Saga
Volume One (#1-6).
2012
You’ll get a kick out of this one, rubbing your hands expectantly while preparing to start what seems like a real cool fantasy-space opera extravaganza…and it will prove to be exactly that.
Teenage ghosts suddenly appear, so do weird-disgusting spider-women, romance lit’, robot guys, rocket trees…(you get the gist…), often without a hint of connection to each other. Rather, the weirder and more creative they get, the more they feel almost randomly splashed across the pages. It’s a good thing Brian K. Vaughan’s ideas are that “kitschly” charming and original because structure isn’t his strongest point. So much happens, in fact, that you’ll find yourself quickly breathless, yet frantically looking for any piece of backstory that might work as a clue to details of the past and the future within the narrative, fervently wanting to devour even more than you’ve actually been given to chew. Saga Volume 1 works as a hook, offering an array of storylines, mysteries and emotions, never dwelling too deep into them, letting them linger with you until the next volume, instead.
Fiona Staples’ artwork is amazingly realistic, its rendering of facial expressions and body movements making almost ludicrous characters credible, even close to us. The tone is right, though at its best with colour ranges diffusing an atmosphere of nighttime fantasy-sci-fi nightmare than when the action is in broad daylight.
Hazel and The Will are definitely the most stand-out characters, but, unfortunately, they’re not the main meal. The rest of the cast appear varyingly interesting but rather pale in comparison; though they prove enough to lead the story, they’re not the ones whom we wish would lead it. However, not complaining…This may actually work to the book’s advantage because it keeps you on your toes for appearances from the real stars of the show.
As for Alana, Marko and the lot, there’s a lot of wit and personality showing off in their one-liners, yet somehow it all feels a little rushed, a little too easy. Having spent the whole issue with the parenting couple, I’m still not quite sure I actually care for anything coming their way. They are said to have personality, they sound like they have personality, they are drawn beautifully, perhaps even a little too beautifully for the first-degree writing; still, they feel like actors losing their strong acting skills in witty but mild dialogues_ dialogues from which the main core is missing. What is it that Vaughan is actually trying to say?
So, yes, it’s luxuriously laden with stuff, a lot of elements catch your eye in Saga_ as they are designed to do_ but the real question is: will they prove more than mere baits to take the reader on a fan-generating trip through a vaguely moralist fantasy tale?
Having dropped all those nasty hooks with characters appearing more evil than doing evil (save from one very awful, vomit-inducing nightmarish scene), you half expect the narration to get deeper into the whole of it_ either in the Song of Ice and Fire style, showing how nasty the mind can be, or via a more mature outlook: diving into character motives, complex emotional network, backstory, or anything that should lie on the other side of the hook.
For that was the one thing that annoyed me persistently, though it didn’t prevent me from enjoying the read, at all: nothing really happens for nothing is really developed. A lot of things are said, shown or hinted at, but it almost feels, at times, as if the writer did not know while writing where his story would in fact lead him to. And that he’s making it up as he goes along is one thing, that we notice it is another. It’s possible that I’m utterly wrong on this but the fact remains that reading book 1 felt like reading the first tentative chapters of a longer piece: we haven’t even been given the middle, yet, and the comic book closes on a big ‘so what?’ All the while I’m enjoying this, a little voice within me is still wondering why I should actually care, and it becomes increasingly harder to shove it aside.
Now, I’m not one for going through authors’ interviews or anything where they express their intentions and opinions on their books as I firmly think a review works best when based on the material actually present in the book; hence, simply based on its content, Saga effectively comes across as a nice, light, attractive, entertaining, sometimes harsh, comic book that fully and unashamedly lives up to its name: it’s a saga, a darkly clever soap opera, and I’m not sure its first installment aims at more beyond that. It will draw you in, whether you’re half interested to start with or not, and you’ll remained hooked during the reading. However, you’ll notice you close that last page a little too soon, having witnessed a lot, having absorbed much less.
