Game of Thrones Season 5 Review

Note: This post would have come up yesterday or even Sunday if not for this little thing called "E3" that everybody seems to be going gaga about. Reaction to that is coming up at the end of this week, once I've seen everything. I'm not there this year (sad face) but I'm still following the streams, sorry for spamming your twitter.

I guess it was inevitable in some way that the season adapting "A Dance with Dragons", by far the worst book of George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series was going to be by far the worst season of HBO's smash hit "Game of Thrones"*.  "A Dance with Dragons" is not a very good book in my opinion, being full of unnecessary padding and leaving open far too many plot points to possibly justify itself. Where previous books of the series were in some ways stand-alone complete chapters, "A Dance with Dragons" is just a chunk of story that happens to be bound in a single volume, utterly useless without knowing what comes before or next. So when the show runners of "Game of Thrones", D. B. Weiss and David Benioff, decided that they were going to make huge changes to Season 5, I was pretty much behind it. Change away, I said, it cannot get any worse.

Guess what? It got worse. "A Dance with Dragons" is far from a good book, but it did have good qualities. It is amazing how much we have lost in order to condense things down. There is no Lady Stoneheart, nobody baked any Freys into pies, it seems the battle of Meereen is just not happening (not that it happened in the books either yet), so much of the tension of the Winterfell plothole is completely gone, Ser Barristan's most badass scenes are just not happening this time, etc. etc. Luckily though, even if you are not an avid book reader who obsessively devoured the first four books of the series in a single summer, "Game of Thrones" Season 5 is still impressively awful. Maybe you have never read a word of anything in your entire life, it doesn't change the fact this was still a disappointing and miserable season to watch.

In a lot of ways "Game of Thrones" has been too good to be true. GRRM has created a vast universe with memorable colorful characters, and the show runners have done a fantastic job translating them to the screen. Can you even imagine Tyrion Lannister without thinking of Peter Dinklage? How about the incredible work they've done with Ned, Varys, Davos, Arya, the Hound, Jaime, Tywin, even relatively minor characters like Balon Greyjoy? That one of the largest and most complicated fantasy series ever written has managed to make compelling television, even amazing television is truly an impressive achievement. Eventually their casting luck had to run out, so we ended up with the Sand Snakes. The pacing has been phenomenal, eventually that had to slow down as they ran into GRRM's slow middle portions of his story that ultimately go nowhere. So a solution needed to be found to keep the show interesting during an inevitable rough patch.

Freelancin': Jodorowsky's Dune and Dear Mr. Watterson

New post!  Finally!  I haven't forgotten this blog after all!

This week's Freelancin' is about two documentaries from 2013, "Jodorowsky's Dune", about the greatest film never made, and "Dear Mr. Watterson", the greatest comic strip ever made.

What I've Been Reading: Rainy Season, 2014

The theme for this month is comedy and horror.  One of the books I read is a tale of two young men discovering the edges of reality, and realizing their world is nothing more than bubble surrounded by an insane universe of darkness.  It is hysterically funny.  Another book takes place during the darkest period of human history, the second World War, where the entire planet erupted into violence and savagery.  But that story has its own subtle sarcastic tone.  Then there's a story about a clown running around, just trying to impress an old friend with increasingly elaborate gags.  That's a grotesque nightmare.  We have horror transforming into comedy, and comedies transforming into horror.   The face of things cannot be trusted.  All you have to do it cut off the facade, and see what's really lying under the skin, to find the truth.

Batman: Death of the Family by Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV

"Batman: Death of the Family" is the latest trade paperback collection of the New 52 series of DC mainstream coninuity comic books from its "Batman" comic series.  Confusingly this is not the only comic book featuring Batman, as there is also "Detective Comics", "Batman: The Dark Knight", and "Batman Incorporated", which are four redundant titles all starring Batman.  But if you think that's a bit much, there's also "Batman and Robin", yet another Batman series, but this one featuring Batman's newest Robin, his son, Damian Wayne.  Oh and Batman is also in the Justice League, so there's all of those comics too.  And beyond that, Batman's various allies get their own comic books, such as "Nightwing", "Batgirl" (who is also in "Birds of Prey"), "Batwoman", "Batwing", and "Red Hood and the Outlaws".  This book collects five issues of the presumably main Batman storyline, which you would think would be enough to tell a full tale.  However, because all thirty-five other Batman comic books had to have their own tie-ins to sucker fans into buying them all, this means the trade paperback I read held only a fraction of the full "Death of the Family" arc.  Some of those tie-ins might have been important, some might have just created huge plotholes, and others were certainly giant wastes of time shoveled out to sell more comics.

And then I sometimes wonder if I'm being too harsh on comic book fans when I tell them their favorite medium is a goddamn mess.  Unfortunately every time I try to get into the main continuity of a superhero comic, I'm met by this huge wall of tie-ins, references, cameo appearances by characters from another series who are never explained, and then a bigger wall of continuity and prior history, which ironically the New 52 series was supposed to fix.  Luckily though, "Death of the Family" is a garbage series anyway, so if you choose to skip all of this nonsense, you're really not missing much.

