Sam Downing

Alternate title: In Which I Write the Words “Will Grayson” over and over and over…

There’s a lot to like about Will Grayson, Will Grayson: it’s strong and honest and funny, its teen melodramas feel so authentic (when you’re a teenager everything is so! important! and! dramatic!), and some of its characters are truly likeable.

But… I’m not sure I liked this book.

That’s because, despite its title, Will Grayson, Will Grayson isn’t actually about someone called Will Grayson. The dominant character is Tiny Cooper, an ironically named high-schooler whose body is almost as big as his personality. Tiny is the long-time best friend of Will Grayson, a pessimistic introvert who’s determined to avoid any sort of emotional experience. By a strange quirk of fate he meets another Will Grayson: this one is starting to open up about his sexuality, and entranced when he meets the openly and extremely gay Tiny.

The book wavers between the viewpoints of Will Grayson and Will Grayson (Green wrote from one point-of-view, and Levithan from the other), and it’s cleverly written – it’s a book with gay characters, though it’s not a gay book. (Not that there’s anything wrong with gay books, as such; I mean it’s not a Problem Novel about being gay.)

(For the record, the gay Will Grayson was my favourite Will Grayson.)

I found Tiny annoying, and it annoyed me that the other characters fawned over him so much – the book literally ends (spoiler!) with scores of people declaring to Tiny how much they appreciate his sheer awesomeness. If you’re like me and don’t buy into Tiny’s awesomeness, this is a serious problem. I didn’t really get why Tiny, who’s so overbearing (not to mention gay to the point of stereotype; he reminded me of “too gay to function” Damian from Mean Girls), is so important to these characters.

That said, I did like that the straight Will and Tiny have a friendship where sexuality is not an issue. And a crucial part of the adolescent experience is having at least one friend who is kind of a dick. (Years later, you reflect on your teenage years and wonder why the hell you spent so much time with so obvious a jerk.) Perhaps this is what Green and Levitan are really writing about – major kudos to them if so, though such an analysis seems like a bit of a stretch.

You know when a book is so good, its scope so wide and so imaginative, that it leeches into pretty much every thought you have? World War Z, an epistolary novel documenting mankind’s battle against rising zombie hordes,  is one of those books.

For example: I read it while holidaying in the Cook Islands, on a tiny dot of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. “I’d be pretty safe from a zombie invasion here,” I thought. Then: “… right? What if the zombies crossed the sea somehow? What if the island became crowded with refugees, who carried the zombie infection? Would my hotel room provide a safe place to hide from zombies?” (I decided it wouldn’t.) It’s an exciting book, in the literal sense of the word.

It’s told as a series of short stories documenting the experiences of people all over the world¹ before, during and after the zombie apocalypse, and though I’m not paticularly enamoured of the zombie genre (all those eviscerations and eyeballs hanging from stalks. Eeeeewwwww), World War Z is fascinating in its realism. Yes, realism. It’s an odd word given the subject matter, but this truly feels like what would really would happen if a mysterious virus started turning its victims into the flesh-hungry living dead. The human weaknesses that allow the zombie plague to spread and the (sometimes shockingly cynical) strategies that enable the survivors to win are convincing, propped up by Brooks’s incredible attention to detail – especially when he imagines scenarios that aren’t immediately obvious: what would happen aboard an international space station during a zombie invasion? How do you train dogs to detect and attack the living dead? What animal species would be ravaged by the zombie war (spoiler alert: the whales bite it. Sad face)?

What’s also surprising is that World War Z isn’t a gore-and-guns splatterfest that glorifies weapons and gung-ho violence. It’s hopeful, unexpectedly uplifting, partly because it’s set after humanity’s victory (mostly) over the zombies), so you know it has a happy ending (again, mostly); but also because it’s a celebration of humanity’s pluck and moxy. Many of the people respond to the zombie crisis as selfishly as you’d expect, but many more behave admirably. (And there’s a strong satirical undercurrent that keeps it all from ever becoming too mushy – win!)

If you’d rather listen than read, the audiobook sounds excellent, and the upcoming film adaptation is also promising.

