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

Fiction - John Grisham - The Testament (1999)

I've never really endeavored to read what I call a "beach book"--that is, a book that comes out usually around summer and is a bestseller because it is a lot of action and little thought, meant to be read on airplanes and on shores by vacationers. I haven't read Dan Brown, and I never read John Grisham until now.

Technically, this book is Bryan's. He bought it for his Modern Literature class. I guess the teacher had him underline a line in the first chapter: "The money is the root of my misery."

This has little to do with the book, but I'm going to dig into this subject anyway. Bryan's ModLit teacher was a dumbass. For one thing, this book came out in '99 and we graduated in '04. There is no fucking way that this book could be called modern literature. At the very best, it would be contemporary literature, and the use of the L word would be shaky at best. Modern is from about 1850ish to about 1950ish. Everything else after is contemporary. My ModLit teacher had a giant girl boner for the Harlem Renaissance, and we never really got much farther than that. For the next thing, Grisham is not literature. It's a beach book. Sold in airports and convenience stores in coastal towns. That sentence is not a theme for the book at all, and not just because this book doesn't have a theme, other than things always work out for everyone. It's fiction, sure. Lawyer fiction, absolutely. Action? Well, there's a plane and boat crash, so I might be able to grant you that. Literature? Fuck no.

So why did I read it? I hate the fact that there is a book in my collection that I won't read, even if I know going into it that it's not going to be the deepest of stories. And it really isn't.

Some old rich guy makes a handwritten will that cuts all of his legitimate children off and hands his billions to an illegitimate daughter in Brazil who is a missionary and couldn't care less. Then he kills himself. Enter the law firm that fixed up all his other wills. They have to uphold it, even though the legitimate children are swooping in to say that the guy was not in his right mind, he didn't know what he was doing, give me some goddamned money motherfucker. They have to find the girl, so they send someone in their firm that's yanked out of rehab for alcoholism and send him to Brazil to find her.

In On Writing by Stephen King, he mentions that many books that people read on planes or whatever are for people who don't read. They have the book because otherwise they would be reading a magazine or sleeping. But when someone makes a mention of them reading a novel, they feel shame and say, "Yeah, but I'm learning so much about Subject X from this book." Because apparently reading is shameful in today's society.

The bulk of The Testament is a foray down the rivers and swamps of southeastern Brazil, and a huge exploration of the culture, climate, and geography there. The chapters are studded with Portuguese words for things we have our own words for, and explorations into how the residents live day to day and feel about Americans and their own Indians. In any other context, I might have been interested by it, but it was clear to me that Grisham was putting it in to teach the reader something, so they could point to the book and say what they learned from it, rather than how it resonated with them. Because it doesn't.

I didn't like this, if you couldn't tell. The whole thing was one predictable development after another, and at no point does it make the reader have to accept anything hard. Nothing particularly difficult happens, and the conflict itself is asinine. Not to mention that a super rich old guy bitching about having too much money sounds like whining on the part of the author.

If you don't like your wads of cash from your mediocre books, hand it over to me. I'm sure I could make a home for it.

3.5/10

Horror - Various Authors - The Living Dead (2008)

The reason it has been over two weeks since the last post has nothing to do with the quality of this book. What it does have to do with is that I had a job interview, a trip to Seattle (for PAX, which was AMAZING), and now I'm sick. Somewhere in there I was reading through this tome, which boasts just under 500 pages of short story zombie goodness.

I've mentioned before how I feel about zombie literature in my review of World War Z, but this book has 34 short stories in it, by both people I know of and love, those I know of and am okay with, and those I didn't know about before. With such a wide selection, there is ample opportunity for slips of "ugh" and "WTF", but overall the experience was positive, and made flying 2.5 hours and fighting a head cold more pleasant than it could have been.

Please note that Blogger won't let me tag every author involved. I'll include the author names and the associated story on each brief rundown.

"This Year's Class Picture" by Dan Simmons is, thankfully, one of the few "zombies are coming OMG" stories in this bad boy, and features a former teacher who wrangles together some of her former students who are now zombies to teach them, as if nothing happened. The automation of the ending is what solidified it for me. Also having a moat around the school made of gasoline was so awesome.

