Kay's Bookshelf

Genre: Classic :) Main characters: Atticus Finch, Jeremy “Jem” Finch, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch Time and place: around 1935, the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama First sentence: “When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.” Summary: At nineteen, Mayella Ewell had a very hard life, surrounded by people who only expected her to work for their welfare. The only friendly face in the neighborhood was Tom, a black guy who used to pass by the house on his way home, and sometimes stopped to give Mayella a hand with her chores. This Tom was young too, and so it was only a matter of time until Mayella started to get interested in him more than she should have. Well, suffice it to say that it all ends with a trial, where Tom is judged for beating and raping young Mayella. It is thus that the paths of Tom and Atticus Finch meet, for an experience that neither Atticus nor his family will soon forget.

General impression
There is a bit of a contradiction here: I liked this book a lot, and yet when I put it down I couldn’t help being disappointed. Everything is in the right place, and yet … I expected it to be a lot more intense. I couldn’t get drawn in, and I felt like I was watching Maycomb and its characters through a window, instead of feeling in their midst. I have no idea how that happened, except perhaps my expectations were way too high: having heard so many good things about it throughout the years, I was expecting something deep, profound, Earth-shattering, and I only got a few events’ worth of story instead.

It is of course obvious that I haven’t tapped in all its hidden wealth of themes and symbolism (themes such as that of hidden talents, such as Calpurnia’s knowing how to read, or Atticus being such a great shot; symbols as Atticus’ shooting the rabid dog, having only one shot to rescue his neighbors, while being blinded by the lack of glasses being a foreshadowing of his one shot at saving Tom, through the legal system who is said to be also blind — although we know it’s not, as their decision is not taken on objective reasons); but still I feel I would have liked something more intense to go by (I think that this is an effect of the age we live in, of the contemporary books and movies that we’re currently exposed to perpetually trying to shock out hearts out, so much so that we have grown jaded, and as such is rather hard for some of us, some of the younger generations at least, not to feel like there’s something missing in a nice & tame old-fashioned novel like TKAM is) (although, in my defense, I don’t remember feeling this kind of disappointment when reading Jane Austen, whom I love, or Jane Eyre for example, so my theory is definitely not set in stone — yet I am sure I would have loved this book a lot more had I read it say twenty years ago).

Characters
I loved the characters, how could I not. While there are some who call all of them stereotypical (Atticus = the white guy who could do no wrong; Calpurnia = the black maid who knows her place and takes care of the children; Scout = the precocious tomboy; Boo = the town eccentric; Bob Ewell = the illiterate redneck; and so on), I will also say that I enjoyed meeting most of them.

My favorite character was (oh how predictable) Atticus Finch, for all his maturity, his principles, the way he struggled to be a role model for his children, no matter how hard it was, or whether the battle he embarked upon had an already decided outcome or not (remember what he told his children on the night Mrs. Dubose died? “Courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what“). However, most of all I liked him for the fact that he literally could do no wrong (or at least he does not do it within the pages of the book). Sure, that might sound boring and one dimensional, but to me it was a welcome break from the quotidian :)

The most complex character of them all I thought was Mayella, so she’s almost a second favorite of mine, because of the sorry life she was condemned to. Illiterate and lonely, at the hands of a violent father — I don’t think life could get much worse. Not to mention that the poor thing is not very bright, so the chances that one day she’ll be able to build a better existence for herself are virtually nil. This is why, although she is closer to being a negative character rather than a positive, I couldn’t help caring for her, rather than the opposite.

Other than that, the rest of the cast are also likable (of course, almost everybody in this book is), but nothing out of the ordinary. I liked the way Scout was shaping up her vision of the world, following her father’s example; the way Jem kept caring for his little sister; the manners Calpurnia taught; the fact that Atticus’ brother, Jack, had life principles very similar to Atticus’ own; Miss Maudie and her azaleas; and so on. All sorts of little warm and fuzzy moments, I like to call them :)

Plot
There is not much of a plot to speak of (and I imagine that some of my disappointment with the book stems from here), as everything revolves around Tom’s trial and its effects on the life of the small town where Tom and the rest lived.

Setting
This is where the genius of Ms. Lee shines through: when it comes to the setting. The author has been influenced heavily by her own childhood, spent in a small Southern town, when she created Maycomb, and it shows. You can feel the said setting living and breathing, and the interactions between people are very believable (even for someone such as myself, who’s never seen a small American town in her life). In a way, Maycomb is a character just like Atticus is, among other things because of the collective prejudice towards black people that almost everybody shared.

