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%.

The Princess Bride

I am, as you may have guessed from the books I read, a big fan of The Princess Bride the movie.  The blend of romance and action and witticisms are highly entertaining.  I could fill an entire blog post with things I love from that movie.  I think my first introduction to it was at a Star Wars convention where Nick Gillard, the choreographer for all the lightsaber fights in the prequels (whatever you say about the prequels, it is hard to complain about the lightsaber fights), said that the fight between the man in black and Inigo Montoya was his favorite fight in cinema.  I filed this factoid away and, when I finally saw the movie, did enjoy the fight and the rest of the film.

However, this is not review of the movie, this is a review of the book, which came before the movie.  Unlike many movie adaptations of novels, the author actually worked on the screenplay of the movie as well.  This gives the novel and the movie the same tone even if the content is not identical.  The novel is perhaps even funnier than the movie, there are some great parts in the introduction of Buttercup that had me chuckling out loud.

You will notice that on the cover of the novel it says "S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure".  For reasons unknown to me, Goldman has decided to write the novel as if he was abridging someone else's work.  This allows him to insert funny interjections into his own writing and "skip over" sections.  It makes for some entertaining parts even if it is a confusing tack to take.  

But he takes it further than that, in the introductions, he talks about travelling to Florin as if it is a real place and he discusses conversations with the owners of the Morgenstern estate over imaginary legal issues with abridging the book.  Stephen King (with all his ties to Florin) even makes a cameo.  However, the real overarching story of the introductions and forewords is Goldman's relationship with his own family and, due to the way the introductions are ordered with newest first, it is like peeling back layers of onion to see how he got to where he is today.  I don't know how much of the story in the introductions is real (Wikipedia tells me that very little of it is) but it is certainly an interesting story.

My one major complaint in this book is the portrayal of Buttercup, she is shown as pretty much helpless for much of the movie, relying on the men in her life to rescue her and save her from all of the perils.  I know that this is a cliche of this type of story but this takes it a step to far where, when the reader sees something from Buttercup's point of view, it is pointed out that she is bad at math and so cannot give the reader an accurate count of something.  That was irksome.

In short, this book is a somewhat unique literary construct and very enjoyable.  Anyone who like light-hearted fantasy should probably give it a read (and if you liked the movie, you should definitely read it).

Overall, I would give this book a 95%.

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%.

Hyperbole and a Half

Hyperbole and a Half was a Christmas gift.  I had never heard of Allie Brosh or her blog (also called Hyperbole and a Half) and I have to say the cover made me slightly worried.  The combination of the subtitle ("unfortunate situations, flawed coping mechanisms, mayhem, and other things that happened") combined with the childish style of art on the cover left concerned that this could be a very unfunny book.  I was completely and utterly wrong.

See, this could be a little troubling with no context, right?

This book had me laughing incredibly hard at multiple points.  The book is formatted as a collection of her blog posts as well as some original stories (which seems to be par for the course for internet writers).  The best chapter is probably the first, where she finds a letter to her present self from her 10 year old self.  I was laughing so much my gut hurt all the way through that chapter and there are many other chapters that are nearly as funny.

There are, however, some serious chapters in the book as well.  Some of them are covered under a veil of comedy like those about her lack of motivation and the rules that she imagines the world lives by. These are humorous but still have the capacity to make the reader think.

Then there are the chapters on depression and her self-identity .  These four chapters comprise a significant fraction of the book, two of them are placed in the middle and two at the very end.  They take issues that are serious and personal and explain what it is like to experience them in a way that still has just enough jocularity to make it not scary or self-pitying.  In fact, while I loved the funny parts, I think the primary thing that I will take away from this book is the exploration of depression.  It was a fascinating read and will probably come to mind when I think of depression for years.

I really liked this book, both at its serious points and its funny points.  I have added the corresponding blog to my RSS reader and I hope that is updated frequently as her art and writing style is highly entertaining.

Overall, I would give this book a 94%.

