Category: review

J’s Take on Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett

Point of Hopes is one of those titles that you can never quite remember. This is a book, really two books (the other being Point of Dreams to add to the confusion), that I’ve seen in various locations and lists. With the impetus of Triple Take, I’ve now read this one. If I can manage to remember the title of it.

The cover intrigued me. It looked rather Puritan, but it also looked academic, and there were girls, or at least young women. But while I can now say the cover accurately represents an important scene in the book.. none of those first impressions were correct. No, those girls and even that guy in the robe.. none of them are main characters.

We start with an unpromising prologue. I had trouble following whose point of view it was, or in being very interested in it. Fortunately, I know that most prologues have little to do with the style and tone of the rest of the book. Unfortunately, that means you have to sit through them and get to the real first chapter before you can tell whether to give up on the book or not. Extra wasted time and effort.

This book does get better after the prologue. The point of view problems settle down… mostly. As we alternate sections and/or chapters with first one character, Rathe, a pointsman (this world’s version of a police detective), and a second, Eslingen, a militaryman between jobs acting as a hired guard. But I do say mostly, because there’s one section in particular where they’re in the same scene and the point of view gets all jumbled up again. It’s at this point that I wondered if the two authors were collaborating by each taking one character. And that they then had trouble reconciling it when the two had scenes together.

As for the plot, it’s mostly a mystery plot. Children are disappearing from the city and Rathe sees it as his job and calling and obligation to various people and whatnot to try to find out what’s going on. So a lot of the book is him running here, and running there, and talking to people, and collecting clues. And really, do people like reading mysteries and watching all this running around and talking to people? Because I don’t get a whole lot of pleasure out of it.

Things got hopeful when Rathe first lays eyes on Eslingen. He makes a point of noting he’s handsome and what he’s wearing. Which isn’t unusual, in itself, but my ears and eyes were perked for a budding romance. A love story? A romantic subplot at the very least? A friendship that slowly evolves into something more? Well, perhaps it’s a spoiler to say so, but I was denied, dear reader. DENIED!

And not in the usual way.. where all the slash is subtext that I’m probably reading into a normal manly friendship. No. Because the authors make a point of Rathe being surprised Eslingen was interested in women. And you just know, you just know, that Rathe is interested and that Eslingen probably wouldn’t be too against it either. Because there are hints throughout that this is a very bisexual sort of society. Not that everyone is, but that the society as a whole is. So that maybe, maybe, if the story of these two continues in the next book, Point of Dreams, they might move further along in this relationship. But by the end of this book, it’s not much of a relationship. It’s barely even a friendship.

GRR!

One cute thing about this world is there are gargoyles. And they’re basically like rats. They hang around the garbage and are a nuisance, but a somewhat cute sort of nuisance. Maybe more like wild cats combined with pigeons? Anyway, that’s a cool little addition. And you can see them on the cover of the book. Even if you first take them for firelizards.

The end of the book seems rushed. I even started noticing more and more typos. And then the big bad bad guy is defeated waaaaay too easily. And quickly. Perhaps, in that way, it was again more like a mystery than a typical fantasy. In a mystery, it doesn’t matter if you shoot the guy at the end, as long as you’ve proved it’s him and done all your revelations. (Not that he gets shot. That’s just an analogy.)

One other thing I should definitely say is that this book read like a very long slog. Perhaps not a particularly hard slog, but a slog. It took a lot longer to read than it looked like from the size of the book. There were a lot of words crammed onto an individual page and the chapters were incredibly long. I think there were only about 9 or 10 chapters in the whole book. I read it diligently and plowed ahead with it, but it still took me over a week to finish it.

I’m mostly left feeling that I like this world. Women are more or less equal. The gargoyles are a bit of fun. They don’t mind a bit of same-sex fooling around — prevents the apprentices and journeymen from getting pregnant. There’s an interesting political setup with the way the local police are new and still feeling out their role.. which isn’t quite the same as we know police.

But while I do like the world, and the characters aren’t bad, I just can’t like the story. It wasn’t the story I wanted, I guess.

So I’m torn. Do I revisit the world because it’s cool and I want to learn more about it? Because the authors might explore things I was more interested in? Because the main characters might finally hook up? Or do I not subject myself to another long slog for a similar plot and unfulfilled expectations?

I’m going to have to give this one a 3.

