Julian
March 4th, 2007, 08:04 PM
Well, I promised I'd do this, so here goes - a thread about Paul Park and his current Roumania series.
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I suspect a lot of you won't know Park. He's hardly obscure, but neither is he very well known. His first book was Soldiers of Paradise, the first volume of a trilogy called The Starbridge Chronicles (the other volumes are called Sugar Rain and The Cult of Loving Kindness). It was met with considerable acclaim from people like Gene Wolfe, who described Park as "a brilliant, stunning, frightening writer".
That's overstating it a bit, perhaps (at least the "frightening" part), but it gives you some idea of the type of writer Park is. And sure enough, The Starbridge Chronicles were dense, difficult, and strangely poetic - Park was, and still is, an ambitious and rather "literary" writer.
His current series, though - The Roumania Series - is certainly more easily accessible, whilst at the same time being more disciplined, plot-wise.
Ostensibly, it's another YA fantasy series, of which three volumes have been published so far: A Princess of Roumania (2005), The Tourmaline (2006) and The White Tyger (2007). The fourth and final volume, The Hidden World, will hopefully be published in 2008.
In "Princess" we meet Miranda and her friends, Peter and Andromeda. The three of them are living happily enough in an ordinary American town, when they are suddenly whisked away to a place called Roumania (Roumania, mind - not Romania). There, Miranda finds out that she's a princess of the realm, and that there are plans - hatched, in particular, by her aunt Aegypta - to set her on the Roumanian throne.
Now this sounds pretty straightforward, doesn't it? Toss in an arch villain - in this case, the baroness Ceauşescu - have everyone spar for a few rounds, and then it's coronation time.
Except that's not really how things seem to be working out. Park has used what is in essence a reasonably well known fantasy formula, but then he's gone and turned it around. Nothing is quite was it seems in Roumania; even its history varies, depending on the points of view of the people recollecting it. And those people are themselves complex and diffcult to judge; as you move through the series, you find your opinions of them start to shift. Aegypta, for example, might not be the goody two shoes you thought she was; certainly Miranda finds herself increasingly uncomfortable with the role Aegypta has planned for her.
The baroness Ceauşescu, alternatively, isn't quite the obliging arch villain either. Probably the most interesting character in the first two books, the baroness does, on occasion, do awful things, but she does so thinking she’s pursuing a worthwhile cause, and she might actually be right.
Then there’s Miranda herself, and her awkward relationship with Peter. At the end of "Princess", the two are seperated, and they are reunited only towards the end of "Tourmaline". But by that time they are no longer the same people they were before, and the meeting is not the joyous occasion Miranda was hoping for.
In short, Park's story is not a clear cut one. To this I would add that his writing style, too, is hardly average. I understand Ursula LeGuin has called it “transparent”, but I feel translucent is perhaps more fitting. There’s a diffusing quality to the way Park writes. The words are clear enough, but you still get the impression that you’re not actually seeing everything that’s going on. It's a style that some will find bemusing - even irritating, perhaps - but I personally feel it's really quite beautiful.
To give you an idea, here's an excerpt from "Tourmaline", just after Miranda and Peter have met up again:
Later, when she’d had time to think, she realized it was stupid to console yourself. Because nothing ever stays the same, and everything is always different, and Peter was different, and she herself was different, and everyone is simultaneously rushing towards someone and rushing away, especially people who care about each other after all. And the past drops away and has no meaning for the future, except for moments we look back and say, “Yes, I remember that.” Or, “Yes, I felt that. Or, “I believed that.” And those images of ourselves are bound to us as if through secret threads of glass.
But if we could forget our disappointment, and if there were something to shatter those tough, sharp threads, sever them, how happy we would be! And the past would recede from us, and we would turn from the people we have known and stumble forward, and meet them coming the other way.
This passage also seems to reflect well what the series is about. Yes, it’s about growing up, and in that sense you may well call it YA. But it is also, and more generally, about change and about accepting change, and about the fact that the world is never quite what you think it is.
All in all I was impressed with the first two books, and I voted for The Tourmaline as my favorite book of 2006 (I've only just started on The White Tyger). It'll certainly not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you like writers such as, say, Wolfe and LeGuin (or Philip Pullman, for that matter), I'd say you'll probably like Paul Park.
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Well - that turned into a pretty long post! Sorry about that (it's actually a condensed version of a fuller review, so it could have been worse... :) ).
