Book Review: The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

"People," Geralt turned his head, "like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live."

The Last Wish, originally written as 6 separate short stories by Polish writer, Andrzej Sapkowski, was published as a collection in Sapkowski's native language in 93, and translated to English in 07, winning a David Gemmell Legend Award.  The Last Wish is a 280 page fantasy, following the adventures of Geralt of Rivia, a witcher.

This is one of two books of Sapkowski's that have been translated into English, with the other being, The Blood of Elves, a novel and sequel to The Last Wish.  Another, The Time of Contempt, scheduled for a late 2012 release.

Characters

• Geralt of Rivia- Known as the White Wolf, he was experimented on from an early age to become a witcher, a professional monster slayer, leaving him with supernatural abilities, reflexes, and the ability to open and contract their pupils at will, giving them improved night vision, (and white hair.)  He is fond of using sarcasm regularly.
• Dandelion- A bard and closest friend of Geralt.  He is well known for his poems and being a womaniser.
• Yennefer of Vengerberg- A sorceress and love interest of Geralt.

The Last Wish is filled with wonderfully crafted characters.  Each is different from one another, and none are portrayed as outright good or evil.  Examples include:

• A incestuous king has a baby with his sister, but is portrayed as a great father.
• A beast-man is shown to be polite and loving.
• Elves, while appearing noble and beautiful, are pompous and bigots.

Geralt, the protagonist, is one of the best and interesting protagonists I have ever read.  The way that Dandelion is foil to Geralt is really well crafted and highlights both characters as wonderful creations of Sapkowski.  He is able to write and create very believable characters, who really are the spotlight of this book.

Dialogue

Sapkowski loves dialogue, and for a good reason.

He's great at writing it.

Sapkowski has such a great ear for dialogue, to the point where he has pages full of it and it is so intriguing.  Never once did it get boring or lackluster.  He is able to tap into who the characters really are and understand what they would say.  Sapkowski handles alternating character dialogue great, only rarely do you ever get confused as to who is talking.

He's also hilarious.

Sapkowski is able to pull off sarcastic remarks and jokes very well, never having one fall flat, and even making me laugh out loud several times.  He knows how to realistically weave jokes into the story, never having one feel out of place.

Plot/Format

The plot of The Last Wish is simply 6 separate stories following Geralt and his adventures, told in a frame narrative.  Because The Last Wish was originally written as such, a overall plot really doesn't exist.

Which isn't really a bad thing.

Sure there isn't a overarching plot line, but the book doesn't really suffer from it.  I found myself intrigued by the characters and world itself, that the lack of a driven plot wasn't missed in the slightest.

The characters push the story forward.

And that is an achievement, in and of itself.

Style

The Last Wish is not another generic fantasy land where everything happy and cheery is threatened by some obvious and ultimate evil, it is very much modeled after our own world with both good and evil intertwined in a complicated yet realistic manner, (with fantasy creatures, of course.)

The Last Wish is very much a deconstruction of various fairy tales and fantasy cliches, including:

• Beauty and the Beast
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
• Various save the princess plots
• Fantasy Elf cliches

And plays with others things like:

• Aladdin
• Rumpelstiltskin

Final Thoughts

Sapkowski has created a wonderful world, filled with realistic and fun characters that never fail to be interesting and are downright awesome.  He is a master writer in my eyes, with The Last Wish becoming one of my favorite books; one that I can see me coming back to every so often.  Time will tell if he enters my top ten authors, (If the rest of his books are like The Last Wish, most likely.)

The Last Wish is a must read, perfect for Tea Time.

This has been a Tea Time Reads review.  Did you enjoy this review? And are you going to check out this book?  Let me know in the comments below.

A link to the Amazon page.

Book Review: The Gunslinger by Stephen King

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

This is the opening line and best summary of, The Gunslinger by Stephen King, a 231 page fantasy/western novel about the antihero, Roland of Gilead, as he chases the man in black and meets various characters along his way.  This is the first book in The Dark Tower series consisting of seven books and an eighth book to be released April 24, 2012.

