The Door in the Tree

I took a day off of work today and, of course, couldn't manage to sleep in nearly as much as I planned, so I took the opportunity to read the last 60 or so pages of The Door in the Tree, the second book of "The Magician's House Quartet" by William Corlett.  The first book in the series, The Steps Up the Chimney, took place during Christmas and now we follow the adventures of the same three school children, William, Mary, and the youngest, Alice, during their spring vacation.  They return to their Uncle Jack's Golden House at the edge of the forest, intent upon further discoveries involving the mysterious magician.

I found this book to be a step up from the first one.  The children this time are much more tolerable, less whiney, and frankly, a bit smarter with how they deal with the unexplained.  They meet an old woman who lives in the forest, Meg, who is a self-appointed guardian of nature.  The major plot line involves her badger friends' plight at the hands of "badger baiters", a group of men who operate a nasty dog fighting ring where the viscious dogs fight the badgers.  As in the first book, the children, after putting aside their propensity to disbelieve, are able to inhabit the bodies of certain animals of the forest, allowing them to further their adventures. 

I thought the story itself was more compelling than the first volume in the series, especially the build up of the suspense, the mystery of the origins of the magician, and the central messages and themes the author brought out in the novel.  There were still a few jarring scenes which seemed odd to be included; i.e. I'm not sure what the point was of the scene where Phoebe, Uncle Jack's girlfriend, breast feeds her baby in full view, an act that completely offends the children.  There is no follow-on nor any sort of enlightenment or character growth there.  But to his credit, the author does do a good job at dealing with anger and loss of temper among the characters.  This seems to be an on-going theme of the series and should be helpful to parents who have to deal with that issue.  He also delves into the idea that you can't rely on magic (or grownups) to solve your problems but must find courage within yourself to tackle life's difficult choices.  He manages to involve these issues in the narrative without sounding preachy or talking down in any way to his target audience, the young readers.

I look forward to the final two volumes of this series as I hope to discover the secrets of the history behind the Golden House, the full nature of the magician, as well as the other animal friends that we've come to know.

Next up: Steve Weber's The Home-Based Bookstore, which I hope will be useful as I make a decision about doing just that in the near future.

The Successor

I've completed my latest audio book, The Successor by Stephen Frey.  Last year I listened to the first in this series starring Christian Gillette, a business mogul who becomes the leader of Everest Financial Capital, one of the largest private equity firms in existence.  That first book was filled with the tension surrounding his rise to power, but also many thriller aspects such as attempts on his life by rival power seekers.  It was a true "business thriller". 

This book is the fourth book in the series and possibly the last.  Mr Gillette has now been a powerful man of finance for many years now and in his mid 50's.  He has successfully raised absurd amounts of money for his clients and shared the vast wealth with his partners.  He has now been tapped by the US President to go to Cuba and, due to rumors of Fidel Castro's death, secure the future of American interests as Cuba joins the global marketplace.  I found the plot to be disjointed, however, and I believe Mr Frey missed the mark this time.

The business aspects of this one were mostly non-existent, with the protagonist having turned over most of the responsibilities of running the firm to Ms Allison Wallace.  Its very obvious from early on that Allison would become the "successor" as well as his love interest but it seemed Mr Gillette was the last one to figure it out.  The thriller aspects of the novel were left to the very end, added, it almost seems, as an afterthought.  The major meat of the novel instead focuses on Mr Gillete's mid-life crisis and his falling for a young 22-year old, who we readers figure out at the beginning is an actress, introduced in the very first scene.  When the author discloses that "ah-ha" moment of who this 22-year old really is, I couldn't believe he expected me to not have figured that out long before. 

I think the author had a trap to climb out of: he had a protagonist who, in the first three books had risen to such powerful heights that he had no more room for growth.  I think he tried to refocus his goals and take him in a different direction but instead he ended up thrusting him into an improbable scenario and then didn't follow through with a believable plot. I am hopeful Mr Frey will put this series to rest and begin anew.

I won't be doing any more audio books for a while.  I have reached the end of my Air Force career and will be retiring after 20 years of service.  In fact, at this point I have only 8 more days of actual work and thus, not enough time to get an entire audio book completed during my commutes.  While I have an ideal future planned that involves staying at home and working on my hobbies (reading, writing, watching movies, and playing computer games) my budget requires me to secure an actual income-producing job.  If I manage to land one in this economy and still have a reasonable length of drive to and from work I will re-enter the audio book realm.  Until that happens, I will miss them.

Wish me luck.

Pattern Recognition

Every once in a while my reading choices take on a decidely different flavor.  I feel like I need to try new things, especially authors that have great reputations.  So I was at work late last week and for only the second time I can remember, I had forgotten to bring my reading material with me and so was "forced" to go to the store and pick something out.  I seized the opportunity to try William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.

William Gibson, for those that don't know, is the patron saint of "cyperpunk" literature.  Cyberpunk can be loosly defined as a combination of cybernetics and punk and has been described as "high tech meets low life".  Usually his books are futuristic and definitely science fiction but this particular novel takes place in the present day (published in 2005).  The protagonist is Cayce Pollard, an internet fanatic who works for various corporate clients who hire her to evaluate potential corporate logos due to her uncanny ability to discern their mass appeal.  Her hobby is to find meaning and patterns in a mysterious collection of videos that are being broadcast on the net called "the footage".  But her hobby and her work overlap when she is hired to find the source of the footage which leads her on a quest around the world.

I find this novel very hard to describe...almost as hard as it was to read it.  I really worked hard to follow the plot and while I was impressed by the author's use of dialogue to convey his characters' inner thoughts, I just found it difficult to follow.  The subject certainly ties in to today's young people (18-25) who seem to practically live on the internet and he captures their attitudes perfectly.  But that alone does not make for a good story.  They say Gibson writes for the intelligent reader; of this I have no doubt.  But I tend to think of myself as pretty intelligent, and I certainly read a lot, but I just found myself wishing the book would hurry up and end.  If I were less of a completist, I probably would have just tossed it aside.  But I stuck with it and actually enjoyed the final 50 pages or so when the action/thriller elements took over.  But unfortunately, by then, I really didn't care what happened to the characters.  Not a good sign.

So will I read more books by this author?  Doubtful.  Am I glad I read this one? Yes because now I know his style and can more easily pass up his other works when I'm browsing the book store shelves.  The only possibility that I can see right now is to try Neuromancer because it is such a definitive work in the science fiction genre.  But still that's doubtful...

But by way of contrast, I followed that book with Jeffrey Archer's second-to-last entry in his Cat O'Nine Tales collection, called "The Commishioner".  This story was a delightful entry, telling the story of a repentent ex-con who tries to pull one last scam and take advantage of a retiring police commishioner.  He does not succeed but how the scam comes to light falls into the "truth is stranger than fiction" category. 

Next up, the second in the Magician's House Quartet, "The Door in the Tree", a young adult novel by William Corlett.