The Terror: A Novel

Book Description

The bestselling author of Ilium and Olympos transforms thetrue story of a legendary Arctic expedition into a thriller worthy ofStephen King or Patrick O'Brian. Their captain's insane vision of a Northwest Passage has kept the crewmenof The Terror trapped in Arctic ice for two years without a thaw. But thereal threat to their survival isn't the ever-shifting landscape of white,the provisions that have turned to poison before they open them, or theship slowly buckling in the grip of the frozen ocean. The real threat iswhatever is out in the frigid darkness, stalking their ship, snatching oneseaman at a time or whole crews, leaving bodies mangled horribly or missingforever. Captain Crozier takes over the expedition after the creature kills itsoriginal leader, Sir John Franklin. Drawing equally on his own strengths asa seaman and the mystical beliefs of the Eskimo woman he's rescued, Croziersets a course on foot out of the Arctic and away from the insatiable beast.But every day the dwindling crew becomes more deranged and mutinous, untilCrozier begins to fear there is no escape from an ever-more-inconceivablenightmare.

Customer Reviews:

ONE MORE THING..........2007-10-08

I agree 100% with the 5-star reviews already submitted but would like to add one thing that seems to have been played down a bit: this book is bloody TERRIFYING!

Amazingly Detailed.......2007-10-03

You have to admire the sheer amount of research that went into this novel, because after reading this book I guarantee that Dan Simmons knows every bit of maritime trivia, every conceivable thing about living in the arctic, and enough Esquimaux mythology to boggle the mind. The story is that of Captain Crozier, who commands one of two ships on a doomed mission to find the northwest passage. Early in the expedition, the ships become frozen into pack ice, stranding the captain and crew. This leads to many problems, including the inevitable accidents, starvation, disease, mutanies, etc. In and of itself, that would be enough to doom any expedition. However, it gets much worse than that -- there's this monster out there on the ice that has an unstoppable desire to kill Crozier's crew in the most sadistic ways possible. The story isn't so much about the creature as it is about the crew's ability (or inability) to deal with the situation. I have to warn you though, this story is long. There are more than a few times when I was hoping it would simply hurry up and get on with it.

Terrifying (but sometimes tedious).......2007-09-30

I enjoyed both the horror and the historical aspects of this book. Unlike some reviewers, I thought Simmons melded those styles and approaches together well. And there were so many characters, so well developed. Half of the enjoyment here, for me, was in learning about the characters and wondering what they would do next, how they would react in the various situations that confronted them. Also, it was just straight-out terrifying to imagine being in some of those situations.

All of that said, occasionally I thought the writing was a little slow and tedious and I probably even skimmed parts. But then, I'm impatient.

Not Simmons' best.......2007-09-27

After the sun-lit world of Olympos, Simmons plunges his readers into his darkest material at least since Carrion Comfort. That in itself is not necessarily a problem, but there is an issue with the way the novel is being billed.

It is NOT a historical novel with a metaphorical element of horror. It is a HORROR novel that happens to have a historical setting.

Again, not in itself a problem. But Simmons himself seems to have difficulty deciding which kind of a novel he's writing, so the historical elements place constraints on the story that keep it from having a fully satisfying plot, while the horror elements introduce things that are historically ridiculous.

After Olympos, Terror's Hobbesian theme is stunningly bleak. But then, life WOULD be nasty, brutish, short, etc. if one were on an early 19th-century Arctic expedition whose captain made astonishingly bad decisions based on an irrational faith that God would see them through--or if one were an Inuit of that time. So the final Rousseau-like chapters romanticizing the "noble Inuit" are particularly strange. Simmons is inordinately impressed with the only two things the Inuit could do: build igloos, which really isn't that hard (I did it as a boy scout at age thirteen or so, though mine no doubt lacked the mathematical symmetry of those Simmons describes, though it's not as if the Inuit, lacking a system of writing, could actually have grasped the higher mathematics of what they were supposedly doing); and hunting seal, which, well, they'd pretty much HAVE to be good at. (None of this is meant to belittle or morally criticize the Inuit of the time, as given their circumstances, it would have been near impossible for them to advance much beyond that.)

Also, Simmons has already done the "what if their primitive mythology were true?" bit in Fires of Eden, with the much more entertaining Hawaiian mythology, and unhampered by claims of historicity.

Still, Simmons' style here is beautiful, and many of the characters are among the best he's created, so it's certainly worth a read, like everything else he's written.

Absolutely Amazing!.......2007-09-26

Quite honestly, I bought this book as a gift for my son in law, but, being momentarily out of reading material, decided to tackle the volume myself. And I was gob-smacked. The amount of research that had to have gone into this book is simply unimaginable. And, Dan Simmons has somehow managed to turn blank historical figures into real people with real problems. He has breathed life and depth into an expedition that still remains enigmatic. And, boy, did he do his homework. Real history is so much more interesting than fiction. We are talking here about an expedition into the arctic some 160 years ago, fuelled by coal and tinned foods and not much more. These guys definitely didn't know what they were getting into and suffered greatly for that lack of knowledge. I trust Dan Simmons. Well, I've read his other books. I trust that his search for the facts has been rigorous and absolute, and that he has endeavoured, and very successfully, to interweave those facts with the ficticious personas of his characters. In doing this, he has written an absolutely incredible book, extremely readable and continuously fascinating. He has kept, without any judgement, within the mores, the cultural values of that time, and that is also fascinating.
I greatly applaud this book and the man who wrote it. To have been able to create such a tale, interwoven with a cumbersome amount of detail and enhanced true characters is indeed a feat worth applause. And, man, it is just really interesting. Not since The Swarm has a book captivated me to this extent.

Average customer rating:

The Sea will make readers cry and cheer for the love of it.
The Power and Peril of Memory
Fascinatingly repelling and attracting at once
Good read
All Life Is Lived In The Past

The Sea (Man Booker Prize)
John Banville
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Irish | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0307263118
Release Date: 2005-11-01

From Amazon.co.uk Review

Incandescent prose. Beautifully textured characterisation. Transparent narratives. The adjectives to describe the writing of John Banville are all affirmative, and The Sea is a ringing affirmation of all his best qualities. His publishers are claiming that this novel by the Booker-shortlisted author is his finest yet, and while that claim may have an element of hyperbole, there is no denying that this perfectly balanced book is among the writer's most accomplished work.

Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. A recent loss is still taking its toll on him, and a trauma in his past is similarly proving hard to deal with. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast at which he spent a memorable holiday when a boy. His memory of that time devolves on the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past?

The fashion in which John Banville draws the reader into this hypnotic and disturbing world is non pareil, and the very complex relationships between his brilliantly delineated cast of characters are orchestrated with a master's skill. As in such books as Shroud and The Book of Evidence, the author eschews the obvious at all times, and the narrative is delivered with subtlety and understatement. The genuine moments of drama, when they do occur, are commensurately more powerful. --Barry Forshaw

Book Description

The author of The Untouchable (“contemporary fiction gets no better than this”—Patrick McGrath, The New York Times Book Review) now gives us a luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory.

The narrator is Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who, soon after his wife’s death, has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child—a retreat from the grief, anger, and numbness of his life without her. But it is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled vacationing family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. The seductive mother; the imperious father; the twins—Chloe, fiery and forthright, and Myles, silent and expressionless—in whose mysterious connection Max became profoundly entangled, each of them a part of the “barely bearable raw immediacy” of his childhood memories.

Interwoven with this story are Morden’s memories of his wife, Anna—of their life together, of her death—and the moments, both significant and mundane, that make up his life now: his relationship with his grown daughter, Claire, desperate to pull him from his grief; and with the other boarders at the house where he is staying, where the past beats inside him “like a second heart.”

What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, vividly dramatic, beautifully written novel—among the finest we have had from this extraordinary writer.

Customer Reviews:

The Sea will make readers cry and cheer for the love of it........2007-09-28

John Banville is a crying out loud genius. I am a writer, and this book will carry me through several of my own books on inspiration alone. I have read it four times friom front to back.
Only a consummate genius of spirit, language, and craft could possibly have written this. Reading it requires, I think, an inveterate reader, for its structure is complex. His description of place will take you there and leave you to inhabit the place.
I found it common to read and re-read passages, pages, and, as I said, the entire book it is so beautifully rendered.
The story is touching and real to my inner self, and he is able to paint me, my innermost thoughts, my love for exquisite detail, scene, memories, and people with such solid and true foundation that humanity within me was discovered, illuminated, and honored.
Blue? Lost? Afraid? Grieving? Satisfied with your lot? Think humanity has gone sadly astray? Read this book. I swear you will never forget it.

The Power and Peril of Memory.......2007-08-31

This is a very rewarding book that requires patience and close attention because of the narrative shifts in time and place.

The story revolves around middle aged Max. In the present, Max is grappling with the recent death of his wife. Clearly the pair had long been a "unit" and Max is quite at loss as to what to do next in her absence. Although he loves his adult daughter Claire, she is no substitute in his affection. So Max is drawn back to a place by the shore that he hadn't been for 50 years, a place where he has a typical early adolesent experience with the opposite sex and an untypical experience with tragedy. The past and present are expertly interwoven by Mr. Banville, who deservedly won his Booker for this effort.

