Playing by the rules of "A Game of Thrones"

There's an old saying our generation has acquired: "READ THE BOOK FIRST". So it has been with countless film and television adaptations: if you want the full experience, read it first. There are only a few exceptions to the rule; Lord of the Rings, for example, arguably works well as a book series and a film series.

So, if you're not rich enough to own an HBO subscription, you had until now a reasonable excuse for not reading their most recently adapted fantasy book, A Game of Thrones. But the months have passed, people! The DVD will come soon! Read it now, before it's too late!

Admittedly, this was my second attempt. I had a few weeks to read the opening couple hundred pages last winter, before the library recalled my copy. So I was familiar with the premise, at least. Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell is summoned to replace the King's chief advisor, and must bring himself and his whole family south to accept the duty. But the land of the Seven Realms is full of major houses that want to take control, and soon the game of thrones becomes deadly - and, for Lord Eddard Stark, more personal, as the safety of his own house and family are threatened.

Each chapter is delivered from the limited third-person point-of-view of a different character. Oh, but there are so many characters. Eight points of view are presented over the course of the novel, plus that of one prologue character. And the non-POV characters are so numerous that a sizeable appendix doesn't even contain them all. I tried diligently to keep track of everyone on a second read-through of the opening, but came to the same conclusion that I did with the faceless goons in V for Vendetta. Names do not give way to personalities: the important thing is that the figures are there.

The names mean even less when you understand that not even the major characters always deserve or want their titles. Lord Eddard Stark resists his position as the king's advisor, and outsiders such as a dwarf and Stark's bastard son are given demeaning nicknames. Names are given, but not earned.

No, the important thing is to trust the power of the narrative, which is strong enough to overcome the repetitive names. As long as you can keep the main family straight, you're golden. Each episode is self-contained, a mini-story in its own right, with a vaguely two-scene structure. The book's episodic nature makes it well-suited for television, as is its tendency to keep storylines hanging for upwards of a hundred pages before that particular section of the narrative resumes, thanks to the large number of character POVs.

(I found some of the characters' literary ancestors interesting, especially where their names were similar. Arya, Eddard Stark's youngest daughter, has the rule-breaking and independence of Philip Pullman's Lyra of Northern Lights; Sansa's troubling disconnect with her siblings is reminiscent of Susan of The Chronicles of Narnia. Arya is more fun to read, but Sansa is taken in new directions from Susan.)

The episodes lull the reader into a sense of security, particularly in the middle section; startling developments come primarily in the first and final acts. This can make the book monotonous, but the prose never is. Florid descriptions are kept brief, cut short by long, more interesting dialogue sections. Talkiness is another thing that would translate well to the small screen.

There is the problem of the book's incomplete nature. This is thanks to the fact that A Game of Thrones is the first part of a first part of a trilogy; this section of the story doesn't wrap until book three. However, unlike most tales where I balk at the idea of waiting until another book to see the conclusion, here I wasn't unsatisfied. The promise at the beginning of the story is only that "winter is coming", and by the end of the book, George R.R. Martin delivers. A few character arcs are completed, but most are only begun, and this feels right at the chaotic situation of the book's finale. I will not read part two for some time, but I am left hanging happily.

Perhaps it's unfair that I'm constantly considering this book's adaptability; after all, we're in the novel world now, and we play by Martin's rules. But his rules are decidedly visual in nature. Martin spent several years working on filmed projects such as The New Twilight Zone and Beauty of the Beast, and his experience there slips through. And anyone that doesn't play by the rules, as A Game of Thrones teaches, is a failure.

Which is a decidedly bleak way to look at life - it's the negative Stephen King message I missed from Carrie - but for the purposes of this novel, a deliciously off-kilter one, and a satisfying conclusion to a story that, while well-told, is a bit long. A Game of Thrones, based loosely off of the Rose Wars of England and showing just as much intrigue, delivers a good fantasy book because it does not pretend to be fantasy; the fantastic elements are considered as myth, and the story could be a historical fiction. Characters, visuals, and various points of inspiration all combine to make a very good experience - especially the characters. It will be good to see them portrayed on screen.

The Green Man: Stories vs. novels

The word "novel", says Reality Hunger author David Shields, is related to the word "new". Similarly "essay" relates to the French word for "try". It is fitting that a genre of wordsmithing should be one of the most experimental media (House of Leaves, The Road, and those are only the more mainstream). Yet The Green Man, by British author Kingsley Attis, attempts to be more than a novel. It intends to be a story.

I'm jaded. Two of my last three novels have not aimed for standard build and climax of narrative. Fine, different, experimental, but less escapist. Gulliver's Travels was political satire in disguise, and may as well have been called Four Shipwrecks and a Soapbox. Meanwhile, One Hundred Years of Solitude meandered and repeated itself. Neither was bad - indeed, both were well-written. But not what I was looking for, so ultimately boring.

But whereas Solitude and Travels were at base words, The Green Man starts with no such assumptions. We open on the owner of an English pub, and we're treated to the unfailing British hardworking minutiae so beloved in the Harry Potter series. But soon things take a turn for the creepy and The Green Man becomes a ghost story - one of those sit-around-the-campfire tales, most thrilling when read aloud. Simple, but effective. Stephen King (author of Carrie, the only other novel I read this summer and truly loved) says the most primal and effective emotion is to horrify. In that sense, The Green Man never really had to work hard to be fun.

Yet it does. First, we are lulled into a sense of calm. Even after ghosts begin appearing, our protagonist and narrator lives a normal life. We, and others around him, chalk up his visions to his alcoholism. Meanwhile, he tries to get a three-way set up between himself, his wife, and his mistress. This ends poorly, isolating him just as his family is isolated from him.

But then the author plays two major cards that give the story its power, and raise it - not demote it - to the rank of novel. First, he kills the narrator's father. Suddenly all - isolation, alcoholism, orgies, visions - are cast under the shadow of death. I said that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was a 2.5-hour slog because everyone always ruminated on death, and I stand by that. Here, it's appropriate. Having a debilitating illness himself, having seen his father die and spirits rise from the grave, the narrator goes on a quest for the nature of the afterlife. But not right away, and not without pauses and pacing. Death comes slowly but surely.

Pacing is parcel of Kingsley Attis's other card: the spirits. There are around ten major visions, and each related pair is given a separate section. The visions begin rather innocuously, and similar to most ghost stories - a view of a woman here, mysterious footsteps there. But as the mystery of their presence deepens and our narrator begins to investigate their reason for being, the visions take a turn for the strange. Time stops and reverses itself, a terrible creature emerges, and evidence of dark magic surfaces. The spirits surprise and delight with every twist and turn. Even the most implausible - the Young Man of section four - is handled with British charm and wit enough to dispel any qualms I had with his summoning.

Themes, philosophical discussion, historical research, and the visions themselves escalate towards a satisfying yet heartbreaking conclusion. The story completes, the fun is over, and we are left with questions of the afterlife to ponder. Best of all, authorial influence is negligible. Whereas Gulliver's Travels was a smart but (I felt) indulgent satire, where fantastic images and questions served the whims and beliefs of the author, here the author serves the story. The reader, by extension, feels more involved, more welcomed to both enjoy and ponder. The power of the best novels, like this one, is not to solely explain the author's point of view, but to invite the reader to develop his own. And, of course, to tell a good story besides.

