TAI-PAN BY JAMES CLAVELL

Tai-Pan by James Clavell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

”’Joss’ was a Chinese word that meant Luck and Fate and God and the devil combined.”


Hong Kong was just a cluster of fishing villages when the English traders arrived in 1841. The port quickly proved a safe haven to ships even impervious to Typhoons.

Dirk Lochlin Struan is a Scotsman who has spent a good part of his adult life in the orient amassing a fleet of clipper ships and a great fortune. He is called the Tai-Pan. He has made his own joss by being smarter, more ruthless, accumulating more wealth, and being stronger than his opponents. He calls his company The Noble House. The company is built along clan lines with loyalty being first among the most weighted characteristics for joining his empire, and by association, those selected, will also benefiting from his protection. Before anyone has a chance to show loyalty they have to prove something more than just competence. They have to be really good at something that is useful, something that will strengthen “the clan”. Struan is tough on people, but that comes from the struggles he experienced reaching the top of the mountain. He knows how merciless life can be and his primary goal every day is to protect what is his and the people he cares about.

He has a nemesis, Tyler Brock, who is as tough and unyielding as Struan. A man who has been equally successful, but always seems to come up second best. He simply isn’t as smart as the Tai-Pan, but he covets the honorary title. They hate and despise each other, but more than once as the plot unfolds they find themselves allied in a common cause. They are certainly nay gentlemen, but they do honor their own version of a gentlemanly code.

Dirk’s son Cullum comes out from London and is appalled to discover the man his father has become. He is rather harsh on Struan, long before he understands the circumstances that have shaped his father. Whatever rules Cullum may believe exist in England dinna necessarily translate to the rough and ready wilds of empire building.

”You used to be God to me. But in the thirty days I’ve been here I’ve come to know you for what you are. Killer. Murderer. Pirate. Opium smuggler. Adulterer. You buy and sell people. You’ve sired bastards and you’re proud of them and your name stinks in the nostrils of decent people.”

Well, Cullum, *sigh*, you have very set opinions for someone who hasn’t even walked a mile beside him yet, and certainly not a step in the very boots that built this empire . Struam is undeterred by Cullum’s assessment and plans to have him take over as the Tai-Pan when he decides to return to England to run for parliament. He will mold the lad whether the lad knows it or not.

Run for parliament you say? With a Chinese mistress and a slew of bastards in tow?

There are better options, half a dozen at least of the women/girls he knows who would help to open more doors for him, but there is just one damn problem...HE...LOVES...May-May. He will marry her and let them be damned if they dinna like it. He has never met a problem that a cascade of silver won’t fix, by God!


Joan Chen plays May-May in the 1986 film version.

May-May is breathtakingly lovely, descended from an honorable and rich family who made the decision to sell her to the Tai-Pan to have someone they trust close to the source of English power. This is 1841 and the first Opium War is in full flower. Concessions to the barbarians will have to be made (Hong Kong) and Struan, the devil man, has the ear of the English politician Longstaff or as the Chinese refer to him Odious Penis.

There is the rather odd, but refreshing character of Aristotle Quance, a man almost completely depended on the traders, mostly Struan, for his support. He is a painter, preferably of beautiful young women. He is graced with a silver tongue capable of talking them out of more clothes than they are...at first...willing to part with. He has a wife who hounds him from one whorehouse to the next as he tries to stay one step ahead of her iron grip. He might be the happiest person in this new world that is about to be carved out of the coast of China.

”And he realized he was witnessing the end of an era, he was also part of a new one. Now he had new history to eyewitness and record. New faces to draw. New ships to paint. A new city to perpetuate. And new girls to flirt with and new bottoms to pinch.”

Well if he can keep one step ahead of the wife, by God!