The book almost makes me wish that the zombie apocalypse really will happen. Fingers crossed it won’t break out till after I track down a copy of Brooks’s companion book, The Zombie Survival Guide…

1. Unfortunately, Australia is hardly mentioned. Did we endure the zompocalypse or not?! [↩]

Neil Gaiman writes in the preface of this short-story collection that the most important rule for any tale is that is must consantly answer the question: “And then what happened?” Because why would you keep reading (or listening, or watching, or whatever) if you don’t care about what happens afterwards?

Not all the stories live up to the rule (I won’t name names, but a handful are so uninteresting that surely they only made the cut because the writers are pals of Gaiman and co-editor Al Sarrantonio), though almost all of them do, and many exceed it. An everyday husband develops a taste of blood (and then what happened?). An elderly woman’s dead twin sister attempts to manipulate her way back from the grave (and then what happened?). A “retired” serial killer releases his victims before killing them… mostly (and then what happened?).

There are many other tales worthy of a mention, but including synopses of them all would make for a super long post, so I’ll just say: there’s a heck of a lot of imagination stuffed between the covers.

The stories range from chilling to funny to outright bizarre, from the very short to the very long, and while they cross genre lines there’s a touch of fantasy to almost all of them (not to mention a pervading theme of death). It’s such a diverse collection of superb writing that there really is something for everyone – assuming that “everyone” likes their stories black.

(PS: This is my first book review in ages not because I haven’t been writing them, but because I’ve been trying to learn French in the time usually allotted to reading. But then I went on holidays for a week and read like a mofo, so.)

The last time I reviewed a Neil Gaiman book I noted that his authorial voice is one that people seem to either like (usually a lot) or they don’t. But, I don’t get how you wouldn’t like it! His writing is conveniently tailored to fit my interests: it’s imaginative, clever, eerie and a little bit creepy.

Coraline, I think, I would’ve been into bigtime as a kid: I loved (and still love) stuff that was scary but not gruesome, and Coraline fits into that niche with classics like The Witches. (Sidenote: I must’ve read The Witches a hundred times as a kid. I subsequently developed a terror of women with seashell noses, and I can’t wait for Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation.)

Much like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Coraline is about a young girl who ventures into a strange land, but where Wonderland is eccentric-creepy, Coraline’s otherworld is creepy-creepy. It’s ruled by the Other Mother, a sinister matriarch with buttons for eyes. Gaiman smartly declines to reveal too much about the origins of the Other Mother and her powers, or about the nature of the mirror world Coraline winds up in, and it’s the mystery that makes it spooky.

Also highly recommended: Henry Selick’s film adaptation of Coraline, which is also wonderful.

My copy of Coraline is part of the Bloomsbury Phantastics range, and includes several of Gaiman’s short stories. Some of them I’ve previously read, either online or in Fragile Things, but even the ones I’d come across before are definitely worth re-reading. The highlights are Sunbird, about an epicurean club whose members decide to eat a phoenix; October in the Chair, which ties nicely with The Graveyard Book; and Don’t Ask Jack, a genuinely unsettling tale about a spooky jack-in-the-box and its effect on the lives of the children who own it. (It’s one of the shortest stories in the collection, but also the scariest.)

I realise that at this point it’s cliche to profess one’s adoration of Gaiman, but: he is such a great writer.

Honestly, Patrick Ness couldn’t have ended the Chaos Walking trilogy in a more perfect way.

The first two books in the series, The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer, stand out for their inventiveness, their fierce pace, and their vivid characters. Monsters of Men meets their standard, then ups the stakes, then ups them again, and then again. There are a billion points in the story where I didn’t think Ness could ratchet up the tension any more – and then he does.

Avoid spoilers, if you can. I’m not giving anything away, so, vague summary ahead: Monsters of Men is about young people coming into power, guided by those who are in power already (and who, in most cases, have been corrupted by it). Our heroes Todd and Viola are mostly back together again, in the sense that they share many more scenes than they did in Ask and find ways to communicate even when they’re apart, but they’re still constantly buffeted and battered by the competing forces of Mistress Coyle and Mayor Prentiss.

Who, by the way, is the strongest and most difficult character. Is he really the villain of this story, or is he its hero? Ness doesn’t answer that question (and nor should he), instead crafting a character who is at once charismatic, paternal, untrustworthy and chilling. Which is just the way it should be. Of all the characters in Chaos Walking, the Mayor will stay with me the longest.

(And maybe Manchee. Love that dog.)

