Anne Lyle - Merchant of Dreams

Anne Lyle - Merchant of Dreams (The Night's Masque #2)

The Merchant of Dreams kicks off where Anne Lyle's great debut, The Alchemist of Souls, left off, but doesn't quite live up to the debut (which, in the interest of fairness, I must admit to having received for free in a giveaway). That said, it is still a very good, romping adventure through the streets of an parallel Renaissance Venice & London, full of plot twists and great action. The biggest draw, however, is Lyle's characters - particularly the three main characters of Ned, Coby and Mal.

Kicking off in London, but swiftly moving to Venice, The Merchant of Dreams follows Mal, Coby and Ned's adventures with the New World, reincarnating fantastic species the Skraylings. Fresh from discovering a plot in London (in the first book) involving 'guisers', Skraylings in human form (of which Mal, and his identical twin brother Sandy, happen to acidently be), they are sent via dying intelligence officer Walsingham to investigate Skrayling dealings in Venice.

While Mal and best friend Ned are split from Sandy, Coby and Ned's partner Gabe Parrish, adventures happen with both groups, both at sea and on land. The scenes set at sea are excellent, and provide both good pacing and settings - the prose is sufficiently cramped and swaying to engage with watery travel.

However, when the groups land, the middle 200 pages drag a little. There are issues with pacing and the plot seems forced at times - there are scenes that are two page long MacGuffins - they serve no purpose in the logic of the world, and at times feel like they have been forced in to make the plot go a certain direction. The prose, too, has moments that feel forced - at times cod-renaissance 'art's and 'thou's and 'Jesu's take away from the plot and my immersion in it - indeed, they are not always coherent and lack a certain continuity. However, once over this middle hump, the action picks up and the conclusion is very well done - we feel the pain of loss and redemption well.

The characters' personalities are, once again, really well built - we know the innermost thoughts and feelings of the three effortlessly, in any given situation. The relationships of Mal/Coby and Ned/Parrish are lovely, and its refreshing to see a gay main character, and a (questionably) bisexual one as well. Further, questions of gender are well written in, easily done with Coby's male-dress/female person combo.

Overall, I'd recommend The Merchant of Dreams if you enjoyed The Alchemist of Souls (which I also recommend...) - however, take it with a pinch of salt: the middle part isn't quite up to the scratch of the character development, the magic system, nor the overall storyline - all of which are excellent.

Overall rating: 3.5*

January and reading objectives

Three books in January. Three. THREE.
That's really shit.
It gets worse when you consider that all three were for my American Fiction module at university.

Admittedly, 8 days of January were taken up by mass panic about essays, but that's still a book every 7 days or so, which doesn't feel great. However, when I think about it, I did 53 last year, 56 the year before, so around one a week - I should be reading far more. This years 'goal', loosely termed, is 75 books, of which around 40 should be my own choices and 35 university related, though there is bound to be overlaps once I start on my dissertation in third year (tentatively titled 'The Urban Space in Contemporary Secondary World Fiction'). Of these, moving on from my last log, I hope for at least 20-25 (33%) to be women writers. I aim for 50, but my literature course is overtly male biased in terms of reading (a paltry 3 of 21 complete novels read for my 8 modules last year whereby women) so that seems unrealistic.

Today also saw a trip for myself and my girlfriend to Foyles and Forbidden Planet, for my Valentine's Day gift: £60 worth of books and a subscription to Interzone magazine. I finally picked up a few 'classics' I'd been planning to get - Roadside Picnic and The Prestige, as well as both James Smythe and Myke Cole's new books, as well as an anthology and Costa Prize winning biography/graphic novel 'Dotter of her Father's Eyes'.

As I picked up both the 'classics' above I also made the conscious decision to attempt, slowly but surely, to acquire all the SF Masterworks series, both old and new. Both Old and New titles are beautiful books, but on top of that they will improve my knowledge of SF immeasurably. If your interest in SF goes beyond 'its shit and for children' (I.e. you are a fully rational and independent Human, capable of some degree of autonomy) I'd recommend picking up someone from that series just to see the best at SF has to offer - I'd go for Flowers for Algernon myself.

