Remember the 5,000 pages of flashbacks in ,i>Wizard and Glass? After the publication of The Waste Lands, which ends with an agonizing cliffhanger, reaRemember the 5,000 pages of flashbacks in ,i>Wizard and Glass? After the publication of The Waste Lands, which ends with an agonizing cliffhanger, readers of the Dark Tower saga had to wait for years to read another volume, and they did receive a big, fat book - but one which barely advanced the story in any meaningful way. 3/4 was a story told by young Roland about his youth; while it was definitely not a bad story in itself, it felt like a cheap cop out written by an author who had no idea as how to advance the story he was writing, so he came up with a completely separate storyline instead in order to gain some time.
So what do we get in The Wind Through the Keyhole, a book which received a lot of hype? Well, it's basically Roland and the gang from Wizard and Glass (this novel is supposed to take place before Wolves of the Calla, serving as a transition piece) hiding up in some shack because a severe storm is raging, and Roland telling one more story of his youth about him and his buddy hunting a werewolf, and then - wait for it, this is good - inside the story he's telling he tells another story he read as a young child! So, imagine reading this entry in the series in its chronological place. You just suffered through 500000000 pages of completely unnecessary flashback, and then gratefully start reading the next volume, where you encounter not one flashback, but two, not advancing the important storylines an inch! You just crosed a bridge and found yourself on another bridge, though thankfully this one is mercifully short.
The publication of this novel reminded me of all these novels written in the realms of popular science fiction series, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. There are thousands of hundreds of them and most don't really reach that wide of an audience simply because most of them are not really that good. Nevertheless, authors keep churning out origin stories one after another, hoping to squeeze just one more drop of honey out of this whole enterprise. And this is how the whole keyhole business looks to me, too. I can see a volume of Dark Tower related tales being released one day, but i'm not looking forward to it. For better or worse, the saga has been finished in 2004. It's time to let it rest....more
This is a delightful little story, for children and adults alike. A scarecrow is struck by lightning, and comes to life; he recruits a young lad namedThis is a delightful little story, for children and adults alike. A scarecrow is struck by lightning, and comes to life; he recruits a young lad named Jack as his personal servant, and having nothing better to do the two embark on a grand adventure, complete with an army episode, entrangement on a solitary isle, and even a love affair. All complete with fun illustrations, bringing the story to life and pointing out its dramatic and hilarious moments just on time. Obviously inspired by Cervantes, this short tale should satisfy people of all ages, regardless if they've just learned to read, or have been reading all their lives. Please do yourself a favor, sit in your favorite chair, take a cup of tea with you and enjoy this little gem....more
This is a classic book for boys. Who didn't want to run away and have wild adventures? It doesn't matter if you wanted to be a cowboy or a dangerous mThis is a classic book for boys. Who didn't want to run away and have wild adventures? It doesn't matter if you wanted to be a cowboy or a dangerous mercenary or a space traveler. Going away from home on your own, getting into adventures, forming friendships and making enemies, and most importantly - getting the girl.
This is pretty much what happens in All The Pretty Horses. Except it doesn't. The book starts bleakly - with the funeral of the main character's grandfather. John Grady Cole - who will be the protagonist - learns that his father's ranch is to be sold, as after years of separation his parents are finally divorcing and his mother is determined to sell his father's property. John will have nothing of this, and together with his good friend Rawlins he sets off to Mexico, where they hope to find work. On the road they met Blevins, another kid, who choses to tag along with them.
Even though there is plenty of humor in this coming of age story, the overall volume remains pretty bleak. The boys travel across the country and get into all sorts of trouble, most of which ivolves a whole lot of violence. It is never boring, as there is constantly something happening which moves the story along on the waves of Cormac's run on sentences without any commas but with a whole lot of ands. This is in essence a road trip, a wild ride that is sometimes bloody but not without fun and humor of the teenagers who undertook it.
Then there is the romance section. This is, unfortunately, the schmaltziest part of the whole novel (well, rivaled maybe by the sometimes overwrought parts about the souls of horses and such, but this is a western so...). The eternal love at first contact leads to sex and promises for lifelong devotion - while at the same time omitting the bones of any relationship, meaning the actual relationship. It's not that it's unbelieveable - but it is completely undeveloped. Still, forbidden love is always a good topic for fiction, even if it smells of Hollywood-like cheese.
