Context

I've had this post sitting in my drafts for a week. I've added to it, removed from it, had my finger hovering over the delete button and the post button alternatively. First worried it was too personal, then that it wasn't personal enough, and at last that no one cared any way. Doubt, second-guessing, insecurity, etc.

I made this blog, all those years ago, as a place to vent. A place I could say all the things I will never ever say. Hence the title. It's not so easy to do now, given most of you reading this actually know me. There are a great many things I'm not saying that I really, really, really, REALLY need to say.

I know what happens when I let silence rule me. Silence is yet another of those goblins that harass me. So this is venting. You all know someone who isn't a happy person, and this is a little bit of what it's like. Give them a tap.

Suffering From Depression vs Being Depressed

I have been discussing depression with a couple of friends recently, and was informed that apparently there's a difference between being depressed, and suffering depression. I didn't realise, although if I had thought about it for long enough, it should have been obvious.

Everyone, at some time in their lives, becomes depressed. No one has a good time all the time.

That doesn't mean one suffers depression. Being depressed, even for those suffering depression, is usually circumstantial. After a while, the circumstances go away, and the depression does to.

For me, being depressed is-

DEPRESSION

A grey, wet blanket. Wool, so it is heavy, and scratchy.

-which differs from person to person. For Winston Churchill, depression was a black dog that followed him around.

Suffering from depression means that that grey, wet blanket never goes a way. It sits just there. Every. Single. Day.

When depressed, it covers my whole head, so that I can't see or hear, I can't speak, and sometimes, I can't breathe. It's paralyzing. On the good days, it pulls back to just sit there, being heavy, cumbersome, but not in the way. But it never goes away.

It means that, on the good nights, you have trouble sleeping, and on the bad nights, you can't sleep because you're crying, and have been for hours.

It means on good days you're enjoying yourself, having a glimpse of what it feels to be a normal person, and yet waiting for that one look, pause, sentence that will ruin it all and bring you back down. And it does.

It means you spend a lot of time avoiding people, because people hurt you. Never intentionally, but you're sensitive, and you can hear everything that isn't said as well as the many inflections of what is said, and you can read between lines to entire universes that don't exist, and the strength of your insecurity and doubt has the power to destroy even the happiest of bubbles.

It means you spend a lot of time in your head, to hide from these people who mean you no harm. You take refuge in your warmest memories, and then, because you cannot help yourself, you systematically tear them apart, and poison them with doubt, and tell yourself that it never meant anything to anyone else but you.

It means you know yourself well, very well. You get tired of your own company, and when you're not avoiding all contact with the human race, you're obsessively checking your phone or email, to see if anyone feels any need to acknowledge your existence.

It means when you need help, you're incapable of asking for it. You sit there with the phone in your hand, staring at the wall, playing through your mind all the conversations you might have with all the people you could call, but you don't. You say it's because you don't want to impose, but really, it's because you're terrified they won't understand, or won't care, and that the slightest rejection will make you crumple.

It means you look at the days, weeks, years, decades, minutes of your life stretching out before you, and the sheer length of it sucks the breath from your lungs, because the thought of having to go through every one of those days is crushing, is more than you can handle. So you don't think about it.

It means on good days you don't like yourself, and on bad days you hate yourself.

It means when people ask 'how are you?', you give nothing answers, 'okay', 'alright', because the truth takes too long, and no one wants to be burdened with someone elses darkness, and they never know what to say anyway.

It means you carefully push your friends to arm's length. Words are so very cheap, and not matter how well meant, words don't mean anything to you anymore. So you'd rather nothing was said.

It means you need some sort of acknowledgement that you're not a worthless sack of meat as much as you need air, because you can't convince yourself otherwise.

It means you're constantly tired, because every day is one long battle with yourself, to not assume the worst of the world, to acknowledge that it isn't personal, to remind yourself that there is nothing wrong with your life and you have no reason to for all this anger, and hatred, and misery. And why are you crying on the train?

It means you're strong, because you've had to carry a heavy burden for a long time. But its a strength like glass; easy to see through, easy to break. There is no armour thick enough.

It means you spend most of your life alone, because you're afraid of what the world might do to you. You're hard to get to know, so a lot of people don't try.

It means the walls are always up. The walls are always down. You're nothing but contradictions, and no one knows what the weather is like in your head from one minute to the next.

It means you see life as an ocean. Everyone else seems to have a boat, and they coast about on the surface as if it were fun. You lost your boat. Perhaps you never had one, and now you're in the water, and every day you struggle to keep your head above water, with this grey, wet blanket tangling you up and dragging you down.

Somtimes, it means you drown.

Someties, it means you're very good at treading water.

PMS [demon] -

No one knows what colour she is, as she is always covered in the Blood Of Her Enemies. She doesn't speak, but screams.

1. The PMS card, once played, cannot be used again for one month.
   
   
2. When PMS is in play, the player takes a negetive fifty penalty to Charisma, Fortitude, and Happy Beans.
   
   
3. When PMS is in play, INSECURITY receives a plus fifty bajillion bonus to attack power.
   
   
4. If the player chooses to invoke chocolate, PMS has decreased attack power by thirty percent for twenty minutes. After that time, PMS regains full attack power, and INSECURITY receives an additional ten percent bonus due to feeling guitly for eating chocolate.
   

Yep. I'm feeling that fifty bajillion extra attack power.

(Promise I'll stop messing around with my demons and make a sensible post soon.)

INSOMNIA [noun] (phonetic AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!): a small goblin, white and pasty skinned, with spindle limbs, an enormous fat gut, and a mouth that takes up more than half her head. It is the sort of mouth that indicates should you displease her by going to sleep, she will eat your face. INSOMNIA sits on a would-be sleeper's pillow, and talks to them, all night long.

INSOMNIA has been an unwanted guest for three nights.

EXHAUSTION: [noun] (phonetic ...mmmrrgh): a small goblin, mushroom mouldly brown in colour, totally emanciated. Big bags and shadows under eyes. In fact, face is all eyes, bloodshot, somewhat twitchy. EXHAUSTION exudes a definite air that does not require you to look at him funny for him to shank you with his shiv.

On the third night, EXHAUSTION crawled out from under my bed.

INSOMNIA gave EXHAUSTION a funny look.

EXHAUSTION went super saiyan and evolved in to TOTAL FREAKING EXHAUSTION, and shanked INSOMNIA with his shiv.

SIR TESSA promptly fell into a coma.

Viator - Lucius Shepard



Fabulous cover, isn't it? I am quite in love with it. Nightshade do make beautiful books. The novellas especially, as this one is, are lovely to hold. It fits so nicely in my hand, with good weight, but not too much. The pages are nice to touch, and they even imprint the naked hardcover.

Originally, I'd started to read this book in the middle of a night shift. Shepard writes damn long sentences, and I mean long. They take up the whole page. He has control of them, and it isn't hard to follow them, but it was way more than I could handle at the time. So, take note: don't read on night shift.

VIATOR is the story of a ship of the same name, whose crew abandoned her, and whose captain went made and drove her into the coast of Alaska, ploughing on at such a speed that only the very stern of the ship remains on the beach, the rest of her steel carcass marooned high in the forest.

(I loved this book just from the blurb.)

Wilander is hired to join a ragtag crew of men who are assigned to the landlocked ship, to evaluate her worth in order to be stripped. They're a bit kooky when he arrives, and throughout the book descend even further into kookiness.

But Viator is not all that she seems. Something is happening with the ship, something violent and mysterious and wonderful. Not content to be cannablised, she is changing herself and those who crew her, and although trapped on land, she is still travelling, pushing her way through to somewhere else.

Wilander strays between Viator and the town of Kaliaska, between an alternate reality and one that is all too real, between his derranged crew members and the woman who could ground him in his life, in his soul.

Shepard is brilliant in shifting Wilander and the reader from what is familiar and sane, to what is unfamiliar, yet seems to make more sense. He exercises impressive control over narrative tension, and builds it up at a perfect rate of knots, exactly what is needed for the story at any given time.

I felt somewhat alien from his characters, even Wilander whom the story rides on. Perhaps, methink, this is because they're mad.

In fact, Viator herself was the character I loved most. She had grace, that banged up old ship, grace, strength, courage and cunning. And most of all, she had mystery. Not necessarily menace, but mystery.

Unfortunately, the ending sucks. After the breath-stealing build up Shepard had woven, the end was as exciting and as satisfying as scooping wet fluff bits out of the washing machine. According to a thread on the Nightshade boards, he was in dire straits himself when writing, and didn't have the capacity for anything else in him. This I can understand, but doesn't make the fact any less disappointing. Apparently, Nightshade will be releasing a paperback of the book later this year, rewritten, with an additional 10k. I am as yet undecided whether or not to acquire it, as I'm not entirely happy with the thought of buying a book twice, even if the story is changed. I've already read it once.

Verdict: A very powerful book, one whose images will stay with you for some time. Just...pity about the end. Real pity.

EXT. STREET. DAYTIME.

Enter right, SIR TESSA, going about her daily business, whatever that may be. She pauses and waits for an opportunity to cross the road.

SIR TESSA
...

Enter right, INSECURITY, cloth in one hand, chloroform in the other. INSECURITY soaks the cloth in chloroform, pounces on SIR TESSA from behind, and clamps the cloth over her face. SIR TESSA makes the appropriate surprised noises, and then passes out.

