A few weeks ago I was driven near mad by something I just couldn't fathom. I wanted to know how cats see the world when their pupils are all thin and slivery. Is it like they're constantly looking through a crack in a wall or a slit in a picket fence? I had no idea so I brought it to Facebook, but I don't think I was understood. One response suggested that I purchase cat eye contact lenses (which I'm planning to do anyway for other reasons), but even if I were to do so I'm still seeing the world through a circle whereas felines view it through a thorn. This conundrum also affected the story I'm working on, Northern Lights, although I was able to cleverly sidestep the question in narrative, it still bothered me intrinsically. It also didn't help that I'd changed my work desktop background to Grumpy Cat so every time I booted up I was forced to stare at her near luminescent green eyes with slit pupils in her trademark, irritated face. I've always been good at point of view and empathy, but this seemed beyond even my skill.
Then one day at work I was helping out my friend Andrew on something or other and I mentioned that he should look at the column highlighted in pink. His response was something along the lines of "Which column are you talking about?" and that's when I remembered that Andrew is colorblind, like totes colorblind, green is pink and down is tooth-fairy. I can't make this stuff up. I had to pause for a moment because then I remembered the concept of qualia. I first learned about this from VSauce on YouTube (and you should totally click those links, because this stuff is just fascinating). It's complicated and philosophical, but what can be easily taken is that you can never understand how someone else sees the world. Essentially, you are alone in your experiences and that makes one feel both very humble and very lonely. Even with the words of a thousand tongues, it's not possibly to convey exactly what you're seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, or tasting nor is it possible for you know what someone else see, hears, smells, feels or tastes. Because we can only live in our own heads, we can never know how someone else experiences reality. As a writer this should seriously bother me, because that's what we constantly strive to do, but understanding the antithesis is very useful, because knowing the limitation is liberating; it doesn't have to be a flaw.
Recalling the concept of qualia brought me such peace of mind. There is absolutely no way I can ever know how a cat sees the word with constricted pupils, just like I can never know how someone who's color blind sees the color orange. Maybe my concept of orange is really wrong and what I'm actually seeing as orange is purple, but because the majority of the world sees and agrees that orange looks that particular way that's what we call it. But there's a chance an alien species will come here and declare, "Nah brah, that's purple" and which one of us will be wrong. This isn't even scratching the surface that we can only see a minute fraction of the visible spectrum, which means were not even on the level of the bees. Not being able to know is a comfort, because it means I can stop driving myself crazy in wondering about this impossible point of view.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Sunday, October 20, 2013
3 Gates of the Dead Review
Jonathan Ryan's 3 Gates of the Dead came recommended to me by an old high school friend whose opinion I value highly, and I was not disappointed. I am not usually one for mysteries or thrillers, though I have dabbled in them before (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo of The Millennium Series for one); my usual staple is of the fantasy and fairytale ilk, but I'm more than happy to step out of my boundaries for a good, rousing tale, and Ryan blows this out of the water. I finished it in two days.
This novel introduces Aidan Schaeffer, an assistant pastor for the Knox church in Columbus, OH. The story opens with Aidan dealing with the aftermath of his ex-fiancee Amanda's desertion and his subsequent crisis of faith, which was exacerbated by that event along with his parents' death in a house fire. It becomes very clear that these tragedies were not the cause of his doubts, but merely a catalyst to bring them to the forefront. I was immediately drawn to Aidan because of this as I have had similar issues, and the questions he was bringing up to his friend Brian were the same ones I've brought up to my husband (who is oddly enough also named Brian). Aidan is in a far more delicate position than the average Doubting Thomas since his business is to believe and to be a source of unshakeable faith for the congregation. Despite knowing what will happen he brings his issues to Mike, the head pastor and his boss, fulling expecting to be fired on the spot, but Mike who has also been his mentor for many years, takes this news in stride and tells Aidan that he'll help him on his journey to regain his faith. Aidan pursued a biology degree in college so he's very level headed and turned to theology because he saw it as a rational step. The doubts had always been there fueled by indulging in Dawkins and Hitchens, but he'd always been able to keep them at bay until the double whammy of his fiancee and parents.
As most mysteries go, things are never going to remain so "simple" as a crisis of faith and Aidan soon discovers that Amanda has been murdered in a highly ritualistic and frankly eerie way. He is initially a suspect, but his innocence is soon proven, but this heartbreaking wrench just throws him deeper into territory he is not prepared for. Both he and the detective who suspected him, Jennifer Brown, are baffled by Amanda's murder as there were strange markings found on her body. Adding to this is the strange supernatural events that have been occurring: the footprints found in the snow with no forensic evidence to indicate who made them, the findings by a "ghost hunting" group that Aidan is led to, and the cryptic note left by Amanda charging to him to find "Father Neal" and what horrors will happen if he does not. Aidan Schaeffer is literally a man chased by the dead and haunted by the ghosts of his guilt.
This book gave me goosebumps. I had to stop reading at around the half way point the night before and do something else before going to sleep. Aidan is such a well written and relate-able character. All of the doubts and contradictions he brought up about the nature of God were things that I myself have pondered still without satisfactory answer. I liked how Ryan was not trying to force religion down our throats, which is an amazing feat in a story about a preacher who has been thrust into a world of supernatural phenomenon. Usually crisis of faith stories end with the character having an amazing revelation and finding God again. It's trite; it's boring; it's expected. This story did none of those. Aidan's journey back to his faith is still in question by the end, but he has made progress. While there were a few things I did figure out on my own, they didn't detract from my enjoyment of the story, and far more revelations were utterly shocking. There were a few things Aidan references that I believe I might have had a better grasp on if I were more familiar with contemporary Christian culture, but these were few and far between. Ryan did an excellent job explaining most things that weren't common knowledge, but in a way that wasn't presumptuous and that didn't take me out of the story. Once I started reading I was in. He wove in the love aspect of the novel very well. It was an expected angle, too, but came off in a perfectly natural way. For a pastor Aidan is is very witty and snarky, which I chalk up to his fiery Irish blood. I also loved the nerd culture references. In a way that contributed to the creepiness of the tale, because these were so seamless that when the kooky stuff started happening it really got to you because you start thinking, "Oh my God...this is happening in the real world with real people who know about Star Wars and Harry Potter. Ahhh *chils*"
Aidan's struggle does a lot to present pastors in a different light and this is not a bad thing. It makes one feel less awful for doubting if people who are in the upper echelons do so it makes it okay for the rest of us. Most of all, it shows that they're human with human failings and human questions. It makes me think that faith is not necessarily unshakeable even for those who seem constantly unshaken. It's more mutable and wavering like the tide, but above all of it really was the message of hope. The people that really mattered never gave up on Aidan, and I think that says a lot about what true Christianity should be about.
I give this book four and a half stars and I can't wait for the next installment The Dark Bride.
This novel introduces Aidan Schaeffer, an assistant pastor for the Knox church in Columbus, OH. The story opens with Aidan dealing with the aftermath of his ex-fiancee Amanda's desertion and his subsequent crisis of faith, which was exacerbated by that event along with his parents' death in a house fire. It becomes very clear that these tragedies were not the cause of his doubts, but merely a catalyst to bring them to the forefront. I was immediately drawn to Aidan because of this as I have had similar issues, and the questions he was bringing up to his friend Brian were the same ones I've brought up to my husband (who is oddly enough also named Brian). Aidan is in a far more delicate position than the average Doubting Thomas since his business is to believe and to be a source of unshakeable faith for the congregation. Despite knowing what will happen he brings his issues to Mike, the head pastor and his boss, fulling expecting to be fired on the spot, but Mike who has also been his mentor for many years, takes this news in stride and tells Aidan that he'll help him on his journey to regain his faith. Aidan pursued a biology degree in college so he's very level headed and turned to theology because he saw it as a rational step. The doubts had always been there fueled by indulging in Dawkins and Hitchens, but he'd always been able to keep them at bay until the double whammy of his fiancee and parents.
