Lynda Reads

Old Men, Smoking

2007-12-21T07:10:00.000-08:00

Came across the poem "Old Men, Smoking" while googling for Sandra Kasturi and had to say something about it. I found it on the ARC Poetry website in a 2005 review by John Barton . The poem describes the interior world view of the men through exterior details - tells a story in images. I love the way Kasturi makes lovely language reveal hard realities and then lets it stand, naked, in this poem: admiring the "guileless crocodiles" who steady the "tilting world" even while exposing their ugliness, like an object and a disease "humming in the voices of God". Just wow.

Chasing the Bard by Philippa Ballantine

2007-12-13T08:41:00.000-08:00

I picked this book up at a con in the spirit of sampling works on my publisher's table. (Dragonmoon Press is now part of Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. I'm published by Edge.) I've read a couple other fantasies from Dragonmoon Press which were competent and interesting enough to finish, but this is the first of three I have felt the urge to blog about. So - why did I like Chasing the Bard? For characters like Puck and Anne and Oberon, I think, although Sive and Will himself are the main protagonists. I suspect Sive is Ballantine's invention. A quick google for "Sive" turned up references to an Irish play by John B. Keane and a bunch of acronyms from various industries and adding "Oberon" yields hits from the software industry, not mythology. Sive is Oberon's smarter, tougher sister in the novel and the savior of her kind from the evil machinations of her ex-boyfriend, Mordant. For this she needs to woo Will Shakespeare for magical reasons which play out over his lifetime. I recently did a course on Renaissance literature which featured Shakespeare, so perhaps the interweaving of the bard's story with faery was another reason I enjoyed the book. Readers are idiosyncratic creatures, after all, who respond to what an author offers based on what they have already laid down as a foundation in their own brains. As villains go, Mordant was predictably vile and mindlessly destructive. He is given a little scope by his back story, but not much is made of his betrayal of his former nature. Everyone important seems to grasp, from the start, that he is possessed by the story's god of chaos, the "unmaker". The lively interactions of characters from faery with the world of mortals is the fun part of the story. Ballantine?s portrayal of multiple universes bridged by fey immortals reminded me of Martha Wells? book, Elements of Fire. I suspect anyone who liked one of these books might find the similarities and differences interesting. Both feature a powerful female misfit from faery-land whose alliance with a mortal is critical to beating the bad guys.

Princes of the Golden Cage by Nathalie Mallet

2007-09-03T07:44:00.001-07:00

Nathalie Mallet sets up the problems faced by her hero, Prince Amir, on the very first page of her lively novel, The Princes of the Golden Cage. From that point on, she artfully entwines a mystery with a journey of self-discovery that includes a motivating love interest on the side. The characters are individuals from the start, and the tale beguiles the reader with a story-telling armoury drawn from the best tradition of secret passages, hidden identities, supernatural thrills and dramatic combat.

At the center of the story is Prince Amir, a decent young man despite his life?s alarming circumstances who longs to survive the struggle among his brothers over who will succeed their father as sultan so he can fulfill his dream of exploring the world beyond. Unfortunately for Amir, he has over two hundred brothers and must live with them inside the confines of a palace governed by formal rules of combat and gangs led by stronger contenders for the throne than himself. His strategy has been to trust no one and disguise his own strengths in the hope of escaping notice but this, too, his risky because his loneliness and isolation can pitch him into periods of hopelessness. At the start of the novel, his only companions are two mentally ill brothers and his precious books.

Amir?s very reputation as a reclusive scholar gets him drawn into investigating the eerie deaths of his brothers when some supernatural evil begins to harvest them once a month when the moon is full. In the process, he makes the acquaintance of an eccentric but friendly brother named Erik who turns out to be much more important than Amir thought. Because of Erik, Amir becomes embroiled in the struggle for the throne, like it or not, and entangled in the schemes of powerful women, including the beautiful and well-educated princess intended for whoever wins the throne. Politics and personal desires create good chemistry for action with high stakes, emotionally.

