The Man with the Iron Heart

Posted on June 26, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Man with the Iron Heart
© 2008 Harry Turtledove
532 pages

On 27 May 1942, Reinhard Heydrich barely escapes death at the hands of a Czech hitman, his life being saved by the assassin’s weapon jamming.  Although the misfire does not much alter the course of the war, it changes the peace dramatically, for Heydrich refuses to stop fighting even after the death of Hitler, the destruction of Berlin, the total occupation of Germany, and the formal surrender of Nazi officials. As early as 1943, Heydrich began storing munitions and training troops discreetly to carry on the fight in the event that the Reich lost, and no sooner has the dust settled over the bombed cities of Europe than do Heydrich’s Werewolves begin the Resistance. Their goal is to force the Allies and Russians to end their occupation through whatever means possible.

What follows is a clear allusion to the Iraq War and resulting insurgency: the tactics are the same, as are the arguments from either side of American politics in arguing for or against staying in Germany. Heydrich’ tactics mirror those of al-Queda terrorists, including the propaganda use of captured Allied soldiers. While most of his warfare is attritive — targeting groups of soldiers with car bombs and the like — his German Freedom Front occasionally launches larger operations to poison large crowds, destroy symbolic buildings, and obtain supplies. In the US, a Cindy Sheehan stand-in leads an anti-war movement, tacitly supported by ambitious Republicans who see the Heyrich insurgency as a good club to beat the Democratic administration over the head and gain political power. President “Give `em Hell” Harry Truman insists on finishing the job in Germany, although he’s not one to hide away in the White House or a ranch in Texas: Truman dishes out abuse as good as he gets it and speaks personally to protesters marching in D.C. While the United States grapples with unpredictable German tactics, the Soviet Union merely shrugs as it shoots or deports hundreds of Germans with every attack.

The book uses Turtledove’s typical approach of relying on a panel of viewpoint characters: a housewife turned political activist, Heydrich himself, and various American or Russian soldiers. Also typical of Turtledove is the generous use of Russian, German, and Yiddish phrases, particularly profanity. The book also abounds in historical, cultural, and political in-jokes.

“Well, if that don’t beat all,” Benton said disgustedly. “If I do me a crappy job, I get my sorry ass blown up. If I do me a great job, they make me stick around — so’s I can get my sorry ass blown up.” He spat on the filthy floor. “Ought to be a name for somethin’ like that, where you get fucked over comin’ an’ goin’.”

“Yeah, it’s a heller, all right. One of these days, I bet there will.” Lou got a strange kick out of thinking like an English teacher instead of a counterintelligence officer. “A guy who’s been through the mill will write a story or a book about it. He’ll hang some kind of handle on it, and from then on everybody’ll call it that.”

The book’s connection to the Iraq War is obvious enough to be mentioned on the inside cover as a selling point for people who are interested in Turtledove’s “profound insight into contemporary affairs”. Although I  am aware of war weariness at the end of the Second World War, I doubt that events concerning Iraq since 2003 would repeat themselves so neatly in 1945-1948 Germany. Although Turtledove’s villains are much more effective than al-Queda or related groups, the development of the anti-war movement and the stances of American characters are taken too directly from contemporary newspapers: the occupation of Nazi Germany, which declared war upon the United States after savaging its commercial shipping cannot be so easily equated to the invasion and occupation of Iraq,  which lacked consistent explanation for motive. In addition, the novel lacks a German perspective beyond Heydrich’s, which isn’t exactly nuanced. Turtledove might’ve used a German citizen turned insurgent to explore the effects of Soviet tactics in polarizing civilians to take up arms.

For whatever its weaknesses, I enjoyed this bit of alternate history. Throughout, I wondered what the Nazis would try next — and what the end result would be. Would Soviet-occupied Germany become completely void of Germans? If the Americans did leave, as Republican congressmen urged, would Russia try to annex the vacated portion and instigate a war between itself and the western democracies? The beginning of the end had me on the edge of my seat.  I can recommend this to Turtledove fans specifically, and cautiously to alt-history readers or those interested in the premise.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Summons

Posted on June 26, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Summons
© 2002 John Grisham
373 pages

When Professor Ray Atlee returned to his family home in Clanton, Mississippi to discuss his ailing father’s will, he found two surprises waiting for him. His father, an elderly judge who even in retirement remained a pillar of the community, lay dead in his study — only two hours parted from life. The judge left dozens of boxes of legal files, enough Confederate memorabilia  to stock a museum, and over three million dollars stashed away in boxes. The untimely death and the discovery of the money are staggering to the professor, who knows his father to be both grossly underpaid and as great a philanthropist as any man:  the judge gave money to anyone who needed it, so how did he manage to acquire such an immense fortune? And why isn’t that fortune in the bank — why is it hidden in these boxes away from public view?

