The Magician King by Lev Grossman is hilarious. Following The Magicians, The Magician King picks up where it left off. The Fillorian Kings & Queens, Eliot, Janet, Quentin and Julia, are aimlessly enjoying the riches of Fillory. Quentin in particular is a tad bored by their royal status, which involves lounging, drinking and indulging in reckless games and overeating. This is the problem really. Quentin is bored. He’s looking for an adventure. After two years as king of Fillory, he’s got a little paunch and a bout of kingly aspirations to rule something or conquer the unexpected or to find some thrill in the routine that is now his day.

In case a memory spell has been cast upon you, the quartet are mere mortals who’ve come to rule Fillory via Brakesbill College (for wizardry) and a subsequent series of adventures much like an adult version of The Chronicles of Narnia.

What I love about Grossman’s writing is that it’s fantasy with questions. In Harry Potter and the Narnia books, the characters just accept that this is magic and it is what it is. But Grossman’s characters comment upon it. “Two years as a king of Fillory and he (Quentin) was still shit at horseback riding” … “The news that real dragons lived in rivers, and didn’t go thundering around the countryside setting trees on fire, had come as a disappointment to him” … and then journeying to the underworld “it wasn’t a perfect system‚ every time he got up a decent head of speed he would get stuck and have to scooch again, his butt squeaking loudly in the pitch-black.”

There’s something more real about characters that would comment on the world around them, and the descriptions of magic are visceral. Grossman describes the smell of casting a spell and the wonkiness of magic cast by those untrained, or the differences between old magic and newer magic. Old magic usually had any obvious bugs or loopholes worked out long ago, for example, you could expect that if you had a key that it would fit into an invisible lock even if you were on a moving ship vs. standing still on land.

I hope Lev Grossman continues to write this series. I won’t spoil the ending but I’m left with an intake of breath and wondering “now what?”

Oh, and Grossman’s novels always have me dreaming in magic, just like Harry Potter. It flips a switch in my brain, like when you ski hard all day and then dream of skiing.

Chuck Klosterman has quite the reputation in my house. His novel Downtown Owl fast became a favourite and Eating the Dinosaur is one of the few books that I want to re-read over and over again.

The Visible Man falls somewhere in the range of Downtown Owl and If Minds Had Toes. The novel is philosophical in the way of If Minds Had Toes but quirky and strange like Downtown Owl.

The novel opens with Victoria Vick’s letter to the editor along with the submission of the final draft of her manuscript. The reader soon discovers that Vick’s ms is about a strange incident between her and her patient Y_____. Vick is a licensed therapist and the manuscript, which we are about to read, is a compilation of transcripts of phone, email and in-person sessions she’s had with a very strange man who, over the course of their sessions, reveals that he worked on a relatively secret government project to construct an invisibility suit. Y_____ is currently using the suit for his own “investigative” research into how humans behave when they are utterly alone. Through various means he gains access to their homes and observes them. His goal with the therapy sessions is to remove doubt or guilt that he believes society would like him to feel about these acts.

A ton of things are very wrong with the scenarios presented but Victoria goes along with it, assuming at first that Y____ is highly delusional. Then she’s suckered in. In some ways it’s like the stoner philosophical arguments you overhear and are unable to pull away from because you remember from your high school English studies that the Shakespearian fool speaks the truth. (Or, maybe that’s just me.)

According to this National Post review, The Visible Man is a fictional spin-off from the Eating the Dinosaur essay on voyeurism (titled “Through A Glass, Blindly”). In both, Klosterman explores whether we are most ourselves when no one’s watching.

I’m off now to swing pillows wildly around the room to make sure I’m alone. Just acting normal. PKS. Post Klosterman Syndrome.

Winner of the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize

Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan begins in Paris 1940 with Sid and Hieronymus restless after a late night of recording and in search of milk in a Paris cafe. Sid is an American bass player and Hiero is a brilliant trumpet player. So brilliant that Louis Armstrong has recognized his talent and asked him to cut a record with a band he’s formed. Hiero is 20 years old, German and black. He’s arrested in the cafe that day and not heard from again.

Sid was dealing with some irritable bowels when “the Boots” came in and he watches in fear from the stairwell as Hiero is arrested. It’s his guilt we wrestle with and try to understand throughout the novel. Did he want the kid arrested? Was he really frozen in fear and should have our sympathies?

Fifty years later, Sidney Griffiths and drummer Chip Jones come to Europe for the showing of a documentary about their legendary time in Paris with Hiero, “the kid.” But Chip’s planned another itinerary, which involves visiting Hiero. He’s discovered the kid is alive, blind and living in Poland.

The novel flips back and forth from the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin and the legends of Jazz in pre-war Paris to Sid and Chip’s geriatric return. Each episode draws the reader deeper into the relationships of the band members and the local colour of Berlin and Paris in the early haze of their WWII days.

The depictions of the band playing with Louis Armstrong and recording their own record are dynamite. It’s jazz from a musician’s point of view and it’s poetic.

Quote: It was the sound of the gods, all that brass. It was the old Armstrong and the new, that mature distilled essence of a master and the boy he used to be, the boy who could make his glissandi snap like marbles, the high Cs piercing. Hiero thrown out note after shimmering note, like sunshine sliding all over the surface of a lake, and Armstrong was that water, all depth and thought, not one wasted note. Hiero, he just reaching out, seeking the shore; Armstrong stood there calling across to him. Their horns sound so naked, so blunt, you felt almost guilty listening to it, like you eavesdropping. After some minutes Chip stopped singing, left just the two golden ropes of sound to intertwine.

See more of my thoughts as part of the Vancouver Sun Book Club.

Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
Published by Thomas Allen
Canadian author

Half-Blood Blues on Amazon.ca

The Bird Sisters made me incredibly sad. The book is great. My 1-line review would be “delicate and sturdy.”

The basic plot line follows two sisters, Milly and Twiss, and one summer when everything falls apart. Their father, who’s a golf pro, has an accident and loses his form. Their mother’s scorn becomes unbearable. And then their cousin from Deadwater arrives to spend the summer while her parents get divorced, which is the ultimate fly in the ointment.

The Bird Sisters is set in the 40s in Spring Green, Wisconsin. All the pettiness of a small town runs throughout the book, as well as all the treasures. There is a delicateness to each of the characters, almost like they are about to break, yet also a sturdiness to Milly and Twiss. I’m not sure which broke my heart but there is a scene in this book where “nice” is no longer nice.

A wonderful debut. And notably, the first book that I’ve read because of the internet. There are a ton of books that I hear about online but I’ve typically had them on my radar from word of mouth, publisher catalogues, or personal recommendations. The Bird Sisters, funny enough, or perhaps intentionally, came to me via twitter. I watched this title build momentum and really wanted to read it. I even remember checking if Ardea Books had it and having no idea what the book was about, only that it was a novel. I’m glad the twitter about The Bird Sisters was legit.

Visit thebirdsisters.com to read an excerpt