The Stormlight Archive: Words of Radiance

"Words of Radiance" is the second novel of The Stormlight Archive, a series of a planned-ten epic fantasy novels from prolific author, Brandon Sanderson.  Three years ago, while in visiting a part of the world straight out of fantasy literature, I read the first book, "The Way of Kings", and wrote a rambling absolutely terrible post about it.  You don't have to read that post, but the book itself is definitely worth your time.  Sanderson is a better writer than me, do not worry.  "The Way of Kings" was easily Sanderson's best novel, bringing a new level of imagination, creativity, and excitement to the fantasy genre.  Its really startling the level of detail Sanderson has put into his world, creating several sciences of magical forms, a completely new culture, and a world geography built around a constant barrage of attacking storms.  All of that continues with the second volume, "Words of Radiance".

Final Fantasy wishes it had the creative powers of Brandon Sanderson.  Certainly the worlds of Spira and Cocoon are not lacking in the fantastic elements, but JRPGs rarely manage to add a coherent culture, religion, and scientific reasoning behind all of its magical elements.  More importantly, Sanderson indulges in his hokier instincts - the climax of "Words of Radiance" is essentially a "Dragonball Z" flying battle involving a Super Saiyan - yet never allows all of his sillier action demands to get in the way of characters.  "Words of Radiance" might be almost too character driven, as just like "Way of Kings", it spends most of its 1000+ pages slowly building the characters, developing their interactions, and having them reflect (often rather endlessly) upon their decisions.  What's important is that Sanderson can bring everything:  the spectacle, the humanity, and the color of the world, and that's a quality almost unique to him alone.

The star of "Words of Radiance" is Shallan Davar, a beautiful red-haired teenaged scholar with magical powers, a magical sword, a fairy companion, savant-level powers of drawing from memory, and a charming sense of humor which immediately makes every male her age fall in love with her.  So we're dangerously skirting Mary Sue-ness with this protagonist.  Sanderson uses a revolving protagonist for his series, so Shallan will only be plot tumor for this one book, and her current happiness is ephemeral, clearly.  The first book starred the much less cute Kaladin Stormblessed, a bitter slave being worked to death by the corrupt aristocracy that took his future and murdered most of his loved ones, so "Words of Radiance" comes off as something of a more bubbly high school adventure than a dark war novel.  Luckily Shallan is still well rounded as a character, Kaladin is still around to be one of the best fantasy characters of all time, and Sanderson sets up the story well for the remaining eight books.

What I've Been Reading - February 2014

Earlier this month I had the specific displeasure of watching "Vampire Academy".  Weeks later I still remember that experience, mostly thanks to midnight terrors and the occasional emotional breakdown.  It was a bad movie.  A really bad movie.  Theoretically "Vampire Academy" was a Twilight teen fantasy, but instead was so much less:  mainly a hideous drive through slut shaming and various other high school nonsense.  Things so profoundly stupid that only a fifteen-year-old girl could possibly think they are important - also the reason why everybody uses fifteen-year-old girls as a base standard for moronism.

Anyway, at some point I felt it important to revisit my own high school experience.  Was I also a vapid bitch with no comprehension of or interest in other people beyond a slim validation of my ego?  When have I not been that?  More importantly, I discovered that I could barely remember high school at all.  I am fairly certain I went, I have a diploma, and at some point learned trigonometry, but the entire four years is a giant blur of discarded memories.  I had a few friends at the time, I think, I went to classes and had some truly excellent teachers, I had my first drink and kiss... But honestly, the whole four years was wasted time.  College was real living, high school was waiting for it to end.

Early on in Freshmen year I took one look at everything high school was and declared immediately that the entire thing was total bullshit and I would have nothing to do with it.  So rather than joining some tribe of nerds, geeks, jocks, or whatever cultures network TV sitcoms content that I am suppose to join, I did my homework quietly and read.  I had a book with me constantly, and if I was not in class, I was reading.  And sometimes if the class was poorly taught, I would read in class, and then get to sent to detention.  Which was pretty awesome since it was a nice peaceful hour where I could really focus on the text while the delinquents and future drop-outs around me nervously sneaked text messages.  Obviously high school fought back, I got my face punched in once to protect a paperback volume of Tolstoy.  But I ignored them and their punches, and kept on reading.  Then I graduated and went home.

Which leads me to the point of this post:  three great books that I read in high school that you should read now.

What I've Been Reading (Holiday 2013)

Movies have always loved adapting their storylines from novels and books.  It goes all the way back to the beginning, when many of the most classic films of all time were based on the written word:  "The Wizard of Oz", "The Shining", "Frankenstein", "The Godfather", even the first giant monster movie ever, "The Lost World", came out of the mind of a novelist, Arthur Conan Doyle.  2013's slant of "The Hobbit", "World War Z", "Ender's Game", and the dozens of teen fantasy stories that came out this year are nothing new.  In the coming years we'll see dozens more adaptations, and more recreations will occur after that, forever, as long as movies are movie.   However one question I've never had adequately answered for me is:   when you see a movie adapted for a book, is it better to have read the novel beforehand? 

