Book 47 - "All the stories we step into become part of our own story. Our pilgrimage."

Title: Gatty's Tale (2006)

Author: Kevin Crossley-Holland

Why this book?
My mother recommended it to me.

So what's it all about?
Gatty's a field-girl, working the lands of Sir John de Caldicot - until he and his wife notice her singing. The Lady's sister is going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and she wants Gatty as her second chambermaid, believing that the girl's voice will keep them safe on what is often a perilous journey.

The pilgrims are a mixed bunch - as well as Gatty there is her new mistress, Lady Gwynneth, a priest, a cook, a merchant, and others. They come from all walks of life, but Lady Gwynneth is determined that each and every member of the pilgrimage will contribute his or her best to the journey, and that if they pull together nothing will be able to go wrong.

Things go wrong, of course. Gatty gets lost in London on her very first day there. As the pilgrims start their journey they find themselves tricked and cheated; short of food; ill; in love; stuck at sea; and left behind in unknown territory. Yet they do, slowly, pull together, and Gatty becomes determined that one way or another, she and Lady Gwynneth will make it to the Holy Land.

The Good and the Bad
Gatty's Tale is, in fact, the fourth book in a series - or rather, a sequel to a trilogy. Crossley-Holland's Arthur trilogy follows a young lord, Arthur de Caldicot, who is given a seeing-stone through which he can see into a parallel world, where a boy who looks very much like him becomes Arthur of Round Table fame. I hadn't read the trilogy, but found that Gatty's Tale stood just fine on its own.

I started off not enjoying this book overly much, mostly because it took me until I was about halfway through the book to stop finding Gatty annoying long enough to actually start liking her. Her naivety was perhaps expected from a girl who had never been out of her own village before, but I still found it a little hard to believe that Gatty was so naive that she never realised that most of the men who approached her had intentions beyond those of just being friendly. Or perhaps it was realistic, for someone of her age and situation - but it was still incredibly frustrating to read about. However, once Gatty had finally learned about the harsh realities of the world, she somehow became more likeable - which sounds just awful, when I put it like that. I suppose it was more that she was forced to grow up, and her rather limited world-view was expanded into one that I could be sympathetic towards. She's also an incredibly strong character, right from the word 'go' - while she might have been a slow learner in that one respect, she was also adaptable, friendly, and had a stroppiness which was at times both charming and repelling.

In a way, the book seemed like a long, detailed plot device to get Gatty to a point where she could marry Arthur. She couldn't, obviously, as a peasant girl, but thanks to Lady Gwynneth leaving her title and lands to her (for no reason that made any real sense to me - surely there must have been someone she liked and trusted who she'd known a little longer than Gatty?). But to say that would be to downplay the vivid picture that Crossley-Holland draws of the almost impossible journey of pilgrims to the Holy Land in the Middle Ages, of the reactions of a large cross-section of people to foreign lands and customs who have never had to deal with such things before.

So should I read it or what?
Although I was dubious at first, I definitely enjoyed Gatty's Tale overall. It was nice to read a book set in this period and place which focused on pilgrims, rather than crusades. The books was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal in 2008, so you don't just have to take my word for it: it's a story worth reading.

Book 42 - Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter (no seriously that's its name)

It's coming up one year since I started blogging. I've got ten weeks to blog the remaining 11 books. However, being the incredibly over-excited young person I am, I'm already planning a new reading challenge for my second year blogging. It'll involve a quick and dirty site revamp, a banner (I've been meaning to put one up for ages) and a new approach to the books I read. So what's the challenge for year two? I guess you could say that it's a mystery...

Meanwhile, how about a little historical fantasy?


Title: Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter (2009)

Author: A. E. Moorat

Why this book?:
Because it's called Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter. I mean, really.

So what's it all about?
In a somewhat alternate reality, the night that Victoria learns that the King is dead and she will soon be the Queen of England (and, you know, everywhere else) she is attacked by a succubus, her life saved by the mysterious Maggie Smith. Maggie, it seems, has a very particular role: protect the incumbent ruler from demon attack, and make sure that the Devil never gets to put a finger in the ruling pie. Needless to say, this comes as something of a shock to Victoria.

