The Magicians – Lev Grossman
Before I started reading the book I had heard that it was a sort of an adult version of Harry Potter. The parallels between the two stories are very clear, but comparing them like that also seems like a disservice to The Magicians since the books are different in all the important areas.
The Magicians is a story about a young boy, tired of ordinary life, who learns that magic is real and then goes to a school where he learns more about it. This is the part that is similar to Harry Potter, but that is also where the similarities end. Instead of the happy feeling of endless possibilities that the Harry Potter books have, The Magicians focuses on what happens when dreams come true and they're not really what you had hoped for.
This is one of the first books I read with this focus, on dreams not being all that good once they become reality, and I found it very refreshing and interesting. There is no doubt that the book at times is a bit depressive and nihilistic, but it was still very enjoyable to read.
I never really liked the main character, since he is too depressive and self destructive for that, but he worked great as a main character since he used his self destructive tendencies to drag the plot forward in a very convincing fashion. This use of the main character's temper and destructive tendencies was very apparent after reading the Hunger Games, where the main character has the same tendencies, but there those characteristics are never used to advance the plot.
The biggest problem in the book that I find is that at times the lore seems underdeveloped, and there are a few characters which we are given very little information about even though they fill important roles in the story. There is a sequel to this book though, The Magician King, which might solve a few of those problems.
Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
If you've seen the movie trailer for the Hunger Games you have a pretty good idea what to expect from the book as well. A young girl, Katniss Everdeen, is drafted into a game that does not end until there is only one person left standing. This bloody game, called the Hunger games, is where the book draws its title from.
The book is very fast paced. Little time is spent on exploring the setting where the Hunger Games take place, and most of the characters are given just enough background and development to make them fit into the action. The fast paced, action driven parts is also were Suzanne Collins's writing is at its' best. Her language at times get a bit tedious when the story dwells on the inner problems of Katniss, but that is all forgotten when her sparse and direct prose makes us tear through the action sequences that make up most of the book.
Katniss is a perfect protagonist for this story. Headstrong and skilled she fits perfectly into the Hunger Games, but she has enough small flaws to make her interactions with the other participants (and indirectly with the audience) interesting. Other than Katniss the only other character that I really liked in the book was Rue. The resemblances that Katniss draws between the little Rue and her younger sister are very touching, and the parts of the book where Rue is included are some of the few where I enjoyed the non-action writing as much as the action driven writing.
Something that stuck with me from the beginning though was that the world around the Hunger Games was given very little attention, and the few characters Katniss meets that could develop it further are quickly left behind in the story. In some ways this fits with Katniss's view of the world, in the beginning of the book she has never been outside of her home town and only been fed the propaganda information distributed from the Capital. But even it if might fit I want to know more, since the strange setup with a small elite district living by abusing surrounding areas seems like a society that would quickly fall apart. It would not take a lot of extra background information to leave me more comfortable with the setting, but unfortunately that information is never given.
The downside of the lacking world information was not very noticeable though, and for the larger part of the book I totally forgot about it as the action kept me turning the pages.
The Master of Go – Yasunari Kawabata
The Master of Go is a book about a single game of Go. In the book Yasunari Kawabata chronicles the long retirement game between Honinbo Shūsai and Minoru Kitani. The game was played in 1938 and it went on for almost six months. During this time Yasunari Kawabata reported on the game as a newspaper journalist, and parts of the book are rewritten columns from the original newspaper articles.
The atmosphere of the game, the players and those watching is the focus of the book. The reverence you feel for the old master as he contemplates the Go board, and the sympathy you feel for him when he grows sick and you hear about all the burdens resting upon his old shoulders.
The book starts at the end of the game, and after that jumps back and forth between various stages of the game. I think Yasunari Kawabata avoided a fixed time progression to keep the reader's focus on the atmosphere, and not on the actual events. Since I tried to follow the game this became a bit distracting as it was hard to know what moves had been played and which had not. But the jumps in time helped to emphasize the parts that Yasunari Kawabata wanted to. At times he used this masterfully to show the stark contrast between two situations that happened at very different times in the game. If we had followed the ordinary time line the contrast could easily have been lost, since too much would have happened between the events.
In the book Honinbo Shūsai is a clear representative of the old traditions. He is the last holder of the hereditary Honinbo title (the title became a tournament title after his death) and he was used to all the privileges usually given to the better and older player. Minoru Kitani is on the other hand the representative of the new, more pragmatic, approach to Go. This struggle between old and new is very important throughout the book, and it keeps cropping up in various forms as the game progresses.
After having finished the book I'm left with mixed feelings about it. I think it is a great book if you want a a peek at the Japanese mindset, and how their old traditions clashed with something new during the middle of the 20th century. But the strange timeline made it at times difficult to enjoy the book properly. Too often I was left wondering where I was in time, but that might have been because I set out to read about the game. I think I would enjoy the book more a second time through, when I know what to expect from it.