Review: Pale Fire

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book can be deceiving, as it doesn't look anything like a novel, but it arguably is one. It basically consists of a foreword written by one author, a 999 line poem written by another, and an extensive commentary sorted into footnotes by the first author, and an index. The commentary itself is the real novel here, as the poem itself is... all right by poetry standards, I guess. But don't ask me cause I'm not a poetry person. Protip: don't listen to Kinbote in the foreword when he says to read the commentary before, during, and after the poem. You can do whatever the hell you want with this book.

But seriously, this book was one of the most fun reading experiences I've had in a long while. If there were ever a book in which writing notes in the margins significantly enhances the experience, I'd say it was this one. Sure, it relies on a lot of cross-referencing between the poem and the index and the footnoted commentary, but the ride became such a thrill as the "story" progressed that I didn't really mind it at all.

For lack of spoilers I won't say more, except to say that as usual, Nabokov's prose is king. He's so good at writing like an egotistical maniac. Although I have to wonder if he really is one... (From what I've heard, kinda probably.)

Review: A Dance with Dragons

A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Better than the last book, A Feast for Crows; the story finally feels like it's heading somewhere again. I guess it helps that Tyrion, Jon Snow, and Daenerys are finally back to give the plot a sense of direction, as without them the rest of the POV character chapters just feel like aimless, arbitrary distractions (granted, distractions that made for entertaining romps into the world of Westeros- that much I can appreciate). Even Theon's storyline alone in this book seems to accomplish more than the majority of AFFC, though, and what little details mattered from that book are continued in last third of this one anyway.

But at the same time, this book essentially suffers from the same problem that AFFC had: overwriting. In a way, most of the Song of Ice and Fire books have always had this problem, but the original first three had the benefit of taking on a conventional plot structure where their climaxes actually felt like an appropriate reward given (or in spite of) the length of each book.

This is less so with ADWD: Martin wound up writing so much for this and the last book that the major events that this book builds up to (The Battle of Slaver's Bay and The Battle of the North) got moved to the beginning of the next book, The Winds of Winter, and instead we're left with a bunch of cliffhanger moments that make it feel almost as if we've been stopped and left stranded right before the top of the roller coaster. There's no real resolution or conclusion of anything that's happened so far by the end, and given that we've had to trudge through over a thousand pages to get there, it almost feels like a rip-off. I say almost since I'm assuming the next book will come out... hopefully sometime in the next year or two. But you never know.

I recognize that Martin had issues trying to write both this and the last book in a coherent way - hence the splitting of POVs between the books by geographical location rather than making AFFC a two-volume work - but as this became less consistent towards the end of the book and more AFFC character POVs started coming back, it made me realize how flexible the chapter placement in this series is... and how awkward it is to suddenly have random characters turn up who you'd forgotten about from 500-pages-into-the-last-book ago.

I think it would've been more effective if he'd stuck to a normal chronological order and focused on making the character chapters more concise, perhaps condensing some of the aimless exposition details (so much writing about FOOD- no, I'm not interested in how cooked the locusts looked) and even scrapping some of the minor character POVs that barely contributed to the main plot; how many Greyjoy or Dorne character chapters do we really need anyway? Too much overwriting and even the likes of Tyrion or Jon Snow or Daenerys (well, especially Daenerys in this case... unfortunately) will seem whiny and frivolous. And if that happens, this series will lose a lot of what it has going for it.

Review: Children of Dune

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

On first look, it kind of surprises me how polarizing the reaction to this book seems. A number of fans of the original Dune (and perhaps less-so Dune Messiah) seem to hate on this book and the rest of the series, whereas others would see it as just as good if not better than before - one of my friends went so far as to tell me that Children is actually the REAL Dune. So I went into this book curious of that prospect, mentioning last time that the previous sequel, Messiah, felt significant but incomplete in some senses.

Having finished it, I would say that I appreciate Dune Messiah more now after reading this, as I realize now how that book could stand alone without this one. It really was meant to be a more introspective look into Paul's character post-Dune, whereas Children of Dune for the most part feels very different without Paul as the central narrative focus. As the title would suggest, the attention in this book is on his children who were born at the end of the previous book, the twins Leto and Ghanima, although the attention goes more towards Leto- particularly so in the latter half as the story progresses towards him confronting the issues that his father was unable to deal with at the end of Messiah. Children is effectively Leto's coming of age story just as Dune was for Paul, but with much different results, and as such it feels like the beginning of a new arc as much as it does a conclusion to Paul's story.

The plot here is better balanced between action and talking/plotting than Messiah was, which I think is partly due to the longer length of Children. I guess a Dune book wouldn't be complete without lots and lots of competing factions and interests and political machinations going down, and there's plenty of that to be had here. Alia's internal conflict as a pre-born "Abomination" serves as one of the driving forces of the events in this book, and combined with Leto's rise to power, it makes for a rather engaging story overall. However, none of the characters really reach up to the same level of depth or interest as Paul did in the previous books, to be honest (although I'm glad Jessica is back, after missing her in the last one). Leto probably comes closest, but his (and Ghanima's) unusually precocious nature as a 9-year-old makes him come across as infinitely more creepy than Alia ever did, and that makes it rather harder to appreciate him as a main character in the same vein as Paul.

In addition, one of the major events in this book doesn't really make much... narrative sense, to me anyway. I won't say what it is for risk of spoiling, but the book claims the presence of foreshadowing in Messiah that I felt was vague enough in that book to potentially have been anything. So when this moment does come, it feels very out of the blue, and from my understanding is part of the reason why some of the other reviewers on goodreads feel that the Dune series went off the deep end with this book. And I can sympathize with that, because to be frankly honest, the manner in which this event resolves most of the of the plot threads in this book and its influence on future ones feels almost like a deus ex machina. If it weren't for my interest in the conflicts themselves, it would've made my eyes roll.

So at the end of it all, I'd say that Children of Dune has a lot of interesting ideas, but as with its predecessor, the execution feels a little off, but in the opposite sense from before. Where Messiah lacked in plot and pacing, it made up for it thematically in its handling of Paul's story arc, whereas conversely Children has a better plot but comes with some questionable design decisions in the story/characters and even in the context of the overall series. As before, I feel like I have to read the next book to really get the overall message here, but to be honest I don't really feel as interested or invested in doing so (or should I say, ugh... more Leto). It'll probably be a long while before I get to next one, if I ever do.