Review: Sabriel by Garth Nix

Sabriel by Garth Nix

Published: HarperCollins Australia, 1995

Series: Book 1 of the Old Kingdom

The Book:

“Sent to a boarding school in Ancelstierre as a young child, Sabriel has had little experience with the random power of Free Magic or the Dead who refuse to stay dead in the Old Kingdom. But during her final semester, her father, the Abhorsen, goes missing, and Sabriel knows she must enter the Old Kingdom to find him.

She soon finds companions in Mogget, a cat whose aloof manner barely conceals its malevolent spirit, and Touchstone, a young Charter Mage long imprisoned by magic, now free in body but still trapped by painful memories. As the three travel deep into the Old Kingdom, threats mount on all sides. And every step brings them closer to a battle that will pit them against the true forces of life and death--and bring Sabriel face-to-face with her own destiny.” ~WWEnd.com

I’ve never read anything by Garth Nix before, but this series comes highly recommended by some of my best friends.  Surprised that I hadn’t read it in high school, they marched me right to a bookshelf in Barnes & Noble and said, “Here, this is the book you’re buying today.” Thank you, friends, for encouraging me to fill this gap in my reading!

My Thoughts:

The world of Sabriel contains magical and technological lands that are separated by a long wall. The heroine, Sabriel, has spent most of her life in technological Ancelstierre, though she has remained close enough to the wall to be able to practice magic.  Her father practices his art-- making sure the dead remain dead-- in the Old Kingdom, but he has kept her mostly ignorant of her home realm.  Within the story, this is for her protection, but it also allows Sabriel to be a character through which the reader can learn about the magical kingdom.  I was impressed by the creativity of the uses of magic and the different magic systems, and the vividness of description that made the more action-heavy scenes easy to visualize.  I didn’t get an altogether clear sense of the framework underpinning the magic, but it seemed like something that might be explored more thoroughly in the later novels of the series.

I felt like the heart of the story involved Sabriel’s growing into her responsibilities, finding confidence in herself, and accepting the nature of death.  She seemed like an excellent young adult heroine, since I think her uncertainty and feelings of inadequacy would be particularly easy to identify with for people of that age.  In addition, her loyalty to her family and friends, her compassion, her practicality, her courage, and her capability to rise to the occasion make her a heroine that it is easy to admire.  Her companions, the talking cat Mogget and the dislocated Touchstone, also help her along the way.  I loved Mogget’s sarcastic personality, and was happy that Touchstone’s potential as a love interest did not overwhelm the story.   

Sabriel’s story here is very straightforward and complete in one novel-- she has to find and rescue her father, and find out what evil has managed to imprison him.  The story has a lot of forward momentum, initially because of a powerful dead creature, likely related to her father’s trouble, that is relentlessly pursuing her.  On top of this immediate danger, Sabriel is driven by the knowledge that the longer it takes her to find her father, the less likely it is that she will be able to save him. There’s a lot of action, danger, and excitement along the way, as Sabriel learns more about the state of the Old Kingdom and the evil that her father was trying to defeat.  Overall, it was a very fun, quickly-paced novel, and one that was difficult to put down.

My Rating: 4/5

Sabriel is an exciting young adult fantasy novel that I regret it has taken me twenty years to get around to reading. I enjoyed the creativity of the various kinds of Old Kingdom magic, though I hope the system is more thoroughly explained in the later novels of the series. I think the heroine Sabriel would be easily relatable for teen girls, and I appreciated that her strength and competence also made her a character that was easy to admire.  Sabriel’s quest to rescue her father was simple in structure, but there was plenty of action and excitement along the way. I enjoyed following Sabriel as she learned about the Old Kingdom and grew into her responsibilities as her father’s daughter.  I am looking forward to reading the sequels!

New Voices: Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed

Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed

Published : DAW Books, 2012

Awards Nominated : Nebula and Hugo awards

Awards Won : Locus Award for Best First Novel

Saladin Ahmed is a poet, as well as a writer of science fiction and fantasy, and he maintains a website.  While he has a quantity of public short fiction and poetry, Throne of the Crescent Moon is his first novel. Out of his short fiction, he was twice nominated for the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer for "Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela”, which was also nominated for a Nebula Award (and is available online).

