Marooned

So I haven’t talked about books much, so I figured I’d catch up. I believe I mentioned late last year that I was going to finally read Harry Potter, once I had finished Game of Thrones. I did finally read and finish the Harry Potter series, and I did really enjoy it. While it has a few flaws, it was an enjoyable fantasy romp with characters that you really care about.

I had been meaning to read Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five for many years, so I finally got around to it in early May. It’s the story of of Billy Pilgrim as he recounts his war experiences and his journeys through time. S5 is ranked the 18th greatest English language novel of the 20th century by Modern Library, it is generally recognized as Vonnegut’s most influential and popular work.

I didn’t get it. At all.

It’s apparently a huge anti-war work. That didn’t really come through to me. In fact, the whole book seemed disjointed and I was very unsatisfied at the end. I finished this book weeks ago and I could tell you very little at all about it. It’s very possible that I just don’t understand satire. In fact, that’s highly likely. In a way it makes me feel stupid, I mean this is the 18th greatest English novel in the 20th century. Shouldn’t I have gotten something out of it? I wish I had! Maybe “high reading” isn’t for me.

Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons is actually a series of novels, of which Hyperion is the first. I have been seeing this book for years, a Hugo award winner, and the cover has always intrigued me. It was supposed to be a wonderful book so I finally sat down and read it. In a nutshell, it’s the story of a group of pilgrims heading to this planet in the far future where a horrible god resides in the Time Tombs called the Shrike. Something is happening at the tombs, and this group of pilgrims are said to be the last allowed to go there.

The book is the story of their journey to the Time Tombs. They decide that each person should tell their own story as to why they are going (especially since it is likely to end in their death), as it may help them all understand their fate. So really, the book is a group of stories of each character as they get closer and closer to their destination. It’s quite interesting in that manner, I’ve never read anything quite like that.

The stories are all different and some are better than others. Really two of them stick out. One involves a soldier who keeps meeting a woman of his dreams on the battlefield, but it’s hard to say whether or not she is real. Her destiny is tied to the Shrike. The most interesting is the story of a father and his daughter, who was a researcher at the Time Tombs years before the events of the book take place. Something happens there, and she begins to age in reverse. It’s a sad story, and in the book, he is carrying her now as a baby to the Tombs, in hopes of finding something to reverse the process.

The climax of the book is when they all arrive at the Tombs – and yet we never find out what happens. Those events happen in the next book, The Fall of Hyperion. This book left me a bit dissatisfied in the end – like the story was just cut off. As I read about the next book, it seems the events shift away from these characters to new characters and the reviews are very mixed. For now, I have no desire to continue on with the story, which is too bad. I wish it would have had a more satisfying conclusion for this book, even if the story does continue later.

Shadowmarch by Tad Williams is the book I am currently reading. I’ve mentioned Tad before, his series Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is one of the great Fantasy works out there, and I have read it a few times. Shadowmarch is his return to the genre. I had put off reading this initially as the reviews are somewhat mixed. It is said that there are too many characters for one. (Ha, such people have never read Game of Thrones!) And there are complaints of the pacing and plot of the series.

I’m about 200 pages in so far, and I can say that I am enjoying the book. Here’s the basic idea:

The first Marchlands kingdom, Southmarch (commonly called “Shadowmarch”), lies directly on the edge of the mysterious Shadowline, a shroud of endless mist that marks the entrance to the realm of the fairy-folk, the Qar. Crossing the Shadowline is said to drive any human mad, but, as far as anyone knows, the line has not moved any further south for centuries. Now, inexplicably, it has begun to creep slowly but surely deeper into the lands of Southmarch, bringing an unknown menace with it.

I get wary of stories with Elves or elf-like beings. It’s been done to death, and none as good as Tolkien. Williams actually had Elvish like beings in his first series (called the Sithi) which were very well done. I’m not sure he can come up with another group that is done so well again. This time it’s the Qar, and they seem to be (on the surface) an evil force – but maybe only because of what men have done. It’s hard to tell at this point. They certainly seem to be of various shapes and designs, which is something a bit more fairy-like.

So far what I like is that there are some characters I think I can latch onto. There’s an early tragedy that has thrown everything into confusion and it will be interesting to see what happens next.

The bad is there, though. The book starts out with a “history” written my some historian. It’s somewhat boring and makes no sense, because you have no frame of reference for any of it. I constantly kept looking back to the map in the front (which is very poorly done, by the way – good heavens man, hire an artist) to get my bearings. The world doesn’t seem all that well designed, but maybe time will tell.

As if this history weren’t enough, we then get a prologue. Prologues are a crappy writing tool. It’s essentially an infodump – an exposition. There are simply better ways to impart info to the reader. Luckily, the story, once started, was good enough to keep me interested. We’ll see if the books deliver despite the rough start. Much of the reviewing I read on the book stated that if you can handle the rough start, the story gets real good. We’ll see!

What are you reading?!