I found this in The Guardian recently:
Should Science Fiction and Fantasy Do More Than Entertain?
First off, I have to say this again, but I love The Guardian for treating fantasy literature like a serious topic. I like fantasy enough to write this blog, and I've got more than 400 posts by now (ok, this is number 401). Also, once again, the comments are cogent and the writers of said comments well-informed. Which is great, because I'm used to either the deliberately insulting comments on the Memebase and Failblog families of sites, or else the idiots on news sites who start blaming "liberals" for everything (and, full disclosure, I am a flaming liberal and proud of it).
Anyway, if you're interested in what academics are saying about fantasy, there are a couple of good links to check out in the article I linked to above. I think it's cool that any academics are even thinking about fantasy; myself, I'm just a hobbyist -- here talking about what I love to read about.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Harry Potter e-Books
So if you didn't already know it, the Harry Potter books are now available as e-books, but only from J.K. Rowling's website. Read more about that here and here.
Lots of things could be said about this, but I guess one important thing I took away from the story is how Rowling was super smart to keep the e-book rights for herself. (I'm coming at this from the perspective of an aspiring novelist. I don't have an agent and there is tons of advice out there about what you should accept or not accept in a contract.) The first I heard of the Harry Potter books was when I was in college the first time around, so late 1990s I guess. In other words, way before the e-book boom. I don't remember the precise timing of the advent of PDFs but I think at the time, and even for some years afterwards, it was not a given that people would have the free Acrobat Reader. So e-books were a distant dream at that point. (MP3s were popular, I remember Napster from back then.)
Not much else to say about this; I'm having trouble concentrating because I'm sitting in the closet with my cat who has inflammatory bowel disease and refuses to eat without me keeping her company.
Lots of things could be said about this, but I guess one important thing I took away from the story is how Rowling was super smart to keep the e-book rights for herself. (I'm coming at this from the perspective of an aspiring novelist. I don't have an agent and there is tons of advice out there about what you should accept or not accept in a contract.) The first I heard of the Harry Potter books was when I was in college the first time around, so late 1990s I guess. In other words, way before the e-book boom. I don't remember the precise timing of the advent of PDFs but I think at the time, and even for some years afterwards, it was not a given that people would have the free Acrobat Reader. So e-books were a distant dream at that point. (MP3s were popular, I remember Napster from back then.)
Not much else to say about this; I'm having trouble concentrating because I'm sitting in the closet with my cat who has inflammatory bowel disease and refuses to eat without me keeping her company.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Advice from James Patterson
I'm not sure if I've ever read a James Patterson book. I know that's surprising, considering the saturation of the market. I do think I have one, that my mom left here when she visited one time. But I thought he did have some good advice, quoted in The Writer's Almanac:
"If you think of the story that you tell that's your favorite personal story, or funny story, it doesn't have flashy sentences. It doesn't have too much detail. It just tells the story. That isn't, for whatever reason, the way most people write books. But it seemed to me that there was no reason that it couldn't be the way at least one person writes books. I said: 'I'm going to stop writing the parts that people skim.'"
I don't feel so bad about my dearth of narrative description and my excess of dialogue now. (And the characters in my manuscript talk about stuff that's important: what their problems are, how they're going to deal with said problems, etc.)
"If you think of the story that you tell that's your favorite personal story, or funny story, it doesn't have flashy sentences. It doesn't have too much detail. It just tells the story. That isn't, for whatever reason, the way most people write books. But it seemed to me that there was no reason that it couldn't be the way at least one person writes books. I said: 'I'm going to stop writing the parts that people skim.'"
I don't feel so bad about my dearth of narrative description and my excess of dialogue now. (And the characters in my manuscript talk about stuff that's important: what their problems are, how they're going to deal with said problems, etc.)
Writing Prompts
I have an active enough imagination that I don't need writing prompts to get ideas or to get the pen moving. I don't really suffer from writer's block because I have worked out most of what needs to happen in my head, before I even get to the manuscript. And I've finally learned that you don't have to be perfect the first time around. There can be all kinds of editing going on afterwards. (I do sometimes get writer's block with my PhD dissertation; in that case, I know what needs to go in a particular section, but not how to get started. Though creative writing prompts wouldn't help there, I suppose.)
Anyway, if anyone is interested in writing prompts, I've found the following collections of them on the web:
Anyway, if anyone is interested in writing prompts, I've found the following collections of them on the web:
- creativewritingprompts.com
- Creative Writing Prompts from Writer's Digest
- A writing prompts tumblr
- Daily Writing Prompts for Journal Writing
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Something Else Which Made Me Sad
A little while ago, I wrote about the low standards for passing grades on the New York State Regents Exam writing section.
Now, here is something else which pains me: American High School Students Are Reading Books at 5th-Grade-Appropriate Levels from The Huffington Post
We did read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school, sophomore year, I think. I haven't read it since then, though we did also watch the movie in a class I took in college. The book is not a difficult read, it's true, but the age-appropriateness somewhat depends on class discussions and activities surrounding the actual material. There are some very nasty things going on in that book, though seen through a child's eyes. When you talk about what Scout maybe didn't understand, is when it could become more suited to a high school audience.
We also read Animal Farm and The Great Gatsby (from the slideshow accompanying the piece). Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games didn't exist at the time (I graduated in 1996).
I never felt particularly challenged by novels I read in high school. But I was always just way above the reading level of the required reading. Because I enjoyed reading, long before it became a chore associated with schoolwork. So I read in my spare time, and advanced quickly in my reading level. Books I remember reading on my own in high school include:
And even with that background, I wasn't ready for Harvard. It was a hell of a learning curve when I got there. And if I wasn't ready for college (albeit a difficult college), then all these Twilight readers sure as hell won't be.
Now, here is something else which pains me: American High School Students Are Reading Books at 5th-Grade-Appropriate Levels from The Huffington Post
We did read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school, sophomore year, I think. I haven't read it since then, though we did also watch the movie in a class I took in college. The book is not a difficult read, it's true, but the age-appropriateness somewhat depends on class discussions and activities surrounding the actual material. There are some very nasty things going on in that book, though seen through a child's eyes. When you talk about what Scout maybe didn't understand, is when it could become more suited to a high school audience.
We also read Animal Farm and The Great Gatsby (from the slideshow accompanying the piece). Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games didn't exist at the time (I graduated in 1996).
I never felt particularly challenged by novels I read in high school. But I was always just way above the reading level of the required reading. Because I enjoyed reading, long before it became a chore associated with schoolwork. So I read in my spare time, and advanced quickly in my reading level. Books I remember reading on my own in high school include:
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- Candide by Voltaire
- Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X
- Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
And even with that background, I wasn't ready for Harvard. It was a hell of a learning curve when I got there. And if I wasn't ready for college (albeit a difficult college), then all these Twilight readers sure as hell won't be.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
How to Write Like a Scientist
This blog is not about science writing, I know, but I've been doing a lot of science writing lately and I found this piece hilarious: How to Write Like a Scientist by Adam Ruben
If you are in the sciences, this will totally ring true to you. Although "lone" is acceptable in chemistry because there are lone pairs on electrons.
One thing Dr. Ruben laments is having to use the same word multiple times in close proximity due to the restricted vocabulary of scientific writing. I feel his pain; there is no synonym for "atmosphere" when you are specifically referring to the mixture of gases that surrounds the Earth. At least when you are describing compounds you have made, you can say "yielded," or "produced," or "synthesized," or "generated." (This is another problem for me.)
Why this last paragraph? Well, I have read a lot of fantasy lately where people don't understand the concept of varying the language. See my review of Legacy of Kings by C.S. Friedman for a particularly egregious example. I'm reading Echoes of Betrayal by Elizabeth Moon now, and just came across one sentence with "different" and "differently" only a few words apart.
I also liked the item about the number of references you include, not so relevant to fantasy literature but I have almost 180 in my doctoral dissertation so far, and I've only written the introduction. (In fairness, I do have to cover quite a few topics.) The author list thing is pretty accurate, as well.
The piece probably won't be funny to you unless you're in the field, but I certainly enjoyed it.
If you are in the sciences, this will totally ring true to you. Although "lone" is acceptable in chemistry because there are lone pairs on electrons.
One thing Dr. Ruben laments is having to use the same word multiple times in close proximity due to the restricted vocabulary of scientific writing. I feel his pain; there is no synonym for "atmosphere" when you are specifically referring to the mixture of gases that surrounds the Earth. At least when you are describing compounds you have made, you can say "yielded," or "produced," or "synthesized," or "generated." (This is another problem for me.)
Why this last paragraph? Well, I have read a lot of fantasy lately where people don't understand the concept of varying the language. See my review of Legacy of Kings by C.S. Friedman for a particularly egregious example. I'm reading Echoes of Betrayal by Elizabeth Moon now, and just came across one sentence with "different" and "differently" only a few words apart.
I also liked the item about the number of references you include, not so relevant to fantasy literature but I have almost 180 in my doctoral dissertation so far, and I've only written the introduction. (In fairness, I do have to cover quite a few topics.) The author list thing is pretty accurate, as well.
The piece probably won't be funny to you unless you're in the field, but I certainly enjoyed it.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
PayPal and Censorship, Part Two
I wrote a few weeks ago about PayPal and Censorship. A little bit has happened since then, so I thought I'd share it in case you were following the story. (These stories are not in publications I usually monitor, so it would've been easy to miss them.)
At any rate, PayPal says its objection was that some erotica (about the forbidden topics listed in my previous post such as bestiality or rape) also includes images. Well, banning payments because a particular publication *might* include images seems excessive, to me. But the PCWorld article articulates this position pretty well, so I don't think I'll go repeating it here. (It's not purely fact-based reporting, it's definitely an opinion piece with some facts mixed in.) It sounds like a lot of other people had the same opinion, though, because the blanket policy has been altered and now books will be evaluated individually and only for image content.
- PayPal Eases Curb on Obscene E-Books from The Wall Street Journal
- PayPal Policy Raises Question: Content Sanitized for Whose Protection? from PCWorld
- Protests Force PayPal to Drop Attempts at E-Book Censorship from The San Jose Mercury News
At any rate, PayPal says its objection was that some erotica (about the forbidden topics listed in my previous post such as bestiality or rape) also includes images. Well, banning payments because a particular publication *might* include images seems excessive, to me. But the PCWorld article articulates this position pretty well, so I don't think I'll go repeating it here. (It's not purely fact-based reporting, it's definitely an opinion piece with some facts mixed in.) It sounds like a lot of other people had the same opinion, though, because the blanket policy has been altered and now books will be evaluated individually and only for image content.
Monday, March 26, 2012
More Web Tools for Writers
I posted recently (okay, two months ago) about a couple of web tools for writers. I thought I would see what else was out there, and I found a number of web pages that had rather long lists of such tools. Here are a few:
- 100 Useful Web Tools for Writers: Organizes tools into categories (organization, inspiration, networking). I'm not sure how applicable all of these are, as I notice eFax is in the list. So few people even send faxes anymore. (Granted, it says at the bottom that the page was posted in 2008. I guess a few things have changed since then.) But the presence of eFax makes me wonder about some of the rest. I'm sure there are a few good (and free) links in there, but I would imagine there are a few broken links as well.
- Writer's Toolbox: 35 Best Tools for Writing Online: There are a few things I haven't heard of here, but a lot of these are like, duh. (For example, some of the blogging and microblogging sites like WordPress or Twitter, or social networking with LinkedIn -- these are things that shouldn't be a mystery to anyone with a bit of web savvy.) And for what it's worth, CareerBuilder is absolutely terrible at finding jobs that are actually appropriate based on the content of my resumé. It keeps suggesting things like HVAC instructor. Which is something I don't know the first thing about doing. So take these with a grain of salt, as well.
- 22 Web App Tools for Writers and Editors: With only 22, there's not much here that's not covered elsewhere. So I don't have a lot of comments.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Review - Mockingjay
As if you didn't already know this, Mockingjay is the third book in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games and Catching Fire being the other two). Major spoilers below, so if you don't want to read them, stop now.
This book is a departure from the first two; there are no official Hunger Games being held, though there are still games-like challenges to overcome. There's also much less bad science (see my reviews of Book One and Book Two for more on that). There are some lizard/human hybrids which couldn't exist, but compared to some of Collins's past transgressions in this area, it's really not much. (These also don't play a huge part.) Speaking of past transgressions, now I'm really confused about the wolf or dog mutts -- Katniss says they do have the eyes of the dead contestants. But in Catching Fire, Peeta says they didn't.
The societal organization of District 13 is a little unbelievable. It's almost all underground; they even grow turnips down there...All lives are pretty much controlled from the point in the morning when people get up and have their schedules stamped on their arms (they say "tattooed" in the book). Interestingly, Katniss ignores her schedule a lot of the time and doesn't seem to get into much trouble. It could be that since she's a super-important person to the cause, she can get away with more. I hope that's it.
I will say that it's curious that Katniss is given a special bow, and Finnick is given a trident as a weapon. I understand why they might have originally gained proficiency in these weapons, not being allowed anything better by the Peacekeepers and the people in Capitol. But being given a trident as a weapon of war, when there are guns and landmines, just doesn't make a lot of sense. (Also, explosive arrows seem kind of dangerous -- bump those the wrong way and you go up in a puff of smoke, with your quiver.) You can say all you want about symbolism, but on a practical level, it doesn't add up. In fairness, Katniss is trained with a gun as well.
I kind of feel like I just have less to say about this book than I do about the previous two. I would still recommend reading it; it's fast-paced with lots of chapters ending with cliffhangers, and you really do want to know what happens. Katniss's personality hasn't changed a whole lot; she still doesn't want to follow the rules and Gale and Peeta are still both interested in her. So the love triangle is still going on.
