Dandelion Wine – Ray Bradbury

First off, I’d just like to say that if you are reading this blog and you are not a Ray Bradbury fan, then kindly fuck right off and close this browsing window right this instant. He is one of the few authors I can apply the term “electrifying” to.  He dazzles. He makes me wonder at how great writing can be. And he makes me feel ashamed that I do not appreciate him enough. I own many books of his, several I have thoroughly enjoyed, some I am yet to read, and his short stories sit in a rather large volume on my shelf, unmolested, much to my dismay but entirely my own fault.

Many authors bring many different styles, and I have reviewed a large portion of my favourite authors on this blog: Neil Gaiman can write circles around the reader with a very “that’s exactly how I feel!” sense that comes to mind when he is read; Frank Herbert has a quality of delivering incredibly well thought out, unique plot-twisted and intense epics; Stephen King can wrap popular culture around a jagged, rusty blade of a storyline and stab it violently towards your eyes; Orson Scott Card will generally find the qualities of life you enjoy and use them as leverage to tear down a main character until he is the exact opposite of everything he is allegedly standing for; but Ray Bradbury remains un-trivialised on my blog. Let us change that, shall we?

He is, to me, what happens when incredible writing meets the everyday observation and is sprinkled in with a very modest, un-voluminous yet extremely powerful darkside. He does not dance around in his own cleverness the way Neil Gaiman does, yet they are very similar to me. He also does not bathe the heroes/heroines in despair quite the way Herbert or Orson Scott Card would, but I can see the relations and inspirations between them all.

Dandelion Wine represents to me a complete novel that fulfills all that I felt The Martian Chronicles lacked. Understand they are completely different books with nearly nothing in common. But both are novels compiled of essentially independent short stories tied to a central location/setting. I loved The Martian Chronicles, loved how it painted humans and our relationship with a new culture that is more of a state of consciousness than a simple second sentient race. But it lacked ringers. Stories that made you put the book down and take a few paces around the room, taking time out to appreciate the experience.

Dandelion Wine does not lack these moments. I do not feel I need to get specific, both for the sake of not spoiling anything for readers of the blog who have not yet read the book as well as for those of you who may have felt the way I did only with different chapters, but this book had individual stories of supreme brilliance.

Whether it was a simple description of the atmosphere one feels when in the prime of summer; the dread of seeing summer’s end; the thrill of scaring one’s self; the fear/acceptance of death and celebration/acknowledgement of life; everything seemed to be so clever and extremely relatable in the analogies and descriptions. In the end, I felt I lived through that Midwestern US summer of 1928 with Douglas and Tom in Illinois.

Whereas authors like Gaiman can be polarizing with their cuteness and subsequent filth in times of comic relief setting the stage for a quick, dark surprise, I felt like Bradbury simplified things in this book. Which serves well as much of the story revolves around two young boys, one a teenager and his brother a ten-year-old. Together they fantasize about the endless possibilities of new shoes. They philosophise and write down everything they learn and categorise human behavior as something “traditional” or “new”, something I found highly advanced for kids but was jealous of their cleverness; not because I could never think of that but because, in my experience, brothers tend to have a mutual let’s see what the riskiest thing we can do/dumbest lie we can tell/most dangerous behavior  complex. Not always, but two young males usually push each other in much the same way as Douglas and Tom, only in a direction that is less productive. So that was cool.

Prentice Alvin - Alvin Maker: Book Three

Jesus fucking Christ guy, are you Mormon or not! Orson Scott Card, after talking about how much he loves and respects the red man (Injins for those of you more PC) at the beginning, and then throughout, Red Prophet, comes back with a hard punch to the chin regarding slaves and rape, and slaverape, and rape-slaves. And I was familiar with how he speaks down to Native Americans when he is using the point of view of a hateful, villainous, no good settler or white politician like William Henry Harrison (called “White Murderer Harrison” by the reds) or “Old Hickory” Andrew Jackson. But holy smokes, nothing can prepare you for the hatred toward blacks by slave owner Cavil Planter and his new buddy, Reverend Philadelphia Thrower (he was the preacher that was in league with what I thought was the devil in Book One).

I do not mean to scare off children thinking that this is a kids’ book or a kids’ series, because they should know damned well by now it is not. Young adult, yeah maybe, in the same sense His Dark Materials is young adult. But people actually let children read this stuff! It just blows my mind.

Oh man, anyway, plot revolves around Cavil Planter seeing a vision of an angel that is eerily similar to the one Reverend Thrower saw in book one, the one that instructed him to kill Alvin. This angel says that the white man can conquer and civilize the blacks, but it will take a long time. Whipping them into shape, literally, is one way. But another is not to allow them to reproduce within the slave quarters, and instead slowly start to purify the bloodlines but producing whiter and whiter babies. That is where slave-rape comes in. And after his first, she runs away, uses her black magic she learnt from her time in Africa (her father was a witch-doctor) to turn into a raven and fly away with the newborn babe.