Maycomb is also shown to be a paradise for children, such as Scout and Jem, a place to spend the days in childish adventures of one sort or another — it even has its very own boogeyman, aptly nicknamed Boo, a source of wonder and fear for our small heros to fight and eventually overcome.

Thoughts on the title
The title represents the most obvious symbol/theme of the book (one that even I have managed to discern, ha!): the death of innocence. The wording is taken from something that Calpurnia once said, “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.“. There are two such “mockingbirds” in the novel, Tom Robinson and Arthur Radley. Unfortunately one of them ends up being killed, and only a handful of characters realize how much of a sin that was — at least the other’s fate is set in fairer hands, and he is free to go.

Thoughts on the ending
Predictable.
show spoiler

What I liked most
Although Atticus discouraged them, I was enchanted by the children’s attempts to get Boo Radley to join them for an ice cream. To me it was the perfect manifestation of their innocence and kindness, the way they saw a lonely person (which they imagined to be miserable because of that) and tried their best to “cure” his loneliness the best way they knew how.

What I liked least
There’s nothing that I have actually disliked. It was a nice book overall :)

Recommend it to?
Everyone, since it’s one of the classics :)

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Genre: Fairytale retelling Main characters: Beauty (whose real name is Honour) and the Beast (whose real name is forgotten) Time and place: Once upon a time :) (though late medieval England fits the bill quite well) First sentence: “I was the youngest of three daughters.” Summary: The subtitle says it all: “A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast”. A wealthy merchant loses all his fortune when his ships sink, so he has to take his three daughters and move to the country, where life is cheaper. One day he is lost in a snowstorm and ends up in a mysterious castle, where all his needs were magically catered for. Just as he was leaving he sees a wonderful rose garden, and he picks a single red rose for his youngest daughter. But this small gesture has upset the owner of the castle, a frightening beast, who made the poor man swear he will be back in a month with one of his daughters or he will lose his life.

I was so bound to love this book (a Beauty and the Beast retelling, very high rated on goodreads), and it was no surprise that I did. I read it breathlessly in less than a day, and felt sorry when it was over, because I was already thinking of the characters as friends.

The author has taken the original story and, without changing any essentials, has breathed life into it. The characters are written in such a way one cannot help caring about them. Yes, yet another of those stories filled with only good people, the kind I was bound to like :)

Beauty’s real name is Honour (other female names in her family include Grace, Hope, and Mercy), and she has chosen her own nickname when she was five and unable to understand the concept of honour. To her chagrin, it’s not a particularly apt nickname: while her two sisters are tremendously beautiful, Beauty, at 16, sees herself as mousy and drab. She doesn’t let that get to her though, preoccupied as she is with her books, her horse and her daily chores. One really cannot help liking her, especially later on, after she meets the Beast, and she is always struggling to treat him kindly even when she’s afraid.

The Beast is… anything but beastly. Ugly, yes, but he has a personality I think I would actually like to meet. Two hundred years old, he has grown wise, and his loneliness and sadness made him very considerate to those around him (case in point: Beauty). He is struggling to retain his humanity in that beastly shell, sometimes with more success, sometimes with less. Like Beauty, he has read a lot, and the two characters enjoy one another’s company, making their relationship seem so very believable (even to the point where Beauty realizes she is in love with the big, ugly, hairy beast).

The writing is also a pleasure to watch. Unpretentious, conversational (because, after all, it represents the thoughts of a sixteen-years old girl), at times it contains breathtaking metaphors, or even better, whole moments.

Here is a quote I liked:

I glanced at the picture again briefly. I thought: The artist was a genius, to catch that fire-eaten look. He must have been exhausted when he was done; I’m tired after only a few minutes of looking at the finished work. “I think he died young,” I said finally. A curious silence stepped in, took my words, and tapped and shook and rattled them together, as if they would ring clear as brass or silver; and then, disgusted, blew them away entirely.

The castle itself is a lovely place, with beautiful imagery. Everything there is not only richly decorated, but also friendly, and it’s been, in itself, an experience to discover and enjoy, particularly some of the details (such as, for example, Beauty’s room always being just around the corner whenever she got lost).