The setting in which the novel takes place has a charm of its own. The insider view of life as a surplus prince is plumped out with stolen glimpses of the harem and tales of the past that haunt the present. But Amir himself is definitely the best part of the book. Impelled to act by circumstances and leery of his own better impulses, he betrays a good heart through his choices and his thirst for friendship. His moody hours are easy to identify with and his fear of betrayal is completely understandable even though it can seem peevish at times. His flaws make him human and his misconceptions inject humour. Amir is fundamentally an optimist, game to carry on with whatever comes his way and bold enough to brazen his way through the rough spots. I look forward to seeing him in print again.

The Princes of the Golden Cage is a rewarding read for anyone with a taste for historically based fantasy, a supernatural mystery or just a fondness for charmingly flawed, heroic characters struggling to find their way in life. It is suitable for readers of any age sophisticated enough to understand the historical setting and young enough at heart to enjoy evil genies and a bit of sword play.

According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge

2007-08-05T17:28:00.000-07:00

I picked up According to Queeney for $5.00 as a remaindered book for the prospect of an historically plausible glimpse of Dr. Johnson, an eccentric whose dictionary made him an icon of his era and beyond. I bogged down a bit in the middle and wasn't sure I would review it here as a book that touched me in a special way, but I found myself thinking about the characters and wondering how I would feel about the opening that frames the story after I had finished the book and re-read the beginning which is actually the end. It has the power to make the reader share the lives of the historical characters within its covers in an intimate way that left me with two lasting impressions of note: how human legends really are, and how sad it is that genius of Johnson's kind would be lost in the modern world. Telling the story "according to Queeny" placed the point of view solidly on the sidelines, in the hands of someone unimportant to historians but as much a person with her own goals as anyone who makes it into Who's Who, for whom the great man was both a very real person who was a long-term friend of the family, as worthy of both criticism and compassion as her mother or other family friends, and a bit of a bother to a young girl with little person interest in him. Perhaps I, like Dr. Johnson, was suffering a bit of a depression when I put the book aside, temporarily. I am glad I completed the journey.

The Steam Magnate by Dana Copithorne

2007-07-10T04:39:00.000-07:00

The city of broken glass is the central character of Dana Copithorne?s novel The Steam Magnate. Protagonists Kyra and Eson, and later Jado the inventor, play out their parts in the arms of a dreamlike world of lost knowledge and serene days filled with filtered light and settings presented one by one like paintings in a gallery. The reader determined to have a love story or a tale of intrigue surrounding power will be tantalized but might be ultimately disappointed by the way conflicts wash away before the greater significance of mood and setting, but the eerie feeling of having visited a unique place with deep secrets will stay with the reader when the book is finished.

The Steam Magnate?s strengths lie in the pictures it creates in the reader?s head filled with brooding undertows and the haunting impression of lives trapped in amber. The featured line drawings enhance the effect. I sometimes paused to study an illustration until I felt satisfied and then reread the scene it described before continuing with the next chapter. It would be a mistake to read The Steam Magnate with too much urgency.

Drama, in the book, is vested in marvellous details rather than events in the lives of the characters. It is ultimately not very important, for example, why Kyra comes to the Glass City to meet Eson or that he originally mistook her for another woman named Sarah. It is not clear whether Eson?s entrepreneurial endeavours, with Jado, is ultimately successful or desirable. And although the characters intertwine, each is profoundly alone to the very end where Eson and Kyra are parted. Important questions are resolved in introspective solitude. I was fond of the use of letters as bridging instruments in this internal dialogue, sometimes answering questions left unanswered from the earlier part of the novel. The letters span time and place like artefacts of communication that create a false sense of certainty about slippery relationships.

Science is a shadowy spectre in the world of The Steam Magnate. Its power is nodded at occasionally in items like the fantastical vision bird explained as a product of lost craft from an earlier era, but the feel of Copithorne?s realm is magical although the magic might be understood as a metaphorical cipher for real phenomenon. Eson?s power over his debtors, for example, is bound up in potent documents it is easy to interpret as legal ones that drain their victims of vitality. His attempts to profit from nature, first through steam power and later through attempts to harness the might of the ocean in the city of Rising Waters, parallels the exploitation of natural resources to create wealth in the mundane world. But whatever the deeper significance of the magical functions and objects in The Steam Magnate, they wind through the book?s gently flowing plot like bright ribbons.

