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tachyondecay
I spend a lot of time (hah) thinking about how little we understand the way people in the past actually lived, day to day, simply because technology that we now take for granted has changed things we don’t even think about. I take it for granted that I can know the precise time, as we currently measure it, all the time. I take it for granted that I can flick a switch and have light even in the middle of the night. These things mould and shape my perception of our world, but they are artifacts of the present society, not inviolate states of being. Timekeepers looks at our fascination, or our obsession as the subtitle bills it, with time, and the way this obsession has evolved hand-in-hand with technologies.
Simon Garfield’s name rang a bell when I saw this on NetGalley. Plus, it’s a book about time! How could that go wrong? I might have been more hesitant had I remembered the other Garfield book I’ve read is On the Map. Nevertheless, I’m a sucker for those free books, so I dove into Timekeepers hoping to learn some interesting things. And I did. But I was also bored. I do, however, appreciate Canongate Books and NetGalley for making this ARC available to me.
I’m starting to hate reading non-fiction on my tablet. I have no idea, on my tablet, how far I am through a book. With a physical book, this is not a problem, obviously. Even with a novel in ebook form, the natural arc of the narrative means I can guess when we’re approaching the end. I know that ereader apps tend to tell you how far you are through the book (or how much is remaining), but that is just a number to me; it doesn’t give me a good sense of how much progress I’ve made. With non-fiction, this is a problem; I start feeling bogged down, and if the book is not really compelling me to read on, I drag my heels. This was my experience with Timekeepers.
Some of the individual chapters here are fascinating. I genuinely enjoyed Garfield’s discourse on the reasons why movies have different frame-rates from television and, in the beginning, even variable frame-rates. That was a cool tidbit of knowledge. Similarly, Garfield discusses the way our ability to precisely measure time has contributed to such phenomena as world records (the “4-minute mile”) and mass production (the assembly line and scientific management). All of these are interesting phenomena that are worth (and have had books written about them) in their own rights.
And that’s really where Timekeepers fails to deliver for me: the subject matter here is just too varied. It’s a smorgasboard of subjects that are all vaguely connected to time in some way, but they are not connected to each other. Some of the chapters are short, others quite long—or in the case of Garfield’s digression into watchmaking, he gives the subject two chapters. This is not a linear or chronological history, and while Garfield makes that quite clear in the preface, the subtitle of this book—How the World Became Obsessed With Time—suggests otherwise. I was all on board with his promise to jump around and look at the issue thematically, but now, at the end of the journey, I’m wishing there were some kind of chronological thread to tie everything together.
I don’t want to be too hard on Timekeepers, because it is not a bad book. It is well-written, well-researched, and interesting. Yet it is also long. It could have benefited from some more rigorous (read: ruthless) editing to restrain some of Garfield’s more enthusiastic tangents. This is not the type of pop culture non-fiction book I enjoy, the kind that grabs me and makes me want to keep reading because there is just so much to learn from it. As with On the Map, I feel like this is partly because of an incompatibility of styles, and so you might enjoy this book just fine and find nothing wrong with it whatsoever.
The anecdotes and history related in this book have given me some ideas for books I want to read next, for sure. But whatever good will or fascination Timekeepers fostered with each fact it squandered on the stamina required to simply get through it. Reading this kept reminding me of the six-part series from BBC, How We Got to Now, hosted by Steven Johnson. Each episode focused on a specific topic, which provided a good way to take a non-chronological look at history. Perhaps this book would fare better as a such a miniseries. Take it to Netflix, Garfield, and I’ll give it another go!
Simon Garfield’s name rang a bell when I saw this on NetGalley. Plus, it’s a book about time! How could that go wrong? I might have been more hesitant had I remembered the other Garfield book I’ve read is On the Map. Nevertheless, I’m a sucker for those free books, so I dove into Timekeepers hoping to learn some interesting things. And I did. But I was also bored. I do, however, appreciate Canongate Books and NetGalley for making this ARC available to me.
I’m starting to hate reading non-fiction on my tablet. I have no idea, on my tablet, how far I am through a book. With a physical book, this is not a problem, obviously. Even with a novel in ebook form, the natural arc of the narrative means I can guess when we’re approaching the end. I know that ereader apps tend to tell you how far you are through the book (or how much is remaining), but that is just a number to me; it doesn’t give me a good sense of how much progress I’ve made. With non-fiction, this is a problem; I start feeling bogged down, and if the book is not really compelling me to read on, I drag my heels. This was my experience with Timekeepers.
Some of the individual chapters here are fascinating. I genuinely enjoyed Garfield’s discourse on the reasons why movies have different frame-rates from television and, in the beginning, even variable frame-rates. That was a cool tidbit of knowledge. Similarly, Garfield discusses the way our ability to precisely measure time has contributed to such phenomena as world records (the “4-minute mile”) and mass production (the assembly line and scientific management). All of these are interesting phenomena that are worth (and have had books written about them) in their own rights.
And that’s really where Timekeepers fails to deliver for me: the subject matter here is just too varied. It’s a smorgasboard of subjects that are all vaguely connected to time in some way, but they are not connected to each other. Some of the chapters are short, others quite long—or in the case of Garfield’s digression into watchmaking, he gives the subject two chapters. This is not a linear or chronological history, and while Garfield makes that quite clear in the preface, the subtitle of this book—How the World Became Obsessed With Time—suggests otherwise. I was all on board with his promise to jump around and look at the issue thematically, but now, at the end of the journey, I’m wishing there were some kind of chronological thread to tie everything together.
I don’t want to be too hard on Timekeepers, because it is not a bad book. It is well-written, well-researched, and interesting. Yet it is also long. It could have benefited from some more rigorous (read: ruthless) editing to restrain some of Garfield’s more enthusiastic tangents. This is not the type of pop culture non-fiction book I enjoy, the kind that grabs me and makes me want to keep reading because there is just so much to learn from it. As with On the Map, I feel like this is partly because of an incompatibility of styles, and so you might enjoy this book just fine and find nothing wrong with it whatsoever.
The anecdotes and history related in this book have given me some ideas for books I want to read next, for sure. But whatever good will or fascination Timekeepers fostered with each fact it squandered on the stamina required to simply get through it. Reading this kept reminding me of the six-part series from BBC, How We Got to Now, hosted by Steven Johnson. Each episode focused on a specific topic, which provided a good way to take a non-chronological look at history. Perhaps this book would fare better as a such a miniseries. Take it to Netflix, Garfield, and I’ll give it another go!
I can’t tell if this is a compliment or criticism, so I’ll just put it out here and let you decide: I spent most of this book trying to cast different actors from Game of Thrones to play the characters in this book. The similarities are just so glaring—not that I’m saying The Adamantine Palace is in any way derivative of A Song of Ice and Fire. Its world and plot and characters are entirely its own, and Stephen Deas definitely has some interesting ideas cooking here. But the overall tenor of the work, from the multiple kings and queens, the dragons, the scheming maester-like alchemists, and the use of multiple POVs and tendency for characters to keep killing each other off … all of that makes this feel along the same lines of Game of Thrones. I feel like this is exactly the kind of book series an opportunistic network that wanted to jump on the Game of Thrones trend might option and then do a terrible job adapting.
If you like more “traditional” high fantasy, this book will appeal. As previously mentioned, the book follows nobility in the throes of unceasing intrigue. The nobility and their knights ride dragons, kept tame by the potions of the alchemists. During The Adamantine Palace, certain nobles conspire with and against each other (allegiances shift really fast) in the weeks leading up to the election of a new Speaker, who is kind of like the Secretary of the UN, if the Secretary of the UN had a small military force and a massive palace and tortured people. So, you know, exactly like the Secretary.
I feel like a really awful person. I keep saying I want to read more traditional high fantasy, and then I rip into the books for being too traditional and not doing enough to circumvent, subvert, or otherwise play with the tropes of high fantasy. Why do I do this to myself? Shadow Prowler is another recent example, and although I think I liked The Adamantine Palace better on the whole, I have similar complaints. By and large, Deas reaches in the Fantasy Tropes Grab Bag, pulls up a handful of good ones, and puts them to work. But one reason I’m not a huge fan of uninnovative traditional fantasy is simply because it’s lazy. With a generation or two of readers raised in this tradition, authors don’t have to spell things out. They just say, “dragon” or “knight” or “castle” and let us do the rest. I get the sense there is a rich and interesting society in this world, but Deas spends very little time explaining it. We get vague allusions to wars of succession, etc., but no fulfilling background.
Yet it’s not as if this book is devoid of exposition. There is plenty of it, spread across far too many POVs. Indeed, The Adamantine Palace jumps from character to character even more than Game of Thrones does! With each new chapter, I kept thinking, “Ugh, not another perspective!” Don’t get me wrong: I love, love, love books that show me characters on either side, protagonists and antagonists, perpetrators and victims of schemes, etc. That’s all well and good. But there is a limit, and Deas exceeds it.
Worse still, some of the POVs seem utterly unnecessary. He introduces a few characters only to unceremoniously kill them off (or they disappear, presumably killed) after one or two chapters. What, exactly, was their point? I don’t object to the killing of main characters, but the issue here is that they didn’t have time to become established as main characters. Meanwhile, characters who were previously side characters suddenly get promoted to main characters, and—look, do you know how hard it is for me to redraw my Fantasy Character Org Chart for a book every time someone dies? I need to stop working in permanent marker….
