This is Pratchett’s latest juvenile and his latest Discworld book;
it’s also the sequel to The Wee Free Men, which I reviewed
last
month.

I read it aloud to Jane, and we both loved it.

The Wee Free Men introduced us to a young girl named Tiffany
Aching. She lives on a sheep farm in the Chalk country, and is in charge
of the dairy. She’s also a budding witch, which in the Discworld is a
sort of combination of country doctor, clinical psychologist, and
defender of the neighborhood from evil forces. She first assumes her
role as defender of the neighborhood when she clobbers a nasty monster
from Faerie with a cast iron skillet, having first staked out her little
brother as bait. (Witches are not generally particularly sentimental, but
they get the job done.) Later she has to rescue her little brother from
the Queen of Faerie, which she does with the help of the Nac Mac Feegle,
the Wee Free Men of the title.

The Nac Mac Feegle are fairies of a sort; at least, they lived in Faerie
until the Queen cast them out for being drunk and disorderly. They are
about six inches tall, are tattooed a vivid blue color, have red hair
with a variety of objects plaited into it, and wear kilts. Some call
them “pictsies” (a name I wish I’d thought of, darn it! though I doubt
I’d have made a quarter as good a use of it if I had). The only
thing that makes them happier than drinking is fighting–which, as they
are immensely strong and nearly indestructible, they are exceedingly good
at. And they are very fond of Tiffany, who they call their “Big wee hag.”

At the conclusion of [btitle “The Wee Free Men”] Tiffany meets Granny
Weatherwax, one of our favorite Pratchett characters, who is clearly very
impressed–not that it’s obvious to Tiffany. As there are no other
witches in the vicinity, Granny tells her that she’ll need to leave home
for a while to train, if she’s to develop her skills.

[btitle “A Hat Full Of Sky”] begins a couple of years later, just as
Tiffany is leaving home. She’s going to spend a year apprenticed to
a witch named Miss Level, learning what being a witch is all about.
Unfortunately, there’s a strange creature called a “hiver” that’s
determined to make things deadly difficult for her….

There’s so much about the book that I like. The Feegles are a delightful
creation; I particularly enjoyed watching a drunk Feegle get into a brawl
with one of Miss Level’s ceramic garden gnomes (the Feegle won). We get
to see another side of Granny Weatherwax, which is neat. But my favorite
part is probably the Witch Trials. You know, the Witch Trials? They
hold them every year. All of the witches get together and have a
competition to see who can do the neatest stuff. You know, like sheepdog
trials.

Anyway, if you’ve not encountered the Discworld, you’ve been missing out.
And if you’re a fan but have not seen these particular books, check out the Young
Adult section; they are well worth it. Order them if you have to.

As of thirty minutes ago, we are up and running on our wireless network using Earthlink DSL as our internet connection. I have to say, getting the DSL modem to work with our Airport wireless base station was tough. Really tough. Really, amazingly, incredibly tough.

I had to plug the DSL modem into the wall. The horror!

I had to connect the DSL modem to the phone line. Gosh!

I had to connect the DSL modem to the Airport base station. Oh the humanity!

I had to disconnect the DSL modem from the wrong port on the Airport base station and reconnect it to the right port. Oh the stupidity!

I had to disconnect the DSL modem from the wrong phone line and reconnect it to the right phone line. Oh the absurdity!

I had to tell the Airport base station to connect to the Internet via PPPoE instead of dial up. Oh the pretty interface!

After that, it all just worked. The two mis-steps cost me about five minutes; hiding all of the cables and putting the furniture back where it was before I started took longer.

And it’s a lot faster, too.

Set up was pretty easy. I plugged the modem into the wall, connected it to a phone jack, connected it to my laptop using the included ethernet cable, and turned it on. A few minutes later it agreed to talk to me; I told it who I was; it connected up to Earthlink’s net; and here I am!

Unfortunately, I can’t leave the modem on my desk–got to get it hooked up to my wireless router. But that’s a problem for another day.

Well, truthfully, it’s later.

My Earthlink DSL installation kit arrived today, and it looks like getting everything installed should be a snap. But I spent the day coding like a fiend, so I’m like, totally wired, y’know? (Did I just say that?) And anyway my boy James is graduating from pre-school tonight. Not a good time to get started with something like this–if it went well, that’d be great, but if it didn’t my stress level would go through the roof, to the detriment of any small children in the vicinity. Perhaps after they are all in bed.

