K-Squared Ramblings

Stella!

After last weekend’s trip to storage, I was planning to re-read Greg Keyes’ Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series, until I remembered that the new Wheel of Time novel, The Gathering Storm (why, oh why did they have to pick such a generic title?), comes out next week. Not the best time to start a four-book epic.

So I rummaged through the to-read box this morning, looking for something to bring along and read at lunch, and settled on The True Stella Awards. I picked it up when it was new, four years ago, but somehow never got around to reading it.

The nonfiction book is by Randy Cassingham, author of the long-running This is True newsletter, and is a collection of write-ups of frivolous lawsuits. It’s named after an email forward that used to go around with the title “The Stella Awards” (only that used made-up lawsuits like the one about the guy who supposedly put his Winnebago on cruise control and went into the back to make a sandwich). That list was named after Stella Liebeck, the woman famous for suing McDonalds after spilling scalding hot coffee on herself. Cassingham decided that using fake examples to illustrate a real problem was counterproductive, and started a newsletter featuring real cases of legal abuse, eventually making it into a book.

It’s been interesting to see which cases have been included. One of the first examples was a 2003 lawsuit against Nabisco for using trans-fats in Oreos (they’ve since been reformulated, IIRC)…which was dropped as soon as the filer had racked up enough publicity.

Breaking the Castle’s Fourth Wall

Hah! It turns out those ads for Heat Wave during Castle aren’t fake: ABC actually had someone write the Nikki Heat book as a tie-in #

The first time I remember seeing something like this was with (appropriately enough) Murder She Wrote, with a paperback mystery novel credited to Jessica Fletcher. In that case, though, the show had been on for years and was a television staple. DC Comics got into it in 1997 with The Life Story of the Flash, credited to Iris (West) Allen, which had previously been referenced in the comic books.

More recently, Lost had an in-universe book published in the real world: Bad Twin was billed as the final novel by one of the passengers on Oceanic 815 who didn’t make it through the first episode. I actually read that one. It was interesting enough, though it had little to do with the show beyond the presence of the Widmores.

Final Battles

• Movies: Standing in theater lobby listening to competing CLANKing from Star Trek & Terminator: Salvation. #
• Wheel of Time: They really couldn’t come up w/a less cliche title than The Gathering Storm? Really, A Memory of Light Part 1 would be better. #

Questions

• Parked on 3rd floor at mall for lunch, had to hunt far afield for a table. Do that many people really have today off? #
• Is the glut of vampire novels a result of more people WRITING them, or more publishers ACCEPTING them? #
• Google employees ask the all-important question: Will It Lens? #

Cross-posted at LiveJournal.

Wheel of Time Finale: 3-Book Split

I missed this news from a couple of weeks ago: Tor has announced that A Memory of Light, the final Wheel of Time book, is going to be split into three volumes. A Memory of Light Part 1: The Gathering Storm is due on November 3, 2009. Working titles for the others are AMOL Part 2: Shifting Winds and AMOL Part 3: Tarmon Gai’don.

Author Brandon Sanderson, finishing the book from Robert Jordan’s manuscript and notes, explains how the decision was made: basically, it was turning into a 750,000-word novel. Consider that 250,000 is seriously long already, and Nanowrimo considers just 50,000 to be the lower limit. So we’re talking the equivalent of 15 Nanowrimo Novels. Not only would it need the proverbial luggage cart, but he wouldn’t be able to finish and revise it in time for a 2009 release. They figured 2011 at the earliest.

So they’re splitting it into three physical books, the first coming out in 2009 as promised to fans, and the others following — one hopes — in 2010 and 2011.

On one hand, I’m annoyed. I thought we were one book away from the finale. I thought we were only going to have one book worth of material polished by another author. And suddenly the single $25–30 purchase for one hardcover is turning into a probable total of $90 (over the course of several years, sure, but still…). Regardless of the actual reasons, it feels like a money-grab by the publisher trying to squeeze two more books out of a dead author’s fan base.

On the other hand… I’m not exactly surprised. Given the sheer amount of detail in Robert Jordan’s magnum opus, the number of open plot threads, and the scale of building up to full-on Armageddon, I think I’d rather see everything handled properly than get the Cliff Notes version of the series conclusion.

Author Catch-Up Revisited

About a year ago I posted a list of authors I wanted to catch up with. I read quite a few books last year, but how did I do with this list?

Julie E. Czerneda — I read the Trade Pact Universe trilogy last year, and I’m about half-way through the stand-alone novel, In the Company of Others, which means I’ve read just over half her novels. That leaves the Web Shifters trilogy and the two books so far of Stratification.

Robert J. Sawyer — since last year I’ve only read two of his books: Rollback and Flashforward (reviewed here). Though I made a point of attending his panel at Comic-Con International in July.