"Some Zombie Contingency Plans" by Kelly Link roots itself deeply into WTF Terrace. Here, the zombies are not walking around and eating human flesh. They are among a myriad of other worries a guy has. I can't even tell you what goes on in this story. Some guy who stole some art went to jail, but then got out, and now is at some party, and he's also talking to himself about stuff, and then he kidnaps the hostess's little brother? What?

"Death and Suffrage" by Dale Bailey started off fucking great, but then kind of devolved into some bullshit having to do with accidental shootings of kids. Why the fuck should I care about that when there are zombies coming up from the dead and all voting for the guy against guns?

"Ghost Dance" by Sherman Alexie is another one in WTF Nation. A detective guy goes into a fugue state and sees all this shit happen, and it has something to do with the Battle of Little Big Horn. Though this story did teach me about Lysol sandwiches.

"Blossom" by David J. Schow was the very first story that I wanted to share. Zombie sex. Naked woman eating flowers. A man's penis bit off by a rigor mortis vagina. What's not to love?

"The Third Dead Body" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman was the first, I think, to reference voodoo curses in the anthology. In this, a woman is killed by a serial killer and buried in his favorite spot. But because her grandmother put a curse on her for snitching on her pedophile grandfather, she wakes up with a raging girl boner for the guy who killed her, and is able to bring him to justice.

"The Dead" by Michael Swansick probably would have worked better if it had been placed in the book before "Blossom". It's just not shocking to see a woman fucking a corpse after a dead vagina has ripped a penis off.

"The Dead Kid" by Darrell Schweitzer is another one of those zombie stories that doesn't paint them to be shambling monsters, which I like. Instead, it's more like a hurt animal some bully kids find and then torture because they are cruel. Also, they piss on him.

"Malthusian's Zombie" by Jeffrey Ford is very Lovecraftian, to me, or maybe even Shelley-like. A family lives next to this weird little man who tells the guy about this experiment he conducted on something he called a zombie. Then the little man dies, and things get weird.

"Beautiful Stuff" by Susan Palwick is amazing. Simply amazing. A perfect show of how we don't appreciate what we have. Buy this fucking book, if only for this one short story.

"Sex, Death and Starshine" by Clive Barker is actually pretty terrible. It's based entirely around a Shakespearean play being put on starring a subpar soap opera actress. And then there are zombie guys and attacks. I've never read Clive Barker before, but this was a terrible introduction. It just took too long to get anywhere where I am supposed to care. Everyone is just a fucknut.

"Stockholm Syndrome" by David Tallerman is another good one. Surprising, since it's the hungry horde flavor of undead. But there is a guy that has shut himself up in a house, and watches a smart zombie break into the house across the street without doing anything, knowing full well a family is holed up there.

"Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead" by Joe Hill has no real zombies. It's a love story that takes place on the set of Dawn of the Dead between a couple of extras dolled up like zombies, and the girl's son with her husband. It's sweet, from someone who doesn't really like romance.

"Those Who Seek Forgiveness" by Laurell K. Hamilton is the Anita Blake story I know you saw in the tags and was wondering about. According to the description, this short story was the first thing Hamilton wrote having to do with Anita Blake at all, and let me tell you, this was the first of her Anita Blake stuff I've read. If the rest of the series is anything like this story, which granted, had a lot of plot holes, but was entertaining, I might consider getting into it.

"In Beauty, Like the Night" by Norman Patridge is one that, I am ashamed to say, I don't quite remember. I know that it's about a guy like Hugh Hefner retreating to his private island with his favorite models, only the models die in an accident and stalk him on his paradise. Don't remember much else.

"Prairie" by Brian Evenson I only remember because it was riddled with words I didn't know. Like fumid. Also, it's super short.

"Everything Is Better With Zombies" by Hannah Wolf Bowen is more of a coming-of-age story than a zombie one. It's a little ambiguous if zombies are even existent in the world of the story, but it mostly surrounds two youths that recently graduated.

"Home Delivery" by Stephen King. I know you saw that name on the cover up there. It reads like traditional King fare, with a large thing happening with many people, and it affecting someone in a more scaled-down way. In this case, a pregnant woman having to give birth during the zombie uprising where all the men are out defending their town from the creatures.

