Customer Reviews

Mists of Everness

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm in awe of Mr. Wright's ability to toss off a summarization of just about every mythology I've ever heard of and probably a few new ones that he snuck in for laughs. This guy could make a plumbing manual interesting. This book is, of course, a sequel. The first Everness book was amazing--the characters just kept coming and they were good ones as well. Be warned, a careful reading of the first novel is necessary to understanding what in the heck is going on. Nevertheless, Wright has a gift for action--his plot never drags.

The Everness books are a fine reminder that we speak a language of story, that our modern entertainments are built upon their predecessors. Who would have imagined Batman as Merlin's heir? How about a Clancyesque American coup d'etat plot based upon seal-men wearing coats of Congressional skin? What would Prometheus do if he were stuck on an aircraft carrier for a couple hours? How about designing an ultra superduper nuke? Inspired.

Mr. Wright joins my automatic purchase list. Nothing this man has written has disappointed in the slightest. The Everness books will become a staple of the genre.

A delightful fantasy, part lyrical fairytale, part rousing pulp action, Mists of Everness takes place in modern America and culminates in a roller coaster of dramatic events, during which the heroes and their magic weapons, accompanied by the US military, face off against a dread ancient force from the forgotten dreaming. The characters are charming, particularly Wendy, Raven, and Peter, and even small characters, such as Raven's father or Meadow Mouse (nod to Little, Big there) are well-delineated.

I must disagree with the previous reviewer. I do not see this book as a satire. While it is quite different from many contemporary works in its field - not being in the tradition of Tolkien and the pastoral fantasies - I do not believe the differences are intended to mock or poke fun at other writers. Rather, the story is a marriage of fairytales, myths, and 1940's pulps, offering a tribute to these earlier works, while still standing on its own. Over all a very amusing and worthwhile read.

This is one of those books that receives an average rating even though nothing about it is average. Rather, it features a combination of several above-average qualities with much that is unfortunately below.

What is there to like? First of all, the sheer inventiveness of the plot. Wright is well aware of his antecedents -- including Zelazny's Amber chronicles and Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels -- but has crafted a thoroughly contemporary take on some of the same building blocks, one outside the realm of cookie-cutter conventional fantasy. What if, the story asks, a family with a generations-old task is finally called upon to perform the task and fulfill a prophesy...but they stop to think about it, and decide that performing their task may not be the best solution for the world after all? That's the question that defines the surface of the story told by the Everness books.

The other chief aspect I enjoyed was the style of writing. Wright has a unique and distinctive writing style. Nothing is ever described in detail, yet Wright chains together great masses of words and concepts to shape the mood of each scene. Consider the following sample, wherein Raven, one of our heroes, travels through a city of torture on the dark side of the moon to the rescue of another character:

"There were barred gates hanging open at each crossroads, with lines of heads on spikes above, mummified by the lunar air. The next street was lined on both sides with starvation cages, and the one beyond that was lined with impaling screws.

They turned again, passed a gate hung with severed hands. In the near distance was the central dome. The archstone of the main gates had the head of a medusa hanging from it, with hair of snakes and eyes of viper-hate.

Even the shadow of the medusa in the mirror was almost too much for Raven; there was a stinging pain in his eyes, and he felt faint. [...] When he recovered, they crossed over a moat filled with blood into the shadow of the central dome."

Not all or even most of the book is this grim, but this gives you an idea of what the writing is like: ideas like a lunar city, a moat filled with blood are just casually tossed out, and while the level of detail is minimal, the quantity of things mentioned is unrelenting. Some readers may not like this -- certainly I wouldn't like all books to be written this way -- but I enjoyed the writing for its uniqueness and audacity, and for the way it conveyed mood by constant reinforcement of concepts.

I must also say that I found the selkie to be the most entertaining villains since Croup and Vandemar in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere: in many ways the addition of humor makes the horror of the selkie actions that much more real and terrible.

Unfortunately the unrelenting action of Wright's style of writing does highlight one of the books main shortcomings: the characters, or rather the lack thereof. Characters young and old do not really develop over the course of these books; they are presented with little or no background or personal information, act according to a fairly narrow set of characteristics, and finish the book much as they began. Fantasy of course is ripe for symbolic characters, but those here are more stereotypes than symbols, because we never see enough of them, get to know them well enough, to see them as human (or as close to human as they're meant to be). As has been pointed out in other reviews, this is particularly true of the female characters, who appear to want nothing more out of life than to be interrupted and kissed senseless (Wendy is bad enough, but there is also a scene with Titania that was just silly).

