Return of the Fluff (Inheritance Review)

It would be unfair of me to mock Christopher Paolini's 849-paged finale for being about four times larger than it should have been, and it would be cruel of me to call Inheritance a worthless steaming pile of cow dung (figuratively-speaking).  Those kinds of things would be unprofessional exaggerations.

But I am no professional.

Inheritance is the fourth and final book in the Inheritance Cycle originally kicked off by the teenaged Christopher Paolini and his "Star Wars plot meets the Lord of the Rings universe" Eragon.  The series is about a young man named Eragon who discovers a dragon egg in the forest and suddenly finds himself becoming one of the last Dragon Riders, a once-noble group of elves and men who worked together with dragons to keep the peace in the land.  That is, until Galbatorix and thirteen of his favorite buddies all but wiped out the Riders and set Galbatorix up as ruler of the new Empire.  After over a century of iron-fisted dictatorship, Eragon appears on the scene and joins the Varden, who have rebelled against the Empire in the hopes of restoring Alagaesia to its former glory.

Eragon, Eldest, and Brisingr (which I previously reviewed here) are conveniently summed up in Inheritance's first seven pages, which I found both very helpful and rather entertaining in an "I can't believe this is actually here" kind of way.  The plot is unnecessarily twisted and confused; I have to give Paolini credit for keeping everything straight because I cannot imagine any reader being able to do so, even with the 2000-word recap.  From there, you launch straight into battle, which is by far Paoloni's strongpoint.  The battles in this book, with the exception of Roran's scenes (more on him later), are excellently-written and meticulously crafted, if a bit gory.

Unfortunately, his attention to detail is also his great undoing.  I am not kidding when I say that you could cut out the first three-hundred pages of the book, slap them in as quick summary along with the other seven pages, and begin in earnest from there.  I cannot begin to count how many superfluous scenes litter this book: easily the majority of it.  I was being unfair earlier when I called Inheritance a worthless steaming pile of cow dung.  But in fantasy novels there is world-building, and there is fluff, and Inheritance is so fluffy that you'll suffocate before you find the animal underneath.  Paolini had originally intended for this quartet to be a trilogy, and I do believe that, with some simple editing, that could have been easily achieved.

Don't believe that the book is overly-long?  I challenge you to read the chapter in which Nasuada spends multiple pages obsessing over the fingernails of a character whose name you never even learn and see if you still feel the same.

The Plot (**WARNING! MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD**)

One of the two places where Inheritance really falls flat is here, in the plot line.  You get the sense that Paolini is simply going through the motions by book four.  He is completely incapable of letting more than a few minutes pass by without telling you about them, so while he continues switching POVs between Eragon, Nasuada, and Roran as he has for the past few books, nothing of particular interest happens for a very long time.  For those first three-hundred pages or so there are no twists or interesting turns of events.  The course stays steadily forward at a leisurely pace. Capture this town in the name of the Varden.  Assess damage.  Move on to next town.  Capture in the name of the Varden.  Keep heading north towards Uru'baen.  Fight, win, take stock, continue onward.  This is the kind of pacing suited for a video game, not a book.  Perhaps he wanted you to be as tired of this war as the characters are by the time they reach Galbatorix.  Whether that was his intention or no, I guarantee that you will feel this way.  If I had to choose one word to describe this book, it would be "slog".  The book should have started with the Varden's army outside of Dras-Leona, but instead you get to spend hundreds of pages reading about how three other cities fall to the rebels and how Galbatorix makes no attempt to slow their progression.

Some of the sub-plots work well enough - like watching Elva come to terms with her "gift" of feeling others' pain - but many are not explored sufficiently, and there are countless minor characters and "who the  hell was that?" moments that the author simply left open.  In a way, this keeps the plot more organic - do you know what has become of every person you've ever met? - but at the same time they just continue to add to the page count that needs no expansion as it is.

The biggest problem with the plot is a lack of opposition.  Sure, you only see the POVs of the heroes (though one from Galbatorix would have been awesome), but that shouldn't mean the bad guys aren't hatching any plots of their own.  Galbatorix and the Empire do not react.  They are like poor A.I. in a video game.  They simply wait for the Varden to show up.  How would The Lord of the Rings have progressed without the Nazgul seeking out Frodo?  How would Star Wars have changed if Darth Vader only used Star Destroyers to defend Empire-controlled planets?  Part of the appeal of the Harry Potter series was that Voldemort was always up to something and it was up to Harry to stop him.  There was a sense of urgency; if Harry didn't win by the end of the school year, the wizarding world was doomed.  In Inheritance the only urgency comes from the Varden's limited supplies.  If they don't do something now, then the army will disband - not die, mind you, but disband and go home to find some dinner.  That's not urgency, no matter how much the narrator tries to talk about how urgent things are.  It's no coincidence that the point at which I felt the plot actually began was the point in which one of the bad guys - Murtagh, one of the only interesting characters - appeared and hatched a freaking plot.  That was more than 300 pages in, more than one page for every oiled Spartan who followed King Leonidas to certain doom.  Paolini could learn from the Spartans and their efficiency.

In an odd paradox, though, I would almost argue that Inheritance is both too long and too short.  I know how retarded this sounds, but hear me out before you get the room with the nice padded walls ready.  That stupid fluff metaphor I used earlier?  The fluff made the book seem too long, but once you got down to the real plot - that is, once Paolini got away from spending pages describing fingernails and balls of mud (I kid you not) and suddenly remembered that a story was going on - it felt curiously rushed, like the author couldn't wait to move on to the next scene filled with completely useless knowledge.

Ultimately, though, there is little in this book that is really necessary for the reader to know going in to the final battle, and that's not the mark of a good writer, no matter how technically skilled Paolini's keyboardsmanship may have become since his almost laughable Eragon.

The Setting

By this point in the series, you should be pretty familiar with Alagaesia.  Eragon is from Carvahall.  The Haradric - excuse me, Hadarac - Desert is huge.  Galbatorix lives in Uru'baen.  To Paolini's credit, I found myself rarely looking at the map in the front of the book to try to figure out where in the hell the characters were.  You could watch the Varden's march from Surda to Uru'baen, and that was pretty cool.  By the end of Inheritance you will have seen nearly every place marked on that map, with the exception of the southwestern islands, one of which (Illium), appears to be named after a section of the human small intestine.  If only the islands around it were something like "Je'junum" and "Seecum".  But I digress.

A small beef I have with Alagaesia is that I do not believe that a land of that size has so few settlements.  Only about a dozen human towns on the entire continent?  I don't think so.  Paolini gives no indication that there are farmsteads, or villages, or anything one would expect besides the handful of places listed on the map.  You get almost no sense about how anyone other than the Varden feel about the state of affairs, either, except for the multiple people who actually boo and hiss the Varden once they "liberate" a city.  The citizens of the Empire do not welcome the rebel army.  You start to wonder if anyone under Galbatorix's rule actually wants their king gone, but unfortunately Paolini never tells you.  You have to take the narrator's word for it that the Varden are right and Galbatorix is wrong, so just for fun I started to read the book as if the opposite were the case.  You know what?  It still held, and in many instances it actually worked better.  Uh oh.