"Less Than Zombie" by Douglas E. Winter is about some crazy kids and their late night antics. These aren't nice antics, though. They are dark, gritty antics. That results in them killing one of their friends for laughs. Don't do drugs, kids.

"Sparks Fly Upward" by Lisa Morton could have been SO much better. Your story is about abortion and it's in a zombie anthology? Sign me the fuck up for aborted fetus zombies. Oh, that's your proof that they aren't really human? Oh. That's, uh... less entertaining. Sigh.

"Meathouse Man" by George R.R. Martin is perfect. Fucking amazing. I know, you may think that I'm just gushing because it's GRRM, but this is so deliciously sci-fi and emotional and YES. So great. Don't buy this book for "Beautiful Stuff". Buy it for "Meathouse Man". Please. PLEASE.

"Deadman's Road" by Joe R. Lansdale is why I didn't finish reading this until today. I had been reading this before to avoid packing for PAX. Upon starting to read this, however, I didn't want to any more. It may be a personal thing, but the dialect in this western zombie story (and now you know why I hate it) was so spot-on (which may be considered a good thing to others) that I started speaking in my southern accent again, against my will. And I worked hard to get rid of that shit. That, and the story isn't very compelling. So poop.

"The Skull-Faced Boy" by David Barr Kirtley I read on the plane. Maybe it was the experience of being on a plane for two and a half hours, but the idea of selling out the girl you like to a zombie general does not seem like a great way to get to see her again.

"The Age of Sorrow" by Nancy Kilpatrick is a much better depiction, I think, of how a middle-aged woman would survive being the "last man" in the zombie apocalypse than that of "This Year's Class Picture". It made me feel good as a woman, even though I know full well I couldn't do the same.

"Bitter Grounds" by Neil Gaiman is the most WTF story in this whole book. A guy abandons his life, tries to be a Good Samaritan, gets lost, and then assumes the other guy's identity. Also Haitian coffee girl zombies. What? Huh? Gaiman, I love you and all, but what the fucking shit?

"She's Taking Her Tits to the Grave" by Catherine Cheek has the best title ever, forever. But if you've seen Death Becomes Her, you know all you need to know about this story.

"Dead Like Me" by Adam-Troy Castro is another good one. Not "Meathouse Man" good, but still good. Remember in World War Z how they talked about people who would act like the undead in order to go undetected by them? This story is about two people who do the same, and don't even know each others' names.

"Zora and the Zombie" by Andy Duncan is a weird one. Not "Bitter Grounds" weird. Not by a long shot. But it's always weird when a real person is a character in a fictional story. In this case, it is Zora Neale Hurston. But there is a voodoo witch doctor or whatever they like to be called. So it harks back to the origin of zombies.

"Calcutta, Lord of Nerves" by Poppy Z. Brite is another odd one, but because it takes so much from Indian culture, which I am less than versed in. Is Poppy Z. Brite heavy on the mythology in her other stuff? This is the first I've ever read.

"Followed" by Will McIntosh is another good one, but this is one that I would love to see expanded into a full novel. There just isn't enough meat here. The idea is that when a zombie is raised, it is drawn to someone who either caused or had a hand in its death, I think. It's not clearly laid out. But this guy is like a nice guy all around. He can't figure out why this Southeast Asian girl zombie is following him, and he can't convince anyone anymore that he doesn't deserve it. It's good, but needs more.

"The Song the Zombie Sang" by Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg is one I tried reading yesterday, while sick, and fell asleep during. I don't know if that really has something to say about the quality. It does seem to sink into Metaphor Marsh without much care for the quality of the story itself. I personally think it was trying too hard.

"Passion Play" by Nancy Holder is interesting, if only for the truth melded into it about the play about Jesus. Also, the aspect of how old religion would be able to stand during the zombie apocalypse is interesting as well.

"Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man" by Scott Edelman is blech. I know that it's meant to sound disjointed because it's about a writer trying to make sense of living through the undead rising, but does it have to be steeped in cliche? I didn't like it at all.

"How the Day Runs Down" by John Langan is unique to this book, and though it is built like a play, it does such a great job of segmenting the zombie apocalypse into slices of life, as well as that story about the mom and her kids... It's great. The twist at the end is interesting, but not unexpected. I still like it, though.

Again, buy this book, if only for "Meathouse Man". You will find several other jewels here.

9.0/10