Pratchett's Hogfather, and a Christmas Poem

Welcome to the festive edition of Annie's Crazy Book Reviews!
There are some books that are particularly suited to the Bleak Midwinter, when the sun gets somewhat sluggish and the world is invaded by Christmas lights and small children. I don't know if it's the effect of too little light driving me a bit mad, but I always get the urge to do something Traditional at this time, like eat mince pies even if they're not very good, or read books I've read before.

The book which I feel summarises the supposed Christmas Spirit is The Night Before Christmas, the text of which is a poem by Clement Clarke Moore, first published as A Visit from St Nicholas in 1823. It has been illustrated many times over in various styles, but I think the poem itself is quite magical, as it captures a child's anticipation of Christmas. It starts like this:

T'was the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

But my actual all-time favourite is Terry Pratchett's Hogfather.

Hogfather imagines the origins of Christmas in a primeval past where the festive season and rituals associated with it have a function: namely, to ensure the sun rises the next day. The novel begins with Susan, Death's Granddaughter, attempting to ignore the irritating intrusion of the Death of Rats and his talking raven in her carefully constructed normal life, where she is governess to a brother and sister called Gawain and Twyla, 'who'd been named by people who apparently loved them'. At the same time, the Wizards at Unseen University have discovered a door that has been nailed shut and labelled 'do not open', so of course they are opening it. And there is something odd going on with the Tooth Fairy.

Hogfather transposes a multitude of winter myths and Christmas stories to the Discworld universe, and tells a sinister version of The Grinch who Stole Christmas, in which The Auditors of the Universe, soulless empty grey robes who resent life for being unpredictable, hire the fantastically creepy Mr Teatime (pronounced Te-ah-ti-meh) to assassinate the Hogfather. His unlikely saviour is Death, who has come to appreciate the irrationality of the living, so with the help of his trusty servant Albert he dresses up as the Hogfather, lashes six smelly, hairy pigs to the sled, and sets off to delight children everywhere by giving them what they actually want for Christmas, and saying 

HO. HO. HO.

The cast of characters also includes a giddyTooth Fairy named Violet, the Verruca Gnome, the Oh-God of Hangovers, and Discworld's first ever Super Computer, Hex, who believes in the Hogfather. Hogfather is gripping, atmospheric, erudite, and very, very funny. Highly recommended, especially at the darkest time of the year.

The Wine of Angels, Phil Rickman

After my last reading experience, this was refreshingly brilliant. It is extremely absorbing, paced wonderfully and very atmospheric. The characters are also interesting, as well as believable, so this book is highly recommended. Warning: it is hard to put down.

The Wine of Angels follows the (mis)adventures of Merrily Watkins, female Church of England clergyperson, and daughter Jane, who has more Pagan inclinations, as the pair move to Ledwardine where Merrily has been appointed priest-in-charge. Nothing is simple for a woman priest, as she is alternately feted as a sign of progress in the church and hounded as an abomination, while trying to write sermons and suffering from nightmares about the third floor.

Action centres on a creepy apple orchard which surrounds the Vicarage and churchyard, and once surrounded the whole village. The story begins with an ill-fated attempt at Wassailing in said orchard, involving shotguns, which results in blood all over the place. Things get progressively stranger from there; Jane has a transcendental experience in the orchard while very drunk on cider, and Merrily starts hearing noises in the Vicarage at night, and getting lost in its empty rooms.

There is a brilliantly realised cast of supporting characters, including Collette Cassidy, Jane’s sexually precocious teenage friend, Lol (Laurence) Robinson, an erstwhile rockstar who appears to be afraid of teenage girls and listens to too much Nick Drake, and Lucy Devenish, the local wise-woman who runs a gift shop that doubles as a shrine to apples. There is also a good cast of villains, including Dennis Child, the small creepy organist who has a thing for female priests, James Bull-Davies, the local squire who loves Tradition and thus really doesn’t have a thing for female priests, Karl Windling, bassist, entrepreneur, and chief tormentor of Lol, and Alison Kinnersley, Wanton Woman.

One of the book’s greatest successes is that does not become apparent until the very end whether it is discussing human crimes or supernatural occurrences, and even then the line between the two is delightfully blurry. The novel evokes the feelings of unwelcome strangers living in a village steeped in ancient secrets, and investigates what happens when these secrets are blown open. Overall, it seems to argue that change is a good thing, but explores the implications of change in the context of tradition.

