Reading Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

I would say that The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is probably the most well known book in the Narnia series, and although it is only the second in the line up, it is also one of the most pivotal. In it we are introduced to the Pevensie children – Peter, Susan, Lucy, and Edmund, who reappear in future books, and we see more of Narnia post-creation.

I feel like the plot of this book is fairly well known. Lucy finds Narnia through the wardrobe she walks into a world enchanted into an eternal winter (with no Christmas) at the hands of The White Witch. With the help of the magical creatures of Narnia and Aslan of course, the children set out to bring back spring, but of course not everything goes to plan.

I found Lucy and Edmund to be the most interesting  of the children – Peter and Susan kind of take on the role of parents as the two oldest, and while Peter does have a good story arc of accepting his role of High King of Narnia, I just found Edmund and Lucy to be the most interesting.

Edmund is an interesting character because he is pegged as the “evil one” when he follows Lucy into Narnia. When he gets there he meets The White Witch, who offers him whatever he wants in the way of food and he snacks on the Turkish Delight that she gives him. (I’ve actually had Turkish Delight when I was in Turkey freshman year of college and it is pretty good. I will always connect it with this story.)

I have often thought that in a way it is easier to write bad characters than good characters – they don’t always have to play by the rules and they often have interesting motivations and back stories (not that good characters don’t but there’s just something about a villain’s back story that I am really interested in). I think C.S. Lewis does a good job with this in Edmund and the role that he plays in the book.

First off Edmund himself isn’t bad in the way that many villains are. He just comes across the villain first and falls in with her. Before Narnia he’s kind of the lost child in the line up – he always picks on Lucy and gives her a hard time and scolded by his older siblings. He isn’t as close with the rest of them as they are with each other. So when The White Witch gives him special attention, he can’t help but feel loved.

The interesting part of Edmund’s character is when he returns to The White Witch and her castle on his second trip to Narnia with his siblings. He goes back to the Witch after seeing how she took Mr. Tumnus (I love Mr. Tumnus, and James McAvoy), and hearing about the terror she inflicted on Narnia from Mr. and Mrs. Beaver (love them too!) But he still goes back after he heard about Aslan from the Beavers because the Witch promised him that he could be king over Narnia, and that he would have power over his siblings, particularly Peter.

On this reading I thought Edmund was a very well flushed out character. He was very realistic in his desires and flaws and C.S. Lewis does a good job of making him relatable. He isn’t at The White Witch’s castle for very long before he realizes that this is not what he had in mind. She turns very cruel to him, and there are no more promises of power or Turkish Delight. So while a large part of his character is striving for power and recognition above his siblings, the rest of his character is trying to get back to them after seeing the cruelty of The White Witch.

Lucy is another favorite of mine. Maybe it’s because she and Mr. Tumnus are such good pals and I want to join them for tea. Or maybe its because she is the youngest and the first one to find Narnia. The others write it all off as her being an imaginative little girl but are proven wrong when they end up in the snowy woods themselves. She is also the one that has the closest relationship to Aslan throughout the books, which I think is a really interesting detail that Lewis chose to hone in on.

I was talking about this with a friend of mine, who had also read the Narnia books recently, and it is interesting to look at the reactions of various characters throughout the series as they meet Aslan. I will be talking about this more in future posts as well but some are frightened, some are hesitant, some are doubtful, and others are relieved. When the Pevensies first hear about Aslan, Lewis writes,

At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.

Lucy is always the one that is happiest and the most free around Aslan, and Lewis is really showing the whole concept of “child-like faith” through her. I also feel like she is the Pevensie that is focused on the most throughout the series, and she is the one that is closest to Aslan.

And now on to Aslan himself. I said that this is a pivotal book in the series because it really sets up Aslan character for the rest of the series. In the first one it is clear that he is special because he is the one that sings Narnia into existence, but in Lion, Witch, Wardrobe we see him in a relationship with those around him. And most importantly (spoiler alert) he dies. Not only does he die, but he dies for Edmund and then he comes back again. Kind of like Jesus…

I first read Lion, Witch, Wardrobe (that is going to be my name for it since it is a long title to type out) in third grade Reading, and I was so sad by the fact that Aslan died that I had forgotten he came back to life again. I also never really put it together with the Jesus metaphor because I did not read it in that context. We watched the Aslan’s death scene in class from the old movie, and I remember it being really scary. It definitely affected me, and that was without the religious connotations, which I think really is a nod to the writing and the scene itself. It is powerful. I rewatched the new version of the movie a few months ago, and I was also blown away by it then as well. I knew the plot by then of course, but it was the first time I had revisited the story since really becoming a Christian in high school, and I just had a lot of feelings about that scene in general.

First of all, Edmund left to go to the Witch’s castle after hearing about Aslan (as it said earlier, he was filled with fear). He heard about who Aslan was and he turned away. He never even met him like the others did, but he was the one that Aslan died for so that he could have a second chance and be reunited with the rest of his siblings. Also he left so that he could gain power and become king, but there was a prophesy that said he and the rest of the Pevensies were going to be kings and queens of Narnia, which turned out to be much better than what the Witch had planned for him. He is the one that goes through the most character development throughout the book, and is pivotal to the story itself.

