Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury

There's a special king of ire you can raise among fans of the Star Wars franchise by suggesting the whole damn thing isn't science fiction at all, but rather fantasy in space. Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 mines a similar vein of having all the trappings of science fiction present simply for genre appeal, but it features none of the intelligence that makes the subgenre compelling in the first place.

Fahrenheit has futuristic fireproof structures, robots who butter bread for their humans, and houses constructed entirely of television-screen-walls. This book has got a glossy coat of science fictiony paint, but peel off that outer layer and you'll find that what's underneath is a pretty bog standard, empty-headed dystopia with very little concern for the actual science (both soft and hard) portion of the science fiction moniker.

This might not seem very important given the book is a dystopia first and a science fiction novel second, but the real bone I have to pick with Bradbury is how flatly this book falls on its face when considering the soft sciences it relies on to build its world and thus make its point about where Western civilization was headed in the 1950s and 1960s with the advent of the television. Bradbury's book lacks both the intelligent foresight of Huxley's Brave New World and the strong narrative structure of Orwell's 1984 and replaces it with little else but his rampant insecurity and incapable worldbuilding, the latter of which is perhaps what was most offensive about Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury's creation is artificial, incoherent, and completely falls apart if you think about it for more than 5 minutes.

Bradbury would have us that government has replaced books and classic liberal thinking with television as a control device. He'd have us believe that liberal arts have been all but abolished. Classic subjects in the western canon such as literature and history are no longer taught, replaced with seemingly vapid and obedience-inducing classes on television and sports and various other opiates-of-the-people. A scary thought, especially to his core audience of folks who enjoy reading literature—myself included.

But, with the absence of these classes, which are fundamental to a child's ability to learn in the first place, how are these characters even literate? Why is there a need to burn books at all when such a civilization would presumably be incapable of producing an adult capable of reading one? Further, what kind of education provides the bedrock for a civilization with such advanced robotics and technology as are present in Fahrenheit 451? Who is designing these groundbreaking new pieces of technology when children are supposedly not even taught to think critically in any fashion whatsoever? How is this society still capable of urban planning and complex public transportation? Air flight? War? The extraordinary new technologies our modern society is populated with are far from a given, which is why they've never existed in the tens of thousands of years of human civilization until just the past century. Bradbury's poor worldbuilding betrays a lack of understanding of how a modern, developed society even functions. Ironically, this book doesn't seem to understand the importance of basic critical thinking and open-mindedness to a functioning, wealthy society, despite railing against its potential extinction and rallying Bradbury's readers behind the importance of these ideas. The flimsiness and logical incoherence of Bradbury's world — something that should be the foundation on which the rest of the story converts itself organically via its plot and characters into the points he seems to want to make — wrecks the entire thing. It's infuriating, and I refuse to keep reading it.

It's a popular notion that the best children's literature is also enjoyable for adults. Fahrenheit 451 is the opposite; it's literature for adults that's so stunted and poorly conceived that it could only be genuinely enjoyed and resonant to teenagers. This is straw fiction set up by a grumbling fan of the medium of the novel who views new technology as a perversion of everything he loves. It's a pontification about the evils of stuff he hates that other people are wrong to like. It's a book with a message that works only on the outermost surface and fails at every deeper level within.

Fahrenheit 451 is "old man yells at cloud" dressed up in fancy clothes. It's old folks in the '30s telling you that jazz is just noise, in the '50s telling you that television will rot your brain, in the '70s telling you that KISS are satanists, in the '90s telling you that video games will make you shoot up schools. If this book succeeds as a cautionary tale or a prompt towards open-mindedness, it does so accidentally, in showing the dangers of becoming so secure in your own bubble that you end up dismissing new forms of media outright, rather than considering the potential strengths of such new media. Look at what television has done in the decades since Bradbury penned this novel. Some of the most successful creations of artistry have been created in this new golden age of television.

I've had one run-in with Mr. Bradbury in the past and found him so reliant on simile and purple-prose as to be unreadable. I suppose the best thing I could say about Fahrenheit 451 is that it's far more readable than Something Wicked This Way Comes, but instead of trying hard to be literary with its prose, it tries hard to be literary with its themes. Unfortunately, it fails in this manner just as badly.

Sorry Ray, but I think I hate your work.

⭐

Oliver Twist (1837) by Charles Dickens

It's difficult rating books like Oliver Twist where I seem to bounce rapidly from really loving it to grinding through, seemingly by the page.

Dickens' writing is gorgeous which makes the majority of the book an enjoyable read. His ability to set a scene is unmatched and his dialogue seems genuine, and the very setting of Victorian London is hard to beat. The credibility rising from Dickens depicting his contemporary setting only makes Oliver Twist stronger.

But the story itself, beyond these aspects, didn't engage me. Dickens' characters are pretty thin and he relies more on his wittiness and his sense of humor to carry them than their caricature-like construction. I felt little attachment to any of them and I didn't feel that any of them really grew as we continued, nor would I really have cared if they had. The only two in the whole thing I ended up rooting for were Nancy and Sikes' poor dog.

It seems like Dickens' own upbringing as a working child gave rise to much of this story. Some of the scene-by-scene events are extremely compelling — such as the Artful Dodger's courtroom shenanigans, which I later read was actually inspired by a real event witnessed by Dickens. But I never felt that the overarching story set enough framework for these moments to really shine. I suspect Dickens had a number of these scenes in mind when writing Oliver Twist, but was not as inspired when laying the foundation in which to place them.

It's worth reading, if only for the caliber of Dickens' prose:

The stars seemed, to the boy’s eyes, farther from the earth than he had ever seen them before; there was no wind; and the sombre shadows thrown by the trees upon the ground, looked sepulchral and death-like, from being so still.

There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed, and your senses wrapt in perfect unconsciousness. At such time, a mortal knows just enough of what his mind is doing, to form some glimmering conception of its mighty powers, its bounding from earth and spurning time and space, when freed from the restraint of its corporeal associate.

The sun rose and sank, and rose and sank again, and many times after that; and still the boy lay stretched on his uneasy bed, dwindling away beneath the dry and wasting heat of fever. The worm does not work more surely on the dead body, than does this slow creeping fire upon the living frame.

The child was pale and thin; his cheeks were sunken; and his eyes large and bright. The scanty parish dress, the livery of his misery, hung loosely on his feeble body; and his young limbs had wasted away, like those of an old man.

Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.

But I've already read better Dickens and I look forward to getting into some of his other, more critically celebrated work now that I've finished Oliver Twist.

⭐⭐⭐

The Terror (2007) by Dan Simmons

Simmons' work is such a Frankenstein's monster of different genres and sub-genres, modes, and styles, and he's so deft at blending the disparate appendages that the transitions between each never come close to feeling jarring or contrived.