But anyway, all of the equipment is here, though I’ve got to get some more microfilters. They included three, but I need at least six total, and maybe seven. Does Radio Shack carry these?

More later.

Having enjoyed Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man and
Saint Thomas Aquinas, I opened this autobiography of St.
Francis eagerly. And I enjoyed it, and I learned quite a bit about St.
Francis, but it definitely left me wanting more.

Compared to Thomas, of course, Francis is a saint of a different
color. Apparently there’s not all that much biographical information
available about St. Thomas; not surprisingly, as he spent most of his
time thinking and writing. The difficulty in writing about St. Thomas
is that to explain why he was and is important you need to get into
serious matters of philosophy and theology–and to do that in a book
intended for a popular audience without losing them is no mean feat.

The problem of writing about St. Francis is far different. Here there is
a vast wealth of material, a plethora, possibly even a superfluity of
story and legend from which to draw. At the same time, Francis is a far
more popular saint than Thomas; everyone has at least the notion that
Francis got on well with birds and suchlike creatures, even if they know
nothing else about him. With Thomas, Chesterton didn’t need to worry
much about people’s preconceptions; here he does.

Consequently, Chesterton’s avowed intent in this book is to illuminate
the saint’s character. He tells us, in dribs and drabs, the bare
biographical details; he shares with us a handful of anecdotes which
illustrate his points. And he spends quite a lot of time telling us,
somewhat abstractly, what St. Francis was like, and perhaps more time
telling us what he wasn’t like. But he doesn’t tell us many stories
about things Francis actually did, because he’s more concerned that we
have the proper grounding to appreciate such stories and not
misunderstand them.

Unfortunately, this approach means that the narrative is somewhat
detached. For example, the early
biographies of Francis tell of a number of miracles God worked through
him during his life. In the chapter where Chesterton addresses this, he
spends most of his time talking about how strange it is that your average
historian will read such a biography, discount the miraculous on the
ground that it’s nonsense and that the author must be lying, credulous,
or a simpleton, and yet presume the remainder of the work to contain
worthwhile historical detail. Surely, says Chesterton, if the author is
unreliable, he’s unreliable?

Well, and so, but I’d have liked to hear more about Francis’ miracles.

I gather from some comments that Chesterton lets drop that he wrote this
book during a period when Saint Francis was quite a popular figure in
England, and books containing the kinds of stories Chesterton mostly
left out were perhaps all too easy to come by. Chesterton clearly
assumed that his audience had already read such books, or that having
finished his they might go on to do so, and therefore it was more
important to provide something they did not than to simply duplicate them.

I can’t argue with that; but it does mean that the book, though valuable,
didn’t satisfy me, and that I’m probably going to have to find something
else to read about St. Francis.

Chesterton, darn him, would undoubtedly be pleased.

I first tried reading this around the time I got out of college. Then,
as now, I was a big fan of C.S. Lewis, and especially of his book Mere Christianity, and I’d been led to believe that this
was more of the same. And in fact, it was nothing like I expected; I
found it disappointing, and heavy going, and I soon abandoned it.

Now, the fact is, I was doomed from the start. Chesterton is not Lewis,
and must be enjoyed on his own terms. If they explored some of the
same territory, they explored it in completely different styles. Lewis
set out with little but surveying instruments of the highest quality;
Chesterton set out on elephant back, with Persian rugs and his entire
library in jeweled boxes at his side. If sometimes seems that it takes
Chesterton a full page to say what Lewis can say in a sentence or two,
still, Lewis does not provide us with such a dizzying panoply of
examples, illustrations, and allusions in every breath.

Suffice it to say that I appreciated the book much more this time around.

It’s difficult to summarize Chesterton, especially at this length, but
I’ll try. We moderns have gotten used to thinking of Christianity as one
religion among many: Christianity in this column, Judaism and Islam just
adjacent, with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism just beyond that.
That is, we’ve gotten the notion that all of these labels stand for
things that are much the same underneath, when nothing could be further
from the truth. In this book, Chesterton has undertaken to show us how
different Christianity is from all of these others, and indeed how
radically different it was at its inception from the Greco-Roman paganism
it replaced–that is, how different Christ, the everlasting man of the
title, is from Zeus and all that lot. Along the way he explodes a great
many sacred cows of his day, and it’s rather surprising to note how many
of them have calves roaming our streets even today.