INSECURITY cavorts.

INSECURTY produces cuts SIR TESSA open, climbs inside, and sews her up from within.

LATER. EXT. STREET. DAYLIGHT.

SIR TESSA wakes up. Sits up. Gets up.

SIR TESSA
...what was that?

Exit left, SIR TESSA.

MUSASHI - EIJI YOSHIKAWA, TRANSLATED BY CHARLES S. TERRY

(Originally, I tried to get my hair in a topnot, as pictured on the cover. You'll just have to do without, as I have too much hair, and not enough hands.)



This is the second time I've tried to write up this book, and I'm not sure I'll succeed. There's too much contained between the two covers for me to handle, because I'm not a reviewer, just someone who gets excited about books and feels the need to share/inflict this excitement.

This isn't a story, it's great handfuls of stories that end, start, twist, change, mature, overlap, entwine, split, and makes it just about impossible for me to provide any sort of overview. But, I shall try.

It begins in the aftermath of the battlefield of Sekigahara, with Takezo and his friend Matahachi lying among the corpses. They were not on the winning side, and there are limited options for the losers of great battles, being branded as traitor to be killed on sight, and having not a scrap of honour with which to return home.

Their paths diverge; Matahachi runs off with a praying mantis like widow and her daughter, despite being betrothed to the beautiful Otsu back in his village. But the widow Oko doesn't care for him, merely understands the need to have a man about the house in these times, and after breaking his engagement with Otsu and thus disappointing his mother, he cannot return home. He sits in the back room, and drinks sake. At some point, he finally plucks up the courage to leave, but instead of making steps to amend his wrongs, he goes on to pursue some imaginary easy life of money, sake, women, and respect. He makes no effort to work for this life, but instead waits, and waits, and waits for it to drop in his lap. From stealing from dead men, impersonating heros, kidnapping women, and estranging his mother, he drops from on depth to the next, until, at last, he learns. In taking responsibility for his actions, he finds strength, and more importantly, peace.

Otsu at times I wished to dismiss as nothing other than a silly girl, but she of all characters proves the strongest. An orphan consumed by the loneliness of having no family, abandoned by her betrothed, and then after saving Musashi, further abandoned by him, she spends the book travelling across the country, largely alone. She doesn't have the physical dominance that rules so many people, nor does she have the safety of a powerful clan to shelter in. What she does have, is a willpower that is unmatched by any of the enormous cast of this book. It carries her through all sorts of horrors, and in the end, she triumphs.

Osugi, Matahachi's demonic mother, also possesses an incredible force of will, but it is that blind, raging, destructive willpower, that hinders her more than anything else. She won't consider that her son is less than perfect, refuses to acknowledge the dissolusion of the betrothal and as such, considers Otsu her propert as daughter in law and slave, and blames everything, possibly even the weather, on Musashi. The years she spends chasing around the countryside after him, determined to have revenge for something that she can barel remember, see her lose her family, her meagre friends, until she is nearly beyond redemption. For her cause is perhaps the worst, in that she fully believes in her righeousness in all things.

Takezo, who becomes Musashi, goes through the greatest transformation of them all. As a selfish and angry young man, he decides to find the Way of the Sword, and over the ten years covered in this book, learns that the Way does not merely mean becoming an expert swordsman, but an entire way of living, inside and out. In his travels he makes many mistakes, but he learns from them, and in doing so becomes a mature and wise man worthy of the respect he commands, and humble enough not to accept it.

As I said in a previous posts, through his insights I learned a little about myself, and how much further I have to go.

Those are but a few of the immense cast in the book. There really are too many key characters to count, and their tales are so complex and so tangled with each other, than I won't try to unpick it.

The translation is the best translation of japanese I've come across yet, but given how highly regarded the book is, I'm not surprised. It still suffers here and there, as I cringed at 'okay', and an awful lot of samurai have fire shooting from their eyes, but they are very minor things. Interestingly, I think this is one case where a shifting POV works. Currently butting heads with omni POV as I am, it was interesting to note Yoshikawa's use of head jumping, which is seemless and well used.

Finally, this is a japanese samurai story written by japanese, for japanese. I learned a lot, both in terms of a history and culture I know very little about. I can't help wondering how things would be if Australia had a folk hero like Musashi to idiolise. Instead of the honour, respect, wisdom and kindness that comes from trying to emulate Musashi, we have...well, Ned Kelly I suppose. Who was not about honour, respect, wisdom, and kindness, but fighting for the underdog.

I'm all for underdogs, but there's an inherent conflict involved in standing up for one.

Verdict: An astonishingly complex and wonderful story that is less about grand bloody battles (although they happen) and more about people, the way they are, and the way they learn. It is one of those books that will make you stop and think hard about yourself, and perhaps grateful to be given the chance to change for the better.

I'm looking for my Way. May I never achieve perfection.

No Present Like Time - Steph Swainston

Dear UK Publishers,

I realise that in order for speculative fiction books to do well within your marketing environment, there is a need to get books off the genre shelves and onto the mainstream shelves. I don't have a problem with that.

I do have a problem with the fact that, apparently, in the UK publishing world, 'mainstream' is another word for 'shit boring cover'.

See Exhibit A:



While I am a fanatic book preservation cultist, I am well aware that by eating this copy, I could go out and buy a prettier one, with a cover that had something resembling personality.

I even find that the original Wheel of Time covers, with all their whacky proportions, are preferable to the new super bland masks they wear now.

Think on that,

Sir Tessa

Right! Onward!

I had an odd relationship with The Year of Our War. Aside from dealing with the mild fork in the eye that is discovering one of your favourite story ideas is already in someone else's book, it just didn't....there wasn't...the chemistry-

-I felt that I really should like it, yet I didn't.

That initial feeling didn't dispel in the first few pages, chapters. The new pieces of world introduced, Jant's relationship problems, politics; it all felt like a set up for a sequal, not a story that appeared on its own. The Insects were pushed back, so Swain needed to devise a new enemy. There's nothing wrong with the story as it is, it just didn't sit right with me.

And while I love stories of long sea voyages, and discovering new lands, and giant sharks and serpents, I found that this time around the wonders of the world did even less to woo me, something that I feel is partially due to the characters.

Characterisation is Swain's trump card. Jant, an immortal junkie academic, is a hard character to nail down, but she staked him out well and good. As protagonists and narrators go, she brings out his unreliability, selfishness, obsessiveness, neediness, etc, and instead of making him an utterly dispicable character, she made him fascinating. That is skill, right there. I fell a little bit in love with Jant, in an I-want-to-throttle-some-sense-into-you way.

Which is pretty much all the book had going for me, because nothing else has stuck. Not the giant monsters, not the sieges or the flying or the fighting or the sneaking. Just one brilliant character.

Taking half a minute to dredge up what else I thought while reading; the title irked me. A third of the way in, a new country is introduced, and this country's currency is time. This coin here, is worth half an hour. This note, is a day of labour. You work, you get paid. It's a lovely idea, and given all the stalling and shirking and waiting for everything to sort itself out Jant was doing, I expected time to play a larger role, but instead it got lost in the smoke and the blood and the drugs.

Guess I like my themes to stick around, instead of wandering off.

Verdict: Yeah, it's an okay read. It didn't displease me at all, but neither was I burning through the pages. I do believe there is a lot to be learned from Swain's use of voice and character, which is of value to any writer.

BATTLE ROYALE - Koushun Takami, translated by Yuji Oniki

Spoilers? Hell yes.



It started with the one on the left. Actually, that's a lie. It started with Peek rabbitting on and on about how awesome the book was, and the movie (which I have yet to see anywhere at all) and how I needed to go read it.

FINE.

Couldn't see the novel anywhere, so I started on the manga. When I discovered that I just could not read it in public due to the sudden and frequent appearance of double page spreads of boobies and or motion capture close ups of students getting their jaw blown off, I got hooked. Anything I can't read RIGHT NOW I want to read.

I devoured it when I got home. It was awful, horrible, shocking, and the next day, I went out to get the second book.

It wasn't there, but hey presto, the novel was.

It's a big mother of a novel. There are bigger and thicker books on my shelves, but this thing has density. I think it's fitting that the book have adequet mass to be a murder weapon.

Set in an alternate universe in which Japan is one of the ruling powers of the world, it focuses on one of the products of this strict, regimented society; The Program. Random year 9 classes are selected from all the schools in the empire, and are sent to remote areas - in this case an island - with absolutely no way of escaping. There, they are fitted with explosive collars. These collars trigger if a student wanders into a forbidden zone (the island having been divided up into grids, and a good method of keeping the students from attacking their captors), if the collars are fiddled with in an attempt to remove them, and if no one has died within a 24 hour period.

The aim of the Program is survival. Of a sort. The class is set loose on the island, each student with rudimentary supplies an a random weapon. Then, they're expected to kill each other. There is only ever one winner for the Program. (There Can Be Only One.)

The reality of the situation and the total lack of say the students have in this is hammered home by a) the presentation of their teacher's corpse, he who was against the class being selected for the Program, and b) the killing of two students, in the class room, right in front of everyone else.

The story is like that. Brutal. No holding back, no kittens spared.

