Book Review: Reading Like a Writer

Reading Like a Writer
A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
by Francine Prose

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In spite of Prose’s mind for detail, the subtitle of Reading Like a Writer is only half right.  This certainly is a guide for those who love books — non-book-lovers wouldn’t reach the second chapter — but it isn’t merely a guide for those who “want to write [books].” All things considered, a more accurate subtitle might have been “A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them Well.”

There are no tips or tricks in Prose’s 250-page lesson in literature appreciation. At most, Prose instructs readers and writers to enjoy, to consider, and to listen. Those looking for an easy guide to improving writing skills are both in and out of luck, depending on their expectations. Rather than giving us exercises to follow, Prose has provided a number of excerpts from her favorite books, as if to demonstrate just how well words can come together when handled properly.  Prose’s underlying advice is at odds with our constant need for instant results, but it’s a better lesson: Love what you do, and you’ll do it well.

It’s difficult to agree with all of Prose’s points, or to be as inspired by her choices as she seems to be, but we have to be impressed with the detail of her obsession.  She examines books at the level of nuts and bolts — the words they contain — in order to prove just how important the smallest choices can be.

The second chapter of Reading Like a Writer (titled, rather simply, “Words”) deals with the importance of choosing the perfect word, and shows us how great writers use selectivity to their advantage.  It’s a highly attentive approach to reading — and one that forces us to slow down and treat each word with special care.  This ground-up approach to literature is a far cry from the more general study of themes and imagery, but it’s an essential foundation.

The remaining chapters follow a similar pattern: Sentences, Paragraphs, Narration, Dialogue, etc.  Right through the end of the book, Reading Like a Writer acts as a sounding board for Prose’s raving; all the lessons are taught by example.

There are a startling number of self-help books tailored for writers (or, as the case usually becomes, those who enjoy the idea of being a writer), but Reading Like a Writer does anything but follow tradition.  There is no confusing Prose’s lessons with the Dummies series, as there are no bullet points, exercises or tiny mile markers to make us feel we’re already improving.  Instead, Prose has compiled a small encyclopedia of examples that are rightly humbling to any budding author. 

Despite Prose’s professionalism, Reading Like a Writer occasionally wanders into the obsessed monologue that one might expect of a bookworm.  Her anecdotes are quaint, though nothing alien to any habitual reader.  And, as with most bookworms’, Prose’s fanaticism comes off mildly aggressive; any disagreements we might dare to consider would only be a shortcoming of taste on our part.  With all the examples Prose has gone to the trouble to provide, it’s difficult to prove her wrong.

Reading Like a Writer is both inspirational and damning.  For the casual reader and writer, it’s easy to be daunted by the passages Prose has quoted — so much so that literature seems something best left in the hands of the proper authorities (most often English majors).  But, to the serious reader, this book can be a source of near-infinite motivation.  Prose has provided an impressive list of ways in which writers can improve at the craft, without ever giving us exercises to carry out.  Instead, she reminds us that others have been here before (and have done better than most of us ever will), and the best way to learn from them is to listen.

Rating: B+

[Amazon]

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Book Review: Maximum Ride

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment
by James Patterson

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Against all odds, James Patterson seems to have stumbled onto the secret to writing a bestseller.  The trick isn’t far off from what the winged heroes of his Maximum Ride series would recommend: Keep drag — be it aerodynamic or narrative — to a bare minimum.  There are three parts to this feat: ignoring logic, defying time, and doling out deus ex machinas whenever you hit a rough spot.  All storytelling should be so easy.

Maximum Ride — the 14-year-old protagonist, narrator, leader, and supposed savior — chose her own name when she escaped from the facility where she and her “flock” were raised.  The others suffer similarly lamentable outcomes in the department of names: Fang, Nudge, Angel, Iggy and the Gasman.  Thanks to the facility’s tampering, all six of them boast wings, lighter-than-air skeletal structures, and an innate ability to beat the crap out of anything that comes their way.  It’s not a bad set of skills for a handful of preteens.

Of course, they are pursued by the facility, known as the School, and hunted by half-man half-dog mutants called Erasers.  Amidst betrayals, newfound superpowers, ambushes and Dumpster-diving, Max does her best to protect her flock and to give them a chance at normalcy.

Avoiding the obvious comparisons to any number of similar stories (Dark Angel, X-Men, …all right, Dark Angel, mostly), it’s still easy to see why Patterson’s self-proclaimed best series sits on the NYT bestseller list.  It’s fast, it’s exciting, and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

For a man who earned his fame for murder mysteries, Patterson certainly seems to have trouble getting his story into the rough vicinity of opaque.  Every “accident,” every whim and every event are so blatantly contrived that the story can’t even coast on its own momentum — something is always happening, happening, happening, because Patterson has somewhere to get us, and he’ll be damned if he takes the time to make it look natural along the way.

When Max and two of her friends head off to remedy a kidnapping, they stop for a rest and accidentally sleep for a full ten hours.  It isn’t so Max can thoroughly berate herself for the mistake (although she does do a bit of angry verbal stomping), and it isn’t so the others can doubt her leadership.  It’s so Iggy and the Gasman back home have sufficient time to design and assemble a bomb.  Patterson’s worked so hard to keep the timelines in check that he’ll do absolutely anything to make sure they all match up at the end, regardless of how much sloppy stitching it requires.