As most mysteries go, things are never going to remain so "simple" as a crisis of faith and Aidan soon discovers that Amanda has been murdered in a highly ritualistic and frankly eerie way. He is initially a suspect, but his innocence is soon proven, but this heartbreaking wrench just throws him deeper into territory he is not prepared for. Both he and the detective who suspected him, Jennifer Brown, are baffled by Amanda's murder as there were strange markings found on her body. Adding to this is the strange supernatural events that have been occurring: the footprints found in the snow with no forensic evidence to indicate who made them, the findings by a "ghost hunting" group that Aidan is led to, and the cryptic note left by Amanda charging to him to find "Father Neal" and what horrors will happen if he does not. Aidan Schaeffer is literally a man chased by the dead and haunted by the ghosts of his guilt.
This book gave me goosebumps. I had to stop reading at around the half way point the night before and do something else before going to sleep. Aidan is such a well written and relate-able character. All of the doubts and contradictions he brought up about the nature of God were things that I myself have pondered still without satisfactory answer. I liked how Ryan was not trying to force religion down our throats, which is an amazing feat in a story about a preacher who has been thrust into a world of supernatural phenomenon. Usually crisis of faith stories end with the character having an amazing revelation and finding God again. It's trite; it's boring; it's expected. This story did none of those. Aidan's journey back to his faith is still in question by the end, but he has made progress. While there were a few things I did figure out on my own, they didn't detract from my enjoyment of the story, and far more revelations were utterly shocking. There were a few things Aidan references that I believe I might have had a better grasp on if I were more familiar with contemporary Christian culture, but these were few and far between. Ryan did an excellent job explaining most things that weren't common knowledge, but in a way that wasn't presumptuous and that didn't take me out of the story. Once I started reading I was in. He wove in the love aspect of the novel very well. It was an expected angle, too, but came off in a perfectly natural way. For a pastor Aidan is is very witty and snarky, which I chalk up to his fiery Irish blood. I also loved the nerd culture references. In a way that contributed to the creepiness of the tale, because these were so seamless that when the kooky stuff started happening it really got to you because you start thinking, "Oh my God...this is happening in the real world with real people who know about Star Wars and Harry Potter. Ahhh *chils*"
Aidan's struggle does a lot to present pastors in a different light and this is not a bad thing. It makes one feel less awful for doubting if people who are in the upper echelons do so it makes it okay for the rest of us. Most of all, it shows that they're human with human failings and human questions. It makes me think that faith is not necessarily unshakeable even for those who seem constantly unshaken. It's more mutable and wavering like the tide, but above all of it really was the message of hope. The people that really mattered never gave up on Aidan, and I think that says a lot about what true Christianity should be about.
I give this book four and a half stars and I can't wait for the next installment The Dark Bride.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
The Well of Acension (Mistborn 2) Review
In Sanderson's second installation Elend Venture is the current king of Luthadel with Vin as his personal mistborn bodyguard, but the young monarch holds a very precarious position as his father, Straff Venture, is camped outside his city's gates with an army bent on conquest. This fact is compounded when another army (that of Lord Cett) shows up, and of course there are still assassins trying for Elend's life. On top of this, Vin discovers a mysterious Watcher during her nightly patrols who tests the limits of her mistborn abilities.
Sanderson again tells far more than he shows. The most blatant instance of this comes when Elend meets with Dockson, and afterword the author insists that Dockson doesn't like Elend. Okay...what? At no point in the prior exchange was there ANY sign of animosity between these two individuals. Their conversation was polite and there was nothing in the narrative or dialogue tags to show what Dockson felt. We don't find this out until afterward where Sanderson tells us that it's so, and has Elend bemoaning the fact.
I also found reason to dislike Vin in this novel among other things. She has inherited OreSeur the kandra, a creature that can take the shape of people (and later animals) that it consumes. Vin is still upset that the kandra, well, essentially ate Kelsier after he died in order to impersonate him for a time, even though this was the Survivor's plans all along. Her treatment of OreSeur just bugs me and seems out of character with someone who has been trodden on and abused her entire life. Kandra follow a contract that allows them to live in human society. They are forced to obey their human master/mistress by this with few exceptions.
*sigh* I am very glad I didn't waste my time finishing this novel. I tried...I really tried to get through it. I really tried to let my fascination with the Deepness cut through my ever growing ennui and fuel a desire to find out what the hell that was. I really tried to maintain my interest despite the stodgy dialogue and constant telling instead of showing. I tried to latch on to some of the attempted intrigue with Zane who ends up not only be the elusive Watcher, but also Straff Venture's bastard mistborn son who constantly hears "God's" voice telling him to kill everyone he meets especially his father. I tried to care about this stuff, but it all just seemed so forced and trite. No one really had a strongly discernible personality, and I honestly just stopped caring and resorted to reading the Mistborn wiki to find out how both this and the third one ended. Having done that I'm even happier that I didn't waste my time in finishing because I'm less than impressed. The first novel was okay. The idea was new and fantastic; what would happen if the villain won. Brilliance pulled off in a not so stellar way, but I was still able to slog through it. This one has the two armies besieging our protagonists, but it just doesn't hold a candle to a ragtag bunch of thieves and spies trying to overthrow god (which, let's face it is essentially the plot of every Final Fantasy), and Sanderson's writing just wasn't compelling enough to hold me to this story without those dire odds. Maybe this one just begins slower because it's mostly about politics, but reading what the end is, I just sort of shrug my shoulders and say, "Eh..."
Two stars and I (obviously) won't be reading the third or fourth or however many of these there are. Maybe I'll give Elantris a try...but not right now.
Sanderson again tells far more than he shows. The most blatant instance of this comes when Elend meets with Dockson, and afterword the author insists that Dockson doesn't like Elend. Okay...what? At no point in the prior exchange was there ANY sign of animosity between these two individuals. Their conversation was polite and there was nothing in the narrative or dialogue tags to show what Dockson felt. We don't find this out until afterward where Sanderson tells us that it's so, and has Elend bemoaning the fact.
I also found reason to dislike Vin in this novel among other things. She has inherited OreSeur the kandra, a creature that can take the shape of people (and later animals) that it consumes. Vin is still upset that the kandra, well, essentially ate Kelsier after he died in order to impersonate him for a time, even though this was the Survivor's plans all along. Her treatment of OreSeur just bugs me and seems out of character with someone who has been trodden on and abused her entire life. Kandra follow a contract that allows them to live in human society. They are forced to obey their human master/mistress by this with few exceptions.
*sigh* I am very glad I didn't waste my time finishing this novel. I tried...I really tried to get through it. I really tried to let my fascination with the Deepness cut through my ever growing ennui and fuel a desire to find out what the hell that was. I really tried to maintain my interest despite the stodgy dialogue and constant telling instead of showing. I tried to latch on to some of the attempted intrigue with Zane who ends up not only be the elusive Watcher, but also Straff Venture's bastard mistborn son who constantly hears "God's" voice telling him to kill everyone he meets especially his father. I tried to care about this stuff, but it all just seemed so forced and trite. No one really had a strongly discernible personality, and I honestly just stopped caring and resorted to reading the Mistborn wiki to find out how both this and the third one ended. Having done that I'm even happier that I didn't waste my time in finishing because I'm less than impressed. The first novel was okay. The idea was new and fantastic; what would happen if the villain won. Brilliance pulled off in a not so stellar way, but I was still able to slog through it. This one has the two armies besieging our protagonists, but it just doesn't hold a candle to a ragtag bunch of thieves and spies trying to overthrow god (which, let's face it is essentially the plot of every Final Fantasy), and Sanderson's writing just wasn't compelling enough to hold me to this story without those dire odds. Maybe this one just begins slower because it's mostly about politics, but reading what the end is, I just sort of shrug my shoulders and say, "Eh..."
