During Anita and Jim's recent visit to Gaineville, we tried looking around the used bookstore 2nd and Charles. There was such a dearth of interesting books or magazines...and I was feeling physically exhausted...that I almost jumped at the opportunity to buy a 2016 juvenile-level fantasy novel by Joshua Khan titled Shadow Magic. It took me a while to get going reading through it, especially when I quickly discerned how depressing and hopeless the setting, characters and social order were. Imagine that the "good" place, called Gehenna, is where the dead are brought back to life. Society is worse than the Taliban and women can be put to death for simply invoking magic. Lilith Shadow rules over Gehenna although she is suffering through a 3-year engagement to an entitled little creep of the opposite ruling house named Gabriel and trying to solve the mystery of recent assassinations and attempts. The novel's hero is a rough little boy named Thorn...he and Lily hook up and are pretty much on their own to solve the mysteries and save the day. In the background is a scary (but principled) man named Tyburn: he is the official executioner, and no one wants to find themselves on his bad side. Let me explain my reactions. I found nothing in the story's setting attractive or stimulating to my imagination, which was the case in The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, and Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling...J.R.R.Tolkien's two sagas The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings also stand out. Rick Riordan wrote the Percy Jackson series bringing classical mythology to a modern-day level, and until filmmakers ruined it for me by over-dramatizing it, I enjoyed the occcaional tongue-in-cheek repartee. But not with Shadow Magic. On the book's jacket he is quoted as saying,"I defy you not to love this story."
Well, I stand defied.
I had little trouble reading through Joshua Khan's narrative, but found it all pretty boring...it didn't matter to me what happened to anyone, including the so-called "good guys", who I would no doubt have disliked in real life. So I don't recommend Shadow Magic and only bought and read it just to be able to say I read a book. i won't buy or read the next one. No, I think I'll just bide my time and choose something else with a special, appealing nature to it...
I'm curious to know if you've ever read 'The Mote in God's Eye' by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I first read it back in the '80's and I reread it from time to time for no other reason than the fact that I just really like it. About 20 years after that novel, they wrote the sequel which, here in Australia, was called 'The Gripping Hand'. I went on to read many more of their books over the years, and while I usually enjoyed them, none of the others measured up to that first one I read.
ReplyDeleteHaving just renewed my public library registration, I'm looking at the audiobook app called Libby to find more books. It's interesting how many books I read while at work at the post office in years gone by. I'd like to see what I can find in the young adult dystopian fantasy genre. Maybe I'll browse Books-a-Million for attractive-looking books.Niven and Pournelle sound interesting.
ReplyDeleteRemember the Voyager I and II missions (with one of them still going)? My youngest sister, Amy, was the girlfriend of Brad Smith who was the Head of Imaging for the mission. Sometime in the early 80's I introduced Brad to that book (The Mote In God's Eye). He later told me that he thought that was the best first-encounter book he had ever read. Brad was quite well-known at the time (listed in People Magazine's '25 Most Intriguing People of 1981'), and I don't know whether he had gotten in touch with Pournelle and Niven or if it was just coincidence, but in the sequel (The Gripping Hand) he is actually mentioned in the novel.
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