The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers

The City of Dreaming Books is a fanciful and utterly charming fantasy originally written in German. The author is also an illustrator, and the text is filled with charming and funny drawings of the characters he describes. The main character, Optimus Yarnspinner, is a dinosaur from Lindworm Castle. Like all civilized people, he is educated in literature by an authorial godfather, in his case Dancelot Wordwright, the author of The Joys of Gardening. When Dancelot dies he leaves Optimus a manuscript that is so amazing it caused Dancelot to give up writing because he could never approach its perfection.

Optimus is just as impressed by the manuscript as his godfather was, and so he sets out for the city of Bookholm to see if he can find the author of the amazing document. Bookholm is the city of books, where most of the commerce is in the publication and trade of books. And beneath the city there are deep catacombs filled with old and often dangerous books, which are sought out by the fearsome Book Hunters. Optimus is naive, and begins showing the manuscript to anyone who will read it. He is advised, for his safety, to leave the city at once, wise advice which he naturally ignores, or we wouldn't have a novel. Optimus is directed to a book dealer who turns out to be more than he appears, and soon he is trapped in the catacombs, desperately trying to survive and find a way back to the surface. He has many interesting adventures along the way.

Let me say, first, that though this is a charming book with illustrations, it is not a children's book. It is clever and charming and filled with wordplay. It was also a surprisingly slow read for me. Even though I was enjoying it, this book did not flow quickly and easily. There is a lot going on, and there's a lot to digest in the text. It also took me a while to get into the right frame of mind for the work--sometimes your mood doesn't match the tone of the work, and evidently mine didn't match this one this week.

This is a translated work, and I have to commend the translator, because it read beautifully. Unlike my recent reading of The Stranger, whose prose was leaden and awkward, this one was witty, light, and clever. And given the amount of wordplay in the text, it must have been a challenge.

But though I keep praising The City of Dreaming Books, it was, as I said, a slow read. Whimsical and clever only work if you're in the right mood to receive it, and I spent a good deal of time this last week reading other things instead of this book. Even though I enjoyed it while I read it, I kept finding myself looking for other things to read instead. And when I did read it, my reading pace was slower than an average book. As I said, there was a lot to digest in its paragraphs. I enjoyed it, but I'm not particularly inclined to seek out Moers' other books. Nevertheless, recommended.

Cast in Shadow by Michelle Sagara

The most interesting thing about Cast in Shadow is that, mostly, I enjoyed it. I mostly enjoyed it, even though I shouldn't have. The book has three things going against it:

1) It's published by Luna, an imprint I have been avoiding like the plague. Luna is a paranormal/SFnal line put out by Harlequin, the romance publishers. And maybe I'm a snob for avoiding their books, but I don't think it's really snobbish to avoid something you're pretty sure isn't written to your interests. I don't mind a little romance in my SF, but I want the book to be SF, not romance, and geared toward the sensibilities of an SF reader, not a romance reader. I'm not sure I can explain this clearly, but different genres have different tools and different expectations, and I'm not looking for fantasy aimed at romance readers. Which leads to the next problem:

2) The basic premise is lame, outdated, and simplistic. Our heroine, Kaylin, is the Chosen One. Really. And she has amazing and unexplained powers that she can use intuitively, facing down huge challenges on instinct and luck alone without the slightest bit of training and no real idea what she's doing. Which is really lame. I thought the genre had outgrown that in about 1985, but maybe it was just that I outgrew that in 1985. And then there is the problem of the main character:

3) Kaylin is horrible. Really, really contemptible. Immature, impulsive, illogical, willfully ignorant, rude, thoughtless, bigoted, unreliable, perpetually tardy, and apparently unable even to feed and clothe herself. I am perfectly happy reading about characters who are not like me, so long as I can be comfortable that they aren't fucking idiots who will always do the wrong thing. Kaylin, however, is pretty much a fucking idiot who always does the wrong thing. And that does not make me a happy reader.

And so I am here to report my amazement that I enjoyed the book anyway. Despite the lame plot and the asshole heroine, the rest of the characters and the setting were interesting enough to hold my interest. Despite some of the dialogue not making much sense to me (people kept asking Kaylin questions that I found I didn't understand). Despite, at the end, when they're running out of time and, literally, running to save the world, interrupting it for unnecessary conversation and a flashback. In nearly every sense, this is exactly the sort of fantasy that made me give up on most fantasy quite a while ago. And yet it was oddly entertaining. I might even read the rest of the series.

