The Golden Age

Warning: While I try to keep these posts as spoiler free as possible, when discussing the later books in a series, it is difficult to avoid spoiling details of the earlier ones (though with Narratives of Empire you will probably get more spoilers from a passable knowledge of American history).

The Golden Age is the last book in the Narratives of Empire series, both chronologically and in publication order and closes out the series in a somber note.  However, much of the book takes place concurrently with Washington D.C.  following the adventures of some of the characters that he added in books later in the publication order.  However, it then continues past that through the end of the 20th century.

While wrapping up the stories of all the characters with varying degrees of satisfaction, this book also enhances and continues the cynical bent of the latter book and basically flat our accuses FDR of warmongering.  The title is, as you may expect, also a cynical slant on American history.

The Golden Age also has a fair amount of discussion of America's growth as a cultural epicenter, following up on many of the threads in Hollywood.  Gore Vidal himself makes an appearance within the pages of the book, more than once no less.

I think if you don't like FDR that much or if you like unpopular historical takes, these books will be fascinating.  I know I was very interested to see the way that FDR was portrayed continue as the modern world is so effusive in its praise of him.  However, it also makes you wonder how much of it is true and how much of it is dramatized and how much of it the author wishes were true.

Bringing the series to a close, it is somewhat depressing to do it on this note, I wish he had continued further into the cold war rather than dig so deeply into FDR for two books.  I think it leaves the series somewhat unbalanced (two books of focus on FDR, George Washington barely above a cameo in Burr). I think the years between ~1960 and 2000 could have benefited from a more detailed viewing.

However, this book is what it is and while I think the author could have picked better subject matter, it does provide some interesting views (though one has to wonder what the series would have been like if he had his ideas for the whole thing when he was writing Washington D.C. originally).  The fictional characters are all vividly imagined and the historical figures seem like they could have stepped right out of a history book.

Overall, I would give this book an 88%.

Washington DC

Warning: While I try to keep these posts as spoiler free as possible, when discussing the later books in a series, it is difficult to avoid spoiling details of the earlier ones (though with Narratives of Empire you will probably get more spoilers from a passable knowledge of American history).

Washington D.C. is the penultimate novel in the chronological reading of Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire but the first one published.  Unfortunately, the fact that it is the first published is not as well disguised as other series where the chronological order and published order are different.

Caroline Sanford, primary protagonist of the last two books, has vanished.  And I don't mean like Luke at the beginning of The Force Awakens, it becomes clear that Gore Vidal didn't come up with her until he was writing Empire.  The final book in the series, The Golden Age, takes place concurrently with this book but I am not sure that there is a reading that interleaves the chapters in true chronological order.

This book covers the depression, World War II, and the beginning of the Cold War and it is definitely more novelized and dramatic than some of the other books in the series.  It is also pretty cynical, basically stating straight out that FDR got us in to WW II deliberately and takes an overall fairly negative view on some people who are today considered icons.  I'm not sure if there was a large contingent of people with beliefs like that at the time and we are blinded by nostalgia or if Vidal was cynical even for his own time.

However, all of these complaints are not to say the book is unenjoyable.  There is a lot to like here and seeing the 40's through a different lens makes it different than most history books I have read.  Perhaps if I had started here, it might have been more of a turn off but with the investment in the characters and reading the lead up to how they got to this point, it was interesting to see how he is maneuvering everyone towards a conclusion.

Overall, I would give this book an 86%.

Hollywood

Warning: While I try to keep these posts as spoiler free as possible, when discussing the later books in a series, it is difficult to avoid spoiling details of the earlier ones (though with Narratives of Empire you will probably get more spoilers from a passable knowledge of American history).

Hollywood is our fifth stop on our journey through the Narratives of Empire series (it would be the sixth if I was reading in publication order).  It is also, unfortunately, my least favorite volume in the series.  This is not to say it is bad but I think it is a clear outlier considering how much I enjoyed the rest of the series.

Caroline Sanford, who spent the last book assertively establishing a newspaper empire and competing with her brother now throws it all away to move to Hollywood and work in the movie business with William Randolph Hearst from the last book. 

While this book covers the United States' entry into World War I and the aftermath, splitting the action between Hollywood and DC doesn't do the pacing any favors.  I also found the Hollywood parts of the book just less compelling.  Perhaps someone with a greater appreciation for film history would enjoy it more, but I found it lacking.

I can understand that it kind of follows a similar format to Empire in that it takes a more social perspective to formative events in American history but it doesn't feel like it works as well.  Also, Caroline Sanford being a producer and an actor and being willing to give up her newspapers seems like an unrealistic character change.

