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Showing posts with label 5/5. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 5/5. Show all posts
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Valdemar 23: Mage Storms 3--Storm Breaking (Mercedes Lackey)
Rating: 5/5
Year: 1996
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Yes.
Three to go.
Team Karal headed a 'way down south to the Dhorisha Plains, all that remains of the great mage Urtho's domain after the Great Cataclysm centuries ago.
They were successful in finding a temporary "fix" for the ever-worsening mage storms that mark the rebound of the Cataclysm. Now, they hope to find something to help counter the Really Really Big Bang The Will Kill Everone And Everything Period coming at the end of this book. This means they're stuck in the middle of the Plains, in the wrecked remains of Urtho's Tower, in the worst winter storms any of them have ever seen.
Karal spends some time in recovery. The Big Fix at the end of the last book nearly fried him. If not for him, the rest of the team wouldn't have been able to direct the enormous force of one of Urtho's mage-weapons against the incoming storm wave. Now they've got some time (several hundred pages) to find the next one.
We're given a nice little walk-on cameo for Tarma of the "Vows and Honor" trilogy (books 8-10). She's a ghost now, but she still comes in, drops some Shin'a'in proverbs (a running joke in the Valdemar books) on Karal, and winks out.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Over in the Eastern Empire, the most useless people (the 1%!) in the realm are gathered for "Season"--the winter occupation of the wealthy and powerful (and, hence, most useless) wherein they bring their unmarried brats and try to curry favor with those of higher status. Every Mitt Romney, every George Bush, all the other toadies and suck-ups too stupid to go home when the storms started are now stranded in the capital city. Never mind that the Empire is crippled: the storms disrupted everything that depends on magic. The fabulous rich are reduced to using common fire to...to...cook their own food! They have to travel by horse or carriage. WHEELS! Those are for commoners!
Emperor Charliss is spending his energies just shielding against the effects of the storms. The spells that have preserved him over his 150 year reign are failing. Before the storms, Charliss had maybe 20 years before his spells could no longer sustain him. Now, though, he has much less time.
Outlying provinces of the Empire have revolted. With no ability to build magical Portals, there is no way to get troops into position to subdue the rebels. There's also no way go get food quickly into the cities. People are rioting and Charliss' center cannot hold.
Uneasy is the head that wears the crown, dude.
Charliss declares Grand Duke Tremane nameless for turning against the Empire; in his place, he names Baron Melles the new Heir.
Melles, in true Imperial style, immediately begins maneuvering and politicking and intriguing, seeking out enemies and allies and garnering power.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Back west in Hardorn, Princess Elspeth is leading a small troop of guards and her boyfriend to meet with Grand Duke Tremane. The former Heir to the Valdemaran throne is to be the Envoy to Hardorn. Her boyfriend will speak for some of the other Allies. The guards will, of course, be guards.
On the road to Shonar, now the de-facto capital of Hardorn, she finds surprising, growing support for Tremane. The Hardornens have heard of Tremane's fairness and his real concern for his adopted People. They're not calling him "King" yet, but there are mutters in that direction.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Team Karal's numbers continue to swell over the course of the book. They started out with:
--Karal.
--Altra, a Firecat, a re-born Son of the Sun and representative of Karal's God.
--Florian, a horse-like Companion. Reincarnated Herald.
--Firesong, a Tayledras Healing Adept.
--An'desha, formerly possessed by the evil spirit of a near-immortal mage.
--Silverfox, the "healer" of the team.
They were joined shortly by:
--Lo'isha, a Shin'a'in scholar and shaman.
--Tarm, a Kyree (basically a calf-sized, intelligent wolf) scholar/historian.
--Lyam, Tarm's secretary, a Hertasi (your basic child-sized intelligent lizard).
--Sejanes, Grand Duke Tremane's chief mage.
--Master Levy, a math/science/engineering teacher from Valdemar.
Lyam and Tarm have brought Need, the spirit of a priestess-warrior ensorcelled into a sword (and with us from Book 8 onward).
Near the end of the book, another five people join the team:
--the ghost of Vanyel, the Last Herald-Mage from books 4-6;
--the ghost of Yfandes, his Companion;
--the ghost of Tylendel/Stefan, his dead boyfriend/reborn boyfriend.
...and:
--Trevalen, the ghost of a Shin'a'in shaman who was killed several books ago, but now acts as the Avatar of his Goddess
--Dawnfire, the ghost of a Tayledras scout who was also killed several books ago, and who is also an Avatar of her Goddess.
With all these folks--and the little cameo from Tarma--we have cast members spanning the entire series' history and get to say goodbye to some of them.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
No complaints, but the book ended just in time. I'm ready for something non-Valdemar after a months' worth of it in three thick books.
Friday, August 29, 2014
Valdemar 22: Mage Storms 2--Storm Rising (Mercedes Lackey)
Rating: 5
Year: 1995
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? yes.
Book the 22nd with 4 to go before I'm done with the Valdemar books I've got...as compared to the Valdemar books Lackey has added in the last two days.
We pick up shortly after the end of the previous book. Grand Duke Tremane has been forced to consolidate his forces even further in the wake of ever-worsening mage storms which have rendered magic unreliable and near-useless.
Tremane has pulled the troops off the front lines and brought them to the small town of Shonor. He's got them fortifying both the Imperial encampment and the town to protect everyone from vicious creatures spawned by the storms.
There has been no word from the Emperor or the Empire. No orders to pull back, no support, no rescue. Tremane still half-wonders if the storms and his isolation are a test from the Emperor to see how he handles adversity. Or is it because the Empire has been rendered helpless itself as the storms tear all magic asunder?
He has no way of knowing, but keeping his men and the town safe and preparing them for the coming winter is more important. There's no going back to the Empire unless he marches his men through hostile territory, first east across Hardorn, then through several Imperial client states.
As the story progresses, he realizes that he's not preparing just for a single winter; he's setting up for a long stay.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Karal has been in Valdemar for a year. With his teacher and boss Ulrich murdered by Tremane's assassin, Karal now represents his home country of Karse in Valdemar. It's painfully clear to him, however, that no one really takes him seriously as an Envoy. He's too young, barely into his twenties. He has no experience in diplomacy. Unlike Ulrich, Karal isn't even a mage, so in his own opinion he's unable to help the Allies to solve the mage storms problem other than to take notes like the secretary he used to be.
He was instrumental in bringing Nerd Power to the mages in the first book--engineers, builders, mathematicians, scientists--scholars and their students who all would otherwise have been left out of the loop by the mages, who never would have thought to ask for a diagram of how the storm waves are interacting, let alone a timeline for when the Big Bang was coming. They've given the Allies an advantage that Tremane and the Empire lack: the ability to measure how the storms interact with the physical world. It soon becomes clear that for the next round of protection that will get us to the end of this book, the magical "breakwater" they set up at the end of the previous book will have to be expanded to include Hardorn.
Karal and An'desha team up to magically search for a contact in Hardorn, someone who can help the Allies in getting the expanded protections together. Their scrying leads them to...Grand Duke Tremane!
All Karal has to do is convince the Queen of Valdemar, his own boss the High Priestess of Karse, and the other allies to make an alliance with the man who ordered the murders of two Envoys and the attempt on two others. But first he must convince himself. Time is ticking: they only have till the end of the novel, just past Midwinter.
-=-=-=-=-=-
As in the first book, we're about 3/4 of the way in before Lackey is done setting up and maneuvering everyone to their places. The story is well-paced and doesn't drag, but by the time I'm done with the trio I won't be wanting more for awhile.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Continuity:
--In this second book, An'desha suddenly has cat eyes, a leftover from his possession by the spirit of an evil, near-immortal mage. When that spirit was destroyed two books ago, An'desha's Goddess gave him his body back, reversing Falconsbane's transformation into a man-cat. In the previous book, however, there's no mention of lasting changes other than white hair and silver eyes, which would be normal anyway for a powerful Adept mage.
--Early in this book, Tremane has his men building a high wall around his camp and the town of Shonor. Yet a few chapters later, he's thinking of how the town has no walls of its own, and how the residents will regret this fact.
--In the first book (and ONLY there), Tremane and the other Imperials refer to the Forty Little Gods; in the second and third, they invoke the Hundred or the Thousand Little Gods. I suppose this could be a proportion thing, with the Forty for less-extreme matters and additional Little Gods tacked on as needed to handle the larger work load. Tremane's gonna need the Thousand.
--In the first book, Tremane is pleased to have functional latrines that convert waste to fertilizer without using magic...but in this book he needs latrines!
Year: 1995
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? yes.
Book the 22nd with 4 to go before I'm done with the Valdemar books I've got...as compared to the Valdemar books Lackey has added in the last two days.
We pick up shortly after the end of the previous book. Grand Duke Tremane has been forced to consolidate his forces even further in the wake of ever-worsening mage storms which have rendered magic unreliable and near-useless.
Tremane has pulled the troops off the front lines and brought them to the small town of Shonor. He's got them fortifying both the Imperial encampment and the town to protect everyone from vicious creatures spawned by the storms.
There has been no word from the Emperor or the Empire. No orders to pull back, no support, no rescue. Tremane still half-wonders if the storms and his isolation are a test from the Emperor to see how he handles adversity. Or is it because the Empire has been rendered helpless itself as the storms tear all magic asunder?
He has no way of knowing, but keeping his men and the town safe and preparing them for the coming winter is more important. There's no going back to the Empire unless he marches his men through hostile territory, first east across Hardorn, then through several Imperial client states.
As the story progresses, he realizes that he's not preparing just for a single winter; he's setting up for a long stay.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Karal has been in Valdemar for a year. With his teacher and boss Ulrich murdered by Tremane's assassin, Karal now represents his home country of Karse in Valdemar. It's painfully clear to him, however, that no one really takes him seriously as an Envoy. He's too young, barely into his twenties. He has no experience in diplomacy. Unlike Ulrich, Karal isn't even a mage, so in his own opinion he's unable to help the Allies to solve the mage storms problem other than to take notes like the secretary he used to be.
He was instrumental in bringing Nerd Power to the mages in the first book--engineers, builders, mathematicians, scientists--scholars and their students who all would otherwise have been left out of the loop by the mages, who never would have thought to ask for a diagram of how the storm waves are interacting, let alone a timeline for when the Big Bang was coming. They've given the Allies an advantage that Tremane and the Empire lack: the ability to measure how the storms interact with the physical world. It soon becomes clear that for the next round of protection that will get us to the end of this book, the magical "breakwater" they set up at the end of the previous book will have to be expanded to include Hardorn.
Karal and An'desha team up to magically search for a contact in Hardorn, someone who can help the Allies in getting the expanded protections together. Their scrying leads them to...Grand Duke Tremane!
