Book Reviews

The story lacks the constant sense of impending doom and loss that has become popular in fantasy lately with the renewed success of The Lord of the Rings. The characters manage to surmount their obstacles quickly. At first I thought the story would grow dull because of this, yet I was eagerly waiting to see what happened next, probably because I liked the characters so much.

The story is well written with a background mystery and a well woven plot. The protagonist is unusual but truly likeable and the story has a happy ending. And what is wrong with that?

The first book in this series is Across the Nightingale Floor, which I really enjoyed. Hearn's style was direct yet descriptive, which suited the Asian context.

However, this sequel is not nearly as good. This book splits the plot line into a male and female one. The male plot line is good, but the female plot line is weak. Not much happens in the female plot line and I found myself dozing off or waiting for it to end. Unfortunately it dominates the book.

Hearn's style is still fresh and interesting. Too bad most of the book wasn't.

I'm hoping the third in the series will revive it.

This is a surreal fantasy. The entire book is a setup for the rest of the series, which I haven't read (yet?). It is an interesting read and should be encourging to all us starting writers. It is also interesting to read the introduction and forward. I haven't read anything else by King except for "On Writing" so can't say if this is his usual quality or not. To me it seemed like a first novel which it was.

The edition I read is a revision of the original written in 1970 and published in parts starting in 1978. For this edition he cleaned it up both logically and stylisticly. It would be interesting to read a first edition it see what changes he made.

I do reccomend reading it if surrealistic fantasy is acceptable to you.

Okay someone had to...

The first few books were terrific. The characters were three dimensional and the world was vast and intricate. I couldn't put them down.

After a while though, the story got a little stale. I enjoyed the last two books but I didn't rush to buy them or to read them. Ten books and counting, plus the prequel (haven't read, probably won't) is a long time to ask fans to wait for an outcome. He should tie them up in mini-trilogies like Brooks did with Sword of Shannara.

Jordan has lost control of his tale. There are too many characters and far too many plotlines. Even though the books are massive, often several books will go by without us knowing what major characters have been up to. By then we forget who they are or why they were in the story in the first place. As a result, the chronology is a mess. And every book brings in more characters!

The protagonist, Rand, has taken a back seat along with his two childhood friends. These three were originally the main characters of the story. It's all about the women now. Women hold all the positions of power, except for Rand, whom we rarely see. This feels like a blatant appeal to a feminine audience. I don't care if the protagonists are female -- but the change in focus feels like a sellout and that irks me.

Some people say Jordan only got his books on the bestseller shelves because his wife is in the publishing business (an editor at Tor, who publishes his books). Apparently they met after Tor bought his first book, but anyway, I don't hold it against him. In any business you use all the contacts you can. I would do the same in his place.

Excellent epic high fantasy. Martin created a rich world with several huge factions with interesting characters and keeps the tension between them high. There are a couple of fantastic creatures but mostly it's about people and armies.

There were times where I had to keep reading but I didn't want to, because I knew it was going to hurt. Here is an author with the huevos to torment his characters for the sake of the story. Most of us are too scared or too attached to our characters to really make them suffer.

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series started out well, like this, but after the first few books he lost control of the story. Now he has too many characters and the chronology is a mess. I hope Martin can keep it together, because I just started the second book in this series, A Clash of Kings.

I read this book before the recent movie came out with George Clooney. The movie was decent, but poor Lem would be rolling in his grave if he knew Clooney had played a character he had penned.

Stanislaw Lem is all about the term "alien". If something is truly alien, then we as humans are never supposed to understand it. Once we understand it, said "alien" is no longer "alien", it has been defined in Human terms, and when something is defined in Human terms, it is no longer alien. Confused yet?

Therefore, most Hollywood and book aliens are nothing but Humans personified, and in his translated Polish he would say: "that's a load of crap."

Therefore, all his alien's are "alien." Humans do not understand them, and they never will. In "Solaris," the alien is a "planet" with an everchanging vast sea. On this planet, a team of researchers have established a base, and on this base, strange things start to happen. Long dead friends and relatives appear, as if nothing to has happened, though with no memory. It is reasoned that this is Solaris' means of communication, but whether malignant or benign, no one knows. Nonetheless, the Human reasearchers cannot take the strangeness and start to go strange themselves.

"Solaris" is a masterpiece of what the word "alien" really means. Lem had a belief, that aliens should be "alien", and he stuck to his Polish guns. If one is looking to learn how to create non-Star Trek aliens, There is no one better to learn from then Lem.

Having said all this, Lem is a dense read. If "Solaris" wasn't relatively short, it would be somewhat hard to get through. Lem likes thick sentences, and even in translation (I can't imagine what the text is like in Polish), the writing can be difficult. However, this should not deter writers and readers from experiencing a truly original mind at work.

So, I decided I need to read some more of the works by the established bigwigs of science fiction, people like Greg Bear, Robert Silverburg, Larry Niven, and a whole sleu of others I don't have on my shelves.

So, while in Fort Collins a while ago, I picked up "The Forge of God" by Greg Bear.

Good book.
It's a disaster tale about the end of the world, but done unlike most disaster stories. It is slow, character oriented. There's no huge action sequences, merely a steady building of strange events the Human characters don't quite understand, and never really do (in this fashion, it's much like Stanislaw Lem's work--another author I should post on.) Although the tale was slow, it kept me turning the pages. The characters were real, the ending all to uncommon. Nothing felt forced. I really didn't feel I was reading science fiction, but then again, this was a near future tale.

In summary, it was worth every penny spent, and it made me want to pick up another book by Greg Bear.

I love reading about history and the medieval time period especially, because so much of our culture and language formed during that time. This book covers many topics and does a good job of relating them to modern society, especially in the epilogue. There is much information here and many interesting side stories.

However, I found the beginning far too preachy. I understand Christianity was important to Europe and through it people accomplished great things, but all religions have been used as an excuse for almost every war in human history. Pious Christians were no better. This side was not given much airtime and thus the opening chapters seemed slanted.

Also, the narrative often jumped over time and space, which was sometimes confusing. I would have preferred it to be more chronological (which it was, mostly).

I finally read this....

To think this story has come to us after nearly 3000 years is impressive in itself. It is worth reading simply as a piece of history. It captures part of an epic tale in an era of glory and bloodlust and of battles that lasted years, and we learn much of their time and culture.

Taken purely as a story, however, it falls short. For all its length, not much happens, and we are left hanging just before the sacking of Troy and the use of the wooden horse, and of the much-foretold death of Achilles. There are many long, repetitious, flowery speeches outside and in the middle of battles, which at first are poetic, but after a few hours they get tiring. Plus it's hard to imagine warriors locked in mortal combat speaking to each other in this way. There is little suspense, because if you aren't already familiar with the tale of Achilles, there is a lead-in to each chapter that tells you what is going to happen in it.

Most frustrating of all, the gods are constantly interfering. Seriously, every few minutes some god does something to mess with the lives of our heroes. As with all deus ex machina, the struggles of mortal characters become pointless. At one point Zeus says "let us leave the mortals to fight it out among themselves" but none of the gods actually do, including him.

Apparently the original story was written in meter like Shakespeare, but that wasn't preserved in my translation. Pity. It seemed faithful otherwise.

I would say this story is important reading for any fantasy author, like Tolkien or Brooks. Maybe what we need is a retelling in a modern form (would that be sacrilege?).

This story won the 2003 Nebula award for short stories. It can be found at http://scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/fowler/fowler1…

Two questions--where is the science fiction and where is the story? I can't believe that this was nominated much less that it won.