His father’s latest will named Ray the executor of the estate, but he’s not willing to reveal the millions to the world, for the cash stinks of some kind of impropriety. Where could it have come from?  He begins to discreetly investigate the matter, hoping to find that his father earned this fortune legitimately through trading on the stock market or even gambling in casinos — but the money remains inexplicable. No one else seems to know anything about the money, but Ray soon begins receiving threatening mail and phone calls and his home is ransacked. Someone else wants the money — and they want it enough to kill.

The Summons is more of a mystery thriller than a legal thriller, although the law is an irreplaceable element of the plot. Set partially in Grisham’s Ford County and partially in Charlottesville, North Carolina,  the book offers character drama, an interesting mystery — how does an honest  judge get three million dollars? — and a little moralizing on the effect of large amounts of cash on human behavior: Ray has no intention of reporting to the IRS, and not just because he’s concerned for his father’s reputation. The book is also a teaser of sorts for Grisham’s The King of Torts, one of my favorites. I enjoyed re-reading The Summons: like The Brethren, it’s an interesting diversion from Grisham’s usual legal fare, and the setting is an old favorite.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

This Week at the Library (23/6)

Posted on June 23, 2010 by smellincoffee

From the past two weeks….

  • Memories of Old Cahaba dates to the start of the 20th century, and is the recollections of a woman who lived in Alabama’s first state capital (now a ghost town) as a teenager. I checked out the book to guide me as I toured the few remains of the town, once one of the grander towns in pre-industrial Alabama. Fry’s memoir depicts a heavily romanticized view of the town, but was useful during my visits there.
  • I also finished a collection of essays by Isaac Asimov titled The Roving Mind. Most of the essays were scientific in nature, with a few on skepticism and the future. There’s also some satire, which is unusual for Asimov. Enjoyable, of course, and worth any Asimov reader’s while. 
  • Next, I re-read The Other Side of Selma, a collection of anecdotes about my hometown (Selma, Alabama) during the fifties and sixties. Most of the anecdotes are pitched as humorous, although a few recount the kindness of people long dead. Its appeal is limited, naturally, but as a Selma native I enjoyed it. The stories are very informal.
  • Lev Grossman’s The Magicians is a coming of age story set against a fantasy background.  Quentin Coldwater is an isolated and lonely young man who frequently escapes from the boredom and meaninglessness of the real world into the fantasy world of Fillory. When he discovers that the world of magic is real — and is invited to join the ranks of magic-users by abandoning dreams of college for a private magic academy —  Coldwater finds meaning and adventure, but realizes too late that a life of excitement comes with a price.  Grossman starts off charming and funny, but grows darker as Coldwater matures into a angsty twenty-something.
  • Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire collects Twain’s various works criticizing American imperialism, specficially the war against the Phillipines. Twain sees expansionistic war as dooming the the Republic to authoritarianism, and mourns the perversion of patriotism into merely “supporting the troops”.  Enjoyable and applicable for today, I’d reccommend this most of all the books I’ve read this week.
  • Tales of the Dominion War collects stories by various Trek luminaries set during the Dominion War. The stories’ characters come not only from the television and movie canon, but from the expanded universe of Trek literature. The stories are not just about ship-to-ship combat: a few are set on planets being attacked and concentrate on civilians or on low-ranking Starfleet members, while others go outside the Federation and tackle Romulan politics and Klingon honor. Great read for Trekkies.
  • Hornblower and the Hotspur tells the tale of Commander Horatio Hornblower, recently appointed the peacetime captain of the Hotspur, assigned to survey France’s coast and keep a wary eye out for antagonistic activity. Such activity is assured given the rise of Napoleon, and Hornblower is soon busy blockading ports and sacking convoys. Although this book has many great Hornblower moments, I struggled through it.
  • Most recently I read The World Through Maps: A History of Cartography, a brief summary of map-making history replete with gorgeous illustrations of maps. Short’s narrative provides many tidbits and a little context for understanding the maps, but it’s far from comprehensive and focuses a bit much on the United States. 

Pick of the Week: Weapons of Satire, Mark Twain.

