Rating: 3
Year: 1992
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? In another 10 years...
A Bard (Eric), an elf (Korendil or 'Kory') and their girlfriend Beth have been in San Francisco for a couple of years making rent money as street musicians. This is the perfect way to lie low and avoid the attention of the FBI, which has been looking for them in the wake of some scary stuff in Los Angeles (but that's another book).
Eris has been having nightmares of an apocalyptic series of earthquakes and demonic Nightflyers. It takes a lot of pages for his friends to convince him to talk to someone who can help him figure out what's going on--are they just bad dreams, or are they premonition?
More pages go by before the three venture to the Embarcadero to play for the lunch crowd. Beth gets nabbed by some guys in suits. They take her to their Evil Secret Facility and torture her into panic attacks.
Eric and Kory split up to go looking for Beth. Kory uses his elf-senses and such and goes right to the Evil Secret Facility, where he bluffs his way in...only to end up captured in the same cell holding Beth.
The bad guys torture him, too. Turns out the Evil Secret Facility is a government project run by an evil guy who's working on mind control using psychics and mages.
Eric is almost grabbed by the same suits who got Beth, but uses his music-magic to escape. He even gets their car's tag number. Good boy.
He gets with some friends, puts together a Plan, and they raid the Evil Secret Facility. Here's where Eric turns fucking stupid, evil and psychotic: he uses his music to summon a flock of Nightflyer demons and sends them into the facility to kill bad guys and wreck the joint. He has enough sense to tell them not to kill the three good guys he knows are there, but doesn't give a thought to having condemned everyone else (including innocent victims) in the place to horrible deaths. We're told that he is "sickened" by what he's done, but that doesn't keep him from doing it.
Rescue, rescue, action, action, hooray! and Eric sends the Nightflyers home. Well, he thinks he does. There's one that possessed the evil guy running the Evil Secret Facility. This one is like the Boss Momma Nightflyer and she's looking to make baby Nightflyers and wreck the world in a...Nightflyerpalooza? Nightocalypse? Nightstock?
Conveniently, the Evil Secret "torture the psychics" Facility is right on top of a Legit Good Science Earthquake Research Lab which is conveniently close to a Major Scientific Breakthrough That Could Help Save The World From Bad Earthquakes!
Unfortunately--and also conveniently--this Research Can Also Be Used As A Weapon!
Nightflyer's gonna trigger The Big'un, kill the hell out of people, spawn, and do Total World Domination.
Can Eric the Douchebag fix what he broke?
Bleh. The dialog (and, well, everything else) could use some cleanup and polishing. Seems clumsy/melodramatic, especially when two people are talking in Plot Points where descriptive text would have been better.
Decent concept; I'd like to see how the authors would write it now, compared to then.
Showing posts with label 3/5. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3/5. Show all posts
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Bardic Voices I: The Lark and the Wren (Mercedes Lackey)
Rating: 3
Year: 1992
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Maybe, when I forget...
I decided to pop out of the Valdemar stuff again, but I didn't wander far. Mercedes Lackey is crazy prolific in her scribbles.
Rune is a little tavern girl. The 14-year old hates her life. She's stuck working the backwater tavern in a backwater village with her backwater mother, whose only ambition is to lure the tavern owner into marriage so she'll have a cushy (if backwater) life.
Rune wants to be a musician. A Guild Bard, player to queens, singer to kings, writer of songs that make the whole world sing. The villagers come to the tavern to listen to her scratching on her fiddle while they drink beer, but no one thinks much of her or her scratching. To the others in the tavern her music is a distraction from her proper place: doing chores, waiting on the customers, and little more. To the villagers she's a bastard and likely to follow in her mother's slutty, backwater footsteps.
Rune has talent, according to the occasional visiting minstrel. They teach her when they have time, encourage her, and feed her desire to get away from the village. She wants to go to the huge Kingsford Faire, to take the three-day challenge against other musicians and win, taking her place as an apprentice in the Bardic Guild.
--but there's no money for that. Her "pay" at the tavern is room and board, no more.
We're treated to seven pages of Rune considering prostitution or stripping.
Seven. Two of these are her thinking of how filthy and degrading and horrible and slimy and bad and sickening and awful and sinful and disgusting and otherwise not-good the stripping would be, as if that's somehow worse than prostitution.
We get 52 pages of "Rune is unhappy and trapped in a hellhole and she hates it here and they hate her and she hates them" before she opens her trap and tells some village boys that she will play for the Skull Hill Ghost to prove that her fiddling is going to make her somebody, someday. She grabs up her fiddle and marches all the way to the dark, forbidding hill in the woods.
The way the book blurb is written--and from the cover art--you'd think this was the Big Finish. Rune the Triumphant, player to Death, defeater of Doom, and all that. Nope.
The ghost comes and they make a deal: she'll play for him all night. If he digs her stuff, she gets to live.
Her digs her stuff, man. He tells her she's amazing and leaves her with a double-handful of silver pennies, remarking that she deserved gold but it'd be harder to explain to other people how this tavern child came to have so much money.
So now she's got money and the rest of a too-thick book stretching out ahead of her. It could have been so much better, but there doesn't seem to be much conflict for Rune, even while she's confronting the ghost. Everything pretty much falls into place for her, just so. Where there is something like a conflict or danger, it's resolved pretty quickly.
Basically, no Runes were seriously injured or killed during the production of this book. Author's pet? Rune is barely--more like minimally--educated, but is often the most articulate voice in the room. She doesn't really carry the "tavern bumpkin" role even in the tavern, which clashes with her upbringing.
The characters--all of them--are pretty straight-cut sketches, nothing really interesting about them. We know what Rune hopes to become, but we don't know much more than that.
(Spoilers!)
The plot goes in a straight line from the Skull Hill Ghost to the city where she finds work, a teacher and lodging all on the same day. At the dramatically appropriate time, her teacher dies of pneumonia (giving the Big Emotional Hit) and she comes down with it herself. It takes the rest of Winter and part of Spring for her to recover--and just in time, the Church representative shows up to tell her that her teacher left her everything, and here's enough money for her to get to the next act in the book.
She hits the Kingsford Faire and enters the competition disguised as a boy: her teacher warned her that there are no girls or women in the Bardic Guild. Her best bet is to play as a boy. If she wins, she can either keep up the deception or reveal herself (so to speak).
She wins, gets the living crap beaten out of her...but fortunately she's rescued by the Free Bards, folks who play music without being part of a Guild or beholden to rich and powerful patrons. Not only that, she meets the love of her life and gets set up for the final act of the book.
Blah. I'll just stop there. I'd like to have seen some more slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune.
This thing's so heavy-handed it must have been typed with a sledgehammer.
There's so much hand-holding I was starting to hope she'd just ask me OUT already.
There's so much hitting over the head I've got a concussion.
EVERY TIME Rune starts thinking, it takes several pages of making goddamn sure we get it. She's not a whore? She's not a stripper? Okay, just say that in a couple of sentences, I'll understand.
On p. 254, she meets Mr. Boyfriend. She sets out with him after the Faire, looking for a place to set up for the winter.
By p. 331, they're still on the road, weeks later. Mr. Boyfriend is being the noble, self-sacrificing older guy who doesn't want to lead Rune on. He's TWICE her age (35!!), it wouldn't work out.
PAGES of this.
Rune wants him, but thinks he's not into her. She's not pretty, she's not interesting...instead of calling her "Lark" the Free Bards should have called her "Mourning Dove." PAGES.
Pages of Very Serious, Deep Introspection! At least it's not "Brightly Burning."
By p. 350, rune finally nails Mr. Boyfriend. Maybe they can shut up, now. All that inner monologue self-torture stuff was audience abuse, just 4 shy of 100 pages. Did Baen tell her they needed a book "about this thick"?
Maybe she started out with only 200, but they forced her to pad it out. "Yeah, make it 488 pages."
They could have titled it, "The Demotivational Reader Edition."
Year: 1992
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Maybe, when I forget...
I decided to pop out of the Valdemar stuff again, but I didn't wander far. Mercedes Lackey is crazy prolific in her scribbles.
Rune is a little tavern girl. The 14-year old hates her life. She's stuck working the backwater tavern in a backwater village with her backwater mother, whose only ambition is to lure the tavern owner into marriage so she'll have a cushy (if backwater) life.
Rune wants to be a musician. A Guild Bard, player to queens, singer to kings, writer of songs that make the whole world sing. The villagers come to the tavern to listen to her scratching on her fiddle while they drink beer, but no one thinks much of her or her scratching. To the others in the tavern her music is a distraction from her proper place: doing chores, waiting on the customers, and little more. To the villagers she's a bastard and likely to follow in her mother's slutty, backwater footsteps.
Rune has talent, according to the occasional visiting minstrel. They teach her when they have time, encourage her, and feed her desire to get away from the village. She wants to go to the huge Kingsford Faire, to take the three-day challenge against other musicians and win, taking her place as an apprentice in the Bardic Guild.
--but there's no money for that. Her "pay" at the tavern is room and board, no more.
We're treated to seven pages of Rune considering prostitution or stripping.
Seven. Two of these are her thinking of how filthy and degrading and horrible and slimy and bad and sickening and awful and sinful and disgusting and otherwise not-good the stripping would be, as if that's somehow worse than prostitution.
We get 52 pages of "Rune is unhappy and trapped in a hellhole and she hates it here and they hate her and she hates them" before she opens her trap and tells some village boys that she will play for the Skull Hill Ghost to prove that her fiddling is going to make her somebody, someday. She grabs up her fiddle and marches all the way to the dark, forbidding hill in the woods.
The way the book blurb is written--and from the cover art--you'd think this was the Big Finish. Rune the Triumphant, player to Death, defeater of Doom, and all that. Nope.
The ghost comes and they make a deal: she'll play for him all night. If he digs her stuff, she gets to live.
Her digs her stuff, man. He tells her she's amazing and leaves her with a double-handful of silver pennies, remarking that she deserved gold but it'd be harder to explain to other people how this tavern child came to have so much money.
So now she's got money and the rest of a too-thick book stretching out ahead of her. It could have been so much better, but there doesn't seem to be much conflict for Rune, even while she's confronting the ghost. Everything pretty much falls into place for her, just so. Where there is something like a conflict or danger, it's resolved pretty quickly.
Basically, no Runes were seriously injured or killed during the production of this book. Author's pet? Rune is barely--more like minimally--educated, but is often the most articulate voice in the room. She doesn't really carry the "tavern bumpkin" role even in the tavern, which clashes with her upbringing.
The characters--all of them--are pretty straight-cut sketches, nothing really interesting about them. We know what Rune hopes to become, but we don't know much more than that.
(Spoilers!)
The plot goes in a straight line from the Skull Hill Ghost to the city where she finds work, a teacher and lodging all on the same day. At the dramatically appropriate time, her teacher dies of pneumonia (giving the Big Emotional Hit) and she comes down with it herself. It takes the rest of Winter and part of Spring for her to recover--and just in time, the Church representative shows up to tell her that her teacher left her everything, and here's enough money for her to get to the next act in the book.
