Tim J. Myers's Blog
August 8, 2016
Review of Garth Nix's "Goldenhand"
When it comes to fantasy novels there is, naturally, a wide range of literary quality—to the point that many readers are put off by the whole genre. If you're in that category, try Garth Nix's Abhorsen books; I think you'll change your tune. "Goldenhand," his latest in the series, reminded me of this in the most powerful way possible.
The world of these books is both profound and profoundly imagined, and the highly engaging characters face joys, fears and challenges that, however fantastic, forcefully echo our own real lives. I look on the world of the Abhorsens with a combination of awe and envy, since Nix has created a relative rarity: a fantasy universe with full cosmological scope that manages to balance believability and wonder, specificity and mystery. The Charter, that fundamental magical force experienced as an endless flow of luminous, river-like symbols, is foundational to this world, but also, even in its infinite flow, has its limits. And the dangerous chaotic Free Magic that both opposes it and sometimes works in concert with it reminds us of the chaos at least partially inherent in our own lives. Many readers may not think specifically about this metaphysic, but I know they're affected by it, consciously or not—since it lends a breadth and philosophical power to these books that's as forceful as it is unique. I'd give my eye teeth to have come up with this world. The presentation of Death as an irresistible river sinking through Nine Gates is especially affecting, and Nix uses it again and again in heart-thumping plot action and for deeper and subtler thematic reasons.
And he specifies his overall cosmology in brilliant, complex, and seemingly endless ways. So detailed and internally consistent is this world that it fairly exudes that most critical of fantasy-novel characteristics: what I call "the weight of the real." His wondrous, inventive characters, settings, and back stories all seem to pour from a history book—one that was simply written in another reality. The Clayr, seers who inhabit a glacier that includes the wildest, most vital, and most dangerous library I've ever encountered—the contrast between the magical Old Kingdom and modern magic-stripped Ancelstierre, which reflects our own human sense of the magical and the mundane—the Abhorsens themselves, master necromancers whose life-task is to keep the Dead in Death, among other duties—and now and again a glimpse of the deeper, almost unthinkingly ancient realities and hyper-beings of this world, through, in two noteworthy cases, what seem to be a dog and a cat—somehow Nix makes all this as real as anything in daily life.
But don't get me wrong. In my burning admiration for his worldbuilding, I don't mean to slight his ability to write the kind of plot that has my eyes leaping from paragraph to paragraph, to the point that I sometimes have to slow myself down so's not to miss a single delicious detail. I often quote Marianne Moore's line about "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," and the metaphor fits the Abhorsen books to a t. Nix's characters are endlessly involved in plain old breathtaking adventure—and I'm swept away with them.
"Goldenhand" is skillfully presented so you can read it as a stand-alone. But I highly recommend starting with "Sabriel," the first of what's soon to be six books when "Goldenhand" comes out officially in October '16 (I read an ARC). I recommend starting at the beginning because the richness and intricacy of "Goldenhand" is rooted in previous events—but mainly because each of the titles is so compelling in itself. And there's a further advantage too. "Goldenhand" ends with a surprising and deeply-satisfying resolution that also reaches back to earlier books. That resolution had great force for me; I finished the book a few days ago and it's still echoing in my heart.
And it takes a superb writer to work that kind of magic in a reader.
The world of these books is both profound and profoundly imagined, and the highly engaging characters face joys, fears and challenges that, however fantastic, forcefully echo our own real lives. I look on the world of the Abhorsens with a combination of awe and envy, since Nix has created a relative rarity: a fantasy universe with full cosmological scope that manages to balance believability and wonder, specificity and mystery. The Charter, that fundamental magical force experienced as an endless flow of luminous, river-like symbols, is foundational to this world, but also, even in its infinite flow, has its limits. And the dangerous chaotic Free Magic that both opposes it and sometimes works in concert with it reminds us of the chaos at least partially inherent in our own lives. Many readers may not think specifically about this metaphysic, but I know they're affected by it, consciously or not—since it lends a breadth and philosophical power to these books that's as forceful as it is unique. I'd give my eye teeth to have come up with this world. The presentation of Death as an irresistible river sinking through Nine Gates is especially affecting, and Nix uses it again and again in heart-thumping plot action and for deeper and subtler thematic reasons.
And he specifies his overall cosmology in brilliant, complex, and seemingly endless ways. So detailed and internally consistent is this world that it fairly exudes that most critical of fantasy-novel characteristics: what I call "the weight of the real." His wondrous, inventive characters, settings, and back stories all seem to pour from a history book—one that was simply written in another reality. The Clayr, seers who inhabit a glacier that includes the wildest, most vital, and most dangerous library I've ever encountered—the contrast between the magical Old Kingdom and modern magic-stripped Ancelstierre, which reflects our own human sense of the magical and the mundane—the Abhorsens themselves, master necromancers whose life-task is to keep the Dead in Death, among other duties—and now and again a glimpse of the deeper, almost unthinkingly ancient realities and hyper-beings of this world, through, in two noteworthy cases, what seem to be a dog and a cat—somehow Nix makes all this as real as anything in daily life.