All Karal has to do is convince the Queen of Valdemar, his own boss the High Priestess of Karse, and the other allies to make an alliance with the man who ordered the murders of two Envoys and the attempt on two others. But first he must convince himself. Time is ticking: they only have till the end of the novel, just past Midwinter.
-=-=-=-=-=-
As in the first book, we're about 3/4 of the way in before Lackey is done setting up and maneuvering everyone to their places. The story is well-paced and doesn't drag, but by the time I'm done with the trio I won't be wanting more for awhile.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Continuity:
--In this second book, An'desha suddenly has cat eyes, a leftover from his possession by the spirit of an evil, near-immortal mage. When that spirit was destroyed two books ago, An'desha's Goddess gave him his body back, reversing Falconsbane's transformation into a man-cat. In the previous book, however, there's no mention of lasting changes other than white hair and silver eyes, which would be normal anyway for a powerful Adept mage.
--Early in this book, Tremane has his men building a high wall around his camp and the town of Shonor. Yet a few chapters later, he's thinking of how the town has no walls of its own, and how the residents will regret this fact.
--In the first book (and ONLY there), Tremane and the other Imperials refer to the Forty Little Gods; in the second and third, they invoke the Hundred or the Thousand Little Gods. I suppose this could be a proportion thing, with the Forty for less-extreme matters and additional Little Gods tacked on as needed to handle the larger work load. Tremane's gonna need the Thousand.
--In the first book, Tremane is pleased to have functional latrines that convert waste to fertilizer without using magic...but in this book he needs latrines!
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Valdemar 21: Mage Storms 1--Storm Warning (Mercedes Lackey)
Rating: 5
Year: 1994
Genre: fantasy
Read again? yes.
After nearly three years of not reading any Valdemar books, I finally dove in. This is the 21st in the set, with 5 to go, not that I'm really bothering to make fun with the countdown anymore. But she is STILL writing them.
I will never be finished. This is the "Hotel California" of reading. And all those new books are going to screw up my book count. This one could be number 43 by the time I'm done writing this sentence--or number 90 by the time you're done reading the review. STOP HER!
This one and its two companions (Companions, get it? Valdemar joke! hahaha) weren't as hard a slog as I'd been expecting. They went by pretty quickly over the last 4 weeks. Reading them and the fat fifth "A Song of Ice and Fire" novel over the last 8 weeks marks the first time since 2010 that I've even felt like reading again since all the medical crap started.
We begin far to the east of Valdemar, with Emperor Charliss of the vast Eastern Empire. I don't know who had it first--Lackey or George R. R. Martin--but Charliss sits upon an Iron Throne made up of the weapons of vanquished kings and emperors, same as in "A Song of Ice and Fire"/"Game of Thrones." I'd forgotten this detail, but remember it seeming confusingly familiar when I was reading "Thrones" a decade ago.
Anyhow, Emperor, Iron Throne, bad guy. He's been ruling since he was 30. One hundred and fifty years, his life sustained by magic. But his clock is winding down, the center cannot hold, and he's got maybe 20 years left in him. Time to pick an Heir and get ready to retire.
He has selected Grand Duke Tremane, a boring man of about 30, only a Master mage to Charliss' Adept-class. To prove his worth, all Tremane must do is take what is left of the nation of Hardorn, subdue it, and bring it into the Empire.
Hardorn has had a rough several years. All the way back in Book #16, "Arrow's Fall," Prince Ancar staged a coup in which he murdered the king and most of his Court. He used evil blood magic to enslave any man who could hold a weapon, then used them as arrow-fodder to take control of Hardorn. Then he made war on Hardorn's peaceful neighbor, Valdemar. His campaign drained his country of able-bodied men and mage energy. By the time the Valdemarans and their allies finally got people in place at the end of the 20th book (Winds of Fury) and destroyed Ancar, poor Hardorn had been ravaged past any ability to resist when Charliss had his men invade from the Empire.
They took half of Hardorn without any real opposition...at first. There were enough Hardornen loyalists to stop them from taking any more than that. Now all Duke Tremane must do is take command of the Imperial forces, subdue the resistance, and take the rest of the country.
There's a snag, though.
Valdemar.
The same group of Valdemarans who killed Ancar also left a knife in the Imperial "envoy" to Hardorn (a spy, actually). Charliss takes this as a message from them. A warning? A threat? He doesn't know, but once he has Hardorn, he will be able to put troops on the Valdemar border to find out.
Valdemar itself is overrun with refugees. Though their own military strength has been reduced by long years of war with Hardorn, they could still offer Hardorn material aid, making Imperial assimilation that much more difficult.
-=--=-=--=-
Meanwhile, on the Valdemaran border with Karse, we meet our next point-of-view character, Karal. He's a novice, a priest-in-training in the Karsite religion/government. He has been sent north with his master Priest Ulrich, who is to be the Envoy to Valdemar, the first such in centuries.
Until only recently, the two nations had been fighting a war that stretched back several centuries and several novels, all the way back to #5, "Magic's Promise." Everyone on both sides of the border will have to get used to being friends now. To the Karsites, the Heralds of Valdemar and their horsey Companions were White Demons, the baby-eating epitome of evil. To the Valdemarans, the Karsites were murderous land-grabbing demon-summoning child-burners, which is actually what they were thanks to a string of evil religious zealots who turned the Karsite religion into centuries of Inquisition where being a mage got you taken for the Priesthood and having mind-magic got you toasted. The difference between those should be a separate post, I think.
The Karsites suddenly stopped fighting Valdemar when a woman, Solaris, took over as High Priest, Son of the Sun, and the Karsite god Vkandis legitimized it. Vkandis declared the burnings and demon-summoning and all the other evil stuff anathema and He smote and toasted several power-hungry Priests to make His point clear: only Solaris spoke for Him, Stop This Shit Right Now.
Shit stopped and Karse joined Valdemar in their war against Ancar and Hardorn.
Karal and Ulrich are sent north to work out the details of peace and friendship.
-==-=-==-=-==-=-==-
Our next point-of-view character is An'desha, whose body was the secondary bad guy in the previous three novels--Winds of Fate, Change, and Fury. His spirit was pushed aside as that of an evil mage moved in and took over to become Mornelithe Falconsbane. This seemingly-immortal spirit dates back to the very first book, some 2,000 years (both in the series timeline and how long it's taken to read them), as the original Big Bad, Ma'ar.
The same little group of Heroic Cast Members who took out Ancar also took out Falconsbane. An'desha was given his body back, but now he's terrified that the evil Falconsbane still lurks within him. He's also troubled by sudden spells in which all sensation vanishes--no light, no sound, all existence put on hold for an eternity that lasts only moments. Thanks to his possession by the Evil One, An'desha has memories that stretch back to the first novel (wish I could remember that far back) and he knows that the spells are nothing of his doing. Something bad is coming and it will take three novels to deal with it.
It takes two-thirds of the novel to get all the main players and relationships ready to go and make things happen.
Tremane arrives in Hardorn to find the occupation going even more badly than expected. He is forced to pull his men back to the town of Shonor. Almost as soon as he gives the orders to do so, Tremane is hit with the same "spell" as those An'desha has been experiencing--no light, no sound, all existence on hold for an eternity. He soon learns that the "spell" has affected all the mages and all the magic. The Empire uses magic for everything: transportation, cooking, heating, lighting, building. It has all failed, disrupted by this "mage-storm."
Tremane's advisors tell him that the wave swept out of the northeast, headed southwest and leaving strange circles of disrupted land in its wake.
Imperials are suspicious by nature; it's a given that the man standing next to you is a spy for at least one of your enemies. Your own wife could be on the Emperor's payroll, telling him all your secrets. It's also a given that there are daggers everywhere, always ready should the unwary turn his back. Did the Emperor send this "storm"? Or was it one of Tremane's rivals? Was this a test, an assassination attempt?
Or maybe it was sent by the Valdemarans to further hamper Tremane's mission in Hardorn. He's already convinced that they've been giving aid to the Opposition.
Beset by unseen enemies, Tremane sets some retaliatory plans in motion.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Meanwhile, back in Valdemar, the same wave of disruptive mage energy has rolled past, flattening all the mages, disrupting their spells, and leaving strange circles of disrupted land in its wake. Since Valdemarans don't use the same class of magic as the Imperials do, though, they're back on their feet pretty quickly. Search parties are sent out to inspect those circles. Each one looks like someone dug out of plug of earth several feet across and replaced the plug with something different--a circle of black sand; one of tough, wiry grass in red clay; one of fused black glass that looks blasted by enormous power. There are also transformed or dead animals, but no people...so far. These circles stretch for miles in all directions.
An'desha offers an answer based on those ancient memories of his: this wave was just a small one, a tiny ripple that will build into a repeat of the great Cataclysm that ended the war between Urtho and Ma'ar some two thousand
-=-=-=-=-=-
Typically for a Lackey novel (when it's not one of the suck ones), the story moves well. She makes an effort to make people "feel" real, but maybe spends too much time on that. The "mage storm" subplot builds slowly; two-thirds of several hundred pages is a long time for the action to kick in. Not that it drags, but there is an awful lot of getting to know Karal and getting him around to meet everyone who will be instrumental in the next two books.
This first one is mostly about him.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
SPOILERS!!
I didn't like the "just so" jumping to conclusions that led Tremane to unleash the assassin/agent in Valdemar. I really didn't like the bad-guy-who-looks-like-a-weasel character who plays the assassin. Beady eyes, obsequious, nervous, and all intended to scream in 90-foot-high neon that HEY!!! THIS IS THE BAD GUY YOU GUYS!! SEE HOW HE LOOKS LIKE ONE?!?!
There's some hammy overacting and Heroic Speeching that are played straight, as if the character is rallying her troops, but it feels clumsy and out-of-character.
This wouldn't be a Mercedes Lackey book without the Big Emotional Hit in the assassination that leaves Ulrich and a supporting character dead and several others injured. Karal becomes the new envoy from Karse. It's telegraphed several pages in advance, with Ulrich telling the young man how proud he is, and how like a son Karal has been to him. At least it wasn't held until later as a death bed declaration, complete with Karal closing his master's eyes and screaming at the sky as the camera looks down upon him. As it is, Ulrich is rendered unconscious in the attack and never wakes up. This keeps our focus on Karal as he first keeps his vigil and subsequently goes looking to get away from the Palace.
The confrontation with the assassin was another bit of just-so convenience, with the bad guy spilling the whole plot in an insane rant designed to let the Valdemarans know that Grand Duke Tremane of the Evil Eastern Empire Sends His Greetings. Crap.
Monday, July 28, 2014
SIF 05: A Dance With Dragons (Martin, George RR)
Rating: 5
Year: 2011
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Yes.
The long-awaited triumphant conclusion to the epic "A Song of Ice and Fire"!
Wait...no, sorry. It's not over yet. There are still some Starks to kill off.
"Dragons" runs mostly parallel to 2004's "A Feast For Crows" and follows characters who weren't included in that book.