Ahmed’s first novel, Throne of the Crescent Moon, is a sword and sorcery tale set in an Arabic world, featuring a power struggle around the aforementioned throne.  While magic is pretty common in the capital city of Dhamsawaat, the townsfolk are more concerned with the corrupt Khalif and rebellious Falcon Prince than any possible threat from ghuls or djenn.  As a result, professional ghul hunting has become a largely thankless task, though the elderly, messy, curmudgeonly hunter Adoulla Makhslood still risks life and limb to protect people from the occasional ghul.

Adoulla travels with his dervish companion, the young Raseed bas Raseed, who zealously adheres to a strict code of piety.  Chasing after a particularly dangerous set of ghuls leads them to take in a vengeance-obsessed young tribeswoman, Zamia, who can transform into a lion.  As ghul-hunt takes a more complicated turn, Adoulla and his friends must turn to allies old and new. They find themselves becoming entangled in multiple plots, mystical and political, as they uncover secrets that could have disastrous consequences for the entire world.

While Throne of the Crescent Moon has a fairly interesting Arabic setting, it feels like a conventional adventure story that could have come straight from an especially fun table-top role-playing game.  I think the novel might most be appreciated by fans of novels in the style of Weis & Hickman, provided that they are interested in adventures set in a very different campaign setting.  The character classes are different than the standard wizards, clerics and fighters, but they mostly serve the same purposes.  The action-focused combat scenes, as well as the descriptions of weapons and class abilities, also seemed particularly reminiscent of these kinds of games and novels.

The general structure of the story mostly followed these role-playing conventions as well, progressing from party formation and dynamics to the final boss fight, and it included many familiar narrative tricks along the way.  While there’s some attempt at a little bit of moral ambiguity (e.g. the Falcon Prince’s Robin Hood style morality), the main conflict is basically black-and-white/good-vs.-evil.  The novel also feels very self-contained, though it is planned as the first part of a trilogy.  I’m guessing the following novels will follow the main characters through more adventures and personal difficulties.

The characters were mostly likable, but were a little too flatly portrayed for my taste.  The dialogue and narrative often seemed awkwardly explicit, as if every person’s thoughts and feelings needed to be spelled out completely. This made many of the character’s personalities seem simplistic and exaggerated.  I think this was particularly grating on Raseed and Zamia, who caught a bad case of instant-love.  Their romance was clearly telegraphed in advance, and it never really seemed emotionally convincing to me.

Despite my several complaints, I did find the story entertaining.  I don’t think the story really broke much new ground, but it did do what it set out to do—tell a conventional fantasy adventure tale in an interesting, Arabic-influenced setting.  I think anyone looking for that kind of reading experience will likely not be disappointed.

Review: Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb

Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb

Published: Random House Publishing Group (1996)

Series: Book 1 of the Farseer Trilogy

Awards Nominated: British Fantasy Society Award

The Book:

“In a certain coastal kingdom, the nobility were named for the qualities their parents hoped they would possess. Prince Chivalry, heir to the throne, was the picture of propriety, respectful of others, and a skilled diplomat.  That all ended the day Chivalry’s illegitimate son was discovered.  Chivalry abdicated his position and left the court, leaving his bastard to be raised by the gruff, kind stableman, Burrich.

The nameless boy, commonly called “Fitz” or “the bastard”, lived in Buckkeep Castle, where few bothered to treat him with anything but contempt.  However, while he was growing from a small boy to a young man, he caught the king’s attention.  King Shrewd knew that a bastard could be either a dangerous threat or a loyal tool, and he was determined to make Fitz into the latter.