Side note on language: "who" is still used when "whom" is meant. Repeatedly. It's not that hard to get right, but either Collins or her editor has a mental block with this. Also, at one point, Katniss says something is "more deadly" now. "More deadly" is grammatically incorrect. So there are comparative and superlative forms of adjectives, right? And a two-syllable adjective ending in "y" (like "deadly") drops the "y" and adds "ier" in the comparative form. (Click here for the rules and a lot of examples.) So it should be "deadlier." It's not a matter of choosing to use the word "more" for effect. There is no choice here. One is right, and one is not. Okay, enough about that.
Maybe a little plot summary now? Since I'm having trouble coming up with more to say, and that could get me moving. When last we left Katniss and company, she had been pulled from the arena by the rebels from District 13 and Peeta had been captured and imprisoned in the Capitol. The rebels from District 13 launch an invasion; first they try to unify the districts, using Katniss in propaganda films, and then they invade Capitol. Katniss is mostly a figurehead, someone for the troops to rally around, so to speak. So she mostly dresses up for television. One of the rebels has figured out how to break into the television signal from Capitol, so these are broadcast to everyone. Long story short, though, the rebels are successful, though Prim is killed in the fighting. (She was being trained as a medic/doctor.)
Now that I think about it, there's a lot in this book that's similar to the previous books, but it feels different, which is good, because The Hunger Games and Catching Fire were much more alike. Collins is branching out here. But back to plot summary...a good chunk of the book is Katniss leading a team into the Capitol. This part is a little bit like a video game; they navigate block by block, trying to capture good footage and avoid traps -- and luckily, they have a map of where many of the traps are, because it was smuggled out. Their map is outdated, but better than nothing. In ones and twos, though, the team gets picked off until only Katniss, Peeta, Gale, and two others are left. The tide of battle turns so fast that by the time they get to the presidential palace, the rebels have won.
Couple of complicating factors, of course. When Peeta was rescued from Capitol, he'd been "hijacked," or caused to react negatively to Katniss. Through the help of a lot of people, though, he turns around. But there is this feeling that he can't be trusted, which adds to the tension. Also, Katniss encounters the imprisoned President Snow and he forms some doubts in her mind as to the motivations of President Coin of District 13 who intends herself as Snow's replacement. Coin and Katniss have an uneasy relationship; Coin likes to be in control and starts to see Katniss as a rival. Not that Katniss wants to be president, but whoever she throws her support behind will probably end up in charge. So Katniss has to bite her tongue sometimes and agree when she doesn't want to.
I think that's what happens when Katniss agrees to the holding of a final, symbolic Hunger Games to be played by children from Capitol. At first, I'm like, what? But then I started thinking, Coin wants the Games, and Katniss wants Coin to let her (Katniss) be the one to kill President Snow. So Katniss has to agree to what Coin wants, to get her shot at Snow. And then I totally missed it in the execution scene, but Katniss killed Coin, not Snow. I just read the name wrong (easy to do with a four-letter, one-syllable name, I guess) and then I had to go back and check that part again because the following events didn't make sense. But that is entirely my own fault; I was probably reading too fast because I wanted to find out what happened next.
I'm not sure I understand Katniss's suicidal tendencies towards the end of the book, but she has been through quite a lot at a fairly young age, and has been forced to make some tough decisions. She's seen a lot of violent deaths and has been the cause of a few. So maybe her reaction is authentic. It's been a long time since I was a 17-year-old female, and my life hasn't been that hard, really. So maybe because I haven't been there, I can't identify. I honestly don't think I would like Katniss much, as a person. She's often brusque and moody, and she's too mean to Buttercup, but I guess it's hard for her to get attached to an animal when she has to hunt for food. (I love cats, so I hate to see people being mean to them.) I give Collins credit for making the characters sympathetic (in that they stand for what's right and good, and you want them to win) but also for giving them some tendencies that demonstrate their imperfections.
I feel like I know the characters a lot better in this book (at least Katniss's core group) than in the previous books. Gale has some actual personality now, Finnick's past is more complicated, and Haymitch adds a dimension or two as well. This is an improvement, then. Some of this may be from tidbits dropped in the previous novels, but I really think Book 3 is better in this area. Other people are still stock characters (Prim, President Snow, President Coin, Boggs, etc.). And Peeta spends most of his time as a victim or a deranged lunatic, only gaining his own self back towards the end of the book, and perhaps not fully.
Collins kills a lot of characters off in this book. Way more than J.K. Rowling does in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Including people you might not expect to get killed off. Sure, when Katniss's team goes into Capitol, few of them end up alive at the end. Although it surprises me that Collins killed Finnick, especially after he was reunited with Annie, and married, and everything. But being surprised is good.
I like that the ending is happy, but not happily ever after. I mean, Capitol is overthrown, Katniss decides to settle down with Peeta, Coin and Snow are both gone, the Hunger Games have ended for good, and there are hints, at least, that life is going to be much fairer for people than it was before. But, lots of people have died, Katniss has grown apart from Gale (who doesn't die, but gets a job elsewhere). Katniss has also grown apart from her mother, though that relationship was fraught with difficulties ever since Katniss's father died, before The Hunger Games began.
I read someone's complaints about character names on Amazon.com, and I have to agree, they can be pretty silly. Some could be real names or nicknames: Effie, Johanna, Annie. Some are influenced by literature, history, and the classics (Castor, Pollux, Messalla, Cressida). But some are just silly: Peeta, Finnick, Haymitch, even Katniss. Names can be an important part of a culture (think of Tolkien), but they seem to be cobbled together haphazardly here.
With the release of The Hunger Games movie, we've been hearing a lot in the media about themes in these books. It seems this is one case where the author actually set out to examine such themes as hunger, inequality, repressive governments, and violence as entertainment. (Most of the time, I don't think people have anything thematic in mind when they write, and readers and critics overinterpret.) Although I don't really know that I learned anything as a result of this. Maybe younger people (the book's intended audience, after all) who don't watch CNN and/or read The New York Times and who therefore aren't as in tune with current events, would be influenced to start thinking about these things. It could be a good starting point for parents to discuss topics like the violence in Syria with their children, so they know that some of these things still go on today, in the real world. (Just please, please don't use The Hunger Games trilogy as a starting point for discussing anything whatsoever related to science.)
This book is a departure from the first two; there are no official Hunger Games being held, though there are still games-like challenges to overcome. There's also much less bad science (see my reviews of Book One and Book Two for more on that). There are some lizard/human hybrids which couldn't exist, but compared to some of Collins's past transgressions in this area, it's really not much. (These also don't play a huge part.) Speaking of past transgressions, now I'm really confused about the wolf or dog mutts -- Katniss says they do have the eyes of the dead contestants. But in Catching Fire, Peeta says they didn't.
The societal organization of District 13 is a little unbelievable. It's almost all underground; they even grow turnips down there...All lives are pretty much controlled from the point in the morning when people get up and have their schedules stamped on their arms (they say "tattooed" in the book). Interestingly, Katniss ignores her schedule a lot of the time and doesn't seem to get into much trouble. It could be that since she's a super-important person to the cause, she can get away with more. I hope that's it.
I will say that it's curious that Katniss is given a special bow, and Finnick is given a trident as a weapon. I understand why they might have originally gained proficiency in these weapons, not being allowed anything better by the Peacekeepers and the people in Capitol. But being given a trident as a weapon of war, when there are guns and landmines, just doesn't make a lot of sense. (Also, explosive arrows seem kind of dangerous -- bump those the wrong way and you go up in a puff of smoke, with your quiver.) You can say all you want about symbolism, but on a practical level, it doesn't add up. In fairness, Katniss is trained with a gun as well.
I kind of feel like I just have less to say about this book than I do about the previous two. I would still recommend reading it; it's fast-paced with lots of chapters ending with cliffhangers, and you really do want to know what happens. Katniss's personality hasn't changed a whole lot; she still doesn't want to follow the rules and Gale and Peeta are still both interested in her. So the love triangle is still going on.
Side note on language: "who" is still used when "whom" is meant. Repeatedly. It's not that hard to get right, but either Collins or her editor has a mental block with this. Also, at one point, Katniss says something is "more deadly" now. "More deadly" is grammatically incorrect. So there are comparative and superlative forms of adjectives, right? And a two-syllable adjective ending in "y" (like "deadly") drops the "y" and adds "ier" in the comparative form. (Click here for the rules and a lot of examples.) So it should be "deadlier." It's not a matter of choosing to use the word "more" for effect. There is no choice here. One is right, and one is not. Okay, enough about that.
Maybe a little plot summary now? Since I'm having trouble coming up with more to say, and that could get me moving. When last we left Katniss and company, she had been pulled from the arena by the rebels from District 13 and Peeta had been captured and imprisoned in the Capitol. The rebels from District 13 launch an invasion; first they try to unify the districts, using Katniss in propaganda films, and then they invade Capitol. Katniss is mostly a figurehead, someone for the troops to rally around, so to speak. So she mostly dresses up for television. One of the rebels has figured out how to break into the television signal from Capitol, so these are broadcast to everyone. Long story short, though, the rebels are successful, though Prim is killed in the fighting. (She was being trained as a medic/doctor.)
Now that I think about it, there's a lot in this book that's similar to the previous books, but it feels different, which is good, because The Hunger Games and Catching Fire were much more alike. Collins is branching out here. But back to plot summary...a good chunk of the book is Katniss leading a team into the Capitol. This part is a little bit like a video game; they navigate block by block, trying to capture good footage and avoid traps -- and luckily, they have a map of where many of the traps are, because it was smuggled out. Their map is outdated, but better than nothing. In ones and twos, though, the team gets picked off until only Katniss, Peeta, Gale, and two others are left. The tide of battle turns so fast that by the time they get to the presidential palace, the rebels have won.
Couple of complicating factors, of course. When Peeta was rescued from Capitol, he'd been "hijacked," or caused to react negatively to Katniss. Through the help of a lot of people, though, he turns around. But there is this feeling that he can't be trusted, which adds to the tension. Also, Katniss encounters the imprisoned President Snow and he forms some doubts in her mind as to the motivations of President Coin of District 13 who intends herself as Snow's replacement. Coin and Katniss have an uneasy relationship; Coin likes to be in control and starts to see Katniss as a rival. Not that Katniss wants to be president, but whoever she throws her support behind will probably end up in charge. So Katniss has to bite her tongue sometimes and agree when she doesn't want to.
I think that's what happens when Katniss agrees to the holding of a final, symbolic Hunger Games to be played by children from Capitol. At first, I'm like, what? But then I started thinking, Coin wants the Games, and Katniss wants Coin to let her (Katniss) be the one to kill President Snow. So Katniss has to agree to what Coin wants, to get her shot at Snow. And then I totally missed it in the execution scene, but Katniss killed Coin, not Snow. I just read the name wrong (easy to do with a four-letter, one-syllable name, I guess) and then I had to go back and check that part again because the following events didn't make sense. But that is entirely my own fault; I was probably reading too fast because I wanted to find out what happened next.
I'm not sure I understand Katniss's suicidal tendencies towards the end of the book, but she has been through quite a lot at a fairly young age, and has been forced to make some tough decisions. She's seen a lot of violent deaths and has been the cause of a few. So maybe her reaction is authentic. It's been a long time since I was a 17-year-old female, and my life hasn't been that hard, really. So maybe because I haven't been there, I can't identify. I honestly don't think I would like Katniss much, as a person. She's often brusque and moody, and she's too mean to Buttercup, but I guess it's hard for her to get attached to an animal when she has to hunt for food. (I love cats, so I hate to see people being mean to them.) I give Collins credit for making the characters sympathetic (in that they stand for what's right and good, and you want them to win) but also for giving them some tendencies that demonstrate their imperfections.
I feel like I know the characters a lot better in this book (at least Katniss's core group) than in the previous books. Gale has some actual personality now, Finnick's past is more complicated, and Haymitch adds a dimension or two as well. This is an improvement, then. Some of this may be from tidbits dropped in the previous novels, but I really think Book 3 is better in this area. Other people are still stock characters (Prim, President Snow, President Coin, Boggs, etc.). And Peeta spends most of his time as a victim or a deranged lunatic, only gaining his own self back towards the end of the book, and perhaps not fully.
Collins kills a lot of characters off in this book. Way more than J.K. Rowling does in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Including people you might not expect to get killed off. Sure, when Katniss's team goes into Capitol, few of them end up alive at the end. Although it surprises me that Collins killed Finnick, especially after he was reunited with Annie, and married, and everything. But being surprised is good.
I like that the ending is happy, but not happily ever after. I mean, Capitol is overthrown, Katniss decides to settle down with Peeta, Coin and Snow are both gone, the Hunger Games have ended for good, and there are hints, at least, that life is going to be much fairer for people than it was before. But, lots of people have died, Katniss has grown apart from Gale (who doesn't die, but gets a job elsewhere). Katniss has also grown apart from her mother, though that relationship was fraught with difficulties ever since Katniss's father died, before The Hunger Games began.
I read someone's complaints about character names on Amazon.com, and I have to agree, they can be pretty silly. Some could be real names or nicknames: Effie, Johanna, Annie. Some are influenced by literature, history, and the classics (Castor, Pollux, Messalla, Cressida). But some are just silly: Peeta, Finnick, Haymitch, even Katniss. Names can be an important part of a culture (think of Tolkien), but they seem to be cobbled together haphazardly here.
With the release of The Hunger Games movie, we've been hearing a lot in the media about themes in these books. It seems this is one case where the author actually set out to examine such themes as hunger, inequality, repressive governments, and violence as entertainment. (Most of the time, I don't think people have anything thematic in mind when they write, and readers and critics overinterpret.) Although I don't really know that I learned anything as a result of this. Maybe younger people (the book's intended audience, after all) who don't watch CNN and/or read The New York Times and who therefore aren't as in tune with current events, would be influenced to start thinking about these things. It could be a good starting point for parents to discuss topics like the violence in Syria with their children, so they know that some of these things still go on today, in the real world. (Just please, please don't use The Hunger Games trilogy as a starting point for discussing anything whatsoever related to science.)
Blogging and Journalism
Even though this blog is supposed to be mostly about fantasy literature, I do veer into other topics now and again: blogging, e-books, proper English grammar and usage, etc. So the following discussion from The New York Times was quite interesting to me:
Are All Bloggers Journalists?