There are 16 Point Of View characters in this 1,040-page wrist-breaker.
Tyrion Lannister has fled Westeros after killing his father. The old man had it coming:
--having convinced the dwarf that his wife had been nothing more than a whore; it turns out she had legitimately loved Tyrion. This is what got his father killed--when Tyrion asked him where Tysha was, Lord Tywin told him, "wherever whores go."
--he claims he would have saved Tyrion from execution after blame for King Joffrey's murder fell upon him;
Tyron makes his way across the Narrow Sea to the city of Pentos. He ultimately joins a band of people headed for the city of Meereen, hoping to meet with Daenerys Targaryen. They hope to convince her to return to Westeros to take the Iron Throne as the rightful Queen.
Things don't work out for Tyrion. He gets taken captive and sold into slavery as part of a novelty dwarf-jousting act--but he does end up in a slavers' camp right outside of Meereen, so that part worked for him.
Meanwhile, in the northern reaches of Westeros, Jon Snow is learning how to be the commander of the Night's Watch. His men and supplies are stretched too thin and winter is coming. The Others and their walking dead troops are coming and there's no way the Watch can stop them, even with the great Wall blocking their path.
Jon knows the only way to fight the Others is to make peace with the Wildlings, long the enemy of the Watch, and bring them through the Wall to help his men staff its castles.
Meanwhile again, Daenerys Targaryen is trying to keep her own realm together. One of her three dragons has gone from eating sheep to children. Then he goes missing when she tries to pen the dragons to protect her people.
She holds Meereen by slender threads. Thousands of former slaves are loyal to her, but their former masters are scheming to take the city back. Other slave cities have answered their calls and have sent ships and troops to lay siege to the city.
All roads seem to be leading to Meereen. There are at least four men who want to marry Daenerys, but only one she really wants.
Another meanwhile! Cersei Lannister, the manipulative mother of dead King Joffrey, has been imprisoned in the Great Sept. The only way out is to confess her sins, and being Cersei she confesses only enough to get herself out of there. She denies having slept with her twin brother Jaime, having borne him three children, and engineering the death of her husband King Robert. She's lying, but she'll stand trial somewhere in the 6th book.
There are at least 12 more "meanwhiles," but this is a good stopping point. For being such a thick book, "Dragons" left me wanting more. I put off reading it for nearly three years because of its length and because the last time I read the first four novels it took me 6 months to get through them. That was in 2010, just after my medical troubles started. Between that and wasting time on the Internet, I don't feel like reading nearly as much as I used to. This one only took 6 days!
One thing that amused me was Martin's nicknames. EVERYONE has a nickname.
Jon Snow? The Bastard. He is, though--his father got an unnamed woman pregnant.
Tyrion Lannister? The Imp or Halfman. He's a dwarf.
Ser Gregor Clegane? The Mountain That Rides. Dude's really big.
Jaime Lannister? Kingslayer. He killed Mad King Aerys, who came by his own nickname honestly, too.
There are tons more. Even people you only encounter as some background guy on page 860 and never again. Barristan the Bold, Dolorous Edd, the Knight of Flowers, the Blackfish, the Sword of the Morning, the Hound. If you don't have a nickname, you're just not cool.
This is why the 6th book isn't out yet, and why it took 7 years for Martin to finish the 5th. He was coming up with nicknames.
Year: 2011
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Yes.
The long-awaited triumphant conclusion to the epic "A Song of Ice and Fire"!
Wait...no, sorry. It's not over yet. There are still some Starks to kill off.
"Dragons" runs mostly parallel to 2004's "A Feast For Crows" and follows characters who weren't included in that book.
There are 16 Point Of View characters in this 1,040-page wrist-breaker.
Tyrion Lannister has fled Westeros after killing his father. The old man had it coming:
--having convinced the dwarf that his wife had been nothing more than a whore; it turns out she had legitimately loved Tyrion. This is what got his father killed--when Tyrion asked him where Tysha was, Lord Tywin told him, "wherever whores go."
--he claims he would have saved Tyrion from execution after blame for King Joffrey's murder fell upon him;
Tyron makes his way across the Narrow Sea to the city of Pentos. He ultimately joins a band of people headed for the city of Meereen, hoping to meet with Daenerys Targaryen. They hope to convince her to return to Westeros to take the Iron Throne as the rightful Queen.
Things don't work out for Tyrion. He gets taken captive and sold into slavery as part of a novelty dwarf-jousting act--but he does end up in a slavers' camp right outside of Meereen, so that part worked for him.
Meanwhile, in the northern reaches of Westeros, Jon Snow is learning how to be the commander of the Night's Watch. His men and supplies are stretched too thin and winter is coming. The Others and their walking dead troops are coming and there's no way the Watch can stop them, even with the great Wall blocking their path.
Jon knows the only way to fight the Others is to make peace with the Wildlings, long the enemy of the Watch, and bring them through the Wall to help his men staff its castles.
Meanwhile again, Daenerys Targaryen is trying to keep her own realm together. One of her three dragons has gone from eating sheep to children. Then he goes missing when she tries to pen the dragons to protect her people.
She holds Meereen by slender threads. Thousands of former slaves are loyal to her, but their former masters are scheming to take the city back. Other slave cities have answered their calls and have sent ships and troops to lay siege to the city.
All roads seem to be leading to Meereen. There are at least four men who want to marry Daenerys, but only one she really wants.
Another meanwhile! Cersei Lannister, the manipulative mother of dead King Joffrey, has been imprisoned in the Great Sept. The only way out is to confess her sins, and being Cersei she confesses only enough to get herself out of there. She denies having slept with her twin brother Jaime, having borne him three children, and engineering the death of her husband King Robert. She's lying, but she'll stand trial somewhere in the 6th book.
There are at least 12 more "meanwhiles," but this is a good stopping point. For being such a thick book, "Dragons" left me wanting more. I put off reading it for nearly three years because of its length and because the last time I read the first four novels it took me 6 months to get through them. That was in 2010, just after my medical troubles started. Between that and wasting time on the Internet, I don't feel like reading nearly as much as I used to. This one only took 6 days!
One thing that amused me was Martin's nicknames. EVERYONE has a nickname.
Jon Snow? The Bastard. He is, though--his father got an unnamed woman pregnant.
Tyrion Lannister? The Imp or Halfman. He's a dwarf.
Ser Gregor Clegane? The Mountain That Rides. Dude's really big.
Jaime Lannister? Kingslayer. He killed Mad King Aerys, who came by his own nickname honestly, too.
There are tons more. Even people you only encounter as some background guy on page 860 and never again. Barristan the Bold, Dolorous Edd, the Knight of Flowers, the Blackfish, the Sword of the Morning, the Hound. If you don't have a nickname, you're just not cool.
This is why the 6th book isn't out yet, and why it took 7 years for Martin to finish the 5th. He was coming up with nicknames.
Friday, August 2, 2013
Cornelius Murphy 01: The Book of Ultimate Truths (Robert Rankin)
Rating: 5
Year: 1993
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy
Read Again? Yes!
Young Cornelius Murphy is the Stuff of Epics. Destined for Greatness. No one is more aware of this than he.
Actually, he seems to be the only one aware of this fact: the world doesn't care.
There's a Mr. Yarrow (the youth Employment Officer) at his school who is desperate to see the young Murphy gainfully employed before his final school year is done. He's tried and failed seven times to get the wretched boy into a job.
Mechanic? "Too delicate."
Merchant Seaman?
Minicab Driver? "Too well-spoken."
Monumental Mason? "Too tall."
Motorcycle Messenger?
Marriage Counselor? "Too sophisticated."
Male Model? "Too rugged."
He tries again. Mime Artiste.
Nope. "Too well-endowed."
Cornelius does finally get a job, but not via Mr. Yarrow. One Arthur Kobold hires him to travel into the wilds of Scotland to find and purchase the effects of the heroic and mystical Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune, master of the unpaid bill, guru of gurus, reinventor of the ocarina, hater of Bud Abbott.
Among these effects is a manuscript for Rune's greatest work, The Book of Ultimate Truths. Kobold wants to reprint the magnificent opus.
Cornelius travels into the vast reaches of untamed Scotland, finding himself pursued by a Campbell, who is also after the manuscript.
The simple "go to the auction, win the bid for some old junk no one wants, and bring it back" isn't as simple and uneventful as Cornelius expected it to be. He faces an enormous riot, a shootout in a monastery, and a bunch of naked Wiccans ("It's a genuine religion, you know.").
As he travels, Cornelius reads a copy of The Book, learning of the perils of C11 H17 NO3 (mescaline) in soaps, tea, and cola (Rune ran a profitable soap, tea, and cola concession off this fearmongering); the secret lives of Biro ballpoint pens (and why they vanish when you need one); and the truth of why there's always two screws left over when you reassemble a toaster or radio, and how this delayed the scheduled beginning of World War Two by three years (Rune learned this secret in India, acting as Gandhi's spiritual advisor).
Rankin's writing is rich, engaging and wickedly funny. There's no drag, aside from a mincing Gandhi in disguise as Rune's wife. Hell of a ride.
Year: 1993
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy
Read Again? Yes!
Young Cornelius Murphy is the Stuff of Epics. Destined for Greatness. No one is more aware of this than he.
Actually, he seems to be the only one aware of this fact: the world doesn't care.
There's a Mr. Yarrow (the youth Employment Officer) at his school who is desperate to see the young Murphy gainfully employed before his final school year is done. He's tried and failed seven times to get the wretched boy into a job.
Mechanic? "Too delicate."
Merchant Seaman?
Minicab Driver? "Too well-spoken."
Monumental Mason? "Too tall."
Motorcycle Messenger?
Marriage Counselor? "Too sophisticated."
Male Model? "Too rugged."
He tries again. Mime Artiste.
Nope. "Too well-endowed."
Cornelius does finally get a job, but not via Mr. Yarrow. One Arthur Kobold hires him to travel into the wilds of Scotland to find and purchase the effects of the heroic and mystical Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune, master of the unpaid bill, guru of gurus, reinventor of the ocarina, hater of Bud Abbott.
Among these effects is a manuscript for Rune's greatest work, The Book of Ultimate Truths. Kobold wants to reprint the magnificent opus.
Cornelius travels into the vast reaches of untamed Scotland, finding himself pursued by a Campbell, who is also after the manuscript.
The simple "go to the auction, win the bid for some old junk no one wants, and bring it back" isn't as simple and uneventful as Cornelius expected it to be. He faces an enormous riot, a shootout in a monastery, and a bunch of naked Wiccans ("It's a genuine religion, you know.").
As he travels, Cornelius reads a copy of The Book, learning of the perils of C11 H17 NO3 (mescaline) in soaps, tea, and cola (Rune ran a profitable soap, tea, and cola concession off this fearmongering); the secret lives of Biro ballpoint pens (and why they vanish when you need one); and the truth of why there's always two screws left over when you reassemble a toaster or radio, and how this delayed the scheduled beginning of World War Two by three years (Rune learned this secret in India, acting as Gandhi's spiritual advisor).
