Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson

Steven Erikson’s The Crippled God is coming out in February 2011, finally bringing his ten book series Malazan Book of the Fallen to a close. My usual policy with series is to wait until they are finished, read them all at once, and review them as a single work. However, a few years ago, after being told the early books stand on their own, I read the first few Malazan books to see what the fuss was about. That was during a period where I’d succumbed to laziness and stopped updating this site with what I was reading, so you’ll have to just take my word that I enjoyed the books. Having heard the series gets more tightly linked as it goes on, I stopped pretty early…to be honest I’m not completely sure where, but I think after the third book, Memories of Ice. With the series about to be completed, however, it’s finally time to read the whole thing. I’m starting a little early, but with nine books totaling almost three million words to read, I don’t think I’m likely to be done before February. Since the early books in this series, while linked, have distinct plots and often distinct sets of characters, I’m going to review them separately, at least for now. Enough about that, let’s actually start talking about the first book, Gardens of the Moon. From the beginning this was described as the first of ten books. What kind of story needs that sort of space? As the novel opens, the 2nd Army of the Malazan Empire has been fighting for years against the Free Cities of the continent of Genabackis. Although only two cities remain outside Malazan control, the campaign is in danger of failing. Malazan morale is dropping rapidly, and the officers, if not the entire army, think they are being set up to fail by their Empress. To their opponents, resistance against Malazan tyranny is a patriotic struggle for freedom, but one they can’t hope to win in the long run. This is more than enough to sustain a novel, but as the book goes on, all this turns out to be just the tip of a vast iceberg. Perhaps the highest praise one can offer a book of this size is that after finishing it I was eager to keep reading more. Like most fat fantasy novels, this is a very broad book. There’s a huge cast, many of whom serve at least briefly as viewpoint characters, and although the action of the book ultimately centers on the Free City of Darujhistan, it first ranges through other cities and even other continents. Insomuch as it can be boiled down, there are two main threads. In one, the few survivors of an elite 2nd Army regiment are given a new captain they don’t trust and a mission they believe impossible. In the other, a diverse group of friends in Darujhistan struggle to stay afloat amid the corruption and intrigue of a city in the shadow of an invading army. When summarized so briefly, it takes on a realistic air, but this is very much of the swords and sorcery branch of the fantasy genre. Magic use is restricted to a small subset of the population, but that subset is large enough for it to be far more pervasive than in most fantasy novels. The range of power, meanwhile, is as wide as any novel I’ve read. The army has fairly weak “squad mages” mixed in with its soldiers, but there are High Mages capable of leveling armies by themselves. Beyond the human majority there are various types of immortals, from the elf-like Tisti Andii fighting for the Free Cities to the undead army of T’lan Imass commanded by the Malazan Empress. Complicating matters still further, gods and near-divinities called Ascendants are interfering in mortal affairs so much they make the gods of the Iliad look like the Swiss. There’s a ton of people groups, concepts, and powers to digest, and no doubt readers new to fantasy must find it all pretty dizzying, but for the experienced reader there’s nothing very unfamiliar. While it sounds harsh to call Erikson unoriginal, the fact is just about all the fantastic elements he uses have precedents from other prominent genre works. What distinguishes Erikson’s work, apart from its scale and ambition, is the mood he strikes. You see, as with most sword and sorcery stories, and especially given its kitchen sink approach to fantasy tropes, there’s a danger that Gardens of the Moon won’t quite pass the giggle test, what with its floating mountain, assassins and thieves guilds, and hulking fantasy stereotype Anomander Rake. Erikson defuses this by starting off grim. By present standards, Gardens of the Moon is not a really dark book, but its darkest moments are at the beginning to set the tone. Before sitting down to reread this novel, I had forgotten almost everything from my original Malazan reading, but you can be sure that I still remembered the aftermath of the siege of Pale. From this bleak beginning, Erikson moderates the tone and eventually introduces various elements that, considered in isolation, would seem pretty silly. But these are defused by the inertia of that serious beginning and the constantly down-to-earth attitude of the main characters. This is still high fantasy, but where most novels would feature a larger than life character like Anomander Rake prominently, Erikson is smart enough to leave him on the periphery, just as remote from the experience of the main characters as he is from our own (alas, whoever designed the cover pictured at the top of this review wasn’t so circumspect). Although some of the main characters are more powerful and influential than others, all are at the mercy of larger powers they cannot control, a surprisingly unusual theme for a genre that always seems to put the fate of the universe in the hands of the main character in the penultimate chapter. The book’s relentless narrative momentum contributes to this feeling of being tossed by the winds of history. It might seem hard to believe given the length and complexity of the book that this is actually a very fast paced story, but with so many characters doing so many different things, Erikson is actually pressed for time. In traditional fantasy, diverse groups of characters band together to achieve some sort of goal. In Gardens of the Moon, everyone has their own thing going on, resulting in not just one plot, but over a dozen. Only strong unities of place and time keep the novel from feeling more like a short story collection. However, it must be said that in the end it gets pretty messy. There is a point where it seems everything will come together explosively at a Darujhistan socialite’s party, but there are so many storylines to resolve and so many characters who need to take a bow that the ending is denied much of its punch. The result