Kay's Bookshelf

This is the second book in the Wheel of Time series and I have enjoyed a very small bit less than the previous one, yet still a lot. First of all, I love the writing style, because it has what I call “cinematic quality” (every visual detail is so aptly described that it sometimes feels like watching a movie). This book needed less world-building than the one before, since the reader is now familiarised with the location; however there were still new concepts introduced, and new places, giving me the occasion to bask in visual details, just as I like.

The plot is also well written, and quite unpredictable too — I very rarely knew what to expect, if at all. This is another reason why I’m on the way to becoming a fan of the series: the fact that there’s always something happening, with never a moment of boredom. Many people say that will change once the series reach book six or seven, but until then I really really love this part.

As for the characters, my, there’s plenty of them. I was happy to meet again most of those introduced in Book 1. Rand, desperately trying to adjust to who he is, trying to get rid of the yokel of prophecy but at the same time preparing himself for it, taking swordfighting lessons and learning to channel. Mat, sick, doing nothing but participating in the search for his dagger, now a bit more likable to me than before because he has less pages to complain in. Perrin, still communicating with wolves, also with less pages allotted. Loial, always with his nose in a book and one of my favorite characters. Surprisingly enough, Bayle Domon, the owner of the ship Rand crossed the river seemingly eons ago, makes an appearance in this book too, piquing my interest in his fate. There are also a few new characters, of which Huron, a “sniffer” (a man who can smell deeds done by others) seems the most promising one, and I am looking forward to meeting him again. A notable absence is Lan (yup, the one that I liked most of them all), who only appears a little in the beginning and a little at the end since Moiraine Sedai is kept busy elsewhere almost all throughout the book.

The female characters get to grow and develop, especially Egwene, whom I dismissed as childish before, but whom I have actually liked in this volume. Nynaeve is trying hard to learn to become the best Aes Sedai she can be, dreaming to punish Moiraine later on for everything Nynaeve thinks she has brought to “her people”. We meet Elayne again, and, although the Daughter-Heir, she is so very down-to-earth that it’s impossible not to like. Another old acquaintance is Min, who, while only met once in Book 1, already seemed like a promising character and I was happy to see her again. As secondary characters we also get to meet a few more Aes Sedai (including their leader, the Amyrlin Seat, an old friend of Moiraine’s), some more interesting than others, and about whom I am curious whether we’ll get to see them again or not, but none of them particularly captivating and/or likable for me.

Speaking of Aes Sedai, I was happy that the author chose to give at last a bit more details about the notion of Ajah. While I have already surmised that each Aes Sedai belonged to an Ajah, and the said Ajah’s color meant something related to the Sedai’s personality, I knew no more than that. In this book though I found out a bit more details, some even funny ones, such as the way the Green Ajah women treat men (the more the better, they even have more than one Warden each). Their opposite is the Red Ajah, who despise men altogether, and never choose Wardens for that reason. There’s also the Brown Ajah, whose members thirst for knowledge and as such are always studying one thing or another. I have no idea yet of the particularities of the other Ajahs (including the Blue, Moiraine’s colors), but I am looking forward to finding out in the next book or books :)

As a small detail, I was amused by the names of the fighting stances Rand had to learn. “Cat Crosses the Courtyard” is my favorite, but there’s also “Parting the Silk”, “Hummingbird Kisses the Honeyrose”, “Heron Wading in the Rushes”, “The Kingfisher Takes a Silverback”, “Bundling Straw”, “The Dove Takes Flight”, “The Falling Leaf”, “The Swallow Rides the Air”, “The Boar Rushes Down the Mountain”, “The River Undercuts the Bank”, “Stones Falling From the Cliff” and many more :)

Thoughts on the ending: Unsurprisingly, I absolutely loved the ending (more so than the one in the previous book). show spoiler

What I liked most: It’s a tie between two things:
1) the three tests that Nynaeve had to go through in order for her to become Accepted. While the idea of testing someone by making him (or her) confront his (or her) innermost fears is not new by far, I very much loved the buildup and the way each test was more intense than the one before. Plus the fact that we got another glimpse of Emond’s Field and of Lan. :)

and

2) the portal stones!!!
The very idea of there existing “worlds our world might have been if things had happened differently.“. Much like some people believe in parallel universes, people in the WoT world also believe that “The Pattern has infinite variation [...] and every variation that can be, will be.“. Well actually, that’s not just a belief of theirs, because those worlds of variation actually exist and can be visited too, using portal stones. So, so very cool (I seem to use this word a lot lately). Not to mention the moment when Rand focused on one portal stone and actually got to “live” some of these variations for himself.

