If I’d read this book at any other time I probably wouldn’t
have rated it quite so highly, but Urban Shaman gave me my
reading mojo back (I inhaled it in a matter of hours at the start of a day off)
and so it gets a thumbs up from me.
When police force mechanic Joanne Walker spots a damsel in
distress from her aeroplane seat (yeah, I know, stay with me) she feels
compelled to track her down and help. Enlisting the aid of an ageing cabbie on
landing, she soon finds herself confronting her Celtic and Native American
heritage (and real name of Siobhan Walkingstick) and newly awakened shaman
powers (yeah, I know, shut up). Which is handy, as it turns out some Celtic deities have
decided that they’re relocating to Seattle.
While the writing wasn’t always spectacular, I liked the
sarcasm on display from most of our characters at the situations they were
finding themselves in (Gary the elderly cabbie was a particular favourite) as
well as the characterisation of the deities, even if I didn’t always enjoy the
way some of the magic scenes – with vague metaphors of fixing cars – were handled
(these were especially vague to me as I know nothing about cars and have no
wish to rectify this). That said, I did appreciate that Joanne’s
magic skills were all about healing, rather than the killing skills the
heroines of these types of book usually develop, and found it a refreshing change
that I hadn’t been aware I’d wanted from this genre.
I won’t be adding the rest of the series to the top of my
to-read pile just yet, but they’re definitely in there somewhere, ready for the next
time I need some brain candy.
I’ve always been a fan of Greek mythology, so when I
saw this range of Penguin’s Little Black Classics (just 80p each – bargain!), Jason and Medea was one of the first that my
eager hands grabbed.
If you’re not already familiar with the story of Jason and
the Argonauts this probably isn’t a very good place to start as it drops us
straight into Jason reaching Colchis on his errand for the Golden Fleece, and
being set an impossible task by Aeëtes – to yoke two flame breathing
bulls and plow a field with serpents teeth which would sprout into an army of
earth-born men who he must then defeat.
Aided by Aeëtes daughter, Medea,
Jason accomplishes the task – which is where this book ends.
If you’re after the full story then you’re likely to be
dissatisfied (I’m always disappointed when we don’t get to hear the end of
their tale, having long been a fan of the unhappy-ever-after ending), but if
you want a quick dip into one of the more exciting parts of the tale, then this
is the book for the job.
4 stars A long overdue re-read that was just as entertaining as the first time around, I started A Generation of Swine on my birthday as a little treat to myself. The time between then and now has been heavily slanted towards work, but the format of the book - articles written for the San Francisco Examiner between '86 and '88 - made it the perfect reading material to fit into my often very short lunch breaks.
A Generation of Swine is a brilliant time capsule, bringing back many of the things that were on our (but especially American) minds in the late '80s: AIDS, the War on Drugs, Ghaddafi, acid rain and the Iran/Contra affair as well as the Presidential campaign for '88, showing that while we may have pretty short memories the world has always been an insanely corrupt and often frightening place, and that the only thing that's really changed are the names of the players and how its documented. For me, Hunter S. Thompson is a huge loss from amongst the best of those documentarians, someone who's miles better than most even when he's not at his peak.
Never better than when he's at his most vitriolic, the Iran/Contra scandal and the Presidential campaign would give him plenty of material - especially when it came to George Bush Snr:
"...a truly evil man, a truthless monster with the brains of a king rat and the soul of a cockroach, is about to be sworn in as President of the United States for the next four years...And he will bring his whole gang with him, a mean network of lawyers and salesmen and pimps who will loot the national treasury, warp the laws, mock the rules and stay awake twenty-two hours a day looking for at least one reason to declare war, officially, on some hapless tribe in the Sahara or heathen fanatic like the Ayatollah Khomeini."
Based on this little jaunt through the decade of "Huge brains, small necks, weak muscles and fat wallets...", I think it might be high time for a re-read of all his other books too.
by Peter Berresford Ellis, 3 stars I’ve always loved a bit of mythology but have until now always been drawn to the Greek and the Norse, so it was high time I read a little about the myths that were formed in my own country. Being both mammoth and full of re-tellings of Celtic myths and legends, this one lived up to its title’s promise.