There is a reasonable amount of death, sometimes in unexpected places, some of it involving sheep, but none of it is gratuitous. There are some disgusting moments as well, but again, all within the realms of the acceptable (and I’m really squeamish).

The final twist is chilling, but in the end all is resolved as well as it can be, and the denouement causes the characters to grow rather than breaking them. It actually takes a while for the story to conclude itself, but the suspense and pacing are managed so well that is definitely doesn’t get boring, it just becomes incredibly hard to put the book down (so make sure you have no plans when you start reading the last fifty pages or so). The ending is satisfying, but not artificially neat, and although it is the first book in a series, it doesn’t leave any annoying mysteries that would compel you to start the next book immediately. But I did that anyway, because I enjoyed the experience of reading this one so much.

The Unicorn Crisis (The Hidden Academy), Jon Rosenberg

This is a terrible book, which I guess I should have expected, given that it doesn’t really have a cover, and it cost me 99p. You may wonder why I am reviewing it. (I sort of wonder that myself). The fact is, although the writing style annoyed me, and the characters could be divided into three stereotypes (male, female, evil), I did actually read the whole thing to see what happens in the end, so the author must have done something right. Right?

I have three major criticisms to make:

a) The text had not been edited.
In addition to a proliferation of typos and missing words, there were several instances where the author used words incorrectly, and the crimes committed against the common comma alone are deserving of extreme and creative punishment.

b) The characterisation sucks.
The ‘show don’t tell’ rule clearly hasn’t found purchase here. Furthermore, the way characters respond to situations makes absolutely no sense in the context of the narrative. They go wide-eyed when they should raise their eyebrows, they blush when they should blanch, and generally feel about as genuine as a banker’s apology.

c) The dialogue. Oh, the dialogue.
It is so unfathomably bad I can’t describe it, so I’ll just have to give you an example:

”So, where are the others?” I asked her.
“Alanza said she needed some stuff if she was going to spend the day here, so Llwellyn took her to the store.”
“Just as well, as there is something I wanted to ask you.” I continued eating.

Can you tell where any of these people are from? No. Because nobody talks like that. Llwellyn’s ‘regionalese’ is even worse. Basically, he says ‘boyo’ every three words, I’m assuming to indicate his Welshness.

Setting the above catastrophic failures aside, the novel does sort of function. The plot is engaging, although there’s a massive slump in the middle where they wander around the main character’s house doing nothing because the author wasn’t sure how to progress things, the characters are, though dull, likeable, and there is definitely no question of the magic aspect leaving the characters with too few limitations. Summoning, which is what they can do, appears to be completely useless, although I had a vague sense that I was supposed to think it was cool.

So, don’t read this book. It sucked. But I get the impression that Rosenberg may write something good in the future, assuming he finds a sufficiently ruthless editor and a book explaining the difference between commas, question marks and full-stops?

Fated: An Alex Verus Novel, Benedict Jacka

I read this because it was promoted as Urban Fantasy, and alleged to be similar to the Rivers of London series, with which I’m a bit obsessed. I suppose there are some similarities, but Fated is markedly less good. I feel this may be because Mr Verus spends a lot of his time being knowing about things that are completely alien to the reader, so we don’t really get what he’s being knowing about, or why it’s impressive. Also, the decision to call the great Dark Mage who scarred Verus’ youth ‘Richard’ was perhaps not the best. Funnily enough, Looking For Group uses that very name as a name hilariously unsuitable for a Dark Lord:

So every time the Dread Richard was mentioned as a demon from Verus’ past, I had a mental image of LFG Richard going ‘Fwoosh!’ which ruined the image of cold sophistication Jacka had been going for.

I was also led to expect a realistic evocation of the city of London. Unfortunately, the descriptions did not resonate with me, possibly because I have been spoiled by Ben Aaronovitch, whose descriptions of both place and people are just better. Fated could have been happening anywhere that has tall buildings. The British Museum features quite centrally, but I didn’t get much of a sense of uniqueness of the space. Overall, I felt like I was being told a lot of things rather than being shown them, which grates a little. Then again, given that I want to write and publish myself, I feel like I should try not to be too judgmental: I did enjoy the book, I’m just being picky. (Although I can’t resist pointing out that the author’s headshot on his webpage is truly hilarious:

The Aristotle pose? Really?)