Interestingly enough, the author has written another, a second retelling of The Beauty and the Beast story, decades after writing this one. I know very little about it, but I cannot believe it can be as good as this one :) (but, of course, I plan to read it and find out)

Thoughts on the title: Self explanatory :)

Thoughts on the ending: I was as glorious as I hoped it would be, and all went downhill from there :(
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What I liked most: The library, of course, hands down :) Although I cannot even begin to fathom how it must be to read about Sherlock Holmes and his adventures so many centuries before his time. I liked the idea of not confining Beauty to reading the books of her own age :)

Also, I very much liked the way the curse upon the Beast came to be:

“It’s an old family curse of sorts. My forebears were, um, rather over pious, and overzealous in impressing their neighbors with their piety. After the first few generations of holier-than-thou the local magician got rather tired of them, and cursed them; but unfortunately their virtue was even as great as they made it out to be, and the curse wouldn’t stick. So, being a magician, he settled down to wait for their first erring step. My family laughed, which didn’t improve his temper any—and unfortunately for me, at last, that erring foot was mine.”

What I liked least: Dare I say, Beauty’s beauty? I mean, I was so happy in the beginning to see the heroine as smart, capable, compassionate, everything a girl should be, minus the looks (I didn’t imagine her ugly, only not extraordinarily beautiful as princesses in fairytales usually are). I mentally congratulated the author for that, for getting rid of cliches, for showing readers that physical beauty is not the end all and be all… and then there’s an end scene where Beauty says the now former Beast that she cannot marry him, as he is too good for her, because she’s not beautiful. “Oh but you are”, sayeth he, and shows her that, she is now, indeed, truly beautiful (so yes, now they can get married). So much with cherishing courage and inner strength and anything else :(

Recommend it to? Anyone, I absolutely loved it. If you happen to like retold fairytales, or the tale of the Beauty and the Beast in particular, so much the better :)

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Well, I am not certain what expectations I had prior to opening this book (especially given the fact that I had heard of Mr. Barker only vaguely before, plus my copy of the book had a very uninteresting cover), but I was very pleasantly surprised.

The Book of Blood

The house at 65, Tollington Place has the bad luck to be situated in the same place as a highway of the dead. A thing that, naturally enough, makes it haunted. Doctor Mary Florescu has seen her chance to prove, once and for all, that the supernatural exists, so she moved to the house, together with her assistant and a medium. This latter, Simon, was actually a fraud, taking pride in the way he managed to fool everybody. Not knowing that, in the process, he has angered the dead. The dead that, one day, did came and did leave tangible traces: their stories, written all over Simon’s body. This is how The Book of Blood came into existence — written in blood, on human skin — and some of the stories in it are those that follow.

I don’t know how to feel about this. Sure, I love the idea behind it. The imagery is interesting too. However, I did not particularly like the characters — Simon wasn’t actually supposed to be likable, which is ok, but Mary… I am left with a question mark regarding the way I should relate to her. One of the disadvantages of short stories I guess, they have too little space to determinedly define their characters.

I wonder why the doctor had a Romanian name :)

The Midnight Meat Train

Leon Kaufman is an ordinary guy, living in New York, intrigued, like the rest of the people in the city, by the latest mysterious murders discovered. People have been stripped, cut, and bled to death in subway wagons, by an unknown guy dubbed the Subway Butcher. Theories abound, and everyone has an opinion, but the unfortunate Kaufman is the only one to find out the truth, one evening when he stayed up too late at work.

I cannot add the whole quote, because it’s about one page long, but I really liked the way this story has begun: with Leon examining his feelings towards New York: it used to be his promised land, and he had been in love with it from afar for about twenty years. When his dream of coming to live here had come true, Leon was delighted, openly declaring his feelings to the world. And yet, less than four months later, he is thoroughly disillusioned:

“New York was just a city.
He had seen her wake in the morning like a slut, and pick murdered men from between her teeth, and suicides from the tangles of her hair. He had seen her late at night, her dirty back streets shamelessly courting depravity. He had watched her in the hot afternoon, sluggish and ugly, indifferent to the atrocities that were being committed every hour in her throttled passages.
It was no Palace of Delights.
It bred death, not pleasure.
Everyone he met had brushed with violence; it was a fact of life. It was almost chic to have known someone who had died a violent death. It was proof of living in that city.”