isn’t bad, per se, but it’s certainly not as effective as it would have been with a little more focus. With barely enough space to resolve the many stories, it almost goes without saying that there isn’t a lot of depth to the characters. Some are more effective than others (I really enjoyed Kruppe’s third person monologues, though I can see how some might find them annoying), but the timespan of the book is short enough that they don’t have very much time to change. As a standalone book, then, the characterization seems fairly shallow and very much beholden to the plot, but hopefully in the context of the longer series there will be better development. Since I think the plot is messy and the characters are nothing special, you might be forgiven for wondering why I enjoyed it so much, and why this novel was successful enough to launch a ten book series. I think there are two factors. The first and probably most important is the world Erikson creates. The second, less important but more interesting to discuss, is the novel’s worldview. Let’s start with the world. While some settings are more interesting than others, I sometimes make the mistake of treating them like a commodity, assuming that since every published fantasy book will have its own world, the mark of a strong book is its plot and characters. Reading Gardens of the Moon was a reminder that no, not everyone does this equally well. In fact, Erikson’s setting is the most effective of any I’ve encountered besides Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Given the by now well-known story of how the Malazan series came to be, I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising. If you don’t know, Erikson and a friend, Ian Esselmont, created the Malazan setting for a pen and paper roleplaying game back in the early eighties. Later, they tried and failed to sell a screenplay based on it to Hollywood. Finally, Erikson wrote Gardens of the Moon. By the time it was published in 1999, there was well over a decade of thought put into the setting. Middle Earth had the depth it did because Tolkien spent literally his entire adult life working on it. Erikson perhaps hasn’t spent quite so long, but he had the advantage of a partner in Esselmont. Right from the beginning of the novel, the depth of setting is obvious. Unlike Tolkien, who eased readers into his world one step at a time, Erikson dives into the deep waters almost immediately. Some people report bouncing off the book because of this, and I don’t blame them. It’s a lot to process. But for those who manage to integrate it, the result is powerful. Again turning to Lord of the Rings as a useful model, the timespan of that story caught almost every important event. Aragorn had been alive for over a hundred years when he meets Frodo, but little of what he was doing had much impact on the outcome of the story. The same is true for most of the other characters. Ask a character after the events of Lord of the Rings when the important time of their lives was and all would point to the War of the Ring. Gardens of the Moon is completely different. The older characters (and even some of the younger ones) have been active for years and this is just the latest situation they’ve had to confront. It’s serious, but they’ve seen worse, and they’re worried they may someday see worse still. But the setting’s history goes back a lot farther than just a few decades. Tolkien probably felt our world was about 6,000 years old and so was his Middle Earth. Erikson no doubt sees our world as much older, and this is likewise reflected in his fiction. The Malazan Empire is just the latest of a thousand civilizations, a tiny sliver of hundreds of thousands if not millions of years of history. And this being a fantasy, there are immortal characters who have seen a sizable fraction of that history. Unlike Tolkien, who maintained a generational distance from the events of myth (Elrond was present only for the events at the very end of the Silmarillion), the influential immortals of Erikson’s present were just as influential in past millennia. This results in a unique effect where the past can feel extremely distant in one scene and very immediate in the next, depending on who is present. Now, having made such an extended comparison to Tolkien, I have to make clear that although Erikson’s world has a depth similar to Tolkien’s, he is a very different writer. He doesn’t share Tolkien’s gift for languages, nor does he lavish nearly so much attention on the landscapes. Erikson was a professional anthropologist, so the details he emphasizes are those of culture. When Tolkien described a hill topped with ruins, he spent most of his time on the hill, whereas Erikson lingers on the ruins. The result is that Erikson’s landscapes are not beautifully evoked, but they come off as being genuinely inhabited (whether now or in the past) in a way that Tolkien’s empty countryside does not. It’s worth continuing this contrast with Tolkien when we turn to the novel’s worldview. Tolkien’s setting was a conscious evocation of the high medieval period, however idealized. Most of his lesser successors have followed him in this, although they both loved and understood it less than Tolkien did. Erikson goes back much farther, and while his Malazan Empire is not an exact replica of any previous society, the closest analogue is probably the early Roman Empire. Whereas Tolkien’s world was fundamentally Christian, Erikson’s is thoroughly pagan. His gods are capricious and quick to interfere in the affairs of mortals. There’s no sense that humanity has dominion over the earth…the opposite, in fact. The distance between gods and men is small. Dangerously small, since the difference in power is vast. That disparity in power is perhaps the most old-fashioned element here. It’s easy to forget that for all the inequalities of wealth in our era, most people deny there is much difference between the average person and, for example, the American president. But to the ancients, there was an enormous gulf between the lowly peasant and Pharaoh, son of Ra. However, mixed into this authentically ancient outlook is a very modern flavor. Unlike traditional Tolkien-influenced fantasy, the past is not considered better, nor is the present a slide down into a faded future. Oh, there were still powerful races and empires in previous eras who forged mighty artifacts and fought incredible battles, but while they are certainly due some respect, ultimately there is an assumption that modern magic is just as good as the old stuff, if not better. Even the Jaghut Tyrant, an ancient evil feared by all and the closest thing in the