A few years ago, Sergei Lukyanenko's novel The Night Watch was made into a movie. As I watched the movie, I found myself thinking "This would be a lot better if they took any time to explain anything. Maybe the book is better."
A few months ago, I found said book at the used bookstore and decided to find out if it was any better. The answer was a definite "yes," though it's still not without its flaws. I found it to be a really interesting read. Moscow is a new and different setting for me, the writing was evocative, and the cast of Light and Dark agents are interesting.
If there's one big problem with The Night Watch, it's that it is marketed as a horror novel, and it fails to live up to this expectation. It takes more than vampires to make horror. Horror needs to be scary, eerie, or intense. There's a lot of darkness in the world of the Watches, but the pacing of the book keeps it from being scary. Everything feels a little too casual. The main character is already pretty well-steeped in the supernatural world. Sure, he's moving from a desk job to being a field agent, but he has enough knowledge that he faces the challenges ahead of him without too much fear of the unknown.
While I read this book, I was turning the pages out of curiosity over the story, rather than any sense of urgency. This lack of intensity causes me to feel that it's much more effective as a dark, brooding, but introspective fantasy, rather than a true horror.
There are some major differences between the book and the movie -- the movie starts out with the main character going to a Dark sorceress for a magical abortion on his cheating wife. This never happens in the book. The first third of the book does otherwise mostly follow the movie's plot, but without some of the subplots, and with some differences in character and plot resolution. The rest of the novel consists of two other stories (both like short, interconnected novels of their own) which continue the main plot thread while introducing secondary plots that move it along. The third story even allows us to see how the Light agents act on their rare days off, which was fun.
The Night Watch is the first of a four-book series, and I intend to work my way through the rest, assuming they don't take a steep nosedive in quality.
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
An old character story
I was poking around in my writing folder and I came across this story that I wrote for a D&D character. It's fun sometimes to go through my old character stories, they remind me of games that never finished, and friendships that have drifted away. Bittersweet, perhaps, but mostly sweet. This file says last modified in 2006, but I think the story is a little older than that.
Null
Once, she was a dancer. In those days her name was Elysa, a name that she considered to be as beautiful and graceful as she was. Her grace was such that from a distance, only her height served as proof that she was not an elf. Her beauty was not exceptional, but it was enough, and her fame as a dancer served only to make her more attractive in the eyes of the people.
Everyone imagined Elysa to be as charming as she was lovely, but this was far from the truth. She was a proud woman, with an incredibly sharp tongue that she had no compunctions against using. She felt that her fame was her due, and that she deserved all of the best things in life, which she rarely got (her dancing brought her far more fame than money). Elysa constantly strove to find a wealthy patron who would reward her art with a shower of lavish gifts, but her arrogance drove most people away.
At the age of 18, she met what seemed to be the perfect patron. Vedorn was a young, attractive nobleman who seemed quite smitten by her. Elysa was dazzled by his masculine good looks and the promise of his wealth. Though she was seeking a patron, she ended up with a husband instead. Their wedding was a huge affair, with hundreds of guests and a huge celebration feast. Elysa left the city to go spend her honeymoon at his country estate.
When she got there, all of the illusions crumbled. The country estate was not as grand as Vedorn had promised, and it turned out that he had spent nearly all of his wealth courting her and throwing the wedding party. The happy couple came home to a small, run-down estate out in the sticks, and the happiness ended there. Vedorn learned what a sharp-tongued shrew Elysa was, and Elysa learned that Vedorn was not above raising his hand to his wife. Each learned that the other had a fiery temper, and they fought constantly.
In addition to their temper and greed, Elysa and Vedorn had one major thing in common; they were both too proud to admit to the mistake of their marriage. They stayed together and maintained the illusion of marital bliss. Elysa still kept her small home in the city, and danced whenever she could, bringing her money home to Vedorn.
Although they quickly grew to hate each other, the physical attraction remained, and make-up sex became the one good thing about their fights. It came as no surprise, then, that Elysa eventually conceived, and then gave birth to a son a little more than a year after they had been married. Their child actually brought a little calmness to the marriage, as they each discovered a spot in their selfish hearts where their was room for love for their son. As well, Vedorn was proud to have an heir and Elysa loved how her friends all oohed and aahed over her and her baby.