Her thoughts are soon directed elsewhere - to politics, of course, and to her country that may still follow France's example and revolt; but also to her cousin, Albert, with whom she has fallen hopelessly in love. The good news is that Albert loves her, too: the bad news is that he is almost certainly the son of a demon. The really bad news is that Victoria's parents aren't exactly who she thought they were, either, and Victoria and Albert, for all their good intentions, might just be a match made in hell...

The Good and the Bad
One of my friends called this book "a waste of a perfectly good title" and I am forced to reluctantly agree. It starts out very strongly, with prostitute-eating zombies and Victoria fighting for her life, but afterwards, when Victoria is learning how to Queen, as it were, and angsting over Albert, my interest waned, and not even a kidnapping and a werewolf attack could bring it back. I think the problem is that Moorat tries too hard to mingle fact with fiction - a lot of the incidents in the story did actually happen, but few of them are really that relevant to the plot and as a result the story continually builds up tension and then loses it again. Or perhaps it's simply Moorat's style - there were several high-action scenes where I ended up skipping ahead rather than impatiently reading every word to see what happened.

The other problem is that I found the supernatural elements weren't quite concrete enough - there was religion mixed in to them, with the idea of the anti-Christ and the devil, the dead walking the Earth, but I didn't really buy it, not without the other side of the battle for good and evil being mentioned as well - Victoria, as the head of the Chruch of England, surely would have considered where God and Jesus were in this equation. I know, I know, I'm probably demanding too much from a story about Queen Victoria fighting demons but I think it may have helped the story to be less muddled (and more interesting) if the pseudo-religious bits were left out.

Having said that, the book does have the occasional good joke:

"Amazed, Quimby looked at her, then gazed at her internal organs quivering on the boards. She had the body of a weak and feeble woman, he thought, distractedly, but she had the heart and stomach of, well, a seemingly invincible zombie."

So should I read it or what?
Enough one-liners to cause a chuckle, but not enough to save the book's confusing plot or bad pacing. I wouldn't recommend.

Link of the day: One of my favourites show ever ever, Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

Book 27 - The reformed vampire support group, or: "Being stuck indoors with the flu watching daytime television, forever and ever"

Vampires! They are pretty popular at the moment. Everywhere you go (if by "everywhere" you mean "the Young Adult section of bookstores") there they are, hangin' out, all, "Look how cool I am, I could drink your blood if I wanted to but I'm too cool for that! PS: I'm pretty sexy, unlike you. God, when did you last even wash your hair?" I may be projecting slightly.

I have to admit that I've never really got the whole vampire thing. That's not just a reaction to the recent surge in popularity, either; when I was thirteen or so I remember my friends reading a vampire series by Christopher Pike and being equally bemused. There are some exceptions: I loved the over-the-top pseudo-horror mess that was the Underworld movie. I also love Terry Pratchett's satirical take on vampires, who are far more style than substance and prefer to give up drinking blood for other, cleaner ways of gaining power of people. But when I saw this book I was immediately interested, since Catherine Jinks is a pretty talented author.



Title: The Reformed Vampire Support Group (2009)

Author: Catherine Jinks

Why this book?
Jinks wrote the amazing Pagan Chronicles, which was my sole food intake for like a year. She also wrote the pretty excellent Witch Bank. I was interested to see her take on vampires!

So what's it all about anyway?
Nina writes a popular vampire series, about the beautiful Zadia Bloodstone, crime-fighter extraordinaire. Secretly, Nina wishes she was just like Zadia Bloodstone, but she knows that it really is just a story. Real vampires aren't beautiful and strong: they're fragile, weak-willed, constantly sick and anti-social. Nina knows, because for the past thirty years she's been a vampire. And being stuck as a teenager forever isn't exactly fun.

Nina doesn't drink blood, either (at least, not human blood). She, along with the other members of Father Ramon's Reformed Vampire Support Group, have found other methods of coping with their problems. No attacking humans, that's one of their rules. So is not telling anyone what they are, because humans can be a bit - well - scared of vampires (although vampires are for the most part far more scared of them). But one member of their group isn't quite as dedicated to the cause as the others. That becomes apparent when they find him staked to death in his home.

