May Short Book Reviews

Homelands: Fables Volume 6 – Willingham, et al. Have I mentioned before how much I am enjoying this series?  This volume isconcerned primarily with the departure from New York (in typically flamboyant fashion) of Jack of the tales, and with Boy Blue’s journey into the homelands to rescue his long lost love. Neither course of action goes quite as planned. In spite of confirmation of the identity of the Adversary and mechanics of his rule, this wasn’t the highlight volume for me, probably because of the narrower range of characters. But I enjoyed the adventures of the Black Knight, Boy Blue’s fanatic indefeasibility, and the surprise of seeing the Adversary’s land not as the Mordor-like wasteland I expected but a functioning and corrupt empire and the ending was typically complex – goals achieved but not in the way expected, friends reunited but seeing each other differently. The characters are not bounded by immutable fairytales, but grow and shift and change.

The Orphan’s Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice – Valente. The second half of The Orphan’s Tales and I enjoyed this one just as much as the first volume. It captures the feeling of old tales read for the first time, and in spite of the desert- djinn- and spice-laden character of this volume, the book reminded me of those northern European fairytales that begin as a riff on Cinderella and go east of the sun and west of the moon and into the arctic and change into bears and fall in love with the King of Arabia’s daughter and meander on and on. In the case, the stories go inward, looping around and in on themselves and gradually coming together, repeating names and stories from themselves, and the first volume, changing and shifting perspectives until the goal is revealed. The ending was not earthshattering, and could perhaps have been stronger, but this story was never about the end. Go. Read. Preferably one after the other so you don’t lose the paper-thin subtelty of the connections.

Batman: Black and White – Miller, Gaiman, Lee, Kubert et al. I wandered into Borders and found this on a discount rack and it was good. I said last month that I couldn’t review Batman. This was something else. This was brilliant – an anthology of 8-pagers by different artists and writers, in differing styles. Classic, tight, sketchy, surreal, comedic, metatextual, hilarious, poignant, hard-bitten, bitter. Facets of an iconic character, of a man, of an idea, of a city (“We are Batman” was my favourite line). I recommend this very highly – for the art, for the tales, for the feeling of being let into a world of minds which have been influenced by this story.

Arabian Nights (and Days): Fables Volume 7 – Willingham, et al. Back to New York and the politics of the Woodlands. Still not nearly enough of Snow and Rose Red and Bigby, but they are there – or their influence is – and the old Mayor is put to a new purpose (it took me a while, but I like King Cole). And crawling out from under that influence come the new generation of the government in exile – Charming as much of a cad and a bounder as ever, but realising abruptly what the title he has won means; Beauty and the Beast getting their feet under them and realising that they can’t do their jobs the way Snow and Bigby did, but they just might be able to do them their own way. The main problem I found was the Arabian delegation and I can’t work out whether its treatment could have been different. They are Arabian characters from the Arabian Nights as told in Europe and come with all those ideas and notions and I’m not sure if those will be or are examined. Particularly the women of the harem. But I will wait and see, because so far the series is doing a strong job of developing stock characters into strong individuals, and for all the cardboard villainous viziers, there was Sinbad, who showed promise. Like Baghdad of the two worlds, there may be more than meets the eye.

Batman: Black and White volume 2 - Dini, Ellis, Claremont, Azzarello et al.:Not as deep or multifaceted as the first (although it has received higher reviews on Amazon) but not as bad as I feared it was going to be from my first glimpse. It seemed much lighter and more comic-traditional in feel and I did enjoy it. And I can’t get the story of Batsman (the one that put me off to start with) out of my head. I keep laughing over his cape adorned with flocks of tiny bats. But it didn’t have the extra information about the writers and artists and the pages of sketches and script that the first did. I liked those.

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Also: Isaiah; 1,2 and 3 John in German and English; Jude; Philemon in German and English. I am cultivating a low appreciation for paraphrasing and dynamic equivalents, particularly when one parallel translation is just so obviously much worse than the other.

