Aren't they fantastic?

I recently reviewed two books that are right in my realistic fantasy wheelhouse for The Miami Herald — both are the final installments in trilogies and both were just great, in different ways. I’m going to link to the reviews here but they will eventually go off the Herald’s free site so I’ll try to remember to change this once that happens. In both cases, I strongly recommend reading the entire trilogy and not starting with the third volume.

First up was The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness, the finale in her All Souls Trilogy. The first book was called A Discovery of Witches; the second is The Book of Night. Harkness writes for those of us who are open to stories of the supernatural but don’t really want to deal with Twilight and its ilk. As I said in my review, despite most of their characters being witches, vampires and daemons, these books share more DNA with A.S. Byatt’s Possession than they do with Twilight. They start out in Oxford’s Bodleian library and its main characters, witch Diana Bishop and vampire Matthew Clairmont, are brought together by a long-lost manuscript that Diana accidentally conjures up during her research into medieval science (ie. alchemy). That manuscript is, of course, the titular Book of Life but to re-find it Diana and Matthew have to, essentially, change the world. And travel back in time to Elizabethan England (that’s the setting for the second book, The Book of Life). So if you like Tudor stuff, as I do, that’s another gold coin for you.

The second was The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman. This also includes the supernatural but it is a more conscious riff on other books, especially The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. Mostly they are the story of Quentin Coldwater; at the beginning of the first book, The Magicians, he is a hyper-intelligent super-dorky kid who likes to practice sleight of hand (coin and card tricks) and can’t quite let go of his devotion to the series of books about Fillory, the rough equivalent of Narnia. What is supposed to be a college interview turns into his introduction to Brakebills, an academy of magic that is kind of like Hogwarts with sex and drugs. The second volume, The Magician King, recounts Quentin’s post-Brakebills adventures. The third has him back in the real world, ie. the Earth that we know, and confronting adulthood as he nears 30. I don’t want to go into too much detail for fear of spoilers but if you loved Narnia as a kid, these books are a must-read. And the final volume, especially, is in many ways a love letter to books and reading — I think it captures the way we all want to — and in fact, do — practice a little alchemy when we’re really immersed in a book no matter how unrealistic or different from our own lives it may be. Not surprising, since Grossman is the book critic for Time magazine, I suppose. I can’t wait to see what both these authors do next.

Stuck in the middle again

Dammit. Now I'm caught up on three different trilogies and am facing a wait of at least a year on each. I guess it's good news that each of the middle installments made me even more eager for the third.

The first was Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, sequel to her Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall. And the sequel just made the longlist for this year's Booker; how cool would that be? The second was Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness, second in her All Souls trilogy about star-crossed witch Diana Bishop and vampire Matthew de Clermont. I liked that one so much I went and re-read the first book, A Discovery of Witches, and liked it way better on a second read. The third middle book was The Twelve, the follow-up to Justin Cronin's bestseller The Passage, a post-apocalyptic vampire epic. (Note to Twilight/All Souls/True Blood fans: These are not sexy kind of vampires.) The Twelve one doesn't publish until October but I got an advanced review copy and devoured it in four days. Three of which I was working for eight of my waking hours.

It's funny but reading, and liking very much, Cronin's work doesn't make me want to go out and get Stephen King's The Stand, the book to which it is frequently compared. I'd be more inclined to check out other dystopias except we've had a lot of that with the recent Key West Literary Seminar and all. If anything the books remind me most of George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, just for their masterful plotting and command of huge casts of characters and multiple settings. In Cronin's case that even includes jumping around in time quite a bit and he still pulls it off. At several points in this book he would start with a whole new time, place and group of people and my initial thought would be, come on! I want to know what's going on with Peter and Lish, and how am I supposed to keep all these people, places and times straight? And then found myself getting totally absorbed anyway. Definitely the mark of a good storyteller. Now if only he (and our friend Martin) would write faster.

Why this image for this blog post? Well, there are, appropriately, TWO reasons. Anyone want to take a guess what they are?

Harry Potter for grownups, or realistic fantasy

Lots of books get described as Harry Potter for grownups. Deborah Harkness' work is the closest I've seen to truly fitting the bill. (Other contenders include Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I haven't read yet, and Lev Grossman's Magician books, which I read and liked but consider to be far more Narnia-infused than Potterian, despite the action surrounding teen magicians at a special magical academy.) When A Discovery of Witches came out, I read it and liked it though I fear I may have read it too fast -- it just felt like the crises were too many and piled on top of each other too quickly.

But I knew I was going to read Shadow of Night, the second in a planned trilogy, especially since the protagonists -- witch Diana Bishop and her vampire lover Matthew de Clermont -- were planning to travel back in time to 1590, the Elizabethan era. The book publishes in July but I got my hands on an advance review copy (one of the benefits of being a librarian) and devoured it in just a few days. Then I went back and bought a copy of A Discovery of Witches -- despite the fact that we have two copies in our branch of the library alone. And enjoyed re-reading it thoroughly; my earlier concerns about it just being Too Much seem to have disappeared. Perhaps a couple doses of George R.R. Martin gave me some perspective. Or maybe it really was my own fault for reading it too fast.

