NorsePlay: A Yank At Valhalla.

Not to let the hokey Twain-ist title fool you, Edmond Hamilton's A Yank at Valhalla delivers a Norse-inspired genre mash-up in fine pulp style.

[Original pulp from January 1941.]

Part lost civilization fantasy, part science fiction, Hamilton plays with the idea that behind mythology lies a greater truth.

Physicist Keith Masters, during an exploratory survey flight, gets blown into a hidden area of the arctic where he discovers the secret lands of the Norse Gods.

[An Ace double version from 1973.]

Stylewise, the many typos (a pulp given) are unexpectedly balanced out by some lovely .50-cent word selections, and it's neat shifting gears as a reader between scientific terms and medieval descriptors. This integrated juxtaposition aside, a lot of the presentation is stirring with cries of "Our swords for Asgard!", impressive feasting hall settings, and saga worthy melees & martial battles.

[UK re-titled version from 1950. And Freya's going to fall out of that top at any moment.]

While the start isn't as fast as Lester Del Rey's The Day of the

Giants (1950), they share a conceit that a mid-century modern man can think more clearly and problem solve better than an immortal, which here is still a false conceit, and one finds Masters a few times saying things like, "Score one for my science!" to convince us, but not successfully. Anachronistic of this, Masters flies a "rocket plane", which is more than bleeding edge technology in 1940, even for a well-

funded polar expedition.

[Interior art from Fantastic Story 1953 January pulp.]

We suspect this early NorsePlay also possibly influenced Ian Cameron's Island At the Top of the World from 1961 where a polar foray stumbles onto a Viking civilization survival. And

the mix of high-tech with ancient dress reminds us of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby's Thor, which began in 1962, where the science is implied, but not overt, and one wonders if either of them read this beforehand.

[More interior art from Fantastic Story 1953 January pulp.]

In terms of what was going on in 1940, we have an American character with no horse in the race between the Aesir & the Jotuns, getting involved for various circumstantial reasons in what may very well become Ragnarok. This raises the question if Hamilton possibly wrote this as an appeal for a

U.S. entry into WW2. While the text always has the battles as being against the odds, the Viking ethos of combat being a necessary facet to support civilization and that risk being celebrated is prominent in the novella.

[This same side-saddle valkyrie on colourless Bifrost art was also used for a later NorsePlay: Lester Del Rey's The Day of the Giants, except it was re-titled When the World Tottered.]

With pulp motifs, A Yank at Valhalla also presents the idea of the hidden subterranean. Using the dwarves (here labeled the Alfings) and a radioactive Muspelheim as a pre-surface dwelling and advanced technological world, this presages The Shaver Mystery's pulps/memoirs by half a decade:

"This was no mere cavern, but an enormous hollow such as many have believed was left under the planet's surface by the hurling forth of the Moon." (p.96)



In a current young adult novel landscape of Riordan's Magnus Chase and Armstrong's The Blackwell Pages, where overweening teen sass underqualifies as optimism, going back to an early NorsePlay like Hamilton's A Yank At Valhalla yields more imaginative treasure.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+. 

NorsePlay: Neil Gaiman's "Norse Mythology".

Neil Gaiman faced the daunting task to adapt the narrative holy of the holies, the ur-book stories, the most ancient tales known to man from which all other tales have since flowed from: Norse Mythology.



As we told a childhood friend of Neil's last month, Neil is a fearless writer, that before Neil there wasn't a great movement in the fantasy genre to use the Gods as actual intimate first & close third-person protagonists.

[Neil Gaiman being fearless!]

We look back at his record for this daring talent with reading pleasure: The Sandman (his breakout World Fantasy Award-winning graphic novel series expanding the being of Greek deity Morpheus), American Gods (heavily featuring Gods from various pantheons), and Odd & the Frost Giants (a NorsePlay story for children of all ages). And now, in a tribute to pay back what originally inspired him, Gaiman offers us his version of Norse Mythology.



In his introduction, Neil points out and mourns the loss of many stories in the Norse Lore, with only hints of more left behind in epithets and kennings:

I wish I could retell the tales of Eir, because she was the doctor of the gods, of Lofn, the comforter, who was a Norse goddess of marriages, or of Sjofn, a goddess of love. Not to mention Vor, goddess of wisdom. I can imagine stories, but I cannot tell their tales. (p.14)

You big tease, Mr. Gaiman, as we're pretty sure you could draft some. (And go check out "The Almighty Johnsons" for an interesting take on these goddesses.)



