The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey around South America - Ernesto ('Che') Guevara

The account of two Argentinian travellers exploring South America on a disaster prone motorbike is, I believe, interesting in itself, even if you don't know anything about Che Guevara. If this is the case, I'd suggest you either go and find out, or read this book first and see what you think of him before looking at the rest of the review, because I'm interested to know what sort of impression people get from it before they find out anything else about him. I haven't figured out where this review is going yet (as with the last three...) so please excuse me.

Guevara, a 23 year old medical student, leaves Buenos Aires on their motorcycle, 'La Poderosa II', in January of 1952 with his friend Alberto Granado, and returns home in September of that year minus both friend and bike. They pass through Chile, where the people are incredibly friendly, and Peru, where they get through a lot of sightseeing; then Colombia, and Venezuela. In this edition, at least, letters from Che Guevara to his parents are interspersed with his diary entries. I get the impression that these have been altered for publication, and of course it's inevitable that the translation isn't as direct as the original, but the entries are very readable - they're written with a sense of humour, and apparent honesty; Guevara doesn't hold back in telling of how they used their positions as 'doctors' to cadge meals or few nights' accomodation at the local hospitals, getting drunk and having to escape an enraged husband, their 'anniversary routine' - I hope you'll appreciate this so I'm putting it in:

"1. One of us says something in a loud voice immediately identifying us as Argentine, something with a che in it and other typical expressions and pronunciation. The victim asks where we're from and we strike up a conversation.

2. We begin our tale of woe but don't make too much of it, all the while staring into the distance.

3. Then I butt in and ask what the date is. Someone says it and Alberto sighs and says: 'What a coincidence, it was exactly a year ago.' The victim asks what was a year ago, and we reply that was when we started out on our trip.

4. Alberto, who is much more brazen than me, then heaves a tremendous sigh and says, 'Shame we're in such dire straits, we won't be able to celebrate' (he says this as a kind of aside to me). The victim immediately offers to pay, we pretend to refuse for a while saying we can't possibly pay him back, etc., then we finally accept.

5. After the first drink, I adamantly refuse another and Alberto makes fun of me. Our host gets annoyed and insists, I keep refusing but won't say why. The victim keeps asking until I confess, rather shamefacedly, that in Argentina it's the custom to eat when we drink. Just how much we eat depends on what we think we can get away with, but the technique never fails."

- Ernesto Che Guevara, 1995. The Motorcycle Diaries. 'Our hopes are dashed', p115-116. Verso: London.

Please excuse the rather long quotation and the referencing :P This is only one of the many things they come up with - a Kiwi OE seems so dull by comparison. An excellent thing about Che Guevara's writing is how ordinarily he treats his adventures (I'm not sure if this is what he actually thought - perhaps this is completely normal behaviour for South American guys in the 1950s - or if it's just a feature of his writing style); he doesn't try to excuse their actions, and writes very casually about recurrent asthma attacks, or about swimming across the Amazon to visit a leper colony.

You may have seen the film of The Motorcycle Diaries - it's good, although in some ways I think the book does more justice to the characters, being a first hand account. However, the movie does emphasise a lot of the material that Che Guevara downplays, for example the way they deal with the patients in the leper colony (normally, compared the way they're treated by the doctors and nuns), and works well in combination with the book.

Che Guevara's developing political and social views also come across to an extent - in his birthday speech at the leper colony, where he talks about a united South American identity, or when he writes of meeting a Communist couple in Chile '..what had burgeoned in him [the husband] was nothing more than the natural desire for a better life...' and the treatment of workers at a Chilean copper mine. He tells his mother about staying in a hospital in Colombia - '...by which I mean a chair to spend the night in. We aren't all that broke, but explorers of our stature would rather die than pay for the bourgeois comfort of a hostel.' Comments like these might not be entirely noticeable, though, unless you know more about his later life.

Well, I apologise profusely for the quality of the review, and all I can say now is that I strongly recommend you read this book (and watch the film), because they're humorous/entertaining, and thought-provoking; if you don't know much about South America they're also informative, and give an insight into the development of (I think) the world's most influential socialist revolutionary.