The Gunslinger was first published as a series of five short stories throughout 78-81, then published in a book format in 82. Finally, in 03, King did massive rewrite of the entire book, which is the only version in print now and is the one being reviewed.  Available in different editions (all revised) including one with full color illustrations and in audio book format.

Characters

• Roland of Gilead- Hailing from a long gone kingdom, he is the last of the order of Gunslingers.  He is hunting the man in black.
• The man in black- Shrouded in mystery, little is known of him, only that he is being chased by Roland.
• Allie- A scarred woman who live and works in the town of Tull.
• Jake- A young boy, who finds himself lost in a whole new world, before Roland finds him and takes him in.

King presents us with a large variety of characters who are all interesting, with a depth to them that gives them that extra quality.  King is known for having a sharp ear for dialogue, and he delivers on that.  In one scene, after reading, I put the book down and sat back in awe.

It was gripping and completely blew me away, inspiring me to write something that awesome.

The interactions and dynamics between the characters are great, flowing back and forth, and you really feel how they feel, and understand their relationship with each other.

Plot

The plot of The Gunslinger is told entirely through Roland's perspective, and about half of the book is told in flashbacks.  We follow Roland throughout his quest to find the man in black, who is always one step ahead of him.  We cross through deserts, an old town, and a subterranean railway, all in pursuit of the man in black.

The first half of the story is well told and equally coherent, but once I hit the midway point, I felt as if King didn't quite know where he was going with the story.  The pacing of the latter half just feels awkward, occasionally going back into a flashback that didn't feel quite right.  And it doesn't have, in my opinion, a great ending.  King himself writes in the foreword:

"All to often I heard myself apologizing for it, and telling people that if they persevered, they would find the story really found its voice in The Drawing of the Three."

(The Drawing of the Three is the sequel, and next installment in The Dark Tower series.)

Style and Format

The style of The Gunslinger is written in King's usual laid back and frank way of writing, that I find easy and fun to read.

This is in no way a negative thing.

One thing that some of the "academic-literary elite" types complain about is his style.  Some have said that he is a terrible writer and an author of penny dreadfuls.  (A type of fiction in the 19th century that usually featured stories about highwaymen and various other vagabonds, aimed primarily at working class adolescents.)

I disagree completely.

Even though The Gunslinger isn't the greatest example of his work, I still feel they are absolutely wrong.

Final Thoughts

When it comes down to it, if you are a Constant Reader, (as King calls the people who read all his work) you will like it.  If you're not, this may not be the best King novel to acquaint yourself with his work. In the end, I enjoyed this novel and can't wait to read the next of The Dark Tower series.  The Gunslinger had made an excellent Tea Time Read.

This has been a Tea Time Review of The Gunslinger by Stephen King.  I hope you have fun, and maybe check out this book.

A link to the Amazon page.

Book Review: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

This is not for you.

This is the opening line of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.  A psychological horror/love story about...  House of Leaves is a hard book to describe.  Even the genre could be debated.

House of Leaves is about a young man named Johnny Truant, who has found a chestful of notes, pictures, and various journal ramblings from a recently deceased neighbor, Zampano.  He then takes the laborious task of putting it all together to create the novel the old man had tried to make before his untimely demise.  Along the way, we learn about Johnny through his increasingly disturbing ramblings, and stories about his latest hookups.  Oh, and we learn all of this through footnotes.  (More on that in a minute.)  But this is only partly correct.

House of Leaves is about a novel Zampano wrote about a short film/documentary titled, "The Navidson Record" in which, we follow the story of a family of four as they move into a new house on Ash Tree Lane.  Things are going relatively well, until the family discovers some very disturbing secrets deep in their new house.  But even now this doesn't begin to describe what this novel is about.  Lets try and get down to brass tacks.

This novel is amazing.

