Archives

Happy Birthday, Mr. Tolkien

Jan3

250px-Jrrt_1972_pipeToday, January 3rd, is the birthday of Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, b. 1892 in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State, South Africa, to English parents Mabel and Arthur Tolkien. Tolkien grew up to be a professor of philology and Anglo-Saxon literature, and the author of beloved and best-selling fantasy books: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Silmarillion, and other minor works.

Tolkien’s influences: Beowulf, Norse Sagas, the Nibelungenlied, Homer, Sophocles, the Finnish and Karelian Kalevala, Catholicism and Christian theology in general, She by Rider Haggard, Edward Wyke-Smith’s Marvellous Land of the Snergs, poet and artist William Morris, W.H. Auden, and of course, The Inklings, especially Tolkien’s friend, C.S. Lewis.

Influenced by Tolkien: C.S. Lewis, Terry Brooks, Stephen Donaldson, Christopher Paolini, JK Rowling, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (creators of Dungeons and Dragons), Peter Jackson, Carol Kendall, Alan Garner, Lloyd Alexander, Peter Beagle, Jane Yolen, Andre Norton, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and probably almost any other modern fantasy author, including those who write that they are deliberately reacting against Tolkienesque high fantasy (i.e. China Mieville).

To celebrate Tolkien’s 119th birthday, I read The Children of Hurin, a book I’ve had on my shelf for about a year. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion, and I guess this birthday is it. Children of Hurin is a story from The Silmarillion, adapted and edited to book form by Tolkien’s son Christopher Tolkien. The language in the book, like that of The Silmarillion, is formal, somewhat stilted, and quite beautiful. The story is a tragedy, the doomed lives and loves of the children of a hero named Hurin. Hurin’s children, Turin and Nienor, are cursed because of the hatred that Morgoth has for their father. Just as the children of Adam are cursed because of Adam’s sin and the hatred of Satan for our race, the children of Hurin make their own choices, and yet are doomed to fall under the curse of Morgoth.

JRR Tolkien died on September 2, 1973. Tolkien’s tombstone at Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford, bears the following inscription:

Edith Mary Tolkien
Luthien
1889-1971
John Ronald
Reuel Tolkien
Beren
1892-1973

Luthien and Beren are two legendary lovers from Tolkien’s epic saga, The Silmarillion.

News and Notes: Links

Nov9

Esther Hautzig, who wrote The Endless Steppe a memoir of her family’s deportation to Siberia in 1939, died November 1, 2009. She was 79 years old.
Betsy at Fuse #8 knew and worked with Ms. Hautzig.
School Library Journal article on Ms. Hautzig: “In Hautzig’s many appearances at conferences and classrooms, she encouraged people of all ages, especially young people, to keep a journal and record their stories. She believed that all stories were unique to the individuals writing them and each life story important in its own way.”

Nominations list for the Clive Staples Award for Christian Speculative Fiction. I’ve not read any of these, but I’d like to sample a few after my Cybils work is done. Any suggestions? If you voted, which book did you vote for?

The Next Big Hype: Beautiful Malice by Rebecca James out of Australia. Has anyone actually seen this highly touted YA novel?

10 Coolest Bookends.
15 Coolest Bookshelves.

BBAW: Best Speculative Fiction Blog

Sep9

Voting is now open at the Book Blogger Appreciation Week Awards.

Bibliophile Stalker Charles Tan, The Bibliophile Stalker, is having computer issues; I can sympathize. He’s a promoter of Philippine speculative fiction, a niche that hadn’t occurred to me but sounds interesting. In addition to speculative fiction, he enjoys and reports on RPG’s, anime, and manga. He’s a Neil Gaiman fan, and it looks as if a lot of his links are directed toward aspiring authors.

Dribble of Ink Aidan Moher is also an aspiring author of fantasy/scifi, and the emphasis at his blog looks to be sword and sorcery, wizards and witches. He also has a BIG List o’ SF blogs here which would be a fine resource for those looking for more speculative fiction blogs.

