The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

Pages: 768 (hardcover)

I’ve been meaning to review this for a long time – and having just finished its sequel, The Dark Volume, it seems like as good a time as any to finally get around to it.

Some interesting financial data, to begin with: according to this (and various other stories I’ve read) the author was paid $2 million for the two-book deal. The initial print run was 120,000 books, of which 22,000 sold. Publisher’s Weekly reported that the first printing was actually less than that – they went back to press for more copies even before the on-sale date due to positive response from booksellers.

Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure what to think of the book the first time I read it. The story of it sounded immensely interesting but it was more unrelenting than any other book I’d read; the action literally did not stop and there weren’t really any breaks in between, even – many books will give you a trivial scene or a few pages of narrative summary so the reader can “breathe.” The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters takes place over a period of I think three days, despite its considerable length, and I definitely did not feel like I was allowed to “breathe” at any point.

But the unique style grew on me as I read it, and particularly after I’d finished it. It may have been an epic failure financially but the editors who acquired it must have seen something they liked and I’m inclinced to agree with them.

The story begins with Miss Temple, as she recieves a letter from her fiancee breaking off their engagement. Unable to accept it without discovering the reason, she sets off to get to the bottom of the business – but she soon gets entangled in the rather intricate plots that revolve around the blue glass tomes from which book gets its title.

Cardinal Chang and Doctor Svenson each get roughly a third of the book devoted to them, too – the storyline alternates between the three, devoting a fairly large section to each before ending it with an annoyingly tantalizing cliffhanger and switching to the next character. It ends up being a significant number of pages before you get back to resolve the cliffhanger – by which time you’re usually concerned with the other two cliffhangers you’ve just been fed and have nearly put the first one out of your mind.

There’s one other thing I should mention. There’s a rare break from the action when Miss Temple has tea and it is the most spectacular tea-drinking scene I’ve ever read. It spans two and a half pages and would very likely be enough to make me like the book all on its own.

Let’s forget that ever happened, okay?

I had to put up a new style which I’m probably going to customize when I have time – although I actually do like the way it looks now.

Also, most of the images in posts were deleted, due mostly to my stupidity. I’m going to have to go re-upload them individually and it might take me a while to get them all done.

George R. R. Martin | Susanna Clarke | Patrick Rothfuss
Philip Pullman | Neil Gaiman | Ursula K. Le Guin
Peter S. Beagle | Tad Williams | Charles de Lint
Robin Hobb | Steven Erikson | Robert Jordan

George R. R. Martin

Widely considered one of the top authors of fantasy writing today, he is best known for his epic series, A Song of Ice and Fire, which draws inspiration from medieval history – i.e. the Wars of the Roses. The world, though fictional, lacks the spellbooks and magic typically found in fantasy.

The most important thing for any aspiring writer, I think, is to read! And not just the sort of thing you’re trying to write, be that fantasy, SF, comic books, whatever. You need to read everything. Read fiction, non-fiction, magazines, newspapers. Read history, historical fiction, biography. Read mystery novels, fantasy, SF, horror, mainstream, literary classics, erotica, adventure, satire. Every writer has something to teach you, for good or ill. (And yes, you can learn from bad books as well as good ones — what not to do)

Source: FAQ page on the author’s official site.

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Susanna Clarke

Author of the 2004 historical fantasy Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and the short story collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu, Clarke combines a style similar to that of nineteenth century novelists like Jane Austen or Charles Dickens with decidedly English magic and some less-than-amiable fairies.

I think some of the most sensible advice I can offer is to read a book called Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. It’s not about plot construction or getting published or any of the stuff they put in other books on creative writing (though that stuff can be useful too). Nor is it mystical or spiritual. It’s common-sense advice about writing every day so you build up creative muscles. She was a great believer that anyone, or almost anyone, can learn to write. She wrote her book in the 1930s, but what she says is still as relevant today as it was then.

Source: B&N Interview, Summer 2004.

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Patrick Rothfuss

Author of The Name of the Wind (a fantasy debut of 2007 that drew considerable attention and won the SF/F/H quill award), the forthcoming sequel (which is due next year), and an often-hilarious personal blog.

I think the tendency to over-explain and over describe is one of the most common failings in fantasy. It’s an unfortunate piece of Tolkien’s legacy. Don’t get me wrong, Tolkien was a great worldbuilder, but he got a little caught up describing his world at times, at the expense of the overall story.

Source: Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist interview, March 2007.