Nina knows there is a slayer out there. And the group is sure that if they just talk to him (or her), he'll come to understand that vampires pose no real threat. But things are never quite that simple, and Nina and her friends suddenly find themselves in a world of underground werewolf fighting, deranged slayers, and vampires who really do think they can act like Zadia Bloodstone...

The Good and the Bad
This book should have been great - but I just couldn't get into it. The characters weren't quite engaging enough, the plot wasn't quite interesting enough, the pacing wasn't quite right - all in all, just not quite good enough. I actually really liked Nina, but since she was narrating the book it lost a lot of its suspense - you know the whole time nothing terrible is going to happen to her, because she's still alive (well, undead) at the end of the story to tell it, and I just couldn't work up enough enthusiasm about the other characters to care if any of them exploded in the sun or were eaten by werewolves or what have you. A disappointing read, overall.

So, should I read it or what?
It's pretty hard to make a story about people who eat hamsters bland, but somehow Catherine Jinks managed it. Not recommended.

Later this week, probably: Teen detectives, 70's style!

Link of the day: Top Ten 15 Saved By the Bell moments, because the 90's haven't really died yet.

Book 24 - A Rose for the Anzac Boys, or: "There's nothing worse than ill-fitting socks!"

Title: A Rose for the Anzac Boys (2008)

Author: Jackie French

Why this book?
Because when I was at school we learned about the battle at Gallipoli every Anzac Day, every year, and that is pretty much the extent of my knowledge of WWI and thought I should correct that ASAP - through the power of fiction! Also, I like Jackie French - she wrote one of my favourite fantasy books, Tajore Arkle, as the wonderful but sad Hitler's Daughter.

What's it all about anyway?
When the war starts, New Zealander Midge is a long way from home - in a boarding school in England, in fact, where she is learning frightfully important things like deportment and posture. Her twin brother, Tim, has lied about his age and joined up, and she's really proud of him - he's fighting for King and country, and besides, everyone knows the war won't take that long to win.

Then Midge gets a telegraph saying Tim is missing, and everything changes for her. She knows he can't really be dead - he must've been taken prisoner by the Turks - but suddenly, the war seems real. She doesn't want to just sit around knitting socks and putting together trifles to send to the soldier. That's when Ethel, daughter of a nouveau riche grocer, has an idea - why don't they start a canteen for the soliders? They won't be in any danger themselves, and with her father's help they can provide food and a hot drink for soldier leaving for and returning from the battlefield. Along with their friend the Honourable Anne, they set out for France.

Midge works harder than she has ever worked in her life; one night the girls and their helpers actually serve over ten thousand soldiers. She sees countless soldiers returning missing arms and legs, some shellshocked, others already dead. When a friendly ambulance driver is taken off the job due to septic wounds in her hands, Midge offers to take her place; and from there, somehow, she manages to meet her aunt - a nurse - and is pressed into duty in the big hospital tents where there are too many injured and not enough supplies, and where even the chaplain has been pressed into duty as a surgeon.

And through it all, two things keep her going: one, the drive to find her brother; and the other, the memory of the sheepfarm back home, the place she yearns to be more than anywhere. She meets a young Aussie soldier, a fellow sheepfarmer who knows exactly how she feels, and who gives her a rose on her birthday...

As destructive and terrifying as the war is, Midge revels in the freedom her work has given her. Can things really ever go back to how they were before the war?

The Good and the Bad
This book was kind of amazing. It's not at all subtle - Midge's naivety, the snobbery of the army officers, the pure idiocy of many of the armies' campaigns, they're all painted with a thick brush. But the boldness of French's writing makes this a very readable story - it unfolds quickly, and you can get a grasp on what's going on very quickly. The descriptions of the wounded are stomach-churning at times, but accurate - French based them on descriptions in real letters and diaries.

