Kay's Bookshelf

This is a book very hard to sum up in just a few words (there are many subplots, political satire, references to just about anything, and a cast of many bizarre characters). It is, nevertheless, pretty much as any reader of this series has come to expect: a wild ride through a world of strangeness.

As usual though, the details are too funny to be ignored. Such as the translating carbon paper named rossetionery (a reference to the Rosetta stone) and the fact that last year’s Booker speed-writing winner was stripped of his award when he tested positive for Cartlandromin (a reference to the very prolific romance author Barbara Cartland). Some of the politically correct names for various states are also funny, such as (the currently non-existent) Landen being referred to as having “an existence problem“, whereas the dead people are called “spiritually bereft“. My favorite example of such wooden language being the part where the president went missing, so his security people called Thursday and explained her that “We find ourselves in a head-of-state deficit condition” :)

Throughout the series Thursday is very much like Kinsey Milhone from the Alphabet series: resourceful, courageous, and smart. These days I can hardly think of one of them without being instantly reminded of the other. And yet there are parts (in this particular book most of all), when Thursday has another dimension: she is a loving wife and mother. While a bit hard to reconcile with her tough exterior, her new-found side doesn’t diminish her strengths, just makes her all the more interesting. I was a bit disappointed to see that my other female favorite character, Granny Next, was too old in this book to actually do something memorable, but it was nice to see her nevertheless. And Hamlet, well, he is worried about his being perceived by people as a ditherer, but he has trouble making up his mind even when faced with an easy decision like what kind of coffee he wants (“To espresso or to latte, that is the question“). He does nevertheless try to fix this, attending Conflict Resolution classes, but luckily for all of us he realized in the end that people enjoy his play precisely because of his moral issues, not despite them.

Another thing I likes was the light shed over some things mentioned long ago, in Book 1. For example, we finally get to know who the much-mentioned Millon De Floss is (we already knew he was Thursday’s biographer but he makes his first actual appearance in this book). Also in Book 1, Thursday is mentioned to have left a weapon hidden near her own self sometime in the future; in this book we get to witness that particular scene. And, my favorite, there is a reference of a young man seen at Thursday’s wedding (I had to go back and check, the young man is indeed there and he tells Thursday that “If you ever have a son who wants to be in the ChronoGuard, try and dissuade him.“, while both Thursday and Landen thought he looked a bit familiar) — and that young man is now revealed to be a grown-up Friday :)

A quote about BookWorld:

The chaotic nature of the real world that gave us soft undulating hills and random patterns of forest and hedges was replaced within fiction by a landscape that relied on ordered repetitions of the author’s initial description. In the make-believe world where I had made my home, a forest has only eight different trees, a beach five different pebbles, a sky twelve different clouds. A hedgerow repeated itself every eight feet, a mountain range every sixth peak.

Thoughts on the ending: show spoiler

What I liked most: show spoiler

What I liked least: show spoiler

Recommend it to? This book is the fourth in what I understand to be a series of eight (five books have currently been released, while a sixth is scheduled to be published in January 2011). As such, although I have found the book very enjoyable (my favorite in the series so far), I can only recommend it to people who have read the previous three.

This book is a sequel to:
The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots

Written by the same author:
Shades of Grey

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Popularity: 1% [?]

I have to start by saying that, while I am a devout Pratchett fan, I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would. Which means that this will be one of those not exactly reviews but me jotting down random things about the book (whenever I find a book I like a lot I sort of lose my head and cannot talk about it like I should). Oh well. Since I am here I might as well give it a try :)