What I liked least: I have no major complaints but
1) I could have done without the Children of the Light (they served no major purpose anyway)(or perhaps there is a purpose and it will be revealed later?)

and

2) I was a bit annoyed at the beginning by all the drama surrounding the fact that Aes Sedai might want to “gentle” Rand because of who he is. Now, I understand that the male Aes Sedai broke the world once; I also understand that the prophecies state that the Dragon Reborn “shall break the world again by his coming, tearing apart all ties that bind“. I understand that people might want to stop the world from breaking again and thus harm Rand to keep him from doing so. But the prophecies also state that “the Dark One shall once more lay his hand upon the world of man [...] yet shall the Dragon Reborn confront the Shadow at the Last Battle, and his blood shall give us the Light“. So, considering that somewhere in the near future the said Dragon Reborn will be the only thing keeping the world from being conquered by the Dark One, why would anyone do anything to the Dragon and interfere with his doing so?

Recommend it to? Anyone who read and liked the first book, of course. While I imagine it may work as standalone too, many of the events are based on what had happened before so the enjoyment of it would be considerably reduced. Or so I think :)

See also
Wheel of Time wiki :)
Moiraine’s Facebook page :)

This book is a sequel to:
The Eye of the World


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The mythology of the imaginary world the author has created is very detailed; so much so that at first I had a bit of trouble keeping the hang of who was what — however, I soon got to know everyone and things started making sense. Started being wonderful, actually. There are, at first, two clearly separated kinds of things: real, the ones everyone met with at times in their daily life (gleemen, the village Wisdom (a wise woman who is said to be able to heal people and to read the future in the wind), Winternight, the Bel Tine festival, etc.) and the ones everyone heard about in stories only (the Trollocs, the Aes Sedai, the Fades, and lots more). Some of the things in the latter category are even thought to be the product of someone’s too vivid imagination, that’s how rare they are.

And yet, all of the sudden, Rand’s world and the others’ is turned upside down, all things they barely believed in coming to life. Trollocs attacked, all of a sudden. A Fade/Myrddraal made itself known to boys of certain age. An Aes Sedai and a Warden turned out to have been in their midst. And I, I was fascinated by this sudden process of legends becoming tangible :)

There are a lot of concepts that were obviously inspired from real life, and it was interesting to see Jordan’s take on them. To name but a few, the Light is their good force (makes one think of God, especially when one sees the way it’s mentioned in daily life — “Light keep you!”, “Light, did you see that?”; they believe in a Creator too but the Light is the divinity they refer to in their every day life). The name of the evil one is Shai’tan. The Children of Light, an organisation with its own rules and ranking system, is the Andorian equivalent of Inquisition. Saidin and saidar, the male and female forces, make one think of Yin and Yang (especially as their symbol seems to be quite similar too). The Tinkers, the travelling people, are very much like the Gypsies of old: earn mend pots, travel in wagons, dress in vivid colors and are said to steal whatever they can get their hands on (what I liked most about them is that “They’re looking for a song. That’s what the Mahdi seeks. They say they lost it during the Breaking of the World, and if they can find it again, the paradise of the Age of Legends will return.“). And so on.

People often say that Jordan was heavily influenced by Tolkien, and that the plot is similar to the one in the Lord of the Rings. They are more or less right, as there are many elements in the book that make one think of Tolkien. However I would dare to say that the plot, albeit very interesting (with a few incredibly captivating moments now and then), is not necessarily the main attraction of Jordan’s work. Neither is the character development — I could say that it is actually the book’s weak point, because while the characters are believable and interesting, their emotions and dialogue aren’t always up to par. I for one felt quite meh about the relationship between Rand and Egwene, especially when the latter was being jealous — but I digress. As I was saying, the most interesting feature of the book, what makes it truly special, is the way Jordan has managed to create a living and breathing world around his characters. We are treated to detailed descriptions of villages, monuments, cities and people altogether, all forming in a colorful background behind our characters’ deeds. And it’s worth mentioning that, at least in this first volume, the author managed to present it all in such a manner that is never boring. I understand that this becomes a flaw later on, as the amount of detail tends to overcome the actual plot in some future books, but right now, after reading just this one, I am charmed.

