Book Review: Ramayana – The Game of Life : Shattered Dreams by Shubha Vilas

The test that Shubha Vilas' Ramayana – The Game of Life : Shattered Dreams faces, is the sort of test faced by any author who attempts a retelling of any epic —  How to make the story and the characters appear fresh and new again? We readers, may not have read the Ramayana or the different versions of it, but we are familiar with the story and the protagonists. In such retellings, there's often little the author can do about the story itself (unless he is attempting a postmodern subversion), and has to find something that's "different" ... something that will give the readers a reason to pick up a yet another telling of an oft-told tale. Shubha Vilas' hook and bait for the readers is to attempt a "spiritual and motivational" series out of the Ramayana demonstrating "how the ancient epic holds immediate relevance to modern life."

Ramayana – The Game of Life : Shattered Dreams is the second book in this series and narrates the story of how and why Rama (with Sita and Laxman in tow) is exiled from Ayodhya. Vilas annotates his story-telling with numerous footnotes that distil the wisdom from the epic. Imagine for a moment, if you will, a bhajan or a kirtan singer. The kirtankar's (devotional singer's) performance includes not only singing but also story-telling that elaborates the themes, and oratory, that explicates the lessons from the song. Vilas, is attempting something on the lines of a kirtankar in his Ramayana – The Game of Life series. A kirtankar is successful and holds attention only if he can seamlessly weave together all the threads in his performance — singing, which is primary, and story-telling and oratory, that are secondary, but which enhance and add to the performance. If even one strand is off, the weave will not hold.

Vilas unfortunately is neither a good story-teller nor a good teacher. Vilas falls into the same trap as many of the Indian mythological television soaps. Everybody declaims in the grandiose and the characters (like the props) are uniformly cardboard. Sample what Vasistha, the spiritual guru of Rama's dynasty says when Dasaratha announces his decision to hand over the reins of Ayodhya to Rama: "...We are waiting to see Rama seated under the white umbrella, ride on the royal elephant across the streets of Ayodhya. In fact, we wish to see this lion of Ayodhya astride an elephant! Historic!"

A few pages earlier, Vilas awkwardly describes Dasaratha entering the courtroom thus: "A regular day would have Dasaratha saunter in, with a nod here and a nod there, savoring the adulation of his citizens as he trundled to his throne.... He walked briskly toward his throne like a horse with blinders."

Vilas' explanatory footnotes and interpolations too are heavy-handed. In an interpolation attempting to elucidate Rama's embodiment of the three virtues of magnificent talent, right attitude, and spotless character, the bit on Attitude goes like this: "Talent without the right attitude is like sweet rice without sugar. Talent brings one to the brink of the bridge to success and right attitude helps one cross it.
The symptom of the disease of vanity is the desire to be approached by others rather than to approach others; the sweet-smiling Rama vaccinated Himself from this disease and initiated discussions using the elixir of humility."

And Vilas keeps going on like that. This was only page 22 of the book and already I was finding Vilas' story-telling as well as his teaching heavy going. With no compulsions of having to take an exam at the end of it, I was tempted to skip Vilas' classroom and chuck this heavy-handed text book without proceeding further.

Vilas' characterizations too don't help. It would be too much to expect anything "novel" in the story-telling and to expect even an attempt at a postmodern play on the characters would be far-fetched, but the lack of any sort of nuance to any of the protagonists just makes the entire telling of the story fall flat. Rama and the others are placed on a pedestal. We only get a divine and perfect perspective on their character and their actions. Never is there any attempt to lend them any depth or problematize them.

Take Vilas' lack of anything interesting or novel in the story or the narration.  Then add to that his heavy handed teaching and prose bordering on the purple. The resultant book,  Ramayana – The Game of Life : Shattered Dreams, is something that is neither worth reading as a story nor as a textbook on wisdom. Vilas, idea of making a modern spiritual and motivational series out of the Ramayana is good, unfortunately he doesn't have the story-telling ability or the teaching nous to pull it off.

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Book Review: Tritcheon Hash by Sue Lange

About a millennium into the future, the universe is a lot different. Many generations ago from 3011, the year in which Sue Lange's Tritcheon Hash opens, women decide they have had enough of the testosterone fueled violence and messiness of males. They pack up and over the next decade or so, leave the men behind on the polluted and resource-depleted Earth and board starships to Coney Island. Coney Island is named after the amusement park-turned woman's penal colony-turned back to amusement park on Earth. Coney Island, light years away, is the all-human female planet, a refuge from and in many ways a complete opposite of, the now completely-male Earth. Here on Coney Island, women indulge in vegetarianism, aromatherapy, and a whole lot of peaceful and "womanly" activities that are the antithesis of the aggressive male-dominated culture they left behind. The women prosper and over the generations evolve a culture and society that epitomizes everything that is the opposite of war-mongering, unhygienic, and "un-cultured" males. In fact, ever since the absolute separation of the sexes, Coney Island has over the centuries even developed technology that surpasses that of the men back on earth.

The women in Tritcheon Hash have adapted and learned to live in a world devoid of the male species. The human females on Coney Island are highly paranoid and wary of Earth. Contact with Earth is extremely limited — confined to once a year when they swap male babies for enough frozen sperm to last their planet for another year. Men, since the separation, have mucked up Earth even more — a perpetual belt of garbage now encircles the planet. This sea of crud blots out the sun, making the human males fight their petty, and numerous, wars in artificial daylight. Plant life is thus highly limited on Earth, and circumscribed to a few areas which have been painstaking reclaimed from radiation fallout.

Tritcheon Hash or Tritch is the eponymous protagonist of Sue Lange's novel. She is brash, fearless, tough, and smart . . . a woman in love with speed. She is a test pilot who loves spaceships that are fast. Her job is to test the newly developed faster-than-light spaceships. She is married to the lovely Drannie Cove and has two daughters. Tritch, on the surface, appears to have everything a woman would want from her life. But within her, there's a knot of dissatisfaction that threatens to come undone and unravel her life. Her marriage to Drannie Cove has dwindled into an unsatisfying and unhappy relationship. Drannie has been acting distant and apathetic, devoting her full attention to their two daughters. Tritch's been spending more time sitting on her butt waiting for the ships she tests to actually fly than she's been enjoying the thrill of space flight. She's also increasingly haunted by an experiment that she was a part of when she was training at Coney Island's military academy — a group of women cadets and a visiting male students are tossed together to see what would happen. The experiment is a spectacular failure, thanks to the aggressive and uncouth behavior of Slab Ricknoy and his dust-up with Tritch during an exercise in which they were to partner each other. Tritch could do with a break.

The opportunity comes in the form of a request for reunification from the males. There are enough people on both sides wondering if that may be a good idea. But paranoia of the males has become the second nature for the inhabitants of Coney Island and while there are sufficient people interested in the reunification idea they want to exercise all possible caution. A decision is made to scout the enemy. So, because of her prior dust-up with Slab Ricknoy, her excellent credentials as a pilot, and her "military" training, Tritch is recruited for a clandestine mission to journey alone to earth, make her way through the layer of garbage permanently obscuring and orbiting the old home planet, and to see if men have managed to evolve out of their wicked, meat-eating, leather-wallet-carrying, war-mongering and aggressive ways. Tritch is excited about her mission. Not just because the idea of espionage and flying the fastest spaceship around — equipped with the "Lighterator" sounds thrilling, but also due to the possible chance that she might somehow may manage to again meet the intriguing Bangut Walht — the "forbidden" and "taboo" man — she met during the experimental exercise back in military school.

Tritch's exceptional skills as a pilot see her through the layer of garbage but she damages the ship during the tricky maneuver and crash lands on Earth. The crash-landing leaves her unconscious long enough to be captured by the one man she really hopes not to see — Slab Ricknoy who is now an aggressive and bellicose military leader in charge of one of the many wars on Earth. Somehow, Bangut Walht also finds himself thrown in the mix of circumstances. Ricknoy's aggressive stance against Tritch and her and Bangut's reaction to it threatens to trigger an intergalactic incident.

