Book review in one tweet

A vengeful AI in a human body stalks the ruler of the galaxy and gets sort of confused about gender, life, and self. Also, she sings a lot.

Favorite quote

Thoughts are ephemeral, they evaporate in the moment they occur, unless they are given action and material form. Wishes and intentions, the same. Meaningless, unless they impel you to one choice or another, some deed or course of action, however insignificant. Thoughts that lead to action can be dangerous. Thoughts that do not, mean less than nothing.

Review

I'm having trouble deciding what to talk about here, and I suspect this is mostly because the book itself has a hard time deciding what it's trying to say. (And possibly because I'm devoting approximately 90% of my brain power to getting ready for baseball season. And by "getting ready" I mean "buying beer"). It's not so much that the book is unclear, but rather that it says so many different things, it's difficult to know which thread to follow. There are at least three major themes:

Theme 1 - The social construction of gender

Breq, the main character, is an artificial intelligence stuck in a human body, and "she" has a difficult time understanding gender, mostly because the social indicators of gender--clothing, hair length, patterns of movement, demeanor, etc--change so frequently from planet to planet and culture to culture. As a result, Breq refers to everyone as "she" in her internal dialogue, even when you as a reader know that the character is male. It's a choice that will probably seem like a gimmick to some people, but eventually it ceases to matter. I stopped trying to figure out who was who fairly quickly, mostly because I was too lazy to actually reread sections hunting for clues. But also because it ended up not really making much of a difference.

Theme 2 - The multiplicity of self

As the story progresses, you find out that Breq was once a massive warship named Justice of Toren, used by an empire known as the Radch to conquer most of humanity. Her main weapon is actually not really a weapon at all, but an army of walking human corpses or "ancillaries" that are essentially extensions of Justice of Toren's consciousness. She controls all of their actions, sees everything they see, and generally kills a lot of people with them. She is them, in other words, and they are her. They make up her sense of self. This is probably the most creative thing about the book, since it allows for multiple points of view while still using the first person.

It also allows Leckie to think through the different ways that we often feel at war with ourselves, the conflicting feelings and motivations that drive our actions. This point is laid on a little thick at times, but it was still the most interesting part of the book for me.

Theme 3 - The illusion of free will

There's a constant tension in the book about whether individual actions have any meaning and, indeed, whether in a universe of such complexity and size, we are even in control of our own actions. Perhaps everything we have ever done was already determined from the moment the universe was created, our brains are no different than machines, free will is simply an illusion, etc -- all of that fun Intro to Philosophy stuff that annoys some people (like my wife) and fascinates others (like me). Breq, of course, is an artificial intelligence, programmed to obey, and thus seemingly without free will. And yet, she often seems to have more free will than of any of the humans, or at least as much as them.

There are some smaller ideas floating around the book as well, but these are the main ones. I was hoping that all of this stuff would come together by the end, but most of the threads were left hanging loose. Raising important questions is always a good idea, and Leckie does that in spades (or in hearts or clovers or diamonds, whichever suit you prefer). But all of the questions have been asked by science fiction novels before, (See also: The Left Hand of Darkness, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) and I tend to prefer books that offer answers to the questions they raise, even if I end up disagreeing with that answer.

Instead, we get a sort of science fiction equivalent of a Chili's appetizer platter. Not something you're going to rave to your friends about when you leave, but still pretty freaking delicious.

Nerd rating

7 wizard staffs (out of 10)

I feel like I've said a lot of negative things, here, but the book is engaging and suspenseful, and there are plenty of fun creatures and fantastic landscapes. If you're looking for something solidly sci-fi, this is an excellent choice, and a pretty fast read once you're through the first couple chapters.

Non-nerd rating

3 cold, frosty beers (out of 10)

The world Leckie creates is complicated, and there is a lot of information thrown at you that doesn't always get explained until fifty pages later, or sometimes not at all. There's a decent amount of fighting and a hint of a love story, but the gender terminology make that love story difficult to follow or understand. I'd recommend staying away from this one if you are new to the genre.

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All book reviews are posted first on my Goodreads page, for those of you who are a part of that particular electronic social club. They all trickle over to this blog eventually.

Book review in one tweet

Two humans and two wheeled houseplants race across the galaxy to stop a demonic supercomputer and save 2 kids from a bunch of evil rat-dogs.

Favorite quote

How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.

Review

I picked up A Fire Upon the Deep from a 2011 NPR list of the 100 best sci-fi and fantasy books of all time. I wanted to get The Mists of Avalon but the library's copy was checked out. A Fire Upon the Deep was a wonderful consolation prize, however, with plenty of action and big ideas to keep me fully engrossed. I also really like Vernor Vinge's name. Well done, Vernor Vinge's parents.

The story begins when a colony of humans accidentally builds a hyper-intelligent artificial intelligence called The Perversion. As you might expect from the name, The Perversion isn't very nice, and it soon kills most of the humans and begins a slow takeover of the rest of the galaxy. A family of four manages to escape however, carrying a weapon that could stop The Perversion from spreading further. The family crash-lands on a planet full of intelligent dog-rats, who kill the adults and take the children captive.

Meanwhile, the spread of The Perversion leads to an attempted rescue mission of the children and the weapon they hold, conducted by a couple of humans and a couple of "Riders," aliens that are sort of like intelligent house plants with wheels and short term memory loss.

The dog-rats are one of the most fascinating species of aliens I've ever encountered in the pages of fiction (or in real life). Each dog-rat "person" is made up of multiple "members," and each member has a distinct body and brain. The dog-rats "think" through specialized sound waves, which travel from member to member, coordinating their movements like fingers on a hand. So where a human sees five different dog-rats working together like a circus act, the other dog-rats simply see one being.

This is sci-fi at its best, raising all sorts of fun questions. How does an individual emerge from a multitude of parts? What is the relationship between soul and body (or bodies, in the case of the dog-rats)? How much does an individual have to change in order to be, effectively, a new person? And what happens when one part of yourself battles the other for control over the soul? A Fire Upon the Deep asks these questions and more.

When a story is as big as this one, expanding to the size of the galaxy, there's a distinct danger that individual human (or super dog-rat, or short-term-memory-loss plant) actions will shrink to insignificance in comparison. This shrinking is a good thing to the extent that it leads to humility, but there's a fine line between humility and despair. At times, Double-V walks both sides of that line, but ultimately A Fire Upon the Deep comes down on the side of hope, the side where love matters, and where the greatest love is shown when a human/dog-rat/plant lays down their life for a friend.

Nerd rating

8 wizard staffs (out of 10)

A Fire Upon the Deep has pretty much everything you would want from a science fiction book: epic scale, weirdly fascinating alien life forms, blaster fights, immanent threat of complete galactic disaster, and real human emotion. I docked it a couple staffs because the middle third of the book is rather slow, keeping half the characters in cold storage in the midst of space. That's a nitpick, though. It's well worth the time.

Non-nerd rating

4 cold, frosty beers (out of 10)

Not a book for beginning sci-fi readers. The jargon is heavy, and there's not a ton of hand-holding to get you grounded in the setting. If you can make it through the opening chapter, you might stand a chance.