It’s fan-generating material, all right, and I can say I’m in to the extent I acquired the second book, but did so hoping it’ll do better than its first installment which presented more than it actually gave. Volume 1 won’t be a breakthrough or the revelation of the year (not if you’re honest with yourself), having you redoing scenes in your head while waiting impatiently for the next installment or anything like that (and if it does, perhaps you need to start reading better books). But it will please you, that’s undeniable.
P.S. I
found Hazel’s comments not always well enough synchronized with the images they
commented to really give you that witty, startling effect they intended.
Mary WebbSarn (Precious Bane)
1924
N'avez vous jamais souhaité dénicher un vieux livre d'une bibliothèque de tante ou de grand-mère et avoir l'impression d'être intelligent(e) parce que vous, au moins, vous lisiez de vrais livres, de la littérature ? C'est exactement l'effet que fait Sarn. Une plume du jeune 20ème siècle nous narre le jeune 19ème dans la lointaine campagne anglaise et ses personnages hauts-en-couleur, terribles et tristes. Le rythme est tranquille sans être paisible, le sujet attendu nous surprend au fil des mots, le style est retenu mais les pages cachent quelques perles... Sarn est un livre à lire pour lire, autant que pour l'intrigue. Quant à l'intrigue, il est difficile de se souvenir, après coup, de ses étapes: il ne se passe qu'une seule et longue chose mais les mots nous enlisent dans sa toile, sans effets de style et sans effort.
Tags: famille & land, close quarters, roman de mœurs, wisdom, destin, 19th-century society, life in the country
September
1990
Moins touchant que Retour en Cornouailles, ce livre reste une énigme. Ici, les personnages sont à observer de loin; l'auteur nous demande presque de les juger sans nous dire, bien sûr, qui et comment. Les mauvais sont nuancés, les bons ne sont pas faciles à aimer, jusqu'à ce qu'ils convergent et nous laissent un sentiment de désarroi. Quelle est l'intention du bouquin? Est-on censé aimer ces gens, est-on censé les comprendre? Lire September c'est un peu comme être soudainement propulsé au cœur de la campagne upperclass telle une grouse bien grasse, et d'y surprendre, presque à contrecœur, trop de conversations privées. Mais Pilcher ne rechigne pas et nous présente une toile honnête et crédible d'un riche September écossais.
Tags: saga familiale, roman de mœurs, close quarters, famille & land,
relations entre les classes
A Song of Ice and Fire
A Game of Thrones I.
1996
We all know
it for its enormous character cast, its rich intrigue, its wealth of details. A Game of Thrones kicked off what would
become a franchise with a list-long series of strong points. But what if we
took a look at the first book itself, without considering the TV show or the
following volumes, for once?
Let me first establish the following point: the strengths of A Game of Thrones shine best with the Night’s Watch and Jon Snow’s progress among them. Here, Martin’s talent at crafting a gripping tale results in a storyline so well-rounded, invested with, that it by far overshadows all other chapters. A whole book on the Night’s Watch would have been fine by me! But if we must extend the praise, then, Martin, Bran, Tyrion and Arya make further combinations with which other characters, for all their high opinion of themselves, pale in comparison.
Still, you’ll get ensnared in the plotlines which creep up with every other chapter, no matter what. If the growing number of characters pushes readers away at first, around page 200 the tale goes from intriguing to extremely well-plotted and you start getting into it because Martin is fully at ease with it, now, and you can feel it. Overall, the intrigue is so carefully woven that you cannot help but care about how it will all end, even if you must wait decades for the seventh book (seven gods, seven books…). With this first installment, Martin sets himself up as one of the leaders of epic fantasy with a strong political edge. He thinks on a grand scale, clearly devoting all his efforts to A Song of Ice and Fire; he writes on a grand scale; and he produces a first work which can only be qualified as ‘grand.’ So, the story is thrilling and greatly developed. Greatly, pff! what am I saying? it’s immense, yeah! And the characters feel real and often in 3D. We know, we know. But both take so completely over that you won’t remember A Game of Thrones for the beauty or strength of its words. Having to juggle with fifty characters, each carrying their own motivation and past, and keep all those balls up in the air for the next installment, Martin spends little time trying to suffuse an atmosphere or tone that would linger on well after you’ve closed the first book.
