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Fantasy - Cenacle

Harry Potter and The Order of Phoenix

December 22nd 2006 08:44
Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix


The Order of Phoenix is the longest of all Harry Potter series and also its most plotless book. Until Arthur Weasley is attacked in the middle of the novel, nothing much happens.

The problem with this novel is that one comes to it with heavy expectations from the previous one. When Goblet of Fire ends on a rising note that a second war is looming, you strap your belts for action. But in Order of Phoenix, the Second War between Good and Evil may have begun but only a minor battle is fought.


After the incidents in the last novel, Harry is incensed that he is being kept in the dark by his friends about the goings on. Dumbledore had constituted a secret order to fight the resurrected Voldemort but Harry is not allowed in it and just glimpses the action tantalizingly from outside. The Ministry of Magic is at odds with Dumbledore and has sent an odious teacher called Umbridge to take the school from Dumbledore’s control. Harry is the first victim of the plot. Meanwhile, he has been enjoying a psychic connection with Lord Voldemort.

The Umbridge angle is not strong enough to deserve the attention it gets here. Contrast it with the Dumbledore dismissal in the second novel and you will find how overblown the whole episode is. The showcasing of bureaucracy of the Ministry and how it impedes in the conflict is a necessary part of the story but its over-extended too much for our liking.


Rowling took three years to write the novel and perhaps forgot to edit a large portion of it. Also, Rowling has to stagger the Potter-Voldemort confrontation over the next three novels. Since, Goblet of Fire this angle has become the main plot of the novels, depriving therefore from Book Five, each novel of its own separate adventure. Perhaps, to make amends for the sluggish initial portion, Rowling wrote in a heavy-duty climax with jaw-dropping action. But, the denouement is based on our caring for the HP universe and the charcaters in it and not on surprise.

In many ways, Order of Phoenix is a weak novel but it also reveals one reason why so many people take to these books: loneliness. Harry is an orphan, Ron, overshadowed in a large family, Hermione by her own intelligence, Sirius by his inability to transition from adolescence that was brutally cut off—these are all lonely people fighting to survive their loneliness. Just like us who are all imperfect by some artificial standard and therefore lonely. And when we meet the cool people, James and even Sirius in their teens, we are not impressed. That is perhaps the real lesson of the novels: in spite of being a cliché it teaches us to value our inner, real self.

In the early chapters of the novel, we are introduced to a sculpture of the wizard world: a handsome pair of wizard and witch is being worshipfully attended by the other magical creatures. By the end, this sculpture shatters, symbolizing the fissiparious nature of the wizarding world.

The message is quite open-ended depending on how Rowling would approach the problems posed here and to her eternal credit, Rowling does complicate her narrative and the moral compass in her next novel. Therefore, when you come back to it, you can read Order of Phoenix without feeling that you were cheated.
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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

December 21st 2006 08:16
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire


The Goblet of Fire breaks ranks from the earlier Potter novels in many ways: it is the first long novel in the series, the first to feature Voldemort-Potter conflict as the plot mainstay, the first to expand the limited perspective of Hogwarts and give us a wider view of the wizarding world and its politics.

At the beginning, Harry is happy. He gets to watch the Quidditch World Cup with his friends and there is a new tri-wizard tournament at Hogwarts. Harry gets the first jolt when he is selected as one of the champions even though he was underage and didn’t volunteer for it. The tasks are all too big for him and most of the book is about how Harry gets past the tasks, a fragmentary, serial plot that is rather unsatisfactory the first time you read it.

There is a lot going on in the background but that’s not enough to count as a central mystery (which is why I did not like this novel the first time I read it; not being aware of the dynamics of HP world, I couldn’t appreciate half of what’s going on.) Nevertheless, once you are familiar with the HP saga, Goblet of Fire makes for an exciting read.

But, once you go into the climax, the novel picks up amazing speed and depth and this probably is the most well-written climax in the series. For pure action, there is nothing to beat Order of Phoenix, for pathos half-Blood Prince, for complexity Prisoner of Azkaban but for simple well-written drama that makes your veins pop out, nothing can beat Goblet of Fire. As Voldemort is resurrected and the second war begins, you relish the anticipation of it all.

The novel is so long because there are a lot of unnecessary scenes like the Yule ball which add verisimilitude to the HP universe but little else to the plot. Details like these have been plaguing HP novels ever since. Also, Rowling builds up into major paragraphs what she could epigrammatically condense in few words in earlier novels. This takes away the special shiver the brevity of her style produced in the earlier novels. I think Rowling rather cunningly calculated that she had acquired enough fans by novel three that she could depend on them alone and provide a lavish dinner for fan base rather than a sprightly supper for the everyman. That takes away some points from the technical perfection of the novels but it still is a feast for the fans.


