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The fairy godmother that dogged Harry's footsteps in Grave Peril was forced to trade the debt-- Harry now owes a debt to Queen Mab of Faerie, and she is requesting him to look into the murder of one of the knights of the Summer Court of Faerie-- a person of great power, whom it would be difficult to kill, which may mean that it is one of the other Queens of Faerie. Mab wants Harry to prove that it wasn't her, in order to avert a war between the two courts of Faerie. There's also some wizard politics going on, fallout from encounters with the vampires in previous books, that forces Harry's hand and makes him accept Mab's offer even though he knows he should avoid entanglements with fairies at all costs. Harry begins the difficult task of investigating the other six Queens of Faerie (three for each of the Summer and Winter courts), and does his usual bang-up job of alienating people along the way. And, naturally, someone doesn't want him to succeed in his investigations and keeps sending warriors and beasts to try to stop him.

There are some clever, fun parts to this story. I liked the way Butcher worked in all the known names of the Queens of Fairies by giving the Summer and Winter courts each three queens-- sort of a past, present, and future queen, in a sense. I also liked the continuity from the other books-- the Alphas from Fool Moon are around, keeping an eye on Harry and helping him out of trouble, and eventually helping him out in the final showdown.

That final showdown is pretty exciting. There is a war going on in the heavens-- the beginning of a full on Faerie battle that, if left unchecked, could destroy the human world. Dresden and his allies climb up into turmoil and dark clouds over Lake Michigan in order to fight their way into the center of the battle and stop the unraveling that was caused on purpose, to upset the balance of the Winter and Summer courts of Faerie.

Title:	Summer Knight
Author:	Jim Butcher
Date published:	2002
Genre:	Fantasy
Series:	Dresden Files book 4
Number of pages:	371
Notes:	borrowed from Garvey

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This is a graphic novel adaptation of Richard Matheson's famous 1954 novel (which I haven't yet read but now want to). Robert Neville is the only uninfected, normal human left in a post-apocalyptic world (there are hints of bombs and dust-clouds in his flashbacks) where all other humans have been infected by a disease that basically turns them into vampires. The black and white artwork conveys beautifully the darkness and the utter loneliness of the world that Neville lives in. When the book opens, Neville has an established routine of the errands and tasks he does during the daylight (including repairing any holes in his boarded up windows, growing garlic in his hot-house, and stringing garlic around the doors and windows), but is always inside and locked up by dusk, usually playing classical music in attempt to drown out the noise of the monsters that congregate outside his house to try to lure him out. Eventually, Neville starts to move beyond this routine-- he starts researching the infected blood and reasons through how much of the vampirism is biological and what might be psychological (like fear of the cross and mirrors), and he starts hunting and killing as many vampires as he can during the day, while they are in their coma-like sleep.

There are great details here that make the whole world Neville inhabits much more convincing. For instance, on cloudy days he can't go far from home because he doesn't know how soon it will be dark enough for the vampires to come out. Or how a little thing like a watch stopping could mean death. Neville goes to abandoned stores for whatever equipment he needs and can salvage (like the microscopes he uses to study the infected blood), and he drives at high speeds, goes the wrong way on one-way streets, etc-- rules that were necessary in society become meaningless when he is the only man left.

What makes this story is compelling is the human element. Neville is tortured by the loss of his wife and child to the plague, and some of these experiences are shown through flashbacks. When Neville sees a thin, scared, stray dog in the daytime is nearly overwhelmed by the desire to have companionship. Over days and weeks he slowly, patiently gets the dog used to him, feeding him and moving closer to the food while remaining utterly still so as not to scare the dog off. Finally he manages to bring the dog into his house, and as night falls the dog is terrified because it can't get to its hiding place (and, of course, doesn't know that the house or this man is safe). Neville is finally able to touch the animal, and discovers that it is infected.

The other brilliance of this book, of course, is the twist of the title. Eventually (after three years of this existence), Neville discovers that the infected humans have figured out a way to live with their disease and are beginning to establish a new society-- and as he is dying, he recognizes that he has become to this new society what vampires are to us: the legendary, horrific monster that comes in while we are asleep and kills for no reason.