On the whole, there is a whole lot to enjoy in All The Pretty Horses. It's a compelling novel, and I'd even name it as a classic page-turner. The fact that it's sometimes overwrought on the similarities of horses and men, and the unfortunate simplicity of the love affair doesn't stop it from being entertaining and even unique as I don't know any other contemporary coming-of-age westerns. John Grady is an endearing character - the classic young man on a quest, rightful and devoted to his friends - and this is only the first volume of a trilogy, and it made me want to read the rest to follow his adventures. Cormac did his best, but even with all the crimes against punctuation he could not entirely destroy this moving tale....more
Now this was a big monster of a book. Swan Song is huge, huge like the Xbox. My copy spans 850 pages and is hard to carry around because of its size -Now this was a big monster of a book. Swan Song is huge, huge like the Xbox. My copy spans 850 pages and is hard to carry around because of its size - it'll never fit into a pocket and will take significan space when deposited in a bag (why it was released by a publishing house named "Pocket Books" then?). It's about the end of the world. Written in the 80's, when words like Cold War were used often, it's no wonder that in the novel the relationship between Soviet and American governments has deterioriated. Soviet and American submarines play cat and mouse, India and Pakistand destroy each other with nuclear weapons, and when reports of more and more Soviet submarines reach the Americans every base swtiches to DEFCON 1, and then everything goes to hell.
And I mean literally. Swan Song opens with wild, vivid descriptions of the end of the world. And the world ends with a BANG. Everything explodes, buses with charried bodies fly through the air, DJs at radio stations scream into their mics as cities become obliterated. Borders disappear, and the whole of America (because that's where our story is set) becomes one big wasteland.
Obviously, there are survivors. The picture looks grim, but cockroaches aren't going to rule because few of our kind are still walking. The characters that we met seem to be tad a little too banal and stereotyped, but the adventure, the adventure they set on is grand. Similarly to The Stand, a group of people needs to contact another group of people, while trying to stay alive and not fall prey to scavengers and the lone Dark Figure, which seems to relish in destruction that just took place. McCammon is a terrific writer and the pace he sets up is an achievement in itself, as there's no stale moment in the first section. His imagination is broad, and he shares it with us generously. His prose is unpretentious and delivers exactly what it promises - a gorgeous painting of a postapocalyptic America, and the people and creatures that inhabit it. The story just mounts an mounts and mounts, and although there are cliches and a few schmaltzy moments McCammon pulls no punches and there are shocks that put a succesful shadow on any eye-rolling moment. HOWEVER, in approximately half of the text, the novel takes an unexpected jump of seven years to the future. And it never really regains the thrills and sheer imaginative achievement of the first part, though it keeps a steady level of suspense. But the outcome becomes more and more predictable, and the suspense slowly starts fizzling and gradually disappears completely. The ending reaches just a bit too far into feel-good territory for me, and was a culmination of all those moments of schmaltz which I disliked.
If I were 13 and haven't read The Stand - which has to be named here, and I'd say why in a moment - I would have loved this book. Loved it! But now aspects of it irritate me, especially considering the writer's talent and skill at constructing and pacing his tale. As for The Stand, aside from the basic premise - survivors of a nuclear holocaust try to live in the charred world, and there's a Big Evil Guy to stop them - the similarities are largely superficial, and save for a few scenes Swan Song is a much different work. Much more...optimistic, much simpler in characterization. It's not bad, it just didn't meet my expectations, as I've read that it's a favorite among the author's fans. McCammon is a terrific writer, and both Boy's Life and Gone South are gorgeous efforts. Blue World is a great collection of short tales with one sublime novella. Swan Song was his breakthrough novel from the horror genre, and it is an impressive achievement when you consider the theme and the size, but in the end it went out with a whimper, not a bang, and I don't think a re-read is in order....more
Blood Meridian is a novel that deromanticizes the West and strips off its John Wayne antics - here there's absolutely no place for the moral and the gBlood Meridian is a novel that deromanticizes the West and strips off its John Wayne antics - here there's absolutely no place for the moral and the good, where murder is a fact of life comitted without a blink and discarded from thought later. The desert rewards the worst scoundrels and spits on the bodies of the innocent and old who are unable to defend themselves.