But don't get me wrong. In my burning admiration for his worldbuilding, I don't mean to slight his ability to write the kind of plot that has my eyes leaping from paragraph to paragraph, to the point that I sometimes have to slow myself down so's not to miss a single delicious detail. I often quote Marianne Moore's line about "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," and the metaphor fits the Abhorsen books to a t. Nix's characters are endlessly involved in plain old breathtaking adventure—and I'm swept away with them.
"Goldenhand" is skillfully presented so you can read it as a stand-alone. But I highly recommend starting with "Sabriel," the first of what's soon to be six books when "Goldenhand" comes out officially in October '16 (I read an ARC). I recommend starting at the beginning because the richness and intricacy of "Goldenhand" is rooted in previous events—but mainly because each of the titles is so compelling in itself. And there's a further advantage too. "Goldenhand" ends with a surprising and deeply-satisfying resolution that also reaches back to earlier books. That resolution had great force for me; I finished the book a few days ago and it's still echoing in my heart.
And it takes a superb writer to work that kind of magic in a reader.
September 22, 2015
Review of The Hunter's Promise by Joseph Bruchac and Bill Farnsworth
I think Joseph Bruchac and Bill Farnsworth’s new picture book "The Hunter’s Promise" is a masterpiece. And I don’t use the term lightly. Watching the Emmys or Oscars you might wonder how almost every director or screenwriter can be a “genius,” and “masterpiece” is sometimes thrown around in a similar way. I find myself thinking of Inigo Montoya’s line from The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think that word means what you think it means.”
But Bruchac’s retelling of a traditional Abenaki folktale is truly masterful, and captures a quality which I revere but can’t fully express in words. A hunter goes each fall into the deep forests north of his village, living alone there through the winter and returning in spring with skins and dried meat. In the depths of one winter, however, he feels a great pang of loneliness, and then encounters a mysterious woman who cares for him and, over the course of the ensuing winters, gives him two fine sons. Each spring when he turns southward to his village she says only, "Promise to remember me." As the story reaches its strange but beautiful climax, we realize that this remembering runs very deep.
There's a quiet power, a purity and clarity to Bruchac's storytelling, which allow the emotional and philosophical depth of its theme to shine through. The story seems almost to emerge from the natural world itself, the way water flows along a streambed or a leaf grows on a tree. And although Bruchac speaks in his introduction about the balance between human and animal and "respect for the great family of life," I think this story carries evokes something else too, something hidden in each of us—some unspoken desire to go back to the animal existence we once knew and seem even now to dimly recall. I find myself reciting Whitman's words: "I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self-contained; I stand and look at them long and long."
But a picture book is a meeting of two art forms, and it's hard for me to imagine a better companion to Bruchac's text than Bill Farnsworth's hypnotizing impressionist/realist paintings. One after another pulls the reader into the world of the story, with its almost raging autumnal reds and oranges, its shimmering waters, its details of Abenaki clothing and camp life. A particularly stunning example shows a spirit helper in the form of a Canada jay hovering in sunlight just above the hunter's face—and I find myself transfixed by it, the sun-fired motion of the bird's wings, the glint of wonder and surprise in the man's eye, the entrancing vibrancy of it all. Farnsworth's evocation of winter woods is equally compelling, and leads us emotionally to the climax of the story.
Child and adult alike will be mesmerized by this book—and I know it will linger in the minds and hearts of anyone who's truly open to it, who will allow its powerful quiet magic to work in them.
But Bruchac’s retelling of a traditional Abenaki folktale is truly masterful, and captures a quality which I revere but can’t fully express in words. A hunter goes each fall into the deep forests north of his village, living alone there through the winter and returning in spring with skins and dried meat. In the depths of one winter, however, he feels a great pang of loneliness, and then encounters a mysterious woman who cares for him and, over the course of the ensuing winters, gives him two fine sons. Each spring when he turns southward to his village she says only, "Promise to remember me." As the story reaches its strange but beautiful climax, we realize that this remembering runs very deep.
There's a quiet power, a purity and clarity to Bruchac's storytelling, which allow the emotional and philosophical depth of its theme to shine through. The story seems almost to emerge from the natural world itself, the way water flows along a streambed or a leaf grows on a tree. And although Bruchac speaks in his introduction about the balance between human and animal and "respect for the great family of life," I think this story carries evokes something else too, something hidden in each of us—some unspoken desire to go back to the animal existence we once knew and seem even now to dimly recall. I find myself reciting Whitman's words: "I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self-contained; I stand and look at them long and long."