In terms of voices, Patterson alternates between Max’s first-person narration (which, though quasi-earnest, doesn’t quite have the brilliantly genuine quality of Rennison’s Georgia Nicholson), and the Gasman’s, Nudge’s and Angel’s third-person views.  For the most part, it works; but Max has a tendency to describe everyone on their behalf, and when the narration falls out of her hands, the rest of the characters fall flat.

Patterson really does his best to speak through the mind and mouth of an unusual teenage girl, but something about Max’s voice seems misplaced.  She’s quick to lapse into casual, youth-inspired terminology, but there are still a lot of references she makes that would pass over the heads of most 14-year-olds, even those with access to the outside world.  Max is yet another adult-inspired teen: a mature, well-educated creature that is mysteriously absent from real life.  Expecting Max’s level of narrative ability from a 14-year-old is farfetched; to expect it from a teen whose first half of life was spent in a laboratory is pure wishful thinking.

Patterson’s so dedicated to his Mach-3 plot speed that he’s ruthless in doing away with unnecessary elements like research.  A personal favorite of mine is the scene in which an MIT dropout accuses Max of messing with his laptop with her mental interference (as mutant schizophrenia appears to affect electronics).  The boy first accuses her of “messing with his Mac,” then he launches into complaints that she’s “screwing up his motherboard.”  I’d love to know how he’s managed to trace the interference to her, and how he’s doing it in an abandoned subway tunnel.  Short of wandering around in the dark, waving his laptop over groups of people like a geek version of Hot/Cold, he’s out of luck.  As far as I know, Macs aren’t standard-equipped with EMF readers.  But then, I’m a PC user.  One never knows.

I’m also curious to understand just how Max manages to fit her 13-foot-wingspan beneath a windbreaker.  There’s no mention of the wings shrinking when they’re folded; at best, they’d be folded in half.  That’s still 3.25 feet from top to bottom, which I don’t see a windbreaker doing much to conceal.  (If the book’s fans could explain this in simple, non-physical-universe-twisting terms, I’ll happily recant.)

Having forsaken research in any arena, Patterson seals the deal with such outrageous plot twists and coincidences that the story never has a chance to pause for a breather.  When the flock realizes that they need disguises, they are almost immediately set upon by a team of makeover artists as a part of their free makeover promotion.  In one deft stroke, Patterson just saved himself a dozen pages of needless writing.  You have to admire the man’s efficiency.  If nothing else, he’s saving trees.

There are a host of other problems that condemn Maximum Ride to the realm of mere pop fiction, but it does have one saving grace: it keeps pages turning.  No matter how much eye-rolling, sighing or book-throwing the story inspires, it begs to be finished, just so we can see if Patterson’s managed to really surprise us with a clever move.  The chapters are never longer than two and a half pages (a problem I like to call Goosebumps Syndrome), and the reader can’t help but feel like they’ve accomplished something every few minutes.  Non-habitual-readers love the thrill of telling their friends they’re on Chapter 36 — never mind the fact that it comes on page 109.

Maximum Ride spans four books, each of which seems to hint at bigger and more exciting things for Max and Co.  I plan on reading all of them, just to see if the series improves.  By the end of The Angel Experiment, at least, there’s no indication that Max or Patterson knows what they’re doing.  But, to be fair, Max knows that perfectly well.

 

Excerpt (p. 193-194):

He unlatched my dog door and held it open.  In a nanosecond, I had a plan of action: not to act.  Just to listen and watch.  To absorb everything and give out nothing. Okay, as a plan, it wasn’t the blueprint of Westminster Abbey, but it was a start. Slowly, I climbed out of my crate.  My muscles groaned when I stood up.  I didn’t look at any of the flock when I passed, but I put my right hand behind my back, two fingers together. It was our sign that said “Wait.” Jeb had taught us that.

 

Rating: C- -
[Amazon]

 

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Book Review: Powers

Powers
by Ursula K. Le Guin

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As an author, Le Guin is something of an oddity: Not for the fact that she is a prominent and respected female member of the fantasy literature community, but because her weaknesses are just as striking as her strengths. Le Guin is a competent author — more so than 95% of the fantasy genre — but not a perfect one. She takes her prose very seriously, and much of it reflects her interest in the balance and sound of poetry. Her stories’ settings are more realistic and better constructed than anything else in teen fiction. Unfortunately, Le Guin uses these strengths to carry the story, leaving the characters to wander.

In spite of its title, Powers does not actively focus on supernatural abilities except when the plot begins to flounder. Gavir, a slave of the house of Arca, has the ability to see visions of the future. Surprisingly, these visions have no impact on the story until the three-quarters mark, at which time they are a passing nuisance. Instead, Gavir’s real talent is language: his ability to memorize anything after hearing it once. Le Guin, being an author, falls into the startlingly common trap of making her characters obsessed with stories and poetry, with the assumption that her readers can understand this love almost innately. Instead, it reeks of a self-congratulatory superiority that overshadows the poor protagonist and makes him and his abilities unlikable.

Gavir is an unknown, even after the story ends. He has no particular emotions beyond a sort of halfhearted despair. His slavery is an accepted fact, and when he suddenly rejects it, it is for his sister’s sake rather than his own. Gavir plays the part of the dutiful anthropologist, who must narrate without giving away his presence, and he vanishes even as he talks. It’s hard to care about a character that scarcely exists, and Gavir’s minor brushes with death throughout the book barely register.

