Book Review- The Navigator and City of Time by Eoin McNamee

The Navigator and City of Time by Eoin McNamee

The Navigator summary: One day the world around Owen shifts oddly: Time flows backwards, and the world and family he knew disappear. Time can only be set right when the Resisters vanquish their ancient enemies, the Harsh. Unless they are stopped, everything Owen knows will vanish as if it has never been....And Owen discovers he has a terrifying role to play in this battle: he is the Navigator.

City of Time summary: Cati, the bold Watcher readers met in The Navigator, returns from the shadows of time to summon Owen and Dr. Diamond, for time is literally running out. The moon is coming closer to the earth, causing havoc with weather, tides, and other natural cycles; people fear the world will end. To discover what’s gone wrong, Cati, Owen, and the Doctor must take an astonishing journey to the City of Time, where time is bought and sold. There, Owen begins to understand his great responsibility and power as the Navigator.



I got the second book in this series (City of Time) in a big package that I got from Random House this past summer. So I had to find the first book and I couldn't find it in any bookstore, and while my local library had it, I didn't have the time to read an extra book. So finally, I went home for Christmas and at my old library, they had the audio books for both Navigator and City of Time. So I listened to both at work.

It's a good futuristic series and had some great suspense to it; I enjoyed the originality of McNamee's storyline. The characters were all really well-written and unique; I particularly enjoyed the characters of Katie and Owen. Kirby Heyborne did a great job reading the two novels and providing all the voices for the characters, which were all different and unique for easy identification. It's a fantastically woven story and I absolutely can't wait to read (or listen to) the third book, which will be out this June.

The third (and final) book is titled The Frost Child and will be released on June 9. You can pre-order a copy of The Frost Child from Amazon.

Perks of being a librarian

One of the benefits to a life of librarianship is access to advance reader copies of upcoming books. Sometimes publishers respond to requests for upcoming books (I got a box of The Dead and the Gone from Harcourt) sometimes they just send copies out to random people (I got The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks in an unmarked envelope). My library system has a shelf of Advance Readers Copies free for the taking and one of the best books I read last year (that just came out) was on it.

Peter Brown is an overworked doctor at the worst hospital in New York. One morning he witnesses a rat fighting a pigeon, is the victim of an attempted mugging, and has to choke down experimental amphetamines to stay awake. But his day only gets worse when he finds he knows one his patients, a New Jersey mobster dying of cancer. How does Peter know this mob boss? Because Peter Brown was once Pietro Brwna, a hit man with ties to organized crime now in the witness protection program. And the mobster thinks Peter is there to kill him.

This is the beginning of a literary drag race featuring mobsters, lost love and assassination by shark. Beat the Reaper is sardonic, clever, and bad-ass all the way through. This is no Sopranos episode about the conflict between family and the Family, it's straight-ahead acceleration driven by betrayal, revenge, and violence.

It reminded me more than a little of The Wheelman another stylish thriller about violence -fueled crime. Definitely recommended for older teens looking for something a little for dangerous and gritty than Theives Like Us.

I Should Really Just Relax

I've never been one to get real picky with the plausibility of my science fiction. Fiction is fictional. Whether or not you believe it's really possible to build a light saber, one thing you ought to know for sure is that Darth Vader isn't real. He's made up. So why shouldn't his light saber and his hyperspace-travelling fleet of starships be completely made up as well? Why would they have to be plausible? I mean we don't go around questioning whether Hades' helm of invisibility from the Greek myths is "plausible." My philosophy on this can be best summed up by the immortal words of the original Mystery Science Theater 3000 theme song (the one featuring Joel, not that other guy):

If you're wondering how he eats or sleeps
or other science facts
just say to yourself, "It's a TV show,
I should really just relax."

And yet . . . it wouldn't be science fiction without that pesky word "science" in it. Much science fiction does make predictions about the future, especially future technology. And it's both enlightening and fun to question how possible or plausible those predictions might be. Certainly many authors take this aspect of their fiction quite seriously. H.G. Wells predicted dozens of inventions that later became part of our reality, among them the tank and the credit card. Jules Verne's obscure 19th century novel Paris in the Twentieth Century predicts gas-powered automobiles, high-speed trains and the Internet. Many of his critics claimed his vision was ridiculous, impossible.

