Trajan: Lion of Rome

Trajan: Lion of Rome
CRH Wildfeuer
Aquifer Publishing
May 2009

It is rare in my life I ever get a book I hate so much I can not possibly finish reading it. I don’t think, short of a Laurell K. Hamilton book, I’ve had a book that has turned me off so completely that I wanted to put it down twenty pages in. Ladies and gentlemen, I have that book for you. Yes, it’s a Roman historical fiction novel. You are all probably thinking, “Strange, Jenn eats Roman history for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and sometimes mid-afternoons snack.” And yet, this book made me weep in places…and not in a good way.

First of all, let me preface this by stating that I have met Mr. Wildfeuer, who is a perfectly lovely person. I was impressed with anyone willing to write a historical fictional novel on any emperor as little known as Trajan is to the mass market, and thought it would be exciting to read about him. Trajan, one of the so-called “five good emperors” of Roman history, isn’t particularly sexy to most popular Roman historians, because he wasn’t insane, he didn’t start a civil war, and he didn’t particularly make major changes to Rome, (well except for the whole Trajan forum, the defeat and colonization of Dacia, oh, and invading Parthia….except for those.) The History Channel and popular novelists tend for forget Trajan, who for his part was a very interesting man and a very good emperor. Considering that Wildfeuer had studied Trajan intensely over a period of time, and had a Classical studies background, I was ready for a great read through the era of history my UCLA degree prepared me for!

I admire anyone who has had seven years worth of Latin. My paltry one, (mostly forgotten), quakes in the face of it. But I shall state this, seven years worth of Latin and an intense knowledge of any period of history does not a good storyteller make. And in Wildfeuer’s book, this lack of ability to even string together an endearing and complex English sentence grabs you almost from Chapter One. I could tell because Chapter One is only a couple of pages long. Startled, I looked through the rest of the book and found that this is the case through out, with very little dialogue development, character development, or scene development as far as I could tell. I thought I was reading a high schooler’s work, until I remembered a man who specializes in the field wrote this.

Odd….

The writing doesn’t improve one wit as the story progresses. We are led through a confusing ramble in the Jewish Wars; I am surmising the whole point of this to set up the loyalty shown by the Traianus family to the Flavii as they take the purple in Rome. Trajan isn’t even involved in these opening sequences in Palestine, rather he at home in what is modern-day Spain, dealing with bullies in what I am guessing is supposed to show Trajan’s strength, resilience, and bravery against those who threaten him.

These are all suppositions on my part, I couldn’t really tell what the point of the opening chapters were because they tell you nothing really. They are interesting from a historical perspective, I suppose, but the dialogue is so childishly weak, and the scene writing so bad that I got distracted by how horrible the story was.

But I soldiered on, because I have a degree in Roman History, and I wanted to see where Wildfeuer was going with this, (and if he would improve his writing as the book went on). As we watch Trajan age from youth to man with very little character development, the stilted dialogue and lack of true, in-depth character study or plot is glossed over in favor of jumping from one historical event to the other, mostly relating it through Trajan’s rather static eyes. I say static because Trajan never comes off as having been a living, breathing human being once, with real thoughts, ideas, and passions. So little attention is given to Trajan’s personality that if I didn’t already know the man’s life before reading the book I’d wonder why it is anyone was bothering to write about him at all. Trajan becomes as thin as dishwater, the aspects of his personality gleaned from meticulous reading of first hand sources and are clumsily pieced together without real thought or explanatio. There is none of the imagination and creativity an author needs to give their characters to make Trajan real, no spark of live, of adventure, of excitement. And it lacking in all of the people populating the story, not just the main character. Trajan and his compatriots plod through the history we know they are meant for, and you come off at the end of the day wondering why you didn’t just bother picking up Anthony Birley’s translation of the so called Lives of the Later Caesars and read that instead. After all, he at least makes questionable court-gossip fun, which is more than I could say for Wildfeuer.

And speaking of gossip, if you aren’t comfortable with writing about sexuality, please don't write about it. Our modern views of sexuality are very different from the Romans, but I can guarantee that even the Romans would be horrified by the very amateur way it was handled in this book. Beyond the fact that I question and doubt that one bad love affair in Trajan’s life prompted his sexual preference for men over women, Wildfeuer treats sexuality in general and the Roman views of it in particular so ham-fistedly that in spots I had to wonder if this was a twelve-year-old writing writing their first love scene. One episode in particularly had me laughing so hard I was in tears, and I couldn’t stop giggling for half-an-hour. I was the queen of the trashy-romance as a teenager, I can say it was certainly not out of some titillated fit of scandalized prudishness that made me so shocked and amused. Between the dialogue so choppy you wonder who in the world speaks like that in the bedroom, to the gratuitous use of the word cock, jarring in and of itself given the historical nature of the book, I had to classify it as the worst love scene I’d ever read anywhere, in any book.

And that is saying something. See mentioned Laurell K. Hamilton, who I mentioned earlier, for more details.

I don’t know who his editor was, but if you have a job at a publishing house, you really might want to brush up on what it takes to make a good, interesting, and enlightening story, because this is not it. Mind you, I’m am not claiming to be great with grammar, frankly some of the things I do with the English language as I type would have English majors fainting, but I do know enough to spot obvious errors. There are quite a few of them in this book. One or two are to be expected in any book, but these are gross errors, and there is bad syntax left and right. If Wildfeuer were writing the book as a translation of Latin, I could understand the syntax, Latin often has clumsy syntax at best that in English has to be tweaked a tiny bit. But honestly, it is the editor’s job to catch these things. And they weren't caught. And that is a shame in any book.

Now, Wildfeuer’s book isn’t all bad, there are some very rough diamonds in it that if he were a better writer he could have really made something of this book. As a historian I took away much that made my geeky heart palpitate in joy. His Latin usage was appropriate and always given in a context that either described the object clearly, or helped you understand what the title/word/term was so that you got the sense that this was Rome, and not just some guy doing a bad translation job. Wildfeuer also always tried to inject as much of the Roman traditions, moirés, and culture in as he could, albeit stiffly. While I can’t give him props for really breathing life into it, it is accurate to its time period. I was particularly pleased with minor details, such as the remembrance of the difference in ladies elaborate hairstyles in that period as opposed to early periods, of the clear definition of titles and roles in the empire at the time, little things that are so often glossed over in history classes that Wildfeuer really did give full attention to.

And I appreciated that Wildfeuer does know his history, and he knows it well, and he tries, clumsily, to create a narrative of it. He does try to give explanations for the actions of historical figures, actions that often in history books or lectures get overlooked for the bigger picture of what is going on. You can see very much that Wildfeuer wanted to very much provide for us the thinking behind the events we know happened, the reasoning for those things that became so pivotal to history. But sadly, his storytelling skills are so poor that not even his insights come across, instead you almost wish it were a lecture because it seems unreal that anyone could write this badly.

And I don’t say that lightly. I would never say anyone is a bad writer unless it distracted me that much. And sadly, Mr. Wildfeuer is a horrible writer.

It is a difficult thing to write historical fiction, I will grant any writer that. On the one hand you want to stay true to what you know from your sources, to the things they saw and experienced, and yet you have to tell a tale that is compelling to people who didn’t see it and who don’t know. And frankly, you are only working off the eyes of someone long dead, who describes little because they expect everyone to know what they are talking about. This is not easy at all. I know this, I’ve been up to my eyebrows in original source material, and I have to give Mr. Wildfeuer a hand for even making the attempt. But I’ve read many historical fictions, and it can be done. It just takes a touch of the writer, that spark of imagination, and that grace to handle difficult topics with finesse, and that is something that takes years of practice. It also takes getting into the head of the person you are writing about, be they an original character or the Emperor Trajan, a real life person. You need to understand that person better than you know yourself, you have to get into their personality, speak with their voice, their words, their experience and views, and that is something that takes years of practice, and a keen understanding of people that did not come across at all in Mr. Wildfeuer’s book.

If Wildfeuer ever writes a true history book, a study on Trajan or any of his predecessors, or even a study on the world of the Roman Empire at the time, I will of course buy it happily. I can say with certainty the man knows his stuff. He just needs to learn how to write fiction.

Rate this wormy book: This book gets the worst rating from me, MAGGOT. The dialogue is unreadable, the characters are wooden, and short of the history you have no reason for caring why any of it is happening. I recommend the San Diego Writer’s Guild, or whoever gave it such a great review try speaking to some of the San Diego writers I know about basic fiction before handing out recommendations.

Santa Olivia

Santa Olivia
Jacqueline Carey
Grand Central Publishing
May 2009

Jacqueline Carey has quickly become one of my favorite, fantasy authors, and there is a reason for that. Carey, best known for her Kushiel’s Legacy series of books has the uncanny ability to take our world and twist it, creating a fabulous new world full of things that are eerily similar to what we know, but strange, new, and different. Her talent lies not in convincing you that this other world is living and breathing and exists, but in making you care so deeply about it because in reality this world could be what your own was if things were only slightly different. There is some sort of secret delight in seeing how our world gets turned at right angles into the stories that Carey produces, and what sort of threads are woven together into the tapestry of some new, unique re-imagining of familiar stories.

Carey’s latest work, Santa Olivia, is a departure from her world of Terre D’Ange, and is instead a modern book, an urban fantasy. Before I received the book in the mail, I dubbed it Carey’s X-files book, after my much beloved show, and within a few pages you know why. The story seems nearly ripped from the headlines of the past few months, the world is plagued by a pandemic that streams across the border between the US and Mexico, and the town of Santa Olivia, Texas is caught in the middle. Weakened by illness, and caught in a mysterious conflict between the US and a ghostlike Mexican general named El Segundo, Santa Olivia is soon cut off from the world, it’s people informed that they are no longer citizens, they are non-entities, lorded over by the US Army who establish a base nearby and rename the town as Outpost. A town with no name, with no country, with no hope, for years the citizens of Outpost eek out an existence under the watchful eyes of the local general, barely piecing together the days with no hope of relief, their one comfort taken in the boxing matches that are the passion of the soldiers and the townspeople alike.

Loup Garron is born into this environment, years after Outpost was taken over and freedom was just a memory. Her lonely mother happened upon her father, a deserter from the Army, a genetically modified experiment on his way to Mexico to join the others of his kind. Their brief and passionate union created a child that no one thought could exist, a girl with all of the powers of her strange, inhuman father. Sadly, before her birth, her father was forced to leave to join his own kind, leaving Loup, (a name her father requested due to her mother’s belief that he was a sort of werewolf). Raised by her loving but overworked mother and her doting and over-protective brother, Loup is very different from the other children of Outpost. Stronger, faster, and more agile than any child of her age should be, Loup also knows no fear. Incapable of feeling that emotion, Loup is forced to learn and understand the social cues and consequences of what having no fear means, and is schooled by her brother to always be careful, to never show off her powers, and to always be mindful of just what her father was. If the Army overseeing Outpost ever got wind of Loup, she could easily be taken and tested on by them, never to be seen by her family again.

