Imaginative Fiction

A summer or two ago, I read The Eyre Affair. and it quickly sailed to the top of my "List of Favorite Books". This list is not to be taken lightly. It consists of (but is not limited to) the following:

The Golden Compass

Fahrenheit 451

Ender's Game

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Eyre Affair

You could head these under "Science Fiction / Fantasy", but I'm determined not to do so because I'm not putting books like Star Wars in here for a good reason. I prefer to head these books under the category of "Imaginative Fiction" -- books that completely blew me away with their worlds, their prose, and their stories. Books that repeat things I've already seen, and in an inferior way (see: The Giver), won't make it onto this list.

There's a reason The Eyre Affair is so damn good. The book, written by Jasper Fforde, takes place in an alternate 1985, where the Crimean War (of all wars) is still going on, and Great Britain is run by 32 variations of police -- "Special Operations". Thursday Next is a member of SpecOps-27, the Literary Detectives (LiteraTecs). That's all the backstory I'll give, and it's most of what I can give, because the story takes so many swerves and dives that it's a bit hard to keep track of what's what. Still, the book is surreal, witty, and (most importantly) one of the best tributes to the world of literature I've seen.

I walked into Lost in a Good Book hoping for a similar experience. (I mean, if Rowling could do it, why not Fforde?) First impressions were good -- Fforde throws us into the novel without much prose to explain backstory, which actually works for the scene; we only know as much as we need to about new characters. I'm sad to say that the book goes downhill from there. What we are treated to is essentially a reminder -- a "who's-who" and "what's-what" of the first book. For example, Thursday's uncle Mycroft (the genius behind the device from the first novel that let people jump into books) shows up for half a chapter and then exits the book. New characters are variations on the old ones. In fact, both of the villains are directly related to the last book's villains by blood, which turns the book into a kind of complicated revenge novel. The first book had varied characters with completely different motivations, but this one makes it all as same-y as the goo that threatens to destroy the Earth.

Oh, I forgot. There's also a plot to destroy the world. That annoyed me. As soon as there's a chance of the world's end where only one or two people are able to stop it, warning bells go off in my brain. Come on, it's about the most cliched plot ever. The first book, I think, had the idea to put all the stakes of the story around a famed work of literature instead. That was far more clever. Here, it feels like Fforde ran out of ideas. Heck, I feel like I'm running out of ideas, writing this. There's just not much to say about the book. It's the first one, without the charm, wit, or surreality. Subplots are recycled elements from the first book (such as the chapter with the undead). I went back to look, and even the most important subplot, the one with Cardenio (a lost Shakespeare play), is based on an offhand comment in the first pages of The Eyre Affair! One new device is interesting -- the entroposcope that alerts Next to a change in levels of entropy -- and while it certainly gets enough 'screentime', it's not enough to fix the book's inherent problems.

This book feels like a sequel -- nothing more or less. The writers of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy said in an interview that they'd used all their ideas for the first movie, and didn't know where to begin for the second and third. Like them, Fforde seems to be writing this book for sequel's sake -- or just to expand Next's world. While the book ties up the loose strand of how people can go in and out of books without a Prose Portal, I have no desire to read more, despite the several loose ends that are left at the end of this one. Fforde leaves us, basically, with a "To Be Continued" sign, and while I'd dearly love to see Next interact with past version of herself in First Among Sequels, I think this series has already lived past its prime, which is why I'm putting it to rest.

On pulp fiction

Just a quick post as to why I haven't posted recently, and why it'll be a while before I have another book to review.

While I've been reading Flatland, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and (in honor of the 6th Potter movie release) Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, I've had sitting in the back of my mind Michael Crichton's State of Fear. It's a thriller I'm required to read for school, and I guess it's anti-global warming; I didn't really get too far. I've been trying to read a few chapters at a time while distracting myself with better books such as the ones mentioned above, but it's become apparent to me recently that even J.K. Rowling can't cover up the mess that is Crichton's novel. For one thing, it's very hard to keep track of all the various characters and corporations while reading another book, although I don't think I could keep track even if I was only reading Crichton. For another, Crichton's portrayal of women frankly disgusts me -- cardboard cut-outs whose only purpose is to be a sex symbol (or more than a symbol) and/or spout off terribly flat pro-environmentalist beliefs in order to push Crichton's anti-global warming agenda. Then there's the issue of pacing -- 85 pages in and I'm still not sure who the main character is, or what the main action is going to be. This is a hell of a lot worse than anything Dan Brown could dish up.