On top of this, my other purchasing aim is to get all the old-style covered Discworld books. They'd look ace on my bookshelf. Worthy aims, all, I think.

Books 2012 - an anlaysis

I know it was eleven days ago, practically ancient history, but with essays out of the way and a bit of free time, I've decided to post up about my 2012 in books. With statistics, because that's just the way I roll.

Firstly, a little preamble: I record every book I read in an excel spreadsheet. This covers date read, title, author, series (if applicable), my rating (out of 5, including halves). Because I'm cool. Ever since I read Art Garfunkel's booklist I've always wanted to keep one, and this is it in its current form. When I'm old, and hopefully computers haven't taken over the world, I want to be able to turn to my grandchild and say read Cormc McCarthy's The Road - I read it when I was 19 in 2011, and it was absolutely astonishing. Or similar.

Anyway, onto the list.

Over the course of 2012 I read 53 books (including one read twice), 3 less than 2011. This is impressive when you consider the 2011 included my gap year travels (6 weeks in Italy - I read around 15 books in that time) and I wasn't at university until the end of the year.

However, there was a great discrepency in total pages read: from 26173 to 14813. These 12000 pages are pretty much Jonathan Strange, Pat Rothfuss and A Song of Ice and Fire which were read in 2011.

Star's (/rating) average declined from 4.04 to 3.83 which I think reflects the amount I'm reading for university, and that I'm not choosing off my own back. Of the 53 read, 21 were for university and the other 31 for pleasure - one was first read for pleasure, then read again to psychoanalyse for my Literature and Psychoanalysis module (Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg)

Of the 31 read for pleasure, 21 were SFF - 2 of which I could also classify as LitFic (Communion Town by Sam Thompson & A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess). 3 were non-fiction, 3 LitFic, and others including a short story collection and Magic Realism - which you might be able to classify as SFF (The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami)

I've been reading a lot of blogs on gender discrepancy in reading, and I fear that I fall into that category. If we include all the books I've read this year, we have: 45(!) men, 7 women and one anonymous. Just for personal reading: 27 men, 4 women. This seems a bit shit to me. If we just look at authors, and not multiples (there are multiple of, e.g., Peter V. Brett, Shakespeare, Terry Pratchett, Joe Abercrombie,in there) we have:  37:7:1(anon.) split. (18% female) split, or personal reading: 21:4 (19%). Hmm. Something to work on.

Finally, my 5* books are:

Dying Inside - Robert Silverberg
A Single Man - Christopher Isherwood
Communion Town - Sam Thompson
Brother in the Land - Robert Swindells
The Heroes - Joe Abercrombie

Worst books were:
The Family Reunion - T.S. Eliot
A Case of Conscience - James Blish

Worries and suchlike - on creativity and titles

On my course at uni, I have a creative writing module. Sounds fun, eh? Trouble with it was it just wasn't very good... Sure our teacher, Andrew o'Hagan is a Booker lon-listed author, very funny, and Scottish to boot, and his lectures were fun and informative, but somewhere long the way the actual process of writing was forgotten.

Ever since I was but a wee lad I've wanted, desperately, to write. I've been told I have something by teachers etc., but recently I've lost my confidence. I sit and write bullshit. Forced into a mould - 4000 words, title: The Ashtray. This doesn't feel to me like a valid way of testing my storytelling mettle. The title alone seems to force me down a contemporary setting, between the 18th and 21st centuries, Western in culture, urban, or at least close to it, in setting. What if I don't want that? What if that's not even close to my thing? I write SFF - science fiction and fantasy - I write the alien, the other, the different. As such I'm forced to liberally force an ashtray into a setting in order to justify it.

