Quentin Coldwater. Wataguy.

The Magicians

The Magicians was a good read. It took fantasy like Harry Potter, Narnia and others of the genre and tossed them together in a blender. What I liked most about the story was the existential nature of Magic.

            The story follows a unique protagonist. Quentin Coldwater, who is a depressed and social spacious teenager. This was an interesting take on the hero as the closest book I’ve read to The Magicians is the Harry Potter series. I guess I’m just used to the “glass half full,” type of heroes.  Quentin however is anything but that. He is more real, more relatable.  Even the spark of magic disappears and becomes monotony as training becomes laborious.

            He is never satisfied. That is why I love him so much as a character. This constant search for more power manifests itself as depression, as sullenness. You see this a lot in the real world as well. For example when I was a boy I remember my brother doing a kick-flip on a skateboard. I couldn’t and I was jealous. I’d try and try and try for hours every day and couldn’t do it. Eventually I got so upset I picked up the skateboard and slammed it onto the pavement, shattering the tip. The point is, I feel your pain, Quentin.

            Quentin grows as a character throughout the story. All characters in all stories do, but I think it’s pretty forefront in this novel.  Even in the first few chapters you start to see a transition of character. His unrequited love for Julia transforms into a ember of what it once was. His contacts change, his mind changes and his attitude changes.

            This story can be seen as the last ‘coming of age,’ story. It’s a great story about transitioning from the last shell of child life into adulthood, even if it’s in Fillory. 

Night Circus isn’t so black and white, in fact it’s grey.

Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern was a breath of fresh air. Its interesting and contemporary take on what good vs. evil really is was enjoyable to read. When you think fantasy novel. You think of a young hero embarking on or having an epic quest thrust upon them. They overcome some great evil and the world is tossed back into normality thanks to their interference. It’s not a great piece of literature, nor is it groundbreaking. It’s just a pretty interesting book.

When first starting this book I thought to myself, “A love story with magicians? How droll,” but as I slothed through the pages I found myself intrigued with many aspects of the novel.  Primarily, I found the vagueness of good vs evil interesting. I think that contemporary issues often force their way into works of art, either knowingly or subtly.

For the past 11 years, America has been on a war against terrorism. The solider who shoots a woman and child on the suspicion of being terrorists is just as much to blame as the man strapped to the bomb. But are either of them really to blame? The solider was following orders. The bomber, brainwashed. These two wars America has been in have had very cloudy depictions of what is good and what is evil.

In the story, two young magicians, bound by a magically force, serve as proxies for an ageless feud between two magicians. Even the two puppeteers aren’t all that evil.  I must admit that I haven’t finished the novel yet. I plan to go back to it after the course is over. There are books I am more excited about reading for my speculative literature class. 

-Jack

The Hobbit, Real Talk

The Hobbit is a quintessential fantasy novel by the great J.R.R Tolkien. Its episodic storytelling style makes it a great coffee table book for any fantasy enthusiast.  Tonight’s blog post will be a little different. It isn’t about The Hobbit; it’s about how this book in particular affected my life as a reader.

            Let’s dive in shall we? I have dyslexia. To this day I still can't spell my way out of a paper bag. I attribute all my spelling success to the red squiggles that help keep me in check. You would be horrified at the amount of red squiggles on the screen right now. I’ll fix those in a bit. Regardless, I love reading. (I read about 1 book every week and a half.) When I was a kid I vehemently despised reading.  This book flipped my perspective.

            As a child, I had a tutor who would come on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for 2 hours. I’d scatter like a spotted cockroach every time I heard the ominous ring of the doorbell. After 5 or so minutes of fruitless struggling, I’d be seated in the kitchen with her and we would crack open a book. One day she looked at me with a sly grin,

            “Jack, I have a new book for today’s lesson that I think you’ll enjoy,” she says.