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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

December 20th 2006 07:39
Harry Potter and the Prsioner of Azkaban


Among the Harry Potter fans, Prisoner of Azkaban is regularly counted as the best novel in the series to date. I agree that this is the novel that converted me to the series. I had read Goblet of Fire before, which was also the first HP novel I’d read only to see what the fuss was about, but that novel passed over my head. It was only when I read Prsioner of Azkaban that I fell hook, line and sinker to the delights of HP universe.

So, is it the best HP novel? Technically I think Chamber of Secrets was harder to pull off but this book gets the better ratings everywhere because of one word: chemistry. We meet Sirius and Lupin, two of the most engrossing HP characters for the first time and they are nevr again so fascinating and Harry and his friends are at the right stage and age(they are neither too grownup nor too young) and their interaction with the adults has just that right chemistry, which is what makes this novel so satisfying. More than any other HP book, this is a character novel; the entire plot, its symmetries, its surprises are rooted in the characters and because we care about everyone and not just the main trio, the book makes for a majestic reading. Also, it is of right length not suffering from bloatedness as do the latter novels.

A dreaded convict called Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban, the notorious prison. The wizard world is all atwitter and Harry Potter has to put up with extra-cautionary vigils around him because everybody thinks Black is after Potter. Harry is a bit irritated but not really worried. What makes him worry though is his encounter with Dementors, the guards of Azkaban, who suck out happiness and hope from people. Whenever a Dementor is near by, Harry can hear his mum and dad being killed and this makes him pass out, once in a crucial quidditch match. This might mean Harry’s house can’t win the Quidditch Cup, so Harry requests the new Defense Against Dark Arts teacher, Professor Lupin, to teach him how to combat Dementors. Harry also comes to know that Sirius Black is his godfather and had betrayed his parents to Lord Voldemort. Rowling can deliver standout climaxes and Prisoner of Azkaban has the best action at the end.

As I’ve said before, there is a Potter-Voldemort saga outside the novel’s main plot and it is from this book that this saga dovetails more and more into Harry’s yearly adventures until it takes over completely from Order of the Phoenix.

So, is it the best? As a true Harry Potter fan, I do not want to pick and choose between the novels( I've even tried hard to overcome my disappointment sometimes and work on liking the novels)so there, I can't choose. I do not know if it's the best Harry Potter ever but it is Harry Potter and that's enough for me.





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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

December 19th 2006 07:01
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets


When I first read the Chamber of Secrets I was stuck by the form of the novel, a whodunit set in a fantasy landscape. There might be very few other examples of this genre but I haven’t come across any of them and so far, Chamber of Secrets remains insuperable example. I have read the book at least 3 or 4 times since then and every time my appreciation of the technical skill Rowling displayed here only grows more ferocious. It is hard to pull of a satisfactory whodunit in the normal crime genre as it is but, when you create a alternate universe, it should be harder.

One might argue that the alternate universe will give the author a degree of arbitrariness that is not available if the plot were set in “real”world. But Rowling’s creation is not arbitrary and has a finite number of rules on which it depends and there are many conditions which the plot has to meet. The demands on Rowling are more rigorous because this novel is second in the series and has to be consistent with the first novel and not jeopardize the five sequels that were planned.

So, what’s the fuss about? Harry Potter is in his second year at Hogwarts and before going to school is warned by Dobby the house-elf not to go there because a number of dangerous plots are being hatched. Harry goes nevertheless. A number of students, one by one are being petrified( turned to stone) and there are rumours that an ancient monster that had been sleeping in Hogwarts is awakened again. Harry keeps hearing strange murmurs and when the school comes to know that Harry can talk to snakes, he becomes the main suspect. Meanwhile, Harry with his friends Ron and Hermione, hatch an audacious plan to find out who is instigating the attacks. The final denouement is extraordinary and will spoil you forever with anagrams.

Once you reach the end, you realize how perfectly the plot has been cooked. It is clear that there is a parallel saga running, the feud between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort that is the backbone of the series but this novel starts off as a separate adventure but cunningly ends by prefacing the main saga
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Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

December 12th 2006 11:16
It all began here. Lord Voldemort, the most evil wizard of our generation went to Godric’s Hollow to wipe out the Potters He killed Lily and James but their son, the one-year old Harry somehow survived the attack and Lord Voldemort lost his powers and fled. The whole wizard world is happy but little Harry, with a lightning-bolt scar to remember the event, is taken to his Muggle(non-magic people) aunt and uncle and left on their doorstep.