Two stars and I (obviously) won't be reading the third or fourth or however many of these there are. Maybe I'll give Elantris a try...but not right now.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
My Adventures in Editing a Paranormal Romance Novel: What I've Learned from Critiques/Reviews
I've been trying to be more attentive to this blog, since I seem to get so caught up in life that I often neglect it. I'm happy to say that I've written two book reviews in the past month, and although I've always known that reading makes one a better writer, I'm also finding that critiquing makes me more critical of my own work in a beneficial way.
I just now posted a review of Brandon Sanderson's first Mistborn novel, and one of my biggest issues with the story was how much the author told instead of showed. Because I discovered this paradigm in another, it's causing me to turn a more critical eye to The Serpent's Tale and wonder if there are more instances of this phenomenon that I can cut out in my next edit. Am I making sure I'm showing what the characters are like through dialogue and action rather than just telling what they're like? I know for a fact that Maya often remarks both internally and aloud on Uriel's strength, but in the wake of seeing this in Mistborn, I want to ensure that I'm not falling into the show vs. tell trap.
I think an even more important observation is the harsh review I gave of the first Mortal Instruments. I was disappointed in that book for a variety of reasons. One, I really, REALLY want to find a novel based on fanfiction that is favorably received by a sizable portion of the population, but I have yet to see this occur. This..is a bit discouraging since my novel is based on a fanfiction I wrote back in the year 2000, and it would be nice to see some validation of such a paradigm while I'm still in the editing stages. Unfortunately, nearly every novel I've seen that can claim such (50 Shades of Gray, Mortal Instruments) has such glaring issues that I can't call such a claim anything positive. Of course it's possible that there are novels out there that don't promote this as their claim to fame, but this presents the problem of assumption. There are many stories I can see parallels in, but I never want to assume that perhaps it's based on something I've read, viewed, or played, because, well I find random and weird connections in everything. I could begin a conversation course that would end in Death of the Author versus Word of God, but you should already how I'd arrive at that crossroad. Of course perhaps the novels not making their fanfic base a claim to fame is a good thing and maybe the authors are assuming or targeting their works towards an audience that is clever enough to figure this out themselves without needing it advertised.
Besides the above, Mortal Instruments presented a critique that I desperately want to avoid in my paranormal romance novel. I absolutely hated the character of Jace, the bad boy (initial) love interest. He was a complete jackass and douche whom I had no attraction to at all. I was discussing this with a friend and we decided that you want a character to be a "bad boy," but not a "bad guy." Essentially, you want to pull off the bad boy status without making the character just an asshole. They need to show redeeming qualities even before the big reveal as to why the character is a bad boy after all (because you know there HAS to be a reason) aka the character should have a show multiple layers that keeps the reading interested and wondering why they're putting on this veneer of douchebaggery. But you don't want your reader to hate the character even if the main female lead does or isn't sure. It's a definite balancing act. Even worse than Jace is of course anything pertaining to Twilight (cries tiny tears) and I want NO association with that at all. It's bad enough just mentioning the term "paranormal romance" usually garners it as a response because apparently it's become the paragon of what paranormal romance is.
Fellow writers and intelligent thinkers this HAS to be changed, but this shows that even faulty writing has merit. It stands as an example of what not to do and how to improve your own works. It's also encouraging to realize that a novel doesn't have to be perfect to be published as long as the right representation is discovered and convinced.
I just now posted a review of Brandon Sanderson's first Mistborn novel, and one of my biggest issues with the story was how much the author told instead of showed. Because I discovered this paradigm in another, it's causing me to turn a more critical eye to The Serpent's Tale and wonder if there are more instances of this phenomenon that I can cut out in my next edit. Am I making sure I'm showing what the characters are like through dialogue and action rather than just telling what they're like? I know for a fact that Maya often remarks both internally and aloud on Uriel's strength, but in the wake of seeing this in Mistborn, I want to ensure that I'm not falling into the show vs. tell trap.
I think an even more important observation is the harsh review I gave of the first Mortal Instruments. I was disappointed in that book for a variety of reasons. One, I really, REALLY want to find a novel based on fanfiction that is favorably received by a sizable portion of the population, but I have yet to see this occur. This..is a bit discouraging since my novel is based on a fanfiction I wrote back in the year 2000, and it would be nice to see some validation of such a paradigm while I'm still in the editing stages. Unfortunately, nearly every novel I've seen that can claim such (50 Shades of Gray, Mortal Instruments) has such glaring issues that I can't call such a claim anything positive. Of course it's possible that there are novels out there that don't promote this as their claim to fame, but this presents the problem of assumption. There are many stories I can see parallels in, but I never want to assume that perhaps it's based on something I've read, viewed, or played, because, well I find random and weird connections in everything. I could begin a conversation course that would end in Death of the Author versus Word of God, but you should already how I'd arrive at that crossroad. Of course perhaps the novels not making their fanfic base a claim to fame is a good thing and maybe the authors are assuming or targeting their works towards an audience that is clever enough to figure this out themselves without needing it advertised.
Besides the above, Mortal Instruments presented a critique that I desperately want to avoid in my paranormal romance novel. I absolutely hated the character of Jace, the bad boy (initial) love interest. He was a complete jackass and douche whom I had no attraction to at all. I was discussing this with a friend and we decided that you want a character to be a "bad boy," but not a "bad guy." Essentially, you want to pull off the bad boy status without making the character just an asshole. They need to show redeeming qualities even before the big reveal as to why the character is a bad boy after all (because you know there HAS to be a reason) aka the character should have a show multiple layers that keeps the reading interested and wondering why they're putting on this veneer of douchebaggery. But you don't want your reader to hate the character even if the main female lead does or isn't sure. It's a definite balancing act. Even worse than Jace is of course anything pertaining to Twilight (cries tiny tears) and I want NO association with that at all. It's bad enough just mentioning the term "paranormal romance" usually garners it as a response because apparently it's become the paragon of what paranormal romance is.
Fellow writers and intelligent thinkers this HAS to be changed, but this shows that even faulty writing has merit. It stands as an example of what not to do and how to improve your own works. It's also encouraging to realize that a novel doesn't have to be perfect to be published as long as the right representation is discovered and convinced.
Mistborn: The Final Empire Review
Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn: The Final Empire does something I've yet to see a novel do: show what would happen if the villain won. A thousand years ago the hero of prophecy set forth to save the world. He failed and now the Lord Ruler reigns as both immortal emperor and god. The descendents of the people who supported him are the nobles and aristocracy, while the descendents of the people who opposed him are known as the skaa and are treated as slaves. Ash rains continuously from the skies blocking out the sky and making the sun appear as a molten red ball. People have never seen green plants or flowers and the ash floods the world by day while the mists come at night.
The novel starts out really strong in the prologue with Kelsier, a man known as the Survivor since he's the only known one of a horror called the Pits of Hathsin where a metal known as atium is mined (more on that later). Kelsier visits a group of plantation skaa at the end of the day after their backbreaking labor is done. Elusive and legendary, Kelsier is both a beacon of hope and a cause for alarm among the skaa since he openly defies the nobility and associating with him could have any skaa beaten and/or killed. The lord of that particular plantation no longer participates in that since Kelsier murders him that very night setting the tone for what's supposedly going to be a vengeance story, but then the gears switch over to the actual main character of the tale.
Vin is a street urchin currently working for a thieving crew headed by a brutal man named Camon who consistently beats her. Vin is around sixteen years old and has been abandoned by everyone she thought she could trust. Her brother Reen, who also beat her, left her long ago, fulfilling his words of "everyone will betray you" by doing so himself. The thieving crew operates in Luthadel, the largest city in the Final Empire and where the Lord Ruler resides, and Vin is useful to Camon for her ability to calm peoples' emotions, which is very useful for when one is trying to scam the nobility. Vin is aware that she has some sort of power that she can't explain, but also knows that it's in limited supply and too quickly runs out. She often spares some to use on Camon to avoid being beaten though this has backfired on her when he realizes she's doing so.