I grunt.  Reading fun? How could reading ever be fun? I think. She reaches into her worn leather purse and pulls out a book. This book was stained with use.  Its pages were worn and flimsy. The book had been smashed, bent, mangled, spilled on and yet it still functioned.  Intrigued by its aesthetics, I took a peak at the book laid before me. The Hobbit, was written across the cover.

            As soon as we started reading it together I was enchanted. I have always been a gamer and this was the perfect book for a young geek. When we finished the novel I became obsessed with Lord of the Rings.  It had such a huge impact on me that during my senior year of high school I wrote a 40-page paper about the allegorical themes surrounding Tolkien’s universe.

            I couldn’t be more grateful, it opened the door to R.A Salvatore, Stephen King, Greg Keyes, and a whole spectrum of other great writers.  Cheers!!! :)

-Jack

Haruki Murakmi is an Interesting Writer.

I found A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami to be a very unique story. It’s probably my favorite story I’ve read so far for my speculative literature class.  This was the first novel that I’ve read by Haruki Murakami and it won’t be the last. To quickly summarize the premise; a man in his late twenties uses an image of a sheep with a star on its hind in an ad. This pulls him on an adventure that means life or death.  For my blog post tonight I’ll be discussing how interesting Haruki Murakami’s writing style is.

            Put simply, this book is one hell of a ride. I didn’t understand it until the last 50 pages. That’s when the whole story clicked in my mind. I still have no idea what kind of story it is. It transcends horror and spills into a whole range of other genres. Even though I struggled a bit, I pursued the story along with our protagonist and Ears. (Ears, is the protagonist’s rebound girlfriend which he acquired right after he got a divorce.)

            It’s my belief that Murakami spilled a lot of himself into the story. I don’t know anything about him and I’m sure a quick Google search would confirm my suspicions but here’s what I think I learned about Haruki Murakami:  He likes France a lot. He likes language and is a very metaphysical man.  Also, he enjoys talking about philosophical topics and he’s hilarious. Again, I’m completely ignorant to what he actually is like but after reading this novel and digesting his writing style I make these assumptions confidently.

            The interesting thing about this story is that it’s so hard to explain but makes perfect sense. I tried telling a friend of mine to read it. She asked me what the story is about and I tried in vain to help her understand. You really have to read it for the story to make sense. I attribute this to Murakami’s writing style. He leaves a lot up to interpretation and places the reader in the story with little or to explanation. If you haven’t read it already, I recommend reading A Wild Sheep Chase, it’s one wild ride.

- Jack

The life of Robert Neville.

Robert Neville’s life was, as he put it, “monotonous horror.”  The interesting part is that he had gotten used to the horror, it’s the repetition of life that was such a droll to him.  He lived in a sort of limbo of emotions, not having a high point or a low point in the day. His life was one of perversion and twisted fantasies that were forged from a life of solitude. The interesting thing is that acceptance of this life, and odd dependence of it led to his death.

            At the beginning of the story we are introduced to a naïve Robert Neville, he spent his day making wooden stakes to stab vampires with. At night he would drink himself into a stupor. Listening to Cortman, egging him on to come outside. This is when you first notice the morality of Robert, you notice how he thinks to himself, as if he were talking to himself. Then there are the women, the ones who flaunt their goods at Robert Neville when he is looking through the peephole. His instinctual needs had the most destructive affect on him in the early days. He overcame these issues when he almost died one night by arriving late after visiting his wife’s grave.

            After almost a year of being alone, he spots a dog in the daylight. This dog becomes a symbol for hope to Robert and more than anything, a companion. Weeks go by and Robert tries to coerce the dog with food.  This obsession with befriending the dog really hits the reader with just how lonely Robert is.  When the dog dies, Robert isn’t sad. As he buried the dog, he just felt void of emotion. At this point you can see the mental toll that solitude has on Robert. He is slowly becoming less and less human.

            When he found Ruth, another human, he could never trust her. He even contemplated killing her a few times to go back to his old life. When he beings to show her compassion and regains a bit of his human essence, he is bashed unconscious and Ruth turned out to be a vampire spy. She warns him to leave. He doesn’t. This is because of his dependence on his life of solitude, it drove him insane, like it would to any man.

