After a slow start, my reading habits seemed to have picked up as the heat of summer gives me another reason to just stay inside. I have a peculiar trilogy of books this time, including a few sequels that I had been putting off. Once again, this is mainly to try and read through the books I've gathered in my shelves. Here's what I've just finished reading lately!
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by Robb White
So this is a book I read once in middle school. It's a bit of an odd choice, looking back, as it is a rather grisly survival story for young teenagers, but I remembering thinking it was a pretty novel scenario, and parts of it stayed in my mind for a long time. Eventually, I was able to get myself a copy of the book, where it sat on my shelf collecting dust, just like the others. However, in a moment of whimsy, I pulled it down and blitzed through in a few days, happy to find that it's still a pretty satisfying, if slightly implausible, thriller!
A young college student named Ben is hired by a big-game hunter named Madec to guide him through the Mojave Desert to hunt some bighorn sheep. However, Madec ends up accidentally killing a wandering prospector, and not wanting to deal with being in prison for a few days over an investigation, decides to frame Ben instead. However, he can't just kill Ben directly, but decides to take away his clothes, food, water, and weapon so that the desert can kill Ben, leaving Madec free to go. This requires Ben to use all of his knowledge of the desert to try and survive against the odds and turn the tables against the tricky hunter who set him up.
The writing is quite simple and straight-forward, mainly focusing on the lethality of Ben's circumstances and Madec's clever thinking. As such, there isn't much depth beyond what Ben decides to do to survive from moment to moment. However, that focus does help the survival aspects feel all the more potent, and you can't help but root for the underdog Ben to overcome each challenge. There are a few moments while Ben is climbing up and around a butte that feel like a bit of a stretch, considering how battered and dehydrated he is, but it doesn't ruin the story completely. Even when Ben seems to have the upper-hand, Madec is able to weave his lies to cause problems right up until the end.
The book remains a thrilling read, even if it does take a while for the premise to really get going. You really feel for Ben as he endures all kinds of pain and humiliation. Even if the lines of good and evil are drawn rather bluntly, it's hard not to root for Ben in all his circumstances. If there is another problem with the book, it's that it ends rather abruptly. Once the truth gets sorted out, it just ends. I think I would have liked a bit more of a denouement. Still, it's nice to see that a book I enjoyed when I was younger is still a good, engaging read, after all these years.
by David Gemmell
I admit it took longer than I expected to get back to the Rigante series, but I was thrown for a loop when the second book took place a good 20 or so years after the first, leaving the massive battle with the Stone people that the first book was heading towards as background for this one. Not getting to see that battle ruined my motivation to keep reading, but the draw of Gemmell's storytelling style eventually changed my mind. While this is a solid entry, I do feel like the plotting is a little messy, but it doesn't bring the book down that much.
The story follows Connovar's illegitimate son Bane as he makes his way through the world. At first, he travels with his friend Banouin (the son of a couple of major characters from the first book), who is looking to join the Stone people, as he feels he doesn't belong among the Rigante. However, tragedy strikes, and Bane is eager to get revenge on a man named Voltus for killing a young woman he loved. This brings him into the empire of the Stone for his own reasons, eager to learn the way of the gladiator and eventually come face to face with his nemesis. However, as expected, the story is not quite that simple, and as things develop, we get introduced to new characters who find their way into our hearts as we get to know them better. An old gladiator named Rage takes Bane in to mentor him, eventually becoming a father figure to him in many ways. In the meantime, Banoiun starts to doubt his own ambitions as he tries to ignore a pair of competing cults that seems to be tearing apart the Stone empire from within. Before long, as intrigues grow and revelations are made, the Rigante are once again faced with total annihilation. (And of course a member of the Sidhe named Morrigu is influencing things in her own way.)
All of Gemmell's story-telling traits are here in abundance, as men fight and reconcile, coming to terms with their own weaknesses while recognizing others' needs for their strengths. The story does a decent job of setting up Bane and Banouin as foils for each other, the former being cheerful but violent, while the latter is cowardly but thoughtful. However, they get separated for so long that you almost forget Banouin is even in the story, which itself has a tendency to meander. You get the impression that Gemmell wanted to write a Ben Hur style story, using the backdrop of a Roman-like empire and its gladiatorial fights for a story about revenge and forgiveness. It feels a lot like the movie Gladiator, but that didn't come out until a year later, leaving me to wonder what Gemmell's influences were for this particular tale.
Still, messy plotting aside, the story brings things back together in a way that is satisfying enough, giving Bane, Connovar, Banouin, and company plenty of opportunities to stumble as well as shine. The writing remains rich without being complex, letting the reading put together a few clues themselves here and there, and even throwing out a twist or two that I didn't see coming. In the end, while I don't think it's quite as good as the first book, but works as a worthwhile sequel, bringing an end to many of the stories the first one introduced. (And I have peeked ahead just enough to note that the third book takes place 800 years later, with completely new characters! I haven't decided when I'm going to pick it up, but once I do, I will certainly let you know what I think of it!)
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by Frank Herbert
Another book that took longer to read than I had planned, but I've finally made it through the first sequel to the epic sci-fi masterpiece of Dune. While it does a good job of picking up where the first one left off, Dune Messiah is much smaller in scope, and as a consequence feels less substantial and meaningful.
Taking place 12 years later, it focuses on Paul Atreides and his struggles to maintain his empire after acquiring it and maintaining it with religious wars. A group of conspirators, including his political wife Irulan, seek to kill him in the name of undercutting his religious power base, including a new type of being, the Face Dancer, who is able to change his appearance at a whim. Now burdened with a different purpose, Paul winds his way through intrigues as he faces the limits of his own prescient powers. While he certainly not alone, as Stilgar and Alia remain his faithful allies, the biggest shock is the arrival of his once-dead friend Duncan Idaho coming back as this highly intelligent flesh golem and going by the name of Hayt, leaving Paul uncertain as to who he really serves and role he will play in his prescient-driven plans.
While all of this makes for a solid sci-fi political thriller, the fact that it's so focused on Paul and the conspiracies around him and not much else makes this book feel small. Granted, the first book provides a lot of the framework, from galactic politics and genetic manipulation to the ecology of Arrakis and its complex cultures, so this one doesn't feel the need to reexplain it all. However, it feels like all the layered themes of the first book have been compressed down to have it all fall on Paul's shoulders, making the story feel much more direct and less epic, like it's a story in the Dune universe than a proper sequel. There's also a shift in tone: while the first book has a very heroic feel to it (even if it is being critical of that heroism), the sequel focuses more on the characters' various flaws and tensions, and how they wrangle with them, giving the book more of a soap opera feel.
Of course, that doesn't mean there isn't some philosophical themes going on. Paul wrangles with the lives he has indirectly killed as the Fremen Messiah, and hopes to end the wars while not upsetting the bureaucratic machine that has built up around his divinity. He often laments how his ability to see the future seems to lock him out of his free will, and he hopes that he can adjust it even slightly to get the results he wants, with the Empire and his loved ones at stake if he fails.
Still, there is this nagging feeling that the book isn't as good as I want it to be. Maybe it's my own expectations, wanting something grandiose like the first book, so I should probably adjust them if I want to continue reading this series. I will say, though, that the ending is a little more satisfying, providing a proper denouement to the characters who make it through the end, and a little tease for where things go next. While it might not have been the classic that the first one was, this book was still an interesting journey, showing what happens when a hero has all his decisions thrown back at him.
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