Novel Responses

   The two main characters of The Night Circus are extremely interesting cases of very different childhoods resulting in a similar adulthood. Celia Bowen, after having being dubbed a girl of the devil by her mother is crudely taught magic by her father and paraded around until she is no longer young and cute. After she is older her father stops teaching her so regularly and commonly abandons or forgets her in different places that they stay in. He demands that she use magic for every mundane or simple test -no matter how small- so that she can keep up her magic. In order to teach her healing magic he slices her finger tips over and even breaks her hand. He forces her to work at a job she doesn't like and is continuously judging her performance and actions regarding her "game" with Marco. Marco, on the other hand, was an orphan who was adopted by a magician specifically for the purpose of training him so he can compete in and win this "game" with Celia. Marco is...

   Neil Gaiman seems to root his fantasy world in the same one we live in. Writing about things we interact with every day suddenly from a new and fantastic perspective.  Something that he does in most of his pieces involving gods, is include the idea that a god only exists as long as they are believed in. Belief also controls how strong and influential they are on the world. Sandman fantasy characters, for example, seems to rotate almost entirely on belief. Not only gods exist but also fairies, Barbie, and The Presence (an overarching idea of a supreme being). There is even a human who, since he believes so strongly that he won’t, does not die. For hundreds of years he preaches that if you don’t want to you can simply not die. What so interesting about the graphic novel series is that is focuses on 7 beings called The Endless. They are not gods and so their existence does not hinge on belief. Rather they are embodiments of aspects of the known universe and therefore ...

    The Martian is first a wonderful novel in audio. As almost all of the book is from the lost Commander Watney's logs, only the small section of text that are from the perspective of either the crew of the Hermes or Mission Control on Earth are not written in the first person. While extremely entertaining, The Martian doesn't discuss extremely improbable or fictional events. While still fiction, it can be argued that the piece is more realistic non-fiction than science-fiction. This is only strengthened by the fact that so much of what Watney talks about is the technicalities of his problems, situations, and solutions. The technical aspect combined with how sarcastic and human Watney appears allows the reader to entirely accept the way the story progresses. This is perhaps ironic because at first glance The Martian seems like a comical laugh at the genre of science fiction novels. Its interesting that its so funny and yet this effect was accomplished by making the book more...

Surprisingly captivating, The Hobbit is a wonderful example of fantasy literature. It encompasses a very well built world view while never revealing too much and allowing the reader to slowly develop their perception of middle earth. As we follow Bilbo, we are slowly introduced to an incredible and very odd world. Bilbo is very similar to us as we are very unaccepting or at least judgmental of a world so different than our own. So as Bilbo is thrown into this fantastic adventure that drastically changes his life, we too are now thrown into a world than demands to be acknowledged. As bilbo is gradually brought into the ever more and more dangers of the world outside the shire, we too are slowly introduced to the people and circumstance of the environment. Something else that is done exceptionally well is the history and effects of past action. While some of the history is simply “long long ago” (as is seen too much in too many fantasy stories) many of the events are put into persp...