Book Club - by Suhaili

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Book Club - February 2008

The Wandering Fire

February 15th 2008 22:41

'The Wandering Fire' is the second and shortest novel in Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry, and is the fifth book I've read this year. This review will most likely be fairly short (but who can tell these things) as a lot of what I have to say about Kay's writing I've probably already said in my review of the first book in the trilogy, The Summer Tree. Mild spoilers ahead.

Picking up where the first novel left off, our five intrepid Earth heroes are back in Canada and unable to return to Fionavar. The book jumps right in regards to Jennifer's fate after her traumatic ordeal in The Summer Tree's last chapters and allows for some exciting developments early on. Obviously, our heroes don't remain on Earth for too long as this would be a fairly dull book if they did, and with the help of the group's seer, Kim, they travel to England and use the ancient power of Stonehenge to transport back to Fionavar. But not before Kim reawakens a hero from Earth's own past to bring back to fight the terrible war that is shaping up between the forces of light and dark.

It's hard to write a summation of the second book of a series for two reasons... 1) you don't really want to give anything away to anyone who hasn't read the first book but it's hard to say anything interesting without doing so (hence the mild spoilers warning - I've tried to avoid anything that really spoils it), and 2) it sounds crap and uninspiring because it requires a working knowledge of what has gone on before it in the first book. Hmmm... maybe that's just one big reason. Anyway, I'm unenthusiastic about this review and that's why. So from here on in I'll just kinda list what this entry in the trilogy seems to be about...

As the novel progresses it starts to become clear that this is more about each of the five Earth heroes finding their place in this new world they have been thrust upon. The previous novel tied up the fates of Kim as a seer and Paul as some kind of Jesus-like walking legend, whereas this novel delves more into the other three and what part they will play in the fate of the war, as well as their own fate and fate as a general idea in itself. Frequently we'll hear about what is meant to happen and then we'll see events scrambling forth in an attempt to adhere to some kind of structure of destiny, but it never really pans out the way it's foretold. Which is just as well, as it would be a boring book otherwise. The only major thing that seems to grate with me is how important all five of our heroes have become... perhaps some kind of prophecy at the beginning of the first book might have prepared me for this, but having five barely-capable students become God-shagging titans of myth seems to stretch credibility a bit. Yes, even in a fantasy novel. Another minor gripe is that Kay kills off a character at the book's climax only to drammatically bring him back to life. This would have been fine if he hadn't already done the same trick in the first book.

On the up side, 'The Wandering Fire' opens out the world of Fionavar a bit more. We learn further details of Cathal, a middle eastern-like garden kingdom to the south, and more is revealed of the twilight world of the various Gods who walk amongst the people of Fionavar - powerful beings who are (mostly) unable to interact with events. The only major group still left unexplored is the kingdom of Eridu in the far north, which I'm hoping will feature in the third novel. Kay also manages to keep things cracking along at a fair pace and things are never predictable, though the climactic battle between the forces of light and dark comes across as an almost unforgiveable pastiche of the two major battles from The Lord of the Rings... Kay rips off the dramatic arrival of the elves at Helm's Deep and the calling of the spirits from big battle in 'The Return of the King'. I just needed to say that as it was unbearably obvious to me when I read it.

Anyhow, this book was a nice read but I have to admit that I'm starting to tire of Fionavar a little. I'm about to wade into the third and final novel tomorrow so a review of that and the series as a whole should be soon pending.

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy

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Does My Head Look Big In This?

February 10th 2008 09:10

A while ago I wrote an article about Randa Abdel-Fattah, click here to see what I had to say and how much I've back-peddled with this review. It's not that I disagree with my optimistic appraisal of Abdel-Fattah or her inspiring status as a potential role-model for young Australians, but what I am at odds with is how excited I sound at the end of said article in regards to reading her debut novel, Does My Head Look Big in This?. I was wrong to be excited. The book sounded good, and Abdel-Fattah's skills as a public speaker (no doubt honed by her dayjob as a lawyer) helped sell the book to me. In light of now having read the actual thing I have to admit that the book isn't actually all that good. Which is a shame, especially as so many people recommended it to me.

The basic premise of Does My Head Look Big in This? seems to be to do Looking for Alibrandi with Muslim-Australians instead of Italian-Australians. The main character, Amal, is a 16 year old muslim girl at a predominantly white-bread anglo-Australian private school. One morning she wakes up and decides that it's time to wear the hijab, the scarf that muslim women wear to cover their hair as part of their faith, and the book follows the consequences of this amongst her friends, family and peers at school.

There are various subplots that pertain to what it means to adhere to the islamic faith within Australian society and the book deals with themes of cultural and social identity and all that jazz. Abdel-Fattah works to dispel many myths about Australian muslims and islam in general, and she writes with a breezy, easygoing style in the hope of making it palatable to the average teen reader. The book has won a lot of praise for it's educational qualities and politcal correctness, and I think a few schools have picked it up as a classroom English text. It was roughly 30 pages into the book when I first had to suppress the urge to spew.

I'm sorry, and I understand the need to combat the common mainstream perceptions of muslim-Australian society, but Does My Head Look Big in This? takes it all too far - offering an embarrassingly politically-correct, squeaky-clean story with a heroine crafted far too self-consciously to the author's designs to educate the assumed bigoted masses of white Australia. I fear she may have been preaching to the converted - those who need educating the most are those who wouldn't touch this book with a 3 metre barge pole, and those who willingly pick up a book with a quirky rom-com style muslim girl on the front probably aren't all that prejudiced to begin with either. Amal comes across as too infallible and overly precocious rather than the headstrong smart-arse she describes herself as. The continuous rallying against the misconceptions of those around her get very tiring to read and after a while it feels like a bad fish-out-of-water sitcom or disney film where the put-upon protagonist teaches her co-stars (in this case mainly made up of up-tight anglos and anglo-wannabe muslims) how to live life and love it.

