VOTE!

Yesterday was election day.  We now have the results and regardless of how you voted you can at least know you did what you could to make your voice heard.  Wait...you did vote didn't you?  Voting is so very important, even in elections that may seem ridiculous.  What does this have to do with reading you may ask.  I tell you it has everything to do with reading.  We live in a country (or at least I do...if you don't live in the US then this post is probably not very applicable...) where we can walk into a bookstore or log on to the internet and pretty much pick up and book we want.  We can write any book we want.  We can sell any book we want.  We can own, rent, loan or give any book we want. We can do all this without fear of imprisonment, fines or repercussions other then the

occasional ridicule from pretentious book bloggers.  The reason we can do this is because we continually exercise our right to vote.  We need to use this right to maintain our voice, our freedoms and our ability to educate our selves, to entertain our selves, to discover new ideas and in all honesty I find books a very effective way to do this.  We need to always be on guard to make sure complacency does not result in leadership that curbs these rights.  I never want to have to live here and not be able to pick up any book I want.  I always want the ability to read anything and everything.  For this reason, no matter how difficult it may be to make myself vote for one of the candidates I know at the very least I have to go and write in a choice, because if I don't use my right to make some sort of choice I know I will quickly lose it.  So please, for the sake of my bookshelves vote!  Happy Reading Everybody!

Let's Get Political

Just finished watching the first season of the American version of House of Cards and I have to say I am a little disturbed and a little in love.  It was a bit like watching a train wreck, you know the outcome is going to be horrific, but you just can't help but watch the process.  To be fair, when it comes to shows about politics I am definitely more of a TheWest Wing fan, it is a bit more optimistic then most other shows about Capitol Hill.  When it comes to reading politics can be hit or miss for me.  If not done correctly it can get confusing and boring, but done right it can be as exciting as any battle scene.  Here are a few of my favorite books/series that have a strong political theme to them.

The Newsflesh Trilogy

Zombies and Politics what could be better!  Seriously though, this series is not what I thought it was gonna be, it turned out so much better, and involved, and fresh and different and...well you get the idea.  The politics are a central part of this story and it is extremely well done.

The Dragonriders of Pern

Dragons and Politics who knew they would turn out to be such a good mix.  Another series that on the surface seems to be about one thing.  Brave daring dragon riders battling an evil threat, but the more you read the more you realize it is about a whole world and it's way of life, with a heavy dose of conflicting politics thrown in for fun...and it actually is fun.

Ender's Game

Politics in Space with a side of ethics and morals.  I love this book for so many reasons, one of the chief ones it the look at a global political system.  I love how involved the children get, either by choice or by circumstance. This book really explores all the different ways you can use politics to manipulate just about anything.

Crown Duel

Politics at the Castle, this is actually an interesting duo of books.  The first half deals with a renegade noble trying to get her brother on the throne, along with politics there is a lot of swordplay and typical fantasyish mayhem.  The second half is an awesome contrast to the first half where our heroine has to battle using words and influence in a political arena instead of her fists, very very cool.

Seraphina

Politics and Religion in a land with an uneasy truce.  I loved how different this book turned out to be.  Aside from my few minor frustrations I liked how politics mingled with religion, fear, biases, and practicality.  I also liked how the politics were shown from different views, the higher ups, the lower class, the different age groups etc.  I also liked how the humans and the dragons had two completely different political and governmental areas.

As you can see I don't read a lot of realistic political books.  I figure if I want to deal with that crap I can just turn on any of our zillions of 24 hour news channels.  However I do like a book that can explore the politics of different times and places adapting it to things we don't have to deal with and yet making the struggle feel familiar.  There are tons of other books that do the politics well, these are just a select few of my current favorites. Happy Reading.

What is your favorite type of politics in books?  Do you like politics in your fiction or do you read to escape all that?  If you could invent a political party what would it be?  Is it bad that I can finish a 13 episode series in a single weekend?

 

Dragons: Friend Or Foe?

Wow, I am so sorry about the gap in posting, I ended up at the station with no access to my computer for several days, and the worst part is we were so busy I didn't even get any extra reading in.  Actually that part was ok 'cause as much as I love reading, I love going on calls even more, especially the ones that come in over a holiday weekend.  Since this is a book blog and not a blood and guts blog I will now commence with the post I have been meaning to put up for the last four days.