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Jordan Jeffers would like to take this opportunity to promote his new book, The Towers, an epic fantasy novel that will be released November 18. Early reviews on Facebook have been very flattering.

Note: Some of you may recognize this series from my old blog, "Whispers in the Earthquake." I'm working on a novel at the moment and have decided to repost some older stuff for the next four weeks to give myself more time with it. I think it still holds up. In fact, I guarantee you'll love it, or your money back.

Our quest is nearly over! In case you missed it, this is the fourth and final installment of my wife-acclaimed, overly-thought-out Wizard Series. As I'm sure you all remember, we started this journey by discovering The Wizard Rules, narrowing our pool of candidates to an elite group of "true-wizards." We then delved deep into the intricacies of The MERLINS Scale, the original (and still the best!) arbitrary, seemingly objective ranking system for all true-wizards.

After an exhaustive scoring of every wizard known to (this particular) man (aka me), we finally determined The Ten Greatest Wizards.

Part 1 of this list covered Wizards 10 - 6. We are now ready to present Part 2 (or Part 4?), the best of the best, the top five, the wisest, funniest, most famous, most powerful, best told, best dressed magic mentors in all of fiction.

For those of you who need a review (though I can't imagine why, the system is so simple!) the MERLINS Scale is scored out of a maximum 70 points, and consists of the following categories:

• Magic – The sum of a wizard’s Raw Power (what they can do, abbreviated RAP) and Relative Power (what everyone else can do, abbreviated REP): 15 points
• Exploits – Adventures, deeds, and other risky and unexpected undertakings: 10 points
• Raillery – The funniness of a wizard: 10 points.
• Looks – Appearance and style: 5 points
• Intellectum – The measure of a wizard’s wisdom: 5 points (I've had a few people ask, so in case you are wondering why I chose "Intellectum" instead of "Intellect," it's because Intellectum sounds more wizard-ish.)
• Normalishness – A made-up word roughly defined as “the extent to which you would enjoy yourself splitting a six pack with this guy/gal over a ballgame”: 10 points
• Story – The quality of the story in which the wizard appears: 15 points

In addition to the honor of a high ranking, I've also decided to give out special awards this time. You can think of them like high school yearbook awards for wizards. They're all totally meaningless, so they fit in perfectly. So without further ado, I present the first (fifth) candidate on our list...

5. Sparrowhawk

Actual photograph of Sparrowhawk

MERLINS: Magic: 15/15 (12 RAP, 3 REP), Exploits: 10/10, Raillery: 5/10, Looks: 5/5, Intellectum: 5/5, Normalishness: 5/10, Story: 9/15 = 54 points

Awards: Token Minority Award, Pseudo-Hero Award, My Name is Two Birds Award

The Story of Sparrowhawk

Sparrowhawk is the main protagonist of Ursula Le Guin's Tales of Earthsea, a series of five novels and half a dozen or so short stories focusing on the magical fantasy land of...wait for it...you'll never guess the name...Earthsea! He has the honor of being the only non-white wizard on our list, unless you count Yoda of course.

The story of Sparrowhawk begins on his home island of Gont. After raising goats for a while, his incredible magical talent is discovered by Gont's resident wizard, Ogion - sort of like Scooter Braun and Usher discovering Justin Bieber, only with magic and goats involved. (It's actually more lame that I know Justin Bieber's story then that I know Sparrowhawk's. Point being, as always, that I'm pretty lame. And that wizards are cooler than pretty-boy pop stars.)

Ogion eventually sends Sparrowhawk to a magical school for wizards on another island called Roke - there a lot of islands in Earthsea. It's here that Sparrowhawk gets a little too big-headed and opens a door to the land of the dead, accidentally unleashing a shadowy demon that scars him for life and kills his teacher, the noble and powerful Archmage of Earthsea. Whoops!

The rest of the first novel tells the story of Sparrowhawk's attempts to defeat this demon, which he finally does. At this point he turns from young hero into true-wizard. Thus in subsequent novels, the main protagonist shifts away from Sparrowhawk to several different characters which Sparrowhawk then advises and helps in one form or another.

Sparrowhawk eventually becomes the Archmage himself, recovers a magical, long lost rune of peace, closes another doorway to the land of the dead, and finally settles down on Ogion's old farm to raise goats and care for his half-human, half-dragon daughter. I'm assuming Justin Bieber will probably grow up to do something similar.

Sparrowhawk's Coolest Power
Crossing into the land of the dead

Magic in Earthsea is based on the ancient and powerful "Old Speech," which is basically an ancient spell language. It's also randomly capitalized, and you know something is important in fantasy when it is randomly capitalized. The Old Speech isn't particularly flashy, but if you're interested in controlling the weather, talking to dragons, or turning yourself into a bird, then you'll love it. I should mention that there is a very slight danger that if you don't turn back into a human quickly enough you will completely forget who you are and go on living like a bird for the rest of your life...but all magic has a little risk right?

Sparrowhawk's most unique power is his ability to cross into the Dry Land (random capitals!), which is the name of Earthsea's extremely depressing land of the dead. The Dry Land has everything you'd ever want in a land of the dead, including:

• Low valleys
• Shadows
• Dust
• Mountains of Pain (capitals!)
• Thousands of mindless souls with no memory of their former lives wandering around silent cities underneath a sky of perpetual darkness, pricked with thousands of dim, unmoving stars.
• Daily speeches by Senator Joe Lieberman

OK, so I made that last one up, but seriously, if we were picking a current political leader to give speeches in an endlessly dusty, boring, and painful land of the dead, we'd pick Lieberman right? Right? Do I need to link a Youtube video of Lieberman discussing the public health care option to convince you?

Sparowhawk's Wisest Wisdom

They have nothing to give. They have no power of making. All their power is to darken and destroy. They cannot leave this place; they are this place; and it should be left to them. They should not be denied nor forgotten, but neither should they be worshiped.

The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes.

And where men worship these things and abase themselves before them, there evil breeds; there places are made in the world where darkness gathers, places given over wholly to the Ones whom we call Nameless, the ancient and holy Powers of the Earth before the Light, the powers of the dark, of ruin, of madness.

They exist. But they are not your Masters. They never were. You are free, Tenar. You were taught to be a slave, but you have broken free.

-The Tombs of Atuan, by Ursula Le Guin

Sparrowhawk's Greatest Moment
Sacrificing his power to save Earthsea

In the third novel of the series, The Farthest Shore (1972), a bad-guy sorcerer named Cob tries to make himself live forever by saying a bunch of really evil Old Speech. Turns out this is not such a good thing, since it opens up a hole between Earthsea and the Dry Land. All of the magic in Earthsea starts leaking away, and it's up to Sparrowhawk and Arren, the future king of Earthsea, to stop him.

Spoiler alert! They stop him.

