The Bartimaeus Trilogy

Posted on January 15th, 2012

I should have included this trilogy in my Good Reads 2011 post, but I was still finishing off Ptolemy’s Gate, the final book in the series.

The Bartimaeus Trilogy is an inventive alternate history that reimagines the UK as a bloating empire colonizing unlucky countries all over the world. Magicians control the government and most of the country’s wealth. They have created a police state wherein commoners suffer constant surveillance and harsh reprisals for any sort of rebellious activity.

The books present a unique take on magic. Magicians possess no magical power. Instead, they learn to harness spirits from another dimension (aka “The Other Place”) using pentagrams and detailed incantations. Magicians enslave the spirits, binding them to follow their commands and do their will. This creates tension between magicians and the source of their magic. There is an array of different spirits, from low-level imps used to spy or perform mechanical tasks to gigantic afrits who could level a city if insufficiently bound.

The best part of the trilogy is Bartimaeus, the djinn summoned by the protagonist. He is a pompous windbag who uses extensive footnotes to deliver hilarious commentary and anecdotes. Bartimaeus presents himself as a ruthless, powerful being, but reality slowly emerges. He is actually a third-rate spirit with a soft spot for human beings. He constantly refers to his involvement in major projects, such as building the pyramids and winning famous wars. Because he is thousands of years old, he offers a glib historical perspective about the rise and fall of empires.

The other characters are well done, too. There’s Nathan, the emerging young magician who summons Bartimaeus. They share a love/hate relationship and constantly harass each other, which is very entertaining. Nathan is not an incredibly likeable person, but he is certainly the most upstanding magician we meet. There’s also Kitty, a revolutionary commoner who becomes a very enjoyable character in the second and third books. She is by far the bravest character.

The trilogy stands out for its excellent follow through. The second and third books maintain the same high quality as the first. The more the story goes on, the higher the stakes are for a satisfying ending. Ptolemy’s Gate delivers.

I recently picked up The Ring of Solomon, which is a prelude to this series. It follows Bartimaeus when he serves King Solomon in 950 B.C. I expect that he will offer same style of entertaining, footnote-laden witticisms about this set of royalty as he did in the other books.

Categories: Reading

Ithaca Pages

Posted on January 3rd, 2012

Jeremy and I have been very busy lately working some projects for Outland Entertainment. The deadlines all hit at once, so we’ve had to put in a lot of hours this holiday season. We created a series of animated museum exhibits, a sex education booklet for Canadian youth, and a short sports comic. Such variety! The finished products are great, and I look forward to sharing them. In the meantime, I will post some recent Ithaca pages.

Ithaca will be released online in March or April of this year. We’re still getting a nice buffer of finished drawings from the artist (Dean Kotz). We’ll start coloring and lettering sometime next month. The following pages show the protagonist being trafficked and ultimately meeting her caretaker.

Categories: Comics, Outland, Writing

Good Reads 2011

Posted on December 28th, 2011

These are my favorite books that I read in 2011. Note that many of them have been around for a few years at least.

The Magician and The Magician King by Lev Grossman

Much has been said about the so-called adult Harry Potter books. They feature all of the wonderful things you expect from a fantasy novel: A magical boarding school. A band of geeks. A gateway to another world. A socially awkward but brilliant protagonist who is a goofy looking outcast in this world but (literally) royalty in the other.

These books depart from a typical fantasy in a few spectacular ways. First, the discovery of magic and alternate worlds does not create meaning in the protagonist’s life. He still has to cope with his sense of directionless angst like any other teenaged boy. Second, the author isn’t afraid to confront the questions and conundrums that crop up in fantasy books but are never acknowledged. Such as, where does magic come from? Why can people use it? Is there a theological aspect to all this? Finally, the protagonists drink and screw liberally throughout the books, just like any group of dorm-dwelling teenagers.

Lev Grossman is a great writer. Anybody who was raised on fantasy books will love these.

Incarceron and Sapphique by Catherine Fisher

The premise is remarkably original. Incarcaron is a living prison. Inmates live, die, and get recycled under the watchful, intelligent eyes of the Prison. Outside of Incarceron, people live by Protocol, a stifling dictum that forces them to stagnate in a pre-industrial era. And then there is Sapphique, the magician/savior who escaped Incarceron generations before. He is legendary, the subject of many songs and works of epic poetry. I was blown away by Catherine Fisher’s imagination, and I found the books very thought-provoking.

Some of the writing is a little crappy. (The words “acrid” and “tinkling” recur with annoying frequency.) But the descriptions, especially those of the synthetic forests within Incarceron, are beautifully vivid.

