The Alchemyst, or how to kill an innocent plot

This review concerns the first hundred or so pages of The Alchemyst, on account of the book being so boring it might kill me if I try to finish it.

The Alchemyst, by Michael Scott, is a fantasy novel in which Nicholas Flamel really did create the Philosopher's Stone and make himself and his wife Perenelle immortal, while John Dee is his evil nemesis. There is also a mystical Elder race, lots of demonic crows, and people have spangly auras, the color of which determines their value. So far so good. For reasons that left me completely mystified, the action takes place in and around San Fransisco, and involves fifteen-year-old fraternal twins Sophie and the other one. That's right, Josh. They have no real distinguishing characteristics, from each other or anyone else. They do have red belts in some martial art or other, so presumably the narrative will at some point call for them to beat someone up, but at the point where I stopped reading they did nothing more than complain about how their cell phones didn't work in magic land.

It is possible that the reason I took a dislike to this book is that the opening action sequence involves the gratuitous trashing of an antiquarian book shop - crimes against literature and pretty things shall not be tolerated. Or maybe it really is just bad. Here are some things that are bad about it:

1. 'Show don't tell': it is obvious by page two that Scott has not been shown or told this basic rule. Although I guess he's not so much guilty of describing characters' reactions as he is of picking uninteresting reactions to describe. For example, Josh and Sophie spend the first hundred pages expressing their surprise that magic is real in different sentence structures. Not only is this repetitive, it is actively disruptive to the genre. I'm not surprised there's magic, it's a bloody fantasy book. By having the characters express unending bafflement without signs of PTSD, the author just makes them look stupid. So the rule should be 'show. And show something interesting, profound or funny.' Not that I'm demanding or anything.

2. The dialogue: omglol. And not in a good way.

3. Balance between action and backstory: basically, there isn't any. They'll be in the middle of a high octane chase where demon crows are about to devour the dopey teenage protagonists' succulent livers when suddenly, and for no discernible reason, the narrative veers away from the action and gives a detailed description of a moment in the eternal Alchemyst's childhood when he discovered his favorite color, and had an epiphany about the sound snails make when you roll on them naked. Narrative tension = down the toilet. It reminds me of myself trying to tell a story after about three glasses of wine, at which point I can no longer distinguish between what is relevant and what is not. And I can only pronounce vowels.

4. The full name thing - every few pages he introduces characters using their full names as if a) that's relevant and b) we might have forgotten. Some sound particularly ridiculous like Perenelle Flamel.

5. The Accent thing - in times of extreme stress, immortal characters display European origins in speech. This suggests that anyone who has traces of a faded French or British accent is weird and probably 500 years old and trying to hide it. Anyone heard of migration?

6. The narrative has no flavor. The good characters are all uniformly nice, the bad characters are all uniformly creepy, so there is no chance of complexity of character or anything as daring as that.

Conclusion: this is a young adult book that really is for young adults. Bizarre. 

Film Adaptations: The Great Gatsby and The Wolf of Wall Street

This post is a bit of a cheat, because it is about the film adaptations of books rather than the books themselves. However, while the film of The Great Gatsby inspired me to read the original there is no way on earth I'm touching The Wolf of Wall Street, as I feel I wasted quite enough of my life watching the film. (Three hours! Are you f'n kidding me?) So this post is about the films, though it's more about the narrative arc than its visual representation.

Both feature Leonardo DiCaprio playing a disgustingly rich man with the gift of the gab who became wealthy by shady means. The former is a mysterious millionaire who worships women like objects on a pedestal, throws enormous parties he does not attend, and drinks gin like it is going out of fashion. He is based on a fictional character. The latter is a slimy stockbroker with a defective moral compass who treats women like objects for his consumption, defrauds everyone he encounters of their money and hoovers drugs like they’re going out of fashion. He is based on a real person. Neither film, in its depiction of excess, gave me any desire to ever make money, which I suppose is the point. Both create the impression that people, as a species, are awful, and if they make too much money they just acquire the means to become more prolifically awful.