One can't help but hear Gaiman's comfortable English accent while reading. (If you're unfamiliar, listen to this.) Some authors make a total hash of reading their own work (talking to you, departed Douglas Adams), but the words here just rise off the page as though you're listening by a campfire. 



The bar for comparison will always be D'Aulaires' Norse Gods & Giants, but Gaiman instead grew up with Roger Lancelyn Green's Myths of the Norsemen. This early inspiration aside, he sources Snorri Sturluson, the Poetic Edda, and Rudolf Simek's Dictionary of Norse Mythology for his current retelling.

[Fenrir-fraught German edition cover.]

There's an open-endedness to the Norse Lore which allows the teller to detail in the blanks as they see fit. Everyone takes the opportunity to do so, and in this Gaiman is no different. Just when you thought you'd heard all the names for the Gods, he comes up with some original epithets, which is a skaldic achievement.



Charming anachronisms, born of Gaiman's penchant for contemporary urban fantasy (i.e. Neverwhere), make their way into his version of the Eddaic material. For instance, the giant that survives Ymir's flood of lifeblood does so by "clamoring onto a wooden box" (p.32), and smithy dwarf Brokk threatens Loki with converting his head into "A thinking machine (...) Or an inkwell." (p.55) The fact that these modern day items can flow backward and find a place inside these stories only reinforces the Norse Lore's timeless essence.



Other interesting additions and modifications in Gaiman's version include: the cosmic giant Ymir being made neither sex yet hermaphrodite, the detail of runes inscribed on the sides of Utgardaloki's bottomless challenge horn, the rationalization of Odin, Vili, & Ve wanting to create better worlds to live in & thus sanctioning the necessary sacrifice of Ymir to provide realm-building materials to do so, the prick of "Baldur's bell-like laughter...", a new character of Thyrm's conniving sister at Thor's marriage, and Mjölnir winning the the dwarven crafting contest because of its ability to protect, as Gaiman emphasizes that value far above the other entries.



Gaiman also specifically assigns the Vanir's Frey & Freya with the creation of Kvasir, which dovetails nicely into their role as both generative/creative gods and as the members of the post-war tribal exchange.



As the book continues, one can't help but notice Gaiman's enjoyment of writing Loki as a foil for events, especially seen in his extended embellishment of Loki's seduction of the giant's draft horse into something rather sensual.

"The Mead of Poets" is a brilliant standout. The dwarves who kill Kvasir are recast from spiteful miscreants into alchemists, which makes more sense for the murder's resultant beverage. And Bolverkr's underhanded wooing of Gunnlod's done as well as any modern lothario running game on a girl on any given club night.



"Hymir and Thor's Fishing Expedition" partly gets retold as a bad stepfather story, as Tyr's giantess mother marries the abusive & inhospitable Hymir, and we get a taste of Tyr's oppressive early home life.



Hel's half-dead side is descibed as looking into the "pale eye of a corpse" (the exact phrase Gaiman re-uses later for midwinter's brief and distant sun). Gaiman's previous empathetic personification of Death in Sandman may have been partly influenced by her Gothic-forbearer Hel:

"I am only myself, Hel, daughter of Angerboda and of Loki," she said. "And I like the dead best of all. They are simple things, and they talk to me with respect. The living look at me with revulsion."

One can't help but admire Hel's forthright manner, and despite the horror of her condition, she wins us with her self-acceptance, and also wins Odin when he gives her a fitting place in his cosmic scheme of things.



Gaiman reorders events to make more narrative sense. Odin raises the long dead wise woman völva only once, far later in the stories after Balder experiences his plague of nightmares. Gaiman also takes the liberty of making the völva Loki's lover & monster mother jötunness Angrboda, which makes her belligerent & doom-filled revelations to Odin more motivated. This shuffling of prophecy toward the end of things gives the reader a feeling that Ragnarök's too late to stop by the time Odin hears of it, which eliminates the usual planning versus destiny questions of why can't it be avoided if the Gods know about it from so early on in the stories' throughline.

[Hungarian edition.]

Like in Sandman, and in his introduction, Gaiman falls prey to the common slanderous reduction of Thor to a box of hammers ... which ignores Thor's verbally deft outwitting of dwaven Alvíss (actually meaning "All-Wise") to save his daughter Thrud from his amorous attentions, and Gaiman omits this story in his collection. 

