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shadow and bone, by leigh bardugo. [fictionista.]

By Scott • On 2013-03-26 • In books, fictionista, nerd candy, scott • 1 min read

I bought this book because it caught my eye when I was looking through Amazon’s Best of 2012, Editor’s Picks. The first novel in what is eventually scheduled to become The Grisha Trilogy, it is set in a fantasy world based on Tsarist Russian culture, history, geography, and mythology instead of the more common Anglo-Saxon and European sort. By the time we as readers first arrive in Ravka, a nation perpetually at war with its two neighbors, it has long had a dark , supernatural scar slicing through the nation’s heart, cutting off the capital from the all-important coast. This scar, the ‘Shadow Fold’ or ‘Unsea’, is a deadly place, full of flesh-eating monsters. One only crosses in the accompaniment of great force, and even then the best hope is not being noticed.

The story follows a 15-year-old orphan girl, Alina Starkov. She is an unremarkable, weak, unnoticed, melancholy insomniac. On a military journey through the Shadow Fold, Alina’s closest friend in the world (a boy named Mal) is about to be killed by one of the Unsea’s monstrosities. This is when — as is wont to happen at the beginning of fantasy stories about previously unremarkable orphans — Alina inadvertently unleashes a power from within herself that has been awaited for centuries.

It appears she may be the one destined to heal the Shadow Fold, but she can also be a powerful weapon. She is thrust into intrigue and danger, not knowing who can be trusted and who just wants to use her for evil ends. Only time will tell if she is the world’s salvation or damnation.

I enjoyed every page of Shadow and Bone. I had (I suppose still have) an idea for a novel about a broken creature summoned incorrectly to save a doomed world, who must wrestle with his own brokenness if he will ever truly do what he is capable of. Bardugo does a lot in this book that I day-dreamed about when I’ve thought about that story. I love the way Alina is at war with self-doubt, desire, and hope; as well as the way she comes alive when she starts leaning into what she is capable of. It resonated in a pretty deep place for me. Before I had even finished the book, I had already pre-ordered the second book in the Grisha Trilogy, coming this June: Siege and Storm

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poster for ‘ender’s game.’

By Scott • On 2013-03-25 • In blogging challenge 2013, books, fictionista, invasion/visitation movies, movies, movies in space, nerd candy, scott • 1 min read

The first poster for Ender’s Game is here! To offer an overly short summary, the story is set in a future in which humanity has had disastrous conflicts with an alien race, and is constantly fearing and preparing for the next war, knowing hope of surviving another conflict aren’t good. Our protagonist is Ender Wiggin, a brilliant child selected to attend an elite military academy where kids are trained in tactical strategy and space warfare using various games. Turns out, Ender is a tactical genius, and there are some who believe he is humanity’s only hope. Yet, as is the case in all wars, nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

As crazy as Card is in real life, I love this book. The second book is remarkable as well, but I’m not sure there would be much of a mainstream audience for a sci-fi movie of that type. It’s very different in tone. I would watch the hell out of a Speaker for the Dead film, but it would be interesting to see if the powers that be would be willing to foot the bill.

Anyway, if you haven’t read Ender’s Game yet, you have until November 1st if you want to beat the movie’s release.

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my ‘to read’ shelf is out of control.

By Scott • On 2013-03-18 • In blogging challenge 2013, books, fictionista, nerd candy, scott • 1 min read

Most of the time, my appetite for stories and books and movies is voracious and unquenchable. I guess my appetite for many things is like that: experiences, conversations, cocktails, food, and new things of all sorts. Yet, this behavior probably peaks in my relationship to books and movies. For example, my Netflix queue currently has 911 movies in it counting Instant and Mailer queues together. For books, it is no different.

This is my ‘to read’ shelf. This is just the books I’ve queued up to be books I read the soonest. I have other books that I already own to be added to this shelf in the future once I weed it out a bit (both books to be read for the first time and books to be read again). I also have a piece of looseleaf folded in my wallet where I keep track of all the books I hear about and want to get access to eventually (this is mostly a Powell’s list, so that I can be more purposeful when I make pilgrimage to that wonderful ‘City of Books’).

