Beautiful but labyrinthine
345984
I think that Mark Helprin is truly deft in his crafting of the English language and of imagery.  Paragraphs and pages of this book are a pleasure in an of themselves.  That said I have to admit to not being able to get into this book.  It seemed to drift for me.
3153179
This beautiful soundtrack expertly combines classical instruments, electronic ones and human vocalizations. It does a good job at evoking feelings of discovery, harmony and awe. My favorite track, as you might have guessed from the title, is "The Bioluminescence of the Night".

However, there are several shortcomings, as other reviews have mentioned. There is the one main theme that is really memorable and is carried out throughout the other tracks, however, that is the only one. Horner should have better developed other themes too with more interesting and catchy melodies. Another drawback is that a lot of the soundtrack echoes Horner's previous work. He should have left the old things behind and brought newer music to the table. Lastly, although I can admire Leona Lewis' "I See You" song, it doesn't really evoke much emotion. It's a pretty song, but it does not surpass "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic. I just don't see it climbing the charts much.

Despite all this, I did enjoy the soundtrack, perhaps not as much as Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, but I do like it and give it 4 out of 5.
2898638
The cover art is gorgeous.  Well, it is.  The most ecstatic of my praise for Ascension undoubtedly goes to the cover, although it doesn't quite match Kara Dalkey's description of Nia.  The book itself is a fairly decent read, but at the risk of being facetious, about half a star of my rating goes to the designer and illustrator of the covers for the trilogy.
I imagine that it is exceedingly difficult to write a book about a culture completely submerged in water, and Kara Dalkey clearly puts some thought into the creation of this society, with attention to details in the type of houses, foods, materials, social classes, and schools.  I particularly liked the pun inherent in the academy, where pupils swim after the instructor in a group, rather like a school of fish.  Dalkey goes to considerable lengths to invent life in Atlantis, and many of the elements, such as the Farworlders and their Avatars, are intriguing and pleasingly exotic.
But for all that, it's still hard to, er, completely submerge oneself in Nia's watery realm.  For one thing, I have never managed to hold coherent conversations underwater; even a single word usually comes out hopelessly garbled.  There is no evidence that they speak any differently than humans-- if giggles result in a stream of bubbles, surely speech does too?  But what is more jarring to any feeling of complete integration in Nia's world is not the occasional inconsistency, but the feeling that it is a carefully fabricated, intricately thought out work of imagination, a sensation that the best works of imagination never convey.  I was never fully convinced in the existence of Kara Dalkey's Atlantis as I was in, say, Lloyd Alexander's Prydain or Paula Volsky's Vonahr.  Often the abundance of detailed descriptions do not provide a sense of realism and smooth integration into Nia's world so much as make the book seem like a stilted tour guide to Atlantis, complete with information on local delicacies, transportation, entertainment, and customs.  From a book written from Nia's perspective, even with the third person narration, there are too many explanations that a native of Atlantis such as Nia probably wouldn't even think twice about.  Occasionally, such as in the school scene, things become even more bogged down with awkward, bulky history lessons about Atlantis.
What really saves Ascension is Nia herself.  Unlike the other rather flat and/or undeveloped characters in the book, the villains in particular, she is completely believable, realistic, and likable despite-- or because of-- her flaws.  Nia's emotions as the startling events in Atlantis occur are realistic without being overdone or sickeningly melodramatic; for a character who isn't even human, she's a much more convincing teenager than many other fictional, human, teenagers.
Ascension isn't really a complete tale of itself, unfortunately, and while it doesn't end on an outright cliffhanger, having the rest of the trilogy on hand would probably be a good idea.  Despite the Water trilogy's flaws, I do think that it is a series worth reading, particularly when in later books more mythology become entertwined in surprising ways.  Readers who liked Ascension might also enjoy Diana Wynne Jones's The Power of Three, which deals partially with mermaids (of a sort, anyway)...
740565
I could go on, but J.S.M. pretty much articulated my reaction to this recording more brilliantly than I would have managed. Ms. de la Salle exhibits flashes of inspiration and brilliance; her tone is mostly lovely, her technique is impressive. But her quirky Chopinesque Mozart, though seductive in places, was hard for me to swallow. Further, I found her Prokofiev toccata to be a bit mechanical and heavy-handed - I prefer the fleeter treatments by Argerich and by Francois.
4456177
The style of Virginia Woolf's writing may have been revolutionary in its time but while there is some beautiful imagery here, I struggled to stay interested as the narrative skipped from character to character in a steady stream of consciousness that captures almost every random thought they have over the course of a day.
I will try and read this again as many reviewers have written about the depth that only becomes clear on multiple readings. I loved some of the scenes that were portrayed in her wanderings about London and the settings are wonderfully described. I just felt this really wasn't for me but I'm not sorry to have made the attempt.
1766063
The writing is beautiful in this novel, but I feel that it becomes trapped between nature writing and relationship writing. The main character, Rachel, has such a flat affect that it's difficult to be sympathetic with her, though the details of her pregnancy and new motherhood are interesting. The project of reintroducing wolves into England is potentially fascinating, but we are kept at a distance from it, as if Sarah Hall feels that expressing too much detail is inappropriate or even prurient. The result is an oddly nuanced book, a bit cold where it should be warm.