The Characters (**MORE MINOR SPOILERS HERE**)

This is the other area in which Inheritance fails severely.  I did something I don't usually do while writing these blog entries: I read some other reviews to see what other, less-harsh people had to say, and I found someone on Amazon who summed up Paolini's problem perfectly: "he does not build a world with a story and have characters drive the story forward; he drives the story forward and has characters along for the ride".  This is most particularly apparent in the ending (which I will discuss at the end of this entry), but the problem can easily be seen throughout all of the four books.

Eragon has grown since the first book, and one could argue that this series is first and foremost a coming-of-age tale.  Yet, by the end of everything, I still felt like Eragon was little more than a hollow shell into which the reader was supposed to insert him/herself, much like Bella in the Twilight series.  Eragon often displays emotions like anger, jealousy, and downright brattiness, but they're all so shallow and spur-of-the-moment that all they do is make him seem even more like a baby than he was way back in Eragon.  He is far too quick to despair when he cannot think of a solution, and his continued duels with Arya show just how childish he still is.  There finally comes a turning point in his maturity, but it is so late in coming that I had stopped caring long ago.

Saphira is one of the few interesting characters.  She is like a gigantic cat; her vanity offers one or two small moments of humor, and oftentimes she brings a certain directness to the table that the extremely loquacious humans, elves, and dwarves singularly lack (the two-leggers will discuss every possible angle of an argument any time two or more of them get together, which is both unrealistic and boring).  Unfortunately Saphira has hardly grown since the first book, and her one POV chapter felt more like an accidental photobomb that, like all of the other non-Eragon chapters, did little to progress the story.

Arya, the ever-unobtainable love interest, doesn't change.  This mostly makes sense, as she is an elf and has had quite a lot of time to develop her personality, but you find little in her to really enjoy as a character.  She's just there, constantly rejecting Eragon's advances (a scenario to which I can relate and in which I took a devious delight).  As Eragon begins to match her in magical abilities, you do start to see a friendship grow, but Arya has been nagged by this puppy for so long that I had a hard time believing she would ever come to regard him as an equal.

Roran is a horrible character.  He's the story's Rambo with no personality and a wife who also has no personality.  Roran's chapters are so thoroughly pointless as to almost be comical, and one scene of his in particular gets my award for "most stupidest scene evarr" for Inheritance.  It's the chapter entitled "A Toss of the Bones", involving a surprise attack on the Varden's camp during the siege of Aroughs.  If you've read the book, you know of what I speak.  I cannot think of anything Roran adds to the story other than a point of view of a soldier weak against magic.  This is indeed a theme in Inheritance, but it's nothing that a simple conversation with Roran during an Eragon chapter couldn't have fixed.  I was so tired of reading about Roran fighting for Katrina and his unborn child that I almost wanted the character to die just so that he'd shut up.  When you've come to the point of actually cheering against the protagonists, you know the book is in trouble.  Roran has a certain bloodlust that bordered on disturbing, and let's not forget the fact that at the start of this story this man was a farmer with absolutely no combat experience.  How he was able to constantly beat hundreds of trained soldiers is totally beyond me.

Katrina only seems to be there to give Roran something to fight for.  She and Arya are strange foils for each other in the romance department: where Arya is the independent woman who wants nothing to do with Eragon's advances, Katrina's only two functions appear to be housework and baby-making.  Both Katrina and Arya are extremes, and both are unlikable.

Angela is another prime example of pointlessness.  I'll discuss her in a special rant at the end of this review.  It won't be pretty.  I hate this character with a passion burning brighter than the light of a thousand stars.

King Orrin of Surda takes a bizarre turn in this book.  Specifically, this once-cheery and artistic king apparently decides to shirk his responsibilities and become an angry alcoholic.  He blames stress, but his condition never improves even when circumstances do, so I blame Paolini's issue with having the plot drive the character.  He needed King Orrin to become an antagonist to Nasuada, and so he wrote a glass of wine into the King's hand and a foul temper into his head so that things could continue on as the author required.

Nasuada's POVs throughout Inheritance are actually interesting and tend to show a different perspective on the goings on of Alagaesia.  Her chapters in the latter half of the book in particular offered some fresh scenes of not-action and not-endless-fluff (with the exception of the aforementioned obsession with a man's fingernails), but the whole thing falls apart when in the end you realize that her chapters, like Roran's, offered nothing but a distraction to the plot.  With everything she goes through, to see her as nothing more than a damsel in distress in the climax was extremely disappointing.  There were countless opportunities for Paolini to have done something interesting with her there, but alas.

Murtagh, like Nasuada, was one of the very few characters I cared for in Inheritance.  He is the series' Darth Vader, the character who is most torn between good and evil, but Paolini does not explore this near as much as he should have.  Though it would have broken from his previous books, it would have benefited the plot greatly if Paolini had done a chapter from Murtagh's point of view.  Just like Nasuada, though, Murtagh is thoroughly underutilized by the story's end, and that was a major letdown.

Galbatorix, as you might guess, finally makes his grand appearance, and I have to admit that it was mostly worth it.  I remember nothing of his physical description, but it's his voice that is his most distinctive feature, and Paolini did indeed do well here.  Galbatorix is, for the most part, a smooth talker, and you can almost feel the power in his words.  It was rather silly, though, how long it takes to actually see Galbatorix after you first encounter him; he remains in the shadows for so long that you just know Paolini was grinning as he wrote the scenes and muttering to himself, "Yeah this'll keep the suspense going!"  It was a cheesy effect that somewhat dampened the impact of the character's reveal.  And when the heroes don't do as he commands, his transition from smooth-talking politician to angry whiny baby was so sudden that it almost made Eragon look grown up by comparison.

Everyone else I had trouble remembering from past books.  Orik the dwarven king was alright in a jolly sort of way.  Elva the creepy girl Eragon blessed towards the end of the first book remained creepy and more or less unhelpful, but of course she offered to help out when Eragon needed it the most (even though her "help" amounted to absolutely nothing).  But the characters who had no business in continually popping up were the villagers from Carvahall.  Half the time I couldn't remember who these characters were supposed to be, and the other half of the time I simply accepted that their names looked vaguely familiar and moved on.  There was no reason to spend two solid chapters on the birth of a baby by one of the Carvahall women, especially since you practically never saw the baby's family members again for the rest of the book.

The Editing

As I said before, Inheritance is four or five times longer than it needs to be, meaning that about 80% of the book is pure, useless fluff.  Paolini's writing isn't exactly bad; in fact, it's grown immensely since Eragon.  But his editing and - more importantly, - the job done by his editor are offensively poor.  There was no reason for Brisingr and Inheritance to be two separate books.  That was a failing of epic proportions on his editor's part.  She should be fired.  I mean, come on, look at the tree that Paolini plops onto her desk:

That's downright insulting.  I'm pretty sure she just checked for spelling errors (ignoring the incorrect pluralization of Eldunari) and sent it off to be published.