As the king’s man, Fitz is thrust into the world of court intrigue, while being secretly trained as the king’s new assassin.  In dangerous times, where vicious raiders employ dark magic against civilians, and the people are losing confidence in the monarchy, Fitz may be instrumental in safeguarding the future of his homeland.” ~Allie        

This is my second book for the Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge at WWEnd.  The challenge is to read 12 novels by 12 female authors in the year 2013.  To make things more interesting, they must also be authors that I have never read before.  I also selected this book as a result of Calico Reaction’s Ladie's First Dare, which gives a reading suggestion each month of a novel by a female author that Calico has read and enjoyed. 

Though I’ve often seen her name around bookstores, Assassin’s Apprentice is the first novel I’ve read by Robin Hobb. I have not been having the best luck with these kinds of traditional, high fantasy stories lately, so I was a little wary starting this one.  I’m glad I gave it a shot, because Assassin’s Apprentice is a very entertaining story, and it definitely makes me want to read the rest of the trilogy. 

My Thoughts:

Assassin’s Apprentice is in some ways a pretty standard fantasy story.  The world is a variation on a pseudo-medieval setting, there’s a fair amount of court politics, and the magic appears to be nothing new.  The two major forms of magic are the Skill, which is a power of the mind, and the Wit, which is the ability to mentally commune with animals.  The story is quite familiar as well—a boy from humble beginnings (an illegitimate birth) discovers his strengths and talents, and grows into a young man who may be able to change the course of his society.  The framing device consists of an elderly Fitz setting down the story of his early life.  Each chapter begins with texts of world information, and the story is told in first-person from Fitz’s viewpoint.  All of this is pretty traditional for the genre, but I think this novel is an example of why this sort of story might be so common. When it is done well, as in Assasssin’s Apprentice, it makes for a very engaging and enjoyable story.

In many ways, it was really the characters that made this story work for me.  They seemed very real to me, with their individual insecurities, needs, strengths, and weaknesses.  For instance, Chivalry’s wife Patience was unable to have children, and she struggles with defining what she and Fitz should be to each other.  As another example, Burrich struggles with a serious injury and a declining career after Chivalry’s abdication, and he still has to figure out how to raise a rather troubled child (Fitz).  Also, Prince Verity, the new king-in-waiting, is a highly competent and thoroughly decent man, but he has to cope with the fact that he can’t live up to Chivalry’s charisma and diplomatic skill.  Some of the characterization is a bit more tell than show, but their characterization also shone through in their actions.

In addition to the engaging cast, Fitz was an excellent protagonist.  While he has a nice handful of natural talents (such as the Wit), he has his fair share of weaknesses as well.  He struggles with his identity and role in the court, and with his need for acceptance and belonging.  Fitz is no stranger to mistakes, and it sometimes takes him a while to bounce back from the consequences of his failures.  I also appreciated the moral ambiguity of Fitz’s position.  His desire for acceptance, loyalty to his king, and sense of morality all come into conflict through his training and first missions as an assassin.  In comparison with Fitz and the other characters, the villains of the piece seem a little simple in their motivations. Their schemes were clever enough, though, that I was mostly just willing to enjoy having villains that are easy to despise.   

The story follows Fitz’s life, starting from early childhood, so the pace is somewhat slow and the story can sometimes seem to be meandering.  I was typically interested by the stories of Fitz’s daily life, but I felt like the story dragged a bit when he was very young.  At that age, he didn’t interact with very many people, and he had little understanding of the world around him.  As a result, the reader wasn’t given much information about anything happening in the world that didn’t directly involve Fitz.  His knowledge and experience increased as he grew up, and the story began to broaden, involving court intrigue, foreign threats, and more.  From the early scenes on, though, I appreciated how the foundations of connections between characters were established, and how important these relationships continued to be throughout the story.  Though much of the novel had a kind of “slice of life” feel, it eventually built up to an exciting finish.  Some questions were answered, but some major plotlines were left open for the rest of the trilogy to explore.