After chasing Cob for most of the book, Sparrowhawk and Arren finally confront him in the land of the dragons, managing to kill his living body with the aide of one of the oldest dragons, Orm Embar. A small, pitiful, mostly dead version of Cob (think Voldemort pre-Goblet of Fire) then crawls away into the Dry Land, with Sparrowhawk and Arren hot on his tail. The three men manage to cross the whole of the Dry Land and climb the Mountains of Pain, where Sparrowhawk confronts Cob a second time and defeats him.

The hole between Earthsea and the Dry Land is still open, however, so Sparrowhawk does the whole selfless thing and sacrifices all of his powerful magic to close the hole and save the world. He becomes merely human so that magic as a whole might survive. Pretty cool right? I'm thinking of naming my first child Sparrowhawk "Orm Embar" Jeffers in honor of this accomplishment. Madelyn will talk herself into it eventually.

4. Belgarath the Sorcerer

The weirdest set of conjoined twins in history

MERLINS: Magic: 13/15 (12 RAP, 1 REP), Exploits: 10/10, Raillery: 10/10, Looks: 5/5, Intellectum: 5/5, Normalishness: 9/10, Story: 4/15 = 56 points

Awards: Single Father Award, Most Likely to Turn into a Wolf Award, Most Likely to Walk Off with a Case of Beer from Your Fridge after a Party Award

The Story of Belgarath the Sorcerer

Anyone interested in an immortal wizard who orchestrates the triumph of Light over Darkness over the span of 6000 years, manipulating kingdoms, prophesies, and bloodlines to bring to power the last true god? How about a drunk criminal who selfishly abandons his two daughters directly after the death of their mother and spends years drinking himself into oblivion and having sex with prostitutes?

Then Belgarath the Sorcerer is for you!

Belgarath is the second wizard to make it on this list from David and Leigh Eddings Belgariad series, joining his daughter Polgara, who came in at number eight. As I mentioned in my description of Polgara, there are over 5000 pages in the Belgariad / Mallorean Cycle, so a short summary of Belgarath's life and times is basically impossible.

Belgarath is powerful, drunk, wise, poorly dressed, funny, horny, and loving. He tells great stories. He has a short temper. He gets married to a wolf. He's described once as a "drunken lecher with scant morality and little seriousness." He's like a bachelor uncle that your parents never want you to stay the night with, but for some reason he'd be the one they would trust to raise you if they died and you needed to be adopted. I swear that's the best I can explain it.

If you're keeping track, then, I've described Polgara as "the sassy aunt you've always wanted" and Belgarath as "the bachelor uncle your parents (dis)trust." I'm not sure what this means, but let's pretend I made a clever joke and move on.

Belgarath's Coolest Power
Sun illusion

Belgarath's sorcery works through a technique which he calls "the Will and the Word." (capitals!) It's a fairly simple system. Those born with the gift of magic simply Will something to happen and then speak a Word which releases the power of their Will onto the world. The Word is not particularly important; the key is to form one's Will clearly and purposefully, so that one's imagination is actually the most important factor in carrying out powerful magic.

The drawback (and isn't there always a drawback?) is that there are physical effects on Belgarath's body whenever he uses magic, almost to the point where it drains his energy as if he had accomplished the magical task physically. I'm not sure what the physical toll on your body would be from doing something like... say... making an illusion of the sun come up so that a bunch of magicians who are sending hordes of demons at you get distracted and lose control of their demons who then turn around and start eating their former masters... But that kind of thing isn't ever really resolved.

Belgarath's Wisest Wisdom

Have you ever noticed that? We base our assessment of the intelligence of others almost entirely on how closely their thinking matches our own. I’m sure that there are people out there who violently disagree with me on most things, and I’m broad-minded enough to concede that they might possibly not be complete idiots, but I much prefer the company of people who agree with me.

You might want to think about that.

-Belgarath the Sorcerer, by David and Leigh Eddings

Belgarath's Greatest Moment
Duel with Ctuchik

Belgarath has his finger in so many pies and does so many things, that eventually everything kind of runs together, making it hard to pick out one particularly great moment. The one moment I still remember clearly after eight or nine years is Belgarath's duel with the evil sorcerer Ctuchik. (Another thing I love about fantasy - It's OK to give important characters names that no one can pronounce). It's a fairly standard titanic battle of wills, culminating in Ctuchik's panicked scream of "Be Not!"

In the Belgariad, it's a big faux pas to try to will something out of existence like that. The Universe (capitals!) doesn't like it at all, and Ctuchik's attempt ends up about as well as Voldemort's repeated attempts to use the Avada Kedavra curse on Harry. The spell backfires, and Ctuchik winks out of existence instead. Fun times.

3. Merlin

Merlin putting the finishing touches on the world's first paint-by-number

MERLINS: Magic: 14/15 (12 RAP, 2 REP), Exploits: 10/10, Raillery: 9/10, Looks: 5/5, Intellectum: 5/5, Normalishness: 4/10, Story: 13/15 = 60 points

Awards: Wizard with a Thousand Faces Award, Democracy Award, Homewrecker Award

The Stories of Merlin

The story of King Arthur's most famous magical adviser is impossible to tell, mostly because there are now hundreds, if not thousands of stories in which Merlin appears (OK maybe not thousands). He's one of the most frequently reused characters in fiction, joining the likes of Merlin's protege King Arthur, Dracula, and Satan (though strangely not God or Jesus).

I'm an English major, but I'm not a literary scholar or historian, so I really can't describe the impact that Merlin has had on the Western literary world. Let's just call it "unknowable" and let it go at that.

The "traditional" story is this:

A long time ago, in an island 3963 miles away, Uther Pendragon is named as heir to the throne of Britain. He sets his eye on a pretty girl named Igerna, and he likes the way she eyes back if you know what I mean. Unfortunately, Igerna happens to be married to another powerful lord by the name of Gorlois. Gorlois isn't real happy with Uther's roving eye, and the two fight a big battle to decide who gets to sleep with her (apparently asking Igerna who she preferred was out of the question).

Uther asks Merlin for help, and so Merlin casts a spell on Uther that makes him look like Gorlois. (Merlin, by the way, is the offspring of a demon and a human woman, hence his great powers. Funny how often that little tidbit gets ignored in most subsequent stories) Using Merlin's disguise, Uther slips into his enemy's castle and sleeps with Igerna. By a happy coincidence, Gorlois is killed that same evening, and Igerna and Uther can get married.

Igerna gives birth to Arthur, who Merlin educates and guides. Merlin eventually convinces Arthur that once he is king he should eat at a Round Table (capitals!) because it will be easier to play poker on it after dinner. He also tells him to drive off all of the invading Saxons and convinces him to go look for something called the Holy Grail (capitals!). Merlin does some magic stuff to help Arthur do all of this, mostly by involving shape-shifting into different animals.

Eventually, however, things start going down hill. Arthur drunkenly bets his wife Guinevere in a late night poker game, loses to Lancelot, and then gets all pissy the next morning and claims not to remember the bet. Then Lancelot sleeps with Guinevere anyway, Arthur sleeps with his half sister Morgan le Fay, and Merlin falls in love with the Lady of the Lake (capitals!). But he doesn't get to sleep with her until he teaches her all his magic, so he does so. In return for this precious knowledge, the Lady traps him in the trunk of a tree for the rest of eternity, which probably has my vote for the worst break up ever. Without Merlin, Arthur gets killed by his incest-produced son, and the whole tragedy comes to a tragic end filled with tragedy.

