Series « Books Worth Reading

Worth Reading: A Wizard of Earthsea

August 30, 2009 at 11:42 am | In Books, Reviews | 3 Comments
Tags: Bildungsroman, Earthsea, Fantasy, Series, Ursula K Le Guin

Image via Wikipedia

A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin (1968)

In this young adult fantasy, a young wizard releases an unnamed evil into the world of Earthsea during a spell that goes wrong and comes of age in a quest to defeat it.

Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk’s flight
on the empty sky.

–from the Creation of Éa

I’m sure I read A Wizard of Earthsea as a young adult, although I didn’t remember it very well. But like the best novels written for young people, it holds up excellently in this second reading as an adult.

In Earthsea, Le Guin has fully realized a land of islands, where people live as much on the sea as on the land, where there are dragons and wizards and magic. As a young boy, Sparrowhawk discovers his talent for magic when he protects his village from invasion by creating an obscuring fog. He is apprenticed to a wizard on his home island, then goes to the school for wizards across the sea, where his powers become evident. But his hubris gets the better of him, and in attempting a dangerous spell, he looses a nameless shadow in the world, which is bound to him and determined to possess him.

The rest of the story describes Sparrowhawk’s coming-of-age quest to learn how to defeat the shadow, and to learn who he is. Le Guin’s simple but evocative prose brings her imaginary world of Earthsea to life, and while reading this short book, I felt like I was traveling along with Sparrowhawk among the islands’ rocky cliff faces, desolate moors and heaving oceans. Whether rediscovering Earthsea or visiting it for the first time, the trip is worthwhile.

Worth Reading: The Worthing Saga

July 31, 2009 at 12:18 pm | In Books, Reviews | 3 Comments
Tags: Orson Scott Card, Science fiction, Series, Short stories

Cover of Worthing Chronicle

The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card (1990)

This collection of a related novella and short stories chronicles an epic history while examining themes of immortality and what it means to be human.

In many places in the Peopled Worlds, the pain came suddenly in the midst of the day’s labor. It was as if an ancient and comfortable presence left them, one that they had never noticed until it was gone, and no one knew what to make of it at first, though all knew at once that something had changed deep at the heart of the world. No one saw the brief flare in the star named Argos; it would be years before astronomers would connect the Day of Pain with the End of Worthing. And by then the change was done, the worlds were broken, and the golden age was over.

The Worthing Saga is a collection of Card’s works originally published separately that depict the zenith, subsequent collapse and rise again of a far-future human society. In this culture, a drug called somec, which produces a state of suspended animation, has made long-distance spaceflight a possibility, but has also engendered a pseudo-immortality for the rich and privileged, who sleep away years of their lives and only awaken for brief periods. As a result, they are like stones skipping along the surfaces of their lives, rather than actually living them.

In the opening novella, The Worthing Chronicle, Jason Worthing relates the history of this culture. His family has genetically inherited psychic abilities, but a massacre caused by Jason’s father has made all the Worthings outcasts. He grows up on a planet called Capitol, which has been completely covered by buildings and infrastructure. Learning of a plot to bring down Capitol, Worthing leaves for an unsettled planet with a pre-selected group of colonists: his own enemies and detractors. But an accident during the journey causes the colonists’ memories to be destroyed while they are under the somec. Essentially, they are adult infants who Worthing must teach and raise, giving him the opportunity to create a culture entirely from scratch. Eventually, he leaves his fledgling society in the hands of his descendants and goes to sleep for several thousand years, until they have advanced enough to figure out how to awaken him.

While Worthing is sleeping, his family’s genetic abilities are augmented by inbreeding, until they become so psychically powerful that they are able to control the lives of their subjects. They eliminate pain, grief and accidental death, creating a veritable paradise, one in which human progress is essentially stalled, however. Then one day, pain returns to the world, as does Jason Worthing.

