A Meaningless Title

Stolen from sunnyskywalker

1) Look at the list, copy and paste it into your own journal.
2) Mark those you have read however you want.
3) Feel free to tell your friends what you thought of them.

Bold = Read
Italic = Started, but didn't finish

( Read more... )

 Total: 26 read, 9 unfinished, 65 unread.

What can I say about Breaking Dawn? I can say that it’s the only book of the series I’d describe as a ‘page turner’, and I can say that I didn’t hate it. I can also say that it’s possibly the most screwed up story I’ve ever read…

Alright, so you’ve got the first section of the book, which is Bella and Edward’s rather boring wedding and honeymoon. (It’s on a private island the Cullens own, off the coast of Brazil. Remind me again why these people are hanging around in small town Washington?) They have sex, which is apparently so totally awesome that Bella starts reconsidering becoming a vampire so she can keep having mind-blowing mortal/vampire sex. But Edward basically says “No, we’ve been dragging this out for three books already, we’re not going to end the series with you deciding not to become a vampire.” Then she gets pregnant.

And then we get the second part of the book, which is actually really good. Just… well, not entirely in the way intended. For some reason, after three and a half books from Isabella’s point of view, we now get a chunk of the book from the werewolf Jacob’s perspective. In addition, we get a sudden shift of genre. While the series so far has been entirely rather bland romance, suddenly we’re in the middle of a horror novel. A pretty good horror novel at that.

There was some earlier foreshadowing in the first part, about how a bunch of vampires created immortal vampire children, and that ‘You had but to be near them to love them; it was an automatic thing.” The vampire leaders destroyed them, and anyone who had a role in creating such things. Now Bella’s pregnant with a vampire baby – one growing at an accelerated rate, and is sucking the life out of her. Nobody expects she’ll survive the pregnancy; Edward wants the fetus destroyed. Most of the other vampires agree. The werewolves, now they’ve learned of the thing, have drawn up plans to eliminate the baby, even if it means destroying the Cullens and Bella in the process.

Now, a fair number of reviews have noted the rather strong anti-abortion message of Bella refusing to terminate the pregnancy, even at the cost of her own life. The thing is – if that’s what Meyer was going for, why don’t we get this section of the book from Bella’s point of view? Instead, this whole chunk of story is from Jacob’s perspective, and he’s just as horrified as anyone else. And why wouldn’t he be?

Let’s look at what we know. We know that vampires can control minds, influence people’s emotions. We know that people ‘automatically’ loved the old vampire children; that their creators died alongside them rather than sacrifice them to the Volturi. As the story develops, we find that the creature in Bella’s womb already thirsts for human blood. And then it begins to communicate telepathically with the other vampires. It is, apparently, already sapient, already able to communicate its goals and desires. Would not the first goal of such a creature be survival?

In that light, the sudden switch away from Bella’s point of view comes across as far darker than intended. It feels as though Bella, as a character, has been lost – that she has come under the control of her monstrous child, that it is not entirely her choice to sacrifice herself for the creature growing within her.

And this isn’t just my crazy reinterpretation. The story seems to want to draw attention to the creepyness. We get Jacob discussing how screwed up the werewolf ‘imprinting’ is – literally saying that it takes away your free will. It’s not my interpretation – the story wants to put the idea into your head that some of the characters are no longer acting of their own volition! Then we get a discussion that the werewolf imprinting is designed to ensure that the strongest werewolves reproduce; that those that don’t imprint are ‘genetic dead-ends’. So now we get the idea of a natural survival instinct that overwhelms the will of those involved pointed out to us.

And to be fair, I like the way this part of the story is written. It’s damn atmospheric; there’s a real sense of impending doom as Bella grows weaker. There’s some truly insane bits in here – at one point, Edward convinces Jacob to try and talk Bella out of having this baby. Edward’s idea? That if she’s so intent on having kids, she can have them with Jacob. It’s a bizarre development, but it’s also one of the few emotionally powerful sections in the series; you can feel how desperate Edward is to find a solution that will save his wife.

And then we get the twist ending – of a sort. Jacob’s given up; he’s gone off into town to try and find a woman he’ll imprint on. It’s written in a way that, if I didn’t know better, I’d assume was attempting to evoke the idea of committing suicide. Anyway, he can’t find any woman to bond with, so he heads back to the Cullens. The baby thing is about to be born, and it’s tearing Bella’s body apart; it had already cracked her ribs and pelvis, now it breaks her spine. Jacob has to be called in to rip the baby of her chest with his teeth – seriously, this is some sort of stealth anti-teen pregnancy propaganda, right?

