Book 48: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

I have not seen much about this book, but what I have seen has all been positive.  It is, apparently, a book about wizards and witches in an alternate England with supernatural overtones.  It has something in common with Harry Potter in that respect, but it is supposed to be a more mature, more peculiar take on the idea with more alternate history than fantasy.  Also in common with Harry Potter, this book is massive at 782 pages.

I'm looking forward to reading a book with no preconceptions.  It can sometimes backfire if the book ends up being terrible, but I'm hoping for the best.

782 pages means 112 pages per day.


REVIEW:

On paper, this book sounds like a Harry Potter-type book.  An award-winning, 800-page book about an alternate, magical England.  It's even written by a woman.  However, it becomes very quickly evident that this is NOT Harry Potter.  The book is set in the early 1800s and more accurately, is written as a book of that time.  As such, it comes off as more of an alternate history book than a magical fantasy book.  The writing is very good and you never get the impression that it's a modern author trying to write in an older style.  I've read a number of books from the period and other books attempting to fit themselves into the period and this book feels a lot like those.  Magic is treated, almost, as a natural science and the practitioners of  magic behave accordingly.  The story started out slow but eventually picked up and led down more interesting paths.  One of the most interesting aspects of the book were the footnotes.  Extended footnotes are almost a hallmark of Regency / Victorian writing, especially scientific writing, and the footnotes in this novel are some of the most interesting ideas in the book.

Unfortunately, for me, very little can save a book set in this time period.  The reserved manners, somewhat pompous speech affectations and utter civilization of the characters does not lend itself well to action.  Neal Stephenson tried really hard to stay faithful to the Regency Era in his Baroque Cycle, a novel focusing on the early history of Science.  But even his books, though well-written and full of interesting information, fell flat.  I just found it boring and this book was having the same problem.  Someone like Jane Austen is able to overcome these limitations by showing the passions behind the characters' manners and Charles Dickens is able to (sometimes) overcome them with the emotional situations of his underprivileged protagonists but it's a very tricky feat.

The book was an interesting read but was a challenge to finish.  While I respect Susanna Clarke's ability as a writer and her subject matter is deep and interesting, the period of time just doesn't lend itself well to anything exciting, which is what this book lacked most.

6 out of 10.

Book 35: A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

I'm back on schedule now and ready to get back into this series.  I nearly burned myself out on it when I read the first four books in one month.  At around a thousand pages each, that was a bit much.  I'm eager to read this one because the last one felt a bit like half a book.  The author, instead of showing half the story for all the characters, decided to show all the story for half the characters.  Unfortunately, the characters that I really enjoyed were, for the most part, absent from the last book.  This one should show the events surrounding those missing characters and, hopefully, advance the plot a bit further.  I know that he plans at least 2 more books in this series, so I'm not expecting a resolution, but we'll see where he goes with it.

1040 pages means about 150 pages per day, quite a lot.

REVIEW:  As I mentioned before, the previous book in this series, A Feast for Crows, followed the stories for most of the characters in the Seven Kingdoms.  This book follows the stories of the remaining characters, most of them either at The Wall or across the Narrow Sea in the Free Cities.  This was good for me because the characters that this book focused on happen to be some of my favorites.  Tyrion, Jon Snow, Daenerys and Arya were all there and it was good to catch up with them.  What look to be some momentous changes are also beginning in this book.  Jon Snow has taken charge and is putting that authority to use and Daenerys’ dragons are finally starting to show their power.  Once Martin has brought the narratives int his book up to the time of those in the previous book he starts to show us how some of them may eventually tie together.  It’s just a tease, but it’s definitely starting to look like something more than just a lot of random character plots.

Unfortunately, his writing style has not much improved.  More than anything, it seems like he just needs  a more assertive editor.  He has a tendency to use repetitive descriptive phrases such as the dreaded “useless as nipples on a breastplate.”  He also has entire chapters of questionable relevance.  It’s admirable that he’d want to flesh out his side characters and their motives but, ultimately, it doesn’t matter.  It just serves to detract from the real action.  These overelaborations and the distractions of skipping around so much between chapters drag the plot to a snail’s pace.  He reminds me of Robert Jordan, the writer of the Wheel of Time series.  Jordan would spend an entire 800-900 page book moving an army from one city to the next with the only action at the very end.  Which, of course, is another problem here. Because this is the middle of the series, there is no resolution to any of the plot-lines.  Martin's series is not like Jordan's where there is a fight with one of the "little bad guys" at the end of each book.  It is the middle of a single, very long narrative.  Like chapter 40 through 70 of some 20,000 page epic.