Once the ink is dry, though, and we have a fairly stable cast, what then of the story, the plot, all those intrigues? Well, I do love the dragons. My only complaint is that Deas drops his bombshell a little too far into the novel—I kept reading, because I could see hints along the lines of what he eventually reveals, but he plays it almost a little too coy. Still, once we learn the Truth About Dragons and get more scenes with the vengeful Snow, the book picks up pace. I also love how very few people actually understand the scope of this problem; most of the nobility who are even aware of the issue think it’s simply a case of a missing or kidnapped dragon. This feels very realistic to me (insofar as a fantasy book can be realistic), and it’s also something that can be difficult for an author to achieve. Balancing the need for characters to have imperfect information while also letting the audience in on the joke can be a delicate act, but Deas does it well.
Unfortunately, the dragon plot gets sidelined by political machinations that are not as exciting or well-thought-out as their author might think they are. For one, Prince Jehal switches sides more the narrator of Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold”, to the point where I don’t think even he knows whose side he’s on. I think he’s just an overconfident, scheming psychopath amidst a bunch of overconfident, scheming sociopaths. This could have made for a good character study, except that we get treated to one too many chapters in which Jehal cackles over this or that scheme while the narrator explains to us precisely what’s going to happen next. The same goes for many of the other POV characters wrapped up in this plot. I just want to get back to the dragons.
Because, at the end of the day, I care about the dragons more than I do about these people. The dragons have my sympathy. These kings and queens? Not so much. Deas gives me little reason to cheer for any of these human characters; they’re all pretty despicable, and none of them sound like they’re going to do a better job running this land than any others. (It’s important to note that we get precious little face time with anyone who isn’t nobility, and the one sell-sword POV character is on Team Dragons. So that tells you a lot about the moral fibre of these rulers right there.)
Machinations in medieval-inspired fantasies should be like the medieval machinations that inspired them. There’s a reason why A Song of Ice and Fire steals so much from the Wars of the Roses. While it’s true that people changed sides during such conflicts, there was much more going on. I find such epic conflicts interesting because, when you read about them, you learn about what’s at stake, as well as the family politics behind the story. That isn’t present here. There are vague references to a war or two, as I mentioned above, and some allusions to pacts made long ago—and that’s about it. The Adamantine Palace is adrift in its timeline, providing little in the way or weight of history to anchor it.
I would really like to recommend this, if only because Deas does some interesting things with dragons. But it overreaches, overpromises, and does not end up delivering the depth of politics, characterization, or worldbuilding I’m looking for in my high fantasy. Am I overly critical and picky? Probably. But that doesn’t make me wrong!
If you like more “traditional” high fantasy, this book will appeal. As previously mentioned, the book follows nobility in the throes of unceasing intrigue. The nobility and their knights ride dragons, kept tame by the potions of the alchemists. During The Adamantine Palace, certain nobles conspire with and against each other (allegiances shift really fast) in the weeks leading up to the election of a new Speaker, who is kind of like the Secretary of the UN, if the Secretary of the UN had a small military force and a massive palace and tortured people. So, you know, exactly like the Secretary.
I feel like a really awful person. I keep saying I want to read more traditional high fantasy, and then I rip into the books for being too traditional and not doing enough to circumvent, subvert, or otherwise play with the tropes of high fantasy. Why do I do this to myself? Shadow Prowler is another recent example, and although I think I liked The Adamantine Palace better on the whole, I have similar complaints. By and large, Deas reaches in the Fantasy Tropes Grab Bag, pulls up a handful of good ones, and puts them to work. But one reason I’m not a huge fan of uninnovative traditional fantasy is simply because it’s lazy. With a generation or two of readers raised in this tradition, authors don’t have to spell things out. They just say, “dragon” or “knight” or “castle” and let us do the rest. I get the sense there is a rich and interesting society in this world, but Deas spends very little time explaining it. We get vague allusions to wars of succession, etc., but no fulfilling background.
Yet it’s not as if this book is devoid of exposition. There is plenty of it, spread across far too many POVs. Indeed, The Adamantine Palace jumps from character to character even more than Game of Thrones does! With each new chapter, I kept thinking, “Ugh, not another perspective!” Don’t get me wrong: I love, love, love books that show me characters on either side, protagonists and antagonists, perpetrators and victims of schemes, etc. That’s all well and good. But there is a limit, and Deas exceeds it.
Worse still, some of the POVs seem utterly unnecessary. He introduces a few characters only to unceremoniously kill them off (or they disappear, presumably killed) after one or two chapters. What, exactly, was their point? I don’t object to the killing of main characters, but the issue here is that they didn’t have time to become established as main characters. Meanwhile, characters who were previously side characters suddenly get promoted to main characters, and—look, do you know how hard it is for me to redraw my Fantasy Character Org Chart for a book every time someone dies? I need to stop working in permanent marker….
Once the ink is dry, though, and we have a fairly stable cast, what then of the story, the plot, all those intrigues? Well, I do love the dragons. My only complaint is that Deas drops his bombshell a little too far into the novel—I kept reading, because I could see hints along the lines of what he eventually reveals, but he plays it almost a little too coy. Still, once we learn the Truth About Dragons and get more scenes with the vengeful Snow, the book picks up pace. I also love how very few people actually understand the scope of this problem; most of the nobility who are even aware of the issue think it’s simply a case of a missing or kidnapped dragon. This feels very realistic to me (insofar as a fantasy book can be realistic), and it’s also something that can be difficult for an author to achieve. Balancing the need for characters to have imperfect information while also letting the audience in on the joke can be a delicate act, but Deas does it well.
Unfortunately, the dragon plot gets sidelined by political machinations that are not as exciting or well-thought-out as their author might think they are. For one, Prince Jehal switches sides more the narrator of Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold”, to the point where I don’t think even he knows whose side he’s on. I think he’s just an overconfident, scheming psychopath amidst a bunch of overconfident, scheming sociopaths. This could have made for a good character study, except that we get treated to one too many chapters in which Jehal cackles over this or that scheme while the narrator explains to us precisely what’s going to happen next. The same goes for many of the other POV characters wrapped up in this plot. I just want to get back to the dragons.
Because, at the end of the day, I care about the dragons more than I do about these people. The dragons have my sympathy. These kings and queens? Not so much. Deas gives me little reason to cheer for any of these human characters; they’re all pretty despicable, and none of them sound like they’re going to do a better job running this land than any others. (It’s important to note that we get precious little face time with anyone who isn’t nobility, and the one sell-sword POV character is on Team Dragons. So that tells you a lot about the moral fibre of these rulers right there.)
Machinations in medieval-inspired fantasies should be like the medieval machinations that inspired them. There’s a reason why A Song of Ice and Fire steals so much from the Wars of the Roses. While it’s true that people changed sides during such conflicts, there was much more going on. I find such epic conflicts interesting because, when you read about them, you learn about what’s at stake, as well as the family politics behind the story. That isn’t present here. There are vague references to a war or two, as I mentioned above, and some allusions to pacts made long ago—and that’s about it. The Adamantine Palace is adrift in its timeline, providing little in the way or weight of history to anchor it.
I would really like to recommend this, if only because Deas does some interesting things with dragons. But it overreaches, overpromises, and does not end up delivering the depth of politics, characterization, or worldbuilding I’m looking for in my high fantasy. Am I overly critical and picky? Probably. But that doesn’t make me wrong!
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“After centuries of calm, the Nameless One is stirring.” So opens the cover copy for Shadow Prowler.
A Nameless One, you say? Could this possibly be some kind of “evil overlord” (TVTropes) who wants to bend an entire land to his will? But surely there will be some resistance!
“Unless Shadow Harold, master thief, can find some way to stop them.”
A master thief named “Shadow Harold”, you say? Could he possibly be some kind of Lovable Rogue (TVTropes) who steals for fun and profit yet has a heart of gold?
“… accompanied on his quest by an Elfin princess, Miralissa…”
Elves, you say?
“… ten Wild Hearts, the most experienced and dangerous fighters in their world …”
Fantasy SEALs, you say?
“… and by the king’s court jester (who may be more than he seems … or less)”
A fool turning out to have a pivotal role in the plot, you say?
Shadow Prowler is one of those jewels of epic fantasy that fell out of the trope tree and literally hit every branch on the way down but still somehow manages to avoid being a total wreck. Alexey Pehov crams wizards, shamans, ogres, orcs, dwarves, gnomes, elves, and even some humans into this book. There is magic on a grand scale but mundane activities like theft and soldiering. There is a literal nameless Big Bad (and hints of an even Bigger Bad behind the Big Bad) who wants to swoop back in after centuries of being held at bay by a MacGuffin. If you’re coming to Shadow Prowler looking for “original” fantasy you’ll be sorely disappointed. On the other hand, if, like me, you’ve been craving some good ol’fashioned epic fantasy, you might find this to be exactly what you need.
To be fair, Pehov embellishes and reinvents to a small extent. Take elves, for instance. These aren’t your typical Tolkienesque, statuesque, blond beauties. They are fanged cousins of the orcs. Similarly, the overarching plot involves a dungeon dive into a forbidden tomb. (Although this by itself is not original, I admit, the worldbuilding behind the story of the tomb is pretty cool, as are some of the other details Pehov includes. He’s lifting from a lot of sources, so it evens out nicely.)
Shadow Harold, the protagonist and narrator, becomes a reluctant sort of hero and prophecy figure. We meet him in the midst of a heist, which itself is a sort of audition for the main adventure. However, Pehov allows a side-quest to hijack the main narrative. This is not a standalone book and it literally just ends with no real resolution to any of the plot threads; you are so warned. The side-quest is interesting enough if you just enjoy hanging around Avendoom with Shadow Herald, but if you’re one of those people who skip talking to any NPCs except the ones you have to interact with to get the achievements and finish the game, you’re going to be bored for most of this book.
