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This author and his books are highly respected and talked of, and this was indeed well written. But also hard to read. It's so full of despair. Once I finally reached the end, there was some hope .. but a few times I had to force myself to pick up the book .. knowing I would most likely read something deeply saddening. Mariam is a young girl when we first meet her, in a house a few kilometers away from a small city in Afghanistan. We follow her through her life and in the process see pieces of the history of Afghanistan that one might not wish to have seen.

Mariam is born to a unmarried mother, and has a father who is rich but will not marry her mother. She adores her father .. until she discovers that he does not wish to acknowledge her existence in public. After her mother dies, Mariam is quickly married off to the first suitor. Who happens to be much older than her, not physically handsome, and overweight. As a young teenager, she takes over the duties of a household, cleaning and cooking and of course sexual relations. Mariam has little to look forward to in life, and simply tries to get through each day. war becomes part of their daily lives, and the daughter (Laila) of the next door neighbors ends up an orphan, and is 'kindly taken in' by Mariam's husband as a second wife. There is rivalry .. but eventually these two women become friends as they face a common enemy. And Mariam, who has had little hope since childhood suddenly finds herself with hope. Laila has two children, and these two women value them and nurture them. Even Rasheed, their husband, is human again when he is with his son. Laila's childhood sweetheart who she hoped to marry, named Tariq, is a strong man who has seen evil and still come out gentle. May there be more men such as him!

This book is full of sadness. It's about life during war. A number of wars. Evil is clearly depicted. Men who want power, men who tell lies, what death can do to people, what living under fear does, how boundaries can change .. stories that can be hard to read. But for this story .. there are millions of other stories with similar pieces. That are true. Despite the overall sadness and weight and pain in the book, the end is actually hopeful. Not amazing or perfect or wonderful, but there is some light. In the places where darkness has reigned so long, there are people choosing to value each other, choosing to not only survive but work to find the beauty in life. And, by the grace of God .. that is strangely possible in life. Even in the darkest places, God made humans to find reasons to delight in simple pleasures and to hope.

Title:	A Thousand Splendid Suns
Author:	Khaled Hosseini
Date published:	2007
Genre:	Fiction,
Number of pages:	367
Notes:	Given by Birgit

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Acacia is a peaceful, prosperous kingdom made up of the provinces of the known world and has been ruled for 22 generations by the Akaran family. What is kept as much of a secret as possible is that their prosperity is built on slavery-- extensive mines are worked by slaves, who are kept pacified by a mist drug which is in turn bought with a Quota of child slaves each year. These facts are exposed when a Meinish assassin kills King Leodan and Hanish Mein leads a quick, brutal attack against Acacia. Leodan's four children are sent away to for safety, and where they end up has a profound effect on who they become and how they try to take the kingdom back from Hanish.

Only one of Leodan's children ends up exactly where Leodan planned. The oldest, Aliver, is sent to a chieftain among the dark-skinned tribes of Talay, and as he grows up he is trained as a Talayan warrior and hunter. However, the guard who was supposed to take care of the oldest daughter, Corinn, turned out to be a greedy opportunist who betrays her to Hanish Mein for a position of power in the new empire. As an "honored guest" (but really a prisoner) of the new leaders of the empire, beautiful Corinn becomes manipulative, selfish, and hard. The younger daughter, Mena, ends up in the islands of Vumu and because of her strange appearance on their beach, she is chosen by the priests as the human representative of the angry island goddess, a Sea Eagle named Maeben. The youngest, Dariel, becomes a sea raider and learns to be a clever fighter and a leader; but he was so young when he was separated from his siblings that at first he doesn't want to remember who he really is.

One particularly interesting aspect of this book is the place of their legends and mythology, not least because they turn out to be true (at least to some extent). The Meins practice what seems like a form of ancestor-worship they call the Tunishnevre; they were cursed by the first king of Acacia who exiled them to the north, and the curse has not allowed the souls of the dead Mein warriors to depart. so there are 22 generations of angry Meinish warriors whispering to their leaders and wanting to be released.