The other big negative, also mentioned by other reviews, is Wright's tendency to preach his philosophical ideals and political-economic ideas. Preaching, to me, is when characters make speeches unasked for and unnecessarily: when Anton explains why he has no wish to be President is a perfect example, as his speech doesn't really answer the question at hand. The sad thing is that Wright maintains a proper narrative distance for the first book and a half in this series, with ideas present but not preached. The tone only becomes preachy in the last 100-200 pages, but because the ending is our final experience of the work and presents the solutions on which the story hinges, that preachy tone really damages the impression of the work as a whole. It is especially an issue because the characters are so underdeveloped: they are such figureheads, it's impossible to see their words as coming from their own personal belief systems, as opposed to mouthpieces for the author. And of course the lack of characterization also damages any points the author wishes to make, because if the only people who could thrive in the world he desires are magic-wielding archetypes as opposed to normal humans, that's not a world most of us are capable of thriving in.

All told then this is a curious book. Readers desiring thoughtful, sympathetic characters should stay away. Readers desiring lots of detail should stay away. Readers who have read a fair amount of speculative fiction, who need a minimum of words to put a picture in their heads, who can overlook a bit of proselytizing, and who are looking for something different than the usual genre fair, may well find this a welcome break from the norm.

This second half of the Everness story lived up to the first half in terms of originality and imaginative storytelling, but I was left feeling strangely flat by the end of it.

One of the things that bothered me was the character of Wendy, a half-mortal, half-fairy girl who, I guess, was meant to embody the feminine virtues. My problem with Wendy was that Wright made her far too childlike. I get the whole free-spirited, honesty/wisdom-of-a-child thing, I really do. And Wendy's character was certainly imbued with admirable courage and a great zest for life. But you can't give me a character who naively skips around talking about "mommy" and "daddy" one minute and then expect me to turn around the next minute and embrace the idea of her doing the wild thing in the Oval Office on her way to becoming the mother of Humanity v2.0. It was completely unconvincing, because there simply was no woman in Wendy -- she was all precocious little girl. And if sexually charged little girls are supposed to be the standard for admiration...well, I don't even want to think about the kind of message I'm supposed to take away from that.

So I ask, why were there no mortal female counterparts to the heroic Waylocks and Pendrake? Were there no parts for rational, serious, and mature mortal women to play in mankind's battle against tyranny? I would have liked to have seen at least one mortal woman who, if not necessarily heroic, was at least worthy of respect. Instead, I was left with the feeling that only goddesses and fairy girls were good enough to stand alongside mortal heroes in their fight to save humanity.

One of the other issues I had with this book was that the text was in need of better editing. Normally, I can get past small mistakes without too much irritation, but in a story that relies so much on symbolism, subtext, and allusion, each word is important. Not only were there too many typos, but I found myself brought to a screeching halt by such lines as: "She dreamed of a dark and windowless city drowned beneath the waves, seven towers of imperishable metal rising into the sunless gloom of the abyss, while blind and transparent fish sported among the tombs and windows...." I read this and thought to myself, if the city was windowless, how could the fish be sporting among the windows? Was this just careless writing, or was the wording intentional? Either way, the flow of the story was interrupted, and I found it harder and harder as I encountered more mistakes to trust either the author or my own interpretation of his words.

Finally, I found the ending to be a little too pat, a little too neat. It was almost painful in its wishful contrivances (though I really did enjoy the introduction of Prometheus near the end -- he was a fun character). Between the instant creation of a "controlled" Big Bang, and Pendrake's "magical means of discovering the perpetrators of any crime committed at any time anywhere in the world," my reaction by the end was little more than a resigned sigh.

For a millennium, the Waylock family has served as vigil guardians at the dream gate Everness to insure that evil never enters this world. However, the malevolent forces are mounting their strongest assault in centuries with the goal to take over the reality world of those awake. The current gate guardian Galen Waylock, who was forced too young to take over when his father abandoned his post, has fallen into a coma (see THE LAST GUARDIAN OF EVERNESS).

In the Pentagon, Azrael de Grey, who is an important government official, performs summoning rites as part of his plan to take control first of the Everness gate, next the evil forces of the dream world beyond the gate, and ultimately both planes. The evil begin penetrating into this world with an epic sea battle rivaling World War II in the Pacific as the US Navy skirmishes with wraiths and krakens. Apparently, in spite of Galen's sire returning to aid his son, Azrael has succeeded in bringing apocalypse now.

