Whew! Just got back from a wedding in Pittsburgh of one of my bestest of bestest friends. It was a whirlwind of sleeplessness.
So. Once again we are getting into our wayback machine, Sherman, to examine one of the most elegant YA/adult urban fantasy novels: Archer's Goon.
Diane Wynne Jones died this year, and we lost a powerful force in fantasy. She was a Welsh author, and far more known in Britain than here. My mother read several of her books to me as a child. Throughout the years, my family searched out her out of print books. Then Rowlings blew up and Jones was back on the shelves! When I read Rowlings, I can't help but see Jones's influence. She was friends with Neil Gaiman.
You could put it down to my childhood bias, but I generally prefer Jones's earlier works out of her formidable contributions to literature. When I say I prefer the earlier works, I mean Archer's Goon, Charmed Life, Witch Week, and Howl's Moving Castle stand out to me as contributions to literature that stand up to any adult fantasy, or, for that matter, stand up to any other form of literature. The rest of her literature may not be as perfect, but I'd still pretty much rather be reading Jones than virtually anything else.
Having made myself sound like a rabid and unreliable fan, I'll continue with the summary.
Archer's Goon
Summary
An urban, YA fantasy novel. Howard Sykes comes home from school in a terrible mood, having had defend his sister, Awful, from a hoard of girls that probably had every reason to be angry at awful Awful, to discover a Goon filling up his parents' kitchen. The Goon professes to be from Archer, here to collect his due two thousand words from Howard and Awful's dad, Quentin, a writer. Archer is one of the seven magical brothers and sisters that control the town. The only problem is that as soon as Archer has made his demand, the others begin chiming in that the words belong to them, and the Goon has yet to leave the house. When Quentin refuses to write the words for anyone, life gets unpleasant for the Sykes. Howard is left trying to maneuver through the tangled world of the magicians, and why the words are so important.
Review
Magic aside, Archer's Goon is a YA exploration of family and what it means--good or bad--for both the Sykes and the family pressuring them. I can state that baldly now, but while reading about the eccentric Sykes and the equally eccentric magicians, you can only break your captivation with your laughter. All you see is a rich landscape of characters, sewn together into a twisting, mystery filled plot with a concept I have never seen before or since. What might not hold together for adult readers are some of the mystery aspects. As a child, puzzling together each piece took work. However, an adult reader may get to the end of some of the mazes ahead of time. There is a fusion aspect to the book, but I'm not given that one away.
Fusion Fantasy by Bets Davies Put your favorite genres in a blender and put it on high.
Showing posts with label J.K. Rowlings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label J.K. Rowlings. Show all posts
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Diana Wynne Jones
All right, this is late in coming, but I must: the Homage to Diana Wynne Jones.
I cut my teeth on Diana Wynne Jones. My mother read Jones to my brother and me as we sat by the Franklin stove cold wintered. As I got older and learned more about writing I returned again and again to her earlier writing. In books such as Charmed Life, what is so fascinating is that not only does Jones create complex characters that drive the book, but they drive a complicated book in a YA format.
When I look at Rowling, I do not see a visionary genius--as much as I might be hated for that remark. I see someone standing on the shoulders of Jones. Gaiman was in close with Jones. In Britain, she is well known. Here, she was out of print till the Rowling explosion brought her back to the fore (and for that I will thank Rowling as searching out Jones's novels on line and in used bookstores was an exhausting endeavor).
When I first start describing Charmed Life: orphaned Cat and Gwendolyn are taken in by their mysterious relative Chrestomancie--sounds really fucking simple, right? And something you would put in a query letter, which I despise. When I try to tell a friend who wants to read the book what it is about (don't worry, no spoilers)--with Howl's Moving Castle and Archer's Goon and Witch Week as well--what starts simple, I realize the plots are complex in a beautifully streamlined way. She gets away with all of it because her characters have an inner complexity that puts me in mind of a snowflake, or Jenga. If she had moved one piece of her characters out of line, the whole book would fail. But because each character has the inner integrity of a tank, you never question one move that character makes or, because of her world building and other characters, why that choice lands the character where it does.
