Last Dragon

The debut of a brilliant new voice that will change the fantasy genre forever.

An intricate web of stories weave together to tell a tale of revenge, justice, ambition, and power. Zhan has been sent to find her grandfather, a man accused of killing not only Zhan's family, but every man, woman, and child in their village. What she finds is a shell of a man, and a web of deceit that will test the very foundations of a world she thought she understood.

A tale of revenge that grows into something more, Last Dragon is a literary fantasy novel in the tradition of Gene Wolf and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. J.M. McDermott brings the fantasy genre to new literary heights with a remarkable first novel that will leave critics and readers alike in stunned awe.

I've been talking about Last Dragon practically since I started this blog. It's taken me a much longer time to finish it that I originally anticipated, often spending weeks on the floor of my car, underneath my coffee table, hidden in my bedroom. I was avoiding it because I was avoiding reading. 5 days a week of working in a bookstore, I wanted nothing to do with books. Fortunately for me, Debris renewed my love for books, and, as it turns out, Last Dragon renewed my love for reading.

What is life besides a series of memories? And, really, do you remember the order your memories belong in? Which part came first, what happened most recently? Some of it is clear, but most of it is a jumble, things coming back in pieces, a little bit of everything at a time. This is how Zhan tells her story. It is a series of letters written by a dying women. She is trying to remember, only, "...it's all mixed up in my head. I [Zhan] can't separate lines from lines, or people from people. Everything is in this web, Esumi. Even you. Even me. .... The ghosts all fade the same way. They fade together." In the method of this story telling, there was a different POV besides first person, second person, etc. It wasn't your normal sort of narration. The letters were private, earnest, and honest. They were sent expressly to one person and we are simply privy to that honesty. In this, we see a different narrator. You feel for her, you know her, you see inside her and you begin to really know her. This wouldn't work so well in simple first person narrative, I don't think, and that's the genius of the way the story is told.

There is something incredibly beautiful about this novel. It weaves a story that can maybe be compared to a dance. Back and forth it goes, over and over, back to the same places it had been, but with different things to say, different things to do. Perhaps I've spend too much time reading and I've begun to talk like the novel was written, but there is truth in that statement. The farther into the novel I progressed, the more beautiful I found the book to be. I felt like I knew Zhan, like I was Adel's friend, like Seth had betrayed me, that I wanted Esumi to understand, to come back. I was drawn into the story in a powerful way, and I loved every minute of it.

The narration itself is inconsistent at best, jumbled at worst. The first time, I stopped reading it at around page fifty because the book required a certain amount of concentration I couldn't give it. However, when I picked it back up again, I was able to give it the concentration it deserved, the concentration it required, and I was immediately sucked back in. Focus is required for this book. It is not your "light beach reading" sort of book. It's an honest portray of a journey that wasn't all good. It's confusing if you're not paying attention. The way it is written makes sense, in a nonlinear sort of way. The story is a like a spider web, as she says herself in the very first page of the book. It weaves back it forth. It's a tangle, and it doesn't always make sense, but that's life. Life doesn't always make sense. It's not always linear and manageable. It's confusing, it hurts. It's not always a happy ending.

The one thing that bothered me was that when the narrator switched, you couldn't tell. The thing about switching narrators is that it needs to be obvious, the separate personalities must be reflected in the tone of the words, otherwise it doesn't work. More than half the time, Zhan was the narrator and that was fine. When it switched, the only clues were what was being said. The voice was exactly the same.  I'm not sure if it was intended to be Zhan's voice explaining their words, or if it was just bad writing. If it was supposed to be Zhan's voice explaining their words, that's a whole separate problem; I couldn't tell. The voices merged together too much and in the case of the narrator, too much was left unexplained and I was left more confused than I would have liked.

