Mistborn
by Brandon Sanderson
I've been keeping an eye out for this author's novels, because he's the guy writing the 12th book of the Wheel of Time from Robert Jordan's notes. I wanted to see if he had the authorial chops to handle the task he's taken on.
Short answer: Maybe.
I found Mistborn, the first in a trilogy, and bought it, and now spent 8 days reading it -- it's fairly long, and it's been a busy week of school seminars and home repair. It was really good; apart from the whole WoT thing, Sanderson is definitely an author I'd want to keep up with. The second book of this trilogy is already out, as is a stand-alone novel, his first; this book was a discounted re-release to promote the publication of the last book in the trilogy. So I'll be looking at Powell's for the sequel and the separate novel.
The positives: the writing was strong, though a bit plain; the magic system and the world were outstanding, one of the best fantasy settings I've seen in a while -- comparable in some ways with WoT, which is probably why he was tapped to write Book 12. The concept is that there is an absolute dictatorship ruling this world, a single world-spanning empire with an immortal god-king at the head. The world has turned ugly, with volcanoes spewing a constant stream of ash and smoke into the sky, blocking most of the sun's rays and leaving the people with brown plants and a world coated in black ash, which falls like rain. The empire has divided people into nobility and peasants, and the peasants suffer just as they did in the feudal system of the Middle Ages: they exist only to serve the nobility, who slaughter them wholesale just for amusement, and who work very hard to crush their spirits, mostly with great success.
The book is about a group of people, thieves, who try to organize an uprising in order to overthrow the all-powerful emperor, slaughter the nobles, and free the people -- and make themselves impossibly rich in the process. The cast of characters were mostly good, though some of the secondary characters were a bit cliche -- a soldier who tries to think like a philosopher, but honestly, his philosophical questions are a bit ho-hum (The best one was: if the Lord Ruler is actually a piece of God, as his reputation has it, then doesn't his divinity make his actions morally right, and thus make our insurrection the wrong thing to do?), and then there are the overweight bombastic politico, the quiet organizer, and the cantankerous old man. But the main characters were much better, and the magic system -- which is based around metals, which the magic-users ingest and then "burn" to gain magical powers -- was both subtle and intricate, as well as being basically straightforward and easy to follow.
The plot was great, though again, there were little cliche moments that irritated me slightly -- I could have done without the love interest, for one, as the lowborn main character falls for the one noble with a heart of gold. But the ending was outstanding, and the image of the villains -- the Inquisitors, horribly powerful, immortal servants of the Lord Ruler -- was inspired: instead of eyes, they have steel spikes driven through their heads, with the tips protruding from the backs of their skulls and the square ends of the spikes right where their eyes should be. That was fantastic.
So basically, Sanderson has the imagination to keep up with the Wheel of Time, but not really the storytelling skills, at least not in this book. Unfortunately, the imaginative parts of WoT are already done for him, so this doesn't play to his strengths. I'm hoping his other books show better writing.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Book #54
Circus of the Damned
by Laurell K. Hamilton
Continuing on with the Anita Blake series, I read the third one, Circus of the Damned. I didn't like this one quite as much as the last one, but I liked it more than the first. The bad guy in this one was good, though it centered a lot more on Anita and Jean-Claude and Anita's attempts to live a normal life, all of which are effectively ruined by her association with Jean-Claude, because she knows who the Master of the City is and where his daytime resting place is, so everybody who wants to kill him -- and it's more than a few -- wants to bribe, threaten, and torture the information out of her. It was an interesting depiction of what it's like to be a human drawn into the vampire's world. It also made Anita seem much less high-powered -- though she did have her badass moment at the end, oh yes she did.
I liked the million-year-old vampire enormously; I thought it was a fantastic idea and a wonderfully drawn character. I liked his motivation and the ways he intends to accomplish his goals, as well as his obvious personal power as seen through his control of such incredibly powerful minions. I didn't like the lamia, but I'm not supposed to, so that worked out well; it's an interesting way to handle the villain, to have a personable mastermind with loathsome henchbeings. On one level I wanted Oliver to win, mostly because I'm tired of Jean-Claude's assurance that he'll win and that Anita will surrender to him. Why? Because he's pretty, that's why. He's way too much of a prettyboy, utterly confident that his looks will enable him to get any woman, utterly convinced that once a woman gives in to her attraction to him, she will never resist him again. It's annoying. The conversation just keeps happening the same way:
"I'll never give in to you, Jean-Claude."
"But you want me."
"But I can't love you."
"But you liked kissing me."
"But I can't love you, and so there will never be anything more than a kiss."
"I'll wait, ma petite."
And on and on it goes. Now, this doesn't detract from the books, and it did make this one better for me because of the events that happen between Anita and Jean-Claude, how she turns on him and why, and the end result of her unexpected (to Jean-Claude; seems like it was always just a matter of time) betrayal of him, and I do agree with Anita's final choice of Jean-Claude as the least of the several evils facing her -- but I want her to slap him. A lot. Maybe muss up that pretty face a little bit. Although more scars would just give him character, like that damn cross scar gives to his chest.
So I'm seeing great potential in these books to go the distance: the main character is both powerful and, as this book establishes, very human and thus a bit outclassed by her immortal enemies -- though she uses all of the tools at her disposal to maximum effect, which works out quite well -- and the other main characters are complex and multi-dimensional. Because despite my irritation with Jean-Claude's prettyboy seduction techniques, he is actually much more than that, which is why I don't really hate him. But it isn't just him: Willie McCoy and her boss, Bert, and the other animators, including the new guy, all have their strengths and weaknesses. They are all very realistic, and thus very interesting. At the same time, of course, there is some serious booty-kicking going on in these books, and who doesn't like that?
by Laurell K. Hamilton
Continuing on with the Anita Blake series, I read the third one, Circus of the Damned. I didn't like this one quite as much as the last one, but I liked it more than the first. The bad guy in this one was good, though it centered a lot more on Anita and Jean-Claude and Anita's attempts to live a normal life, all of which are effectively ruined by her association with Jean-Claude, because she knows who the Master of the City is and where his daytime resting place is, so everybody who wants to kill him -- and it's more than a few -- wants to bribe, threaten, and torture the information out of her. It was an interesting depiction of what it's like to be a human drawn into the vampire's world. It also made Anita seem much less high-powered -- though she did have her badass moment at the end, oh yes she did.
I liked the million-year-old vampire enormously; I thought it was a fantastic idea and a wonderfully drawn character. I liked his motivation and the ways he intends to accomplish his goals, as well as his obvious personal power as seen through his control of such incredibly powerful minions. I didn't like the lamia, but I'm not supposed to, so that worked out well; it's an interesting way to handle the villain, to have a personable mastermind with loathsome henchbeings. On one level I wanted Oliver to win, mostly because I'm tired of Jean-Claude's assurance that he'll win and that Anita will surrender to him. Why? Because he's pretty, that's why. He's way too much of a prettyboy, utterly confident that his looks will enable him to get any woman, utterly convinced that once a woman gives in to her attraction to him, she will never resist him again. It's annoying. The conversation just keeps happening the same way:
"I'll never give in to you, Jean-Claude."
"But you want me."
"But I can't love you."
"But you liked kissing me."
"But I can't love you, and so there will never be anything more than a kiss."
"I'll wait, ma petite."
And on and on it goes. Now, this doesn't detract from the books, and it did make this one better for me because of the events that happen between Anita and Jean-Claude, how she turns on him and why, and the end result of her unexpected (to Jean-Claude; seems like it was always just a matter of time) betrayal of him, and I do agree with Anita's final choice of Jean-Claude as the least of the several evils facing her -- but I want her to slap him. A lot. Maybe muss up that pretty face a little bit. Although more scars would just give him character, like that damn cross scar gives to his chest.
So I'm seeing great potential in these books to go the distance: the main character is both powerful and, as this book establishes, very human and thus a bit outclassed by her immortal enemies -- though she uses all of the tools at her disposal to maximum effect, which works out quite well -- and the other main characters are complex and multi-dimensional. Because despite my irritation with Jean-Claude's prettyboy seduction techniques, he is actually much more than that, which is why I don't really hate him. But it isn't just him: Willie McCoy and her boss, Bert, and the other animators, including the new guy, all have their strengths and weaknesses. They are all very realistic, and thus very interesting. At the same time, of course, there is some serious booty-kicking going on in these books, and who doesn't like that?
Book #53
Conquistador
by S.M. Stirling
You know, it's hard to say why I didn't like this book. Well, no it isn't, but I can almost justify every problem I had with it -- almost. Conquistador is the story of an alternate Earth, which becomes accessible through a freak accident which opens a dimensional portal from our Earth to the new one. In this new land, European settlers never made it to the New World, and so when the portal's discoverer -- he-man and Southern Gentleman Extraordinaire John Rolfe -- steps through from Oakland in 1946, he finds himself in a California populated solely by Native Americans, and incredibly rich and bountiful wildlife. It is a paradise, the perfect place that California once was and hasn't been for a very long time, and Rolfe does what any he-man and red blooded American would do with this opportunity: he Manifest Destinies himself right the fuck over there, starts bulldozing, and builds a new nation the way he thinks it should be built, damnit. The main story takes place 60 years later, and focuses on the efforts of his granddaughter, Adrienne Rolfe, and of a Fish and Game warden from our side of the portal named Tom Christiansen, to protect this other-dimensional nation from a hostile takeover by an evil faction bent on world domination -- both worlds, that is. That's the basic concept, though the novel is much broader in its scope, covering everything from ecology to politics to world history to modern warfare; it's epic in every sense of the word.