I'm not really the kind of blogger who's in danger here, as this blog is pretty much all link aggregation, reviews, and commentary. I don't do interviews, I don't publish news stories. I'm a secondary source. Hopefully I provide a few laughs or some information to people who are seeking either of those things. (Granted, I also don't commit slander or libel. Everything is labeled as my own opinion. I don't say "author X is a child molester" because that would be wrong, unless he had been convicted of that offense. I do understand that not everyone has the same sense of morality as I do, and that there are people who make unsubstantiated allegations for the sake of spite.)
But, there are some bloggers out there who DO report the news. And the laws were written long enough ago that they don't adequately cover new media issues. The First Amendment should apply to all.
Are All Bloggers Journalists?
I'm not really the kind of blogger who's in danger here, as this blog is pretty much all link aggregation, reviews, and commentary. I don't do interviews, I don't publish news stories. I'm a secondary source. Hopefully I provide a few laughs or some information to people who are seeking either of those things. (Granted, I also don't commit slander or libel. Everything is labeled as my own opinion. I don't say "author X is a child molester" because that would be wrong, unless he had been convicted of that offense. I do understand that not everyone has the same sense of morality as I do, and that there are people who make unsubstantiated allegations for the sake of spite.)
But, there are some bloggers out there who DO report the news. And the laws were written long enough ago that they don't adequately cover new media issues. The First Amendment should apply to all.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Fanfiction AND Plagiarism (I Know, Again)
Last week, my Google news kept pointing me to stories about Fifty Shades of Grey. (I haven't read it, nor do I intend to. Twilight is bad enough, or so I've been told. Twilight fan fiction has got to be unbearable. But it was interesting to read the discussion surrounding it. Some of which I'll compile below in case you're interested in pursuing it.)
This brings up the whole fan fiction thing again. I've also found some discussions of the ethics of making money off fan fiction; this one is from Jami Gold and is pretty well thought out. (Actually, I poked around some of her other blog posts and found some interesting discussions. It seems she's an author, though I've never heard of her.)
I don't anticipate my own work ever leading to fan fiction, but then, there are some surprising things on the web. I would probably opt for the route of "cease and desist" letters from a lawyer and asking for fan fiction with my characters to be removed from the web.
Though there are some defenders of fan fiction, and I suppose I'll link to one of them, as well. I would say that there is a difference between adaptation and fan fiction. I will say that the list I link to in this paragraph, is comprehensive. Though I disagree with the person who wrote the post. Mostly because it reads like an apology for fan fiction and is written by someone who reads and writes it. The person is just not objective enough. Rather like a religious zealot. ("Transformative on a scale that's hard to describe?" Talk about superfluity...)
I hate to tell you, but just because something gets read by a lot of people doesn't make it good. And I'm sorry to say, but just because someone has a PhD, doesn't mean he or she is intelligent. Trust me, I'm in a graduate program at a respectable institution and there are people enrolled who really shouldn't be there. The author of the piece is also super-defensive. Here's the thing: no one ever criticizes authors who create original, non-derivative fiction, for creating original, non-derivative fiction. People might quibble with the quality or the content of original work, but people like me, who write only our own ideas, don't need to get defensive because there's nothing shady about NOT ripping off someone else's ideas.
By the way, plagiarism is not unique to Twilight fan fiction. It exists for the Harry Potter fanfic crowd, as well.
- Popular, raunchy book series and the fan fiction debate from chron.com
- "Fifty Shades of Grey": Publishing's Sexiest Trend from NPR
- Fifty Shades of Grey Began as Twilight Fan Fiction from Galleycat
This brings up the whole fan fiction thing again. I've also found some discussions of the ethics of making money off fan fiction; this one is from Jami Gold and is pretty well thought out. (Actually, I poked around some of her other blog posts and found some interesting discussions. It seems she's an author, though I've never heard of her.)
I don't anticipate my own work ever leading to fan fiction, but then, there are some surprising things on the web. I would probably opt for the route of "cease and desist" letters from a lawyer and asking for fan fiction with my characters to be removed from the web.
Though there are some defenders of fan fiction, and I suppose I'll link to one of them, as well. I would say that there is a difference between adaptation and fan fiction. I will say that the list I link to in this paragraph, is comprehensive. Though I disagree with the person who wrote the post. Mostly because it reads like an apology for fan fiction and is written by someone who reads and writes it. The person is just not objective enough. Rather like a religious zealot. ("Transformative on a scale that's hard to describe?" Talk about superfluity...)
I hate to tell you, but just because something gets read by a lot of people doesn't make it good. And I'm sorry to say, but just because someone has a PhD, doesn't mean he or she is intelligent. Trust me, I'm in a graduate program at a respectable institution and there are people enrolled who really shouldn't be there. The author of the piece is also super-defensive. Here's the thing: no one ever criticizes authors who create original, non-derivative fiction, for creating original, non-derivative fiction. People might quibble with the quality or the content of original work, but people like me, who write only our own ideas, don't need to get defensive because there's nothing shady about NOT ripping off someone else's ideas.
By the way, plagiarism is not unique to Twilight fan fiction. It exists for the Harry Potter fanfic crowd, as well.
Cover Blurbs
Long ago, I decided never to buy a book based on cover blurbs. I noticed that a lot of the time, with new authors, the cover blurb would be from a more established writer under contract from the same publisher. Like it was part of the job.
Some authors call every book they read the greatest novel of the ______ (year, decade, century). You learn who these people are pretty quickly, and that you should distrust their opinions. Some authors write a couple of sentences of description that are no more than a statement of fact, and don't offer an evaluation one way or the other.
The blurbs in some books are so over the top as to be comical (I'm thinking of Stormlord's Exile by Glenda Larke). I've noticed a trend lately, also, to include blurbs from random (sometimes anonymous) blogs.
Here's a discussion about blurbs from the New York Times. (Sorry to all you non-subscribers; I gather they're knocking down the number of free articles per month to 10.) Some big-name people weigh in (e.g. Stephen King) and lots of different opinions are expressed. I didn't realize how many of these blurbs are not even written by the authors they're attributed to.
Probably my favorite blurb of all time is biologist P.Z. Myers's assessment of Kirk Cameron's and Ray Comfort's semi-bowdlerized, rambling, and not always topical edition of The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition. (Note: by all means, click the link and read the reviews. But please don't buy that edition of that book.)
Myers's blurb reads: "It's like a book with multiple personality disorder — two parts that absolutely hate each other; an intro that is the inane product of one of the most stupid minds of our century, and a science text that is the product of one of the greatest minds of the author's century. - PZ Myers, biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris"
This was actually on the website for the freely-downloadable version of the book (circa 2009, I'm not sure it's still up). I really don't get why they would post this because it's absolutely not complimentary to Cameron and Comfort. I actually liked this blurb so much that I spent like 10 whole minutes looking for the quote online.
Some authors call every book they read the greatest novel of the ______ (year, decade, century). You learn who these people are pretty quickly, and that you should distrust their opinions. Some authors write a couple of sentences of description that are no more than a statement of fact, and don't offer an evaluation one way or the other.
The blurbs in some books are so over the top as to be comical (I'm thinking of Stormlord's Exile by Glenda Larke). I've noticed a trend lately, also, to include blurbs from random (sometimes anonymous) blogs.
Here's a discussion about blurbs from the New York Times. (Sorry to all you non-subscribers; I gather they're knocking down the number of free articles per month to 10.) Some big-name people weigh in (e.g. Stephen King) and lots of different opinions are expressed. I didn't realize how many of these blurbs are not even written by the authors they're attributed to.
Probably my favorite blurb of all time is biologist P.Z. Myers's assessment of Kirk Cameron's and Ray Comfort's semi-bowdlerized, rambling, and not always topical edition of The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition. (Note: by all means, click the link and read the reviews. But please don't buy that edition of that book.)
Myers's blurb reads: "It's like a book with multiple personality disorder — two parts that absolutely hate each other; an intro that is the inane product of one of the most stupid minds of our century, and a science text that is the product of one of the greatest minds of the author's century. - PZ Myers, biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris"
This was actually on the website for the freely-downloadable version of the book (circa 2009, I'm not sure it's still up). I really don't get why they would post this because it's absolutely not complimentary to Cameron and Comfort. I actually liked this blurb so much that I spent like 10 whole minutes looking for the quote online.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Sentence by Sentence, or Not?
Here's a link to some online-only content from the New York Times: My Life's Sentences by Jhumpa Lahiri
And here's a response: The Art of Writing - The Story's the Thing by Lisa Cron
Full disclosure: I've never read anything of Lahiri's. Her piece strikes me as pretentious, however. ("For some time now, I have been reading predominantly in Italian." Sometimes I think people do stuff like that, just so they can say they do stuff like that, in an attempt to feel superior to others.) Also, reading "My Life's Sentences" reminds me of what I hate about literary fiction: being so obsessed with the beauty of the language that no point is made, no action occurs, nothing happens. Actually, that last sentence of mine is a bit of a dig at Lahiri: she seems to have so much trouble constructing sentences that instead of choosing a word or phrase, she chooses three or four, often separated by commas. ("Sentences are the bricks as well as the mortar, the motor as well as the fuel. They are the cells, the individual stitches.") I think actually reading one of her books would aggravate me to the point that I might not finish it. And that's saying a lot.
Crom's response is much more sensible. It's also shorter and it makes a point and therefore, it appeals to me on a level that I don't think Lahiri ever could. (I don't think Lahiri even had a point. Sentences are important? That means nothing.)
And here's a response: The Art of Writing - The Story's the Thing by Lisa Cron
Full disclosure: I've never read anything of Lahiri's. Her piece strikes me as pretentious, however. ("For some time now, I have been reading predominantly in Italian." Sometimes I think people do stuff like that, just so they can say they do stuff like that, in an attempt to feel superior to others.) Also, reading "My Life's Sentences" reminds me of what I hate about literary fiction: being so obsessed with the beauty of the language that no point is made, no action occurs, nothing happens. Actually, that last sentence of mine is a bit of a dig at Lahiri: she seems to have so much trouble constructing sentences that instead of choosing a word or phrase, she chooses three or four, often separated by commas. ("Sentences are the bricks as well as the mortar, the motor as well as the fuel. They are the cells, the individual stitches.") I think actually reading one of her books would aggravate me to the point that I might not finish it. And that's saying a lot.
Crom's response is much more sensible. It's also shorter and it makes a point and therefore, it appeals to me on a level that I don't think Lahiri ever could. (I don't think Lahiri even had a point. Sentences are important? That means nothing.)
Review - Catching Fire
Today I'll review Catching Fire, the second volume in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. While I think you will want to read this book if you enjoyed The Hunger Games, I feel like this may be the least important book in the series. (I'm midway through Mockingjay now.)
Why do I say this? Well, let me lay out what happens in each volume (I'm making some assumptions about the end of Mockingjay although I will admit to having read the epilogue before finishing the book). Briefly, we have:
But, Catching Fire is at least a little forgettable in that much of it seems to be a copy of The Hunger Games only with more experience under Katniss's and Peeta's belts. I'm actually having trouble coming up with additional things to say in this review. I don't have quite the indictment of Collins's understanding of science as I did last time, except that most of the events that happen in the arena this time around don't make a lot of sense. Acid fog that eats your skin? Well, I can believe you could aerosolize a chemical that might do something like this. But you couldn't just draw it away, nor could you really control the spread. Blood rain? No. Mutant orange attack monkeys? I suppose this is plausible; baboons can be pretty nasty and changing fur color is probably not the most difficult genetic engineering task ever attempted. (Glow in the dark cats exist, after all. I so want one. But that is not the point of this paragraph, so I'll move on.)
The jabberjays bother me. First, as I said in my review of The Hunger Games, they just don't make sense from a technological standpoint. They can hear and repeat back conversations exactly. So can recording devices. Now, seeing as Panem has television and keeps around footage of past Games, I think it's safe to say recording and playback devices exist there. And, I don't believe for a minute a bird would ever exist, by genetic engineering or not, that could mimic a specific person's voice so exactly so as to cause confusion in one of that person's loved ones. (But, again, recording and playback devices are capable of this.) Have you ever heard a parrot talk? Sometimes they're downright difficult to understand, plus, even Alex the African Gray Parrot only ever had a vocabulary of 150 words, and, well, he sounded like a parrot. He was a pretty remarkable bird, probably one of, if not the, best-trained birds around, and it was a thirty-year process with him. Jays, meanwhile, are from the same family as crows and though birds from this family are recognized as being pretty smart, they can't talk.
Not to mention the logistics of the whole jabberjay scene. It may be that specific birds were trained to mimic specific people, and only those birds who could mimic Prim were turned loose when Katniss was in the jungle. But it seems improbable that that could work. It would be too much interference on the part of Capitol -- that is, whoever was releasing the jays would be seen. Because if you release a bird from far away, you have no guarantee that it's going to fly towards the target. But if you release it close by, you've got a reasonable chance of it being heard.
The whole force field around the arena was comical from a scientific perspective. Just because something exists in science fiction movies, doesn't mean it'll ever happen in real life. And since Collins wants us to believe Panem is a far future North America (or US, at the least), and since she never mentions magic, we have to believe that the things that happen in Panem could happen here, in the future, as well, That sets important limits on the science, but these limits are disregarded due to what I presume to be lack of knowledge on the author's part.
A force field that can not only stop mass, but bounce it back at you (e.g. the nuts that get thrown at it) has to have mass. Remember collisions from first-semester physics (if you took first semester physics)? I suppose I would call an encounter between a small object and the force field an inelastic collision because some of the kinetic energy is lost as heat. Or electricity. Collins isn't too particular about this. But then it's also sort of like an elastic collision, because Haymitch let the last tribute (besides himself) in his Games throw her axe, which then bounced back perfectly and killed her. Well, it can't be both. And the equations for both types of collision have mass terms in them, for both involved objects. As for electric and magnetic fields, they're all around us right now. Connections to human health conditions are tenuous (based on actual medical studies), and at any rate, if they're all around us, well, then we can walk through them. They don't have mass, and they can't stop us. So an electromagnetic field that is capable of simultaneous elastic and inelastic collisions with objects such as nuts? There is just no way the physics works. (Oh yeah, and it's doubtful something like that would nearly kill Peeta.) Actual scientific findings on force fields are slim, as well.