This book reminds me why I like reading. It's a challenge that you have to accept. It's an invitation to a world that you can only temporarily belong to, but that little bit of time is an epic adventure that you don't want to end. It's a journey that you take with the main character, not one that you sit outside of and watch. This book is different, and difficult. It's not meant to be easy. Throughout the entire novel, I never hoped for a happy ending. I never hoped for a sad ending, either. The book simply was. The events in this book all happened outside its pages. Every word carries the weight of the words before it and after it. It is a story wrapped in itself. Almost from the beginning, I knew I wasn't going to be delighted at the end of the book.  Again, it's not going to be everybody's cup of tea. It's a little bit creepy, sometimes way too honest, and seriously hard on the brain.

Whether all this is good or bad, that's for you to decide. For me, it was a very good and extremely impressive first novel. J.M. McDermott has serious talent in the way of storytelling. He wrote a second book, Never Knew Another, and I'm thinking I'll just have to read that one, as well.

Rating: 9 - Near Perfect
This book was really hard for me to rate. There was so much that I absolutely loved about it, and enough that bothered me that I couldn't give it a 10. I wavered between 8/9, but I settled for 9 because I really loved it. It was a great, engrossing story. I would say its the kind of book that everyone should read, but I'm not sure that it's the kind of book everyone would enjoy. If you're looking for something different or a challenge, definitely give this one a shot.

»»  read more

Debris

She can control pions, the building blocks of matter, shaping them into new forms using ritual gestures and techniques. The rewards are great, and she is one of most highly regarded people in the city. But that was before the “accident”.

Stripped of her powers, bound inside a bizarre powersuit, she finds herself cast down to the very lowest level of society. Powerless, penniless and scarred, Tanyana must adjust to a new life collecting “debris”, the stuff left behind by pions. But as she tries to find who has done all of this to her, she also starts to realize that debris is more important than anyone could guess.

Debris is a stunning new piece of Science Fantasy, which draws in themes from Japanese manga, and classic Western SF and Fantasy to create this unique, engrossing debut from the very exciting young author Jo Anderton.

The world of Debris is a fantastic place. I think the author did a fantastic job of creating this world without overloading us with information all at once. I did take it upon myself to look up the definition of a pion. For the record, a pion is:  a meson that is a combination of up and down quarks and antiquarks, that may be positive, negative, or neutral, and that has a mass about 270 times that of the electron (from Merriam-Webster). Basically, it’s a really small bit of energy, which is what you get from the book anyway.

The entire book is very cleverly imagined. It’s the most original sci fi/fantasy story I’ve read in a long time. It’s a world where energy – little bits of energy – is everything. The worldbuilding elements are all there. There is a lot of description in a lot of points, but it is not burdensome. We see the world as Tanyana does; we follow her every step up of the way from her fall and the lost of her power. When Tanyana loses her ability to see or manipulate that energy, the world goes dark, to a certain extent. Things like paper and gas lamps are nearly unheard of among higher circles. Only those who can’t see the energy – can’t see pions – use those sorts of things. While there is a lot of description in certain parts, there are sometimes where there is not enough description. I think it was a bit unbalanced, there were chapters where I wished the circumstances were better described, and still other chapters where they were described far too well. It was well done and clever enough that this didn't bother me as much as it might have in another book.

I’m going to assume that Tanyana was not supposed to be likeable in the beginning. Sometimes, I would feel sorry for her and I would wish her better luck, but then the very next page and I’d change my mind. She’s selfish and she believes she deserves better treatment than the entire rest of  the population. Tanyana was skilled, she was the best there was, and she lost it all. She was used to being treated better for what she could do, now she has to learn how to prove herself for who she truly was. She grows toward the end of the book, just as a character should. At the beginning, she is insistent that no one could possibly know or understand her. I mean, how in the world could these people possibly know what happened to her? I wouldn’t suppose that there’s something like gossip in her world? If there is, she seems to think she’s above it. By the end, she is more willing to understand. By the end, Tanyana has formed a bond with the people she never would have looked at before and was willing to fight for them, as we see in the final pages of this book. I found that I enjoyed watching her journey from rich snob to understanding debris collector. She learns throughout the book, exactly as a good character should. At the end of the book, I appreciate her journey and I'm excited to see her grow more in the next one.