The novel begins with an introduction of a young teenager who's simply named "The Kid", though in fact there's no universal protagonist, and there are no heroes. All of the characters are villains. The group of scalpers comprised of The Kid, a man named Galton, an expriest called Tobin and another man called Toadine, an idiot and the persona that calls itself The Judge, to whom I will return later. The merry brigade perpetrates violence agains everybody that can be scalped, and we're not talking about some stylish violence, toned down and set for cinema. The violence in Blood Meridian is visceral and nightmarish, and everything is recounted in bloody detail. The acts of perpetration are dark and soulless and The Kid spits a lot.
Blood Meridian sports some great imagery, like this: They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and- leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing.
However, a great deal of it is lost in the tedium of run-on sentences which form paragraphs that sometimes take up almost the whole page. They rode through regions of particolored stone upthrust in ragged kerfs and shelves of traprock reared in faults and antilines curved back upon themselves and broken off like stumps of great stone treeboles and stones the lightning had clove open, seeps exploding in steam in some old storm.
On the day following they crossed the malpais afoot, leading the horses upon a lakebed of lava all cracked and reddish black like a pan of dried blood, threading those badlands of dark amber glass like the remnants of some dim legion scrabbling up out of a land accursed, shouldering the little cart over the rifts and ledges, the idiot clinging to the bars and calling hoarsely after the sun like some queer unruly god abducted from a race of degenerates.
Unfortunately the description of mundane activities like desert crossing embroidered in masculine imagery (badlands of dark amber! Damn!) diminishes the beauty of some sections, and even boils down the violence to the simple act of recounting throats cut and arms torn. The kind of thesaurized desperation is evident in sentences like they had been burned unredeemed in the a green and stinking bonfire so that nothing remained of the poblanos save this charred coagulate of their preterite lives. Every page, every paragraph strives for such intensity of description that ultimately the desscription overcomes what it describes, and the prose attracts attention to itself rather than to the content of the novel. The imagination of the author is overwhelming, but his strive for perfect execution ultimately gets out of hand and produces sentences like There is hardly in the world a waste so barren but some creature will not cry out at night, yet here one was and they listened to their breathing in the dark and the cold and they listened to the systole of the rubymeated hearts that hung within them. - it reminds us much of the excesively, flowery style of victorian novels, and fail to produce shock, contempt, digust or even make the reader stop and contemplate the scene he has just read. Instead, he contemplates the prose. But it's the wild West, and heartbeat is not masculine enough, so you have to stick with systole. Hey, you did it without quotation marks, so it's not that bad. At least there are pauses between words.
Not a single character is developed and not much of a plot line exist, 'cept for crossing the desert, killing, crossing the desert and killing and crossing and killing again. The violence is excessive, but the extensive historical research comitted by the author tells us that it was like that in the time period he chose to set his novel in, so the reader is not complaining. But who would want to read endless descriptions of deserts and murders that become tedious, even if the style they are told is grand? The style is of course subjective, but it doesn't make the story. So let us return to The Judge. The Judge is the most interesting character in the novel and he comes to save the day when the desert heat becomes unbearable. He's the antidote to McCarthy's long, snakelike sentences which are joined by the word "and" (that must be this Biblical cadence which the blurb raves about). The Judge is the biggest accomplishment of the novel,he is thrilling, and he reads like another man wrote his sections. He is beyong pure savagery of the rest of the characters; he is bigger, stronger, and his skin is pale and he has not a single hair on his body. He is a man of many talents, who speaks in many tongues and posesses the strenght that's almost superhuman. The Judge is a humorous character who speaks in charades; he is a man who is perverse, cold and murderous. He encompasses the entire space between animal bestiality and the high culture of humankind. With The Judge McCarthy is not striving to express his meaning; the language is calm, concise and clear, he knows what he wants to say, and how he wants to say it and lets the meaning be revealed though the Judge's language and actions. As things fall apart, the last 50 or so pages of Blood Meridian regain coherence and the novel reaches a great climax, which almost redeems the novel. Almost. The preceeding 280 or so pages are unfortunately largely and meandering mess, comprised of killings and desolate landscapes in all flavors of the thesaurus. So I guess it's up to the reader if he wants to read this or not. Me? I wish the man who wrote The Judge has written the whole book. ...more
This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. -T.S. Eliot
Warning: Contains spoilers.
The Amber Spyglass is the final volume in His Dark MThis is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. -T.S. Eliot
Warning: Contains spoilers.
The Amber Spyglass is the final volume in His Dark Materials trilogy.