But a picture book is a meeting of two art forms, and it's hard for me to imagine a better companion to Bruchac's text than Bill Farnsworth's hypnotizing impressionist/realist paintings. One after another pulls the reader into the world of the story, with its almost raging autumnal reds and oranges, its shimmering waters, its details of Abenaki clothing and camp life. A particularly stunning example shows a spirit helper in the form of a Canada jay hovering in sunlight just above the hunter's face—and I find myself transfixed by it, the sun-fired motion of the bird's wings, the glint of wonder and surprise in the man's eye, the entrancing vibrancy of it all. Farnsworth's evocation of winter woods is equally compelling, and leads us emotionally to the climax of the story.
Child and adult alike will be mesmerized by this book—and I know it will linger in the minds and hearts of anyone who's truly open to it, who will allow its powerful quiet magic to work in them.
September 14, 2015
Pauline Ts’o’s Whispers of the Wolf
"Whispers of the Wolf" is the perfect picture book, in which careful research, beautiful illustrations, and pure storytelling power come together seamlessly. I was moved by this story, by both its evocation of the particular world of pre-Contact Pueblo life and the universals it presents. And I know how deeply it would have appealed to me if I’d encountered it as a child; I would have longed to be Two Birds!
August 27, 2015
Review of Tod Davies' "The Lizard Princess"
It seems clear to me that the modern/postmodern world is undergoing a major shift in values—or to put it in the language of myth, that we've undertaken a new journey. In her surrealist-tinged fantasy novel "The Lizard Princess," Tod Davies brings both passion and a fundamental vision to this journey—not least because she understands so deeply just how crucial Story is to the enterprise.
As the plot unfolds, the titular princess—very unlike the shallow princesses of so much lore—is seeking both to find herself and save her threatened kingdom. But in transrealist stories like this, plot is only part of "what happens," since symbol, dream, and story "people" this world in their own right. Although I've never met Davies, she's published some of my work in her "Exterminating Angel Press Magazine"; I'm reviewing the book, however, precisely because of her luminescent understanding of myth and other forms of "fantasy" narrative. I asked her if I could review it because I too believe that Story is one of the most human of behaviors, one of the great gifts we find before us in the world, one of the great powers that come naturally to our hands. "The Lizard Princess" embodies this belief in many ways, for example, in the way a particular cycle of stories has to be not only heard but more deeply understood for Princess Sophia to come to the fullness of her self as well as to her queenhood.
I don't agree with every aspect of Davies' philosophy, but overall her values will resonate powerfully with anyone who, like me, believes that human culture is now in a watershed era and so is struggling to create new myths for a better world. And there are such riches in this book! I love, for example, the False Moon, built by a technology-mad society and set in space in mockery of the real moon, a false Utopia built on consumerist thrill and blind domination of nature. I love the Ruined Surface of the planet beneath it, where the poor must live but which the rich from the False Moon must periodically visit to restore their health. I love the star window, the one aperture on the False Moon that looks out on the actual universe. And I especially love Davies' wise and profound view of Death, her understanding of its vital natural role.
Consider too the language of lines like these: "Was I not the Lizard Princess, whose warm blood mingled with cold?"--"…it seemed to me that many things that had been obscure would become clear to me now."--"It is far more dangerous to be an object of envy…than to be one of scorn."--"We swayed on that Bridge between the False and the Real…" And my favorite: "It was summer as we walked, as it always is on the Road of the Dead."
You'll be swept up into the story of the Lizard Princess.
As the plot unfolds, the titular princess—very unlike the shallow princesses of so much lore—is seeking both to find herself and save her threatened kingdom. But in transrealist stories like this, plot is only part of "what happens," since symbol, dream, and story "people" this world in their own right. Although I've never met Davies, she's published some of my work in her "Exterminating Angel Press Magazine"; I'm reviewing the book, however, precisely because of her luminescent understanding of myth and other forms of "fantasy" narrative. I asked her if I could review it because I too believe that Story is one of the most human of behaviors, one of the great gifts we find before us in the world, one of the great powers that come naturally to our hands. "The Lizard Princess" embodies this belief in many ways, for example, in the way a particular cycle of stories has to be not only heard but more deeply understood for Princess Sophia to come to the fullness of her self as well as to her queenhood.
