The Power Of One

So I finished The Road and have decided to move on to reading The Power of One since I recently learned that my Call of the Wild book is abridged.
The story so far. The Power of One is a book about a child growing up in South Africa just as WWII is starting out, this boy is sent to a boarding school where he is the youngest kid there by at least a year and he is constantly harassed. In South Africa at this time there were many ethnic factions and most of where the main character lives is dominated by the "boers" who are South Africans of Germanic descent, and he is English. These two factions had been warring at the turn of the century and the boers were sent to some of the worlds first concentration camps. Unfortunately for Peekay (the main character's nickname, his real name has not been mentioned) the school is entirely boers seeking revenge for what the "rooineks" or English had done to their ancestors. A lot of events happen at the school but I really don't want to go into them right now. After leaving school he is moving to the city with his Grandfather. He is riding a train to the city and is paired with the train guard Hoppie Greonwald an Irish boxer. While Peekay is with Hoppie he becomes obsessed with the sport of boxing and witnesses a boxing match between the 145 lb. Hoppie and a 225 lb. brute Jackhammer Smit. Hoppie obviously being a protagonist in the story wins against Jackhammer Smit by out smarting him in the blazing 105 degree temperature by boxing Jackhammer Smit's eyes closed then getting a TKO with a uppercut. Hoppie's influence on Peekay give Peekay the aspiration to become a welterweight boxer.

A major theme expressed so far in this book is the story of big versus small, before Hoppie's fight the announcer references the biblical fight between David and Goliath, Peekay is beaten and "tortured" by the Nazi Boer kid who he calls the Judge. The book stresses that whomever has the most heart and the smartest head will win not just the strongest contender.

The Road- The End

So I finished my book the road and I have to say it is the most depressing book you can find. The ending was kind of perplexing and if you dont want me to ruin it quit reading NOW so the father of the boy dies of a lung infection or something of the sort but the boy is picked up by a group of "good guys" but the last paragraph is confusing. It seems to contradict itself in saying that the world is over and that the world may continue yet, I have read over it at least a dozen times and still do not understand exactly what it means. I did really enjoy the book but it did have some incredibly repetitive conversations. Often times when the man does something that the boy doesn't deem the right thing to do the man asks the boy if hes talking, then the boy says yes he is talking and the man tells him he isn't and then the boy tells him he just did and then they quit talking. This reoccurs every time a major event in the book happens and I dont feel like it is necessary for it to be repeated on the level that it is. The book does a good job of impressing upon the reader that after this generation of people dies out there will never be anything alive on the Earth again and it truly is the end. But the last paragraph suggests a more bright future for the world that contradicts the whole book.
So now I need to chose what to read next, the call of the wild which is one of my favorite books of all time, or the power of one which I've heard is great from my whole family and I might read.

The Road- The people

The people in the road explore the moral extremes. There are the protagonists who are very good people though I don't believe they are entirely perfect they are oppritunists and if they weren't they'd be dead but they don't commit any misdeeds. Then there are the cannibals they are the most sadistic terrible people you could imagine. The boy and the man stumble upon an estate looking for food and clothing to take and find a hatch in the ground where cannibals keep their victims before they cook them, needless to say the man and the boy sprint out of the home just in time to avoid becoming a victim. There are roving groups of cannibals that eventually consume each other. There is very little moral middle ground in fact the boy divides the world into "good guys", and "bad guys" and the only good guys they a have seen are themselves in a mirror. The world shows how people have gone to the extremes of evil by torturing and eating other people something that is completely unthinkable in society this says alot about the human race first it shows we are selfish and brutish in our natural state (Hobbes) but it also shows that we are the ultimate survivalists we are willing to do whatever it takes to stay alive and thus we are among the only specieses that has the capability to survive the apocolypse, and it was only a fluke that the boy and the man are alive but the cannibals were the people who really did what it takes to stay alive but I don't believe that most normal good people would go to that extreme.

Some eventat that happened in my most recent reading is the miraculous discovery of a cache of supplies and food, this is definately a rescue from without and it really affects the reader. When they opened this hatch that the book says looks identicle to the hatch where they found the cannibal victims and saw the food and cloths they didn't believe it was real, they were on the brink of starvation and the man had come to terms with his death and they find this cache of food to save them.

So far The Road has shown a very polarized views of human nature. Though it only shows the bad side becuase honestly it could only be by sheer luck that any good guys are still alive. "Nice guys finish last" and the others eat people.

The Road- The world

The world in the road is a post apocolyptic (most likely nuclear apocoyptic) where humanity faces extinction yet nobody in the world seems to care about humanity. Everyone in The Road is an opritunist meaning that they are not worries about others and they will take any opritunities they see to increase their own chances of survival. Nobody in this world is exempt from this rule even the protagonists are with eachother for their own survival, but not their physical survival but they mental health. It says that they are each other's entire world meaning that without each other they would lose their will to live and cease to do so. The world is nearly barren and seeing other people is rare and most often you do not want to see other people for they range from murderous raiders to cannibals. It seems the only people in the world who aren't insane and evil are the man and the boy. They are help together by the bond of father and son, they probably aren't completely flawed but they are not self rightous they are only trying to be good and stay alive for the sake of the other person. Strangely the world in the road is told from an oblivious point of view where the speaker doesn't actually know or care why and how the world got to this point, it only cares about the man and the boy. The speaker is like this because the man and the boy only care about their own survival and not the survival of the world as a whole. I like this point of view because instead of trying to create a large all encompasing world it creates a small world where there are only two important thing (the portagonists) so the reader cares more about each of these characters because they seem to be the only beacon of hope in the desolate world of The Road.

