while justice sleeps

While Justice Sleeps is written by Stacey Abrams, who served for eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven of those years as Democratic Leader. Then in 2018, Abrams was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia, which she might have won if not for alleged irregularities in the polling. Those irregularities became the impetus for Abrams to create her Fair Fight organization.

According to her Abrams for Governor website, which is still up, she has also authored eight romantic suspense novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery. In the front matter of Justice lists only two books by Abrams, and they don't sound like romance novels. Justice has a little boy-girl tension, but its not a romance novel. By contrast, take this line from the description of Secrets and Lies on the Harper Collins website: "She just witnessed her uncle’s murder, she’s running for her life, and now Dr. Katelyn Lyda is face-to-face with a breathtaking man who could be her salvation. It’s too bad [he] is one of the bad guys." cue heavy breathing

So you get the idea. nom de plume indeed.

This book had a nice pace, and the characters were nicely developed, and how they reacted to the things around them was mostly on point. Every now and again, and author needs to ask us to suspend disbelieve more than they normally would. Typically its with more outlandish stuff, fantasy and SciFi, but when it happens in a modern day set crime drama, it needs to be reasonable. A current day novel is essentially a 'what if?' scenario; if the the response to that what if, is a resounding 'never in a million years,' then the author has asked for too much. Abrams didn't go that far, but some things were a stretch. I also think there may be a plot hole. I'm not the most careful reader, but at one point our protagonist, Avery Keene contacted a mystery person who gave a false name. A chapter or so later, Avery knew who that mysterious person was, but how she figured that out, I don't think was covered in the text. if you've read this, and I missed it, let me know in the comments below

That said, While Justice Sleeps was a fun read, and an original plot line. I read this in just a few days, so that's always an indicator of a fun read. I'm under the impression we may not have seen the last of Ms. Keene either. Nice work Ms. Abrams, and go get 'em.

atlas of middle earth

When you create a reference book about a fictional place is your reference book fiction, or non-fiction?

Given that Middle Earth has almost no reliable  empirical data, I guess Karen Wynn Fonstad had to take some creative license in order to produce the maps and plans she did.  That said, I think she did consult with Christopher Tolkien; I’m pretty sure I read something he wrote indicating the he had worked with her on something. Not sure what that was, but it may have been a forward in one of the History of Middle Earth books. Speaking of which, I haven’t read all of those yet. Fonstad also consulted drawings and maps done by Tolkien, and his son, which were used in earlier published works, as well as unpublished drawings and sketches form the professor’s notes, the text of the books, and further information from the Histories, published by Christopher Tolkien which provided additional information and was the impetus for the revisions Fonstad made in the updated Atlas. 

By tying the maps and the landforms they represent to the distance data provided in the various texts, Fonstad has created maps that can be scaled and therefor, in many cases, actually differ from the maps published in versions of The Lord of the Rings. That takes some getting used to. btw, I’m not used to it, and I may not get there

Any serious fan of the world building accomplished by Tolkien will recognize the dedication and joy expressed by Fonstad in her work. The Atlas is clearly a labor of love undertaken by a cartographer who really just wanted a more complete picture of the lands she followed our mutual friends through on their adventures. Are there problems? Sure. Do I hate that all of her hills, mountains, and downs end in the same elephant toenail roundness? Sure. Am I grouchy that the publisher (or some other bean counter) decided that two colors was plenty to adequately express the level of detail included in all of the maps in the Atlas. You bet. And finally, is it—and has it been, over the years I’ve had this book—aggravating to consult the maps it contains while reading The Silmarillion or The Lord of the Rings and find that they are so different (for the sake of scale accuracy?) that they confuse more than clarify. Ya, you betcha. But that doesn’t mean I’m a hater. 

 

Karen Wynn Fonstad has done an admirable job of researching and providing insight many of us would never otherwise have access to. It’s the same issue diehard fans have when someone makes a movie of a book like The Lord of the Rings, it’s bound to contradict our individual visions of what happens in the stories we read. Our internal visions are a dialog with the author’s written word. Seeing someone else's vision of that material is always jarring, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. I went to see all of the movies, and they were great. They just weren’t how I would do it. 

And neither is The Atlas of Middle Earth. But I keep going back to it. And so should you.

 

 

Silmarillion

Sweet, sad, Silmarillion. 

The Wikipedia entry refers to The Silmarillion as a mythopoetic collection of stories. I had to look that one up; and I kind of like it. The tone the stories are told in is a little reserved. Some of the early ones, chronologically speaking, read like bible entries. But when you’re talking about the birth of the Earth—or Ea, Tolkien calls it—then I guess biblese seems appropriate. 

As I understand it, Tolkien felt the absence of a traditional English mythology beyond the tall tales of Arthur Pendragon and his ilk. Something of the scope and depth of the kind the Greeks, Romans, and Norse cultures have; stories that underlay their culture and belief systems, and tie them to their spiritual past. A careful look at what Tolkien has done shows that. From his proto-nursery rhymes, to the linguistic underpinnings of English, present in the early languages of the Quendi, the Elves. 

The Silmarillion is Tolkien’s unfinished backstory, the framework of his world building upon which he built the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. But it’s more than that; it’s his notes on dozens of other stories that he didn’t get the chance to finish. Christopher Tolkien did a great job, organizing, editing and releasing many of these work in the decades after his father’s death. Working, as he says he did when his father was alive, as a kind of amanuensis. One can only imagine what kind of works Tolkien may have produced had he had access to modern word processing or even speech-to-text technology. 

Tolkien described the creation of the world as the first collective music of the Ainur, made manifest by the one god Illuvatar, with all of the good, the bad, and the ugly of a first run, still in there. It’s like a proud papa pasting his kid’s first crayon drawing on the fridge... and then asking us all to live there for eons. augh, I don't wanna live in a first draft. Melkor is licking his finger and touching me! But don’t worry, says Eru, the big man, this is like a dry run. We’ll work out the bugs then bang out a fresh one all fixed up!*

What? Yeah, this ones probly gonna suck, for you guys and everyone else down there, but screw it, right? You guys made it, let’s see what happens!**

In here we find everything from the beginning of the world to the creation myths of the sun, the moon, and the stars; from the origins of elves, dwarves, and men, to the flat world theory; from the flood story to the making of dragons; and from the invention of war, to the making of rings. That last one was inspired, by the way, by the same fables and myths that inspired Wagner and his Der Ring des Nibelungen, "The Ring of the Nibelung," often referred to as the Ring Cycle. Tolkien was also inspired by the Edda, as was Wagner. 

 

This isn't the first time I've read this book, and it won't be the last. My last time through was nearly ten years ago. That review is maybe better than this one. If you want to know why you should read The Silmarillion, or even some pointers on how to read it, check out my earlier review.

Either way, read this book.

 

* I'm paraphrasing, nerds

** Yep, paraphrasing again