I have a lot of feelings about the Narnia series and this book in general, and I could go on and on, but I am going to stop here and save the rest for the other posts. (I am about to finish up the 6th book.) But recommend this book to everyone no matter what their religion or age is. It’s hugely layered and is just a good read in general. It doesn’t take very long to get through, and most importantly it takes you to Narnia.

Reading Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew

I have never read all the Narnia books before. I read The Magician’s Nephew and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe when I was little, but then I got bored when I started The Horse and His Boy and found out that it introduced new characters when I thought we were going to stick with Peter, Susan, Lucy and Edmund for a while, or at least Polly and Digory. And that was the end of my Narnia reading as a child.

But a few weeks ago I decided to give it another try. The cat is out of the bag – I know that the series covered many characters, and I now know about the Aslan/Jesus metaphor – another aspect of the books that I wasn’t aware of when I first read them. I also watched Lion, Witch, Wardrobe and Prince Caspian recently and it got me in a Narnia mood.

Even though I’ve never read through the Narnia series, The Magician’s Nephew was a book that I returned to a lot as a child so it was pretty familiar to reread. I also used it in my senior paper about children’s literature and the changing view of the British Empire through the 20th century. Sounds kind of obscure but it was really fun to write. So in a way I was returning to an old favorite.

Reading The Magician’s Nephew for fun was much different than the last time I read it for my paper though. I found myself enjoying it much more than I expected, even though the story is a familiar one to me. Digory Kirke lives in London with his aunt, uncle, and sick mother. He is playing one day when he meets a girl named Polly next door and the two of them discover what Digory’s Uncle Andrew is creating in the attic – magic rings that will take the wearer to new worlds.

C.S. Lewis meant The Magician’s Nephew to be a prequel to the rest of the series, and I found that although a lot does happen in this book, there is a lot of set up and not as much action as in future books. It does have some memorable scenes and characters it though – the evil queen who wants to take over whatever land she is in, Uncle Andrew who is slightly mad and power crazy but is intimidated by the queen, Strawberry the talking horse, Digory, Polly, and of course Aslan.

Lewis also did a good job of telling the creation story while still making it his own. I love the idea of Digory et. al. watching as Aslan creates Narnia, and the way Lewis describes each person’s reaction to what is happening before them. The Queen is just too obsessed with power to notice, Uncle Andrew ignores Aslan as much as he can, convincing himself that he is just a silly lion and argues with the queen, and Polly and Digory want to simply observe the creation but are constantly distracted by the Queen and Uncle Andrew. The only character that is fully present is the London cabby and his horse who came along by accident – the most unlikely king of Narnia.

That’s one of the things I like about Narnia. It’s characters from our world are regular every day people who are introduced to Narnia and Aslan, and it is from that place that they do amazing things.  That is seen over and over again throughout the series. It is something that Lewis himself focuses on, and I’m excited to look at that further in these blog posts.

The story has a very 50’s children’s story feel to it, almost as if Lewis is narrating the story himself, which I liked. I feel like that’s not seen as much anymore with the author directly talking to the reader, and I felt like I was being read to.

I also liked the way The Magician’s Nephew set up The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (I need to find an abbreviation for that) by explaining the lamp-post, the Queen, and the wardrobe.

So although I found other Narnia books more action packed than this one (I am currently on The Voyage of the Dawn Treder), I enjoyed being reintroduced to Narnia and the characters that it holds. And whether you see Aslan as Jesus or simply as the lion in Narnia, there is no denying that he is awesome.

 

Stardust is Amazing (and so is Neil Gaiman)

I don’t have an excuse for why it took me so long to read a book by Neil Gaiman. Gaiman is an author I knew I would love. I love fantasy, fairy tales, and excellent writing. I have friends who are huge fans of his, who have gotten their books signed by him, and who have urged me to read his books. But every time the subject came up I was either in the middle of another book with a long list of books to read afterwards or I was in the middle of school and didn’t have any plans for recreational reading until coming up for air during winter or summer break. Not a good excuse, I know. I’ve even written a post about an article of his, but last week I finally, finally read a book of his- Stardust.

Stardust is one of the few movie/book combos where I have watched the movie before reading the book. I am usually pretty good about sticking to my book before movie rule, and it has introduced me to some good series (i.e. Divergent), but Stardust was not one of those examples. I first saw the movie Stardust in college and I absolutely loved it. I was hesitant about not reading the book first, but I quickly got caught up in the story and that was the end of my worrying. I rewatched it a few years later, both times swearing that I would read the book, but as I said before I never got around to it.