She hits the Kingsford Faire and enters the competition disguised as a boy: her teacher warned her that there are no girls or women in the Bardic Guild. Her best bet is to play as a boy. If she wins, she can either keep up the deception or reveal herself (so to speak).
She wins, gets the living crap beaten out of her...but fortunately she's rescued by the Free Bards, folks who play music without being part of a Guild or beholden to rich and powerful patrons. Not only that, she meets the love of her life and gets set up for the final act of the book.
Blah. I'll just stop there. I'd like to have seen some more slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune.
This thing's so heavy-handed it must have been typed with a sledgehammer.
There's so much hand-holding I was starting to hope she'd just ask me OUT already.
There's so much hitting over the head I've got a concussion.
EVERY TIME Rune starts thinking, it takes several pages of making goddamn sure we get it. She's not a whore? She's not a stripper? Okay, just say that in a couple of sentences, I'll understand.
On p. 254, she meets Mr. Boyfriend. She sets out with him after the Faire, looking for a place to set up for the winter.
By p. 331, they're still on the road, weeks later. Mr. Boyfriend is being the noble, self-sacrificing older guy who doesn't want to lead Rune on. He's TWICE her age (35!!), it wouldn't work out.
PAGES of this.
Rune wants him, but thinks he's not into her. She's not pretty, she's not interesting...instead of calling her "Lark" the Free Bards should have called her "Mourning Dove." PAGES.
Pages of Very Serious, Deep Introspection! At least it's not "Brightly Burning."
By p. 350, rune finally nails Mr. Boyfriend. Maybe they can shut up, now. All that inner monologue self-torture stuff was audience abuse, just 4 shy of 100 pages. Did Baen tell her they needed a book "about this thick"?
Maybe she started out with only 200, but they forced her to pad it out. "Yeah, make it 488 pages."
They could have titled it, "The Demotivational Reader Edition."
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Rush Complete (2 volumes) and Deluxe Anthology
Rating: 3
Date: 1986
Genre: Music
Read Again? Yes
Gotta say first off, by "Complete" all the author(s) meant was "We did arrangements of all their albums through Power Windows," not "Every song in its completion."
Keep in mind that Rush is a "power trio"--drums, bass, and guitar.
Now consider that the books are arranged for vocal and piano, with chord symbols for guitar. Heh.
There's no TAB, so I was at a big disadvantage when I started learning songs from these books. I can read music notation...very slowly. I suck at it. Fortunately, those chord symbols are there and they helped a lot.
The arrangements themselves are best treated as sketches of the actual songs; they're heavily simplified and edited, with no solos or any of the badassery a Rush fan would be looking for. I knew this when I bought them, though--they're Rush memorabilia--and they were all there was in 1990, as far as I knew. While I learned by ear most of what I can play, I had the books just in case there was a phrase or chord I couldn't quite figure out (assuming it was in one of the books).
Another fun thing to do would be to program each song as written into Cakewalk or a similar music-writing program, just for something to do, and for something to laugh at. I wish I could rate these books higher, but they just don't make the cut, especially when compared to the arrangements in Guitar Magazine or some of the newer music books on today's shelves.
Volume 1:
Rush
Fly By Night
Caress of Steel
2112
A Farewell to Kings
Hemispheres
Volume 2:
Permanent Waves
Moving Pictures
Exit...Stage Left
Signals
Grace Under Pressure
Power Windows
The Deluxe Anthology is just 27 songs culled from the two-volume set. Same arrangements, so the same comments. My copy's pretty heavily annotated, which tells me that I depended more on this book than on the other two.
Date: 1986
Genre: Music
Read Again? Yes
Gotta say first off, by "Complete" all the author(s) meant was "We did arrangements of all their albums through Power Windows," not "Every song in its completion."
Keep in mind that Rush is a "power trio"--drums, bass, and guitar.
Now consider that the books are arranged for vocal and piano, with chord symbols for guitar. Heh.
There's no TAB, so I was at a big disadvantage when I started learning songs from these books. I can read music notation...very slowly. I suck at it. Fortunately, those chord symbols are there and they helped a lot.
The arrangements themselves are best treated as sketches of the actual songs; they're heavily simplified and edited, with no solos or any of the badassery a Rush fan would be looking for. I knew this when I bought them, though--they're Rush memorabilia--and they were all there was in 1990, as far as I knew. While I learned by ear most of what I can play, I had the books just in case there was a phrase or chord I couldn't quite figure out (assuming it was in one of the books).
Another fun thing to do would be to program each song as written into Cakewalk or a similar music-writing program, just for something to do, and for something to laugh at. I wish I could rate these books higher, but they just don't make the cut, especially when compared to the arrangements in Guitar Magazine or some of the newer music books on today's shelves.
Volume 1:
Rush
Fly By Night
Caress of Steel
2112
A Farewell to Kings
Hemispheres
Volume 2:
Permanent Waves
Moving Pictures
Exit...Stage Left
Signals
Grace Under Pressure
Power Windows
The Deluxe Anthology is just 27 songs culled from the two-volume set. Same arrangements, so the same comments. My copy's pretty heavily annotated, which tells me that I depended more on this book than on the other two.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Pearl Harbor: America's Darkest Day (Susan Wels, 2001)
Rating: 3
Year: 2001
Genre: Nonfiction/History
Read again? Maybe
First off...printed in Hong Kong?! Really? I'm bombing two points for that. Having a Foreword by WW2 vet Senator Daniel Inouye doesn't make up for it.
This isn't much of a reading book. It's not an in-depth scholarly work. There's just enough information to keep the narrative moving and hopefully enough to make the reader want to know more.
The book's strength is in the pictures. It's lavishly illustrated from cover to cover with period photos and beautifully-rendered paintings.
Year: 2001
Genre: Nonfiction/History
Read again? Maybe
First off...printed in Hong Kong?! Really? I'm bombing two points for that. Having a Foreword by WW2 vet Senator Daniel Inouye doesn't make up for it.
This isn't much of a reading book. It's not an in-depth scholarly work. There's just enough information to keep the narrative moving and hopefully enough to make the reader want to know more.
The book's strength is in the pictures. It's lavishly illustrated from cover to cover with period photos and beautifully-rendered paintings.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Star Trek--TOS #45: Double, Double (Friedman, Michael Jan)
Rating: 3
Year: 1989
Genre: Sci-fi/Star Trek
Read again? Eh. I don't know.
At some point after the Trek episode What Are Little Girls Made Of?, the USS Hood receives a distress call from supposed survivors of an expedition. The ship is quickly taken over by androids designed to replicate the crew.
The androids are led by a replica of James Kirk--and while he wants to finish the work of his creator, Dr. Korby (to establish an android colony), he also wants revenge on the real Kirk for his interference in Korby's work.
Meanwhile, the Enterprise is mounting a rescue mission. A swarm of asteroids is about to conveniently wipe out an entire civilization of aboriginal people on an island. The swarm's inconveniently large and fast, so there's no shooting or pushing them around. With minutes to spare, Kirk rescues a kid who went foraging for eggs. Beamed up in the nick of time, and all that.
It turns out that the kid's people have a life-debt thingie where the kid's got to stay with Kirk for a year, or until the life-debt is paid off, whichever comes first. So the kid (conveniently an empath) comes along (hint: androids don't have feelings).
There's also trouble with the Romulans.
Pedestrian. Few surprises in the plot and plenty of things that could have been tightened up. The book doesn't drag, but I really wish it had been more fun. I should have taken more points off for having so many pat plot points--and I should send Friedman a bill for doctor visits to fix rolled-eye muscle strains.
The big "pro" for this book is that there are no Space Animals--no anthropomorphic cows, wallabies, sheep, mice, cockroaches, snot puddles, or any of the other things that populate some Trek books.
The big "cons": stuff Friedman got wrong (I hope he eventually learned his "Trek" stuff, since someone kept giving him work):
--Romulans use disruptors and plasma--not phasers and photon torpedoes.
--Spock is a touch-telepath (can read thoughts, if he's touching you), not primarily an empath.
--The characters are 2-dimensional and stock: the emotionless Vulcan, McCoy the a-hole, Kirk the amiable hero.
--(spoiler) The Enterprise crew isn't killed after replication the way everyone else was.
Year: 1989
Genre: Sci-fi/Star Trek
Read again? Eh. I don't know.
At some point after the Trek episode What Are Little Girls Made Of?, the USS Hood receives a distress call from supposed survivors of an expedition. The ship is quickly taken over by androids designed to replicate the crew.
The androids are led by a replica of James Kirk--and while he wants to finish the work of his creator, Dr. Korby (to establish an android colony), he also wants revenge on the real Kirk for his interference in Korby's work.
Meanwhile, the Enterprise is mounting a rescue mission. A swarm of asteroids is about to conveniently wipe out an entire civilization of aboriginal people on an island. The swarm's inconveniently large and fast, so there's no shooting or pushing them around. With minutes to spare, Kirk rescues a kid who went foraging for eggs. Beamed up in the nick of time, and all that.
It turns out that the kid's people have a life-debt thingie where the kid's got to stay with Kirk for a year, or until the life-debt is paid off, whichever comes first. So the kid (conveniently an empath) comes along (hint: androids don't have feelings).
There's also trouble with the Romulans.
Pedestrian. Few surprises in the plot and plenty of things that could have been tightened up. The book doesn't drag, but I really wish it had been more fun. I should have taken more points off for having so many pat plot points--and I should send Friedman a bill for doctor visits to fix rolled-eye muscle strains.
The big "pro" for this book is that there are no Space Animals--no anthropomorphic cows, wallabies, sheep, mice, cockroaches, snot puddles, or any of the other things that populate some Trek books.
The big "cons": stuff Friedman got wrong (I hope he eventually learned his "Trek" stuff, since someone kept giving him work):
--Romulans use disruptors and plasma--not phasers and photon torpedoes.
--Spock is a touch-telepath (can read thoughts, if he's touching you), not primarily an empath.
--The characters are 2-dimensional and stock: the emotionless Vulcan, McCoy the a-hole, Kirk the amiable hero.
--(spoiler) The Enterprise crew isn't killed after replication the way everyone else was.
Star Trek--TOS #39: Time for Yesterday (Crispin, AC)
Rating: 3
Year: 1988
Genre: Sci-fi/Star Trek
Read again? In a few years.
This sequel to Yesterday's Son takes place just before "The Wrath of Khan."
Stars are dying. Time is running too fast and making them burn out! Kirk, Spock and McCoy--three of only a few people in the Federation who know what the Guardian of Forever really is--are sent to try to find out why it's suddenly wreaking havoc with the galaxy's time-stream.
They take a psychic Space Wallaby, the best candidate for talking to the Guardian. It zaps her brain, so there's only one thing to do: go back 5,000 years, find Spock's son Zar (who once talked psychically to the Guardian), and bring him back to the present! Great Spock!
There's a snag. For Zar, it's only been about 15 years since the last time he saw them. He's been using the time to build a little kingdom in a pleasant valley. But he's surrounded by enemies! When they find him, Zar is marshaling his forces, preparing to die in battle.
A much better book than its predecessor. More twists and turns, better characterization. But the science sucks, even for a "Star Trek" novel.
