The Guardians: The Sandman and the War of Dreams and Masks

So here are my quick thoughts on the books i read the last couple of days:

The Sandman and the War of Dreams by William Joyce

I love William Joyce’s Guardians of Childhood series. The picture books, the novels, the movie… they’re all a lot of fun. I’m sad that the movie—which is really good—didn’t seem to get much attention, and I’m sad that it appears that the next novel looks like it’s the last one. Still, they’re all quick enough reads that I can go back and read them all over again.

This latest novel brings the character of Sanderson Mansnoozie, the Sandman (geddit?) into the fray, after having had his origin told in a picture book. While each book in the series builds from the last, this one is very much an installment in a serialized tale. Following the capture of young Katherine in the previous volume, the Guardians search for their friend. Along the way, we learn more about the evil Pitch, his daughter, Mother Nature, and we see the Guardians begin to set things up for what may be the final battle.

As with previous books in the series, I really enjoy the mythology Joyce is building. It’s an epic adventure featuring Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Mother Goose, but it neither feels silly nor overly serious. The books have the tone of an oral folktale, one that has been told again and again over generations. And yet, they also feel focused and detailed. While this time around, we don’t get too much insight into most of the characters, we do learn a great deal about Pitch, Sandman, and Nightlight.

Unfortunately, it felt as if this volume had fewer illustrations than previous ones. I really enjoy Joyce’s artwork, so that was a shame. Also, this feels less like a complete installment than setup for what will come next. Having said that, the background information this book provides more than makes up for that. And since I am totally enjoying the series as a whole, I’m okay with installments that expect me to read what came before and what will come next.

Masks by Chris Roberson, Alex Ross and Dennis Calero

I also read Masks, the collection of the Dynamite comics series bringing together a ton of pulp heroes, including the Shadow, the Green Hornet, the Spider, Miss Fury, the Black Terror, and many others. The story, by Chris Roberson, gives us the state of New York under the grip of the fascist Justice Party. This is a corrupt political party, essentially run by gangsters, meting out terror and oppression under the name of the law. The notion that a state government could be so easily subverted, and the streets of New York start being patrolled by an army of masked, armored thugs feels very pulpy, in the spirit of the characters it teams up.

Unfortunately, the story ultimately feels so busy and crowded that nobody really gets much of a chance to do anything. The Shadow gets his best lines, with his “Why don’t you all quit screwing around,” attitude. Others, like Miss Fury and the Green Lama, end up making token appearances. We get the origins of the Black Bat and a new Zorro, but ultimately, their roles could have been played by anybody, and that makes the story feel kind of pointless.

For that matter, the revelation of the villain behind everything, and his motivation, seems very perfunctory and rushed. It’s a character we’re supposed to know, but we never see him out of the context of being a villain. He ascribes more complex motivations for his plan than we see on the surface, but it’s difficult to believe him when we only ever see him doing anything besides masterminding this fascist organization. Also, things get wrapped up so easily it’s hard to imagine how they got so bad in the first place.

Fortunately, it’s got great art by Alex Ross on the first chapter, and Dennis Calero through the rest of the book. While I hadn’t thought of Calero’s pen-and-ink work with its heavy use of shadow as particularly similar to Alex Ross’s painted pages, they share a lot in terms of layout and character acting. So the whole thing feels like a cohesive whole, despite what, on the surface, are two very similar styles.

As a huge fan of the Shadow, it’s hard for me to pass up any story featuring him. And this is a very pretty one, but also very slight.

"Christmas ought to be brought up to date, it ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols."

For me, this line perfectly sums up The Box of Delights by John Masefield. I have decided that rereading it will be an annual Christmas tradition for me, as well as watching the BBC television adaptation. At least, that's the plan; this is the second year I've read the book, and will the the third year in a row watching the TV series.

It's this weird, modern (for it's time; published in 1935) fantasy story that moshes up modern-day religion, pagan religion, talking animals, Roman armies, Herne the Hunter, magic, gangsters, Punch and Judy, flying cars, time travel, and Christmas. The (extremely) simple version of the story is that young Kay Harker finds himself caught up in a plot by evil gangsters/magicians to get hold of the Box of Delights. The Box (held by centuries-old philosopher-turned-Punch & Judy man Cole Hawlings) has the power to make people "go swift," "go small," or travel through time.

That simple description doesn't really do it justice, though. It doesn't take into account the nonsensical digressions and plot twists that come from out of left field and disappear just as quickly. At one point, while Kay and his friends are hiding from the gangsters, using the box to shrink themselves, they encounter a race of fairies who have been transformed into paintings, with no real explanation. When Kay frees them, they reward him by allowing him to visit their realm one day a year.