Kelsier comes back into the picture during an attempted job by Camon's crew to secure a canal route and thereby steal from one of the city's noble houses. Kelsier is less than impressed with the way Camon has been treating Vin, ousts him and his crew from their lair and secures it for him and his crew taking Vin into his employ. Kelsier's crew consists of a bunch of various characters including his brother, and the Survivor of Hathsin's big scheme is to do no less than to overthrow the Final Empire and kill the Lord Ruler, which everyone thinks is insane seeing as the Lord Ruler is (supposedly) no less than God, and, well you can't defeat God. Kelsier vehemently disagrees with this belief and hates that everyone has fallen for it even unto the point that By the Lord Ruler is a common exclamation. He thinks the emperor is a very powerful fraud, but a fraud nonetheless. In this the novel shows some Gnostic leanings as that ideology states that the being we believe to be God is actually not and is rather an entity who claimed the title. Whether Sanderson has studied this mode of thought or not I don't know, but you can definitely see its influence in his novel.
Before all of this can happen however, Vin needs to be brought into the realization of what she is. Kelsier kept her in his crew because he recognized she wields the same power he has. She's Mistborn, a person born with the ability to use allomancy or manipulate metals in a method they refer to as burning. When Vin was calming emotions, she was actually burning brass to use a power called Soothing, but there are numerous other abilities a Mistborn has at their disposal. Most people if they can use allomancy can only use one aspect of it and are called Mistings. There are ten known metals, which work as opposed pairs for both physical and mental enhancements, and (we find out later) an eleventh "secret" one, which suggests to me that Sanderson was dabbling a bit in Qabbalistic theory as well. This really solidifies when we find out more information about the Inquisitors (oh boy...), men with spikes hammered through their eye sockets that stick out the back of their heads. Granted this is just the first book so there are probably more than eleven metals, which rips my Qabbalistic theory apart, but it works for this first installment and STILL stands true for the Inquisitors (I refuse to give up on making this my theory of everything!).
Crash course in allomantic metals! There are metals that grant physical and mental enhancements and they're generally paired.
Steel - people who can burn this are called Coinshots and use it to Push on nearby metals. If the object weighs less than they do they'll fly through the air. If it weighs more than they do they'll be pulled toward it. I guess if they weigh the same it'll be a stalemate (random thought).
Iron - this is the opposing metal to steel so Lurchers, as they're called, Pull on nearby metals and it's similar to what Coinshots can accomplish with Steel.
Tin - Tineyes have the ability to enhance all of their senses, which makes them great as lookouts. The disadvantage to this is that they can easily become overwhelmed since the volume is turned up to eleven all the time they're burning their metal.
Pewter - used by Pewterarms or the much simpler term Thugs, this metal allows the user to enhance their physical prowess so Thugs are useful in physical altercations. Pewter is also useful if the user is injured as it gives the ability to carry on in the face of serious wounds or weariness. Of course once the pewter runs out the Thug is faced with the full brunt of what they've endured, and they could potentially die from their wounds. This would also be disastrous if they were carrying something really heavy...
Bronze - Seekers can burn this to find out if anyone is using allomancy in a particular vicinity. I guess the area range is dependent on the strength of the seeker.
Copper - Mistings who can burn copper are called Smokers and they essentially create a smokescreen or (in their vernacular) a Coppercloud (which is their other name) from Seekers. This ability is priceless to thieving crews who want to hide their metal burning from Inquisitors, Mistings or Mistborn.
Zinc - this metal inflames the emotions of people in the vicinity and Mistings who can use it are called Rioters (for obvious reasons).
Brass - this is the one that Vin has been unknowingly using all of her life, and it serves to sooth peoples' emotions so the Mistings that can use it are known as Soothers.
Gold - this one is rare and Vin doesn't find out about it until later in the story (I have some feelings about that, but I'll divulge later). Gold shows what you could've been in the past. It's rarely used since something like this can obviously cause emotional trauma and regret for what could've been.
Atium - ah the big one! Atium is sort of the MacGuffin of the story and a big driving force behind the plot. As gold shows the past atium reveals the future. Burning this extremely precious metal will show a target's future moves so that the burner can easily avoid them. Of course if the other person burns atium, as well, all possibilities will be visible since the original burner will then alter their course of action, which will then alter their opponents course of action and so on and so on. Both people burning atium will bring the fight back to equilibrium, with the only advantage being if one person runs out. Atium is what was being mined in Hathsin from whence Kelsier escaped and his master plan is to find the Lord Ruler's source, which will make him vulnerable. The fact that a "deity" needs a source of power that will show him the future throws another wrench into the idea of his godhood.
The Eleventh Metal - this one doesn't even have a name and is in fact legendary. Kelsier does manage to get his hands on it, but he doesn't know what it does; he only believes it can somehow defeat the Lord Ruler. This may actually be the true MacGuffin of the story.
Alright...enough exposition and introduction of the plot. Let's get to what I liked/didn't like!
Vin is pretty much your average orphan, foundling, urchin, etc. with mystical powers who is going to save the world (shocker). I'm okay with this. She's a fairly interesting character who definitely shows a lot of growth. Her other part in Kelsier's plan (besides training her to use her powers as a mistborn) is to play the part of a young noble women and spy/infiltrate the aristocracy as Valette Renoux the niece of Lord Renoux who's actually an imposter planted by Kelsier. Lord Renoux has been dead for a while (probably killed by Kelsier, but I forget), and she definitely is drawn out of her abused child shell with this task. It's a total 180 from living hand to mouth, subsisting on scraps, and sleeping on the floor to having her own room/bed, dining and dancing with nobles, and not being beaten every day.
Kelsier's crew is made up of various Mistings: Breeze, an aristocratic looking man who serves as their Soother; Ham, their Thug, Kelsier's brother Marsh whose the Seeker; Clubs, the Smoker who owns a carpentry business that's often used as a cover (hehe, double entendre here); Lestibournes later referred to as Spook is the group's weirdly accented Tineye, and Dockson who isn't an allomancer but serves as Kelsier's second in command and hates the nobility as much as the Survivor of Hathisin does. Finally there's Sazed, a Terrisman who acts as steward to Lord Renoux in the plot. He can use Feruchemy a contemporary but opposite ability set to Allomancy where users of the former use metals as holding units for power.
Honestly, I had to use the Mistborn wiki to remember all of these. A lot of the crew is so forgettable and not fleshed out that I seriously had to force myself to remember how they fit into the narrative. Breeze stands out due to his aristocratic speech since he deals with the nobility so much, and Sazed is memorable due to him being a Terrisman, which I'm guessing is another race like elves/dwarves especially owing to Sazed's description. Spook has a soft of weird accent and is (of course) lovestruck with Vin, but Sanderson actually starts explaining certain aspects of some of these characters more than halfway and almost three-quarters of the way through the book! He'll also brought up the term "kandra" in respect to some random noble's servant and I sat there scratching my head wondering what the hell he was talking about. About fifty or so pages later the term is mentioned again in front of Vin and she questions it and I found that to be poor writing. It would've been far better to bring up the term initially in front of a character who could be used as the foil to explain it. My guess is he wanted to introduce it and leave it mysterious, but it came off as sloppy.
I had a tough time remembering what each metal did and what the name of each Misting who controlled said metal was called. There was a lot of flipping back to the glossary at the end of the book to refresh my memory. I feel that Sanderson could've done better with that by working descriptions of each into the narrative when they're mentioned in the beginning. It was disruptive to be constantly checking on what the hell a Coinshot or a Tineye was when I was nearly through the book.