Much like the world, Shadow Harold himself and the plots he gets wrapped up in are straight from your typical pantheon of rogue-like adventures. For example, he has to steal from the deserving, steal from forbidden territory, and engineer a meeting of people who all want the same thing so that they will kill each other instead of him. Fortunately, Pehov’s writing is interesting and entertaining enough that you can overlook this deployment of standard ideas. I saw everything coming from a kilometre away, but I still took a good amount of delight in reading it. Is that a guilty pleasure? I don’t know.
That being said, I’m questioning whether I’ll pick up the next book in the series. I’m just not sure I’m invested in the story. Shadow Harold is a fun character, but do I care about him? Do I care about cookiecutter fantasy kingdom from standard fantasy world? Mehhhhh. The ride is fun but the memories are a bit jaded, I admit.
Shadow Prowler also falls flat in a few other areas. There is a notable dearth of women characters; Miralissa, the “elfin princess” is pretty much the only memorable one, and so she of course has a mystical role (not to mention being an Other in the form of an elf). Most of Harold’s antagonists have a buffoonish quality to them; he never really meets with any truly threatening resistance on an individual level. And, as a I said, the fact the entire book is leading up to the actual quest that Harold is supposed to go on is a bit of a letdown.
I will say that Andrew Bromfeld’s translation is impeccable. I don’t mean that in the sense that I understand Russian and can pass judgment on its accuracy. But this book reads as if it were written in English. It doesn’t feel forced at all; there are idioms in here that are natural to English speakers but would be odd if they were present in the original text. This is how translations should be, and Bromfeld seems to have nailed it. One minor quibble related to the writing, however: occasionally we get terms imported from our world, such as the use of Latin (“quod erat demonstrandum”) or Harold’s reference to “Wednesday”. It really throws me off when authors do this in fantasy worlds. It’s like, did their world invent a parallel Latin and days named after Norse gods? I don’t know if it’s Bromfeld or Pehov’s doing, but I don’t like it. *curmudgeon harrumph*
Bottom line: Shadow Prowler is a lot of fun, for some value of fun, but it isn’t innovative. This is one step down the ladder from Shannara, which is also a blatant Tolkien clone, but does innovative things with that. There’s something to be said for embracing the tropes and trying to use them in new and interesting ways, but that doesn’t happen here. If you can put up with that and just let it ride, then like me you’ll probably like the story enough to stick around and enjoy it. Pehov has a competent, careful, and reassuring way of plotting that, while perhaps more predictable than I like, is no less fulfilling for it. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for fantasy that challenges and pushes back against the genre’s conventions, you’ll want to keep looking. Shadow Prowler is a clone, but it makes no bones and no secrets about this, and that’s why I’m OK with it.
A Nameless One, you say? Could this possibly be some kind of “evil overlord” (TVTropes) who wants to bend an entire land to his will? But surely there will be some resistance!
“Unless Shadow Harold, master thief, can find some way to stop them.”
A master thief named “Shadow Harold”, you say? Could he possibly be some kind of Lovable Rogue (TVTropes) who steals for fun and profit yet has a heart of gold?
“… accompanied on his quest by an Elfin princess, Miralissa…”
Elves, you say?
“… ten Wild Hearts, the most experienced and dangerous fighters in their world …”
Fantasy SEALs, you say?
“… and by the king’s court jester (who may be more than he seems … or less)”
A fool turning out to have a pivotal role in the plot, you say?
Shadow Prowler is one of those jewels of epic fantasy that fell out of the trope tree and literally hit every branch on the way down but still somehow manages to avoid being a total wreck. Alexey Pehov crams wizards, shamans, ogres, orcs, dwarves, gnomes, elves, and even some humans into this book. There is magic on a grand scale but mundane activities like theft and soldiering. There is a literal nameless Big Bad (and hints of an even Bigger Bad behind the Big Bad) who wants to swoop back in after centuries of being held at bay by a MacGuffin. If you’re coming to Shadow Prowler looking for “original” fantasy you’ll be sorely disappointed. On the other hand, if, like me, you’ve been craving some good ol’fashioned epic fantasy, you might find this to be exactly what you need.
To be fair, Pehov embellishes and reinvents to a small extent. Take elves, for instance. These aren’t your typical Tolkienesque, statuesque, blond beauties. They are fanged cousins of the orcs. Similarly, the overarching plot involves a dungeon dive into a forbidden tomb. (Although this by itself is not original, I admit, the worldbuilding behind the story of the tomb is pretty cool, as are some of the other details Pehov includes. He’s lifting from a lot of sources, so it evens out nicely.)
Shadow Harold, the protagonist and narrator, becomes a reluctant sort of hero and prophecy figure. We meet him in the midst of a heist, which itself is a sort of audition for the main adventure. However, Pehov allows a side-quest to hijack the main narrative. This is not a standalone book and it literally just ends with no real resolution to any of the plot threads; you are so warned. The side-quest is interesting enough if you just enjoy hanging around Avendoom with Shadow Herald, but if you’re one of those people who skip talking to any NPCs except the ones you have to interact with to get the achievements and finish the game, you’re going to be bored for most of this book.
Much like the world, Shadow Harold himself and the plots he gets wrapped up in are straight from your typical pantheon of rogue-like adventures. For example, he has to steal from the deserving, steal from forbidden territory, and engineer a meeting of people who all want the same thing so that they will kill each other instead of him. Fortunately, Pehov’s writing is interesting and entertaining enough that you can overlook this deployment of standard ideas. I saw everything coming from a kilometre away, but I still took a good amount of delight in reading it. Is that a guilty pleasure? I don’t know.
That being said, I’m questioning whether I’ll pick up the next book in the series. I’m just not sure I’m invested in the story. Shadow Harold is a fun character, but do I care about him? Do I care about cookiecutter fantasy kingdom from standard fantasy world? Mehhhhh. The ride is fun but the memories are a bit jaded, I admit.
Shadow Prowler also falls flat in a few other areas. There is a notable dearth of women characters; Miralissa, the “elfin princess” is pretty much the only memorable one, and so she of course has a mystical role (not to mention being an Other in the form of an elf). Most of Harold’s antagonists have a buffoonish quality to them; he never really meets with any truly threatening resistance on an individual level. And, as a I said, the fact the entire book is leading up to the actual quest that Harold is supposed to go on is a bit of a letdown.
I will say that Andrew Bromfeld’s translation is impeccable. I don’t mean that in the sense that I understand Russian and can pass judgment on its accuracy. But this book reads as if it were written in English. It doesn’t feel forced at all; there are idioms in here that are natural to English speakers but would be odd if they were present in the original text. This is how translations should be, and Bromfeld seems to have nailed it. One minor quibble related to the writing, however: occasionally we get terms imported from our world, such as the use of Latin (“quod erat demonstrandum”) or Harold’s reference to “Wednesday”. It really throws me off when authors do this in fantasy worlds. It’s like, did their world invent a parallel Latin and days named after Norse gods? I don’t know if it’s Bromfeld or Pehov’s doing, but I don’t like it. *curmudgeon harrumph*
Bottom line: Shadow Prowler is a lot of fun, for some value of fun, but it isn’t innovative. This is one step down the ladder from Shannara, which is also a blatant Tolkien clone, but does innovative things with that. There’s something to be said for embracing the tropes and trying to use them in new and interesting ways, but that doesn’t happen here. If you can put up with that and just let it ride, then like me you’ll probably like the story enough to stick around and enjoy it. Pehov has a competent, careful, and reassuring way of plotting that, while perhaps more predictable than I like, is no less fulfilling for it. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for fantasy that challenges and pushes back against the genre’s conventions, you’ll want to keep looking. Shadow Prowler is a clone, but it makes no bones and no secrets about this, and that’s why I’m OK with it.
Is Andreas Corelli the Devil?
This is the part of the review where I confess I remember almost nothing about The Shadow of the Wind or The Prisoner of Heaven, because that’s how my memory rolls. So I can’t say much about the interconnected nature of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s Cemetery of Forgotten Books series. Instead, let’s look at The Angel’s Game on its own, as a suspenseful and literally literary thriller.
David Martín is an orphan who grows up to become a pulp thriller writer. But he seems marked for bigger things. He ghostwrites his best friend and benefactor’s novel, unbeknownst to that man, while trying and failing to sway the girl of his dreams into marrying him. When his own novel proves a flop, he resigns himself to dying of a brain tumour, forgotten and unmourned. But then a mysterious publisher shows up and promises to make all of David’s problems go away … and all David has to do is write a book. Well, a book that invents a new religion.
It sounds too good to be true, and David agrees. Although he starts working on this book, most of The Angel’s Game concerns David’s search for answers. And this is no straightforward mystery: everything seems to be connected to the tower house he rented, and it seems like history is repeating itself. The more David investigates, the more serious matters become. Ruiz Zafón mixes in murder and mayhem and madness for a truly delightful story. Given its length and a busier-than-usual week, The Angel’s Game took me slightly longer to read than I wanted—but I was never bored by it at any point.
David might be a hard narrator for some to warm to. He’s not all that likeable. Isabella makes the best criticisms of his character. She calls him selfish, which is accurate to an extent, though I think it’s more that he is unsure how to involve himself at times. He can be beneficent when he chooses, such as when he initiates the convoluted plan to get Isabella and Sempere Junior together. And he gives Ricardo Salvador that nudge to visit Dona Marlasca once again. Indeed, one might say that David is a veritable matchmaker, able to get everyone with someone else, except himself. His brief, tumultuous, ultimately tragic reunion with Cristina is perhaps one of the most heartbreaking parts of the book.
