This is a series I can’t stop reading for the simple reason that the characters are engaging. The plots are very all-over-the-place, the descriptions of scenes and images are often hard to understand or a little clunky, the diction and language are inconsistent and a little annoying, but Chance has done something some well- and tightly-written fantasies have failed to do for me: she has utterly and truly engaged my interest with what happens to her characters, even the most insignificant ones.

Unlike the other series in the genre I’ve read, Chance is willing to do some crazy things to her characters. And I’m not talking “dangerous” things or “complicated” things — I mean crazy crazy things with hilarious results. Like swapping bodies. Like compromising situations involving time travel, famous historical events, and mage conspiracies that turn things on their heads. I really enjoy those moments. This series is much more light-hearted and comedic than the other series, definitely full of self-referential tongue-in-cheek moments that make me giggle. Sometimes a good giggle is a lot more effective to me than a good moment of action or a good dramatic moment. Not saying I don’t get plenty of enjoyment out of series with little humor, but it’s a different kind. If I could satisfy all of my reading tastes and desires with a single book or series, forever, then I wouldn’t be the wide-ranging voracious [fantasy] reader that I am. The Cassie Palmer series fills a gap, satisfies a need/desire for me, and perhaps that’s why I keep reading it. No other series has such a clunky, goofy, naggy, whiney, amusing heroine who interacts with such interesting main male characters. (Pritkin is my personal favorite; I suppose that means I am a Cassie/Pritkin shipper? Dare I say it? I never usually go for the vamp when there’s a choice, and Mircea is no exception. Crazy battle mages for the win!)

Midnight’s Daughter, an off-shoot novel to the Cassie Palmer series, was not a necessary read before Curse the Dawn but because I’d read it, I had a more enriching experience, I think, because the action in that novel sort of bisected this one (off-screen) a bit. Also, Cassie sees a photo — or several — of Dorina, the main character introduced in Midnight’s Daughter, and having read Midnight’s Daughter I understood the ironic context of Cassie seeing the photo. Without that knowledge Cassie’s suspicions and jealousy wouldn’t have been as amusing. But reading that novel wasn’t necessarily necessary to the series, but considering they’re set in the same world at the same time I have a feeling that Chance is shaping things up to coincide between books. There’s a huge conflict she’s building toward and between the two series, she’ll be able to show two different sides of it (the fey side, and the vampire/mage side). I’m also assuming there will be character crossover, as there was already some crossover with Mircea in Midnight’s Daughter.

All in all I enjoyed this book. Books 3 and 4 of this series were much better than 1 and 2; based on that I can’t wait for more. If you enjoy urban fantasy and humor, with a little dash o’ crazy thrown in, this is a fun series for that and you may as well dive right into it, starting with the beginning.

Firstly, the book was excellent. I love this entire series. It’s different from a lot of the other series in the genre for a few reasons, but the main one is the world. It’s set in a slightly futuristic time in a world where magic and technology intermingle and often cancel each other out (well, when it comes to magic canceling out tech, really) and the world is built up so well, you’re utterly and unquestioningly drawn in. That rich world layers the present action with a lot of depth, as well as allowing a huge backstory to unfold in a skillful way that doesn’t feel too clunky — in part because of how slowly and deliberately it’s revealed. (Any story can have a backstory this richly developed but the trick is in the way it’s revealed and therefore absorbed by the reader. If it’s all thrown out immediately, or infodumped in the middle/end, it’s hard to process.) That and the entire series so far is very well-paced. There’s a very comfortable unfurling of overarching series plot going on across all of the books that I am really enjoying as well as each book’s individual plot. And each book does have a distinct individual arc, which both complicates and helps to enhance the series plot. As much as I really want to know what will happen… it’ll keep. I’m enjoying everything as it’s been written. Yes, I want to know some things, but enough has been said, implied, and foreshadowed that I am quite happy to keep reading. (Twitch. I keep telling myself that I can wait patiently, anyway.)

I also love this series compared to many others for two other major reasons: the first is Kate herself (a true female hero if there ever was one) and the fact that there is no distracting, drama-ridden love triangle or ridiculous battle over the “many men” who love Kate. Nope. It’s straightforward and singular and I love that. The love plot for each book is simple, pointed, and clear, with as little drama as possible — which fits Kate. She’s not one for drama, and her love life (whatever there is of it) shouldn’t be made into the tug-of-war some authors make for their female main characters. (I am thinking of two series in particular; if you read the genre you probably know which I mean.) She just doesn’t have the time nor the energy to care too much about it and if it were any other way than the way it is, I wouldn’t enjoy the series half as much.

More specifically in Magic Strikes I enjoyed the interaction between Kate and Curran (as always, their witty interplay and chemistry is wonderfully amusing) and the structure of the tournament idea. The whole underground fighting idea has been done but it was used here in an entirely new and interesting way in keeping with this world and its style, and I enjoyed that. I really enjoyed getting to see a different/deeper side of Saiman, and getting to see the developing relationship between Raphael and Andrea (lovelovelove her!), especially as it compares to (and is totally different from) Kate and Curran’s. Getting to know more about Kate was exhilarating, as was seeing the promise of battles to come through well-placed hints and some obvious comments.

I’m thrilled at the way this series is shaping into something subtly grander and more epic than I’d initially anticipated. It’s growing into an epic urban fantasy series and I love that. And it’s not losing its voice or sense of characters, either, as it grows into a larger and more epic framework, which is so vital.

I can’t wait for the next installment in the Kate Daniels series, as well as the new book set in a new world that’s coming out, On the Edge. Keep them coming!