It was a story rather filled with gore — blood, blood, and more blood — and some curious creatures too. Did I like it? Not necessarily. I did read it breathlessly though, because I was quite eager to find out how it ended (and also, to find out who died, because I figured that someone must die in order for this story to end up written on Simon’s skin). Did I enjoy the ending? I have no idea. I figure it’s a good one though. show spoiler

The Yattering and Jack

The Yattering has a mission: to get the soul of Jack J. Polo for his master, Beelzebub. Unfortunately for him, there are a lot of limitations to what a fury can do to his assigned person, such as never leaving his house, or never touching him, and, although the Yattering is doing everything in its power, Jack remained completely oblivious to its manoeuvres. Stuck in the same house for months, with no company most of the time, the poor Yattering is nearing its breaking point. At least, it consoles itself, Christmas will soon be there and Jack’s daughters will come visit, giving the harpy the leverage it needs to fulfill its mission.

This story was, to me, more amusing than horror (which is why I have rather liked it, hehe). The frustration of the poor fury, plus the extreme obliviousness of Jack to all its efforts, were enough to put a smile on my face. An example of the way Jack treated life:

“Events seemed to make no dent in his perfect indifference. His life’s disasters seemed not to scar his mind at all. When, eventually, he was confronted with the truth about his wife’s infidelity (he found them screwing in the bath) he couldn’t bring himself to be hurt or humiliated. ‘These things happen,’ he said to himself, backing out of the bathroom to let them finish what they’d started.”

Definitely one of my favorites so far :)
show spoiler

Pig Blood Blues

The story takes place in a youth correctional facility, where a former policeman, Neil Redman, has just started working. Filled with good intentions, he stumbles straight into the heart of a mystery involving a pig, a current inmate, and a former one, who still roams the facilities as a ghost, or perhaps something else.

As every other story so far, this one was captivating: once I begun it I couldn’t put it down — Mr. Barker really has a talent when it comes to creating stories like that. However, this is the first story when I didn’t quite “get” what happened after a certain point, and so my enjoyment of it was a bit less than the rest.

Hats off to the title, which I have found quite inspired. This is a story having to do with pigs (one in particular), but it is also an allusion to the fact that Redman was called a pig too, due to his past in the police force. Only one of these two “pigs” will have its blood shed in the story though, so it is that one the title points out to — but still, I liked the ambiguity of it all.

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Sex, Death, and Starshine

Terry Galloway is the new director of the Elysium theatre, and his mission is to stage a production of The Twelfth night, starring a famous actress of the moment, Diane Duvall, as Viola. Only the famous actress cannot act to save her life, so the play is in shambles, two days before opening. The salvation comes in the shape of a former devotee of the theatre, a certain Mr. Lichfield, who, knowing that this is the last performance the Elysium is ever going to see, has kindly persuaded his wife Constantia to play Viola instead of Diane.

By now the “starshine” part of the title should be obvious, the “sex” should be covered by saying that the relationship between Galloway and Diane wasn’t exactly platonic, but where does “death” come into it? Very simple: some of the characters are already dead when the story opens, some of the characters will be so by the time the curtains fall. Sort of creepy, but also sort of fascinating, I would say.

The idea at the end, about art imitating life was quite interestingly put. show spoiler

Also, there is a minor character somewhere in there called Wellbeloved, how cool is that :)

In the Hills, the Cities

Mick and Judd are in their honeymoon, touring Europe. While in Yugoslavia they get lost and reach two cities who have a very strange tradition: each ten years all the inhabitants of each city harness themselves to one another and build a giant out of their bodies, and the two giants fight each other to see which is better. This year however something goes terribly wrong, as one of the giants falls down and dies, while the other goes out of its mind and run for the hills.

This was by far the most shocking story of all. The imagery it conjures, the sheer number of human lives lost is… I don’t have a word for it. A horror story if there ever was one. I am terribly impressed both by the imagination of the author, to think up something like that, and at the way he chose to envision the two “flesh-knitted giants“: scary, disturbing, frightening, and also a sight that might be interesting to see.