Banville does an incredibly good job showing us the power and limits of memory and how things are remembered (or disremembered) lucidly or poorly.

I think only Ian McEwan today writes with quite the same degree of elegance. And actually, as I think about it, I could make an argument that there are interesting similarities between McEwan's "Atonement" and "The Sea". In each case, the narrator sees or thinks they see something that turns out not to be the case and, in each instance, with terrible consequences; although more obviously so in "Atonement".

Read it "The Sea" and see for yourself.

Fascinatingly repelling and attracting at once.......2007-06-04

I would never have picked up this book if it hadn't been on a friend's recommendation but, boy, am I glad I did. Normally I wouldn't want to read about an old man reminiscing but I was hooked from the very first by John Banvilles language.

Max Morden, the main character, alternates between remembering an important time in his adolescence and reviewing his marriage with emphasis on his wife's last months before she dies of cancer.

John Banville's style spellbound me from the first. It's poetry in prose form, every word, every sentence deliberately sculpted and positioned. I refused to be intimidated by his words and made it a challenge to add to my vocabulary.
As I became Max Morden's confidant I was equally repulsed by his honesty and intrigued by his insights. Max speaks about things that happen to all of us but you don't normally hear people admit to them or even mention them: acting out agressively towards a beloved pet, being abusive to other children, having sexual fantasies about adults while we are children or adolescents, hating people close to us just because they are who they are. He shares his regrets and at the same time realistically admits that he'd make the same mistakes again given the choice. He's refreshingly unapologetic.

It took me a while to finish the book and for a while I want to read easier fare; but I want to read more by Banville. He's as much an artist in his field as Gaugin, Goya, Courbet and others. He paints using language.

Good read.......2007-05-31

The temporal layers of the story make it a little bit confusing in the beginning, but by the end you understand this man's grief and search to find himself by going back to the town where he lived as a child, trying to make sense out of his life and who he has become. My book club read this and we all enjoyed the writing and story. Some people will not like this book. It is not a fast paced story, but it is a story full of emotion. Soo.... go read it.

All Life Is Lived In The Past.......2007-05-18

The Sea is a marvel of efficiency; in less than 200 pages, Banville writes a "memoir" that is spare and yet touching and profound.

The Sea is the story of a rapidly aging widower who, after the death of his wife, travels to the seaside resort town where he spent several summers as a child. Taking up residence in a long term boarding house filled with other hurting and lost souls, he thinks about his life; first his childhood summers and the life defining relationship and events of those years, then the days preceding and during his wife's illness and death, and then finally the unkind truth of his present life. These narratives are weaved together throughout the novel until they coalesce towards the end.

I could ramble on for a while about how much I liked this book, how true Banville's observations rung, how deep the sense of loss is, how scary it makes one feel about getting old. I could, but you should just buy the book and experience it for yourself.

Banville won the Mann Booker prize for The Sea. Some quotes:

"On the subject of observing and being observed, I must mention the long grim gander I took at myself in the bathroom mirror this morning. Usually these days I do not dally before my reflection any longer than is necessary. There was a time when I quite liked what I saw in the looking-glass, but not any more. Now I am startled, and more than startled, by the visage that so abruptly appears there, never and not at all the one that I expect. I have been elbowed aside by a parody of myself, a sadly disheveled figure in a Hallowe'en mask made of sagging pinkish -grey rubber that bears no more than a passing resemblance to the image of what I look like that I stubbornly retain in my head."

"When we arrived I marveled to see how much of the village as I remembered it was still here, if only for eyes that knew where to look, mine, that is. It was like encountering an old flame behind whose features thickened by age the slender lineaments that a former self so loved can still be clearly discerned."

"I looked aside quickly for fear my eyes would give me away; one's eyes are always those of someone else, the mad and desperate dwarf crouched within. I knew what she meant. This was not supposed to have befallen her. It was not supposed to have befallen us, we were not that kind of people. Misfortune, illness, untimely death, these things happen to good folk, the humble ones, the salt of the earth, not to Anna, not to me."

"I recalled walking in the street with Anna one day after all her hair had fallen out and she spotted passing by on the pavement a woman who was also bald. I do not know if Anna caught me catching the look they exchanged, the two of them, blank-eyed and at the same time sharp, sly, complicit. In all that endless twelvemonth of her illness I do not think I ever felt more distant from her than I did at that moment, elbowed aside by the sorority of the afflicted."

"[my daughter] understands me to a degree that is disturbing and will not indulge my foibles and excesses as others do who know me less and therefore fear me more. But I am bereaved and wounded and require indulging. If there is a long version of shrift, then that is what I am in need of. Let me alone, I cried at her in my mind, let me creep past the traduced old Cedars, past the vanished Strand Café, past the Lupins and the Field that was, past all this past for if I stop I shall surely dissolve in a shaming puddle of tears."

"Have I spoken already of my drinking? I drink like a fish. No, not like a fish, fishes do not drink, it is only breathing, their kind of breathing. I drink like one recently widowed-widowered? - a person of scant talent and scanter ambition, greyed o'er by the years, uncertain and astray and in need of consolation and the brief respite of drink-induced oblivion. I would take drugs if I had them, but I have not, and do not know how I might go about getting some."

Average customer rating:

Civil War: historical fiction
A fragmented soap opera
Very readable.
Character vignettes, but depth
A Story of the Effect of War on the Participant

The March: A Novel
E.L. Doctorow
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0812976150
Release Date: 2006-09-12

Amazon.com

As the Civil War was moving toward its inevitable conclusion, General William Tecumseh Sherman marched 60,000 Union troops through Georgia and the Carolinas, leaving a 60-mile-wide trail of death, destruction, looting, thievery and chaos. In The March, E.L. Doctorow has put his unique stamp on these events by staying close to historical fact, naming real people and places and then imagining the rest, as he did in Ragtime.

Recently, the Civil War has been the subject of novels by Howard Bahr, Michael Shaara, Charles Frazier, and Robert Hicks, to name a few. Its perennial appeal is due not only to the fact that it was fought on our own soil, but also that it captures perfectly our long-time and ongoing ambivalence about race. Doctorow examines this question extensively, chronicling the dislocation of both southern whites and Negroes as Sherman burned and destroyed all that they had ever known. Sherman is a well-drawn character, pictured as a crazy tactical genius pitted against his West Point counterparts. Doctorow creates a context for the march: "The brutal romance of war was still possible in the taking of spoils. Each town the army overran was a prize... There was something undeniably classical about it, for how else did the armies of Greece and Rome supply themselves?"

The characters depicted on the march are those people high and low, white and black, whose lives are forever changed by war: Pearl, the newly free daughter of a white plantation owner and one of his slaves, Colonel Sartorius, a competent, remote, almost robotic surgeon; several officers, both Union and Confederate; two soldiers, Arly and Will, who provide comic relief in the manner of Shakespeare's fools until, suddenly, their roles are not funny anymore.

Doctorow has captured the madness of war in his description of the condition of a dispossessed Southern white woman: "What was clear at this moment was that Mattie Jameson's mental state befitted the situation in which she found herself. The world at war had risen to her affliction and made it indistinguishable." And later, " This was not war as adventure, nor war for a solemn cause, it was war at its purest, a mindless mass rage severed from any cause, ideal, or moral principle."

As we have come to expect, Doctorow puts the reader in the picture; never more so than in recalling "The March" and letting us see it as a cautionary tale for our times. --Valerie Ryan

Book Description

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
WINNER OF THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“E. L. Doctorow [is] always astonishing. . . . In The March, he dreams himself backward from The Book of Daniel to Ragtime to The Waterworks to the Civil War, into the creation myth of the Republic itself, as if to assume the prophetic role of such nineteenth-century writers as Emerson, Melville, Whitman, and Poe.”–John Leonard, Harper’s

In 1864, Union general William Tecumseh Sherman marched his sixty thousand troops through Georgia to the sea, and then up into the Carolinas. The army fought off Confederate forces, demolished cities, and accumulated a borne-along population of freed blacks and white refugees until all that remained was the dangerous transient life of the dispossessed and the triumphant. In E. L. Doctorow’s hands the great march becomes a floating world, a nomadic consciousness, and an unforgettable reading experience with awesome relevance to our own times.