James Clavell explores the politics of the time. He brings to light the manipulations that occur behind locked doors over a glass or two of good port or brandy with results that benefit the few over the many. Profits are king and certainly the opium and tea trade were important to the British economy. The insistence of the Chinese in receiving only silver bullion for tea actually destabilizes the British economy as silver becomes scarce and afternoon tea became jeopardized. There have been grain riots, tax riots, draft riots, religious riots, but no one wants to see a British TEA riot, by God!

We see the rise of the Triads during this time as well, and in this story, Gordon Chen, a bastard of Struan with his head for intrigue, is the head of the movement. He is a man trapped between cultures, not fully accepted or rejected by either one. Chen is torn between his loyalty to his people and his loyalty to Struan. He plans for any contingencies and shows resilience in the face of a series of setbacks beyond his control.

This is an epic tale, with Shakespearean romance, typhoons, love and malaria, incest, discord between fathers and sons, the building of a city of trade, lust, complicated characters with tangled relationships, and an exploration of the power of possession. These larger than life figures are battling on a small and large scale for what is theirs, but also for what will be their childrens and their children’s children. I was very impressed with the depth of the plot, the deftness with which Clavell pulled me into the story, and the breadth and scope he was willing to manfully shoulder to bring these characters to life.


James Clavell based Dirk Struan on William Jardine who built the "Princely House" of Jardine, Matheson & Co of Hong Kong.

Dirk Struan peers at the world through jaded eyes, but clearly and astutely. He sometimes knows the intentions of a person before they even know it themselves. He is harsh, but capable of great tenderness. He is unpredictable, but only seemingly so, because he gauges every situation by much more than just what is before him. His projections become truths adding a mystical quality to his persona. He devours information and knows how to use it. While others sleep he studies. He fixes what is broke before it snaps. As unearthly as it seems to those who know him it is no mystery to me why he is:

the Tai-Pan.


”Man is born to die, Father. I just try to protect mysel’ and mine as best I know how and to choose the time of my dying, that’s all.”

A very interesting link that explains the history of this time period. It was so kindly supplied by Margitte. http://www.china-mike.com/china-touri...

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Cell Everlasting

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

2010

Reviewed by Diane K.M.

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I am late to this book party, but let me explain.

I get twitchy about medical stuff. Earlier this year I had to abandon Rosemary Mahoney's book about the blind because it described an eye surgery. I have never been able to finish Dr. Atul Gawande's "Complications" because of its description of medical procedures. It was a small miracle that I was able to finish the first "Call the Midwife" book, because I hate childbirth scenes. 

When this Henrietta Lacks book started tearing up the bestseller lists a few years ago, I read a few reviews and thought, "Yeah, that can wait."

But I started a new library job recently, and the Lacks book was chosen as a Common Read for the campus. And guess who was volun-told to help lead upcoming book discussions? (Hint: it's me.)

So, with a deep sigh, I started reading. And then, oh happy day, my fears turned out to be unfounded because I ended up really liking the story. Rebecca Skloot wrote that she first heard about Henrietta Lacks and her immortal cells in a community college biology class. Lacks was a black woman who died in 1951 from cervical cancer. Before she died, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital took samples of her tumor and put them in a petri dish. A key part of this story is that Henrietta did not know her tissue had been taken, and doctors did not tell her family, either.

"Scientists had been trying to keep human cells alive in culture for decades, but they all eventually died. Henrietta's were different: they reproduced an entire generation every twenty-four hours, and they never stopped. They became the first immortal cells ever grown in a laboratory."

Henrietta's cells, nicknamed HeLa, were given to scientists and researchers around the world, and they helped develop drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, Parkinson's disease, and they helped with innumerable other medical studies over the decades. At first, the cells were given for free, but some companies were set up to sell vials of HeLa, which became a lucrative enterprise. 

"The reason Henrietta's cells were so precious was because they allowed scientists to perform experiments that would have been impossible with a living human. They cut HeLa cells apart and exposed them to endless toxins, radiation, and infections. They bombarded them with drugs, hoping to find one that would kill malignant cells without destroying normal ones. They studied immune suppression and cancer growth by injecting HeLa cells into immune-compromise rats, which developed malignant tumors much like Henrietta's. If the cells died in the process, it didn't matter -- scientists could just go back to their eternally growing HeLa stock and start over again."