Initially, I had some reservations about the book. 42 students, and they all had to die. There was no way I was going to keep track of 42 charcters, but that turned out to be quite well handled. There are a handful of main characters: Shuya, Shogo, and Noriko stick together through the larger part of the book, as do Shinji and Yutaka, with Mitsuko and Kazuo being lone predators who are most definitely playing the game. The rest of the class appear, and after an introduction as to their history and character, proceed to die in all sorts of horrible ways. Morbid as it sounds, this book is one of those parge-turns because finding out who dies next, and how, is addictive.

And considering that for the first half of the book, the 3 Stooges (Shuya, Shogo, Noriko) do nothing but sit around and talk, argue, agree, until the next scene where they hash over the same conversation again, it's a good thing that there are plenty of other students running around doing things. Sad to say that in the manga, the 3 Stooges are being just as uninteresting at this point.

I wouldn't say this book is well written, and it's not something that can be palmed off on translation. Takami labourously follows the structure of; new character, state what they've been running around doing for the past few hours, go into great detail about what sports they play, or what subjects they liked, or who they had a crush on (Shuya, everyone has a crush on freakin' Shuya), then summarise the past two pages with something throwaway like "Basically, she was just your average girl," (I've never met an average anybody), and then go back to the present, where they die. As most of the characters are alone, they all spend a lot of time talking to themselves, and thinking the most unlikely things for the sake of the story. They're also the most unlikely teenagers I've ever encountered. Cliched doesn't begin to cover it.

But they rock.

Mitsuko especially.

Because Takami defied wobbly pacing, cliched characters and lacklustre writing by coming up with one hell of a good idea. This idea, setting a class of ordinary students - friends - to kill each other off on an island has more tension than anything I have ever read. Lots more. If I put all my high paced scary books on a shelf together, Battle Royale would just laugh at them. There is a lot to be learned about ideas in this, with time limits within time limits, and characters that you'll like despite it all.

Because I think, no matter what age we are, we can all relate to high school students. We've all been there. And reading this, there's a part of me thinking "That could be me."

(I don't think I would have lasted very long.)

I acknowledge that this is not at all a book that will appeal to all audiences. Far, far, far from it. If gratuitous violence is not your thing, turn away. If brutality isn't your thing, turn away. If very ordinary prose and lousy structuring isn't your thing, turn away. If cliched school kids (seriously, what is up with Shinji?) aren't your thing, run screaming.

If you don't have a problem with any of the above, if you have even the slightest interest in this book, my dogs above, hie thee hence to a book store and get this book now. It isn't a story. It's an experience.

Verdict: You know how half way across the road you look up to see oncoming traffic oncoming very fast, and you make it to the other side with time to spare, but your heart is hammering anyway, because you didn't see that when you first stepped out, and you nearly died, and it wasn't good, but damn what a rush.....
People chop up Battle Royale and snort it. It's that good.

Liquor - Poppy Z. Brite

See this?



Signed. Normally, I go giddy over having a book signed. It feels like acknowledgement, putting the author's book in the author's hands, that I loved the book that much to go giddy fan girl on them. Well, this time it felt like cheating, because at the time I hadn't yet read Liquor.

Now I have, and I'm glad I took the opportunity to have it stamped.

Prior to this, the only Brite I'd read was her collection of short stories, The Self-Made Man. This book and I, we didn't get along that well. I haven't had a problem with horror in the past, but Brite does her sex, violence, and gore that well, that it got under my skin and left me feeling decidedly unsettled. Her writing was excellent, I just didn't enjoy the content.

Liquor isn't horror. It's restaurants.

Possibly a much crueler environment.

Set in New Orleans, it follows the lives of Rickey and G-man, two kitchen workers who are taking that mad leap into opening a restaurant of their own. In fact, that's the entire story. There is an evil nasty antagonist of sorts, but he's almost incidental, and given how much appears to be involved in opening a restaurant, there's material for many more novels in there.

Brite's biggest strength is her characterisation, no, not just her characterisation, but the dynamic between characters. She is a master at that which I take too much pleasure in messing around with: chit chat. The seemingly idle banter of her characters disguises itself as random shit talking while moving the plot steadily along. (My random shit talking, while amusing, tends to actually be random shit talking.) Rickey and G-man are fascinating guys, their relationship especially. That of two people who have known each other so long that it doesn't really matter (but it does), and that the act of not being overly intimate in public occasionally intrudes on their private life, these things have truth to them.

I can't comment on whether or not she captured the restaurant scene, or New Orleans, knowing very little about either, but I do know that I learned a lot about kitchens and cooking from this slim little book. And every second page made me hungry.

As an aside; this book has fantastic flop. The pages aren't stiff, and the cover is lovely.

No, I don't have a lot to say about this book. Partly because I read it a while ago, and most of it has slipped from my mind, but mostly because it was a straight forward story that was very well told. Given my normal reading habits, it was a wonderfully refreshing romp in a world I know nothing about, and a fantastic example of characters driving a story, something I'm becoming more obsessed about.

I'm saving the second book for the next time I need something different, with boys boys boys who swear swear swear and a good story.

Verdict: I don't think this will change your life, but it is very well written, and the characters will stay with you. So will risotto. Mmmm.

Nails and Shells

To his way of thinking, he had had a battle with a nail, and the nail had won. As a student of the martial arts, he was humiliated at having let himself be taken unawares. "Is there no way to resist any enemy of this sort"? he asked himself several times. "The nail was pointed upward and plainly visible. I stepped on it because I was half-asleep -- no, blind, because my spirit is not yet active throughout my whole body. What's more, I let the nail penetrate deep, proof my reflexes are slow. If I'd been in perfect control, I would have noticed the nail as soon as the botom of my sandal touched it."
His trouble, he concluded, was immaturity.

Taken from Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa.

Although it is arrogant and egotistical to compare myself with Musashi, right now, this is how I approach the world. Everything is a battle. Some battles are small, such as seeing that I get my quota of 40 reports a shift. Some battles are large, such as retaining a positive outlook. Some are fleeting and exhilerating, such as climbing cliffs to fish off dangerous rocks, as was involved last weekend. (I didn't fall to my doom or hurt myself, so I defeated the cliffs.)

This is, however, Musashi at his young, reckless, and very immature stage. At about 24, to be precise.

I'm not trying to find the Way of the Sword, yet still trying to find a way. Any way. My way. Maybe I'll grow out of this need to conquer the world around me, but not, I think, anytime soon.

Right now, I'm not sure what it is I'm battling. I have the vague suspicion that it's me, and the not-so-vague suspicion that I'm losing.

"To tell the truth, I myself have run up against a wall. There are times when I wonder if I have any future. I feel completely empty. It's like being confined in a shell. I hate myself. I tell myself I'm not good. But by chastising myself and forcing myself to go on, I manage to kick through the shell. Then a new path opens up before me.
"Believe me, it's a real struggle this time. I'm floundering around inside the shell, unable to do a thing."

I've kicked through a lot of shells in my life, but they've been easy to identify, as far as shells go. External problems, internal issues, things that determination will get the better of.

This time, I do wonder if I have any future, or more precisely, what I want my future to be. I don't know. I'm not sure what I'm aiming at anymore.

Do not merely pinch off the leaves
Or concern yourselves only with the branches.

At this point, Musashi has acknowledged that he has failed to kick through the shell, and he is now seeking, from the outside world, this one thing that will untangle the mess, break the dam, unlock the door, kick through the shell. Just one thing, one simple, obvious and beautiful that will open his eyes, and give him that new path.

I think I'm spending all my time with leaves and branches. I'm fretting over the leaf mould when right beside me is the tree itself.

Eventually, I will find the trunk again. But this time, looking inward can help me no longer.

I am not the droid you're looking for.

Quick Picks

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (movie) - very pretty, quite well adapted, however, I had the same problems with this movie as I had with the book. The girls don't do anything, and while I'm perfectly happy to believe in magical worlds hidden in wardrobes, I will NOT believe that a boy can suddenly pick up sword fighting, in full plate armour, on horse back, and be good at it. Nor do I believe it's a brilliant idea to find the first random bunch of kids you can, and automatically assume they're going to make GREAT rulers. I'll believe in magic, but people are people.

King Kong (movie) - this film needs cutting. Someone needs to take to it with an axe and a big red pen. Too many action sequences for the sake of action sequences, which go too long. I mean, at the end, when he's up on top of the Empire State Building with no space to turn around let alone manoeuver, and the planes are coming at him and he can't get out of their way - that could have been a quarter of the length it was. But, beautiful film. Loved the dinosaurs.

Blood: The Last Vampire (movie) - well I say 'movie', but it's only half an hour long. Vampire is part of a secret organisation that hunts demons. She hunts some demons. That is all. Nothing new there. Animation was okay. Due to the lack of any originality, was bored most of the way through it, and waiting for the end. Did I mention it was only half an hour long?

Voices of a Distant Star (movie) - oh my god. Only half an hour long, but what a brilliantly crafted half hour. It was beautiful, and when I say that I'm not talking about the animation. Childhood friends finish school. She goes to join the army, he stays on earth. As the fleet she is with jumps from Mars, to Neptune, to Pluto, to the Sirrius Constellation, the time it takes for her messages to reach him is greater and greater, until he's waiting 8 years between messages, when she waited maybe a day between writing them. It's stunning. It broke my heart so tenderly. Very much worth your time.

