Battle of the 2015 Books, Bracket One, Second Round :: The Banished of Muirwood by Jeff Wheeler vs. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

We begin the second round of Bracket One of the Battle of the 2015 Books with The Banished of Muirwood by Jeff Wheeler going against The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 50 pages.

The Banished of Muirwood: 47North, August 2015, 438 pages, cover art by Magali Villeneuve. The Banished of Muirwood is the first volume in the Covenant of Muirwood trilogy. The Banished of Muirwood defeated Forge of Ashes by Josh Vogt to get into the second round.

The heroine of The Banished of Muirwood is Maia, daughter of the king of Muirwood. Disappointed at not having any sons, the king has banished Maia from the capital and replaced Maia's mother with a scheming noblewoman. Sent on a very dangerous (perhaps pointless) mission, Maia soon finds herself and her "kishion" bodyguard pursued by "Dochte Mandar" wizards, who do not believe a woman should be allowed to practice magic, as Maia does. In a remote town, she meets a tough woodsman named Jon Tayt, who vows to help her escape. Despite his best efforts, the opening 50 pages end with Maia captured by the Dochte Mandar.

The Buried Giant: Alfred A. Knopf, 317 pages, March 2015, jacket design by Peter Mendelsund. Kazuo Ishiguro won the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Remains of the Day. The Buried Giant overpowered Firesoul by Gary Kloster to get into the second round.

The Buried Giant takes place in ancient England after the Romans have withdrawn. Our main characters are an old couple named Axl and Beatrice. Frustrated that they don't remember him very well, they determine to leave their farming community and travel across country to see their son. It seems that nobody in this area can remember very much, something Axl and Beatrice attribute to a peculiar mist over the land. In the first 50 pages, they travel through a rainstorm to encounter a boatman dogged by an old woman furious that he took her husband across the water to a strange island but left her behind. Then they enter a Saxon village gripped by fear and paranoia, because a young boy has reportedly been carried away by an ogre.

The Battle: Here we have an epic fantasy going against historical fantasy.

The opening 50 pages of The Banished of Muirwood effectively pull the reader into the story. Wheeler alternates between present-day scenes, in which shit is going down around Maia in a big hurry, and flashbacks in which we learn how she ended up exiled into this mess. The pacing is just right to make it seem like a lot is a happening, while simultaneously taking time for us to get to know Maia and feel sympathy for how unfairly she has been treated by her father and by fate. It felt a bit contrived that this dynamic fellow Jon Tayt was waiting around in Maia's path with nothing better to do than risk his life on her behalf. Then again, that may yet turn out to be no coincidence.

The opening 50 pages of The Buried Giant have a slower pace, consisting simply of an elderly couple walking about talking to people, yet have pulled me into the story just as effectively. The affection Axl and Beatrice have for each other after a lifetime together is presented most endearingly, and the folks they encounter on the road are intriguing. I am very interested in the nature and effects of the mist that has fogged everyone's memories.

I am enjoying both these books and would be happy to keep reading either. But a decision must be made.

When a battle comes down to something I dislike about a particular book, that is usually easy to articulate. It's much harder to explain when a battle turns on my admiration for a writer who is far more skilled than I am.

Simply put, Kazuo Ishiguro rocks. I wish I understood everything he is doing for me to be so absorbed in The Buried Giant, so I could do the same when I write. The narrative flows over me in such a way that each time I start reading, I do not want to put the book down. The characters' quest to find their son and regain their memories is personal in a way I find very affecting. For instance, after they learn that the boatman they met is not permitted to transport a couple together without first asking questions to test the bond between them, Beatrice confesses fear to Axl:

"But what's to fear, princess? We've no plans to go to any such island or any desire to do so."

"Even so, Axl. What if our love withers before we've a chance to even think of going to such a place?"

"What are you saying, princess? How can our love wither? Isn't it stronger now than when we were foolish young lovers?"

"But Axl we can't even remember those days. Or any of the years between. We don't remember our fierce quarrels or the small moments we enjoyed and treasured. We don't remember our son or why he's away from us."

"We can make all those memories come back, princess. Besides, the feeling in my heart for you will be there just the same, no matter what I remember or forget. Don't you feel the same, princess?"

"I do, Axl. But then again I wonder if what we feel in our hearts today isn't like the raindrops still falling on us from the soaked leaves above, even though the sky itself long stopped raining. I'm wondering if without our memories, there's nothing for it but for our love to fade and die."

