If you haven't figured it out by now, I have a tenacious proclivity for anything to do with magic, fantasy, and all things out of the ordinary. I've been meaning to get around to reading this series for quite a while, as is the usual for me and also the general aim of this blog in terms of getting through my extensive To Be Read pile. Maybe a better title for the blog would have been "Getting Around To It"... In any case, here I am, breaking one of the rules and purchasing another book on my Kindle. That doesn't count as buying books, yeah? If I'm not buying a physical book, and I certainly I never specified as to it's form, I can get away with this technicality, correct? Sure. On we go, with my half price book. Right. London. You know it. Capital city of England, been around a long time. England! The birth place of King Henry the Eighth, the dude with all those wives, see also: Harry Potter. In this series, the London we know is one of several. A template so to speak, of four lands that are connected by magic doorways. Each London holds it's similarities mostly in shape and name only, they differ in culture, names, language, the kind of people that inhabit them... Technically they aren't just different version of London but different worlds that magicians have the power to travel between, and any coincidental similarities are mostly coincidental within the confines of the story, in name and magic only, and in certain replications across the worlds. For example, there is a tavern in the same place in each London, with different names, different layouts and different surrounding streets, but for all intents and purposes it acts as an anchor point between the cities. In the history of magic London's, the magic in one city - Black London, starts to feed on the people instead of the people making use of it. This imbalance grows and grows until the magic takes over the city and the people within, mind, body and soul. The other Londons fear the threat of this wild magic and the doors between are sealed off. Each world lays stacked against the next in a string - Grey London (ours, with the least magic), Red London (a bountiful empire flush with celebrated magic, a whole culture of its own), White London (a starving, brutal place filled with desperation), and then Black London, which falls to the brutal origin of magic and is sealed away, Schrödingers London, if you will. No one knows what happens to the world itself or whether there are still people alive there... What is clear is that travel between the worlds remains possible but only in the hands of the Antari. Antari are specially talented people, they are not a race, one Antari does not beget another, rather they are born with the ability like an extra gene. They cannot open doors for everyone, but can step through and keep a communicative link between the rulers of each land. In our recognisable London, King George the Third is in power - we're talking 1800's here, just to set the tone appropriately. In Red London, a rich royal family thrives, and from here our Antari protagonist comes. Kell is a Traveller, a blood magician with power over the relevant elements - fire, earth, water, air, and bone. He's part of the royal family without being related, a topic that has only been mentioned very briefly half way through the book, and is one of two remaining Antari left across the worlds. We have no idea what his origin is at this stage but I'm sure it will be revealed at some point due to his potential love interest, a thief named Lila who has aspirations that take her away from the dull streets of Grey London and catapult her into potential freedom and certain danger. This story will be more blood thirsty than you think, less childish than you might imagine, and full of gentle plot twists that keep an easily bored reader engaged. At the end of the first book, well, I'd say you could potentially read these as stand alone novels, though there is enough to be getting on with considering there are another two books. I'll read them, because I want to know if Lila becomes a dang pirate, I'm all about that life. 7 out of 10 for non-ground breaking ideas but decent writing and an interesting diversion!
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Remember a few months ago when I crapped all over a really bad book that I suffered through? Which time, you ask? I'm talking about that poorly written steampunk monstrosity that I spent actual money on. Ugh. Well, this book is the antithesis to that horrible garbage. Just last weekend I was strolling through a bookshop with a friend, whining about how I wish that there was some sort of Steampunk novel that didn't completely suck because I love the idea, I love the potential, but it always turns out really cliche and overdone. Thank the heavens. Thank you, Elise Kova. You've blended high fantasy with just the right amount of steampunk and given me something that's interesting, enhanced by the world of steampunk themes in a way that makes sense and isn't completely pretentious. It was not an easy feat. Also the cover art on the first book is pretty cool. Thumbs up, girl, YOU DOIN' IT. Am I biased on this topic because I have a deep and everlasting love for high fantasy? It's possible. My thinking on this is that it works so well specifically because it's