Samurai Executioner (comic) - by the gentlemen responsible for Lone Wolf and Cub. Alas, no Ogami Itto, but this samurai is just as worth. Same brutal and wonderful writing. Same sex and violence. Possibly even more meaning and layers to this, although I've only read the first book.

Akira (comic) - again, I've only read the first book, but already everything that the film blurred makes So Much More Sense. It's all bigger, better, with more depth, more time, more space. When they say 'classic' and 'masterpiece', they're not talking about the movie, they're talking about this. Added bonus that these books are huge, as opposed to the vast majority of manga, which is small.

Battle Angel Alita (comic) - only first book. So far, very similar to the movie, haven't met an unfamiliar plot point yet. Very cool though. Cyberpunky, grotty, dingy. My sort of thing.

Battle Royale (comic) - oh em gi. If I had kids, I wouldn't want to know they were reading this. There's sex and violence, like with samurais, and then there's this. It squicked me out first time around, and now I'm hooked. The tension in the first two books is unbelievable. Even having read the novel, and knowing everything fate has in store, it's so hard to put down. The only thing that has slowed my consumption of this series is that the shops don't ever seem to have the next book in stock when I'm passing by. So good, but if you're a delicate flower...this isn't your thing.

The Red Star (comic) - this is THE prettiest colour comic out there. Don't believe me? Just flip through a book when you're passing through. It's stunning, and better yet, it's incredibly original. Addictive story, fantastic character dynamics. There aren't many colour comics, in fact there aren't ANY other colour comics I follow, yet this, I've bought several times. Single issues, collected trades, new editions, I have them. They'll stay with me forever.

Cowboy Bebop (comic) - the anime is genius. Love it. Get fangirl squealy about it. These comics? Not so genius. Not just lackluster writing, so-so art, but sloppy design. I don't like spending time trying to figure out what order to read the text boxes in.

Ghost in the Shell (comic) - manga, anime, movie; this is the original, and it does beat all the others hands down, and hands up. Good depth of the characters, flexible relations between them, and it trips over so many fascinating themes without losing the reader in heavy heavy philosophical Matrix-Puke. Go the Major.

1984 - George Orwell

Mild spoilers? Who doesn't know this story in essence?

There was something of a validation that the copy I read was printed before 1984. 1979, to be exact. There was a (very old) 'collins book depot' bookmark - calendar still slotted in the cover.



My initial motivation for picking up this book was, again, because it was small. Light. Oh so very light. Oh, I wanted to read it, but the driving force wasn't the best. I popped it open whilst waiting for a train. Good solid writing, easy to read, and I was enjoying myself until I came to the first reference to Big Brother.

Such is the conditioning of society, my reaction was "Pah. They're ripping off sci-fi classcis and destroy- oh. Shit." At that point, I remembered I was holding the actual original in my hands, and promptly got very embarassed in my head.

I admit, I've been procrastinating writing about this book. It has been studied and analysed for so long, by people with far high academic credentials than me, that I'm sure anything I have to say will have been said before, or be complete and utter crap. But that hasn't stopped me in the past, and I recommend books I like.

I loved this book, because it got me so worked up I stormed about the house making all sorts of outraged exclaimations at the state of the world Orwell proposes. The concept of Newspeak in particular horrified me, in a deep-in-the-bone way. Not only that Newspeak seeks to take away the ability to even think dissident thoughts in the comfort and privacy of one's own head, but that Newspeak seeks to abolish layers of meaning. That Newspeak seeks to destroy words. That's the writer in me screaming bloody murder.

Languages are messy things because humans are messy things. We're not the neat, concise and clear cut beings we wish we were, and unless we turn into the entirely emotionless automations of futuristic cliches, we never will be. To take away a means of expressing that mess seems to be setting the entire human race up for one massive implosion.

(I like words.)

Perhaps Newspeak disturbed me so deeply because of all the methods of maintaining a dictatorship, it seemed the most effective and brilliant way.

Unfortunately, there was one very large point in the story's politiics that I didn't buy. O'Brien, the incredibly obvious two-faced working-for-the-party traitor, goes into a lengthy explainations of why the Party has created the world it has, and why this system must be maintained. Unfortunately I can't find the quote I was looking for, having spent the last ten minutes flipping through the pages, but a basic paraphrase of what I understood the Party's goal to be was a world without happiness, joy, pleasure. A world built on fear, hatred, mistrust, and those other mean and lonely things. They were actively working towards that world.

Now, if O'Brien had been talking about working to a better world, I might have swallowed it. Hitler, even on his worst days, believed he was making a better world. He didn't think of himself as the root of all evil. That is my problem; I don't believe that people can actively work to make the world miserable. For everyone. For ever. Misery might be a means to an end, but never the end itself.

But I'm young, and dumb. I can take this comfortable life I have for granted, and tell myself that I would have never given in. (That small truthful and stomped on part of me says that I wouldn't have given in, because I wouldn't have had the courage to speak out in the first place.)

But now, I must share a terrible truth with you. The following is taken from the first page of the book, and describes a poster of Big Brother himself;

It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features.

GEORGE ORWELL IS BIG BROTHER.



THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THE WORLD! DOOM! DOOM! DOOOOOOOOM!

Verdict: Books like this become classics because they are -that- good. They deserve the acclaim, and they really have the staying power. This will make you think, if only because it hightlights the fact that you can take for granted your ability to think.

PS: Orwell uses the word 'oftener'. Newspeak stomps on that word.

2005: An Overview

(I had intended to do this yesterday, but if you think I'm turning the Decepticon on in the middle of a 45 degree day, well, you're mad. And I'm not.)

2005, in the Chinese calendar, marked the Year of the Rooster, a cocky bastard of a creature with a whole lot of strut and bugger all balls. Being a rooster myself, I made sure to let everyone know that it was my year, this year, if ever it came up in conversation.

That said, the Year of the Rooster was not slated to be a kind year for roosters, (how very typical), and it wasn't. It was a very, very up and down year. I suppose extremes are character building. (My character is built! Leave it alone or you'll poke a hole in it!)

The year began with Clarion South, which shall remain one of the quirkier experiences of my life. It was wonderful. For six weeks, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, I got to be a writer, and nothing but a writer, and hang around with writers, and talk shop with writers, and write, and have to worry about nothing but writing. I'll never have that luxury again. Although I learned scads of useful bits and pieces, and can exercise far more control over my writing because of my time there, the best thing I took away from Clarion South was a lump of new friends.

Love ya guys.

From there, till July, the year wasn't so great. I've blogged enough about the true trials of being unwillingly unemployed, and while I could go over it all again, I think only those who are in the middle of it, or have been there recently, will understand. It's a horrible place to be. When I flipped through my diary for 2005, and saw how many jobs I'd applied for (at least 2 a week), and counted how many interviews I was granted (I can count them on one hand), I was surprised I got through at all. Even now, after having held down a job for 5 months, I'm still getting job rejections from applications I sent out. It was not a good time, and my family bore the brunt of it.

Love you, family.

And then I got a job, at last, at freaking last. To be honest, I'm still waiting to be pulled aside, and be told it was all a rather silly mistake, and they don't have a place for me after all. After a year and a half of job hunting, this job is precious to me. It will be the ruin of my shoulders and wrists, possibly my eyes, but I'm going to cling to it like a limpet. I will not go back to being unemployed, never again.

That said, being employed full time isn't easy either. It would help if I didn't have a hour commute on either end of the day, but that can't be helped. I don't mind the shift work (although I do mind having only single days off at a time), and the work itself is wonderfully undemanding and will not follow me home, but so much time has been stolen away from me. My brother feels the same; how has society managed to get itself into a position where the majority of people have to work so much they have no time for any of the things they want to do? How have we come to work so much that we are perpetually tired? I regret losing time.

If I learned anything from the whole unemployed/employed experience, it is that I need validation. Something to measure myself against. Even if it is merely doing my quota of 40 reports a shift, that's enough. I can prove to myself that I'm worth it. Whatever it is.

There were conventions along the way. Conflux was fun, Continuum was...well, to be honest it was a lot of time spent waiting in signing queues, but that's my decision, and I got my signatures, dammit. I got to talk to Neil Gaiman about Quentin Blake, and I got to do possum impressions at Jeff Vandermeer. What else does a year need?

I read, but that's hardly surprising. It's a failing of mine that I don't have a particularly good memory of when I read a book, so I can't say what books I read this year without pouring back over this entire blog and hunting out reviews. In fact, I don't think I will mention any titles, as they've all been mentioned. Every book is worth it. (With the possible exception of The Phantom Menace by Terry Brooks.)