In one sense, The Steam Magnate is a book about how we succeed and fail to connect with each other as spiritual beings with hopes, secrets and aspirations, but its unique charm is in the interplay between these and the settings in which they take place. Place and personality interact in the search for identity. Jado the inventor sums it up well in the following passage:

The places Jado knew had been the settings of stories he had heard all his life. When he was a child, the stories were of heroes and thieves, ghosts and angels. As he got older he was told other stories that changed his view of each spatial reference point. Sunlight Appears Only at Dusk was at first a ghost tale, a place where one must be fearful for his soul when walking past. Later, Jado learned it was also a place where some of his past relatives had been arrested and taken away on false grounds a hundred years earlier. So the place took on a different meaning, and his sense of identity sharpened.

Anyone nimble-minded enough to appreciate the bleed of spirit between character and setting, history and present, will find The Steam Magnate an interesting meditation.

Element of Fire by Martha Wells

2007-01-21T10:01:00.000-08:00

This is the first book I have stayed up all night to finish in a long time. It happened over the Xmas holidays which made the extravagance possible, but I would have been captivated by the characters and situations of Wells' novel even in the middle of the busiest of weeks. Wells achieves a fantasy setting with enough historical realism to retain the interest of the older, more cynical reader who would like to experience the joy of once more sympathizing whole-heartedly with worthwhile characters. I worried she was going to crush my revived joy in the noble and heroic just enough to be unable to sleep without finding out what happens to the gallant, jaded Thomas and the brash young mortal-fairy hybrid Kade Carrion who begins the tale as a problem for Thomas, the captain of the Queen's guard, but becomes the answer to more than he'd bargained for. Thomas' relationship with the dowager queen and the character of Ravenna herself weave a rewarding counterpoint to the growing entanglement of Thomas and Kade, keeping the story grounded in politics that reminded me of bits and pieces of European history surrounding royal families, their favorites, scheming courtiers, and interminable struggles for dominance with other powers. Students of literature and folklore will likewise enjoy Wells' portrayal of fairy, which cleverly incorporates both the 'ugly and evil' view of fairy-kind based on medieval legend and the 'beautiful but inhumanly cold' alternative, with Kade knocking around all realms as a misfit in every one.

I highly recommend the tale to intelligent readers, young and old, who like to cheer for deserving, if imperfect, good guys and experience the senory pleasures of a romp through an enchanted land.

Element of Fire by Martha Wells was originally released by Tor in 1993. I reviewed the 2006 edition re-released by the author after a tidy-up edit in order to keep the book accessible in print. Cover design for the 2006 edition is by M. Wilson with typesetting by Katya Loney.

PS for a map of the palace to let you locate characters in scenes as they unfold, see Palace of Vienne in the Ile-Rien on Wells' website.

Rarity From a Hollow by Robert Eggleton

2006-11-10T07:32:00.000-08:00

"Knowing everything doesn't mean that a person has a true answer to an actual question."

Lacy Dawn (character)

Intrigued by what I've glimpsed of Rarity From a Hollow by Robert Eggleton and especially liked the quote, above, from the free online sample of the book. Owe a few reviews to others that will keep me busy until Xmas, so I'm blogging an expression of interest for the time being.

Homepage of Theresa Crater

2006-11-03T11:27:00.000-08:00

Just started reading Under the Stone Paw by Theresa Crater, which was sent to me for review, and surfed to her homepage. Very classy. Loved the picture and the clean, simple functionality of the choices. (Oh, how badly doth the Okal Rel Universe website, of mine, need to be re-vamped to move the background material, er, well, into the background. Maybe next year.)