Overall, I would give this book an 81%.

Empire

Warning: While I try to keep these posts as spoiler free as possible, when discussing the later books in a series, it is difficult to avoid spoiling details of the earlier ones (though with Narratives of Empire you will probably get more spoilers from a passable knowledge of American history).

Empire by Gore Vidal is the fourth volume in his Narratives of Empire series chronologically and the fifth published.  At this point, publication order and chronological order will line up for all but the penultimate volume and you can tell that this sets up a little more world building than previous volumes.

Empire is a strong contender for my favorite volume in the series (Lincoln being its strongest competitor) but it introduces my favorite character, Caroline Sanford. She and her brother are the latest descendants of the Schulyer family and they are pitted against each other in the age of yellow journalism.  Her ambition is most of the driving force in the novel and Vidal manages to make her triumphs feel appropriately hard fought.

This volume interested me more because it focused less on the global events at the beginning of the 20th century (though still a fair amount, "Empire" is the title) and more on the social, with which I was less familiar.  I didn't really know much about the Hearst news empire (owned by the child of the villain of Deadwood) and the social struggles around McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt's presidential runs.

As with all the books in the series, you could probably pick it up and start here. However, this one has more connections to the previous volumes than some of the others.  Like the others though, it is a highly enjoyable read steeped in the characters and politics of the time.

Overall, I would give this book a 90%.

1876

Warning: While I try to keep these posts as spoiler free as possible, when discussing the later books in a series, it is difficult to avoid spoiling details of the earlier ones, (though with Narratives of Empire you will probably get more spoilers from a passable knowledge of American history).

In our continuing journey through Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire brings us to 1876, the third published and the third chronologically.  This is much more of a direct sequel to Burr than Lincoln was and bridges the gap between Burr and the first book published, Washington D.C.  (You could consider Narratives of Empire in publication order as two trilogies, with the misfit Lincoln between them.  Anyway, enough discussion of the series, on to the book!

While Gore Vidal's cynical eye generally portrays an America that is probably more true than I would like, his coverage of the year 1876, what he calls "probably the low point in our republic's history" is particularly painful.  Grant is another historical figure I found interesting, I read his memoirs and enjoyed them, but there is a reason that they end at the end of the civil war and don't continue into his political career.

I generally try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but the character of Grant in this book gets very little wiggle room around his corruption and the problems in his administration.  This book could easily have been entirely about Grant's administration like a dark mirror to Lincoln but instead the author has tried to give us a slightly wider view of what is going on, which has its pluses and minuses.

Our narrator from Burr returns, now an appropriately old man.  As an interesting choice, Vidal makes him quite the unreliable narrator.  He ignores signs that are right in front of him and has difficulty remembering things.  In an interesting case of parallelism, the corruption of the United States is matched by the corruption in the narrator's brain.  His self-delusion and absent-mindedness perhaps match the country's delusion that, at that point in history,  America was still a great nation.

Overall, I would give this book an 89%.

Lincoln

Warning: While I try to keep these posts as spoiler free as possible, when discussing the later books in a series, it is difficult to avoid spoiling details of the earlier ones, (though with Narratives of Empire you will probably get more spoilers from a passable knowledge of American history).

Lincoln is the second book of Narratives of Empire chronologically but the  4th published.  It is far and away the least related to the rest of the series, only a couple reoccurring characters from Burr and the introduction of a few characters that play significantly larger roles in later volumes even merit it admission into the series.  If you were solely interested in the plot of the saga, this would be the volume to skip.  But why would you?

Even if you aren't a completionist like me, anyone who would enjoy the rest of the series would definitely enjoy this book.  Its loving look at Lincoln from those around him is a total contrast to the frustrated look at Jefferson in Burr and is a delight to read.  Of course, it doesn't go easy on him, I'm not sure Gore Vidal is capable is going easy on anyone, but you can tell had great respect and regard for Lincoln.

The book has only one viewpoint from Lincoln and all the rest are from the people around him, with his secretary John Hay as one of the most frequent (due in large part to the fact that Hay's autobiography was one of the major sources for the book).  I am not sure I have ever read a book quite like it with all the viewpoints focused on a single person without hearing from them directly, it has the interesting effect of making you feel like you are orbiting some celestial object and observing it from all sides.

The book is also an interesting take on the Civil War as it goes through Lincoln's presidency and a little beyond, however it rarely shows any of the battles.  The reader learns about them as Lincoln does, from messengers and telegrams.  "Atlanta is ours and fairly won" has a stronger resonance when you don't see Sherman take the city and are waiting nervously at the White House with the president.