As for writing...My other regret. Although Clarion South ensured that I wrote probably 6 times more than I would have, I hardly wrote for the rest of the year. I've dribbed and drabbed here and there, but nothing serious. I pulled together the giant crab story (although I'm not sure if it I pulled enough, so to speak, and I'm afraid to go back and look at it), and secured myself a publication for early 2006, (see, that's me! If anyone can offer a better title, DO) and banged out a fun little piece for the Gastronomicon (which never fails to produce the reaction I was after), but I really don't feel that I wrote at all. I'm coming out of that, slowly. Although I have good (very good) intentions of fixing up a couple of Clarion stories, I've been swimming around in a spaceship world instead. I wanted to try a novella, to have some largish project that I could finish, and finish soonish, and thus be able to say "Huzzah! I am finish-ed!" but the more I drib and drab at it, the large the story seems to get, and the bloody thing is looking distinctly novelish. Still, I will stick with it. I've made a conscious effort to stay away from action and big monsters, and concentrate on relationships and the dynamics between people. Whether or not I can pull it off is another matter entirely.

Still, I feel I can still call myself a writer and not be called out as a fake.

I ushered in the new year at 5am. Midnight wandered past while I was sleeping. Yes, while you lot were comfortable in your beds (or not in your beds, as the case may be) I was staggering around in an overheated stupor getting ready for work. The house never actually cooled down after 45 degrees. Not fond of the burninating.

On the first day of 2006, I drove to work, alone, to the freaking city, for the very first time. Going in wasn't hard, the roads being 100% deserted, but driving out was horrible. To begin with, I had to do a 50 point turn to get out of the carpark it was that narrow, and I was that scared of scratching mum's car. Then, it shat down. To make up for 45 yesterday, the sky is trying to drown us. Torrential rain, like Melbourne never sees, and no! I haven't driven in the rain before! Alone! On the highway!

It was all rather traumatic, and I'm never driving ever again.

(Till next time.)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - JK Rowling

What is there to say about this book that hasn't already been said? Nothing!

She still needs an editor, although this book is superior to the last. The dynamics between all the school kids are fantastic; she knows how to do teenagers in the middle of puberty, and do them right.

That sounds wrong.

The end was spoiled for me long ago, which turned out to be a good thing. No shock involved. I would have regretted throwing the book across the room. It's the nice cloth-bound hardcover.

The end was, I think, pretty much inevitable from the beginning.

And that's all.

Vampire Hunter D: volume 1 - Hideyuki Kikuchi, translated by
kevin Leahy

After ploughing through Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrell the only thing I wanted my next book to be was small. Light. Not a physical strain to read. This was the smallest thing I had in reach. It isn't the most noble reason to choose a book, although it is quite nice to hold. It's a good shape, with nice heft, and flexible paper. I'm fond of the cover as well.

The first sentence made me cringe. 'stained', not 'was staining'! Blood and vermillion, you mean red? Long grass high enough to hide all to a man's ankles? That's not very high.

Quash the inner editor.

This isn't partictularly well written, however I'm not sure how much blame lies with the writer, and with the translator. I have no idea how much artist license a translator is allowed to exercise over a work, although it seems to me to be something that is entirely subjective and depends on writer and translator.

On a sentence level, I know the translator is responsible, and likes to show off what fancy words are in his vocabularly. He's particularly fond of 'vacillate', and uses it at every opportunity. No one in this book hesitates, deliberates, doubts, consideres, wavers, etc, they all vacillate. There are cliches everywhere, EVERYWHERE. But perhaps he was doing a very literal transaltion. I'll never know.

But, the writer is very, very guilty of all sorts of 'orrible things. Telling, for starters. Quite literally in most cases. He has a habit, in his fight scenes, of flashing through what happened, and then going back, and saying 'shall I tell you what happened?' (yes, that's in the book), and narrating, blow by blow, exactly how super fast and incredible and wow the fight was, and how brilliant and ingenious D was for defeating this enemy faster than the eye. This shat me more than anything else in the book, as all the thrill is stolen from any action sequence if you already know how it ends. (Sports playbacks have never interested me either.) It felt condescending. I was being told how I should react to these amazing astonishing feats, instead of actually being amazed and astonished.

Characterisation is poor. They're all cliches, and I'm pretty sure that D is a Mary Sue. I mean, everyone comments on how wonderfully beautifully gorgeous he is, everyone wants in his pants, he can't actually do anything wrong himself...(and he has no personality. He's too cool to have personality.)

The story itself was so-so.

And despite all this, I devoured it all, and I'll probably go and buy the second book soon. It's immature writing, it has so much potential that it squanders on cliches, yet that potential is still there. There are moments of raw wonder that I adored. The world he's imagined, a mix of gothic and cyberpunk, is so fresh and wide, I can forgive these things to take a stroll in it.

Sometimes, I think I forgive books such as these because I'm afraid that they're me. That I'm all imagination and no talent as well.

Verdict: It's a bit like popcorn. You won't be able to stop eating it, but you're not exactly drawing anything nutritional out of it either.

A story broke my heart, so I went outside and wrote my own story till it was whole again.

The other reason I make-like-jedi at automatic doors, is that for a significant percentage of the time, they don't detect me.

When I walk up to automatic doors, I wave my arm so that I look like I'm exercising my awesome jedi powers.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke

I wanted to like this book.

(I'm very tempted to stop and leave it at that, but that would be lazy.)

Set in London, in the early 1800s, with Napoleon skirting around the edges; a period and area I'm rather fond of. And magicians. This should have been my sort of book.

But...

I do not believe that a book should be a test of endurance, either of my mental stamina or the strength of my wrists. 782 pages is a long time, for both of these things. It could just be that the book didn't gel with me, but before it even came into my possession I'd been told by multiple people whose opinions I trust that 'the first 500 pages are a bit slow but then it picks up'. 500 pages of slow is a lot of slow.

By the time I'd waded my way through that 500, I no longer cared, not about the characters or the outcome of the story. Not caring is probably the worst reaction I can have to a book. There are plenty of terrible books I've read that I've cared about, in a rabid frantic frustrated sort of way, which worlds more love than this received. I reached the end, and thought "hoo-bloody-rah".

Which isn't to say it had this affect all the way through. I was enjoying myself at the beginning. Clarke has good control over her voice, and it is consistent throughout the entire book. Norrell, despite being one of the most annoying characters I have ever come across, is incredibly well drawn, and has more depth than all the other characters combined. (I felt a particular empathy to his concerns about his books, and the fact that people might touch them. I'm also now more aware of how ridiculous such concern looks from the outside, not that this will change my attitudes.)

I was also fond of Strange's adventures in Spain, if only because he was protaging.

(I'd almost go as far to say that Clarke didn't write a book set in the 1800s, but wrote an 1800s book. But, not having read many books from that period, it's entirely possible that that statement is a load of horse shit.)

(Still, she did work hard at it, but I do wonder at the wisdom of it. It's quite an accomplishment to write a book from another century, but it is THIS century's audience which will read it. The mindset is...different now.)

Having had a couple of days distance from the book, I'm left wondering exactly what the point was. The ending didn't satisfy me. There were loose ends, large ones, messy ones. It didn't end, it just stopped. Was there a point? I'm not sure of the message. Given that a prophecy was involved, one that had some sort of purpose behind it...I still can't see what was actually achieved. This, more than anything else, makes me resent 782 pages.

Doors have been opened, however. I will read her again.

Verdict: Make up your own mind.

Thud! - Terry Pratchett

This will be another short musing, as I generally feel with someone as popular as Pratchett, everyone knows already anyway. They already have and have read the book, and my opinion is worth bleargh.

For me, this book was largely miss. There were a few very lovely instances where he hit the spot, but overall, it was miss. This was surprising considering his last few books have, for me, been very hit. I felt that the themes didn't resonate, including weirdly enough, prejudice. It was there, it was clear, but I didn't feel it. The Summoning Dark didn't hit a nerve, and I wondered through the length of the book what it's actual purpose was.

Regardless, it's still a well written book, as Pratchett seems incapable of writing a bad book. I daresay I'll go back and read it at some stage, and wonder why it didn't work for me the first time around.

Verdict: It's Pratchett. You've already made up your mind.


And now, I am caught up on verdicts. Go me. (Which was why I chose to read Johnathon Strange & Mr Norrell as I knew it would take me a while to get through.)

Midshipwizard Halcyon Blithe - James M. Ward

I didn't intent to buy this book. In fact, before I saw it in a bookshop, I'd never even heard of it. There are hundreds of books I've been meaning to buy for a very long time, but when I saw this, and that it combined His Majesty's Royal Navy and dragons, I couldn't very well not buy it. One of those Sir Tessa's dream come true books.

I'd like to say it is well written, but it's hit and miss. The first page made me cringe significantly, and I wondered if I hadn't made a rather large mistake. It comes from trying, and not quite suceeding, to affect a narrating voice reflective of the time. Formal, full of 'quite' and 'splendid'. Sometimes, Ward succeeds with this, other times it wobbles quite drastically. Having attempted to write a story with a strong and unfamiliar vernacular myself, I fully understand how hard it is, and even more the importance of maintaining it consistantly throughout the book.

Aside from that, he is also guilty of sentences that are wrong. Just wrong. He and possibly his editor need a smake for basic sentence structure.

In terms of overall structure, the story is quite simple. It is Midshipwizard Fifth Class Halcyon's Blithe first assignment to a naval ship, none other than on of the great dragonships, the Sanguine. He arrives, makes friends, makes enemies, learns the ropes, and inevitably saves the entire ship from certain destruction, because he's special. Yes, he's from a family famous for its accomplishments in the royal navy, a family with demon blood, he's the seventh son of a seventh son, a rope speaker, a dragon speaker, knows the articles of war inside out, good with a sword, etc etc etc. Everything he does, he does brilliantly. Every now and then, it got a little sickening.

