The Magicians

Author – Lev Grossman

Hardcover
Pages: 416
Publisher: Viking Adult
Release Date: August 11th, 2009
ISBN-10: 0670020559
ISBN-13: 978-0670020553

Much fuss has been made about The Magicians, the first foray into the Fantasy genre by Lev Grossman, uber-geek, author of Codex and Senior Writer for Time magazine. The most ironic of all? The book is not being marketed as a genre novel, but rather being shelved in the Literature section at most bookstores, despite being a Fantasy novel (full of every cliché in the book) through and through.

The thing is, though, The Magicians is a good crossover novel, bridging the gap between Literature-with-a-capital-L and Fantasy, by taking the usual tropes (magic school, dysfunctional band of misfits, wizards, ‘You’re a wizard, Harry’-moments, fireballs, etc…) and throwing in all that stuff the literary folk like (sex, moral ambiguity, cocaine and whiskey, cancerous relationships, etc…). The Magicians is like Harry Potter meets The Graduate, with a little bit of Trainspotting thrown in for good measure.

Of course, general debauchery and acidic characters aren’t a magical fix-all, able to turn any Fantasy novel into a work of literary genius; but Grossman is aware of this and uses these uncomfortable literary devices as an avenue to tell a sometimes funny, sometimes painful story of young people growing up in a world they hardly understand. Like Trainspotting, The Magicians is all about Quentin’s inability to cope with the trials and travails of real life, and his constant search for Fillory, a magical world that Quentin knows will solve all his problems. As most of us know, though, finding that place rarely solves anything, rather it’s often a slippery slope, leading to bigger and more serious problems.
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The Sword-edged Blonde

Author – Alex Bledsoe

Paperback
Pages: 320 pages
Publisher: Tor Fantasy/Nightshade Books
Release Date: June 30, 2009
ISBN-10: 0765362031
ISBN-13: 978-0765362032

The Sword-edged Blonde by Alex Bledsoe is one of those rainy-day kinda novels. You know the type. It’s not the deepest book on your bookshelf, but it’s fun. It won’t stick with you for weeks afterwards, but you can’t put it down while you’re reading it. It’s got problems, but, for some reason, you’re willing to look past ’em. The Sword-edged Blonde doesn’t set out to be anything more than what it is: a pulpy homage to Raymond Chandler, set in a world not unlike those found in any other Fantasy world. Bledsoe knew what he was aiming for, and hit the mark on the first try. Mostly.

It seems obvious: take the tried and true detective novel formula and plunk it down in a standard Sword & Sorcery world. Like Urban Fantasy throwing werewolves and vampires into the mix, putting a traditional story in a new setting can make the old feel new again and that seems to be exactly the angle Bledsoe was trying to take. He pulls more or less every cliche out of the book – a case with a personal connection to the gumshoesword jockey’s past; amnesia; a murdered prince; gangsters, gambling dens and thugs; pretty girls and dangerous fellows – but uses them all with tongue firmly in cheek, and comes out the other end with a novel that’s fun for all the right reasons.
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The Happiest Days of Our Lives

Author – Wil Wheaton

Hardcover
Pages: 160 pages
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Release Date: December, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59606-244-3

I first became aware of Wil Wheaton (outside of his acting, of course) a couple of years ago (or maybe around the time I joined Twitter. I can’t remember) and could never really figure out what the big deal was, or why nerds (Trekkie or not) were ready to kiss the damn ground he walked on. Sure, I was damn jealous of the traffic his blog gets, and that he was going to be on Season Three of The Guild, but Wesley Crusher? Come on, nobody liked Wesley Crusher back in 1989, so why would that change now, 20 years later?

Well, for one, it turns out not even Wesley Crusher liked Wesley Crusher all that much (Wheaton appreciates the success of the show, but was never too fond of the material given to him by writers), and it also turns out that Wes– er… Wil Wheaton has a whole lot more to offer outside of Wesley Crusher and Gordy from Stand by Me.