Midge is a great character. She's not out to change the world; at the very bottom she simply wants to help her own family, but in her love for them lies the strength to do a great many things that a great many people wouldn't. Anne and Ethel are both equally strong, and I was sad to see them drift out of the story as Midge's choices took her further away from them. Anne in particular interested me; the daughter of a Duke who clearly had no interest in being married off to the first suitable suitor who came along, but who didn't seem to have any great argument against it, either; who rebelled in quiet ways, like making friends with Ethel, even as she tried her best to get rid of her pimples to please her mother.

What I did feel weakened the story was framing it against the recent Iraq War. French's message seemed to be that ultimately, it's the soldiers who get screwed over, no matter what the circumstances, and that's true enough! But to me modern wars are a world away from those that happened almost a century ago. We no longer have the belief that this war will be the last; we've long since lost that innocence. Besides - it seemed a little odd having a whole book about women in wartime, the invisible heroes, and ending with a message about male soldiers. I don't know; it really just seemed to take something away from the book, to me. Or perhaps it was my own feelings on the Iraq War that just jolted me out of the story.

So should I read this book or what?
I'd definitely recommend it, although I was pretty much sold as soon as I knew it was about a New Zealand girl in WWI. I'd actually recommend anything by Jackie French though - she really is great!

Link of the day: I mean to pimp this earlier, but since it's still going - check out the Agatha Christie Blog Tour! Awesome.

Book 22 - The Bride's Farewell, or: You can run (from your past) but you can't hide...

This week's excuse for belated blog posting: I have been off on a skiing holiday! I have returned with a father with a broken shoulder and a crush on my very nice and Scottish ski instructor. Also, with two more books under my belt! Not literally though, my belts don't stretch that far.



Title: The Bride's Farewell (2009)

Author: Meg Rosoff

Why this book?
Saw the review of it over at My Favourite Books and thought it sounded interesting, and needed something to read at the airport on Friday so when I saw it for sale I grabbed it.

What's it all about anyway?
Pell Ridley cares for the man she is supposed to marry, and she loves her brother and sisters, but she knows if she becomes Birdie's wife and stays in her village she has nothing to look forward to but drudgery and misery. The night before her wedding she decides to leave with her horse, Jack, and look for work, as far a way from home as she can get. Her plans are immediately interrupted when her younger brother Bean decides to join her, and it's not long before everything has gone horribly wrong and she's lost both her brother and her horse.

With no money, and no friends, Pell is nevertheless determined to find them again. Her gift with horses finds her both friends and enemies, as does her own unwillingness to compromise her own happiness for anyone else. Strangers both help and hinder her journey, sometimes giving her food and shelter, sometimes using her for their own profit. Eventually, the trail left by Jack and Bean runs cold, and Pell returns to her village, only to find that her escape had devastating consequences for the people she loved. She does her best to make things right, and fortune finally favours her in the shape of a an excellent job with an understanding boss - but she knows she can never be happy until she finds her brother and her horse, and no matter how much she's enjoying her new life, she can't forget the one she left behind...

The Good and the Bad
OK, so I made this book sound far more depressing than it actually is. I mean, it is depressing in the sense that it is pretty historically accurate, but it's not a wrist-slitting tragedy. It was a light read - I'd almost finished it even before my plane took off - but it's a gripping read, too, and Rosoff's language is simple but evocative.

What I really loved about The Bride's Farewell was that it had all the elements of a clichéd historical novel without ever becoming one. Pell is a talented, intelligent young woman in a world where women are supposed to be neither, but she's not fighting for women's rights - she accepts that that's the way things are. She's a strong, determined character, but she makes plenty of mistakes, is at times too naive and at others too untrusting. Without spoiling too much, I also liked that Pell's story was part of a bigger picture, one which the reader is allowed to see but Pell never realises (although I think perhaps Rosoff spelled things out to the reader so obviously that it was almost disappointing the Pell never figured out the truth).

I liked that the ending didn't tie everything up neatly with a great big ribbon. You're not sure if Pell is going to be happy with the life she's chosen, or how things are going to work out between her and her lover and her sister, but at the same time you do know that Pell is strong enough to handle whatever challenges life throws at her. In the end, this isn't really a book about finding happiness - it's a book about simply finding a place where you can be yourself, and be content.

