Veronica

Rating:
Summary: I never lived a book until I read Veronica
Review: A Christmas present from my girlfriend (who, coincidently, is named Veronica), I read it this past February around the same time Leo meets the title character in the book. Despite my efforts to slow down my reading pace, I absorbed the novel as quickly as I would respond to the rhythm of a good song. And like a song, with its lyrical writing style, Veronica is a novel I will return to again, and undoubtedly find something new each time I read it. It's a book filled with spiritualism, magic, and hope which turned New York City into a magical kingdom of dreams. I've read numerous books in the fantasy genre, but this is the first book I've read in a long time which created (at least for me) a whole new plateau worth exploring. It's also interesting to note that after I finished the novel, I realized that the author hadn't used a single profanity. That's rare in today's mass market fiction. I look forward reading more of his work.

Rating:
Summary: deliciously surreal
Review: I fell in love with this story from page one. While the surface plot is about two people, Leo and the mysterious Veronica, racing against (and through) time in order to rescue Veronica's magician father, Albin White; what made this story so rich is the plethora of mystical symbolism that dotted every single page.

Tibetan magical practices, hermetics, the tarot, lunar cartographical history, and the number 8 all mingle together to provide a complex and multi-layered landscape. Along with the symbols, "Veronica" has a supporting cast that are as strange and interesting as anything out of a Terry Gilliam film. Among them, there's Clement, Veronica's pickpocketing brother, who has a talent for spectral photography; Otto, a man obsessed with the number 8; Remi Sing, a one-eyed artist whose paintings look like scars in a snowstorm; and Keko, blind courtesan with a passion for the moon and whose apartment is precisely duplicated in a fishtank. Then, of course, there's Starwood, Albin White's nemesis whose sole purpose in life is to destroy everthing White loves.

This isn't a typical sword-and-sorcery fantasy. Christopher's work is more like Patricia McKillip's "Stepping From the Shadows" or Charles de Lint's "Someplace to be Flying".

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Read "A Trip to the Stars" Instead...
Review: I just could not connect with this book, or feel really involved with the plot or its characters. I think this is due to the symbolism that I don't understand. Christopher obviously did his research with this one, as evidenced by the 'Recommended Reading' at the back. However, since I haven't read "Magic and Mystery in Tibet," or "My Journey to Lhasa," or "The History of Magic," I have a sneaking suspicion that I don't understand what was meant by the heavy use of symbolism in the novel. Oranges, a blue and yellow bird, golden wings... these are among the cast of symbols that appear and reappear constantly in the novel, but I have no idea what exactly they are supposed to mean or indicate.

Also, the main character in this novel leaves something to be desired. Leo seemed to me to be too passive, lacking a real personality. Although we see through his eyes, I don't feel like our vision was colored at all by his personality or interpretation of what was happening to him. Perhaps he is supposed to be intoxicated by Veronica, the novel's namesake, but Veronica didn't command such a presence in my mind.

The book was still good, and other viewers are right-- this book will take you on a fantastic journey. However, since I read it after "A Trip to the Stars," [now one of my favorite books] I was disappointed. My recommendation is to read "A Trip to the Stars" first. If you like it and like Christopher's writing, then read "Veronica."

Rating:
Summary: Read "A Trip to the Stars" Instead...
Review: I just could not connect with this book, or feel really involved with the plot or its characters. I think this is due to the symbolism that I don't understand. Christopher obviously did his research with this one, as evidenced by the 'Recommended Reading' at the back. However, since I haven't read "Magic and Mystery in Tibet," or "My Journey to Lhasa," or "The History of Magic," I have a sneaking suspicion that I don't understand what was meant by the heavy use of symbolism in the novel. Oranges, a blue and yellow bird, golden wings... these are among the cast of symbols that appear and reappear constantly in the novel, but I have no idea what exactly they are supposed to mean or indicate.

Also, the main character in this novel leaves something to be desired. Leo seemed to me to be too passive, lacking a real personality. Although we see through his eyes, I don't feel like our vision was colored at all by his personality or interpretation of what was happening to him. Perhaps he is supposed to be intoxicated by Veronica, the novel's namesake, but Veronica didn't command such a presence in my mind.

The book was still good, and other viewers are right-- this book will take you on a fantastic journey. However, since I read it after "A Trip to the Stars," [now one of my favorite books] I was disappointed. My recommendation is to read "A Trip to the Stars" first. If you like it and like Christopher's writing, then read "Veronica."

Rating:
Summary: A Trippy Love Story
Review: I picked up a used copy of Veronica based solely on the praise found on its cover, knowing nothing about the novel or the author. I was pleasantly surprised by the book, and can honestly say that it was like nothing I've ever read before. I do read a bit of fantasy, but Veronica is different in that the plot is grounded very firmly in New York City. It's what happens in the city to Leo, an innocent bystander who gets caught up in a whirlwind of magic and time-travel, that's the fantastic part. Though I found the novel to be innovative and the plot intriguing, I found Mr. Cristopher's writing style a bit repetitive and forced. I don't want to spoil the book for anyone who might be wanting to read it, but the ending leaves one wondering what exactly happened to Veronica and Leo -- it's one of those endings I'm dying to discuss with someone else who's read the book. A fun, yet thoughtful, escape from reality.