It’s a fascinating book, frankly, and as always with Chesterton makes me
look at some familiar things in a new way. I’m clearly going to have to
re-read it in a year or so, though, just to see what I missed the first
time through.

I used to really like Sheri Tepper’s stuff; whenever a new book came out,
I was all over it. She has a vivid imagination, and she can tell a
story. Ultimately, though, her message started to take over, and that’s
tiresome. And it happens that a good bit of her message is that Women Are Wiser
Than Men, and another bit is that Religion Is Bad, and being a male
Christian I found that even more tiresome.

Still, I remember her early books fondly; and I was quite surprised to
discover, whilst doing a little site maintenance, that I’d only read and
reviewed a single one of her books in all the time since I started
reviewing books on-line (December of 1996). So it seemed like a good
time to re-read some of them, and see how they have held up.

The books listed here are six of the nine books in Tepper’s “True Game”
series. The first three books are among her earliest, and introduce her
world. It’s a planet somewhat like our own; mankind’s arrival on the
planet was long enough ago to be a dim and dusty legend when it’s
remembered at all. And the part of the planet where our story begins is
the land of the True Game.

It seems that after the arrival of men and women on the planet, some of
them began developing strange talents. Some could fly, or lift heavy
weights with their mind, or teleport, or read minds, or (horrors) raise
the dead. Somehow–it’s unclear just how, as Tepper changes her story in
the course of the series–the notion of the True Game arose. Those who
have a power, or Talent, are Gamesmen; those who don’t are Pawns. The Gamesmen are
the elite, and they spend much of their time gaming (read, fighting)
with their peers. Being near such a battle, or grand game, is dangerous;
Gamesmen draw energy from the immediate vicinity as they use their
Talents, and an unwary pawn can be frozen to death if they are in the
wrong place at the wrong time. Or the right place at the right time, for
what else are pawns for?

It’s easy to die in such a game, so children of Gamesmen are usually sent
to a boarding school, where they will learn the rules of the True Game
and how to play it well, and this is where we meet Peter, our hero. The
first three books follow his history as he is first used in a game by a
man he trusted, gains his Talent, and takes his revenge. Along the way
he explores a goodly bit of the planet, and discovers some truly odd
things, including the Gamesmen of Barish. The Gamesmen of Barish resemble
chess pieces; there’s one for each of the first eleven legendary Gamesmen
and women. And Peter discovers that if he takes one of the pieces in
hand, he can awaken that legendary invididual and use their talent.

The first three books are OK, in a science-fantasy sort of vein, if flawed.
Tepper’s writing improves in her later books, and it’s clear that her
concept of Peter’s world evolves considerably from book to book. The
series begins with the notion that the True Game is a kind of super-chess
played with real pieces; in fact, the metaphor doesn’t work out in
practice, at least as Tepper tells the story. None of the “games” we
actually see resemble what’s described in Peter’s schooling in the
slightest. And certain segments are simply ludicrous; in the middle book,
for example, Peter discovers the “Base”, which is where the spaceship
from Earth first landed. It’s a fascinating and baroque place, where the
descendants of researchers from the original crew spend their time
breeding and studying genetic monsters. The trouble is, their motivation
for doing so is too absurd for words; it’s one place where I think
Tepper’s ideological preoccupations got the better of her.

The next three books in the series, which I didn’t re-read this time
around, involve some adventures of Peter’s mother, the famous shapeshifter
Mavin Many-Shaped. They are prequels to Peter’s part of the story, and
contain some background for the concluding three books, but as I may yet
re-read them I won’t say anything more about them here.

In the third book, Wizard’s Eleven, Peter meets an intelligent
and resourceful young woman named Jinian, and after saving her life a
couple of times not unreasonably falls in love with her. Jinian takes
center-stage in the final trio. Jinian Footseer tells of us
Jinian’s life from her childhood up to the climax of
Wizard’s Eleven, and here’s where the nuisance factor begins
to scale up.

Jinian Footseer is a much better book than the first three.
The story is more interesting; Tepper’s writing has improved; and the world
is more deeply and richly described. What’s not to like? Two
things–first, it almost doesn’t seem like the same world; it doesn’t
quite fit. Second, Tepper’s ideology shows up again. Those times when
Peter saved Jinian’s life? She arranged for it happen, so that he could
save her, so that he’d come to love her. Peter’s amazing feat at the end
of Wizard’s Eleven, that saves the day? Most of the work was
actually done by Jinian, behind the scenes.