Howlers:
"When a star burns all of its hydrogen, it dies." (page 33). WRONG. Stars aren't really "burning" hydrogen--they're doing nuclear fusion, where hydrogen atoms are fused into helium atoms and energy. If it's a sun-sized star, once it has "burned" through a certain amount of its hydrogen, it expands to become a red giant (there's more to it than that, but dammit, Jim, I'm a book reviewer, not an astronomer!).
Crispin's got stars going nova all over the place and uses that as the "ticking clock" gimmick that's supposed to push the plot...but they've got a freaking TIME portal they could use to minimize that problem.
One point off for the sucky science--and another for the Space Wallaby.
Year: 1988
Genre: Sci-fi/Star Trek
Read again? In a few years.
This sequel to Yesterday's Son takes place just before "The Wrath of Khan."
Stars are dying. Time is running too fast and making them burn out! Kirk, Spock and McCoy--three of only a few people in the Federation who know what the Guardian of Forever really is--are sent to try to find out why it's suddenly wreaking havoc with the galaxy's time-stream.
They take a psychic Space Wallaby, the best candidate for talking to the Guardian. It zaps her brain, so there's only one thing to do: go back 5,000 years, find Spock's son Zar (who once talked psychically to the Guardian), and bring him back to the present! Great Spock!
There's a snag. For Zar, it's only been about 15 years since the last time he saw them. He's been using the time to build a little kingdom in a pleasant valley. But he's surrounded by enemies! When they find him, Zar is marshaling his forces, preparing to die in battle.
A much better book than its predecessor. More twists and turns, better characterization. But the science sucks, even for a "Star Trek" novel.
Howlers:
"When a star burns all of its hydrogen, it dies." (page 33). WRONG. Stars aren't really "burning" hydrogen--they're doing nuclear fusion, where hydrogen atoms are fused into helium atoms and energy. If it's a sun-sized star, once it has "burned" through a certain amount of its hydrogen, it expands to become a red giant (there's more to it than that, but dammit, Jim, I'm a book reviewer, not an astronomer!).
Crispin's got stars going nova all over the place and uses that as the "ticking clock" gimmick that's supposed to push the plot...but they've got a freaking TIME portal they could use to minimize that problem.
One point off for the sucky science--and another for the Space Wallaby.
Star Trek--TOS #8 Yesterday's Son (Crispin, AC)
Rating: 3
Year: 1983
Genre: Sci-fi/Star Trek
Read again? In another decade
The book starts off with a weak premise: Spock & Dr. McCoy are playing chess; a new girl comes over, asks Spock about Sarpeidon, the planet where Spock & McCoy went back 5,000 years in time (and Spock nailed Mariette Hartley--"All Our Yesterdays"). She's got pictures of some of the relics of Sarpeidon's lost civilization, including a recognizable Vulcan painted on one cave wall, where no Vulcan had gone before!
Here's the weak part: the Vulcan's so recognizable that Spock knows it's not himself--therefore it must be his son.
Of course he's going to use the Guardian of Forever to go back there. McCoy and Captain Kirk tag along. Poof! They go back and find Zar, now in his mid-twenties, living alone in the icy wilderness. He's a proficient hunter and survivor, but he's been lonely for years since his mother died. He willingly agrees to go back to the future!
This is a much better book than Diane Carey's Battlestations! and Dreadnought!; characterization is reasonably good, but the plot's very linear. There have to be Bad Guys, so Crispin brings in some Romulans who wonder why the Federation is spending so much time trying to keep the Guardian's planet a secret. Big fight, of course. Zar goes back to his own time--pretty much has to.
Year: 1983
Genre: Sci-fi/Star Trek
Read again? In another decade
The book starts off with a weak premise: Spock & Dr. McCoy are playing chess; a new girl comes over, asks Spock about Sarpeidon, the planet where Spock & McCoy went back 5,000 years in time (and Spock nailed Mariette Hartley--"All Our Yesterdays"). She's got pictures of some of the relics of Sarpeidon's lost civilization, including a recognizable Vulcan painted on one cave wall, where no Vulcan had gone before!
Here's the weak part: the Vulcan's so recognizable that Spock knows it's not himself--therefore it must be his son.
Of course he's going to use the Guardian of Forever to go back there. McCoy and Captain Kirk tag along. Poof! They go back and find Zar, now in his mid-twenties, living alone in the icy wilderness. He's a proficient hunter and survivor, but he's been lonely for years since his mother died. He willingly agrees to go back to the future!
This is a much better book than Diane Carey's Battlestations! and Dreadnought!; characterization is reasonably good, but the plot's very linear. There have to be Bad Guys, so Crispin brings in some Romulans who wonder why the Federation is spending so much time trying to keep the Guardian's planet a secret. Big fight, of course. Zar goes back to his own time--pretty much has to.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Splinter of the Mind's Eye (Foster, Alan Dean)
Rating: 3
Year: 1978
Genre: Sci / Star Wars
Read again? Ask me in 10 years.
I took nearly 5 pages of notes for this one. Woof.
This was the first "Star Wars" spin-off book to pop up after the original movie. I ate it up, like many "Star Wars"-hungry kids of the time. I suppose Foster--and Brian Daley, with his "Han Solo" books--knew their audience. At least, I hope they were deliberately writing for 11-year-olds. It would explain a few things.
As with Daley's "Solo" books, you won't find "Star Wars" anywhere in or on the book, just the "from the Adventures of Luke Skywalker" note beneath the title. But you know it's SW because it's got SW words--Luke Skywalker! Princess Leia! R2-D2! C-3PO!
And Darth Vader!
That was all this 11-year-old needed.
Luke & Leia are sneaking from the outskirts of the Circarpous system to a meeting with possible Rebel sympathizers on the 4th planet. Instead of them driving something sensible like a shuttle or courier ship, Luke's in his trusty X-Wing (with Artoo) and Leia's flying a Y-Wing (with 3PO).
Leia's ship develops convenient engine trouble and they make a forced landing onDagobah Circarpous V, aka Mimban, a swampy, slimy mudhole that Yoda would love. Both ships are wrecked (convenient lightning-like disruption in the upper atmosphere), and the four of them make their way to a landing beacon, hoping for passage off-planet.
They find an Imperial mining colony, complete with Stormtroopers and rowdy miners. Luke & Leia steal some clothes and try to fit in. They meet an old woman and strike a deal with her: help her find the fabled Kaiburr crystal, she'll help them steal a ship.
Howlers:
--Leia's engine trouble is in her upper-right engine...on a Y-Wing? They only HAVE two engines. I'm not gonna be out-geeked by this hack!
--The lightning-like disruption doesn't damage Artoo, even though the droid's exposed outside Luke's ship.
--Landing beacon, colony--but no one picked up all the radio chatter between Luke & Leia before and during the crisis. After he crashes, Luke refrains from yelling while he looks for Leia--might attract attention.
--The Big Battle near the end features a primitive tribe of critters that demolish a company of Stormtroopers without using energy weapons. The Coway aren't ewoks, but the parallels between this and "Jedi" are amusing. Obviously (if we take this book as canon) the Empire didn't learn a thing from the encounter.
--The Kaiburr crystal: a honking big glowing ruby that magnifies the Force. And we never see it again once the book's done.
This is another B-grade sci-fi book like Daley's "Han Solo" trio and the horrible epic series "New Jedi Order." The plot doesn't twist much at all, and we plod half-awake from situation to situation--oh, look, they're gonna crash. Oh, she fell into quicksand. Look, Stormtroopers. Oh, now she fell through a hole in the ground. That guy's gonna kill Luke. Oh no, Stormtroopers are coming. Hey, that's that Darth Vader guy, he's not very nice. What? The book's done? Yay.
Where Daley relies on the longer words in his thesaurus to remind us that he's being sophisticated, Foster tends to go for word-count.
Characterization isn't great; Leia is just the girl-in-distress, screaming and crying hysterically at times. She gets mad at Luke after the crash-landing for not pulling a miracle out of his ass and saving the mission...WHOSE ship had engine trouble? Then she gets mad at him for being right about not trying to land on Mimban. She gets mad a lot. She does the Space Bitch thing a lot. Meh.
Foster DOES play lightly with the sexual tension between pre-sibling Luke and Leia (remember, it's not until "Return of the Jedi" that we learn about that), but they still never do more than exhange significant stares. There was some attempt at character development, but none of them are interesting people for the reader to identify with.
Dialog is laughable at best; none of the Big Names sounds like him- or herself. They all sound like Foster's writing.
If you want GOOD "Star Wars," find Timothy Zahn's "Thrawn" books--a trilogy and a pair--and skip this one.
Year: 1978
Genre: Sci / Star Wars
Read again? Ask me in 10 years.
I took nearly 5 pages of notes for this one. Woof.
This was the first "Star Wars" spin-off book to pop up after the original movie. I ate it up, like many "Star Wars"-hungry kids of the time. I suppose Foster--and Brian Daley, with his "Han Solo" books--knew their audience. At least, I hope they were deliberately writing for 11-year-olds. It would explain a few things.
As with Daley's "Solo" books, you won't find "Star Wars" anywhere in or on the book, just the "from the Adventures of Luke Skywalker" note beneath the title. But you know it's SW because it's got SW words--Luke Skywalker! Princess Leia! R2-D2! C-3PO!
And Darth Vader!
That was all this 11-year-old needed.
Luke & Leia are sneaking from the outskirts of the Circarpous system to a meeting with possible Rebel sympathizers on the 4th planet. Instead of them driving something sensible like a shuttle or courier ship, Luke's in his trusty X-Wing (with Artoo) and Leia's flying a Y-Wing (with 3PO).
Leia's ship develops convenient engine trouble and they make a forced landing on
They find an Imperial mining colony, complete with Stormtroopers and rowdy miners. Luke & Leia steal some clothes and try to fit in. They meet an old woman and strike a deal with her: help her find the fabled Kaiburr crystal, she'll help them steal a ship.
Howlers:
--Leia's engine trouble is in her upper-right engine...on a Y-Wing? They only HAVE two engines. I'm not gonna be out-geeked by this hack!
--The lightning-like disruption doesn't damage Artoo, even though the droid's exposed outside Luke's ship.
--Landing beacon, colony--but no one picked up all the radio chatter between Luke & Leia before and during the crisis. After he crashes, Luke refrains from yelling while he looks for Leia--might attract attention.
--The Big Battle near the end features a primitive tribe of critters that demolish a company of Stormtroopers without using energy weapons. The Coway aren't ewoks, but the parallels between this and "Jedi" are amusing. Obviously (if we take this book as canon) the Empire didn't learn a thing from the encounter.
--The Kaiburr crystal: a honking big glowing ruby that magnifies the Force. And we never see it again once the book's done.
This is another B-grade sci-fi book like Daley's "Han Solo" trio and the horrible epic series "New Jedi Order." The plot doesn't twist much at all, and we plod half-awake from situation to situation--oh, look, they're gonna crash. Oh, she fell into quicksand. Look, Stormtroopers. Oh, now she fell through a hole in the ground. That guy's gonna kill Luke. Oh no, Stormtroopers are coming. Hey, that's that Darth Vader guy, he's not very nice. What? The book's done? Yay.
