Book Reviews for February

I only read four books in February, but wow, they were all actually really good! That doesn't happen often :)

This makes choosing a Book of the Month very difficult. But I still managed to do it: and here we go!

The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner
I had this book recommended to me by a friend (see, I do listen to people's suggestions!) and wasn't really sure what to expect. That's a good thing in hindsight, because one of the story's greatest strengths is how it sort of . . . sneaks up on you. The style is deceptively simple, as are the characters, the ostensible objective of the story, everything . . . and then Turner deftly twists, turns, and flips the story until it turns into something highly entertaining and wonderful. I also really liked the pseudo-Grecian setting, which reminded me very strongly of 'Til We Have Faces', by CS Lewis--another good book which I recommend if you haven't read it.

The Golden Horn, by Judith Kerr
The main cast of the first book (See last month's Book of the Month) are transported to Byzantium just in time for the infamous sacking of the city. More character development happens, a few secondary characters are added, more peril is survived, but everything that I loved about the first book--the lyrical prose, the expert handling of the characters, the engrossing blend of high fantasy and historical realism, the philosophical exploration and the integrity of the theology--is still here. There's some dark moments of more graphic brutality related to the pillaging of the city, but they are not offensively written and again serve a point.

The Hounds of God, by Judith Kerr
A very nearly fully satisfying ending to the series. The climatic 'magical' battle was probably the most satisfying I have ever read, and the characters remained as compelling as they were in the first novel, enriched and deepened by the trilogy's arc instead of getting tired and complacent as so often happens in trilogies. A key couple that I had been wanting to get married never did, but did baptize their children, giving something of a mixed message. Also, a romantic 'affair' between two very secondary characters, though brief, was a blot against the main story and served no real purpose to the plot, the only instance in this entire series where Kerr makes a mistake in my opinion. Everything else, however, was excellent. And I really liked how the theological issues were ultimately resolved--with a cameo from St. Francis of Assisi, even! I'd put 'The Hound and the Falcon' on my Top 10 fantasy series' list, definitely.

The Golden Age, by John C Wright
After deliberating I have chosen Wright's 'The Golden Age' as my Book of the Month, and now I'm not quite sure how to describe it. In simplest terms it is the story of a man living in a future society in which people are now immortal and completely immersed in artificial reality. He discovers that he is missing large swaths of memory, and begins to unravel the artificiality of his life, his memories, and his own personality to rediscover an obsessive dream he had been forced to forget and a hidden danger that no one else can see. Beyond that utterly bare-bones description, however, I'm not sure how to elaborate. This is a novel so inventive, so teeming with philosophy, wit, creativity, and pure science-fiction magic, there's basically at least one new concept or invented tech or complex idea thrown at you from every single page. Wright clearly knows and loves his classics--a complex computer program designed to do detective work uses an avatar that looks like Sherlock Holmes, for example, and many characters have significant names from mythology like Orpheus and Phaethon--both aspects of the tale that delighted my own classic literature obsessed heart. Reality and artificial reality is blended so completely it's often difficult to tell the two apart, but that lends a greater power to the protagonist's quest, then--as he peels back the layers and almost unwillingly becomes closer and closer to unadulterated reality it's fascinating. And the protagonist and secondary characters have enough personality and depth to both hold my interest and ground the reader in this supremely inventive, almost insanely intellectual world Wright has concocted. It's like Asimov's 'Foundation' with personality, or good old high fantasy except futuristic and science-fictionized . . . Oh, I don't even know how to describe it. Just read it.