I really enjoyed Northern Lights (or The Golden Compass as it is titled in the US), the first volume of the trilogy. Pullman introducted us to a fantastic world of great scope. It was suspenseful, the presented world was enchanting, and Northern Lights was pregnant with interesting ideas and concepts - that's why I chose to read all three.
The next one, The Subtle Knife was laborious indeed. Most of what made Northern Lights wonderful was dropped - there was no world building in this volume, the characters seemed stalled and the book was a chore. It was a transitional piece so some of these things might be excused, and I approached the final installment expecting a grand payoff.
The Amber Spyglass is no Return of The King. It's the ugly baby that came out of Pullman's imagination and his hatred of religion. The novels is such a tremendous let-down that it's hard to decide where to start a list of its failings.
Lyra, the cocky and bratty protagonist of Northern Lights disappears almost entirely. Lyra from The Amber Spyglass is almost fullly submissive to Will. Oh Will! What shall we do? Will! Oh Will! Where is the girl who rescued children and planned it all on her own? Here Lyra doesn't seem to be able to do anything without depending on Will.
The "redemption" of Mrs. Coulter is totally unconvincing. The Grand Evil Lady (who was so great in Northern Lights!) suddenly out of the blue starts loving Lyra. This is just so ridiculously uncharacteristic and unbelieveable. The great villain is reduced to a mere puppet in Pullman's hands, who seems to have forgotten how to hold the strings.
Not that other characters are handled expertly. Aside from Lyra who was reduced to a dependand sissy and Will, the grand young adult fiction boy-on-a-quest stereotype Pullman introduces more and more characters like the new race of Mulefa, the bug-like creatures. He then goes on a tangent describing their culture, which while interesting doesn't add much to the plot.
The figure of Father Gomez, who is sent by the Church to kill Lyra is just a cheap way of maintaing tension. He never faces his victim and dies from the hand of a character we believed to be dead several hundred pages previously. His sections are nothing but filler.
The theological questions are never developed. Pullman literally stated in the previous volume that "every Church is evil", without showing why. He didn't show how Chuch uses religion to manipulate the consciences of people - we are treated only to Pullman's version of the Church, which is evil because the author told us it's evil. Everyone associated with Church is EVIL at a cartoonish level. Mother Theresa has evaporated from Pullman's cosmos, and took all the good priests along with her.
There's no conflict inside the Magisterium - no good voices are drowned by the bad ones - because everyone is bad. All of these evils are dressed in the not-at-all veiled robes of Christianity, especially the Catholic Church. These evils are never really shown, we're just told they are evil. Oddly, there are no evil Muslim priest or bomb-throwing Buddhist monks. In Pullman's world there is only one religion, and it is THE BAD ONE. As one of the characters says: "The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all." Doesn't sound very convincing.
Curiously, the church seems to have little impact on Lyra's world. Though Pullman wants to lay all of the evil of mankind on Christian religion and God he doesn't bother with providing plenty of evidence. The Church does evil things, but it doesn't get into the way of the Armored Polar Bears who live a godless existence, or the clans of Witches who are into paganism. Neither the Polar Bears nor the Witches seem to be particularly bothered by the Evil church - The Witches seem to love their country, and don't seem to be forced or isolated by the church. They seem to love the north pole where they live.
Now, in a world dominated by an incredibly powerful religious organization which corrupts everything, one would expect that everyone would be forced to follow the enforced religion and actively participate in its rituals - masses, etc. Religion would be a part of the daily life, as vital as a breath when you practice it, and as deadly as lack of it when your faith is not strong. In Lyra's world, NO ONE prays or goes to any sort of religious service. In a world where religious domination is SAID TO BE thriving, I'd expect it to be obvious. If religion is the source of all the evil in the world I expected it to be omnipresent. But it isn't. Except Pullman said so. So we have to believe him, eh?
Pullman goes on a specific tangent to discuss the very issue of God. God is said not to be the original creator, but the first of the angels to appear. He portras him as some sort of terrorist, who lied about his origins and holds the reins of Heaven in his strong hands. However, it is all told to us; we never see it played out. When God makes an appearance, he is shown to be a demented, old angel which vanishes almost immediately. We are never shown the man behind the curtain, the malevolent presence who is the source of all trouble. We are supposed to accept, that no matter what THIS is TRUE and REAL. Is "God" a sadist? We may never known, we can only accept what Pullman tells us, because he showes his truth down our throats. The angels are shown as extremely ineffectual. They can't really hurt anything, which makes us think again: How exactly did "God", who is just the first angel, become so powerful? There are many more questions about the angels (how did Baruch and Metatron became angels from men, but no one else did?) but Pullman never bothers with them.