Where Daley relies on the longer words in his thesaurus to remind us that he's being sophisticated, Foster tends to go for word-count.
Characterization isn't great; Leia is just the girl-in-distress, screaming and crying hysterically at times. She gets mad at Luke after the crash-landing for not pulling a miracle out of his ass and saving the mission...WHOSE ship had engine trouble? Then she gets mad at him for being right about not trying to land on Mimban. She gets mad a lot. She does the Space Bitch thing a lot. Meh.
Foster DOES play lightly with the sexual tension between pre-sibling Luke and Leia (remember, it's not until "Return of the Jedi" that we learn about that), but they still never do more than exhange significant stares. There was some attempt at character development, but none of them are interesting people for the reader to identify with.
Dialog is laughable at best; none of the Big Names sounds like him- or herself. They all sound like Foster's writing.
If you want GOOD "Star Wars," find Timothy Zahn's "Thrawn" books--a trilogy and a pair--and skip this one.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Solo 02--Han Solo's Revenge (Daley, Brian)
Rating: 3
Year: 1979
Genre: Sci-Fi / Star Wars
Read Again? In a decade, perhaps
Second in the Han Solo set.
No dusty encrustations decorate his thesaurus: Daley the syllable-smith forges onward!
This is the most complex of the three books; Solo and Chewie each get their own plotlines! Beyond that, it's a straight line "B" book like the other two.
They start off on Kamar, showing travel movies to the natives...when the natives become restless, Solo decides to put in a "blind" offer--pilot and ship need work, no questions asked.
They get a contact, show up, and soon find that they're expected to give some slavers and their "cargo" a ride. Firefight, k'pew, k'pew, bad guys die, Han decides to go to the slavers' contact on Bonadan: someone owes him and Chewie 10,000 credits!
The slavers are waiting. Another fight, slash slash, Chewie and Solo split up--the Wookiee in the Millennium Falcon, Han with his new gal-pal on a slow boat--all headed to Ammuud, the next planet in line. Solo still doesn't have the money, and the slavers are still after him!
On top of all this, a skip-tracer from a collections agency has tracked the Falcon to Bonadan and intends to take the ship as payment for money Han owes someone else. This character's pretty lame as Space Critters go. Remember--it's Sci-Fi, so we have to have anthropomorphized animals-as-people; Lucas gave us Space Mice, Space Trees, Space Wolves, Space Twin Sisters, Space Walruses (Walri?), Space Yaks, Space Squids, Space Goats, and Space Teddy Bears....
Daley gives us...the Space Otter. Or maybe it's a Space Seal. Space Otter sounds better. Spray (get it? Aquatic critter, watery name? ha, ha) is buck-toothed, near-sighted, talks with a lifp around thofe bfig teef. This is supposed to be the comic relief, since Spray stays with Chewie and the Falcon--you've got that whole big, hairy wookie/small Space Otter "Odd Couple" thing...meh.
That's the thing, here. Daley doesn't use ANY of these elements to advantage. Han and the women in all three books don't really have a lot of developed sexual tension to push the characters along. They're set-dressing, all equally anonymous and generic, all pale reflections of Princess Leia.
The various Space Critters--a pair of humanoid Space Cats in "Star's End," the Space Otter here, and the Space Caterpillar in "Lost Legacy"--are underdeveloped, not particularly interesting or funny. They're just boring 2-dimensional people like the other characters, only they're funny-looking.
This is also the book that introduces what has become my least-favorite "Star Wars" critter name: howlrunner. No matter what planet we're on (or what planet someone's from), "howlrunner" is the standard "Star Wars" name for a wolf. Given that most of the language is "translated" for us in the narrative...why not just call it a wolf, or "the wolf-like [alien-sounding name]"?
There are some notable howlers--other than Space Wolves--in the story. Chewie is forced to make a high-altitude mountain landing; while he's setting up a sensor on a nearby ridge, there's a stampede of Space Cattle--and they're getting dangerously close to him! So our Wookiee McGyver builds himself a hang glider!
Yes. A hang glider.
From the corpse of a pterosaur, the sensor tripod, some clamps, and some cable!
He glides too far...face-plants into the nearby lake...and Space Otter is there! Chewie is saved!!
You can safely skip all three of these books. But it's good news for Alan Dean Foster: He's not the worst "Star Wars" writer anymore. This is subject to change, because I'm considering reading his ghost-written "Star Wars" novelization. I haven't cracked it open in more than 20 years, and I remember really disliking it.
Year: 1979
Genre: Sci-Fi / Star Wars
Read Again? In a decade, perhaps
Second in the Han Solo set.
No dusty encrustations decorate his thesaurus: Daley the syllable-smith forges onward!
This is the most complex of the three books; Solo and Chewie each get their own plotlines! Beyond that, it's a straight line "B" book like the other two.
They start off on Kamar, showing travel movies to the natives...when the natives become restless, Solo decides to put in a "blind" offer--pilot and ship need work, no questions asked.
They get a contact, show up, and soon find that they're expected to give some slavers and their "cargo" a ride. Firefight, k'pew, k'pew, bad guys die, Han decides to go to the slavers' contact on Bonadan: someone owes him and Chewie 10,000 credits!
The slavers are waiting. Another fight, slash slash, Chewie and Solo split up--the Wookiee in the Millennium Falcon, Han with his new gal-pal on a slow boat--all headed to Ammuud, the next planet in line. Solo still doesn't have the money, and the slavers are still after him!
On top of all this, a skip-tracer from a collections agency has tracked the Falcon to Bonadan and intends to take the ship as payment for money Han owes someone else. This character's pretty lame as Space Critters go. Remember--it's Sci-Fi, so we have to have anthropomorphized animals-as-people; Lucas gave us Space Mice, Space Trees, Space Wolves, Space Twin Sisters, Space Walruses (Walri?), Space Yaks, Space Squids, Space Goats, and Space Teddy Bears....
Daley gives us...the Space Otter. Or maybe it's a Space Seal. Space Otter sounds better. Spray (get it? Aquatic critter, watery name? ha, ha) is buck-toothed, near-sighted, talks with a lifp around thofe bfig teef. This is supposed to be the comic relief, since Spray stays with Chewie and the Falcon--you've got that whole big, hairy wookie/small Space Otter "Odd Couple" thing...meh.
That's the thing, here. Daley doesn't use ANY of these elements to advantage. Han and the women in all three books don't really have a lot of developed sexual tension to push the characters along. They're set-dressing, all equally anonymous and generic, all pale reflections of Princess Leia.
The various Space Critters--a pair of humanoid Space Cats in "Star's End," the Space Otter here, and the Space Caterpillar in "Lost Legacy"--are underdeveloped, not particularly interesting or funny. They're just boring 2-dimensional people like the other characters, only they're funny-looking.
This is also the book that introduces what has become my least-favorite "Star Wars" critter name: howlrunner. No matter what planet we're on (or what planet someone's from), "howlrunner" is the standard "Star Wars" name for a wolf. Given that most of the language is "translated" for us in the narrative...why not just call it a wolf, or "the wolf-like [alien-sounding name]"?
There are some notable howlers--other than Space Wolves--in the story. Chewie is forced to make a high-altitude mountain landing; while he's setting up a sensor on a nearby ridge, there's a stampede of Space Cattle--and they're getting dangerously close to him! So our Wookiee McGyver builds himself a hang glider!
Yes. A hang glider.
From the corpse of a pterosaur, the sensor tripod, some clamps, and some cable!
He glides too far...face-plants into the nearby lake...and Space Otter is there! Chewie is saved!!
You can safely skip all three of these books. But it's good news for Alan Dean Foster: He's not the worst "Star Wars" writer anymore. This is subject to change, because I'm considering reading his ghost-written "Star Wars" novelization. I haven't cracked it open in more than 20 years, and I remember really disliking it.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Solo 01--Han Solo at Star's End (Daley, Brian)
Rating: 3
Year: 1979
Genre: Sci-Fi/Star Wars
Read Again? In another 10 years
First of the original Han Solo trilogy.
I devoured this book and the other "Star Wars" tie-ins over that long, dark time between the original "Star Wars" and "The Empire Strikes Back." That 12-year-old me couldn't get enough--Lucas' brainchild was in my blood, no matter that I was maybe 18 months later than every other kid on the planet in seeing the original.
This is pre-franchise "Star Wars." You won't find those two words anywhere on the book. There's just a little tag under the title letting you know that it's from the Adventures of Luke Skywalker.
But it has Han Solo! It's got Chewbacca the Wookiee! It's got the Millennium Falcon! It's got other "Star Wars" words! But there's no Empire, no Luke Skywalker, no Jabba the Hutt. Han and Chewie are in theUnited States Corporate Sector, where the government places profit above everything else.
After the Falcon takes some damage on a smuggling run, Han & Chewie seek out an old friend: Doc, the leader of a...consortium of enterprise-minded ship techs, who can and will do most anything, no questions asked, for the right price. "Outlaw-techs," as Daley calls them. But Doc's not there--he disappeared months ago, leaving his daughter Jessa to run the family business.
Jessa is happy to make the repairs; all Han has to do is go to a meet-spot, pick up some people, and take them where they need to go. The meet-spot is a Corporate Sector data center; the people are looking for information about missing relatives, "disappeared" as undesirables. Their first passenger is a droid, Bollux, and its little super-computer pal Blue Max. We have to have comic relief, right?
The mission goes well enough at first. Han & Chewie meet their contact, they get into the data center, Max finds the information they need, the rest of the team shows up, and it's time for a firefight and daring escape!
Yeah, almost. Before they can escape, Chewie is nabbed by the security guys--and now he's "disappeared" too.
As with Alan Dean Foster's "Alien" books, Daley's got a style peppered with expensive syllables, since apparently that's what makes something science-fictiony. Why say "work and play" when you can have "toil and enjoyment"? Why use a simple lock when "impoundment fastener" has 5 more syllables? When you tell time in Daley's "Star Wars" (and others', since many of his ideas are aped by later writers), you don't use hours. You use "Standard Time-Parts," with the capitals intact. Even the wordy Mercedes Lackey tells time in candlemarks. One less syllable, yes--but less clunky.
Yeah, yeah, I know Daley--and others who write like this--are trying to tech it up, use more "sophisticated" language, but it feels fake and clunky and doesn't really add anything of substance to the narrative. Solo comes off at times sounding like some upper-class professor rather than the fast-talkin' wise-ass.
"Star's End" isn't Great Literature, doesn't explore the histories of its main characters, and doesn't make them grow into better beings. It has the benefit of being better than anything George Lucas has done in the past 20 years, so that's worth something.
Year: 1979
Genre: Sci-Fi/Star Wars
Read Again? In another 10 years
First of the original Han Solo trilogy.
I devoured this book and the other "Star Wars" tie-ins over that long, dark time between the original "Star Wars" and "The Empire Strikes Back." That 12-year-old me couldn't get enough--Lucas' brainchild was in my blood, no matter that I was maybe 18 months later than every other kid on the planet in seeing the original.
