The Happiest Days of Our Lives by Wil Wheaton: B+

From the back cover:
Readers of Wil Wheaton’s website know that he is a masterful teller of elegant stories about his life. Building on the critical success of Dancing Barefoot and Just a Geek, he has collected more of his own favorite stories in his third book, The Happiest Days of Our Lives. These are the stories Wil loves to tell, because they are the closest to his heart: stories about being a huge geek, passing his geeky hobbies and values along to his own children, and painting, as vividly as possible, what it meant to grow up in the ’70s and come of age in the ’80s as part of the video game/D&D/BBS/Star Wars figures generation.

In all of these tales, Wheaton brings the reader into the raw heart of the story, holding nothing back, and you are invited to join him on a journey through The Happiest Days of Our Lives.

Review:
The Happiest Days of Our Lives, a collection of stories by actor, writer, and blogger Wil Wheaton, focuses primarily on childhood and adolescent memories as viewed through the nostalgic lens of an adult and experienced parent. In “Blue Light Special,” for example, Wil tells the amusing story of how he ended up with a Lando Calrissian action figure. “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Geek” charts his entry into the world of gaming. And in “The Butterfly Tree,” he recounts the story of how he got in trouble at school for the first time, and manages to perfectly capture the painful moment when a child first discovers the fallibility of adults, as his teacher punishes him unfairly and his parents fail to defend him. Having had a similar experience myself once (though, happily, with much parental defense), I thought he nailed the feeling precisely.

I’m not a regular reader of Wil’s blog, so nearly all of this material was new to me. Sometimes this worked to my detriment, though, as there were references to other stories—one about a homemade Star Wars toy and the other an in-joke shared between Wil and Jonathan Frakes—that I just didn’t get. Still, growing up in the ’80s myself, there was much with which I identified, like watching Poltergeist and being scared silly (“Close Your Eyes and Then It’s Past”) or forever being tempted to equate raspberry sorbet with a certain song by Prince (“Exactly What I Wanted”).

I also enjoyed stories like “Suddenly It’s Tomorrow,” which is about Wil’s desire need to spend more time with his family. The story that resonated with me the most, though, was “Let Go – A Requiem for Felix the Bear.” This story, about the efforts of Wil and his wife to prolong the life of a sick and beloved kitty, had me in tears. It also made me love Wil quite a lot, not only for the efforts he made to help Felix, but for how profoundly affected he was by his death.

There’s not much negative to say about the collection. A couple of the stories aren’t really stories, but are more just snapshots of recollections, like “Beyond the Rim of the Starlight,” which is about Wil’s experiences attending Star Trek conventions, and “My Mind is Filled with Silvery Star,” in which Wil puts the ’80s music on his iPod on shuffle and writes about the memories that each song conjures up. While I preferred the tales with linear narratives, I still found both pieces to be entertaining. The only real sour note is the final story, “Lying in Odessa,” which has nothing to do with being a geek or being a parent. Instead, Wil writes about an illegal poker tournament that he participated in. Since I am not a poker aficionado, there were many terms that I didn’t understand and I questioned the choice to end with this story and not one of the warm and fuzzy “family togetherness” ones.

I’m not sure the experience of reading The Happiest Days of Our Lives will convert me into a faithful blog-reader, but it has at least sparked an interest in reading Wil’s other books one of these days.

Booked to Die (John Dunning)

The Plot
Cliff Janeway is a Denver detective with a weakness for book collecting. He likes to read, too, though that’s not a given. The year is 1986 and eBay and the internet have not yet transformed the antiquarian book market into something completely unrecognizable from its previous incarnation. A book scout — a person who makes the rounds of yard sales and thrift stores in search of underpriced used books — is murdered, and Janeway finds himself oddly determined to find out who was responsible. The path he takes to the answer puts his career and even his life in danger.

My Thoughts
This was not a mystery series I had ever heard of until it was suggested for one of our reviews. I suspect it was the alleged subject matter — the book trade — which was the attraction. And I freely admit, had I found this on my own, I might well have been tempted to pick it up.

And it succeeded in one goal at least: I was able to finish the book. In spite of my near obsessive need to finish things like books, there have been quite a few mysteries that I’ve picked up off the shelf at the library due to an interesting cover blurb which later proved to be entirely unreadable for a variety of reasons. (Off the top of my head, the recent failures include The Rabbit Factory, Southern Fatality and Consigned to Death.)