Title:	I Am Legend
Author:	Richard Matheson (adapted by Steve Niles and Elman Brown)
Date published:	1991
Genre:	Graphic Novel, Science Fiction / Horror
Number of pages:	244

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The galaxy of Ulubis has been disconnected from the rest of the "meta-civilization" when its wormhole portal is destroyed by Beyonder terrorists, but now, because of something inadvertently discovered by Seer Fassin Taak, two separate fleets are racing through deep space to attack or defend Ulubis and retrieve the vital information they think Fassin stumbled across-- a transform to find and access the long-thought mythical Dweller List, a wormhole network set up by the ancient gas-giant Dwellers centuries ago. Fassin is a scholar of Dweller Studies, caught up in the politics and bureaucracy by the order of the Mercatoria. While all the preparations for war and defense are going on, he is sent back to the gas planet Nasqueron to try to find the information that everyone is fighting for. Most of the story follows Fassin, but we get other parts of the story through Fassin's flashbacks, his friends Saluus Kehar, a rich industrialist, and Taince, a military officer with the fleet racing to Ulubis' defense, as well as glimpses of Lusiferous the Archimandrite, the ruthless and vicious head of the fleet coming to attack Ulubis. Banks has created a rich, dense universe populated with fascinating creatures (so many ideas here just thrown into the background could be a full story) and a compelling plot with a pretty satisfying resolution.

One of the undercurrents to this book is the existence of AIs. The current reigning bureaucracy hunts them down and destroys them, and often people use technologies that are "dangerously close" to full-blown AI. In fact, I noticed early on that the few instances of first-person narration all seemed to be AIs; most of the book is in third person, so this is an interesting (and, no doubt, quite intentional) choice-- it's subtle, but it seems to underscores the "personhood" of the AIs. I hoped and suspected that AIs would play into the story, and was delighted when one of the most interesting and strange characters turned out to be one.

There are so many interesting creatures and ideas here. The Dwellers themselves are fascinating (although I can't quite picture them visually from the strange description); they seem childish and silly, but they are the oldest known civilization still living in the galaxy, spread to all gas giant planets billions of years ago, and individuals can live for centuries. Species are divided into Slow (like Dwellers) and Quick (like humans), both for how they sense time's passing and (more importantly) for how long their civilizations endure. Dwellers are impossible to coerce or bribe, both because they are basically indifferent to most of what goes on outside their planets (during the invasion of Ulubis, almost all of the news Fassin can find is about the "play" war the Dwellers are conducting on Nasqueron), but also because their only form of money is the "kudos" that they receive from each other.

There are many fascinating "by the way" ideas that Banks throws in just as background for this universe. For instance, aHumans and rHumans-- some humans were taken from earth and helped to develop so that when the "remainder" humans finally developed their technology and made it into space, they discover that they aren't the only or even most developed humans out there. Or the Morbs, death-obsessed races such as the bird-like Ythyn who roam space collecting and preserving the dead of all kinds. The water-worlder Sceuri, like a huge eel with a folding sail-wing on its back. Or the moment when Fassin finds out his family has been killed and contemplates revenge, and ponders the fact that so many were involved in the destruction (military commanders, the person who launched the weapon, the people who built it, those who started the conflict, etc) that he can't possibly identify who was actually responsible. Also compelling: the Machine War against the AI (centuries ago) ended not because the biologicals won, but because the AIs recognized they could wipe out all of the biologicals and decided not to, and instead went into hiding.

I was a good chunk of the way into the book before I had any idea what the title meant. The Algebraist is the title of an ancient epic poem about a space voyage-- Fassin traded with a Dweller for this book, and it was in a footnote of the first volume that others discovered a reference to the key to the Dweller List. Eventually, Fassin discovers the alien algebra that is the answer he was sent to look for, and first thinks it is a joke-- but eventually figures out the answer is simpler than anyone could have guessed (it seemed like the perfect, satisfying answer to me, drawing together clues from earlier, seemingly unrelated parts of the story). But it also seems to me that the idea of algebra also links to the AI, especially because the first use of the word algebra in the novel is by an AI in hiding that knows it will soon be discovered and destroyed, meditating on the idea of revenge,

... the price its enemies all deserved to pay-by any algebra of justice under any sun you cared to name-for their intolerance, their savagery, their generacide...

Caveats for the sensitive reader: lots of swearing (even Dwellers occasionally use the f-word, which seemed strange-- translated into human?), some sex scenes, and some gruesome violence (presumably to establish how horrific and amoral Luseferous is, but still quite disgusting).

