The Dark is Rising

For years I thought that circle on
my sister's copy was a stain.

Having recently suffered a self-inflicted viewing of the film known in the States as The Seeker, I decided I owed myself a return to the source: Susan Cooper's 'The Dark is Rising'. I first encountered this in a semi-dramatised reading that I borrowed from Fleet public library on cassette (I would make a joke about how the current generation basically don't know what cassettes are, if I weren't so concerned that the next won't know what a public library is,) and then borrowed the book and the rest of the series from my sister. Consequently, I have always viewed this as the first book in the Dark is Rising sequence, and while this is accurate in terms of neither internal chronology nor publication order, it is kind of true, in that prior to its writing, Cooper had no thought of a sequence, while after she had a complete plan for the other three books and the final page pre-written*.

As he turns 11, Will Stanton learns that he is an Old One, a being not merely human and the inheritor of great power and wisdom. As the last of the Old Ones to be born he completes the circle and is destined to seek the six Signs of the Light, which together hold the power to drive back the rising Dark and preserve the world for a little while longer. As Christmas passes and the cold, dark days take hold, the power of the Dark waxes, and only steadfast courage will carry Will through.

'The Dark is Rising' is the antithesis of more recent YA fantasy. Largely unconcerned with - but not heedless of - the trials of adolescence, it is built upon the lyrical flow of folklore and not on the dynamic beats of adventure fiction. Will's virtues are essentially passive - endurance, courage, and ultimately patience - and much of the story follows a course long set in which Will seems almost incidental, but this is not because he is irrelevant, but because Will and his story are but part of a greater tapestry.

I mean, seriously? Did the prop master get bored of
mandalas?

I love 'The Dark is Rising', both the book and the wider sequence, which is one of the reasons I hated the film so much (the other being that it's rubbish.) I am however grateful to The Seeker for giving me the impetus to go back and re-read an old favourite.

* And all respect due to JK Rowling, it's way better than the epilogue of Harry Potter.

Reading - A Review

I've been a little slack of late on keeping this blog updated, in part because there have been so many entries needed on my media blog (thank you, rich television season) and I find snarky TV reviews more fun than book reviews a lot of the time. Books - including audiobooks; especially audiobooks, since it takes longer to read a book aloud than to read it to yourself - require more investment of time and concentration, so I tend to try to only read good ones, and I kind of prefer reviewing bad things.

But, so you know I've not given up completely, here's a bit of a digest on recent reads/listens (in no particular order):

'Harmony Black' by Craig Schaeffer (Kindle)

'Harmony Black' follows the titular FBI agent, part of a double-secret counter-supernatural task force and a practicing witch, as she revisits her home town to tackle a horror from her childhood.

Black began life as a one-off antagonist to anti-villain Daniel Faust in a series I admit I haven't read. I picked up this, the first book in the series, via Kindle First and it proved one of the better picks from that programme (mentioning no The Gemini Effect.) Harmony Black is a breath of fresh air, a hunter of gribblies who maintains a solid professional attitude, even in the face of the thing that killed her father, and resists all inclination to swoon at dodgy allies of convenience or masterful vampire dipshits. Not that I've been burned before, you understand. The book pushed some buttons - the central plot revolves around the Bogeyman, a monster that leaps out of cupboards and abducts children who are never seen again - but managed not to be too horrid, and the central interplay between Black and her partner, half-possessed shitkicker Jessie, is a lot more fun than if Jessie were a smooth-talking warlock or sexy elf.

'Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits' by David Wong (Kindle)

Zoey Ashe is a regular gal with just the one distinguishing feature (or two if you count a peerless flare with the espresso machine): Her absentee dad is a multimillionaire of the kind who has become so successful that the word 'criminal' just sort of falls away. And then he dies, and Zoey learns that she is the key to his fortune, his only heir, and the target of superhuman killers hired by a megalomaniacal criminal showboater named Molech.

The first non-John novel by David Wong ('John Dies at the End' and 'This Book is Full of Spiders (Seriously Dude, Don't Touch It') takes a little getting into - bluntly, the casual slacker narrative voice is a little less effective when the book lacks a first person casual slacker narrator - but from about a third of the way in accelerates its pace into a funny, fast-paced, and at times surprisingly hard-edged techno-thriller about the gap between possibility and application, the nature of villainy and heroism (and the degree to which society and the wider world care about the difference,) the callousness of social media, and the danger of vast technological power falling into the hands of an infantile prick with a bad case of testosterone poisoning.

'The New Frontier' (Kindle)

Thanks to my Amazon Prime membership, I got a shit tonne of vouchers for getting my Christmas presents delivered no-rush (and all of the presents on time, I'm glad to say) which I blew on both volumes of Darwyn Cooke and Dave Stewart's electrum-age DC do-over.

Covering the transition from golden age to silver through the story of a giant, living island seeking to extinguish all life on Earth, 'The New Frontier' ropes in more characters than an Avengers movie, from members of the Justice League to the Challengers of the Unknown, presenting them as far as possible in their original character rather than updated to a common time period. The result is a lot of fun, with a surprising amount of dramatic punch.

