This post contains book-destroying spoilers for The Hundred Days by Patrick O’Brian. The non-spoiler post is here.
Continue reading “O’Brian, Patrick: (19) The Hundred Days (spoilers)”
O’Brian, Patrick: (19) The Hundred Days (audio)
The penultimate book in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series, The Hundred Days, is an unfortunate disappointment. Set during Napoleon’s escape from Elba, its plot is illogical on its face, and its personal-level developments are disturbingly unsatisfactory.
The book opens with news of a major off-screen personal happening, which I disliked strongly both for its form and its content. It then moves into the political/military plot: a Muslim conspiracy is afoot to hire a mercenary army to disrupt the joining of the allies against Napoleon. Jack and Stephen are to prevent the passage of a large sum of gold that will fund the mercenaries. Even without knowing anything detailed about the course of the Napoleonic Wars, however, this adventure ends up not making much sense on its own terms, and feels somewhat repetitive besides. This is only compounded by the extremely rushed feel of the conclusion. In short, I hope this is the low point of the series.
A spoiler post follows.
Jordan, Robert: (01-03) The Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, The Dragon Reborn
Because of Leigh Butler’s re-read of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series over at Tor.com, I’ve re-read the first three books, The Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, and The Dragon Reborn. Leigh is actually a substantial way into the fourth, The Shadow Rising, but I haven’t caught up with her yet.
I have mixed feelings about the Wheel of Time books. I enjoyed the first several, but the series lost a lot of my good will with the later books, when the odious gender-war aspects got uglier and more prominent and the pace slowed to a crawl. I didn’t read the last two volumes at all.
On this re-read, yes, the books I’ve read so far do have the ability to suck me in and make me read large chunks at a time. But my tolerance for Jordan’s characteristic ways of writing gender relations and politics is even lower than ever—there’s really only so much mental screaming “JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER, ALREADY!” that I can do. So I have to be in just the right mood, as suggested by the fact that The Shadow Rising is generally thought to be, along with The Dragon Reborn, the high point of the series, and I haven’t been able to make myself start it yet.
I imagine I will, eventually, read The Shadow Rising and maybe the next one or two (The Fires of Heaven and Lord of Chaos). After that is when, in my memory, the books really started going downhill, so I may just rely on Leigh’s summaries and only read the cool bits from then on. We’ll see.
And despite all that, yes, I’ll almost certainly read Brandon Sanderson’s conclusion of the series from Jordan’s notes and writings. Sanderson strikes me as a really good choice for the job from a writing perspective and also a class act, and most importantly—it’s how it all comes out, and how can I resist?
Arakawa, Hiromu: Fullmetal Alchemist, vols. 1-8 (spoilers)
This post contains spoilers for volume 1-8 of Fullmetal Alchemist and implicit spoilers for the entire original anime. The non-spoiler post is here.
Continue reading “Arakawa, Hiromu: Fullmetal Alchemist, vols. 1-8 (spoilers)”
Arakawa, Hiromu: Fullmetal Alchemist, vols. 1-8
I finally went back to reading Fullmetal Alchemist, by Hiromu Arakawa, when I heard that a new anime was on the way. Enough time had finally passed from my watching the original anime that I could enjoy this on its own merits, which are considerable. (The new anime appears to be much more closely based on the manga, so it was read it now or not for a long time.)
I started by reading the new-to-me volumes that I had on hand, volumes three through eight. I enjoyed these so much I went back to the beginning and re-read all eight straight through. Like the anime, the manga of Fullmetal Alchemist has great characters, fascinating worldbuilding, and gripping angst and action. (I talked about the basic premise in the entry for the first volume.) It eventually develops some pretty significant differences from the anime, but at this point these may also be strengths: certain aspects of the underlying plot seem to remove some logistical questions I had, and the worldbuilding and range of characters are wider and more diverse [*]. I’m not sure how I’ll feel about their relative strengths when it comes to themes and philosophical musings, but the manga certainly has its eye on the questions. Finally, it may just be the difference between screen and page, but the manga doesn’t feel as unsubtle about emotional matters.
[*] There are a couple of isolated instances in which this isn’t a good thing. The series is set in a European-equivalent country, and a handful of characters are obviously meant to have African-equivalent ancestry; they’re not characterized in a stereotypical way, but they do tend to have balloon-like lips, which is unfortunate. And the sole homosexual to date is extremely effeminate and has a thing for underage boys.
Roughly speaking, volumes three and four are the Lab 5 arc, which is where the anime began to diverge—well, rather, there were small hints of divergence from the very beginning, but the different outcomes of this arc start pointing toward the significant changes to come. Volume four is also a convenient point for comparing the overall progression of the two story lines: its end corresponds to episode twenty-five, that is, halfway through the anime, while the manga currently stands at ninety-three chapters, four chapters to a volume.
Volumes five and six take the Elric brothers to Rush Valley and into an extended flashback of their childhood and training. Volumes seven and eight play out the Devil’s Nest arc, and then introduce manga-only characters from the adjacent empire of Xing. The divergences become very apparent and quite fascinating here, and it took a fair effort of will to write these volumes up first instead of diving into the ones that had arrived from Amazon.
Some other comments: the art is generally clear and fairly detailed. Over these volumes, I found myself noticing it more, in a good way, during emotionally-intense sequences. The fight scenes are usually not difficult to follow and not too prolonged, though I tend to skim them anyway—hey, I like stuff with dialogue. And I’m not crazy about the publisher’s decision to overwrite the Japanese sound effects with English translations; I find it distracting when enormous “BOOM”s and such integrated into the artwork, and prefer the original Japanese with translations outside the panels where the meaning isn’t obvious.
A spoiler post follows.
Crossposted to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
50books_poc (with spoilers in the same post).