To summarise the plot: Alex Versus, probability mage, nightmare-sufferer and all-round mensch, runs a magic shop in Camden. His magic skill enables him to look into the future, and see the outcome of any given potential action. On a day like any other, a nefarious Greek-looking person from his past walks into the shop to offer him a job for The Council. At this point the reader discovers that there is a Council of Light Mages, and a bunch of fractious Dark Mages to whom teamwork is like altruism to cats. Versus likes neither, but through a series of coincidences somewhat frustrating for someone who can see the future, he manages to end up working for both.

The controversy centres on a statue, which contains a priceless artefact that has been locked away for centuries, and is reputed to give the possessor endless power. Understandably, everyone wants it for themselves, and all are willing to kill to get it. Except for Alex, because he’s a mensch. And mostly everyone wants to kill him.

Alex is joined by Luna, a girl with an ancient curse that causes everyone who comes near her to have terminally bad luck, and Starbreeze, an air elemental of female persuasion, who is described as being simply dumb. They are helped out by Arachne, who is an enormous spider that makes beautiful clothes with magical properties, and a straight-edged bureaucrat/ Council member whose name I’ve forgotten, which fits with the character.

The magical elements of the story are managed reasonably well – Verus’ ability to look into the future is not overly deterministic, and doesn’t give him too much of an edge over the other characters. Luna’s curse is incredibly depressing, but hope is introduced gradually over the course of the narrative, which is nice. There are also lots of jolly explosions and things being smashed, which is always good in an urban fantasy story.

One final thing that was a bit annoying: throughout the novel there are allusions to the past that don’t always gel with the narrative of the present. They are generally important for character development, but the way they are introduced and the amount of information they convey doesn’t work. A lot of the time, I felt like the narrative was presenting itself to me as an outsider, instead of feeling completely absorbed by the story.

But, all whingeing aside, I quite enjoyed this book, and I look forward to reading the next one, to find out what happens to Luna and her curse. Oh, and to see if I’ll finally be introduced to this nefarious, ballroom-dancing Richard.

Dodger, Terry Pratchett

I've stewed over this review for a while. Like many people out there in the wilds of the internet, I have difficulty separating this novel from the rest of Pratchett's oeuvre, which has had a defining influence on my development, both as a reader and as a person. While I enjoyed reading the book very much, the experience was not unproblematic for me, so it took me a while to digest my feelings and come out with a coherent sense of what I thought about it. The gist of it is that I found it good, but different.

Dodger is from the Nation school of Pratchett novels: optimistic to a fault, self-indulgent in its degree of wish-fulfillment. It reminds me of the idealistic narrative of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc created by Alex in Goodbye Lenin: well-intentioned, but ultimately silly. And yet, I can’t begrudge Pratchett the relentless series of serendipitous happy endings that is Dodger.

The novel is set in a fictitious but well-researched Dickensian London, and features both Dodger, the character from Oliver Twist, and Charlie Dickens himself, imagined as an investigative journalist. Other famous Victorians make appearances, including a young Benjamin Disraeli, Henry Mayhew champion of the poor, and Queen Victoria herself. Sweeney Todd, demon barber of Fleet Street, makes a cameo appearance, acting as the foil for Dodger’s change of circumstances, and instigating a discussion of mental illness and the way it is handled by society.

The plot is a little bit flabby – Dodger rescues a young Lady from some very unpleasant gentlemen, which motivates his meteoric rise through the echelons of Victorian society, achieved as a result of a series of convenient coincidences following his kind disarming of Sweeney Todd. There are rather a lot of coincidences, much like in a Dickens novel, but these are revealed too gradually to have any kind of effect. On the other hand, there is something delightful about the delicate web of references to the urban mythology of London: to use the example of Sweeney Todd again, at the moment when Dodger walks into a barbershop on Fleet Street, I experienced a thrill of recognition, followed by surprise at the way the narrative subverts the myth, bringing in the issue of soldiers’ unimaginable experience of civilian life after the battlefield.

