Weird November – City of Saints and Madmen R3
The Transformation of Martin Lake
Who is Martin Lake? How did an unambitious painter, his talents wasted on the safe, rise so swiftly from the depths of ignored obscurity to dominate the Ambergrisian artist community? The death of Voss Bender, composer and politician, brings sadness, tribute, and battle between rival operatic gangs to the city of Ambergris and a mysterious invitation to Martin Lake, an invitation to a beheading. The Transformation of Martin Lake reveals the secret of Lake’s rise and offers up a look at his more famous paintings.
The Transformation of Martin Lake is a third person narration broken up by small excerpts from a guide to Martin Lake’s work written by none other than Janice Shriek. The narrative portions of the novella are a joy to read, providing yet more glimpses of the city that failed to find the love-struck sight of Dradin or Shriek’s backward gazing eyes. Lake, a likable character made more so by an irritable nature that I am rather fond of, gives us a look at the artistic side of Ambergris and the absurdity and seething violence it embraces. The prose here is a departure from the more formal-seeming prose of Dradin, In Love and a far cry from the historical text of Duncan Shriek’s Guide, instead falling into a looser, more flowing style that proves easy to read while avoiding the trap of becoming overly ornate or dancing on the edge of boredom like the aforementioned two novellas.
Janice Shriek’s excerpts, though highly reminiscent of her writing in Shriek: An Afterword (actually the other way around), are the weakest part of the novella, which is not surprise. Her writing did not improve between the completion of the guide and the writing of Shriek: An Afterword. It is the writing of an amateur, bordering on mediocre with the occasional dalliance towards a stream of beautiful, entrancing, prose. Her inclination towards making assumptions rears its ugly head, providing moments of hilarity when they turn out to be incorrect. Switching over to VanderMeer, I was highly impressed by his ability to describe Lake’s paintings though that may be because I have little experience in the area, especially concerning the study and judging of artwork. These excerpts are surely the poorest part of this novella, but even then I have no complaint. They provide an excellent groundwork for the Janice Shriek we will meet later on and a measure of surprise concerning the consistency between the two novels.
A continuation of the weird world of Ambergris, this novella is a dark tale from the odd city that mixes a bit of horror with art appreciation and inspiration. There is a reason why this novella won best novella from the World Fantasy Awards and why it is thought so highly of in most reviews. Arguably the best of the three I have read from City of Saints and Madmen thus far, The Transformation of Martin Lake is a joy to read and hard to put down.
In Brief – Shivering Sands, Warren Ellis
Ellis’ experiment in self-publishing is a success. There is not a lot I can say about the book, which is why I am not writing a review. What you’ll find within is a collection of short articles on numerous subjects that Warren Ellis has written over the past seven years. If you are a fan of his and have been following him for a while, then chances are you have likely read quite a bit of it already. Luckily I am a newer fan and recognized only a few articles found towards the end of the collection, all well worth a retread. One of the things I realized during my time spent reading the collection is that Warren Ellis is perhaps the most inspirational bastard that I have ever encountered. Screw self-help books by people with doctorates and other useless scraps of paper, read a handful of essays or articles from Warren Ellis and experience the feeling of someone kicking your ass into gear through the sheer power of words on paper and the idea of a rather menacing cane.
Those of you who have no clue who Warren Ellis is… well, where the hell have you been? Have you read this blog before? Because I am pretty damn sure I have mentioned him enough over these past few months to account for a giant neon sign spelling out “Fan Boy” in some blindingly hideous color. Seriously, if you do not know who Warren Ellis is (and no, he is not an Australian musician that sometimes performs with Nick Cave), check out his comics, read Crooked Little Vein, and for fuck’s sake, visit his blog. And if you see something that you like or just interested period, go buy his little experiment, Shivering Sands.
Me, I enjoy what Warren Ellis has to say to the point where I much prefer to read these articles over his comic work, but then I’ve never been a big fan of comics. Odd that, because I can sit here and spend hours reading him go on and on about comics and the history thereof. He makes it interesting and damned if I am not a sucker for interesting. Not a lot of comic talk in Shivering Sands (that is reserved for Come In Alone, which is sitting on the stack), but it is all very interesting. And hey, not only that, but I also pulled a music rec from one of the articles and have been listening to the song for the better part of the day, so that is something to be happy about.
