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.

Heroes of Olympus - The Mark of Athena and The House of Hades

I've been getting caught up on Percy Jackson lately, inspired by my partner's run at the original heptalogy. The Mark of Athena was for a long time a sticking point for me, since my commute got bigger and more crowded and the hardback is fricking huge. So I bought the kindle edition as well and read that on the train.

Annabeth, Jason, Piper and Leo have flown to Camp Jupiter in the magical trireme Argo II, in the company of Coach Gleeson Hedge, action satyr. Percy and his friends Hazel and Frank are more than happy to sign on to the Quest of the Prophecy of Seven, but when Leo unaccountably opens fire on the camp, they are forced to set out straight off and pursued by Roman forces, heading for the forbidden Ancient Lands and a Greek treasure stolen long ago by the Romans. Banishing ghosts and battling monsters, they make their way across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and Rome, where Annabeth has to go it alone in pursuit of the Mark of Athena, while Jason and Percy overcome their alpha-hero antagonism to take on a pair of giant twins.

Although technically victorious, our heroes begin the next book in the series, The House of Hades, separated, and indeed with Annabeth and Percy literally in Hell, or at least Tartarus.

With time running out, and at different speeds for those in and out of Tartarus, the heroes must make their way to the two sides of the Doors of Death in order to close them. En route, Annabeth and Percy must befriend those whom they might have thought implacable foes and learn the meaning of sacrifice. In the mortal world, Frank embraces his inner war god and Hazel is chosen by Hecate to learn to control the Mists. Meanwhile Leo, the perpetual seventh wheel of the quest, finds his destiny and proves that in some ways he is better than Percy Jackson, and Nico di Angelo comes out (which for a popular children's series is pretty huge.)

Riordan continues to combine rollicking adventure, snarky humour and mild horror to good effect. Especially effective is some of the soul-searching in The House of Hades, where Percy is faced with the consequences of his past heroism, not just in the resentment of monsters he has killed, but of those he has left behind and never thought of again (a not uncommon failing in ancient heroes.)

Dracula

Audible's new version of Bram Stoker's Dracula is a multi-voiced recording, each actor taking one of the epistolary narrators. Alan Cumming plays John Seward, while Tim Curry is Van Helsing (and thus has almost no lines; seriously, there's a couple of letters and some telegrams.) The promise 'all-star cast' is B-list at best, but competent. Especially interesting in terms of performance is the varied approaches to the dialogue of other characters. In particular, it is notable that Lucy mimics the accents of her friends, while Mina just reports their words.

Narratively speaking, revisiting Dracula always brings home that it's basically a story of a bunch of stuffy white blokes throwing money at a problem that happens to be a vampire. It's actually a very, very weird story by modern standards.

The Green Rider

Merchant's daughter Karigan G'ladheon is on her way home, having been expelled from school for whipping one of the posh kids in a fair fight, when she meets a dying royal messenger; a Green Rider. Entrusted with his last message and gifted with his horse and a golden brooch which grants her the power to become invisible, Karigan sets off on a desperate mission to deliver the message and protect King Zachary against a sinister plot, itself but a first move in a larger scheme against all that is good and right.

Some accuse fantasy, as a genre, of being too black and white, and Green Rider isn't about to change that. It's a tale of the virtuous against the vicious; a plucky young girl, a good and idealistic king and his loyal, courageous servants, against a soul-eating, monster loosing sorcerer, the king's selfish, sadistic brother, a gout ridden misogynist warlord and their drone-like soldiers. Karigan is a largely likable protagonist; if anything, too likable. An instant hit with anyone who isn't a complete and unmitigated villain, her path is largely untroubled by misunderstandings and even her sudden and unannounced mystical appearance in the throne room is soon glossed over. Very few characters are more than what they seem (two, I think) and the plot is pretty much a to b with detours at c, d and mortal peril at e.

Green Rider isn't a terrible book, and there are some interesting bits of world-building, but overall it lacks nuance and too much of Karigan's success is due to chance rather than wit or skill, despite establishing her as a capable fighter and survivor. It would have been good to see her working things out rather than being handed them in a machina.

Also, cream in tea. What the hell is wrong with you people?

Ellen Archer is a very capable reader, although I found it an odd choice to slip from narration in her slightly transatlantic New York accent to present the characters in faux-British of various stripes. Where is it written that fantasy belongs to Europe?

I sound really damning, and that's probably not fair, but I find I'm always less forgiving of a near miss than a total disaster.