First of all, on the positive side, it has amazing descriptions, particularly of natural scenes and the actions and habits of animals. The action scenes were great, and only marred by the ability of the heroes to do anything and everything well, and to take on overwhelming odds and win the day, but what the heck? That isn't uncommon in adventure novels like this one. I liked that he didn't dwell on the actual functioning of the dimensional gate; he makes some references to string theory and the multiverse, but for the most part, they just deal with what they've got, without obsessing over how they got it. The author obviously knows his stuff and has done huge amounts of research and planning, which makes for a better reading experience. But there's too much: on some level, this book felt like the author showing off his knowledge and planning, and while I'm impressed, I'm not terribly entertained by erudition. Plus, I think he's wrong: wasn't it just an urban legend that "Kemosabe" means "asshole," and "Tonto" means "idiot?"
Anyway, the serious problems I had with this book were with the larger-than-life characters, the sheer length of it, and the ethnocentrism of the setting and general attitudes portrayed. Okay, larger than life characters: the hero is hugely strong, and much is made of his 6'3" frame, his great slabs of muscle, his enormous strength; that's all fine and good, but he's also intelligent, sensitive, environmentally conscious, and one of those smug Libertarian survivalist type that can go into the woods with a large Rambo knife, kill a bear, skin it, cook it, and then build a log cabin to eat it in while he discusses politics and history and philosophy, in at least three different languages. It's a bit much. But at least his love interest is the feminine version of him, in every way: also large and remarkably strong, though in her case much is made of the buxom curves on top of the muscle; also a master of all trades and a jack of none, also humble enough to throw sheaves of wheat with her peasants and yet dictatorial enough to kill without remorse in protection of her homeland. What a woman. Oh, and both of them are humbled by her grandfather, the founder of the new nation, and as smart as they all are, everyone is hard-pressed to keep up with the heartless Machiavellian plotting of the bad guy. Fortunately he's dead when the main action happens, thus allowing the heroes to brilliantly exploit the weaknesses left by the poorer planning of Satan's hellspawned children, and win the day. Oh, by the way, the Machiavellian guy? Yeah, he's Sicilian.
The second issue I had with it was the length. Out of 600 or so pages of novel, at least 300 of them were descriptions of wilderness and wildlife, of settlements and farming and social order on the other side of the Gate, in Rolfe's Commonwealth of New Virginia. And almost every word of that boils down to this: in this world, there are too many people. Stirling goes on and on and on about how much more beautiful and majestic, and healthy and useful and just -- good -- the world is when the total population of California is under 200,000. And I agree, and the world as it is depicted here does sound absolutely wonderful. You can stop telling me, now. It just got obnoxious; it felt like I was being lectured, yelled at, for the things I have done to screw up this world and ruin it for people who would have preferred it the way it is in the book, and hey, I didn't do it, so quit yelling, okay?
The last problem I had with it was a certain, mm, callousness about the characters. Now, Stirling makes the point that the characters who found this world of New Virginia are from a less touchy-feely society than ours, and it's a good point; realizing the truth of that made me accept their casual racism. They use a number of racial epithets fairly early on, and you find as the book goes on that New Virginia not only doesn't have anyone but white members (basically -- they do have Jews, so, y'know, that's multicultural and stuff -- but then, they treat them like crap in some ways, so never mind), it includes Nazis and South African Boers along with the Southern Gentlemen. But, the founder is unapologetically racist, so that was reasonable, at least; but then, these characters are seen as sympathetic, as heroic, as being in the right -- so even though the author distances himself from this archaic viewpoint, it seems pretty clear he'd rather be on the far side of that divide than here on the politically correct side. Then it bothered me that the characters, all of them, were so indifferent to the fact that the coming of these extradimensional honkies caused a repeat of history: they brought diseases that wiped out 95% the Native American population. And while I understand that this is just something that happens in history, with the way people become separated from other populations and thus susceptible to their germs, I think it should be treated with some sympathy, some sorrow and respect for the victims who died. These people effectively say, "Pshaw; they died, tough luck. No crying over spilt milk. More room for us. Hey, somebody shoot that renegade Indian over there!" Though the point is made that our heroes are fighting against a group that plans even more horrible things for the non-white peoples of the world, and even though there is a token black character, still the white settlers exploit the native people in every possible way -- and the system of exploitation is seen as very clever, if a bit heartless.
Come to think of it, that's a reasonable description of the book: very clever, if a bit heartless. I'd like to read something else by this author and see if it measures up, both in the positive and negative ways.
by S.M. Stirling
You know, it's hard to say why I didn't like this book. Well, no it isn't, but I can almost justify every problem I had with it -- almost. Conquistador is the story of an alternate Earth, which becomes accessible through a freak accident which opens a dimensional portal from our Earth to the new one. In this new land, European settlers never made it to the New World, and so when the portal's discoverer -- he-man and Southern Gentleman Extraordinaire John Rolfe -- steps through from Oakland in 1946, he finds himself in a California populated solely by Native Americans, and incredibly rich and bountiful wildlife. It is a paradise, the perfect place that California once was and hasn't been for a very long time, and Rolfe does what any he-man and red blooded American would do with this opportunity: he Manifest Destinies himself right the fuck over there, starts bulldozing, and builds a new nation the way he thinks it should be built, damnit. The main story takes place 60 years later, and focuses on the efforts of his granddaughter, Adrienne Rolfe, and of a Fish and Game warden from our side of the portal named Tom Christiansen, to protect this other-dimensional nation from a hostile takeover by an evil faction bent on world domination -- both worlds, that is. That's the basic concept, though the novel is much broader in its scope, covering everything from ecology to politics to world history to modern warfare; it's epic in every sense of the word.
First of all, on the positive side, it has amazing descriptions, particularly of natural scenes and the actions and habits of animals. The action scenes were great, and only marred by the ability of the heroes to do anything and everything well, and to take on overwhelming odds and win the day, but what the heck? That isn't uncommon in adventure novels like this one. I liked that he didn't dwell on the actual functioning of the dimensional gate; he makes some references to string theory and the multiverse, but for the most part, they just deal with what they've got, without obsessing over how they got it. The author obviously knows his stuff and has done huge amounts of research and planning, which makes for a better reading experience. But there's too much: on some level, this book felt like the author showing off his knowledge and planning, and while I'm impressed, I'm not terribly entertained by erudition. Plus, I think he's wrong: wasn't it just an urban legend that "Kemosabe" means "asshole," and "Tonto" means "idiot?"
Anyway, the serious problems I had with this book were with the larger-than-life characters, the sheer length of it, and the ethnocentrism of the setting and general attitudes portrayed. Okay, larger than life characters: the hero is hugely strong, and much is made of his 6'3" frame, his great slabs of muscle, his enormous strength; that's all fine and good, but he's also intelligent, sensitive, environmentally conscious, and one of those smug Libertarian survivalist type that can go into the woods with a large Rambo knife, kill a bear, skin it, cook it, and then build a log cabin to eat it in while he discusses politics and history and philosophy, in at least three different languages. It's a bit much. But at least his love interest is the feminine version of him, in every way: also large and remarkably strong, though in her case much is made of the buxom curves on top of the muscle; also a master of all trades and a jack of none, also humble enough to throw sheaves of wheat with her peasants and yet dictatorial enough to kill without remorse in protection of her homeland. What a woman. Oh, and both of them are humbled by her grandfather, the founder of the new nation, and as smart as they all are, everyone is hard-pressed to keep up with the heartless Machiavellian plotting of the bad guy. Fortunately he's dead when the main action happens, thus allowing the heroes to brilliantly exploit the weaknesses left by the poorer planning of Satan's hellspawned children, and win the day. Oh, by the way, the Machiavellian guy? Yeah, he's Sicilian.
The second issue I had with it was the length. Out of 600 or so pages of novel, at least 300 of them were descriptions of wilderness and wildlife, of settlements and farming and social order on the other side of the Gate, in Rolfe's Commonwealth of New Virginia. And almost every word of that boils down to this: in this world, there are too many people. Stirling goes on and on and on about how much more beautiful and majestic, and healthy and useful and just -- good -- the world is when the total population of California is under 200,000. And I agree, and the world as it is depicted here does sound absolutely wonderful. You can stop telling me, now. It just got obnoxious; it felt like I was being lectured, yelled at, for the things I have done to screw up this world and ruin it for people who would have preferred it the way it is in the book, and hey, I didn't do it, so quit yelling, okay?
The last problem I had with it was a certain, mm, callousness about the characters. Now, Stirling makes the point that the characters who found this world of New Virginia are from a less touchy-feely society than ours, and it's a good point; realizing the truth of that made me accept their casual racism. They use a number of racial epithets fairly early on, and you find as the book goes on that New Virginia not only doesn't have anyone but white members (basically -- they do have Jews, so, y'know, that's multicultural and stuff -- but then, they treat them like crap in some ways, so never mind), it includes Nazis and South African Boers along with the Southern Gentlemen. But, the founder is unapologetically racist, so that was reasonable, at least; but then, these characters are seen as sympathetic, as heroic, as being in the right -- so even though the author distances himself from this archaic viewpoint, it seems pretty clear he'd rather be on the far side of that divide than here on the politically correct side. Then it bothered me that the characters, all of them, were so indifferent to the fact that the coming of these extradimensional honkies caused a repeat of history: they brought diseases that wiped out 95% the Native American population. And while I understand that this is just something that happens in history, with the way people become separated from other populations and thus susceptible to their germs, I think it should be treated with some sympathy, some sorrow and respect for the victims who died. These people effectively say, "Pshaw; they died, tough luck. No crying over spilt milk. More room for us. Hey, somebody shoot that renegade Indian over there!" Though the point is made that our heroes are fighting against a group that plans even more horrible things for the non-white peoples of the world, and even though there is a token black character, still the white settlers exploit the native people in every possible way -- and the system of exploitation is seen as very clever, if a bit heartless.