Let’s start with the (very colorful) cast of characters, from powerful gods to puny tortoises. Brutha is, at first, a simple minded guy, whose only interesting trait was the fact that he never forgot anything. He doesn’t know how to read or write, but he is as happy as can be with his monastic life. However, forced by the circumstances, his horizons enlarge, and I liked very much the moment he started thinking for himself instead of blindly believing the precepts of the city he lived in. He is essentially a good guy, never hesitating to lend a hand to his worst enemy if need arose, and I rooted for him all throughout. Om is also an interesting character since he is used to being a Great and powerful God, worshipped by many, and has a bit of trouble adjusting to his new condition. His destiny is now tied to Brutha’s and is interesting to notice how Om’s way of thinking becomes influenced by him (he even stops to ask himself whether it’s fair for a god to kill people or not, a thing he used to take for granted). There are a lot more characters (the ship captain, the inquisitors, various soldiers, lots of philosophers, a Tyrant, minuscule gods as well as powerful ones, an inventor, an anchorite in the desert, and many many more), but I will leave the reader the pleasure of discovering them him/herself.

The two cities where most of the action takes place are quite interesting to observe in light of their comparison with their “Roundworld” counterparts. We have the city/Kingdom of Omnia, that makes one think of, for example, 16th century Rome (and the Omnian Cenobiarch being the counterpart of the Pope). In both there is a belief in one God Almighty, everything else being considered a blasphemy and the guilty party was then tortured by the Quisition (or its real-world counterpart, the Inquisition). Vorbis is the head of the said organisation, just as a Grand Inquisitor was the leader in our own world. Not to mention that the most important secret organisation of Omnia in that time was one that opposed the official theory of the planet being a sphere, fighting for their idea that their world is in reality a disc placed on the backs of four elephants who stand on the back of a turtle that swims slowly through space (which, by the way, it actually is). Their codephrase is “The Turtle moves”, making one think of Galileo Galilei’s famous alleged remark, “And yet it moves!” (while also bringing to mind the dilemma of centuries ago when people tried to decide whether the world was flat or not). Not to mention that the Omnian armies conquer everything in sight, in the name of their true faith (16th century Spain anyone?)

As for Ephebe, I am quite certain it is a reference to Athens of antiquity. The land is teeming with philosophers, all of them discussing important questions like “Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear?”, while only now and then having an actually useful idea. Their leader is called a Tyrant, although he is chosen by very democratic means. Everyone lives peacefully, and most of them are polytheist (just like people in Athens were). Speaking of which, my favorite god of theirs (besides Fedecks the Messenger of the Gods) is Patina the Goddess of Wisdom, as described in this quote:

Gods became what people believed they ought to be. So the Goddess of Wisdom carried a penguin. It could have happened to any god. It should have been an owl. Everyone knew that. But one bad sculptor who had only ever had an owl described to him makes a mess of a statue, belief steps in, next thing you know the Goddess of Wisdom is lumbered with a bird that wears evening dress the whole time and smells of fish.

A hint at Athena if I’ve ever seen one :)

I loved the fact that there are many irreverent references to various philosophers/writers — and I am fairly certain I didn’t get them all either. For example it is said that Aeschylus died hit on the head by a turtle dropped by an eagle (and there’s a turtle-dropping eagle featured in this story too). Sartre’s “Hell is other people” is mentioned in passing. Ephebe, the city of philosophers (one of them named Aristocrates), is filled with them and their strange ideas — let us consider for example Legibus, who jumped out of his bath ’cause he had “this splendid idea for moving the world around” using a lever (yup, the same idea Archimedes had — “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth.“). Then there’s Dydactilos who lived in a barrel (like Diogenes), who said “pray don’t touch my circles” when faced with soldiers, and who also mentions the idea that life is just shadows on a wall. Add to that his statement that “There’s no point in believing in things that exist.[...] They just are.” (an oblique reference to Kierkegaard) and you’ll begin to get a taste of the way the book feels (parts of it at least).