The Terror is equal parts historical fiction and horror, with a healthy dash of Inuit mythology thrown in for good measure. The framework and foundation of The Terror is of a naval historical fiction surrounding the doomed Franklin Expedition tasked with the discovery of the Northwest passage in the mid-1840s, but I suspect Simmons' true desires were to plumb the various subgenres of horror that he blends within this larger framework. Nearly every popular subgenre of horror is present; there's the much-touted monster aspect of the story, but there also exists elements of pulpier slasher fiction in the later pages. My personal favorite — and perhaps the most disturbing of the lot, because it's true — are the descriptions of men suffering from severe bouts of scurvy. These passages are true body horror. I found myself recoiling is disgust and visceral offense while reading through them, physically cringing all the more because they weren't merely figments of Simmons' healthy (and somewhat disturbed?) imagination but real symptoms suffered by real men. Awful stuff.

Simmons is a master of pacing. At nearly 800 pages, The Terror is not a short book — and it doesn't have a vast, epic scope to help keeps things fresh and shepherd the reader through that pagecount. Simmons instead resorts to regularly changing the third person limited viewpoint characters and jumping back and forth through time. The changes in mode and voice greatly help to keep things from going stale, and the narrative blends smoothly between the different characters. The Terror never falls victim to the slog that drags other works of this nature down. It's masterful work, and its quality is telling in that it kept me burning through pages and pages of relatively minor activity set mostly all within the same ship, frozen in the same ice, over hundreds of pages of narrative.

It helps that his characters are so authentic and that their voices are all so unique. Simmons' agency in crafting the characters out of real, historical men is notable. There's a strong sense of poignancy reading through this story and knowing that the expedition is doomed to fail, because you grow to like some of these characters and to preemptively mourn their inevitable deaths. Bridgens' quiet, wise manner; Irving's youthful, hopeful naivete; Crozier's curmudgeonly manner and focus on duty. I found the main villain of the crew to be extremely compelling, as well, and the subtle way in which his evil is portrayed in the first half of the book leaves the pieces of the puzzle to the reader to put together, and colors the entire middle portion of the book with an air of negative foreshadowing. Voice is a strength, especially in the later chapters when characters' wits and mental stability begin to fail them. Simmons is a master craftsman and I'll remember certain chapters late in this book for the rest of my life due to how unique and affecting they remain to me.

I'm not sure quite what I expected when I picked this up, but it certainly wasn't what I got. I've read Simmons before — I greatly enjoyed Hyperion — and I'm beginning to think of him as one of the best modern writers I've experienced. I used to think of him as a science fiction writer, but the amount of research he's put into crafting The Terror is equal to any great writer of historical fiction I've ever read. But the real strength of this book is how Simmons colors it with his abject weirdness. The soul of horror is growing tension and creating the fear of what's to come, and Simmons is such a freaking oddball that you're never quite sure what he's going to pull out of his bag of tricks next.

In this way Simmons reminds of Stephen King. Except without the cocaine. And, you know... Actually good.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Traveling Companion (1835) by Hans Christian Andersen

The Traveling Companion features the same charm that makes other Andersen stories so celebrated, but he dips too frequently into cloying irritation and I didn't find this story to be up to par with some of the others I've read from him recently. It lacks the sheer beauty of something like Thumbelina and the surprising dark humor of Big Claus and Little Claus, but I did find the resolution to be satisfying.

Worth reading, but a lesser entry in Andersen's celebrated canon than some of its contemporary counterparts.

⭐⭐

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) by Ray Bradbury

This review's probably going to make a lot of people mad. I'm sorry if you like this book; really, I am. But I couldn't stand to read any more of it. And yes, I know I'm just some random idiot on a website. Far be it from me to criticize a legendary writer like Ray Bradbury, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Bradbury's writing is so egregiously fat with purple prose that if you had showed me some of these paragraphs and told me that a try-hard high schooler had written them I'd have believed you. Seriously, even I don't try this hard to be artful and profound in my dollar-store-website reviews. I found myself reading some of these lines multiple times just trying to grasp what the fuck was even going on in the damn scene since Bradbury had described it in the most obtuse, impenetrable way—for the sake of no more than making the sentence as amusing and pretty as possible. I can only hear about a tattoo artist described as seated rapturously alongside his ceaseless melancholy, stinging himself with a dagger of bees! so many times before my eyes roll themselves right out of their sockets. In the beginning I was struck by Bradbury's endless, artful adjectives and his rambling nature, considering the book nearly more poetry than prose. By page 100, though, they were beginning to wear me out. And by page 150, they were absolutely unbearable. Maybe there's a decent story in here somewhere, but I couldn't dig my way through the piles of lard to find it.

I realize this is very much up to personal preference. If you like extremely stylized prose then you'll probably love this novel. I didn't hate every second of it, but I do hate it.

⭐

Ligeia (1838) by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe entrances us with a similar story to Morella (which I loved), but to lesser effect. His typical overwriting is present and has a strong effect on our tally of the narrator's sanity (or lack thereof). Portions of the short story are startling beautiful despite their nearly purple nature, and the climax—although good—did not affect me as much as Morella's did.

Still good stuff from Poe.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Call of Cthulu and Other Weird Stories (1917-1935) by H.P. Lovecraft (In-Progress)

I can certainly see the appeal of Lovecraft, and I don't have much to say that hasn't already been covered in any random review of one of his short stories you could chance upon. His building of atmosphere is up to par and perhaps even excels past some of the more well-respected literary horror I've been reading, and digging into some of these stories in the '20s must have been an absolute trip. That said, it's tough for me to adequately critique it given my modern biases considering his style has inspired so much genre media since the time when he was writing, be they short stories, novellas, television, film, or even video games.

His prose probably wouldn't be described as tight and I couldn't shake the feeling that some of these short stories could have been produced by one of my high school contemporaries clad in goth garb back in 1999. I can understand the praise for his ability to build atmosphere though I found many of his stories don't give me the claustrophobic sense of mind-altering madness he probably intended. Many of his creepy-crawlies thus far have felt more cartoonish than anything actually inspiring otherworldly awe, visceral revulsion, or knee-jerk, xenophobic odium. I do long for the sense of cosmic foreignness Lovecraft seems dead-set on inspiring.

Maybe I just need a few more reps of Lovecraft to fall into a groove and acquire the taste. I'll push further into this come next Halloween season — there's just too much on my plate right now.

The Gold Bug (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe

19th century writers and ruining their stories by depicting unintelligible dialect phonetically; name a more iconic duo.

Look, I finish almost everything I read. And I really do like Poe. But I just can't do it with this one. There's probably a very good story in here somewhere, but Legrand's African American servant Jupiter's illiterate dialogue is so frustratingly constructed that I simply can't bring myself to continue bludgeoning through it to get to the good stuff. Reading The Gold Bug is a miserable chore and I have much better things to do with my time (and better books to read) than to waste it decoding this nonsense.

"Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate --de queerest figgurs I ebber did see. Ise gittin to be skeered, I tell you. Hab for to keep mighty tight eye pon him noovers. Todder day he gib me slip fore de sun up and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. I had a big stick ready cut for to gib him d--d good beating when he did come --but Ise sich a fool dat I hadn't de heart arter all --he look so berry poorly."

Pardon my French, but: Fuck this shit, Edgar. You're better than this. It goes past style value. This is bad without even applying the lens of 21st century ethics and criticizing this in a racial fashion. I'm not reading this for literary purposes, but for enjoyment. And this sort of dialogue is such a chore to decipher that it completely destroys my ability to read and enjoy the story.

When it comes to dialect and dialogue, let's have more Twain and less Poe, please.

⭐

A Little Hatred (2019) (The First Law, #8) by Joe Abercrombie

I dislike fantasy. But Joe Abercrombie does two things far better than most fantasy writers:

1) He's very funny. His penchant for gallows humor is nearly unmatched, and the quality of his comedy stands out even more when compared to the humorless, stodgy lot that are contemporary writers of fantasy.

2) He writes incredible characters. In a sub-genre defined by inch-deep cardboard cut-outs given life by unextinguished, unrealized teenage power-fantasies that read as if they're written by 12-year old boys, Abercrombie's deep, interesting, human characters from various, unique demographics are a joy to read.

Neither of these qualities are any less than you'd expect from his newest work, but he does add something I haven't yet seen from him: He builds an incredibly interesting world.

Abercrombie's "Circle of the World" setting has always felt simply like it existed so that he could populate it with interesting characters. It was always rather pedestrian as far as fantasy worlds go—it's not poorly constructed, it's just sort of by-the-book. There are guys with swords here, other guys with swords there, there are some barbarians, there's some magic, etc. Nothing too extraordinary. But with A Little Hatred he's taken this opportunity to progress the technology level of his world into an Industrial Revolution, and the skill and education with which he's done so has made all the difference.

The nobility of Adua reeks of the heights of the Holy Roman Empire, the politicking of which is legendary. Toss in a bit of Dickensian poverty and an uppity, socialistic peasantry torn straight from the French Revolution and you've got the setting for A Little Hatred. The setting became the chief character for me, something that hasn't happened in any of his books thus far. That's not to say that the human characters are lacking, either. They're solid, interesting, and witty, with their own quirks and faults to keep things honest. The easy violence of newcomer Gunnar Broad is particularly my taste, and Savine dan Glokta's gleeful lack of a social conscience made her chapters endlessly entertaining when she begins to experience the events of the story.

Abercrombie surprised me with his quality several times through my reading of A Little Hatred.

Early on, a revolt is presented as a typically socialist Utopian action, with all the rah-rah propagandist one-liners you'd expect. I rolled my eyes at this portion of the plot, wondering if Abercrombie's personal politics had polluted his storytelling—Until it turned out like nearly every other socialist revolution in history has; with the replacement of the old regime (if you will) with starving, rioting, chaos, and eventually a new regime altogether too familiar to what was just toppled. He had deftly set me up and knocked me down, perhaps expecting all the while that I'd have a reaction like I did. Looking back, I admit that I probably should have seen such a development coming, but I'd rather credit Abercrombie's skill as a writer than admit my own gullibility.

Another occurrence was towards the end, featuring a character being an on-the-nose, close-minded nationalistic racist. His depiction as such grew a little too anachronistic and cliche for my tastes, until our perspective changes and another character accurately appraises the first as simply a little too 'provincial' and casually racist.

Abercrombie demonstrates his education and self-awareness in these instances, and it's quite refreshing. His characters are nuanced and they feel like real people because of that nuance. Abercrombie regularly demonstrates the expertise with what motivates human beings that great writers consistently possess, and the world-turning events which take place in his fiction feel like real history, demonstrating an education in such matters that writers of fantasy frequently lack. He doesn't give in to the masturbatory, 'this-is-what-the-world-should-be-like' tendencies that lesser fantasy writers do, and thus doesn't suffer the same penalties to your suspension of disbelief that other fantasy novels do. I've seen readers paint him as a relentless cynic, but you know what they say: 'A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist' and all that.

This book does suffer a bit from first-episode-of-a-trilogy-syndrome. I was so enthralled by Valbeck's social strife that I found myself struggling to care about the conflict in the North beyond revisiting its interesting characters—some of whom we're already well acquainted with from the prior books in the First Law series. It all feels a bit too sprawling, but I would be surprised if this sprawl isn't justified in the events of later books. I guess I've just got to wait and trust for now, something I have no problem doing considering the way this book comes together and ends on a superb note.

I once read someone say that Haruki Murakami 'feels like he writes books just for me'. That's how I feel about Abercrombie. His cynicism, humor, and characters always seem to hit the bulls-eye of what I'm looking for in modern fiction. If you're familiar with Abercrombie then you know what you're going to get: It's pulpy, campy, morbidly hilarious, and oddly relateable. The former two are found—mostly unintentionally—in nearly every fantasy novel penned today. But the latter two are what make Abercrombie special, and his surprisingly improved ability to craft an intriguing, genuine setting has provided a new angle to chew on.

I'm definitely looking forward to next book.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) by Shirley Jackson

WARNING: Lots of spoilers in this review! Turn back now if you haven't read We Have Always Lived in the Castle yet!

I've never read a writer capable of crafting such genuinely engrossing mentally unstable characters as Shirley Jackson. I found myself enthralled by Mary Katherine Blackwood, who is a human being so different from myself that she's interesting just for that, without even considering how real and intriguing the character is beyond such differences. It took a few pages for me to get used to her quirks but she was so skillfully crafted that I felt I had come to know her very well by the end of the story.

The conflict which takes place in the story felt a bit manufactured, but it was entertaining nonetheless and I also enjoyed the blunt scumbagitude of Charles Blackwood. For the majority of the story, it feels as though we're observing the Blackwoods far after the climactic, world-shifting event has already occurred. It makes for a bit of a lull in the story's first half as we get to know how dysfunctional and broken daily life has become for this family, but I suppose this period is necessary to fully come to terms with the odd situation we found our protagonist in, in addition to warming to her mental instability, which often presents itself as quirky and cute with a dark streak that bursts forth often out of nowhere and without warning.

By the end of the story I realized that my previous notion of this story occurring after-the-fact might not have be completely accurate. We're past the climax of the grander story, sure. But following the conclusion of this one I began to grasp how the seed of this story grew in Jackson's mind. Not as an aftermath, but as a prelude—We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a story about how the crazy ladies who live in the burned out, overgrown house came to be. You can see the Blackwood house growing into the house of legend that children are afraid of, and the Blackwood sisters themselves being the scary old ladies who steal children and cook them and eat them. And the way the story comes together to form this in its closing pages is absolutely brilliant. It was a subtle 'Aha!' moment that I was allowed to form in my own mind rather than having it foisted on me with a clumsy, contrived plot twist.

