This isn't supposed to be a race, mind you, but maybe I'm a pretty fast reader. I have been known to gorge, and not savor, which may be why I'm so inclined to re-read a work - I tend to lap up the crumbs I left out the first time.
200 pages in, and walking down the Road of Trials. I made a brief mention of Mrs. Brisby as an excellent example of a heroine in my other blog and Jack Sawyer fits the bill here as well. Unlike a steaming hot plate of most protagonists, Jack is as vulnerable as we would expect a twelve-year old kid to be marching down the road on his own. So far we've seen a little bit more of the Territories - and I remember how good an impression Captain Farren made on me when I read it the first time. Very well written as a soldier, love the business-like sword with the leather-grip "sweated dark". We also meet Osmond, the closest literate depiction of Kefka Palazzo I think I can think of off hand.
There's the horrific Oatley Tap ordeal, where Jack becomes trapped in a nightmare of a town that reminds me of the bad parts of Hamilton and a few of the run-down pits I've uncovered in Southern Alberta and the "dark places" of Ontario. The kind of place where the men drink their beer and then eat the glass, hunt out the winter and let the meat go to rot - smoke a lot, wear work-boots and squeeze their lives between the sharp edges of their teeth. Drink your pay, work out the booze on the rigs, that sort of cycle. I think Oatley works because it's a bad kind of real - the kind of real that King wrote into Jack Torrance when wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
I just watched the movie "Wake in Fright", an Australian cultural icon so far overlooked. A young school-teacher gets lost on the way to Sydney from some Pit - in some other Pit. A slippery slope of booze, more booze than most people can imagine (not me, sadly, ha), gambling, taking in the local colour, violence, booze, implied rape, murder... it's disturbing and the fact that I've been exposed to both this backwoods Australia and the Oatley Tap at almost the same time is almost ironic.
Anyways, the book takes a good break from all the hum-glum and shows off the beautiful parts of the Territories, reminding us - from a child's perspective - how beautiful a sky without airplanes might be, where men jump off towers wearing (growing?) wings in a kind of ballet, the joy of that pain, and currency made out of sticks. When I first read Patrick Rothfuss' unique nomenclature for his world's currency (talents and jots) I immediately brought to mind the Territories sticks. It quickly grounds us in reality once more, but it's a nice departure while it lasts. Morgan is coming, there are living trees here, and the adventure is really only beginning. Cam, you better be reading this book!
200 pages in, and walking down the Road of Trials. I made a brief mention of Mrs. Brisby as an excellent example of a heroine in my other blog and Jack Sawyer fits the bill here as well. Unlike a steaming hot plate of most protagonists, Jack is as vulnerable as we would expect a twelve-year old kid to be marching down the road on his own. So far we've seen a little bit more of the Territories - and I remember how good an impression Captain Farren made on me when I read it the first time. Very well written as a soldier, love the business-like sword with the leather-grip "sweated dark". We also meet Osmond, the closest literate depiction of Kefka Palazzo I think I can think of off hand.
There's the horrific Oatley Tap ordeal, where Jack becomes trapped in a nightmare of a town that reminds me of the bad parts of Hamilton and a few of the run-down pits I've uncovered in Southern Alberta and the "dark places" of Ontario. The kind of place where the men drink their beer and then eat the glass, hunt out the winter and let the meat go to rot - smoke a lot, wear work-boots and squeeze their lives between the sharp edges of their teeth. Drink your pay, work out the booze on the rigs, that sort of cycle. I think Oatley works because it's a bad kind of real - the kind of real that King wrote into Jack Torrance when wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
I just watched the movie "Wake in Fright", an Australian cultural icon so far overlooked. A young school-teacher gets lost on the way to Sydney from some Pit - in some other Pit. A slippery slope of booze, more booze than most people can imagine (not me, sadly, ha), gambling, taking in the local colour, violence, booze, implied rape, murder... it's disturbing and the fact that I've been exposed to both this backwoods Australia and the Oatley Tap at almost the same time is almost ironic.
Anyways, the book takes a good break from all the hum-glum and shows off the beautiful parts of the Territories, reminding us - from a child's perspective - how beautiful a sky without airplanes might be, where men jump off towers wearing (growing?) wings in a kind of ballet, the joy of that pain, and currency made out of sticks. When I first read Patrick Rothfuss' unique nomenclature for his world's currency (talents and jots) I immediately brought to mind the Territories sticks. It quickly grounds us in reality once more, but it's a nice departure while it lasts. Morgan is coming, there are living trees here, and the adventure is really only beginning. Cam, you better be reading this book!
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