A huge deviation in "The Story of Gerd and Frey" is that Gerd's refusal of Frey's proposal is completely skipped. One wonders if the coercion aspect was found to be distasteful by the author, but that's negated anyhow for most modern audiences by her finding mutual happiness with Frey at the end. He is a God of love after all, and being selected by love itself for marriage would be the ultimate compliment.

A serious missed-opportunity occurs in "The Last Days of Loki" when the "Lokasenna" usually takes place. During this episode Loki calls out all the Gods on their transgressions and shortcomings in an attempt to show them they're as mischievous as he is and hypocritical to boot (which is false since Loki's brand of mischief also harms everyone and is born of a darker motivation). Unlike Gaiman's previous writerly use of Loki, he skips the potential of this famous verbal tennis match entirely, which we found disappointing.

[Domestic cover with nordic landscaping.]

During "Ragnarok: The Final Destiny of the Gods", there's a dying exchange between Heimdall & Loki, and a gorgeous post-Ragnarok ending that movingly capstones the book.



Bottom-line: Does Gaiman significantly improve the telling? No, but his telling is respectful, adorned with thoughtful things only he would do, crafted with the fuzzy edges of myth gathered & woven into smoother narratives, poetic yet accessible, and, in many passages, beautiful & wondrous. In that meritorious achievement, Gaiman fulfills the role of that Green version he grew up with, and this new version will be the lens through which the current generation first encounters the All-Father, the Trickster, and the Thunderer. Snorri would be proud.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him viaLinkedIn or G+.

Dumézil investigates the Gods of the Ancient Northmen.

Georges Dumézil's Gods of the Ancient Northmen surpasses the academic into the realm of poetic & enlightening, like a good professor when he's got love behind his lecture. And of these eight chapters, some actually are taken from Dumézil's lectures.


Published in 1959, this post-doctoral thesis level work of comparative mythology shows French professor Dumézil's thoughtful expansion of the study of Norse lore from the mostly associative philology it was into a functionalist sociology, which invites easier comparisons with the Hindu gods and thus backtracks their migration to the Indo-European.

[Spanish edition cover featuring Icelandic Thor.]

Dumézil's trifunctional hypothesis posits that the functions of the gods reflect a society's factional roles, with Odin, Thor, & Frey being the major triumvirate and thus classifying that society's members into rulers, warriors, or farmers, respectively.



Also if modern Indian society is made up of castes, then Dumézil follows that this is a hold-over from Indo-European roles represented by the deities Varuṇa, Indra, & Nasatya, who also have similar functions as Odin, Thor, and Frey, and therefore correspond to those post-migration deities.



Supporting this association, Dumézil shows additional parallels between the tales of Kvasir (a being turned into the intoxicating drink of poetry) and the vedic Mada (a giant who's name means drunkenness), both importantly figuring in the end of a war between factions of the gods (Aesir versus Vanir & the Indian sky versus nature gods), and the Mahabharata's inter-familial struggle of Shakuni tricking Yudhishthira into exile compared to Loki's catspawing of Hodr to kill Baldur among the Aesir (which of course presages Ragnarök, and for the former, the Kurukshetra War).



The author also casts some grim light on the Vanir goddess Nerthus, who according to Roman historian Tacitus' Germania was in a veiled cart and given a procession to visit and bless all the towns before returning to her sacred island. Just before that return however, slaves who bathe the cart & see the goddess are drowned in her lake (!):

"From there comes a mysterious terror, the sacred ignorance of the nature of a secret that is seen only by those who are going to perish." (Tacitus, ch40)

Another reveal mentions the nail in Thor's head depicted in statues (p70), which we'd never run across until finding this illustration online:

[God pole engraving of Sami storm deity Horagalles ("Thor-Man") with nail in his head hung with whetstone. By Bernard Picart, 1725.]

Dumézil likens the stuck hone from Thor's first formal duel to legendary Irish hero Cu Chulainn's hone-like shaped head "emanation" after his first battle, and would guess that there's a representation of a warrior's rite of passage in this striking similarity.



And Dumézil works out an impressive mental somersault into a what seems to be correct identities for Byggvir & Beyla, two mysterious companions to Frey passingly mentioned in the Lokasenna. From clues in retorts made by Loki, the former male is Barley, and the latter female is the Bee (this conclusion expanded in Dennis Schmidt's erudite & entertaining re-imagining of the Eddas, Twilight of the Gods), both appropriate offerings & personified associates of harvest god Frey.