Maybe you think I'm unfairly picking on Collins. And it's true, every time there is a force field in a movie or book or video game, it's crap. Just keep that in mind. Collins is certainly not unique on this point.
I was a little concerned about the speed of travel during Peeta's and Katniss's "victory tour" but I checked, and a Seattle to Miami trip is about 3350 miles. If you really had a train that could go 250 miles an hour, their travel speed isn't unreasonable and only involves 13-14 hours of travel time, total. (Experimental maglev trains that go up to 360 miles an hour do exist now.) I do wonder about the level of maintenance of the train tracks, as the population seems to be pretty spread out, with a few centers in the districts and in Capitol and not much in between. Work crews would have to be going out to check things a lot. But then it hardly makes economic sense to maintain something like that when people don't even seem to be allowed to travel between districts.
I think that's all the science I'll talk about for now. I just took a break to read some Amazon reviews and they're really not all that helpful. Negative reviewers complain about the Peeta-Katniss-Gale love triangle, which didn't bother me that much. I didn't really like all the focus on wedding dresses and Katniss fawning over Peeta, because it wasn't true to her character. I understand that she's playing a role, though.
Katniss really is the only character who's not one-dimensional. A lot of first-person narratives are like this; we only know what the main character is thinking because she's the one telling us the story. We can speculate all day long as to the motives of others. But we will never know these motives. We can only learn about people through their words and actions, and one action can easily be interpreted in many ways unless we know the intent behind it. This is not a problem specific to Collins; rather, it could impact any first-person story.
The writing was very similar to The Hunger Games, with the same present tense (which I still hate) narrative. It seemed like nearly every chapter ended in a cliffhanger. I have this OCD habit where I try to only stop reading at a chapter boundary. But this caused me a lot of consternation, because I did want to find out what happened next.
And that is truly where Collins's talent lies: getting you to keep reading. Catching Fire was like its predecessor in that it was fast-paced, easy to read, and included enough action and twists and turns to keep me turning the pages. If you can look past the bad science (and that's HARD for me to do), I'd recommend reading Catching Fire as soon as you're finished with The Hunger Games! Despite all the criticisms I have come up with, I still enjoyed the book. (And I learned a few things by analyzing it...) A lot of times, I start coming up with a list of problems I had with a book, and that totally ruins my enjoyment. Not so with this trilogy.
Why do I say this? Well, let me lay out what happens in each volume (I'm making some assumptions about the end of Mockingjay although I will admit to having read the epilogue before finishing the book). Briefly, we have:
- Book One: We learn about Panem: the districts, the Capitol, the Hunger Games.
- Book Two: Another Hunger Games, some rebellion in the districts. Clues are dropped such that it seems something is going on that Katniss doesn't know about.
- Book Three: Rebellion/revolution.
But, Catching Fire is at least a little forgettable in that much of it seems to be a copy of The Hunger Games only with more experience under Katniss's and Peeta's belts. I'm actually having trouble coming up with additional things to say in this review. I don't have quite the indictment of Collins's understanding of science as I did last time, except that most of the events that happen in the arena this time around don't make a lot of sense. Acid fog that eats your skin? Well, I can believe you could aerosolize a chemical that might do something like this. But you couldn't just draw it away, nor could you really control the spread. Blood rain? No. Mutant orange attack monkeys? I suppose this is plausible; baboons can be pretty nasty and changing fur color is probably not the most difficult genetic engineering task ever attempted. (Glow in the dark cats exist, after all. I so want one. But that is not the point of this paragraph, so I'll move on.)
The jabberjays bother me. First, as I said in my review of The Hunger Games, they just don't make sense from a technological standpoint. They can hear and repeat back conversations exactly. So can recording devices. Now, seeing as Panem has television and keeps around footage of past Games, I think it's safe to say recording and playback devices exist there. And, I don't believe for a minute a bird would ever exist, by genetic engineering or not, that could mimic a specific person's voice so exactly so as to cause confusion in one of that person's loved ones. (But, again, recording and playback devices are capable of this.) Have you ever heard a parrot talk? Sometimes they're downright difficult to understand, plus, even Alex the African Gray Parrot only ever had a vocabulary of 150 words, and, well, he sounded like a parrot. He was a pretty remarkable bird, probably one of, if not the, best-trained birds around, and it was a thirty-year process with him. Jays, meanwhile, are from the same family as crows and though birds from this family are recognized as being pretty smart, they can't talk.
Not to mention the logistics of the whole jabberjay scene. It may be that specific birds were trained to mimic specific people, and only those birds who could mimic Prim were turned loose when Katniss was in the jungle. But it seems improbable that that could work. It would be too much interference on the part of Capitol -- that is, whoever was releasing the jays would be seen. Because if you release a bird from far away, you have no guarantee that it's going to fly towards the target. But if you release it close by, you've got a reasonable chance of it being heard.
The whole force field around the arena was comical from a scientific perspective. Just because something exists in science fiction movies, doesn't mean it'll ever happen in real life. And since Collins wants us to believe Panem is a far future North America (or US, at the least), and since she never mentions magic, we have to believe that the things that happen in Panem could happen here, in the future, as well, That sets important limits on the science, but these limits are disregarded due to what I presume to be lack of knowledge on the author's part.
A force field that can not only stop mass, but bounce it back at you (e.g. the nuts that get thrown at it) has to have mass. Remember collisions from first-semester physics (if you took first semester physics)? I suppose I would call an encounter between a small object and the force field an inelastic collision because some of the kinetic energy is lost as heat. Or electricity. Collins isn't too particular about this. But then it's also sort of like an elastic collision, because Haymitch let the last tribute (besides himself) in his Games throw her axe, which then bounced back perfectly and killed her. Well, it can't be both. And the equations for both types of collision have mass terms in them, for both involved objects. As for electric and magnetic fields, they're all around us right now. Connections to human health conditions are tenuous (based on actual medical studies), and at any rate, if they're all around us, well, then we can walk through them. They don't have mass, and they can't stop us. So an electromagnetic field that is capable of simultaneous elastic and inelastic collisions with objects such as nuts? There is just no way the physics works. (Oh yeah, and it's doubtful something like that would nearly kill Peeta.) Actual scientific findings on force fields are slim, as well.
Maybe you think I'm unfairly picking on Collins. And it's true, every time there is a force field in a movie or book or video game, it's crap. Just keep that in mind. Collins is certainly not unique on this point.
I was a little concerned about the speed of travel during Peeta's and Katniss's "victory tour" but I checked, and a Seattle to Miami trip is about 3350 miles. If you really had a train that could go 250 miles an hour, their travel speed isn't unreasonable and only involves 13-14 hours of travel time, total. (Experimental maglev trains that go up to 360 miles an hour do exist now.) I do wonder about the level of maintenance of the train tracks, as the population seems to be pretty spread out, with a few centers in the districts and in Capitol and not much in between. Work crews would have to be going out to check things a lot. But then it hardly makes economic sense to maintain something like that when people don't even seem to be allowed to travel between districts.
I think that's all the science I'll talk about for now. I just took a break to read some Amazon reviews and they're really not all that helpful. Negative reviewers complain about the Peeta-Katniss-Gale love triangle, which didn't bother me that much. I didn't really like all the focus on wedding dresses and Katniss fawning over Peeta, because it wasn't true to her character. I understand that she's playing a role, though.
Katniss really is the only character who's not one-dimensional. A lot of first-person narratives are like this; we only know what the main character is thinking because she's the one telling us the story. We can speculate all day long as to the motives of others. But we will never know these motives. We can only learn about people through their words and actions, and one action can easily be interpreted in many ways unless we know the intent behind it. This is not a problem specific to Collins; rather, it could impact any first-person story.
The writing was very similar to The Hunger Games, with the same present tense (which I still hate) narrative. It seemed like nearly every chapter ended in a cliffhanger. I have this OCD habit where I try to only stop reading at a chapter boundary. But this caused me a lot of consternation, because I did want to find out what happened next.
And that is truly where Collins's talent lies: getting you to keep reading. Catching Fire was like its predecessor in that it was fast-paced, easy to read, and included enough action and twists and turns to keep me turning the pages. If you can look past the bad science (and that's HARD for me to do), I'd recommend reading Catching Fire as soon as you're finished with The Hunger Games! Despite all the criticisms I have come up with, I still enjoyed the book. (And I learned a few things by analyzing it...) A lot of times, I start coming up with a list of problems I had with a book, and that totally ruins my enjoyment. Not so with this trilogy.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Reading Your Own Manuscript
I had intended to write a bunch of blog posts tonight but my review of The Hunger Games took me nearly two hours (mostly spent picking apart the science). I did want to mention one thing that's been on my mind lately, with respect to my manuscript.
So, the fifth draft of my manuscript is done. I'm winding down, but I've got at least one more full revision left in me before I get utterly bored. I am focusing on "ing" words that lead off dependent clauses. Because I don't want to do command-F for any word that contains "ing" (which would find every instance of building, cooking, earring, etc.), I'm actually reading the manuscript with a highlighter and a pen. Not trying to alter language at this point, just reading.
First of all, I'm absolutely pleased that I don't start so many clauses with "ing" words. There are a few that need to be addressed, however, and I've highlighted them in orange on a printed-out copy of my manuscript, to deal with later.
Second of all, I had mentioned previously, I ran a computer program to determine which words and phrases I use too often in my manuscript. This does a good job, globally, but it doesn't catch certain words used too much in close proximity. Well, this reading for "ing" words also helps me catch instances of using the same word two or three times in the same paragraph. I'm circling those in purple pen for later revision, as well.
Anyway, I think a number of authors I've read lately would benefit from having READ their own manuscripts, considered them as real books, instead of projects. If you're writing something now, seriously, consider doing this. You'll never be quite removed enough to take the role of an average reader, but you'll be surprised at what you catch.
So, the fifth draft of my manuscript is done. I'm winding down, but I've got at least one more full revision left in me before I get utterly bored. I am focusing on "ing" words that lead off dependent clauses. Because I don't want to do command-F for any word that contains "ing" (which would find every instance of building, cooking, earring, etc.), I'm actually reading the manuscript with a highlighter and a pen. Not trying to alter language at this point, just reading.
First of all, I'm absolutely pleased that I don't start so many clauses with "ing" words. There are a few that need to be addressed, however, and I've highlighted them in orange on a printed-out copy of my manuscript, to deal with later.
Second of all, I had mentioned previously, I ran a computer program to determine which words and phrases I use too often in my manuscript. This does a good job, globally, but it doesn't catch certain words used too much in close proximity. Well, this reading for "ing" words also helps me catch instances of using the same word two or three times in the same paragraph. I'm circling those in purple pen for later revision, as well.
Anyway, I think a number of authors I've read lately would benefit from having READ their own manuscripts, considered them as real books, instead of projects. If you're writing something now, seriously, consider doing this. You'll never be quite removed enough to take the role of an average reader, but you'll be surprised at what you catch.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Review - The Hunger Games
It's extremely difficult for me to read something these days and not pick it apart. So I'm going to write this review in reverse -- offer up my final assessment, then get into the gritty details. That way, if you just want to know whether or not to read this book, you can have your answer right away.
Also, please be advised this is a review of the book, not the movie.
So, should you read The Hunger Games? Yeah. It's not terribly long (my edition has 374 pages with fairly wide line spacing), and it's actually fairly engrossing. I spent 2 or 3 hours finishing it without realizing how much time had gone by. I had a good guess about one character's outcome (seeing as there are sequels) but as to the rest, I didn't know how it would end, and I wanted to find out. I found Katniss to be a compelling character, and I cared about what happened to her.
Should you let your kids read this? I'm not the best judge of that. Despite the premise (that 24 kids have to fight each other to the death, with only one surviving), there's not much in the way of violence. When there is death, you know that it has happened, but the detail isn't too graphic. Perhaps there's more death than in, say, the Harry Potter books, but those -- especially the later ones -- were equally grim in outlook and lots of parents found those appropriate reading material for their children.
Do adults want to read this? I mean, it is considered YA fiction (The Hunger Games is put out by Scholastic Press). I, personally, read YA fantasy periodically, so it's not too much of a stretch for me to pick these books up (there are two sequels if you are one of those people living a rock who didn't already know that). If you hate YA fiction, this may not be for you. But the narrative is interesting enough to keep adult interest, if you're willing to use me as a guide. (Check out some of my other reviews to get a sense of my preferences.)
To preview the rest of this review, I'm going to touch on language and style, then get right into the science.
First, language and style. This book is written in the present tense, with flashbacks in past tense. I am expressing a personal bias when I say this, but I HATE reading fiction that's written in the present tense. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I can't really explain why, other than to say that it's unusual enough that whenever I see someone trying to write in present tense, I feel like they're trying to be edgy or something, and it's just not working. Most fiction is in past tense and that is how I'm used to reading it. Also, the transitions between present and past tense are kind of jarring, to me. I kept looking for Suzanne Collins (the author...I don't think I've mentioned her name yet) to slip up and use past tense when she meant to use present tense, etc. To her credit, I didn't notice any. That's not to say that there weren't any there, but if there were, I read right through them.
Not much stood out to me when it came to the language, other than a misused "who" when "whom" was meant. (As my boyfriend pointed out to me, most people are entirely consistent on their use of "who" and "whom" -- they never use "whom" at all. And they're wrong. But I digress.)
