I’m not sure what happened, here. I’d swear I waited longer than a month or so between the vampire porn this time. And yet, the evidence suggests I finished the last one no later than the beginning of August. Perhaps it’s some kind of compulsion. Because I know, I know I was going to wait longer, and then I thought I had. I’d still think I had, if the evidence wasn’t right in front of me. All I’m saying is, this can’t be a good sign.

Anyhow, I read Blue Moon. One thing good I can say for it is that the plot was vastly improved over the last one. Although aspects of it were a bit predictable, I definitely wanted to find out what was going on and how it would all end. Another thing I can say for it, which may as well be classified as good, is that it really lends itself in visuals to a comic format. Now, sure, I’ve been reading a lot of graphic novels lately, so I may bias in that direction. But I haven’t noticed it with any other books, plus the art style in my head does not match the art style in any of the graphic novels I’ve been reading. There may have been a third good thing. If I remember it, I’ll probably edit these lines out and replace them with the thing. But don’t hold your breath.

The plot, then, which I have deemed good: an unscrupulous and wealthy fellow is trying to acquire a piece of land for what will no doubt turn out to be nefarious reasons. Unfortunately for him, a post-grad research team is observing a tribe of peaceful trolls with sentient characteristics that live on the land. Even more unfortunately for him, one of the post-grads is the werewolf ex-fiance of our perpetual necromantic heroine, Anita Blake. So when his tactics to remove the research team from the area (so he can dispose of the land as he sees fit) go beyond the ‘Pretty Please’ phase, he’ll no doubt discover what a mistake it was to mess with anyone that Anita feels a tie to.

As for the bad stuff, well, it was basically everything that occurs in and around the plot but isn’t directly related to it. For one thing, there is no more porn bloat. This is actual porn. Sure, Ms. Blake has the excuse of a vengeful spirit inhabiting some portion of her psyche for actively seeking a hard lay from anyone close to her (including, in one memorable event, an entire werewolf pack). But that only excuses her. The book, on the other hand, has none. Along the same track but even worse, through her ignorance, the audience is provided with exposition illuminating BDSM terminology. I really fear for what will happen in the next book, since there was no payoff in this one. (I mean, people can live their lives as they wish, and I don’t judge, nor do I confirm or deny my own opinion on the topic. All I’m saying is, it does not make for compelling literature.) And we’re informed that Jean-Claude (the main vampire of the series) gains power through the sexual pleasure of people around him. (No payoff and correspondingly more fear for the future on this one, too.) Worst of all, though, Anita has graduated to full-blown Mary Sue status.

You know, I say that’s what’s worst of all, but it isn’t. If it was just the necromancy stuff, I could see it as growing powers where each step along the series made logical sense. But the werewolf stuff, in addition to appearing without much logic involved, doesn’t really add anything to the stories that’s at all necessary. This book could drop about a hundred pages to be as long as the first one in the series, and it would be much better as a result. So the worst part isn’t the Mary Sue thing, it’s that there’d still be a story without it, and not only that, a fairly good one. Instead, Anita seems to live in a consequence-free world where her biggest problem is whether one or the other of her boyfriends will be jealous when she has sex with someone other than him. She can stop anyone around her from dying, kill anyone in her way, and nobody seems to mind or expect much different.

And yet, God help me, we all know I’ll have read the next one by November at the latest. What is wrong with me?

Ironic that after my complaints about the editing of Nuklear Age, the next book I should read (well, sort of next) would be an advance uncorrected proof. (Also ironic that despite being “advance”, it’s actually for a book that’s two years old.) Most ironic of all, though, is how very few incorrect edits were present in Homeward Bound, the (as far as I know) last book in Turtledove’s alternate history series where aliens attacked the Earth just as World War II was picking up steam. How very few when compared to the purportedly completed and publishable Nuklear Age, that is.

But enough about that unpleasantness. There’s plenty enough unpleasantness to be had here. Which is odd, because I was looking forward to the book, and throughout it I was eager to know what was going to happen. It’s not like I can say that there was no ultimate resolution in the ongoing cultural (and sometimes military) struggle between humans and the Race. I mean, there wasn’t, but in the acceptable ‘I’ve shown you enough that you can draw your own conclusions’ sense. The same is true for many of the individual character story arcs. So you’d think I’d be happy.

I guess my complaints are all about the execution. There’s a fairly large spoiler on the inside cover that meant my perceptions of the first part of the book were colored by waiting for the other shoe to drop. Since it didn’t until three-quarters through (which is what makes me call it a large spoiler instead of a small one), it seemed like I was killing time waiting for the climax. But then, after the big event, it seemed like I was killing time waiting for the fallout to become apparent. Since it did become apparent but only over an accumulation of data, I’m willing to call that my own fault for being impatient.

Even leaving aside my pacing complaints, though, there were still other issues. There weren’t enough character viewpoints to spread the story around, although I think that ties into pacing too. I came back to characters so quickly (relative to Turtledove’s same formula in his other books I’ve read) that I expected more to have happened by the time I got back. But it wasn’t really a Things Happen kind of book, so much as an exploration of the culture clash between two alien species. Which is also not what I was expecting.

