CBR III Review #23 - The Magician King by Lev Grossman

“Being a hero, the man had observed, is largely a matter of knowing one’s cues.” 

Hot on the heels of completing The Magicians, I decided to read Grossman's sequel,  The Magician King.  This was a mistake on several levels.  The first problem is that the first book was awesome.  The second was going to have a hard time living up regardless.  The second problem is that the second book doesn't even come close to the first.

This book again follows Quentin Coldwater, our protagonist from the first book, although this time his chapters are interspersed with chapters detailing Julia's life before the starting point of this book.  Yes, that sentence was terrible.  Anyway, this narrative structure was just one of the missteps for this book.  Honestly, I didn't care about Julia in the first book (not that we were given a reason to - she was a throwaway in the first book, barely a blip on Quentin's radar once he became a magician.  Learning about her story never mattered to me, and actually following it detracted from what I was reading in the present (as her story was in the past).  While I understand how it was relevant in the end (which I won't spoil, even though it's mind numbingly stupid), getting through her chapters was like pulling teeth.  Moody, teenaged, depressed teeth.  Ugh, so did not care.  Julia is no substitute for Alice, and I felt her absence keenly every time Julia took center stage.

In addition, Quentin, who I expected to have grown up a little after the epic finale of the first book, really hasn't.  Every time his character experiences some growth, something comes along to make him instantly disregard everything he's tried to learn.  By the very last pages, I don't feel like Quentin is any more of a man or a grown up (or, more importantly in the context of this book, a hero) than he was at it's opening.  It takes the few steps he had made in the first book and just throws them out the window every few plot twists.

And then there's the plot.  Jesus.  Quests, Gods, mystical rape, Unique Beasts, travels in and out of Fillory - it got really really ridiculous.  Personally, I'm a big hater of using "God" or "Gods" as a scapegoat for creating conflict.  The first book laid an interesting foundation point for where magic comes from.  When they graduate from Brakebills, Dean Fogg gives a great little speech about how they have access to this power they probably shouldn't, and where does it come from, and who might take it back?  This is really interesting theoretically.  And there might have been ways to explore a source of magic without being so damned cliche about it.  Without getting terribly spoilery about it, I just felt that not only was the use of Gods trite and uncreative, but the way they brought them into the story was just ridiculous.  And whereas the showdown with the Beast from the last book was violent, graphic, and disturbing because it needed to be, the invocation scene with Julia just...no.  No, no, a thousand times no.  That got graphic and gross and the worst part is it felt like it was there for shock factor, not because that's how the story had to go.

All in all, this is one I'd suggest skipping, especially if you had any affection at all for The Magicians.  I'm going to pretend I never read it and eventually go back and read the original again to wash the taste of this out of my mouth.

CBR III Review #22 - The Magicians by Lev Grossman

“For just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.” 

The Magicians is the story of Quentin Coldwater, an exceptionally bright and incredibly unhappy teenager living in Brooklyn.  After an interview for Princeton takes a shocking turn, Quentin finds himself in a whole new world - one where magic is real, and he can use it.  He begins matriculating at Brakebills, a school for magicians, learning the skills and meeting the people that will shape him from then on.

Important to everything involved in this book is Quentin's love of a children's book series, called Fillory and Further.  A narrative shaped damn near identically to match The Chronicles of Narnia, these books were Quentin's favorite long after he "should" have outgrown them.  But now that he knows magic is real, could Fillory be real, too?

This book is wonderful.  I'm a big fan of fantasy lit, and this does a nice job of making it more contemporary.  Quentin lives in the world we know, but on the fringes is this whole other world, where magic is real, and possibilities are endless.  There is sex and profanity and the type of moral ambiguity and young adult malaise that are so commonplace now.  It felt very authentic and relatable, even if Quentin was often insufferable in his search to find something to make him happy.  Not all of the secondaries get real fleshing out (Janet, in particular, felt a little thin), but the ones that do are well realized (like Alice, wonderful Alice).  It also treats magic even more harshly than I think the later Harry Potter books do.  It is not only something you work at, that can hurt you, but over-reaching your power can get you killed.  This book does NOT shy away from violent descriptions, btw.  There is one particularly nasty sequence near the end that made me think of Sin City and turned my stomach.

