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This post written by Clint The Last Unicorn
by Peter S. Beagle
[cover name=thelastunicorn]
When I was a kid, I saw a really amazing animated movie called The Last Unicorn. Later, I found the book it was based on. While the movie is really good, the book is even better.
Unicorns live forever, and they tend to stay in one place and not travel. Places where they choose to live become special – the animals learn a little bit of magic, and winter never comes. One day a group of hunters visit a unicorn’s forest but cannot find anything to hunt. They eventually realize that something is wrong, and as they leave, the warn the unicorn that all the others are gone, and that she is alone in the world.
The unicorn had never minded being alone before that, but she is disturbed by the thought that there were no other unicorns left. She isn’t sure what to do, or even whether to believe the men, but she decides to leave her forest and find some answers.
She soon learns that humans can no longer see unicorns. When they look at her, they see a fine horse, but not a magical unicorn. Eventually she meets a butterfly, who appears to be a little bit crazy, but he also seems to know about unicorns. He claims that something called the Red Bull chased all the other unicorns, but that she can save them if she is brave. Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell how much of that is serious and how much of that is the butterfly just saying random things.
The unicorn is taken prisoner by Mommy Fortuna, a witch who runs The Midnight Circus, a pathetic collection of animals that she has enchanted to appear magical. While in the Circus, the unicorn meets Schmendrick the Magician. Schmendrick is a real magician, by which I mean he can actually do magical stuff. However, he isn’t a skilled magician, by which I mean he can’t really control what happens when he does magical stuff. However, he does recognize a unicorn when he sees one, and he is able to help her escape.
Schmendrick and the unicorn meet up with Molly Grue, the wife of a second-rate bandit king. Molly knows a unicorn when she sees one, too – she has always believed in them, and she has always dreamed of seeing one. Together these three head toward the castle of King Haggard, who owns the Red Bull.
They eventually meet the Red Bull, but it proves to be too strong for them to deal with. Schmendrick works his most powerful spell yet, and that’s when things take a sudden left turn. Eventually, our misfit heroes triumph, and unicorns and wonder are returned to the land, but the ending is kind of bittersweet. Unicorns are unicorns, and people are people, and the two don’t really mix. It will make sense when you read it.
One of the things that I really like about this book is that none of the villains are really evil. They’re bad people, but they aren’t evil in the same insane way that a lot of fantasy villains are. They’re people, and you kind of feel sorry for them. Mommy Fortuna is a sad old woman running a sad old monster show. Captain Cully is a two-bit bandit lord who has to write heroic folk songs about himself, because nobody else will. King Haggard rules a vast country and his son is a great hero, but he can find no joy in life. Actually, I think pretty much all the characters are more complex than you usually find in stories.
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This post written by Clint Mimi and Toutou’s Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika
by Giles Foden
[cover name=mimiandtoutousbigadventure]
If you think history is boring, you should read this book. History isn’t all names and dates. Sometimes it’s crazy people doing stupid things, and in this case, it’s both amazing and hilarious.
When World War I breaks out, the Royal Navy of Great Britain is ordered to destroy the German fleet wherever it can be found. This includes Lake Tanganyika, a massive lake in Africa. The Germans have a steamship on it that the British want to sink so they can carry troops across the lake.
Unfortunately, the British don’t have any warships on Lake Tanganyika. They don’t have much of anything there. The Belgians had a ship, but the Germans destroyed it. They can’t send the parts and build a ship at the edge of the lake. The Belgians tried that, too, but the Germans have spies everywhere, and they would destroy the ship before it launched. The only logical solution is to take two small gunboats, ship them to Africa, load them onto a train, take them as far as the tracks went, and then carry them the rest of the way across Africa. Sure. That makes sense.
With a plan that is this good, the Royal Navy needs the best officers they can get to carry it out. They pick Lt. Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, the oldest Lt. Commander they have. Although he has barely been involved in the war, he has already managed to sink two ships and nearly destroy a submarine – all of them on his own side. He has been court martialled twice, once for running his destroyer onto a beach (not counted as one of his two kills) and once for accidentally ramming and sinking another ship. As if Geoffrey isn’t enough, the Royal Navy picks out a few more goofy people to send to Africa along with him.
