Category: Fiction Friday

I’m amazed at how much reading I’ve done this summer. In addition to books I’ve already mentioned here, I’ve also read quite a few others, more than I’ve read in a long time. Enough in fact, that I can do a weekly Fiction Friday post for a month, at least, if I can just keep up with blogging.

The last book I read before heading off to Chicago was Gojiro by Mark Jacobson. I will say up front this was both one of the strangest and one of the best reads I’ve had in a while. The story is told from the point of view of the radio-active behemoth himself, only instead of unintelligible roars, this Gojiro is a hip-talking, Jack Kerouac-like philosophizer addicted to fine grades of plutonium. His companion is Komodo, the Coma Boy, a young man who’s life was obliterated by the Heater, that nuclear weapon of Armageddon that ripped Gojiro from his natural place in the universe and transformed the Monitor Lizard into the King of Monsters.

The plot circles around Gojiro’s attempts at suicide and Komodo’s desire to save his one true friend. The two victims of nuclear disaster live together on Radioactive Island, along with the Atoms, children malformed and mutated by radioactive energy. Gojiro is tired of his life as a freak, and can’t abide the suffering that abounds in his quad-cameral brain. Somehow, he’s hooked into the universe, receiving messages and please for help from fans around the world, and he has no idea how to answer them. He’s also tired of being ripped from his position in the natural order of things. He was never meant to be a monster, let alone King of Monsters, and now, bereft of the comfort of his species, it takes everything he has just to hold it together.

Only he’s not holding it together. If not for a sacred promise he made to Komodo and his pesky invulnerability, the big green ‘zard would snuff himself in an instant. Komodo knows this, and is doing everything he can to keep his friend going. They strike upon a deal – in a year’s time, if they haven’t found a way to relieve Gojiro’s depression and pain, the great lizard will be allowed to kill himself, and Komodo will help ease his way.

That’s when the note shows up, a letter from the mysterious Sheila Brooks, daughter of Joseph Prometheus Brooks, the scientist who invented the Heater. A critically acclaimed film maker and all around nut-case, Ms. Brooks desperately needs Gojiro’s help. She wants to make a movie, entitled “Gojiro Vs. Joseph Prometheus Brooks in the Valley of Decision,” and suddenly Gojiro finds he must once and for all confront the man responsible for his tortured existence.

It’s a long strange acid trip of a book, and the first few chapters may seem rather slow until you get into the rhythm of the language. Gojiro has a slang all his own, and it takes a while to decipher what he means. On top of that, there’s a great deal of philosophy in the book on the nature of species and their interconnectedness and the place of the individual within the whole.

I bought this book waaaaaaaay back in the 1990s, probably 1993, when I was still in grad school. I’ve had it on my shelf ever since then, just gathering dust. I finally reached a point this summer where I determined that I either needed to read the book or get rid of it. I made a deal with myself to read the first two chapters, and then decide. Fortunately, the I found it slow at the start, I was hooked enough to keep going and eventually I reached a point where I couldn’t put the book down. In fact, on more than one night, I stayed up waaaaaaaaaaay to late because I just didn’t want to stop reading.

So Gojiro has earned a permanent spot on my shelf, I’m happy to say. I’ll get rid of some other namby pamby book if I need to clear things out. This one’s got too much style, too much plot, too much mind-boggling entertainment for me to give up.

This post may be a bit disjointed. I’ve got four screaming little girls running amok in my house while I’m trying to write this. I’d wait for a more peaceful moment to write, but I’ve missed the last two weeks (or was it three) and I need to get this out.

So, last time I posted a Fiction Friday, I was reading Philip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife…

Sorry, I just had to sort out a fight between two of the girls. Pixie just spent 10 minutes in a corner shrieking because she can’t play nice and prefers to hit instead. Joy. Anyway, she’s taken care of and back to playing. Now where was I? Ah, Philip Pullman’s The Subt–

What the hell was that noise? Did you just hear a loud bang coming from upstairs? No? Okay, I’m going to ignore it. This time. Anyway, The Subtle Knife. I really enjoyed this one, much like I enjoyed The Golden Compass. Again, Pullman doesn’t condescend to his audience but shows the realities of what childhood, and the beginnings of adolescence, is like. The kids in this book are just as vicious as the adults; they only lack the subtlety that comes with age…