Then there is the separate tangent of dr Mary Mallone, a former nun who rejected the Church and all faith entirely because she ate some marzipan and kissed an Italian. Whoa! Maybe if she ate an Italian and kissed the marzipan I could understand the Church denouncing her (the convent would grow slimmer and slimmer) but it doesn't make much sense. In fact this is some of the poorest reasoning I've read in a while. Can't you believe in God, practive your faith and enjoy the world at the same time? Millions of people do, but Pullman apparently think you can't. I could understand Mary quitting being a nun, even quitting organized religion because of the "imposed" restraints, but stopping believing in God because of marzipan? This is not a strawman argument, it's a marzipanman argument, and unfortunately it ain't sweet.
Mary's story stirs some tension in Will and Lyra, who suddenly realize that they're meant for each other (at age of 12 eternal love is serious business, mind you) and the story morphs into a contrived retelling of The Fall of Man, though I don't understand why Lyra is said to be the next Eve. Of course she finds love (with almost no build up), she gives it up for the sake of the worlds (hers and Will's). I think she resists the temptation to continue their relationship to help everyone build the new Eden, or the Republic of Heaven, but it's a tenuous connection at best. Not to mention that twelve year old children suddenly start talking like certain older men. Blah.
This is getting long, so I'll wrap it up in Pullman fashion. An angel shows up, answers all of the questions and the children return to their separate worlds, promising that they will never forget each other and visit the same place in their worlds to remains as close as possible. In Lyra's world generous foster parents magically turn up, and she sets up to build a godless existence where people could enjoy themselves as if anything was stopping them before. DOH!
I think that these books had great potential. They could show children the dangers of corrupt individuals who use religion to influence and control people. Unfortunately, Pullman took it all away with his absolute lack of polemic and blatant one-sideness and all we got were some puppets running around and spewing his personal sentiments in this incredibly boring and contrived slog. The guy's obviously an imaginative author, but his bigotry got the better of him here and I can only wish that Norhtern Lights was a standalone.
The Subtle Knife which is the second volume in His Dark Materials trilogy fails to live up to the first installment.
In Nothern Lights (or The Golden CThe Subtle Knife which is the second volume in His Dark Materials trilogy fails to live up to the first installment.
In Nothern Lights (or The Golden Compass, as it was titled in the US) readers were treated to a rich alternative universe. It was clear that the Philip Pullman had an active imagination and was good at constructing his worlds just as any good fantasy author.
That's one of the reasons why I didn't enjoy this volume as much as the first one. As it was stated that the books will take place in several universes, I hoped that each of them will be as richly drawn as the first one. It wasn't. Most of the elements that made Northern Lights so enjoyable (the Gyptians, the panserbjörne - the armored polar bears, how can something be more awesome?) are all dropped and nothing equally interesting is introduced in their place. The world-building comes to a halt, and it doesn't help the series.
Lyra Belacqua, the brave and cocky protagonist all but disappears and takes a supporting role to Will Parry, a 12 year old boy who takes the lead. Thanks to a happy coincidence their worlds meet, and the two form a team. Lyra (who was so proud and morally independent in the first installment) becomes subservient almost immediately after their meeting, because she learns through her Alethiometer that the boy is a murderer. Oddly, this makes Lyra feel safe - why she doesn't suspect that the boy might hurt her is never entirely clear. Gone is too the intimate connection between Lyra and her Daemon, which allowed us to see her own inner doubts and disagreements. Pantalaimon plays a minor role in this installment, and all he has to say are a few lines of unrevealing dialogue which adds absolutely nothing to the plot and the characters. The Alethiometer, which helped Lyra achieve her goals in the first volume, now almost seems to set them. It's eerily reminiscent of a certain notebook from another well known franchise.
You must excuse this rather poor pun, but the novel is far from subtle. All of the moral complexity and religious questioning from Northern Lights is dropped, and there's no longer any doubt about what Dust might be, or what are Lord Arsiel's and Mrs. Coulter's intentions. It seems as if Pullman came up with well-crafed fantasy in the first volume and then decided to toss in some anti-religous content just for the pure sake of doing so. He doesn't bring up any sort of polemic or interesting, challenging questions which would make reader think about what he has to say. It's not intelectually stimulating in any way, especially considering that the series is aimed at younger readers - his absolute lack of subtlety and metaphor doesn't allow for any doubt about his belief. You can't ask a child "what do you think is the author's stance on the Authority, the Magisterium? Do you think he's right? Do you think he's wrong?" because of the obviousness of the answer. Look at this:
"I know whom we must fight. It is the Magisterium, the Church. For all its history– and that's not long by our lives, but it's many, many of theirs–it's tried to suppress and control every natural impulse."