The very last post I wrote here was on the second part of the Peter Jackson "Hobbit" trilogy.  And rather shallowly on my part, a great deal of my criticism were its deviation from the open spirits and accessibility of the book.  The original "Hobbit" has this great sing-song quality to every line, its the kind of prose you really need to read out loud in order to appreciate, preferably to a very small child with a sense of wonder in their eye.  The movie is this massive unwieldy slab of drama and plotlines, with so much going on, it really misses the entire spirit of Tolkien.  But maybe I just couldn't appreciate what Peter Jackson was doing because I wanted it to be that original book?  Maybe I would have given "World War Z" a slowing recommendation if I hadn't cared that we were missing the satire and cleverness of Max Brooks - and the blind samurai chopping zombies heads off with a katana.

Then there's movies I've loved, which were based on books I've never read, and might never get around to reading.  I was ten when "The Lord of the Rings" movies came out, and I certainly didn't care that Tom Bombadil was missing.  I've never read "Coraline", but the movie is one of my favorites of all time.  On the other hand, I have no idea how "The Host" managed to link up with Stephenie Meyer's own vision, and its was one of the worst movies of 2013.  I would say, its probably best in the end to see the movie first, then read the book.  Not because of that hopelessly broad generalization that the book is always better (see and read: "Fight Club"), but because film is, in many ways, a less personal medium than a full hundred page novel.  The more familiar you are with the intricacies of the material, such as my comprehensive knowledge of Middle Earth history**, the less likely you are to enjoy a piece that simply gets its feet wet with that universe, rather than drown itself in the lore.  A movie is something you get to enjoy for a few hours, and its over.  A book is a part of your life for days, if not weeks, something you carry with you and fall into over and over again, then return to reality after a nice long stretch.  A movie is a date, a book is a relationship.  So here are three one-night-stands I decided to go back to and turn into long term romances.

What I've Been Reading (Fall 2013)

The Blue-mobile is currently in the shop, so that means I'm house-bound, for the most part.  I think I might be able to wrap my laptop with a hobo pack on the end of stick, pop out my thumb, and fair the dangers of the Garden State Parkway, that wretched hive of thieves and villains, to go see "About Time".  Or I could instead sit down and enjoy an old friend of mine.  I think you've heard of him.  His name is READING!!!  You may think that even though I spend most of intellectual power writhing over the performances in a Marvel superhero movie that I may be entirely illiterate.  But in fact, I read a lot.

Just last night I read no less than three books!  It was a time paradoxitive record of grammar-digesting brilliance.  And not little Goosebumps nonsense books, bit old fat novels full of texts.  These things had so many words they will spilling on the floor and on my good pants.  Which reminds me:  any of you ladies or gentlemen got a mop?  My house is completely cluttered with words, some quite long and very hard to scrub out.

So what I have here are three shorter reviews of the three books I read, none of them altogether connected in any way.  I considering writing out singular reviews for all three, but I decided that I didn't want to get as deep and involved as my film work.  I've read so many good books in just the years I've done this blog, and there's so much to talk about, I could spend a month just detailing the material I have, which is always expanding.  So from now on, I'll make a post like this:  "What I've Been Reading".  It will pull back and give a shorter but hopefully still extensive overview of the products, and hopefully you'll realize, like I have, how much genius are inside these tomes.  (Be careful though, because the genius gets on your pants sometimes, and that doesn't wash out.)  Really though, I don't want to write a post for every book I read like I do for movies and video games.  It would be too exhausting, and mediocre books are so much more tragic, considering the time and energy you have to invest in order to experience them.  I want to just review the best of the best, so you Space Monkeys can see what you're missing.

All-Star Superman

Last month I reviewed "All-Star Batman and Robin Boy Wonder" as part of my big Batman celebration, and decided that it was the worst superhero thing I've ever seen.  And we don't need to recap why it was terrible.  But I again need to restate the fact that I am not the person you want to trust when it comes to superheroes, and you'll see why in this post.  This will probably be the last comic book discussion from me.

There happens to be another title in DC's (mostly failed) All-Star line, and that is called "All-Star Superman" by Grant Morrison.  If you take all the hate, annoyance, and confusion that resulted from Frank Miller "All-Star" series, and flip it upsidedown to pure unending praise, you'd get the reaction from the superhero critics about "All-Star Superman".  Its repeatedly listed among the best comics of the last decade, its won awards, it is simply beloved by nearly everybody who loves Superman, superheroes, and comic books.  It apparently redefined and reaffirmed everything that made Superman SUPERMAN.  I thought, "hey, I had to suffer through goddamn 'All-Star Batman and Robin', I deserve to read a good superhero comic, don't I?", so I sat down at a Barnes & Nobles for an hour, found a copy of "All-Star Superman", and read it cover to cover.  And wow... what the fuck was that?

