Tag: Time-Travel

Walking Ankh-Morpork with Sam Vimes–Both of Him

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Summer in Discworld2 Comments

I wanted to read some new Discworld books this summer, but I’ve also been meaning to re-read Night Watch.  This was the first proper Discworld book I ever read.  Technically I read Maskerade first, but I read it as a Phantom parody, paid no attention to the larger context, and despite madly loving it, I was somehow not inspired to go on to the rest of the series (can’t quite explain that).

So Night Watch is where it really started for me.  I don’t recommend anyone else start here, as it makes absolutely no sense as a place to begin.  More on that in a bit.

The book focuses almost exclusively on Sam Vimes, who remains my favorite Discworld character.  He’s the head of Ankh-Morpork’s City Guard, and has been instrumental in making them into the force they are today (and weren’t a few books earlier).  While attempting to apprehend a serial killer, Vimes is caught in a freak storm above the Library of Unseen University, where the wizards reside.

Vimes and the killer are thrown thirty years back in time.  Due to complications and wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey technobabble, Vimes ends up taking the place of the copper who taught a young Sam Vimes how to be a copper–so it all becomes rather circular and you can’t think about it too hard (Vimes tries not to).  If mentoring his younger self while keeping an eye out for that killer on the loose isn’t enough, Ankh-Morpork of the past isn’t the comparatively well-ordered place of today.  Corruption is rife, plots are afoot, and a revolution is in the making.  Vimes remembers how it all came out, but there’s no guarantee things can’t change, wiping out his own future.

It’s a slightly complicated plot, but somehow it works right along while you’re actually reading it.  I think that was true the first time I read it too.  I liked it even better on a re-read, because I knew who everyone was.  Part of the fun of the book is seeing recognizable characters when they were much younger.  Nobby Nobs is a street urchin (and as ugly as ever), Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler has yet to acquire his trademark phrase, and Vetinari is still in Assassin School.  None of that means anything without reading other books, which is why it makes no sense to start here (funny how that’s always a topic when discussing Discworld, and so rarely one for any other series!)

I can even argue that you get an extra layer if you read later books first.  The narration keeps referring to Vimes’ younger self as “Young Sam.”  In the present-day portion, Vimes’ wife is very pregnant, and in later books we see that their son is called (wait for it) Young Sam.  So there’s definitely a father theme going on that becomes much clearer when familiar with later books.  Discworld is so sequentially confused.

The best thing about Night Watch is that you get to see Vimes at his Vimesest.  He’s a copper and he’s tough and he’s practical.  He doesn’t seem to believe much in honor, while being very honorable.  He believes in Law and he believes his job is to keep the peace and protect the ordinary man–while having no illusions about the nobility of your typical Ankh-Morporkian.  He’s the kind of man who doesn’t fight a mob or yell them into submission.  He steps out in front of the mob, lights a cigar, asks if they’re having a pleasant night and would they like to step into the Watch House for some cocoa, and if not they really ought to go on home, it’s getting cold.  And it works.

Vimes understands Ankh-Morpork and its people, he knows the streets and he knows the crowds and he can handle all of it.  I love this book because we get to see all of this.  In some of the earlier books, Vimes is still evolving.  Some of the later ones deal more with politics, and the most recent, Snuff, takes him out of Ankh-Morpork (which was a mistake, I think, and though I like the book I’ve just now realized this is why it wasn’t better than it was).

Night Watch is set in a different time so a lot of regulars and recurring characters aren’t in it.  But that’s actually okay, because the result is that we get lots of Vimes instead.

My conclusion is, don’t start here, because significant portions won’t mean anything.  But if you’ve read any City Guard books to give you context and if you like Vimes, this is a particularly magnificent installment in the series.  It’s definitely one of my favorites.

Author’s Site: http://terrypratchettbooks.com/

Other reviews:
Ritual of the Stones
Puss Reboots
Sandstorm Reviews
Anyone else?

