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"A Discovery of Witches" by Deborah Harkness

2/26/2014

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Title: A Discovery of Witches
Author: Deborah Harkness
Genre: Fantasy
# pages: 579
Date published: 2011
5-star rating: 3 stars
Would you recommend it: No



When I began this book, I expected a light fantasy read with a lot of magic and mystery. The premise is not unique, but it seemed exciting enough: the story revolves around Diana Bishop, an academic doubling as a repressed witch, who rejects her powerful magic and background in favor of a normal, mundane life. She’s studying in an Oxford library when she accidentally summons forth a mysterious, long-lost magical text of great importance to the supernatural community (which not only includes witches, but also daemons and vampires). Suddenly her world is thrown into chaos when every supernatural being is drawn to her, wanting the manuscript. This includes a benign vampire and geneticist named Matthew, who says he has her best interests at heart and proceeds to follow her around.

                   There were a lot of elements of A Discovery of Witches that I enjoyed. For instance, the mythology of the supernatural beings was well fleshed-out and I especially liked the daemons (extremely creative beings with unstable personalities.) I also generally appreciated the writing style, especially the beautiful descriptions of the locations throughout the novel, Oxford being just one of several. The novel was also very easy to get into and despite the length (a hefty 579 pages), the plot was fast enough and the emotional shocks frequent enough that I didn’t find myself growing bored.

                   However, at its core this book is a paranormal romance between Matthew and Diana, and while I really enjoyed the mythos and plot the author created, I just couldn’t get over how unrealistic and even degrading the romantic aspect was. In the beginning of the novel, Diana is established as a fairly capable, intelligent protagonist rife with internal conflict. I found her likeable and complex. However, her character seemed to crumble when Matthew is introduced. In a matter of pages I went from reading something akin to The Da Vinci Code to something eerily similar to Twilight. Matthew seems too perfect in some ways – intelligent, rich, cultured, physically good-looking – and in others severely messed up –stalker tendencies, temperamental, controlling. Diana, who had initially seemed a solid character, crumbles into a dependent mess as the book progresses. And I tried to be fine with this development, because not every character has to be flawless or strong, but it’s hard to enjoy a story in which a dependent romance is so idolized.

                   Overall, I found this novel disappointing. Its premise, initial character construction, scenery and overarching sense of mystery drew me in and I was expecting a light, but entertaining read. However, the poor romance and aggravating characters prevented me from truly enjoying it. I would only recommend it if you happen to have a long-stretch of time with nothing to do or maybe as a beach-read. Anyway, I’ve finally learned my lesson: from now on, if there are any vampires in the books I’m reading, they’re going to be snarling, corrupt creatures of the night with not a sparkle or a charming smile in sight.


 Review by Julia Walker, A&S '16


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"The Eyre Affair" by Jasper Fforde

12/2/2013

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Title: The Eyre Affair
Author: Jasper Fforde
# pages: 374
Date Published: 2001
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Recommend: Yes

            The Eyre Affair takes us to an alternate-universe England, a place where everyday life offers everything from reverse genetic-engineering to time travel and classic literature is the focus of pop culture. Thursday Next, the novel’s protagonist, is an agent for Litera Tec, a branch of the British government that handles crimes literature-related crimes: everything from high-scale Shakespeare forgeries to black-market poetry-trafficking. In the world of Thursday Next, people are very serious about their literary works.

            Unfortunately for Litera Tec, the antagonist of the novel, Acheron Hades, acquires a new technology and begins dragging fictional characters out of their respective novels and into the “real world” (or the world of The Eyre Affair), including Jane Eyre, as suggested by Fforde’s title.

            On the most basic level, The Eyre Affair is a book about books. But it is so much more than that, spanning several genres, including mystery, thriller, science-fiction and humor, all while retaining a constant ingenuity.