But the Acacian myths turn out to have some truth to them, too. Aliver seeks out the Santoth,the ancient sorcerers who were exiled by Tinhadin. They are called "God-Talkers" because they learned the language that Elenet stole from the Giver who sang the world into existence. But because humans cannot speak the Giver's language perfectly, their magic is corrupted and imperfect.

If the language of the Giver all those years before had been one of creation, and if that act of creation had been a love hymn that sang the world into being on music that was the fabric of existence itself and that was, as the legends held, most wondrously good to behold ... if that was so, then what the Santoth released was its opposite. Their song was a fire that consumed the world, a hunger that ate creation, not fed it.

In some ways, this book reminded me of Dune: the brutal politics, people motivated by revenge and greed; the drug trade that is integral to the society; the idea that harsh climates make fierce warriors while the prosperous get soft; even the leaguemen, the go-betweens for the drugs to the unknown and feared Lothan Aklun, reminded me of the space navigators in the world of Dune. Some of the warfare, especially early in the book, is quite brutal and disgusting. The Meins are aided by a fierce northern race who ride some kind of war-rhinos, and the Meins even make use of a crude form of germ warfare. The politics are believable, too-- Hanish Mein discovers, when he takes over the running of the kingdom, that he can't fix any of the problems or the injustices that he despises, and he rationalizes this with the consolation that at least now his people are not the victims. At many points, Durham seems to purposely upset typical fantasy conventions. The hopelessly outmatched heroes get destroyed, sometimes almost casually run over by the rampaging armies. If everything goes just right, the good guys just might possibly be able to come through and good will win out-- but then a deadly betrayal comes from someplace you don't expect it. It makes for good reading. It took me a little while to get into the book (maybe the first 100 pages), perhaps because there were so many characters and so much going on; but after that, I couldn't wait to read more because I was so interested in what was happening with all the different characters.

Reviewed by Nancy Pearl on her KUOW podcast (review link no longer available, but listed under Pearl's Picks for December 2007). The book was also brought to my attention by an interview with Durham on ScifiWire. Durham was previously known for historical fiction, and he's posted an open letter on his website explaining why he decided to write fantasy.

Title:	Acacia: The War with the Mein
Author:	David Anthony Durham
Date published:	2007
Genre:	Fantasy
Series:	Acacia
Number of pages:	753

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What cost is too high for Peace? This book presents a world ruled by the "Peace Authority", a group who created a new technology that allowed them to enapsulate anything or anyone that they deemed dangerous to mankind (e.g., nuclear weaponry and the people with the power to use it), in an impervious, reflective "bobble." Now, fifty years later, the world is a wild, feudal land with little 'civilized' government in the ruins of the cities of California (large portions of the population were destroyed by a bio-engineered plague around the time the Peace Authority took over). Innovative new technology is being designed and created by the "Tinkers," family groups, and they rely on algorithms designed by the elderly Paul Naismith. When Paul sees a nearby bobble burst and makes the discovery that the people using the technology didn't really understand it to begin with, he uses his wits, his new apprentice, and his Tinker allies to wage war on the Peace authorities who have tried to contain anything "dangerous" in humanity.

In their attempts to keep humanity from self-destructing, the leaders of the Peace effort destroyed any government that might have been capable of resisting them, and they keep any new governments or technologies from progressing far enough to become a threat. The result is that they are keeping all of humanity in a feudal state and stifling innovation; their own technology has barely progressed from what they were using fifty years before, which was plenty when they were the only one with the all-powerful bobble technology. There are also subtle suggestions that gender roles and equality have regressed in this time; one of the most clever and successful agents working for the Peace Authority is a woman, and her place and authority is questioned by many of those around her, yet she is fiercely loyal to the Peace Authority. The Tinker families are very patriarchal, and women aren't allowed to be involved much in the technical work or in the big decisions. This state of affairs is highlighted by the contrast with Allison Parker, a woman from fifty years before....