The book was captivating. It not only bought my attention but it also earned it. Except for the slow beginning, there wasn’t a moment where I didn’t want to flip to the next page. Most of this book was read during my breaks at work. I hate taking breaks because I hate not doing anything, it’s just a character flaw, but this book made me look forward to my breaks. It made me wish they were longer so I could read more. I loved that there was no dumping of information in the book. There were things in the book that were never exactly explained, they simply had to be discovered or inferred. Other things were explained later as they were explained to Tanyana. It was very well done, though, and I never really felt confused or lost in the book.

There were a few things about the book that bothered me. First was the unanswered questions. So many questions were raised in the process of this novel and only a few were answered or sort of explained. I suppose thats what the sequel is for, but now I'm concerned that this will turn into an infodump in the next book. I felt like the promise of this novel wasn't particularly fulfilled within the pages of this book, but I guess I had originally assumed it was standalone. I guess we'll see with the sequel. Part of me wishes it was a standalone novel, if simply for the fact that I generally tend to prefer standalone against series. I also didn't appreciate the abundance of sex scenes in the novel. Ok, so I use abundance a bit liberally, but my point remains: there was no point. They served no purpose and did nothing to push the plot along. Nevermind the moral issue of it for a minute, there was no reason for them. Even the romance itself approached too quickly for me, although that was a little more forgivable. The romance itself helped to push the plot along, it made sense for Tanyana and where she was at that time. The sex didn't. I think it was just an unnecessary plot point and could have very well been excluded.

Over all, a great debut novel from Jo Anderton. I’m looking forward to seeing more from her in the future – especially a certain book two coming out next year – and I definitely think she has a lot of potential as a science fiction author.

I received a eBook review copy of Debris from the publisher, Angry Robot. Debris comes out in October 2011. See the publisher site for more information.

Rating: 8 - Excellently Done. I wavered on the edge of 9, but settled for 8. There was enough that bothered me that I couldn't give it a 9, but the novel was great and the series definitely has potential.

»»  read more

Quick Review: The Floating Islands, Bumped, Ted Chiang

Some books aren't meant to have full reviews. It may be that they weren't finished, or they're easily summarried in a few sentences. Maybe the time just isn't there or the book just isn't worth it. That's why quick reviews. A quick synopsis of recently read books that I just don't have the time or maybe the willpower to give a full review. Usually, it'll be more than one book. This week, I've chosen the books that I've read most recently: The Floating Islands, Bumped, and Stories of Your Life and Others

  

The Floating Islands by Rachel Neumeier

The Floating Islands will forever remain a DNF book for me. It was, for me, all at once lovely and disappointing. You may have noticed from my previous posts that I think the writing is a big deal. It can make or break a book, and in this case, it broke it. I absolutely loved the world that the author created. I was reminded a bit of a scene in Avatar where they go to visit those mountains or whatever that was. (It's been a long time, sorry.) The world was excellently and expertly created, and I loved every detail of it. However, the story itself fell a little flat. There was nothing in it for me to feel for the characters. They were both brats, although that may be a little unfair considering Trei's parents and everyone he knew had just died. I think if I had finished this book, I could find myself very much enjoying it. I just couldn't get very far in it. Maybe I'm just in a book slump or something. Anyway, I would neither recommend nor not recommend the book. I say give it a try, just don't have great expectations for it. It might not disappoint, but it might not live up to them, either.

Bumped by Megan Cafferty

Bumped was an experimental read. I have never really enjoyed satire because I tend to take it too seriously. So when I started reading bumped, I went in with no expectations. The subject is a rocky one for me - teen pregnancy, especially where I firmly believe in no sex before marriage. Still, I found the book entertaining. The switching of perspectives between Harmony and Melody was interesting, especially when the two girls looked at the world is such different ways. I'm not sure that I appreciated the author's representation of Harmony and Goodside, mostly because it hit so close to home. It is a completely inaccurate representation of Christians, and I'm not sure how to respond to it. I know that the book is satire, and it therefore walks what I would call a very fine line. Now don't think I'm feeling offended or upset by it, I simply am not sure how much of it is truly satire when there ARE "christian" cults that behave that way and I sincerely feel for the people who are subject to it. In any case, back to the book itself. The entire story was about choices and identity and the two subjects are handled very well. Both girls go back to their lives with a different mindset and a different view of how they live. Not that they suddenly are against their society's methods or ways, but they simply have realized that they had a choice they did not have before. The lingo quickly gets tiring, but it's not enough to ruin the book. Definitely an interesting look at a future not so far from being possible. Still haven't decided if I'll read the sequel or not. The cliffhanger ending does not help.