novel to a Dark Lord, is implied to be somewhat obsolete and rather out of his depth. As for the gods, they may be active in the world, but ordinary people seem to mostly ignore them and hope to be ignored. Although there are cults and priests, we don’t see sacrifices being made or rituals undertaken to maintain the balance of the world. The only thing that resembles the consultation of omens or oracles is the Deck of Dragons, the ingenious tarot-like game that allows certain talented people to visualize divine affairs. The gods are of the ancient conception, then, but religious practice is about as pervasive as it is in the modern developed world (that is to say, not very). The pagan deities in, say, Rome could be capricious, but ultimately their favor could be bought through sacrifices and their protection assured through the proper administration of rituals. Erikson’s deities are complete free agents, depriving the masses of any hope of influencing the world around them. This lack of influence extends to the characters, although Erikson does something rather tricky there. Again and again, he shows us that his characters are other than what they appear. Kruppe is a bumbling fool, Crokus is an insignificant thief, and Paran is a neophyte officer. Or are they? The named Bridgeburner characters all act like war-weary soldiers from gritty military fantasy like that of Glen Cook: despite cynicism about high command, they push forward and follow orders. Right? Actually, it turns out that Sergeant Whiskeyjack is no mere Sergeant, that Quick Ben isn’t a lowly squad mage, and so forth. The Bridgeburner characters are slumming. They are far more powerful than they appear, but that just makes them a target of the world’s great powers. For the moderately powerful in such a dangerous universe, false humility is the only alternative to destruction. Since they are both long fantasy series, it’s inevitable that Malazan Book of the Fallen is often compared to George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, and it’s interesting that they end up being exact opposites in the way their characters interact with the world. A Song of Ice and Fire is full of ordinary humans who act just like we would expect historical nobles to act, bickering and self-centered, but they are caught amidst the events of high fantasy. Erikson’s characters, meanwhile, are surrounded by what are really quite mundane events. The Empress takes the throne through assassination, slowly purges those who were personally loyal to the previous Emperor and replaces them with her own partisans, and finally bleeds the armies dry trying to win military glory. But for the fact the person in charge is female, this could easily refer to any number of Roman Emperors. But in fact no one’s motivations, from high officials like the Empress and High Fist Dujek to seemingly ordinary grunts like Sergeant Whiskeyjack and Quick Ben, are even remotely like what they appear. They have the motivations of high fantasy characters, but these play out in a way that resembles the mundane games of empire. Perhaps the most modern element of the novel is the depiction of the military. Although I said that the Malazan Empire feels similar to Rome at times, it has armies, not legions, and they are broken down into squads the way modern armies are. The participation of women and the use of winged animals for airlifts also has a modern ring. But by far the most modern aspect of Erikson’s warfare is its carnage. It’s caused by magic or supernatural powers rather than technology, but nevertheless the capacity for mass destruction is unmistakeably modern in nature. The empires of our past were capable of inflicting horrifying atrocities, but they did so slowly and deliberately. In Gardens of the Moon thousands of people can be killed by a single errant magical attack. This modern and therefore very high destructive potential is combined with ancient and therefore low valuations of human life. Since World War II, the ever-escalating cost of war between two developed nations has become so frightening to contemplate that asymmetric war is the only kind anyone is willing to fight. In Gardens of the Moon, leaders are not so squeamish. To his credit, Erikson makes sure the terrible cost of the resulting warfare is put front and center. It’s no accident that the novel opens with not just one but two horrific battlefields where the soldiers who died never had a chance to fight back. Despite the huge number of characters who are soldiers, assassins, mercenaries, generals, etc., fighting is never glorified. Even the Bridgeburners, who are indeed glorified as a legendary military unit and present some of the most interesting and sympathetic characters, turn out to be ambiguous at best, given they attempt to orchestrate murders and then prepare a terror attack on a civilian population. They are well-intentioned, but so are their enemies who live in Darujhistan. When they meet in the right circumstances, people from the two different sides even become fast friends. Yet the intentions of ordinary people cannot change their world, so the conflict continues, grinding up human lives in the vast gears of ambition and intrigue. It’s this theme that motivates the book’s odd title, whose meaning escaped me in my original reading. After finding the corpse of a man killed in the political infighting surrounding Darujhistan’s panicked politics, the naive but supernaturally attuned Apsalar tells her friend Crokus about the oceans on the moon: Its oceans. Grallin’s Sea. That’s the big one. The Lord of the Dead Waters living there is named Grallin. He tends vast, beautiful underwater gardens. Grallin will come down to us, one day, to our world. And he’ll gather his chosen and take them to his world. And we’ll live in the gardens, warmed by the deep fires, and our children will swim like dolphins, and we’ll be happy since there won’t be any more wars, and empires, and no swords and shields. Oh, Crokus, it’ll be wonderful won’t it? Crokus’ initial reaction is to consider this absurd. It’s Erikson’s achievement (and this is, in my opinion, a considerable achievement) that not only do we as readers immediately have the same reaction as Crokus but we have it for the same reason. Immersed in the Malazan world with its manifold deities and deep magic, there’s nothing implausible about the idea of beautiful gardens under an ocean on the moon tended by an elder god. No, the only thing that seems unbelievable about Apsalar’s description is its last image: “There won’t be any more wars, and empires, and no swords and shields.” An end to suffering and war? That’s just fantasy.