“An Iliad-like portrait of war as a primeval human affliction . . . [welds] the personal and the mythic into a thrilling and poignant story.”
–Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Splendid . . . carries us through a multitude of moments of wonder and pity, terror and comedy . . . with an elegiac compassion and prose of a glittering, swift-moving economy.” –John Updike, The New Yorker

Download Description

Praise for E. L. Doctorow

“E.L. Doctorow is a national treasure.”
– St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Beautifully written, meticulously plotted, scrupulously imagined.”
– The New York Times Book Review, about Sweet Land Stories

“In the assured hands of Doctorow, City of God blooms with a humor and a humanity that carries triumphant as intelligent a novel as one might hope to find these days.”
– Los Angeles Times, about City of God

“A ferocious feat of the imagination . . . Every scene is perfectly realized and feeds into the whole–the themes and symbols echoing and reverberating.”
– Newsweek, about The Book of Daniel

“One devours it in a single sitting.”
– The New York Times, about Ragtime

“Marvelous . . . You get lost in World’s Fair as if it were an exotic adventure. You devour it with the avidity usually provoked by a suspense thriller.”
–The New York Times, about World’s Fair

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

Civil War: historical fiction.......2007-08-24

This was an excellant depiction of life as it may have been seen at the time of the Civil War, and most particularly during Sherman's march thru the south. The use of fictional characters gave the story a vibrancy and realism that probably could not have been portrayed thru fact alone. My book club loved it, and, we rarely all love the same book.

A fragmented soap opera.......2007-08-23

A psuedo-romance novel set inside Sherman's march to the sea and beyond. The disjoined story lines lead to a fragmented novel that reads like the script from a daytime TV soap opera. There is little historical insight or significance; in fact, quite the opossite, with the fabrication of events that didn't happen(assination attempts of Sherman??). Not recommended for fans of the civil war.

Very readable........2007-08-03

"The March" is a very readable account of Sherman's march through the South at the end of the civil war. The focus is on what it meant for the soldiers and civilians, not the politics or the strategy. At the same time, the characters are well drawn as individuals. Doctorow maintains an emotional distance from the horrors; while the reader is made aware of them, none of the characters followed as individuals in the novel starve, or suffer unbearable pain (one Southern woman is driven to the edge of madness, and several die). There are some powerful passages, but for the most part the writing does not draw attention to itself. It captures the March in a book of modest size, has interesting sub-plots, and I would highly recommend it. For a very different, but very good and more powerful take on a March, read Patrick Rambauds "The Retreat", on Napolean's retreat from Moscow.

Character vignettes, but depth.......2007-07-22

I'd echo the well-written review from Debra Crosby, but acknowledge that the book is a departure from normal form. It is not a traditional plot-driven novel and it is not really about Sherman's march. Instead, it is a collection of character vignettes, with "The March" the unifying thread.

There are a lot of characters, and it can take some time to get oriented. However, I believe Doctorow manages to create depth in each character despite each character being dedicated fewer pages than in a typical novel. Occasionally I felt like a character disappeared from the book before I expected, but this was a mild distraction because there were so many other characters to latch onto.

The novel is powerful, and in no event sanitizes the Civil War. You cannot read the book without wondering what it must have been like for north and south, civilian and soldier, black and white.

There is a fair amount of military strategy. Hard core Civil War buffs (e.g., fans of Shelby Foote) will not find enough detail regarding troop movements to satisfy them. I've read Foote's three-part Civil War narrative, but I would not describe myself as hard core. In my view, there is just enough to make it real without distracting from the characters. If you despise descriptions of "flanking maneuvers" and cavalry, however, there may be too much here for you. Of course, that's probably going to be true with respect to any historical fiction centered around a war.

Doctorow is a talented writer. If you are looking for a repeat of Ragtime or World's Fair (one of my favorite books), you will likely be disappointed. If, on the other hand, you are looking for a well-written, sophisticated novel that evokes the power of civil war through several characters, I believe you will be happy with your read.

A Story of the Effect of War on the Participant.......2007-06-09

This is E L Doctorow's fictionalized story of "Sherman's March to the Sea". In late 1864 Sherman was give command of the 60,000 man 'Army of the West' and told to march through the heart of the Confederacy and bring it to its' knees. Sherman did just that by marching through Atlanta Georgia, Savannah and Columbia South Carolina and up through North Carolina through Raleigh to the Virginia border. Along the way his men foraged through the countryside while destroying cotton, railroads and anything else of use to the CSA.

Our story follows groups of people, including Sherman and his command as they travel through the South, we learn about the battles they fought and the losses they suffered. Along the way we also follow a rebel deserter, a freed slave (who can pass for white), an Irish volunteer from NYC (who is really a replacement for a wealthy man who paid him $300), an Army surgeon, the daughter of a southern Judge, and others.

Doctorow does a find job in presenting the death and destruction that was rained on the South by Sherman but he also give a human face to the people who fought and died for their convictions. He never misses a chance to make the Civil War as bloody as it was, nor does he ever put a shining smile on those who were in Slavery.

How true to life his description of Sherman is, is up to debate, but he makes the man human and though he was 'Uncle Billy' to the men who served under him and idolized him. He talks about how the pain of sending men to their death is never easy but is a trade-off for ending the War as fast as possible. The most startling thing that Doctorow found in his research was that Sherman, Confederate General Hardy and President Lincoln all lost sons named Willie during the war; one in battle (Hardy) and the other two to disease. All of them were under seventeen years of age.

The March shows that war is not a pleasant diversion and spending your days killing other men is not the 'glorious' ideal it is sometimes made out to be (just ask any combat veteran).

Twelve Kingdoms, The - Hardcover Edition Volume 1: Sea of Shadow

Average customer rating:

Astonishingly good
A fun read...
Good ending, lukewarm beginning and middle
Outstanding !
Beautiful Read

Twelve Kingdoms, The - Hardcover Edition Volume 1: Sea of Shadow
Fuyumi Ono
Manufacturer: Tokyopop
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1598169467
Release Date: 2007-03-13

Book Description

For high-schooler Yoko Nakajima, life has been fairly ordinary--that is until Keiki, a young man with golden hair, tells Yoko they must return to their kingdom. Once confronted by this mysterious being and whisked away to an unearthly realm, Yoko is left with only a magical sword; a gem; and a million questions about her destiny, the world she's trapped in, and the world she desperately wants to return to.More than just a fantasy story filled with horrific monsters, half-beasts, and magicians, The Twelve Kingdoms centers around a world reminiscent of Chinese mythology and rife with civil and political upheaval. Sea of Shadow, the first volume of this ongoing seven-volume epic, takes you on a wild ride that leaves you questioning the bounds of reality and fantasy."An exciting, fast-paced adventure that will keep readers on the edge of their seats."--BookLoons.com "This is a fantasy novel displaying a grand imagination and soaring adventure."--ActiveAnime.com"Fuyumi Ono weaves a bewitching tale of strength in adversity, bravery despite fear, courage above all, and trust â€" in yourself and in others."--Yabookscentral.comFuyumi Ono was born in Oita Prefecture, Japan. She graduated from Otani University with a major in Buddhist studies. During college she was a member of Kyoto Universityâ€™s mystery story club for readers and writers of the mystery genre. In 1988, she made her publishing debut in Kodanshaâ€™s teen-targeted X-Bunko Teens Heart series. Besides The Twelve Kingdoms, Ono has written other novels in such genres as mystery and horror.

Customer Reviews:

Astonishingly good.......2007-06-25

I couldn't put this book down. I stayed up all night to finish it, and went to work the next morning like a zombie. The story is extremely well-written and the translation is handled perfectly. I did not expect the character development to be so in-depth--this book is a must-read for both children and adults. I can't wait for Book 2 to come out!

A fun read..........2007-06-19

I enjoyed the anime series and since it's based on novels instead of manga I figured I'd read them. The book takes you deep into the world of the twelve kingdoms, and also into the mind of the heroine, Yoko, who is dealing with her own faults while trying to survive in an unfamiliar and hostile world. The author's descriptions give a vivid account of what it's like to be Yoko by mentioning "other senses" type of details, by which I mean senses other than sight. We hear about sounds, smells, and most importantly how things feel. The story is rich and complicated, but not so much that one can't put things together. I enjoyed this book, and anyone who is a fan of anime or manga would probably like it as well.

Good ending, lukewarm beginning and middle.......2007-06-12

I wish there were half-stars on Amazon, because my actual rating for this book would be a three and a half. For most of the book (i.e. the beginning and middle), my reaction was merely that it was okay. I had liked the premise for the book, which was why I bought it, but it didn't quite live up to my expectations as I began to read. After the initial set-up, I felt like the same things kept happening over and over again: Yoko fights demons, almost dies, gets help from strangers, and then the cycle repeats. There are also long periods of reflection, both in Yoko's mind and in conversation with "herself" (the blue monkey), which always seemed too similar to one another as well; there wasn't much progression until the final conversation. The whole idea of the "good girl" and Yoko's eventual lack of trust didn't feel natural too me~it was as though I could see the author pulling the strings, purposely feeding me information to get me to believe these character traits that just didn't seem to develop properly.

Don't get me wrong, though~there were quite a few things about the book I did enjoy, especially the ending. While much of the book gave me a humdrum feeling, by the time I closed the book I was left with the impression that I actually liked it. I am now even looking forward to the next volume. In short, the ending saved this book for me, which is why I wish I could give it three and a half stars instead of three. There were also other enjoyable points/ideas as well: I especially liked the concepts of beastlings, egg fruit, and the various other demons in the story, among other things. I just wish I was able to like all of the book, not just parts.

Outstanding !.......2007-06-09

I have seen the Anime version and was very pleased that the book is so different. I cannot wait untill the next book is released.