Jackson touches on some interesting questions regarding guilt and conscience, too. How it affects people, or doesn't affect them. But the mark those questions have left on me is still fresh and they're something I'll need to consider further as I put some more time between me and finishing this excellent book.

This is a brilliant piece of fiction. Probably more solidly constructed and more polished than The Haunting of Hill House. It's beautifully written and Mary Katherine is one of the most memorable characters I've read. It's subtly off-putting, more than a bit creepy, and it took me completely out of my comfort zone. It posed some questions to me that I haven't considered before and it presented me with a human character populated by thoughts and motivations completely foreign to my own, and I can't possibly ask more from reading a work of fiction.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Black Cat (1840) by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe's prose is pretty wordy by today's standards, but he avoids the same pitfalls Lovecraft dives headfirst into because he's very to-the-point with the actual content of his stories. Poe's lilting style suggests that his perpetually unreliable narrators are not quite in their rightest mind, and it's subtly offputting for that. He's nowhere near as subtle as a Shirley Jackson, but her work frequently reminds me of his—neither are blatant enough leave you bored by another maniacally insane narrator.

The more demonstrably insane a character is, the more boring, one-dimensional, and unrelatable they seem to become. And so depictions of insanity are always way more interesting and when they sprout from a kernel of logic that grows into such otherwise unstable action. It's why we love characters like the Joker, Tyler Durden, or Hannibal Lecter. We've all been in moods that'd see us burn a pile of money, or blow up a credit card company, or eat someone's liver with some nice fava beans and Chianti.

Okay, so maybe not the last one. But you get my point. Dostoyevsky's fond of prattling on about the inherent irrationality of humanity and how it torpedoes our repeated (and inevitably failed) attempts at crafting a Utopian society, and Poe totally gets that. Except rather than axing a landlady in the noggin, he chooses to axe his wife in the noggin. And drink tons of booze and write poetry, too (which sounds like a fuckin' party to me, let's go).

This reminds me a lot of The Tell-Tale Heart —so much so that they could be companion pieces. It's a fantastically morbid work of art that had to be a stunningly realized piece of short fiction when it was produced in Poe's contemporary era. And it leaves me wondering: "How the hell did this guy have any friends?" I mean, if one of my buds wrote something like this, I'd probably be making a concerted effort to avoid them. Or at least to make sure they spent as little time as possible in the same room as my pets.

Poe's brilliant, and I find it interesting that the man himself has been so overridden by the pop culture
persona his work has mutated him into—like a real-life version of Frankenstein's monster. I mean, I own a pair of socks with Edgar Allan Poe's face all over them. And really, can you imagine what he'd have thought about a freaking NFL mascot being named after one of his works? It's completely bizarre, but I find it hard to argue that his work and his persona aren't each so interesting and worthwhile that they're not deserving of the utmost honor that is being completely perverted by modern American corporate interests in order to make a quick buck.

So here's to Poe, whose face adorns my socks and whose stories haunt my mind.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Mystery of Marie Rogêt (1842) (Dupin, #2) by Edgar Allan Poe

I really love Poe, but this is just too damn dry.

Perhaps this much dry detail about a murder may have been intriguing and curiously morbid in a society less permeated with all sorts of depictions of bloody viscera, but for us modern folks steeped in true crime fiction, slasher-horror, and everything in between, there's a distinct lack of humanity and emotion in this story to attach ourselves to.

Poe's knowledge of the science of violence is not trivial considering the contemporary era in which he lived (where 'miasma' was the hot infection theory, and actual germ theory was still just a budding, abstract idea), and it serves him well in much of his other work, but you can see why the storytelling polish present in Conan Doyle's later Holmes stories were a necessary, welcome evolution to the detective-mystery fiction of Poe's Dupin. I wasn't a huge fan of The Murders in the Rue Morgue, but it's still superior to The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.

I assume this isn't skippable if you want to read the (apparently) far superior The Purloined Letter (I haven't read it yet!), otherwise I'd be comfortable urging Poe fans ignore this entry entirely and jump right on to the final—and perhaps most famous—Dupin episode.

⭐

Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He stood and stared into the distance for a long while; he knew this spot particularly well. While attending university it often happened — a hundred times, perhaps, usually on his way home — that he would pause at precisely this spot, look intently at this truly magnificent panorama and every time be almost amazed by the obscure, irresolvable impression it made on him. An inexplicable chill came over him as he gazed at this magnificence; this gorgeous scene was filled for him by some dumb, deaf spirit... He marvelled every time at this sombre, mysterious impression and, distrusting himself, put off any attempt to explain it. Now, all of a sudden, those old questions of his, that old bewilderment, came back to him sharply, and it was no accident, he felt, that they'd come back now. The simple fact that he'd stopped at the very same spot as before seemed outlandish and bizarre, as if he really had imagined that now he could think the same old thoughts as before, take an interest in the same old subjects and scenes that had interested him... such a short while ago. He almost found it funny, yet his chest felt so tight it hurt. In the depths, down below, somewhere just visible beneath his feet, this old past appeared to him in its entirety, those old thoughts, old problems, old subjects, old impressions, and this whole panorama, and he himself, and everything, everything... It was as if he were flying off somewhere, higher and higher, and everything was vanishing before his eyes... Making an involuntary movement with his hand, he suddenly sensed the twenty-copeck piece in his fist. He unclenched his hand, stared hard at the coin, drew back his arm and hurled the coin into the water; then he turned round and set off home. It felt as if he'd taken a pair of scissors and cut himself off from everyone and everything, there and then.

I once read someone say somewhere that behind the grim and grit of one of the most famous examples of literary realism lies a surprisingly traditional moralist in Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

It must have been so jarring for the 19th century denizens of St. Petersburg to read such a gripping, low, accurate portrayal of their city. Crime and Punishment, for me, hit its hardest through its suffocating, stuffy, and sloppy depictions of the city and its cramped apartments and public houses. Contrary to the cliche'd Russian setting, this novel takes place at the height of Summer. A hundred years before air conditioning would be invented left one of the world's most famously freezing countries a stifling mire, and Dostoyevsky chooses to show us some of its poorest inhabitants. They're riddled with illness, they drink too much, their clothing is falling to tatters. They live in glorified closets and sleep on cots and old couches. I felt myself there with them throughout the book thanks to Dostoyevsky's fantastic scene-setting.

His characters are equal to the quality the setting provides. Raskolnikov is a more fleshed-out, named version of the same man who narrates Notes from Underground . He's deeply flawed and realistically motivated. Dostoyevsky seems to have such a connection to this young, haughty, disillusioned type of person that I assume it could only come from deep within himself. Perhaps Raskolnikov is a young Dostoyevsky; maybe he was changed so significantly by his time in the gulag labor camps that he looked back on his former self in order to craft this novel.

