one more draft…

Adams was the first writer I read who made me laugh out loud. Perhaps it’s the British humour, which I have come to love (another possible example of my reading leading my interests, as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (again, no link necessary, right?) was another early read, and, I believe, my first exposure to British humour. I also enjoyed his two Dirk Gently book. My talents have never run to comedy, and I can only envy Adams’ work, and this reminds me that I haven’t picked up anything of his lately, which I really must do.

Not truly the father of fantasy literature, Tolkien was still my first such exposure, and left an indelible mark. I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (you don’t really need me to add links on those, right?) when I was in middle school, and while a lot of the political parallels, unintentional or no, went right past me, I gobbled up the adventure, amazingly impervious to the sometimes numbing descriptive passages and history lessons throughout. Tolkien’s work was my definition of fantasy, for a long time, and I held him on a pedestal, not so much from conscious deliberation and choice, as from, well, I’m not entirely certain what. Perhaps because he was first, more than anything else.

Ah, and because he was an historian. I don’t know if I was aware of history before Tolkien, nor if Tolkien had an impact in that direction (I was dead certain on going to MIT for math during the time I was reading his work…then we hit algebra), but I have since found myself intrigued and entranced by histories, real and imagined. In fact, many of my stories start off with an idea, and almost immediately begin working backward through time, rather than forward through the expected plot. I’ve put aside more than one story idea because I found myself so caught up in intertwined back-stories and histories that I’d lost all energy for moving forward.

But I digress. Tolkien created a world, top to bottom, beginning to end, and all the way round Robin’s barn. It was the first world I ever knew apart from my own, and may well have been the first time I truly experienced a book, and I know myself to be the better for it.

When I was working in a bookstore (how long ago?!), we received this truly massive tome of a book, a monstrous doorstop of a thing, with a Romaticized(?) picture of some kind of noble or aristocratic hunter on the front. It was the title, though, that grabbed me: With Fire And Sword. That, and the sheer magnitude of the thing. I put it on my reserve shelf in the back room, bought it, and I do not believe I have loved a book more. It’s been a few years since I re-read it, but it still holds my imagination like few others. It’s a sprawling historical epic about the Cossack Uprising in 1647, and contains one of my favorite literary figures: Pan Longinus Podbipyenta.

Much as it pains me to do so, describing WFaS is not unlike that cliche about the Broadway musical “Cats”: I laughed, I cried, I fell in love. Yep. All that, and a big ol’ bag of chips.

From this random, and extremely fortunate, beginning, I found Quo Vadis, the Nobel Prize-winning novel of early Christianity which Sienkiewicz had also written, and which, despite my own lack of certainty about matters of a religious or faith-based nature, pulled me right along with it. Regardless of topic, Sienkiewicz had the ability to turn the deserts of my middle and high school history classes into oases of adventure, wonder, and passion.

Mr. Lynch’s work has been a breath of fresh air and a reminder of why I started reading Fantasy literature in the first place. I picked up his The Lies of Locke Lamora from the library and it hooked me immediately. I now own hardcovers of both this and the second novel, Red Seas Under Red Skies.

Perfect? No, but what is? The world is both old and new, and though the first of the forthcoming 7 (!) novels in the Gentlemen Bastard series is entirely set in a single city, Camorra is a fully realized, fantastical version of Venice, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I have to admit that the title (and main) character is my least favorite, but I’m generally a sucker for sidekicks and secondary characters, from Tolkien’s Boromir to Weis & Hickman’s Sturm Brightblade to Sienkiewicz’ Pan Podbipyenta (the list of those three makes me realize my partiality for tragic endings…).

Lynch has a strong, confident voice, a powerful sense of place, and an excellent hand at scenes of energy and violence. At times, the loops and twists of cons and counter-cons seems a bit too much for me, but every action has a genuine and realistic reaction, and it’s to Lynch’s credit that these situations are not always as the heroes expect.

So if you haven’t yet read Lies, go get it. Now. Seriously.