"God wouldn't allow such a thing, princess." Axl said this quietly, almost under his breath, for he had himself felt an unnamed fear welling up within him.

After 50 pages, I'm enjoying The Banished of Muirwood, but feel compelled to keep reading The Buried Giant.

THE WINNER: The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Buried Giant advances to the semifinals to take on either Fortune’s Blight by Evie Manieri or The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the 2015 Books, Bracket One, First Round :: The Banished of Muirwood by Jeff Wheeler vs. Forge of Ashes by Josh Vogt

Our first match in the first round of Bracket One of the Battle of the 2015 Books features The Banished of Muirwood by Jeff Wheeler versus Forge of Ashes by Josh Vogt. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

The Banished of Muirwood: 47North, August 2015, 438 pages, cover art by Magali Villeneuve. The Banished of Muirwood is the first volume in the Covenant of Muirwood trilogy. The heroine of the trilogy, Maia, is the only daughter of the king of Muirwood. Chapter One of The Banished of Muirwood consists of a flashback to Maia's youth, when she learned magic from a "Dochte Mandar" wizard, while her mother bore one of several stillborn children. The stillbirths placed Maia in line to be queen, but also left her father bitter and irrational. In Chapter Two, we see Maia as a young adult, effectively exiled by her father from the capital. She is sent on a mission with an assassin for a bodyguard, a mission which will put her in the path of other dangerous wizards and lead her to Naess, a place where it is a capital crime for a woman to learn magic.

Forge of Ashes: Paizo, June 2015, 387 pages, cover art by Eric Belisle. This is a tie-in to the Pathfinder role-playing game. Pathfinder books have made a strong showing to date in the Battle of the Books, consistently featuring a high level of writing. In Forge of Ashes, a female dwarf named Akina returns to her home after many years fighting as a mercenary. She is accompanied by Ondorum, who has taken a vow of silence. Akina is startled to see her own likeness on sculptures decorating many parts of the city. She learns that her brother has become an insensible drunk, her mother has disappeared and is presumed dead in the mines, and her former lover became obsessed with her in her absence. He is the source of the Akina sculptures, a revelation to which she does not take kindly.

The Battle: We start this bracket of the Battle of the Books with a contest between two high fantasy adventures. It's an interesting case study in what it takes to pull through the first round of BotB.

The opening round is first and foremost about pulling me into the story. The Banished of Muirwood has some writing quirks I wasn't crazy about, starting with the fact that the entire first chapter turns out jarringly to be a dream. But by the end of 25 pages, I have a pretty good sense of what's at stake for Maia, both internally and externally. Internally, she feels abandoned by her parents, and she loves to study magic but tradition says she shouldn't be permitted to do so because of her gender. Meanwhile, externally, her father has banished her and all the other magicians, triggering a series of large-scale conflicts. On the horizon, there is a potential conflict over Muirwood, the area Maia's family left when it was overrun by plants and animals in a case of nature gone berserk. All of these storylines make me want to keep reading.

In contrast, on a sentence-by-sentence level, I couldn't find a flaw in Forge of Ashes if I tried. Josh Vogt has an excellent flow to his prose, and is certainly a young writer to watch. Yet through 25 pages, the narrative of Forge of Ashes has not pulled me into the story so well as The Banished of Muirwood. I think the biggest problem is Vogt hasn't stopped to set the stage for me. Unlike The Banished of Muirwood, the opening section of Forge of Ashes shows no thoughts or flashbacks to Akina's past. There's not even a moment when Akina pauses to say anything like, "I wonder what Mom's up to." Rather, she just wanders into town and things happen without any preamble. For example, she is told her brother has been kicked out of his monastery and become a drunk, which has no impact on the reader, who is simply thinking, "Oh, she has a brother?"

Through 25 pages, we don't know why Akina left home, we don't know why she has now come back. We have little sense of what's at stake for her in this story. One supposes the story will involve looking for Akina's mother, but then, does Akina even care about her mother? The fact that Akina stayed away for ten years without so much as sending a post card suggests a less than ideal relationship, but so far the narrative hasn't actually told us so. Despite the strong prose, it's easier for me to stop reading Forge of Ashes after 25 pages, because I don't yet have even a vague sense of where Akina's story is headed.

THE WINNER: The Banished of Muirwood by Jeff Wheeler

The Banished of Muirwood advances to the second round to face either Firesoul by Gary Kloster or The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro.

To see the whole bracket, click here.