My Rating: 4/5

Assassin’s Apprentice is a familiar kind of story, following an unwanted, illegitimate boy as he grows up in a troubled court.  The setting is a fairly usual medieval-style kingdom, and the magic consists mainly of powers of the mind and telepathic communion with animals.  For me, the strength of the story was in the characters, which were fallible, mostly sympathetic, and very human. I enjoyed following Fitz’s life, watching his painful failures and hard-won successes. The story began slowly, with Fitz’s early childhood, but eventually built up to an exciting ending.  While I enjoyed this novel on its own, it is clearly the first third of a larger story, one that I am looking forward to reading!

Review: Eon by Alison Goodman

Eon by Alison Goodman

Published: Firebird Distributing, 2010

Series: Book 1 of the Empire of Celestial Dragons Duology

The Book:

“In the Empire of Celestial Dragons, the twelve Dragoneyes stand below only the Imperial Family in power and prestige.  A Dragoneyes sacrifices his own life energy, “Hua”, in a bond with one of the twelve energy dragons of the zodiac. In return, he gains great power to protect the realm, which is increased further in the year that his dragon is ascendant.  Currently, there are only eleven Dragoneyes, since the Dragon-Dragon (known as the Mirror Dragon) has been missing for hundreds of years.  This year, a fresh crop of potential apprentices will present themselves to the ascendant Rat Dragon.

Sixteen-year-old Eon is one of those candidates.  Eon’s master, a former Dragoneye, has gambled the last of his fortune to put forth Eon as a candidate.  If Eon is selected, it could return the former Dragoneye to a wealthy and powerful position. He hopes that Eon’s incredibly rare spirit sight might serve to attract the dragon.  However, Eon has two marks against her from the beginning—she has a crippled leg and she is truly a woman named Eona.  While the first condition is viewed disfavorably, the second is entirely unacceptable.  If anyone discovers Eon’s true gender, she knows she will probably be killed.” 

I read this novel for Calico Reaction’s Theme Park Reading Challenge.  Eon, which is written by Alison Goodman from Melbourne, Australia, was picked for the theme “Aussie YA”.  Eon is the first half of a duology, the second book of which is titled Eona. Eon, which ends on a cliffhanger, is clearly the first half of a larger story, but it also has its own arc that does come to a satisfactory close, in my opinion.  The first book has also been released as The Two Pearls of Wisdom, Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, and Eon: Rise of the Dragoneye, but I will refer to it simply as Eon throughout the review.

My Thoughts:

As far as plot goes, Eon is a pretty predictable YA fantasy.  It features a female main character who is forced to hide her gender in order to succeed. While there is almost no romance to speak of in this novel, the groundwork appears to be laid for love to blossom in the second.  The good guys are good, the bad guys are very bad, and there is very little in the way of moral ambiguity. In general, the plot points were pretty easy to see coming, and heavy foreshadowing gave away anything that was not immediately obvious. Just because there is nothing unexpected, though, doesn’t mean the story wasn’t entertaining.  I thought it was well-paced, with a good ratio of description and world-building to plot, and reading the novel was usually a pleasant part of my day.    

In addition to the predictable plot, the main character, Eon, came very close to being too clichéd for me to appreciate.  She has convenient amnesia concerning parts of her early life, and she is gifted with exceptional spirit sight, as well as several other things throughout the story. The predictability of the novel also had an unfortunate effect on the portrayal of Eon.  The solution to the central mystery is fairly clear to the reader from near the beginning, but it takes Eon much, much longer to figure it out.  Even considering that her ingrained prejudices may have clouded her thinking, this seemed to paint her as more than a little unintelligent.  Even though Eon grated on me sometimes, though, I still appreciated some things Goodman did with her character.

 One of the more interesting points of the novel was the way the characters were used to discuss gender identity.  The most notable in this regard were Eon and Lady Dela, both characters who presented a gender that did not match their biological sex.  Eon honestly believed that women were inferior to men, and so she desperately tried to suppress everything about herself that was feminine.  Even aside from the threat of execution, I think that Eon wanted to believe she had a ‘male’ spirit, so that she could be worth more in her own eyes.  Contrasted with this unhealthy attitude of gender was the transsexual Lady Dela, a force to be reckoned with in the imperial court.  She encountered many hardships by living as a woman, but she insisted that was the only way she could live and be true to herself. Through her acquaintance with Lady Dela and others, Eon is forced to engage with her own problematic ideas about sex and gender.

