davramlocke's Reviews (777)

This third and final installment in the 'Nation Under our Feet' portion of Ta-Nehisi Coates' Black Panther run is the best of the three volumes, but I still feel mostly lost amid the mythos that is Black Panther's world. This is largely on me as I am not an active Marvel Comics reader and were I a fan, I likely would know more of what's going on.

The gist of the series is that T'Challa returns home to a country broken my outside forces, and though those forces are driven out, the remaining pieces of Wakanda are rebellious and dissatisfied with his rule. This third volume sees a resolution to that rebellion, and I think it is successful in that ending even if there is still unrest past the final pages. I like T'Challa as a character, and I think the rest of the cast is also well written - and what's more the problems presented to these characters are real, and they are conflicts that those of us paying attention to the world can sympathize with. My problem with this volume is that everything seems to move too fast. I believe Coates has a story to tell here but not enough space to tell it. This is maybe what happens when someone accustomed to writing novels jumps into a smaller space.

I'd still like to read more of Coates' Black Panther work, but I fear I will never be knowledgeable about what's going on in this Marvel world.

Like previous volumes of Saga, 8 is beautifully illustrated and shows off all the weirdness of Vaughan's universe. But like many stories that try to incorporate multiple narratives happening all over the galaxy, this one seems a little aimless. The value of killing off characters, which Vaughan has not been shy about in Saga, is that it lets a writer tie some loose ends up in order to focus on what should be the main narrative. I'm not even sure what the main narrative of Saga is at this point, and so it feels like lots of threads floating around, swinging and twisting in the wind.

This particular volume feels like one of those books we had in our high school library that tried to explain both sides of an issue, in this case abortion, and makes it feel like a lesson in morality. That's fine if it's less obvious.

I'll still continue the series. The characters completely likable, and they talk with such contemporary dialogue that they feel like people you might see on - oh I don't know - Archer (obviously). If nothing else, this is a fun adventure story in space that allows itself few limitations.

Back in the 90s - I say, dating myself - there were multiple novel series set in different Dungeons and Dragons campaign worlds; mostly Dragonlance and The Forgotten Realms. These included some gems like Salvatore's Drizzt series and the Dragonlance narrative itself. These two sagas were fantasy comfort food that one didn't have to think too much about and that spawned a plethora of imitations - copycat novels that would not be published in today's competitive climate. They were the fantasy equivalent of trashy romance; fun occasionally but ultimately hollow. 

Adrian Tchaikovsky's Spiderlight follows in the tradition of a classic D&D spin off, even if it never mentions any specific D&D phrases or systems, and it somehow manages to elevate this strange sub-genre of fantasy into heights I didn't even know it was capable of. Like this year's debut hit from Nicholas Eames, Kings of the Wyld, Spiderlight is an adventure story about tromping across the land on the way to defeat a great evil. It's chock full of familiar tropes and more than a little comedy, and if I were to read a synopsis of this story, I would assume it was a carbon copy of The Lord of the Rings cross-bred with Garry Gygax's formulaic ruleset. Much like Kings of the Wyld, Spiderlight is so much more.

The story follows Dion and her hand-picked group of adventurers on their quest to save the world - typical fantasy stuff. There is a paladin, a thief, a wizard, a ranger, and Dion herself as the holy priest and the one destined by prophecy to defeat the Dark Lord Darvezion. This is the group in the beginning, but things quickly change as Dion is forced to accept Enth into the group. Enth is a spider. 

This is unusual, but even with a spider companion along for the ride - albeit one transformed magically to appear human - one might be tempted to compare Enth to a Gollum or a friendly Ettin if it weren't for the fact that Tchaikovsky lets us into Enth's mind. Viewpoints change often, and Lief the thief, Cyrene the ranger, and Penthos the wizard (who has the personality of Usidore from "Hello from the Magic Tavern") are interesting viewpoints, as is Dion with her righteousness and doubt, but Enth's sections are a fascinating introspection on what it means to be human, to have emotion, and to live in servitude to masters who misinterpret almost everything. He is seen as a monster, and while we the reader can see the falsity of this, that even the term monster is a human invention to demonize the "other", his traveling companions are continually torn, in a world where Light and Dark are very clear-cut, about whether to trust Enth or simply kill him for the nightmare-made-flesh that he is. Their pathos is ultimately useless as Enth is required to fulfill their quest.