This book is historical fiction and thus has some inaccuracies though what and how much were hotly debated by Gore Vidal.  While it isn't perfect, it definitely is an entertaining read and a welcome addition to any history nerd's bookshelf.

Overall, I would give this book a 92%. 

Burr

Aaron Burr has always been a sort of favorite of mine.  Not in the sense that he was a role model or anything like that; a man who is, by many accounts, a traitor and a sore loser doesn't seem suited to that sort of favoritism.  Instead, I liked him because he was a quirk of history, he managed to interact and work with many of the founding fathers of America, without ever being considered one.  It seems he was a skilled lawyer and politician but he burned the wrong bridges (and shot the wrong people) and ended up on the wrong side of history.

These were the things I was thinking when I saw Burr by Gore Vidal among my grandmother's books.  After a quick google which told me that it was the first of a 7 book series (as always if I can help it, I read the series in historical order rather than publication order (Burr is second in publication order)), I shelved it for some years until I was in the mood to read something longer.  When I finally hit that point, I was delighted at how good it was.  Gore Vidal was just a familiar name to me before I started this series but now he is an author I respect.

The book is historical fiction and follows Burr in the twilight of his life recounting adventures from his younger years.  As you might expect from the title, it generally puts him in a sympathetic light.  After reading the rest of the series, I've determined that Vidal is somewhat of a historical contrarian.  If history says someone is good, Vidal probably portrays them less kindly in his books and, to Burr's benefit, someone history frowns upon gets a more positive spin.  This makes for a particularly interesting read for someone like me who generally goes after the breadth of history rather than the depth of particular parts.

The book is highly enjoyable: the characters are engaging, and while the plot is mostly a frame story, it makes history interesting.  It is not the best book in the series (that honor probably goes to Lincoln or Empire) but it is in the top half of a set of seven good books.  Plus, it makes for the perfect gift for anyone who is annoying you by singing Hamilton lyrics too much.

Overall, I would give this book a 90%.

Katabasis & Siege Perilous

At the end of the first three Mongoliad books, the main plot has been resolved but there are a few and fertile ground for imagining what happens next to the  surviving characters (spoilers: some people die).  The following two books, for the most part, answer those questions though not always satisfactorily.  Also, I was partially through the fourth book when I realized that they had lost Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear as authors and the fifth book is only by one author (E. D. deBirmingham) and not even a collaboration like the other four.

 
Katabasis, the fourth book, wraps up the story of the shield brethren (yes, there are shield brethren in the 5th book but they are not the focus).  There are definitely some great battles and fight scenes, which was what originally drew me into the first Mongoliad book, this one seems somewhat lacking in the epic scope of the first three.  Also, it was primary about infighting between various factions of the western world and it made all the efforts of the previous books to force the mongols back seem a little pointless (however, I am sure that they did meticulous historical research and this resembles what happened in the period).

At the end of the big battle one of the characters gives a speech that I won't post here because it contains minor spoilers but it is a good speech and concludes with the line "Let us live my friends, and by living keep alive our hope for a world made better by our presence in it."  I particularly liked that line.

Siege Perilous provides (more of) a conclusion to the Rome plot lines in books 2 and 3 which were basically ignored in Katabasis.  The story is based on the siege of the Cathars in France but, as always, our protagonists make an appearance.  Once again, there was some good combat but most of it was seen from the viewpoints of people not directly involved.  However, from a historical perspective this one felt more interesting than the other, perhaps because I knew a little about the siege before I read the book.  Probably the most annoying part of the story was the end where they resolve one plot point by saying, almost literally, "That is a story for someone else."

Both of these trend towards a more fantastical story than the historical fiction that originally interested me.  I have it difficult to believe that there were various magic elements permeating history it breaks my suspension of disbelief every time an, generally subtle, implication of magic occurs.  They are definitely a continuation in the spirit of the first three books but I don't think that they really needed a direct continuation.

Overall, I would give these two together an 82%.

To Be or Not To Be

Following my last post about Hyperbole and a Half coincidentally this next post is also an "internet book".  Ryan North writes one of my favorite webcomics, the creatively named "Dinosaur Comics".  If you have never read them I must recommend that you give them a try.  Ryan North decided to start a kickstarter funded, choose-your-own-adventure book based on the story of Hamlet.  The project blew up and broke multiple kickstarter records.  Due to the level of funding the book was able to get artwork for every ending from webcomic artists as well as a prequel story and several other additional features.

This book clocks in at 700 pages, so if you don't like it, it makes quite the doorstop.  However, I enjoyed this book immensely.  The book is lighthearted and witty but at the same time has great respect for the original work.

