I have to admit, the reason I was first drawn to this book was the edition. It is a regular paperback, except the edges of the pages are blackened. Thinking it was a horror book I just briefly looked at the text on the back. It said something about living forever and middle ages and I figured I’d pick this one up one day. I found it cheap at Waterstones in London on a trip there, so I thought, what the heck, let me get it, and I am glad I did.

The premis of the book is the I-character, a man who was involved in a one-sided car crash and was burnt terribly. The book starts with his accident and his time in the burn ward of the hospital. Soon he starts getting visits from a mysterious woman, Marianne Engel, he has never met before, but who claims to have known him 700 years earlier in medieval Germany. He figures she’s crazy (schizophrenic or manic, he doesn’t know yet), but because it is something that keeps his mind of the burns, he indulges her.

The story moves from the day to day realities of healing from burns to the stories that Marianne tells him. The story is crazy to believe, but is written really well. It involves Japanese, Italian, English and Icelandic legends (which are not authentic I think) and a detailed description of medieval Germany. It also involves a lot of ideas of Dante’s Inferno.

I loved the book and it’s ideas. I think that Davidson is a great storyteller, and I look forward to any other books he may write (this is his first!).

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In a funny post on Always Watching about how Kung Fu Panda is really just a remake of Star Wars somebody pointed in the comments to a book by Joseph Campbell called The Hero With A Thousand Faces. In this book he lays out the theory that in essence all myths are really different versions of the same story. George Lucas has said that he used this book in writing the Star Wars films, and after reading the book it becomes clear very quickly that he wasn’t the only one.

The basic theory is this: There is a monomyth, a base for all myths. Campbell spends a lot of time explaining the reasons behind this from a philosophical and psychological approach. For modern man, who seems to be ‘too civilized’ for myth, he pulls examples from dreams. He is a student of Jung, and this is evident in the book, much is based on theories by Freud and Jung.

Even though the book is sometimes a bit hard to read (it is from 1948, and they had a different view of popular science back then ;)) it is a good read. It shows that myths are much the same across the world, even in regions that have developed wholy separate from everybody else, like the aboriginals from Australia. The reasons Campbell describes are a bit far out to me. Campbell almost describes a world view that can be described on religions. He himself says that buddhism comes the closest to teaching the theory of the monomyth.

Religion and theory aside, it is a good read and the more you read, the more you see that current day hit movies and books are based, conciously or subconsiously on the same base story. I even had to look up if The Lord of Rings was written before or after publication of this book, the story follows the monomyth pretty closely. Apparently we subconsiously relate to and like stories that follow that pattern.

Anyway, the book is a good read and it opens your eyes to the how and why of storytelling, even though the philosophy, psychology and religion might not be your cup of tea.

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After reading great reviews/stories about Neal Stephenson’s latest book, Anathem, I really wanted to read it. On a recent trip to London I picked the 950 page book up for a reasonable price, and I saved it for when I would have my wrist surgery, because I would have plenty of time to get lost in the story.

The story takes place on a planet called Arbe, where society is roughly split up into two factions, one is a non-technical monastic culture that is based on science (math and physics mostly), the other is a ‘modern’, ‘regular’ culture with technology and faith in (a) god. The monactic culture (living in concents, whose monks are called avout) is split up into unarians, decenarians, hundreders and thousanders. For the unarians the door to the outside world opens for 10 days each year. For the decenarians, 10 days every ten years, hundreders every 100 years and thousanders every millenium. They take great care to not let any outside news in when the doors are not open, meaning the thousanders have no idea what happened outside of the concent since the last time they went out.

The story is from the view point of a decenarian avout, Fraa Erasmas, and starts right before the door to his part of the concent is opened for the first time in ten years. Soon it becomes clear that strange things are happening, but because of their limited contact with the outside world, and their non-access to technology it is hard to figure out. This doesn’t stop Fraa Erasmas of course, and it all becomes the start of a great adventure featuring math, physics and a bit of philosophy too.

I found this book a lot like Sophie’s world by Jostein Gaarder, wherein the reader is introduced to basic philosophy through a fictional story. In this book a lot is learned about math and physics. The avout learn and study through dialoging and teaching and the reader gets to follow all discussions. Some of it was a bit over my head, but all in all I really enjoyed it. None of the ideas are too difficult, and because our Fraa Erasmas isn’t that good of a learner, all gets explained.

In another level of the story, the great adventure part, Fraa Erasmas is as much in the dark as we are, so when he figures things out as he goes along, so do we. This makes things confusing in some parts of the story, but all gets explained eventually. The adventure itself is true science fiction, and the world that is spun around it is vast, and beautiful.

I really enjoyed this book. After reading reviews online it becomes clear that it is a “hate it or love it” kind of book, and for me it is clearly love. Some negative comments were that the story was too slow, to pretentious and that the science part played too big a role. Yes there was a lot of science, but it helped explain the mind and culture of Fraa Erasmas. Yes, new words for familiar concepts were perhaps unnecessary, but that really helped in establishing that while this planet is a lot like earth, it truly is not. And yes, the story might be slow due to all the science, but for me that was part of the culture of the avout, no need for speed.

If you love science fiction, with a big backstory, I recommend this book. It might take time to read, but for me, it was really worth it!

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