For the second time in a row I’m going to make an observation, and I’m not sure if it’s a compliment or a criticism (though this time, unlike last time, I mean for it to be a compliment). Ruiz Zafón is the poor man’s Umberto Eco. By this I mean that he shares a great deal with Eco in terms of style and literary motifs. Both enjoy writing about literature, both suffuse their literature with rich allusions to European history and events contemporary to their settings. The Angel’s Game has some similarities to Foucault’s Pendulum, my absolute favourite Eco book. (Both books are about how books can change the world, and if that is not an awesome theme, I don’t know what is.) Whereas Eco offers up a sumptuous repast steeped in medievalist philosophy and semiotics, however, Ruiz Zafón prefers to serve a sweeter, lighter fare. It’s not a question of one being superior or better quality, but they’re travelling in parallel. Basically, though, reading this just reminded me of how I should read an Eco book soon.
Is Andreas Corelli the Devil? The ending to this book is seriously strange. As with the other books in this series, The Angel’s Game eschews overt usage of magic. Zafón does keep us guessing, however, when it comes to David’s reliability as a narrator. Is Corelli even real, or is he a figment of David’s imagination—or a fragment of David himself? I’d opine that Corelli is indeed the Devil, that the eponymous angel is Lucifer, and David the latest victim of his game. Whether or not Corelli is “real” isn’t so much the salient point, because the effects of Corelli’s influence—from Cristina to Vidal to Senor Sempere and on—are very real. One might wonder if everyone would have been better off had David forsworn all involvement with them.
In this way, Ruiz Zafón delivers that most delightful of old-school tragedies: the kind where everything goes wrong for the protagonist, even his moments of triumph turning to ash in his mouth. The Angel’s Game is not an uplifting book; at times it is fucking depressing. But it is artful. It is magical, in its own way. It is a nice soak in the literary hot tub, if you know what I mean. I won’t compare it to the others, but if you liked the other books in this series, you will probably like this one.
This is the part of the review where I confess I remember almost nothing about The Shadow of the Wind or The Prisoner of Heaven, because that’s how my memory rolls. So I can’t say much about the interconnected nature of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s Cemetery of Forgotten Books series. Instead, let’s look at The Angel’s Game on its own, as a suspenseful and literally literary thriller.
David Martín is an orphan who grows up to become a pulp thriller writer. But he seems marked for bigger things. He ghostwrites his best friend and benefactor’s novel, unbeknownst to that man, while trying and failing to sway the girl of his dreams into marrying him. When his own novel proves a flop, he resigns himself to dying of a brain tumour, forgotten and unmourned. But then a mysterious publisher shows up and promises to make all of David’s problems go away … and all David has to do is write a book. Well, a book that invents a new religion.
It sounds too good to be true, and David agrees. Although he starts working on this book, most of The Angel’s Game concerns David’s search for answers. And this is no straightforward mystery: everything seems to be connected to the tower house he rented, and it seems like history is repeating itself. The more David investigates, the more serious matters become. Ruiz Zafón mixes in murder and mayhem and madness for a truly delightful story. Given its length and a busier-than-usual week, The Angel’s Game took me slightly longer to read than I wanted—but I was never bored by it at any point.
David might be a hard narrator for some to warm to. He’s not all that likeable. Isabella makes the best criticisms of his character. She calls him selfish, which is accurate to an extent, though I think it’s more that he is unsure how to involve himself at times. He can be beneficent when he chooses, such as when he initiates the convoluted plan to get Isabella and Sempere Junior together. And he gives Ricardo Salvador that nudge to visit Dona Marlasca once again. Indeed, one might say that David is a veritable matchmaker, able to get everyone with someone else, except himself. His brief, tumultuous, ultimately tragic reunion with Cristina is perhaps one of the most heartbreaking parts of the book.
For the second time in a row I’m going to make an observation, and I’m not sure if it’s a compliment or a criticism (though this time, unlike last time, I mean for it to be a compliment). Ruiz Zafón is the poor man’s Umberto Eco. By this I mean that he shares a great deal with Eco in terms of style and literary motifs. Both enjoy writing about literature, both suffuse their literature with rich allusions to European history and events contemporary to their settings. The Angel’s Game has some similarities to Foucault’s Pendulum, my absolute favourite Eco book. (Both books are about how books can change the world, and if that is not an awesome theme, I don’t know what is.) Whereas Eco offers up a sumptuous repast steeped in medievalist philosophy and semiotics, however, Ruiz Zafón prefers to serve a sweeter, lighter fare. It’s not a question of one being superior or better quality, but they’re travelling in parallel. Basically, though, reading this just reminded me of how I should read an Eco book soon.
Is Andreas Corelli the Devil? The ending to this book is seriously strange. As with the other books in this series, The Angel’s Game eschews overt usage of magic. Zafón does keep us guessing, however, when it comes to David’s reliability as a narrator. Is Corelli even real, or is he a figment of David’s imagination—or a fragment of David himself? I’d opine that Corelli is indeed the Devil, that the eponymous angel is Lucifer, and David the latest victim of his game. Whether or not Corelli is “real” isn’t so much the salient point, because the effects of Corelli’s influence—from Cristina to Vidal to Senor Sempere and on—are very real. One might wonder if everyone would have been better off had David forsworn all involvement with them.
In this way, Ruiz Zafón delivers that most delightful of old-school tragedies: the kind where everything goes wrong for the protagonist, even his moments of triumph turning to ash in his mouth. The Angel’s Game is not an uplifting book; at times it is fucking depressing. But it is artful. It is magical, in its own way. It is a nice soak in the literary hot tub, if you know what I mean. I won’t compare it to the others, but if you liked the other books in this series, you will probably like this one.
Maybe it’s just because I picked this up after a long day of failing to strip wallpaper from my bathroom, but White Cat was really gripping. Aside from a Supernatural-infused dinner break with my dad, I didn’t put it down and ripped through it in a single night. That’s not a feat—it’s YA and not particularly long—but it’s a mark of how much Holly Black made me want to stay in her world and find out what was really going on with Cassel Singer and the mysterious white cat.
It’s a fair place to start by focusing on the magic, but, you know, the magic doesn’t actually interest me all that much. The magical system here is a simple one: some people are workers (“curse workers” if you want to be derogatory), of which there are various types. It’s a gift, not something you really can or have to learn, and every variety comes with “blowback” that people can or can’t handle to various degrees. It’s a neat little system, but that’s not what is so interesting about White Cat.
Instead let’s talk about the gloves.
The gloves are first mentioned on pages 5 and 6, where Cassel describes both Dean Wharton and Ms Northcutt wearing them. This is before we know about working, and a casual eye would miss them, but the insistence on everyone wearing gloves is our first signal that not everything is the same as our world (or else Cassel is going to a fetish school). Once we learn that workers affect you by touching you with their hands, the gloves make total sense. But what rocks is how Black weaves the gloves retroactively throughout our history. We hear about the Romans wearing gloves. And even in people’s most intimate moments, when all their other clothes are discarded, the gloves tend to stay on. When Cassel finds porn on his brother’s computer, what’s significant and titillating about the images are that the women aren’t wearing gloves! I love attention to details like this. I love subtle social differences between our world and fictional worlds that are consequences of the type of magic loose in the latter. And I love that Black weaves it seamlessly through the book rather than hitting us over the head with it.
Indeed, White Cat is one of those rare gems of tidy exposition. Black drops us into the middle of Cassel’s life, casually lets on that he killed his best friend … and then doesn’t develop that for a while. Instead, we’re more concerned with the mystery du jour and Cassel’s need to stop sleepwalking so he can stay in school. Similarly, although we learn about how curse working is illegal in the States and there are mafia-like families that snap up most workers, Black doesn’t ever go too far off the deep end of explaining all this. There is plenty we don’t learn about the wider politics of working or of this world, not just because it is irrelevant to seventeen-year-old Cassel, but because it is irrelevant to this particular plot. Black is confident (and rightly so, at least in my case) that the reader will be able to follow along with what little she gives them. As a result, we get a lighter, easier book that keeps you interested without hitting you over the head and yelling, “Hey, isn’t my world so cool?”
These details kept me going even though the actual mysteries and plot of White Cat are not that complex. It was fairly easy to see the link between Lila and the eponymous cat, especially after we learn what her power was. Same goes for the identity of the mysterious, rare worker whose existence Cassel must deduce given what he learns about Lila’s murder. About the only thing I didn’t predict was the nature of the ending, wherein Cassel’s mom gives him a gift he wishes he could refuse, because all it does is complicate his life beyond reason (but more on that in a moment).
It’s a measure of the quality of a book that even when you find it predictable you keep reading, because you’re just enjoying it so damn much.
Cassel is an excellent narrator. My YA reading in recent years has largely been dominated by female protagonists. This is an observation, not a complaint; I deliberately seek out YA with female narrators because I can’t experience what it is like to be a woman, and this is a great way to build empathy with what young women go through growing up. Nevertheless, I don’t want to ignore the multitudes of experiences that young men have that I might have avoided when I was younger. So I enjoyed Cassel’s voice. I like that he has an Indian background. I like how he gradually comes to a realization that friendship might actually be worth something—watching Sam and Daneca evolve from minor characters he is conning/taking advantage of into full-fledged sidekicks is very cool.
Moreover, Black depicts his relationship with his brothers with exactly the right balance of love and tragedy. Even when Cassel discovers that they have essentially betrayed them, he can empathize with them and try to save them from themselves. The way that Cassel manipulates Barron near the end of the book is brilliant.