I've never really been the world's biggest Superman fan, but I've always respected the idea of Superman.  I could appreciate what he was:  the quintessential embodiment of American exceptionalism.  A walking avatar of what our brightest dreams for what American should be:  the invincible guiding protector for the entire world.  And its probably due to my own personal cynicism that I've always preferred Batman to Superman*, but this seems to be a notable cultural shift in our entire mass consciousness.  At some time as the generations passed Batman became more popular.  It would take a sociologist years to figure out what exactly that means, but I don't think its good news for our mass-psychological health.  If somebody could remind everybody why Superman is so important and why we need our Superman dream, I would be there to support the idea.  Unfortunately, "All-Star Superman" loses whatever high-minded plans it had thanks to the great disease of superhero comic books:  continuity obsession.

All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder

Oh God...

Frank Miller's "All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder" might have seen like a brilliant, groundbreaking storyline in Frank Miller's own head.  Yet another excellent Batman comic that would revolutionize the Batman mythos once again just as his previous "Dark Knight Returns" and "Year One" had done back in the Eighties.  However, to the rest of the human race, Frank Miller's new Batman tale appeared to be more like a nightmare, an insult, or just a plain old prank.  The fact of the matter is that nobody has the slightest clue what Frank Miller was thinking when he wrote this horrible comic, which is without a doubt the worst Batman related product ever released, and possibly the worst superhero story ever*.

DC's "All-Star" line began as a rather admirable idea, I think.  Back in the mid-2000s, DC decided that they would create a whole new series of brand new Superman, Batman, and Wonderwoman comic book series that would be out of continuity of the goddamn confusing mess that is their DC universe, so that new readers would able to get into comics without needing to memorize eight decades worth of stories, exactly how the Ultimate Marvel Universe did.  They also wanted these new stories to be written by the very best authors money could buy.  "All-Star Superman" was written by Grant Morrison... who I assume is a very good author of comics.  And "All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder" was written by Frank Miller, who was then considered an absolute genius, perhaps the most famous comic book author in the world.  Unfortunately whatever genius Frank Miller had rolling around up there seems to have been replaced with total madness and "All-Star Batman" was a total disaster.  Worse for the All-Star line, their other two projects, "All-Star Wonderwoman" and "All-Star Batgirl" never got made at all, so I guess we could say that this entire ambitious project was a failure.  "All-Star Superman" apparently is really really good, and I might have to read it one day, but its success was balanced out by the vile terribleness of "All-Star Batman".

I feel almost ill-equipped to review "All-Star Batman and Robin" because like the rest of the world, I have no idea where Frank Miller was coming from writing this story.  The story is so bad on so many levels, and is fact downright disturbing, that you almost can't believe that Frank Miller is playing this straight.  You cannot believe that he actually thinks what he's writing is effective storytelling.  Is this whole comic written by the Joker?  That's really the only explanation, Frank Miller is the Joker.  Its a comic where everybody is insane, where Batman talks like a seventh grader, where Frank Miller gleefully mocks a great deal of superhero mythos, and where the fanservice is so blatant and shameless that I'm surprised this isn't anime.  And then, ten issues later of atrocious dialog and cringeworthy plot points, it all just ends, with no resolution.  The comic was never finished, its last issue came out four years ago.  The story barely reaches its second act.  And maybe, that's for the best.  For it just to end.

Batman: The Long Halloween

I suppose I'm deviating from the Batman Movie Batdown plan just the slightest bit.  Its occurred to me that Batman actually is slightly more than just the movies that have appeared in cinemas, he actually does appear in comic books every so often.  In fact, some comic books that are rather good.  At some point during this Batman adventure I went completely mad and started becoming more than a little obsessed with the Caped Crusader.  Which may be a problem after the 20th when I have to return to normalcy, but until then, I'll breath Batman air, drink Batman water, and run around everywhere talking in the Batman voice.

In 1987 Frank Miller wrote the fantastic comic, "Batman: Year One", which detailed how Batman and Jim Gordon came together to fight the rotting urban slime that was Gotham's underground.  "Year One" was a huge success that masterfully defined the Batman even more than Miller's previous smash hit, "The Dark Knight Returns".  And as with all things, "Year One" needed a sequel.  Unfortunately, this being the world of comic books, there are now approximately fifty seven different sequels* all made by different writers, artists, and in varied styles, tones, and ultimate success.  "The Long Halloween" is just one sequel - the best sequel - written by Jeph Loeb with art by Tim Sale.  Now usually I wouldn't review a comic book ever unless it was either one of the greatest things ever written or one of the very worst, something so amazing that I believe that my little slice of the Internet needs to tell its readers about it, so "The Long Halloween" immediately is that good to pass that standard.  Its just that special that I cannot ignore it.  And neither could Master Christopher Nolan, who used this comic along with "Year One" and some other comic book called "The Man Who Falls" as his primary inspiration for "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight".