Will Tritch escape the clutches of Ricknoy? Will she and Bangut "get-together"? Will she be able to escape Earth, now that her spaceship is damaged and in Ricknoy's custody? What about Drannie and the kids? And if she does manage to escape and return to Coney Island, will Tritch recommend reunification or are the sexes destined to stay apart? The answers to these questions occupy the rest of the story of Tritcheon Hash.

Though it is presented as science-fiction, Tritcheon Hash is primarily a satire. The "science-fiction" is merely a wrapper that provides a world, a reason, in which the story can be played out and explored. Sue Lange uses satire in Tritcheon Hash to poke fun of various gender stereotypes prevalent in the current times. Satire, at most times, is tough to pull off. An author can err on the side of the serious, emphasizing the "message" and alienate the audience who would find the heavy-handed treatment boring. An author can also err on the other extreme — trying to explore every incident and opportunity to poke fun, elicit laughs, and come across as silly and frivolous. Sue Lange, for most of Tritcheon Hash, manages to strike a balance between the two. The science fiction wrapper for the story allows Lange to exaggerate stereotypes and then satirize them in interesting ways by making them sound perfectly logical and sound in the fictitious world. The satire and humor is born out of the play between the exaggerated notions of the characters in the fictitious world and similar notions in the real world. For example, everything on Earth is made of meat products. Males on Earth grow plants just to feed animals and then make everything out of meat and leather. Sample Tritch's reaction on entering Bangut's living quarters for the first time:

The place was orderly—surprisingly so, in fact. No socks draped on heat disseminators, no dirty underwear hung on the back of a chair. Last week’s beer-bash flotsam was not floating about in knee-deep water. The room appeared not only neat, but also tastefully decorated: curtains matched throw pillows, furniture covers had been chosen in stylish auxiliary colors, and a big rug tied everything together. No animal heads were mounted anywhere.

Lange also uses language effectively to emphasize the separation between the sexes and further reinforce the satirical intent of the story. Anything to do with male-female relationships and procreation is described in highly technical terms (a penis is always referred to by Tritch and others on Coney Island as the "Penile Apparatus"). Tritch and the females of Coney Island over the long years of separation have created a slang and manner of speaking that is unique to the planet and that produces some very funny misunderstandings when Tritch talks to the men in the book.

While the satire and humor is definitely a strong point of Sue Lange's story, she does lose her way towards the end. For most of the length of the novel, the story is extremely fast-paced. But towards the end Lange seems to lose her grip on the plot — it almost feels like the author knew how to develop the situation and take it to its climax but hadn't given a thought to how she would handle the resolution of the story. Like Tritch, the plot of the book too drifts at the end.

The characterization in this novel is tricky. One would normally consider sketching in finer details make for a better character. Lange paints Tritch and especially her male characters with a very broad brush. The characters largely are representative of various stereotypes. General Anschoss takes on every generic characteristic of any "General" in any book ever written. Slab Ricknoy, is the archetypical swaggering, aggressive man. Bangut is the stereotypical "sensitive" male. But when you understand that the author's purpose is to make fun of various gender stereotypes, you realize that painting the characters in broad brush strokes was the right (it may have been unintentional) decision. These conventional characters make it easy for Sue Lange to satirize male-female gender perceptions about each other.

Where the novel fails to impress is in its "science" part. For a novel that positions itself as science fiction, there is very little science in the story. Most of it is cosmetic and purely used to create atmosphere. In a science fiction story, at least to me, the science (whatever rules it obeys in that world) should be the reason of the story and should be the primary means of taking the story to its climax and resolution. The only science fiction in the novel is the faster-than-light ships powered by the lighterator and a few other similar token nods to science (plants that soak up radiation, gigantic sails that filter and "mine" the air for metals). The notion of the separation of sexes which is the basic premise for the story, could be easily setup without requiring the science fiction part of the story. Tritcheon Hash is a character-driven story in which the science-fiction is merely cosmetic and incidental. To me a book that is classified into the genre and then turning out to be not hard core science fiction is a big disappointment.

Tritcheon Hash is a book with undeniable energy. It is often funny, and but for the end, never dull. The characterization fits the book's purpose perfectly. If only Sue Lange had also paid attention to the science in her book, Tritcheon Hash would have been a unique coming together of satirical intent and science fiction.

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Book Review: The Iron Tooth by Prithvin Rajendran

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams, the Vogons are an alien race from the planet Vogsphere who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an intergalactic highway construction project. They are the writers of "the third worst poetry in the universe." The only way Vogons get other races to hear their poetry is by capturing them and torturing them with readings. Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz captures Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent when they hitch a ride in his spaceship and reads out his poetry to them. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy issues a terse warning: On no account should you allow a Vogon to read poetry at you.

People of the earth beware! The Vogons are here on Earth. And they are publishing novels.

I was reminded of Vogon poetry repeatedly as I read Prithvin Rajendran's, The Iron Tooth. I would have been immensely grateful if the book had not been published. Or at least if it had been published with a warning: On no account should you read this book. The only way I thought I could survive The Iron Tooth was if I could later slice open my head and scrub my brains in a vat of vinegar.

If you go just by the back cover of the book, Prithvin Rajendran's, The Iron Tooth, is yet another addition to Indian fantasy fiction. The book is set in the magical world of Goodbaiya. A young girl mysteriously becomes pregnant (in what seems like Rajendran's version of the Immaculate Conception), and is thrown out by her family and the city. She is makes a new home for herself at the foothills of the Mala Mountains. On a dark stormy night, she delivers two babies – one human and one troll. From the girl’s story, which functions as the prologue, the book then jumps to various other events. It then links back to the events in the prologue at the end. The first Chapter opens with the story of the great and mighty Dashtum, the good king of the kingdom of Dashter. His adventures cover about a page and a half and we move on to reading about his evil son, Darum, who takes over the kingdom after Dashtum's death. Darum is hated by his people who rebel against him repeatedly but without success. The beautiful princess Nova, Darum's eldest child is like her father – selfish, arrogant, and extremely rude. When she insults the master magician, Faerum, he takes the help of six other powerful magicians and the Custodian of First Light to avenge his insult. The Custodian of First Light curses the entire kingdom of Dashter so that it is perpetually covered with darkness. Princess Nova is imprisoned in a tower, which is guarded among other things by zombies wielding battleaxes. Here she waits to be rescued, forever regretting the grave mistake she had made.

The book then jumps to the kingdom of Greatix where a young man by the name of Princix, after acquiring magical weapons, sets out to become the champion warrior of the king of Greatix, Grantum. Using his weapons, he succeeds in completing all the tasks set out for him and so impressed is Grantum that Princix is made the Champion General of the kingdom. After becoming the Champion General, Princix is tasked by Grantum to find out what is wrong with Dashter. Along with Candlebre and Hammil, members of the imperial guard of bodyguards Princix sets out to remove the curse from Dashter. How Princix fulfills his quest, acquires the iron tooth, (from which the novel gets its title), wins Princess Nova's love and then goes on to rule the kingdom of Princeum forms the rest of the story.

Into this boiling and bubbling cauldron of a plot, Prithvin Rajendran throws in ingredients by the fistful: there's a sort of a magical mystic who foretells the destruction of the kingdom of Dashter and its resurrection by a stranger, there's a couple of envious brothers (who serve no other purpose than accompanying Princix on his first quest and then destroying his magical gifts later out of jealousy), a cabal of powerful magicians, a "duke" who is actually the ringleader of a band of thieves, grateful strangers who bestow magical gifts and weapons in gratitude for help, and medusas and vampires and zombies and trolls and giants, and the Baks (who are like Orcs) and the Massive Body Octopus and the Extra Large Locusts, massive owls and even two swords — one called the "Bastard Sword" and the other "Skull Killer".