Rating:
Summary: Nifty Fantasy Ride Thru NYC & The Galaxy!!
Review: If you're looking for a wild ride of time/space/dimension travel, this ones hard to beat! Beautifully written, near flawless in conception, this book journeys through Elizabethan England (with Sir Walter Raleigh at his death), Lower Manhattan, the entire Empire State Bulding, Tibetan myth and magic, an unknown South American island, and some of the most bizarre characters you'll ever run into, including the fellow whose life revolves aroung the number "8"! Give this whrlwind adventure through magical and fantastical Gotham (and lots of the universe), and you'll have a thrill-filled ride!

Rating:
Summary: Nifty Fantasy Ride Thru NYC & The Galaxy!!
Review: If you're looking for a wild ride of time/space/dimension travel, this ones hard to beat! Beautifully written, near flawless in conception, this book journeys through Elizabethan England (with Sir Walter Raleigh at his death), Lower Manhattan, the entire Empire State Bulding, Tibetan myth and magic, an unknown South American island, and some of the most bizarre characters you'll ever run into, including the fellow whose life revolves aroung the number "8"! Give this whrlwind adventure through magical and fantastical Gotham (and lots of the universe), and you'll have a thrill-filled ride!

Rating:
Summary: Poetical magical realism
Review: Nicholas Christopher's Veronica will always be linked in my mind to the movie Rough Magic starring Bridgit Fonda and Russell Crowe. There are many obvious similarities, such as magician's assistants and the magic realist feel. But they will mainly be linked in my mind because I experienced them at the same time: I was in the middle of reading Veronica when I decided to take a break and see Rough Magic. This served to enhance the link that was already quite strong. (For what it is worth, I would be interested in reading Rough Magic's source material, James Hadley Chase's short story, "Miss Shumley Waves a Wand"--at least that's what I recall the title being.)

Leo, our hero, stumbles across the eponymous title character in New York City on a winter night. He quickly finds himself involved in an illusion of magicians, with blind Japanese courtesans, identical twins, and secret societies. He, of course, falls in love, but things are not so cut and dried as to be predictable.

Christopher is an accomplished poet, and Veronica is his second novel, the first from a major press. On a sentence by sentence level, I can hardly fault him, but he does not have as sure a hand when it comes to plotting. After a great start, the book bogs in the middle as the coincidences and conspiracies add up, and then it's an all-out sprint to the grand climax. I liked it, but that's because it punched several of my pleasure buttons. I would hesitate to recommend it to strangers without asking them about their literary preferences.

Rating:
Summary: i'd like to live in the world of this book
Review: this is an exhilirating, phantasmogorical novel that falls more into the "urban fantasy" genre than anything else, with a dash of magical realism thrown in, but it is really unique. nicholas christopher is obviously very erudite about Tibetan lore, history of alchemy and magic, and thus he imbues his wild inventiveness with acute historical detail which makes the fantastical world he creates in the surreal New York, from the starting point of the book, at the place in downtown where Waverly Place intersects itself to the spectacular climax battle atop the Empire State Building, seem weirdly real--not like you are transplanted into another world, as often happens with fantasy books, but as if this world he describes exists just around the corner from where you live, you just need to go to the right jazz club, or order from the right Tibetan restaurant. The plot involves the photographer Leo helping mysterious Veronica on a quest to find her father, a magician trapped in time by his former student/current nemesis; the book is endlessly entertaining, but at the same time bittersweet, and has one of the most satisfying endings i have ever had the pleasure to read.
note: i am currently reading christopher's next book called "a trip to the stars" which confirms for me that he is the umberto eco of fantasy--that should be a good indicator of his level of erudition, and the degree to which he uses history and cultural mythology to add dimensions to his books.

Rating:
Summary: Written in glorious technicolor!
Review: Veronica is more than a book - it's an experience! It is quite evident that Mr Christopher is a poet - this is one of the most visual books I have ever read. I "saw" this book in glorious technicolor! From the moment Leo meets Veronica by accident (or IS it by accident?) at the spot where Waverly Place intersects with Waverly Place in Manhattan, as she is looking for the keys she dropped in the snow, I was hooked - and you will be too! Leo's openness and sense of adventure make him the ideal person to help Veronica to get her father back. Dad is a famous magician who disappeared during a magic trick due to dastardly sabotage by a rival magician. I loved the feel of this quiet, empty New York, in parallel with the "real" noisy, crowded one! I found the feel of this book to be palpable. I inhabited the story while it was happening. There are things in it which will stay with me - for instance, the image, both visual and olfactory, of black tea seasoned with butter and salt. Such an exotic concept - for me, though probably not for a Tibetan! I tried it myself and found it to be quite tolerable, not at all the ghastly taste I was expecting! I loved the fact that Leo drinks endless cups of it during the time he has lost Veronica. Mr Christopher makes everything to do with Veronica seem cool, as viewed through Leo's eyes - the jazz combo she performs with, the clove cigarettes she smokes, the dress with "black holes" in it that she wears. The scenes with Keko are wonderful and the symbolism of the Empire State Building is perfect - what a great choice for "The Big Battle" between good and evil. Then there are the Elizabethan scenes, complete with tulpas with "eyeless eyes" and golden wings. (What a brilliant concept: that in a parallel world the "people" would be blurred and their voices muffled.) There are photographs that come to life and tricks that are not illusion but are on the level! Then there is the Tibetan connecti! on, including upside down triangular mirrors which reflect rooms other than the room one is in! I could go on and on (and have!!!) If you are looking for a book that will change your life (or, at least, the way you look at it) this may be the one! I also recommend highly Mr Christopher's poetry - 5 Degrees and Other Poems and In the Year of the Comet are both dazzling and mind-expanding!