Remember: Review contains spoilers. No attempt to hide them will be made.
The climatic scene of Rogue One, the battle on Scarif, was shot in sunlight with fully saturated colors. I just want to take a moment to appreciate that. Fully. Saturated. Colors. It was a horrifying sequence, in terms of plot, and still amazing to look at. Even the inside of the Imperial base, where you'd almost expect gray, they did almost in jewel tones, and Vader's pad on Mustafar was vividly red. What a change from the dreary gray tones of so much of contemporary film. It was refreshing.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled review.
First things first, I liked it. Quite a lot, actually. I warmed up to The Force Awakens after a while, but this one, I liked right away and continue to like. My reasons are outside of the "elements" format, so I'll get to them more in depth at the end of this essay.
Let's just go straight into the elements.
Plot: More on this later, but essentially, I see this as a very well executed bit of fan fiction (and no, that is NOT AN INSULT). It's a very plausible answer to several questions raised in the canonical films, and it explores something that has to have happened: The battle mentioned in the very first opening crawl of the series, where the rebels stole the Death Star plans. The story follows Jyn Erso, daughter of the engineer who was coerced into designing it, as she first finds him and learns about the flaw he built into the station (nice gap-filling on a major fan question), then, with the team she's built along the way, leads a suicide mission against the Imperial archives to obtain the plans and transmit them up to the fleet, where Leia will retrieve them and set us off on the saga. The movie ends perhaps a day, perhaps only minutes, from Leia's capture at the beginning of A New Hope. (And makes her lie about being on a diplomatic mission all the more audacious, since she's literally been chased from the battle.)
Character: Probably one of the weaker elements. I wasn't really drawn into the conflicts of any of the OCs (original characters) who populated this tale. I mean, there was nothing wrong with them, but with the exception of the reprogrammed imperial droid, K2SO, I didn't think, "Wow, I can't wait to find out what that one is doing next." Jyn's got some good moments, but I feel like they tried to force a character arc on her by making her cynical without any particular explanation, so that she could later find belief. I didn't really understand Cassian at first; I thought after he killed the informant that he was an Imperial spy, and waited the whole movie for something to come of it (either that he'd betray the rebellion at a crucial moment or he'd reform). I realize that was a wrong assumption, but the first act we see him take is murdering a rebel after getting information, so... Kind of a curveball, and not in an interesting way. Krennec isn't a very credible villain (and it's not helped by the costume... most of the costuming is good, this poor guy was saddled with what looked like the kind of bedsheet cape kids will trick-or-treat in this year). Vader is great, but doesn't get much screentime. Tarkin... more later. I like Chirrut and Bazea and (especially) Bodhi, but I guess I'm just as glad I didn't get attached. Was that the plan? To have characters not be especially attachable so that people wouldn't be particularly phased by all of them dying at the end?
Setting: There are several settings, from the city of Jehda to the rebel base to the Imperial base at Eadu, to the amazing Scarif base. I've already mentioned how refreshing Scarif is. Eadu is more standard, but they chose to set the battle during a raging rainstorm, and it looks fabulous. Jehda is more or less the standard desert planet trope of Star Wars. Looks good, but it should... they've had enough practice! To be fair, I'd think the desert-planet type is likely to be a common occurrence, so that one's fair to have several examples of.
Theme: Rebellions are built on hope. Conveniently stated outright. (Though of course, the Empire was originally built on hope of correcting the corrupted republic, too. Hmm.)
Style: This is a gorgeous looking film. Saturated is the best word for it, I think. The look is detailed, there is great care given to lighting and sound, and the creators clearly love the fact that they are working in this universe. They savor the details.
Beyond the elements:
There is, of course, more to the movie than the regular elements because it is an entry in a long-running, well-beloved series.
I referred earlier to the movie as well-executed fanfic, which is what I believe it to be. Good fanfic interacts with the canonical text, asks questions, offers ideas, and plays around with what is plausible and even probable within the world. Rogue One does this wonderfully. It takes that open question -- that shiny bauble: "How did the rebels get the plans to Leia?" It's an obvious question, and it leads to other questions. Who were the people who got it? Why did they take that risk? What happened to them, and why did we never hear of them again? It even looks at minor questions like why the call sign Red Five was available for Luke to take over. The script is a well-thought out and highly plausible answer to the questions. It feels like the real answer, or at least like it could be the real answer. (And no, I guess I don't ultimately feel the Disney era stuff is canonical. I mean, it's not anti-canonical and there's nothing wrong with it, but I just don't subjectively feel like it's part of the saga.) Full marks for fan imagination here.
My main fannish quibble is that they brought in a lot of Expanded Universe stuff, like Kyber Crystals, that are part of a whole overly-complicated structure that I wish they'd stayed away from. They didn't need to reject it outright, but I'm not a big fan of bringing things in from outside the main line. If people are just watching the movies, they should be able to just watch the movies -- the rest of it is like tinsel on the Christmas tree. People should be able to take the tinsel off if they want to, and I feel like a lot of it got tangled up in the branches here. That's probably just me, though. I did a little jig when I found out Disney was jettisoning the EU, and I don't like seeing it back, largely because I detest the Star Wars EU. Which, you know... is probably just me.