That is the key to a novel, in my opinion. The characters must be complex, but that complexness cannot be loose. You can't have facets of them hanging every which way that could easily be ripped off or fall off and not change the basic integrity of the character. Each piece of the character must be vital, and stack together into an important vehicle that will take us seamlessly through the novel. Everyone talks about the need for complex characters, but we rarely discuss the fact that every complexity has to be build in, to have grown in a tangled knot with every other complexity. That character will determine the world we see. That character will determine in what direction the we, as readers, move. If we feel that viewpoint or movement is false, we will lose the book.
Not to say that absolutely every one of Jones's novels are epitome the of fabulous writing. She has written, over her long, and now cut dead, career a swath of childrens', young adult, and adult fantasy. She has explored Tam Lin in multiple books. She, as far as I know, created the idea of a "multiverse"--that being more than one universe through dimensions. We all know it has been around in speculative fiction forever, but I still find her classification charming.
Towards the end of her career, I have to admit my heart sank a bit. She still used marvelously complex and original plots, but I felt as though sometimes they drove the character, rather than the other way around. Her characters' strengths are what make me love her, and make me beholden to her for my own values in writing.
Her passing passed us by without much of a bump, but we will feel the reverberations of what she created in others work throughout the years. If you have any wish to write--yes, especially speculative fiction, but really in any genre--go pick up the four books I listed above: Charmed Life, Witch Week, Archer's Goon, and Howl's Moving Castle (which isn't anything like the movie, by the way). Read them once and fall in love. Read them again and understand what and how she created.
I cut my teeth on Diana Wynne Jones. My mother read Jones to my brother and me as we sat by the Franklin stove cold wintered. As I got older and learned more about writing I returned again and again to her earlier writing. In books such as Charmed Life, what is so fascinating is that not only does Jones create complex characters that drive the book, but they drive a complicated book in a YA format.
When I look at Rowling, I do not see a visionary genius--as much as I might be hated for that remark. I see someone standing on the shoulders of Jones. Gaiman was in close with Jones. In Britain, she is well known. Here, she was out of print till the Rowling explosion brought her back to the fore (and for that I will thank Rowling as searching out Jones's novels on line and in used bookstores was an exhausting endeavor).
When I first start describing Charmed Life: orphaned Cat and Gwendolyn are taken in by their mysterious relative Chrestomancie--sounds really fucking simple, right? And something you would put in a query letter, which I despise. When I try to tell a friend who wants to read the book what it is about (don't worry, no spoilers)--with Howl's Moving Castle and Archer's Goon and Witch Week as well--what starts simple, I realize the plots are complex in a beautifully streamlined way. She gets away with all of it because her characters have an inner complexity that puts me in mind of a snowflake, or Jenga. If she had moved one piece of her characters out of line, the whole book would fail. But because each character has the inner integrity of a tank, you never question one move that character makes or, because of her world building and other characters, why that choice lands the character where it does.
That is the key to a novel, in my opinion. The characters must be complex, but that complexness cannot be loose. You can't have facets of them hanging every which way that could easily be ripped off or fall off and not change the basic integrity of the character. Each piece of the character must be vital, and stack together into an important vehicle that will take us seamlessly through the novel. Everyone talks about the need for complex characters, but we rarely discuss the fact that every complexity has to be build in, to have grown in a tangled knot with every other complexity. That character will determine the world we see. That character will determine in what direction the we, as readers, move. If we feel that viewpoint or movement is false, we will lose the book.
Not to say that absolutely every one of Jones's novels are epitome the of fabulous writing. She has written, over her long, and now cut dead, career a swath of childrens', young adult, and adult fantasy. She has explored Tam Lin in multiple books. She, as far as I know, created the idea of a "multiverse"--that being more than one universe through dimensions. We all know it has been around in speculative fiction forever, but I still find her classification charming.
Towards the end of her career, I have to admit my heart sank a bit. She still used marvelously complex and original plots, but I felt as though sometimes they drove the character, rather than the other way around. Her characters' strengths are what make me love her, and make me beholden to her for my own values in writing.
Her passing passed us by without much of a bump, but we will feel the reverberations of what she created in others work throughout the years. If you have any wish to write--yes, especially speculative fiction, but really in any genre--go pick up the four books I listed above: Charmed Life, Witch Week, Archer's Goon, and Howl's Moving Castle (which isn't anything like the movie, by the way). Read them once and fall in love. Read them again and understand what and how she created.
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