Books: Faerie Tale By Raymond E. Feist (1988)

“Phil Hastings and his family have just moved back to his hometown for some much needed peace and quiet from the Hollywood scene. As Phil's twins, Sean and Patrick, soon discover, there is more to their new home than was expected. Gloria, their mother, senses something, but simply dismisses her concern as stress from their recent move. Gabbie, their older half-sister, meets the man of her dreams, but also is tempted by other men. Deep in the woods, The Bad Thing and his Master are ready to break free of the centuries-old compact made to keep the Faerie world and the Human world at peace. Only through believing the insane and impossible can Sean and Patrick save both worlds from colliding again.

There are a lot of familiar themes here that make the book worth reading, especially the oft-told story of your average –but very, very rich- white family moving into a haunted house, and it’s take on possession, again, seen in multiple horror stories, and uses (to certain extent Midsummer’s Night and All-Hallow’s Eve as a template as well) but I found the first half of the book clunky, as if Feist could not figure out how he was going get all his characters going in the right direction. There is, as well, a weird and creepy-to-the-max rape fantasy sequence, with Gabbie sort of wanting it take place. It strikes me that Feist, in the mid-1980s when this was sort of acceptable and not questioned by his editors, gave away his own dark psyche here. And then afterwards, no one seems to care if there could be a crazed rapist hiding in the woods.

Still, Feist replaced a lot of typical horror tropes and meshed them with ancient myths of faerie folklore and changelings. Here the book is better, but is rather dense in research. I felt at times I was reading a book on myths than a fiction tale about a house and the land it sits on being the crossroad between the real world and faerie one. So the mythology is really intriguing and vastly different from what you see in this sub-genre.

It might not be fair to compare Feist’s only dark fantasy novel to someone like Ray Bradbury, but all of Bradbury’s work seemly has stood the test of time. Here, in Faerie Tale, we get a late 1980s look at writer in his early 40s who probably read Bradbury (and borrowed heavily from Stephen King -the hero kids trope) but took the 80s excess of violence and sexuality and added it to his tales, where Bradbury’s dark fantasy tales, in both short story and novel formats, can be read decades later. Faerie Tale has just aged badly, and I have matured since those halcyon days of reading every fantasy novel released in the 80s and 90s.

Also, I think I originally read this book back when it was released in 1988, though now after reading it, I’m uncertain I did. I know I had a copy of it, but a lot of serial readers know that their TBR piles never seem to go down and some titles spend years in it before being read or donated eventually down the line due to various circumstances< Still, Faerie Tale remains Feist’s only stand-alone title. I first encountered him is the mid-80s, when his 1982 novel, Magician was released in paperback in 1985. The book is set in a Dungeons & Dragons–style fantasy world called Midkemia, originally invented by Feist and his friends during college. The story follows the early life of friends Pug and Tomas as their world is overtaken by war against alien invaders who appear via portals. For some reason, Magician was separated into two volumes for the United States market and published as: Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master (though the 1992 tenth anniversary release in hardcover returned it to its proper one volume tale). Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon finished out what turned out to be the early arc of Pug and Tomas. It was after was Faerie Tale, that Feist returned Midkemia and write (sometimes with other authors) 27 more volumes set in that universe, ending it in 2013. Five years later, starting in 2018 and concluding in 2022, Feist published the Firemane series.

I’m unsure why exactly I never followed through in reading other books in the Riftwar series, but I sense a lot had to do with other fantasy writers and tales that hit the bookshelves in that decade I was reading them. I knew then –as I do today- that there is a lot of stuff to read and devoting 30 years to the Riftwar series, the nearly half century to Xanth series, or the Robert Jordan series, or Shannara series was going to prevent me from reading others.

I’ve said it before, these fantasy novels should be no more than three to five volumes –maybe six. After that the original audience has begun to move on to other things. You may get a cadre of people who will read every book in the coming years, but it’s a lot to expect. It’s a huge commitment once readers start having families and homes and working horrible hours. Keep it simple, keep it short (in both volumes and pages), I say.

Books: Doctor Who: The Missing Adventures: The Well-Mannered War By Gareth Roberts (1997)

“Two factions have laid claim to the planet Barclow: humans from Metralubit, and the Chelonians. But instead of fighting, for nearly two hundred years, the two sides are the best of friends. The Doctor, Romana and K-9 arrive to find an important election looming. K-9 begins a career in politics, Romana reunites with an old friend, and the Doctor discovers a plot to alter the war's friendly nature. And what has Galatea, leader of the beautiful Femdroids, got to do with this?”

As typical with a Gareth Roberts tale –especially with his love of the Fourth Doctor -story was good with some funny characters, including the communist character which made me smile -he's spot on with a lot of his comments. The combination of producer Philip Hinchcliffe’s horror and Graham Williams humor is handled very well. For the “guest characters”, he fleshes them out enough it and gives weight for their actions and motives. The return of his Chelonians, who he first introduced in the New Adventures lines, works fairly well in this story. There is a disappointing cliffhanger at the end, which is no fault of the author, but what happened to the book line up.

