5.21.2010

Three Lines Free



Three mini-reviews amidst a busy season:

Donald Dudley - Roman Society

Not a light read, but a vast one... I can't comment on the scholarship, but the world painted here inflamed my imagination and cast my heart beyond the thousands of years: oh, the places I saw. Here I felt the sun of Lucretius' farm, I met briefly and humbly the ancient guide: Virgil. I thought on a sentry tower in rainy weather on Hadrian's wall. I thought on the sleeping dead in Pompeii. I pictured the sun-drenched construction of the Pont du Gard; I dreamed the slow gaze of the eye of the Pantheon... I rode the frontier and mouthed the words: "all things must pass!" while the walls fell and fired... Mostly, I thought long and often on the tides humanity, the ebb and flow of suffering and peace, of individual men and women throughout the ages dreaming themselves of arcadia, of love, of conquest, of war... Such a topic doesn't lend itself to brief reviews, or to light histories. Dudley, a peerless historian, follows his seminal work The Civilization of Rome with this text in which he treats the tides of philosophy, the lives, the personalities, the religion and art of the Republic and Empire. It takes some work, but the mind strains to take in the vista here presented. Can the importance of understanding the past be overstated? I'll avoid the trite: it cannot.

Final Grade: A-
Re-read? As a reference, I'm certain I'll be back.
Neil Gaiman - Sandman: The Dream Hunters

Apparently this work fits within the mythos of a comic book series created by Gaiman. It's also meant to stand alone as an illustrated novella. The book had sat on my shelf for years, and finally received the gaze of the random number generator. The tale: mediocre and forgettable. Gaiman is considered something of "rock star" in the modern Fantasy/SF genre. I'm not a groupie: I'll admit that straight-up. The tale is written as a pastiche of Japanese folk tales: folk tale it is not. I know that Gaiman is using the form as a vehicle for whatever it is he's trying to get across - mainly an air of mystical depth that doesn't materialize. That's what you get when you try to pastiche and don't respect the source material. Doesn't respect the source material? "Didn't Gaiman translate Princess Mononoke," you might ask? Don't get me started on the self-serving malarkey of an afterward that Gaiman pasted into the back of this work - which, when held to the slightest scrutiny, evaporated as the whole cloth it was. And then Gaiman has the moxy to sneer at his own preposterousness when confronted: read the first two paragraphs of the wikipedia entry.

Yoshitaka Amano's art is fine with some lovely highlights - the Fox and the Tanuki are gorgeous. Here, the art's interpretation of the text seems to me the work's primary merit. But Japan is perennially vogue, and it seems that if you stretch far enough, you can fit your brand over the frame. Do yourself a favor: forget that you read this review, and then go and buy any edition you can find of Ueda Akinari's Ugetsu Monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain) for a truly wonderful read. Why waste time on self-advertising?

Final Grade: Strictly B material
Re-Read? Back to the used-bookstore for you.

Robert Charles Wilson - Spin

What to write about this novel? It's been nearly a month since I finished - the images remain: a vast and bloody sun filling the sky as a man drives his dying childhood love across a desert... A vast arch in the cerulean sky above the Indian Ocean - the gateway to...

I continue to be exceedingly impressed with Wilson's work. I don't think my previous comparisons with Arthur C. Clarke are too fine. His characterization is true (mostly - I'll grant that this novel had some strictly "use" characters) - his writing gutsy and poignant, and his ideas - well, his ideas... I'm leaving too many ellipses lying about, which means that I think that you should read the book and that I shouldn't write much at all so that none of this harrowing tale is spoiled for you. Then call, and we'll talk about it all you like.

Final Grade: A
Re-Read? Yes - probably as part of dyad with the sequal that I just heard about: Axis

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