The Gunslinger

So, a friend of mine offered to let me borrow this book. Being the book-addict that I am, I couldn't refuse. He told me the writing was very unlike Stephen King, so it might not be what I expected. Having never read a Stephen King novel before (honest!), I wasn't really expecting anything in particular anyway. I just hoped it would be a good read.

And yeah, it was.

Roland Deschain is the last Gunslinger of the world, and he is following the track of the Man in Black. In the beginning, this is all you really know. The rest of the book reveals more about the history between them through a series of well-done flashbacks (as they are all-too-often poorly written) at intervals during his quest. These flashbacks unravel the mystery of Roland's character, providing some clarity to his motives, and helping one understand what made him the person he is in the present. The man can be cold, can be caring, and be yet cold again a moment later. He's a warrior, through and through, and views the world through a lens of cruel necessity.

Stephen King paints a picture of a bleak world, which is said to have "moved on". Here and there are remnants of ages long past, remnants of the modern world. Roland travels through badlands and desert, and the only civilization he comes across are lonely ramshackle dwellings and a rundown wild-west style town. Most people are poor, most animals are mutated, good food is scarce. Or at least, this is what it is like in the part of the world we first start traveling alongside Roland. Not all is as it first seems.

The book is cool. The book is weird. The book can be creepy.

The book is also very short, for a fantasy novel. 231 pages in total, in the revised and expanded version (which is the version any prospective reader should get). And this shortness makes the one problem I have with this book all the more irritating: the pacing is slow. It simply does not have enough going on during those 231 pages to turn it into a real page-turner. And that is a shame.

However, it's still worth reading. What Stephen King does with The Gunslinger is give us a glimpse into the scope of his imagination. And from what I have been told, the books that follow only get better. And if that's true, there is absolutely no reason to skip this one.

Rating: Good

Ender's Game

Brilliant. Brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant. I could simply end the review there, and that would be a completely accurate assessment of this novel. But that's not how I work.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, winner of the Nebula and Hugo Awards in 1985 and 1986 respectively, is a science fiction novel telling the story of Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, a child genius who was born for one purpose: war. A population limit is in effect that bans families from having any more than two children, but Ender is a third, an exception to the rule. The military takes exceptional children to participate in Battle School, to train future commanders to fight against the alien Buggers; Ender's older siblings were both exceptional, but had their flaws: Peter was too violent, and Valentine was too timid. The military asked Ender's parents to have a third child, to be the middle-ground between Peter and Valentine. And, after monitoring Ender's growth for awhile, they decide he is that middle-ground they need him to be, and a man named Colonel Graff comes to ask him to leave his family and join the Battle School. Caring deeply for Valentine, but being bullied by Peter and shunned by other children his age for being a third, Colonel Graff manages to convince him. He takes a shuttle to the Battle School, and his real troubles start.

Ender is an amazing protagonist—he is at times extremely sympathetic, a young boy thrust into a situation no child should be subject to, with all the emotional trauma involved; and yet at other times he can be shockingly brutal, retaliating against his enemies in ways that no normal child would. And he is always genius, and expert at strategy and improvisation, surpassing all the other students at the battle school, earning both ire and respect. He makes friends, he makes enemies, he divides and he unites. And the Colonel Graff, the administrator of the Battle School does all he can to keep Ender isolated, to turn him into a somebody who can order soldiers to their death in order to accomplish any mission.

He goes through hell, and his reward for it will shock the hell out of you. My jaw was open for a good five minutes when the climax resolved. The big reveal, done perfectly.

But enough about Ender. My favorite character is actually Colonel Graff, despite his time on stage being relatively limited. He is resolved to make Ender the best commander he can, but is tortured by it at the same time. He does cruel things, for the sake of humanity, and his personal battles are portrayed very well.

The prose is nothing special, but not flawed in any way. The dialogue is fantastic, especially when the children use their own slang amongst each other.

Some people might be put off by the graphic level of violence portrayed, especially because it is a novel marketed towards teens, and is between children; really though, its no worse than a lot of the stuff on television nowadays.

Overall, excellent book. Despite being published in the mid-eighties, none of the science seems particulately outdated (apart from the "nets"), and there are no over-the-top space-opera-esque scenarios that would make an over-analytical cosmologist or physicist shake their heads in disbelief.

Those awards are well deserved.

Rating: Awesome

The Lord of the Rings

This will not be a typical review; most people should be familiar with the basic premise of the story by now, due to, if not the book, someone talking/arguing about the book, or the films, or someone talking/arguing about the films.

I have read The Lord of the Rings several times over the years, my first time being when I was twelve—about a year before the first of the film trilogy came out in theater. I know it is a cliché by now, but this is the book that beat, bound, and dragged me into the fantasy fandom. I fell in love with the world, Sam, the language, Sam, the larger-than-life characters, and Sam. I tore through the entire thousand-page epic in three days, staying up reading long past midnight, finishing each volume with only enough time to get one or two hours of sleep before catching the bus to school. I'd suffer through the hours heavy-lidded and half-dead, but be perfectly lucid by the time I got home, fueled by eager anticipation of the next chapter.

I read it again after watching the first of Peter Jackson's films. And then again after the second film. And yet again after the third film.

But it's been awhile since then.

I've been noticing recently a lot of negative comments about the novel; about how it is boring, or about how Tolkien's prose sucks, or about some recent authors are better than he. And I thought, “Well now, that can't be right. Are they really reading the same book that I did?”

And so I set about to reading it again.

And unlike the first, second, or third times, this read took me quite a long while. Nearly a month, in fact. At first, that might not sound very promising; that maybe I realized how boring his prose is, or couldn't understand the characters, or some other negative thing. But the truth isn't anything like that. The real reason it took me so long to read it is this: I am older.

An older person (or rather, a wiser person) will read it the way it was meant to be read; and it was meant to be read aloud. This is a story that needs to be told. The way in which it is written is akin to an ancient myth, the kind of story passed down orally from person to person. Grandiosity, events and people larger-than-life—these are things conducive to story-telling.

The downside to this is reading aloud takes longer than silently, and the voice tires. And so I had to take long breaks often. But it was entirely worth it.

When you read the languages of the Elves, Dwarves, Rohirrim, and Men of Gondor, and sing the songs as well, it breathes more life to the world. When you speak the way the characters speak, you (or at least I) subconsciously give each of them their own unique voice. When you describe unmuted the landscapes, and the cities, and the structures, the fact that this is a world of great wonder, masterfully crafted in one man's mind, becomes all the more apparent, and the mental images become all the more vivid. There is magic here, and glory, and power, and beauty, and love, all in the words. The words become music, and music is meant to be heard.

At least, this is what I experienced.

It is not boring. It is not badly written. The characters are not flat. If this is what you take from The Lord of the Rings, a particular internet meme is suitable to quote here: “You're doing it wrong.”

This story is a tribute to the old ways. A world that once was, now lost: a theme that is carried throughout the entire novel.

If you are a naysayer, I urge you to give it one more shot. Don't treat it like your average page-turner. Read it aloud, slowly, passionately, chapter by chapter. Make love to it (metaphorically of course; I don't condone sex with inanimate objects), and it will make love to you (also metaphorically).

Rating: Awesome