I feel that a better test of students writing abilities would be a theme, or a complex, abstract title. 'The Ashtray' is too mundane, too simple a figure. It's perfect for the Andrew o'Hagans of this world, but can you imagine Paolo Bacigalupi, China Mieville, Ken MacLeod, Arthur C. Clarke or Ian M. Banks latest, 'The Ashtray'? No, me neither. I see Raymond Chandler or Carver, Chekhov, Isac Dinesan - all masterful writers, yes, but all of a certain style or period - realism, the early 1900s, noir, etc. etc. - not speculative, not fantastic (in the literal meaning)

Further to this is the Western-centric approach. Suppose I want to write from the basis of the South American, the South-East Asian, the Central African. The Ashtray is a Western symbol, a western ideal. I can't even locate my story pre-1500 by historical necessity. Tobacco wasn't brought out of the Americas until then, and a quick google doesn't give me much prolific use of ashtrays until the 1940s, and of that mostly American and Western European. And even now, they are declining as smoking becomes less and less widespread. Why, therefore, should an Ashtray be the item to set my creative juices flowing.

You could argue its a 'challenge', something to take you out of your comfort zones, but I'd argue right back that this isn't a Creative Writing university course. It's one module, it's 4% of my degree. That's quite a lot really - £400 of my tuition fees. If it were a creative writing course, over a year to three years, then yes; bring me out of my comfort zone and make me a better writer that way. But to be fought out, you have to be eased in, and that I haven't been. I've written a small piece for class, and that was fantasy. I've written another piece which could be interpreted across cultures and across times, entitled 'My Grandmother's House was a places of constant danger". However, for my last piece I want to do my best. Get the best mark I can. And not to worry about my writing, how bad it is, how much it sucks. And that means writing what I know and what I want to write, what I need to write. The ashtray doesn't allow me that. 'Fear' would. 'Red' would. Hell, any abstract notion would.

It is my belief that such a limiting title is wrong, and not only that, it is actively limiting my ability to do well. I'll try my best, but if you want to teach, why not do it in a way more open to interpretation?

Christmas revolutions and musings on blogging

It's Christmas today. You might have noticed. Well, actually it's no longer Christmas for my UK brethren (what's the feminine/gender neutral term for 'brethren'?), but I'm currently in America, so it's still Crimbo here on the West Coast.

I got an iPad today. In fact it's what I'm typing this out on right now, as we speak. I've spent the day writing for my Creative Writing course at university, trying to convince myself to let my expression be free. I've watched 4 TED talks. I've felt inspired. As a result, I feel once more like a bit of a revolution in my online presence - in blogging, on twitter, and, to a lesser extent on Facebook.

When I started this blog, around this time last year, I intended to blog regularly about my reading passion, and particularly my love for Science Fiction and Fantasy. I let a few people down with false promises with regards both this blog, and external work. I spent a gap year with all the time in the world, and wrote quite a lot on Fantasy-faction.com, an excellent website devoted to Fantasy
literature. I was meant to write for them monthly. I didn't. Now that website has grown, and I'm no longer an active part of its community, despite the opportunity to be so. I tried to blog. I tried to be active on Twitter. These too failed.

I look back and I blame one thing: university. Now, I bloody love university. I love learning, I love the variety of reading it introduces me to, I love the excitement of a course in my passion, I love the opportunity to think more deeply on subjects that it never occurred to me I might be interested in (masochism and medieval religious writings anyone?). But there is one thing that university has not done for me, and that is make me productive externally. Yes, I write for the university newspaper, and yes I have a fairly decent social life and a wonderful girlfriend, but in some areas I feel that the university experience has not helped me flourish. In particular, I have less time to read what I want, less time and, as a result of less reading, less inclination or perhaps inspiration to muse upon what I want, and, less opportunity to read around what I want. To give an example: I only read about, and obsessively thus read around, Paul Kincaid's piece on 2011s 'Best of...' science fiction anthologies in the LARB. This despite massive blogosphere presence and informed opinion surrounding the matter.