So, that ending.
I was ready to three-star this book before that ending. I enjoyed it, particularly Cassel as the narrator and his relationship with his family. But as I said, I found much of the plot merely satisfactory. Then we get that ending, where for a moment Cassel seems to have everything that he wants—until a phone call from his mother snatches it all away again. Black neatly finishes the story off while still making us demand a sequel, because now we have to know how Cassel handles this well-meaning betrayal. Like, I’m not all that interested in the next book’s description of its plot, but I will read it, because I need to emotionally process this. It’s squicky in a consent? sort of way, all tangled and totally messed up. Well played, Black. Well. Played.
So, in short, White Cat is worth reading if you like magic and YA and alternative history and crime families and stuff like that. It’s the goods. And if my critique is that it’s overly simplistic at times, just keep in mind that’s often better than so-convoluted-you-need-a-whiteboard-and-string-to-keep-track. What matters is that Black creates a world and characters worth reading about, and a story that was exactly what I needed on a Sunday night.
It’s a fair place to start by focusing on the magic, but, you know, the magic doesn’t actually interest me all that much. The magical system here is a simple one: some people are workers (“curse workers” if you want to be derogatory), of which there are various types. It’s a gift, not something you really can or have to learn, and every variety comes with “blowback” that people can or can’t handle to various degrees. It’s a neat little system, but that’s not what is so interesting about White Cat.
Instead let’s talk about the gloves.
The gloves are first mentioned on pages 5 and 6, where Cassel describes both Dean Wharton and Ms Northcutt wearing them. This is before we know about working, and a casual eye would miss them, but the insistence on everyone wearing gloves is our first signal that not everything is the same as our world (or else Cassel is going to a fetish school). Once we learn that workers affect you by touching you with their hands, the gloves make total sense. But what rocks is how Black weaves the gloves retroactively throughout our history. We hear about the Romans wearing gloves. And even in people’s most intimate moments, when all their other clothes are discarded, the gloves tend to stay on. When Cassel finds porn on his brother’s computer, what’s significant and titillating about the images are that the women aren’t wearing gloves! I love attention to details like this. I love subtle social differences between our world and fictional worlds that are consequences of the type of magic loose in the latter. And I love that Black weaves it seamlessly through the book rather than hitting us over the head with it.
Indeed, White Cat is one of those rare gems of tidy exposition. Black drops us into the middle of Cassel’s life, casually lets on that he killed his best friend … and then doesn’t develop that for a while. Instead, we’re more concerned with the mystery du jour and Cassel’s need to stop sleepwalking so he can stay in school. Similarly, although we learn about how curse working is illegal in the States and there are mafia-like families that snap up most workers, Black doesn’t ever go too far off the deep end of explaining all this. There is plenty we don’t learn about the wider politics of working or of this world, not just because it is irrelevant to seventeen-year-old Cassel, but because it is irrelevant to this particular plot. Black is confident (and rightly so, at least in my case) that the reader will be able to follow along with what little she gives them. As a result, we get a lighter, easier book that keeps you interested without hitting you over the head and yelling, “Hey, isn’t my world so cool?”
These details kept me going even though the actual mysteries and plot of White Cat are not that complex. It was fairly easy to see the link between Lila and the eponymous cat, especially after we learn what her power was. Same goes for the identity of the mysterious, rare worker whose existence Cassel must deduce given what he learns about Lila’s murder. About the only thing I didn’t predict was the nature of the ending, wherein Cassel’s mom gives him a gift he wishes he could refuse, because all it does is complicate his life beyond reason (but more on that in a moment).
It’s a measure of the quality of a book that even when you find it predictable you keep reading, because you’re just enjoying it so damn much.
Cassel is an excellent narrator. My YA reading in recent years has largely been dominated by female protagonists. This is an observation, not a complaint; I deliberately seek out YA with female narrators because I can’t experience what it is like to be a woman, and this is a great way to build empathy with what young women go through growing up. Nevertheless, I don’t want to ignore the multitudes of experiences that young men have that I might have avoided when I was younger. So I enjoyed Cassel’s voice. I like that he has an Indian background. I like how he gradually comes to a realization that friendship might actually be worth something—watching Sam and Daneca evolve from minor characters he is conning/taking advantage of into full-fledged sidekicks is very cool.
Moreover, Black depicts his relationship with his brothers with exactly the right balance of love and tragedy. Even when Cassel discovers that they have essentially betrayed them, he can empathize with them and try to save them from themselves. The way that Cassel manipulates Barron near the end of the book is brilliant.
So, that ending.
I was ready to three-star this book before that ending. I enjoyed it, particularly Cassel as the narrator and his relationship with his family. But as I said, I found much of the plot merely satisfactory. Then we get that ending, where for a moment Cassel seems to have everything that he wants—until a phone call from his mother snatches it all away again. Black neatly finishes the story off while still making us demand a sequel, because now we have to know how Cassel handles this well-meaning betrayal. Like, I’m not all that interested in the next book’s description of its plot, but I will read it, because I need to emotionally process this. It’s squicky in a consent? sort of way, all tangled and totally messed up. Well played, Black. Well. Played.
So, in short, White Cat is worth reading if you like magic and YA and alternative history and crime families and stuff like that. It’s the goods. And if my critique is that it’s overly simplistic at times, just keep in mind that’s often better than so-convoluted-you-need-a-whiteboard-and-string-to-keep-track. What matters is that Black creates a world and characters worth reading about, and a story that was exactly what I needed on a Sunday night.
Guys, this book is legitimately terrible.
I knew, given Agatha Christie’s prolific output, that not all of her books, not even all of her Poirot mysteries, could be good. There was bound to be a few stinkers in there. But The Big Four is to Poirot what “Threshold” is to Star Trek: Voyager—which is to say, it is a well-intentioned attempt that might have once held interesting ideas but, when executed, became a shambles of a story that is best forgotten.
I’m not even sure where to begin, because this is like the opposite of a Hercule Poirot story. It’s like the Robert Downey version of Sherlock Holmes. Instead of a quaint country house mystery that subtly reveals the innate darkness in every human’s psychology, we get an over-the-top spy thriller in which Poirot and Hastings must stop four people from total world domination.
I’m not kidding. It sounds like a bad fanfic, right?
The book opens with Hastings coming back from South America for a bit of a visit and catch-up with Poirot. He learns that Poirot is becoming obsessed with a shadowy secret organization called “the Big Four”, after the codenames the four of them use. Over the course of the book—its constituent chapters having first been published as a series of short stories—Poirot and Hastings uncover the identities of the Big Four while solving mysteries, which sometimes don’t initially appear to be related. Along the way, the Big Four tend to be several steps ahead of our intrepid duo, although Poirot more often than not uses his little grey cells to escape whatever traps they’ve sprung before he and Hastings come to serious harm.
That is, of course, until Poirot has to fake his own death, pose as his “long lost twin” Achille Poirot, so that he and Hastings can stop the Big Four from unleashing some kind of superweapon on the world.
I am not joking. That is the plot of this book. No, I cannot believe it either. It sounds like a James Bond plot, but Christie wrote it. And it’s just so bad.
We can even put aside, for the moment, the outsized world domination plot. I get where Christie is coming from with this, because at the time she was writing The Big Four, fascism was on the rise in Europe. The idea that secret societies might be plotting to start another war didn’t always seem far-fetched. That being said, the idea that four individuals alone could run such a secretive apparatus, and that they would choose to dispose of people through a costume-wearing assassin, is a little out there.
Even ignoring this part of the story, however, The Big Four is a disappointing array of mysteries. When Hastings opens the book with his disclaimer that Poirot doesn’t go in for measuring footprints and using disguises, à la Holmes, I cheered a little. Yet he does exactly that! At first I thought Christie was lampshading all the way—but it feels genuine. I think Christie is genuinely trying to write a Poirot novel that is also a thriller. And it just doesn’t work. Look, I love the little bursts of action when Hastings gets to sweep the leg as much as any Poirot fan. At its core, however, these novels are always about Poirot puzzling out aspects of human psychology. And Christie knows it too, which is why the story always comes back to framing the plot as a game of wits, Poirot versus the Big Four, and how the turning point proves to be Poirot’s careful analysis of the psychology of Number Four.
I am a Poirot completionist, i.e., I want to read all the novels there are. But I don’t ever want to read this one again, and unless you are as diehard as me, you should skip this one too. My only consolation is that, according to Wikipedia, the ITV Poirot adaptation of this story is almost entirely different because Mark Gatiss agrees with me! So at least I don’t have to watch them struggle to realize this on screen.
Here’s hoping the next Poirot mystery I read has more of the little grey cells and less disguises, hmm?
I knew, given Agatha Christie’s prolific output, that not all of her books, not even all of her Poirot mysteries, could be good. There was bound to be a few stinkers in there. But The Big Four is to Poirot what “Threshold” is to Star Trek: Voyager—which is to say, it is a well-intentioned attempt that might have once held interesting ideas but, when executed, became a shambles of a story that is best forgotten.
I’m not even sure where to begin, because this is like the opposite of a Hercule Poirot story. It’s like the Robert Downey version of Sherlock Holmes. Instead of a quaint country house mystery that subtly reveals the innate darkness in every human’s psychology, we get an over-the-top spy thriller in which Poirot and Hastings must stop four people from total world domination.
I’m not kidding. It sounds like a bad fanfic, right?
