All too familiar fantasies

I’m about to shut the door on the fantasy. Trying to find something outside the parameters of “heroic/epic fantasy” is turning into a full-time job. Especially considering every publisher out there list their books as being something greater than they are; with promises to transcend genre and change preconceived ideas of what fiction is.

I’m going to start and finish Brandon Sanderson's Hero of Ages soon and then I’ll be placing a lot of faith in Jay Lake’s Green. I don’t know why I am doing this but I am. Perhaps it’s the cover. Maybe because it’s written in first person which seems to me a rarity in fantasy. Perhaps it’s because it’s not a standard fantasy trilogy. Perhaps it’s this excerpt.

It’s not a happy feeling to learn that the genre that prompted an interest in reading within me is falling out of favor.

A terrible book

I want to be absolutely clear that when I say terrible I am referring to the book’s manufacturing: the construction of the book. As for the words on the page, I haven’t read them yet.

If you go to amazon and search for Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees you will find a few results. The first to come up is the one I purchased. Printed by CreateSpace, which is, as best as I can tell from their website a POD/self-publishing subsidiary of amazon.

I have nothing against such presses but this does raise some questions, least of all how they acquired the rights to print the book. The cover has a zoomed in pixelated picture that looks to be an extreme close up of the cover art from a previous Del Ray mass market paper back and is without doubt a copyright violation of some sort. (As Del Ray is more than creditable, for three dollars a used copy of that edition is probably preferable to the Createspace edition.) When the book is opened there is no library of congress catalogue listing, nor copyright information of any sort. All that is said before the table of contents is the title, the author and, “First published in 1926,” which combine to make for a very poor title page. Perhaps public domain is in effect, but even so that does not explain the reproduction of the cover art--no matter how altered it may be--without permission or accreditation.

The paper is standard office stock, the binding is laughable. I think it would be apparent to the untrained eye that this book was made in someone’s basement. I have seen many and own a few self-published books. All of them were more professionally done than this. If you are a lover of books and enjoy creating your own library I have no doubt that my complaints will become your own should you purchase this edition. The alternatives are an edition by the now defunct BORGO PRESS, Cold Springs Press (which amazon reviewers have also bashed in terms of quality of book construction) and the apparent diamond-in-the-rough Wildside Press.

I do not own any books printed by Wildside but judging from their website and the authors they represent I think they are legitimate, though I would welcome any feedback from any who know. I searched for this book on amazon’s Canada site to seek alternatives after seeing what arrived in the mail and was fortunate enough to stumble across Wildside. For whatever reason, they do not appear on any page of the amazon US site. Sadly, they do not have a “look inside” option to check out the formating. Should you be interested in Lud-in-the-Mist, THIS, is the edition you should purchase. Without seeing it, I have full confidence it can't any worse than the competition and judging from the books they publish I have a feeling it will be infinitely better.

I don’t expect all the books I buy to posses the master craftsmanship of Random House’s Everyman’s Library, but I do expect a lot more than this for my hard earned money. Having only gleaned the first few pages I have no doubt that I will have better things to say concerning the content of the book than the quality of it’s construction and I look forward to saying those things shortly.

Finding a New Office

There are fourteen libraries in Gwinnett county which at one point in time was the fastest growing county in the nation. The services they offered were wonderful and the facilities were some of the nicest to be found in a public library system. Seems as if their heyday is over and the reality of budget constraints are affecting everyone.

The staff cutbacks are sad and I feel for those who have been let go, but--on to more selfish concerns--the hours being so heavily cut in the evenings is something I may have to protest.

I can blog and freelance about anywhere, but when I write my own fiction I enjoy being able to get of my apartment to do so. (And no, I'm not that pretentious guy you see at a coffee house with a notebook, laptop, more pens and pencils than needed surrounded by cups of tea.) The comforts of home are too tempting for me to properly focus on anything that is truly important to me. The library was a perfect outlet: an office of sorts, for me. They used to close at nine so there was a timeline that was imposed by someone else that I was working under; a great motivator. The silent reading room was deathly quiet. Most of all it felt like an office to me. No, TV, video games, I turned my phone off and Wi-Fi, and in that room I was surrounded by other people that, in one form or another were there to work. It was an environment that I found very conducive to making progress.