I was surprised to read several reviews praising Raskolnikov, however. He's a fantastic protagonist; a Byronic anti-hero, and he's a joy to read and to examine. But I've constantly heard that this is a novel that makes you 'root for the bad guy', or pull for Raskolnikov to 'win'. I never felt that. Although he's undoubtedly interesting to read, I was almost immediately turned off by his inner monologue. Raskolnikov is a whiny, entitled pissant . His arrogance is unmatched by any other character in the entire novel. He's a young man with nothing; he's poor and subsists on money given to him by others. He's created nothing, he does nothing of value, yet he thinks of himself as a great genius. No reason is given to us for his failure to succeed, despite his having several advantages over the characters who surround him. Marmeladov is crippled with alcoholism, for example. His wife is ill and forced to care for their children. Their daughter is penniless and forced into prostitution as a result. These are characters dealing with severe adversity. What about Raskolnikov? Well, he was a student. He thinks himself clever and intelligent, so he must have been a good student. His education was paid for by his mother and sister, so he doesn't have to worry about that. But when we meet him, he's dropped out, and is not seeking work. Why? His internal monologue rambles on, often suggesting that he's just too good for it all. He's Napoleon, reborn! A great man for a new generation! Yet none of his actions have suggested this. He is a clever talker at times, and a methodical thinker. But none of this is put into any sort of practical success, and I despised him for his seemingly undeserved high opinion of himself. Never once did I root for him to succeed in his titular crime and get away with it. Instead I found myself attached mostly to Porfiry Petrovich and Dunya, the two most intelligent, wily, and likable and respectable characters in the entire thing, and hoping that Raskolnikov would be taken down a peg.

Aside from the evocative descriptions of St. Petersburg in the summer, perhaps my favorite scene in the entire novel is that of the crime itself and the riveting manner in which the criminal escapes the scene of it. I found myself glued to the pages as I read, entranced by Dostoyevsky's masterful weaving of the episode. But although the cat-and-mouse scenes that follow between Raskolnikov and Porfiry Petrovich are similarly suspenseful, I found this narrative too frequently broken up by lengthy discussions of philosophy between the characters. The footnotes present in my Penguin Deluxe edition were extremely helpful in this regard, as it appears that Dostoyevsky is using his characters as mouthpieces in order to debunk some contemporary socioeconomic theories. Perhaps this might be interesting to those reading this novel who might have an interest in such theories, and it certainly must have been a novel inclusion when it was published in its time, but I felt that these portions overstayed their welcome at times and broke up the pace of the main narrative in too jagged and clumsy a manner.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

A Dog's Tale (1903) by Mark Twain

"The more I see of some people, the better I like my dog." — Mark Twain

Skillfully penned with moments of wry levity that Twain is known for. It's also quite deep in its examination of how casually human cruelty is often committed. While human beings don't have a monopoly on dealing death and pain to other species, we're certainly the most well-practiced at it, and one of the few species who revel in dispensing such things for purposes of pleasure. Perhaps animals are not possessed of human emotions or intellect, but those are not always attributes necessary to experience suffering, nor does a shallower view of suffering make it any less considerable or more bearable.

I'm too sad to write any more and I want to go hug my dog now.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) (The Adventures of Tom and Huck, #1) by Mark Twain

There's a pretty common, easily identifiable process guiding decision-making in most human societies: We identify the ends at which we mean to arrive, we make certain decisions and engage in work to get there, and, hopefully, the process concludes after some time has passed, and we arrive at our desired destination.

As adults, we spend the vast majority of our lives operating within these processes. Some take place over decades of time, others months, or even weeks. "I want that promotion". "I'm saving up for a house". Even something as trivial as "I need to finish eating these bananas before they get overripe". Of course, these goal-oriented life processes don't always conclude in the manner in which we had hoped—Sometimes our boss is just an oblivious asshole who doesn't realize how valuable we are to our team. And nobody wants to eat more than one banana at a time, right? But typically with enough moxie and fastidiousness, and with reasonably conceived goals, we get where we're looking to go.

We often underestimate the intelligence of children. You can go downtown during summertime and see them all eating ice cream and getting it all over their face like some kind of fool. Or witness your son falling off a step while doing something stupid and hurting themselves. Any parent will tell you that they've thought (probably more than once) the words "Jesus Christ, my kid is a goddamn moron". But children are often just as intelligent as we are. They are definitely far more observant than we are. And they are, without a doubt, far, far more imaginative.

Twain's writing of children subtly grasps both their strengths and pitfalls. Tom Sawyer is an extremely clever, imaginative young man. He understands what makes people tick and often manipulates it to his advantage. He operates under the same aforementioned process we adults do—he identifies what he wants and operates in accordance with these goals. The difference is that oftentimes he doesn't arrive where he wants to go.

That's because, for children, there's a key element of this process that's missing: Experience. They're capable of crafting their own goals—"Skip school today", "get Becky to like me", "get out of whitewashing this fence", "make my Aunt miss me". But they often go about accomplishing these in a clumsy, sub-optimal manner—Sometimes to such an extent that they hurt those around them. They lack the experience of fully formed adults, so they're often unaware of how their actions could potentially affect others around them, and they fail to account for the inherent irrationality of human beings. For example, Tom manipulates Becky into liking him, but it all implodes when she realizes that he's not been completely genuine with her. Or, he runs away from home in order to garner an emotional response from his Aunt and Sid, but is surprised to find them honestly distraught when they assume he's dead—or worse. Tom is not stupid—quite the opposite; his cleverness is a joy to read throughout the story. But his lack of experience in dealing with people is often apparent in episodes like this. Twain has such a firm grasp on what it is to be a child: you're operating in this weird world of adults in which everyone seems to know the rules except you. So Tom longs to run away, to fish and play and shirk his responsibilities, because he knows the rules of those worlds—or, rather, he's free to make them up as he goes along.

Twain nails the writing of children in a way I haven't very often, if ever. The strength of his prose is remarkable, too. And his usage of local, contemporary slang brings a heightened sense of sincerity to the novel. But it does have its faults.

The vignettes that populate most of the book are expertly crafted, enjoyable, and affecting, but the lack of a strong overarching narrative until the final quarter of the book left me with an experience that felt like reading a group of short stories rather than one cohesive novel. It feels like Twain decided to write a novel, but had no strong 'glue' to hold it together. It still works pretty well as a novel, but don't expect a strong plot to keep you shuffling along.