Gavir’s sister, the little-seen but often-adored Sallo, is most likely to blame for his oversensitivity to women. Le Guin does her best to write from a male viewpoint, but it still sounds like a woman feeding a young man all his lines, and it’s difficult to see Gavir without imagining Le Guin hovering over his shoulder. To make matters worse, the intended theme of freedom (both physical and intellectual) is ousted by Le Guin’s disgust with gender inequality. The women seem to have a constant, unreachable society that leaves Gavir alienated and admiring. I have to wonder if Le Guin hates men as much as the book makes it seem, or if she’s merely channeling a desperation to keep her place as a female author in a traditionally male-dominated genre.

Le Guin’s real skill is her ability to create realistic worlds for her characters to live in, but only by sacrificing their personalities and the plot. She drags Gavir from place to place, introduces new characters and new societies, and scarcely lets him get a word in edgewise. By the time we reach the end of the book, Gavir has grown into a young man, but we still don’t know anything about him. We might, if Le Guin would be quiet long enough to let him talk. We can’t hate him, because there’s nothing to hate, but we can’t identify with him, either.

Le Guin is experienced and talented enough to overcome most of today’s popular bad advice for writers, but her stories tend to amble without a purpose beyond giving her a chance to show off her creativity. The protagonist meets dozens of people and has to learn the cultures that go with them, but nothing ties together, and Gavir himself doesn’t seem to understand what he’s doing. Le Guin is more interested in being a poetic anthropologist than a storyteller, and it costs the story dearly.

Powers struggles to be a young adult action/adventure/fantasy read, but it’s best enjoyed for its prose rather than its plot. As the most recent book in the Annals of the Western Shore series, Powers certainly feels like the end of a series that’s rapidly losing steam.

Rating: C

[Amazon]

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Book Review: My Swordhand Is Singing

My Swordhand Is Singing
by Marcus Sedgwick

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It’s almost more difficult to review a run-of-the-mill book than to review a bad one. There is nothing to rave about, nothing to rant about. Mostly, it’s difficult to think of something to say when you forget the book as soon as you’ve finished it. My Swordhand Is Singing is inoffensive, but for all its exciting subject matter it fails to elicit more than a yawn or two. It’s a struggle to imagine how Sedgwick made 17th-century vampires dull, but he has.

Perhaps Sedgwick’s biggest mistake was holding his characters at arm’s length and forbidding us from mustering anything more than a vague interest in their fates. To his credit, Sedgwick went out of his way to make sure that the backdrop was accurate. He’s quick in telling us that he researched 17th-century vampire lore and did his best to portray it accurately, which he’s probably done. But in doing so, he’s focused too much on the history and sacrifices the characters’ personalities in the shuffle. The only characters who manage to lift themselves from being mere ink on paper are the protagonist’s father (a drunk with a sword) and Sofia, the Gypsy girl who sings and slaps people. Even the hero’s horse was more interesting than most of the cast, which is a cruel fate for anyone.

The premise of the story is interesting enough. Tomas and his son Peter (whose names have taken me two paragraphs to recall), are woodcutters who are widely disliked by their clientele in the nearby town of Chust. When a distant friend of Tomas’ is found hanged in the forest, it’s the beginning of a series of deaths in the village that the inhabitants are quick to blame on the supernatural. Peter, being the age of impressionable rebellion, doesn’t know what to think, and proceeds to dally through most of the book. I half-hoped that the vampires would get him in the end, but Sedgwick isn’t quite that dark.

Sedgwick can’t seem to quell the urge to cross-examine his characters’ actions, just in case we couldn’t do that much for ourselves. More than once, we’re forced to read the feet-draggingly dull analysis of a young man with a drunk for a father. And, when that gets too depressing, the narration switches to other characters for a paragraph or two: Tomas, who spirals through a life of regret; Agnes, who can’t decide whether she loves Peter or not (this issue is later resolved by the vampires, who seem to dislike indecision as much as I do); and the occasional vampire victim. Instead of providing different angles to the story, the tactic was jarring and caused faint bouts of vertigo.

The final nail in the coffin (couldn’t resist) is Sedgwick’s mimicry of poetic prose. Many authors have managed elegant prose; many more have failed. Sedgwick attempts to force himself into the first group, but he relies so heavily on clichés that the result seems tacky. When the entire book reads like the back of a DVD, it’s hard to take anything seriously.

All in all, My Swordhand Is Singing isn’t a bad book, but it certainly isn’t a good book. It was well researched, but a mind for accuracy is Sedgwick’s only redeeming quality. Most of the characters are unlikeable, the prose is occasionally interesting but more frequently cookie-cutter, and the entire thing seems cramped. The story never moves beyond the village of Chust; but rather than providing the claustrophobia that small-town horrors usually create, it only makes the tale seem limited.

According to the book jacket flap, Sedgwick works in publishing. There are two very different skills involved in publishing a book: good writing and good polishing. Those who excel at the first can improve at the second with enough time and practice; but those who excel at the second will never master the first, because they’re more interested in expectation than inspiration. My Swordhand Is Singing covers the bare requirements of getting a book published, but it isn’t a writer’s work.