Maybe I'll read the Sparknotes later, but I doubt I'll pick it up again. I had a couple of other books that I had waiting in the wings after Crichton, but I couldn't decide what to read next: Three Cups of Tea (also required) or The Lightning Thief (recommended by my sister, and sitting on my shelf). Trying to read both didn't work for the aforementioned one-book-at-a-time reason. So I turned to a completely different book, one I purchased at the beginning of the summer: Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde, the sequel to The Eyre Affair.

Thank heavens for that, because the book is a godsend. I'm not that far into it, but already it works tremendously well as a direct sequel. It catapulted me right back into the fantastical world I'd left in The Eyre Affair, without too much exposition (a la J.K. Rowling), and with the same amount of wit and charm. In short: I'm very excited for it.

Spiderwick

Since my last post, I've finished Flatland and The Spiderwick Chronicles (all 5 of the original series). I'm going to talk about the latter now.

My sister read and loved this series a few years back, and we recently rented the movie. Haven't seen it yet, but I wanted to read the books before the movie, so I set to work. I finished the entire series in under 24 hours. Each book is short, so that the whole thing reads like one story.

I've tried to read the series before and never got past the first book. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe because I haven't had time to read it -- but on the other hand, these are very short books. Halfway through the fourth book, the reason why became shockingly clear: these books -- while somewhat original, and certainly fun with all their illustrations -- are devastatingly boring. I did a lot of skimming on my read of them. Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black (the authors) fill the story with meaningless description. Maybe you need to be a kid to like it, but I'm surprised any kid could get through the slog presented to them. I'm sure one reason they could was because of the fantastical illustrations that pepper nearly every page. It's a really interesting idea to have faeries in your own backyard, as part of the wildlife; and while I'm sure it's been done before, this seems to be a really appealing way to present it to kids.

Let's talk about the story itself. The main character is Jared, twin to Simon, sibling of older sister Mallory. The three Grace children supposedly contact the authors and ask them to publish a book they've found (Arthur Spiderwick's Guide to the Fantastical World Around You), and subsequently tell them their tale, found within these five volumes. Along their journey, they meet everything from a troll under a bridge to an ogre in a palace of trash to a dragon doing battle with a griffin. Since the story is split into five parts, the authors have to create a new situation with each book. The first is undoubtedly the most fun, in which they encounter a brownie (or boggart) in their house. Actually, though, most of the rest are repetitive hostage situations with goblins, ogres, dwarves, or elves. Scattered within are some information sessions with members of the Spiderwick family, since the famed Guide is often not with them for some reason.

For a kid's story, too, this series is very centered around despair. Jared (whose point of view we see most often) is often angry, as if an "animal" is eating him from inside. He has an uncontrollable temper, and in the final two books realizes that he is against unwinnable odds. Needless to say, it takes some supreme luck to get him and his family out of tricky situations, which just goes to show you that those with good intentions will be protected by an omnipresent deity. Gee, that's a helpful message. For a theme this big (and with other heavy storylines such as a well-written, nasty divorce), the authors needed a hugely satisfying ending, which they completely failed to deliver. The end is abrupt and lucky, and they then spend too much time on epilogue. An epilogue which, by the way, is also unrealistic. Spoilers: the Guide, promised to the elves for their help, is returned to the Grace children because they'd "proved their worth" by destroying the antagonist. I don't see how they did that; they were lucky. I also don't see how publishing the Guide is "protecting" it.

They never explained why the kids could waltz right into the trash palace at the end, either. (Well, I guess that can be explained by the troll's need to brag. Still, it's a bit weak.)

All in all, this series made me thirst for the Lord of the Rings again. The whole thing had a feel of great mythology behind it, but unless I know that mythology, that's not going to help the massive heaps of description that fluff up a largely insubstantial series. I admire the authors for doing something different, but it's actually not that different. There are lots of stories about fantastical worlds in kids' backyards out there. Far better ones, too.

I'm just looking forward to the Guide. (My sister has that too, luckily, so I don't have to go looking for it.) This is obviously the centerpiece of the whole series. At the beginning of each book is a letter from the Grace children asking the authors to publish the Guide. I understand there was a long delay between the publication of the final book and the publication of the Guide. The delay had better be worth it, because I'm aching for mythology, and DeTerlizzi and Black have so far not met my expectations. Certainly not enough to warrant my going to look for the sequel series.