Reading List 2.0

After a couple of misfires, I have decided to revise my reading list. There were more books that I'd wanted to read than I remembered, and they currently take priority over the books suggested by others. (Not that I mean offense in ousting the majority of those suggestions, nor is my intention to ignore them completely; and even the ones I've already begun, and not quite enjoyed, those being One Hundred Years of Solitude and Gulliver's Travels, I intend to finish if I can in the future.) This list is not ordered, either, but categorized. And so the second half of the summer begins!

SELECTIONS FROM
Stephen King
H.P. Lovecraft
Jorge Luis Borges
William Shakespeare
Bedford Anthology of World Literature

NOVELS
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
A Game of Thrones
Catching Fire
Super Sad True Love Story
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

CURIOSITIES
Packing for Mars
Nation
The Waste Land
Paradise Lost
Dubliners

COMICS
Essential Marvel
Runaways
Y: The Last Man
The Walking Dead
Bone
Tintin
Sandman

EPICS
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Infinite Jest

CARRY-OVERS
The Green Man
Boy's Life
Dandelion Wine
The House of the Spirits
Invisible Man
Neuromancer
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Me Talk Pretty One Day
Kafka on the Shore
The Instructions
Invisible Cities
Someplace to be Flying
Original Sin: A Cultural History

Comic Two-fer

Summer's for fun, and all this heavy literature needs to be broken up with something a bit lighter. For some, this is television. For me, it's comics.

(Okay, there's only been one dense work so far this summer: "One Hundred Years of Solitude", which I haven't even finished. But next is "Gulliver's Travels", and another horror story. I have an excuse, okay?)

So, two comics that are both entertaining and well-written. Yes, these may be mutually exclusive; see most summer blockbusters for that.

"Runaways" is written by Brian K. Vaughan, author of the recent "X-Men: First Class" movie. Like the opening to that movie, "Runaways" takes an unorthodox look at superheroes. The chief plot mover is when six kids decide to spy on their parents and realize they are a clan of supervillains. From there, the kids investigate and find that they themselves have access to powers, gadgets, and telepathic dinosaurs. Their parents had hoped the kids would continue the legacy. Instead, they rebel and become... well, what?

Superheroes. That's the word that should finish that sentence, right? That's how the story goes. And at the end, they have a desire to fight crime, and most of them have powers. But they're not heroes. They're fugitives - what the X-Men always try to be. The X-Men happen to be more like refugees, though, because they always have a home in the X-Mansion. The whole point of "Runaways" is that they have no home.

The old origin story tropes are here. Shock at finding new powers, a raid against villains more powerful than they, luck and a bit of good strategy allowing the new heroes to win out in the end. They are buried beneath a linear narrative that doesn't only stick to those tropes (although, partially, that is the idea); very good characterization; and art that looks as pretty as a painting.

And right away we feel like these are the oppressed minorities, steeling our opinion that these kids are wronged by their parents. There are four females - one very young, and rarely taken seriously at first by her fellow teammates. One of the two remaining males is black. Even the white guy, a jock, feels oppressed because his parents are nerds, and highly disappointed in his academical failings. He has no idea how to operate the equipment he inherits.

Comics like "Ant Man" feel like a collection of tropes that, together, makes a story. "Runaways" feels like it's trying hard to be a narrative.

I also recently finished the first three adventures of the "Tintin" series, in preparation for the new film. I was surprised at the variety in quality.

These first few stories ("Tintin in America", "Cigars of the Pharaoh", and "The Blue Lotus") were written in three different styles. At least one ("Cigars") was redrawn several years later to keep a consistent style with later volumes; all were edited a decade or two after their original publication, to make them more accessible to the post-World War II masses; and all were translated from the original French, so some jokes are altered to make more sense to a British/American audience.

"Tintin" was originally published as a comic serial, and the first two stories reflect that. "Tintin in America" is the story of Tintin, junior reporter, and his dog, Snowy, as they come to Chicago in order to reduce crime and stop two bands of gangsters. They chase after first one, then the other boss, while capturing their mooks along the way. He really does seem to be removing them from the streets one man at a time. "America" feels episodic, but vaguely linear.

Meanwhile, "Cigars of the Pharaoh" is treated more as a mystery, but not one that Tintin goes willingly into. On a cruise, he meets an eccentric professor on the lookout for an Egyptian tomb. Finding some cigars there, he begins to unearth an illegal opium trade. Not for a long time does he know what he is unearthing, though, and the story emphasis is on the mini-episodes he encounters along the way, rather than on the bigger picture.

But the mystery is not quite solved in "Cigars of the Pharaoh"; the leader of the opium gang appears to die, but in fact survives and disappears. A mysterious poison that drives people mad is unleashed upon Tintin's friends. Tintin sets out to find an antidote, and shut down the opium trade once and for all.

"The Blue Lotus" is a longer journey than other Tintin books. It remains episodic, with Tintin steadily approaching the denouement of a bigger story, but the main objective is always in sight. The reader usually knows how close Tintin is to achieving it, and keeps in mind the obstacles he has already overcome. It's a coherent narrative, and it ties up nicely.

It's also remarkable how well author Herge depicts 1930s Japan. This was the book at which he began his tradition of heavily researching the areas he wrote about. Thanks to a letter from a Chinese teacher who wished to keep his students from balking at the Tintin comics, Herge was treated to a thorough tour of Japan's and China's cultures and heritage. The Chinese and Japanese characters are far more sympathetic than the American and Egyptian ones of previous adventures. There are even references to political events of the time, such as Japanese-Chinese colonialism.

The Tintin comics were said to inspire such famous adventure films as "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and I believe it. No matter what the situation or how good the overall writing, emphasis is always on two things: adventure and humor. The varying locals, the quick pace, and the constant slapstick are a refreshing frosting that lie on sometimes substantial baked dessert-stories. They are primarily fun, and secondarily deep, and that's what makes these books classic.

Starting points

I'm not quite sure how to approach this.

Two reasons. One, this is Stephen King's first published work. Do I review it from the perspective of a new reader, or from the perspective of an old reader, or as something in between - as somebody who's read a few of King's more recent works, and none of his older stuff? I fall around the middle of that spectrum, right?

Two, is there enough here to review? There might be more interesting material here to discuss. Pardon the existential crisis, but I'm beginning to think that simply critiquing a book - quantifying it, or putting my own admiration of it on a sliding scale - is not enough here.

Carrie is weird. Not in tone: this is the prose I'm used to from King. It hasn't changed much in forty years. Not the genre: realism with a hint of magic is one of my favorites, after all.

It's the message, and the way it's delivered. Carrie follows titular character Carrie White, picked on by her classmates for her entire life, and constantly subject to the fundamentalist Christian rantings of her mother. The story (short, for a King novel) includes two major scenes - both examples of taunting Carrie that go too far - and the fallout from them. And then it's all over. I read it in a couple of days.

This should be pulp. The cover of my edition is graphic-novel style: simple low-quality drawings with expressive fonts. But as I've come to discover with King lately, this author has a knack for sophisticated messages (it's what makes his horror so powerful), as well as top-notch storytelling.

I mean it, top-notch. The pace is usually breakneck, and the prose is great. And King leaves no stone unturned: he takes time to round his characters out as much as possible. In one example, a character hears the garbled shoutings of a nearby pedestrian before she falls unconscious. The pedestrian is then given a backstory and several friends within the next few pages. King explores every cranny of his story as he tells it.