Even their shared love of their son wasn’t enough to fully bring Vedorn and Elysa together, however, and though they fought less often, they still fought just as fiercely. Elysa was adept at goading Vedorn to anger, constantly harping on him for being one of the poorest nobles in the land and “forcing” his wife to dance just to have enough money to raise their son. If he hit her, she would remind him of how the bruises marred her beauty, making it hard for her to get work dancing.
And so it continued until the night when things went too far. Elysa provoked Vedorn until at least he truly snapped. He yelled and screamed and raged as he always did, and hit her and threw things, as he always did. His madness didn’t become apparent until he threw an oil lamp at Elysa and laughed when it shattered against the wall and splashed burning oil everywhere.
“Let it all burn up!” he screamed. He pinned her against the wall and wouldn’t let her leave as the flames spread throughout the room. Through her anger and panic, Elysa tried to reason with him, tried to remind him of their child, but still he insisted that they would die together and end the farce.
Desperation lent her strength, and eventually she was able to fight him off. She ran towards her child’s room, but she never made it. A falling timber struck her, trapped her, and that she did not have enough strength to escape. The house continued to burn around her, and the suffocating smoke overwhelmed her. Her vision went black, and it was some time before she came to in a strange place.
By the time anyone arrived to put out the flames, it was too late. Much of the house had been consumed, leaving only stone and brick and debris. In amongst the men armed with buckets there were clerics of various churches, there to pray for the departed souls and offer what help they could through the magical creation of water and spells which boosted the strength and stamina of the erstwhile firemen.
It was a cleric of Ilmater who felt drawn to Elysa as the volunteers pulled her badly burnt body from the wreckage. Drawing closer, he saw that she was not dead. “This one will return with me to my god’s temple,” he said. He could feel the hand of his god guiding him to help her. There would be much suffering to ease.
He healed the burns just in time to keep her from dying, though her body was left quite scarred, and much of her hair was gone. The healing did not wake her, however, so he carried her the long way back to his temple, praying to his god for the wisdom necessary to help her through such a painful time.
Elysa awakened in the temple of Ilmater, disoriented and distraught. She demanded to know what had happened, and when she found out the truth, it crushed her. The house was gone, Vedorn and their child were dead. The flames had taken her beauty, too. She was left with nothing. For a time, she withdrew into herself. She did not speak, and she had to be forced to take those actions that would keep her alive, such as eating and drinking.
During this time, the cleric who had saved her ministered to her. He shared with her the doctrine of Ilmater, and also the personal pain that he had been through before he found peace in the church. As Elysa listened, she realized the folly of her life up until that point. Her vanity and pride had been her downfall, and it had cost her child his life. The cleric told her that enlightenment often came through suffering, and he was right.
When at last she finally spoke, Elysa stated that she was going to rededicate her life to Ilmater and his church. Deep inside, she did not feel that she was worthy to even presume to be a vessel of a god’s power, so rather than seeking to become a cleric or paladin, she stated that she would join the ranks of the monks she had seen practicing. Perhaps she would be able to channel some of the anger that she felt at herself into righteous violence.
Elysa realized that deep down inside, she was still the same person. Enlightenment was not instant, and she had much work to do. To ensure that vanity would never again be a problem, she refused to seek out any healing for her scars. Her outer appearance, she felt, reflected the ugliness that she’d always had inside.
It was her tongue that really worried her, so she took a vow of silence, swearing to not speak again until she achieved true enlightenment and inner peace. To remind herself of this, she had her tongue pierced with a sharp spike, its presence reminding her of the pain a sharp tongue can cause. To remind others of her vow, she took to wearing a tight mask around the lower half of her face, a sign that nothing would leave her mouth.
She said only one last thing before swearing her vow. “The woman that I was is dead. Call me Null, for I am nothing.”
Null trained in silence, and because she did not speak, she spent much time listening. She grew familiar with the doctrines of the church and pondered them always, growing wise in ways she had never been before. She learned when to end suffering, when to ease it, and when to administer it. Still, though, inner peace avoided her. She remained bitter and sarcastic, and as such, she remained silence.