The story centers around one Cliff Janeway, who seems to be writing or telling this tale from some unspecified point in the future. At the time described at the beginning of the story, he is a police detective who has been having some problems with a wealthy scumbag to whom no charges will stick. He’s also involved with another police officer, Carol, supposedly to the point of considering marriage with her. But it’s telling that the author lavishes far more time and effort in detailing Janeway’s feelings and emotions toward the scumbag than his relationship with his girlfriend. She remains a non-entity and pretty soon they randomly break up and she disappears from the narrative altogether. Janeway, in fact, is really a loner in spite of a superficial effort (purposely superficial? It’s unclear) made to give him connections and friends and other contacts. And honestly, loners can be hard to make interesting.

The mystery itself doesn’t really ramp up until the second half of the book. The first half, though the mystery is presented on the very first pages and there is some desultory detective work put in, is totally there to explain how Janeway came to leave the police force and enter the book trade. I would have liked to have seen this fact a bit more well camoflaged, because as it stands, there’s a very clear break in the middle of the book where this tale ends and then suddenly the real detective work begins.

I also found some of the writing and characterization to be sloppy. In the middle of the book especially, Janeway starts to make sweeping statements about the passage of time which makes it seem as if years have passed. But then when we move in to the second half of the book, it’s clear that this is taking place just a few months after the first section. So where did those statements come from? Is he narrating this from a time far in the future? This could be made more clear. As it was I spent several minutes flipping back and forth trying to figure out how it could work that there wouldn’t be a contradiction.

And then the characterization. Janeway was all right; by the end of the book I did feel like he was starting to take shape, if a still nebulous one. But the secondary characters were very vague, and many of them (like his police detective partner) never made it past cardboard cutout. I also felt cheated — one expects to lose secondary characters in a mystery, that’s a danger of the role, but if you spend the first half of the book tearing apart the character’s life, you tend to expect that when he finally begins to rebuild it that you’re going to start meeting the characters who will people the series from here on out. This is obviously not the case here, as by the end of the book there’s perhaps only two people other than Janeway who seem likely to return in any future stories.

The mystery itself was pretty weak. The author dropped enough hints about who the culprit was that he might has well have erected a sign. That he managed to spin it out over half the book was impressive; it just wasn’t complicated enough to go on longer than that, so it’s a good thing there was all that other stuff to occupy the other half.

In Short
This was an okay, but not stellar mystery book. It was made more interesting to me by its description of the used book trade of two decades ago. The author could have done more to tie the two halves of the book together, and there were some sloppy phrases that made the timeline of events confusing to me. The secondary characters were also pretty weakly drawn in several cases, with little to make them memorable in any way. I probably won’t be continuing with this series, though I may check out the jacket summaries just in case.

Flora Segunda by Ysabeau S. Wilce: A-

From the back cover:
Flora Fyrdraaca knows taking shortcuts in Crackpot Hall can be risky. After all, when a House has eleven thousand decaying rooms that shift about at random, there’s no telling where a person might end up. But it’s not just household confusion that vexes Flora, what with Mamma always away being Commanding General of the Army, Poppy drowning his sorrows in drink, and Crackpot Hall too broken down to magically provide the clean towels and hot waffles that are a Fyrdraaca’s birthright.

Yet Flora is nothing if not a Girl of Spirit. So when she takes a forbidden shortcut and stumbles upon her family’s biggest secret—Valefor, the banished Butler—she and her best friend plunge happily into the grand adventure of restoring Valefor to his rightful (or so he says) position. If only Flora knew that meddling with a magical being can go terribly awry—and that soon she will have to find a way to restore herself before it is too late.

Review:
This is the story of Flora Fyrdraaca, referred to by some as Flora Segunda because she is the second Flora to have been born to her parents. She is on the verge of turning fourteen, an age at which Fyrdraaca family members go off to the Barracks to embark upon their careers as soldiers. Flora does not want to be a soldier, though; her ambition is to become a ranger like her heroine, Nini Mo, and use magic, stealth, and cunning while having exciting adventures. Flora’s mother, a high-ranking general, disapproves of magic, so Flora cannot express this preference, and the Ranger Corps has been disbanded anyway, so she contents herself with devouring every bit of information she can find on Nini Mo.

