Tag Archives: fantasy

The Joiner King

Apparently, there are new Star Wars books set later in the continuity than the New Jedi Order stuff (which has ended, so that partially explains that.) I read it between two weeks and a month ago. I wonder, therefore, if I can remember the title. …and, as it happens, I did so while explaining myself just now. It’s the Dark Nest trilogy, with this particular first book being called The Joiner King.

Even after over a decade of books detailing the rise of the new generation of characters, I’m still only minimally attached to them. It didn’t help my enjoyment of the book that a lot of what happened revolved around pheromones changing peoples’ brain chemistries such that they act in new and unexpected ways. I’m not going to come out and call it a sloppy plot device until I see how it plays out over the next couple of books, because, right, trilogy. Nevertheless, it tainted an otherwise fairly decent story. Standard adventury goodness, some rehashing of the Jedi trying to find their way in a changed galaxy and the government trying to find its way in a new galaxy, but those parts worked despite being rehashed, because the galaxy is more fundamentally changed than it was even after the fall of the Empire.

My favorite part was incidental so far, involving Luke’s discovery of some old recordings of his father and mother in Artoo’s memory banks that the droid keeps trying to prevent him from seeing, for reasons unknown. Because, like I started to say before, I’m mostly still interested in the original characters, 10 years on or not.

In sum: Interesting main plot conceit. Tantalizing side story. Character Template Modifications of Weirdness +2. Decent new characters. (An Ewok with a death mark on his head in multiple systems; cheesy, but it makes me giggle.) It’s not bad Star Wars, but I’d claim that most bad Star Wars has been stamped out these days. Not brilliant Star Wars, either. If you were already going to read it anyway, still do; if you weren’t, I’m not here to change your mind.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Over the past couple of years, I’ve become gradually aware of a thriving internet fandom community for these Harry Potter books, complete with wars over which person should date which and extensive fan fiction. To my very great delight, I’ve completely avoided all that smeg, and this review will be completely uninformed by that section of the internet. It’s all about me, baby! Also, I’m not sure how to discuss it in any real detail without a spoiler cut. So, if you haven’t read the book, or if you haven’t read the series but might someday, stay out from this point on. (Includes spoilers for previous books as well.)
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

So, I know what you’re thinking. Hey, why not space these things out a little more evenly, instead of cramming in a bunch of updates all at once, and then you can give fair consideration to each thing instead of just finding a block of time and catching up but cheating on real content. I have a few answers. 1) How dare you? This is absolutely real content. Well, okay, but even if it isn’t, I have a good excuse. 2) I actually watched these two movies right in a row, so I had to take extra time to digest them separately instead of getting them all mixed up together. Also, for the book, I handed it to my dad as soon as I finished it, and I wanted to give him a little breathing space prior to a review that I knew he’d read even though it would have been better to wait until he was done. But I’m well over halfway through the Potter book, and two books behind is too much. So, I got off my ass and here I am.

In any case, yeah, after an hour’s break doing the whole summer mall-watching thing (the problem is that the girls in the mall are too young and you feel like a bad person and have to stop watching almost right away; if only there was a place where hot chicks walked by, but they were all at least 20. Maybe they could serve alcohol, too. Comfortable seating, maybe some TVs. Not so much actual shopping, because that’s lame. This is a million dollar idea right here), it was back into the theater for another serving of popcorn literally and metaphorically. Well, perhaps junior mints would make the better metaphor, considering the themes but especially the chocolatey subject matter of the flick in question.

After all that, you’d think I’d have more to say about the movie. Very enjoyable, almost entirely due to Johnny Depp. The writing had good moments too, but so many things that could have been really annoying (particularly the Oompa Loompa songs, to a lesser extent the morality plays that the songs served as microscopes for) were made hilarious by Willy Wonka’s childlike (sometimes spitefully so) enjoyment of them.

Comparison to the Gene Wilder version? Well, I think I liked Depp better on the whole because candy really is a kid’s game, and he nailed that. But there’s a lot to be said for Wilder’s omnisciently knowing Wonka, leading his would-be proteges through a series of tests and only pretending to wide-eyed innocence. It’s a little too musical for me, though.