Conclusion

If you've bothered to read the first three books already, then you might as well finish, but do yourself a favor and start with the siege of Dras-Leona.  Everything before that (and most things after) is completely unnecessary.  Many people have stated that they were disappointed by the number of loose ends left by the book's end, and while I agree that many subplots fell by the wayside and there were probably more characters that I didn't know than those that I did, there were at least as many reviewers who join me in saying that the book should have ended about sixty pages before it actually did, and that's not including the pronunciation guide, the glossary, or the acknowledgments (where Paolini gleefully hints that this is not the last book he'll write concerning Alagaesia, oh joy!).  But if you want to see whether or not Eragon finally defeats Galbatorix, then give this a shot.

But get your best swamp gear ready, because it is a slog.

The Ending (**OBVIOUSLY, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD**)

Many reviews I read were disappointed with the book's "imperfect" ending.  Ignoring the fact that the post-climax felt more like a history book than a novel and that its listing of events went on for far too long, I was thrilled by the fact that Eragon and Arya don't end up together.  The reader is never given any good reason as to why they should.  Their friendship was pretty well-established, sure, but romance?  No.  Hell no.  It shouldn't happen, and it didn't, and that was alright by me.  Paolini did himself a service by avoiding cliche, and for that I will applaud him with the lightest and slowest of golf claps.

Where I do not applaud him, however, is in his deus ex machina solution to taking down big bad Galbatorix.  Deus ex machina, in case you don't know, is a term generally used to refer to moments in stories where a solution just comes completely out of nowhere to fix the problem.  Toy Story 3's ending had this, and so did the ending for Inheritance.  Paolini messed up big time by making a villain who was simply too powerful, and the lengths he had to go to in order for the heroes to win felt more like a cheat code to beat the final boss of a video game than pure, honest ingenuity.

The sudden production of the Dauthdaert, a spear capable of penetrating all magic, was as mystifying as it was completely against the rules Paolini had already set up for his world.  Add that to Galbatorix's use of the Word of Words, and you have a climactic scene that was less about the clashing of characters as it was a cheap manipulation of Paolini's magic rules.  The scene's entire set up was a rude imitation of the climax of Return of the Jedi, with Galbatorix watching as Eragon and Murtagh duel with their colored swords.  But where in RotJ you see Luke Skywalker realize what he could become and defy it, here you just have pointless swordplay and Eragon defeating Galbatorix through the power of understanding.  But, unlike a similar finale for a certain Orson Scott Card classic, this felt like an unbelievable letdown.  After almost three-thousand pages, Eragon pulls some unspoken magic almost literally out of his arse to force the mad king to feel the misery he has brought on his people until he blows himself up?  Come on.  There were too many violations of the magical world which Paolini had established for this victory to feel properly won.  1) The Dauthdaert used to take down Galbatorix's admittedly awesome dragon was too out-of-nowhere, 2) the Name of Names suffered from the same problem, and its effects were never clearly explained (did it completely dispel all magic, or did it just alter magic to the speaker's liking?), 3) To my knowledge Eragon had never even performed an unspoken spell before, and they supposedly take such a degree of concentration that Eragon, near death and in the most stressful situation of his life, could hardly be believed to have pulled off a spell so great that he forced the most powerful magician in the universe to live every moment of a thousand lives.  The most fitting end would more likely have been something to do with Eragon's and Galbatorix's true names, but those things, which had seemed so important to know before the fight, were never brought up.

The whole scene, from the random children as hostages to Nasuada's uselessness to the pointless fight against Murtagh, paled in comparison to the same scene from Star Wars, which was written by George Lucas, the same man responsible for Jar Jar Binks and Kinect Star Wars.  I can hardly think of a greater insult, but Paolini earned it.

Speaking of Nasuada, I cannot over-stress my disappointment in her story arc.  It held such promise.  She and Murtagh had a thing going on during her imprisonment that was - finally! - the first decent bit of romantic tension we've seen in the entire series.  He promises to help her escape, and I was expecting some great moment when he'd do just that and get her out of there just as the Varden begin their final attack, but what happens?  The Varden attack "a day before Murtagh can get his plans in order", and it all amounts to nothing.  And since you see no one's POV but Eragon's after the victory over Galbatorix, you are left wondering how Nasuada feels about all of this, and that was, for me, the greatest letdown of them all.

One more quick note on a controversial point about the ending: Eragon's self-imposed banishment from Alagaesia.  This is a prime example of Paolini moving the plot forward and bringing the characters along for the ride rather than building a character-driven story.  Eragon appears to come to this decision because of the prophesy Angela made in Eragon (Your fate will be to leave this land forever.  Where you will end up I know not but you will never again stand in Alagaesia.  This is inescapable.  It will come to pass even if you try to avoid it).  So, to appease his own fate (read: Paolini's wishes), Eragon decides to pack up his things and all the dragon eggs and sail to the Undying Lands - I mean, whatever lies east a\of Alagaesia.  While I actually understand Eragon's thought process that goes into choosing to train the new Dragon Riders outside of Alagaesia, there is absolutely no reason as to why Eragon "will never return".  Perhaps secretly he does not like Roran, or Orik, or Arya, so he uses this as an excuse to get away from them.  That's how I read it, but perhaps that was just because I didn't much like those characters, either.

Either way, I understand Eragon's decision, but the only reason I know of as to why he will never return to Alagaesia, despite having a flying dragon, is because fate said so.

The Rant of Angela

I like wise, goofy characters.  Yoda and his bizarre speech, Master Splinter and his insistence upon ending each of the old TMNT movies by "making a funny", even Pai Mei and his "contempt for women" in the Kill Bill films; these are great characters.  Despite (or perhaps because of) their humor, you learn just how bad-ass they are over the course of the story.  Their humor shows a certain childishness about each of them that endears them to you.  They show their skills to prove to you and the heroes that they are to be respected, and then they guide the heroes on their journey with wisdom so pure and simple you would be a fool to ignore it.

Angela is a spoof of these characters.