A really great read that I totally recommend.  I picked up the sequel, The Magician King, immediately following my completion of this one and am already sucked back in.  I'm surprised this hasn't already been grabbed up for movie rights, as the material seems to lend itself to adaptation, but perhaps it just hasn't hit the right people yet.  Regardless, if you enjoy good fantasy, especially adult fantasy, this is well worth your time.

CBR III Review #21 - The Ghost of Hannah Mendes by Naomi Ragen

"Fight the degradation of your cultures, of your environment, of your nation and your community.

Dust off the jewels in the attic, shake out the skeletons – stare them in the face.

Stop being afraid."

The Ghost of Hannah Mendes tells the story of three Sephardic women (sort of four, but Janice is really more of an afterthought than a primary character) searching for the past and how to apply it to the future.  Catherine da Costa, a wealthy Manhattan Jew, is nearing the end of her life and realizes she has not passed on the cultural traditions that have made the family what it is today.  Her daughter, Janice, and two granddaughters, Francesca and Suzanne Abraham, do not practice the faith, do not appreciate their familial ties, and are completely disconnected from the history of their family.  Catherine decides to change this, motivated by visitations from the spirit of her ancestor, Hannah Mendes (who goes by several names in the course of the book, all historically accurate as far as I am aware).  She sends her granddaughters on a mission to Europe to locate the rest of Hannah's memoirs, a priceless heirloom missing from the family for generations.  

Both girls are a far cry from their ancestors power and family loyalty.  Suzanne is a stunning vegetarian do gooder who works for a rape crisis center and is perpetually broke.  She doesn't believe the past is relevant to the present and keeps a distance from her family.  Francesca is a petite type A overachiever, with a desire to have the things in life she thinks she should and an intense need to control things.  Once Catherine gets them to Europe, however, things start to change for all three women as they learn more about their family through Hannah's memoirs - discovering her life during the Spanish Inquisition.  The women have a great deal to learn about their religion, their roots, and themselves.

Naturally, there are two romantic subplots, because why not?  It's also one of Catherine's goals not to let the family tree die off, and her two single granddaughters are an obstacle to that.  They meet lovely Jewish men that fit their needs almost immediately upon arriving in London, and the way those plotlines resolve will surprise nobody.

What IS surprising, and enjoyable, is watching the women grow in the light of each new section of memoir they discover.  The book is broken up by excerpts from other texts (historical fiction, as far as I am aware) that teach them, and the reader, more about Hannah and what happened during those bloody years of the Inquisition.  It's a really fascinating read, especially from the perspective of a no-longer practicing Catholic.  I learned a lot about Judaism, and felt a lot of connection to the history within my own faith as well, even though I no longer practice.

This is a really great read and I highly recommend it!

CBR III Review #20 - Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

“The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. You've been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way.” 

Alright, I've put off reviewing this long enough.  I finished this book maybe a week and a half ago and refuse to write this review.  It's not because it was bad - that I'd have been able to write about easily.  It's that it is just so very very...BLAH.  It's beige.  It's white bread.  There is no flavor, no heart to this book at all.  The foundations are good, but they've built some humorless cement block building on them so that you don't bother to remember it at all once you've left it.

I'm not going to really summarize this, because I genuinely didn't care enough to remember.  We are taken to a world where human clones are bred and raised to be organ donors.  That is their entire purpose in life.  They grow up, stay healthy, and give away organs until their bodies fail and they die.  The story itself follows three characters; our narrator, Kathy, and her friends Ruth and Tommy.  The love triangle business, the way their existence at all is addressed, the relationship with the teacher, Miss Lucy, who wants them to really understand who they are - all of this sounds like really great lit material.  But none of it is explored with any depth of feeling.  It's very cold, much like the donor facilities all three of our characters end up in.  This is a story that could have done so much to explore what life could be if cloning were to go in this kind of direction, and could have connected us to it on an emotionally resonant level that left a reader asking questions.  But at no point in reading this did I give one shit about any of these characters.  It's sad.  I really wanted more from this.  And because the premise is so solid, I can't write it off entirely as bad writing.  It is just entirely too cold to leave a lasting impression.

