The year in books #22, #23 & #24

It's a three-fer special today at the American Umlaut! Woot! Despite the absence of my words here at the ol' Umlaut, I have not stopped reading books, but I've found myself with less and time to write about them here. The birth of the Loaf, the release of Starcraft 2, and a renewed passion for playing the piano have all left me... well, I wanted to say "with less free time," but of course, I have plenty of free time and am simply choosing to spend it with my daughter, my game and my instrument. I find, though, that it remains very important to me to get my thoughts about the books I read down somewhere. I especially like writing about books I've loved - telling a friend about a book that has fascinated or moved me feels a bit like introducing two friends and watching to see how they hit it off. I love letting you all know what I've enjoyed, and I really love all the times I've heard from my readers that they've looked at something I recommended here and enjoyed it.

So let's get to it. The first book to be discussed today is Terry Pratchett's The Last Continent, a Discworld novel describing the adventures of Rincewind and his fellow Unseen University wizards as they explore EcksEcksEcksEcks, the titular last continent, which bears a striking resemblance to Earth's Australia. I have shared my thoughts on the Discworld books generally in my previous post about The Hogfather, so this review can be short and sweet: This is the only Discworld novel I've ever found less than fabulous. The humor felt quite forced in places, and the fact that I'm not terribly familiar Australian culture or the stereotypes the English associate with Australians left me never sure if a particular characteristic of the continent in the novel was a Discworld-specific funny thing or was supposed to be, in some way, making fun of Australia. If you're a big Discworld fan, then I suppose you're going to read this one in any case, but if you're not, I wouldn't recommend this as an introduction to the world or to Terry Pratchett's writing, which has otherwise never failed to impress me.


Books two and three in today's Review Spectacular are Dan Simmons's Hyperion and it's sequel, The Fall of Hyperion. Hyperion came out in 1989 and won the 1990 Hugo award for best novel, and when The Fall of Hyperion came out the next year it got a Hugo nomination and won the Locus. The reason that I am writing about the two books together rather than as separate pieces is that they are essentially a single novel in two volumes. Based loosely on The Canterbury Tales, Hyperion follows five pilgrims (a private detective, the former governor of a colony planet, a priest of a religion worshiping life, a catholic priest, and a great warrior) as they make a pilgrimage to the site of the legendary and deadly Shrike creature, taking turns telling the tale that has led them to make the pilgrimage. As their stories are more or less completely independent of each other, the book is less a novel than a collection of novellas, which together serve to paint a coherent picture of the far-future universe in which they are set, tied together with interstitial bits detailing the pilgrimage itself. The Fall of Hyperion is much more traditionally novel-like in its structure, continuing the story from the point of the pilgrims' arrival at the Shrike temple.

If you like science fiction, you must read these books. Even if sci-fi isn't your cup of tea, I suspect there is a great deal to appeal to the mere appreciator of fine literature. They reach heights of artistry and depths of philosophical thought that you rarely find in literature of any kind, and they do it while telling a captivating, epic story. Revealing any more of the story would ruin the fun of letting the books reveal it themselves, so just take my word for it: these are good books!