And then the kids leave, and the incident is never brought up again.

The book is full of stuff like that, and trying to follow it expecting everything to tie together or make some kind of sense is a fool's errand. Last year, I watched the TV series with the lovely fiancee (just the lovely girlfriend at that point) and watched her get more and more confused and bewildered at each new, weird incident. By the end, she was kind of curled up in a fetal ball, whimpering. And the TV series leaves out a lot of stuff from the book.

(There's a really good piece on the TV show here. They pretty much say everything I would want to about the show, so I refer you to it rather than just say it all again.)

I don't think watching the show is going to become a shared tradition for us, and that's fine. It's got some great performances, particularly from Robert Stephens and former Doctor Who Patrick Troughton, but it's weird as all get-out. But it's also a great Christmas story.

And that's why I love the book, as well. As the opening quote suggests, it isn't trying to be a warm, cozy, traditional tale, but it never forgets that it's a Christmas story. When Kay is listening to the villains plotting, he goes through a whole series of speculations about their plans in his head, but the last thing he thinks about is what he's going to get his governess for Christmas. When Maria Jones (one of a family of children staying with Kay and his governess) appears to go missing, Kay and the other Jones kids worry... until it's time for a Christmas party at the parish cathedral. Then they forget all about Maria, until the party is over. And part of the villains' plot involves kidnapping clergymen in order to prevent Christmas services from being held.

Paul Magrs has written a pretty through analysis of the book on his blog. He also compares it to The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, so now I want to read that. But I can't imagine it's got the same sprawling holiday insanity as Box of Delights. And I won't have the same childhood connection to it (I saw the TV adaptation of Box when I was a kid.)

Even though it's a kid's book, and a story I first discovered as a kid, I think it's only come to define Christmas for me as an adult. For one thing, it's not about family and love and home and hearth in the same way most Christmas stories are. Having lived alone for the past 20-some years, and spent many of my Christmases with just my cat, Christmas isn't about that stuff for me, either. It's about the surface trappings (Christmas music, TV specials, movies, stories, and decorations) overlaid onto and mixed into everyday life. This book may be a weird, twisted hybrid that often makes no sense, but I guess that's what Christmas is to me.

Finished reading Midwinter by Matthew Sturges. As I've mentioned already, I came to this book familiar with Sturges' work as a comics writer, but this is his first prose novel. I thought it was great. He sets up an interesting world that's more complex than it initially appears, and populates it with characters who are interesting to spend time with. The story is a fairly straightforward quest tale (and pretty much lives up to the high-concept description "The Dirty Dozen with elves") but it's told well.

I have a lot of trouble with this sort of otherworldly fantasy, and probably wouldn't have read this if I wasn't already a fan of the author. It's really hard for me to get a picture of a place in my head, or to keep characters straight if they've got weird names. Sturges makes his setting and characters distinct enough that I never had any trouble. He also connects his world to our own in some interesting, unexpected ways, which I thought were pretty cool.

While Sturges' next book--due next year--is set in the same world, it doesn't seem to be a direct sequel to this one. Similarly, this book does drop hints for what the future may hold, but it's complete in its own right. That's great; I read enough stuff as it is. If I read a new book, I want to know I'll be completely satisfied when I get to the end. That's the case here, but I'm so completely satisfied that, paradoxically, I can't wait for the next one.

We've been traveling a lot this month, first to North Carolina (as mentioned in my wedding planning blog), then a couple of trips to California. So I haven't been able to post as often as I'd like. Once Lura starts work again next week, I'll have more time on my hands needing filling, which means more regular blogging.

So in the time since my last post, I've read a couple of books. The first, Peter & Max, by Bill Willingham is thematically tied to the last book I read, James Owen's The Shadow Dragons, in a couple of ways. For one, it's a prose work by a creator I first discovered through his comic book work. His current big claim to fame is Fables, a series bringing together characters from fables and folklore across various cultures, refugees from their war-torn homelands, now living together in a small neighborhood in New York. Peter & Max is a prose novel, but still part of the Fables series.

Like The Shadow Dragons, Peter & Max draws together a bunch of different folk tales into one cohesive story. The book tells the story of the Piper brothers, Peter (of Pumpkin and Pickled Pepper Eating fame) and Max (the Pied Piper of Hamelin), from childhood to the present day. It's a tale of bitter sibling rivalry taken to the extreme, and Willingham effectively shows how the characters grow and develop from their humble beginnings as part of a family of traveling entertainers. The historical flashbacks alternate with the present day, as we see the resolution to their centuries-old conflict.