Also, this is the first book that I have review here that I haven't finished, if finished means having read every page.  I have reached an end multiple, multiple times but I still haven't hit every single possible page or even every single ending.  Some of the endings I have reached were the original ending (of course), one where ghost Hamlet and his ghost dad lead a ghost army to fight ghost aliens, and one where Hamlet and Ophelia invent thermometers and live happily ever after.  These are just a few of the many endings that book has to offer.

The book also allows you to play as Hamlet, Ophelia, and Hamlet's father and each of these stories has its own set of endings and experiences and sometimes switches back and forth between them.  In certain read throughs, you can play as Claudius reading a choose-your-own-adventure book.  It is very entertaining.  It is clear that the better that you know the source material the more enjoyable the book is.  However, the book starts at a high level of enjoyment even without any knowledge of the source material.

I think my favorite part of the book is a particular part where Hamlet fights pirates and all of the choices in that section are choosing between the witticisms Hamlet uses in the fight.  While it is a little graphic, that section alone is worth pages and pages of giggles.

Overall, I would give this book a 94%.

The Boat

This book is the original novel the famous movie Das Boot is based upon.  If you have not seen the movie, as I have not, it is the story of German U-boat crew and their adventures in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.  While that description makes it sound like a lighthearted romp, it is anything but.  The entire crew and the boat get pushed to their breaking points and beyond.

The author of the book actually served on a U-boat and he says that while the novel is fictional it is very closely based on real events. The author felt so strongly about this that he complained bitterly when the movie further dramatized the events to make it more exciting.

The book provides some interesting statistics as well.  Out of the 40,000 men who manned u-boats and terrorized the shipping lanes, 30,000 of them never returned.  That is a truly awful ratio.  Another troubling thing that most people do not think about  is how young everyone was.  The book implies that most people serving on submarines were under 20 years old.  However, after reading the book that is somewhat understandable because anyone suffering even the slightest bit from age would probably not be able to hold up under the constant pressure (literal and otherwise).

While I know a fair bit about World War II, most of my knowledge is confined to the land battles.  I did not know that U-boats were vastly different than modern submarines, which spend most of their time underwater.  U-boats spent most of their time on the surface, only going underwater to attack or to avoid being spotted.

I think the thing that I will remember most about this book is that it managed to portray German soldiers in World War II not as Nazis, not as men just following orders, but as tired boys just trying to do their jobs and make it home.   The sufferings of the crew, like not being able to sleep because they are battered by a massive storm for days on end, are really brought to life by the author and descriptions like the green rings around the Chief Engineer's eyes from sleep loss are enough to make one cringe.

Overall, I would give this book an 89%.

The Prince and the Pauper

I have never read any Mark Twain other than those mandated by my middle school curriculum until this one. This is another one of the many books I have inherited from my grandmother.  I decided to read it because this version has the subtitle "A Tale for Young People of All Ages" and I really liked that.

The story is sort of a classic tale of two people switching positions, in this case the aforementioned prince and pauper.  Interestingly, unlike a lot of these stories, the two main characters have no contact with each other for the majority of the story.  Also, considering the age of this tale, it probably inspired a lot of the more modern renditions of the switching story.

This book does portray a pretty grim picture of the differences between the upper and lower classes in England in those days.  Also, it shows some issues with medicine at the time and how willing people were to accept the "prince's" drastic change in behavior and knowledge levels.

What was the most interesting part of the book to me was that there were various endnotes that explained various historical implications of the events of the novel including how he felt the events of the young prince's childhood in this story affected his actual reign as king.  They also talk about various laws and historical facts that influenced his decisions about various plot points in the book.

I think that the thing I will remember about this book is the harshness of the laws presented here.  It is easy to think of things like the Salem Witch Trials as a isolated historical incident but it was really just a harsher and more extreme version of the norm at that time.  The fact that people were actually routinely flogged and burned at the stake, even for relatively minor issues, is a troubling part of our world's history.

This copy was originally published in 1944 (I think, check out this website for the interesting history of this particular printing run http://www.twainquotes.com/UniformEds/UniformEdsCh35.html).  Another interesting thing about this version, is that, because it was published during WWII, it has a small picture in the bottom inside of the back of the dust jacket.  I thought that this was pretty interesting as I had never seen anything like it before.

Overall, I would give this book a 86%.

Doomsday Book

It feels a little unfair to compare this to Blackout/All Clear because this was written years earlier and Ms. Willis has obviously improved as a writer in the intervening timespan.  However, with their both being part of her "Oxford Time Travel" series, it is hard not to.  Don't get me wrong, Doomsday Book is quite the good book, it is just not as good as Blackout/All Clear.