I’ve read the Cassandra Palmer series to date — three books, the fourth is coming out in April 2009 — and when launching into this novel, I was glad I had. Karen Chance definitely made me feel as if I needed to have not only read all three of those books but also the short story in the anthology On the Prowl (which I have read), too, to really get an appreciation for the story’s situation. That said, that’s not necessarily a bad thing on her part — plenty of authors love confusing me with that sort of thing, so she’s not alone! — but I still felt a little annoyed because it didn’t really mention that anywhere on the book before I’d started reading it. So yes, having read those helps, but in retrospect they weren’t entirely necessary, as her vampires and the magic system is fairly basic and works off of a lot of canon lore (her vampires have all the usual strengths & weaknesses, plus levels of mastery that yield interesting results). 

Basically, Midnight’s Daughter was all right, but then again, I’m the first to admit I’m both easy going about saying I enjoy a ton of books while having ridiculously high standards for books that go that next step from enjoyment to adoration. (Or obsession.) I wasn’t obsessed with this book, but you know, that’s quite all right. I didn’t race through it — honestly, some of her language tripped me up a little and I had to reread things to be sure I was getting the meaning, and still wasn’t entirely sure I’d gotten it — but I definitely was grabbed by the plot and characters. Louis-Cesare is Mmm, of course — I was wondering if he’d get his own book when he featured so prominently in the Cassandra Palmer books – and Dory was a fun character, if a little abrasive with a voice that didn’t really match her character. (Would a 500 year old half-vampire — dhampir – really speak like that? Really? Oh, first person narration when it’s not quite there.) But I sort of loved Radu (teehee) and the whole thing with the “Dracula” family? The brothers, Dory’s place in it, the history, I have to admit, it kept me interested.

Having gotten used to Karen Chance’s style, I can’t say I wasn’t expecting the way a lot of this book was going to unfold. Her unpredictable plots are predictable in a strange and amusing way. I like the way she’s imagined the Fey (proper creepy/pretty Fey, yes! None of this cutesy crap) and I definitely am a fan of any series that has battle mages and people who are half-things and therefore have to deal with crazy family or genetic issues that result. (More Claire! More Claire!) Plus, I have to admire a writer who just plows forward with world-building and drops detail without getting heavy-handed with the explanation — she doesn’t really explain about magic or they Fey the way she might, the way other authors have, and I like that. She left the end open enough for a sequel or sequels and I admit, I’ll check them out.

So yes, Midnight’s Daughter was quirky, fun, random, and it definitely helps to have read Karen Chance’s other books, but it was still enjoyable.

If you don’t normally read fantasy but you like mysteries, I’d recommend this series because it certainly doesn’t read like Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files or Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson books, for instance, both of which are very fantastic in terms of the amount of fantasy elements and lore involved, the amount of actual magic that happens, etc. The Greywalker series leans more toward ghosts and thus has a decidedly historical and retrospective bent to it, because ghosts usually bring up issues of the past and/or crime, both of which themes play influentially large roles in each book of the Greywalker series. The lore that actually does pop up is historical, ethnic, or scientific in substantiation, which is really unusual. I enjoy it.

An example of this more technical lean to the urban fantasy elements, from Underground itself, comes in the form of a point one character makes to another about mid-book regarding the improbability of the existence of werewolves:

Everything I’ve seen tells me that magic tends to respect the laws of physics — kind of freaky physics, but lawful physics. For total form-shifting to happen in less than, say, a couple of days, max, it would have to break conservation of mass, conservation of energy, and the laws of thermodynamics at the very least. If shape-shifting does exist, then it’s an illusion, not an actual form change — unless it happens very slowly, which doesn’t seem to be the case. If someone were to change from human to wolf he’d have to make a whole lot of physical changes very rapidly, shedding or gaining mass and using up a ton of energy. There just isn’t enough elasticity in the system to allow it — he’d burst into flames from the heat of the energetic change alone.

I’m a dork; I like that sort of explanation.

I liked the book. I think I liked it better than Poltergeist, book two, which was decidedly strange. This one was decidedly strange, too, though. Harper Blaine’s world of the paranormal in Seattle, WA is so interesting and I have to admit, it sucks me in regardless of how weird or technical Richardson gets. She also had a lot of Indian legend/myth stuff in this one, as well as a lot about Seattle and its history (well, the last two had that too) and I enjoy that. Her descriptions, though, strike me as either lyrical or not explicit enough, which is fine, but sometimes when she describes Seattle I get lost because she’s going just a step short of a whole staircase, and I can’t see the image she’s drawing for me. I have never been to the west coast of the United States so it’s really hard for me to visualize Seattle, for instance, which I haven’t seen a ton of in movies or TV (unlike Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Las Vegas, for instance). When she takes for granted that I know things, I get miffed; if she were setting this book in a fictional series, she’d have to be more thorough, but I guess she can get away with assuming we know what things look like. I tend to prefer an author build the world of the story regardless of how well known the book is. Take New York City and make it your own, for instance, don’t just assume we all know what it generally looks like. It’s the slant of the narrative voice on that description that makes it pop from the page into my mind’s eye, and sometimes Harper’s voice just didn’t do it for me.

Yes for the plot surprises (or not so surprises?) though. Yes for the minor character development. Yes for her love life’s shift. (The book isn’t romance so it handles the love life in a really good way — classy and realistically without distracting from the main plot or sacrificing character.)

What’s weird is this book fits into the category of books for me that I can put down and walk away from comfortably. It’s not a thwwwp book by any stretch, though the last five or so chapters were thwwwp-ish, mostly because I’d given the book that much by then so I had to know what happened. But I’m reading it and sometimes I’m thinking, “Why? What is the element that keeps me reading?” General curiosity, I think. Not overwhelming need-to-know curiosity. Chalice was like that, too, usually, and so have the last few Dresden Files books. But what’s weird is that I no longer mind in the way I think I would have been annoyed about a few years ago. I enjoy books so long as I like them and they hold my attention and interest above all other distractions — they don’t need to suck me in. (Though of course I love a book that does that.)