Westlake, Donald E.: (03) Jimmy the Kid
I hadn’t planned to resume the Donald E. Westlake Memorial Dortmunder Re-Read—had in fact picked up Jimmy the Kid and put it back down as not what I was in the mood for—and then I found myself with a sleeping SteelyKid in my arms and nothing else at hand. (She really, really needed the sleep, and was unlikely to keep sleeping if I put her down. Nb.: do not offer me parenting advice.)
This is the very meta one in which Andy Kelp proposes a job using a novel as a blueprint, one written by Richard Stark—Westlake’s pseudonym. (It doesn’t actually have independent existence.) At least in my edition, there’s no indication of the connection, which might make it rather a peculiar experience for someone unfamiliar with Westlake’s career—though whether more or less peculiar, I don’t know. Since, after all, having one set of fictional characters critique the realism of the plans of another set of fictional characters is pretty darn peculiar.
Because this is a Dortmunder novel, things do not go anywhere near according to plan. And the complications are amusing enough, but somehow the book just didn’t click for me. It may have been the circumstances of the re-read, but on the other hand, this is not one of the Dortmunders I re-read usually, so it may be something about the book as well. I just can’t quite put my finger on what.
Ongoing series notes: they’re still not “regulars” at the O.J., but their absurdity levels are approaching baseline. Dortmunder seems angrier at Kelp’s perceived jinxings of plans than I remember him being later. And May and Murch’s Mom again play a more active role than in many later books.
Robb, J.D.: (28) Promises in Death
The most recent novel from J.D. Robb, Promises in Death, opens with a murder that strikes close to home: the victim is Amaryllis Coltraine, a cop and the lover of Chief Medical Examiner Morris.
Despite the more personal nature of this case, this book fell somewhat flat for me. It may just have been that, reading it at three in the morning as I did, I couldn’t suspend disbelief enough: I couldn’t pretend that there was a chance that Morris wouldn’t get justice and start healing, and so there wasn’t very much suspense. I realize that this could be said about basically every entry in the series, so it was probably me, not the book.
(Though it didn’t help that the charming quirks of Morris’s personality get suppressed by his role as the grieving loved one.)
Also, apparently this book was not copy-edited, otherwise a sentence like “Art radiated from the walls in an eclectic mix from bold, bright colors and odd shapes to elegant pencil drawings of naked women in various stages of undress” would never have been published.
Duane, Diane: (108) Wizards at War (audio)
I really enjoy Christina Moore’s narration of Diane Duane’s Young Wizardry series, but didn’t want to listen to the next ones in the series, The Wizard’s Dilemma and A Wizard Alone, for personal reasons. And I didn’t much like the next, Wizard’s Holiday. So I decided to just skip to the eighth and presently-last book in the series, Wizards at War.
Moore does her usual astonishing job of narration, moving effortlessly between distinct and extremely appropriate voices for all manner of species. And I’d remembered almost nothing about this book, so it was also a suspenseful listen. Anyway, after listening and then looking back at what I said on my first read of the book, I stand by those comments, with the additional grump that the ending strikes me as coming at too low a price.
On the other hand, this listen also prompted me to look up what else Moore has narrated (answer: unfortunately not much I want to listen to except maybe Kelly Link’s Pretty Monsters; apparently she is also on the new 90210) and what the status of Duane’s writing is (answer: no idea, none of her web pages seem to have been updated for half a year or more), so that was also a plus.
Ariely, Dan: Predictably Irrational (audio)
Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely, is a popular-level look at behavioral economics, the relatively recent field of study that examines how people actually make decisions, instead of assuming, as economics traditionally has, that people act rationally. As numerous behavioral economics experiments have demonstrated, people often act in ways that are, as the title says, both irrational and predictably so. Thus, for instance, people can be shown to buy things they don’t actually want just to get something “free,” or to pay arbitrary amounts for things related to random numbers like the last digits of their Social Security Numbers.
The book is generally a fun, engaging, and convincing description of the research findings regarding people’s irrational tendencies. It is somewhat less successful when it suggests ways to combat those tendencies. The worst of these is when Ariely suggests that to make people keep medical screening appointments, they should be forced to put down $100+ deposits. This strikes me as an incredibly efficient way of making sure that the poor get even worse health care than they currently do, or, put more concisely, my, what astonishing class bias you have.
My annoyance with that particular “suggestion” was probably exacerbated by the reader of the audiobook version, Simon Jones, who is British and whose voice I found just a touch snooty—giving an extra dash of condescension to this American ear. Otherwise, Jones generally gives a smooth and accessible reading, though I probably would have preferred to read this book.
You can find out more about Ariely’s research at www.predictablyirrational.com.
Liu, Marjorie M.: (02) Shadow Touch
A while back, I read the first of Marjorie M. Liu’s Dirk and Steele paranormal romance series, Tiger Eye. I enjoyed that well enough to stock up on the next several books in the series as light reading during my pregnancy, and then of course never got around to reading any of them. Recently, however, I needed something light, fast, and fun, and picked up the second book, Shadow Touch.
I believe the general consensus is that this is a better place to start the series and a better book generally, and I agree wholeheartedly. Elena’s touch can heal; Artur’s touch forces him to experience the emotional history of people or objects. They meet as captives of a shadowy organization. Together, they try to escape, fall in love, and, yes, fight crime.
This is full of fierce funny characters, fast-paced cracktastic action, and tasty tasty angst: just the thing for taking one’s mind off other stuff at three in the morning. It also has the start of a long-term plot arc that opens up the world established in the first book, which now seems rather like a series prologue to me. I had altogether too much fun reading this, and while some of that may be the delight of finding exactly what I was in the mood for, well, there’s nothing wrong with that. I look forward to reading more of Liu’s work as the mood calls for.