Share

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Seth Grahame-Smith)

The Plot
Fifty-five years ago, the British Empire was faced with an uprising of the non-colonial sort: the dead were walking and they wanted brains. The scourge continues unabated, but life has adapted to cope with the continual threat. The five Bennett sisters have all been trained to fight the menace, but their mother would like to see them well married as well. Enter Mr. Bingley, a single young man of good fortune who has just moved into the neighborhood.

My Thoughts
When this book first came out, I resolved not to read it. The original Pride and Prejudice is my favorite book of all time, coming as close as any book has to my idea of perfection: lots of witty, interesting characters saying pithy things to one another and a happy ending to boot. I love it well enough to hate the vast majority of sequels I’ve tried, because they simply couldn’t live up to the original, or they took liberties to which I objected.

At any rate, my resolve weakened against PPZ. The author had kept a great deal of the original text, and the juxtaposition of zombies with the social machinations of the original might be, as one of Austen’s characters would put it, exceedingly diverting.

The premise is this: about a half-century before our story opens, zombies suddenly began appearing to menace the living. They are witless creatures, not impossible to destroy or even to distract, but doggedly determined in their quest for brains. Zombies seem to have two sources: the already dead may rise again, and the living may be infected by exposure (such as being bitten). In response to this, the army has mobilized, and also the general citizenry has begun to train and arm itself. Even women have received some training, including women of quite high station. The opening of a new economic door to women has seemed to have an effect on society: crudeness and innuendo is more common and there is a great deal more violence.

It’s clear from reading that the author has put at least a little thought into how this situation might change polite society. Unfortunately, in many cases it seems to have been very little. It’s hard to tell whether this is meant to be a “serious” retelling of the story or if it’s just meant to be a silly parody. Different rules apply in the latter case, but just enough effort has been made to maintain the integrity of the plot and story that the argument falls flat — this is not the literary equivalent of Scary Movie. And that makes it all the more galling in the cases where it’s abundantly clear that something has been inserted only because Grahame-Smith just couldn’t resist and not because it made sense in either the original or the re-imagining.

I get the sense, too, that the author didn’t have a great deal of respect for(or understanding of?) some of the original characters. In several places, Austen’s original text is included, but the speaker (or writer) is not the same as the original book – and yet they’re using the exact same phrasing. This is just sheer laziness on the part of the author. The work is almost bookended by the two of the most egregious examples of this: first, where Caroline Bingley takes over some of Darcy’s lines in an early exchange with Elizabeth, and then at the end, where a letter originally sent by Mr. Collins is penned instead by Colonel Fitzwilliam. In neither case are either pair of characters in any way similar and so the reassignment of words is out of character even within the context of this new book.

Similar problems arise when Austen’s text is revised for no apparent purpose beyond dumbing it down for the modern reader, something which happens at multiple points. A single example here will suffice to illustrate the danger of this.

Original:
“No. It would have been strange if they had. But I make no doubt, they often talk of it between themselves. Well, if they can be easy with an estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the better. I should be ashamed of having one that was only entailed on me.”

Zombies:
“No; it would have been strange if they had; but I make no doubt, they often talk of it between themselves. Well, if they can be easy with an estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the better. I should be ashamed of putting an old woman out of her home.”

In the original text, we refer back to Mrs. Bennett’s refusal to admit that the entailment of her husband’s estate makes sense or is legitimate. Further, we have a joke: of course the entailment is pefectly legal, that is the entire problem. In the Zombie version, even though there is no zombie-related information conveyed here, the text is altered: the joke is removed and the reader is not reminded that Mrs. Bennett is ridiculous or of the inheritance situation, but instead is apparently meant to feel bad for her.

There are examples of this sort of careless editing all through the text, toning down the snarkiness of the dialogue and the narrator in some sort of misguided quest to make it more simple. In many cases, these changes cause anachronisms to creep in.

In addition to these changes, there are still more points of fail.

The illustrations: These are just awful. The clothing, which is not particularly mentioned in the text as being different in most cases, is just odd looking. Not at all correct for the time period or even sensible allowing adaptations for fighting and training.