The movies for Stardust, Eragon, The Golden Compass, and Inkheart all came out with in a few years of each other. And most of these titles are tagged as great books that made not so great movies. I haven’t seen Eragon or Inkheart; I enjoyed the Golden Compass movie, but I do agree the book (which I am currently reading) is much better. But Stardust doesn’t fall into that category. It makes an excellent movie. After reading the book I think the movie did a really good job of maintaining Gaiman’s sense of imagination and whimsy on the big screen. There were even a couple of scenes that I thought would be in the book that weren’t, but they still fit in with the feel of the story. So even there is some discrepancy between the book and the movie (which I am usually pretty picky about), it still has the same feel as the book, and that is what makes it a good movie.

Now, onto the book itself. Gaiman has really perfected the art of the adult fairytale in Stardust. While there is a whimsical feel to the story, and many of the typical characters one would find in a fairytale (a witch, a prince or two, etc.) there is a distinctly mature feel to the book as well. Tristan Thorne is a young man who lives in Wall, a town in England bordering a fantasy world (the two are divided by a wall, hence the name). He goes out on an adventure to retrieve a shooting star for his love back home, but the story quickly becomes more complicated than that as other characters want the star as well. There are many tropes Gaiman follows in this book, but he also does a good job of turning them on their heads which makes the story more unique and memorable.

Many fantasy authors create fantastic worlds through description, but Gaiman’s excellent use of language adds another element to the his fantasy world. It’s artistic but not overdone to the point where it becomes tired or draws the reader out of the story. Instead it draws the reader farther in. He is going on my list of authors who use great language along with Billy Collins and Markus Zusak. I should say that this list doesn’t actually exist on paper, although it probably should. I can tell that Stardust is a good book to reread as well, and I’m looking forward to coming back to it and seeing what jumps out at me the second time around.

It is also a graphic novel, and I am interested in reading that as well to see what changes, what stays the same, how pictures add to the story especially considering Gaiman’s use of language. So that’s something that I’m looking forward to. And it’s almost the weekend.

An Interview with D.C. Akers, Author of Haven: Revenge of the Viper

I am very excited to post my first official author interview on goodbookscents! A few months ago I got to sit down with Akers over the internet and ask him a few questions about his writing habits, the inspiration for Haven, and his favorite characters both in and out of the Haven world. The first Haven book, Haven: A Stranger Magic, came out last May (see the press release here) and it has been a great success on Amazon, reaching the #1 spot on multiple Amazon Bestseller lists (see here and here).

The second book in the series, Haven: Revenge of the Viper, officially comes out this Saturday, March 1st on Amazon, and I liked this book even more than the first one. It picks up right where A Stranger Magic ends, and the action builds throughout the book as we find out more about Sam, the mysterious people in his life, and his family’s past. I am so happy that I got the chance to help edit this novel, and I am excited to see where the story takes us next.

So, without further ado, here is the interview:

What is your writing routine? Do you have a favorite place or time of day to write?

Well, after I have written the outline and have some general direction I stick to a very strict writing schedule. I write six days a week for about four to five hours straight until the novel is finished. I never set a word count for myself; I write until I think I’m done for the day. Most of my writing is done at night, in the dark. Just the light from the monitor is all I need. I love to write when it’s raining, too. I can get really creative then!

How did you come up with the idea for Haven? 

Haven was written five years ago, and began with one simple sentence: “My life has been a lie.” When I was growing up, my family was always very guarded about the past. I always felt things were shared on a need-to-know basis. Family photos were rare, and most of what I knew about my extended family was hearsay more than fact. So I drew on my past to create Sam, and then I added things like the love for his mother, his relationship with her, and the longing for a father figure. Then I took it a step further by asking questions such as what if all the secrets and lies where there to protect him? What if the truth was so unimaginable and daunting that it was best to keep it hidden from him? I think parents face decisions like that all the time. We choose the time and place to tell our children the things they need to know. Sometimes we have to wait until we think they are old enough to handle the truth. But sometimes, as parents, we make the mistake of holding on to the truth too long, and when it finally surfaces it can be more damaging than we originally thought.

As for the world of Haven, I wanted it to be something different. There are loads of books about supernatural creatures, and how they interact or try to assimilate into the human world. So with Haven, I wanted to turn the tables — make it about the world they had created for themselves where the humans were not the ruling class.

How does Haven differ from your previous book, Terra Vonnel and the Skulls of Aries? How is it similar? 

Well, the biggest difference is Magic. In Terra’s world Magic is not unheard of; it exists, but Terra does not possess the ability to perform magic. Whereas in Haven, Sam lives on Earth in the beginning of the book and there is no such thing as Magic. But that all changes when Sam reaches Haven — Magic is prevalent there and Sam discovers he has an affinity for it.

What was the process of becoming an author and getting self-published like?

At first it was a lot of research—learning what I would need to do, and who I should choose as my main distributor. Then it was about building my team, which included my editors (I have a team of four), graphic artist, and someone to format my manuscript. Then I began to build my author platform. I knew taking the self-published route with Haven was going to be a challenge, but I love the control it offers. I think of it as a business, and in reality that is exactly what it is. I know that as the CEO of my company, I cannot and should not try to do everything myself. I believe if you want to be great, you surround yourself with great people. I understood early on that I’m a storyteller and nothing more. I’m not an editor or graphic artist. It’s important to understand what your strengths are and to get help with your weaknesses.