Split into sections covering the different Celtic regions – Ireland, Manx, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish and Brittany – each came with a preface explaining the historical context in which these tales should be placed, something I greatly appreciated. Prompted by the prefaces, it became easier to see how these tales had been shaped and influenced by the landscapes in which these storytellers lived, as well as how they started to change with the influence of Christianity (and the pens of contemporary Christian authorities as they sought to alter or suppress the beliefs native to whatever land they’d ‘converted’).
I enjoyed reintroductions to some of the beings I’ve encountered in modern paranormal stories – such as the Tuatha De Danann and the Fomorrii (thanks to Harry Dresden), early versions of stories I’ve come to know through fairytales (Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty to name two) and, in my own favourite section (the Cornish, being in my part of the world), the Bukkys and piskies that can waylay unwary travellers.
If I had hoped to get a little more on the deities of the Celtic regions, I was to be ever so slightly disappointed, but in all this was a good introduction to a fascinating subject.
3.5 stars In which Jesus returns, only to discover that we're now extremely trigger happy. Not to worry though, the hoodied hippy has that whole resurrection thing going on - as does everyone else now too (Jesus! Probably don't get quite so baked before your next big decision, yeah?), leading us to our next problem: If you can't die, then life is just unending suffering.
Which is the case everywhere: after some meddling by Hephaestus down in the Aztec Realm of the Dead, the gods are back for yet another supernatural smackdown, while the destruction unleashed upon Gaia in the second volume means that Earth is on its way out too... What to do? Looks like I'll have to buy the next Volume to find out.
3.5 stars More than a century after the old gods were defeated by Gaia (the goddess formerly known as The Collective's tit-strap girl), she now spends her days being worshipped by the humans that remain. Except for a bunch hiding out in the The Dreamtime, biding their time to launch an attack. Meanwhile, some other pantheons have also been waiting in the wings, culminating in another supernatural smack down.
While many of the ladies in this volume still insisted on having at least one boob out in order to get anything done, the plot felt a lot tighter this time around and I'm still interested in seeing wherever it will take me.
3.5 stars I love the idea behind this graphic novel, with the old gods returning to Earth (this time, it's personal!) to claim dominion over mankind, which they turn out to be rather good at.
As the remaining human population gets mostly sacrificed and the gods start a Battle Royale for control over all, a small band of people known as The Collective have gone underground, looking for a way to fight back.
While I enjoyed the way the gods were depicted, I have to admit that one of the humans made my shit start to ever so slightly itch - The Collective, made up of pudgy scientists, skinny nerds, old men and the physically impaired, also happens to have a girl in it. A girl who, of course, has breasts bigger than her own head which are forever straining to free themselves from the strip of material she wears across them, and who finds pudgy scientists with whom she's had little interaction or chemistry insanely arousing.
4 stars Not many series, especially those set in the paranormal realm, manage to get 15 books in without showing signs of bloat, slump, or the author no longer feeling any enthusiasm for their creation (as in the case of the terminal decline of the Sookie Stackhouse books). As tall as he is, Skin Game sees Harry Dresden still standing head and shoulders above his contemporaries as we tear through the latest breakneck instalment in the continued development of my favourite wizard-for-hire. Following the events of Cold Days Harry has spent a long time recovering on his island with just Mab, Demonreach itself, and the parasite that's soon due to burst from his head to keep him company. But not for long, as Mab has loaned Harry out for a job - a particularly awkward one, seeing as Harry will be working for one of his nemeses, the bastardly Denarian Nicodemus Archleone. Archleone has assembled a motley crew of supernatural types (including a not very friendly Yeti) for the heist of the century - he doesn't want to break into any old vault but one belonging to Hades, down in the Underworld.
Butcher yet again does a great job in raising the stakes for Harry while at the same time avoiding one of the more common missteps in the supernatural; while Harry is no longer just a wizard-for-hire but also a Warden of the White Council and Winter Knight, that doesn't mean that he's now nigh invincible and possessing every power imaginable (*cough* Anita Blake *cough*). Instead each new job has brought a different set of responsibilities, a new set of restrictions, and a new set of challenges (especially in the case of negotiating the moral pitfalls of being the Winter Knight).
Keeping us in touch with the human world are the friends Harry calls in to help - good old Murphy who's always got his back, Michael Carpenter, getting a last hurrah as a Knight of the Cross while also raising Harry's cute-as-a-button daughter Maggie (whose moments, along with Mouse, made it a little hard to swallow past the lump in my throat) and, most effectively, Waldo Butters who proves that you don't have to be the smartest, the strongest, or the most fearless to be a total hero.
