davramlocke's Reviews (777)

This is a fun concept - old man with Alzheimer's finds a magic sword that gives him back his power. It's galactic in scope and has a ton of metaphorical significance. Gods are killed and Texas is glorified.

Truthfully, I wish this wasn't a one off series because I could see myself enjoying more of it. The sword, Vallofax, is cool as hell, and the idea of there being an Ur-sword, a god of blades who is all swords that have ever existed, appeals greatly to the sword-nerd in me (the sword-nerd in me makes up at least 75% of my brain).

What I would really want is to see the sword, the best character really, fall into someone else's hands - preferably not some fat old man from Texas. There is potential in the concept that could be wonderfully expanded.

I need to admit something right away - I had a song from Aladdin playing in my head almost the entire time that I read this book. I partly blame myself for watching that movie about a million times as a child, and partly blame author S.A. Chakraborty for creating a character called Prince Ali (if you know the movie, you likely know which song). Admittedly, this book does share some characteristics with Disney’s classic, if heavily appropriated, tale of desire and consequence. The City of Brass is quite literally full of djinn, and while Robin Williams brilliant take on the wish-fulfilling magical being is unforgettable, Chakraborty creates characters every bit as memorable and a mythology that begs for more. The City of Brass does for Northern Africa and the Middle-East what The Bear and the Nightingale did for folkloric Russia, and Chakraborty’s talent is right up there with Katherine Arden’s.

We first meet Nahri as she swindles a pair of Ottomon Turks, which places The City of Brass squarely in the 19th century. France has recently taken over Cairo, and while the fluctuations of these wars of empire flow around the Egyptian city, Nahri is simply trying to survive. She does this partly through her power to heal, a secretive thing that she does not fully understand until she accidently summons an uber-powerful daeva named Darayavahoush e-Afhsin (and yes, there are some real mouthfuls in this book, enough to keep a Western man’s brain-tongue-tied). Dara takes Nahri on a magic carpet ride, opening her up to a whole new world that she never knew. No joke. It actually happens, and while it sounds somewhat silly when I write it, the ride is one fraught with danger and this new world that Nahri comes to is one she never asked and fears. Dara and Nahri are chased by a band of evil ifrit, and while I could explain what the various tribes of the djinn are and how they relate to one another, it is best left to the reader to uncover these delightful morsels. It does get confusing, and there were times when I wish Chakraborty would have given us a little more to work with, but by the end of the story, I could fire off any number of family histories and likely recite a holy prayer or two.

Our second narrator is Alizayd al Qahtani, a prince of Daevabad, the capital of the magical realm of the djinn. Hidden from human eyes, Daevabad becomes the axis around which the entire tale revolves, and Ali is our window into its mechanisms. Factions compete within Daevabad’s walls, and Ali finds himself torn apart by his differing loyalties, and his anxiety only accumulates when he finally meets Nahri.

The City of Brass, at its core, is a story about an orphan rediscovering the life that was taken from her. This is not new territory, but setting that tale into an Arabian fantasy world both connected to our own and completely at odds with it is as new as this genre gets. There is something so rich about The City of Brass, like Middle Eastern food that is the very definition of savory, or a fine Persian rug that not only bedazzles the eye but tickles the foot in the most pleasant ways. I felt satisfied every time I put this book down, and hungry every time I turned the next page.

Is this book all that I could have wished for? Almost. There are a hundred pages in the middle that drag, and I hope to see Chakraborty improve her pacing in the second installment. I also found the use of contemporary curse words to be a bit jarring. They are not used often, and when they are, they feel so completely out of place as to be laughable. One could also find some complaint in the actual form of the story. There are mysteries core to the book that are left largely unsolved, and while much is revealed to both Nahri and Ali, this book doesn’t have an ending in the traditional sense. It feels more like an episode of television that begs you to return next week. Thankfully, The City of Brass is good enough that many will be aching to revisit.

As far as debut fantasy novels go, this is one of the best I have read. That seems to be a theme this year, with such immediate titans as Katherine Arden, Nicholas Eames, and Ed McDonald blazing their way into our magical minds. For someone who never intended to become a novelist, S.A. Chakraborty has landed herself among some august company.

I want to give this book to everyone who has recently become a parent or even thinking about it. There is deep, and frankly really obvious, wisdom in this short essay about raising a 'feminst' daughter (that is equally applicable to raising a feminist son).