Beautiful Read.......2007-06-02

This book was a joy for me to read, plain and simple. I am an avid anime and manga fan, and I was intrigued by this book, simply because I had heard a friend mention the 12 Kingdoms anime long ago. I was surprised and delighted to find this book was worth far more than I paid. The book is very well written and I had trouble putting it down. The story is captivation and keeps you guessing, weaving a very surprising and I enjoyed it, just when you think you finally start to understand, you are taken in a whole new direction. The world put forth in this book seems limitless, and the characters, most notably Yoko, grow in such a fantastic way it's hard to put into words. I am very pleased and recommend this to anyone who has a hint of imagination, a taste for adventure and a love for the unknown

Average customer rating:

Disappointed
A truly unpleasant character
empty
I read a library copy, then bought my own -- it's that good!
Highly Recommended

The Sea
John Banville
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1400097029
Release Date: 2006-08-15

Book Description

In this luminous new novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel — among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.

Customer Reviews:

Disappointed.......2007-10-10

I found this book disappointing. I teach writing, and the novel reminded me of an assignment in which students must write essays using lists of vocabulary words. The extensive vocabulary employed to describe such a narrow existence and set of circumstances made the novel, at times, appear an odd parody of itself. Certainly no A la recherche du temps perdu, although it moves at about the same speed.

A truly unpleasant character.......2007-09-25

A young boy full of turbid imaginings ages into a frustrated, self-destructive widower. He's a skillful creation, even if his take on life leaves the reader feeling a little queasy.

An art historian, he turns a grim eye to the business of human bodies. Even the objects of his youthful desire are described in terms of thickened and bulging flesh, veins, sweaty skin, greasy hair, chilly lavender lips. Bodies are instruments of lust and illness, and to this narrator, the two seem wedded by events in his past and his present.

The plot is simple. Reeling from one tragedy, he returns to the site of another, hoping to drink his way into an understanding of both. As a story, it's given a surpisingly hopeful ending, to my delight. It is not so much the story, though, it is of course the way it is told. The prose here is stunning, a catalog of unusual words and poetic imagery.

Ah, but this character. He bugged me.

He is painfully aware of the flaws of the bodies around him, including his own. He holds his daughter's lack of artful proportions against her, remarking on her long neck and melony bottom, though the sight of her small hands folded can bring him to tears. He rages at his own aging. The body that betrays him most is that of his late wife, who succumbs to cancer. Her death is not noble, not beautiful, and neither is he, though the language of the book certainly is.

His late wife takes a series of photos of patients at the hospital, focussing in color on their scars, deformities, ruptures and stumps. "It's my indictment," she says. This book functions in much the same way, as a written indictment of the body and all its betrayals.

Thank god for the ending.

empty.......2007-09-14

I found this book sadly lacking in everything. I love good prose but that's just not enough for me. Even Banville's prose in The Sea didn't seem that good but perhaps that's because I wanted so much more than this from a Booker Prize winner. The characters all seemed unlikeable and the story, if it could be called that, was very simple. It concerns and aging man of perhaps fifties or even sixties, grieving (a little) over a dead wife and returning to a place on a seafront where he spent a childhood holiday. Something bad happens at the end of this childhood holiday that you'll discover at the end of the book. But the 'bad thing' is in itself anti-climactical. It's a slow inevitable journey towards it during which time we are shown some byplay between the characters of today and yesterday. We never get to know the characters well and the story never seems to take off or go anywhere. It's almost like writing a slow plodding book about anything and have a murder/accident/crime at the end of it as if to make the reader/art-critic nod his head wisely at the end of it, thinking of what has gone before. What a waste of a booker prize!

I read a library copy, then bought my own -- it's that good!.......2007-08-21

Can a book about death, grieving and isolation from life be sensuous? That, most certainly, was the feeling that this exquisitely written book evoked in me.

Imagine strolling through a world famous art gallery and gazing at the paintings, many of which you already know so well from books or lectures. No doubt many of the paintings would have somber, dark themes, yet somehow the beauty of the art overwhelms, bringing forth awe, enthusiasm...even joy. That is the feeling that reading John Banville's Man Booker award winning novel, "The Sea," was like for this reader.

Max Morden, the narrator, is not an easy character to understand or like. It is precisely his strangeness that keeps us reading. We live in his mind for the entire novel, yet somehow the reader can't quite come to terms with what makes Max the miserable, grieving, self-loathing, isolated man he appears to be.

By profession, Max is an art historian, apparently involved in researching and writing a scholarly book on Pierre Bonnard. But he thinks of himself as "a man of scant talent and scanter ambition." He is disappointed in life, disappointed in his daughter, and disappointed in himself.

After the death of his wife, Anna, Max returns to the only other place in his life where he felt a whole person: The Cedars, a seaside villa run as a boarding house. It was here, as a young boy, that he first experienced love and death. It is the intertwining stories of that time, the recent past, and the present that make up the story line of the novel.

Max is a man who dreams that he owns a typewriter without the letter "i." He prefers dispassionately to observe life. Banville gives us few glimpses of him actually participating in life. For Max, life passes before him like images on a tableau and people seem to exist for him alone and not in their own right. How odd, therefore, that he views himself as being made real only through people.

Max marries his wife because she gave him the chance to fulfill his fantasy of himself. He remembers her with great tenderness. Yet the only time in the novel where Max allows himself to rage against his loss is when you find him thinking: "how could you go and leave me like this, floundering in my own foulness, with no one to save me from myself. How could you."

Usually, the reader is drawn positively to a protagonist. But with "The Sea," the reader is drawn irresistibly to the beauty of the text. The reader falls in love with the words. One novelist, Nabokov, and two poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins and T. S. Eliot, frequently came to my mind while savoring this book.

I read a library copy, but when I finished I bought my own copy. I look forward to reading this book again--like revisiting a favorite poem, or reviewing a grand painting, I am sure I will enjoy it completely anew.

Highly Recommended.......2007-08-13

John Banville's lyrical novel, "The Sea," was highly recommended to me, and it met my every expectation for a well-written, intriguing piece of fiction. Though there is a story imbedded in the fanciful meanderings of the protagonist, Max Morden, it is slow to come amid his interior musings, and, as in any good novel, the crucial incidents are not revealed until late in the book.

The novel opens by the sea with a strange high tide with seabirds mewling and swooping, and the sea becomes a presence, as Max deals with disturbing crises in his life. His wife, Anna, has died of cancer, his grown daughter remains distant, and he is plagued by memories from his childhood summers spent on the Irish coast. Max returns to the seaside town of his boyhood, remembering his own loveless parents, the enviable upper-class Grace family, Connie, the attractive mother, Carlo, the corpulent father, the twins, Max's playmates, Chloe and the mute, sometimes spooky, Myles, and Rose, the twins' nanny.

While the plot is rather thin, the reader is carried along with Max as he relives the traumatic incidents of his life, his adolescent awakening to love and sex and unexpected death, and his current struggle with grief and depression, from which his daughter, Claire, tries to rescue him. But the reader is buoyed from this morass by the wonderful and uplifting imagery of Max's meanderings, the ever-reassuring presence of the sea, and the surprising revelations as the novel reaches its climax. Banville's prose is a pure treat, and the novel's prize-winning power is evident on every page.

Average customer rating:

Terrible.
First draft
Descent into the depths
Part Ingmar Bergman, part Alfred Hitchcock --- masters of the symbolic, the noir-ish and the macabre
The deserved ruination of a despicable human

Depths: A Novel
Henning Mankell
Manufacturer: New Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1595580891

Book Description

A gripping, masterful novel from the world-famous Henning Mankell, set off the coast of Sweden during World War I.

The skerry was resting in the sea. It was like being in a cradle, or on a deathbed, he thought. All the voices hidden in the cliff were whispering. Even rocks have memories, as do waves and breakers. And down below, in the darkness where fish swam along invisible and silent channels, there were also memories.—from Depths

It is October 1914, and Swedish naval officer Lars Tobiasson-Svartman is charged with a secret mission to take depth readings around the Stockholm archipelago. In the course of his work, he lands on the rocky isle of Halsskär. It seems impossible for it to be habitable, yet it is home to the young widow Sara Fredrika, who lives in near-total isolation and is unaware that the world is at war.

A man of control and precision, Tobiasson-Svartman is overwhelmed by his attraction to the half-wild, illiterate Sara Fredrika, a total contrast to his reserved, elegant wife. Soon he enacts the worst of his impulses, turning into another, far more dangerous man, ready to trade in lies and even death to get closer to the lonely woman without losing hold of his wife. Matters of shame, fidelity, and duty are swept to sea as he struggles to maintain his parallel lives, with devastating consequences for the women who love him.

Henning Mankell, author of the internationally bestselling Kurt Wallander series and the critically acclaimed Chronicler of the Winds, once again proves himself a master of the novel with Depths, an arresting, disquieting story of obsession.

Customer Reviews:

Terrible........2007-09-24

This book was cold and bland. It never drew me in and it wasn't all that entertaining either. The only reason I finished it is because I didn't have anything else to read at the moment. I hope this isn't typical of Mankell, I'll be hard pressed to read another book by him.