Attributes of a Goddess

2006-10-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

I've never been one for inspirational pop psychology on how to fix your life or get in touch with your inner whatever-it-might-be, but I recommend Denise Torgerson's Attributes of a Goddess with pleasure. It is fun to read and well crafted. The sense of a personality behind her descriptions of how to get in tune with your inner goddess is a playful and unpretentious one, making it easy to take what works for you and stand clear from those aspects of Torgerson's philosophy that do not fit with your own. In a world full of desperate competition for diminishing resources, Attributes of a Goddess breaths with the graceful wisdom of being satisfied with less than everything, so long as the journey taken is a true one. Organized into fifty-two short passages, for consumption at a rate of one a week, the book can easily be sorted or shuffled to suit a reader's fancy as required. I take a few pages with me on trips to remind me to open my eyes and my heart and laugh at myself with affectionate humor from time to time, because goddesses need a good sense of humor as well as the strength to walk among "the small ones" without losing their own, vital spark. Attributes of a Goddess is an e-book. It may be purchased online at http://www.attributesofagoddess.com/.

Kynship by Daniel Heath Justice

2006-09-04T08:28:00.000-07:00

Daniel Heath Justice's Kynship blends mythic traditions of North American natives and medieval Europeans in a magical re-telling of the archetypal conflict between those who belong to the land and the avaricious rapine of invaders. The story plays out against a cultural mosaic complex enough to cover the problems of half-breeds and misfits as well as each culture's exemplars. Told from multiple points of view, the first book of this three part series succeeds in making readers care about the characters, particularly the cheerful and self-assured "pixie" (Tetawi), Tobhi, who becomes an emotional focus for many of the large cast of colourful characters. I was fortunate to have this book brought to my attention by Renee K. Abram, the Publishing Coordinator its publisher, Kegedonce Press, and to get a sneak peek at book two in the series, as well. I recommend it to readers who like their good and evil well defined but human enough to entertain, and all who have longed to cheer for nature and the bonds of community in the struggle against an alienating and avaricious lust for progress that is really all about amassing power. The sensory stalks of the 3-gendered Kyn, interspersed histories of the gods, many races of unhumans, charming illustrations of the characters throughout the book, unexpected connections between characters, handy glossary and many other details and touches contribute to the story's richness and originality.

Peony by Pearl S. Buck

2006-08-21T17:17:00.000-07:00

I and my family recently stayed with my publisher, Brian Hades, who invited us to help ourselves to the paperbacks lining the walls of his basement, as he is planning to clear them out soon to make way for rennovations. My daughter, Jennifer, took home a big load. I confined myself to about ten. Well, maybe twenty. The first one I read was old and dry that pages fell out as soon as they were turned, so I wandered around Heritage Park, in Calgary, periodically discarding pages of an Agatha Christie novel in waste bins. The second one I read is the jewel that inspired this blog entry: Peony by Pearl S. Buck, written in 1948 and still delightful.

The Air Loom Gang by Mike Jay

2006-06-14T05:37:00.000-07:00

The Air Loom Gang is a strange and compelling tale, blending the history of madness in England with the social upheaval leading up to the French Revolution. Author Mike Jay also traces threads from the "Air Loom" of his subject, James Tilly Matthews, forward and backward in time, concluding with a look at its descendants as spun from the imaginations of more recent madmen. But the story's real power lies in the personality of Matthews, himself, a madman who was half right; a husband who was much loved, and a patient with more popular appeal than the doctor who used him to achieve fame. The book is a unique piece of social history: part biography of a remarkable human being and part detective story.

Prisoners Under Glass

2006-03-30T19:02:00.000-08:00

Rachel's adventures evading the wicked Lilah and her people-shrinking mother, engaged me and my eleven year old daughter, Tegan, for many pleasant nights of bedtime reading. We had a bit of a hard time believing in the scale of things (literally), in a climactic scene but that, itself, was cause for discussion, and the emotions all worked even if the physical proportions were dubious. This is a book you can laugh out loud with as you read, and shed a tear over as well for the sake of the heroine's sorrows. I stress the shared enjoyment factor because R. Patrick's book has plenty of punch and quick developments that are ideal for a chapter-a-night affair. I recommend it to all mothers and other adults looking for a good read to share with the reluctant (or voracious) reader in their lives, and for all those who are young at heart whatever the number of candles on their cake, next birthday. My daughter and I particularly enjoyed the astonishing transformations, the sparkling imagery and the humorous dialogue. Tegan's favourites were the colourful supporting cast of characters, who each had their own unique voice, quirks and personal growth challenge to overcome. We also have a new family saying, delivered in an over-the-top Italian accent: "The size of a chilli pepper!"