For the next ten years, Harry grows up, rudely treated by the muggles and not knowing who he is until one day he gets a letter of admission from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When the muggles resist sending him to the school, the giant Hagrid comes to the rescue. He not only tells Harry who he is but also takes him through a tour of Diagon Alley where Harry buys an unusual wand an unusual owl for pet. Harry finds out that he has been a left a pile of wizard gold by father.

On the train to Hogwarts, Harry makes friends with Ron Weasley. He also makes enemies with Draco Malfoy. Harry is sorted into a house called Gryffindor and on Haollowe’en, he and Ron save Hermione Granger from a troll. This is their first adventure together, first of many to come and the trio become friends, a unit never to be separated.

But, the Dark Lord who had vanished ten years ago is making desperate attempts to come back and it is up to our trio to stop him.

Harry came fully formed like Athena into J.K.Rowling’s head when she was riding a train. She spent the next few years knowing more about him and his world and then began writing his story in a café as a single mother. When Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone was finally published, we muggles by birth but wizards by heart got to know the remarkable story of Harry Potter.

It all began here.




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The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers

December 8th 2006 08:25
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers

The Stress of Her Regard is the Tim Powers Goddess novel. I do not know if Powers has explicitly followed the Graves single poetic theme but here the White Goddess is a vampire who can be vanquished through appurtenances of Catholic Church. The vampire forms a family called nephelim who include the "Goddesses" all the way upto the Nine Muses, who break into infants at certain times of Hallowe'en and use them as hosts. For the host, the vampire provides out of the world sexual experiences and poetic inspiration. They count as her family but she is ruthless with anyone else.

The novel tracks one Michael Crawford who is a gynaecologist and is about to get married. On a drunken bout the night before his marriage, he mistakenly slips a ring on the finger of statue and gets wedded into the family of the nephelim. The next morning his bride is slashed to pieces and he quickly turns into a fugitive.

Michael's career as a runaway is dovetailed with the lives of Romantic poets: Byron, Shelly and Keats. They are all also in various stages of bondage to the nephelim and Powers uses their poems throughout the novel rather cunningly to add to his gothic vampire adventure.

Coming after The Anubis Gates, the novel is a disappointment. It's plot is more of a escape than a chase and escapes do not grip your attention if what you are escaping from is not a formidable enemy. The vampire here lacks personality and that makes it harder to get involved in the conflict. There are some knockdown scenes full of violence though but Powers' writing strangely lacks erotic charge even when he describes some really decadent acts. All in all, its a graphic but rather a static counterthrust to those matriarchal fantasies.

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The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

December 7th 2006 07:46
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley


The Mists of Avalon is the quintessential Goddess novel and perhaps the most widely read fantasy that accrues to Robert Grave-ish idea of a line of matriarchal goddesses displaced by patriarchal warriors.

Marion Zimmer Bradley is an American author taken in by the British folklore and The Mists of Avalon is her most successful fantasy.. It is a rehash of, what else, Arthurian legends now retold from the viewpoint of Morgaine, Arthur's sister, bedmate and enemy.

Avalon is the magic island of worshippers of the native goddess of Britain which is rapidly disappearing in mists as Britain is taken over by Christianity. Morgaine was raised to be a priestess in Avalon. Unknown to each other, she mates with her own brother Arthur which starts off the novel. He becomes the king of Britain and she a priestess of Avalon and so, they become the protagonists of the supposed battle between Paganism and Chrisitianity.

I did not like the novel too much for its lush desrciptive prose is matched by mechanical plotting and dull characters. It struck me as nothing more than an erotic foursome orgy where everybody sleeps with everybody else. Bradely ends up sex-kitsch trying to imagine the freer, wilder pagan ways. And like Ursuala Le Guin, she is much too constricted by feminist dogma to adequately represent a three-dimensional world.

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Contact by Carl Sagan

November 23rd 2006 09:09
Probably, Carl Sagan was himself a bit doubtful whether what he wrote counts as a novel, so he's added A Novel to Contact, to remind people that his book is supposed to be a novel. Sagan had that popular glamour some science boys seem to acquire and this rubs off on the novel. Otherwise there is plenty little to recommend.