I’m sorry. Just had a lengthy discussion with the girls about what we had available to drink in the house, and the fact that NOBODY is going upstairs with a drink, especially if it’s blueberry juice because I am not cleaning up those stains. And now the girls have discovered a whistle and a harmonic. Lovely. But to continue. The children in Subtle Knife are as vicious as the adults. The only thing that separates them is what drives them. While the main characters, Will and Lyra, are driven by the need to protect those they love, other children in the book are driven more by greed, revenge, hunger, and other basic needs. In that way I think they’re more honest than the adults, who are driven by the need for power and whose goals are mandated by the sadistic rules and superstitions of the Authority, the religious entity that dominates the world Lyra comes from…

Do you know how many toys in this house make noise? Too many. And they’re all going in the trash on Monday. ALL of them. And if certain little girls don’t stop pushing and shoving and refusing to share, there’s going to be a massacre in my living room very shortly. I’m just saying.

To continue, beyond the violence and savagery of the children and adults, there’s also a great deal of heroism. Lee Scoresby, the aeronaut from the great country of Texas is particularly moving. His quest to find aid for Lyra, a girl he loves as much as he would his own child, leads him to a perilous fate. Serafina Pekkala, the witch, is also on a quest to aid Lyra, and her fate becomes just as much in doubt in the course of event…

I swear to god, I wish I had never bought that damned harmonica. Nor the whistle that is currently being blasted in my ear. Somebody’s about to end up in the corner! And where is the heroic aeronaut to come take me away from all this? Huh?!

Whatever. Physics and religion are discussed side by side in The Subtle Knife. Many have accused Pullman of writing atheist propaganda. In truth, I don’t think the books are atheist, so much as a criticism of how institutions and individuals pervert religious ideas to gain powe–

And I’ve just confiscated my third toy of the afternoon. Okay, you know what, let’s get right down to brass tacks. Subtle Knife is a good book. I’m lucky to have read it. Quite frankly I’m lucky to have read anything. Do you know how hard it is for me to even get five minutes alone in the bathroom with a National Geographic? Do you?! And yet hear I am, surrounded by screaming little girls, trying to put together an intelligent review of a book I think people would actually enjoy, sans screaming little girls of course. The Subtle Knife. Do you know what I’d do if I had a Subtle Knife right now? There wouldn’t be quite so many screaming little girls running around, I’ll tell you that.

I’m done. I had also wanted to talk about The Daring Book For Girls, by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz, but I can’t think straight enough to do that right now. I swear, it’s no wonder people drug their children with TV! It’s the only way to get any peace and quiet around here! My kids are going to grow up to be illiterate savages because their mother couldn’t handle the stress and the noise and she drugged them with crappy TV! That’s what’s going to happen to this family!

Great, now all the kids are screaming. I have to go. Next week I’ll discuss The Daring Book For Girls… assuming any girls in this house survive that long.

After my disappointment with Butlerian Jihad, I decided I really had to go with a sure thing this week. So I picked up Philip Pullman’s “The Subtle Knife,” and I have not been disappointed at all. I love reading books with depth and layers. I love complicated yet realistic characters, and Pullman’s characters definitely fit the bill. When I read “The Golden Compass,” I was startled by how well Pullman managed to capture the true nature of childhood. Kids are not simple, happy creatures, but vicious and cunning little savages. Really! Pullman talked about how the children of Oxford college would form tribes and go to war with each other. This is something I recall doing as a child, and it’s both delightful and frightening to see that particular aspect of my young life captured on the page.

The Subtle Knife keeps up in the same vein, following the adventures of Lyra Silvertongue and a new friend, Will. While the entire “His Dark Materials” series is billed as children’s books, I have to wonder what age ranged the publisher (Yearling) is thinking of. The main characters are children, but the contents of the book are far from childish. The first three chapters include a boy taking care of his schizophrenic mother, a violent death, a torture scene, and a nightmare about a decapitated head. Not suitable fare for my six-year old, I think. She’d probably have nightmares. In fact, it’s all scary enough to keep me on the edge of my seat, but I love it and I’ll be happy to hand over my copies to Princess when she reaches ten and see how she enjoys them. At six though, she’s still a little too young.