Sometimes the detail was a little excessive. I mention this because since this book is written from a first-person perspective, it should really be the character who is telling the story, and occasionally it didn't feel that way. Early on, Katniss says something about her "long, dark braid." People just don't describe themselves this way. (Authors who have developed pictures of characters in their minds, might.) Let me give you an example. I work in a chemistry lab, because I'm a graduate student in chemistry. Sometimes my hair gets in the way. Did I say "sometimes my waist-length black hair gets in the way?" No, I didn't. (And yes, I do have waist-length black hair.) Because it's my hair, I deal with it every day, and once I got used to the color after dyeing it some 18 years ago, I stopped obsessing over it. But I don't really need to go on here, I think you get the point.
And now, the part I've been waiting for -- the science. Which is not at all strong in this book. In fact, the science is probably the biggest weakness. (I'm going to include social science here in addition to biology.) The fact that the science is bad may not mean a whole lot to the non-specialist, but I have degrees in government, biology, and chemistry, and so I have a lot to say.
First of all, the social science. This is sort of a catch-all term I'll use for politics, sociology, economics, etc. The society that's been set up is profoundly unrealistic. A central district called "Capitol" serves as the center of government for twelve other districts known only by numbers. Each district is known for something. District 12, where Katniss is from, does coal mining. This is not much of a stretch, as we're told the region used to be known as Appalachia. Different districts are known for different things. This could be a classic case of comparative advantage. Except that Suzanne Collins has absolutely no academic background in economics or political science, if you look at the information on her Wikipedia page. (She's studied things like theater, communications, and writing.) It's not so bad for District 12, but one of the other districts (11 maybe?) specializes in agriculture. While it's never explicitly stated, it sounds as if this district is supposed to supply food to the entire country. Which doesn't seem realistic to me. (In the next book we learn that seafood comes from another district, so maybe it's more spread around than it seems, but that is absolutely not expressed in volume 1.) Especially since, while Katniss poaches regularly, other districts have much stricter rules, and people don't poach to supplement their meager food rations.
Why isn't this realistic? First, different geographical regions are going to have different growing seasons. And different capabilities in the first place. The desert Southwest isn't going to be good at agriculture, period. Minnesota is going to have too short of a growing season for a lot of crops. Other places are going to have difficulties with specific crops (wheat, citrus, etc.). You can't (or shouldn't, anyway) concentrate all your agriculture in one area, anyway. What if there's a natural disaster that wipes out all the crops? The people of Panem (the country in which the story takes place) seem to be no strangers to natural disasters. If you grow all your food in one place, and it's wiped out, everyone starves. If you grow your food in a lot of places, you get more variety, and if one area is devastated, the other areas can fill in the gaps. Second, I just don't think it's enough. One district supplying all the grain for the whole country? When all another one makes is electronics? I'm not saying all electronics production has to be spread out; that actually can be concentrated. In a way that food production can't be. (There are no spoilage issues with electronics. You can transport them halfway across the globe if you want. This doesn't work as well with fruits and vegetables, for example.)
Another issue I have is with the sizes of the districts. This could be geographical size, or population size, or both. I'm never clear on how big the populations of these places are. Let's assume, for a moment, that war and natural disasters and diseases have claimed a large portion of the population, and even that some land has been swallowed up by the sea due to global warming. This shrinks the size of the country, but not by nearly enough. It's patently unclear how big the districts are, though we get some sense that they have different populations. Katniss's district seems small enough to be a small town. It feels as if she knows everyone in it, even if that wasn't Collins's intent. It's small enough that on Reaping Day (when tributes for the Hunger Games are chosen), every single inhabitant can show up in the same town square. So I'm guessing this is not 1/12 of the population of all of the districts, that District 12 is smaller than the rest. But it's really hard to say, based on the information we're actually given. I'm not sure that Collins thought this out, and if she did, it just didn't make it into the final draft...
Perhaps more realistic is the decadence of the residents of Capitol in comparison to the difficult lives of those in the districts. We've seen plenty of dictatorships fall and/or experience rebellions in the past year (in real life), and after the fact, we hear about all kinds of excesses from those close to the top, contrasted with the poverty and deprivation of all the rest. Even so, I'm not sure I buy the details. Showers with dozens of buttons that circulate all sorts of oils and soaps and water temperatures in Capitol, and taking baths with water heated on a stove in District 12. Food at the press of a button, Star Trek-style, in Capitol, and people starving to death in District 12. Medical procedures that can remove every scar from your body in Capitol, and people relying on herbalists in District 12. Usually when people heat water on stoves, starve to death, and go to herbalists, they don't also have electricity. But everyone, in all the districts, has television. (Few, by contrast, have telephones. Never mind that the telephone was invented long before television. And rotary phones don't even require electricity to run, whereas TVs certainly do.) Electricity is not always reliable in the districts (it is in Capitol) except during the Hunger Games, which everyone is REQUIRED to watch. Contrast this with real-life countries that have state television and not much else. If you want to watch television, state TV may be the only choice, but you don't have to watch television. You can do something else.
Long story short: in an attempt to set the stage for rebellion in future books, Collins may have gone overboard with the dichotomy between the lifestyle of Capitol's residents and that of everyone else.
By the way, it sounds as if only white people survived the apocalypse/downfall of civilization/war/famine/etc. While Katniss has dark hair and skin of a certain color, I don't believe any of the characters were African-American, Latino, Asian-American, or members of any other ethnic group. I'm not saying there would be a large minority population, but surely SOME ethnic minorities would have survived the wreckage of the USA. (In a fictional land, this wouldn't be an issue. You can make the racial makeup whatever you want. But remember the far future of Who Fears Death? The setting was Sudan and there were people who were clearly black Africans, Arab Africans, and a few who had one parent from each of those groups.)
And now, the life sciences.
Ecology-wise, the animals and plants in District 12 are not so out of the ordinary. I even looked it up, and it's possible for blackberries and strawberries to be in season at the same time (though usually blackberries peak a little later). I had to check because Katniss and Gale eat blackberries on a day they pick strawberries. (Katniss plants are real, by the way. Nightlock berries are not. Check out this list of fictional toxins.) There are turkeys, rabbits, squirrels, and deer, all of which are ubiquitous in large swaths of the country. One issue I might raise is with a lynx that Katniss describes as having killed; she's probably located too far south for the Canada lynx, especially if there was any type of global warming that had occurred (assuming somewhere West Virginia-like for her part of Appalachia). Calling it a bobcat (which is a related species with a more appropriate geographical range) would probably have been a better choice. (Other lynx species only exist in Europe.)
DNA and genetic engineering are the biggest problems, here. There are three different "muttations" described. These are genetically-engineered species and none of them could ever exist without magic. This is coming from a biochemist (me), mind you. The tracker jackers are wasplike organisms and they would be the most realistic of the muttations except that their venom causes hallucinations. Well, that and the actual behaviors associated with them (e.g. following people like a swarm of cartoon-style bees).
Then there are the jabberjays. They are some species of bird that can remember and repeat back entire human conversations. Which is silly, in itself. Why not just plant bugs? If you've got all the technology to genetically engineer entirely new species with all these wacky traits, surely you can conceal a recording device. (Don't forget that President Snow knows about Katniss having kissed Gale, even though no one was around. Or the lack of obvious cameras in the Hunger Games arena -- yet somehow, every moment is caught on tape for posterity.) The real problem I have here is the cross breeding of jabberjays (presumably actual jays, from family Corvidae) with mockingbirds (from family Mimidae) to create the mockingjays. These species are too biologically distant to cross breed. Suzanne Collins, do not pass go. Please proceed directly to Wikipedia and review the biological species concept.
Note: this paragraph was added several days after I wrote the initial review, but prior to posting. I finished Catching Fire last night and Peeta says something near the end that suggests the topic of the rant that follows may not be precisely what it seemed in the first book -- he says that the muttations didn't actually have the eyes of the other contestants. You could interpret this in two ways: (1) Collins never intended the mutts to be genetically engineered hybrids of the children and dogs (or whatever); in this case, the point did NOT get across in The Hunger Games or (2) someone told Collins after the fact that the muttations were stupid and/or impossible and she put this qualifier in the next book to cover her butt.
Moving on to the muttations that come after Katniss, Peeta, and the last kid who dies (forget his name). They are cross-breeds of some type of dog with each of the fallen contestants. Oh, where to begin. Let's assume the people running the games didn't know who the last three contestants were going to be. Let's assume they took DNA from all the contestants, and only released the muttations they made from the dead children and teenagers. If it was even possible to mix two species with completely different numbers of chromosomes (dog species have 78, humans 46), there just wasn't a lot of time between the reaping and the end of the games. Humans have a 9 month gestation period, dogs a little over 2 months. So let's assume DNA was collected from every tribute immediately, and immediately sent to a lab in Capitol. Let's assume it was manipulated to cross it with some breed of dog or something along those lines, and that all the embryos lived (which is absolutely not a guarantee -- even cloning, without genetic manipulation, has a low success rate). Let's assume there was some host mother these could be implanted in, where there wouldn't be rejection of the embryo and miscarriage from strange antigens coming from a hybrid embryo/fetus. Let's assume we're closer to a dog's gestation period, than a human's.
So that's at least six assumptions and a minimum of 10 weeks from DNA collection to full-term pregnancies in the host organism. Now, have you ever SEEN a newborn puppy? Cute, but not the least bit threatening. A large-breed puppy at two months is cuddly and utterly dependent. I've had my Rottweiler since she was that age, and she didn't hit her full size until a year and a half after birth. Humans take much, much longer. So even allowing for all six assumptions outlined in the previous paragraph, and they are pretty much all stretches except for perhaps the collection of DNA, we're at like one and a half to two years from the collection of DNA to organisms large enough and with enough training to do what these doglike muttations did.
You may be wondering why I've included so many links to Wikipedia here. It's because the research was simply not done by Collins. And it doesn't even require effort, really. I found all those links in the 90 minutes I've taken to write this review. Granted, I knew what to look for, with my educational background and all, but the information is freely available to anyone with an internet connection. (A solution, by the way, would simply have been to call this a fantasy and invoke magic. From my perspective, it makes a lot more sense than explaining away something scientifically when the science just isn't there.)
Well, I already offered my recommendation up above. (Consider, if you will, the fact that I thought this was worth reading even in light of all the scientific flaws.)
Also, please be advised this is a review of the book, not the movie.
So, should you read The Hunger Games? Yeah. It's not terribly long (my edition has 374 pages with fairly wide line spacing), and it's actually fairly engrossing. I spent 2 or 3 hours finishing it without realizing how much time had gone by. I had a good guess about one character's outcome (seeing as there are sequels) but as to the rest, I didn't know how it would end, and I wanted to find out. I found Katniss to be a compelling character, and I cared about what happened to her.
Should you let your kids read this? I'm not the best judge of that. Despite the premise (that 24 kids have to fight each other to the death, with only one surviving), there's not much in the way of violence. When there is death, you know that it has happened, but the detail isn't too graphic. Perhaps there's more death than in, say, the Harry Potter books, but those -- especially the later ones -- were equally grim in outlook and lots of parents found those appropriate reading material for their children.
Do adults want to read this? I mean, it is considered YA fiction (The Hunger Games is put out by Scholastic Press). I, personally, read YA fantasy periodically, so it's not too much of a stretch for me to pick these books up (there are two sequels if you are one of those people living a rock who didn't already know that). If you hate YA fiction, this may not be for you. But the narrative is interesting enough to keep adult interest, if you're willing to use me as a guide. (Check out some of my other reviews to get a sense of my preferences.)
To preview the rest of this review, I'm going to touch on language and style, then get right into the science.
First, language and style. This book is written in the present tense, with flashbacks in past tense. I am expressing a personal bias when I say this, but I HATE reading fiction that's written in the present tense. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I can't really explain why, other than to say that it's unusual enough that whenever I see someone trying to write in present tense, I feel like they're trying to be edgy or something, and it's just not working. Most fiction is in past tense and that is how I'm used to reading it. Also, the transitions between present and past tense are kind of jarring, to me. I kept looking for Suzanne Collins (the author...I don't think I've mentioned her name yet) to slip up and use past tense when she meant to use present tense, etc. To her credit, I didn't notice any. That's not to say that there weren't any there, but if there were, I read right through them.
Not much stood out to me when it came to the language, other than a misused "who" when "whom" was meant. (As my boyfriend pointed out to me, most people are entirely consistent on their use of "who" and "whom" -- they never use "whom" at all. And they're wrong. But I digress.)
Sometimes the detail was a little excessive. I mention this because since this book is written from a first-person perspective, it should really be the character who is telling the story, and occasionally it didn't feel that way. Early on, Katniss says something about her "long, dark braid." People just don't describe themselves this way. (Authors who have developed pictures of characters in their minds, might.) Let me give you an example. I work in a chemistry lab, because I'm a graduate student in chemistry. Sometimes my hair gets in the way. Did I say "sometimes my waist-length black hair gets in the way?" No, I didn't. (And yes, I do have waist-length black hair.) Because it's my hair, I deal with it every day, and once I got used to the color after dyeing it some 18 years ago, I stopped obsessing over it. But I don't really need to go on here, I think you get the point.
And now, the part I've been waiting for -- the science. Which is not at all strong in this book. In fact, the science is probably the biggest weakness. (I'm going to include social science here in addition to biology.) The fact that the science is bad may not mean a whole lot to the non-specialist, but I have degrees in government, biology, and chemistry, and so I have a lot to say.
First of all, the social science. This is sort of a catch-all term I'll use for politics, sociology, economics, etc. The society that's been set up is profoundly unrealistic. A central district called "Capitol" serves as the center of government for twelve other districts known only by numbers. Each district is known for something. District 12, where Katniss is from, does coal mining. This is not much of a stretch, as we're told the region used to be known as Appalachia. Different districts are known for different things. This could be a classic case of comparative advantage. Except that Suzanne Collins has absolutely no academic background in economics or political science, if you look at the information on her Wikipedia page. (She's studied things like theater, communications, and writing.) It's not so bad for District 12, but one of the other districts (11 maybe?) specializes in agriculture. While it's never explicitly stated, it sounds as if this district is supposed to supply food to the entire country. Which doesn't seem realistic to me. (In the next book we learn that seafood comes from another district, so maybe it's more spread around than it seems, but that is absolutely not expressed in volume 1.) Especially since, while Katniss poaches regularly, other districts have much stricter rules, and people don't poach to supplement their meager food rations.
