rebel prince

The Rebel Prince is the third in The Moorehawke Trilogy by Celine Kiernan, which brings this trilogy to a compact and quiet conclusion. In doing my internet poking-about in preparation for this, I was interested to see that Kiernan is working on a web comic version of the story and is quite a talented artist. The fact that she has to pare the story down so that it fits into the comic format is telling in my mind when considering how she was able to truncate what could have been a very prolonged finale to the trilogy. Once an author has that many balls in the air, and can be tricky to extricate one's self from a story without feeling like you need to satisfy every little urge and need. christopher paolini, i'm looking at you. I was glad to see that Kiernan was able to let a couple of those balls drop in the interest of brevity.

 I can't say that this was my favorite fantasy story but it was fun to read, and its clearly written for the YA set, and will appeal to those who enjoy a fun fantasy story with a fair amount of action and a touch of romance. Some of this sub-plots, like the ghosts and the talking cats seemed a little tacked on in the end, by which I mean that the story would have been the same with or without them. It left me feeling like there was more to it that I just didn't hear about. While I'm grousing, I will also say that the main character was kept in the dark about a lot of things, for a long time, and I had to suffer along with her. Once I found out, I wasn't sure the secrets that were being kept from her really warranted so much cloak and dagger. This ended up accentuating this young woman's feelings of being left out of matters that were perhaps above her station--certainly things being discussed by men in most cases--and it may have been the author's intent to point this out.

Now on to some classic smut: Sons & Lovers by D. H. Lawrence for Banned Books Week!

crowded shadows

The Crowded Shadows is the perfect middle book;* its got all of the things you'd expect from a middle book, and not many of the things you wouldn't. It probably wouldn't stand on its own, it helps to flesh out the characters and build tension leading up to the finale, the stakes get higher, and some of the mysteries of the the first book get resolved.

Sort of. And not all of them.

Celine Kiernan does write a pretty good story. The characters are solid and feel like people, and only occasionally does someone say or do something that seems slightly out of character. Seems hard to keep track of that as a writer, but there you are.

In this series you've got your swashbuckling, your horse riding, your royal court intrigue, mystery as I've said, and speckled throughout, you've got your religion and religious fanaticism, you've got your love, your hate, and your love-hate relationships, your mysticism, occult,  and a few talking animals.

A little something for everyone.

On to the last book!


* I've called these bridge books in the past.

farthest shore

The Farthest Shore in the third book in Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series. This book also focuses on the wizard/mage Sparrowhawk but like the second, it isn't exclusively about him. Le Guin has created a world with a wide array off possibilities; the stories she could set in this universe are unlimited, and she actually speaks about that at length in the afterword. Le Guin describes how she drew up the map of Earthsea, and named all of the places that she knew about from her story, and then went about naming all of the rest of the places, wondering all the while what those far away places were like, what kind of people lived there, and how they would interact with the characters and peoples she already knew about. She speaks about wanting to travel to these places through story to find what was there, say that this is how she wrote The Farthest Shore--by letting the story take its own course without knowing what would happen next, and especially not knowing the ending.

Of the three, I think I like this one best. The character of Sparrowhawk has grown, and has a certainly solidity to him that may have been a little thin in the other two, even the first where he is introduced. This volume also has a epic sweep to it that was also absent in the others, there is an Odyssey-like aspect to it which is nice.

And the dragons. The dragons are fleshed out in some detail in this story unlike they were in the mysterious first book. Le Guin talks about how she borrowed from others in her development of the dragons, and I haven't read all of the authors she nods to in the afterword, but they do seem to have an aspect to them the rings as original to my ear.

There are some grand developments in the Earthsea universe in this story, and I'm curious to see how these developments impact the next stories in the series.

snow crash

I got the heads-up on Snow Crash after visiting Christopher Moore's web site. I went looking for Moore's web site after reading his Sacré Bleu. I wanted to send him an email telling him how much I liked it--that is the first and only time I've contacted an author after reading a book--and Moore was kind enough to write back. Moore has Snow Crash listed on his "Chris's Picks 1" page, along with a little blurb about it. I read that and decided I had to read Snow Crash; I've read a few of Neal Stephenson's books, and they were good so what more did I need?

Stephenson seems like a deep thinker to me. He really puts the time into both research and thinking through how his characters react to the world around them. This grounds his plots in reality and gives them weight, which is especially important in SF, where suspension of disbelieve is so critical. I've said this about Neal Stephenson before: he can really work a complex storyline into a manageable read that doesn't get bogged down and really pushes the story along. But the ideas are BIG!

