Have never read Dean Koontz, as popular as he is.  Have also never heard of this "Odd Thomas" series, which features a very young and itinerant fry cook who see ghosts and has a mishmash of other psychic powers. There are several of these Odd Thomas books, and I accidentally ordered one toward the end rather than the first one.  It worked out.  It was a super cool book and, of course, odd.

I think Charlaine Harris stole the format of this series for her Sookie storyline, but I doubt she got anywhere near what made this book so much fun and near impossible to put down: Odd Thomas's observations and reveries about everything that happens around him.  The odd (so odd, the way Odd has conversations with people that never quite intersect what they say in return, the way Odd  really is so alone with only his thoughts) story serves as a plate for the main course: what is running through Odd's mind.      

Some bites of what is in there:

"Every talent is unearned, however, and with it comes a solemn obligation to use it as fully and as wisely as possible.  If I didn't believe in the miraculous nature of talent and in the sacred duty of the recipient, by now I would have gone so insane that I'd qualify for numerous high government positions."

"Anyway, the dead can be even more frustrating to deal with than are many of the living, which is astonishing when you consider that it's the living who run the Department of Motor Vehicles." 

"But you can't  stand an idea up against a wall and shoot it."


Thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable.  Terrifically written.  His first name is really Odd, too.  I don't know about Dean Koontz's other stories, but I think I would really enjoy reading more Odd Thomas stories.  

Lessons for Writers: In reality, we ourselves keep a running commentary of what is happening around us.  Perhaps this reaction and involvement with the story by a character is too often forgotten in writing.  We remember to write down reactions only in the most rudimentary way, but not the way we really think about things.  It's magical almost.  And odd!

And lest we forget, Dean Koontz owns airport books sales.  

I just finished Susan Ee's last book in her Penryn trilogy.  During this Fantasy Reading List, I've read many books that are parts of series, but few of those series have drawn me in enough to command me to read the others: they are in fact only John Crowley's Aegypt series, David Gemmel's Troy series, Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and this snarky, frightening Apocalyptic series by self-published author, Susan Ee, who just released this last book in May.

I loved Angelfall.  I loved World After. 

I liked End of Days.

The heroine Penryn and all her companions return in this last book.  I read this book in two days, and there were lots of new monsters, lots of "Oh, no, you didn't!" moments, and new emotional territory for Penryn that was more precarious than her surroundings.  But...

But this longer book felt like it didn't have quite enough content to fill it, which is odd, given its lush-for-description Apocalyptic theme.  The plague that could be contracted immediately just by being in the vicinity of the carrier also threw my toxicology-and-epidemiology-sense for a loop.  And the ending is very, very pat, wrapped up, and happy, which is also odd, given the lush-for-sorrow theme.

Lessons for writers:  I know a certain format is expected of stories, especially to get published these days, but I don't think it should force your themes to go against themselves.


But I would certainly read more from Susan Ee.

The Jungle Book and Just-So Stories have been with me a very long time.  One of my favorite possessions is a USSR Lomonosov porcelain tiger which I of course named Shere Khan.  I named the first car I ever bought, a brown 1972 Dodge Colt, Rikki Tikki Tavi.  

And how does The Jungle Book appear when I return to it?  Absolutely lovely.

It's oft viewed as a children's book, but it doesn't feel that way to me, and it certainly didn't feel like that to Kipling's fans back in his day, who was so popular the British wanted to knight him (he turned it down). The Jungle Book eventually earned him a Nobel Peace Prize for Literature in 1907.

Written in the 1890s, I can only imagine how thrilling the depictions of Indian jungles and its creatures were to people who had no television or ability to travel far, because they are absolutely amazing even now, and that amazement is shared through words.  

Above the use of words as artful engines of the imagination, what really sparkled for me in this book was the love the man-cub Mowgli had for his animal family, and they for him.  That these creatures addressed each other so formally, with thees and thous, made their respect and love for one another that much clearer: it turned their relationships into royal affairs.

I got my copy from the library,a 1955 hardback with pen-and-ink illustrations.  Some lovely lines:

By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the jungle will call fire by its proper name.  Every beast lives in deadly fear of it, and invents a hundred ways of describing it.

"Put dead bats in my head!  Give me black bones to eat!  Roll me into the hives of the wild bees that I may be stung to death, and bury me with the Hyena, for I am the most miserable of Bears!"

And Mowgli, on money: "Ah, yes.  The stuff that passes from hand to hand and never grows warmer."

For writers: Characters are better for the relationships they have with others, whether those relationships are fair or foul.  