The Great Gatsby is a cross between coming-of-age narrative, (for the narrator) and star-crossed-romance (for the subject, Jay Gatsby). If you’ve read the book, you’ll know the plot anyway, but here’s a summary: a Good Young Man (Nick Carraway) moves into a small cottage next door to the decadent mansion of Jay (The Great) Gatsby, who throws debauched parties featuring cocktails, partial nudity and feathers on a nightly basis. Nick receives an invitation to one such party, where he discovers that most of the guests have never seen Gatsby. It transpires, after much mincing about in evening dress and necking gin, that Gatsby only wants to be reunited with Nick’s cousin Daisy, for whom Gatsby has had a thing since adolescence. It is to gain her favour that he has amassed his ill-gotten fortune, and the endless decadent parties are held in the hope that she will one day wander in to see what the fuss is all about and drink some gin. Daisy is, unfortunately, married to a man with a moustache, a drinking problem and a bad temper. With Nick’s fortuitous intervention, Gatsby and Daisy meet, they have sex, and pledge their eternal love. Daisy’s husband gets jealous despite being constantly unfaithful himself, and finally Daisy’s impossibly bad driving gets Gatsby murdered when she runs over her moustachioed husband’s lover outside a petrol station. Cousin Daisy and her moustachioed husband wiz off into the sunset as if nothing has happened, and nobody wants to come to Gatsby’s funeral because there isn’t any free booze. Nick concludes that they are all rotten bad sports.

The Wolf of Wall Street is a baffling object. One reaches the end of the film feeling that, firstly, it should have come a great deal sooner, and secondly, it is unclear what one is meant to be feeling or thinking about the mind-numbing three hours of footage of Leo-as-Wolf (aka Jordan Belfort) snorting cocaine off various women’s intimate areas, often with no regard for basic hygiene. Some of the drug fueled escapades can be considered funny, but they are by no means harmless, which tinges any laughter or enjoyment with an edge of horror and self-loathing for laughing at something so awful. Belfort hurts everyone around him, including himself in the long run - only he is too fixated on the importance of being rich to realise he is a miserable bastard with no friends. I mean, I like a good champagne as much as the next person, but I’d rather have a happy marriage than neck bottles of it at work while pretending to myself that I’m doing things that are great and clever. Drunk people are never clever. All you need to do to verify this statement is stay sober at one party where everyone else is drunk. Just sayin’. Anyway, the moral of the story seems to be that Brokers are Bad. But also that if you sell bullshit with sufficient fervour you will come out on top every time.

Both films left me with a distinct aversion to the idea of having money. In both films, the main character starts out with a problem and the conviction that its solution is to become extremely rich; in Gatsby’s case, his problem is that he is in love with the idea of a woman who in reality is a dishonest greedy cow who is emotionally as deep as a puddle; in Wolfie’s case, his problem is that he is a complete psychopath. Both narratives demonstrate that the quest to become wealthy solves no problems, and instead erodes the seeker’s integrity, leaving him in the end with nothing but his salesman’s patter. In Gatsby, this represents the end of an imagined golden age in which there was human integrity and the possibility of Great Romance - Gatsby himself is the last gentleman. Similarly, in The Wolf, the narrative arc could be read as a chilling warning against the moral decrepitude of the values of the present day - despite all his devious machinations and morally bankrupt strategies, and despite getting caught, he continues to make money after his release from prison, by, irony of all ironies, becoming a motivational speaker. The main difference is that in the case of The Wolf, there is no imagined golden age - the degeneracy of the human spirit is timeless, making the whole thing more depressingly hopeless.

From the two films, one gets the impression that DiCaprio wants to warn us all against the pursuit of wealth, by showing that all rich people are morally bankrupt, not to mention utterly miserable. This is odd, because one imagines he is rather rich himself, mainly because all the teenage girls of the 1990s fell in love with his floppy blonde hair, and he subsequently made a soppy movie set on the sinking Titanic, in which he played someone poor who fell in love with someone rich. Maybe these films are meant to warn against potential pitfalls of extreme wealth, rather than represent the inevitable outcome of making money. Or maybe DiCaprio is a Miltonian devil-character, degenerate but aware of his own degeneracy, and dashingly romantic as a result. Either way, these films made me worry a whole lot less about the fact that my decision to study literature means I will never make any money. The resulting debauchery just looks too exhausting.

Large Ex-Military Mavericks - Reacher, McEvoy or Strike?

