As it turns out, the next article would be more book reviews! This one features two books that I started quite a while ago and only finished this year. I've been reading them in between all the others, catching a chapter or two, and was finally able to wrap them up this Spring. Here's what I've been reading lately!
by David Bilsborough
This is a fantasy novel I got in a family book exchange for Christmas a few years ago, and while I started it a few times, I found it to be tough to get into. It wasn't until this past year that I finally decided to knuckle down and get through it.
The story seems typical enough: 500 years ago, a great evil was defeated by an army of heroes, but unknown to them, the evil warlord's sword escaped notice, and now threatens to cause problems once again. A priest named Appa tries to assemble a new army to go back to that cursed island and stop a new evil form arising. Unfortunately, only a handful are keen on going, including a paladin and his squire, a few wanderers, another priest, and a druid. Most notable is Bolldhe, a perpetual vagabond who, according to Appa will be the key to victory, but you get the impression that Bolldhe is only going because he seems to have nothing better to do.
What then transpires is a travel tale that ends up being quite the slog. Instead of being on some grand quest, the story focuses a lot of hard travel, strange monsters, near-death experiences, and plenty of animosity among the group. This is why it's been hard to for me to get into, as the stakes seem poorly explained, and none of the characters were likable at first. They did eventually grow on me, but not without effort. One character, a young squire, gets an entire coming-of-age story that takes several chapters to develop, only to be left aside by the end of the book in anticipation of the sequel. In fact, the book doesn't really resolve anything, instead just ending with a blunt "to be continued." Fortunately, I was able to find a copy, so I'll probably get to it at some point.
To the author's credit, his world-building is pretty robust (if a little reliant on unique terms). Clearly inspired by British and Irish folklore, the world is filled with unique peoples and races, and the terrain is as pretty (or daunting) as it is difficult to traverse. Unfortunately, the poor characterization makes it hard to feel invested in what's going on despite all the danger they face. While I won't say it was a complete waste of time, it was certainly a rough experience. Like I said, I'll get to the sequel at some point, largely because I'm a stubborn soul, but I'm not exactly holding my breath for it to be an improvement.
by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, and Dezra Despain
To counter-balance the drudgery of the previous book, I picked up some Dragonlance once again. While I enjoyed the Chronicles Trilogy and endured the Legends Trilogy, I wanted to dig further into this world, and so I picked up and charged through this collection of novellas. While a few of them had shown up before in other anthologies (which I haven't read), some are original to this collection, and all of them are meant as a prequel to the next book Dragons of Summer Flame. As a consequence, it's hard to really feel invested in the stories as other than expanded backgrounds for characters that will be fleshed out later in the main book.
Still, it was fun to fall back into this D&D setting again, and the stories never felt bogged down or difficult, perhaps due to their shorter novella style. In any case, it does make me somewhat excited to dive into Summer Flame, as I do think these new characters (being children of the Heroes of the Lance) have some interesting potential. Caramon's sons in particular make for an entertaining trio of adventurers. While this may be a bit difficult to recommend to anyone other than diehard fans of the franchise, I enjoyed these stories well enough and look forward to Weis and Hickamn have to offer for the next chapter in Krynn's timeline.
Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Stories
by Edgar Allan Poe
So this is a bit of a weird book. I got it several years ago, and I've been slowly working my way through it. However, it has no copyright page or date, so I don't know when it was published, only that the The Reader's League of America was responsible for this book. It also has a blank black cover, with no words or images, so that's why I don't have a picture for it. Naturally, it is a pick-and-mix of the renowned author's short stories, but in the end, it ends up being a bit of an odd collection. As tacky as it may be, I think the best way is to simply go through them all, one-by-one, as they appear in the book.
It starts off with the classic tale that provides the title, and carries on with the other two stories of the brilliant amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin. Considered to be the first fictional detective, he ends up being the model for many later famous detectives, such as Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. The tales themselves are fascinating, as they often see Dupin and his nameless friend collecting clues in the aftermath, not really getting caught up in any kind chase or intrigue, and Dupin coming to a brilliant deduction at the end. The second story, "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" sees Dupin putting the case together mostly by reading newspapers about the subject. The third, "The Purloined Letter," has Dupin match wits with a criminal mastermind and succeed, though this time, he seems to be out for more than simple justice. As I've been slowly growing an appreciation of mystery stories, I find these three to be fascinating in how much later mystery writers were inspired by these stories, and it's a little curious that more weren't written by Poe.
