The Between by Ryan Leslie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Between drew me in with something I’m always a sucker for: a portal to another world accessed through something mundane and ordinary. In fact, the previous book I read, Stephen King’s Fairy Tale, has the same hook, where the portal is inside a shed in a backyard. In The Between, the portal is behind a huge iron door buried…in a backyard! Reading these books may make you think backyards are way cooler than they actually are.
For a debut novel, The Between is pretty good. Author Ryan Leslie finds a tone and stays with it fairly consistently throughout–serious, but leavened by the characters reflecting on the unreal situations they find themselves in. The prose moves between macho pants banter between the main characters of Paul and Jay, and descriptions of the bizarre world of The Between and the rules that govern it, with the latter comprising the bulk of the novel. Leslie does a good job in providing enough detail for The Between to make it feel like an authentic place, while teasing details that suggest a lot more than what the reader sees.
But, as is often the case with a debut novel, it’s got a few flaws that bugged me. There are two that stood out. The first is The Between itself felt like a fusion of several different concepts the author had for the realm, and the inclusion of the ASCII computer game version seemed more a bit of a cheat for the author than something that added to the story, in that it allows a character to have a handy notebook/reference for The Between, but adds little else for the reader.
The other main issue I had was with the main character of Paul. He not only disappears for a large chunk of the story in the middle, but never seems to change at all, or have any real kind of arc, despite performing heroic deeds, especially near the story’s conclusion. The tense relationship that is fleshed out early on between Paul and Jay is also never revisited in a meaningful way once they enter The Between. There is some excellent work in showing how taking up artifacts in The Between confers powers and a specific role to the person wielding them, and can transform the person’s personality. This is used to great effect when Jay gets a knife that essentially turns him into an assassin with an insatiable bloodlust, but this never really gets followed up on at story’s end. Sure, there’s plenty of rousing adventure and the set pieces are full of action and derring-do, but if you take the time to create and explore relationships between characters and have them change in significant ways, I think it’s important to explore the consequences after all the gun fights and stabbings. By the end, I didn’t really know where Paul and Jay stood, except that I guess they were still friends.
Still, there’s a lot that works in The Between and I am confident Leslie will take what he has learned from writing it and incorporate it into future stories.
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fantasy
Book review: Fairy Tale
Fairy Tale by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
When I hit a reading slump, as happened when my long commute went away at the start of the pandemic, I often struggle to find a book to get started on. On the one hand, I enjoy giving unknown authors a chance, but this often leads to, if not disappointment, then an underwhelming experience where a book is perfectly decent, but feels like eating a bland meal. It does the job, but nothing more.
In this case, I decided to turn to the author I’ve read more than any other (hardly a novel claim, if you’ll pardon the pun), and tackled Stephen King’s latest, the generically-titled Fairy Tale.
There will be spoilers below. A spoiler-free summation would be: Buy it if you’re a King fan, if you’re not super hardcore about how fantasy worlds should “work”, or if you are a sucker for alternate dimensions/realities–like I am.
The story is divided into two parts. The first third establishes the relationship between Charlie Reade, an athletic 17-year-old high school student, and a reclusive old man named Bowditch, who lives in what is termed a “Psycho house” at the top of a hill on the street where Charlie lives. Charlie hears Bowditch’s cries for help after he has fallen off a ladder while trying to clean the gutters of his house, breaking his leg. Charlie becomes something of a local hero and he and Bowditch form a friendship during Bowditch’s recovery.
After revealing that he has not much time to live, Bowditch tells Charlie about a secret in the locked shed in his backyard, where Charlie had previously heard a strange skittering sound. Describing it as a burden rather than a blessing, Bowditch leaves Charlie his estate, along with some hurried instructions on tape regarding the shed, recorded as Bowditch suffers a fatal heart attack.
Charlie unlocks the shed and enters a tunnel that leads deep down into the earth and eventually emerges into another world with two moons, called Empis.
From here, the story takes on the fairy tale of the name, where the people of Empis, suffer under a curse by a possibly-not-quite-human-anymore king named Elden. The people see Charlie as their saviour prince, which, of course, turns out to be true.
