Review: The Last Detective

The Last Detective by Robert Crais

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This might be the great American detective novel.

It perfectly captures the spirit of the genre:
It is a once-in-a-series opportunity for Elvis Cole to solve a deeply personal mystery, and it delivers on
all fronts. The mystery is pernicious, and is solved by honest-to-god detective work.
There are actual consequences for character actions. The characters* emerge at the end
changed from how they were at the beginning. (And I trust Robert Crais to carry these changes through
the series). But really, what makes this novel work is that it presents the detective as hero: Intelligent,
determined, and in the end, indomitable. This world is the kind of world I want to live in.

The only (minor) negative is that the main threat never quite feels fully threatening,
but this quite forgivable in the face of how awesome everything else is.

* Except, perhaps, Joe Pike, which is as it should be.



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Review: The Stand

The Stand by Stephen King

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



** Spoiler alert for both this book (and minor ones) for the Passage by Justin Cronin **

At long last*, my review of the classic post-apocalyptic** novel.

Stephen King is a very talented writer, and commensurately, The Stand is very good. And yet, I still found this novel not completely to my taste.

I have always found Stephen King to be highly readable, and able to make both the pedestrian and the wildly implausible seem equally interesting and engaging. In particular, the characters in this book are pretty good. They're all distinctive, which is a pretty neat trick seeing as there are way too damn many of them. The main ones at least get a fair bit of character growth and maturation (even the bad guys change and grow--if not always towards the light...)

Despite this, the best parts of the novel don't really have much to do with the main characters at all. The chapter which documents the deaths, not by the the flu, of dozens of the survivors really sings, as does the creepy graph-theoretic montage of disease transmission.

But here's the problem. I get that King is really telling a story about religion and the arbitrariness of ritual sacrifice.*** But it makes the novel feel kind of hollow when the heroes whom over the past 1100 pages have been charged with saving the world don't actually have to do anything but be there to get snuffed.**** And beyond the climax, a bunch of the the other character endings didn't really have enough meat to them.*****
In the most egregious case, I get that King needed his villains to have some teeth, but, dude, you suddenly and capriciously killed my favorite character when there were like 4 (for lack of a better term) red-shirts
in the room. Not cool.

A few other details and comments. I read the extended version (why bother with anything else...) Having spent
a bit of time on the wikipedia page to figure out the differences, I think I'm glad I
read the expanded addition, if for no other reason than that "The Kid" is scary and funny. That being said, his is another character whose denouement was not...big enough for the novel. Nextly, what is up with the cover art? I get that it's the final climactic battle between good an evil,****** but that scythe guy that has been on the cover for basically every edition of the novel I've ever seen is not even actually hinted at in the text. Is he supposed to be Flagg?...why the scythe?!?!?!
And finally, is or is this not, basically, the exact same damn book as The Passage. Seriously, right down to the damn nuke. At least the Passage has some surviving characters (and a sequel)...*******

* This book has been on my radar since like the mid-90s...
** Does it count as "post" apocalyptic if the apocalypse happens during the events of the novel?
*** Or maybe Stephen King really believes in the cleansing power of arbitrally killing good people. I don't

know.
**** Don't get me wrong the nuke was pretty cool. But the hand of god thing was kind of dumb.
***** Like basically all of the bad guys, most of whom went up with the aforementioned nuke. I was ok with

Harold's exit, but Nadine could have used, you know, a couple more paragraphs, or something.
****** Except it's not, see *******.
******* Yes, yes, I know there's a larger Stephen King continuity. I'm slowly working my way through the dark

tower series, but i really don't think that counts.



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Review: Knife of Dreams

Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Oh, goodness, this is going to have spoilers galore.

After a long hiatus (with the intention of making it so that I would finish Towers of Midnight just in time to read A Memory of Light; but with that date something like a week away and with me being about half way through New Spring with two more full-lengths to read after that, it looks like I may have over shot...oops) I am back at my wheel of time re-read.*

And so, without further ado, and enumerated for your convenience, my thoughts on The Knife of Dreams.