The Dreamers' Quartet - David & Leigh Eddings

The Dreamers Quartet: The Elder Gods, The Treasured One, Crystal Gorge, The Younger Gods

David & Leigh Eddings

David Eddings is undoubtedly one of the father-figures of fantasy fiction. He is commonly credited with inventing what is now known as “generic fantasy fiction.” As such his older works can seem a little stale and predictable if you have read vast quantities, but as the creator of it, he should still be applauded.

I wasn’t sure what this quartet would be like when I picked it up. Being Eddings I was well aware that it could be more of the same old same old. Yet from works such as The Redemption of Althalus I know it could be fantastically different.

I’ll get it out of the way now: I didn’t entirely like this series. It was relatively different to Eddings’ previous work, and had some interesting ideas flowing round in it, but it just didn’t sit right with me. I’ll get back to this point later.

Brief synopsis of the whole thing: On a planet somewhere out there in a universe is a continent called the Land of Dhrall. It is split into 5 parts, 4 of which are the domains of different sibling gods and goddesses. Each god watches over their land (North, South, East or West) for a few eons, and then goes to sleep. When they are sleeping, their counterparts awaken and take charge for the next few eons. Each phase the order of hierarchy among the gods changes to keep things fair.

In the centre of this continent is a wasteland. It is ruled by something called the Vlagh. It is effectively a giant insect queen that tampers with genetics. Each time the insect nation come up against a problem the Vlagh goes into a cocoon and figures out what natural tools her next brood should be born with, and then lays a clutch accordingly. Unfortunately she is not bound by natural limitations to evolution so her children can be part mammalian, part insectoid, and so on. Anyway, like all good insects, basically their aim is to find more food, and grow the family. So their eyes have turned out of the Wasteland, beyond the encircling mountains, to the other parts of Dhrall. While the insects still only live for about 6 weeks at most, the Vlagh seems to be eternal, and directs her brood through an insect overmind setup.

Human life has not been going for all that long on Dhrall (still in the stone age more or less, some being tribal-hunting lands, some being farming communities) and the Gods become concerned about their wellbeing if the Vlagh is going to start attacking them. Thus they go overseas to find other more developed civilisations (who know about bronze, and iron etc) and recruit them all to fight in Dhrall. The Gods themselves are bound not to kill any creature, or perform activities that will knowingly bring about death – to Humans, animals, or the Vlagh’s brood – which is why they needed other people to fight for them.

Over the 4 books, 4 pivotal battles are fought against the Vlagh, with lots of extra stuff happening around them. The plot in general is rather cool, with clever conventions and twists to keep it interesting. There is a little too much dues ex machina but that’s only to be expected when you have 4+ gods involved in the world.

The characters are very Eddings typical characters. They are painted with very broad strokes. One race all seem pretty much the same except for a few characters with extra colour running through their personality. The next race can be completely different to the first, but all the same within their community. All these conflicting personalities are thrown together to overcome the big issues. It’s something that works well for Eddings.

It makes for a fair quartet. Not bad reading, and once you start you will want to know the end. But I’m just hazarding that you may want to spare yourself some pain and not bother entirely. It’s up to you.

I will say this before I start moaning. The first book was really good. Truly it was fantastic. It hooked me enough to want to read the rest of the series no matter how bad as I wanted to know the conclusion. Books 2-4 were sloppy, and not as tight or well prepared.

Now on to my gripes: My biggest one is that the storyline repeats itself. I’m not just meaning that the same things happen in each situation, I am literally meaning that you keep getting the same plot happening in exactly the same time.

Why? Somewhere between writing the first and second books the Eddings’ decided that character development could be furthered much better if we got to see the past (and present!) that moulded them. As such the reader is subjected to frequent detours and repetitious material for both main characters and minors. They’re not simply: Hold up! When this dude was young his life was like this…

They go further than that and you end up reading about the same battles, the same meetings, and the same journeys multiple times.