Rajendran seems to go by the principle that if he adds all possible tropes from fantasy stories and fairy tales, stirring and stewing them together, the resultant tale would be something worth telling. He however forgets one important ingredient that makes even the most outlandish and outrageous fantasy tales such interesting stories to read and listen — the skill of the story-teller.

I remember being told in my school days the golden rule of writing: one main idea per paragraph with supporting details to aid and carry the weight of the central idea. It is amazing how impossible it is to err too much if you follow this simplest of rules while writing. Prithvin Rajendran tries doing something different. Sample this from the early pages of The Iron Tooth:

Elnix assisted the king in the administration of the kingdom. King Dashtum was pleased with Elnix's wise decisions and appointed Elnix as the head of the legal department. Soon, Dashtun married a beautiful commoner named Frisix. She begat him a son in C90 and they named him Darum. Dashtun and his family were loved by the people. Dashtum denounced corrupt courtiers and punished them. He was impartial in his judgments and allowed the people to play a vital part in the governing of the kingdom. His wealth grew beyond imagination and the kingdom was at peace.

While having even a single paragraph like the above is unforgiveable, Prithvin Rajendran writes the entire The Iron Tooth in the same fashion. Ideas, sentences, and paragraphs ramble and run helter-skelter. One never quite gets used to Rajendran's writing style and you struggle to hit some sort of a reading "rhythm or pace" while reading The Iron Tooth. I suppose I am being charitable to call it a style when it could be the acme of Rajendran's writing skill and abilities. So bad is the writing that it affects the story and the telling. I almost gave up reading the book in the initial few pages and had to summon great will power and gnaw my arm to continue. I often wondered if the entire harum-scarum story and plot reflected Rajendran's writing skills or did his writing reflect his scatter-gun imagination.

Sometimes, Rajendran turns into Wikipedia while describing beasts:

The Massive Body Octopus was a cephalopod of the order of Octopoda and had lengthy tentacles with suction cups in them and a soft body with no internal skeleton; it had neither a protective outer shell nor bones. The defensive mechanisms were its inks sacs and camouflage.

When he returns to Greatix after rescuing Princess Nova, Princix tell Ushix, his mother, about his adventures and laments the loss of Hammil's life. Ushix consoles him:

"Life is a constant struggle. Many times, we lose what we love. I know that is difficult to let go but it is best if we forget the past and move forward. Please go and take some rest."

If you felt that the prose itself didn't merit me invoking the Vogons at the beginning of this review, there's poetry as well. Prithvin Rajendran's The Iron Tooth labors under the belief that characters in "epic" fantasy (increasingly this term denotes a breadth of imagination and influences without any corresponding depth to give the story some substance) regularly break into song and verse. He fails to note that the verse has to be of impeccable quality. When Rajendran describes the various towns of the Kingdom of Greatix, we come to the towns of Aeros and Ratne. He tells us:

As the rivers provided fresh water, fishing was a major activity in the towns of Aeros and Ratne. The fish was a good source of protein for the people's diets. The people chanted,

"O, water, O, water!
Everywhere around us water is present
Fresh water is in plenty
It is savoury
And excellent for digestion in the body
Water provides fish
Fish is enriching
O, water, O, water!"

During one of his early adventures, Rajendran tells us how Princix takes out three chunks of fish and places them on fire to cook them. And then he chants:

"O, what a smell!
I cannot wait to eat this fish
What weather!
The wind is serene
There is no worry
What calm!"

And later, while on his quest to Dashter, Princix comes across a pheasant and waxes lyrical:

"O, What a pretty bird!
Its feathers dry all our burdens
But what do we do?
We have to satisfy our hunger!
We have to kill this bird."

When such songs and poems occur on every other page of the book, you would be forgiven if you were to revise your opinion and declare the Vogons as high priests of excellent poetry and prose.

The Iron Tooth is a hotchpotch tale that seems to have a vague idea about the direction in which it is heading. Otherwise the story rambles, events are put down on paper as they occurred to the author with no thought to their relevance or the plotline. Prithvin Rajendran seems more bent upon cramming every influence and fantasy trope into his story rather than worry about the coherence of his tale. I have mentioned earlier that virtually every well-known trope and character from fantasy fiction and fairy tales seems to have found its way in The Iron Tooth. Would personal experiences and incidents be left out? In the Acknowledgements section of the book, Prithvin Rajendran tells us:

I also applied some of my personal incidents to the story. I cite one of them as follows: in January 2006, due to a minor fall, I got hairline cracks on two of my upper teeth and my lower lip was swollen. I applied similar injuries to Candelbre when he was attacked by trolls near the marshes of Troyae in Chapter 12.

That in a way sums up what to me The Iron Tooth is all about — a personal indulgence of the author. Books are, of course, personal and many a writer has channeled the personal into the fictional. Considering Rajendran's craftsmanship and his writing skills, I would have been happy if he had kept his story and experiences to himself and let The Iron Tooth stay unpublished.

These days publishing houses seem deem editors unnecessary, the least they could do is print the book with an appropriate and prominent hazard warning. I, for one, would be full of gratitude.

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Book Review: Satin - A Stitch in Time by Payal Dhar

I have always wondered why Payal Dhar and her Shadow in Eternity series are not famous enough. For the large number of authors that seem to have their 15 minutes under the limelight these days, the lack of excitement around Payal Dhar's Shadow in Eternity trilogy feels like a betrayal by us readers. Those three books, to me, are amongst some of the best fantasy fiction written in India and I always thought that the story should get its due. After her interesting and enjoyable Shadow in Eternity trilogy, I had marked Payal Dhar as an author to follow and waited for her next with much anticipation and expectation. It is the sort of feeling that one probably gets after seeing a highly remarkable debut by a young cricketer. For the next match or series, you have your fingers crossed — will he live up to his promise? Or was that just one good innings? There are so many writers who have nothing better to tell than their first story, that the idea of a second book (in this case, a second series) fills the reader with both anticipation and dread. You want to read more from the author, but you so ardently wish, with both your fingers and toes crossed, that she lives up to the expectations. You know it is so unfair to the writer that she has to live up to your expectations but can't keep wishing for it. When Payal Dhar's next book was announced and published, I tried my best to quell my expectations and hoped that it will be a well-told story.

Payal Dhar's latest, Satin - A Stitch in Time, is the first book of her new fantasy trilogy, Satin. Satin - A Stitch in Time is weaved around Marik Yavi, a young magician, from the family that rules the Prefecture of Marik. The Prefecture of Marik is a small matrilineal province in the Union of Nizrah that depends on its reputation as a tourist destination to make money. The Union of Nizrah practices something called the Flame Magic — its magic comes from the eternal flame and all the mages train at the Academy of the Flame at Koda. Politics, alliances, and enmities between the various provinces and prefectures of Nizrah are common and the various ruling families and their "officials" navigate the treacherous waters of Nizrah politics regularly.

Marik Yavi is the second son of the House of Marik and an accomplished word mage. Yavi finds himself to be the heir to his grandfather's, Marik Avin’s, belongings after Avin's death. This is surprising because when he was alive, Avin never lost an opportunity to belittle Yavi and point out that he was but an adopted son of the family. Even more surprising is Avin's legacy to Yavi — several bound volumes of what appear to be cloth samples of satin, and some diaries that chronicle routine, everyday affairs. And a cryptic note to Yavi which simply says: "The key is in Satin." Is this an elaborate prank by Avin on his grandson whom he disliked? Or is it something more that Avin expects Yavi, with his word magic and fondness for puzzles, to solve?