Come to think of it, that's a reasonable description of the book: very clever, if a bit heartless. I'd like to read something else by this author and see if it measures up, both in the positive and negative ways.
Book #52 -- that's the year, baby!
The Laughing Corpse
by Laurell K. Hamilton
Boy, and you thought the first one was bloody? This one was easily the goriest, most gruesome piece of writing I've seen outside of Stephen King and some of the schlock-fest fiction I've read in the past when no better option was available -- you know, trapped in a waiting room kind of thing. Actually, probably working in the discount bookstore in Esco, most likely.
Anyway, the second Anita Blake book was as good as the first, and that was a good sign. Because the second book is in some ways very unlike the first: in the first one, the murder mystery takes a backseat -- way back, like hanging off the rear bumper of one of those double-length buses with the accordion joint in the middle -- to the vampire stuff, which is very scary and shows that the vampires are incredibly nasty and overpowering and no human really has any chance. At the end of the first book, Anita feels small to the reader. And that's good, because it makes the character human, and when she says at the very end of the book that line -- "I don't date vampires. I slay them." -- it sounds desperate, like she's whistling in the dark and she knows it, because Jean-Claude already has such a claim on her, both in terms of his mind control and because of her attraction to him. It makes her sympathetic.
This book made her badass. The murder mystery took center stage, because at every pause in the action, back it came with an even bloodier and more horrifying murder scene -- and since the very first murder scene begins with a corpse that is nothing but a section of ribs, and a blood-soaked teddy bear, saying that each scene is more horrifying than the last is saying a lot. And more so than the first book, the murder mystery and the intrigue element complemented each other, because this time, the intrigue involved the killers and Anita, and so her dealings with the evil folk brought her closer to solving the murders.
As before, the villain was great -- both the evil voodoo queen and the actual murderer -- and the final confrontation was totally sweet. I definitely enjoyed this one, even more than the first, and now I'm eager to read on.
by Laurell K. Hamilton
Boy, and you thought the first one was bloody? This one was easily the goriest, most gruesome piece of writing I've seen outside of Stephen King and some of the schlock-fest fiction I've read in the past when no better option was available -- you know, trapped in a waiting room kind of thing. Actually, probably working in the discount bookstore in Esco, most likely.
Anyway, the second Anita Blake book was as good as the first, and that was a good sign. Because the second book is in some ways very unlike the first: in the first one, the murder mystery takes a backseat -- way back, like hanging off the rear bumper of one of those double-length buses with the accordion joint in the middle -- to the vampire stuff, which is very scary and shows that the vampires are incredibly nasty and overpowering and no human really has any chance. At the end of the first book, Anita feels small to the reader. And that's good, because it makes the character human, and when she says at the very end of the book that line -- "I don't date vampires. I slay them." -- it sounds desperate, like she's whistling in the dark and she knows it, because Jean-Claude already has such a claim on her, both in terms of his mind control and because of her attraction to him. It makes her sympathetic.
This book made her badass. The murder mystery took center stage, because at every pause in the action, back it came with an even bloodier and more horrifying murder scene -- and since the very first murder scene begins with a corpse that is nothing but a section of ribs, and a blood-soaked teddy bear, saying that each scene is more horrifying than the last is saying a lot. And more so than the first book, the murder mystery and the intrigue element complemented each other, because this time, the intrigue involved the killers and Anita, and so her dealings with the evil folk brought her closer to solving the murders.
As before, the villain was great -- both the evil voodoo queen and the actual murderer -- and the final confrontation was totally sweet. I definitely enjoyed this one, even more than the first, and now I'm eager to read on.
Book #51
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
by Frank Miller
And by the way, even though it doesn't need justification, this comic book counts as a book on the list because I spent several days before this trying to read Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart, the sequel to Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold. I liked the first book, because the main characters, the girl and her wolf friend, were excellent, the political intrigue was well done, and I liked the interaction between the wolf perspective and the human perspective. Unfortunately, Lindskold decided to do away with all of those things in the second book: she focuses on the other characters instead of Firekeeper and Blind Seer (and she made Elation ten times more obnoxious), the political intrigue is reduced mainly to a wedding and the attempts to make the kingdoms stable, and the plot was boring in the extreme. I stopped reading it after a week or so, and I flipped through to the end: no great loss. It ends with an anti-climax after 700 or so pages; the bad guy gets defeated long before that, and the last several chapters are all about the attempt to save a young girl who was only introduced in this book and who I just don't care about. Oh, they save her, by the way. Now nobody has to read it. So after I put it down and crossed that fantasy series off my list, I went for something fast and fun. The Dark Knight.
This was a birthday present from Dad. I asked for it because if I want to have a collection of the top graphic novels -- and I do -- then I needed this one, right from the start. I read it once before, in high school, and I loved it then, and now that I've read it again, I still love it.
It's a brilliant set of stories, particularly because it gives such a dark side of the classic Batman stories. Bruce Wayne is very nearly evil in these, so driven by his obsession with fighting crime that he is close to suicidal, and even closer to homicidal; but the best part is that as nasty as he is, his enemies are even nastier. The Joker breaks out of Arkham Asylum in one segment, and immediately slaughters as many people as he can; Batman catches him and comes close to killing him, but doesn't do it -- no, the Joker kills himself in order to frame Batman for murder. One incredibly chilling scene, that one is.
But now that I'm rereading it again at my current age, and with my current awareness, the most interesting part for me was the final chapter, when Batman fights Superman and wins: because while I remembered the fight, and it was just as cool the second time around, what I hadn't caught when I read the book way back when was what Batman says about Superman: he accuses Clark of giving his power away to "Them," of selling us out, of being weak and pathetic -- he says he follows any order given by anyone with a badge. I loved it: Superman is the Man, and Batman is the revolution. It was outstanding.
by Frank Miller
And by the way, even though it doesn't need justification, this comic book counts as a book on the list because I spent several days before this trying to read Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart, the sequel to Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold. I liked the first book, because the main characters, the girl and her wolf friend, were excellent, the political intrigue was well done, and I liked the interaction between the wolf perspective and the human perspective. Unfortunately, Lindskold decided to do away with all of those things in the second book: she focuses on the other characters instead of Firekeeper and Blind Seer (and she made Elation ten times more obnoxious), the political intrigue is reduced mainly to a wedding and the attempts to make the kingdoms stable, and the plot was boring in the extreme. I stopped reading it after a week or so, and I flipped through to the end: no great loss. It ends with an anti-climax after 700 or so pages; the bad guy gets defeated long before that, and the last several chapters are all about the attempt to save a young girl who was only introduced in this book and who I just don't care about. Oh, they save her, by the way. Now nobody has to read it. So after I put it down and crossed that fantasy series off my list, I went for something fast and fun. The Dark Knight.
This was a birthday present from Dad. I asked for it because if I want to have a collection of the top graphic novels -- and I do -- then I needed this one, right from the start. I read it once before, in high school, and I loved it then, and now that I've read it again, I still love it.
It's a brilliant set of stories, particularly because it gives such a dark side of the classic Batman stories. Bruce Wayne is very nearly evil in these, so driven by his obsession with fighting crime that he is close to suicidal, and even closer to homicidal; but the best part is that as nasty as he is, his enemies are even nastier. The Joker breaks out of Arkham Asylum in one segment, and immediately slaughters as many people as he can; Batman catches him and comes close to killing him, but doesn't do it -- no, the Joker kills himself in order to frame Batman for murder. One incredibly chilling scene, that one is.
But now that I'm rereading it again at my current age, and with my current awareness, the most interesting part for me was the final chapter, when Batman fights Superman and wins: because while I remembered the fight, and it was just as cool the second time around, what I hadn't caught when I read the book way back when was what Batman says about Superman: he accuses Clark of giving his power away to "Them," of selling us out, of being weak and pathetic -- he says he follows any order given by anyone with a badge. I loved it: Superman is the Man, and Batman is the revolution. It was outstanding.
Book #50
Guilty Pleasures
by Laurell K. Hamilton
I finally read this one. I tried it a year or two ago and didn't like it; I remember being annoyed by the main character, but I can't really remember why. It was something about how she found the evil vampires attractive, I think. But that's weird, because she doesn't, not really -- not until the end of the book. Eh, I don't know why I didn't like it then; I enjoyed the heck out of it this time. I started reading it this morning when I got up, and read 2/3 of it then; I finished it this afternoon.