Unfortunately, the Lacks family did not know about any of this until several decades after Henrietta had died, and some relatives became very upset and felt betrayed by the doctors at Hopkins. A few threatened to sue the hospital, but never did.

There is a lot of biology and medical discussion in this book, but Skloot also tried to learn more about Henrietta's life, and she was able to interview Lacks' relatives and children. Additionally, there is some good discussion on the ethics of taking tissue samples from patients without their consent, and on the problem of racism in health care.

"I always have thought it was strange, if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can't afford to see no doctors? Don't make no sense. People got rich off my mother without us even known about them takin her cells now we don't get a dime. I used to get so mad about that to where it made me sick and I had to take pills. But I don't got it in me no more to fight. I just want to know who my mother was." -- Deborath Lacks, who was very young when her mother died

My favorite parts of the book were the stories about Henrietta and the Lacks family, and the discussions on race and ethics in health care. 

"There's no indication that Henrietta questioned [her doctor]; like most patients in the 1950s, she deferred to anything her doctors said. This was a time when 'benevolent deception' was a common practice -- doctors often withheld even the most fundamental information from their patients, sometimes not giving them any diagnosis at all. They believed it was best not to confuse or upset patients with frightening terms they might not understand, like cancer. Doctors knew best, and most patients didn't question that. Especially black patients in public wards. This was 1951 in Baltimore, segregation was law, and it was understood that black people didn't question white people's professional judgment. Many black patients were just glad to be getting treatment, since discrimination in hospitals was widespread."

Skloot worked on the book for more than a decade, paying for research trips with student loans and credit card debt. I would highly recommend the book to anyone interested in medical ethics, biology, or just some good investigative reporting. 

Favorite quote:
"Like I'm always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can't do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different." -- Deborah Lacks

King Khan

King Khan by Harry Connolly
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

When a mysterious arrow bearing a message in his handwriting instructs Professor Khan to go to Hollywood, he finds that a friend of his has committed suicide and his newest invention is missing...

King Khan is the fourth book in the Spirit of the Century series by Evil Hat. It's also my least favorite book in the series. I'll cover that bit later.

Professor Khan, with rich fop Bertie Blinkersly in tow, leaves London behind for Hollywood to solve the mysteries surrounding a friend's death and winds up in a battle for his last invention, the Improbability Bow. Helping him and Bertie Wooster, I mean Bertie Blinkersly, are the inventor's daughter Sylvia, a diminutive cop named Cross, and a luchador named the Blue Hornet. Sound good?

Meh. It was okay and had some good moments but it was nothing spectacular. It may have been that the previous books in the series were just too much fun and raised the bar too high. After the two Dinocalypse books and Khan of Mars, the Hollywood setting and the threat just didn't do it for me. Hell, you'd have to do a lot to top psychic dinosaurs and Martian apes.

Don't get me wrong. King Khan isn't a bad book. There are a lot of twists and lots of pulp action. There are also hopping zombies and a fair amount of humor, much of it due to the Bertie Wooster-inspired Bertie Blinkersly. It just had some might big shoes to fill after it's predecessors.

The Blue Hornet greatly added to my enjoyment of the book. It reminded me of the crappy movies they used to make starring El Santo, Mil Mascaras, Blue Demon, and other luchadors fighting werewolves and things.

The Blue Hornet and the possessed Shirley Temple were enough to add a half star. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

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The Widening Gyre

The Widening Gyre by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When a state representative is getting blackmailed with a film of his wife having sex with another man, he hires Spenser to get to the bottom of things for him. But when Spenser learns the man's identity, he's bitten off more than he can chew, especially with him preoccupied with Susan Silverman being out of town.