Heimdall, a god with so many inexplicable epithets, also gets the acute eye of Dumézil's associative reasoning by figuring out that the "whitest of the gods" (compare to Baldur, "brightest of the gods") probably connects with another name for Freya: Mardoll (note the suffixes -dall & -doll), which means sea-light. Heimdall's sea origins come from his nine mothers, the waves, who are the nine daughters of the sea jotuns Ægir & Rán. Sailors say the ninth wave is the roughest, and therefore the most decisive of action, and that many cultures liken the foamy tops of waves to charging white animals. In the case of the Welsh and the sailors' saying, the first eight are ewes, but the strongest is the forceful ram, which gives Heimdall his godly connection with the ram, applicable to his last mother. This is but a few of the explorations Dumézil pulls together on this deity.



Parisian Georges Dumézil (1898-1986) could read Latin by age nine, served as an artilleryman in WWI, earned his doctorate in classics by comparing the Greek divine drink ambrosia with the Indian immortality drink amrita, taught in Istanbul, Uppsala, & France, achieved membership in the prestigious Académie Française, and through most of that time published many, many works on comparative mythology.


Flying in the face of the above curriculum vitae and after reading this study, we feel the tripartite theory is a simplification, an academic's need to place people in boxes using the roles of their major gods to do so. While this mirroring looks great on paper, societies have specialists (i.e. craftspeople, seers, clergy, merchants, scribes, et cetera) that do not fit in such cut & dried classifications. Yet without a time machine or further accounts one cannot discount Dumézil's trifunctional theory. We do note that in old Nordic societies the farmers were also the same warriors who went on viking raids, so while those functions were separate the same individuals did both, as per need or season. Despite this critic's disagreement with the core thesis, there's so much depth & perceptiveness that Dumézil has to teach that even the most hardcore of mythology mavens never knew of, which makes this book so worth learning from.



While there are bilingual side-by-side translations of Icelandic quotations to English, there are also many parts where German, Greek, Latin, French, and others are used but not translated, author & editor expecting their audience to know them. We should be flattered by this presumption, but instead find ourselves quite stymied, and suspect most monoglot readers will be too.


In sum Gods of the Ancient Northmen isn't so much a progression as it is a collection of papers & combined lectures, which leaves no great conclusion, but its amazing examinations can only make us scrutinize & broaden our search for answers.

[One wonders at what other insights could've been discerned if Georges Dumézil had a search engine for his library.]

The individual chapters & exploratory passages all contain great points that are provocative & illuminating. Dumézil's reasonings within Gods of the Ancient Northmen's an impressive thought exercise to get us to continue to think of our divinities in different ways in order to learn more about them -- an intellectual pursuit of insight Odin would totally approve of.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Chasing Magnus through the Norse Lore.

The unwritten criticism of young adult offerings (and it's not a genre, it's a market) is that none ever seem to pass the bar of its progenitor J.K. Rowling -- all else that follows Harry Potter's been derivative. Nor have they been able to strike such a grand balance between character & world-building as Rowling.



That bar still remains unapproached by Rick Riordan's latest trilogy series launch, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Sword of Summer, though you'd think with the richness of Norse Lore to draw from it might surpass the young wizard, but Magnus makes for a fun read.



Much like Riordan's Percy Jackson series, our titular protagonist has a mystery daddy, is a streetwise kid, has an important prophecy at age 16 event to propel their plot, and much internal thought reactions of sophomoric adolescent "smartness" in their texts for the teen reader & young-at-heart to identify with.



And our newly chosen hero & his varied party of gifted friends must accomplish a quest by a deadline for a lost object. Since Homer, or Tolkien, however, we never tire of this story's formula.



In contemporary fantasies our modern interpolations on ancient legends are where the humour's supposed to come from. Would today's modern man appreciate Valhalla? Maybe if it were turned into a hotel is Riordan's answer. And the pop culture references are meant to give enough perspective for a young & modern audience to see Riordan's pushing forward of the long-hidden denizens of the Nine Norse Worlds, but push the results of this technique ten years on and it might read more dated than classic. 



