Saturday, June 29, 2013

A Book A Week - Two Week Hiatus

I always wanted to be 'on hiatus.'

I was away for a week, and then recovering from being away for another week.  But now I'm rested up and ready to resume my 'book a week' yearlong experience.

 I was in New York, the Big Apple, the city so nice they named it twice, and to fill time and space I thought I'd share a few random thoughts.  In no particular order:
  •   It's not a stereotype, Newark really does smell funny.  And not 'ha-ha' funny, more like 'chemical accident that creates a super-villain' funny.
  •   Also not a stereotype, Midtown Manhattan still smells like tinkle.  Not as strongly as it did last time I was there, but it didn't not smell like tinkle either.
  •   Pizza crust really is better in NYC.  Sorry, Chicago.
  •   Believe it or not, at least one person drives a Maserati on New York city streets.  Seems like a pointless risk to me, but then again I can't afford a Maserati so what the Hell do I know?
  •   I saw almost no cyclists using the new bike lanes they put in since the last time I was there, but I did see a lot of people using the new medians as parking spots.  At least someone benefits.
  •   New Jersey Transit workers were all very nice.  Seriously.  I didn't have a bad interaction with a single one.  I was kind of expecting a staff of Tony Sopranos.
  •    Deli clerks seem to have problems making change.  At least four times I had to give them back money.  Because that's how I roll.
  •    Tourists all wearing the same bright yellow shirt look like a line of ducks crossing the street.  I know the same shirt makes it easier to keep everyone together, but did it have to be yellow?
  •   When I looked out the windows at the tall buildings, I really did kind of expect Spider-Man to go swinging by.  And I was disappointed when it never happened.
 Next week:
  Gone Girl  by Gillian Flynn
   People in the know tell me this is a book I must read, it's the author's breakout and a great, well-written story.  I don't know.  I'm having better luck with stuff I find on my own.  You know what your mother used to say instead of an outright 'no?'  We'll see...

Sunday, June 16, 2013

A Book A Week - Week 24: Earth Afire

This week's book:
   Earth Afire  by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston

Grade: C

Meh.

Maybe this was my fault for picking up the middle volume in a trilogy, but this book just didn't do it for me.  I found it unremarkable in every way, not really fantastic, not horrible, more like Wednesday night sitcoms, just hitting the beats and keeping the core audience happy.

This plot is standard sci-fi stuff, there's an alien invasion and one guy is trying to tell the world about it but no one will listen.  And then the aliens come anyway and they're not nice at all and, for some reason, decide to kill everything on the planet.  If you're an American and you've watched TV or movies you've encountered this plot before.  The difference is the authors try to make it plausible using what we know about science today.  An admirable effort, but when writers try this usually they end up twisting themselves into knots trying to explain how their sci-fi stuff works.  These authors largely avoid that, the story isn't about the tech, it's about the people.

But that's the problem.  I know where they're going with this, it's plain on the page: most disasters in human history are the result of incompetence rather than malice, and one person with purpose can accomplish more than a directionless army.  I agree.  But that doesn't mean I want to spend 400+ pages reading the same thing over and over again.  And that's what this book is, the same situation over and over again.
    For instance, every main character has a bully.  And I don't mean that metaphorically, like they all have a nasty obstacle to overcome, I mean that each character literally has a bully, a bit-player character who picks on them and tries to keep them down.  Most of the time these bullies are part of the establishment, functionaries who - also quite literally - put themselves directly in opposition to the main characters.  The authors are not just making a point, they're hammering it home with a big ol' mallet, making sure you, the reader, get what they're trying to say.
   All the main characters see things much clearer than anyone else around them.  This is also standard sci-fi stuff... but all of them?  Each one?  Every time?  It's an epidemic of competence to combat the malaise of incompetence around them.  It's also not very believable.

Don't get me wrong, like I said, this book is not terrible.  There are even moments of suspense and drama and action.  When the characters aren't speaking the narrative is actually very taut, the description crisp, and the pacing great.
   But then the characters speak.  Whatever good will the authors built with their narrative all gets lost when the characters interact.  I couldn't find any difference between characters in their dialogue, if the parts hadn't been labelled I wouldn't have known which character was speaking.  And then there's that whole epidemic of competence idea again, which strains credulity, especially when, for instance, a wise-beyond-his-years little Chinese kid has adult-style conversations with a grown military officer.  I've known many, many eight-year-olds in my time - I spent nearly a year as one - and though they can be smart and perceptive, they're still eight years old.  Enjoying sci-fi requires a willing suspension of disbelief, and almost every dialogue exchange in this book violated that for me.

Now to my deep genre-specific critique, for the sci-fi nerds out there.  I haven't read much Orson Scot Card, just a few short stories and those were years ago.  However, this narrative feels very Heinlein-esque to me.  Or at least like it's trying to be.  Maybe it's the invasion part, or the military part, or the realistic-space-opera part.  But for me Card's efforts fall flat where Heinlein's didn't.  The difference, I think, is that Heinlein actually served in the military where Card never did.  It's like if I tried to write a detailed account of what being pregnant is like; I can certainly try to understand it but my narrative would never have the credibility or veracity of one written by a woman who's actually carried a child in her womb.  It's an object lesson for writers everwhere: stick to what you know.