The dialogue in this novel is far too simplistic for what the story is about. Besides Spook and Breeze there didn't seem to be much individualization in how each character speaks. Nothing really sets them apart much in mannerisms either (unless we're told it does..more on that in the next paragraph). The nobility is the same way. I can't count how many times Sanderson mentioned something was said in an aristocratic way instead of just saying it in an aristocratic way. Even the Lord Ruler has this very generic speech pattern. He does call Vin a child, a lot, which I'm guessing is Sanderson's attempt to make him seem condescending. It doesn't really work out all that way to distinguish him, and I felt the same way about the Inquisitors. I almost wanted him to make them have this very distinct speech pattern due to what had been done to them; it would've made them seem far more creepy and other, which I'm assuming he'd want to do. We're more told what a character's personality rather than shows, which leads me into my next point...
Sanderson is a HUGE perpetrator of telling instead of showing. He'll often have a character think something along the lines of He's so strong! in the midst of a fight and then he'll go into showing how this is so where he could've easily dropped the thought bubble. This telling besides showing takes away from some of the more brutal parts of the book as well. There's one scene where Kelsier has the entire crew attend a public execution so that they can be reminded what they're fighting against. He then makes a speech while in between paragraphs Sanderson reminds us that four more skaa have been killed, and that's literally what he says, "Four more people died." It's so amazingly drab and doesn't begin to explain the horror of what they're seeing. We're told throughout the novel that skaa women are consistently raped and then murdered by noble lords so that no halfbreeds are (supposedly) born, but the only time this is really ever seen is in the prologue, which is honestly what drew me into the book in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I don't need to consistently see graphic rape scenes (I've been accused of not going into detail with one of those myself, wtf...), but Sanderson seems to work on a system of narrative where we hear people mentioning it to characters instead of having it shown within the work.
What kept me reading was the idea behind the Lord Ruler being a god usurper. Unentitled apotheosis has always been an interest of mine. The beginning of every chapter had a blurb that appeared to be the hero's story about how he defeated something known as the Deepness (shivers) and THAT definitely interested me. I really wanted to know what this Deepness was and what he had to do to defeat it. I also began to believe that the hero of legend was actually the Lord Ruler, but something had gotten into him and changed him into the emperor/tyrant god that he became. Maybe he didn't defeat the Deepness...maybe the Deepness took over him. This had a bit of a Cthulhu vibe and I'm a sucker for anything Lovecraftian.
I struggled between giving Mistborn: The Final Empire 2 or 3 stars, but I think I can give it 3 due to the fact that I'm interested in reading the next installment. Despite the flaws Sanderson did manage to intrigue me and make me want to know more about this Deepness and what the Lord Ruler was really protecting mankind from even if I do have to take it along with the mostly generic characters, overly verbose dialogue, telling vs. showing, and uninteresting fight scenes. I think despite all of that it was still worth my time in reading it, and if you can get past the foibles I mentioned, it's worth your time, too.
The novel starts out really strong in the prologue with Kelsier, a man known as the Survivor since he's the only known one of a horror called the Pits of Hathsin where a metal known as atium is mined (more on that later). Kelsier visits a group of plantation skaa at the end of the day after their backbreaking labor is done. Elusive and legendary, Kelsier is both a beacon of hope and a cause for alarm among the skaa since he openly defies the nobility and associating with him could have any skaa beaten and/or killed. The lord of that particular plantation no longer participates in that since Kelsier murders him that very night setting the tone for what's supposedly going to be a vengeance story, but then the gears switch over to the actual main character of the tale.
Vin is a street urchin currently working for a thieving crew headed by a brutal man named Camon who consistently beats her. Vin is around sixteen years old and has been abandoned by everyone she thought she could trust. Her brother Reen, who also beat her, left her long ago, fulfilling his words of "everyone will betray you" by doing so himself. The thieving crew operates in Luthadel, the largest city in the Final Empire and where the Lord Ruler resides, and Vin is useful to Camon for her ability to calm peoples' emotions, which is very useful for when one is trying to scam the nobility. Vin is aware that she has some sort of power that she can't explain, but also knows that it's in limited supply and too quickly runs out. She often spares some to use on Camon to avoid being beaten though this has backfired on her when he realizes she's doing so.
Kelsier comes back into the picture during an attempted job by Camon's crew to secure a canal route and thereby steal from one of the city's noble houses. Kelsier is less than impressed with the way Camon has been treating Vin, ousts him and his crew from their lair and secures it for him and his crew taking Vin into his employ. Kelsier's crew consists of a bunch of various characters including his brother, and the Survivor of Hathsin's big scheme is to do no less than to overthrow the Final Empire and kill the Lord Ruler, which everyone thinks is insane seeing as the Lord Ruler is (supposedly) no less than God, and, well you can't defeat God. Kelsier vehemently disagrees with this belief and hates that everyone has fallen for it even unto the point that By the Lord Ruler is a common exclamation. He thinks the emperor is a very powerful fraud, but a fraud nonetheless. In this the novel shows some Gnostic leanings as that ideology states that the being we believe to be God is actually not and is rather an entity who claimed the title. Whether Sanderson has studied this mode of thought or not I don't know, but you can definitely see its influence in his novel.
Before all of this can happen however, Vin needs to be brought into the realization of what she is. Kelsier kept her in his crew because he recognized she wields the same power he has. She's Mistborn, a person born with the ability to use allomancy or manipulate metals in a method they refer to as burning. When Vin was calming emotions, she was actually burning brass to use a power called Soothing, but there are numerous other abilities a Mistborn has at their disposal. Most people if they can use allomancy can only use one aspect of it and are called Mistings. There are ten known metals, which work as opposed pairs for both physical and mental enhancements, and (we find out later) an eleventh "secret" one, which suggests to me that Sanderson was dabbling a bit in Qabbalistic theory as well. This really solidifies when we find out more information about the Inquisitors (oh boy...), men with spikes hammered through their eye sockets that stick out the back of their heads. Granted this is just the first book so there are probably more than eleven metals, which rips my Qabbalistic theory apart, but it works for this first installment and STILL stands true for the Inquisitors (I refuse to give up on making this my theory of everything!).
Crash course in allomantic metals! There are metals that grant physical and mental enhancements and they're generally paired.
Steel - people who can burn this are called Coinshots and use it to Push on nearby metals. If the object weighs less than they do they'll fly through the air. If it weighs more than they do they'll be pulled toward it. I guess if they weigh the same it'll be a stalemate (random thought).
Iron - this is the opposing metal to steel so Lurchers, as they're called, Pull on nearby metals and it's similar to what Coinshots can accomplish with Steel.
Tin - Tineyes have the ability to enhance all of their senses, which makes them great as lookouts. The disadvantage to this is that they can easily become overwhelmed since the volume is turned up to eleven all the time they're burning their metal.
Pewter - used by Pewterarms or the much simpler term Thugs, this metal allows the user to enhance their physical prowess so Thugs are useful in physical altercations. Pewter is also useful if the user is injured as it gives the ability to carry on in the face of serious wounds or weariness. Of course once the pewter runs out the Thug is faced with the full brunt of what they've endured, and they could potentially die from their wounds. This would also be disastrous if they were carrying something really heavy...
Bronze - Seekers can burn this to find out if anyone is using allomancy in a particular vicinity. I guess the area range is dependent on the strength of the seeker.
Copper - Mistings who can burn copper are called Smokers and they essentially create a smokescreen or (in their vernacular) a Coppercloud (which is their other name) from Seekers. This ability is priceless to thieving crews who want to hide their metal burning from Inquisitors, Mistings or Mistborn.
Zinc - this metal inflames the emotions of people in the vicinity and Mistings who can use it are called Rioters (for obvious reasons).
Brass - this is the one that Vin has been unknowingly using all of her life, and it serves to sooth peoples' emotions so the Mistings that can use it are known as Soothers.
Gold - this one is rare and Vin doesn't find out about it until later in the story (I have some feelings about that, but I'll divulge later). Gold shows what you could've been in the past. It's rarely used since something like this can obviously cause emotional trauma and regret for what could've been.