Book List

I’m not going to lie, I actually really love having a shelf this packed with stories to engage over the next few years, as the number of books on the shelf shrinks and then swells again after a trip to Powell’s or an AbeBooks.com binge.

I guess I need help… but I don’t want it.

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the raven boys – maggie stiefvater. [fictionista.]

By Scott • On 2013-03-16 • In blogging challenge 2013, books, fictionista, scott • 2 min read

Maggie Stiefvater has already had a pretty impressive career, but this is my first time reading her work. It was another one of the delightful spoils of being married to a future librarian, since Emily got this book for free at last year’s American Library Association Conference. The most awesome thing so far: not only does Emily have access to free books, she is also really good at choosing which ones she is going to grab for free.

The story begins with a girl named Blue. Born into a family of psychics, she doesn’t have their powers, but does have the ability to increase the energy of those around her, honing their abilities. So, she can’t hear or see supernatural things, but she turns up the volume for anyone who does. The book opens with the line, “Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she’d been told that she would kill her true love.” Destined to kill her first love with a kiss, she has heard the same thing from every true psychic she’s ever met. Then, on the night of St. Mark’s Eve, where she goes each year so her mother can see the spirits of those who will die in the next year, and thus deliver the bad news to ones she knows. Blue can never see the spirits, until tonight when she sees one boy. It turns out, the only reason she would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve is either because he is her true love, or she will kill him. In her case, those are sort of the same thing.

I really love what Stiefvater does here. What seems like it will be just another run-of-the-mill young adult love story is anything but. Instead, it’s a story of magic, friendship, loneliness, and wrestling with the gap between who we are and who we want to be. Romance barely factors in at all, outside of the confusions and attraction of being a teenager. And romance certainly isn’t the force that drives the story along. Great characters, compelling narrative, and great prose are what kept the pages turning for me well after I should have put the book down to do something else.

When I finished this book, I was genuinely sad that I need to wait until September for the second book in the series to be released. The day after finishing it, I had a few moments of free time and thought, “I should read The Raven Boys… oh, wait, I finished it last night.” It was a real disappointment. I sure can’t wait to see what happens next, especially since she threw in a pretty fun hook in the book’s final line.

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this is how you lose her – junot díaz. [fictionista.]

By Scott • On 2013-03-15 • In books, fictionista, nerd candy, scott • 1 min read

After reading this book, I told Emily that with any justice, our potential future children would learn about Junot Díaz in school, even though he would still be a contemporary, living author. He’s just that good, and that important. His voice is singular and empowering, and I think he is an example of what it truly means to be a brilliant writer.

This is How You Lose Her is a group of short stories, all having something to do with love, relationships, fidelity, and the forces that bring us together and tear us apart. Many of the stories center on a fictionalized, semi-autobiographical character named Yunior. Perhaps by creating that bit of space between himself and Yunior, the floodgates open and the honesty that results is striking. Whether or not it is the freedom offered by the character being ‘semi-autobiographical’ or not, the honesty is certainly one of the most palpable things to jump off of Díaz’s pages. It genuinely inspired me to learn to be more honest in my own fiction writing (when I finally do that again).

Diaz is young, he’s a geeky fanboy, he came over to NYC as a child from the DR, he teaches creative writing at MIT, and he’s already won the Pulitzer for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. It’s not that his voice can speak on behalf of Latinos, or Dominicans, or men, or even fanboys. Instead, I think his honesty lends toward an empowerment for everyone to find their own voice and speak with it honestly, because his is so intensely real and located. He should be required reading.

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the best books i haven’t mentioned yet. [lists of 2012.]

By Scott • On 2013-01-06 • In books, fictionista, lists of 2012, nerd candy, scott • 6 min read

It sucks to love books as much as I do, and yet be a relatively slow reader. Compared with most avid readers, I know I have a much slower page per minute rate. Granted, some of that is because I am comparing myself to people like my friend Amara, who probably read War and Peace in the time it took me to proofread that last sentence. Still, I know I am not the fastest of readers, I suppose a combination of just plain being slow, and my need to savor each sentence and feel sick if I start rushing and missing stuff. I retain well, when it comes to picking out themes and seeing connections I’m one bad mamma jamma, but speed eludes me.

