to respect and understand each other enough to earn the label 'love', unlike in some books where a bit of bickering, a hug and some passionate sex means twoo lurve.
At times the book was a touch too silly for my tastes, but overall I really enjoyed it. It's definitely worth reading as a taste of something a little bit different.
My rating: 4.5 / 5
Bellis is a fantastic character. As someone I know said, the prose doesn't present her with a resounding chorus of 'you must love this woman'; on the contrary, I wouldn't fault anyone for disliking her. She's frigid, cold, sullen, hates Armada and everyone in it, and is used by two characters for plots that she only realises the truth of after they've occurred. Though she distinctly isn't, it feels like she is driving the plot because she thinks she is. She's gritty and real and one of the best characters I have ever encountered.
The other characters are great too. The Lovers are totally fucked up, Uther Doul is probably one of the deepest, darkest assassin-type characters ever written, Tanner Sack is less interesting (in my personal opinion) but no less real, Shekel is kinda cute, and so on... As for the plot - well, that's fucking awesome. I won't say any more on it, so as not to ruin it for anyone. This book is a testament to everything that the fantasy genre can be but usually isn't, and I recommend it to everyone who's sick of the usual clichés and wants to experience what fantasy should be like.
A resounding 5 / 5
Ganking the amazon summary: "In New York, 1893, society portrait painter Piero Piambo is feeling jaded, endlessly subordinating his art to capture the likenesses of the nouveaux riches. Then comes a commission he cannot refuse. He is offered a fortune to depict the mysterious Mrs Charbuque, but is not allowed to see her."
To gain an impression of her likeness, he asks her questions about her past. She helped her father examine snowflakes for portents of the future, until he found a pair of identical snowflakes and gave them to her. They whispered visions of the future to her, and she became the Sibyl, relating those visions to others from behind a screen. At one point she married, but she wouldn't allow her husband to see her and this eventually drove him into a murderous rage. His return to New York complicates things somewhat for Piambo, as a series of strange murders spread through the city.
At times the narrative style was a little too heavy and rambly for my taste, but overall it did the job well despite being the dreaded first-person. The plot is little more than already described, though there's a good twist at the end. I found the narrator (Piambo) likeable enough: I understood his dilemnas and approved of his ability to make mistakes when he should have known better. All in all it was an interesting book.
My rating: 4.5 / 5
Having recently moved into a new house, Coraline decides to go exploring - and finds a doorway into a strange likeness of her house with a sinister Other Mother who wants to be her real mother. With the help of a black cat, Coraline must free her parents from the Other Mother's snare.
The fact that this is a children's book did not detract from my enjoyment fo it. The plot is simple but effective, the delivery is good, the characters are interesting. In fact, I think the delivery is perhaps Gaiman's most effective. He often has a slightly simplistic style, and in a children's book it worked really well whereas in his adult books it occasionally grates on my nerves. I think my only complaint about the character of Coraline is her awareness that children want what's not best for them - that, in my opinion, is a very mature awareness. Her age is never given but I assume it's in the region of 8 or 10; I don't think children that age possess that kind of self-knowledge. But other than that she acts her age, so I can forgive her that one fault.
A brief, enjoyable read: 4.5 / 5
A typographical error produced the word 'Alsiso' and a bunch of authors were invited to create short stories around that word. Obviously the genres vary, though the majority of them are fantasy/scifi. And, as with any short story collection, there are some that I thought utterly fantastic and others that I struggled to finish.
My favourites are one where a woman must get pregnant in order to locate precious metals, one where an expedition to another planet meets an interesting fate to the background of 'alsiso' birdcalls, one where the word 'alsiso' has been tucked away in historic paintings, one where saying the word will result in a hideous death, and a few others I can't quite recall right now. I also liked KJ Bishop's brief one about the word's passage through history. In all, this was an interesting collection, and worth getting if you're into short stories or fancy a change of pace.
My rating: 4 / 5
A darkly fantastical story, The Etched City is a prime example of the wonders the fantasy genre can yield when the writer isn't afraid to do something new.
I was drawn by the cover and by an except on the back: "Have you seen a
split cranium, growing flowers like a window box? I saw that, a mere
hour ago." Also, I admit, after the publisher Tor gave me the
wonderful The Carpet Makers I wanted to see what else they've been publishing lately.
