j – Page 5 – Triple Take

Jâ€™s Take on A Spy in the House by Y. S. Lee

The basic premise of A Spy in the House is that it’s er.. Victorian? London and this girl is plucked from prison where she’s about to be hanged for theft, and brought to a school. Where she learns, not how to be a proper lady, but how to think for herself. Not that she needed much help there. But she also learns maths and things. Only learning and then teaching at the school isn’t enough, and she asks if there isn’t more. And there is. There’s the Agency, which is a private company of spies. Female spies.

Unfortunately, we don’t get to see the school at ALL. Unless you count the headmistresses’ (or whoever they are) study, or room, or office (whatever it is). Four or five years go by between the introduction and the first chapter, and suddenly she’s 17 and ready to go do spy stuff. We don’t even get to see any of her super-intensive super-secret spy training!

But, that’s okay, because she was so super-awesome that she could do it super-intensively and not the long way. And maybe I wouldn’t have twigged ‘Mary Sue!’ if it hadn’t been so recently after my discussion with K about Babel-17. But I’m calling it on this one. Total Mary Sue.

So, yea, okay, the school sounds mostly normal and boring. But it was new to her and I really, really, really would’ve liked to have seen some of it. So, at this point I’m already rather annoyed. I’m more annoyed when she passes their spy wannabe test with super-awesome flying colors. I then get further annoyed when several chapters in, we randomly get a chapter from some guy’s point of view.

It’s around about this time that I start feeling it’s a historical romance novel disguised as a YA adventure-intrigue-mystery novel. Grr.

My annoyance escalates when, in the first scene where the main character (Er.. name name.. what was her name…? Mary Quinn? Ha ha! It totally was. Okay.) The first scene where Mary Sue Quinn and Hunky McDreamy are together, the point of view completely breaks down. Utter failure. It was his point of view, but then we get one of her thoughts. And that’s not a fluke. Because the entwined confusing points of view recur every time they’re later in a scene together.

So now I’m just ready for this book to be over with so I can write my review full of annoyance about it. But I’m not even halfway through. Fortunately it’s not a slog. And it’s not a long read. It’s just not a particularly interesting one either.

Then, ladies and gentlebeings of other genders, then we learn something about Mary Sue’s past that she knew all along. No, dude. No. You don’t get to hide something that important from us. If it was first person, sure. But it’s third person and we’re inside her head. The author should not be keeping that sort of secret from us. It’s just wrong.

And, yes, it does make the whole story a little more interesting from that point on, but I’m still beyond annoyed and into mad now. And while I’m reading, in the back of my mind I’m thinking.. if I say this in my review, is it a spoiler? When I firmly believe it should have been revealed in the first chapter? Hrrrm. Am I complicit in hiding it from other readers by not mentioning it? Well.. now you’re warned at least. And if you care to know, probably the second book in the series says it right in the summary.

So the next thing that happens is Mary Sue Q does the unforgiveable. She receives some deeply important information about her past. And she doesn’t read it. And she doesn’t take it with her. Why? I have no idea. You’d think she’d have plenty of hiding places in her dress. It’s not like it’s a steamy romance novel and McDreamy was going to rip it off of her in the next scene.

So, la la la.. plot, bickering, plot, flirting, plot, standard dialog you’d find from two love interests who don’t get along at first, maybe plot or something. And then it’s all over. The end.

Except it’s not. Because there are loose ends.

But there’s no way I’m reading the next book to see if they’re tied up!

And now I feel remorse. I feel I was too harsh on it. So let me soften the blow at the end here. It does try to say some things about gender. Women can be spies. Women make good spies, even. Women can be political and business minded. Women can be bad guys too. And Victorian London kind of sucked. Especially with the smelly Thames.

I really do like the cover. Kudos to the publisher on that. It’s subtle (to my eyes), but there.

And, I don’t know, maybe the series improves. But there’s not enough in this book to compel me to brave it.

—

Fun Fact: The first paragraph involves urine. Nice way to get teen girls to just jump into your story, isn’t it?