Hopefully one or two of you will give (or perhaps have already given) this series a try. In that case, it'd be interesting to hear what you think about it.
__________________
I suspect a lot of you won't know Park. He's hardly obscure, but neither is he very well known. His first book was Soldiers of Paradise, the first volume of a trilogy called The Starbridge Chronicles (the other volumes are called Sugar Rain and The Cult of Loving Kindness). It was met with considerable acclaim from people like Gene Wolfe, who described Park as "a brilliant, stunning, frightening writer".
That's overstating it a bit, perhaps (at least the "frightening" part), but it gives you some idea of the type of writer Park is. And sure enough, The Starbridge Chronicles were dense, difficult, and strangely poetic - Park was, and still is, an ambitious and rather "literary" writer.
His current series, though - The Roumania Series - is certainly more easily accessible, whilst at the same time being more disciplined, plot-wise.
Ostensibly, it's another YA fantasy series, of which three volumes have been published so far: A Princess of Roumania (2005), The Tourmaline (2006) and The White Tyger (2007). The fourth and final volume, The Hidden World, will hopefully be published in 2008.
In "Princess" we meet Miranda and her friends, Peter and Andromeda. The three of them are living happily enough in an ordinary American town, when they are suddenly whisked away to a place called Roumania (Roumania, mind - not Romania). There, Miranda finds out that she's a princess of the realm, and that there are plans - hatched, in particular, by her aunt Aegypta - to set her on the Roumanian throne.
Now this sounds pretty straightforward, doesn't it? Toss in an arch villain - in this case, the baroness Ceauşescu - have everyone spar for a few rounds, and then it's coronation time.
Except that's not really how things seem to be working out. Park has used what is in essence a reasonably well known fantasy formula, but then he's gone and turned it around. Nothing is quite was it seems in Roumania; even its history varies, depending on the points of view of the people recollecting it. And those people are themselves complex and diffcult to judge; as you move through the series, you find your opinions of them start to shift. Aegypta, for example, might not be the goody two shoes you thought she was; certainly Miranda finds herself increasingly uncomfortable with the role Aegypta has planned for her.
The baroness Ceauşescu, alternatively, isn't quite the obliging arch villain either. Probably the most interesting character in the first two books, the baroness does, on occasion, do awful things, but she does so thinking she’s pursuing a worthwhile cause, and she might actually be right.
Then there’s Miranda herself, and her awkward relationship with Peter. At the end of "Princess", the two are seperated, and they are reunited only towards the end of "Tourmaline". But by that time they are no longer the same people they were before, and the meeting is not the joyous occasion Miranda was hoping for.
In short, Park's story is not a clear cut one. To this I would add that his writing style, too, is hardly average. I understand Ursula LeGuin has called it “transparent”, but I feel translucent is perhaps more fitting. There’s a diffusing quality to the way Park writes. The words are clear enough, but you still get the impression that you’re not actually seeing everything that’s going on. It's a style that some will find bemusing - even irritating, perhaps - but I personally feel it's really quite beautiful.
To give you an idea, here's an excerpt from "Tourmaline", just after Miranda and Peter have met up again:
Later, when she’d had time to think, she realized it was stupid to console yourself. Because nothing ever stays the same, and everything is always different, and Peter was different, and she herself was different, and everyone is simultaneously rushing towards someone and rushing away, especially people who care about each other after all. And the past drops away and has no meaning for the future, except for moments we look back and say, “Yes, I remember that.” Or, “Yes, I felt that. Or, “I believed that.” And those images of ourselves are bound to us as if through secret threads of glass.
But if we could forget our disappointment, and if there were something to shatter those tough, sharp threads, sever them, how happy we would be! And the past would recede from us, and we would turn from the people we have known and stumble forward, and meet them coming the other way.
This passage also seems to reflect well what the series is about. Yes, it’s about growing up, and in that sense you may well call it YA. But it is also, and more generally, about change and about accepting change, and about the fact that the world is never quite what you think it is.
All in all I was impressed with the first two books, and I voted for The Tourmaline as my favorite book of 2006 (I've only just started on The White Tyger). It'll certainly not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you like writers such as, say, Wolfe and LeGuin (or Philip Pullman, for that matter), I'd say you'll probably like Paul Park.
_______________
Well - that turned into a pretty long post! Sorry about that (it's actually a condensed version of a fuller review, so it could have been worse... :) ).
Hopefully one or two of you will give (or perhaps have already given) this series a try. In that case, it'd be interesting to hear what you think about it.