While I may have missed not having Toot, Thomas or Bob (except in a small but great cameo), these were minor niggles easily cancelled out by my glee at Harry's new habit of shouting 'Parkour!' every time he moves (as someone who shouts similar at minor movements like getting off the sofa, I wholeheartedly approve) with my biggest niggle being that I'm now up to date with the series, and am going to have to actually wait for the next to be written. Dagnammit!
Wizard is the extremely comprehensive biography of possibly one of the most interesting
men to have ever lived, a man so cool they had to get David Bowie to play him –
Nikola Tesla.
Before we
begin, I should probably make it clear that while I am fascinated by science
and the great thinkers that practice it, my mind does not work in that way at
all (I only passed my Science GCSE after my mum condensed pretty much the
entire syllabus into a series of silly cartoons a few days before my exams) and
so the title of this book is made even more appropriate. My only real
understanding of electricity being that when I flip a switch, my lights come on
(when the bulbs haven't gone), it really may as well be magic as far as I'm
concerned.
So, Nikola Tesla...
Look at him. See? Told you he was cool.
A genius
with a talent for invention as well as for winding up his investors and a
great showman whose incredible lightning spewing demonstrations would capture
the public imagination before his grandiose pronouncements and appetite for
self-publicity saw him later dismissed as something of a crank unable to finish
a project, Tesla would invent many of the things we take for granted in the
modern world whilst also contributing to many more. He would also be eternally screwed
over and in debt, his work credited to and making others rich, his achievements
only properly recognised long after his death.
Born in
Smiljan in 1856 to a gifted family (particularly his mum, who was forever
inventing new household appliances for herself) and possessing a photographic
memory, Tesla was already far more accomplished by the time he'd left University
than most of us could hope to be in a lifetime, having taken courses in
arithmetic and analytical geometry, theoretical and experimental physics,
integral calculus, analytical chemistry, mineralogy, machinery construction,
botany, wave theory, optics, philosophy and higher maths, and speaking 8
languages. He’d also survived several near death experiences including plunging
into boiling milk, drowning under a raft, being swept over waterfall,
contracting cholera, and driving himself through overwork into a nervous
collapse – something he would continue to do throughout his lifetime as he
subsisted on bread and milk, sleeping only a few hours a night and pouring all
of his energies into his work.
Moving to the US in 1884 to work
for Thomas Edison’s company, Tesla would set out on his own after almost
immediately receiving the first of many shaftings at Edison’s hands – being
paid just $18 a day to redesign and reassemble much of the company’s equipment
after having been promised $50,000. These shaftings would also continue
throughout his life, and were as many and varied as his astounding array of
inventions (which included an induction motor, electrical power distribution
system, fluorescent and neon lights, wireless telecommunication, remote
control, robotics and apparently even fricking laser beams) and came at the
hands of not just Edison but the likes of Marconi, Westinghouse, Pupin, Steinmetz,
JP Morgan and the US Government.
Facing a
publicity backlash due to Edison’s dickish publicity campaign in which he
electrocuted animals with Tesla’s competing AC system, mired in patent
infringements and court battles, and forever toadying up to potential investors
(mostly unsuccessfully, thanks to his habit of sending long letters bemoaning
his hard luck and full of emotional blackmail, while asking for way more funds
having abandoned agreed plans in favour of altogether grander schemes), Tesla would
become far more paranoid, bitter and reclusive over time, allowing the weirder
aspects of his personality free reign.
Amongst his many peculiarities
were: an aversion to women's earrings and touching people’s hair, being sent
into fits at the sight of pearls and fevers at the sight of a peach, insisting
on living in hotels despite an almost pathological inability to pay his rent,
where his mirrors must be draped and no sunlight must enter his room. And
despite being a favourite of the ladies (especially of his friend’s wife, Mrs
Katherine Johnson), he remained celibate – having eyes only for his work and,
well, I’ll let him tell you:
“I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them
for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips
on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and
call her and she would come flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a
woman, and she loved me. As long as I had her, my life had purpose."