Where Magnus really shines is when it provides other unthought of specifics & fill-ins, such as an actual descriptor of the taste of Mimir's well of knowledge, or elaborating on the current results of Freya's bartering with the dwarven Brisings, adding to the list of "paradox ingredients", or the unique physics of Jotunheim.

"The smell of the giants' body odor -- a combination of wet clay and sour meat ..." [p.388]

These new imaginings give the reader some nice mythological extras.



Another cool hard copy reader extra (because real books will always rule!) is that depending where you buy your copy, you actually get something extra: If off a pallet at CostCo, it's a bookmark. If from the shelf of Barnes & Noble, it's a small pamphlet guide to the Norse Gods. If from the bestseller rack at Target, it's a mini-poster of the Nine Worlds. And there's even a limited edition slipcased version if you order yours from Amazon UK.


Points in the plot borrow many episodes in Norse Lore but instead place Magnus & Co within them, so if you've read the original stories you'll be the inside reader:

"We met at that party at Bilskirner -- the one where you were playing tug-of-war with Loki?" 

"Oh ... ." [He] shook his horns. "Yes. That was embarrassing." [p.343]

... but not so surprised, and if you haven't read the stories the narrative will be new ... but weirdly seeming a bit forced. There's a familiar eagle dragging a character, some fishing for a large sea monster, a deception by giantesses, et cetera. Some of the comparative situations are funny, while others fall flat from trying too hard.



For Rick Riordan fans, Annabeth Chase from Percy Jackson cameos, turning out to be Magnus' cousin. This also implies a shared universe which might lead to a conflict between the pantheons ... ? Maybe even a duel between Percy & Magnus? (A Red Gold on Magnus! Sumarbrander totally breaks Riptide.)

[Sumarbrander!] 

While in the Lore the monsters are universal forces of entropy & destruction, in Riordan's worlds they are external manifestations of our fears & anxieties amplified, reflections of fault & weakness & regret, giving the characters' encounters with them a more crushingly personal aspect.


And in an interesting setting decision, Texan Rick Riordan celebrates his own Boston transplantation by imbuing Beantown with a close connection to Yggdrasil, the World Tree, thus making the northeastern city a crossroads to getting from Midgard, our world, to the other Nine Worlds.



In contrast to the Lore, sometimes the book puts itself at odds with the lessons in the original stories. Odin teaches that knowledge sometimes requires levels of personal & impersonal sacrifice, but Magnus questions this and frequently whines & opines differently as he proceeds on his quest.



We would adore it if Magnus Chase were to give kids & adults new to the epic accounts of the Norse Gods the same wonder & fascination that we got from D'Aulaires' Norse Gods & Giants (which really still stands as the best [even if Magnus currently outsells it on Amazon]) when we were growing up, and enough to direct them to later go read the Eddas where they came from. In all, Riordan, previously a teacher by trade, has written an entertaining embroidery of the lore that hopefully opens this door to Asgardian narratives.



Part two of the Magnus Chase trilogy, The Hammer of Thor, is scheduled for release October 4th, 2016. We can only hold out a reader's hope that this upcoming literary Mjölnir can finally smash Potter's wand.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him.

dare you enter The Cemetery of Forgotten Books ... ?

We eagerly return to the Zafóniverse, a Gothic Barcelona founded upon secrets, unspeakable war tragedies, and mysterious legends, fueled by an unending hunger of Catalonian delectables, set in unforgettable residences, with a cast tossed about by masterfully plotted waves of hopeless hopes, impossible loves, and dark circumstances.



Yes, we are so bookdrunk on another double draught of Carlos Ruiz Zafón, this time the finishing two installments of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books trilogy.

[The Cemetery of Forgotten Books?
No, it's The Library of Parliament in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.]

The Angel's Game (2008) proves to be an illuminating prequel to The Shadow of the Wind (2001). Our young boy main character adjusts from Daniel Sempere to David Martin, who have similar voices, both having lost their mothers to tragic circumstances, and a narrative difference being that David much more fearlessly says what intelligent Daniel only has the insight to think, perhaps because David loses his father far earlier and then feels he has nothing to lose. In most instances this gives the dialogue a winningly zippy Tracy-Hepburn delivery, especially in his later "His Girl Friday" repartee with equally sassy assistant Isabella.



