Book Review: The Messenger, by Markus Zusak

The Messenger by Markus Zusak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a lovely book. I suspected I would enjoy it, having loved The Book Thief, and I was not in the least disappointed. I found the whole thing such an original concept, this placid no-hoper protagonist drifting through life until unexpectedly, a series of playing cards appear in his letterbox with clues directing him to the homes of strangers who, in different ways, need him to help them find what will bring them happiness. Ed is the messenger, finding courage and soul and integrity inside himself as he divines his way through these challenges and connects each of his 'messages' with their needs, finding his place in the world while he is at it. I loved the Australianness of the language, setting and detail; I loved the beauty of Zusak's way with words. I smiled as I read the ending, which I did not see coming, though I knew there had to be some unique answer to it all. In summary, a beautiful, lovely book, light and casual but with heart.

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Six Favourite Male/Female Friendships from Sci-Fi and Fantasy

But the mere fact that they were still there on either side of him, speaking bracing words of comfort, not shrinking from him as though he were contaminated or dangerous, was worth more than he could ever tell them.

-Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Despite setting out with The Elm Stone Saga to write a modern fantasy with cool stuff like MY OWN STYLE OF MAGIC and A POTENTIALLY HAUNTED MANSION and TRAUMATISED CHARACTERS, what ended up being my number one reason for writing was to see the friendship unfold between Renatus and Aristea. As they have grown closer and come to understand one another better they have only interested me more. I admire their loyalty, their warmth, their uncompromising demands on the other to be the best version of themselves they can be, and most of all, what goes unsaid – the silent shared looks of understanding and the reading of one another’s body language as they intuit the other’s feelings and reactions. 

In television and film, this formula for deep affection between male and female friends can be a key element in building a solid cast of characters, and is definitely a common one across my favourite fandoms. I’ve compiled a list of my top six favourite male/female friendships from science fiction and fantasy, as I’ve no doubt drawn on these as inspiration in writing Renatus and Aristea over the years.

1. Sam Carter and Daniel Jackson, Stargate SG1

 

In a core cast of four on a sci-fi show with opposing themes of military leadership and social justice, Drs Carter and Jackson are the two genius scientists opposite all-American Colonel O’Neill and alien freedom fighter Teal’c. Both married to their work, Sam and Daniel bond quickly in the show’s early episodes when they find in the other not only a similar intellect, but a shared tendency to question military action where it affects life, even though Sam is herself an Air Force Captain. I loved in the show how easy these characters were with one another, talking geek over O’Neill’s head and sharing small jokes at his expense or even just silent condescending looks they make no effort to hide. 

2. Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, Harry Potter

 

The perfect platonic friendship. Harry can ask Hermione anything and she can reply in complete honesty and not only is the friendship unharmed, the fact that they are opposite sexes barely registers. They are friends because they are compatible people. Harry admires Hermione’s intelligence and problem-solving abilities, while Hermione sees qualities in Harry that he doesn’t recognise, and she helps him to see those. 

3. Felix Dawkins and Alison Hendrix, Orphan Black

One of the many wonderful mummy-helpers of my classroom recommended this show to me and I am hooked, and one of the (many) reasons I love this show is the adorable connection between Felix, the protagonist Sarah's foster brother, and her many clone sisters. He relates to each of the sisters differently, and often seems to get along with them better than Sarah herself, but probably the most entertaining to me is the dramatic friendship that sparks between Felix and prissy-perfect soccer-mom Alison. Finally, someone else just as over-the-top as they are who can appreciate how a public speaking event or bad hair can outweigh global conspiracies and life-or-death situations, any day of the week. I love seeing characters find their soul friends, and this is so sweet and beautiful amidst the heaviness of some of the show's other themes.

4. Sansa Stark and Tyrion Lannister, Game of Thrones TV

Really, really hope these two will find each other in this year's season, or the next one if necessary - I loved what these seemingly incompatible and extremely different characters brought out in one another when forced into a reluctant marriage. Disempowered little lamb Sansa finds her lost spine in the friendship that emerges over their shared hatred of King Joffrey while funny womaniser Tyrion proves to himself that he is better than is expected of him. Shared smirks at Joffrey's wedding, and Sansa standing up for Tyrion though she hasn't had the strength to stand up for herself in several seasons, are to me what true friendship is all about. 