This history, related by Worthing through dreams to a young scribe, is fascinating and often harrowing, covering tens of thousands of years of history and leading up to an explanation for why pain, death and sorrow have returned. The short stories that follow fill in the gaps left by the novella, detailing some of the more critical events in the history of Capitol and Worthing. Card has fully realized several societies in The Worthing Saga, and his answers to the what-if questions he poses — What if immortality were possible? What if pain and suffering were eliminated? — are both epic and meaningful.

The Dark Tower Series: From Start to Finish

July 21, 2009 at 11:56 am | In Books, Reviews | 12 Comments
Tags: Dark Tower, Fantasy, Horror, Metafiction, Series, Stephen King, Western

Cover of The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, Book 7)

The Dark Tower Series Books 1-7 by Stephen King

If you didn’t read the Dark Tower books as they came out, entering the series now can seem daunting. While the first book in the series, The Gunslinger, is relatively slim, the books just keep getting thicker and thicker — and there are seven of them to get through. But I think the journey through King’s epic is well worth your time, especially if you enjoy novels that mix genres (science fiction, fantasy, western, horror), present a new spin on old tropes (the quest story, parallel worlds), and even experiment with metafiction. The Dark Tower is the pinnacle of King’s writing career, and I think the series incorporate the best of his ideas and themes (as well as some failures). Here is my guide to the series.

The Gunslinger was first published in 1982, but a revised and expanded edition was released in 2003 that restores a few cut scenes, adds some important foreshadowing and cleans up some inconsistencies with the later novels. The slimmest volume in the series, and the best written, The Gunslinger has one of the truly great opening lines:

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

In The Gunslinger, we meet Roland, King’s antihero, and enter his world, a “world that has moved on.” We also learn of his quest to reach the Dark Tower, Roland’s obsessive goal that drives the entire series. The book is haunting and spare, and if you were only going to read one Dark Tower book, this would be the one. Just try not to continue, though, when you reach the end.

For me, the strongest books in the series after The Gunslinger are The Drawing of the Three (Volume II) and The Wastelands (Volume III). In these books, Roland is putting together his ka-tet, the group of people who will travel with him on his quest, and he first crosses from his world into ours (or a world very much like ours). The suspense in these two books is ramped up high; I have reread both several times and still could not put them down. Many readers would also name Volume IV, Wizard and Glass, as their favorite because it tells Roland’s back story: how he first became a gunslinger, his first love and what happened to her, and how his kingdom of Gilead was brought down. I find Wizard and Glass to be a little long-winded but still highly enjoyable.

The fifth and sixth installments, Wolves of the Calla and Song of Susannah, are probably the weakest links. In Wolves of the Calla, King really crosses into metafictional territory, spicing it with cross-references — and even one major character — from his other works, as well as elements from Marvel comics, Star Wars and Harry Potter. There is a lot going on in these two novels, maybe a bit too much for some readers. But having journeyed this far, it seems a shame to stop now, and both are still great fun, especially Wolves, which features a spaghetti Western-style showdown at the end. I do have to say that these books introduce King’s most audacious twist of all, which I won’t spoil. Some readers see this as a shocking and arrogant bit of hubris, although I look at it not only as an interesting experiment with reality within fiction, but also a culmination of themes King has been writing about for a long time. It may not be completely successful, but it certainly is something new.

The last book, The Dark Tower, has deeply divided fans. It is the heftiest of all the volumes (with the possible exception of Wizard and Glass), but you can’t stop if you’ve made it this far. This novel is a mass of contradictions: absurd and moving, deeply satisfying and completely unsatisfying in its long-awaited conclusion to Roland’s quest, disappointing and ultimately redeeming. Of course, King kills off a bunch of major characters, which I am not spoiling because that was foreshadowed all along, but don’t forget Jake’s haunting line from Volume 1:

Go on, then; there are other worlds than these.

And there certainly are.