This is pre-franchise "Star Wars." You won't find those two words anywhere on the book. There's just a little tag under the title letting you know that it's from the Adventures of Luke Skywalker.
But it has Han Solo! It's got Chewbacca the Wookiee! It's got the Millennium Falcon! It's got other "Star Wars" words! But there's no Empire, no Luke Skywalker, no Jabba the Hutt. Han and Chewie are in the
After the Falcon takes some damage on a smuggling run, Han & Chewie seek out an old friend: Doc, the leader of a...consortium of enterprise-minded ship techs, who can and will do most anything, no questions asked, for the right price. "Outlaw-techs," as Daley calls them. But Doc's not there--he disappeared months ago, leaving his daughter Jessa to run the family business.
Jessa is happy to make the repairs; all Han has to do is go to a meet-spot, pick up some people, and take them where they need to go. The meet-spot is a Corporate Sector data center; the people are looking for information about missing relatives, "disappeared" as undesirables. Their first passenger is a droid, Bollux, and its little super-computer pal Blue Max. We have to have comic relief, right?
The mission goes well enough at first. Han & Chewie meet their contact, they get into the data center, Max finds the information they need, the rest of the team shows up, and it's time for a firefight and daring escape!
Yeah, almost. Before they can escape, Chewie is nabbed by the security guys--and now he's "disappeared" too.
As with Alan Dean Foster's "Alien" books, Daley's got a style peppered with expensive syllables, since apparently that's what makes something science-fictiony. Why say "work and play" when you can have "toil and enjoyment"? Why use a simple lock when "impoundment fastener" has 5 more syllables? When you tell time in Daley's "Star Wars" (and others', since many of his ideas are aped by later writers), you don't use hours. You use "Standard Time-Parts," with the capitals intact. Even the wordy Mercedes Lackey tells time in candlemarks. One less syllable, yes--but less clunky.
Yeah, yeah, I know Daley--and others who write like this--are trying to tech it up, use more "sophisticated" language, but it feels fake and clunky and doesn't really add anything of substance to the narrative. Solo comes off at times sounding like some upper-class professor rather than the fast-talkin' wise-ass.
"Star's End" isn't Great Literature, doesn't explore the histories of its main characters, and doesn't make them grow into better beings. It has the benefit of being better than anything George Lucas has done in the past 20 years, so that's worth something.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
3001: Final Odyssey (Clarke, Arthur C)
Rating: 3
Year: 1997
Genre: Sci-Fi
Read again? Eh.
Frank Poole died in 2001, when HAL-9000 ran him over with a space pod.
Eh, not so much.
In 3001, Frank Poole's body is found by ice-wranglers in the outskirts of the solar system. He's brought out of his deep-frozen state and revived.
Frank's a mega-celebrity, a national treasure, a curiosity from a long-past age. He sees new wonders: a nearly-completed ring around the Earth; settlements on Mercury, the Moon, and Ganymede. A new sun named Lucifer where Jupiter once roamed. Genetically-engineered gorilla archaeology assistants. Velociraptor gardeners. Surgically-altered criminals become personal assistants for the duration of their sentence.
All the world's religions have been discredited!
But Frank soon becomes bored, even after learning to fly, so he hitches a ride to Ganymede to see to some unfinished business. The last time he was in the neighborhood, HAL tried to kill him. Frank gets involved with a philosophy professor who is convinced that Europa holds many secrets--and that Frank's the key to sorting them out.
This final book in the set is the least satisfying of them all, and marks the end of a trend toward more and more silliness in "light-hearted fun" drag. The original book was clean and serious, and more entertaining because of it. Gorilla archaeologists?! Dinosaur gardeners?!
Eh.
I'm glad it's done, but I'm disappointed that Clarke took the story in such a direction.
Year: 1997
Genre: Sci-Fi
Read again? Eh.
Frank Poole died in 2001, when HAL-9000 ran him over with a space pod.
Eh, not so much.
In 3001, Frank Poole's body is found by ice-wranglers in the outskirts of the solar system. He's brought out of his deep-frozen state and revived.
Frank's a mega-celebrity, a national treasure, a curiosity from a long-past age. He sees new wonders: a nearly-completed ring around the Earth; settlements on Mercury, the Moon, and Ganymede. A new sun named Lucifer where Jupiter once roamed. Genetically-engineered gorilla archaeology assistants. Velociraptor gardeners. Surgically-altered criminals become personal assistants for the duration of their sentence.
All the world's religions have been discredited!
But Frank soon becomes bored, even after learning to fly, so he hitches a ride to Ganymede to see to some unfinished business. The last time he was in the neighborhood, HAL tried to kill him. Frank gets involved with a philosophy professor who is convinced that Europa holds many secrets--and that Frank's the key to sorting them out.
This final book in the set is the least satisfying of them all, and marks the end of a trend toward more and more silliness in "light-hearted fun" drag. The original book was clean and serious, and more entertaining because of it. Gorilla archaeologists?! Dinosaur gardeners?!
Eh.
I'm glad it's done, but I'm disappointed that Clarke took the story in such a direction.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Star Trek: TOS 081 Mudd in your Eye (Oltion, Jerry)
Rating: 3
Year: 1997
Genre: Sci-Fi
Read again? Nope.
The main thing I remember about this book is that I bought it and read most of it on the first day in my own apartment, December 20, 1996. This will be the second reading--and based on one line on page 9, I doubt I'll go for a third.
Several books back, I ranted briefly about Trek writers who don't "get it" with important stuff about key characters; too many writers make the mistake of claiming Vulcans have no emotions. This isn't so! They HAVE feelings--but they've developed a system of logical thought and self control so that their feelings aren't in control!
Oltion stepped in it. I remember mentioning in a previous Trek book review about a book where "Spock came dangerously close to feeling emotion." This is that book. Two points off the top, one for each pointy ear! Even worse, in later parts of the book, Spock shows emotional reactions--suspicion, humor, sarcasm, irritation. It's clear that Oltion intended to say something other than "dangerously close..."--and if that's the case, he should have said the something other. Someone who makes a living putting words together should be better at putting words together.
The story opens with Kirk presiding over a wedding. There's a brief argument between bride and groom over the word, "obey" in the vows (he's surprised it's in there and refuses to obey--good man--but after a brief argument, they agree to a different word). Then Scotty (the best man) substitutes a joke ring. Then the newlyweds push cake in each others' faces.
See? This is going to be a comedy. Ha. Ha. Ha. *rolled eyes* I can hardly wait.
Fortunately, Enterprise gets diverted to investigate the sudden breakout of peace between a pair of worlds in the Nevis system that have been at war for 12,000 years. Spock's thinking about this when he gets "dangerously close"...you know, I'm tempted to take off another two points just because I came dangerously close to quoting the whole stupid phrase again. This could well come dangerously close to negative numbers in the rating.
It turns out that Harcourt Fenton Mudd--Harry, in casual circumstances--is the broker of the peace. Apparently all he's doing is selling fruit, and that's enough to bring peace to Prastor and Distrel...it's the fruit they've been at war over. See, there's this conveniently-striped fruit that's conveniently made of alternating purple and white sections. Eating one or the other is harmless, but eating one of each will conveniently kill one before one hits the ground. The war started because neither side wanted to eat the white ones. Now that Mudd's selling those white bits, there's no reason to fight. Wait, what? They go back to fighting again? That's pretty good, since we're only a third of the way into the book. Might get boring, otherwise.
Of course, Harry's got an angle; he's a con man, right? Kirk and his merry crew know this--but the Nevisians have some secrets and angles of their own. Seems that when they blow each other away with their fancy zap-guns, they get transported, processed, and sent back out into the world to live a new life. Turns out it works on humans, too: first the red-shirt-wearing bride from the wedding scene gets wasted. Then, in short order, Mudd, Chekov, Sulu, Scotty and Kirk all buy it.
No idea how canonical it is, but Mudd mentions that a distant grandfather of his was Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, who was convicted of conspiracy in Lincoln's assassination and sentenced to prison at Fort Jefferson, off the Florida Keys. Neat little tie-in with reality.
Overall, it's not an awful story, if predictable. Oltion's style flows well, so it's a quick read. I'd like to see better characterization, and a better grasp of those cold-blooded, pointy-eared Vulcans.
Year: 1997
Genre: Sci-Fi
Read again? Nope.
The main thing I remember about this book is that I bought it and read most of it on the first day in my own apartment, December 20, 1996. This will be the second reading--and based on one line on page 9, I doubt I'll go for a third.
Several books back, I ranted briefly about Trek writers who don't "get it" with important stuff about key characters; too many writers make the mistake of claiming Vulcans have no emotions. This isn't so! They HAVE feelings--but they've developed a system of logical thought and self control so that their feelings aren't in control!
Oltion stepped in it. I remember mentioning in a previous Trek book review about a book where "Spock came dangerously close to feeling emotion." This is that book. Two points off the top, one for each pointy ear! Even worse, in later parts of the book, Spock shows emotional reactions--suspicion, humor, sarcasm, irritation. It's clear that Oltion intended to say something other than "dangerously close..."--and if that's the case, he should have said the something other. Someone who makes a living putting words together should be better at putting words together.
The story opens with Kirk presiding over a wedding. There's a brief argument between bride and groom over the word, "obey" in the vows (he's surprised it's in there and refuses to obey--good man--but after a brief argument, they agree to a different word). Then Scotty (the best man) substitutes a joke ring. Then the newlyweds push cake in each others' faces.
See? This is going to be a comedy. Ha. Ha. Ha. *rolled eyes* I can hardly wait.
Fortunately, Enterprise gets diverted to investigate the sudden breakout of peace between a pair of worlds in the Nevis system that have been at war for 12,000 years. Spock's thinking about this when he gets "dangerously close"...you know, I'm tempted to take off another two points just because I came dangerously close to quoting the whole stupid phrase again. This could well come dangerously close to negative numbers in the rating.
It turns out that Harcourt Fenton Mudd--Harry, in casual circumstances--is the broker of the peace. Apparently all he's doing is selling fruit, and that's enough to bring peace to Prastor and Distrel...it's the fruit they've been at war over. See, there's this conveniently-striped fruit that's conveniently made of alternating purple and white sections. Eating one or the other is harmless, but eating one of each will conveniently kill one before one hits the ground. The war started because neither side wanted to eat the white ones. Now that Mudd's selling those white bits, there's no reason to fight. Wait, what? They go back to fighting again? That's pretty good, since we're only a third of the way into the book. Might get boring, otherwise.
Of course, Harry's got an angle; he's a con man, right? Kirk and his merry crew know this--but the Nevisians have some secrets and angles of their own. Seems that when they blow each other away with their fancy zap-guns, they get transported, processed, and sent back out into the world to live a new life. Turns out it works on humans, too: first the red-shirt-wearing bride from the wedding scene gets wasted. Then, in short order, Mudd, Chekov, Sulu, Scotty and Kirk all buy it.
No idea how canonical it is, but Mudd mentions that a distant grandfather of his was Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, who was convicted of conspiracy in Lincoln's assassination and sentenced to prison at Fort Jefferson, off the Florida Keys. Neat little tie-in with reality.