Scifiguy.ca I entered SciFiGuy’s Catching Fire promotional giveaway because I’m ready to read the sequel that we’ve all been hearing so much about for months. Doug Knipe, the blogger at SciFiGuy, says he reads and reviews “Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, SciFi, and Fantasy.” Look at these pictures of his library, and you’ll see that he’s serious about the genre.

The Book Zombie Joanne Mosher, The Book Zombie and the first female blogger in this category, is an enthusiastic reader. She says, “I read constantly and I have been known to read instruction manuals, cereal boxes and the YellowPages if I am without a book.” It looks as if her tastes run to zombies, vampires, and mystery/horror with a few other kinds of books thrown in for spice, when those are available to substitute for the phone book.

The Galaxy Express is subtitled “adventures in science fiction romance.” So, probably not my cup of tea, but definitely another niche I hadn’t thought about. Of the many authors Heather lists in her sidebar, I know and have enjoyed books by Anne McCaffrey, Ursula LeGuin, Connie WIllis, Andre Norton, Robert Heinlein, and Stephanie Meyer. I have a lot of others to check out.

I’m going to vote for SciFiGuy in this category because he looks like the one with the closest taste to mine, and he’s giving away stuff! No, really, I just enjoyed his blog and his style and will visit again when I get through all the nominees that I’m visiting for BBAW.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Aug19

I don’t need to do a regular review of this YA fantasy title; everyone and his dog have been there before me, and I agree: it’s a great debut novel, good story, intriguing characters, and themes that provoke both thought and emotion. Here are some reviews for those of you who haven’t read the book yet:

Carrie K: “In her debut novel, Ms. Cashore has created a fully formed world with authentic characters that breathe on the page. I loved Katsa, Po, Raffin, Helda, Bitterblue – these characters became real to me as I read, and I cared deeply about what happened to them.”

The Reading Zone: “This is a gorgeous romance set amid a fantastic fantasy. Cashore has given birth to a new world within these seven kingdoms, and the romance between Po and Katsa will leave your heart racing.”

Librarian Amy: “Katsa is an orphaned young woman, the niece of the king, who is graced with the ability to kill. As she matures, she becomes less comfortable with being the king’s bully and muscle, and part of the story is her quest to know herself, her grace, and her place in the world.”


So, relieved of the need to do a full court press review (whatever that is), I thought I’d write a little mini-essay about something I noticed while reading the book, even though it’s not the main point of the novel. The main point of the novel is that relationships are complicated, and that giftedness in whatever area can be both a liability and a “grace.” The remainder of this post assumes that you’ve already read Graceling.

Transition. (I can’t think of one.) Back in the seventies when I was a kid of a girl, I read a series of fantasy novels that became classics: the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. Since I was a teenager and more easily shocked back then, I was somewhat taken aback by the attitude of the Weyr-folk of Pern in regard to sex. Basically, without going into detail, they’re rather promiscuous. Their excuse is that the dragons make them do it. I won’t debate the morality or sustainability of such a society, but I did notice that the Dragonriders of Pern with their casual attitudes toward sexual liaisons appeared in literature at about the time that our society was tending toward casual sexual pairings and serial monogamy (and acceptance of homosexuality which is accepted and practiced on Pern). I don’t suppose it’s any great new insight, but McCaffery’s fantasy/sci-fi seemed to be trying out the same morality (or lack thereof) that the American society was trying out in the 1970’s. It works better in the books than in real life.

So what do all these dragon-riding ethical systems have to do with Kristin Cashore’s Graceling? I believe I see the same sort of playing out of the possibilities of a sexual ethic in Graceling. This time rather than promiscuity with excellent reasons, it’s the current rampant marriage-phobia that is being explored. Katsa and Po, the two main characters in Graceling, are in love, but for reasons that are unclear to me, something to do with fear of being controlled or of losing control, the two decide not to marry but to be lovers. How very twenty-first century!