I see no greater failing in Paolini's writing than in Angela.  As Lost fans may tell you, a good mystery does not mean that you answer no questions but raise a hundred more.  But that is precisely what Angela does.  Throughout the Inheritance Cycle you are barraged with references to Angela's past and how awesome she is, yet you learn nothing about her.  There are passing references about her former master and that she visited the elves at some point, but that's about all you get.  She's quirky in a way that teaches Eragon nothing (like how she knits a sweater to ward off rabbits, or how she tells him to beware of earwigs and wild hamsters).  Perhaps strangest of all, she knows of atoms and other scientific things that feel wholly out of place in this fantasy world; though, as ever, you are not even given a hint as to how she has come across such knowledge.  And after saying, "What am I?  Chopped liver?", she had the following to say:

"What a strange expression," said the herbalist.  "Who would compare themselves to chopped liver in the first place?  If you have to choose an organ, why not pick a gallbladder or a thymus gland instead?  Much more interesting than a liver.  Or what about chopped t--"  She smiled.  "Well, I suppose that's not important."
-Inheritance, page 265 (hardback American edition)

As a nursing student, and thus someone who actually knows a little something about the organs mentioned above, I take offense to this sad attempt at wittiness.  A gallbladder is not interesting, I assure you.  It is a storage sac.  And, again, Angela's scientific knowledge receives absolutely no clarification.  I would have accepted just about any explanation, even something like "she's a time-traveler from another dimension", but you are given nothing but idiotic jokes about a small sack of bile.

A character cannot be wise and revered simply because the narrator says she is so.  Angela does show her combat prowess both with magic and her profoundly stupid lightsaber, Twinkledeath (which is of course the most powerful sword in existence, though apparently not as powerful as the Dauthdaert, but that's okay because the Dauthdaert is a spear).  But combat skills do not make one wise.  In the cases of Yoda, Master Splinter, and Pai Mei, each one is an undeniably great fighter, yet the reason why each is revered is because they teach their heroes something about themselves that becomes key to defeating the villain.  They help their students succeed.  They show the viewers some way to look at life that they might not have considered yet.  Angela's only usefulness is to give a prophecy that imposes the author's will upon Eragon and then refuse to die for the rest of the series, despite my most sincere wishes.

It is my understanding that Angela is based on Paolini's sister - also named Angela.  I am not sure how strong that base is, but Angela sticks out so badly in the world of Alagaesia that I have no choice but to believe that she is a fair representation of Paolini's sister.  It almost makes me feel bad, to so strongly detest a character who is in fact based on a real person.  Perhaps that is why I would believe it if Angela were to say that she has time-traveled from another dimension: she basically has.  Paolini has transplanted his modern-day sister into a medieval-style fantasy.  But in the end, all the character has done is cheapen the world Paolini has spent nearly three-thousand pages to painstakingly create.

I hate Angela the herbalist as I have never hated a character before.  I am not exaggerating when I say that I would rather read an entire novel about Jar Jar Binks' indigestion than read another scene involving this witch.  She is an affront to the very concept of "wise" - a concept that must be entirely foreign to our dear Mr. Paolini.

Ancient Egypt is... Interesting? (The Red Pyramid Review)

While I impatiently wait for Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Last Olympian to come out in paperback, Rick Riordan has not been so idle.  In fact, he has started not one, but two new series!  One of them appears to be a continuation of the Percy Jackson series starring different kids, but the other is entirely new, called The Kane Chronicles, and its first entry is called The Red Pyramid.

Where Percy Jackson & The Olympians dealt primarily in Greek mythology, The Kane Chronicles does the same for Egyptian.  Carter and Sadie Kane are the brother-and-sister duo who take turns narrating, and they are about as wildly different as you could ever imagine.  Carter grew up with his dad traveling from dig site to dig site, museum to museum, while Sadie grew up in England with her grandparents following the death of their mother some years ago.  At the start of the novel, their dad takes them both to a museum in London, where he performs a ritual of magic on the Rosetta Stone, which promptly explodes and unleashes five of ancient Egypt's biggest dieties.  Thus begins a whirlwind of gods and magic, with Carter and Sadie right in the middle of it all.

If you've read the Percy Jackson series, The Red Pyramid should feel quite familiar.  The kids narrate in much the same way as Percy Jackson, and many of the peripheral characters are just as zany, like their uncle's baboon who only eats things that end in -o (Cheetos, cherios, burritos), or Phillip, the huge albino crocodile who guards their house.  Riordan's ability to take myths thousands of years old and paint them in a new and relevant way continues to shine through with his take on Egypt.  I'm proud/embarrassed to say that I knew quite a lot about Greek myth and was able to pick out more or less everything Riordan threw at the readers in Percy Jackson, but my entire knowledge base of Egyptian myth comes from "Stargate-SG1" and The Mummy, so you could say that I was a touch limited.  I can't speak for Riordan's accuracy in his myth retellings, but the explanations he gives are easy to understand, make perfect sense within the context of the story, and are terribly interesting, particularly in the way that he deals with conflicting myths and times when brothers and sisters are sometimes husband-wife, or even mother-son.  Only Riordan could make that so unconfusing.

The Red Pyramid keeps the same blistering pace of the Percy Jackson novels.  The kids hardly spend more than a chapter in one location before being chased elsewhere, barely managing to escape before the goddess of scorpions, just to name one, turns them into afternoon snacks.  It is The Red Pyramid's fast pace that makes it so suitable for today's ADHD, gotta-have-it-now generation of kids, but adults may find it a little too fast.  I admit that my reading preferences do match that of a 12-year-old boy, but even I sometimes wished that things would slow down a little.  It's not that there isn't character development - the two kids in particular are well-thought out and fun to follow - but sometimes it just felt like there was a little connection missing.  Percy Jackson had the same problem, like the characters moved too fast for me to truly see them.

Where The Red Pyramid shines is its portrayal of magic.  Again, my knowledge of Egyptian myth is about as limited as my knowledge of Hungarian folk dances, but I'm assuming that Riordan has done his homework and created a brand of magic as close to that of ancient Egypt as possible.  Have you ever noticed that this is what young adult fiction novels do?  Your typical teenager (Carter/Sadie, Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, Eregon, even Luke Skywalker) is thrown into a new and magical world and subsequently spends the majority of the first book (at least) learning all about that new world while at the same time stopping some kind of destructive force.  Well, The Red Pyramid follows that same old formula, but the world created here is one of my favorites that I've ever encountered.  If you think that Egypt is dead, or that myths about Osiris or Anubis are irrelevant to today's world, check this book out.  I dare say you may think differently when you finish.

I can't wait for the next in the series.  You had better hurry up, Rick Riordan.  Your books are addicting.

We're Not Worthy! We're Not Worthy! (Notes on The Knight and The Wizard)

GoldenPigsy's been waiting for this one for a long time, since before I even had a blog, I expect.  Two years ago, I studied abroad in Australia, and Pigsy gave me his copy of Gene Wolfe's The Knight.  Being the dutiful, perfect friend that I am, I read it during my time there.

And understood, at most, 2% of what I read.

I got the basic plot down, that a teenaged boy from America writes to his big brother Ben about being transported to another world, one that is actually seven worlds in which humans inhabit the 4th and middle one, called Mythgarthr.  After a little while, he gets transported to the 3rd world, Aelfrice, where Queen Disiri turns him into a full-grown, beefy man.  He returns to Mythgarthr and begins his quest to find the legendary sword Eterne, for when he finds it, Disiri, whom he loves greatly, has told him that she will see him again.

