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Welcome again folks, it is now June. Well, July your time. Back in high school, June and July was the time when I would read fantasy books instead of the assigned summer reading that was supposed help me learn stuff that the public school system thought I should know, but was never really that important. All it did was turn me off from learning and almost killed my interest in reading anything other than my friends' stories and comic books. So to celebrate that bygone age, I bring you- Fantasy Fun Month.
- Imaginalis by J.M. DeMatteis:
One of the things that has always been of interest to me is the difference between religion and faith. I guess that's why I've always been drawn to DeMatteis's work. Imaginalis is billed as a children's book. Much like his Abadazad series, this one is full of many of the spiritual ideas that are reoccurring themes of DeMatteis's writings. It sure didn't read like any of the fantasy books I read as a child. Okay, maybe A Wrinkle in Time minus the Christian allegory. The chief philosophical idea espoused is so simple an idea that we should all take it to heart more often than we do: that compassion is the most valuable human commodity. People will say it isn't a practical way to live your life or even that it is simply impossible to live that way. DeMatteis answers is: It's only impossible if you want it to be. He never shows that the road to be free of risk. The characters stumble, they fall and they dream. Belief in compassion is never treated as the easiest solution. Quite the contrary, it is shown to be the hardest quest of all but by far the most worthwhile. It is bold and even dangerous. The urge to give in to violence or to give up after traveling further than they thought possible, occurs to at least one character in the last six chapters of the book. I've said it before- I don't believe in much in this world. Love, compassion, friendship and the denial of hatred are things I struggle to believe in every day. It's not something I want to believe in, sometimes I think I need to believe it. I've had a particularly rough time of that last month and this book- in its own small way helped remind me of that. As for the story itself, about a girl named Mehera who finds out her favorite book series has been cancelled midstory is delightful and borders on meta story. There are parts where it gets unbelievable, but it never stops being fun. It never stops being an entertaining story so even if it is impossible, I choose to believe that while it's not how it would happen, it is how it should be. The book still angered me because it reminded me the third Abadazad book: 'The Puppet, The Professor and The Prophet' was never released in the United States. I'm not willing to spend $50 for a book so chances are, I'll never get to read it.
- A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett:
There is something I thought Terry Pratchett's sense of humor could never be and that is almost sedate. Not to say that the book doesn't have plenty of really funny moments, characters and concepts that have made Discworld an international phenomenon. After all, it's a bit hard to take any book where you have a woman with one soul and two bodies who pretend to be twins and a house haunted by a friendly poltergeist with OCD completely seriously. Not to mention the Mac Nac Feegle. Pratchett just doesn't go too crazy with it as he has in the past. It is a book that goes into a darker place than I think I've ever seen him travel to before. It seems oddly appropriate to do so in a kids book rather than one of his adult novels. I don't know why, but it just does. Perhaps it is if you believe the general public, fairy tales are for children. It also is a story about the greatest terror that everyone goes through- adolescence, a time when we all appear to be possessed by monsters, only Tiffany Aching probably a little more so than most. Another different turn than its predecessor, 'Wee Free Men', Pratchett lets Death attend the party. This one felt like a real Discworld book.
- Folk of the Air by Peter S. Beagle:
When I read 'The Last Unicorn' two years ago, it marked the first time I fell into the lush, vivid landscape filled with fleshed out people that seem to populate the mind of Peter S. Beagle. It was an amazing and heart breaking read. While Folk of the Air has many of those same elements, it is much more of a 'modern fantasy'. If I hadn't seen the plot summary on the back cover or had the cover image, or had a blank cover like some of the other editions of the book I've seen, I probably wouldn't have been 100% sure I was actually reading a fantasy novel until about page fifty. It's a subtle and intentionally slow mystery. Needless to say, it took me back to the days when I had a more regular tabletop RPG group and my one or two dabblings into LARPing. It had a bit of sentimental value for that alone. I think in many ways it is actually a better book than 'The Last Unicorn.' You don't just end up feeling sorry for the good people. You end up feeling sorry for the bad ones too. Any time a writer can do that, I am impressed.
- The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny:
I felt a bit cheated by the middle and ending sections of The Nine Princes in Amber. Guns of Avalon has more of those 'this happened a long time ago and I didn't tell you' moments in it. I hate that. Not only that- as a narrator Corwin calls attention to the fact he didn't tell us these things and expects us to go with it. That makes him an even less reliable narrator than he had been previously. It makes me wonder not only about Corwin's 'when I do this it is good, when Eric does exactly the same thing it is evil' ethos but also about why the hell should I care. A lot of this book reads like a slightly less combat heavy Dungeons and Dragons campaign that is trying to put on moral airs. Only it lacks the spunk and player commentary that comes with a good D and D game. It's hard to see why this series has become a classic that so many of my friends enjoy. It might have been hot in the 70s but so was Happy Days. The 'I don't trust anyone even though it's in their self interest to trust me, one of us will betray the other somehow' routine gets old very quickly. Furthermore, I really lose interest in Corwin around the time he boinks a seventeen year old girl he believes to be his great-grandniece. There is just a certain amount of ick factor I can take in something that is not an intentional comedy. It picks up a little bit by the end but I'm uncertain if it was enough to make me want to progress further in this series. The first book did the same thing and ran out of steam a few paragraphs into the second book.
Well, that's all the time we have for this month. Be back here next month as I work on my summer reading homework? By the Great Vishanti, the terror. Well, not really. I find a way to make it fun. Trust me.
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