A quote is most definitely requested at this point (although, not being complete, it definitely does not do justice to the concept):

It was a masterpiece of human engineering: a man made entirely of men. Or rather, a sexless giant, made of men and women and children. All the citizens of Popolac writhed and strained [...], their muscles stretched to breaking point, their bones close to snapping.
They could see how the architects of Popolac had subtly altered the proportions of the human body; how the thing had been made squatter to lower its centre of gravity; how its legs had been made elephantine to bear the weight of the torso; how the head was sunk low on to the wide shoulders, so that the problems of a weak neck had been minimized.
Despite these malformations, it was horribly life-like. The bodies that were bound together to make its surface were naked but for their harnesses, so that its surface glistened in the starlight, like one vast human torso. Even the muscles were well copied, though simplified. They could see the way the roped bodies pushed and pulled against each other in solid cords of flesh and bone. They could see the intertwined people that made up the body: the backs like turtles packed together to offer the sweep of the pectorals; the lashed and knotted acrobats at the joints of the arms and the legs alike, rolling and unwinding to articulate the city.

And I just have to mention how great I think the title is, how much I like the way the imagery those few words evoke before reading the story contrasts the one in the reader’s mind right after finishing it :)

show spoiler

Thoughts on the title: Well, there is a full story describing the idea behind the title, and I have to say I am quite a bit impressed by that :)

What I liked most: “The Yattering and Jack” was my favorite story, because it was the lightest of them all. At the opposite end of the spectrum was “In the Hills, the Cities”, also a favorite, because of the way its strangeness affected me.

Were I to choose a certain element to like then I would say the writing, a thousand times over. Not only the pace is always alert, making the reader want to discover what happens next, then next, then next, but also some sentences are very beautifully phrased (unfortunately I didn’t take notes so I cannot give an example, but this is the feeling I got while reading).

What I liked least: Not that important but I’m a bit sad that I didn’t get the ending of the sow story. Or perhaps sad isn’t the word, curious is. I wonder what detail did I miss.

Recommend it to? Anyone who enjoys light horror stories. Expect some gore, of course, but there’s nothing in this book to give you nightmares (or so I think, wait ’til I fall asleep tonight).

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Let me start off by saying I have throughly loved Dumas as a child. I have read many of his books and loved them — somehow this book of his always remained unread, albeit famous and albeit being praised by some. I started it off almost fearfully, thinking that there’s no way I was going to like one of Dumas’ books as I did as a child — and that turned out to be true, in a way. However I read almost the whole book (all 600-something pages of it) in a single day, which means there must have been something in there that I did like, right? :)

The characters are quite well drawn, and one couldn’t help rooting for the obvious good guys (and some of the less obvious ones too). Margaret of Valois, the Margot in the title, is described as being incredibly beautiful (when in fact she looked like this), and also much learned. She is rather ambitious though but, unlike her mother Catherine de Medici, she has no occasion to actually be stepping on bodies in order to fulfill her plans, so she’s rather okay in the book. Her husband, Henry of Navarre, is the one who I think should have been the title character, as Margot is more like his prop than anything else: the vast portion of the book deals with Catherine’s planning Henry’s demise, and he managing to escape her clutches at the very last moment. Speaking of Catherine de Medici, she is the one who breathes life into this book: sure, she’s the antagonist, but she’s so creative and so out-and-out evil than the reader is drawn in, reading faster and faster just to see her fail once again.

Another interesting character was the king at the time, Charles IX. While he had a weak constitution and he cared for hunt more than anything else, he was also rather hard to pin down to one side or another, making for an interesting read in search for his motives. We also get to meet another two noblemen of the time, La Mole (Margot’s love interest) and his friend Annibal de Coconnas (a person just as real as the rest and yet unknown to Wikipedia). Their friendship is an interesting thing, as it starts out like a series of mere coincidences (which I doubt happened in real life, of course, but I found them a nice touch nevertheless), evolving into conflict and hatred during St. Bartholomew’s Day (they were on different sides), then blossoming into a charming friendship mostly due to another series of coincidences.

As mentioned earlier, all of the main characters in this book have lived and breathed, and, while the author has taken some liberties with some of the facts of history, he has taken particular care to weave in some of the details I wouldn’t have expected him to (I wouldn’t have thought they were actually real, that is). As characteristic to Dumas, he has also taken liberties with the characters’ emotions, making his heros and heroines somewhat different than they were in real life (for example one of my favorite parts in the book was the perfect relationship between Margot and Henry of Navarre; in real life they were known to have been arguing quite a lot during their marriage) — but, since I was expecting it, I was careful to filter all the information through Wikipedia’s almost all knowing filter (sure there are a lot more detailed historical accounts, but for my purpose Wikipedia did serve just fine), so it didn’t bother me that much, and, more important, it didn’t skew my perspective towards facts.