J’s Take on The Science of Doctor Who

Because when you can capitalize on a media sensation without breaking copyright laws, why shouldn’t you? The Science of Doctor Who takes the science and quasi-science and pseudo-science you can find in Doctor Who and compares it to the state of real world science (and techology).

I never found it so dull that I wanted to completely stop reading it, but I didn’t find it fascinating or captivating for the most part. A lot of the science that was included were things I already knew, or studies I’d already heard of. Some of it was new, but already I couldn’t call up one example of it.

At times, he got so deeply involved in explaining some scientific concept that he’d go for pages without even mentioning Doctor Who.

It also seemed to me that he kept referring to the same episodes. He’s really keen on “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances”, using them for all sorts of examples of things. And most of the older Who episodes he mentioned were ones I’d seen or heard of, because they were released on DVD. Which started to make me wonder if he’d really watched all the Who he could possibly watch, or only hit the highlights.

Right at the start, it says the book has been updated up until the Eleventh Doctor. But don’t expect a lot of updates. Ten doesn’t even get much action. And right in the first chapter, the first paragraph even, he says we don’t know if the doctor has a family. Apart from calling a girl his granddaughter in the first series. Well, we all know there’s more family than that!

Where I really took objection to what he was saying though was in regards to Jack Harkness. He says in the future everyone’s bi and then blithers on about not having to reproduce in the traditional manner, so being straight is no longer biologically necessary. Or something. But Jack is not bi, because he doesn’t limit himself to two genders, or even to humans. And the kiss he and the Doctor shared is a not a ‘gay kiss’. Because neither of them is gay!

Oh, oh, and then he talks about this idea that this female scientist had that.. wow, the Doctor could regenerate as a woman! And he thought it’d blow our minds a little if the Doctor were transgender. I think it was him that had his mind blown when she mentioned the idea.

Back to the science.. I don’t know how many explanations I’ve read now about the theory of relativity and gravity and time and the speed of light. I don’t pretend that I understand it fully, but I’m not really eager to read about it anymore. I think that sort of thing is better demonstrated with video. Not little graphics and text written by a non-scientist.

I wish there had been more Dr. Who images in the book. Or like.. anything. I think one picture might’ve featured the TARDIS. I guess they didn’t want to pay any licensing fees. But it made the graphics that were included all the more boring to look at.

Well, that all made me sound rather down on the book. But overall it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t a slog. If you like Doctor Who and want to learn about cutting edge science, go for it. If you just want to get your geek on, probably Chicks Who Dig Time Lords is a more interesting read. And if you’re looking for science, go for Michio Kaku or Neil deGrasse Tyson.

J’s Take on The Key to the Kingdom Vol 5-6

I feel like I don’t have a lot to say about these last two volumes of The Key to the Kingdom. And it’s not even really because I can’t say too much without spoiling you for the entire series, though that’s definitely true! It’s more that I don’t think I have much more to say that I didn’t already say in my review of the first four volumes.

Right when I started reading volume 5, I was a bit at sea. It had been long enough that I’d forgotten exactly where we were in the story. Though it hadn’t been much longer than a week. I would’ve really loved a recap right at the beginning, which I swear was in volumes 2, 3, and 4. But there was no recap for 5 or 6.

So we’re at a big climax and things are happening in several different places to several different characters. We learn more about the dragon men or dragon tamers or dragons. The bad guys are successful in some things, and are thwarted in others.

Oh, and then one of the good characters has to do something really gross! I wonder if it tasted like chicken or pork.

The manga had a satisfying conclusion. It wasn’t all sweetness and light, of course. The fate of some characters is not, perhaps, what we might have wished. I will spoil insofar as to say.. I totally expected it to end with a wedding. Don’t these things usually end with weddings?

You know, I almost want this to be longer, or in a different form. Maybe a longish anime series, or a prose novel. Just so we could spend more time with the characters and explore little side stories. I feel like they should have had a chance to have more adventures on their quest. They could’ve actually used up the full 2 years allotted to them for one thing!