Instead of World War II, this story takes the time travelling protagonist to England in the Middle Ages.  Also, in this book it continues to follow the characters in the "present" as well as in the past which makes for some interesting parallel dramatic tension (though if you don't understand the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian calendar, the timeline can be a mite bit confusing).

The beginning and the ending of this are both very strong,  but I felt that it slacked off a little in the middle.  Some important things happen, for sure, but I feel that it could have been compressed.  However, the final act is wrought with emotion and a pretty moving expression of what life what probably like in that time period for some people.

Despite the slowness in the middle, I would say that the biggest problem that I had with this book was, since it was written shortly after I was born, the future that the time travelers come from no longer feels very futuristic.  There is surprisingly large number of pages devoted to one of the characters trying to find someone to stay by his phone while he goes out, which kinda broke my suspension of disbelief because he really should have a cell phone.

Like Blackout/All Clear, the strongest part of the book is the characters, heroes and "villains," they are all very well done and you really feel for them.  It would be hard to imagine a time travel story that tried so hard to emphasize the lives of everyday people that wasn't by an author of Connie Willis' caliber.  She is the only author that can consistently bring me to (at least) the verge of tears whenever she tries to.   I think that these characters will live on in my head for a long time.  (Also, there are two little girls in this book who remind me a great deal of an Arya and Sansa Stark if they lived in the actual middle ages rather than Westeros.)

That being said, the time traveler in this book seemed a little less competent at her job then those in Blackout/All Clear (last comparison, I promise), she is much freer with information that she is from the future than the other books' protagonists.  She is also a lot quicker to give up hope than the others.  To be fair, she is less experienced than at least some of the characters in the other books so she has that rationalization going for her.

Overall, I would give this book a 93%.

The Years of Rice and Salt

A while back I did a post about Agent of Byzantium.  I talked about how it was not at all bad but the short story format didn't flesh out the world nearly as much as I wanted it to and how I wished that it had gone further down the path of history.  The Years of Rice and Salt answers most of those complaints, ironically from the opposite direction.  In Agent of Byzantium, Islam is never founded and so the Eastern Roman Empire never falls.  The premise of this book is that instead of one third of Europe dying during the black plague, 99% does.  The book starts when the black plague is just finishing up its course and goes through about 2050 C.E. So it covers about a 1000 years and really fleshes out the world showing how different parts adapted differently.

The book was recommended to me by a friend after he lent me Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars.  I didn't get around to reading it for about four years until it caught my eye in the small used book store in the little town where my Dad lives.  Since I have a difficult time leaving a book store empty handed I bought it.  $8 for a hard cover in good condition is pretty good.

Unlike a lot of alternate histories, this book does not make special effort to point out that certain events did or didn't happen.  Perhaps it is partially because this is so drastic of a historical change but I would like to attribute it at least partially to Mr. Robinson's skill at writing.  Despite the massive change, it is a pretty believable history (though Japanese ronin helping Native Americans fend off  Chinese conquistadors is a little far fetched, I will admit).  The history, rather than focusing on the leaders and major events, follows the lives of relatively normal people.

The book covers its time span by having 10 short-story-esque parts with varying amounts of time between each one.  The group of characters are always the same group, reincarnated in different positions.  This would merely be a quirk of the book except that some of the stories follow the characters after death while they have conversations in the afterlife; a seemingly needlessly fantastical flourish.  Each of the characters is then reincarnated as someone whose name starts with the first letter of the last life's name so you end up thinking of the characters as K and B.

One of the themes of the book is that the idea of a one overarching "shepherd" god is a bit naive and that there is holiness in all things.  Multiple different characters express this view and even the ones that don't seem to believe it.  In addition, the book spends a lot of time following the advancement of women's rights in the world and, while not as much the progression of science, the progression of scientific thinking.  It is very interesting.

This book makes for an good read, however, it can come across as a bit dry at times.  Not exactly a fun read, but a nice intellectual one.

Overall, I would give this book a 92%.

Agent of Byzantium

Agent of Byzantium is a collection of short stories that take place in an alternate timeline where the Byzantine Empire did not fall.  The book takes place around 1300 AD and follows one particular citizen who works as sort of a James Bond-esque character for the government.  The stories are certainly interesting and definitely left me wanting more.

The book starts with an introduction by Isaac Asimov where he discusses his love of alternate history stories.  He talks about how he would like to see one where Einstein's letter to Roosevelt arrived a day later.  This would put its arrival on Pearl Harbor Day when a response probably would have been delayed or lost in the shuffle.  I thought that that was a really interesting idea and it was nice to read Asimov's reasoning behind "presenting" this book.