First draft.......2007-09-07

This one reads really like an outline for a movie screenplay and could have done with better editing to excise the pretentious bits; it's better than the pedestrian Wallander novels but completely devoid of any humour or levity.
It's still, oddly, very gripping. It's tantalising to imagine what a really great writer, rather than a merely good one like Mankell, could do with the plot.

Descent into the depths.......2007-07-01

A number of reviewers here were disappointed with this novel because of its relentless bleakness. The "Depths", by Henning Mankell, is bleak indeed, but it is not a story badly written. Some objected to "very short chapters", this of course is a valid stylistic exercise used by other authors, usually to make a point; it is used by Mankell to the same effect here (the protagonist was obsessed with the detail but unable to see the whole and this can be seen as one of the reason of his descent into depths, both literally and figuratively).

The bleakness of the novel is masterfully executed; if you would rather read something uplifting this is not the book to pick up! The characters are well supported by the relentless land- and seascape (much of the story is set in the cold season, and most of the summertime is glossed over). But this novel belongs in the European tradition of Ibsen or Dostoyevsky with its dispassionate analysis of a character whose life unravels in front of our very eyes and where practically everyone affected by his actions ends up damaged as well. The strong female characters grow in strength through the story but still remain only schematically, or lightly, drawn in contrast to the centre character. This was the only disappointment for me; otherwise the story made a powerfull impact on me.

Part Ingmar Bergman, part Alfred Hitchcock --- masters of the symbolic, the noir-ish and the macabre.......2007-05-30

I think of films, not novels, when trying to describe DEPTHS: It's part Ingmar Bergman, part Alfred Hitchcock --- masters of the symbolic, the noir-ish and the macabre --- with maybe a dash of Ripley's Game thrown in. However, Ripley --- in the film and the Patricia Highsmith novel on which it's based --- is clearly a psychopath; the suspense is in seeing how long and how successfully he can pass for normal. In contrast, the protagonist of DEPTHS, a naval officer by the name of Lars Tobiasson-Svartman, initially appears sane, albeit terrifically repressed.

Sure, he has issues: a father complex (Tobiasson is his mother's name, inserted for protective purposes: "His father was dead now, but dead people can also be a threat"); a highly ritualized marriage to Kristina Tacker, a woman who mysteriously has retained her maiden name; and seriously weird dreams (horses being whipped?), but he seems more control freak than madman.

When we first encounter him, it is wartime, 1914, and he is engaged in a covert mission to the Baltic Sea --- charting the depths of certain sea routes used by the Swedish navy to make sure ships won't run aground. His profession has to do with measurement, and he seems to conduct his life and manage his psyche with the same pitiless precision. Then disturbing things start happening. A seaman falls ill with appendicitis and dies before he can reach a hospital; the body of a German soldier is found floating in the ocean (although Sweden has remained neutral, Russian and German ships are battling not far away); and a captain drops dead of a heart attack.

Most fatally, Tobiasson-Svartman rows to Halsskär, an obscure and apparently unoccupied island near his ship's anchorage, and there he discovers a young woman named Sara Fredrika --- a widow living in unimaginable isolation --- and conceives a desperate passion for her. Sara Fredrika is completely unlike Kristina Tacker, with her cool beauty and fragile china animals (the two women are clearly conceived as opposites). She is dirty and smells; in her primitivism she is irresistible.

Tobiasson-Svartman is hooked. He returns home to Stockholm, where his wife tells him she is pregnant, but he cannot stay away from Halsskär and Sara Fredrika. In his desperation to return to the island undetected, he even walks over the frozen sea (like many scenes in DEPTHS, this journey is strikingly and memorably cinematic). Helpless in his obsession, he squanders his savings, deceives his wife and employer, and finally commits murder; as his double life unravels, we begin to see that he is not just the victim of an inappropriate lust --- he is quite insane. It all ends just about as badly as one can imagine.

The wildness of this gothic tale is echoed in the oceanic setting --- more than a setting, actually, for in Tobiasson-Svartman's fevered mind nature is treacherously alive (rocks turning into beasts; the sea "keeping watch on him, like a sharp-eyed animal"), and Mankell is constantly making parallels between the unconscious mind and the fathomless sea ("He was mapping navigable channels so that other people would be able to travel in safety, but the charts he was mapping for himself led to chaos." And again: "He had measured the depth of the sea...but he had not succeeded in coordinating his discoveries with the navigable channels inside himself.").

I must confess that this relentless, heavy-handed symbolism got me down after a while (as did the oddly brief chapters, some as short as a single sentence). Perhaps it is a European style of novel that doesn't appeal to me, or maybe the fault of any literature in translation, but despite its haunting seascape the book seemed to me pretentious and arty rather than profound.

It's not that I insist on Mankell sticking to the known territory of his mystery novels. He is allowed to experiment. But here, it seems to me, his usually sure touch has deserted him. In his thrillers, as in DEPTHS, the realm of the abnormal and disturbing (in the form of murder) is juxtaposed with matter-of-fact life and daily routine. But Mankell's finest creation, the police inspector Wallander --- instead of being consumed by the craziness of his job --- remains magnificently human and absolutely sane. He is flawed, vulnerable, overweight, lonely, sometimes depressed, not that good at being a parent, husband or lover --- but he is magnificent at solving murders.

I wish Mankell had dispatched Wallander on his own secret mission to save DEPTHS from turning into a chilly intellectual conceit. With him tracking Tobiasson-Svartman, the book might have had a pulse.

--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman

The deserved ruination of a despicable human.......2007-05-13

Henning Mankell uses a distinctly different writing style in his latest translated novel "Depths", compared to his hugely popular Kurt Wallander series. Rather than using the descriptive style prevalent in his police procedurals, "Depths" is written concisely with a proponderence of chapters typified by their brevity. Whereas most of his previous offerings are presented in a largely somber manner, "Depths" is a downright depressing novel.

Mankell's novel commences with a woman, Kristina Tacker having escaped from a mental institution. He goes on to describe the circumstances that put her in her present predicament. Her husband, main character Lars Tobiasson-Svartman was a Swedish naval commander and venerable hydrographic engineer. At the onset of World War One he was commissioned to sound the depths of navigable waterways around the Stockholm archipelago, to update sea charts. This would allow safer and more rapid transit of Swedish ships during the tumultuous wartimes.

Svartman while on his secret mission discovers a woman living by herself on a small rocky island of Halsskar and becomes obsessed with her. He formulates a series of lies and deceptions to his wife, comrades and superiors that are fabricated to enable him to shirk his duties as both a commander and a husband to be with this woman, Sara Fredricka.

Gradually his whole essence sinks to the level of depravity as lies lead to violence and murder. While his pregnant wife sits in their Stockholm flat convinced that Svartman is on a clandestine mission, he is leading a double life on Halsskar.

Eventually he sinks into an abyss from which he cannot extricate himself as "Depths" plays out like a Swedish Shakespearean tragedy. All that the deplorable Svartman touches becomes marked for catastrophe.

In the Wallander series, Mankell's protagonist is empathetic whereas main character Lars Svartman evolves into a villainous blackguard for whom there can by no sympathy or acceptance.

Wide Sargasso Sea: A Novel (Norton Paperback Fiction)

Average customer rating:

The horror... the horror... Wide Sargasso Sea is a searing indictment
confused
Has potential, but doesn't succeed
Wide Sargasso Sea
How the hell did this make the MLA 100?

Wide Sargasso Sea: A Novel (Norton Paperback Fiction)
Jean Rhys
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0393308804

Amazon.com

In 1966 Jean Rhys reemerged after a long silence with a novel called Wide Sargasso Sea. Rhys had enjoyed minor literary success in the 1920s and '30s with a series of evocative novels featuring women protagonists adrift in Europe, verging on poverty, hoping to be saved by men. By the '40s, however, her work was out of fashion, too sad for a world at war. And Rhys herself was often too sad for the world--she was suicidal, alcoholic, troubled by a vast loneliness. She was also a great writer, despite her powerful self-destructive impulses.

Wide Sargasso Sea is the story of Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress who grew up in the West Indies on a decaying plantation. When she comes of age she is married off to an Englishman, and he takes her away from the only place she has known--a house with a garden where "the paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched."

The novel is Rhys's answer to Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë's book had long haunted her, mostly for the story it did not tell--that of the madwoman in the attic, Rochester's terrible secret. Antoinette is Rhys's imagining of that locked-up woman, who in the end burns up the house and herself. Wide Sargasso Sea follows her voyage into the dark, both from her point of view and Rochester's. It is a voyage charged with soul-destroying lust. "I watched her die many times," observes the new husband. "In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty."

Rhys struggled over the book, enduring rejections and revisions, wrestling to bring this ruined woman out of the ashes. The slim volume was finally published when she was 70 years old. The critical adulation that followed, she said, "has come too late." Jean Rhys died a few years later, but with Wide Sargasso Sea she left behind a great legacy, a work of strange, scary loveliness. There has not been a book like it before or since. Believe me, I've been searching. --Emily White

Book Description

The fortieth anniversary reissue of the best-selling "tour de force" (Walter Allen, New York Times Book Review).