This isn't Ward's first book, as I'd assumed. He has previously written for TSR, which explains why his world building is pretty damn good. Although the enemy, a race of evil shapeshifters, were fairly generic, the dragonships were truly magnificent. A lot of though has gone into their creation and utility (and ultimate destruction, which is a red herring that never comes about), and I probably took more joy in reading about the ship than anything else. Ships have souls, this I do believe, and to see one personified as a dragon that looked after the crew as the crew looked after it was wonderful, and struck a very true note.

Yes, red herrings. There are a great many of those. All sorts of things are hinted at, not at all subtly, only to never, ever, be mentioned again, let alone actually happen. This I found entirely vexing, as I waited to be surprised, all anticipation, for things that never occurred. Instead, all my expectations (which weren't high) were filled. I'm never fond of books which, while refusing to state outright who the antagonist is, will make absolutely no effort to hide their identity. If it's so obvious to me, the reader, it should be obvious to the characters as well.

Despite all this, I had an absolutely brilliant time in the book. I know most writers have a hard time turning off the inner editor while reading, which isn't a problem I seem to have. This book is incredibly rough, but at its core it is something author had a great deal of fun writing, and that comes through. For a book that isn't trying to revolutionise the industry, giving the reader a good time is all you can ask for, and in this, Ward succeeded wonderfully. I hope he will continue to write stories about Halcyon Blithe and the world he lives in, because I will continue to read them.

Verdict: will grate on your inner editor, and delight your inner sailor. Yar. I know ships aren't everyone's cup of tea, but if you have the sea bug, it's well worth it.

Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman

Is there anything to say about this book that hasn't already been said a thousand time before?

It's a good book. Well-written, and Gaiman does absurdist comedy quite well. I was very fond of the lime in particular. But I don't think he stretched his story-creating muscle much, and I didn't feel like I was reading anything new.

The 'special features' at the back startled me. As Peek said, it's not a DVD. With DVDs, just having the movie isn't enough, there needs to be extras as well. Books are there for the sake of having a story. From a writer's point of view, I quite enjoyed the cut scene, and the notebook, as it provided insight into Gaiman's writing process...but reader discussion questions? I dug my hooves in there. It's enough that I read the book and enjoyed it. I don't need to be told what I should be analysing about it, thank you very much.

And then, the dedication. I thought it was lovely. I also thought he asks for every shark-woman groupie he gets, from here on it.

Verdict: Yeah, I know. Short innit? But as I said, it's all been said before. It's a good book, well worth your time and money, but I don't know that it will open new doors in your mind.

I'd Forgotten That Colour

I had a moment of insecurity the other day. It came poncing up out of nowhere, sat down, made itself real comfortable, and didn't budge. Took me by surprise. Partly due to the extremely non-existent sleep I've been getting, partly due to the monthly rag time, and mostly completely uninvited.

Tiredness makes me crabby. This is generally inflicted upon other people.

Hormones make me glum. This is generally inflicted upon myself.

But insecurity? I can't remember when I last felt insecure. Hopeless, useless, apathetic and full of despair, but not insecure.

I'd forgotten quite how crippling it was. One of my main supports is that I know I'm a strong person, and the price of being strong is to be strong. My two feet are all I stand on and other such prideful sayings. To have that foundation up and disappear left me a bit shaken.

(But of course, the price of being strong is that I can never be weak, not to others nor myself, so I will not call friends at midnight for the sole purpose of reassuring myself that I'm not a waste of meat.)

It left quickly. It had no reason to stay. And it brought to my attention that I'm not an insecure person, not inside or out.

Chalk that up to one of the year's sucesses.

The ninjas have given up on bees, and they're resorting to summer instead.

The end is nigh. Doom is at hand. Etc.

The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

Here is a case where marketing actually worked on me. An excerpt of the book was sent in the mail with a newsletter, and because it was there, I read it, and was completely suckered in. How could I not be, when it ends on such words "Vlad Tepes is still alive." The fact that it was beautifully written didn't hurt at all, as I've been known to pick up excerpts for the sole purpose of reading out the horrid bits to annoy mum.

This is not a vampire book. It contains vampires, just as some foods may contain nuts, but don't taste like nuts at all. The vampires are a subtle menace, thwarting the protagonists, but not poncing around as stories tend to make vampires do. They remain unreachable, a mystery, and as such work incredibly well.

The protagonists themselves aren't tough, macho vampire hunters, or heros of any description. They're scholars, all of them, and aside from a remarkable intelligence, they're ordinary people, and remain ordinary people. This is, I think, one of the key succeses of the book.

I'm very guilty of pitting my characters against monsters that are unlikely to afflict anyone walking this earth, and I'm also guilty of having those characters become heros. Of being able to cope with it all, not necessarily well, but being able to come out the end in one piece, on top. I'm guilty, in my head, of being a hero. Ordinary people aren't. Ordinary people don't have armies, swords, BFG's, etc at their disposal, and ordinary people don't wound, let alone kill. That Kostova pitted her characters against some of the greatest monsters of time, and had them remain ordinary people, is a marvellous feat. It gives the book a grounding and an air of validity that drew me in much deeper than I would have otherwise gone.

As well as not being a vampire story, it isn't really a family story either. It's more of a travel book than anything else. As various characters travel to various cities in Europe and the Middle-East, each destination is a marvellous treasure that the character falls in love with, and I had no choice but to do so as well. Everything was wonderful, beautiful, a perfect individual day that would never be replicated. Food was magnificent. People were blessed. Everything had a history I can't even begin to imagine. If you're given to itchy feet, as I am, be warned; this book will make them itchier. I rue the current situation of the Middle East, as I now have a strong desire to see Istanbul, among other things. Kostova is incredibly evocative, and all her settings become characters themselves.

But...she gets a bit carried away with the story. To begin with, I don't know that she can cope with anything but first person. There are multiple POVs within, from the daughter, to the father, to the professor, to her mother, to monks who died in centuries ago - and they're all written in first person. This wouldn't be so bad if there were distinct voices between them, but for the most part, there aren't. The same measured, educated and refined voice dominates all, and so for a book that contains several POV characters, it reads as only one character. There were several times when I forgot exactly whose eyes I was reading through, and what year it was.

Then, her supposedly intelligent characters make assumptions that appear to be there for the sole purpose of the writer being able to pull back the curtain and shock them later. I'm not fond of situations in which the reader has information that the character needs, as it makes me impatient with the character and the story, as there's nothing left to reveal. That the characters don't possess this information for no very good reason at all makes it worse.

Ah, and then we come to the miraculous coincidences. There's nothing else to call the meeting of Turgut and James but out of the blue 'oh what luck!' to get the story moving along. Once I can handle, twice is far too often and smacks of laziness.

The reason for Helen's disappearance, and her continued disappearance, didn't work for me at all. At all.

Finally, the book is too long for the story. I don't usually say that, but with 100 pages to go, I was heartily sick and tired of them digging up one supposedly pointless clue after another, jumping from one dusty library to another, which is what they were doing for the majority of the book. It was interesting for the first part, then it got repetative, then boring. I just wanted them to hurry up and find Vlad's tomb, and get it over and done with. I shouldn't come to the end of the book with relief that it is finally over, I should approach it quickly, to know what happens, and sadly, knowing that I'll never be able to read it for the first time ever again.

It is still, however, a beautifully written book, and refreshingly different. It's full of love and mystery, with just the right amount of menace.

Verdict: Well worth the time, just remember about the last few pages.

Dead in the West - Joe R. Lansdale

I'd almost caught up on verdicts. Then I went and read three books in as many days.

After reading something that had as much impact as City of Saints & Madmen, any book that follows has its work cut out for it. So, I deliberately chose something that wasn't trying to be genius (not that I wanted a repeat of The Phantom Menace experience) and this one had 'pulp' written all over it. As well as 'zombie western'. Really, I couldn't go wrong.

It always takes me a couple of pages to adjust my gears for a book that is shooting for pulp. The initial metaphors and similies make my inner editor cringe, until said inner editor realises that they're totaly deliberate and unshamefully so, and shuts up. Didn't take long to do that, in this case, as I spent a while staring at the cover.

Big bosomed young lady clings screaming to big muscled hero who is fending hordes of zombies off with a shotgun. (Although he's not actually using the shotgun the traditional way, he's swinging it around like a club, which I can't imagine is nearly as effective.) Brilliant!

The small town of Mud Creek is cursed, oh woe, and they asked for that curse, what they did to the medicine man and his woman. And only one man can save the town! Reverend Jebediah Mercer! Who's currently having a severe crisis of faith! And drinks! And kills! And oooooooooh! His troubled soul! God has sent him to this forsaken town to test him, in several different ways if his reaction to Abby, the Doctor's daughter is anything to go by.

I had a lot of fun with this book. Lansdale is consistent with his pulp and cheesy, and mixes it in with horror quite well. Zombies don't frighten me. It's hard to work up fear about some that shambles, that even I can easily out run. But damn, these ones grossed me out. Bits hanging out, bits of goop and ick everywhere. Ick. Ick ick ick.