She made no real friends at the temple. Not only did she not speak, but she never sought out the company of others. She never fully fit in at the temple, and so when it was suggested that she travel with a cleric who was scouting out a new temple location, she agreed with a sharp nod of her head. The journey to true enlightenment would be a long one, and it could not be completed within the temple walls.
Null
Once, she was a dancer. In those days her name was Elysa, a name that she considered to be as beautiful and graceful as she was. Her grace was such that from a distance, only her height served as proof that she was not an elf. Her beauty was not exceptional, but it was enough, and her fame as a dancer served only to make her more attractive in the eyes of the people.
Everyone imagined Elysa to be as charming as she was lovely, but this was far from the truth. She was a proud woman, with an incredibly sharp tongue that she had no compunctions against using. She felt that her fame was her due, and that she deserved all of the best things in life, which she rarely got (her dancing brought her far more fame than money). Elysa constantly strove to find a wealthy patron who would reward her art with a shower of lavish gifts, but her arrogance drove most people away.
At the age of 18, she met what seemed to be the perfect patron. Vedorn was a young, attractive nobleman who seemed quite smitten by her. Elysa was dazzled by his masculine good looks and the promise of his wealth. Though she was seeking a patron, she ended up with a husband instead. Their wedding was a huge affair, with hundreds of guests and a huge celebration feast. Elysa left the city to go spend her honeymoon at his country estate.
When she got there, all of the illusions crumbled. The country estate was not as grand as Vedorn had promised, and it turned out that he had spent nearly all of his wealth courting her and throwing the wedding party. The happy couple came home to a small, run-down estate out in the sticks, and the happiness ended there. Vedorn learned what a sharp-tongued shrew Elysa was, and Elysa learned that Vedorn was not above raising his hand to his wife. Each learned that the other had a fiery temper, and they fought constantly.
In addition to their temper and greed, Elysa and Vedorn had one major thing in common; they were both too proud to admit to the mistake of their marriage. They stayed together and maintained the illusion of marital bliss. Elysa still kept her small home in the city, and danced whenever she could, bringing her money home to Vedorn.
Although they quickly grew to hate each other, the physical attraction remained, and make-up sex became the one good thing about their fights. It came as no surprise, then, that Elysa eventually conceived, and then gave birth to a son a little more than a year after they had been married. Their child actually brought a little calmness to the marriage, as they each discovered a spot in their selfish hearts where their was room for love for their son. As well, Vedorn was proud to have an heir and Elysa loved how her friends all oohed and aahed over her and her baby.
Even their shared love of their son wasn’t enough to fully bring Vedorn and Elysa together, however, and though they fought less often, they still fought just as fiercely. Elysa was adept at goading Vedorn to anger, constantly harping on him for being one of the poorest nobles in the land and “forcing” his wife to dance just to have enough money to raise their son. If he hit her, she would remind him of how the bruises marred her beauty, making it hard for her to get work dancing.
And so it continued until the night when things went too far. Elysa provoked Vedorn until at least he truly snapped. He yelled and screamed and raged as he always did, and hit her and threw things, as he always did. His madness didn’t become apparent until he threw an oil lamp at Elysa and laughed when it shattered against the wall and splashed burning oil everywhere.
“Let it all burn up!” he screamed. He pinned her against the wall and wouldn’t let her leave as the flames spread throughout the room. Through her anger and panic, Elysa tried to reason with him, tried to remind him of their child, but still he insisted that they would die together and end the farce.
Desperation lent her strength, and eventually she was able to fight him off. She ran towards her child’s room, but she never made it. A falling timber struck her, trapped her, and that she did not have enough strength to escape. The house continued to burn around her, and the suffocating smoke overwhelmed her. Her vision went black, and it was some time before she came to in a strange place.
By the time anyone arrived to put out the flames, it was too late. Much of the house had been consumed, leaving only stone and brick and debris. In amongst the men armed with buckets there were clerics of various churches, there to pray for the departed souls and offer what help they could through the magical creation of water and spells which boosted the strength and stamina of the erstwhile firemen.
It was a cleric of Ilmater who felt drawn to Elysa as the volunteers pulled her badly burnt body from the wreckage. Drawing closer, he saw that she was not dead. “This one will return with me to my god’s temple,” he said. He could feel the hand of his god guiding him to help her. There would be much suffering to ease.