When it comes of the characters, I very much liked the way Jordan chose to treat women. There are no damsel in distress in this book. The women are just as willing to go the needed lengths as men are; they are also, magic-wise, the more powerful, since they are the only ones able to touch the True Source. Quite a cool concept for a novel set in a medieval-like world.

Interestingly enough, my favorite character of them all was Lan. Even the author said about him that “Lan is simply the man I always wished I could be.“. My teenage self would have been head over heels fascinated with him. He is a very capable warrior, with a noble heart, always putting the interests of others ahead of his own. He is not talkative, but spends his time studying the surroundings, as any Warden on the run is supposed to be do. Yet he does notice things one would think he wouldn’t, and that shows most of all when it comes to who his love interest is (unfortunately I can’t spoil that but I was very excited about that part). Oh, and did I mention he is also of (very) noble blood?

Opposed to him, the three main characters (Mat, Rand, and Perrin) are nothing but boys. I liked Rand a lot because his emotions are very believable, and his heart is good. Perrin is the strong one, who thinks slowly but always thinks things through. As for Mat, he is the claimant of the “my least favorite male character” honor. He is supposed to be a mischievous lad, but not a bad one. However he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut (annoying!!) and is too preoccupied with finding treasure for my taste (this happens to also be his doom, at least in his book, haha).

Mat’s female equivalent, “my least favorite female character”, is Egwene (pronounced eh-GWAIN). She is very young and she’s also Rand’s love interest, so I suppose she is meant to be likable rather than not. Well, she does have her qualities — strong willed, courageous, loves being part of an adventure even if it’s scary at times — but she is also a bit of a bully, and also a bit annoying towards the end. I probably named her as my least favorite not because I disliked her but because I fully liked the others. Moiraine (pronounced mwah-RAIN), the Aes Sedai (EYEZ seh-DEYE), powerful and with lots of knowledge. Nynaeve, the young Wisdom, very capable and taking her responsibilities very seriously. Quite annoyed with men, but a good tracker herself. Both (Moiraine and Nynaeve) are promising characters and I am quite curious to see how they’ll develop in the future books.

Two tiny quotes I liked:
At one time, this is said about one of the Travelling People: “he moved as if he were about to begin dancing with his next step“. A bit of nice imagery. :)

The folks in the Two Rivers are said to be pretty stubborn, and I liked their way of thinking: “[...]the Light will take care of us all. And if the Light doesn’t, well, we’ll just take care of ourselves. Remember, we’re Two Rivers folk.”

Thoughts on the ending: There are people who call it rushed, but I have actually liked it. show spoiler

What I liked most: Interestingly enough, although in real life I’m not fond of the idea of predestination, I was quite captivated by the idea of a Pattern comprising all lives.

“The Wheel of Time weaves the Pattern of the Ages, and lives are the threads it weaves. No one can tell how the thread of his own life will be woven into the Pattern, or how the thread of a people will be woven.”

It seemed to me that somehow being a part of a bigger pattern gave everyone’s lives meaning, and I liked that. Not to mention I enjoyed trying to imagine how the said pattern might actually look (yeah, I know it’s not a literal pattern, but I love imagining it nevertheless). As such, I was also bound to like the notion of Ta’veren:

“You see, the Wheel of Time weaves the Pattern of the Ages, and the threads it uses are lives. It is not fixed, the Pattern, not always. If a man tries to change the direction of his life and the Pattern has room for it, the Wheel just weaves on and takes it in. There is always room for small changes, but sometimes the Pattern simply won’t accept a big change, no matter how hard you try. [...] But sometimes the change chooses you, or the Wheel chooses it for you. And sometimes the Wheel bends a life-thread, or several threads, in such a way that all the surrounding threads are forced to swirl around it, and those force other threads, and those still others, and on and on.”

I love the imagery of that :)

What I liked least: Can I say the Prologue? It started out so sudden I was finding it all very confusing, so much so that I almost put the book down (of course I didn’t consider it seriously, as I knew the book must be quite good to have sparkled such interest, but for a moment I did consider it nevertheless).