The end did surprise me, because I'd forgotten exactly how zombie stories worked. It's okay, I remember now.

Verdict: Much fun, although not for everyone. I know I have a very high tolerance for cheese (I enjoyed Van Helsing after all), and this is cheese very well done.

In the morning, ninjas try to garotte me.

They have, dare I say, an unholy alliance formed with the spiders of suburbia. In the night, the spiders drift down across the foot path, casting a line of thread which resides perfectly at throat height for someone of my stature. No one else walks these footpaths until I do, on my way to work. I feel the threads break on my throat. They're trying to lure me into false sense of security. It won't work. I'm onto them. In winter, I wear a scarf, and now summer is coming, the sun is at just the right angle to reveal those infernal lines.

In the evening, ninjas try to cripple me with caltraps.

They have, dare I say, a blasphemous alliance formed with the snails of suburbia. They creep out after dark, crossing from one side of the footpath to the other, just like the metaphorical chicken. It is dark. There are few street lights. The walk home is crunch, crunch, crunchy. I rue that these snails sacrifice themselves for so useless a cause, for my guard will never be lowered.

In the afternoon, the ninjas get fed up and try to kill me with a swarm of bees.

Well...shit.
I don't know why they decided a swarm of bees hanging around a street light at the end of the road was an efficiant way to do me in, because it wasn't. Bee swarms are pretty easy to see, and thus, easy to avoid. But ninjas must know they've failed, so I walked through the swarm. Bees don't really fuss me. They were just buzzing around, doing their thing, which had nothing to do with me.
Which I think has lulled me into a false sense of security, because when I walked home that night, I passed the lamp post and they were all there. All of them. Huddled in a tight clump. Still. All of them, watching me. It turned my heart, in that instance I caught it out of the corner of my eye. They've been there for a few days now.

My time is coming. Doom is at hand.

While ZZZ Hunting

I dreamed that terrorists blew up the World Trade Centre in Melbourne. This was a bit of a drag, considering I actually work in the WTC. Thankfully, I wasn't there at the time. I'd swapped my 9-5 shift for a 3-11.

Instead, I was in a shopping centre, deadling with an idiot. Not a terrorist, just an idiot opportunist with a gun, who wanted everyone's money, as they do. But hey, I'm a hero. I ran around the shops grabbing their big canvas sale banners, threw them on him, tackled him, and had a mad wrestle for the gun, which I won. No one else helped though, of course not.

Then the alarm went off.

And I went back to sleep, and dreamed that I had to spend the night in a haunted church. Naturally, this freaked me right out, until I saw the ghost. Who happened to be a four inch tall blue-glowing dancing baby.

Still, it upset the dogs.

While ZZZ Hunting

I went to Mars in my dream this morning. Although I've never been to Mexico, Mars reminded me of it. Red dirt. Dirty shopping strips. Put-put-bang cars. It was always night there, always a sky full of stars.

I can't quite remember why I was there. I think I was part a space shuttle mission, testing out a new-old spaceship. We arrived. My parents weren't at the base to pick me up, so I had to get a lift with one of the other astronaughts. It turned into a school camp of sorts, full of people I have no real desire to see again. Even in my dreams, my High School people happen around me, not to me.

But I couldn't stay long. I had to get home, to earth. For some reason, instead of taking a space ship, I was expected to accomplish this with a cream coloured toyoto corolla as old as I am, which didn't actually start.

Mars, quite clearly, is a hole.

City of Saints & Madmen - Jeff Vandermeer

I just found seven words of interest on the spine. Now I'm tempted to forgo this verdict and spend my time putting these words where they need to go, but perhaps not. Wouldn't want to end the world. This is the price I pay for buying hardcovers and then putting the dust jackets aside so they don't get damaged. There's an entire story on this dust jacket, and only now have I read it.

It's a good sized book. Just the right amount of heft, with a loose spine that isn't too stiff, and cover art that is just gorgeous.

And it has pictures.

I'm not so old that I don't get excited over a novel with pictures. Not even pictures, do some fancy formatting, get carried away with borders, use footnotes: break the monotonous block of text, and I'll adore it for no reason. The King Squid plates are fantastic, and the Disney mushroom dwellers hold a special place in my heart.

City isn't a novel, but it's not quite a collection of short stories. It could be the dossier of a man gone mad, a hallucination, it could be an anthropological study of a city on no map of ours. Whatever you chose it to be, it is brilliant.

(Oh no, she's going to gush.)

Dradin, In Love
It's a false beginning to the book. It is, perhaps, the only adhering-to-the-standard-definition-of short story. The reader is Dradin, who has just stumbled into Ambergris from the jungles, and as we are new to the city, so is he. Not a walking tour, but a shamble, a stagger, and a run for your life. Dradin is a sad man, and instead of wanting to shake his naivety from him, I just want to pat him sadly on the shoulder. It's a rich story, so very textured, and Ambergris completely overwhelms all else. It isn't a setting, it's a character, and we quickly learn so much from it. Full of life, of wonder, of mess, and full of death. The Festival of the Freshwater Squid unsettles me, whenever it is mentioned. This is the only good look you'll get of that Festival, and I didn't want to look any further. O thought this story was wonderful, beautifully written, and yet, so quickly overshadowed.

The Hoegbottom Guide to the Early History of Ambergris
Suddenly, from literature to comedy. Should I have found this so amusing? It's non-fiction, a historical account of the city, dotted in highly opinionated and subjective footnotes from a snooty history who has, I think, a severe chip on his shoulder. I do love pieces of history, and I swallowed this whole. It was wonderful. I sat on Flinders Street Station at 11.30pm, not used to catching trains after dark and more than a little threatened by the vagrants that wandered the platforms, and this story made me forget all that. No, it isn't a story. The mushroom dwellers fascinate me, as all things that are mysteries must. The Silence chilled me, left me raw and horrified, especially that little gesture, what they did leave behind. I thought this was the best in the book. I was afraid everything would be left standing in its shadow.

The Transformation of Martin Lake
It's good to be wrong.
I'm hopeless at writing about that which I truly love. Things that get me into a tizzy, things that make me giddy with delight and incoherant with joy; I'm left gobsmacked. This story gobsmacked me. I use the word brilliant too much, but it is, it's an amazingly brilliant story. It narrates one of the greatest events in the life of Martin Lake, a soon to be famous painter, broken up with pieces artistic criticism and history. One stream of what really happened, and another stream of what others guess might have possibly happened. The chasm between truth and speculation is enormous, but usually they're on the opposite sides. No one could have guess what truly happened, it seems wild, crazy, more like rumour that the speculation does.
But most of all, what won me over was the paintings.
This story doesn't have pictures, but in the art historian steam, there are descriptions of Lake's work, after the event. They were beautiful. I came out of that story feeling heavy, that I would never be able to see the paintings described. I want to, oh I want to.

It is the footnotes, the art history, that makes Ambergris not a story, but a city. It lives.

The Strange Case of X
This controls the rest of the book. Alas, the twist at the end came as no surprise for me, for it was what I'd assumed from the first page. I thought that was all that story was, until it hit me. Vandermeer was doing something I'd never seen before, doing something I can only think of as brilliant, brilliant, and entirely unapologetically.

The chapbook on King Squid had me in stitches, at work no less. "Remove your tentacle from my birthing canal immediately!" and my favourite:
Their annual celebration, held at roughly the same time as the modern day Festival, culminated with the choosing of one man to hunt the scuttlefish. Given that the average Mothean Scuttlefish, flattened against the riverbed, forms a circle roughly six feet across and that their primary defense consists of stuffing as much of their invertebrate bodies as possible down their attacker's mouth and other available orifices- at which point I choked and died, and had to explain to my supervisor exactly why I was dead. Not one of my finest moments.

I was quite entranced by The Cage. It was a strange story, but Vandermeer knows how to work mystery, how to drop the right revelation that is not a revelation at the right time. An air of quiet menace fills the entire story, as mushrooms can only ever be quiet, soft, and still.

He merged the writer with the world, the world with the writer.

This book left me tizzy. I didn't enjoy it, it enjoyed me, and blew me away. Tizzy, giddy, terribly excited by all that had been done, and all the possibilities that could follow. I enjoy so many books (except The Phantom Menace), but there are only a very few, a mere handful of books that shake the foundations of my mind, break down the walls, and give me the opportunity to build something new. This is one of those very rare, very special books. There is no writer out there who should not read this, there's so much too learn from simple good writing on a sentence level, to genius.

But genius can't be learned.

Verdict: Please, do yourself a favour, and read this. Please. I beg you. The tizziness must be spread.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace - Terry Brooks

I'm not even linking to this one. Stop looking at me like that. I found it for $5 in a remaindered pile, and I had a SW hankering. Don't worry, I suffered the full consequences of my folly.

Never read any of Brooks's novels, and have no desire to change that. The only piece of writing I've read of his was a short story in Legends II, which completely failed to impress me. It was far too simple, too easy, and reminded me of stories I'd written when I was in high school. (They weren't very good stories.)

Admittedly, Brooks was given a crap story to begin with here. The movie of EpI is just sloppy, and I'm being nice there. I'd come to this book assuming that he had fixed it up a bit. Made it more palatable.

Noooo.