Rankin's writing is rich, engaging and wickedly funny. There's no drag, aside from a mincing Gandhi in disguise as Rune's wife. Hell of a ride.
Monday, July 1, 2013
Raylan 04: Raylan (Elmore Leonard)
Rating: 5
Year: 2011
Genre: Crime
Read again? Yes.
Raylan's got a warrant for Angel Arenas, a marijuana dealer. He finds Angel in a hotel bathtub full of ice water, near death, and shy a pair of kidneys.
Once he gets Angel to talk, Raylan learns that the dealer was meeting with a couple of men. He figures the guys drugged their mark, cut him open, nipped the kidneys. But Angel refuses to ID them.
Doctors at the hospital say the job looks professional. The incisions were stapled up.
The kidney-nappers send their victim a fax: $100,000 to get his guts back. As a show of good faith they've taken the liberty of dropping the purloined pieces at Angel's hospital, ready to reinstall.
But if he doesn't produce the cash, they'll repossess them. Angel has one week.
The plot breaks up into several threads from here: the hunt for the pair of small-timers who waylaid Angel; a young woman who's insanely good at poker and who might be part of a trio of drug addicts who rob banks; and the people running the kidney-theft ring. Harlan County is very busy.
A lot of this book has made its way into the TV series "Justified," but not quite as-written. The kidney-theft and bank robber arcs are part of the show's third season and get tweaked to fit the show's plotline. It's got me wondering whether the poker champ will show up for the 5th season.
Good book, more meaty and satisfying than "Fire in the Hole."
Year: 2011
Genre: Crime
Read again? Yes.
Raylan's got a warrant for Angel Arenas, a marijuana dealer. He finds Angel in a hotel bathtub full of ice water, near death, and shy a pair of kidneys.
Once he gets Angel to talk, Raylan learns that the dealer was meeting with a couple of men. He figures the guys drugged their mark, cut him open, nipped the kidneys. But Angel refuses to ID them.
Doctors at the hospital say the job looks professional. The incisions were stapled up.
The kidney-nappers send their victim a fax: $100,000 to get his guts back. As a show of good faith they've taken the liberty of dropping the purloined pieces at Angel's hospital, ready to reinstall.
But if he doesn't produce the cash, they'll repossess them. Angel has one week.
The plot breaks up into several threads from here: the hunt for the pair of small-timers who waylaid Angel; a young woman who's insanely good at poker and who might be part of a trio of drug addicts who rob banks; and the people running the kidney-theft ring. Harlan County is very busy.
A lot of this book has made its way into the TV series "Justified," but not quite as-written. The kidney-theft and bank robber arcs are part of the show's third season and get tweaked to fit the show's plotline. It's got me wondering whether the poker champ will show up for the 5th season.
Good book, more meaty and satisfying than "Fire in the Hole."
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Raylan 02: Riding the Rap (Elmore Leonard)
Rating: 5
Year: 1995
Genre: Crime
Read Again? Yes
Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens drives up to Ocala to nab Dale Crowe on a warrant (Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution). He puts Crowe in the driver's seat and makes him drive them back to Palm Beach County.
He's alone with the man convicted of battery on a police officer. Being a Crowe, he tries something stupid and ends up handcuffed to the steering wheel, still driving.
On the way, they pick up a pair of carjackers (dumbasses tried to jack Raylan's car), so now the Marshall has three prisoners and feels pretty damn smug.
Meanwhile, Harry Arno, the bookie-in-trouble from the first book, hires a bounty hunter to ferret out a $16,500 gambling debt owed by Warren "Chip" Ganz up in Manalpan, Florida. Harry's retiring and wants to settle his accounts.
The bounty hunter, Bobby "the Gardener" Deogracias, finds Ganz at his mother's run-down 9,000 square foot home. Ganz' mother is in a different sort of home, dying alone of Alzheimer's. Ganz himself is hardly living large, since his mother controls the house and whatever money there is.
The Gardener offers to prune Ganz' ears, one at a time, if he doesn't pay up the $18,000 he owes (finder's fee). More anatomy to follow as needed for motivation.
Chip sees an angle and proposes a business opportunity: he and The Gardener could team up, take Harry Arno hostage, and squeeze him for the money he's had to be skimming in all his time as a bookie. They'll split the take three ways, since Chip's already got another partner, man named Louis Lewis.
Harry vanishes. Raylan reluctantly tries to find him, prodded by Harry's lady friend. He finds some interesting puzzle pieces: a young, attractive professional psychic; a robbery at a little Mom & Pop grocery (with strawberry Jell-O as part of the take); one of the robbers threatened one victim with pruning shears. Raylan suspects Bobby Deo, "The Gardener," but lacks all the pieces just yet.
The genius of Elmore Leonard's tale is that we're not dealing with criminal masterminds. You've got the financially embarrassed, desperate man-of-the-house (Chip Ganz) who once read a book about hostages and how they were treated. Chip wants the caper done By The Book, but the practicalities keep this from going to plan. Straw mattresses are hard to come by in Palm Beach County. Crappy food, chains, and squalid shacks are kind of hard on the jailors and the jailed, and Chip's partners refuse to go along. Harry makes do with being chained in a run-down 9,000 square foot mansion instead.
Then there's Louis, who almost immediately starts trying to undercut the other guys; and The Gardener, who's so obsessed with his gunslinger-badass self-image that he fails to think very far ahead.
Greed is the only thing keeping the trio of kidnappers together, and each of them is plotting against the other two.
Fast-paced, easy reading here. I really like that the bad guys are just regular, stupid human beings instead of evil geniuses. It really doesn't take much more than that and a little greed to drive a typical crook.
Year: 1995
Genre: Crime
Read Again? Yes
Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens drives up to Ocala to nab Dale Crowe on a warrant (Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution). He puts Crowe in the driver's seat and makes him drive them back to Palm Beach County.
He's alone with the man convicted of battery on a police officer. Being a Crowe, he tries something stupid and ends up handcuffed to the steering wheel, still driving.
On the way, they pick up a pair of carjackers (dumbasses tried to jack Raylan's car), so now the Marshall has three prisoners and feels pretty damn smug.
Meanwhile, Harry Arno, the bookie-in-trouble from the first book, hires a bounty hunter to ferret out a $16,500 gambling debt owed by Warren "Chip" Ganz up in Manalpan, Florida. Harry's retiring and wants to settle his accounts.
The bounty hunter, Bobby "the Gardener" Deogracias, finds Ganz at his mother's run-down 9,000 square foot home. Ganz' mother is in a different sort of home, dying alone of Alzheimer's. Ganz himself is hardly living large, since his mother controls the house and whatever money there is.
The Gardener offers to prune Ganz' ears, one at a time, if he doesn't pay up the $18,000 he owes (finder's fee). More anatomy to follow as needed for motivation.
Chip sees an angle and proposes a business opportunity: he and The Gardener could team up, take Harry Arno hostage, and squeeze him for the money he's had to be skimming in all his time as a bookie. They'll split the take three ways, since Chip's already got another partner, man named Louis Lewis.
Harry vanishes. Raylan reluctantly tries to find him, prodded by Harry's lady friend. He finds some interesting puzzle pieces: a young, attractive professional psychic; a robbery at a little Mom & Pop grocery (with strawberry Jell-O as part of the take); one of the robbers threatened one victim with pruning shears. Raylan suspects Bobby Deo, "The Gardener," but lacks all the pieces just yet.
The genius of Elmore Leonard's tale is that we're not dealing with criminal masterminds. You've got the financially embarrassed, desperate man-of-the-house (Chip Ganz) who once read a book about hostages and how they were treated. Chip wants the caper done By The Book, but the practicalities keep this from going to plan. Straw mattresses are hard to come by in Palm Beach County. Crappy food, chains, and squalid shacks are kind of hard on the jailors and the jailed, and Chip's partners refuse to go along. Harry makes do with being chained in a run-down 9,000 square foot mansion instead.
Then there's Louis, who almost immediately starts trying to undercut the other guys; and The Gardener, who's so obsessed with his gunslinger-badass self-image that he fails to think very far ahead.
Greed is the only thing keeping the trio of kidnappers together, and each of them is plotting against the other two.
Fast-paced, easy reading here. I really like that the bad guys are just regular, stupid human beings instead of evil geniuses. It really doesn't take much more than that and a little greed to drive a typical crook.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Star Trek--TOS #23: Ishmael (Hambley, Barbara)
Rating: 5
Year: 1985
Genre: Sci-Fi/Star Trek
Read again? Yes
James Kirk hopes Spock is dead.
The Vulcan science officer snuck aboard a Klingon ship, convinced its crew were Up To No Good. The ship entered a Space Cloud, ostensibly to investigate a rogue dwarf star...and then vanished. Spock managed two transmissions: "White Dwarf, Khlaru, Tillman's Factor, Guardian" and "Eighteen Sixty Seven."
Kirk knows that if the Klingons found Spock aboard their ship, they would torture him.
Meanwhile, in 1867, Aaron Stemple sees a strange light in the woods as he guides his horse through an early-morning mist toward Seattle. Upon investigating further, he finds an unconscious man. No, not a man, not with those ears, not with green blood. After days of nursing the alien into some semblance of health, Stemple is no closer to understanding him: the alien has no recollection of his own identity. Stemple passes him off as his nephew, Ishmael Marx.
About the same time "Ishmael" shows up, two mean-looking strangers come to town, asking questions; we'd recognize them as TV Klingons--dark skin, dark hair.
Can Ishmael figure out why he's in Seattle? Can Kirk figure out Spock's final transmissions?
This book hies from the era of Space Animals in Star Trek books: a Space Octopus (I'm assuming; she had a tentacle) who takes over at the Science station when Spock goes missing; and a blue-eyed Space Snot Puddle named Aurelia Steiner. There just had to be one, some sort of Cosmic thing, because shortly before getting to the part where we meet Ms. Puddle, I was re-reading the review for "Double, Double," where I made a snarky reference to them.
This book was better than I was expecting. I seem to remember not liking Hambly's style or writing for some reason, but I found no issues with this one that would keep me from coming back to it.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Teardrops and Tiny Trailers (Douglas Keister)
Rating: 5/5
Year: 2008
Genre: Nonfiction / Travel
Read again? yes
I've been wanting to build a little teardrop camper for years, partly out of a desire to see forts I've never been to without having to pay for motels, but also because one just needs to get away from time to time.
These hip-pocket homes on wheels date back to the 1930s and are typically built around a standard 4 x 8 foot sheet of plywood. The smaller ones are roomy enough for two friendly people and are light enough to be towed by almost any car. It's a step up from lying in a tent, but still more rough-and-ready (and far cheaper) than a bus-sized RV.