The thing I haven’t been that fond of is that everything is just the slightest bit exaggerated at times. People talk with lots of exclamation marks, for one. Dodging bullets is literally possible (there are many instances in the book when a character manages to jump sideways before being hit by a bullet, a thing I very much doubt can actually happen in real life). Also, some of the feelings expressed in the book seemed to me somewhat exaggerated — all people in love in this book, are terribly, unbelievably so, 110% percents. I cannot even chalk this out to their being part of one of the hot-blooded Romance people, because I happen to be part of a Romance people myself and still find it all more over-the-top rather than not :)

Thoughts on the ending: Quite predictable given what history teaches us :) :)

What I liked most: Predictably enough, the parts where real-life things happen to real-life characters :)

What I liked least: Did I mention some parts are exaggerated? My least favorite of them was a scene between Margot and La Mole, the latter making her promise that, should anything ever happen to him, she should retrieve his head and always have it by her side. Can you say “eeeeew”?

There was a scene I liked even less than that though, and the honor goes to the part where Margot and one of her friends let La Mole and Coconnas duel almost to the death under their very eyes, without moving a finger to stop the fight. I found this strange, as both ladies had previously invested time and feelings in the two gentlemen, and also their willingness to let one of them die needlessly chilled me to the bone. Perhaps at the time someone’s life was worth a lot less than it is now (although can this, should this ever be true?)

Recommend it to? Anyone who loves swashbuckling novels and/or has an interest in French history at the end of the 16th century.

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Interestingly enough, although the book title is “The Dragon Reborn”, we get to see very little of the said Dragon Reborn in it. The main threads of the story are narrated either by Perrin, Mat, or Egwene, and we get to know almost nothing about Rand, his adventures, and his state of mind (a very nice touch of the author’s actually, because Rand seems to be fighting hard to maintain his grip on sanity and as such I am not sure how interesting/reliable his part of the story would be).

As expected from a third book in a series, it was nice to see the characters grow and develop even more. This is particularly true for Perrin, who keeps fighting his wolfish instincts (plus I think he’s sort of a male Dreamer, but we’ll see), and a part of whom starts to yearn for home and for the uncomplicated life as a blacksmith, and also for Mat, who is at last cured of the evil taint and who finds himself the “owner” of some unbelievable good luck. I was happy to get to know Mat better (the real one, uninfluenced by outside factors) and, while he was still a bit too interested in money matters (remember that he ended up with the dagger in the first place because he was seeking treasure), he kept putting others’ interests above his own and I really liked him for that (a huge step forward because I kinda disliked him in Book 1).

Unfortunately I cannot say the same thing about the girls. The three of them (Nynaeve, Egwene and Elayne) seem to be inseparable now, but the dynamic of their relationship is not particularly interesting. It can be summed up as: Nynaeve, being the mature one, takes the decisions, Egwene resents her for that, and Elayne… Elayne is just there. Nynaeve is often angry (a bit more often than she has reason to), and she is always plotting her revenge on Moiraine (although even she realizes that she is wrong, that Rand and Egwene’s lives would have been out of ordinary even if Moiraine had never interfered), which is getting a bit annoying after a while. Egwene sometimes makes me want to shake her, as she is far from sensible at times, opposing any suggestion of Nynaeve’s simply because she thinks she’s being treated like a child (not that she ever had a plan herself, she just feels like opposing others). Ugh. I do hope she’ll grow up soon.

Speaking of female characters, I was glad to discover a new one — a very unexpected thing for me as I thought everyone worth knowing had already been introduced in Book 1. Zarine (or Faile, as she wants to be called) sounds like a very promising character so far (I particularly like her courage, the way she doesn’t give up even though she’s afraid), although she couldn’t participate so much because there are still lots of things she has yet to know. I’m looking forward to seeing more of her in the next books :)

Thoughts on the ending: I found the ending to be a bit disappointing, not through a fault of its own but because it was no match for the one in the previous book (that was oh so cool and thus set the bar oh so high). It was nice seeing everyone together again (it seems to be a characteristic of all books so far, the fact that however things start everyone ends up back together near the end).

I do have a question though: show spoiler

What I liked most: I seem to be still very fond of all the talk of pattern and ta’veren and the way they influence lives around them. From this point of view my favorite part was what happened in the first village Rand went through (lots and lots of weddings, because he was a very strong ta’veren and influenced lots of people; I’m having quite a bit of fun imagining how all those wedding happened and how things went in that village for a while).