been blended gently into an already tried and tested formula. This author knows how to write a beautiful turn of phrase and keep the reader engaged with the classic ploy of writing each chapter from the point of view of different characters: but there's only four and it doesn't get annoyingly confusing. Rather we encounter a dynamic and refreshing view point as events unfold from both sides of the differing peoples. You're going to think it's one thing at first and then it flips quickly, several times. The lands of Nova and Loom are curious, delightfully imagined and full of magic. When I say lands though... two worlds essentially lay stacked, one on top of the other. A weather anomaly separates them, layers of cloud and extreme winds making them difficult to traverse and effectively ensuring each land is unable to visit the other. Nova above is the domain of Dragons. Humanoid creatures not entirely unlike the widely known mythical beast, though more on the side of half-human, half-dragon - coloured skin, fangs and claws, magical powers - but no wings. The ways in which their magic manifests are as varied as our human talents, one could say. Some have the power to see in complete darkness, some are exceptionally strong, in some vary rare cases they are able to stop time. There isn't much information as to the format of their lands, though we know they live above Gods Line, the weather bank that keeps them sequestered above, blocking most of the sunlight from shining on the lands of Loom. I honestly couldn't figure out by the end of the book if they were magically floating lands or some sort of technological marvel. The land of Loom is populated by a humanoid race called the Fenthri, stocky, thrifty people whose society values hard work, technological advance and freedom. A few Dragons fall to their deaths through Gods Line and realising that there is something above them, completely unexplored, they create machines to solve the mystery, giving themselves the power of flight. Along with this development they discover the magic Dragons possess can be transferred into their own bodies as long as they transplant the organ where the magic is. Yes. This is super fucked up. But so is the king of the Dragons stealing technology, combining it with magic and together with his superior resources... declares himself emperor of both lands. The worst part of this is that he scrambles their societal structure to the point that they have no freedom to move outside strictly enforced guidelines that hobble them technologically, biologically, societally... they're under the thumb totally, and after one truly sensational revolt they are quashed and broken. Enter The Wraith. This book starts with something I truly love - a good heist. I love an old fashioned one, guns blazing, Bonnie and Clyde style. I cant get enough of a medieval one either, yeahhh pick those poorly crafted padlocks, slip some chancy powders made from berries into your targets wine to put 'em out for a few hours while you rob 'em blind. I go nuts for a good con and I have no idea where this compulsion comes from. The Wraith very nearly makes it out with her prize, has an excellent escape plan, when the smallest detail trips her up... it's abundantly clear that she is not like the others of her race. Each twist and turn during the heist is surmounted by the grace of her enhancements. Night vision, speed, but also incredibly clever planning and ground work, she's done her research and displays a general disregard for others that makes her pretty ruthless. Yes, she's stubborn as hell and you know she's going to have that rubbed in her face somewhere along the line. But all of a sudden, she's losing ground trying to escape her pursuers and barrels around a corner to find a mostly unconscious dragon trying to heal himself. She immediately steps up to carve out his heart to sell on the Chimera black market when his eyes flick open and he stays her hand. From this point on it's power struggle central! He quickly separates himself from the dragons pursuing her, offering a boon in exchange for his life. It's clear she has barely the time to consider but errs on the side of a potential future leg up. The rest of the story I will leave to you to discover. It's an excellent go at steampunk fantasy without being so over the top that a reader gets weighed down in all the details. Kova weaves a rich story and leaves out the unneccessary garbage. I'll give this an 8.5 and will definitely be reading the next one. I'm not really a Stephen King fan, I don't get my kicks from horror films, jump scares and bump in the night creepy stuff, so horror or thriller novels have never really tempted me. If it has a vaguely fantasy, science fiction or supernatural theme I AM THERE, but you know, that's not King's normal shtick. I did discover many years ago, that King does actually write some loosely fantasy stuff. I read The Eyes Of The Dragon when I was in high school and found it's high fantasy style to be absolutely to my taste, especially when you throw in a bit of regicide via poisoning. It seems that the land in which that was set actually relates directly to the setting of The Dark Tower series. The Gunslinger is the first book of eight and having finished it I finally allowed myself to do a little bit of googling. SPOILERS