The part of history that is changed so that the Empire never fell is that Mohammed, instead of founding Islam, converted to Christianity and became a Christian saint.  With this change, the Muslims never become a significant military force and never pressure the Empire.  In addition, this means that the Persian Empire never fell either.  This means that, throughout the book, Byzantium and Persia are engaged in a cold war.  This matters more in some of the stories than others.

Each of the stories basically has a gimmick, some (more) modern invention that is discovered by the protagonist that shapes the story.  In one, he finds a telescope and another has him finding a printing press, among several other stories.  I understand that that was a nice gimmick that allowed even someone without a strong grasp of history to be involved in the story because they could recognize the modern inventions.  However, I cannot help but feel that this at least somewhat implies that technology would have progressed faster without Islam, which is not a sentiment that I like as much.

It was interesting to read this so close to the end of the Mongoliad because they take place in similar time frames and it was exciting to see some of the similar things between the stories (though Mongoliad had much better combat).  In this book, the protagonist spends some time living among the mongols which resembled some of Gansukh's chapters in Mongoliad.

There is certainly nothing wrong with the stories in this book.  The biggest problem is that there are only five.  I wish that the book had been either a full novel rather than short stories or at least a lead in to a larger exploration to this alternate timeline.  Sadly, Mr. Turtledove has not done any such thing (at least not yet).

Overall, I would give this book an 87%.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

"Can a magician kill a man by magic?" Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. "I suppose a magician might," he admitted, "but a gentleman never could."

I think that this quote sums up a lot of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.  This book takes place in an alternate history of Europe and the world where magic is real.  The book takes place in the early 1800's and covers a long period of time.  However, unlike Michael Stackpole's Crown Colonies, real historical events like Waterloo take place throughout the course of the story and all of the geography is real. 

 

The way that magic works in this book is interesting because it appears to happen basically without cost. Magicians never seem to suffer any sort of consequences for doing even powerful magic.  This makes the magic in this book, in a way more subtle, while also making it more powerful.

This book is Ms. Clarke's debut novel and it is, especially for a debut, quite good.  The book is very long but it uses that length to fully immerse the reader in the world.  The world of the upper class in the early 1800's is very different than the modern world but after a book this long it seems very natural.

The book is also very silly.  At no point is it outright funny, but the author makes a lot of little side comments that make it sillier.  Also, she has built up an entire world of stories and literature that are referenced in her extensive footnotes throughout the book.

While the first third of the book barely has Jonathan Strange in it, he dominates the latter two thirds.  At the end of the book it talks about how some people support Norrell's views and others, Strange's.  However, with Strange taking up so much of the book, it was hard for me to see how people would take Norrell's side of view.  I would say the situation would be analogous to someone who only read Al Franken thinking about Republicans.

I tend to avoid talking about the format that the books I read are in.  However, this book was the first book I read with the new Kindle firmware that estimates the amount of time that the reader has left in chapters and in the book.  I felt like the estimates were a little off but, on the Kindle, it was a nice compromise for the lack of physical pages.

Overall, I would give this book a 94%.

11/22/63

I first heard about 11/22/63 from an interview with Stephen King at the end of one of the first Gunslinger comics (I know, I am a nerd).  I do not remember exactly what the question was but it was something about other ideas for comic stories and he described a story about someone who goes back in time to save JFK and comes back to the present to find it ruined and he then has to go back in time again to stop himself from saving JFK.  This concept intrigued me and when I saw that he had made a book based on it, I told myself that I would read it when I got the chance. 

Without giving too much away, I will say that the plot of 11/22/63 does not follow that original idea very closely.  Despite this I greatly enjoyed the book.  The way that it handled time travel was relatively unique and historical detail was great.  The book did lose its way a little in the middle, but it finished strong and was certainly an enjoyable read.

The way that time travel works in this book is interesting and different from any other version of time travel I can think of having seen.  In this there is one time portal that always goes back to exactly the same time and people always come out two minutes after they go in.  The author avoids the problem of all the time travellers running into each other right outside the portal by having the world undergo a reset each time.  Therefore any change that is important has to be the last time the portal is ever used.

The afterword implies that Stephen King has gone a boatload of research for this book, and it shows.  The level of historical detail that he put in is sometimes staggering.  It is easy to believe that the characters are in the 50's and 60's because the author puts in so much effort to make the elements of story really seem like it.

The middle of the book seemed to get a little off message.  The portal opens in 1958 and the reason for not just compacting the story by a year seems unclear.  I feel like the whole plot makes sense if there is one less year for it to happen in but I am sure that Stephen King had his reasons.  Despite this, when the book nears its climax, it becomes almost impossible to put down  The sense of urgency is fantastically done. 

