Against Nothingness

There is no good time to reach the end of a book. If the book was bad you should not have finished it. If the book was good you will wish it had not ended. If there is no good time to finish a book there are even fewer good times to finish a series. And woe to he who reaches the end of a ten book series which has been years in the reading and re-reading. Indeed, one mourns. I do.  For some people the quality of the writing ceases to matter somewhere between the 3rd and 5th book of any series. The flawed gamblers logic of "I've already invested so much" takes over and momentum alone carries us through to the end. I have never been such a one and so, in agony, I have left behind me a ragged trail of unfinished series. Yet when a series is good enough to hold my interest the agony I experience, through my own foolishness, has often been no less. I keep starting series before they are completely written and so I face the specter of uncertainty as I await with eagerness...

Ed. Bart R. Leib. Subversion: Science Fiction & Fantasy tales of challenging the norm . Crossed Genres Publishing, 2011. 172 pgs.  Traitor or Revolutionary? Hero or Villain? Don't these titles mean the same thing, just from a different side? History, as they say, is written by the victors, but what would it be like to get a look before those histories were written? Here, you will find stories which explore these themes and more.  Subversion is a collection of short stories around the theme of, you guessed it, subversion. Each author has his or her own take, and each story holds forth a different facet of dealing with change.  As a book of short stories, I can't tell you everything about this book. It was a very enjoyable collection, with stories ranging from 3 to 5 stars. Some of the authors were indeed very creative in dealing with the idea of subversion, others merely wrote a good yarn. Of course, that isn't really an easy thing to do, and so merely is...

Ross Lawhead.  The Realms Thereunder (An Ancient Earth) . Thomas Nelson, 2011. 400 pgs.  Beneath Great Britian lies a sleeping army ready and waiting for the great battle between good and evil. Daniel Tully and Freya Reynolds are normal school children. Until they accidentally discover, and awaken, two of the sleeping knights in that army. Thus begins their adventures in the realms thereunder. Knights, immortal and ancient wise men, trolls, gnomes, dragons, and an evil wizard seem to be in only the beginning in this enjoyable series.  Reading The Realms Thereunder  felt like a return to an older style of fantasy novel. It comes from a time when confused youths with swords could become heroes, a time when fantasy still had an element of the fairy tale, and it is well done. While maintaining the ambiguity of the human soul, the deceitful shadows of evil, and the reality of our confusing and often sorrowful life on earth Lawhead manages to pull the reader ...

Stephen R. Lawhead.  The Bone House (Bright Empires) . Thomas Nelson, 2011. 416 pgs.  One year ago, less one week, I posted my review of Stephen Lawheads  The Skin Map , which is the first book in the "Bright Empires" series. Here, then, is the second book in that series. The Bone House  continues the story of Kit Livingston in his quest for the skin map. One piece has been found, but the stakes have been raised. Kit has inherited this quest from his grandfather, Cosimo, but Kit is now on the run, and, except for the help of his surprisingly resourceful girlfriend Mina, on his own.  This book was a pleasant surprise. It is an incredibly rare series which gets better in the second book, but Lawhead has done just that. He has maintained the depth of character development, excellent descriptions of the scenes, and at the same time upped the pace and removed my one qualm with the first book in this series: the confusion of jumping from time to time. ...

Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn. (New York: Penguin, 1968) 304 pages. My second Peter Beagle book and, I have to say, this novel was as much of a treat to read as were his short stories . The Last Unicorn is a faerie tale. Not only that, but it is a faerie tale of exactly the right sort. It is the kind of tale where nothing is as it seems and everything is as it should. A tale which starts out in such a simple, non-presumptuous, way but which ends by giving so much more than you anticipated. A tale in which each character is human, frail and weak and a mix of good and evil, but where each one surprises you and makes you feel for him or her. It is, in short, a very good story. The tale begins with a unicorn in a wood. This is Beagle's description: " The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But he...

Peter S. Beagle, We Never Talk About My Brother. San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2009. 219pgs My leisure reading has been, for a very long time, focused largely on the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres. There are some exceptions, naturally, but at least 90%, if not more, falls into this category. As such, I have reached a point, several times now, of despair. I often wonder if I've read all the really good authors and must now settle for passable entertainment at best. My despair rarely grows too deep though; I usually find another good author before too long. In this case, the man who has lifted the fog is Peter S. Beagle. I feel like I've found something new under the sun. Of course, this is not actually the case. The reality is that Beagle has been writing since 1958, and his most famous novel, The Last Unicorn, is on many lists of "top 10 best fantasy books" and the like (and on my short list of fiction to read soon). How I missed him for so long i...