Jean Rhys's reputation was made upon the publication of this passionate and heartbreaking novel, in which she brings into the light one of fiction's most mysterious characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.

A sensual and protected young woman, Antoinette Cosway grows upin the lush natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold intomarriage to the coldhearted and prideful Rochester, who succumbsto his need for money and his lust. Yet he will make her pay forher ancestors' sins of slaveholding, excessive drinking, and nihilistic despair by enslaving her as a prisoner in his bleak English home.

In this best-selling novel Rhys portrays a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.

Customer Reviews:

The horror... the horror... Wide Sargasso Sea is a searing indictment.......2007-09-14

Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea is a dreamlike feverish novel awash in passion and trauma. Forget for a moment that it's a sequel to "Jane Eyre" or that it is a seminal text in Feminism and Colonialist studies. Simply as a strikingly modern story of trauma and madness it is brilliant. Disorienting, agonizing, nightmarish yet stunningly beautiful; I was forced to read it in dribs and drabs - as the knife edge of Rhys' vision would compel me to come up, panting for air. This book is powerful - yet unforgivingly dark. But, of course, it is much more - it's a modernist masterpiece which brilliantly critiques the human costs of crimes of patriarchy, colonialism, slavery and subjugation. It is a searing indictment at the same time it is a haunting work of art.

Antoinette grows up poor and isolated at her family's plantation. Her companions are the black laborers and their children who simmer with resentment at the legacy of slavery. Slavery may have been abolished but has been replaced with economic and social subjugation and the resentment is palpable. Mr. Mason disregards this in a classic example of colonialist arrogance - which destroys their lives. Her mother's anger at Mr. Mason leads to her imprisonment as a mad woman. Women are not permitted to express rage. Patriarchy is central because Antoinette/Bertha is chattel. Her marriage to Rochester is effected because she owns land - it's an economic arrangement to gain property for Rochester. Once married, Antoinette/Bertha is stripped of all her claim to property and is completely under her husband's authority. Their marriage is marked by passion but it becomes apparent how culturally Caribbean (black) she is, tainted with scandal. Their relationship flames out spectacularly. When he decides he can't deal with her and chooses to abandon her to be locked as "the madwoman in the attic" she is reduced to, essentially, a prisoner. A woman, in that society, is literally the prisoner of her husband. Both Antoinette and her mother, Bertha are confined as mad - but their pathologies are the simple act of blaming their spouses and acting out their anger. Rebellion is seen as madness - both in the context of rebellion against slavery and rebellion against patriarchy.

As for the literary context - "Wide Sargasso Sea" as sequel to "Jane Eyre". By situating WSS's story within the classic Victorian novel "Jane Eyre", Rhys sets up a host of powerful resonances. Jane Eyre is a tale of redemption; of love's power to redeem. England's brutal social and economic inequities are hurdles to be overcome - but ultimately love overcomes them all in a healing and redemptive way. The fly in the ointment is Bertha, the mad woman in the attic. Her presence complicates the otherwise straightforward romantic narrative and gives it tension and fire. By inverting this tale to tell the story of Antoinette/Bertha, Rhys deepens the misery by shattering "Jane Eyre"s redemptive message. In "Wide Sargosso Sea" love is a tragic by-product of the economic abuses of patriarchy. Love has no redemptive power for Antoinette. It's just more salt in the wound. A lot of the negative reviews here center around resentment at Rhys for besmirching their beloved innocent "world of 'Jane Eyre'". They've missed the point. Inverting and besmirching the innocent world of 'Jane Eyre' is exactly the point. Colonialist England's apparent grace is built on the blood and toil of subjugated peoples. The subjugation extends to English women as well. You are meant to see that and the experience is not meant to be pleasant.

I can't say enough about this book's importance or the brilliant, polished skill with which it is written. Published in 1966 - at the height of the civil rights movement and free speech movement - WSS's issues were dead on the zeitgeist of the moment. You can imagine how the lush, dark, evil imagery of the jungle must have resonated in with an America embroiled in Viet Nam and a rising anti-war moment. It's not a pleasant read, however. The messages are hard, dark ones. There are no happy endings here and as the story unfolds the brutal details big and small are as oppressive as the tropical humidity. This is fine literature, indeed - but also a journey into pain, deprivation, madness and tragedy. It's not a journey to be taken lightly.

confused.......2007-07-04

This story is confusing and keeps shifting from one thing to the other. It wasn't what I expected it to be. I think it should have been better thought out. It doesn't make much sense and is not entertaining.

Has potential, but doesn't succeed.......2007-06-07

You should probably understand that like a lot of the reviewers who have written in here, Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books. Also, I am a stickler for canon, and anything that's off even a little will drive me crazy.

Honestly, it was hard enough for me to get over the basic changes that Rhys made. Changing the character's name is probably the worst offense. An earlier reviewer said that it was probably just because the name "Bertha" didn't sound pretty enough to her 20th century ears, and I completely agree. Second, changing the character's background. Rhys tried to make Bertha (no, I will not call her Antoinetta) into herself, and impose her own views upon her--if you read about Rhys's life, it makes perfect sense. Perhaps you will argue that Jane Eyre was also a carnation of Charlotte Bronte, but Bronte was creating the world, not trying to fit herself in it. Also, in doing this, Rhys had to make Antoinetta half Creole, and completely violate canon by making Mason only her half-brother. In Jane Eyre, Rochester says that Mason will also one day likely become an imbecile like the rest of the family, so his not being related to the psychotic mother makes absolutely no sense.

These are just superficial complaints, however. As you read the rest of the novel, it goes deeper. Some may claim that Rhys was merely trying to draw parallels between Jane and Bertha, but to me it felt like a blatant ripoff and way of cheating through the novel to get to the "good part." Lessee... poor birth and low social status, check. sad childhood, check. Cold and unfeeling school where the character doesn't quite fit in. Check. However, unlike Jane, you never really like Bertha all that much. She doesn't have Jane's pride and fighting spirit. Why should I root for this sad, mopey character who rarely even speaks in complete sentences? I'd say that it was the negative symptoms of schizophrenia beginning to kick in, but I think that would be giving Rhys too much credit (more on the mental illness as portrayed in the book later.)

And then we get to the Rochester part. This, ladies and gentleman, is character assassination at its finest. I am not arguing that Rochester was the greatest guy ever in Jane Eyre, but Rhys's argument that he was whitewashed makes no sense to me. Jane recognizes that Rochester has sinned, and she even reproaches him for how he has treated Bertha. Also, it is implied that Bertha cheated on Rochester--not the other way around. If Rochester did cheat on her, why would it be with another Creole, a group with which he obviously feels no affection? There were plenty of Englishwomen in Jamaica. Also, we're supposed to feel that his locking her in the attic is the worst crime imaginable, but it's hard for me to agree: being locked in the attic is kind compared to what Bertha would have undergone in a 19th century insane asylum.

The implication, too, that Rochester is the one who drove Bertha mad makes no sense, psychologically (sorry, I am a psychology student, and I have spent much time analyzing the character of Bertha, as I am particularly interested in psychosis) when one considers Jane Eyre. The general view of schizophrenia is that it requires two "hits": genetic and environmental. You are genetically predisposed, but it takes things in the environment to set it off. Rochester makes indications of having disliked Bertha before her symptoms were completely manifested, but he also claims that he would do things such as attempt to make conversation. Also, from what he told Jane, he was initially infatuated with his wife. It was not until she began to act off-hinged that he became disgusted (remember that Bertha was Jamaican, but also well-off and English: I doubt that she would have committed mannerisms so offensive were they not inspired by pathology.) The childhood that Rhys gives Bertha alone would make her suspectible to the disease. Schizophrenia usually does not manifest itself until the early 20's, so it would make sense that her psychosis would appear to begin after the marriage.

Also, part the reason schizophrenia is so dehabilitating is because of the negative symptoms. Rhys's portrayal of Bertha does not appear to have those negative symptoms; most schizophrenics would be not too passionate, but not passionate enough. Granted, there are always exceptions, but someone who is lacking those negative symptoms would be healthier than someone who has them, and I was always under the impression that Bertha was severely ill. Also, Bertha lacks the language and cognitive problems associated with schizophrenia (it is a language and cognitive-based psychosis.) She speaks in fragments and perhaps her speech is a little disorganized, but there is nothing even close to the level of what an unmedicated schizophrenic would say (granted, then we might not understand the book, but such is the problem with first person--it has to be realistic.) I don't know how much about schizophrenia was known when Rhys wrote this book, but if she'd only done a little research to see how schizophrenics truly behave... Maybe attended therapy sessions or visited an institution?

Basically: I understand what Rhys was trying to do, and I think that if you read it on paper, the novel's idea is good. But in trying to fit it with the world of Jane Eyre, she made her mistake. The girl portrayed in this book does not fit with Bertha, and her husband is certainly not Rochester. Also, the portrayal of a character's descent into madness could have been handled so much better. I didn't really feel that Bertha was psychotic until the last part, which isn't too long before she dies.