Overall, the book is slowpaced and meandering, though there is still a sense that, somewhere in the future, the many, many threads that Martin has woven will come together to form a whole.  I can't say that the series is my favorite of all time, but it is still in the top ten and I will continue to read the sequels when they are released, if only to see where all this is leading.

7 out of 10.

Book 17: A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

This is the fourth book of the Song of Fire and Ice series by George R.R. Martin.  It's also the last book for this mini-marathon as I don't yet own the fifth in the series.  As soon as I pick that one up I'll continue.  This one is a little smaller than the last, only 976 pages (!) so it should be slightly easier to finish, haha.

140 pages per day to finish this one in a week, but I've been going through the series at about 200 pages a day so I'll probably stick with that, it's a good rhythm.

REVIEW:  This book was my least favorite so far.  Apparently, Mr. Martin had too much material for one book so he split it into two volumes.  Instead of giving half the story for all the characters he decided to give the full story for half the characters.  The only problem with this is that few of the characters that I'm interested in are in this book.  Instead of Jon Snow, we get Samwell, instead of Tyrion we get Cersei, instead of Bran we get Sansa.  In addition, he decided to expand on the happenings in some of the more remote areas of his world.  Personally, I think that much of that action could have happened "off-screen" and been handled by references and allusions to the results.  Martin gives entirely too much information and it bogs down his narrative.  It's less like reading The Lord of the Rings and more like reading The Silmarillion.  Those that have read the two will know the difference.

In addition to slowing down the plot, his over detailed prose is starting to become a bit repetitive.  The terms "mummer's farce" and "useless as nipples on a breastplate" were used many times and his description of food and eating is still very repetitive.  Hot juices running down chins and into beards is a common occurrence as is tearing the wing from a plump, crisp capon.

Don't get me wrong, I still think that the story is great and the weaving together of the separate plot-lines is genius, but the writing is still pretty average.  I'm not sure what it is about most fantasy and sci-fi authors that makes them such mediocre writers... something about people with great ideas but little talent as a wordsmith.  I could name a dozen or more writers like that.

The same complaints from this book as the previous coupled with the absence of most of my favorite characters and locations makes this my least favorite so far.  By contrast, the next book, being focused on the characters that were left out of this one, should be one of the best.   5 out of 10 for this one.

Book 16: A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin

I'm not actually going to say much about this yet, because... ahem... I'm not quite done with the previous yet.  Between my sick kid at home and Halloween activities I'm a little behind.  I should be done today or tonight though, so I'll be starting this one sometime today.

These things keep getting bigger!  This one is 1128 pages which is way too many pages per day.  Yeesh!

REVIEW:  A Storm of Swords is by far the darkest volume in this series so far.  There was a point in the first book that had me so outraged that I wanted to put the book down and quit.  This book has several such moments.  With The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien was able to balance tragedy with heroism, but the realistic tone of Martin’s books don’t allow that kind of escapism.  As a result, the story falls deep into tragedy leaving you wondering who will even remain alive at the end of the series to put the pieces of the world back together again.

The survivors of this book continue to live, however, and fight desperately to do so... and similarly, I continue my struggle to continue through to the next book.  The writing and the plot are still ponderously slow with almost a hundred pages at the beginning simply bringing the reader up to speed with the characters from the last book.  There are very good scenes to be had, though, and the battles are particularly brilliant with the fighting at the Wall in the north as shining examples.  In fact, all the parts dealing with the characters in the far north, at and beyond the Wall are, by far, my favorites.

The fall from grace and/or death of many of my favorite characters gave birth to some very strong nihilism.  There was a very large part of me that wanted the armies from across the sea to come and burn the whole thing to the ground.  This world needs a clean slate at this point and it’s hard to predict what Martin will do next.  There are still 2 books in the series I have yet to read, however, and 2 more that are still unwritten, so I’m sure that the author has very large and very complex plans for them. He is nothing if not painstakingly detailed.

The big swing into tragedy in this volume, coupled with the same slow, extremely detailed plot progression made this one harder to read than the previous:  6 out of 10.

Book 15: A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

Well, here we go, the second part of the epic series by George R.R. Martin.  The end of the last book was action-packed and spurred my interest after a very long introduction.  This book promises to be full of action and intrigue.  I have a few friends that, when I mentioned that I was debating reading all of the books in a month (there were only 4 at the time), said that it wasn't possible.  Seeing that as a challenge, I'm off and running into book 2... and it's a huge one: 969 pages in my edition.  That's a whopping 140 pages per day just to stay on schedule.  I'm gonna need a whole lot of luck to finish these on time.