Selected Quotations:

“Patriotism is merely a religion — love of country, worship of country, devotion to the country’s flag and honor and welfare. In absolute monarchies it is furnished from the throne, cut and dried, to the subject; in England and America it is furnished, cut and dried, to the citizen by the politician and the newspaper.” – Mark Twain

“He was either going to punch someone or start a blog. Personally, I’m glad he clocked you.” – Paraphrase from The Magicians.

Upcoming Reads:

  • The Adventures of Robin Hood, Paul Creswick. I’m not sure about this one: the first four times I tried reading the opening chapter, my eyes glazed over. On the fifth try, it clicked. We’ll see what happens.
  • The Man with the Iron Heart, Harry Turtledove. What if hardline Nazis refused to stop fighting after Hitler’s defeat? 
  • Chainbreaker’s War: A Seneca Chief Remembers the American Revolution, ed. Jeane Winston Adler. 
  • I may finish a Grisham re-read, and I’ve got some Star Trek books I could read as well…
Posted in Reviews | Tagged | 2 Comments

The World Through Maps

Posted on June 23, 2010 by smellincoffee

The World Through Maps: A History of Cartography
© 2003 John Short
224 pages

Cartography has interested me ever since elementary school, when I read that Christopher Columbus worked in a cartographer’s shop. The idea that people made maps fascinated me, and I wondered what what it entailed, thinking of men sailing the coasts of islands and pain-stakingly portraying what they saw. I enjoy enjoy older maps, or those included in fantasy books, as art, for they tend to be charmingly illustrated.

Short begins by explaining the language of maps — perspective, scale, orientation, the like — and commenting on their uses before diving into the general history. Short’s book begins with rock-art maps steeped in mythology, then moves to Babylonian maps on wax tablets that portray landowners’ plots in an irrigation zone. Sections following these tend to be short — two pages — and roam the world. Short places emphasis on the idea that maps portray what cultures deem most important, and points out religious and political elements within maps as they come. Although every other culture in the book receives a scant few pages, Short devotes several sections to the mapping of North America and specifically the United States. I expect this disproportional emphasis on the US reflects the target audience — Americans.  Although he drops plenty of trivia, the book isn’t comprehensive: reading the sections on Islamic or Chinese maps gives the reader a glimpse of what they might’ve been like, but the effect is kin to trying to enjoy the plot of a fictional novel by reading the plot summary on the back. Still, the illustrations of maps are fetching, especially the Renaissance works that depicted their cities with a near-isometric perspective. The effect is more a work of art — the illustration of a city — than a map.

More a severe summary of cartographic history than an actual history, this book was enjoyable more for the art and less for the text, although the limited background information did come in handy when trying to understand older maps, especially medieval works.

Posted in history, Reviews | Tagged | Leave a comment

Hornblower and the Hotspur

Posted on June 22, 2010 by smellincoffee

Hornblower and the Hotspur
© 1962 CS Forester
344 pages

Young Horatio Hornblower flourished as an officer in the King’s service during the general European war against the fledgling French republic, the war having given an ambitious and intelligent officer like himself plenty of opportunities for promotion. Hornblower rose swiftly through the ranks owing chiefly to his keen mind and penchant for taking risks, but he is able to call upon neither strength in civilian life: struggling to survive on a commander’s half-pay, Hornblower is roped into marrying a young woman whom he does not love. He has sprinted across mast-heads without a net and bearded French lions in their dens innumerable times, but he does not have the courage to break a young woman’s heart.  News that France is now ruled by a swaggering little man from Corsica who fancies himself an emperor comes as a great relief to him, and the newlywed commander is all-too-happy to accept his first real command, the sloop Hotspur. At his side is the implacable Mr. Bush. What’s more, he will once again be serving under his beloved captain from his midshipman days, Commodore Edward Pellew.  Although my own experiences watching the television series have undoubtedly influenced my judgment, I  was just as happy as Hornblower to see Bush and Pellew again.

France’s First Republic is steadily replaced by its First Empire as Napoleon gathers more power around himself, and Hornblower is ordered to troll the French coast for fisherman to bribe, seeking news of the French fleet. These initial orders become more aggressive as Napoleon readies for war with Europe: Hornblower and the fleet his Hotspur is part of blockade certain port cities and are eventually told to sack the annual Spanish delivery of gold from the New World: Spain intends to use the money to assist France in a newborn alliance. Hornblower and the Hotspur contains many of the legends told about Hornblower in his later years — how he discreetly showed mercy on a man by allowing him to escape to the USS Constitution, or how he picked up a not-yet exploded shell and threw it back into the water,  saving his ship. Despite this, I struggled through the book, forcing myself to march ahead:  this book more than any other is dominated by the act of sailing the ship. It’s hard to enjoy details when there are so many of them.