Kudos to Ness for avoiding the drippy sentiment that often plagues finales (Deathly Hallows, anyone?), but he does cheat a few times: a lot of the support characters feel stand-in-ish, and a couple of the plot twists seem like they’ve been thrown in for shock value rather than to enhance the story. (Particularly the very final twist, which came thisclose to ruining the whole series for me. Ultimately, though, Ness turns it into a very satisfying conclusion.)

I’ve been lucky with the series: I only started reading it in the month leading up to Monster’s release, meaning I didn’t have to wait a year between instalments like everyone else. I literally read all three entries one after the other. So I’m not sure what the feeling is in the Chaos Walking fanbase – but I have a feeling they’ll like the final book as much as I did.

I finished reading The Ask and the Answer about a day after I started, because it’s one of those books that doesn’t like to be put down once you pick it up.

About two-thirds through Ask I thought, “I am enjoying the shit out of this book, but it’s not as good as The Knife of Never Letting Go, because it’s the second entry in a trilogy, and second entries in trilogies are by nature the weakest”.

Then I got into the finale and ohmigod. I took it back. This book could not have ended on a more heart-pounding note, or a more intense cliffhanger, without being sold with a safety warning. Our heroes Todd and Viola evolve so powerfully during the story that the contrast between their characters at the beginning of the book and their characters at the end is as sharp as a slap to the face on a winter morning – and yet their growth feels totally unforced and organic. Superbly played, Ness.

If you haven’t read Knife, skip over this non-spoilery-I-hope plot summary: so, Todd and Viola are separated (meaning that Ask is told from the first-person perspective of both, an interesting change from book one) and each come under the guidance of powerful leaders who seek to pull them apart. War, totalitarianism and terrorism ensue, along with some utterly fascinating good vs. evil stuff – this is one of those rare books where you’ll find yourself siding, actually siding, with the bad guys. Partly because pretty much everyone is one of the bad guys, even (occasionally) Todd and Viola.

If there’s one problem with this book, it’s that my Australian twang ruins the alliteration of its title. The Arrrrrsk and the Annnnnswer. Stupid accent.

I cannot wait to read book three, Monsters of Men. Thank god it comes out in less than a month. Unless it really sucks (unlikely), Chaos Walking is destined to become one of my very favourite trilogies.

To quote Nuttymadam, this is an amazing book.

And really one of those books that spits in the face of the (stupid) idea that books about kids are just for kids. Sure, the story told in Knife is an exciting adventure – but it’s also complex, and mature, and a lot bleaker than you’d expect if you didn’t know a lot of about so-called young adult literature.

It’s also a story I’ll shy away from saying too much about, since half the joy of reading it is unravelling it yourself. Basic premise: it’s the tale of Todd Hewitt, a boy fast approaching the birthday that will make him a man. All his life Todd has resided in Prentisstown, a place ravaged by the Noise: a germ that broadcasts the thoughts of men to everyone around them. And it only affects men – all the women in Prentisstown are dead.

You’d think that there couldn’t be any secrets in a world where men hear each other’s thoughts, but very early on Todd discovers this isn’t so – everyone has been lying to him, even his loving guardians Ben and Cillian (a gay couple whose homosexuality is only cleverly alluded to), and these lies propel Todd out of his hometown with a vicious enemy on his heels.

The sheer momentum of The Knife of Never Letting Go is even more unrelenting than that of The Hunger Games; every time I put this book down I felt a restless impatience till I opened it up again, and even while reading it I frequently had to resist the urge to skip ahead to the next page. But Knife has an extra depth reminiscent of His Dark Materials, not to mention some scenes that are genuinely traumatic – after one bit I literally had to put the book down for a while (and if you’ve read the book, you’ll know which bit I mean without having to be told).

Todd has a vivid, memorable voice overflowing with ain’ts and (intentional) mispellings, though Ness also excels at writing support characters – the best of these is Todd’s talking, pooing dog Manchee, though even people who only appear for a couple of pages (such as Hildy, and the mayor of Prentisstown) are deftly drawn.

Knife is the first entry in the Chaos Walking trilogy, which I reckon I’ve started at exactly the right time – by the time I’ve finished with book two, The Ask and the Answer, it won’t be long to the release of book three, Monsters of Men.