Snow Crash has a definite cyberpunk twang to it, but all of the action doesn't take place in cyberspace, or the Metaverse, as Stephenson calls it. The action happens in the real world and is supplemented by action in the Metaverse. The main protagonist is a katana toting hacker who helped to write the code for the Metaverse, and his sidekick ends up being a skateboard riding courier who takes her chances flying through traffic grappled to moving vehicles.

What's it about? Computer viruses, biological viruses, dissolution of American society, franchise economy, the birth of a super-library, the birth of organized religion, the birth of human language, nuclear testing on aboriginal peoples, the pizza-delivering mafia, and, you know, how all of those things tie together.

Sound crazy? Yes. It is one of my favorite recent reads.

Read this book. Push someone out of the way if you have to.

inheritance

The fourth and last book in the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini is Inheritance. If I remember correctly, this series started when Paolini was able to publish the first volume when he was 15 or 16 years old. I read the first three installments before I began this blog, so its been a while.

Eragon is the first book, titled after the main character; the series focuses on him throughout. Eragon is young man who starts out living with his uncle, and undergoes a series of life-changing events that eventually puts him in the center of his world in not much of a span of time. Watching the young man grow from a farm boy to a leader, and all the struggles that come with that, is the personal story driver that winds throughout the series, but the external action is keeps the story fun. Eragon and friends certainly get into their share of scrapes.

If the series has any draw backs I would say that the first book suffers a little bit from the youth of Paolini as a writer. Paolini has two parents in the book business which helped him get going by self-publishing Eragon themselves. The book came to the attention of Knopf who contacted Paolini and made arrangements to publish the second edition of Eragon, and the rest of the series. I think Knopf editors helped with the book when they got hold of it, but I could feel the writing growing up with the writer as I read through the series. The writing in this last volume was pretty good.

Second, this series was a little long. I know when folks read The Lord of the Rings, they wish it wouldn't end, and Tolkien commented himself that people had complained to him that it was too short. After all, an epic story deserves an epic length, but we readers were expecting this to be a trilogy, and when the third book came out and it was bigger than either of the first two AND included an author's note saying that he tried, but was unable to get it all wrapped up in three volumes, I was a little surprised to find the fourth volume even larger, by more than 100 pages.

Eragon 528 pages
Eldest 704 pages
Brisingr 763 pages
Inheritance 880 pages
Inheritance Cycle Total 2,875 pages dang, son, that's a lot of paper

The conclusion was satisfying, and I was glad to see that Paolini didn't give in to all of his adolescent fantasies in the final story. That being said, there may be more to come. There are some story legs left in the universe Paolini has built, and I would bet we'll see more stories of dragons, magic, and elves from him in the future.

I have a pile of fantasy stories lined up next.

travel marker series iii

This is a trade bookmark, designed to be the wrapping for a fun kid's bracelet called the b.FUNNY. These rubbery bracelets come in a variety of colors and designs, with hearts being the main design element. Wear one, or wear ten, depending on how you feel. The bracelets are one-piece, with a knob on one end that pops into a hole at the other end to hold them in place. When a bracelet is picked out, its slipped through the 'smile' cutout in the bookmarker, and the knob is popped thru the 'nose' from the back. The bracelet then hangs down the front of the bookmarker card as a presentation when sold.

This bookmark was given to me by the owner of the store in Sulmona, Italy who happens to be engaged to my wife's cousin. Silvia's store is FULL of all kinds of fun stuff for kids and adults, and if the store has a theme, it would have to be: adorable. Silvia's store is listed on the bracelet manufacturer's website as an authorized dealer.

IL CAPRICCIO DI SILVIA CONCETTA GOLEMME 

CORSO OVIDIO, 56 - AQ, SULMONA, ITALY

At Il Capriccio di Silvia (Silvia's Whims?) you can buy a Superman lunch box, a Hello Kitty bikini, a Mini Mouse school bag, a tea set with puppies, pocketbooks, purses, T-shirts, posters... she has everything, and if its not in the store she has it on her website.

The reverse of the card says: "Your Birikino Bookmarker!! Bring it with You!!" So I did.

Grazie mille Silvia!

baby steps

I just listened to a Science and Creativity podcast by Studio 360; the episode is called "Becoming the Bionic Man." Producer Jonathan Mitchell talks to MIT professor Hugh Herr about his new prosthetic lower limb program that he has also spun off into a company called BIOM.*

Herr is a double amputee himself, and using his own prostheses he is able to return to the sport that first cost him his limbs: climbing. "I was actually able to climb at a more advanced level, with artificial limbs, than I'd ever achieved, before the accident, with biological limbs." Dr. Herr is obviously a talented and driven scientist, but he doesn't see prosthetic limbs as the ultimate solution for amputees, he sees them as the ultimate solution.