Slowish reading is my achilles heel when it comes to the massive number of books on my ever growing ‘To-Read’ list. In a 2012 that was down in just about every aspect of my life, reading books was no different. I only read 41 books in 2012, and before some of you roll your eyes and say, “Oh, only 41 books, I read 4,” remember that I get very little done. I have no excuse for not getting through more books… well except for profoundly severe insomnia and terrible clinical depression, but that doesn’t stop me from being frustrated I don’t get through more books in a year. My goal for 2013 is 52, but that’s best left for another post.

For this post discussing books I love in 2012, I wanted to limit my list to those books I haven’t mentioned on the blog before. Books I loved this year, but have already written about are: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo, Lilith by George MacDonald (which I mentioned in a post that also features a now depressing reference to Being Elmo), Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore, Kraken by China Miéville, Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick, The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, and Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.

Here are some I haven’t mentioned yet. As is always the case with book lists, this is just books I read this year, not books released this year.

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1. The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls– Lois McMaster Bujold

Every year, I discover at least one new author I fall in love with. In 2013, Lois McMaster Bujold was that author. I read Paladin of Souls as part of my goal to eventually read every novel that has won both the Hugo and the Nebula, but that required reading that book’s predecessor The Curse of Chalion. Reading books that have been honored as the best in their field sure is a great way to discover masters of the craft of writing. Bujold is so wonderful. The magic and gods and demons of her world are so rich. Where most fantasy authors these days use gods lazily, as nothing more than a catalyst for political intrigue, Bujold’s gods, while mostly in the background, are central to the action and to Bujold’s remarkable engagement with themes of belief, despair, anger, disillusionment, and hope.

These are special books, and they enter the realm of mythopoeia with the skill of masters like MacDonald, Tolkien, Lewis, L’Engle, LeGuin, and Gaiman.

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2. The Scar – China Miéville

A book set in Miéville’s remarkably imaginative steampunk(ish) world of Bas Lag (the setting of Perdido Street Station and Iron Council), in which most of the action takes place on a floating pirate city made of the cannibalized remains of captured ships? Yes, please.

When it comes to dark, weird, twisted, engaging fantasy that isn’t like any other fantasy you’ve ever read, Miéville is unparalleled. The Scar is so rich in its characters, atmosphere, and moments (many of said moments are genuinely chilling).

Also, I used to love the idea of writing about vampires, but have despaired that possibility because of the oversaturation of really bad vampire stories. And while this isn’t a vampire book, in the lone vampire character in the novel, Miéville gives me hope that there is still a place for vampire characters as long as they are well written and engaging. It can be such a fun mythology to play with, as long as we leave out all that goddamned sparkling tomfoolery.

Miéville is the best, and you couldn’t ask for a more capable author to write your nightmares.

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3. The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer – Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson is one of those highly lauded authors who deserves the hype. It’s evident he is wildly intelligent and knowledgeable about the fields he is passionate about (which are myriad), and even while enjoying his work on every level we are aware of, most of us will know full well we are missing so many connections, subtexts, and layers in his wonderfully complex work.

What Snow Crash did in 1992 in envisioning implications for economics, politics, and relationships in the information overload of the internet age, he does again in The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer for the overwhelming implications on their way in the age of nanotechnology. I should probably read Snow Crash again, a contemporary classic only two decades old and praised as one of the more important science fiction novels ever, but on my first read, I actually enjoyed The Diamond Age more. It flies along at a breakneck pace and thrusts its characters through remarkable events that may not be so remarkable someday very soon.

The plot is too complex to do it justice in a brief summary, but basically, a rich and powerful man commissions a wonderful interactive nano-book, The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (I can’t really describe in this space how awesome this nano-book is!). The book will interact with and instruct the rich man’s granddaughter and teach her all she needs to know about the world, saving her from the fate of becoming just like her inane parents. The man commissioned to create the book succeeds, but also tries to steal a copy for his own daughter, with the result being that a stolen copy falls into the hands of a poor, abused, forgotten girl named Nell. Then things get awesome/terrible/crazy/awesome (yes, awesome twice).