Outpost is a hard town, and life there is harsh and unforgiving. Though Loup can’t feel fear, she can feel hurt, injustice, and anger, and like many of the other children her age she chafes at the restrictions of the town, of the Army who controls them, of the two warring families who take advantage of Outpost’s unique situation, and at the fact that the people of Outpost are never, ever able to leave and see the greater world. Their existence has been eradicated and denied, and their movements are carefully monitored. As Loup and her friends age they begin to yearn to do something, anything to give hope to the mindless existence they all live in. And they realize they have hit upon it with Loup’s strange and unique gifts. Taking the persona of the patron saint of the town that had once been Santa Olivia, Loup begins a mission to right the perceived wrongs of Outpost, and to help her people find the faith to persevere despite the oppression. Knowing her quest might end with the very thing her brother Tommy feared the most, Loup decides to make a statement and to become the one thing her community has never had…a hero.

Compared to the 600+ brick monstrosities that are Carey’s normal MO for her Kushiel books, Santa Olivia is a smaller, much more compact read, lacking the epic scope of Carey’s fantasy books. One of my normal complaints about Carey’s work is that it is long and drawn out, overly pedantic, with scenes and side stories I feel are useless in the face of the bigger story. But Santa Olivia suffers from none of these drawbacks. Carey keeps a tight story for a change, leading you easily from before Loup’s childhood through the entire story of her growth and journey into adulthood without anything unnecessary and cluttered. She leads us from point A to B in the most efficient of storytelling ways. Perhaps because her world is so limited, specifically to Outpost, this aided her in keeping the story focused on where it should be, on Loup and her friends, rather than adventures in strange lands far away.

Though it lacks the wide sweep of adventure, it makes up for it in a tight story revolving a close-knit circle of characters, in a situation that could come straight out of a AP newswire today. The idea of a pandemic from Mexico effecting the world, the US over reacting to the threat by overstepping personal and Constitutional rights for the idea of the “greater good”, to the point that they create great evil…this is what we are living and breathing everyday in this country. And Carey takes these ideas and creates a scenario that says, “what if this happened”. It isn’t uncomfortable, and in no way does it stand there pointing fingers. That isn’t what this book is about. But it deftly handles the sensitive subjects without prejudice, with understanding. While we want to hate those who oppress the people of Outpost, we also recognize that they are men doing a distasteful job because someone else made a distasteful decision, and while they aren’t happy about it, they are doing it. The situation is so very complicated, but it is also very real, even in terms our own world.

Carey as an author has a reoccurring theme through her books, and that is that is that people can rise to great things because of their force of will, not because of anything particularly special about them. Even if there is something special that they possess, it is less that specialness and more of what is in their spirit and heart. In essence Carey is writing about a ‘werewolf’ character, a superhero with inhuman strength, never once do you ever see Loup as fantastical or larger than life. She is a girl who is different, yes, but in many ways Loup has the same sense of the world and herself that her peers, the Santitos have. She is a pragmatic, no-nonsense child of a troubled town, and in that you realize that Carey has turned the traditional story on its head. Rather than being from another planet or directly part of the human experiments herself, Loup is a girl who is as much shaped by where she was born and the community she was at as any strange powers or cataclysmic events. Loup as a heroine is one of them, one of the people of Outpost, and thus is one of us as well. Her strangeness almost becomes an afterthought in the journey she must face and the destiny she creates for herself as a symbol to her people.

Outpost is a hardscrabble town; much of what had been civilization at one point in time has given way there to basic necessity and sheer survival. And out of this comes an unlikely cast of characters within the book who might come off as somewhat shady or distasteful in another light, but in the hard luck work of Outpost and around Loup herself they find better qualities. The priest of the town who isn’t really a priest, but takes on the mantel of one to try and do some good in the town, aided by the nun who isn’t a nun either. The boxing coach who is paid by the General to train local boys to box against the Army’s champs is a man who can come and go as he pleases, but chooses to side with Loup when he realizes just how little hope the Army is willing to give to anyone, including himself. The promising prizefighter, son of one of the local powerful families, who uses his station to get what he wants in the tired town, but yearns to be free in the greater world. He eventually comes to love Loup as a friend and kid sister, aiding her in her quest. The world has forgotten about these people and cares little for their little lives, but Carey makes you love them, even though by no means are these people perfect. They are rough, tough, leathery people, worn by the injustice done to them, but they yearn for something better, to be something better and do something better, and through that we come to enjoy them as much as we care for Loup.

Her description of Outpost, the dry and parched desert town, with ghosts of memories of a world that has long past the town by is particularly poignant and poetic. Nothing in the town is new if it doesn’t come from the Army, and few have ever ridden in cars, let alone gotten their hands on a working one. Besides, where would they go? Clothing is patched and frayed, old equipment is used and reused using technology years out of date by the rest of the world’s standards. All communication with the outside is cut off, and for the people of Outpost they don’t remember a world before, a wonderful world that they let slip away as the Army descended. These ghosts of there past act as painful reminders of just what they have given up, and the oppression they feel everyday at their lost lives. It wonderfully creates the atmosphere dying for someone or some thing to give them hope that there can be something better someday, some hope of a life beyond their dusty town. Her setting is perfect for the story she is telling, and while it lacks the polish of graceful and gracious Terre D’Ange, it is no less familiar or powerful.

This is a very different book from the Kushiel series, and Loup is no Phedre no Delauney. Where Phedre is a beautiful and graceful woman, full of elegance and manners, Loup is a child raised on the streets of a ragged town. Liberal use of the swear words, especially the F-bomb is common amongst all of the characters, reminding us that this is a book happening more in our world than in Terre D’Ange. However, if Carey gave up her graceful touch on Loup’s language, she didn’t lose it on Loup’s heart. Loup’s touching romance with her fellow Santito, Pilar, is handled not only tactfully but as a matter-of-fact, with the occasional lewd references, mostly in jest, but with none of the recrimination that one would expect in many corners of Texas today. It is almost indicative of where Outpost exists. They could care less who you sleep with. Perhaps it is merely a result of Loup’s utter lack of fearlessness about the matter. It lacks the uncomfortable that such a relationship would have in perhaps another story or with another author and becomes an afterthought in the full fleshing out of the tale.

Overall for Carey’s first, non-straight-up-fantasy novel, I believe Santa Olivia is a roaring success. Poignant, sweet, thrilling, and heroic, you find yourself at the end wondering if this will be the start of a whole new chapter for both Loup and Carey, with her ‘werewolf’ girl out to save the world. We don’t know, but I certainly hope that it is.

Rate this wormy book: I rate this a MONSTER read for anyone who loves Carey’s work. It is engaging and a fast read compared to her others books, with a character that is just as engaging as Phedre no Delauney, but who is at the same time VERY different. At the end you are cheering for your girl, and hoping that she makes reappearance again for more.

A Time to Run

A Time to Run
Barbara Boxer and Mary-Rose Hayes
Chronicle Books-2005

I love living in California…and Barbara Boxer is one of the big reasons why.

Not only is the esteemed Senator from California a woman I respect and admire, but now she’s an author too! I’ve loved a lot of the work Senator Boxer has done for my state, (as well as Senator Feinstein-note how California has TWO female US Senators people). It is this experience that Sen. Boxer has drawn on to bring us her first, fictional work, A Time to Run, the story of a first time, junior Senator from California, her improbable rise to such a powerful office, and the crucial juncture she stands at as she is faced with key evidence regarding the current nominee for the Supreme Court.

Ellen Fischer is placed in a predicament. She is the foremost voice for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and is not happy with the Presidents current choice for the Supreme Court, a highly Conservative law professor by the name of Frieda Hernandez. On principle Fischer knows she should lead the challenge against the nominee, but knows that in the next week she has the bill that is near and dear to her heart coming up for a vote. Having run on platform trying to create legislation that protects children against abuse, and to create a system that better ensures childhood welfare and stability, she knows that any rabble rousing on her part against the President’s choice could nix the bill. But she is not happy with Hernandez, knowing that is she gets onto the bench could cause all sorts of harm to the liberal cause.

As luck would have it, an old friend of Fischer’s stops by. Greg Hunter is a star reporter, and is in the pocket of Fischer’s political nemesis, a Cheney-esque Republican politico by the name of Carl Satcher. Ellen Fischer had beat out Satcher for her seat, and there was no love lost between the two, nor between herself and the man who had been a very close friend of both Fisher and her late husband, Josh. But Hunter is contrite, he comes bearing gifts, he has apparently found, in his investigations, evidence that Frieda Hernandez abused her daughter Flora as a child. Knowing this cuts at the heart of Ellen Fischer, he passes the information to her, asking that she keep his name out of it, and do with the information what she will.

Fischer is left with the decision…should she bring this information out to light in the floor debate the next day, or should she look into the charges further? Time is running short, and she has to do something before the call for a full Senate confirmation vote the next day.

From here the story focus shifts from that of a political debate to the story of just how Ellen Fischer, her late husband Josh, and Greg Hunter all know each other. The story is less about what Fischer will do with the information and much more how she and Greg Hunter got to this point. Ellen Downey we discover was once a bright-eyed Berkeley student, a displaced kid from Long Island, who befriends the two big men on campus, Josh Fischer, a thoughtful and passionate young up-and-coming lawyer and politician, and Greg Hunter, a handsome journalism student who has his eyes set on becoming something bigger and better than his family’s blue collar roots in Ohio. Ellen is drawn to both men, Greg who is the wounded soul who finds comfort in Ellen’s easy honesty, and Josh, the son of Holocaust survivors, who wants desperately to right the type of wrongs that entrapped and killed much of his own family. Ellen herself is a bit of the bleeding heart, she becomes involved with a group called the Children’s Alliance, a mentor group for the young, hardscrabble kids of Oakland, trying to teach them how to read, and to give them something more to do in their life than just run the streets with gangs.

Despite having an idyllic few months in 1974 before graduation, the threesome does eventually break up after graduation. Though she has a one-night stand with Greg, Ellen’s heart belongs with Josh, while Greg takes a job in small town papers in the Midwest. Josh becomes a defense lawyer, under the guiding wing of Congresswoman Lester from Oakland, who is grooming him to be her successor. When Ellen discovers she can’t have children, she throws herself into her passion of mentoring and saving the children of Oakland. After eight years, the three find themselves brought together again, when Greg returns to San Francisco to take a job at the Chronicle. It is there that he reunites with a college flame, Jane, and her rich father, who has connections with the very powerful Senator Carl Satcher. Despite their friendship, Ellen, Josh, and Greg all find that the choices they make in these years, and the places they decide to keep their loyalties have serious repercussions in the future to come, decisions that ultimately would cost Josh his life, Greg his career and family, and would put Ellen into the Senate seat that she now holds…the one that could have such heavy consequences for Frieda Hernandez.

Despite being advertised as being as catchy as The West Wing, (one of my three favorite shows of all time), A Time to Run, while being interesting and fun, is hardly as snappy, hard-hitting, or thoughtful as Aaron Sorkin’s political drama. While it certainly has a lot of political backstabbing running amuck through it, I had the feeling of it being a tad too Pollyanna-ish, as if Ellen Fischer somehow stood above the fray of the dirt of Washington politics. Perhaps I’ve been watching too much The X-files, (the first of my three favorite shows of all time), and I’m a bit cynical when it comes to backroom deals, or maybe Dick Cheney and Karl Rove have just left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I sort of felt that there wasn’t enough bite to the really dirty things going on there. I wanted to really hate Greg Hunter for being the spineless shit that he was, instead I felt a bit sad for the guy. Sure, he’s a pathetic sack of crap, but he had some real reasons why he’s a pathetic sack of crap.