For Hornblower, the book is a coming-of-age: he begins the book as a young man just about to be married, and looks on Captain Pellew almost as son. By the end of the book, Pellew has been promoted to the admiralty,  removing him from Hornblower’s service life for the most part — although he did appear in the last book of the series, Lord Hornblower.  Hornblower receives his own promotion to post-captain, and begins the next phase of his life as the master of his own series of ships throughout the Napoleonic wars.

Of the Hornblower books I’ve read, I enjoyed this the least, although my own reception of the book seems to differ from other Hornblower fans. I would not recommend first-time readers to the series to start with this one.

Ioan Gruffuld as Horatio Hornblower, Robert Lindsay as Edward Pellew. 
Posted in historical fiction, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Teaser Tuesday (22-6)

Posted on June 22, 2010 by smellincoffee

Teaser Tuesday again, from Should Be Reading.

“Repeat after me,” said the parson. “I, Horatio, take thee, Maria Ellen –“

The thought came up in Hornblower’s mind that these were the last few seconds in which he could withdraw from doing something which he knew to be ill-considered.

The opening sentences of Hornblower and the Hotspur, by C.S. Forester.

Posted in General | Tagged | 4 Comments

Tales of the Dominion War

Posted on June 20, 2010 by smellincoffee

Tales of the Dominion War
Published in 2004, editor Keith DeCandido
370 pages

O’Brien: Engage, retreat, engage, retreat. I tell you, that’s becoming our favorite tune. 

Bashir: Well, we’d better think of a new tune fast or the only song we’re going to be singing is “Hail the Conquering Dominion”. 

Dax: I wouldn’t start learning those lyrics just yet. (“Favor the Bold“)

If you’ve ever seen an episode of the original Star Trek series, you know the essential formula for most of the rest: a crew of gallant Starfleet personnel travel through the galaxy, solving a mystery or problem every week amid playful banter and warm idealism. These standard series each have their strengths and weaknesses, but their foundation is the same. Deep Space Nine stands alone: set in an outpost at the outskirts of the Alpha Quadrant, its stories are not weekly events but large arcs. The Dominion War was one such  arc: the series’ second season introduced a vast trade federation known as the Dominion, protected by super-soldiers whom everyone feared. The Dominion matured through the show’s early seasons, eventually being realized in full as a vast empire controlling much of the Gamma Quadrant — a region of the galaxy so far removed from the Alpha Quadrant that only a stable wormhole providing a shortcut from Deep Space Nine to the fringes of the Dominion’s borders made traveling between the two feasible. A group of aggressive shape-shifting xenophobes known as the Founders created the Dominion to protect them from outside persecution, and they used their empire to establish order by subordinating weaker powers.  In season five, the Dominion set its sights on subduing the various powers of the Alpha Quadrant, resulting in a war that lasted several seasons and culminated only at the series’ finale.

Tales of the Dominion War is set during that time, in which the Dominion fights and nearly destroys the Federation as well as the Klingon and Romulan Empires. The book begins with a tribute to Deep Space Nine, crediting it for making Trek literature more varied: in breaking with the format of the original series and The Next Generation,  Deep Space Nine allowed authors to explore the entire galaxy, creating book series about characters and powers not mentioned in the television shows. Many of the characters from various series produced following Deep Space Nine‘s beginning make appearances here, like Michael Jan Friedman’s Stargazer crew and  Peter David’s New Frontier cast and ship. The stories here not not just set aboard ships, though; authors take us to Earth, when Breen ships stage a surprise attack and level Starfleet Command; to Romulus, where Ambassador Spock watches as Romulan politicians and generals struggle for command of Romulus’ fate, and decide whether or not it shall enter the war; and to a world of the Klingon empire, in which a one-armed Klingon fights off a ship of Jem’Hedar warriors on foot. There’s even a story about Shinzon, the foe from Nemesis who led Reman combat troops on special operations, one that sets the stage for Nemesis. Scotty and McCoy also have a day in the sun, although the Voyager crew is excluded — having spent the war lost in the Delta Quadrant. The collection’s captstone story (“Requital”) is the only one that includes Deep Space Nine‘s characters: a young Federation officer assigned to guard the Founder who instigated the Dominion War and the slaughter that follows struggles with his desire for vengeance while reliving in his mind some of the war’s most vicious battles.