If you're vampire-curious, these are far, far better written than the Twilight series or the Sookie Stackhouse novels. If you like some romance in your reading, these have that, too, without many of the conventions and, yes, cliches that define so much romance fiction. If  you like old manuscripts and ancient conspiracies, set in academic libraries and old family castles, they've got that -- and I don't even want to mention Dan Brown in the same sentence, these are So. Much. Better.

So why call them Harry Potter for grownups? Because they fit into the same realm of realistic fantasy, a sort of yang to the yin of fantastic realism. While much of what gets labeled fantasy fiction takes place in some alternate universe or a mythical planet, the Harry Potter books, and these, take place in a world we recognize easily as our own -- only it happens to also be occupied by supernatural beings (which we always kind of hoped would be the case, right?). In J.K. Rowling's world, and Harkness', we can easily imagine ourselves living our daily lives, interacting with these witches and wizards and vampires and daemons. In Harkness' books, daemons are creative but often unstable, or as one witch puts it, "rock stars and serial killers." In the second book, Christopher Marlowe is a daemon, and a remarkably unstable one at that. Some people, like Queen Elizabeth, know about the existence of vampires and witches and the witchhunting craze at the time takes on even more sinister cast when there are real witches in danger of persecution simply because of who they are.

She also handles the attractions and dangers of time travel in the most deft way I've read since Connie Willis' Doomsday Book. From speech to clothing to the possibility of screwing up your own future existence -- or, in this case, revealing the fate of a being who thinks he is immortal -- it's all handled with the same straightforward approach. Magical realism has had quite a heyday. With vampires, werewolves and zombies all the rage, I'm ready now for realistic magic and I'd put Harkness at the front of the pack.

Between the covers, without pain

It's surprising who has read the Fifty Shades books, or at least the first one. Me, for instance. And other people I know whom I think of as No Dummies. I remain torn on this issue, kind of liking the out-of-nowhere fan-fiction origins -- the literary equivalent of winning the lottery only with a tad more initiative involved. On the other hand, the fan fiction aspect is slightly annoying; more so is the Old Skool romance, virginal-heroine-must-redeem-the-tortured-dominant-hero theme whose problems are explicated to a far smarter degree than i could ever do in this post from the Rumpus. Not to mention the general annoyingness of the heroine, along with the not-very-inspired writing (many have suggested drinking games based on how many times Anastasia chews her lip -- an action that just makes world-traveling sophisticated billionaire Christian Grey INSANE WITH LUST). But my primary issue with the success of these books, really, is that there is so much out there in the broad area of the romance genre that is so much better written. I know this is true of many, many bestsellers. Why does Dan Brown sell so much better than writers who are so much better? And I won't even go into the James Patterson Fictional Industrial Complex.

So as alternatives for people who are curious about books written primarily for women and that include differing amounts of nookie -- and because at the Library we are embarking on a Summer Reading program for adults with the theme Between the Covers (with four weekly prize drawings! Prizes from Key West Island Books, the Tropic and Bad Boy Burrito!) -- I am hereby offering my suggested alternatives for books you can read on your ereader ... and not be cringing at the writing. Or the stupidity of the heroine, for that matter.

Most of my trashy romance reading is historical. However if Fifty Shades has you curious about contemporary romances, I can recommend Jennifer Crusie (my favorite of hers is called Bet Me, but they're all pretty good). I like Lisa Kleypas, too; the one that got me hooked is called Smooth Talking Stranger. Kristan Higgins is also very well regarded; I have to admit I haven't actually read her but I saw her at the ALA conference last year and she was charming.

If you're not averse to the vampire thing, many library patrons and some staffers like Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse books (the basis for the HBO series True Blood though they differ significantly) and Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series (which I haven't read but understand are pretty high on the smut-ometer and pretty gory, too). For supernatural and romance, but not much smut at all, check out Deborah Harkness's All Souls Trilogy, at least the first two installments. The first is called A Discovery of Witches, the second is Shadow of Night. I liked them so much after reading the second that I went and bought the first and wrote a whole blog post just about them.

On historical romances:

Joanna Bourne's spymaster series. The covers are appalling, the books are a lot of fun.

Eloisa James -- in real life she is Mary Bly, a Fordham literature professor ... and daughter of Robert Bly, of Iron John fame. She's also married to an Italian cavaliere (some kind of knight).

Lisa Kleypas again -- I prefer her historicals to her contemporary novels, especially the series about the Hathaway family. Bonus facts: She is a Wellesley grad -- and a former Miss Massachusetts!

Loretta Chase -- many people who read a lot of romance consider Lord of Scoundrels to be the greatest recent historical romance. I like another of hers better. It's called Mr. Impossible -- and it's in that same old Regency time period but set in Egypt.