5. Olivia Dunham and Lincoln Lee, Fringe

A fast-paced four-and-a-half season long show stuffed full of parallel universes, conspiracies and cover-ups, unlikely but possibly plausible science and a generation-long story-arc crossing timelines and dimensions does not sound like it has the room for a beautiful platonic friendship to shine, but even against the love story and the insightful dissection of a damaged father-son relationship that dominate the narrative, lead character Olivia's friendship with eventual FBI partner Lincoln stood out for me. The unquestioning devotion all versions of Lincoln show to all versions of Olivia, with no expectation of anything more, and her swiftness to trust him even when it's not her Lincoln or she's not his Olivia speaks to my vision of the deepest of innate friendships. 

 

6. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, The X-Files 

 

Uh, obviously these two make the list, even if this friendship deviates from the 'platonic' zone at some point heavily debated by fans even after twenty years. Despite outwardly seeming opposites and despite bickering constantly about opposing expectations of their investigations, these partners turned friends share a common drive to understand the truth of everything they come across and to bring those who would hide it for their own gains to justice. Demonstrating that 'just friends' is not 'just' anything when you're platonic soulmates, Mulder and Scully are the friends we all wish we had - painfully honest, desperately loyal and forever watching the other's back. Friendship is trust at this fundamental level. This is what I hope my writing of Renatus and Aristea channels!

 

 

Book Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, by J.K. Rowling

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In the script format, this was a one-morning read, and I enjoyed it as much as I did the film. Mirroring the movie almost shot-for-shot (I'd have to rewatch to be certain, but I could picture almost everything as I'd seen it on the screen), reading the escapades of Rowling's refreshing new characters was probably even more charming - the mumbled lines I missed onscreen were there for me to appreciate, the dark visuals were left to my imagination to decide and Rowling's trademark attention to unexpected detail and humour was more evident. I love reading her, and I love this new cast of characters, and I appreciate so much the opportunity to enjoy this story as a book after loving the film.

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Book Review: Throne of Glass, by Sarah J. Maas

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I connect so much with the background of this author - sixteen when she started out writing for an online audience, and wanting to write fantasy with a badass chick lead - but I connected very little with this book. I think I'm too old now to swallow the trope of eighteen-year-olds who have already traveled the world, achieved it all and topped their game, and well and truly over the perfect/talented/smart/witty/beautiful/strong/confident/impressive Mary-Sue archetype. If you're still in your teens, this is probably the perfect book. If you're looking for good assassin fantasy, look elsewhere.

I liked a lot of what I got from the first chapter - former assassin enslaved in the fantasy equivalent of the Spice Mines of Kessel offered a humiliating get-out-of-jail card by the same royal family who ruined her country and enslaved her in the first place. Her freedom, after four years of servitude to the man she hates the most. I liked the moral dilemma of it, and I liked the casual carelessness of the prince when we first met him. I also liked the very un-princessy visage we're given of our protagonist here: enslaved for a year, she's dirty, scarred, bedraggled, unsightly. How often are female leads allowed to be so repulsive to their male counterparts?? I appreciated the author's bravery in beginning her story in this way. To hell with meeting sexist societal expectations! This is my kind of book!

But then. The rest of the book happened, and it was, mostly, not my kind of book. I realised I am old.

Celaena is quick to assure readers that she's normally very pretty, and that she dresses well, which is good, because we couldn't like her otherwise, I guess. (??) Once she's clean and getting healthy again, male characters constantly note how beautiful/delicate-seeming/innocent-like she is, and there's a fair number of 'admiring looks' being noticed by the very arrogant Celaena. It's mostly annoying because, while we're told how attractive she is way too much, what we're shown is quite contradictory - verbs associated with Celaena are typically 'grabbed' and 'snatched' when offered something politely, and 'sneered', 'snarled', 'screamed' and 'demanded' when speaking to anyone other than her princess friend. She's depicted scoffing lollies tipped out on her bedspread until her teeth are stained red all day, throwing a tantrum (including biting a pool cue) when she can't win a game after a couple of tries and baring her teeth at people trying to scare them every chapter or so. If I wasn't being periodically reminded that the character was a beautiful, overly talented young woman, I would think I was reading the tales of a spoiled, snotty, grubby child. This characterisation was too hard to connect with as an adult.