EDIT: I've actually just thought of a more interesting version of the first book in the series. The Boggart, by Susan Cooper, is a highly entertaining read about a boggart inhabiting an old mansion, clashing with the family that comes to live there (including a computer genius, who proves himself as more than a match for the boggart). Susan Cooper is also the author of the lackluster Dark is Rising series and the excellent Shakespeare time-travel story King of Shadows.

Scream and Run Away: A horror retrospective.

The title for this week is from a Lemony Snicket song. His books, and the album containing this song, are absolutely hilarious.

I'm not sure whether I'll do regular reviews. At present, I've read three books and started one more, but I feel like writing a comparison, so that's what I'm going to do.

The two books I'm going to compare are World War Z and The Graveyard Book. The latter I've started, the former I've just finished. In a decent bookstore, you'd probably find both of them in the horror section. (Then again, maybe not. The Graveyard Book is more of a children's or teen book, and World War Z is rather sci-fi. But let's look at a hypothetical, ideal bookstore, with no age boundaries.)

It's interesting to compare these two, along with 'Salem's Lot, in terms of effectiveness. I still haven't finished 'Salem's Lot, which (for the uninitiated) is a Stephen King novel about vampires. I liked the book at the beginning because it introduced a varied set of characters in order to create a pretty layered society, which I expected King to then smash apart with his vampire, sledgehammer-style. Once the killings got going, though, I found the book to be long and tedious. Partly this may have been because the choice of deaths was uninspired -- the least interesting characters went first. Partly this may have been because the vampires in question were riddled with all your basic cliches -- compounded by the fact that King intended to stick to the vampire's roots to make the book more interesting. (It didn't work in Superman Returns, and it didn't work here either.) But I think the real reason the book didn't work was because it approached fear from entirely the wrong direction. There are few light moments in the book, and the human characters feel one, unambiguous shade of fear towards the vampires, and King expects us to do the same. For any writers out there, noobs or otherwise, let me say this: this is boring. Horror is a very layered feeling. Disgust, curiosity, xenophobia, and uncompromising terror are all different aspects of it. Neil Gaiman gets it right; more on that in a minute.

Horror is a very misleading term. My parents, and some of my friends, are always talking about how horror movies are the blood-and-guts type: "Saw", "Hostel", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "The Exorcist". (By the way, ever wonder why it's called "The Exorcist" and not "The Exorcism"? Me, too. I need to see that movie to find out why.) Anyway. That's all well and good, but what about films like The Blair Witch Project, or Poltergeist, or even Jaws? Those movies are made to scare you out of fear of the unknown, be it that thing hiding in the dark, the clown draped over your bedroom chair, or the shark in the water. Hell, throw Ghostbusters in there, that's got a little horror. My point is that there are many different aspects of horror. Blood and guts is not the only part of it. Horror is a feeling, and we can all experience it in different ways.

Lest you think this is too much about stuff that I'm not reading this summer, let me link this very smoothly to World War Z. I wish Max Brooks had learned about layering horror before he'd written this book. I started out reading it going, "Oh, zombies! Hooray!" but once the novelty wore off, it got dull and pointless. Okay, here are some dead things killing five people in different ways. So? The interesting part became how the world survived the infestation, but even that was riddled with cliches: the USA is the first to advance aggressively, after having massively screwed up on the battlefront; people start eating each other for food; political exploits, etc. etc. Every step, I could have guessed. Yet it became an entertaining read after a time because, well, it was written so well, and maybe because it was so varied. I need to think about it for a bit, why I got back into it, but about halfway through the book something clicked and I tore through it with gusto.

And this was completely different from my experience upon opening The Graveyard Book. See, here's what I've been leading up to: how Neil Gaiman treats horror. Short version: it's not all horror. Oh, sure, there are huge elements of it: unnatural otherworldy beings, a murder, and enough ghosts to cool several walk-in refrigerators. But it's treated like a pretty natural tale set in completely unnatural circumstances. The horror is THERE: I was scared out of my skin by a couple of the beings in the first chapters, but the whole feel of the book is much more invigorating and interesting.

I guess this post has rambled on long enough, and possibly most of you have stopped reading by this point, but my whole point is that horror is varied, and that's the only way to write it. Now if only we could have more Graveyard books and fewer zombie flicks.

P.S. I do need to get ahold of The Zombie Survival Guide. I've grown a little addicted to Max Brooks' work.