Another criticism—perhaps more important—is the lack of any strong characters outside our lead. Most of the adults in the story are token or weak, from the cliched down-and-out drinker Muff Potter, to the awful evil-because-he's-part-Native-American Injun Joe. I realize that this is a pretty tight book and there's not too much space to flesh these people out, but it still left me feeling like they were a bore to read about. Even his steadfast companion Huckleberry Finn felt like more of a token orphan than a fully realized secondary character.

The strength of this book is in its character interactions and its dialogue. And that's enough. But with just a little bit more, I could have liked it a whole lot better.

⭐⭐⭐

Sputnik Sweetheart (1999) by Haruki Murakami

I've read a lot of Murakami lately so I I took my time with this one.

Murakami seems to have begun to come into his own (or at least discovered some new inspiration) after the publishing of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle . Both this and Wind-Up Bird were deeper, more fruitful reads than the book published immediately prior, South of the Border, West of the Sun —Which I would not recommend.

Sputnik Sweetheart has a more intriguing premise than most of Murakami's novels, which start off relatively uninspired and then careen between different, nonsensical-yet-intriguing vignettes. It also pleasingly abandons some of the more common tropes he had been relying on up until this point that have begun to grow tired to somebody like me who has read most of his stuff. There are no lost cats and no wells (though they're mentioned to cheesy effect to those of us who have read Murakami before), though jazz does make an appearance. Sumire is probably his best, most 'whole' female character yet, and his exploration of her sexuality feels genuine rather than the perverted musings of a horny old man (a common criticism of Murakami that I've never found accurate), and he avoids any cloying sentiment that often gets caught up in love-triangle-literature. It's also paced far better than South of the Border—which was a novel clocking in at a scant 200-pages that felt like it was twice that length due to its meandering melodrama and the monotonous time we were forced to spend in the protagonist's less-than-pleasing brainspace.

This paciness was helped by Murakami's strong scenario writing. Being stranded on the top of a stopped Ferris Wheel, for example, is such a viscerally terrifying experience, much like the well of Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. That said, you can still see the same tropes redressed in different clothing; though the Ferris Wheel incident is affecting, it serves little difference in the story as the well did in Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. So I do still sometimes have a difficult time putting up with Murakami's formulaic tendencies, but this book is well-executed enough that it's still worth reading.

Sputnik Sweetheart is as underrated a Murakami book as Dance Dance Dance , except you don't have to read three books before Sputnik for it to have its full impact, like you do with Dance since it's book #4 in a series.

I'm looking forward to getting into some of Murakami's most famous works—Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84—as my chronological read of Murakami's oeuvre continues.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Elephant Vanishes (1980-1991) by Haruki Murakami (In-Progress)

The Elephant Vanishes is Murakami's introductory volume to his short fiction. As with other authors of short fiction, this first volume is somewhat rougher than some of his later stuff.

Reading Murakami is akin to comfort food to me—not because of his weirdness or magical realism, but because I find his prose atypically easy for me to consume. It's not beautiful, nor is it workmanlike. It fits somewhere between the two, almost inconsequential. But, puzzlingly, the way the it seems to flow just 'works' for me. I lack the ability to describe it in much better terms. I suspect it's just a 'me-thing'.

That said, I do have a recurring complaint regarding Murakami. I find that he sometimes seems to struggle with populating his work with enough substance to make his more stylistic, imaginative departures worthwhile. There's the formulaic nature of his novels that rears its ugly head once you've read a couple of his books already and know what's about to be coming: the ear fetish, the lost cats, the psychic teenage girls—everyone knows his tropes and has discussed them ad nauseam. But there's also a distinct lack of substance in so much of his work that I find is rarely mentioned. Murakami badly wants to be this abstract, postmodern writer, and I can't help but feeling that so much of his "magical realism" is frequently just complete and utter bullshit. I suspect that he doesn't actually have much to say in many cases, so he's ambiguous by default to try and cover up his lack of substance and affect a more surreal narrative than is actually warranted.

This is not always the case, of course—but even some of his best work is rendered uneven by seemingly arbitrary turns of weirdness that have no justification and add no value to the narrative or the ideas Murakami is trying to explore. An early story in this collection titled The Kangaroo Communique is a good example of this. The perspective, the narrator's voice, and the premise work together to create an intriguing narrative, but it doesn't really seem to have much to say, so it ends up going nowhere and feels more like space wasted in a style-over-substance exercise. 

The best writers of short fiction—the Raymond Carvers and the Shirley Jacksons—say a whole lot with relatively few words. In stories such as The Kangaroo Communique, however, Murakami seems frequently to say relatively little, and the unique voice with which he relays the story to us does not do enough to carry it.

The Second Bakery Attack by Haruki Murakami

My experience with Murakami is akin to a couple entering their third decade in marriage. I've already read quite a bit of Murakami's work, so I'm intensely familiar with both his strengths and weaknesses. And I don't believe this collection is entirely weak. On the contrary, there are quite a few stories present here which I find quite worthwhile. 

Barn Burning is an incredible piece of short fiction. It's one of my very favorite short stories I've ever read. It's so strong that I'd consider this entire collection worth a purchase just for this one. The popularity of Barn Burning subsequent to the Korean film adaptation in 2018 led me to review it separately—see the full review here. Short summary: It's an excellent, ambiguous piece of fiction that accomplishes everything it sets out to do. It's choice Murakami.

Another solid story was On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning, in which Murakami takes the notion of I-should-have-said and uses the framework to construct an affecting short story focused on hindsight and missed opportunities. There's a nice parable here on losing the ability to communicate that continues to ring true among the less socially apt of us—of which I include myself. So I found it to be entertaining and meaningful, and Murakami has returned to this particular motif in future work as well.

Note: This is an in-process review. I'll continue to update it as I read more of this collection.

Meditations (167) by Marcus Aurelius

Perhaps the stoic philosophy Marcus Aurelius' ruminates upon within this diary can most adequately be summarized as "going with the flow", and thinking a lot about said 'flow' while you're at it.

It's always been amusing to me just how comparable our American society is within that of ancient Rome, despite being separated by the Atlantic ocean, language, religion, and two millennia. Meditations would suggest that the upper crust of Rome during the Pax Romana shared a similar malaise and an ennui to that depicted in an American film penned by a Sofia Coppola, or a Japanese novel by Haruki Murakami, for example. A good part of Meditations is focused on the same questions developed countries have been asking themselves for literal ages: "How do you live a fulfilling life when you are no longer struggling to survive each day?" In this, Meditations is still highly applicable to daily life in developed countries.

Much of Marcus Aurelius' philosophy is anchored in reason and discipline, something I find personally appealing. When tasked with a great question about the human condition (eg. "where does the soul go when we die?") he's often given to tracing a thread back down from the abstract, monumental cloud that is the question back to the earth of reason and attempting to answer it as simple and straightforward manner as possible. I find this appeal to cold logic and tranquility quite comforting; it tends to take the teeth out of the questions that worry us so—it's like being terrified of the monster in the dark, only to switch on the light and realize it was just your hat and jacket on the coat rack. Through this stoic calm he seems to realize the core idea of this entire book: Any worries we have exist only in our mind, thus mastery over our own mind leads to the mastery of any worries we might have. It's a simple way of facing down adversity and making it seem less daunting, and it's probably what has made this book so timeless.