Overall, it's not an awful story, if predictable. Oltion's style flows well, so it's a quick read. I'd like to see better characterization, and a better grasp of those cold-blooded, pointy-eared Vulcans.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Forbidden Fighting Techniques of the Ninja (Kim, Ashida)
Rating: 3
Year: 1984
Genre: Martial Arts, Nonfiction
Read Again? Heh.
Okay, unless you want guys in black pajamas attacking you, don't read this review.
No, not really. They'll get me first.
This is an assemblage of badly-lit black & white photos with poor contrast and sketchy text descriptions of those "forbidden" fighting techniques. Took a point off for the pics. They're not uniformly bad, mind you, but I'd like to see a reissue with some attempt at better lighting and background choice.
I picked it up at a used book store for maybe five bucks. Much of the "forbidden" stuff is the same karate I studied for two years back in the early '90s--the same blocks, punches and kicks in the same forms as those of the Shotokan style. I got a good laugh from that! I guess the "forbidden" part is that they wear black pajamas and ski masks?
There's also some stuff about throwing and falling and warmups, but this isn't really a "reading" book. I think I've tried a half-dozen times to read the introductory chapter and some of the rest of the book and failed from boredom. I'll have to yawn another point off there.
There are short descriptions of various weapons--swords, kama, nunckaku, bo or jo staff, shuriken, throwing knives, crowbars, chains, ropes, sai daggers, and all those other things you'd see in a standard mid-'80s ninja movie, any samurai flick from Japan, or any kung-fu flick out of China. It seems like there's just enough in this book to whet a serious student's appetite, but there's also just enough to get an idiot in trouble.
If you REALLY want to learn a martial art, you need a teacher. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but after looking at some of the sword work, I cringe at how amateurish the attacks look. I wonder what the serious-student-to-idiot ratio was for book sales?
Year: 1984
Genre: Martial Arts, Nonfiction
Read Again? Heh.
Okay, unless you want guys in black pajamas attacking you, don't read this review.
No, not really. They'll get me first.
This is an assemblage of badly-lit black & white photos with poor contrast and sketchy text descriptions of those "forbidden" fighting techniques. Took a point off for the pics. They're not uniformly bad, mind you, but I'd like to see a reissue with some attempt at better lighting and background choice.
I picked it up at a used book store for maybe five bucks. Much of the "forbidden" stuff is the same karate I studied for two years back in the early '90s--the same blocks, punches and kicks in the same forms as those of the Shotokan style. I got a good laugh from that! I guess the "forbidden" part is that they wear black pajamas and ski masks?
There's also some stuff about throwing and falling and warmups, but this isn't really a "reading" book. I think I've tried a half-dozen times to read the introductory chapter and some of the rest of the book and failed from boredom. I'll have to yawn another point off there.
There are short descriptions of various weapons--swords, kama, nunckaku, bo or jo staff, shuriken, throwing knives, crowbars, chains, ropes, sai daggers, and all those other things you'd see in a standard mid-'80s ninja movie, any samurai flick from Japan, or any kung-fu flick out of China. It seems like there's just enough in this book to whet a serious student's appetite, but there's also just enough to get an idiot in trouble.
If you REALLY want to learn a martial art, you need a teacher. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but after looking at some of the sword work, I cringe at how amateurish the attacks look. I wonder what the serious-student-to-idiot ratio was for book sales?
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Valdemar 10: Oathblood (Lackey)
Rating: 3
Year: 1998
Genre: Fantasy
Read Again? Eh. Probably not.
The 10th book of Valdemar, the last of the "Vows and Honor" trilogy, with 16 to go. This is a short-story collection, and it answers my comment about the first of the "Vows and Honor" books feeling like a bunch of shorts strung together: it was. One "Oathblood" story ('Turnabout') was already published in "Oathbound."
A quick rundown of titles:
Sword-Sworn (1985): From the night Tarma's Clan was wiped out by bandits to the final fight in which Tarma and her new friend Kethry fight the last of the bandits to the death.
Turnabout (1986): A band of bandits has been terrorizing wagon traffic, stealing anything of value, raping and killing at will. When Tarma and Kethry nab their leader, Kethry puts an illusion spell on him, making him look like the sort of woman he and his men victimized. Then they send him back to his own camp. I skipped reading it this time around. I'm not really sure why Lackey felt the need to have it reprinted here when it's already part of the first book. Guess I'll take a half-point off just for principle.
The Making of a Legend (1990): The Bard who follows Tarma and Kethry around, writing songs about their heroic exploits, has tracked them to a little spot on the map where he hopes they'll be forced into a heroic battle with the local criminal element, who just happen to own the town. He does get his wish....
Keys (1988): Another repeat from "Oathbound." Kethry and Tarma must solve a murder mystery to save an innocent woman's life. Another half-point!
A Woman's Weapon (1992): A dig at industrial pollution and a shady businessman who is poisoning his rival.
The Talisman (1990): Kethry's magic sword leads them to a woman in trouble--but not in the way they've come to expect.
A Tale of Heroes (1987): The sword leads them to a farm near a town where women and children have been eaten by a vicious monster.
Friendly Fire (1993): After a brief stop for supply-shopping, our heroines are beset with the Murphy's Law curse: everything that can go wrong, goes wrong.
Wings of Fire (1991): The death of a shaman leads them deep into the Pelagir Forest, where they find themselves fighting a power-stealing mage.
Spring Plowing at Forst Reach (1998): This short pivots upon one of Lackey's conveniences. The Lord of Forst Reach (Herald Vanyel's ancestral home) has a problem with highly aggressive geldings. He asks for help--and Tarma just happens to have a pair of friends who she trained as "horse whisperers," and they just happen to be looking for jobs.
Oathblood (1998): This novella begins with a day-in-the-life at the Kethry & Tarma School of Magical & Physical Kicking of Ass. No idea if that's its real name, but we should call it something, right? This was what the two were working so hard for in the first two books. It's been something more than ten and something less than twenty years since they started their school; nobles from all over send their precious snowflakes to get a serious education. Two of their students get an early real-life test.
Overall, not nearly as satisfying as the second book. Every one of the shorts feels rushed, and everything works out so convenient, pat & easy that I've just got to give back those half-points for repeating "Turnabout" and "Keys" and take off two solid points for an overlong, boring book with no suspense. Call it the "Superfriends Effect": you know in every episode that the heroes will triumph and that they're never going to be in any trouble they can't simply pop free from and make a crappy joke about it before the end credits.
Year: 1998
Genre: Fantasy
Read Again? Eh. Probably not.
The 10th book of Valdemar, the last of the "Vows and Honor" trilogy, with 16 to go. This is a short-story collection, and it answers my comment about the first of the "Vows and Honor" books feeling like a bunch of shorts strung together: it was. One "Oathblood" story ('Turnabout') was already published in "Oathbound."
A quick rundown of titles:
Sword-Sworn (1985): From the night Tarma's Clan was wiped out by bandits to the final fight in which Tarma and her new friend Kethry fight the last of the bandits to the death.
Turnabout (1986): A band of bandits has been terrorizing wagon traffic, stealing anything of value, raping and killing at will. When Tarma and Kethry nab their leader, Kethry puts an illusion spell on him, making him look like the sort of woman he and his men victimized. Then they send him back to his own camp. I skipped reading it this time around. I'm not really sure why Lackey felt the need to have it reprinted here when it's already part of the first book. Guess I'll take a half-point off just for principle.
The Making of a Legend (1990): The Bard who follows Tarma and Kethry around, writing songs about their heroic exploits, has tracked them to a little spot on the map where he hopes they'll be forced into a heroic battle with the local criminal element, who just happen to own the town. He does get his wish....
Keys (1988): Another repeat from "Oathbound." Kethry and Tarma must solve a murder mystery to save an innocent woman's life. Another half-point!
A Woman's Weapon (1992): A dig at industrial pollution and a shady businessman who is poisoning his rival.
The Talisman (1990): Kethry's magic sword leads them to a woman in trouble--but not in the way they've come to expect.
A Tale of Heroes (1987): The sword leads them to a farm near a town where women and children have been eaten by a vicious monster.
Friendly Fire (1993): After a brief stop for supply-shopping, our heroines are beset with the Murphy's Law curse: everything that can go wrong, goes wrong.
Wings of Fire (1991): The death of a shaman leads them deep into the Pelagir Forest, where they find themselves fighting a power-stealing mage.
Spring Plowing at Forst Reach (1998): This short pivots upon one of Lackey's conveniences. The Lord of Forst Reach (Herald Vanyel's ancestral home) has a problem with highly aggressive geldings. He asks for help--and Tarma just happens to have a pair of friends who she trained as "horse whisperers," and they just happen to be looking for jobs.
Oathblood (1998): This novella begins with a day-in-the-life at the Kethry & Tarma School of Magical & Physical Kicking of Ass. No idea if that's its real name, but we should call it something, right? This was what the two were working so hard for in the first two books. It's been something more than ten and something less than twenty years since they started their school; nobles from all over send their precious snowflakes to get a serious education. Two of their students get an early real-life test.
Overall, not nearly as satisfying as the second book. Every one of the shorts feels rushed, and everything works out so convenient, pat & easy that I've just got to give back those half-points for repeating "Turnabout" and "Keys" and take off two solid points for an overlong, boring book with no suspense. Call it the "Superfriends Effect": you know in every episode that the heroes will triumph and that they're never going to be in any trouble they can't simply pop free from and make a crappy joke about it before the end credits.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Valdemar 07: Brightly Burning (Lackey)
Rating: 3/5
Year: 2000
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Not likely
Book 7 of the rather long Valdemar series. Only 19 more to go. This is one of the few stand-alone books. I'm glad it's not a trilogy. I don't think I could handle two more books this boring.
*grumble* This book takes its time getting started. Lavan Chitward is the second son to a prosperous textile merchant. The family has just recently moved to Haven, the capital of Valdemar. He doesn't want to be in the family business, so his parents enroll the 16-year-old in a fancy private school--and that's where the trouble starts. One would think that this formula would be so well-known that people wouldn't pick on the New Kid, because Bad Things Happen. Guess these kids never saw "Carrie."
The school's administrator is more interested in the parents' money than in doing well for the kids; the teaching staff are paid according to test scores, and there's no real incentive for them to maintain discipline. This is left to the oldest students. What could possibly go wrong?
Lavan quickly becomes a target for the gang of thugs who rule the younger classmates, leading ultimately to his being beaten with a cane--and four of them die in a blast of fire caused by their tormented victim. Sadly, by that point, I still didn't care enough about any of the characters to feel anything for them. It was too obvious that we're supposed to hate the bad guys, too obvious that we're supposed to feel oh-so sorry for the poor, innocent kid.
*more grumbling* Wow, does this thing drag. Almost 450 pages, and the four punks don't die until around page 129. In the meantime, we are clubbed into submission with Lackey's heavy-handed approach: he's unhappy. He's not happy. He's not happy. He is not happy. He's not happy. He is in no way happy. He is not happy in the least. Did I mention he's not even slightly happy? Happy, he is not. He's also lonely.