The book opens with Hastings coming back from South America for a bit of a visit and catch-up with Poirot. He learns that Poirot is becoming obsessed with a shadowy secret organization called “the Big Four”, after the codenames the four of them use. Over the course of the book—its constituent chapters having first been published as a series of short stories—Poirot and Hastings uncover the identities of the Big Four while solving mysteries, which sometimes don’t initially appear to be related. Along the way, the Big Four tend to be several steps ahead of our intrepid duo, although Poirot more often than not uses his little grey cells to escape whatever traps they’ve sprung before he and Hastings come to serious harm.
That is, of course, until Poirot has to fake his own death, pose as his “long lost twin” Achille Poirot, so that he and Hastings can stop the Big Four from unleashing some kind of superweapon on the world.
I am not joking. That is the plot of this book. No, I cannot believe it either. It sounds like a James Bond plot, but Christie wrote it. And it’s just so bad.
We can even put aside, for the moment, the outsized world domination plot. I get where Christie is coming from with this, because at the time she was writing The Big Four, fascism was on the rise in Europe. The idea that secret societies might be plotting to start another war didn’t always seem far-fetched. That being said, the idea that four individuals alone could run such a secretive apparatus, and that they would choose to dispose of people through a costume-wearing assassin, is a little out there.
Even ignoring this part of the story, however, The Big Four is a disappointing array of mysteries. When Hastings opens the book with his disclaimer that Poirot doesn’t go in for measuring footprints and using disguises, à la Holmes, I cheered a little. Yet he does exactly that! At first I thought Christie was lampshading all the way—but it feels genuine. I think Christie is genuinely trying to write a Poirot novel that is also a thriller. And it just doesn’t work. Look, I love the little bursts of action when Hastings gets to sweep the leg as much as any Poirot fan. At its core, however, these novels are always about Poirot puzzling out aspects of human psychology. And Christie knows it too, which is why the story always comes back to framing the plot as a game of wits, Poirot versus the Big Four, and how the turning point proves to be Poirot’s careful analysis of the psychology of Number Four.
I am a Poirot completionist, i.e., I want to read all the novels there are. But I don’t ever want to read this one again, and unless you are as diehard as me, you should skip this one too. My only consolation is that, according to Wikipedia, the ITV Poirot adaptation of this story is almost entirely different because Mark Gatiss agrees with me! So at least I don’t have to watch them struggle to realize this on screen.
Here’s hoping the next Poirot mystery I read has more of the little grey cells and less disguises, hmm?
First off, an update on the shoe situation: I’m much faster at putting on shoes now. I’ve been training hard, lots of montages and such, and I’m proud to say I’ve seen great improvement.
Why Not Me? is the second autobiographical set of essays from Mindy Kaling. In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), Kaling told us about her childhood and the path that led to her involvement with The Office. In this book, Kaling reflects more on her adult life, talks about developing her own TV show, and shares her opinions on being in the position of a somewhat recognizable celebrity.
Kaling’s humour once again suffuses her writing, with delightful sentences such as, “… a honeymoon is, after all, a sex vacation you’re giving yourself after a massive party in your honour”. But this book probably works so well because it neither glamourizes nor downplays the life of a Hollywood actor/writer. In one chapter, Kaling describes a typical day of working on the set of The Mindy Project, from waking at an ungodly hour to get to work, to going to bed at an ungodly hour after a long day of acting, writing, editing, and occasionally cake-eating. Replete with (often unflattering) pictures to illustrate the long process of early-morning makeup and late-night editing, this chapter reminds us that making TV shows is hard work for everyone involved. Typical coverage of celebrities tends to focus on the red carpet galas and extravagant premieres, but this over-emphasis on the glamour of acting in Hollywood detracts from the hard work it takes to actually make these entertainments.
On the flip side, though, Kaling is quick to acknowledge the disconnect between her experiences now versus her experiences a decade ago. She mentions hiring a “team of stylists” and then remarks on how weird it is to say that—but that it’s also incredibly useful. Kaling is careful not to minimize the impact that her increasing success has had on her life. Claims by celebrities that they are “just like us” tend to ring hollow. Firstly, it’s obvious that all celebrities are actually lizard people in human suits. Secondly, it doesn’t matter how famous a celebrity is: just living and existing in that particular sphere of social interaction necessitates a different lifestyle. Kaling remains down to earth, but she never claims to be “just like us” (doesn’t deny the lizard thing either, you notice).
In case it’s not obvious, I’m not necessarily Kaling’s target audience. She goes so far as to explicitly acknowledge this in her introduction. So take my three-star rating with that grain of salt. Nevertheless, there were a couple of passages that resonated with me, such as this one from her chapter on weddings and friendship:
Every once in a while, Kaling drops nuggets of hard truth in between her jokes. I shared the above realization with her as I have grown older. Many of my friends have moved away, or entered into long-term relationships, even had kids—and this is great and all, but it is a big change. Particularly as someone who doesn’t enjoy “going out” and prefers to have one or two close friends over just to hang out, it’s a change that requires a lot of adjustment.
I also enjoyed this observation about differences between women’s and men’s magazines:
Zing! But a zing with a heavy dose of truth about different expectations of genders.
And so this is why, even if I’m not the target audience and not, in fact, a huge fan of Kaling herself, I still enjoyed Why Not Me?. It’s modest but honest, and rather than serving up chapter after chapter of fluff, Kaling sticks in real, thoughtful, often feminist observations about our society. This is a book that can check off both the “easy read” and “meaningful read” boxes on the reading checklist I know you keep beside your bed.
Why Not Me? is the second autobiographical set of essays from Mindy Kaling. In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), Kaling told us about her childhood and the path that led to her involvement with The Office. In this book, Kaling reflects more on her adult life, talks about developing her own TV show, and shares her opinions on being in the position of a somewhat recognizable celebrity.
Kaling’s humour once again suffuses her writing, with delightful sentences such as, “… a honeymoon is, after all, a sex vacation you’re giving yourself after a massive party in your honour”. But this book probably works so well because it neither glamourizes nor downplays the life of a Hollywood actor/writer. In one chapter, Kaling describes a typical day of working on the set of The Mindy Project, from waking at an ungodly hour to get to work, to going to bed at an ungodly hour after a long day of acting, writing, editing, and occasionally cake-eating. Replete with (often unflattering) pictures to illustrate the long process of early-morning makeup and late-night editing, this chapter reminds us that making TV shows is hard work for everyone involved. Typical coverage of celebrities tends to focus on the red carpet galas and extravagant premieres, but this over-emphasis on the glamour of acting in Hollywood detracts from the hard work it takes to actually make these entertainments.
On the flip side, though, Kaling is quick to acknowledge the disconnect between her experiences now versus her experiences a decade ago. She mentions hiring a “team of stylists” and then remarks on how weird it is to say that—but that it’s also incredibly useful. Kaling is careful not to minimize the impact that her increasing success has had on her life. Claims by celebrities that they are “just like us” tend to ring hollow. Firstly, it’s obvious that all celebrities are actually lizard people in human suits. Secondly, it doesn’t matter how famous a celebrity is: just living and existing in that particular sphere of social interaction necessitates a different lifestyle. Kaling remains down to earth, but she never claims to be “just like us” (doesn’t deny the lizard thing either, you notice).
In case it’s not obvious, I’m not necessarily Kaling’s target audience. She goes so far as to explicitly acknowledge this in her introduction. So take my three-star rating with that grain of salt. Nevertheless, there were a couple of passages that resonated with me, such as this one from her chapter on weddings and friendship:
Until I realized: this long expanse of free time to rekindle friendships is not real. We will never come home to each other again and we will never again have each other’s undivided attention. That version of our friendship is over forever.
Every once in a while, Kaling drops nuggets of hard truth in between her jokes. I shared the above realization with her as I have grown older. Many of my friends have moved away, or entered into long-term relationships, even had kids—and this is great and all, but it is a big change. Particularly as someone who doesn’t enjoy “going out” and prefers to have one or two close friends over just to hang out, it’s a change that requires a lot of adjustment.
I also enjoyed this observation about differences between women’s and men’s magazines:
I laugh thinking about if they ever tried to do “Who Wore It Best?” for men’s magazines. They wouldn’t, because no one would care. Men don’t care which men looked better in the same clothes because it’s so obviously a huge waste of time. It’s also why they don’t have astrology sections in men’s magazines.
Zing! But a zing with a heavy dose of truth about different expectations of genders.
And so this is why, even if I’m not the target audience and not, in fact, a huge fan of Kaling herself, I still enjoyed Why Not Me?. It’s modest but honest, and rather than serving up chapter after chapter of fluff, Kaling sticks in real, thoughtful, often feminist observations about our society. This is a book that can check off both the “easy read” and “meaningful read” boxes on the reading checklist I know you keep beside your bed.
What happens when the Singularity leaves you behind--or worse, forcibly uploads a copy of your mind state and then goes off and builds a wormhole using your mind as forced labour?
The Cassini Division asks just these sorts of mind-boggling posthuman questions. Ellen May Ngwethu is a few centuries old, thanks a telomere hack, and living in a post-scarcity society, thanks to nanomachine manufacturing. She has chosen to live on the front lines, literally, and is now a senior member of the eponymous group that watches over the slumbering AIs who built a wormhole out near Jupiter and then lapsed into senescence. Now there are signs that they are back, evolving (or re-evolving), and Ellen and her colleagues aim to do something to stop that.
Ken MacLeod pits humans against machines here, where machines are the evolved intellects of other humans. But this is also a book that attempts to get at heavy issues of philosophy of mind and even economics. MacLeod's characters debate everything from the most efficient decision-making structure to the nature of morality. It's a lot to squish into a three-hundred-some page book, and MacLeod isn't always successful. That being said, it's not a bad effort, and I could see someone else really getting a kick out of this. As far as posthuman SF goes--and you know how lukewarm I feel about that subgenre these days--this is a good one.