Stories of Your Life And Others by Ted Chiang

This book is a masterpiece of science fiction, as far as I am concerned The writing is gorgeous. It's eight short science fiction stories that may have just reaffirmed my love of science fiction. I don't read sci fi very often, mostly because I don't spend a lot of time around those sections of the local library/bookstore and I don't know enough people who read it to know the right books to read. I stumbled across this one during my short story obsessive phase - a phase that I am still in, I might add - and I heard only great things about it. The book certainly does not disappoint. Ted Chiang is a fantastic author. He knows how to weave a story within a few short pages. The stories in this anthology are all about discovery of oneself and one's universe. From the inside flap: ". . .What if men bult a tower from Earth to Heaven - and broke through Heaven's other side? What if we discovered that the fundamentals of mathematics were arbitrary and inconsistent? What if there were a science of naming things that calls life into being from inanimate matter? What if exposure to an alien language forever changed our perception of time? . . ." Chiang calls us to our own realities within another reality. He poses real questions that are outside our ability to fathom and answers them with more questions, but he does so with the ease and comfort of having actually answered those questions. He's a science fiction genius, if I may be permitted to say so. This is not a book for science fiction fans to miss.

»»  read more

The Life of a Book

I had another training meeting at my job today. Never mind the fact that I've been working there for a month, but I digress. During the training meeting, one of the managers offhandedly mentioned the life of a book. She described it as the process of a book travelling from featured table to the new fiction tables, to the hardcover features, to the paperback fiction shelves. She said a book's life is all about its chance to make it to the bestsellers list. It also only has about a month to make it to the bestsellers list. Some books are luckier than others. Most books leave the hardcover shelves and get close to a year before they are in paperback.

It got me thinking about books and the life of a book. I spend hours pouring over the stuff I write, making sure that my sentences are worded in a way that will convey the exact amount and type of emotion I want them to, keeping track of my "fall back words" like always, such, however, and so on. Writing is a process. I admit, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Still, when it comes down to it, if we're offering our words to millions, we want them to be perfect. Or we risk being the subject of a joke. To think that those hours and weeks and months all amount to a month on a shelf; one month between publishing date and the time its deemed unfit to be on the shelves. It's a little bit depressing. Maybe the truth here is a little bit exaggerated, but it really isn't by much. Your life's work can be done with in a month just because it wasn't noticed by the right person at the right time.

That got me thinking again. How many really good books are out there that are underestimated, unknown, or forgotten? How many books didn't make it to the bestseller's list in the given month and were shelved away with the rest of them - good and bad - as a result? Everyone loves the underdog. Its why we cheer when the little team wins - even when we were rooting for the other side. The case with books is the same. Why do you think people are obsessed with bestsellers? They once were the underdog and they've found their place in the world. Most breakout successes - the ones that make it within it's original month lifetime - are books written by well-known authors or the second, third, fourth in a series. The really good ones are probably in paperback before they're noticed.

I want to commit to a book-a-week type of thing, where I post an underrated or unknown novel and leave it up to you to decide if it's truly underrated or if its unknown for a very good reason. Every week, a new book. It can't be well known, it cant be on the bestseller's list, and it certainly cannot be the subject of many a book reviewer's blogs. It can be old or new, fiction or nonfiction.I can't promise to have read it; I'm a busy person. I'll give a brief synopsis and my thoughts. If I have free time, I will read it and review it myself. No promises, though.

- - -

For this week, I'd like to mention The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor.