Excerpt (p. 12):

But why? Most murderers tried to conceal their victims’ bodies. Why display Radu’s body instead? To Peter, it seemed like a warning, a warning that death was walking in the woods. And Peter was right.

 

Rating: C-
[Amazon]

 

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Book Review: The Last Unicorn

The Last Unicorn
by Peter S. Beagle

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To say that The Last Unicorn is one of the best fantasy books of all time is only a slight exaggeration — and one only mildly perpetrated by my inner 5-year-old. Admittedly, I grew up on the movie rather than the book, but Beagle’s work is probably best watered down into animation for the sake of unicorn-obsessed children, for whom pages crowded with words and no pictures are not yet as exciting as they ought to be. Of course, Beagle wrote the screenplay for the 1982 animated film himself, and he managed to stay faithful to his book. Now, after 20 years of not knowing that the movie came from a book (it’s an odd thing for me, of all people, not to know), I finally got around to reading the original.

The title of The Last Unicorn also serves as its summary. The last unicorn discovers that she is, in fact, the last, and sets out on a quest to discover why. Beagle had plenty of opportunity to bog the unicorn down in typical human rumination (Oh, why am I the last? Am I meant to be the last? Did they all leave me? Why must I wallow in solitude?), but, being more interested in the quest itself than the melancholy behind it, Beagle gets the unicorn out of the forest and on her way rather quickly.

Among the characters who join her on her quest for one reason or another are Schmendrick, the bumbling magician, and Molly Grue, the frequently unimpressed companion of Captain Cully. There is also the hapless Prince Lír, son-or-perhaps-not-son of the evil King Haggard. Upon reading the book, I have to think that Haggard sounds more like an old man with ADHD than the evil tyrant I’d seen as a child. In his infinite boredom, he’s terrorized his own country, raised a son for entertainment, and kidnapped unicorns. Repulsive? Of course. But my standards for evil are quite high, and I’m not sure that Haggard meets them.

As far as the writing goes: There is something about shadows, flowers and water that begs authors of a certain breed to construct comparisons from them, and Beagle is no different. The unicorn is always a shadow on water; her horn always glows like the moon. All shades of red resemble blood. And on, and on. It grows old, but it grows comfortable. It’s a story about unicorns, so my complaints over whimsical prose are few. And Beagle is certainly not without his sense of humor in places; the effort is definitely appreciated and makes up for the overabundant imagery.

I don’t know which group would find The Last Unicorn among their favorites today. It’s a touch involved for the youngest set, and it’s a bit too “fantasy” for their elders: it’s a book about unicorns, for chrissakes. My guess is that the book will hit home with those of us who grew up with the movie firmly ingrained in our minds. True, Beagle earned his fame long before the movie ever existed, and had done so on his own credit, but I just don’t think unicorns hold the same fascination today that they did back in the era of daisy chains and free love (or such is my understanding of the late ’60s).

Still, it’s a wonderful book. I can’t figure out why, exactly, but I’ve known the story for the last 20 years. I have a right to be biased.

Excerpt (p. 128):

“You know, I really think you should stop slaying dragons for the Lady Amalthea. If five of them haven’t moved her, one more isn’t likely to do it. Try something else.”

 

Rating: B+
[Amazon]

 

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Book Review: The Faceless Fiend

The Faceless Fiend: Being the Tale of a Criminal Mastermind,
His Masked Minions and a Princess with a Butter Knife, Involving Explosives
and a Certain Amount of Pushing and Shoving
by Howard Whitehouse

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Whitehouse created some wonderfully memorable characters in his first book, The Strictest School in the World, and he continues to drag them through the most outrageous adventures in London in its sequel.

Emmaline Cayley (junior aeronautical inventor), her friend Rab "Rubberbones" Burns (pilot and frequent crash test dummy), and the dethroned and disgruntled Princess Purnah of Chiligrit ("Much stabbings!  Porok!") enjoy a few months under the tutelage of the questionably sane Professor Bellbuckle before life takes another predictably bad turn.  As if escaping from the "strictest school in the world" hadn’t been impressive enough for a group of 14-year-olds, they must now outwit a team of henchmen, armed with little more than their wits, a butter knife, and a flying contraption or two.  And the result is 272 pages of frequently well-crafted hilarity.

It’s nearly impossible to summarize The Faceless Fiend, as it has a habit of flaunting misdirection like a medal of honor.  When a mysterious man is caught snooping around Aunt Lucy’s home, the chase to track down the Faceless Fiend and save Purnah from a most undignified kidnapping plot begins.  With Emmaline devising elaborate airborne escapes, Aunt Lucy sabotaging imposters with her cooking, and Professor Bellbuckle supplying his usual half-cocked inventions, London has never seen such a mess.

Whitehouse’s writing style is reminiscent of Lemony Snicket’s at its roughest and Patricia Wrede’s at its best. There are parts that drag too long, parts that grind on the brain, and parts that feel like mini-lectures joined less seamlessly than the reader would have liked; but there are also sparkles of genius that make the adventure worthwhile.  Even the unnecessary appearance of Sherlock Holmes in a hot air balloon doesn’t do irreparable damage.  Not with chapter titles like "Things Don’t Improve Much," "Dogs, Rats and Horses — Mostly Rats," and "Arrests are Made and Cakes are Eaten," anyway.