Atium - ah the big one! Atium is sort of the MacGuffin of the story and a big driving force behind the plot. As gold shows the past atium reveals the future. Burning this extremely precious metal will show a target's future moves so that the burner can easily avoid them. Of course if the other person burns atium, as well, all possibilities will be visible since the original burner will then alter their course of action, which will then alter their opponents course of action and so on and so on. Both people burning atium will bring the fight back to equilibrium, with the only advantage being if one person runs out. Atium is what was being mined in Hathsin from whence Kelsier escaped and his master plan is to find the Lord Ruler's source, which will make him vulnerable. The fact that a "deity" needs a source of power that will show him the future throws another wrench into the idea of his godhood.
The Eleventh Metal - this one doesn't even have a name and is in fact legendary. Kelsier does manage to get his hands on it, but he doesn't know what it does; he only believes it can somehow defeat the Lord Ruler. This may actually be the true MacGuffin of the story.
Alright...enough exposition and introduction of the plot. Let's get to what I liked/didn't like!
Vin is pretty much your average orphan, foundling, urchin, etc. with mystical powers who is going to save the world (shocker). I'm okay with this. She's a fairly interesting character who definitely shows a lot of growth. Her other part in Kelsier's plan (besides training her to use her powers as a mistborn) is to play the part of a young noble women and spy/infiltrate the aristocracy as Valette Renoux the niece of Lord Renoux who's actually an imposter planted by Kelsier. Lord Renoux has been dead for a while (probably killed by Kelsier, but I forget), and she definitely is drawn out of her abused child shell with this task. It's a total 180 from living hand to mouth, subsisting on scraps, and sleeping on the floor to having her own room/bed, dining and dancing with nobles, and not being beaten every day.
Kelsier's crew is made up of various Mistings: Breeze, an aristocratic looking man who serves as their Soother; Ham, their Thug, Kelsier's brother Marsh whose the Seeker; Clubs, the Smoker who owns a carpentry business that's often used as a cover (hehe, double entendre here); Lestibournes later referred to as Spook is the group's weirdly accented Tineye, and Dockson who isn't an allomancer but serves as Kelsier's second in command and hates the nobility as much as the Survivor of Hathisin does. Finally there's Sazed, a Terrisman who acts as steward to Lord Renoux in the plot. He can use Feruchemy a contemporary but opposite ability set to Allomancy where users of the former use metals as holding units for power.
Honestly, I had to use the Mistborn wiki to remember all of these. A lot of the crew is so forgettable and not fleshed out that I seriously had to force myself to remember how they fit into the narrative. Breeze stands out due to his aristocratic speech since he deals with the nobility so much, and Sazed is memorable due to him being a Terrisman, which I'm guessing is another race like elves/dwarves especially owing to Sazed's description. Spook has a soft of weird accent and is (of course) lovestruck with Vin, but Sanderson actually starts explaining certain aspects of some of these characters more than halfway and almost three-quarters of the way through the book! He'll also brought up the term "kandra" in respect to some random noble's servant and I sat there scratching my head wondering what the hell he was talking about. About fifty or so pages later the term is mentioned again in front of Vin and she questions it and I found that to be poor writing. It would've been far better to bring up the term initially in front of a character who could be used as the foil to explain it. My guess is he wanted to introduce it and leave it mysterious, but it came off as sloppy.
I had a tough time remembering what each metal did and what the name of each Misting who controlled said metal was called. There was a lot of flipping back to the glossary at the end of the book to refresh my memory. I feel that Sanderson could've done better with that by working descriptions of each into the narrative when they're mentioned in the beginning. It was disruptive to be constantly checking on what the hell a Coinshot or a Tineye was when I was nearly through the book.
The dialogue in this novel is far too simplistic for what the story is about. Besides Spook and Breeze there didn't seem to be much individualization in how each character speaks. Nothing really sets them apart much in mannerisms either (unless we're told it does..more on that in the next paragraph). The nobility is the same way. I can't count how many times Sanderson mentioned something was said in an aristocratic way instead of just saying it in an aristocratic way. Even the Lord Ruler has this very generic speech pattern. He does call Vin a child, a lot, which I'm guessing is Sanderson's attempt to make him seem condescending. It doesn't really work out all that way to distinguish him, and I felt the same way about the Inquisitors. I almost wanted him to make them have this very distinct speech pattern due to what had been done to them; it would've made them seem far more creepy and other, which I'm assuming he'd want to do. We're more told what a character's personality rather than shows, which leads me into my next point...
Sanderson is a HUGE perpetrator of telling instead of showing. He'll often have a character think something along the lines of He's so strong! in the midst of a fight and then he'll go into showing how this is so where he could've easily dropped the thought bubble. This telling besides showing takes away from some of the more brutal parts of the book as well. There's one scene where Kelsier has the entire crew attend a public execution so that they can be reminded what they're fighting against. He then makes a speech while in between paragraphs Sanderson reminds us that four more skaa have been killed, and that's literally what he says, "Four more people died." It's so amazingly drab and doesn't begin to explain the horror of what they're seeing. We're told throughout the novel that skaa women are consistently raped and then murdered by noble lords so that no halfbreeds are (supposedly) born, but the only time this is really ever seen is in the prologue, which is honestly what drew me into the book in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I don't need to consistently see graphic rape scenes (I've been accused of not going into detail with one of those myself, wtf...), but Sanderson seems to work on a system of narrative where we hear people mentioning it to characters instead of having it shown within the work.
What kept me reading was the idea behind the Lord Ruler being a god usurper. Unentitled apotheosis has always been an interest of mine. The beginning of every chapter had a blurb that appeared to be the hero's story about how he defeated something known as the Deepness (shivers) and THAT definitely interested me. I really wanted to know what this Deepness was and what he had to do to defeat it. I also began to believe that the hero of legend was actually the Lord Ruler, but something had gotten into him and changed him into the emperor/tyrant god that he became. Maybe he didn't defeat the Deepness...maybe the Deepness took over him. This had a bit of a Cthulhu vibe and I'm a sucker for anything Lovecraftian.
I struggled between giving Mistborn: The Final Empire 2 or 3 stars, but I think I can give it 3 due to the fact that I'm interested in reading the next installment. Despite the flaws Sanderson did manage to intrigue me and make me want to know more about this Deepness and what the Lord Ruler was really protecting mankind from even if I do have to take it along with the mostly generic characters, overly verbose dialogue, telling vs. showing, and uninteresting fight scenes. I think despite all of that it was still worth my time in reading it, and if you can get past the foibles I mentioned, it's worth your time, too.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
The Fault in Our Stars
The best stories are about memory,
I read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green in two settings but in the same place. On an airplane thousands of feet in the air sitting above one of the wings and wondering how fast angels can fly. In most of my reviews I spoil the story. I will not be (entirely) doing that this time, nor will I do so unless I deem the tale unworthy of your time and I wish to spare you the trouble since I was not so fortunate.
The Fault in Our Stars is quite possibly the best standalone novel I have ever read and is certainly the best book I've had the privilege to experience this year. I place it in the very prestigious position as my second favorite story and favorite non-fantasy novel, The title comes from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and it sets the perfect tone for this story written in the first person by Hazel, a sixteen year old girl in the regressive stage of lung cancer who nevertheless is required to cart around an oxygen tank because (as she so perfectly puts it ) her "lungs suck at being lungs." Her mother forces her to go to a cancer patient/survivor group where she proceeds to exercise her considerable teenage snark and wit along with her friend Isaac who is suffering from a type of cancer that required the removal of an eye.