Tesla
passed away at the age of 86, having outlived his pigeon, sending various
secret agencies into frenzies as they tried to suppress his papers and get
their hands on a rumoured death ray machine, Tesla having supposedly left a
working model in a hotel basement in lieu of rent.
As a reading experience, due to
the staggering amount of information imparted I sometimes struggled with Wizard
- especially as much of it was highly technical information. This, coupled with
the authors insistence on flying off on tangents and flitting around in time,
meant that I often spent entire chunks completely befuddled and bewildered. But
I still learned everything I could possibly want to know about one of the most
interesting people to have ever lived, so I'm not going to hold too much
against it.
And in case you're wondering, I'm firmly on the Tesla side of this rap battle:
“Seven o'clock, on a Monday morning, five hundred years after the end of the world, and goblins had been at the cellar again...”
With an opening line like that and the blurb promising Norse gods, Runemarks had the potential to become one of my new favourite books. Potential that it then squandered as it edged really, really, really slowly towards its confusing and chaotic end.
Teenaged Maddy Smith lives in the village of Malbry, in a world in which Ragnarok really happened. With the old gods dead or forgotten, they’ve now been replaced by The Order, an Inquisition-like bunch of religious zealots that presides over a suspicious and unimaginative population, making sure that it is regularly ‘cleansed’ of undesirables such as those with runes upon their skin, like Maddy.
Whilst ostracised and sneered upon by her neighbours, Maddy hasn’t yet been murdered by them and so spends her time working low-level rune magic to keep the cellars clear of the goblins that have been increasing in number. But then her old friend One-Eye (ooh, wonder who that might be, wondered no-one ever) sends her into Red Horse Hill on a quest for some treasure, setting her on the path to adventure – one in which she’ll encounter more not-dead gods, sort-of-dead gods, and gods-who-were-dead-but-then-got-better, severed heads and other dimensions, attempt to thwart prophecies, find out who she really is, and save the Nine Worlds from ending.
I enjoyed the early part of the book and the world and magic system that was set up – even the fingering (fnar!) that the practice of magic through runes required that makes anyone taking part in a battle look like they’ve got to the finger-tutting part of their breakdancing routine.
Sadly, instead of my enjoyment increasing once we got involved with the gods, it all went rather downhill from the moment Maddy entered Red Horse Hill, and while a lot happened on her trek through the Underworld and into others – far much to go into here – reading it felt rather like wading through treacle and seemed to take aeons to get through. The gods were all well presented – especially Loki, who gets all of the charm and the best lines (although I have to fear for the intelligence of a heroine who puts her trust in, and is always taken aback when someone known as a liar and who’s even referred to throughout as the Trickster, turns out to be a liar), but Norse mythology can be slightly confusing at the best of times and this wasn’t helped as Maddie’s quest progressed and we starting bumping up against the realms of Chaos and Dream. I understand that Chaos and Dream are, well, chaotic and dreamlike, but towards the end it got so chaotic that it soon became the reading equivalent of this:
Sometimes it’s not about the destination, but the journey. In this case, I should have probably stayed at home.
4 stars I'm either getting my mojo back or there's something in the air, as I've picked up the next Discworld book starring Rincewind to find myself not only unirritated but positively enjoying him.
I know, I'm surprised too. In Faust Eric, Rincewind is accidentally summoned by a teenage demonologist who'd like three wishes granted. Although Rincewind is definitely not a demon he's still bound by the summoning, and so (to Rincewind's surprise) a click of his fingers soon sees him taking a trip around the Discworld as he sees to Eric's wishes - to be ruler of the world, to meet the world's most beautiful woman, and to live forever. As happens with most wish-granting, they don't quite turn out the way Eric expects and he and Rincewind are soon being prepared for sacrifice, popping in to the Tsortean (Trojan) War to discover that, while pleasant, the classics may have exaggerated Elenor's (Helen of Troy's) beauty somewhat, and then having a quick chat with the creator as the Discworld is brought into being, before finding themselves in hell. Very quick and very amusing, this was a really fun read that sped by in no time at all, and one that's proven I no longer need wrinkle my nose whenever picking up a Rincewind book.