Somehow these misfits and their gunboats make it to Lake Tanganyika and actually manage to cause the Germans some serious trouble. They don’t quite do everything they had hoped to do, but at least Geoffrey Spicer-Simson can now claim to have attacked a German ship. In fact, Lt. Commander Spicer-Simson is the first Royal Navy officer to capture a German ship in the war.
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This post written by Clint Watership Down
by Richard Adams
[cover name=watershipdown]
Watership Down is a fantasy story about people leaving their old home, traveling across the country to start a new one, and defending it from the forces of evil. What makes this book unusual is that most of the characters in it are rabbits.
Fiver is a young rabbit who has visions of the future. One day he has a horrible vision of his warren (the rabbit version of a city) being destroyed, but the leaders of the warren will not listen to him. Fiver and his brother Hazel, along with a few other rabbits, leave the warren in search of a safe place that Fiver also saw in his vision. They are joined by two warrior rabbits, Bigwig and Silver. This group faces many dangers as they travel across the English countryside, like stray dogs, rabbit snares, and highways. Eventually they make it to Watership Down, the place Fiver recognizes from his vision, and start a new warren.
Now that they have a chance to relax, the rabbits notice that there aren’t any female rabbits. With the help of Kehaar the seagull, they manage to find another warren in the area that might be willing to share some of its people. Unfortunately, this new warren turns out to be a police state run by a crazy killer bunny who calls himself General Woundwort, but Hazel and the others manage to free a few of the rabbits from Woundwort. General Woundwort won’t allow anyone to leave, so he and some of his soldiers attack Watership Down. The Watership Down rabbits aren’t really warriors, but they are smart, experienced, and desperate.
Watership Down is more than just an adventure story. When the rabbits stop for the evening, they tell each other stories from bunny history, myth, and legend. Along the way you learn a little bit of the bunny language, too. Richard Adams did a really good job of making rabbit culture interesting.
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This post written by Clint The Lies of Locke Lamora
by Scott Lynch
[cover name=theliesoflockelamora]
Locke Lamora is the best thief in the city of Camorr, a city that is kind of like a fantasy version of Venice. As a young child, his parents are killed in a plague. When the city guards come to round up survivors, Locke steals one off their purses. From there, he was sold to a man called the Thiefmaker, who trains orphans to be thieves. Locke’s work is just too much for the Thiefmaker to handle, but rather than kill Locke, the Thiefmaker sells him to a priest named Chains.
Rather than trying to turn Locke into a decent citizen, Chains teaches Locke to be an even better thief. Eventually, Chains assembles a team of outstanding pickpockets, burglars, and con artists. Locke and his friends Jean, Bug, Caldo, and Galdo, are masters of disguise and deception. They can convincingly impersonate nearly anyone, from a priest of the god of death to a nobleman.
Thieves in Camorr must follow a few simple rules set by Capa Barsavi, the crime boss of the city. Among other things, they must give him their allegiance, pay him a portion of their earnings, not draw too much attention (Locke is really bad at this part), and leave the nobility alone (Lock is really, really bad at this one). In return, the city guard pretty much leaves the thieves alone. This is called the Secret Peace,and it works pretty well for the nobility and the thieves, but not for anybody else.
Locke and his friends ignore the secret peace. After all, stealing from the nobility has three huge advantages over stealing from anyone else.
- They’ve got the money.
- They’d never expect it.
- Many of them deserve it.
However, Locke and his pals aren’t the only people breaking the Secret Peace. Thieves are being murdered, but nobody has the faintest idea who is doing it. This throws the criminal underground into chaos just as Locke, Jean, Caldo, Galdo, and Bug are in the middle of the con of a lifetime.
The scams Locke and his friends use in this book are just amazing. They are works of art. This is like Ocean’s Eleven, except much more clever. However, the story is also a lot grittier and more violent. There’s a lot of swearing, and a fair amount of bloodshed. Locke isn’t much of a fighter, but Jean is a big guy who fights with a pair of axes, and he gets to use them on more than one occasion.