I was needing a quick read before taking on another fantasy read and The Widening Gyre fit the bill. It got the job done.

The book started slow, with Spenser moping because Susan Silverman was out of town. Even when Susan's not around, she manages to suck the life out of things. Anyway, Spenser gets on a security detail for a state representative with an alcoholic wife and things spin out from there.

Spenser did some great detective work when he wasn't pining for Susan in this one, gradually piecing together the identity of the blackmailer and then stirring up a hornet's nest when he finds out who the man's father is. There isn't a whole lot of action in this one but when it comes, Parker makes it count.

So yeah, I only gave this a three despite enjoying the shit out of parts of it. Firstly, there was very little Hawk. Secondly, there was way too much of Spenser and Susan discussing their relationship when they finally crossed paths again halfway through the book. Are there people out there who actually enjoy Susan Silverman having such a large role in the books?

Despite the abundance of Susan and lack of Hawk, I still enjoyed this book for the most part. 3.5 out of 5.

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An Entertaining Tale with Two Very Quirky Charachters

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Four out of five stars


Precocious doesn’t begin to describe fourteen-and-a-half year-old Serendipity Dahlquist who’s wise well beyond her years. Neither of her parents is in the picture and so Serendipity, or Sarah, lives in L.A. with her grandmother, a famous day-time television soap opera star. Sarah’s treasured companion is her dog, Groucho, a bullterrier that was a gift from Sarah’s late father thirteen years earlier, before he went off to meet his fate in the Vietnam War.

Sarah is devastated when she returns home one afternoon to find the front door standing open and Groucho gone. She appeals to the police for help to no avail, but a police detective refers her to a P.I. named Leo “the Bloodhound” Bloodworth. Sarah straps on her roller balls and skates over to Bloodworth’s office, but Bloodworth has no tolerance for kids and even less interest in the case of the missing Groucho. When Sarah refuses to take no for an answer, Bloodworth’s office mate, a P.I. named Roy Kaspar, offers to help. He takes a retainer from Sarah, drives her home and looks over the scene. He then promises to report back in three days.

When Kaspar fails to report as promised, Sarah tracks down Bloodworth is a sleazy bar and informs him that she’s just been to his office which has been ransacked. After assessing the damage in the office, the two then go in search of Kaspar and find him murdered. Bloodworth didn’t like Kaspar very much, but Sarah insists that “When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t matter if he liked him or not, he’s supposed to do something about it.” The Bloodhound tells Sarah that she’s been watching too many old movies and that he’s perfectly content to let the cops handle the investigation.

In fairly short order, though, it turns out that Kaspar’s murder and the disappearance of Groucho are almost certainly related and for reasons way too complicated to explain, Sarah and Bloodworth wind up joined at the hip, on the road, and up to their necks in trouble with a particularly vicious band of Mexican criminals. It’s a very entertaining romp, principally because Lochte has created in Sarah and Bloodworth two unique, intriguing and very amusing characters. The dialogue between them is often hilarious.

The story is told through their alternating views so that the reader sees each development through the eyes of both Sarah and Bloodworth, and the end result is a great deal of fun. This book was first published in 1985, and was nominated for virtually all of the major crime fiction awards. The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association named it one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Twentieth Century, but it has been out of print and largely unavailable for a number of years. Happily, it has just been re-released in a new trade paperback edition as well as in an e-book edition and so it’s now available to an entirely new audience of readers who are sure to enjoy it as much as the original audience did.

D&D Hilarity

Critical Failures by Robert Bevan
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In Critical Failures a group of friends meet for a little role playing, inviting a stranger to play with them. The stranger turns out to be strange indeed. Soon their fantasy game becomes very real.

This is almost the exact same premise as the '80s tv show Dungeons & Dragons, wherein some kids get swooped up into the game and must fend for their lives. More originality would've been nice, but as long as there's excitement and fun in the adventure that's all that matters. Oh, I suppose that since this is a comedy, it's also important that this be funny. Let's see how it pans out...