Why isn't this realistic? First, different geographical regions are going to have different growing seasons. And different capabilities in the first place. The desert Southwest isn't going to be good at agriculture, period. Minnesota is going to have too short of a growing season for a lot of crops. Other places are going to have difficulties with specific crops (wheat, citrus, etc.). You can't (or shouldn't, anyway) concentrate all your agriculture in one area, anyway. What if there's a natural disaster that wipes out all the crops? The people of Panem (the country in which the story takes place) seem to be no strangers to natural disasters. If you grow all your food in one place, and it's wiped out, everyone starves. If you grow your food in a lot of places, you get more variety, and if one area is devastated, the other areas can fill in the gaps. Second, I just don't think it's enough. One district supplying all the grain for the whole country? When all another one makes is electronics? I'm not saying all electronics production has to be spread out; that actually can be concentrated. In a way that food production can't be. (There are no spoilage issues with electronics. You can transport them halfway across the globe if you want. This doesn't work as well with fruits and vegetables, for example.)
Another issue I have is with the sizes of the districts. This could be geographical size, or population size, or both. I'm never clear on how big the populations of these places are. Let's assume, for a moment, that war and natural disasters and diseases have claimed a large portion of the population, and even that some land has been swallowed up by the sea due to global warming. This shrinks the size of the country, but not by nearly enough. It's patently unclear how big the districts are, though we get some sense that they have different populations. Katniss's district seems small enough to be a small town. It feels as if she knows everyone in it, even if that wasn't Collins's intent. It's small enough that on Reaping Day (when tributes for the Hunger Games are chosen), every single inhabitant can show up in the same town square. So I'm guessing this is not 1/12 of the population of all of the districts, that District 12 is smaller than the rest. But it's really hard to say, based on the information we're actually given. I'm not sure that Collins thought this out, and if she did, it just didn't make it into the final draft...
Perhaps more realistic is the decadence of the residents of Capitol in comparison to the difficult lives of those in the districts. We've seen plenty of dictatorships fall and/or experience rebellions in the past year (in real life), and after the fact, we hear about all kinds of excesses from those close to the top, contrasted with the poverty and deprivation of all the rest. Even so, I'm not sure I buy the details. Showers with dozens of buttons that circulate all sorts of oils and soaps and water temperatures in Capitol, and taking baths with water heated on a stove in District 12. Food at the press of a button, Star Trek-style, in Capitol, and people starving to death in District 12. Medical procedures that can remove every scar from your body in Capitol, and people relying on herbalists in District 12. Usually when people heat water on stoves, starve to death, and go to herbalists, they don't also have electricity. But everyone, in all the districts, has television. (Few, by contrast, have telephones. Never mind that the telephone was invented long before television. And rotary phones don't even require electricity to run, whereas TVs certainly do.) Electricity is not always reliable in the districts (it is in Capitol) except during the Hunger Games, which everyone is REQUIRED to watch. Contrast this with real-life countries that have state television and not much else. If you want to watch television, state TV may be the only choice, but you don't have to watch television. You can do something else.
Long story short: in an attempt to set the stage for rebellion in future books, Collins may have gone overboard with the dichotomy between the lifestyle of Capitol's residents and that of everyone else.
By the way, it sounds as if only white people survived the apocalypse/downfall of civilization/war/famine/etc. While Katniss has dark hair and skin of a certain color, I don't believe any of the characters were African-American, Latino, Asian-American, or members of any other ethnic group. I'm not saying there would be a large minority population, but surely SOME ethnic minorities would have survived the wreckage of the USA. (In a fictional land, this wouldn't be an issue. You can make the racial makeup whatever you want. But remember the far future of Who Fears Death? The setting was Sudan and there were people who were clearly black Africans, Arab Africans, and a few who had one parent from each of those groups.)
And now, the life sciences.
Ecology-wise, the animals and plants in District 12 are not so out of the ordinary. I even looked it up, and it's possible for blackberries and strawberries to be in season at the same time (though usually blackberries peak a little later). I had to check because Katniss and Gale eat blackberries on a day they pick strawberries. (Katniss plants are real, by the way. Nightlock berries are not. Check out this list of fictional toxins.) There are turkeys, rabbits, squirrels, and deer, all of which are ubiquitous in large swaths of the country. One issue I might raise is with a lynx that Katniss describes as having killed; she's probably located too far south for the Canada lynx, especially if there was any type of global warming that had occurred (assuming somewhere West Virginia-like for her part of Appalachia). Calling it a bobcat (which is a related species with a more appropriate geographical range) would probably have been a better choice. (Other lynx species only exist in Europe.)
DNA and genetic engineering are the biggest problems, here. There are three different "muttations" described. These are genetically-engineered species and none of them could ever exist without magic. This is coming from a biochemist (me), mind you. The tracker jackers are wasplike organisms and they would be the most realistic of the muttations except that their venom causes hallucinations. Well, that and the actual behaviors associated with them (e.g. following people like a swarm of cartoon-style bees).
Then there are the jabberjays. They are some species of bird that can remember and repeat back entire human conversations. Which is silly, in itself. Why not just plant bugs? If you've got all the technology to genetically engineer entirely new species with all these wacky traits, surely you can conceal a recording device. (Don't forget that President Snow knows about Katniss having kissed Gale, even though no one was around. Or the lack of obvious cameras in the Hunger Games arena -- yet somehow, every moment is caught on tape for posterity.) The real problem I have here is the cross breeding of jabberjays (presumably actual jays, from family Corvidae) with mockingbirds (from family Mimidae) to create the mockingjays. These species are too biologically distant to cross breed. Suzanne Collins, do not pass go. Please proceed directly to Wikipedia and review the biological species concept.
Note: this paragraph was added several days after I wrote the initial review, but prior to posting. I finished Catching Fire last night and Peeta says something near the end that suggests the topic of the rant that follows may not be precisely what it seemed in the first book -- he says that the muttations didn't actually have the eyes of the other contestants. You could interpret this in two ways: (1) Collins never intended the mutts to be genetically engineered hybrids of the children and dogs (or whatever); in this case, the point did NOT get across in The Hunger Games or (2) someone told Collins after the fact that the muttations were stupid and/or impossible and she put this qualifier in the next book to cover her butt.
Moving on to the muttations that come after Katniss, Peeta, and the last kid who dies (forget his name). They are cross-breeds of some type of dog with each of the fallen contestants. Oh, where to begin. Let's assume the people running the games didn't know who the last three contestants were going to be. Let's assume they took DNA from all the contestants, and only released the muttations they made from the dead children and teenagers. If it was even possible to mix two species with completely different numbers of chromosomes (dog species have 78, humans 46), there just wasn't a lot of time between the reaping and the end of the games. Humans have a 9 month gestation period, dogs a little over 2 months. So let's assume DNA was collected from every tribute immediately, and immediately sent to a lab in Capitol. Let's assume it was manipulated to cross it with some breed of dog or something along those lines, and that all the embryos lived (which is absolutely not a guarantee -- even cloning, without genetic manipulation, has a low success rate). Let's assume there was some host mother these could be implanted in, where there wouldn't be rejection of the embryo and miscarriage from strange antigens coming from a hybrid embryo/fetus. Let's assume we're closer to a dog's gestation period, than a human's.
So that's at least six assumptions and a minimum of 10 weeks from DNA collection to full-term pregnancies in the host organism. Now, have you ever SEEN a newborn puppy? Cute, but not the least bit threatening. A large-breed puppy at two months is cuddly and utterly dependent. I've had my Rottweiler since she was that age, and she didn't hit her full size until a year and a half after birth. Humans take much, much longer. So even allowing for all six assumptions outlined in the previous paragraph, and they are pretty much all stretches except for perhaps the collection of DNA, we're at like one and a half to two years from the collection of DNA to organisms large enough and with enough training to do what these doglike muttations did.
You may be wondering why I've included so many links to Wikipedia here. It's because the research was simply not done by Collins. And it doesn't even require effort, really. I found all those links in the 90 minutes I've taken to write this review. Granted, I knew what to look for, with my educational background and all, but the information is freely available to anyone with an internet connection. (A solution, by the way, would simply have been to call this a fantasy and invoke magic. From my perspective, it makes a lot more sense than explaining away something scientifically when the science just isn't there.)
Well, I already offered my recommendation up above. (Consider, if you will, the fact that I thought this was worth reading even in light of all the scientific flaws.)
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Review - Legacy of Kings
Legacy of Kings is the third and final book in C.S. Friedman's Magister trilogy. (The previous two volumes were Feast of Souls and Wings of Wrath.)
For once, I am starting this review immediately upon finishing the book. And unfortunately, what is in my head right now is that this book reads like an unedited first draft. The writing is very informal, colloquial, even. I think there is too much of the author shining through. I can totally believe Friedman talks like this in her daily life. And that would be appropriate in a book about a contemporary ex-theater costumer, which Friedman is, but not so much in a fantasy set in a time where there was magic but a much lower level of technology. (This informality is a little bit of a problem in The Coldfire Trilogy, as well.)
In some cases, the writing is just sloppy. I marked Chapter 33 because even though I was very sleepy when I read this chapter (which has nothing to do with the book, by the way, I had just had a long day preceded by a night where I didn't get much sleep), I nearly cried. And it was only two pages. (And the near-tears were not due to overwhelming emotion...)
Here's an excerpt..."By the time the sun set, the entire sky was almost entirely black, and bands of rain whipped across sea and shore in a pounding rhythm. One thin band of orange light that managed to work its way into the storm was caught up by the rain, making it seems as if liquid fire were raining down on everything."
So here's the thing. That is an EXACT copy of the text on the page in the printed book. I checked it more than once. Here goes the analysis:
So I've described a typo and the instances of overuse of words. Then, there are the grammar errors. I've pulled a couple of examples out of the last part of the book, which I just finished tonight.
If dreams that have meaning irritate you, or if novels that feature a lot of scrying or other means of viewing activities from a distance irritate you, this book is probably not for you. The heroine, Kamala, spends a lot of her time sending her senses out into the surrounding lands, trying to find the Souleater Queen and her "consort," Siderea Aminestis. So there is a crap ton of narrative description. There are pages and pages of description with little dialogue. (What little dialogue there is has too many speaker attributions modified by adverbs. But I digress.)
So the gist of this book is the Souleaters are back (they sound a lot like dragons that bond humans who ride them). They're evil and a threat to civilization (they previously destroyed another civilization in the same area) and they must be stopped. An alliance is formed; it consists of a couple of Magisters (Colivar, Ramirus, and Kamala, as well as a few others who drop out because of their own treachery), High King Salvator who is a member of the Penitent order that does not support sorcery, some desert-like tribal people led by Salvator's dead father's rival, Salvator's mother Gwynofar, some people called Guardians, some Penitents, and a bunch of witches supporting various factions.
You might think there would be tension in such an alliance. The Penitents don't like Magister sorcery and are still reeling about recent changes to their doctrine. Salvator's father and his rival (I forget the guy's name, sorry) fought rabidly over territory. The Magisters don't even like working together. But you know what? The alliance is never really threatened. People tolerate a lot of stuff they wouldn't normally tolerate. There are no big fights among the alliance members. The tension just wasn't there.
Some big things get dropped or forgotten here, both within the book and within the series. For example, the big revelation in Feast of Souls was that Magisters draw their power from consorts, or random people they make some sort of aetheric (my word, not Friedman's) connection with. Salvator might have some inkling of this, but most people seem not to know. It was a big source of conflict in Feast of Souls; Kamala actually met her consort, which was basically unheard of. There were all these people dying of some mysterious wasting disease. There was some sense of wrongness about the fact that people got used this way; witches, at least, used their own life essence instead of stealing from someone else. This aspect is almost exclusively dropped here, with the possible exception of Salvator's insistence on not being aided by sorcery. The Magisters are the good guys now, the consorts are forgotten. Also, there are a couple of scenes describing the snatching of a baby and the aftermath. I think we are supposed to take away the message that the baby is dead, but this isn't really tied up well. When we last see the mother and father, they're still hopeful they'll see the child again, and a witch has promised to ask around. Then, nothing.
There's also a weird picking-up of a detail. Right before the final confrontation(s), Colivar leaves to distract Siderea. He makes a portal and goes. Then Kamala picks up some small bone off the ground which I had not seen mentioned at any point prior to his traveling, and which is never discussed again. I re-read that part several times and couldn't figure out what the hell significance the bone was supposed to have. I'm assuming it played a larger part in an earlier draft -- if there was an earlier draft -- and got cut down/out, but this one sentence accidentally got left in.
I've done a lot of trashing of this book. Was there anything I liked? Well, sure. Sometimes when people try to write dark fantasy, or include dark elements in normal fantasy, they get a little too creative, a little too evil. This seems to be a special problem for female authors, for some reason. But Friedman does a good job, here. She comes up with some appropriately dark themes and ideas, but the people are complex (for the most part), and the characters you root for are not wholly sympathetic. (You can still root for them, though. And this seems to be a general feature of Friedman's writing; Tarrant from the Coldfire trilogy was one of these as well.) For example, Kamala and Colivar save the day, but they're Magisters and drain the life from their consorts. They also struggle with the ikati (Souleater) nature inside them, that is the source of their power and bond with consorts.