If you could have a meal with any author, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

That’s easy—J. R. R. Tolkien. That man was brilliant! I love the world he created with all its intricate details and rich history.

What about fictional characters? Who would you want to meet?

I think meeting Gandalf, Dumbledore, and Obi-Wan-Kenobi all at the same time would prove to be quite interesting.

Do you have a favorite character in the Haven series, and if so why is he or she your favorite? Which character is the most fun to write?

Right now it would have to be Travis, just because he is so quick-witted, but more importantly because he just gets it. He understands the true importance of friendship and how important it really is in our lives. Friendship is a choice, not like family into which you are born and feel obligated to. I think the quote by William Shakespeare that I placed in the beginning of Haven: A Stranger Magic sums it up best:  “A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”

These precious bonds are timeless and seem to blossom without our ever realizing how intrinsic they have become in our lives. It’s one of life’s true gifts.

You read and write a lot of Young Adult fiction/fantasy books. What is it about the genre that makes you keep coming back to it as an adult? 

Well, this genre offers me a means of escape. It gives me a chance as an adult to live in a fantasy world through the eyes of someone who has had fewer life experiences to draw from. It places you in a time where things are still intriguing as a young adult. Where feelings are being felt for the first time, and so much of the world and everything around you is still new and unknown. I think that is an exciting time.

Haven: Revenge of the Viper officially comes out on Saturday, March 1, but the ebook and paperback versions are currently available on Amazon along with Haven: A Stranger Magic, and the Haven series collection. Get them before the launch here! 

Haven series – Amazon #1 Bestseller!

Kindle:

Haven: A Stranger Magic – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CR4IR7A

Haven: Revenge of the Viper – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IKJ3EBK

Haven: Series Collection – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IJC9SN6

Paperback:

Haven: A Stranger Magic – https://www.createspace.com/4281387

Haven: Revenge of the Viper – https://www.createspace.com/4679353

Haven: Series Collection – https://www.createspace.com/4679432

Akers is also the author of Terra Vonnel and the Skull of Aries available here- http://www.amazon.com/Terra-Vonnel-The-Skulls-Aries/dp/0984587101 

To find out more about D.C. Akers,

Website –  www.dc-akers.com

Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/AuthorDCAkers

Twitter-  @DC_Akers

Some More Old Time New York

Earlier this week I finally finished reading The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr, the sequel to The Alienist which I read earlier this fall. I say finally finished because Allegiant came out while I was in the middle of it, and I took a break to reread Insurgent to catch up on the goings on of that series before the last book came out. So this review has been a while in the making.

As a whole, I felt like The Alienist was a better read, but Angel of Darkness definitely did have its strengths. Carr did a good job of making it its own unique story by setting up the story differently, so that it wasn’t just a repeat of his previous book.

Unlike The Alienist, Angel of Darkness starts off by telling the reader who the villain is up front. The story progresses as the team works to prove that she in fact did it.

The story starts with the wife of a Spanish diplomat coming to Sara for help when her baby is kidnapped. Sara has continued to run the detective agency that was established in the first story, and primarily helps women in New York.

The diplomat has forbid his wife from getting help, but the woman is desperate and has come to Sara in secret. What’s more is that she swears to have seen a woman, Libby Hatch, on the subway carrying her baby. The case brings the group out of New York City to upstate New York, where they examine Libby’s past and uncover some haunting information about the woman in question that leads them farther into the case than they thought possible.

The story is narrated by Stevie Taggert, one of Dr. Kreizler’s old patients, who now works for Kreizler after Kreizler helped him get back on his feet after living in the streets as a child. Taggert comes from a rough background, and tells a different kind of story than John Moore did. For one, his speech is different, more slangy, which is apparent in the narration. Also, since he is a side character, and does not always attend the same meetings or encounters as Moore and Kreizler, the reader gets a better idea of what is happening outside the kind of meetings that they first saw in The Alienist.

The story also differs in that the primary focus of the narrative once the team gets out of the city, is the trial for Libby Hatch and her past actions. This makes it much less action packed that Carr’s first story which had no shortage of chase scenes and intrigue. Carr still does keep the drama and suspense up as much as he can, but at times it did feel slow.

Still, the focus of the book was still interesting, and Carr does grapple with a couple of interesting themes, especially considering the era which the story takes place in. In his previous book, Carr established his strength in writing strong female characters and he takes that strength to a new level in this book with Sara Howard, Kat – Stevie Taggert’s friend who finds herself mixed up in the seedy underbelly of gang life in New York, and Libby Hatch herself.

What was probably most interesting was Carr’s examination of Hatch as a character. Carr looks at what happens to a woman who is ultimately a bad caregiver in an era where caregiving was the only role a woman could really play in the higher circles of life. Mix that with Libby Hatch’s personality and muddled past and the result could be toxic.