Keister's book is both an attractive guide to the possibilities for designing, outfitting and decorating trailers and a display of their tow vehicles, from Plain Jane to radical; boring to beautiful; wood, fiberglass, and aluminum.
There are plenty of photos of gorgeous old cars and trailers, some of which were built from plans like these from Mechanix Illustrated in 1947.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Jack of Shadows (Zelazny, Roger)
Rating: 5
Year: 1971
Genre: Fantasy
Read Again? Yes
Jack the master thief is nabbed at the Hellgames: his presence alone (even as a bystander) is reason enough to suspect that he intends to steal the game trophy, the Hellflame.
He is executed. Because he's a Darksider, he has a number of lives, but dying is still no small thing.
He awakens several years hence in the Dung Pits of Glyve and sets out to gain revenge upon those who sent him there, most notably his worst enemy, the Lord of Bats.
As he walks from the Pits, he seeks to avoid capture--but the Bat Lord has been waiting: Jack is imprisoned and tormented in payback for stealing some magical manuscripts. Jack's execution was only the beginning.
Once he wins his freedom, Jack's revenge could bring the end of the world.
This is a quick, easy read, though Zelazny doesn't spend much time fleshing the characters out.
Year: 1971
Genre: Fantasy
Read Again? Yes
Jack the master thief is nabbed at the Hellgames: his presence alone (even as a bystander) is reason enough to suspect that he intends to steal the game trophy, the Hellflame.
He is executed. Because he's a Darksider, he has a number of lives, but dying is still no small thing.
He awakens several years hence in the Dung Pits of Glyve and sets out to gain revenge upon those who sent him there, most notably his worst enemy, the Lord of Bats.
As he walks from the Pits, he seeks to avoid capture--but the Bat Lord has been waiting: Jack is imprisoned and tormented in payback for stealing some magical manuscripts. Jack's execution was only the beginning.
Once he wins his freedom, Jack's revenge could bring the end of the world.
This is a quick, easy read, though Zelazny doesn't spend much time fleshing the characters out.
Roadshow: Landscape With Drums (Peart, Neil)
Rating: 5
Year: 2006
Genre: Biography/Travel
Read again? Yes
For several years I've been wanting to read Peart's books to see whether his prose is as good as his lyrics for Rush. Maybe it's not as evocative or poetic, but a book takes different writing skills than does a song--and he does a fine job.
In the first chapter, Peart takes us on the road along Interstate 40, nominally following old Route 66, from his home in Los Angeles to the tour's first venue in Nashville, Tennessee. He gives brief sketches of scenery, bumper stickers, reminiscences from the band's beginnings or most recent tour. He describes old diversions for days off--building models, bicycle tours, reading, several abortive attempts at writing fiction. Anything to kill time during the boring stretches of highway travel.
We see a side of the author that most fans never see; he used to have a reputation for being standoffish, unapproachable, and rude toward the invading fan horde. His writing here--and in interviews for the Rush biopic "Beyond the Lighted Stage" reveals a man who can play his drums before 500,000 screaming Rush fans but who is terribly shy and uncomfortable under fame's microscope.
Here, on the road with Michael (the R30 Tour's security director) and their motorcycles, he's not Neil Peart the Greatest Rock Drummer Of Our Time (and he'd be very uncomfortable if you called him that to his face); no, he's Just Neil, an anonymous guy on a bike who takes the occasional smoke break, stays overnight in a Best Western, and has a generous serving of The Macallen single-malt before dinner: "When I'm riding my motorcycle, I'm glad to be alive. When I stop riding my motorcycle, I'm glad to be alive."
Chapter 1 comes to a close 2-1/2 days later with the weary riders pulling up to the practice venue.
The rest of the book follows the same pattern, with snapshots of shows old and new, rides past and present, moments with friends and family, all tied together with life on the smallest, most out-of-the-way roads on the way to the next show, passing farms and tiny towns and meeting real people, regular people, ordinary people along the way.
I was amused to find that Peart "collects" church signs--
--We have no new messages
--To prevent burning, use son block
--If you take satan for a ride pretty soon he'll want to drive
--Faith is a higher faculty than reason
--To belittle is to be little
--Why worry when you can pray?
--He is no respecter of persons
--each of which get some snarky comment or launch a philosophical discussion once he and Michael are off the road and drinking their evening Macallen. The thoughts triggered by "He is no respecter of persons" is especially worth reading.
Another running joke is that Peart doesn't give the venues' corporate names in the book; he names them "Lodging and Entertainment Corporation Amphitheater" or "Consumer Electronics Chain Amphitheater" or "Natural Gas Corporation Theater" or whatever. He describes fans who've been to so many shows that the band gave them nicknames (license plate chick, the happy guy), remembers seeing the Fan's Girlfriend phenomenon over the years (she hates the music, hates the band's place in her BF's affections). There are the inevitable fans who push a little too far, following Peart's bus out of the venue lot and down the highway--do they want autographs, or is it some lunatic who wants those secret lyric messages decoded?
When he arrives in London to begin the European leg of the tour, there are heartbreaking memories of Peart and wife Jackie trying to absorb the loss of their teen-aged daughter in 1997; they went to London hoping to get away from publicity and reminders. Less than a year later, Jackie was dead of cancer. Peart goes out of his way to avoid triggers this time around (the show must go on), but it's a hard couple of days.
Still, this isn't the book for dwelling on those losses, though there are many other places that bring the occasional stab of memories: a museum trip in St. Louis when Selena was nearly 16, Peart keeping it short: "I love those memories. And hate them, too."
Year: 2006
Genre: Biography/Travel
Read again? Yes
For several years I've been wanting to read Peart's books to see whether his prose is as good as his lyrics for Rush. Maybe it's not as evocative or poetic, but a book takes different writing skills than does a song--and he does a fine job.
In the first chapter, Peart takes us on the road along Interstate 40, nominally following old Route 66, from his home in Los Angeles to the tour's first venue in Nashville, Tennessee. He gives brief sketches of scenery, bumper stickers, reminiscences from the band's beginnings or most recent tour. He describes old diversions for days off--building models, bicycle tours, reading, several abortive attempts at writing fiction. Anything to kill time during the boring stretches of highway travel.
We see a side of the author that most fans never see; he used to have a reputation for being standoffish, unapproachable, and rude toward the invading fan horde. His writing here--and in interviews for the Rush biopic "Beyond the Lighted Stage" reveals a man who can play his drums before 500,000 screaming Rush fans but who is terribly shy and uncomfortable under fame's microscope.
Here, on the road with Michael (the R30 Tour's security director) and their motorcycles, he's not Neil Peart the Greatest Rock Drummer Of Our Time (and he'd be very uncomfortable if you called him that to his face); no, he's Just Neil, an anonymous guy on a bike who takes the occasional smoke break, stays overnight in a Best Western, and has a generous serving of The Macallen single-malt before dinner: "When I'm riding my motorcycle, I'm glad to be alive. When I stop riding my motorcycle, I'm glad to be alive."
Chapter 1 comes to a close 2-1/2 days later with the weary riders pulling up to the practice venue.
The rest of the book follows the same pattern, with snapshots of shows old and new, rides past and present, moments with friends and family, all tied together with life on the smallest, most out-of-the-way roads on the way to the next show, passing farms and tiny towns and meeting real people, regular people, ordinary people along the way.
I was amused to find that Peart "collects" church signs--
--We have no new messages
--To prevent burning, use son block
--If you take satan for a ride pretty soon he'll want to drive
--Faith is a higher faculty than reason
--To belittle is to be little
--Why worry when you can pray?
--He is no respecter of persons
--each of which get some snarky comment or launch a philosophical discussion once he and Michael are off the road and drinking their evening Macallen. The thoughts triggered by "He is no respecter of persons" is especially worth reading.
Another running joke is that Peart doesn't give the venues' corporate names in the book; he names them "Lodging and Entertainment Corporation Amphitheater" or "Consumer Electronics Chain Amphitheater" or "Natural Gas Corporation Theater" or whatever. He describes fans who've been to so many shows that the band gave them nicknames (license plate chick, the happy guy), remembers seeing the Fan's Girlfriend phenomenon over the years (she hates the music, hates the band's place in her BF's affections). There are the inevitable fans who push a little too far, following Peart's bus out of the venue lot and down the highway--do they want autographs, or is it some lunatic who wants those secret lyric messages decoded?
When he arrives in London to begin the European leg of the tour, there are heartbreaking memories of Peart and wife Jackie trying to absorb the loss of their teen-aged daughter in 1997; they went to London hoping to get away from publicity and reminders. Less than a year later, Jackie was dead of cancer. Peart goes out of his way to avoid triggers this time around (the show must go on), but it's a hard couple of days.
Still, this isn't the book for dwelling on those losses, though there are many other places that bring the occasional stab of memories: a museum trip in St. Louis when Selena was nearly 16, Peart keeping it short: "I love those memories. And hate them, too."
Friday, December 30, 2011
Jaws (Benchley, Peter)
Rating: 5/5
Year: 1974
Genre: Horror
Read again? Yes.
Summer is only days away; Amity's 1,000 permanent residents will soon be joined by 9,000 summer visitors.
When Christine Watkins' mangled remains wash up on the beach where tourists might see, Amity's politicians step up and bravely order police chief Martin Brody to keep his mouth shut. The beaches will stay open, the paper will stay silent.
There were no witnesses.
A few quiet days pass, and within hours of each other a 6-year-old boy and a 65-year-old man are killed.
This time, there are witnesses.
Brody gets the beaches closed, but now (as he expected) he looks like the bad guy. Those politicians wouldn't dirty their hands with responsibility.
A shark expert from Woods Hole--Matt Hooper--thinks the killer is a Great White shark.
Now July 4th--the big weekend that could make or break Amity--is less than two weeks away. People are canceling their leases or just walking away from them. The Mayor's freaking out (he's one of the major real estate owners in town) more over the financial losses than over the killings.
Brody's wife Ellen has a shagfest with Hooper; we're treated to all of her rationalizations for this (lonely, bored, unhappy, etc.), but I wasn't sympathetic to her plight. Perhaps it's mostly there to heighten tension between Chief Brody and the shark expert later in the book, but it really made me dislike her.
Otherwise, Benchley tells a good story and moves it along. Characterization is reasonably good and there's only the amount of exposition that the reader needs.
Year: 1974
Genre: Horror
Read again? Yes.
Summer is only days away; Amity's 1,000 permanent residents will soon be joined by 9,000 summer visitors.
When Christine Watkins' mangled remains wash up on the beach where tourists might see, Amity's politicians step up and bravely order police chief Martin Brody to keep his mouth shut. The beaches will stay open, the paper will stay silent.
There were no witnesses.
A few quiet days pass, and within hours of each other a 6-year-old boy and a 65-year-old man are killed.