Copenhagen at the Prince George Playhouse

2006-03-22T06:52:00.000-08:00

I don't know how to thank Sue Murguly properly for her production of Michael Frayn's brilliant play, Copenhagen, at the Prince George Playhouse March 9 to March 28, 2006. I will have to settle for telling her and and her accomplished cast that I have never seen a local production of a more difficult and important play executed as professionally as her Copenhagen. The last one I saw in Prince George that made a comparable impact on me was Michael Armstrong's original, two-person production of his play In Their Nightgowns, Dancing, and for some of the same reasons. Both plays use language and a complex interplay of time and perspective to get at concerns as profound as the atrocities of war, and as personal as a friendship. In talking with Sue Murguly, during the run, I discovered that she offered Copenhagen in the full knowledge that it would not be a box office hit. No matter how well staged, the play is demanding and its subject matter threatening. Not once, but through a multiplicity of possible realities, we see how the decisions of a few individuals could make the world end, and for reasons even they can never clarify entirely although they are the most intelligent -- if not the wisest -- of men. We seem to be in the mood for ligher fare. Ironically, the more densely packed the action and violence in our entertainment, the less able we seem to take it seriously as a threat to civilization as we know it, and perhaps even to life on Earth. It is almost as if the game-player who blows up worlds a dozen times a game is innoculating himself against the terror of the real thing by making it surreal. If so, we need more producer-directors like Sue Murguly to bring us down to Earth. If only we could get more people into theatres to see plays like hers.

Wasps at the Speed of Sound

2006-02-13T21:38:00.000-08:00

Derryl Murphy's first collection of short stories has a great name: Wasps at the Speed of Sound. The stories measure up to the bizarre image. Things are just wrong in these stories, but we come upon them in media res, with the characters taking them in stride. Dodging wasps that can drill through the front porch is the sort of thing that Murphy's characters expect to get through on a bad day. Although the situations in most of the stories are bleak, the characters face them with a jaunty sort of fatalism that keeps them in action to the final sentence, occasionally terminating in a happy ending for the protagonist, at least, if not our planet. Earth gets done in often enough, in the book, to satisfy a whole choir of doomsayers, but the reader is insulated from the impact by the brash indifference of the often-jaded characters, making it bearable. Sharp bits still sting, now and then; where they poke through the superficial callousness: like the well-televised demise of the last lemur, interesting enough to draw an alien to observe it, but still not enough to make us wise up and stop trashing our irreplaceable inheritance. Murphy's stories are a strange collection of barbed allsorts, that won't please all palettes, but come in an interesting selection of flavors with tart twists to please jaded taste buds.

Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold

2005-11-30T20:18:00.000-08:00

I didn't think I was going to like Paladin of Souls at first. I remember having the same reaction to The Curse of Chalion, because it wasn't a Vorkosigan tale, but found I enjoyed it greatly by the time all the characters and conflicts were established. In the case of Paladin of Souls, I found the first few chapters a bit irritating for the sake of the extended traveling-the-countryside business so typical of fantasy novels, and the main character's "I'm resentful about everything" attitude. Not that Ista didn't have cause for her resentment, but her life seemed to be one long rejection of everything and everyone about her, which made it a bit hard to warm up to her until she conceived a liking for the lively Liss, the female courier. But I grump only because I am so very glad I didn't give up prematurely. I picked the book up again, after a six month hiatus, and read the last 3/4's in every spare minute available to me. It has been a long time since I lost myself so pleasurably in a fantasy! Thank you, Lois McMaster Bujold, for a great read, great characters, a moving story and further development of the ingenious system of magic wrapped up in the nefarious ways of the five gods of Chalion. The book deserves its hugo and I hope Bujold has many more in her!