Several aspects of Volume VII border on the ridiculous. It does go on a little too long, and at some point, you’re ready for the Dungeons and Dragons escapades to stop and the serious story to resume. But the ending makes up for it, in my opinion. I won’t give it away, but I imagine I’m one of the few readers who didn’t howl in frustration and throw the book against the wall when we find out what happens to Roland. It takes quite a bit of musing to unravel the tangled web that King has spun of story upon story, world interconnected with world, and that’s good enough to satisfy me. I won’t say that The Dark Tower is my favorite in the series — the first three books are far better — but I will say that King wrote an ending I never saw coming, and that’s why I liked it so much.

The Comic Book Adaptations of Stephen King (readmorebooks.wordpress.com)
Hell Is Repetition: The Theme of Cycles in Science Fiction (readmorebooks.wordpress.com)
Damon Lindelof Compares ‘Dark Tower’ Adaptation Process To ‘Watchmen’ (splashpage.mtv.com)

Worth Reading: Wicked

April 16, 2009 at 3:30 pm | In Books, Reviews | 3 Comments
Tags: Fantasy, Gregory Maguire, Oz, Parallel literature, Series

Cover of "Wicked: The Life and Times of t...

Cover via Amazon

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (1995)

Wicked, our book club’s selection this month, was not a book I expected to enjoy. It is a retelling of the Oz story from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West, beginning with her birth and childhood and ending with her infamous death by water bucket. I am not a fan of the whole Oz story-verse generally, but I did enjoy Wicked, very much.

Maguire has transformed his subject matter from children’s adventure to something much funnier, more satirical and definitely more adult. His version of Oz is a dangerous and corrupt place, ruled by a despot with an iron fist. The three Witches — Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, who was born with green skin and a decidedly anti-social disposition; her sister, Nessarose, who was born without arms and grew up to be a religious fanatic; and her college roommate, Glinda, who is a bit of a dingbat — attend university together as young ladies. There they are manipulated by their headmistress into becoming Adepts, pawns of the Wizard who unwittingly help him maintain his control in the regions where they hold sway. Elphaba, even at the end, has no idea how she has been used, even when Dorothy, another stooge, quite accidentally douses her with that handy bucket. Wicked is, quite surprisingly, a novel filled with political intrigue and dark humor, and is a lot of fun to read.

Old Favorite: Dune

April 10, 2009 at 11:06 am | In Books, Reviews | 3 Comments
Tags: Frank Herbert, Hugo award, Nebula award, Science fiction, Serialized novels, Series

Cover of Dune (Sf Masterworks)

Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)

5 stars!

When I first read this science fiction classic, I was 14 and probably read it purely as an adventure story. (I still remember it vividly. I read it in two or three sittings on a long plane trip.) When I reread it as an adult, I came at it from the perspective of a character-driven political novel that happens to be set on an alien planet. It works both ways. Herbert has created a world that is so complex and layered that the reader has to tease it apart to gain full understanding of all the themes at play. I suspect even more rereadings may be necessary.

One new thing I noticed during the latest reading was how much human political and religious history is infused in the alien societies Herbert created, with a particular emphasis on Islam, which makes this messianic war story just as apropos for our time as it was when it was written 40 years ago. The depiction of life on a desert planet where water is the most precious of commodities and every action is about survival remains fascinating as well. The only thing that fell short for me this time was that the story was so epic and so grand that certain aspects of it had to be glossed over; some characters got short shrift, and some plotlines got lost. But that’s nitpicking. This classic of the genre still stands.

Frank Herbert’s Dune cast a spell on me, writes Sam Jordison (guardian.co.uk)

Classic Favorite: The Giver

April 25, 2008 at 12:16 pm | In Books, Reviews | 4 Comments
Tags: CS Lewis, Dystopia, Eugenics, Isaac Asimov, Lloyd Alexander, Lois Lowry, Madeleine L'Engle, Newbery Medal, Science fiction, Series, Soft science fiction, Speculative fiction, Trilogy, Utopia, Young adult

The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)

It is true that most habitual readers acquire the habit when they are young. I have my father to blame for my addiction to books, who actually gave me an Isaac Asimov novel when I was in the fourth grade (from which I learned several choice curse words, although I was totally incapable of following the plot). In fact, if I do not get to read at least once a day, preferably before going to sleep, I suffer severe withdrawal symptoms such as insomnia and persistent moodiness. But I digress.