On top of that, Lackey has pulled out all the stops for vocabulary! If there's a long-ass way to write a sentence or piece of dialog, she does it. I think she could have cut this book in half just by tightening everything up. She must have been paid by the word--either that, or she's fallen into the "I've sold millions of units--I can do no wrong!" trap that keeps Metallica in the studio. Guys, "Load" was a load, and "Death Magnetic" just isn't cutting it. You've got your money--you can relax.
Then there's the characterization. Everyone's a cardboard cutout from Central Casting: the emotionally-distant, Social Climbing mother; the emotionally-unavailable "yes-dear" father; all the Heralds are such nice people; the bullies are faceless, without much humanity; the King could be played by Sean Connery's body double. There just aren't any actual people in the book--and people are what stories are supposed to be about. Even Lavan is a stereotype: he's got wavy, red-brown hair to further evoke the whole fire-starter image.
Maybe it was a contractual obligation. Maybe she's running out of ideas. Maybe she's as tired of writing Valdemar books as I'm getting of reading them. Maybe she's just not happy in the least...but this is by far the worst of the Valdemar books--"The legendary story of Herald Lavan Firestorm," according to the subtitle. Bleah.
Don't get me wrong; there are a few good scenes scattered amongst this otherwise steaming pile, but they're not enough to save the book from being forgettable. I'm just glad it's over.
The book starts off with an unintentionally funny dedication: "To all the unsung heroes who stood by on the evening of December 31, 1999 to ensure that we crossed into the year 2000 with our safety, security and peace intact." Me, I was stocking the cooler where I worked and completely missed the end of the world. "O noes! Our toasters will stop working!!"
Nickname Watch (strangely, only a few this time):
Lavan (the main character): Lan (LAN? Will there be a kid named Wi-fi next?)
Samael (older brother): Sam
Year: 2000
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Not likely
Book 7 of the rather long Valdemar series. Only 19 more to go. This is one of the few stand-alone books. I'm glad it's not a trilogy. I don't think I could handle two more books this boring.
*grumble* This book takes its time getting started. Lavan Chitward is the second son to a prosperous textile merchant. The family has just recently moved to Haven, the capital of Valdemar. He doesn't want to be in the family business, so his parents enroll the 16-year-old in a fancy private school--and that's where the trouble starts. One would think that this formula would be so well-known that people wouldn't pick on the New Kid, because Bad Things Happen. Guess these kids never saw "Carrie."
The school's administrator is more interested in the parents' money than in doing well for the kids; the teaching staff are paid according to test scores, and there's no real incentive for them to maintain discipline. This is left to the oldest students. What could possibly go wrong?
Lavan quickly becomes a target for the gang of thugs who rule the younger classmates, leading ultimately to his being beaten with a cane--and four of them die in a blast of fire caused by their tormented victim. Sadly, by that point, I still didn't care enough about any of the characters to feel anything for them. It was too obvious that we're supposed to hate the bad guys, too obvious that we're supposed to feel oh-so sorry for the poor, innocent kid.
*more grumbling* Wow, does this thing drag. Almost 450 pages, and the four punks don't die until around page 129. In the meantime, we are clubbed into submission with Lackey's heavy-handed approach: he's unhappy. He's not happy. He's not happy. He is not happy. He's not happy. He is in no way happy. He is not happy in the least. Did I mention he's not even slightly happy? Happy, he is not. He's also lonely.
On top of that, Lackey has pulled out all the stops for vocabulary! If there's a long-ass way to write a sentence or piece of dialog, she does it. I think she could have cut this book in half just by tightening everything up. She must have been paid by the word--either that, or she's fallen into the "I've sold millions of units--I can do no wrong!" trap that keeps Metallica in the studio. Guys, "Load" was a load, and "Death Magnetic" just isn't cutting it. You've got your money--you can relax.
Then there's the characterization. Everyone's a cardboard cutout from Central Casting: the emotionally-distant, Social Climbing mother; the emotionally-unavailable "yes-dear" father; all the Heralds are such nice people; the bullies are faceless, without much humanity; the King could be played by Sean Connery's body double. There just aren't any actual people in the book--and people are what stories are supposed to be about. Even Lavan is a stereotype: he's got wavy, red-brown hair to further evoke the whole fire-starter image.
Maybe it was a contractual obligation. Maybe she's running out of ideas. Maybe she's as tired of writing Valdemar books as I'm getting of reading them. Maybe she's just not happy in the least...but this is by far the worst of the Valdemar books--"The legendary story of Herald Lavan Firestorm," according to the subtitle. Bleah.
Don't get me wrong; there are a few good scenes scattered amongst this otherwise steaming pile, but they're not enough to save the book from being forgettable. I'm just glad it's over.
The book starts off with an unintentionally funny dedication: "To all the unsung heroes who stood by on the evening of December 31, 1999 to ensure that we crossed into the year 2000 with our safety, security and peace intact." Me, I was stocking the cooler where I worked and completely missed the end of the world. "O noes! Our toasters will stop working!!"
Nickname Watch (strangely, only a few this time):
Lavan (the main character): Lan (LAN? Will there be a kid named Wi-fi next?)
Samael (older brother): Sam
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Edge: 01 The Loner (George Gilman)
Rating: 3/5
Year: 1971
Genre: Western
Read again? Maybe.
"The Loner" is the first in the Edge series.
It's June of 1885. The Civil War is over. Captain Josiah Hedges is a Union officer who comes back home to his Iowa farm to find his younger brother tortured and murdered. He takes the time for a proper burial and heads out to demolish the men who did it.
This is a straightforward revenge story, and man-o-man is it massive violent! The kid brother--Jamie--is the second to die (the dog was first). The bad guys tie him to an oak tree--all but his right arm, which they secure by long nails hammered between and then bent over the fingers. This brings us to a good line:
"You got four fingers and a thumb on that right hand, boy. You also got another hand and we got lots of nails."
Bad guy has already told Jamie that his big brother ain't comin' home, that he's dead and owed the bad guys money. They've already ransacked the house and barn, stolen most of the horses, and set Jamie up for a little talkin'.
He says there's no money. *BLAM* There goes his thumb.
Now he's too busy screaming to answer properly. *BLAM* there goes his index finger.
One of the other men takes a shot, making a cut on Jamie's cheek. Jamie wets himself.
Then the drunk one tosses his empty whiskey bottle aside, pulls out his pistol, shoots from the hip, and plugs Jamie right between the eyes.
The gang leader blows off the drunk's junk and leaves him there to die.
Then he and the remaining baddies burn the place and high-tail it out of there.
Josiah shows up the next day and buries his little brother. After a preamble about parents and religion, the eulogy is simple, straightforward:
"Rest easy, brother. I'll settle your score. Whoever they are and wherever they run, I'll find them and I'll kill them. I've learned some special ways of killin' people and I'll avenge you good."
They did leave their junkless drunk behind for Hedges to find; he knows these men. They served with him a 'way down South, kickin' Dixie's ass. And he knows pretty much where they're headed.
This sounds promising--you've got the senseless murder, greedy outlaws, and a reason for revenge. But much of the rest of the book seems to be written with an eye toward getting Edge into situations where he kills someone: a fake preacher, a nervous kid, a dancing girl. We find out he's half-Mexican when he educates a sheriff in race relations. He doesn't kill everyone he meets, but he spends so much time glowering that Clint Eastwood should sue for infringement.
Another great exchange:
"You wouldn't shoot an unarmed man!"
Edge: "They're the easiest kind to kill."
Gilman's style is adequate, if clunky and wordy and irritatingly passive in voice, but we're not talking Shakespearean sonnets or flowing streams of prose, here. This book and its brothers are about men who need killin', and the man who kills 'em. There's not really much character development. Edge is homicidal right out of the box and all the other people are just sketches from Central Casting. No twists in the plot, either--Edge goes to [blank], he encounters [blank], he kills [blank], he leaves [blank]. Then he travels a chapter or two to reach the next [blank]. Everything's a straight line, and it's not like that's a bad thing. I do hope that Gilman develops the character in the later books. If not, there's not really much point in writing more books.
Year: 1971
Genre: Western
Read again? Maybe.
"The Loner" is the first in the Edge series.
It's June of 1885. The Civil War is over. Captain Josiah Hedges is a Union officer who comes back home to his Iowa farm to find his younger brother tortured and murdered. He takes the time for a proper burial and heads out to demolish the men who did it.
This is a straightforward revenge story, and man-o-man is it massive violent! The kid brother--Jamie--is the second to die (the dog was first). The bad guys tie him to an oak tree--all but his right arm, which they secure by long nails hammered between and then bent over the fingers. This brings us to a good line:
"You got four fingers and a thumb on that right hand, boy. You also got another hand and we got lots of nails."
Bad guy has already told Jamie that his big brother ain't comin' home, that he's dead and owed the bad guys money. They've already ransacked the house and barn, stolen most of the horses, and set Jamie up for a little talkin'.
He says there's no money. *BLAM* There goes his thumb.
Now he's too busy screaming to answer properly. *BLAM* there goes his index finger.
One of the other men takes a shot, making a cut on Jamie's cheek. Jamie wets himself.
Then the drunk one tosses his empty whiskey bottle aside, pulls out his pistol, shoots from the hip, and plugs Jamie right between the eyes.
The gang leader blows off the drunk's junk and leaves him there to die.
Then he and the remaining baddies burn the place and high-tail it out of there.
Josiah shows up the next day and buries his little brother. After a preamble about parents and religion, the eulogy is simple, straightforward:
"Rest easy, brother. I'll settle your score. Whoever they are and wherever they run, I'll find them and I'll kill them. I've learned some special ways of killin' people and I'll avenge you good."
They did leave their junkless drunk behind for Hedges to find; he knows these men. They served with him a 'way down South, kickin' Dixie's ass. And he knows pretty much where they're headed.
This sounds promising--you've got the senseless murder, greedy outlaws, and a reason for revenge. But much of the rest of the book seems to be written with an eye toward getting Edge into situations where he kills someone: a fake preacher, a nervous kid, a dancing girl. We find out he's half-Mexican when he educates a sheriff in race relations. He doesn't kill everyone he meets, but he spends so much time glowering that Clint Eastwood should sue for infringement.
Another great exchange:
"You wouldn't shoot an unarmed man!"
Edge: "They're the easiest kind to kill."
Gilman's style is adequate, if clunky and wordy and irritatingly passive in voice, but we're not talking Shakespearean sonnets or flowing streams of prose, here. This book and its brothers are about men who need killin', and the man who kills 'em. There's not really much character development. Edge is homicidal right out of the box and all the other people are just sketches from Central Casting. No twists in the plot, either--Edge goes to [blank], he encounters [blank], he kills [blank], he leaves [blank]. Then he travels a chapter or two to reach the next [blank]. Everything's a straight line, and it's not like that's a bad thing. I do hope that Gilman develops the character in the later books. If not, there's not really much point in writing more books.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Tregarde 03: Jinx High (Lackey, M.)
Rating: 3/5
Year: 1991
Genre: Horror/fantasy
Read Again? Eventually
Third and final in a series of horror/fantasy/mystery novels. "Jinx" takes place about a year after "Burning Water." Say late 1987. Diana Tregarde comes to visit her old pal Larry Kestrel in Jenks, Oklahoma (get it? Jenks, Jinx, hahaha), and to sit in on an English class as a living, breathing example of a Real Author. The two of them are soon working on a mystery (just like old times): something hungry and evil is after Larry's son Derek.