Adolescent David gets a chance to pen a Gothic potboiler, The City of the Damned, serialized on the back page of the newspaper he runs copy for, and it becomes a runaway hit, earning the adoration of the common reader and the scorn of the city's classicist green-eyed literati. Like the eponymous cursed book in The Shadow of the Wind, Zafón's compelling description of this serial makes one want to read this book within a book with its Feuillade's "Les Vampire" (1915 silent serial film) criminal stylings. David's success launches him into the pleasures & perils of authorship, and gains him the attention of an enigmatic would-be patron. (Cue suspense theme.)



When this plot thickens, David's opportunity's for publishing increases, and the novel takes on the larger meaning within the craft & process of writing a book. Zafón's world posits that books serve as vessels of persona & purpose, just as equal as the soul is to the body.


AG also boldly holds forth on religious faith & its invisible constructs, the story-church/chicken-egg causality, whether it's made from a historical messiah figure, or verisimilitudinal legend, or fill-in for a current societal need (almost an unintended comparative to L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology).



Whether commenting on the necessity of religion, the horror of civil war, or the glories of past architectures, Zafón adorns his ideas with a poetic hyperbole and a challenging exploration that is nothing short of transportive. We enjoy the peoples and city walks of bygone days, a fallen elegance that one thought gone but is held in the amber of Zafón's words.



One grim aspect that Zafón endows David's story with is that betrayal is the easy shadow cast by friendship as people turn out to be not what they steadfastly seemed, which makes for surprising (and woeful) reading.


AG also seems to contain a self-aware critique of the Gothic's tropes' effect on the reader, like Northanger Abbey (1817) -- but of course without all of Austen's ploddingly unreadable Regency twaddle. When David selects a long abandoned gargoyle crowned mansion to live in, the manse's dark charms are a dream come true to the writer's fevered imagination, yet as events progress, the house weighs heavy on its resident and possibly colours how he sees things happening to him. Yet the occult forces that are hinted in small details in SotW begin to be revealed, and plunges the book from noir mystery to seriously dark historical fantasy.



Between these last two books is The Rose of Fire, a small 2.5 short story installment that explains the mysterious medieval origins of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books!



But while AG takes it off the map into the unknown in an amazing way, The Prisoner of Heaven (2011) tells you the journey is a lie.



PoH Takes place after SotW, unlike the prequel placement of AG. While a forward states that The Cemetery of Forgotten Books series can be read in any order, in retrospect it unfolds best in order of publication as the third would definitely spoil aspects of the second.



The third installment picks up Daniel Sempere as main character, revealing bookstore clerk & bon vivant Fermín Romero de Torres' story and its consequences.



Fermín's nested flashback narrative honors Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) with a transposition of Zafon's characters which it makes no bones about reframing, but it's a long prison sentence of 82 pages out of 278 for the reader, and some may have hoped that having Prisoner in the title might have proved less literal.



PoH seems to retract the supernature of both SotW & AG as we find David Martin in prison, deluded & dialoging with his more-than-mysterious patron. This turn feels like a cheat that deflates as opposed to a quantum truth, and in questioning his own second novel's decisions Zafón undermines the darkly numinous occult forces in his world.



Zafón plays with the unreliable narrator which later comes across as a slight abuse of the reader/author compact. Yet it partly doesn't matter since by the time he unveils that trick's mechanics his story's momentum far outweighs most misgivings one might have for such an implied illusion versus reality twist. (And if the occult is unseen and the spiritual invisible, then there isn't a paradox to complain about -- but that's a semi-apologetic comfort this reviewer had to come up with, not the author.) Still, we feel this implied retraction shouldn't be there at all, that such a move feels cowardly, and this is our one large complaint about these otherwise brilliant books.



Not that a visual adaptation needs to even be made as the literary medium does quite well on its own, but if Zafón's work were serialized into a series, one would want the Russian network to give it a "The Master & Margarita" treatment. Or, if major motion picture, maybe best put in the hands of Guillermo Del Toro, who's Hispanic sensibilities would do the work's sinister mood justice.


Like an Alfred Hitchcock cameo, Zafón passingly references himself in the side character of Professor Alburquerque:

"‘You should write a book on the subject,’ I proposed. ‘A secret history of Barcelona seen through its accursed writers, those forbidden in the official version.’ The professor considered the idea, intrigued. [...]

‘You’d better, because cities have no memory and they need someone like me, a sage with his feet on the ground, to keep it alive.’" [p.211]

In this goal, Zafón succeeds. Dickens is to London as Zafón is to Barcelona, and that will be his immortal legacy that cheats death, the towering monolith that looms largest in the haunted center of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

incorrect inquiries encouraged.