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4. Neuromancer – William Gibson

Much of what can be said about the literary significance of Neal Stephenson can also be said about William Gibson, with the important distinction that William Gibson came first. Neuromancer came eight years before Snow Crash hit the scene, as the debut novel of the man who coined the name of the cyberpunk genre. In many ways, Neuromancer is actually a cybernoir novel, with noir values, themes, and relationships merging with cybertechnology.

Neuromancer features Case, a former hacker criminal wunderkind in a rough and tumble city in Japan, in a future imagined in the 1980’s. In this future, “jacking in” was done in a style similar to what was later popularized in The Matrix. When Case double-crosses one of his criminal employers, they inject a microtoxin into his bloodstream that ruins nerve endings and makes it impossible for him to jack in, cutting him off from his only skill and the only thing he loves in one fell swoop. Then, a shadowy figure emerges from the underworld and offers Case one massive job, the reward being a cure to his damaged nerve endings.

It’s good, and you should read it.

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5. Cannery Row – John Steinbeck

It’s called a novel, but it is really more of a connected series of vignettes revealing the lives of the bizarre enough to be real characters who live on Cannery Row in Monterey, California during the Great Depression. Simple and quiet, with no great revelations or existential crises, the perfect 1940’s prose and realistically painted characters got underneath my skin. I just wanted to go on reading forever of the little moments these characters shared, the minor adventures they embarked on, the way people stumbled towards and away from one another as they do in life. People’s tragedies and triumphs are most often of the sort in these stories, unremarkable, but leaking through with grace.

My friend W gave me the book over the summer, and I’m in his debt for facilitating my encounter with this unassuming little miracle of tightly written fiction.

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6. Seraphina – Rachel Hartman

The crown prince is murdered gruesomely and mysteriously, threatening a tenuous peace between dragons and humans. Seraphina, a gifted and intelligent young musician, is pulled into events by her own curiosity and strength, but the closer she gets to unraveling the mystery and finding connection with another person, the greater the threat of the revelation of a secret she holds that may cost Seraphina her life.

In this world, dragons can choose to take on human form, but not human emotions and passions, in order to serve at court and uphold the precarious treaty between humanity and dragonkind. Rich characters, satisfying narrative development, and an exciting story make this, at least in my opinion, a must read for YA-addicts and fantasy fans alike.

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never letting go of dandelion wine leads to long goodbyes in the southern wild, also batman. [five things.]

By Scott • On 2012-08-22 • In books, fictionista, five things, graphic content, movies, noir, scott • 3 min read

I wasn’t sure if I was coming back after this recent hiatus. I’m still not entirely sure, but here I am writing a ‘five things’ anyway. I’ll need several ‘five things’ posts to catch up on sharing all the things I’ve been enjoying lately with the friends who read this blog.

I apologize in advance for typos, I haven’t slept in a very long time.

1. Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

This book is really wonderful. A time capsule of one small-town summer in 1928, told in a style that is basically a connected series of short stories. Primarily, it tells the story of one boy truly coming into the knowledge of what it is to be alive, and then coming to inevitably fear death, and the loss of the remarkable life he’d discovered. More subtle and real to me than other coming of age tales I’ve read. Bradbury certainly was a master.

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2. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

The story of a boy named Todd, who lives on a planet where men’s thoughts are audible to anyone nearby. Todd is counting the days until he becomes a man, until an unexpected discovery leads to a thrilling and heartbreaking adventure that has me excited for book two… that is, once I whittle down my ‘To Read’ shelf a bit first.

The book was smart and well-written, and should be added to the list of good books you should read even though it has what I believe to be an ugly cover.

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3. Batman: Year One

When it comes to the two primary comic book players, Marvel is far and away more successful than DC with making films from their brand. Marvel Studios has taken characters that common logic said would have trouble making money in film franchises, and then proceeded to make enormous amounts of money off of them, while also churning out some great films along the way. However, in the last decade, DC can only make a profit off of a hero if that hero’s name is Batman.