Title:	The Algebraist
Author:	Iain M. Banks
Date published:	2004
Genre:	Science Fiction
Number of pages:	434
Notes:	recommended and loaned by Pete

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The title of this book is a bit misleading. I've owned it for years, but apparently never read it, because somehow I thought it was a collection of fictional short stories about the Salvation Army during the war, and it's really nothing like that. Instead, it is a factual, anecdotal account of the work of the Salvation Army with the soldiers in France during World War I, pieced together from journals and letters from the people who were over there. Most of the anecdotes are very brief, a page or two at most, so there's not a lot of continuity; stories are organized by region and apparently by some kind of chronology, although this is not obvious. At times it feels like propaganda, as anyone who speaks ill of the Salvation Army soon comes to love and respect them, and the "lassies" are all pure of heart and motive-- and apparently most of their work involved making doughnuts and pies to give the lonely soldiers a taste of home. Still, it was interesting to get a very different perspective on the war and the living conditions near the front-- as Hill points out repeatedly, the Salvation Army workers went as near to the front as they were able, and endured the hardships along with the "doughboys" rather than associating with the officers.

There's a section at the beginning about "Commander" Evangeline Booth raising money and support to send her people to Europe (when someone asks where the Salvation Army is, she somehow correctly intuits it is a spy trying to find out where the American troops are), a bit at the end about the work of the Salvation Army for soldiers returning home, and then a long section at the end full of letters from presidents and governors endorsing the Salvation Army, and then from military people of every rank thanking them for their work. These are interesting, but they also make the book feel even less consistent.

I felt like this would have been a much stronger and more compelling story if Hill had taken all the anecdotes and stories and threaded them into a fictionalized account, creating a few characters that the reader could follow throughout, rather than jumping back and forth to unnamed people. And the moments when she talks about the Salvation Army "lassies" and heroes the way she describes the heroines in her fiction-- in spite of their blond curls and pretty faces, if you look into their eyes you just know how sweet and dedicated they are, etc. These kind of descriptions are silly enough in her fiction, but here in what is otherwise almost too dryly factual, it stands out even more.

Couldn't figure out how to classify this one-- it's not fiction, but I'm not sure it really counts as history either.

Title:	The War Romance of the Salvation Army
Author:	Grace Livingston Hill
Date published:	1919
Genre:	History ?
Number of pages:	327

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Bryson is a wonderful writer, and this is quite the interesting topic. Particularly for someone who enjoys words and using them well. Bryson includes a number of comparisons between English and various languages .. for instance, how English only has the word 'you' while in most other languages there are at least three or four different varieties to choose from when addressing someone else. And he is careful to make sure these go both ways .. expressing how in some ways English is simpler than other languages, but also how confusing it can be with grammar and vocabulary and simple changes bringing large changes in meaning.

There are a nice divisions for chapters .. names, spelling, pronunciation, swearing, wordplay .. and others relating to both the history and future of words and language. Of course Bryson uses good vocabulary in this book (how else could one write a book about the English language?!), so it was good for my brain to read this book. Not only was I learning as I read (and also wanting to share random facts with friends who weren't always so interested..), but I was using my brain and being reminded of words I don't get a chance to use often. This is a book I am sure I will read again.

Title:	The Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way
Author:	Bill Bryson
Date published:	1990
Genre:	Nonfiction
Number of pages:	245
Notes:	from danny & anita

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I decided at the last minute that I wanted to re-read this book before I saw the new Narnia movie (I actually read the last ten pages in the movie theater), but I'm glad I did even though they changed so many things in the movie. It was delightful to catch the little bits that are directly from the book that I might not have noticed otherwise (like the Bulgy Bear sucking on his paws). Prince Caspian has never been my favorite of the Narnia books, but I think that must be simply because the others are so good and have so many interesting ideas in them, and not because this is a bad book. There simply isn't the scope for ideas that's provided by the many strange islands in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, or the fascination of meeting Narnia for the first time, or glimpses of creation and heaven that we get in the other books. But this story does have much to say about faith.

Narnia is in trouble again when the Pevensies return. Where before Narnia was oppressed and enslaved by the White Witch, now Narnia is wild, asleep, and hidden-- oppressed by humans who fear the fantastic Narnian natives. The landscape has changed so much in the centuries since Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy reigned over Narnia's golden age that a long section of the book is about them getting lost in the woods. Perhaps one of the changes they made in the movie are an extension of this-- in the book Peter is over-reliant on his sense of direction and knowledge of the land, where in the movie he is over-reliant on his skills as a military leader.

The ideas of faith mostly center around Lucy's interactions with Aslan. When they are all lost in the woods, she sees Aslan when no one else does, and they don't believe her. They made an interesting choice in the movie not to show Aslan when Lucy first glimpses him-- in the book it is easier to sympathize with and believe Lucy, but in the movie we are among those who don't get to see Aslan and don't know whether to trust Lucy. There is a great sequence in the book where Lucy is following Aslan and the others are following her without really seeing Aslan, although gradually they get glimpses of his shadow in the moonlight, and eventually they see him too. This is a great spiritual metaphor, because some people do seem to see God more easily than others, maybe because they are looking for him. But it also gives hope to those who don't see-- we can rely on those who have more faith until our own faith catches up.