Mind you, this is a long, dense tale, and what I just told you is pretty much what they write on the back of the book, so clearly my understanding by the end was somewhat limited.

I didn't bother with the sequel, The Wizard, at the time, but for some reason I made sure to buy not only The Wizard but also my own copy of The Knight before returning to the states.  I don't know why.  I think that using foreign money makes it feel like you aren't spending anything at all.  Also, prior to that, I happened across $170 of Australian money on the street (I kid you not; three $50 bills and one $20 fluttered across the sidewalk one night, so I scooped them up, looked around, saw no one crying over lost cash, and took them myself), so really you could say that God wanted me to buy these books.  He also apparently wanted me to buy a Nintendo DS game (Hoshigami Remix), some green tea frappachinos from Starbucks, a blanket, some alcohol for my boxed-wine-guzzling friends, and multiple $3 busrides to and from Circular Quay (where the Opera House is), but that's besides the point.  That money was meant for The Knight and The Wizard, I am sure.  Call it divine intervention.

Now that I have had a bit more experience with reading, I decided to have another go.  This is the primary reason for my lack of book reviews lately: I've been reading these two books since I finished Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire a month ago.  I've never been a fast reader, but these two books just take a long time.  But I finished them both... finally... and can now report to you what I've observed.

Let me start by saying that this is not a proper review.  I am not qualified to give these two books the review that they deserve, nor am I sure if I know anyone who is.  As I said, these books are dense, and by that I mean that there's more going on than just the plot.  In high school, GoldenPigsy and I read Dante's Divine Comedy (which was not, as the title may suggest, a retelling of Jim Carrey's Bruce Almighty starring Dante from Capcom's Devil May Cry game series).  Our teachers informed us that Dante's three poems had four layers of meaning, derived from an old way of interpreting Biblical scriptures:

Literal (what happened?)
In the Second Circle of Hell, Dante watches as famous lovers - like Paris and Helen from the Trojan War - are flung about by tempestuous winds.

Allegorical (meaning behind what happened as it relates to us)
The winds whipping the lustful around like ragdolls represent the chaotic nature of desires of the flesh.

Moral/Tropological (what have we learned today?)
It is wrong to give in to temptation, for lust is as unpredictable and temporary as a storm.

Anagogical (meaning behind what happened as it relates to life beyond our world)
Giving in to sinful desires of the flesh will throw your spiritual life into turmoil.  (I'm pretty sure I butchered that, but who really understands anagogical interpretation, anyway?)

In other words, for every scene, there are, in a way, four scenes.  Think of them as four different-colored lenses through which you read the text, thus putting Dante and other interpretors of Biblical scripture centuries ahead of their time in terms of fashion.

As it turns out, Gene Wolfe converted to Catholicism upon marrying a Catholic woman, and this heavily influenced his writings.  The world represented in The Wizard Knight series will illustrate this point in a moment, but first, allow me to talk a bit more about The Knight.

The Knight is a first-person narrative told in the form of an absurdly long letter written by an American teenager, who takes the name Able in this new world, to his older brother Ben.  Able rarely takes the time to properly explain what's going on; in fact, you may turn to the next chapter to find him somewhere else completely, without the slightest bit of detail on how he got there.  You'll more or less hear about it later, so that by the time you finish both books, you know the full story.  You just have to be patient and trust that Able will explain things later whenever you read a section and say "what the hell?"  This also includes several little asides and remarks where he'll mention some character whom you haven't even met yet, like if he talked about some type of sword and said, "ah, yes, Pigsy was always the best with those."  If you've never met someone named Pigsy, you can understand why this can be a difficult read for the first time through.  He writes these things, obviously, after everything has already happened.  The difficulty comes with the fact that Able almost expects you to be in the same position as him: having already experienced everything he talks about.

Anyway this is a story about "Sir Able of the High Heart" and his transformation into the knight he always wanted to be.  Initially, The Aelf queen Disiri turns him into a large, hunky man physically, but the remainder of the book is all about him being a knight in more than just his muscles.  He learns from a knight named Sir Ravd, he fights bandits, he travels on a ship, he takes up service with a duke, and he travels north - towards the land of the Giants - to hold a mountain pass until winter in service of said duke.  When he makes a promise, he keeps it.  His love is only for Disiri, and he will not be with any other woman.  He strives to be just and fair, just as Sir Ravd was.

The first time I read this, I really didn't get Able as a character.  It was my own fault; I misread some things and skimmed over others, so I thought Able brutish and unjust, when in fact he is neither.  He's a great character, a good model for other knights.  Because, you know, we have so many of them around nowadays.  The reason I thought him brutish and unjust during my first read-through was mostly because he can be, um, forceful, when situations call for it.  Not overly-violent, mind you, but he asserts himself when needed, and to the unaccustomed eye it can look as though he's just throwing his weight around because he can.  Let's just say that you don't see a lot of compassion in his actions; he's not meant to be a Christian example, after all.  The human world here has a decidedly Norse flair to it, so think Vikings, not Jesus.

The Wizard picks up right where The Knight left off, only several portions of the narrative are Able's telling of another character's - primarily the squire Toug's - adventures separate from Able (that he later hears of from the characters themselves).  After the events of The Knight (which I won't spoil for you), Able takes on a certain magical quality that makes him almost literally a god amongst men.  All of his friends are busy dealing with the Giants - Lord Beel has been instructed to serve as ambassador to them, and his daughter, Idyn (which I think is a lovely name), is to wed the King of the Giants - and much of the second book is devoted to dealing with these fleshy pillars of anger (they are called the Angrborn, after all).  The Wizard maintains the style of The Knight for the most part, but Able is considerably wiser in The Wizard, so there is more discourse on the nature of the worlds and the history behind the different beings Able encounters.

It is the set up of the worlds that I found to be the single most fascinating aspect of the series.  Mythgarthr, the world of the humans, is the fourth world in a heirarchy of seven.  The world above ours is called Skai, which we see above us in the form of clouds, the sun, the moon, the stars, etc.  Below us is Aelfrice, whose sky... is us!  Trippy?  I thought so.  When the Aelfs in Aelfrice look up, they see us.  There is no sun, but light is supplied by whatever is in Mythgarthr.  Below Aelfrice is Muspel (think of the base of a volcano), where dragons dwell, and below that is Nieflheim/Hel.  Take a guess who lives there.  So, ascending: Hel, Muspel, Aelfrice, Mythgarthr, Skai, Kleos, Elysion.  As you go higher and higher, the beings become more and more perfect, meaning that the uppermost world entirely consists of "The Most High God".  This guy, a perfect being, decided in the beginning that he wanted to create something, so he made the second world, Kleos.  However, since he was perfect, anything different than him must be by definition imperfect, so while the beings of the second world are near perfection - in fact, they are angels - they are not quite perfect themselves.  The excess/unwanted materials from the second world were then used to create the third, Skai, and so on and so forth.  Skai is where the Overcyns live, who are, essentially, the Norse gods like Thor and Odin (called here Thunor and the Valfather, respectively).