He healed the burns just in time to keep her from dying, though her body was left quite scarred, and much of her hair was gone. The healing did not wake her, however, so he carried her the long way back to his temple, praying to his god for the wisdom necessary to help her through such a painful time.
Elysa awakened in the temple of Ilmater, disoriented and distraught. She demanded to know what had happened, and when she found out the truth, it crushed her. The house was gone, Vedorn and their child were dead. The flames had taken her beauty, too. She was left with nothing. For a time, she withdrew into herself. She did not speak, and she had to be forced to take those actions that would keep her alive, such as eating and drinking.
During this time, the cleric who had saved her ministered to her. He shared with her the doctrine of Ilmater, and also the personal pain that he had been through before he found peace in the church. As Elysa listened, she realized the folly of her life up until that point. Her vanity and pride had been her downfall, and it had cost her child his life. The cleric told her that enlightenment often came through suffering, and he was right.
When at last she finally spoke, Elysa stated that she was going to rededicate her life to Ilmater and his church. Deep inside, she did not feel that she was worthy to even presume to be a vessel of a god’s power, so rather than seeking to become a cleric or paladin, she stated that she would join the ranks of the monks she had seen practicing. Perhaps she would be able to channel some of the anger that she felt at herself into righteous violence.
Elysa realized that deep down inside, she was still the same person. Enlightenment was not instant, and she had much work to do. To ensure that vanity would never again be a problem, she refused to seek out any healing for her scars. Her outer appearance, she felt, reflected the ugliness that she’d always had inside.
It was her tongue that really worried her, so she took a vow of silence, swearing to not speak again until she achieved true enlightenment and inner peace. To remind herself of this, she had her tongue pierced with a sharp spike, its presence reminding her of the pain a sharp tongue can cause. To remind others of her vow, she took to wearing a tight mask around the lower half of her face, a sign that nothing would leave her mouth.
She said only one last thing before swearing her vow. “The woman that I was is dead. Call me Null, for I am nothing.”
Null trained in silence, and because she did not speak, she spent much time listening. She grew familiar with the doctrines of the church and pondered them always, growing wise in ways she had never been before. She learned when to end suffering, when to ease it, and when to administer it. Still, though, inner peace avoided her. She remained bitter and sarcastic, and as such, she remained silence.
She made no real friends at the temple. Not only did she not speak, but she never sought out the company of others. She never fully fit in at the temple, and so when it was suggested that she travel with a cleric who was scouting out a new temple location, she agreed with a sharp nod of her head. The journey to true enlightenment would be a long one, and it could not be completed within the temple walls.
Friday, December 26, 2008
I am a defective woman.
If stereotypes are to be believed, I should like romance novels. It's like porn for girls, right? So I guess if I was a guy, I wouldn't like porn, because I'm totally not getting into the paranormal romance genre. I've tried. Honestly I have. I've read a whole... three novels that might count as paranormal romance. Plus one entire series that sits somewhere between paranormal romance and normal modern fantasy. The series I can handle, but the honest-to-goodness romance stuff just annoys me on several levels.
I spent Christmas Eve reading Sherrilyn Kenyon's Seize the Night. It was a Comic Con give-away, so I decided I'd read it and review it for Collector Times. After writing a three-page review (which will be available on January 1st), I realized that I hadn't managed to complain about everything that annoyed me about it, so it's spilling over into this little rant.
So you don't feel lost, here's a capsule review: Seize the Night is a book in the middle of a series about a bunch of immortal demon/vampire hunters called the Dark-Hunters, who work under the auspices of the Greek goddess Artemis. This particular volume concerns a 2000 year old Roman general, and the 20-or-30-something human vampire hunter who are complete opposites but fall in luuuuuurve anyway, while kind of sort of maybe worrying about killing some demon/vampires that want to kill her twin sister, who is married to one of his old enemies.
