Books

Thalen Reads The Dreamstone

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They will not be wise, who set foot in Ealdwood. - Arafel
This week we take a look at a fantasy story with roots in Celtic mythology. The Dreamstone, by C. J. Cherryh, centers around the last remnant of Faery upon the earth, and it's guardian, Arafel, the last of the Daoine Sidhe.

Thalen Reads The Dreamstone

This is actually the first of Cherryh's books I've read. She's been on my list of authors to try for a while, and I do still intend to get to some of her more famous works in the future. Based on what I've read here, I expect them to be a good read.

The Dreamstone is another of those works which combines multiple previously release works into a full novel. In this case we have two parts which are connected primarily by location and the presence of Arafel. The course of the novel spans some decades and most of the mortal characters from the first section of the book are years dead when the second section begins.

In an unnamed kingdom somewhere in the British Isles (most likely somewhere in modern England near the borders of Wales) a rebellion against the rightful king has recently succeeded and the former lord Niall, who remained loyal, flees his enemies. Taking shelter in the Ealdwood, he draws the attention of Arafel, last of the Daoine Sidhe, who refuses any direct aid but guides him to a protected valley where those who are lost can find refuge.

Years pass, until events lead Niall's villainous cousin Evald to invade the Ealdwood and come into conflict with Arafel. When word of Evald's death comes to Niall, he leaves the valley to retake the lands his cousin had usurped from him. He marries Evald's widow and accepts her son as his own heir.

Decades later, Niall has died and his heir rules in Caer Wiell. The old king's heir has come of age and has launched a campaign to retake his throne. After a great battle is won, a messenger is sent to warn Caer Wiell of enemy forces come to try to take it in an attempt to hold it against the king. His path takes him into the Ealdwood, where he meets Arafel and ultimately brings her to the aid of Caer Wiell, though not without cost to himself.

The Dreamstone is a book that focuses on one small area while great conflicts occur in the background. The old king is already dead by the time the book starts, and we barely meet his heir many chapters later. The kingdom and its fate isn't what matters here; this is really the story of Arafel and her somewhat unwilling part in the human conflicts near her home. Elves in this book are very much in the classic Fair Folk vein; mischievous and given to stealing people away to Faery (though not, in Arafel's defense, from any real malevolence.)

The Dreamstone is also a quiet book, mostly concerned with character interaction and the intrinsic conflict between man and elf. There is a battle near the end of the book, but it's secondary to the conflict within the messenger who convinced Arafel to aid them, and the conflict within Arafel herself regarding mortals and her place in a world where Faery has nearly withdrawn entirely. To anyone with an interest in Celtic mythology I can recommend this as an interesting take on the concepts.

Thalen Reads The Dreamstone

by
They will not be wise, who set foot in Ealdwood. - Arafel
This week we take a look at a fantasy story with roots in Celtic mythology. The Dreamstone, by C. J. Cherryh, centers around the last remnant of Faery upon the earth, and it's guardian, Arafel, the last of the Daoine Sidhe.


This is actually the first of Cherryh's books I've read. She's been on my list of authors to try for a while, and I do still intend to get to some of her more famous works in the future. Based on what I've read here, I expect them to be a good read.

The Dreamstone is another of those works which combines multiple previously release works into a full novel. In this case we have two parts which are connected primarily by location and the presence of Arafel. The course of the novel spans some decades and most of the mortal characters from the first section of the book are years dead when the second section begins.

In an unnamed kingdom somewhere in the British Isles (most likely somewhere in modern England near the borders of Wales) a rebellion against the rightful king has recently succeeded and the former lord Niall, who remained loyal, flees his enemies. Taking shelter in the Ealdwood, he draws the attention of Arafel, last of the Daoine Sidhe, who refuses any direct aid but guides him to a protected valley where those who are lost can find refuge.

Years pass, until events lead Niall's villainous cousin Evald to invade the Ealdwood and come into conflict with Arafel. When word of Evald's death comes to Niall, he leaves the valley to retake the lands his cousin had usurped from him. He marries Evald's widow and accepts her son as his own heir.