This time, there are witnesses.
Brody gets the beaches closed, but now (as he expected) he looks like the bad guy. Those politicians wouldn't dirty their hands with responsibility.
A shark expert from Woods Hole--Matt Hooper--thinks the killer is a Great White shark.
Now July 4th--the big weekend that could make or break Amity--is less than two weeks away. People are canceling their leases or just walking away from them. The Mayor's freaking out (he's one of the major real estate owners in town) more over the financial losses than over the killings.
Brody's wife Ellen has a shagfest with Hooper; we're treated to all of her rationalizations for this (lonely, bored, unhappy, etc.), but I wasn't sympathetic to her plight. Perhaps it's mostly there to heighten tension between Chief Brody and the shark expert later in the book, but it really made me dislike her.
Otherwise, Benchley tells a good story and moves it along. Characterization is reasonably good and there's only the amount of exposition that the reader needs.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Maximum Bob (Leonard, Elmore)
Rating: 5/5
Year: 1991
Genre: Crime
Read again? Yes
Kathy Baker is a parole officer. One of her "projects" is a kid named Dale Crowe, 2 days out of prison for hitting a cop. He broke parole in a drunken bar fight.
Maximum Bob Gibbs is the Palm Beach County judge presiding over Dale Crowe's fighting case. Bob ignores the underage drinking and the fight altogether, focusing on the kid's prior cop-hitting instead.
He's not called "Maximum" Bob for nothing. He likes making examples of people--and since the Crowe family are a bunch of habitual offenders, he decides to send the kid back to prison on a longer sentence.
Bob's also a lecherous 57-year-old. He quickly notices Kathy Baker and starts trying to put some moves on her. Of course he's married, but his wife's a crystal-gazing, aura-reading New Ager who's gained a little extra weight. She's also slightly crazy: she believes she can channel the spirit of a long-dead 12-year-old black girl.
Bob's tired of married life and really wants the house clear so he can lure that attractive young parole officer. He pays a man to drop a dead gator in the back yard, hoping to scare her away.
Gator's not quite dead. Eats her dog. The cops get involved, and they're thinking someone's trying to kill old Bob.
Meanwhile, Dale Crowe's uncle has been offered $10,000 to kill Maximum Bob.
Leonard's writing is tight! He metes out bits of exposition as needed, but keeps it on the fly. He doesn't pause to hold your hand or tell in-depth back stories.
Each character carries a piece of the puzzle. They all stand out and they're all interesting and believable. It's clear that we're not following heroic, important people here, just regulars--some on the take, some on the make, some just wanting the work day to end, thinking of that cold beer at home. We know their motivations: lust in the old judge, revenge in the ex-con, the parole officer who's afraid to say "no" to the judge who could easily wreck her career, the cops who know something hinky is going on.
Leonard's style is clean, free of wasted words or wasted time. He takes you from A to B, gives hints about C along the way, builds things a little more, and you're expected to keep up. He won't hold your hand.
This is how writing ought to be! Make every word count. After reading a couple of really bad Star Wars books and one Lackey book, this was an unexpected pleasure.
Year: 1991
Genre: Crime
Read again? Yes
Kathy Baker is a parole officer. One of her "projects" is a kid named Dale Crowe, 2 days out of prison for hitting a cop. He broke parole in a drunken bar fight.
Maximum Bob Gibbs is the Palm Beach County judge presiding over Dale Crowe's fighting case. Bob ignores the underage drinking and the fight altogether, focusing on the kid's prior cop-hitting instead.
He's not called "Maximum" Bob for nothing. He likes making examples of people--and since the Crowe family are a bunch of habitual offenders, he decides to send the kid back to prison on a longer sentence.
Bob's also a lecherous 57-year-old. He quickly notices Kathy Baker and starts trying to put some moves on her. Of course he's married, but his wife's a crystal-gazing, aura-reading New Ager who's gained a little extra weight. She's also slightly crazy: she believes she can channel the spirit of a long-dead 12-year-old black girl.
Bob's tired of married life and really wants the house clear so he can lure that attractive young parole officer. He pays a man to drop a dead gator in the back yard, hoping to scare her away.
Gator's not quite dead. Eats her dog. The cops get involved, and they're thinking someone's trying to kill old Bob.
Meanwhile, Dale Crowe's uncle has been offered $10,000 to kill Maximum Bob.
Leonard's writing is tight! He metes out bits of exposition as needed, but keeps it on the fly. He doesn't pause to hold your hand or tell in-depth back stories.
Each character carries a piece of the puzzle. They all stand out and they're all interesting and believable. It's clear that we're not following heroic, important people here, just regulars--some on the take, some on the make, some just wanting the work day to end, thinking of that cold beer at home. We know their motivations: lust in the old judge, revenge in the ex-con, the parole officer who's afraid to say "no" to the judge who could easily wreck her career, the cops who know something hinky is going on.
Leonard's style is clean, free of wasted words or wasted time. He takes you from A to B, gives hints about C along the way, builds things a little more, and you're expected to keep up. He won't hold your hand.
This is how writing ought to be! Make every word count. After reading a couple of really bad Star Wars books and one Lackey book, this was an unexpected pleasure.
Dresden Files 13: Ghost Story (Butcher, Jim)
Rating: 5/5
Year: 2011
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Yes
I haven't eagerly anticipated a new book this way since the early '90s, when Roger Zelazny was writing new "Amber" books. It's been about 15 months since I finished the 12th Dresden book (note: that'd be in May of 2010, then late September 2011 for "Ghost Story"--posting the reviews hasn't been on my radar for a few months, unfortunately).
Harry Dresden is dead.
He was taken out by a sniper at the end of "Changes." How the hell do you follow that?
Dresden finds himself in a ghostly shadow of Chicago. He's escorted to the police station, where the ghost of Karrin Murphy's father outlines a mission: Dresden has to figure out who killed him or three of his closest friends will be next.
At first, he can't use magic or interact with the real world, but he quickly learns that his friends have been busy in the 6 months since his death. Things have worsened in the city: just his presence and the threat he represented to the Bad Guys was enough to keep most of them in check. With the effective destruction of the Red Court vampires at the end of "Changes," other ghosts, goblins, ghouls, and gangs have moved in to take over. The White Council of wizards is swamped, so they can't spare a Warden for Chicago.
Murphy, Butters, Bob the Skull, and other friends of Harry's have strengthened the ParaNet, and that's doing some good.
There's one threat on the streets that has all of Dresden's friends terrified, though. His apprentice went insane when he died. She's gone off on her own to fight evil things alone.
There has to be a point where Dresden meets his friends; they've dealt with his death to varying degrees, but Murphy isn't convinced he's dead. The scene where she's faced with his ghost is powerful.
Harry figures out pretty quickly who the shooter was, but the more important question is why it happened.
Then there's the bigger issue of saving the world from an enemy he's already faced once before.
Very good story; I devoured it. I liked the "It's a Wonderful Life" aspect of it, seeing how the world changed for the worse without Dresden in it. The plot moves nicely, the main characters continue to develop, and now I have to wait several more months for the next book.
Mad Hatter has a different take (might be spoilers). Since I've only read this book once, I've yet to develop as deep a reaction to the story and characters as Hatter got.
Year: 2011
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Yes
I haven't eagerly anticipated a new book this way since the early '90s, when Roger Zelazny was writing new "Amber" books. It's been about 15 months since I finished the 12th Dresden book (note: that'd be in May of 2010, then late September 2011 for "Ghost Story"--posting the reviews hasn't been on my radar for a few months, unfortunately).
Harry Dresden is dead.
He was taken out by a sniper at the end of "Changes." How the hell do you follow that?
Dresden finds himself in a ghostly shadow of Chicago. He's escorted to the police station, where the ghost of Karrin Murphy's father outlines a mission: Dresden has to figure out who killed him or three of his closest friends will be next.
At first, he can't use magic or interact with the real world, but he quickly learns that his friends have been busy in the 6 months since his death. Things have worsened in the city: just his presence and the threat he represented to the Bad Guys was enough to keep most of them in check. With the effective destruction of the Red Court vampires at the end of "Changes," other ghosts, goblins, ghouls, and gangs have moved in to take over. The White Council of wizards is swamped, so they can't spare a Warden for Chicago.
Murphy, Butters, Bob the Skull, and other friends of Harry's have strengthened the ParaNet, and that's doing some good.
There's one threat on the streets that has all of Dresden's friends terrified, though. His apprentice went insane when he died. She's gone off on her own to fight evil things alone.
There has to be a point where Dresden meets his friends; they've dealt with his death to varying degrees, but Murphy isn't convinced he's dead. The scene where she's faced with his ghost is powerful.
Harry figures out pretty quickly who the shooter was, but the more important question is why it happened.
Then there's the bigger issue of saving the world from an enemy he's already faced once before.
Very good story; I devoured it. I liked the "It's a Wonderful Life" aspect of it, seeing how the world changed for the worse without Dresden in it. The plot moves nicely, the main characters continue to develop, and now I have to wait several more months for the next book.
Mad Hatter has a different take (might be spoilers). Since I've only read this book once, I've yet to develop as deep a reaction to the story and characters as Hatter got.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Pocket Ref (Glover, Thomas J)
Rating: 5
Year: 1989/20006 (3rd Ed.)
Genre: Technical
Read again? all the time.
Maybe it's a little too big for a pocket, but this hefty little book is incredibly useful.
Do you need to know the hand signals for guiding a crane or hoist operator? Page 105.
Wiring diagrams for common trailer wiring harnesses? Page 41.
Perpetual calendar? Page 737.
Airport 3-letter codes? 290.
...for Frankfurt, Germany? 301.
If you look on page 384, you'll note that rabbit skin glue can be used for bonding wood but is mainly used in gilding, artwork and furniture repair.
Page 537 starts a section on knots.
This little book seemingly has it all--mathematical formulae, physics and chemistry, masonry, military ranks, automotive, carpentry & construction, first aid, surveying and mapping, tools, weather, welding, and conversion tables packed into nearly 800 pages.
Year: 1989/20006 (3rd Ed.)
Genre: Technical
Read again? all the time.
Maybe it's a little too big for a pocket, but this hefty little book is incredibly useful.
Do you need to know the hand signals for guiding a crane or hoist operator? Page 105.
Wiring diagrams for common trailer wiring harnesses? Page 41.
Perpetual calendar? Page 737.
Airport 3-letter codes? 290.
...for Frankfurt, Germany? 301.
If you look on page 384, you'll note that rabbit skin glue can be used for bonding wood but is mainly used in gilding, artwork and furniture repair.
Page 537 starts a section on knots.
This little book seemingly has it all--mathematical formulae, physics and chemistry, masonry, military ranks, automotive, carpentry & construction, first aid, surveying and mapping, tools, weather, welding, and conversion tables packed into nearly 800 pages.