Jurassic Park review

Let me just state that while Jurassic Park is a science fiction novel, it has elements that could be considered urban fantasy. Now, I have to say that this review will be super biased because this is the book that started my love of science fiction and intensified my love of fantasy. Dr. Alan Grant and grad student Ellie Sattler are paleontologists at the forefront of their field. John Hammond, an eccentric millionaire, has funded their digs, for unknown reasons. Grant and Sattler are on the verge of discovering a complete juvenile Velociraptor skeleton—the first of its kind— when Hammond calls and essentially demands they come visit Isla Nublar where he has built a nature preserve. The two reluctantly agree, and fly out to the island with Dennis Nedry, a computer technician, and Ian Malcolm, a chaos mathematician. Malcolm insists—even without knowing what is housed on the nature preserve—that due to chaos theory, the nature preserve will fail. Upon landing and seeing the results of InGen's bioengineering, Malcolm's predictions turn dire. Hammond has also invited his grandchildren, Tim and Lex, to come visit the preserve as well. The group begins to tour the facilities, and that is where the complications begin to arise. No matter how many times I read this book, Crichton's writing manages to still give me a feeling of dread and keep me on the edge of my seat. The use of his medical knowledge combined with the fantastical element of dinosaurs as the villains really makes it come alive. In fact, until last summer, I had refused to watch the movies because I felt that there was absolutely no way for the movie to even come close to portraying the story. This is definitely a modern classic. This is the book that I recommend to anyone that asks me for a book to read. There are very few books that I can actively read over and over again and still find them as amazing as I did the first time I read them, and this is definitely one of those books.

The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3)

“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them”.

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is the final installment of the well known trilogy. Like the previous two parts, this one continues with the intrepid group of heroes still moving forward with their individual quests. Filled with drama, adventure and plenty of cliffhangers, The Return of the king is a worthy climax of this epic saga. Like the Two Towers, here also the book runs in two parts; one explaining the adventures outside Mordor, and the other describing the adventures of Frodo and Sam.

41KGl2FqeALTo give a brief summary about the plot, Gandalf and Pippin are making their way to Minas Tirith to try to convince Denethor, the city’s Steward to join their fight to defeat Sauron. Frodo and Sam along with the treacherous Gollum as their guide, are continuing their long journey to Mount Doom, where they hope to destroy the Ring, once and for all. Aragorn accompanied by Legolas and Gimli is taking the legendary Paths of the Dead to Gondor, with the hopes of recruiting an enormous army of Sleepless Dead. Simultaneously, Lady Eowyn and Merry lead their forces against those of Mordor. And After improbable struggles where odds were always stacked against them, the evil Sauron is defeated by the forces of good. The book ends with Aragorn, now King and Arwen join in marriage and usher in a new age of peace and prosperity whereas the Hobbits return to the Shire to rebuild their beloved home against fading might of Saruman. The final chapter has Frodo deciding to leave the Shire and his friends and sailing away over the Great Sea with Bilbo, Gandalf, and the other Ring bearers to the beautiful and peaceful paradise in the West.