Another strength of the novel was its setting.  Rather than the usual pseudo-medieval European influences, Goodman’s fantasy empire took influences from several Asian cultures, mostly Chinese and Japanese.   The Empire of Celestial Dragons was obviously not a representation of any actual culture, but Goodman used many details from reality to construct a fantasy culture that felt pretty well thought out and respectful.  The story was mostly set in a small area, the imperial palace complex, and the descriptions throughout the story build it up to a delightfully detailed picture.   

My Rating: 3.5/5

Eon is a predictable YA fantasy that covers very familiar ground, but it is fairly well-constructed and entertaining.  I particularly liked the culture of the fantasy Empire, which draws influence from Asian cultures.  The story was told in the relatively small stage, mostly the imperial palace complex, and that area was very vividly described.  Though the main character, Eon, seemed at times to be annoyingly dense, I liked the gender issues that were explored through her character. I was occasionally bothered by clichés and the predictability of the plot, but I still enjoyed Eon and am planning on reading the second half of the story.

Review: Lyonesse: Suldrun's Garden by Jack Vance

Lyonesse : Suldrun’s Garden by Jack Vance

Published : Berkeley Publishing Group, 1983

Series : Book 1 of the Lyonesse Trilogy

Awards Nominated: Nebula Award, Locus Fantasy Award, and World Fantasy Award

The Book :

“The Elder Isles, located in the modern-day Bay of Biscay, contain a number of independent, often contentious, kingdoms. Some of kingdom’s monarchs have an eye towards unifying the entire region under a single rule.  One of these ambitious rulers is King Casmir of Lyonesse, who is determined to use anyone and anything he can to conquer the other islands.  For the most part, his ambition gains him only powerful enemies and war.

It is Casmir’s pretty, powerless, neglected daughter Suldrun, however, whose sad life sets a wide-reaching tale in motion  Though most of the excitement and magic is experienced by others, the start of it all can be traced back to Suldrun’s peaceful, isolated garden.  In these kingdoms full of violence, war, magic, ogres and fairies, there are plenty of adventures—good and bad—to be had by young princes, cruel rulers, and powerful sorcerers.”    ~Allie

I know I said I was going to review The Sparrow next, but this I wanted to make sure I got this month’s  WWend.com Grand Master’s Reading Challenge review out on time. This is the first novel I’ve read by Jack Vance, and it’s possible I should have started out with some of his science fiction.  I’ve heard Vance’s work described as pulp-style adventure fare, where the destination of the story matters little compared to the interesting things you see along the journey.

My Thoughts:

Suldrun’s Garden starts out very much like what I would think of as a typical high fantasy.  The Elder Isles seem like a fantasy version of medieval times, and the story seems constantly interrupted by lectures about lines of inheritance, politics,  and geography. Whether all the dry detail is a benefit or a drawback will really depend on the reader.  I can see the appeal of Vance portraying the Isles as a large place with many different peoples and lands.  However, the solid blocks of information seemed to come at very jarring places in the narrative.  In my case, it took me quite some time to develop an interest in the lands of the Elder Isles, and the information dumps were more of a hindrance than a help (at least initially) in building that interest.

The many characters that peopled the Elder Isles also seemed fairly usual for high fantasy--primarily princes and princesses, sorcerers, and fully evil villains.  The story starts out featuring the pretty Princess Suldrun.  She suffers from most of the familial problems of fantasy princesses (her father wants to marry her off, her parents really wanted a son, etc.).  This is not necessarily always a formula for a boring character, but Suldrun is also incredibly passive and inactive.  She spends most of her time wandering aimlessly about the castle and sitting alone in her garden.  She does her best to avoid any kind of social interaction, so she has essentially no meaningful relationships. Of course, when her Hero shows up, she falls in love instantly and marries him shortly thereafter.  The best thing I can say about Suldrun is that the novel soon abandons her to follow much more interesting stories.