It is interesting to compare this to Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis, which was featured on this blog last year.  That book had a team of time travellers and they all worked together and they went to WWII.  This book had a single time traveller going to the 50's and it seems much more (if this word can be used to describe a time travel story) realistic.  In 11/22/63, the protagonist makes  multiple gaffes where he uses slang and makes other references to things that take place after the time he is in while in Blackout/All Clear, the closest thing to that is them discussing what is going to be bombed when.  I would say that Blackout/All Clear is better written but Stephen King makes the reader feel more like a time traveller.

Overall, I would give this book a 94%.

The Mongoliad: Book Three

For the third and final book in the Mongoliad (though not the last in the overarching Foreworld Saga, as the authors keep reminding us) I decided to splurge and buy the deluxe copy.  This comes in hard cover, has a nice map, sketches of some of the characters and the short story that they timed to come out with this book "Seer" which tells of a little adventure starring Andreas, who in retrospect, may be my favorite character in the series.

Before I talk about the story, I want to quickly discuss the deluxe edition.  It was somewhat frustrating because each of the deluxe editions has these same features.  Since they have different portraits in each book, by this one they are mostly characters who are inconsequential.  I have no problem with "Seer", it is just slightly annoying because this book references the story that came with the second deluxe edition, (that is also available separately) "Dreamer", much more.  With the greater number of references, it seems like it would make more sense to include that one.  On the map, they have the path of the journey that the main characters are going on, but they have that journey plotted to where it stands at the end of the book rather than the beginning, ruining a little of the suspense.  One final issue, is that the first two books are each ~400 pages.  This book, minus "Seer" is ~700.  I would have appreciated a slightly more balanced allocation of pages all around.

Despite all of my issues with the formatting of the deluxe edition, the story was enjoyable.  As with the previous two books in the series, the best part is the exceedingly well done sword fights.  They are done in a level of detail that is just not found in most books.  As a reader, you can tell that the authors spent a painstaking amount of time researching these.

The dual climactic battles at the end of the story work well (very well) but the politics of the cardinals did not really do that much.  Actually, the interactions between the characters in the political storyline and those in the other story lines are so few that it almost feels like you are reading two books in one: one about an election in Rome and one about the Shield Brethren.

Also, the story has hints of magic throughout.  Everything is explainable so far (and I like fantasy stories), I was just greatly enjoying the historical fiction that these stories are and I don't want magic to complicate that.

Lastly, the end of the story is so clearly a set up for more stories that it is almost painful.  Almost every surviving  character ends on some degree of cliff hanger.  Which would not be quite as big of an issue, except that I had imagined these to stand alone.

Because I had some Kindle Lending Library borrows available, I got two other of the short stories.  One about the father of one of the characters, "The Beast of Calatrava" and one about Ferronatus and Rutger as young men, "The Lion in Chains".  Of these two, the one about Ferronatus was much better partially because it filled in more backstory for characters that have already been introduced to the reader.  I am slightly worried about the future of the Foreworld Saga if they move away from the characters that have been established by their major book series and their major talent.  However, I love me a good cohesive canon and I am excited to see where the world goes.

I know I spent a lot of time on the negatives of this book.  Despite this, I did enjoy this book and it was a fun read.

Overall, I would give this book an 85%.

Gravity's Rainbow

I received Gravity's Rainbow as a Christmas gift.  The back cover made it sound a little strange, missiles hitting in exactly the same spots as a random soldier having sex?  Thus, it was with some trepidation that I embarked on the journey of reading the book.  However, remembering the fondness that I view Blackout/All Clear with, I was willing to give another abnormal story about World War II a chance. 

The time that it took me to read this book would normally allowed me to read several books, but I found that I had difficulties finding the time to read it.  Not that there wasn't time, but that I was allocating that time to other things.

I think that the key part of my issue with the book is that it didn't live it up to its potential.  This book had great promise of being a kind of strangely silly WWII story; a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but set on Earth in the 40's.  In the beginning, it gives you some hints that perhaps that is where it is going.  It is not going there, it is going some place far, far stranger and less enjoyable.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I read a New York Times review of the book before I started writing this.  Normally, I try to avoid reading reviews until after I write mine (a small part of the reasons for this blogs existence is that I rarely fully agree with a review).  However, this book was nominated for and won several awards and just narrowly missed getting a Pulitzer and I was worried that by disliking it I was missing some fundamental part.  The New York Times article's author obviously had a better time than I did but it was still rather critical of the book and I think that some of the points that he made are very valid.  (For the curious, here is the review: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-rainbow.html )

In short, the book tries to be an expansive in depth story, but it almost collapses under its own weight.  There are so many characters that don't make sense and seem pointless, so many plot threads that remain basically unresolved, so many resolutions that are at best strange and at worse unsatisfactory.  This book is more than 700 pages and I feel like it might have done better to be 200 pages longer and perhaps divided up into a few of books to better allow the characters a more coherent story.