I noticed this same fear of marriage (fear of commitment?) played out in the ever-so-popular Twilight series: Bella is willing and ready to go to bed with her vampire boyfriend, Edward, but she fears and resists the idea of marriage. Both Bella and Katsa are afraid that marriage will spoil the love relationship they have with their respective paramours; somehow marriage, instead of strengthening a relationship, is seen as a spoiler, a denier of freedom, and a trap. Perhaps some of this resistance to marriage is a way for the author to maintain the dramatic and sexual tension between her characters. After all, if your romantic leads get married on page 100, what kind of tension remains to be explored in the remaining 200 pages, not to mention sequels? And even if there is relationship-building and even sex after marriage, is it the kind of thing that Graceling’s and Twilight’s teen audiences want to read about?

However, this view of marriage as the problem rather than the solution, is also a popular one in our culture these days. Bella and Edward make their way to the altar over the course of the four books in the series; perhaps Katsa and Po will also come to understand the possibility for some kind of committed relationship that gives freedom because of its boundaries instead of living in fear of their own desires to belong to one another wholly in a physical and emotional and even spiritual sense. Old-fashioned twentieth century reader that I am, I call that relationship “marriage”, but if author Cashore and her characters want to call it “the grace of committed love,” I won’t complain about the nomenclature.

Noel DeVries says kinda sorta what I’m saying here. Only she’s much more straightforward and comprehensible.

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula LeGuin

Jun29

lathe: a machine for shaping a piece of material, such as wood or metal, by rotating it rapidly along its axis while pressing a fixed cutting or abrading tool against it.

The Lathe of Heaven is about dreams and dreaming, about playing God, and about getting by with a little help from my friends. It’s about time travel in a one sense, but also about changes and how the past changes the future and how each person’s actions change the both the past and the future. It’s about the elusive nature of memory. And, of course, like all good books it’s about LOST.

OK, not all good books relate to LOST, but The Lathe of Heaven appeared on my reading list because I saw it on a list of LOST-related books. And the relationship is both obvious and intriguing.

Benjamin Linus to John Locke: Let me put it so you’ll understand. Picture a box. You know something about boxes, don’t you John? What if I told you that, somewhere on this island, there is a very large box and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it when you opened that box, there it would be? What would you say about that, John?

One answer that Locke could have given to Ben’s question is that one should be very careful about one imagines into such a (metaphorical) box. In The Lathe of Heaven, the protagonist, George, has “effective dreams,” dreams that alter the future by also altering the past and making it as if it had always been on the trajectory that the dream imaged. The characters also change history by imagining or dreaming. As they travel in time their actions change was has been, or what will be, maybe, and make it as if it had always been the way it is. The problem in The Lathe of Heaven is that George has no control over his dreams; the dreams change things in sometimes good, sometimes horribly immoral and detrimental ways.

So George gets a psychiatrist to help him quit dreaming, but the psychiatrist, instead of finding a way to eliminate the effective dreams, tries to control them, to improve the world by suggesting to George what he should dream. “Dream about peace.” “Dream an end to pollution.” Just as our waking actions have unforeseen consequences, George’s dreams don’t turn out exactly as planned.

I think the LOSTies are going to have to deal in the last season next year with unforeseen consequences of their attempts to “fix” the past. They really don’t know enough about the way the Island works or about time travel or about Destiny to be blowing stuff up in hopes of resetting the future into a more palatable, or even moral, universe. Perhaps one of the “morals” of LOST, and of The Lathe of Heaven, is that human beings don’t know enough to play God. Rose and Bernard seem to have learned this lesson, and they have opted for withdrawal, cultivating their own garden, not trying to rescue or change things or save anyone.