I addressed a lot of my problems with the book in specific and the genre in general in the review, so I won't rehash them here, but here are a few more that I came up with:
1: Seriously people, learn how to portray gods. This was the second book I've read where the author comes up with a depiction of a goddess that I completely disagree with. I'm not an expert, per se, but I have studied a bit of mythology in my time, and the two goddesses in specific are ones I've read up quite a bit on: The Morrigan and Artemis. The former is a crow goddess of death and the battlefield. She wasn't a very nice lady. She forced Cu Cuchlain into a situation where he had to choose to break one or the other of his two geases, leading to his death. Yet Nora Roberts somehow manages to portray her as some sweet, beautiful, nature-loving, vampire-hating goddess. And then there's Artemis, who's considered indifferent at best to men, if not a man-hater and/or lesbian. She was a capable huntress and was later syncretized with a fellow moon-goddess, Hecate, the goddess of crossroads, who is also often associated with magic. How do you take that and turn it into a woman who keeps a stable of incredibly sexy men as her person demon/vampire hunters? And who, when we finally actually see her in the book, spends her time ineffectively dithering about what to do to avoid upsetting the oh-so-sexy and mysterious uber-character? She comes across like a schoolgirl who's freaking out because she put a scratch on her crush's sports car. Ugh.
I understand that in many mythologies, the gods were seen merely as more powerful reflections of ourselves, with all the foibles of humanity writ large. But I'd still like to see a god or goddess written in a way that suggests that they should actually inspire awe and worship in mortals. At the very least, having lived for thousands of years should give them some level of wisdom and maturity beyond that of the average human.
2: And while we're talking about wisdom and maturity... how about men who have lived for thousands of years, entering into relationships with women in their 20s or 30s? Talk about robbing the cradle! When discussing age differences of 10 years or so, people often bring up the difficulty of differing life experiences, relationship expectations, and lifestyles. How much worse is it going to be for someone who has seen empires rise and fall, living with someone who can count the number of presidential terms they lived through on their fingers?
Then, of course, the immortal has to either accept the fact that their loved one will die after a few decades, while they live on for many centuries. Or they have to somehow give up their immortality, so they can live out a single lifetime with their lover. Let me tell you, my husband and I have had to deal with fights over the minor sacrifices we've made for each other. Can you imagine having THAT thrown in your face every time you have a fight? "Oh yeah? I gave up ETERNITY for you! I don't think asking you to do the dishes is such a big deal compared to that." Plus, what if the mortal love dies suddenly and unexpectedly, mere weeks after you've sacrificed your immortality? I doubt the gods are just going to give it back to you, because you ask nicely. Now there's a book I want to read.
Or perhaps, in some fairy tale endings, the mortal love is granted immortality. Well snap. You get to spend eternity with your lover. Hope it works out for you. Hope you don't mind watching every single other person you love grow old and die. Hope you're prepared to deal with changing your identity every few decades to avoid suspicion. Hope that your kids are immortal, too. No parent should have to outlive all of their children.
3: Three words for you: whirlwind freakin' courtships. Yes, people can know almost from the start of a relationship that they want to spend the rest of their lives together. But I have a hard time suspending my belief when, within a matter of *days* two characters go from hating each other to not just hopping into the sack, but declaring their love for each other. And then within weeks or months, they're married. Awww. How sweet. Right. That totally happens in real life.
4: Do Romans taste better than those who are not? (bonus points if you catch the song reference) Several times during the course of Seize the Night, the female lead "moans at the taste of her Roman" (or general). Does his nationality really affect his flavor? And can he really be called "her general" the first freakin' time she kisses him? Does a single kiss immediately confer ownership? Perhaps that's how vampire hunters mark their territory. I suppose it's better than my cat's method, but it has to be really weird, watching her walk through the store and smooch everything before she buys it.
5: Unquestioning acceptance of flaws and shady past. If my husband of eight years, whom I already love very much, confessed to me some dark secret from his youth, I would probably be able to forgive him. If some guy that I just met less than a week ago had done horrible things, and my family already hated him, and I didn't find out from him, but from some god who thought I should know what I was getting into, I wouldn't just shrug it all off and say "Oh, that's ok, he did the wrong things for the right reasons." I might still end up with the guy eventually, but I'd have to take at least a few days off from the relationship to think things through and ask myself if I could really live with a man who had, say, tortured people.
Then again, I suppose all of the mind-numbingly great sex that we'd been having over the past few days of knowing each other might cloud my judgement a bit (I could say more on the subject of the sex, but I told Blogger that this blog didn't have adult content, so I don't want to get too detailed).
