Trismegistus

I've read nearly 20 books cover-to-cover since the last time I posted a WAIRW, and have easily as many in progress. My plan from here on out is to review the books I've finished each week while working through the backlog of previously finished books, which are:

Breathe ・ Burnt Sugar ・ The Colour of Magic ・ Experience the Mystery of Tarot ・ Girl, Wash Your Face ・ Gold Diggers ・ The Light Fantastic ・ How to Build a Girl ・ How to Make a Bird ・ The Inspired Houseplant ・ The Kingdoms ・ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet ・ Magic for Liars ・ The Silver Bough vol. 2 ・ Thick as Thieves ・ A Thousand Ships ・ The Westing Game ・ The Witness for the Dead ・ Yearning for the Sea

So without further ado:


What I Finished Reading This Week

How To Build A Girl - Caitlin Moran
It's late and I have a ton to say about this amazing book, so: proper review to come at a later date.

Mongol Zurag - N. Tsultem

Published in 1986, this book is written in Russian, English, Spanish, and French; unsurprisingly, the Russian text goes into far more detail than the other languages. Still, the English text is far more natural and free of grammatical errors than similar offerings published in China, Japan, or Korea, so kudos to you, Mongolia. Mongol Zurag opens with an overview of Mongolian art from the prehistoric period through the date of publication, followed by over 150 pages of full-page, full color illustrations of Mongolian art--largely thangkas and appliques--that I can only describe as lavish. No exaggeration: I've spent hours staring at this book. In addition, the book also features Mongolian portraiture, cartography, modern (i.e. Soviet-style) art, and my personal favorite: several pages reproducing Mongolian playing cards. It's very, very cool, and I will definitely seek out other books that go into further depth on the subject.


What I Finished Reading At Some Point In The Past Four Months

The Witness for the Dead - Katherine Addison

The Witness for the Dead is not an excellent book, but it’s a decent one and I liked it a lot more than The Angel of the Crows. I preordered it months in advance, and admit to feeling pretty cheated when I picked it up: This cost me twenty-six bucks? Because make no mistake, this book is short.

In fact, The Witness for the Dead isn’t a novel so much as the first arc of a novel presented as a stand alone; Addison has said two more volumes are in the works. This is probably because Tor has figured out that it can sell one 450-page novel for $30, or one 450 page novel split into three volumes for $25 each. It’s good for Addison’s bottom line and Tor’s, but less so for readers’.

There are indications that The Witness for the Dead was published somewhat expeditiously. Characters regularly say “I” or “me” in situations where the social norms established in The Goblin Emperor would call for the first formal’s “we” and “us,” for instance. Seeing as Addison explains other discrepancies between the worldbuilding in the two books (such as the introduction of ghouls in Witness) but not the linguistic discrepancies, I get the sense the latter are due to lazy editing versus authorial intent (and there are other examples).

The world and worldbuilding of Witness seems, in general, looser than that of The Goblin Emperor, largely owing to Addison’s inclusion of more of her standard narrative elements: proliferating cults, tours through the various districts of a fantasy city where magic and industrialization coexist, labyrinths, terrifying ghosts that can't hurt you and terrifying ghouls that can, theaters and the foibles of the individuals that perform in them.

Addison uses a murder and several other mysteries to knit these elements together. It’s well done and allows for some excellent scene-setting and set pieces, particularly the town of Tanvero and the Hill of Werewolves. There’s also the potential for a budding love story (although knowing Addison, this might not reach its conclusion without some complications). These elements don’t feel abruptly incomplete, but neither do they feel as rich as the storytelling of The Goblin Emperor.

In summary, I found The Witness for the Dead an engaging (if overly quick) read. It does not achieve the narrative sublimity of The Goblin Emperor; whether it will manage that after the follow-on volumes are published remains to be seen.

A Thousand Ships – Natalie Hayes

A Thousand Ships is the story of the Iliad and the Odyssey as told through the perspectives of the female characters who play tertiary or bit roles in the originals. Some narrators appear in just one or two chapters others tell their stories across multiple chapters interspersed throughout the volume.

This didn’t entirely work for me, largely due to personal preference. I much prefer novels told from the perspective of one or two characters, versus dozens. The profusion of POV characters in this novel requires Hayes to set the scene from square one in almost every chapter, to the detriment of digging deeply into the thoughts, motivations, and psyches of said characters.