I hadn't read up on the movie a lot before seeing it, so I actually didn't know that they'd used CGI to bring back Peter Cushing's face for the role of Tarkin, or a 1977-vintage Carrie Fisher (the real CF did the voice of course) for Leia. As a concept, I don't mind it, though I think they're going to have to start making deals with actors in their contracts to use their likenesses in other films, potentially far in the future. If you're dealing with a series that may well jump around in time, it's the best solution. My problem wasn't moral or ideological. It's just that, while the Leia appearance was all right (not perfect, but pretty good), Tarkin kind of screamed "Hi, I'm a CGI character." It was just not... quite... there. A little bit of Uncanny Valley going on there. The tech will get better, though.
God bless James Earl Jones for voicing Vader again. The character would just not be right otherwise.
And now, the big fan war: Force Awakens or Rogue One? God knows why SW fandom is so given to these fights, but it is, and I come down on the side of Rogue One. I didn't dislike TFA. It's okay. But for me, the main saga was satisfactorily closed with Return of the Jedi. (Well, chronologically with Revenge of the Sith, I guess.) The saga was the story of Anakin Skywalker -- how he rose, how he fell, and how he was redeemed. Because of that, TFA felt a little... unnecessary? Disconnected? And any connection seems forced (no pun intended) because the story is over. The final shot at the celebration was the eucatastrophic moment (ref, Tolkien) that put a button on the tale. It began with the equivalent of "Once upon a time..." and ended with "And they all lived happily ever after." It was done. Reintroducing it and grafting on problems that didn't need to be there just... I don't know. Of course it's the beginning of a new story, so you need a problem, but... I guess I just didn't need the new story.
The fill in stories, though, the back stories and one-offs and midquels and so on? Those, I feel like there's an unending need for. What about the life of the Imperials? I wrote a story once about kids trapped in an Imperial boarding school when the Death Star went up, who needed to escape from enraged mobs. The normal, everyday people of the Empire would seem to be endless fodder for this kind of story. What about the handmaidens? What happened to them? Did Obi-Wan do anything during his exile? Did Vader have moments before RotJ when his loyalty to Palpatine may have wavered? How did Leia end up in the Senate at the age of 16? It's fertile ground, and I hope Disney continues to explore it.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Monday, December 19, 2016
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
I caught up on my movies today. I've been meaning to see this one and needed to see Rogue One (review later), so I said, "You know? Let's just hang out at the multiplex."
So, Fantastic Beasts. As always, please recall that I review WITH SPOILERS. There will not be immediate pre-warnings or blanking out.
The verdict? Eh.... not bad.
Enjoyable, actually. It's a story about grown-ups in Potterworld, which is neat. It's in a new setting, which is also neat. Eddie Redmayne is a blast, and the critters are cool.
But...
I don't know. Something didn't entirely click.
So, the elements of the story are all not bad.
Plot: Newt Scamander, author of future!Harry's textbook, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, arrives in New York in 1926, carrying a suitcase full of magical creatures. The dark wizard Grindelwald is on the loose, but Scamander doesn't have much to say about it. Meanwhile, in New York, a very explosive magical force is destroying a lot of things, and it's being blamed on gas leaks. A former Auror named Tina Goldstein (related to Anthony Goldstein, later of Hogwarts?) is investigating a muggle (non-maj... was there any reason for Americans to use a different term for this? That one's pretty clunky, so I'll just use Muggle) group called Second Salem, which is calling for the destruction of the wizarding world (though of course, no one else believes they exist). One of Newt's critters -- a Niffler -- gets free in a bank and causes havoc, which sends Tina after Newt. Meanwhile, Newt bumps into a Muggle named Jacob Kowalski, and they accidentally switch suitcases. Jacob doesn't know what's happening, and several creatures escape. Tina brings Newt in, but is ignored by the upper echelons of MACUSA (the American wizarding government), and they go to find Jacob, though it's too late to stop the escape. Tina brings both men back to the apartment she shares with her sister Queenie, who immediately falls for the kindly Jacob. Then there's another attack by the violent force, this time killing a young politician, and for a time, suspicion falls on Newt's creatures. He explains that the force is an obscurus, a violent expression of suppressed magic, but they don't believe him and sentence both him and Tina to death for breaking the statute of secrecy and possibly causing a war with Muggles. They're rescued by Queenie and Jacob, and it all comes to a fight with the obscurus, which is the magical energy of an abused teenage boy who was raised by the head of Second Salem. The MACUSA wizard who's been in charge of the case -- who's been blocking the heroes at every step -- turns out to be Grindelwald in disguise, and he wanted to start a war because he wants to dominate Muggles, as we know from the books. His position is not made especially clear in the screenplay, though. After the battle is over, Newt's creatures help with a mass obliviation spell, which ultimately has to include Jacob (don't worry, Queenie re-introduces herself later), and Newt returns to Britain to write his book, promising Tina that he'll come back.
Yeah... there's a lot of plot. The magical creatures plot is pretty good. The Second Salem plot doesn't quite work, and the obscurus plot is melodramatic to the point of being unintentional self-parody. It reads like about a million poor-ickle-Draco fanfics. But the rest of the movie is quite charming.
