Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay

Guy Gavriel Kay's Under Heaven (SF KAY) first piqued my interest with its cover, an ancient horse sculpture against a background of scrawled Chinese calligraphy and rough-hewn stone.

I totally thought this book was going to be about horses. I was wrong. But Kay, a historical fantasist, made it more than worth my while. He takes those horses and shoves them to the distant background, making them simply a vehicle for an epic story about the channels carved by political power and the spectrum of people who navigate them. Moreover, he sets that drama amidst a world very concretely inspired by the rich, nuanced tapestry of 8th century Tang Dynasty China.

This is not the kind of story that I normally gravitate toward, but Kay's storytelling ability and his mastery of language and detail kept me enthralled.

Although there are multiple points of view represented in Under Heaven, the main character is Shen Tai, second son of a renowned general of the empire of Kitai. Tai has spent the last two years by himself on the outskirts of civilization burying the remains of the war-dead from both Kitai and its neighboring enemy to the west, Tagur.

As reward for his labors, he learns that Tagur wishes to bestow him with 250 magnificent Sardian horses. Coming from a country that must make do with the stubby horses of the steppes, Tai realizes this is a gift that defies all sense of scope and proportion.

Two hundred and fifty Sardian horses, Tai was thinking, from within the sandstorm of his forever-altered life. Being brought by him to a court, an empire, that gloried in every single dragon steed that had ever reached them from the west. That dreamed of those horses with so fierce a longing, shaping porcelain and jade and ivory in their image, linking poets’ words to the thunder of mythic hooves.

It goes without saying that Tai will donate them to the empire's cause. He sets out on one of those Sardian steeds for the Kitan capital to first bring the news to the emperor before he goes to collect his reward from Tagur. His newfound wealth has not gone unnoticed, though, and after a failed assassination attempt on his life, Tai hires the Kanlin warrior Wei Song to ensure he makes it alive to court.

Nevertheless, the Tagurans’ gift sets in motion an inexorable slide toward war as we see the ruling factions at court jockey for dominance. We see the submissive role women are largely relegated to and how the clever ones and the determined ones manage to still shape and influence their fate as well as that of the empire's.

Kay brings the world of Kitai life with breathtaking lyricism and studied research. The details don't overwhelm but rather effortlessly flesh out social constructs and culture. His characters, too, are never one-dimensional. We see them as complex beings with foibles, fears, ambitions and strengths. For added measure, he even throws in a dose of the supernatural in a seamless way that doesn’t distract from the story.

Under Heaven was a wonderful introduction to Canadian author Guy Gavriel Kay and a welcome reminder that it sometimes pays off to venture outside your reading comfort zone. Even if it does mean judging a book by its cover.

All About Lulu / by Jonathan Evison

Born in California in 1968 but raised in rural Washington state, Jonathan Evison left home as soon as he could. He drifted to San Francisco he tried reliving the city's bygone hippie era with "all the other alcoholic misfits" before realizing it was a losing effort. Ultimately he engendered himself to the burgeoning punk rock scene in Seattle where he helped found the band "March of Crimes", a group which headlined several future members of bands like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. Getting out of the music business in the late nineties, Evison worked several odd jobs before taking up writing fiction, gigs which including disc jockey and telemarketer among other things. A fervent devotee to social networking during it's earliest days, Evison was among the first to credit the online tool--Myspace in particular--as a key component of his literary success--he "cold-clicked" several hundred people whose profiles had James Joyce as their favorite author. His first novel All About Lulu, though a largely different story altogether, vaguely rehashes his own coming of age experiences through the eyes of a young dilettante.

In the wake of his mother's death from cancer in the early 1970's, young Will Miller must find a way to cope with his grief. His father and younger twin brothers already have their outlet--bodybuilding. Will's father, Big Bill, is actually on the professional circuit and a regular at their local Southern California hotspot, "Muscle Beach". And while Big Bill's good enough to place high in the rankings, he's not quite stellar enough to win first prize, always losing out to more pedigreed competitors like Arnold Schwartzenegger. Will's no bodybuilder, not even much of an athlete at all. In fact by the age of 12, he's become a vegetarian and is more interested in music than muscles. When Big Bill remarries, Will gets a new mom, Willow, a stepsister named Lulu and the first love of his life. Lulu's not only smart and beautiful, she likes Will for who he is and by the end of their first year of high school, the pair are dating. But after a summer spent in Vermont with relatives, Lulu comes back different. Isolated and moody, she starts to push Will away, begins dating other guys and ultimately leaves the family altogether to live in Seattle. These circumstances may have ended the relationship but not Will's fixation. For him, Lulu, even though she's just a friend now a thousand miles away, is the only reason to breathe. Slogging his way through the rest of high school as a mediocre student and fast food employee, he ultimately turns to philosophy for consolation, developing a taste for the works of Descartes, Kant, Hume and Kierkegaard as he begins a haphazard path to higher education at the local community college. The years pass by but Will's compulsion towards his life's only love never wains.

Though the level of writing would deem it worthy of adult literature, All About Lulu reads like a lot of YA books, even bearing a striking resemblance to one or two notable ones. It's a work which well characterizes the big events in the lives of young people which can remain just that, a big deal, long after adolescence, denoting that there are just some things in life, first loves among them, which don't diminish with age. Stories like these come with a lot of heavy-hearted delineations and morbid self-analysis, consequently there's a lot of irritating narcissistic qualities about the protagonist. Much like the archetypal love-scarred male adolescent, see Goethe's 18th century novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (FIC GOETHE), Will's emotional reach may touch others (his father, brothers, friends, etc.) but most of him is simply incapable of empathizing with much beyond his own afflicted feelings. This isn't a major fault but it does kind of limit the scope of the book and lend a distorted view to the other characters. In an odd way, especially seen in retrospect, Lulu herself seems to accommodate Will's passionate longing, and while not exactly reciprocating his advances, she's at least tolerable of them in amiable, even affectionate fashion--maybe not a typical reaction but you could argue that it keeps the story moving. Evison followed up this award-winning effort with West of Here, currently a bestseller about the history and heritage of Washington's Olympic peninsula. (FIC EVISON)

New Stephenie Meyers -- no vampires this time

The Host / Stephenie Meyers

Stephenie Meyers, wildly popular with teens and adults alike for her Twilight vampire series for Young Adults, has made her first foray into general adult fiction with The Host.

This book belongs to the science fiction genre, but it also has a strong romantic element. On her website, Meyers, calls it, "science fiction for people who don't like science fiction." She's right -- despite the fact that she uses an alien invasion of earth as a major plot point, the romance, the character development and Meyers' exploration of what it means to be human take precedence over the over the science fiction elements of the novel.

The setting is Arizona, sometime in the near future, after body-snatching aliens have taken over the human race. The main character is Wanderer, one of said aliens, who inhabits the former body of a lovely young woman named Melanie, whose consciousness inconveniently refuses to disappear. Instead, she lives in the back of her former brain -- now mostly controlled by Wanderer -- and periodically provides a commmentary on Wanderer's actions in her former body. Melanie is understandably frustrated with her new situation. She has an orphaned 13-year-old brother and a lover who've managed to avoid capture by the souls, and she misses and worries desperately about both. Wanderer, a soul unused to the intensity of human emotions, becomes caught up in the swirl of Melanie's love and pathos, and sets out on a dangerous journey to find them.

If you're a fan of Sharon Shinn, Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy, the Battlestar Galactica t.v. series, or if you just have a penchant for unusual love stories, check this one out.