Another unexpected thing is how I keep forgiving the book and blaming myself for its shortcomings. So, I’ll close on a note that I know wasn’t my bad. Among the aliens, there’s a fairly amusing Colombo rip-off who’s trying to get to the bottom of an illicit drug trade. Except for the amusingness, the subplot went absolutely nowhere and seemed to have no consequences for any individual character nor for the story as a whole. The amusing part would have been enough to forgive that if it had only appeared once and faded back, but it was still an issue through the penultimate chapter of the book, and then, nothing. So, that’s lame. And the pacing problems were too, even if they were directly caused by my expectations. Because books should entertain me correctly, dammit.

I’ll certainly keep reading Turtledove, as I have no reason to expect this to be a new direction for everything he writes. But I’m glad this was the last of this series, because I’m not sure I’d read the next one, if there were going to be more. And now I don’t have to wonder what I’m missing or (more likely) cave and read it anyway, despite expecting not to enjoy myself. So you see.

If I had to guess, I’d say the failure of the book is that it was an alternate future, which is to say science fiction. What makes him so good at alternate history is his understanding of actual history. In this case, he had to wing it, and that’s probably what kept the story so static compared to the other ones, where he knew what had to happen next simply because it would make the most historical sense.

Or maybe it mostly was just me after all. But probably it’s the other thing.

I’ve noticed lately that I barely have any time to spare for my leisure stuff. Sure, I read (although a bit slowly of late), and I get to listen to a lot more radio or books on CD during my commute than I previously had, but keeping up on TV watching is getting to be a chore, and my internet reading has fallen way off. But nothing has gone so badly as the webcomics. I’m down from about 20 per day on average to none in nearly three weeks, basically since the new job started. I’ll need to catch up soon, too, lest I have no idea where I was on any of them. (Well, okay, I know the date, but it still seems like a good idea.)

Among my handful of favorites is Brian Clevinger’s 8-Bit Theater, which on top of being reliably funny is what inspired me to finally play Final Fantasy all the way through. He spent a lot of months dropping hints about and then eventually published a book, separate from his webcomic presence but purportedly with the same humor. But it was out of a minor press, so I shrugged, Atlas-like, and moved on with my life. Until one fateful day at the used bookstore[1], when I spotted it on the shelf. For, admittedly, a ridiculous amount of money, since it was half-price off a truly ludicrous $42.95. But, y’know, I was probably never going to see it cheaper, or ever again for that matter, so I struck, snakelike.

No, that’s stupid. I mean, even if snakes picked things up by striking at them, how would it get out of the store? It can’t very well shoplift a book, what with the lack of backpacks or baggy shirts, neither could it pay, what with the lack of pockets. Hell, it takes pretty much all of their ingenuity to get all the way down the jetway and onto the motherfucking plane.

I guess my point here is, I got the book.

First of all, I have a complaint. The editing is atrocious. I mean, there are random grammatical oddities that I could get past, and there are places where what should be an s is randomly an a instead, like the spellchecker was never engaged or something. I could get past those too. I could even get past the homonym misspellings, probably. There are two things I cannot get past though. One is the various tics and things related to invented technology, regional dialect spelling to imply accent, etc. You can’t really play with that stuff in a book where the reader can’t trust the editing to be done correctly, because the reader is left to guess which things are on purpose and which aren’t. But most egregious of all, on a semi-regular basis, past tense verbs are presented as present tense. ‘The rocket blast off into the sky’ instead of ‘…blasted off…’ Is that some kind of local to Florida thing that I’ve never heard of, or would it drive everyone as crazy as it drove me?

Despite all that, I was able to get into the story. Nuklear Age is a prose version of comics about the adventures of Nuklear Man and Atomik Lad and their friends and nemeses. Influences from Batman to the Tick are obvious every time you turn a page, not to mention randomly inserted parodies of all kinds of modern fantasy and science fiction completely unrelated to comics. The humor is hit or miss, but more than enough hit to keep me laughing. Some of the characters are cardboard, though I think I’ve established that doesn’t bother me. A few are layered and nuanced, and they were enough to let me latch onto it, have someone to root for, and generally enjoy the ride. Except…

Old Usenet lore has it that the mark of doom for a book is when you utter the seven deadly words, “I no longer care about these characters.” At that point, the book is no longer for you, and you should stop reading it forthwith. It’s probably fair to say that I’m not good at following that adage, or at least that I’m not good about recognizing in myself when I stop caring, or when I should. Be that as it may, it’s not the issue here. Rather, I’ve found something that might be deadlier to one’s enjoyment of a book even than that.

What happens when you find out that the author no longer cares about these characters? Or worse, never did? It’s possible to care negatively about characters, or to care and still allow bad things to happen to them, sure. But to simply not care at all, and just use them as a means to an end that has little or no relation to their circumstances, to their depth as characters? Maybe I’m naive, and most authors don’t care about anything beyond making some kind of point, and the people they use to get there are just pawns invented in their mind to be tossed away or raised to queens at will. If so, at least most of them hide that from me. I’ll keep reading the comic, and I’d probably read another book he put out, if I could find it for cheaper than this, at least. There’s some skill there, even if it’s unpolished at the moment. But I’ll certainly not do it without someone else assuring me that the end goal is a bit less puerile this time.

Because the last 100 or so pages of this book? Imagine being kicked in the crotch repeatedly, but you know you can get through it because of how good it will feel when you’re no longer getting kicked in the crotch, and that thought alone, as simple as it is, is enough. But then, if it turns out you never do stop getting kicked in the crotch? It’s kind of like that.

[1] One Fateful Day at the Bookstore would probably make a good title for my biography.