Having chiefly read (and enjoyed) Under the Dome, I should note that King's science fiction does not differ greatly from his horror. Dome may even count as a horror novel with sci-fi elements; they are similar in tone, and even in events (nice town with several major characters introduced before disaster strikes the whole community).

The biggest difference between Under the Dome and Carrie is that the latter feels like King-lite. It's early, and it's short, because it was King's first novel. But the story does not contain as many morally reprehensible characters as Dome. No Big Rennie to have qualities that other characters like but the readers despise. No, the characters are... more open, not only with the reader, but with other characters. Evil is not omnipresent here.

Cruelty is. Carrie is violent, and it feels like a cathartic (and horrific) comeuppance for what she endures throughout her whole life. And life is cruel to the other characters, too. All the high school girls notice that life after high school will be cookie-cutter, boring, pointless. Life stops after they leave their hometown, or they never leave and life stops anyway. Futility reigns.

Where was I? Oh, futility - like writing a relevant review of Carrie. It has aged well (song titles make it a period piece, as well as fashion styles, but little else), and it's arguably aimed at King's youngest audience, high schoolers. How much you like it depends on your taste for horror; the conclusion is not as gory as other King stories, but it has its fair share of blood, and the final fate of Carrie's classmates is strong. Most excellent is that King's voice is present from the beginning. He had written long enough by this point, it seems, that he knew what kind of stories he liked to tell. That enthusiasm is contagious, which makes me want to read more of him.

Astonishing

You'd be hard-pressed to find many superhero duos in comics. In the Marvel Universe, Cloak and Dagger nullify the negative effects of each other's powers; in DC, Hawk and Dove work together despite different views on violence. But that's about it. Team-ups don't count (they usually last only an issue or so), and neither do hero-sidekick teams, where one is obviously in control of the operation.

The Wasp and (Gi)Ant-Man are almost a hero-sidekick team, but Marvel's a bit more subtle about it. True, only Giant Man gets billing on the cover, but that's because most Giant Man comics shared a space with other stories, and there was only so much room. Wasp gets her name on the title page, and sometimes she gets a feature to herself, too. ...Well, I suppose Robin could sometimes say the same thing, especially after heading the Teen Titans. All right, maybe Marvel isn't subtle about it. But what can you say? It was the sixties.

Mind you, the feminism movement was in full swing by the sixties, so I'm surprised the Wasp's behavior wasn't already dated by then. It's certainly dated now. Though Janet van Dyne is given powers almost equivalent to Ant-Man's (sometimes better - she got a weapon; sometimes worse - she couldn't grow), she is almost never in charge (although Marvel notes this at one point and purposefully gives her more to do because of it, thanks to reader complaints), she is frequently the damsel in distress, and Ant-Man (Hank Pym) frequently distrusts her company, telling her to remain safe while he leaves to fight crime. Janet's behavior doesn't help matters. She's just so in wuv with Hank, as she tells him all the time, and she only thinks about fashion, going out to dinner, or (mostly) moonlit nights with her partner. She's not given much of a character.

Come to think of it, Ant-Man doesn't have much of a character, either. The "Fantastic Four" volume that I reviewed earlier had a bit of an arc, in which the characters of that team came to love and accept each other by the end of the volume. Ant-Man and Wasp grow to respect each other eventually (mostly in the last few issues), but their emotions are so sporadic that it never flows well. Some days Hank sits alone in his lab, ignoring the Wasp, and other days he pines for her.

This may have to do with the writing. Stan Lee famously did all the writing for the early Marvel superhero books, but he did have help. As Steve Ditko reportedly gave ideas for the Spider-Man comics, Stan Lee has surrogate authors fill in the details of the plot and dialogue after he comes up with the basic story for many of these Ant-Man comics, including the very earliest ones.

It may have to do with Giant-Man's purpose as a character, too. These issues (short as they are - as I mentioned, Giant-Man often shared his comic with other stories, including the Hulk later on) span a wide part of Hank Pym's career, from initiation, to his meeting with the Wasp, to his membership with the Avengers, and finally to his first retirement. Pym was not always intended to be an Avenger, probably, but soon the Avengers drop in on Giant-Man's comic without nary a word from the editor, who usually mentions a new guest-star by name several times so consumers will buy their book. This has led me to believe that the Giant-Man comics would be primarily read by Avengers fans who want to know more about the Giant-Man.

The comics aren't really long enough to stand on their own as a story, either. Sure, Giant-Man has as large of a rogue's gallery as everyone else, but in twelve pages there's barely time to introduce him, check on the daily activities of our heroes, and then bring in the villain before he is defeated. Some of the villains are pretty good (Eggman and Porcupine come to mind), but even some recurring villains I don't feel like they're trying hard enough with. The Human Top never receives an explanation for his superpowers, although I'd be interested to finding them out.

The Human Top displays the one big complaint I have about Ant-Man/Giant-Man/Wasp comics: they feel like Marvel superhero comics that have been reduced to the very basics. Unfortunately, all Marvel comics will be judged next to the early Spider-Man until I find something better, because Spider-Man worked hard to make a coherent narrative out of its protagonist, convincing (well, conclusive anyway) backstories for its villains, and a general tone that fit with the way Spidey got his powers: villains got their powers from SCIENCE!, and Parker solved his problems with SCIENCE! Hank Pym is also a scientist, and he invents things as often as Mr. Fantastic, but the tone doesn't extend from there. The villains are just villains, not characters. Wasp is his partner, but for most of this book it's a reluctant partnership, made for convenience. We're here to read about superheros battling villains, and that's fine and entertaining, just like many summer blockbuster movies. But behind the bare mechanics, there's no substance. Nothing besides hype makes me feel like I should come back for more - and sometimes even the hype fails to please. (Spider-Man, for instance, was a guest star, but ended up being terribly written - what a wasted opportunity, compared to the countless interesting guest stars of his own book.) "Essential Ant-Man" works, but only just. Like much of Marvel's early stuff, it's an experiment, but it didn't take enough risks.

Lightly skipping through shallow puddles - or books

Nice easy read, nice easy post to start the summer.

I didn't expect to like The King in the Window as much as I did. It loses points right off the bat - the little amount of action in the first chapter is stifled by what amounts to a travelogue of Paris, as well as way too much character backstory that brings the momentum to zero. As I continued reading the book, it became evident that the author of King (Adam Gopnik) had a lousy editor; the first chapters, at least, are drawn out longer than they should be. The novel feels rough around the edges.

Still, The King in the Window is... largely pretty good, actually. It's extremely imaginative, even when it follows the standard fantasy narrative formula. There's the hero, his female and male sidekicks, the old wise and witty mentor, and the faceless bad guy in an iron mask. At some point the female will get kidnapped, the male sidekick will inspire the hero, and the mentor will learn something about herself. It all ties neatly together in a plot by which the world is almost destroyed but, at the last minute, saved.

Around that framework, though, is draped a story of mirrors and windows, around which Gopnik creates a pretty complex mythology. He even manages to link this to modern-day real-life and conceptual computers, bringing both past and future into play. Dualities abound, which is as it should be in a story about mirrors.

The hero thinks a lot of himself at the beginning of the story, because he knows he is the hero of a story. That's also a concept that has some promise. And the woman's a little subversive, too.