Yavi then undertakes a quest to unravel this mystery. The quest takes him to Kuzerazi in the north and to the estate of Fezar. Magic is frowned upon in Kuzerazi; Kuzerazans shun magic completely and treat mages with suspicion. Fezar is a mysterious place, in this province that is hostile to practitoners and believers of the Flame Magic. Fezar has suddenly dropped from all news a few decades back and its occupants keep minimal or no contact with the outside world. Outsiders are unwelcome. But Yavi must visit Fezar and find its Lakehouse if he has to solve the mystery of the satin samples for his grandfather had spent much of the time detailed in his diaries on the estate. A number of Avin's diary entries are about the construction of Fezar's Lakehouse. Joining him on this quest to unravel his grandfather's legacy are Marik’s sister, the rebellious Fahe, and a young Kuzerazan runaway, Keas. Fahe is the future Prefect of Marik — she's an adolescent, full of angst, one who is yet to learn how to control her magic and is confused with the happenings in her home and family. Keas, is the son of a renowned, almost legendary, Kuzerazan herbalist called Win. He has rejected the apprenticeship of his father and has defied him to pursue his dream of becoming a mage. Accompanying them are Yavi's and Fahe's bodyguards: Rindan and Zurel. Their quest, the three soon find out is dangerous — there are strangers about who clearly mean them harm and who want Yavi's cloth samples. And along the way, the group discovers things about their Flame magic and the nature of magic that challenges the notions they had held sacred. What they discover turns their world, and their time, upside down.

Payal Dhar's great skill at building alternative worlds is on display in Satin - A Stitch in Time. Like the Shadow in Eternity trilogy, Satin's world is a world very like ours in many ways and yet unlike ours. The world is full of technology and Dhar clearly channels her inner geek when she details the technological marvels of this world: the "Infonet," computers, touchscreen tablets, the comm handsets and especially the wonderful machinery and technology that Yavi, Fahe, and Keas encounter in their quest. This world is also magical with mages using pentasters to channel their magic — whether it is elemental or like Yavi's, of words. Some of the technology is in fact powered by Flame Magic. It's a world where Flame Magic dominates and other kinds of magic are non-existent and the notions of any other magic considered pagan. It is also a world that is balanced on an uneasy truce between the mages and the common folk without magic. The world itself thus sets up different tensions in this fictional land. There's the political tension between the ruling families. There's the tension between the rigid (almost "fundamentalist") adherers of the Flame and the others who question and seek to undermine these beliefs, there's the hostility of the Flame mages and the academy against considering any other kind of magic and conveniently labels them as pagan and rebellious. There's the suspicion of Kuzerazi towards magic and mages. And there is Fezar, which has secluded itself from the world and treats any trespass with extreme hostility. All of this is packaged in a geeky world that follows the decimal system of time with each hour having 100 minutes and each minute having hundred seconds. A day is divided into twenty hours and the calendar has five months of 70 days. Time is a crucial concept in Satin.

Satin - A Stitch in Time is clearly a more mature work compared to the Shadow in Eternity series. Action is used in small effective bursts to keep the story moving. For a greater part of the story, it is dialogue and descriptions that keep the narrative moving and the reader engaged. The convoluted politics between the different provinces is well laid out and I expect it will have a major bearing on how the other two books unfold. Dhar, in the Shadow of Eternity trilogy, had shown herself to be especially capable of delineating human relationships and intrigues. We see perhaps a greater emphasis on the same in Satin. Having Fahe as an adolescent perhaps is a masterstroke in this context. Her confusion and angst at the relationship equations in her matrilineal home mirror the reader's feelings. Her angst at growing up and belief that perhaps she no longer has a first claim on her elder brother, Yanik's (who is now expecting a child with his wife, Sera), affections is very well brought out. Yavi's mixed feelings about meeting his onetime mentor the Academy and later a lover, Disciple Kariad, too are portrayed extremely well. Fahe's discomfort with Zurel who is now expected to shadow her 24x7 and Keas' uneasiness at running away and then adjusting to a new life, culture, and people detailed nicely. It is these relationships and the delineation of the unique magic of this world that occupies most of the book. This book clearly demands patience and indulgence from the readers as the author sets her pieces on the board and explains the rules. There are detailed descriptions of the nature of magic (at times, with supporting diagrams).

For readers who are familiar with Dhar's earlier work, there is much in Satin - A Stitch in Time that will feel different and yet familiar. Payal Dhar's obsession with "Time" is a common thread between the two. The nature of magic in Satin may be different from the "Spirit" in the Shadow of Eternity but the blend of technology and magic is something that is familiar. Payal Dhar's fondness for the outdoors and hiking and trekking is something that will echo in the new series too. To a certain extent, some of the characters too are recognizable. One wonders if Disciple Kariad will be the Nira of Satin or if Jurel is not Chiyo from Dhar's other trilogy. I suspect there are elements and character types from the Shadow of Eternity which have served as seeds for their "equivalents" in Satin - A Stitch in Time. In interests of Satin, I do hope these are only seeds and that the characters here develop in a way that is unique to Satin's world.

Did Payal Dhar's Satin - A Stitch in Time meet my expectations? In many ways, it didn't. I suppose I was expecting another Noah and Maya from the Shadow of Eternity trilogy to hook me into the story. And while there may be characters in Satin that remind you of those in her other books, there is neither Noah nor Maya in Satin. In some ways, this is a drawback of Satin - A Stitch in Time. Noah and the wonderful Maya were two characters that I cared about and Maya's spunky shenanigans were what kept me hooked into the Shadow of Eternity books. Satin -A Stitch in Time has no characters, yet, about whom I really care. While the book is low on action and is more interested in laying out the lie of Satin's fictional land, it does result in a book where readers feel aloof from the characters of the story. The engagement with their fates and their quest is missing. But that is a personal take on the book. Satin, otherwise is a very well-told story. Dhar's strengths at creating alternate worlds have clearly triumphed in Satin - A Stitch in Time. I may not care much about the characters yet, but the plot has me hooked. I want to know what happens next and especially I am looking forward to how Dhar handles "faith" in the next two books of the series — I do hope the theme of "faith" in Flame Magic and its institutions is integral to the story that follows — it will be interesting to apply Dhar's take to our world. I am curious to know more about the "Pagan" magic and how it will question the dominant discourse of Flame Magic. And for a book that is about Time, there are many events and things in Satin - A Stitch in Time that make you wonder how exactly it all will happen in the future. Dhar, in a manner of speaking, has told her readers about some of the destinations that they can expect to reach in the forthcoming books in the series. The intrigue and the interest is not in knowing the destinations beforehand, but in wondering how exactly will the story-teller journey her readers to these milestones. Satin - A Stitch in Time is a sufficiently  intelligent fantasy that is engrossing and engaging enough to look forward to making the journey into Payal Dhar's new world again.

Book Review: The Beast With Nine Billion Feet by Anil Menon

Anil Menon's The Beast With Nine Billion Feet uses "opposites" to tell its story. At the most primary level this is a story of social and ethical issues about genetic engineering. This is depicted through the covert war between two groups: one wants to make genetic engineering affordable and used for public good. It believes in propagating its boons through something similar to the current open source movement in software and is against manipulating genes to create creatures for entertainment, or engineering humans with special abilities. The other group believes such engineering is the future of the world — thus the single seed, which depending on the fertilizer can be "programmed" to grow three different kind of crops or the attempt to make humans immortal. This group also believes in monopolizing the IPR for their genetically modified creations.

This ethical dilemma and the major conflict of the novel plays out through the lives of a pair of siblings, Tara and Aditya (Adi) who are opposites of each other. Tara, the younger sibling, is a voracious reader, takes school seriously and is extremely grounded in the physical world around her. She loves her aunt, Sita, and her two friends, the twins, Ria and Francis. Her brother, Adi, on the other hand, is hooked on to virtual worlds through "illusion tech," and can't read, doesn't believe in formal education but is a genius self-taught genetic engineer. Adi finds acceptance in his virtual friends, his "posse," with whom he has worked on some genetic engineering projects. Adi also dreams of emigrating to Nurth, an artificial island near the North Pole, which believes genetic engineering of humans is the future.