Merlin's Coolest Power
Prophecy

Merlin is usually exceptionally good at predicting the future, often delivering long, extremely detailed predictions like this one:

Fly the fire of the sons of Boring, if you are able to do it: already they are fitting out their ships; already don't read this are they leaving the Armorican shore; already blah blah blah out their sails to the wind. They will steer towards Britain; they will invade the Saxon nation; they will subdue that wicked people; but they will first go out for ice cream shut up in a tower. To your own ruin did you prove a traitor to their father, and invite the Saxons into the island. You invited them for your safeguard; but they came for a blah blah blah. Two deaths instantly threaten you; nor is it easy to determine which you can best avoid. For on the one hand I'm really boring lay waste your country, and endeavour to kill you; on the other shall arrive the two brothers, Aurelius Ambrosius and Uther Pendragon, blah blah blah to revenge their father's murder on you. Seek out some refuge if you can: to-morrow they will be on the shore of Totness. The faces blah blah blah shall look red with blood, Hengist shall be killed, and Mickey Mouse shall be crowned. He shall bring peace to the nation; he shall blah blah blah die of poison. His brother blah blah blah Pendragon shall succeed him, whose days also shall be cut short by poison. There shall be blah blah blah commission of this treason your own issue, whom the boar of Cornwall shall devour a bacon cheeseburger and thus commit cannibalism.

- History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, slightly adapted.

Riveting right? I really hope you didn't read that whole thing.

Merlin's Wisest Wisdom

The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.

- The Once and Future King, by T.H. White

Merlin's Greatest Moment
Building Stonehenge

According to Geoffrey of Monmouth (people had names like that in the 12th century) Merlin built Stonehenge in the 4th century. Originally the rocks of Stonehenge were erected by giants in Ireland, who had brought the stones from Africa because of their unique healing properties. Uthur decided those Irishmen didn't need that magical healing as much as his people did, so he sent Merlin to move the whole monument to Britain, which Merlin promptly did (after slaughtering a bunch of Irishmen of course).

It's been 900 years or so since Geoffrey wrote his version of the building of Stonehenge, and modern scientists haven't really come up with a more plausible story for how it was built. So I'm sticking with the Geoffrey.

2. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

"And now Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure."

MERLINS: Magic: 15/15 (12 RAP, 3 REP), Exploits: 8/10, Raillery: 10/10, Looks: 5/5, Intellectum: 5/5, Normalishness: 6/10, Story: 12/15 = 61 points

Awards: Most Stylish Award, The Benevolent Machiavellian Award, The Only One He Ever Feared Award

The Story of Dumbledore

Since I'm pretty sure that most of you know Dumbledore's story better than the current President's, I won't bore you with a rehash of it here. But I do want to deal with one rather controversial thing before moving on: J.K. Rowling's assertion that she always thought of Dumbledore as gay.

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, this makes total sense, especially given Dumbledore's love of slightly over-the-top clothes and knitting patterns. It also puts a whole other level of depth to his relationship with Grindewald, since you can definitely envision a scenario where Dumbledore's crush on the handsome young foreigner would cloud his better judgment and blind him to Grindewald's darker side (who can resist that accent?).

On the other hand, there's not really anything in the books that would indicate with any certainty what his sexual orientation is. So while I'm inclined to think that it would make the books more interesting, I can't really argue that Dumbledore is gay. Of course, it shows you how much these characters mean to people when we start debating the sexual orientation of a fictional, 100+ year old wizard from a bunch of children's books. 450 million copies sold will do that for you.

Dumbledore's Coolest Power
Love

Sappy I know, but I will defend myself by pointing out that love is actually a real form of magic in the Hogwarts universe, to the point where a concentration of love is constantly kept under lock and key in the Department of Mysteries.

I gave Dumbledore the "Benevolent Machiavellian Award" because he's often uses an odd combination of loving manipulation. He's constantly pulling strings, making alliances, hiding the truth from people when it suits him, and leaving obscure clues for the heroes to follow after his death. Usually when somebody does morally ambiguous things in a fantasy novel it comes back to bite them in the ass later, and we learn a valuable the lesson about always telling the truth or whatever.

That never really happens to Dumbledore though. We love him pretty much from start to finish, or at least I did. When Harry was getting mad at him halfway through book seven, I was getting mad at Harry. "CAN'T YOU SEE THAT DUMBLEDORE LOVED YOU!" I screamed (OK not really). I still loved Dumbledore because I believed that he genuinely loved and cared for everyone, even if he made mistakes.

And that, without a doubt, was his greatest strength.

Dumbledore's Wisest Wisdom

That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.

- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling

Dumbledore's Greatest Moment
Dying

OK so I know that normally we wouldn't put "Dying" on the list of anyone's greatest moments, but hear me out on this. Dumbledore basically has four "great" moments. Two of them, his discovery of the twelve uses of dragon blood and his defeat of Gellert Grindelwald, do not appear in the books so I can't really put them in here.

That leaves us deciding between Dumbledore's duel with Voldemort in the Ministry of Magic and Dumbledore's fall from Hogwarts tower. Let me argue for the Death (self-created capitals!) for just a second.

1. It was the most memorable Dumbledore moment, and probably the most memorable moment in the whole Hogwarts series.
2. It epitomized everything great about Dumbledore's character, including:
   • His ability to manipulate things behind the scenes
   • His willingness to give people a second chance
   • His love of his students, especially Harry
3. All of the final plot lines leading to the defeat of Voldemort depended entirely on the Death, and unraveling the mystery of those final events on the tower was the most satisfying bit of writing in the whole series.

I'm not going to call you crazy if you pick the duel instead (it was a pretty awesome duel), but the Death says way more about Dumbledore's character than anything else.

As I mentioned in The Wizard Rules, I can't really fault you for picking Dumbledore as number one if you've never read Lord of the Rings. I think he's a phenomenal wizard: wise, funny, powerful, everything. But as great as he is, he's still a copy. There's no shame in that really. He's a wonderful copy, maybe even a more popular copy (though that's debatable), but he's still a copy.

A copy of the Greatest Wizard of All Time...

1. Gandalf

Gandlaf the Grey smiles upon receiving the Greatest Wizard of All Time Award

MERLINS: Magic: 14/15 (12 RAP, 2REP), Exploits: 10/10, Raillery: 9/10, Looks: 5/5, Intellectum: 5/5, Normalishness: 6/10, Story: 15/15 = 64 points

Awards: Best Fireworks Award, Most Aliases Award, The Greatest Wizard of All Time Award

The Story of Gandalf

What is there to say? The story of Gandalf is as widely known as any wizard save Dumbledore, and that mostly by choice, as Tolkien only reveals parts of Gandalf's story in the less well read Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, and simply leaves other parts to the imagination.