I thought it was good. I thought the character was well done; I liked both her attitude and personality, as well as her vocation and her beliefs. I liked most of the vampire stuff, though one thing bothered me that wasn't supposed to: the wind stuff that happened when the Master Vampire lost her temper; I didn't get that, what was happening or why, and that was annoying. Especially when I found out later that Jean-Claude had given Anita the second mark while she was trying to run from the wind stuff. That was just confusing. Otherwise, Nikolaos really pissed me off with her arrogance and her cruelty, but she's supposed to, so that was well-done, I thought. I loved the mystery aspect -- great choice of villain, nice surprise to it without being overly complicated, good explanation of the killings. The final confrontation was okay, though Hamilton overpowered the ultimate vampire too much for the final destruction to be completely credible. But hey, why not? Everybody gets overconfident, and Anita was swinging a really big sword. I was certainly glad when she killed that wench.
Overall, it's a good character, good vampires, well-written. I liked it.
by Laurell K. Hamilton
I finally read this one. I tried it a year or two ago and didn't like it; I remember being annoyed by the main character, but I can't really remember why. It was something about how she found the evil vampires attractive, I think. But that's weird, because she doesn't, not really -- not until the end of the book. Eh, I don't know why I didn't like it then; I enjoyed the heck out of it this time. I started reading it this morning when I got up, and read 2/3 of it then; I finished it this afternoon.
I thought it was good. I thought the character was well done; I liked both her attitude and personality, as well as her vocation and her beliefs. I liked most of the vampire stuff, though one thing bothered me that wasn't supposed to: the wind stuff that happened when the Master Vampire lost her temper; I didn't get that, what was happening or why, and that was annoying. Especially when I found out later that Jean-Claude had given Anita the second mark while she was trying to run from the wind stuff. That was just confusing. Otherwise, Nikolaos really pissed me off with her arrogance and her cruelty, but she's supposed to, so that was well-done, I thought. I loved the mystery aspect -- great choice of villain, nice surprise to it without being overly complicated, good explanation of the killings. The final confrontation was okay, though Hamilton overpowered the ultimate vampire too much for the final destruction to be completely credible. But hey, why not? Everybody gets overconfident, and Anita was swinging a really big sword. I was certainly glad when she killed that wench.
Overall, it's a good character, good vampires, well-written. I liked it.
Book #49
The Utopia of Sir Thomas More
I thought, "Hey, let's go for something different. Something classic, instead of trendy; profound, instead of shallow; realistic, instead of fantasy." So I picked up Sir Thomas More's Utopia, one of those books I found at a library sale and bought because Cinderella liked it in Ever After. Just one of those random decisions for reading.
I'm glad I read it, but I wouldn't read it again. It was surprising how much of it was still applicable, 500 years after it was written -- the description of how sheep have destroyed England, for instance. He described how wool had become a valuable export, and so rich men had bought up arable land and turned it all into pasture for their massive flocks of sheep, and how now people not only didn't have enough food, because too much farmland had been turned into sheepland, but the people of England, the average peasants, could no longer afford wool for their own clothing because it was too valuable. And doesn't that sound like modern industry and the way corporations screw everybody over, and isn't that almost exactly what happened with agribusiness, corn, and ethanol.
I hadn't known what to expect going in, and so I skipped over the multiple introductory parts that focused on More's place in history and just went for the text itself. The first part is a discussion More has with a couple of people about why one of them, an experienced and wise old man named Raphael Hythloday (I like the name -- it means something like "Babbler" according to the endnotes), does not want to be a counselor to a prince. The basic reason is that he would be the sole voice supporting his ideas of what would be best for the country, and he would never be able to override the prince's other advisors, who would say the opposite of everything Hythloday said. In that part they talked about what was wrong with the world -- like the sheep -- and then the second part described the ideal country that Hythloday had visited: Utopia. Nowhere, in Greek.
I didn't actually think Utopia was all that, well, Utopian. They had all their property in common, which is fine as far as it goes, but they were all forced to be part of the society, and I don't like that. There was way too much Big Brother in it for me. They were too fond of fighting wars, too, which I don't see as Utopian; it was amusing, though, to see how More went against everything he knew in creating Utopia, where they have elected leaders instead of kings, where they see gold and silver as mere dross and trash, where they have carefully planned communities where everybody works for 6 hours a day and listens to a lecture in the morning before going to work -- I liked that one; very obviously the fantasy of a scholar surrounded by louts. The most interesting thing to me was that More, who apparently (I don't know the history, which would have made this more interesting, I'm sure) became a persecutor of heretics and eventually a Catholic martyr, in this book's ideal world, has a non-denominational religion: they agree that there is a deity (I did like that his supreme tolerance fell short of welcoming atheists, heh) but not what shape the deity has nor what the deity is like; their prayers and worship and such are carefully designed so as not to mock anyone's vision of that deity. All were welcome there.
That part sounded nice. And right after finishing this book, I got into another online debate that just angered and then depressed me. I guess I should have paid more attention to Hythloday, huh?
I thought, "Hey, let's go for something different. Something classic, instead of trendy; profound, instead of shallow; realistic, instead of fantasy." So I picked up Sir Thomas More's Utopia, one of those books I found at a library sale and bought because Cinderella liked it in Ever After. Just one of those random decisions for reading.
I'm glad I read it, but I wouldn't read it again. It was surprising how much of it was still applicable, 500 years after it was written -- the description of how sheep have destroyed England, for instance. He described how wool had become a valuable export, and so rich men had bought up arable land and turned it all into pasture for their massive flocks of sheep, and how now people not only didn't have enough food, because too much farmland had been turned into sheepland, but the people of England, the average peasants, could no longer afford wool for their own clothing because it was too valuable. And doesn't that sound like modern industry and the way corporations screw everybody over, and isn't that almost exactly what happened with agribusiness, corn, and ethanol.
I hadn't known what to expect going in, and so I skipped over the multiple introductory parts that focused on More's place in history and just went for the text itself. The first part is a discussion More has with a couple of people about why one of them, an experienced and wise old man named Raphael Hythloday (I like the name -- it means something like "Babbler" according to the endnotes), does not want to be a counselor to a prince. The basic reason is that he would be the sole voice supporting his ideas of what would be best for the country, and he would never be able to override the prince's other advisors, who would say the opposite of everything Hythloday said. In that part they talked about what was wrong with the world -- like the sheep -- and then the second part described the ideal country that Hythloday had visited: Utopia. Nowhere, in Greek.
I didn't actually think Utopia was all that, well, Utopian. They had all their property in common, which is fine as far as it goes, but they were all forced to be part of the society, and I don't like that. There was way too much Big Brother in it for me. They were too fond of fighting wars, too, which I don't see as Utopian; it was amusing, though, to see how More went against everything he knew in creating Utopia, where they have elected leaders instead of kings, where they see gold and silver as mere dross and trash, where they have carefully planned communities where everybody works for 6 hours a day and listens to a lecture in the morning before going to work -- I liked that one; very obviously the fantasy of a scholar surrounded by louts. The most interesting thing to me was that More, who apparently (I don't know the history, which would have made this more interesting, I'm sure) became a persecutor of heretics and eventually a Catholic martyr, in this book's ideal world, has a non-denominational religion: they agree that there is a deity (I did like that his supreme tolerance fell short of welcoming atheists, heh) but not what shape the deity has nor what the deity is like; their prayers and worship and such are carefully designed so as not to mock anyone's vision of that deity. All were welcome there.
That part sounded nice. And right after finishing this book, I got into another online debate that just angered and then depressed me. I guess I should have paid more attention to Hythloday, huh?
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Book #48 (This one's lengthy)
Happy Hour of the Damned
by Mark Henry
I had a unique experience in reading this book: for the first time in my life, out of all the books I have read, this book was so bad that it kept me awake at night. I actually couldn't sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about how annoyed I was at the author, at the characters -- and, I suppose, at myself for actually deciding to read this wad of tripe.
Let's start at the beginning, shall we? Hold on -- this may take a while.
The beginning of a novel should do two things: it should catch your attention in some way, hook you in, and it should introduce the most basic elements of the story -- the setting and the characters. This book's hook is: the character is a bitch. That's right, because everybody who reads fantasy and paranormal romance is a fan of the hard-nosed supercilious bitch archetype, aren't we? Well, no, but that is only the first clue of the author's incompetence. So we're supposed to be amused and, I assume, pleasantly shocked and even titillated by the -- er -- heroine's abrasive and thorny conversation with her equally bitchy friends. Unfortunately, this is not an episode of Sex in the City; bitchiness, while sometimes -- vaguely -- amusing, is certainly not going to make me want to read 300 pages of the same. As for the setting, it is cliche -- a hidden world of supernatural beings in the heart of a city, in this case in Seattle -- but somewhat interesting in that it is in an undead bar. The bar scene is ruined, however, by the people whose company we are forced to keep: namely the main character, Amanda Feral (Yeah -- I buy that name. Of course I do.) and her circle of shallow, obnoxious, fashion-obsessed undead twits. From the first scene, when Amanda brings up the strange weather as a topic of conversation, and then loudly complains that the conversation is boring all of two (interrupted) sentences later, I hated these people.