Now I accept this was an attempt to show that different people see situations differently depending on their upbringing and process of evolution, but it’s BORING. It could have been done well, but in my opinion it wasn’t. Hearing the same guy describe the plot of the previous books from 3-4 different points of view is not cool! It’s not needed. Hell I just read the previous books! Please don’t treat me like a moron with a 5 second attention span and the short term memory of a goldfish! Reading about the deep past is useful, reading internal responses to the current situations is also interesting, but having them simply relate the same narrative of events with only a couple of personal thoughts about it is not good.

Frankly it ruined what could have been a really good series. Sorry.

The transitions between 3^rd and 1^st person narrative is also choppy and unpleasant at times. There was no 1^st person in book 1. It came in in book 2, and that was about when I started to think “uh-oh.”

Maybe it’s just me. Perhaps I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for the books, or not the targeted audience. Maybe you should read them to see what they’re like first-hand, as my response is evidently shrouded in distaste and bias. They are good writers, but this effort failed in structure, in plot and conventions it was right up there.

I will say this: The ending was not what I expected. I personally felt cheated, angry and let down to some degree, but also satisfied that it wasn't predictable to the end. A spectrum of feelings has been awoken in me while reading this book and perhaps that makes it epic. I love and hate it, find it interesting and boring, innovative and generic, bland and full of twists, fulfilling and emptying.

The final thing I would like to say is this: may the spirit of Leigh Eddings rest in peace in whichever world she escaped to. She provided countless contributions to almost all of David’s works, whether her name is on the front or not. It will be interesting indeed to see what David comes up with in the future, without the direct influence of his equally talented wife. Although being 76 himself he may just be ready to hang up the pen.

The Quest of the Fair Unknown - Gerald Morris

I feel like reviewing something. However, there's one problem with this - namely that I'm a chronic procrastinator, and I haven't actually read a book since... umm... When did Harry Potter come out? Was there a Terry Pratchett after that? I think there was... oh yes!! I read "Making Money" at Christmas. But you've all read that, I suspect. Even if you haven't, it's pretty much in the same vein as the rest, and just as brilliant. So what do I review?

Well, I guess what I do is think waaaay back... And seeing as how I'm in a medieval mood at the moment, I think of... Gerald Morris! Now, when was the last time I read one of those books...? Must have been 2006 or 2007, cos I read one that came out in 2006, called the Quest of the Fair Unknown. So I'll review that.

For those who haven't come accross him yet, Gerald Morris is definitely a light author. He takes Arthurian tales, and retells them as he feels like - sometimes he is close to the original, sometimes not very - but his writing always has a happy, slightly jovial tinge, that keeps you happy and in a good mood - these are children's books really, afterall. And they always have some way in which they relate to modern society. I think this is sometimes deliberate, sometimes not, but he loves to retell tales of excellent young women being awesome that make you make all kinds of funny noises of exhilaration while you read, which get you odd looks from everybody around you. So yes, they are a little clichéd, and coloured by modern views.

The Quest for the Fair Unknown (his 8th book) is definitely one of those tales where he takes a small story - which gets a few mentions here and there in many of the old Arthurian writers - and turns it into a novel. In this case, the big part that stems from Arthurian stories is the main character, a boy named Beaufils who has lived secluded from society with his mother for his entire life. When she dies, charging him to seek his father (a knight at Arthur's court), he wanders off into the wider world... which is all too amusing to read about... Beaufils's innocence is really rather fun, if completely unbelievable.

Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy this as much as I enjoyed Gerald Morris's other tales. It's not too bad, but it gets a bit strange here and there, and for a fun, light read, it's a bit overful with symbolism and modernity. Having said that, it's still fun, and definitely worth a read (and more than a few lols). However, I would recommend starting with "The Squire's Tale", which is the first story he wrote. Although they are all stand-alone books, each links to the other, and you understand the in-jokes better if you read them all in order...

...and the other ones are better.

Really do read these books. This kind of medievalist series is so much fun, and makes you feel all happy and bubbly, and there are enough of them to keep you going for a little while. He should have a new one out soon too, I would imagine.

Sorry for that messy review. Someone will have to come along and fix it. But I missed you all so much, I had to review SOMETHING. :P