More Books than Time

Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman Retell Ancient Myths and Stories

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Neil Gaimon wrote Norse Mythology using the ancient stories of the Aesir and Vanir gods, giants, huge wolves, world trees.  His characters include our familar Thor, Odin, Frey and Loki, and the less-familiar Kvasir and Aenir and still more.  Gaiman does an excellent job merging his own style into the narrative flow of the legends and is faithful to the overall feeling that these stories are oral tales.

If you’ve read any of the old myths you know that Thor and Odin and the rest are nothing like the brave and clever heroes in the movies.  Instead they are rather stupid, gullible and greedy, easy pickings for someone like Loki or the dwarf craftsmen.  Gaiman shows us these folk as they were in the legends.

The book includes 15 stories spanning from the creation of the world to Ragnarok and the world that comes after.  It includes some of my favorites featuring Loki and his genius for manipulating and deceiving the other gods.

Relationship Between Loki and Thor

All the movies and books stress the love/distrust between Thor and Loki.  Loki can’t help scheme; it is what he does and Thor can’t help getting mixed up in Loki’s maneuvers.  Gaiman keeps their relationship central to the stories.

My favorite was Freya’s Unusual Wedding.  One of the best passages is “There were things Thor did when something went wrong.  The first thing…was ask himself if what had happened was Loki’s fault.  … So he did the next thing he did when something went wrong, and he went to ask Loki for advice.  Loki was crafty.  Loki would tell him what to do.”

Loki discovers the ogre Thrym stole Thor’s hammer and wants Freya to marry him in exchange.   After several lively discussions Thor dresses up like Freya and goes with Loki to marry Thrym.  Of course Loki and Thor trick Thrym and manage to kill the ogres and escape with virtue intact and hammer in hand.

Finally Loki goes too far.  He causes Hod to kill his brother Balder; he refuses to go along with Hermod when she requests Balder back from Hel; he murders Fimafeng at one feast and gets drunk and insults every god at the next.  Thor captures him in the form of a salmon and takes him back to be punished.  The other gods imprison him with a giant serpent to drip venom onto his face unless faithful Sigyn catches the venom as it drips.  Gaiman added detail and color to this tale, including Loki congratulating himself on hiding so well.

Overall

Norse Mythology is easy to read because the individual tales are all short, making it easy to pick up for a few minutes before dinner or read before bed.  The stories themselves are true to the original which makes them a little hard to read.  We can see the train wreck coming and watch the gods’ cupidity destroy their world.

4 Stars

 

A Thousand Nights by E. K. Johnson, Subtle Magic, Quiet Fantasy

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A Thousand Nights.  Doesn’t that sound like Scheherazade with the king who lets his wife live another night as long as she spins a tale he wants to hear?  E. K. Johnson’s A Thousand Nights is closer in spirit to Naomi Novik’s Uprooted than to the original Arabian Nights.

As in Uprooted girls are seized and taken from their homes, but unlike Novik’s tale the women are to marry the king and die after one night.  Our heroine – who is never named – knows that the king’s servants will choose her beautiful sister and instead puts herself forward to go in her place.  The wife doesn’t know what will happen or why the king takes his wives.  The other similarities lie in the grudging romance, the constant threat in the background of an otherwise placid country, fear, and sheer bloody mindedness that the heroine uses to keep her life and her wits.

I particularly liked the subtle magic and the nuances the wife must thread.  For example, she decides to stay with the king because she can survive but realizes no other lady could.  She gets a chance to kill her husband, but she knows a kingdom without an heir is a kingdom in chaos when contenders tear the country apart to grab the throne.  She realizes the kingdom tolerates the king because he is a just ruler who brings prosperity and peace despite sacrificing a young lady every month or two, so decides to conquer the demon…somehow.

Be warned that the story is slow in the beginning.  The wife does not know she will survive and she views everything she sees as the last time she sees it.  We go along with her as she wanders her palace suite, as she remembers her family’s tales, as she lets her husband hold her hands to eat her life.

A Thousand Nights is not for action junkies.  Don’t read this expecting fierce sword fights or blasts of magic.  Our heroine develops her magic as her sister builds her a memory shrine, in effect making her a small god while alive.  Her magic works from visions, where she is able to weave a fabric by imagining it, where she finds the metal that demons cannot tolerate by a waking dream.