I love how Willingham takes the stories we all know and adds real depth and human emotion, fleshing them out. Here, we see how events come together to help foster a psychopath. We see how gentle Peter is forced to adapt to the harsh circumstances with which he is confronted. Despite its origins in a comic book series, this story is perhaps best told as a novel, allowing for a storytelling style that gets right into the characters' heads.

While the comic series deals with the ongoing relationships and political situations within the Fables community, the story of Peter and Max takes place on the sidelines. This helps make this novel completely accessible to new readers. Willingham gives enough background information to understand the setting, but this could easily be someone's first visit to this world.

The writing is clear and precise, focusing more on telling the story than fancy literary tricks. Willingham's voice still comes through clearly, with his characteristic dry wit. According to his blog, he is working on a new novel already, and also has several short stories appearing in various anthologies. That's good news; I like his comics work just fine, but, based on this example, more prose from him will also be something to get excited about.

And while this is notable for being the first prose Fables novel, I don't want to forget the illustrations (and short comics-format epilogue) by regular series inker Steve Leialoha. I've been a fan of his for even longer than I've followed Bill Willingham, and it's nice to see him doing the full art for this book.

I also read the latest Gabriel Hunt novel, Hunt at World's End. I talked a little about the Gabriel Hunt series in a previous entry. Nicholas Kaufman wrote this installment, but I'm not familiar with his work, so I can't pick out his individual style. Like the previous Hunt novels, it's a fast-paced action-adventure story with a supernatural MacGuffin at the heart of it. As always--similar to the Indiana Jones movies--the supernatural element is secondary to the action, so they're not really fantasy novels.

I don't have a lot to add to what I said about the last book. After three books, the Gabriel Hunt formula is becoming pretty apparent: Hunt and a beautiful companion race against a larger-than-life villain to uncover some mysterious and powerful ancient artifact. They're well-written, entertaining diversions, but they're not particularly deep in terms of theme or character, and beyond the surface details, there's not a lot of variety among the stories.

Arguably, the Doc Savage novels that helped inspire this series are pretty formulaic as well. And there's something to be said for knowing what to expect from genre fiction, because sometimes you want the comfort of the familiar.

Since the next Hunt novel isn't due out until next spring, I'm planning on continuing to read them. But if the frequency were to ever increase, I would hope the variety of stories would increase as well.

And now, I'm in the middle of Midwinter by Matthew Sturges. (He's another comics writer turned novelist, and a longtime collaborator with Bill Willingham. No coincidence I'm reading this so soon after Peter & Max.) It's been described as "The Dirty Dozen with Elves," and I'm enjoying it a lot so far. More about that once I've finished.

The other day, I finished reading The Shadow Dragons by James A. Owen. It's the latest in his series, Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, which I love, despite the somwhat unwieldy series title.

The series focuses on the caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica, a book which contains maps to all the lands of fantasy and literature and myth which once existed side by side with our world, but have since vanished to another plane. The caretakers, who defend the borders between this other plane and our world, are drawn from the greatest artistic and academic minds throughout history. The current caretakers are J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams, all members of the Inklings, an early 20th literary group at Oxford university.

Each book tells a complete adventure, but together, they tell a continuing, ongoing story, each installment building on what came before. So I recommend starting at the beginning. Every time I finish a new book, I want to go back and reread the earlier volumes, so I can appreciate the foreshadowing and the history Owen is building in this series.

The Shadow Dragons, detailing yet another attempt by recurring villain The Shadow King to conquer both the realms of fantasy and our own world, represents something of a turning point for the series. A lot of the story threads set up in earlier volumes pay off here, and the series seems poised to head off in a new direction. Which is cool, because I prefer the sorts of series that grow and change as they go, as opposed to the "just another adventure" type of series.

Back in the 90s, James Owen published a comic called Starchild which dealt with similar themes, bringing together characters from different myths and folklore into one story. It was very well-written, and drawn in a very detailed, intricate style. I loved it, and was very sad when it ended due to economic reasons. So I was always going to pick up anything new by him, whether it was comics or prose. (And he does an illustration for each chapter of his books, so I still get to see his artwork.)

I particularly enjoy this series because its heroes are writers and artists and scholars. Lately, ever since the accident, I've been feeling pretty down because of the sense of powerlessness. If I were to ever be a hero, it wouldn't be because I'm a big, macho strong guy. So, as much as I like tough heroes like Batman or Superman or Indiana Jones, I probably gravitate more naturally to guys like Doctor Who or Sherlock Holmes or the caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica.

I also like a good, twisty plot, and Owen's books provide those in spades. And the more of his books you read, and you see how events in one book affect events in others, they become even more complex and twisty. Then, as if that weren't enough, there's time travel.