So since I have nothing to write about this, let's ask a really meaningless question. How about this: If you were naming thirteen kittens, would you rather give them Gandalf's thirteen names or the names of the thirteen dwarves from the Hobbit? In case you've forgotten, don't know, or don't care, the dwarf names are Ori, Dori, Nori, Fili, Kili, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dwalin, Balin, Oin, Gloin, and Thorin Oakenshield. Gandalf's names are Greyhame, Stormcrow, Olórin, Incánus, Tharkûn, Lathspell, Mithrandir, Gandalf the Grey, The Grey Messenger, The Grey Pilgrim, The Grey Fool, Gandalf the White, and The White Rider.

I'd probably go with the dwarves, mostly because you'd need a lot of grey cats for Gandalf's names to make any sense. Though I admit it would be pretty fun to pick up a kitten and say, "Late is the hour at which this kitten chooses to appear. Lathspell I name him, ill mews is an ill guest."

Ok I'll stop. I swear that bit sounded funny in my head when I wrote it. Let's move on.

Gandalf's Coolest Power
Flood of the Bruinen

This is actually a tough one. You don't realize this when you're reading the books or watching the movies, but Gandalf doesn't actually use magic all that much. He blows cool smoke rings, fights like a badass, and shoots off fireworks that take the shape of dragons, but most of his power seems to be "hidden in the margins" so to speak, not out in front of you. His most impressive feats of magic usually occur out of the narrative flow of the story, so in the books we get hints of a massive magical fight with the Ring Wraiths, with Saruman, and with the Balrog, but we don't actually get to see a lot of it.

My personal favorite is the Flood of the Bruinen. You probably remember this from the movies, even though you don't know it by that name. So think back. Remember that part in Fellowship of the Ring when the nine black riders are chasing Frodo and Arwen on the way to Rivendell, and Frodo's eyes are glazing over like he just chained smoked four or five joints in a row? (Not that I know anything about weed, but people usually make jokes like that, so I thought I'd try one. My guess is that no one really "chain-smokes" joints, but again, I have no idea.)

Arwen finally beats the black riders to the Bruinen, at which point they stupidly enter the river and get crushed by a wall of water taking the shape of horses.

In the movie it appears as if Arwen is commanding this flood, but in the books it's the work of Elrond and Gandalf. Here's how Gandalf explains it to Frodo:

"Who made the flood?" asked Frodo.

"Elrond commanded it," answered Gandalf. "The river of this valley is under his power, and it will rise in anger when he has great need to bar the Ford. As soon as the captain of the Ringwraiths rode into the water the flood was released. If I may say so, I added a few touches of my own: you may not have noticed, but some of the waves took the form of great white horses with shining white riders; and there were many rolling and grinding boulders. For a moment I was afraid that we had let loose too fierce a wrath, and the flood would get out of hand and wash you all away. There is great vigour in the waters that come down from the snows of the Misty Mountains."

Here's what I love about Gandalf. He's not content with just unleashing a raging flood to destroy the servants of Sauron, he also has to add "a few touches of his own," just to take everything to a whole other lever of cool. That's just the way he rolls.

Gandalf's Wisest Wisdom

Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.

-The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Gandalf's Greatest Moment

True story: Some engaged friends of ours came over this summer for dinner, and while we were talking afterwards, my wife brought up my wizard staff. My wizard staff is a five and a half feet tall staff of polished, amber colored wood, knotted and blackened in places by the natural grain of the board it was made out of. I got it in fourth or fifth grade as part of a Halloween wizard costume, together with a long black and purple robe, a golden rope belt, and a ridiculous dragon-molded skull cap.

I absolutely loved this wizard costume. I loved it so much, actually, that I proceeded to wear it every year for four consecutive years, adding a little bit of flair every year. I only stopped because I hit that age where I was too cool to go trick-or-treating but too genuine to start wearing ironic costumes.

I kept the staff, though, and brought it with me to our new apartment when Madelyn and I got married. Sometimes I hold it when I need to think, like Tom Cruise holds his bat in A Few Good Men. I get compared to Tom Cruise a lot actually.

For some reason Madelyn brought this up (the staff, not the Tom Cruise part), and our guy friend asked to see it. So I got it out of the library / spare bedroom and handed it to him.

Question: What did he do with it?

Answer: The same thing that every single other person would do with it.

He planted his feet wide, raised the staff over his head, slammed it to the ground and said... what did he say everybody... come on... you know it.... say it with me....

"You shall not PASS!"

He reenacted the greatest moment in the wizard universe, the fantasy geek equivalent of Michael Jordan crossing up / pushing off Bryon Russel in the '98 Finals Game 6 and rising up for the game winner.

Gandalf is kind of like the Michael Jordan of wizards, actually. Both men are the greatest ever at what they did. Both men redefined their fields such that everyone that has ever followed after them is judged based on how close they come to their high standards. Both Gandalf and Michael Jordan took us to the absolute peak of entertainment awesomeness.

But most of all, they were just so amazing that everyone who ever experienced them in action is, on some level, always trying to recreate that experience. Dumbledore came the closest that anyone has ever come to actually doing it. But awesome as Dumbledore is, his MERLINS Score is probably closer than it should be.

Because, like with Jordan, it's not really about the numbers. It's about the swooping feeling in your stomach; the burning spark in your mind; the eight-year-old kid throwing lightning bolts at his action figures; the twenty-four-year-old grad student slamming a polished staff into the carpet of his apartment living room and snarling Your dark fire will not avail you!; the grad student's wife climbing into the car when they are late for something and saying Show me the meaning of haste; the moments that stick with you as the years go by.

The Purpose of a Wizard

So, did we learn anything from all this? I set out trying to capture everything that I loved about wizards, but now that I get to the end, I'm sort of left wondering if I didn't miss the point entirely.

It's fun to debate and rank and analyze wizards, but in a way it kind of misses the most important thing. Story tellers don't create wizards to score highly on the MERLINS Scale. Of course, this is mostly because they've never heard of it, but it's also because they know that wizards aren't awesome because they shoot lightning or wear pointed hats or make witty jokes or say wise things.

A wizard is awesome because a wizard carries a light along the blackest of roads, and keeps hope alive until the dawn breaks.

That's right. I just got poetic on you. Say this phrase again, out loud.

A wizard carries a light along the blackest of roads, and keeps hope alive until the dawn breaks.

That's it. That's the purpose, awesomeness, and ultimate judgment of every wizard, all rolled into one sentence. Aren't you glad you read this far to find that out?

And there is no one, no one, I would rather follow more than Gandalf the Greyish White, just like there is no one I would rather start a team with more than Michael Jordan. And until there is, it doesn't really matter what the MERLINS score tells us. All the other wizards must graciously step aside.

Gandalf rules them all.

Other essays in the Wizard Series

Part 1 – The Wizard Rules | Part 2 – The MERLINS Scale | Part 3 – The Ten Greatest Wizards (10-6)

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Jordan Jeffers wishes he had more wizard essays to give you, but sadly this is it for now. Feel free to give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twiiter buttons below. It means more to him than you might think.