6: Deus Ex Machina. Ok, this is something I hate about any book in any genre, or any movie for that matter, who can't just let its main characters solve their problems. But really, what is the point of having two moderately powerful characters, and making me spend an entire book watching them fall in luuuuuurve, if in the end, they have so little to do with the climax of the story that they might as well not be there? Seriously, I thought I was finally going to see some action of the non-sexual sort, but instead I get some uber-character coming in and taking care of everything with little more than a flick of the wrist. Gee. That's exciting.
I suppose the worst part of all is that whenever I read a book that I don't like, I get really paranoid about my own writing and I have to go back over it and question whether I'm doing any of the things that bothered me about what I just read. But then again, if I find that my writing is too bad, I guess I can come up with reasons for my characters to have mind-numbingly good sex, add a few lines about burning groins, market it as paranormal romance, and become a best seller.
No, I'm not bitter.
I spent Christmas Eve reading Sherrilyn Kenyon's Seize the Night. It was a Comic Con give-away, so I decided I'd read it and review it for Collector Times. After writing a three-page review (which will be available on January 1st), I realized that I hadn't managed to complain about everything that annoyed me about it, so it's spilling over into this little rant.
So you don't feel lost, here's a capsule review: Seize the Night is a book in the middle of a series about a bunch of immortal demon/vampire hunters called the Dark-Hunters, who work under the auspices of the Greek goddess Artemis. This particular volume concerns a 2000 year old Roman general, and the 20-or-30-something human vampire hunter who are complete opposites but fall in luuuuuurve anyway, while kind of sort of maybe worrying about killing some demon/vampires that want to kill her twin sister, who is married to one of his old enemies.
I addressed a lot of my problems with the book in specific and the genre in general in the review, so I won't rehash them here, but here are a few more that I came up with:
1: Seriously people, learn how to portray gods. This was the second book I've read where the author comes up with a depiction of a goddess that I completely disagree with. I'm not an expert, per se, but I have studied a bit of mythology in my time, and the two goddesses in specific are ones I've read up quite a bit on: The Morrigan and Artemis. The former is a crow goddess of death and the battlefield. She wasn't a very nice lady. She forced Cu Cuchlain into a situation where he had to choose to break one or the other of his two geases, leading to his death. Yet Nora Roberts somehow manages to portray her as some sweet, beautiful, nature-loving, vampire-hating goddess. And then there's Artemis, who's considered indifferent at best to men, if not a man-hater and/or lesbian. She was a capable huntress and was later syncretized with a fellow moon-goddess, Hecate, the goddess of crossroads, who is also often associated with magic. How do you take that and turn it into a woman who keeps a stable of incredibly sexy men as her person demon/vampire hunters? And who, when we finally actually see her in the book, spends her time ineffectively dithering about what to do to avoid upsetting the oh-so-sexy and mysterious uber-character? She comes across like a schoolgirl who's freaking out because she put a scratch on her crush's sports car. Ugh.
I understand that in many mythologies, the gods were seen merely as more powerful reflections of ourselves, with all the foibles of humanity writ large. But I'd still like to see a god or goddess written in a way that suggests that they should actually inspire awe and worship in mortals. At the very least, having lived for thousands of years should give them some level of wisdom and maturity beyond that of the average human.
2: And while we're talking about wisdom and maturity... how about men who have lived for thousands of years, entering into relationships with women in their 20s or 30s? Talk about robbing the cradle! When discussing age differences of 10 years or so, people often bring up the difficulty of differing life experiences, relationship expectations, and lifestyles. How much worse is it going to be for someone who has seen empires rise and fall, living with someone who can count the number of presidential terms they lived through on their fingers?
Then, of course, the immortal has to either accept the fact that their loved one will die after a few decades, while they live on for many centuries. Or they have to somehow give up their immortality, so they can live out a single lifetime with their lover. Let me tell you, my husband and I have had to deal with fights over the minor sacrifices we've made for each other. Can you imagine having THAT thrown in your face every time you have a fight? "Oh yeah? I gave up ETERNITY for you! I don't think asking you to do the dishes is such a big deal compared to that." Plus, what if the mortal love dies suddenly and unexpectedly, mere weeks after you've sacrificed your immortality? I doubt the gods are just going to give it back to you, because you ask nicely. Now there's a book I want to read.