Does the Island itself grant wishes? Healing? Is that a good thing, or perhaps does that very changing of events disturb the balance of the universe in ways that are destructive and ultimately harmful? What will it take to fix what Jack and Juliet and the others have done in the final episode of season 5? Is the “loophole” that Jacob’s enemy exploits to get to him a result of the time-tinkering that the LOSTies have been doing?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. However, just as The Lathe of Heaven ends on a somewhat ambiguous and confusing note, I predict that LOST’s ending will not satisfy everyone. Some questions will be answered definitively; other answers will be obscure with more than one possible meaning and open to interpretation; and still other questions and answers will be notably absent.

And that continuum of elucidation will again make LOST a lot like Life.

The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson

May20

I picked up The Star of Kazan at the library on spec. It looked interesting, and I’d heard of Ms. Ibbotson, but I’d never read any of her books. (If you want more about Eva Ibbotson, Austrian-born, British writer of both children’s and adult books, here’s a delightful Guardian interview with her. She starts out cranky and ends up reflective.)

A foundling, Austrian professors, Viennese cooking, a bookshop, the Lippizaner stallions, a castle, a mysterious trunk full of costumes and fake jewels. These are some of the elements that make up this adventure story set in early twentieth century Vienna and Germany. It’s not really a fantasy, but it feels a little fairy-tale-ish.

Annika, the foundling who is the story’s heroine, loves her life in Vienna as the adopted daughter of servants, Ellie and Sigrid, and the adopted “niece” of the three professors for whom Ellie and Sigrid work. However, as a found child, Annika does imagine what it would be like to have her birth mother sweep into the house and claim her as a beloved, long lost daughter.

Then, one day it happens! And Annika’s mother and her new-found family are both more and less exciting and wonderful than her imagination could have dreamed.

The story sort of reminded me of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Little Princess, one of my favorite tales when I was a girl. Annika, like Sara Crewe, is either a princess or a penniless orphan or something in-between. And Annika and Sara, as their fortunes rise and fall, are throughout both books rather Pollyanna-like, almost always humble and servant-like and joyful.

I think I would have had a great big noisy fit somewhere in there. Which shows that when it comes to living up to my fictional ideals, I don’t.

A Curse Dark As Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce

Jan14

“The story of Rumplestiltskin is what folklorists call a ‘Name of the Helper’ tale, in which a character must defeat a mysterious helper by discovering his True Name (or Secret Name or Hidden Name). . . I’ve also found it fascinating that in Rumplestiltskin, the heroine is known only as ‘the miller’s daughter’ or ‘the queen,’ while Rumplestiltskin’s name becomes a magical talisman–an object of power in and of itself. In a story about the potency of names, the heroine is anonymous.” –From the Author’s Note at the end of the book.

Author Elizabeth Bunce gives the heroine in this retold fairy tale a name, Charlotte Miller. The other characters also have names: Rumplestiltskin becomes Jack Spinner, but of course, that’s only his everyday name. The revelation of his True Name awaits the end of the story. Charlotte’s love, and later husband, is Randall Woodstone, a stable and dependable pillar of love and faith in an otherwise precarious and unreliable world. Names and naming of both people and places in this book are very important. Note to readers: watch the names.

The setting, too, is a key to the entire story. Again, in her author’s note Bunce tells us that Charlotte’s village is not based on any real place. However, it is some combination of late eighteenth century England and New England and influenced by the woolen industries of those countries as the Industrial Revolution changes manufacturing from a village-based, home-worker centered system to a city-based, factory system. Charlotte’s world is a pagan, superstitious place, with only a veneer of Christianity symbolized by crisis prayers and an occasional blessing on official occasions. Curses and hexes and wards and magic circles are the powers that be in this setting, and Charlotte must learn to fight the shadows and the curses of the past with her own inner courage and the help of friendly villagers and family.