Humor aside, there is also some unexpected depth to the book. It mostly deals with god(s) and belief, and some parts really got me thinking. One of the ideas I have found worth mentioning is this: “People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure.“. God is not the same as the rituals in his honour, but people can forget that at times. In Brutha’s words, “Like…like a man hitting a donkey with a stick. But people like Vorbis made the stick so good, that’s all the donkey ends up believing in.” (admittedly not a great analogy but one I found to be fitting in the context). There is also the matter of what happens to gods when they run out of believers (“because what gods need is belief“). Om’s very vital power very much depends on the number of believers’ minds available. Speaking of which, only the true believers could hear Om — interesting perhaps as an illustration of Kierkegaardian leap of faith: one had to believe first and get the proof of his conviction later.

Speaking of which, Brutha is at times sort of (more or less vaguely) making me think of Jesus. He has a direct line with the god, for one. He is a rather innocent human being and always tries to do the right thing. There’s also a mention of Brutha’s being tied up on a huge iron turtle, condemned to death, while Didactylos mused about how they left him his loin cloth on (to spare his dignity although they were planning to kill him). Plus, my favorite, there is also a scene where Brutha is discouraged because he has lost track of Om and has stopped hearing his voice, and he thinks he should do something but does not dare; a scene somewhat reminiscent of Jesus in the Gethsemane garden when he too was feeling forsaken and afraid.

What I liked most: My three favorite scenes, in no particular order:

The most visually appealing: the scene where a ship is crashed and destroyed and everyone on it (plus the ship itself) meets Death who sends them on to find what awaits them. “Accompanied by the ghosts of dolphins, the ghost of a ship sailed on…”

Well written: the scene where Om meets an ex-important god in the desert, almost bringing shivers down my spine (perhaps because I can visualise it all so well and feel the small god’s loss):

And there were temples. I, I, me. Such temples as you may dream of. Great pyramid temples that reached to the sky. The glory of. Thousands were sacrificed. Me. To the greater glory.

And there were temples. Me, me, me. Greater glory. Such glory temples as you may dream of. Great pyramid dream temples that reached to the sky. Me, me. Sacrificed. Dream. Thousands were sacrificed. To me the greater sky glory-

Just a funny moment: the one where Brutha first met the God and kept quoting Om’s scriptures at him (“you said this”, “you said that”, while the god seemed to hear mostly everything for the first time)

“Ossory. Ossory,” said the tortoise. “No . . . no . . . can’t say I-”

“He said that you spoke unto him from out of a pillar of flame,” said Brutha.

“Oh, that Ossory,” said the tortoise. “Pillar of flame. Yes.”

“And you dictated to him the Book of Ossory,” said Brutha. “Which contains the Directions, the Gateways, the Abjurations, and the Precepts. One hundred and ninety­three chapters.”

“I don’t think I did all that,” said Om doubtfully. “I’m sure I would have remembered one hundred and ninety-three chapters.”

“What did you say to him, then?”

“As far as I can remember it was ‘Hey, see what I can do!’“ said the tortoise.

What I liked least: While I have very much loved the book on the whole, there were a few tidbits that bothered me a bit at times. For example, after the library, Brutha had “memories of knowledge” from the books he looked at — but he couldn’t read so how did the meaning of them get into his head? (this is addressed by the characters too as being something strange; and yet it bothered me for its sheer lack of logic). Also, the turtle that is Om can sometimes speak to wildlife (usually birds), and I kept wondering how that is since it has been previously established he could only reach his believers (and, of course, the birds couldn’t be that). Perhaps the reason lies in the birds having a simpler mind or something like that :)

Recommend it to? Anyone, particularly those who are fans of British humor. This is the 13-th book set in the Discworld universe but it is almost completely unrelated to the ones before or after so do not be afraid to pick it up :)

See also:
Annotations @ The Annotated Pratchett File (containing lots of details I didn’t manage to notice)

Written by the same author:
Nation
Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman)

A few more quotes:

“It is all for the glory of Om,” he said. “Trust is our sail, and glory is our destination.”
The captain had had enough. He was unsteady on the subject of religion, but felt fairly confident that after thirty years he knew something about the sea.
“The ocean floor is our destination!” he shouted.
Vorbis shrugged. “I did not say there would not be stops along the way,” he said.

