Lucas Blogs About Books

So, what's this book's deal? You know, Hypothetical Reader, you've been pretty cool about every book being an entry in the same series for the last several weeks. I guess I have, maybe I'm growing. Or maybe I just forgot to write you as a scold. Thanks. So, Tales from Earthsea  is the fifth entry in the increasingly inaccurately named Earthsea trilogy ( to borrow a joke from the Hitchhiker's Guide series ). This time around it's actually a collection of short stories. Shit! You're not gonna give each one its own review like you did with Terra Incognita , are you? No, I've learned my lesson. One review for the whole book. So, this sort of expands on the project begun in Tehanu . That is to say, Le Guin continues to interrogate the base assumptions of her own imagined world. None of the stories is a direct continuation of Tehanu , but there are a number of thematic similarities in these stories. So let's get going. First there's...

Hmm, I know I've seen this book cover before  . . .  somewhere . So, what's this book's de—motherf— Last one, I promise. I just think you're setting a bad precedent. What if you finally finish one of your phonebook sized short story collections? We'll burn that bridge when we get to it. You know that's not the expr— Oh, and spoilers for "Remake," I guess. AUGH! So, the deal? All right, so Theodora Baumgarten finds her life transformed when she's whisked away to the IASA's (International Air and Space Administration, I assume) academy. And get this, it's in SPACE! SPACE! SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE! So I take it that she's excited? Naw, her bunkmate, Libby, is ecstatic, but Theodora hates it, not least of all because she didn't apply to go to the academy—she wanted to go to UCLA.  However, when an assembly is called to announce the latest Academy appointee, it's Theodora. After a few hours, she'...

Finally, a prequel to American Gods ! So, what's this book's deal? Hold up, Hypothetical Reader, are you really asking me what a book called Norse Mythology  is about? Well, I mean, it could be anything, it could be an academic treatise on the subject, it could be a misprint in a collection of stories about legendary equines, it could be. . . Okay, I get it. Norse Mythology  is a collection of short stories about the Norse gods, which all happen to be in sequential order, but don't necessarily coalesce into a single story. Gaiman sources the stories back to the  Prose  and  Poetic Eddas , and even talks about the ways he tweaked the stories to maintain an internal continuity. What can I say? It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a book with the words: "Neil Gaiman" and "Norse Mythology" on the cover. Gaiman presents these stories of gods, elves, dwarfs, giants, and ogres in plain, clear prose that leaves intact the darkness ...