It was hard to take the movie on its own terms because I kept thinking about what was different from the book. It makes sense that they would need to change and condense things to make this work as a movie, but some of the changes seemed like an excuse to have more battle scenes because I guess that is what movie-goers like (Lewis' description of the battles are always incredibly brief). It is also strange to listen to reviewers who don't like-- and don't seem to understand-- the Narnia movies. They think it is a poor attempt to duplicate the Lord of the Rings movies, and dismiss the talking animals as "cutesy." Whatever my quibbles with the changes they made to the story, my reaction to these kind of misunderstanding reviews makes me realize how much I value the movie-- perhaps because it allows me to enter into the wonderful world of Narnia and spend a couple of hours there.

Title:	Prince Caspian
Author:	C. S. Lewis
Date published:	1951
Genre:	Fantasy
Series:	Chronicles of Narnia
Number of pages:	216
Notes:	repeat reading

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This book has an introduction, a closing, and 9 chapters in between, with each of the main chapters being specifically about one pathway toward God. These are: naturalist, sensate, traditionalist, ascetic, activist, caregiver, enthusiast, contemplative, and intellectual. How freeing to be told that we don't all need to relate to God in the same way. So often in churches, we are told one or two specific methods .. told indirectly that 'good Christians' will have their quiet time reading the Bible every morning, or other similar mandates. For some people, these are good - but for others they limit and create discomfort. Because, you see, we are all created differently! And God is gracious to relate to us in a variety of ways, so that we can best come to know Him and His love.

Many of these pathways fit with a specific denomination or branch of Christianity, and I wonder how many of the divisions in the Church have come about because of difference in the way we were created by God. As humans, it seems that we are so quick to expect others to be like us. When someone becomes a Christian, it is easier to say 'follow my example' and 'do what i do' than to say 'follow the example of Jesus' - because Jesus seems unreachable and too perfect. But Thomas uses Jesus in most if not all the pathways, because He showed us how to live each one. God is much bigger than we believe Him to be - and the ways that He can reveal Himself are also much wider than we believe them to be. This book encouraged me to know the ways that I most naturally relate to God and make sure those are part of my normal life. Other pathways and methods will happen, and are good ways to stretch myself and learn new truths -- but if I'm not making sure my soul is fed in a way that it can easily receive food and communication from my Dad, I won't have the energy to try to hear God in unfamiliar ways.

Title:	Sacred Pathways
Author:	Gary Thomas
Date published:	2000
Genre:	spiritual
Number of pages:	224
Notes:	borrowed from diane, recommended by diane & lori

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Chesterton writes well .. with enough detail and not too much, and this book flows quickly and well, as one would expect from a nightmare. And there are certainly dream-like elements: at various points time moves much too quickly or too slowly for real life; there are sudden changes, with strangers suddenly being revealed as friends and the like; and oddities are seen as expected and normal. As with much of Chesterton's work, there are many layers and levels of ideas and relationships and truth in this work, and I'm sure I only grasp a few .. but on this reading I understood a bit more than on my first reading.

Gabriel Syme, a man who was selected to be a police detective fighting the anarchists, enters the story and debates with a poet spouting anarchist propaganda. Nobody believes he is one because that would be too obvious .. but shortly thereafter Gregory is invited to a meeting of anarchists so that he will believe there are actually such people. Which is exactly what he wants. Through a series of events, he is elected to the high council of anarchists. Which is composed of 7 people .. each known mainly by a name which is a day of the week (hence the title). At the first meeting where Gregory is present, they eat breakfast together and Sunday denounces one of the members as a policeman .. which later turns out to have affected everyone strongly.

Sunday is the leader of the anarchist high council, and is the definition of so much. All events revolve around him, whether others know it or not. All the anarchists are afraid of him and aware of how much power he has. The ending is spectacular. Sunday is revealed for who he really is (or at least what he can be understood to be .. ) and the other six days of the week are given clothes which beautifully represent the days of creation. Sunday is revealed to have been in all sorts of unexpected places, playing many parts to make things have happened as they did. although this was written and meant as a nightmare, there are many beautiful truths in it. Two being that each man experienced Sunday differently and remembered different facets of him & they experience challenges and suffering, but consider it all worthwhile once they reach the 'end'. This book is well worth reading, as are all the books of Chesterton I've read so far. And worth re-reading!

Title:	The Man who was Thursday: a Nightmare
Author:	G. K. Chesterton
Date published:	1908
Genre:	fiction
Number of pages:	186
Notes:	borrowed from jonathan, repeat reading

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