"Batman: The Long Halloween" tells the story of Batman's second year fighting crime, where he has teamed up with Commissioner Gordon and DA Harvey Dent for a full-on assault against the Falconi Crime Family.  This is an incredibly dangerous assignment since Carmine "The Roman" Falconi rules Gotham City and is virtually untouchable.  Somebody, however, has found a way to make Falconi touchable - by murdering members of his crime family with a .22 caliber pistol on every major holiday.  This criminal, known as "Holiday" takes the city by storm, because nobody knows who or what he is, or why he's after Falconi.  "The Long Halloween" essentially is Batman's war on traditional crime, a war he wins, but not without casualties (I think you can guess who falls to the Dark Side here).  Worse still, a new class of criminal is beginning to rise in Gotham City, the Freaks.  All in all, "The Long Halloween" is an excellent Batman story, perhaps the best one I've ever read/seen/experienced with fantastic artwork, a great detective mystery plotline, and an all around beautiful set-up for Batman's endless crusade against the forces of evil.  This is the best Western comic book I've ever read in my life...

...and I've only read about ten altogether, so take of that what you will.

The Handmaid's Tale

I always feel utterly terrible when a week passes without a post being written.  Unfortunately, I've been busy.  Finals snuck up on me, along with lots of work, and a small nightmare of things to do other than post writing.  And it isn't just my blog that's suffering:  my novel is completely stalled on Chapter 2, mid-sentence in fact.  I haven't been drunk in a week!  What has gone wrong with my life??

"The Handmaid's Tale" is a 1985 dystopian future novel written by Canadian author, Margaret Atwood.  I just happened to be digging through the back catalog of titles in my Kindle*, and "Handmaid's Tale" was there.  I've been meaning to read that book for about five years now, even since I went through a small dystopia craze in high school after reading "1984".  I actually bought Atwood's novel right after reading over my review of "Atlas Shrugged", since I wanted to read a dystopian SciFi novel that didn't - to use a complex academic literary phrase - suck.  Now I've seen dystopia based on total government control of the mind, and dystopia based on bureaucratic inefficiency, and dystopia based on the Internet destroying all ability to think, and even Ayn Rand's dystopia based on hilarious unbelievable stupidity, but "Handmaid's Tale" is probably the scariest of them all.  Because I happened to be reading it right at the same time that the media was blaring about a War on Women.  Its one thing to read "Feed" and think "wow, a lot of teenagers today really don't use the Internet to best of its possibilities and wallow in their own ignorance".  But its another thing to read a dystopian novel about the future slavery of women right when idiotic Republicans around the country keep passing anti-abortion laws of every flavor.

Essentially the plot of "The Handmaid's Tale" is my darkest political nightmare:  the United States has been overthrown and replaced with a fundamentalist theocracy.  Al-Qaeda hasn't conquered us, but you might think that they have on first reading.  Right-wing Christianity has completely outlawed all gender freedom.  Women must serve either as maids, stern elderly matrons, wives, or walking incubators that exist only for procreation.  The unnamed narrator is a walking uterus essentially.  She belongs to a caste known as "Handmaids" for no particular reason that I know of.  Freedom of speech is gone, freedom of religion is gone, freedom of choice is gone, you must serve your job without question or be executed and hung-up on a wall for all to see.  Basically Rick Santorum masturbates to this book.

The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure

I'm exhausted, been up since six in the morning.  I promised a post, I'm giving a post.  It wasn't easy to find time, but I did.  You're welcome.

If you haven't seen "The Princess Bride" yet, I really don't know what to say about you as a person.  You're incomplete, that's for sure.  But living this long without seeing one of the great pillars of modern comedy film points to me as a more extreme failing, a sign of deep personality disorders.  Perhaps extreme psychopathy.  Whatever it is, if you haven't seen "Princess Bride", you need to go see it now, then cut off a pinky in penitence.

But like most movies, it was not an original creation.  It was actually based on a William Goldman novel, which was in turn based upon a work by the famous Florin author, S. Morgenstern.  He's the most famous Florin author because he's actually the only Florin author.  William Goldman completely made Morgenstern up for the purpose of a bizarre frame story and various jokes.  Some people hold the mistaken belief that there actually is a real S. Morgenstern original, they are extremely wrong.  The idea is that the book I read is some kind of abbreviation of an older book, though even a cursory read would show you that nobody could have made a book as weird as Goldman describes.  However, as for the book, William Goldman made a classic masterpiece of his own.

If you thought the movie was good, "Princess Bride: the Book" was at least ten times better.  Yeah, I did the math, I laughed exactly ten time more reading this thing than I did watching the movie.  And since the book is barely 250 pages, you can basically read it in the exact amount of time it would take to watch the movie.  You can finish this thing during any trip to the beach, airline ride, or night in jail.

A Dance With Dragons

Let's be quick with this right now:  "A Dance With Dragons" is the worst book of "A Song of Ice and Fire".  I know a lot of people consider "A Feast For Crows" to own that dishonorable position, but they're wrong.  "A Feast For Crows" might be slow, disjointed, and clearly inferior to the first three books, but its not a giant tease.  It at least has the good measure to finish up its plot points.  I was fine with the way the events at King's Landing ended up in that book.  Somehow "A Dance with Dragons" is the second-longest book, with over 1000 pages, yet it can't finish anything.