If you're more of an action-oriented sci-fi reader, you'll like this book.  If your tastes are more character-driven I think you'll be disappointed.


Next week:
  No book next week, I have stuff to do that will prevent me from reading and reviewing.  I'll pick it up again the following week.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

A Book A Week - Week 23: Inferno

This week's book:
   Inferno  by Dan Brown

Grade: C

It started out so promising.  I never read 'The DaVinci Code,' or any of the other books.  Never saw the movie, even.  But I liked the first few chapters of 'Inferno.'  Really.  Up until around page 40, I was pleasantly surprised, it was well-written and intriguing.  This was not the fiction I had been led to believe Dan Brown usually committed.  I was along for the ride and I was enjoying it.

Then I made the mistake of reading more.

Ugh... which authorial sin do I outline first?  My major quarrels are with the contents and execution, not with the mechanics, except for this annoying habit:  the author's tendency to have his dialogue be unashamedly 'on the nose.'  Like, when a character is feeling sad he'll have them say 'I'm sad,' instead of showing it.  Mr. Brown has his characters caption most things he's just explained to the reader, as if the characters needed the reassurance of saying their own internal dialogue out loud.
    Other sins:  the villains who turn out to be friendly and the friends who turn out to be villains.  Or do they?  Done to death, and you can set your watch by the reveal.  Heroes who consistently outsmart a determined and far-better armed and prepared (and non-amnesiac) adversary.  The running chase through foreign cities, where the hero doesn't even try to contact the local police, or, indeed, even get stopped by them, like Florence is used to daily gun battles so one more doesn't gain any notice.
    Also:  the author crams so many trite tropes into the story that it becomes very hard to take it seriously.  The beautiful, mysterious woman who helps the hero.  The sinister mercenaries in black.  The behind-the-scenes manipulator of things.  The insane genius with a mad agenda.  The hero with amnesia.

"Huh?" I can hear you saying.  "Amnesia?  Seriously?"
   Yup, that staple of the dearly departed weekday soap operas, amnesia, features prominently in this book.  Turns out that it's been established in prior novels that Dr. Langdon, the hero, has an eidetic memory.  He recalls everything.  So in order to generate suspense, the author gives him amnesia.  The entire first half of the novel - maybe more - is devoted to the hero re-discovering the clues to the truth that he's already figured out before the novel opens, yet can't remember.  Double Ugh.

Mr. Brown, amnesia is not a plot device, it's a cheat.  It's trite and awful and nobody comes away from an amnesia story thinking 'you know, the author really had no other choice, he had to go with amnesia.'

There is a particular Dan Brown sin that runs through the entire book: the desperate need to make a suspense story an historical travelogue.  He's incapable of not telling us every detail of everything he's researched.  It's the second worst part of this book.  Every chapter - EVERY CHAPTER - has an art or history or art history lesson as part of the narrative.  The characters either explain things to each other or explain things in their internal dialogue, as if they were teaching class.  Sure, the hero Langdon is a professor, but, jeez... shut up about it once or twice.  The constant, extensive lessons really distracted from the narrative, which wasn't all that strong to begin with.

The worst sin, by far, however, only came to light in the second half of the narrative.  Mr. Brown seems overly fond of the M. Knight Shyamalan-style 'twist,' wherein the characters reveal, through tortured dialogue exchanges, that everything the hero - and by extension the reader - knew up until that point was a lie.  And no, I don't mean 'was misunderstood,' I mean was a bald-faced lie.  This is another literary cheat and points to weak plotting and shoddy characterization.  This bothers me so much that I need to make a very strong, direct point about it.

Mr. Brown: a 'twist' is a plot reveal that the reader didn't see coming, yet makes perfect sense in context.  For instance, in 'The Sixth Sense' where it's revealed that Bruce Willis's character is, in fact, already dead but he doesn't know it. That reveal made the audience re-evaluate everything they knew up until that point, and did not violate anything thus far in the plot.  Unlike all the 'twists' you throw at your audience in this book.
    TELLING THE READER THAT EVERYTHING YOU TOLD THEM SO FAR IS A LIE IS NOT A 'TWIST,' IT'S A CHEAT.  AS AN AUTHOR YOU SUCK FOR DOING IT NOT ONCE, NOT TWICE, NOT THREE TIMES, BUT OVER AND OVER AND OVER.  YOU SUCK YOU SUCK YOU SUCK YOU SUCK YOU SUCK.

Okay, I got that off my chest.  I just really hate feeling cheated.  It's like I got the ring over the milk jug at the County Fair but the gap-toothed carny just won't fork over the giant Pink Panther.  It's a swindle of epic proportions.

I'm sure Mr. Brown doesn't give a rat's ass what my opinion is, he's going to sell a million of these books before the Summer's done.  The hero of the book is a 'symbologist,'** though, and studies  hidden meanings.  So I won't actually say what I think, I'll use symbols.  To wit:  Normally I read on the couch, or on my back porch, or even seated on the floor, but as a hat's-off to Mr. Brown I read the last five chapters of 'Inferno' firmly seated on my toilet, while doing my business.  Make of that what you will.