1) I TOLD YOU MOIRAINE WASN'T DEAD! (On the other hand, I'm kind of impressed at Robert Jordan for stringing that particular plot thread along, basically without barely so much as a hint for six 800 page books.) By my recollection, the only plot thread that's now been hanging on longer is who killed Asmodean....)
2) Boy, for what might be the biggest plot revelation in the whole book, the loss of Rand's hand
is...underwhelming. I mean, we knew his meeting with the Daughter of the Nine Moons was fake, cause, uh, she's with Mat, thanks...., but the "oh hey it's Semihrage, and oh hey she burnt off his hand" was just.....kinda pedestrian.**
3) I never felt the same fatigue at the Faile, Perrin subplot. Its conclusion was mostly satisfying, except that I thought Aram's death sucked. Even though I liked him, I didn't really mind that he got brainwashed by Masema. He was always was intended to be a tragic figure, but killed randomly by Aiel? bull$#i^.***
4. It kind of seemed to me like Robert Jordan was going out of his way to avoid Heroic Charges. (I mean, this has been a theme of his for some time....) I guess that the one actual charge (Guybon against the darkfriends) was pretty heroic, but I thought the rest of that battle (i.e. to retake Caemlyn) was kind of a mess. We're just going to Travel to right behind them and start fighting. Have fun!
5. I rather liked the ending of the epilogue, it was delightfully creepy. on the other hand, I'm kind of disappointed that Mazrim Taim is actually a Darkfriend. Partially that's because I liked him, but more so, cause I wanted him to *just* be a bastard....
6. I was also disappointed with the title. I mean, it's called "Knife of Dreams" I was expecting some crazy Tel-aran-rhiod shenanigans, and there was basically nothing. Just a random quote from yet another historical figure in one of the heroes' heads.
7. Likewise, holy God is the cover art bad. Is that supposed to be Gual on the cover? He looks dumpy! There are _so_ _many_ iconic scenes in this book: The loss of Rand's hand, the taking of Caemlyn, the charge against the darkfriends, Mat does...anything, the meeting of Pevara with Marzim Taim. The dead walking among the living, that guy sinking into the ground. Galad Fights Pedron Niall. Egwene getting spanked.
And yet Mr. Sweet chose....Perrin sitting around a table. What. the. Fuck.

As you're probably gathering from these bullets, I actually liked this book quite a lot. An awful lot more happens in this book than in the last one, it advances the story well, and reemphasizes some of the themes of the burden of leadership, the necessity of war, etc. Still, there were some moments when I wanted to fling the book across the room. Like in the first chapter. Did we really need the excruciating detail of Siuan's walk (and ride, and moon for Gareth Bryne) through the Aes Sedai camp? I could barely remember who half of the people she encountered were, nor why I should care****

* Well, since Path of Daggers it's just been my Wheel of time read.
** I mean, it's not that surprising a revelation to anyone whose, oh, SEEN THE COVER OF THE GATHERING STORM, (and people on the internet claim this was well foreshadowed.) All I really have to say to that is, "I never thought I'd miss a hand so much." (Pic related)

*** On the other hand, I did like the kind of awful conclusion to the Faile-Rolan storyline. It's gruesome, inevitable, and heartbreakingly sad.
**** Turns out for most of them, I probably shouldn't.




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Review: Synechdoche, New York

Note: So, I wrote this review right after I watched the movie, about 8 months ago. I just noticed that I never posted it. So, here you go!

Review: Synechdcohe, New York
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.








.....what....the....fuuuuuuuuuuuuck?

 This is one weird movie. It's packed to the gills with imagery and symbolism. I actually liked it quite a lot. I think Charlie Kaufmen does a tremendous job of using his weird plot devices to capture something significant about life*, love**, art***, death****.

Unfortunately, as a consequence, I'm not sure I have much more to say. I mean, the symbolism of the film is fairly transparent. The acting is fine***** (but is really not the point), the highlight of the film is really the background detail: the various clues as to what's going on in the world as we zip forward into the future, the ever increasing detail of the warehouse.

So, lacking anything more profound to say, I want to talk about the poop. One of the things that makes this movie remarkable is that it talks about human feces. This is kind of remarkable, because outside of the sub-sub genre of gross-out comedies, I defy you to find feces discussed in any serious film, and yet it's hard to argue that it's not an important part of the human existence. I mean, every one produces it on a near daily basis. And so, I present this as a microcosm of why Synechdoche is so successful. Synechdoche doesn't shy away from any part of the human existence, no matter how taboo.

Afternote. I am tremendously glad I watched this movie BEFORE I saw this episode of community. Bravo, Mr. Harmon.