The City and The City

The City and The City is a truly fantastic book, it certainly deserved all the awards that it received (Locus and Hugo among others).  It artfully blends detective tropes with a unique (at least among my readings) fantastical concept.  I won't go too far into it because part of the fun of the book is discovering this as you read but the basic premise is that two cities occupy the same geographic space but have different laws, language, people, etc and to go between them without certain permissions is called "breach" and strictly punished.

Whenever I read a fantasy book that doesn't have blatant use of magic, my brain always tries to see if there was some other explanation for the magic.  For example, A Game of Thrones passes this test until the last chapter (perhaps "passes the test" provides the wrong impression.  There are many fantasy books I love a great deal that do not pass).  This book, however, passes completely.  All of the magic is completely explainable while at the same time refraining from ever explicitly saying that it isn't magic.  I think the thing that I will remember the most from this book is how perfectly balanced the central idea is between a rational explanation and a fantastic one.

The protagonist is a detective (as you might expect from a mystery story) and it is told entirely from his point of view.  The way the book is structured all of the reveals, both the gradual ones about the world as a whole and the sudden ones about the resolution of the mystery, are excellent. The author says that he views this book as the last chapter in the story of its protagonist and that he would consider writing his earlier adventures.  If he writes them, I will read them.

Overall, I would give this book a 97%.

Space Chronicles

My first experience with Neil deGrasse Tyson was watching him talk about his book, Death by Black Hole, on Jon Stewart's Daily Show.  I was enamored with the concept, rushed out, bought the book, and enjoyed it immensely.  A few years later, I happened to be watching the Daily Show and again saw Tyson.  This time he was promoting a new book, Space Chronicles.  I put that on my to-get list but as a collection of his former works didn't sound as interesting as his answering of space questions like Death by Black Hole.  When I finally got it, I was right, however the book still has some interesting points.

The primary problem with the book is that, since it is a collection of his other works, he makes the same points over and over again.  Even someone who supports the space program, as I do, found the repetitiveness of some of the points exceedingly wearying.  This book would probably have more enjoyable read over the span of several months rather than a week so that the repetition would be less obvious.

However, despite this problem, the articles are all quite interesting individually.  Tyson's ability to take complicated interstellar concepts and render them easy to understand by the layperson remains undiminished over the years making it an easy and yet educational read.  The book is also interspersed with tweets from him; some of which are funny, all of which are informative.

Some of the parts I found most interesting were when he talked about the political climate during the space race (and contrasting it with today's).  I was a big fan of space race history when I was younger, I knew all about von Braun and Aldrin and Shepard and all the rest, and reading about it as an adult was a fun return to nostalgia.

I think the thing that I will remember the longest from this book is something that Tyson only makes allusions to, however the allusions he made were enough to convince me to look it up myself.  It was the story of Robert Wilson and what he said when asked about how the particle accelerator that was planned in Batavia, Illinois would contribute to national defense.  He said "In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending." (http://history.fnal.gov/testimony.html).  I love this sentiment.

Overall, I would give this book an 87%.

Joyland

Stephen King is one of those authors that I would read any of his books. They are, while not particularly dense, certainly entertaining. Joyland is no exception. While it was not a serious or science fiction-y as the last Stephen King book I read (11/22/63), it was still a fun, vacation style read.

The book takes place at an amusement park and, in traditional Stephen King fashion there is a certain amount of the supernatural. Though I thought that the supernatural bits were unnecessary and the story would have been better and perhaps even scarier without them.

I found the main character pretty likable with his mixed bag of failures and successes but really the most enjoyable part of the book was simply the setting. It is clear that the author put in a lot of time researching carnivals and amusement parks for the writing of this book. Just like 11/22/63, the research clearly shows in the attention to detail of the carnie lifestyle. Parts of the book don’t even feel like a Stephen King story; they could have been in some sort of carnival novel.

I think one of the main things that I will take away from this book is how adaptable a writer King is. He has put out a huge number of books but the last couple of his that I have read show a huge amount of effort and care put into them. The fact that one of the bestselling authors of all time does this shows how much he cares about writing as a craft.

Overall, I would give this story an 82%.