And then it looks into his eyes. And he is lost.

That’s right, he imprints on the half-vampire child. Quote: “Everything inside me came undone… all the lines that held me to my life were sliced apart in swift cuts… everything that made me who I was… my love for my father, my loyalty to my pack… my home, my name, myself – disconnected from me in that second – snip, snip snip.”

I’m not making this shit up. Just look at this demon-child, and your entire identity is destroyed, erased, replaced with a overwhelming desire to love it, to please it, to serve it. I don’t see how this is anything but a horror story. And – well, like I said, I rather enjoyed it. It’s well written, atmospheric – and it takes some skill to write a series where vampires and werewolves are rather mundane and dull, but the old cliché of ‘love at first sight’ is treated as being equivalent to assimilation into the Borg hive…

And then we get part three, and a return to bland romance. Nah, it’s not too bad. Bella survives because Edward turns her into a vampire just before the childbirth killed her. But the vampire elders have heard about the demon-child (Bella names it “Renesmee”. As names go, it’s no Nyarlathotep or Shub-Niggurath, but it’s up there…), and begin massing their forces to destroy it. The Cullens draw together an army of vampires of their own, hoping that if enough vampires witness that the child is no threat, they’ll be able to convince the elders to let it live – and if not, they’ll go down fighting. Bunch of stuff happens, the two armies meet and debate various things, and after some tense negotiations and a demonstration of Bella’s amazing new vampire Mary-Sue powers, the elder vampires are convinced to let the issue drop. It’s not as good as the second section, but there’s a lot of tension, some interesting new characters, and a decent enough resolution of the various plot threads.

Like I said, I didn’t hate the book. It’s insane, but entertaining.

Random notes:

- Bella’s baby being a nightmarish mind-controlling demonspawn isn’t really played up much in the last third of the book. Still, here’s a few fun quotes from part three about little Renesmee:
“He said her name… the way devout people talk about their gods.” – p. 396
“Charlie was just as helpless against her magic as the rest of us. Two seconds in his arms, and already she owned him.” – p. 515
“No-one keeps her out… No-one can doubt the truth of her thoughts.” – p. 664

- On awakening as a vampire, Bella “could see each colour of the rainbow… and an eighth colour I had no name for.” That’s pretty cool – I didn’t know vampires could see Octarine…

Yeah, I’m a masochist. If there’s a book in my house, I’m going to read it, regardless of my expectations of quality.

Anyway, New Moon’s a hell of a lot better than Twilight – if nothing else, there’s a lot more story here, and we get some vampires actually acting like vampires. In the first couple of chapters, we get a room full of ‘friendly’ vampires be overwhelmed by bloodlust as Isabella accidently cuts herself, followed by a conversation about souls, and whether the vampires still have them. That’s pretty much my two largest complaints about Twilight taken care of right there.

Now, that’s not to say the story’s perfect; Edward Cullen, our romantic lead, still has no discernable personality traits. Every other vampire character comes across as far more interesting that him. It doesn’t help that what personality traits he has are increasingly creepy – and I’m still not entirely over the whole “He’s 100+ years old, but fakes being a high school student” thing. Sure, he looks seventeen, but surely he could fake being nineteen or something, and could have avoided having to go to school over and over again if he wanted to… then again, that brings us right back to “Why would a group of immortal un-aging vampires decide to hide out in a small town where everyone knows everyone, rather than in the anonymity of a large city?”

As for Isabella, our heroine – I find myself liking her despite myself. See, here’s the thing: She’s supposedly head-over-heels in love with Ed. But Edward doesn’t have any real personality – so the impression I get can’t be “She loves him because he’s charming/funny/whatever.” Instead, the impression I get is “She loves him because he’s the key to her achieving immortality.” The first few chapters, every time they’re together, she’s badgering him to agree to vampify her. She’s horrified at her birthday that another year has passed and she’s still aging. During the climax of the novel, her and another vampire are racing to Italy to rescue Edward from his poorly thought out suicide attempt – and on the plane, she’s trying to turn the conversation away from “How do we rescue my beloved without drawing the wrath of the vampire elders?” and towards “Say, you’re a vampire too – how about letting me on that action?” And then, having finally gotten the vampires to agree to vampify her, she seems far more excited by that outcome than by her being reunited with her one true love who has, by the way, just proposed to her.

