Reading: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

In a departure from my current diet of SF reads, I delved into this story recommended by a friend. It's a very large tome, taking me five long evenings to chew through; yet never was there any temptation to give up.

On the outside, it may appear like the tale of a missionary family in the Congo in the 60's, but it is more than that. It is also a damning, passionate exposé of the harm done by foreign intervention - but it is much more than that. A whirling narrative from five wildly different viewpoints of how Africa changed each heart forever...yet it is so much more than that again.

Language is a tool in the author's hand as she uses it to shape each character. Consider the palindrome-obsessed and poetic Adah, the grammatically challenged Rachel, feisty yet needy Leah.

Here's a sample. It was so hard to choose just one excerpt, so I chose a few, some from near the beginning and the last from near the end. Many are the treasures in this book.

Sunrise tantalize, evil eyes hypnotize: that is the morning, Congo pink. Any morning, every morning. Blossomy rose-color birdsong air streaked sour with breakfast cookfires. A wide red plank of red - the so-called road - flat-out in front of us, continuous in theory from here to somewhere distant... 

Congo sprawls in the middle of the world. Sun rises, sun sets, six o'clock exactly. Everything that comes of morning undoes itself before nightfall: rooster walks back into forest, fires die down, birds coo-coo-coo, sun sinks away, sky bleeds, passes out, goes dark, nothing exists... 

Backdrop to the Kilanga pageant, rising up behind the houses, a tall wall of elephant grass obscures our view of anything but the distance. The sun suspended above it in the afternoon is a pink, round dot in the distant white haze you may stare at and never go blind. The real earth where the real sun shines seems to be somewhere else, far from here. And to the east of us, behind the river, a rising rumple of dark greek hills folded on each other like a great old tablecloth, recending to pale hazy blue... 

If only a river could go uncrossed, and whatever lay on the other side could live as it pleased, unwitnessed and unchanged. But it didn't happen that way. The Portuguese peered through the trees and saw that the well-dressed, articulate Kongo did not buy or sell or transport their crops, but merely lived in place and ate what they had, like the beasts of the forest. In spite of poetry and beautiful clothes, such people were surely not fully human - were primitive; that's a word the Portuguese must have used, to salve their conscience for what was to come. Soon the priests were holding mass baptisms on shore and marching their converts onto ships bound for sugar plantations in Brazil, slaves to the higher god of commodity agriculture.
There is not justice in this world.

Daily Doctor: The Stone Rose (review)

Hanging out at Mum's house today, we came across this book. I ended up sitting down and reading it cover to cover in about an hour and a half. These tie-in novels always seem to look bigger than they actually are - I think it's the chunky hard covers and thick paper. Certainly makes for a nice collector's piece.

Anyway, it was a pretty good read, if a bit light and fluffy as these things tend to be. The premise goes that Mickey finds a 2000 year old statue of Rose in a museum, which launches her and the Doctor on a mission to get the statue made. The answer to that mystery is a bit of an "awww!" moment! There are a couple of genuine tear-jerking scenes and plenty of the usual randomness as the Doctor gets thrown to the lions in ancient Rome (this was actually a distraction from the main plot!) and a machine from the 24th century displaces a teenager.

There is an audiobook read by David Tennant. Curious, I listened to a sample, only to discover that narrated sections are read in his own Scots, while dialogue is in character accents. It's a rather head-shaking mixture. The Doctor is the Doctor, of course, but the impressions of Mickey, Rose and Jackie are pretty darn impressive, too. I didn't get to a part with ancient Romans, I wonder how he read them?

Reading: The Masterharper of Pern

This is my first time reading Anne McCaffrey, and I guess it's about what I expected. Epic fantasy isn't necessarily my first choice for leisure reading - and the ones I publish have to be truly outstandingly exceptional - still, she kept my interest to the end. In some ways it is an extended coming-of-age tale, from Robinton's birth to the prime of his authority.

Doused in music from the first page to the last, there are many other threads too. My musical learning is long past, but the way it's described here, the making of it, the building of instruments, the training of voices and hands, it almost makes me feel like I've done it in just that way.

Of course Pern is a gigantic storyworld and any one book can only skim the surface, or so it seems after my first go. This is certainly an accessible entry point, following the life of one man, his loves and tragedies, and his particular ability to hear dragonspeech.

I must interrupt myself to express surprise at the fact that the second book in this series, Dragonquest, although famous in its own right and extant since 1971, was shamelessly copied in title by a Christian YA book released in 2005. Not sure what that publisher thought they were doing - maybe they believed it would help sales? Or, more likely, that their target market had never heard - would never hear of the first Dragonquest. That's probable enough, sad though it is. Or even...did they not know of the other? In any case, I find it just a bit cheeky.

Anyway, back to this book - I found it worth reading for the sustained story threads that run throughout, for the deft depiction of humanity, and for some gems of words such as "bruited" and concepts of dragon bonding at hatching, and so on. Decent read.

Reading Challenge #1 - Embassytown by China Mieville

Well, I got through it. It was a bit of a hard slog, but I persisted because of the linguistic and existential nature of the story. The concept is so high-flying that it is largely opaque to begin with and for me, not a whole lot better at the end. The author uses a lot of invented words, or repurposed, so that until I got used to it, it was like reading a foreign language, which I suppose is one intended effect.