Everything regarding the Singularity, AI, mind uploading, etc.--this is where The Cassini Division shines. MacLeod is great at portraying the different opinions regarding mind uploading through his characters. Ellen and many of her allies look down on the idea that consciousness can exist independently of a biological, human brain. To her, an "upload" is just a copy, a stored state, and if it is run on a machine, it is a simulation of a person rather than that actual person's consciousness. Although Ellen and the Division make use of "backups" before they go into dangerous situations, they only load those backups into cloned bodies--and even then, Ellen acknowledges that entity is a copy of the "original" rather than a continuation of that original's identity. The posthumans who became the Outwarders disagree. They believe that consciousness is preserved, that a mind running on a computer (even one where computation speeds up the experience of "consciousness" thousands of times over) is actually conscious and living. Hence, they see this existence as generally superior, although it leads to an evolution in mental capacity and state--the Singularity.
Far from being philosophical discussion without any purpose, this all has very real implications within the story. MacLeod points out that the descendants of Singularity-uploaded humans may not regard regular ol' humans as all that necessary to keep around. We're just taking up space, using valuable matter that can be gobbled up and converted to smart matter. So for Ellen and crew, stopping the posthumans by any means necessary is simply a preemptive means of survival. Her disdain for anything involving electronics and AIs, the way that the Solar Union has stuck with chemical and mechanical computing, despite its speed trade-offs, to avoid computer viruses from the posthumans, is all very fascinating. MacLeod has created a possible future that is interesting, original, but also believable within the Singularity conceit.
Where The Cassini Division starts to falter is its dichotomous depiction of an anarcho-communist Solar Union and the anarcho-capitalist New Martians (along with similar non-cooperatives, nor "non-cos" scattered throughout the Union). It's not so much that I find these social setups unrealistic. But I find the way in which the members of these societies engage in offhand philosophical and economical debates about the relative merits of their systems somewhat stifling. It's almost Heinleinian. I get that you're excited because you have no money any more, but you don't have to point it out all the time. And why is everyone so obsessed with free love? Oh my god, it is a Heinlein novel! Run!
I also didn't care for Ellen all that much. She's not a sympathetic character. Her hard-line stance regarding AIs is interesting, but she just strikes me as uncomfortably genocide-happy. Her amoral adherence to the "True Knowledge" is creepy. I want to think this is intentional on MacLeod's part, just another way of depicting how different this society is. Still, it made me difficult to cheer for Ellen. The rushed resolution, the way she turns out to be right about everything after all and just conveniently manages to "fix" things (maybe) adds to my dissatisfaction.
The Cassini Division is the third book in a series. Nevertheless, it reads fine as a standalone. MacLeod lets you in on the historical details without hitting you over the head with them. I see now that I have the earlier books on my to-read list--but I don't think I'll bother, to be honest. This is the third MacLeod book I've read and the third I haven't enjoyed all that much. It's not the books so much as just my personal experience with his writing and his style, so you might enjoy them. Third time for me, however, proves not to be the charm.
The Cassini Division asks just these sorts of mind-boggling posthuman questions. Ellen May Ngwethu is a few centuries old, thanks a telomere hack, and living in a post-scarcity society, thanks to nanomachine manufacturing. She has chosen to live on the front lines, literally, and is now a senior member of the eponymous group that watches over the slumbering AIs who built a wormhole out near Jupiter and then lapsed into senescence. Now there are signs that they are back, evolving (or re-evolving), and Ellen and her colleagues aim to do something to stop that.
Ken MacLeod pits humans against machines here, where machines are the evolved intellects of other humans. But this is also a book that attempts to get at heavy issues of philosophy of mind and even economics. MacLeod's characters debate everything from the most efficient decision-making structure to the nature of morality. It's a lot to squish into a three-hundred-some page book, and MacLeod isn't always successful. That being said, it's not a bad effort, and I could see someone else really getting a kick out of this. As far as posthuman SF goes--and you know how lukewarm I feel about that subgenre these days--this is a good one.
Everything regarding the Singularity, AI, mind uploading, etc.--this is where The Cassini Division shines. MacLeod is great at portraying the different opinions regarding mind uploading through his characters. Ellen and many of her allies look down on the idea that consciousness can exist independently of a biological, human brain. To her, an "upload" is just a copy, a stored state, and if it is run on a machine, it is a simulation of a person rather than that actual person's consciousness. Although Ellen and the Division make use of "backups" before they go into dangerous situations, they only load those backups into cloned bodies--and even then, Ellen acknowledges that entity is a copy of the "original" rather than a continuation of that original's identity. The posthumans who became the Outwarders disagree. They believe that consciousness is preserved, that a mind running on a computer (even one where computation speeds up the experience of "consciousness" thousands of times over) is actually conscious and living. Hence, they see this existence as generally superior, although it leads to an evolution in mental capacity and state--the Singularity.
Far from being philosophical discussion without any purpose, this all has very real implications within the story. MacLeod points out that the descendants of Singularity-uploaded humans may not regard regular ol' humans as all that necessary to keep around. We're just taking up space, using valuable matter that can be gobbled up and converted to smart matter. So for Ellen and crew, stopping the posthumans by any means necessary is simply a preemptive means of survival. Her disdain for anything involving electronics and AIs, the way that the Solar Union has stuck with chemical and mechanical computing, despite its speed trade-offs, to avoid computer viruses from the posthumans, is all very fascinating. MacLeod has created a possible future that is interesting, original, but also believable within the Singularity conceit.
Where The Cassini Division starts to falter is its dichotomous depiction of an anarcho-communist Solar Union and the anarcho-capitalist New Martians (along with similar non-cooperatives, nor "non-cos" scattered throughout the Union). It's not so much that I find these social setups unrealistic. But I find the way in which the members of these societies engage in offhand philosophical and economical debates about the relative merits of their systems somewhat stifling. It's almost Heinleinian. I get that you're excited because you have no money any more, but you don't have to point it out all the time. And why is everyone so obsessed with free love? Oh my god, it is a Heinlein novel! Run!
I also didn't care for Ellen all that much. She's not a sympathetic character. Her hard-line stance regarding AIs is interesting, but she just strikes me as uncomfortably genocide-happy. Her amoral adherence to the "True Knowledge" is creepy. I want to think this is intentional on MacLeod's part, just another way of depicting how different this society is. Still, it made me difficult to cheer for Ellen. The rushed resolution, the way she turns out to be right about everything after all and just conveniently manages to "fix" things (maybe) adds to my dissatisfaction.
The Cassini Division is the third book in a series. Nevertheless, it reads fine as a standalone. MacLeod lets you in on the historical details without hitting you over the head with them. I see now that I have the earlier books on my to-read list--but I don't think I'll bother, to be honest. This is the third MacLeod book I've read and the third I haven't enjoyed all that much. It's not the books so much as just my personal experience with his writing and his style, so you might enjoy them. Third time for me, however, proves not to be the charm.
Fairytale retellings are sooooooo in these days, and probably with good reason. Fairytales are, in some ways, cultural bedrock. They are meant to be adapted, retold, reimagined with each new generation and new age. The popularity of such a practice fluctuates, but they are always there, beneath the surface, lurking and awaiting their next moment in the spotlight. Hollywood is incredibly talented at messing up its attempts to retell fairytales (although I have to admit, I really enjoyed Disney’s new Cinderella, and Maleficient wasn’t bad either). Fortunately, a great many authors have taken to penning their versions of these classics. In the case of The Sleeper and the Spindle, Neil Gaiman teams up with Chris Ridell to provide a spin on Sleeping Beauty along with beautiful illustrations.
I’ll start by echoing what many other reviewers have said: this story is not as developed as it should be. The characters are more sketches. One might argue that fairytales are like this, that the characters in these tales are intentionally archetypes. But that’s one of the joys of retelling fairytales: the author gets to give that character a personality all of their own making! The Sleeper and the Spindle is a nice, quick afternoon or evening read. But the little heart there is in this tale feels underwhelming. Oh, Gaiman puts in some deft touches—allusions linking the queen to Snow White, and the twist at the end regarding the identity of the sleeper—but these are like flourishes atop a fairly mediocre cake: once you get past them, you realize you might have ordered the wrong dessert. (Cheesecake. Always the cheesecake.)
That being said, even mediocre Gaiman is still better than some writers’ bests. In particular, this is another opportunity for me to marvel at how Gaiman is so good at so many different forms and formats. He seems equally at home writing novels, short stories, graphics novels, children’s books, screenplays … it’s a joy, as a reader, to be able to sample one’s favourite writers in various forms. Although I will always love novels (perhaps irrationally) most, I appreciate the sheer variety of ways I can consume more of Gaiman’s writing.
The story might not be as impressive as I had hoped, but it is enjoyable. As I mentioned above, the queen, while not as fully-developed as I might like, is a cool protagonist. She is decisive and courageous, and she never gives up. I especially enjoyed her decision at the end to walk east instead of west. I mean, maybe there is a conversation to be had about her responsibility to her subjects. Perhaps this is a missed opportunity for her to go back, introduce democracy, then leave. But short stories must be short, I suppose, and there is something very romantic about the queen’s decision to avoid her unwanted marriage and just keep walking, to find more adventures. I’m not saying I’m demanding a sequel, but … well, maybe sequel?