Final point, beyond all the rambling, if you are fan of Warren Ellis, buy this book. If you are interested in Warren Ellis despite having never heard of him before, buy this book. If you know who Warren Ellis is and hate him with an all-consuming passion… get the fuck out of here until the next post (because I like having a readership, even if it consists of one person with terrible taste).
Rambling – On The X-Files, Etc.
In the comfortable boredom of the early morning hours, between the time when the normal person would be tucked into bed and dreaming and the time when the normal person wakes for their morning coffee, there are few bastions left to while away the time beyond books, television, and the internet. No doubt the shows that one prefers to watch in these hours varies from person to person, but growing up my show of choice was syndicated episodes of The X-Files. But it was not limited to just early morning/late night syndication for the restless night owl in me, the show has had all sorts of time slots on several channels and over the years it became my go-to show to fight off the effects of boredom.
I only started watching the show on FOX during its latter seasons, just before Mulder left the show. I stopped watching The X-Files soon after, bored to tears by the abomination that it had become. A fan of Scully, sure, but the two new agents brought in left me cold and uninterested. These latter shows would make it into syndication, of course, but I would not see any until long after I had, for the most part, stopped watching television. I tuned in a couple months ago in the hopes of easing some tired afternoon boredom to find one of these episodes. I tuned out quickly enough.
I picked up the first season on DVD a couple months back, with every intention of harkening back to those sleepless nights. Oh Nostalgia, how I love thee. Did I mention that I don’t watch all that much television? Between reading, writing, working, and my addiction to the internet, there is not much time left to spend searching for and watching something remotely interesting. I managed to watch the first episode before consigning the DVD into my very short stack that serves as a pitiful collection. It was not a matter of disliking the show, as the cursing of nostalgia would suggest, just disinclination towards watching television.
Yet tonight, bored of reading, unable to write more than a paragraph of fiction, and unwilling to put in a movie, my eyes settled on The X-Files. Four episodes in as I type this, my boredom soothed and my ability write something, even if it is not fiction, has obviously been repaired, though I daresay it is probably nowhere close to interesting. I also realize that this is not the X-Files I know, these are not the episodes I watched on those sleepless nights and tired afternoons. I have never seen the first season. This X-Files is new to me.
It is a pleasure to watch these older episodes with the knowledge of the latter ones playing alongside, but it is amusing at times, too. The acting is laughably terrible, with Mulder and Scully providing surprising bland performances, albeit early versions of the ones they would groom over the following seasons. A thought keeps running through my mind while watching it though.
Had The X-Files aired now instead of 1993, just how long would it last? According to Wikipedia, the ratings for the show’s first season were rather poor and the second season’s, although improved, were not the greatest, but managed to place it in FOX’s eyes as a “Cult Hit”. These days, with ratings that are not up to a network’s par, would a show such as The X-Files have a chance, even if it was considered a cult hit?
There is a part of me—the last remaining shred of an optimist, chained up in a cerebral dungeon—that wants to venture yes. If one pays attention to all of the back and forth in the genre community, this is a time for geeks *insert fist pump and cheer here*. A show like The X-Files is prime geek material and there seems a decent likelihood of success. A cult hit in the first season, perhaps, but would that be enough?
My cynical and pessimistic side says no. There was Firefly, a prime example of just what FOX can do to sabotage a show—though it did not gain its rather large cult following until after it was released to DVD, I believe. NBC’s Surface was expanded because of positive ratings and then nixed over average ratings, leaving off on a cliff-hanger that has at least one fan extremely bitter towards the network to this day (not me, a friend). Similarly, NBC’s Chuck only just succeeded in gaining a half season after being threatened with cancellation for poor ratings. Also, much to my amusement, Chuck ranked close to what The X-Files did during its second “cult hit” gaining season and it is thanks to the work of Chuck’s cult fandom that managed to bring about the third season.
It seems that more and more often shows are getting the axe before they even have a chance to get off the ground. With The X-Files poor acting during its initial episodes and its odd subject matter, how great is the chance of finding an audience before a network pulls the plug? I understand fully the need for a network to actually make money off of a product and an audience is needed for that, but there is a point when it takes a turn to the ridiculous. Canceling shows before they have even gone a full season is distinctly in that realm, so is ending shows after fucking them over schedule-wise throughout the one season they are given, but that is business, I guess.
Oh well, at least we still have the classics. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to devote my full attention to The X-Files and enjoy what is left of my night before sleep kicks my ass.
