The Devil in a Forest
10 Jan 2009 Filed in: Books
The Devil in a Forest is a short (208 page)
fantasy novel by Gene Wolfe, of Shadow of the
Torturer and Book of the New Sun fame.
It's also one of my favourite books, even though I have
only read it a few times.
The reason that the book has always resonated with me is its almost claustrophobic focus. Set in an unnamed forest, it is a story with only a few characters, most of whom are close-to, but not-quite, archetypes or ciphers. It has few locations; the village in the forest (with an inn, a forge, a chapel and a few craftsmen), the charcoal burner's settlements, an ancient stone monument, the witch's house, the river, the road, St Agnes' Shrine, and later on, the city. Several of the locations are bit parts, with much of the story taking place in the village itself as the inhabitants come to terms with the decisions that they have taken.
The protagonist is a weaver's apprentice called Mark. Aged fourteen, this could almost be a coming-of-age tale for him, but it is far darker than that. Mostly, Mark is buffeted between the various other characters in the tale, and has to make choices that will determine hist future. He is often confused, unsure and reactive, and all the more human for it.
The decisions taken by the village drive the story, upsetting the equilibrium of this small and limited world. The village elders – the Abbé, the craftsmen, but not the Innkeeper – decide to do something about Watt the Outlaw as his robbery and murder of travellers and pilgrims threaten the income of the village as people have stopped visiting St Agnes' Fountain. (Yes, the more astute of you will have spotted that the story references the Christmas Carol Good King Wenceleslas). But some of the villagers are sympathetic with Watt, and treachery and mixed alliances are the order of the day. Mixing with this is the ambiguous Mother Cloot and a party of soldiers hunting for Watt.
It's a simple story where you never feel certain about what will happen next. Wolfe isn't afraid of killing characters, so you never feel safe. The story is very much driven from the protagonist's perspective, limiting your knowledge to that of the character. Altogether, it's a lovely book.
The reason that the book has always resonated with me is its almost claustrophobic focus. Set in an unnamed forest, it is a story with only a few characters, most of whom are close-to, but not-quite, archetypes or ciphers. It has few locations; the village in the forest (with an inn, a forge, a chapel and a few craftsmen), the charcoal burner's settlements, an ancient stone monument, the witch's house, the river, the road, St Agnes' Shrine, and later on, the city. Several of the locations are bit parts, with much of the story taking place in the village itself as the inhabitants come to terms with the decisions that they have taken.
The protagonist is a weaver's apprentice called Mark. Aged fourteen, this could almost be a coming-of-age tale for him, but it is far darker than that. Mostly, Mark is buffeted between the various other characters in the tale, and has to make choices that will determine hist future. He is often confused, unsure and reactive, and all the more human for it.
The decisions taken by the village drive the story, upsetting the equilibrium of this small and limited world. The village elders – the Abbé, the craftsmen, but not the Innkeeper – decide to do something about Watt the Outlaw as his robbery and murder of travellers and pilgrims threaten the income of the village as people have stopped visiting St Agnes' Fountain. (Yes, the more astute of you will have spotted that the story references the Christmas Carol Good King Wenceleslas). But some of the villagers are sympathetic with Watt, and treachery and mixed alliances are the order of the day. Mixing with this is the ambiguous Mother Cloot and a party of soldiers hunting for Watt.
It's a simple story where you never feel certain about what will happen next. Wolfe isn't afraid of killing characters, so you never feel safe. The story is very much driven from the protagonist's perspective, limiting your knowledge to that of the character. Altogether, it's a lovely book.
CJ Cherryh's Russian novels
03 Apr 2008 Filed in: Books
I've been
revisiting a number of books which I originally read in
1992 (gosh, 16 years ago!) written by one of my
favourite author's, CJ Cherryh. They are
Rusalka,
Chernevog and a
recently acquired copy of
Yvgenie. I've
really enjoyed them, but they've been harder work that
some of the other books which I've read recently. The
books are Cherryh's exploration of her Russian
heritage, and quite dark in subject, full of ghosts,
magic and dark forests.