Love's Body, Dancing in Time by L. Timmel Duchamp

2005-10-19T03:00:00.000-07:00

Duchamp's intelligent tales of otherworldly experience are literary science fiction that is hard-hitting with a velvet glove. She paints disturbing images in lovely words. Sexual distress underlies most of the stories, but is handled uniquely in each case, revealing just how complex a thing human sexuality really is.

The first story, "Dance at the Edge", features an obsession with a loved one, but its special significance lies more in the idea of "the edge", itself, as a concrete analogy for that ineffable something that spell binds those few blessed (or cursed) to perceive it when others do not. "The Apprenticeship of Isabetta di Pietro Cavazzi" and "The Heloise Archive" are empowering stories of women overcoming their exploitation by lovers through their own, intrinsic superiority, expressed in deep and subtle ways. "The Gift" is a beautifully ambiguous look at suppressed sexuality, couched in a cleverly drawn portrayal of a gender role reversal in which the worldly interloper who perturbs a flawed paradise is female, and the innocent she seeks to liberate is male.

A minor quibble concerns the length, or perhaps the amount of repetition, in "The Heloise Archive", however authentic the voice for the historical setting and the vehicle of telling the story through letters. I rather enjoyed the footnotes, however, and the arc of the whole tale.

Over all, I agree with Samuel R. Delany's endorsement of Duchamp's work: her stories "elicit the thrill of ideas struggling to manifest as pure drama". I recommend them to any reader with an interest in sexual excesses and limitations, who values a painful and humanizing treatment of subjects that might otherwise be merely titillating.

Commander's Log, Craig Bowlsby

2005-09-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

Delighted to see Commander's Log continue with a new episode in 2005!

In an era when special effects dominate too many weak scripts, in blockbuster productions, Bowlsby proves that good writing and good acting lie at the heart of comedy.

The early episodes remain my favorites, for sheer audacity and originality, although Bowlsby ramps up the action in episode three with typical zany charm, while managing to remain loyal to the laundry squad roots of his heros as they fight a bitter electrion campaign against the arch villain Bastaard. The best moment in the new format episode, for me, is the one where both candidates woe a voter with promises, our hero running on the clean socks campaign. The best episode, all around, has to be the one that features Blather alone in the command center, played against an ingenious counterpoint of screen alerts.

(I look forward to the next complication. Perhaps our heros will become covetous of status, take a teach-yourself course on being real officers, and struggle to keep their lowly roots and shallow qualifications from showing in their discourse on engineers at fashionable crew events.)

Reviewing Site Finds

2005-08-28T14:29:00.000-07:00

Discovered two interesting review sites this week that restore dignity to the deserving among the ranks of unpublished or POD published writers, while exercising standards and discrimination. If the future of publishing is for weeding to take place via post-publication selection, rather than via pre-publishing screening, then people like POD-girl and Torgo of Honest Critiques may be the avant-garde of a new phenomenon. (If I was a betting animal, my money would go on "some of each" for the future of publishing. That is, traditional publishing will remain a major player but there will be increasing scope for alternative routes to respectability.)

POD-dy Mouth POD-girl is a published author who started reading POD books in quest of the ultimate bad novel...and was surprised to discover some good ones. Her blog is devoted to giving those unexpected jewels more exposure.

Honest Critiques Discovered by my friend Virginia O'Dine, who is a member of the NorSpec Writers Group in which I take part, this site reviews whatever authors wish to send in, for good or ill.

Sandinista by Marie Jakober

2005-08-19T08:19:00.000-07:00

It is a testament to the power of Marie Jakober's Sandinista, that I remember it so well, years after reading it for the first time. It made me miss a bus. I was visiting Alison Sinclair, in Calgary, at the time. Never good at navigating, my wanderings landed me in a fast food restaurant, about noon, where I settled down to read after reassuring myself that I knew which bus to catch, when, in order to get back to Alison's apartment that night. But I became so engrossed in Sandinista that I failed to look up until I finished the last page, hours later. I had not even noticed the young man sweeping up around me with a hopeful air of expectation that I might leave.