Character: Newt is just awesome. Awkward, a little annoying. He's Sherlock Holmes-ian in his inability to fit in. Smart and kind-hearted as well. His real purpose in America is to release a thunderbird named Frank back into the wilds (it's Frank who saves the day in the end), and he is willing to die to protect his creatures. He's also friends with an adorable bowtruckle. He's not so good with Tina and Queenie (possible romantic heartbreak in his past), but he's delightful with Jacob. Jacob himself is a great addition to the universe. I thought for a while that he might be excused from obliviation, but he isn't. He's gobsmacked by the magical world, but he keeps up and works with Newt all along. Tina -- a bit insecure after her sacking, but determined and well-meaning, and able to change her ideas about Newt as she sees the truth of the situation. Legilmens Queenie is a little pushy, but funny and appealing.
Most of the American wizarding government has pretty short shrift. Graves, the persona Grindelwald is using, is more than a little over-the-top, but I'm guessing, with Johnny Depp taking over the Grindelwald role, that the man is supposed to be over-the-top. The less said about the Second Salem group, the better. I don't mean, "Wow, they're unpleasant." They're villains, that would be allowed. I mean, they're soap opera villains, with motives so paper-thin that I couldn't suspend my disbelief over them.
Theme: Don't suppress your talents and gifts, or require others to do so. Not a bad theme. I imagine anyone who's been told to give up an aspiration to be in the arts feels it, or really anyone who has a particular talent that's being hidden. All of the smart kids who feel they have to play dumb to get along, all of the creative ones whose ideas are shot down as absurd, all of the hopefuls ones told to get real.
Setting: New York City is a super odd setting for that theme, though. I mean, the essence of New York is not letting anyone hold you down. You have a city of... what was it in the 20s, three million? Every one of them chasing down one dream or another. The only city less likely for the "don't suppress your gifts" theme would be L.A. (Unless you're talking about a gift as a nuclear scientist, I guess, but in terms of municipal mythos... not so much.) We didn't see a lot of the American wizarding world, which I'm glad of because I prefer to imagine it for myself, but it seemed relatively interesting.
The other setting is the inside of Newt's suitcase, which is full of magical environments for the beasts. It has the wonder of Hogwarts in the earlier episodes, and I'd dig an entire movie set in the suitcase.
Style: This movie is in the same style as all of the later Potter movies, with the same effects and design, and, outside of the suitcase, the same bleak, gray undertones so common in pop movies today. I have no idea why this is a thing, but there you have it. I guess there's no getting around it. (Except that Rogue One kind of does... but that's for later.)
So, Fantastic Beasts. As always, please recall that I review WITH SPOILERS. There will not be immediate pre-warnings or blanking out.
The verdict? Eh.... not bad.
Enjoyable, actually. It's a story about grown-ups in Potterworld, which is neat. It's in a new setting, which is also neat. Eddie Redmayne is a blast, and the critters are cool.
But...
I don't know. Something didn't entirely click.
So, the elements of the story are all not bad.
Plot: Newt Scamander, author of future!Harry's textbook, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, arrives in New York in 1926, carrying a suitcase full of magical creatures. The dark wizard Grindelwald is on the loose, but Scamander doesn't have much to say about it. Meanwhile, in New York, a very explosive magical force is destroying a lot of things, and it's being blamed on gas leaks. A former Auror named Tina Goldstein (related to Anthony Goldstein, later of Hogwarts?) is investigating a muggle (non-maj... was there any reason for Americans to use a different term for this? That one's pretty clunky, so I'll just use Muggle) group called Second Salem, which is calling for the destruction of the wizarding world (though of course, no one else believes they exist). One of Newt's critters -- a Niffler -- gets free in a bank and causes havoc, which sends Tina after Newt. Meanwhile, Newt bumps into a Muggle named Jacob Kowalski, and they accidentally switch suitcases. Jacob doesn't know what's happening, and several creatures escape. Tina brings Newt in, but is ignored by the upper echelons of MACUSA (the American wizarding government), and they go to find Jacob, though it's too late to stop the escape. Tina brings both men back to the apartment she shares with her sister Queenie, who immediately falls for the kindly Jacob. Then there's another attack by the violent force, this time killing a young politician, and for a time, suspicion falls on Newt's creatures. He explains that the force is an obscurus, a violent expression of suppressed magic, but they don't believe him and sentence both him and Tina to death for breaking the statute of secrecy and possibly causing a war with Muggles. They're rescued by Queenie and Jacob, and it all comes to a fight with the obscurus, which is the magical energy of an abused teenage boy who was raised by the head of Second Salem. The MACUSA wizard who's been in charge of the case -- who's been blocking the heroes at every step -- turns out to be Grindelwald in disguise, and he wanted to start a war because he wants to dominate Muggles, as we know from the books. His position is not made especially clear in the screenplay, though. After the battle is over, Newt's creatures help with a mass obliviation spell, which ultimately has to include Jacob (don't worry, Queenie re-introduces herself later), and Newt returns to Britain to write his book, promising Tina that he'll come back.
Yeah... there's a lot of plot. The magical creatures plot is pretty good. The Second Salem plot doesn't quite work, and the obscurus plot is melodramatic to the point of being unintentional self-parody. It reads like about a million poor-ickle-Draco fanfics. But the rest of the movie is quite charming.
Character: Newt is just awesome. Awkward, a little annoying. He's Sherlock Holmes-ian in his inability to fit in. Smart and kind-hearted as well. His real purpose in America is to release a thunderbird named Frank back into the wilds (it's Frank who saves the day in the end), and he is willing to die to protect his creatures. He's also friends with an adorable bowtruckle. He's not so good with Tina and Queenie (possible romantic heartbreak in his past), but he's delightful with Jacob. Jacob himself is a great addition to the universe. I thought for a while that he might be excused from obliviation, but he isn't. He's gobsmacked by the magical world, but he keeps up and works with Newt all along. Tina -- a bit insecure after her sacking, but determined and well-meaning, and able to change her ideas about Newt as she sees the truth of the situation. Legilmens Queenie is a little pushy, but funny and appealing.