The Road

So as you may have guessed from my previous posts i have given up on Brisingr. I have started a new book in the spirit of reading ATPH I started reading The Road. I got this book last winter but I didn't have the will to force myself to read this post apocolyptic novel, but now since we are already reading one Cormac McCarthy book I might as well read another. I started the book which is about a father and a son traveling to the west coast of america on what is left of a interstate highway. The destruction of the world is never explained but it is hinted at being cause by nuclear war. Since they often refer to the burned charred remains of buildings. The father and the son are never named in the book signifying that they could easily be anybody or they are a symbol of humans in general not specific people. Cormac describes them as "each others world entire" meaning that without each other neither of them would be able to survive and the only reason they still have the will to live is for the other person. Thus far in the book they have not encountered any other people but they have discussed the prospect of being attacked by "bloodcults". One mildly confusing aspect of the book is that it drifts between the past and the present describing the man's wife before the apocolypse there are no transitions to these aspects except that occasionally the flashbacks are preceded by the man or the boy falling asleep. The book is terrifying and sad somehow Cormac is able to make a boys nightmare about a toy penguin that when you would up it walked around, but the boy saw it moving around and the key in it's back wasn't moving send a shiver down my spine. The book is unbelievably sad as it describes the death of humanity and a father and son's fight to survive. They are trying to get to the west coast simply so they have a goal to go through even though they are forced to walk through the freezing cold rockey mountains with little provisions, this shows that people need a goal and aspirations in order to maintain their will to live.

Why I hate fantasy books

This book Brisingr has convinced me never to read a fantasy book again. I really hate how the plot follows the same formulaic plot somewhat like the hero quest. Actually I don't really like the idea of a formula to a book, even the hero quest. It makes books very predicatble and with the fact that the protagonist is ALWAYS perfectly moral which means that as i have stated in my past post the hero always finds the ideal solution to a problem that works out best for everybody (even some times the antagonist) so you always know what is going to happen in the end. Sometimes they are able to keep you interested and hae some unpredictablility like in Harry Potter where they kill a major character in most of the books at the end of the series so your always guessing who is going to die even if Harry still emerges triumphant. Harry Potter is the only example of a fantasy book that I still like because they make all the characters so much a part of who Harry is that when one of them dies it feels like part of Harry and the series dies as well. Another thing that I dont like about fantasy novels is that you don't really care about the characters because they have no depth (again i believe Harry Potter is exempt from this problem somewhat). In Brisingr i really wouldn't care if halfway through the novel Eragon caught fire and died and the Antagonist won the war, this is because they make him such a perfect character that the reader cannot connect to him. Though I must admit if Eragon's cousin Roran died I would be mildly pissed off because he had character depth.
Beyond the typical problems with fantasy novels and their formulaic plots is the actual idea of a fantasy novel. I like things to be set in the real world not some crazy offshoot of midieval life with dragons and magic. This just seems like things that distract from the plot without really adding much more. So much of the stuff simply seems to be for the "WOW" factor like if a little kid said "Its like knights in shining armor only they have dragons instead of horses and the ride them and fight on them!". That doesnt really change the novel in many fantasy books you could easily replace the word dragon with the word horse and the phrase breathed fire upon with ran over, and the book woud be virtually unchanged in its plot. I do understand that these books are written for children and I should view them as that but even as a child I was bored by these formulaic plots and predictability of fantasy/sci-fi books but I couldnt find a way to put that into words.

Predictablility in books...

so I am reading the book Brisingr, and it seems centered around the battle between good and evil, which is very typical of a sci-fi/fanstasy book. Last week I complained about how the main character of the book is far too perfect, well he was actually able to kill someone who wasnt fighting him, he killed a soldier who was in retreat from a battle. I am glad that this happened because it makes Eragon a more unpredictable character, which creates conflict and some supence in the novel. I do wish they did a little more explaining the antagonist because all they have really told you about the evil character in the book is that he once was good and now he is evil. This lack of an explanation about this character makes him not mysterious but very uninteresting.
Some things I do like about the book are that not ALL the characters are either perfectly good or impossibly evil (without explanations) some of the characters most notably Roran, Eragons cousin. Roran is a good character but he enjoys fighting in battle and getting revenge for the death of his parents (or something like that). The fact that he likes what he does adds character depth, and a little spice to the story. The world that the author has created is also very interesting, the author developed a complex mythology of magic and the magic language. The author makes all that deals with magic in this world very complex and many mistakes are made that result badly for those involved. This also adds a little bit of surprise to Brisingr.

Overall I would say my main complaint with the book is that it is woefully predictable, but in the end it is worth my time to read because it is a fun to read book.