The siblings' personal lives and relationships become twined in the ideological conflict around genetics engineering. Adi's mentor and friend, Vispala employs any means necessary in her pursuit for immortality. Vispala, as a diplomat from Nurth on a special mission to India, tries to kill Sivan's movement and get the Indian Government to accept Nurth's engineered life-forms. The siblings' scientist-politician father, Sivan, who earlier had been declared a terrorist for promoting "Free Life Movement" in genetics, returns from his exile after a presidential pardon to thwart Vispala's plans. Vispala is also convinced that Sivan knows the secret of longevity and is determined to wrest it from him. As Mandira, she comes to Pune, where Tara and Adi stay, with her twin children, Ria and Francis, who befriend Tara. Meanwhile Adi's resentment, partly fueled by Vispala, against his long-absent father and his ideology grows.

Who succeeds in their plans? The ruthless Vispala or the sagacious Sivan? Which of them is right? The Beast With Nine Billion Feet doesn't ostensibly take sides with anyone. It does not provide tidy answers to the questions it raises. Both Sivan and Vispala/Mandira lose some and win some. While it does raise a few questions, the inconclusive and mixed ending seems to tell readers to decide for themselves the ideology that appeals to them.

The Beast With Nine Billion Feet belongs to a sub-genre in science fiction called mundane SF — like most SF books this is set in the future but not centuries away. The novel is set in a world 30 years from now — a future that is almost tangible. Also while we have some typical sci-fi tech and concepts as a part of life — visors that spew information on the world around, genetically engineered nictating eyelids that perform a function similar to the visors, smart homes that talk, cars with AI that need to be praised, illusion pods that can transport a user virtually to another place where the avatar can touch and feel things and interact with others, and a wonderful history class set in an experience lab — it is the mundane, everyday life which is the focus Tara's problems at school, her history classes and her feelings about Sanskrit, the need for the siblings and their aunt to scrimp and manage their limited money, Tara's relationship with her friends - the twins, the rise and win of the Vermillion party and its strident manifesto in politics. It is in the interplay of these two "worlds" that the novel also focuses on an issue that is of much importance today — the ethics of biotechnology and genetic engineering. All this make the book quite interesting.

About the only quibble I have with The Beast With Nine Billion Feet is its use of its milieu. The story plays out in Pune in Maharashtra, India. For an Indian sci-fi book, there is very little of the setting in the story — few references to Appa Balwant Chowk, one mention of Shaniwarwada, a quick dash to Matheran and a passing mention of Mumbai. Nothing much else of Pune or India seep through into the story.

Do read the The Beast With Nine Billion Feet if you like science fiction and especially if you are interested in mundane SF. The book takes a look at a slice of the future which is near at hand and at an issue of today which possibly will be a bigger dilemma in the future.

Book Review: Turbulence by Samit Basu

Warning: Mild spoilers ahead

Turbulence is the tale of some people who alight from BA 142 — the flight from London to Delhi, and find that they have acquired superpowers. These superpowers are linked to their deepest desires and wishes: Aman can hook himself to any computer, access any database connected to the Internet or make calls anywhere by just dialing the numbers in his head. Tia, an overworked mom in an orthodox family who yearns to be able to live all the lives and experiences denied to her, finds that she can now split herself in multiple bodies. Jai finds himself to be the perfect and indestructible soldier, Vir acquires immense strength and the ability to fly. . .

Samit Basu provides readers with just this sketchy origin story (no one fathoms why people have received superpowers). He then takes away the costumes from these “superheroes” or “X-Men” and puts them into a situation where they have to deal with the real world and each other while deciding how to use their powers. Samit Basu, like in his other works, deliberately breaks with tradition, and undermines stereotypes. Turbulence aptly reasons that some comics or graphic novel writer has done already depicted every conceivable superhero and superpower. Basu's superheroes are in our world where such comics and films are commonplace. Aman, Tia, Vir, et al are already aware of all the sartorial and ethical choices that they have to consider. They even “know” what their decisions for the “greater good” should be. Turbulence is about how they struggle to arrive at those decisions in the more complicated real world, where issues are obviously more intricate. His characters ponder what to do — take over the world, fight those who are taking over the world, solve world poverty, the Middle-East crisis — what the right decision is. And they realize that both their actions and non-actions have significant and dramatic repercussions on their world.

A group of the “good” superheroes soon find themselves wondering whatever happened to all the British and other non-Indian passengers on the BA 142 flight — they have just disappeared. Many of the Indians with special abilities have also vanished without a trace. Is some super-villain eliminating killing all the other people on that flight? Why? After much reluctance, the good people unite to investigate the disappearance of the non-Indian passengers and to resist the gang of super-villains that is aiming that is aiming for world dominion. Their national loyalties and patriotism are strained and questioned — about the only thing that real world graphic novels or comics don’t prepare them for is to find themselves in a world which is awakening to the fact that Superman and other superheroes exist, except they are not American. In arriving at answers and responses to the world and in understanding their unique abilities and what to do with them, the characters come to understand the limits of human responsibility.

The book's premise is largely interesting but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Turbulence is an improvement from Samit Basu's forgettable attempt at young adult fiction — Terror on the Titanic: A Morningstar Agency Adventure (Do yourself a favor: Don't read it). Readers who pick up this book expecting something on the lines of Basu's Gameworld Trilogy will be disappointed. Turbulence doesn't even come close. A part of the reason for this could be the direct and up-front nature of this book. Samit Basu's strength and skill likes in his weaving of references and allusions in his books and his humorous and playful twists on established genre conventions and stereotypes. While there are the obvious references to X-men, there is not enough “play” with this angle. Basu thus fails to play to his strengths which were so strongly on display in the Gameworld Trilogy. Turbulence would have benefited with taut writing and some memorable characters to make a quirky concept even quirkier. More importantly, it could have done with a generous dose of irreverence and the playfulness to do justice to the novel's interesting premise. For a concept begging for insouciant and irreverent treatment, Turbulence isn’t postmodern enough.

Book Review: The Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb

Warning: Mild spoilers ahead

The Dragon Keeper is the first book of Robin Hobb's duology - The Rain Wild Chronicles. After the wonderful Soldier Son Trilogy, Hobb once again returns to the world of her earlier three trilogies — the story of FitzChivalry Farseer, the Fool and the world of the Liveships (The Farseer Trilogy, Liveship Traders Trilogy, The Tawny Man Trilogy). The Dragon Keeper in a way builds on the events of the earlier three trilogies of this world though the focus is no longer on the kingdom of the Six Duchies. This novel can be considered as a sequel to middle trilogy — Liveship Traders, though some events described in The Dragon Keeper show that the story is to some extent concurrent and largely subsequent to the last book of The Tawny Man Trilogy.

At the end of the Liveship Traders Trilogy, Tintaglia, the Dragon, makes a pact with the inhabitants of the Six Duchies, specifically those of Bingtown. In return of protecting the kingdom from the attacks of the kingdom of Chalced, Tintaglia expects the humans to assist her sea serpents up the Rain Wild River to their cocooning grounds and then look after the young dragons that will emerge from the cocoons. The Dragon Keeper opens with Tintaglia and the humans leading a tangle of serpents up the acidic Rain Wild River to Trehaug to change into dragons. The tangle is however in a bad shape when they begin to cocoon. Most of the serpents have been serpents for too long and have lost a lot of their memories. All of them are weak and exhausted. And apart from Tintaglia and the humans of the Rain Wild, there are no other dragons or Elderlings to look after the serpents and the new dragons. A number of serpents die in their cases without turning into dragons and some are swept away when the fickle Rain Wild River suddenly floods. The dragons that emerge from the cases are nothing like the majestic creatures that once roamed the skies. These dragons are stunted, with very few of their ancestral memories, incapable of flight, or even of feeding or looking after themselves. Soon only a handful survive with the humans of Trehaug and Cassarick doing their best (and often their worst) to keep them fed. Tintaglia, meanwhile who has found another black male dragon abandons these new dragons. Soon the burden of feeding and housing the new dragons becomes overwhelming. The people of Cassarick decide (with a little prompting from the dragons who want to escape the swamp of Trehaug) to move the dragons and aid them in their search for the legendary Elderling city of Kelsingra far up into the unexplored regions of the Rain Wild river. For this endeavor, they recruit "dragon keepers." This background and the beginning of the search for Kelsingra by the dragons and the dragon keepers constitute the first tale of the Rain Wild Chronicles.