I don't agree with every aspect of Davies' philosophy, but overall her values will resonate powerfully with anyone who, like me, believes that human culture is now in a watershed era and so is struggling to create new myths for a better world. And there are such riches in this book! I love, for example, the False Moon, built by a technology-mad society and set in space in mockery of the real moon, a false Utopia built on consumerist thrill and blind domination of nature. I love the Ruined Surface of the planet beneath it, where the poor must live but which the rich from the False Moon must periodically visit to restore their health. I love the star window, the one aperture on the False Moon that looks out on the actual universe. And I especially love Davies' wise and profound view of Death, her understanding of its vital natural role.
Consider too the language of lines like these: "Was I not the Lizard Princess, whose warm blood mingled with cold?"--"…it seemed to me that many things that had been obscure would become clear to me now."--"It is far more dangerous to be an object of envy…than to be one of scorn."--"We swayed on that Bridge between the False and the Real…" And my favorite: "It was summer as we walked, as it always is on the Road of the Dead."
You'll be swept up into the story of the Lizard Princess.
July 27, 2015
New post
Collapsing time and space! Creating invisible passageways between the depths of one person’s being and another’s! Hyper-charging my intellect! Throwing open the doors of self onto a universe of wider perspectives, so no life has to remain alien to me! Showing me how to see with new eyes! Reminding me of what I treasure, even of what I love without knowing it! Granting me some of the most powerful protection against various dangers! Opening my heart, or revealing its deeper chambers to me! Teaching me without pressure, without tests, using only that which I myself seek! Giving me more power over the world, and over myself! Drowning me in the beauty of language!
Yeah—I like books.
Yeah—I like books.
September 3, 2012
An excerpt from "Glad to Be Dad" by Tim Myers
At that point back in the 90's, my wife and I found ourselves excited. Years of hard work and careful decisions were soon to bear fruit. Our two sons were in middle school, and she was at work on her dissertation and therefore close to finishing her degree. Family life was running smoothly and on schedule. We had Big Plans.
But that September all hell broke loose. Suddenly my spouse and I learned, in the most direct way possible, that abstinence is the only 100% effective form of birth control. (And we'd never been big on abstinence)...
Our daughter--whom I'll call "Shilly-Shally," for reasons soon apparent--was born that May. She was, and is, one of the most beautiful creatures I've ever seen, a falling star we happened to catch, a bright, wild, funny, utterly lovable kid. But this Blessed Event brought disruption and difficulties in its wake. My wife, finishing the dissertation only through herculean effort, finally got her Ph.D., which meant she had more earning power than I did. So I became our daughter's primary care-giver--"Mr. Mom," as people so stubbornly insist on saying--and found myself called on to develop skills and attitudes I'd only BEGUN to learn when I'd stayed home with my sons for a short time years earlier. Living that life, and watching other families go through similar struggles, led me to write this book.
But that September all hell broke loose. Suddenly my spouse and I learned, in the most direct way possible, that abstinence is the only 100% effective form of birth control. (And we'd never been big on abstinence)...
Our daughter--whom I'll call "Shilly-Shally," for reasons soon apparent--was born that May. She was, and is, one of the most beautiful creatures I've ever seen, a falling star we happened to catch, a bright, wild, funny, utterly lovable kid. But this Blessed Event brought disruption and difficulties in its wake. My wife, finishing the dissertation only through herculean effort, finally got her Ph.D., which meant she had more earning power than I did. So I became our daughter's primary care-giver--"Mr. Mom," as people so stubbornly insist on saying--and found myself called on to develop skills and attitudes I'd only BEGUN to learn when I'd stayed home with my sons for a short time years earlier. Living that life, and watching other families go through similar struggles, led me to write this book.
August 13, 2012
Hot--Amazon style
My "Glad to Be Dad" recently made the Amazon "Hot New Releases in Fatherhood" list--I'm psyched!
July 31, 2012
My new fatherhood ebook is out!
"Glad to Be Dad: A Call to Fatherhood" is now available wherever digital books are sold. Published by Familius.com, it's a warm-hearted, realistic, and modern work about the real pressures facing American families today, and the great rewards that come to committed fathers. And it's for wives as well as husbands, with a lot of the natural humor of parenting thrown in.
Here's one reader's response:
“I found your book to be thoroughly charming, tender and just plain wonderful. Laura [her 20-year-old daughter] and I were weeping as we completed the last chapter. I could relate clearly to what you were able to capture in words…The insights into family dynamics were so accurately portrayed. Thank you so much for such delightful reading.”
Here's to family!
Tim
Here's one reader's response:
“I found your book to be thoroughly charming, tender and just plain wonderful. Laura [her 20-year-old daughter] and I were weeping as we completed the last chapter. I could relate clearly to what you were able to capture in words…The insights into family dynamics were so accurately portrayed. Thank you so much for such delightful reading.”
Here's to family!
Tim