Subtlety is not the point of A Song of Ice and Fire; it never was, I think, and you won’t find it. This is no book that you can approach with a mind bent on emotional outburst or wise enlightenment, but neither is it a pure tale of escapist fantasy. It stands midway between a clever and often (though not always) credible tale of political drama set in historically-relevant Medieval Ages and a popular (and heavily marketed) feast of intense plot twists and turns, strong characters, sexposition and cruelty, the latter both too often gratuitous, irrelevant and verging on downright melodrama.
Too bad that, as will be said by Stannis in A Clash of King, a good deed does not erase a bad one; well, neither can the strengths of A Game of Thrones, which are rare in fantasy and laudable here, buy back the flaws of its rendering. If the point-of-view chapters successfully manage to tame an immense beast into a structured story, they come to constitute in themselves as many stories, and the ever-growing number of epic characters equally enthralls, confuses, and disturbs our reading. You get the story, you want more of it, but between the two of you names keep popping up with little use to the present narrative and great deeds of forgotten heroes who won’t even appear in the story keep coming out of the mouths of characters who are the ones we actually care about. It is an epic, as it was meant to be, and that makes the reading journey equally as epic. A challenge, and not always one you care to take up.
I love long stories, I love dense and massive books and, if anything, I’d say that A Game of Thrones wasn’t long enough. Some moments in this first installment needed more time to occur, needed to be reflected upon; some characters needed more digging into. The suspense is well diffused, beating faster and faster as the pages turn; yet, all that under the rule of a pacing all too rapid. A situation gets set up, you come to face it and, as soon as it is exposed, the chapter closes and when you meet the character again the situation has already moved on_ and so does your emotional reaction. With all there is to say and show in this first book, the narration has to go quick, so quickly, in fact, that there is no time for reader’s investment. That will happen after reading, when you come to think about it.
Reading A Game of Thrones is like swallowing a dose of ‘too much’; the digesting part takes some time which the narration itself does not allow. You don’t devour A Game of Thrones. It devours you. An addictive read, but still not the best everyone makes it to be.
P.S. The prologue is one kick-ass piece of writing!
Let me first establish the following point: the strengths of A Game of Thrones shine best with the Night’s Watch and Jon Snow’s progress among them. Here, Martin’s talent at crafting a gripping tale results in a storyline so well-rounded, invested with, that it by far overshadows all other chapters. A whole book on the Night’s Watch would have been fine by me! But if we must extend the praise, then, Martin, Bran, Tyrion and Arya make further combinations with which other characters, for all their high opinion of themselves, pale in comparison.
Still, you’ll get ensnared in the plotlines which creep up with every other chapter, no matter what. If the growing number of characters pushes readers away at first, around page 200 the tale goes from intriguing to extremely well-plotted and you start getting into it because Martin is fully at ease with it, now, and you can feel it. Overall, the intrigue is so carefully woven that you cannot help but care about how it will all end, even if you must wait decades for the seventh book (seven gods, seven books…). With this first installment, Martin sets himself up as one of the leaders of epic fantasy with a strong political edge. He thinks on a grand scale, clearly devoting all his efforts to A Song of Ice and Fire; he writes on a grand scale; and he produces a first work which can only be qualified as ‘grand.’ So, the story is thrilling and greatly developed. Greatly, pff! what am I saying? it’s immense, yeah! And the characters feel real and often in 3D. We know, we know. But both take so completely over that you won’t remember A Game of Thrones for the beauty or strength of its words. Having to juggle with fifty characters, each carrying their own motivation and past, and keep all those balls up in the air for the next installment, Martin spends little time trying to suffuse an atmosphere or tone that would linger on well after you’ve closed the first book.