Julia Quinn -- They're fun, especially the Bridgerton series. I'm still warming up to her latest, about the Smith-Smythes. (Fun fact: Quinn once went on the TV game show The Weakest Link -- and took home $79,000.)

Madeline Hunter -- Another academic -- I saw her at ALA and she said then she was still in the closet as a romance writer and won't tell anyone her real name.

Elizabeth Hoyt -- Another one I saw at ALA who was funny and charming. Her current series is set in the slums of Victorian London. Fairly high on the smut-ometer.

For anyone at all interested in romance as reading, or as a phenomenon or just looking for an entertaining website to read during working hours, I highly recommend Smart Bitches Trashy Books. The reviews are often hysterically funny (including some of old titles from the real bodice-ripping days of the '70s and '80s), and there's lots more, including links to sale titles on Amazon, etc.

Not smutty at all but nice reads that probably did as much as Jane Austen to establish the Regency as THE time setting for historical romance are the works of Georgette Heyer. Once you've read her you can see how much a lot of other historical romance writers are copying her -- then adding smut. Those were the only romance books we had in my house when I was a kid -- my grandmother and mom both read them and eventually, so did I. I love seeing them in the library, in those good old-fashioned buckram covers though I'm also nostalgically fond of the cheesy '70s covers I first knew, like the one illustrating this post. And they're sometimes available at good prices as ebooks. My favorite is The Nonesuch. Another good one is The Tollgate. (Fun fact: ABE Books announced that Heyer is one of their Top Ten all-time sellers: ahead of Charles Dickens, James Patterson and even the mighty J.K. Rowling.)

Need more suggestions? NPR recently had a post on recommended romance reading from Eloisa James that includes some of these authors and some different ones. If it's the kink in the 50 Shades phenomenon that intrigues you, check out the titles mentioned in this recent piece from Time magazine, along with others in their Summer Books series.

My epic problem

Last week, while home from work with a sore throat, I spent the whole day reading the new highly-touted novel, A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I liked it, as did the folks at Publisher's Weekly and Booklist (which gave it a starred review). Even more impressively, it showed up at number 2 on the New York Times' hardcover fiction bestseller list in its first week -- nice to see a first-time novel by an English professor up there in Patterson/Larsson land. Yet. Toward the end, I found myself racing through -- not quite skimming but definitely not paying close attention. This is a bad habit of mine, especially if I'm reaching the end of a book at the end of the day and know I won't be able to sleep until it's done. But I found myself also getting a tad annoyed and I realized what that was about.

It's the "Wait, there's more!" syndrome, commonly seen in action/epic movies (Wyatt Earp and The Dark Knight come to mind) where there is just one denouement/near death experience/ultimate showdown too many. Or three.

I realize that's kind of the point of an epic book like this one -- and it's the first part of a trilogy so there's more to come. But after awhile, especially in a single volume, it starts to feel like Too Much. This is the reason I've given up on Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. Each single volume just involves too many James Bondish escapes. Even in a fantasy where you've suspended disbelief (time travel and all that not to mention a brawny, sexy Scotsman who's also really smart and thoughtful, too), it's asking too much to follow these characters through yet another traumatic event. I think if you're going to follow the same people on epic adventures it helps to break it down into more digestible episodes like your standard mystery or thriller series. And one of the geniuses of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin series, I realize now, is his ability to take us along on extended periods where nothing much actually happens, plotwise, but we're still enthralled by just hanging out with those characters in those settings.

I feel the need here to repeat that I really did like Harkness' book -- which contributed the new (to me, at least) feature of supernatural beings doing yoga together as well as great European settings and the always-alluring enticement of ancient secrets hidden in an old book in the archives of the Bodleian Library. This book, like Justin Cronin's blockbuster from last year, The Passage, (which I also read and liked but felt a little annoyed at its super-hype) is getting a lot of props as a sort of genre/literary hybrid, although the vampires in A Discovery of Witches are more traditional dangerous romantic hero types, not the viral predators of The Passage. I rated A Discovery of Witches 3 1/2 stars on LibraryThing which is my standard "enjoyable read" rating and I will probably read the next installment. The fact that I'm spending so much time thinking about this book indicates that it's good, good enough to stay inside my head for a bit. And I am glad to see a non-Patterson-violent-male thriller book up there selling well. As the review in the Miami Herald pointed out, Harkness's book uses elements from fantasy, romance and historical fiction, and I'm all for all those genres getting more play.

Maybe it's the English major in me, or the romance reader, but the parts I like best about these books are the characters and their idiosyncracies. I know you need lots of action to keep people interested and I know if you're talking about some kind of supernatural showdown there has to be lots of conflict with lots at stake. I just hope Harkness, Cronin and others (I'm sure their success means there will be tons of others) trust their readers, and themselves, to know that we're reading these stories for more than just one more Incredible Cheating of Death.