It’s my belief that you should never show your work to anyone in the publishing world until it shines like a diamond. Rough drafts don’t shine, as a rule. Mine certainly didn’t. That’s why I was rejected for years and years.

Source: Patrick Rothfuss’s blog, March 2007.

• For Patrick Rothfuss’s thoughts on writing action scenes, check out this topic on the Dragonmount forums.
• Pat talks about what needs to be included vs. what ought to be left out in the July 2007 Em Sky interview.

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Philip Pullman

Partial bibliography: Northern Lights (The Golden Compass in the US), The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass, Lyra’s Oxford, Once Upon a Time in the North, the to-be-published Book of Dust, The Ruby in the Smoke and sequels, The Tin Princess, and The Scarecrow and His Servant.

Don’t listen to any advice, that’s what I’d say. Write only what you want to write. Please yourself. YOU are the genius, they’re not. Especially don’t listen to people (such as publishers) who think that you need to write what readers say they want. Readers don’t always know what they want. I don’t know what I want to read until I go into a bookshop and look around at the books other people have written, and the books I enjoy reading most are books I would never in a million years have thought of myself. So the only thing you need to do is forget about pleasing other people, and aim to please yourself alone.

Source: The “About the Writing” page on Philip Pullman’s official site.

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Neil Gaiman

Books authored include Stardust (recently made into a movie), American Gods (winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel), Coraline, Neverwhere, The Graveyard Book, and several story collections. His blog is here.

Well, I used to have lots of pieces of advice for writers, and these days, I’ve whittled them down to two pieces of advice. Which are, (1) if you’re going to be a writer, you have to write. (2) You have to finish things. Beyond that, I suspect all is detail, but I would add to that, that having written it and finished it, you should send it off to somewhere that might publish it, and not get discouraged if it comes back.

Source: CNN interview, July 2001.

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Ursula K. Le Guin

Author of too many books (and in too many genres) to list here, but she’s most best known – at least in the fantasy community – for A Wizard of Earthsea and its sequels.

To read and to write. Some writers have to be told to write. They think their job is to meet agents and have experiences and they can just be rich and famous. Their job is to write. Some really don’t realize that. And you can’t write unless you read.

Source: Writing World interview, 2000.

• Ursula Le Guin has a section on her website for writing advice.
• She wrote a book about writing, Steering the Craft, in 1998.

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Peter S. Beagle

Author of The Last Unicorn, which is Patrick Rothfuss’s favorite book – and which, according to Wikipedia, “routinely polls as one of the top ten fantasy novels of all time.”

Writing has nothing to do with publishing.  Nothing. People get totally confused about that.  You write because you have to – you write because you can’t not write.  The rest is show-business. I can’t state that too strongly.  Just write – worry about the rest of it later, if you worry at all.  What matters is what happens to you while you’re writing the story, the poem, the play.  The rest is show-business.

Source: Scifi.com interview, November 1996 (archive.org).

There’s a phrase, “sitzfleisch”, which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done.  Just showing up for work.  My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, “If the muse is late for work, start without her”.  You have to be there.  You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you’re probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow.

Source: an older Google cache of http://west-of-the-moon.net/peterbeagleinterview.htm. The original appears to have been taken offline, the Google cache is gone now, and archive.org has no entry for it – so you’ll have to take my word on this one. I did manage to screenshot it, but I can’t seem to find where I put it at present.

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Tad Williams

Author of the complted Memory, Sorrow and Thorn (fantasy) and Otherland (sci-fi) series, and he’s currently writing the third volume in the Shadowmarch trilogy (also fantasy).

Read a lot of other kinds of books. Make fantasy a small part of what you read. Learn a lot about the world and finish things, even if it is just a short story. Finish it before you start something else, finish it before you start rewriting it. That’s really important. It’s to find out if you’re going to be a writer or not, because that’s one of the most important lessons. Most, maybe 90% of people, will start writing and never finish what they started. If you want to be a writer that’s the hardest and most important lesson: Finish it. Then go back to fix it.

Source: De Nieuwsbron interview, 2006.

Photo: Ejdzej

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Charles de Lint

I’m running out of interesting ways of describing authors, but Charles de Lint’s a fairly popular author of urban fantasy stories and novels. Um, yeah. Random works include Moonheart, The Onion Girl, Moonlight and Vines and Widdershins.