So, what could our contemporary writers and producers tell us about the future of technology and science? Could there really be a Death Star? Light sabres? Ray guns? An invisibility cloak? Warp drive? Time travel? Could we one day command "Beam me up?" and get teleported across space? Is any of this possible?

The answer to all of these questions, and most of the other ones that Michio Kaku asks in Physics of the Impossible, is "Yes." (It would be a pretty crappy book if it were "No.") None of these acheivements will be easy, and while scientists are close to realizing some of them, the complexities involved in acheiving others may prove to be insurmountable. But what is important to Kaku is that none of them violates the laws of physics as we currently understand them.

Kaku divides the "impossibilities" he discusses into three classes. Class I impossibilities are those which he believes will be achieved sometime in the next 10-300 years. Class II impossibilities are those which may not be acheivable for many thousands of years (if we continue on the technological path we are currently on). And Class III impossibilities are those which are really truly impossible, unless we discover that physics doesn't work the way physicists currently think it does.

It's surprising at times which common science fiction ideas fall into each category. Teleportation, for instance, would seem to be an extremely long way off, and the type that's practiced on Star Trek--transporting large, complex and even living objects like humans--may very well be. But simpler teleportation, the teleportation of individual particles and atoms has already been acheived. And Kaku predicts that the teleportation of molecules will likely be demonstrated sometime in the next several years. Who knows where that could lead?

On the other hand, I would think that handheld ray guns would be nearly acheivable now (we have laser pointers after all). But Kaku predicts that they are still a terribly far away. Today, we could build lasers powerful enough to blast holes in concrete, but the power required to generate that kind of beam equates to a nuclear power plant's worth of energy. Kaku believes that we won't soon see a palm-sized nuclear power plant.

Kaku is a prominent physicist and on issues dealing largely with physics he is at his clearest and most comprehensive. For example, he challenges one of the primary dictates of special relativity: that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. He points out that in quantum theory information travels faster than light all the time. (Unfortunately it seems that only useless information has this capability.) But even for more substantial things like people and spaceships, faster-than-light travel may be possible by creating wormholes in space-time. However, the potential traveller would need to gather or produce the energy of a star in order to even crack a wormhole open.

Likewise, on invisibility Kaku has quite a bit of fascinating information to share. He describes experiments in which small objects have already been made invisible to microwave radiation, by bending the radiation around the object. Kaku thinks scientists will be able to make an object invisible to visible light of at least one color within a decade, but it will be quite some time before anyone will be able to offer Harry Potter a replacement for his prized cloak.

In areas further from his specialty, however, Kaku is sketchier. I was particularly disappointed with the section on telepathy. Kaku clearly relates both the charlatan-infested history of telepathy and the more scientific developments in "mind reading" through monitoring brain activity using MRI machines (these, unlike ray guns, may soon be hand held) and creating a vocabularly to translate thoughts into words. All this is fascinating and well-researched but Kaku movew on to something else before considering the possibility of using brain implants to either broadcast thoughts or receive broadcasts of others thoughts. (Anyone who reads widely in the genre knows such implants are staples of science fiction.)

On the subject of alien visitors Kaku is similarly uninspiring, predicting that an intelligent alien species would probably be much like us, with eyes on the front of its head to provide stereoscopic vision and evolving from a species with predatory tendencies, rather than from herbivores. This all makes sense, but relies on the rather large assumption that life (and more importantly, intelligence) on other planets would evolve similarly to life on Earth. Why for instance, would an alien even have a head or eyes, if something else proved more adpative to its particular other-worldly environment? Would alien species even be so easily divided into plants and animals? Would the classification of herbivores and carnivores even make sense on another planet? Kaku doesn't go there.

Kaku situates each impossibility firmly in both the history of science and contemporary culture, citing past scientific research and discussion as well as myths, legends, psuedo-science, films, novels and television. While his knowledge is broad and ranges from Greek mythology to the Back to the Future series of movies, he does rely prehaps a bit too heavily on Star Trek references. Even more discouraging is that he's one of those Kirk/Spock guys who apparently never moved on from the original series.

Kaku's real agenda though, hidden in plain sight, isn't to talk about what's possible or impossible in science fiction; it's to introduce the reader to both the ideas and people behind the work being done in contemporary physics. And as such he provides a pretty good primer, introducing the reader to the priniciples of special and general relativity, quantum mechanics, the search for a Theory of Everything and strange new worlds of superstring and M theory. Wherever this hidden agenda emerges, Kaku veers off in pursuit of it, often leaving behind the impossible techonology he is discussing. This habit is entirely forgiveable, as he always wanders only into more fascinating territory, following the word "impossible" wherever it may lead.