But, yea, no, it’s good. Not the best manga I’ve ever read. It doesn’t make me squee. But it’s a solid 3.5 or 4 out of 5.

J’s Take on The Key to the Kingdom Vol 1-4

In addition to reading The Key to the Kingdom for Triple Take, I just started watching a bunch of anime. I’ve gone through about half of “Princess Jellyfish”, which is fun, by the way. I also have a lengthy Zorro series. Because, Zorro! Anime! Also Stardriver, which I haven’t started to watch yet.

It occurred to me while reading and watching that Japanese anime and manga won’t be the same again. What’s happened there and is still going on is one of those culture-changing events. I’m sure the anime and manga will still be brilliant, but it’ll be different. Different how, I don’t know. The perspective of time is the only thing that’ll tell us that.

If you want to donate, you know where to do it. But also just take a little time this week to realize/remember how awesome Japan and Japanese creators are.

The Key to the Kingdom is interesting in that it’s a more traditional Western fantasy story. King dies, throne is up for grabs. So the young prince and a bunch of other contenders for the throne go on separate quests to try to find the ‘key to the kingdom’. And, of course, there’s dragons!

Landor is in the middle of a war, which some would term a civil war, to try to unite the neighboring lands that were once part of it. So when the king dies, they rather have to put up a strong front, or their enemies will take advantage. So when the young prince (the older prince and heir also died) says, no way, I don’t want it, they’re all kind of stuck. Not that they really wanted a 13 year old who can’t hold a sword to be king, but you sort of need someone, don’t you? So the council or whatever decides to make it a 2-year quest. Whoever finds the magical, rumored key to the kingdom — as long as they’re of royal blood, of course! — will get to be king. Or queen. And if the two years expires with no one finding it, then the prince will take over. Presumably older and wiser.

This bit I had trouble with. Are those neighboring countries just going to sit back while half the nobility is off gallavanting around? Or wouldn’t they take advantage of the lack of ruler for TWO YEARS and invade and cause general havoc? But no one seems concerned about this.

So Prince Asta sets off with swordsman Baddass and he’s off to go to a place his older brother, the heir apparent, told him to go to. Rather than specifically seeking out the key. Though he stops in at a library and whatnot on the way. And childhood friend and girl is also off having her own adventures and trying to become queen.

And then there’s dragon men. Or dragon tamers. Or dragon speakers. Or actual dragons. It’s all a little confusing. And probably meant to be. These guys are plotting, but are they plotting to help someone find the key? Or to bring down the entire kingdom? Or are both those things the same thing?

I like most of the characters. I also liked that Prince Asta, though people call him a spoiled little prince, is only kind of that. He doesn’t whine his way about the countryside. He’s not naive and ignorant. He just isn’t much for holding a sword and going into battles. And he is only 13!

The end of volume 4 seems to bring us to the point of the climax. I haven’t yet read the final volumes. Hopefully it will all come together satisfactorily.

The artwork is shoujo and pretty. Since it’s a fantasy world, the mangaka can really play with clothing and jewelry and hair and all of that. I wish there were more color pictures.

I have 2 quibbles with the translation. One, it seems the translator was going for the sort of pseudo-British, pseudo-medieval, fantasy-ish kind of language. And I found it distracting, especially at first. I think less would’ve been more in this case. Just a flavor of the language is fine. (Then again, maybe the heavyhandedness of it was present in the original and thus it’s a truer translation.)

I also noticed some copyeditting problems. You know: it’s instead of its. All ready instead of already. Noticed that more in the first two volumes.

One word to CMX: Your promos for other manga in the back? Not doing it for me. I don’t really care if SoandSo is going to hook up with SoandSo in Volume 6 of Manga Y, if I don’t even know what Manga Y is about! I think it would be more effective if you gave a summary of the manga in general, not the specific volume.

I would like to see this as an anime. I think the dragon men in particular would be very pretty in action. And I bet the music would be cool too.