It’s an unusual – and probably not entirely intentional – choice of characterisation, but as I mentioned in my Twilight review, it’s not like there seem to be any actual downsides to being a Twilight vampire. Why wouldn’t you make every possible effort to gain immortality once you learned of the possibility? Yeah, yeah, yeah, sparkly vampire boyfriend, who cares about that when I’m still subject to the forces of entropy and decay? In her position, I'd be just as determined to achieve immortality.

Granted, there’s the whole section where Isabella becomes suicidally depressed because her vampire buddies have decided to go into hiding (and stolen her car stereo), but again, since there’s nothing specific about Edward himself she’s missing, I think it’s a defensible interpretation that she’s not too concerned about him, she just doesn’t see the point in continuing her life now she’s doomed once again to inevitable decay and death.

Of course, it also occurred to me during this section that the reason she’s so depressed once the vampires leave is that they don’t feed on blood after all – they feed on human emotions or souls; she’d been in a state of heightened emotion and ecstasy while she was around them because they were drawing out her emotions in order to feed on them. Now they’ve used her up, cast her aside, and she’s left a soul-less husk, her ability to feel true joy or happiness entirely consumed by them. So, yeah, maybe I’m just trying to come up with a more interesting interpretation of events than the book is actually offering me…

Still, at least this volume actually has enough happening to spark the imagination somewhat, whereas Twilight had literally nothing happening for the majority of the book. I’m actually vaguely interested to see where the story’s going next, so that’s a big improvement.

Other quibbles:

- Isabella’s non-supernatural friends still don’t seem to have any actual role to play in things. Why do they keep getting so much attention directed at them? They don’t even qualify as “comic relief’. (I don’t mean they’re not funny – I mean they’re not even meant to be funny. They’re just bland – even blander than the protagonists, if such a thing is possible.)
- The werewolf plotline really didn’t seem to go anywhere. What’s the origin of the ‘vampires and werewolves are mortal enemies’ idea, anyway? At this point, it’s practically a cliché. I want to see a setting where they work together for once…
- I like that vampires are apparently loners in this setting. The vampire elders in Italy are the biggest vampire organisation in the world; they’ve got almost a dozen vampires living with them! Explains why vampires have never taken over; they don’t work together well enough to organise anything large-scale. Plus, it’s a good contrast with the werewolf pack structure.
- Is Stephenie Meyer a mechanic in real life or something? These books seem to have far more details about different types of cars and auto repairs than I’d expect from the genre or audience.
- Alright, so Edward’s going to commit suicide by elder vampire. He’s going to wander into the sunlight at midday in their capital city, because he knows they’ll kill him first lest he ruin their secret. Here’s the thing – Twilight vampires don’t combust in sunlight. They’re not hideous Nosferatu monsters either. If they step into sunlight, they sparkle. I’m not entirely sure anyone seeing a sparkly figure emerge in a city square on the feast day of that city’s patron saint is really going to think “Holy shit, vampires are real!”. It might draw in more pilgrims than the vampire elders want to deal with on a regular basis, but since their food supply appears to be ‘clueless tourists’ anyway, it doesn’t seem like Edward’s really causing them much of a problem…

I’ve mentioned a few times before that I pretty much lost all interest in the EU about halfway through the New Jedi Order series, largely because I found it pointlessly depressing. And since then I’ve had no interest in going back to find out what happened in the rest of the series. There’s two reasons for this; number one, I never really cared about the story when I was reading it, and two, because the ending I’ve constructed in my head is no doubt much more satisfying than whatever ended up being published.

See, in my trawling through the internet, I have ended up finding out one major detail about the storyline of the New Jedi Order – that Borsk Fey’lya sacrificed himself, killing thousands of Yuuzhan Vong soldiers in the process. So in my personal interpretation, that’s the end of the story. Fey’lya’s sacrifice destroyed the majority of the Vong invasion force, ending the threat forever and saving the galaxy.

Because, you see, Fey’lya is one of my favourite characters, and if he’s going to die, I want it to be a galaxy-changing event, and I want everyone to be forced to recognise his heroism and apologise for ten years of novels where he was portrayed as a villain, often with little to no justification.

( Politics isn’t something the post ROTJ-EU handled very well.  )

The Jedi Academy Trilogy are Not Very Good Books.

All right, so that might not come as much of a shock to most people. Still, I recently reread them, and I was surprised by just how bad they were. I mean, I remembered that I never thought very much of them, but I’d forgotten just how terrible they were.