Empis is one of these strange worlds that King likes to write about, mixing high fantasy tropes with anachronistic modern touches, like electric trolleys. King deliberately avoids trying to explain everything. Indeed, Charlie, who narrates the tale, notes this himself, surmising his time in Empis as one with many mysteries left unsolved.
Some might be impatient with the slow burn approach of the story, which spends hundreds of pages in the small town of Sentry’s Rest before moving on to Empis, but in this opening third of the novel King effortlessly makes the mundane not just interesting, but compelling, peppering the story with hints of weirder things to come.
In Empis, the story becomes a retelling of sorts of Rumpelstiltskin, filtered through King’s version of a magical, high fantasy realm where magic exists, both good and dark. There are noble sacrifices, dungeon escapes, gladiatorial games, dubious astronomy, truly evil villains and through it all, King adroitly drops in the kinds of details that make the place and its people feel authentic.
There are also more spiralling staircases in this story than in any other I’ve ever read. If you have an unnatural fear of spiral staircases, be warned!
Overall, I enjoyed Fairy Tale. It may seem trite by now to call any King novel “vintage King” but it fits here. King clearly had a lot of fun creating the world and people of Empis, and fusing it, Dark Tower-style, to our modern one. It even has a happy ending.
Recommended.
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Movie re-review: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Yesterday, I spontaneously decided to start watching The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on Prime Video. My plan was to split it up over a few days, because even this original, non-extended version, is about three hours long.
I ended up watching the whole thing, of course.
It still holds up. The special effects mostly still hold up, too.
Let me start with a few aspects I didn’t care for, which match my recollection from when the film first came out in 2001 (22 years ago!). Peter Jackson does a great job here, but his strength seems to lay more in the character moments than the giant action set pieces. These set pieces are still well-done, but he has a penchant for showing cuts of slow motion action, which is really hard to pull off without looking hokey. There are times when it just looks hokey.
The score also swells just a bit too much at times, a case where I think less would have been more. But it is still an excellent score, and this is perhaps more something of personal taste.
I’m still somewhat divided over Hugo Weaving’s Elrond. On the one hand, his arch, exaggerated performance does fit with the idea of a thousands-year old elf not exactly being like your regular guy, but it still seems a bit hammy. Just a bit, though.
The cast, in general, though, is outstanding. Jackson knows what he wants from each of them, and he expertly draws great performances from everyone. Ian McKellen provides a definitive performance as Gandalf, and I love that Aragorn is played by Viggo Mortensen, who does not have a typical “hero” voice. Sean Bean dies, of course, but the death scene is both touching and ridiculously over the top. The actors are just fun to watch.
The other two things I’d highlight are the pacing and the writing. The film is a masterclass in moving between quiet, character moments and large (or small) scale action scenes. There is, despite the running time, no flab here, where scenes linger too long, or exist for no reason. The thing moves at just the right speed for nearly three hours.
The writing stays true to the original book (as far as it matters), and the dialogue manages to avoid sounding arch, again mainly due to the great performances of the cast.
Jackson uses the rugged scenery of New Zealand to great effect, of course.
I think I might have an even more favourable view of this movie now because it takes place in an entirely different world with no connection to a larger universe. It’s nice to just soak it in without worrying about how it ties into 500 other LOTR movies, TV shows and whatnot. The characters are not glib, quipping superheroes, which I feel like I’ve seen enough of to last this and several additional lifetimes.
Overall, this was and remains a delight. On a scale of 1 to 10 Gollums Lurking in the Shadows, it rates a 9.
Book review: Die, Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker
Die, Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker by Kieron Gillen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is exactly what it says on the tin–a story about a group of teens who are returned as adults to a realm where their tabletop RPG is a real world. The concept is a favorite of D&D or D&D adjacent nerds, but Gillen’s writing elevates the material beyond its hackneyed premise. It is very dark, but in that darkness the characters feel authentic and make mistakes and judgment calls that never feel driven by the needs of the plot.
The art by Stephanie Hans is bursting with color and drama, perfectly matching the grim setting.
Recommended, with the caveat that Volume One does not have real closure–you are fully intended to move on to see the rest of the story.
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Book review: The Hike
The Hike by Drew Magary
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a delightfully nutty story.