Weird November – City of Saints and Madmen R2
The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris
By,
Duncan Shriek1
An in depth look at the early history of the strange city of Ambergris. This latest addition to the Hoegbottom series of guidebooks, written by fringe historian Duncan Shriek, The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris leads us up from the pre-Ambergrisian flight of Whaler-cum-Pirate Cappan John Manzikert that led to the discovery of the Gray Cap city, through the events that would transform him into Manzikert I and later the creator of a rat-based religion. It takes us still further, through the steady-handed reign of Manzikert II–who ruled well, but was unloved by his people–and the ambitious, but poor reign of Manzikert III. The Guide unfortunately ends with the reign of Cappan Aquelus, but does linger on both The Silence and the story of Samuel Tonsure and his journal.
Here’s me trying again…
For the second novella in City of Saints and Madmen, we are presented with The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris, by Duncan Shriek. VanderShriek’s guide to the early history of Ambergris is a very large step away from the previous novella, Dradin, In Love2, in a very different direction. The two are both works of fiction, but whereas Dradin, In Love embraces the idea of prose fiction in a great bear hug, VanderShriek’s guide takes a turn and makes itself appear, rather convincingly, like a work of non-fiction and I am struck, just as I was while reading Shriek: An Afterword, which is in the style of a biography/memoir, at how well it reads.
However, the imitation of a historical text does present a problem. VanderShriek’s Guide toes the edge between boredom and entertainment and during some moments where the pacing of the history takes a few moments to linger about it forgets about toeing the line and dances atop it wildly, flailing between the two states in such a manner that it does not take much to be inspired towards taking a break. Still, these moments are few and far between and, having no disinclination towards footnotes3, I found myself content to enjoy the novella and the history it details.
The early history of Ambergris presented in the guide is fascinating, but even as interesting it is to read, the star of the guide is not the history presented in the main text, but rather the 137 footnotes found throughout. All are interesting and most had me cracking up as they seemed to fit my sense of humor perfectly. Shriek’s commentary is that of a grumpy historian who knows full well he is doing the job for the money and is rather bitter over the disinformation and ignorance sewn throughout history that still settles over the city. It was also these footnotes that reiterated my happiness in having read the latter books first. There is added depth to be found in the angry and often flippant references to Mary Sabon’s theories that is only realized in the knowledge of the events found in Shriek: An Afterword.
If it is not yet obvious, I am a fan of the city of Ambergris. It interests me as no other setting in a fantasy novel has before or likely ever will again. This interest is stated because I am forced to admit that I am biased. I loved The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris because the setting fascinates me, it catches hold of my interest and attention and shakes its head in a distinct refusal to let go. I spent my part of my morning after finishing the novella checking out some reviews of City of Saints and Madmen and while most listed this novella as one of the good stories, it was rarely listed as one of the best. Would I list it as such? I am two novellas into the book, but yes, yes I would and I am almost saddened that I was never able to get the chapbook from a previous release.
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1 I know full well that the title of these reviews sucks and is rather poor in terms of effective titling. However, as this is for Weird November and these are reviews of the contents of City of Saints and Madmen, I find it hard to come up with an effective title that does not stretch from here to eternity. If it is not yet apparent, the “RX” at the end of each post title is the review sequence. Dradin, In Love was the first review for this book, hence the R1, and this is the second, hence the R2. Each of these reviews will be listed on the review index with a further addition to the post title indicating which story/novella the review is for.
3 A while back I reviewed Memoirs of a Master Forger by William Heaney (aka, Graham Joyce) and in this novel there are a certain amount of demons of a wide variety. One of these demons happens to be the Demon of Excessive Footnotes, which I may have gotten wrong, but I do not have the book on me. At 137 footnotes–some no longer than a few words, some a few paragraphs in length–and eighty-nine pages of text, we are entering into the lower threshold of excessive. However, considering the entertaining nature of these footnotes, I can excuse Shriek for his demons.
Weird November – City of Saints and Madmen R1
Dradin, In Love[1]
A missionary returns from the jungle to the city of Ambergris, just in time for the Festival of the Freshwater squid. A happenstance, an odd moment that takes tilts his head to the sky instead of towards the ground, sets his sight upon a woman of such beauty to seize his heart then and there. What follows is a tale of a hopeful heart beset by empty pockets, confused and saddened by memory, and lost in a city where he does not belong at a dangerous time for priests.
As good as I could do, sorry.