The Adventure
Critical Failures could've been a little more adventurous. The characters didn't get very far and spent much of their time jailed. Still, Bevan squeezed in some low-level fighting in keeping with the way a good old D&D game campaign usually begins. He also kept up the action about as much as he could. After all, wimpy beginners can't be slaying dragons and conquering hordes. There's lots of fun for old school gamers. I got a few nostalgic chuckles as Bevan walked me down memory lane. As a writer he smartly added in a couple characters who were new to it all, so that things could be explained and elementary mistakes could be made that might heighten the tension or hilarity, which brings me to...

The Humor
I'm a 12 year-old-boy trapped in a middle-aged man's body [insert "insert" jokes here], so I enjoyed the potty humor...well, at least to a point. I need variety too and there's too much reliance on "your mom" jokes to provide comic relief. It's no relief if it's repeated so often that the humor is drained out of it. But to be fair, this book is meant to be representative of some immature, socially abhorrent young men playing a role playing game. When I played D&D, this is pretty much what it was like. It weren't pretty.

Overall, Bevan did a decent job combining adventure and humor in this fantasy setting. Slaying things and making it funny can't be easy, so I give him props for that.

As a novel for fans of fantasy, who are non-role-players, well, I guess they'd find some enjoyment in Critical Failures. However, all others should steer clear of this one. It's not meant for you, and the author's awkward phrasings and occasionally stilted dialogue would only grate upon your brain, especially if it wasn't receiving the influx of pleasure the rest of us are getting from this otherwise admirable attempt at a mock up of the role playing experience.


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The Gateway Drug to Hardcore Fantasy Gaming

Dungeons and Dragons Basic Rules by Tom Moldvay
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

*** HAPPY 40th BIRTHDAY D&D!!! ***
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! I was given the "basic set" aka "the red box set" for my 9th birthday and I couldn't have been happier!

It was the early 80s and Dungeons and Dragons was the game everyone was talking about, for better or worse. My two older cousins, who I idolized, already owned it and had been talking up big-time this crazy new kind of game ("So it's not a board game? How does that work?" I remember asking) where you could be a wizard, warrior, elf, halfling ("What's a halfling?"..."A hobbit."..."Oh."), dwarf, thief, cleric ("What's a cleric?"..."It's like a priest."..."Oh," I said, still not really understanding why a priest would be called a cleric and why in their right minds anyone would waste their time playing one.) and once you created this character you then went adventuring off to some old ruined castle where you would find monsters in the dungeon which you'd kill and take their treasure. Brilliant! Sign me up!

Well, easier said than done. After the birthday party was over, I opened the box, admired the funny shaped dice, flipped through the pre-made accompanying adventure The Keep on the Borderlands and then I turned to the actual rulebook...and then over the next few hours I steadily turned from pink to blue to purple and red with rage and frustration that I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Soon after followed desperation as I feared I would never figure it out and thus would never be able to play the game.

The issue with novices learning how to play D&D back then was that the available version at the time did not walk you through a how-to play the game introduction. There were no step-by-step instructions like a board game has. No, when you flipped the Basic rulebook open it essentially said, this is what's in this book, now go create a character! I guess I was stubborn. I wanted a full explanation of the game from start to finish. Hahahaha! What I didn't realize was that creating a character was the start of the game and that - unless that character died - there was no end to the game. Honestly, I was too young and ignorant of many of the ideas and concepts one needed to understand D&D. Ah, but in swept mom (not dad, who has never understood fiction/fantasy in any form...well, except for maybe porn) to save the day! She got me over the hump on a few stumpers and off I went! Within a short while I was at my cousin's and we were killing goblins and wererats in "The Haunted Keep" mini-module (a pre-made adventure) that came with the rule book.

And thus began years worth of fun and celibacy through out my teens!

