The Song of the Quarkbeast

The Song of the Quarkbeast
by Jasper Fforde
Recommended Ages: 12+

Jennifer Strange is only 16, but she has a head on her shoulders. She'd better. Since the wizard she works for disappeared eight months ago, the former foundling is the de facto manager at Kazam – part talent agency, part retirement home, catering to a coterie of cracked sorcerers. Kazam has only one competitor in the Kingdom of Snodd (the area around Hereford in the Ununited Kingdoms), recently rebranded from Industrial Magic to iMagic and led by a sleaze named Blix who has just gotten himself appointed as the Royal Wizard. Blix is in cahoots with King Snodd and his chief advisor to turn magic, which powers all technology in their world, into a lucrative, government monopoly. Jennifer and the wizards at Kazam think magic should freely benefit everybody. So a challenge is thrown down: whichever house of wizards gets the farthest in rebuilding the collapsed bridge at the center of town will get to decide.

To make sure he wins, Blix pulls some dirty tricks. Between Kazam's wizards being jailed on trumped-up charges and a few of them getting turned to stone for their efforts to restore their home's magical battery to full use, Jennifer is pretty much down to one wizard – a youth who has only just passed his license exam – to put up against Blix's three-sorcerer team. She turns to everyone she can think of to help. The old crone who ran the home for foundlings where she grew up. The bitter ex-sorcerer who hasn't done a single spell since she was kidnapped in 1975. Even a daring, supersonic trip on a magic carpet to chase down a wizard's premonition of where her missing boss might momentarily appear – smack in the middle of a demilitarized zone patrolled by the kingdom's deadly enemy, the trolls. She must survive being scrobbled by the bad guys and imprisoned in a tower, face a contest of magic with the odds stacked against her – and mind you, she has no magical talent herself – and somehow save magic, and the kingdom, from a dastardly plot.

This is a fun book, set in a quirky world where utter weirdness is taken in stride. I haven't even figured out a way to describe the creature mentioned in its title, let alone the Transient Moose – a quasi-sentient simulacrum that somehow plays a pivotal role in this story. There's a bit of youthful romance in it. There's a stiff snort of sociopolitical satire in it – relating to the way upper classes, and especially royals, treat common people, and especially foundlings. There is a bizarre blend of fantasy world-building and modern technology in it, from Volkswagens to mobile phones (although the tech hasn't been working so well lately, due to magic being in decline). There are hilarious notions, such as light globes powered by sarcasm, and moments of breathtaking danger blended with whimsy, such as when a couple of troll sentries try to coax Jennifer out of hiding with "Here, person, person, person." There are fiendish plots, creepy curses, sweat-eliciting buildups of suspense and, running through it all, a nonstop flow of clever originality that can only be described as magical.

This is the sequel to The Last Dragonslayer, and I've been meaning to read it for something like 12 years. So remiss am I that I only lately discovered the series continues after it in The Eye of Zoltar and The Great Troll War. Jasper Fforde, whose name (I believe) is pronounced exactly like Ford, lives in Wales and is the author of many books I have read and some I have yet to get around to. I'm working on it. His titles include now eight "Thursday Next" novels (the most recent addition being Dark Reading Matter), the two "Nursery Crime" spinoffs, Shades of Grey and its recent sequel, Red Side Story, Early Riser and The Constant Rabbit. Three of these titles are already on my TBR pile.

Just One Damned Thing After Another

Just One Damned Thing After Another
by Jodi Taylor
Recommended Ages: 14+

Madeline Maxwell, a.k.a. Max, takes a demotion from Dr. Maxwell to Miss Maxwell when she goes to work for St. Mary's Institute of Historical Research. It's a secretive outfit that, she learns only after she signs on the dotted line, does its research "in contemporary time." Like, via time travel. Their pods run circles around TARDIS; for one thing, you can pick the exact coordinates in time and place where you want to materialize. More or less. There's still a lot of mapping to do, and there are risks. St. Mary's chews up historians and sometimes doesn't spit them out. But Max survives her first five years with the organization before a three-month study of the Cretaceous period takes a disastrous turn.

You'd think being stalked by velociraptors would be the biggest danger. But as Max finds out, her fellow man is just as deadly. Besides a traitor within St. Mary's, there also seems to be a rival outfit that doesn't bat an eye at tampering with history, so long as they can make a profit off of it. Despite Max's best efforts to protect St. Mary's independence from outside interference, another visit to the Cretaceous uncovers evidence that the enemy is cruelly exploiting dinosaurs for the entertainment of trigger-happy tourists. And their trigger-happiness isn't confined to exctinct reptiles.