This book is... interesting.  I say that with respect, awe, and wonder.  I've read many entertaining books, many beautiful books, many touching books, many amazing books, but this one was interesting: it represented a fantasy world where everything was so novel that I had to rely on the author to guide me, much like the lovely, blind protagonist Oree relied on everyone around her to traverse her strange, beautiful, and at times frightening world.  There was a part that dragged in the middle -- where Oree was a captive and not much else was happening, but then the story jumps back into its saddle and rides like hell.  "Interesting" creates attachment, and I became so involved in the relationship of Oree and the cursed god "Shiny", aside from reading it in a few short days, the ending stung me more than I expected and almost more than I could handle.

This is a world where a giant tree grows through a city; a city where gods and godlings and humans of different classes and races intermingle, re-gentrification of a neighborhood at its most extreme, with all the problems that come with it.  One of the most interesting parts of this book are the gods themselves. In fantasy, interacting with magical creatures is pretty much the norm, but has there been any other book I can recall where mortals have day-to-day relationships with deities as friends?  As lovers?  From a human point of view? Not to my recollection -- and I've read (and written) a substantial amount of mythology-based stories, starting with my most favorite of authors, Roger Zelazny.  See?  Interesting.

Okay: mortals interact with gods and goddesses fairly routinely in Greek and Roman mythology.  Perhaps that is why I found this so enchanting. Also, the godling Madding has a house where the bottom floor is pretty much a lush lagoon -- I wanted with all my heart to visit it. That is exactly the way I would set up a house, if I had my druthers.

Jemisin's city Shadow echoed of Viriconium, but not as alien; her characters' chatty relationships reminded me of Emma Bull, but this world is something new and... again,  interesting.  I am a little embarrassed I had not heard of her before -- I had found this book, which in in the middle of a trilogy at Bookman in Anaheim last November.  This one was written in 2010, and she now has five books out. (This lets me know that I can now venture into picking the best of a series, not just the first of a series, as I continue this "100 Great Fantasy Novels Reading List.")  It did not hurt that this book stands alone as it own story, another strength.  There were so many great images, passages, and lines.  A favorite:

"Loneliness is a darkness of the soul."

Lessons for writers: this book has made me really ponder what the nature of "interesting" is.  What makes things interesting, rather than merely imaginative or evocative?  What makes us interested in some stories, but not in others?  Novelty can only be one part of that equation -- there are lots of imaginative inventions out there in the world of Story.  What gains our interest?  How do we make our stories interesting to others?  I think it may take years just to define the parameters of this question alone.

                                    Visit this wonderful author at her website.  

During our Thanksgiving visit in Anaheim, Chris and I went to the Bookman used bookstore. I had a list of "J" authors I wanted to acquire, but I was getting nervous around these long serial stories like Jordan's Wheel of Time and Jacque's medieval animal tales.  I am not a quest fan. I'm just not.  Sorry.  But what other books could I find?

I found the fourth book of a Diana Wynn Jones series for teens, but I got it anyway because she is such a fine writer. And a book called Broken Kingdoms caught my eye.  And on a shelf so high I had to fetch a rickety set of stairs to get to it, this book, Shiva 3000.

As far as I am concerned, Shiva 3000 is the book that all readers crave -- a book that you could read over and over again.  I add it to a very short list: Dune, The Gypsy, Bone Dance, When Gravity Fails. The book is certainly a paen to Lords of Light, but it has the prose-musculature of Gene Wolfe, Christopher Priest, and John Crowley.  The novel creates a far-future fantasy where the gods and demons of India command their subjects despite their wills, as discover two otherwise very chaste and religious men of different castes -- Rakesh and Vasant.  This 1999 novel is an immersive tale, which I think what long quest stories attempt to do, but I think in this book it is accomplished with the thoughtful and imaginative virtuousity of its crafting.

Some of my favorite lines:

"Buddhists figured in stories but in daily life were less common than benevolent tigers."
"Reason was weak currency."

Some reviewers did not like this book because of the future depictions of religious rigidity and the abrupt ending; I was a bit disappointed that the only koan used (Zen puzzle-poem) was "one hand clapping" when there are thousands more which are more interesting and thematically relevant, but I've been reading a lot of them.  Otherwise, who would know?

Which brought me to my own puzzle?  Why had I never heard of this Canadian author before?  Why was he not renowned? The answer was chilling: after the publication of this book, the author had a psychotic breakdown.  He described it in a 2005 book, but otherwise, has written nothing else.

Part of me wants to track him down and let him know how amazing this book is.  Another part thinks that would be cruel.  I don't know.

I don't know.

Lessons: You can write a good story with words, but to write a great story, you need Words.

This story was also nominated in 2000 for the Locus Best First Novel. 