Note: Some of you may recognize this series from my old blog, "Whispers in the Earthquake." I'm working on a novel at the moment and have decided to repost some older stuff for the next four weeks to give myself more time with it. I think it still holds up. In fact, I guarantee you'll love it, or your money back.

We're finally there! I started writing this list about a month ago, and can now say with confidence that it has been one of the funnest things I have ever done. And yes, that is rather sad.

I'd recommend that those of you who missed the first two introductory essays go back and read The Wizard Rules and The MERLINS Scale to catch all the way up. Otherwise it will be hard to know what I'm doing here. Of course, that's another 6,600 extra words about wizards to read, so here's a quick review for those of you with actual social lives.

Review

Every wizard on this list qualifies as a "true-wizard" in accordance with the two Wizard Rules:

1. A wizard must have supernatural power
2. A wizard must try to use their wisdom to mentor a hero

The Wizard Rules are in place to keep out two groups of posers:

• "Normies" - people who are called wizards, but have no supernatural powers (i.e. The Wizard of Oz)
• "Pseudo-wizards" - people who have supernatural powers, but do not serve the same function in a story as a true-wizard (aka Harry Potter).

I have scored every true-wizard on the MERLINS Scale, a highly arbitrary ranking system that attempts to compare the awesomeness of different wizards across story lines and genres. And when I say "every true-wizard," I mean every true-wizard that I'm familiar with. I've read a lot of fantasy in my day, but I haven't read everything.

The MERLINS Scale is scored out of a maximum 70 points, and consists of the following categories:

• Magic - The sum of a wizard's Raw Power (what they can do, abbreviated RAP) and Relative Power (what everyone else can do, abbreviated REP): 15 points
• Exploits - Adventures, deeds, and other risky and unexpected undertakings: 10 points
• Raillery - The funniness of a wizard: 10 points. (By the way, I originally wrote the word "funniness" as a joke, but apparently it's a real word. Who knew?)
• Looks - Appearance and style: 5 points
• Intellectum - The measure of a wizard's wisdom: 5 points
• Normalishness - A made-up word roughly defined as "the extent to which you would enjoy yourself splitting a six pack with this guy/gal over a ballgame": 10 points
• Story - The quality of the story in which the wizard appears: 15 points

That's it! After applying these criteria for the last day and a half, I can officially present to you all the TEN GREATEST WIZARDS OF ALL TIME (*cough-that-i-know-of-cough*). Hooray!

10. Yoda

45 points

Strengths

Magic: 14/15 (11 RAP, 3 REP); Looks: 5/5; Intellectum: 5/5; Story: 11/15

As we all know, Yoda's power comes from the Force, that midichlorian produced mysterious power that binds the Star Wars galaxy together. Yoda can move massive objects with his mind, see into the future, repel lightning, fight like a demon toad on twenty grams of crack, and influence the weak-minded. He's probably the most powerful being in the Star Wars universe, although his only fight with the evil Emperor Palpatine at the end of Episode III ends in a draw. He's also not much of a cook.

Yoda's real power is in his wisdom though, where he easily gets the full 5 Intellectum points. I'd probably give him 20 more if it was possible in this system. For 800 years has Yoda taught Jedi, and almost everything out of his mouth is wise in some way. My favorite examples:

"Great warrior, eh? Wars not make one great."

"Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is."

"Try not. Do! Or do not. There is no try."

"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering."

"Size matters not. Judge me by my size do you? And well you should not. For my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. It surrounds us. And binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter!"

Luke: "Mater Yoda, moving stones is one thing but this is totally different."
Yoda: "No! No different! Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned."

Etc. Hard to believe that Yoda came from the same mind as The Comic-Relief That Must Not Be Named, but so it is.

Weaknesses

Exploits: 2/10; Raillery 4/10; Normalishness: 4/10

Here's where Yoda comes up pretty short (get it, short?). Though he's a wise and powerful Jedi Master, he never really does anything. He has some pretty entertaining duels in Episodes II and III, but honestly the only moment that really sticks out in my mind is when he lifts Luke's X-Wing out of the swamp. That's not a whole lot to go on. And he's pretty funny when he's pretending to be a weird old hermit in Empire, but other than that he's pretty much all business.

Thoughts

Here's how I know this system isn't totally worthless.

I LOVE YODA. Out of all the wizards on this list, he's the one I most want to be real, the one I'd most like to meet. I would carry him around on my back all day and listen to him say stuff and make that deep humming noise (hmmmmm) that he makes and watch him poke at stuff with his stick. And he would use the Force to pick up the cars on School Street so that I'd always have a place to park in the morning when I went to work.

Before I started this whole wizard essay series, I would have picked Yoda for my second or third wizard overall, with an outside shot at first, and I'm kind of upset that he ended up at ten. In fact, he was one point away from not making the list at all, which I think would have caused this list to mysteriously never get written.

But that's what the MERLINS Scale is supposed to do, provide a common basis for comparing wizards to each other without taking personal preference into account. So you're welcome America. Now I'm going to go buy a Yoda-shaped backpack to make myself feel better. Seriously - don't shake your head Madelyn! - I want one.

9. Merriman Lyon

46 points

Strengths

Magic: 14/15 (12 RAP; 2 REP); Exploits: 8/10; Looks: 5/5; Intellectum: 4/5;

Many of you are probably unfamiliar with Susan Cooper's 1970s fantasy series, The Dark is Rising. And by "many of you," I mean the five to ten people who are actually reading this. It's a solid, five-book epic that focuses on five child heroes and their wizard Merriman, also called Gummery and/or Great Uncle Merry. Merriman is an Old One, an immortal servant of the Light who has dedicated his life to fighting the barbarous servants of the Dark. He's also (sort of) Merlin, and I insert that parenthetical (sort of) because Merlin is (sort of) just another one of Merriman's many personas, albeit the most famous one.

Old Ones have a really impressive array of powers, including time travel, self-transfiguration, memory wipes, and control over the elements. As the oldest of the Old Ones, Merriman has been fighting the Dark for a long, long time, and it is he who actually uses the power of the Wild Magic and the Old Magic to throw the Dark beyond time at the end of the final novel. I know that you have no idea what I'm talking about, so let's move on.

Weaknesses

Raillery: 4/10; Normalishness: 5/10; Story: 6/15

Merriman is sort of like a wizard version of Tony La Russa - He has a proven track record, a desire to win at all costs, and a face that is only capable of three emotions: stoic, contemptuous, and contemptuously stoic. His driving commitment to beating the Dark often leads him to ignore people's feelings, which means that he's rarely, if ever, funny. He also has a serious, media-suppressed drinking problem. (OK, maybe not that last one. Maybe.)

Thoughts

Merriman is our first example of a character who scores high on the MERLINS Scale without being all that memorable. He's a wizard whose whole is less than the sum of his parts. (And the comparisons to TLR keep mounting…) Merriman is basically too perfect. He's more like a force of nature than a person - he never makes mistakes, never lacks important knowledge, never gives the impression that he is anything less than in complete control at all times.

And guess what? That's boring.

