fantasy – Page 14 – Wis[s]e Words

The King’s Peace — Jo Walton

Published on January 5, 2012Leave a comment

Cover of The King's Peace

The King’s Peace
Jo Walton
416 pages
published in 2000

When I put together the list of science fiction and fantasy books I’d planned to read for my Year of Reading Women project last year, I’d knew I’d want something familiar and enjoyable to close out the year, as a reward. Looking over my bookshelves the choice was easily made: I hadn’t read The King’s Peace since it had first come out in 2000 so it was high time I reread it. Back then I had come to it cold, without any preconceptions other than Jo Walton’s reputation as one of the best posters on the rec.arts.sf newsgroups. Rereading it now, having read more of her novels and also knowing somewhat more about the setting she used or at least the historical inspirations for it, have changed The King’s Peace for me, in a positive sense.

To start with the setting, you could call The King’s Peace an Arthurian romance set in a fantasy Britain, but that’s not quite right. I prefer to call it a histoire à clef, where Walton has taken post-Roman Britain at the time of the Saxon invasions and changed it. So the Roman Empire here is called the Vincan Empire, the Saxony raiders are Jarns, Britain is called Tir Tanagiri and instead of a King Arthur there’s king Urdo whose Lancelot, Sulien ap Gwien is the first person narrator of the story. When I first got to grips with the story more than a decade ago this all seemed needlessly complicated and I wondered why she hadn’t just written a straight Arthurian story. But I think it makes sense.

A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens

Published on December 25, 2011Leave a comment

Cover of A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
100 pages
published in 1843

Sandra always loved Dickens more than any other Victorean novelist and she always tried to convince me to try him but never succeeded. So I thought that it would be nice to try a couple of his novels next year in her honour and to warm up I thought I’d start with A Christmas Carol. It’s short, it’s the season and the story is so familiar to me from various adaptations that I could almost read it on autopilot. I actually read it in its entirety on the train journey to my parents when I was going home for Christmas.

Stories like A Christmas Carol, which are so popular and have been adapted so often that they’ve become part of the background cultural noise, are always interesting to go back to. With some of these stories the original is so different from what you expect that it’s actually a disappointment to read them, as you run into all the awkward bits that had been filed off through various retellings. This wasn’t the case with A Christmas Carol: it’s exactly as you’d expect it to be.

Procession of the Dead — D. B. Shan

Published on December 13, 2011Leave a comment

Procession of the Dead

Procession of the Dead
D. B. Shan
312 pages
published in 2008

Never heard of D. B. Shan before I found this in the library, but the book looked interesting and that’s what libraries are for, aren’t they; discovering new authors. Judging from the back cover blurb this seemed to be a crime thriller with some fantastical elements and for once that’s what it turned out to be. It was interesting to for once go into a novel without preconceptions, without knowning anything about the author or the books he has written.

Procession of the Dead is a book about a young gangster called Capac Raimi, coming to the City to be an apprentice to his uncle, one of the small time crooks running part of the underworld. Capac has higher ambitions than that though, hoping to catch the eye of the Cardinal, the man who runs all of the underworld. The Cardinal is the City and the City is the Cardinal: “if the Cardinal pinched the cheeks of his arse, the walls of the city bruised”. And Capac does catch his eye, at the cost of his uncle’s life.

Snuff — Terry Pratchett

Published on December 4, 2011Leave a comment

Cover of Snuff

Snuff
Terry Pratchett
416 pages
published in 2011

Wouldn’t you know it; you try to start writing a review and suddenly you can’t find the bloody book anywhere. Which is not just annoying because I want to get started but also because I’m now worrying I lost it somewhere. If I have I will have lost a piece of history, it being the last Discworld novel she and I read together before her death, as we did with all the new Discworld novels when we were together; usually she read them first as I could be slightly more patient. We not only were both fans of Pratchett, but we actually met thanks to him, through the dedicated IRC channel at lspace.org which had been set up for the alt.fan.pratchett newsgroup. What’s more, his documentary this year on assisted suicide and the dignity of choosing your own death helped Sandra make up her mind once she was convinced she couldn’t go on anymore.She had thought about it before, but seeing that really firmed up her conviction not to suffer if there was no point to it. Reading Snuff therefore was a bittersweet experience.

Snuff itself is a typical late Pratchett novel, good but not outstanding with few surprises for the longtime fan. Once again, as in Jingo, The Fifth Elephant or Thud to name but three, Samuel Vines is taken out of his element and has to maintain the peace outside of his jurisdiction and once again there are powerful forces who profit from the lack of it he has to conquer. This time Vimes is sent on holiday to his wife, Lady Sybil Ramsbottom’s country estate to play the laird, something he’s not good at nor likes much. Fun is had with city boy Vimes’ discomfort with country ways, again as in previous novels. Finally, there’s yet another fantasy race rescued from its stereotypes: after trolls, dwarfs, golems, zombies and vampires it’s goblins this time.

No Present Like Time — Steph Swainston

Published on November 29, 2011Leave a comment

Cover of No Present Like Time

No Present Like Time
Steph Swainston
294 pages
published in 2005

I was quite taken by Steph Swainston’s debut novel, The Year of Our War, which I read from the library back in 2008. When I was looking over my bookshelves late last year to decide which books I was going to use for my Year of Reading Women project my eye fell on the omnibus edition of Swainston’s Castle series, of which The Year of Our War had been the first and I had the idea to save the second book, No Present Like Time for November as a treat. I knew I was going to like it which I wasn’t sure of with some of the other books I was going to read and I needed some incentive to keep me going.

Steph Swainston is one of the new breed of British science fiction and fantasy writers that rode to prominence under the ill fitting “New Weird” label in the first half of the noughties and one who got a lot of both commercial and critical succes. Unfortunately however she choose to stop writing to pursue her dream of becoming a chemistry teacher, which means that for the moment we’ll have to make do with the four novels she has written so far. A shame, as I quite liked both the novels of her i’ve read.

As said, No Present Like Time is the second novel in the Castle series, but this is not a proper fantasy trilogy and you can read this as a standalone; you’ll just miss a bit of context. It’s set a couple of years after the crisis of the first book, but moves into an entirely new direction. The Year of Our War had a fairly standard fantasy plot of the countries of the Fourlands being threatened by a unending horde of Insects which had already taken over the northern part of the Fourlands and which was only held in check by the powers of the immortal emperor San and his Circle of Immortal warriors only for political intrigue threatening their very existence. In No Present Like Time barely play a role, as a new, insect free island is discovered in the middle of the world ocean and the emperor sends out an expedition to persuade them to join his protection. Things quickly go wrong.