Hannibal IV: The Fava Menace

CNN reports that a fourth Hannibal novel, Hannibal Rising, will be out in December. Apparently it’s a prequel to Silence of the Lambs showing how our favorite evil cannibal turned evil.

I’m betting Obi Wan was involved somehow.

The Other Wind

Grade: A+

A perfect ending to a classic series. Let’s just hope it really is an ending.

Dear Ms. LeGuin,

Please stop writing Earthsea novels.

You are one of the great authors of our time, so this has nothing to do with your overall talent or abilities as a writer. This has everything to do with the fact that there is nothing more to do in Earthsea. When the original trilogy was completed, it was a masterpiece. But something inside you made you continue. True, there were some hooks in the third book that leant themselves nicely to continuing the story. But just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be.

The trilogy became a quartet with Tehanu. Then you put out a collection of short stories, so the publishers all realized they didn’t know where this train was stopping and quickly renamed it The Earthsea Cycle. Please stop the cycle.

In your last book you tackled the biggest issue that was left hanging out there after The Farthest Shore. The Other Wind takes on death in Earthsea, and while there are certainly hooks for another book, please resist the temptation. Tehanu and Tales From Earthsea all got slightly off track and started dealing with gender in Earthsea. I’m sure the sociologist in you finds this fascinating, but you’ve done it better in The Left Hand of Darkness. Earthsea is about something more, and you’ve captured that in the first three and the last book.

At least, I hope it’s the last book.

Look at it this way, you have created a modern myth. And how do all classic myths end? With some flavor of “And they lived happily ever after.” It gave the reader a sense of finality without a sense of ending. The story continued, but we don’t need to hear more about it. This is how Earthsea should end. You have resolved death in Earthsea. You have resolved Ged’s and Lebannen’s story enough. Is there more? Certainly. But we don’t need it.

What we need is for you to end on a high note. And you have.

Thanks.

Dead Lines

Grade: C

Good SF does not translate to good horror.

I like Greg Bear as a science fiction writer. One of my top 10 SF books would easily be The Forge of God. Amazing work. So when I saw a copy of this book at a charity sale, I picked it up thinking a horror based on a bit of science fiction could be interesting.

Here, a new company invents a new type of cell phone that uses a previously undiscovered frequency to transmit crystal-clear signals anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, it turns out they were broadcasting on the channel that ghosts live, so all these new cell phones start clogging the ghost-channels, forcing them back into our world. Add to that a ghostly serial killer with a connection to a poor schlubnik of a leading character, and a good concept quickly becomes a mediocre novel.

The sad thing is that this book recycles a concept that Bear has used before. In Anvil of Stars, the sequel to The Forge of God, there’s a good amount of talk about information channels that exist between particles–the same core concept that becomes the ghost channel in this book. Unfortunately, the conversion to horror just doesn’t work as well.

But if I start getting possessed by ghosts after using my cell phone, I’m really going to be angry.

Tales From Earthsea

Grade: C+

Fantasy with an agenda is not a recipe for success.

For LeGuin to get a C+ on this book is a huge disappointment for me. Don’t get me wrong, at her worst she’s better than 95% of the authors out there, and very few fantasy authors even hold my interest anymore these days. But this collection of short stories that take place in Earthsea masquerading as a complete novel is incredibly frustrating.

I don’t know if LeGuin always felt bad about her lack of interesting female characters in the original Earthsea trilogy, or if later events forced her to reevaluate her earlier works, but this collection all deals with women in Earthsea–basically the same topic dealt with in Tehanu. While it was somewhat interesting in Tehanu, it’s now been done. Each story here, though, focuses on some new aspect. How women are unfairly treated like second-class citizens, how their efforts are overlooked, how their powers are seen as evil while men’s powers are good, etc. We get the point. We got it in Tehanu. So LeGuin’s need to constantly repeat it must be driven by something else. I don’t know if it’s her guilt or what–but this collection certainly isn’t for children and it isn’t even that interesting.

The basic stories do have some good points, and we get some glimpses into Earthsea’s history and earlier chapters, but this still pales in comparison to the original trilogy.

One book left for Earthsea, which I’ll probably finish just for the sake of completeness–but I have lower expectations now. Sad, really.

Tehanu

Grade: B

The first in the new Earthsea collection brings the adult world to the classic fantasy realm.

As I mentioned before, I started re-reading the Earthsea books so I could read the latest additions to the series. Having completed The Farthest Shore, and not being sure if I’d read it before or not, I gladly turned my attention to the fourth Earthsea book, Tehanu.