Subtlety is not the point of A Song of Ice and Fire; it never was, I think, and you won’t find it. This is no book that you can approach with a mind bent on emotional outburst or wise enlightenment, but neither is it a pure tale of escapist fantasy. It stands midway between a clever and often (though not always) credible tale of political drama set in historically-relevant Medieval Ages and a popular (and heavily marketed) feast of intense plot twists and turns, strong characters, sexposition and cruelty, the latter both too often gratuitous, irrelevant and verging on downright melodrama.
Too bad that, as will be said by Stannis in A Clash of King, a good deed does not erase a bad one; well, neither can the strengths of A Game of Thrones, which are rare in fantasy and laudable here, buy back the flaws of its rendering. If the point-of-view chapters successfully manage to tame an immense beast into a structured story, they come to constitute in themselves as many stories, and the ever-growing number of epic characters equally enthralls, confuses, and disturbs our reading. You get the story, you want more of it, but between the two of you names keep popping up with little use to the present narrative and great deeds of forgotten heroes who won’t even appear in the story keep coming out of the mouths of characters who are the ones we actually care about. It is an epic, as it was meant to be, and that makes the reading journey equally as epic. A challenge, and not always one you care to take up.
I love long stories, I love dense and massive books and, if anything, I’d say that A Game of Thrones wasn’t long enough. Some moments in this first installment needed more time to occur, needed to be reflected upon; some characters needed more digging into. The suspense is well diffused, beating faster and faster as the pages turn; yet, all that under the rule of a pacing all too rapid. A situation gets set up, you come to face it and, as soon as it is exposed, the chapter closes and when you meet the character again the situation has already moved on_ and so does your emotional reaction. With all there is to say and show in this first book, the narration has to go quick, so quickly, in fact, that there is no time for reader’s investment. That will happen after reading, when you come to think about it.
Reading A Game of Thrones is like swallowing a dose of ‘too much’; the digesting part takes some time which the narration itself does not allow. You don’t devour A Game of Thrones. It devours you. An addictive read, but still not the best everyone makes it to be.
P.S. The prologue is one kick-ass piece of writing!
For a more detailed, full spoilers on, and personal look into A Game of Thrones, click here.
Tags: the threat of the Others and the genial concept of the wall as an in-between between life and death (a literal and a metaphorical one); torture, rape and bruises or the never-ending round of "heroes" = victims, good = lame; a lot of well-researched and credible political questions, strategies and thinking rooted in King's Landing vs. weirwood, weirwood: a little "what the hell are we doing here question" via Bran's eyes and the Starks in general; more fantasy, less politics! or magic limited to the Night's Watch, dragons, direwolves and a three-eyed raven; direwolves and dragons; a less good rendering of race than expected; naughty? Dirty, yeah! I'll say...; countless legends, heroes, songs, foes, swords, banners, customs and manners, too little world depiction, but way too much textile overflow; very well-researched look into knights, lordlings and vassals, though they're all a little too evil to be credible; too many kings for the realm's own good (I'm on team Varys, by the way!); a quickly-dispatched look into the beauty and the beast concept with (white) Daenerys and (brown) Drogo and the establishment of a future beauty and the beast dynamic with Sansa and the Hound; life at Castle Black; beginning of a war; Arya's needle; is it fate or Martin's ruthless quill?; grey keep, red keep, a few towers, a lot more names (some not on the map) and Castle Black; Cersei or the cliché; direwolves or the figure of the loyal companion by the hero's side
A Song of
Ice and Fire
A Clash of
Kings II.
1998
Simply
better quality.