For an interesting interview with the author see: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HanselminutesPodcast101DrMichioKakuOnThePhysicsOfTheImpossible.aspx

For a video featuring the author discussing time travel:
http://www.livescience.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=Time_travel_lite

"They're disappointed in their progress...their possibilities. But they don't know what to do. They don't know how to get out of this situation."

Guys Lit Wire favorite, Walter Dean Myers has a new book Dope Sick due out this month. Here's the description:

Lil J has lived through the layers of pain that are so difficult for inner city youngsters to transcend and has been exposed to an astonishing array of drugs. His path from "brokesick" to "dopesick" leads to a drug deal gone bad and a shot undercover cop. Lil J suddenly finds himself in an abandoned crack house with a bullet wound to the arm. He would do anything to change the last 24 hours. That possibility becomes real when he stumbles into Kelly, who is set up in front of a TV set with remote control, about to provide Lil J the opportunity to assess and confront his own existence and ultimately, a chance to change the direction of his life.

You can download the first three chapters for free at the Adolescent Literacy web site and also read an interview with Myers at Public School Insights. Here's a bit of that:

When I see that 50 percent of African-American kids don't finish high school, that's a crisis of tremendous weight to me. These kids are not finishing high school. They're not getting the core knowledge of how to conduct their lives and how to move on. As far as I'm concerned, from a national point of view as an American, we have to rescue these kids. We have to reverse this. We have to go into these communities and turn this around.

The first thing we have to do is change the norm. When these kids go to school, their norm is depressed. It's been dislocated downward. So they have these low expectations of themselves--not of their abilities, but of what's acceptable. So if a kid gets C's and D's, it's fine. It's okay. Because in his community, C's and D's are the norm. There are many schools in the New York area and New Jersey where the norm for the school is not to graduate high school. We have to change that.

I think Obama, because he doesn't have to be as politically correct as a white president, can approach this. And he has to. He has to. Because these kids are coming through schools… The pictures that I see are not even as good as the dismal figures which are being published.

It's a great interview from someone what has been writing about teens and talking to them and working with them for decades. Here's hoping that some of the tragic circumstances he discusses in the interview will finally change for the better.

Undead Austen, celebrating Darwin and more

First, I kid you not, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies It features "... the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action."

If you think Bruce Springsteen is awesome (as any music lover should), check out his bookshelves. (The titles are taken from a shot in the current issue of Rolling Stone.)

Sir David Attenborough has a few thoughts for creationists who send him hate mail as he celebrates Darwin's multiple anniversaries this month:

Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give "credit" to God, Attenborough added: "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator."

You can read more about Darwin online in the current issue of Smithsonian and in two articles in National Geographic. (And in my February column which will go online next week at Bookslut.) (And one of the more interesting sounding new books out on this subject that I haven't had a chance to read is Darwin's Garden by Michael Boulter. It's one to keep an eye out for.)

Finally, steampunk fans need to keep their eyes peeled for The Affinity Bridge by George Man. From a recent Tor post: "The book follows the adventures of Maurice Newbury, detective for the Crown, and his assistant, Ms. Veronica Hobbes, a team who sit somewhere between a classic Sherlock Holmes and Watson pairing and that of Doctor Who’s Doctor and one of his more capable companions. They inhabit a wonderfully-realized steampunk London, replete with clockwork butlers, airships in the skies, and zombies in Whitechapel."

It's due from Tor in July.

He Said, She Said: Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Welcome to He Said, She Said, a GLW feature in which a guy (Book Chic, a recent college graduate) and a gal (Little Willow, a bookseller) discuss books that appeal to both genders.

With its dual narrative, Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher is the perfect choice for a He Said, She Said discussion. In the story, a teenage boy receives a package from an unknown sender filled with cassette tapes. Once he starts listening to the tapes, he recognizes the voice as that of Hannah Baker, a classmate who recently committed suicide. She explains that the tapes should be passed from person to person, thirteen specific people who are related to her story in some way.
Hannah and Clay share narrative duties. Did you prefer one voice or character over the other? Why?

Book Chic: I didn't prefer one over the other. Both characters were evenly flawed and were also really interesting and realistic to read about. I liked reading through both narratives; both brought a great layer to the novel.