Characters

• Johnny Truant, a young man who has found Zampano's unfinished book, and has recompiled it into a complete copy.
• Zampano, a blind, old man who has watched a short film/documentary called "The Navidson Record" and has written a documentary of his own, detailing the events that unfold.  He is dead at he beginning of the story.
• Will 'Navy' Navidson, the man of the household and who the "The Navidson Record" is centered around.  He is an award winning photojournalist and has two kids with his partner Karen.

These are our main characters we follow, but each in different ways.

• Johnny's story is followed in the footnotes he wrote in Zampano's book.
• Zampano's story is mostly told through his manner of writing and a few notes and poems Johnny included in the book.
• Navidson's story is told completely through Zampano's description of the events he saw in "The Navidson Record".  We also learn through the way Navidson films the documentary (As described by Zampano.), and things he says to the camera.

Danielewski has done a terrific job detailing these characters, making you feel how these characters feel.  Originally, when I started reading this I admit, the characters (specifically Johnny) were, to say the least, odd, but you warm up to them as you follow their tale.  Danielewski adopts a different writing style for Zampano and Johnny, that are wildly different to each other, yet tells us so much about the characters themselves.

• Zampano is wordy and chooses the poetic over the precise.

• Johnny, likewise, is very much wordy, yet in a completely different way unique to him.  He curses, but not in a way that implies unintelligence.

• Navidson, while described and interpreted by Zampano, has a large amount of dialogue that reveals his inner workings, and is free from other viewers interpretations.

I could go on and on about the side characters in this book, as most seem fleshed out, almost to the same degree as the protagonists, but alas, I have a review to write.

Needless to say, the characters will not disappoint.

Story/Plot

The plot of House of Leaves is about "The Navidson Record" and Johnny's fall into obsession with finishing Zampano's book.  Interestingly enough, even though Zampano is a main character (debatable), in the long run, he has little to offer storywise.  (This is a very hard and confusing thing to talk about.  On one hand, without him the story would not exist and he plays a key part in it, yet on the other, he is almost relegated to the status of a side character.  (He is dead after all.))

That is not a bad thing.

Danielewski knows when to poke a few interesting points about Zampano throughout the book, and he does it well.

House of Leaves is very much a book that's more about the journey than the destination.  You will not find a lot of answers for the events that take place in this book.

This is also not a bad thing.

If Danielewski explained everything, it wouldn't be much of a horror story.  The greatest fear is of the unknown and unexplained, and you will find a lot of the unknown and unexplained here, simply because the characters don't know either.  It isn't lazy writing, rather it's excellent writing.

Opening like it does, House of Leaves pulls you in from the beginning, and never lets go.  The story will keep you up at night, either from fright or sheer curiosity of what happens next.

Style/Format

House of Leaves is written in the style of something all of its own.

• It has footnotes that go on for ages, crossed and inked out words in all of the right places (the infuriating places), and side bars with the words upside down or backwards, all creating a crazy labyrinth within the book itself. 
• At several points there are pages that only have one word on the entire page, dead smack in the center, with blank space all around.
• Sometimes, the words are arranged upside down or at an angle.
• It even has three appendices. (Of course I'm talking about the literary kind.)

And of course, you've probably noticed that the word house is always in blue and all crossed out words in red.  This is also in the book.  (At least the full color edition.)

It is awesome.

For spoiler reasons I can't tell you why this is, but it is effective.  You feel terrified and/or claustrophobic as your reading your way through this labyrinth, constructed entirely of words.  Which leads me to say:

Bravo, Danielewski, Bravo.

Summations

House of Leaves is definitely a interactive read, requiring you to use your mind and link two and two together.  At 709 pages, it is a lengthy read, but well worth the time and effort.  I fully recommend this book, but it is not for those who are easily put off by vulgarity and strong language.

This has been a Tea Time Reads Review of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.  I hope you had fun, and maybe give this book a read.  You won't be disappointed.  (Just frightened.)

A link to the Amazon page.

Welcome to Tea Time Reads

Hello, I'm Trey Schauer and welcome to my little corner of the Internet, where you can find book reviews and updates on my own excursions into the world of writing.  I'm hopeful you'll find something that piques your interest here, at Tea Time Reads.

Have Fun!