A law the Great God was thinking of proclaiming after he got back into his seat of power:

Thou Shalt Bloody Well Pick up Any Distressed Tortoises and Carry Them Anywhere They Want Unless, And This is Im­portant, You’re an Eagle

Funny but true:

It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary gray goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys. It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.

Because if this was not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big stupid grins, similar to those worn by certain remote tribesmen who occasionally get raided by the authorities and have the contents of their plastic greenhouses very seriously inspected. They’d say “Wow!” a lot. And no one would do much work.

And my favorite:

What have I always believed?

That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.

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Popularity: 22% [?]

I was fascinated by the book from the very first page and the very first moment when the author started to describe life in the fiction world:

All the boring day-to-day mundanities that we conduct in the real world get in the way of narrative flow and are thus generally avoided. The car didn’t need refuelling, there were never any wrong numbers, there was always enough hot water, and vacuum-cleaner bags came in only two sizes – upright and pull-along. There were other, more subtle differences, too. For instance, no one ever needed to repeat themselves in case you didn’t hear, no one shared the same name, talked at the same time or had a word annoyingly ‘on the tip of their tongue’. Best of all, the bad guy was always someone you knew of and – Chaucer aside – there wasn’t much farting. But there were some downsides. The relative absence of breakfast was the first and most notable difference to my daily timetable. Inside books, dinners are often written about and therefore feature frequently, as do lunches and afternoon tea; probably because they offer more opportunities to further the story. Breakfast wasn’t all that was missing. There was a peculiar lack of cinemas, wallpaper, toilets, colours, books, animals, underwear, smells, haircuts and, strangely enough, minor illnesses. If someone was ill in a book it was either terminal and dramatically unpleasant or a mild head cold – there wasn’t much in between.

Add to that the fact that the streets contained very few cars that appeared repeatedly and how some of the minor characters have names like “Unnamed Police Officer #1″ and “Unnamed Police Officer #2″, and you’ll get an idea of the world where the book’s action takes place. There is an affluence of generic characters (many of them transformed accidentally in Mrs. Danvers), contraband with plot devices is flourishing, the characters in Wuthering Heights are forced to take anger management classes, the nursery rhymes characters are perpetually threatening they’ll go on strike and so on.

I was very glad to see that my favorite three characters from the precedent books are also present in this one. Thursday (predictably enough, since she is the main character) is always solving other people’s problems, while at the same time struggling with a few troubles of her own. Miss Havisham, Thursday’s mentor, trying to break the world’s car speed record and protecting Heathcliff from the ProCaths (I’ll never look at Mr. Dickens’ Miss Havisham with the same eyes again :) ). Granny Next, unexpectedly arriving in Thursday’s book, and being by her side in her battle with Aornis’ aftereffects. It is perhaps interesting to note that, while the book can boast with no less than three strong female characters, there is no male counterpart to either of them. Not that it is a fault, of course, especially as strong female characters are hard to come by, I just was amused at the “out-of-ordinary-ness” of it :)

There are many things I have found absolutely charming in the book (Mathias, the Houyhnhnm that is a bit of a show-off and speaks in quotes, or the fact that there is a reference about a new Nursery Crimes series starting to take life in the Well — quite cool if we take into account the fact that the author’s next series, currently a trilogy, but unpublished when this book was released is perfectly described), yet by no means I think it’s perfect. I would say it has the same fault all Fforde books I read so far have: there are many characters and many subplots and many of them are incompletely explored or not at all in some cases (What was the deal with Big Martin? What did actually happen to Godot? and more). I do acknowledge this, and have even been bothered by it at one time or another, but on the whole I was so enchanted by the whole literary world that I ended up not caring about (most of) the details (not to mention I am fairly certain that some of them are going to appear in the next two books too).