I can see why some readers feel frustrated with Rachel. The relationship between Rachel and her mother, Binny, is particularly well done at the opening, so subsequent events are jarring. That between Rachel and her brother blossoms late, so it is in some ways unsatisfying too. And the boyfriends in the piece are too uniformly accommodating -- blank slates upon which Rachel can choose to write or not. Enviable . . . but not realistic.

Yet for these negative comments, THE WOLF BORDER is quite interesting. The writing is beautiful, which helps a lot. And I was curious throughout to see if there would be huge events, or if the same even keel atmosphere would prevail. (No spoilers!) This is the first Sarah Hall novel I've read, and I will try others. But I can't recommend THE WOLF BORDER wholeheartedly, because many readers will be frustrated by the tone or the lack of deep passion. Give it a try, and by the end of the first chapter, you will know whether you like it.
4278394
The language in this book is rich, evocative, and sometimes slyly arch, but the story is a bit strange. The heroine, Marie, runs away from a cruel circus-master to a small town, where she begins to play a tune on her violin. But Jacques De'Arthenay (his name is a remnant of his Huguenot ancestors; everyone in his town pronounces his name "Jakes") shows up glowering, because he thinks music is the work of the devil. His glower makes Marie just as certain that Jacques is the work of the devil, himself. But, of course, Jacques has already (and quite against his will) fallen in love with Marie...