And perhaps there’s a lesson there about how I shouldn’t hate the Bush/Cheney era politicians because they were humans too…but I’m not listening if there is that lesson.

I did find Ellen Fischer endearing, much as I find Senator Boxer, a person who in real life I think I’d get along with a lot. Red headed, loves to sing, is passionate about helping kids; she and I could be friends. And that is what keeps the book engaging, even when the plot sort of runs a bit mushy on you. Ellen Fischer is an endearing person, and you cheer for her when she helps kids as desperate as Derelle, one of her aids who Fischer helps as to get off the streets as a girl. You want to see more of these types of people in real life, and I liked her desperately. She made me want to go up to Oakland and start mentoring kids, (which isn’t half a bad idea for me).

The rest of the supporting cast, (save for Derelle, who I adored as well), sort of falls a bit flat, Greg and Josh in particular seem to run into this problem. Josh you want to like because he is the love of Ellen’s life, despite his faults. But Boxer never allows us to really see Josh as himself; rather we see much of Josh through Ellen’s eyes. Those rare times we do see Josh as himself, he feels so strikingly unrealistic, and he’s almost too good to be true. He is slightly insecure, but painfully noble, yet with his one big mistake that could damage everything, he is almost a cookie cutout of a political Greek tragedy waiting to happen. I wanted to like Josh, but he felt he was just too hard to hold on to as a character.

Greg also felt flat to me, a man who sort of dug his own grave, and rather than being truly a slimy git came off as being a sad, pathetic jerk who was so screwed up he should have been on meds. Greg is no Danny Conchanon from The West Wing, the man torn in his loyalties, wanting to tell the truth to the people, but is desperately in love with the Press Secretary, CJ. And you almost feel that Greg sort of wants to be that way. Rather he’s a selfish prat who always sort of wanted what Ellen offered, but was too much of a self-centered jerk to do it right, and instead chose a different path and screw anyone who came in his way, including the people he loved most. And he never, ever once sees it that way. He always only thinks of himself. I’d have rather hated the guy for being a jerk playing political hardball, than a pathetic sack of crap that just couldn’t keep from screwing up his life.

And maybe that is the point of the book. Rather than being a political thriller, A Time to Run is more a character study in how three people’s lives lead up to this moment. I recognize that not everything in Washington is going to have the high-impact drama of a Hollywood film, or even a television show. Often the backroom deals and evil power plays are situations just like these, with real people having to deal with real issues. Despite this, Senator Boxer’s book seemed to be just a bit too light and fluffy when it came down to it.

Not that this affects her in my eyes politically. I plan to keep voting for this woman until she stops running for office! And this was her first book out, and as far as first books go, it’s not so bad. Hopefully there will be others from our esteemed Senator, especially about Ellen Fischer. If I felt the novel was lacking oomph, I found Ellen to still be as engaging and endearing a person as I find the good Senator herself.

Rate this wormy book: I rate this with a FAT worm. It’s not a high-stakes political thriller, but it is an entertaining read. I highly recommend it to anyone who is considering becoming a commie community organizer, like myself!

Storm Front

Storm Front
Jim Butcher
April 2000
Roc Publishing

You remember a few months back I posted about Black Magic Woman, how I really wanted to like it because my friends loved it, blah, blah.

Yeah…seems this keeps happening to me.

I’m a huge fan of the film noir/pulp detective story. I’ve read Chandler and Hammett; I’ve seen every film noir known to man. I’ve listened to every episode of both Philip Marlowe, (not as good as the original), and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, not to mention a few other notable radio shows. I love the genre a lot, and it is clear that Jim Butcher loves it a lot too. His first outing with his wizard detective, Harry Dresden, is a more modern, and slightly altered retelling of those same sort of dark, blood drenched detective stories from our grandparents era, where the detective always gets drug into a seemingly innocuous case, only to end up being beaten up, threatened, nearly killed, and getting involved with the way wrong dame.

Dresden is a wizard. We don’t know how he figured this out or when he started practicing, but we do gather that there is an art to it, and that there are other wizards who more or less follow a code of conduct run by the mysterious White Council. We don’t know much about any other wizards, save for Morgan, a particularly pissy one who has it out for Harry. Seems back in the day Harry had a run in with dark magic and someone dying, but we don’t know any of the details of that either, only that the White Council was divided in what to do about it, so they split down the middle and decided to put a doom on him. Mess up again and we will have pissy Morgan kill you.

I suppose this tends to put a cramp in anyone’s style.

So Harry spends his days trying to keep a low profile, which is a bit difficult to do when he advertises himself as a “wizard” for hire. Apparently business as a paranormal expert isn’t so great, because he also does a gig working with a special unit of the Chicago police department that specializes in his type of thing…strange and paranormal, think X-files without the hotness of Mulder. Oh wait….

Anyway, as luck would have it, Harry gets jobs from both of his gigs in the same day, which is a boon this his bank account. One is a woman who is searching for the husband she suspects has vanished on her. She insists he hasn’t left her, but nervously pays Harry a large amount of cash to track down his whereabouts. Karrin Murphy of the CPD also calls him in on a case on the mysterious and gruesome death of a prostitute and her john, a man who happens to work for the largest criminal syndicate in town. The death screams it was done by vicious magical means, and of course all eyes turn to Harry, the guy who advertises himself as the wizard. And it isn’t just the police that are giving him the stink eye; it is Morgan and the White Council as well.

Now Harry is under pressure to figure out not just how the murders were committed, but by whom and for what purpose. His search sticks him in the middle of a turf war between criminal groups surrounding a strange new drug called “Third Eye”, the deaths of those who attempt to aid Harry in his search, and a really bad first date with a woman that Harry’s been attracted to for a while.

Not to mention an embarrassing incident with him running around naked with soap in his eyes.

For a first run for Harry Dresden, Storm Front is not a bad book. The action is tight, the plot makes sense, and it has the sort of gripping violence that makes a nice, old fashioned, pulpy ‘who-dun-it’. If you take the supernatural factor out of the story, it’s an OK crime story, of a guy who is over his head trying to figure out what in the Sam-hell is going on around him.

That being said, it is still an urban fantasy, involving a wizard, and magic, and supernatural aspects that are brought up, but then never really delved into. And I think that is where the book started failing for me pretty quickly. I admit it’s my own personal quirk that I love to know stupid details like why wizards exist, how they operate, what is the role of the supernatural in terms of the rest of the world. Perhaps it’s the years I spent playing Vampire: The Masquerade, I couldn’t tell you. From almost the start that niggling lack of detail about Harry’s world sort of bothered me. Admittedly, many pulp-murder stories have this same lack of detail, but none of them deal with wizards or any other strange supernaturals.

And it’s not to say that there wasn’t that background feeling there. As the story goes along, Harry reveals more and more aspects of what he does and how he does it, but it’s brought up in such an afterthought manner I sort of had to ask myself how much of this did Butcher really think out before he wrote this first novel.

One of my friends is finishing the latest novel, Turn Coat, and made a very astute statement about Butcher’s writing. It’s not a bad thing, but really his writing style is very much “guy”. It’s hard to explain, and I don’t think any author goes out there thinking they will write “guy” style or “girl” style, but there’s something about it that seems to really work on that male, testosterone level that I think is what carries a good portion of the book. And it makes it hard for me to sometimes really delve into it. At times you want to really like Harry, but he is a particularly standoffish character at first, and I’m hoping with time and further adventures this changes.

On the flip side, I don’t hate this novel. After all several of my dearest friends love it, and they can’t all be wrong. As Harry Dresden’s story is part of a series, I’m hoping that much of what I was seeking in Storm Front begins to resolve itself in the later books, to the point that I have a feeling I really will love this series when it’s all said and done. Just right now, I was sort of ‘eh’ about the first one.

I feel bad giving this a not-so-hot review, especially after I went and got this copy signed by the guy. I feel even worse one of my good college friends is being published by Roc as well and loves Jim Butcher, stalks him, etc. And I tend to trust this person's instincts in books, (especially as hers are awesome and I’ll spam those all over the interwebz closer to the publishing date.) Like I said, I want to think it’s just the rookie attempt that didn’t give me the wow factor, and that this will change with other Dresden File books.

Rate this wormy book: I give this a FAT worm. It is an enjoyable enough book for a sunny afternoon if you sit through and get it read. Not to deep in the supernatural as far as urban fantasy goes, but very good with the sort of noir-style mystery, with familiar themes and the sort of usual storyline you find in one of these stories. Why that might sound familiar and bland to most, it actually is done fairly well, and the supernatural factor does give it a sort of twist that makes it far from predictable. Just don’t expect too much explanation from the start as to how and why Harry’s world works.

Kushiel's Mercy

Kushiel’s Mercy
Jacqueline Carey
Warner Books-2008

I’m a sucker for these books.

It’s not just the alternative history, which admittedly excites the raging, ancient history geek in me. It’s not just the beautiful, epic scope of the stories, which speaks to the Tolkien geek in me. And it’s not just the very, kinky, S&M sex that gets to the….OK, what were we discussing again?

Ahem….Kushiel’s Mercy…yes.

Carey’s latest installments of the “Chronicles of Terre D’Ange” as it were is another adventure through the slightly-but-not-quite the same universe that she has created in her Kushiel series. As we all know by this time, Terre D’Ange is an alternative France, Alba is an alternative England, and you sort of figure the rest out by looking at the map, (assuming you can read maps). The hero of the last two books, Imriel no Montreve de la Courcel has just returned from the wilderness of Vralia (Russia), and has buried the head of the murder of his wife, Dorelei. He is reunited with his true love, Sidonie de la Courcel, both now realizing the grave mistake they made in putting duty over love, and are determined to face off her mother and the entirety of Terre D’Ange over it.

Well, it sounds like an idea anyway, and when the couple return to the City of Elua (Avignon), determined to never be parted again. But Imriel can no more change the fact that his mother was the treacherous Melisande Shahrizai than Sidonie can change the fact that she is the heir to Queen Ysandre’s throne. Sides rage between old and young, those who remember and lost loved ones in the wars and deceit that Melisande wrought cannon forgive her or Imriel for her crimes. As debate rages, the Queen declares that she can not ignore Blessed Elua’s precepts…but neither can she condone their relationship. She will acknowledge it, but she will not bless it, and her heir can not marry Imriel if she wants to remain her heir. That is, unless Imriel can bring his own birth mother back to Terre D’Ange to find the justice that she has eluded for close to twenty-five years.

Imriel has his marching orders, as it were, and begins his search, taking the brief respite to rest, and spend time with Sidonie and his adopted parents Phedre no' Delauney, Comtesse de Montreve and Joscelin Verruil. His happiness is marred only by the disgust many hold at the couple’s relationship, the least of which is Imriel’s perennial nemesis, Barquiel L’Envers, Sidonie’s Great-Uncle. Word finally does reach Imriel about his mother, on the heels of a Carthaginian envoy, seeking to reach out to Queen Ysandre and create relations between the two countries. Their arrival is more than exotic, it is also dangerous, and sets Imriel and his country on a crash course against their own kin, and forces Imriel and Sidonie to test the love they have not just for each other, but for their country as well.