Getting Great Guitar Sounds (Ross, Michael)
Rating: 5
Year: 1988/1998
Genre: Music/Technical
Read again? Yup.
One thing a serious musician will spend endless hours and wallet-loads of cash on is getting good tone, whether it's from a guitar or a trumpet. It starts with an instrument that will play in tune--and stay that way. It needs to be comfortable, too--if you're fighting the thing, you're not going to play it well.
Michael Ross starts us out with the instrument itself. The sound you get from an electric guitar depends on more than just plugging it into an amp. The big factor is wood. What's it made from (alder? Ash? Maple?) ? How is the neck attached (bolted on? Glued on? Neck-through-body?)? What's the neck material (maple is typical)? Is it a hollow-body? Solid? Semi-hollow?
From there, you get into string size, scale length, and hardware, all of which contribute to how the guitar itself sounds both before it's plugged in and to the overall sound. Then you've got pickups and controls, on-board electronics...
Lots of choices, there; to the non-musician they might all sound the same. But to a tone junkie, there's a huge difference between the sounds of classic Van Halen, Angus Young, Alex Lifeson, Joe Satriani, Billy Gibbons, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Keith Richards, and James Hetfield. Each has a distinctive sound that begins with his guitar.
Ross doesn't overdo it; he keeps his descriptions clear and non-technical, discussing how each component will affect the overall sound of a guitar.
That's just Chapter One.
With the second, Ross guides us through pickup choices (single-coil, humbucker, active) and location (bridge, neck, middle), wiring, controls (active, passive), and then finally to amplifiers. The amp itself will affect your sound--it doesn't just make the guitar louder, it colors the tone depending on how you play through it.
In Part Two, Ross discusses effects pedals, the tools a guitarist can use to further affect his tone: compression, distortion, preamps, delay, reverb, chorus, flange, and pitch shifters, all available as stand-alone "stomp boxes" or in all-in-one multieffects units.
Part Three sees us putting all this stuff to work; many of the effects sound better when they're arranged in a certain order, but there will be songs when you want a clean sound, your guitar's natural voice, without all the extra trimmings. From here, he looks at "live" vs. "studio" sound and the give and take of using vintage instruments, amps and effects.
His final note is about musicianship: none of these things matters if you don't have the chops. Alex Lifeson will sound like Alex Lifeson no matter what guitar/amp/effects he's using--the instrument's tone is important, but not nearly as important as what Lifeson does with it. The single most important part of your sound is...you.
Ross' advice:
--Play with authority. Play each note like you mean it--even if you screw up. Screw up like you mean it.
--Make your sound and playing fit the song! If you're going to play like Stevie Ray Vaughan, you have to lay into it with both hands. Stevie played hard, till his fingers were bleeding--and he meant it. But you can't play like that if you're supposed to be subtle and romantic.
--Listen. Pay attention to your favorites and try to figure out how they got that sound.
The closer is a rundown of some guitar greats and how they got their sounds: Jeff Beck, Clapton, Van Halen, Hendrix, David Gilmour, Andy Summers, The Edge, and Kurt Cobain, to name a few.
The book is a little more than 70 pages and sized to match standard music books. Pics are in black and white. Ross discusses various brands without pushing any of them in a sales pitch, making it clear that the thing that matters in any of this is that you pick what you like to get the sound you want.
Year: 1988/1998
Genre: Music/Technical
Read again? Yup.
One thing a serious musician will spend endless hours and wallet-loads of cash on is getting good tone, whether it's from a guitar or a trumpet. It starts with an instrument that will play in tune--and stay that way. It needs to be comfortable, too--if you're fighting the thing, you're not going to play it well.
Michael Ross starts us out with the instrument itself. The sound you get from an electric guitar depends on more than just plugging it into an amp. The big factor is wood. What's it made from (alder? Ash? Maple?) ? How is the neck attached (bolted on? Glued on? Neck-through-body?)? What's the neck material (maple is typical)? Is it a hollow-body? Solid? Semi-hollow?
From there, you get into string size, scale length, and hardware, all of which contribute to how the guitar itself sounds both before it's plugged in and to the overall sound. Then you've got pickups and controls, on-board electronics...
Lots of choices, there; to the non-musician they might all sound the same. But to a tone junkie, there's a huge difference between the sounds of classic Van Halen, Angus Young, Alex Lifeson, Joe Satriani, Billy Gibbons, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Keith Richards, and James Hetfield. Each has a distinctive sound that begins with his guitar.
Ross doesn't overdo it; he keeps his descriptions clear and non-technical, discussing how each component will affect the overall sound of a guitar.
That's just Chapter One.
With the second, Ross guides us through pickup choices (single-coil, humbucker, active) and location (bridge, neck, middle), wiring, controls (active, passive), and then finally to amplifiers. The amp itself will affect your sound--it doesn't just make the guitar louder, it colors the tone depending on how you play through it.
In Part Two, Ross discusses effects pedals, the tools a guitarist can use to further affect his tone: compression, distortion, preamps, delay, reverb, chorus, flange, and pitch shifters, all available as stand-alone "stomp boxes" or in all-in-one multieffects units.
Part Three sees us putting all this stuff to work; many of the effects sound better when they're arranged in a certain order, but there will be songs when you want a clean sound, your guitar's natural voice, without all the extra trimmings. From here, he looks at "live" vs. "studio" sound and the give and take of using vintage instruments, amps and effects.
His final note is about musicianship: none of these things matters if you don't have the chops. Alex Lifeson will sound like Alex Lifeson no matter what guitar/amp/effects he's using--the instrument's tone is important, but not nearly as important as what Lifeson does with it. The single most important part of your sound is...you.
Ross' advice:
--Play with authority. Play each note like you mean it--even if you screw up. Screw up like you mean it.
--Make your sound and playing fit the song! If you're going to play like Stevie Ray Vaughan, you have to lay into it with both hands. Stevie played hard, till his fingers were bleeding--and he meant it. But you can't play like that if you're supposed to be subtle and romantic.
--Listen. Pay attention to your favorites and try to figure out how they got that sound.
The closer is a rundown of some guitar greats and how they got their sounds: Jeff Beck, Clapton, Van Halen, Hendrix, David Gilmour, Andy Summers, The Edge, and Kurt Cobain, to name a few.
The book is a little more than 70 pages and sized to match standard music books. Pics are in black and white. Ross discusses various brands without pushing any of them in a sales pitch, making it clear that the thing that matters in any of this is that you pick what you like to get the sound you want.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Star Wars: Thrawn 01--Heir to the Empire (Zahn, Timothy)
Rating: 5
Year: 1991
Genre: Sci-Fi / Star Wars
Read again? Yes
I started on this book in late April; it's hard to concentrate on a novel when you're exhausted from kidney surgery, so it's no fault of Zahn's.
This was the first Star Wars novel I found in the years after "Return of the Jedi." I devoured it in a matter of hours, all 400-plus pages, and immediately wanted the next book in the trilogy. That one was only out in hardcover, but I gladly snapped it up and devoured it as well.
It's been 5 years since the Rebel victory against the Galactic Empire at the Battle of Endor. The second Death Star is gone, the Emperor and Darth Vader are dead. The remnants of the Empire still hold onto parts of the galaxy, but until recently they've been without a leader.
Grand Admiral Thrawn was a rarity in the Empire: he's not human. This blue-skinned man with glowing red eyes was one of the Emperor's master strategists. Now he's providing the leadership--and victories--the Imperial Remnant badly needs. Thrawn intends to bring down the New Republic and bring the Empire back to its former glory.
Meanwhile, the New Republic has established Coruscant as its capital planet, as it was for the Old Republic...and for the Empire. Luke Skywalker hasn't been able to sense any disturbances in the Force that would point to this being a bad decision, but he's uneasy.
Han Solo and Leia Organa are married; she's pregnant with twins. While her husband is out in the galaxy trying to scare up some of his old smuggling contacts with the offer of honest shipping jobs, Leia is up to her shoulders keeping the New Republic's government going.
Thrawn leads several lightning raids against minor Republic assets, forcing their overtaxed fleet to spread itself thinner and thinner and leading us to wonder why he needs stolen mining equipment and a deranged Dark Jedi. I won't spoil it, because it's pretty damn creative.
Unlike Alan Dean Foster and Brian Daley, Zahn's not giving us a crappy science fiction novel that uses Star Wars words. He's got a feel for the people that was sorely lacking in any of the movie novelizations or the early spinoffs by Daley and Foster. One nice touch is that the main characters--Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, and Lando Calrissian--all have history with each other. Zahn uses this for inside jokes and tag-lines, as in one scene with Han, Leia and Luke:
I really liked that callback to the argument between Han and Leia from "The Empire Strikes Back." Little moments like this add a lot to the "feel" of the characters.
About the only thing I didn't like is some of the euphemized slang terms that everyone in sci-fi seems to indulge in. Zahn uses "cloak-and-blade" in place of cloak-and-dagger, which isn't as bad as Daley's "howlrunner" in place of "Space Wolf." But given that a ship is a ship, and so many other common items have the same names (or are "translated" for us into English), why not call a dagger a dagger?
Maybe I should drop a point for it, but Zahn has done such a good job that I can cringe but let it pass.
Year: 1991
Genre: Sci-Fi / Star Wars
Read again? Yes
I started on this book in late April; it's hard to concentrate on a novel when you're exhausted from kidney surgery, so it's no fault of Zahn's.
This was the first Star Wars novel I found in the years after "Return of the Jedi." I devoured it in a matter of hours, all 400-plus pages, and immediately wanted the next book in the trilogy. That one was only out in hardcover, but I gladly snapped it up and devoured it as well.
It's been 5 years since the Rebel victory against the Galactic Empire at the Battle of Endor. The second Death Star is gone, the Emperor and Darth Vader are dead. The remnants of the Empire still hold onto parts of the galaxy, but until recently they've been without a leader.
Grand Admiral Thrawn was a rarity in the Empire: he's not human. This blue-skinned man with glowing red eyes was one of the Emperor's master strategists. Now he's providing the leadership--and victories--the Imperial Remnant badly needs. Thrawn intends to bring down the New Republic and bring the Empire back to its former glory.
Meanwhile, the New Republic has established Coruscant as its capital planet, as it was for the Old Republic...and for the Empire. Luke Skywalker hasn't been able to sense any disturbances in the Force that would point to this being a bad decision, but he's uneasy.
Han Solo and Leia Organa are married; she's pregnant with twins. While her husband is out in the galaxy trying to scare up some of his old smuggling contacts with the offer of honest shipping jobs, Leia is up to her shoulders keeping the New Republic's government going.
Thrawn leads several lightning raids against minor Republic assets, forcing their overtaxed fleet to spread itself thinner and thinner and leading us to wonder why he needs stolen mining equipment and a deranged Dark Jedi. I won't spoil it, because it's pretty damn creative.