Now, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. There have been books that have very successfully created main characters that one loves to hate -- Pennywise the clown springs to mind, as does Hannibal Lecter -- but there are a few special requirements for those characters. First of all, they have to be the bad guy. We don't root for the one we love to hate, we want them to fail. If they are going to be the good guy -- as Hannibal Lecter becomes in the later books, to some extent -- then there must be something about them that is sympathetic, something that actually puts us on their side. Amanda doesn't have that. It amazes me that anybody can stand her company, but of course, her friends are just as shallow, narcissistic, and overwhelmingly obnoxious as she is, so they have that in common. Unfortunately, I am not the same kind of person, and so I don't admire her superficiality nor her condescending attitude; in fact, I want to slap her, except, of course, I don't care enough about her to want to improve her behavior by beating her bloody. The second requirement for an anti-hero like Hannibal Lecter is they must be consummate villains. People admire perfection, even if it is perfect evil: Hannibal Lecter is the ultimate serial killer, the most vile and villainous murderer imaginable, which makes him cool; Pennywise is the ultimate demon (Though Randall Flagg from The Stand is right up there with him) and so there is an element of awe in reading about these characters; we are impressed by the depths to which they can sink.
But Amanda? Amanda isn't even a good bitch. For starters, her bitchiness is neither clever nor stinging; she tends to fall back on calling someone names, rather than actually zeroing in on a deep insecurity, as a true bitch does. Here is her defense against condescending nicknames:
"First off, you two. You two must shove the pet names up your asses. Second, it's Amanda Feral, and if that's too difficult for you, then don't refer to me at all."
Here is her ultimately devastating comeback after the villain -- because all of the characters in this book are shallow, superficial bitches; I kept expecting the fights to devolve to hair-pulling and scratching, but I suppose the author couldn't do that because it would have been sorta funny -- calls her fat:
"Fat? You motherfucker! At least I'm not some crazy lesbian werewolf's impotent little chew toy. You're a worthless piece of shit, you know that?"
Wow. Quite the zingers, there. I don't know how I'd be able to look myself in the mirror after taking a verbal tongue-lashing like that. Of course, after she delivers that soul-tearing barb, the villain literally crumples up in tears, holding his hands over his ears and saying, "Shut up, shut up, shut up!" But for me, as a real person and not one of the hollow imitations of same in Mark Henry's feeble mind, I found Amanda's insults simply -- boring. Which does not fit well with a character who is supposed to be glamorous, fabulous, and endlessly entertaining, the life of the party and the center of attention. Which is why the book didn't work.
The one good thing -- seriously, the only good thing in this book -- had to do with the larger setting, as in the concepts for the undead and their world. Henry actually has some pretty good ideas. Amanda and her friend Wendy are zombies, or abovegrounders -- clever nickname -- which means they eat human flesh. And drink alcohol, even though there is absolutely no logical or creative explanation for that; it seems he thought to himself, "They have to eat human flesh, and can't eat anything else. But they have to go to bars. I know! They can eat two things: people, and alcohol." And then when that little voice inside said, "Wait, how the hell does that work?" he put his hands over his ears and said, "Shut up, shut up, shut up!" But as dead people they don't heal wounds, so they have to be careful not to get damaged -- there's an other clever moment when Amanda's friend tries to fix a gash on Amanda's arm with that liquid leather repair goop they sell on TV. The villain of the piece turns out to be Persephone, which is fairly clever -- though some explanation of her presence in this particular part of the mortal world would have been welcome -- and the bar where the climactic fight scene happens is actually the grade above clever, intriguing: it is called Mortuary, and it is decorated to give you the feeling that you are a rat in a morgue. It is several stories tall, all open space, with the main bar under a 30-foot steel gurney with a proportional (fake) cadaver on top, under a sheet that drapes down to the ground; brown liquid (brandy) bubbles upwards into an IV tube leading under the sheet, and red drips out the other side into a basin. The morgue drawers, accessible by elevator, are the VIP rooms, like private boxes at a theater. It's an intriguing concept. Too bad the author is too incompetent to do anything with it beyond fill it with a blood bath for the final fight scene.
Okay, so that's the setting and the characters. Now let's discuss the plot. (Don't worry -- this will be quicker.)
There isn't one.
Well, that isn't completely true. It's just that the plot is impossible to follow, because in between important events are pages and pages of bitchy attitude, bad toilet humor, poorly done sex scenes, and descriptions of high fashion -- I suppose the author does those well, a positive aspect that was lost on me since I don't care what designer somebody is wearing. By the time the next important event rolls around, and makes reference to the prior important event, I had forgotten the previous event -- but Lord knows I wasn't going to go back through pages of boring superficial bullshit to find the previous reference. So when Amanda recognizes the man over there as Shane, and I think, "Wait -- who the hell was Shane?" I had to keep reading until there was enough context to place him. When Amanda realizes that there is the blue van again, and I didn't remember the first time the blue van appeared, I just kept on reading, even though the first reference never actually came back to me. I didn't care that I didn't see the significance of the blue van's appearances, because, you see, there was another problem with the important plot moments: they weren't important. The blue van? It was the camera crew from an undead reality show following Amanda around, so it wasn't important. The disappearance of her succubus bitch-friend, which started the whole "plot?" She hadn't actually disappeared, and the "Help me" text message had been a red herring. So that wasn't important. The one apparent love interest for Amanda, her human therapist from before her zombification? She ate him. He wasn't important. The plot, it turned out, was as empty and superficial and pointless as was the main character herself.
So what's left? Ah yes, the writing. So because I am above stooping to the level of grammar nazi, I will not mention his run-on sentences, nor his inability to differentiate between "affect" and "effect" or "instant" and "instance." After all, a competent editor should have caught those -- clearly the editor is also an idiot. But I knew that, since the author thanks his editor for believing in the book and getting it sold, and only an idiot would believe this crap should be sold. No, my problems with the writing fall into three main categories: it is not funny, it is far too precious and gimmicky, and it is completely inappropriate for the audience and genre.
First of all: not funny. Most of the humor relies on Amanda's bitchiness, which, of course, is both poorly done and inherently unfunny, so this book's laughs are pretty much doomed from the start. But then to top that off, the author actually uses toilet humor: when a ghoul -- who can only eat human flesh and alcohol, remember -- ingests normal food, it gets explosive diarrhea. Which might have been almost funny, in an immature gross way, when it first happens to her. Except it keeps happening. At least ten times. Because diarrhea is funny. Really, really funny. He also uses gay stereotype humor -- not well, of course -- and he actually goes so low that he makes fun of a Korean man's accent. Really. Amanda laughs at him because he says l's as r's.
How can I even respond to that? I think I'll just move on.
Next problem with the writing: precious and gimmicky. He uses epigrams at the opening of each chapter, but he wrote them himself. And, as they are ostensibly taken from a series of undead lifestyle guides for the Seattle area, written for such shallow fashionable idiots as the main characters -- in fact, written by one of the main characters, according to the narration -- they sound exactly like the regular narration. So it's like each chapter starts with an excerpt of itself. On top of that, he uses footnotes: whenever he feels the urge to add a witty comment or explanation of the text, he footnotes it and has the narrator expand or reply to something she herself said in the main text. Which is pretty stupid to begin with, but is made worse by the fact that the footnotes are even more irritating than the actual storyline. Though there was an interesting confessional moment or two when the author apologized for his own bad writing: at one point, Amanda says that things got serious, and then in the footnote she said "They'd better be, to justify the use of that adjective." The adjective "serious," that is. The one the author himself had the narrator use. The only good thing the footnotes did for me was give me a chance to pause in reading the main story. Sadly, the best part of the pause was the moment when my eye moved down the page, and the moment when it moved back up; the actual reading part of the footnotes was no less annoying than the story itself. And because two ridiculously bad gimmicks -- did you think I was done pointing out problems here? Oh, I could go on for days -- are never enough, the author also puts in large, distracting insets that give the recipes for the various cocktails the characters drink, as if I care enough about them to want to imitate their alcoholic intake, and some of the music they listen to, which, since they are electronica-loving club-goers (as is the author, one assumes) is nothing but annoying, pretentious, repetitive, noisy shit.
Let's see, now, I've forgotten the third problem I had with his writing. Let me scroll up and check. Oh right! It's completely inappropriate for the genre and audience. As I said when I started this, so long ago, the readers of paranormal horror/romance are not generally admirers of the bitchy club-hopping fashionista set, and so the narrative voice is annoying in every possible way, but apart from that, this book is clearly written by a man who does not know how women talk, or how women think, and despite being married, has no interest in trying to find out. Which would be fine, except the main character here is a woman, as is the majority of the audience, from what I can tell. The female character talks like a man. She cusses like a man, she describes things -- particularly objects and moments related to sex -- like a man, she has a man's sense of humor. Amanda thinks the poop jokes are funny. She insults her friends, trying to embarrass them in public, and laughs about it when she succeeds. When she checks out guys, she looks immediately at their crotch; when she describes the sex act she focuses on position and duration. The romantic elements of the book are completely overwhelmed by graphic, detailed, loving descriptions of excrement and of cannibalism; the man clearly has an oral/anal fixation, and the accompanying maturity level -- isn't that stage connected to two-year-olds? Maybe it's younger. Finally, the female main character consistently and repetitively refers to women by genital epithets -- the equivalent of a man calling other men "swingin' dicks" -- and inhuman objects, a portal between worlds, an object buried in a hole, with vaginal/anal imagery. I don't care how fashionably slutty the woman is supposed to be, it is men who are fascinated by the holes and putting things in them, not women. Actually, it is not even men: it is little tiny children, which some men -- the kind of men I want nothing to do with -- resemble far too closely.