Recommend it to? Anyone who enjoys epic fantasies? Actually, I fell in love with it while reading so I heartily encourage anyone to at least give it a try :)

See also
Schema of the places where the characters travelled in this book
A background of the history of the world in the Wheel of Time series

This book is followed by:
The Great Hunt

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At last another book in the series that I can actually like! I started it with a “meh” attitude but I was soon won over by how fast paced everything around Percy was. Now, I do realize that all of the books in the series are just as fast paced as this one, but for some reason (Percy being less annoying?) this one I do like quite a bit. So much so that it is a serious contender for the “favorite book in the series” spot, and that’s saying something because I have really loved book one :)

The recurring characters are just the same as in the previous books. Percy is still Percy (and lucky me, he didn’t have to read many things so I didn’t have to hear about his dyslexia that many times), and I actually spent the whole book liking him (though I wouldn’t have expected it after the previous one). He seems to have matured a bit, and his choices are always the good ones (not necessarily correct, but good, as he is indeed the loyal person one would expect him to be after the previous book), so I ended up liking him just as much as I did at the beginning of the series. Speaking of which, my feelings for Annabeth seem to have reverted to those I had in the very first book too, namely most of the time I cannot stand her. She is clearly the smart girl of the series (Hermione, look out), and I would have expected her to be likable because of that, but she is way too careless with others’ feelings for that.

Nico di Angelo, the brother of Bianca is also back with a vengeance. I imagine him to be about twelve (I may be wrong), but I find him to be quite cool, what with his being always dressed in black and able to summon skeletons and such. A true son of Hades, more so than Percy is Poseidon’s son to me (well, Percy can do interesting things too, summon water out of nowhere, keep himself dry in the middle of a storm and so on, but what Nico can do is way way cooler). Also, there is a new character introduced, a young “mortal” girl named Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who just happens to be my favorite character in this book (her and Calypso). I do wonder what will become of her later on, as I am certain she’s been introduced in the book only as a possible love interest for Percy, because Annabeth is still pining for her traitorous Luke — but we’ll see :)

It probably shows that I had a lot of feelings invested in (almost) all of the characters, right? I did like and did root for most of them indeed, but that doesn’t mean that the characters are all that’s interesting in the book. On the contrary, the author seems to be really good at describing visuals (a thing that for some reason I don’t remember noticing until now), plus his imagination (places, events) leaves nothing to be desired. Oh, and the battle of the Labyrinth is great!

A quote I liked, a thing Poseidon tells Percy, when asked what he thinks about Antaeus sacrificing all sorts of creatures to him:

“Percy, lesser beings do many horrible things in the name of the gods. That does not mean we gods approve. The way our sons and daughters act in our names… well, it usually says more about them than it does about us.”

Thoughts on the ending: It’s a good prelude to book five, I would say. So here Percy is on the roof, when Nico appears all of the sudden and tells him, “Wait, I know how to beat Kronos, and this is the only way you’d stand a chance!”. So Percy invites him in and… ta-daaa! the book ends :)

What I liked most: I very much loved the visuals this book made me imagine: the cherry-colored cattle, the labyrinth, with its various everchanging rooms, the scene with the skeletons who fall apart when they are no longer needed, Kampe, who was half woman and half dragon and “around her waist, where the woman part met the dragon part, her skin bubbled and morphed, occasionally producing the heads of animals—a vicious wolf, a bear, a lion, as if she were wearing a belt of ever-changing creatures“, Briares, who had no less than one hundred arms and “his chest sprouted more arms than I could count, in rows, all around his body. The arms looked like normal arms, but there were so many of them, all tangled together, that his chest looked kind of like a forkful of spaghetti somebody had twirled together” and more. Speaking of Briares, try to imagine this particular scene for example:

“Briares wiped his nose with five or six hands. Several others were fidgeting with little pieces of metal and wood from a broken bed, the way Tyson always played with spare parts. It was amazing to watch. The hands seemed to have a mind of their own. They built a toy boat out of wood, then disassembled it just as fast. Other hands were scratching at the cement floor for no apparent reason. Others were playing rock, paper, scissors. A few others were making ducky and doggie shadow puppets against the wall.”

Isn’t it really cool?