Most of the American wizarding government has pretty short shrift. Graves, the persona Grindelwald is using, is more than a little over-the-top, but I'm guessing, with Johnny Depp taking over the Grindelwald role, that the man is supposed to be over-the-top. The less said about the Second Salem group, the better. I don't mean, "Wow, they're unpleasant." They're villains, that would be allowed. I mean, they're soap opera villains, with motives so paper-thin that I couldn't suspend my disbelief over them.
Theme: Don't suppress your talents and gifts, or require others to do so. Not a bad theme. I imagine anyone who's been told to give up an aspiration to be in the arts feels it, or really anyone who has a particular talent that's being hidden. All of the smart kids who feel they have to play dumb to get along, all of the creative ones whose ideas are shot down as absurd, all of the hopefuls ones told to get real.
Setting: New York City is a super odd setting for that theme, though. I mean, the essence of New York is not letting anyone hold you down. You have a city of... what was it in the 20s, three million? Every one of them chasing down one dream or another. The only city less likely for the "don't suppress your gifts" theme would be L.A. (Unless you're talking about a gift as a nuclear scientist, I guess, but in terms of municipal mythos... not so much.) We didn't see a lot of the American wizarding world, which I'm glad of because I prefer to imagine it for myself, but it seemed relatively interesting.
The other setting is the inside of Newt's suitcase, which is full of magical environments for the beasts. It has the wonder of Hogwarts in the earlier episodes, and I'd dig an entire movie set in the suitcase.
Style: This movie is in the same style as all of the later Potter movies, with the same effects and design, and, outside of the suitcase, the same bleak, gray undertones so common in pop movies today. I have no idea why this is a thing, but there you have it. I guess there's no getting around it. (Except that Rogue One kind of does... but that's for later.)
Thursday, May 5, 2016
Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle, by Rick Riordan
Spoilers, lots of them, as always.
Spoiler space...
Spoiler space...
Spoiler space...
Okay, if you're still reading, you're going to get spoiled.
I adore Rick Riordan's Greek mythverse, in case you haven't noticed by the number of reviews. The man has an excellent grasp of the mythology, and he loves to throw in even more great tidbits as he learns them. The books have a great sense of humor, and a lot of genuine heart, too.
The Trials of Apollo is the third and final quintology of the series, which began with Percy Jackson and the Olympians and continued the Heroes of Olympus. Here, Riordan takes a fairly obscure pair of myths about Apollo being turned mortal as punishment from Zeus, and updates them into the contemporary world. Apollo, in trouble for letting his oracle set a prophecy in motion, comes crashing down into a garbagey alley in New York, as a sixteen year old mortal boy with acne. He has no idea how to regain his godhood, so he asks for Percy's help to get to Camp Half-Blood, and there, quests for the Grove of Dodona (the titular Hidden Oracle), because it's the only place where a good prophecy might be found a the moment (Apollo is the god of prophecy, among many other things, and neglectfully let his oracles be taken by a hostile force).
I'm going to be blunt: The beginning is rough here. The first several chapters had me doubting Riordan, as Apollo's voice is almost parodic, and the new character, Meg (a street urchin who protects him from bullies and then claims his service), is... well, irritating. And not just in Apollo's point of view. I was irritated at even being asked to care about this one.
But I stuck with it, because the first book of PJO started a little rough, too, and the series ultimately became quite good. In this book, things take a turn for the better when Apollo reaches Camp Half-Blood and begins to deal with his somewhat complicated relationship with his own half-blood children, now his own age or even older. This is when he begins to develop his own voice, and it's actually quite winning.
If you're hoping for a lot of check-in with older characters, keep hoping. Percy appears at a couple of key points, and Nico is a small presence throughout (he's dating Apollo's son). Another member of the crew of the Argo II shows up at the end, with an implicit promise of more in the next book. Everyone else is just name-checked. Apollo lampshades it by wondering where the A-listers are, but it still feels a little bit of a cheat.
Elements.
Style:
It has the usual Riordan touches, acknowledging the absurdity of the situation and using sarcasm and wry humor to make it feel like, yes, this is how modern people would react to these elements of Greek myth. The chapter titles are done in deliberately bad haiku (god of poetry, of course). The most dangerous of all prophecies are delivered as limericks, which we learn by the horrified reactions of Apollo and his oracle, Rachel Dare, to a limerick delivered by the Grove. There's a talking arrow that gives Apollo instructions in Shakespeare-esque dialogue, and Rhea appears as a first wave feminist hippie who thinks the young goddesses coming up don't really understand the struggle, since they weren't asked to stand by their men while he ate their children. Basically, Riordan gives good Riordan on the tropes of the 'verse.
Like I said, the beginning is off-kilter. Apollo as a character in the earlier books had a certain grandiose way of talking, which is amusing in itself as dialogue, but as interior monologue, it's grating very quickly. It's understandable that he'd still think of himself as a god who ought to be worshiped instead of tossed in garbage, but there's a kind of self-consciousness to the prose that makes me feel more like Riordan is making fun of his protag than that he's dealing with the protag as a character. This starts to self-correct as Apollo becomes more human.
