Wednesday 25 October 2017
Battle Stove Spectacular by Standard Eyre
Welcome aboard the Battle Scar, and welcome to the feast prepared by Chef, your host on a flying castle populated by elves, dwarves, fieldfolk, gnomes, and humans as it careens towards a key diplomatic meeting that may decide the fate of the Elf Confederacy. The table is set with a menu outlining the novella you are about to consume. It begins with "Drinks-Aperitifs-Conversation", moves through "Appetizers and Contemplation", "Specials of the Day", and "Tossed King Salad" before concluding, of course, with "Just Desserts".
Battle Stove Spectacular is an adventure fantasy set in a vast, complicated world full of intrigue, suspense, romance, restaurant critics, and puns. It's the first of a planned 20 stories by the Vancouver author Standard Eyre. It's available only as an e-book, and can be found both on the Apple Book store and as part of the Vancouver Indie Author's collection at the Vancouver Public Library.
Battle Stove Spectacular is not my usual kind of book. I'm a regular reader of SF, but a less-regular reader of fantasy and an infrequent reader of stories set in universes descended from Tolkien's. But I'm not entirely unfamiliar with the genre. I also know the author, and was interested in finding out what he had come up with.
What did I discover? A world with some spectacular technology, intriguing characters, and a plot twist or two. As book 1 of 20, I'm curious where the author is planning take the larger series: will the future stories explore different elements of this universe, like the history or future of the different races that inhabit this world? Tell further adventures of these specific characters? Explore the history and future of the flying castle itself? The base the author provides in Battle Stove Spectacular could easily support multiple story threads and multiple directions. There is a lot going on, especially considering that this is a novella of a mere 145 pages on my e-reader.
What did I think? Well, my personal taste in fantasy and SF leans to the "less is more" school, rather than the "more is more" school when it comes to characters, plot, and world-building. For example, I thought Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and all of the subsequent books in that series would have been far better if they had been pruned by about 1/3, and I couldn't finish The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson.
I'd have loved to have read Battle Stove Spectacular as part of the larger planned series, where the (presumably) interlocking stories could have borne some of the burden of context-setting and world-building. Alternatively, I might have preferred that the Battle Stove itself be promoted to full noveldom by having its action spread over a longer adventure.
But the novella as written is entertaining, including everything from automated Bus Buoys and sous-vide apatosaurs to an ambiguous golden boy and a warrior named Bunny. If you're a fan of "more is more" fantasy fiction, you may enjoy spending a few hours exploring the Battle Scar with Standard Eyre.
Tuesday 24 October 2017
Ru by Kim Thuy
I'd read Ru years ago, shortly after it won the Canada Reads competition in 2012. I remembered it as a short, beautiful, and poetical book about the refugee experience, which is why I recommended it as a selection for my book club.
It's more properly a novella than a novel, having only 141 sparsely populated pages, so I delayed re-reading it until just before the group met. I tore through the book again, finishing two days before our meeting and thought "But what am I going to say about this book?".
It was only then that it occurred to me that Ru is a novel, not a memoir. Thuy is a Vietnamese refugee who came to Canada as part of the huge exodus of "boat people' in the mid-70s. The book is written in the first person, and she did draw upon her own experiences in writing the book. But Ru is a novel. That means that the incidents and structure and language of the book have been carefully selected by the author to produce a certain effect, and to convey a certain message. I couldn't assume, as I had unconsciously been doing, that Thuy had simply been recounting selected incidents from her life. I needed to re-read, thinking about why, how, and when the author had inserted each incident, and what she was trying to say with what she was writing.
Unfortunately I didn't have time to finish the book for a second time before we met. But the more critical re-reading I did have time to do was a revelation. The book has a beautiful structure. In French, a "ru" is a flow, as of a stream of water or tears. In Vietnamese, a "ru" is a lullaby. And the book itself is a ru....it is a series of linked stories, linked not by chronology but by themes. One fragment will end with mention of a photo, or of a floor, or of the narrator's voicelessness. The next will begin across time and space with a mention of a different floor, a different photo, another incident of speech or silence, the stories connected only by the theme and the fact that they tell fragments of the same person's life. The book was also filled with interesting images: what was the significance of the pink acrylic bracelet filled with diamonds used to smuggle wealth out of Vietnam, but stolen and discarded by thieves in Canada who had no idea of the value hidden inside? How could I have missed the metaphorical nature of the brick wall built dividing the author's childhood home, half given over to the communists, and the other half invaded by soldiers that they were obliged to billet?
I didn't finish my re-reading, but reading the book as a novel definitely enhanced my enjoyment of it, and my appreciation of the artistry involved.
The other striking feature of the book is that it was written in French, and translated. The translator did a fabulous job of capturing the poetic language of the book.
It's more properly a novella than a novel, having only 141 sparsely populated pages, so I delayed re-reading it until just before the group met. I tore through the book again, finishing two days before our meeting and thought "But what am I going to say about this book?".
It was only then that it occurred to me that Ru is a novel, not a memoir. Thuy is a Vietnamese refugee who came to Canada as part of the huge exodus of "boat people' in the mid-70s. The book is written in the first person, and she did draw upon her own experiences in writing the book. But Ru is a novel. That means that the incidents and structure and language of the book have been carefully selected by the author to produce a certain effect, and to convey a certain message. I couldn't assume, as I had unconsciously been doing, that Thuy had simply been recounting selected incidents from her life. I needed to re-read, thinking about why, how, and when the author had inserted each incident, and what she was trying to say with what she was writing.
Unfortunately I didn't have time to finish the book for a second time before we met. But the more critical re-reading I did have time to do was a revelation. The book has a beautiful structure. In French, a "ru" is a flow, as of a stream of water or tears. In Vietnamese, a "ru" is a lullaby. And the book itself is a ru....it is a series of linked stories, linked not by chronology but by themes. One fragment will end with mention of a photo, or of a floor, or of the narrator's voicelessness. The next will begin across time and space with a mention of a different floor, a different photo, another incident of speech or silence, the stories connected only by the theme and the fact that they tell fragments of the same person's life. The book was also filled with interesting images: what was the significance of the pink acrylic bracelet filled with diamonds used to smuggle wealth out of Vietnam, but stolen and discarded by thieves in Canada who had no idea of the value hidden inside? How could I have missed the metaphorical nature of the brick wall built dividing the author's childhood home, half given over to the communists, and the other half invaded by soldiers that they were obliged to billet?
I didn't finish my re-reading, but reading the book as a novel definitely enhanced my enjoyment of it, and my appreciation of the artistry involved.
The other striking feature of the book is that it was written in French, and translated. The translator did a fabulous job of capturing the poetic language of the book.
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