Right before I went to the station I finished up a book that has been on my TBR pile forever.  It came with a ton of recommendations and I was very excited to read it.  I promptly bought it, put it on my book shelf and completely forgot about it until the other day when I was frantically cleaning the house for last second guests.  Alas the cleaning never got quit done, but the book was a page turner.  The book was Seraphina by Rachel Hartman.  It was a really good read, not what I was expecting at all in a good way, but more on that later.  First a rambling synopsis. As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Seraphina is set in a the fictional land of Gorred in a medieval type time period.  One of what makes this world so special is the presence of dragons. Up until 40 years ago, dragons and humans were at war.  Dragons would eat humans and humans developed a form of fighting called dracomachia that turned the tied and made it into an even battle. Finally the Queen of Gorred and the Ardmager of the dragons come up with a treaty to ensure peace between the two species.  As with all change, especially when it involves putting hostilities aside, it is not popular with everybody. Both sides have it's detractors and vocal portions of the populations in opposition to the treaty.  Our story opens a couple of weeks before the 40th anniversary of the signing of the treaty.  Our heroine, Seraphina a 15 year old girl and the assistant music director has had to make a last minute adjustment in the funeral program of the crown prince.  Seraphina was forced to put herself on the program and play her flute for the entire crowd.  Now this is normally not a big deal, especially as Seraphina is an extordinarly talented musician, but she has been trying to keep a low profile her entire life. We learn the reason for this is because Seraphina is a dragon/human hybrid, possibly the only one in the world, in fact most people think that it is not possible for a dragon and human to breed. This manifests itself in a band of silvery scales around her forearm and midriff.  She also inherited her musical talent from her dragon mother, along with some pretty freaky maternal memories.  One of the side effects of her dragon half is the relentless inundation of images and sounds from random and bizarre creatures inside her head.  Her Uncle Orma, who is also her teacher, helped her create a garden in her head that she could "place" each creature into.  The garden has an environment suited to each character and Seraphina has to visit it each night to make sure everybody is in their place.  Many of these characters that live in her head have some sort of unusual feature, a wattle, deformed wings, lumpy skin, and some are mostly human looking.  I have to admit I found this whole garden of personalities fascinating and promptly tried to apply it to any number of things :-).  As our heroine goes about her duties as music mistress (she is described by her peers as prickly) we see just how deep seated the prejudiced between the two species are.  We also start to get a glimpse of the complicated religious and political structure.  We learn that dragons take the form of humans when they are in the cities, and unless they have a special dispensation they must wear a bell to identify themselves.  For dragons ard, or order is the most important part of their life.  Being in human form allows them to experience intense emotions which is contradictory to their dragon way of life.  Dragons in human form are kept under strict watch by the Censors and if they display any undue emotion are ordered to have that part of their memories or brain cleansed.  Any extreme feeling such as love, guilt, empathy etc. are forbidden and seen as a disease.  This creates a lot of Vulcan like conversations with the dragons.

Most of the story itself focuses on trying to solve the murder of the crown Prince before the Ardmager comes to celebrate the treaty signing.  Seraphina uses her maternal memories (memories that her mother passed down to her before she died giving birth) and information from her Uncle Orma to piece together what happened.  With the help of the bastard Prince Lucian Riggs, the captain of the guard, and his fiancee the spirited (and one of my favorite characters) crown princess Glissenda, she finds the dragon that is her grandfather is responsible not only for the princes death, but also a plot to try and kill both the royal family and the Ardmager.  Along the way Seraphina starts to meet some of the people/creatures in her garden in real life.  At first she is confused and frightened, but then soon realizes that they are all part dragon as well.  It turns out that each of these creatures has it's own unique talent that can be used to help our intrepid trio in keeping everybody safe.  Unfortunately the dragon conspiracy is uncovered to late and the Queen and her daughter (Glissenda's dragon hating mother) are both killed, leaving Glissenda as the ruling heir. Back in the dragons land a coup has occured and the treaty is nulled. Seraphina and Lucian fall in love with each other, but he decides he can't leave Glissenda on her own and asks Seraphina to let him go, which she does.  Her uncle Orma assists in killing his own father, and goes into hiding to avoid having his brain cleansed of all memories of his niece.  Seraphina goes out to find the rest of the people in her garden to try rally them and their talents to help keep the piece.  The book ends with everybody gearing up for war and a sequel.