The Trader's Council of Cassarick looks for "expendable" people to be recruited as dragon keepers. Thymara is one of this group employed to accompany the beasts on their journey up river to find the ancestral Kelsingra. Thymara is a child of the Rain Wilds, born highly deformed by Rain Wild standards (born with claws instead of fingernails and some scaling on her face and back). She should have been "exposed" at birth (abandoned to die), but was saved by her father. Thymara is shunned by most Rain Wilders (and is resented by her mother) and longs for acceptance. As a kid she had watched the new dragons emerge from their casings and had fallen under their spell, especially under that of the Queen Dragon, Sintara. Along with the other outcasts of Cassarick, she volunteers and becomes one of the dragon keepers and is charged to look after Sintara. Accompanying her is her childhood friend, Tats, who is a former Chalcedean slave – keeper of the dragon Fente. After the dragons and the dragon keepers begin their journey and search for Kelsingra, the story details the inner tensions and turmoil within the dragon keepers. The wily Greft, the oldest dragon keeper (of the biggest dragon, Kalo), assumes himself to be the leader of the group and has his own notions of the laws applicable to the group and how he wants the group to behave. Some of the other dragon keepers side with him while Thymara, Tats, and Sylve (keeper of the dragon Mercor. Mercor is the most intelligent of the new dragons and is implied to have previously been the sea serpent Maulkin — an important character in the Liveship Traders) range themselves on the other.

Also in the group is Alise Finbok, of Bingtown trader stock, who has devoted her life to studying dragons. Alise is trapped in a loveless and stifling marriage of convenience with Hest Finbok. Hest marries Alise to escape from his father's nagging for him to get a wife and continue the Finbok line with a grandson. Alise accepts his proposal on the understanding that he would allow Alise to pursue her scholarly interests in dragons and the Elderlings. Unfortunately for her, she falls in love with Hest and is soon rebuffed by him after marriage. The trip provides her with an opportunity to continue her research and also an escape from her unhappy marriage. Accompanying her is Sedric, secretary to Hest, her childhood friend, and unwilling companion. Sedric, who is not only Hest's secretary but also his lover, has fallen out of Hest's favor and has his own reasons for assisting Alise in her studies.

Escorting the dragon keepers and the dragons is the barge Tarman, along with its crew and captain, Leftrin. Leftrin falls hard for Alise and hence decides to accompany the expedition. His barge, the Tarman, we later learn is made from wizardwood (the hard cocoon casing of the sea serpents as they transform into dragons). Leftrin had come across a wizardwood log washed up after the flooding of the Trehaug beach while the sea serpents were cocooning. The dragon inside is dead and Leftrin initially planned on selling the log for a fortune, before deciding to keep it and use it himself on Tarman. The Tarman, because of its unique nature, is the only barge that can navigate the acidic Rain Wild River and accompany the dragon keepers.

For most of the story, Hobb follows Thymara or Alise and we come to know their backgrounds and how they end up with the expedition that accompanies the dragons in their search for Kelsingra. At times, we move away from these two to follow the other protagonist of the story, the dragon Sintara. Hobb, within these stories, also weaves in those of Sedric, Tats, Leftrin, Hest and other characters (Readers of Hobb's earlier works will also recognize Althea, Brashen Trell, their Liveship – Paragon, and Malta Khuprus). Fans of Robin Hobb will not be disappointed. The Dragon Keeper, like any of her other books, builds on strong characters who struggle against their unique environment and fate as they attempt to make the best of what circumstances have handed to them. Like in any of Hobb's other books (and which I consider to be a hallmark of good fantasy fiction), the unique world of the Rain Wilds forms the other important "character" and backdrop to the story. Thymara, Alise, and even Sintara are shaped and directed by the Rain Wilds and the traditions and customs of Hobb's unique world. The book has some amazing descriptions of Rain Wild and Bingtown customs (Alise's and Hest's wedding, for example, or the birth of Thymara) and lush descriptions of the tree cities of Cassarick and Trehaug and its inhabitants make her world vividly real. Hobb is easily one of finest and highly imaginative writers of fantasy fiction writing today.

The writing and story-telling is of the same high quality that earlier readers of Hobb's books would expect. Her characters and her world come alive and become people and a setting we intimately know and care about. The Dragon Keeper, as mentioned earlier, lays the foundation for the various characters and the expedition to search for Kelsingra. Readers of fantasy fiction who expect a spell or a magic duel on every other page will be better advised to steer clear of The Dragon Keeper (or for that matter, any of Hobb's fantasy fiction). What you get with Hobb, is not a thrill-a-minute story but a slow and careful building up of characters, their circumstances and the fantasy world. You are engrossed because you have been caught up the magic of a great story-teller and are interested in seeing how the tensions between the characters and their circumstances will reach a head and resolve in the unique world created by the author.

About the only thing to kvetch about with The Dragon Keeper is its abrupt end. We find ourselves stranded at the beginning of an expedition that everybody expects to be doomed with a dead dragon and a brewing tension between the two factions that have formed within the dragon keepers. It was later that I found out that this was originally slated as a single book. But the tale grew in its telling and in to two books. However, that still doesn't take away the feeling that it was the publisher who decided to end the book where it did and not the author. Nevertheless, the end in no way detracts from all that happens and is told earlier. Most readers, I presume, like me would brush-off the end as a minor quibble and start anticipating a return to the Rain Wilds to pick up the tale again with The Dragon Haven.

How Well do you Know Your own Books?

The Guardian Books Blog has a post on the premise of Susan Hill's book: Howards End is on the Landing (read the first chapter here)— While digging around her bookshelves for an elusive book, she soon finds herself waylaid from her original purpose. She finds a book that she hasn't read, and that pulls her on to the next and then another one and the next and many more others. She realizes that she has numerous unread, long-unopened titles in her library and resolves to not buy books for another year. The year she would use to get to know her own books again.

The Guardian blogger than runs a "mental finger" down her own shelves and picks out books that she hasn't got around to reading yet. And invites us to check our bookcases, tables for unread books and read one of them over the weekend.

Well, circumstances prevented me from doing the second part of what she recommended — having come across the blog post only today morning. But I did rummage through all the books on my table (and decided to leave the shelves for later when I am feeling less lazy) and as expected came across quite a few as-yet-unconsumed books. There's Orhan Pamuk's Other Colours — an unexpected present from a friend. I do occasionally dipstick into that one, reading an essay or two. It is a slightly bulky book. The kind that is not easy to carry and read in Mumbai's crowded local trains. Most of my reading happens in the trains on my daily commute to and from office.

Just next to it, still wrapped in the plastic bag it was packaged in, I found Marjane Satrapi's awesome graphic novel, Persepolis. I assume it is awesome going by the reports and reviews. I haven't yet read it. Along with it was also The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman. I had picked up both the graphic novels at a discount a couple of months back. Still hadn't got around to unwrapping them. On the top of another stack are a couple of books -- Stephen King's On Writing and Brenda Ueland's If you Want to Write — which a friend bequeathed to me before moving on to another city. Since, the person also happened to be my manager, who regularly plodded through and reviewed what I wrote in the line of duty, I am wondering what he is trying to tell me by giving me these books. I should get to them . . . hopefully sooner than later.