Reflections on the blog

This weekend is my four-year anniversary of blogging. I started over at Yahoo360, which is now defunct, and later moved here to Blogger. The nature of the blog has changed over those years. For one thing, Yahoo360 was more of a social networking site than a pure blogging venue, so mostly my posts were seen by my friends. Here at Blogger I seem to be posting less about my personal life than I did over there. I'm not sure if this is because the setting is different, or if it's because I doubt the big wide internet is particularly interested in my personal life.

I seem to have stopped posting much except book reviews. I rarely even post photos of my finished knitting projects any more, mostly because I'm too lazy to photograph them. And yet, even though last year I read more than ever, I made fewer blog posts. I don't blog about every book I read, by a long shot. Usually it's just because I don't have anything particularly interesting to say about the book. This is quite common with mysteries--my generic review would say something like: "Description of murder and characters. The police step in, investigate, and solve the crime. It wasn't brilliant, but kept me entertained for a few hours, and that was all I asked of the book." Which really isn't particularly insightful, so I usually don't bother. On one occasion last year, I decided not to review a paranormal fantasy because I didn't really like it, but it was the author's first book and I didn't see much point in ruining her day. I didn't hate it enough to bother to slam it in great detail, but it really wasn't very good and I couldn't give it a good review. So I kept my mouth shut.

Those who read this blog are certainly aware that I don't usually pull my punches when I don't like a book. (And yet, I did recently with Grimspace by Ann Aguirre. It wasn't good, but I couldn't summon the energy to explain all things that were wrong with it. Maybe I'm getting kinder with age? Or maybe just lazier?) I am not trying to be a serious critic, I am merely recording my thoughts on what I read, and a large part of that is whether or not I enjoy the book. Sometimes a book is very competently written, but just isn't really my thing, and I try to make that clear in the reviews I write of those books, if I even finish the book. Often I just abandon competent books that don't float my boat, and never mention them here. I am not one of those readers who feels the need to finish every book they start. Life is too short to slog through books you're not interested in.

However, I think I was just being lazy last year. There were books I could have reviewed, but didn't because I didn't have much of interest to say about them. But if I'd sat down and reviewed them, perhaps I would have thought of more than I expected. That sometimes happens--writing about a book makes me think about it more deeply, and thus I am getting some value out of blogging about my reading. And that's important--readership of this blog has never been very high, so I'm really not doing this for anyone but myself.

This year I intend to try to be less lazy, and write about more of the books I read. Well, except for the paranormal gay romances--I still don't care to share my thoughts on those with the world at large. (Though that might be an interesting topic to think about--why are there so many gay werewolf romances? Really, are all werewolves gay or what?) I may even try to post about things other than books. I'm looking forward to reading a lot of good books in the next year, and I look forward to sharing my thoughts on them. I hope you enjoy it, too.

The Stranger by Max Frei

The Stranger is the first in a series of fantasy novels that have been wildly popular in Russia. It was translated into English last year, and sounded sufficiently interesting that I had to track down a copy. The main character, Max, tends to stay awake at night and sleep during the day. When he sleeps, he dreams of wondrous places, and in his dreams he befriends Sir Juffin Hully. Sir Juffin invites Max to move to his city of Echo and become the Nocturnal Representative of the Most Venerable Head of the Minor Secret Investigative Force of Echo. In other words, he is the night shift of the magic police.

Max settles quite comfortably into Echo. It's a pleasant city, where people enjoy their food and enjoy soaking in their multiple bathing pools, each kept at a different temperature. To explain Max's accent and lack of knowledge of Echo, Juffin tells everyone that Max is from the Barren Lands, far from Echo, and therefore a barbarian. Max was recruited because Juffin senses that he has considerable magical talent, and most of the time he picks things up very easily. It lowers the tension of the story sometimes to know that Max can handle damn near anything, even if he's never tried before. But the story is entertaining enough that I was usually willing to forgive that.

It's hard, with translated works, to know how much of the voice I'm reading is the author's and how much is the translation. The language of this novel is kind of blunt, a bit simplistic and imprecise. I'm not sure whose fault that is. For that matter, Max himself is simple, in both senses of the word--both uncomplicated and sometimes rather stupid. This is sometimes annoying, and it was a tremendous relief when he got over his childish crush on his sole female coworker. Anyway, the text: it's hard to explain, so let me just give an example. Here is a scene from early in the book, when Max has escaped harm from something powerful that should have destroyed him. He is explaining to Juffin what happened:

I thought...I didn't want to die in the company of that monkey. Dumb, wasn't it? And when the candlestick flew at me, I finally got furious--at the stupid piece of iron, at the monster in the mirror, even at you, for some reason. And I decided, no way, I'm not dying here! And that's about it.