Some of the most interesting ideas are about creativity - Paul's insight into the way bobbles actually work gives him the capability to use bobbles defensively instead of only for attack. Similarly, the Tinker technology is much more sophisticated than the Peacers suspect-- partly because they haven't been developing their own technology, and even seem to have lost some understanding of the old technologies they use that have kept them dominant. For one thing, the Tinker tech is much more energy efficient-- because they had such limited resources, they figured out a way to adapt.

I found this to be an exciting book, and very readable (although it took me a while to get engaged and really drawn in), but there are a lot of ideas here that are quit thought-provoking.

Title:	The Peace War
Author:	Vernor Vinge
Date published:	1984
Genre:	Science Fiction
Number of pages:	304
Notes:	recommended and loaned by Levi

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I re-read this book over a weekend when I wasn't feeling well, and it was perfect timing to forget how miserable I was and lose myself for a while in Sunshine's fascinating world of vampires and magic and baked goods. I guess that means that it must be "escapist" literature, although I don't really think of it that way. There is so much worth thinking about here, and parts of this book stay with me. Sunshine discovered more of herself and who she is-- and she struggles with it, because she thinks it means that she is some kind of monster. She has this dark "affinity" for vampires, even helped save one, which she's sure no one around her could understand (although it is her very generosity towards the unthinkably Dark Other that saves her). She thinks this makes her a dark creature herself, but those around her have to help her see that it is because of her brightness, because of who she is and the source of her power, that she can face such darkness.

The fascinating character of Con, Sunshine's unlikely vampire ally, gives McKinley the chance to dig into the workings of vampires in this world she's created. Vampires are completely other and scary to humans on an instinctive level, as hunter to prey. The normal path for a vampire who survives to any kind of age is to become a wealthy master vampire with teams of younger vampires working for him-- in part, because the old vampire can't go out in any kind of light, even moonlight. We see this with Con's enemy Bo-- he has become so corrupt and evil through satisfying every dark appetite he could imagine for many centuries that he is no longer even fully corporeal.

A great book that I could (will) re-read again. I see that McKinley has published a few other books lately, which is exciting, but I hope that sometime she gets inspired to give us another glimpse of Sunshine and her world.

Title:	Sunshine
Author:	Robin McKinley
Date published:	2003
Genre:	Horror / Fantasy
Number of pages:	405
Notes:	repeat reading

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It was so delightful to read the newer Chrestomanci books and re-acquaint myself with the wonderful characters of Cat and Christopher Chant that I found myself wanting to go back and read their own stories again. Both stories tell stories about young boys with nine lives, destined to be the Chrestomanci, the only magic-user powerful enough to police the rest of the magics in the twelve related worlds. But when we meet them, both boys are quite powerless and pretty lonely, and don't have any idea that they are actually powerful magicians. In Charmed Life, the orphan Cat lives with his beloved sister Gwendolyn, who is very pretty and seems to be a talented young witch. What he (and we) don't realize for quite some time is that Gwendolyn isn't all that powerful on her own; she has simply been using Cat's magic. In The Lives of Christopher Chant, young Christopher isn't an actual orphan but he might as well be-- his rich, society mother drives away his kind, worried father (who has enough premonition to sense something bad is going to happen to Christopher, but not enough power to know what to do about it). In his dreams, Christopher travels to strange and wonderful lands, but the gifts from strangers that he carries back in his dreams actually end up in his bedroom. When a clever nanny figures out what this means, Christopher's uncle begins making use of this ability to do some "experiments"; the young, lonely Christopher is so eager to please his uncle that it doesn't occur to him for quite some time that he might be doing something dangerous or illegal.

Cat and Gwendolyn eventually go to live with Chrestomanci (the grown-up Christopher Chant). Chrestomanci decides that Gwendolyn cannot be taught or practice magic until she has caught up on other things (which she neglected entirely, devoting herself to magic). Her tantrums and spiteful magic on the castle grounds, in the house, at the dinner table, and the like are quite entertaining and an interesting look at what it might be like to live with a powerful and capricious teenager (hopefully anyone who has to deal with that has a staff of trained magicians to clean up and keep them in check, as Chrestomanci does). Eventually, she decides she isn't going to get what she wants so she decides to jump to a different reality where she will be worshipped and adored-- but in doing so, she burns up another of Cat's nine lives and shifts a whole sequence of alternate Gwendolyn doubles into different realities, leaving a girl named Janet from an unmagical world like ours in her place. Finally, Cat makes the painful discovery that Gwendolyn was completely selfish and uncarinng, and he finally decides that he does mind having his magic borrowed and used without his permission, and is able to use some of his powers to help save the day in the climactic fight.

