“Fiddle-de-dee’s not English.”

The Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones
Illustrated by David Wyatt
CollinsVoyager 2004
480 pages

OK, I’ve put this off long enough. I read this book in November 2007, and after I post this, I still have seven books backlogged from 2007. Chalk it down do laziness and being uninspired; I just couldn’t sit down long enough and type anything substantial. Also, it doesn’t help that this book isn’t exactly one of my favourites — and I don’t know why.

The Merlin Conspiracy is set in an alternate British Isles, in a world almost like our world but not quite. Well, not really “almost”. There’s a King’s Progress going around the Isles of Blest all year round, and our first protagonist, Roddy, is a member of this Progress, and her parents are wizards in the King’s court. And there’s a Merlin, who’s kind of in charge of all the magic in the Isles of Blest. Then the old Merlin dies, and is replaced with a new one, and the new Merlin doesn’t really seem cut for the job, though it seems like only Roddy and her best friend Grundo notice this.

Our other protagonist is Nick Mallory, a kid from our world. Apparently Nick has made an appearance before in another of Jones’s novels, Deep Secret, which I haven’t read but it really doesn’t matter here. He tries to go to other worlds, and surprisingly (or perhaps not), he manages to do just that, getting himself into a lot of trouble. It seems he’s the only one who can help Roddy unravel the Merlin conspiracy, so Roddy seeks his help.

The writing is good — all the things you expect from Diana Wynne Jones are there: the story is fast-paced, the characters flawed but likeable (this won’t make sense if you haven’t read the book, but good lord the Izzy twins are annoying. Jones gets an A+ for those two, since I am pretty sure she intended those two to get on your nerves), the storyline complicated but not completely bewildering. And this is where I get frustrated — I still don’t really like the book.

It’s quite possibly the format. The story is told in first person, alternating from Roddy to Nick. (I am not a fan of the first person narrative. It sets me off, and I have yet to find the reason for this.) Both get whole chapters to themselves — sometimes consecutively; it doesn’t always switch to the other’s POV at the end of a chapter — and there are some overlaps in events, but not much. I was partly amused and partly irritated that the font changes with the POV changes. Personally, I prefer the font they used for Roddy.

And I’ve groused about this for other books I’ve read by Jones before, but the ending here really made me pause. Not the actual resolution to the whole conflict — that was tied up pretty well — but the very last few lines of the books. They’re just sort of . . . hanging. I mean, if I were to expect a “THE END” at the end of a book, I wouldn’t have expected it to come after those lines.

I do think the cover is really funky, though, as well as the illustrations at the beginning of each POV change. XD (D’oh, I’ve just checked and realised that they’re by David Wyatt; of course they’re awesome.)

Probably I’ll check out Deep Secret one of these days. Probably. Not any time soon, though.

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This book is also read in conjunction with Renay’s Speculative Fiction challenge!

Ilium by Dan Simmons
HarperTorch (2005)
731 pages

I better be admitting this up front — I wasn’t looking forward to doing any sort of recap of this book or Olympos. It’s a messed-up jumble in my head, both of the books, and if asked to summarise the plot points I’d probably fail, since it seems more like a whirl of characters and events. I’m not saying that I didn’t like the book — it was intriguing and mostly well written, and I did spend a few sleepless nights reading both Ilium and Olympos.

Here’s what it’s about: it’s the Trojan War, but being reenacted in the future, on a terraformed Mars. Yeah, I know. Took me a while to wrap my head around that myself. There are three major strorylines going on, the first one about said Trojan War, the other about humans living on earth about 2000 years into our future, and the third about Shakespeare-analysing, Proust-quoting man–machine hybrids called moravecs from the Jovian moons. The first part is in the first person — we’re tagging along with a scholar from the 21st century named Thomas Hockenberry who has been revived to observe as the war progresses, and basically he’s sick and tired of the whole thing and he eventually does something to derail the original course of the Iliad. We almost get a blow by blow account of the war at some parts of his story. The other story is about the old-style humans on earth, post-literate and almost completely ignorant about everything — their history and origins, the world around them — but a group of them from Ardis Hall are finally realising that not everything is as fine and dandy as they had been led to believe. The third, centred on the moravecs, is about their mission as they travel from Jupiter to Mars, and later their journey through the terraformed Mars, to investigate what is going on. All three storylines converge somewhat, near the end of the book.

. . . You know, I’m giving up on the summary. Wikipedia has a pretty detailed spoiler-full synopsis (which, personally, I think, needs some heavy editing) of the novel.

I don’t know much about the Iliad. I probably know more about the Odyssey, but even that not by much. Nor have I ever read anything by Marcel Proust and while I do know my Shakespeare, it’s mostly from casual reading, and it’s not something I ever studied. Ilium still worked for me despite the numerous, sometimes bewildering, literary references. I missed a lot of the more subtle references, I’m sure.

Most of the times the characters have no idea what’s happening, and I was pretty much as confused as they were, and it was the worst with Hockenberry, since his narrative was in first person, present tense and we only know what he knows. The man can’t even remember much about his previous life on earth — the only thing he knows with complete clarity is Homer’s Iliad. Yet I liked reading about Hockenberry most, though I liked, as a character, Mahnmut the moravec from Europa and his interactions with Orphu of Io more. I have trouble with the “old-style” humans on earth; I liked them pretty well, but none of them caught my attention — Daeman annoyed me no end at the start though I liked him best at the end, Harman thinks himself too clever for his own sake, Ada . . . just doesn’t do anything that interests me.