Through a Maze, into the Past

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Reviews, Young Adult7 Comments

Some books seem to make the rounds of all the blogs I follow.  That’s what brought me to The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman.  So many bloggers loved it, I couldn’t resist giving it a read.  And I did enjoy it, largely for reasons that other people mentioned too…and I had a few reservations.  More on those in a bit!

The book is about Sophie Fairchild Martineau, thirteen years old and living in the American South during the 1950s, just as the Civil Rights movement is starting to take shape.  She’s bookish and awkward and doesn’t know how to be the proper, refined Southern lady her mother wants her to be.  Her mother has never forgotten that their family used to be wealthy plantation owners, before the Civil War.  Sophie is sent to spend the summer with her grandmother and aunt on what’s left of the family land, and wanders into the Maze, a labyrinth of hedges and paths.  She meets a strange Creature, and makes a wish…only to find herself back in 1860, where her Fairchild ancestors assume that this tanned, unkempt child must be a slave.

There’s a lot to love in this book, starting with Sophie.  I already loved her by the bottom of Page One.  She reminds me of Sym from The White Darkness, so obviously a thoughtful, lovely girl who’s being told by the people around her that there’s something wrong with her.  I love that Sophie likes to read–and she and I seem to have read all the same books!  It’s so much fun to have a heroine who has read Edith Nesbit and Edward Eager, and knows how this sort of adventure is supposed to go.  She knows the rules about wishes and magic creatures and native guides…but then nothing goes the way she expects.

I was so interested in Sophie and her family dynamics and life in the 1950s that I was almost disappointed when she went into the past.  But the family dynamics and the life in the 1860s turned out to be very interesting too.  The handling of the master/slave situation was fascinating.  The Fairchilds (with the exception of a very nasty daughter) are not cruel people, but they are slaveowners.  Through a combination of obliviousness, delegation of discipline, and a conviction of how the world is meant to be, they fully believe in their own goodness.  And in a way they are “good masters”–but that doesn’t mean the slaves are happy.  Neither are they desperately miserable in the day-to-day.  Sherman walks a narrow line to avoid falling into stereotypes in either direction, while vividly portraying the culture of the white society, and the community of the slaves.

Sophie is mistaken for the daughter of one of the men in the family, who’s currently living in New Orleans.  She has the Fairchild nose and tan skin from being in the sun, and so must be the offspring of a white master and his African slave–which makes her a slave too.  This was one of the most intriguing and disturbing aspects of the story.  I’ve certainly been familiar with the concept before, but I don’t think I had ever seen it brought to life.  Everyone, white and black alike, believes that Sophie is related by blood to the white family, but she’s still classed and treated as a slave.

Sophie meets many wonderful people, particularly among the other slaves, and somehow those characters are growing on me more as I get farther out from the book.  Strange!  The book takes on the feel of historical fiction the longer Sophie spends in the past, and I liked learning more about life in the time, though to some extent this was a more academic than emotional interest.

As interesting as it all was, it also began to feel somewhat purposeless.  It’s suggested, very clearly, that Sophie has been sent into the past for a reason, to do something.  I had to wait most of the book for any hint of what that might be, and at times I felt as though I was waiting for the main story to get going.  Sophie does ultimately end up helping another character in an important way, but the character wasn’t previously significant, and I didn’t have much reason to care.  If that was the whole point of it all…I could appreciate it from a humanitarian standpoint, but it didn’t have much emotional resonance for me.

The other point, I’m sure, was for Sophie to grow, to find a new view on the world, and to find the strength to seize her own freedom.  And I love that in theory…but in practice that aspect felt a bit rushed.

This book does many wonderful things–the way it does them doesn’t always feel quite as wonderful as they might have been.  But don’t let that dissuade you!  It is an enjoyable, fascinating book.  It takes what feels like a very familiar setting, finds new angles, and is thoroughly thought-provoking!