What I liked least: First of all there’s my usual qualm about people substituting “hell” with “Hades” in day-to-day expressions (“all Hades broke loose”, “Hades if I know”) that are so automated I find it hard to believe whoever says them actually thinks of what they mean (so I have trouble imagining Percy thinking something along the lines of “and then, all hell broke loose — oh wait, there’s no hell, just Hades — and then, all Hades broke loose”). Also, I hated the way Annabeth kept calling Miss Dare “mortal”, with disdain, at every chance she got. As far as I noticed half-bloods can very well die too, so they are by no mean immortal and I hated Annabeth feeling so superior over what was actually nothing (yeah, and more than once too).

Recommend it to? I am not sure it shows in the review but I have really loved this book! As such, I dearly recommend it to everyone who has managed to read the previous three books :)

This book is a sequel to:
The Lightning Thief
The Sea of Monsters
The Titan’s Curse


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Popularity: 17% [?]

I cannot help liking Percy less and less with each book. Sure, he is a noble hero, an no one can deny him that (especially after this book when his one weakness is revealed). And yet the author had tried to make him an ordinary boy too, and this side of him annoys me to death. My pet peeve regarding him is that he knows very little mythology (or anyway, a lot less than he should have, being a part of that world). Also, every single time he sees something to read, even a few words, he reminds us he’s dyslexic (but we knew that already! why is he mentioning it again and again?). Last but not least, his one reaction to everything seems to be “whoa!”, and it gets somewhat tiring after a while.

As for the other characters, especially the newly introduced ones (Artemis and her Hunters) they do seem pretty interesting — and, of course, Zoe Nightshade is my favorite of them all. Grover is still the same old Grover, caught in his permanent quest for Pan, Thalia is the same punk/goth kid that for some reason I don’t very much like, Bianca Di Angelo is another promising character and I very much hope we’ll see more of her in the future (the name is kinda meh though, Bianca means “white” in Italian and Angelo means “angel”, so a literal translation would be “the white one of the angel”, which I don’t much care for). On the gods side, we get to know a few new ones, like Apollo/Fred, who is very fond of writing haikus ever since he visited Japan (my favorite one being

“Green grass breaks through snow.
Artemis pleads for my help.
I am so cool.”

). Also, we get to see a new side of Dionysus (even his wife Ariadne makes a cameo appearance), and to be honest I am starting to almost like him, unlike in the previous books.

I really don’t know how I feel about the series at the moment. I very much loved the first book (it was a very pleasant surprise for a mythology buff such as I). The second one has been a bit less enjoyable and surprising, very likely because this time I knew what I was going to find inside and had some pretty high expectations too. With this book I started in quite the opposite way as, after the second book, I had no expectations at all — and yet I managed to end up a bit disappointed. There are still mythological characters (including some new ones), Percy still goes on a quest across America, and yet… and yet something wasn’t there. The book felt pretty normal to me instead of the sparkling one Book 1 was. I will probably read the next book at one time in the future, to find out what happens next, but I cannot help being a bit sad that the first book didn’t get the worthy sequels it would have been nice to have. My subjective opinion, of course.

A quote I liked seeing come to life in my mind:

As he said that, skeletons erupted from the ground. There were twelve of them, one for each tooth the General had planted. They were nothing like Halloween skeletons, or the kind you might see in cheesy movies. These were growing flesh as I watched, turning into men, but men with dull gray skin, yellow eyes, and modern clothes—gray muscle shirts, camo pants, and combat boots. If you didn’t look too closely, you could almost believe they were human, but their flesh was transparent and their bones shimmered underneath, like X-ray images.

What I liked most: A fact that probably everyone else but me knew for ages, but I have only rather recently found out. I read in an interview with Rick Riordan (that unfortunately I can no longer track down) that one of his own kids is dyslexic and has ADD. One evening he wanted a bedtime story and this is how Percy Jackson was born (dyslexic and with ADD so the kid could identify with him better). I think it’s a really cute story, especially as I have somewhat wondered about where these afflictions come from in Percy, as we very rarely get to see heroes “with issues”. The fact that the author has taught Greek myths for a few years is also quite cool (and it very much shows in the pages of the books).