The Happiest Days of our Lives showed up unannounced on my doorstep the other day, an advance copy from the good people at Subterranean Press that wasn’t ever really on my radar. It couldn’t have come at a better time. After coming over a marathon read of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy, I picked up Junot Diaz’s The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that promised to be a geek’s dream, but left me feeling confused, alienated and a little depressed. Inevitably, it became hard not to compare Diaz’s novel to the one I read next. To follow that uneven experience, I picked up the quiet little novelette by Wheaton, a collection of non-fiction pulled together from writing for his blog, WWdn and found everything little misinformed me wanted The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to be.
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The Hero of Ages

Author – Brandon Sanderson

Paperback
Pages: 784 pages
Publisher: Tor
Release Date: October 14, 2008
ISBN-10: 0765356147
ISBN-13: 978-0765356147

The Final Empire, the first volume of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy kicked my ass (in a good way). A great blend of original ideas, charming characters a nicely self-contained story (no real cliffhangers to speak of), and good ol’ fashioned ’80’s style fantasy. It brought me back to my roots, reminded me of when I first discovered the genre through the likes of Terry Brooks, Raymond E. Feist and R.A. Salvatore. Maybe not for everyone, in the age of Joe Abercrombies and Hal Duncans, but an accessible novel that left me wanting more.

Sanderson followed that up with The Well of Ascension, which turned out to be a massive disappointment. Instead of delivering on the promises of the first novel, Sanderson left his characters at a stalemate, giving them time to evolve, sure, but grinding the plot and world development to a halt. Gone were most of the most interesting elements of The Final Empire (the forbidding Steel Inquisitors, most notably) and in their place were insipid, weak characters dealing with politics and love stories that I just didn’t give a damn about. Elend, in particular, regressed from a confident paramour to a self-doubting child thrust into a position of rule. It felt false, and, even worse, pointless.

So, home-run in his first at-bat, flaming strikeout in his second, how was Sanderson to fare with his third (and final) attempt? Let’s call it a ground-rule-double. The Hero of Ages succeeds, but doesn’t quite hit it out of the park like the first volume.
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The Well of Ascension

Author – Brandon Sanderson

Paperback
Pages: 817 pages
Publisher: Tor
Release Date: June 3rd, 2008
ISBN-10: 0765356139
ISBN-13: 978-0765356130

In my review of Brandon Sanderson’s The Final Empire, the first volume in his Mistborn trilogy, I lauded it as a novel that returned me to my roots as a reader of Fantasy. It brought back memories of first getting into the genre and reading the likes of Terry Brooks, Raymond E. Feist and R.A. Salvatore.

Furthering its success was Sanderson’s ability to take the cliches of the genre, which the aforementioned authors were chock full of, and flip them on their head, pulling the rug out from under readers, so comfortable with genre tropes, just as they began to feel like they had a grip on the story. The Final Empire was a story of likeable characters, imaginative world-building and genuinely shocking twists. Unfortunately, The Well of Ascension takes most of these strengths… and tosses them out the window in favour of a hard-to-swallow love story and a drawn-out siege with the heroes caught between two armies. Luckily we still have one hell of a twist to end the novel off.

With the Lord Ruler seemingly defeated, Sanderson was set to explore territory not often touched upon in the Fantasy genre: how a world reacts when the evil lord has fallen and freedom is within grasp. Sanderson presents a world on the edge of chaos, one that has to transition from a society ground under the oppressive rules of the Lord Ruler to one that has to manage itself, to figure out how to right the wrongs set by a thousand-year-old regime, and why it might not be so easy to rule with kindness, compassion and democracy. Where The Final Empire was a successful character-driven caper novel, The Well of Ascension is a political stalemate led by a naive youngster.

The Well of Ascension is defined less by what it has, and more by what it’s missing. Kelsier, the dashing lead of The Final Empire is gone, and with him goes most of the charisma and fun that defined the first novel. In his place is Elend Venture, the aforementioned naive youngster, who made a strong impression when he was first introduced in The Final Empire, but utterly fails to live up to it in The Well of Ascension. Gone is the confident, aloof individual that helps bring down a tyrant, and in his place is a nervous, self-righteous boy who has little idea how to handle his newfound power. Of course Sanderson sets up The Well of Ascension as a novel about growing into oneself, and making sacrifices for the greater good, which gives Elend (and Vin) room to grow. Still, I couldn’t help but feel that the extended siege (which takes up the majority of the novel) was an excuse to halt the more interesting aspects of the story (what exactly the Lord Ruler was warning against at the end of The Final Empire; where Kelsier discovered the fabled Eleventh Metal; Marsh and his infiltration of the the Steel Inquisitors), allowing Sanderson to self-indulgently explore his philosophies on leadership and bog down the story with boring politics that just don’t hold up against other novels in the genre.
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