Of sorcery and beauty

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that I’m quite the avid reader. One of my favourite genres is fantasy, which started when my mother got me The Wishsong of Shannara by Terry Brooks for my 13^th birthday.

Of course, the rest is history.

One of favourite books from that particular genre is Polgara the Sorceress by David & Leigh Eddings. This, of course, was written waaaay before he degenerated into slothful works like The Dreamers.

It was a beautiful story. On one level, it was a good start for beginners of the genre; simple prose, good dialogue (which happens to be the Eddingses’ forte), and enough magic to assuage one’s hunger for the incredible. To a seasoned fantasist; it has drama, adventure, and magic aplenty. For longtime followers of The Belgariad and The Malloreon series, it serves as a bookend and prologue of sorts to the preceding stories. It delves into the history of the titular character and gets into who and what she is—her motivations and her and dedication to her charges. And for the sentimentalists, there is enough romance to fill-up your Mills & Boon’s fetish.

I’m not going to spoil it for you, but I recommend you to get a copy—buy, steal, rent, whatever. Just make sure you read it.

Polgara the Sorceress by David & Leigh Eddings

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The Twilight craze is insane. Yes, I know it is a tautology, but it is what it is. I’ll admit I have all four books—Breaking Dawn hardcover!—but I’ve only read them once. I’m not saying Stephenie Meyer is a horrible writer. She’s good at manipulating the language. The key word here being manipulating. Just as how she belabours the obvious beauty of the vampires, she seems particularly vague when it came to Bella. Yes, I know she’s dark-haired and pale-skinned. So does almost every Goth/emo girl out there. What’s the exact hair colour? Chestnut, dark brown, highlights? Almost any girl can project what she is onto the character and experience forbidden love vicariously through the book.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret purchasing those four books. Nor am I discounting rereading them. I even have favourite parts in the book that I paused and reread several times—the birth scene is my ultimate favourite. It’s like Aliens meet Sweet Valley High, by way of Anne Rice. However, unlike Rice’s vampires who could be very sexual, sensual and decadent Meyer’s came across as repressed and awfully ethical. Then again, Meyer is a Mormon so perhaps we should’ve expected that.

Except Edward, of course. The whole stalking, passive-aggressive, controlling, I-know-better-than-you-fragile-human shtick is just wrong. I’m expected to accept that this is what most pubescent girls go ga-ga over?

I don’t think so! Then again, we have to account for Justin Bieber’s fame so what the Hell do I know, eh?

So, it is with great trepidation that I picked up Beautiful Creatures. After having Jacob from Twilight go all WASP-y and whiney on me as he watched Bella vacillate between werewolf-human or vampire-human pairings I have some reservations about female writers writing from a male protagonist’s point of view.

I was humbled to say that my misgivings were unfounded. Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl have managed to write something fresh, yet familiar. The hero Ethan Waite tends to overanalyze but with the advent of the “sensitive new age guy” or SNAG, I can deal with that. And before you throw up your hands in disgust and say, “Oh wonderful! Just what we need, another fragile hero!” allow me to set a few points across:

1. Ethan is a rough-and-tumble kind of guy.

2. Ethan is understanding, yet pushy (like every young man he spouts understanding and yet gets demanding—without making any bones or excuses for it. Suck it, Edward!)

3. Ethan has issues—real ones (unlike Bella’s “I’m the new girl but so darn superior ‘cos I’ve done your lab work at my previous school!”) which ran the gamut from heavy stuff (distant and emotionally disturbed father), to small potatoes (flaky/spacy best friend), to having his life unravel by lies and falsehoods (nope, that would be spoiling it).

I know, itemizing the above makes one wonder how is a high-school senior supposed to get through this without reserving a spot at the Betty Ford Centre? Yet, for all that never once did the writing devolve into melodrama. Stohl and Garcia kept it paced just nice. Slow enough for you to digest the angst and speedy enough you want to see a good ass-kicking done.

Beautiful Creatures and its sequel Beautiful Darkness is out now. So grab a copy and enjoy!