A man goes to a seedy hotel to conduct a business meeting and gets there early. He decides to go on a short hike before the meeting and follows a nearby path into the surrounding woods. Then things get terrifying and weird and weirder still.
The Hike is probably better without knowing too many details before going in–even the illustrations on its cover (well, the busier version of the cover) are a series of mini-spoilers. Without going in too deeply, The Hike finds the protagonist Ben on a path that he is warned to stay on, under penalty of death. From there, he begins a long journey that tests his sanity, mental and physical strength, and resolve to keep pushing forward in the hope of seeing his wife and three children again.
The overall tone is light and at times quite amusing, despite the horrors sometimes visited upon Ben, and while you might be able to poke holes in the logic of this strange universe if you look closely enough, doing so is going entirely against the spirit of the book.
The Hike is silly and weird and I was entertained throughout. If you’re looking for a surreal take on the hero’s journey that never takes itself too seriously, The Hike is an easy recommendation.
Book review: And Then Begin Again: Six Tales of Hope
And Then Begin Again: Six Tales of Hope by Ann Christy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Ann Christy’s second collection of six stories covers an eclectic mix of time travel, super powers, far-future doom and alternate history. Some spoilers ahead, so be warned.
“Sedge” puts together a young man and woman on a newly-settled world, each of them not quite fitting their own culture. There is an abrupt tonal shift due to a rather significant event happening right at the end, and I felt it was glossed over a little too readily, but it’s still charming to watch these two flirt on this new world before that happens.
“The Mirroring” is a weird story about a new counselor investigating some very strange self-worth issues some students at a private college are experiencing. A strong (and agreeable) Twilight Zone vibe here.
“Life/Time in the New World.” Alpha male business guy gets frozen for 300 years, pops out of his capsule and continues being an alpha male business guy in the future, which is part paradise, part sneaky Twilight Zone hell. All the pieces are here, but the story felt a bit perfunctory at times, and the character’s growth as an individual almost seems deliberately undercut by the ending.
“Unnatural” imagines an alternate history where Pope John Paul I doesn’t die after only 33 days and basically announces that births as a result of in vitro fertilization are A-OK, resulting in a future where natural birth is…illegal? Again, all the pieces here are put together well, but the basic premise, while a fun “What if?” exercise, doesn’t seem that plausible. Maybe this is just a reflection of the world we live in now.
“Yankari” tells the story of Olisa, an eight year girl in Africa who has some very potent abilities that she struggles to control and use to protect wildlife from poachers. I felt the ending broadened out the story in a way that was unnecessary, but this is still a tight, enjoyable tale of a little girl learning to harness some amazing abilities to do the right thing.
“Lulu Ad Infinitum” is an SF piece about a colony ship that suffers a catastrophic failure, forcing its lone survivor, the titular Lulu, to survive by cloning, then learning to live with, herself. Despite the grim backdrop, the tone remains surprisingly light as Lulu grapples with a possibly untrustworthy AI, the process of raising her clones and more. Christy does an excellent job here with the setting, fleshing it out in satisfying detail.
Overall, even the lesser stories were eminently readable and I enjoyed all six, just some more than others. An easy recommendation if you’re looking for a blast of SF/fantasy variety with a (mostly) hopeful theme.
Book review: A Darker Shade of Magic
A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I don’t read a lot of fantasy. Sure, I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. That’s about 95% of it right there, the remainder being short stories or books I’m not recalling at the moment. I’ve seen more fantasy movies–they’re quicker to consume–but generally while I am aware of most of the cliches, stereotypes, tropes and such of fantasy, I am not well-read on the genre.
This is my way of saying my opinion of A Darker Shade of Magic may come across as naive, or uninformed or kind of dumb. Because when it comes to fantasy I am kind of dumb.
Still, I’ll start by saying my strongest criticism of the book was its occasional lapse into twee language, passages where the author’s voice intrudes by phrasing something in a way that draws attention to the narrator. This can work if the entire novel is presented as a story being told by an unseen narrator (Mr. Norell and Jonathan Strange comes to mind in this regard–and hey, that’s another fantasy novel I read) but here it pops up only a few times, so it draws unnecessary attention. This is a very minor criticism, though.