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Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone

FULL FATHOM FIVE
Max Gladstone
Tor Books 2014

 Reviewed by carol
 5/5 stars






Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them—Ding-dong, bell.
–Ariel’s Song, from  The Tempest, Shakespeare

Deep breath: a dive into the water, immersed in something alien, and yet familiar.  This is the best I can summarize Full Fathom Five, an inventive fantasy that had me riveted, fighting the need to finish the story so that I could just stay submerged a little longer.

It begins with a professional priest, Kai, diving into an infinite pool in an attempt to rescue a drowning idol. Or maybe she’s a goddess–Kai is no longer sure–perhaps the division between her work with idols and the forbidden worship of gods isn’t as clear as she thought. Her superior, Jace, and friend, Mara, witnessed Kai’s jump and do not believe Kai heard the idol speak. Kai’s injuries, both spiritual and physical, result in a prolonged convalescence and the loss of her prior position in the order.
In another part of the island, Izza, a fifteen year-old refugee and street thief, is refusing to take lead of her rag-tag group of urchins. The oldest child usually becomes the ‘priest’ of the group, leading and providing solace through stories about their god, but Izza doesn’t want the responsibility.  In a moment of compassion, Izza rescues a foreigner, clearly a representative of a god, and thus forbidden. The island Kavekana is one of the few places in the world that has maintained its independence in a world beholden to the power of the gods or the Death Kings. Like a fantasy Switzerland, religious neutrality has financial and power implications; their neutrality has allowed them to sell idols and priests who act as religious savings accounts, allowing owners from other countries to protect, hide, or leverage assets. And, like Switzerland, there will come a time when circumstance will force the island to declare itself, no matter how much the island priests want to maintain independence. 

“‘Okay,’ Cat said. She stood and offered Izza a hand up, which Izza didn’t take. ‘It’s not all bad,’ she said as they walked back into the warehouse together. ‘Being a priestess, I mean.’ ‘No,’ Izza admitted. ‘But the congregation can be a pain.’“

Gladstone’s sophisticated writing is one of the pleasures of the book. On the second time through, reading through the scenes at the bar with the poetry slam, I realized that Gladstone reminds me of Zelazny, able to capture a depth of emotional detail without purple prose. Sometimes, it is a little like reading poetry: sentences truncated, occasionally extended; he uses language like an song, conveying meaning with format as much as word:


“Before the cable car, before pilgrims travels from around the globe to Kavekana, before the gods sailed off to fight the world’s wars, priests had only climbed the mountain on holy days: a journey of fear and trembling that began with this walk down a narrow dirt path through dense forest that smelled of motherhood and rot.“

Characterization was done well, particularly considering there was a range of character age and experience levels. Characters were people, not tropes, most clearly demonstrated in the ambivalence and sympathy for the characters working against the leads. I enjoyed  Gladstone’s  characterization of women in the story–they were well-rounded people, not sexualized props. It is also worth noting that one character is transgender, part of a larger idea of identity, and not mere inclusion for Serious Issues or tokenism. 

“Mapping her scars, she imagined her next trip to the beach, once she’d healed.
What happened to you? the boys and girls would say.
Myself, she thought, and showered, and gritted teeth rather than accept the pain.“

Narrative alternates between Kai and Izza, in a third person format. Each section tells the story, in basically linear fashion. The straightforward structure contrasts nicely with the sophistication of the world-building. There’s very little telling here; since the fantasy elements of gods and soul-coins contrast with the urban fantasy feel of tequila shots and poetry slams, it helps to have a linear narrative while the reader pieces the world around them.


