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A quick, fun read, but still dark, complex, engaging, and witty (cuz it’s Neil Gaiman). The book opens with a mysterious and creepy man named Jack on a mission to murder a sleeping family of four; he makes short work of three of them, but finds that the family’s 18-month-old toddler has somehow managed to slip through his grasp.

The boy wanders up the hill to the town’s historic graveyard, where its denizens dub him “Nobody Owens” and vow to protect and care for him. Bod spends the years that follow growing up in the graveyard, educated and cared for by his adoptive ghost-parents Master and Mistress Owens, his mysterious, formidable guardian Silas, and a host of tutors, friends, and all-around quirky characters. As he gets older, Bod begins to learn the truth about where he came from, why he lives in the graveyard, and the danger that lurks beyond the graveyard fence as a result.

I haven’t read Coraline yet, but I saw the movie, and I’d say it’s about on the same level in terms of darkness / storytelling / age level. Like I said, not what you’d call a dense read (I finished it in about a day and a half), but throughly enjoyable.  Kind of wish it was a grown up book, because I could see expanding this plot into something super-rich and intriguing (and probably even darker).  Still a lot of fun, though.

Oddly, I learned about this book by spotting it randomly in a bookstore back in the summer of 2007.  It had an interesting cover, so I picked it up and spend a few minutes reading the back & flaps of the jacket & perusing the first few pages.  After flipping through the rest of it and noting the, er, “uniqueness” of some of the formatting (more on this later), my curiosity got the better of me and I walked out with it, thinking I’d discovered some little-known but intriguing narrative gem.

Yeah, not so much.  After reading the first couple of chapters, I decided to try to hunt down a few reviews or critiques online & see what I could find, which quickly disabused me of the assumptions I’d made about the book when I’d first found it.  Googling [“House of Leaves” Danielewski] turns up over 100,000 results, and the Wikipedia page devoted to the book is some 15 pages long.  Apparently it’s had a cult following since its release in March of 2000.

So what can I write here about this book that’s in any way useful, without basically summarizing the Wikipedia page?  Not entirely sure, but I’ll try. (more…)

Part of Rothfuss’s dedication reads, “[T]o my father, who taught me that if I was going to do something, I should take my time and do it right the first time.”

Well done, sir.

Reading the The Name of the Wind, the first book in what will eventually be a trilogy, it was difficult to believe  that this is Rothfuss’s first effort.  I have to be honest and say that I often shy away from being identified as a fantasy fan because there is soooo much mediocre fantasty out there, and I would hate for anyone to think that those books are the ones I deem worth my time.  It just seems to me that when one sets out to write a fantasy novel, that is probably at least in part due to having read and being a fan of a lot of fantasy, which inevitably subjects the author to a number of potholes, which I could probably enumerate, if I was willing to think about it long enough.  So much new fantasy seems like the oldies but goodies dressed up in gawdy new clothes that don’t fit, or is brimming with cliche & tiresome characters & situations & painful wannabe-medieval dialogue, or spends so much time trying to catch you up on the entire mythological, sociological, anthropological, and historical context of the world that you’re ready to chuck the whole thing after just a few chapters.  I do think there are folks out there who really enjoy reading Lord of the Rings with all the names changed over and over again, but I would never want to be confused with one of them.  This book, though, I would actually admit in public to enjoying.  Delighting in, in fact.

The story centers around a middle-aged innkeeper / bartender named Kvothe who lives in a rather typical fantastic, pseudo-medieval world.  A figure of legend and many an embroidered tale of heroism and derring do, Kvothe has gone into hiding for reasons as yet unknown to us.  When he is discovered by a scribe who wants to write down the real stories behind Kvothe’s legendary adventures, we are thrust into a Thousand-And-One Nights-style story-within-a-story retelling of the barkeep’s life.  In between these tales, we learn more about the present-day goings-on in Kvothe’s world, and begin to suspect that there’s bad business a-brewin.

“That should do for now, I imagine,” says Kvothe on page 712, having reached his 16th or 17th year in his recounting of his life.  “We have all the groundwork for now.  A foundation of story to build upon.”  Which may as well be Rothfuss speaking directly to us. One of the difficulties in fantasy writing is always setting up an unfamiliar world for your readers without overwhelming them, confusing them, or causing them to lose all interest in the story itself.  Rothfuss, on the other hand, has taken his time and done the thing properly.  This volume, in a way, feels like the exposition of a sonata.  It’s clear that development or tidy conclusions were never on the menu; that will come later.  By cleverly tucking all the background information we need into the tale of Kvothe’s childhood and adolescence, we reach the end of the book and realize that we know everything we need to to leap head-on into Act 2, where we will get some larger-scale plot development.  And, intrigued as we are to find out what happens next, we finish NotW feeling strangely satisfied.  Kvothe’s stories-within-a-story contain their own little arcs; perhaps another of Rothfuss’s goals for book 1 was simply to help us get to know our protagonist, inside and out.

