Month: October 2005

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Clancy, Tom: (09) Rainbow Six

This is a pretty shameful admission, but I did read Rainbow Six some time ago in paperback, after I’d thought I had given up on Tom Clancy’s books. (This is in the Jack Ryan continuity, but Jack doesn’t appear.) I don’t remember now why I picked it up, but I actually liked it, or at least parts of it. This is kind of two books: in one, a new international anti-terrorist team, Rainbow, responds to a number of hostage situations; in the other, frothing environmentalists plot to kill off all of humanity (except them). No, really.

I liked the hostage rescue stuff; it scratches the same itch as his good stuff. However, the frothing environmentalist sections are unspeakably bad, and I skipped right past them on this re-read. It’s still a sizable novel even with the awful parts excised, so it served fine as bedtime reading. It is highly unlikely that I’ll try any other Clancy books, though.

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Clancy, Tom: (02) Patriot Games

In my Tom Clancy bedtime re-reads, I had hopes that Patriot Games would have remained readable, being the second Jack Ryan book and therefore early in Clancy’s career. Alas, it is not; evidently, Jack has already become perfect in his author’s eyes, and on this read comes off as a gratingly arrogant and insufferable know-it-all. The sex scenes and the sections from his wife’s point-of-view are also cringe-inducing, or possibly are meant to depict aliens. I’d read another four in the continuity back in the day (The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears, and Executive Orders) but didn’t bother with them now.

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Clancy, Tom: (01) The Hunt for Red October

Some backlog clearing: After re-reading Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising, I acquired a used copy of The Hunt for Red October. This is his first published novel, the start of the Jack Ryan continuity, and probably his best work. Clancy is very bad at people at any level other than their technical competence (such as politics, emotions, and sex), and happily this book is just lots of soothing technogeekery about submarines. It’s not hard to understand why it was initially published by the Naval Institute Press rather than a traditional fiction publisher; I guess its surprising success is a good example of how sometimes readers actually like exposition.

The movie captures the spirit of the book fairly well, though it is dumbed down in a couple of places for (unnecessary) dramatic tension.

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McCloud, Scott: Understanding Comics

I got Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics out of the library a while ago, and after posting quick practical notes on my LJ, completely forgot about logging it until now.

This is a book on the history, theory, and practice of sequential art (comics and manga), told through sequential art. I can understand why McCloud made this choice, since he’d need a large fraction in comic form to illustrate his points; and yet I wonder if the format excludes some people who might get something out of a partly-prose book. I checked this out to increase my understanding as a reader, so I skimmed a lot of the history and the exhortations to creators: highly enthusiastic, but not what I was looking for. As for the practical stuff, some of it crystalized things that I’d noticed (especially in several posts doing close readings of Saiyuki art) but hadn’t verbalized; some of it just felt obvious, but then this wasn’t the first sequential art criticism I’d read.

If you have already found that your brain can process sequential art, and are interested in the history or the nuts and bolts of the form, this is worth a quick browse at the least.

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Christie, Agatha: Evil Under the Sun (radio play)

Another BBC radio play, Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun, again with John Moffatt as Poirot. I think I must have re-read this one fairly recently, because I remembered enough of the plot to spot every twist just before it was revealed. The adaptation is again nicely produced and voiced, but unfortunately, it fails to convey an important clue. I enjoyed it, but I can’t recommend it as heartily as I did Death on the Nile.

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Arakawa, Hiromu: Fullmetal Alchemist, vol. 2

I wasn’t intending to read volume 2 of Hiromu Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist just now, as my entry on volume 1 indicated. However, despite my express requests, Chad bought me a copy, and well, if it’s right in front of me . . . .

We’re up to episode 20 in the anime now (so again, if you spoil me for future developments, I will kill you with my brain—also unwelcome are hints, clues, suggestions that something will be important later, and the like. Sorry.), and volume 2 is again stuff that we’d already seen. Here’s the breakdown:

  • Chapter 5, “The Alchemist’s Suffering”: corresponds to the Shou Tucker plot of episodes 6 and 7, “The Alchemy Exam” and “Night of the Chimera’s Cry.” Again, unlike the anime, these chapters are not flashbacks: Ed and Al are using Tucker’s library to research bio-alchemy after arriving in East City after the events of the first volume, as Tucker undergoes strange stresses leading up to his yearly assessment to renew his license as a State Alchemist. The anime’s ending is also different in a way that I find more interesting and complex.
  • Chapter 6, “The Right Hand of Destruction,” and chapter 7, “After the Rain”: these correspond to the Scar sections of episodes 14 and 15, “Destruction’s Right Hand” and “The Ishbal Massacre.” A serial killer targeting State Alchemists is on the loose, and Ed is in danger.
  • Chapter 8, “The Road of Hope”: this corresponds to the Marcoh sections of episodes 14 and 15, as well as the beginning of episode 16, “That Which is Lost.” The brothers accidentially happen upon a hot lead in their quest for the Philosopher’s Stone.

I personally find that the anime’s interleaving of the material in chapters 6-8 / episodes 14-15 works better from a dramatic standpoint, as does its expanded history of the Ishbal Massacre. And I’m beginning to think that Roy Mustang’s complexities were created out of whole cloth by the writers of the anime (a good thing, as far as I’m concerned).

I recall reading that anime tends to be produced faster than manga is written, so that anime ends up with filler episodes, or plot divergences, or both. Comparing story choices with the manga confirms that some anime episodes felt like filler because they were, though at least they were thematic filler; however, it also seems that the difference in production schedules encourages, or at least permits, more time spent on backstory and on setting up later developments. As before, the manga isn’t bad, but in a straight comparison between the manga and the anime at this point, I like the story choices of the anime better, filler bits and all.

I’ve got some further comparison notes, with spoilers, over on my LiveJournal; the specific anime episodes spoiled are 8, 14-16, 18, and 20.

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James, Eloisa: (01) Much Ado About You

Eloisa James’ Much Ado About You was mentioned favorably by Rachel Brown recently, and I picked it up as a lunchtime book while I was getting the new Diana Gabaldon (because I am not hauling a 980 page book back and forth to work). As light lunchtime reading, I have no complaints.

This is the first in a Regency romance series about four sisters; those sibling relationships are the distinguishing characteristic of the book. The romance moves a touch faster than I’d like, but has its good points; the overall plot also had a few elements that didn’t go as I’d expected, which is particularly a plus in the romance genre. A number of the secondary characters are also very interesting and I look forward to seeing more of them, though I suspect that a couple of them are going to be taken in a direction that strikes me as awfully tricky (I’ll still read the story even if I’m right; James seems a lot less frothy than Regency authors can be—and while frothy is all well and good for certain moods, it’s not what would be called for in that case). I’ll be checking out James’ backlist from the library.

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