Decades later, Niall has died and his heir rules in Caer Wiell. The old king's heir has come of age and has launched a campaign to retake his throne. After a great battle is won, a messenger is sent to warn Caer Wiell of enemy forces come to try to take it in an attempt to hold it against the king. His path takes him into the Ealdwood, where he meets Arafel and ultimately brings her to the aid of Caer Wiell, though not without cost to himself.

The Dreamstone is a book that focuses on one small area while great conflicts occur in the background. The old king is already dead by the time the book starts, and we barely meet his heir many chapters later. The kingdom and its fate isn't what matters here; this is really the story of Arafel and her somewhat unwilling part in the human conflicts near her home. Elves in this book are very much in the classic Fair Folk vein; mischievous and given to stealing people away to Faery (though not, in Arafel's defense, from any real malevolence.)

The Dreamstone is also a quiet book, mostly concerned with character interaction and the intrinsic conflict between man and elf. There is a battle near the end of the book, but it's secondary to the conflict within the messenger who convinced Arafel to aid them, and the conflict within Arafel herself regarding mortals and her place in a world where Faery has nearly withdrawn entirely. To anyone with an interest in Celtic mythology I can recommend this as an interesting take on the concepts.

Thalen Reads A World Out of Time

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I thought I was ready for anything, but this-- - Peter Corbell
In the year 1990, give or take a few, a man dying of cancer had himself frozen in desperate hope that he might be revived and cured in the future. 200 years later he awakes to find himself in an entirely new body, with no rights or property, force to work off a debt to the world-wide totalitarian state that revived him. So begins Larry Niven's 1976 novel A World Out of Time.

Thalen Reads A World Out of Time

I've read a fair bit of Niven's other works, particularly the ones set in Known Space such as Ringworld and short stories collected in Neutron Star. This book is recognizably Niven, but noticeably different from those other works. Most noticeably there are no aliens involved at all. All the characters are humans, though there is the 'man out of time' element to make things seem alien to our protagonist.

Speaking of the protagonist, Peter Corbell is unlike your typical space hero. We never learn all that much about his past; he was married and had children, was an architect, and enjoyed to travel. That's pretty much everything we find out. His new body is even more of an enigma, a man who committed some crime against the State and had his personality wiped because of it. We do learn that Corbell is the fourth personality to have been placed in this body, the others didn't work out. Corbell is never portrayed as particularly impressive physically or mentally, he mostly makes it through the story by being more useful alive than dead.

For that matter, we learn little of the State that rules Earth in the year 2190. We know it's world-spanning and has begun looking towards planetary colonization to secure humanity's future. We learn that it holds a monopoly on the generation of energy on Earth, and thus all of its citizens are wholly dependent upon the State for their needs. It's heavily implied that the human population has skyrocketed over 200 years and that privacy is a thing of the past.

The state of Earth in 2190 is really only important as the springboard that propels Corbell into the real story. The job assigned to him is that of 'rammer', he will pilot a Bussard ramjet in a centuries long mission to seed a number of planets with algae in hopes of converting their reducing atmospheres into oxygen atmospheres suitable for human life. Once on his way, however, Corbell changes course and heads for the Galactic Center in hopes of using the time dilation aspects of relativistic speed to return millennia later when either the State has fallen or colonies might exist and have broken away. Ultimately a desperate attempt to return before the ship breaks down (it wasn't meant to maintain the speed Corbell needs for such long periods of time) results in a slingshot around the galaxy's central black hole, returning him to Earth 3 million years later.

In 3 million years the solar system has changed quite a lot. The Sun has expanded and is hotter (more than it should be), Earth now orbits Jupiter which is itself generating more heat than it ought, and the majority of Earth is parched and uninhabitably hot. Corbell arrives on this massively changed planet to find that civilization rose to technological heights, then fell leaving only the Antarctic continent inhabited by immortal prepubescent boys and a small population of men and women who are left to age normally for breeding purposes.