I just loved this series. The final installment is the most fast paced of the three books. The quality of Tolkien’s writing is so high that you can’t help but feel immersed in the book and can actually feel yourself travelling along with the hobbits, experiencing every bit of peril and hopelessness that they too must have been feeling on the final stages of their trek to Mount Doom. As with the first two books, I find it extremely difficult to write a review that actually does justice to the magnificent detail of the plot, the characters and the world of Middle Earth in general.

Return of the King is a fitting finale of this hugely engrossing saga. Written at a very high standard, I would strongly recommend this series to anyone who is able to commit to a book, interested in fantasy and looks forward to complicated ideas and vocabulary. This book is relatively shorter than the previous two but what really makes up for it is detailed specific details of each category; Hobbits, Elf, Dwarves, Men etc at the end of the book. So many new similar sounding names can often be confusing but that’s the fun part. J.R.R.Tolkien is a master storyteller, and it really shows in this fantasy trilogy of deceitfulness, faith, courage and heart. What really appeals to your reading sense is the writer’s relentless narration of quest, the heroic journey, the Numinous Object, the conflict between Good and Evil while at the same time satisfying our sense of historical and social reality. To create an imaginary world of such magnitude is no mean task. Once you finish this trilogy, perhaps you would be knowing more about different aspects of Middle Earth than you would be knowing about the actual world you are living in. It’s not just fantasy; its sheer intelligence and brilliance. A must read         

The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2)

The Two Towers’ is part 2 of Tolkien’s epic trilogy and comprises of ‘books’ three and four.

Book three follows the adventures of the fellowship after Frodo and Sam depart. At the end of ‘The Fellowship of the Ring,’ the orcs have attacked. Aragorn is up at the high seat where Frodo and Boromir conversed before he tried to take the ring from the hobbit. Aragorn hears Boromir’s horn, but arrives too late. Boromir is hanging on to life and after a few words, he dies in Aragorn’s arms. Gimli and Legolas show up and they discover that Merry and Pippin have disappeared. Aragorn tells them that the orcs have them and they make quick pursuit.

They follow the orcs (who were slain by Éomer and company) to Fangorn. In the forest, they discover that Gandalf is still alive and that the hobbits are alive and well. Gandalf goes with the trio to Edoras to meet with Théoden, King of the Mark. There they find the king’s mind poisoned by Wormtongue. Wormtongue’s hold is destroyed and he flees back to Isengard, to Saruman.

It is decided to go to Isengard and strike down Saruman and end his evil campaign. On the way, they are detoured to Helm’s Deep where a massive battle ensues. Miraculously, the armies of Isengard are defeated and then destroyed by the mysterious forest (a horde of Ents) that appears.

They leave Helm’s Deep and continue on to Isengard where they find it ravaged. After the armies had left, other Ents attacked and trapped Saruman and Wormtongue in Orthanc. They also find Merry and Pippin quite safe and sound. After they had escaped the slaughter of the Orcs, they had ran across Treebeard (Fangorn is his forest) who took them with him to a council of ents were they decided to go to war against Isengard.

When the company finally go and speak with Saruman, Gandalf destroys Saruman’s staff. Then Wormtongue nearly hits Gandalf with an orb he threw from one of the higher windows. What he threw was a palantir, one of seven stones used for communication many centuries prior (and how Saruman communicated with Sauron). On their way back, Pippin lets his curiosity take over and holds the orb. He communicates with Sauron, but doesn’t give anything away. They see one of the Nazgûl and Gandalf instructs the others to go to Helm’s Deep, while he takes Pippin and leaves for Minas Tirith.

Across the river, Sam and Frodo are trying to make their way to Mordor. Before they get out of Emyn Muil, they capture Gollum (also called Sméagol) who they thought they’d lost. Gollum leads them across the dead marshes and to the Black Gate, but it is closed, guarded, and has too much foot traffic. Gollum tells them of a secret way further south near Minas Morgul. Sam (who doesn’t trust Gollum) isn’t keen on the idea, but Frodo knows there really isn’t another choice.

As they pass through Ithilien, they meet with Faramir (Boromir’s brother) who takes them with him and his soldiers. Once he learns of their mission, he allows them to go (and doesn’t kill Gollum). They continue down through Ithilien and eventually pass Minas Morgul and up through Cirith Ungol. Gollum then leads them through the tunnels and his betrayal is learned when they are attacked by Shelob, a giant spider. Sam and Frodo get separated and when Sam finds him again, Frodo appears to have been killed. He takes the ring to continue the journey, but some orcs appear and he learns that Frodo is still alive. He follows the orcs to where they take him, but arrives too late and is stuck standing outside the gate.

I was considering watching the film again to make sure I correctly mentioned some of the scenes, but got annoyed so I turned it off. It is a no brainer that the book is better than the film. As I’ve been reading the three books, I’ve been amazed at the liberties Peter Jackson took when making the films. When they first came out, I remember people saying how close they were to the books. Sorry to say, but not really. I’ll highlight some of the major scenes as citing them all would take ages.