As a result, I'm trying to make myself a promise. I want to blog. I want to read my chosen genres. I want my passion, true as it is, to come though better than it does. However, that means, for me, taking a step back. University and studying are the ultimate time sink, especially when you are trying to read, understand, think upon and question 800+ pages of unchosen, if not in interesting, texts per week (and then write 3-4000 word essays on them in the weeks that you aren't reading). To those that juggle a time sink degree and a time sink passion, I salute you. My step back is this: I will continue to blog, but I will de-specialise. I will realise that if what I think interests me, it may well interest another person. It may, indeed, interest you, if you've managed to read this far. This may be intensely personal feelings, abstract philosophising, or, and I hope that this occurs with regularity, reviews and explorations of SFF fiction, or anything in between. This, hopefully, will mean a blog that isn't updated 5 times in a year, but 50. A twitter feed that doesn't have month long gaps. Something interesting by myself online.

This realistic approach is a difficult one for me. I'm intensely self critical. Even now I'm thinking 'what if' - what if no one reads this blog? Does it matter? Am I blogging for an audience? If I am blogging for an audience, is that a bad thing? If not, is that a bad thing too? I think the answers to al these questions lies in a bit of a truism: live for yourself. I need to step back, and do want I enjoy, no matter the 'audience opinion'. I'm not Stephen King, or Wil Wheaton, or Ozzy Osbourne. I don't have millions of people expecting a certain thing from me, who would be dissappointed if I didn't give them it. When I reach that point, then I ought to worry. Until then, I'll ramble, and you can read me if you want, and I'll try to accept that.

On the wonders of London (and Tom Pollock)

I bloody love London.

No, really, I bloody love London. To my mind, of all the places in the world I've been, it's by far the best - though I've yet to visit New York, and I hear tell that that s wonderful, vibrant and stunning - like an American London, then, just with higher buildings and a bit less history.

I'm a student at a London university (King's College London to be precise), and, as of last October when my mum moved to Seattle, a full time London-liver. And I still bloody love it. Nowhere else is so diverse, culturally, architecturally, with people, with places, with history. There is a new surprise around every corner. A new shop to be found. A new stunning scene to stumble upon.

A couple of stories: I referee football matches which occasionally sends me to weird bits of London. I went to Victoria Park the other week, and found a shop that specialises in different types of chicken eggs, from rare breeds, and then sells eggs from other birds on top of that!... How cool is that??? And then, I live in Bangladeshi East London, next to the DLR. And yet, just around the corner, an 8 minute walk, I stumbled upon St. Katherine's Dock, which is an absolutely gorgeous place full of the boats of the rich, a (fairly average) pub, and more cool shops. The difference in atmosphere between Shoreditch and the City, between Chelsea and Borough, between Brixton and the West End is astonishing for just a few square miles. So much diversity in what is, in reality, such a small place.

St. Katherine's Dock

Does this blog have a point, I hear you ask/ Well yes - I'm using it as background for espousing about Tom Pollock's lovely novel The City's Son, which I read recently (well a couple of months ago, but I'm lazy...). I met Tom back in August at Blackwell Charing Cross' Fantasy Faction event with Joe Abercrombie, Peter V Brett & Myke Cole. His book had come out a week earlier, massively backed by Jo Fletcher books with a launch at the excellent Forbidden Planet. I had heard nothing but good things from the Fantasy connoisseurs there, so I decided to try it out.

Thank god that I did.

The novel is bloody excellent. Regarding a weird-fiction idea of the modern juxtaposed with the fantastic in an "unseen city", its an idea that has been done before done in a completely new way. The feeling of the city, both real and unreal, blend with awesome ease.

What a cool cover!!

Concerning the "City's Son" himself, Filius, and the normal human teenager Beth, and their attempts to defeat the crane king, Reach, who is slowly destroying London. Full of weird creatures, from Railwraiths to the Pavement Priests (animated statues across London) to the Chemical Synod, a sinister group of chemical-based pseudo-men, the fantastic world is meticulously built up. The setup is a little jaded, but the characters are excellent. Beth, Filius, Beth's best friend Pen, Beth's father - all felt real to me, felt like people I could reach out and touch.