Earth as we know it is only one of five parallel worlds, or Dominions,
and is the only one that remains unaware of the others’ existence. Attempts
made in the past to Reconcile these Dominions have been disastrous, leading to
a secret society being founded to keep the traces of magic from our world. But
the time has come for the Reconciliation to be attempted once more…
With some books, timing can be everything. Imajica, a huge
book full of extraordinary worlds and beings, an epic plot, and sensuous prose
with a leaning towards the philosophical and mystical, should have been read in
long stretches where there was little else demanding my time. Instead I read it
in 10 minute snatches wherever I could grab them, usually with constant
interruptions, over the course of a fortnight. Due to this, each time I picked
it up it would then take me a while to get back into it again, only to find my
attention wandering as I waded through the detailed writing and heavy themes
(and I wasn’t always helped by the vague confusion and instinct that most of
the characters seemed to operate under).
Now that I’ve finished the book I can look back and admire
the scope of what I’ve read, but the benefit of hindsight hasn’t quite managed
to cancel out my actual reading experience. This, and a smidge too much
mysticism for my tastes, has dragged its score down from a potential 4 to a
distracted 2.
Holy shit. Those stakes? Just got well and truly raised. When Harry's ex-lover Susan Rodriguez calls, his world changes overnight. Finding himself in a truly desperate situation, he's forced to make hard choice after hard choice after hard choice...and still the best outcome he can hope for is bleak. I can't say any more than that without dropping a ton of spoilers but trust me, it's a doozy. While not exactly the most fun entry in the series to date, this probably made it all the more effective for me and besides, just because Harry was having the worst time of his life it didn't mean there weren't moments that nearly made my head explode with glee. Including that cliffhanger, although that also had a dash of...
(and this, even though I'd known something like that might be coming thanks to a couple of hints in Bombshells) I keep telling myself I'll read something else for a little while. But like any addict, I also keep telling myself, 'just one more...'
I love Greek mythology and think the fall of Troy is easily one of the most powerful myths around. Prior to reading this I would never have believed that anyone could tell it in such a way as to make it utterly boring, but sadly Margaret George has proved me wrong.
Telling the story of Helen of Troy, the face that started it all, it's clear that Ms George put in rather a lot of research. It's just a shame that, while remembering to add in details like what sort of cups people might have drunk from, she didn't bring any real storytelling talent to the table. A tale that should have been pulsing with passion, instead I felt nothing. Even during the parts that would normally have me weeping like a bereaved child (the death of Hector, and Priam's pleas for his son's body to be returned) or cursing furiously (anything to do with that shit Achilles) I found it all strangely lacking.
As for Helen, considering this is all told through her eyes, it seems that even though she's the main character she's not much more than an insipid, passive nincompoop, hardly the sort of person that thousands of men would give up their lives and bring ruin to kingdoms over, and the 600 odd-pages in her company were a slow torture.
If you're after something that really brings the story of Troy to life you could do much better - I'd recommend David Gemmell'sTroy series instead.
All about one of my favourite gods and supposedly bringing the story of the "God of Mischief, Father of Lies, Harbinger of Destruction" to life as he brings about Ragnarok, this ought to have made my head explode with joy. Instead, I was mostly like this:
For starters, and for a book purporting to be all about Loki, he's not even in it for much of the time (especially the second half), and though we did initially get multiple chapters from his point of view more often than not we were with Balder, or Tyr, or Odin instead, with Loki fading further and further into the background as the book progressed.
Something in Vasich's writing style fell flat for me ("He had the weight of Ragnarok on his shoulders, as usual..."), with Loki nowhere near as much fun as he usually is to read about, and even the most outlandish bits of myth (like his birthing of the eight-legged horse, Sleipnir) rendered rather pedestrian. Unfortunately, Vasich also had the odd habit of effectively spoilering his work by constantly giving us an italicised synopsis of a particular bit of myth before going on to tell his version of it, with only a little additional detail and barely deviating enough from the source material to make it worthwhile. This echo effect may have ensured certain things stuck more than usual, but the repetitiveness soon dulled the reading experience and made me feel strangely detached, not at all emotionally invested and suffering from a severe case of deja vu.
There were some positives, and the battle scenes that featured (particularly Ragnarok) were one of them. Others included the characters and unjust treatment of Fenrir and Hel (Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent and Loki's other child, gets barely a look in). I also rather enjoyed how the gods were shown to be raging dickbags most of the time, but sadly the positives didn't do enough to outweigh the negatives, and overall I was disappointed.