ARE THE DEVIL. Looks like the series is supposed to be one long novel, and the revised version of The Gunslinger that I read was published in 2003, but the original seed began in 1982. This series is older than me. The seventh novel was published in 2004 and there's an upcoming film starring freakin' Idris Elba - though this is not an adaptation but rather a sequel to the series. I started reading the book purely because I wanted to see the movie and now I find myself back-pedaling. I am going to end up spoiling the series for myself because I have no idea what's happening... Oh well I guess some journeys are published in a time jump format and I'm fond of those... This is a real weird magic western, my dudes. A magical, post apocalyptic, sword swinging, gun toting, western magic land with mutants and crazy people and some evil voodoo-looking, mind control nonsense. In the opening chapters we are introduced to a character of calm tenacity, a strangely familiar landscape and a gentle disconnect from the world we know. Oh, this is set on Earth, sort of. Most of his experience of the world is a different reality, some completely different land, but many of the words and sayings come from the culture of Earth we recognise. Carefully added words separate the Gunslingers world from some sort of duality, incorporated slowly and with just enough context to guess at the meaning. What's most apparent from the outset is that this guy has already seen some serious shit in his lifetime. He's on a journey of pursuit that he doesn't fully understand, and we barely come to grasp by the end of the book. The instant mystery surrounding his motives make him interesting and puzzling. He's a lonely figure with no friends, all spoken of in the past tense, and no family, revealed slowly as distant and likely deceased. Everyone he knew seems to be gone and he doesn't allow himself to ruminate too much, though for the purposes of the narrative he does play out scenes in his memory to give a better picture of his background. I say background, but really, we know next to nothing about him most of the way through. The gunslinger himself makes observations that are dreamy and then by turns matter-of-fact, taciturn and flat. You could almost comment that he holds no illusions about his place in the world but I think, and I'm guessing here based on everything I've read about this series and the impression I get of the character so far, that maybe his entire reality is an illusion. One thing is for sure, I love King's writing chops. "The wind moaned, a witch with cancer in her belly. Every now and then a perverse downdraft would make the smoke whirl and puff toward him and he breathed some of it in. It built dreams in the same way that a small irritant may build a pearl in an oyster.The gunslinger occasionally moaned with the wind. The stars were as indifferent to this as they were to wars, crucifixions, resurrections." I think I'm becoming a fan of Stephen King. Maybe. The thing is, nothing really happens in this book. The whole thing is a tease. He's after the Man in Black, playing a game of cat and mouse where we aren't sure at any point who the cat is and who the mouse might be. Things happen, he goes places, he journeys, he fights, kills, is kind, drinks with locals and then guns them down when they're possessed by the magic of the Man in Black. He encounters a young man, takes him under his wing so to speak, and eventually he catches up with his quarry. This doesn't turn out to be a rage fueled battle of aggression, though sure, he's mad as hell... They sit down to "palaver". He sits down with him and basically has his third eye blitzed wide open magically, expanding his understanding of the universe vastly but also, not at all. It's a subtle novel one moment and obvious the next with it's duality. I think that's important now, given the fact that I've done some reading about the series. I really don't want to encounter spoilers and I think that's also a ridiculous expectation considering the movie is about to come out. I don't know how I'll fare reading the rest of them if I'm essentially skipping to the end. For sure a few books I've read this year were first installments and I feel zero desire to continue the series, but those weren't adapted into movies starring Idris Elba and Matt McConaughey. If you don't know who Idris Elba is, you've been hiding under a rock and if you don't think McConaughey is a great actor then you've not seen True Detective and you absolutely should. There's a lot of uncertainty in finishing this and knowing that there's another seven of them, plus a short story and an impending movie. Will I bother finishing them? Probably not this year, but yes I think I will. Apparently if you can get through the first book and still find that your interest is piqued, then everything gets a whole lot more interesting in book two - The Drawing Of The Three. Overall, weighing content, tone, writing, character development... I'd give this a 7.5, it's actually pretty good. If you're looking for a great series, well maybe I can get back to you once I've read the rest! Look at this movie poster though, ooooooh. Book 20 in 2017 "Doing magic was like finally finding the words you'd been groping for your whole life." This was the third book in a series I