The magic of Sandinista lives in the weave of the very human lives that Jakober uses to tell the story of a painful time in history, with her usual gift for embedding people in the circumstances and setting of her novels.

The Concubine's Children by Denise Chong

2005-07-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

Denise Chong achieves magic with her very human portrayal of her two, extraordinary grandparents, and the generational fall out of their roots in the "old world". It is seldom any author can reveal both the courage and failings of subjects with such generous objectivity. The fact that the story she tells of May-ying and Chan Sam was one that defined the warp and weave of her mother's life, penetrating into her own, makes it even more impressive. Adding the parallel life of the family in China creates an eerie, almost supernatural overlay that proves to be surprisingly real when the author and her mother brave the journey to discover the side of the family to whom they are the legends.

The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson

2005-05-22T17:54:00.000-07:00

The 'salt roads' of this novel's title are the blood, sweat and tears of Ezili's people as they struggle against prejudice and slavery to achieve fulfillment in their lives. Three women are featured, separated by centuries and geography, but united by the touch of a troubled goddess. Ezili is both powerful and helpless. She is a force without a will, and then a will without the freedom to act. Over the course of the novel, the heroines age as the goddess grows up.

A key moment, for Ezili, is the scene in which she clashes, through the agency of of one of the women, with a rival god bent on reckless violence. But for the most part, Ezili knows no more about who and what she is than the reader does, and the richness of the novel is derived from the life experience of its protagonists. Whether or not the thematic aspects achieve a satisfactory chord for the reader, the crisp characterizations and historical details surly will.

The Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay

2005-05-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

I found The Last Light of the Sun a somewhat grimmer story than most of Kay's wonderfully emotive sagas, but still completely enjoyable although I don't think I would rate it as my favorite of his books. Kay's quasi-historical settings were delicious, as usual, and the fairy world elements of the story were cool, other-worldly and mysterious. The book is a "slice of life saga", skillfully tackled from multiple viewpoints. As always with Kay's books, I was sorry when I found I was done.

The Ghosts Behind Him

2005-04-09T07:47:00.000-07:00

Bruce wanted his book of poems to be called The Ghosts Behind Things. His mother, author Doris Ray, does not say so explicitly, but I am sure that is why she named the book she wrote about their family's struggle with his schizophrenia, The Ghosts Behind Him.

The story she tells is a touching, often gripping, chronicle of her own attempts to come to terms with her son's illness, in the midst of a life that embraces not only Bruce but a large and complex extended family with a committment to literary pursuits that permeats their everyday lives, and inspires an open-minded quest for meaning wherever it is offered.

Anyone suffering through similiar turmoil will find an unadorned courage in this book, as well as friends with human failings, who survive tragedy and negotiate, repeatedly, with new hope. Anyone who can't imagine what it would be like to have a loved one who suffers from a disabling and personality-altering mental illness, can find out, in Ray's book.

As a last thought, I would like to commend Bruce Ray, himself, for believing in literature enough to support his mother's work with his cooperation.

Interview with Nalo Hopkinson

2005-03-28T13:29:00.000-08:00

Nalo Hopkinson, Interviewed by Lynda: Williams Dec 7, 2004

[Full Transcript]

Summary

Nalo Hopkinson read at Mosquito Books, in Prince George, B.C., on Dec 7, 2004, at the invitation of Dr. Robert Budde of the UNBC English program. She was interviewed about her writing earlier that day by fellow author Lynda Williams, who runs the web development lab at the Centre for Teaching and Learning at UNBC. Pictures were taken at Nalo's reading, on the evening of Dec 7.

Nalo read from her Christmas story, "A Young Candy Daughter", donated as a benefit for the Caribbean hurricane relief fund, as well as her critically acclaimed novel, The Salt Roads and other works.

Transcription by Amanda DaSilva.