The first page should have warned me, but I'm an idiot. Either he, or his editor, in fact both of them, need to be taught about commas, and shifting perspectives within a sentence. I'm not fond of the latter, not at all, but it is possible if you use commas wisely. Unfortunately, he doesn't use commas. At all.



Okay, so it isn't well written, I can deal with that, I said, and promptly ignored everything that happened on a sentence level, which left me with the characters and story itself, which really wasn't much better.

Oh, Anakin.

We hates him, we does.

You thought he was bad in the film, he's seriously bloody ugly here. He's perfect. He's a golden haired angel, with such a big heart, and everyone loves him, and he loves everyone, and he helps out little old ladies, and total strangers and is soooooo good it made me want to vomit and smack him around. Children aren't like that. Sometimes they are, but not ALL THE TIME. They're children. In fact, NO BODY is like that. Not all the time, and not in the depths of their hearts, but noooo, Anakin is peeeeeeerfect.

Surprisingly, I didn't mind Jar-Jar Binks. Perhaps because I had to concentrate to figure out what it was he was saying. I have picked up the unfortunate habit of saying "Okie-day!"

And then, about half way through, I just stopped. It wasn't worth my time. I even knew how it ended, fancy that.

Verdict: Don't. Just don't. Jedis can't save this.

Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & - Anna Tambour

(What's this, you cry, a verdict?)

I began chewing this book whilst stuck at Heidelberg Railway Station. The next train wasn't due for ten minutes, and wasn't going to my stop anyway, so as I slouched against a street light waiting for my brother to pick me up, I started on the first story, Klokwerk's Heart. In it, I found a flavour that would suffuse through all of Tambour's other stories: delight. It is, I think, her greatest strength, that she has mastered that incredibly hard atmosphere that is joy, happiness, and love, without the added bedbugs of trite, cliche, and sloppiness. They're warm stories, friendly stories, stories that want to be your friend and hold your hand for a while. And yet, even as they're wooing you, some of those stories are down right nasty. Here, I'm thinking of The Eel and Crumpled Sheets and Death-Fluffies.

Travels with Robert Louis Stevenson in the Cévennes left me in stitches. Told through the eyes of the donkey that is Stevenson's sole companion, it was full of practical, no-nonsense observations from said beast, and a brilliant insight into exactly why donkeys are unwilling to go where ever they're asked to go. The last line, however, was the crown.

Valley of the Sugars of Salt is a beast of a story, but a gentle beast. It is perhaps the story that contains the most love in it, a peculiar sort of love that comes from the orchid and its special trees to its tender. Tim, a man with too much money, has taken it to his head to revive a virtually extinct species of fruit tree; the medlars. Medlars are a peculiar fruit that is best eaten when near putrescent, close to being rotten through, and looking just the same. (No, it doesn't sound all that appealing, does it?) His scheme to set the gourmet world afire with them falls through, for aesthetic reasons, but he choses not to give up the orchid, having found a peace there he has never known. The trees themselves have the most personality in the story, rascals the lot of them, telling stories and jokes night in and night out, to the delight of the spiders, birds and beasts around them. It was such a warm story, I felt the strong urge to go out and hug a tree once I'd finished.

The Ocean in Kansas was a lovely, whimsical piece, and I think the world would be a better place if more people gave into such flights of fancy.

And then there was Monterra's Deliciosa, the true beast of the book. A giant rambling story that wandered about the place, looking over here, investigating over there, taking its time to get to where it was going. The journey was worthy of the end. Food, something that Tambour paints vividly in all her stories, was rife throughout, as a country boy moved up and out in the world of high class chefs and restaurants. (What they did to the pigs!) But I couldn't have predicted where it was going, and didn't. I won't reveal it here, as it is something best discovered yourself, but it left me shocked, and slightly nauseated. Still, good writing is good writing, and it was very good.

These are but a few of Tambour's works contained in the collection. It is my preference to read collections all the way through; I do not break them up with other stories, I treat them as any other book. As such, it was wonderful to witness little nods and smiles that went from one story to another. The medlars snuck in a couple of times to say hello, her fascination with lips and food spread about. Although none of the stories are related, it lent them a feel of connectivity. They were all part of the great mind of Anna Tambour.

Verdict: Different, always unexpected, brilliant.

Hawksmoor - Peter Ackroyd

(Ha! Bet you never thought you'd see one of these again!)

This book doesn't belong to me. Matthew Farrer clobbered me with it, and I've never been one to say no. It was given to him by Dan Abnett, in return for a David Malouf book. I've only read one Malouf, but I think Matthew got the better deal.

He intrigued me initally by outlining it as being about the churchs of London, and the incredible symbology that went into their construction. That perked my ears. My favourite chapter in From Hell involves Sir Gull and his driver seemingly randomly trotting around London, viewing churches while Gull delivers something of a lecture on their history. It was fascinating, and sinister.

But perhaps I didn't time my reading of this as best I could. I started reading this book the same time I started work. Instead of being able to give it the hours of attention that I like to languish on books, it was read in bursts and fits; on train stations, in lunch breaks, with a suddenly shifted sleeping pattern that killed my ability to concentrate, until everything spiralled together, and I became as adrift as the characters in the book itself.

Ackroyd is a remarkably talented writer. He exerted a control over his voice that I learned a lot from. The book slips back and forth between two timelines; that of Nicholas Dyer, the architecth who designed and built the churches, full of a purpose I'm sure their majesties would not approve of, and Hawksmoor, in our present day, investigating strange murders occurring in the churches.

It began with Dyer, and at first I was taken aback. His voice, the writing, was heavily 'olde worlde'. I'm not sure that's the best way to put it, but it stemmed from a time when spelling differed from sentence to sentence, and captials went where ever they wished. It was thick, full of colour, and took some effort to read. It put me in mind of my story 'Bitter Elsie Mae' which was written in a thick dialect that tripped a lot of people up as well. One trick I was told was to lay it on in the beginning, and then back off slowly. People will remember the dialect, and hear it even if it isn't there. Either I became used to Dyer's voice, or Ackroyd pulled the same trick.

Then came Hawksmoor, and Ackroyd did something interesting with him. Although Hawksmoor's line could have been written in our current and familiar dialogue, it wasn't. There was no dialect as Dyer had, but turns of phrase, the voice, and mannerisms were such that I never lost contact with the century that Dyer lived in. I wasn't shaken out by modern devices or slang, and occasionally, as the story lines seemed to refect and tangle themselves across time, I lost track of what time I was in, and wondered when I was in the story. (Perhaps that was exhaustion.) Given that one of the themes of the book was the spanning and compressing of time, it felt right. Appropriate. A very complex spell.

But while I understood Dyer, I don't think I ever truly got a handle on Hawksmoor. (Did he have a handle on himself?) He seemed a creature entirely of the present. I knew nothing of his origins, where he had come from, what path his life had trod - he existed only for the duration of the book, with no sense of history or future to his being. As he unpeeled the murders and progressed towards some inevitable conclusion, he was a stranger, as he was to the people in his life. When at last (SPOILER) he entered the church, and found the tramp, and all infinity spun around him, I can't say I had the slightest idea what was going on. From Dyer's perspective, I understood he was successful. From Hawksmoor's...

Perhaps the problems stems from the simple fact that I don't know why Hawksmoor. Perhaps it was something I missed, but I don't know why Hawksmoor had this fate, and not another.

I felt I learned a lot from this book, and although I was unable to give it the full concentration I think it required, I enjoyed it. One of those books that sits slightly sideways of everything else, one that challenged me and still sits in my head, daring me to sort it out.

Verdict: Well worth the time. But yes, have something of a concentration span when you begin. Writers will learn a lot. And I apolosise for mistakes/typos. (Matthew, need your postal address.)

11:44 Hurstbridge

I caught the train home last night. Previously, Hamish had been picking me up at the end of all my afternoon shifts. I didn't expect him to keep doing so, and told him. The cricket was on anyway.

This is why I hate being a short, little, female.

The city was full of drunk people, swearing people, aggressive people, people asking for money and staring at my rack. There were normal people mixed in there, just enough for me not to feel entirely threatened. I'm not, and have never been comfortable around drunk people. They upset me in a deep in the stomach way.

The train worried me, until I stepped on it. It was mostly tired students and workers, all with earphones in. No longer any inhibitations of listening to my iPod. I parked myself next to a huge japanese samurai guy (probably a student) and stared at the floor.

Strange, worrying people don't confine themselves to one carriage. They walk up and down the train, continuously.

There was a domestic at Alphington. Yelling. I couldn't see, but as the doors closed and the train pulled away I could see a woman picking herself up off the ground, and I realised that I had just sat there and done nothing. Disgust. Shame.

Kids. A large mob of them. Thinking they were real tough hot shit. Only one word in their vocabularly, and it began with F. They worried me. A lot. Aggressive. Up and down the train, up and down the train. Yelling at each other. Forcing the doors. I didn't relax until they got off at Watsonia.

Stepped off the train, and it was raining. Just a light rain, enough to give the air that hot wet smell that only summer storms bring. Lightning was frantic in the sky, but thunder only intermittant, and in lazy grumbles. I walked through the storm, and I felt clean again.

There's no other way to say it; humanity makes me feel dirty. Under my skin.

(The rain brought the snails out. The walk home was a bit crunchy.)