The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Embarking on another childhood nostalgia quest. These are a bit more obscure than previous subjects, but I read them to tatters once upon a time. Literally tatters – I recall wearing out multiple cassette tapes.

Anyway, this is young fantasy inspired from Welsh legend (or appropriated, it depends on how you look at it). Taran, Assistant Pigkeeper, desperately wants to go on adventures, and then he gets some and discovers they are more difficult than assumed. Also, rescuing oracular pigs is complicated, yoe. I attempted not to think about this too hard, because if I did I would start asking awkward questions like "wait, is Taran thirteen or twenty?" (entirely impossible to say), or "wait, is this fantasy land roughly the size of a dozen football fields?" (entirely possible).

But the thing is, I had to think about this too hard because that's basically what I do, and also because the surface story here is incredibly young and it wouldn't otherwise hold my attention. So I thought about how this book plays with callowness. There's this great moment where Taran nearly drowns because he knows he can't swim, but he believes as soon as he gets in the water he'll figure it out. That's Taran all over. The quest of this book is about learning not to drown. It's not deep, but it is well meant, and it is flirting with more substantial questions of worth and the making of the self that I think? Based on dimly recalled spoilers, will be developed as we go.

Oh, and this is also patently Lord of the Rings transformative work for kids, if that interests anybody.




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Matter by Iain M. Banks

Matter by Iain M. Banks

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Far future scifi in his Culture universe. One of those books that cross-sections a story down civilizations, from the nearly sublimed galactic empire to the tiny steam-powered local monarchy. I keep running across those types of books (Vinge, some others I'm not thinking of) and going 'meh.' This one also got a 'feh' for the 500 pages of ponderous, bloated setup, followed by a totally weaksauce punch. I can see that Banks had something here – the background texture of this universe with the smugly utopian Culture kept snagging my awareness with little sparks of interesting detail. But this book qua book was a bust.

Case in point: I could write another three paragraphs about how part of the Culture's utopia involves the elimination of disability, and how I snorted and twitched at that, because naturally improving a society involves removing people like me. But then Banks complicated it a little, and raised a dry eyebrow over it, and made me go "huh" in surprise, because hard scifi authors basically never stop to think through that particular proposition. All of this occurring in a half-page background digression having nothing to do with the actual story. And the actual story is already fading from my mind. So yeah.




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