This field is called biomechatronics, and its come a long way from hooks and peg legs. The Studio 360 piece is chock full of Dr. Herr's dreams for the future, and some of those dreams aren't too far away from the Singularity idea that others are touting. "We're rebuilding humans, from the ground up," says Herr.  "The artificial part of my body is actually a blank palette for which to create."

Herr is also looking forward to the future of bionics: connecting the limbs to the brain. Maybe even sensory feedback. You know...touch. steve austin style, baby. And what's beyond that? There's plenty of room for speculation, but Herr and his team have some ideas:

"The next step is to say, well, maybe we shouldn't be cell- and tissue-centric, maybe we shouldn't view our biological hand as the end-all. Maybe that bionic hand is also okay, and acceptable. And perhaps beyond that, when we experience the biological hand being stiff in the morning, and maybe even being painful and arthritic, maybe that bionic hand over there may actually be attractive." Yeah, that's right. Grandma may get sick of not being able to lift a pan off the stove, or  have trouble getting up the stairs. Just pop down to the media lab for an upgrade, Grandma! jus' chop them ol' limbs off granma, and get you some new ones!

But it may not just be for the old, infirm, or those with birth defects. Herr adds, "People with quote, normal minds and bodies, will volunteer, I predict, to use these technology, to go beyond what nature intended."

Dr. Herr says that he gets limb upgrades every few years, and its no big deal; He doesn't weep or feel a loss of any kind, but speculates that this may not always be true. "I can imagine that when my bionic limbs are more intimate with my biology... when my nervous system is completely interfaced with the bionic limb. I can imagine that I will have a deeper relationship--emotional relationship--with the synthetic part of my body."

Jonathan Mitchell then adds, as a closer, "And maybe one day, our machines will be so good, that we'll love them, as though we grew them ourselves."

I told you: robot love. < go ahead. click. its a good one.



* BIOM was formally called iWalk, but I guess that name wore off. Click on the BIOM link above. There are some cool videos of the limbs in action. The ankles are amazing.

And yeah, that's Luke Skywalker up there. Who should I have used? Anakin? Pfff

poison throne

The Poison Throne is the first in a trilogy (The Moorehawke Trilogy) by Celine Kiernan. I bought it for my daughter, who may or may not have read it, but she didn't go out and get the second and third books that I'm aware of, so it must not have done big things for her in any case. It didn't do BIG things for me either, but it was entertaining. And its refreshing to read about a strong female character who has emotions, but still has a job and is self-reliant, even as a teen. This is a fantasy story what takes place in ye olden tymes. With a twist.

The majority of this first volume seems to be a setting of the scenery, an introduction to the characters, as well as an understanding of who means what to whom, and who, you know... doesn't. The rest is all just a big ol' mystery, right down to the title of the book. poison? what poison. where's the poison at? did someone leave it in the metaphor cabinet? This is not one of those first volumes that you can read on its own and then get to the others whenever; this book doesn't stand on its own, there is too much left to happen, and I just got the 'Tune in Next Week' message at the end. So I'll tune in and read the others, but I'll read something else first.

The story centers on Wynter Moorehawke who is trained to be a carpenter, and is quite advanced in her trade, altho still a protege to her master and father. Wynter and her father return from a long stay away from their kingdom, only to find that their kingdom isn't the same as they left it. Inner castle politics, infighting and family battles rage beneath the surface, but the Moorehawkes learn very little about the reasons behind the unrest, try as they might throughout the story.

There are secret passages, talking cats, and sneaking ghosts about the old castle. Plenty to keep the interest of one who likes an old timey story, set deep in the fantasy fiction camp. We'll see where this one goes.

tombs of atuan

The Tombs of Atuan is the second volumes in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle. I read the first about a year ago, so I had forgotten some of the subtleties in the earlier book, but was reminded of what I needed to know as I read. I found this book in the young adult section of my library, and I guess that's about right; its one of those books meant for younger people that can still be a fun read for adults. Its an entertaining story but not a whole lot of meat to it.

The story centers on a young girl, said to be the reincarnated high priestess of an obscure, and so-old-as-to-nearly-be-forgotten religion, based somewhere on the outskirts of Earthsea. The young girl tells her story as she learns her way around the crumbling temples and grounds, striving with members of a newer, yet well established religion based on the godking. The young priestess slowly learns that it isn't all about the purity of religious belief, its also about power, influence, dominance and control... and, you know, human sacrifice and blood rites.

Into this remote and removed little town wanders a young wizard, looking for an ancient artifact, and her world, so untouched by time and the outside world for so long, reels under the seemingly minor upset caused by this visitor. Its fun and fast paced, and made me want to read the next one, but not so much that when I discovered my library didn't have it, I ran out to buy it; I just moved on to the next thing.