            The part that stood out as his true departure from humanity is when the living vampires roll up in a car and started slaughtering the dead.  Robert, felt bad for the dead vampires. He understood their agony and was furious about the butchery. Just before he died, he realized something. That in this new world. He was the monster.

           

-Jack 

Zombie Apocalypse, Then and Now.

The other week I read Monster Island, a chilling narrative written in blog format, which you can read here, http://www.davidwellington.net/books/monster-island/. I loved every thrilling moment of it; except for a few parts that I felt were a tad untrue to zombie mythos. (I’m a zombie realist kind of guy.)  Tonight I watched Night of the Living Dead. As I sat there with a Stella and popcorn so buttery my fingers felt like Land O’Lakes I realized something, I kept repeating one word over and over in my mind…BRAIIINNSSS! (I jest, the word was different.)

            Currently, zombies are back in Vogue and it’s astounding how they have aged. From radioactive miscreants to plague bearing savages. 40 years is a short amount of time for things to have changed so much. The zombies in Night of the Living Dead had a mission; they were less instinctual and a bit more methodical about their approach to killing. They only wanted the flesh of the living. The zombies in Monster Island were more visceral, doing what an animal would do to survive. Even going as far as eating the bark off of trees to get what little supplements they provided.

            Another thing different about the two is the lapse in time in which the events occur. NotLD happens in the heat of the attacks while Monster Island happens about a month after the zombie apocalypse. I tend to favor Monster Island because I find most aspects of the story are more realistic and more conceptually interesting than Romero’s vision.

I’m sure it’s personal opinion, but I grew up in a time when zombies moved fast. Left 4 Dead, DayZ, 28 Days Later. These are the zombies I am familiar with. I even have a copy of How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse under the seat of my motorcycle!  This isn’t a bash on NotLD, just a stimulated young adult’s point of view. I enjoyed NotLD and found it to be a very sad film. It was also great to see one of the very first film adaptions of zombies. The mythos of the undead has changed drastically, from voodoo to a mysterious virus; I’m excited to see where it will be going next.

-Jack

Here’s a link to Night of the Living Dead. A movie worth watching if you haven’t seen it yet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRkrQZ0A1SU

Mary Shelly and the relationships she shares with her characters.

Mary Shelly’s life is as interesting as the life of the characters she has created. Authors are notorious for drawing from their lives to create a foundation for stories they create. From the allegories in Tolkien’s work, to the bitter truth of A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, all artists need this form of inner inspiration. 

            Many similarities can be found between Mary Shelly and her monster Frankenstein. For example Mary Shelly was educated by her father’s library, and she had no restrictions on what she could and couldn't read. A self-educated woman. This form of education is mirrored in her story when Frankenstein learns to speak by listening to the DeLacy family.  This is an allusion to her self-willingness to learn, and transcending the normal education a female received during the early nineteenth century.

            Another, move obvious allusion is the creation of monster Frankenstein himself. He was conceived in a time when Mary Shelly was ostracized from a lot of people she knew. This was largely due to her scandalous behavior.  She wrote the story 1816 when she spent her summer in Geneva, Switzerland. She was there with Lord Byron, Clair Clairmont, Percy Shelley and John Polidori. They would sit around and tell each other tales of gothic horror, which helped Mary Shelley conceive the idea of Frankenstein.

              In addition to the above contributing factors, there is another important one as well. The fact that, at the time of writing, Mary Shelley was having trouble with her children. Both were ill and out of all here children only one, Percy Florence Shelley, survived past childhood. Mary Shelley wrote in her journal "Dream that my little baby came to life again - that it had only been cold & that we rubbed it before the fire & it lived." Which could be primordial inspiration for Frankenstein.

            It’s interesting to learn the stories behind the stories and that is especially the case with Marry Shelley’s, Frankenstein. It’s hard to believe that an ostracized 19 year old wrote such a masterpiece and arguably the first science fiction story.