Sorry if this review wasn't well-organized. Also, I read the novel a while ago, so I may be a bit rusty on it. Consider the fact too that I am a diehard Jane Eyre fan, and thus may be biased.

Wide Sargasso Sea.......2007-05-10

I love this book. At last, a face and soul for the woman in the attic. How fascinating to accompany her on her descent into madness.

The island imagery was spot on. I can almost feel the wind in my face, smell the pure sweet air and hear the noises in the night.

The only thing wrong with this book is that it was too short.

How the hell did this make the MLA 100?.......2007-04-05

This is not a good book. It is incoherent. It is poorly written. It is silly, pretentious, and, at times, melodramatic. How can this be one of the hundred best novels of the 20th century? Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One is ten times the book that this is. The only positive thing I can say about Wide Sargasso Sea is that it doesn't take very long to read.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Calculus Affair / The Red Sea Sharks / Tintin in Tibet (3 Complete Adventures in 1 Volume, Vol. 6)

Average customer rating:

Great fun!
Disappointment
great stories
1956-1960
Glad to See Tintin again

The Adventures of Tintin: The Calculus Affair / The Red Sea Sharks / Tintin in Tibet (3 Complete Adventures in 1 Volume, Vol. 6)
Herge
Manufacturer: Little, Brown Young Readers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0316357243

Customer Reviews:

Great fun!.......2007-10-10

This series of Tintin anthologies is a great buy--the durable hardback cover and the high-quality paper means these books will last a long, long time.

Disappointment.......2007-07-15

I've always been a Tintin fan, and wanted to buy a book for my son. However the format of this book was disappointing, as the original (single) story books were more like A4. The book (with three stories in one) is just too small. It's not the fact that there are three stories all in one volume, it's simply the size of the book. Why was it changed? If you're thinking of buying one of these ... check the measurements! The're not the same size as the originals.

great stories.......2007-03-10

As usual, my 7 years old loved to read Tintin, and I loved to rediscover the stories too ! It is a great book to transport you and your little ones into new adventures. Calculus and Captain Haddock are hilarious. Tintin is adventurous, smart and a good example to my kid.

1956-1960.......2007-02-07

Comic #6 of "The Adventures of Tintin" 3-in-1s has "The Calculus Affair" (1956), "The Red Sea Sharks" (1958) and "Tintin and Tibet" (1960). There's some fine stuff here, but it's not my favorite time in the series. Tough times for Herge too.

"The Calculus Affair" features a new invention and a kidnapping, set in Switzerland and "Borduria". From me, 3 stars.

"Red Sea Sharks" is set in the Middle East, and features Abdullah. From me, 4 stars.

"Tintin in Tibet" is pretty famous in the series, and sees Tintin go out to find his old friend Chang, stranded in the Himalayas. From me, 5 stars.

Kind of like his later stuff a bit better. Worth a look for fans though.

Glad to See Tintin again.......2007-01-19

I grew up reading The Adventures of Tintin and recently purchased this volume for a young cousin in an effort to turn him on to these great stories. I like the new hard cover 3 story format as my old paperback copies have begun to come apart, from repeated reading of course. One thing that I noticed is that unlike the original versions which each had exactly 62 pages, the new format has not preserved this... now I know that's a little nerotic but that's something I always remembered from reading them as a young boy, the fact that each was exactly 62 pages. Herge is a very talented artist and story teller, I would recommend the complete collection to anyone who is looking for a quality adventure story!

Average customer rating:

Maturin's book
Another good one
Another stellar effort for Patrick O'Brian as Aubrey and Maturin wear a bit about the edges
I'll be coming back for more!
From Chase to Chase

The Surgeon's Mate
Patrick O'Brian
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0393308200

Book Description

Read by Tim Pigott-Smith
Three Cassettes, 5 hours

The 7th installment in the Aubrey/Maturin Series.

Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are ordered home by dispatch vessel to bring the news of their latest vitory to the government. But Maturin is a marked man for the havoc he has wrought in the Fren intelligence network in the New World, and the attentions of two privateers soon become menacing. the chase that follows is as thrilling and unexpected as anything O'Brian has written.

Customer Reviews:

Maturin's book.......2007-05-01

The focus is on Stephen Maturin in this seventh installment of the Aubrey-Maturin series, which, though it isn't the best or most exciting of the first seven books, is still a ripping good read. Returning to England following their escapades in North America, Aubrey and Maturin try to settle into life at home -- Jack with his family and Stephen with his scientific pursuits -- but their pasts catch up with them, compelling them to join forces for a spur-of-the-moment mission to the Baltic. Will they succeed? Will they overcome the old problems that dog them? And just who is the surgeon's mate? Read this tale of spying, diplomacy, and (of course!) naval combat to find out.

Another good one.......2007-03-17

This series is great and this was another chapter in the ongoing story of Maturin and Aubrey. Their adventures are of another world and provide a great contrast to other books.

Another stellar effort for Patrick O'Brian as Aubrey and Maturin wear a bit about the edges.......2007-01-17

Patrick O'Brian's scope of imagination is staggering. We are now into the seventh book in his series, and Captain "Lucky Jack" Aubrey and surgeon/naturalist/spy Stephen Maturin continue to find themselves in realistic-yet-dire circumstances of a personal, military, and intelligence nature. Through it all, these two characters never seem like invincible juggernauts, but instead very human, very capable men living by the best their wits and luck can offer.

At the outset of the novel, Aubrey and Maturin need to flee the New World for the old, but find themselves hard-pressed to do so. Thanks to Dr. Maturin's single-handed destruction of French spy networks in Boston (including a wee bit of murder), a wealthy intelligence figure hires ships to track down the fleeing Maturin. The result is a thrilling chase off Nova Scotia and the nearby waters - while I prefer Aubrey's sinking of the Dutch 74 the Waakzamheid in "Desolation Island," this chase is one of the most thrilling in the series so far.

And the joys of this novel don't stop there. O'Brian once again finds various ways to inject humor into his novel. Dr. Maturin hits a personal and professional high (as a naturalist) when he gets the chance to address a body of learned scientists in Paris . . . only to bungle the presentation horribly. Aubrey allows himself to be seduced by a wanton woman while celebrating his escape from the jail in Boston, and is confronted with news of the natural biological result of such a transgression. Maturin and Aubrey are accompanied on many of their adventures in "SM" by the Swedish captain Jagiello, a supremely attractive young man, and Aubrey finds himself at a loss as to why the women fall all over themselves for this young buck when they could have a sailor "with the handsomest set of whiskers in the fleet." There are joys in this novel that you just don't find in most swashbuckling thrillers.

But at its heart, "SM" is an adventure yarn, and O'Brian does not disappoint. In a story that sweeps from the New World to Paris to Denmark to the infamous Temple Prison back in France, Aubrey and Maturin find themselves thrown from one pan into another fire. And God bless them for it!

I'll be coming back for more! .......2006-11-02

This entry in the Aubrey-Maturin seagoing saga was probably my least favorite that I've read so far in this series. My quibble was with the novel's plot, which was pretty thin and derivative of other action novels and movies. And Diana Villiers, Dr. Maturin's love, is starting to remind of the character of Irenee in The Forsythe Saga. Everyone is always talking about how fascinating she is, but darned if I can see why. On the plus side, as always O'Brian serves up amazing historical details and makes Jack and Stephen witty and real. And the on-going story of their lives advances to a very eye-opening and surprising ending. So you can bet I'll look forward to the next installment of this series.

From Chase to Chase.......2006-04-23

In "The Surgeon's Mate", Patrick O'Brian concludes the interior trilogy that is contained within his larger series- the previous two being "Desolation Island" and "Fortune of War". In these books Stephen Maturin comes into his own as the main protagonist driving the suspense and tension- in addition to the overt action on the high seas and the covert action of 19th Century espionage, Stephen struggles with an addiction to an opiate and a woman whose collective effect nearly destroys him. "The Surgeon's Mate" continues this trend and takes it to new levels, and concludes them rather than leaving us hanging. `Lucky' Jack Aubrey is of course present, and often present at the heart of the action, and in this volume exposes the weaker side of his character in the form of an affair he has in Halifax- after so long away, he caves only a few months from home.

From the harbor of Halifax, Stephen, Jack and Diana travel back to England and are pursued relentlessly by American privateers- so relentlessly that Stephen realizes they are sent to hunt and capture him as result of his recent exploits in causing havoc among the French intelligence service in America. From this tense chase, the companions are given a much needed respite in England. The are there long enough for Jack's mistake with Amanda Smith in Halifax to haunt him- for Diana and Stephen to drift apart, and for Stephen to accept his invitation to speak at the Institute in Paris on his beloved topic of Natural Philosophy. When in Paris he brings Diana and sets her up with his contacts, as she can no longer stand English society (mostly due to her own promiscuity), and terrified at the prospect that she is unmarried and may be with child. Jack and Stephen reunite and escape from their various troubles by accepting a mission to neutralize (peacefully if possible) a garrisoned fortress in the Baltic known as the Grisholm; a fortress manned by Catalan soldiers misled by Napoleon's propaganda and led by none other than Stephen's Godfather. This sets up Maturin to again take the lead and showcase the espionage that O'Brian writes so well.