MISTS OF EVERNESS, the sequel to the fun THE LAST GUARDIAN OF EVERNESS, is an amusing epic fantasy with religious overtones. The satirical story line concentrates on spoofing the Books of Revelation and Daniel. This serves as a two sword of Damocles with plenty of humorous exciting scenarios, but none of the characters except somewhat Galen's cousin (a wheelchair bound Nam vet POW of the evil forces) fully developed. Instead the key players are ironically overwhelmed by the lampooning of converging religion and fantasy. Still well written and thought provoking, John C. Wright provides an interesting tale for fantasy readers who enjoy cutting edge satire starring flatlined heroes and villains.

Harriet Klausner

This is the conclusion of the story begun in The Last Guardian of Everness. There is no easy way to summarize the plot, but the struggle to prevent the Darkness from taking over the Earth without calling in the Armies of Light (thus creating a "perfect" pastoral and static world), continues. Peter, Raven, Galen, Wendy, a brave little mouse, and other unlikely characters, all learn new things about what they are and aren't capable of. (Raven also discovers the great advantages of consulting a librarian, but nobody cares about that so I won't mention it at all.) Oberon and Titania get their licks in, and Wendy's finally puts in an unambiguous appearance, scrambling to prevent the start of a nuclear war in the Pacific and then to prevent (or undo) a coup by the tools of the Power of Darkness in Washington. And those aren't even the important battles.

It's all very exciting, and, as always with Wright, very beautifully written-wonderfully easy to lose yourself in.

Highly recommended.

This is one of my favorite books. For lack of a better term, this book is erudite: Wright manages to reference almost every mythological figure from the Amesha Spentas to Zeus himself. A keen eye will catch the Shakespearean references. The jokes regarding the old Shadow radio show. The symbolism inherent in every character, sacred item, and monster.

Unfortunately--though I happened to enjoy it--Wright does indulge in a bit of preaching. And while I happened to agree with his views, I must stand up for the reader's right not to be preached at. Also, his female characters are all Magical Pixie Dream Girls. Which, while appealing to the male demographic, is a lazy way to practice characterization.

This book was pretty enjoyable. I found the family tree at the back to be quite helpful, although it's too bad that I needed it. That indicates to me that perhaps the author made things a little too complex (in having too many characters who were too similar).

I don't quite have the negative view of the portrayal of females, although there is only one major female character and she's a lightweight.

The interweaving of our historical mythologies (norse, greek, etc) into this story was great. I'm a fan of Wright's other books.

Ok. Yeah, you're gonna have to read the first book, but this pair of novels is heads and sholders above the fantasy pack. Lots of action and plenty of imaginative ideas. The author does seem to let a wee bit of right wing/libertairian ideas knock about. And I sort of got the feeling toward the middle of the book that this was turning into a Christian Apocalypse idealization, (which almost made me put it down) but the sense of fun and myth as well as a equal dose of pagan spirit won me over by the end. I think the author has done a good job stiring up old and diverse mythos into a tastey new cocktail.

Everness has fallen. Galen, the new guardian, is dead. And from deep beneath the sea, the vast city of Acheron is rising. The angel of the morning star, Morningstar, Lucifer is ready to take control of the earth. Worse, his enemies remain in disarray, fighting one another, divided in their goals, and unable to trust.

Against the power of Hell itself, the guardians seem to have little to help them resist. Raven, son of Raven has developed a skill with lightning. But Galen is pretty much dead, Wendy has lost her memory, Pendrake is invisible to almost everyone, and Azrael is torn between his own ambitions and the need to stop Morningstar before his city rises above the water creating another path between the world of dreams and that of Earth. Of course, the hosts of heaven stand ready to ride, but the price for an earthly paradise is high indeed--no more creativity, no more growth, no more great men.

In THE LAST GUARDIAN OF EVERNESS, his earlier novel in this series, author John C. Wright creates a powerful mixture of mythology, fairy tale, and adventure. MISTS OF EVERNESS steps back from the achievement of the earlier book. Although Wright continues to deliver plenty of adventure, the characters are weaker and we are subjected to political discussions that don't really advance the story.

MISTS OF EVERNESS is an enjoyable read with plenty of adventure. For fans (like me) of GUARDIAN, it is enjoyable to see how the problems established in GUARDIAN are worked out. I don't think many readers will enjoy MISTS as a stand-alone. It's quite important to read the earlier volume first.