Next is "The Assignation," which is a bit of a strange tale, involving the beauty of Venice and some star-crossed lovers that goes awry. Most interpretations see it as a tragic love story involving a suicide pact, but I've seen other interpretations that it's actually a murder mystery and potentially even a parody of a biography about Lord Byron written by Thomas Moore (who does get referenced in the story). Based on my own reading, it's kind of a confusing mess, and I have no conclusions. "The Tell-Tale Heart" follows next, and is a classic. It's a confession by someone who seeks to justify their sanity by explaining how cleverly they ended up killing their victim and hiding the body. Unfortunately, their paranoia and nerves compel them to reveal the murder to the police in the end. I remember reading this in middle-school and being disturbed and yet intrigued by the story, and the relentless beating of the dead man's heart.
What comes next is a curious pair. "The Domain of Arnheim" talks about a man named Ellison who, upon becoming incredibly wealthy, is inspired to put together a plot of land dedicated to his own sense of art, focused on landscape gardening, and how it should try to go beyond nature, like any other art form. The tale merely describes Ellison, then his theory, then the narrator describes the garden, and that's it. This is followed by "Landor's Cottage," which has the subtitle of "A Pendant to 'The Domain of Arnheim.'" Here, a nameless traveler comes upon a valley where an equally skilled landscaper has turned it into a paradise that blends the natural with the artificial. This one is almost exclusively description, which makes for a strange read. Neither really have a story and instead seem to be an attempt at intense description, literally trying to paint a picture with a thousand words. Neither are particularly compelling as stories (and quite the slog to get through), but I suppose serve as examples of decent description writing.
"William Wilson" is next, and is a strange tale about a man, who, as a child, ended up meeting a boy who had the same name, appearance, and birth date as himself. This mirror image, however, bothers the main character with whispered criticism, and when it becomes too much, the main character leaves to college, thinking he has left the doppelganger behind. However, when the main character begins to live a hedonistic life, this double keeps appearing to frustrate his wicked plans over and over again. At one point, he has had enough, grabs the double and takes him into a secret room where they have a sword duel, only to kill each other. While on the surface, it may seem like a strange horror story, the way things are described, few other people seem to notice or acknowledge the double character, making me think it was an allegory of split personality or schizophrenia. There seem to be elements of an unreliable narration, much like "The Tell-Tale Heart," and so my mind spent the story expecting some kind of big reveal in that mindset. However, there is just enough description of the double's actions to challenge such an interpretation, making it hard to know what level of strangeness I should interpret the story. Still, it was a pretty compelling (if cumbersome) read as a dying man tries to justify his own life and destruction.
What follows next are a handful of stories that focus on dying beautiful women and how the narrator deals with the grief, often ending in some supernatural or grotesque twist. Dying women were a major part of Poe's life, so it makes sense that it would become a theme in his writings, but having these stories side-by-side really pushes the theme to the forefront. "Bernice" is certainly the darkest and most macabre, "Eleonora" actually has a happy ending (a rare thing in Poe's works), while "Ligeia" and "Morella" push into the surreal with elements of horror or magic. I don't know if there are any conclusions to make here, other than perhaps Poe was writing these stories to help personally reconcile with his own tragedies, coming up with strange conclusions as to why these deaths happened or why they matter.
The last story is "Metzengerstein," which is a curious piece of historical fiction about two competing families of nobility from Hungary. When the house and wealth of Metzengerstein falls on the shoulders of a very young man, he quickly falls into vices and lifestyles in the worst way possible. As the stables of the rival family burn down, a horse escapes and the young noble takes it as his own, eventually becoming obsessed with it. However, when his own castle lights on fire, the horse seems to take him into the blaze, as a kind of act of revenge. A strange and dark tale for sure that leaves a lot to be interpreted. Experts even debate as to whether or not it's a piece of satire, as later versions of the story show Poe taking some of the more exaggerated elements out of it.
Before reading this collection, I had only a passing familiarity with Poe and his stories (mostly "The Raven" and the aforementioned "Tell-Tale Heart"). While the older writing style took a while to get used to, once I did, I recognized that his flowery prose was what made him such a compelling author. Despite the endless sentences, full of subordinate clauses and phrases, he excels at creating a haunting and disturbed atmosphere while getting deep into the heads of his characters and their situations. While the Dupin mysteries are much more pragmatic in nature (fitting the character), the others seem to live in a state of subtle surreality, as if strange horrors live in your blind spots and seek to slowly drag you down to some kind of madness. Is it any wonder Lovecraft saw him as a major influence on his own work.
I know this was quite a long review, so I appreciate it if you got all the way down here. Poe was a complex author, who's own life was strange and tragic. Even his death was a mystery, leaving a very unique body of work. I'm not sure when I'll get back to this author, but I do know this book was an unusual collection, featuring all kinds of stories, and not necessarily all the popular ones, so I know I have plenty more ground to cover. In the meantime, I think I'm going to focus on books that aren't quite so hard to read!
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