Write from the heart, what has meaning to you personally; have the patience and discipline to sit down and do it every day whether you’re feeling inspired or not; never be afraid to take chances, in fact, make sure you take chances. As soon as you become complacent, you become boring.  [...]  Read as much as possible, not simply in the genre, or what you think you’re interested in, but other things as well.

Source: The Rose & Thorn interview, date unknown.

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Robin Hobb

A character-driven writer of epic fantasy who commonly uses the first-person perspective. She wrote the Farseer trilogy (Assassin’s Apprentice, etc), The Tawny Man trilogy, and the Soldier Son trilogy.

I meet far too many people who are going to be writers ‘someday.’ When they are out of high school, when they’ve finished college, after the wedding, when the kids are older, after I retire. [...] You will never have any more free time than you do right now. So, whether you are 12 or 70, you should sit down today and start being a writer if that is what you want to do.

Source: FAQ on RobinHobb.com.

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Steven Erikson

Steven Erikson is a Canadian writer and the author of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, which has a “dark, gritty atmosphere” (his words) and leans toward a style of shorter sentences.

[T]wo basic rules — finish what you start and write all the time, preferably daily.

Source: Wavnutz chat transcript, October 2004.

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Robert Jordan

…is well-known enough that writing an introduction seems pointless. (Hint: The Wheel of Time.)

My advice to aspiring writers is: (1) Write, send what you’ve written to publisher, then immediately begin writing something else. And (2) Read. Read as much good stuff as you can find time for, and try to learn from it. Also (3) Write what you like to read. If you don’t like reading it, you won’t be able to write it very well.

Source: Wotmania interview, April 2004.

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Photo: Jeanne Collins, licenced under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

And that’s it for my fantasy-author writing advice compilation. For now, anyway. I may try to do something similar for other genres at some point. (Mystery, perhaps? Romance? Literary fiction? So little time.)

But I’m sure I missed many excellent writers (and interviews) while writing this post; if you know of any, please do leave me a comment – I’ll start a list of reader-suggested additions at the end of the post.

A Victorian mystery set in London. The book opens with the death of protagonist Lady Julia Grey’s husband, though the majority of the action comes a year later when she realizes that he may have been murdered: she begins to investigate the matter with the help of possible Love Interest and detective Nicholas Brisbane, who has a number of secrets of his own.

Silent in the Grave is very well-written overall, and surprisingly entertaining; up until the last hundred pages I was all prepared to go write a glowing five-star review. But it fails to live up to the expectations set by the beginning of the novel – and, honestly, by the jacket text. A blurb by Karen Harper says it has “one of the most clever endings I’ve seen” (yes, most clever, not cleverest) while Valerie Anand praises “some lovey twists in the plot and a most satisfactory surprise ending.”

That – combined with the quality of the beginning and middle part – led me to expect something truly amazing, which it wasn’t at all. It was more or less an average mystery plot. It was clever, in a way, but also sort of unlikely. The final couple pages in which Julia doesn’t expect to see Nicholas again were particularly annoying, because it was so blatantly obvious that she would in fact do so before the end of the book – it felt like I’d read the same ending dozens of times before.

Still, I don’t want to let my disappointment over “the novel that could have been” make this sound like an awful book. It really isn’t, at all, and I’m looking forward to reading Silent in the Sanctuary, the next volume in the series.

See Also:

• Deanna Raybourn’s blog
• Read an excerpt
• Bookshelves of Doom review
• Dorolerium.com review
• Bibliophile Musings review
• Material Witness review
• The Book Smugglers review
• What Kate’s Reading review
• Leslie’s Psyche review
• Wendi’s Book Corner review

I know I haven’t been particularly good with doing regular updates lately, but one thing I have been doing a lot is visiting Goodreads – a sort of additive site where you can catalog your books in various shelves. For example, if anyone’s interested, mine are read, currently-reading, to-read, i-own-this, made-me-cry, read-more-than-once, and to-reread. My main profile is here.

Basically, in The Cry of the Icemark the thirteen-year-old princess Thirrin Freer Strong-in-the-Arm Lindenshield has to fight back the forces of the Polypontian Empire to defend her home. And there are a lot of different battles to be fought and potential allies to be courted, such as werewolves, the vampire king, some giant leopards, the Holly King and the Oak King.

The publisher of this book writes in the introduction, “When I got the manuscript I knew it was the best ‘movie’ I had ever read!” And that’s kind of an interesting way to look of it, because when I read it back in 2005, it seemed, in a way, like some other form of media in disguise. Although my initial feeling was to compare it to a game (like, Blizzard’s Warcraft universe or something).