What DC/Warner Bros. does do well is animation. Much of my love for Batman is rooted in watching Batman: The Animated Series every weekday at 4:30 throughout my formative years. These days, I don’t catch much in the way of animated television series, but I have recently gotten into something called DC Universe Animated Original Movies. DC is bringing some of their most beloved and celebrated comic storylines to life via animation, and my first experience was Batman: Year One. It’s a really great adaptation of one of the best graphic novels ever, and it has gotten me into the rest of the new original animated movies DC has been producing.

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

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4. The Long Goodbye

Way back when Noir Month ended several weeks ago, I decided to watch an updated private detective film in the form of Robert Altman’s 70’s rendition of Philip Marlowe (the guy from The Big Sleep, as well as a large number of novels).

It was awesome. Just as I wanted to keep watching Bogart play Marlowe in the film from the 40’s, I wanted to watch Gould keep delivering his smart-ass, deadpan lines for all eternity… well, maybe not eternity, but for much longer than the all too brief 112 minutes of the film.

It’s a great movie that was underappreciated upon release, only to garner the respect and accolades it deserves in the decades to follow.

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5. Beasts of the Southern Wild

It’s been a few weeks since I saw this, and I still don’t really have words to describe my feelings about it. I could come up with some, but I think it would cheapen my experience some, in a mystical sort of way. Suffice it to say I thought it was an uncommonly beautiful film that has stayed with me long after viewing it.

Also, Dwight Henry and Quvenzhané Wallis gave genuinely stunning performances. Wallis was especially awe-inspiring, showing talent far, far beyond her years as our fierce young heroine, Hushpuppy.

This movie honestly moved me to silence afterward.

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m. ward’s sasquatch avenges a community of elephants. [five things. 5.20.12]

By Scott • On 2012-05-20 • In books, fictionista, five things, graphic content, invasion/visitation movies, movies, music, music videos, nerd candy, sasquatch, scott, seattle, television, the band wagon • 4 min read

It’s been a while since I’ve written a ‘five things’ post. The time has come.

In personal news, I finally got back to writing my novel in earnest, again. It’s still early, but I’ll be pushing past the 20,000 word mark today, so that’s a lot better than nothing.

1. The Magician’s Elephant – Kate DiCamillo

I’ve never read DiCamillo’s hugely successful books, The Tale of Despereaux or Because of Winn Dixie, so unlike most who have read her work, The Magician’s Elephant was my first encounter with her. Emily encouraged me to read it because she thought it would be the perfect story for my sensibilities. She was very, very right.

I want to believe that there is genuine beauty and magic in the world. I want to believe that there is grace and goodness there for those who keep their eyes open to see glimpses of them. I want to believe that there are such things as home, belonging, and love. I want to believe that if we are good to one another, and if we are willing to do crazy, extraordinary things, the world can be made lighter and kinder and better. I want to believe those things, and in my better moments, I actually do.

The Magician’s Elephant, the story of a boy in search of a home and a family, is written by someone who wants to believe those things along with me, and it is written for everyone else who feels similarly.

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2. The Avengers

I know, I’ve written about this once already, but there was one important thought that I forgot to mention in my last post about it. It seems like today is a good day to blog about it again, as in its third weekend so far, The Avengers CRUSHED Battleship, leading everyone in the blogosphere to make bad puns about sinking and torpedoes.

Speaking of which, I still don’t understand how they can say that a movie is based on the game ‘Battleship’ when it has nothing to do with the game ‘Battleship.’ I mean, just because there are battleships in it doesn’t mean you can say ‘based on the game.’ Just because both the game and the movie happen to center on the reality that battleships do, in fact, exist… that’s enough? I’m going to write an indie film about a tortured architect trying to complete a project building a huge tower. The project is going to cost him more and more emotionally and financially, but his ego is going to be so tied up in the project that he is going to push himself to utter ruin because he just won’t let go. I’m going to call it Jenga. I mean, they both have towers, so I think that is probably enough to say it is ‘based on the game.’