Some reviews note plotting was slow; I’d disagree, arguing that the action-driven plot of many books and movies has left us with difficulty appreciating the slow build. Like going for a swim, I know there’s a gestalt experience at the end that will make plodding to the pool and jumping into the cold water worth it. The pleasure is in the warmth through exertion, the thoughts examined in silence, the deep breaths of air, the laughs, the weary muscles at the finish. On the other hand, while I had a a few suspicions where the plot was heading, Gladstone was still able to surprise me with his twists. He really is a clever writer; normally, I focus more character, avoiding thinking too hard about the world politics, but he slips major concepts like religious orders and power brokering in and all of a sudden, I understand the issue. The personal is political, and its a sharp writer who can make that clear in a book without long blocks of text which my eyes have a sloppy habit of skimming over (tl;dr, which I only recently learned stands for ‘too long, didn’t read.’). Somehow, there’s a balance between the smalls steps our characters take as they set down the path to fundamental change, giving a greater appreciation for the struggle and betrayals.


This is the third book in ‘The Craft Sequence.’ Gladstone is doing extremely interesting things with this series, essentially creating each book as a stand-alone story. To date, the books have been set in different areas of his world. In the case of Full Fathom Five, I’d recommend Three Parts Dead (review here) be read first, as historical references that play a role in this book are best explained there, along with the reappearance of three characters, one or two who are farther in their own development arcs. It isn’t strictly necessary, but you’ll catch the deeper currents that way. If you are a fantasy fan, particularly of Zelazny’s mesh of inventiveness and language, or Martha Wells’ imaginative world-building, or Liz Williams’ Detective Chen melding divine, urban and fantasy worlds, I strongly suggest you check The Craft Sequence out.


cross posted at my blog:  http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/full-fathom-five-by-max-gladstone-or-full-of-fabulous/

Something Rich and Strange

Patricia A. McKillip
Spectra Books
Reviewed by Nancy
5 out of 5 stars

Summary


Illustrated by Brian Froud, this second volume of the Faerieland series by an award-winning fantasist spins a haunting tale of the sea with a decidedly modern twist. Here a couple living in a small seaside community in the Pacific Northwest are enchanted by magical folk who inhabit and protect the sea.




My Review


When I first read this book, it was a Saturday afternoon, drizzly and cool, and I was sitting in my favorite chair reading. After I was done, I had such an overwhelming urge to drive to the beach. So I did. It was pouring, and the beach was soggy and desolate. I loved the smell of the turbulent ocean and wanted to reach the "bottom of the stairway into the sea" and discover all its mysteries. So rarely does a book have this kind of power over me. It was beautiful, magical, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days.

I decided to revisit this story. This time, I did most of my reading while riding the bus or during the long commute to work. There was no way I could just get out and drive to the beach. While the imagery still enchanted me the second time around, I was more focused on the relationship between Megan and Jonah, their problems, the strong environmental message, and how the sea and its mysteries are slowly drawing them apart.

McKillip's magical prose and gorgeous style does not fail to enchant. This is a short story with gorgeous illustrations that can easily be read in one or two sittings.

If you love beaches, love the sea, and love dreamlike, magical stories, then I would highly recommend this. The beach will never look the same again.

KAFKA ON THE SHORE BY HARUKI MURAKAMI

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

”Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn.

Why?

Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.”

His given name isn’t Kafka Tamura, but when he decides to strike out on his own he gave himself a name that more properly fit the version of himself he wanted to become. Kafka means crow in Czech. A name of significance to an inner self. His father is a world famous sculptor, a man admired for the strength of emotion his creations inspire. He also brought his son into existence (no hocus pocus here...the old fashioned way) molding him as if he were inanimate clay, infusing him with imagination, and in the end like a demented soothsayer, warping him with an Oedipus curse.

Kill the father.
Sex the sister.
Seduce the mother.

”It’s all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. It’s just like Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there’s no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise.”

Kafka is fifteen, not going on sixteen, but barely fifteen. He is on a quest

to find himself.
to lose himself.
to escape himself.
to avoid the prophecy.