If you haven’t read The Golden Compass yet, or any of the other books in the series, I should mention that the books are set in an alternate Earth, mainly in England and parts of northern Europe. In this alternate world, airships are the main form of mass transportation, and the lights are anabaric, not electric (though apparently that’s the same thing). It’s a sort of steam punk world ruled by the Church, a frighteningly totalitarian institution bent on discovering the nature of the human soul and controlling the exercise of free will. This is an exageration of the churches in our real world (though Pullman doesn’t have to exagerate much, in my opinion) and the things those churches have done in the name of God. There’s a great deal of theology packed into this adventure story, which is probably why I’m enjoying it so much. As a Buddhist, I look at Catholic and Christian churches from an outsider’s point of view, and I have no problems dissecting these institutions to see what they’ve done right and what they’ve done wrong. I am normally inclined to question what people do in the name of God, and I’m happy to read a book that does the same thing.

Many people have criticized Pullman’s books as being anti-Christian. I would say the books are more anti-Church. Again, it’s that look at what people do in the name of God, not was God is doing, that’s the focus of the story. People may claim they act in God’s name, but I think they often do what they want and just use God as an excuse. Many of the characters in Pullman’s book are motivated by nefarious goals and quite frequently justify what they do by saying their actions are in compliance with God’s will. These people make for some very intense and chilling villains.

Aside from the theology, there’s quite a bit of adventure and fantasy to enjoy. There are witches and talking polar bears, and of course the daemons, which are the embodiment of people’s souls in Lyra’s world. The plot has plenty of twists and turns, the dialogue is believable, and the world building is excellent. I’m about a quarter of the way through the book at this point, and as much as I’m enjoying it, I’ll probably have it finished by the end of next week. I’ll give a final report then. For right now, I’m giving the book two thumbs up!

After the unexpected surprise of enjoying the teen fluff romance of Twilight, I decided to dive into some serious science fiction just to prove to myself that I had not gone completely soft in the head. I hit Fictionwise.com and picked up a copy of Dune: Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. I love the Dune series, both the original books and the first trilogy of prequels written by Herbert and Anderson. Given that the events in Butlerian Jihad happen over 1000 years before the original Dune, I really expected something exciting in terms of getting into the back story of the Bene Gesserit, the Mentats, and the whole history of the House Atreides/House Harkonnen feud. Really, this sort of stuff is right up my alley.

At least it should have been up my alley. I cannot tell you how disappointed I’ve been with this book. The story is set during the age when Thinking Machines rule most of the galaxy. The Thinking Machines want to wipe out the remaining free human planets, but a sort of stalemate has been going on thanks to the development of planetary defensive shields, called Holtzman Shields, that fry the computerized brains of any machine that dares to breach it. However, not all the Thinking Machines are powered by computers. A select group, called the Cymeks, are actually human brains encased in machine bodies, and the Thinking Machines figure out they can drop those human brained Cymeks through a Holtzman Shield to lead an attack.

The Cymek led attack on a human free world is the plot for the first chapter of Butlerian Jihad, and it irritated the crud out of me to have to slog through this. The miltary strategy was so simplistic it was ridiculous. To make things worse, the hero of the story (who just happens to be a Harkonnen, a member of the house that will eventually evolve into some of the vilest villains of all sci-fi) can’t figure out what the goal is of the Cymek lead element when they land on the planet.

Now let’s think about this carefully. Your planet is defended by a shield that keeps out all computer-run ships and assault equipment, yet a vast armada of computer-run ships is sitting in orbit overhead. These computers drop a small group of giant mechs controlled by human brains onto the planet. The human brain-controlled mechs proceed to attack while the computer-run armada waits overhead. What do you think is the goal of this lead attacking element? Do you think maybe, just maybe, they might want to shut down the shields that are the only thing keeping out the armada overhead? The armada that’s just sitting there with enough firepower to wipe out the entire planet if only they could get through that stupid planetary shield?

I hate stupid main characters, and I’m afraid Dune: Butlerian Jihad presented me with a doozy of one. Xavier Harkonnen is about as thick as they come, a promising but love-sick military officer who obviously can’t grasp the most basic concepts of military strategy. Not only is he slow to figure out what the initial attack on his planet is about, but he makes further dumb mistakes later on, mistakes anyone who’s studied even a little bit of military history could figure out (I was a transporter in the Army Reserves — a transporter, not an infantry man, mind you — and I could see what the Thinking Machines were going to do next before the machines themselves even made the decisions in the book!). What’s worse, Xavier Harkonnen is in love with the fair but boring Serena Butler. Serena wants to do good in the universe and save lives, and she’ll willingly puts herself into danger to do so. Just as with the military tactics of the thinking machines, I could see what Serena was going to do long before she even did it.