Max perseveres through disaster after disaster, getting closer and closer to the center of the conflict between St. Mary's and the villainous Clive Ronan. It all comes to a head during a daring exploit to save what they can from the burning library of Alexandria. Her adventure is packed with danger, devastating loss, heartbreak and discouragement – but also sharp comedy, thrilling adventure and sexy romance. St. Mary's is packed with almost too many eccentric characters to keep track of, lampooning the types of characters many of us deal with among the departments of our real-world workplaces. And Max's narration, which is to say Taylor's writing, crackles with the kind of inventive wit that makes me want to quote it. Like:

He was built like a large brick shithouse. Two large brick shithouses actually. In fact he was so big it was possible he distorted time and space. He had his own gravitational pull, like a blond planet, and he'd fallen for Kal like a sperm whale failing to clear the Grand Canyon on a bicycle. He thought no one knew.

And:

We watched the show and then the disco started, so after shouting pointlessly at each other for a few minutes, we got up to dance. The usual thing hapened. Just as we arrived on the dance floor the good music stopped and they started with the smooch stuff.

I'll stop there, because if I go on, I'll give away the punchlines of a couple jokes that made me laugh loud and long. You wouldn't want that. So go read this book for yourself, and you're welcome.

This is the first novel in the soon-to-be-15-book series known as the Chronicles of St. Mary's. Among its sequels are A Symphony of Echoes, No Time Like the Past, What Could Possibly Go Wrong, An Argumentation of Historians, A Catalogue of Catastrophe and, coming in August 2027, Well, That Could Have Gone Better – all besides several short stories sprinkled throughout the series. Jodi Taylor is also the author of three "Frogmorton Farm" novels and its companion short stories, the quartet of "Elizabeth Cage" thrillers, six Time Police novels plus short stories (which apparently overlap with the St. Mary's series), a couple of "Smallhope and Pennyroyal" books (also related to time travel) and the historical novel A Bachelor Establishment, published under the name Isabella Barclay. If this isn't the first you've heard of her, you probably first ran across her under the rubric "readers who enjoy Jasper Fforde also buy..." Either way, you'll probably see more reviews of her books on this blog in time to come.

Today's Dream

This morning, just before I awoke, I had a weird dream that, in retrospect, makes me feel a bit like I can understand Beethoven's deal. I was responsible for playing the organ for a big, important worship service, but the organ console was apparently sequestered in some kind of soundproof booth and I couldn't hear a note of the music I was playing, or the singing of the crowd accompanied by it. Also to my disadvantage, the sheet music I was given had only the melody I was supposed to play, and I had to improvise the harmony on the spot. I had to make do with hearing what I was playing in my mind's ear. It should have been a mortifying dream. Embarrassing or frustrating, maybe. But other than the impression that I was being judged by some highly critical VIPs, I didn't feel like I was doing too badly. And the hymn tune I was hearing in my mind's ear at the moment I awoke was REX GLORIAE, by Henry Smart, a.k.a. "See, the Conqueror mounts in triumph."

It's not all that far-fetched a dream. I've played the organ at two different churches where the acoustics of the joint conspired with the location of the organ console so that I couldn't get a real-time impression of how loud I was playing. People complained that I was playing too loud and it gave them a headache. In one of those situations, the acoustics were so bad, and the console was in a recessed alcove below and behind the speakers that were aimed out at the nave, that during postludes when people were standing up and talking at the tops of their voices, I couldn't hear a note of what I was playing. You really need auditory feedback to do the job properly, as I stressed when the latter congregation installed a new organ – making sure they put the console up at the front of the church this time.

As for hearing the music in one's head ... well, that's how Beethoven did it, isn't it? And it's not all that exceptional. I've spent hours at the wheel of my car, driving from one state to another, unable to stop my mind from turning over voice-leading problems in my head. Chord progressions that I could both see and hear in my mind, as if reading from sheet music. I felt like it was driving me insane. It gave me an insight into the conditions under which a musically inclined person might feel they just have to compose music. It pours out of one, sometimes.

Heart of the Beast

My local, three-screen movie theater gave me the choice, last night, of what looked like a wilderness survival drama starring Brad Pitt (Heart of the Beast), an Aaron Sorkin legal drama about the Facebook files (The Social Reckoning) or an adaptation of a trashy novel (Verity). I wasn't super excited about any of them, so I asked the kid at the cash register, "What am I going to see?" – specifying either Heart of the Beast or The Social Reckoning. She said something to the effect of, "I haven't seen either one, but the one I'm looking forward to seeing is Heart of the Beast," so I said, "Give me a ticket to that."