One day Hazel catches the attention of a boy named Augustus and their romance is as breathtaking and expedient as it is completely genuine and uncontrived. Augustus has recovered from bone cancer that left him with a prosthetic leg, but did nothing to diminish his attractiveness. She can scarcely believe he's as perfect as he projects and indeed feels as though she's found his hamartia or fatal flaw when he puts a cigarette in his mouth. Hazel is of course livid that anyone who survived cancer would willingly place themselves into its way again, but Augustus never lights them using the act as a metaphor of having "the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing."
Both of them together have enough wit and snark to drown the world in metaphors and sarcasm with just the barest dash of bitterness for their plight. Hazel whom Augustus calls "Hazel Grace" for most of the novel feels incredibly guilty that she's allowed Augustus to fall for her as she and her family expect her cancer to return full force at any moment, and yet their relationship parallels the ever moving train of her mortality. So much so that Hazel shares with him that her favorite book is a story by the reclusive author Peter Van Houten called An Imperial Affliction, and I understood immediately that she loved this novel the way that I love FFVII.
"My favorite book, by a wide margin, was An Imperial Affliction, but I didn't like to tell people about it. Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising that affections feels like a betrayal."
Van Houten's work is very meta to the larger story at hand being about a girl named Anna who suffers from cancer and her one-eyed mother who grows tulips. But Hazel makes it very clear that this is NOT a cancer book in the same way that The Fault in Our Stars is not a cancer book. Anna grows progressively sicker and her mother falls in love with a Dutch Tulip Man who has a great deal of money and exotic ideas about how to treat Anna's cancer, but just when the DTM and Anna's mom are about to possibly get married and Anna is about to start a new treatment, the book ends right in the middle of a
Exactly. And this drives Hazel and eventually Augustus insane to not know what happened to everyone from Anna's hamster Sisyphus to Anna herself. Hazel assumes that Anna became too sick to continue to write (the assumption being that Anna's story was first person just as Hazel's is), but for Van Houten to not have finished it seems like the ultimate literary betrayal.
As terrified as Hazel was to share this joy with Augustus (and god knows I understand THAT feel) it was the best thing she could've done because they now share the obsession and the insistence that the characters deserve an ending,
The conversations of Hazel and Augustus are not typical teenage conversations, but they're not typical teenagers. Mortality flavors all of their discussions and leads to elegance such as "The tales of our exploits will survive as long as the human voice itself. And even after that, when the robots recall the human absurdities of sacrifice and compassion, they will remember us." They speak of memory and calculate how there are fourteen dead people for everyone alive and realize that remembering fourteen people isn't that difficult. We could all do that if we tried that way no one has to be forgotten. But will we then fight over who we are allowed to remember? Or will the fourteen just be added to those we can never forget? They read each other the poetry of T.S Eliot, the haunting lines of Prufrock "We have lingered in the chambers of the sea/By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown/Til human voices wake us, and we drown"," and as Augustus reads Hazel her favorite book she "fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once."
When I finished this I thought to myself How am I going to read anything else? How will I find something to match this? How can I pick up another book and not expect it to resonate with this haunting beauty, this tragedy ringed with comic teenage snark and tones that are themselves tragic in their sarcasm like whistling in the ninth circle of hell or laughing uproariously at the monster? I realized I was lost. I could think of no negative critique unless you count the fact that the two main characters have Dawson's Creek Syndrome (a term I just made up) where they're teenagers who speak as if they were philosophers, but then again Bill Watterson did the same thing with a boy and a stuff tiger. You realize the story's hamartia doesn't matter. That the fact that the plot may be cliched is unimportant and that dwelling on such trivialities is in and of itself a fatal flaw. This story is so much more than the letters and words on each page. It's the triumph of morning over night when the night grows ever longer. It's the dream of hope when you've done nothing but dine on despair. It is sad? Yes. It is heartbreaking? More so. Is it worth reading? Has anything sad and heartbreaking not been worth reading? The story of Hazel and Augusts deserves to be read just as the story of Anna, her mother, and dear hamster Sisyphus deserves an ending, and that becomes their exploit to seek out reclusive Peter Van Houten so that the characters can be properly laid to rest and remembered.
The best stories are about memory.
I read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green in two settings but in the same place. On an airplane thousands of feet in the air sitting above one of the wings and wondering how fast angels can fly. In most of my reviews I spoil the story. I will not be (entirely) doing that this time, nor will I do so unless I deem the tale unworthy of your time and I wish to spare you the trouble since I was not so fortunate.
The Fault in Our Stars is quite possibly the best standalone novel I have ever read and is certainly the best book I've had the privilege to experience this year. I place it in the very prestigious position as my second favorite story and favorite non-fantasy novel, The title comes from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and it sets the perfect tone for this story written in the first person by Hazel, a sixteen year old girl in the regressive stage of lung cancer who nevertheless is required to cart around an oxygen tank because (as she so perfectly puts it ) her "lungs suck at being lungs." Her mother forces her to go to a cancer patient/survivor group where she proceeds to exercise her considerable teenage snark and wit along with her friend Isaac who is suffering from a type of cancer that required the removal of an eye.
One day Hazel catches the attention of a boy named Augustus and their romance is as breathtaking and expedient as it is completely genuine and uncontrived. Augustus has recovered from bone cancer that left him with a prosthetic leg, but did nothing to diminish his attractiveness. She can scarcely believe he's as perfect as he projects and indeed feels as though she's found his hamartia or fatal flaw when he puts a cigarette in his mouth. Hazel is of course livid that anyone who survived cancer would willingly place themselves into its way again, but Augustus never lights them using the act as a metaphor of having "the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing."
Both of them together have enough wit and snark to drown the world in metaphors and sarcasm with just the barest dash of bitterness for their plight. Hazel whom Augustus calls "Hazel Grace" for most of the novel feels incredibly guilty that she's allowed Augustus to fall for her as she and her family expect her cancer to return full force at any moment, and yet their relationship parallels the ever moving train of her mortality. So much so that Hazel shares with him that her favorite book is a story by the reclusive author Peter Van Houten called An Imperial Affliction, and I understood immediately that she loved this novel the way that I love FFVII.
"My favorite book, by a wide margin, was An Imperial Affliction, but I didn't like to tell people about it. Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising that affections feels like a betrayal."
Van Houten's work is very meta to the larger story at hand being about a girl named Anna who suffers from cancer and her one-eyed mother who grows tulips. But Hazel makes it very clear that this is NOT a cancer book in the same way that The Fault in Our Stars is not a cancer book. Anna grows progressively sicker and her mother falls in love with a Dutch Tulip Man who has a great deal of money and exotic ideas about how to treat Anna's cancer, but just when the DTM and Anna's mom are about to possibly get married and Anna is about to start a new treatment, the book ends right in the middle of a
Exactly. And this drives Hazel and eventually Augustus insane to not know what happened to everyone from Anna's hamster Sisyphus to Anna herself. Hazel assumes that Anna became too sick to continue to write (the assumption being that Anna's story was first person just as Hazel's is), but for Van Houten to not have finished it seems like the ultimate literary betrayal.
As terrified as Hazel was to share this joy with Augustus (and god knows I understand THAT feel) it was the best thing she could've done because they now share the obsession and the insistence that the characters deserve an ending,
The conversations of Hazel and Augustus are not typical teenage conversations, but they're not typical teenagers. Mortality flavors all of their discussions and leads to elegance such as "The tales of our exploits will survive as long as the human voice itself. And even after that, when the robots recall the human absurdities of sacrifice and compassion, they will remember us." They speak of memory and calculate how there are fourteen dead people for everyone alive and realize that remembering fourteen people isn't that difficult. We could all do that if we tried that way no one has to be forgotten. But will we then fight over who we are allowed to remember? Or will the fourteen just be added to those we can never forget? They read each other the poetry of T.S Eliot, the haunting lines of Prufrock "We have lingered in the chambers of the sea/By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown/Til human voices wake us, and we drown"," and as Augustus reads Hazel her favorite book she "fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once."