Angel of Darkness also picked up where The Alienist left off in terms of new crime solving techniques when the group hires an artist to draw a depiction of a character simply based on description. We all know these as sketch artists but back then this was a new concept for everyone. The book also continues to bring in an array of characters from history from Vanderbuilt, to Clarence Darrow, a famous defense lawyer of the era.

While I did enjoy The Alienist more than The Angel of Darkness, I do appreciate Carr’s ability to change up the story for his second novel. I always like it when you can revisit characters from a previous book, and it was nice to return to the world of old New York.

Allegiant and Some Final Thoughts on the Divergent Series

Last night I finished reading Allegiant and I promptly could not fall asleep, probably from the adrenaline rush that the book, and the series gave me. The is seriously action packed from page one. I do think that by the end the series was a little too action-saturated, and there could have been a few more slow paced scenes scattered throughout the series. I don’t think that would have slowed down the plot too much, but I did like the story that Roth was telling.

There is no way to review this book without giving away spoilers so if you are someone who is interested in reading the series and haven’t yet, or if you haven’t finished this book yet – be warned. You can find my reviews for Divergent and Insurgent here and here.

So Allegiant. The book starts off right where the second one ended, and Tris finds that her solid community of factions no longer exists. It has been destroyed through the factionless take over, and although the factionless people rally for peace and for freedom, there is still very little of either within the city of Chicago. Tris soon finds herself traveling with Tobias and a few others outside Chicago to a bigger world that she didn’t know existed – one that is just as broken as the world she escaped from.

In many dystopian novels the history of the community or the reasons for an overbearing rule, are addressed in the first book of the trilogy. With this series however, Veronica Roth waits until the final installment to show what is really going on. I was concerned, going into the third book, that the reasons behind all the madness wouldn’t be addressed fully, and while I do think there could have been more shown in the first book without giving the whole story away, I was generally happy with the way it was addressed here.

Essentially, the city of Chicago was turned into a social experiment where the faction system is used to “cure” people of their broken genetic code. This “broken” code is ultimately what causes violence in the world, researchers have decided. There are those who are “broken” and those who are not (otherwise known as Divergent). The government is ultimately attempting to “fix” those who are “broken” and as one can imagine, things don’t quite go according to plan.

Veronica Roth did an excellent job really showing and discussing human nature in this book. So much of history’s conflicts arose from the idea that group A was in some way better and more whole than group B was, and that is essentially what is being addressed here in Tris’s society. At the same time, however, the symbolism of human nature and the deeper meaning behind the story is not overstated, and does not get in the way of the action, the characters, or the plot as a whole. Instead it is really what ends up driving the story forward. In an interview with MTV news, when asked about what Divergence really is, Roth says,

The point of [Tris’s] Divergence is that it’s this complex thing inside of her, and there are all these things that she can be, these possibilities. But as I wrote the series, I realized that all the characters had become complex that way, and that none of them really fit into those categories [of their factions]. …I think Divergence doesn’t mean anything…I think it’s a more powerful thing for everyone to be this complicated, rich, good, bad mixture of things. But to have people believe that there are these divisions that exist.

While I do think that some of the lesser characters could have been more distinctive and unique in terms of their voices, attitudes, and humor, these ideas were portrayed consistently throughout the book, and this quote sums up human nature pretty well if you ask me.

While the first two books of the Divergent series were told only from Tris’s point of view, this third one is split between Tris’s narration and Tobias’s. This was another aspect of the story that I was a little weary about, as I am not such a fan of the split narration method. But I have been known to get over it before, and I found that Roth really uses the dual narration to get inside Tobias’s head so the reader can see a new side of him that would have been harder to show otherwise.

In the previous book, Tobias has been seen as Tris’s handsome, brave boyfriend with a troubled past. Readers certainly grew to love him but I always thought he was a little one sided in the books alone (I know there are also short stories that Roth published earlier this year focusing on Tobias and his past). But in Allegiant, Tobias really struggles through a lot of issues, much in the same way that Tris did in Insurgent. It would have been good to see Tobias as more of a three-dimensional character earlier in the series, but I did enjoy his chapters, and the things that he struggles with throughout the book. He is faced with obstacles that force him to reevaluate much of his life, and that really dig into his character as a whole. I really enjoyed seeing this new side of Tobias, and in some ways this book is more about him than it is about Tris.

I didn’t read any spoilers before starting Allegiant, but I had some suspicions about what would happen at the end of the book based on what I’d seen so far from people’s spoiler free comments and from the story itelf. And I have to say, in some ways my suspicions were correct, and in other ways they were very wrong. All in all, the action and suspense kept me reading through to the end, and although there is a dramatic ending to the series (how can there not be with all the action) I can appreciate the ending when looking I look at the stories and characters as a whole.

Murder in Old New York

I always love to see what other people are reading. On the subway, in the park, really anywhere. I also love bookshelves filled with books, and seeing other people’s collections. While I was traveling throughout the month of August, I stayed with a good friend of mine in Maine. I was staying in their very cute guest room, and was happy to see that they had a selection of books lined up on the dresser. I picked up The Alienist, a book I had started in high school but never got the chance to finish, and started reading.