The interesting thing about it is that Apollo turns out to actually be a very decent guy, and the less he brags, the more apparent that becomes. At first, he's talking about how awesome he is, but later, he decides that he's a terrible person, that he's not as worthy as his children, that he's nothing but a blowhard... but throughout the whole thing, we've seen him quite consistently doing the right thing, worrying about his children when they're taken, befriending his son Will (who he is happy to play second fiddle to as a healer), being deeply proud of his daughter Kayla and his son Austin (an archer and a musician, respectively), staying loyal to Meg even when her behavior is open to question, and generally being a good egg. Like his inability to be a perfect archer or play music perfectly, he is focused on his failings while the text makes clear that he's succeeding wildly. It's a very good example of unreliable narration.
Setting:
A garbagey alley, Percy's apartment, an orchard on Long Island, and Camp Half-Blood. This isn't a very setting-heavy book. The labyrinth is back, and will likely be more of a plot point later on.
Theme:
I'm not sure I can say, thematically, what it's all about, Alfie. There's a lot of focus on destiny and on innate talents. Maybe some notion of finding out what you're really good for, getting to that middle ground between "I'm the greatest god that ever was" and "I'm an unworthy worm." But if I were to put a circle around weakness in this particular story, it's that I feel like this first book doesn't know what it wants to be about. The same was true of The Lightning Thief, except that the plot there had more urgency. I could almost feel Riordan groping for a theme. I think it will come together more in subsequent books, because there were a few places where it was touching on something. I just can't quite put my finger on it.
Plot:
Eh. There's a lot of exposition here, and the plot skips around a little bit. Meg rescues Apollo, then they're with Percy, then there's a problem at camp (kids disappearing into the woods), and there's a problem with prophecy and...
I'll get this over with. The new bad guys are semi-deified Roman emperors, led by Nero, who are trying to be a Triumvirate (Apollo reminds Nero that this never ends well). They are the financiers behind the events of the other books, and I have to admit, I'm getting bad season six Buffy vibes from them. Meg's connection to them is painfully obvious from the start, and Riordan still treated it like a big reveal. Not loving this development.
Other than that, there's the search for the Grove, an encounter with giant ants, and a fight with a giant bronze statue of Apollo, which annoys him because it's got a neck beard. Also, he finds himself irritated that it's not wearing underwear, even though he knows they almost never do. Because it's weird having a battle with a 50 foot tall naked bronze version of yourself, I guess.
Finally, Apollo gets a prophecy to set him on the path to his next adventure, which is going to at least be started in the company of a crewman on the Argo, his girlfriend, and another bronze automaton.
Characters:
Since this largely exists to introduce the character situation, that's where the book spends most of its time.
Unfortunately, the old characters don't appear much, and the new characters are kind of duds.
Not good:
Meg McCaffrey is a twelve-year-old half-blood (daughter of Demeter, which for some reason was treated as a big deal to Apollo), who has been living on the streets with a protector. (Three guesses.) She's not actively unpleasant, but she's also just... not there. We're asked to care about her immediately, and the character gives us no compelling reason for it.
Nero... I can't with this villain. There is no point at which I care about what he's doing. Maybe that will change; I don't know.
Percy and Chiron: Are there. So is a pregnant Sally Jackson. None of them do anything particularly impressive. Rachel is a smidge better (she's jealous when she finds out that Apollo has other oracles), but she doesn't do much. She's largely been sublimated to Meg. (What I would have done: Rachel's father or his business partner turns out to be one of the Triumvirate. She's the one who rescues Apollo and gets him to camp, with Percy's help, and goes on the adventure with him.)
Much better:
Will Solace, Apollo's healer son, started to come into focus at the end of The Blood of Olympus, when he starts flirting with Nico, and, more importantly, actually standing up to his Prince of Darkness routine and making him interact with the world. Here, Nico is a satellite while Will comes into his own. He's head counselor to the Apollo cabin, which means he has to keep his head when things go wrong (which they always do), and he feels very responsible for the well being of his siblings and the camp as a whole. He's a naturally good doctor, and he's the first one Apollo makes a real connection with. His siblings, Kayla and Austin, are less prominent (they are mostly missing for the book, as pieces for Apollo to rescue), but all three of them turn out to be caring and generous kids, who are sympathetic to Apollo and immediately behave as real family to him, which isn't always a given. (Riordan is pretty frank about how badly the Greek gods treated their kids.)
It's in Apollo's interactions with his kids that he becomes a very interesting character. He absolutely adores them. He chastises himself for being a terrible father (I have a feeling that sometime in the series, we're going to get some information about this that will change perceptions), but he loves it when Will, like his other son Asclepius, surpasses his skill as a medic, and he is absolutely delighted by the others as well, calling Austin his beautiful son, and praising Kayla's archery skills. He has to go on a quest, but he wants to stay with them, to be part of his cabin and part of life at camp. It wasn't what I expected in the first book. I figured that would be part of the process of character development. But it's there at the start, and I'm very interested in where it goes.
In general, it's a shaky but promising start. I trust Riordan to deliver on the rest of the series.
Spoiler space...
Spoiler space...
Spoiler space...
Okay, if you're still reading, you're going to get spoiled.