There is a sub-genre of crime fiction where the hero is a rugged, manly person recently discharged from the military, who despite his professed desire to live a simple, blameless life surrounded by kittens, rainbows and ponies, gets drawn inescapably into investigating some bloody civilian crime, which is not a patch on the crimes he investigated when he was in the military, but somehow still takes him 500 pages to solve. Three notable specimens of this type are Jack Reacher, Daniel McEvoy and Cormoran Strike. All three are over 6ft tall, stacked and brooding. But each has his own charm. Here is a summary of each one's first appearance, for the sake of comparison:

Jack Reacher first appears in Lee Child's Killing Floor. Having recently left the Military Police, after a lifetime of army bases man and boy, he decides to become a Hobo, and listens to lots of country music travelling around the USA on public transport and paying for things in cash. He gets off a bus one morning in the middle of nowhere, and walks into a small and inconsequential town in Georgia that happens to be in the throes of a tidal wave of inexplicable crime. In fact, he is immediately arrested for a shooting that happened the previous evening, because he is a stranger, and people in small towns think strangers are bad. This is not a bad development for Reacher, though, because it enables him to meet Finlay, the local detective who will be his slightly dimmer old sidekick, and Roscoe, sexy woman cop who looks good in shirts, jeans and uniforms as well as out of them. She also occasionally says something clever, but is mostly there as an excuse for sex scenes. The plot involves some satisfying twists, but the revelations are so heavily signposted you may well work out what is going to happen a good fifty pages before it actually does. This is annoying. Reacher himself is an interesting character. He is a distillation of all things masculine; tall, strong, martial arts expertise bordering on the supernatural and a love of large guns. Interestingly, he is not that great at driving, but this seems to be a case of ticking the 'character must have at least one weakness' box. He knows everything there is to know about combat and anger and death, and he is never surprised. He has feelings, but they are always secondary to his instincts, his effortless ability to distinguish right from wrong and willingness to act on that distinction by braining people with a blackjack and creating rivers of the blood of his enemies. The book itself is not a particularly traumatic read - horrible things are done by good and bad guys alike, but the characters are cardboard cut-outs that can only elicit so much sympathy in their passing. Overall, it is not a bad read, if you have a large vat of willing suspension of disbelief lying around. And as an unintentional bonus, the fact that it was written in 1997 makes it amusingly dated - Reacher delights in skipping around leaving no trace of his identity which is somewhat harder to do in the age of facebook and ubiquitous CCTV. But I digress.

Daniel McEvoy appears in Eoin Colfer's 2011 Plugged. The title refers to his recently acquired hair implants, carried out by his friend, dodgy doctor Zeb. McEvoy has recently left the Irish army, where he worked on various UN peacekeeping missions, and acquired some serious mental scars which he does not discuss in detail. The main advantage McE has over Reacher is that he has a sense of humour, which runs through his first-person narrative like a seam of gold, making it very easy to ignore whether or not things are believable. The plot is as tightly constructed and gloriously twisted as Killing Floor's, but the characters are far more believable, despite their stereotypic qualities. In fact, they are constantly pushing against the boundaries of their own stereotypes, and constructing images and identities for themselves which are fictional but they are willing to defend quite viciously. The driving force of the novel is itself wonderfully quirky: McEvoy discovers that Zeb has gone missing, and the same day his occasional girlfriend Connie is found murdered outside the nightclub where they work. While trying to find out what happened to Connie, McEvoy has the constant nagging voice of Zeb in his head, complaining about how McEvoy is not looking for him. McEvoy has picked up some skills in the army, both physical and strategic, but he is reluctant to use them, and though he engages in violence he does not exactly revel in it. In fact, more often than not the sage advice he follows was given to him by his boozy psychoanalyst, to whom he was assigned after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. That combined with his concern about the hair plugs gives the impression that McEvoy is trying to better himself, that he would like to have friends and fit into society rather than being a tough loner, and that makes him sympathetic. At the same time, he is not shy of a bit of sarcasm, and never soppy.

Cormoran Strike is a different breed to the previous two creatures. First appearing in Robert Galbraith's (aka. J.K. Rowling's) The Cuckoo's Calling, he is an x-soldier, discharged because he lost part of his leg in an explosion in Afghanistan. This is a recurring theme in the plot, as he has to do all the daring things a private investigator has to do with the added challenge of his prosthesis, which often causes him trouble. Like McEvoy, Strike is not one to romanticise the military. But although the book has many humorous moments, Cormoran is a brooding Heathcliff character who takes himself exceptionally seriously. He is the son of a rockstar and deceased groupie, which both helps and hinders his investigative career. It is unclear what made him decide to become a detective, but he is reminiscent of the BBC's rendering of Dr Watson in Sherlock. And what is most interesting about The Cuckoo's Calling is really the way the character of the deceased victim, Lula Landry, emerges and is modified by each revelation in Strike's investigation of her death. Strike is of less central importance than McEvoy or Reacher, because this is a third-person narrative, and he shares point-of-view character status with his assistant, Robin. Nevertheless, an engaging hero is useful for a successful detective novel, and Strike is engaging. The mystery of his past, which he is not too keen on discussing, unfolds beside the murder investigation, and the fact that his detective agency is almost bankrupt and he has personally hit rock bottom gives him all the more motivation to pursue this case. The prose may get a little Rowling-esque at times, but it is still certainly better written than Killing Floor, and somewhat more substantial than Plugged, though it lacks the easy humour of the latter.