Robert Charles Wilson — Somehow managed not to read anything of his last year.

Greg Keyes — Re-read the first three books of The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, then read the final volume, The Born Queen, after it was released. Received The Hounds of Ash for Christmas, a collection of short stories set in the same universe as The Waterborn and Blackgod, and I got two stories in before I decided I wanted to re-read the novels.

Neil Gaiman — I read The Graveyard Book when it came out last fall (thanks to my brother for sending a signed copy from the SF reading!), but I can’t think of anything else (other than his blog) that I’ve read during the past year.

Other authors/titles I’ve read over the past year: Connie Willis (Bellwether), Robert Asprin (several Myth Adventures books), Naomi Novik (Fifth Temeraire novel, Victory of Eagles), Larry Niven (entire Ringworld series), George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones, sorry, not a fan), JMS (various B5 scriptbooks). Soon I Will Be Invincible (reviewed), Gateway, Night in Times Past, The Flash Companion, plus bunches of comics and tons of stuff online.

Hail Burst, Pride & Predator, DTV

• Wow…just had a seriously intense burst of hail. ~30 seconds, but LOUD! #
• This looks hilarious: Pride and Predator (via @breagrant) #
• Just remembered it’s Digital TV Switch Day! Or rather, it WAS. Looks like a lot of stations are taking the new June deadline. #

Finally Finished A Game of Thrones

Well, it took 2½ months during which I took breaks to read at least three other books, but this weekend I finally finished the first book of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy epic, A Song of Ice and Fire: A Game of Thrones.

By all rights I should have liked this book. I frequently like big epic fantasy: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Greg Keyes’ Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. Actually, Wheel of Time is probably the best comparison, given the sweeping scope of the series, the number of viewpoint characters, the emphasis on political intrigue, and the length of the books.

On the other hand, no Robert Jordan book has taken me longer than a month to read.

About a year ago, a friend recommended the books to Katie, and gave her the series so far (4 books) for Christmas. It took a while before she got to them, but when she did, she tore through them in about a week. (It helped that she had the free time.) She recommended them to me, but I didn’t pick up the first book until sometime last November.

And I just couldn’t get into it. The characters I found most interesting seemed to get the least attention. Of those, one character’s chapters were difficult to read because she’s in the wrong genre: a girl of 10(?) who wants to grow up to be a warrior princess in a world that would casually kill her before she had the chance. And while I’m sure it’s a matter of morally gray=interesting, it’s basically “Kingdom of A—holes” (maybe not as poetic as “The Knights Who Say F—” but more accurate, at least for the first book). The only adult character who isn’t morally gray or worse is so stuck on honor that he can’t handle the compromises necessary in politics. So it’s not so much a question of who’s the best choice to be in charge, as who’s the least bad.

The first book is about 95% straight medieval-setting political/military drama, with hints at supernatural elements here and there. The prologue sets up an otherworldly menace that is subsequently ignored for most of the book, there’s the occasional sword described as magic, it gradually becomes clear that the dragons are a historical fact, rather than legends (the previous king had dragon skulls mounted along the walls of the throne room) and that seasons frequently last years. “Winter is coming” is a key phrase, and the motto of the family that provides all but two of the viewpoint characters.

After 400 pages of tedious setup establishing just how brutish, brattish, or manipulative everyone is, things start going off the rails. And boy, do they go off the rails. You know how, when reading a book, you get to a point where you figure it can’t get worse? It does. Repeatedly.

About 200 pages from the end I decided I was going to make an effort to finish the book and get it out of the way. So I had a marathon reading session one Sunday, then made an effort to read during lunch over the next week, and then finally finished it over this past weekend. (For contrast, with each of the first two or three Wheel of Time books, when I got within 150 or 200 pages of the end I had to finish, even if it meant staying up until 2am on a work night.)

Actually I guess it’s kind of like some of the later Wheel of Time books in terms of sheer detail and trudgery. Except those have the advantage that you’ve probably read the earlier ones, which were quite good. (I’ve often described the WoT series as 5 novels of one book each followed by one novel that spans 7 books.)

The last 50 pages or so, particularly the final chapter, are considerably more interesting. If it had stopped at 750 pages, I’d probably be inclined to just leave it there, but I might actually pick up the second book at this point.

Just not now. For now, I’m picking up Julie Czerneda’s stand-alone In the Company of Others.

Recent Reading: Flashforward

Earlier this month I read Robert J. Sawyer’s novel, Flashforward. It’s about what happens after, during a scientific experiment, the entire population of the world blacks out for two minutes and sees a vision of what they will be doing twenty years from now. It focuses on the question of free will, and looks at the different ways people might react to learning exactly what their future has in store.