She dies and the babe is to be raised by the folks at Hatrack River, the same ones that helped Alvin come into this world. She is found by Peggy’s father, who is running an underground railroad of sorts and helping runaways escape the slave laws of the southern and Crown colonies, and helping them get to Canada! But this baby will never make it. It all goes down as Alvin is on his way to become a prentice, a year late and fully recovered from his capture by Tenskwa-Tawa.

This forces Peggy the Torch to flee the area, not wishing to let Alvin ruin her life or allow herself to ruin his. So he enters his apprenticeship, and works through much of it, without knowing how much she does for him. He befriends her family as well as young Arthur Stewart, who is named after the King of England as a joke to diss the King of England…I think. Not real sure.

Anyway, his master, Makepeace Smith, is a real asshole. And slave owners who are down 2 slaves with the runaway who took her baby with her go after Arthur, fueled by a chance meeting between the two most disgusting people in the series thus far: Reverend Philadelphia Thrower and Cavil “Slave Rapin” Planter. Rev. Thrower knows Alvin all too well, and has updates from friends of his family that he is in the limelight for befriending the “mix up boy,” as everyone refers to Arthur. This is all Cavil needs to send Slave Finders out.

Finders have the knack of being able to identify people based on a bit of hair, or skin, or blood you give them and let them carry around. They’re like fucking bloodhounds or something. And obviously, because this is America, they use their knack for money in the sickest way possible.

Peggy comes back, eventually, in a disguise that helps her be known to everyone only as Mrs. Larner, a middle-aged school teacher for hire. She teaches in Hatrack River and then takes on Arthur, more in the role of tutor as he is disallowed form school, but also teaches Alvin. Obviously, he falls in love with her and Finders come about and shit gets real, and death that will surely start more trouble ensues. The book ends with Alvin leaving Makepeace to become a Journeyman, he and Makepeace are real enemies by this point, and Alvin sets out on his own for the first time. But not before more rape involving slaves, only this time it is slaves raping white women. What a way to cap off a pretty intense book for this series. Definitely caught me off guard.

Cheers! Can’t wait for Book Four!

Nation - by Terry Pratchett (it's funny)

Nation is a good story. Humourous, adventurous, insightful. It brings together, in times of great human tragedy, a native islander boy on a very isolated South-Pacific-esque island in the fictional Pelagic Ocean (brilliant touch) and a woman of high British society, the nobility, the class of people that work their way into many books I read and I really enjoy them.

I picked this book up in the middle of reading Wizard and Glass, book IV of the Dark Tower series, so I was feeling epic and dark. Not really in the mood for such a light read, but I won’t hold it against Terry Pratchett. His humour is relentless, consistent and puts a smile on my face throughout the book.

Mau, the protagonist, returns to his home island after being sent out on a rite of passage, arriving just after a catastrophic tsunami washes away his entire home civilization. He is met there by a shipwrecked Lady, named Ermintrude but decides to go by Daphne instead. Very much an upgrade. Anyway, the first part revolves around the integration of two completely opposite cultures learning to survive on an island, all whilst Mau fights his own internal battle with the Grandfathers, a religion of sorts amongst the islanders, whom he blames for the deaths of everyone he has ever known and loved, and further struggling to follow the traditions that helped build his Nation and ensure their survival but denying other traditions that seem pointless now. It makes for great internal conflict, and the fact that the two parties are so poor at understanding one another, seeing eye to eye, things tend to get solved more by rationalizing than by clinging to traditions. Traditions only go so far for Daphne, who is from high British society but shipwrecked with only an islander as her companion; and Mau as well, who feels that traditions failed to protect people from the horrors of mother nature.

Pictured: Terry Pratchett's teeth, beard and novel.

Smoke signals are sent out, by means of a continuous bon fire, and people from nearby islands begin arriving. Soon enough there is a new Nation being built, led by a young man who is named Chief very unconventionally, not having gone through the official rites of the transition from boyhood to manhood usually granted to people who pass the test that Mau indeed passed.

When mutineers-cum-pirates from Daphne’s ship, the Sweet Judy, find their way to the island and threaten violence, the Nation and Mau stand strong. And it isn’t until her father, crowned as King by virtue of everyone dying to some epidemic of influenza, rescues them that we see Daphne’s struggles fitting back into British society. One Western party arrives on the island to use brute force and take it over, and claim the white girl of course, whilst the other comes to plant a British flag and claim the island as a new port, as well as to bring the girl back to high society, albeit in a more peaceful, civilized manner. Both are wrong, and both are made to see the error of their ways, yet Daphne still returns to the place where she can be of more use to the islanders, helping set up science foundations that study the secrets that the island beholds, most notably its ties to early man and the first conquests of the world.

I believe it is a clever book, set in a cleverly made up South-Pacific-like fictional place in an alternate history universe. The people develop as we’d like to see people develop, breaking senseless traditions in the name of progressing as a young nation, discovering science, history, and other cultures with the help of the dominant, ever well-funded and supplied Royal Kingdom. One of the better light reads and, as always with Pratchett, very funny in many places, even if his humour is a bit exhausting at times.