So should I read this book or what?
If you're looking for something light without the saccharine toothache that is chick lit, this is the book for you!

I guess kind of related link of the day since Pell's father is a preacher: 10 Gruesome Bible Scenes Recreated in Lego! I can't even remember where I got this link from, but it is pretty lulzy.

Book 13 - Bloodhound

Not-even-slightly-related link of the day: Questionable Content. A webcomic about music, love, and tiny, cute, sociopathic robots. About as addictive as a soap opera and occasionally as dramatic as one, but usually pretty funny and always entertaining.

And now, to business. I only have one assignment left to write, and miraculously I actually had time over the weekend to read something that wasn't an article on online bibliographical exhibitions (don't ask). Ergo, today I can actually write up a post! Huzzah! PS: I know, I totally abuse the word "actually". Just think of it a charming personality quirk.



Title: Bloodhound (2009)

Author: Tamora Pierce

Why this book?
So when I was about thirteen all my friends started reading Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness quartet. It didn't sound that great to me - a girl disguising herself as a boy to be trained as a knight sounded kind of clichéd, and I just wasn't interested. But then I discovered First Test, about the first girl to train as a knight as a girl, which sounded much better. I read it, and was instantly hooked, to the point that I immediately read all the rest of her books set in the realm of Tortall - and then everything else she'd written that I could get my hands on, including the recent White Tiger miniseries she co-authored for Marvel (which is excellent, by the way, and I highly recommend it to you even if comics aren't your thing). In 2006 she published Terrier, the first in a series set 500 years before Song of the Lioness. Bloodhound is the second in the series.

What's it all about anyway?
In Terrier, Beka Cooper was a trainee member of the Provost's Guard (kind of like the police) With her ability to hear the dead speaking and an unquenchable thirst for justice, she helped to bring down the child-murdering 'Shadow Snake'. Now she's a proper Guardswoman - one who is unable to hold down a partner. She's not the only member of the Watch to have that problem, though; Achoo, a scent hound (think sniffer dog) is having the same problem - worse, in fact, since Achoo is being abused by her handler. Beka takes over, and together her and Achoo make a formidable pair.

Meanwhile, there's a big problem facing Tortall; someone is circulating fake silver coins, and in very large numbers. Coupled with a bad harvest, this sends food prices rocketing, and a riot breaks out when the price of bread doubles. The money forging is traced to the city of Port Caynn, and that's where Beka is sent to investigate - along with Achoo, of course, and Guardswoman Goodwin, one of Beka's mentors. Beka enjoys herself immensely in Port Caynn, especially when handsome young gambler Dale starts to flirt with her.

Beka's investigations are putting her in some serious danger - not just from Port Caynn's criminals, but from its Provost's Guards as well. Beka knows she's in trouble when she's being hunted by both the menacing Pearl Skinner and her own fellow Guardsmen - but she's not going to let a little thing like that stand in her way of discovering the truth...

The Good and the Bad
As usual, Pierce has written a fantastic adventure story - and as usual I couldn't put it down. One of the things I love about this series in particular is that because it's set in Tortall's 'past', Pierce is able to slip in hints of how society changes between Beka's time and the events of the Song of the Lioness. In Terrier, it's mentioned that the slave trade is losing popularity. This time, we see the beginnings of the religious movement which is the start of the end of Lady Knights.

In Pierce's previous Tortall series, each of the female heroes were pitted against various evils, but each book built up to the final showdown against a powerful male villain - Alanna had Duke Roger, Daine had Emperor Ozanne, and Kel had... that sorceror whose name I've forgotten. Each of these villains has power from their magical abilities and from their societal status. In Bloodhound, as in Terrier, we're given different types of villains - women, who have no social status, who've gained what power they've had entirely from their own actions. They make the perfect antagonists to Beka, who like them has no social status, and who also has got where she is almost entirely by her own actions.