Alright, here are some changes from book 3. So the whole scene about how the Ents were going to war was totally incorrect. Sure their meeting took a long time, but they were keen on going to war and already knew about what Saruman had done to the trees. Next, Théoden wasn’t being controlled by Saruman. His mind was poisoned by Wormtongue. Then the whole scene at Isengard was so wrong that it would take ages to convey all the differences (for one Saruman never dies). Book 4 had tons as well. Gollum never started to become good. He pretended. Frodo wasn’t bothered by the ring until they passed Minas Morgul. The interaction with Faramir was totally different and they were never taken to Osgiliath. And Frodo wasn’t poisoned against Sam whilst climbing Cirith Ungol. They’ve been cool the entire time.

I’ll just straight into my qualms with the characters. Faramir is such an amazing character and Jackson made him into a joke. When I read about him, all I could think about was how noble a person he was. The ring was within his grasp and he knew taking it was wrong. He knew that even with good intentions the ring would bring about evil. The people loved him because he was wise, kind, and a great leader. He was none of those things in the film. It was so infuriating. Not to mention that Frodo is so much stronger in the books than the films. They turn him into a weakling as well. It is so aggravating. The characters are so great and unique. There was no need to change them.

I found the book very exciting. My problem was that it was more interesting following Frodo and Sam than the rest of the fellowship. There is a lot of description going on with the fellowship and everything they are doing. With the hobbits it is much more linear. I found it easier because you were following feelings and journey of two people rather than the goings on of a large group. It is more intimate. Plus their journey is wrought with more danger (and who doesn’t like reading about dangerous adventures).

Overall, of course I think you should read it. It is an epic fantasy that has earned that classification. Yes, it can be difficult to get though and some of the sentences will need to be reread a couple times as they can be quite confusing (some seriously don’t actually make any sense). But if you can get through it, you will be glad you did. It is worth the read. Enjoy

The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)

Bilbo, after the events from The Hobbit, has settled down to a nice slightly eccentric life. He adopts one of his nephews, Frodo, as his heir and begins to write his memoirs. On his One Hundred and Eleventieth birthday, Bilbo disappears and leaves everything to Frodo. Only Gandalf knows that Bilbo has gone to Rivendell.

Several decades later Gandalf visits Frodo and reveals that the little gold ring that allowed Bilbo to turn invisible, and that he left to Frodo, is actually a ring of great power, possibly The One Ring that was made by Sauron to control all the other rings of power. Gandalf tells Frodo he needs to go to Rivendell to take counsel and that he, Gandalf, will return in a year to help guide him there.

A year passes and no word of Gandalf. Frodo has been preparing and his cover story is that he is moving to Buckland, another settlement of hobbits. Two of his cousins, Merry and Pippin, along with Frodo’s gardener Sam, have all been helping him move. On the way to Buckland, Frodo runs into a black rider that inspires complete unreasoning terror in his heart. No longer knowing who to trust, Frodo and his companions begin their trek to Rivendell.

Having several adventures, the hobbits meet up with Strider, a human ranger who Gandalf trusted. They all head for Rivendell, doing their best to avoid the attention of the Black Riders, who Strider reveals are Ringwraiths, Sauron’s powerful underlings. The Group makes it to Rivendell and Gandalf shows up. He tells them that the head of the Wizard’s Council, Saruman the White, has been corrupted by a lust for power. Now the world must deal with Sauron and Sarumon, both who want the One Ring for the power it contains. Elrond, the elven lord of Rivendell, tells that the Ring will corrupt any being who uses it and that it must be destroyed. The only way to destroy it is to cast it back into the fiery Mount Doom from which it was created.

A Company is gathered. They set out. Hindered in many ways, they must eventually decide what they are going to do with the Ring. Gandalf perishes defending them from a Balrog, a being almost equal in power to Sauron himself. Eventually, one of the Companions, a human named Boromir, falls under the influence of the Ring and tries to take it from Frodo.

Frodo flees, along with Sam and heads off on his own towards Mt Doom. The book ends with the Fellowship breaking apart and heading their own ways.


My Thoughts:

This is going to be a lot shorter of a review than my 2012 one.

I enjoyed this but was not raving about it. A thoroughly good story that is at once personal and cozy and yet epic in scope all at the same time. It is no wonder that this trilogy ended up spawning the Fantasy Genre as we know it today.

The reason this doesn’t get more than 4stars from, and never will, is all the blasted songs and poetry. Sometimes they contained pertinent information to the current story and other times they were simply a history lesson and at others they were just an expression by the character. You never knew which. I ended up just skipping them, plot points be forsaken.         