I hadn’t gotten very far in the first go-round of reading The Alienist, but I remember thinking that it was a really good book. And upon rereading the beginning of the story I wasn’t disappointed. The Alienist follows the story of John Schuyler Moore, a newspaper journalist in 1896 New York as he, a psychologist, and a small group of detectives work to find a serial killer who is ravaging downtown Manhattan of its young boys.

The thing that kept me reading throughout the first chapter was Caleb Carr’s elegant writing style. As I kept reading, I found that he painted all his characters, whether they were big or small, with amazing detail.

The character of the alienist, a man named Lazlo Kreizler, works as a psychologist and has many used-to-be misfits working for him as personal servants. Carr gives each one of these characters an elaborate backstory that he shares with the reader, and each one plays their own part in the telling of the story.

Carr also has a very strong female character in Sara Howard, whose dream is to be the first female detective. Right from the bat it is clear that she is not someone to mess with, and we all know how I feel about strong female characters, especially in period pieces.

The narrator, Jacob Moore, reports the story retrospectively, as if it were one of his news pieces. This allows him to step back from the story and elaborate on some of the different elements of life such as various buildings that were being built at the time, the nature of mobs in the city, or how childhood was viewed during the late 19th century. This doesn’t slow down the fast paced plot however, and adds an element to the story that would be hard to get otherwise.

Carr paints a very gritty, very realistic view of New York City at the turn of the century. He doesn’t shy away from some of the darker, more disturbing elements of life in the city at this time, and some of his descriptions can be pretty graphic. He does do a good job, however, of showing the variety of life that New York had in the late 1800’s Kreizler and Moore travel from the slums of tenement housing to the opera, and everywhere in between.

Carr also intersperses the story with some real characters of the time such as J.P. Morgan, Jacob Riis, and Teddy Roosevelt, who was chief inspector of the police department at the time. The sites in New York are also very accurate for the time, and Carr really gets the grit of the city under his fingernails. I enjoyed reading another story about a place I know so well such as New York, but seeing it at a different time.

Probably the most interesting part of the story for me was how the murder was actually solved. The story starts out the way many mystery novels do, with finding a body. But since there are no actual clues for the police to go off of, the case is handed over to Kreizler the psychologist to see if he can make anything of it. Psychology at this time was a fairly new field, and one that was not widely accepted by the general public. Freud was alive and practicing at the time, but psychology wasn’t seen as a valuable science beyond the walls of a psychiatric hospital. This is addressed in the book when the mayor of New York confronts Kreizler about the case at the opera. He says,

…let me be plain. If you were to associate yourself with the Police Department in any capacity, Dorctor, it would constitute just such a way for our enemies to discredit us. Decent people have no use for your work, sir, for your abominable opinions of the American family, or for your obscene probing into the mind of American children. Such matters are the province of parents and their spiritual advisors. If I were you, I should limit my work to the lunatic asylums, where it belongs.

Psychology clearly was not a credited science at this point, and there has been much debate about it over the years. I enjoyed seeing how Carr used the psychology aspect of the book to drive the story. Much of the psychology used seemed to stem from Freud, with its focus on childhood, mothers, and sexual orientation etc., but in the end it was the psychology that solved the case. It was also interesting, in a similar light, to see how crime fighting was conducted at this time. There is a scene in the book where two of the men on Lazlo’s team ultimately explain that there is a new fangled way of seeing who has been at a crime scene – its called fingerprinting, and it might just work.

I was happy to see that The Alienist has a sequel, The Angel of Darkness, that follows the same team of crime fighters a few years later. I didn’t know about this sequel before and now I want to read it and see where the characters and the crimes go from there. Guess I will have to add it to my list of books to read!

The Society Continues to Crumble: Insurgent

A few nights ago, I stayed up late to finish Insurgent, the second book in Veronica Roth’s Divergent series. To see my review of her first book click here, or scroll down to the next post. Insurgent starts right where Divergent leaves off, and Veronica Roth continues the action at the same break neck speed. At the end of the first book, the factions that Tris’s society has come to rely on began to turn on one another, and Tris and the rest of her Dauntless family are left to their own devices.

Much of the book is spent with them traveling from faction to faction, trying to figure out who to trust and who to believe after the Erudite community’s attempted take over of the Abnegation. There is also the introduction of some new characters, including the Factionless – those people who either failed to successfully chose or get into a faction, or those who have left the factionless life. Tris, having spent most of the first book in fear of a factionless life without community – begins to see these people, and her society as a whole in a different light.

Throughout the book, Tris is dealing with quite a heavy load in the aftermath of the battle that concludes the first book. She has lost both her parents, and is dealing with the fact that she shot one of her friends, a fellow Dauntless transfer. Things with Tobias, otherwise known as Four, are also a little rocky, as the two of them try to figure out how to navigate in this new unstable situation, what they want to get out of it, and how to fit each other into their plans, especially when their plans may differ. Trouble in paradise. I personally enjoyed this conflict as it made both characters more flushed out and realistic – no one’s relationship is perfect, and it gets tiring when relationships are shown in only one light through books, movies, etc.