Author’s Site: http://deliasherman.com

Other Reviews:
Stainless Steel Droppings
Charlotte’s Library
Stella Matutina
Anyone else?

So I Finally Watched Doctor Who…

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Science Fiction8 Comments
The TARDIS - it's bigger on the inside

For ages, everyone told me I had to watch Doctor Who.  So I finally did–and they were right!  I always say my main interest is stories, not exclusively books…so why not a review of a TV show with truly brilliant storytelling?  And it gives me an opportunity to be gleeful about Doctor Who!

The history of the show is complicated.  It ran on the BBC for 26 years, starting in the sixties.  One reason it took me a while to start watching is because I just didn’t know where to start.  But finally enough people told me I could just begin with the recent series, which runs from 2005-present, and that’s what I did–you can too.

The premise has to be every storyteller’s dream, because it’s so limitless.  The Doctor is the last of the Time Lords, and he travels around the universe in the TARDIS, which from the outside looks like a blue phone booth–but it’s bigger on the inside.  It has incredible power, and can travel through time and space.  So you can go into the future and have a sci fi show–go into the past and meet Queen Victoria–invent all kinds of aliens, which sometimes resemble the supernatural (which means you can have ghost stories)–and if things ever get dull, recast the Doctor and give him a new sidekick.  You see, the Doctor never dies, he just regenerates with a new face, which is how they can now be up to the 11th Doctor.  He usually travels around with a companion, but the companion is open to replacement.

So you have a premise with pretty much no boundaries.  And the show itself is exciting, witty, suspenseful, hilarious…  I’ve just finished Season Two, so I can’t yet comment on anything after that.  But the first two seasons are fantastic.

I admit it did take me a few episodes to get into the show.  The recent series opens with the 9th Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston.  He’s a sort of goofy action hero, who will save the day, while grinning and making jokes.  At first I wasn’t sure I liked it–then I had a complete turn-around and loved it.  One cool thing about a constantly funny hero is that when he does turn serious, it means a lot.  His face goes solemn and the tension rises through the roof.

The Doctor regenerates at the end of Season One, to be replaced by David Tennant.  He’s goofy, but in a different way.  Still very mercurial, but he gets serious more often.  It took me a few episodes to forgive him for not being Christopher Eccleston, but by the time he crashes a white horse through a mirror into a French ballroom, I decided I loved him too.  He brings a whole new level of awesome to the character.

I have not yet watched enough to get to know the Doctor’s later companions, but for the first part of the series he travels with Rose.  She rises above really bad make-up to be a quite good character, and there’s excellent chemistry between her and both Doctors.   When I say “chemistry,” though, I don’t mean romance, and that’s actually something I love about the show.  The Doctor and Rose are very, very close–but they’re friends.  There isn’t even any flirting or innuendo.  They’re just really, really good friends.  You don’t see that very often in TV.

Another thing that strikes me about the show is its confidence.  I think it comes of having a forty-year history and apparently an enormous British fanbase.  I don’t quite know how to explain how a TV show can be confident–but I think it’s that they present sometimes absurd things and treat them seriously.  They don’t mean it ironically, it’s not campy, and yet instead of laughing at them–I end up believing them!  For instance, the Daleks.  They’re this alien race that’s totally ridiculous-looking, these rolling tank things that look like they belong in Lost in Space, and they roll around with funny voices saying, “Exterminate!  Exterminate!”  But the Doctor says that they’re the ultimate evil and very dangerous, and he and everyone else takes them very seriously, and I find myself looking at other alien races on the show and thinking that they’re not as threatening as the Daleks.  Really, I don’t know quite how they do it.  And sometimes, the show does know it’s being absurd, and has really funny episodes as a consequence.

Some TV series will have funny episodes, and tragic episodes, and spooky episodes.  Doctor Who manages to do it all at once.  There are terrifying aliens, really clever lines, heartbreak and hilarity.  And the show is often absolutely riveting.