Mark Salzman "The Laughing Sutra"

Mark Salzman has lived and taught English in China in 1980s. He is best known for the autobiographical book "Iron and Silk" describing this period of his life. "The Laughing Sutra" is a fiction novel following the adventures of Hsun-ching - a Chinese orphan turned monk turned Red-guard-against-his-will turned vagabond - who travels to United States to retrieve a mythical "Laughing Sutra" for his old teacher/adoptive-father. The book is easy and fun to read, but does not pack a lot of punch. The adventures are too lightweight to make it an action novel. The deliberations about China and USA and their culture are too well-known and stereotypical to make it a treatise about the two cultures and societies. The fun elements are too infrequent to make it a funny book. The references to Buddhist teachings are mixed bag: some deep insights in the beginning coupled with what-was-he-thinking Laughing Sutra ending. The only truly interesting character is Colonel Sun, but even he is not fully developed, since he plays a secondary role. Fun light read, but not more. 6/10.

Philip Pullman "His Dark Materials"

"His Dark Materials" trilogy received praise from a lot of places and garnered quite a few of book awards. Since the movie is coming out sometime this year, I decided to read the books before the movie comes out. My overall impression though was mixed. First part of the first book is just boring. Even though Lyra - the main heroine - manages to stop an assassination in the very first chapter, the book loses its intensity and pacing immediately afterwards. We get quite a few pages of random juvenalia, which is probably supposed to be character building, but is just random child games instead. Only when Lyra has to run from Mrs. Coulter, the pacing improves again. The pacing problems are also apparent in other two books, for example, the middle of "The Amber Spyglass".

Couple more things that annoyed me in the first book were the superbad parent characters, the anti-Church stance, and steampunk world. Parent characters do not improve throughout the trilogy staying lifeless although with a few character twists. Anti-Church rhetoric continues too.

The strong parts of the book are friendship, love and freedom lines. It is quite weird though that the author after proclaiming Love almost the ultimate power and achievement, lets the books end the way they do. Yes, sure he wants to make a point, but his other points suffer.

For an atheistic book there are way too many deus ex machina moments. Angels and demons - literally - appear to save hopeless situations and it seems that the whole plot is dictated by some higher power. I almost expected to meet an old man feeding Oxford pond ducks (cf "Good Omens") in the very end.

With all that said, the books are worth reading just for Iorek Byrnison and maybe for Lyra and Will. It will be interesting to see how the movie is presented and if it will maintain the harsh antireligious position. Apparently Pullman is unhappy about the movie already, so it may have serious differences from the books.

Books 6.5/10. Movie - ?