That’s just the first third of the book! And that’s the problem with Kushiel’s Mercy. At 653 pages, it crams quite a bit of information into its pages, whirling us from Terre D’Ange, to Cythera, (Cypress), to Carthage, to Aragonia and Euskerria (Spain and the Basque Country). Much like her early book, Kushiel’s Chosen, you sort of get spun around in all these places, as Imriel, and later Imriel and Sidonie work to get back to their country and stop the wrong that has happened to them. While Carey is very fond of adding a new and exciting place we’ve never been to in every book, we have so many new places it sort of boggles the mind. And a part of you just wants them to get home and deal with what is going on there, run off, get married, and have babies, the end.

Which leads to the problem of too much is just too much. Imriel and Sidonie have a lot going on for them. After the last book, with the distance, the anguish, the guilt, all of that, you just want these two crazy kids to get together. Settle down, have a normal life. This is Imriel’s fourth appearance in a book, and no where does this kid have it easy. Perhaps it’s just part of being a member of Kushiel’s line, Imriel can’t ever seem to catch a break, and even I start saying, “enough already, just give him the girl and lets be done with it!” Perhaps this is what Imriel gets for wanting to be like his adopted father, Joscelin, and be a hero. He gets it in spades.

The keenest example of both of my major issues here is the entire section in Carthage. Imriel has gone to rescue Sidonie from the Carthaginians, but not as himself, as a distant cousin working for his mother, Melisande, so as to fool the magicians who have taken Sidonie. So a good fourth of the book is spent with Imriel as Leander, falling madly in love with Sidonie as Leander, and she with him, except it isn’t Leander she is falling in love with, it is really Imriel, and on, and on, and on….all to get to the point where their true love breaks the spell, Imriel frees her, and off they run to the rescue of their country.

I skipped through large portions of it because…well, I was bored. Really, it was great, Carthage, nice….I studied a lot about Carthage in school. Interesting place…really, I just wanted you to get to the point already. And we are only halfway through! The book started seriously bogging down, and I had trouble keeping as interested or caring as much about what happened until the two manage to save the day at the end.

Not the entire book was dull and boring. I appreciated the maturation of Imriel and Sidonie’s relationship from one of feverish, teenaged desire to that of mature, young love. I enjoyed seeing Imriel overcome many of his demons, physically as well as mentally. And while it was disturbing, it was very strange and yet insightful the way that Carey had the entire City of Elua possessed, and how the possession worked on the very faults that Imriel and his mother can see and press. Almost as if it turned people to the utter worst versions of themselves, bringing out their most awful capabilities, in a very stark way showing people what could happen when they allow their own ugliness and anger turn in on themselves to the point of civil war. While it wasn’t them, I think it was an important lesson for the D’Angelines, especially given the point they were almost at when Imriel and Sidonie returned to the city. It certainly makes a point of the demonization of Melisande. No matter how many wrongs she visited on her people, one can say she did nothing more than play ont he very fault they themselves had all along. I thought it was good irony. I think I just would have liked to see more focus on that, and less on Imriel’s adventures as Leander. Perhaps my attention would have been focused more.

Overall it’s not a bad book if you love the Kushiel series already. It certainly rounds out the story of Imriel and Sidonie de la Courcel nicely. True love perseveres, and all is made right in the land, huzzah, the sort of ending you want for any epic story. In comparison to some of the other Kushiel books, especially Kushiel’s Dart and Kushiel’s Avatar, I say it isn’t quite as good. It gets bogged down with too much extra stuff, and doesn’t have the momentum of a gripping story to keep you floating along, even through the duller parts.

This disappointment doesn’t mean I don’t plan on checking out Carey’s next D’Angeline installment, Naamah’s Kiss, out this June. It should be dealing with a descendant of Sidonie’s sister, Alais, who lives in Alba. It will be a completely different story, and I’m eager to see where Carey goes with it.

Rate this wormy book: I rate is as a fat worm for those who love the Kushiel series, though I wouldn’t recommend this as the starting book for anyone new to it.

The Scarlet Pimpernel

The Scarlet Pimpernel
Baroness Emmuska Orczy
1905

When I was a teenager, I had a soft spot for Harlequin Regency romances. I was a sucker for strong-willed, but prim ladies, who all seemed to fall into some sort of strange, Jane Austen mode, falling madly for inappropriate, rakish men, and running off to elope in Scotland, or getting involved in duels, or perhaps to France. Though France always confused me, because the last place I’d want to be during the Revolution and Napoleonic Wars was France. But still, there was something to the idea of turn-of-the-19th century romance in England that mixed all the best parts of Jane Austen with good-old-fashioned snogging that titillated by teenaged sensibilities.

Now, when one of my favorite novels is Kushiel’s Dart, I don’t think that the Regency era folk would quite understand my interest in S&M, but I still love the romance of it. The Scarlet Pimpernel is brilliant with the mixture of high romance and intrigue, with much more of the historical accuracy that the good-old Harlequin romances seem to gloss over to get to the snogging bits. The creation of the Hungarian émigré, Baroness Orczy, while she lived with her minister husband in England, the story is a rollicking mix of adventure, intrigue, and suspense, all the while wrapped in the sort of cloak that only Bruce Wayne could truly appreciate.

The story is set during the bloodiest moments of the French Revolution, before King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette lose their heads, but most likely just before. We learn that French nobles are being snuck out of France by a band of English nobles, all young, bored men seeking to have fun and do some good while they are at it. Their leader is a mysterious figure, known simply as the Scarlet Pimpernel, a man shrouded in intrigue, so named because of the tiny scarlet flower he leaves as a signature on all of his notes.

One of the many spies employed by the Scarlet Pimpernel is one Armaund St. Just, a young, French man who had supported the Republic but is horrified by what it has become. His young, brilliant, and beautiful sister, Marguerite, has recently married a British noble, Lord Percy Blakeney, a favorite of His Royal Highness, George, Prince of Wales. Marguerite is unhappy in her marriage to her foppish, dull-witted husband because his affections have seemingly left her. He had at one time courted her ardently, but the moment they married, his affections dried completely, and his behavior became idiotic and vacant. While the two are very much devoted to one another, their marriage is not a love marriage, and they are as distant in their worlds and preoccupations as night and day.

Marguerite is loath to see her brother return to France; the one person she feels loves her in the world. Yet, she lets him go, confident he will return soon. Unbeknownst to her, Chauvelin, an old acquaintance from her days in Paris has come to England to ferret out just who this Scarlet Pimpernel is, and to bring him to justice for his assistance of the nobility. Chauvelin believes Marguerite, not the celebrated Lady Blakeney of London, is just the person to help him find the devil. And once he learns of her beloved brother’s involvement in the plot, he believes he can convince her to assist him. Brilliant Marguerite is forced to make a choice to save the brother that she adores, or betray a man she has come to admire. Turning to her idiot of a husband for assistance, Marguerite not only realizes that Lord Percy is not the man that she had assumed him to be all of this time, but that she has been led, unwittingly into the worst possible of situations…to either betray her brother or the man that she loves.

The Scarlet Pimpernel hits the ground running in terms of action and adventure. From the beginning we are brought into the intrigues of the daring hero, all the while kept in the dark about his true identity. The intrigue builds throughout the story, as you wonder who it is that could possibly be their leader, and when it is discovered, you wonder how it is that he will pull off his next mad-caper. Orczy pacing in the story is brilliant, tumbling you along from small inns, to glittering balls, to the most dire, perilous journeys, all the while keeping you on the edge of your seat as to what will happen next. And while some of the twists are a tad predictable to us now, that doesn’t make them any less enjoyable to read about.

Marguerite as a heroin is enjoyable to take the ride with. While she is a vain girl at times, and perhaps a tad foolish, she is particularly smart, and you begin to sympathize with her when you realize that she does have heart and courage, and isn’t just a pretty face. It is heartbreaking to see her confusion as to her husband’s behavior, and to see her slowly catch on to what is going on. And their misunderstanding that separates them, as Lord Percy so aptly puts it later, is truly a case “of the blind leading the lame”, two people who have made a mess of their marriage by being prideful, who have now been given a second chance at love again.

Lord Percy is as fun a character as you will find in literature, a veritable precursor to Bruce Wayne. While he for all appearances comes off as being a nothing better than an idiotic dandy, busy carrying the favor of the Prince Regent, he is a man with hidden depth and a wealth of talent, and a man who wants more than anything to have the love of his wife and to trust her with his deepest secret. In many ways, Percy is what Bruce Wayne can never be, a man who can truly be happy with himself, and with the life he makes for himself.

The book does suffer from many things that I believe are more or less a testament to when it was written than to it being a true problem with the narrative. Much of the language tries to affect the style of Regency Era English, some 100 years before the writing of The Scarlet Pimpernel. The affectation can often be silly at times, making you wonder if they actually said ‘zooks’ every other sentence. It’s hard to tell, Baroness Orczy is writing the story well after anyone who would remember was alive. And it seems silly and fake to modern readers, brought up on Jane Austen and Horatio Hornblower.

In the tradition of many romances of the period, a lot of description is given to the emotional state of our heroine in the book, over her pining, her sorrow, her worry, etc. While Marguerite is hardly some fainting flower, the purple prose is enough to make you wonder if she’ll take to her bed soon in a dead faint. It doesn’t do much for the picture of the strong heroine, but then again that is a much ore modern idea of femininity in literature, and I can’t fault the Baroness for carrying on with it. It’s a book of its time, that of the early 20th century, and it is a book of its time, seen clearly in its portrayal of nationalistic pride and prejudice. Common Englishman thought nothing of calling French, ‘heathens’, while English and French alike thing nothing of kicking about poor Jews and seeing them as nothing more or less than base, sub-humans, worthy of distance at best, scorn and beating at worst. While the events of the book itself happen before the ghettos of Europe are open, the book is written at a time, the author claims, when religious toleration is much better known. However, if that were so, why have the Jew be picked on in the first place…never mind that the Jew isn’t all he seems anyway. But it is a book of its time, and while as a 21st century reader it bothers me, it would have not even been noticed at the time the book was first published.

With many classic stories, it is often difficult to get into them, but The Scarlet Pimpernel was by far the opposite. A spirited story of true love and high adventure, it certainly blows my hot and steamy Harlequin romances out of the water, with their heavy petting and mussed cravats. For all fans of Georgian British history, or anyone who just likes a fun story of intrigue, go grab it and give it a whirl. You won’t be disappointed.

Rate this wormy book: I rate this a MONSTER worm. By far one of the best and most enjoyable books I’ve read in a long time. I’m voting that PBS or the BBC needs to make a new movie version of it soon for me to swoon over.

The Prince

The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli

I admit it…I’m a rampaging Vampire: The Masquerade player.

I lay the blame fully at the feet of my friends Kari and Patric. They sucked me in with stories of angst-ridden vampires, and I lapped it up like a half-starved kitten let loose in a dairy. My first lessons in real politics were at the feet of maniacal VtM role-players, out to rule our little vampiric domains and plot against one another in never-ending schemes of conquest and total annihilation.

I cut my teeth, (no pun intended), on the complex, Byzantine labyrinth of intrigue that was my old gaming group. Sad as it is to say, it is very true. Which is why, when I finally got around to reading Machiavelli’s classic treatise, The Prince, I was blinking at it with the consternated frustration of one who thinks, “Duh, doesn’t everyone know this already?”