Yes, it’s interesting to see the events from two points of view, and it’s
true that this didn’t bother me much when I first read these books. It’s
the cumulative effect that matters. And then, in the final two books,
the series takes on the aspect of a kind of environmentalist parable,
including a truly scurrilous slam on the Roman Catholic Church.

Have you ever noticed, while eating something tasty, a bit of an off-note in
the flavor? An off-note that gets not louder but more noticeable with
each bite, until finally you just can’t ignore it any longer? That’s
how I feel about these books. Well-written; interesting tales, well-told;
and an agenda I simply don’t buy.

The moral bottom-line of the series is this: it’s evil to punish those
who can’t learn to do better. And those who can’t learn to do better
should be killed. I am not, as they say, making this up. Tepper refers
many times to a particular Talent, that of the Midwives. The Midwives
are able to see the future in a particular way–that is, when they
deliver a child, they can tell whether the child will ever develop what
Tepper calls a soul and I’d call a moral compass. And if not, they
kill the child then and there. The child will never be able to learn
better, so punishing it for wrong-doing is evil, and letting it harm
others is equally evil; better kill it.

Now, at first glance it appears that there’s something to this: the
prominent Gaming families eschew the use of midwives, and we certainly
run into a number of sociopaths among their number. Arguably, Peter and
Jinian’s world would have been a better place if these conscienceless men
and women had been strangled at birth. And then it becomes clear that
Tepper extends her principle not just to sociopaths, but to any human
being that is incapable of learning–the severely retarded, for example.
Or those in a persistent vegetative state. In one book we encounter two
of the genetic monsters bred at the Base: a fat man with no legs, and a
pair of Siamese Twins with only one pair of legs between them. As
they are described to us, they are clearly sociopaths–but later on,
Tepper makes it clear that their shapes are of themselves evil,
and that children with such monstrous shapes should have been killed at
birth. Yes, she really says that.

It’s always dangerous to presume that an author believes the things her
characters avow, or that a book’s clear message necessarily represents the
author’s own views; Swift didn’t really think that selling Irish babies
at the meat-market is a good idea. But I don’t see any sign of satire,
here, and it’s a thread that runs right through the six books. And
frankly, it’s repulsive.

A few years ago I put an Amazon Honor System box on my main webpage as a tipjar. Almost immediately I got word that a long-time reader of Ex Libris Reviews had made a donation. After that, nothing. The way it works is, donated money accumulates until there’s a balance of more than $50; then they deposit the money in your bank account.

And in fact, that has never happened…until today. I’d almost forgotten that I’d set it up, and I’d long since stopped bothering to look at it. And today I received word that Amazon was going to be depositing $50 (less a small fee) to our checking account.

Now the thing is, when someone sends me money through my Amazon paybox there’s a “Send Info” button. If you click it, then I receive e-mail saying who you are and how much you donated. If you don’t press it, then I won’t even know you made the payment until Amazon deposits the money.

So what I’m saying is, I don’t know who donated the money, or how many people there were, but I’d like to say thank you: collectively, you’ve paid for my webhosting for the next five months. I really wasn’t expecting it, so it’s come as quite a pleasant surprise, and I’m truly grateful.

In addition, I’ve added the tipjar to this weblog as well, something I’ve been intending to do for ages, only it seemed rather pointless. It’s over there on the right; if you should feel so moved, I’d be glad to be grateful to you, too!

I’m not sure, but I think Mr. Smith is slacking off.

I mean to say, I read the book in part of an afternoon, and it isn’t like I
didn’t do anything else. Plus, for a
mystery novel about a private detective agency there wasn’t much detection
in, or much that was mysterious either. Granted, that’s never been a big part
of the series anyway, but the lack is more pronounced this time around.
I’ve always said that I like mystery series with strong continuing characters, but there should be more to a mystery novel than the continuing soap opera of the sleuth and her loved ones.

I enjoyed, it I guess; but had this been the first in the series, I doubt
I’d have gone on to the second.

No, I’ve not seen the new Harry Potter movie yet, though I intend to do so in the next week or two.

But this morning a correspondent wrote to recommend Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s blog, and when I went there what did I find but amazing story on Michael Berube’s blog. Mr. Berube’s son Jamie has Down’s syndrome–and the Harry Potter books have opened a whole new world of narrative for him.

I’ve always believed in the power of tales well-told, and here’s the proof.