The story is meant to be sweet, and parts of it are, but given that Marie is the romantic heroine it's hard not to be a little disturbed by the narrative emphasis on how young and child-like she is. Even leaving aside his feelings about music, she seems far, far too young for Jacques.
4217597
This is one of the most pleasurable books to own in term so its artwork (far cry from Gray's anatomy0. It reminded me of the exquisite artwork that made Scientific American postively redolent when I was a child many years ago.  The influence of Chris Frith on the writing has ensured that the text is clear and concise on important scientific points.  It does however share the hubris of all modern neuroscience by persistently interchanging talk of thoughts, emptions and feelings with talk of brain activity, brain scan interpretations, etc.  I am loathe to dismiss this epistemological violation as a stylistic error but in the beautiful aesthetic context of the rest of the book I let it slide.  This book is not eye candy, by any means.  The explanations and descriptions are constructed to be read.  However, the artwork reinforces the old adage: a picture tells a thousand words.  If you have an interest in anything to do with the brain, even down to delicate sweetbread fritters in a provncale sauce, this book is for you.
3605305
The Pupil does for the brief, meditative lyric what Merwin's Travels did for the elegy and The Folding Cliffs for the historical narrative, and that is to live as perhaps the only examples of those forms to attain the stature of greatness and beauty in the last 25 years.  I hope they presage a new possibility in verse, but I don't know of another living poet writing even close to this well out of a faith in the transparency of the word, except maybe some late Creeley.  I don't mean this to say that Merwin is dated, more that it must somehow still be possible, since he does it, to write referential poetry and poetry with clearly stated ideas in it without being boring.  He often seeems to me like a rarified, or purified, ghost of what used to be considered human to human communication, alive somehow in a space we more remember than encounter, where there were transpersonal signifiers that allowed us to understand something of each other even as we slip away from the understanding and from each other.  The poems themselves sometimes function as an elegy for this belief, but I hope it's premature, not eulogy.  That said, I find it difficult to write about Merwin, in that his poems seem to mean exactly what they say, to float ethereal and wraithlike in the mind's capaciousness, a loveliness one fears to touch or think about.  You can't read these poems if you're nervous, or looking to find impressive things to say about them, or enter Derridean chains of substitution, and in that regard, they become so transparent, so self-evident, as to enter their opposite and become as opaque as reflecting onyx.  As much as I hate to say so, they hint toward the belief, normally misguided, that poetry this beautiful has to come from a spiritually realized person.  I'd rather just consent to the idea that the defining lines of The Pupil are from the Marfa Lights, about how it is the light, not the darkness, that everyone feels the need to explain, and so here is a collection of poems of darkness like that, the darkness glimpsed in a just opened mouth, the word spoken as music and its reference as perhaps a shadow music in near perfect unison.  The only poems that seem to handle this kind of writing this well are Rexroth's meandering mountain and river poems of cloud and light (only with a deeper and quieter engagement with human transiency), and what I'm able to imagine of the great Sung and Tang Chinese masters through the layers of sensibilities, translations and my dictionary Chinese.  When reading these poems one is brought into a quiet center, or shadow or seam, between sorrow and beauty that exists through these expressions but cannot be expressed.  This poetry is exquisite.  I'd strongly recommend you buy it, calm down, and let it work its magic.
2025558
Very well-focalized, and an evenly produced sound (granted, there is no special color, nor low register) --- but the problem is the anonymous quality of the interpretations.  If you want to truly understand Iphigenie's predicament in her aria 'O malheureuse Iphigenie', seek Janet Baker.  Not a generalized torment beautifully sounded -- but a moment of tormented grandeur.
277947
So I love Labyrinth. It's my favorite movie ever. I have pined after the novelization for years, but didn't want to spend $100s on it. The covers and back are really pretty and the book is sturdy. I love the art by Brian Froud and the pages from Jim Hensons notes. The novel itself...eh. A lot of it is word for word of the movie, but there is a lot of extra dialogue and scenes. There are also a lot of thoughts from Sarah. The way she is written, she comes off as clinically insane (she believes bad things will happen if her room is out of order and sometimes wishes to hurt Toby). Some of the extra scenes are really useless (the door with the knocker in his ears is opened in the book and random). Sarah is REALLY whiny and spends 90% of the book sobbing. She's whiny in the move, yes, but the novel is a different level. The novel version of Sarah I am hating. Jareth also comes off really pervy and kind of like a pedophile. Overall, it's a nice addition to own...just not to read. Skip it, unless you want to own it just because. The art alone is a good reason to actually buy it
4669764
Like the musical Bardo itself, a space somewhere in between life and death, this book is somewhere between great and awful. It is often times incoherent, tedious, and full of confusion. At other times, it is beautiful, poignant, wonderfully atmospheric and mystical. The style of the book makes it very hard to enjoy and therefore this is a book that is very difficult to recommend, as I have a feeling anyone who reads this book will either love it or hate it. Thus - it too occupies 'the space between.'
3389732
In 1920s Barcelona, David Martn is struggling to get by as a writer and longing to be noticed by the lovely Cristina, daughter of his mentor's chauffeur. When David discovers that his true mtier is for Gothic, sensational stories, he comes to the attention of the mysterious publisher Andreas Corelli, who offers him a fortune to write a shocking book which will be the keystone to a new religion. His involvement with Corelli, however, does not lead David to fame and fortune, but deeper and deeper into a maze of fantastical, dangerous events.