I’ll pick up the next in the series when it comes out, no doubt. Now on to Small Favor by Jim Butcher.

I enjoyed it a lot, but it brought up a lot of issues with me (independent of the novel itself) that I found I was thinking about while reading this, especially because I read her blog and have a sense of who she is apart from her novels — and because I analyzed two of her books for my senior honors thesis and because of that I find I think of those books often.

Firstly, the book was not broken into chapters but sections and parts, similarly to Sunshine. The third person narration was smooth and zigzagged and jumped back and forth through the story’s timeline to flesh out the characters and narrative in a way that was distinctly McKinley and natural, but in a way I think may confuse young readers. (Even The Hero and the Crown‘s structure tripped me up as a precocious 14-year-old when I first read it.) Mirasol is really well-drawn and she was full of contradictions and she made mistakes and learned from them. I liked that bit a lot. (Of course I always like protagonists who are (1) clumsy, (2) mistake- or accident-prone, (3) full of faults or have one large fault, either recognized or not, etc.) The Master is also terrifically interesting, flawed, mysterious, and unusual. None of the other characters really stuck with me in anything more than in a “name-with-description” sort of way, though, and while I don’t mind in this case, I think I would have been bored with this story had it not pulled me along with a series of quick scenes, bursts of image and snippets of world-building detail, and a very tight attention to the storyline. The plot simply follows Mirasol’s perspective as she works to orient herself to her new position and then heal her land, second-guessing herself the whole way, which was interesting in that this book was really solely about Mirasol. I suppose I’ve read enough books lately with multiple plots or converging storylines that it took me a moment to settle into this narrative but in hindsight I really did appreciate and enjoy it.

The book was also short. I found I was mostly through it before I realized and I was pleasantly surprised about it. It felt right, too. I love it when a novel seems to stretch to perfectly fit inside the space in which it is written, rather than having a feeling of being condensed or too drawn out. It is lovely when a novel hints at a richness of world but only hints, rather than demanding to show you everything the author has come up with and figured out. I always prefer worlds where the author clearly knows ten times more about the world than any reader will ever actually know — or at least the author succeeds in giving the impression of such a rich world and tricks the reader into believing his/her mastery of it.

The language was consistent and distinctly British-y, with an old flavor to its diction, vocabulary and its prose in general that I both enjoyed but found I was hesitating over, wondering how young would be too young to encounter this book. Its story and themes lean toward the G-rated fairy tale at times but its language is much thicker and more difficult than a reader younger than middle school would be able to chew through easily, nor would it probably sustain the interest of a younger reader. Bryan is someone who was — and still is — frustrated by books where the language is more of a barrier to image than a vehicle for its further evocation, if that makes sense. I find myself often writing to a Bryan reader, or a younger version of myself, as my imagined reader (I always find I write with one in mind). This imagined reader is rarely the Chalice sort of reader.

In that regard I kept finding myself wondering about literacy issues and getting children and young adults into reading in this age of computers, video games, and instant-gratification entertainment. I’m fiercely interested in attracting readers who may normally not read a book and get them into my world, to pull them in deep enough that they might want to stay a while. This is not to say that a book like Chalice can’t do that but I think it’s a harder sell to a kid than say, Twilight, which is a terribly sad thing, considering how beautiful, warm, evocative, and wonderful Chalice was compared to… well. I won’t rehash it here.

I wondered, during and after reading Chalice, if Robin McKinley, with a book like Chalice, could be considered a writer’s writer. And if so, is that a good thing? I think it is. Heck, I want writers to read my work and say, “Her writing is something.” Don’t all of us want that kind of peer-level validity?

Look at where this “review” has gone. I’m so terrible at reviews, aren’t I? I riff, really, which is definitely why I do call them “reactions” — I think that’s a more accurate term.

Back to a “review”: I liked it. It’s my first hardcover purchase in who knows how long (I am cheap and proud to admit that I use libraries and second hand books and all of that to get my reader’s appetite fulfilled) and I’m glad I made it. I’ll read it again. It was multilayered. Its world was relatively simple and clean — no messy histories or backstories thrown in, but hinted at, slowly brought in as it pertains to the main plot. Which I loved. While there was a lot of telling — a lot of telling — the language was lovely and the scenes she threw in between the exposition to show earned those passages of expository telling. None of the passages seemed inserted or forced, which can really irratate me in a fantasy novel. Everything fit with the style of the narrative, as well. So yes, I recommend it.

Back to Princeps’ Fury: it was both excellent and fairly surprising — in a good way. (I’ll keep it general until I give you the spoiler warning.) The characterization, plot, and pacing were all as excellent as in any other installment of the series — the events involving the secondary characters were treated with the same gravity, care, and patience as the events around the protagonist, Tavi, which is something that deterred me from the first book (I love me my hooking protagonists) but ultimately drew me back in and made me appreciate the world anew in the successive books. In a lot of epic fantasy (I mean it, here, to refer to fantasy series where events happen on a large, world-wide scale), I tend to get pulled toward the main plot involving the protagonist because it’s simply the most interesting and exciting, ultimately making all secondary plots/characters annoying and more bland by contrast. (Robert Jordan & Terry Goodkind do this quite a lot.) Butcher doesn’t do that. He gives us enough reason to care and root for the secondary cast as he gives us reason to root for Tavi, but without diminishing Tavi’s importance. The secondary characters and plots are simply different, but commutatively crucial to the overarching plot of the series.

Now for the potential spoilers. You’re warned.