All in all, Daniel McEvoy is a bit too unbelievably calm, not to mention glib in times of stress, Cormoran Strike is a big brooding baby, but Jack Reacher tops the lot by being a murderous psychopath who coats his killing sprees with a veneer of justice.

Jack Glass, by Adam Roberts: A genre experiment in three parts

This is a whodunit. Only you know exactly whodunit at the outset; all that is left to find out is how they dun it and why. And what they dun. We are told at the outset that there will be three mysteries: a prison break, a locked-room mystery and a conventional whodunit. In each case, the perpetrator is Jack Glass, the solar system's greatest criminal mastermind, a vicious murderer but surprisingly nice guy.

The action is set in a world a thousand years in the future, when the human population has swelled to fill the solar system with Perspex bubbles, where people live in zero gravity and eat 'gunk', some sort of fungus which presumably doesn't taste very nice. The descriptions of the effects of zero gravity on the human body and the prevalence of skin cancers create a sense of an alien but believable environment. In the novel, only the super-rich can afford the experience of gravity, because they are the only ones who have access to the Earth.

This book is a genre experiment in two ways: on the one hand, the juxtaposition of different types of murder mystery makes the overall text a reflection on the genre. On the other hand, the author's intent, which is stated in the prefatory material, is to fuse elements of golden age detective fiction with golden age science fiction. To some extent, he is successful: there are moments when intricacies of the mystery plot hinge on the realities of the science fiction universe. Problems which have a simple solution when presented directly become more complicated when filtered through the gaze of characters who are unfamiliar with the tendency of dust to settle on surfaces, because they perceive gravity as something which you do on holiday, but you wouldn't want to live with.

However, sometimes the focus on genre games seems like an attempt to distract the reader from the fact that the stories themselves are kind of boring. Of the three mysteries, the first is by far the most striking, the weirdest, and the most morbidly satisfying in its solution. In it, Jack Glass must escape from an asteroid prison thousands of miles from anywhere else, with no spaceship, and no tools except a 'window' the size of a coin and some shards of glass. The following two are to some extent let down because the first is too hard an act to follow. The characters are also not entirely lifelike. Part II features the genetically manufactured MO-sisters Diana and Eva, each with their particular restrictive set of skills: Eva studies supernovae, and Diana solves virtual mysteries. The slight uncanniness of the sisters combined with Diana's tendency to exclaim 'no wavy-way!' makes it believable that they are from the future, and moves the plotline along nicely. However, it is not as easy to relate to them as to the Jack Glass of Part I. In Part III, Diana falls on hard times and must flee into the rebellious underworld of 'the sump', the thousands of bubbles full of poor people floating around the sun. Her character sort of develops, but if anything the loss of her slightly fluffy personality combined with her tendency to solve problems by sleeping leaves a somewhat depressed young woman who is not entirely believable.

On the other hand, the representation of life in the solar system of the future is very believable, if somewhat chilling. Roberts imagines a future where space and food have become abundant, but the gap between the rich and the poor has become even more pronounced. His construction of the power relations within this universe is engaging, interesting, and highly politicised.

Overall, this is an engaging and interesting novel, which does innovative things with the genres employed. However, the author's strength definitely lies in the exploration of power structures rather than the development of individual characters. A thought-provoking read.

The Rook, Daniel O'Malley

This is a novel about a secret organization that protects the world from supernatural threats and for some reason names its agents after chess pieces (the organization as a whole is called ‘The Chequy’). The Rook in question is Myfanwy Thomas, or so she is told by a letter she wrote herself before losing her memory.  She wakes up in a park with a circle of unconscious people around her and two black eyes, and no memory of how she arrived there, or, indeed, of having existed before that moment.  There is a letter in her pocket from her previous self, explaining that there are lots of people trying to kill her, and telling her what to do. There is an interesting contrast between Myfanwy the protagonist and Myfanwy the letter writer, hereafter referred to as Amnesiac Myfanwy and Absent Myfanwy respectively; it seems that between losing her memory and waking up she has acquired a whole lot of attitude and a desire to kick people.

