The Blood of Eleven Review
Oct. 28th, 2014 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHi,
So the one good thing about endless rehearsals and performances is that you get a fair amount of reading done. So I finished up two books and here’s what I think.
First up Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. This is a book about a post-apocalyptic traveling Shakespeare Troupe/classical orchestra and so you can’t expect the least bit of objectivity from me about it. Despite my 45-degree slant, I did think this was a very good book on it’s own merits.
In Toronto, Arthur Leander is playing King Lear when he dies on stage. A young paramedic named Jeevan rushes in to help while a young girl, an actor in the show watches on in horror.
Over the next few weeks humanity is mostly wiped out by a super-virus.
Flash forward and the young woman, Kirsten, has grown up and now roams around the Great Lakes region with the Traveling Symphony. While the story traces her troupe’s encounter with a town fallen under the sway of a cult, it also jumps back and forth between the past and the present. It looks into Arthur and Jeevan’s life and all the various threads that manage to reach out across the crumbling of the world into the present.
In a lot of ways the book is a bit like Oryx and Crake where the apocalypse simply serves to pare down the focus and provide contrast. It does a better job of keeping one foot in both past and present and the story is interesting. The book covers a lot of ground but circles around art and fame and meaning.
Overall, a high-quality piece of dystopian fiction and one of the better things I read this year.
Next up a bit of fantasy. I read Blood of Ambrose by James Enge. You’ve got young King Lathmar who will become Emperor of Ontil...except that his Protector has just purged everyone loyal to him and is intent on making him a figurehead. The only people who can save Lathmar, are Morlock and Ambrosia, nearly immortal ancestors who founded the Empire and show up from time to time to help out.
While Morlock and Ambrosia are powerful, they have limits. It’s a magic indistinguishable from technology and while they can produce powerful effects, it’s sometimes easier to make people believe something that isn’t there. The two are also the children of Merlin and Nimune (apparently that Merlin and Nimune although this isn’t set on Earth at all). There are some favorable comparisons to Zelazny’s Amber books here.
The story pretty much gets told from Lathmar’s point of view and he does manage to make a number of contributions to the overall effort to regain the throne, but it’s mostly the elder’s show. In particular it’s mostly Morlock’s show although Ambrosia is no slouch as a protagonist.
I liked the book. It had a weird obsession with astronomical details. There’s a full appendix dedicated to the progression of the three moons of the planet along with footnotes about chronological terms being used by the characters. It just seemed a little out of place for a book that keeps up a sort of fairy-tale atmosphere. There are other books in the series but there was no particular cliffhanger for this so full marks there and I’m interested in checking them out now.
later
Tom
So the one good thing about endless rehearsals and performances is that you get a fair amount of reading done. So I finished up two books and here’s what I think.
First up Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. This is a book about a post-apocalyptic traveling Shakespeare Troupe/classical orchestra and so you can’t expect the least bit of objectivity from me about it. Despite my 45-degree slant, I did think this was a very good book on it’s own merits.
In Toronto, Arthur Leander is playing King Lear when he dies on stage. A young paramedic named Jeevan rushes in to help while a young girl, an actor in the show watches on in horror.
Over the next few weeks humanity is mostly wiped out by a super-virus.
Flash forward and the young woman, Kirsten, has grown up and now roams around the Great Lakes region with the Traveling Symphony. While the story traces her troupe’s encounter with a town fallen under the sway of a cult, it also jumps back and forth between the past and the present. It looks into Arthur and Jeevan’s life and all the various threads that manage to reach out across the crumbling of the world into the present.
In a lot of ways the book is a bit like Oryx and Crake where the apocalypse simply serves to pare down the focus and provide contrast. It does a better job of keeping one foot in both past and present and the story is interesting. The book covers a lot of ground but circles around art and fame and meaning.
Overall, a high-quality piece of dystopian fiction and one of the better things I read this year.
Next up a bit of fantasy. I read Blood of Ambrose by James Enge. You’ve got young King Lathmar who will become Emperor of Ontil...except that his Protector has just purged everyone loyal to him and is intent on making him a figurehead. The only people who can save Lathmar, are Morlock and Ambrosia, nearly immortal ancestors who founded the Empire and show up from time to time to help out.
While Morlock and Ambrosia are powerful, they have limits. It’s a magic indistinguishable from technology and while they can produce powerful effects, it’s sometimes easier to make people believe something that isn’t there. The two are also the children of Merlin and Nimune (apparently that Merlin and Nimune although this isn’t set on Earth at all). There are some favorable comparisons to Zelazny’s Amber books here.
The story pretty much gets told from Lathmar’s point of view and he does manage to make a number of contributions to the overall effort to regain the throne, but it’s mostly the elder’s show. In particular it’s mostly Morlock’s show although Ambrosia is no slouch as a protagonist.
I liked the book. It had a weird obsession with astronomical details. There’s a full appendix dedicated to the progression of the three moons of the planet along with footnotes about chronological terms being used by the characters. It just seemed a little out of place for a book that keeps up a sort of fairy-tale atmosphere. There are other books in the series but there was no particular cliffhanger for this so full marks there and I’m interested in checking them out now.
later
Tom