Buried under a pile of books, and long forgotten, were Vivek Tandon's A Blind Man's Map of Mumbai and Joseph O'Neill's Netherland. Under another pile was Devdutt Pattanaik's The Pregnant King — a retelling of little-known tale from the Mahabharata of a king who drinks a potion meant for his barren queens and becomes pregnant himself. I like the Mahabharata and regularly pick up literature associated with it, especially the subversive kind. I had bought a copy of The Pregnant King and I suppose I meant to read it soon. It needed some archaeological excavation to unearth it again. Also unearthed were Kankana Basu's Cappuccino Dusk and (what is happening to me!!) Milan Kundera's The Curtain and Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies. Yes, as of yet unread.

There are also two (towering) stacks of books at one end of my table — books I have read, but which I need to read over and over again. For my studies (long in a state of stasis).

And I haven't investigated my bookshelves yet.

With most books, what happens, I suppose is, I pick them up, because I find them interesting and mean to read them. But there are always other books to be read too — the ones that I have borrowed friends and need to be returned soon. The ones I borrowed from my library and which if I don't return timely, I would be paying a heavy monetary penalty. By the time I am through these books, the ones that I have bought have been buried under new ones that I have bought or borrowed. I suppose, like most others, if I don't read something I have bought in the first few days, it soon makes its way to a corner in my mind, it goes under the radar, so to speak. Each time I come across them I tell myself, I will get to them eventually, after all I own them. There's no hurry. Meanwhile let me finish the ones which my friends have lent me.

I will read these, yes. Now that I am aware again that I have all these unread books, I will get around to reading them. Eventually. Just let me finish the first two books from Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments Trilogy, City of Bones and City of Ashes. Post that, I promise, (if I don't get my hands on the third book in the trilogy or any other fantasy and sci-fi) I will get around to my stack of unconsumed books.

Leading a Normal life? : Ink Scrawl Nugget 30

Read occasional books, thought occasional thoughts. [. . .] Are you so stale, flat, unbumped, untouched, unscarred, unmoved? Have you no nightmare dreams, secret murders, drugs, or drink in your soul? Is your heart missing, the pulse spent? Did you give over when you were thirty, or were you ever more than a dry biscuit, an unbuttered bun, flat wine? Pleasantly sensual, but never passionate. A good husband, fair friend, far traveler, without worry, coming and going so quietly that God himself never noticed. And when you die Redleigh, will even one horn sound? Will one hand flutter, one soul cry, one tear drop, one door slam? What's you sum? Let's finish it. There, there it is: zero. [. . .] Feed zero, get zero?

—From Leviathan '99 by Ray Bradbury

Any wonder that the most people lead lives of quiet desperation?

John Redleigh, first Mate of the Cetus 7, a starship, pens the above in his log. Leviathan '99 is a reimagining and retelling of Herman Melville's Moby Dick as an interstellar adventure, transforming the great whale into a worlds-devouring comet.

You can read Leviathan '99 in the book: Now and Forever.

Another Ray Bradbury nugget: On Silence

On Silence : Ink Scrawl Nugget 29

There was a desert prairie filled with wind and sun and sagebrush and a silence that grew sweetly up in wildflowers. There was a rail track laid across this silence and now the rail track shuddered.

—From Somewhere a Band is Playing by Ray Bradbury

These are the best opening lines of a story that I have come across in sometime. Very evocative and beautiful imagery. Somewhere a Band is Playing is a novella by Ray Bradbury. You can read it in the book: Now and Forever.

Feeding the Multitudes? Ink Scrawl Nugget 28

Daisy looked up at him with the kind of expression that Jesus might have given someone who had just explained that he was probably allergic to bread and fishes, so could He possibly do him a quick chicken salad: there was pity in that expression, along with almost infinite compassion.

— From Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

When to Write/Tell a Story: Ink Scrawl Nugget 27

"So my tale has begun?" Poison asked, brushing her black hair behind her ear.
"Yes."
"So why can't I see it?"
"Because all the pages are blank."
Poison made a noise of incomprehension.
"You can't tell half a tale, Poison. You can't write half a book. Whatever you choose to do next will completely change the aspect of what has gone before. If you decided to suddenly kill your friends as they slept—"
"Why would I do that?" Poison interjected.
"Bear with me," Fleet said patiently. "If you did, then the tale will take on a whole new light. Instead of being the journey of Poison from Gull to save her sister, it would be the terrible story of how a young girl became a cold-blooded killer. The way it would be written would be different. Do you see? Or you may die right now, and it would turn out that it wasn't your tale all along, it was Bram's or Peppercorn's, and you were just one of the sideline characters. The whole story has to be known before it can be recorded; otherwise it might suddenly change. That's the beauty Poison. You never know what's going to happen next. When the tale is ended, then the writing will be visible to your eyes; but until then, it is unwritten."

— From Poison by Chris Wooding

Fleet, an antiquarian (a collector and narrator of tales) explains to Poison how and when the stories of heroes are written. What happens prior to the writing of a story is merely the collecting of details — the boring work of historians. Storytellers do not include details unless they are necessary. And the necessity of a particular detail is known only when the tale is ended—and when it is ready to be told.

If Fictional Characters Could Read

Over at The Publishers Weekly they are playing a game of guessing which books fictional characters might buy (and read) if they were browsing today's book stores. The Guardian too points to the PW piece while speculating on what Huck Finn and Becky Sharp would buy and feels that Sherlock Holmes "would have got on well with a good Agatha Christie." Read both the posts as well as the comments. 

You think a Harry Potter would have enjoyed reading a Percy Jackson? Percy Jackson, if he could manage his dyslexia and ADHD, probably wouldn't mind reading Samit Basu's Gameworld Trilogy. Basu's Silver Dagger would have enjoyed the intrigue at the Farseer Court but would have thought of poorly of Robin Hobb's assassin — FitzChivalry Farseer. Fitz ain't cool and smooth enough for the Silver Dagger. But one can imagine Le Guin's archmage Ged appreciate the detailing of Robin Hobb's world. 

It is a fun game. What books would your favorite fictional characters read?

Why are SF and Fantasy Novels the Length They are?

Followers of SF and fantasy will have noticed this  — most novels/stories are big fat tomes or are split across trilogies (I am currently reading The Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb after having read The Farseer Trilogy and The Liveship Traders trilogy  — and yes, the three trilogies are related) and quartets and what not. It is almost as if a SF & F writer can't tell a tale in a slim volume. An interesting explanation for the length of a typical SF & F novel is posted by science fiction writer Charles Ross:

Until the early 1990s, mass market SF/F paperbacks in the US were primarily sold via grocery store racks, supplied by local distributors (400+ of them). The standard wire rack held books face-out, either against a wall or on a rotating stand. And that's where the short form factor novel became established. Thinner books meant you could shove more of them into a rack that was, say, three inches deep. Go over half an inch thick, and you could no longer fit six paperbacks in a 3" rack. And there was only so much rack space to go around.

During the inflationary 1970s and early 1980s, prices of just about everything soared. The publishers needed to increase their cover prices to compensate. But the grocery wholesalers who sold the books insisted "the product's gotta weigh more if you want to charge more". They weren't in the book business, after all, so just as buffalo tomatoes got bigger, so did paperbacks. (Even though this meant there was less room to go round in the wire racks.) You can only get so much milage by using thicker paper and a bigger typeface; so they began looking for longer novels.

In the 1960s, an SF novel was 60-80,000 words, with 80K being considered overblown and long. By 1990 they'd grown to 90-100,000 words. Luckily the word processing revolution came along in the 1990s, making it easier to write and revise longer books. (A different editor of my acquaintance observed that whenever one of her novelists switched to word processing, the average length of their books increased by about 10% .)

There's more in that post including an explanation about why crime and mystery novels haven't similarly bulked up. Do read.

I personally feel this could be a "chicken or egg" kind of a situation here and that there are two trends to be considered in contemporary SF & F: 

— the growing acceptance of the literary worth of SF & F and 

— the effort that these writers put into creating their fantastic worlds.  