I loved Zafn's previous book, _The Shadow of the Wind_, to which this is a prequel of sorts, but alas, I was disappointed in _The Angel's Game_. I still love Zafn's very vivid, visual, almost Hitchcockian style -- I noticed myself visualizing scenes in detail more than I usually do -- and the use of books as keys to the story, and I appreciated the subtle links with _The Shadow of the Wind_. However, I did not love the characters; I found David selfish and Cristina nearly a non-entity. I don't require that a novel's characters be perfectly admirable, or they would be boring, but I do want them to have more depth and at least some likeability. (I did really like David's devoted friend Isabella, and had more of the book been about her, I would have liked it more.) The plot veers wildly about and finally devolves into an ending which simply baffled me. In the end, though the lush writing and tense action kept me reading to the end, I found _The Angel's Game_ more style than substance.
20350
The designs and ideas are creative and gorgeous.  There are times when the directions are unclear.  Wording could be much simpler, straightforward, which would help.
2849232
Let me preface this review by stating that I think Cormac McCarthy is one of the world's greatest living novelists, and The Road exhibits his mastery of the writing craft. The book is poetic and disturbingly beautiful. I typically love melancholy art, however something about McCarthy's nihilism does not sit well with me. There is a quality to the suffering and hopelessness that the protagonists undergo that is hard to define, perhaps a mean-spiritedness. I also have problems with the author's philosophy but that is a discussion for another time.
2373951
"Balthazar" is the second of the sibling tomes of Lawrence Durrell's "Alexandria Quartet". The novel allows the reader to dive again deep into Alexandrian life and see everything what happens already in "Justine" from a different angle.

Darley, the narrator, still living in seclusion on the remote Greek Island, has sent the story (i.e. Justine) to one of the Alexandrian friends, Balthazar, the Jewish, gay doctor interested in philosophy and theology, initiator of the Kabbalah group, suspected of spying activity. Balthazar during his short visit on the island gives Darley the manuscript back together with a substantial amount of notes, which (with Darley's comments) are reconstituted in this volume. Darley was prompted to add a lot of the notes, as, reflecting upon them, he realized that despite his doubts, expressed in "Justine", many things he took for granted are completely different than he thought.

Balthazar sees the events described in "Justine" from his own point of view, and, having often more information or just different sources than Darley, his versions of events add to or change the descriptions from the first volume. New characters are introduced, and those, who were merely mentioned or hinted upon (Pursewarden, Mountolive, Leila, Narouz), become central, and their preoccupations and emotions are at the first plane. These shifts, instead of clarifying things that were blurred and mysterious in "Justine" make the narrative even more slippery and allusive. New avenues open for each event, tales within tales are discovered, which need their own explanation, and the atmosphere is even more dreamy... The motivations of ome characters, especially Nessim, seem to change completely from what Darley perceived, as new events are revealed. The search for the truth obviously cannot end here, so the reader needs to proceed to "Mountolive".

Alexandria becomes even more of a main character in this novel, and definitely the one with the strongest and versatile personality. Most of the other characters, struck by destructive love (again the analysis of love is one of the main themes, although the secret service intrigue gets more momentum), are impressionable, prone to spontaneous, sudden behaviors, and transient. The climactic event, as the hunting party was in Justine, is this time the carnival ball, where the reader roams the streets together with the characters in disguise... and is a witness to another death.

"Balthazar" is even more full of aphorisms than "Justine" - there seems to be a sentence for any occasion, and whereas the generalizations of love may appear trivial, childish even, the truths about literature and theoretical background of Durrell's enterprise to create a novel which would reflect its times, are amazingly formulated and put into the mouth of the surprising number of the writer characters (look especially for what Pursewarden has to say).

In summary, this is another delightful volume, different than "Justine" and only giving the reader the appetite for more of Durrell's Alexandria!
2117672
It's surreal and pretty. Pandora is a fox girl who lives all alone in a land of broken things. With nobody visiting her, she spends her time fixing things. One day, an injured bird falls out of the sky and she helps nurse it back to health. It starts flying, taking trips away and returning with gifts. Then one day it doesn't return and she's very sad. The place in her house where its nest was grows into a massive tree, which is somewhat confusing, and plants grow all over the place and the bird returns after nature has kind of reclaimed the whole land of broken things.

I'm not really sure what it means, but the gorgeous level of detail makes it a beautiful experience nonetheless. The book's flap describes it as a "fable about renewal and the power of hope, friendship, and nature." Somehow I missed the fable part of it, because a fable usually has a moral. There's a stunning beauty to the illustrations, and a subtle message about helping other people, working together, and the power of nature. It's vague but positive.

Message: Be kind to others.

For more children's book reviews, see my website at drttmk dot com.