There is no satisfaction to be found at the end of this book.  Rather there's only more hunger.  Because every single plotline ends mostly incomplete you're left with nothing to enjoy.  The main point of this book is two wars, one in the North, one in Essos.  Neither are completed.  The book actually ends just as battle is about to begin on one front, and another battle occurs off-page, and the only possible conclusion we're given is a letter from a character who is untrustworthy to say the least.  These should be great moments, but they're not in this book.  Combine that with the fact that the first 600 pages have basically nothing happen, and you have a book that is miserable.  "A Dance with Dragons" could be part of a great story, merely a lead-up to the final act, but on its own, its nothing.  Cliffhangers, cliffhangers, and more cliffhangers.  Nothing is answered, nothing is gained, one step forward, three steps back.  The worst part is that Martin doesn't write quickly, so we have to wait YEARS AND YEARS for these cliffhangers to be answered.  Only a very cruel cruel author would leave his readers hanging on these plotpoints like this, when the next book probably won't be out for another half a decade, at least.

What this book needed more than anything else was another 200 pages.  You just can't leave the story like this.  In "A Game of Thrones", the book doesn't end with Eddard Stark's execution.  No, it properly continues, so that you know exactly what that execution means.  You know that the next phase of the story has begun.  This book doesn't do that.  It ends on a similarly dark note, but I don't even know if the character in question is even really dead, let alone what that's done to the political situation.  This is a book without an ending, it ends right before the climax.  Right before everything I've been waiting a whole year to happen.  And what that means, is that the next book, "The Winds of Winter", is going to have to do the work that "A Dance With Dragons" put off till later.  So if you think that "A Song of Ice and Fire" will end in two books, you are dreaming.  There is no way in Hell Martin can finish this story up in just two books.  Its hopeless now.

So that's the non-spoiler part of this review.  After this comes the spoilers, and there are a lot.

Foucault's Pendulum

What do you get if you mix the Knights Templar, Nazis, the Cathars, the Freemasons, Rosicrucian, Kabbalah, Alester Crowley, and an immortal 18th century aristocrat?  "Foucault's Pendulum" is a really weird smoothie of every flavor of European mysticism, occultism, and not a small amount of college socialism.  This is a novel by Umberto Eco, probably the only man alive who can write novels steeped in Medieval lore and complex scholarship and somehow or another be widely read.  I suspect its because Umberto Eco, from name down, actually is a Medieval Italian character.  If Dante didn't find a place for Umberto Eco in the "Divine Comedy", he definitely should have.

"Foucault's Pendulum" at its core is a reaction to the centuries of occult conspiracy theories that have dominated Europe's intellectual underground.  Umberto Eco, through his characters, sets out to create a Grand Unifying Theory of Conspiracy, which they call more simply, "the Plan".  In modern America, the conspiracy theories mostly revolve around the Kennedy Assassination and UFOs, but this realm of paranoid insanity has gone back centuries revolving around secret societies, wacky religious orders, and of course, the Knights Templar.  The characters in this book decide immediately that anybody who writes about the Knights Templar are automatically insane, so eventually they decide to make the most insane Knights Templar theory.

Of course, to get that level of insanity, to even understand half the things that Umberto Eco is talking about, you better know your history.  You need to know the Crusades, you need to know the Byzantines, you need to know Kabbalah, and you need to know what the heck Foucault's Pendulum is in the first place.  This is a book you read sitting in front of your laptop, plugging in the dozens of obscure words you'll find.  At one point Eco used a word "Metacyclosynchrotron" - a word so bizarre and esoteric that it beat Google.  I still don't know what the heck a "Metacyclosynchrotron" is, and if anybody has a clue, feel free to prove you're smarter than me.  There aren't many books that left me proud that I was able to slug through them while almost completely understanding*, but "Foucault's Pendulum" was one of them.

The Way of Kings

I left for Israel just a week too soon.  Right now, someplace, thousands of people are reading "A Dance With Dragons", the fifth book in the Song of Ice and Fire series.  They're finally finding out what happened to Dany, Jon, Bran, and Tyrion.  Maybe they'll know who Jon Snow's real mother is*, maybe they'll see Queen Cersei's death, maybe they'll see the Dragon finally return to Westeros.  I am so jealous right now.  As a matter of fact, if you already have a copy of "Dance With Dragons", I will find you and murder you in your sleep.  That's a promise.  Nobody, not even George R. R. Martin's editor, should read that book before me.  Well, since I'm vacation for roughly three weeks, I did wisely bring along a fantasy book of equally insane size and mass:  "The Way of Kings" by Brandon Sanderson.

