Eating Muffins

Posted by Sari

Patrick Rothfuss: Name of the Wind, Wise Man's Fear

When I was younger I used to love big fantasy series. Thousands and thousands of pages of adventures and worldbuilding. There was no bad there. LotR was and is the defining novel of my life, and after that I read everything I got hold of from Donaldson, Modesitt and Eddings to to Feist, Tad Williams and Hobb.

Then I sort of went off the format. I tried some really awful ones, like Brooks and Jordan, and some really well recieved ones, like Martin and Erikson, but nothing really took. Name of the Wind had been waiting on the shelves for a year or two, and I don't suppose I would have gotten around to reading it without Tähtifantasia Award. It was a 2011 nominee and as a member of the shadow-panel of the award at Finncon, I was forced to tackle the daunting tome.

And I was pleasantly surprised. Name of the Wind, and especially the sequel, Wise Man's Fear have their share of problems but for a first time in years, I really got into the groove, and ended up ordering part two when I was only half way through part one. Kingkiller Chronicles is the story of Kvothe, whom we meet at the beginning as a humble innkeeper Kote, telling his life story to a travelling chronicler. Though Kvothe is still young, he is already a legend, who – according to the blurb on the back – has stolen princesses back from the sleeping borrow kings, burned down the town of Trebon, spent the night with Felurian and left with his sanity and life intact, has been expelled from the university at a younger age than most people are allowed in, tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during the day, talked with Gods, loved women and written songs that make the minstrels weep. Busy life, one might say.

A hypercompetent protagonists growing up and having adventures is the meat and potatoes of fat fantasy. Nothing new, exciting or different here. The hook is that Rothfuss does what he does very, very well. His worldbuilding is interesting, he unravels his plot little by little, thus making the reader wanting more, and there are a lot of hints (and hopefully also red herrings) to keep the reader engaged. As far as the protagonist goes (as my favourite character in all fiction is that king and emperor of hypercompetents, Crawford of Lymond) I have no problem with Kvothe being good at everyting at the age fo seventeen. Besides, there are ecxellent character details, like the way Kvothe handles money (he is always short of it and thus much of his life revolves around getting some), or the way it is apparent that teenagers, even hypercompetent ones, are morons at times.

But as I said there are problems. Traditional fantasy like this is supposed to run for hundreds and hundreds of pages, but the level of detail here is daunting. Kvothe's first year at the magical university takes about three hundred pages, and Wise Man's Fear has a hundred page training montage. I know this is all about the growth and education of the hero, but come on! In the novels there are episodes of Arsenal level boredom where nothing happens. Also, is there any reasonable way to bring the story to the end in the next volume without the whole feeling unbalanced? Two thousand pages on and our protagonist is still seventeen(ish) – depending how you count the time he spent in the fearie.

Kingkiller Chronicles are page-turners because you really, really want to know what happens next: who is Denna's mysterious patron? Who is Denna, for that matter? How does the moon figure into anything? Where did Kvothe pick up Bast? Who is this king he is supposed to kill? Or is he? And what is the real deal with the Chandrian? Lets hope it does not take Pat another four years to tell us.

Posted by Sari

Tässä olisi kevään ja kesän aikana luettujen kirjojen pino. Muutamasta niistä ja parista kuvasta puuttuvasta on mielipiteitä nakuteltukin, ensimmäinen niistä alla.

Mutta mistäpä sitä kirjoittamaan seuraavaksi? Olisiko kellään palavaa halua saada lukea äärimmäisen mielenkiintoisen näkemykseni jostain kuvan opuksesta? Itse ei nyt keksi mistä nappaisi kiinni.