I adore Rick Riordan's Greek mythverse, in case you haven't noticed by the number of reviews. The man has an excellent grasp of the mythology, and he loves to throw in even more great tidbits as he learns them. The books have a great sense of humor, and a lot of genuine heart, too.
The Trials of Apollo is the third and final quintology of the series, which began with Percy Jackson and the Olympians and continued the Heroes of Olympus. Here, Riordan takes a fairly obscure pair of myths about Apollo being turned mortal as punishment from Zeus, and updates them into the contemporary world. Apollo, in trouble for letting his oracle set a prophecy in motion, comes crashing down into a garbagey alley in New York, as a sixteen year old mortal boy with acne. He has no idea how to regain his godhood, so he asks for Percy's help to get to Camp Half-Blood, and there, quests for the Grove of Dodona (the titular Hidden Oracle), because it's the only place where a good prophecy might be found a the moment (Apollo is the god of prophecy, among many other things, and neglectfully let his oracles be taken by a hostile force).
I'm going to be blunt: The beginning is rough here. The first several chapters had me doubting Riordan, as Apollo's voice is almost parodic, and the new character, Meg (a street urchin who protects him from bullies and then claims his service), is... well, irritating. And not just in Apollo's point of view. I was irritated at even being asked to care about this one.
But I stuck with it, because the first book of PJO started a little rough, too, and the series ultimately became quite good. In this book, things take a turn for the better when Apollo reaches Camp Half-Blood and begins to deal with his somewhat complicated relationship with his own half-blood children, now his own age or even older. This is when he begins to develop his own voice, and it's actually quite winning.
If you're hoping for a lot of check-in with older characters, keep hoping. Percy appears at a couple of key points, and Nico is a small presence throughout (he's dating Apollo's son). Another member of the crew of the Argo II shows up at the end, with an implicit promise of more in the next book. Everyone else is just name-checked. Apollo lampshades it by wondering where the A-listers are, but it still feels a little bit of a cheat.
Elements.
Style:
It has the usual Riordan touches, acknowledging the absurdity of the situation and using sarcasm and wry humor to make it feel like, yes, this is how modern people would react to these elements of Greek myth. The chapter titles are done in deliberately bad haiku (god of poetry, of course). The most dangerous of all prophecies are delivered as limericks, which we learn by the horrified reactions of Apollo and his oracle, Rachel Dare, to a limerick delivered by the Grove. There's a talking arrow that gives Apollo instructions in Shakespeare-esque dialogue, and Rhea appears as a first wave feminist hippie who thinks the young goddesses coming up don't really understand the struggle, since they weren't asked to stand by their men while he ate their children. Basically, Riordan gives good Riordan on the tropes of the 'verse.
Like I said, the beginning is off-kilter. Apollo as a character in the earlier books had a certain grandiose way of talking, which is amusing in itself as dialogue, but as interior monologue, it's grating very quickly. It's understandable that he'd still think of himself as a god who ought to be worshiped instead of tossed in garbage, but there's a kind of self-consciousness to the prose that makes me feel more like Riordan is making fun of his protag than that he's dealing with the protag as a character. This starts to self-correct as Apollo becomes more human.
The interesting thing about it is that Apollo turns out to actually be a very decent guy, and the less he brags, the more apparent that becomes. At first, he's talking about how awesome he is, but later, he decides that he's a terrible person, that he's not as worthy as his children, that he's nothing but a blowhard... but throughout the whole thing, we've seen him quite consistently doing the right thing, worrying about his children when they're taken, befriending his son Will (who he is happy to play second fiddle to as a healer), being deeply proud of his daughter Kayla and his son Austin (an archer and a musician, respectively), staying loyal to Meg even when her behavior is open to question, and generally being a good egg. Like his inability to be a perfect archer or play music perfectly, he is focused on his failings while the text makes clear that he's succeeding wildly. It's a very good example of unreliable narration.
Setting:
A garbagey alley, Percy's apartment, an orchard on Long Island, and Camp Half-Blood. This isn't a very setting-heavy book. The labyrinth is back, and will likely be more of a plot point later on.
Theme:
I'm not sure I can say, thematically, what it's all about, Alfie. There's a lot of focus on destiny and on innate talents. Maybe some notion of finding out what you're really good for, getting to that middle ground between "I'm the greatest god that ever was" and "I'm an unworthy worm." But if I were to put a circle around weakness in this particular story, it's that I feel like this first book doesn't know what it wants to be about. The same was true of The Lightning Thief, except that the plot there had more urgency. I could almost feel Riordan groping for a theme. I think it will come together more in subsequent books, because there were a few places where it was touching on something. I just can't quite put my finger on it.
Plot:
Eh. There's a lot of exposition here, and the plot skips around a little bit. Meg rescues Apollo, then they're with Percy, then there's a problem at camp (kids disappearing into the woods), and there's a problem with prophecy and...
I'll get this over with. The new bad guys are semi-deified Roman emperors, led by Nero, who are trying to be a Triumvirate (Apollo reminds Nero that this never ends well). They are the financiers behind the events of the other books, and I have to admit, I'm getting bad season six Buffy vibes from them. Meg's connection to them is painfully obvious from the start, and Riordan still treated it like a big reveal. Not loving this development.
Other than that, there's the search for the Grove, an encounter with giant ants, and a fight with a giant bronze statue of Apollo, which annoys him because it's got a neck beard. Also, he finds himself irritated that it's not wearing underwear, even though he knows they almost never do. Because it's weird having a battle with a 50 foot tall naked bronze version of yourself, I guess.