Derek is the "It" boy at Jenks High School, if only because the school's reigning princess Fay Harper has the hots for him. He's not a jock, doesn't wear the "right" brands, doesn't have rich parents, and doesn't drive a flashy car...so why does a girl who gets everything she wants even bother breathing the same air as Deke?
Monica Carlin is the New Girl, and she likes Deke. But everyone knows that Deke is with Fay. Bad luck for her. The thing that's after Deke wants Monica, now, too.
Jinx High drags, holy crap does it drag, and starts off disappointingly in that Lackey continues being heavy-handed and clumsy--something "Burning Water (1989)" didn't suffer from, but its prequel "Children of the Night (1990)" did. She started with a tight concept and solid writing with the first, but went flabby for the next two. Again, she can tell a good story, but it's how she tells it that annoys me. It's a combination of word choice, wordiness, emphasis and convenience.
Word choice: some of her descriptions read like a vocabulary list. Writing about cars? Find a car magazine and randomly pick out words. Steering box. Rat. Undercarriage. Fiberglass. Now just toss them into a paragraph when you're writing about a car and don't worry about whether they belong where they go.
And don't be afraid to throw clumsy combinations out there. "Max limit"? "About to reach the max limit on their library card"? Why not "about to max out the library card"? Less wordy, less clumsy, and it echoes a term we've all heard about credit cards.
Wordiness: Never, never make use of a half-dozen words when thirteen will do. Does she get paid by word-count?
Emphasis: She _likes_ that italicized text; she also literally likes "in no way," absolutely. Stuff like this should be used sparingly, if at all.
Convenience: Cheap little tricks that manipulate the plot where she wants it to go. Monica just got her license a month ago, but she's allowed to drive alone at night? Well, yeah--but only so the bad guy can try to scare her into a wreck, and so Diana Tregarde can explain psychic phenomena to the kid, Learner's Permits be damned. The kid doen't touch ass to driver's seat again for the rest of the book.
One particularly ironic scene has Diana lecturing the class on writing style, warning about unrealistic protagonists and unnecessary repetition. Is Lackey's own character telling her how to write?
On top of all this, the reader isn't really involved in the mystery in any of the Tregarde books. We know early on who the bad guys are, and we have to follow Diana around for the rest of the book wishing she'd figure it out, already. I was done reading halfway through, and still had half the book to go. Gonna have to take two points this time.
And for all three books as a series, I'll give it 3/5. That's too bad, because this series could have been much better.
Year: 1991
Genre: Horror/fantasy
Read Again? Eventually
Third and final in a series of horror/fantasy/mystery novels. "Jinx" takes place about a year after "Burning Water." Say late 1987. Diana Tregarde comes to visit her old pal Larry Kestrel in Jenks, Oklahoma (get it? Jenks, Jinx, hahaha), and to sit in on an English class as a living, breathing example of a Real Author. The two of them are soon working on a mystery (just like old times): something hungry and evil is after Larry's son Derek.
Derek is the "It" boy at Jenks High School, if only because the school's reigning princess Fay Harper has the hots for him. He's not a jock, doesn't wear the "right" brands, doesn't have rich parents, and doesn't drive a flashy car...so why does a girl who gets everything she wants even bother breathing the same air as Deke?
Monica Carlin is the New Girl, and she likes Deke. But everyone knows that Deke is with Fay. Bad luck for her. The thing that's after Deke wants Monica, now, too.
Jinx High drags, holy crap does it drag, and starts off disappointingly in that Lackey continues being heavy-handed and clumsy--something "Burning Water (1989)" didn't suffer from, but its prequel "Children of the Night (1990)" did. She started with a tight concept and solid writing with the first, but went flabby for the next two. Again, she can tell a good story, but it's how she tells it that annoys me. It's a combination of word choice, wordiness, emphasis and convenience.
Word choice: some of her descriptions read like a vocabulary list. Writing about cars? Find a car magazine and randomly pick out words. Steering box. Rat. Undercarriage. Fiberglass. Now just toss them into a paragraph when you're writing about a car and don't worry about whether they belong where they go.
And don't be afraid to throw clumsy combinations out there. "Max limit"? "About to reach the max limit on their library card"? Why not "about to max out the library card"? Less wordy, less clumsy, and it echoes a term we've all heard about credit cards.
Wordiness: Never, never make use of a half-dozen words when thirteen will do. Does she get paid by word-count?
Emphasis: She _likes_ that italicized text; she also literally likes "in no way," absolutely. Stuff like this should be used sparingly, if at all.
Convenience: Cheap little tricks that manipulate the plot where she wants it to go. Monica just got her license a month ago, but she's allowed to drive alone at night? Well, yeah--but only so the bad guy can try to scare her into a wreck, and so Diana Tregarde can explain psychic phenomena to the kid, Learner's Permits be damned. The kid doen't touch ass to driver's seat again for the rest of the book.
One particularly ironic scene has Diana lecturing the class on writing style, warning about unrealistic protagonists and unnecessary repetition. Is Lackey's own character telling her how to write?
On top of all this, the reader isn't really involved in the mystery in any of the Tregarde books. We know early on who the bad guys are, and we have to follow Diana around for the rest of the book wishing she'd figure it out, already. I was done reading halfway through, and still had half the book to go. Gonna have to take two points this time.
And for all three books as a series, I'll give it 3/5. That's too bad, because this series could have been much better.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Star Trek: TNG--Vendetta (Peter David)
Star Trek: TNG--Vendetta (Peter David)
Rating: 3/5
Year: 1991
Genre: Sci-Fi
Read again: I don't know.
The Borg. The Ferengi. A planet-killer bent on destroying the Borg. Riker's beard. Foreshadowing via Picard flashback to his Academy days, foreshadowing via Geordi LaForge tilting at Holodeck windmills.
Ever wish you could wipe out the entire race of soulless Borg who eradicated your planet? All you need is a planet-killer--the enormous cornucopia of destruction from the Original Series' "The Doomsday Machine." It's indestructible, chops up planets for fuel, and someone bent on revenge has gotten ahold of one. Picard's foreshadowing has him studying the original Doomsday Machine in Starfleet Academy, hoping to find out where the mysterious ship came from.
Then there are the Penzatti, the latest victims of the Borg. Their planet gets wasted on their equivalent of Thanksgiving, the day where all Penzatti thank their gods for making them sooo much better than any other race. Apparently their gods are irrelevant.
Nitpick: The Penzatti planet is almost utterly demolished by the Borg; yet there's still enough of an atmosphere for the few survivors of the attack--and their rescuers--to survive. "Chunks" of atmosphere scooped away like so much ice cream. I'd like a bit better "sci" with my "fi."
On the Borg side, there's a woman, completely assimilated, playing Dulcinea or windmill for LaForge. He's sure she can be "saved" from Borgdom. Can she? David hits the reader over the head with her condition. After the first couple of times of reminding us that there's no "there" there with her, she's a blank slate, a zero, a cipher, an empty cup...all right, all right, I get it, dude. Just tell the story! That's the first point off. If I want hand-holding, I'll watch a George Lucas movie.
The rub for me is that this and so many other stories have something introduced at the beginning that gets echoed everywhere in the story. In this case, it's the tale of Don Quixote echoed in each of the main characters--Picard's Dulcinea (and his windmill?) is the woman who seeks to destroy the Borg. We have an unimaginative captain (an Academy rival of Picard's) who must be Sancho, yet he's obsessed with Picard, so he's got some Quixote, as well. The major moral is obvious: we all have our Dulcinea to be obsessed with, our own windmills at which to tilt, and our own Sancho moments. The Borg are, in this case, the ultimate unimaginative Sanchos. The rub is that the whole parallel to Don Quixote is forced to the point of numbness. A few threads, subtle references to the original, would have sufficed.
As with most of the other Star Trek books I've got, I haven't read this one in maybe 10 years. It's one of a few I've read 5 times or more. It's not as good as I remembered, and that's a shame, because Peter David was my favorite Trek author. If his stuff hasn't weathered well, I shudder to think of how bad the worst books will be. His style feels a bit clunky, or clumsy. Heavy-handed, and that's the second point off--which is a shame, because the story is a good basic concept. It could be so much _better._
Rating: 3/5
Year: 1991
Genre: Sci-Fi
Read again: I don't know.
The Borg. The Ferengi. A planet-killer bent on destroying the Borg. Riker's beard. Foreshadowing via Picard flashback to his Academy days, foreshadowing via Geordi LaForge tilting at Holodeck windmills.
Ever wish you could wipe out the entire race of soulless Borg who eradicated your planet? All you need is a planet-killer--the enormous cornucopia of destruction from the Original Series' "The Doomsday Machine." It's indestructible, chops up planets for fuel, and someone bent on revenge has gotten ahold of one. Picard's foreshadowing has him studying the original Doomsday Machine in Starfleet Academy, hoping to find out where the mysterious ship came from.
Then there are the Penzatti, the latest victims of the Borg. Their planet gets wasted on their equivalent of Thanksgiving, the day where all Penzatti thank their gods for making them sooo much better than any other race. Apparently their gods are irrelevant.
Nitpick: The Penzatti planet is almost utterly demolished by the Borg; yet there's still enough of an atmosphere for the few survivors of the attack--and their rescuers--to survive. "Chunks" of atmosphere scooped away like so much ice cream. I'd like a bit better "sci" with my "fi."
On the Borg side, there's a woman, completely assimilated, playing Dulcinea or windmill for LaForge. He's sure she can be "saved" from Borgdom. Can she? David hits the reader over the head with her condition. After the first couple of times of reminding us that there's no "there" there with her, she's a blank slate, a zero, a cipher, an empty cup...all right, all right, I get it, dude. Just tell the story! That's the first point off. If I want hand-holding, I'll watch a George Lucas movie.
The rub for me is that this and so many other stories have something introduced at the beginning that gets echoed everywhere in the story. In this case, it's the tale of Don Quixote echoed in each of the main characters--Picard's Dulcinea (and his windmill?) is the woman who seeks to destroy the Borg. We have an unimaginative captain (an Academy rival of Picard's) who must be Sancho, yet he's obsessed with Picard, so he's got some Quixote, as well. The major moral is obvious: we all have our Dulcinea to be obsessed with, our own windmills at which to tilt, and our own Sancho moments. The Borg are, in this case, the ultimate unimaginative Sanchos. The rub is that the whole parallel to Don Quixote is forced to the point of numbness. A few threads, subtle references to the original, would have sufficed.
As with most of the other Star Trek books I've got, I haven't read this one in maybe 10 years. It's one of a few I've read 5 times or more. It's not as good as I remembered, and that's a shame, because Peter David was my favorite Trek author. If his stuff hasn't weathered well, I shudder to think of how bad the worst books will be. His style feels a bit clunky, or clumsy. Heavy-handed, and that's the second point off--which is a shame, because the story is a good basic concept. It could be so much _better._
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