Little Willow: Because she was talking straightforwardly, without any interruptions or descriptions aside from that which was observed or felt by Clay, I really heard Hannah’s voice as I read the book. I was drawn to her character more than Clay’s because of my inherent need to protect, help, and save people – even though I knew from the start that it was futile in Hannah’s case, as she was 1) dead and 2) fictional.

Did you feel as if either Hannah or Clay was an unreliable narrator?

BC: For some reason, I never wonder about reliability when reading a book, even for a class. It always surprises me when the question pops up. Perhaps I'm too naive but I tend to take things at face value, so if that's how it happened in the book, that's how that happened. Unless of course I'm reading a book about a compulsive liar or something, in which case it's known that the narrator is unreliable. So that's a long way of saying that I didn't feel either narrator was unreliable. I mean, maybe Hannah could have been unreliable either for a part of or the whole of the novel since she had already decided for the most part to commit suicide, so she could've been looking for any reason to go through it and twisted things to fit what she felt. But I don't think that was the case.

LW: I believed both of them. I think Hannah relayed what she felt, and that Clay reacted accordingly. Hannah never whimpered or whined; she had been the victim of some cruel events and pranks, and she described them as she remembered them. Clay, meanwhile, was more of a semi-casual observer. He knew Hannah, and they weren’t strangers, but they weren’t close. As the book is set up, with him listening to the tapes Hannah left behind, he had nothing to gain from feigning ignorance or from being boastful. He was alone, listening, learning, and that allowed readers access to his feelings as well as to Hannah’s words.

Without giving too much away, let’s simply say that there are some characters which greatly wronged Hannah, and some who inadvertently got caught up in everything, like Clay. He wasn't really a bad guy, especially not when compared to some of the other people / reasons on the tapes. So...

Do you wish he HAD been more of a bad guy, someone who was a perpetrator of a crime committed against Hannah? Or do you think he was?

BC: I think that it was the right decision to have him be a good guy because otherwise, the reader's perception of him would have changed halfway through the novel. While it might be a good twist to have him be a bad guy or one that was more at fault than he thought, it doesn't seem to me like it'd be the right choice for the story. For one thing, it makes the story more relateable in a sense because Clay didn't do anything to really harm Hannah in any way, and neither did the reader so Clay's reactions to Hannah's story are closer to our own as we read (or listen) to the novel. And also, the point of the novel, in my opinion, is to show that even the slightest thing can lead someone even more down the spiral because you never know everything that's going on in someone's life. Your own choices, your own words, your own decisions and actions will affect others. If Clay had been someone bad who had really wronged Hannah, I don't think that point would have come across as well as it does the way the novel is.

LW: I agree. When stories are narrated well by anti-heroes, that’s one thing, but when the narrator is someone utterly deplorable and/or the story is poorly written, I can’t stand it. I liked that Clay was more of an observer, so that readers could slip easily into his shoes (or ears, as it were) and discover what happened to Hannah.

What was your favorite scene?

BC: I'm not really sure I had one. Everything about the novel was amazing, and there isn't one particular scene that sticks out in my mind. There's at least a couple. Actually, there is one I did really enjoy. I don't know if it's my favorite, but it's the one fighting to the forefront right now. It's the part where Clay is meeting his mom at the diner and I just loved how she didn't nag him or make him come home or anything like that; she knew he was going through something and needed his space to do it in. I also really liked the scene in the coffee place where Hannah used to go with the other two new kids (the names are escaping me now) and Clay was listening to the tape there and he found the photo in the scribble journals on the bookshelves. I'm not sure why that scene popped up, but it did and I did like it.

LW: The journals. The photo. The map. The window. The journey, all of it. The last tape.

Same story, different formats.

LW: I read the book in 2008. You listened to the audio in 2008. How was that experience for you? What do you get out of audio books that you don't get from the printed page? How were the performances?

BC: I read the book as well in early 2008 and reviewed it too. When I finally found a job, it was just doing data entry so it's not like rocket science and therefore I could listen to stuff while working. Most of my co-workers listen to audio books while they work, so once I gave up on music CDs after like three days, I got some audio books out from the library. One of them was 13 Reasons Why because I'd wanted to listen to it for the longest time since I'd heard it was done with two narrators (one for Clay and the people in his narrative, and one for Hannah and the people in her narrative) and I thought that would be so cool. Plus, I definitely think that with this book, it's more powerful to listen to the audio book since the whole plot hinges on Clay's listening to the tapes; with the audio book, you can listen to the tapes along with Clay, which really brings the story to a whole new level. Toward the end of the novel, just listening to Hannah as she slowly gave up with the last few tapes seriously made my chest tighten because I was just feeling so close to Hannah and her situation that it hurt to listen to it.