You know you've made it as a fantasy
author when they give you a mono-
chrome reprint.

'The Dragonbone Chair' by Tad Williams (Audible)

Simon is a scullion at the King's court in the Hayholt, until the kindly old court physician, Dr Morgenes, takes him on as apprentice. This is an appointment which, together with Simon's native curiosity and adventurous spirit, will catapult him into the heart of deadly politics, black treachery and evil, ancient magics.

The first volume of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is a bit of a blast from my personal past. I first read the series as a teenager, and going back to them my first impression is that I didn't notice at the time what a whining dick Simon is for the first half of the book. Such is the nature of the beast, I suppose, and he does get a bit better. On rereading, I also found myself wondering at some of the politics and economics of the thing, and how High King Elias can be so shockingly poor at domestic economy and yet manage such vast feats of military logistics. Surely there must be some crossover of those skill sets?

Regardless, 'The Dragonbone Chair' manages good epic, and for all that he starts out a bit whiny, Simon does demonstrate definite character growth across the course of the novel. With decent writing, a large cast, an epic scale and a fair degree of character mortality, it's interesting to wonder if HBO might be considering it for when Game of Thrones wraps up.

'Blood of Olympus' by Rick Riordan (Audible)

The seven heroes of prophecy continue on to face the Giants at Athens, but it will all be for nothing if the Greek and Roman demigods can not come together and heal the rift between the two faces of their divine parents. Reyna and Nico are rushing the Athena Parthenos to Camp Half-Blood, but teddy bear killer Octavian is determined to crush the Greeks once and for all.

Thanks in part to my girlfriend Hanna, I've been on a bit of a Rick Riordan kick lately (she started to catch up on me, so I hurried to finish Heroes of Olympus, which I have now done; yay!) He writes a cracking adventure yarn full of action and thrills and goofy jokes, and from time to time gets some serious dramatic punch; often from reminding you how young some of these characters are (in particular, the borderline diabolical Octavian is, what? Fourteen?) I also appreciate the fact that, despite all of his viewpoint characters basically feeling that the Gods are bastards, he manages to present them as a compelling mix of genuine cosmic good and mythological dickbags, with solid - if somewhat obscure - reasons for all that they do.

At the end of the book, Annabeth drops in that she has an uncle and a cousin in Boston that her dad doesn't talk to much. It turns out the cousin's name is Magnus, and coincidentally my next book is called...

'Magnus Chase and the Sword of Summer' by Rick Riordan (Audible)

Done with the Classics (not really; he has a series about a mortalised Apollo coming out soon,) Riordan is starting in on the Norse. Seriously, between him and Neil Gaiman there is basically nothing for the rest of us to work with. In the first book of the series, we meet Annabeth's cousin Magnus, and he dies. No, seriously, like in chapter three, since to differentiate the series only some of Magnus' abilities come from being half-god; the rest come from him being one of the Einherjar, the dead warriors of Asgard.

One of the nice things about this is that it lets Riordan use more of a range of characters. Magnus is a homeless kid from Boston, and joins a team of warriors including a thousand year old Viking with a doctorate, an Irish girl who - and I quote - tried to defuse a car bomb with her face - and a black soldier from the Civil War with a mad on for seizing hills. For his first adventure, he's the outsider, forced to go rogue with a dwarf, an elf and his Muslim Valkyrie (which sounds crazy, but I think it's good to see more inclusion in what has traditionally - and probably unfairly - been characterised as the very whitest of afterlives.

Also adventure (rollicking), humour (goofy) and punch (dramatic). Check, check and check.

'Career of Evil' by Robert Galbraith (Audible)

Success is a two-edged sword. On one edge, a fractional reduction in the struggle to make ends meet in the PI game; on the other, everyone wants a piece of you. There's a killer on the loose, he's gunning for Cormoran Strike, and he's planning to go through Robin to get to him.

The third Cormoran Strike novel is the first I've listened to. It helps a lot in this instance, because I have real trouble visualising Cormoran's Cornish accent. (Similarly, the American readers in the Rick Riordan books help me with the voices.) It's a creepy, claustrophobic novel, partly recounted from the killer's twisted perspective and somewhat reminiscent of some of Ian Rankin's Rebus novels. The shifting relationships between Robin, her fiance and Strike are a little less satisfying, mostly because I don't want to see Robin and Strike together (that ship does not appeal to me,) but her fiance is a 24-carat prick. I don't think this is about poor writing; it's intentional, it just doesn't entirely work for me.

'The Tales of Max Carados' by Ernest Bramah

My last entry is a bit of a cheat. It's actually the first two stories in a longer collection, offered as a free sample by Audible. Carrados, a contemporary of Sherlock Holmes in the Strand Magazine is a consulting detective whose schtick is that he is blind, but utilises his other senses and his intellect, all honed to as keen a razor's edge as Holmes's, to aid the police and museum authorities (his particular thing is antiquities forgery and smuggling) in solving crimes. It's interesting, but suffers from the absence of an in-story Watson in my opinion.