An idea that sounded quite interesting:

Write is only the word we use to describe the recording process,’ replied Snell as we walked along. ‘The Well of Lost Plots is where we interface the writer’s imagination with the characters and plots so that it will make sense in the reader’s mind. After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colours of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer’s breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer – perhaps more.’

A quote from the author about the title:

The title of the book, incidentally, comes from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana and Marianne have to go to the Well of Lost Souls to find the Sacred Ark of the Covenant. (remember that scene with all those dried corpses?) For years I referred to the place where the kid’s missing socks went as The Well of Lost Socks, so the name came quite easily to a place where fiction actually grows upon the shelves; it works well as a pun, too: The spring from which all fiction rises.

What I liked most: The mispeling vyrus!! A virus that turned every word around it to being misspelled (see it’s own name). It destroyed everything in its path if left loose, by misspelling the defining words in names or descriptions (the table became a label, glass became grass and so on). It was quite funny to me to see the way everyone’s lines became badly spelled when exposed to the virus, but the nicest touch of all was in my opinion the fact that Uriah Heep was at first named Uriah Hope (prompting me to rack my brains trying to remember whether his name was Hope or Heep in the original book), and became Heep later on after he was exposed to the aforementioned virus.

Also, it very much amused me the way everyone was always waiting for Godot and the fact that the American spelling of some words (labor, valor, flavor, etc.) actually exists because at one time the reserves of U were running out so they (the people of BookWorld) had to think up a strategy to make them last longer.

What I liked least: This book begins with a rewriting of the last scene of the previous book, the scene where Thursday arrives in the book she’s to live in and the former occupant of her soon to be home shows her around. The lines are very much the same between the two versions, with one notable difference: the scene from book two mentioned a Captain Nemo and Nautilus; the scene in this book did not, and I was kinda upset because it had seemed quite promising when I first read it. Not to mention the omission is also quite useless, as we later get to discover that Captain Nemo did actually live nearby.

Also, at one time Thursday imagines the way her tombstone would look (THURSDAY NEXT 1950-1986). But shouldn’t it be 1949, since Thursday was 36 in 1985?

Minor details, I know, but somehow these two nagged me a bit more than the rest.

Recommend it to? Predictably enough, everyone who read and liked the previous two books. Actually, this is currently my favorite in the series, and I think it just might work as a stand-alone novel too, so I encourage anyone to give it a try :)

See also
The site of the author

This book is a sequel to:
The Eyre Affair
Lost In A Good Book

This book is followed by:
Something Rotten

Also written by the author:
Shades of Grey

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Popularity: 13% [?]

I have to say I was quite fond of all the main characters. Lara, the typical Sophie Kinsella heroine, amused me to no end (in no small part because we kinda have some common traits) — and, of course, liked her very much for her good side (inherited from her father, whom I have also liked very much for the very reason of sharing this trait). Nevertheless the true star of the book was Sadie, the great aunt returned from the dead. She is overwhelming, what with her penchant for dancing and adventure, and, not in the least, ability to pick up the pieces and move forward with her life whenever the going got tough. And, of course, let’s not forget the male lead, a very serious business man that is quite funny once one manages to get him out of his shell — and I, understandably enough, very much liked him too :)

I was amused (in a good way, of course) at what the author has chosen to do with the book’s title. “Twenties girl”. At first I thought that the twenties girl was Lara, given that she lives in the year 20-something (I know it’s technically the 21st century but for some reason, when reading the title, I first thought of the twentieth). After reading a handful of pages it had become obvious that I was wrong, and the twenties girl was actually Sadie (who had actually lived through the twenties). And yet, approaching the end, the signs are pointing towards Lara again since her guy is calling her “twenties girl” since she seems to him to have a penchant for those years.

What I liked most: The whole idea of old people being old only on the outside. Like in this particular quote (when Lara is at a nursing home watching the old people there enjoy the music of their youth):

I feel a sudden lump in my throat as I watch. They’re all Sadie inside, aren’t they? They’re all in their twenties inside. All that white hair and wrinkled skin is just cladding. The old man with the oxygen tank was probably once a dashing heartthrob. That woman with distant rheumy eyes was once a mischievous young girl who played pranks on her friends. They were all young, with love affairs and friends and parties and an endless life ahead of them….