I think that listening to an audio book may give the reader more of a sense of the characters because you're listening to them talk and interact, as well as simple things like pronunciation (I was listening to Wicked Lovely and some of the characters' names were said differently than how I had read them) and how certain things were said, in terms of emotion and inflection. Plus, you can finish books faster by listening to the audio books, which is always good. I do like reading and listening to the same book- been listening to a lot of books I've already read and it's fun to revisit them in this format.

I really enjoyed the performances, particularly the one from Debra Wiseman, who did Hannah. She had the PERFECT voice for Hannah, and it was exactly how I pictured it sounding like in my head when I read the book. The guy doing the voice for Clay, Joel Johnstone, did a pretty good job, though I wasn't a huge fan of the women voices he had to do every so often as part of Clay's narrative. I definitely recommend this audio book (as well as the print version) to everyone. It's such a powerful story in both formats, and is definitely one that will stick with the reader once they're done with it.

Check out previous He Said, She Said discussions at GuysLitWire.
Read Book Chic's review of Thirteen Reasons Why.
Read Little Willow's interview with Jay Asher.

Punk Rock Etiquette: The ultimate how-to guide

So I'm trolling through the "new releases" shelf in the teen department at my library, as I am wont to do, when a small, slim black volume catches my eye. PUNK ROCK Etiquette is the title, and I'm already curious because the words and the fonts, well, they don't really go together well, if you see what I mean. The book is written by Travis Nichols, a cartoonist who posts original comics on his website as well as drawing cartoons for Nickelodeon Magazine.

Travis breaks down potential band members into the following categories: Tortured Poet ("You might have to stop him/her from cutting little thumbholes in his/her long-sleeved shirts"), Guitar/Drum/Other Hero ("Pros: Skills, skills"), Rock Star ("Cons: Potentially a total prick, likely a drunk or druggie, wears sunglasses indoors (and not in an ironic way)"), Techie ("It's good to have one of these people around."), Rich Kid ("Pros: They . . . have money. And maybe even a pool"), Poor Kid ("give a band cred, and they're usually REALLY into music"), Delinquent ("if your band's Delinquent dabbles in anything violent or something that could get YOU in trouble, steer clear"), Whatever (cons: "About as exciting as a sack of doorknobs"). He notes that categories often overlap. E.g., "Tortured Poet/Rock Star: Usually a 'front man.' God, what a dorky term. If it's a guy, he probably wears eyeliner."

Information on starting a band includes pointers such as "Appearances are pretty important", with follow-up tips to help you sort out if a band is any good based on their appearance. (Tip: "If anyone in the band you're about to see is wearing one of their own T-shirts, leave NOW.") There's an entire chapter devoted to recording sessions, with good tips about changing guitar strings and drum heads before recording, as well as tips on what can and cannot be accomplished by the recording tech, another on selling your music, and even one on selling merch. "After CDs/records/tapes, which should come before anything else, the most common forms of band merch are shirts, buttons, and stickers." What follows is a tutorial on how to screen print your own t-shirts, with a reminder NOT TO WEAR YOUR OWN BAND'S SHIRTS.

There are tips on how to act on stage, what not to do to look like a weenie, and on the importance of supporting other bands (particularly touring bands). And there are tips on how to book gigs. And dudes, I've been there - when I was in a rock band in the late 80s, I was in charge of booking gigs for a while, and it can be a hard, hard task to accomplish. I so could've used these tips. And there are tips on booking a tour: how to find places to play, what to pack, where to stay, whether to engage in a "roadmance" or not ("It's a scientific FACT that being on tour makes little hormone bubbles fizzle in your brain that make you want to get your smooch on. Yes, that is the scientific way to put it.") Oh - bottom line on roadmance? After "Don't be a creep! . . . And don't be a trollop. If you go around making out with people every time you put the van in park, you will get a bad rep. Your band will get a bad rep. . . . But if you're available and legal and you meet someone nice, let the roadmance commence."

A must-have for aspiring bands everywhere, or folks who'd like to be in an aspiring band.

