This is a long post about two books I liked :-)

Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson). I can’t believe this book exists. In a good way. The closest thing I can compare this book to is actually being inside the internet. It’s as if Stephenson has built a virtual model of the real world, but he built it entirely out of cultural references and sensory stimulation. Part of the opening paragraph:

“His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.”

(I read this to my mom, and she pointed out all the Americana in there: wren + patio door + napalm + the ideal of perspiration wafting through your clothes + jello + telephone books.)

So Stephenson writes in this virtual world, this imaginary alternate present, where so many of our fears and dreams are realized. Fears like, the world is a soulless collection of corporate franchises. Dreams like, I wish I was the greatest swordfighter in the world. And then he creates a plot out of these fears and dreams which could only really exist in this amazing internet world.

Downsides: the characters are kind of without downsides. They make mistakes, but the mistakes are of a technical or logical, rather than a human, nature.

The Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss). I like fantasy novels. I like them a lot. I like magical worlds, and wizards and dragons. I think the only thing that would have made Braveheart more awesome is if Legolas was in it (j/k) (I SAID J/K! PUT DOWN THE SWORD!!!). I knew I would like this book before I started it because it’s a fantasy novel, and because it’s got two more books in the series coming out soon, and the next one has more pages in it than this one did.

Wikipedia says that Patrick Rothfuss dropped out of college to write a single massive fantasy novel, which has been chopped into three parts and is being edited and expanded, and tossed to readers (me) like meat to starving wolves. This idea is very charming to me, because I have harbored a dream of writing such a novel for my entire life.

It does read a little bit like someone who loves the fantasy world, and who followed his heart to create a fantasy novel. The story is awesome in scope, it follows its ideas way past prudence, and, at times, the writing clearly displays the author’s opinion about the book’s events, saying things like “He was a bank teller, and like most bank tellers, he had no imagination.” This awkward boldness tends to be his greatest asset. He’s unsure where to stop, and his willingness to keep going forces him to come up with some very interesting stuff.

By the same token, I think the author’s inexperience beleaguers the novel. The book is having a hard time building a believable internal logic – a set of rules implicit or explicit that govern what can happen in the world. To me, this is the crucible of good fantasy. The Lord of the Rings famously introduced not only characters, but races and languages and separate cultural traditions and codes of honor, all of which hung together and were based on an elaborate fictional history that standardized power levels throughout Middle Earth. In short, it had both depth and balance.

Rothfuss has given himself a particularly difficult challenge in this regard by creating the smartest, most wizardly adept, most musically talented, best looking etc. etc. character in the history of this world. On a practical level, it’s very difficult for him to keep doing things that seem as brilliant as he’s purported to be. And when he does outsmart everyone, it’s hard to keep the other characters from looking dumb, or the task looking too easy to solve.

My main critique of the book is also what is most exciting about it. It’s way, way too ambitious--and I'm glad it's this way. As a fantasy buff, I dream of a fantasy novel that can fulfill the massive expectations of its readers’ imaginations, readers already sated on trilogies and cycles of the best fantasy minds. Rothfuss throws a lot of balls in the air—which is cool—and in all the whorls and offshoots in his story, he demonstrates great skill at following each path absolutely as far as it can take him, whether it discovers darkness or fear or joy or brings harm to his characters. I’m hoping for the best on his next two books, which I will buy the day they are released.