The dialogue needs some work at some points — I can’t remember where, but there was a point that I had blinked at the pages wondering who the heck talks like that, 2000 years in the future or not. Sometimes Simmons’s graphic descriptions of the Greeks and Trojans killing each other made me go “eww”, and the somewhat mechanical descriptions in the sex scene(s?) also made me go “eww” in a different way, but I was already kind of expecting that, thanks to Hyperion. Some continuity problems, but I’m willing to dismiss them (I can’t even remember what they are now; I generally don’t take notes as I read) due to sheer volume of the book. Simmons also tends to be repetitive at times — I don’t know how many reminders we need about how Orphu of Io can’t “see” or what communicating with the little green men (no, that’s not the end of things you’ll find yourself completely bemused by in this novel) will do to them.

Other points in the novel that left me blinking — or at least, I think it was Ilium, it may have been Olympos, the way I’m confusing things: how apparently some Islamic caliphate was the terrorist that helped end the world, and the call for prayer by the muezzin in Jerusalem called for killing the Jews. (It didn’t help that while reading that part, it coincided with the actual call for Subuh prayers — early morning prayers, before dawn — I could hear from the mosque down the road, leaving me feeling disoriented, which was partly from lack of sleep. I have a really bad track record with not going to bed on time thanks to reading.) Terrorists, huh. A reflection of the current times, I suppose. :/ I was mildly miffed.

The ending of the book was a cliffhanger. I think that’s just the way Simmons does things — he did the same thing in Hyperion before. The story continues in Olympos.

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This book was also read partly for the speculative fiction challenge hosted by Renay!

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The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories by Susanna Clarke
Illustrated by Charles Vess
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (2007)
235 pages

My first — and perhaps only — complaint about The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories is it is too short. Especially after the thickness of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell — that one was heavy enough to use as a blunt weapon.

I enjoyed Jonathan Strange though it took me ages to get into the book. It was probably because I had trouble getting used to the prose. I remember complaining to Justine on how I was not managing to make any progress reading the book. It probably took something close to a third of the book before I got absorbed into the story and the pages went flying by. I couldn’t put it down until I got to the end.

This isn’t a problem with The Ladies of Grace Adieu, thankfully. The stories are short, more whimsical than Jonathan Strange, and I enjoyed them immensely. Some of them may sound familiar, almost like retellings of folktales and some draw upon historical characters, like Mary, Queen of Scots, and Duke Wellington.

Eight short stories grace this book (and an introduction that I believe is fictional — it has to be . . . right?) and while some are stronger than others, I can’t say that I found one that I didn’t like. The title story takes place in the same world of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell . . . Jonathan Strange even makes an appearance in the story. The second story, On Lickerish Hill, made me flounder a bit, mainly because of the deliberate misspellings used in it. But then I got to this line: “Sir John Sowreston is two-and-thirty years of age; size, middling; eyes, black; legges, handsome.” and it made me snort with startled laughter and all was right with the story.

Mrs Mabb is one of my favourites, in which a young lady tries to get back her young man who’s in the clutches of the fairy queen. The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse is a story set in Neil Gaiman’s Stardust’s village of Wall, a lighthearted interlude, almost. Mr Simonelli or The Fairy Widower, probably the longest story of the lot, is about a local rector matching wits against a fairy lord, and, in my opinion, the best story this collection holds. I still can’t make up my mind whether the ending is hilarious or tragic.

Tom Brightwind or How the Fairy Bridge was Built at Thoresby is a bit predictable, but the characters were fun and witty and funny. Antickes and Frets befuddled me for quite a bit, possibly because I have very little idea who Mary, Queen of Scots is, and why she wants revenge on the Queen Elizabeth of England. Thank goodness for Wikipedia. (I know, I know. My history needs some polishing.) I really liked the last story, John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner, as well. It’s one of those stories where the lowly peasant outwits a king, except this time there are saints and fairies.

This is a witty, almost whimsical collection of short stories that I had enjoyed reading very much. The prose is flawless, and the illusions by Charles Vess are beautiful and complement the stories perfectly, both in style and sense. And I love the cover.

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This book was also read in conjunction with Renay’s speculative fiction reading challenge!

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To celebrate finally finishing setting up the site (and a reason for me to procrastinate posting about the books I have read), I’ve decided to take part in the Book Ninja’s Speculative Fiction reading challenge!

Here’s the, uh, sexy image for the challenge:

And quoting the quote from Renay:

Speculative Fiction . . . the action of the story can take place in a culture that never existed, a world we know nothing of, or an earth that might have been or might be, to name a few. . . . This distinctiveness is best illustrated in the primary question asked by the writers of Speculative Fiction, “What if?” . . . this genre has a special capacity to deal with the human equation. (source)

I’ve chosen the path of A Theoretical Handbook For the Unseasoned Speculator, otherwise known as the speculative fiction buffet. (But damn, I would’ve liked to claim I was reading for Skinning Schrödinger’s Cat With Occam’s Razor, if only because I find the title hysterical.)

Books chosen are:

• Ilium by Dan Simmons
  • science fiction
• The Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones
  • fantasy
• The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke
  • alternate history, or at least I hope so! It’s a short story collection and I know some of the stories share the same world as Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
• Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve
  • alternate history sorry, sorry, it’s probably science fiction; I’m confusing it with Larklight
• Temeraire by Naomi Novik
  • alternate history
• Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
  • magical realism

Alternates, because I’ve been known to be easily distracted!

• Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
  • magical realism
• The Riddle-Master’s Game trilogy by Patricia A McKillip
  • fantasy (I have a bound book with all three of the books in the trilogy in it. I may decide to cop-out and read the first volume, The Riddle-Master of Hed, only!)

Yay!