I adore Tavi. The terrific characterization given him (and his band of merry cohorts) is so excellent and so consistent. Except for Max perhaps being a little too annoying, I enjoyed his plot the best. The interplay between he and the Canim was excellently portrayed, and I especially loved the “Tavar” name given him by Varg. Kitai shined, as usual, but expressed an interesting gravity of emotion that was not so “feminine” as demonstrating a maturation of her and Tavi’s relationship that really moves toward deep, devotional, permanent love, and I liked that a lot; it was done organically. In other plots: Isana’s was so exciting, hilariously surprising and yet typical, and very emotionally moving. I loved the revelations about Septimus and their past that Isana, naive as she is and has always been, learns along with us. I love that we’re not learning what she’s always known in that regard; it would change her character if she had been aware all along of what Antillus Raucus and Aquitanus Attis have been. I enjoyed that a lot. That, and her juris macto challenge had me gasping with shock, awe, and glee. I enjoy that the resulting fight was completely in character for her, too, with the defensive movements and the desire to talk, emotionally, with Raucus; she’s not Araris, nor Tavi, and through her I can see how Butcher is really working to demonstrate Tavi’s difference from Gaius Sextus in terms of sheer upbringing and raw personality. The Septimus/Sextus divide is interesting enough, but I don’t know Septimus — neither does Tavi. I don’t care much about how great he was (so I’m glad Butcher kept it relatively toned down), I only care about how what people think and thought of him are reflected in their current actions, beliefs, and motivations (like with Aquitaine; the scene with Amara/Isana at the end was perfect).

Fidelias as usual was entertaining but not nearly as much as in previous books; what little we saw from his perspective this book seemed to built toward the (inevitable?) revelation of his identity to Tavi. I naturally hated him at first but once I (finally, ugh) got to understanding his type of hatred of Gaius and his subsequent motivation, I like him a lot. I think that’s the point, though. 

Amara and Bernard’s plot was much more interesting in this book, consistently, than in the last; the slog through the swamp could only captivate me for so long, regardless of the (awesome!?) Gaius Sextus’s involvment in it. Amara’s deception with Brencis was excellent and surprising, but not nearly as surprising as where Invidia’s plot has taken her — with the Vord queen?! So interesting, the layers built into that “relationship.” Bernard, cute as always… aw, Bernard. Sure and steady in a way that annoys me in other characters in the genre, though not here. I actually do not really like Amara as a character. I think she agonizes a little much over things — thank goodness it was less in this book than the last two; I was getting tired of it — and I am trying to figure out why I don’t particularly like her. It’s weird. I love Kitai. I love Isana — not quite as much as Kitai, who from the first line of her dialogue I knew she would be important, surprising, and engaging — but Amara has never effectively held my interest. Maybe it was my experience in Furies of Calderon with her, her interaction with Tavi and the others… I put my support firmly behind Tavi from the start and her (quick, infrequent) remarks against him must have hit home? I don’t know why I don’t like her. But even though I don’t like her, her plot was interesting and I do love Bernard. So. I suppose I’m really quickly judgmental about characters? Maybe I don’t like her hot, ridiculous hatred streaks? (Fidelias, Gaius Sextus?) Oh, well, I liked her better in this book and that’s good, I guess.

And then Gaius. He’s been a fascinating character from the start — the hard-edged First Lord whose complexity makes him terrifically fascinating. He’s not nice. He’s not bad. He’s perfectly, reasonably, understandably gray; he does bad things for good reasons, he does good things for layered, deceptive reasons. The quintessential politician and perfect person whom Tavi should both emulate and avoid becoming at the same time. Amara, Aquitaine, Isana, and Antillus (and others) are all justified in their different, complex hatred of him, all for different reasons and with different corresponding reactions. They all ostensibly hate him but none acts on that hate in the same way or with the same ends. His end was brilliant but bittersweet in a way that could only have come across because of the build up to it through the series. He had to go out in a terrific way; the little (almost after the fact) addition that he’d been slowly poisioned by his second wife was relatively unnecessary, to me, but helped explain some things… possibly. I would have accepted pneumonia and gone with it willingly, though. Not every important death (few though they are) in his series needs be motivated by greed, anger, revenge, ambition, hatred, disgust, or jealousy, right? I liked Ehren’s point of view with Gaius; it would be strange to see Gaius’s point of view and I’m glad I never saw it.

It all leaves me excited for the  next installment. First Lord’s Fury, perhaps? One wonders what its title will be. And is it the last book in the series? I don’t read enough forum/website information for me to know (some fan I am!) and I’m curious. But I’m not usually an avid website-checking fan, anyway; I have too much to work on with my own material to be much devoted to anything but the books I read themselves, I guess.

I’ll try to keep the spoilers vague, as usual. Not to give anything away, but the ending both surprised and somehow felt right, though naturally I had thought of two or three other possibilities that I’d been thinking were more likely than what happened. Had I written the book at this stage in my life, it would have ended differently, I know that, and I can’t help thinking of the ending I wanted and didn’t get and feeling a bit sad. But I did enjoy it, let me make that clear. Admittedly, if every book I read proceeded along a path that was perfectly in line with my own tastes and desires, I would have no reason to write, now would I? I started writing books as a kid in “answer” to books that displeased me for one reason or another.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and the trilogy as a whole. I’m glad I bought them, retrospectively; I’ll end up reading them again one day, I’m sure. The third book was by and large the best and most exciting, as well as most satisfying, but that was accomplished in large measure due to its being the final book of a trilogy. The plots of each book were distinct and strong, as was the trilogy’s overarching plot. What Canavan built up across the trilogy paid off very nicely throughout. Each book had its little satisfactions but ultimately the third was the best, just because the largest, most interesting set-ups generally have the greatest and most exciting pay-offs. The character of the High Lord, Akkarin, for instance. He’s built up remarkably well — and slowly! — but a lot of that also has to do with the trade-offs between point of view. Canavan made certain POV judgments early on (limited third person) and decided to only choose certain characters through whom we would get to consistently see their world (Sonea, Cery, Lorlen, Rothen, Dannyl), and others to consistently be a mystery for us and the characters to discover. That was a good choice that paid off well. 