As always my summation does not do this book justice. There was a lot of intricacies and interpersonal stuff, a lot of history both personal and world, just all kinds of stuff.  Phew, lets take this one piece at a time shall we? The biggest thing that struck me about this book is how different it was from what I had expected.  From the reviews and blurbs I was expecting a typical, if fresh YA fantasy novel.  This book was not in any way shape or form a typical fantasy novel, in fact I would call it a political novel with dragons.  The main part of this book was setting up the relationship between dragons and humans.  In this book humans are religious, emotional beings, while dragons are brilliant, logical beings.  This sets up a conflict not only between dragons and humans, but between human and human, and dragon and dragon.  Humans have a normal life span of a mediaeval time person, while dragons can be extremely long lived.  This sets up other conflicts, especially when it comes to the treaty.  I found it interesting that the older generation of humans, one that was starting to die out had an understandable hatred/fear of dragons, after all for most of their lives the dragons were trying to eat them.  The younger generation of humans, ones who have lived with the treaty their whole lives were more of a mixed bag, some adapting and utilizing the teachings of the dragons, even befriending, or in some rare, secret occasions even falling in love with a dragon (in human form).  Others either inherited their prejudiced or were induced into it by an extreme faction of the multi saint religion.  The people who follow St. Ogden are notorious for their extreme intolerance of dragon kind and any who associate with them.  Dragons also have a divided population. The older generation is still alive and well, some resenting the loss of the old ways, others rejoicing in the peace between them and humans.  The younger dragons almost all enjoy the freedom of the treaty and try their best to uphold it.  The human political/religious set up is reminiscent, though not exactly like old European style monarchies, with religion and government being inseparable on most accounts and how that influences the way things are done.  I loved, loved, loved Seraphina's brain, the way things in their were almost tangible.  She could "walk" in her garden and maintain it, she would create visual representations of things (such as a file box for her mothers memories) that could be interacted with, so much fodder for a person like me who finds that stuff fascinating, I wanted to spend even more then the ample amount of time the book allowed in her head.  The Seraphina/Prince Lucian love thing was a bit of a mixed bag for me.  Lucian is not my favorite of characters, he is a bit of a black and white type of guy, and Seraphina is an accomplished liar so that obviously caused some issues.  The fact that he is not only engaged to Glissenda, who is great friends with Seraphina, but that the relationship seems to work well, makes it hard to see how the Seraphina/Lucian thing could ever work out well.  I actually kind of liked that she falls for an unavailable man, who is engaged to somebody who is not a horrible wench, but a friend.  I also like that Glissenda and Lucian seem to have a very functional relationship and that he decides to honor it, at least for the moment.  It is a much different love story than I am used to.  The different versions of family and the different ways those relationships play into decision making are pretty thoroughly explored, and the parts were music was prominent made me happy.  The main problem I had with the book was it tended to skip around a bit much, it gave a ton of information without actually telling you anything.  When I started the book I did not know it was intended as a series, so I went reading it as a stand alone, which made the gaps even more frustrating.  Even knowing it is supposed to be a series just makes it feel like the author purposely left stuff out so that she would have something for the next book, which is one of my reading pet peeves.  I felt like I needed a bit more of a complete history of this world to really be able to put all of this great material into context. The ending felt completely rushed and different from the rest of the book, which again irritates me to no end.  The writing style however was superb, very readable without being simple.  I enjoyed the book on the whole, will definitely read the sequel when it comes out, and maybe some of her freshmen writing flaws will be mended by the next book. I will give this book 7 out of 10 houppelande.

VOTE!!!!!!

Hi All, sorry this is up so late, but it took over 1 1/2 hours to vote this morning, but hey that is the price of living in a country where I can vote for whoever I want without fear of being shot in the head.  If you have not yet voted, please please please go vote, I don't care who you vote for as long as you vote.  If you have already voted then YAY for your you, you awesome and wonderful and are now entitled to complain about anything the government does :-)  Standing in line today with my Hubbin got us thinking and talking about the most common forms of government in fiction and how that very much shapes the world the book is set in and in many cases is integral to the plot.  Here are just a few of the common ones we came up with.

Monarchy-Since I read a lot of fantasy, this is the most common form of government I run into in books, it comes in many many forms and is usually central to the plot.  It is also the basis for many of the old fairy tales and finding out you are a long lost prince/princess is a key plot device in many a story.  Monarchies can be good as in The Princess Novels series or Ella Enchanted where the main King/Queen reign trying to honestly do what is best for the people.  There are the monarchies that are contested like several times in the Chronicles of Narnia which the struggle for the throne is central to the plot.  Then of course the are the bad Kings/Queens/Princes/Princesses/Dukes/Baronets and so forth that must be fought against as in the Song of Fire and Ice.  Monarchies are not limited to strictly fantasy, historical fiction such as The Other Boleyn Girl or alternate histories like the Leviathan Series or even Science Fiction type stories like Dune can have some form of monarchies at there center.

Dictatorship/Dystopian-This is another common literary government style. I include both of these styles together because to me one indicates an individual and the other a group, but both are a leadership style that controls the people with or without their consent.  Again there are several types of this leadership style.  There is the crazed leader who will stop at nothing to gain and keep power as seen in the Inheritance Cycle.  Lately the oppressive government that is only good to a limited number of people while keeping the rest of the population miserable and controlled has been very popular especially in Young Adult Fiction such as The Hunger Games.  And of course their is always the more subtle dystopian government that is kept in place mostly by consent and very few people seem to have an issue with it (until of course the plot decides to expose some heinous secret to the general masses) The Uglies Series is a good example of this.

Federations-This government is most often used in Science Fiction, it is a great way to unite humans, or a group of "good" people against a common outside threat.  The most famous example of course is the Star Trek series (yes these are books as well as a TV show...actually a lot of the books are even better then the shows).  The Tower and the Hive series is another one that focuses on a more strictly human federations.  Enders Game shows a more forced style of federation, where the planet has to mostly come together to defeat an outside threat, even with the domestic problems still looming large.

I found it interesting that overall in the type of fiction I normally read (and I know that there are always exceptions) elected officials are few and far between.  Even in happy peaceful countries/worlds/random places it is usually a benevolent (unelected) leader or government that is in charge.  I guess that is because it makes for more compelling story telling when you can solve all your problems by discovering a long lost prince to depose the evil government that was suppressing your right to a federation :-)

Did you vote yet, did you, did you?  What is your favorite style of literary government?  What is the most unusual style you have read about?  What blend would be your ideal?