Anyway, the thought that I forgot to share before was this: In almost every movie that has as much scope and potential as The Avengers, I find myself disappointed. I still like the movies, but usually I find myself saying, “It was really good, but they could have done so much more! Maybe they will in the sequel.” Not so with The Avengers. It delivers excitement, fun, and size that truly fulfills all of the movie’s potential. It is everything a movie with this many great, dynamic, superhuman personalities should be. I’ve seen it twice so far, and I am itching for number three.

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3. Community

The life of a Community fan sure is bittersweet. First came the news that the show would be renewed for a fourth season, but only for a half-order of episodes. Then came the rumors that Dan Harmon was out as showrunner. Then came the confirmation that Dan Harmon was out as showrunner. It’s entirely possible that most of what we all love about the show will be leaving with him. Hopefully not, but it is highly likely. He was the brains, heart, and soul of the show. It was his baby. Now that he’s gone… ::sigh::

Yet, since the final episodes of Season 3 were written with the distinct possibility that the show would be cancelled altogether, they offer a beautiful end to what Community has been. From the awesome 8-bit episode, to Jeff’s final monologue in which he articulates the soul of the show: that even though we are cynical, jaded, self-centered, broken people, we still need each other, and we make the world better when we embrace that and get over ourselves a little bit. It’s a thought that temporarily zaps the beard off my inner ‘Evil Abed.’ It was all I could do to keep from bursting into tears when the final story ended with a single screen featuring the ‘six seasons and a movie’ hashtag. I love the show that much. I really hope we don’t all come to wish it had just been cancelled when Dan Harmon was fired. I really wish the show had somehow moved to Netflix like Arrested Development. That would have immediately made Netflix my favorite company on the planet.

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4. Wasteland Companion – M. Ward

I realize that I’ve never recommended M. Ward’s newest release. That’s an oversight that needs to be remedied right this moment. Ward is a master of crafting sweet, sad, spiritual songs of life and existence, disappointment and love. He has the ability to be as silly as he is melancholy. His music is perfect for the soul of the rainy pacific northwest. I love him.

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5. Sasquatch!!

Speaking of M. Ward, Sasquatch starts Friday!! And I’M GOING TO BE THERE!! In the immortal words of Jason Penopolis, “Wee-ow!” I made a list of things I want to do in my 30’s. This weekend, I cross one of those things off!

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the sportswriter. [fictionista.]

By Scott • On 2012-05-01 • In books, fictionista, scott • 2 min read

Frank Bascombe is a sportswriter who doesn’t much care about sports one way or another. Yet, as a man in the midst of the complexity of shattering tragedy, he embraces sportswriting for its simplicity and predictability. It’s part of his retreat from reality, into ‘dreaminess’, as he himself puts it. As the book begins, his career as a novelist has aborted before it truly got started, his oldest son has died, and his marriage to a woman he still loves has recently ended.

Thus, with nothing in his life to truly ground him, Bascombe romanticizes the fact that athletes can embrace a single-mindedness; that during their careers they can step on the field where there are rules, where things make sense, where they can pour themselves wholly into their art. Then, when off the field, they can answer reporters questions in clichés, perhaps even non sequiturs, in their special language of the game, never having to touch down into the muck of life as it truly is. This is, in the character’s opinion, why athletes often live lives of such abject failure after their playing careers have come to a close.

With 1986’s The Sportswriter, my first experience with Richard Ford, he has created a remarkable engagement with life as it is. His narrating protagonist is fully realized, complicated and contradictory. This is a beautiful rumination on the beauty of mystery, and also its ability to shield us from the bone and marrow of true life if we choose to use mystery as a crutch. It is about our ability to hide from the truths we know, but pretend not to. It is a mirror for how we cope with failure, loss, tragedy, pain, joy, intimacy, and community.

We can live our entire lives hiding from anything genuine or true. Like the athletes whom Frank Bascombe profiles and interviews on a regular basis, we can live in artificially created worlds, the sole design of which is to blind us from what actually is. Reading The Sportswriter, I was nudged to ask myself if I am willing to pay the price for belonging. Am I willing to pay the costly price of vulnerability, honesty, and the risk of pain in order to experience true intimacy, connection, and relationship.