And perhaps they don’t….or at least it had never been quantified in one document set firmly in the European mindset. Machiavelli’s most famous work, published in 1532, is more a treatise and entreaty written to Lorenzo de Medici. An outcast from his beloved Florence, and seeking to regain favor with the current powers-that-be in his home city, Machiavelli wrote down his observances on the best way by which to govern and maintain a state as a ruling head. Sometimes using common sense, sometimes using more than a fair dollop of ruthlessness, Machiavelli weaves then current politics amongst the Italian states and Europe, with ancient stories familiar to them from the Greece, Rome, and other periods. He creates a system that he believes will not only effectively help a prince to lead his people, but shows examples of how other leaders of the time are flagging miserably.

There are many themes that Machiavelli picks up on and most of them are common sense to anyone who’s spent even half-a-minute watching History Channel shows on ancient and medieval European history. His antipathy towards mercenaries is a common theme in the annals of ancient history, even my own medieval history professor, Patrick Geary, used to warn loudly, “Don’t let the barbarians come to defend you, else they might get the idea that they like the joint and will want to stay.” Even worse, as was the case in the waning days of the Roman Empire, auxiliary troops, made up of non-Roman, barbarian soldiers would often be so depended on in the outlying regions, the regular army just assumed they would always be there, and always be loyal. Thus one of the many reasons for the Fall of Rome, and countless other nations up to Machiavelli’s time, this isn’t a particularly new idea, but never before had it really been pointed out in literature for everyone to see. It’s one of those common sense things I suspect that many a strong ruler knew, and Machiavelli finally gave voice to for everyone to understand.

Machiavelli’s opinion of rule over the centuries has been noted as being callous, calculated, and amoral, “ruling by any means” in other words. And this has given rise to the modern English word “Machiavellian” to describe anyone who tends to plot in this sort of manner. And yet, when one reads The Prince, one realizes that Machiavelli is less about being a cruel or dispassionate man, as you can tell by his work that he does care very much about a great number of things, Florence in particular. Rather, he is a man who sees the role of a ruler as that of a man who has to balance practicality with sentimentality, and how does one maneuver both in order to not only maintain his throne from those who threaten it within, as well as protecting both his people and his power from enemies without. It’s a fine line that any ruler is asked to tread, even in modern democracies. This theory isn’t so much cruel or manipulative as it is strict politics. It is how one maintains their state.

However, Machiavelli is certainly a man of his time, and writes very much that way. He is focused on the political situation that has been and is ongoing in 14th century Italy, and his observations are very much colored by the city-states and papal empire that existed in the land at the time, not to mention the rising powers of Spain and France to the east. Modern historians and political scientists look back on that with the benefit of hindsight, and wonder what Machiavelli was thinking at times, (medieval and early Renaissance France, straight out of the Hundred Years War, being a good example of strong, central government to anyone was a particular laugh.) But his observations do mark a time when things were changing in Europe, when it was less and less about small, feudal governments, and more about expanding powerbases, when rulers had to care more than about their duties of fief to some overlord, and more about ensuring their lands, people, and power base to create what would, in the next few hundred years, become the nation-states that we have inherited in our own world today.

Much of the advice that Machiavelli gives is very common sense now at days, the sort of thing that we all take for granted in modern politics. Not that we have much in the way of singular ruling princes in modern democracies, but the themes make sense to us even in our current political landscape. And it is hard to tell whether it is because Machiavelli isn’t necessarily inventing the wheel here, or if it is because he had, and its effects on the politics of Western society were forever changed by it. To be sure, it is a seminal work, but it’s hard to tell which came first, the chicken or the egg. At times I sort of shake my head and think, “Why is this book so important? This isn’t anything particularly new or ground breaking?” As this wasn’t particularly a matter of literary discussion before Machiavelli, we will never know, and perhaps that is part of why is work is so seminal in Western literature.

Needless to say, one can not become Prince of a vampiric Camarilla city in Vampire: The Masquerade without employing more than a few of these methods.

A warning, however, as I mentioned this is a text that is from Renaissance Italy, and if you read it in English it is a translation to boot. Also, Machiavelli has the tendency to like to wander in many of his explanations and examples, (oh if I could have gotten away with that when I was in my history classes). Because of this, the reader often wonders why it is he is discussing Cesare Borgia one moment, then Heiro of Syracuse the next, (there is a point, and it takes him a while to get to it). For the historians out there, such as myself, you get giddy when he mentions events and people you learned about in your history classes, (I got excited at the Orsini and Colonna, having stayed at the Colonna Palace in Rome and heard the whole sordid story about those two families). For the person who is simply reading this as a political treatise, you will want to pull your hair out, especially if you know nothing about ancient or Renaissance Italian history.

However, it’s a lot of fun to read about, so go pick up Rome: The History of a City by Christopher Hibbert one of these days. It doesn’t cover Florence, but it does discuss a great many of the events, particularly with the Popes, that Machiavelli brings up.

Rate this wormy book: Machiavelli earns a FAT WORM from me. It’s not that his book isn’t good, (if very convoluted and long winded to those who aren’t used to reading texts from this period), but it’s not as if this is anything the modern reader doesn’t know. The true value in reading it is that it is codified here, complete with Machiavelli’s political thoughts on the matter, which leads you down the train of thought he himself was taking while writing it.

The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride
William Goldman
Harcourt Brace Jovonovich-1973


“This is true love…you think this happens every day?”

The moment in the movie when Westley whispers that to Buttercup, I puddle into peels of rapturous delight. Since I was eleven-years-old, when I first saw the movie adaptation of The Princess Bride, I have adored the story of romance, adventure; daring sword fights, pirates….what isn’t to love for an eleven-year-old.

To this day, the movie is amongst one of my favorites, so much so it sits on my Ipod so I can listen to it while stuck in long, Los Angeles commutes. I own two copies of it personally. I can quote lines from the movie verbatim. I have friends who seriously considered naming parts of their anatomy after Westley, (if you need me to describe that further, perhaps you should go find ‘true love’ for yourself, or at least an attractive member of the opposite gender.)

This story has been as formative a part of my life as Cookie Monster and Transformers! And yet, I didn’t know for years that it was based on a book. Yes, I know it mentions it in the credits, but by that time I’m usually a sighing lump of goo on my couch, wishing I had a Westley to come and save me, (except I don’t live in a castle, there is no Prince Humperdink at my house, and the only pirates I know of are the ones who are downloading the movie illegally off the internet).

A girl can wish….

Anyway, when I did learn it was based on a book, I decided to give Mr. Goldman’s text a whirl. I had a bit of trepidation, admittedly. I so loved the original movie, and I had a feeling that somehow, someway the book would let me down. Either the story wouldn’t be nearly as fun, with its giants and miracles, or I’d find that the characters weren’t nearly as loveable as in the movie. Perhaps the movie wouldn’t follow anything in the book, and I would discover that the story was a long, drawn out mess of a tale, with the romance of Westley and Buttercup only some small part of what turned out to be some other epic story. What if I hated the book? Would this taint my love of the movie forever?

Well, to be fair, the book did not completely disappoint me…but it didn’t endear itself to me the way the movie did. In fact, the book lies weirdly in between for me. Unlike other books-cum-movies out there, I believe that this is one of the few books where the movie was actually an improvement on the story, rather than a sad, pale copy. And while this doesn’t take away from what is essentially a very good story, it does leave me sort of weirdly disappointed that I didn’t love the book more.

Much of the plot of The Princess Bride stays the same. In the country of Florin, the farm-boy Westley is in love with the self-absorbed Buttercup, who one day realizes she loves him as well. He leaves to find his fortune, but his ship is attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts, a notorious killer who leaves no survivors. Heartbroken, Buttercup eventually agrees to marry Prince Humperdink, the heir to the Florinese throne, not realizing that he is using her and their marriage to help create a war with Florin’s long-time rival, Guilder. When the new Princess is kidnapped by three mercenaries, out to do the Prince’s bidding, only the mysterious Man in Black can save Buttercup. But he proves to be someone who Buttercup never expected to see again.

Goldman’s telling of the now familiar story takes on the literary conceit of being an abridgement of a historical work by an S. Morgenstern, a supposed famous Florinese historian. While Goldman presents Morgenstern’s “work” as a satirical take on the rich lives of nobles, it plays out as much more Goldman’s satirical take on the publishing world, his own made up marriage and family, (in the book he has a wife and son, in the real world he has a wife and two daughters), and poking fun at traditional fairy tales all together. Interspersed between the ‘abridgements’ that form the basis of the tale of Westley and Buttercup are Goldman’s own notes and observations on Morgenstern’s ‘work’, as well as personal remembrances of how he first heard the story as a boy, (all made up by Goldman), and the continuation of the device that Florin and Guilder are indeed real places that he not only has been to, but has descended from. All of this lends the reader to nearly, almost believe that none of this was make-believe, fairy tale romance at all, but that it really did happen, and Westley, Buttercup, and all of the rest really did exist in the annals of history. So badly did I want to believe it, that despite the fact that I know those places don’t exist, I became impressed at how well Goldman wove real history and politics alongside his make-believe. That is until he would rattle off some fact in the sort of tongue-in-cheek, flippant way that gave you a wink and a nod and reminded you that indeed this was really just a silly, fun fairy story, like you would tell your children at night.

The story’s greatest strength is in the compelling nature of its characters, one which obviously carried over into the later movie, made in 1987. However, movies can only fit so much into their allotted time, and so much that made these characters wonderful was left out of the film, but Goldman had intact in his book. Everything from the past of Inigo Montoya, with the heartbreaking loss of his father to the ‘six-fingered man’, to Fezzig’s essentially sweet nature trapped in his giant’s body, to the real reason why the Prince is as ruthless as he is. I found myself loving Inigo and Fezzig all the more, and found Humperdink more despicable than he was even portrayed in the movie. If possible it made me love the story that is so familiar to me now even more.

But there were some down sides to this version as well, things that did detract from it greatly for me. First of all, Goldman’s commentary, while perpetuating the idea that he is abridging a real work of academic scholarship, often breaks in at moments that are both irritating and unwelcome. And often his commentary has very little to do with what is actually going on in the plot, but rambles to stories about his imaginary wife and son, his woes on his life, the publishing process, his arguments with the supposed Morgenstern estate, and any countless number of bits of information he has gathered on the fictional Morgenstern and his work. And while this is amusing in its fashion, it begins to become tiresome after a while. It’s almost like watching the movie with Jerry Seinfeld sitting beside you running an ongoing commentary about whatever is going on in his head regarding the story at hand. And while that would be a great Seinfeld episode, its horrible academia, (which this is supposed to mimic), and even worse literature, and you find yourself skipping over these parts to get to ‘the good parts’ as Goldman would say.

Yes, I do believe that the characters are even more compelling in the book; the one exception to this rule is Buttercup. She is the one character I found to be less compelling in the book than in the movie, a vapid, self-centered, ignorant girl, who made you wonder what Westley saw in her in the first place. Yes, admittedly, she does grow a great deal in the book, maturing to be both internally beautiful as well as externally. But there is Westley, braving every danger, fighting ever foe, coming back from death itself for this woman, and she not only treats him horribly in the beginning, but then ditches him at the Fire Swamp because she made a promise, and she doesn’t want to die.

At least in the movie, she does it for very noble reasons, and it makes you understand why Westley would come back from the dead to be with her. In Goldman’s narrative it only comes off as his own self-delusion that convinces himself that Buttercup did it out of greater reasons. It just-so-happens that she eventually comes to her senses about it all and realizes that Westley is worth it all in the end., and perhaps Goldman is trying to make a statement about true love and imperfections, and I realize that. I perhaps prefer the fairy tale.