Oh, it wasn't easy to continue liking this story. The imagination is something I'd kill for in most other stories, but its presentation has flaws. For example, much is made of the process of thinking, and of the fact that each event in life should follow logically from the other. Yet The King in the Window lacks logic. All over the place, characters make leaps of faith that don't make sense. And sometimes concepts are introduced and used before they are fully explained. This can be done well, but here it isn't. In other books, I get the feeling that the author always had a sense of the underlying logic of his world, and managed to only gradually reveal it to us. Here, Gopnik really feels like he's making it up as he goes along.

So, in essence, while the beginning of the book explains too much, the end explains too little. Characters with promise, like that male sidekick, are tossed away. The Window Wraiths, a kooky band that crowns our hero, is forgotten for the middle of the book. There are a lot of great concepts, but they weren't well linked and there wasn't quite enough time to develop them. The pacing of the book has improved, but not its content. I wanted to understand this world better.

Gopnik dedicates his book to his son, who requested that all the cool parts be put closer together. Which makes for a well-paced yarn, but a shallow one. The King in the Window reads well, will be contemplated for a couple of days after, and then quickly forgotten. The substance to this novel is a well-worn framework, and it's the only thing, in the end, that the reader can hang on to as the author leaps disjointedly around his universe. Still, it's an entertaining read, and it's a good way to start the summer.

The Third Summer Begins!

After a little help from my friends, here is this summer's reading list.

Note that the order is definitely subject to change; I was suggested items that did not make the list, but that I may still read this summer; and that, due to my own forgetfulness and my spontaneity in reading, the content of this list is DEFINITELY subject to change.

The King in the Window

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Essential Ant Man

Carrie
Gulliver's Travels

The Green Man

The Odyssey

Boy's Life

Nation

Dandelion Wine

The House of the Spirits

The Best of H.P. Lovecraft

A Game of Thrones

Packing for Mars

Invisible Man

Henry VI Part 2

Neuromancer

Catching Fire

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Me Talk Pretty One Day

The Waste Land

Kafka on the Shore

Super Sad True Love Story

The Instructions

Labyrinths

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Invisible Cities

Someplace to be Flying

Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes

Original Sin: A Cultural History

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

I will partially be working off of this list. The other list I will be working off of is a categorized one saved on my computer, which separates the various categories of book possibilities, and also includes the possibilities not added to this list. Not that you're probably interested in all those specifics, but it just shows you that I'm very, very open to the restructuring of my summer reading.

Fantastic.

Superheroes have always been a little silly. The Fantastic Four might be the silliest of the lot. On a spontaneous trip to space, four people gain powers: one guy turns into a rock, another can vanish at will, another can light himself on fire, and the final guy can stretch like taffy. Put next to the gritty realism common in postmodernism, these guys are off-the-wall bonkers.

It helps that the Fantastic Four, along with many Marvel Comics superheroes, grew out of the fantasy-horror tales that Marvel was famous for. The first issue of "Fantastic Four" (as collected in "Essential Fantastic Four, Vol. 1, my latest read) is essentially a creature feature. The Mole Man, shunned from society, gathers terrible underground-dwelling monsters to steal the world's atomic energy centers. It's up to the ridiculous Fantastic Four to stop them.

Thank heavens Marvel doesn't take itself too seriously. On the one hand, we get overdramatic statements of the obvious and heartfelt commitments to justice. On the other, Marvel kind of knows that it has a laughable commodity on their hands, and they play it up. The following two issues are an alien invasion, to play up the world's UFO conspiracies, and a man who can perform miracles. The Thing is often seen subverting those overdramatic statements that were (and sometimes still are) a trope of comics. When Mr. F explains how a machine works, the Thing goes, "You don't have to make a SPEECH everytime you do it!"

Marvel Comics superheroes are drastically different from other superheroes of the time, though - by which I mean, largely, DC. While the competition had a boy scout as their iconic hero, Marvel has a dysfunctional family. In the first few issues, the Fantastic Four barely have the will to stick together. This collection provides an awesome arc, in that by the end, the four not only can stand each other, but love and trust one another like a real family - despite their various rivalries (Thing and Torch) and regrets (Thing, perhaps the most fun character to write, detests his permanent transformation).

On the other hand, the villains are usually pretty good, but the writers never hit their stride in this collection. Generally, Fantastic Four antagonists are either human or alien. Returning villains are largely human, perhaps due to the slowness of interstellar transportation. And they're generally really good; the Puppetmaster, Dr. Doom, and the Sub-Mariner make repeat appearances in this collection, and they all provide a viable threat. But my prediction is that FF gets REALLY good when its returning villains are aliens. There is one instance of that here - the Skrulls launch two offensives on Earth - and it's done reasonably well.

Perhaps it's unfair to compare this to a comic that came a year or so later, but this is not as good as Spider-Man. The writers of Spidey always found ways to keep us coming back the following week. Would Spidey take pictures and have enough money to eat? Would he ever meet that mysterious red-haired girl who keeps showing up? Will Aunt May pay her rent? They were little things, but they mattered to Peter, and they were our gauge of whether Spider-Man felt that he succeeded as a hero. With the Fantastic Four, there is as of yet no through-line. The most interesting one is Sub-Mariner, whose story comes to a climax with the annual issue, in which he finds his people and attacks the human race. His conflict between earth and water is a very interesting one to read. But the only reason early readers had to pick up the FF comic was to read more of the same. It's very good stuff, even with all the tropes that it follows, but it doesn't seem to have a purpose. The FF join and decide to fight crime on a whim; Spidey tripped over the crimefighting business while he was looking for work. The FF are good at saving the world, but I wish they were a little better at doing something else, too.

What DOES Yggdrasil mean?*

I've been sitting here trying to define House of Leaves, and it's one of the most difficult things I've ever categorized. It's a horror story, but it doesn't evolve or resolve quite the way you'd expect a horror story to work. It's a romance, but it's one of the most surreal, screwed-up romances ever. Even its designation of book within a book is hard to pin down, because House of Leaves -- the book -- itself appears within the story, which should be impossible given the circumstances.

Whatever it is, House of Leaves is crazy - and not in an Ophelia-crazy, this-makes-everything-make-more-sense-crazy. No, House of Leaves is off the wall. It begins when Johnny Truant, your average crack-smoking sex addict, finds the work of late blind man Zampano. He's been writing a book about the supposedly famous film The Navidson Record, although there are two problems. One, the movie doesn't exist, despite the book's numerous citations by other authors regarding the book. Two, Zampano could never have seen the movie because he's blind.

So Johnny starts collecting the old man's notes and constructing the book. As he works, though, he himself gets more and more paranoid. His prose starts to resemble Zampano's -- verbose, supremely tangential, and often nonsensical. And once you get into the meat of Zampano's story, you might start to get paranoid, too. The horror of the house is mostly psychological, but tangential enough to provid the book with substance. A minotaur and a shifting labyrinth are involved, but they all seem to be driven by the emotions and mindsets of the characters. Do you really want to know what's at the point directly behind your head, the one you can't see? And when's the last time you measured your house, to make sure it isn't really bigger on the inside?