Last night I found myself unable to sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about how annoying Amanda Feral was, nor could I stop counting the ways this book is badly written. When I woke up early this morning, I had to drop everything else just to finish this book, because I did not want to spend another day reading it. I'm glad I did finish it, because it feels like an accomplishment, almost an act of heroism for a lover of good literature. But I feel terrible that I added even one tally to this man's total sales. I have a tremendous urge to use this book for a symbolic act of opposition to all bad writing, especially bad writing that gets published and sold -- maybe nail it to a sign that reads "Bad Books Make Baby Jesus Cry" or track down the author and slap him with his own novel -- but I think it best if I just let this go, and move on.
by Mark Henry
I had a unique experience in reading this book: for the first time in my life, out of all the books I have read, this book was so bad that it kept me awake at night. I actually couldn't sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about how annoyed I was at the author, at the characters -- and, I suppose, at myself for actually deciding to read this wad of tripe.
Let's start at the beginning, shall we? Hold on -- this may take a while.
The beginning of a novel should do two things: it should catch your attention in some way, hook you in, and it should introduce the most basic elements of the story -- the setting and the characters. This book's hook is: the character is a bitch. That's right, because everybody who reads fantasy and paranormal romance is a fan of the hard-nosed supercilious bitch archetype, aren't we? Well, no, but that is only the first clue of the author's incompetence. So we're supposed to be amused and, I assume, pleasantly shocked and even titillated by the -- er -- heroine's abrasive and thorny conversation with her equally bitchy friends. Unfortunately, this is not an episode of Sex in the City; bitchiness, while sometimes -- vaguely -- amusing, is certainly not going to make me want to read 300 pages of the same. As for the setting, it is cliche -- a hidden world of supernatural beings in the heart of a city, in this case in Seattle -- but somewhat interesting in that it is in an undead bar. The bar scene is ruined, however, by the people whose company we are forced to keep: namely the main character, Amanda Feral (Yeah -- I buy that name. Of course I do.) and her circle of shallow, obnoxious, fashion-obsessed undead twits. From the first scene, when Amanda brings up the strange weather as a topic of conversation, and then loudly complains that the conversation is boring all of two (interrupted) sentences later, I hated these people.
Now, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. There have been books that have very successfully created main characters that one loves to hate -- Pennywise the clown springs to mind, as does Hannibal Lecter -- but there are a few special requirements for those characters. First of all, they have to be the bad guy. We don't root for the one we love to hate, we want them to fail. If they are going to be the good guy -- as Hannibal Lecter becomes in the later books, to some extent -- then there must be something about them that is sympathetic, something that actually puts us on their side. Amanda doesn't have that. It amazes me that anybody can stand her company, but of course, her friends are just as shallow, narcissistic, and overwhelmingly obnoxious as she is, so they have that in common. Unfortunately, I am not the same kind of person, and so I don't admire her superficiality nor her condescending attitude; in fact, I want to slap her, except, of course, I don't care enough about her to want to improve her behavior by beating her bloody. The second requirement for an anti-hero like Hannibal Lecter is they must be consummate villains. People admire perfection, even if it is perfect evil: Hannibal Lecter is the ultimate serial killer, the most vile and villainous murderer imaginable, which makes him cool; Pennywise is the ultimate demon (Though Randall Flagg from The Stand is right up there with him) and so there is an element of awe in reading about these characters; we are impressed by the depths to which they can sink.
But Amanda? Amanda isn't even a good bitch. For starters, her bitchiness is neither clever nor stinging; she tends to fall back on calling someone names, rather than actually zeroing in on a deep insecurity, as a true bitch does. Here is her defense against condescending nicknames:
"First off, you two. You two must shove the pet names up your asses. Second, it's Amanda Feral, and if that's too difficult for you, then don't refer to me at all."
Here is her ultimately devastating comeback after the villain -- because all of the characters in this book are shallow, superficial bitches; I kept expecting the fights to devolve to hair-pulling and scratching, but I suppose the author couldn't do that because it would have been sorta funny -- calls her fat:
"Fat? You motherfucker! At least I'm not some crazy lesbian werewolf's impotent little chew toy. You're a worthless piece of shit, you know that?"
Wow. Quite the zingers, there. I don't know how I'd be able to look myself in the mirror after taking a verbal tongue-lashing like that. Of course, after she delivers that soul-tearing barb, the villain literally crumples up in tears, holding his hands over his ears and saying, "Shut up, shut up, shut up!" But for me, as a real person and not one of the hollow imitations of same in Mark Henry's feeble mind, I found Amanda's insults simply -- boring. Which does not fit well with a character who is supposed to be glamorous, fabulous, and endlessly entertaining, the life of the party and the center of attention. Which is why the book didn't work.
The one good thing -- seriously, the only good thing in this book -- had to do with the larger setting, as in the concepts for the undead and their world. Henry actually has some pretty good ideas. Amanda and her friend Wendy are zombies, or abovegrounders -- clever nickname -- which means they eat human flesh. And drink alcohol, even though there is absolutely no logical or creative explanation for that; it seems he thought to himself, "They have to eat human flesh, and can't eat anything else. But they have to go to bars. I know! They can eat two things: people, and alcohol." And then when that little voice inside said, "Wait, how the hell does that work?" he put his hands over his ears and said, "Shut up, shut up, shut up!" But as dead people they don't heal wounds, so they have to be careful not to get damaged -- there's an other clever moment when Amanda's friend tries to fix a gash on Amanda's arm with that liquid leather repair goop they sell on TV. The villain of the piece turns out to be Persephone, which is fairly clever -- though some explanation of her presence in this particular part of the mortal world would have been welcome -- and the bar where the climactic fight scene happens is actually the grade above clever, intriguing: it is called Mortuary, and it is decorated to give you the feeling that you are a rat in a morgue. It is several stories tall, all open space, with the main bar under a 30-foot steel gurney with a proportional (fake) cadaver on top, under a sheet that drapes down to the ground; brown liquid (brandy) bubbles upwards into an IV tube leading under the sheet, and red drips out the other side into a basin. The morgue drawers, accessible by elevator, are the VIP rooms, like private boxes at a theater. It's an intriguing concept. Too bad the author is too incompetent to do anything with it beyond fill it with a blood bath for the final fight scene.
Okay, so that's the setting and the characters. Now let's discuss the plot. (Don't worry -- this will be quicker.)
There isn't one.
Well, that isn't completely true. It's just that the plot is impossible to follow, because in between important events are pages and pages of bitchy attitude, bad toilet humor, poorly done sex scenes, and descriptions of high fashion -- I suppose the author does those well, a positive aspect that was lost on me since I don't care what designer somebody is wearing. By the time the next important event rolls around, and makes reference to the prior important event, I had forgotten the previous event -- but Lord knows I wasn't going to go back through pages of boring superficial bullshit to find the previous reference. So when Amanda recognizes the man over there as Shane, and I think, "Wait -- who the hell was Shane?" I had to keep reading until there was enough context to place him. When Amanda realizes that there is the blue van again, and I didn't remember the first time the blue van appeared, I just kept on reading, even though the first reference never actually came back to me. I didn't care that I didn't see the significance of the blue van's appearances, because, you see, there was another problem with the important plot moments: they weren't important. The blue van? It was the camera crew from an undead reality show following Amanda around, so it wasn't important. The disappearance of her succubus bitch-friend, which started the whole "plot?" She hadn't actually disappeared, and the "Help me" text message had been a red herring. So that wasn't important. The one apparent love interest for Amanda, her human therapist from before her zombification? She ate him. He wasn't important. The plot, it turned out, was as empty and superficial and pointless as was the main character herself.
So what's left? Ah yes, the writing. So because I am above stooping to the level of grammar nazi, I will not mention his run-on sentences, nor his inability to differentiate between "affect" and "effect" or "instant" and "instance." After all, a competent editor should have caught those -- clearly the editor is also an idiot. But I knew that, since the author thanks his editor for believing in the book and getting it sold, and only an idiot would believe this crap should be sold. No, my problems with the writing fall into three main categories: it is not funny, it is far too precious and gimmicky, and it is completely inappropriate for the audience and genre.
First of all: not funny. Most of the humor relies on Amanda's bitchiness, which, of course, is both poorly done and inherently unfunny, so this book's laughs are pretty much doomed from the start. But then to top that off, the author actually uses toilet humor: when a ghoul -- who can only eat human flesh and alcohol, remember -- ingests normal food, it gets explosive diarrhea. Which might have been almost funny, in an immature gross way, when it first happens to her. Except it keeps happening. At least ten times. Because diarrhea is funny. Really, really funny. He also uses gay stereotype humor -- not well, of course -- and he actually goes so low that he makes fun of a Korean man's accent. Really. Amanda laughs at him because he says l's as r's.
How can I even respond to that? I think I'll just move on.
Next problem with the writing: precious and gimmicky. He uses epigrams at the opening of each chapter, but he wrote them himself. And, as they are ostensibly taken from a series of undead lifestyle guides for the Seattle area, written for such shallow fashionable idiots as the main characters -- in fact, written by one of the main characters, according to the narration -- they sound exactly like the regular narration. So it's like each chapter starts with an excerpt of itself. On top of that, he uses footnotes: whenever he feels the urge to add a witty comment or explanation of the text, he footnotes it and has the narrator expand or reply to something she herself said in the main text. Which is pretty stupid to begin with, but is made worse by the fact that the footnotes are even more irritating than the actual storyline. Though there was an interesting confessional moment or two when the author apologized for his own bad writing: at one point, Amanda says that things got serious, and then in the footnote she said "They'd better be, to justify the use of that adjective." The adjective "serious," that is. The one the author himself had the narrator use. The only good thing the footnotes did for me was give me a chance to pause in reading the main story. Sadly, the best part of the pause was the moment when my eye moved down the page, and the moment when it moved back up; the actual reading part of the footnotes was no less annoying than the story itself. And because two ridiculously bad gimmicks -- did you think I was done pointing out problems here? Oh, I could go on for days -- are never enough, the author also puts in large, distracting insets that give the recipes for the various cocktails the characters drink, as if I care enough about them to want to imitate their alcoholic intake, and some of the music they listen to, which, since they are electronica-loving club-goers (as is the author, one assumes) is nothing but annoying, pretentious, repetitive, noisy shit.