Well, I don't want to spoil the whole movie for you, but it's not quite accurate to call it a survival drama. Remember my synopsis of another brutal Brad Pitt flick, Ad Astra? I quote myself: "A man travels 2.7 billion miles to find his absentee father, only to learn that the old man doesn't care to have a relationship with him." Well, this movie is almost as much of a one-man show as that one was. It's long stretches of one dude (Pitt) alone in the Alaskan wilderness with his dog, credited on screen as Odin (actually the name of the dog character, played by four actual dogs), suffering in seemingly every conceivable way. And yet despite the ending, at which I have already hinted too much, you come out of this movie feeling altogether better than from Ad Astra. Man and dog go through hell on earth (I emphasize, on earth), yet somehow their lack of human company and the, um, incomplete fulfillment of their quest doesn't leave you depressed. I would even say there's something uplifting about it. And it's all about the fully believable love story between Jim, the human, and Odin, the dog.

There are a few other human characters in the movie. Canadian First Nations actress Anna Lambe has a tiny role in a scene that frames the main body of the movie. J.K. Simmons appears in approximately one scene, and says probably 50% of the entire movie's dialogue, as a guy in a canoe who crosses paths by chance with Jim and Odin just before the feces hits the air circulation device, though (you may be surprised to learn) it's none of his fault. A seaplane is the next most important character, other than Army guys glimpsed in PTSD flashbacks (backstory for the combat veteran man and dog), and I won't conceal from you that when said plane crashes, it's no fault of the plane's or even the storm Jim has just flown it through. Dude straight-up has a heart attack at the yoke, and it's amazing that he survives the initial crash and how hard he fights to save himself and his dog from their seemingly inevitable doom in the back of nowhere, 49th Stately speaking.

What do they survive? Well, not just the crash itself, and the heart attack that led to it, but also starvation, painful trips and falls, probably hypothermia, attacks by a bear and a pack of wolves, a perilous crossing over a whitewater gorge that doesn't go to plan, griveous injuries, strenuous passages through almost every kind of difficult terrain, etc., etc., etc. How many things go smoothly for them? Not a single one. But do they give up? Well ... not on each other. And the way they look at each other, and the way they talk to each other (within a given definition of "talk"), is so tender it'll go right to your heart. Whatever this is a tale of, and it's not entirely one of survival, it has healing from trauma and, above all, friendship in it. Across a landscape that feels like a very big, very real place, this seemingly very real man – not altogether lovable – and his completely lovable dog struggle together, struggle to save something, and the movie is well crafted to keep you hanging on what they do save, if anything.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) The crash sequence, a total nailbiter in which you wonder how either of the hero pair can possibly survive. (2) In another callback to Ad Astra, specifically to its gruesomely clinical specificity, Pitt self-administers a medical procedure that requires Odin's assistance, sparing the audience not one awful detail of his disturbingly realistic ordeal. (3) The last moments the man and his dog share with each other, in which their mutual love reaches an emotionally devastating level. Moral: See this, not that Aaron Sorkin thing. Facebook, shmacebook!

The Kaiju Preservation Society

The Kaiju Preservation Society
by John Scalzi
Recommended Ages: 14+

Jamie Gray goes into his six-month performance review at a tech startup with big ideas about how to improve the food delivery app, and comes out with a pink slip and an opportunity to become a delivery driver just as COVID-19 hits. It's a tough break, but luckily he runs into an acquaintance while making a delivery and gets offered a job. Lifting things. For an organization called KPS that protects large, endangered animals. The pay is good, so Jamie takes it. And then he's let in on the secret. The off-the-grid, foreign-country situation he'll be working in? It's a parallel earth. An earth with a warmer climate, a thicker atmosphere, and kaiju. Like, you know, Godzilla.

The Kaiju Preservation Society is what KPS stands for. And Jamie adjusts quickly from gosh-wow-sense-of-wonder to more than competent lifter of things who, with his group of newbies, soon becomes passionately committed to protecting Kaiju Earth's mountainous, nuclear-powered denizens. Despite the fact that said denizens, and their parasites and other critters down to insect-sized, would gladly eat a human being if they can. Jamie and friends have a few tricks to defend themselves, though. Like stun batons and monster pheromones.

They're there mainly to study the creatures, but now and then they also have to babysit tourists – mainly richie-rich investors, government and military officials – and one of the first group Jamie gets saddled with turns out to be the evil CEO who fired him. On a bet. This guy, Rob Sanders, tries to throw his weight (and money) around on Kaiju Earth and very nearly gets thrown to the parasites for his pains. But while he pretends to learn his lesson, he still has something up his sleeve that's going to turn the final act of this funny, fast-paced, intense novel into a life-or-death fight to save a momma kaiju and her brood.