While hilarious in places, The Faceless Fiend is a bit too ambitious for its own good.  Whitehouse does his best to educate us on aviation, gambling, economics, sleuthing, and linguistics — but falls just short of each of them.  Still, with a cast that includes an aunt who adds slugs to her cooking for vague purposes of nutrition, a professor whose American family pays him to stay in London, and a mysterious Indian butler who speaks little but is wise in the ways of sneaking, the story can’t really fail as a comedy.  And judging by the title, Whitehouse had intended comedy all along.

The Faceless Fiend is quick-paced, occasionally clunky but otherwise clever, and surprisingly engaging.  It might fare better as a children’s book; but with a good deal of violence and at least one nude scene (no fault of anyone’s, one might note, least of all the displeased artist and his model), the book might not make it past your local library’s restrictions for J fiction.  The book suffers from the common dilemma of being too juvenile for teens and too mature for the younger crowd — but Roald Dahl fed children to giants, and The BFG still managed to squeeze onto elementary school bookshelves around the world.

While not as strong as its predecessor, The Faceless Fiend is still laugh-out-loud funny in places and definitely worth picking up.

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Excerpt (pps. 91-92):

Aunt Lucy seized Emmaline by the arm.  "Why did you tell them that Purnah was a French girl called Glecque Poroque?" she asked in a whisper that could be heard fifty feet away.  [...] "I thought if people called out in Chiligriti, she might reply.  Come out of hiding." "But couldn’t they just say the Chiligriti words for ‘Come out, Princess Purnah,’ or something like that?" "I don’t know the words for that.  I only know the things that Purnah shouts out when she’s excited or angry, which is most of the time.  I don’t really know what they mean." "I have always assumed that they were curses, insults and threats of violence," said Aunt Lucy. "Like when the professor says ‘Criminy!’ and ‘Tarnation!’ when he’s upset?" replied Emmaline. "Possibly, although they might be a bit more rude." Emmaline hadn’t thought of that.  Meanwhile, the village crowd continued through the woods, shouting possible curses, insults and threats of violence in a strange Asiatic tongue.

 

Rating: B-

[Amazon]

 

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Book Review: Moon Called

Moon Called
by Patricia Briggs

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Every now and then, someone gives me the gift of a train wreck disguised as a book recommendation. I have to thank my lone blog reader for this one, since Moon Called successfully kept me busy for a good five hours and has provided me with some of the most quote-worthily-horrid excerpts I’ve ever come across.  I tried to attach a Post-It to the pages with the worst atrocities, but it eventually occurred to me that putting a note on every single page wasn’t worth the time.

It’s difficult to explain how bad this book is, or just what makes it so bad. It has all the necessary parts for a book: a front cover, a back cover, and a few hundred pages in between; a language that is recognizably English (thankfully having passed spell-check inspection); and a story. A story about a coyote/human changeling who runs an auto repair shop and, judging by the cover, can conceal both a separator and a push-up bra beneath an unusually revealing mechanic’s uniform…but a story nonetheless.  The definition of "story," however, remains happily vague.

The first two pages of the book are spent watching the main character, Mercy, install a new transmission into a Volkswagen Jetta.  Two entire pages of bolts, gears, wrenches and nonsense.  And the plot only gets better from there.  Mercy’s concerns seem limited to dealing with the dozen or so werewolves who are mainly interested in mating with/eating her, though usually not at the same time.  She carries guns (which the author can’t seem to understand or depict properly), utilizes karate (which is introduced eight-tenths of the way through the book and serves painfully little purpose), and generally behaves like a spoilt child.  When someone else — as it is always someone else — screws things up, Mercy executes a neat rescue, ignorant of the constraints set by physics and common sense.

The remainder of the plot involves her run-ins with vampires, witches, undercover cops, armed morons, and horny men (which are, in Briggs’s defense, not always mutually exclusive, which brings the character count down to a few dozen). Characters are introduced (usually for the purpose of hitting on Mercy) and forgotten; conspiracies are hinted at and abandoned in lieu of totally unrelated ones; secrets are revealed, then explained, then overrun with even less relevant information.  And somehow, Moon Called retains a 4.5-star rating at Amazon.com, which saps a few more points from my faith in humanity.

If the storytelling weren’t entertainment enough, Briggs has truly outdone herself in the department of unintentionally hilarious narration.

……………………………………………………

• “It wasn’t me that done it,” he growled ungrammatically. (p. 56)

• I found a second werewolf under the fainting couch. (I liked to tease Adam about his fainting couch — How many women do you expect to faint in your living room, Adam?) He’d have to buy a new one. (p. 61)

• My style of karate, Shi Sei Kai Kan, was designed for soldiers who would be encountering multiple opponents — which was good because there were three men in my living room. (p. 221)

……………………………………………………

Not to be bested by the narration, the characters toss in a few jabs of their own, mostly aimed at the literary-appreciation part of my brain.  In Briggs’s mind, the following laws are universal and inflexible:

• Swearing is not permitted, most notably in the presence of ladies.  This rule extends to all supernatural creatures, including those in the process of killing others, bleeding to death, or acting as vile henchmen.

• All sensuality is to be treated from the viewpoint of a 13-year-old girl.  The insanely hot werewolf pack leader next door is made jealous by other werewolves, vampires, and the occasional tumbleweed.  Jealousy is often remedied by catty remarks traded between middle-aged men.