Instead of action we have a bit of mystery, well-developed settings and emotion. A Thousand Nights delivers simple magic and understated romance, duty and emotional appeal.  And like Uprooted this is listed as YA, older teens but adults will enjoy it too; in fact it is likely more appealing to adults than to teens.

Overall this is an excellent novel.

4 Stars

 

The Bear and the Nightingale – Best to Read in Your Warmest Room

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Russian winters are long, long and cold and full of snow.  In the days of the Rus winter was terrifying; even rich nobles risked starvation and freezing.  Roads were closed in fall and spring, open in winter for sleds and in summer for horses.  Winter was a time for fear and staying close by the fire, with whole families sleeping on top the oven to survive.

Katherine Arden’s new novel, The Bear and the Nightingale, is set in the late 1200s, after the Mongols conquered the Kievan Rus kings who ruled semi-autonomously from their wooden palace in Kiev.  Vasilisa. the main character, is the daughter of a rich Boyer and the granddaughter of a prior Kievan king.

Vasilisa has a happy life with her close family and kind father until he remarries, this time to the fiercely devout and unpleasant daughter of the current king, his brother-in-law.  (Apparently the Rus nobility weren’t concerned with degrees of consanguinity because Vasilisa’s sister marries the king’s nephew, her first cousin.)  Her new stepmother wants Vasilisa gone, married if possible, cloistered if not, or dead if all else fails.  She gains an ally in the new village priest, an ambitious man.  Vasilisa is willing to marry but would prefer to remain single, to visit her sister in Kiev or to stay and care for her young half sister.  Unfortunately she doesn’t get a choice.

Primary Conflicts

The story moves along in small plot incidents, much like daily life does for everyone.  We have several conflicts, both open and simmering, that intertwine around Vasilisa and her affinity for the household and nature spirits that most people cannot see.

  1. Vasilisa to be married/cloistered or Vasilisa to be free
  2. Stepmother/priest vs. the household spirits
  3. Winter as a deadly force vs. everyone
  4. Winter as a nature spirit vs. his brother

The story is easy to follow as conflicts rise to the surface then subside.  There is not a lot of drama.  Vasilisa saves the small son of her father’s serfs at the cost of scaring off her betrothed a day or two before the wedding by out-thinking and out-riding him.  She flees her stepmother’s plans to force her to a convent and runs into Winter’s brother who takes the form of a rich, normal man. All these events just happen, although each has ramifications that follow.

Arden does an excellent job showing Winter as man’s deadly enemy.  The Rus live in a cold, inhospitable land and must force nature to allow them to live.  They plant and harvest – even the priest helps harvest – and they cut wood.  They put up thick shutters and keep the oven running day and night.  They eat what they can and when the ground freezes and it’s safe they hunt for meat during the short winter days.  We see the effort it takes to create and retain any sort of civilization in this wild land northeast of Kiev.

Writing Style

Arden writes in a natural, unaffected manner that is easy to read, enjoyable, but also understates the high moments that could have used a bit of drama.  It is as though we see the events through the eyes of a child who sees what happens but doesn’t recognize the import unless it directly affects him.

Overall the story is good.  I particularly liked her personification of Winter as a force and an enemy, and Arden did a nice job characterizing Vasilisa and her father as people.  We could understand their hard choices and the depth it took to retain one’s decency in the face of harsh climate and a miserable wife or stepmother.

Not Like Uprooted

The blurbs on Amazon and NetGalley compare The Bear and the Nightingale to Naomi Novik’s Uprooted but that is unfair to both novels.  Uprooted uses a character’s name from a Russian fairy tale but is set in a created fantasy world and the main character works magic.  The Bear and the Nightingale is based on a Russian fairy tale and is set in the real world, the Rus Kievan kingdom of the 1200s and magic is the background.  Both feature young women with unique gifts who must fight terrible enemies to save their homes and families, but otherwise they have little in common.

Overall

The Bear and the Nightingale is good, well worth reading, especially when you remember that it is Katherine Arden’s first novel.  Had I not been expecting more fantasy, more on the lines of Uprooted I would have liked it better, but it is still a fine novel showing family and home in the depths of Russian winter.  Older teens and adults will enjoy the flowing style and interesting characters and setting.