Like many young readers, I was hooked by the gateway drugs of science fiction and fantasy. My favorites when I was a pre-teen were the Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis, the Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander and A Wrinkle in TIme and its sequels by Madeleine L’Engle.

Unfortunately, I had long abandoned my childish ways by the time The Giver was published. I read it for the first time recently and realized that this was a book my younger self would have loved. It depicts a dystopian society where all choices have been eliminated. Everything from what your job is to who you marry is decided for you. But one person in the society, the “Receiver,” must be chosen as the keeper of the society’s collective memories. His job is to remember what life used to be like, with war, tragedy and pain, yes, but also with true emotions, extended family and even colors. Each new Receiver receives the memories from the previous Receiver, who thus becomes the “Giver” of the title. While a bit too simplistic for the adult reader, the novel provides a nice introduction to some weighty themes for younger readers. Think of it as a Brave New World or 1984 lite.

This is the first book in a trilogy. I haven’t read the other two in the series, but trilogies are the crack cocaine of science fiction — once you start, you can’t stop. (Or have I stretched this metaphor too thin?)

Practice a little subversion, and sneak a copy of The Giver to a young reader you know.

Worth Reading: Red Mars

January 27, 2008 at 4:07 pm | In Books, Reviews | 4 Comments
Tags: Hugo award, Kim Stanley Robinson, Mars, Nebula award, Science fiction, Series, Spiritual sci fi, Trilogy

Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson (1993)

Mars was empty before we came.

Kim Stanley Robinson is not an easy author to read or to love. Some of his novels can be counted among my favorites (The Years of Rice and Salt), and others (The Gold Coast, Forty Signs of Rain) I simply hated — or couldn’t even get through to the end (Fifty Degrees Below). Even the books I loved required a lot from me: they are thick, dense and epic, layered with so much hard science and social science that they can sometimes read like textbooks rather than novels. But with Robinson’s best books, the effort is worth it. Red Mars is a good example.

Robinson’s epic about the colonization of Mars (the first book in a trilogy on the subject) covers a lot of ground. Sure, it tackles the myriad technical problems involved in colonizing such a hostile planet, including how to build a space elevator for easier transport of settlers and exploitation of Mars’s resources. But from there, Robinson takes on even more weighty themes: the clash between those coming to Mars to try to create an entirely new way of life and those back on Earth who want to retain control; cultural conflicts among the various ethnic and religious groups spreading out to Mars; the discovery of an innovative medical procedure that greatly extends the human lifespan and the implications for an over-populated Earth; all climaxing in a planetary revolution propelled by all of these issues.

This is a ponderous book with a lot of big ideas. It may be a bit overlong — sometimes it seems as if all the characters do is drive around by themselves for great distances over the barren Martian landscape — but those sections may be excused by the action of the rest of the novel. Robinson actually helps us believe that living on Mars is something we can achieve, while showing us that these advances will probably only exacerbate our very human problems.

Worth Reading: Seed to Harvest

August 21, 2007 at 8:59 am | In Books, Reviews | 3 Comments
Tags: Dystopia, Octavia Butler, Science fiction, Series

Seed to Harvest, Octavia Butler (2007)
Seed to Harvest Cover

Doro discovered the woman by accident when he went to see what was left of one of his seed villages.

Grand Central Publishing has been reissuing Octavia Butler’s novels in attractive trade paperbacks, which I think is a great thing. It enables readers — meaning me — to catch up on Butler’s work, particularly her series, which are each collected into one volume. Seed to Harvest is comprised of all of the novels in the Patternist series, including Butler’s first published novel, Mind of My Mind. The only Patternist novel that is omitted is Survivor, which Butler herself disowned.