All this psychological craziness would be pretty difficult to navigate without some outside commentary - beyond the two fairly unreliable narrators. Luckily, the book provides this - in spades, clubs, hearts, and diamonds. There are over four hundred footnotes within the book (not to mention the appendices and index, which comprise the book's final two hundred pages). Most of them refer to alternate critical takes on The Navidson Record, but since it only seems to exist in Zampano's mind, we already know that most of the sources don't exist. (Google a few. I did.) Still, if you look closely, the footnotes give away more than you think at first glance. For instance, some have code embedded in them, especially around the midpoint of the book, when the footnotes and main text start to resemble the labyrinth itself. One had a reference to a story by Jorge Luis Borges, but neglected to mention the source.

The book is very Borgesian in two different ways. First, as you can imagine with the rampant footnotes, plot centering around literary criticism, and verbose tangents, House of Leaves is a parody of literary criticism. Mark Z. Danielewski, the book's true author, worked on his magnum opus for around ten years. Just as I questioned the necessity of writing a book with capital letters or punctuation (Cormac McCarthy's The Road), I question the necessity of taking four hundred pages to make a point. The book is unbelievably dense; the first time I put it down was because I refused to keep reading through the rampant footnotes as they moved all around the page. If Danielewski wanted to be pretentious, he could, just as long as he did so very far away from me. I couldn't stomach it.

But the second time I nearly put down the book, on this reading, it was for a totally different reason: I was legitimately scared. This is the only book I can remember reading to give me nightmares. Beyond the literary criticism is a truly scary story, with almost Aronofsky-like** surrealist twists. I think it's partially effected by the second reason House of Leaves reminds me of Borges. By layering the story beneath madness, peer review, and three or four primary authors, Danielewski tries to make the story a myth in one fell swoop, without having to go through the pesky process of waiting five hundred years for his book to be deemed a classic and read by everyone. Characters whispering with other characters about the significance of a story we're reading now make us feel like we should be doing the same thing. The literary criticism does serve to make a point: the themes of the labyrinth, of blindness, and of observation and criticism are universal, they are important, and they should be considered.

As I said, I'm unsure how to classify this book, but I think that however you read it, the book will deliver. I think it's an important book, and it's certainly one of the most imaginative modern books I've read. It will stand up to years of analysis; the internet will help that, and readers won't get to the bottom of it for a while, if Danielewski worked as long as he says he did on it. But even if you don't want to fetishize this book and tear it apart in minotaur claws, it's a fascinating read. Just don't be surprised if you feel the need to measure your house or look behind your shoulder more often. I certainly do.

*It has something to do with Norse mythology, apparently.

**Darren Aronofsky is the director of the recent Black Swan, along with The Fountain, Requiem for a Dream, and Pi.

2010 in review

Everyone else, Jon Stewart said on his first day back after September 11th, 2001, has already checked in. Thankfully no such disaster happened on the first of January, 2011, but I'm one of the latest to the game to offer my thoughts on the year 2010.

For me, it was a year of marathons. This was the year I vowed to see all 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (I got in about 40 of them, which schooled me well for the jazz scene here at Oberlin). This was also the year that I decided to read 14 books at a time, then cycle through them and finish them on a schedule. Due to circumstances of that being a crazy idea, it didn't work, and a lot of the books I read this year went unfinished. In memory of that, one of the lists below will be the books I thought were good enough to go back and finish next year.

I told myself at the beginning of the year that I would keep track of all the books, movies, songs, and magazines I experienced, but around the time I came to college I decided that was a crazy idea, too, so I stopped. However, it's a mite useful on these review posts, so I'm going to do it again next year. I don't know if I'll hit all the best movies I saw and books I read this year, but I'll definitely try.

BEST BOOKS I FINISHED IN 2010

1. Under the Dome (Stephen King)

2. The City of Ember (Jeanne DuPrau)

3. Tales from Outer Suburbia (Shaun Tan)

4. Paper Towns (John Green)

5. V for Vendetta (Alan Moore & David Lloyd with others)

6. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party (M. T. Anderson)

7. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke)

8. Hamlet (William Shakespeare)

9. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

10. The Knife of Never Letting Go (Patrick Ness)

11. Henry VI, Part I (William Shakespeare)

12. The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis)

13. 1984 (George Orwell)

14. Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (David Shields)

15. Noises Off (Michael Frayn)

16. The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

17. Mogworld (Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw)

18. Full Dark, No Stars (Stephen King)

We start and end with a Stephen King book. These books aren't listed by preference, but by chronological order in which I read them, but Under the Dome is probably my favorite book of the year: long, engrossing, and tightly plotted. Shakespeare, dystopian futures, and comedy make appearances, including the staples Brave New World and 1984 -- both of which troubled me, but also entertained. Highly visual works are here, such as V for Vendetta and Tales from Outer Suburbia. And smack dab in the middle is the only marathon I managed to complete this year: The Chronicles of Narnia, in preparation for the role of Aslan.

Unrepresented here is a large amount of philosophy I read this year, particularly Aristotle. He turned out to be a bit of a misogynist, and The Republic was a little boring, so I included neither. Instead, I chose Reality Hunger, a vastly entertaining little book full of quotes and thoughts on the future... none original, but none found anywhere else, either.

BEST BOOKS I'D LIKE TO FINISH IN 2011

1. House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski)

2. The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)

3. Labyrinths (Jorge Luis Borges)

4. The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman)

5. Dragonhaven (Robin McKinley)

6. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larrson)

7. Henry VI, Part 2 (William Shakespeare)

8. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith)

9. All in the Timing: 14 Plays (David Ives)

10. A Game of Thrones (George R. R. Martin)

11. The Bedford Anthology of Literature, Volume 1

12. Will Grayson, Will Grayson (John Green & David Levithan)

BEST MOVIES I SAW IN 2010: Released in 2010

Alice in Wonderland

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I

Inception

Iron Man 2

The Kids Are All Right

Megamind

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

The Social Network

Toy Story 3

Worst movie of the year: Hot Tub Time Machine

BEST MOVIES I SAW IN 2010: Misc. Casual Viewing

12 Angry Men

(500) Days of Summer

Cloverfield

Company

Extract

Fantastic Mr. Fox

The Hurt Locker

In the Loop

The Informant!
Inglorious Basterds

Invictus

Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro

Minority Report

Monty Python's Life of Brian

Moon

National Lampoon's Animal House

Pinocchio

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Sherlock Holmes

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Spirited Away (Japanese dub)

This Film is Not Yet Rated

The Truman Show

Tron

W.

Where the Wild Things Are

Zombieland

Honorable mention: all Pixar films

BEST MOVIES I SAW IN 2010: Cinema History

Battleship Potemkin

Bicycle Thieves

Birth of a Nation

Bonnie and Clyde

Casablanca

Un Chien Andalou

Citizen Kane

The Dark Knight

Dog Day Afternoon

Double Indemnity

Duck Soup

The Gold Rush

The Graduate

Grand Hotel

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

In the Heat of the Night

High Noon

The Intruder

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Jaws

The Maltese Falcon

Meet Me in St. Louis

Metropolis

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Week

The Philadelphia Story

The Public Enemy

Rear Window

Safety Last!

Shoot the Piano Player

Star Wars

The Spanish Prisoner

Vertigo

A Woman is a Woman

The Wizard of Oz

This is a post on self-reference.

Welcome to 2011! Or, actually, the end of 2010. I'm a bit behind in reviewing, so here's the last few books I read in 2010 reviewed under one heading: self-reference. And what better way to begin a review of self-referential books than to say, "Here begins a review of self-referential books", right?