While this is billed as the fourth book in the series, and indeed my book was billed as The Earthsea Quartet, this is clearly a new book that just happens to take place in Earthsea with some of the characters from previous books. But this is like if we had a book that took place thirty years in Harry Potter’s future–sure, it’s the same characters, but you have very different themes being covered. Tehanu is in that vein–although the original Earthsea quartet had some adult topics, those were mostly buried. All three of the original books were approachable by children and teens, Tehanu is not.

Tehanu deals with some very adult subjects. There are blatant discussions of sexuality that are crammed into a few pages, perhaps to try and gloss them over and keep this book approachable by a younger audience. But the book is slow, not as plot driven as the original three. In that way, it’s closer to The Tombs of Atuan in that it deals with more internal changes than external–and not even changes so much as realizations. Perhaps its fitting that the characters from Tombs are used so much here.

Ultimately, this isn’t even a complete novel, as it seems to simply set the stage for future stories to be told. In reality, this feels like a very long short story. And while it is an interesting, adult look at a fantasy world, it feel incomplete which is why it only earns a B. But perhaps its setting the stage for books 5 and 6 will be worthwhile in the end. Stay tuned.

The Farthest Shore

Grade: A+

A fantastic conclusion to the original Earthsea trilogy.

In re-reading the Earthsea trilogy, I couldn’t honestly recall whether I’d read The Farthest Shore those years ago (nearly two decades-whoa!). Perhaps reading The Tombs of Atuan turned me off the trilogy back then. Or maybe I did read it–the book certainly felt familiar but that could also be because of Le Guin’s comfortable writing and obvious telegraphing of the plot. I wasn’t sure if I’d read it before or just knew where it was going because that’s how the Earthsea books worked.

Either way, this is a fantastic conclusion to the trilogy. Even though the series picked up again in the 90s, this is a true conclusion. As in the first two books, we follow a teenager in Earthsea. In the first book it was Ged coming to grips with his own power and his own mortality. In the second book we followed Tenar (and her meeting of Ged) as she became her own person rather than the one her environment forced her to be. In this final book we follow Lebanen as he journeys with Ged to embrace his own destiny in the world and save it in the process.

The second book took a very introspective, almost dull approach to plot. This one more than makes up for it. Almost all of Earthsea is covered in harsh detail, and magic is vital to the story. Power, its use and abuse becomes a central theme all seen through the eyes of a 17 year old. The Earthsea books were tagged as teen or children’s fiction because they have teenagers as central characters and they’re relatively short (each one under 200 pages for some editions). But that’s not a fair characterization. Yes, the issues are certainly identifiable by teens and perhaps slightly younger, but adults can pick up a lot more of the subtle undertones that make this such a compelling work.

I like Harry Potter, but it’s still a fun children’s tale. It’s a Disney movie in book form. A really dark Disney movie, like they used to make (anyone else remember Watcher in the Woods?), but it doesn’t go very deep by design. And if Harry Potter is a Disney movie, then the Earthsea books are like the Shrek films. Yes, a young audience will like them, but there’s also plenty of material for an older crowd.

Of course, things took a turn after the original trilogy, but I’ll blog that later. For now, if you haven’t read the original three books, I highly encourage you to give them a try.

The Tombs of Atuan

Grade: B

Teenage rebellion comes to Earthsea.

The second book in the Earthsea series was quite risky for an actual sequel. The main character from book 1 doesn’t appear until halfway through this novel–not too late since this book is also under 200 pages, but still surprising since the story is clearly geared towards people who read the first book. Also gone from the second installment is most of the magic (until near the end) and virtually all of what makes Earthsea unique. This book comes from the perspective of an entirely different character and 99% takes place on one island.

So instead of dealing with a world of magic amidst a harsh environment, Tombs is the story of a girl taken from her family and brought up to be a spiritual leader for a religion she doesn’t believe in, but doesn’t know anything else. So when a mage shows up, it becomes her catalyst for teenage rebellion. But the rebellion isn’t prolonged, isn’t reasoned (or attempted to be reasoned), it just sort of happens. Which makes this book a bit weaker in my opinion–the major change we see in Ged in the first book felt natural, reasoned. This one feels random, more like a plot device.

Still, Le Guin handles fantasy starring teenage leads with her usual grace and skill, and to the extent this book sets up the next volume (and the fourth to a great degree), it’s a must read for the series.

A Wizard of Earthsea

Grade: A

Fantastic piece of literature that truly bridges the gap between children’s and adult fiction.

I recall reading A Wizard of Earthsea in sixth grade and while I remember reading at least the second book in the series I was never sure if I read the third. Some time ago I discovered a fourth book had been written in 1990, nearly twenty years after Le Guin finished book three. So when I came across an edition in London over a year ago that had the complete quartet, I purchased with the hopes I would eventually have time to read them again or anew.