If I had one complaint about this series, it's that there always seems to be more of an emphasis on plot than character. We don't really get into the characters' heads that much. Even though decades have passed for the characters over the course of these first four novels, I can't really say that they've seemed to grow or change all that much. Having said that, though, it's not a problem that ever bothers me when I'm reading the books.

Owen has made a committment to having a new book come out every October, and so far he's been on time. So that gives me something to look forward to every fall. And every fall so far, the new book has lived up to my anticipation.

I'm sure the series will eventually reach a conclusion. (I think he's said between sequels and prequels, it'll be about 12 books in all.) Until that happens, we've got a bunch more Octobers to look forward to. And after that, I'll be looking forward to whatever James Owen does next.

The last book I finished reading was And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer.

As a kid, I loved the works of Douglas Adams, and that probably had more of an influence on my sense of humor than anything (except maybe my Dad). Loved the books, the TV series, the radio series... I even got to go hear him speak once (with my Dad) at the University of California, Berkeley. He may have been the first one of my idols I actually got to see live, if you don't count the guy in the Darth Vader costume we could barely see in a crowded Fisherman's Wharf T-shirt store one day back in 1978. (Which I was also taken to by my Dad. I miss him.)

Those books are products of such a distinct voice, I--quite reasonably--balked when I heard that his estate had approved a new book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, almost a decade after his passing. It's one thing for an author to be one of a crowd writing a series of media tie-in books. It's also one thing for an author's estate to commission someone to finish a series left incomplete by an author's untimely passing. But this... It's not like Adams had left notes about a new Hitchhiker's book, or even had anything beyond vague plans to write another book at some point, reportedly.

However, this was going to be written by Eoin Colfer, who I also like. I really liked the first three Artemis Fowl books that he wrote. (I thought the third one ended the series so perfectly I really don't have any interest in reading beyond that.) I also loved The Supernaturalist by him, and have Airman on my to-read stack.

So it became clear to me that I was going to have to read And Another Thing... I planned on just getting it from the library, but as the publication date approached, and Internet buzz from folks who had read preview copies of the first half seemed good, I decided I didn't want to wait, and went ahead and ordered the book.

It's hard for me to really articulate my opinions about it. It's not just a new Eoin Colfer book; it's a new book by him about somebody else's characters, continuing somebody else's story. It's not just a new Hitchhiker's Guide book; it's the first one not written by Douglas Adams (something which would have once seemed unthinkable). So I come to this book with more baggage and expectations than I might if it was just one thing or another.

I enjoyed it enough that I read it all the way through, but I found it ultimately dissatisfying. For one thing, it's mainly a Zaphod Beeblebrox story, and he's not really my favorite character. Everyone else pretty much spends most of the book sitting around doing nothing. Not saying a Hitchhiker's Guide book needs to give everyone equal time; I love So Long and Thanks for All the Fish even though it's mostly an earthbound romance story featuring Arthur Dent. But this isn't just another book in the series.

To Colfer's credit, he doesn't try to write a pastiche of Douglas Adams' writing style. But this may also be a reason for my ambiguous feelings. He gets the characters' voices right--I can totally hear the radio/TV actors saying the lines--but the story they're in isn't written like any of the others I've read. So it feels a bit different, because it is a bit different. Also to his credit, he describes his own book as "authorized fan fiction," instead of claiming his is the official continuation of the series.

There are funny bits, which made me laugh out loud. It feels true to the spirit of the original series, which is good. It's also kind of unnecessary, and if someone--Colfer or anyone else--were to create another Hitchhiker's book, I'm pretty sure I'd wait to get it from the library this time.

Yesterday, I raved about how Adventure Comics lived up to my lofty expectations. Unfortunately, that's not always the case.

Last week, I read The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan. I'm a fan of Del Toro's films, and Chuck Hogan has apparently won awards for his mystery writing. (I thought I had read good reviews of his novels, as well as comics by him, but I was confusing him with Charlie Houston, I only just realized.) Unfortunately, this book, the first of a trilogy, wasn't particularly good.

To me, it reads like the treatment for the first act of a movie. It's 401 pages long, and not only does nothing really happen, but the characters are almost nonexistent. Only one is really fleshed out to two dimensions, and he's still not that interesting. I can see that if the characters were played by charismatic actors, and the action was unfolding visually on the screen instead of being described--sometimes in excruciating detail--on the page, this could be the first third of a cool movie. Instead, it's a fairly uninvolving opening installment to a prose trilogy, and there's not really enough there to make me want to read part two, a whole year from now.