Many reviews compare A Thousand Ships to Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls and Madeline Miller’s Circe and The Song of Achilles, so I suppose I will too. I found Miller’s retellings more effective in conveying nuance, depth, and character growth, largely due to their limited POVs. Barker’s novel, however, was a complete failure in that it purports to be a feminist retelling but still focuses entirely on Achilles—his desires, his pain, how the saga's events affect him. By contrast, A Thousand Ships succeeds in keeping the focus firmly on the female characters; Erato’s disgust with Homer’s entitled pleas for inspiration and Penelope’s simmering, subconscious resentment of Odysseus and ambivalence over his return are exceptionally well done. This ultimately puts Hayes’ Ships squarely in the middle for me in terms of modern reexaminations of the Iliad and Odyssey; despite some weaker elements, it’s still a pretty good read.

The Colour of Magic – Terry Pratchett

I remembered literally—in the actual definition of the word—nothing about this book beyond the fact that it contained the Great A’Tuin, a wizard named Rincewind, Rincewind’s annoying sidekick and foil (Twofeather, although I’d forgotten his name) and the Luggage. That’s it.

I thought Unseen University made an appearance. It didn’t.

I thought the Librarian made an appearance. He didn’t.

I thought Cohen the Barbarian made an appearance. He didn’t.

It’s a light read. It’s a fast read. It’s on par with (even somewhat better than) the majority of paint-by-numbers genre offerings purporting to be Serious Fantasy Literature.

But as far as the evolutionary stages of the Discworld are concerned, it’s the equivalent of primordial ooze.

The Light Fantastic – Terry Pratchett

I remembered virtually nothing of this book, either; indeed, elements that I recalled as occurring in The Colour of Magic actually took place in this novel. Again, this was a function of my not particularly caring about any of these characters or the novel’s very early-80s fantasy sensibility and humor (the hur-hur, wink-wink of “Seventeen-year-old-virgin falls in love with toothless, geriatric man” being a particularly cringeworthy example).

And so I had the experience of essentially reading the novel for the first time again while vaguely recognizing certain scenes as I came to them: Oh yeah, doesn’t Cohen get a set of diamond grills from the trolls? Doesn’t the red star turn out to be good? Huh, this edge-of-the-world scene probably inspired Grossman all those years later.

The trolls, the gnomes, and the edge of the Discworld are the highlights, but The Light Fantastic is still more a series of mildly amusing vignettes than a proper Discworld novel.

Yearning For The Sea - Esther Seligson

I really love the premise of Yearning for the Sea: that Penelope was anything but pleased to spend ten years of virtuous chastity fending off unwanted suitors with a smile by day and undoing the previous day's labor by night...all while her husband took his sweet time getting home so he could rack up martial glory and sexual conquests on the way.

Seligson's Penelope, by contrast, mourns and seethes with sexual frustration and resentment at the once-devoted husband who finds it so easy not to come back. I very much liked this aspect of the book. But the introduction to this translation speaks of "Seligson's version" of the "epic tale," and therein lies the source of my disappointment. Yearning for the Sea is not epic; it's not even a retelling, but rather four short interior monologues delivered by Telemachus, Eurycleia, Penelope, and Ulysses. There's rumination but no action, and any reader without prior familiarity with the Iliad and the Odyssey will have precious little idea what's going on. I, however, wanted (and had expected) a bona fide retelling of the story from start to finish a la Madeline Miller's novels, or even a short story treatment along the lines of Stephen Fry or Natalie Haynes' recent works. Instead, Yearning for the Sea is a series of short character studies-by-way-of-ruminations set after all the action's concluded. It's a shame, because Seligson's portrayals are intriguing, and I would have loved to have seen them fleshed out in proper story format.

The translation itself is very well done, and the introduction and translator's note left me eager to learn more about Seligson's life and other writings. My reaction to this book is obviously colored by the expectations I had going into it; readers who pick the volume up knowing what it is and is not are in for an excellently pointed take on Penelope's treatment by Ulysses and millennia of readers who've not questioned the idea of a blindly devoted wife putting her life on hold to wait ten years for a husband who's not very interested in hurrying home.


What I Am Currently Reading

Atrix Wolfe - Patricia McKillip
Try as I might, McKillip always leaves me cold.

Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett
Embryonic Granny Weatherwax.


What I'm Reading Next

This week I acquired a copy of The Book of Spells by Jamie Della.



これで以上です。