It does not help that all the characters come across as cardboard cutouts, the dialogue is horribly stilted, and most of the book is just one massive info dump of back story. There’s a basic rule in writing that goes “Show, don’t tell.” Having your characters actually act out the plot rather than spoon feeding it to your readers via info dump solves so many of the problems that Butlerian Jihad suffers from. But somehow, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson forgot this rule when they wrote this book. I can’t understand it. They did a good job with their previous Dune books, bringing to life the histories of so many characters who played essential roles in the original series. I made it through seven, maybe eight chapters of this one before I gave up reading any further.

Not knowing what to read next after such a disappointment, I simply decided not to read anything at all. I had picked up a few art books back in February and I thought I’d amuse myself by looking at the pictures inside. One book was Frida Kahlo: Beneath The Mirror by Gerry Souter. I found this book in the bargains section at my local Barnes & Noble. The paintings in it are so beautiful. Since I had never read about Kahlo before, I decided to skim through the first chapter to see if I could get a summary of her life. Wouldn’t you guess, I ended up reading the whole book in just a few days? What the Dune book lacked in terms of exciting plot and fascinating characters, Frida Kahlo more than made up for. I don’t think I could have imagined a more bizarre life for an artist. Souter did an excellent job of presenting the basic facts in a clear, easy style, without leaching Kahlo’s life of all interest. My only complaint about the book is that Souter frequently discusses particular pictures that Kahlo painted at various points in her life, but the paintings don’t appear on the same page or the next page so you can look at them while you read what he says about them. In fact, the paintings are scattered through the book in no logical matter. Souter talks about a painting Kahlo did early on in her career right after she marries her husband, but the image doesn’t show up until the very last chapter, sandwiched between the pages of her funeral. Early on in the book, there were a few instances where Souter listed what page the painting was on when he described it, but that quickly stopped after the first two chapters. Another note, at one point in the book, there is a huge, blatant printing error where a paragraph cuts off in the middle and there is an inch or so of blank space, and then the paragraph starts again and the writing contiues on. I think it’s for these reasons that the book ended up in the bargain section as opposed to the art section of the store.

In any event, Dune: Butlerian Jihad turned out to be a big FAIL in my book, while Frida Kahlo: Beneath The Mirror was an unexpected win. I have no idea what I’ll read next. I’ll ponder that question this weekend and start a new book on Monday.

Twilight was one of those books I just had to read. You see, I’d already read so much about it, and what I’d read was divided into two camps. People either seemed to absolutely love the book beyond all reason, or they absolutely loathed it to the point of vomitting at the mere mention of the title. I had a hard time imaging a book that could invoke two such extreme reactions, but after reading a few reviews and synopes of the book, I had a feeling I’d probably fall into the loathe camp rather than the love camp. The whole thing sounded too much like a bad romance too me, and I’m not a romance reader by any stretch of the word, especially if the romance in question is bad.

So this sounded like the kind of book I normally wouldn’t have wasted my time and money on, but like I said, the reactions were so extreme, I just had to find out for myself what the book was really like. Sort of like a car accident, you know? You just have to see how bad it really is.

With all that in mind, I did want to give the book a fair shake. I wasn’t sure how easy that would be to do, given my personal biases against romance and the fact that I already knew the plot in advance (honestly, I think there was no way for me not to know what the plot was once the movie came out). Still, I promised myself I’d read at least three chapters before writing the book off as a waste of my time.

Imagine my surprise when I ripped through the book in just four days.

Well, not exactly four days. I started the book, got through the preface and the first two chapters and then I stalled for a couple of weeks. The opening was just so slow, and the main character, Bella, rather dull. It was only my decision to get through at least one more chapter (along with the recommendation of the ever-sensible Patty, one of the moms in the Screeching Harpies) that made me pick up the book again. My family and I were getting ready to visit my parents in Arkansas for a week, and I thought maybe I’d squeeze in that third chapter then. Somewhere during that first day of travel to distant, rural Mountain View, I got hooked. I stayed up late the first night to read “just one more chapter (or three)” and then spent the next two days with my nose buried in my netbook, devouring the rest of the story. It was definitely a romance, but not a bad one, and better than even most good romances I’ve had shoved into my hands.