This was thirty-third and final book in the Missing Adventures range (and set between the TV serials Shada and The Leisure Hive) and The Well-Mannered War is one of a number of Virgin Doctor Who novels which sell for far in excess of their cover price, especially on online auction sites such as eBay and Amazon. This was my second attempt at getting a copy. The first time, bought some time ago (a year or so), I paid well over $40 for it. And it was a fairly horrible mess. This time, I paid about $30 and got a reasonable copy –certainly not new, but not that used. At the time, in the late 1990s, Virgin lost their license from the BBC to publish original Doctor Who fiction. Lungbarrow and The Dying Days are similar in this respect, as they were the two final Virgin New Adventures to be published (though, originally, Lungbarrow was to be the last, which lead directly in the 1994 TV movie, but due to publishing issues, it became the penultimate title instead). And those can go for well over $100 a piece.

Years later, it was learned by Who author Lance Parkin the reason the last three books in the Virgin range, were so expensive on the secondary market was excessive demand, rather than an unusually low initial print run. However, he also noted that reprints of these books were not allowed, because Virgin's license expired before a second printing might otherwise have been made (which also may explain why all those books have never been reprinted over the decades – the original authors retain the copyrights of various characters and situations they created for the story, which would force the BBC into contract negotiations that they would see as untenable to them financially –as seen with the tales written by Douglas Adams). 

Books: The Celebrants By Steven Rowley (2023)

“It’s been a minute—or five years—since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and twenty-eight years since their graduation when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over the years they’ve reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living “funerals,” celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living—that their lives mean something, to one another if not to themselves. But this reunion is different. They’re not gathered as they were to bolster Marielle as her marriage crumbled, to lift Naomi after her parents died, or to intervene when Craig pleaded guilty to art fraud. This time, Jordan is sitting on a secret that will upend their pact.”

I found this book a bit difficult to get through. Part of the problem, something that continued to overshadow me, was the idea this is a book about WHITE PEOPLE PROBLEMS (though out of the six, one is Latino, but stereotypically gay and who gets the Big C –bury the gay and the one POC) who create a Pact no one would really do outside of a TV sitcom. Their late friend Alec, who died two weeks before graduation of apparent drug overdose, is the ghost that keeps on giving without ever appearing. But beyond having the Latino gay guy, we also have one the friends with so much money, so everyone can drop what they’re doing in expensive New York and be together in super expensive Big Sur. It’s all convenient, as it attempts to tell its BIG CHILL story for Generation X. 

As much as I’ve like his previous books, The Celebrants falters as being nothing but a collection of witty, but overly uninteresting characters. We’ve seen this story before, where the reader is tossed into the red-wine sea of their many, many problems, but no one really realized they were the authors of their said problems and it drove me nuts. And then they bicker, not like adults, but like the kids they were in 1995. And why does everyone do casual drugs as, well? Maybe not thought by not doing the hardcore drugs that killed their friend, it was fine to things like mushrooms? Really? Do people think this was 50 year-olds do to bring some entertainment value back to their lives?

I also had an issue with The Jordan’s, the gay couple. At times, I found it really difficult to tell their voices apart. Yes, the coda of the book is about living one’s life to fullest; as you only get one try at it. It’s by far one of the most overused tropes in these styles of books push, but by the end, it’s one thing that did make me cry.

Wonder now: should I buy the hardcover of his latest book, the sequel to his most appealing title yet, The Guncle Abroad, get it out at the library or wait for paperback next year?

Books: Stringers By Chris Panatier (2022)

“Ben is NOT a genius, but he can spout facts about animals and wristwatches with the best of experts. He just can’t explain how he knows any of it. He also knows about the Chime. What it is or why it’s important he couldn’t say. But this knowledge is about to get him in a whole heap of trouble. After he and his best friend Patton are abducted by a trash-talking, flesh-construct alien bounty hunter, Ben finds out just how much he is worth… and how dangerous he can be. Hopefully Patton and a stubborn jar of pickles will be enough to help him through. Because being able to describe the mating habits of Brazilian bark lice isn’t going to save them.”

Stringers is the sort of book that went where I didn’t expect. I liked the premise, the idea was intriguing, but it quickly devolved into a turgid tale of bad jokes and giggling like 8 year-olds that pickles look like penises. So the comedy is a bit childish, as well, boarding on dull scatological humor –humor for those who think Larry the Cable Guy is actually funny. There are few jokes that work, but mostly this was an exhausting comedy/science fiction/alien invasion, blah, blah, blah. The technical jargon was also dense, and added to the slowness of the book.

Maybe I’m just too old –at 61 I’m, not the demographic this novel was seemly going for? Not trying sound egotistical, maybe I’m too intellectual for this type of tale?