Maybe my own atheist leanings made it impossible for me to be less than heavily-subjective as this is, after all, a book about remaining faithful to one's religion. As a result I found all the hoo-haring hypocrisy about Amal liking some guy to be terribly overdone and overwrought, and at the end of the day I just found it to be as alienating to me as all the anti-muslim attitudes probably are to the author. I really wanted to like this book but every page of the way I found it a struggle and full of too many subplots with too little substance, and when I reached the last few pages I wasn't convinced that anything of any consequence had really happened since the novel's beginning. In light of this, a more apt title for this book would probably be Muslims are OK, as this is pretty much all the book has to say. Who knows, maybe I just can't read predominantly-girly teen-fiction... there's bound to be at least one whole genre of writing I don't like, and maybe I just found it. That doesn't really excuse my misgivings about this book though, but it should at least dissuade me from reading any other books like it in the future!

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Comedy

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The Summer Tree

February 1st 2008 06:49

Book 3 of my almighty slog of 2008 is 'The Summer Tree', the first in a trilogy of fantasy novels by Guy Gavriel Kay, published in the 1980s, and collectively referred to as 'The Fionavar Tapestry'. Gavriel Kay (or just Kay - why do some people insist on having three names? It makes it hard to refer to them correctly in reviews like this and it makes it equally annoying if you have to arrange their books alongside other books in alphabetical order. Be damned!) is probably best known for this trilogy, but his enduring legacy will be his editorial work on J. R. R. Tolkein's 'The Silmarillion', which he helped Christopher Tolkein put together. Gavriel Kay originally trained as a lawyer before turning to writing, and is based in Canada. He can be largely viewed as carrying on Tolkein's legacy, and is amongst the first to tap into the second wave of interest that Lord of the Rings generated (mostly amongst university students in the 1970s - check your dad's bookcase for proof).

I waded into 'The Summer Tree' with a view in mind of adding it to the canon of must-read fantasy classics that are slowly being collated in my head. And whilst it's influence probably shouldn't be wholly discounted, I have to admit that I was somewhat disappointed in what this book initially seemed to offer, and with hindsight this impression is probably the result of many, many other paint-by-numbers fantasy epics having followed in the years since. So I'm trying to be as objective as possible, and I'm trying to ignore the aspects of this work that have since become cliches as they most likely weren't cliches when Gavriel Kay first wrote them.

The novel concerns the coming of five Canadian university students into the fantasy-realm of Fionavar. They are collected by a mage and brought from our world to this older, more magical one for the purposes of celebrating the king's 50th anniversary as ruler of High Brennin (one of the five major kingdoms contained in the continent of Fionavar). What the five students don't realise is that they have unwittingly been brought into a political powder keg waiting to explode - various factions vye for control of the throne and, somewhat more ominously, a chained God of destruction and darkness waits to make his comeback in the far north. It doesn't take long for the group to split up, and soon most of the five are finding their places in this world of gods and legends.

All the usual staples are present... mysterious and gruff dwarves, elf-like beings ofwisdom and light known as the lios alfar, a shady middle-eastern style empire to the south, a pantheon of enigmatic gods, an being of surpreme evil who once fought a mighty war against the allied peoples of Fionavar, and High Brennin itself - a medieval kingdom full of behind-the-scenes machinations and a cadre of jealous priestesses who worship a god known as the Mother. It's safe to say that a certain degree of the novel is derivative of Tolkein, and it's also in danger of turning into a bit of a yawnfest up until the third segment of the book, which introduces the Dalrei - a plain-dwelling people with more than a few resemblances to native americans. This part of the novel hooked me right in and was a pleasant break from all the usual fantasy info-dumping that had so far filled the book's 400-odd pages.

Also, as much as this book sometimes consciously resembles the work of Tolkein, Gavriel Kay does seem to be on a mission to correct his hero's mistakes. He aims to layer his story by making his characters deeper and more realistic, and thus gives the novel a more human element than Tolkein could ever achieve. Sometimes it's quite jarring to read the more adult aspects of the storyline that accompany these five modern earth-based protagonists as they move about and interact with this fantasy world, but it also serves to remind the reader (in this case, me!) that the stakes have been raised. Gavriel Kay aims big and probably introduces far too many characters and factions for his own good, along with a boggling amount of mythical backstory and magical artefacts, and whilst the presence of five identifiable characters should've made it easier to introduce concepts and background it doesn't to really swing that way, and I only really grasped who and what everything was by the very end of the book. The one exception to this is the Dalrei segment of the book, which is allowed to move along at it's own pace and without confusing asides to other characters and unexplained situations, which is probably why it stood out for me so much and helped cement my resolve to continue with the trilogy as a whole.

Oh, and it should also be said that the ending of 'The Summer Tree' is very good. Remember how I mentioned 'the stakes' just before? The ending puts them up very high and has a great sense of momentum and synchronicity, and all in all it leaves the book on a very high note. I can't really give much more of a review than that as it's really just the first volume of a larger story, so I'll continue my thoughts (and, eventually, my overall opinion) after I've read the next book.

So long suckers!

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy

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February 2010

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