Max grows more ridiculously overpowered as the book goes on, and yet I still really enjoyed the story. I enjoyed the setting, the other characters, the problems they encounter--for all of its faults, this book is just a hell of a fun read. I hope that the next volume is translated soon, because I'm dying to read it. Highly recommended.

Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts

Yellow Blue Tibia is a science fiction novel set in Russia in 1986. Konstantin Skvorecky was a science fiction writer who, along with several others, was tasked by Stalin in 1946 with inventing an alien invasion that could be falsified to unify the people. The plan was never used, and Skvorecky got along with his life and forgot about it. But forty years later he is reunited with one of his fellow writers, who informs him that the invasion they imagined is actually happening. He then meets with some UFO enthusiasts, including an American nuclear engineer who tells him that something is going to happen at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine. The engineer is killed, and Skovercky has improbable adventures as he runs from the KGB and tries to prevent the end of the world, although he still does not believe in the aliens.

It took me a while to realize what a funny novel this is. The scene in which they meet the Scientologists was amusing, but it wasn't until Skvorecky is being interrogated by a Russian policeman who keeps threatening to cut off his balls that I "got" the tone of the book, after which I began to enjoy it enormously. It is a very funny book, in a dark, Russian sort of way.

I also really enjoyed the setting. It had me dredging back into my memory of my Russian history classes, and trying to decipher the Cyrillic occasionally used in the book. I once knew that stuff, but have forgotten a lot of it, and it was stimulating to have it brought up to the forefront of my mind again. I was really ridiculously pleased when I remembered enough to translate ИОСИФ СТАЛИН as Josef Stalin. Yes, I'm a geek.

Yellow Blue Tibia is a really unusual work, and therefore quite refreshing. I really enjoyed it, once I'd got past the first part and figured out how I should be reading it. It might not hold quite the same delights for someone less interested in Russia than I am, but still this is a work that deserves more attention than it has received. This one may make it onto my Hugo nominating ballot. Recommended.

Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding

I should have written this review earlier, because I find my memories of it are already a bit hazy. This is a swashbuckling adventure with pirates and smugglers and running from bounty hunters. It features Frey, captain of the Ketty Jay, and his lovable crew of misfits, most of whom are on the run from their former lives.

Frey and crew are hired to rob a particular ship that will be passing a particular place at a particular time. It is a setup, though, and things go very wrong, leaving them running from the law and from bounty hunters. After hiding for a while, Frey gets mad and decides the only thing to do is track down who was really responsible and clear his name. This involves gunfights, arson, and ex-girlfriends. Meanwhile we get to know more about his crew, most of whom are trying to escape something from their prior lives, except Pinn, one of their pilots, who is an idiot and provides the comic relief.

The setting of Retribution Falls is strange. They have aircraft, and space ships, but otherwise the level of technology is pretty low. Fighting takes place with pistols and cutlasses, and some places don't even have electricity. It doesn't really make sense, and I didn't see much of an explanation. John Brunner, in his fixup work Interstellar Empire, noted that he wanted to write sword and spaceship stories, but it was hard to come up with a way for such a thing to exist. Here we have something similar, without any reason I could figure out. That doesn't prevent me from enjoying the story, but the setting just didn't actually make sense. I also admit to being a bit confused about the geography of the story. It isn't entirely clear to me (and I read it quickly, so perhaps I just missed it) if all the places they visit are on one planet, or if they're traveling between planets. The Ketty Jay seems to be a spaceship rather than an aircraft, but if so it doesn't make sense at one point when they are overcome by noxious fumes from outside, because wouldn't a spaceship be airtight? So I guess I will just observe that the setting didn't really make sense to me.

The adventures they have are certainly entertaining, and the crew are mostly interesting. There are funny moments, many of them provided by Pinn, the idiot. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I was reading an episode of Firefly. For many, this may be a good thing. It's a fairly fun read with a lot of action. But I didn't like it quite as well as I felt I should have. Perhaps I just wasn't in the right mood.

Wise words about blogs

Stomping on Yeti posted a very good list of things that are bad about (some) blogs.

Ten Things I Hate About You(r Blog)

I don't usually post links to other blogs, but I'm making an exception because this list is spot-on, and I am in complete agreement. Though I do wonder if I am guilty of number 8. Any thoughts?