And, of course, I couldn’t not like (in fact I was absolutely charmed by) show spoiler

What I liked least: Nothing. I found it a delightful book on the whole.

Recommend it to? Any chick lit lover :)

Written by the same author:
Can You Keep a Secret?
Remember me?
Shopaholic & Baby
The Undomestic Goddess

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Popularity: 13% [?]

The book is filled to the brim with interesting characters. Sibille is a “poetess”, quite untalented but also quite persistent, interested in nature and preoccupied with cultivating what she calls her Superior Self. Offspring of a difficult father who never hesitated to treat her bad, her greatest bane are her (supposedly huge, as everyone wonders about them) feet. Her aunt Pauline is one of my favorite characters in the book: wise in her own way, learned, with an incredibly sharp tongue and afraid of nothing (not even the ghosts swarming her home). Speaking of sharp tongue, Menander himself should perhaps be mentioned here, although he is by no means a match for the aunt. Another interesting character is Nostradamus himself, a grumpy old man that nevertheless never hesitates to put himself in the job of good (although he does complain a lot :P ). There was only one character I didn’t find as interesting as the rest, and a pretty important too: Nicholas Montvert, the banker’s son and Sibille’s love interest. Oh well, to be honest the rest of the cast quite makes up for it; I would have preferred perhaps a wittier main hero but on the whole it doesn’t detract much from the overall interestingness.

Besides the characters I have very much enjoyed the book due to its twists and turns — one very rarely knows what will happen next (and rest assured that plenty of things do happen). Add to that historical characters, prophecies, ghosts, spirits and love potions and you will probably start to get an image about the story depicted between the covers.

It is perhaps interesting to notice that, while the overall tone is mostly funny and flighty, there are some really serious issues “underneath it all”, the most important of them being, over and over again, the truth contained into that old saying “Be careful what you wish for”. The Night of St. Bartholomew is also hinted at, as are the hardships and tough times awaiting France in the next decades. Not to mention the very end of the world is obliquely discussed at one particular time.

In the end, a quote representing the Secret(s) of Happiness according to Nostradamus:

“The first secret is to find an excellent life partner. The second, is to take up a profession of interest, and the third is to do good wherever you find the opportunity presents itself.”

What I liked most: While the whole book was filled with elements I found enjoyable, the one thing that impressed me the most is the very title: “The Master of All Desires” sounds so … encompassing to me. Perhaps the fact that I am not a native English speaker helped my seeing it so, but to me the word “desire” evokes also a hidden component, and a powerful one too. Like something you’ve always wanted so much you never even dare tell people about it (I know that this is not the actual sense of the word but this is what it makes me think of). As such, the idea of a “master of all desires”, someone who can grant one all his/her deepest wants, is… well, let’s just say I do understand why everyone who hears of it wants to have it :)

What I liked least: I actually loved this book on the whole. Not even the fact that certain liberties were taken when dealing with real historical figures has actually bothered me (it seemed very carefully done).

Recommend it to? Anyone, because I found it quite a fast and interesting read, with some fun bits sprinkled in too. Doubly recommended to historical fiction fans :)

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Popularity: 2% [?]