Honestly, I'd have to suggest skipping this one.  No idea if the movie is any good, but I don't plan on watching it to find out.

CBR III Review #19 - Born in Shame by Nora Roberts

The heart has to break a little to make room.

The last of the Irish Born trilogy!  This one focuses on Shannon Bodine, daughter of an affair that Thomas Concannon had with a woman named Amanda.  Shannon starts the story completely unaware of the circumstances of her birth.  The truth is that Amanda and Tommy were very much in love for three weeks in Ireland.  Amanda went back to America and found herself carrying Tommy's child.  However, due to his marriage and family, Amanda makes the choice to inform him of the child's existence and then disappear from his life, for the good of everyone.  She ends up marrying a lovely man during her pregnancy, and that is the man Shannon knows as her father.  The novel starts with Amanda's deathbed confession of these facts to Shannon, which coincides with the detective Rogan hired to find Amanda finally arriving at the Bodine home in Columbus, OH.  

Shannon has been living the high life in NYC, working as a commercial artist and working towards the goals she thinks she is supposed to aim for.  She has the good job, the perfect apartment, the reasonable boyfriend - and no passion in her life.  She decides, in her mourning, to travel to Ireland to meet the women who identify themselves as her sisters - Brianna and Maggie, both now married and each with a child at this point (btw, those Concannon women do NOT mess around! That was a really quick turn over from both husbands being strangers to becoming two families).  

This story, in addition to exploring the burgeoning relationship between the Concannon sisters, also serves to explore Shannon's passion for painting and her rather unique relationship with the surrogate brother and neighbor to the sisters, Murphy Muldoon.  Anyone who didn't see that coming from the start of Born in Fire clearly hasn't read enough Nora Roberts.  There was an element of their relationship, however, that I was unprepared for - the mysticism.  Shannon and Murphy are connected by lovers from the past, the Witch & the Warrior.  They both dream of these people, and therefore each other.  Murphy, in fact, tells Shannon almost upfront that he loves her and will marry her, because they are fated and he's been waiting for her all his life.

I'm torn on how I feel about this.  On the one hand, it feels unnatural with the realism of the rest of the trilogy (and Roberts work on the whole).  However, being of Irish heritage myself, I understand that perspective, of knowing you've been there before, or how the land there can make you believe in things you never thought you would.  On a trip with an Irish Lit class in college, our bus driver took us to see a fairy mound.  If you are unfamiliar with this, they are little mounds of dirt all over the countryside that are believed by many to be the homes of fairies - to approach or touch one is to bring bad luck upon yourself, as you have disturbed their home.  This is something, on American soil, I would have called bullshit.  But when the bus arrived, the driver refused to get out or park closer, telling us we were taking our chances on our own.  Our professor told us we were allowed to stay on the bus if we agreed with the driver, and inexplicably, I found myself still in my seat as most of the bus emptied.  Somehow, I believed enough to avoid it.

Still, while I can see where people might indulge in the belief, especially when it's wrapped in something as emotionally complex as love, it felt a little unnatural in the context of Roberts work.  As such, this book, like Born in Ice, didn't quite touch me the same way as Born In Fire.  It's still a series I will likely revisit, if for no other reason than my enjoyment of that part of Ireland and the way Roberts loving writes it.

CBR III Review #18 - Miss Peregrine's School for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen.

This was a really interesting read, if for no other reason that it is so very different in format than your average novel.  For those unaware, this book is created from found photography.  The images inform the narrative, rather than the other way around.  Each of the pictures is a really fucking creepy image from much older times, all of which appear they have either been altered or are of something mysterious and magical.

The story itself revolves around a young man named Jacob.  Jacob grew up listening to stories of his grandfather, Abe.  Abe has shown Jake pictures of his childhood at the home of Miss Peregrine, where he escaped to during WWII.  Abe's pictures and stories are all about magical children with powers, and for awhile, Jake believes that's how it was.  As he grows older, he comes to believe that it's all an analogy for his experiences in escaping Poland as a Jew during the war, and that what he survived has led him to make it into fantastic stories.  After Abe is killed in the woods behind his house, the teenaged Jacob realizes there is more to this magical children stuff than he thought - much, much more.