A Clash of Kings doesn’t just tell a story, it finally unfolds it, with a writing style still fairly raw and accessible, but actually fitting the tale, providing just the necessary build-up and setting for each scene to occur. If in A Game of Thrones Martin’s writing style felt at times as if it attempted to get rid of the scenes it had to show_ each scene tumbling on the precedent, as it were_ instead of building them up, A Clash of Kings has let loose of that “one chapter = one scene” pattern which downplayed the first book: we get to see characters’ lives, their “routine” instead of just the scenes where they impact on the story. The book feels more written. The added landscape and weather depictions (except for Sansa’s and Tyrion’s chapters which still cruelly lack in room and city descriptions), the setup, the fluid passage from one day to the next or from days to days, all of that draws us in. We can feel Martin knows exactly what he has to say in this book and takes more time to say it, which in turn allows us to feel simultaneously as the characters do. And perhaps because there is less to say, it is better said. Lots happen in its own way as Martin takes more care to set up the necessary conditions for things to happen. His characters are not moving very far, but we see them get there (Arya’s wandering, for instance) and that’s all the better. We get to discover them in more depths, get to know and understand them better.
A Clash of Kings was a harder story to write, what’s with the war facts Martin had to introduce as a background and all (Arya’s detailed chapters; Qhorin and Jon attempting to survive in the Skirling Pass), yet_ or perhaps because of that_ one that ends up displaying significantly stronger storyteller skills than in A Game of Thrones.
Size shouldn’t be a put off for the book reads easily. Each storyline follows its path without too much concern for the others_ allowing for interaction to take place between them, yes, but without ever sacrificing their own subject matter and quality in the process. Thus, as characters' motivation unfolds and finds its fate, the reader’s attachment to them often equally and gradually grows. Renly’s and Robb’s wars meet, then part again; Arya’s, Robb’s and Tywin’s progresses cleverly cross or replace each other at Harrenhal. And this here constitutes the strength of A Clash of Kings: its ability to lead characters all throughout the Riverlands and The Reach, all the while knowing where and when stopping at keeps and fortresses becomes necessary. It uses the given maps proficiently, directing its characters quite like each king is directing his troops along the map of Westeros. We move around but none of it is mere filler; on the contrary, these journeys provide the sheer core of substance to the book, literal representations of the mental journeys the characters undergo.
Some downers among all the storylines, though: the war itself threatens to put you off from reading on, but effectively gets shoved back to the wayside. Theon’s insufferable mental make-up is difficult to believe and to read through (I mean, he’s a child, right: “I wasn’t given as good a toy as the others, so I kept on sulking, so I got less and less good toys, so now I must steal back all those toys… Aheuh!”). And Sansa’s plotline suffers heavily from the absence of plot. She’s only there to tell us what The Hound, Cersei, Littlefinger, Varys and Tyrion are up to. In her chapters and through her voice we hear more about the ever-changing Kingsguard than about her. Her emotions we get easily enough, but what was her story before this endless captivity? Given their lack of happenings, her chapters would have been perfect occasions to introduce Sansa’s link to the North: memories, ties to her family, culture; instead we only get “Sansa the victim,” which rapidly comes to weigh too heavily on us. You literally dread reading her chapters (which might have been Martin’s intention).
On the other hand, characterization benefits from the notable additions of Meera and Jojen Reed, surrounded by an aura of mystery which further contributes to the fantasy side of the book; of Davos Seaworth (as a POV character) and of Brienne of Tarth_ two strong characters. The Night’s Watch also gets more exposure, allowing us to interact (and to bond) with the various brothers. On Stannis, the verdict is still hanging in this second installment; we can’t say that, reader-wise, he’s a strong player in the big scheme that is ASOIAF yet, but we feel that this is a character whose importance will reveal itself in the future. The prologue, however, is overlong and a predictable case of a good person displaying unusual, and stupid, bravery, and getting himself humbled back to his place by somebody more powerful, cooler and, of course, eviler.