Unlike Alan Dean Foster and Brian Daley, Zahn's not giving us a crappy science fiction novel that uses Star Wars words. He's got a feel for the people that was sorely lacking in any of the movie novelizations or the early spinoffs by Daley and Foster. One nice touch is that the main characters--Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, and Lando Calrissian--all have history with each other. Zahn uses this for inside jokes and tag-lines, as in one scene with Han, Leia and Luke:
"Yeah, as it happens, I do," Han said, his voice hardening. "I also have a pretty good idea what could happen if our late pals with the stokhli sticks brought friends with them."
For a long minute Leia stared at him, and Luke sensed the momentary anger fading from her mind. "You still shouldn't have left without consulting me first," she said.
"You're right," Han conceded. "But I didn't want to take the time. If they did have friends, those friends probably had a ship." He tried a tentative smile. "There wasn't time to discuss it in committee."
Leia smiled lopsidedly in return. "I am not a committee," she said wryly.
And with that, the brief storm passed and the tension was gone. Someday, Luke promised himself, he would get around to asking one of them just what that particular private joke of theirs referred to.
I really liked that callback to the argument between Han and Leia from "The Empire Strikes Back." Little moments like this add a lot to the "feel" of the characters.
About the only thing I didn't like is some of the euphemized slang terms that everyone in sci-fi seems to indulge in. Zahn uses "cloak-and-blade" in place of cloak-and-dagger, which isn't as bad as Daley's "howlrunner" in place of "Space Wolf." But given that a ship is a ship, and so many other common items have the same names (or are "translated" for us into English), why not call a dagger a dagger?
Maybe I should drop a point for it, but Zahn has done such a good job that I can cringe but let it pass.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Projects for Guitarists (Anderton, Craig)
Rating: 5
Year: 1995
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Of my three project books, this is the one I never really cracked open. By the time I got this one, my interest in building my own guitar effects--and my interest in electronics--went on a back shelf in favor of other things.
This isn't a re-packaging of Anderton's "Electronic Projects for Musicians"; he does give some basics in the first couple of chapters, but the 35 projects in this book are all new, many gathered from Anderton's columns in Guitar Player Magazine):
Wall-wart tamer (mini extension cord with switch)
AC adapter hum-buster
Making crossfade & pan-pot pedals
Effects-order switcher
Power/Status indicator monitor
Stereo/Mono breakout box
Buffer Board
"Clarifier" On-board preamp/EQ
Beat the DI blues with IGGY (direct-injection box)
Frequency Booster
Phase switcher
AC power supply/battery eliminator
AC-powered practice amp
Signal switcher
Volume pedal de-scratcher
Cheap & Cheerful (Guitar) tone mods
Humbucking Pickup Tricks
Pots & Pans (pan-pot add-on to guitars)
Telecaster Rewiring
Balanced/Unbalanced Adapter
Direct Injector
Tape Recorder to Echo-unit conversion
Building a Better Bypass
Restoring Vintage Effects
Vintage Effects de-hisser
Adding Presets to Vintage Effects
Go/No-Go Cord Tester
Testing Impedance
LED Level Meter
"Tri-Test" Cord Checker
Designing an on-board (in-guitar) pre-amp
Octave-doubling fuzz
Quadrafuzz
Rocktave Divider
"Stack in a Box" tube preamp
One very helpful section helps you translate between American and International capacitor values (this information would have been useful in Penfold's book).
Well-written, with plenty of drawings and parts lists. There's no "sound page" as with Anderton's other book, but I won't quibble over something like that.
Year: 1995
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Of my three project books, this is the one I never really cracked open. By the time I got this one, my interest in building my own guitar effects--and my interest in electronics--went on a back shelf in favor of other things.
This isn't a re-packaging of Anderton's "Electronic Projects for Musicians"; he does give some basics in the first couple of chapters, but the 35 projects in this book are all new, many gathered from Anderton's columns in Guitar Player Magazine):
Wall-wart tamer (mini extension cord with switch)
AC adapter hum-buster
Making crossfade & pan-pot pedals
Effects-order switcher
Power/Status indicator monitor
Stereo/Mono breakout box
Buffer Board
"Clarifier" On-board preamp/EQ
Beat the DI blues with IGGY (direct-injection box)
Frequency Booster
Phase switcher
AC power supply/battery eliminator
AC-powered practice amp
Signal switcher
Volume pedal de-scratcher
Cheap & Cheerful (Guitar) tone mods
Humbucking Pickup Tricks
Pots & Pans (pan-pot add-on to guitars)
Telecaster Rewiring
Balanced/Unbalanced Adapter
Direct Injector
Tape Recorder to Echo-unit conversion
Building a Better Bypass
Restoring Vintage Effects
Vintage Effects de-hisser
Adding Presets to Vintage Effects
Go/No-Go Cord Tester
Testing Impedance
LED Level Meter
"Tri-Test" Cord Checker
Designing an on-board (in-guitar) pre-amp
Octave-doubling fuzz
Quadrafuzz
Rocktave Divider
"Stack in a Box" tube preamp
One very helpful section helps you translate between American and International capacitor values (this information would have been useful in Penfold's book).
Well-written, with plenty of drawings and parts lists. There's no "sound page" as with Anderton's other book, but I won't quibble over something like that.
Electronic Projects for Musicians (Anderton, Craig)
Rating: 5
Year: 1975, 1980
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Around the same time I was learning to play guitar--late '80s, early '90s--I was also into electronics.
I figured it'd be fun to build my own guitar effects and such...but I never built anything. I studied, planned, tinkered with stomp boxes I already had, but to this day I've yet to start or finish any of Anderton's example projects.
It's not him. It's me. Always wanted to say that.
The book's a reasonably comprehensive mini electronics course. In the first four chapters, Anderton introduces various electronic components and where to source them, what sort of tools you'll need, and assembly techniques, enclosures, soldering, testing, and the all-important "smoke test" when the project either catches fire or works like it's supposed to.
Chapter 5 introduces the books' 27 projects, including a simple pre-amp, headphone amp, tone controls, distortion, an 8-input mixer, phaser, talk box (think Joe Walsh or Peter Frampton), and a noise gate...hell, here's the list:
Preamp
Metronome
Passive tone control
Headphone amp
Mini-amp
Ultra-fuzz
Bass fuzz
Compressor/Limiter
Ring Modulator
Dual-filter voicing unit
Adding bypass switches to effects
Guitar rewiring
Bipolar AC adaptor
Treble booster
Electronic footswitch
Tuning standard
Super Tone Control
8-in, 1-out mixer
Using a volt-ohm-millammeter
Practice play-along
Phase shifter
Making patch cords
Talk box
Tube-sound fuzz
Envelope Follower
Spluffer
Noise gate
Chapter 6 discusses different ways of patching the effects together, since your overall sound will be affected by the order in which effects are connected.
As a bonus, my copy of the book came with a flimsy record page with examples of many of the effects in action.
Looking over the list, I can't see me building a Tuning Standard because in the past 20 years small tuners have become cheap and small enough to fit in your guitar case. Most of the rest might bear revisiting, though--I'll need to dig out my big folder full of scribbled notes and schematics. It's always more fun to just look at the stuff, try to figure out how it works.
Overall, the book's well-written and illustrated, with parts lists for each project and plenty of assembly photos. Of the three books like this in my collection, this is the best.
Year: 1975, 1980
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Around the same time I was learning to play guitar--late '80s, early '90s--I was also into electronics.
I figured it'd be fun to build my own guitar effects and such...but I never built anything. I studied, planned, tinkered with stomp boxes I already had, but to this day I've yet to start or finish any of Anderton's example projects.
It's not him. It's me. Always wanted to say that.
The book's a reasonably comprehensive mini electronics course. In the first four chapters, Anderton introduces various electronic components and where to source them, what sort of tools you'll need, and assembly techniques, enclosures, soldering, testing, and the all-important "smoke test" when the project either catches fire or works like it's supposed to.
Chapter 5 introduces the books' 27 projects, including a simple pre-amp, headphone amp, tone controls, distortion, an 8-input mixer, phaser, talk box (think Joe Walsh or Peter Frampton), and a noise gate...hell, here's the list:
Preamp
Metronome
Passive tone control
Headphone amp
Mini-amp
Ultra-fuzz
Bass fuzz
Compressor/Limiter
Ring Modulator
Dual-filter voicing unit
Adding bypass switches to effects
Guitar rewiring
Bipolar AC adaptor
Treble booster
Electronic footswitch
Tuning standard
Super Tone Control
8-in, 1-out mixer
Using a volt-ohm-millammeter
Practice play-along
Phase shifter
Making patch cords
Talk box
Tube-sound fuzz
Envelope Follower
Spluffer
Noise gate
Chapter 6 discusses different ways of patching the effects together, since your overall sound will be affected by the order in which effects are connected.
As a bonus, my copy of the book came with a flimsy record page with examples of many of the effects in action.
Looking over the list, I can't see me building a Tuning Standard because in the past 20 years small tuners have become cheap and small enough to fit in your guitar case. Most of the rest might bear revisiting, though--I'll need to dig out my big folder full of scribbled notes and schematics. It's always more fun to just look at the stuff, try to figure out how it works.
Overall, the book's well-written and illustrated, with parts lists for each project and plenty of assembly photos. Of the three books like this in my collection, this is the best.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Myth #3: Myth Directions (Asprin, Robert)
Rating: 5
Year: 1982
Genre: Fantasy/Comedy
Read again? Yes.
Skeeve and Aahz are bored. The weather in Possiltum is rainy and miserable and there's not much for the Court Magician to do.
When Tanda (the hottie assassin chick) pops in looking for a shopping assistant, Aahz reluctantly agrees to let his student go with her. She lets Skeeve in on a secret: they're going to be looking for a birthday present for Aahz!
They visit several dimensions off the beaten path, looking for the Perfect Something Aahz could never have seen, ending up on Jahk, where Tanda spots a hideous Trophy. She tells Skeeve the rest of the secret: they're stealing the Trophy.
The caper ends with the Trophy missing, Tanda arrested for a theft she didn't commit, and Skeeve and Aahz putting together...a sports team?
Year: 1982
Genre: Fantasy/Comedy
Read again? Yes.
Skeeve and Aahz are bored. The weather in Possiltum is rainy and miserable and there's not much for the Court Magician to do.
When Tanda (the hottie assassin chick) pops in looking for a shopping assistant, Aahz reluctantly agrees to let his student go with her. She lets Skeeve in on a secret: they're going to be looking for a birthday present for Aahz!
They visit several dimensions off the beaten path, looking for the Perfect Something Aahz could never have seen, ending up on Jahk, where Tanda spots a hideous Trophy. She tells Skeeve the rest of the secret: they're stealing the Trophy.
The caper ends with the Trophy missing, Tanda arrested for a theft she didn't commit, and Skeeve and Aahz putting together...a sports team?
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