Doesn't that make a little too much sense, theologically speaking?  Gods like Thor and Odin (and, I like to think, Zeus, Hera, Apollo, etc.) are one world above us, with angels above them, and The Most High God above everything.  So The Most High God is a god over angels, who are gods over the Valfather & Co, who are gods over humans.  This makes us gods to the Aelfs, who are gods to dragons, who are gods to whatever lives in Hel, meaning that, while it's okay in The Knight/Wizard to worship the Valfather and pray to him, the one who deserves the most worship is The Most High God.  It's like Gene Wolfe found a way, using Catholic/medieval hierarchies, to toss multiple theologies into one, coherent world, and I think that's bloody brilliant.

I can't say it better than GoldenPigsy did in a recent email, though, so I'll let him further explain:

The levels of the world are a conflation of Neo-Platonic Medieval/Catholic cosmology and Norse myth about the levels of the Yggdrasil tree. Mythgarthr is Midgard. Skai is Asgard. Utgard, the giant's castle, in Norse myth is the name of a realm on the same level as Asgard, but separate from it. Nieflheim in Norse mythology is the roots of the Yggdrasil. Muspell -- this will be no surprise to you -- is the fiery realm of dragons.

The upper two are not variations on Norse myth. Kleos is literally what certain Medieval thinkers thought outer space was: a realm of angels. The highest is simply God and nothing else. The way the worlds are stacked is in keeping with the hierarchical structure that Medieval people applied to practically everything. Divine right of kings ring a bell? You have authority the closer you are to God, and the people beneath you look up to you as a model in order to become more like Him. The peasant looks up to the duke who looks up to the king who looks up to the Pope who looks up to God. The son looks up to the father who looks up to etc. etc. In The Wizard Knight, The Valfather is the model for earthly Kings, for fathers and rulers. Thunor (if I remember right) is the model for Knights and sons and retainers. The King is the model for dukes; the Knight is the model for squires. Michael (lol!) the archangel is the model for the Valfather. Who's the model for Michael?

Yeah. There's a few different valid interpretations of what's going on. There's an adventure/fantasy story here, and it's an awesome one, but there's more to it than that.

Wolfe is brain-melting good. Didn't I tell you so?
 
Yes, Pigsy, you did (several times), and yes, you were right.  One of the most brilliant settings I've encountered in a very long time, one that made me think about my own beliefs and how I view the world.
 
Because the events were related directly by Able himself, sometimes (read: often) you get the feeling that he misinterpreted what he saw.  Certainly it's common to feel as though he didn't tell you everything, but this is apparently part of Wolfe's style: narration told by the main character, who is constantly unreliable.  If you're looking for a straight-shooting story, this is not it, but if you want something that will make you think, then check this series out.  I never thought I'd be glad to have my brain feel as though it was back in high school English class, but there you go.  Oftentimes I felt like I needed a pen and a notepad, and I mean that as a compliment, both to the richness of the books and the skill of dear Mr. Wolfe.

And for the record, I was entirely joking when I suggested that they turn the game Too Human into a videogame version of these books.  While Too Human could have done well with the basic setting of The Wizard Knight, it goes without saying that the style of the books could not possibly lend to a videogame.  I fear that it would turn into the recent Dante's Inferno game, which seemed to have achieved the setting without too much trouble (but a giant Cleopatra who births badguys out of her breasts?  Really?), but utterly botched/didn't care about the spirit of the original poem.  It'd be kind of like turning The Hunger Games into a videogame, as well.  Can you imagine a videogame that actually requires you to hunt down and kill other teenagers?  You'd basically be playing Halo 3, and nobody wants that now, do they?

'Tis but a Scratch (The Warrior Heir Review)

If you're wondering where my book reviews have disappeared to lately, the simple answer is that I'm in the middle of a two-book series that's so dense it's taking me forever to finish.  In the meantime, though, I realized that I never did write a review for a book that I read before Collins' excellent Catching Fire, so I'll do that now.

The Warrior Heir (Chima, 2007) is the first in "The Heir Trilogy".  To be honest, it caught my eye almost exclusively because its cover looked interesting in a cheesy-cool kind of way, but who hasn't done that with a book before?  The Warrior Heir is written in - what's it called? - third-person omniscient, where the main character is "Jack" and not "I", yet you still know what he's thinking.  It occasionally jumps around to other characters as the author sees fit, to give you a fuller story and to try to not confuse you, though, as you'll see, Chima doesn't entirely succeed.

The story primarily follows Jack, a teenager with a rather odd problem.  He'd been told all his life that he was born with a heart defect and had to undergo special surgery, so he's always had to take some medicine prescribed to him by a doctor from London, Dr. Longbranch, but one day he forgets to take it, and suddenly he finds that it's as though a haze has been lifted from his body.  His senses are sharper, and he's much stronger and faster.  As it turns out, he's part of a line of Weir - a secret group containing Wizards (magic missile!), Enchanters (these aren't the droids you were looking for), Soothsayers (look into my crystal ball), Sorcerers (here, I made these special anti-poopstain underwear for you!), and Warriors (um, hyah?).  From the title, I bet you can guess which one Jack is.

To put it bluntly, I didn't care for this book.  To put it a bit more accurately, I didn't really care one way or the other about this book.  I found out that it's Chima's first (I seem to be making it a habit of reading "first" books lately), and boy does it show.  Not only is her plot weak, confusing, and meandering, but her editor should be shot.  Typos abound, and there were two occasions in which the same thing was said twice - once by a character, once by the narrator.  It was sloppy and embarrassing to read.

The characters are alright - Jack's your typical, bland hero who's as clueless as you are.  His Aunt Linda's persuasive and highly dominant in all her scenes, and Jack's two best friends - Will and Fitch - show at least a little personality here and there.  There's the neighbor with a secret (Snowbeard, as if you'd never guess from his name), and the mentor with a dark past.  Not to mention all of your typical "schoolyard" stereotypes.

A good writer can have a clueless protagonist while still keeping the reader interested and aware of what's going on, but when the reader becomes even more confused than the hero, you know you've got a problem.  The latter is how I felt with The Warrior Heir.  All Weir are born with a stone inside them indicating what kind of Weir they are (wizard, warrior, etc.; you know, like Dungeons & Dragons classes), but Jack was born without one, even though he was technically a Weir.  How someone can be Weir without the stone that makes them so, I don't know, and I don't recall Chima ever sufficiently explaining it, but that's what happens here.  Even though he was meant to be a Wizard, the most powerful of the Weir, the doctor from London (a Wizard herself) decided to experiment on him by implanting a rare warrior stone while he was a baby.  Wizards, you see, hold a tournament every so often to determine which house (Red Roses and White Roses - of the "War of the Roses" from your history book) will hold the most power until the next tournament.  Each house brings a Warrior champion, and they fight to the death.  Therefore, the Warrior Weirs have pretty much gone extinct, which is why Dr. Longbranch gives Jack medicine to subdue his powers: she doesn't want other Wizards learning of his existence until he's ready to receive training from her and her Rose house (whichever one it is; I don't remember or care).