I can’t say much about the art, because despite nearly ten years of working at the front desk of an art gallery, I still don’t know much about art. It looks … good? Nice? I like the lines? Indeed, Riddell’s illustrations reminded me so much of a friend’s line drawings that I’ve bought a copy for her birthday book. They definitely add to the story; as someone who does not visualize when I read, the drawings are a great way for me to understand the nature of this fantasy world and the people in it.
I know some are disappointed that, despite the queen kissing the sleeping beauty and the accompanying drawing of said kiss, there’s no lesbian romance here. I get that. “The queen saves the day” doesn’t feel as transgressive as it might have a few years ago, and that’s a good thing, and it would have been cool to see a non-hetero relationship depicted in this fairytale. Nevertheless, it’s also cool that this story isn’t about romance at all. The queen wakes the sleeping beauty not out of love but her sense of duty and her desire to save the two countries from this creeping curse. Indeed, the best thing about this story might simply be its message that it’s OK for girls not to be obsessed with marrying: the story ends with the queen choosing adventure and being single (at least for now) over the certainty of marrying (thus allowing headcanon like the queen being asexual). This ending of the fairytale not with the woman finding her prince but with the woman taking on the traditionally male role of wandering adventurer, that’s powerful in its own right. I can’t wait to read more stories like that, or stories with lesbian romances. Hey, maybe we’ll even see some stories about dwarves who don’t like living in mountains because they are damp and dark, and so the dwarves prefer a nice, cushy house in town!
I’ll start by echoing what many other reviewers have said: this story is not as developed as it should be. The characters are more sketches. One might argue that fairytales are like this, that the characters in these tales are intentionally archetypes. But that’s one of the joys of retelling fairytales: the author gets to give that character a personality all of their own making! The Sleeper and the Spindle is a nice, quick afternoon or evening read. But the little heart there is in this tale feels underwhelming. Oh, Gaiman puts in some deft touches—allusions linking the queen to Snow White, and the twist at the end regarding the identity of the sleeper—but these are like flourishes atop a fairly mediocre cake: once you get past them, you realize you might have ordered the wrong dessert. (Cheesecake. Always the cheesecake.)
That being said, even mediocre Gaiman is still better than some writers’ bests. In particular, this is another opportunity for me to marvel at how Gaiman is so good at so many different forms and formats. He seems equally at home writing novels, short stories, graphics novels, children’s books, screenplays … it’s a joy, as a reader, to be able to sample one’s favourite writers in various forms. Although I will always love novels (perhaps irrationally) most, I appreciate the sheer variety of ways I can consume more of Gaiman’s writing.
The story might not be as impressive as I had hoped, but it is enjoyable. As I mentioned above, the queen, while not as fully-developed as I might like, is a cool protagonist. She is decisive and courageous, and she never gives up. I especially enjoyed her decision at the end to walk east instead of west. I mean, maybe there is a conversation to be had about her responsibility to her subjects. Perhaps this is a missed opportunity for her to go back, introduce democracy, then leave. But short stories must be short, I suppose, and there is something very romantic about the queen’s decision to avoid her unwanted marriage and just keep walking, to find more adventures. I’m not saying I’m demanding a sequel, but … well, maybe sequel?
I can’t say much about the art, because despite nearly ten years of working at the front desk of an art gallery, I still don’t know much about art. It looks … good? Nice? I like the lines? Indeed, Riddell’s illustrations reminded me so much of a friend’s line drawings that I’ve bought a copy for her birthday book. They definitely add to the story; as someone who does not visualize when I read, the drawings are a great way for me to understand the nature of this fantasy world and the people in it.
I know some are disappointed that, despite the queen kissing the sleeping beauty and the accompanying drawing of said kiss, there’s no lesbian romance here. I get that. “The queen saves the day” doesn’t feel as transgressive as it might have a few years ago, and that’s a good thing, and it would have been cool to see a non-hetero relationship depicted in this fairytale. Nevertheless, it’s also cool that this story isn’t about romance at all. The queen wakes the sleeping beauty not out of love but her sense of duty and her desire to save the two countries from this creeping curse. Indeed, the best thing about this story might simply be its message that it’s OK for girls not to be obsessed with marrying: the story ends with the queen choosing adventure and being single (at least for now) over the certainty of marrying (thus allowing headcanon like the queen being asexual). This ending of the fairytale not with the woman finding her prince but with the woman taking on the traditionally male role of wandering adventurer, that’s powerful in its own right. I can’t wait to read more stories like that, or stories with lesbian romances. Hey, maybe we’ll even see some stories about dwarves who don’t like living in mountains because they are damp and dark, and so the dwarves prefer a nice, cushy house in town!
In Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, Salman Rushdie combines the literary traditions from A Thousand and One Nights with aspects of Arabic mythology and a dash of our own fascination with apocalypses of the modern age. It is an entertaining novel in its own right, but I can’t help but feel like Rushdie has gone and pulled a John Irving on me and written something on repeat. All the old standbys are here.
Rushdie’s particular brand of magical realism has always been one of absurdity layered atop mysticism. As with Midnight’s Children, this book features people receiving powers all at the same time. The themes here are very much concerned with the nature of God, as well as the nature of humanity itself, and whether humanity is at essence good, evil, or neutral. These sound like heavy questions, and Rushdie occasionally engages with them directly—but at its heart, this is a story about a conflict between the jinn, in which Earth essentially becomes a battleground and the people with powers—descendants of a jinnia princess and therefore part-jinn themselves—conscripts into Dunia’s army to fight the dark jinn who killed her father.
Rushdie’s writing and style are, as always, up to this monumental philosophical undertaking. His prose is beautiful, and reading Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is relaxing even at during its most violent confrontations or wretched moments. I particularly like his descriptions of Peristan and the lives of the jinn. I appreciate his tongue-in-cheek comments about the jinni obsession with sex, or the one off-handed remark he makes about magical realism authors. This kind of wit is a nice tonic to what otherwise might be an odd clash of tones going on here: the over-the-top supernatural and the heavy-handed theological.
Nevertheless, something stopped me from really embracing this book and enjoying it as I have with other novels of Rushdie’s in the past. I blame the characterization, or perhaps the narration. None of the characters felt very real to me. The book is narrated in a dry, textbook style, framed as a chronicle of history from a millennium after these events. And this just makes it difficult to connect to any of the characters. We’re talking evil beings from another world invading ours, and the closest we get to heroes is a geriatric gardener who starts hovering and a psychopath who kills people with lightning. These are interesting ideas for characters, but I didn’t really find myself interested in them as people. Perhaps ironically, the character I ended up sympathizing most with was Dunia. Her grief over losing her father, and the knowledge of the burden she had to assume now as ruler of his kingdom, is a poignant moment that shifts the tone of the novel into decidedly more serious territory.
This book is more literary experiment than actual narrative. Rushdie is very consciously attempting to emulate the stories-within-stories that comprise Arabian Nights. And while I have a lot of appreciation, and sometimes occasionally patience, for these types of experiments, I find myself less and less tolerant of them when their stories and characterization don’t match up. It’s not that I disliked this book. It’s good, on most such metrics. Yet I find myself asking the question: would I rather have read this, or re-read another Rushdie novel I’ve previously enjoyed? It’s not good—or at least, not good for this book—that my answer is the latter.
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights has its moments, but in the end all it really did was make me want to read The Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children again. So … yay? I guess?
Rushdie’s particular brand of magical realism has always been one of absurdity layered atop mysticism. As with Midnight’s Children, this book features people receiving powers all at the same time. The themes here are very much concerned with the nature of God, as well as the nature of humanity itself, and whether humanity is at essence good, evil, or neutral. These sound like heavy questions, and Rushdie occasionally engages with them directly—but at its heart, this is a story about a conflict between the jinn, in which Earth essentially becomes a battleground and the people with powers—descendants of a jinnia princess and therefore part-jinn themselves—conscripts into Dunia’s army to fight the dark jinn who killed her father.
Rushdie’s writing and style are, as always, up to this monumental philosophical undertaking. His prose is beautiful, and reading Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is relaxing even at during its most violent confrontations or wretched moments. I particularly like his descriptions of Peristan and the lives of the jinn. I appreciate his tongue-in-cheek comments about the jinni obsession with sex, or the one off-handed remark he makes about magical realism authors. This kind of wit is a nice tonic to what otherwise might be an odd clash of tones going on here: the over-the-top supernatural and the heavy-handed theological.
Nevertheless, something stopped me from really embracing this book and enjoying it as I have with other novels of Rushdie’s in the past. I blame the characterization, or perhaps the narration. None of the characters felt very real to me. The book is narrated in a dry, textbook style, framed as a chronicle of history from a millennium after these events. And this just makes it difficult to connect to any of the characters. We’re talking evil beings from another world invading ours, and the closest we get to heroes is a geriatric gardener who starts hovering and a psychopath who kills people with lightning. These are interesting ideas for characters, but I didn’t really find myself interested in them as people. Perhaps ironically, the character I ended up sympathizing most with was Dunia. Her grief over losing her father, and the knowledge of the burden she had to assume now as ruler of his kingdom, is a poignant moment that shifts the tone of the novel into decidedly more serious territory.
This book is more literary experiment than actual narrative. Rushdie is very consciously attempting to emulate the stories-within-stories that comprise Arabian Nights. And while I have a lot of appreciation, and sometimes occasionally patience, for these types of experiments, I find myself less and less tolerant of them when their stories and characterization don’t match up. It’s not that I disliked this book. It’s good, on most such metrics. Yet I find myself asking the question: would I rather have read this, or re-read another Rushdie novel I’ve previously enjoyed? It’s not good—or at least, not good for this book—that my answer is the latter.
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights has its moments, but in the end all it really did was make me want to read The Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children again. So … yay? I guess?