Book Review: Broken Quill by Joe Ducie

“Broken Quill” is longer and more epic than its predecessor. There’s a car chase. In Perth, Austrailia, a series of atrocities circles around Declan Hale, the Immortal King and Shadowless Arbiter. Declan is being stalked by an unfathomable and seeming unbeatable foe while across True Earth, the Knights Infernal retreat to Ascension City, leaving the world unprotected. After a harrowing battle with Emissary, the one responsible for brutal murders around Perth, Declan leaves Earth to have his questions answered. Sophie and Ethan return from “Distant Star” and Detective Annie Brie joins him on his journey across the literary worlds. From here onwards, it’s epic madness, majestic landscapes, and devastating battles.

Two books in and if there ever was a more apt theme to assign to this series it would be that while our regrets may be inescapable, still we soldier on, and mayhaps find redemption along the road. Declan’s guilt seems to weigh heavily on him, so much so that his finest ability is his invulnerable liver. But the true arc of our protagonist is his emotional and mental shift from reactive guilt to walking on the perpetual road to redemption.

As usual, Ducie illustrates otherworldly landscapes with a masterful hand. He lends his descriptive powers to a slew of colourful worlds, strange characters, and vividly depicted scenes. We glimpse a little of Hale’s past in “Broken Quill”, from his time as a commander during the Tome Wars. The scene reminded me a little of Star Trek, maybe Firefly. These flashback scenes are a treat to watch and spliced within the present narrative gives a juxtaposing weight to the story, compelling readers to compare Declan’s situation now with the glory of his past. It accentuates his regrets and guilt and gives us a deeper insight to his nature.

Ducie teases us with Annie Brie’s character. She’s an anomaly, an enigma. She shares Ethan’s role in serving as the reader stand-in for exposition and questions, but she is more significant than that, but in what ways we don’t know. As a character, Annie is well-crafted. She is sweet and bold, brave and daring. She is an excellent companion for Declan, the Amy Pond to his waistcoat-wearing Doctor. They have chemistry and balance. Her innocence and wonder are foils to Declan’s deepened cynicism and experience. Whether their relationship remains platonic is up in the air. Ducie gives evidence for either direction.

Whether intended by the author or not, I think on a deeper level, The Reminiscent Exile serves as a poignant metaphor for the metafictional, self-reflexive, and intertextual nature of pop culture in general, and popular literature in particular. Like the breadth of popular culture, “Distant Star”, and more so “Broken Quill”, permits a host of self-referencing remarks for the reader to catch and literary allusions to its intertextual predecessors. The notion that Declan and his friends can pull out aspects from books is a clever reference to real-life authors borrowing genre conventions and concepts from other authors. But dig deeper and it gets more complex. The characters take their own reality and shine a light on it, forcing us readers to question our presumptions about Declan’s multiverse and the essence of reality. Take, for example, a conversation Annie Brie has with the protagonist. She remarks that this “feels as if we’re in a storybook ourselves.” This metafic snippet made me a little giddy inside. I had a déjà vu moment, reminding me of the time Roland Deschain and the ka-tet learnt they were characters in a Stephen King series. I almost expected Ducie’s characters to learn they were written in a blaze of scotch- fuelled madness.

The conflict and drama in “Broken Quill” open up the mythology and universe to the reader. Threads started in “Distant Star” ascend to the fore in this second novel and set the way for future stories and future battles. In hindsight, “Distant Star” feels like an extended prologue placing characters into position and setting the field for battle. “Broken Quill”, therefore, is the opening salvo of an inevitable war that has been long in the making.

Book Review: Bleachers by John Grisham

John Grisham has written books outside his field of legal thrillers before. The first one I read in 2011 was “Skipping Christmas” which they adapted into a movie some years back. I wasn’t very pleased with the story and came away thinking Grisham should stick to novels like “Runaway Jury” or “Innocent Man”. But Grisham isn’t a bad writer himself and I had a copy of “Bleachers” on my shelf from an impulse purchase at a second-hand store, so I committed myself to engaging his tiny novella. Unlike “Skipping Christmas”, Grisham explores much more personal themes concerning forgiveness, the measure of greatness, the unfairness of life, and finality of our choices.

Eddie Rake, the dying coach, for whom many of his former players return to their hometown to pay their respects, was something of a hard ass. They all hate Coach Rake at some point, but come to grudgingly respect him for all he has taught them. One of his players, Neely Creenshaw, harbours a secret about a violent altercation between the coach and himself. After that fight, Neely has been bitter and distant, and the vigil he gives his coach is also a vigil for the man he used to be, and the man he could have become. Grisham works to deconstruct the legend that is Eddie Rake through the collective experiences of his players. Rake’s reputation of greatness is undisputed, but like everyone else, he is just a flawed human being prone to the same mistakes. The vigil his players hold for him illustrate that despite his cruel regimes, gruff exterior, and rough countenance, he has a man who loved his players but couldn’t show it; adored his family, but dominated them, and loved to triumph, but couldn’t fathom defeat.

Neely spends fifteen years drifting through life in bitter stupor after he suffers a knee injury that ends professional football career. His wife leaves him after two miscarriages. But the shadow that hangs over his life is the confrontation with Coach Rake in the locker room of their 1987 championship game. He never forgave the man until he returns to his hometown for the first time in fifteen years to sit vigil for his coach. Grisham paints a sombre man lost in his reverie, longing for the better times after having fallen on hard ones. Neely’s air is permeated with a sense of loss and grieving, both for his own soul and for his fallen coach. He is man of deep regrets, for his lost love, his game, and his coach.

Grisham tells us that we can’t reclaim the past. When Neely meets his former girlfriend and apologizes for the way he treated her, there is almost a moment when the reader can see how desperately Neely hopes to venture back into the past. But soon after that point, reality steps in and we see just how much their lives have diverged. Not all rifts can mend. We can’t go back into the past, but what this story illustrates is the hope of letting go of it and moving forward.

Day 40: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice is a classic love story and interesting phenomena of both pop culture and high culture. This is the Victorian tale of prideful Mr. Darcy and prejudicial Miss Bennett and how they meet and interact amidst local politics in the socio-political norms of the bygone era. This is an excellent romance that is relatively feminist for its time and praised for its characteristic witty dialogue. Austen’s portrayal is sharp in its biting accuracy towards gossips, a colourful past, and a rich society.

              

Day 39: The Amory Wars: The Second Stage Turbine Blade by Claudio Sanchez

This graphic novel is actually the second in the series, preceded by a prose novel setting up the events depicted here. But since this was published first, I thought I’d start off here. Sanchez is the frontrunner of the band Coheed and Cambria, the music they play is the work that the comics are based off. The meta concept is really interesting and you might worry that the stories might not live up to the form, but you’d be wrong. The Amory Wars tells the tale of Coheed and Cambria Kilgannon, a married couple from a little peaceful neighbourhood on one of the seventy-eight planets held together by mystical energy called Heaven’s Fence. The couple believe they are just ordinary people until disaster causes them to confront their mysterious origins and take the war to the dictator ruling Heaven’s Fence, Wilhelm Ryan, the Tri-Mage. The story evokes images of Star Wars but the writing is lyrical and fluid. Claudio Sanchez is a great writer, the art is wonderful, and the story Shakespearean.