The (MINOR SPOILER ALERT) romance between Beth and Filius that inevitably develops is handled well, with a subtlety and yet a certain realism of teenage fumblings to it. The plot itself is solidly constructed, exciting and reaching a natural climax. The only faults I had were the length and the action scenes - at times I felt that the action scenes were too long, too ponderous, too hard to imagine - Pollock can be forgiven in this as a debut author, but it is something that to me needs work, as well as parringdown some of the exposition - again, we can applaud the idea of trying to draw us in as best as possible, but at times a little mystery makes for a better experience.

However, this i ignoring the point of this blog. London. Amazing. The descriptions, the places, the feeling of London. Its astonishing. I can feel thephysical presence of London, both its real and unseen parts. I can see the dancing by the rough brick arhitecture of East London, under flicking sodium lamps. I see Crystal Palace radio tower, full of movement and menace. I see St. Paul's, crawling with cranes, with activity, with building work. I feel the diversity of London, that sense of wonder at its sheer presence, that sense that this place is exciting on every level, from the Eastender's-title-sequence-aerial-shot all the way down to the individual alley off the Old Kent Road.

London is awesome. Tom Pollock captures it sublimely. That is all.

And I'm back from beyond... (And JK Rowling)

Well, I'm back.

I thought I'd neglected this blog for far too long. SO today is the first of a new start in posting. Today I will blog. Tomorrow I'll probably blog. Next week I'll probably forget to blog, but that's beside the point. Because next week I intend to blog, and that's whats important.

Anyway...

Yesterday I went to see the wonderful JK Rowling at the Southbank Centre, London, England, UK, Europe, The World. She was ace.

You see, you might not have noticed, it being a relatively minor event, npot publicised anywhere or anything, but she has a new book out. Yeah, I know! Shocking, eh? Well, turns out that to go with the book, Ms. Rowling decided to do a Q & A session in fornt of 900 or so people. Answering questions about the book, her treatment of mortality, moving on from Potter and the like, she entertained the crowd for an hour while being grilled by the excellent Mark Lawson. It was "a celebration" to publish the book, JK has a "fascination" with mortality, she upset her children with some of the comments about having children in the book. It was really good. In fact I recommend you watch it here.

Then the cameras stopped rolling and a Q & A session started. I missed out on asking my question ("With all the pressure you must have been under with regards the novel, how tempting was it to publish under a pseudonym"), but some interesting questions were asked, alongside the usual "what advice would you give aspiring writers" (Answer: Get an agent). we learnt that JK likes e-books, but it took so long for Potter to be published in them as she "is a bit of luddite" and "didn't understnad them... until last year on holiday", that Sirius' mirror was a mistake, as was the Maurauder's Map's powerfulness and that her characterisation of Luna Lovegood was the only part of Harry Potter to have been affected by the movie's casting (of the rather wonderful Evanna Lynch). These were cool facts to know, especially as a massive Harry Potter fan.

It turns out the JK Rowling is very engaging, very interesting, and very humble. Unlike GRRM, she was engaged with her audience, having time to chat with a girl who'd once asked her on Blue Peter whether Dunbledore had fallen in love (pre "he was gay" revelation!), and accepting a present from a massively over excited Spaniard who had travelled all the way from his home country to watch her speak.  Further, while I was mssively starstruck as she signed my book (an hour and half of queuing!!!), and she was probably more bored than a snail encased in amber, she still had enough time to smile and thank me for queuing, seemingly genuinely thankful for each and every one of her fans.

Now I've yet to read the book, but when I do a review will be popped up here. I'm about 10 chapters in, and I'm pleasantly surprised  - I was expecting it to be shit for some reason... Its really not.


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That doesn't seem to work... If anyone knows how to embed correctly, please help...

In the meantime, find the interview here

God I'm excited to read it :D