Another mild criticism is how it feels like some of the character development happens very slowly, perhaps because this is the first book of a series, so by the end of the book it only feels like some parts of the story are getting started. The character of Lila is the best example of this, a cutpurse with grand plans for adventure and little care for anyone else who only just starts to show a more human side by the end of the story.
The story itself presents a plot with far-reaching implications–the fates of three parallel versions of Victorian-era London are at stake–but feels intimate because it focuses on a small number of characters, primarily the two Antari (powerful wielders of magic), the good-but-somewhat-naughty Kell of Red London, and Holland, the bad and beholden servant to the throne of the amoral White London, along with the aforementioned Lila Bard and assorted kings, queens and a royal brother.
The world building is likely to draw in a lot of readers, as Schwab does a fine job of laying out the different versions of London and how they and the magic within each, operates. Into this comes Kell, whose habit of trading trinkets from the different Londons, using blood magic that allow him as an Antari, to slip between the worlds while few if any others can, ends up with him coming into possession of something Very Bad from Black London. Black London, as you might guess, is also Very Bad and is sealed off from the other Londons to prevent its corrupt magic from spreading and possibly destroying the other three versions of the city.
There is a lot of vicious magic, swinging of swords and the occasional report of gunfire at play as things speed toward an increasingly bloody conclusion. While the story does achieve a certain level of closure, it’s still obvious by the end that there is more to come.
Why do I keep swearing off series and then find myself reading them? I’m not yet sure if I will read the follow-up to A Darker Shade of Magic, but I’m reasonably certain that anyone not entirely tired of stories set in Victorian London will find the story here a brisk and entertaining read. While there are few surprises, there are many small pleasures to be had, whether it be the exchanges between characters who won’t dare admit they like each other, to the showy displays of mages fighting, using wits and, sometimes, anything they can get their hands on.
Recommended.
Book review: The Library at Mount Char
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I don’t read a lot of fantasy because I prefer my absurd story scenarios to be horror-flavored but The Library at Mount Char had been recommended and has surfaced on a few “Best of 2015” lists so I figured, what the heck, it’s not like it was going to be elves and dwarves arguing with each other.
Instead, The Library at Mount Char tells the story of how an ancient uber-being who may or may not be human has fended off his enemies for thousands of years (maybe longer) while maintaining The Library, a collection of books, scrolls and bric a brac that essentially allows him to rule and shape our universe. He is aided by twelves children he kidnaps at the beginning of the story, using them as apprentices, with each studying a different discipline. One of them is Carolyn, the protagonist, and the story that unfolds deals mainly with her plotting to usurp her “Father” and also how she learns to become human again, sort of, after turning into an emotionless monster for several decades due to aforementioned plotting.
There’s always a goofy plumber/thief named Steve she conscripts for various tasks and an ex-military man named Earwin who is pretty much your typical possibly-crazy-but-smart ex-military guy.
Several times when explaining the various impossible things happening, Carolyn tells Steve “It’s not magic” but it’s magic. Some lip service is paid to “seventh dimensions” and such but if you’re expecting plausible, scientific explanations for everything, you won’t find them here–nor should you, despite the overall realistic tone the story takes.
What you will find is a generally light, sometimes funny and often gruesome tale of long-brewing revenge, world-destroying (rather than building) wrapped up in a modern fantasy shell with a little life lesson tucked in at the end.
And talking lions. And deer. And zombies. And people who love baking brownies.
The general inhumanity of the children (who are in their thirties for most of the story) means you won’t particularly identify with or feel empathy for them, but Steve the plumber serves as a reference point to the reader, a likable doofus who gets in way over his head.
I liked The Library at Mount Char overall, though at times I felt author Scott Hawkins might have committed more fully to a specific tone, as the story swings a bit uneasily at times from Very Serious High Stakes Stuff to irreverence and silliness. But that’s more a personal preference on my part more than it is a significant failing of the book.
As I mentioned up top, I don’t read a lot of fantasy so I have no idea how The Library at Mount Char compares to similar work. It’s a well-written and tightly-plotted novel, though, and taken on its own, I enjoyed the journey of Steve and Carolyn through the woods and bombs and gunfire and weird other dimensional places.