What with all that Tris is going through, it would be easy to say that she becomes weak in the second book, but I would disagree with that statement. While she constantly talks about how she wants to curl up in a ball and pretend that her life isn’t happening, she never actually does that, even when it would be easy for her to do. She knows that she has people she wants to protect and goals she wants to accomplish, she just isn’t always sure what those goals are. Most importantly, she doesn’t want her parent’s deaths to be in vain.

Roth really gets inside Tris’s head in this book in terms of her fears, hopes, and desires. It can be easy when writing such character heavy scenes for the action to slow down, and it can be easy during action heavy scenes to step away from the characters and let the action play itself out, but Roth strikes a good balance between these two extremes in her writing. All of the action comes directly from the characters and the decisions that they make, and she makes much of the internal process within the character’s minds (mainly Tris) exciting and fast paced.

It was also interesting as a reader to see the different factions and the way the members of different factions lived their lives. The first book was primarily focused on the Abnegation and Dauntless, but in the second book we get to see Candor, Erudite and Amity as well. Roth also does a good job of defining these factions with their blunt, almost stereotypical traits, but then moving beyond that to show the complexities that lie within each faction.

For example, in the first book, Dauntless is seen as both reckless and fearless, but also brave and selfless. Similarly, in the second book Roth touches on ideas like what is the difference between the thirst for knowledge and the thirst for power, or how is being kind different than being passive and where is that line drawn? She really pushes both Tris and the reader to look beyond the stereotypes of each faction within the divided nature of the society.

Once again, Roth does a good job of writing a unique, exciting story while staying within the formula that a dystopian Young Adult novel provides. If I had planned this better I would have read these two books in October closer to when the third book, Allegiant, comes out. That way I could have finished Insurgent and just gone to the bookstore with the masses of people I am sure will be there to buy Roth’s third book. But it didn’t work out that way so now I am stuck waiting until October 22. Oh well.

Some More Dystopia: Divergent

I first bought Divergent by Veronica Roth last fall at a used bookstore for about $3. I started to read it then but as I read it, I found the dystopian world to be a lot like the one in the Hunger Games, so I put it down.

Since then I have come to realize that when I first started reading Divergent I hadn’t read any other dystopian novels other than The Hunger Games, (besides The Giver) and therefore that was my definition of a dystopian Young Adult novel. I didn’t have anything to compare it to.

But now I have read some other dystopian series, and when I saw the trailer for Divergent, I decided that if I ever wanted to see the movie in the future, which I might want to do, I should read the book first.

So I read it. And I was pleasantly surprised when Veronica Roth’s futuristic Chicago no longer reminded me of Panem.

Beatrice Prior lives in a world that is divided into factions based on virtue. There’s Abnegation, Erudite, Candor, Amity, and Dauntless. Beatrice was born into Abnegation, and is taught to be quiet, calm, and to constantly think of others before she thinks of herself.

While Beatrice loves her family, she struggles to maintain these values in her life. When the time comes for Beatrice to chose her own faction, she finds out that she is in fact a Divergent; one who has an aptitude for multiple factions, in Beatrice’s case Abnegation, Erudite, and Dauntless. But Beatrice has to decide which one to join. She is told that her Divergence must be kept a secret, as it is dangerous for others to know about her.

So Beatrice joins Dauntless, changes her name to Tris, and throws herself whole heartedly into Dauntless training. But all the while, it looks like something bigger is going on around her, and while Tris struggles to keep her Divergence a secret, her world starts to change, and her secret might be more important than she originally thought.

Dystopian novels in themselves are inherently formulaic: a seemingly perfect yet controlling society starts to unravel and it is up to a bunch of teenagers to save it. That’s not too surprising. What makes a dystopian novel good then, is how the author uses the formula to tell his or her own unique story, and Roth does this well, in my opinion. There enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing. The fact that the society is going to fall apart is not what kept me reading, it was the how and why that were interesting. It’s kind of like watching a chick flick and you know the girl is going to end up with the guy, but you watch the movie anyway to find out how it happens.

And of course, what would a dystopian novel be without a love interest? Although there is no love triangle in Divergent, which I find rather refreshing – I tend to get very cynical when it comes to love triangles, and its a pretty big trope that is hard to avoid in YA books lately.  What made this love interest different, and even enjoyable for me, was that Tris is already a hugely strong and defiant character. That is clear from the beginning.

But as Tris starts to fall for Four, her leader in Dauntless training, Roth uses this relationship as a means for Tris to find out more about herself, the Dauntless faction, and her society as a whole. It’s not just a girl swooning over a guy. In a similar way, Four also learns about himself, rather than being the perfectly flawed boy that helps a helpless girl through her life. To me, that makes the relationship all the more real, believable, and enjoyable to read. It should be no surprise by now that I am a huge fan of the strong female character and Roth portrays through a variety of different characters and relationships in her series.

