Franchise Fiction - Robin D. Laws - The Freedom Phalanx (2006)

Now this is how you write franchise fiction. My god, this one is so much better than the first one it's hard to believe.

This is another one of Bryan's books, obviously, though I was with him in the store when he got it. I think I was the one that found it on the shelf for him. :)

This particular book isn't about the original Freedom Phalanx of the first book, but instead the formation of the Phalanx in the game. All the guys on the cover are there: Manticore being a dick, Sister Psyche being the helpless girl, Statesman being from another era, Synapse being annoying, and Positron being Positron.

Where the last one fell short, this one succeeds with flying colors. Its perfect balance of action and repose works in this book, which is just as much about how the characters learn to work together and deal with their clashing personalities and opinions as much as it is a conspiracy involving food additives. Chapters actually end on cliffhangers, and each hero has a villain counterpart they have to contend with along with their own inner demons.

This one was an absolute joy to read.

There are only a couple of things I had problems with: the fact that Sister Psyche had to be the captured one because of her gender, and the fact that there was no opportunity for the reader to figure out what the bad guys' plans were on their own. I've spoken before on that last bit.

I know that in comic books, which is where this game pulls most of its inspiration, female heroes are frequently the target of kidnappings. In this case, it fits in the story to use Sister Psyche's psionic power as a battery and affect the minds of Paragon City's citizens. But it still felt like it was just a way to take the female character out of the game so the big strong manly male heroes could save the day and her without her help.

Because of that, it doesn't get a perfect score. Sorry, Mr. Laws.

9/10

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Franchise Fiction - Robert Weinberg - The Web of Arachnos (2005)

You may or may not know this, but City of Heroes was a superhero MMORPG that Bryan and I played a lot over the years. I say "was" because while we were in Seattle for PAX we heard from a friend that NCSoft was dissolving Paragon Studios, the developers who were still working on new content for the game. It's still available to play until the end of November, but we are already in mourning for our game.

So, with this new knowledge, I thought it was prudent to read the two City of Heroes novels that Bryan purchased before I got into the game back in '08. After all, very soon they were not going to be relevant anymore.

If you feel the urge to purchase this book, which is essentially the origin story of Statesman, Lord Recluse, and the Nemesis villain group, I feel it is necessary to point out to you that it's not very good. Even for franchise fiction, it's pretty bad.

It's been a few days since I finished it, so I've had some time to gain some distance from it. It hasn't truly tempered my feelings about it. The whole thing just feels like an amateur job, particularly completed by someone who doesn't do a lot of reading himself.

When you describe a person in fiction, do you give their exact heights and weights, and hope that is plenty of explanation? In case you weren't aware, the answer is no. Don't say that a girl is five feet six inches tall and weighs only one hundred three pounds (also, WHAT THE FUCK. That's not a human being. That's a skeleton.), say that she is of slightly above average height and very skinny. Let US, the audience, decide what we imagine from that.

One of the main characters, Stefan Richter, makes a big deal in the first quarter of the book about how he doesn't believe in myths and magic, he believes in logic, science, and technology. That's all well and good. The frequency in which he asserts this belief (OUT LOUD, for fuck's sake) is annoying, but considering the crazy shit they begin to find (the Well of the Furies with curative liquid and stuff), I was willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume that it meant the character was trying to reassure himself in the face of this cognitive dissonance. But when we get into his head, there isn't any cognitive dissonance. Just stupid crap. And then, (spoiler!) when he turns evil, we are never given any reason why he chose that path. Just a flimsy excuse of "it's the logical way of things" is bullshit, and you know it, Mr. Weinberg.

The other superheroes that are introduced--in the later half of the book, mind you--get almost no screen time to explain their personalities and motives. Their time spent in the book is mostly where they got their powers, and then using them against baddies. Where's the characterization?

It's kind of sad when your most interesting parts are the ones that DON'T include the superpowered beings, and instead the thugs of the Prohibition era.

One last point: this book spent too much effort trying to couch the events in its pages with things that happened in real history. Statesman was not a friend of a friend of Hemingway, just so you can namedrop him. There was no need to make Arachnos part of Mussolini's cadre. Your efforts to shoehorn Mickey Mouse in were disruptive. If you are writing a book that takes place in a point of history and you want to make it relevant, don't do this. If you must associate with something to breathe life in your story, first analyze what's wrong that it needs this shit, and please try to limit it to one. This author went too far, and it did more to anger me and frustrate me as a reader than intrigue me.

3/10

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Fantasy - R. Scott Bakker - The Darkness That Comes Before (2003)

I clearly bought this book at a thrift store, but it wasn't a random pick-up like some of my brick-and-mortar store purchases tend to be. I actually had accidentally purchased the fourth book in this series because on the outside it was declared a first book, but told the truth within the covers, and I didn't notice until I was already home. When I saw the first book of this series at Deseret Industries, I had to get it. After all, used it only cost me three bucks.

Anyway.

I originally bought this author, I think, because my brother is a fan of his works. I think. I'm actually not sure. I may even be confusing this dude with someone else he likes. Either way, thick-ass fantasy novel? I'm all over it.