            For instance, the world building in this book is phenomenal. Fforde creates a setting that is at once familiar and foreign, weaving together twisted references to literary, historical and pop culture in our world with the small, odd details of his alternate England to create a unique sense of place. For example, the Crimean War plays a much larger role in the world of The Eyre Affair than it did in real life and the main protagonist’s pet is a re-engineered Dodo bird.

However, these various parts fit together well and, as a person who loves reading, it was both surprising and gratifying to see a world in which the theft of first-edition prose or the appearance of a new play by a famous playwright is an issue of national importance.

            The Eyre Affair does take a lot of effort on the part of the reader. Fforde’s frequent references to historical people, events and literary works left me baffled at first. For instance, when he brought up Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens, I felt I actually had to go look up a plot summary of that book to fully understand the happenings of The Eyre Affair. I then found myself repeating this brief research every five pages or so. While I might have been able to simply skim over the references, much of the novel’s meaning would have been lost, and I wouldn’t have fully followed or appreciated it. Therefore, while The Eyre Affair can take some time and devotion to read, it proves itself well worth the effort.





Review by Julia Walker, A&S '16

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"Sometimes a Great Notion" by Ken Kensy

12/2/2013

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Title:  Sometimes a Great Notion
Author:  Ken Kesey
# pages:  715
Date published: 1964
Stars: 5 out of 5
Would you recommend it? Yes

“Sometimes I live in the country
Sometimes I live in town
Sometimes I have a great notion
To jump into the river and drown”

These are the lines that Ken Kesey uses as an introduction in his fantastic 1964 novel Sometimes a Great Nation. Lines from a song by Lead Belly, they work as a concise summary of the novel as well as an opening into its themes.

Although the work tells of logging community in Oregon, the river surrounding the town is what drives the narrative forward. As we see a family of loggers take over, the only force that seems to have any effect on them is the river. This novel is far more realistic than Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but the character of the river is so vivid and almost visceral that it is hard not be captivated by Kesey’s descriptions: the river becomes a character itself.

In spite of this easily discernable, straightforward plot, in which a family founds a logging community and one of its members seeks revenge against his brother, whom he sees as representative of everything wrong about the community, this plot is secondary to the description of the river, to the way that the description of the town and the town’s surroundings engulf the narrative. At certain moments, the characters’ physical experiences are more important than their emotional development. When one of them swims in the river, for instance, Kesey focuses on the water against his skin.

Overall, Sometimes a Great Nation is a fantastic book and definitely recommended for anyone who likes a good (but long) read. 



Review by Michael Solah, A&S '16

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"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams

11/11/2013

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Title: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Author: Douglas Adams
# pages: 224
Date published: 1979
5-star rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Would you recommend it:  Yes

            In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, homebody Arthur Dent is rescued from the planet Earth seconds before it is demolished by a race of vicious, bureaucratic aliens, in order to make space for an inter-galactic freeway. And so the novel begins, with Earth and almost all of humanity destroyed. The two main characters, Arthur and his alien savior Ford Prefect, are sent into outer space where they end up on a spaceship with an eccentric President of the Galaxy, a human girl Arthur once met at a party and a very depressed robot.

            It would be a shaky, even depressing plot if not for Douglas Adams’s writing style. The surrealist humor Adams employs, with its creativity and witticism, reminded me of Monte Python; although everything is turned upside-down, the humor still works. In these pages you can find everything from an infinitely useful translating fish to the answer to the meaning of life; each is treated in the same, ingenious way. While this work is science fiction, the style of writing and the light content sets it apart from most other literature in the genre. You need not necessarily like science fiction to enjoy this book. It’s also a fairly quick read, though at times the author’s habit of going off on mini-tangents about certain topics in his “universe,” to further the humor, can be a little distracting.

            Overall, though, I definitely recommend The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s a light, humorous, extremely creative read, and definitely a nice change of pace. It’s also the first book in a series, so if you enjoy the first, definitely check out the later books.  


Review by Julia Walker, A&S '16




           


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