The best wizards have flaws; they've got pimples; they sometimes give the impression that they don't know what the hell they're doing. Like Ozzie Guillen. Who cares if he doesn't have as many championships. He's a heck of a lot more entertaining.

8. Polgara the Sorceress

47 points

Strengths

Magic: 13/15 (12 RAP; 1 REP); Exploits: 9/10; Raillery: 9/10; Intellectum: 5/5; Normalishness: 6/10

The only woman to appear in our top ten (sorry Mary Poppins!), Polgara the Sorceress is the creation of David and Leigh Eddings. She's a beautiful, sarcastic, powerful, pissy woman, and she was also one of my favorite characters growing up. Polgara is one of two wizards in the Eddings' two massive fantasy epics, The Belgariad and The Mallorean. According to the internet, there are 5353 pages in the 12 books of this series, and since I read about a page per minute, I figure I spent at least 89 hours of my life with Polgara over the course of my childhood.

The following quote pretty much captures her personality exactly:

“Listen carefully, Arshag,” Polgara said. “You provided the Demon Lord with women so that he could unloose an abomination upon the world. That act must not go unrewarded. This, then, is your reward. You are now invincible. No one can kill you – no man, no Demon – not even you yourself. But no one will ever again believe a word you say. You will be faced with constant ridicule and derision all the days of your life and you will be driven out wherever you go, to wander the world as a rootless vagabond. Thus you are repaid for aiding Mengha and helping him to unleash Nahaz and for sacrificing foolish women to the Demon Lord’s unspeakable lust.” She turned to Durnik. “Untie him.” She commanded.

When his arms and legs were free, Arshag stumbled to his feet, his tattooed face ashen. “Who are you, woman?” he demanded in a shaking voice. “And what power do you have to pronounce so terrible a curse?”

“I am Polgara,” she replied. “You may have heard of me."

SNAP!

Weaknesses

Looks: 1/5; Story: 4/15

Polgara's beauty is one of her defining character traits. Like in real life, it's probably the first thing that everyone notices about her. But, also like in real life, it progressively becomes less and less important the more time you spend with her. You almost forget about it, actually, until some new person sees her for the first time and brings it back up again.

If you take a look at my Wizard Style Guide, however, you'll notice that "beauty" does not appear anywhere on the list. The one cool "wizard" thing that Polgara has is the shock of white hair running through her raven locks. Even that is not particularly cool, however, since it's exactly the same style as Rogue from X-Men. (BTW, is Rogue still an X-"Man," even though she's a woman?)

Thoughts

The 89 hours notwithstanding, I'd recommend reading The Belgariad if you enjoy Harry Potter. Polgara is the biggest reason why. She's sort of like the sassy aunt that you've always wanted. (People want sassy aunts right?) The Eddingses (Eddingsi? Eddingees?) are good story tellers, even if not as consistently good as Rowling is. I have no other thoughts here, and since Polgara always has the last word, I'll give it to her.

"It pains me to say it about my own gender, but young women, particularly young noblewomen, are a silly lot, and their conversation is top full of empty-headed frivolity - mostly having to do with decorating themselves in such ways as to attract attention.

I take a certain amount of comfort in the fact that young men aren't much better."

7. Obi-Wan Kenobi

48 points

Strengths

Magic: 10/15 (9 RAP; 1 REP); Exploits: 7/10; Looks: 4/5; Intellectum: 5/5; Story: 11/15

Look! Someone else you've actually heard of! Awesome, right? Trust me, we'll get to Dumbledore eventually.

I originally considered making a rule that would prohibit two wizards from the same story on this list. Then I spent an hour staring blankly at the name Tiresias, and I decided against it. We all love ancient Greek myths, of course, but Star Wars is a little more accessible these days.

And Obi-Wan certainly deserves it. He's one of the most powerful Jedi Knights to ever live, and though he's not as wise or as powerful as Yoda, he beats the green master on the strength of his high Exploits score.

After his famous dance-off with the Sith Lord Darth Maul, Obi-Wan spent the next decade or so training the most important figure in galactic history, Anakin "Loud Breath" Skywalker. The two heroes exchanged a lot of witty banter during the Clone Wars and then Anakin killed himself in order to become Darth Vader, at which point Obi-Wan challenged him to another famous dance-off, finally cutting off the traitor's legs and shouting his famous insult ("Dance NOW sucker!"). Or something like that.

Obi-Wan then went into exile for twenty years or so to work on his beard. Then Anakin's son, Luke "Blondy" Skywalker, showed up one sunny Tatooine morning with an Astro-Droid named R2D2 that Obi-Wan must have mysteriously forgotten because R2D2 was one of Obi-Wan's constant companions during the Star Wars prequels and yet some how Obi-Wan fails to mention any of this to Luke when they meet for the first time. Not that the Prequels are poorly made or anything. (Nerd…Rage…Mounting…)

Weaknesses

Raillery: 5/10; Normalishness: 6/10;

Obi-Wan is good for the occasional sarcastic comment, especially in the Prequels, but he's not quite up to Dumbledore standards in the Raillery category. He's also not someone I could ever picture doing something as normal as, say, falling in love, that wonderful foible of humankind that Anakin at least pretends to do. From this point forward, though, I'm kind of just splitting hairs. Obi-Wan is awesome. He's just not quite as awesome as the next six names on the list.

Thoughts

As much time as I spent reading The Belgariad as a kid, I'm 98.75% sure that I spent more time watching Star Wars. Besides, I stopped reading The Belgariad 12+ years ago, whereas I continue to watch the Star Wars series at least three to four times a year (the original series, that is, not the prequels). They're just incredibly re-watchable.

Star Wars epitomizes one of the best arguments for Why Fantasy Matters (WFM). Ultimately the entire series boils down to two scenes:

• Scene 1 - Anakin Skywalker is tempted by the evil, pasty Emperor and decides to pay any cost, including his soul, in order to gain power and save his life. (Despite Hayden Christensen inability to change the perfect contours of his face to express emotion, that's what that scene was about. Trust me on this one.)
• Scene 2 - Luke Skywalker is tempted by the evil, wrinkly Emperor and decides to pay any cost, including his life, rather than gain power at the cost of his soul.

The reason Luke is able to make the right choice where is father fails is, in my opinion, very much due to Obi-Wan's willingness to admit his own limitations. He tries to train Anakin himself, and fails miserably. Rather than repeat his mistake, however, he sends Luke to Yoda to get the proper training that Anakin was denied. Obi-Wan pays dearly for his first mistake, humbles himself in the desert, and makes the right choice the second time. There's a lesson in there for us, a real, life-changing lesson, but we have to look past the lightsabers long enough to see it.

And actually I think most of us do see it, even if we don't realize it at the time. That's the power of fantasy. We can learn to be good without realizing it.

6. Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander

49 points

Strengths

Magic: 13/15 (12 RAP; 1 REP); Exploits: 9/10; Raillery: 9/10; Looks: 5/5; Intellectum: 5/5

Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander is the true-wizard of Terry Goodkind's 12 book epic / low-budget T.V. series The Sword of Truth / Legend of the Seeker. He's a mastermind of Additive Magic, which usually involves lighting and healing and other Elemental work.

