Forest Mage

I first met Robin Hobb at the Tacoma's Writer's Convention in 2004. She sat at our table, and I was a total dolt. I hadn't read her yet, so was a bit tongue tied. I asked her about breaking into writing, and she suggested getting a few short stories published before trying to sell a novel. Good advice, taken badly:

"I don't like short stories." I told her. "I don't read them, I don't want to read them, I wish they would just go away. My ideas can't fit into a short story."

I am such an idiot. And now, when I'm not writing short stories, I'm often reading Robin Hobb.

Forest Mage by Robin Hobb

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This sequel to Shaman's Crossing was a bit of a let down. I don't mind when a book takes its own good time, but this was glacial.

Many authors will use narrative time to skip ahead, but Robin Hobb teased the reader with lines like "It was twenty days before..." and you think you are about to skip twenty days. But no. "On the first day..." "The second day..." and so on.

If you use Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey model, this book, and the first, find the protagonist stuck in the Refusal of the Call for two, thick, slow, books.

On the other hand, the details were great, the characters felt real, and the magic was new, different, and magical. And the book is about something. The tension between nature and civilization. Between two conflicting rules of conduct. Yes, even good and evil, and the big grey/green area in between.

If you have time, and you enjoyed the first book, I'd say keep going. If you want to see her at her best, try the Tawny Man trilogy, starting with Fool's Errand.

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Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was a great read.

In an alt-Alexandria (Egypt, not Virginia, and part of an Ottoman empire that lasts past the present day and into the near future), a minor Seattle criminal finds himself treated as royalty and gets implicated in murder. He has very little idea of who he is supposed to be, and there is dangerous conspiracies on all sides.

Much of the book is told in flashback, where we learn of his past in Seattle. I found these tedious at first. He seemed more three dimensional in the book's present of El Iskandryria than the spaced out small time crook in Seattle. As the book goes on, you get a better sense of him in both places, and the flashbacks stopped annoying me, and I became engaged in both threads.

The setting contained a nice mix of historic plus modern Muslim with a cyberpunky youth culture and high tech surveillance. The protagonist is the classic outsider, but with the twist of everyone thinks he's a high powered insider.

The plot is very noir detective, and the characters end up very memorable and over the top.

I will definitely read Jon Courtenay Grimwood again.


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Kennedy at the Podium

Watching Senator Ted Kennedy speak at the Democratic convention last night flipped all my emotional buttons. I was sad, moved, happy, and enraged.

There was a man with terminal brain cancer whose doctor told him not to go to Denver, whose wife asked him not to go, who checked himself out of the hospital and took the stage and gave a great speech. While he did praise Obama as a commander in chief who would never commit our servicemen and women to a mistake, "but always to a mission worthy of their bravery," his main focus was on health care.

Which is what really made me mad. Listen to each of his lines, delivered with force, he did not say what was on my mind.

What was taking America so long? Why had he spent his life pushing the rock of universal health care uphill? What is wrong with us? Health care is a basic human right. This should have been done long before Kennedy grew old...

Persepolis

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I read this after listening to Marjane Satrapi speak in Portland: http://johnwsmarvin.blogspot.c...

This is one powerful story. Marjane is a very intelligent person and a great storyteller who lived through the Iranian revolution and watched it turn against her and her family. When war with Iraq breaks out her parents send her to she study abroad in Austria where she becomes unhinged, lost in a culture she can't relate to. Back in Iran the war grinds to a halt, as she becomes a mature woman.

The stark black and white comics look fits her story. She must cover herself in black to go out on the streets. The simplicity of pen and ink draws you into the facial expressions and the eyes that take all this history in.

Some events that Americans are very familiar with are new again when told from her Iranian perspective. When Kuwait is invaded by Iraq the Iranian mood was one of relief that they were out of the war. She is propositioned by a Kuwaiti "refugee" in a big car who assumes she must be a prostitute even though she wears the veil because she is alone and drinking a coke.

She has boyfriends, sex, and a husband. Eventually she leaves for France, where she take up art studies and produces this book.


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Children of Chaos

Children of Chaos by Dave Duncan

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was a fun and fast read, but ultimately lightweight. It's the first part of a two part story, and it never really engaged me.

The setting is a twelve sided world. At the start of the book, a group of children are taken from one of the pentagonal faces to another, as war hostages. The siblings are split up, and the book takes place years later, after they have all grown up among their people's occupiers.

Each chapter uses one of the children as its point of view character. The plot is fairly simple, which can be fine, but so are the characters. One of the characters, the sculptor, is so unconcerned about his own life that it was very hard for me to care about him either.

The sister is the most interesting character, as she pursues forbidden magic in order to survive in a nest of vipers.

There are some nice twists, but ultimately I found the book overly simple. As far as I could tell, it wasn't about anything.

On the up side, it moves fast and is written in a clear and direct style. This is my first Dave Duncan, I enjoyed it, and will try him again.


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People of the Book

People of the Book: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
What an amazing read. Geraldine Brooks stunned me.

I love historical fiction that teaches me about history inside of a great story, but this book exceeds expectations all around.

The book is about a five hundred year old book, and the history of the people whose lives intersected with the book. The present day protagonist is Hanna, an Australian rare book expert sent to Sarajevo to work on Sarajevo Haggadah which was saved from Serbian shelling by a Muslim librarian.

As Hanna investigates the book, the story jumps further and further into the past, where we see the book menaced in other times and places. Sarajevo in World War II, Vienna in the time of the Empire, Venice in the waning years of the inquisition, Spain during the expulsion of the Jews, and finally in Muslim Spain.

Hanna has her own journey, which is often painful. Her story has the most complete arc. The historical episodes have well drawn characters, but they come and go. Hanna's discoveries about the book lead into each of these vignettes. Since we are going backwards in time, we get background information about people and events that we've already read about. And Hanna's story is told chronologically, so we have two time streams, going in opposite directions.




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Game Book Reivew: Purge the Unlcean

Purge the Unclean: Dark Heresy adventure anthology by Black Industies

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is more than three well written and connected adventures for Dark Heresy. It is also a template for how to write your own Dark Heresy adventures, with tips on Action, Horror, and Investigation adventures.

The adventures are for acolytes new in their careers, and can be played after the example adventure in the core Dark Heresy rule book.

T. S. Luikhart is a fine game designer, and these are fun adventures that will have your players hopping.

The three adventures showcase Investigation, Action, and Horror. I would quibble that the Horror adventure doesn't get truly horrific until the end, but it goes all out once it gets there. The action adventure is my favorite, and I like the design hints for doing your own action adventures.


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Edit 8/21/09: Now that I've GM'd them all, I'd like to say the third adventure, Baron Hopes, required a lot of modification: http://johnwsmarvin.blogspot.com/2009/08/rpg-scenario-modding-on-baron-hopes-for.html