To choose a tidbit from this particular book, my favorite was the moo cow!! Okay, okay, the Ophiotaurus. A cute creature with gentle eyes named Bessie (although it’s actually a he) :)

Also, the moment when Grover got “the message from the Wild” was quite nicely written, making me hope that there will be some more such messages in the next books (or even a cameo of Pan if it is not too much to ask). show spoiler

What I liked least: My nominations are as follows:
Worst Percy Jackson moment:
When he said this:

“I didn’t know exactly when cars were invented, but I figured that was like prehistoric times—back when people watched black-and-white TV and hunted dinosaurs.”

I cannot believe a fourteen year old kid can be that uneducated, and I have a hard time esteeming him if that’s the case.

Worst plot hole:
show spoiler

Something else that bothered me:
Zoe is supposed to be really old and talk in a quaint way as she thinks English is a hard language (changing too much too often). Then why is it that her only “quaintness” is that she uses thee/thou/thy instead of you/your? Not to mention she even has trouble even saying “your” although it is a very simple word compared to some of the rest of the English language (like for example “health”, “depth”, etc).

Recommend it to? Whoever read and liked the first two books, of course. This is a highly successful series (quite similar to Harry Potter in many regards), so I definitely encourage one to read it (despite my pesonal take on it ’cause tastes vary as they say).

See also:
Rick Riordan – the official site
Rick Riordan – the blog

This book is a sequel to:
The Lightning Thief
The Sea of Monsters

This book is followed by:
The Battle of the Labyrinth

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Popularity: 49% [?]

As it’s usually the case with Mr. Gaiman’s books, this too has an assorted cast of characters. We have Richard, the all around nice guy that has discovered a world he never knew he existed (and that becomes a stronger person in the process). The Lady Door, the descendant of a family of door openers (a concept that has fascinated me). Hunter, the woman hunter whose life purpose was to kill as many dangerous beasts as possible. The Marquis of Carabas (a self-given name straight out of the Puss in Boots story) that I have found a bit annoying at the beginning but that has earned my respect later on. Not to mention the two hired hands, Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, the former being one of the more interesting such characters that I have ever met, and whose manner of speaking being one of my favorite things in the book.

Mr. Gaiman’s imagination doesn’t disappoint when it comes to places either: we have an ever-moving market (whose variety reminded me of the one in Stardust), an Earl’s Court (complete with a jester) in a subway train, a bridge that captured people now and then, and many more. Speaking of the Earl’s Court, I have found quite cool the way the author has chosen to reinterpret the meaning of some of the London tube stations. for example Knightsbridge becomes Night’s Bridge (the one I mentioned before), The Angel, Islington is an actual angel named Islington, Shepherd’s Bush is a place where actual shepherds hang out, and so on. The thing is perhaps all the more interesting when coupled with one of the very first scene, where Richard gives away his tube station map (it was printed on an umbrella, and it was raining) to an old woman who warns him to stay away from doors. I see Richard’s losing the map as a metaphor for the fact that he’ll soon become lost in London Below, and have difficulties finding his way there (as in “of course he had trouble making sense of the underground world since he had no map”).

Speaking of metaphors, I have very much liked the mention of “a fraction of a second that becomes a tiny forever” (probably because a second is so the opposite of forever that even the mere idea of associating the two seems somewhat out of this world :) ).

What I liked most: I was fascinated most by the idea of opening doors, especially when it came to creating doors where there previously were none. The image that I liked most though was that of the house Door and her family lived in:

The swimming pool was an indoor Victorian structure, constructed of marble and of cast iron. Her father had found it when he was younger, abandoned and about to be demolished, and he had woven it into the fabric of the House Without Doors. Perhaps in the world outside, in London Above, the room had long been destroyed and forgotten. Door had no idea where any of the rooms of her house were, physically. Her grandfather had constructed the house, taking a room from here, a room from there, all through London, discrete and doorless; her father had added to it.

I was also fond of the ending, more precisely of the fact that show spoiler

What I liked least: I found it a charming book with nothing to criticize :)

Recommend it to? Everyone who enjoys reading fantasy, of course :)

Written by the same author:
American Gods
Coraline
Good Omens (with Sir Terry Pratchett)
The Graveyard Book
Snow, Glass, Apples
Stardust


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Popularity: 16% [?]