A couple of the more minor villains were a little troubling. There's a guy named Nyuku (sounds like an anime villain to me, sorry) who is apparently Colivar's oldest rival, from hundreds or thousands of years ago. He is a constant worry for Colivar, but he hangs around Siderea, tries to embarrass Colivar with words, then loses a fight. That's all. Lazaroth is another Magister; his secret is that he's actually female and has been pretending to be a man because there are no female Magisters. S/he hates Kamala because Kamala parades about openly as a female. When s/he traps Kamala, s/he takes male form and rapes Kamala. It's actually an interesting scene, I think, and a woman raping a woman has a completely different power dynamic than a man raping a woman. What I don't like about Lazaroth is that it's not believable that s/he is a woman in disguise as a man. There are absolutely no clues dropped about this, and I can't believe Lazaroth's teacher wouldn't have noticed something like his/her gender, as it sounds like Magister training was intense. (Side note: Kamala gets over the rape way too easily. Her not telling anyone makes sense, as a reaction, but she's having sex with Colivar by the end of the book.)
The other thing I sort of have a problem with is that I think too much was crammed into one book. It could be that we don't get enough depth on conflicts brewing within the alliance because there wasn't enough time or space. (DAW publishes Tad Williams, too, and put out the Crown of Stars series by Kate Elliott, so I imagine Friedman could get away with being a bit more long-winded, either in the form of an additional volume or an extra-long novel.) It seemed like the book was jumping all over the place at first, and only came together and got interesting in the second half.
Anyway, if you read the first two, you'll probably want to see how this book ends. (I'd call it much less tragic than either of the previous two volumes, maybe even happy, by comparison.) I thought the first book in the series was the best, by far. And I think I liked the Coldfire trilogy better.
For once, I am starting this review immediately upon finishing the book. And unfortunately, what is in my head right now is that this book reads like an unedited first draft. The writing is very informal, colloquial, even. I think there is too much of the author shining through. I can totally believe Friedman talks like this in her daily life. And that would be appropriate in a book about a contemporary ex-theater costumer, which Friedman is, but not so much in a fantasy set in a time where there was magic but a much lower level of technology. (This informality is a little bit of a problem in The Coldfire Trilogy, as well.)
In some cases, the writing is just sloppy. I marked Chapter 33 because even though I was very sleepy when I read this chapter (which has nothing to do with the book, by the way, I had just had a long day preceded by a night where I didn't get much sleep), I nearly cried. And it was only two pages. (And the near-tears were not due to overwhelming emotion...)
Here's an excerpt..."By the time the sun set, the entire sky was almost entirely black, and bands of rain whipped across sea and shore in a pounding rhythm. One thin band of orange light that managed to work its way into the storm was caught up by the rain, making it seems as if liquid fire were raining down on everything."
So here's the thing. That is an EXACT copy of the text on the page in the printed book. I checked it more than once. Here goes the analysis:
- "The ENTIRE sky was almost ENTIRELY black": My criticism of this falls into the category of not varying the language enough. Only three words separate "entire" from "entirely." This is not an instance of using a word more than once for effect. "Entire" has a number of synonyms which would have been appropriate. (As opposed to another case I've been struggling with lately in my dissertation...the meaning of "atmosphere" as a mixture of gases surrounding a planet seems to have no synonyms. But the point is, I recognize when I've used the word too much and I find another way to say what I want.)
- We have "bands of rain," "caught up by the rain," and "raining down." There's "rain" three times in three lines. This is just describing light affected by a storm. There has simply got to be another way to express this.
- "Making it seems..." Yeah. "Seems," not "seem." Actually printed in the book. (I didn't even notice that the first time I read this chapter, but there it is.)
So I've described a typo and the instances of overuse of words. Then, there are the grammar errors. I've pulled a couple of examples out of the last part of the book, which I just finished tonight.
- "might have forbade" (NO! It's "might have forbidden." Past perfect tense, not simple past tense.)
- "for you and I" (NO! It's "for you and me." Objective case after the preposition.)
If dreams that have meaning irritate you, or if novels that feature a lot of scrying or other means of viewing activities from a distance irritate you, this book is probably not for you. The heroine, Kamala, spends a lot of her time sending her senses out into the surrounding lands, trying to find the Souleater Queen and her "consort," Siderea Aminestis. So there is a crap ton of narrative description. There are pages and pages of description with little dialogue. (What little dialogue there is has too many speaker attributions modified by adverbs. But I digress.)
So the gist of this book is the Souleaters are back (they sound a lot like dragons that bond humans who ride them). They're evil and a threat to civilization (they previously destroyed another civilization in the same area) and they must be stopped. An alliance is formed; it consists of a couple of Magisters (Colivar, Ramirus, and Kamala, as well as a few others who drop out because of their own treachery), High King Salvator who is a member of the Penitent order that does not support sorcery, some desert-like tribal people led by Salvator's dead father's rival, Salvator's mother Gwynofar, some people called Guardians, some Penitents, and a bunch of witches supporting various factions.
You might think there would be tension in such an alliance. The Penitents don't like Magister sorcery and are still reeling about recent changes to their doctrine. Salvator's father and his rival (I forget the guy's name, sorry) fought rabidly over territory. The Magisters don't even like working together. But you know what? The alliance is never really threatened. People tolerate a lot of stuff they wouldn't normally tolerate. There are no big fights among the alliance members. The tension just wasn't there.
Some big things get dropped or forgotten here, both within the book and within the series. For example, the big revelation in Feast of Souls was that Magisters draw their power from consorts, or random people they make some sort of aetheric (my word, not Friedman's) connection with. Salvator might have some inkling of this, but most people seem not to know. It was a big source of conflict in Feast of Souls; Kamala actually met her consort, which was basically unheard of. There were all these people dying of some mysterious wasting disease. There was some sense of wrongness about the fact that people got used this way; witches, at least, used their own life essence instead of stealing from someone else. This aspect is almost exclusively dropped here, with the possible exception of Salvator's insistence on not being aided by sorcery. The Magisters are the good guys now, the consorts are forgotten. Also, there are a couple of scenes describing the snatching of a baby and the aftermath. I think we are supposed to take away the message that the baby is dead, but this isn't really tied up well. When we last see the mother and father, they're still hopeful they'll see the child again, and a witch has promised to ask around. Then, nothing.
There's also a weird picking-up of a detail. Right before the final confrontation(s), Colivar leaves to distract Siderea. He makes a portal and goes. Then Kamala picks up some small bone off the ground which I had not seen mentioned at any point prior to his traveling, and which is never discussed again. I re-read that part several times and couldn't figure out what the hell significance the bone was supposed to have. I'm assuming it played a larger part in an earlier draft -- if there was an earlier draft -- and got cut down/out, but this one sentence accidentally got left in.
I've done a lot of trashing of this book. Was there anything I liked? Well, sure. Sometimes when people try to write dark fantasy, or include dark elements in normal fantasy, they get a little too creative, a little too evil. This seems to be a special problem for female authors, for some reason. But Friedman does a good job, here. She comes up with some appropriately dark themes and ideas, but the people are complex (for the most part), and the characters you root for are not wholly sympathetic. (You can still root for them, though. And this seems to be a general feature of Friedman's writing; Tarrant from the Coldfire trilogy was one of these as well.) For example, Kamala and Colivar save the day, but they're Magisters and drain the life from their consorts. They also struggle with the ikati (Souleater) nature inside them, that is the source of their power and bond with consorts.
A couple of the more minor villains were a little troubling. There's a guy named Nyuku (sounds like an anime villain to me, sorry) who is apparently Colivar's oldest rival, from hundreds or thousands of years ago. He is a constant worry for Colivar, but he hangs around Siderea, tries to embarrass Colivar with words, then loses a fight. That's all. Lazaroth is another Magister; his secret is that he's actually female and has been pretending to be a man because there are no female Magisters. S/he hates Kamala because Kamala parades about openly as a female. When s/he traps Kamala, s/he takes male form and rapes Kamala. It's actually an interesting scene, I think, and a woman raping a woman has a completely different power dynamic than a man raping a woman. What I don't like about Lazaroth is that it's not believable that s/he is a woman in disguise as a man. There are absolutely no clues dropped about this, and I can't believe Lazaroth's teacher wouldn't have noticed something like his/her gender, as it sounds like Magister training was intense. (Side note: Kamala gets over the rape way too easily. Her not telling anyone makes sense, as a reaction, but she's having sex with Colivar by the end of the book.)
The other thing I sort of have a problem with is that I think too much was crammed into one book. It could be that we don't get enough depth on conflicts brewing within the alliance because there wasn't enough time or space. (DAW publishes Tad Williams, too, and put out the Crown of Stars series by Kate Elliott, so I imagine Friedman could get away with being a bit more long-winded, either in the form of an additional volume or an extra-long novel.) It seemed like the book was jumping all over the place at first, and only came together and got interesting in the second half.
Anyway, if you read the first two, you'll probably want to see how this book ends. (I'd call it much less tragic than either of the previous two volumes, maybe even happy, by comparison.) I thought the first book in the series was the best, by far. And I think I liked the Coldfire trilogy better.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Correct ALL the Grammar and Usage Errors!
I post about grammar errors all the time. Here is one image that covers a bunch of different cases! Writers, please pay attention. Seriously.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Fantasy IRL, Part 2
From Tor.com: Eye of Sauron Found in Space. (Actually, if you look at a lot of astronomy photos, you'll see lots of creepy "eyes.")
And, here's another one along the same lines:
And, here's another one along the same lines:
Stuff I Say Too Often in My Manuscript
My boyfriend is a computer programmer and he wrote me a little program that takes a text file of my manuscript (all 150,000+ words) and analyzes it to find the most common words, two-word phrases, and three-word phrases. (Not including stuff like "and if" or other common combinations of simple words.)
Some interesting things:
Some interesting things:
- Most common word is "said," and third most common word is "asked" (not a problem)
- I was surprised at the character whose name pops up the most; I knew he was one of the main two or three but not that he would show up at the top of the list
- Other single words are all common and I'm not too concerned about them (something like "magenta" showing up too often would stand out, but actually no colors are there, nor are "very" or "really")
- A good deal of the two-word phrases are speaker attributions (again, not a problem)
- I use "old man" 44 times; I should think about changing this (I only use "old woman" 22 times, but there are three old men and only one old woman)
- One character nods 14 times; he's not even the first- or second-most used character
- One character shrugs 12 times
- I say "shook his head" 19 times and "shook her head" 14 times (I need some new gestures; I knew the shrugging and nodding and head-shaking would be bad, even after I tried to change some of them)
- Too many people breathe sighs of relief or take deep breaths
Saturday, March 17, 2012
E-Book Price Wars
Since I talk about e-books and e-readers and Amazon a fair amount here, I figured I'd share some links about e-book pricing that I've come across lately.
Where it gets dicey between readers and publishers seems to be paperbacks. And even here, there may be a difference between trade and mass market paperbacks. There's always a physical object to be shipped, but it costs less than a hardcover, if we're talking about a paperback. And there's one benefit to e-books that paperbacks don't have, which is that e-books often have the same release date as hardcovers. So should you have to pay more for getting it sooner? Does that balance out the cost of printing a mass market paperback? What about long after the release, when that benefit has disappeared?
I know that I don't always say the nicest things about the writing of L.E. Modesitt, Jr., but at his website, there are some cogent, interesting discussions, with thoughtful comments, about e-books versus hardcovers versus paperbacks, costs associated with each, which books are released in each format, etc. Click on this link to go to his website and then click on his blog to read more.
- DOJ Targets Apple and Publishers for E-Book Price Fixing
- How Cheap Should Books Be?
- Pick Your Monopoly: Apple of Amazon
Where it gets dicey between readers and publishers seems to be paperbacks. And even here, there may be a difference between trade and mass market paperbacks. There's always a physical object to be shipped, but it costs less than a hardcover, if we're talking about a paperback. And there's one benefit to e-books that paperbacks don't have, which is that e-books often have the same release date as hardcovers. So should you have to pay more for getting it sooner? Does that balance out the cost of printing a mass market paperback? What about long after the release, when that benefit has disappeared?
I know that I don't always say the nicest things about the writing of L.E. Modesitt, Jr., but at his website, there are some cogent, interesting discussions, with thoughtful comments, about e-books versus hardcovers versus paperbacks, costs associated with each, which books are released in each format, etc. Click on this link to go to his website and then click on his blog to read more.
Dystopian Fiction
Found this list of dystopian fiction online. It's got a lot, and is divided by age group (kids, teens, and adults). There's a bunch there I've never heard of. There are a few things missing, though. I'm having trouble thinking of examples right now, but let's see what I can come up with:
On my shelves, I don't have much else that fits, that's not already mentioned in the linked-to article (which was inspired by the upcoming release of The Hunger Games movie). Dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction is more of a science fiction thing than a fantasy thing. You could also make an argument for Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence as being post-apocalyptic, especially in light of the nuclear device.
Anyway, check out the list if you're into this sort of thing. I like a good post-apocalyptic or dystopian yarn every now and then. May write one myself, one day.
- Seed to Harvest by Octavia Butler
- Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler
- Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
- Nights of Villjamur and City of Ruin by Mark Charan Newton
- Shadow & Claw and Sword & Citadel by Gene Wolfe
On my shelves, I don't have much else that fits, that's not already mentioned in the linked-to article (which was inspired by the upcoming release of The Hunger Games movie). Dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction is more of a science fiction thing than a fantasy thing. You could also make an argument for Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence as being post-apocalyptic, especially in light of the nuclear device.
Anyway, check out the list if you're into this sort of thing. I like a good post-apocalyptic or dystopian yarn every now and then. May write one myself, one day.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Review - The Devil's Diadem
My first experience reading Sara Douglass was the DarkGlass Mountain trilogy, and I wasn't so happy with it, to be honest. You can find my reviews of those volumes here, here, and here.
But, I picked up The Devil's Diadem because it sounded significantly different from DarkGlass Mountain, and I liked it a lot more. There was something of an M. Night Shyamalan quality about The Devil's Diadem, and I will admit to hating his movies and the twists at the ends of them, but this book is still probably worth a read.
The Devil's Diadem is a standalone; Sara Douglass recently died of ovarian cancer and towards the end, expressed concerns that she wouldn't be able to finish any more series, and vowed to only write standalones. I do admire her for that; it must have been difficult and emotional to confront her own mortality like that. So if you are looking for a standalone, here you go.