The book is filled with strange and colorful characters. Charlie Asher is a Beta Male and, even as a representative of Death, is one of the most normal of them all :P We have Sophie, Charlie’s daughter, who can kill anyone by simply pointing at him and saying the word “kitty”; Sophie’s hellhounds, Alvin and Mohammed, huge, black, and with no particular taste in food: they eat everything, from shampoo to home appliances; the woman who died because she ate silica gel (a.k.a. the “do not eat” stuff); Charlie’s two neighbors, a Russian woman with Cossack roots that compares everything to bears and a Chinese woman who cooks any random animal that she can put her hands on; Audrey, the woman who spent years in a Buddhist temple, learning how to keep people from dying and how to move souls from one being to another — and who’s also an accomplished tailor; the guy named Minty Fresh who always dresses in mint green; and many many more :)

Almost everything Charlie does is said by the author to be the result of his (Charlie’s) being a Beta Male. The author seems to delight in describing and developing the Beta Male persona, to the point of overdoing it in the end. The first parts are funny though :) For example:

In fact, many Beta Males, contrary to any empirical evidence, actually believe that they are Alpha Males, and have been endowed by their creator with advanced stealth charisma, which, although awesome in concept, is totally undetectable by women not constructed from carbon fiber. Every time a supermodel divorces her rock-star husband, the Beta Male secretly rejoices (or more accurately, feels great waves of unjustified hope), and every time a beautiful movie star marries, the Beta Male experiences a sense of lost opportunity. The entire city of Las Vegas—plastic opulence, treasure for the taking, vulgar towers, and cocktail waitresses with improbable breasts—is built on the self-delusion of the Beta Male.

The chapter titles were in themselves quite amusing (at least some of them) — like for example “A Streetcar Named Confusion” or “Thanatoast” (a play on words on Thanatos and toast). There are also many funny dialogues and situations, making the book a pleasure to read most of the time (for some pages I did have the feeling the author goes off in tangents a bit too much, losing my interest i the story, but those pages were very few compared to the rest). Underneath the humor were nevertheless some serious themes, like the dedication of the nurses caring for the dying (feeling the loss with every death); what happens to people’s selves after they die; what exactly is the soul and is it necessary for a human being to function and more. Why I may not always agree to the author, I must say he offers some pretty interesting angles nevertheless.

What I liked most: Despite their strangeness (and sheer creepiness at times) I was drawn to the squirrel people. First of all because I found them quite original creatures, and also because they make good visuals (just imagine a squirrel in an elaborate ball gown for example :P ). They were also on the good side and quite innocent creatures actually, and as I am an animal lover I was bound to like them (notwithstanding the fact that few of them were one actual animal, most were build out of the parts of different species). A quote about them:

And so Charlie Asher, in the service of life and light and all sentient beings, and in hope of rescuing the soul of the love of his life, led an army of fourteen-inch-tall bundles of animal bits, armed with everything from knitting needles to a spork, into the storm sewers of San Francisco.

See, they’re courageous too — what’s there about them not to like? :P

What I liked least: I wasn’t particularly bothered by the way things ended, because it sort of fit with the rest of the book — and yet, I would have liked it a bit better some other way. To be more precise, show spoiler

Recommend it to? Anyone enjoying Moore’s kind of humor (the world he created reminds me of Terry Pratchett). If you are not sure whether you’d like it or not I do encourage you to at least give it a try :)

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Popularity: 6% [?]

It might seem strange but Arabella is a very down to Earth person, smart,kind and very well read (very beautiful too). She would be utterly perfect if it weren’t for that fault of hers: believing that life respects what she calls “The Laws of Romance” by the letter. She is very naive in that sense (understandably so for one who had no contact with the real world whatsoever), but her naivete and her confusion only make her more likable to the reader instead of detracting from her charm. Her suitor, Mr. Glanville (as opposite to the romantic heros as can be) is a man filled with common sense, captivated by Arabella’s charms enough to pardon and accept her quirks. He does hate when she’s making a fool of herself (most of the times when she has company) — but who wouldn’t? I totally commiserate with him each and every time (which, as I said, doesn’t stop me from liking Arabella quite a lot).