First published in September 2004, this book is still very largely unknown, although within the circles where its know, its a like it or hate it kind of book. The Looking Glass Wars is a re-imagining of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass where "Alice" is really "Alyss," a girl who had lost her way. In the story, the Alice's Adventures In Wonderland we know was Charles Dodgson's - Lewis Carroll's - interpretation of a wild and mad adventure of a young girl who was merely an orphan in a rough world. Alice purists tend to not be fans of this book, and it's not hard to see why. Everything about this book is a grand misinterpreted adventure of the original, except that within The Looking Glass Wars, the original book is a mad misinterpretation of the real story. I think its wonderfully clever. I love the original story, but I love this one, too. Here, imagination reigns. Here, there are yearly parades for inventors and if the inventors are lucky, their invention is sent through the looking glass to our world. Where did you think the idea of a hula hoop came from? Imagination is the most important thing a person owns, and the book is all about its dangers and gifts. As someone writing on a blog named after a book all about imagination, you know what my opinion is on that. I found it to be a fantastic book. Enjoy it on its own merit. Forget for a minute about the original story and all its merits and enjoy this one in its fantastic adventures with Queendoms and chessboard deserts. 

Now it's time for you to decide, underrated or better left unknown?

»»  read more

Tiger's Curse

Passion. Fate. Loyalty.

Would you risk it all to change your destiny?

The last thing 17-year old Kelsey Hayes thought she’d be doing this summer was trying to break a 300-year-old Indian curse. With a mysterious white tiger named Ren. Halfway around the world. But that’s exactly what happened. Face-to-face with dark forces, spellbinding magic, and mystical worlds where nothing is what it seems, Kelsey risks everything to piece together an ancient prophecy that could break the curse forever.

Tiger’s Curse is the exciting first volume in an epic fantasy-romance that will leave you breathless and yearning for more.

Oh goodness, where do I start? I'm not sure that this book as a single redeeming quality, and I don't mean that to say that I simply didn't like the book. No, it truly was that the writing, the characters, the storyline - all were done terribly and I seriously wonder what the author was trying to get at. The book initially drew my attention when the bookstore I work at began promoting its sequel, Tiger's Quest. The menacing black tiger on the front cover caught my interest, and upon researching it, I found it was the second in a series. Naturally, I decided to start from the beginning. I did read a few of the reviews on goodreads.com, so I definitely did not go into the book with high expectations. That being said, I was severely disappointed in the novel.

We begin with Kelsey, an 18 year old who has just graduated high school and is now looking for a summer job. She finds a job at a circus where she fills in doing a bunch of odd jobs, including feeding the white tiger the circus keeps. Naturally, as is custom in recent fiction works, Kelsey immediately becomes obsessed with the tiger. You don't even need to read the back-of-the-book blurb to know that something's up. The tiger is being taken to India by someone with a rich employer and this man asks Kelsey to help transport the tiger to the other side of the world. She agrees, and adventure ensues!

I don't think I need to tell you why this book got me interested in the first place. The captivating cover, the interesting blurb. This book had serious potential that I really believe it wasted. The plot feels contrived and loosely strung together. I feel like there were so many ways for the events in this book to happen, and everything seems to follow a over-used, unoriginal formula that barely keeps me entertained. There is no emotional pull to anything in the novel. I feel no connection to Kelsey or Ren. It's like reading a string of facts, one after another. There was no reason for me to want to connect to it. It lacked any sort of voice beyond what you might find in a history book.

I know I pick on writing a lot, but there are some things that just shouldn't be done. One of those things is writing a character's thoughts in past tense. It only makes sense to write a thought in past tense if they are thinking of something that has already happened. Just because the book is written in past tense, that doesn't mean you have to continue that through to thought processes. If I was in the middle of eating a piece of cake, I would not think, "That piece of cake tasted really good." It doesn't make sense. People don't think in past tense all the time. Also, overexplaining everything the character comes into contact with does not reassure me that you did your research. Every time I finished a paragraph the detailed the exact type of plane they were in or exactly what was in the food she was eating, I only found myself completely annoyed and I still wondered if she really did her research.