Or perhaps, in some fairy tale endings, the mortal love is granted immortality. Well snap. You get to spend eternity with your lover. Hope it works out for you. Hope you don't mind watching every single other person you love grow old and die. Hope you're prepared to deal with changing your identity every few decades to avoid suspicion. Hope that your kids are immortal, too. No parent should have to outlive all of their children.
3: Three words for you: whirlwind freakin' courtships. Yes, people can know almost from the start of a relationship that they want to spend the rest of their lives together. But I have a hard time suspending my belief when, within a matter of *days* two characters go from hating each other to not just hopping into the sack, but declaring their love for each other. And then within weeks or months, they're married. Awww. How sweet. Right. That totally happens in real life.
4: Do Romans taste better than those who are not? (bonus points if you catch the song reference) Several times during the course of Seize the Night, the female lead "moans at the taste of her Roman" (or general). Does his nationality really affect his flavor? And can he really be called "her general" the first freakin' time she kisses him? Does a single kiss immediately confer ownership? Perhaps that's how vampire hunters mark their territory. I suppose it's better than my cat's method, but it has to be really weird, watching her walk through the store and smooch everything before she buys it.
5: Unquestioning acceptance of flaws and shady past. If my husband of eight years, whom I already love very much, confessed to me some dark secret from his youth, I would probably be able to forgive him. If some guy that I just met less than a week ago had done horrible things, and my family already hated him, and I didn't find out from him, but from some god who thought I should know what I was getting into, I wouldn't just shrug it all off and say "Oh, that's ok, he did the wrong things for the right reasons." I might still end up with the guy eventually, but I'd have to take at least a few days off from the relationship to think things through and ask myself if I could really live with a man who had, say, tortured people.
Then again, I suppose all of the mind-numbingly great sex that we'd been having over the past few days of knowing each other might cloud my judgement a bit (I could say more on the subject of the sex, but I told Blogger that this blog didn't have adult content, so I don't want to get too detailed).
6: Deus Ex Machina. Ok, this is something I hate about any book in any genre, or any movie for that matter, who can't just let its main characters solve their problems. But really, what is the point of having two moderately powerful characters, and making me spend an entire book watching them fall in luuuuuurve, if in the end, they have so little to do with the climax of the story that they might as well not be there? Seriously, I thought I was finally going to see some action of the non-sexual sort, but instead I get some uber-character coming in and taking care of everything with little more than a flick of the wrist. Gee. That's exciting.
I suppose the worst part of all is that whenever I read a book that I don't like, I get really paranoid about my own writing and I have to go back over it and question whether I'm doing any of the things that bothered me about what I just read. But then again, if I find that my writing is too bad, I guess I can come up with reasons for my characters to have mind-numbingly good sex, add a few lines about burning groins, market it as paranormal romance, and become a best seller.
No, I'm not bitter.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Book Review: The Merchants' War by Charles Stross
Possible subtitle: Stupid cover, good book.
As a reader and hopeful author, I often wonder if authors get any say in the cover of their novel. I'm pretty sure the answer is no, otherwise we wouldn't get all of these covers where the main character looks nothing like how they're described, or situations that don't really happen in the book.
The Merchants' War by Charles Stross -- Book 4 of the Merchant Princes if you're American like me, Book 3 if you're in the UK like Stross -- has a cover that invited quite a bit of ridicule from my husband, and in fact, I'd be pretty embarrassed to read the book in public. It's the sort of cover you expect to see on one of those blogs where they photoshop a new title on a Choose Your Own Adventure book or cheap 80s video game (I'd provide links, but I'm too lazy to go looking for them).
How bad is the cover? Well, you can see it in Amazon's listing for the book. In case you can't tell, yes, the men in medieval armor and surcoats do in fact have guns at their belts, and are firing more guns at a man flying over a courtyard in an ultralight glider aircraft. Shockingly enough, this actually happens in the book, although the perspective in the cover is way off.