SF & F, at least what I know about it, in its early years was much published in magazines and had roots in pulp. This is when the Astounding and other magazines established the short story or the novella as the preferred length for SF & F. Lately, SF & F has become more literary  — and writers pay much attention to the characterization, style etc. A reason for this could be that SF & F was easily appropriated by any writers who had a "political agenda" to be conveyed in their writings. Feminist writings are a case in point. As the novels and the concerns (as opposed to the earlier stories which primarily focused on adventure) became more literary the size of the books started increasing. SF & F moved away from its pulp roots and became more acceptable and thus it was alright to publish more of it. Of course, it could be that the move away from standard grocery store wire rack led to bigger books which led to a more literary style, etc in SF & F. I suspect it is a bit of both.

Compared to the earlier days, I have found that SF & F writers today (and of the past couple of decades  — the time period Ross is talking about) are more willing to take the time to build their world and characters and slowly immerse their readers in this universe that they are creating. It is almost as if the writers think and know that they are creating something so fantastic and imaginative that their readers could do with some extra help in the detailing of their universes in order to anchor themselves in the story better. This naturally leads to bigger and fatter books. A bigger book allows for more canvas, so to speak, to detail out the universe  — which is of such prime importance in SF & F. 

Book Review: The Flood: A Novel by David Maine

Many writers have taken a story from the Bible, layered it with their ideas and interpretations, developed the characters, and fleshed an entire novel from a few lines. Of these Biblical stories, the tale of Noah and the Flood, from Genesis, surely is one that has be told and retold many times before. Julian Barnes, for one, did a wonderfully irreverent account of the story through the eyes of a stowaway woodworm in A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. 

David Maine, in his debut novel, The Flood: A Novel, too tries his hand at retelling the world's best-known disaster story. Unlike Barnes, Maine is not particularly sacrilegious or flippant. He does occasionally poke fun at the story and the characters but largely uses the tale to muse on the nature of faith and god, families, relationships and how people cope with a catastrophe created by a god intent on scrubbing the world clean.

Maine's Noe (as Noah is called in this tale. Some research showed that Maine names his characters from the Douay-Rheims Bible which was translated in English from Latin) is a 600-year-old paterfamilias who is introduced to us while he is peeing. A cantankerous and churlish Yahweh talks to Noe whenever he needs to express displeasure with his creations. A few pages into the book, when Noe hears Yahweh outline his plans to cleanse the world — that humanity is to be destroyed in a flood, Noe pees himself. This, along with the blurbs, prime the reader to expect that the author is out to have some fun with his source material. That expectation is however soon belied. While Maine does occasionally have some fun with his story and his characters, we soon realize that he is not treading that path. Maine is rather looking to flesh this Biblical episode in a way that allows him to raise questions on the role of God and faith in human lives, the nature and stuff of relationships, and (often) the role of women in this story. He achieves this by rarely departing much from the original tale. Rather he explores the psychological detail that such a story offers.

When the Yahweh tells (orders) Noe to build the ark, he pisses himself, then weeps, and then calls his family together and orders them to start building. Noe may be 600 years old, but hurries with the project of building and readying the ark believing "great age was not an obstacle to great deeds." His family lets out a collective groan, privately think he's nuts — his wife remarks "So when Himself starts with the visions and the holy labors and the boat full of critters, what am I supposed to do? Talk Sense?" — but don't dare disobey him. Noe, anyways, can't tell them much, except that the boys have to build a colossal boat, and that the girls (the wives of his boys) have to travel to their respective homelands, gather, and bring back every species of animal they can find. 

So the sons start on the boat. Cham designs and oversees the building of the ark with Sem to assist him. Jahpeth goofs off. Sem's wife, Bera, travels south and finds a menagerie in her savage father's kingdom. Cham's wife, Ilya, goes to the north and returns with bears and wolves. Jahpeth's wife, Mirn, looks for insects and other critters under rocks and in the soil. People gather around to watch and to jeer – "It's not every day you see a ship growing in the desert." Some offer to buy room on the ark. Noe refuses, explaining that one can board the ark only "with a pure heart." As the clouds gather and build in the sky, Noe's family debates about how the animals ought to be packed in.

Eventually the rain starts and the waters rise and the world becomes a waterscape. Unlike the Bible, Maine does justice to the enormity of the catastrophe. In Genesis, the story of Noah's ark and the wiping away of all life save that is safe on the boat, is narrated, if I am right, in about 4-5 verses. Here we watch the community that had gathered around the Ark wash away. The world's population is swept away, and Noe rejoices: "They were unclean in the sight of the Lord. . . Old is this world, a thousand years or more. It had grown heavy with filth and weary with sin. Now it has been scrubbed clean."

 

Maine also beautifully conveys the humanity of it all — of the characters trying to get a perspective and understand such an event. Ilya reflects "A pang cuts me whenever I remember him, or the matriarchs, or my uncles. All gone now. But I can't give in to grief about them - if I start I'll never stop, there are just too many dead, whole peoples, whole civilizations. I hold their memory off, at arm's length, and concentrate instead on measuring rainfall and striving to understand what is happening. If such a thing can truly be comprehended."

Maine re-tells this catastrophe and the events before and after it, in eight voices — The Flood is divided into succinct chapters told from the perspective of the various characters. While Noe's wife, three sons, and three daughters-in-law  —  tell their own stories in their own voices, a narrator takes over the chapters devoted to Noe. It is an eminently readable and clever narrative allowing the reader for a 360-degree perspective on episode. 

It allows Maine to explore two fundamental ways (within the boundaries of the world depicted in the novel) of looking at the world. One view which believes that god reigns over everything (primarily held by the men in the novel). Another which believes that god rains over everything (primarily held by the women in the novel). And why these perspectives matter — for it is the viewpoint which decides how one tells and how one listens to a story. The book attempts to explore this by often having chapters with these juxtaposed viewpoints follow each other (It is subtle and not as explicit and blatant as I have made it out to be). 

Apart from earnest explorations into theology and faith, this narrative of eight voices comes together, naturally and strongly, to form a marvelous description of a family trying to cope with a crisis of worldwide proportions. Once confined to the boat, and with nowhere to go, they tire of each other, bicker, grow bored, complain about the sameness and the paucity of the food, the stink and try to cope with the irritation of having to put up with each other and the animals and the hopelessness of the situation. The sons have a crisis of faith — in themselves, in Noe, and in Yahweh. The women are altogether more practical and often provide witty and acerbic assessments of the situation and the other characters. It is the three daughters-in-law (who are not named in the Bible) that are the most fascinating characters in the book — practical, focused, clever, crafty and cunning, tough and more capable than any of the male characters. Bera, Ilya, and Mirn (and to an extent Noe's wife) are arguably Maine's most engaging characters and serve to bring in a feminist perspective to this Biblical tale. Their interactions with one another and the other characters in the novel give the book its primary strength — an examination of the dynamics in the interrelationships amongst the characters.

While The Flood questions and probes the tale from Genesis and contemplates and muses on life and relationships (the nature of love) and God and faith, Maine, every now and then (very rarely), seems to remember the immense ironic and comic potential of his source material and sprinkles a few funny episodes (Noe's vision of Yahweh as a testy ant) in the story. This however, to me, is where the book fails. It is as if Maine couldn't decide if his novel was to be a deeply serious affair — with solemn observations on faith, God, and insights into relationships or a totally postmodern, irreverent, and funny take on the flood. In trying to include bits of both he doesn't do enough justice to either.

There is, however, a lot to enjoy in this novel. It is energetic and fluent and easily read in a sitting or two. While it is serious in some parts and irreverent in others, and it may well be confused whether it wants to be more of one or the other, The Flood is never uninteresting and makes for an engrossing read.

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Nuggets from David Maine's The Flood: 

On the Nature of Love

How to Kill a God

Men are so Amusing

Is God in Everything?