Brandon Sanderson invents another system of magic that is both intriguing and kind of cool. No surprises there. The conceit with this world is that there are a group of warrior monk-types who can use sand to do magic things. Oddly enough creating water is one of those things, though I can't quite figure out the logic behind that. Kenton barely has enough power to fling a grain of sand, but his ingenuity is quickly faced as an old enemy of the Sand Masters raises its collective head. The world of White Sand is one divided into Light and Dark, where one half of the world exists in perpetual sunshine and one in endless dark. It's an interesting, world-is-flat kind of theory, and the plot moves along well enough to keep a reader intrigued.

But in the end, this is kind of typical Sanderson, which I am growing bored of as I read more and more fantasy that is better-written and more imaginative. Worth a read, regardless.

Kadare is famous for writing novels with messages so subtle as to pass underneath the notice of the former communist party that ruled Albania, and A Girl in Exile attempts to portray a playwright that essentially does the same. I've become a little tired of the trope of casting a writer as the main character in a novel. I understand that authors are supposed to write what they know, but it feels both arrogant and a little lazy to create in such a way. This comes through in A Girl in Exile, and I could not divorce the author from his main character, despite the excellent writing and intriguing plot, and even found myself envisioning the man whose photo graces the dust jacket as protagonist Rudian Stefa. 

The story of A Girl in Exile is one set before the founding of the Albanian Republic in 1991, at a time when the Communist Party was still very much in control of Albania, and fear of crossing the tyranny of its regime ran deep in its people. This fear comes through within the first few pages as Rudian Stefa, the novel's playwright protagonist, is summoned to the Party Committee Building to interview with authorities about the suicide of a young ex-bourgeois woman who was exiled to the back-country and who has recently killed herself. Rudian's name is plastered all over her journal, and through a few hundred pages of stream-of-conscious-style writing mixed with historical expository, we learn why this girl who Rudian had never met is so vital to his life. I was at times fascinated and at other times bewildered by this journey. Kadare's prose can be lovely, but his ability to tell a clear and vivid story is at times muddled. 

What I enjoyed most about Kadare's novel is his ability to humanize the many facets of a conflicted nation. The characters of this book, namely Rudian, Linda, and Megina, all exist in different spheres within the Communist Party: Rudian manages to subvert it from within with his writing, Megina is able to cross the threshhold of Linda's world and Rudian's, And Linda herself lives in isolation, removed from the Party but slave to it. They are a Venn diagram of possibility. "Here, at the end of the twentieth century, was a young girl who'd thought of an unfavorable breast scan as her last chance, almost her salvation," Rudian says to himself at one point, illustrating the plight of Linda, who once would have been among the wealthy elite and thus worthy of scorn to most of Albania. Kadare makes her a human being, not only disallowing scorn, but causing a reader to feel Linda's sorrow despite Rudian never even meeting the girl. We also feel her increasing madness as the novel progresses, to the point where she sees death as worth the cost of visiting Tirana, Albania's capital city and Rudian's home. Despite what pity we must feel for Linda, it is also hard to shake that fact that had this novel been set before the rise of Communism, she would have likely been the oppressor, subjecting men and woman like Rudian and Megina to the same harsh world that the Party has given her. 

I did have some issues with A Girl in Exile. The stream-of-consciousness style of writing that Kadare often employs can be difficult to make sense of. There is some excuse in this given the frail ego and psyche of Rudian Stefa, but Kadare's weaving in of Greek and Roman mythology/history, his wildly differing forms of conveying dialogue, and the intersperses of some of Rudian's play outlines all make for a mess from a comprehension standpoint. This may be a book that would benefit from a re-read, and it is short enough to allow that, but first-time readers may find it jarring. 

Despite my criticisms, I am intrigued by Ismail Kadare. I would like to read more of his work and see how his other protagonists compare. I did not much like Rudian Stefa, who comes off as arrogant and misogynistic much of the time, and insane for the rest, but there is room in the world of literature for flawed men. The immersion into a Communist nation, with all of the emotion and turmoil that such an existence entails, is one to which I would like to return. 

Hell’s Chasm terrifies me, and it does so because Janny Wurts’ talent for writing about a harrowing flight through some of nature’s most unforgiving terrain is second to no one. I didn’t even really understand the title of the book until the lead characters come to the titular Chasm itself, and then I could think of no better title. Unfortunately, it takes so long to get to this nerve-bending chase that the entire book loses some luster in the approach.