The Laws of Magic series continues to check all the right boxes: Cracking – check. Inventive – check. Intriguing (in the best sense of the word, the one that implies spies and politics and conspiracies) – check. In Word of Honour, junior magician Aubrey Fitzwilliam and his pals save the capital of the great nation of Albion, their universe’s incarnation of England, from magical distruction; in Time of Trial, they travel to Holmland – that is, Germany – in an attempt to avert war.

Time is the better of the two, because the stakes are higher: war is close, Holmland is dangerous, and the romantic tension between Aubrey and Caroline is more electric than ever. (Seriously, if they don’t at least share a chaste kiss in the next instalment, I will die.)

These are good books, though I do have one complaint. And it’s a biggie.

The villain of the piece – who I won’t name, because it’d spoil the end of Blaze of Glory, though I will refer to him as “he”, which isn’t really a spoiler since almost all of Laws of Magic’s major characters are men¹ – is not a formidable enough opponent for Aubrey, our protagonist. I don’t mean that in the sense that the villain isn’t powerful; we’re constantly reminded of his power. I mean that he’s not a compelling villain.

In Word of Honour the villain runs around concocting plots intended to spark a world war, basically as a means to securing his own power. (His motives are revealed in more detail in Blaze, though again, I don’t want to spoilt it.) But he’s a villain because we’re told he’s a villain – he doesn’t really do anything especially villainous. And even when he does appear on the page, he’s a bit two-dimensional. “Evil and smug cackle, I have you in the clutches of my nefarious plan now,” etc.

In Time of Trial Michael Pryor attempts to rectify this by expounding on the villain’s backstory, revealing details about his family and background. Though it’s still unsatisfying – who is this guy? Why is he like this? How come he doesn’t just kill Aubrey? I’ve read all four books in the series so far and I don’t really have a sense of the bad guy. He’s just “the bad guy” to me, and I want him to be more. (In Pryor’s defence, I have the same beef with Lord of the Rings. Sauron = zzzzz.)

1. Note: that’s not the say the series has no strong female charaters, because it does, just that most of the major characters have penises. Which fits the books’ early-20th century setting. [↩]

White Teeth was published when Zadie Smith was 25. 25! She wrote this brilliantly when she was only 25! That’s younger than I am now several years older than I am now! Worse still, she has such a loose, easy, vibrant style that if she told you that she’d written the whole book down in a single effortless draft, you’d believe her. (Bitch!)

But seriously: White Teeth is a great book. There’s a reason it won scads of awards upon its release in 2000. It’d been hovering on my I-Really-Must-Get-Around-To-Reading-This list for years, and I’m pleased I did – especially given it’s not usually the sort of book my young adult-loving self would normally get into.

It’s a tricky book to sum up succinctly, so I’m stealing a synopsis:

At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith.

That doesn’t really do it justice. The plot is sprawling, both geographically and historically; there’s characters I liked (Archie, Irie, Niece of Shame), characters I hated (Samad – why anyone would want to be friends with him is beyond me); and Smith gets across a real sense of a thriving multicultural city, and what a slippery term “multicultural” actually is.

I read most of White Teeth in airports and on planes on my way back from New Zealand. If you’re looking for a book you can disappear into for hours-long stretches, this is perfect stuff.

Okay, I’m now officially a fan of The Laws of Magic. Blaze of Glory (my review is here) was a fun read, but Heart of Gold is a ripper.

So in this instalment – the second in the series – our hero Aubrey Fitzwilliam and his chum George Doyle leave “Albion” on a trip to “Lutetia”, the beautiful capital city of “Gallia”. (Laws is set in an alternate universe where a) magic is real, and b) everywhere has a different name, so England is “Albion” and Paris is “Lutetia”. It even has its own “Exposition Tower”. Hee.)

Aubrey reunites with the beautiful Caroline Hepworth – who’s kind of like Hermione Granger, if Hermione were all aloof and kick-ass – and discovers a plot to destroy Lutetia and spark war across the Continent.

The right word is “rollicking”. In Gold author Michael Pryor expands the world he created in Blaze, crafting an adventure that’s immensely captivating (even in the bits where the plot feels like it’s treading water).

Pryor is not only a writer who makes me want to read, he’s a writer who makes me want to write. And now on to book three, Word of Honour!