Sadly there isn’t another option quite like it that comes to mind. So it seems that I have either a couple more weeks before I’ll have to learn how to write at home or find a new safe haven for creative thought.

Three Strikes

July has been a really bad reading month for me. I’ve picked up three books with intentions of finishing them promptly and ended up putting all three down. It has been a little disheartening to say the least.

The only one of the three that I feel deserves mention would be Then we Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. It’s laugh-out-loud funny in spots, but for me there was no gravity to hold the loosely strung together events called the plot with any cohesion.

Not to make a division among readers, but any who read casually and want something fun and funny; this book would get a high recommendation. I personally needed a more present central element to give things a feeling of unity. This was by no means a bad book, it’s just not for me.

As my everyday reading pile crapped out three straight turds, I’ve retreated deep into familiar and comfortable territory. I’m half way through Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol. Needless to say, I’m enjoying myself. If things go well and these two are finished shortly I may indulge in a third bit of comfort fiction with Hero of our Time by Mikhail Lermontov.

Anyone else have any reading duds lately?

Reading more than one book at a time

I am a one-track-mind person. I can multitask, but given the option I’d rather dedicate myself wholly to one project and then move on upon completion. The same is true for my reading habits. I know of people that can juggle three, four, or more books at a time; still keep things straight and enjoy doing so.

I don’t think I’m capable of this feat. If I start to lose interest in one book and pick up another chances are slim to none that I’m gonna go back and finish the one that is now officially boring in my mind.

Perhaps if it was four books in four different genres I could manage to keep things straight, but even then if one of them was really good I think I’d stay with it until it was over; thereby possibly not doing justice to the other three.

So, all of you multi-book-reading-at-one-time types: how do you do it? Are there benefits that I’m missing out on? Do you feel you finish all started novels in a timely fashion? Is it worth the effort?

Jellyfish, Books, Saltwater, and Complete Relaxation.

I can’t read on the beach. In fact I’m not sure how anyone can. It’s not the kids (there were few and well behaved), or the heat (I am from Atlanta so Gulf Shores humidity isn’t intimidating) or even the constant drone of the ocean (I’ll get to that drone in a moment.)

The beach may be the most surreal place on Earth. Everything you look at is amazingly beautiful from the sand, to the water to the skyline and yet it is all a bit cloying. So much so that we have to mute all we see with sunglasses least we go blind.

The water is lethal made up of ridiculous salinity, algae, and nigh invisible jellyfish that sting like fire ants, but none of that keeps people out of the water. The sand is too hot to walk on and the sand crabs are too territorial to risk with out sandals but still adults compete in sand castle contest as if they were five year olds and the five year olds bury each other up to their necks in what used to be the crabs home.

It would seem that the beach is the perfect place to read a book as the temperate water and inviting white sand only hold appeal for a little while and after time send everyone running for the relative safety of higher ground and an umbrella. Yet I just couldn’t read. Feeling as out of place as I did, and in such a foreign environment, I felt being there was more than enough to make me happy and a greater escape than any fiction I could have brought along.

That said I did discover the purpose for buying books in ‘terrible’ condition off ebay. Take them to the beach. If all you pay is ten cents and shipping who cares how much sand, salt, and water get into it?

The drone of the ocean is near deafening. I don’t know how people say they can tune it out. There are few comparable omnipresent sounds I can think of. It is most commonly described as ‘hypnotic’ and I think that is a good descriptor. As such, I couldn’t focus on much else let alone take part in a novel.

I had noticed myself falling into a pattern these past few days: when the jellyfish finally defeated me and the sand had burnt the previous day’s blisters I retired to my chair and umbrella with the intentions of reading. I read the first three pages of the same book four days in a row but never got any further.