It is very amusing to notice the parallel the author does between Cervantes’ hero (Don Quixote) and Arabella. His mind has been “turned” after reading many novels of chivalry he took as truth; Arabella’s romance novels have been the source of her illusion. He thinks he’s a hero looking for Adventure and a romantic heroin; she sees herself as the heroin waiting for her adventurous hero (not minding a few adventures of her own along the way). Don Quixote thinks he should praise beauty everywhere he sees it; Arabella is waiting for her beauty to be praised — and more :)

The ending seemed to me a bit rushed, as everything changes and concludes in the last three chapters or so. I think I would have liked it a lot more if the author would have imagined a way for Arabella herself to gradually realize her mistakes, the differences between her world and the real one. It might have taken her a while (and to be honest I have no idea how this might have been brought about), but it would have made the book more authentic and all the more enjoyable (in my opinion of course).

A thing I’ve been amazed at was how actual the story (written about three hundred years ago) still is. Not only the style (other than some variations in spelling) seemed recently written (excepting, of course, the parts when the “language of romance” was used), but also the topic: I’ve been reading only recently about a theory that warned people who love romantic comedies (I being one of them) that they are rather bad for one’s love life, because it makes people expect impossible things from their relationship (the fact that if your partner truly loves you he/she should be able to read your mind, and other such things). The very thing that happened to Arabella (her expectations of life have been really twisted by the stories in her books), only more extreme in her case (because, after all, she’s a character in a book and as such she has to be a bit more special than normal people in order to captivate people’s interest :) )

What I liked most: I have been mightily amused at all the quirks Arabella (and her books) had :) :) Here come the quotes:
First of all, here’s how Arabella usually talked (in this particular instance she thought herself about to be captured by a ravisher, so she fled her castle with only one maid; she fainted and the maid went to get help; when Arabella came to her senses and found herself alone she spoke thus):

Alas! unfortunate Maid that I am! cried she, weeping excessively, questionless I am betrayed by her on whose Fidelity I relied, and who was acquainted with my most secret Thoughts: She is now with my Ravisher, directing his Pursuit, and I have no Means of escaping from his Hands! Cruel and ungrateful Wench, thy unparalleled Treachery grieves me no less than all my other Misfortunes: But why do I say, Her Treachery is unparalleled? Did not the wicked Arianta betray her Mistress into the Power of her insolent Lover? Ah! Arabella, thou art not single in thy Misery, since the divine Mandana was, like thyself, the Dupe of a mercenary Servant.

The way men were supposed to act in books (part of the imagined adventures of a wannabe romance hero, when he found out his beloved was in trouble):

Scarce had he finished these cruel Words, when I, who all the time he had been speaking, beheld him with a dying Eye, sunk down at his Feet in a Swoon; which continued so long, that he began to think me quite dead: However I at last opened my Eyes; but it was only to pour forth a River of Tears, and to utter Complaints, which might have moved the most obdurate Heart.

(this one amuses me the most, I find a man who faints and then cries “a river of tears” quite ridiculous in the circumstances :D )

One of my favorite parts was also when “the unfortunate Bellmour” starts to recount his (completely fabricated in order to impress Arabella) adventures, in the hearing of people who knew him (and his real life) since he was a child:

It shall suffice, therefore, to inform you, that my Father, being a peaceable Man, fond of Retirement and Tranquillity, made no Attempts to recover the Sovereignty from which his Ancestors had been unjustly expelled; but quietly beheld the Kingdom of Kent in the Possession of other Masters, while he contented himself with the Improvement of that small Pittance of Ground, which was all that the unhappy Prince Veridomer, my Grandfather, was able to bequeath to him.

Hey-day! cried Sir Charles, Will you new-christen your Grandfather, when he has been in his Grave these Forty Years? I knew honest Sir Edward Bellmour very well, though I was but a Youth when he died; but I believe no Person in Kent ever gave him the Title of Prince Veridomer: Fie! fie! these are idle Brags.

What I liked least: The book is quite long and at times repetitious, making the reader (or at least me) lose his/her patience with Arabella’s foibles now and then. I really really liked Arabella, but seeing her making the same mistakes for the tenth time didn’t really help the matters.

Recommend it? Yes :)

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