I started reading them a while back because, well, I hadn’t read them in a decade or so, and I wanted something light to read on the train. I thought, ‘hey, Kevin J. Anderson has written a ton of books; he must be at least a competent writer, if not a particularly inspiring one.’ I was wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

( See, it’s not that Anderson’s a bad writer, or that he has bad ideas (though he is, and does) )

Yes, I know, there's a lot of contenders for that title. But in re-reading the craptacular Jedi Academy* trilogy, I think I've found the crown jewel: The Force Detector found on Coruscant in the first book.

What is it? Well, it's a pair of paddles that you put on either side of a person, and then it displays a hologram of them. If they're force-sensitive, there's a blue glow around them.

Stupid things:

• Paddles. That just sounds silly on its own.
• It's a machine that detects the Force, that pre-dates the Phantom Menace's midichlorians by five years.
• It was apparently used by the Empire in the Jedi purges. That's right, the Empire detected Jedi by grabbing people off the street, putting them between a pair of paddles, and scanning them to see if they could use the Force.
• It displays a hologram of the person you're scanning, despite the fact that the only data it's actually analysing is "Force Sensitive/Not-Force Sensitive". Can't it just beep or something?
• Finally, what makes it really stupid: Anderson devotes an entire chapter to finding the detector, retrieving it from the ruins of a secret imperial lab, having Luke work out what it does... and then it never actually gets used. Well - no, Lando uses it once to check if a con-artist is a force-sensitive or not. Of course, it's pretty much a formality at that point, since Lando already knows how the con-artist is working his scam and that he's not using the force to do it - also, the con-artist is never mentioned again.
  So you could cut the Enchanted Paddles of Detect Force from the book entirely without affecting the story whatsoever, but Kevin Anderson apparently felt they were such a brilliant idea that they had to go in anyway!

And that's why the Force Detector is the stupidest thing in the Star Wars EU. Say what you will about the other stupid concepts and ideas of the EU, at least they existed to move the story forward...

* Couldn't find anything good to read; hadn't read them in years, alright?

It used to be practically every novel I bought was a media tie-in. Since I'm loath to ever chuck out a book, I've still got tons of them... all the Bantam Star Wars EU novels, about half the New Jedi Order series, ridiculous numbers of Star Trek novels, most of the Babylon 5 novels - I've even got a couple of Doctor Who novelisations, which confuses me since I've never seen an episode of Doctor Who...

Now, I'm not embarrassed to be reading media tie-ins. The Star Wars EU has its moments, and some damn good authors wrote Star Trek novels - I'd never have heard of Barbara Hambly or Diane Duane if it wasn't for their Trek novels. Still, they do take up a lot of space, and a lot of them aren't that good. So, a few months back, I implemented a new rule: any book I re-read that doesn't have any particular redeeming value goes in a stack. Every so often, I take all the books in the stack to a second hand bookshop or opportunity shop, where some new undiscriminating reader can enjoy them - and I get more free shelf space to fill with books I actually like. Goodbye, The Crystal Star! Get out of here, Bounty Hunter Wars! Sayonara, Price of the Pheonix!

Since it's always fun to tear crap apart, I thought it'd be entertaining to write a little bit on some of these books before I consign them to oblivion - or at least, get them off my bookshelves.

Today's entry is David Dvorkin's Star Trek TOS novel "Timetrap"

Basic plot: The Enterprise is cruising space when it runs into a damaged Klingon warship. While trying to evacuate the crew, the Klingon ship disappears - with Kirk still onboard! Oh, and some redshirts, but nobody cares about them. (Seriously, they're never mentioned again. I guess it's true to the source material.)
Kirk finds himself on a Klingon starbase, and is told he's a hundred years in the future, in a time when the Klingons and Federation are allies. I assume this was more surprising before The Next Generation was made, a show set a hundred years after TOS, in a time where the Klingons and Federation are allies...
The future Klingons tell Kirk that they're 'New Klingons', a peaceful faction of Klingons who rose to power after Kirk led a fleet of them to Earth to negotiate a peace treaty. They then tell him that to preserve the timeline, he has to go back to his own time to ensure that happens. Also, they're sending a fleet back with him to play the role of the New Klingons who negotiated the peace treaty.
So they all go back in time and run into the Enterprise again. Kirk tells Spock about the New Klingons, but Spock's still skeptical. Kirk beams back to the Enterprise with one of the New Klingons (A woman, who he's fallen in love with. Of course.), at which point the shocking truth comes out! There are no New Klingons, and he never travelled in time at all! He was just being tricked by regular old Klingons after all! Wow, I didn't see that coming!
There's also a subplot about Klingons infiltrating Starfleet, but that doesn't go anywhere or impact anything important.