Two points disagreed with me, though. The first book took forever to engage me. I was determined but not so many readers are. (I’d invested money which I never do when there are library copies easily accessible, which there weren’t for this trilogy.) I also wasn’t too daunted because the books are not that thick. They’re a good, proper-book size. I like proper-book-sized books. Why take 800-900 pages when you can do it in 300-500? Yet, to give Canavan credit, once you stumble through names and the world (which is immediately presented in full complexity — which was good; but this is not terrifically interesting because it’s all conversations and arguments — which was bad) there is enough there to hold on to. The High Lord and Dannyl probably hooked me the most to start with — even Sonea (the main character) was a little boring, though Cery proved interesting immedaitely. 

The second point I wasn’t crazy about was, well, Trudi Canavan’s style. This had its good and its unfortunate moments. She is a terrific plotter and has a very smooth sense for consistent, active pace and tension — only when she’s gotten all of the “set up” done. She spends a lot of time setting up (especially in The Magician’s Guild where that slow start can also viewed as “set up” for the entire trilogy, which a large part of it effectively is). The exposition in that regard was engaging, however, so this only hit me retrospectively. The good of such quick plotting and movement is that the book is a really engaging and quick read once you “get into it”, which I always like to see and read. As much as I like to be pulled in from the first paragraph, sometimes I’ll be more patient if the book gets really good and makes up for it, as these did.

The bad part of her style of writing was that I had a hard time connecting, emotionally, at several pointswith the characters and the scenes (especially in The High Lord). These emotional moments were described in such rough, to-the-point exposition I couldn’t feel with the characters. I was shown (good, at least) how they seemed to be feeling and knew, based on the set up how they must be feeling given very good previous set up and characterization, but that resonance, that which should make me Cheer! or Weep! was not there. My eyes practically flew over these scenes as usual and I felt my mind skid to a halt and think, “Wait, what just happened to whom? What just went on there?” That was disappointing and a little disheartening. I love getting brought to that same height of emotion as the characters, especially characters we care about, or should be caring about. As I wrote about in my thesis, fantasy literature is a form of art, and in its highest form, as any true art, it can evoke in us the visceral emotions of the highest highs and lowest lows of the human experience. Regardless of how magical or inhuman the characters are, they have still got to resonate with us for us to really take something powerfully away from the book — and I do believe the best writing always lets us take something away from it, regardless of what that “something” is.

I bawl my eyes out when reading books; this has happened in the past, both for “happy” and “bittersweet” endings. Robin McKinley’s Deerskin saw me reacting colorfully all over the spectrum, while the third book in Robin Hobb’s Liveship Trader’s Trilogy (Ship of Destiny) had me bawling all over the place and grinning through tears in a way I really was shocked about. (Love/hate with characters? Yes. That book had me all over the place — and one of the most rewarding, shocking, and thoroughly terrific character arcs I’ve ever read. I love Malta Vestrit.) Come to think of it, Robin Hobb usually evinces that strong emotional reaction from me; Fool’s Fate had me bawling for hours, but that was also PMS coupled with one of those unusual twin-emotion realizations: when you realize what the character has seen and felt is what you, in the real world, are experiencing in your own life as well. Fitz and I had a moment, at the end of Fool’s Fate when I read it during the fall of my senior year of college. I think I remember distinctly that Bryan had to hold me as I nattered on and on about things he was really confused about having to do with the book’s plot and its connection to my own life, however tenouous and vague it was factually but how similar emotionally in some weird sense.

Call me crazy but I love when a book evokes that level of response from me. As much as I hate the feeling of “leaving a world” that really, really good books (or series) give me when I finish reading them (and again, upon re-readings), I love it. It’s not “escapist”; no, I don’t read these books desperately seeking an emotional distraction, though I have read books over and over seeking that comfort before. But a really good book does pull me in and let me see a different world and hang around with a hopefully interesting cast of characters, and it’s the most exciting thing in the world for me. When writing, I get as emotionally attached as when reading, though, which both makes it fun and tough, but it’s the most rewarding thing I’ve done.

To conclude, I definitely recommend The High Lord and the whole Black Magician Trilogy, though I bet you won’t react to it the same way I did. We’re all different readers, after all.

Now, to put my mind firmly on being a winner of National Novel Writing Month 2008. It’s been a good month but my brain is exhausted. Wrung out. If this novel had been at all planned or outlined I doubt I’d be feeling so wrung dry of all imaginative juices. But it’s been a really informative month about my own natural pace and capacity for work, as well as given me a newer appreciation for my desperate need to take breaks from stretches of “work” — reading, watching TV, playing mindless games… these are all good things. Really they are. I’ve missed them dearly this month.

And I did love it. It was such a fun, clever book. The plot is simple: The sheltered, teenaged Charmain is volunteered to look after her Great-Great-Uncle-by-marriage’s house while he recovers from an illness. While living in and exploring this house, Charmain discovers a door that has many ways to it and encounters several crazy, funny, and fascinating characters, including, of course, Mrs. Sophie Pendragon and her family. Hilarity, magic, and life lessons ensue culminating in a satisfying, classically Diana Wynne Jones style of revelation-conclusion. (In that regard it was very Conrad’s Fate.)