A Curse Dark As Gold paints a picture in story of the essential hopelessness and darkness of paganism without ever presenting much of an alternative. Charlotte finds the ability within herself to love and forgive and break the curse of the past, but I’m not sure where that power comes from. I found the entire story to be both fascinating and terrifying. If all I have to depend upon is my own inner strength, or even the kindness of friends and strangers, it’s not enough. Although some whispered and desperate prayers and some Christian symbolism underlie the final denouement of the story, I’m glad I don’t live in Charlotte’s neck of the woods. It’s a scary place.

Blogger reviews:
Miss Erin: “I wonder how many times the word “gold” or “golden” appears in the book!? Golden hair and golden fields and Gold Valley and gold gold gold . . . it was obviously a major theme in it. I love themes in books.”

The Puck in the Midden: “I loved the way that marriage is presented as imperfect, as flawed, as not the happy ending, but instead as merely the middle of someone’s story. I loved the strong female characters, Charlotte and Rosie both, and I loved their flaws. I loved the very creepy ghost story.”

Melissa at Book Nut: “It took me a while — 50 pages or so — to get the rhythm of the book, to understand what Bunce was trying to do with Charlotte (she grated on me at the beginning, but eventually I understood, and liked, her as a character), and to really enjoy what I was reading. But once I got past that point, life got put on hold.”

Here, There Be Dragons by James A. Owen

Aug27

Here There Be Dragons by James Owen. Recommended by Gina Dalfonzo at Breakpoint.

A murder brings three Oxford “scowlers” together on a dark and stormy night in a club at 221B Baker Street, London. When an eccentric stranger, Bert, crashes the party, or wake, and tells the three that they are all in danger, they are forced to believe him by the appearance of strange, bloodthirsty creatures called Wendigo outside the window and clamoring to get in. So they flee, in Bert’s ship, and the adventure begins.

Shades of Narnia: There’s a Dawn Treader-like ship, and an island voyage, and nightmare creatures, and talking animals. Oh, and the world has an edge where you can fall off.

Shades of Alice in Wonderland: The trio feel as if they’ve landed in a world turned upside-down and backwards, and the King and Queen of Hearts make an appearance, croquet mallets in hand.

Shades of Morte d’Arthur: One of the islands is Avalon, and King Arthur has some influence on events in the book.

Other cameo appearances are made by Dickens’ Magwitch and the Green Knight and Captain Nemo and the Three Fates and Pandora and assorted goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, and even the evil Mordred. To me anyway, none of the references to classical mythology and more recent fantasy felt derivative or plagiaristic, merely allusive and suggestive. I had lots of fun trying to place the various literary allusions and trying to figure out where the appearance of this character or that plot element, reminiscent of a particular classic work of fiction, was leading the story.

There’s a nice surprise at the end, and if you read the reviews at Amazon, the surprise will be spoiled. I want to say I had it figured out, but I really only had it partially figured out. Suffice it to say that fantasy fans won’t be disappointed in Mr. Owens’ tribute to the best imaginative writers of all time.

Leila at Bookshelves of Doom didn’t much care for the writing, especially the dialog.

Colleen at Chasing Ray loved it as much as I did: “Here There Be Dragons is all about stepping up to the plate and doing the right thing and being smart and brave and saving the world and readers are going to love it from start to finish.”

Oh, and Computer Guru Son walked by while I was reading and stopped to looked at the cover art. He really liked the art, which I think was also done by James Owen.

According to the author’s website, there’s a sequel called The Search for the Red Dragon, and the next book in the series is coming out in October, 2008. It’s called The Indigo King, and I sure wish I could get an ARC of that one.

Mr. Owen also has a Livejournal sketchbook and blog here, last updated August 22nd of 2008.

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton

Jun21

Weird. Nightmare-ish. Imaginative. Chestertonian. Spoilers follow.