Like Terrier, Bloodhound is written in 'diary' format - and I just don't think that Pierce manages it entirely convincingly. For instance, writing in her usual third-person limited narrative, it would be fine to have the narrative explain the the Black God's priests wore veils to cover their faces, but it feels unnatural for a character to be explaining something like that in their own diary. It's a well-known fact as far as Beka is concerned - why would she feel the need to explain it in a diary which presumably only she is ever going to see?

I also felt that the writing around Okha, a trans* character, was weak. Shortly after meeting Beka, Okha tells her her whole life story, and it felt very much like Pierce was telling Okha's life story - would someone who has been hurt as much as Okha have really be so quick to trust a stranger? It did feel more than a little shoehorned. At the same time, it meant that Okha was explicitly trans* - and a protagonist, too. That doesn't exactly happen very often in popular YA fantasy.

So should I read it or what?
I have pretty high expectations of Tamora Pierce and I wish she would return to her old narrative style - it suits her writing so much better! But I still enjoyed Bloodhound and I'm still going to go ahead and recommend it. I'm already looking forward to the next Beka Cooper book, Elkhound.

And for extra credit: Tamora Pierce's webpage

Book 4 - The Graveyard Book

I've got a bit of a love-hate relationship going on with Neil Gaiman. I mean, not on a personal level. I don't know the guy, although I've heard he's followed around by screaming hordes of young, lithe women who want to have his slightly geeky literary babies. (This might be a slight exaggeration.)

No, my problem with Gaiman is that he seems to have women issues - sometimes. My two favourite books of his are both children's books, Coraline and MirrorMask, and both have the kind of capable female protaganists that I hope to offer to my future godchildren as the people they should grow up to be like. But both stories also feature mother-figure antagonists - dark parodies of the girls' real mothers - intent on keeping the girls as their own daughter-possessions. Does Mr Gaiman have mother issues? I've had some professional training in this area (at least, I once sat in on my friend's Psych 101 class) and I'm going to go ahead and say yes.

Then there's the women in his books for adults. The three most memorable women in American Gods are a goddess who works as a prostitute, Shadow's wife, who dies will giving his best friend a BJ, and Bast, who spends most of her time as a cat, only turning into a woman at night... in order to sleep with Shadow. And let's not even talk about Gaiman's short story reimagining of Narnia (I shall never think of Aslan the same way again).

For those of you playing at home, that's a tick for "sex issues" and a tick for "mother issues". Freud would be having a field day.

Despite all that, I do enjoy Gaiman's work, and considering that The Graveyard Book was about a child-orphan-protagonist I was interested to see how he'd break from his usual Oedipal mould. I'm glad that I did.

Title: The Graveyard Book (2008)

Author: Neil Gaiman

Why this book?
I got if for Christmas!

What's it about, anyway?
A baby boy's entire family is slaughtered one night but the baby boy escapes by crawling to a nearby graveyard. The people of the graveyard - its ghosts, and other members of the, uh, non-living community - adopt the baby, naming him Nobody, or Bod, for short.

Bod has a surprisingly idyllic childhood, watched over by his adoptive ghost parents and his guardians, Silas and Miss Lupescu. He makes friends with the ghost-children, and with Scarlett Perkins, one of the first live people he has contact with. As he grows, however, he struggles with the fact that as someone who is not yet dead he can not really be part of the graveyard's world; but as a human boy growing up among ghosts he can never be quite normal to those who are still alive.

Bod's adoptive family try to shield him from the harsh realities of the world, but his own curiosity drives him to try to discover who killed his parents, and why. The words "thrilling conclusion" could definitely be used here, and entirely without irony.

The good and the bad:
For the most part, this book was what I've come to expect (and love!) from Gaiman - the story is both quirky and chilling, at times light-hearted and at times pretty dark. Bod's encounter with the Sleer, an ancient underground monster, had me on the edge of my seat, as did his imprisonment by a living store-owner. All the characters were well-drawn, from Bod himself to the schoolyard bully, to Scarlett and her mother, to the Man Jack, Bod's family's murderer. Liza Hempstock, the ghost of a witch who was not buried in consecrated ground, is a particular treat.