Self-reference is probably one of the more overused, and often delightful, tropes of post-modernism. Taken in the loosest possible terms, self-reference acknowledges the audience, and may tell the audience something about what they're feeling as they read the book (or watch the movie, or play the game). It doesn't quite break the guidelines of the story, but it leans on them enough for the reader to feel a little bit uncomfortable.

Failing that, it at least spices up the action somewhat.

Case in point: The Hunger Games is about the world's most brutal reality show. And right away, that's a comment on the readers, right? Reality shows have become one of the most popular television genres of the last decade, so most of today's readers are going to nod to themselves and say, "Yup, I might be watching this." Everybody in this dystopian future watches The Hunger Games live, as they unfold -- the poor districts have to watch it, but the richer districts that really get pleasure out of it are portrayed as rich, pompous assholes who don't care if a few children live or die.

The constraints of this particular reality show are these: In order for all the districts to remember who's in power (and I can't recall who is, but never mind, just call them Big Brother), each one must give one boy and one girl to the Games every year, and the kids (ages 12 to 18) must fight to the death. I'm speechless at how bad of an idea this is: it's supposed to remind the districts who's in charge, in order to keep them from starting a revolution, but sacrificing children just seems like it would hurt Big Brother more than help them, and indeed there are hints that a revolution might come in the next two books of the series. But the violent nature of the Games gives Suzanne Collins a few opportunities for very shocking moments. People are regularly starving or suffering from fatal wounds, and one character whom I and the protagonist both liked very much was killed without a second thought halfway through the book.

The protagonist's internal monologue focuses mostly on strategy, which is often necessary in the games, but sometimes feels excessively indulgent; she wards herself against threats that never come and don't seem plausible. She also ignores most emotions for other members of the Games, which comes back to bite her in the butt later on, both in terms of plot and in terms of me considering her more as a robot than a human.

The book always focuses on what isn't there. Kids in the Games perform for cameras; the protagonist wonders about what her crush at home thinks when she starts snogging the other guy from her district; and that strategy of hers is always thinking about where the other players are, and in what state. This gives a huge sense of isolation, and as a writer I felt cheated when perfectly interesting areas were mentioned and subsequently not explored. For example, there was a tall strong character who took up hiding in a reedy swamp, which sounded very interesting, but he was quickly dispatched offscreen.

This lets Suzanne Collins focus on the relationship (staged or not) between the protagonist and her district-mate, and this, I think, is where the book is compared to Twilight. I was a little disappointed that the book resorted to this, actually. There's plenty of action, but it all essentially centers around romance in act three, which gives the author a good chance to not resolve anything at the end.

Oh, the ending. Alfred Hitchcock had a saying. When a bomb goes off, it's shock. When a bomb is ticking, it's suspense. The Hunger Games ends with a ticking bomb - and no clue as to whether or not it will go off. Not only that, but it's a little uncertain as to whether there's a bomb at all. The protagonist has been overly cautious before, and it's entirely plausible that the ticking we're hearing is only a pocketwatch. I'm not sure whether to condemn or praise the book for this, because it's always nice to end with a little ambiguity -- see also Inception, my favorite movie of the year.

But then I remember that the suspense had nothing to do with the last words of the book, which were as follows: End of Book One. I've already talked a lot about sequels on this blog; do I really have to do so again? I understand how new authors might want to market their first book as a first installment of a trilogy, but Suzanne Collins doesn't even have that excuse; she's already a bestseller! The point of the suspenseful ending was just to get you to buy another book, and I feel cheated by that. If Eoin Colfer and Neil Gaiman can write their books with a little closure, then dagnabbit, other books can. Please stop doing this, youth authors!

Anyway, I can't complain about that because I'm not really the target audience. I was the target audience for Mogworld, though, and I'm not quite sure how to take that. Unfortunately, for the self-reference to work, you have to be in the target audience. Mogworld is essentially about an online role-playing fantasy game world gone awry, seen from the inside. (Oh, come on, that's not a spoiler; it's given away on the fragging cover.) So you're reading about your own actions as viewed by Non-Player Characters, and they all see the heroes of their world as pompous assholes who walk and talk very stiffly.

This isn't that new of an idea, but on the other hand, I can't remember the last time I read a book with a zombie protagonist, and it provides for hilarious results. The character is killed or maimed often without feeling pain, but keeps returning to his body, so it's very much like the author recreated the feeling of a game without actually incorporating a lives system. Not quite a MMORPG game, though; it's more like an adventure game feel. The protagonist in this case is trying to figure out what exactly is wrong with his world, and the finale is a climb up a mountain, rather than defeating a big baddie. Now that's mixed messages if I ever saw them.

The author is a game reviewer I watch often: Yahtzee Croshaw of The Escapist's Zero Punctuation. He's notable for his hilarious metaphors and pessimism, and it comes through in this book, as I expected. I didn't expect him to be so good at plotting and pacing, but he is. Each of the book's four parts is a self-contained little chunk that builds on the previous one until the climax. Occasionally he introduces too many plot threads at one time, and it becomes obvious that one will help to clean up the other, but his main character is so funny that I didn't mind.

I did mind when that main character was dropped off a bridge at the end, though, and then resurrected a few times. There are plenty of books and movies that do this, where the protagonist is reverted at the end to the state he began the book in, and that defeats the purpose of the novel for me. Sure, the zombie has obviously learned something in the final scene, when he makes a crucial decision that alters his future, but he's lost any relationships or philosophies he gained along the path of the book, and as a reader I feel cheated.

I felt cheated by Stephen King in his latest batch of stories, too. He uses self-reference to spice up his novels, and I'm sad to say that that's the last thing he should be doing. I read 'Salem's Lot a few years back and thought that the worst part about it was how King kept referencing the original Dracula story, at which point it became frightfully easy to predict every single thing that would happen. The horror was removed and replaced by dreary predictability.

Well, he does almost the same thing in Full Dark, No Stars. His prose remains masterful (but what else is new?), but his stories lack spark. In order, we have a murdered ghost story, a rape revenge, a deal with the devil, and a serial rapist husband. Those aren't stories, they're situations. I'm reminded of the time after the writer's strike when I sat in movie theaters and watched trailers that basically went: "This one is about a long distance relationship", or "This one is about robots". Anyone and their dog could come up with a plot for those movies, and the same goes for Stephen King.

I'll bet anyone's dog could think of a better ending than King, though. One's pretty good, one makes no sense, and two basically summarize what came before and send the reader packing. What happened to the great climax of Under the Dome? And furthermore, what about King's trademark bleak endings? In three of four stories, the protagonists get exactly what they want. What fun is that? I mean, King, I know you have to write happy endings sometimes to make it more dramatic when the hero dies, but you don't have to make it so saccharine! (For a horror story, I mean.)

Self-reference in FDNS just reminds us that we could be reading better books or watching better movies, while in The Hunger Games it points at the reader and laughs. There's a bit in Games when the protagonist snogs her boyfriend, then says to herself, "I'll bet the audience will get a kick out of this!" It's bits like these when we realize why there are no cameras visible in the Games: this book is the camera, and we are the Games's intended audience. Collins likes to lean on the proverbial Fourth Wall, and question our ideas of violence as entertainment, or other peoples' romance as a hot-button issue. In FDNS, the references to movies or books just fall flat.