A special note on one of the resolutions.  One mystery in particular, the 00000 rocket, is brought up again and again throughout the book and it resolution, when it finally arrives, is so strange and so anticlimactic that it does not do itself justice.

One other thing that I did not like was the sex.  I am by no means a prude but the sex in this book was, frankly, ridiculous.  It is not so much the quantity as the general types.  There are is the B, the D, the S, and the M from BDSM, urine, pedophilia, orgies, and the only sex scene I have ever read with feces. I have not had that much trouble reading any single scene since the scene in Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho where the main character kills a hobo very graphically.

This book is not entirely bad.  The second of the four parts is quite an enjoyable read (though it does randomly drop a bunch of plots from the first part) and it really explores the levels of paranoia that, somewhat ridiculously, seem justified.  I am also generally glad to read award winning books because I like to see what kind of books win awards.  This book was a bit of a slog but I am glad that I read it.

Overall, I would give this book a 70%.

The Mongoliad: Book 2

The second book of the Mongoliad is an interesting read.  It definitely continues the promise of the first book with vividly realized and described combat.  The historical era that the books cover is one that is rarely discussed in mainstream history, the point after Genghis Khan died but before the Mongol tribes splintered.  I like it for that reason too, the books make a rarely discussed era of history exciting.

Even though this is a collaborative work between many authors, it works very well.  It gives each character (or group thereof) their own unique feel without each section being jarringly different like some collaboration novels (I'm looking at you, Wild Cards).

I was totally understanding of the last novel ending on a cliffhanger, however, I was vastly less understanding of this one leaving that cliffhanger open for the first 80 pages.  Plus, I am sure that the storyline that took up most of those 80 pages will eventually tie into the ones introduced in the first book, but at the end of the second book it seems pretty mysterious how it is going to do so.

Since it had been a while since I had read Book 1, it was a little difficult to be sure that I was making all the connections I was supposed to be making.  The names are also not the type of names that are easy to remember and distinguish so that didn't exactly help.

Like in Book 1, the sword fighting was excellently written.  It was taken to a basically unique level of detail.  There was a little less of it in this book, but that is because the series is headed to (I believe) a big climax with much sword fighting and that takes some non-swordfighting plot bits to be set up.

After reading this I read a couple of short stories set in the Mongoliad universe before this main series.  They are short and don't cover what I want out of Mongoliad stories: swordfighting and cool insight into that era of history.  They are more character pieces, giving the reader a bit more insight into some of the characters.  I think together the two stories might come to 150 pages, so they are pretty short but fun little reads.

Overall, I would give this book an 88%.

Shane

My discovery of Shane was sparked by Wikipedia.  I was looking up information on the most recent Dark Tower book (which I will be reviewing soon) and I began wandering through Wikipedia as some people have a tendency to do.  I noticed that main character of the Dark Tower series, Roland, was partially based off of the titular character of the book Shane. I do so love origin stories and behind the scenes information, so I thought it would be worthwhile picking up.

When I did scoop it up at my local used book store, (it came out after 1923, so its copyright is still strong) I noticed that it was very short.  Like my the book I reviewed immediately before this one, it was probably 120 pages at the most.  I had noticed on Amazon that versions of the book had been edited to remove "words that might offend" and so I was a little hesitant to pick up a copy without knowing if it was the edited one or not but after a quick look at the copyright page I saw Bantam was kind enough to promise "It contains the complete text of the original hard-cover edition. NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED."  There were still times when characters said "By Godfrey" or something similar but I assume that that was in the original version.

What I read about this book would have me believe that it redefined the western genre; somewhat created the mysterious gunslinger archetype.  I would believe it, a lot of this book seems slightly cliche now but I can forgive that if it was creating those tropes.  This was Jack Schaefer's first book, and his most famous.  For a writer to come out of the gate with a book like this shows real skill.

The storytelling and pacing are excellent.  Living in this era, knowing that the mysterious gunfighter is the protagonist, most readers would be able to guess a lot of the plot just from that.  However, this story is told entirely from the view of an admiring kid, which does make it an interesting change from the norm.  The way that certain things are described, the book can really take you into the kid's head and show how he really looks up to Shane.

I am not a huge fan of the western genre, but I enjoyed this.  It was a fast, fun read with bona fide historical significance. Overall, I would give it an 87%.