The Fyrdraaca family occupies an enormous house known as Crackpot Hall. At one time, there was a magical butler, but in his absence (banished by Flora’s mother), things have fallen into disrepair: rooms shift about at random, the elevator is unreliable, and most of the house is uninhabitable. One morning, while late for school and darting back inside to retrieve an overdue library book on Nini Mo, Flora decides to use the forbidden magical elevator and ends up in a new part of the house where she encounters the abrogated butler, Valefor. Tempted by the prospect of shifting the burden of her many chores upon him, she agrees to feed him a little of her Will (the power behind magic) to help get his strength back. This starts her on the path of various adventures, culminating in the useful lesson, “No one can take you from yourself unless you allow them to.”

There are many things to like about Flora Segunda. I particularly appreciate the lessons that Flora has learned from her adulation of Nini Mo—sprinkled liberally throughout the book as Flora calls them to mind during difficult situations—since they emphasize things like “being strong, fast, and clever is more important than looks.” Traditional gender roles are also dispensed with. It’s an absolute given that women can become soldiers—two powerful generals referenced within the story are female—and there’s a male character (awesomely described as “a glass-gazing font of frivolity”) who’s into fashion, eyeliner, and crinoline, which doesn’t seem to be a problem with anyone, either. The setting is unique, as it’s seemingly an alternate universe sort of 19th century California (dubbed Califa) that’s made peace with an invading Aztec-like culture, and the magical system is original and intriguingly complex.

Above all these things, however, is my deep and abiding love for Flora’s father, Hotspur. He had been a bright-eyed and magnificent soldier in his day, but when we meet him, he’s a broken, half-mad drunk with hollow eyes who spends most of his time holed up in a remote spot of Crackpot Hall, grieving over tragic losses sustained during the war. (I’ve just noticed that description sounds very like Sirius Black.) He sobers up a little bit along the way, offering unexpected help a couple of times, and there are some terrific moments with and revelations concerning him near the end of the book that had me teary and desperate to know more about his history and his future.

On the negative side, the plotting, while on the whole pretty tidy, feels a bit haphazard at times. Flora misjudges people time and again, leading to lots of running about hither and thither to try to solve problems created by her previous actions. I also don’t really feel I have a good grasp on Califa’s culture, though I grant that more detail probably would’ve been unnecessary and a detriment to the story’s momentum. Lastly, although I admire Flora’s amusingly snarky turns of phrase and the fact that I had to look up more unfamiliar words for this, a children’s book, than I have in quite a while, Wilce has this annoying habit of using the same word multiple times within the span of a few pages. With common words, this is no problem, but when the word is “scarpered” or “sangyn,” it’s much more obvious.

Like its sometimes foolish, sometimes courageous namesake, Flora Segunda isn’t perfect. However, its merits, originality, and knack for leaving me wanting more spur me to cry, “Bravo!”

The Sharing Knife: Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold: B+

From the front flap:
Young Fawn Bluefield and soldier-sorcerer Dag Redwing Hickory have survived magical dangers and found, in each other, love and loyalty. But even their strength and passion cannot overcome the bigotry of their own kin, and so, leaving behind all they have known, the couple sets off to find fresh solutions to the perilous split between their peoples.

But they will not journey alone, as they acquire comrades along the way. As the ill-assorted crew is tested and tempered on its journey to where great rivers join, Fawn and Dag will discover surprising new abilities both Lakewalker and farmer, a growing understanding of the bonds between themselves and their kinfolk, and a new world of hazards both human and uncanny.

Review:
After one book taking place primarily in the farmer world and another that focuses on Lakewalker life, Passage, the third book in The Sharing Knife series, finds Dag and Fawn working to bring those two worlds closer together. Having witnessed the loss of life caused by farmers’ ignorance of the warning signs of a forming Malice, and not willing to stay at a camp at which the validity of his marriage is questioned, Dag gives up his patroller life and decides to become an ambassador of sorts, explaining some of the most fundamental Lakewalker secrets to what farmers as will listen.