"That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling. So if a war comes, and the Church is on one side of it, we must be on the other, no matter what strange allies we find ourselves bound to."
""Oh, there is more suffering to come. We have a thousand years of experience in this Church of ours. We can draw out your suffering endlessly."
That's pretty much a good summary of how the book tackles the issues. One would expect somewhat more subtlety, grace and thought would be put into questioning them, being as big as they are. Unfortunately that's not the case here.
Lyra and Will's adventures are rather dull and boring, and the characters seem to be unchanged by the experience. The whole thing feels cold and calculated, as if the author changed his mind about letting children discuss and discover the benefits and danger of religion on their own. Instead, he chose to throw in his real-life opinions at them with the arfullness of throwing a brick into someone's face. The whole thing feels cold and calculated, and never recaptures the feel of the first installment. I will still read the final volume, so maybe my opinion about the series will change, because it has significantly dropped....more
Northern Lights (or The Golden Compass which is the name with which it was published in the US) is the grand opening to Philip Pullman's His Dark MateNorthern Lights (or The Golden Compass which is the name with which it was published in the US) is the grand opening to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
Northern Light is certainly an adventure, which opens in Oxford (though this particular Oxford is set in an alternate universe, which is "like ours, but different in many ways."). The reader is immediately introduced to a young girl named Lyra, whose life is just about to undergo a radical change. Lyra lives at Oxford with the scholars who have raised her; she's an orphan. She has just entered a forbidden retiring room where she hid and saw the master of the college put poison into vine intended for Lyra's uncle, Lord Arsiel who's visiting the college and is expected to join the scholars in a discussion. Lyra manages to warn Lord Arsiel, and instead of punishing her for snooping and being where she wasn't allowed to be he orders her to hide in the wardrobe and witness the upcoming meeting. He orders her to spy on the upcoming attendees. That's when Lyra learns about the titular Northern Lights, and the mysterious particles called "Dust". Shortly after her best friend is kidnapped, and Lyra sets out to rescue him.
The world that Pullman created for Northern Lights is wondeful, and one cannot help but admire the sheer scope of it, and the imagination one must posess to create such vivid and compelling locales. There's quite a bit of travelling going on, and the reader is just behind Lyra in being enamoured with everything she sees. And as she is on a quest to rescue her friend, she suddenly realises that she has been drawn into something much bigger, something she doesn't yet understand and something that makes her fear the adventure that she's going to experience. Why are the children disappearing? Who is the mysterious Mrs. Coulter? What is Dust? The travels of Lyra is the essence of fantasy literature, and the joy that comes with immersing yourself within the world the author has created. While completely foreign, the world developed by Pullman is analoguous enough for a young reader to not cause any distraction or confusion.
However, the real joy in the story comes with the author's invention of a Daemon. A Daemon is an animalistic expression of a character's soul - the loyal friend and companion that never leaves one's side. A Daemon is usually the opposite of the person's gender - men have female Daemons, while women have male. People cannot be separated from their Daemons - when Lyra and Pantalaimon (that's the name of her Daemon) try to put some distance between themselves, their yearning for each other becomes unbearable and both quickly return to each other in a touching scene. Children's Daemons are as inconsitent as their characters, and constantly change shapes - from a cat to a bird, and from a bird to a dolphin. Pantalaimon changes into a moth or a rat when he wants to hide, and can take forms of a lion when she confronts someone. The idea is truly great, and it touches one of the basic human needs - the need of being with each other. Daemons are not toys or a pet animals - they have their own opinions, their own moods which not always match those of the people their with, but the relationship between a human and a Daemon is perfect and platonic, consisting of the purest love, devotion and loyalty.
Early in the story, Lyra receives an Alethiometer - a device resmebling a navigational compass. Through a series of needles, the Alethiometer points to the objects symbolising answers to Lyra's questions. No one seems to know how the Alethiometer works, and only Lyra is able to read it.