Another wee detail I was happy about was getting to meet Hopper again (remember, the cub who wanted to soar like eagles? :) ).

Plus we got out first requited love story, hehe, how cool is that? :)

What I liked least: At times the author seemed to think that the only way he will make the characters different from one another would be to give each of them a trait and make them show that over and over again. Example: twenty years ago the Amyrlin Seat lived into a fishermen village; almost every other sentence of her is a metaphor related to fishing, and it gets really tiring after a while. Nynaeve tugs at her braid when she is upset; this book almost puts the said braid in danger, that’s how often she tugs at it — in every single scene is Nynaeve there’s at least one tug, usually more. Mat always thinks of gambling (believable enough given his interest in money and his new-found luck, but each and every time he meets someone new he thinks of dice — so very meh after a while).

Recommend it to? Needless to say, I recommend this to whomever has read books 1 and 2 and is curious what happens next. Overall, I thought this book was somewhat slower than the previous two, but there are a lot of people who claim the exact opposite :)

See also
Here’s how a spit dog looked like

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

This book is followed by:
The Shadow Rising | The Fires of Heaven | Lord of Chaos

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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Expect this to be a review filled with quotes because I don’t think my own words alone could give a good enough idea of what the book is actually like :)

There are many characters in this book (as there are many people in a squadron). Some of them appear more often, some of them rather rarely. The one who appears the most is the one I have considered the main character and, coincidentally, is my favorite one. Yossarian is, at first, described by one of his friends as having “an unreasonable belief that everybody around him was crazy, a homicidal impulse to machine-gun strangers, retrospective falsification, an unfounded suspicion that people hated him and were conspiring to kill him“. At first the reader sees him as somewhat ridiculous, and doesn’t know what to make of him. The same can be said about the book, filled at first with all sorts of absurd episodes, seeming strange but not necessarily to be taken seriously. Even the timeline is messed up, the events being presented in what looks like random order.

And yet, as the pages are turned, more and more facets of Yossarian (and of the story itself) come to light. The reader gets to see that, far from being the paranoid and irrational creature presented in the first pages, Yossarian is actually “an intelligent person of great moral character“. He is indeed afraid of dying (aren’t we all?), but most of all he doesn’t want to waste his life uselessly. The same happens to the book. Even the timeline fixes itself, and, as events progress, more and more important issues are being revealed. In a war people die. Some profit off it. Some sacrifice the lives of others for their personal glory. The naive ones get killed. All these are obvious in a way even before reading, but they are made more poignant by the events in the book. The author doesn’t emit judgments, he just narrates the facts, and it’s these facts that are the striking part.

Now consider all this wrapped in a thick layer of sheer absurdity. Yossarian’s superiors keep raising the number of missions a pilot has to fly before being sent home (they do this so often that there are pilots, like Hungry Joe, who completed the “tour of duty” several times, because the number of necessary missions changed before anyone who completed the previous number had time to receive his papers and go home). The efficacy of a bomb run is not measured by the number of targets hit, or whether they were hit at all, but by how nice a pattern they offer when thrown. One of the characters is considered dead after the plane he officially was on exploded, despite the said character being right among the people who observed the accident. The mess hall officer is involved in some shady business involving supplies, a business that occasioned his being offered an important position in almost every city in the world (he is the mayor of Malta, the Caliph of Baghdad, the Imam of Damascus, the Sheik of Araby, the Vice-Shah of Oran, and many more), and also enabled him to fight on both sides of the war.

In this context, the idea of the Catch-22 feels right at home. These days, a “Catch-22″ is the name one gives to a no-win situation, due to circular and self-contradicting logic. Which is the exact meaning the term had in the book, as, whenever there was a certain type of situation, someone was bound to invoke the said catch. Even if the actual wording varies now and then (“‘Catch-22,’ [...] ‘says you’ve always got to do what your commanding officer tells you to.’“, “The men don’t have to sign Piltchard and Wren’s loyalty oath if they don’t want to. But we need you to starve them to death if they don’t.“, “Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.“), the feeling of illogicality and contradiction is the same. Interestingly enough no one has ever seen the Catch-22 in writing (Yossarian thinks it doesn’t even exist), but everyone obeys it because the Catch-22 itself states that no one wanting to apply it has to show it to the one it’s being applied on.

A few more quotes that I liked:
The first appearance of the infamous catch:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

One of the absurd moments that flourish throughout the book:

‘Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?’