The setting for The Lies of Locke Lamora is really elaborate and creative. Scott Lynch has put a lot of detail into the city and the many different cultures of the world. This is a fantasy novel, and while there aren’t a lot of people who can cast spells, there are still plenty of fantastic elements. Another race of creatures ruled the world before recorded human history, and they left amazing artifacts behind. Much of the city is made out of a special material known as Elderglass, which is indestructible and glows just after the sun sets. The towers on the cover shown above are the five main Elderglass towers of Camorr, where the rich and powerful live. Of course, since nobody alive can really work with Elderglass, and since whatever ancient devices once moved people from one floor to another have long since broken down, the nobles of Camorr get around these giant towers in crude wooden elevators slapped onto the sides of the towers.
Alchemy, a fantasy version of science (plus a little magic) is also an important part of the world. Alchemists make poisons and potions, but they also make lights, cooking stones that heat up when you pour water on them, and many more nifty things. Alchemists also help develop new kinds of plants – alchemically enhanced fruit and wine are popular treats among the extremely wealthy.
I haven’t really mentioned the characters yet, but they are really well done. Pretty much everybody is interesting and has a twist and a surprise or two hiding inside. Locke, of course, always has a trick up his sleeve. Jean is a big, chunky, axe-wielding accountant with a soft spot for romance novels. Capa Barsavi was a famous scholar before he took control of Camorr’s underworld. There are too many twists and surprises for me to spoil, but I’ll leave the rest for you.
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This post written by Clint His Majesty’s Dragon
by Naomi Novik
[cover name=hismajestysdragon]
Did you enjoy the movie Master and Commander? This book is a lot like that, but with dragons.
His Majesty’s Dragon is set in the early part of the 19th century, during the Napoleonic Wars.* Will Laurence is a captain in the British Royal Navy who captures a dragon’s egg from a French ship. When the egg hatched, the baby dragon attached itself to Laurence. He names the dragon Temeraire, after the famous ship. As far as Laurence is concerned, Temeraire has just ruined his life.
Why? Wouldn’t it be awesome to have your own dragon? Well, not exactly. The dragon becomes property of the British Empire, and since it seems to really like Laurence, he is forced to give up command of his ship and serve in the Aerial Corps. That means living out in the middle of nowhere, where the dragons have the space they need and won’t cause trouble. That probably means never getting married, since the Aerial Corps is no place for a gentleman. As far as Laurence’s wealthy family and friends are concerned, commanding a ship is fine. Commanding a dragon is so undignified.
Temeraire, as it turns out, is an unusual dragon. He isn’t one of the kinds of dragons you find in Europe. Instead, he seems to be some special breed from China. He is smarter than many other dragons – he enjoys being read to, and he questions the way dragons are treated in the military.
Laurence stands out just like Temeraire does in the Aerial Corps. As a former Royal Navy captain, he is very fond of rules and regulations and politeness. Nobody else in the Corps really cares about that stuff. They are misfits, isolated from regular society. Of course, one of the most shocking things Laurence finds is that the Corps allows women to be soldiers.
Laurence also stands out because, despite his obsession with making lower-ranking soldiers salute and call him “sir,” he takes way better care of his dragon than anyone else. Most people in the Corps like their dragons, but they treat them more like pets and horses than people. Laurence is very different – he treats Temeraire like a person, and he thinks all dragons should be treated that way.
A lot of the story is about Laurence loosening up, learning to fit in as much as honor will allow, and dealing with his family, who are not happy about his new position. We also get to see a lot about the daily life of dragons, and we get to watch Temeraire grow up. As you might guess from a book about dragons in the military, there is also some good dragon-to-dragon and dragon-to-ship combat.
If you like Master and Commander and you also enjoy fantasy, this should be the perfect book for you. Unlike Master and Commander, there aren’t many nautical terms in the book, so you don’t need to worry about what a bosun’s chair is or anything like that.
If you want to read the first chapter or so online, it’s on the author’s official website.