The quest to discover the nature of Dust is a great one, and the narrative is brisk and captivating. As this is the opening of a series, the ending is not conclusive; the book doesn't stand on its own, but depends on the subsequent volumes. However, the world presented by Pullman is wondrous, the ideas captivating, and the whole thing is an enjoyable and entertaining opening to a series I look forward to discovering. Plus it has armored polar bears....more
To tell the truth, I didn't believe it was possible. My copy of "Stardust" promises so much just by images on the cover - and the volume is so slim, bTo tell the truth, I didn't believe it was possible. My copy of "Stardust" promises so much just by images on the cover - and the volume is so slim, barely reaching 200 pages. How will all these events and characters fit in such slim space? - I asked myself, and started reading on the evening of October, 2nd. By 4AM, October 3rd, I learned that not only it is possible, but also that Neil Gaiman is a talented, gifted writer with gorgeous imagination and invaluable, rare talent for recreating the noblest thing: magic.
I think that the tale is really worth discovering for yourself, so I'll refrain from discussing the plot. Let me just say that few fantasy stories are as charming as "Stardust", which is a haunting journey from the border of the human reality into the magical land of Faerie. Gaiman mixes humor with seriousness, realism with fantasy, displaying skill rarely encountered that deserves to be admired and, quite simply, envied. His prose is simple and easily accessible, but in no way generic or cheap. The author's voice is never intrusive, and the tale moves at a surprisingly fast pace, switching effortlessly between several narratives which all are captivating and important - not a single moment is redundant. The descriptions are delicate and ethereal, and scenes are written in vivid detail - the tension at times is almost palpable.
"Stardust" is a sublime, intriguing and simply beautiful fairy tale, full of compelling characters that the reader is sure to find himself caring strongly for, taking a journey most unique and exciting. Take it with them by reading this wonderful, memorable book destined to become a classic. Neil Gaiman is a marvelous storyteller who knows all his spells - prepare to be enchanted. ...more
I honestly wasn't impressed with The Road. Like it's title, it seemed to drag and drag.
I dislike McCarthy's writing style. I've read onlSome spoilers.
I honestly wasn't impressed with The Road. Like it's title, it seemed to drag and drag.
I dislike McCarthy's writing style. I've read only one of his books before (Child of God, 1974). I wasn't impressed with that one, but I decided to give The Road a try, since it was written more than three decades later, won a Pulitzer, was made into a movie etc. Boy, was I wrong. It reads just like Child of God. I don't know why the guy receives so much praise for writing if all he does is ignore punctuation, quotation marks, splices together two words into one and such. His dialogues are also dull - either there's a lot of sadism ( he/she said) or he just mixes his speakers who talk one after another and make the reader unable to decide who's who. Apparently recognized and acclaimed authors can do this and the public will think that it's okay while it's not okay okay ? okay.
I couldn't help but wonder about the cheesy sentimentality of it. I enjoy stories about fathers and their sons who struggle against the cruel world, but it's difficult to read page after page about a man who pushes a shopping cart full of stuff while his son constantly tells him how's scared he is and how good that his papa is with him. The struggle is difficult, but not too much; there is apparently a fallout shelter full of food hidden just for our heroes to find. The papa tells the son constantly how they're the good guys and how they're carrying the fire. Didn't he notice that everything around him is burned to ash ? Lol. All this is sparkled with sentences like "The snow fell nor did it cease to fall." What ? Oh, and at the end the heroes reach the south, and (surprisingly) there's nothing there. The Father dies, But no worry, a man has been shadowing them and he takes the boy with him. If you're making a postapocalyptic work a Hollywood ending is not exactly good - and that's why it has been made into a movie. It's basically an award bait, emphasizing the strenghth of the human spirit, the importance of ecology etc. Wonder why the boy doesn't wear a "I SHALL PREVAIL!" T-Shirt.
I know that the cold, detached prose was meant to reflect the state of humanity, the postapocalyptic grayness and other mystycism that's in the novel. But McCarthy just fails at it. All he has to offer is a bunch of banal, uninteresting sentences, tedious murmuring between father and son and a whole lot of weeping and shallow sentimentality. The print is large, the paragraphs are scattered making this seem more a novella than a novel.
You can safely skip The Road - it won't give you anything that you don't know already. Rather poorly written - the constant abuse of grammar rules is not cool, it's just poor. A post-apocalyptic rehash of better stories, such as Mad Max or I Am Legend. Two stars only because I'm a sucker for dystopian fiction....more