Voice is everything. Unimaginative reductivists argue that there are no original stories left to tell (which, as a writer, I do not believe), but it's the teller's interpretation which is unique and what makes those stories worth retelling. Within that half-falsity, what makes a Lemony Snicket book is his voice, the redundant, rephrasical, regretful narrator who paints his uncanny world in shades of woe & misfortune.



Second in Snicket's All The Wrong Questions series, When Did You See Her Last? finds our apprenticing secret society autobiographer cutting his teeth on a case of a kidnapped heiress, but in the ghost town of Stain'd-by-the-Sea all isn't as sadly simple as it seems.



Unlike Vonnegut (bleh!) or Robbins (meh!), it's Snicket who uses constantly deft verbal dexterity to reinforce character & narrative, as opposed to an author just showing off at the cost of those same storytelling factors he should be building. It's Lemony who's so wordsmith, and the grasp of language is what gives him an edge, showing that he has the mind enough to define his dilemmas even if he doesn't yet have a true handle on their motives or scope: "I was standing in front of a Dilemma. There are people in the world who care about automobiles, and there are people who couldn't care less, and there are people who are impressed by the Dilemma, and those people are everyone. The Dilemma is such a tremendous thing to look at that I stared at it for a good ten minutes before reminding myself that I should think of it as a clue to a mystery rather than as a wonder of modern engineering. It was one of the newer models, with a small, old-fashioned horn perched just outside of each front window, and a shiny crank on the side so you could roll down the roof if Stain'd-by-the-Sea ever offered pleasant weather, and it was the color of someone buying you an ice cream cone for no reason at all."



Also, Snicket delivers consistently great character names, like Ellington Feint, Moxie Mallahan, Dashiell Qwerty, aside from his own, reaching far outside the usual baby name books to make not just proper nouns but cultural associations.



While the pacing of this book is slightly faster with less lingering descriptions, we still get a few wonderfully hard nutshells via Snicket's implicative encapsulations: "The books and shelves seemed to be in the middle of an argument nobody was winning."



Art by still no-last-named Seth (but we now know he's Canadian, so that narrows it down[?]) trades its predominant blue for purple in the solid graphic style. Sort of warming up to its noir sensibilities by this second book.

[Yes, a fountain pen skyscraper featuring a keyhole breather nib!]

Presentations of vocabulary aside, there's a new device in this series: In the oblique references to other books which are never actually named, Snicket reveals not only literary suggestions, but his influences. Yet these references are also distractions from the real mystery ... if there actually is a real mystery. Kit Snicket, Lemony's sister, keeps getting mentioned as perilously on her own back in the city, and her's is the story untold, yet bookended by Seth's splash pages at the front and back of both installments so far. For those of you who have read A Series of Unfortunate Events, you know how things sort out for intrepid Kit, but we may get the chance to find out how she starts her journey there, and these hints could fill in her arc.



Snicket also waxes philosophical. Between the kids there's a commerce of help, knowledge, and trust. Snicket trades book recommendations for cab rides from a duo of young taxi drivers, the same for breakfasts from teen fry cook Jim Hix, ingenue fatale Ellington Feint trades assistance for Snicket's gallant but possibly misplaced help, reporter Moxie exchanges her local who's-who for Snicket's info toward her unpublished news stories. Snicket argues that all would be more egalitarian if seen through the leveling eyes of youth and run by children, that adults get compromised and give up, while children with their untarnished optimism do not: "'You said we could make our organization greater than ever, but only if we stopped listening to our instructors and found new ways to fix the world. It was quite the speech you gave, It almost got you thrown out for good.'" And with that suddenly Lemony may become responsible for an event that does change everything.



While not as fresh as Who Could That Be At This Hour?,  there are revelations and far-reaching implications that Snicket's liminal role as hesitant documentarian for ASOUE may be much more involved than we ever suspected. While Snicket's world's never played with the supernatural, one dares to think that with hidden cult-like fraternities, octopi, a strange idol, the decaying seaside town, and constant fear of the unknown, that something Lovecraftian might dare to rear its scaly head? We dare hope.



April 1st, 2014, sees the release of not a third installment, but a collection of mini-mysteries set in the ATWQ world, File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents.

[Or is it an April Fool's publishing joke? So suspect, Snicket!]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.