As I was reading Divergent, I began thinking – is this book darker than The Hunger Games? It’s hard to be darker than a book about kids battling to the death for public enjoyment, but I saw The Hunger Games as more of a survival story for Katniss rather than a battle. She doesn’t kill unless she needs to. And while the plot of Divergent is different altogether, there is more outright violence simply within the Dauntless faction, and frequently it is this violence and turmoil that pushes the plot forward. I’m not one of those people who condones violence in Young Adult books, I’m all for it; if the story calls for it, then by all means put it in. I really enjoyed reading Divergent and, I am currently reading Insurgent, and I am looking forward to reading Allegiant when it comes out in October, but the comparison of violence was a thought that entered my mind while reading Divergent.

It will be interesting to see how the violence is portrayed in the movie when it comes out next year. Personally, I found The Hunger Games movie to be darker than the book, simply because it was visual instead of verbal. You are being shown something outright as compared to imagining it yourself off the page. So it will be interesting to see how Divergent is translated to the big screen.

One problem I had with Divergent was there were a few times where it seemed like the narration came to a conclusions about the turn of events before Tris did. This was a little strange considering that it is narrated in the first person. It meant that there were times where I felt like I was ahead of Tris when it came to figuring things out, and it made some of her realizations not as gripping as they could have been if they came slightly earlier in the book. This didn’t detract me too much from the series, as I still tore through the book and enjoyed reading it, but I think some of the realizations could come earlier in the narrative while not throwing off the plot, or slowing down the story too much.

All in all I thought Divergent was a good read. I always enjoy it when authors create unique characters and worlds and Veronica Roth does this well in her series. I am currently enjoying Insurgent and I am debating placing a hold on Allegiant before it comes out so I won’t have to wait forever to read it from the library. And now, if I want to, I can go see the movie when it comes out in 2014.

The Poisonwood Bible

Last summer I read Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, and ever since then I have been dying to read another Kingsolver book. There is something about Barbara Kingsolver and the way she writes that makes summer the perfect time to read one of her books. She is always very in tune with nature and her surroundings in a way that can be appreciated outdoors in the summertime.

So I chose The Poisonwood Bible as my next Kingsolver book. The Poisonwood Bible follows the Price family, a family of missionaries who travels to the Belgian Congo in the 1960’s. The story, much like Prodigal Summer, is told from the view point of the mother and the four daughters. Each narrator has their own voice, personality, and opinion on what is happening around them which adds a complexity to the story that would not be there otherwise. The family is in the Congo when it gains its independence, and what they are in for will change their life forever.

There is no doubt that The Poisonwood Bible is a heavier and more serious read than The Prodigal Summer, but despite the serious subject matter Kingsolver still uses the same beautiful prose that she is known for. As I said in my previous Kingsolver review, she can see beauty in the most mundane events, and brings that beauty out in her writing with ease. The way she writes makes me feel like the rest of us must be missing what’s really going on around us.

Kingsolver herself spent part of her childhood in the Congo before it was renamed Zaire. She drew on this experience when writing the novel. For example, in an essay she explains that her day to day life wasn’t too exciting (did mulitplication tables and schoolwork etc.). The same is true of the story. The Prices are leading as calm a life as they can. Kingsolver does talk about the politics that are happening in the Congo at the time, but it all seems somewhat distant compared to the everyday life of the characters. This is much like Kingsolver’s experiences in Africa. In her essay she writes,

[I read] of how The Congo became independent for some fifty remarkable days and then lost itself – diamonds, cobault, soul, and all – to indentured servitude to foreign businesses, mostly in the United States. I read this…in a trance thinking: “I was there…I had no idea.” Few of us did, at the time…

And that is what Kingsolver has done. She has told this story to those of us who glob onto fiction rather than read foreign affair reports. She has painted the scenes from history in her book. I wouldn’t say that The Poisonwood Bible is a fast paced read, but the characters are each so unique and interesting that I kept reading to find out what happens to them and to see how they change.

It was very interesting to read this book from a Christian persecutive. Nathan Price, the father of the narrators, is a Baptist minister who is the one leading the family on their missions trip. In many ways he is the antagonist of the story, but Kingsolver does not use this book as an opportunity to bash religion. Instead, she focuses on the misunderstandings between culture, especially between Americans and foreign cultures, and used religion as a literary tool to show this misunderstanding. As Kingsolver constructed the novel she explains,

The story I’m entitled to tell, the one I needed to tell, was an American one – what we’ve carried into the world, what we believed, and what we might still learn

and,

It aroused ire in a few people who…presume that a Christian missionary character who behaves badly in a novel is…proof of the author’s anti-Christian sentiments.

Upon reading the book I did not find anti-Christian sentiments, but rather anti-American-superialism sentiments. Nathan is not the antagonist because he is trying to spread the Gospel, rather he is the antagonist because of his closed mindedness and failure to see the Congolese culture and lifestyle for what it is. It is not the message itself, but rather the way that Nathan delivers the message that makes him an antagonist.

The Poisonwood Bible is one of those books that could became a whole other story upon a second reading, and I would love to return to it at some point in the future to see what changes for me within the story then.