I began Dradin, In Love with great eagerness. Here it was, City of Saints and Madmen, one of the few books consistently recommended to me over the past couple years, the first book in a series that I had come to love despite the odd order in which I read it. And it all came crashing down within the first few pages. The prose, unfamiliar and odd, put me off of the book before I had really even begun. I found myself putting the book down every few sentences and looking longingly towards my shelves for something else to read. If I did not make it a goal to read it, I may have done so.
But I continued on. I trudged forth, my head held high, wading through the prose that sought to drag me down in frustration. Then something happened: I began to enjoy the prose. More than that, not only did I enjoy the prose, I fell in love with it. There was a beauty there that grasped me as the beauty of the woman in the window grasped Dradin. It did not drag me forward, to blow through the story like a man possessed. No, it lured me onward slowly. Each sentence lingered over to break through the wall of my single-minded attention to the text, for to leave it standing would increase the pace and before I knew what was happening the story would be over and done and I would be deprived of the prose I so loved.
The story revolves around Dradin and Ambergris. Everything else is minor. Dradin, a younger man made old by his missionary work with the tribes of some far-flung jungle, is viewed poorly in my eyes. When he was not fretting over the mysterious woman in the window, creating a life for her from his own imagination, he was an enjoyable character. While he sought to create a background for his love, we learn of his own background, of his alcoholic father and operatic mother, with bits and pieces of his time in the jungle strewn about and it is all very interesting, so much so that I would have loved to read more of his life leading up to the events during the Festival of the Freshwater Squid. It is the moments when he thinks only of his mysterious love that I find him annoying, frustrating beyond all tolerance, which left me dancing on the fence knowing full well that I could fall off any time and put the book down without a second thought. But then again, part of that is knowing full well that I have acted the same way at times, which is a good enough reason to hate it.
Ambergris is beautifully described and much different from what I was introduced to in Shriek: An Afterword and very, very different from the Ambergris of Finch. It is not the gray, depressed beauty of the Ambergris I found in Shriek or the colorful decay found in Finch, the Ambergris of Dradin, In Love is bright and alive, colorful and odd, but it is also a beauty struck through with flecks of shit. It is a city gone to excess with an undercurrent of menace and shot through with a barely visible streak of nightmare. The progression from this version of Ambergris to the Ambergris of later novels is understandable and almost unbelievable insomuch as I am surprised those future cities did not suffer a worse fate. As beautiful, as odd, and amazing as Ambergris is, the city is one straddling a knife’s edge, caught between spiraling civilization and savagery.
In describing the character and the city I have described the story better than I could have ever done otherwise. The story is more than Dradin, it is a bright and terrible showcase of Ambergris gone to an annual madness and the story reflects this well. I was impressed, extremely impressed by the novella and all the elements that went into creating it. Especially the ending, which reminded me of Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart for reasons I will not go into for fear of being too spoiliferous.
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[1] I tend to shy away from short fiction and I hate to review it, but here I am. City of Saints and Madmen is just that, a collection of shorter fiction, but I cannot shy away from it and I did mention that I would be reviewing it. Normally, I would wait until I finish a book to write a review, but again, I hate to review short fiction. As such, I will be doing reviews one at a time for longer stories or a couple at a time for shorter.
Worst Endings in SF/F/H
John Ottinger of Grasping for the Wind presents another Inside the Blogosphere. Included is my terrible take on the worst endings, part of which probably won’t be readily agreed with.
Weird November Update
Having finished and reviewed Finch, I have moved on to City of Saints and Madmen, which finally arrived in the mail. Not read much so far, but I have to say that I love the Introduction from Michael Moorcock. It is odd, eccentric, and utterly fucking brilliant and I wish that more were written in such a manner. At the very least it would turn the dull monotony of some of the ones I have read into something infinitely more interesting. Also, this book is surprisingly heavy, I took it out of the mail box and wondered if someone had mailed me a brick on accident. It would work well as a bludgeon, better if it was a hard cover, and I would not find it amiss to find it stuffed into an evidence baggy and held up before the jury in a murder trial. Actually, I think I might be disappointed if I die without seeing something like that.
Purchases 11/14
As the books pile up, I am starting to feel a tad guilty. I really should work on taking down the stack just a little…
Review – The Magicians, Lev Grossman
Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. He’s a senior in high school, and a certifiable genius, but he’s still secretly obsessed with a series of fantasy novels he read as a kid, about the adventures of five children in a magical land called Fillory. Compared to that, anything in his real life just seems gray and colorless.