So that's part of what makes Spiderlight so cool, and that might have been enough to set this book apart from the multitude of fantasy novels drowning the shelves. But Tchaikovsky is not content to merely subvert a hero trope. 

The world of Spiderlight is as familiar as the characters. Light and Dark in Tchaikovsky's vision are manifest things. One can detect the other even if shades of grey seem to exist in every nook and cranny of both humanity and those outside of it. The book is packed with action, which is always entertaining, but it's the indecision and moral squabbling in between the sword-and-fire fights that makes for the more intriguing experience. These characters fight more with their own morality than they do with the varied dark fiends roaming the land. Tchaikovsky seems, in places, to be recriminating the gratuitous violence found in much of the genre while at the same time indulging in it. He finds clever ways as a writer to damn his cake and eat it too. 

One could make the argument that the plot of Spiderlight, at least until the final few chapters, is not engaging enough to slog to its incredibly worthwhile ending - how could it be with such a trope-filled cast and by-the-numbers progression - but thanks to Tchaikovsky's deft hand with moral quandary and an equally skilled ability to make almost every chapter laugh out loud funny, reading Spiderlight is never anything less than engaging. And though I won't spoil the ending in this write-up, I have rarely read a final chapter that so thoroughly envelopes the preceding ninety percent of the story. 

I am go glad I read this book!

It is interesting to read this collection of essays after reading Patchett's latest novel, Commonwealth. It is no secret that Ann Patchett is a research writer. She finds a subject that interests her and then becomes an expect in that subject. She didn't know a thing about opera before writing Bel Canto, nor did she know much about the jungles of the Amazon before diving into State of Wonder. She consistently puts the lie to the advice that you should "write what you know," which is bad advice and if anyone ever tells you to do that, ignore them. This is the Story of a Happy Marriage is full of autobiographical essays about Patchett's relationships, her family, her time as an author, and of course, dogs. It also becomes apparent, fairly soon, that Commonwealth is nearly a memoir. Many of the stories that appear in her essays directly translate into the plot of that novel, and despite making a career of researching other people's lives, Patchett manages to "write what she knows" both in this book and in that novel.

As for the essays here, they are a mixed bag. Some are fluff -there is a piece about staying at a hotel and how nice that is, for instance, that feels like filler to give the book a higher page count. Thankfully, even Patchett's fluff is well-written enough to be readable, and there's much there to enjoy. On the opposite side, I found several of the essays to be invaluable. She details her writing process in a way that had me scribbling to take as many notes as I could, and I will certainly return to that piece. She is not shy about exploring her grief and sadness and many of the essays are about the death of those she loves. If you ever want a really good eulogy, it would behoove you to befriend Ann Patchett - or become her dog.

My only real complaint with This is the Story of a Happy Marriage is that much of this collection feels forced. Patchett talks extensively about writing to make a living, and there are large portions of the book where this seems to be the theme. There is a marked difference between the writing that she wants to do and the writing that she needs to do. This is something I can sympathize with, however, and if someone ever collected the essays of one D.C. Stewart into a book, it would not be this enjoyable to read.

I think I enjoyed this spin-off of the Fables universe more than any of the main series run. I say this despite being put-off by the overly super-hero style of the artwork. I like Briar Rose as a character, and I wonder if knowing her eventual fate in the series - which is non-traditional and heroic as hell -
influenced my liking of this piece. I have also always been a fan of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, despite its misogynistic overtones, and this really dives into that and probably enhances it.

My only complaint is Ali Baba, who seems included simply because he isn't anywhere else in the series. He is largely irrelevant, despite being an important pair of lips. Maybe that's fine.

The biggest issue I had with The Bear and the Nightingale is that the titular Bear is not identified until halfway through, and the Nightingale does not make an appearance until the final fourth of the book. Does that make this a poorly titled novel? No. The title is inviting and intriguing. My complaint is a really good problem to have in a fantasy tale that is nearly flawless. I’d have given it a perfect rating except that I love bears so much that I can not abide seeing one as the villain.

The truth is, The Bear and the Nightingale is one of the best debut novels I have ever read, and if this is Katherine Arden’s bold first step into novel-writing, she is going to be a titan. Her ability to create believable characters is second-to-none, and she tells a story that not only wraps itself up, but leaves the door open for future forays into the mind and and heart of Vasilisa Petrovna.