Like an arrow shot by a sure hand he lands at a private library managed by a beautiful woman named Miss Saeki. ”I look for the fifteen-year-old girl in her and find her right away. She’s hidden, asleep, like a 3-D painting in the forest of her heart. But if you look carefully you can spot her. My chest starts pounding again, like somebody’s hammering a long nail into the walls surrounding it.” Kafka feels a kinship with her that makes him wonder if she is his long lost mother. She has experienced tragedy, losing a lover when she was fifteen, and leaving behind a ghost of herself that becomes a haunting experience for Kafka.

”While they’re still alive, people can become ghosts.”

As a parallel story we follow the old man Nakata and his truck driving sidekick Hoshino. Nakata experienced something as a child during the war that left him unable to comprehend reality, but also opened up doorways in his mind to things that if they ever existed... in our minds... have long been lost.

He is crazy.
He is a prophet.
He can talk to cats.
He can understand stones.
He can open an umbrella and leeches or fish or lightening can fall from the sky.
He isn’t crazy.

Nakata searches for lost cats and discovers in the process that he has an arch nemesis in a cat killing phantom named Johnnie Walker. Johnnie turns cats into beautiful flutes and collects their heads in a similar fashion to big game hunters. After a confrontation Nakata finds himself with the need to leave which dovetails perfectly with his quest to find an entrance stone that opens up another world, another world where things have been left behind.

"You should start searching for the other half of your shadow.”

The connection between Nakata and Kafka are very strong. Their dreams mingle, a nemesis for one is a nemesis for the other. They may have different names, but they are one and the same. The quest for one of our heroes is contingent on the success of the other. If they are aware of each other it is buried under their own current perceptions of reality.

One of the more humorous moments is when Hoshino, once a perfectly sane normal human being, meets Colonel Sanders, not someone dressed as Colonel Sanders, but the finger lickin’ good, fried chicken magnet himself. Hoshino, after several days of trying to wrap his head around the eccentricities of his traveling companion, is in need of relaxation. As it turns out the Colonel can help him have the best time of his life.

He hooks him up with a prostitute, but not just any prostitute.

”The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.”

A philosophical prostitute with a special penchant for Hegel.

”Hegel believed that a person is not merely conscious of self and object as separate entities, but through the projection of the self via the mediation of the object is volitionally able to gain a deeper understanding of the self. All of which constitutes self-consciousness.”

“I dont’ know what the heck you’re talking about.”

“Well, think of what I’m doing to you right now. For me I’m the self, and you’re the object. For you, of course, it’s the exact opposite--you’re the self to you and I’m the object. And by exchanging self and object, we can project ourselves into the other and gain self-consciousness. Volitionally.”

“I still don’t get it, but it sure feels good.”

“That’s the whole idea.” the girl said.

I have a new appreciation for Hegel.

Kafka also meets a fantastic character named Oshima which I really can’t talk about without explaining him in detail, but by explaining him in detail would reveal a rather surprising moment in the book which I really want to preserve for those that haven’t read this book yet. Let’s just say he isn’t exactly who he seems, but he is exactly who he says he is. He proves to be the perfect friend for anyone, but for a dream questing fifteen year old runaway trying to escape an Oedipus Curse he is a steady rock to understand even those things beyond the scope of comprehension. He sees things for more than what they are.

Oshima explains to Kafka why he likes Schubert.

”That’s why I like to listen to Schubert while I’m driving. Like I said, it’s because all the performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I’m driving. I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of--that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally, I find that encouraging.”

It is hard for those of us who have based their whole life off of reason to keep from instantly dismissing the improbable, the impossible, the absurd, the preposterous, but you must if you are going to hang with Haruki Murakami. Although, I must say there is something very accessible about his writing style that makes the transition from reality to alternative reality to fantasy back to a new reality painless.

We all have mystical things happen to us. We rarely recognize it, most times we fill in what we don’t understand with something we can understand and in the process snap the threads of the extraordinary. I feel the lure of the unknown quite regularly. I feel the itch to leave everything and go someplace where no one knows my name. A place where maybe I can find the rest of my self, the lost selves each holding a fragment of the missing part of my shadow.


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