Vaan itse asiaan, eli yhteen vuoden kotimaisista esikoisista:

Saara Henriksson: Moby Doll

Aina aika-ajoin tartun kokeilumielessä johonkin suomalaiseen romaaniin testatakseni josko nimenomainen kappale onnistuisi osoittamaan että ehkäpä sittenkin minä ja kotimainen kirjallisuus joskus kohtaisimme onnelisten tähtien alla. Usein käsiin päätyvät romaanit ovat tavalla tai toisella spekulatiivisia kun siihen suuntaan kirjallisuusmakuni gravitoituu. Niistä kirjoittaminen on usein hiukan hankalaa koska piirit ovat pienet, ja usein kirjoittaja on ainakin hyvänpäiväntuttu. Niin tälläkin kertraa, Saaraan olen törmännyt ja muutaman sanan aina vaihtanut erilaisissa hörhöjen kokoontumisajoissa. Eli caveat lector: tämän kirjoittaja tuntee a) kirjailijan ja b) syvää ennakkoluuloa suomalaista proosafiktiota kohtaan.

Moby Doll kertoo Jennystä, Jockesta ja valaasta. Jenny on lopputyötään ryhävalaan laulun ympärille ymppäävä sibeliusakatemialainen, Jocke puolestaan Jennyn ex, ympäristöministeriön valastyöryhmään puolivahingossa itsensä läntännyt virkamies Valas on kostaja. Kirja huipentuu Norjan pohjoisilla vesillä kun aalloilla keikkuvat valaanpyytialus, ympäristöradikaalit ja valastutkijat kohtaavat syvyyksistä nousevan ikivanhan valaan.

Moby Dollissa on paljon mistä pidin. Kieli kun kuvaavaa mutta konstailematonta, luonnon ja ihmisen välisen suhteen kuvaus mukavan monisyistä ja valastietous oli upotettu ihan onnistuneesti narratiiviin. (Viimeksimainittu tosin välillä ehkä hiukan liiankin sujuvasti – minusta olisi ollut kiinnostavaa kuinka kirjailija olisi onnistunut peilaamaan Moby Dickin tylysti kertomuksen katkaisevia valaanpyyntiluentoja omassa tekstissään). Hahmoista Jenny ja erityisesti Jocke jäivät hiukan kaukaisiksi, mutta sivuhahmot, erityisesti valastutkija/kalastaja pariskunta jonka kyydissä Jenny lähtee metsästämään valaanlaulua oli mainiosti hahmoteltu. Intertekstuaalisuuden tasoja olisin kaivannut ehkä vielä enemmän – olkoonkin että kirjan nimi ensimmäisellä tasolla viittaa vangittuun miekkavalaaseen eikä Melvilleen – mutta toisaalta en ole vielä tavannut kirjaa jossa olisi minusta liikaa viittaustasoja.

Lukijana minulla kuitenkin on ”henkilökohtainen onglema”, joka vaikeutti kovasti kirjasta nauttimista. Pitkään olen ollut sitä mieltä että tämä ongelma on nimenomaisesti suomalaisen kirjallisuuden vahva realismin perinne, savotta- ja korsurealismi kuten Leena Peltonen on oivasti tyylisuuntaa kutsunut. Asiaa pohdittuani olen tullut siihen tulokseen että kyseessä ei ole niinkään se etteikö suomalaisessa kirjallisuudessa olisi fantastisen perinnettä tai että realismin troopit olisivat minulle punainen vaate. Se mikä minut vieraannuttaa on lähes pakonomainen arjen tason korostaminen, ehkä erityisesti silloin kun teksti on tavalla tai toisella spekulatiivista. Niin tässäkin tapauksessa. Alun asuntojen, aamiaisten ja ratikkamatkojen kuvaukset olivat juuri sitä mitä minä en kirjaltani kaipaa. Vaikka romaani kasvoi upeasti loppua kohden ärsytti arjen trooppien käyttö alussa sen verran että ellen olisi luottanut kirjailijaan, olisi lukeminen saattanut tyssätä siihen.

Eli en minä vieläkään löytänyt sitä suomenkielellä kirjoitettua romaania joka todella kolahtaisi (lähimmäksi taitaa päästä Sinisalon Sankarit jossa on uskallettu leikkiä intertekstuaalisuudella ja joka on myös sukupolvestani johtuen sentimentaalinen lukukokemus). Mutta ei Moby Dolliin käytetty aika hukkaan mennyt; se avasi muutamiakin solmuja omissa ennakkoluuloissa ja loppupeleissä lukukokemus jäi ehdottomasti plussan puolelle.