And does nobody else find it creepy that while in tiger form, he keeps licking her? I mean, first of all, I don't think it's normal tiger behavior. I know that he's not a "normal tiger" but I feel like the author is trying to push it across as if that just him behaving as a tiger. It doesn't feel like that way at all. I feel like Ren-as-tiger could find so many better ways of comforting Kelsey than licking her. It's creepy and weird. Also, even if she was supposed to be the one to break the curse, Ren's behavior is oddly uncharacteristic of the society he grew up in, and even still of the society he would belong to today. I don't see any of his princeliness or proud heritage or upbringing in his behavior. You could count it toward 300 years as a tiger, I guess. Still, it's strange to me.

One redeeming thing, though small, was that she certainly got the traffic situation down. While I don't know how Kelsey managed to drive around with a tiger in her car and have no one ask question, the way the roads in India were described were perfectly accurate. It made me remember my own time in India. It would be nice to go back one day.

In the end, not the greatest book I've ever read. However, I will call say that toward the end, it got a little bit more entertaining. Once I let go of any expectation whatsoever, I found myself enjoying the mindlessness of it. Though, I think I might have enjoyed it more when I was younger and more unwise to the ways of the world. Ha.

Rating: 5, Mediocre
Recommendation: Eh. Could go either way. Don't waste your money, get it from the library or borrow it from a friend. Don't expect anything of it, bad or good.

»»  read more

Leviathan/Behemoth

It's the brink of World War I and in different parts of the European continent, two young people are making decisions and doing things that will change their lives. They are convinced to do so my circumstances that are beyond their control, and by the decisions and things, they are tossed right into the middle of what would become a global war. In this alternate history, Alek is heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary and Deryn is a girl who has disguised herself as a boy to join the fight. It is Darwinist versus Clanker, fabricated beasts versus advanced technology.

I'll give two thumbs up for an interesting premise. And if I had two more thumbs, I'd give it four thumbs up for the excellent illustrations. Leviathan and it's sequel, Behemoth, are definitely fun reads. The intricacy and detail are amazing to me, it's a world that I definitely would not mind living in. The writing is also done very well. I was a little worried at the beginning of Leviathan with the second-person POV switching between characters, but I like the way it was done. Both Alek and Deryn have their own voice, enough so that when we got to a point in the books where they were in the same place at the same time, the chapters would switch and I felt like I would know whose POV it was immediately, without having to look for clues as to who is currently "speaking." 

My only little quibble with the characters is that they were written much younger than we are told they are. When I read the book, I feel more inclined to think of thirteen- or fourteen-year-olds, not sixteen-almost seventeen-year-olds. I know this isn't an issue with Scott Westerfield's writing ability, because I read his Midnighters series and the Uglies series, and both of them contained characters written to the age they were intended to be. I suppose, in some way, we get to see a little bit more of their maturing throughout the books this way. Alek started as a spoiled young prince who had nothing to gain but also nothing to lose. Deryn began the story as a girl whose dreams of flying made her dress as a boy, though her ideas were of glory and adventure, and nothing could have prepared either of them for what would follow. So I guess, in some ways, they matured as a result of their young writing. Even so, they still seem a little young for the age they're intended to be. 

That's only a little thing though, and it definitely didn't detract from the story. I wouldn't say that the story is one that I took super seriously, or really took anything away from it when I was done. It's also not a story that I will probably remember forever, though I do want to read the third one when it comes on this year and I probably will buy the series for myself once the third one comes out. Over all, it was a good story, fun to read, and very well written. Definitely another good series for Scott Westerfield, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite YA authors.

Last thing, I can't believe I almost forgot to mention it, is the illustrations in both books. There are almost 50 illustrations in each book, both full-page and smaller drawings. They're beautifully illustrated by Keith Thompson and definitely make the book just that much better. I absolutely adore books with illustrations, and I wish authors used them more often than they do these days.

So overall, very good series. Not life-changing or anything, but certainly worth reading and enjoying for yourself.

Rating: 8, Excellently Done
Recommended For: I'd say it is a must read for steampunk and fantasy fans. It's a fun story,  nothing serious, I think, but it is beautifully written and takes place in a world where I would certainly like to visit, sans World War I. 

»»  read more