After a brief stay with Fawn’s family, Dag and Fawn (along with her brother, Whit) hit the road, visiting a few towns and eventually booking passage on the Fetch, a flatboat headed downriver to the sea. From there, they encounter a variety of (mostly) likable characters, like Berry (boss of the Fetch), Remo and Barr (a pair of disgraced young patrollers), and a bevy of other boatmen. Dag performs several impressive feats of healing, works out some finer details of groundwork, ponders some troubling questions, and makes a lot of rather repetitive speeches. The action picks up a little when Berry’s search for her missing father, brother, and fiancé yields some unexpected results, and Dag is ultimately forced to question whether farmers and Lakewalkers aren’t better off living separate lives after all.

Although parts of Passage are quite slow—like the speeches and the many discussions on the ethics of Dag’s developing abilities—it’s still my favorite of the series thus far, a factor I attribute mostly to the influx of new people. Suddenly, a series that has been almost exclusively about two characters has developed an ensemble cast, and I find it to be a big improvement. My favorite of the new characters is actually not so new—Fawn’s brother Whit has been around before, but really becomes a new person due to the things he sees and experiences on this journey.

Whit’s growth also serves a handy example for one of my favorite things about the series: women’s roles. Bujold manages to show women in positions of power—boat captains, patrol leaders—about as often as women living more domestic lives without making a judgment about which has more value. Whit, having grown up on a farm, is used to men being in charge, and early on accuses Fawn of being “just a girl.” Dag expertly turns this around to talk about all of the brave and valiant things his first wife, Kauneo, accomplished when she was “just a girl.” After witnessing Fawn’s practical cleverness on several occasions, and having his notions of gender roles challenged by Berry, with whom he falls in love, Whit comes to value Fawn’s input in a way that the rest of her family does not.

Despite enjoying Passage quite a bit, I find I have some trepidations about Horizon the fourth and final volume in the series. I do like Dag and Fawn, but they weren’t the main attraction for me this time. I hope Berry, Whit, Remo, and Barr have significant roles in Horizon else I shall be disappointed.

The Happiest Days of Our Lives (Wil Wheaton)

The Plot
A loosely related collection of essays by blogger Wil Wheaton. The theme here seems to be memories.
My Thoughts
I’ve been a reader of Wheaton’s blog for years, and I read his first two books when they first came out. I anticipate that I’ll continue to read after this one, even though I […]

The Plot
A loosely related collection of essays by blogger Wil Wheaton. The theme here seems to be memories.

My Thoughts
I’ve been a reader of Wheaton’s blog for years, and I read his first two books when they first came out. I anticipate that I’ll continue to read after this one, even though I found it a bit more disjointed than his previous efforts. Perhaps it suffered in comparison to Just a Geek, which I had reread most recently, and which was really a _book_ rather than a collection.

The essays in this entry into the Wil Wheaton oeuvre are of varying lengths. Some are just a handful of short paragraphs and others continue for pages — either greatly expanded from their origins as blog entries or a combination of many posts, because blog entries are rarely so epic.

The writing flows, at its best when he doesn’t try too hard to be literary and just lets the story have its own voice. It’s probably no coincidence, but I found that the writing was at its best in the entries where he’d clearly felt the most emotion while the event itself was happening. “The Butterfly Tree” and “Let Go – a requiem for Felix the Bear” really stood out for me. The former especially — I felt so badly for little Wil, and it was so easy to see myself at the same age feeling the same way in a similar situation. The deep embarrassment compounded by the unfairness of it all and his parents’ reaction: it’s the sort of thing that sticks forever in your mind.

Aside from the disjointedness of the content, which I’ve already mentioned, the only other thing that started to bother me was the continual injection of song lyrics and music into the text. However, this is not really a failure of the author — clearly song lyrics and bands are important to him. Unfortunately I just find them annoying. About the only thing that turns me off more than random quoted song lyrics in a blog entry is a long rambling discussion of the dream you had last night.

In Short
I wouldn’t call this Wheaton’s strongest book, but it holds up well enough next to his others. An expanded/revised/superspecial version of this is supposed to be out from Subterranean press some time soon (I believe he’s sent off the final copy to them now). I’d be interested to know what he felt like adding and/or changing now that the book has had a while to settle in his mind. Bear in mind that the title is sort of ironic, as quite a few of these memories have the potential to leave you in tears.