For some reason I was expecting this to be an enchanting book: swordfights, a masked hero, a fiery love story. I ended up being disappointed though. First of all because of the way the story is told: long narrative pieces, with very little dialogue. Also, the story is told by one of the characters, which means we didn’t have access to the other characters’ inner life. The result? With a few exceptions, all characters seemed very flat to me and I couldn’t bring myself to care about them.

Let’s take Zorro for example. Young Diego de la Vega is a good guy, preoccupied by justice, but also shy in the presence of girls. Add to that the fact that he is quite proud of his feats (understandably enough perhaps, who wouldn’t have been in his stead) and that is almost everything we know of him. He simply doesn’t manage to raise himself off the paper. The same goes for almost everyone else — perhaps with the exception of Isabel de Romeu, my favorite character, who manages to express herself through words because she never shies in telling exactly what she thinks, so we get to know her a bit better than the rest. I also liked Toypurnia, and regretted (as is the case with Isabel too) that she didn’t get to appear in some more pages and do some more things.

They always say that in a review one should write about the book that is not the book the reader would have wanted to see. True, but a bit hard for me in this particular case. In my younger days I used to be a fan of (almost) every Zorro movie that I got to see — I sort of expected the book to follow the same pattern: Zorro, placed in difficult situations, manages to make justice prevail while, at the same time, finding his perfect mate. The book is vastly different though. I did enjoy some of the parts of Diego’s history and the very fact that we got to see him becoming Zorro, how did it happen, what brought it to him, etc. But there were other parts that I have found quite forced though: his communicating to his “brother” via telepathy, his becoming a part of a secret society and some more. To me these seemed mostly implausible, instead of adding charm to the story, as I imagine the author had wanted.

As a bit of trivia, Diego is Gemini — hence his dual nature. I was amused by it since I am a Gemini too :P

Here is a quote describing a moment I think characterizes Diego/Zorro quite well:

The masked man mounted his steed. To thrill the children, he whistled, and his mount whirled and reared; then he pulled out his sword and flashed it, making it glint in the lantern light, and sang a verse that he himself had composed during the idle months in New Orleans: something about a valiant horseman who rides out on moonlit nights to defend justice, punish evildoers, and slash a Z with his sword. The song beguiled the children but increased Padre Mendoza fear that the man was out of his mind.

Yes he was that vain, to start singing a song about himself, all of the sudden. Were I in Padre Mendoza’s place (seeing a guy on the black horse all of the sudden starting to sing) I would fear for his sanity as well. :P

What I liked most: the way the author has imagined the well known characters: Diego is the son of an officer and an Indian “warrior queen”; Bernardo, instead of being Diego’s servant, is his Indian “milk brother”, not dumb but not speaking because of a childhood shock; the fat sergeant Garcia used to be a childhood friend of Diego’s and so on — thus adding a history and depth to the story.

What I liked least: the lack of a strong enough heroine — I was especially bothered by the fact that the one who becomes Diego’s wife has to be one of the flattest female characters I had ever encountered :| (I do realize that the author was going for “something different” with her version of the story, but still)

I was also a bit bothered about the Z marking. When Diego was in Spain there was a lot of uproar about a guy dressed in black, wearing a mask and calling himself Zorro, who helped some prisoners escape and left a Z mark on one wall. Now that Diego is back in California, a guy dressed in black, wearing a mask and calling himself Zorro, helps some prisoners escape and leaves behind a Z mark. Can there be any question at all about the identity of the man?? Could he have been any more obvious?

Recommend it to? Although I wasn’t particularly excited by this book, I do recommend it to all Zorro fans — who knows, perhaps some will see in it a lot more than I did.


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The author has taken the strange, twisted world from Lewiss Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”, reinterpreting the characters and (some of the) events in order to make them form one big, connected story. There are characters corresponding to almost every one of the important characters in “Alice”, only usually with an amazing twist: so much so that they are hardly recognizable but for one detail that gives them away. For example, Redd is the author’s take on the Red Queen in “Alice” — although the two have nothing in common but the habit of screaming “Off with his/her head!” when angry. The Mad Hatter has become Hatter Madigan (nothing in common but the name and the top hat), a feared warrior who became a legend in our own world. The grinning Cheshire Cat (predictably enough one of my favorite characters in “Alice”) is no longer grinning and no longer Cheshire: he’s called The Cat and he’s a huge cat with literally nine lives, a trained assassin under Redd’s command. The “pair” that amused me the most was the one between the White Rabbit and Bibwit Harte — while Harte has nothing of a rabbit whatsoever, him being the respectable tutor of a long line of Wonderland queens, his very name is an anagram of “White Rabbit”! (luckily this is mentioned in the book as I am fairly certain I wouldn’t have thought of that myself :) ). Speaking of characters, a novel one but also very captivating is the general Doppelganger, who can, at will, split in two identical generals, General Doppel and General Ganger :)