When a movie nut reads a book...

Atilla “Tilly” Gokbudak is a Turkish-American, ex-reporter who used to be my competitor on a small-town government beat in rural Southwest Virginia.

Nowadays he’s a playwright/actor and an English teacher.
“If you can imagine Quentin Tarantino teaching English, then you know what my classes are like,” he says.
He’s also a heavy-duty movie buff. (He’s seen more than 5,000 movies. Do the math and you’ll realize that it’s not easy.)

But he does find time to read books. Very different books than I would choose to read. Here's his take on GuysLit:

Q: Can you describe your ethnic/cultural/social status when you were 17?

A: I was like the native foreign exchange student in my high school. My dad , who had died when I was in the seventh grade, was from Turkey, so everyone thought out of me as "The Turkish guy" even though my mom is from Rock Hill, SC. I couldn't buy a date, but I did get invited to parties.

Q: What kind of books were you reading then?

A: I was really fascinated with true crime books like "Cruel Doubt" by Joe McGinnis back then. Even though it wasn't about crime, I liked Bob Woodward's book on John Belushi called "Wired," which was very unsettling, back then. I really identified with Belushi very strongly, and come to think of it, it seems odd to think that I've now outlived him since he died at age 33 in 1982. And, there were Stephen King novels. But, I'm not sure I finished either "Christine" or "Cujo." I did see their movies.

Q: Do you think those were good books now?

A: I am still a better reader of non-fiction than fiction, but my interests in books have focused a bit more towards politics, which is perhaps as disturbing as true crime! Ironically, I just read Joe McGinnis' book on Ted Kennedy, which was written about ten years ago.. It was awesome! Anyone interested in politics, regardless of their chosen party, should read it.

Q: What would you tell 17-year-old Tilly he should read for fun?

A: The 17-year-old Tilly Gokbudak should read Barry Gifford novels like "Wild at Heart" for fun. It's what I read for fun now. I am amazed that it is actually hard to find books by Gifford in bookstores and libraries. "Night People" is actually my favorite novel by him. My sister got it for me in Baltimore_ of all places_ about eight years ago. I just recently reread it.

Q: Since I know you love movies even more than books ... what movie was at the top of 17-year-old Tilly's list? What about your current list?

A: I was a die-hard movie geek even when I was in high school. Movies were an escape from my very painful existence back then. By the time I was 17, I had seen virtually all of Woody Allen's films from the 1970s. "Bananas," his most outlandish comedy, was my favorite film of his at the time. Today, I prefer "Manhattan." I also loved Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" and Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" as well. I watched them both quite often. Though I did watch movies like "Porky's" and "Bachelor Party" so I could seem cool, I think I considered "The Godfather" to be the best movie ever made when I was a teenager. Today, it ranks as my fourth favorite behind "The Graduate," "King Kong" (1933) and an obscure 1966 Japanese film called "The Pornographers."

Princes and Poisons

So you're not at all into fantasy novels. I understand. There are enough hardships and struggles in the real world; we don't need to veneer it with magic and monsters. Well, I have a book for you, one that features danger as well as good people endeavoring to overcome years of suffering and cruelty.

Maybe you don't mind a bit of magic. Magic is like jalapeños on that burger, right? Too many and it ruins the taste. So let's say there's just one dragon in the book. And one magician, but he's the nastiest ever to play the game. Otherwise the story's a familiar one. A father, a bit foolish, who's greatest mistake is favoring one son (though he does love both his boys). The cruelty of ignorant people. The loyalty of good friends. Even a dog helps to save the day. I have a book for you.

And if you're a guy who happens to really enjoy reading the fantastical, the one who'd be adding horseradish to that jalapeño burger I mentioned before, well, I have a book for you as well, one about a demonic man who cares only for chaos, possesses a seeing stone, and uses horrible poisons that burn a man from the inside out.

Of course, you're no fool. You've realized I'm talking about just one book, one book that can satisfy so many readers: Eyes of the Dragon. The author happens to be rather well-known: Stephen King.

Eyes of the Dragon was released in 1987. I was eighteen when I first read it. On that edge of being not-so-young, not-so-old. I was tired of being a teenager. And Stephen King didn't write for kids (I was wrong, and later learned this book had been done as a present to his daughter and a dear friend). Oh, but he wrote an amazing fantasy.