The alien Hosts on the planet Arieke have a language that cannot be spoken; they also are unable to learn other languages. It has to do with the essence of the world and of words that cannot be separated from reality, hence there is no lying in that society. Cloned doppelgangers eventually enable communication, but then comes a new pair whose speech is like a drug for the locals, and chaos breaks out.

Did I enjoy it? In places, yes, the sheer randomness of the words flung together and the strangeness of the situation. Here is a pretty passage spoken by the alien Host nicknamed Spanish Dancer after he has learned to speak metaphor:

"Before the humans came we didn't speak. We've been like countless things, we've been like all things, we've been like the animals over Embassytown in the direction of which I raise my giftwing, which is a speaking you'll come to understand. We didn't speak, we were mute, we only dropped the stones we carried in our mouths and had the birds we described fly out, we were vectors, we were the birds eating in mindlessness, we were the girl in darkness, only knowing it when we weren't anymore."

Rabbit: Chasing Beth Rider, by Ellen C. Maze

It was with some trepidation that I opened my first ever vampire book this weekend. But I couldn't help asking to be involved in reviewing it, due to the sheer amount of noise and success surrounding this particular book.

Beth Rider is an author with a problem when a race of bloodsuckers comes after her for the tale she told in her book. But one pursuer asks why, taking her into his protection - throwing his people into the chaos of the chase.

The major idea here is the correlation of modern vampires to Biblical beings. Following that, it reads like a parable for those who have eyes to see it: the vamps don't need to suck blood or be violent, but they do it to satiate their lust.

I particularly liked the aspect of metafiction - the story within the story. Although we never get to find out what happens in the book Beth wrote (but I hear that's coming out someday for real!), its events and their effects on the vamps are a large part of the plot.

Strangely, it is the character of Beth Rider we see the least of in terms of her internal personality. She is strong in her faith and remarkably unruffled even in the most alarming of situations. Michael Stone on the other hand, the pursuer-turned-protector, is drawn in great detail and depth in the scenes in which he appears.

The plot struck me as very unusual and imaginative. I couldn't tell you another book with a final victory anywhere near similar to this. I'm only sorry there wasn't another round of copyedits to fix the typos and comma use - but those aren't significant enough to spoil a good read.

In all - well done, Ellen Maze. I like the way your brain works. You've heard of "outside the box" - here, there is no box.

The Sacred Cipher by Terry Brennan

Zero to 100 is one way to describe the pace of this novel. It starts out harmlessly enough with the discovery of a stash of old scrolls in a New York mission. Then odd and frightening things begin to happen to those involved in reading one scroll in particular. Near misses and almost-fatal accidents point the men to the significance of the find. Much time is spent on filling in the background history - of which there is plenty - mostly by way of dialogue and questions batted back and forth. Finally our scholars, amateur and otherwise, crack the near-impossible code in the scroll and realise what they have on their hands.

An expedition is mounted to Jerusalem to attempt the daunting task of proving or disproving the scroll's hidden message. At this point the story becomes a big boys' lark as our city slickers prepare to become archaeologists. This element of wide-eyed discovery and good plain fun in the face of danger continues to be a large part of the story's appeal.

The action and adventure mounts in leaps and bounds as our intrepid and largely clueless explorers determine to reach their goal in the face of overwhelming odds. But not only that: the magnitude of the matter at hand soon looms larger than any personal struggles as astonishment and wonder take the place of grit and fear. A couple of amazing saves out of left field are required to get our boys out of the massive international unrest they've gotten themselves into the middle of.

Recommended for guys in particular, and also anyone who likes breath-snatching action and plenty of supernatural intervention at just the right moments.

CHION by Darryl Sloan - The Review

Yes, I'm late. Want to know why? I got stuck in the Dublin floods and couldn't get home last night. I did make some video but these guys did it better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXRyqaNxrpA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJxOFCEkWmo

Well, enough of that. There's a great book to go on about! And it involves not rain, but snow...

Chion is Greek and means "like snow". A white substance has fallen from the sky, immobilising all that it touches. We watch events unfold within a junior high school. The story is centred on Jamie and his friend Tara, fighting to survive in a world that's turned against humanity. Yet the national and international disaster is eclipsed by their intensely personal journey of faith and tragedy, despair and love, chilling ruthlessness and future hope.

Darryl has written a book eminently suitable for teens, but carrying enough bite for vanloads of grown-ups. I loved the Irish setting (of course), the accents leaping off the page, and a very nicely crafted story. And so imaginative! Who would ever think of twelve reams of paper as a life-saving necessity? Not me. Surprises like this are all the way through Chion, along with quirky sideways humour - such as when Jamie thinks of terrorists as the safe, sensible explanation for what's going on.

This is not sci-fi as you know it. There's actually very little in the way of technical stuff. It's very people-centred, casting a bright light on personal action and reaction to adversity. Both kindness and cruelty are increased in a vivid display of humanity, and it caused me to wonder: What would I do? Can I even answer that question? If the whole country were in such mortal danger, would my thoughts be on my own survival - or someone else's?

There's a great sense of the coldness, of streets emptied of life, of sudden harshness, the will to live, and the will to save. There's also a sense of the awakening of maturity within Jamie and Tara as they face the unprecedented situation.

Chion is an absolute gem. Hold on tight and jump aboard for the ride!

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