The first book, Rusalka, tells the tale of Sasha, the unlucky pub stable lad, who ends up fleeing town with Pyetr, one of the local ne'er-do-wells, and getting lost in a very dark forest where they encounter a magician and a terrifying ghost. Sasha slowly comes to terms with the fact that he actually has magical abilities himself, and the truth about the ghost is established.
The second book, Chernevog, was a harder book to read, as Cherryh takes her usual approach of telling the tale from the POV of the characters, who spend a lot of the novel confused as to what is actually going on. However it came to a satisfactory conclusion.
The final book, Yvgenie, is the one I'm on now. This is a voyage of discovery, as I only found out it was published recently, and managed to get a second hand copy as it is long out of print. It's the reason that I re-read the first two books, as I wanted to remind myself what had gone on before. The story is some 16 years later than the previous book, and deals with a resurgent threat from the past which menaces Pyetr's daughter.
I love Cherryh's writing, and these books are no different. However, they are more difficult to get on with than her usual books (which normally take 50 pages to get me hooked), and have left me wanting to get a clear bit of time to dedicate to reading them. They definitely aren't novels you can just dip in and out of!
The first book, Rusalka, tells the tale of Sasha, the unlucky pub stable lad, who ends up fleeing town with Pyetr, one of the local ne'er-do-wells, and getting lost in a very dark forest where they encounter a magician and a terrifying ghost. Sasha slowly comes to terms with the fact that he actually has magical abilities himself, and the truth about the ghost is established.
The second book, Chernevog, was a harder book to read, as Cherryh takes her usual approach of telling the tale from the POV of the characters, who spend a lot of the novel confused as to what is actually going on. However it came to a satisfactory conclusion.
The final book, Yvgenie, is the one I'm on now. This is a voyage of discovery, as I only found out it was published recently, and managed to get a second hand copy as it is long out of print. It's the reason that I re-read the first two books, as I wanted to remind myself what had gone on before. The story is some 16 years later than the previous book, and deals with a resurgent threat from the past which menaces Pyetr's daughter.
I love Cherryh's writing, and these books are no different. However, they are more difficult to get on with than her usual books (which normally take 50 pages to get me hooked), and have left me wanting to get a clear bit of time to dedicate to reading them. They definitely aren't novels you can just dip in and out of!
Legacies
13 Jun 2007 Filed in: Books
Legacies is a SF novel by Alison Sinclair. I'd been introduced to her as an author through her later novel 'Blueheart', which was a great inspiration for me with two RPGs, Traveller and Blue Planet. Recently I picked up both of her other novels, Legacies and Cavalcade. I found Legacies to be an exercise in frustration. Sinclair can write well, and the story has shades of CJ Cherryh (the isolation of the main character), Arthur C Clarke (Rendezvous with Rama) and a number of the other classics. However, it took nearly three hundred pages of a four hundred and nineteen page novel for the plot to finally kick into gear, and the whole story was made disjointed by the style deployed, ruining any flow.
The tale is a simple one – the colonists, our protagonists, have been settled for five generations on a world which is not especially hospitable. They arrived at the colony having fled Burdania, their homeworld, using an experimental stardrive because the politicians had wanted to shut down space exploration. The stardrive may – or may not – have caused devastation and widespread ecological disaster on Burdania as it did not function as planned. The colony is also home to another post-technological race with which little contact is held. The tale starts with the arrival of a mission back to Burdania to find out the fate of the homeworld. It then intermeshes chapter by chapter with the story of how the colonists finally came to decide to return to their origins. All this is seen through the eyes of Lain, an outsider in the colony who has suffered severe brain trauma in an accident in his youth which limits his ability to communicate normally.
I can't help but wonder is Burdania is a play on the word 'Burden', related to the colonists concerns about the unknown situation on their homeworld.
I did enjoy the book, but the failure to sustain any pace, and the hard work to get anywhere with it means that I would only give it a 3 out of 5 rating. I'll pass it on to my dad to try and thence to the charity shop or Bookcrossing.com as it's not a keeper.