For my money this book is strong indeed; I’ve never been able to enjoy New Frontier or Klingon stories before, but the authors of those respective stories kept my interest. David’s New Frontier story is one of the few stories in the collection that comment on war itself — while his comments on the way emotional appeals are used to glorify, promote, sell, and maintain wars, the collection’s final story addresses the way individual psyches are warped by battle. The rest simply explore themes common in Star Trek war stories: bravery under fire, idealistic determination, the value of quick wits. This is a superb collection of Trek stories that is an easy recommendation to Trek fans.

Related:

  • “Tales of the Dominion War” Memory Alpha article.
  • “Call to Arms” video depicting one of the Dominion War’s largest battles from Deep Space Nine. The music fits it well, I think, and the video chosen will give you an idea of the scale of the conflict.
  • The Dominion War, a four-book set divided between one of the Enterprise-E‘s most crucial missions during the war and the novelization of DS9’s story arcs with greater context. The TNG books are two of my favorite Trek novels. TNG fans may enjoy the inclusion of Ro Laren and several characters from “Lower Decks”.
  • The Battle of Betazed, set during the Dominion’s occupation of Commander Deanna Troi’s homeworld, which  she infiltrates in order to rescue a gifted telepath whose abilities might help the Betazoids create a potent resistance. This book integrates with the post-DS9 Relaunch canon. 
Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Weapons of Satire

Posted on June 16, 2010 by smellincoffee

Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the American-Phillipine War
© 1992 Mark Twain; edited by Jim Zwick.
256 pages

Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword;
He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger’s wealth is stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightenings, and with woe and death has scored;
His lust is marching on.

(“Battle Hymn of the Republic” brought ‘down to date’. Written in 1901  by Mark Twain. Picture taken from the book: click for larger image.)

In 1898, the burgeoning United States declared war on the Spanish Empire and set forth to ‘liberate’ the island of Cuba, which Spain held. The resulting victory netted the US government Cuba, Guam, Wake Island, and a few other odds and ends — including the opportunity to buy the Phillipine Islands from Spain. Both Cuba and the Phillipine islands posessed native populations eager to rule themselves, not that the US or Spain gave them much notice.  Filipinos mounted an insurrection against their self-aclaimed new masters in 1899, and the bloodshed would not end until seven years had passed. Some Americans saw the removal of Spain from the western hemisphere as a fulfillment of the Monroe Doctrine, or as  the beginning of a great crusade to spread Republicanism throughout the world. Other Americans were not so sure the US invasion of the Phillipines, and its occupation of the ceded Spainish territories was a good thing: they saw it as a naked land-grab. Mark Twain of the Anti-Imperialist Leauge was one such American.  He campaigned vigorously against the war, and his thoughts regarding the war are collected here.

Weapons of Satire pulls together speeches, articles, jotted-down private thoughts, satiricial essays, and a book review of Twains into this anthology, one that makes Twain’s view of the war abundantly clear. At first he viewed the war as a good cause,  wanting to see his country rid the western hemisphere of imperial powers and make way for democracies. Upon seeing the way American generals, politicans, and businessmen interacted with Cuba and the Phillipines, Twain concluded that this was nothing more than the expansion of imperialism, under a new flag — one with industrial might and not just the gold of days gone past to back it up. Twain sees the war as a moral failure on the part of the United States: instead of spreading democracy, it is expanding itself like the European states of the day, in the same manner as England and Germany. It is commiting great abuses against the people of the Phillipines, even engaging in massacre.  This imperial growth will not only harm the annexed territories, but undermine the American vision: the ideal of the Republic will be undone by these dreams of empire, for Twain believed no democracy could survive prolonged war and imperial ambition. Monarchy, or some form of authoritarianism, would be the inevitable result.  He viewed the war as corruptive — not only of the American system of government, and of hope for the future, but of individual idealism. Patriotism, he notes, has been been perverted:

There are two kinds of patriotism — monarchical patriotism and republican patriotism. In the one case the government and the king may rightfully furnish you their notions of patriotism; in the other, neither the government nor the nation is privilege to dictate to any individual what the form of his patriotism shall be. The gospel of monarchical patriotism is “The King can do not wrong”. We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change to the wording;”Our country, right or wrong!” We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had – the individual’s right  to oppose both flag and country when he (just he by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away, and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque work and laughable word, Patriotism.