The young Christopher Chant seems to have no aptitude for magic because of an undiagnosed magical "allergy" that inhibits his powers. When he finally goes to a teacher that his father finds, he is instructed to empty his pockets, and then when he does the spell that's asked of him he had so much power he lifts the whole roof of the house off. The travelling between worlds that he does is also quite powerful and beyond what most people can do; because of his nine lives, he can just leave a life behind in bed and go somewhere else. But there are consequences, too-- when an accident kills his dream-self, then something similar happens in real life to finish the job and takes on of his lives. In the midst of his world travels and unknown black-market smuggling for his uncle, Christopher meets and strikes up a friendship with a girl who is the living Asheth, a goddess-- in exchange for a temple cat named Throgmorten, he brings her books to read.

Although he is pretty unhappy about it, Christopher eventually goes to live with the current Chrestomanci, Gabriel de Witt. When de Witt is incapacitated in the fight against the mysterious smuggler they can't seem to catch (Christopher's uncle), Christopher has to take over organizing the fight (with some help from Throgmorten and Millie, the former Living Asheth, who chose a name from her favorite series of books about a schoolgirl), Christopher has a revelation-- he sees that de Witt doesn't enjoy his duties as Chrestomanci at all, but finds that he, Christopher, loves it and is actually pretty good at it.

Title:	The Chronicles of Chrestomanci Volume 1 consists of Charmed Life (1977) and The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988)
Author:	Diana Wynne Jones
Date published:	2001
Genre:	Young Adult Fantasy
Series:	Chrestomanci
Number of pages:	598
Notes:	second reading

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Two new installments set in the always-delightful many related worlds of Chrestomanci. If there's a common thread between these stories, it's the idea of talented young people learning to trust themselves and their own abilities, even if the adults around them underestimate them or don't believe in them. The title character of Conrad's Fate is a young man convinced by his uncle that he has a bad karma hanging over him because of something he failed to do in a past life-- at his uncle's insistence he takes a job as a servant at the Stallery mansion to take care of his undone karmic task before he's too late, but things don't go quite the way his uncle hoped. The Pinhoe Egg centers largely on Marianne, a young woman who is sort of the "heir apparent" to the old Gammer of her extended family, sort of the magical head of the clan. A rivalry with a neighboring magic-wielding family turns ugly, the Gammer seems to be going crazy, but no one besides Marianne seems to see what is going on. Both of these stories also feature current or future Chrestomancis that we've met in the other books in the series, and it is fun to see more of them.

Things are always shifting in Conrad's town. One day, suddenly, all the mailboxes might be blue instead of red (and most people don't seem to notice). Once or twice the series of books he is reading in his uncle's bookshop changes, so the new one he was planning to read has a different title or isn't there at all. His uncle explains that someone up at Stallery Mansion is "playing the possibilities", using magic to shift things to their own financial benefit without ano care for how the changes might affect anyone else. Conrad goes to work at the Mansion, and meets up with a youngish Christopher Chant, who is there looking for Millie. The two of them are chosen to be trained as valet for the next master of Stallery, which means they have to learn a bit of everything-- and this gives Christopher plenty of opportunity for wisecracks about the way things work in the big house, such as the seemingly infinite regression of groups of servants eating earlier so they can wait on the next, more important group. In the midst of all their training, Conrad and Christopher notice that something strange is going on-- it turns out that the whole castle is sitting on top of a probability fault, where things and people can suddenly shift from one version of reality to another. When they eventually find the place that's being used to try to harness the probability shifts for financial gain, there is a computer set up, which gives Jones the chance to present something I found particularly clever and amusing-- there is a "shift" key on the computer that actually does exactly what it says.