The book isn’t perfect, of course. There’s an article on Salon that gives a very complete and accurate list of the flaws, and I agree with a lot of that list. Myself, I found the opening preface to be entirely pointless, and the book would have been better without it. Also, the first two chapters were pretty slow. I understand the need to set the scene and introduce the characters, but this seemed tto happen at a glacial pace. The story starts out with the main character, Bella Swan, moving to Forks, Washington, to stay with her father. Once she gets there, a lot of mundane events unfold around her – she goes to school, meets the other kids, runs into Edward Cullen, who eventually becomes the love interest in the story. She complains a lot about how much she hates being in Forks.

And that’s about it.

Have you seen the movie Coraline yet? It’s a similar set up. Coraline moves to a creepy house in a rainy area (either in Washington or Oregon, I think), and she complains about how she doesn’t want to be there. But the very first thing Coraline does when she arrives in her own personal hell is to go exploring. She makes a dowsing rod and looks for an abandoned well. She explores the house and finds a tiny locked door, which she eventually goes through to find a magical world on the other side. Coraline goes in pursuit of the adventure, the adventure doesn’t come creeping to her.

But that’s not what happens in Twilight. Bella is very passive. She doesn’t explore her surroundings, and she certainly doesn’t go looking for adventure. She just plods through her day to day routine, and that’s boring. It isn’t until things start happening to her that the book gets interesting. In fact, I’d say about 98% of the book deals with what happens to Bella, rather than with what she does herself. Bella is constantly reacting to the events around her, never really taking action herself to make anything happen in the book. She’s in love with the mysterious Edward Cullen, but never dares approach him. Instead, he initiates all the contact, and sets the course for the relationship (which may be why so many of the negative reviews I read called Edward overbearing and domineering). Bella does get into into trouble a lot, but not because she goes out looking for it. She is, in Edward’s words, a trouble magnet, someone simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Getting out of said trouble always involves someone else, i.e. Edward, showing up in time to rescue her. In fact, it isn’t until the final chapters of the book that Bella takes any initiative to act on her own. I wish I could have seen a lot more of that sort of thing scattered throughout the book. When Bella took action at the end, I felt more of a sense of danger and excitement that the rest of the story lacked.

None of this is to say that Bella is completely useless as a main character; she’s got plenty of wit, plus a snarky sense of humor that I found enjoyable. I even found her extreme clumsiness, which is practically pounded home with a hammer throughout the book, to be entertaining. But the real interest in the story is Edward Cullen. Is he a vampire or isn’t he? (Actually, that question got answered so early on in the book, and in such a clumsy fashion, that I was left very disappointed.) And why is he alternately hateful and then friendly to Bella? Edward’s got some serious problems to deal with, including his love for Bella warring with his instinct to sink his teeth into her and bleed her dry. This is where the romance comes from, and this was what had me intrigued. Not because I had any doubts that Edward would give in and turn Bella into a midnight snack (that would have been fun to see, but this is romance, which I’ve been told requires a happy ending). But there was something about the dialogue, the descriptions of Edward, his interaction with Bella… It was fun to watch Edward fall in love (Bella was hopelessly in love from the get go, so her point of view on things wasn’t so exciting).

Of course, Edward is flawless, and it’s oh-so-easy to understand why Bella falls in love with him. He’s perfectly handsome, perfectly smart, perfectly strong and fast, and perfectly tortured. Meyers manages to hit all the right notes when writing Edward, making me want to see more of him. But she also left me asking the same question that Bella asks throughout the book – why the heck is he interested in her?

I can’t answer that last question. Like I say, Bella initiates almost no action, is in constant need of saving, and is in no way outstanding physically or otherwise. But perhaps the more important question is will I pick up the next book in the series? After all, the point of a series is to keep people reading and get them to buy more books. At this point, I’m willing to say yes. I’ve bought the second book from Fictionwise. Now to see if I tear through that as quickly as I did the first. There is the promise of a werewolf in the next book, after all, and I can always hope that Bella gets a little more interesting. If not, I might just keep reading to see what happens with Edward.

After all, I could fall in love with him just as easily as Bella has. But hopefully I’m a little more interesting that she is.