The question upset them, because Snowden had been killed over Avignon when Dobbs went crazy in mid-air and seized the controls away from Huple.

The corporal played it dumb. ‘What?’ he asked.

[...]

‘Où sont les Neigedens d’antan?‘ Yossarian said to make it easier for him.

‘Parlez en anglais, for Christ’s sake,’ said the corporal. ‘Je ne parle pas français.‘

An idea I found cool because I myself have never thought of it:

To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.

And a description of one of the characters, Major Major Major Major:

He was polite to his elders, who disliked him. Whatever his elders told him to do, he did. They told him to look before he leaped, and he always looked before he leaped. They told him never to put off until the next day what he could do the day before, and he never did. He was told to honor his father and his mother, and he honored his father and his mother. He was told that he should not kill, and he did not kill, until he got into the Army. Then he was told to kill, and he killed. He turned the other cheek on every occasion and always did unto others exactly as he would have had others do unto him. When he gave to charity, his left hand never knew what his right hand was doing. He never once took the name of the Lord his God in vain, committed adultery or coveted his neighbor’s ass. In fact, he loved his neighbor and never even bore false witness against him. Major Major’s elders disliked him because he was such a flagrant nonconformist.

Thoughts on the ending: I am not sure how I feel about the ending. I mean, I definitely like it a lot, I just cannot decide whether it was simply perfect or just good. The book ends with show spoiler

What I liked most: The sheer absurdity of some of the situations, especially near the beginning. To mention a random one, Chief White Halfoat, an Indian, told the story of his tribe, who was chased from place to place because every time they set up camp anywhere, that place was brimming with oil. In Chief’s own words:

We were human divining rods. Our whole family had a natural affinity for petroleum deposits, and soon every oil company in the world had technicians chasing us around. We were always on the move. [...] Soon whole drilling crews were following us around with all their equipment just to get the jump on each other. Companies began to merge just so they could cut down on the number of people they had to assign to us. But the crowd in back of us kept growing. We never got a good night’s sleep. When we stopped, they stopped. When we moved, they moved, chuckwagons, bulldozers, derricks, generators. We were a walking business boom, and we began to receive invitations from some of the best hotels just for the amount of business we would drag into town with us. Some of those invitations were mighty generous, but we couldn’t accept any because we were Indians and all the best hotels that were inviting us wouldn’t accept Indians as guests.

Or, another random one, Doc Daneeka’s indignation at his word being doubted when he has declared himself unfit for war (note that ha was a perfectly healthy man):

They had to send a guy from the draft board around to look me over. I was Four-F. I had examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military service. You’d think my word would be enough, wouldn’t you, since I was a doctor in good standing with my county medical society and with my local Better Business Bureau. But no, it wasn’t, and they sent this guy around just to make sure I really did have one leg amputated at the hip and was helplessly bedridden with incurable rheumatoid arthritis. Yossarian, we live in an age of distrust and deteriorating spiritual values. It’s a terrible thing,’ Doc Daneeka protested in a voice quavering with strong emotion. ‘It’s a terrible thing when even the word of a licensed physician is suspected by the country he loves.’

Or another random one (last one, I promise):

As a member of the Action Board, Lieutenant Scheisskopf was one of the judges who would weigh the merits of the case against Clevinger as presented by the prosecutor. Lieutenant Scheisskopf was also the prosecutor. Clevinger had an officer defending him. The officer defending him was Lieutenant Scheisskopf.

What I liked least: I cannot say anything remotely bad about this book. I was a bit worried at first, when the characters were introduced and there seemed to be so many of them, enough to lose track of, but with time I got to know everyone so I was able to tell everyone apart.

Recommend it to? You know, this is one of the most controverted books out there. I was amazed to notice there are plenty of people who started on it but put it down after a while (lots more than with other books). On Goodreads for example the book has at the moment over 1300 one-star ratings (presumably all of them from people who couldn’t finish it). However there are also 18402 five-star ratings (yup, more than 10 times the bad ones), making one think there must be something to this book after all :)

Subjectively, I for one have liked the book very much. I got a bit lost in characters at first but I persevered and I am immensely glad I did so. This makes me, of course, to want to recommend the book to everyone around me. And I do. With the caveat that, well, some people find the first hundred pages a bit hard to get through.

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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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 | The Dragon Reborn | The Shadow Rising | The Fires of Heaven | Lord of Chaos

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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