The Neverending Story

It is less than 400 pages, yet is longer than Harry Potter. It is less than 400 pages, yet the entire Fantasy genre is captured within it.

My Father and I just finished The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.
How to describe a book that is unlike any other, that robbed us of words almost nightly? All I can say is that if The Neverending Story is the only Fantasy book one ever reads, then one can call themselves a veteran of the genre. All I can say is that Michael Ende ranks with J.R.R. Tolkien himself. All I can say is that we supped with the Golden-Eyed Commander of Wishes within the Ivory Tower and drank the Water of Life between the black and white snakes who encircle and yet are within the Glory.

All I can say is thank you to Bastian Balthazar Bux and Atreyu of the Greenskins , to Falkor the luckdragon, to the The Childlike Empress who accepts all as they are and never uses her power, to Grograman the Many Colored Death, to The Old Man of Wandering Mountain, to Hero Hynreck and Hykrion, Hysbald and Hydorn, and, last but not least, to Carl Conrad Coreander.

I beseech all to read this book, to join Bastion on his first steps. But I warn you that

“If you have never spent whole afternoons with burning ears and rumpled hair, forgetting the world around you over a book, forgetting cold and hunger--
If you have never read secretly under the bedclothes with a flashlight, because your father or mother or some other well-meaning person has switched off the lamp on the plausible ground that it was time to sleep because you had to get up so early--
If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless--
If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next.”

My father and I have once again finished Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia A. McKillip

My father and I have once again finished Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia A. McKillip.

Her Gilgameshian epic, this was the book that made us - then (2014), now, and forever - rank her as a Fantasy author worthy of standing beside J.R.R. Tolkien, Diana Wynne Jones, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, and J.K. Rowling. We have not read it since because the book is so awe-inspiring, so vast in thought, deep in wisdom, eloquent in language, that one does not read it lightly. But when we learned that Patricia A. McKillip had died we could think of no better way to honor her and all her works mean to us. To be reminded again of her mighty words that shape themselves out of fish, poetry, and thorn in a palace hewn out of stone perched on the sheer edge of the world.

As I said in 2014, so I say again, well done and do well Nepenthe, Tessera, Bourne, Vevay, Felan, Laidly, and Kane. I will think of you whenever my thoughts stray over sea and under stone.

Until next time.

New Year's Eve

As 2017 rolls away I think it is only fitting to look back on this year's accomplishments:

• Dragonworld by Byron Preiss and Michael Reaves
• The Opening of the World series by Harry Turtledove
• Sherwood Smith's The Crown & Court Duet
• The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
• The Tower at Stony Wood by Patricia A. McKillip
• Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer
• The Battle of Hackham Heath by John Flanagan, book #2 of his Ranger's Apprentice: The Early Years series
• The Colors of Madeleine series by Jaclyn Moriarty
• Goldenhand by Garth Nix, sequel and final book of the classic Abhorsen Series
• The Taste of Lightning by Kate Constable, sequel-companion novel of her Chanters of Tremaris trilogy
• The Elenium series by David Eddings
• The Castle Behind Thorns by Merrie Haskell
• Tales of the Bard series by that master of myth named Michael Scott
• Kingfisher by Patricia A. McKillip (I add this assuming that Dad and I will finish it tonight)

 

(Also and on a side note, I can finally say that I have been a Magic: The Gathering player for a full year)

Quote of the month

"Wishes cannot be summoned up or kept away at will. They come from deeper within us than good or bad intentions. And they spring up unannounced.” - Michael Ende

Fantasy Book Tiers

We all have our favorite books and it is no secret that mine is J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, yet what happens when one finds a book that is clearly in the same league even is it is not one's favorite? Take J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, for example: it is very different from LOTR yet is still similar in many ways and, while Rowling did not found the modern Fantasy genre as Tolkien did, Harry Potter was an undeniable literary classic that inspired another whole generation of readers and began the Golden Age of Fantasy. All of which is why I call Rowling the the Heir of Tolkien.

That being the case, though, what do I do? Do I call Harry Potter my second favorite book? I could, given my above praise of her, but would it really be true. Sure I love Harry, Ron, and Hermione, yet, emotionally, I am no less attached and invested in the tales of Lyra Silvertongue and Will Parry, Eragon and Sapphira, Sabriel and Lirael, and Will Treaty & Halt; from the His Dark Materials trilogy by Sir Philip Pullman, The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini, The Abhorsen Series by Garth Nix, and The Ranger’s Apprentice Series by John Flanagan. I love those books (and several others) just as much as Harry Potter, yet at the same time recognize that they are not quite in the same league as Tolkien and Rowling. Close to, but not quite.

Thus, in reaction to this, my Dad and I gradually created what we call Fantasy Book Tiers to measure both a Fantasy author's skill as well as story. Below I will try to articulate what each tier means along with adding a few authors Dad and I agree belong in that rank, but it is difficult to do as authors of the same tier often write quite dissimilar books.

1st Tier: Those Fantasy Masters who break beyond the ordinary conventions of the genre, possessing a unique skill and writing style that regularly shocks and delights even veterans of the Fantastic. (Tolkien ranks as the highest of this Tier for obvious quality reasons as well as the fact that none of the rest would have existed without him.)
Authors: J.R.R. Tolkien, Diana Wynne Jones, J.K. Rowling, Patricia A. McKillip, and The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.

2nd Tier: Books such as I mentioned above, acknowledged classics possessing both story and characters you love, but are not quite in the same league (or tier) as those such as Tolkien, Jones, and Rowling. However, like the Top Tiers, these are crossover books that can be enjoyed and young and old alike.
Examples: The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini, The Abhorsen Series by Garth Nix, and The Ranger’s Apprentice Series by John Flanagan, The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Bartimaeus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud, The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Copper, The Noble Warriors by William Nicholson, and His Dark Materials trilogy by Sir Philip Pullman.

3rd Tier: Good page-turning books that leave you genuinely caring about the characters and awaiting sequels, yet are not what you would recommend to a friend trying to get into Fantasy. Average one might call them, though I think that term a tad harsh.
Examples: The Children of the Lamp series by P.B. Kerr, The Annals of Drakis by Tracy Hickman, The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, and The Echorium Sequence by Katherine Roberts.

Here ends the tiers, as Dad and I use the term "4th Tier" to describe books we deem unworthy of our time. (After all, why read a lesser book when you could be searching for undiscovered better ones or re-reading classics?) More to the point, these rankings are not ironclad for the simple reason that every book is different and may be of varying quality even if they rest in the same tier. Dad and I, for example, describe The Dark is Rising and His Dark Materials as "upper 2nd Tier" as we judge them as good as it is possible to get without being Top Tier. Furthermore, Dad and I have been debating whether The Children of the Lamp is "upper 3rd Tier" or "lower 2nd Tier" for years. Hence these Fantasy Book Tiers are merely approximate categories we created to sort our favorite books into a more organized literary canon