Maybe it's just that my memory ain't what it once was, and that I'm in the process of reading something somewhat similar that blows this one out of the water, but this book was riddled with plot holes the size of Jasmine, my 18-pound cat who at this very moment is doing that weird kneading thing to the bit of blanket on my feet.  Jack and his friends join his successful Aunt Linda in a hunt for a special sword, Eterne - excuse me, Shadowslayer - that helps draw out Jack's powers or something.  It's so hard to say, because Jack shows abilities both of the Warrior and of the Wizard, but no one ever tells you which one is which, so when Jack starts shooting fire out of his sword, I actually thought that was him being a Wizard until another Warrior does the same thing later.  Anyway, once the plotline with the sword comes to a close, you enter another one that I guess you could call the "training" montage, though during the entire sequence Jack is never given a reason for why he is being trained.  He just is, and that should be enough.  Turns out, of course, that he's being trained as a Warrior champion for an upcoming tournament, in which he will be pitted against another Warrior in a battle to the death.

It is this last bit that serves as Chima's big mystery for like the whole second half of the book: who is the Red Roses' champion? (now that I say that, I recall that Dr. Longbranch is with the White Roses.  Now you can sleep tonight)  The problem here is that I called it before it was EVER brought up to be a mystery.  I won't ruin it for you, of course, but the twist was so obvious that it just made things boring, like "yes, yes, we KNOW who it is, please Chima, you're killing me, and I wish you'd do the same to your editor."  Add in other ultra-typical elements, like the school bully who specifically has it in for Jack, the ex-girlfriend who tries to mess with Jack's emotions, and the "I'm getting so cool and important that I'm forgetting my friends" subplot, and you have one of the most standard - possibly sub-standard - young adult books I've ever read.  Again, I can't strictly say that it was a bad book (save for atrocious editing), but it definitely wasn't good.

That being said, my wife read the next two in the series and could not put them down.  She more or less felt the same as I did about The Warrior Heir, but from what she says, The Wizard Heir and The Dragon Heir are much, much better, which is good to hear.  I like seeing writers improve, and Chima needed it.  I'll let you know how the next ones are once I get around to them, but I expect it'll be a while.

But please, don't expect much from the ending.  The climactic moment was so out of left field, so impossibly unpredictable, that it was nowhere near the "aha!" moment that I think Chima wanted it to be.  I'm trying to think of a sufficiently similar example out there for you, but nothing's coming to mind.  I guess... imagine the Helm's Deep sequence of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.  Remember how it ends?  Now imagine that you had NEVER BEFORE been introduced to Gandalf or Eomer and had only vaguely heard mention of the Rohirrim prior to that moment.  Would you be a little confused?  Would you feel like it was a bit of a cop out on the writer's part?  I don't know if I've ever been so disappointed with an action-adventure's finale before.  Ugh.

Hungry? Why Wait? (Catching Fire Review)

I waited as long as I could.  Really.  After reading The Hunger Games, I immediately went out and bought the sequel, Catching Fire, before I realized that this may not be the best idea.  The Hunger Games was really, really good (in case you didn't read my review).  It was the first in a trilogy about a young woman, Katniss, who lives in a world where twelve oppressed districts are ruled by the Capitol.  Each year, the districts must hold a "reaping", where one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 are chosen to compete in the Hunger Games, an annual "celebration" held by the Capitol to remind the districts of who's in charge.  See, several years ago, the districts rose up against the Capitol in rebellion, but they lost.  Now the Capitol holds all the wealth, all the power, while the twelve districts all but starve in the most miserable conditions one can imagine.  Anyway, twenty-four teens are chosen for the Hunger Games.  They are thrown into a large arena.  The last one surviving is declared the victor.

Sound depressing?  I suppose it is.  The Hunger Games was an emotional ride filled with small gems of happiness amongst an onslaught of pain and misery.  Twenty-four teenagers are thrown against their will (except for the "Careers", but that's another story) into this arena.  Twenty-three must die while their parents and friends are forced to watch the highlights, as if this was some football game being covered on SportsCenter.  That any glimpses of humanity could be found within such a dark world is remarkable, yet the story that Suzanne Collins has unraveled here is nothing short of awe-inspiring.

So, why did I not want to read Catching Fire yet?  Well, the third and final book of the trilogy's not out and won't be until August, that's why.  I thought perhaps I could hold out until at least July before reading Catching Fire, but I cracked.  Call it weakness.  Now that I've finished it, things are just as I feared.  I have to try to keep myself together and not go crazy from anticipation.  If The Hunger Games was really, really good, then somehow, Catching Fire was even better.

For some reason, when I started reading this series I thought that this was Suzanne Collins' first book series to write, but I was quite wrong.  She's been writing since 1991, and has even written for some Nickelodeon shows like the excellent Clarissa Explains It All.  Eventually, she tried her hand at novels with the five-part The Underground Chronicles series before tackling The Hunger Games.  As a budding writer, this came as something of a relief, for if this had been her first book series, I may have cried.  It just wouldn't have been fair for someone to be so good so early on in their career.

I'm going to be as spoiler-free as possible, but I won't hide the fact that your narrator, Katniss, survives the first book and is once again your eyes and ears.

Over the course of this book, I finally figured out why this series does such an absurdly good job of taking hold of your heartstrings and slinging them around like some mad spinster.  The books are in first-person.  This puts you right in the action and, if the author's good enough (which Suzanne Collins is), will trick your brain into seeing the events of the books more as memories than a fictional story.  What keeps your brain even more actively involved in the story is that Katniss narrates in the present (as in, "she hunts for food", not "she hunted for food").  It may sound strange, but it works disturbingly well.

Catching Fire picks up right where The Hunger Games left off.  Let's just say that "unrest" is the name of the game here, as the events of the first book have set things in motion that might not be able to be stopped, and Katniss is right in the middle of it all.  What amazes me about this series is that Katniss is a very intelligent girl, yet often times her sound reasoning leads her to assume things that are incorrect, so that when something counter to her expectations happens, not only can you instantly see why her assumptions were incorrect, but the surprises manage to be genuine without being cheap.  Plot twists abound, yet never did I once think "what the hell?"  A few twists actually garnered an audible "oh no!" or a "craaaaap" from me, and I rarely, if ever, speak with my books.  Oh, and darn it all, but this one had a moment that made me cry, too.  I'd say that reading from a girl's point of view has turned me into one, but that'd be sexist and rude, so I won't.

To be honest, I don't have much else to say about Catching Fire without spoiling things.  Katniss and the characters around her are deep and fascinating and constantly full of surprises.  This book will keep you glued to the edge of your seat for the entire ride.  You will not be able to put it down, and you will not, as I must, be able to wait until the final book hits the shelves this fall.  Please do not miss these books.