Contact by Carl Sagan


A female astronomer recognizes a signal coming from Vega, the closest star system to earth. This could be the extra-terrestrial signal they were all looking for and it takes ages to decode it but once done, it appears that the aliens want us to build a machine to go visit them and they have sent us the instructions.

The novel details the global hullabaloo that rises over this news and the long painful process of constructing the machine. The woman has male rivals of course and she will be bypassed at every step of the way. But once the offending rival is cleared out of the way by a religious maniac, it is our heroine’s chance to plunge in.

Sagan can’t plot and there are probably as much twists and turns in this novel as there are in a pitchfork. It is at best a quasi-realist speculation on what might happen in the world if we received anything as like SETI. But, once the plunge is made and the heroine steps onto the machine, the novel even ceases to be that. It becomes an elaborate and rather silly epistemological trap for faith issues just as the whole SETI thing might be an elaborate aand rather silly hoax.

I read this novel after I saw the movie and one can only wonder at the pruning job the scriptwriters did. Strictly avoidable.
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The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers

October 30th 2006 05:22
The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers

The siege of Vienna is regularly described as the most significant event in the conflict of Europe against the Ottoman Turks. The war continued for another 16 years but the decisive blow was struck here. When the Turkish army failed here, it marked the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire.

In less academic circles, this event was also romanticised as the turning point in history where the West was able to repel the advance of the East. In more modern times, the clash of civilzations debate has all but colored this event with a backward nostalgia, the kind of victory that has to be repeated when the West feels itself to be under siege once again.

Tim Powers' novel The Drawing of the Dark was written much before any of these debates became urgent matters of the day. It was one his early novels, written before The Anubis Gates, the novel which established him as a leading a voice in science fiction fantasy. Brian Duffy is a middle-aged Irish mercenary, whiling his time away in Vienna. One day he gets entangled in a fight with three aristocratic youths. Wishing to leave the city to avoid any further trouble he jumps at the chance from an enigmatic Aurelianus who offers him the job as a bouncer in a beer club at Vienna. His voyage to Vienna is more eventful than he wished for, filled with parties Bacchic parties and a parade with mythic creatures.

When Brian reaches Vienna, these supernatural encounters become more common. Just as Vienna is the focus of struggle between Turkish armies and the West, there is a spiritual battle going on between Ibrahim, the chief magician of the Orient and Aurelianus. Brian slowly realises that he has to play a more decisive role in this portentous battle.

The novel is basically written in a tongue-in-cheek manner that besets science fiction before nineties. Imagine Irish mercenary called Brian Duffy in the middle of the Viennese siege! Nevertheless, Powers is a master of plotting and his no nonsense, vivid desrciptive style is breath-taking. The moonlit parade of Brian, for instance, is an amazing sequence.

When it was written, this book I am sure could have been read innocuously. With our present climate, it is hard to read it innocently like that. But, for all the unease you might feel, it is undeniable that there is a confrontation, if not an outright clash between East and West and this fantasy written more than 25 years ago, has acquired a sense of uneasy poignancy for our times.

Not to mention the fact that Powers is a great habit to cultivate. To imagine he wrote this book when he was just 25 years old!
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The Shining City by Kate Forsyth

October 11th 2006 05:25
The Shining City by Kate Forsyth
The Shining City is the second book in Rhiannon's Ride series by Kate Forsyth. In the first book, Rhiannon kills a king's soldier during her escape from a Satyricon herd. She then falls into the hands of Lewen's family who decide to take her to the capital city. On the way, Lewen falls in love with her and is certain she will be pardoned.

In the second part, Lucescere is the shining city of the title. Contrary to Lewen's expectations, Rhiannon is not received well in the city. She is treated as a witch and then thrown into a horrible prison. Lewen, though a knight, is helpless in the matter. His own friend Olwynne, is in love with him and brews a love-potion so that he falls in love with her and forgets Rhiannon.

Kate Forsyth Source: Berkley Jove Authors

The matter with the freaky tower of ravens has not been cleared yet and the ruling clan of the shining city has plenty on their hands and they couldn't care less about this wild satyricon girl in their prison. A centuries-old conspiracy is brewing against the kingdom and there is plenty of intrigue but unexpected by everybody, it falls to Rhiannon to save the day.

This book is much better than the first one because, the plot is more interesting. I didn't like the whole Tower of Ravens thing in the first novel which consumes up the entire climax. Here though, Forsyth pulls out many unsuspected plot threads and makes the novel more entertaining. Rhiannon is a gutsy heroine which is another plus point for the series because the other characters are strictly cardboard.