• Stripping is a necessary and unavoidable part of life. Not “disrobing,” not “undressing”; stripping.

• Secrets must be revealed when they are least needed, and for ten to fifteen pages.

What worries me isn’t the fact that this book made it into print or that it’s popular enough for the copies at my local library to pass through a few hands before coming into mine.  What worries me is that the people who read it think it’s good.  And, for all my praying for the contrary, it does not appear that they are operating under a "well, we know it’s crap, but it’s pretty good for crap" line of reasoning.  For 142 reviewers at Amazon.com — over 2/3rds of the total — the book deserved five stars.  (Out of five, for those of you still clinging to hope.)

Still, for the time I was reading it, Moon Called was entertaining.  Granted, Briggs most likely did not intend for me to laugh so hard at her misfired turn of phrase that I cried, but the outcome was the same.moon called review patricia briggs aydee

……………………………………………………

"I’d started back to the motel [...] when someone called out my name."

"Mercy!"  (p. 103)

……………………………………………………

.

Yes.  Mercy on all of us.

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Thanks for the rec, Vio. I’ll have to return the favor someday.

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Rating: F
[Amazon]

moon called review patricia briggs aydee

Book Review: Faeries of Dreamdark

Faeries of Dreamdark: Darkbringer
by Laini Taylor

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Halfway through Laini Taylor’s debut novel, I envisioned leaving a surprisingly favorable review on Amazon in spite of the fact that I’d never particularly liked fairies, faeries, or however it is they’re being spelled these days. Ditto for vampires, angels, wizards, and the rest of the threadbare myths. They’re overused and far beyond what might be considered a tasteful resurrection, but heaven knows teen lit authors keep trying. Sometimes they succeed. Usually, they don’t.

Faeries of Dreamdark is poised halfway between the two. Laini Taylor has done nothing to faeries save shrink Irish fighters down to pint-sized people with wings. Who know magic.

At times, Taylor’s prose is acceptably clean; but the splatters of lavender — and, in places that encourage bouts of eye twitching, vibrant purple — trip up the otherwise fast-paced action. Entire paragraphs felt as though they had been written after a few well-intentioned glasses of wine, then forcibly inserted into the rest of the story. There is plenty of “pronounced” and “fretted” and “protested” going on when a “said” would have sufficed just as well, if properly handled.

One of the saving graces is the use of Irish-inspired dialect, which seems to consist of exclamations of “Ach!” and “Eh!” and plenty of “lass”es and “lad”s. Whether or not Taylor’s managed to properly emulate the dialect is best left to the Irish to decide, but it was rather entertaining on the page.

Bad prose can slip by undetected after the first hundred, numbing pages, but borrowed ideas have a harder time of it. Taylor goes out of her way to pick bits and pieces from her favorite authors and slip it into her story to disguise the fact that she simply doesn’t know how to come up with one on her own.

The glyphs are Nix’s charter marks. The returning talent among the faeries is the rebirth of Nix’s Wallmaker and Abhorsen. The seven Djinn and Astaroth, the eighth, uncontrolled power, are Nix’s original Nine, including the evil being, Orranis. Seven of Nix’s nine bind the ninth and lock him under the earth. Taylor’s seven bind the eighth and lock him under the sea. Both are freed, expectedly, by man.

And then, seemingly for the hell of it, Taylor throws in the “true name” bit from Ursula LeGuin. It’s a bizarre detail that acts as a small deus ex machina for Astaroth. Even when she’s shamelessly taking her cues from other authors, Taylor can’t piece a plot together without the strings showing.

Setting is decent and believable, and I’ll leave it at that. Characters are expected and unremarkable save Magpie, who is a bite-sized Mary Sue. She is beautiful, stubborn, unimpressed by authority, never punished or held accountable for much of anything, given presents for no clear reasons, and does everything right the first time. Her only real mistake (when not trying to wrangle her newfound powers), is losing her friend Poppy, which she later remedies by saving the entire world, of which Poppy is a part. And everyone lives happily ever after.

Stripped of its Nix-inspired plot, Faeries of Dreamdark is a mindless read that leaves little or no impression. It is harmless in the sense that it accomplishes nothing but seeing to the death of a few unwanted hours. Good for airport terminals and bus stops, but not much else.

Rating: C-

[Amazon]

faeries of dreamdark review aydee

A Friendly Reminder from Your Local Library

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Eleven Little Reminders for Our Beloved Patrons
(Lest AyDee Throws Things at Your Inconsiderate Heads)
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(1) The Library is Not a Daycare

We like kids. Really. They’re like regular library patrons, only smaller. We even have toys set out for them: plastic animals and firetrucks and whatever else administration sees fit to give us. We even go so far as to wipe everything down with Lysol after your little bundles of joy wipe their slimy fingers all over Mr. Giraffe. Really, it’s fine. Just don’t expect us to watch over them.

Don’t plop little Johnny or Susie in the children’s area, expecting the librarian to play nanny. We’re not daycare employees or kindergarten teachers. We don’t have the time (or the interest) necessary to keep watch over Johnny to make sure he doesn’t wad up the pages from Goodnight Moon and attempt to ingest them, or to make sure that Susie doesn’t climb up the bookcases in hopes of reaching whatever the hell it is kids think are on top of bookcases. They’re your damn gene carriers — watch them accordingly.