On the whole, the book isn’t a bad book, it’s even better than mediocre. It’s a good book, and if I had not grown up with the movie all of my life, I might even say it was a great book. But once that mental image was ingrained into my pop culture psyche, it wouldn’t turn off. It is almost the same problem I have with the Harry Potter books and movies, except in reverse, (oh, what they did to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire).

Rate this wormy book: This is a FAT WORM, enjoyable to read, and a good way to get your romantic, fairy tale, swashbuckling, pretty-pretty princess fix in. If you are a huge fan of the movie, prepare for some minor irritations with the book, but on the whole a hell of a lot of fun. Have fun storming the castle….

Black Magic Woman

Black Magic Woman-Justin Gustainis
(Solaris Books-2007)

My friends love to recommend books to me. Usually they are pretty good. I have friends with great literary taste, which is to be expected, many of them are writers. Most of them have a similar taste to me, and can always be counted on for a good read or two. But once in a while a book is tossed in my direction that…well….just doesn’t do it for me. Not even a little. And you always feel slightly guilty that you didn’t like the book, because your friends like it, and thus there must be something wrong with you. And at times like these, you just have to remind yourself that book reviews and recommendations are, like so many things in life, subjective, and while the book is appealing to some, it doesn’t mean that it has to be appealing to you.

This is all really a big preface to say I was less than impressed with this book.

Gustainis’ story pretty much turned me off from the start. We are thrown immediately into a vampire story that introduces us to the tale's antagonist, Quincey Morris, something of a supernatural investigator who is the direct descendant of the character of the same name in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This fact, while not immediately apparent, once introduced seems to be interjected without real explanation from time to time in the story. Morris initially comes off as a smart, (Princeton educated), though tough-as-nails sort of Texan who has inherited from his ancestor a no-nonsense approach to vampire hunting.

Except that isn’t what the story is about. The story is really about a witch. Go figure.

Once the vampires have been quelled, Morris returns to his office where he is being called on the case of the LaRue family in Wisconsin whose home is being ‘haunted’. Morris agrees to the job, and flies up north to assess the situation. It turns out the house isn’t haunted, rather it is cursed, by dark magic. Calling in his friend and white magic practicing witch, Libby Chastain, the pair begins to try piecing together what it is about the LaRues that has someone trying to very hard to kill them. Their investigation is impeded by the powerful witch responsible, who tries to kill them on multiple occasions, and the two are drug from New York, to San Francisco, to New Orleans, and finally to Salem, Massachusetts before they can get down to the bottom of what amounts to a long ago and nearly forgotten family feud with one nasty witch.

But that’s not all. As all of this is going on, there are a series of child mutilation killings taking place that have FBI Agent Fenton calling in Investigator Van Dreenan from the South African Police Force to come in and assist. Van Dreenan, who has a long history with the strange muti magics of his homeland, lends invaluable assistance and advice to the FBI during their search, especially when it comes to the fact that this rituals are more than just superstitions…they are real. And he knows from tragic and awful personal experience. Little does he know that the object of he and Fenton’s search has a direct tie to the very same witch whom Morris and Chastain are searching for at the very same time.

The story has a lot going for it; the plots, if taken individually, are compelling enough to make you want to read it. They are fast paced and energetic, and propel you through the investigation of the cases, just like a good crime story or mystery should. And if this was all I needed, wanted, or was asking for in a book, then that would be great. And in fact if that’s what you are wanting in a novel, then this is great for you. The plot is by far not the worst thing about this story, Gustainis has a great idea that he tries to run with, even if I feel that the two separate story lines here are perhaps a bit too disjointed for one story. I would have liked to see more unison to make this book feel that is was a whole, rather than two separate stories.

All that being said, I must admit I was looking for much more out of this story. I felt mightily unfulfilled, and it disappointed me that a story with this much potential sort of became quickly clichéd and fell a bit flat on me. Morris comes off as a million other supernatural detectives/hunters out there, with lightening quick reflexes, a long family history of fighting against the evil in this world, blessed with a good education, but is the sort of fellow who still can use “pondner” in a sentence. And it felt very, very hokey. Perhaps I’m becoming jaded after years and years of watching The X-files and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, but part of my brain just shrugged and said, “eh, so what’s new.” I feel as if the genre has been over-saturated with Quincey Morrises, and they join the long lines of Anita Blakes and other such lonely, acerbic heroes, the ones who stand up against that great evil. Not that there is a thing against that, but…well make the fellow interesting to me. Outside of the Princeton education, and his phobia of snakes, (hey, me and Indiana Jones get that fear), there is nothing about Quincey Morris that is remotely engaging or creates empathy or a connection. And he’s boring to boot.

Libby Chastain I thought would be a great breath of fresh air. Finally, a character who is a witch who doesn’t own a mystic book shop and dress like a reject from the Stevie Nicks Fan Club! And yet, you never really get a very clear picture of who Libby is, outside of a witch who does private consultations. Who is she, what does she do with herself, what is her life? How does she know Quincey, they seem to have some sort of past together? And what’s the story behind the work she did with Van Dreenan? Some detail please, color, anything to make me really care about these people, please!

The lack of detail is I think Gustainis’ biggest flaw in the book. You are thrown into a world where supernaturals exist, but with very few explanations to the world itself, how it operates, or why. Even the most basic urban fantasy has some rules as to how the supernaturals operate, and what knowledge, if any, the regular world has about them. I would sort of think that if a whole town in Texas got taken over by vampires, someone might just notice, but throughout the book you get the distinct sense that the idea of monsters, magic users, and other things that go bump in the night are generally not widely known. And yet they seem to be well known enough that plenty of people seem to come into contact with them. There isn’t much clarity on how any of this works, except that it just does. And for the escapist fantasy nut in me, that is a big part of any story, and it is just left out, at least with the Morris and Chastain part. Ironically, in the sub plot with Van Dreenan and his past, much more care was taken in this quarter than it was for the main plot, and I think it added a great deal to that story line. Perhaps Gustainis could have just left it out all together, as it didn’t add much to the Morris and Chastain story, and created a whole new story just on Van Dreenan, who I felt was a much more compelling character all together. His story I would love to see someday.

Gustainis’s story contains a lot of literary ticks that would most likely not bother some people, but were jarring enough that it put me off quite a bit. Dialogue was often stilted, sometimes conversations felt as if information was being forced out of characters mouths to move the plot at its fast pace, making you feel even more so that there is little to tie or connect you to these characters. And then there are things such as Gustainis’s use of “podner” by Morris, rather than just using “partner”, which come off as cheesy, and even distracting to the reader. And I won’t mention the moment that I, the rampant The X-files geek, fell off the bed when I read a list of books on someone’s library shelf, complete with a title by authors Scully and Reyes, (yes, Mr. Gustainis, I did get that). OK, I did giggle a bit, but really, it was distracting.

I wanted to like this book, I really did. And there are some amazing stories in this vein that I highly recommend. But there was just nothing there to make me latch on to this novel and say, “I love it.” I can’t even say I like it. I can say, “eh, it’s OK.” Now, for those of you who just like a quick and dirty romp through witches, demons, and vampires, and you want a plot that seems to be good, then read this book, I think you’ll enjoy it. But I was looking for something more, something that wasn’t the same old, same old in this genre. And I fear that Gustainis for me at least didn’t quite deliver the goods.

Rate this wormy book: This one gets a Litte Worm rating. It's not that it's a bad book, it's just not a great book. And I was left feeling that it was cliched and rather unsatisfying.

A change in format....

Well I suck...I start a blog because I want to review books, and well, I fall off the wagon.

The reasons for this are numerous, all centering on real life issues, and all involving my lack of motivation.  However, as I'm beginning to offer up real book reviews for editors of ezines, I might as well start this up again.

So there will be a bit of a change in format, a bit of a difference, but I think I will be able to stick to this thing a bit better in 09...I hope.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows-J.K.Rowling

How I found this book: After getting hysterical about it for two years, it was finally announced that it was coming out…WHILE I WAS IN ROME! So I got to be in Rome, Italy for the big, coming out party as it were, and got to enjoy the fun with French and Italian fans of the series.

Setting: In the ’97-’98 school year, though for the first time not at Hogwarts, (save at the very end of the book.) Most of it is spread out as Harry, Ron, and Hermione move all over the country, from Grimmauld Place to Bill and Fleur’s house, Godric’s Hollow, and lots of forests in between.

Main Characters:

Harry Potter: Just turning seventeen, Harry is preparing himself for his hardest challenge yet, quitting school permanently to find the Horcruxes, the items that contain the fractured bits of Voldemort soul. Sent on the run after Bill and Fleur’s wedding and the fall of the Ministry, Harry must criss cross the country, seeking the answers to the mystery of the Horcruxes, as well as the mythical Deathly Hallows, and figure out how all these factors tie into defeating Voldemort. It forces Harry to make hard choices…ones that might force Harry to chose to sacrifice himself for those that he loves.

Ron Weasley: One of Harry’s best friends, Ron sticks by Harry’s side, going into hiding and danger with him. But the weight of the Horocruxes is a heavy one, especially for Ron who has so many insecurities and is unable to deal with them. He makes the choice to leave his friends for a while, but realizes soon enough that not only does he miss them horribly, he needs them, and he needs to face his own insecurities and issues, and come out as the strong, decisive person he is in his own right, outside of his brother’s and famous best friend.

Hermione Granger: The other of Harry’s best friends, Hermione uses her brains to help Harry unravel the mystery behind the Horcruxes, and stands by his side even when she doubts he knows what is going on, sticking by him when Ron leaves. It breaks her heart to see Ron go, and she is the one left to help Harry in some of his most trying and terrifying moments. A lot is asked of Hermione, including having to face the terrifying Bellatrix Lestrange, but in the end her wits help Harry and Ron persevere.

Ginny Weasley: Ron’s younger sister, and Harry’s ex-girlfriend, she is forced to stay behind and return to Hogwarts while her brother, best friend, and boyfriend run off to face Voldemort. That’s not to say that Ginny is idyll in their absence, and she, along with Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood start an insurrection at Hogwarts to throw off the oppressive administration of Severus Snape and his Deatheater cronies.

Luna Lovegood: One of Harry’s friends from Dumbledore’s Army, she, along with Ginny, helps to fight against the Death Eaters who have taken over the school. But she is captured from the Hogwarts Express on her way back to school from the holidays, and causes her father to try and capture the fugitive Harry for her release. When she is rescued by her dear friends, she too joins the efforts outside to help fight Lord Voldemort.

Neville Longbottom: One of Harry’s Gryffindor dorm mates, and another of the rabble rousers in Hogwarts while Harry is gone, he rallies Dumbledore’s Army while Harry is out searching for Horcruxes, hoping for Harry to return so they can begin to finally fight back and take on Voldemort.

Professor Dumbledore: Killed at the end of the last book, Dumbledore left only the slightest clues for Harry to figure out how to defeat Voldemort. His guidance is limited, but his hope was that Harry and his friends would have the brains and courage to figure them out and help defeat Tom Riddle before it was too late. Still, much of Dumbledore’s past is a mystery to Harry, one that is coming out to him now, after his mentor’s death, in fits and starts. It turns out that Dumbledore’s history is deeply entwined with that of Tom Riddle, and that he can learn from the mistakes both men made in their past.