The gender politics of this story get kind of weird; Niven portrays a world where a form of immortality was discovered that only works prior to puberty and arrests one's aging at that point. Without sex to hold them together, the genders split into Girls and Boys with the Girls holding control over the sky, and thus space travel and weather while the Boys held the majority of the land. At some point the two sides went to war, resulting in the annihilation of the Girls and the Boys controlling what remains of Earth. Corbell's main goal after coming to this changed Earth becomes a search for a legendary form of immortality that worked for adults but was limited to only the elite.

A World Out of Time was an enjoyable enough book, but I wouldn't call it one of Niven's best. For a new reader I'd recommend his short stories or Ringworld as a better place to start. The coincidences necessary to move the story ahead (though somewhat explained eventually) strained my suspension of disbelief and, more importantly, none of the characters were particularly likable. If the book had ended with Earth's destruction I wouldn't have been particularly sad that any of the characters had died, and it might actually have been a more satisfying conclusion than what we actually get. There's plenty of interesting stuff throughout the book, but it just doesn't all come together quite right to make a satisfying whole.

Thalen Reads The Shepherd’s Crown

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Mind how you go. - Terry Pratchett
This was a really hard book to read. Not because it was bad, or because I didn't want to read it. It was hard because for over twenty years I've been either reading a new Discworld novel or looking forward to the next one. And now that's over. Today's book is Terry Pratchett's 41st and last novel of Discworld, The Shepherd's Crown.

Thalen Reads The Shepherd's Crown

I've been a huge fan of the Discworld for the majority of my life, ever since a friend handed me a copy of Guards! Guards! and told me I should read it. Terry Pratchett was on the very short list of authors whose books I always bought on the day of release, sight unseen. I have long been of the opinion that the worst of Pratchett's works is still well above the average and entirely worth the reading.

The Shepherd's Crown is not Pratchett at his height. How could it be, when he was no longer capable of writing and had to rely on an assistant to put his words to paper? Some transitions are a bit rough, some scenes don't quite seem to fit. But the overall story is strong and moving, and the scenes that really matter are deftly written. I was in tears almost immediately on starting the second chapter and by the end I was sobbing. I can't recommend The Shepherd's Crown to new readers, it's both not Pratchett's best and very reliant on what's come before, but for those already invested it's a good and appropriate ending to one of the longest running fantasy series in history.

MASSIVE SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON

Although it was the third Discworld novel, an argument can be made that Equal Rites was where Discworld truly began. It's where Pratchett shifted from parody to satire, and it's where he really found the tone and feel that he would retain for the remainder of the series. Equal Rites was a story about a girl who wanted to be a wizard; and it was the first book to feature possibly Pratchett's greatest character, Granny Weatherwax. Fitting then, that The Shepherd's Crown introduces a boy who wants to be a witch, and has us say goodbye to Granny.

In the second chapter, Granny Weatherwax dies.

It's something I've been half expecting for a while now; the obvious final challenge in Tiffany Aching's career, the loss of her mentor. Chapter two is probably the best (and simultaneously most heart-breaking) chapter of the entire book as we follow Granny making all the preparations for her passing (witches and wizards get to know when they're going to die a little early so they can be ready).

Granny's death is what sets the rest of the book in motion, with Tiffany having to deal with suddenly being Granny's chosen successor (witches don't go in for leaders, but Granny was the witch they looked too to not lead them.) Also, with Granny gone, the elves (nasty pieces of work indeed) see the opportunity to make another attempt to break through from their parasite dimension and have free reign on the Disc.

Mostly this is a book about things changing. Steam engines and locomotives have come to the Disc, and technology continues to advance. The elves are remnants of the old times, and they no longer have any place there. It's telling that the ultimate fight against the elves is very one-sided; they never stand a chance. Their time is done. New ideas are embraced and Tiffany realizes that she can never be Granny Weatherwax, but she shouldn't try. She has to be Tiffany Aching.

Like Granny Weatherwax, the Discworld is dead. We'll never see another book, and we'll never know where Pratchett might have taken it next. But also like Granny, the Discworld isn't gone. It's memory stays with us through our fandom, through the books and through the adaptations to screen and stage. Terry Pratchett is dead, but he remains with us through his writing and the lessons he's taught us over the years. Farewell once more, Sir Pterry. Mind how you go.