And yet, despite the fact that the book has armor-clad, gun-toting men firing at ultralights very late into it, I enjoyed it immensely. Like the three (or two) books before it, it's a fast-paced page turner of a sci-fi fantasy crime thriller detective adventure novel. There's a little bit of everything thrown into the mix. Political intrigue, drug trafficking, government conspiracies, shocking revelations, the hint of romance, gun fights and more.
The Merchants' War starts to answer questions that readers have probably been asking all along (at least I have). Is the clan's ability to walk between worlds magical or some sort of genetic mutation? Are there more than three worlds that can be reached by those means? Are there worlds that are more techoligically advanced than the world we live in? I won't share the answers that are revealed, because I try to avoid spoilers, but I will say that I was satisfied with how these avenues were explored.
There are a couple of places where The Merchants' War almost lost me. When a government scientist starts throwing out ten-dollar science-y words that I've never seen before and can't even figure out how to pronounce so I can ask my bio-geek husband what they mean, and it's 2am, I feel tempted to put a book down. And most of the plots involved the DEA, FBI, and other acronyms failed to grab me, just as they did in the previous book. And there's one plot twist, that I again don't want to give away, but I find it pretty implausible.
Those quibbles aside, I really enjoyed the book and often had a hard time putting it down to eat meals and sleep. The characters continue to be strong, and I enjoyed the new revelations about my favorite secondary character, Erasmus Burgeson. My previous issue with weak dialog seems to have completely disappeared. The plot moves along nicely, and I'm constantly guessing as to how much of what characters reveal is true, and how much of it is carefully-cultured lies meant to manipulate the characters and the reader. I'd highly recommend this series to just about anyone, silly cover paintings aside.
As a reader and hopeful author, I often wonder if authors get any say in the cover of their novel. I'm pretty sure the answer is no, otherwise we wouldn't get all of these covers where the main character looks nothing like how they're described, or situations that don't really happen in the book.
The Merchants' War by Charles Stross -- Book 4 of the Merchant Princes if you're American like me, Book 3 if you're in the UK like Stross -- has a cover that invited quite a bit of ridicule from my husband, and in fact, I'd be pretty embarrassed to read the book in public. It's the sort of cover you expect to see on one of those blogs where they photoshop a new title on a Choose Your Own Adventure book or cheap 80s video game (I'd provide links, but I'm too lazy to go looking for them).
How bad is the cover? Well, you can see it in Amazon's listing for the book. In case you can't tell, yes, the men in medieval armor and surcoats do in fact have guns at their belts, and are firing more guns at a man flying over a courtyard in an ultralight glider aircraft. Shockingly enough, this actually happens in the book, although the perspective in the cover is way off.
And yet, despite the fact that the book has armor-clad, gun-toting men firing at ultralights very late into it, I enjoyed it immensely. Like the three (or two) books before it, it's a fast-paced page turner of a sci-fi fantasy crime thriller detective adventure novel. There's a little bit of everything thrown into the mix. Political intrigue, drug trafficking, government conspiracies, shocking revelations, the hint of romance, gun fights and more.
The Merchants' War starts to answer questions that readers have probably been asking all along (at least I have). Is the clan's ability to walk between worlds magical or some sort of genetic mutation? Are there more than three worlds that can be reached by those means? Are there worlds that are more techoligically advanced than the world we live in? I won't share the answers that are revealed, because I try to avoid spoilers, but I will say that I was satisfied with how these avenues were explored.
There are a couple of places where The Merchants' War almost lost me. When a government scientist starts throwing out ten-dollar science-y words that I've never seen before and can't even figure out how to pronounce so I can ask my bio-geek husband what they mean, and it's 2am, I feel tempted to put a book down. And most of the plots involved the DEA, FBI, and other acronyms failed to grab me, just as they did in the previous book. And there's one plot twist, that I again don't want to give away, but I find it pretty implausible.
Those quibbles aside, I really enjoyed the book and often had a hard time putting it down to eat meals and sleep. The characters continue to be strong, and I enjoyed the new revelations about my favorite secondary character, Erasmus Burgeson. My previous issue with weak dialog seems to have completely disappeared. The plot moves along nicely, and I'm constantly guessing as to how much of what characters reveal is true, and how much of it is carefully-cultured lies meant to manipulate the characters and the reader. I'd highly recommend this series to just about anyone, silly cover paintings aside.
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