I haven't read the third installment in this series yet nor the other fantasy works of Kate Forsyth. So I can't say for sure how good she actually is. But this series works mainly because of one thing: we watch so much injustice piled up against a beautiful woman and we can't control ourselves, we read on. It's a bit like the old formula of TV soaps. Come to think of it , it's being used even today. Think of Bree in Desperate Housewives. All in all, a good day's fun
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The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

October 6th 2006 08:57
The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers


The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers combines elements of two genres which are least attractive to me: science-fiction and horror. I do not like science-fiction novels becuase the science is always hokey and more often than not they end up moaning endlessly in a queer,dystopian world. I've never tried reading horror books like those written by Stephen King, Lovecraft either. Nevertheless, The Anubis Gates turned out to be a very pleasant surprise.

The novel opens with a vivid scene in which holes are punctured in the fabric of time using Egyptian mythology. In the modern times, Darrow is a businessman whose interests have turned to the occult. When he finds about these gaps in time, he plans getting rich by arranging a series of tours to past designed to meet certain historical figues.

The first planned trip is to meet Coleridge and so he takes Doyle, a Coleridge scholar along with him. Back in 19th century, Doyle is mugged by gypsies and left there. It is hard living out in those hard times and Doyle is conscripted in turn by rival group of beggars. The only bright spot for him is a hope to meet a poet called William Ashbless, whom he was researching back in future.

Meanwhile, London is plagued by a weird wolfman-like creature known as Dog Face Joe who is killing a lot of people, not the least a friend of Ms.Elizabeth Tichy, who will be the future wife of Mr.William Ashbless. Elizabeth is searching for Dog Face Joe in guise of a man, calling herself Jacky and meets Doyle, in one of the beggar slums.

The novel gets progressively more complex from there. The action is frenetic, non-stop and the first part ends on a breath-taking flourish. The second part is a bit slower than the first but concludes only after tying all the loose ends satisfactorily.

I did not like all the ghoulish elements and the novel is chock-full of them but I could still admire the skill by which Powers conjures up distant worlds with minimum effort and maximum speed. Sadly, Powers uses only a little Egyptian Mythology but whatever he takes, he uses it to standout effect. Even though I am not happy with his deterministic world-view, Powers provides for an amzingly complex but well thought-out conception of time.

The Anubis Gates was the second novel of Tim Powers and his first success. It has been reissued in Fantasy Masterworks series and there are few novels in any genre which can beat it for sheer chutzpah.
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Temeraire: Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik

September 30th 2006 08:07
Naomi Novik's Temeraire: Throne of Jade

I am usually a dragnostic and the only dragon novel I read before was Christopher Paolini’s Eragon, the most boring marketing trick in history ever (it almost made me an enemy of free markets). So, you should forgive me if I started reading Naomi Novik’s Temeraire:Throne of Jade with a heart full of scepticism. Aussies are getting better at fantasies and for what its worth, Peter Jackson has optioned these novels. So, in the end I decided to give it a try.

Britain is at war with Napoleonic France, only this time fighting with dragons in their midst. Dragons here are used very much like twentieth-century aircraft and the novel is full of richly detailed air sorties of the kind which will put any second world war novel or movie to shame.

Neutral power China has sent Napolean a dragon egg of a rare breed as a present. The ship was captured by British and when the egg hatched, the dragon called Temeraire was pressed into service. Laurence, a naval officer, was made the officer in the first novel. Here, they are inseparable.

The novel starts with a Chinese delegation coming to London to demand the dragon back. Apparently, in their country dragons are treated like aristocrats and not made mules of war. But, Temeraire and Laurence are so closely bonded that the Chinese prince orders Laurence to China as well. After various adventures on board, we come to know that there is a plot to kill Laurence.

The novel pits sea faring adventures like the novels of Patrick O’Brien with the dragon lore of Anne McCaffrey. It is a dazzling combination, one which works so well because Novik’s imagination is so detailed and picaresque. She just does not imagine how a huge dragon would look like but also the navigational problems of shipping a huge dragon over rough seas, the dynamics of dragon flights and the mechanics of dragon armadas in minute detail. When Temeraire has a cold, the dragon surgeon (yes, there is one) uses a ladder to step down its toothy throat to examine the condition. Its details like that that make this novel irresistible.

Novik uses a Hemingway-like style that is hard to follow in a fictional world and the plot development is a bit weak too. Despite these drawbacks, I urge you to read this superbly entertaining novel without any delay. As for me, I am reading the first novel in the series as soon as I can lay my hands on it.


