2011 Notes
Move Under Ground
Notes:
“Let’s do the concept first, and if it doesn’t grab you, this book probably wouldn’t be for you anyway: “Move Under Ground” is the sequel to “On the Road”, where Jack Kerouac tells the story of how he, Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs prevent Lovecraftian monsters from destroying the earth.
Yeah, weird. But it kind of works. Actually, it works way better than it has any right to. Mamatas captures Kerouac’s prose really well, and he manages to keep the style up for most of the book. And the story ends up being a journey across an alternate America, in the same way that ““On the Road”” was, but instead of meeting dis-affected youth, immigrants, and substance abusers, Kerouac meets beetle people, sorcerers/witches, and shoggoths. In part because of the wya I read it, I feel like I didn’t get as much out of it as I would have liked. But instead of putting it aside, I’m going to read it again.
The Magician King
Notes:
The Magician King takes up some time after the end of “The Magicians”, with Quentin as a King of Fillory, sharing his duties with two of his former magic-school friends (Eliot and Janet), and one of his friends (Julia) from his life before Brakebrills. They went back to the magical kingdom, but Quentin feels bored and listless, and seeks another great quest to reinvigorate him. He finds one, and it takes him to places and feelings that he never expected.
But this is only half of the story. The other half (interspersed in alternating chapters) tells the story of Julia, who didn’t get into Brakebrills and has spent the subsequent years learning magic in underground and shady circumstances. Personally, I found her story to be the more gripping of the two. If “The Magicians” was about Quentin desiring an exciting life, getting it, and having to live with the consequences of that, Julia’s story in “The Magician King” is about desiring an exciting life, and not getting it, and what a person in those circumstances is willing to do to fulfil their desires.
The book continues Grossman’s fascination with fantasy tropes and mythology, and the mythology he constructs is haunting and vaguely terrifying, even in the most innocuous ways–clocks, buildings, trees, and other objects become pivot points towards a darker and malevolent series of forces. A good sequel to a great book.
Echoes
Notes:
Effective, creepy storytelling, with great art.
The story is immediately compelling. I keep trying to articulate it, but find myself not wanting to spoil the complexity and emotional heft. Suffice it say, it hovers around some evidence of a horrible series of murders, the relationship between fathers and sons, mental illness and its reverberations, and a disgusting and unnerving collection of dolls.
Fialkov clearly did his research on schizophrenia, and the little realistic touches (like the wristwatch that reminds the main character when to take his clozapine, an anti-psychotic) help the story move between the horrifying/fantastical, and the mundane/everyday. The art, by Rahsan Ekedal reminds me of Jae Lee’s jagged, surrealistic work on Hellshock, and really works for the jagged, fractured world described in the story. I devoured it in one sitting, but I definitely want to go back and swim around in this book again.