Or at least, I try to be.

It took me a month to read this book, and not really for length at 577 pages in this paperback version. It was simply tedious. I don't even mean boring. The whole book felt more like an info dump rather than telling a story. Thank god for the faction appendix at the end, or I wouldn't be able to keep track of all these Schools, religions, races, governments, and who is associated with what where. It was hard to even keep many of the characters' names straight, let alone who they worked for. And while I'm sure that things happened during the course of reading it, it didn't feel like anything happened at all until the second to last chapter, with the guy, with the face.

This book is about a guy who has a long-standing birthright to become the king of... somewhere? I honestly I have no idea. This is what I mean about it being hard to follow. It's also about this savage dude that hangs around him but hates him and wants to kill his father. The prince guy's dad, not his own. And they acquire a former concubine along the way. But the book is REALLY about how there is this religion that is starting a holy war to acquire a holy city back from the "heathens" that control it, and how some of the first waves of their holy war didn't work out. And also there's a wizard who takes a long time to make notes on what's going on and the prostitute that loves him.

It's really fucking convoluted, but I think it's unnecessarily so. In a book series like A Song of Ice and Fire, convoluted intrigues are important because it's not readily apparent who is in the right. In this, it's not readily apparent either, but mostly because none of these people aspire to DO anything.

Despite all of my criticism, it's not the worst fantasy novel I've ever read, but I certainly hope shit gets going in the next book or I'm going to be mad.

Also, there was no god damn reason to have an appendix that detailed the origins and roots of languages and dialects that DIDN'T EVEN MAKE IT IN THE BOOK.

6/10

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Fantasy - J.R.R. Tolkien - The Hobbit (1937)

Aw jeez. Aw jeez. A lot of people are gonna hate me now.

I'm just gonna come out and say it: I'm not a fan of Tolkien. I read the three LotR books a while ago and was bored to tears. I get that he pioneered the fantasy genre and that many authors look to him for inspiration and there's not a small amount of his ideas in Dungeons and Dragons, but that doesn't mean that I have to like his writing.

That said, I enjoyed this book WAY more than LotR. That doesn't mean much in the grand scheme, however.

This book felt more "for kids" than Amazing Maurice did, and I can't really figure out why. I might have had something to do with the storyteller narrator that was driving me up the wall. I had the same problem with Chronicles of Narnia; the narration breaking the fourth wall by mentioning how you may not be able to imagine it, or how the narrator supposes characters' feelings rather than just telling us the fucking story. If the prose is not in first person, suddenly switching to that POV is jarring and makes me mad.

I think I actually enjoyed reading this BECAUSE we play D&D. I've noticed that it makes me more tolerant of the high fantasy that I hate so much. Fighting trolls, goblins, and giant spiders just feels like a series of modules I would run rather than cliche now.

I am glad that this book was not steeped in appendices and glossaries like LotR is. I may be able to reread that series now that I've reading the prelude.

One final note: why are these dwarves so inaffective? They are constantly getting captured and lost and almost eaten, but then when Bilbo saves them, they treat him like shit? Maybe stop being so useless on an adventure, dipshits. Maybe y'all need a respec.

7.5/10

Young Adult - Terry Pratchett - The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents (2001)

Long time no see! Not much has changed. I just felt frustrated with reviewing the books I read before; I hadn't been enjoying the act of reading knowing that I had a blog post to write immediately after. But after this hiatus, I feel like I am ready to get back in the saddle again. And with a pretty good book too!

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents is the first YA installment in the acclaimed (both in our home and beyond) Discworld series. Because it is YA, Bryan, who normally reads all the Discworld books, hasn't bothered with it. I read it because it should come after The Last Hero, which ironically is the last Discworld book I read (several years ago, sadly). I think Bryan got me this for some Christmas, but I could be wrong.

This book is about the eponymous Maurice and a bunch of rats that ate some magical refuse from behind the Unseen University and were granted intelligence and the ability to talk. Maurice comes up with a scheme with a "stupid-looking kid" to have him play as the pied piper, and lead these specific rats out for cash. And it works out, for a while. But then they go to Uberwald.

If the title sounds familiar, it's because the idea of an amazing Maurice and some smart rats were briefly mentioned in Reaper Man. It had been such a long time that I had to look that up myself, and I still haven't found it flipping through the book.

While this book is labeled as YA and is found in that section of the bookstore, I don't think it's really YA. It doesn't feel like it, at least. What it is is very Pratchett, very Discworld. There are only four things I can think of that make it YA, and two of them are just Discworldy: there are talking animals, the book is broken up into chapters, there are illustrations to show how rats write in their language, and the ending is pretty clean.

I enjoyed reading this book. I actually stayed up late two nights in a row reading this in bed. As I said, it is very Discworld, and while there aren't many characters from the main series here, save for the obvious ones, it doesn't really matter. It fits the method of Pratchett's stand-alone Discworld books (Like Pyramids and Small Gods), and is engaging. You won't be disappointed with time spent reading this book.

10/10