Along the way to the conclusion O'Brian writes some of his best descriptions of the Channel, and the sights to be seen there. The dialogue is crisp and sparkles- the addition of the Swedish `hero' named Jagiello adds a lot of humor- the scenes of Stephen, Jack and Jagiello bumbling and scheming in prison is classic. The final chapters take the reader on a gale-force journey from cannon fire in the Baltic to the terrors of a lee-shore and eventually the infamous Temple Prison in Paris. . . .

Desolation Island (Aubrey Maturin Series)

Average customer rating:

Is anyone READING it ?
Slow to Boil, But Still Makes a Satisfying Cup of Tea
Simon Vance just doesn't get it
"Desolation Island" does this thrilling series proud
One of the best of this series

Desolation Island (Aubrey Maturin Series)
Patrick O'Brian
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 039330812X

Amazon.com

Captain Bligh (yes, the guy from the Bounty) needs to be rescued, and the Royal Navy has the perfect man for the job: Captain Jack Aubrey. With his friend and cloak-and-dagger expert Stephen Maturin in tow, Aubrey sets off for Australia. Several factors, including an attractive spy and a small-scale epidemic, conspire to change his plans, and before long his frigate is being pursued into Antarctic waters by a Dutch man-of-war. Five installments into the series, the Aubrey-Maturin story remains (to quote The Observer) "the best thing afloat since Horatio Hornblower."

Book Description

Read by Tim Pigott-Smith
Three cassettes, Approx. 5 hours

The 5th novel in Patrick O'Brian's hugely successful Aubrey/Maturin Series

Commissioned to rescue Governor Bligh of Bounty fame, Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend and surgeon Stephen Maturin sail the Leopard to Australia with a hold full of convicts. Among them is a beautiful and dangerous spy--and a treacherous disease that decimates the crew. With a Dutch man-of-war to windward, the under-manned, out-gunned Leopard sails for her life into the freezing waters of the Antarctic where, in mountainous seas, the Duthman closes...

Customer Reviews:

Is anyone READING it ?.......2007-08-08

Sorry but after reading this book and then seeing the reviews I have to ask if anyone is really READING it or just studying the words? Apart from Obrien's constant use of the old naval terminology which hardly anyone can understand (there were many whole paragraphs and chapters which made no sense whatsoever to the non-sailor) there was very little story at all? One review mentions Aubreys task is to rescue Captain Bligh in Australia. Apart from the mention of it at the start, it ends without them anywhere even close to Australia in a conclusion so abrupt I thought I'd lost half the book somewhere !!! Much as I enjoy these type of novels and will continue to consume them regardless of their quality(within reason),I have to say that reviews that class Obrien as one of the greatest historical fiction writer are pure fiction in themselves. How on earth these books can possibly be compared to Bernard Cornwell or C.S Forester is beyond my understanding(well I could be cynical and suspect that the critics have a conflict of interest somewhere) . I am begining to feel that the 20 odd books in the series could probably be condensed down into no more than 5 once the ramblings of old naval parlance and duplicated situations were dispensed with. I'm starting to feel I could even write one myself as long as I learned how to 'come up the fore and main topsail sheets half a fathom or ease my quoin for greater elevation' or maybe even learn what 'Royal and weather studding-sails' does? I really do hope that the quality improves over the next 15 I shall read. Yes I'll still read em but mainly due to lack of anything else new to me.

Slow to Boil, But Still Makes a Satisfying Cup of Tea.......2007-01-01

A devoted fan of the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin series from book one, MASTER AND COMMANDER, I've been slowly savoring these novels. This one, the fifth in the series, takes a little while to really get started.

The uninitiated reader should not begin with DESOLATION ISLAND which, try as the author might to provide a modicum of amplifying information about events that occurred in earlier volumes, doesn't entirely succeed in helping the reader of the previous books recall all of the earlier events alluded to let alone, I would venture to say, assist the new reader navigate through them.

But never mind. Except for the especially well versed, or the extremely diligent, reader, there are always aspects of the Aubrey-Maturin books that one just lets slide: not knowing a spritsail from a foresail isn't going to detract from your enjoyment; in fact, it might help you better relate to the resident lubber, Dr. Stephen Maturin. I relish these books because of O'Brian's wonderful mastery of language that seems to capture so well the world of the early eighteenth century British Royal Navy. One can afford to let a thorough understanding slip a bit to stay immersed in O'Brian's intoxicating love of words.

O'Brian's novels revolve around the friendship between the captain, Lucky Jack Aubrey, and the ship's doctor, Maturin. (If this makes you think of Star Trek, you're not far off.) The way they interact is one of the joys of reading O'Brian. Of course, one also reads these books for the enthralling depictions of life at sea and the gripping sea battles. In addition, O'Brian throws in bit of the espionage genre to enjoy, insofar as that in addition to his day job as a surgeon, and his avocation as a naturalist, Dr. Maturin is an agent of the British government. Finally, there's a thread of humor that runs throughout the novels. (In DESOLATION ISLAND, for instance, Maturin is listening to the captain's orders being repeated, and "licking a piece of ice--it was quite fresh--once again meditated upon the enormous amount of repetition in the service" (p. 250).)

The significant problem with DESOLATION ISLAND is that the things that one enjoys about the O'Brian novels are in somewhat short supply for the first couple of hundred pages: the relationship between Jack and Stephen is not that much further developed; there's little battle action (though what there is is intense); with much of the book taking place on an isolated vessel, the espionage theme is constrained; and the humor is somewhat a pale echo of the earlier books. Fascinated by Chinese culture, I was at first delighted to see that a character introduced here, Herapath, is an American translator of classical Chinese poetry. Unfortunately, I had to suffer along with Maturin when the doctor found that circumstances made it difficult for him to learn much more about Herapath's interests.

Like the Monty Python peasant who said a witch turned him into a newt, the book does get much better. The last hundred and fifty pages or so are quite marvelous, in fact. O'Brian takes us to a place we weren't expecting, and the journey there is engrossing. These final sections really do redeem the entire work. And so, not put off by DESOLATION ISLAND, I look forward to further voyages with Lucky Jack Aubrey and Dr. Maturin.

Simon Vance just doesn't get it.......2006-11-14

I have loved this series since discovering them in the late 80's. I think that O'Brian ranks with Austen, Twain, Forster, etc. regardless of 'genre'. However, Simon Vance just does not do justice to this book. I have not heard his renditions of others in this series, but if his Aubrey voice is consistent, they must all be disasters. Aubrey sounds like one of Monty Python's Twits. Vance also rushes descriptions that deserve much better pacing. He also seems to miss much of the wit hidden in O'Brian's circumlocations -- or is much too subtle at conveying it. I hate to diss working actors but.... Mr. Vance should try Wodehouse. Bring back Tull.

"Desolation Island" does this thrilling series proud.......2006-09-20

Patrick O'Brian must have sailed the high seas of the Napoleonic Era in a past life. There is no other explanation of how he could create such a vibrant, expansive, perfectly tailored world as he did in his stellar Aubrey-Maturin series.

"Desolation Island" is the fifth book in the series, and O'Brian in many ways is just hitting his stride . . . which is amazing considering the high quality of the first five books. "DI" bears the same style and action-packed plot as the first four novels, and yet brings completely new perils for the characters . . . and, most importantly, the characters continue to grow and evolve along with those perils.

In many series, by the fifth book, the characters have reached superhero status and the series begins to play out. At some point, the dangers of the next novel cannot hope to outweigh the cumulative heft of the dangers faced in the previous novels, so there is a sense of "well, if X lived through dangers 1, 2, 3, and 4, there is no way that this new danger 5 is going to get X." O'Brian neatly avoids this problem by having Aubrey and Maturin encounter completely new dangers at sea.

What is the worst threat posed in "DI"? Is it Aubrey's ability to maintain command of a ship while charged with delivering prisoners (murderers and cutthroats) to Botany Bay? Is it the lethal outbreak of plague while at sea, laying low prisoner and sailor alike and testing Dr. Maturin to his limits? Is it the brilliant, cunning Dutch captain in charge of a mighty Dutch 74-gun frigate that tries to track down Aubrey's new-old ship, the aged Leopard? Or is it the gutting of the Leopard's hull in icy seas, followed by a near mutiny as the Leopard nearly founders?

Or, perhaps worst of all (to Jack Aubrey, at any rate), the presence of women on board?

O'Brian continues to plumb the depths of his characters as they sail the Seven Seas, and both Aubrey and Maturin continue to evolve as wholly capable and wholly human figures. Warts and all, you cannot help but love them and thank O'Brian for introducing us to them and their wonderful seafaring world. Cheers, Mr. O'Brian!

One of the best of this series.......2006-08-28

I thought that this particular book in the series was one of the best-- fast paced, intriguing, with plenty of drama and suspense. I highly recommend reading the whole series.

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