After only reading a few pages, I began to trust the unnamed storyteller who narrates the tale of forthright Peter, first in-line to the throne of Delain, his envious brother Thomas, and the most wicked sorcerer ever to cast a spell, Flagg. I loved that it seemed like Stephen King was telling me the story late at night, besides a roaring fire, and pouring mead or wine or some medieval-sounding drink into my glass.

In the book, Flagg realizes that there's no way he can destroy the kingdom from within if Peter reached the throne, and the real story begins after Peter is blindsided and unjustly imprisoned in the castle's tallest tower, the Needle. And Peter suffers. When his face is terribly scarred, I winced at the damage to his looks (yes, I was shallow at eighteen).

I'll admit, I developed a crush on Peter, the young prince, the hero of the story. Handsome, regal, kind, understanding. If I couldn't be Peter (and no one is so flawless), I wished to have him as a close friend... maybe more. He reminded me of those boys in high school who had everything.

All that envy. Maybe I was a bit more like his younger brother, Thomas than I knew. Of course, we're not likely to be tricked by evil magicians these days, right? Maybe. But think how scared you'd be to inherit a crown at twelve. Wouldn't it be easier to allow someone else to make all the decisions for you? And as Thomas grows into an unhappy young man, the people of Delain are taxed and punished by Flagg, who's aim is the downfall of the kingdom and things soon look very grim.

Like all teens, I had a fondness for suffering. I think it happens when you're not too happy with yourself or the world around you. And when you read about a hero who's been tortured, hurt, and spent years imprisoned in a cold cell, you're filled with a weird blend of heartache and and masochistic glee. And when he reminds you of those boys in high school who have everything, well, you're a bit glad he suffers, too.

But now. Well, it's been too many years since last I read the book. When I was asked to join Guys Lit Wire, I remembered Eyes of the Dragon. So, I reread these past few days.

And while Peter was still handsome and forthright and good, I sympathize with Thomas more. Thomas is the far more human hero of the book. In a story with dragons and magicians, it's important to have a character readers can understand. Thomas suffers more than his brother, too, because he makes choices. Like real people do. And sometimes these choices are good, and sometimes they're not. We have to live with the consequences.

The Lab by Jack Heath

Six of Hearts is the best agent in the Deck, a vigilante group trying to reclaim the values of their city prior to its takeover. Six has a 100% success rate on his missions. He doesn't like smalltalk and his every action is based on logic. He is only sixteen years old.

But that's not what makes him different.

Six was created in a laboratory, part of an experiment called Project Falcon. He's stronger than regular humans, has better eyesight and hearing, heals faster. He is amazingly healthy in a city marked by its wretched environment and the poor health and shortened lifespans that came with the pollution. Only one other person knows the truth about Six, and Six would like to keep it that way.

On a mission for the Deck, Six discovers that the Lab's experiments may not have ended with the fire that destroyed their workspace sixteen years ago. It was the fire that allowed Six to escape the Lab as a baby and he has tried to remain off the Lab's radar ever since. But the Lab is run by ChaoSonic, the corporation that took over the City and now controls almost every aspect of life there. Staying off their radar is tough, especially when you're busy infiltrating and stealing from some of their buildings. And Six just received a new mission that will send him straight back to the Lab.

The Lab by Jack Heath is a dystopian action novel. Think The House of the Scorpion meets Alex Rider, written by a teenager. (Wikipedia shows Heath's birthdate as August 23, 1986, making him 19 when The Lab was published in Australia.) In other words, it's a very cool book.

There is a lot of action in The Lab. A lot of it. And because the story is dystopian, the action seems even more exciting, from the technology and the fights to the car chase to even Six's ability to get out of situations that a normal human would not be able to escape. I also thought action scenes helped to illuminate Six's character. Okay, so there isn't exactly a lot of character development here, but besides providing thrills, they serve to highlight how logical he is and his physical superiority, how different he is from other people.

The action scenes are also varied enough that they never got boring or felt repetitive. Heath's writing is fast-paced, the escapes and scenarios clever, and the dystopian setting gives the story added substance and allows room for some philosophizing.

After finishing The Lab, I still had a few questions about Six, the Deck, the Lab, and ChaoSonic's takeover of the City; there were a couple of subplots that didn't seem to be resolved. A quick look at Heath's website shows that a second book about Six was published in Australia in 2007 and I hope Scholastic publishes it here in the U.S. soon.

[Cross-posted at The YA YA YAs]