Nevertheless, the weakness in plotting persists: the mystery side of the plot is too veiled in, well, mystery, to be effective. Dodger has a plan to rescue his Lady-friend permanently by somehow staging her death, but the details of his plan are left unexplained until it actually fails. This does not allow dramatic tension to build while he is attempting to carry out his plan, because the reader doesn’t know exactly what to expect, so one can’t be surprised. Having said that, there were probably references to other London novels that I missed, which may make the whole situation more clear. I also felt like the ‘Happy Families’ game could have had a more clear function within the plot – the mysterious rescued girl has a pack of the cards in her possession, but her explanation of why is, although sweet, somewhat anticlimactic.

Dodger is different from Discworld: the jokes are more literary than situational, the plot is looser, and the overall experience is different. It seems that the subject of the novel is not the rescue of the damsel in distress, or the transformation of a street child into a gentleman, or the mysterious identity of the mystery assassin; rather, it is Dodger himself who constitutes the core of the narrative. The interest lies chiefly in observing his reactions to new experiences, involving rich people, firearms and heavenly soft unmentionables (underwear, for those unfamiliar with the term). The whole novel is a deliciously divine pursuit of a series of ‘what ifs’. What if Sweeney Todd had been misunderstood? What if a woman in desperate need of help had got it, for once? What if Dickens’ Dodger had been given the choice between good and indifferent, in the face of pure evil? What if under his grimy clothes and sporadic education he had a truly powerful moral compass?

All quibbling aside, this is one of those books that left me feeling inexplicably better about the world and humanity at large when I had finished it, which is what I have always loved about Pratchett’s writing. I didn’t giggle through it like I do with most Discworld novels, but it often made me smile, and I finished it feeling an even deeper affection than before for the man who wrote it.

Fly By Night, Frances Hardinge

I came across this book as a result of picking up its sequel, Twilight Robbery, at an otherwise uninspiring discount book shop in South Africa. I loved the sequel so much that I immediately tracked down Fly By Night, which I think is one of my most favourite books ever. I later discovered that Frances Hardinge, the author, had been a student at Somerville College, and all her books are actually in the library, so I could have read them both for free. But that’s another story.

Fly By Night tells of the adventures of Mosca Mye, named for Goodman Palpitattle, ‘He Who Keeps Flies out of Jams and Butterchurns’. Mosca is the daughter of deceased revolutionary Quillam Mye, who has done her a great disservice by teaching her how to read, and naming her after the common Housefly. Mosca lives in the perpetually drenched village of Chough, which can be found ‘by straying as far as possible from anywhere comfortable or significant, and following the smell of damp’.

The story opens with Mosca’s decision to escape Chough, along with her trusty homicidal goose Saracen. On her way out, Mosca sets fire to a mill, and rescues the amoral but articulate Eponymous Clent, who has been put in the stocks for fraud. Together, they make their way to the City of Mandelion, where they proceed to cause all kinds of trouble.

The chapters are charmingly titled alphabetically, beginning with ‘A is for Arson’ and ‘B is for Blackmailing’, going through other criminal offences including ‘M is for Murder’, finally arriving at ‘R is for Redemption’, and ending with ‘V is for Verdict’. Mosca and Clent become involved in a complex series of political upheavals involving the Duke of Mandelion, Vocado Avourlace, and his sister the Lady Tamarind, as well as assorted revolutionaries and religious fanatics, and a girl who refers to herself as Cakes.

The City of Mandelion is in the Fractured Realm, a sort of parallel of 18th-Century England that incorporates some elements of Romanian tradition. The Realm is Fractured because there is no clear successor to the king who was decapitated some time before, so each City supports their Monarch-of-Choice, and life in general is controlled by the Guilds. The Guild of Stationers is in control of all books, while the Guild of Locksmiths aspires to be in charge of everything.

In Fly By Night, names are of great significance, as each person is named for the ‘Beloved’, the religious personages of the Fractured Realm, who presides over the hour of their birth. It is assumed, therefore, that the name of a person to some extent reflects their character. Mosca often laments her attachment to Palpitattle, but also looks to him for guidance in her times of need.

Fly By Night is a book about identity, belief and loyalty, as well as the role of intellectuals in a functional society, examined through the story of one angry girl, her homicidal goose, and her quest to find a place where she belongs. It is also a well-paced and exceptionally funny murder mystery set in a mock-18th century England. I loved both sides.