This book is set in 12th century England with some slight alterations (according to an author's note). I am no historian, so I'll take her word for it. I really do think she either did her research or otherwise knew what she was talking about, as the descriptions of everyday life strike me as being quite accurate. And I do have to say, I would've hated to be a noblewoman in 12th century England, because it seems like all they ever did is sew and breed and pray and never have any ambitions beyond marriage. (I actually do like sewing and embroidery but I couldn't do it all the goddamn time.)
The writing style is a little archaic and formal, but it seems well-suited to the story's setting. This effect most pronounced in the earliest chapters, and a little more relaxed later, but it's generally well-maintained throughout. Speaker attributions and small character actions (e.g. eating, etc.) are well-done. Characters do have a tendency to prattle on for a few lines instead of making short statements, but it's really not all that bad. Oh yeah, and something I'm quite happy about -- no made-up or foreign words. It's acknowledged that the nobles of the time spoke French, and you can pretend this is a translation if you want to, but all the words are in English. (And you should know what a "diadem" is if you have read the last Harry Potter book.)
Nearly all of the story is told from the perspective of Maeb, a low-ranked noblewoman whose father has died and left all his worldly belongings to the Templars (he was a low-ranked member of this order in the Holy Lands for a time). She has nothing, and is taken into service by a distant relative of her father's, a Lady Adelie, who is the wife of the Earl of Pengraic, a powerful nobleman whose lands border Wales. Border troubles with the Welsh comprise an important element of this story, albeit one that surfaces in the latter half of the book. Maeb has no option other than service to Adelie or the church, and while she seems to be pious enough, she does not think a life in the church is suited to her. She thus wants very badly to make a good impression on her new employer, but it seems things have gotten off to a very bad start, when the Earl's oldest son, Stephen, is caught flirting with her and the Earl gets very angry and basically threatens Maeb. She does her best to stay unnoticed after this, but doesn't stay unnoticed for long. The very King of England, on a visit, notices her, and looks at her in such a way that it's obvious to all he wants her for a mistress at some point.
So we follow Maeb and her fellow servants and Adelie and some of the younger Pengraic children around to various castles. Plague comes, and unfortunately, the plague in this book is absolutely ridiculous, and probably the only thing I really can't stand about the story. The plague starts as a yellow fungus on the body, and victims carry it for a long time with no symptoms whatsoever. They develop respiratory problems, and when it is time for them to die, they spontaneously burst into flames.
I can only guess at why Douglass might have made the plague this way. The flames seem to serve two purposes. First, when Maeb's party travels throughout the land, if the plague has come to a village, at least some houses will be burned down. Since it's unlikely medieval villagers would have voluntarily burned down houses (too easy for fire to spread), flame is the only way to make this visible. Second, some plague victims can't stand the thought of dying in fires sprung from their own flesh, and ask to be smothered or poisoned before the plague runs its course. This becomes important later. But the whole plague is silly and unscientific and I wish Douglass could've thought of some other way around this whole fungus-fire thing.
Spoilers follow. As usual. Adelie has been very sick with her most recent pregnancy, and she gives birth. She immediately dies of plague, which she has been hiding, and so does the baby. This cannot be kept secret for long, and Maeb's party is stuck in the Pengraic castle while all hell breaks loose. Maeb holds out for a long time, although she eventually comes down with the plague, too. She smothers Stephen and two of the Earl's youngest children before they can be consumed by flames. (Stephen has asked her to do this, and while she is aghast, she eventually agrees.)
Maeb then takes hemlock, quite a lot, apparently, but doesn't die of it or of the plague. The Earl returns to find his entire family dead, and finds out what Maeb did to his children, and declares he's going to marry her. Which is weird, honestly, but it makes sense later when he tells her that the reason he got so angry when she was flirting with Stephen is because he fell in love with her on sight and was jealous. The marriage between the Earl (Raife) and Maeb starts out just fine, she actually comes to love him, and the age difference is not so great. She starts seeing "imps from hell" though, and Raife tells her not to breathe a word to anyone about this. He tells her to trust him. And he says nothing else.
This "trust me" stuff is a little irritating, honestly. It's just another variation on the theme of someone with more knowledge doling out a little at a time to someone younger or unschooled. At the end, we are told why it can't have happened any other way, why Raife couldn't just say something to Maeb. (This is the M. Night Shyamalan element I was talking about, and I won't give it away because that would ruin the story in a way other spoilers wouldn't. Actually, sometime I might read this again, knowing what I know now, and see how I interpret Raife's actions in light of that.)
Anyway, these imps are looking for something, and they think Maeb has it. They are the ones bringing the plague. And while the king has eyes for Maeb, the king's son Henry seems to hate her. He's rude to her, then outright hostile, then accuses her of being the cause of the plague. When she undergoes an ordeal and survives unscathed, he's forced to flee court and joins up with a Welsh prince (king?) against her. That doesn't end well.
There's some degree of deux ex machina here. Maeb apparently has the blood of the "Old People" (really, couldn't come up with a better name?), some faery-types that still exist but seem to have disappeared into the landscape with the coming of regular people. She calls on this regularly to get out of tough situations, from the ordeal mentioned in the previous paragraph, to being kidnapped by the Welsh dude who is in league with Prince Henry. But, it IS a fantasy, and I suppose this isn't overused. Bad things do happen to Maeb, several times, and her reputation never quite recovers. Even though she totally wasn't to blame.
Maeb does turn against Raife when she finds out he was sent by the Devil to retrieve this diadem which the imps believe she has. She stops trusting him, and, well, I can't really talk more about that without revealing the twist. At any rate, he leaves the picture and Maeb serves as King Edmond's mistress for the rest of his life. In the end, she ends up with the Old People, after all.
I do like how Douglass drops hints along the way about the diadem. The foreshadowing is not always evident at the time, but when the related events happen later, you do remember the hints from earlier, and honestly, it's pretty well-done. Douglass tells you just enough that you'll remember it, without beating you over the head with it. I like that.
If I had any other complaint, it would be that perhaps a little too much time is spent detailing Maeb's daily life in the first part of the book, while too much is covered in the last chapter or two at the end (her life with and after Edmond). So pacing is a small issue. But for most of the book, this is not a problem.
Maeb is probably the only fully fleshed-out character, but it is mostly a first-person novel, so this isn't necessarily a surprise. She's beautiful and lust-inspiring, but she has flaws, as well. Such as a tendency to speak her mind when perhaps she shouldn't, because she's untrained in courtly ways. I found her generally sympathetic and multidimensional.
Anyway, there are actually a number of incidents which haven't been described above, and I haven't revealed the twist, so you should still get something out of this book if you pick it up. I actually may seek out some of Douglass's other work that is NOT set in the DarkGlass Mountain world, now, as I did enjoy reading The Devil's Diadem.
But, I picked up The Devil's Diadem because it sounded significantly different from DarkGlass Mountain, and I liked it a lot more. There was something of an M. Night Shyamalan quality about The Devil's Diadem, and I will admit to hating his movies and the twists at the ends of them, but this book is still probably worth a read.
The Devil's Diadem is a standalone; Sara Douglass recently died of ovarian cancer and towards the end, expressed concerns that she wouldn't be able to finish any more series, and vowed to only write standalones. I do admire her for that; it must have been difficult and emotional to confront her own mortality like that. So if you are looking for a standalone, here you go.
This book is set in 12th century England with some slight alterations (according to an author's note). I am no historian, so I'll take her word for it. I really do think she either did her research or otherwise knew what she was talking about, as the descriptions of everyday life strike me as being quite accurate. And I do have to say, I would've hated to be a noblewoman in 12th century England, because it seems like all they ever did is sew and breed and pray and never have any ambitions beyond marriage. (I actually do like sewing and embroidery but I couldn't do it all the goddamn time.)
The writing style is a little archaic and formal, but it seems well-suited to the story's setting. This effect most pronounced in the earliest chapters, and a little more relaxed later, but it's generally well-maintained throughout. Speaker attributions and small character actions (e.g. eating, etc.) are well-done. Characters do have a tendency to prattle on for a few lines instead of making short statements, but it's really not all that bad. Oh yeah, and something I'm quite happy about -- no made-up or foreign words. It's acknowledged that the nobles of the time spoke French, and you can pretend this is a translation if you want to, but all the words are in English. (And you should know what a "diadem" is if you have read the last Harry Potter book.)
Nearly all of the story is told from the perspective of Maeb, a low-ranked noblewoman whose father has died and left all his worldly belongings to the Templars (he was a low-ranked member of this order in the Holy Lands for a time). She has nothing, and is taken into service by a distant relative of her father's, a Lady Adelie, who is the wife of the Earl of Pengraic, a powerful nobleman whose lands border Wales. Border troubles with the Welsh comprise an important element of this story, albeit one that surfaces in the latter half of the book. Maeb has no option other than service to Adelie or the church, and while she seems to be pious enough, she does not think a life in the church is suited to her. She thus wants very badly to make a good impression on her new employer, but it seems things have gotten off to a very bad start, when the Earl's oldest son, Stephen, is caught flirting with her and the Earl gets very angry and basically threatens Maeb. She does her best to stay unnoticed after this, but doesn't stay unnoticed for long. The very King of England, on a visit, notices her, and looks at her in such a way that it's obvious to all he wants her for a mistress at some point.
So we follow Maeb and her fellow servants and Adelie and some of the younger Pengraic children around to various castles. Plague comes, and unfortunately, the plague in this book is absolutely ridiculous, and probably the only thing I really can't stand about the story. The plague starts as a yellow fungus on the body, and victims carry it for a long time with no symptoms whatsoever. They develop respiratory problems, and when it is time for them to die, they spontaneously burst into flames.
I can only guess at why Douglass might have made the plague this way. The flames seem to serve two purposes. First, when Maeb's party travels throughout the land, if the plague has come to a village, at least some houses will be burned down. Since it's unlikely medieval villagers would have voluntarily burned down houses (too easy for fire to spread), flame is the only way to make this visible. Second, some plague victims can't stand the thought of dying in fires sprung from their own flesh, and ask to be smothered or poisoned before the plague runs its course. This becomes important later. But the whole plague is silly and unscientific and I wish Douglass could've thought of some other way around this whole fungus-fire thing.
Spoilers follow. As usual. Adelie has been very sick with her most recent pregnancy, and she gives birth. She immediately dies of plague, which she has been hiding, and so does the baby. This cannot be kept secret for long, and Maeb's party is stuck in the Pengraic castle while all hell breaks loose. Maeb holds out for a long time, although she eventually comes down with the plague, too. She smothers Stephen and two of the Earl's youngest children before they can be consumed by flames. (Stephen has asked her to do this, and while she is aghast, she eventually agrees.)
Maeb then takes hemlock, quite a lot, apparently, but doesn't die of it or of the plague. The Earl returns to find his entire family dead, and finds out what Maeb did to his children, and declares he's going to marry her. Which is weird, honestly, but it makes sense later when he tells her that the reason he got so angry when she was flirting with Stephen is because he fell in love with her on sight and was jealous. The marriage between the Earl (Raife) and Maeb starts out just fine, she actually comes to love him, and the age difference is not so great. She starts seeing "imps from hell" though, and Raife tells her not to breathe a word to anyone about this. He tells her to trust him. And he says nothing else.
This "trust me" stuff is a little irritating, honestly. It's just another variation on the theme of someone with more knowledge doling out a little at a time to someone younger or unschooled. At the end, we are told why it can't have happened any other way, why Raife couldn't just say something to Maeb. (This is the M. Night Shyamalan element I was talking about, and I won't give it away because that would ruin the story in a way other spoilers wouldn't. Actually, sometime I might read this again, knowing what I know now, and see how I interpret Raife's actions in light of that.)
Anyway, these imps are looking for something, and they think Maeb has it. They are the ones bringing the plague. And while the king has eyes for Maeb, the king's son Henry seems to hate her. He's rude to her, then outright hostile, then accuses her of being the cause of the plague. When she undergoes an ordeal and survives unscathed, he's forced to flee court and joins up with a Welsh prince (king?) against her. That doesn't end well.
There's some degree of deux ex machina here. Maeb apparently has the blood of the "Old People" (really, couldn't come up with a better name?), some faery-types that still exist but seem to have disappeared into the landscape with the coming of regular people. She calls on this regularly to get out of tough situations, from the ordeal mentioned in the previous paragraph, to being kidnapped by the Welsh dude who is in league with Prince Henry. But, it IS a fantasy, and I suppose this isn't overused. Bad things do happen to Maeb, several times, and her reputation never quite recovers. Even though she totally wasn't to blame.
Maeb does turn against Raife when she finds out he was sent by the Devil to retrieve this diadem which the imps believe she has. She stops trusting him, and, well, I can't really talk more about that without revealing the twist. At any rate, he leaves the picture and Maeb serves as King Edmond's mistress for the rest of his life. In the end, she ends up with the Old People, after all.
I do like how Douglass drops hints along the way about the diadem. The foreshadowing is not always evident at the time, but when the related events happen later, you do remember the hints from earlier, and honestly, it's pretty well-done. Douglass tells you just enough that you'll remember it, without beating you over the head with it. I like that.
If I had any other complaint, it would be that perhaps a little too much time is spent detailing Maeb's daily life in the first part of the book, while too much is covered in the last chapter or two at the end (her life with and after Edmond). So pacing is a small issue. But for most of the book, this is not a problem.
Maeb is probably the only fully fleshed-out character, but it is mostly a first-person novel, so this isn't necessarily a surprise. She's beautiful and lust-inspiring, but she has flaws, as well. Such as a tendency to speak her mind when perhaps she shouldn't, because she's untrained in courtly ways. I found her generally sympathetic and multidimensional.
Anyway, there are actually a number of incidents which haven't been described above, and I haven't revealed the twist, so you should still get something out of this book if you pick it up. I actually may seek out some of Douglass's other work that is NOT set in the DarkGlass Mountain world, now, as I did enjoy reading The Devil's Diadem.
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