I wasn't disappointed. Though at the beginning I had no idea
where the plot was leading, or even what the plot was, by the end I'd
been drawn completely and utterly into the weird and wonderful world
depicted within these pages.
It begins
with Raule, in the desert. She bumps into an old associate,
Gwynn, and together they flee the desert and their enemies to the city
of Ashamoil. There things get weird. Gywnn, you realise, is
the main character, though Raule's story continues to be told in the
sidelines and intertwines with Gwynn's at times. A gunslinger currently
employed as the henchman of a slave trader, Gwynn is surprised to find
himself depicted in an etching. He becomes determined to track
down the artist and, with the aid of a delightfully trippy scene where
he gets high, he finds her. While he becomes closer to the
strange artist Beth, his 'career' runs into trouble. It is with
Beth, though, that the weirdness happens. It's hard to describe.
Think of warped, chimeran dreams brushing against reality, and
you're close to the focus of this book.
My
only complaint is that it took a while to get started.
Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the beginning. KJ
Bishop's worldbuilding and characterisation is brilliant, staying far,
far away from the medieval-fantasy-crap clichés. Raule and Gwynn
- and the Rev, Beth, and the other characters - are all interesting,
three-dimensional people, happily populating the fuzzy grounds of grey.
In reviews on amazon I've seen her work
compared to China Miéville's; it's a fair comparison, but she has her
own style. For one, she doesn't give massive infodumps.
While Ashamoil is very much a tangible place, it's not nearly as
thoroughly described as New Crobuzon, perhaps for the better. If
asked whether I preferred this or Perdido Street Station, I
think I'd lean slightly towards this, but I wouldn't blame anyone for
sliding the other way. It's a touch choice.
A resounding 5 / 5.
KJ Bishop Linkspam:
Check out her website, where you can find links to extracts from Chapter 1 and Chapter 7.
While I don't think they're the best bits to take extracts from -
Chapter 7 is one of the best but the really good bit hasn't been
included in the extract - hopefully they'll give an indication of her
style.
I found this interview
with her particularly interesting, as it helps explain why Raule starts
off as the viewpoint character, only to leave it all to Gwynn once they
reach Ashamoil.
Another good interview.
Link to her flash fiction, Silk and Pearls.
It's fantasy, and kind of fable-like, and though the first few
paragraphs are background infodumping it gets very good, with a
wonderfully dark ending.
Link to her short story, The Art of Dying. Much to my delight, it features Gwynn, providing a window of sorts into his life after The Etched City. If you read this and like it, you'll love her novel.
Title: Perdido Street Station
Author: China Miéville
Genre: Fantasy / science fiction / horror / steampunk
Length: 867 pages
Read: July 2006
Rating: 5 / 5
Summary on the Back:
The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the centre of the world. Humans and mutants and arcane races brood in the gloom
beneath its chimneys, where the river is sluggish with unnatural
effluent, and factories and foundries pound into the night. For more
than a thousand years, the Parliament and its brutal militia have ruled
here over a vast economy of workers and artists, spies and soldiers, magicians, junkies and
whores.
Now a stranger has come, with a pocketful of gold and an
impossible demand. And inadvertently, clumsily, something unthinkable is released.
As the city becomes gripped by an alien terror, the fate of millions depends on a clutch of renegades on the run from lawmakers and crime-lords alike. The urban nightscape becomes a hunting ground. Battles rage in the shadows of uncanny architecture. And a reckoning is due at the city's heart, under the vast chaotic vaults Perdido Street Station.
My Comments:
This a big book of imagination. There is no other way to describe it. ... Well. It's weird. Really weird. Weird and wonderful and so full of ideas it's almost bursting. The ideas and the storytelling kind of weave together at the beginning of the book, as China Miéville shares the history and development of New Crobruzon whenever the characters go somewhere. While he can get a bit infodumpy at times (and it was enough to put my mum off), I found it really interesting. The plot is gripping right til the end, and the various races he comes up with are such a breath of fresh air after all the Tolkein ripoffs you see these days. The races even get their own Wiki page!
I could go on raving about this book but that would be boring. Instead, why not pick up a copy of your own? I heartily recommend this to anyone who likes scifi/fantasy and wants something new and different.