The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Catherynne M. Valente

This is the story of September Morning Bell, who leaves her boring life in Omaha which is mainly characterised by loneliness and washing dishes, and flies away to fairyland with the Green Wind and the Leopard of Little Breezes. As they fly away from Omaha, September doesn’t look back or wave goodbye. The narrator explains that this is because ‘all children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That’s why it takes so long to grow one’. To some extent, this is a story about how September grew a heart.

The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland is a traditional quest story: September is drawn into the struggle between the denizens of Fairyland and the Marquess, who has gone power crazy and invented bureaucracy. Initially, she sets off on a quest to retrieve a magic spoon belonging to the witch Goodbye from the Marquess who has stolen it, which leads to a quest to find a magic sword in the Worsted Wood. September stands up to the Marquess, and is able to restore the normal order of things to Fairyland. In the process, she makes some true friends, and discovers the real value of the home she has left behind.

Fairyland itself is beautifully evoked and endearingly quirky: there is a herd of wild bicycles, a city made entirely of cloth, and a gaol at the bottom of the world. The Marquess’s hair changes colour to suit her mood, and she wears a very fine hat.

September’s friends include the Leopard and Green Wind from the opening, a Marid named Saturday , and a Wyvern who believes that his father was a Library, so he calls himself a Wyverary. There are also several animated objects, including a green jacket, a key and a lamp, and a soap golem named Lye. The inhabitants of Fairyland oscillate between being wondrous and creepy, making September’s adventure somewhat reminiscent of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In particular, September’s encounter with an island full of abandoned things that also happen to be alive is both funny and almost terminally exciting.

Although the book is light and often tongue-in-cheek, there is a serious undertone. September’s father has been conscripted and sent to war in Europe, and her mother has started working at a factory making aeroplane engines. September’s feelings of abandonment constantly reappear in the narrative, giving the book a poignant edge one wouldn’t necessarily expect in this type of modern-day fairytale. Indeed, there is one particularly gruesome moment during Septembers’ circumnavigation of Fairyland in which she is forced to catch, kill and gut a pink fish with emerald eyes in order to survive her trip. This is followed by a conversation with a shark about whether or not fish are meant to be eaten, which provides some degree of closure, strangely enough. But the fishing scene is still rather emotional, and really quite disturbing.

The ending is neat, but not so perfect that it discounts the possibility of a sequel – in fact, the sequel is already out, and is called The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There.

Rivers of London, Ben Aaronovitch

Rivers of London is a good old traditional police procedural set, as the title suggests, in London. But this is a London where ghosts are real, magic is an actual thing, and the rivers are populated by very independent-minded and often cantankerous gods. The structure is supplied in chief by the police procedural genre, and events are narrated in the first person by PC Peter Grant, a true Londoner with a dry wit. The plot is built on a nexus of myths and legends about the London area, cleverly updated to fit this magical vision of the present day. The novel is part of a series focused on the career of Peter Grant, which at this point includes two more books, Moon over Soho and Whispers Underground.

PC Grant is about to qualify as a police officer, and is determinedly trying to avoid being assigned to an office job in the Case Progression Unit. He is also trying to seduce his colleague, Lesley May, with equal determination. On the morning of his career progression interview, he is pulled out of bed early to guard the perimeter of a crime scene. The body of a man has been discovered by another, very drunk man, so a murder investigation is under way. Once everyone has left the scene, Grant is approached by someone claiming to have witnessed the crime. Only the witness happens to be dead himself. Faced with the ghost, Grant reasons ‘just because you’ve gone mad, doesn’t mean you should stop acting like a policeman’, and decides to pursue the ghost lead in the hope that it might help him avoid the Case Progression Unit.

This brings him to the attention of Thomas Nightingale, the tall, dapper last wizard in England, who takes Grant on as the first apprentice wizard in fifty years. Together, they proceed to investigate the supernatural aspects of the case, which seem to centre on the legend of Mr Punch. Through the investigation, Grant comes to meet the goddess of the river Thames and all her daughters, as well as a motley cast of citizens of London and members of the Metropolitan Police.