This is one of those books that changes when you read it at different times of your life. Its density allows for this. When I read it in University, most of its appeal was the novelty of reading an Emperor's inner thoughts. Now that I'm midway through my third decade, however, I find its call to self-discipline most appealing.

I'm sure I'll read it again, and I'll probably pick up something new to be enthralled about when I do.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Mystery Knight (2010) (The Tales of Dunk and Egg, #3) by George R.R. Martin

The Mystery Knight is pretty important to Martin's worldbuilding, but it feels a bit scattered compared the other novellas. We're introduced to a number of hedge knights, proper knights, and lords right away and it becomes difficult to keep the lot of them straight. There are a few with differentiating characteristics—Ser Glendon Ball sticks out right away—but in general, I found myself struggling to recall who was who.

Dunk's experience in the lists is as riveting as ever, though. These novellas include some of the best action sequences Martin has written—even including the mainline A Song of Ice and Fire series—and The Mystery Knight is another fine example of that quality. But I couldn't help feeling that, while this entry is important to Martin's worldbuilding, it doesn't work nearly as well as a novella as The Hedge Knight and The Sworn Sword do. It lacks the focus and the tight narrative of the prior episodes, instead choosing to depict a conspiracy that deserves far more sprawl and page count than it gets here. I chalk this up to Martin's desire to fully flesh out his world's history, and not having the format to do so prior to the conception of his world books, The World of Ice and Fire and Fire and Blood. I believe that both The Mystery Knight and A Dance With Dragons are markedly weaker entries due to the fact that they're jam-packed with worldbuilding that Martin feels is important, but does not always make the stories in those two works better themselves.

The Mystery Knight is generally well-regarded by ASOIAF fans, but I found it clearly the weakest novella of the three that have been released thus far. It's still worth a read for its likable protagonists and its viscerally affecting depiction of jousting, but both The Hedge Knight and The Sworn Sword are more cohesive and more consistently readable.

⭐⭐⭐

The Sworn Sword (2003) (The Tales of Dunk and Egg, #2) by George R.R. Martin

Martin does so enjoy parading the reality of feudalism in front of us. Feudalism-inspired fantasy has so classically been stilted towards the romantic that it can be shocking to see it depicted as it actually was. We're dosed with a close-up view of the peasantry in The Sworn Sword, and it isn't pretty. As a child raised on Disney films, it's easy for me to forget that the peasantry weren't actually the noble, lowly heroes with good hearts that we so often see depicted in media, but instead a class of people so intellectually stunted they read more like they're mentally challenged to us. We are so used to dealing with other educated human beings each day that it can be difficult to imagine someone wholly uneducated, but Martin does a staggeringly good job in depicting a peasantry that feels so real it shocks and saddens.

It's not a miserable read, though. The characters in The Sworn Sword are markedly deeper and given more screen time than those in the most previous novella, The Hedge Knight. Rohanne Webber is one of my favorite characters that Martin has ever written. She's intelligent, interesting, and motivated by a situation that feels real to us. She provides an interesting encounter for Dunk, and Martin's dialogue and the body language he creates between the two make for a compelling dance. Some of the minor characters, such as Septon Sefton and Ser Bennis, are equally compelling, and the presence of so many enjoyable characters makes this such a satiating read for being only just over a hundred pages.

The Sworn Sword also features a riveting climax to rival the one I liked so much in The Hedge Knight. Martin pours the action on heavy, and at one point I found myself literally holding my breath. It's quite good, and the ending is perfect—It hits such a satisfying, bittersweet conclusion that I couldn't wait to move on to Martin's next novella.

There's not much wrong with this one. It's Martin at his swiftest and his best. Highly recommended.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Hedge Knight (1998) (The Tales of Dunk and Egg, #1) by George R.R. Martin

I've written both ostentatiously and at length about my love for Martin's Ice and Fire world. While The Hedge Knight digs into some of Martin's preferred themes regarding honor and character, his novellas generally have a far different tone than the main series.

Dunk is a more genuine, naive, and straightforward character than Martin typically writes. He's blessed with prodigious size and strength, making his earnest, do-gooder character something that he can get away with (just barely) in the story. That he does gives the story a far more whimsical, light-hearted tone (again—generally) when compared to some of the occurrences in both A Song of Ice and Fire and Fire & Blood, though it can still be quite gritty in its depiction of cruelty and violence.

One of Martin's favorite themes—and undeniably a core theme to ASOIAF—is the use of legally and socially permissible violence by those in power, against those without power. It shows up constantly in the main series and it's the main plot-mover in The Hedge Knight. Dunk endears himself to us not by being intelligent or particularly skilled, and not even by trying to do the right thing—but simply by doing it, without thinking. That it's not a conscious decision is both what makes it endearing and what makes it interesting. Dunk does not choose to be protect the weak after considering the potentially drastic consequences of doing so, he just does, because that's the kind of person he is.

As to be expected by its short length and 'novella' moniker, this is very much narrow-scope Martin. There's no real worldbuilding, and though his characterization is as enticing as ever, it takes more of a backseat to the two leads—Neither of whom serve more than a perfunctory role in moving things forward. The real meat of this lean serving is the conflict it follows, and the strength of the action writing at its conclusion. I don't typically think of Martin as a great writer of action sequences or thrilling narratives (at least, not any longer, since I've read A Feast for Crows and A Dance With Dragons), but The Hedge Knight's brevity and action makes it a great treat for those with an interesting in the setting, and features enough depth to place it alongside the main series' more weighty and literary offerings. Highly recommended novella.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Fire & Blood (2018) (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R.R. Martin

I so badly wanted to hate this book.

I was so angry when GRRM announced its publishing. Like many other ASOIAF fans, I viewed it as the reason that the eagerly anticipated The Winds of Winter had been pushed so far back from its expected publishing date of 2015-2016. I vowed not to purchase Fire & Blood, instead wishing to wait for Winds in order to 'punish' Martin for his insolence in choosing to finish the first leg of this offshoot in lieu of completing the next chapter of his magnum opus. So I didn't purchase this on its release date—the first time I've done this with an ASOIAF book since I began reading the series nearly a decade ago.