The 'overly talented' element was the other bothersome part of this book. Aside from being multilingual, good enough at her own language to teach others, a talented musician and dancer, and a bookworm, Celaena was adopted at eight years of age by an assassin, and within nine years had gotten so good at assassin-ing that she was well-known as the land's greatest ever assassin, presumably outshining all the other veteran assassins in her assassin compound. She mentally notes how easily she could kill or overpower every person she meets but never shows it. No mention is given of her amazing hitlist or of any famous kills. She's just famous. She displays unnerving skills in isolation, such as in archery, castle-climbing, fencing and knife-throwing, but does not demonstrate any of these in context in this book, nor reminisce on any past kills in which these skills were helpful. If you were reading this book for the 'assassin' element, it's not really there.

It must be mentioned that, for me, Chaol was one of the BEST things about the whole book. Opposite these irritating, shallow models of perceived teen perfection is this well-rounded, grumpy, efficient and grounded Captain stuck babysitting the childish assassin while also balancing his actual job of protecting the castle and investigating a series of supernatural murders that are mostly ignored for the span of the story. I really, really liked this character, and was soon reading to see what happened next with him. I LOVED his dismissive attitude towards Celaena, juxtaposed against a whole cast of characters present purely to be admiring of her, scared of her or rude to her (so she could put them in their place with her superior wit and intelligence). Nearly everything he said, I just felt like "Yes!" After a near-Dorian-less first half, I felt annoyed by his increasing appearances in the second half rather than swoony, and just wanted him to leave and for Chaol to come back. The resultant obligatory YA love triangle was kind of awkward, but again, I'm not really the right audience for this.

There was enough good raw material that I would be willing to read the rest of the series, because I understand that this was Maas's first book and it's an impossible ask for a perfect book the first time. With this foundation laid, I hope the following books will expand and improve upon what was portrayed in Throne of Glass, especially as the author and her writing grow and develop.

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Book Review: Trust No One, edited by Jonathan Maberry

The X-Files: Trust No One by Jonathan Maberry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was one of those Amazon suggestions that came up while I was purchasing something else X-Files related, so I did the good consumer thing and added it to my cart. It’s a collection of fifteen short stories from various points in the X-Files timeline, though set mostly in the early years. In a lot of respects, I’m really glad I read this. There are some brilliant pieces of writing, particularly in the second half of the book. The first edition is uncomfortably heavy with typos and continuity errors, in some stories more so than others, but the editor Maberry assures me these have been addressed as of the second edition. Some of the entries read like forgotten case files we never got to see on screen, which was exactly what I wanted out of this title, while those that disappointed me were at least short.

Stories that stood out for good reasons are worthy of mention. Catatonia, by Tim Lebbon, the first in the collection, was a good editorial choice to set the tone of the book. The intro of Mulder calling Scully at 3a.m. to convince her to join him on an obscure case was kind of comforting in its familiarity, and the piece was peppered with a light dusting of MSR that fans of that formula will appreciate. Loving The Alien, by Stefan Petrucha, was the only first-person tale in the book, and was delivered in a dry, straightforward Scully wit that hit the mark completely. It was also the first story in the collection where I really enjoyed the writing and not just the story. This beautiful management of language counterbalanced the fact that the story itself wrapped up too quickly and the culprit was… not really hinted at, at all, prior to the reveal, IMO. Dusk by Paul Crilley was a laugh in the face of Twilight, and what I imagine the show would have done to capitalize on the sparkling vampire craze, though the element of M & S working together and openly together…? Uncertain whether I bought that. Sewers by Gini Koch was Scullyless but placed not long after Mulder met Arthur Dales and got hooked on the X-Files, and gave a plausible explanation for Mulder’s wedding ring in the episode Travelers. Time and Tide by Gayle Lynds and John C. Sheldon read exceptionally well and I wish this was an actual episode, as with Kevin J. Anderson’s Statues, both situated at the very end of the book. These were tidy, tight stories, with intriguing X-Files, good pacing, clever M & S banter, almost no errors and obvious attention to detail. In other stories there were irksome oversights, including Skinner googling on his phone in 1994, M & S operating in Saudi Arabia (??), M & S calling each other Dana and Fox, and numerous timeline discrepancies, like “he spoke to her at 4p.m., and it took so long that he didn’t get back to his own office until almost noon!” so ending the collection on the high notes of these very polished pair of longer stories was definitely the right way to order the book.