The memory loss trope is dealt with reasonably well – the moments of uncanny dislocation between Amnesiac Myfanwy’s expectations and the life she has found herself living are mostly believable, and it allows the author to present the Chequy and supernatural elements of the story through the eyes of the uninitiated. However, there is no plausible explanation as to how or why Amnesiac Myfanwy acquires this different character. There seems to be a naïve faith in the existence of ‘normal’ people, so that Amnesiac Myfanwy is obviously horrified by the weirdness of the stuff she encounters as a Rook, but is not surprised by the fact that she is a woman, or speaks English, or is human and sentient.

Speaking of women, O’Malley is not very good at women. The presentation of the main character seems to be saying ‘oh, and by the way, SHE IS A WOMAN!’ at every available opportunity. One notable occasion is when she tries to make a male colleague uncomfortable by talking about going to the gynaecologist, only to remember that said male colleague has three other bodies, of which one is female (more about that later). But what I found more irritating is that Amnesiac Myffanwy arises from nothingness with the ability to make aesthetic judgements about Absent Myfanwy’s wardrobe choices and grooming regimen; to quote her reaction upon looking at herself in a mirror for the first time: 

I think I could do better, she thought. I won’t be able to hit the level of Hot, but I think I might be able to manage Cute. If I have a big enough budget. Or at least some makeup to work with. 

So somehow between waking up in a park with no idea who she is and getting herself to a hotel room, Amnesiac Myfanwy has managed to absorb the cultural expectations of what constitutes an attractive woman and to objectify her own body, using the descriptors ‘Hot’ and ‘Cute’ as classifications of attractiveness. Aside from the fact that it is irritating that a woman is expected to judge herself based on unattainable and artificial standards of beauty, the fact that she is thinking about this at the time simply does not ring true. She has no memory of who she is and no idea who is trying to kill her or why (obviously loads of people are trying to kill her). The last thing one would expect to worry about in those circumstances is how much one could resemble Barbie if one tried. However, having said all that, perhaps the one redeeming feature of O’Malley’s treatment of gender is that there is no ‘love interest’. Myffanwy is entirely motivated by her own opinions and desires, when she finds out what those are.

Another thing O’Malley isn't great at is Britishness. The story is set in London, with the main character described as an Anglicised person of Welsh descent, but he often slips up and uses Americanisms where they don’t fit – for example, he refers to a character ‘going back to school’ when she is going to university. He also uses the same words over and over again – for example, he talks about ‘weeping’ an awful lot (presumably because this is something WOMEN do…), and Myffanwy often says ‘fuck’, or variants thereof. Some synonyms may have been nice. Or a broader variety of swearwords… As it is, the use of language doesn’t really help to position the narrative in Britain.

Aside from his troubles with femininity and Britishness, O’ Malley does quite well. The plot moves at a suitably breathless pace, the bad guys are really bad, the good guys are really weird, and by the end you have a definite idea of who is which. The supernatural elements are generally well-presented and more-or-less believable – I was particularly fond of the house full of purple mould that ate people. But I think the greatest achievement is Gestalt, Myffanwy’s fellow-Rook, who has four bodies (three male and one female) but one consciousness and identity. The Gestalt (as Myffanwy refers to him/her) is both uncanny and intriguing, and perhaps more importantly, imaginable. The presence of the four bodies has interesting implications for plot development as well, so it’s not just a supernatural gimmick.

Overall, it was a fun and engaging read, and I’ll definitely read whatever he writes next, even if his attempts to see the world from a woman’s point-of-view have somewhat bizarre results on occasion.

The Mortal Instruments, Cassandra Clare

I can't quite decide if this series of books is disgustingly pious or pure heresy. Either way, I would describe it as the guiltiest of guilty pleasures. I've decided to write about it as a series, as the first book has an annoying ending that encouraged me to read the next four - I haven't read the fifth one yet, because someone has taken it out the library and I refuse to actually pay for it... The sixth one comes out in 2014.

Clare is very good at creating attractive characters, and similarly good at evoking the sense of unsophisticated teenage desire. (All the evidence you need is in the book covers - by the end of the series they look like Mills&Boon novels). The plot of each novel centres on a coming-of-age narrative, with characters seeking to understand themselves as well as the world that they live in, in the face of situations that appear incomprehensible - because they have demons in them. And blood all over the place. And really, really mean people.