Posted by Sari

J.G. Farrell: The Siege of Krishnapur

Farrell won the lost Booker last year with his novel The Troubles, making him a sort of a double winner. His first winner, The Siege of Krishnapur was also on the short-list of Best of Booker's, and though the award went to Salman Rushdie's masterful Midnight's Children, this novel would also have been a worthy winner. It is always wonderful and regrettably rare to find a book that really connects, and this truly was one of them.

Siege of Krishnapur is a novel about the Raj and the Indian rebellion of 1857. In the fictional town of Krishnapur the British elite hunkers down to a four month siege against the rebelling sepoys, and the novel is a depiction of their break-down, disillusionment and for many, death. It is insightful, witty, graphic, sad, grotesque and hilarious. It exposes the folly of victorian jingoism, but manages to do it so that reader retains her sympathy for the characters. It brings up a myriad of ideas and debates from evolution to colonialism, and is written so well, that most reviewers on the net have felt compelled to spice up their reviews with copious quotations. It is a bloody brilliant novel.

Sherwood Smith: Inda

Smith's Inda series is a first fat fantasy series I have finished in a long time. It is set in the same universe as her earlier novels, but much further back in the history. Inda is a second son of a noble with a future all set up according to the traditions of his people. His future wife has been fostered with him from childhood, and he is to be the caretaker of his father's castle and lands for his elder brother. Inda series begins as a school novel, transforms itself into a pirate adventure and again to a novel about political struggles and war when Inda is exiled and becomes a pirate while his friends and family continue to navigate the murky politics of their nation.

There is lots to like In Inda books, especially if you like your fantasy long and world-building detailed. Smith has been developing this world for a very long time and her familiarity with it makes the long and at times convoluted series worth while. We are not talking about Tolkien-level detail, but I found that the novels had a similar feel of background to them: the author does not need to infodump all she knows of the world into the narrative and that makes for a fuller reading experience.

The characters are sympathetic and their difficult relationships well realised. There are some interesting reflections on desire, beauty and gender roles, interesting magical system and some quite detailed action sequences. I do think, though, that stretching the story to four big volumes was unnecessary. This may be just because a) I really have been off fat fantasy for years and don't seem to be able to get into its groove and b) I really don't much care for pirates. Even so, a good series.

Molly Gloss: The Dazzle of Day

If you are not reading Jo Walton at Tor.com you should be. She writes interestingly and intelligently about books she is interested in, and luckily for me, her taste and mine coincide almost perfectly. Thus if she talks about a book I have not yet read, chaches are I try to get it. Which I did with The Dazzle of Day.

The Dazzle of Day is a story of generation starship Dusty Miller, filled with quakers on their way to a new world. Honestly. And it is an intriguing novel. There are multiple point of view characters, mainly from the same extended family, whose life and feelings Gloss depicts at the point of Miller's joyrney when they are breaking and approching slowly their destination.

Gloss writers quintessentially literary science fiction, the kind Margaret Attwood and Rachel Cusk propably would bend over backwards to call something else. This is a very low-tech science fiction novel. The science from solar sails to relativity is present, but it isin't what is important to the characters or to the novelist. Some of them have exciting jobs like mending the solar sails or exploring the new planet, some of them are farmers or maintenance workers. Some of them are active in the meetings where the future of the community is debated, some are not.

Actually, The Dazzle of the Day is a novel about every day life. We get a slice of the life of these characters, their relationships, lives hopes and loves. The fact that they work and live on a generation starship does not define their lives. They do every-day things and have every-day discussions, They go to toilet, have bad sex, work, sing, mourn and die. Even the hopes and fears generated by the approaching end of their journey and the complications rising from their new home planet being barely life-sustaining are handled in a very low-key manner.