Olympos

Short Answer: Olympos, Dan Simmons follow-up to Ilium, was a really enjoyable read. I was interested in every character’s story from start to finish and glad to spend a little more time on the world. The bad news (there’s always bad news, isn’t there?) doesn’t outweigh any of this, but it did make for a substantial amount of disappointment.

There were only two things wrong, really, is the saddest part. First, some of the plot elements seemed rushed. I think all of my questions about what had happened to get from today to the future earth were answered, but some aspects, usually the negative ones, seemed tacked onto the story just because they were unanswered questions; after reading the first book, I know he has the ability to write more smoothly than that. So: jarring. Worse, though, none of the characters really changed in any important way. As far as enjoying a world, more to read is more to enjoy. But as far as character and plot development, I honestly would have been just as satisfied with the way Ilium ended, without ever needing to read another word. It is a damned shame that Olympos added almost no depth, after the brilliance of the original.

House of Chains

Sometimes, it is unreasonably hard to keep up, for no particularly good reason. The upshot of all the happenings in my life (and various irrelevancies that also slowed me down, mind you; I’d never claim after being more than a week late that it was exclusively the fault of how busy I am) is that I have far less to say about Erikson’s fourth tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, House of Chains, than I feel like I ought to have.

Four books is a long way into a series to feel like one finally has a handle on what’s going on, it’s true. I can completely see why it would put people off. And it’s not like I can explain the first book well enough to talk people into reading it, so far. What I do know is this: despite consistent four-digit page counts and a real struggle to figure out what’s up, these are the only new books in the past several years that have made me want to drag them out and avidly reread them, despite a hip deep to-read pile. (As opposed to, say, the Martin series, which I feel like I should reread to know what’s up, but the task fills me with dread.) Mind you, I won’t be doing so for some months yet, but my point is, I resent that I don’t have time to.

In summation: it’s nice to read a book where the human emotion and the sweeping events are balanced well enough that readers looking for either one as their key ingredient will think this is the right fantasy series for them. Gardens of the Moon is available in America these days, which means (as I probably already said once before when I did book three) people should start reading these now. Lots. (Caveat: Yes, the cover is terrible. But it looks like all the other books are being published with their original covers instead of stock fantasy crap covers, so don’t let that fool you.)

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith

I am jumbled, and I wonder if I oughtn’t wait until another viewing. But screw it, first impressions are important, on top of which it’s one of my few first shot times, so I’ll take it. And then cheat by first talking atmosphere. I know I go on about the Alamo Drafthouse mystique, but it was in fine enough fettle tonight to run down. Someone went to the effort of editing up the Cartoon Network Clone Wars endeavour down to its essential “here’s the bits that are related to the movie” bones, and then showed it, interspersed with all kinds of Star Wars filmed coolness and uncoolness, from Troops to Anakin Dynamite to a Muppet Show appearance to the Turkish Star Wars rip-off to the much maligned (and rightly so!) 1978 Christmas special. A very pleasant way to pass a couple of hours while waiting for the last big event movie of quite a while, and I commend them once more.

Then, there’s the movie itself. The scroll cleared the screen just in time to drop into an unrelenting action spectacle with all the right touches of humor and explosions alike. And then… well, things got a little wooden. Never bad, but never quite great. Motivations that were a hair off, decisions that very nearly made sense, enemies that were inches south of believable. Nothing enough to make me stop enjoying myself, but so much that came close to working perfectly that I had to be disappointed when it didn’t. The real irony I think is that it was the longest Star Wars movie, yet really needed another ten or twenty minutes of scenes expanded in just the right ways to achieve the brilliance it was in sight of.

That said, there’s a moment that I choose not to ruin[1] in the main portion of this review past which everything comes together again. It’s still never quite as perfect as that opening sequence, but the complaints from that moment on are nits to be picked, not faults to regret. It’s a hell of a thing, to know essentially everything that’s going to happen (not due to spoilers but to the logical consequence of having already seen the galaxy twenty years down the road from that moment) and still be kept on the edge of my seat, wondering what will happen next, if there’s a way out of it, how it came to this. For that, I’ll offer Lucas my thanks and my kudos. When he got to the important part, he made it work.