The moment of truth came in Budapest's Franz List International Airport just last month. I had been sick for nearly two weeks with that pervasive, annoying traveler's cold that seems to make you just sick enough that you can't enjoy anything, but not so sick that you're confined to your bed. So you stay ill for weeks at a time, never resting enough to get better, and feeling like garbage the entire time. I still had a number of hours until my flight left, but I had finished the book I brought on the trip with me and had no other means of killing time aside from browsing social media on my phone like some sort of a plebeian. So I wandered over to one of the stores near my gate and perused their selection of books, which—luckily enough for me, being the monoglot American that I am—were all in English. And, staring me right in the face, right in front of the stack, was an English language version of Martin's Fire & Blood, Volume 1. At the time my head felt as if it might detach and float away, and my faculties were dulled by a persistent sore throat. So my steadfast commitment to boycotting this Targaryen tome weakened, and I purchased it and decided to see if it was worth the time.

As I read my opinion of it went from, "this is all just shit from The World of Ice and Fire, what the hell?", to "okay, this is a pretty inspired portrait of a (fictional) enlightened despot", to being brought nearly to tears by the so-called Death of the Dragons.

God damn it, George. You got me again. I wish you'd just go away. And by that, I mean, please defy all the odds and keep writing these books for another 30+ years.

Perhaps it's best to first discuss what the book is not. Gone is the limited third person narrative that Martin uses to such great effect in the mainline ASOIAF series. Fire & Blood feels like George had all of these ideas for storytelling in his head, continuously building over the years. He'd sprinkle them here and there throughout the mainline ASOIAF series, of course—but eventually, his mind reached critical mass, and he just had to unload them. First to Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson (the authors of the previous world book, The World of Ice and Fire), and then onto the page himself with this book.

So these are very much summarized versions of various events Martin has dreamt up, though he does allow for a flourish of style or dialogue here and there. And that might put some folks off. But it also allows Martin to forget about some of the shackles the limited third person perspective places upon him; he can now jump from cherry-to-cherry, neglecting the rest of the sundae, and give us the best bits. While the book loses the atmospheric quality of the mainline series, it gains the punch of a quickly paced, impactful narrative and loses the weakness that is the glacial pacing of both A Feast For Crows and A Dance With Dragons.

Fire & Blood starts off with its weakest portion—the conquest of Aegon and his sisters—but grows more and more enticing from there. The characters and reign of Jaehaerys and Alysanne, and, perhaps most affecting, the civil war in the dance of the dragons, are superbly affecting and quite entertaining to read. Martin proves his storytelling is as strong as ever, despite the criticisms he has received for his most recent entries in A Song of Ice and Fire and the flak he's caught by publishing this book prior to The Winds of Winter.

The dance of the dragons, in particular, is one of the most singularly affecting events of the entire series. Martin spends little time focused on the great dragons of the Targaryen dynasty, preferring to tell us mostly of the Targaryens themselves. Despite this, the dragons come to occupy a place as treasured pets, or beasts of war, rather than the unreal, magical monsters that they are. They are viewed more as 'parts of the family' rather than simply tools of war; children are raised alongside them, occupying the same cradle as the eggs, and love them as they would a family dog that has been assigned to be their companion for most of their lives.

I'm an animal lover, and viewing the dragons in this light created an attachment I hadn't realized had developed until I read through the dance of the dragons—or, as Martin tells us in the text, what some historians prefer to refer to as "the dying of the dragons". The dance of the dragons wasn't just a massive blow to Targaryen power within Westeros, but a massive blow to Westerosi civilization itself, the catastrophic loss of such total war is put into terms that we thus feel personally and emotionally with passages such as this one:

Silverwing had taken to the sky as the carnage began, circling the battlefield for hours, soaring on the hot winds rising from the fires below. Only after dark did she descend, to land beside her slain cousins. Later, singers would tell of how she thrice lifted Vermithor's wing with her nose, as if to make him fly again.

Martin's strong anti-war and anti-feudalist themes from the main series continue to occupy the backbone of his storytelling. If you're looking for something smart, rather than just something fantastical, you can find that here, too. It's convenient that the chapters involving the reign of Jaehaerys and Alysanne—the quintessential enlightened monarchs, who rule (mostly) successfully, and justly—are followed by those whose incompetence eventually led to the devastating civil war that destroyed most of the dynasty's power. As we're reminded of, time and time again, near-absolute power is a fickle thing, as capable of creating boom as it is bust. And the war which follows is, like nearly all wars fought within Martin's fiction, a net negative. Little is gained from the conflict, but much prosperity is lost, as is often the case with war in the real world.

So I suppose the real question is whether or not you'll view this change in storytelling style as a real hurdle. It's far less easy to lose yourself in this book when compared to the reading experience of the main series. It's basically a summarized version of an entire book series that Martin rightly realized he'd never be able to write. To me, it's no less worthwhile even considering the change of format—But I'm a massive fan of this world, this series, and Martin's storytelling and themes. So if you feel similarly about A Song of Ice and Fire, and you don't feel too put off by the fact that Fire & Blood reads like a summarized series, then you should definitely give it a shot. I cracked into it expecting another dry tome involving some excellent worldbuilding, but found it packed full of intriguing characters and storytelling, despite its format falling a bit short of that of the main series.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

South of the Border, West of the Sun (1992) by Haruki Murakami

Perhaps this book is the result of Murakami looking at the protagonists he's written before and realizing, finally, that they just aren't all that interesting.

Our protagonist, Hajime, is typical of the men Murakami writes—Unfulfilled, uninteresting, and with no strong desires or momentous events earlier in their lives to give shape to what identifies most protagonists to us: What they want. They rarely show any agency, taking part in the story merely by being the vessel we as the reader use to experience the various weirdlings and surreal occurrences that Murakami dreams up and throws into his books. Murakami's protagonists are almost universally boring, unfulfilled, weak, middle-aged men to whom various interesting things happen to happen to. He's never been a great character writer—or even a good one—And perhaps this was the first time when he actually considered that fact.

South of the Border, West of the Sun is a book about finding purpose and fulfillment in a post-modern world dominated by capitalism, but for nine of its tenths it's focused mostly on masquerading as a book about relationships, sex, and how we sometimes make choices that hurt the people around us. For the vast majority of my read, I wasn't sure that Murakami was even aware of how unlikable his protagonist was. I waffled back and forth considering whether Murakami was blithely unaware of the supreme asshole his protagonist was, or whether Murakami was purposefully crafting a narrative subversion with consideration of his typical protagonists.

Towards the end of the novel it becomes obvious, as the protagonist himself undergoes an epiphany in which he considers his own self-centered, vapid, worthless character and finally begins to consider the people he has hurt throughout the story. The problem with this narrative is that it requires a better character writer than Murakami to pull off. The main character is an empty, uninteresting asshole, and the side characters all lack depth. Additionally, this book lacks Murakami's ethereal, quiet, melancholy atmospheric ability—One of my favorite things about his writing.

This is just an okay Murakami novel. Towards the end it became clear what he was trying to do, but most of the book is an unenjoyable read, and the conclusion left me questioning whether or not he said what he was trying to say in the best possible way.

⭐⭐