* yeah, spoiler alert 14 years later

** not a real thing

Next week:
  Earth Afire  by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston
   Sci-fi again.  New.  From the guy who wrote 'Ender's Game,' which I've never read, and several short stories I did read.  And liked.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

A Book A Week - Week 22: Fifty Shades of Grey

This week's book:
    Fifty Shades of Grey  by E.L. James

Grade: C-

Dear Penthouse:

I always thought the letters in Penthouse Forum were fake, and I certainly never expected this to happen to me.  But...  I read ‘Fifty Shades of Grey.‘  All the way through.  I still can’t believe someone like me read something like that, and when I think of the details it’s like a hazy dream...

I got the e-book, because I just couldn’t bring myself to actually walk into a bookstore - not even Half Price Books - and let someone else see what I was buying.  It doesn’t come in a plain brown wrapper the way proper pornography should.
    I read the first chapter of the e-book, and I was underwhelmed by the prose.  It wasn’t bad, certainly not as bad as ‘Twilight,’ but, really, what else is?  It wasn’t great either, and there were spots where it could have used a serious rewrite.  The heroine is a college Senior who helps out her sick roommate by conducting an interview for the school newspaper with not-yet-thirty multimillionaire Christian Grey.

Right away, Penthouse, I knew I was in for a conflict with my suspension of disbelief.  Most twenty-somethings are saddled by back-breaking student debt and barely know how to wipe their own asses, let alone paddle someone else’s... but I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s just say that the story at this point already was treading precarious ground.  And I know I’m putting myself in that ‘letters to Forum are fake’ category, but I carried on reading.
   The main character Ana is not really so much a person as a blank screen on which the reader - mostly females - can project themselves.  She’s clumsy, a particularly uninteresting trope I’ve noticed, and she doesn’t think of herself as attractive at all, even though others clearly think she’s drop-dead gorgeous, including the whip-thin-yet-ripped, copper-haired, loose-pants-wearing, sexual deviant hero.  Ana falls victim to his whirlwind attentions, and - inexplicably - allows him to whisk her on his helicopter to his Bond-villain lair in Seattle.  Yes, Penthouse, I did say helicopter.  Which the twenty-seven-year-old gorgeous specimen of an anti-hero flies himself.  Because he has all that spare time from running his multi-million dollar manufacturing enterprise.

Once they’re in his crisp, white, impossibly chic and hip penthouse (HA!), things get hot and heavy.  He shows her his ‘playroom,’ where he keeps his whips, chains, restraints, and cages, and she does not run screaming to the police.  No, she signs an NDA and they discuss his ‘dominance’ contract.
    It was about here, Penthouse, that I started feeling uneasy.  Dirty, even.  Then, a few e-pages later, we got to the pornography.  And I’m not engaging in hyperbole here, Penthouse, this is real pornography, graphic details of Ana’s first ever sexual encounter.  Encounters, there’s the bed, then the tub, then the bed again.  Maybe this is the thing for this genre, if this is a genre other than porn, but it’s not something I’m used to reading in a book.  In the letters section of a magazine, however...

It all went downhill from there, Penthouse.  The heroine goes home after her night with Christian Grey, and tries to return to normalcy.  But she’s just too stupid... sorry... too obsessed with him and his sinister, controlling ways to let it go.  Because he’s a millionaire - as all freaky, under-thirty, super-sexy BDSM guys have to be, I suppose - he can lavish gifts and clothes on her in an attempt to ‘woo’ her.  This, of course, makes her a prostitute as well as stupid, but even though Ana realizes this it doesn’t seem to bother her all that much.  Not enough to give the stuff back, anyway.
   There were more sex scenes, Penthouse, bondage-type encounters that really made me cringe.  Honestly, it was like reading a gruesome description of murdering bunnies or something, which I suppose could be someone’s fetish but certainly isn’t mine any more than a good, crisp spanking is.  Yeah, spanking’s in there too, right before Ana realizes that she’s in over her head and needs to escape Christian Grey.  All that bondage and dominance, and it’s a spanking that does her in.  Go figure.  Oops, I hope I didn’t spoil the story for you, Penthouse.  Oh well, if you don’t want to read the book now, I suppose it’s all my fault.  Darn me and my clumsy writing...

All in all, Penthouse, it was a particularly uncomfortable experience.  The ‘story’ part of the book felt like the string on a pearl necklace, just there to tie the glistening orbs of pornography together.  The characters aren’t really characters, they’re not even archetypes, they’re just bodies with impossible back stories and hollow motivations.

If I were you, Penthouse, I’d give this book a pass.  Reading the letters in your Forum section is much more honest.

-- DH 

Next week:
   Inferno  by Dan Brown
   I'm dipping a toe into the 'DaVinci Code' water, where I've never swam before.  Clearly my standards have been reduced after 'Fifty Shades of Porn.'