This is my first time reading a book by Scalzi and I'll give him credit for making it a fun ride. His characters patter with wit and well-delineated personalities. They're smart, tough and recklessly brave, yet understandably scared at the same time. There are whole scenes that are so good, you'll want to find someone who'll let you read them aloud. (I read to my dad an early scene in which a doctor tells Jamie about the side effects of a series of vaccines.) I could complain about the left-wing politics that everything filters through – sometimes distracting to the point where I, for one, had to double back to understand the antecedent of a character's pronouns – but in the big picture, the only bone I really want to pick at is Scalzi's disinclination to describe.

When the kaiju appear, I yearned for a paragraph, a sentence, a phrase, a metaphor or simile, whatever, to suggest a mental image over and above the implied "you do know what a kaiju is, don't you?" Establish it for those of us who aren't plugged into your mental movie, Scalzi. Paint with words, just for a little bit! I psychically begged him on this, multiple times, but did he listen? No. He told what happened and reported what the characters said, which was (I admit) sufficiently entertaining to keep me turning the pages. But at the expense of slowing the pace just a sukoshi, he could have seeded the reader's imagination with, like, imagery. Just sayin'.

John Scalzi is the Hugo- and Locus-award-winning science fiction author of the seven-book "Old Man's War" series, the "Interdependency" trilogy (The Collapsing Empire, etc.), some "Dispatcher" mysteries, and the novels Agent to the Stars, The Android's Dream, Redshirts, Starter Villain, When the Moon Hits Your Eye (in which the moon turns into cheese), Constituent Service, Monsters of Ohio and End of All Things.

599. Deus, auribus

Reminding you once again that the original hymns posted on this blog are numbered all the way back to zero, lo, this paraphrase of Psalm 44 is officially my 600th hymn. Rejoice with me! The tune I have in mind for it is SALVATION, from the 1816 Kentucky Harmony,, which the Ev. Lutheran Hymnary paired with "God moves in a mysterious way." I kind of dithered between it and JEG SER DIG, SØDE LAM for Hymn 598 and when I went the other way on that occasion, I planned a hymn specially to go with this early American tune.

Our ears have heard, O God, the deeds
You did in days of old,
When You supplied our fathers' needs
With gracious acts and bold.
For neither bow nor blade, dear King,
Can halt our haters' host;
But every day, in everything,
Your name shall be our boast.

Are we cast off and so disgraced,
Made for our foes a spoil?
Must we from scorn to scorn be chased,
Our cheeks with blushes boil?
A proverb though we may become,
A shaking of the head,
Your deeds of old within us thrum:
Deliver us from dread!

Had we forgotten, Lord, Your name,
Or stretched our hands elsewhere,
Would You not intercept the same,
Detect our faithless prayer?
But for Your honor, all day long,
Our very lives we pledge.
Hear our faint-hearted, chastened song;
Recall us from the edge!

Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep?
Arise! Hide not Your face,
Nor cast us off into the deep;
Heal the oppressed with grace!
Behold our soul, bowed to the dust,
Our flesh pressed to the ground:
Rise, help, redeem! In You we trust,
Whose mercies e'er abound.

598. O Lord, You Know

O Lord, how well You know my sin,
Whose depth words scarely frame:
The war that even now within
Strikes at Your holy name.
What effort, yea, what discipline
Can such disorder tame?
Yet through my inward bedlam's din
Your love remains the same.

O Lord, You know the debt I owe,
Down to the basest mite:
Yes, how to pay it blood must flow
And Death assert his right.
Yet as a silent lamb You go,
Bared to his baneful bite,
And all his powers overthrow
Full in his prince's sight.

O Lord, You know how Naaman's bath
Could make the leper pure;
Likewise, of sin and doubt and wrath
You know a certain cure.
Plucked as a grain from beaten path,
From worldly lust and lure,
Drown me and into me blow faith:
Make my salvation sure.

You know, Lord, how a widow's jar
Of oil and bowl of meal
Might never fail of food: You are
Swift always to reveal
Gifts that surpass man's grasp by far,
And what You say is real.
You summoned bread from heav'n afar;
So, too, Lord, with me deal!

And now, O Lord, You know the day
Once even hid from You,
Since into heav'n You strode away,
Your Father's throne to view.
Make haste, then! Lend Your gospel sway,
All that You will to do,
And homeward call us all, I pray—
All whom so well You knew.