* Being John Malkovich
** The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
*** Adaptation (my personal favorite)
**** And, finally Synecdoche. Not that each of these movies are about only one thing, of course...
***** I think I'm just getting tired of Phillip Seymore Hoffman, I mean, he's been in, like, everything. I have to say though, the guy that plays his double was outstanding.

Review: Hell and Gone

Hell and Gone by Duane Swierczynski
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sigh. This book was no where near as good as its predecessor.

I mean, it takes some doing to be even less realistic than Fun and GamesFun and Games but here you have it.

In summary (some mild spoilers for Fun and Games): After royally pissing off The Accident People, Charlie Hardie is abducted and sent to a bizzaro kafka-esque prison. There he interacts with the various guards the prisoners and plots his escape.*

So, one of the things that made Fun and Games so engaging was the claustrophobia invoked by the Hollywood Hills. Ironically, the claustrophobia induced by the prison where most of the action in the book takes place has the opposite effect. The Hollywood Hills are sufficiently accessible that new characters could be introduced or removed, where as the prison was static and as a result the stakes felt waaaaay lower.

Plus, I don't know, the way my brain is wired I'm willing to accept that there is a secret society of assassins that, for the right price, commit murders and make them look like accidents, but i'm not really willing to accept that those same people would own an underground prison**. Nor still would they at the very end.***

* Major pet peeve here: the conceit of the prison was _both_ bewilderingly obvious, and tremendously badly explained.
** (Mild Spoiler) Let alone one affiliated with a major university.
*** If you've read the book (or even the synopsis of the sequel you'll know what I mean.)



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Review: This Crooked Way

This Crooked Way by James Enge

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This might be the most uneven book I've ever read.

Part of it is obviously due to it's structure. The novel is made up of a sequence of short stories. Some of them were probably going to be duds.

Don't get me wrong. Some of them are awesome. "Where Nurgnantz Dwells" is amazing, for one thing. For another, despite his general weakness in characterization*, James Enge does a surprisingly impressive job with his female characters, and the two stories with female narrators are certainly the best of the middle sequence.

On the other hand, Morlock is something of a Mary Sue. He's _always
_ one step ahead, always has the magic to win the day, or just happened to have built the bridge your standing on and knows how to knock it over. This isn't bad in and of itself, but the book gets a little tiresome, when for the 15th time, Morlock concentrates, does something impressive with Tal**, summons his magic sword and.... Yup, Morlock wins again.

I liked Blood of Ambrose because it gently and subtly rose the stakes from "oh, political intrigue." to "is Morlock and Friend or a Foe?" to "holy shit zombies!" But this book had none of that escalation. I will give some consideration to reading the next Morlock book, since I already own it,*** but probably not for a good long while.


* Part of this is a problem of the medium. It's hard to introduce good characters in a short story...
** The magic systems sucks. There, I said it.
*** Bought on the strength of Blood of Ambrose alone. Oops.



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Review: Angelmaker

Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



With only two books out, Nick Harkaway has rocketed to near the top of my favorite authors list. This is the best book I've read in a while. It is fun, complex without being convoluted, has great action, and Something to Say. I love Nick Harkaway's writing. I love the intricate sentences and the extraordinary amount of detail given to the characters, the settings, the scenes.* And as I was reading Angelmaker and writing other reviews, I would notice over and over again just how much Nick Harkaway's writing has influenced my own. Even though he's ONLY WRITTEN TWO BOOKS!**

But.

Yes, unfortunately, there's a sizeable:

But.

I loved this book, but I didn't love it as much as I loved The Gone Away World. The ambiance was great, but some of action didn't quite fit the tone. Every scenes moves forward at a brisk pace, but in between scenes I would put the book down for months at a time with no apparent desire to pick it up again.*** Nick Harkaway is near the top of my favorite authors list, but he was before Angelmaker ever came out.

So, I declare: Go out and buy this book. Support Nick Harkaway. Join me in eagerly waiting his next novel.**** Read his blog.*****

But get the Gone Away World first.


* Aubergine porn. 'Nuff said.
** Technically not true; I think he has a nonfiction book out, but I haven't read it. . .
*** Which is why I wrote so many reviews in the interim.
**** Which I think might be coming soon due to delays in publishing Angelmaker? Here's hoping that's true.
***** Nick Harkaway writes some fabulous essays on his blog. For example, http://www.nickharkaway.com/2012/09/mistruth-and-the-lexicon/




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