I have to say, though, this book felt more like a Chrestomanci book than Castle in the Air did. Had Howl (and yes, he of course has a role in the book) not been so very… Howl, he would have been very Christopher. (For those of you who have read the book: Christopher would never have pulled the Twinkle stunt. Never. He’s much too haughty.) Even so they’re very similar characters — both somewhat selfish and self-important, both powerful magic users (in different worlds with different systems of magic; Howl is a wizard, Christopher is a nine-lifed enchanter) — but also distinctly different. Howl is obsessed with his appearance in a vain, almost endearingly self-conscious way; Christopher is fastidious and prim. What’s interesting too is that these men capture the attention and admiration of those around them but their wives are very simple, compared to them. Though Sophie is certainly a spitfire compared to Millie (in Charmed Life Millie, not the younger versions of Millie).

Charmain was an interesting protagonist, as was Peter as the sidekick/counterpoint character. I’ve never really encountered a character who is really a cleverly, well-drawn “sheltered” character who nonetheless thinks she can do anything she puts her mind to — and fails and fails at it. Her successes are brilliant accidents. Then there’s Peter, also sheltered but much better and more practically educated but anything he sets his mind to — with perfect form, perfect methodology — ends up going hilariously awry. Together they make a bumblingly real pair. I saw them so vividly in their arguments, their pitfalls and disasters, and their terrific successes. Talk about terrific characterization.

Then there’s Sophie, Morgan, Calcifer, and Howl. There is something to a series (or companion books) when you know certain characters already so you can appreciate the riotous one-liners that the author throws out there. And there are a lot. They are terrific. I laughed out loud the most reading this book than I have reading any book in a long while. Witty banter is all well and good but sometimes it’s just a really well-timed one-liner that can bring you to giggling tears. That, and Diana Wynne Jones is absolutely excellent when it comes to the set-up and pay-off. She sets up a lot quickly and drops clever details constantly, but you can never tell when a set-up will pay-off — but when they do… they are perfect. Maybe these books are simply perfectly in line with my particular brand of humor? (I absolutely did find myself laughing a lot while reading the Chrestomanci books and the Dalemark books — The Lives of Christopher Chant and The Crown of Dalemark probably involved the most laughter of their respective series.)

One aspect I really enjoy about the Howl’s and Chrestomanci books are the fact that the kids and teenagers involved as protagonists and supporting cast are always at the point in their plots where they’re still learning how to do things and they make mistakes. Frequently. Neither are they usually “in school” but they’re usually outside of a consistent structure (or fight to escape that structure) and they find themselves in a place where they have to create their own structure, goals, and discipline. (Thank God for an alternative to the “school story”-driven plot of Harry Potter.)

A lot of the plots involve the children/teens making the very mistakes that grow into the problem of the novel itself that they have to solve. (Or, as in Christopher’s case in The Lives of Christopher Chant, finding his loyalties divided and all of his “good” intentions making everything worse.) These characters must take responsibility for their own mistakes and must bring themselves to ask for help, even when they think they don’t need it … these are themes that really resonate. They feel so particularly real. In Dalemark, for instance, there is a distinct element of fate and things beyond one’s control but even so the kids/teens are the ones who make the big choices and who must live with the consequences of those choices. Unlike in adult epic fantasy where sometimes the protagonist is forced along a path he/she doesn’t want nor choose, the element of choice is so vitally crucial to the plot of Diana Wynne Jones’s books. The kids/teens are the ones who convince and win others to their cause, who see the truth that some of the partisan, selfishly greedy adults can’t see. But these kids aren’t pure and innocent either. Dalemark’s Mitt, by fourteen, is a several-times-over criminal and manipulator; Eric Chant, called Cat, in Charmed Life, is almost cripplingly meek and shy; Christopher is so self-motivated and self-centered for so much of The Lives of Christopher Chant, almost every negative event in the book can be traced to decisions or neglectful actions Christopher has taken to make it so — all of which he has to then work to correct. Even Charmain, in House of Many Ways, finds that burying herself in a book whenever something goes awry doesn’t magically make the problem disappear; wishful thinking isn’t what changes things — taking action is the only way to change things.

So in conclusion to this rambling entry… Diana Wynne Jones’s House of Many Ways was a terrific book, though you’ll appreciate it a lot more if you’ve read both Howl’s Moving Castle and Castle in the Air first.

I took so long reading The Spellcoats because it’s written in a completely different, foreign voice from the others (first person, too) and it takes place hundreds of years before the events in the first, second, and fourth books — but its events help explain and illuminate the others, as well as provide the foundation upon which the fourth’s plot is built. I’m glad I didn’t skip it! (I admit, I was tempted. I saw Mitt and Moril’s name in the blurb of the fourth and I was almost — almost — off like a shot, skipping book three. Good completionist me, though! Saved by my own obsessive compulsive completionist nature. Also, looking back, the third book is unusually wonderful. The way it’s written is… beautiful. Its narrator, Tanaqui, is a clever thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl whose narration is actually her weaving. She weaves coats, on which she weaves the story of her and her family’s adventures, and so the book is actually the “translation” of this weaving. It’s a wonderfully unusual way to tell a story — and naturally has consequences for the story’s conclusion and the way the story is discovered and found later on in that world. How fascinating!

Which brings me to the point I found I’d come to after finishing the fourth book: I love Diana Wynne Jones’s stories. So, so much. Every novel of hers (and short story) I’ve read demonstrate a terrific efficiency of language, consistent — and quick! — characterization, and an imaginative level of storytelling that astounds me. Even this, her “epic fantasy quartet” was as good and wonderful, fully, as any of her Chrestomanci books or those set in the world of Howl’s Moving Castle. I obviously need to read more of her works, though I think I’ve hit the “big” “famous” ones.