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(2) Hang Up and Read

Silence your cell phones. Not being able to find the proper button is not an excuse. If, by chance, you have forgotten to silence your cell phone in advance, don’t take thirty seconds to find it. It’s a cute jingle and all — and hey, who doesn’t like ragtime? — but some of us are making an honest attempt to read. Shocking, I know.

And if you do decide to pick up, please remember that “library voices” should extend to adults as well as the children they’re with. Incredibly enough, cell phones utilize modern technology. There’s a little hole in the phone that lets the person on the other end hear what you’re saying, even from miles away. It’s quite impressive. Yelling, therefore, is not necessary, advised or appreciated.

As a side note, screaming, “What? Yeah…YEAH! I’m in the LIBRARY!! LI-BRA-RY!!!” into your phone is the quickest way to stop being in the library at all.

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(3) Don’t Try to Be Helpful

It’s nice to have patrons who clean up after themselves. Nothing warms my heart like the sight of candy wrappers and water bottles carefully corralled in the wastebasket (or recycling bin, if you’re a dear). But please, leave your books the hell alone.

It is a strange phenomenon of nature that those who try their very hardest to “put it back where I found it” are the people least capable of doing so. Nonfiction is not in order by author’s name. Fiction is not organized by genre or date of publication (nice try). And that is a copy of Bob the Builder; please stop terrifying it with A Clockwork Orange. Points for creativity, though.

Do us a favor and be lazy. Leave your books on a table, bench, or other visible place where we’ll bloody well find them. Please stop wedging them into the ends of shelves, on DVD carousels, and into potted plants (this has happened). And stop leaving them in the restrooms, because I can never tell which end is safe to pick up.

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(4) We Aren’t All Fans of Harry Potter

Librarians have opinions, surprisingly. Don’t ask us for recommendations if you can’t understand that there are books we dislike, too. Don’t stand at the checkout counter for ten minutes, rambling on about wizards and witches and quidditch and ohmygoshisn’tHarryjustwonderful? Most of us have high standards when it comes to books, and we don’t always see eye to eye with our beloved patrons. (Half of us lost interest in Harry Potter partway through the first book. And no, it isn’t a brilliant reinterpretation of Arthurian legend. It’s Scooby Doo with magic.)

It’s best to assume that we don’t share your enthusiasm for the collection of books in our branch — we’ve read quite a number of them, and an alarming amount are a gross misuse of paper.

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(5) Leave the Restroom the Way You Found It

I will never understand what it is about humans that encourages them to treat public restrooms as though those of us on staff own hazmat suits. Public toilets still flush, so please feel free to give it a shot. And one can usually manage to dry one’s hands sufficiently with fewer than fifty paper towels. Quite a good deal fewer, actually.

Oh, and leaving dirty diapers in various locations in the library doesn’t make for nearly as exciting a treasure hunt as you might think.

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(6) If You Fall Asleep, Don’t Snore — Or Drool

Yes, the Wall Street Journal is hellishly boring. Yes, we understand that it is nigh impossible to stay awake for more than a paragraph or two of…the socioeconomic impact…of flooding the…stock market with…Monopoly…money…….

We’ve all been there. But please try to fall asleep in a position that does not encourage snoring. Or in one that disguises your breathing. If you are over the age of 75, and I can’t see if you’re still breathing, I may begin to suspect that you’ve passed on. This suspicion raises its ugly head more often than can be considered normal or particularly good for my blood pressure.

While we’re on the topic, please leave the chair as you found it: dry. (Elderly patrons might note that this rule applies to both ends of the body.)

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(7) Stop Using Books as Teething Toys

Child development is an inevitability, but that’s no reason for our books to be returned with half-moon splotches of saliva all over the cover and pages gummed into mush. Hopefully, your kid isn’t that desperate — unless, of course, they are, in which case we will be happy to provide the number for social services.

By extension, this rule also applies to crayons, dogs, coffee mugs, popsicles, and other sources of abuse. I blame your mothers, really.

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(8) Don’t Take Books to the Beach

Clarification: Don’t take our books to the beach. Much like your shorts, the books get filled with all kinds of sand, salt and strange bits of sea life. It might be hilarious to you when 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea comes back caked with sand and salt, but the effect is lost on us — and on future borrowers. As a general rule, try to keep anything made of paper away from bodies of water (both large and small).

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(9) We Can Still Hear Your iPod

If we can hear your iPod from the reference desk at a distance of 30 feet, chances are that you have more pressing issues than offending the librarians. Much as we appreciate 50 Cent’s unique brand of musical styling, we don’t want to hear it when the earbuds are wedged into your ear canals. Or for three hours.

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(10) We Aren’t in Control of the Wi-Fi

Most librarians don’t know a damn thing about the computers, our Internet connection, or the printers. Especially the printers. Please don’t ambush the staff with questions like “Does this wireless network require a password?” and “How do I burn a CD of encrypted data?” They will stare at you like deer in headlights and slowly back away. Administration merely put the computers there, sweetheart. The rest is up to you.

And please stop looking at porn. Yes, we can see you in the corner. No, it isn’t rebellious and badass. Especially when you’re 40.