Believe in the work that comes through you. And as an author, you may be called to fight for that Story. Fight for it. Write your heart out. Don’t save your best stuff for later. Don’t rest on your laurels.

Haunt and taunt your characters, and let them tell the Story. Use the right point of view. Know how your characters are intimately part of their environment. Let them see the world through their own messy, unsure and somewhat magical senses of their own. Don’t let them be arcane and alien. Emotions are very fine, delicate, ephemeral, sensitive things.  If you can get them right, you are probably way ahead of the game.

Words DO matter. The perfectly perched word opens up worlds in your heart, and poetry is a dancing lesson for a writer. Respect pacing. Make every sentence earn its keep. Don’t let your reader wander away. Make your story more and more exciting as it goes along. Theme is no minor device – it is the backbone of your Story. But stories don’t have to be perfect, curlicued literature to get the job done: Ideas, not words, drive stories.

It's the last week of October, and it's raining this morning. Everything about it fills me with delight: the sound of rain drumming in the gutters, the smell of damp pine and oak, the feel of moist air that requires extra socks, and robes, socks and pillows, the flavor of warm tea in my mouth, the sight of my little armies of young round nasturtium leaves being tousled about by grey rain drops. Can I convince my husband to go out into the rain to fetch a log and set me a fire?  Or perhaps easier, make me a mocha? It's a perfect day to read and write. It's  also a perfect day to finish the fortieth book in my "100 Fantasy Books" reading list.

The Lost Continent is also a lost book. I found it only after scouring many, many sources for interesting authors with the last name of "H." This one was published by Forgotten Books and was originally written in 1900. The only information I could find on this adventure serial writer was in the short preface to this book, which notes he -- and this story -- was quite popular in his day.  

Hmmm. Perhaps there is more under his novelist nom-de-plume,Weathersby Chesny.

This is a swash-buckling story with a very faux-modest warrior-priest-king named Deucalion, a delightfully devious empress, a red-haired mammoth, pterodactyls* ("hairless man-eating birds"), and of course, "cave tigers." If you thought Girl-Power was a modern phenomenon, this story proves you (and me!) wrong. It was written to provide delight, in short bursts and it does, and therefore reads as easily as much more modern works. The story only failed for me when it forgot its unique and imaginative setting and focused only on Deucalion's angst.

One of my favorite passages:

"But these tarry shipmen faced it all with an indomitable courage, and never a cry of quailing. Life on the seas is so hard and (from the beasts that haunt the great waters) so full of savage dangers, that Death has lost half his terrors to them through sheer familiarity. They were fellows who from pure lust for a fray would fight to a finish among themselves in the taverns ashore; and so here, in this desperate sea-battle, the passion for killing burned in them, as a fire stone from Heaven rages in a forest; and they took even their death-wounds laughing."

This author of serials has a great lesson for writers: Write your story as if the reader will only see this one part of it, not its entirety. Don't save your best stuff for later. Throw it out there!

                                                                             Forgotten Books has this story and other buried gems.        
*Pterodactyls are probably as necessary an element to every story as are dodos. So here is an important reminder from Deviant Art.                                                               

In 2006, when the Thunderbird Book Store at the Barnyard in Carmel had its going-out-of-business sale, I reverentially snagged, along with a couple of other precious books, this -- a collection of Harrison's novels and stories about the dream-logic city, Viriconium. I always planned to read it for the fantasy list. It's time, now.

In Viriconium was short at 60 pages, but every page gives poetry and deep heart, and also seems to directly channel Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal, besides. I am thinking M. John Harrison HAD to be an influence for another short book that was also so rich: Old Souls and the Grammar of Their Wanderings by Berrien C. Henderson. I might have to ask the author.  With the reality of ebola on our shores this week for the first time in history, In Viriconium was a haunting read about not only citizens, but the city itself, being eaten by a capricious plague as the portraitist Ashlyme flounders at saving a doomed artist while gods dressed as slobbering fools cavort through the crumbling city to amuse the disillusioned and deluded both. 

I wasn't clever enough this month to read the first book, but I do want to read of all of these.  In time.
Here are some especially handsome passages:

"There is a certain time of the afternoon," said Audsley King, "when everything seems repellent to me."

"A wet silvery light fell delicately on the white bridges, limning the afternoon curve of the canal and perfectly disguising its shabbiness. Everyone enjoyed themselves thoroughtly; while down below , among the ragwort on the towpath, writhed the thousand-and-one black and yellow caterpillars of the cinnabar moth, some fat and industrious, rearing up their blunt, ugly heads, others thin and scruffy and torpid. The Barley Brothers at them and were sick."

Lessons on writing? Poetry is a dancing lesson for a writer, I think. 


                                                               Visit M. John Harrison's very curious website. Do.