More emotionally mature than A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings is also noticeably better written, more credible, more intense, and displays a closer, tighter grip on characters. No doubt characterization is better achieved here than in its predecessor because this second installment benefits from Martin’s experienced hand perfecting itself all throughout the first book. Quite aside from the heavy-handed treatment of the war, the emphasis on its impact on characters’ journeys, rather than on the political nest of dramas, renders a simply stronger book; finally in touch with the things of life that truly matter (emotions, fights, causes, the Others), A Clash of Kings ironically gets the reader a little away from the pettiness of the game of thrones (with the noted fall from prominence of Littlefinger), and comes out all the better.
It promised, and it delivered.
A Clash of Kings doesn’t just tell a story, it finally unfolds it, with a writing style still fairly raw and accessible, but actually fitting the tale, providing just the necessary build-up and setting for each scene to occur. If in A Game of Thrones Martin’s writing style felt at times as if it attempted to get rid of the scenes it had to show_ each scene tumbling on the precedent, as it were_ instead of building them up, A Clash of Kings has let loose of that “one chapter = one scene” pattern which downplayed the first book: we get to see characters’ lives, their “routine” instead of just the scenes where they impact on the story. The book feels more written. The added landscape and weather depictions (except for Sansa’s and Tyrion’s chapters which still cruelly lack in room and city descriptions), the setup, the fluid passage from one day to the next or from days to days, all of that draws us in. We can feel Martin knows exactly what he has to say in this book and takes more time to say it, which in turn allows us to feel simultaneously as the characters do. And perhaps because there is less to say, it is better said. Lots happen in its own way as Martin takes more care to set up the necessary conditions for things to happen. His characters are not moving very far, but we see them get there (Arya’s wandering, for instance) and that’s all the better. We get to discover them in more depths, get to know and understand them better.
A Clash of Kings was a harder story to write, what’s with the war facts Martin had to introduce as a background and all (Arya’s detailed chapters; Qhorin and Jon attempting to survive in the Skirling Pass), yet_ or perhaps because of that_ one that ends up displaying significantly stronger storyteller skills than in A Game of Thrones.
Size shouldn’t be a put off for the book reads easily. Each storyline follows its path without too much concern for the others_ allowing for interaction to take place between them, yes, but without ever sacrificing their own subject matter and quality in the process. Thus, as characters' motivation unfolds and finds its fate, the reader’s attachment to them often equally and gradually grows. Renly’s and Robb’s wars meet, then part again; Arya’s, Robb’s and Tywin’s progresses cleverly cross or replace each other at Harrenhal. And this here constitutes the strength of A Clash of Kings: its ability to lead characters all throughout the Riverlands and The Reach, all the while knowing where and when stopping at keeps and fortresses becomes necessary. It uses the given maps proficiently, directing its characters quite like each king is directing his troops along the map of Westeros. We move around but none of it is mere filler; on the contrary, these journeys provide the sheer core of substance to the book, literal representations of the mental journeys the characters undergo.
Some downers among all the storylines, though: the war itself threatens to put you off from reading on, but effectively gets shoved back to the wayside. Theon’s insufferable mental make-up is difficult to believe and to read through (I mean, he’s a child, right: “I wasn’t given as good a toy as the others, so I kept on sulking, so I got less and less good toys, so now I must steal back all those toys… Aheuh!”). And Sansa’s plotline suffers heavily from the absence of plot. She’s only there to tell us what The Hound, Cersei, Littlefinger, Varys and Tyrion are up to. In her chapters and through her voice we hear more about the ever-changing Kingsguard than about her. Her emotions we get easily enough, but what was her story before this endless captivity? Given their lack of happenings, her chapters would have been perfect occasions to introduce Sansa’s link to the North: memories, ties to her family, culture; instead we only get “Sansa the victim,” which rapidly comes to weigh too heavily on us. You literally dread reading her chapters (which might have been Martin’s intention).