Name of the Wind and Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

These are amazing, ambitious books. They are the life story of a man named Kvothe, whose dazzling brilliance and faultless ingenuity would be nauseating if he weren’t currently in a somewhat fallen state. Most of the story takes place in grandiose flashback. Present moments reveal a curiously weakened, compromised Kvothe.

These books have all the hallmarks of a Harry Potter type fantasy: The dead parents, the gifted boy left behind, the terrible villain he seeks, the magical boarding school, the tales of life in the dorms. But the world is more dangerous, the protagonist is more likeable, and the writing is full of awesome bravado.

These books won enough awards and garnered enough praise that I don’t need to write anything more about them. Just go read them for gods sake.

Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

This is the prequel to Oryx and Crake, my favorite dystopian futuristic novel of all time. It further embroils readers in a vivid world that is all too believable. Atwood is a genius, and she has directed her critical gaze at current events. Her story depicts logical outcomes of corporate personhood, concentrated wealth, and a population saturated with meaningless media. Let me tell you, the results are not pretty.

It goes without saying that the writing is flawless and I couldn’t put it down. Atwood always delivers.

Feed by M.T. Anderson

Like Atwood, Anderson captures the present day and the evolution of current trends so well that the story ends up being completely believable in spite of its far-fetched premise. A “feed” is an implanted computer that allows characters to communicate and shop telepathically. It creates the perfect mindless consumers. Privacy does not exist in Anderson’s vision of the future.

This book reminded me so much of George Saunder’s work, specifically Jon. (I love George Saunders.) Anderson uses a similar dialect for his characters and has a similar worldview. He manages to be critical of humanity as a whole while being warm and sympathetic to individual characters.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

I am late to Sedaris fandom, but this book converted me. The essays meander around from topic to topic and time period to time period, but they always wrap up nicely with a perfect final sentence. The author is not afraid to mortify himself for a laugh, and oh how I laughed. Good stuff.

The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare

What can I say? This series is pure fluff. Lots of action, a little incest, and some monsters. I could put my big brain to work discussing its shortcomings, but what a waste of time. I enjoyed reading it thoroughly and would recommend it to anyone who wants a bit of light escapism.

Outland Entertainment – our company! – is involved in the graphic novel rendition of this series. I think it will translate well into the graphic novel format.

Categories: Reading

My Very Worst Roommate, part 3

Posted on December 20th, 2011

See part 1 and part 2 of my Worst Roommate saga.

His name was Wes. He was bone thin and had hair like Jesus. He carried all of his belongings in a bulky backpack. Except for his bongo drums, which he kept tied around his neck with a leather thong.

Our house was less than a mile from a homeless camp by the river. Drifters lived there for most of the year, only packing up to move down to Albuquerque when winter made camping dangerous. I think our worst roommate was one such drifter, although I was never exactly clear on where he came from; he just appeared in our living room one day and lingered there.

Unlike Chuck, he made his substance abuse clear from the beginning. He had no job, but he had money, probably from selling pot or worse. I never knew much about the man except that he was the most annoying person I have encountered before or since.

Let’s start with the bongo drums. Since he didn’t have a job, he had nothing better to do than get stoned, put on a Yes album, and invite other drifters over for a drum circle. They played Yes at full volume so they could hear it over the drums. The windows shuddered, the floor vibrated, and the room stank of a dozen homeless men. They had drug-induced stamina and could play all night. I could often hear these drum circles from blocks away as I walked home from work. Wanting nothing more than to rest my feet and sleep after a long shift, I hated to hear that sound because I knew that neither of those things was likely to happen.

I could try asking him to stop, but that meant turning off Yes, which meant tripping over several leering dudes to reach the stereo and being treated to lectures about how I was such a Libra. Yes, among his other absurd traits, Wes was obsessed with the zodiac and mentioned it as often as possible. It was the lens through which he viewed ever social interaction, from meeting a woman at a bar to purchasing a soda at Kwik Mart, to having a conversation about paying a little rent once in awhile. The first time he met me, he immediately asked my birthday. When I answered, he sneered, “I hate Libras.” I laughed, but he was serious. From that moment forward, he viewed me with eyes narrowed in suspicion.

A frequent LSD user, Wes enjoyed dropping acid in the morning. When everyone else was getting ready for work or enjoying a cup of coffee, he’d be tripping. He would sit on the living room floor, listlessly petting his bongo drum with his mouth hanging open. During one such trip, my roommate and I made the mistake of trying to speak to him about a housekeeping matter (late bill). He cried that we were sending off bad vibes and insisted that he could see our black, nasty auras swirling all around the room. He pulled frantically at his Jesus hair and said, “Uh oh. Now you’ve done it. I am having a bad trip.” He backed away from us, his dilated eyes shining with terror. “Get away from me, Libra!” He diverted all conversations about rent and utilities in this manner.