In a final mention, Jonathan Maberry's introduction to the book is a love letter to The X-Files so inspiring and moving it actually outshines some of the stories in the book. The book has its weak links, of course, which was inevitable when trying to collate the works of so many diverse authors, but it was pulled together out of true love and there are stories here in which that can be definitely felt.

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A Christmas sneak-peak at Book 4

Happy Christmas, readers! While Book 4 is so far away you'll be sad if I guestimated, here is a little snippet to thank you for your support and encouragement this year, and to help assure you that after that horrific cliff I left you dangling from, the story does go on. This piece comes from the prologue of the as-yet-unnamed Book 4.

Please remember that this is a veryveryfirst draft and is entirely liable to change and (hopefully) refinement over the course of the writing and editing process. Enjoy! Xxox

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

They arrived at the doors of the operating room and Miranda paused to catch Renatus as the gurney went on without them. His tight, worried eyes widened as he realised he was to be parted from his apprentice, even briefly.

“No, Miranda-”

“Renatus, you need to get it together,” she told him, calmly but firmly. Aristea disappeared inside the theatre with the other medical staff. For just a moment, Miranda and Renatus were relatively alone – they mightn’t get another such chance. “Tell me what happened to her. Lisandro?”

“I need to-”

“Renatus,” Miranda snapped, trying to focus him. His attention was beyond her, following the girl he could no longer see. “You aren’t going inside my sterile operating environment looking like that.” She pointedly glanced over him, and he seemed to notice the blood on his own hands for the first time. If possible, he paled further, and she worried he might faint. She waved quickly in his face to recapture his attention. “You can see her again in a moment. You’ll scrub in, like everybody else. Tell me what we’re dealing with. How did this happen to her? Was it Lisandro?”

He was so lost, but he nodded quickly, trying to gather to himself the words she needed from him.

“She saw him before I did, and she ran… She wouldn’t stop, she wouldn’t let me stop her,” he explained hurriedly, “I tried. We couldn’t Displace. Otherwise I… He hit her with…” He gestured after her helplessly with his bloody hand. “I don’t know what it was. We’re wasting time.”

“Where were her wards?” Emmanuelle asked with a frown, arriving after having deflected the nurse. Renatus turned to her with blank, empty eyes.

“She let them down,” he murmured miserably. Aristea’s Wards instructor stared at him.

“She what? You let her into that situation without wards?! Why–”

“I told her, I swear.” Renatus looked like he didn’t know what else to say. “She was shielded – she shielded everyone – and then, I don’t know, she dropped them. This is all my fault,” he concluded aloud, pulling away and stalking a few paces down the hall, pressing his sticky hand to his face in distress and leaving a feral smear of blood before he could realise what he was doing.

He was right, they were wasting time. Miranda grabbed his arm as he paced back past her, staring with dread at his hands.

“Can you help us heal her?”

The look on his face was nothing short of broken. She gathered there was a huge story there she’d never heard, but now wasn’t the time.

“Renatus, you’re no good to anyone like this,” she said flatly, not caring if she sounded insensitive. What was the point of a superpower like Renatus if he was shedding magic everywhere indiscriminately instead of concentrating it on a task as significant as this one? “Get a hold on yourself. There’s raw magic in your apprentice’s flesh. We,” she indicated Emmanuelle with a nod of her head, “can close up those wounds but you need to pull that spell out.”

He was so white. He swallowed. Visibly pulled himself together. “Whatever you need.”