Like most of Sawyer’s stuff, It’s a good, fast read that makes you think. It’s also been in the news lately, since ABC is developing it as a TV series to pick up the Lost audience as that show wraps up, and they’ve been announcing casting for the pilot.

I’ve posted a review of Flashforward at Speed Force.

Evil Dead and Flashforward

• Finally saw Evil Dead this weekend #
• Started reading Flashforward. Amused that the trigger is an experiment on the Large Hadron Collider. #

Computer Trouble, Dollhouse, Mist & Invincibility

• Laptop actually booted this morning. Prob. just overheated. Will put RAM expansion back in and run some tests tonight. #
• Got up early. Saw mist blanketing fields at old marine base. Deeper into Irvine, moved into dense fog. #
• Reading: Joss Whedon on Dollhouse status. #
• Laptop OK so far. Still testing. *crosses fingers* #
• Still fighting with computers. Oh, and yesterday I reviewed Soon I Will Be Invincible #

Frostbite Looks Familiar

Looking at the “all ages” shelf in Borders, which seems to be almost entirely made up of novels about vampires and dragons, I noticed that the cover to the Vampire Academy novel Frostbite looked awfully familiar. I walked over to the DVD section of the store and picked up a copy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2.

This may be the most recognized image from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I just could not believe that the cover designer would copy the layout so closely.

Surprises

This morning I was surprised to hear that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had died. In part, it was because I hadn’t realized he was still alive. As the brief story went on, I remembered reading about his return to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Of his work, I’ve only read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, back in high school.

Last week I was surprised to hear that the FBI was on the verge of indicting a suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks. I’d pretty much written it off as an unsolved case. Unfortunately, the fact that Ivins committed suicide means the case will never go to trial. Having the attorney general sign off on it doesn’t quite have the same sense of closure — or certainty — that a trial would. Unless the FBI releases seriously solid evidence (and I’m sure a lot of the evidence is probably classified, especially given the current administration’s affair with secrecy), there will always be a bit of doubt: did he kill himself because he’d been caught, or because he didn’t want to go through being scapegoated?

Judging a Book’s Cover

Reusable Cover Art in Historical Novels: A Gallery. A lot of them are clearly using classical paintings, but some of them are photographs or even modern-style art. What’s especially interesting are the covers which used the same source material, but altered it subtly: adding a headband or a pendant, replacing a bedframe, etc.

The Rap Sheet has even more examples.

(via Colleen Doran)

The Born Queen

We’ve both finished reading The Born Queen, the conclusion to Greg Keyes’ The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. Yesterday we spent the day reading in tandem on the couch: I read book 3, Katie read book 4, and finished within an hour of each other. Determined to catch up, I read 100 pages last night and spent this morning and afternoon reading the final book.

It was well worth the wait.

The series is set two millennia after humans, led by Virginia Dare (explaining where the lost Roanoke colonists went), overthrew the demonic race that had kept them as slaves for generations. Virginia had discovered how to harness the sedos power, essentially magic. The last of humanity’s oppressors warned them that the sedos would eventually destroy their world. Of course, no one believed him.

2200 years later, this corner of the world is not unlike Europe in the early Renaissance. Except that the church is based on the sedos, in the person of saints, and its priests walk the paths to harness the sedos powers.

The world is also beginning to rot. Things of nature are dying, human alliances are crumbling, and terrible creatures thought to be myth are walking the earth. There are several factions who claim that they want to save it, but their true goals are suspect, and their methods differ greatly. The various viewpoint characters are thrust into the middle of things without any real sense of what’s going on: a holter, a princess, a novice priest, a knight, a swordsman, a composer and a queen.

One of the things I find so fascinating about this series (as I mentioned when I first read The Blood Knight) is the fact that everyone is acting on partial information. This makes them screw up, sometimes mildly, sometimes horrifically. And there’s a curveball that comes about 1/3 of the way into The Born Queen that turns everything on its head.

I don’t think it’ll give too much away to say that one of the key struggles in this book is for control of the sedos. Even 100 pages from the end, I wasn’t sure which faction would give the world a better chance of surviving.

Music also figures importantly, starting with the second book, where it’s learned that certain combinations of sound can have a profound effect on the human psyche. I found myself wondering whether Keyes had someone set any of the songs to music.

By the end of The Born Queen, most of the major questions about what’s really going on have been answered. Of course, they’re answered in pieces, by different characters with different agendas. The major characters’ arcs reach (mostly) satisfying conclusions, with some finding what they want, some finding what they need, some doing what needs to be done, and some getting what they deserve.

It’s weird to finally be done with the series, which started around the same time as this blog. The first post that I made that wasn’t “Hey, look! I have a blog!” was a review of The Waterborn and The Blackgod, Greg Keyes’ first novel and its sequel. In it, I mentioned looking forward to The Briar King when it came out.