The Bear and the Nightingale opens in a medieval Russian household, where an old woman is telling fairy tales to the young children gathered around a hearth – an oven that serves as food-production, warmth, and a heated bed for the entire family. From a writing standpoint, this is a deft way to open a fairy tale novel because it invokes that special feeling that only fairy tales can impart. We are immediately transported into this cold, snowy landscape that we know will be full of magic and mystery. The first page of this story sets a tone that some books struggle to find altogether.

We quickly meet our central characters, a noble family headed by the force that is Pyotr Vladimirovich. We also quickly find that many of the names in The Bear and the Nightingale will be a heavy mouthful or even unpronounceable. Pyotr is a wealthy landowner in the harshest of Russian’s northern regions and is married to a woman named Marina who is part of a wholly different fairy tale of which we only get glimpses. They have a daughter named Vasya, who becomes the pivot around which this story spins.

Vasya is almost an ideal character. She is confident, not beautiful in a conventional sense but not unpleasing to look at, smart, mysterious, adventurous, and defiant. In short, she is the character we all want to write and Katherine Arden has beaten us to the punch. The imitators we will see in subsequent years will be many. The only issue I have with Vasya, and this is nit-picking a little, is that she seems impervious. She does change as the novel progresses – she is not given much choice in this regard – but there was never a moment where I feared for her in any way. She lacks a singular flaw that would mean failure for anyone else. Consequently, despite the impossible odds that she seems to face at every turn, and in weather that made me feel cold just reading about it, Vasya always triumphs because she’s, well, Vasya. This does not ruin her as a character, and we can often safely rely on our protagonists to reach the end of the book, but it drains the tale of some tension that I believe Arden intended.

I’ll admit to an almost non-existent knowledge of Russian folklore. I found familiar names in this book, but only because of Russian influence on some traditional fairy tales, as well as the similarities to the Witcher folklore from Andrzej Sapkoswki – as a Polish writer, he probably draws from many of the same legends as Arden. Like many European folk tales, the legends from Russian are dark, cold, and scary. There are no princesses in castles and very few knights to the rescue. There is a grim overtone to everything that is then made grimmer by the inclusion of Christianity. The clash between Christianity and traditional folk lore becomes a huge factor in deciding the fates of Pyotr’s and Vasya’s family, and it is a clash familiar to almost every tradition in the world. The invading philosophy meets traditional belief plot nearly always yields fascinating results. And on a personal note, I love the direction that Arden takes with this culture clash. She is not scared to write her mind.

The Bear and the Nightingale might have received perfect marks for me had I not been a little disappointed in the prose. There are some beautiful sentences there, and some metaphors that work incredibly well, but sometimes Arden’s structure feels stilted, and I wondered several times as I was reading whether or not there had been too much edited in the text and whether Arden fought for her lines or capitulated to the pressures on a first time novelist. I’m excited to see where she goes now that she has jumped this first hurdle and has the clout to defend her own abilities. There is no doubt that she has the chops to tell a wonderful story, create compelling, incredibly real characters, and draw a reader into her world. Obviously, I am speculating about what might have been left on the editing room floor. Either way, what she produces next is likely to outshine even this stellar first novel. That The Girl in the Tower, the second in her Winternight Trilogy, is already out shows a Brandon Sanderson-like ability to produce fiction. I do not usually read series entries very close together, but I am so intrigued by Katherine Arden’s world, that I may dive right back in.

The Black Company was first published in 1984. This is 12 years before A Game of Thrones is first released and 15 years before Gardens of the Moon. It is six years before The Eye of the World starts The Wheel of Time saga. If you told me that Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, and Steven Erikson had somehow missed out on Glen Cook’s work, I would call you a liar and point to any number of influences – some of them downright rip-offs – within this first Black Company novel. In short, Glen Cook is as responsible for the current state of fantasy fiction today as almost anyone short of Grandfather Tolkien. If I were to judge the first novels of any of those authors to Cook’s debut, I’d give the edge to Cook. Whether that holds true for the entire body of work is up for debate, but I hope to be able to make that call within the next few years.