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I’ve always liked the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, if largely for the sheer spectacle of the Triwizard Tournament. Unlike its predecessors, the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is very different from the book – necessitated in part because the book is almost twice the length of Prisoner of Azkaban.

Goblet of Fire contains an entire subplot about House-elf rights not even referenced in the films. It’s an interesting social commentary and adds another layer of moral complexity to the Harry Potter series. Unfortunately, the characters’ responses to the House-elves plight puzzles me, to say the least.

Harry, Hermione, and Ron learn that Dobby now works at Hogwarts as a free Elf. However, they also learn that hundreds of House-elves work in Hogwarts, basically as slaves. This immediately strains credibility. Harry, Hermione, and Ron have all snuck around Hogwarts at night. In Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry even learns about the secret passageways. I simply cannot believe that they’d never spotted any House-elves during their three years at the school. Up to this point. Hermione seemed to know every minute detail about the school and its history. Perhaps they were simply never curious and, like many kids, never wondered about the domestic help who cleaned up after them.

Hermione takes a strong interest in the plight of the House-elves and decides to form the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare (S.P.E.W.) to advocate for Elf rights. Despite her best efforts, neither Harry nor Ron join her crusade. In fact, they seem blasé about the House-elf situation and believe that the Elves are happy to work at Hogwarts. Harry even seems a tad insensitive; for Christmas, he gives Dobby – who risked his life for Harry in Chamber of Secrets – an old sock. Meanwhile, Ron teases Hermione for being obsessed with S.P.E.W.

I’m all for letting Harry and Ron’s characters wade into morally ambiguous territory, but this setup doesn’t quite ring true. If anything, given his backgrounds, Harry should have been more sympathetic to the plight of House-elves than Hermione. When we first met him in Sorcerer’s Stone, the Dursleys basically treated Harry like a House-elf, forcing him to do chores and otherwise stay out of sight. In Chamber of Secrets, he actually developed a friendship with Dobby, and thus should have had a personal stake in the House-elf question.

As any social activist knows, personal appeals are often the most effective. I kept waiting for Hermione to say something like: “Harry, did you like the way your uncle and aunt treated you? Living under that staircase? Didn’t they order you to act happy in front of guests? Imagine your life if Hagrid hadn’t come to rescue you. How different is your situation from the House-elves, really? Except they don’t have a Hagrid.” Even if such an appeal didn’t convince Harry to wholeheartedly join S.P.E.W., I think the character really need to confront the fact that he was turning his back on individuals in a situation similar to what he experienced under the Dursleys.

Maybe Hermione should have written a book about the House-elves, "Uncle Dobby's Cabin"

Believability aside, the House-elf subplot adds an interesting twist by suggesting that the world readers saw simply as “magical” in Sorcerer’s Stone actually runs on slave labor. Again, as Harry grows up, the world is no longer black and white. As Sirius Black says, “If you want to know what a man’s really like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors…” At the same time, Rowling strikes a delicate balance. Despite Hermione’s pleading, the plight of the House-elves isn’t so desperate that readers become disgusted with Harry or Ron. The House-elves have always been somewhat comical figures and do seem to genuinely prefer servitude. We might admire Dobby’s Braveheart-like passion for freedom, and we be frustrated by the limits of Harry’s compassion, but I doubt many readers come away from Goblet of Fire thinking that Harry condones slavery.

If anything, Goblet of Fire seems to use the House-elf subplot as social commentary on society’s blind neglect of societal injustice. We know that problems exist in the world but rarely do we do anything about them. Most of us – and Rowling’s largely Western, middle-class readership – never dig too deeply into the lives janitors, waiters, bus drivers, etc. A news article about Asian companies using slaves to catch seafood might jolt some readers, but will probably prevent few from taking action – if they even remember the following day. Goblet of Fire doesn’t seem to imply that, in accepting House-elf servitude, Harry – or readers who engage in similar blind neglect – is becoming like Voldemort. It does make clear though that Harry will have to learn pity before he can become a truly admirable adult.

For all my discussion about the House-elves, they’re a small part of Goblet of Fire. The later Harry Potter books continue the House-elf subplot. There’s some payoff for Harry and Ron’s character development, but oddly the larger issue of House-elf rights remains unresolved by the final book. Perhaps this is meant to convey the difficult of social change? In any case, the House-elf question provides an interesting subplot throughout he series, but I wish the characters had had more meaningful and personal conversations about the subject.         

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

In some ways, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix marks the true beginning of Harry’s maturation as a character and as a person. As I noted in my review of Chamber of Secrets, Dumbledore misrepresented the nature of Harry’s character arc by focusing on moral choices. Even in this book, Harry is never confronted with a choice between good and evil, much less to join Voldemort’s Death Eaters.