Music in the Bone

I received a free Kindle copy of this book for review purposes.

A musician seeks the perfect sound through the perfect collaboration, no matter the cost to his partner. Seals sing on remote coasts and fiery elementals walk among the people of a shrouded, sunless land. Men dance with ghosts and gods live in cupboards, and aging cowboys sing their sad, sad songs.

Folk rites, ancient religions, horror, fantasy and science fiction blend in this collection of short stories by Marion Pitman. It's a very mixed bag, veering from the bleak and joyless 'Indecent Behaviour' to the mock-Gothic folly of 'Amenities', and from the phantasmagoria of 'Washing of the Waters' or 'Overnight Bus' to the dystopian SF Of 'Sunlight in Spelling'.

The most successful are the stories - including the titular 'Music in the Bone' - inspired by music, and in particular folk music, which rock an effective horror of identity and perception which feels linked to the modern culture of folk clubs and the intense yet transient connections with people encountered briefly and periodically in an emotionally charged atmosphere. I was also very fond of the more humorous vignette 'Amenities', in which a housekeeper shows the new owner the Gothic horror trappings of a house, and 'The Cupboard of the Winds', in which a woman negotiates with the goddess in her junk cupboard. I'm always a sucker for down-at-heels urban deity.

Other stories are less effective. 'Dead Men's Company' feels like an critical response to The Pirates of the Caribbean, but perhaps answering too much for its length, while 'The Seal Songs' has an evocative set-up, but doesn't do anything substantially new with its premise. I describe 'Indecent Behaviour' as bleak and joyless, and it is only the author's acknowledgement that it is a nasty piece of work that restrains me to that. If you miss one story in the collection, I recommend it be that one.

Overall, Music in the Bone and other stories is a little hard to quantify, given the mix of styles, subjects and tones. It's definitely worth a look for lovers of British folklore and folk music, although hardcore horror aficionados should look elsewhere.

The Barest Branch

In the late 9th century, Danish fisherman Dagfinn leaves his village to join one of the Viking crews sailing for England to join the great army of Guthrum in the conquest of Wessex. He finds England to be a strange land, and is never quite at home among the English, or indeed among the other Danes. Then, on a tax raid to the coast of East Anglia, Dagfinn and his mates encounter a village with an absurd fortune in gold. Where does it come from and how did they get it, and what price did they pay?

James Holloway is perhaps the greatest, possibly the only, proponent of the Gonzo style of history, which consciously abandons any attempt to portray people in history as basically like us but with better hats. At the same time, Gonzo history embraces the modern vernacular as preferable to coarse or flowery approximations of antique language or the dry language of science.In his own words:

"...fuck all attempts to portray the past in this reassuring light, because your ancestors were not just like you. They were in some ways, but in other ways they were huge fucking weirdoes, and the sooner you begin the process of trying to get your head around that, the smarter you’ll be, especially if you’re able to come to the conclusion that you also are a giant weirdo and half of what you do makes no sense whatsoever."

And that's basically the same approach Holloway's first novel takes, not just to history but to its other influence, the work of HP Lovecraft. Holloway's Vikings are brutal killers and - in some cases - casual rapists, but speak in a rugged modern dialect, while the first person narrative eschews the intellectual asceticism of the Lovecraftian voice in favour of the same tone, while maintaining the thematic hallmarks of alienation, isolation and identity.

While at first glance an axe-happy, weatherbeaten, foul-mouthed Viking sailor seems as far from Johnny Lovecraft-Protagonist as you could get, Dagfinn's origin as a beardless, slave-born bastard set him apart as much as a sense of obsessive historical romanticism, and the early sections of the book in which he contemplates with awe the cyclopaean relics of the Romans (not that Holloway resorts to using any of the touchstone words - cyclopaean, squamous, non-Euclidean) are actually more effective in terms of creeping, cosmic dread than the later sections with the actual monsters, although in the latter he does a good job of maintaining the appropriate sense of desperate futility in the face of armed and physically capable protagonists.

The Barest Branch is not going to be for everyone. It will not appeal to anyone who likes their Vikings pseudo-Shakespearean or their history clean, and it defies both of the predominant classes of Mythos protagonist - the wilting victim and the muscular hero. It is also very seriously not for anyone who has a problem with the word fuck. It could also use a final pass from an editor, but that's the nature of self-publishing. With those provisos, it is a well-written novella which manages to be effective both as Lovecraftian horror and as Gonzo history, and it's only a couple of quid on Amazon or DriveThru.