On the other hand, I'm not sure what the self-reference to gamers in Mogworld was trying to do. The idea is that the humans create such super-powered artificial intelligence that it becomes self-aware, which is always a good problem to consider, but doesn't apply yet to game worlds. Moving the camera's spotlight from a hero to a protagonist, though, helps us consider that every person we meet has a backstory, and is on some sort of quest. A good sentiment, but it was less about the reader. Well, anyway, it was interesting.

Self-reference can be a blessing or a curse, or a bad metaphor (like the one I just finished). It appears to be here to stay in the post-modern era, but once you've broken down the fourth wall, do you have to create a fifth one just to break it down?

Part One

There is nothing more discouraging than reading an extremely long novel. Some of you may disagree with me on this, but I'd like to put forth one counter-example: The Lord of the Rings. So long it was originally released in three volumes, Lord of the Rings is one of those fantasy masterpieces you kind of have to read if you're a fan of the genre... but geez, is it discouraging.

A few years ago I tried to read the novel in a month. Bad idea -- I didn't get through it. Lord of the Rings is dense. As J.R.R. Tolkien famously said in his preface, "This tale grew in the telling." And what author hasn't realized how much a new world can expand? How about those Harry Potter books, or the legions upon legions of Tolkien rip-offs, such as Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time (now approaching 13 books)? The question is, are the things put in the book interesting?

It depends on what you like. Tolkien manages to stuff a bunch of different things into his book, though. First off, this is a road trip, so there's a lot of scenery. That's pretty nice, although it gets tedious in large quantities. However, the most boring parts of the scenery for me were the incessant names. Tolkien created a really deep mythology, yes, but the exotic names of rivers and land formations (and hilltops, for crying out loud) approach self-indulgence.

How dare I criticize the mythology of Lord of the Rings? Well, to be fair, I liked other in-depth parts. I like the frequent songs, and the stories of olden days are usually pretty interesting. These are fleshed-out and thematically linked to the story, and they make me want to go and read the dozen or so books Tolkien wrote as background material.

You see, The Lord of the Rings wasn't conceived as a novel. It was conceived first as a linguistics project, then as a world. The incredibly lofty Silmarillion that serves as a prequel was actually conceived first. Tolkien's purpose was to create a whole new culture, and that's a pretty ambitious goal. Considering the legions of fans who now speak fluent Elvish, I'd say Tolkien (somehow) accomplished it.

But the tale did grow in the telling, and what The Fellowship of the Ring's explicit, primary purpose is, is to tell a story. Near the beginning, this works rather well, but as the Fellowship convenes in the second half and moves closer to Mordor, the scenery, names, and mythology get more and more fleshed-out. To some, this is a good thing. But to me, I wished I could have lingered on those names and found out exactly what they mean, instead of reading them as a boring throwaway.

Also discouraging is that the book ends on a humongous cliffhanger. There is a long way to go yet, even if the next two books get progressively shorter and the problem of the One Ring is resolved about halfway through book 3. However, this also shows a lot of promise, because some characters' stories will become more important. Merry and Pippin don't get their spotlight until The Two Tower, so that's something to look forward to.

I'm reading this book from the perspective of one who's read it (mostly) once before, and loves the movies (and saw them first). The books hearken back to a beautiful time, and I'm being a little unfair with them. But really, would it kill Tolkien to give me a little more hope at the end of book 1?

On sequels: the sequel

I can tell you right now that this post will be less coherent than the last one on sequels. That's because I first envisioned this post a day or two ago, and since finishing my latest read (Monsters of Men, book 3 of "Chaos Walking"), I've adjusted my opinions somewhat, and yet I'm still attempting to write this.

Luckily, my dilemma illustrates the problem with sequels: the passage of time.

The conclusion I've come to upon finishing the second high-stakes suspense youth fiction trilogy I've read in recent memory (the first being The Aldous Lexicon, which began with A Crack in the Line) is that it's never a good idea to start out by promising more than one book. Why is this so?

Well, because no matter what you do, each book is its own distinct entity. Odds are that most writers will finish the first book, then spend ages editing the heck out of it, and finally begin work on the next one. On further drafts, though, the original intent of the book changes, a central theme comes forth which the writer may not have expected, and the thing ultimately becomes more and more cohesive.

And if, as a writer, you intend to continue the story past the point where you deliberately ended it at the end of one volume, that's not being fair to your creative sensibility. You're forcing yourself to work within boundaries, basically, and so your story will stagnate.

All this leads up to my review of Monsters of Men. The intention of this book is to wrap up all prevailing threads from previous installments. What will the protagonists do about the army banging down their front door? Do leaders of factions have any amount of good, or integrity, in them? Will Todd and Viola stay together, even after being split up yet again?

Bear with me on this theory, but a lot of these threads sound like the author pulling plot out of his ass. Example: there's a problem with metal bands affixed to women. There were no such problems implicated earlier in the series, and their solution comes quickly and arbitrarily near the end of the story.

There is exactly one bit of good done from this event, and it's this: further characterization of the Mayor. And he's only characterized more fully to get a better idea of the "Chaos Walking" theme (that is, the idea of men walking around with their thoughts open to the world). And this is the only point on which Monsters of Men really succeeds: by introducing creatures who have lived with this ability for generations, the reader is treated to the full implications of being able to read everyone else in a society. To which I say: well done, Patrick Ness (the author). As with The Underwood See, I feel like you've successfully wrapped the idea you first presented in The Knife of Never Letting Go.

But I wish you'd done that earlier, and mostly because of the writing style. Seeing, reading, and hearing about wars has made me feel many emotions, but rarely has it made me feel as irritated as in Monsters of Men. Ness has carried over the style of very brief chapters from The Ask and the Answer, this book's direct prequel. In The Ask and the Answer, this style made sense, because the book was about an eternal conflict and stalemate between two groups. But here, even though I see the conflict continues, it just gets annoying to read the same events from three different perspectives. Where The Knife of Never Letting Go had momentum, this book stalls and takes steps backwards.

Other annoying things: ending most paragraphs with a dash, to imply suspense when there isn't any; huge redundancies of prose, even though there should be some due to us hearing people's thoughts; ending each chapter on a cliffhanger. It's the kind of thing I'd expect from a Dan Brown novel, or from Peter and the Starcatchers. I was so bored I even did something I promised never to do again: I peeked at the ending to see if anything got more interesting.

Which leads me to my final point on sequels: if you write something as a direct sequel, while central themes may change, ideology will not. Monsters of Men ends on an ambiguous note; so did the first one, The Knife of Never Letting Go. The first Harry Potter book ends on a light and hopeful note, with the feeling of a return to normalcy. (SPOILERS.) So does the last Harry Potter. It boils down to this: given a similar situation, the author will end the story in a similar way. It's like fate.

So now that I've complained yet again, is there any hope for sequels? I believe so, because there are sequels that are good, or that establish themselves as separate entities from their predecessors (or both). The Lord of the Rings is the famous tale that "grew in the telling" as a direct sequel to Tolkien's The Hobbit. The second Star Wars movie (The Empire Strikes Back) succeeded largely because George Lucas stepped away from the director's position. The Narnia novels appear to be an exception to the rule of ineffective or inconsistent sequels, which may have been due to (A) Lewis's singular and strongly-held Christian ideology and/or (B) his insistence on treating each book as a separate entity. Note that Lewis never promised seven books, unlike J.K. Rowling's recent series, which (I felt) degenerated somewhat by the final book. Sequels hold promise for people who want more of the same, which will unfortunately not generate the same creative spark in the author that the original did. The best course of action, then, is to find a new book, and leave the author alone to his/her own devices, to come up with a new story.