Since I wasn’t able to read on the beach I was forced to take in the environmental oddities that some people call everyday life with out a book to distract me; made to consume fruity flavored rum drinks and nap in the shade.

Pity me...It was terrible.

Terrible.

Mistborn. The Well of Ascension.

I’ve been finished with this book for a few days now, but summoning the energy to revisit it, even if it only is in the way of written commentary, has proven difficult. For me there was an overwhelming amount of drudgery in this novel. It didn’t go anywhere. It moved forward with the haste of US forces trying to get out of Iraq. Generally speaking in most all narrative fiction there is a central conflict that is built upon for the better part of 80 percent of the book. When that moment arrives it is a big deal to the reader and the resolution has a profound effect. Usually this central conflict is hinted at and indeed built upon in many subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways. This concept holds true for Well of Ascension but the lethargic pace and somewhat dead setting (for Sanderson this is somewhat of a compliment that I’ll explain later) combined to help me read the book with nothing short of complete and total apathy.

The majority of the book is very interesting, well written and woefully unimportant to the events that comprise this trilogy. I can say this without even having read the third book yet. There is not a lot of material to work with here. The essential dull cast from the first book are back again doing exciting things that manifest themselves as mundane only because the bulk of the events going on lack a tie in to a central theme or relate to the novel’s pivotal climactic moments.

To say this book felt like a place holder would be a stretch but I am left wondering if I left this book out and skipped to the third would I still be rewarded with comprehension? Perhaps even greater enjoyment?

I had started reading Robert Jordan’s famed Wheel of Time series years ago. I stopped around the sixth or seventh entry because I felt nothing happened in an entire 700 plus page book. In the penultimate book that I read, I still distinctly remember placing a post-it note inside the front cover should I ever want to consult the book again. I wrote on that note the only two events that I felt were important to the entire story. Upon reading the next entry and experiencing the same feelings I promptly started reading other things. Upon finishing Well of Ascension I felt I could place another post-it note on the inside of this book as well.

Reading a series with all the books in hand as opposed to waiting for each entry's publication is a bit different than the norm. My single biggest contention was the constant recapping the book provides of the events from the previous entry… the entry I had just read. This redundancy only added to Sanderson’s still persistent form of repetition. Perhaps other readers will be able to empathize when Adrian Tchaikovsky’s trilogy comes out next year; each book will be released in successive months.

Feruchemy takes Allomancy’s place in terms of reader education and general ‘bogging down of events.’ And now characters are associated with the same cliched word each appearance they make to help hammer home the repetition: Vin, mist; Breeze, wine; Dockson, ledger; OerSeur, contract. And my final point of the written repetition: I pray that the third book makes no mention of Inquisitors with metal spikes through their eyes. (Who could possibly forget an attribute as distinct as that!?)

Forgive me. I don’t use exclamation marks causally. When they happen they take even me off guard.

There were a few awkward moments where the speaker attributive contained an adverb. Something I always thought was a, “no, no.” Not only is it insulting to reader intelligence but it is a cover for weak writing; and Sanderson is not a weak writer. A couple of previously taciturn characters are now chatter boxes only to be called out by other characters as, “quiet” within a few pages. Oh yeah, and a dog constantly shrugs his shoulders.

I’ve been a dog owner and I’m pretty sure the action is physically impossible.

Despite my ranting all is not doom and gloom. My compliments to Sanderson remain the same as my first comments on The Final Empire. He can craft tension and drama as well as anyone but getting there can be a chore and it’s only worth the experience if you actually care about the people involved, and these characters are a bit stiff.

His world-building is nothing short of phenomenal which was also my primary praise of Elantris, his first novel. Considering the book takes places in or around only one location is a further testament to his ability.

I think it’s easy for me to be hard on Sanderson because I am predisposed to liking him. If you enjoyed the first book then you should pick up the second. I, however, am going to take a break before exploring the series end in The Hero of Ages. Amidst all the excitement action and intrigue their is a great, dull presence that I shall call ‘mist.’ At the moment, I need to clear the air, take a break, and read something else.