If you watched the other two movies, like or dislike, go ahead and see this one, at least the once. Even with the mis-steps, it’s worth it.
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The Cestus Deception

A week or so ago, I got caught up in Star Wars excitement despite myself, and snagged a Clone Wars novel at Half-Price Books, the second one I’ve read now. The whole idea is the thing where they can do some guided merchandising, build a bit of storyline between the two movies, and just generally synergize. Still, though, I’m a sucker for that kind of thing. (See also how I’m writing this from a line I’ll be sitting in for the next ten or eleven hours in order to see that one movie at the back half of the two I previously referenced.)

In any case, I finished The Cestus Deception a couple of nights ago, and have now found time to leave general impressions. They are largely the same as the impressions I had of Shatterpoint last year. You’ve got your exciting lightsaber duels, only with Obi-Wan instead of Mace Windu (also a tentacly-headed Jedi named Kit Fisto), an army of Force-sensitive bio-droids being manufactured to kill Jedi, and also lots of clone troopers. They are busily being humanized even as the Jedi are slowly being crushed by the pressures of the War. You have to admire Palpatine’s strategy; he’s put them in this impossible position where if they sit back and do nothing, everyone hates them, but if they step up and do what needs to be done in order to win the war (like force the cessation of Jedi-killing droid manufacture if it can be handled diplomatically, and I think we all know that it cannot), they get their hands dirty and nobody trusts them anymore. Much like Shatterpoint, this is more of the dirty hands storyline. I really hope the movie tonight touches on some of this theme before things start going bad, so that it’s understandable where the popular lack of support came from. If not, well, at least there are lots of people with the talent to make it clear in non-movie places, and I can just take the whole thing as one piece. Frankly, I’d rather be able to rely on the movies for everything, though.

Sethra Lavode

One of the problems with having a booklog is all the books that you had read just before you started chronicling all the books you read, that probably were the very books that led you to say, ‘Hey, there are books out there that people deserve to know about!’, and thus inspired you to get started on such a singularly self-involved project as a booklog. (I know what you’re thinking. ‘You read crap books all the time, nearly constantly in fact, and how dare you pretend that this is something people deserve to know about?’ Well, I do think that very thing, because I have to warn people of the bad stuff too. It’s just that serving as an object lesson wasn’t sufficient impetus, in the way that flagging down the really good books has been.)

My point, which I assure you I have one of, is this. I’ve finished the last published Dragaera book, The Enchantress of Dzur Mountain (or as the publisher insisted it be renamed, Sethra Lavode). The author has explored the recent history of this world extensively: in nine first-person books chronicling the rise to prominence, subsequent fall, and so much more of Vlad Taltos, an assassin and businessman in a world where he is a second- or possibly third-class citizen; in a single book that I haven’t yet read about Vlad’s people; and in five books written in the Alexandre Dumas historical style (and in fact directly ripped off from the Three Musketeers and later books, though gradually less directly over the course of the story) about the people in whose world Vlad moves. Sethra Lavode is the final novel of the latter group.

As with the Vlad novels, the voice of the author is the most distinguishing characteristic. In this case, the voice is that of one Sir Paarfi of Roundwood, a historian of no small renown in his own time, who has been at work on the historical cycle for a matter of some three to five centuries. (Dragaerans are a long-lived people.) As with all of the previous novels, I knew essentially how the story must end, and was so able to immerse myself completely in the telling of it. I found that Paarfi has become a much more settled and sedate author, even as his personal life has gotten ever more glamorous and, dare I say, wild. Honestly, I’m not sure I approve. The Paarfi who wrote The Phoenix Guards would never have followed the story so strictly or with so few of the divergences that made him famous in the first place. Still a very good book, just not quite up to the standards I could wish for it to hold.

As for people who have not read any of these books, or few enough of them that my review doesn’t make sense: Sorry about that, and the best thing for you to do is read them, and then see if you agree. I promise, you really do want to.