The story of Suldrun’s Garden eventually builds to a climax, but it is difficult to see where it is going for most of the first half of the novel.  The narrative skips from one character to another seemingly at random, though one can begin to see the design as the overarching story starts to become clear. Aside from Suldrun’s story, other plotlines feature the sorcerer Shimrod, the evil wannabe-sorcerer/ruler Carfilhiot, the wandering Prince Aillas, and the children Dhrun and Glyneth.  It was with Shimrod’s story that I began to appreciate Jack Vance’s creativity, as he described magic and other realms.  Prince Aillas’ journey is much more of a straightforward adventure story, with lots of hardship and daring deeds.  The story of Dhrun and Glyneth, with its fairy-tale quality, is possibly my favorite.  There are many different kinds of stories within this single novel, so it would be hard to not find something of interest. In my case, Suldrun’s story left me completely cold, but I thought that many of the other characters had delightfully creative, magical, and adventurous tales.

While I found a lot to enjoy in many of the stories, I was bothered by the frequent use of rape or the threat of rape in the many of the plotlines. Of course, it’s not unreasonable that a story featuring a medieval-style society would include some depiction of rape. What most bothered me was the sheer prevalence of rape in this society and the way it was used in the story.  It seemed like nearly every female character had been either raped or threatened with rape, sometimes more than once.  One adolescent female character in particular, Glyneth, seemed to lead a life under the constant threat of rape.  As far as the usage, rape typically seemed to be included as a comic story or as a way of showing the evilness of a villain. I did not appreciate the former, and the latter seemed entirely unnecessary.  Most of the villains were clearly completely evil, and their actions, even without the rape, emphasized this ad nauseam.   

On more technical matters, the prose and dialogue were written in a stilted, formal, pseudo-medieval style. For an example, consider this description of furniture by Princess Suldrun, early in the story:

“Suldrun surveyed the interloping furniture with equal disapproval.  It intruded into the space between the tall chairs, and impeded their intercourse.  Why would anyone do so clumsy a deed? No doubt the arrival of the three grandees had dictated the arrangement.” P.38

All of the characters seemed to speak in a very similar manner, from a 9-year-old boy raised by fairies to the middle-aged king of a realm. For an example of the style of speech, here is a conversation that took place as King Casmir received visitors:

“’Sirs, for now I suggest that you make haste to your chambers, where warm fires and dry clothing will bring you comfort.  In due course we will exchange our counsels.’

Sir Milliflor responded: ‘Thank you, King Casmir.  In truth we are wet; the cursed rain has allowed us no respite!’ “ p.36

For the sake of comparison, here is the voice of a 9-year-old, considering his mortal peril:

Dhrun bethought himself of his talisman. “Remarkable that I am not terrified!” he told himself in a quavering voice. “Well, then, I must prove my mettle and kill these horrid creatures!” p.205

Since this is a novel with many, many characters, this sameness of voice sometimes made it difficult to keep the minor characters distinct in my mind.  Altogether, there were certainly things to enjoy in Suldrun’s Garden, but I’m not sure this is a series I want to continue.  I am considering checking out some of Vance’s science fiction, because I think his creativity might appeal to me more in a different style of world.

My Rating: 2.5/5

Suldrun’s Garden is a meandering tale, though the plotlines of the main characters do connect neatly in the climax and conclusion.  The novel jumps from character to character, showing many kinds of stories—from the tale of the boring, anti-social Princess Suldrun, to those of wandering princes, sorcerers, evil rulers, and children caught in a kind of dark fairy tale.  I very strongly disliked the prevalence and treatment of rape throughout the novel, and it did significantly reduce my enjoyment of the novel.  The writing has a very stilted, pseudo-medieval feel, and the frequent asides about geography and cultures can be seen as either a strength or a weakness, depending on the reader’s preferences. Though much of the setting seems like generic fantasy fare, there are points where Vance’s creativity shines through.  I will probably read more Vance in the future, but I’m not sure if I want to continue this trilogy.