didn't want to end. I know that this is a problem of mine when it comes to reading habits, and that's why I've made a list this year of the various series I need to finish. There's only one left on my list after this one, but The Magicians may be one of my favorite book series I've ever read. I know I've featured it before and I don't want to give up parts of the story line because you should read it, seriously. Read the trilogy, it's excellent. It is the adult solution to the Harry Potter longings of youth and to the endless and renewing world of Narnia left behind for more grown up lands. It's a magical boarding school crossed with a mystic hidden universe crossed with horrific loss, murder and abuse. It's like Stephen King got a whiff of the most delightful sides of magic and put his little hands in there and scrambled everything up and it is SO GOOD. Lev Grossman knows how to write despicable characters, lovable characters, flawed characters and utterly pitiable characters, sometimes fixing this all within the one individual. Quentin Coldwater, the essential protagonist of the series if often seen to be a pathetic idiot, but his arc is an interesting one. In the final installment, Quentin is once again rudderless and uninspired and we're waiting to see what he makes from the ruins of his life, trying to figure out why he's even been giving the gift of magic in the first place. He does come to find that he has a particular magical discipline, though he's rather underwhelmed by it initially. "Give Quentin a broken object and in his hands it woke up, as if from an unhappy dream, and remembered that it had once been whole." One of the things I appreciate most about Grossmans' writing style is that I still have to look up words occasionally. There's nothing like being an avid reader and stretching your memory banks to see if you've heard the word before, or if you can figure out what it means. These days, unless I'm reading some science fiction and it's some sort of technological or engineering term I'm pretty good with comprehension, but Lev's got my back yo, he's here to help me learn. Tranche - this is a French word meaning slice or portion. "A long, heavy tranche of cloud lay above the horizon, utterly still, its outline etched finely against the sky, like the silhouette of a breaking wave cut out of paper." Sangfroid - composure or coolness shown in danger or trying circumstances. "He wanted to play the game the way she had, but he had nowhere near the necessary reserves of sarcasm and sangfroid, so he wound up being honest." Quentin is trying to reconcile his ideas of the world with reality, yet again. He's in a constant state of flux, confusion and readjusting his expectations throughout the series and setback after setback seems to befall the poor guy. Mostly he reacts how you'd expect any socially petrified, intelligent loner to react - he's all over the place, he lashes out or freezes completely, behaves like a total idiot and a coward. If you're a human, you can relate. The series essentially follows along his journey of his growth or lack thereof, but you don't realise how important and all encompassing this is until very close to the end. He's been working towards it, and yes, he does figure out his place in the universe, he does figure out what he's good at and what he wants from his life. What he doesn't figure out is what the hell magic is for. "I still have no idea what magic is for. Maybe you just have to decide for yourself. But you definitely have to decide. It's not for sitting on my ass, which I know because I've tried that." "It was funny about magic, how messy and imperfect it was. When people said something worked like magic they meant that it cost nothing and did exactly what you wanted it to. But even with the things it could do, it didn't always do them right, and it always, always cost something... It was inefficient. The system was never air tight, it always leaked. Magic was decided imperfect. But the funny thing was that if it were perfect, it wouldn't be so beautiful." I found his personal journey to figure out who the hell he is incredibly interesting. Mind you, I'm not going to tell you what happens and I'm not going to assure you that he figures everything out, but he does get to a point where he figures out enough. He does enough, he makes up for some of his mistakes and carves himself out a comfortable niche in his universe that makes sense. Quentin is not the most typical hero, and that is what makes him such a great character. His flaws don't immediately make him likable, he makes dumb mistakes and is a selfish, childish man with no idea just how much of a whiny bitch he is but when he realises, he does as much as he can to make up for it, to make things right and never make the same mistakes again. Such a realistic expression of humanity is what I appreciate in a book, I don't feel like I'm reading a total lie... Apart from you know, the magic thing, which isn't real... But the people, yes. Mate, 10 out of 10 - do read if you like fantasy, magic, a bit of sci-fi, and not being sheltered from the harshness of reality. Title: The Magicians Land (Book 3) Author: Lev Grossman Published: 2014 Genre: Fantasy/Young Adult Pages: 401 Finish Date: 10/07/2017 |
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