Let's see, now, I've forgotten the third problem I had with his writing. Let me scroll up and check. Oh right! It's completely inappropriate for the genre and audience. As I said when I started this, so long ago, the readers of paranormal horror/romance are not generally admirers of the bitchy club-hopping fashionista set, and so the narrative voice is annoying in every possible way, but apart from that, this book is clearly written by a man who does not know how women talk, or how women think, and despite being married, has no interest in trying to find out. Which would be fine, except the main character here is a woman, as is the majority of the audience, from what I can tell. The female character talks like a man. She cusses like a man, she describes things -- particularly objects and moments related to sex -- like a man, she has a man's sense of humor. Amanda thinks the poop jokes are funny. She insults her friends, trying to embarrass them in public, and laughs about it when she succeeds. When she checks out guys, she looks immediately at their crotch; when she describes the sex act she focuses on position and duration. The romantic elements of the book are completely overwhelmed by graphic, detailed, loving descriptions of excrement and of cannibalism; the man clearly has an oral/anal fixation, and the accompanying maturity level -- isn't that stage connected to two-year-olds? Maybe it's younger. Finally, the female main character consistently and repetitively refers to women by genital epithets -- the equivalent of a man calling other men "swingin' dicks" -- and inhuman objects, a portal between worlds, an object buried in a hole, with vaginal/anal imagery. I don't care how fashionably slutty the woman is supposed to be, it is men who are fascinated by the holes and putting things in them, not women. Actually, it is not even men: it is little tiny children, which some men -- the kind of men I want nothing to do with -- resemble far too closely.
Last night I found myself unable to sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about how annoying Amanda Feral was, nor could I stop counting the ways this book is badly written. When I woke up early this morning, I had to drop everything else just to finish this book, because I did not want to spend another day reading it. I'm glad I did finish it, because it feels like an accomplishment, almost an act of heroism for a lover of good literature. But I feel terrible that I added even one tally to this man's total sales. I have a tremendous urge to use this book for a symbolic act of opposition to all bad writing, especially bad writing that gets published and sold -- maybe nail it to a sign that reads "Bad Books Make Baby Jesus Cry" or track down the author and slap him with his own novel -- but I think it best if I just let this go, and move on.
Book #47
The Wastelands
by Stephen King
Looking for something good, I read the third book in the Dark Tower series, The Wastelands. There are parts of this one that I really love, particularly when they draw Jake into Mid-World, and the parts just before that when Jake is the POV character in New York -- I love the scene when he finds the rose in the vacant lot, for instance, and sees faces everywhere and hears a chorus of voices, but also sees that the rose has camouflaged itself. I also love the scene when Roland gets to play nobleman, when they find the old people at River's Crossing (I think that was the name of their town) and they treat him like royalty because they haven't seen a gunslihnger in decades. Plus, Oy is, you know, one of the best animal characters ever written.
The problem was that I remembered this one a little too well. I don't know if I've read it more than the others, or it just stuck in my head better for one reason or another, but I expected things a little too much. It was nice to revisit the parts I enjoyed, but the parts in between -- like when Eddie and Roland get into squabbles, which makes them both seem to me like assholes, which I don't like because I love both characters -- were a little tough to make myself read. So it took me a bit longer than the first two -- of course, it's also 200 pages longer than The Gunslinger and 100 pages longer than Drawing of the Three, so that might have been part of it as well. Heh.
Anyway, I did find some new things; I liked the description of Tick-Tock Man, and of the wasteland beyond Lud (I like the joke about the people being Luddites, too.) and I didn't remember either of those terribly well. I liked the scene when they get on Blaine and he tells them he's going to kill himself and all of them, and Eddie and Susannah are asking him, "Why? Why would you kill yourself? Why would you take us with you?" and every time, Jake keeps muttering, "Because he's a pain." I thought that was great. Also when Roland stands up to Blaine. And though I remembered Gasherman and how icky and horrifying he was, I forgot the lovely detail of pus running out from under his eyepatch. That was about the grossest thing I've seen in these books.
But the best part? This is where I first saw my all-time favorite line of poetry: "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." Greatest. Line. Ever.
by Stephen King
Looking for something good, I read the third book in the Dark Tower series, The Wastelands. There are parts of this one that I really love, particularly when they draw Jake into Mid-World, and the parts just before that when Jake is the POV character in New York -- I love the scene when he finds the rose in the vacant lot, for instance, and sees faces everywhere and hears a chorus of voices, but also sees that the rose has camouflaged itself. I also love the scene when Roland gets to play nobleman, when they find the old people at River's Crossing (I think that was the name of their town) and they treat him like royalty because they haven't seen a gunslihnger in decades. Plus, Oy is, you know, one of the best animal characters ever written.
The problem was that I remembered this one a little too well. I don't know if I've read it more than the others, or it just stuck in my head better for one reason or another, but I expected things a little too much. It was nice to revisit the parts I enjoyed, but the parts in between -- like when Eddie and Roland get into squabbles, which makes them both seem to me like assholes, which I don't like because I love both characters -- were a little tough to make myself read. So it took me a bit longer than the first two -- of course, it's also 200 pages longer than The Gunslinger and 100 pages longer than Drawing of the Three, so that might have been part of it as well. Heh.
Anyway, I did find some new things; I liked the description of Tick-Tock Man, and of the wasteland beyond Lud (I like the joke about the people being Luddites, too.) and I didn't remember either of those terribly well. I liked the scene when they get on Blaine and he tells them he's going to kill himself and all of them, and Eddie and Susannah are asking him, "Why? Why would you kill yourself? Why would you take us with you?" and every time, Jake keeps muttering, "Because he's a pain." I thought that was great. Also when Roland stands up to Blaine. And though I remembered Gasherman and how icky and horrifying he was, I forgot the lovely detail of pus running out from under his eyepatch. That was about the grossest thing I've seen in these books.
But the best part? This is where I first saw my all-time favorite line of poetry: "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." Greatest. Line. Ever.
Book #46
Small Favor
by Jim Butcher
Small Favor came in the mail! Two months before we expected it, since we ordered it bundled with Stephanie Meyer's new book, which isn't due out until August. So, the Dresden series now having become my very favorite paranormal books, of course I read it as soon as I got the chance. Finished it pretty fast, too, since I had to stay up late Saturday night to let my mom in when she came back from square dancing, and she was late because she had lost the keys to her car. But anyway, it was as excellent and fun to read as the rest.
I will say that the feel of it was different. There was much less humor in this one than in several of the others. It seems that, with each book, Harry grows in maturity, in power and influence, and also in pessimism -- because how can you not be a little dark in your outlook, when you're facing necromancers who are immensely more powerful than you, the entire Red Court and much of the White and Black Courts, the Fae, the Black Council (or at least the disapproving White Council), and, of course, the Knights of the Blackened Denarius? But as Harry grows, he becomes too self-conscious of his own smartass defense mechanism, and so loses his flair for it. The comment is made at one point that he is actually left speechless by an enemy, and that seems to be happening throughout the book, and the series. I wouldn't be surprised if part of it is Butcher getting burnt out on making up witty sarcastic repartee -- which I should take as a hint for my character. Although I would guess that any character trait would get somewhat tired after ten books. Maybe I should just worry about publishing an incredibly successful series and making it to ten books, huh?
Anyway, there is some wittiness, and there are some really funny parts -- the moment when Harry raises a fist in praise of the ugly dolphins, the ones who didn't sell out to a plastic surgeon to be on Flipper, and says, "Represent," cracked me up. And there is also a lot of banter between Harry and Thomas, which seems a good place for it. But there is a new romantic entanglement for Harry, which is excellent since the poor guy is so lonely and yet so surrounded by incredibly beautiful and monstrously evil temptresses; and there is some good progress made toward endgame. Though we don't find out anything new about the Black Council, apart from them being even more powerful and nasty than we may have thought. And the good side takes some serious losses as well, so it isn't all wine and roses. Which just makes me eager to read the next book, of course.
As a side note, after finishing this one I tried reading Shadow Play by Charles Baxter, who also wrote Feast of Love, which was turned into a terrible movie despite having an excellent cast. And now I see why: this was a terrible book, despite the fact that Baxter is an excellent wordsmith. I guess that really isn't enough to make you a good writer. It cracks me up, though, to see that truly talented storytellers like Jim Butcher and Robert Jordan and Charlaine Harris and Diana Gabaldon are relegated to the pulps and thus dismissed, while hacks with half their talent are given National Book Awards for their crap-ass novels just because they can turn a phrase and write "MFA" on their resumes. Stupid literary establishment.
by Jim Butcher
Small Favor came in the mail! Two months before we expected it, since we ordered it bundled with Stephanie Meyer's new book, which isn't due out until August. So, the Dresden series now having become my very favorite paranormal books, of course I read it as soon as I got the chance. Finished it pretty fast, too, since I had to stay up late Saturday night to let my mom in when she came back from square dancing, and she was late because she had lost the keys to her car. But anyway, it was as excellent and fun to read as the rest.