 

February Short Book Reviews

Return to Labyrinth, vol. 1. No, no, no, no, no. This isn’t Labyrinth. The Labyrinth is there, and the fantastic creatures, but it has had its heart cut out. The movie had its flaws, but it was wonderful and powerful, and if the main character was spoiled she was also lively and active and if she made mistakes she also made progress and friends. Volume 1 of Return to Labyrinth had none of that. For a moment there was a glimpse of grown-up Sarah, which was like seeing a glimpse of an old friend – heartbreaking because her life now appears to revolve around Toby (who seems to have grown very much into Nick from Deep Secret, but without any of the charm). I enjoyed the creatures and places, some known, some new, some developed (the forest of hat-birds! loved it). But it is, so far, a story of a spoiled and discontented child being led (not enough emotion to be ‘dragged’) against his will into a life of fantasy and privilege, which isn’t the same thing as a spoiled and self-centred child on the point of making a terrible mistake and jumping in feet-first to fix it and travelling through dangers unnumbered and hardships uncounted and loyal friendships and seductive promises and finally growing up. I will read another volume if it comes my way, just to see if the story becomes a deeper story, but it left me cold and sad and wondering if anyone ever can return to Labyrinth. Someone once, long ago, began a fanfiction novel which I found and read unfinished, and it promised so much more than this. On the art: this was my first manga and I do not think, from art I have seen around, that I should judge all manga by the quality of the artwork in this which was sometimes inconsistent to the point of distraction.

The Orphan Tales: In the Night Garden – Catherynne Valente. Fabulous. A filigreed nesting-box of wonderful stories. A thousand-and-one stories each part of the other. A genealogy of delight. The assistant editor at Bantam Dell whose card you can’t quite see on this page of my journal recommended it to me at a function at the Australian Consulate in New York. I could not find it in the days left to us in New York. It subsequently won the World Fantasy award and when I came home I ordered it at Pulp Fiction and – eventually – it arrived. It deserved the award. Now, when I started the book I was not sure whether it would leave me cold, and the first story, the upper layer, the framing story is on its surface a small tale and unfolds only at great intervals across the book. But the tales the girl with all the stories written across her eyelids told were luminous and strange, rendolent of Arabian nights and Norse legends and European maerchen, yet never retellings or rephrasings – always fresh and new and surprising and lovely and shocking and heartbreaking. Lovely monsters and terrible fates, wars and treachery, ambition, love, gold and starlight and foxes and otters, bears and phoenixes and Beasts, creatures of the stars that burn the grass they tread on, creatures of the moon which inhabit and discard cratered bodies, cities of rose domes, of spice, of towers built of ships and bones. And gradually each story feeds into the others, loops back, is threaded through, brushes against the others and builds a world of beauty and dark secrets. And if there were no further book I would be happy in the story – but now I do know and care about the upper layers and am very glad there is a second half, which is on order and I will report back on as soon as possible.

The Fantasy Artist’s Reference File - Peter Evans. I said I might review this. It was – oh, it’s the illustrated version of The Tough Guide to Fantasyland without the self-awareness or deliberate humour. (I think. There were a couple sections where I thought the author must be having a dig at his audience). It is a volume of photo-references of figures poses and costumes, complete with CD of images. The production values are high, the models appear very healthy and there are some unexpected inclusions. And I can’t not laugh. On a pay-per-read it may be one of the cheapest books I’ve bought. It includes poses, costume details, figure reference, facial expressions, ‘classic poses’ and suggestions for illustrating the following: Barbarian Warrior, Warrior Woman, Elven Warrior, Elven Queen, Fairy, Princess, Wicked Sorceress, Warrior Prince, Wizard, Evil Sorcerer, Warrior Dwarf, Cleric, Peasant Boy, Peasant Girl, Norseman and Goblin. And oh the cliches, they burn! And the intricate back stories and descriptions for barely related photographs (did you know: “Elves’ eyesight is far better than that of humans. They have a greater color spectrum and can see in the near dark”)! And the sight of a bearded, wise wizard in his underwear! What is seen cannot be unseen… Some noteable pose titles include: Death to the Dragon! Come forth, my paladins. Get back hordes of chaos. Dragon bait. Midnight abduction (two of these). I will rend your soul. Aaarrghhhh! No, that is not the way to do it. I had it when we left. Notable costume elements: Baggy hose (seriously, if they had not pointed it out I would not have noticed and now I cannot look away!). Puffy gold-lame wristlets. Skullband (as in, a headband on a skull).

I also read several short stories including ‘Tongue before Sword’ which received a longer review here, and Matthew.