Order of the Phoenix does three crucial things for Harry’s character. First, the book forces him to confront his emotions. Second, it challenges his preconceptions about friendship. Finally, it forces him to confront death.

Harry begins Order of the Phoenix in a darker place. He’s moody, angry at the world, and doesn’t want to sit next to the unpopular kids (i.e., Neville Longbottom) on the train to Hogwarts. In short, he’s a teenager. Some Harry Potter fans disliked Harry’s darker turn (calling him “EMO-Harry”). Although that’s not entirely unfair, Harry’s character needed to go in this direction. I found Harry’s unadulterated goodness in the first four books somewhat tiresome and unrealistic. After all Harry has suffered, I’m surprised he has so few emotional issues. I found Harry’s happy-go-lucky goodness in the first four books somewhat tiresome and unrealistic. Moreover, Harry has faced problems that presented physically, mentally, and magically, but never one that challenged him emotionally.

Harry’s emotional turmoil deepens as his faith in his friends and mentors suffers. Ron and Hermione keep secrets from him and don’t write to him during the summer. Dumbledore refuses to speak to him. The entire wizarding government turns on him as the Ministry of Magic rejects Harry’s claims about Voldemort. Perhaps most importantly, through occlumency lessons, Harry sees Snape’s memories of his father James Potter and godfather Sirius Black as bullies. If the lesson of Prisoner of Azkaban was that sometimes society shuns and wrongly condemns good people, Order of the Phoenix tells Harry that even his dearest friends and role models have flaws.

On top of that, Order of the Phoenix kills one of Harry’s key mentors. Ironically, for all the danger Harry has experienced at Hogwarts, nobody close to him had ever died (Cedric Diggory in Goblet of Fire was at best an acquaintance, never a close friend). Nor have any of the adults in Harry’s life died. Harry’s parents died when he was too young to remember, and by Sorcerer’s Stone he had no firsthand memories of them. When Bellatrix Lestrange kills Sirius Black at the end of Order of the Phoenix, we see how Harry reacts to loss for the first time.

Harry goes through the classic phases of grief. He denies that Sirius is truly gone, even asking a resident Hogwarts ghost if perhaps Sirius could reappear in ghost form. He lashes out in anger at those around him. When Dumbledore tries to console Harry by telling him that “This pain is part of being human,” Harry responds, “Then I don’t want to be human!” This is the closest Harry ever comes to Voldemort. Harry would never knowingly join the Death Eaters, but, like Voldemort, his initial instinct is to want to use his power to overcome (i.e., “eat”) death (in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, we learn how far Voldemort takes this obsession).

To some extent, Harry resolves the first two problems by learning to trust in those who have shown loyalty and can admit their flaws. Dumbledore, Sirius Black, and Harry’s friends are all able to admit their mistakes. Dumbledore had valid reasons for not talking to Harry – he feared Voldemort’s connection to Harry’s mind – but realizes that his actions hurt Harry. When Neville, Ginny Weasley, and Luna Lovegood volunteer to help Harry rescue Sirius at the Ministry of Magic, they join Harry’s inner circle of friends (on the train ride back to London, he sits with them).

Those characters who refuse to reflect on their flaws lose Harry’s trust. It’s telling that Harry’s relationship with Cho Chang dissolves because she is unable to admit that her best friend, Marietta Edgecombe, acted improperly in exposing Dumbledore’s Army. Even when centaurs threaten to carry off Dolores Umbridge, she never apologizes to Harry or appeals to his conscience; Harry in turn refuses to rescue her. In short, Harry figures out when he can overlook character flaws and when they indicate deeper personal weakness.

Although Harry doesn’t quite come to accept death in this novel (that won’t come until Deathly Hallows), at least by the end of the book he focuses more on the problems of the living than the dead. I particularly liked how Harry is pulled out of his depression – or at least distracted – when he sees Luna searching for her clothes. Luna tells Harry about her deceased mother and her hopes that they’ll meet again in the afterlife. By helping his friends, focusing on the living, Harry receives some comfort and consolation – something he wouldn’t have gotten had he followed Voldemort’s path in trying to cheat death.

Order of the Phoenix isn’t perfect – I found the satire of public education via Dolores Umbridge a bit heavy-handed, and the book suffers from numerous plot contrivances – but it takes real risks with Harry’s character, most of which work. Although Harry does begin the novel as an angsty teen, he emerges with a greater capacity for compassion and humility. Unfortunately, the film adaptation seemed unable or unwilling to convey the depths of Harry’s emotional turmoil. Perhaps “EMO-Harry” proved too controversial for fans; indeed the subsequent novels never challenge Harry emotionally to quite this extent.

Next week, I review Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth book in the Harry Potter series…