On the other hand, characterization benefits from the notable additions of Meera and Jojen Reed, surrounded by an aura of mystery which further contributes to the fantasy side of the book; of Davos Seaworth (as a POV character) and of Brienne of Tarth_ two strong characters. The Night’s Watch also gets more exposure, allowing us to interact (and to bond) with the various brothers. On Stannis, the verdict is still hanging in this second installment; we can’t say that, reader-wise, he’s a strong player in the big scheme that is ASOIAF yet, but we feel that this is a character whose importance will reveal itself in the future. The prologue, however, is overlong and a predictable case of a good person displaying unusual, and stupid, bravery, and getting himself humbled back to his place by somebody more powerful, cooler and, of course, eviler.
More emotionally mature than A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings is also noticeably better written, more credible, more intense, and displays a closer, tighter grip on characters. No doubt characterization is better achieved here than in its predecessor because this second installment benefits from Martin’s experienced hand perfecting itself all throughout the first book. Quite aside from the heavy-handed treatment of the war, the emphasis on its impact on characters’ journeys, rather than on the political nest of dramas, renders a simply stronger book; finally in touch with the things of life that truly matter (emotions, fights, causes, the Others), A Clash of Kings ironically gets the reader a little away from the pettiness of the game of thrones (with the noted fall from prominence of Littlefinger), and comes out all the better.
It promised, and it delivered.
For a more personal and detailed review, click
here. Careful, if you read on, get ready for spoilers.
P.S. The
map of King’s Landing could have been more detailed, even if only to show
little boxes representing houses and shops.
Tags: the threat of the Others and the genial concept of the wall as an in-between between life and death (a literal and a metaphorical one); the war everywhere, the war all the time; Stannis' ships; the Lord of Light fanatics; torture, rape and bruises or the never-ending round of "heroes" = victims; a lot of well-researched and credible political questions, strategies and thinking centred around the war vs. weirwood, weirwood: a little "what the hell are we doing here question" via Bran's eyes, Jojen’s greensight, and the Starks in general; a little bit more fantasy than inthe first installment and Gosh we’re thankful for that!; direwolves and dragons; Craster Craster…naughty? Dirty, yeah! I'll say...; countless legends, heroes, songs, foes, swords, banners, customs and manners, a little more world depiction, but still too much textile overflow; very well-researched look into knights, lordlings and vassals, though they're all a little too evil to be credible; too many kings for the realm's own good (I'm on team Varys, by the way!); a rapid look into the beauty and the beast concept with Sansa and the Hound; life beyond the Wall; Arya the mouse, Arya the ghost, and Arya's needle; is it fate or Martin's ruthless quill?; grey keep, red keep, a few towers, a lot more names (some not on the map) and Harrenhal ; Cersei or the cliché; direwolves or the figure of the loyal companion by the hero's side
Strange
Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
1886
While we all know the expression “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”,
we don’t necessarily know the book to actually be good. This short narration delivers,
effortlessly capturing the reader’s attention in its very first few lines. Tension is well suffused; you want to
know, it gets you so close to the narrative, confined within this misty
nighttime London and its back alleys lined with sombre doors…and leaves
you on
the borders, never really plunging in those foggy London Streets, never
really
fearing as the characters fear. You’re told what occurs, the suspense
lingers,
but the story is not lived for it’s first and foremost a narration. For a
book
on evil you see very little manifestation of it and, though the
attraction and
freedom of a split nature is well-developed, it’s fair to say it could
have gone further, dared more in exploring Hyde’s evilness and Jekyll’s
falling over the
edge. Utterson is your guide and, being kept pure till the very end, his
meeting with evil will be something of an anti-climax. Whispering at so
many close doors, this captivating read only brushes when you
want to dig in.
Tags: 19th-century backstreet London, gothic science fiction or nighttime London thriller, and man made Hyde and Hyde destroyed man, story of the parasite within and the parasite without or the unleashing of the id, from science to schizo to magic, limits of man, science vs. nature or the theory of chaos
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