The Black Company is a book about a mercenary troop in a dark land populated by grim characters and magic that is unbounded and terrifying. Their tale is told by the troop physician, a man named Croaker, who also happens to be the Company’s historian and pseudo-priest. Croaker is a man out of his element in any space that is not a medic’s tent. Because we see the Company’s movements through Croaker’s eyes, we feel at home because he is just as lost and confused as any reader would be. Croaker takes us on the journey and his viewpoint is one full of humor, common sense, and a warmth and humanity that is sorely lacking in the larger world. In short, Croaker is the only viewpoint possible for the story of the Black Company because he that rarest of species – the human being.

The world that Glen Cook paints is what is known today as grimdark. This is a tenuous term that does not necessarily have any clear definition, but many attribute its first steps to Cook himself. Grimdark worlds are not nice. They are, by their very definition, grim affairs where someone is as likely to ride heroically into battle as they are to die bleeding in a gutter. A Game of Thrones has some of this, as do any number of current popular fantasy series like the First Law Trilogy from Joe Abercrombie and Mark Lawrence’s Broken Empire books. Cook takes his readers into the mind of real military veterans – men who have seen the war wounds and felt the heady terror of combat enough times that it becomes almost rote. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Cook himself was in the Navy, and the dialogue throughout the course of The Black Company suggests an author intimately familiar with how comrades in arms speak to one another. It’s fun, disgusting, and I wish everyone wrote conversations so well.

Though we might expect it today, in 1984 telling a story from the villain’s side might have seemed peculiar, but Cook does just that. The Company is under contract to a villainous sorcerer named Soulcatcher, who is herself the literal slave of a demi-god known simply as The Lady. The Lady rules the world and has ever since some foolish wizard named Bomanz woke her up from a thousand year sleep, along with her ten wizard subjects collectively known as the Taken. Still sleeping is the original dark lord of Cook’s world, the Dominator, who is responsible for the name Taken and who makes even The Lady look nice and docile. Glen Cook’s naming system is very literal. He does not fool around with made up languages or apostrophic nomenclature. His words are never flowery (though there are odd bits of beautiful imagery in this book), and one can learn much about a character’s personality through learning the name. Soulcatcher, for instance, has a severe case of multiple personality disorder due to her penchant for sucking up souls. Goblin is a wizard who looks like a goblin. One-eye, you guessed it, has one eye.

The Taken may sound familiar, as will their lord the Dominator, to anyone familiar with The Wheel of Time. Robert Jordan’s Forsaken are essentially a complete theft of Cook’s pantheon. There’s nothing wrong with this kind of theft because it has been done for ages. The rogue’s gallery style of villain creation is as old as the notion of government. Cook’s villains have a style all their own, to be sure, and unlike Jordan’s bad guys, the Taken are unwilling slaves to their master and mistress. What makes for an even more striking similarity is the fact that the Taken are sealed up with The Lady and Dominator in some hill somewhere for a thousand years in what might strike readers as the very method which the Dark One and his Forsaken are sealed up in some hill somewhere for a thousand years!

I honestly don’t mind this kind of similarity. It gives a writer the chance to create a whole host of supervillains to love or hate, and Cook’s Taken are unique enough to stand out amidst the baddies of the world. Jordan uses Cook’s idea and refines it, creating more elaborate scenarios and personalities, and all for the better.

The other theft I want to talk about concerns Steven Erikson’s Bridgeburners. They are basically the Black Company with different names, and this might be the more egregious theft because the two companies are so similar that I think you could interchange them in either series and hardly notice. To Erikson’s credit, his characters are every bit as lovable as Cook’s, and there is nothing lost by reading the tales of both troops. Are the Bridgeburners a tribute to the Black Company? The ultimate cover band? Sure. Maybe we should all have a Black Company in our fantasy world. They would be richer for it.

There are probably more authors who read Glen Cook back in the 80s have lifted some of his ideas. There are probably authors who Glen Cook read and whose ideas he stole whole-cloth. Everyone steals from everyone is the point, I suppose.

All that said, the first of The Black Company novels is excellent. The story is exciting, simple to follow and at times even predictable, but told with such a wink-and-nod insider quality that the reader always feels like he or she is part of the Company (though I’m not actually sure that women are allowed in the Company, this is one area where Erikson vastly improves on Cook). These are soldiers who are forced to contend with powers well beyond their pay grade, and it is a world where no one is safe. It is also a world worth returning to because the story of Croaker and The Lady does not end with The Black Company. In some ways, the first book is just a warm up for some true chaos to come.