Unfortunately, Twain’s words are still applicable today: questioning the moral integrity of the United States’ actions abroad in the late 20th century and in the past decade is kin to blasphemy: ‘supporting the troops’ apparently means ‘letting the government do with them as it wills’. I wonder what Twain would make of corporation-dominated media and the persistently mighty influence of the US’s military industries on its foreign and domestic policies.

Again from the book; click for larger image.
Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Magicians

Posted on June 16, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Magicians
© Lev Grossman 2009
416 pages

Quentin Coldwater is an unenthused high school student on the verge of depression, feeling out of place in life itself.  Suffering from tedium, loneliness, and unrequited love, Quentin often finds escape in the magical world of Fillory and Further, a series of children’s books that bear a remarkable resemblance to C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. . That all changes when Quentin  receives his acceptance letter from Hogwart’s School of Wizardry and Witchcraft , chasing a wind-blown note from a book given to him by a mysterious stranger, passes through an invisible portal and finds himself in a bewildering place — a place of moving topiaries, where New York’s winter has been replaced by a warm summer. Upon seeing a stranger waiting for him, he asks: “Is this Fillory?”

Quentin’s discovery is not of Fillory, but of the grounds of Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy, an elite private college for young people with a penchant for magic. Quentin, or “Q” as his friends call him, sees Brakebills as what he’s been waiting for all of his life: a place of excitement and meaning.  Teenage Q will, in the five years he spends obtaining his magical education at Brakebills, find a kind of happiness he’s never known before. He disowns his old life, even ignoring his former friends in favor of his Brakebills peers. But something seems wrong: Brakebills is not a land of excitement and meaning. He enjoys life with his friends, yes, and enjoys learning magic — a venture consisting mostly of memorizing recitations and arcane hand gestures — but there’s no Lord Voldemort to fight, no Forbidden Forest to explore — no great adventure to be caught up in. The varied fantasy creatures of worlds like Fillory are absent from Brakebills: it can claim a pixie for a teacher, but that’s about it. His graduation from the academy comes as an unpleasant surprise, and afterwards — as a young twenty-something — he tries to find substance in a life of sex, drugs, booze, and parties.He searches for some great meaning behind his life, but remains restless. The motony is broken when  a Brakebills student who had fallen off of everyone’s radar arrives and breathlessly announces that he’s found Fillory.

A magic realm with witches to fight is just the thing for a group of young magicians who have no purpose in life, but what Quentin and his friends find is scarcely fun:  “adventure” is terrifying and costly, and the perils to be experienced may just make Q realize that he may not necessarily want to live with what he’s wanted all his life. The monsters of Fillory are far more sinister than trolls and armies of mooks.

I checked Lev Grossman’s The Magicians out after seeing an excerpt from it in reader Joy’s Tuesday Teaser, and enjoyed it immensely.  Grossman’s narrative is charming and funny, although the book becomes progressively darker as the magicians age. Thinking of Harry Potter is — given the setting of a magical school with a deliberately English feel — unavoidable, and Grossman refers to the series numerous times himself, along with The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings.  The characters themselves are conscious of Potter, often joking about the few similarities. “I’m going to get my Quiddich uniform” says one, before they begin playing a magical game of their own.

The Magicians made for a fun read at first, and matured into something more thoughtful with its characters. Grossman’s setting is vast and full of little details that make me wonder if he’ll write more. I’d certainly read more, but alas! I have no access to his Codex. I’ll remember this most for its early charm and humor: the darker ending was a bit of a downer. I would recommend it to to most fantasy readers, although The Magicians isn’t standard fantasy — more a story about the difficulties of coming to terms with life as newly-fledged adult that has a magical background.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged | 1 Comment

Teaser Tuesday (15/6)

Posted on June 15, 2010 by smellincoffee

Every little thing it does is magic, every little thing I read turns me on — It’s Tuesday Teaser! A bit late, but it’s not Wednesday yet! As always, from Should Be Reading.

Later on the test gave him a passage from The Tempest, then asked him to make up a fake language, and then to translate the Shakespeare into the made-up language. He was then asked questions about the grammar and orthography of his made-up language, and then — honestly, what was the point? — questions about the made-up geography and culture and society of the mad-up country where his made-up language was so fluently spoken.

The Magicians, p. 23. Lev Grossman

Posted in General | Tagged | 2 Comments