Zedd frequently uses a particularly nasty spell called Wizard's Fire, which may or may not have been the inspiration for Fiendfyre in Harry Potter. Life Fiendfyre, Wizard's Fire is almost alive, and burns so fiercely that a single drop of it on the skin can bore a hole straight through to the bone. Its magic sucks the heat out of its surroundings, a nifty little side effect that Zedd uses at one point to freeze a screeling in a pool of water. (A screeling is a nasty creature from the underworld that laughs like a hyena, climbs like a spider, and rips people's faces off like Hannibal Lecter. The only way to kill a screeling is to hack it to pieces or hit it with Subtractive Magic, hence Zedd is forced to freeze this one in a pool instead. He's a smart guy.)

Zedd also wins the award for Best Wizard Name, and fake awards have to count for something.

Weaknesses

Normalishness: 6/10; Story: 2/15

The Sword of Truth has the dubious distinction of being the only fantasy series that I ever stopped reading. I even read the first nine volumes, and had only to read three more to get the satisfaction of finishing the damn thing. But at that point the story had deteriorated so badly that I just couldn't do it anymore.

Goodkind is a big proponent of Objectivism, a philosophical school based on the thinking of author Ayn Rand. Objectivism is basically the idea that the only moral pursuit of life is one's own happiness, probably the most selfish form of morality I've ever encountered. Objectivism has gotten some buzz recently, especially with conservative politicians like Paul Ryan, who look to Rand to get support for their particular visions of free enterprise economy and small-to-nonexistent government.

Though Rand's ideas are present in most of the Sword of Truth novels, the last three books stop being stories completely and become long-winded speeches encased in fantasy book covers. I was in a bookstore about a year or two ago, and I picked up the last book of the series just to see how things were going to end for old Zedd and the gang. I flipped to the end and discovered that the main hero of the novels, Richard Rahl, was in the middle of what appeared to be twenty or thirty pages of philosophical rambling.

So for stringing me along for nine books and then crapping all over me, Zedd gets a 2/15 in Story category.

Thoughts

The story is still better than Mary Poppins though. Poor Mary Poppins.

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Jordan Jeffers has almost purchased the Yoda backpack several times. Feel free to give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twitter buttons below. It means more to him than you might think.

Book review in one tweet

Last man on Earth fights monsters. Becomes monster. Makes long, boring explanations about monsters. #NotTheWillSmithMovie

Favorite quote

He had such a terrible yearning to love something again, and the dog was such a beautifully ugly dog.

Review

My copy of I Am Legend has a giant red sticker on it that tells me the book is "NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING WILL SMITH." It should probably say something like "NOW LENDING ITS NAME TO A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING WILL SMITH."

Actually, it should probably say something not in all-caps. My point is, these two stories are very different, and whatever your experience of the movie, you'll probably have a totally different experience reading the book.

The basic premise is the same; most of the people in the world have either been killed by a deadly infection or transformed into some form of bloodsucking humanity. One guy, Robert Neville, is left alone, trying not to get eaten and carrying the torch for non-bloodsucking humanity. In the movie, the bloodsuckers are called "Darkseekers," which is basically just a way for the movie to have scary half-humans that are kind of like vampires and kind of like zombies and definitely avoid the long mythology behind both of those creepy creatures that might complicate our experience of watching Will Smith hunt deer.

The bloodsuckers in Matheson's book are straight up vampires - garlic-hating, mirror-hating, religious-symbol-hating vampires. Matheson doesn't shy away from the mythology at all. In fact, he spends most of the book trying to find scientific explanations for the mythology. Vampirism is caused by a facultative saprophyte (a bacteria basically), garlic is an allergen causing anaphylaxis, fear of crosses is "psychological."

Essentially the book tries to make everything deep and interesting about vampires as boring and technical as possible. I found myself losing interest, wanting to hear more about Robert's former family or the dog than his experiments with vampire bloodletting in an artificial vacuum. Horror and fantasy are supposed to places where we explore what we don't understand about our lives. They use a deep (caution: English-major word approaching) symbology to explore our non-rational side. All that power is lost the moment you start talking about facultative saprophytes.

Nerd rating

4 wizard staffs (out of 10)

The most intriguing part of this book is the way it plays with ideas of monstrosity and normalcy. Basically it asks whether "monster" is a relative term. If everyone in the world is a monster, does that make the monsters "normal" and the "normal" hero a monster? It's an interesting question, but not something I couldn't get from multiple Twilight Zone episodes.

Non-nerd rating

4 cold, frosty beers (out of 10)

The book is better than the movie, but neither of them are that great. And the book doesn't have Will Smith hunting deer.

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Jordan Jeffers always wants a beer after writing these reviews. Feel free to give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twitter buttons below. Peace.

Book review in one tweet

Super smart people wearing space suits with laser fingers fight goiter-headed, fish-eyed aliens. 1000 years later, they use swords and spears. #actuallymakessense

Favorite quote

The 1143-year-long war had been begun on false pretenses and only continued because the two races were unable to communicate. Once they could talk, the first question was "Why did you start this thing?" and the answer was "Me?"

Review

My brother-in-law got me The Forever War for Christmas last year. At the time, he described it as Apocalypse Now in space, which sounds about right to me. Of course, I've never seen Apocalypse Now, so that should mean nothing to you.

You might've guessed this from the title, but this book has a lot of fighting and a lot of commentary on why we fight. It takes place over a thousand years, though we follow the same main character throughout the book, William Mandella. William stay alive and young due to the magic of time-dilation; basically, he spends a lot of his time traveling at near the speed of light. At such high speeds, time passes more slowly, and a few months of time aboard his spaceship turns into hundreds of years on Earth. This is one of those freaky physics phenomenons that are actually true. The faster you go, the less time passes for you.

This leads to a very weird life, because every time William returns to Earth from a mission, he finds things have changed drastically since he left. It's fun to watch the book's vision of the future unfold in that way. Like a lot of science fiction books, however, The Forever War can't really deal with God except when he comes before the word "damn," so the future of religion, which I'm super interested in, is totally ignored.

Ultimately, the book forces you to question the motivations and causes of war, as you might expect a book written during the Vietnam War to do. Its vision is sort of limited to that particular war, however. There is no concept of a war in which real, moral differences exist among the different sides; war is here envisioned solely as an economic and nationalistic tool of corrupt government leaders. And modern warfare, at least, often seems all too similar to that vision.

Nerd rating

7 wizard staffs (out of 10)

Lots of super inventive fighting techniques and imaginative planets. I particularly liked Haldeman's concept of a "stasis field," which leads to one of the coolest battle sequences I've ever read. Definitely worth checking out from your local library.

Non-nerd rating

8 cold, frosty beers (out of 10)

If you don't normally like science fiction, this is a good introduction to the genre. There's a minimum of nerding out and a maximum of action. Plus a random love story thrown in for good measure.

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Jordan Jeffers still thinks the best science fiction book on war is Slaughterhouse Five. Feel free to give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twitter buttons below. Peace.