Finally, Apollo gets a prophecy to set him on the path to his next adventure, which is going to at least be started in the company of a crewman on the Argo, his girlfriend, and another bronze automaton.
Characters:
Since this largely exists to introduce the character situation, that's where the book spends most of its time.
Unfortunately, the old characters don't appear much, and the new characters are kind of duds.
Not good:
Meg McCaffrey is a twelve-year-old half-blood (daughter of Demeter, which for some reason was treated as a big deal to Apollo), who has been living on the streets with a protector. (Three guesses.) She's not actively unpleasant, but she's also just... not there. We're asked to care about her immediately, and the character gives us no compelling reason for it.
Nero... I can't with this villain. There is no point at which I care about what he's doing. Maybe that will change; I don't know.
Percy and Chiron: Are there. So is a pregnant Sally Jackson. None of them do anything particularly impressive. Rachel is a smidge better (she's jealous when she finds out that Apollo has other oracles), but she doesn't do much. She's largely been sublimated to Meg. (What I would have done: Rachel's father or his business partner turns out to be one of the Triumvirate. She's the one who rescues Apollo and gets him to camp, with Percy's help, and goes on the adventure with him.)
Much better:
Will Solace, Apollo's healer son, started to come into focus at the end of The Blood of Olympus, when he starts flirting with Nico, and, more importantly, actually standing up to his Prince of Darkness routine and making him interact with the world. Here, Nico is a satellite while Will comes into his own. He's head counselor to the Apollo cabin, which means he has to keep his head when things go wrong (which they always do), and he feels very responsible for the well being of his siblings and the camp as a whole. He's a naturally good doctor, and he's the first one Apollo makes a real connection with. His siblings, Kayla and Austin, are less prominent (they are mostly missing for the book, as pieces for Apollo to rescue), but all three of them turn out to be caring and generous kids, who are sympathetic to Apollo and immediately behave as real family to him, which isn't always a given. (Riordan is pretty frank about how badly the Greek gods treated their kids.)
It's in Apollo's interactions with his kids that he becomes a very interesting character. He absolutely adores them. He chastises himself for being a terrible father (I have a feeling that sometime in the series, we're going to get some information about this that will change perceptions), but he loves it when Will, like his other son Asclepius, surpasses his skill as a medic, and he is absolutely delighted by the others as well, calling Austin his beautiful son, and praising Kayla's archery skills. He has to go on a quest, but he wants to stay with them, to be part of his cabin and part of life at camp. It wasn't what I expected in the first book. I figured that would be part of the process of character development. But it's there at the start, and I'm very interested in where it goes.
In general, it's a shaky but promising start. I trust Riordan to deliver on the rest of the series.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Ender's Game Prequels, by Card and Johnston
I was in either my junior or senior year of high school, if I recall correctly. It was, at any rate, the first science fiction convention I was going to go to, with a friend of mine and her mother. One of the guests of honor was Orson Scott Card, who I'd never heard of. My friend shoved Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead into my hands and said, "YOU HAVE TO READ THESE."
I more or less missed the convention, curled up in bed, reading the story of Ender Wiggin as it existed at the time. Like many an academically gifted kid before and since, I gulped it down. Yes. This was a true story. It's a nutty story about alien invasions and a convoluted plot about having to believe a real war was a game because only a brilliant child who didn't know he was doing it could win it, but it was also a real story about a kid who was isolated and lonely, whose ambiguous relationship with the power structures left him with no one who understood him, with the exception of one kid, possibly even smarter, but younger and less socially adept. It was the story of the equally bright brother and sister, who weren't chosen for the program for other reasons, but who felt frustrated, bored, and out-of-place in an everyday school. And proceeded to take the world over by interesting uses of "the nets," a fairly prescient notion of an internet as it would become in a few years (and may become again, if it gets stepped on and reined in a lot).
Someone knew how all of that felt. It was repeated in Speaker for the Dead, with young Novinha, though that novel was less interested in the visceral character creation and more interested in the speculative part of speculative fiction.
The following sequel novels, Xenocide and Children of the Mind, had strong points to them, but never reached the intensity of EG and SftD. I liked a lot of the introduced characters, but the speculation got more than a little odd. (Beating lightspeed travel by wishing was probably the worst, though the philosophical wrangling over a lethal but possibly sentient virus also got a little tiresome.) Then there was the parallel series, beginning with Ender's Shadow, telling the story of Bean, the aforementioned younger child who became Ender's friend. I liked many things in the Shadow series, and disliked many things in it, about in equal measure. Bean's story was too much of a trauma conga line, basically, and I would have liked more of Peter's plot and less of the ridiculous villain Achilles de Flandres. Seriously, I kept expecting him to grow a mustache just so he could twirl it absurdly; the problem wasn't that he was scary. It was that I never believed in him for a second past his initial moment of threat in Bean's early story. He was a believable threat in that context. Everything after it was just eye-roll-worthy.
So basically, I didn't jump straight into the Formic Wars series, which are the prequel to the main series, telling the story of the First Formic Invasion, co-written by Aaron Johnston (I neither know nor care who wrote what in the story). I finally decided to give it a go.