Severus Snape: The new headmaster of Hogwarts, he takes over when the Ministry falls. While he allows the Death Eaters to run rampant in the school, he also tries to assist Harry in secret ways all throughout the book. Snape’s allegiances are complex and deep, and it is only at the tragic end that Harry finds out the true reason for Snape’s dislike of James Potter, and by extension Harry, but also the true love he had for Harry’s own mother, and the promise he made to himself on behalf of the girl he had once befriended and cared for.

Draco Malfoy: Spared the punishment that could have been his had Dumbledore not been killed, he is returned to his parents, but they are all in disgrace. Draco tries to do what he must to keep them all alive, but in the end, his desire to protect his own life and that of his family overwhelms any desire he truly has to serve the Dark Lord.

Lucius Malfoy: Now disgraced, he is forced to allow Lord Voldemort the use of his home as a headquarters. He and Bellatrix, his sister-in-law, are always on the lookout for ways to improve their standing with the Dark Lord.

Bellatrix Lestrange: The sister of Narcissa Malfoy and Andromeda Tonks, and disgraced favorite of Lord Voldemort she is consumed by her desire to serve her master, and to get into his good graces. Lord Voldemort is all that she loves in this world, and she will do anything to please him, even killing her own family members.

Narcissa Malfoy: The wife of Lucius and mother of Draco, sister to Bellatrix Lestrange and Andromeda Tonks, she perhaps is the only one of all the Malfoys that knows the true danger they are in and the true cost to her family. She plays her cards close, and when the opportunity to extract them all presents itself, Narcissa takes it, aiding Harry Potter in his most desperate moment.

Remus Lupin: Harry’s former Defense teacher, and best friend of James and Sirius, he has married Nymphadora Tonks, and is expecting his first child with her. Despite this blessing, he worries about the war, his own werewolf-ism, and whether he is fit to be a husband and father, and tries to run off with Harry instead. Harry sets him down, angering him at first, but he returns to his wife and child, and begins to take up as a voice on the underground Wizarding Wireless.

Nymphadora Tonks Lupin: Wife of Remus Lupin, daughter of Ted and Andromeda Tonks, niece of Bellatrix Lestrange and Narcissa Malfoy, and mother of Teddy Lupin, Nymphadora is an Auror and metamorphmagus. She spends much of the book pregnant with young Teddy, but stands by her husband’s side when war finally comes to Hogwarts.

Fred and George Weasley: Ron’s older twin brothers, George looses an ear when rescuing Harry from Death Eaters in an effort to get Harry out from the Dursley’s house. Both boys are active in the Order.

Bill Weasley: Ron’s oldest brother, he works for Gringott’s Bank as a curse breaker. He and Fleur marry at the beginning of the book, their wedding reception crashed by the news that the Ministry had fallen to Death Eaters. He and Fleur move into a small house, which serves as a resting point for Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Luna after a narrow escape from Malfoy Manor.

Fleur Weasley: Wife of Bill Weasley, she helps take care of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Luna, and Mr. Ollivander when they arrive at her house after narrowly escaping from Malfoy Manor.

Lord Voldemort: Now having defeated Dumbledore, Voldemort begins his reign of terror on the wizarding world, unleashing persecutions against Muggle-borns and Half-bloods alike, all the while hunting down the one person he suspects can bring down his reign…Harry Potter.

Plot: Harry is now left alone as he turns seventeen, the age of majority in the wizarding world. His mentor, Professor Dumbledore has died, and there is no one else left now to protect him from Lord Voldemort…or to face the Dark Wizard either. It is now up to Harry alone to bring down the darkest wizard in generations, but before he even has a chance to formulate a plan, the Dark Lord strikes, taking over the Ministry, and causing chaos in the world of magic. Harry, Ron, and Hermione become fugitives as they hide out, trying to find the clues of where the remaining horcruxes lay, based on the scant clues Harry knows, and the strange items left behind by Dumledore. In fact, it is in his old headmaster’s own mysterious and suspect past that Harry finds not only the clues to defeat Lord Voldemort, but learns the most important lessons about life…and death. As Harry becomes something of an underground hero for the beleagured witches and wizards of England, he prepares to face perhaps the greatest challenge of his young life, but will he come out of it alive?

Themes:
Even great heroes are flawed: We all know Harry is flawed, as we’ve seen through his development in the series, but we’ve yet to see all the chinks in the armor of Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore never denied he had weaknesses, and even tried to encourage people to keep that in mind, but we are now learning all the aspects of Dumbledore’s own history that explain much of what he became, and also sets the stage for Harry to ultimately discover how to defeat Tom Riddle. Dumbledore has made mistakes, some very great ones that marked his life. Harry, ever Dumbledore’s pupil, learns from those mistakes, and perhaps in learning from them surpasses his old teacher as well.

Give me something to believe in: For the first time, in a large sense, we see Harry becoming a figure for people to believe in. Now it isn’t just his housemates or schoolmates, but it is the entire wizarding world of Great Britain who is looking to Harry to help stop the menace of Voldemort. He comes off in the wizarding world as some strange, Robin Hood like figure, a fugitive who frees the half-bloods and Muggle-borns and is leading an underground movement, (which he isn’t, but he becomes their symbol). Whether Harry likes it or not, he is the symbol for the free witches and wizards everywhere, something they can latch on to during these dark times.

Fairytales do come true: In this case, perhaps it’s more accurate that a fairytale can stem from a true story. The Deathly Hallows is a child’s tale, or so everyone thinks, a legend of magical objects, much like the Holy Grail in our world. But in reality they did exist, (perhaps not quite in the form the legend has them in), and their existence, and the effort to discover them is tied intimately to Dumbledore’s past, as well as to Harry’s ability to defeat the Dark Lord. Ironically, Tom Riddle, for all his knowledge and bravado, knows or understands little about the Deathly Hallows outside of the Death Stick, and it’s this ignorance that Harry is able to manipulate.

War is hell: Gah…so many characters you’ve grown to love during this series are killed! It’s so not fair. And yet, it happens. It is war, that is how it happens, that is what happens. It’s not something that is pleasant, but Rowling doesn’t flinch from these deaths, and instead lets us feel every wound to help emphasis the fact that this is a world that is indeed at war.

Genocide: Part of Lord Voldemort’s plan is to rid the wizarding world of people who are ironically very much like him, Muggle borns and Halfbloods. Many Muggle borns, such as Hermione, Ted Tonks, and Dean Thomas, are sent into hiding, so as to protect themselves and their loved ones from harm, risking hiding in the countryside and potentially running into gangs of thugs and thieves. Others are herded up by the Ministry, in nearly Nazi-like trials to determine who they ‘stole’ their magic from. The amount of racism reaches epic, disgusting proportions, and it does make your stomach turn to read some of it.

SIT DOWN, THERE’S AN EPILOGUE- (This line in reference to my dear friend Dawna, who had to remind a movie theatre full of people there was an epilogue to Romeo and Juliet.) There is an Epilogue when it is all said and done, one that closes up what happens to Harry, Ron, Hermione, and some others after it is all said and done…I won’t tell you how it goes, but it was certainly well worth the wait.

Every book sucks somewhere: I can think of very few areas this book sucked in. It has nearly equal rating in my head with my favorite Harry Potter book, Goblet of Fire. However, I must say the endless wandering through the woods as Harry, Hermione, and Ron try to evade everyone on the search for Horcruxes was a bit tedious and repetitive, and you sort of wanted to say “get on with it already.”

In addition, I have to say…some of the deaths really hurt. A lot. I won’t say who, but..yeah…mmm….I cried and cried while reading this book, and of course I felt like an idiot when my roomie in my hotel in Rome came in and saw me huddled up on my small little twin bed, crying my eyes out over a Harry Potter book! At least I was sober this time around.

What did I like: I LOVED all of it, but best of all, I loved the mystery of the Deathly Hallows, and learning some of the deep, dark secrets of Dumbeldore’s own past. I loved the fact that Ron and Hermione FINALLY cotton on they are meant to be together. And the final scene between Harry and Tom Riddle couldn’t be scripted any better than if it were an epic film. All I have to say is I hope the film makers get it right when they finally get around to doing it, because it just gives you chills reading it.

How would I rate this wormy book: NOM, NOM, NOM, NOM, MONSTER, NOM, NOM, NOM……I wouldn’t suggest reading this book without reading the others in the series, but believe me, getting to this book really makes it all worth while.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince-J.K.Rowling

How I found this book: I squealed like a school girl when the name was released, and called my Mom in a tizzy. I was so excited about this book, and then…it got delivered to my old house. When I went to my old house, it wasn’t there. I finally managed to buy it at Target the day it was released. So I bought TWO copies of the book. *grumble* Then worse, because I waited all day for a book that never came, I didn’t get a chance to read it all before having to go to a friend’s party that night. So of course….I read the end first, just so I wouldn’t have to anticipate! (Anyone who knows me knows I read the ends of ALL books first, even textbooks.)

Setting: In the ’96-’97 school year, almost completely at Hogwarts.

Main Characters:

Harry Potter: It’s been rough the last few years for our now sixteen-year-old hero. He’s lost a classmate and his godfather to Lord Voldemort and his allies. And he now lives with the full weight of the prophesy made about him years ago and the knowledge that he must be the one to face Lord Voldemort. But there is some respite for the weary, as Harry gets to do some ‘normal’ things for a change, including captaining his house Quidditch team, studying for his upcoming NEWT exams, and falling for someone new. Sadly, this someone new is Ron’s little sister, Ginny. Figuring out how to get Ginny to notice him and not having Ron kill him is the least of Harry’s worries this year. His favorite and best class, Defense Against the Dark Arts, is being taught by Professor Snape this year, making it almost as unbearable as the year before. Thankfully he has a potions book, annotated by the Half-Blood Prince, whoever that is, to help him with the new Potions Master, who had a special affection for Harry’s mother. And Dumbledore has Harry studying with him in particular this year, privately and alone. Dumbledore is preparing Harry to face his greatest challenge, but will Harry find all the answers he needs in the mystery of Tom Riddle?

Ron Weasley: One of Harry’s best friends, Ron is flying high after leading the Quidditch team to a House Cup the year before, and looking forward to making the team again under the leadership of his best mate. Not even Quidditch is simple for Ron, though, who not only has to worry about his performance issues, but about the changes in his relationship with Hermione, and his sister Ginny’s popularity with the boys. When he loses his temper and ends up dating Lavender Brown, he not only hurts Hermione, but makes a mess he isn’t so sure he can get out of readily. But Ron has his best friend Harry to help him out when he’s being stupid, and Hermione isn’t as lost as he thinks. It’s their deep loyalty to one another that will hold them in stead for the things to come.

Hermione Granger: The other of Harry’s best friends, studies aside, Hermione is having a tough year. Just when she thought things between her and Ron were changing, he grew angry and began dating Lavender Brown, her roommate, and she has to face the two of them all over each other all the time. And then Harry is outperforming her for a change in Potions with a textbook she is sure is a form of cheating. Nothing seems to be going her way this year. But she will find that her boys will need her more than ever in the days and weeks to come, and when the unthinkable happens and puts them all in danger, it will tie her to Harry and Ron even more closely than they were before.

Ginny Weasley: Ron’s younger sister, she is starting to come into her own, and becoming more and more popular, particularly with the boys. And amongst her admirers is suddenly Harry. Ginny comes up big on the Quidditch field, and suddenly she comes up big in the romance department as well, as the one boy she’s always cared for suddenly feels the same way about her.