* This is also when the Master and Commander series takes place. It’s also when the Horatio Hornblower and the Bolitho series take place. Why? Because Will Laurence and Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower and Richard Bolitho and probably a dozen more fictional captains are all based on the same person, Thomas Cochrane. If you enjoy these kinds of books, you should really read about Cochrane.
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This post written by Clint The Stepsister Scheme
by Jim C. Hines
[cover name=thestepsisterscheme]
You have probably seen the Disney films Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Cinderella. However, you may not know that there were stories about these three characters long before Disney, and that some of the old stories were much more disturbing. In some older Sleeping Beauty stories, the prince’s mother tries to kill and eat Sleeping Beauty. In one old Snow White story, the wicked queen is tortured to death. In an old Cinderella story, those cute Disney birds attack her step-sisters and blind them.
Jim Hines takes some of these older stories and tells you what happens after Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Cinderella had their happy endings. The story begins shortly after Snow White’s wedding, when one of her step-sisters tries to assassinate her. When that fails, she kidnaps the prince. Cinderella sets off to save him, accompanied by Snow White and a particularly kick-butt Sleeping Beauty.
If you want to read the first chapter, the author has put it up on his website.
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This post written by Clint Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
by J. K. Rowling
[cover name=harrypotter]
You may think this book is for kids, but it’s smart enough that adults can enjoy it, too. If you somehow haven’t heard about these books, Harry Potter is an orphan living a very boring, miserable life with his aunt and uncle. He enters a world of magic when he is invited to Hogwarts, a school for wizards. For the first time in his life, Harry starts making friends and goes from being a nobody to being a celebrity. Unfortunately, something evil is going on at Hogwarts, and it is up to Harry and his friends to stop it.
You can look it up on Wikipedia.
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This post written by Clint Master and Commander
by Patrick O’Brian
[cover name=masterandcommander]
Jack Aubrey, a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, makes friends with Stephen Maturin, a doctor, naturalist, and geek. When Jack is given command of HMS Speedy, he invites Stephen to come along and be the ship’s surgeon. Jack is an absolutely fantastic commander, but he’s completely lost away from the sea. Stephen is an absolutely fantastic surgeon and scientist, but he’s completely lost on a ship. This “Odd Couple” relationship is really the main focus of the story.
There is plenty of action, too. Jack Aubrey is based on Thomas Cochrane, one of the most awesome naval officers ever, and many of the battles described in the book and the rest of the series actually happened.
There is a fair amount of naval slang in the book. If you don’t know what a “fo’c’sle” is, neither does Stephen. You can count on him to ask about some of the words, but if he doesn’t, or if your eyes glaze over when Jack explains what a mizzenmast is, don’t worry. You don’t need to know. If you do really want to know all the details and definitions, though, you might want to check out the book A Sea of Words.
You can look it up on Wikipedia. You can also read some of it online at Google Books.
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Other books you might want to check out
- A Sea of Words, 3rd Edition, by Dean King, John B. Hattendorf, and J. Worth Estes
Defines all of the terms used in the series, and gives a whole lot of other information that you might find interesting if you are really into the series.
- Cochrane: The Life and Exploits of a Fighting Captain, by Robert Harvey
This is a good biography of Thomas Cochrane, the person Jack Aubrey (and Horatio Hornblower and pretty much every other fictional sea captain) is based on. This is one of those times when truth is stranger than fiction: I’m amazed by a lot of the crazy stunts Cochrane was able to get away with.
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This post written by Clint Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
by Hayao Miyazaki
[cover name=nausicaa]
This is a story about Nausicaä, a young woman in a post-apocalyptic future, one thousand years after the Seven Days of Fire destroyed the old world. Humans live in small kingdoms scattered around the Sea of Corruption, a forest of giant mushrooms and huge insects that is slowly taking over the globe. Whatever you may think about manga (Japanese comics), this series is epic. It’s packed full of ideas, has very detailed illustrations, and has a memorable main character.
Watch out, though. There are several different printings of the series. They contain exactly the same story, but one is in four volumes, one is seven volumes, and one is in ten volumes. They are shaped differently, so this shouldn’t cause too much confusion.
You can look it up on Wikipedia.
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