Setting

To Ride Hell’s Chasm takes place foremost in the country of Sessalie, a monarchy divided from all other nations by a ring of glacier-ridden mountains. Its only inlets are easily defended, and as such Sessalie remains virtually unconquerable; Tolkien fans will remember the unassailable Elven city of Gondolin from the Silmarrilion. Wurts’ world is one of recognizable medieval standards. The kingdom is divided, as many kingdoms are, by class, and much of the story revolves around royal marriage.

But within Wurts’ world there is also a nefarious system of demonic magic, which is inconveniently explained in the appendices, but which plays the central role in the conflict of the book. There are demons in the nether realm who negotiate with human sorcerers so that said humans can feed them living souls. The demons are constantly wanting more souls, and so the sorcerers are forever attempting to destroy kingdoms and extend their power. Like much of the lore in the novel, this is not very well explained, and I am of two minds about that. Part of me loves that every small scrap of information much be examined with a microscope for its import in the greater world, akin to a Dark Souls game. Part of me sometimes just wants things explained a little better. I think the former is better writing when done well. I’m not sure Wurts does it particularly well and the novel seems to suffer for that lack.

Plot

To Ride’s story begins with a missing princess, which feels cliche, but it is soon discovered that she is missing of her own free will, and it is this twist that opens up a much more interesting story than the ‘Bowser kidnaps the princess’ stuff we have seen for decades in pop-culture. Princess Anja running away from the only home she has ever known turns the tale into a much more complicated scenario, and leaves the gates open for a story that keeps blossoming.

Most of the action, up until about the last quarter of the novel, take place within Sessalie. The last quarter is the aforementioned Hell’s Chasm portion. The trouble here is that the first three quarters are too long by leagues. There is so much exposition just to set up this flight through Hell’s Chasm that I think many readers would find themselves putting the book down in sheer frustration. There are interesting things happening in the first three quarters, no doubt, but it all takes too long. In a book that is 681 pages long (in mass market paperback), those first 400 pages need to pull a reader along much more than they do here. Oddly enough, on a re-read I think that first portion would be more interesting in a retrospective sense.

Character

I am finding that female fantasy authors excel in character development far more than their male brethren. I suppose this should come as no surprise. Wurts has some fantastic characters here; men and women I am sorry to see leave my imagination space. The protagonist is a veteran warrior named Mykkael, who serves as a guardsman to one of Sessalie’s lower wards. Mykkael is a foreigner who distinguishes himself in a gladiatorial contest that earns him a place within Sessalie’s ‘police’. Mykkael is an intimidating figure, and while it is often frowned upon to write about invincible characters, watching Mykkael in action is one of the best things about this novel; he reminds me most of David Gemmell’s Druss. He has such strength of will, and even with an old leg injury that basically renders him a cripple, and even when he has been battered beyond all recognizable humanity, he still manages to do things no one else could even dream of. Beyond that, learning about his past is fascinating, and the cast of characters surrounding adds to that air of mystique.

Other notable characters include the previously mentioned Princess Anja, who proves herself an equal in strength to Mykkael in matters of willpower, Commander Taskin, who acts as the noble counterpart in honor and dedication to Mykkael, Jussoud, a foreign masseuse and healer whose large presence never fails to please in any scene, and a horse named Stormfront who never freaking gives up. The book flags a little in its villains, who are basically mustache-twirling demons who lack any real dimension to them and feel like something out of a horror novel.

Final Thoughts

This is a difficult book to rate, and I am afraid that my words do not quite do it justice. It is too long, and I feel some heavy editing could have improved everything. Wurts’ prose is often too heavy, bordering on purple, and I feel like a lighter hand might have improved things as well.
But I liked this book, and I absolutely loved the titular ride through Hell’s Chasm. The last fourth of this is some of the best fantasy I have read, but getting there is a challenge, and while you could certainly say that sometimes the best rewards come to those who wait, I am not sure that works in fiction. Wurts makes it work here because there is enough to keep the dedicated reader plugging away, even if they don’t fully understand why. In the end, the Ride is worth every page.

This is good! David Gaider always manages to engage me with his Dragon Age writings, and with this omnibus of graphic novels, he does so again. He collects a semi-all-star cast of familiar faces from the video games and sets them on a new adventure that fills in some back story from the very first game while adding in lots of new information. Varric and Isabella were two of my favorite characters from DA 2/3, and while I didn't like Alastair in the first game, he comes off as strong and likable in this adaptation. I think what surprised me most was the layout of the panels, with almost a full two-page spread in every section that really stood out. The art is just right for the Dragon Age aesthetic, which has changed/evolved over time. I think this is a good read even for those unfamiliar with the video game series.