The novels are all rather short, so it makes sense to read them through in one long volume. They are also presented in chronological order in the collection, rather than in the order in which they were originally published in the 1970s: Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay’s Ark and Patternmaster.

I was already a fan of Butler’s when I picked up Seed to Harvest, and I found this series to be the weakest of her works, which makes sense, considering they were her earliest publications. Clay’s Ark, set in a near-future similar to that of Parable of the Sower, was my favorite of the lot: dark, violent and ultimately rather hopeless. Still, none of the novels felt really complete on its own. It was clear that Butler was honing her chops with these early efforts. All that being said, even her mediocre books are fast and entertaining reads, with lots of interesting concepts to chew on, and I can recommend them. I’m also glad that these reissues can bring Butler to the attention of a whole new generation of readers.

Worth Reading: Lilith’s Brood

April 4, 2007 at 1:19 pm | In Books, Reviews | 2 Comments
Tags: Octavia Butler, Post-apocalypse, Science fiction, Series

Lilith’s Brood, Octavia Butler (2000)

Alive!

Still alive.

Alive…again.

Awakening was hard, as always.

Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis novels were first compiled into one volume in 1989, but that compilation is now out of print. As with Seed to Harvest, Grand Central Publishing has reissued the compilation in an attractive trade paperback to capture new readers. And I’m glad they did, because I probably wouldn’t have read these books otherwise.

When I finished Lilith’s Brood, I actually wasn’t sure whether I liked it or not, but I thought about it a great deal, which I think is a sign of a book worth reading. The underlying theme disturbed me, partly because I didn’t find much hope in it, partly because I found myself agreeing with the series’ assessment: that humankind is fated by our own biology to destroy ourselves.

Lilith’s Brood includes three novels: Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago, which comprise the Xenogenesis series. The story starts 250 years after a devastating nuclear war. The few human survivors have been picked up by an alien spacecraft and kept in stasis while the aliens, the Oankali, study them. Lilith is one of the first to be awakened and to be integrated into an Oankali family. She is being trained to awaken others, to introduce them to their new reality and their alien hosts, and to reveal the Oankali’s plan: to produce Oankali-human offspring, a brand-new hybrid species.

The Oankali are genetic engineers and reproduce by genetic manipulation. They have no disease or old age, and they can communicate with one another at the cellular level. They survive by traveling through space and finding species with promising genetic traits to mate with, such as humans. However, this means that humans can no longer reproduce with one another; the Oankalis have disabled their fertility. Also, when the Oankali leave, they will consume the remainder of Earth’s resources for the journey.

Of course, there is rebellion. Many humans choose to live long, childless lives rather than join with the Oankali. Lilith does not, because having been integrated with an Oankali family, she has become physically dependent on them. The next two books follow the lives of two of her children, as the Oankali-human interbreeding progresses. I don’t think I would have been compelled to keep reading the second novel if it were a separate sequel; each book on its own seems somewhat incomplete.

Throughout all three novels, the humans — living in primitive conditions on Earth — are portrayed as without hope, a species that, if allowed to reproduce, would attempt to destroy itself again within a few generations. Humans are hierarchical and competitive, unlike Oankali. As individuals, they can be intelligent and compassionate. But as a group, they are violent, destructive and territorial. Even when the aliens allow some humans to start a new colony on Mars and have children, the Oankali hold out no hope for their future.

That’s what makes this series so disturbing. The only hope posited is essentially that a greater power from the outside will find us, cure all our diseases and create with us a better people than we can ever hope to be. We are unable to cure ourselves, doomed by our own biology to always be fighting and murdering one another. I look at the news every day and feel that this is true. But I don’t want it to be true. I want humans to be capable of evolving past whatever impulse causes us to want to destroy one another. I want us to save ourselves, not look to some alien or god to save us.

But if I’m looking for that kind of resolution, I won’t find it in Lilith’s Brood. Still, I’m glad I read it. Even if I don’t ultimately agree with Butler’s conclusions, her writing made me think about and question some of my own assumptions.