The novel is carried by Grant’s likeable character and amusing commentary on London in general and the Metropolitan Police in particular. The use of myth and legend is tasteful and elegant, lending depth to the narrative but not requiring any previous knowledge of the city or its myths for the novel to be appreciated. But what I liked best about it is that it is unashamedly funny, and it does not resort to caricature to achieve this humour. Grant’s wry observations about London, police work and humanity in general invariably made me smile, and occasionally even laugh aloud. At the same time, the plot is brilliantly paced, so that it is actually very difficult to put the book down.

This is one of the books I enjoyed most this year. In addition to the self-contained plot of the murder mystery, there is also a longer story arc that extends through the series, with Leslie May, Peter Grant and Thomas Nightingale at its centre, and it is highly addictive. So while I thoroughly recommend this book, I would advise against buying all three at the same time, since that would probably result in a suspension of real-life concerns until you reach the end of the third one, which would probably turn out to be a bad thing in the long run.

Ribblestrop, Andy Mulligan

Ribblestrop tells the story of a new boarding school, which is set up by the idealistic Dr Giles Norcross-Webb, with the assistance of Captain Routon, the ex-military PE teacher, and Professor Clarissa Worthington, scientist-in-residence.

Action begins in the style of Harry Potter, with the main characters meeting on the train to school. Sam is eagerly anticipating his first term at Ribblestrop, and is happy to make his first friend on the train: Ruskin. Ruskin introduces Sam to the spirit of Ribblestrop: ‘Dr Norcross-Webb says we’re pioneers, like in the Wild West. We can do anything and everything, if we put our minds to it.’ He also introduces Sam to the real condition of the school: it has hardly any pupils and no roof, and there is a South American pupil called Sanchez who is in hiding from kidnappers and keeps a gun under his bed.

After an accident involving a flask of tea and Sam’s shorts and ‘tender regions’, the two boys run into Millie: the first Ribblestrop girl. Through a combination of Ruskin’s carelessness and Millie’s ill-advised advice, Sam ends up with no shorts, and all three children end up off the train and on the run. Millie’s resourcefulness and lack of aversion to mildly criminal activity is instrumental in getting them to Ribblestrop, and as an added bonus they run into Sanchez on the way, only causing one shoot-out, which is followed by a rather good meal with Champagne all round. Upon arrival at Ribblestrop, they discover that a group of orphan boys from overseas have been given scholarships, so now Ribblestrop has enough students to start its own football team, news which is greeted with much excitement.

The term begins with project to rebuild the school’s roof after the previous year’s fire, set by the now-expelled Miles. At the same time, Captain Routon assembles a football team for the first time in Ribblestrop’s short history, and invites the local High School for a match, which causes the headmaster to lead a prayer requesting guidance in ball-control. But while the children are busy learning about engineering and construction and practicing team-play in football, there is a nefarious plot unfolding in the underground tunnels under Ribblestrop Towers, and Lady Vyner is hatching a plot against the school.

This is unusually gritty for a children’s book. Characters get genuinely hurt, and the villains are genuinely dangerous. But it maintains one of the most significant elements of the genre of Children’s adventure story, in that the adults are only tangentially related to the resolution of the plot, if they have any connection to it at all. Dr Norcross-Webb sails through the term’s calamities on a sea of calm oblivion, armoured with the belief that if he trusts his pupils they will grow both academically and personally, and the school will be a great success. Oddly enough, his approach seems to work: although the children occasionally behave appallingly, and participate in activities that are not only against school rules, but also against the law, they share a deep love for Ribblestrop and for each other, which motivates them to work as a team and save their school and themselves.

This is a satire of the traditional boarding school novel with a warm heart and a great sense of humour. There is rather a lot of drinking and gun-toting for a school novel, but there is nevertheless a strong moral compass at its core, and the children are still credibly childlike. Ribblestrop may not be the sort of school you would want to send your child to, but you’ll definitely wish you had gone there yourself.

The Painted Man, Peter V. Brett

In this world, demons come out every night, rising through the ground from the core of the earth, and they will rip you to pieces and eat your bits unless you hide behind protective wards.