Also a bit disappointing--though nowhere near as much--was the first issue of Doom Patrol from DC Comics. I've been a Doom Patrol fan since the 80s, through all its various permutations. I was particularly looking forward to this one, because it features the original characters, and it's written and drawn by creators who I like. And it is very pretty, and the characters are fleshed out more than those in The Strain.

Unfortunately, it's not a particularly good first issue. It opens at the tail end of an adventure that doesn't seem very well set up, and the rest is follow-up on the consequences of that adventure. I didn't feel as if it really established the current status quo for the team so much as it expected me to already know it.

I get that I'm not always going to be completely up to speed on every comic book character, because I don't read every comic. But if any issue of a series should help the reader get caught up on background and current events for a character, it should be the first one. I felt as if this would be an effective second or third issue, but as a "welcome back" for the Doom Patrol, something felt missing.

Obviously, it's been a while. Once again, I'm going to try to use the new TV season to try to impose some sort of schedule on my blogging.

So here's my thoughts on what's new in the world of television:

Much as I love the work of Steven Bochco (NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, LA Law) I decided to give his new show on TNT, Above the Bar, a pass. Tried it out for about five minutes, and while it looked perfectly well-made, I just felt like I had seen it already. Just not interested in a lawyer show right now. Maybe it brings something new to the table beyond the story of overworked public defenders struggling to keep their clients from being swallowed up by a system that doesn't care. If so, someone let me know and I'll Netflix the DVDs. As should be evident to anyone who even kind of knows me, I watch a lot of television already. Don't need an excuse to add more.

I had thought about checking out the new 90210, but when the day rolled around, I realized I just really wanted to watch it because of my crushes on Shannen Dougherty and Jennie Garth, formed while watching the original version. Not the worst reason for watching, but on the other hand, I would have to sit through another teen drama, and I already watch One Tree Hill. (Which, to its credit, has moved beyond the teen part.) So, at the last minute, I passed, and watched a recording of another old favorite, Tales of the Gold Monkey.

And I did not watch Prison Break. Didn't really enjoy last season, and the news that they're bringing back Sarah after beheading her last season was the last straw for me. Unless they brought her back as a head in a bottle, a la Futurama. But that's not what happened. (I asked a coworker.)

Loved the season premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Lots of great action sequences, as usual. The developments with Cameron will hopefully turn out to be a good idea; I liked her character before, but I think she'll be a lot more interesting now that it's no longer as clear whether she's simply the "good Terminator." And the twist at the end with Shirley Manson's character caught me completely by surprise, and yet made perfect sense.

I'm not quite as enthusiastic about the new HBO vampire series, True Blood. It held my attention all the way through, and I definitely want to see the next episode. And Anna Paquin has quite the young Holly Hunter vibe. (Loving older Holly Hunter in Saving Grace, so not a bad thing.) In some ways, I guess I feel, as with Raising the Bar, that I've kind of seen this stuff before. But while lawyer shows follow a pretty clearly established path, vampire shows are--if nothing else--weirder. So here's hoping.

Speaking of weird, I liked the premiere of the new JJ Abrams show, Fringe, quite a bit. It owes quite a bit to X-Files, obviously, both in tone (been watching early X-Files on DVD recently) and just in the "government agent investigates weird phenomena with hints of some sort of big backstory connecting things" obvious sort of way. Having said that, it doesn't just follow the pair of characters/believer/unbeliever pattern of X-Files, and the larger ensemble cast should make things a little more interesting. Plus the fact that one of the characters is completely mad. And I generally enjoy the shows JJ Abrams produces. (Yes, even Six Degrees and What About Brian. Judge me.)

And that's about it for new American TV. As far as British stuff, I didn't hate Spooks Code 9 as much as the rest of the Internet, but I'm not going to accuse it of being good television. I saw the first episode of Mutual Friends and liked it enough to want to see the next two episodes, but haven't yet. I think I like the cast more than I do the premise. I really liked the first episode of Lost in Austen, about a contemporary London girl who finds herself stuck in the story/world of Pride and Prejudice, while Elizabeth Bennett disappears off to contemporary London.

As far as reading, I am about halfway through Brad Meltzer's latest book, Book of Lies. So far, it's a good, gripping thriller. Also still listening to the audiobook of Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime, although that got sidelined by my desire to listen to the new Torchwood soundtrack over and over again. And I'm about a third of the way through the first collection of IDW"s Complete Little Orphan Annie. As with all chronological reprints of comic strips, the strip is never quite as good at the beginning as it later becomes, but it's not bad, either. I'm enjoying the strips on their own, and as a means to watch the development of Harold Gray as the strip goes on.