What else can I say?  While aspects of the characters, towns, and institutions certainly feel familiar (it’s a feudal fantasy story), it’s the kind of familiarity that’s comforting without being cliche and predictable.  The characters are three-dimensional and believable.  His teenage characters read like teenagers, and act like them (even when being heroic). Rothfuss’s use of language (both narrative and dialogue) feels organic and natural, even when it’s made up (and bonus points for coming up with believable and even delicious slang, swears, and idioms).  Finally, I love a book that doesn’t pull punches, and Rothfuss clearly has no qualms whatsoever about subjecting his characters to the most grisly of fates.

So yeah - a fantasy book you don’t have to defend to your non-fantasy-reading fans.  I have a feeling this may be one that transcends the usual fantasy crowd; it’s less a book about wizards and great feuds and the triumph of good over evil and more a book about people and how they deal with life.  I read it in under two weeks, and that’s saying something for me.

In The Woods shares a number of striking parallels with another book I read a few years called Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson.  In addition to both being award-winning debut novels by female writers that received enormous praise, many key aspects of the plot are quite similar:  A thirty-something relationship-challenged white male cop/p.i. who is haunted by the infamous and unsolved disappearance of a local child/children twenty-some-odd years ago in a backwater area of the UK investigates a somehow related crime in the same area.  Along the way various creepy earth-shattering revelations about and connections between both crimes are uncovered, and lots of bad coffee is drunk by various hard-boiled but slightly quirky police types.

In The Woods also reminded me of Case Histories in that it got a ton of fantastic reviews, made the NY Times bestseller list for several weeks running, and left me wondering what all the fuss was about.  Supposedly, “French’s plot twists and turns will bamboozle even the most astute reader;” maybe, if the book happens to be the first mystery/thriller/police procedural said astute reader has ever read.  I can’t blame French too much for this; the fact is that it’s pretty darn difficult to come up with a truly unique storyline in this genre, and for all that this one is dressed up as sophisticated and edgy, it was remarkably predictable.

The tone of the book also reminded me a lot of Case Histories: way overdone imagery, melodramatic characters, painfully not-so-witty banter, and the kind of deluge of pop culture references that guarantees the whole thing will feel stale ten years from now.  I couldn’t help feeling that the book would have been ten times as readable if French had just stopped trying so hard, especially with the dialogue.  For the record, it does still beat Case Histories; the characters aren’t quite so caricature-y, and there’s not as much gratuitous (and sometimes creepy) sex.

All in all, it was a decent vacation / plane ride read, and if you really really like cop mysteries that don’t try to be anything more than that, then maybe this is your book.  “Ambitious and extraordinary,” however, is in my opinion going a bit far.

I’m on the verge of adding this book to my favorites of all time (ie from about the 9th grade on), which includes Exodus by Leon Uris, The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood, and Mary Stewart’s Merlin trilogy. I really can’t explain why, but I loved this book.

What’s it about? Well, that’s sort of the trouble. It’s hard to explain in words what it’s about. And as strange as it may sound, I don’t think “what it’s about” really has a lot to do with why I like it so much. I think it’s more the style of writing, which is a little dream-like and existential. But, in order to satisfy your curiosity, I’ll tell you that it takes place in 1980s Tokyo and centers around a 30 year old Japanese man whose marriage is beginning to disintegrate. Suddenly mildly strange events begin to befall him. There are vague, troubling, and often surreal connections between these things, sometimes bordering on the supernatural. As one reviewer put it, “Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution.”

In spite of the fact that it’s one of my all-time favorites, I don’t think it’s a book I would go around recommending to everyone, either. I have a hunch that the bits that make it absolutely delectable to me are something of an acquired taste, and likely to be off-putting to a lot of other people. What can I say? I don’t like bland books. This is anything but bland.

So yeah. If you’re in the mood for something a little twisted and existential, give it a shot. In the next few months, I’m also planning on reading some of his others, including A Wild Sheep Chase, After Dark, and Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the Word.

…or at least that I consider having been worth mine. Then again, I can’t so much as walk into a bookstore without coming out with something. These are my “two thumbs up” picks. (more…)