I raced through most of the book in an ohgodwhathappensnext manner, but its conclusion stuck out rather uncomfortably for me. Scarlett, horrified at the way Bod has dealt with his family's killer, has her memories taken from her so that she will not only not remember the events that have transpired, but will forget Bod himself. This is more about Bod than it is about Scarlett - he behaves in a way that the people of the graveyard would completely condone, but which the living find positively inhuman. But the idea of taking away someone's memories is, to me, too much like assault - they're pretty much stealing part of Scarlett's self by doing so.

Then again, it could just be that I still haven't recovered from that episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor does exactly the same thing. Just thinking about it still makes me mad. >:(

So should I read it or what?
While Coraline remains my favourite Gaiman book (and probably one of my all time favourite books, period) The Graveyard Book is a fantastic read, and I didn't notice Gaiman's Oedipal complex at all. This one is definitely with a read - but don't just take my word for it! The ALA awarded it the 2009 Newbury Award, past winners of which include Louis Sachar's Holes and the excellent Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine.

Books 1, 2 and 3 - the Earthsea Trilogy

To start off this blog with a bang I give you not one, not two, but three books! OK, they're all part of the same series, but they still totally count.

image from: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c0/c563.jpg

Title: A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)
The Tombs of Atuan (1971)
The Farthest Shore (1972)

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

Why this book?
Le Guin's trilogy (OK, it's not a trilogy any more, but it began as one!) is one of the foundation stones of modern fantasy. As an avid fantasy-reader, I thought it was about time to find out what exactly it was that makes her books so good.

What's it about, anyway?
A Wizard of Earthsea kicks of the series with the story of Duny, a young boy who accidentally discovers he has a strong gift for magic. When his talents exceed those of his aunt, the local witch, he becomes apprentice to Ogion, a wizard, and gets a new name - Sparrowhawk. Sparrowhawk proves to be very ambitious, and leaves his master for a school for wizards, where he only becomes more arrogant. Eventually, his arrogance lets loose a spirit on the world, and kills the school's Archmage. Sparrowhawk loses his confidence entirely, but gradually comes to realise that he will have to face the spirit if he is ever to be made whole again.

The second book, The Tombs of Atuan, focuses on a girl, Tenar, who is named at a young age to be the reincarnation of a high priestess. Her position is a lonely one, and as she is often trying to avoid or ignore the cruel plots and cold political manoerves of the other priestesses, she has little understanding of human kindness. When she meets Ged - Sparrowhawk - at first she plans to kill him, until her own interactions with him lead her to instead contemplate leaving her lonely existence.

Finally, The Farthest Shore sees Sparrowhawk as Archmage, now a wise and mature man, who must deal with a crisis facing the whole of Earthsea - that magic is beginning to fade. Assisted by a young prince, Arren, Sparrowhawk sets out on a journey to find the source of magic's destruction. Ged's journey from boy to young man is paralleled here by Arren's, while Sparrowhawk's role is more of a mentor - like that of Ogion's. Eventually, Sparrowhawk and Arren journey right into the land of the dead to defeat their foe.

The good and the bad:
Le Guin is nothing if not a compelling story teller. All three books are beautifully written, and her world-building is superb. Her three protagonists - Ged, Tenar and Arren - are well-drawn, and their character development throughout each book is gradual and believable.

However, while I enjoyed all three books they are not without their faults. My biggest problem is with Le Guin's treatment of women. Female characters are frequently conniving, devious, power-hungry; women magic-users are seen as inferior to men. While Ged and Arren both have their 'mentors', Tenar has no similar female role model, and it is not without Ged's help that she is able to escape her fate. Having said that, this gender power imbalance is something that Le Guin herself recognises. In Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea, which I have yet to read, she does her best to address the inequalities that exist in her world.

So should I read it or what?
If you're not into fantasy, then these books are definitely not for you. If you are, then I highly recommend both A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan. The Farthest Shore was less compelling - too similar in overall feeling to A Wizard of Earthsea for me to really enjoy it. But hey, if you read and love the first two, it's probably worth giving it a go!