The Pinhoe Egg is set in the area around Chrestomanci Castle, and takes place when Christopher Chant is the current Chrestomanci and Cat lives there with them (sometime after the events of Nine Lives). Among other things, this book gives an idea what it might be like if we had cantankerous magic-users going senile (a frightening thought!). Because Gammer Pinhoe is unwell, the family has to move her out of her old house-- and she goes pretty unwillingly: she roots herself into her bed, she makes the huge old table go careering through the town, and generally makes things difficult. At some point, Cat meets Marianne and her brother Joe, and he is up in the attic of the old house. He is inexplicably drawn to something, what looks like a huge egg, and Marianne gives it to him. With Cat's special care and magic, the egg hatches and something rare and wonderful and delightful emerges (you think at first it might be a dragon-- that's close, but not quite right). But as Cat learns to care for and understand his new friend Klartch, he learns something about the strange silent woods where he has been riding his horse, and the sacred duty that the Pinhoe family have taken on themselves for generations, a duty of protection that got twisted into something else by the time and forgetfulness of generations.

This story highlights the many different kinds of magic and power - the "dwimmer" of Marianne's family, the mechanical cleverness of Joe and Roger, Cat's creature magic and connection with the horse Syracuse (while Christopher Chant can't stand horses), Jason's fascination with rare plants, Irene's artistic magic-infused patterns and designs, Marianne's magic being different because she is a sorceress in a family of witches, and even Janet's non-magical practicality.

Title:	Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 3 - consists of Conrad's Fate (2005) and The Pinhoe Egg (2006)
Author:	Diana Wynne Jones
Date published:	2008
Genre:	Young Adult Fantasy
Series:	Chrestomanci
Number of pages:	688

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A multi-generational tale of a family that is somehow connected to the world of Fairy. There's a family tree chart at the beginning, and I found myself referring to it frequently because I couldn't keep track of all the people. The book starts in the middle of the family's story (Daily Alice meeting and marrying Smoky and rescuing him from his anonymity), but then jumps backwards a few generations (Violet Bramble leaves England and her fairies behind, only to meet John Drinkwater and learn that the world of Fairy is somehow also close to the crazy multi-style, multi-fronted house he built), and then moves forward and follows some of their children. It's a strange book and I couldn't tell if I liked it even near the end-- the family all know (to varying degrees) that they are somehow "part of a Tale," and I found myself waiting for something to make sense of everything. The ending is pretty brilliant, and really works-- it's the kind of revelation that transforms the characters and the story, makes sense of some of the strangeness and raises a whole batch of new questions. The title comes from (I think) the notion of some of the family that the world of Fairy grows larger the further you go into it-- only the smaller parts of it overlap with our world, so we tend to only see little fairy beings.

Part of the reason I wasn't sure I liked the book, and didn't really enjoy it so much while I was reading it, was that the characters are all so unhappy and, to some extent, difficult to like or identify with. One young man in the family meets an odd bird-person and is granted the gift of being irresistible to women; what he doesn't learn until later that this is really a curse that makes it impossible to resist any woman-- he is consumed with love by each of the many women he is spending all his time and vital energies chasing around the country to be with. Another young couple in the city have a very strange relationship that seems unhealthy-- but when you know the end of their story it makes a great deal of sense, somehow. Another disconcerting thing I found, at least early on my reading, was that although the book is written in a style that reminded me of George MacDonald, there is quite a bit more nudity and sex than I would ever expect to find in a MacDonald story (not much by modern standards, I think it was that the style caught me off-guard).

Other strange and interesting characters-- a dead and ancient king brought back from the dead to become President and tyrant; a woman who is effectively a wizard, but her power stems from her mastery of the Art of Memory, her ability to make sense of things and let the things she knows infuse each other with meaning so her understanding grows and changes. A changeling child, stolen from her mother and brought up by the fairies apparently only with one rather small task.