I very much loved the way real characters are intermingled with fictional ones. From the very beginning we are told that Lewis Carroll wrote “Alice in Wonderland” after talking to Alice Liddell (a thing every fan of the Alice books knows as true). The twist is that Alice is very much insulted when seeing the book, as it’s nothing like what she remembered of Wonderland — so much so that she never wants to see Lewis Carroll again (something that actually happened in real life too, at one point Alice reacted this very way, only the reason is unknown). I was absolutely delighted to read this part due to its roots in reality — less so when I saw how the story unfolded though: Alice met Prince Leopold and he fell in love with her. Now this struck me as too much a liberty to be taken with real characters, how could a real prince meet an fall in love with an ordinary girl, especially one as plain looking (or so it seems to me) one as Alice Lydell? But then I looked them up on Wikipedia and, to my utter surprise, there is actually such a rumor, of something having been between Alice and the prince! And yes, he did name his daughter Alice and she did name her son Leopold, just as in the book :)

Since we’re talking of inspiration, I was also amused to note how the kingdom during Redd’s rule was similar to 1984: television screens everywhere, people watched, texts being rewritten, children telling on their parents and getting them sent to the mines for “thoughtcrime” — to name but a few. The author has been careful to also add some unpleasantness of his own though (or at least I don’t remember it from anywhere): there are speakers everywhere, always blaring, not a moment of silence, because, as Redd puts it, silence breeds dissent.

What I liked most: I was fascinated by the very world Beddor imagined. Cities with gleaming buildings, people going to work in “in sleek glass tubes hovering on cushions of air“, a world where, most of all, the imagination becoming reality is a common occurrence. Speaking of imagination, in Wonderland there are two kinds of imagination: White Imagination and Black Imagination (just like there is magic in other worlds hee hee). Here’s a quote I liked about the world:

[...] most of Wonderland took pride in the Inventors’ Parade, the one time every year when citizens flaunted their skills and ingenuity before the queen. If Genevieve saw something in the parade that she thought particularly good, she would send it into the Heart Crystal—a thirty-three-foot-tall, fifty-two-foot-wide shimmering crystal on the palace grounds, the power source for all creation. Whatever passed into the crystal went out into the universe to inspire imaginations in other worlds. If a Wonderlander bounced in front of Queen Genevieve on a spring-operated stick with handlebars and footrests and she passed this curious invention into the crystal, before long, in one civilization or another, a pogo stick would be invented.

And another one, to get a better idea about how imagination in Wonderland worked:

[...]the queen imagined new weapons for herself—swords, sabers, spiked clubs—whenever one was knocked from her grip. She was always armed with four weapons at once, her imagination swinging two of them, to fend off attacks from behind.

Now that’s some imagination, isn’t it? :)

What I liked least: Well, there are some details not very well taken care of — such as how did Dodge get to London on the first try as there was supposedly no way to control the destination? Let’s call it luck but how about The Cat? Or the part where all the mirrors were broken (Redd broke all mirrors thinking of them collectively as mirrors not thinking of each one in turn so the hidden mirror shouldn’t have escaped unharmed). Nevertheless truth is that on the whole I liked reading about that world so much I very easily ignored everything that didn’t fit, not letting it stand in the path of my enjoyment.

Recommend it to? Well, that is perhaps a bit of a tough one as I have seen a few reviews of the book written by “Alice in Wonderland” fans and some of them were very very upset with the author (I never understood why, but then again I am not that fond of the first “Alice” book either). So, if you really really like the original book and do not ant your image of that world challenged in any way, this book is not for you. Everyone else, feel free to give it a try, who knows, you just might like it as much as I did :)

See also
real Alice Liddell’s Wikipedia page, with her pictures taken by Lewis Carroll (some of them mentioned in the book)
The web site dedicated to the series (it also has games! :P )

This book is followed by:
Seeing Redd

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