I received a free advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

4 Stars

Kind of Cute, Kind of Short, Kind of Pompous The Frog Prince Fairy Tale Retelling

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The Frog Prince (Faerie Tale Collection) sounded so good. A retelling of the fairy tale “The Frog Prince”, this story by Jenni James had a fun twist on the story of the prince spellbound into a frog. Our hero, Prince Nolan, has been engaged to Princess Blythe since both were infants, but he’s pretty sure she’s a rather nasty piece of work. To find out he has himself turned into a frog (talking of course) and transported to Princess Blythe’s favorite pond in her mother’s castle grounds.

Princess Blythe meanwhile has despaired of ever being loved or finding someone to love. Nolan’s stilted letters show him as a conceited, obnoxious bore and she’s not interested in marrying such a man. Of course she and Nolan-the-frog end up having a great time together and fall in love.

The plot idea is cute, the story nice and short so why is this just a so-so read? Maybe it’s the 10 pages of pontificating at the end, or Blythe’s too-perfect nature or her oft-repeated desire to have someone “see her”. I don’t know exactly what the problem is, but I found the first 30 minutes OK and the last 10 tedious. Yes, that’s right. This is well under an hour read. And by the time I finished, I was glad not to have wasted any more than 40 minutes.

The Frog Prince has a 4.5 rating on Amazon with almost all the reviews complimenting the humor, plot and characters. It is not listed as a YA fantasy, but would appeal to romantic minded teens.  It didn’t work for me.

Beauty and the Werewolf, Mercedes Lackey, 500 Kingdoms, Fantasy Fairy Tale

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Beauty and the Werewolf is from the Tales of the 500 Kingdoms by Mercedes Lackey. All the books in this series so far have been enjoyable, easy to read and loosely based on a fairy tale.

Mercedes Lackey cleverly developed The Tradition, a sort of mindless force that wants to mold people into the traditional motifs: evil stepmothers, foolish older brothers, Cinderella, Snow White, so on and on. The Godmothers each handle one or more of the 500 Kingdoms, keep the peace and try to foil the worst of The Tradition’s impact on those step sisters, older brothers, step mothers.

I wasn’t immediately sure which fairy tale Beauty and the Werewolf was based on. True, the character Bella’s father is a rich merchant, and the title implies Sleeping Beauty. But Bella wore her father’s red riding coat with a hood to visit the local Granny when she ran into the unpleasant Woodsman and was attacked by a wolf. This is Little Red Riding Hood. There are liberal doses of Red Riding Hood but with a twist, plus Sleeping Beauty, but the story is unique and stands on its own.

Characters

The wolf that attacked Bella turns out to be Duke Sebastian, a werewolf, and Bella must spend 90 days confined to Sebastian’s castle to ensure that the bite she got does not turn her into a werewolf too. The book spends a bit too much time showing Bella as a somewhat self-centered, smug young lady, rather too sure of herself. She’s convinced that no one – not her step mother nor step sisters nor housekeeper – can run her family’s home in her absence. And she’s angry at Sebastian for biting her and at the king for imprisoning her.

What helps Bella develop a personality and us to enjoy the book is the Woodsman / Gamekeeper, Sebastian’s illegitimate half brother Eric. Eric takes Bella out with him to look for poachers (and for his own reasons) and Bella is glad to go out. She realizes that Eric is too likely to see her as fair pickings and she decides to act more like a boy, dress in Sebastian’s old clothes and act as Eric’s assistant.

The other change is Sebastian asks Bella to help him with his magic and (of course) Bella discovers she has a talent for wizardry. She helps Sebastian find a way to keep his wolf instincts under control and everything ends happily for all except the villain.

Summary

Overall I liked this among the best of the 500 Kingdoms novels. The people were real, although I wanted to yell at Bella a few times when she was being particularly self righteous. The villain was all too easy to spot, the magic was understated and more or less normal, the Godmother was there but not the omnipotent power. The romance had time to develop and was a bit obvious but still fun and a reasonable part of the plot.

Like all the 500 Kingdoms novels this was a fun, fast read. Take an evening and enjoy!