But back to The Crown of Dalemark and the whole quartet. These aren’t perfect, to my sense, but then again, I am a completionist. I finished the fourth book and thought, “Oh, no! There’s no fifth book is there? Is there? IS THERE?” and moaned about it for a good ten minutes of frantic pacing and cleaning. (I do that when I finish a book. I need to extract my mind; I need to clean and moan about the bereft feeling I’m too often left with after leaving a terrific world. If Bryan is around I jump and try to give him the five minute plot summary and he looks at me, annoyed, and says, “You know I haven’t heard any of the words you just said at me, right?”)

Diana Wynne Jones leaves out a level of detail (and completion) that I wish I could see, but to some degree it fascinates me. These are, in truth, children’s books, and it gives a greater depth of the “what if” to leave a lot unsaid. I know as a kid I always asked myself (and when my parents read with me, they encouraged these questions, and I recall this vividly) about all of the detail left un-detailed. I noticed there’s a lot of lack of particular inflection after each character’s dialogue. Some authors use the dialogue to show the character’s personality (through a lot of particular adjective and verbs attached to the dialogue) but Jones (Wynne Jones? Diana? Ha.) has a knack for characterizing through short bursts of personality demonstration or anecdote more in general. She’ll demonstrate a character arguing back unnecessarily in an annoying manner and make a comment like, “And he was always doing nettlesome things like that” or “He was the last person you wanted to start an argument with” or the like, to demonstrate that person’s nature, so when you see dialogue pop up with a particular line of, say, “No I certainly will not” then you automatically find yourself inflecting the dialogue with an irritated tone and you can imagine the other characters making faces like, “Oh, not again!” And it’s so naturally implied! Maybe I’m simply an imaginative reader. Maybe I naturally thicken characters who on the page are simple structures of basic traits. But I think I can credit Diana with a lot more than that. She develops a richness in her simply-yet-complexly plotted children’s (and young adults’) books that is undeniable. And that’s why I love them.

I just finished Breaking Dawn. Gasp. I’m still on hold for it from the library… which I should go cancel. My friend lent me her friend’s copy — haha — and so I devoured that between last night and this morning (while managing, might I add, to get a full night’s sleep). I’ve got an awful lot to say on it but in the interests of spoilers, I won’t say it all here.

I suppose I liked it. Some parts of it I somewhat hated. Some I said “Finally!” about. Overall, I think I am “bleh” about it.

Actually I think I would have preferred Books 2 and 3 to be a heck of a lot shorter and sweeter and this book to be tidier, and then just, you know, have that. Or, well, maybe Book 1 shorter, too. I think they’re just awfully long and filled with lots of stuff that doesn’t need to be there. Efficiency of language and all of that. It would have been an excellent trilogy. If the POV had been different I would have liked it more, too. I grew to dislike the first person the longer the series went on as Meyer seemed to have more and more trouble keeping a rein on her writing style to keep it within the bounds of the perspective she chose… I mean, she even switches perspectives (at the end of 3 and a part of 4) and that’s  just… not… well, I just didn’t like it. Write it in third person if you can’t contain it in one, I think. I’ve read some really, really successful first persons that play up on the inherent tunnel-vision-ness of the first person POV by which Meyer kept seeming stifled. Or be more consistent in the POV switches. I’ve read successful chapter-switching first person POV novels, and those are great if a bit complicated when done well. Oh, well.

I’m going to go spoiler lite and speak in (annoying) generalities for the rest of this, but as a general warning, stop reading if you don’t want any surprises spoiled.

I liked Bella’s character a heck of a lot more in Book 4. But that’s also because she changed significantly (which I incidentally didn’t like; if Bella in Book 4 was the only Bella, it would have been great. But I’ll get into that later.) The change wasn’t a gradual thing, like it should have been. I didn’t like the sudden, sharp shift in personality. It made sense given what happened — I doubt Meyer could have done it differently and had it still be convincing without reworking some of the plot or timeline, at least — but I didn’t like how weak Bella’s personality was all along, leading to this. Book 2 Bella is a miserable nuisance. Book 3 is all… oy. Better but still not ideal. She’s more authentically teenagerish in Book 3, though. I get that she’s not a modern heroine, she’s a throwback to the nineteenth century’s gothic heroine period (has Meyer read any of those early nineteenth century gothic novels? Did she expect any of her teenaged readers to have read them?) and maybe a bit of Austen. (The man-must-save-me-from-my-circumstances Austen, not the strong-willed, self-determined woman Austen; I don’t believe Bella had Elizabeth’s Bennett’s fire. Maybe something of Anne Elliot’s moping. Actually, some of that, yes, I see that. But probably only because I’m throwing Anne onto a Book 2/3 Bella and seeing if it might stick. It might.) Anyway.

The whole plot of Book 4 was sort of, well, unsurprising. I guessed every leg of it a few hundred pages before it occurred, and when it did, I was still shocked that I was right, because when I’d made those predictions to myself, I said, “Wouldn’t that be hilariously ironic? Because that would make this book long! And look how long it is!” And it happened. And I was… bitter? Annoyed that I figured it all out? For one of the predictions I actually thought to myself, “Too bad it’s going to turn out in Way A, because Way B would totally make things crazy! If that were to happen, then this and this and this could happen… But Way A is totally going to happen so there’s no use in further speculation.” And guess what. Way B happened. My speculation was correct. I was shocked because I had never thought Meyer would… do that. I do personally love figuring out the plot of books but… but… there were no surprises. None. Even the swooping-in-at-the-last-minute moment at the end was unsurprising. I was sort of “Sigh.” I suppose not every author can pull a fast one on me. I love it when they do, though.