J’s Take on Botchan

We usually decide on what books we’re going to do months in advance of when we actually read and review them. As evidenced here. So by the time it was Botchan‘s month, the only thing I really knew about it was that it was a classic Japanese novel and that a new translation had come out a few years ago.

What I ended up reading was not at all what I expected. I think I have, and perhaps many people have, a vision of Japanese ‘classics’ as full of poetry, nature.. just sort of perfect, neat, tidy, calming things. Like the embodiment of haiku, in novel form. Or the embodiment of ikebana, or the tea ceremony, or.. any number of other Japanese art and cultural forms.

And no, this was rather more in the line of a somewhat crazy anime. So, yea, there’s flower arranging and origami, but there’s also anime like Kodocha (Kodomo no Omocha), which I guess I had forgotten about! Or I didn’t expect it in something ‘classic’, which in this case means a hundred years old. Which, as far as Japanese history and even Japanese literature goes, is not really all that old. For someone used to reading science fiction and fantasy though, anything older than 50 years is nearly nonexistent.

Botchan is the story of a guy who happens into a job as a math teacher at a boys’ middle school. He’s not a very morally upright kind of guy. You wouldn’t want to be friends with him. But you’re perfectly happy to hear him tell his story. And at first I thought that he was an unreliable narrator when it came to what other people think and feel, being a guy who certainly seems to have very little empathy. So I was ready to think the best of all of the people he encountered, and to feel a bit smug that I understood them better than he did. And ready to feel a little sorry for them that they had to interact with this guy. Except, that, actually, no, all these other people aren’t exactly morally upstanding either.

It reminded me of Goodbye, Mr. Chips or To Serve Them All My Days in its focus on being a new teacher and having to navigate the political sphere of the school faculty. Yet I was also reminded of Bertie Wooster. The way the narrator talked to us, is I think the reason. As if we were reasonable people who think the same way they do about things, and that we would have the same opinion we do of the people around them.

I did quite like it and I think it’s a very good thing I read it, because now I’ll have a different view of Japanese ‘literature’.

I can’t end this review without talking about the translation a little bit. At first I questioned the translation. Very early on there’s mention of a Yamashiro-ya, a pawn broker. And I know that -ya is the suffix for a store. So I thought there was some confusion of the name of the store versus the name of the person/family. Looking at the original convinced me that the text did say Yamashiro-ya.. though I still wonder, given the narrator’s proclivity to nickname people, if that wouldn’t have been better translated as, something like, Mr. Pawnbroker and Pawnbroker’s property. Or even Pawnshop’s property.

And then there was a word here or there that didn’t sound quite right to me. ‘Sissy’? Wuss would’ve been better. But then, do you translate it so it sounds modern, or do you translate it so it sounds a hundred years old? A little ways in, I gave up thinking too much about the translation. (Apart from the appearance of ‘na moshi’.) I just got into the story and went with it. — Though I did find some odd typos that should’ve been caught by a computer: ‘and and’ and ‘suddden’.

The translation I read was by J. Cohn. I did not read the introduction. I think I’ll do that now.

Okay, well, the introduction said some of what I said above, actually. Apparently it’s not a ‘typical’ Japanese novel, for whatever typical might be. And it stands out even to the Japanese as being unusual, and appealing because of it. But then Cohn starts talking about Freud and I’m like.. whaaaaa…

I had to read and discuss Freud in at least one comparative literature class too, and just.. dude, Freud was not all that great. Was a downright idiot when it came to women, and gay people, and.. tons of things. And what does he really have to do with literature anyway? :P

I was not intending to end the review with annoyance at Freud and literature professors. You know what? Skip the introduction completely. Seriously. Usually a good policy to adopt anyhow.

Let me gaze at the happy grasshopper on the geta on the cover of this book. It was a good choice to represent the book. Though until you’ve read it, it’s completely incomprehensible when it comes to guessing what’s inside.

Oh! Now I feel like I should end with a haiku…

happy grasshopper
sits on a wooden geta
for the camera

(now the grasshopper
wants me to tell minna-san
that it’s a locust)