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The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud

September 23rd 2006 03:00
Jonathan Stroud shamelessly pinches the aura and mystique associated with the name of Samarkand while his novel has nothing to do with it; the amulet in question could have come from anywhere. Like all novels of its kind, it was promoted by the Brotherhood as the antidote to Harry Potter we have been waiting for so long. For once they are true. It is not Harry Potter. Not even close. Nevertheless, Stroud's uneven trilogy of novels starting with The Amulet of Samarkand, is marginally better than those other Harry Potter antidotes that have been thrust on us.

It is nineteenth century London and England is ruled by an aristocracy of magicians. The use of magic for the machinations of the empire is a premise shared by Susanna Clarke, Trudi Canavan and many others. Here, the magician class self-perpetuates by raising orphans and teaching them magic tricks and after they qualify, setting them in the bureaucracy somewhere. The commoners don't stand a chance of course.

Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud


Nathaniel is an orphan brought up in the house of a mediocre magician who does not realize that he has a precocious charge on his hands and gives him a lackadaisical upbringing. Unknown to him, Nathaniel has been learning far more than he could ever imagine. He is not just a precocious boy but an arrogant wretch whose belief in his own powers is beyond hubris.

The novel opens when Nathaniel invokes a djinni called Bartimaeus and bids him to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from a prominent magician. Stroud's magic world is a hybrid combination of Jewish mysticism and alchemy and his spirits, and there are many of them, are actively hostile to humans. The human magicians invoke them from their spirit world and make them do their stuff after spiritually binding them, which the spirits resent. They represent the Other.


Where there are artistocracies, there are subversives trying to undermine them and the novel's heroine Kitty is a member one such ruthless gang which is trying to overthrow the government like all good subversives.


Nathaniel wants the amulet for reasons of his own but he does not know that there is a big conspiracy afoot to seize power , which hinges on this amulet. So, when Bartimaeus goes to steal the amulet, he sets in motion a melee of clashing wills all bent usurping power and the whole thing gets bigger and bigger than Nathaniel had ever imagined in his innocence. But, Nathaniel is made for big things.


Bartimaeus is a cantankerous spirit and Nathaniel an insufferable master and it is their clash of egos that's the most appealing part of the series. Otherwise the rest of the plot is based on the subversive fantasy that by trying hard, the whole house of cards that is called state will come crumbling down. For the fantasy to work the author has to construct the house of cards which can be pulled apart easily by his subversives and it is this premise that nearly undoes the series because the plotting is at once frenetic and messy.


Fortunately, the brashness of young Nathaniel and the rudeness of Bartimaeus save the day
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Brilliance of the moon by Lian Hearn

September 21st 2006 02:46
Brilliance of the Moon by Lian Hearn


Brilliance of the Moon is the third novel of the Tales of Otori trilogy.

Takeo and Kaede are now married and resolved to strengthen their domains, Maruyama and Hagi, respectively. Their marriage has displeased Arai, the most powerful lord in the The Three Countries and Lord Fujiwara who considers Kaede to be betrothed to him. Takeo's claim to Hagi is contested by the cousins of Lord Otori and he has to defeat them to get his inheritance.

Then there is the quaint prophecy that Takeo has to wage five battles, four to win and one to lose. As soon as Takeo sets out for the war, Fujiwara seizes Kaede and forces her into a wedding with him. Fujiwara is a homosexual with a cruel streak towards women and Kaede suffers greatly in his captivity. This part forms probably the most static and boring part of the whole series. On the other side, Takeo suffers huge reverses in his initial battle itself.


The series is based on medieval Japan and the era is romanticized without apology and by the end of the series, Japan’s fateful encounter with the modern world is also depicted.

But, the novels also refrain from making any kind of negative judgements about the end of the era and do not cast a mournful backward glance like The Last Samurai did. That adds to their already considerable appeal.

Lian Hearn writes a spare and unassuming prose but still manages to evoke the lush beauty of the landscape. It is a risky business because sometimes the prose feels too flat but for most of the time, she gets away with it.

The three novels all have intricate plots and plentiful action and all of them suffer from a lame climax. I don't have anything else to pick on except for those climaxes. They hugely readable and I finished the entire series in one week.

All in all, for sheer entertainment, Lian Hearn's creation is one of the best in the fantasy genre ever. And I have read somewhere that she is going to continue the series with more novels, which is good news.



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