Professor Dumbledore: Injured in some unexplained accident before the start of term, Dumbledore seems to be trying his best to prepare everyone for the war to come. Even more so, he is trying the help Harry finally understand just who and what he is up against in the form of Lord Voldemort, where he came from, and how to defeat him. But the dangers are looming on the horizon, and will he be able to impart all that Harry needs to know before Harry must face Voldemort?

Severus Snape: Now finally in the position he always wanted, Snape seems delighted that he can make Harry and the others lives miserable at a subject he knows so well. But what games is Snape playing at anyway? Harry feels he should trust him to some degree as a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and Dumbledore refuses to Harry’s insistence that there might be something more going on with the new Defense teacher. What is it that Dumbledore is so sure of that he won’t share with anyone else?

Horace Slughorn: A former Potions teacher at Hogwarts, he was infamous for having favorites and ensuring his students found good positions after school to ensure he had a web of highly placed connections with which to make his life comfortable. One of his favorites was Harry’s mother, Lily. After the last war, he retired, and since the start of this one, he has gone into hiding, knowing that he could be in danger because of who and what he knows through his network. Dumbledore convinces him to return to Hogwarts as a teacher, to side firmly with Dumbledore, and be safe. He is easily talked into it, especially with the thought of having “The Boy Who Lived” as one of his pupils.

Remus Lupin: Harry’s former Defense teacher, and best friend of James and Sirius, he has gone deep undercover tracking Fenrir Greyback, an evil werewolf who preys on children, such as Remus when he was bitten as a boy.

Nymphadora Tonks: While doing double duty for the Ministry and the Order, Tonks seems to be depressed and listless, even her hair is its normal color rather than one of her favorite crazy ones. Harry assumes that it must be due in part to Sirius’s death, and that perhaps she was in love with her cousin.

Fred and George Weasley: Ron’s older twin brothers, they have left Hogwarts and have started a joke shop in Diagon Alley called Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes.

Bill Weasley: Ron’s oldest brother, he works for Gringott’s Bank as a curse breaker. He is engaged to Fleur Delacour, one of Harry’s rival champions at the Tri-Wizards Tournament.

Fleur Delacour: One of Harry’s former Tri-Wizard Championship rivals, she has fallen in love with Bill Weasley and the two are engaged, much to the chagrin of Mrs. Weasley and Ginny, who dislike her.

Draco Malfoy: The archenemy of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, he has become a Deatheater over the summer, in retaliation for his father’s failure at the Ministry of Magic. He is charged with a horrible task, one that, if he doesn’t complete it well it could cost him his life.

Bellatrix Lestrange: One of Voldemort’s trusted leaders; she is the sister to Narcissa Malfoy and aunt to Draco. She distrusts Severus Snape, and is proud of her nephew for the mantel he’s taken on as a Deatheater.

Lucius Malfoy: The father of Draco, he was one of Voldemort’s most trusted leaders, but when he failed at the Ministry he not only was arrested and sent to Azkaban, but he was in disgrace with the Dark Lord as well. His disgrace has dire consequences for his son, ones that could lead to Draco’s eventual demise.

Rufus Scrimgeor: The new Minister of Magic and former head of the Auror division, he has set out to take a head on approach towards Voldemort, as well as repair the damage done to the Ministry’s reputation caused by the ineptness of Cornelius Fudge. He would like Harry to speak up about being the so called “Chosen One” as well as show his support for the Ministry, something Harry refuses to do. He seems more fond of getting Dumbledore and Harry to play politics with him than actually working with them to help stop Voldemort, though he is more accepting of the work Dumbledore is doing than Fudge ever was.

Plot: After the loss of his godfather, sixteen-year-old Harry has been despondent. Not even the public’s terrified realization that “You-Know-Who” has returned is a balm to him, rather it is a reminder of the horrible realization he has discovered. He is the only one who can face Voldemort, and it will either end up with him being a murder, or him being dead. But while the war between Voldemort and the Ministry begins, and the Death Eaters start their reign of terror, Harry begins his sixth year at Hogwarts. This year brings many other, more positive changes for Harry, he is named the Captain of the Quidditch team, and he has become a natural leader amongst his other students. Many look up to him, especially after his leadership of Dumbledore’s Army the year before. But there are not-so-good changes as well, as Snape has finally been granted the post of Defense teacher, and Harry’s favorite class is now an exercise in holding his temper. At least in Potions he is excelling, thanks to the help of a mysterious Potions textbook with notes from a mysterious former student who calls themselves the “Half-blood Prince”. The Prince can’t help Harry in affairs of the heart, when he finds himself falling rather hard for someone rather unexpected…Ron’s little sister, Ginny. It certainly doesn’t help when Ron begins dating Lavender Brown, hurting Hermione and causing a rift between them that Harry has to navigate carefully. But none of these issues compares to the problem of Lord Voldemort and how to defeat him. Only Professor Dumbeldore seems to know the answers to that, and he begins teaching Harry the secrets of just who Tom Marvolo Riddle was, and what he did, and how this orphaned boy became the evil wizard Lord Voldemort. In this, he hopes that Harry will learn just how it was that Voldemort lived on that night so long ago when Harry’s parents died, and how is it that Harry can possibly defeat him.

Themes:

Even the Dark Lord was a boy once: Unlike Darth Vader, who started out as the sweet, cute, and helpful Anakin Skywalker, Lord Voldemort started out as a mean, creepy, sociopathic, psycho kid named Tom Riddle. To be honest…yeah, he was messed up, we are talking Stephen King level of messed up. When you meet his family, the Gaunts, and see how inbred and backwards they are, it’s little wonder that Tom Riddle is a bit…different. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree there. And his father’s family, the rich, indolent Muggles the Riddles, with their upper crust disdain for everyone and everything, he has it no better on his dad’s side. One can criticize the Dark Lord for not making better choices, for deciding to do the evil things he did, as everyone has a choice to do and be something different. But with that genetic pool to choose from, its small wonder Lord Voldmort became what he became. Still, I find it hard to feel sorry for him, Harry was an orphan as well, and from all accounts had a much harder childhood than Tom did in his orphanage, and didn’t make the choices Tom Riddle did, nor did he blame his parents for the situation and try to subvert it somehow. In the end, Lord Voldemort comes out even more evil in my mind because he willfully made the decisions he did, and even if he did have a banana or two missing from the bunch, he could have chosen differently. He just didn’t. Who knows, maybe the nuttiness in his head meant he couldn’t even begin seeing the issue differently, it’s hard saying. What a wack job.

Sometimes a kid has to be a kid: One thing Harry has never been is ‘normal’. This is the one book in the series where we see Harry finally, for once, being comfortable in his own skin. He is growing up before our very eyes, and enjoying being a sixteen-year-old kid who has all the same problems other kids his age do. He has to deal with the adulation of girls younger than him who wish to try and make him notice them, he is stuck in the middle of a potential lover’s spat between his two best friends, (and he’s not so sure he’d be keen on the idea of the two of them hooking up), and he’s FINALLY noticed that Ginny is a cute, attractive girl. The Ginny angle is one fan’s have suspected for some time, since book one really, and many were happy to see it, (except if you happened to be one of the strange, Harry/Hermione fans who got so mad about it, that was disturbing.) Harry for once gets to deal with all the same things other kids deal with. It’s a pity that it doesn’t last.

Harry turning into an adult: Harry has been sort of at the mercy of his elders most of his life. Either he was told he was too young to understand, or he was too young to fight, but with little to no explanation about why things are happening, or what he should do about it, if anything. Much of this has of course led to bad, bad results, with even Albus Dumbledore finally coming to the realization that Harry is growing up, and what’s more, he isn’t a child anymore. While Molly Weasley hasn’t come to this conclusion, (hopefully she does by the next book), Dumbledore at least begins to treat Harry less with kid gloves, and begins to be more honest with him as to what is going on.

Harry as a leader: On top of growing up, Harry is also becoming more and more of a leader. He not only is the Captain of the Quidditch team, but he is seen by other students as someone who understands what is going on in a world that is rapidly falling apart, especially by former members of the DA. Younger students look up to Harry, part of it is natural as they all grew up with stories of Harry Potter as children, but part of it is in seeing who he is, hearing the stories of his exploits at Hogwarts, and the growing rumbles in the wizarding community about Harry being the “Chosen One.” A sign of maturity on Harry’s part, in another time, all this attention to him and dependence on him would have made him angry or frustrated. Now he simply accepts it as something that just is, and moves on.

The bonds of friendship: This book shows ever growing shifts in the bonds of friendship Harry has built for himself with those closest to him. Hermione, who he was always close to, but never as close to as Ron, begins to fill in more and more that role of older sister she’s always inhabited for Harry, giving him advice, being the sympathetic ear, and of course coming to him when her own troubles get too much for her. Just because he is Ron’s best mate doesn’t mean he doesn’t have room for Hermione in his heart when the two are feuding. With Ron, he has the ability to tell Ron the truth, even when it hurts, knowing that Ron will not hate him for it. And he doesn’t laugh at Ron about Lavender, though you get the sense he hardly approves, but instead is willing to let his friend make his mistakes and is there for him when he needs picking up. It is Harry who saves Ron’s life, binding the already close pair even further, (much like we see the relationship of James and Sirius), and Ron and Hermione are able to get over their differences, and take those first, ever so tentative steps to the changes in their own relationship. Dumbledore cautions Harry that the only two he should really ever trust are Ron and Hermione, and it is those two he entrusts his secrets, knowing that neither will break that confidence. And when he must do what he must at the end of the novel, it is Ron and Hermione who unquestioningly stand by his side, even at great personal cost to them. Their bonds of friendship go so deep now, that Harry doesn’t even try to talk them out of it. This friendship will be a key aspect to the next book of the series.

Draco Malfoy is up to something: No one else believes Harry in this, and Harry knows Draco is up to something, and that its potentially dangerous. While Harry doesn’t realize the true ramifications till too late, it does change how he perceives Malfoy, and Harry begins to understand that perhaps Draco is forced into the situation and is as much a victim in his own way as any of the countless people who have actually lost their lives.

What is up with Snape anyway: This is a questions that readers keep repeatedly asking since book one, when I think this theme first appeared in my review. Snape is a very complex character, and becomes even more so in the next book as well. What is the real motivation he has for putting up with Harry, who he clearly hates, and why is it that he hates Harry’s father so much? What was his role in the prophecy surrounding Harry, and was it really Snape who set up Harry’s family for the ultimate betrayal by Peter Pettigrew? Even worse, was Snape ever REALLY a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and why was it that Dumbledore trusted him so much anyway?

Every book sucks somewhere: Well besides the most obvious sucking point, (and if you haven’t read it, I’m not admitting to it in this review,) the book had few sucking points for me. I have to say that this is one of my more favorite books in the series, though I think 4 and 7 certainly take those top spots. Perhaps it sucks because we know this is the last of the good times at Hogwarts for Harry.

What did I like: Watching Harry grow up as a person. He starts to come into all the potential we saw for the little, stunted kid who lives his life in a broom closet, and you start to feel proud of Harry as a person.

How would I rate this wormy book: This is a big, MONSTER WORM, it sets you up so well for the ending of the series, and slowly leads you up to the top of the big, old hill for the ride of the rollercoaster finish. It is great.