Although the going has been slow, I’ve finished the first three and am nearing completion of the fourth (although I recently found out there are two more books in the series). I’m not too surprised the book held up on re-reading, or perhaps a first adult reading. The main strokes of story were as I remembered, but so many of the details were lost in these twenty years since I first read them. This isn’t a wide-eyed look at magic like Harry Potter began (although it’s certainly turned darker with later books). This is a brutal, harsh world that happens to include magic to help make life a bit easier. Le Guin is the master of environment-driven fiction with The Left Hand of Darkness surpassing even Dune in that sub-genre of fiction, and this ranks almost as highly. The world of small islands is both limiting and difficult given the long travels over sea that are part of the world. And with each island being its own land, possibly with its own language and resources, the counties on land are as tumultuous as the sea that divides them.

Cast in the middle of this is the childhood story of Ged. Readers are told up front that Ged grows to become Archmage, so you know he won’t die–that part will instantly make children a bit more comfortable since the majority of the story is fairly dark. Powerful but untrained, Ged unleashes a shadow into the world that eventually tries to take over his body. I remember it being very scary as a sixth grader, and I still feel the echo of those feelings now. But the story itself deals with responsibility and growing up, impressive themes for a book that weighs in under 200 pages. The fact that it’s told in a fantasy genre isn’t new, but Le Guin includes enough material that adults will pick up on that children may miss.

Given the short length, I encourage everyone to read this book. And even though I haven’t blogged the others yet, it’s no surprise that I’d tell you to read the rest of the series if you like the first one (well, at least through book 3 anyway).

A Scanner Darkly

Grade: A

Solid paranoid science fiction from the master.

I’m a big Philip K Dick fan. Back in college I read all of his short stories and even created a web site about them. Sadly, the site was lost when I left school and they didn’t have a procedure for archiving your web sites since the whole personal web site thing was still pretty new. So I lost a lot of content, but not my appreciation for the master of paranoid science fiction.

Knowing that he has a finite body of work, I’ve allowed myself only one of his novels every year or two. Seeing that a movie of A Scanner Darkly is coming out soon, I wanted to read the book before the movie does it injustice.

As a book, it’s raw Dick energy (which isn’t as dirty as it sounds). It’s full of paranoid characters a bit out there. The science fiction part is subtle, and it takes a while to get rolling, but it’s amazing stuff towards the end. A drug addict works as a police mole to make money to fuel his habit. But the drug he’s taking causes some people’s minds to split in two, so eventually our hero doesn’t even realize he’s narcing on himself. There’s a great vibe to the conversations, made more realistic by the fact that Dick wrote this after becoming addicted to drugs himself, and there’s other important elements to the story I’m leaving out on purpose. A difficult read for those who haven’t read PKD before, certainly not as easy to get into as The Man in the High Castle or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Blade Runner), but a great novel nonetheless.

The movie can’t do the book justice, but it will be interesting to see what they leave out.

Haunted

Grade: C+

Collection of effective, uncomfortable short stories doesn’t come together to form a cohesive novel.

The premise is a good one: sixteen struggling writers accept an invitation to join a writer’s retreat for three months. Cut off from the world with life’s essentials provided to them, they should be sparked to writing the next great American novel or blockbuster screenplay. Instead, the group is locked in an abandoned movie theater and they slowly start to turn on each other, sabotaging the food supply then the heat then the lights and finally turning to more physical confrontations.

That’s the premise. And it’s a good premise. But the book doesn’t deliver. Instead, you get a mix of an attempt at a novel told in three parts. The first part is the story I just described. Spaced between the 25 chapters telling this story are the other two parts of the novel: poems about the characters and stories told by the character. What’s amazing is that despite the incredibly differences between the different players, all the poems sound the same. Which would be fine if just one person is writing the poems. But all the stories sound the same as well, which doesn’t make as much sense. And to confuse matters, parts of the main storyline start bleeding over into the stories told by the character, again confusing the storyline’s components and not in an effective way.

The stories themselves are fairly good. Disturbing, but done for effect and intentionally. Most focus on death or suffering and include enough moments to make you squirm while you’re reading. One in particular stands out at the end, and not in a good way, as a bizarre science-fiction-meets-religion story that feels out of place. But the others are all powerful, and if stripped of the occasional reference to the main storyline, this would be a fairly good short story collection, albeit a bit monotonous since every story seems to be told in the same voice (but not intentionally).

I’m a big fan of the movie Fight Club, although I never read the novel. So I had higher expectations for this book given that it was the same author. Maybe his novels are better, but for now it seems that Palahniuk has more talent for shocking than for storytelling.