Jacob decides to venture to the island in Wales where his grandfather had stayed at the home. It is here that the story really picks up steam and we learn the truth of what is going on.  To elaborate on it here would spoil things, so I won't.  It's an interesting and occasionally tense read, and the use of the creepy found photographs is really effective.  Really the only shortcoming I felt the book possessed was the ending.  While I understand the point of ambiguous endings, or endings that don't really feel like they wrap things up, I very generally dislike them.  Miss Peregrine's is no exception.  I wanted more from it.  I'm not sure if there is a planned sequel (although finding images and quotes for this review has led me to discover there IS a film adaptation planned), but I'd like one.  I don't like not knowing what happened after the curtain closed.  

Great book, though, and one I recommend!

CBR III Review #17 - Born In Ice by Nora Roberts

"Changing a man's like walking through molasses. A lot of effort for little progress."

This is the second volume of the Irish Born trilogy and focuses on the second Concannon sister, Brianna.  Brie runs a lovely and relatively successful B&B called Blackthorn Cottage.  She's a homekeeper of the highest order - she loves nothing more than cooking and cleaning for her guests in her lovely home in the Irish countryside of County Clare.  She wants to create a place of love and home there because it is not what she grew up with.

Whereas Maggie was fire and passion and temper, Brianna is a colder sort of collected woman.  She's not cold in a cruel way, like Maeve, but rather in a level headed way.  She doesn't see the point in temper or fighting and generally keeps her cool to avoid both, even when it's warranted.  I think that's why I felt less connected to this particular book.  I have a lot in common with Maggie - we're both stubborn, determined, fiery tempered women who will fight tooth and nail for what we want, and against what we don't.  Brianna's even tempered nature is something I simply can't wrap my brain around.

Thrown into her calm and ordered life, one where she craves a family of her own that she was denied years ago by the abrupt departure of her fiance, Rory, is Grayson Thane, a successful American writer of murder mystery novels.  For starters, I hate his name more than I can express.  Grayson Thane?  REALLY?  His nickname is a color for fuck's sake.  Maybe I'm nitpicking, but it bothered me.  Anyway, Grayson comes to stay at Blackthorn for some undisclosed period of months to write his next novel.  Naturally he falls for the beautiful and fascinating landlady, as you do if you are a character in a roman novel.  However, Grayson has a past that he refuses to acknowledge, one that prevents him from believing in anything but "living in the moment."  He lives a rootless existence, traveling from town to town writing and touring and never really belonging or thinking that he needs to.  Hell, Grayson isn't even his real name (btw, his real name is Michael Logan, which is an AWESOME name).  Of course when he falls for Brie, that all starts to change, and he doesn't know how to deal with it.  The novel revolves around Brie's relationship with Gray, her relationship with her mother, and the search for the sibling neither sister realized they had.

That last point sets up the third novel.  Brie discovers early on a packet of letters from a woman named Amanda to her father - love letters.  Apparently Tom and Amanda had a beautiful love affair for three weeks that they couldn't pursue due to Tom's duty and devotion to his family (even though his marriage to Maeve was a loveless one).  Amanda's final letter informed Tom that she was carrying his child and then there were no more letters.  Brie and Maggie attempt to locate this woman and her child throughout the course of the novel, amidst Brie's romance and Maggie's new baby with her new husband, Rogan.  

I enjoyed this book, though less thoroughly.  Again, my deepest love came from the way the country and its people were utilized.  Part of what draws Grayson in is the sense of community in this small Irish village, where comhain is a way of life. Comhain is essentially doing for others and knowing they'll do for you; having that shared sense of belonging and helping each other without being asked that really makes a community like family.  I'm looking forward to seeing how the surprise sister fits in with the girls (and the inevitable romance that I foresee between her and Murphy, the guy who is "like a brother" to Brie and Maggie).