The first book (Earth Unaware), largely concerned with miners out in the Kuiper Belt, left me vaguely intrigued, but I wouldn't have been in a rush for the second, except that I had nothing else pressing on my list. It wasn't bad, per se, just kind of a pedestrian story. We get to meet the main players, including rich mining magnate Lem Jukes, working class "free miner" Victor Delgado, and Wit O'Toole, the head of the international strike force which would obviously become the international fleet. Lem and his dramas aren't thrilling, though there's some interesting work with perspective and unreliable narration. Victor is a good character, though his story arc seems little herky jerky for the first half of the novel. Wit's the most interesting, and in the most interesting setting (Earth... unaware!), plus he gets us to the only known character, Mazer Rackham, who is rejected from the strike force... but he also gets the least screen time.
The second and third books, which are really a single story, from the actual invasion through the destruction of the scout ship, are much better.
Or maybe I just really like the action scenes, and they are super action heavy. I learned for myself how difficult action scenes are to write, and I have a great deal of respect for people who can write them well, and use them to advance the story and the characters. It's much harder to have a character grow while you're also maneuvering him through battles than have him gaze at his naval for a few chapters and tell you all about himself. They also introduce a Cardian character on the level of Ender or Bean in young Bingwen, a boy trapped in the devastation when the Formics begin their attack in southeast China. Through the course of the books, he attaches himself to Mazer and later to the strike team, but is most striking in the third book, when, with the help of a medical device designed for soldiers on the battlefield, becomes a de facto medic. All of the characters make their way into the same sphere for the final attack... and then we're left with a young woman discovering, after the devastation, that the second invasion is on the way.
I will be joining the series in progress this May, when The Swarm comes out.
I more or less missed the convention, curled up in bed, reading the story of Ender Wiggin as it existed at the time. Like many an academically gifted kid before and since, I gulped it down. Yes. This was a true story. It's a nutty story about alien invasions and a convoluted plot about having to believe a real war was a game because only a brilliant child who didn't know he was doing it could win it, but it was also a real story about a kid who was isolated and lonely, whose ambiguous relationship with the power structures left him with no one who understood him, with the exception of one kid, possibly even smarter, but younger and less socially adept. It was the story of the equally bright brother and sister, who weren't chosen for the program for other reasons, but who felt frustrated, bored, and out-of-place in an everyday school. And proceeded to take the world over by interesting uses of "the nets," a fairly prescient notion of an internet as it would become in a few years (and may become again, if it gets stepped on and reined in a lot).
Someone knew how all of that felt. It was repeated in Speaker for the Dead, with young Novinha, though that novel was less interested in the visceral character creation and more interested in the speculative part of speculative fiction.
The following sequel novels, Xenocide and Children of the Mind, had strong points to them, but never reached the intensity of EG and SftD. I liked a lot of the introduced characters, but the speculation got more than a little odd. (Beating lightspeed travel by wishing was probably the worst, though the philosophical wrangling over a lethal but possibly sentient virus also got a little tiresome.) Then there was the parallel series, beginning with Ender's Shadow, telling the story of Bean, the aforementioned younger child who became Ender's friend. I liked many things in the Shadow series, and disliked many things in it, about in equal measure. Bean's story was too much of a trauma conga line, basically, and I would have liked more of Peter's plot and less of the ridiculous villain Achilles de Flandres. Seriously, I kept expecting him to grow a mustache just so he could twirl it absurdly; the problem wasn't that he was scary. It was that I never believed in him for a second past his initial moment of threat in Bean's early story. He was a believable threat in that context. Everything after it was just eye-roll-worthy.
So basically, I didn't jump straight into the Formic Wars series, which are the prequel to the main series, telling the story of the First Formic Invasion, co-written by Aaron Johnston (I neither know nor care who wrote what in the story). I finally decided to give it a go.
The first book (Earth Unaware), largely concerned with miners out in the Kuiper Belt, left me vaguely intrigued, but I wouldn't have been in a rush for the second, except that I had nothing else pressing on my list. It wasn't bad, per se, just kind of a pedestrian story. We get to meet the main players, including rich mining magnate Lem Jukes, working class "free miner" Victor Delgado, and Wit O'Toole, the head of the international strike force which would obviously become the international fleet. Lem and his dramas aren't thrilling, though there's some interesting work with perspective and unreliable narration. Victor is a good character, though his story arc seems little herky jerky for the first half of the novel. Wit's the most interesting, and in the most interesting setting (Earth... unaware!), plus he gets us to the only known character, Mazer Rackham, who is rejected from the strike force... but he also gets the least screen time.
The second and third books, which are really a single story, from the actual invasion through the destruction of the scout ship, are much better.
Or maybe I just really like the action scenes, and they are super action heavy. I learned for myself how difficult action scenes are to write, and I have a great deal of respect for people who can write them well, and use them to advance the story and the characters. It's much harder to have a character grow while you're also maneuvering him through battles than have him gaze at his naval for a few chapters and tell you all about himself. They also introduce a Cardian character on the level of Ender or Bean in young Bingwen, a boy trapped in the devastation when the Formics begin their attack in southeast China. Through the course of the books, he attaches himself to Mazer and later to the strike team, but is most striking in the third book, when, with the help of a medical device designed for soldiers on the battlefield, becomes a de facto medic. All of the characters make their way into the same sphere for the final attack... and then we're left with a young woman discovering, after the devastation, that the second invasion is on the way.
I will be joining the series in progress this May, when The Swarm comes out.
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