Everything changes when Quentin finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the practice of modern sorcery. He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. But something is still missing. Magic doesn’t bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he thought it would.
Then, after graduation, he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real.
Synopsis blatantly stolen from Lev Grossman’s site.
There are few novels that leave me feeling cold and indifferent. The last one was The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. That was a book that seemed loved by everyone who read it, but I was somehow put off it. Yet, I could not and still cannot place my finger on just what it was that made me so unimpressed and indifferent to the novel. It was a good read, a quick read, but there was something missing, something wrong, about it. The Magicians by Lev Grossman inspired the same feeling. Just as with The Name of the Wind, I have my issues with the novel, but I do not believe that have anything to do with how I feel about the book.
My largest issue with the book was the pacing and even then I am conflicted. The story of the novel raced ahead, blowing through years in mere pages and showing us scenes, glimpses of what happened during those months and days that we passed by so quickly. It was rushed, but in a way I was relieved to see the time slipping by and the story moving on. Still, there is a large part of me, likely the old Potter fan I have chained in the dungeon, that wished the story would have lingered a while longer here and there. Looking at the novel as a whole, it seems to me that the majority of the novel was little more than disparate-yet-connected scenes and events leading up to the real story towards the ending arc of the novel. And that would be fine, of course, had the ending arc of the novel not been so damned short.
The characterization of the story works well for the main character, Quentin, but the rest of the cast is rather lacking. Even Alice, who is by Quentin’s side for the majority of the novel remains rather undeveloped. It makes sense in a way since the perspective is third person, from Quentin’s point of view, and rather limited. However, my disappointment in the characterization stems from that headlong rush I mentioned earlier. While we are given more than enough to show us what these characters are like, they never really move beyond that. The only two that do prove at least some growth, beyond Quentin, are Alice and Eliot, but the change happens primarily off screen rather than on. Quentin definitely changes, sometimes for the worse and sometimes for the better. As the novel progressed I found myself liking him less and less because of what he was becoming. Personal taste here, he was just becoming the sort of person I cannot stand. I expect everyone to react to his growth, be it positive and negative, in a different manner. In my case, it managed to put that much more distance between myself and the text. It was no step out of character for him, so I do understand that it was natural progression. But I do not have to like it.
The Magicians is bizarro Potter and I know I am not the only one who has said this, but it is true. This novel is what would happen if Harry Potter remained with his miserable parents, became fucking brilliant over the course of high school, and then in his senior year was admitted to a Hogwarts populated by horny kids and stocked with an overabundance of alcohol, where he would learn magic is complicated and messy and wands are just damned embarrassing to use. There would be orgies in the houses, Voldemort would have been branded a pussy and dealt with by a first year student on his/her first day of class, and Dumbledore would have been openly gay–with rumors that he was possibly having a relationship with one of the faculty, maybe a student. It is not so much a Harry Potter for adults as it is a foul-mouthed Harry Potter a few years older with access to drugs and booze. Or, as I like to think of it, a more realistic Harry Potter.
The story is well defined, if overly rushed, and there is more than a little foreshadowing to events in the latter half part of the novel. I enjoyed the story, but as I said, I wish that it would have lingered a bit in the beginning instead of rushing through. Though I do admit that lingering a bit may just lead to superfluous scenes with no importance at all to the novel. The book was, much like The Name of the Wind, extremely readable, making it a quick read that I had a hard time putting down. Readers of C.S. Lewis may get more out of the books, as the concept of Fillory seems largely based off Narnia, but there is little I can say about that, not having those books. But it is not just Narnia that gets references and you never know what you might spot, which is always a fun addition. Though some are rather obvious and I feel those might be the only ones I got.
The Magicians is a solid novel and I would hazard to call it good if I did not feel ill at ease in doing so. It is far from bad, despite my issues with it, but I am not sure if I can go beyond it just being OK. I did warm up to it a little by the time I finished, but I was still left feeling a cold indifference to the novel. I would recommend it and I would definitely read a sequel if one is ever written, but there remains a lack of praise for the novel from me. I am in the minority here though and no matter why I could not bring myself to like it more than I did, there are many out there who enjoyed The Magicians and their reasoning is probably a lot better and a lot more informative than my own. I said I would recommend it and I do. I just hope you enjoy it more than I did.