Teenage Romance Wasteland

C.S. Lewis, in his Chronicles of Narnia, omits one important character from the finale. Susan Pevensie, the oldest female child from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, is not invited back to Narnia at the end. Why? Other characters give the reasons -- she's only interested in "lipstick and invitations" from boys. Furthermore, adds one, "Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can." So we can expect that C.S. Lewis had a similar perspective on life: that for every age, there is a season -- childhood, independence, mating, parenthood, and old-age all have their benefits and problems, but they are all meant to come and go. Such is the nature of life.

It is significant that Susan Pevensie is the only character in the Chronicles to have anything to do with love, particularly at such a young age. There are no other amorous relationships in these books beyond marital ones between older people.

Yet it is also significant that the movie version of Prince Caspian introduces the title character as a light love interest to Susan. It shows where our culture is going -- placing an emphasis on true love, and trust, and romance, from the time that kids are able to see Disney films.

The Ask and the Answer, sequel to a book I reviewed earlier, The Knife of Never Letting Go, seeks to establish the idea of love as one that transcends the factions (controlling and self-interested) that dominate our world. Whereas its prequel was a book about running, The Ask and the Answer mainly concerns itself with peer pressure, and the terrific resolve our protagonists have in the face of it.

I admire the book for taking on such a complicated (and yet simple) issue as the dichotomy of factions, particularly in a time when the US battles guerrilla warfare in the Middle East. With a leading figure named the President and torture devices such as waterboarding used, this books strikes very close to home as a relevant status of our national hypocrisy (as well as that of other countries). While two competing groups battle, everyone else is used as pawns, including civilians and the land's original inhabitants. Both, as we eventually discover, strike back with a vengeance.

I also have to admit that the relationship between Todd and Viola, which anchors our narrators' motivations, is movingly written. Their idea of complete trust and love is even more immortal here than those ideas of the factions. The betrayals, temptations, and double-crossing leaders that block their way make it all the more rewarding when they find each other again.

But I would further argue that such an idea, of love as a thing that transcends all boundaries, even those of the stage of life we live in, is unhealthy in the way it is presented in our current day media culture. The audience for this book (young adults) is being told that when the world collapses around you, there may be only one person you can trust. They're not only told in this book, either; it's a common trope. Consider how many pieces of young adult fiction begin with characters whose parents are missing or deceased. As in the Chaos Walking trilogy (composed of The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, and Monsters of Men), this is to cut all ties of trust barring that of one significant other.

Being a teenager, I don't know much about love myself. I believe in friendship, and bonds of love that can come between people who share an experience. I believe in familial ties, bonds which come partly from care given at a young age, and partly from knowing they are part of you. But as a teenager, I have no experience with the bonds that come from loving and trusting only one other person.

So however moving the scenes of The Ask and the Answer are, I reject their relationship as an improbable event. I reject it also as a near-impossible thing for young adults to fully understand without damage to their psyche, and unrealistic expectations raised for people they fall in love with. I find myself disagreeing with much of the current media storm's philosophies. Read this book and marvel at its twists, its unending stalemate, its monster of a villain, and its elegant construction of trust between characters (both between Todd and Viola, and between them and other people). But consider the problem of asking a youth to commit him/herself to one other person for the rest of his days, and what his answer would be if you questioned him about the nature of love.

Escapism

Every so often you hit a big work that you can't put down. For me, the books that have fallen under that category have included the Harry Potter series, The Golden Compass, Fahrenheit 451, and The Eyre Affair. Now I'm rediscovering why the Narnia novels have fallen so heavily under that category for half a century. Having put down The Last Battle, I find myself picking up the book and tearing through it to find my favorite moments and relive them. I muse on the perfect worlds beyond the Shadowlands, remember the friends like Mr. Tumnus and Reepicheep whom I've come to love dearly in the past weeks. And most of all, I mourn that there are no more tales of Aslan -- who, coincidentally, I play in my summer community theater.

Actually, it's not a coincidence. I fully intended, in this summer before college, to pick up The Lord of the Rings and attempt to read it again -- the last time, I got nearly all the way to Mount Doom before realizing I was bored silly, and stressed from trying to read too quickly. However, when I reached for The Fellowship of the Ring, I realized this: acting as a Narnian creature while reading about Middle-Earth would probably get confusing. So I stuck to the novels of Mr. C.S. Lewis instead.

Try to understand: The Chronicles of Narnia are a much more marketable franchise than The Lord of the Rings, at least for Hollywood. There is a significant difference between the two epic fantasies that mark the cornerstones of the genre. While The Lord of the Rings is a single book, presented in six parts, and often published in three volumes (thus necessitating a continuity of quality and tone through the three movies), The Chronicles of Narnia is made up of a book, its sequel, two more sequels, an interquel (coming between two books chronologically), a prequel, and a grand finale.

In other words: C.S. Lewis wrote more because the fans demanded he write more. Smart fans. C.S. Lewis wrote a lot, but these are his most-read books, and the most revealing ones. As a Christian, I found it deeply revealing and insightful to see my faith presented in a different light -- a light of alternate universes, talking animals, and battles for honor. The character of Aslan is great and terrible -- and in one word (LION), C.S. Lewis has hit upon the inherent contradiction that is God, and how lovely the contradiction is.

What this means is that each book stands on its own, as a story. If you ask me, I found that to be a good thing. It's why I liked The Hobbit better than The Lord of the Rings. (I mean, for crying out loud, one chapter in LOTR was literally called "The Old Forest". Pfah!) The reader might not like everything, but there's probably something s/he will like.

There are, of course, the accusations that Narnia is too literal, hitting you over the head with his Christian ideas. I suppose it's possible you'll enjoy these less if you're not Christian, or if you go into the novels without realizing this was the mindset of C.S. Lewis. However, I doubt it, because as whimsical, creative fantasy novels, these books work tremendously. Aslan is an astounding character whether or not you assimilate him to Jesus. The Last Battle is moving even without making the connection that it takes after the Book of Revelation.

There remains the question: in what order should you read the books? On my first outing (years and years ago), I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe first and all the novels starring Pevensies thereafter. This time, I started with The Magician's Nephew, and I think I got more of a feeling for the character of Aslan and his evolution in Narnia. (Aslan is the only character who appears in all seven books, and he becomes more obscure as the books progress in time.) Then again, though, several elements introduced in The Horse and His Boy and The Magician's Nephew only reappear in The Last Battle, so potentially the books work if read out of chronological order.

In the end, C.S. Lewis himself says that it doesn't matter. That's because this is spectacular stuff. We all need a little magic in our lives, and seven books is about the right length to get a reader really deeply involved. The characters, especially those who lasted several books, captured my heart (this is why The Horse and His Boy is inferior to the rest -- Shasta and company never reappear). I was sorry to see it end, but I know it has to end, as did Lewis's first readers. Eventually we must return to this world (for however short a period of time). But while you're staying in Narnia, it's a pretty damn good time.