"The Way of Kings" is Book One of what Sanderson thinks will be a ten-part epic fantasy series called "The Stormlight Archive".   For those of the fantasy community (I guess that's what you'd call them) you'll know Brandon Sanderson's name as one of the new stars of the genre.  He wrote the well-received "Mystborn" series, and is currently finishing "The Wheel of Time" because its original author is too busy being dead to pick up a pen.  I have read none of this, only a little novel called "Warbreaker" that I only got because there was a hot chick eating a rainbow on the cover.  It was decent enough, had a lovely color-based magic system, but sadly the story was overly focused on a mystery plot that really was never all that interesting to begin with.  "The Way of Kings" promises something far grander, something on the R. R. Martin scale.  With ten whole books, Sanderson has basically proclaimed his magnum opus, a story that will take at least decades to complete.

And really, if you're going to do something that big, you might want to try for a better first installment than this one.

American Gods

After suffering through the untold misery bound inside a paperback novel that was "Atlas Shrugged", I decided that I don't want to read bad books anymore.  This realization probably should have hit me earlier, I admit.  But since that fateful moment where I finally excised terrible literature from my life, I have to say I've been considerably happier.  Not euphoric, but measurably more content.  Maybe I should cut out bad games from my life too...  Its worth considering at least.  Anyway, to christen my new Ayn Rand-free existence*, I decided to read "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman.

"American Gods" is a novel with a great premise, which is good.  Because novels that don't have great premises are usually bad.  (See how that works?)  That premise is:  what if the Gods we humans worshipped thousands of year ago were still walking around amongst us?  What if they were aged, forgotten beings desperate for the love and sacrifices they once received.  They are as much immigrants in the New World as the peoples who once worshiped them.  Now they work in butchery shops, run funeral homes, or just bum around the country looking for people to rip-off.  Of course, there are new Gods in America, the iron gods of the railroad, the teenage nerdy gods of the Internet, and Media itself.  What happens when Old Gods meet New Gods?  What else?  They go to war.

The main character of "American Gods" is Shadow - just Shadow.  He's a freed convict with a penchant for coin magic tricks with a wife and a best friend waiting for him at home.  Oh wait, he doesn't have those things because they both died in a car accident while she was making his penis happy with her tongue.  Now Shadow is recruited by Wednesday, a crooked con-artist who is actually the American avatar of Odin, and brought into the bizarre world of Gods, magic, and undead zombie wives following you around.  ...This is a weird book.  Shadow himself is a pretty vague dull-minded protagonist, as per his name, something that often annoys everybody around him.  He kinda takes everything that's happening to him with a weird kind of acceptance.  You'd think that hanging around with the All-Father, Lord of Asgard might make a man a bit disturbed, but not Shadow.  He joins with the Old Gods in their war only because it seems they're his only job prospect.

Atlas Shrugged: Part 2

PART 1 HERE

In the last few days I've realized that the political spectrum of this country seems to be driven by the fear of two ghosts.  Liberals are afraid of Big Brother, and Conservatives are afraid of Stupids like Jim Taggart.  "1984" and "Atlas Shrugged" seem to be almost rival novels, one detailing the horrors of government oppressing individual freedoms, the other detailing the horrors of government oppressing the free market.  Big Brother stole the humanity of his victims, breaking down their ability to even see reality past the lies of propaganda.  Jim Taggart and his government cronies just steal everything they can under the claims of regulating the economy.  Ayn Rand ultimately comes to the conclusion that these characters are their phony altruism exist only to destroy everything they see, including themselves.  To the Right in America, President Obama is a foolish Randian Looter, ruining the economy to steal hard-won money from the real workers.  To the Left, President Bush is a Orwellian Tyrant trying to kill liberty in his search for power.  Both viewpoints are extremely delusional and indeed outright dangerous.

I have finally managed to finish "Atlas Shrugged" in one of the worst slogging reads I think I've ever managed to complete.  Reading Ayn Rand's masterpiece is a desperate climb through a seemingly endless expanse of paragraphs the size of houses, each one smashing on the reader's brain with the horrible thud of bloated mass.  This book for me was the Battle of Passchendaele:  endless muddy charges in a bitter war of attrition.  Which would break first?  Rand's prose or my own consciousness?  At nearly twelve-hundred pages of 645,000 words, this monster is 200,000 words longer than "War and Peace".  You could build bridges using copies of this book as bricks.  It is just inexcusably long - since ultimately it can be cut down to half its length with very little lost to the plot line.  Any teacher who forces his or her class to read this novel is committing a crime against humanity.

No. "Atlas Shrugged" is not a good book by any stretch of the imagination.  As a matter of fact, it easily ranks onto the list of the worst things I have ever read, right up there with Dan Brown's schlock and the indigestible vile that James Patterson wretches up every few years.  But unlike modern crap writers like Brown and Patterson and even Stephenie Meyer, Ayn Rand didn't write this just to make a buck.  No, this was to be her grand achievement, her great message to the generations.  This is the most monumental single work of fiction I've touched upon on this blog.  It deserves, at the very least, a much more detailed analysis than I usually give.

Atlas Shrugged: Part 1

(Blogger has been down for the last two days, so that explains no updates.  But you all probably didn't even notice considering my update schedule.)