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(11) No, I Can’t Magically Make a Book Appear on the Shelf
_______If It’s Already Checked Out

Thanks for understanding.
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Happy reading!

public library rules aydee

Okami review

Okami is easily the best PS2 game of 2006. It is a breath of fresh air: an escape from Kingdom Hearts II (1 part gaming, 9 parts cutscene), Xenosaga III (religious misinterpretation meets battle androids!) and Final Fantasy XII (don’t get me started). In an era of cutting-edge games with evolving graphics, “deep” storyline and feats of digital physics, Okami simply concentrates on being fun. And fun is something that it does quite well.

I wasn’t actually planning on buying it. I’d seen Okami on CNN.com for one reason or another and didn’t give it much thought after that. It was automatically stored in the back of my mind with all the other “games to look into at some point.” But on the next trip to GameStop, I somehow walked out with a copy in hand. (And, it should probably be noted, a receipt in the other.)

Okami turned out to be one of the few gaming purchases I’ve never had the chance to regret. From the moment I saw the title screen, I knew I’d just signed a week of my life away. The graphics are beautifully styled, the music is breathtaking, and the story is charming and memorable. There is almost nothing about this game that I did not enjoy — “almost nothing” because of the few places where the scenes are a bit mature for children (a character with moaning theme music, in particular) and are slightly distracting for the rest of us.

Okami’s graphics are astonishing if only for their deceptive simplicity. At first glance, they are plain and unremarkable; it is only on closer inspection that one can pick out the texture of the landscape and the quality of the outlines that make it look so much like a Japanese scroll. Okami takes place entirely on this canvas and never ceases to amaze. Distant objects, like a tower or range of mountains, are little more than dark streaks of ink against the sky: a sky, no less, that looks precisely like parchment. Every object in the game quivers and flows like the brush strokes that inspired them — and makes for one hell of a gaming experience.

The story begins, as all good stories do, with the resurrection of a legendary evil. Orochi, the eight-headed demon, is brought back to life after a villager attempts to steal the sword that kept it imprisoned, thus freeing the monster into the land of Nippon. It wreaks havoc on the land, trapping the innocent in darkness and exacting revenge for its imprisonment.

It is then that the goddess Amaterasu is reborn as a white wolf in order to save the people of Nippon. She travels the world, collecting her lost skills and gaining new allies in order to defeat Orochi and the evil that is born from his wrath. But this is only the tip of the iceberg — Okami’s involved storyline continues to surprise and enchant until its conclusion.

Much like Nintendo’s Zelda games, Okami is all about freedom. The environment is fully interactive and can be manipulated in dozens of ways. Exploring towns and enormous tracts of land can be a bit confusing for those of us with a poor sense of direction, as the camera revolves 360 degrees and much of the landscape is continuous. However, a bit of map reading and memorization can help even the most pathetic soul (me) find their way again.

The battles are amusing, albeit not quite as difficult as they could have been. Toward the beginning of the game, the bolder demons taunt Amaterasu and slap their behinds in her direction…which often yields more interesting responses from the player than the wolf. Divine Instruments — Amaterasu’s weapons — can be equipped as Main or Sub Weapons and provide unique abilities. But for the most part, they’re good for beating the crap out of uppity demons.

The most inventive and possibly the biggest selling point of Okami is its introduction of the Celestial Brush: a tool that allows Amaterasu to change the world as she sees fit. Using different brush strokes, a withered tree blooms again, or a broken bridge is easily repaired. The game pauses as the player uses the brush to draw a slash through an obstacle or draw a line of ice towards a foe.

There are 13 brush techniques in all, each used for a different purpose. There are fanciful uses, like coaxing a dead garden to bloom again, or more practical uses, like setting fire to particularly obnoxious villagers.

Mini-games also provide entertainment when battles and harassing townspeople grows tiresome. Unexpectedly, my favorite is fishing. There are at least three locations in the game where various characters try their hand at snagging fish from a lake — with the help of Amaterasu’s brush. The fish get progressively more difficult to catch as the mini-game continues, and it can easily consume hours if you let it.

One thing to note about Okami is its use of a fragmented voice acting style instead of actual speech. Instead of having the characters use full words, Okami takes bits of spoken language and breaks it into phonemes before re-working them in random patterns. The result is faintly annoying at first but quickly grows on you. I spent most of the game not realizing that the phonemes were limited to Japanese until a very clearly French character entered the game — speaking in reorganized pieces of French. This little bit of attention to detail is absolutely icing on the cake.

It’s always nice when a game soundtrack adds to the story; it is something entirely different when an incredible soundtrack complements an already stellar game. Like the whole of Okami, the soundtrack is very heavily influenced by traditional Japanese culture. Wind and string instruments and percussion combine to make positively lovely background themes, but the soundtrack pulls no punches in the action sequences. At every turn, the music enhances rather than distracts, making it one of my favorite game soundtracks by far.

The ending theme, titled “Reset,” was a bit of a shock. It was lovely but unexpectedly modern in comparison to the rest of the game. (listen at YouTube)

All in all, Okami is an incredible achievement. With a story that is complex but never preachy, graphics that stand in a class of their own, and gameplay that is often a sheer joy, this is one game that I can recommend to everyone I know. The only thing I find puzzling about the entire experience is the price; for $10 less than most new releases, Okami delivers far more than its competition. Absolutely no one has a reason to let this game get away.

Okami review Amaterasu Playstation Celestial Brush Issun