Sequels: The Sending and The Magician King

This month I've been reading long-awaited sequels.

Isobelle Carmody's much-anticipated The Sending was finally released at the end of October. Originally planned as the final book of five in the Obernewtyn Chronicles (the first book is Obernewtyn, first published in 1987), The Sending is actually book number six, with book seven, The Red Queen, due next year. I started reading the Obernewtyn Chronicles at about age 16, and have been awaiting a conclusion to the series ever since.

What can I say about The Sending? If, like me, you read and loved the Obernewtyn Chronicles as a teenager, it's definitely worth reading. Isobelle Carmody's prose doesn't exactly sparkle; the plot is poorly paced and the first-person narrative is at times frustrating. However, the characters are the same characters you read about and loved all those years ago. They are dear friends, and the opportunity to once more glimpse them as they live and breathe and dream is welcome. Carmody has not lost touch with her characters over the 25+ years she has spent writing the Obernewtyn Chronicles. I love these characters so much that I read the book in a single sitting.

However, a few warnings: Elspeth, the narrator, remains somewhat short-sighted and often jumps to conclusions on little evidence. This  becomes a problem because the narrative is intensely focused on Elspeth's introspection, so the reader is often subjected to several pages of soliloquy in which Elspeth bemoans imagined misfortunes. The focus on introspection also means that the plot moves much more slowly than necessary. The rationale for splitting The Sending into two books (The Sending and The Red Queen) was that there is just too much story to fit into one book, but The Sending could easily have been half the length.

The other long-awaited sequel I read this month is The Magician King by Lev Grossman, sequel to his The Magicians. The Magicians is a little-known but brilliant novel about Quentin Coldwater, a Brooklyn teenager who ends up attending Brakebills, a university of magic. One review I read described The Magicians as 'Harry Potter meets Trainspotting'. There is fantasy, there is magic, but these books are definitely for grown-ups. Read Laura Miller's Salon review of The Magicians here.

In stark contrast to The Sending, Grossman's characters are not always likeable (Quentin can be quite a dick at times), but the plot of The Magician King always moves along. As in The Magicians, Grossman continues to draw on both (quite overtly) Rowling's Harry Potter and (more subtly) Lewis's Narnia, exposing fantasy tropes to the cold light of adult life, making magic uncomfortable and real, yet somehow leaving a sense of wonder. Grossman has a rare talent: he is able to write fiction which is unflinching and sometimes cynical, and to write it in a fantasy novel. This is no broody literary novel with magical elements: Grossman never forgets that he is writing genre fiction, and genre fiction demands to be plot-driven. Give his books a go. You won't regret it.

The Sending

For those who haven't already heard, The Sending, book 6 of Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn Chronicles, is due at the end of October. However, as with book 5 (The Stone Key), this will no longer be the final book of the Obernewtyn Chronicles, with one more to come. At the moment, the expected release date of the final book is early next year, but I'll believe it when I see it.

If you're not familiar with the Obernewtyn Chronicles, they are a teen fantasy series by Australian author Isobelle Carmody. The first book was published in 1987. I don't yet know whether I ought to recommend them - I'm sure I will write about it once I have read the final book.

Literary crushes

The first crush I ever had was on a fictional character. Nuuskamuikkunen. Or, in the English translation of the Moomins, Snuffkin. The reason was simple. He was a thinker, and I liked that. I wanted to marry him. I must have been four or five years old.

Since then, I think the fictional characters I’ve ‘had a thing’ for have outnumbered the ‘real people’. I don’t think I’m alone in this, and I think the reason is simple. We get to know fictional characters, really know them, in a way we rarely know people we come across in day to day life. Isn’t that what happens when you fall in love? You get to know someone so well that their faults and their mistakes make sense to you, because you know their motivations and their history. Sometimes you know them better than they know themselves. That’s what love is. Is it any wonder that we sometimes feel a shadow of it for the characters we know intimately?

Here are a few of my literary loves:

Peter Pevensie, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
Teddy Kent, the Emily series by L. M. Montgomery
Matthew, the Obernewtyn Chronicles by Isobelle Carmody
Fitzwilliam Darcy, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Wintrow Vestrit, The Liveship Traders trilogy by Robin Hobb

I actually began typing out a brief description of each of the characters, and then realized I was saying the same things about each of them: unflinchingly loyal, considerate, immovable on matters of integrity and conscience, confident in his own judgment. (Mind you, a lot of these characters are quite different. They just happen to share all of these qualities.)

I guess the fact that Peter Pevensie makes it onto the list shows that even at age seven I knew that standing for something is hot.

New popular penguins

Penguin is bringing out 75 new titles in its 'Popular Penguins' range. You know, the $9.95 ones with the orange covers. This time there's some Oscar Wilde, another Jane Austen, Verne, Coetzee, Dickens, Winton... even (I'm pleased to say) an Isobelle Carmody. The books will be available for purchase in July.

You can view the list here.