Perhaps it was the effect of working constantly and struggling to save up a little money, but I was becoming less amenable to all the lazy drifters who showed up to eat up our food, congregate in our space, and disturb our sleep. Wes was always gone, in one way or another, when conversations about money were afoot. But when a meal was prepared, he could sense it from miles away. He would skulk around the sidelines of the kitchen, rubbing his stomach and discussing his acute case of munchies. If I didn’t offer him a plate, he sulked and complained that Libras were bastards.

What catapults Wes to VERY WORST ROOMMATE status is the company he kept. He invited many drifters into the house. Most of them were of the same cut as Wes: Rank young men with long, musty beards, greasy backpacks, and big black boots.

There was his leering, thick-necked friend with a bald head and a foot long beard. He was easily six and a half feet tall and incredibly stupid. He thought I was cute and went into flirtation mode, regaling me with stories that were geared to impress. For example, he told me that he had acquired some rohypnol (aka the date rape drug) and had gone downtown to the bars. After a few hours of drinking, he got bored and tried to get high off of the rohypnol. He dosed himself, blacked out immediately, and woke the next morning in a municipal flowerbed. I could only be thankful that he was too dull-witted to follow through with his horrible plan. Since I couldn’t really get away from him, I told him he was a jackass and went upstairs to my room.

I woke from a deep sleep to the putrid smell of rotting socks. I felt the weight of another person in the bed. My heart froze in my chest. When I felt a heavy arm wrap around me, I screamed out in terror. I was sleep-addled and it was dark. I had no idea who it was, only that there was an intruder and I thought he was trying to hurt me. In a fit of pure adrenaline, I kicked. My foot connected, and he flew backward, hitting the wall. I ran across the hall and shook my roommate awake. I hid in his room while he investigated. It was Mr. Date Rape. He first denied that he had been in my room at all, but recanted and said I’d invited him when my roommate discovered his foul boots sitting next to my bed.

Wes had other crappy friends who made us feel unsafe. One specimen was a young hippie who had a wolf for a pet. Of course he named her Luna. Luna was not a domesticated animal. She was lanky, she was clever, and she had a set of razor sharp fangs set in a jawbone as long as my forearm. She put up with being walked on a hemp leash and tied to a park bench, but Luna was only biding her time. The wolf and her owner started squatting at our house on invitation from Wes. I am usually passive, but I couldn’t let that slide. “Why do you have this animal?” I asked. “You don’t even have a home! How are you going to take care of her? Can’t you tell she thinks you’re an asshole and wants to eat you?” Wes rose up, his eyes dilated, his hair swishing around, his skinny finger poking in my face. “How dare you talk to one of my friends like that,” he screamed. “You are so close-minded!” A few days later, he banned Luna from the house himself because she had taken a nice acrid wolf piss on his backpack.

Another awful Wes friend was a popular downtown beggar. He could always be found sitting on a bench downtown, strumming random chords and taking handouts. He had a rough mane of red hair, a bushy beard, and a heavy leather jacket. Wes invited him to the house, and he soon became a regular. This one also thought I was cute and would not accept no for an answer. After a particularly frightening encounter with him, I fled the house. For days, I either slept in a booth at my restaurant or at my boyfriend’s place because I was scared to go home.

At last, I was able to talk to my other roommates. We voted to ban the creep from our house. Wes thought this was highly unfair. Wes discredited me, saying that I had probably given his friend mixed signals since that was a classic Libra trait. It was all I could do not to strangle him and smash his bongo drums over his head.

It was not long after this incident that we jettisoned Wes. He had never paid rent or utilities, and his bongos wore on everybody’s nerves. His guests were dangerous and had made us all feel uncomfortable. I never felt safe at the house again. I took a few trips around the country and moved to Iowa for awhile. When I came back to town, I rented a nice apartment and enrolled in college. Life moved on, and I rarely thought about Wes, or the house, or any of it.

I saw him a few summers ago. I was walking around downtown during a sidewalk sale. I was rummaging through a bin of nails in front of a hardware store when he approached me. His Jesus hair was shorn, but his face was unmistakable. He still had the same wide, superstitious eyes. He looked at me hard, but he didn’t remember me. “You have great legs,” he said.

“I’m a Libra,” I told him as I walked away.

The End

Categories: Life