No, this is not a review of the movie "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1".  That film holds no interest to me, since everybody has already agreed that it completely fails to adapt Ayn Rand's message.  No this is part 1 of a review of "Atlas Shrugged".  You see, this book is so huge that I must break down the review into two parts.  Also, I cannot continue to read this book any longer in silence.  I will not sit through another word without a response.  There is simply too much to say now, I can't imagine where I'll be once I reach the end - if I ever reach the end.

"Atlas Shrugged" is the great dystopia novel of Ayn Rand*, one of the most controversial authors of the 20th century.  Having suffered in the Twenties through the birth of the Soviet Union, Rand became a serious anti-communist.  Not content to merely prove its corruption or its impracticality, Rand instead decided to prove that communism in its very moral foundation was corrupt.  Societies and individuals should not base themselves on helping others, rather the best way the human race should be run is with Enlightened Self-Interest.  (I'm giving the best explanation I can of Rand's philosophy, Objectivism, which like most 20th century philosophical movements is filled to the brim with complex jargon and bizarre metaphysical haggling.)  Altruism, the idea that the service of others is the highest moral goal, is according to Ayn Rand, pure evil and destructive.  One should work for the self primarily, as this is the only method that mankind creates anything of value.  I'm not going to say that Objectivism is entirely without merit, though its a bit too extreme for me.  To say that giving to others is pure evil is about as ludicrous as the idea that working for yourself is evil.

"Atlas Shrugged" exists as only half a story about characters and their actions.  The other half is a poorly disguised philosophical treatise about how Objectivism is awesome.  Every character exists only partially as a true character, they are forced to fit Ayn Rand's scheme of the human race.  Either they're unbelievable workaholic Supermen who can build industrial empires overnight or ridiculous incoherent joke villains who are easily the dumbest characters ever put to print.  Obviously then, "Atlas Shrugged" is not going to be a good book, but goddamn if it isn't hilarious.  This is going to be a long one, trust me.  But it won't compare to the massive size of this book - I think the weight that Atlas was supposed to shrug off was the weight of Rand's prose.

His Dark Materials

"His Dark Materials" is a fantasy trilogy of young fiction novels by Philip Pullman.  These books have been on my reading list for about four years now ever since I saw the film adaptation the first novel, "the Golden Compass".  You can probably get an accurate guess as to how good of a movie "Golden Compass" was simply by noting that they never even tried to adapt the other two.  After I see a really lousy movie based on a book, I make sure to read the source material.  Because typically awful movies represent really good books.  Take for example the 2006 Jude Law film "All the Kings' Men", a hideous disaster of a movie based on what is my favorite American novel.

Unfortunately with "Dark Materials" I'm some ten years too late to be of the age group these books were marketed to.  Last young adult novel I tried to read was "Eragon" - my personal copy of that book has now most likely become part of the the Staten Island landfills with the rest of the trash.  So "Golden Compass" remained unread until I saw it on my ex-roommate's shelf.  Why buy a book when you can read some for free?  With little else to do in my academic freetime, I proceeded to devour all three novels with my typical literary insatiability*.  So now, just little more than a month after I began, I have a post to write.

I was more than aware of the various controversy around these books.  Philip Pullman is an unapologetic atheist, and when he isn't writing a preteen adventure story, he's railing against organized religion.  "The Dark Materials" has outright been admitted to be an attempt by Pullman to kill Christianity in the hearts of young readers.  Of course, there's nothing I like more than some controversy.  That at least gives me something to talk about.  Naturally Pullman's anti-Christian views in "Dark Materials" are things I completely disagree with.  We'll get to that eventually.  But worse "His Dark Materials" the story just isn't all that good.  Its miles ahead of that godawful movie, but ultimately Pullman's story has some serious characterization flaws and has far worse structural problems.  This is not something I'd ever recommend to another person.  Maybe for a ten year old this is good enough, not for me.  These books, especially the last, could have used a lot more work.

Game of Thrones First Episode Reaction

"A Song of Ice and Fire" is so far the greatest books series I have ever read.  As a history major, it puts a smile to my face as every moment of the series is a constant bloody medieval war, with flipping political sides, deep characters with real growth, and dragons.  I know dragons weren't actually in history, but they should have been, dammit!  George R. R. Martin knows better than the history textbooks on that level.  I tore through the entire series in exactly a month last year, and now, with the fifth book, "A Dance With Dragons" just on the July horizon, we have the HBO series to keep us happy until that happy day.

My first worry, that the series would fail has been allayed, as HBO has already bought a second series.  This first season of "Game of Thrones" details the first book, "A Game of Thrones".  This is definitely the best way to adapt these books, as George R. R. Martin's tale is simply too dense with events and characters to ever be made into a feature film.  While reading, I can't help but get the same kind of feeling as watching an HBO drama like "The Sopranos" or its equally brilliant rip-off, "Boardwalk Empire".  Next season we'll be seeing "A Clash of Kings", and presumably, if the series does well enough, every one of the current five books will get a season.  Then there will be problems, but until then...

So as a huge fan of "A Song of Ice and Fire", how did I react to this first episode?  I'll give you two words:  "TOTALLY AWESOME!!"