REVIEW:  Finally finished this book.  The story is moving along a bit better now but Martin still bogs himself down with too much detail.  I appreciate it to a degree because a lot of the realism is from the attention paid to the details, but sometimes he just digresses took much from the story.  For instance, the characters have frequent feasts and Martin likes to describe it in minute detail:

"They began with pears poached in wine, and went on to tiny savory fish rolled in salt and cooked crisp, and capons stuffed with onions and mushrooms.  There were great loaves of brown bread, mounds of turnips and sweetcorn and pease, immense hams and roast geese and trenchers dripping full of venison stewed with beer and barley.  For the sweet, Lord Caswell's servants brought down trays of pastries from his castle kitchens, cream swans and spun-sugar unicorns, lemon cakes in the shape of roses, spiced honey biscuits and blackberry tarts, apple crisps and wheels of buttery cheese."

Sounds tasty, but come on, get on with the story.  He tends to do this sort of thing with food, banners, any kind of group of people, et cetera.  While the story is interesting and the action is moving along, it moves very slowly.  It reminds me of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan in that way... both authors take about 1,000 pages to move an army from one city to the next.  Is it realistic?  Sure.  Is it interesting?  Well, yes.  But it takes quite a bit of determination to get through it.

I can still think of several fantasy genre series that I like better than this one.  The story is very interesting, the characters are rich and the setting is detailed but, it just moves so slowly that I find myself wanting to skip ahead a few pages now and then.  Overall, I found it a bit better than the previous due to the plot picking up speed a bit:  8 out of 10.

Book 14: A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

This series has become very popular lately, no doubt due to the new HBO series based on the books.  I know a couple of people who absolutely love these books and can't stop talking about them.  I also know a couple people who say they're crap.  I guess we'll find out which side I agree with in about a week.

807 pages!?  Ouch... that's about 116 pages a day.  Hope it's good, 'cause that could be painful otherwise.

REVIEW:  This book was a little hard to get through.  As the first book of a long series, it took a long time to get up to speed.  About 500 of it's 800 pages were, essentially, an introduction to the characters and locations involved in the story.  Once it does get going, however, it became much more interesting.

It is definitely a fantasy novel, but written very realistically.  There is little magic and a lot of the action is political in nature.  The Game of Thrones are basically the political machinations of the half-dozen or so lords and their King.  The story is as epic as The Lord of the Rings, or perhaps even more so, but far grittier, rough and bloody.  It is a no-holds-barred look at war in a medieval setting with all the death, destruction, rape, pillaging and burning that implies.

I have really only a few complaints about the book.  First, the story is very dark and gets darker throughout the book.  It could do with a bit of humor or some other respite to help lighten the mood.  Secondly, it is an extremely well detailed story... Martin doesn't omit any little detail in his descriptions of people, places or plots.  While it nice to see someone write his story so thoroughly, it bogs down the story quite a bit and makes it harder to read than necessary.  Finally, I'd like to see him tone down the sex a bit.  I'm no prude, but there is a LOT of sex in the book, consensual sex, incestuous sex, rape, you name it.  There is usually a reason for it, so it's not exactly gratuitous sex, but it's very close to pornographic in sections.

Rich and complex, realistic and gritty this book still suffered a bit from a slow start.  I'd give it about an 7 out of 10.

Book 3: "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien

Yes, I know, this one was cheating.  I've read this one before... multiple times, actually.  But, I was going on vacation and wanted something fun to read.  I brought a total of 3 books with me on vacation being wildly optimistic about how much time I'd have to read.  Turns out, I only read 36 pages.

It took a total of 10 days to finish this book.  Though, in all fairness, once I got back home I finished it in 4 days.  Put me way off schedule though... gonna have to work double-time to catch up.

The Hobbit is still an excellent book, I never would have finished so quickly otherwise.  I'm just waiting until my son is old enough to appreciate Tolkien.

Book 0: "The Red Wolf Conspiracy" by Robert V.S. Redick

This book wasn't really a part of the project.  I read it as a proof of concept, just to see if I could really read a book in one week.  At 462 pages, I needed to read 66 pages per day.  With just my round trip on the bus to work I was able to do it pretty easily.

I saw this one on the shelf in the library and thought it looked interesting.  And, to my surprise, it was quite good.  It had been a while since I read any fantasy books.  This one had a nice, complex plot, a rich world and lots of great characters.  The only real problem is that it's the first in a trilogy, which means that now I have to add volume 2 (The Rats and the Ruling Sea) and part 3 (The Night of the Swarm) to my reading list.