We never even find out what happens to our main characters. The book begins with a chapter on earth and ends generations later on the new planet. In the middle we peak into a moment in these characters lives and are left without closure. This is space travel made ordinary, and that is way it was a book I appreciated but did not connect with. This foregrounding of the every day is a default mode of Finnish writing, and it is one I don't much care about. However, it is a mode very rarely succesfully used in SF, and so makes for an interesting reading experience.

Posted by jukkahoo

Elämme muutoksen aikoja. Hyllyt liikkuvat, niin myös niiden sisältö. Hyviin koteihin on tarjolla proosaa, lyriikkaa, muistelmia, pakinoita, kuvakirjoja, tietoa, taitoa ja Jyväskylän kaupungin historia osat I ja II. Ja genrehyllyjä ei vielä edes ole alettu katsella sillä silmällä…

Posted by Sari

David Leavitt: Indian Clerk

I don't know if it really is a recent phenomenon, but I have a sort of gut feeling literary historicals fictionalising the lives of real people might be in vogue. (Wolf Hall, Arthur and George, True Story of the Kelly Gang…) In these novels the authors seem to be adhering to historical facts as we know them, and imagining the interior lives of the subjects based on what sources and research there is. It is a strange balancing act for an author, and for a reader – especially one interested in the history behind the characters – it is a reading experience full of caveats.

Leavitt's Indian Clerk is firmly in this category. It tells the stories of a Cambridge mathematician G.H. Hardy and his colleague Srinivasa Ramanujan, the Indian clerk of the title. In early 1900s Ramanujan writes to Hardy from Madras telling he is very near of solving Riemann-hypothesis and when Hardy and his colleague Littlewood bring him to England, he becomes an instant sensation, ”a hindoo calculator”. Unfortunately, the devout Ramanujan is trapped in England by the First World War and his health deteriorates badly, partly because of misdiagnosis and the difficulties of maintaining a nourishing vegetarian diet in war-time England, and he dies shortly after returning to India.

Unlike many other american novelists Leavitt has an understanding of the meaning of class in British society and Indian clerk is both a sensitive and insightful portrait of Hardy, and an examination of class and race in early 20^th century Cambridge. Hardy and Ramanujan have very little in common beyond mathematics, and Hardy almost wholly fails to understand his colleague, even though he – both fictional and historical Hardy – describes meeting him as the one romantic incident in his life. That disconnect and – on the other hand – the connect the men share when talking about mathematics works well, espcially when viewed in contrast to the larger societal questions the novel examines. Leavitt isn't quite as succesful with the structure and plot of the novel which does leave a reader feeling little aimless.

Megan Whalen Turner: The Thief, Queen of Attolia, King of Attolia, Conspiracy of Kings

Turner's series of YA fantasy novels have for quite a while been among my favourites, the kind of books I reread every now and again as comfort fic because they feed my id. The Thief and Queen of Attolia were published some time a go, and in the past few years Turner has returned to her world with two new novels. The Thief turns on a narrative sleight of hands which is either clever or irritating depending on what sort of reader you are, and even stating this is a bit of a spoiler. Queen of Attolia is a very strange romance mixed with war maybe war mixed with strange romance, and King of Attolia a straight sequel to that. Conspiracy of Kings is a parallel novel to King of Attolia where another character from the Thief gets mixed up in a coup in a neighbouring kingdom.

Turner's fantasy world is refreshingly not a pseudomedieval one, but one riffing off from ancient Greece and its city states. The world is well-imagined, though I am not a great fan of the ”folk tales” she frequently inserts to her novels to created depth and further a point. The plots move nicely and there is plenty of conspiracies, war and action but also engaging characters and human relationships.

My absolute favourite, and the one I return to quite regularily, is King of Attolia because it utilizes one of my favourite tropes in all fiction: looking at familiar characters through the eyes of a new one. Here the Queen of Attolia and her newly crowned King are seen through the originally quite hostile eyes of a member of the Queens guard who slowly begins to understand his monarchs and their difficult relationship.