There were hints of the ending of the story, and the ones I caught (or know now I failed to catch) were in the names. Auberon seemed like a family name, and I didn't really think about it (why it sounded vaguely familiar, how it could be pronounced). I was intrigued by the mention of a family nickname for the younger Auberon's lover, his "dark girl" Sylvie-- she mentions in passing that her family sometimes called her Tita, or Titania. But even with those clues, I'm not sure I could have guessed (still not sure I understand) the way the story ends. Some of the other parts of the story make me think I'm not quite as familiar with the characters and stories of Fairy as I ought to be, and maybe if I were these things would make more sense.

In a way, this book reminded me of The House of the Spirits and 100 Years of Solitude-- a multi-generational family with hints (and more than hints) of the supernatural, magical experiences woven into the every-day. It was the little moments like this that I loved, where you don't know quite whether or not to believe-- one of the cousins who can't sleep sees the Sandman in the room of the children, but is told he won't get any sleep. Or, the Christmas where they write letters to Santa and burn them in the fireplace (as per their tradition), and Santa shakes his head over what some of them ask for because he knows what it will cost in unhappiness, but the requests are, in a sense, fulfilled.

I hadn't heard of this book or John Crowley until I saw the title listed on Alan Jacob's syllabus for a "Modern Mythology" course somewhere online (that was over a year ago, and now I can't find it). It does seem like a book that would be interesting to discuss, and one I wouldn't mind having other people help me make sense of.

Title:	Little, Big, or, The Fairies' Parliament
Author:	John Crowley
Date published:	1981
Genre:	Contemporary Fantasy / Fairy Tale
Number of pages:	538
Notes:	recommended by Alan Jacobs (sort of)

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Beth Cappadora, a mother of three, takes her children with her to her fifteenth high school reunion, excited to finally spend time with friends and get a break from being a mother. But everything changes in a moment .. she leaves her older son, Vincent, who is 5 holding Ben's hand, who is 3. A friend had already taken Kerry, the baby, upstairs to nap. When she returns from the front desk 5 minutes later Ben is nowhere to be found. Everyone searches, people ask questions, police come .. and her husband, Pat, arrives to participate in the search. At first the policemen are helpful and assuring her that they'll find him .. but as time continues, things become more serious.

Fast forward ten years or so .. and Ben shows up on their doorstep offering to mow their lawn. He lives two blocks down the street. But he isn't Ben any longer. He is Sam. And although they can piece together what happened and how, that doesn't mean Sam/Ben remembers any of it or wants to move in with his new/old family. A classmate stole him, and is in a mental institution, and Sam lives with his father who knows nothing about it. The only person they can blame is crazy and catatonic. What would it be like to live with the guilt that 'I caused this horrible event to happen' for ten years? Both Beth and Vincent live with this guilt. And even Pat, who wasn't there at the time. But they aren't able to talk about it, so each responds differently. Beth stops being a mother, stops caring about life, stops feeling anything. She figures that she was a mother to Ben and because of that he was hurt, so if she stops being a mother to her other two children they won't be hurt as badly. Pat retreats into his work, into dreaming up a new Italian wedding themed restaurant with his family that does brilliantly. Because he works in the restaurant business he is always working and always busy, and he is glad for that. Vincent, on the other hand, knows his mother both before and after .. and knows that she is nothing but a shell. He acts out, gets into fights, challenges everyone and everything. Nobody can make him stop, although his counselor, Tom, finally gets him to face facts and remember what happened and speak it out. At the end of the book it's revealed that Vincent considers it his job to protect his family in any way that he can .. growing up too quickly because his parents didn't really care for him as parents and he had to parent himself. A very interesting psychological story .. including the effects of what happens when Ben is reintroduced into the story. They can't just pick up where they left off .. so how do they pick up? Where do they begin? Can they deal with the new stress and the loss of old stress? And there's even a hopeful ending, which I was glad for :)

Title:	The Deep End of the Ocean
Author:	Jacquelyn Mitchard
Date published:	1996
Genre:	Fiction
Number of pages:	434
Notes:	brought by sue

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