I will say that the feel of it was different. There was much less humor in this one than in several of the others. It seems that, with each book, Harry grows in maturity, in power and influence, and also in pessimism -- because how can you not be a little dark in your outlook, when you're facing necromancers who are immensely more powerful than you, the entire Red Court and much of the White and Black Courts, the Fae, the Black Council (or at least the disapproving White Council), and, of course, the Knights of the Blackened Denarius? But as Harry grows, he becomes too self-conscious of his own smartass defense mechanism, and so loses his flair for it. The comment is made at one point that he is actually left speechless by an enemy, and that seems to be happening throughout the book, and the series. I wouldn't be surprised if part of it is Butcher getting burnt out on making up witty sarcastic repartee -- which I should take as a hint for my character. Although I would guess that any character trait would get somewhat tired after ten books. Maybe I should just worry about publishing an incredibly successful series and making it to ten books, huh?
Anyway, there is some wittiness, and there are some really funny parts -- the moment when Harry raises a fist in praise of the ugly dolphins, the ones who didn't sell out to a plastic surgeon to be on Flipper, and says, "Represent," cracked me up. And there is also a lot of banter between Harry and Thomas, which seems a good place for it. But there is a new romantic entanglement for Harry, which is excellent since the poor guy is so lonely and yet so surrounded by incredibly beautiful and monstrously evil temptresses; and there is some good progress made toward endgame. Though we don't find out anything new about the Black Council, apart from them being even more powerful and nasty than we may have thought. And the good side takes some serious losses as well, so it isn't all wine and roses. Which just makes me eager to read the next book, of course.
As a side note, after finishing this one I tried reading Shadow Play by Charles Baxter, who also wrote Feast of Love, which was turned into a terrible movie despite having an excellent cast. And now I see why: this was a terrible book, despite the fact that Baxter is an excellent wordsmith. I guess that really isn't enough to make you a good writer. It cracks me up, though, to see that truly talented storytellers like Jim Butcher and Robert Jordan and Charlaine Harris and Diana Gabaldon are relegated to the pulps and thus dismissed, while hacks with half their talent are given National Book Awards for their crap-ass novels just because they can turn a phrase and write "MFA" on their resumes. Stupid literary establishment.
Book #45
Goblin Quest
by Jim C. Hines
I finally got a hold of Goblin Quest, the first book in a new trilogy that looks like good comic fantasy: they're about a goblin named Jig who becomes an unlikely and unwilling hero, helping human adventurers in a quest despite a goblin's natural cowardice and untrustworthiness. I saw Book 2 at Fred Meyer several months ago, maybe even last year, and then Book 3 more recently -- but I hadn't seen Book 1, and this seemed a series that needed to go in order, even apart from my own obsession with doing that. But I found it at Powell's on our last trip, which worked out wonderfully well for me since I not only found a half-dozen books I've been keeping my eye out for, but I also found out that my thank-you gift card from one of my favorite students was actually worth $100. Woot! Free books, and plenty of 'em.
Anyway, Goblin Quest was fun comic fantasy; Jig is hilarious as a narrative voice, because he just can't understand the humans and the way they act, and he is constantly comparing their reactions to what a goblin would do in the same situation -- which is generally run away, or stab someone in the back, or both. It was also a lot of fun for me because, although the book doesn't rely on Dungeons and Dragons for its setting and its monsters -- which is really annoying when it is done badly, when a writer describes a dragon as a Red dragon, the biggest and meanest type, much worse than Blue or White dragons, but doesn't offer any more explanation than that, simply assuming that anyone reading the book has played D&D and thinks of dragons in those terms -- this one does have a lot of parallels to the D&D world, but it has a much better set of descriptions and explanations. For instance: the goblins are weaker than the hobgoblins, like in D&D, the goblins attack humans on sight, use no strategy other than "CHARGE!" and hope you don't get killed, and they get absolutely slaughtered -- are seen, in fact, as nothing more than a nuisance by the adventurers. But at the same time, Hines actually explains exactly why goblins fight that way, and why hobgoblins are nastier and more dangerous, and why both races are seen as little more than a nuisance by the humans. And it all makes sense. He may have used D&D as a reference point, but he definitely made these creatures his own, and it was cool.
But on top of that, in addition to being amusing and nicely reminiscent of my role-playing childhood, the book actually had some serious parts to it. Jig has to make decisions about where his loyalties lie, and if and why he has any loyalties at all. He comes to understand himself and the humans, and he compares the goblin world to the human world, and neither one comes out looking very good, although for different reasons. There's a great moment when he and the adventurers -- who are almost all incredibly arrogant jerks, by the way; the real villains of the piece are not the monsters -- are talking about funeral rites. See, the goblins leave their dead in the passageways of their underground cavern-home, because there are creatures called carrion worms that eat dead things but not living things, and so clean up the bodies for them. The humans are utterly shocked and disgusted that the goblins could be so unbelievably disrespectful to the remains of their honored dead, and Jig is taken aback and says quietly, "They're -- just bodies." Because goblins, who are functionally atheists, don't get attached to the dead, whereas humans are almost fetishistic about them. It was interesting to see an outsider's perspective, one that was actually quite well done. It has a great ending, too. Now I'm on the lookout for the next two books, and hoping there will be more.
Oh yeah: and I finally tried reading Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. He's actually quite a good writer, with some nice characters and interesting ideas, but he worked much too hard to make the setting overpowering and dark, and to make some of the characters horrifying and shocking, and it came off as strained and unbelievable. Plus he uses twenty words where one will do, which is not something I can be overly critical about without becoming hypocritical, but at least I sometimes use fewer words. He never did. So that one's done, and I think I will just give up on trying to partake in the new avant garde literary sci-fi genre. They can keep it.
by Jim C. Hines
I finally got a hold of Goblin Quest, the first book in a new trilogy that looks like good comic fantasy: they're about a goblin named Jig who becomes an unlikely and unwilling hero, helping human adventurers in a quest despite a goblin's natural cowardice and untrustworthiness. I saw Book 2 at Fred Meyer several months ago, maybe even last year, and then Book 3 more recently -- but I hadn't seen Book 1, and this seemed a series that needed to go in order, even apart from my own obsession with doing that. But I found it at Powell's on our last trip, which worked out wonderfully well for me since I not only found a half-dozen books I've been keeping my eye out for, but I also found out that my thank-you gift card from one of my favorite students was actually worth $100. Woot! Free books, and plenty of 'em.
Anyway, Goblin Quest was fun comic fantasy; Jig is hilarious as a narrative voice, because he just can't understand the humans and the way they act, and he is constantly comparing their reactions to what a goblin would do in the same situation -- which is generally run away, or stab someone in the back, or both. It was also a lot of fun for me because, although the book doesn't rely on Dungeons and Dragons for its setting and its monsters -- which is really annoying when it is done badly, when a writer describes a dragon as a Red dragon, the biggest and meanest type, much worse than Blue or White dragons, but doesn't offer any more explanation than that, simply assuming that anyone reading the book has played D&D and thinks of dragons in those terms -- this one does have a lot of parallels to the D&D world, but it has a much better set of descriptions and explanations. For instance: the goblins are weaker than the hobgoblins, like in D&D, the goblins attack humans on sight, use no strategy other than "CHARGE!" and hope you don't get killed, and they get absolutely slaughtered -- are seen, in fact, as nothing more than a nuisance by the adventurers. But at the same time, Hines actually explains exactly why goblins fight that way, and why hobgoblins are nastier and more dangerous, and why both races are seen as little more than a nuisance by the humans. And it all makes sense. He may have used D&D as a reference point, but he definitely made these creatures his own, and it was cool.
But on top of that, in addition to being amusing and nicely reminiscent of my role-playing childhood, the book actually had some serious parts to it. Jig has to make decisions about where his loyalties lie, and if and why he has any loyalties at all. He comes to understand himself and the humans, and he compares the goblin world to the human world, and neither one comes out looking very good, although for different reasons. There's a great moment when he and the adventurers -- who are almost all incredibly arrogant jerks, by the way; the real villains of the piece are not the monsters -- are talking about funeral rites. See, the goblins leave their dead in the passageways of their underground cavern-home, because there are creatures called carrion worms that eat dead things but not living things, and so clean up the bodies for them. The humans are utterly shocked and disgusted that the goblins could be so unbelievably disrespectful to the remains of their honored dead, and Jig is taken aback and says quietly, "They're -- just bodies." Because goblins, who are functionally atheists, don't get attached to the dead, whereas humans are almost fetishistic about them. It was interesting to see an outsider's perspective, one that was actually quite well done. It has a great ending, too. Now I'm on the lookout for the next two books, and hoping there will be more.
Oh yeah: and I finally tried reading Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. He's actually quite a good writer, with some nice characters and interesting ideas, but he worked much too hard to make the setting overpowering and dark, and to make some of the characters horrifying and shocking, and it came off as strained and unbelievable. Plus he uses twenty words where one will do, which is not something I can be overly critical about without becoming hypocritical, but at least I sometimes use fewer words. He never did. So that one's done, and I think I will just give up on trying to partake in the new avant garde literary sci-fi genre. They can keep it.
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