The setting is a cross between the mock-medieval universe familiar from many fantasy novels, and a study of backward, closed communities. Hardly anybody travels, because the demons eat you if you stay out at night, unless you have a ‘portable circle’, made of pieces of wood or ceramic with wards on them. But you have to know how to lay out this circle appropriately so that the demons can’t find any weakness in the imaginary protective net through which they could barge in and gleefully nom you. The people who travel are called Messengers, because they carry messages, as well as everything else that ever travels. They are usually accompanied by a ‘Jongleur’, a fool in motley, who plays music and tells stories, and constitutes the only manifestation of culture in the outlying hamlets. The central premise of the plot is that humankind is going to be eradicated by demons because the knowledge of old has been lost, and people have become uneducated and unable to communicate with each other. Also, they are crippled by fear of the demons and a lack of creativity when it comes to dealing with them.

Our hero is a man named Arlen. Similar to The Name of the Wind, the story begins with Arlen as a boy, describing how he is made exceptional by a traumatic experience: his mother is mauled by a demon, his father doesn’t try to save her, and then daddy goes off and marries a younger woman. Arlen takes this personally, so he runs away from home. Conveniently, he has a unique talent for painting wards, so he survives by scraping wards into the mud. (Wards are a bit like maths or language, in that they must be lined up in some sort of order for them to make a protective net, and different combinations have different degrees of effectiveness, therefore some people are better at ‘warding’ than others.) Unfortunately, he is a young hothead, so he baits the demons that are trying to get into his circle, and ends up getting scratched by a rather large one, and then chopping off its arm. The demon takes that extremely personally (as one would), and proceeds to pursue Arlen relentlessly for the rest of the novel. Arlen, meanwhile, gets himself attached to a Messenger and a Warder, and becomes an extremely accomplished, if mentally unstable, young individual.

In addition to Arlen, there are two more pov characters in The Painted Man: Leesha, who accidentally becomes the world’s best ‘herb gatherer’ (i.e. healer), and Rojer, improbably the world’s best Jongleur, who had part of his right hand eaten by a demon when he was little. These two are the sidekicks Arlen requires in order to save the world, but as this is a trilogy, don’t hold your breath. By the end of book one, the central characters have all more-or-less met, but that’s about it.

The plot of the novel is propelled by travel, which is perhaps not surprising, as the characters are unique precisely because they travel. Leesha goes to a city far from home to be apprenticed to a master-healer (and to avoid trouble at home), Rojer travels the countryside as a Jongleur spreading songs and stories and sleeping with other people’s wives (he is young but precocious) and Arlen crosses the desert for an Orientalist sojourn in distant Krassia, where the men fight the demons every night, and he learns about bravery and demon-fighting strategies. By the end of the novel, our heroes’ paths have converged, and there is a satisfying final battle which sets things up nicely for the sequel, The Desert Spear.

Overall, it is a fun, absorbing read, with strong characters and a good sense of poetic justice. There are a few graphic sex scenes, and the ocassional instance of gruesome violence and blood all over the place, but nothing too strong for my delicate constitution, so you'll probably be alright. I thouroughly recommend it.

The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss

This was recommended to me by a friend.

The Name of the Wind is a mix between High Fantasy in the tradition of Tolkien, and mock-Medieval fiction (ie Tolkien without the elves etc).

The main character is a likely lad named Kvothe, who deals admirably with the trials of his youth, which include extreme bereavement and homelessness, by becoming the Medieval equivalent of a Guitar God (only he plays the lute, because that is more realistic). As lead characters go he is actually extremely likeable, although he does have an annoying tendency to be too good at things. For example, in addition to his status as Lute-god, he is also unimaginably good at magic. It is occasionally difficult to believe he could have so many issues with life if he is really that much better at everything than his peers.

The Name of the Wind is the first book in a trilogy featuring the inimitable Kvothe. The novel covers Kvothe's childhood and entrance into the University, where he wants to learn, as I'm sure you can guess, 'the name of the wind'. The narrative is cleverly framed by passages describing Kvothe as a grown man of indeterminate age, who has become an inkeeper, and is telling his story to The Chronicler. Consequently, although the narrative of Kvothe's youth has a largely satisfactory ending, the framing tempts the reader to try and guess how he has ended up there, and why it's such a big deal that he has.

Overall, it is a well-plotted novel with wonderful imagery and interesting characters. It is, however, a bit long for the amount of plot it contains. But that just means you get to follow Kvothe around for a little longer...