Magic Casement

This time, light and fluffy fantasy by Dave Duncan, at the recommendation of Mike Kozlowski. Without any recommendation but that the author was good, I started with the first series I happened to find at Half Price Books, A Man of his Word. The opening volume, Magic Casement, follows the parallel adventures of Princess Inosolan as she is shipped away from her small kingdom to spend a year in Society learning to be a noble lady, and of Rap, her childhood companion and resident stableboy, as he comes to grip with magical powers he has only just discovered he has.

There’s a lot of good and very little bad here, so far: An engrossing system of magic with lots yet to be revealed. An Eddings-esque number of nationalities and nationalistic quirks (I haven’t decided if the nationalities are as internally homogenous as Eddings’ are, due to not enough information). A system of religion that may or may not be tied directly to the magic in some unrevealed way. A fun quest rife with danger. (Okay, that makes no sense. Plenty of danger, but fun to read about rather than oppressive.) Interesting companions and foes. A rollicking good cliffhanger.

My only real complaint is that the main character is unforgivably dumb at a couple of key moments. I blame the author for poor information distribution. He provides info to the reader via the character’s internal thoughts, at a time when the info is useful to solving a puzzle. And then has the character not solve it for a while thereafter. If it had been provided early on, before the character had the puzzle to solve, then either the reader would notice when the character did and nod sagely, or notice early on and have a sense of accomplishment. As it was, though, the info solved the puzzle to my satisfaction and made me want to shake the character for being so blind. (I’m making it sound worse than it was, really.)

I look forward to reading the rest of the series. It’s nice to have the occasional non-doorstop fantasy to look forward too, and nicer yet to have it not obviously be trash, as with all the Buffy or Resident Evil or Shatner books that I read.

Ilium

The problems with having no real standards are two-fold. 1) When you find something that’s really cool and worthwhile, people who let themselves be guided by such factors as quality or entertainingness will naturally suspect you of being up to your old tricks, and 2) you’ll find yourself being given to greater flights of hyperbole as a natural result of the first thing. Hyperbole is absolutely, positively, and I mean this 1000 percent, never effective. So, naturally, both of these are concerns of mine after having finished Dan Simmon’s Ilium.

Okay, the easy stuff. I came into it knowing it was about the Iliad, and basically not knowing any more than that. This is okay, because both the title and the first couple of paragraphs make the same point. A couple of more things that I didn’t know coming in are that it’s also about Shakespeare, and H.G. Wells, and Proust (and a little bit, I claim, about Arthur Conan Doyle), and sentient robots living in the shadow of Jupiter, and pampered people living in an idyllic golden age on Earth. It’s about knowledge, and whether knowledge has value, and whether knowledge has intrinsic value. Most of all, it is about what the very best in science fiction is always about, what it means to be human.

Ah, you ask, but is it any good? Well, obviously you’re not really asking that, because a) you don’t trust me to know anyway, b) I already basically said it’s good, and c) how can that mix of plot, character and theme not be good? I mean, really, did you even read the second paragraph at all? Seriously, though. It’s great. When I finished it, I would not have hated the author if it had been almost exactly the same[1] and been one book instead of the first of two. At the same time, if the second book were out yet, I would go buy it and be reading it now, in express violation of my policy of not reading / reviewing books consecutively. I kind of resent having to wait until early July, as Amazon implies.

Thinking it over, I can’t even say that I miss the lack of frozen zombies. Thinking it over a little bit further, there’s a case to be made that it has the potential for frozen zombies after all, and that makes me feel better about myself. At the least, I can’t say I needed them in volume one, and that’s still saying a lot.

Incidentally: Can someone who has read this book contact me external to the site? I have a question that falls outside the scope of the review, about faxing and whether there was an authorial misstep or hints for the second book. And, can everyone who hasn’t read this book go ahead and read it? The world will be a better place. I actually kind of want to read the Iliad again now. No, really.

[1] Because, being two books, there are elements of the narrative barely alluded to that are sure to come into full relief in the second book. If he’d covered everything, then a second book would be silly.