I think that having a fierce young princess for a main character has been done too much, and unless you can do it better than others have, it’s usually a bad idea. And there’s so much action and so many action scenes that it starts to seem a bit repetitive after a while. But – I don’t know, there are a hundred things I could say are wrong with it, but I did have fun reading it and it’s at least written a lot better than Eragon. I particularly liked the world that the book was set in; it wasn’t really different from your traditional fantasy setting in any perceivable way, but it was done well.

And, okay, I really like description of settings and there was plenty of that here. It’s actually sort of overwritten and pretentious in places (like, “The air was freezing cold, and tiny particles of ice drifted and shimmered in the brilliant sunlight so that they seemed to be journeying through a world of polished crystal.”) but… I still like it.

Breaking Dawn is due out on August 2nd, so it’s time to finish up my reviews of the series so far.

Let’s see. What I said about the writing style in my Twilight review is certainly true here as well. It did seem like there is a slightly increased usage of ‘Said,’ so perhaps the author is learning? Slowly. I may be imagining things.

Eclipse is more or less in keeping with the rest of the series, but I think I’m starting to get tired of the forumla of the books – even more than I already was, that is – and I hated it slightly more than the other two. One of the major themes is the conflict between vampire-Edward and werewolf-Jacob, but I didn’t like either of them and I couldn’t bring myself to care about the final resolution, which was kind of meant to be sad.

It’s been a while since I read the book, though, so I’m just going by memory.

Related Novelish entries:

• Twilight
• New Moon

I like this book quite a lot. I’ve read it twice, and seeing it sitting on my bookshelf, I’m tempted to read it again, even though there are dozens of unread books next to it.

The plot seemed one-dimensional for a lot of the book – it’s like the author is throwing new challenges at the main character just for the sake of needing something for her to do; stuff that isn’t entirely connected to the rest of the plot. But I think the one-demensional plot is actually a good thing, in this case, in a weird way.

And there are some bits that I can’t help but call bad writing. For example:

It took shape as it moved, becoming a large, disgustingly elongated sort of rat. Quicker than any natural rat, it scuttled toward a hole in the wall and escape!

I mean, what the hell? “Disgustingly elongated”? Saying “rat” twice so close together? Using an exclimation point at the end to… add excitement, or something? It’s hard to imagine writing that, and it’s hard to imagine not changing it in the second draft after writing it. And it’s hard to imagine an editor letting it stay.

In another section, there’s an exchange where the dialogue is mewed (by Mogget, a cat), replied, mused, asked, replied, and finally said automatically, in that order.

I don’t know why this book can get away with things that I’d hate in other novels, but it might have something to do with a main character that I actually like, which doesn’t happen all that often. That may also explain why the somewhat simplistic plot works, actually – I’m interested enough in the character that I’m happy to read about her adventures, however unimportant to the overall story they may be.

But Lloyd Alexander and Philip Pullman both liked it, too, and wrote positive blurbs for the back. So I must not be completely crazy.

Well, Brisingr‘s coming out in September so I thought I might as well do a quick review of Eragon.

Anyone who’s read some of my previous posts will know that I’m not particularly fond of this book, but I did have fun reading it when I bought a copy several years ago. I even went back to read a couple chapters a second time. I can think of two possible reasons:

a) I enjoy it when a book takes the time to describe the setting of a scene, which Eragon does a lot. And even if the description is not perfectly written, I still enjoy it.

b) I enjoy reading a book that’s so hugely popular and being able to find something I don’t like in almost every paragraph – and knowing I could do better myself without a lot of effort.

And while I do think the writing is mostly awful, I won’t criticize it as much as I might have once. I recently read the first few chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring, and I realized a lot of the things I found weird in Eragon were really an attempt to imitate Tolkien’s style – which isn’t a bad goal, it seems to me, even if it didn’t really work.

The dwarves and elves seem to be heavily inspired by Tolkien also, and I’ve heard people say that the plot is a copy of Star Wars. (And Brom sounded a lot like Yoda in places, funnily enough, in the original self-published edition of the book.)

But maybe the largest problem is that I didn’t like any of the characters. Some characters really captivate you from the beginning, you know? And make you want to learn more about them. And no one in Eragon did. It isn’t wholly about whether or not a character is an arrogant ass, or is someone you can relate to. It’s more… whether they’re interesting. Whether you want to read about them.