A Quick Note on Percy Jackson & The Olympians

Just in case you're wondering where the reviews are for the other Percy Jackson books (and you know you are), here's the deal. I finished the third one (The Titan's Curse) and am almost done with the fourth (The Battle of the Labyrinth). I will probably wait until the fifth and last (The Last Olympian) hits paperback, since all my others are paperback and I'm OCD enough to want a complete, unified set. As far as reviews go, I'm not going to do proper reviews of the rest of the books but will probably do a series review upon completion.

This is mostly due to redundancy: I pretty much have the same things to say for these books as I did Book 2. They're funny, they're terribly clever, they're inventive, and they impress me to no end in terms of bringing the old myths into modern settings. The characters (namely Percy and Annabeth, but certainly the others as well) mature tremendously and have become compelling personalities in their own rights. The Titan's Curse is probably my least favorite so far, but that's like saying Finding Nemo is my least favorite Pixar movie. They're all very, very good - even the "least impressive" one.

Don't miss out on this series. You'd be doing yourself a terrible disservice.

Been a While, Eh? (Hunger Games review)

Check out the date of the previous (and by that I mean first) post. Big gap, wouldn't you say? Like the space between the front teeth of Sara from CSI. Well, here's the deal. I came to the conclusion almost immediately after making the first post that I'm trying to write a book, and I don't really get a lot of time to do so. Therefore, the time that I can spend writing should probably go towards said book. Not expecting anyone to read this. I would like for people to read my book. Simple, utilitarian calculation. Write what more people will read. Not too complicated.

I'll admit, I don't know what brought me back to the blog. I think it's because I've been reading more, and I'd like the opportunity to review some of these books. I think it's also because I'm tired of writing my book, and I need something else to do for a little while. Any college student who has lived on a diet of Wheat Thins, raisins and ramen for months on end should be able to sympathize with my desire for a bit of variety.

Writers, inventors, engineers, artists: ever come up with a potentially great idea, only to find it staring at you from a bookshelf or YouTube video or museum wall? I was blessed with one such experience recently. I can't really complain - it was one of the best books I've read in a long, long time - but there's still a certain level of disappointment, a wish that you could have been born just a little bit earlier so that you could beat out this other creative person. But no matter. The joy from the experience of reading this book far outweighed my disappointment that someone else had brought my idea to life in a manner far superior to anything I could hope to accomplish right now.

What I discovered was a book entitled The Hunger Games. By "discovered", of course, I mean it was recommended to me by a friend. I don't exactly get a lot of reading time these days, so when someone recommends a book to me, I can be hesitant, as my pile of "to be read" books is quickly ascending. But the individual in question is one whom I trust very greatly in matters of creativity - he's the Gandalf to my Frodo, in that regard, the Obi-Wan to my Luke - so when he said that it was probably the best thing he's read since Harry Potter, I had to listen. "Use the force, Luke"? Try, "Read this book, Camel."

And man, I'm glad I did.

The Hunger Games (by Suzanne Collins, 2008) is told in 1st-person, which has always been hit-or-miss for me. It stars Katniss Everdeen (as good a name as I've ever heard), a 16-year-old girl whose no-nonsense attitude shapes the narrative into an easy-to-follow adventure full of far more turns than I expected. It's young-adult fiction; however, its subject matter is anything but adolescent. It's set in a country called Panem, which is made up of twelve districts controlled by the Capitol, an overbearing, oppressive entity that keeps each of the districts separate from each other with all manner of strict guidelines because the districts rebelled a long time ago. There were 13 then. When the Capitol quelled the rebellion, District 13 was completely destroyed, as an example to the others ("Who's unlucky now?" I can hear the president - played by Ah-nold - quip as he punches the button with the label "FIRE ZE MISSLES"). But since that apparently wasn't enough, the Capitol created the Hunger Games, an annual event in which a boy and a girl (between 12-18 years old) are randomly picked from each district and thrown into a massive arena. There, the 24 teens fight to the death until only one remains. The Games are televised, and all of the districts are required to watch as their children slaughter each other. As an added dig, the districts have to treat the Hunger Games like a celebration. I don't know about you, but watching my 12-year-old son get impaled by some 18-year-old punk from another district doesn't sound like a moment worth celebrating.

I have to commend Suzanne Collins for even believing that such subject matter would make for good young-adult fiction in the first place. It's a hard, dismal book, and you wouldn't expect there to be much love. You wouldn't expect Katniss to show much tenderness, and you wouldn't expect there to be many twists and turns once the 24 "tributes", as they are called, enter the arena. You would, of course, be wrong. I don't know if I'd call myself sentimental when it comes to stories - I cried in Cast Away when Tom Hanks lost Wilson, but I consider that to be a fluke, a momentary flash of weakness on my part brought about by the raging hormones of my adolescence - but one particular moment of The Hunger Games caught me off-guard - during a break at work, for goodness' sake! - and brought tears to my eyes. Collins' writing, her style as much as her subject matter, is what caught me. I can honestly say that I don't recall how things were worded, whether or not she used lots of adverbs or prepositional phrases or whatever, because the way she wrote was truly enchanting. Truly. It flowed so well and spent just enough time on each detail that for the entire book I felt as though I was imaging the scenes, not reading them. And since it was in 1st-person, I felt like it became my story. It was about me. Nevermind the fact that Katniss is a girl, and I am not (the knowledge that my brain so easily imagined itself as female is a bit unsettling, but I'll let it slide for now). When someone nearby talked to me, or one of the cats (particularly Jasmine, the 18-lb Thundercat) jumped into my lap, it was as though I was being shaken from an out-of-body experience. The effect was jarring; I haven't felt so heartbroken to leave a fictional world since last I read the Harry Potter series, which was a while ago now.

I loved every second of it.

The narrative is simple; some may come out of a scene saying "wait i want to hear more about this detail or this person or this setting piece!" I did, too, until some little light turned on in the empty cavern reserved for my brain, and a tiny voice, like that of the red alien from Space Jam (pre-NBA powers, naturally) told me that that was the point. "Use your imagination!" it squeaked. Then a deeper voice told me to just wait for the movie (2011, woohoo!). Red-alien-voice said, "That's what you said about The Golden Compass!"

Touche.

Point being, if you want to exercise your imagination, read this book. It gives you the outlines and the paint. You just have to color in the lines.

I just picked up the second in the trilogy. The bad news? Book 3 won't come out 'til August, 2010. I may be in trouble.

As a completely unnecessary sidenote, I couldn't help but laugh every time District 9 was mentioned. I'm sorry, I just couldn't help it. I kept imagining that the two teens from District 9 looked suspiciously like the crawfish aliens from the movie of the same name, and that they would be lured into a trap by a well-placed can of cat food, only to be blown apart by a strange lightning-gun. Call me immature and ridiculous. You'd be precisely correct.