The Man Who Was Thursday fits all of these adjectives, and to be honest I’m not sure I understand what Chesterton was doing in this novel about a subversive policeman poet who infiltrates and stands against the forces of anarchy. Only it turns out that there are no real anarchists? Or maybe only one or two? Is Chesterton saying that evil is, in the end, only an illusion? That God provides men with the illusion of evil in order to test them and give them the opportunity to suffer and show courage? Or is it that in order to confront real evil, men must “tested by fire” and know suffering? Maybe I’m not intelligent enough for Chesterton.

However that may be, the plot moves quickly and furiously through madcap chases and revelations and surprises. The characters are rather difficult to keep straight, especially since their essential personalities keep changing or being revealed to be other than what the reader first thought them to be. The story is full of such twists and turns and unexpected developments, and by this literary technique Chesterton draws his readers into a dream world in which reality changes colors and aspects in a rapid-fire sequence of fantastical events.

The penultimate scene in the novel is a Job-like Council in which a Real Anarchist confronts the forces of Law and Order and Righteousness. And the Real Anarchist is answered, as Job was answered, with a question: “Can ye drink of the cup I drink of?” The themes of the novel are revealed to be those of redemption through suffering and of the seemingly contradictory faces of God, his justice and his mercy.

It’s a strange nightmare of a vision, and yet Kafka said of Chesterton’s writing, “He is so gay, one might almost believe he had found God.” C.S. Lewis apparently (according to my book’s introduction by Jonathan Lethem) compared Chesterton to Kafka, but Lethem says that Chesterton is instead the anti-Kafka, “so thrilled by his acrobatic stroll along the razor’s edge of nihilism the he earns his sunniness anew on every page.” The book does end with more questions than answers, but also with the main character having “an unnatural buoyancy in his body and a crystal simplicity in his mind that seemed to be superior to everything that he said or did. He felt he was in possession of some impossible good news, which made every other thing a triviality, but an adorable triviality.” Chesterton’s vision of the epic battle of Good versus Evil ends with a sunrise.

NOTE: I thought the strange and bewildering variety of covers at Amazon was somewhat illustrative of the many ways in which Chesterton’s nightmare turned into good news has been understood (or misunderstood) by various people. In a brief commentary appended to my edition, Chesterton even writes that a group of Bolshevists in Eastern Europe, without the author’s permission, “tried to turn this anti-Anarchist romance into an Anarchist play. Heaven only knows what they really made of it; beyond apparently making it mean the opposite of everything it meant.” If so, Chesterton has only himself to thank for writing a story with so many 180 degree turns and unmaskings that when a reader is finished he’s so confused that he’s not sure what’s opposite and what’s inside.

Christian Worldview Fantasy/SciFi

May21

Rebecca LuElla Miller at A Christian Worldview of Fiction is taking nominations for the 2008 Clive Staples Award for Christian Speculative Fiction.

Nominations, so far, for the 2008 Clive Staples Award for Christian Speculative Fiction are:

Auralia’s Colors by Jeffrey Overstreet (WaterBrook)
Demon: A Memoir by Tosca Lee (NavPress)
DragonFire by Donita K. Paul (Waterbrook)
Father of Dragons by L.B. Graham (P&R)
Fearless by Robin Parrish (Bethany House)
Flashpoint by Frank Creed (The Writers Cafe Press)
Isle of Swords by Wayne Thomas Batson (Thomas Nelson)
Landon Snow and the Volucer Dragon by Randy Mortenson (Barbour)
The Legend of the Firefish by George Bryan Polivka (Harvest House)
The Restorer by Sharon Hinck (NavPress)
The Restorer’s Son by Sharon Hinck (NavPress)
Scarlet by Stephen Lawhead (Thomas Nelson)
A Wine Red Silence by George L. Duncan (Capstone Fiction)

– – –

The works that are eligible are Christian worldview science fiction/ fantasy/allegory/furturistic/supernatural novels published in English by a royalty paying press between January 2007 and December 2007. Deadline for nominations is June 15th.

Go over and add your nominations if you know of any books that meet the criteria. I think the details on this fairly new award are still being worked out.