When I finished this I thought to myself How am I going to read anything else? How will I find something to match this? How can I pick up another book and not expect it to resonate with this haunting beauty, this tragedy ringed with comic teenage snark and tones that are themselves tragic in their sarcasm like whistling in the ninth circle of hell or laughing uproariously at the monster? I realized I was lost. I could think of no negative critique unless you count the fact that the two main characters have Dawson's Creek Syndrome (a term I just made up) where they're teenagers who speak as if they were philosophers, but then again Bill Watterson did the same thing with a boy and a stuff tiger. You realize the story's hamartia doesn't matter. That the fact that the plot may be cliched is unimportant and that dwelling on such trivialities is in and of itself a fatal flaw. This story is so much more than the letters and words on each page. It's the triumph of morning over night when the night grows ever longer. It's the dream of hope when you've done nothing but dine on despair. It is sad? Yes. It is heartbreaking? More so. Is it worth reading? Has anything sad and heartbreaking not been worth reading? The story of Hazel and Augusts deserves to be read just as the story of Anna, her mother, and dear hamster Sisyphus deserves an ending, and that becomes their exploit to seek out reclusive Peter Van Houten so that the characters can be properly laid to rest and remembered.
The best stories are about memory.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Start Trek Into Darkness: On the Squee
Be warned this is less of a review of the movie and more of me fangirling over Benedict Cumberbatcch. There are also spoilers. You have been warned.
With that being said OH MY GOD. Words cannot express what that man has done to me just by looking at him. I can't explain what is happening to my body. Benedict plays the gorgeous villain John Harrison who is actually revealed to be the infamous Khan, the pinnacle of perfection in humanity so profound that he has transcended the bonds of that mundane state to become something so much better. That pale, flawless skin, those endless green eyes, that otherwordly beauty, that insane strength, that unwavering purpose and need for vengeance against those who did him wrong ahhhh *shivers* Let it be known that everything I just stated describes every fangirl crush I have ever had. I just...can't even deal with this.
Following discussions with my husband (who is VERY understanding of all of my fictional crushes) it was determined that Khan was just bad from the beginning, which I find it difficult to accept, because true beauty and true evil just do not mesh. There is ALWAYS an excuse. Be that as it may, I believe he was utterly entitled to his wrath, but not his actions. He was created only to be used by humanity, and when they found out he was "broken," they banished him and others like him, cryogenically freezing them because they didn't want to be burdened with the responsibility of their actions. When Admiral Marcus wakes him up in order to help him develop weapons of war by using his own crew/family as hostages, Khan understandably responds in kind because he's ruthless, calculating, and doesn't give a shit about humanity. Yes, he's manipulative, but he was also manipulated...he's just far better at in than humankind, which as usual does something to further their own interests and then acts surprised when it turns on them. You reap what you sow, and if you reap in lust for power and hatred, you will sow in pain.
I don't wish this to turn into a rant about how much I hate humanity, so I will go on to say I am very happy I have a fellow fangirl to swoon over Benedict with. I've never seen anyone real so gorgeous. He does almost look alien he's that beauteous like nothing on this earth could ever be that lovely. Those eyes with their long catty corners, those insanely high cheekbones, ahhh, I'm finished. If you ever have the ill luck to be in the theater with me during Into Darkness I apologize in advance, but I'm not really sorry.
Added bonus.
How to Be a Badass Supervillain:
1. Be unbelievably gorgeous. Your beauty needs to be otherwordly and like nothing common mortals have ever seen. Your skin needs to be flawless; your features should be the epitome of perfection, and your eyes and eye color should be not of this world. Something that people will never forget; something that will make them freeze in place when you look at them. This leads into...
2. Be godlike. You can be a god, an angel, or a human plus. Something better than man (not that that's saying much). It really doesn't matter so long as you have the ability to back up...
3. Be arrogant and confident beyond anything humanely possible. Perfect the art of the intense stare. Learn how not to blink. It will confirm that you are "something else," something better than a mere human. Know that whatever comes out of your mouth will be obeyed instantly without question, because you are just that boss. Also...
4. Have a voice that will make all the pathetic commoners tremble where they stand. It should be low, baritone, and commanding of purpose. Supervillains with high squeaky voices do not go very far in the world and are generally considered laughing stocks or at best common villains. You must sound the part and look the part, therefore...
5. Obtain a long coat if you do not have one immediately. There is nothing hotter than all of the above standing in utter arrogance and self-assurance with a long coat blowing in the wind. Humanity will know that finally someone worthy has come to conquer them.
Also note that all of the above rules will also work if you want women to rip of their clothes and throw their panties at you. Supervillain and irresistible sex symbol are essentially the same thing in the world of being a fangirl.
With that being said OH MY GOD. Words cannot express what that man has done to me just by looking at him. I can't explain what is happening to my body. Benedict plays the gorgeous villain John Harrison who is actually revealed to be the infamous Khan, the pinnacle of perfection in humanity so profound that he has transcended the bonds of that mundane state to become something so much better. That pale, flawless skin, those endless green eyes, that otherwordly beauty, that insane strength, that unwavering purpose and need for vengeance against those who did him wrong ahhhh *shivers* Let it be known that everything I just stated describes every fangirl crush I have ever had. I just...can't even deal with this.
Following discussions with my husband (who is VERY understanding of all of my fictional crushes) it was determined that Khan was just bad from the beginning, which I find it difficult to accept, because true beauty and true evil just do not mesh. There is ALWAYS an excuse. Be that as it may, I believe he was utterly entitled to his wrath, but not his actions. He was created only to be used by humanity, and when they found out he was "broken," they banished him and others like him, cryogenically freezing them because they didn't want to be burdened with the responsibility of their actions. When Admiral Marcus wakes him up in order to help him develop weapons of war by using his own crew/family as hostages, Khan understandably responds in kind because he's ruthless, calculating, and doesn't give a shit about humanity. Yes, he's manipulative, but he was also manipulated...he's just far better at in than humankind, which as usual does something to further their own interests and then acts surprised when it turns on them. You reap what you sow, and if you reap in lust for power and hatred, you will sow in pain.
I don't wish this to turn into a rant about how much I hate humanity, so I will go on to say I am very happy I have a fellow fangirl to swoon over Benedict with. I've never seen anyone real so gorgeous. He does almost look alien he's that beauteous like nothing on this earth could ever be that lovely. Those eyes with their long catty corners, those insanely high cheekbones, ahhh, I'm finished. If you ever have the ill luck to be in the theater with me during Into Darkness I apologize in advance, but I'm not really sorry.
Added bonus.
How to Be a Badass Supervillain:
1. Be unbelievably gorgeous. Your beauty needs to be otherwordly and like nothing common mortals have ever seen. Your skin needs to be flawless; your features should be the epitome of perfection, and your eyes and eye color should be not of this world. Something that people will never forget; something that will make them freeze in place when you look at them. This leads into...
2. Be godlike. You can be a god, an angel, or a human plus. Something better than man (not that that's saying much). It really doesn't matter so long as you have the ability to back up...
3. Be arrogant and confident beyond anything humanely possible. Perfect the art of the intense stare. Learn how not to blink. It will confirm that you are "something else," something better than a mere human. Know that whatever comes out of your mouth will be obeyed instantly without question, because you are just that boss. Also...
4. Have a voice that will make all the pathetic commoners tremble where they stand. It should be low, baritone, and commanding of purpose. Supervillains with high squeaky voices do not go very far in the world and are generally considered laughing stocks or at best common villains. You must sound the part and look the part, therefore...
5. Obtain a long coat if you do not have one immediately. There is nothing hotter than all of the above standing in utter arrogance and self-assurance with a long coat blowing in the wind. Humanity will know that finally someone worthy has come to conquer them.
Also note that all of the above rules will also work if you want women to rip of their clothes and throw their panties at you. Supervillain and irresistible sex symbol are essentially the same thing in the world of being a fangirl.
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