But really, was I expecting this book to be amazing? No. I was expecting it to be just on the wrong side of tolerable. I am surprised that it was better than tolerable. Enjoyable, diverting. Fun. Was it because Meyer finally embraced more fantasy than she had ever used? Probably. She took risks and ran with them, trusting we’d follow. I think in doing so she lost some readers, those who followed her books for the love story and not the fantasy. (Though if they survived the werewolf revelation, I am surprised to think that they wouldn’t be able to survive anything. Vampires are one thing; shape-shifting can be something else entirely, but what came in Book 4 is no more shocking, really, than anything else — fantasy-wise. It was shocking for other reasons, which I can get into at another time.) And I was surprised too that I was in the vampire camp so firmly from Book 1. I am so often in the werewolf/shifter camp that I was surprised when Book 3 came down to it, forcing me to ally with Edward or Jacob, that I was unhesitatingly Edward.

And so anti-Bella. Really, I was fed up with her by the end of Book 3. The choice, ugh. Maybe I was more irritated with the marketing? Maybe. I am glad she was redeemed in part in Book 4 but in doing so she really wasn’t Bella. I mean, I can’t name it precisely. I think I felt condescension toward Bella in Books 2 and 3. The vast majority of my female friends and acquaintances are stronger women, plain and simple, than Bella was. I’m talking strength of character, of purpose, of will. You can’t feel so “meh” about a character for so long and then immediately cheer with her and enjoy her without stopping and thinking, “Wait. This is not the same character.” The changes she went through were abrupt and rough and told to me (ugh, telling versus showing) and I don’t think Meyer convinced me of why Bella changed except for the excuse of the new balances of power. She spends so much time on really strange moments and details but not enough time, space on the page, on this change of Bella’s that is so unbelievably crucial to the plot. I mean, if my life with the man of my dreams shifted that abruptly for the same reason tomorrow, my personality would not change that much in a few days and I can say that with absolute certainty. I know my loyalties and heart would change and grow appropriately, but I would not suddenly become a different person. Change takes time that Meyers did not make me feel I was living through with Bella emotionally. Additionally Meyer made it seem like Bella’s character jumped from 18 to 35, from self-conscious to ferociously self-assured, and I’m supposed to believe that easily, just like that. I don’t think so. She changed Bella too falsely, too rapidly, given what had transpired so recently in book time, in Books 2 and 3. If the change had been gradual, from the start of the series to the end of it, I would have bought it. But Bella was so eighteen years old in Book 3. Devil’s Advocate: I realize the events of the first half of Breaking Dawn were so earth-shattering, so life-altering that Bella really does have to change. But Meyer failed to convince me of the emotion, of the grounded-in-reality-truth of that change from Character A to Character B.

Other writers have done it and blown me away. To use a few fantasy examples from other authors whose books could be classified as “coming of age” or “young adult”: Robin McKinley’s Deerskin does it shockingly well. Heart-breakingly well. Lissar changes completely while retaining her sense of self and I believe every moment of it because of how grounded in raw emotion and power her experiences are. McKinley’s Aerin in The Hero and the Crown has a similar forged-in-the-fires-of-hell life-changing experience, and she changes because of it, too. I mean, hell, one of the best character changes ever has to be Frodo’s in The Lord of the Rings. Harrowing experiences over approximately the same time frame as Bella’s (actually Bella’s is more, I believe) and he is irrevocably altered in a gut-wrenching, proud, and really profound way. (Robin Hobb’s Malta in her Liveship Traders Trilogy is another character who changes sharply and realistically, as is Fitz in the Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies, though his change is over the course of years.) Bella’s change didn’t hit me like that at all. It didn’t feel real.

Getting more and more spoiler-ific here, I thought the events and moments in the series were certainly enough to have moved Bella to discover that sort of power of character on her own but Meyer made Bella’s humanity such a handicap, made being a vampire so perfect and desirable, it’s so hard to compare it. I don’t know how I feel about humanity being a handicap. How being painted as utterly frail and breakable and not… well, in any other way, is any way… relatable? I mean, we are breakable, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen humans painted that way in a fantasy series with supernatural characters. Humans are so much more than that. But then again, her vampires are so human — she doesn’t make them very different — I suppose I can see why she would malign humanity so much when her vampires are that unrealistically cool. In a way, that’s one thing I profoundly do not enjoy about the series. Bella cannot embrace herself as who she is, she has to become someone else — something not entirely human — to finally love herself. I don’t know how that settles with me. The analogy is imperfect, of course, to real life — as all fantasy should be imperfect, not one for one, analogies to real life — but even so. It’s discomfiting.

I sit uneasy with a message that in order to be able to love and be proud of yourself have to both find someone else to complete you and to fundamentally change (in essence, your genetics) in the process.

But of course, cynics will say that about any kind of all-consuming love, or that lots of life-changing events seriously alter the people they happen to. I’ve been asked to my face why I need Bryan to love, cherish, and marry me, when I have to sacrifice my single, individual self to become the us that comprises us? And it is a sacrifice to become an us. You are no longer your own entity in a couple. You are who you become together. You can change and grow and become wiser together. But… I’m also still irrevocably myself. Bumbling faults and all. Gah. It’s such a web of tangled thoughts, that. I could discuss that for a long time.

There are a lot of aspects of the book I’d want to discuss more but in the interests of remaining vague, I won’t. You can talk to me about it, if you like.

I suppose that’s how I think of the Twilight Saga. It’s good, it’s fun; it has its moments of utterly asinine melodrama that make me want to cry with frustration, and it has its moments of beautiful, really adorable romance. It also is pretty good with action and politics; its characters are varied, intriguing, and engrossing. I was without a doubt constantly engaged with the book. Will I buy the series and read it again and again like I do many others? No. It just wasn’t worth it. But I am glad I have read it.