Happy Holiday

Happy Cinco de Mayo. Unfortunately I live in the wrong country to get the day off work, and my work frowns on drinking alcohol while on the clock, so I am stuck with diet soda and water at my desk.

I've decided to lobby for a new holiday. It can be celebrated anytime in early spring. You get the day off work, but to celebrate you have to clean out your fridge and throw out all the stuff that has turned funny colors, grew fur or liquefied. It will be call Stink of the Mayonnaise.

I thought it was funny, but then I am insane.

Incidentally, I finally found and started reading some books I learned up about 7 years ago. If you like fantasy, used to like fantasy but got tired of the same old crap, like comedy, like comedic fantasy, like history, or like mysteries or preferably like comedic, non-western fantasy with a touch of history and mystery you need to check out Barry Hughart. Mr. Hughart wrote 3 books in a series, he originally planned to write 7, but given that he has pretty high standards and the style of book he wrote took a fine balance and he felt it wasn't financially worth the work because the people in charge of his account at his publishers must have moved to the Fox television network in charge of promising new tv series. They did things like fail to tell him his first book won a prestigious award for fantasy fiction, released the hard and soft cover editions of one book at the same time, and publishing a book 3 months ahead of schedule so by the time the reviews (set to appear to coincide with the publishing date) appeared the books were already off the store shelves. Needless to say, from a business standpoint, who could blame him.

I have finished Mr. Hughart's first 2 books and started the third. The first two are very strong, the pacing is fast, the writing tight, the characters, even minors ones well-drawn. The humor is sometimes very subtle and other times more prominent, but never out-of-place.

The books are not the typical fantasy set in a European middle-ages. Rather it is set in a version of ancient China. Chinese history and mythology is blended with fantasy elements in a most satisfying way. You don't have to be at all familiar with Chinese history to follow the story lines. Everything you need to know is included. These aren't 800 page epics either. The books are exactly as long as they need to be. The stories have no padding, footnotes or extra content. It's odd in the day of the 10 book trilogy to run across a series that doesn't require the use of a war room complete with massive computing power and wall board to track events characters and locations.

Book one is The Bridge of Birds. A village known for its silk is suddenly struck by both the untimely death of its silk worms and the children of the village fall into an odd coma. Yu Lu, not the famous author of the "Classic of Tea" but rather a lowly but heroic and incredibly strong young peasant known as Number Ten Ox, is dispatched to the city to bring back a sage to diagnose the illness of the children. He cannot afford most of the scholars and sages, identified by a sign of an open eye over their doors. He does however find a door marked with a half-closed eye, and a drunken man with incredible credentials who identifies himself as Li Kao, who has a "slight flaw to his character."

Book two is The Story of the Stone. Our two hero's become involved in the mysterious death of a monk, apparently the victim of a mad prince who has been dead for a few centuries.

Book three is Eight Skilled Gentlemen. Thus far an execution was disrupted by a vampire ghoul, which leads to the murder of a high ranking official which apparently is being hushed by the highest officials.

Some very minor non-spoiler items I have found funny.

Upon discovering they need to find a mysterious item known as the great root of power, Li Kao predicts it will be worth 10 times its weight in diamonds and look like a dog turd.

Li Kao comments that he doesn't understand why people sometimes think he is a crude assassin, he is never crude.

The author seems to enjoy poking fun at politicians, greedy people, over pious people, bureaucrats, know-it-alls, ect. but his novels move at a pace that makes putting them down nearly impossible.