This is true 20th century literature at its best. The prose is eloquent, simple and grounded, like the work of Walker Percy and Graham Greene. Thus, it’s not for everyone. Some folks will probably be bored out of their minds reading this book, so if you prefer popular fiction in the commercial sense, you’d be wise to steer clear. That may sound pretentious, but it is also simply a fact.

For my money, I highly recommend it.

My booklist is probably longer than I can ever read in my lifetime, and it is ever growing. This is because every book I read opens up several I need to read as well. Now, in addition to Ford’s work in general, I also need to get around to reading the next two novels in the Bascombe trilogy. The second book in the trilogy, Independence Day, actually won the Pulitzer.

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the name of the wind. [fictionista.]

By Scott • On 2012-04-25 • In books, fictionista, nerd candy, scott • 3 min read

Of late, I had been reading lots of books that had decent enough stories, but really weak prose. I won’t name any of said books, because no one really asked, but the prose I had been reading felt like a first draft. There was no polish, no care for the chosen words.

I suppose this may seem a bit hypocritical on a blog that is almost entirely stream-of-consciousness. However, this isn’t my livelihood, and lets be honest, not many people read it. When I finally release my book of fiction to the world, you can be damned sure I will pour over every word until it is exactly as I want it to be. It might not be any good, but that won’t be for lack of trying. Already, I painstakingly rework the chapters that I’ve written with every reading, and I barely feel like I’ve gotten started.

In fiction, the words are the story, the medium. Everything comes to the recipient in the form of the prose. Thus, regardless of what type of fiction it is, whether it is tight, gritty,Hemingway-esque fiction or grandiose, lyrical high fantasy, it still seems like prose is where it’s at. All that to say, I have read many stories lately with distractingly weak writing. For me, this means that no matter how engaging the story arc might be, these stories have no chance of staying with me well after I am done reading.

I really needed to read an author who “brought it” in the word-smithing department. Then, it happened. Lo and behold, I was saved from the mire by a man named Patrick Rothfuss. I checked out The Name of the Wind on the recommendation of my dear friends Josh and Amanda, and I’m certainly glad I did. This is wordy fantasy at its very best. Rothfuss clearly delights in the word craft, which makes his world creation that much richer and deeper.

Rothfuss tells the tale of Kvothe (pronounced like Quothe with a v in it), a world famous magician, musician, and all around badass of legend and myth, who is now a lowly inn-keeper hiding in a dead-end town in the middle of nowhere. Kvothe decides to share his tale with a chronicler, after said chronicler uncovers his identity, and thus we get Kvothe’s origin story in The Name of the Wind.

Rothfuss is keenly aware of fantasy convention, and weaves in and out of that convention well. There is certainly nothing groundbreaking in the sense that the first book in the series offers nothing truly new, but Rothfuss takes the colors already available to him and paints a picture that’s well worth one’s time.

It’s the sort of writing that has stayed with me in the week since I finished reading it. Great prose reprograms the brain, so that my thoughts fit into the framework the author has created for me, from time to time, in the wake of my reading. This is the case with Patrick Rothfuss.

In The Name of the Wind, one can see the traces of fantasy gods like Le Guin, and of course Tolkien. However, the traces always feel like he is playing with someone else’s idea in a new way, not stealing someone’s creativity and passing it off as his own. This is especially true in the way he uses Le Guin’s particular brand of magic: knowing something’s true name, which gives one power over that thing. Le Guin didn’t create that, but she does it far better than anyone else, and Rothfuss is a remarkably capable disciple in that particular fantasy denomination.

I’m actually sort of surprised that the plan is only for this series to be a trilogy, because the first book goes to such great pains creating a fantasy world, introducing a wonderful new fantasy hero, and crafting a magical mythology. The whole first book is really just laying the groundwork for the story that’s to come, and with over 660 pages, that’s quite the foundation. Hopefully, after the third book finally comes out, Rothfuss will have more stories to tell in the world he has created in The Name of the Wind.

I’m going to bide my time before I read book two in the trilogy, A Wise Man’s Fear, because there is no definite word when #3 comes out, and I don’t want to spend two to five years in a George R.R. Martin no-man’s-land.