The necessity of killing demons and generally saving the world from eternal darkness and ruin is a sort of backdrop to a sappy teenage love drama. It is a typical young persons' story in that the teenage characters are constantly facing disastrous perils while the adults who are allegedly responsible for them are otherwise engaged. The excuses for the absence of the adult characters vary in quality, and are often less than entirely credible, but the pace of the action allows the reader to ignore that. If anything, I found that the maturity and behaviour of the characters jarred with their alleged age - these are twenty-five-year-olds masquerading as high school students. It reminds me of the latest Spiderman film, where the actors look way too old for their parts. Then again, one could argue that these are the characters we wished we could be like at seventeen: mature, muscular and impeccably witty, at least in the eyes of our peers.

The story focuses on Clary, an artistically-inclined sixteen-year-old New Yorker. As female leads go, she is actually not too irritating. She is not entirely incompetent, and appears to have a sense of humour. Anyway, in book one she discovers that she can see people who her best friend, the thoroughly friend-zoned Simon, cannot. This leads to the revelation that there is something supernaturally special about her, and that her mother has been lying to her for years, something that most teenagers at least suspect. But Clary is a good girl, so it all comes as quite a shock.

At the same time, she falls in love with Jace, the smooth loner who can make himself disappear and stab things in the neck with alarming speed, both good qualities to look for in a potential mate. He is also blonde and a year older than her, which guarantees his attractiveness. The Guardian summarises him well, in a review of the upcoming movie trailer (obviously there is an upcoming movie): 'Onscreen his character is all brood and depth, but in actuality he'd probably be the sort of person likely to borrow money from you, never pay it back and then get off with one of your friends at a party.' I found him enormously entertaining, because, after all, it was not me that he was borrowing money for, and unlikely to be my friends he would make out with, seeing as we are all too old. Disappointingly, in the later novels it becomes necessary that Jace acquire some depth, including a terribly sad back-story which manifests itself in strange habits, such as obsessive-compulsive tidiness.

But the main thing that makes the series hilarious and exasperating in equal measures is the ludicrous nature of the plot twists. Most of the revelations in the first three books are focused on the teenage main cast's parents. This in itself is really interesting: it is unusual for children's books to draw attention to parents as people with past histories and regrets, and throughout the Mortal Instruments series we watch Clary and Jace come to terms with decisions (and mistakes) their parents made before either of them were born. But the twists themselves are often just daft. For instance, a twist is required at the end of book one to prevent Clary and Jace from 'being together', because otherwise there would be no point in reading the remaining five books in the series. Do their parents disapprove? Does one of them go to boarding school in Lithuania? Does the world actually end? No. They discover that they are brother and sister. Freud must be hyperventilating in his grave.

So, one tries to take the incestuous desire in one's stride, assuming that a new love interest will be introduced in the next book, and having challenged the taboo of incest the author will move on. Because surely finding out that the object of your desire is your sibling would be a deal breaker, right? Wrong. The third book's blurb says:

'Amid the chaos of war, the Shadowhunters must decide to fight with the vampires, werewolves and other Downworlders - or against them. Meanwhile, Jace and Clary have their own decision to make: should they pursue the love they know is forbidden?'

Obviously one always suspects that there will be a larger, more dramatic twist later that will show that they are not brother and sister after all, but the use of incest as a plot device is bizarre, not to mention naive. The argument seems to be that love should be accepted and understood no matter what the circumstances, which is an admirable sentiment, but I still think incest is gross. Not that they actually do anything, they just think forbidden thoughts.

My final issue with this series is the treatment of death, grief and mortality. While it is generally a good thing that these issues are engaged with, the approach is even more naive than the series' treatment of incestuous desire. Grieving characters don't ring true, because their grief is not sufficiently pervasive. It does not dominate the narrative the way it dominates in real life. The horror of death and shock of loss function purely as a backdrop to an insincere teenage melodrama, and are quickly pushed aside in favour of more pressing issues, like what to wear, or who likes whom and whether they could be related. While it is totally unrealistic, you can't accuse it of being manipulative. It just seems like the deaths of the characters killed off are not really vital for the progress of the story, and therefore a bit gratuitous, like the quantities of blood that seem to regularly spatter every exposed surface.

 

Overall, you could not accuse these books of having literary pretensions. They were great fun to read, and I was even laughing at the lame jokes by the end. I'm just glad I didn't read them as a teenager; I don't think they would have helped me much with understanding the world at large.

 

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.