The “Oriental” stuff: I’m not even sure where to begin with all of this. Lady Catherine with ninjas is, I’m sure, the vision that made the insertion of all of this stuff irresistible. And I wouldn’t object to it all overmuch (I leave it to someone else to complain about the potential Racefail aspects of it) were there not such a big deal made about Chinese training versus Japanese training. Because even to my non-expert eyes, it was clear to me that the author was making a distinction he was not prepared to follow through with: Chinese-trained Elizabeth fights with a Japanese sword, there are random bits of Chinese culture at Darcy’s supposedly Japan-inspired home, and so forth. If the author was actually Jane Austen, one might suppose these cross-contaminations were a subtle jibe, but unfortunately, based on the rest of the book, Grahame-Smith is incapable of such a thing.

In Short
This was actually a very clever idea, and I think it could have been very good, with just a bit more effort expended on research and editing. Unfortunately, as it stands, this was definitely a failure, as a parody (not enough liberty was taken) and as a true rewrite (it was too slap-dash and sloppy). I don’t quite regret reading it, but I definitely won’t ever be reading it again, nor will I be picking up the next book, even though it’s to have a different author.

Share

More Information Than You Require by John Hodgman: B-

From the front flap:
When John Hodgman first embarked on his project to assemble, tabulate, and completely make up a comprehensive survey of COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE, he was but a former professional literary agent and occasional scribbler of fake trivia—in short, A NOBODY. But during an interview on The Daily Show with John Stewart, an incredible transformation occurred—he became A FAMOUS MINOR TELEVISION PERSONALITY. Hodgman realized from this unique vantage point that he understood better than ever that THERE IS SOME WORLD KNOWLEDGE YET TO BE DOCUMENTED. And so he has returned, crashing his Kansas farmhouse down upon the wicked witch of IGNORANCE to bring you MORE INFORMATION THAN YOU REQUIRE.

Review:
I’m aware that I have a rather particular sense of humor. And so it’s really not a surprise that I didn’t find More Information Than You Require to be all that funny. I’m more apt to giggle at a silly comment than I am to laugh at a lengthy essay full of clever falsehoods, of which this book is primarily comprised. That isn’t to say that the book is entirely lacking in funny lines—my favorite is “First, get a pig’s spleen. They are often just lying around.”—but that they are few and far between.

Most of the material is at least somewhat amusing, eliciting a snerk here or there, but I don’t think I smiled even once while reading the absolutely ponderous chapter on mole-men near the end; references to Fraggle Rock couldn’t even endear it to me. I didn’t care for the recurring jokes about harm befalling cats, the occasional vulgarity, or the little page-a-day calendar blurbs that disrupted one’s flow of reading and which Hodgman himself seemed to acknowledge as annoying, saying, “You can’t avoid [reading them] forever.”

However! There are also some very nice stories buried in here, those with a more personal feel that seem to be at least marginally grounded in reality. The chapter on being famous, for example, is terrific, and I loved reading Hodgman’s perspective of being recognized. There’s also a really sweet story about vacationing in Portugal as a younger man, waiting for his girlfriend (now wife) to return from a solo journey she’d made, which includes the surprisingly touching line, “And even now, a decade and a half later, when she is out of my sight, I never stop looking for her.”

Alas, I think campaigning for more stories like that would be asking Hodgman to abandon… well, being Hodgman. I still wish the fellow well, but I don’t think I’ll be reading any more of his books. They’re just not my kind of humor.

Share

Patience & Sarah by Isabel Miller: B-

From the back cover:
Early in the nineteenth century, in a puritanical New England town, two women did something unspeakable, something unheard of—they fell in love with each other. With nothing and no one to guide or support them, Patience and Sarah tried to follow their hearts.

And when family pressures separated them, the two women dreamed of leaving their homes, of being together. Defying society and history, they bought a farm and discovered they could live together, away from a world that had put limits on them and their love.

Review:
Patience White has been provided for. Her father’s will made certain that there would always be a place for her in her devout brother’s Connecticut home, but that isn’t enough to make Patience happy. She doesn’t want the things that a woman of her age (late twenties) should want, and though she helps out around the house, Edward’s wife, Martha, makes her feel guilty for desiring privacy to work on her paintings. When she meets Sarah Dowling, conscripted to serve as “Pa’s boy” in the absence of any male siblings and entirely unaware that her manners shock more proper folk, she is immediately intrigued.

Kisses soon ensue, followed by Sarah’s inability to realize that some things should be kept secret, a journey in boy’s clothes, vague yet plentiful sex scenes, manipulation by Patience to get Sarah to agree to come away with her, familial discovery, further journeying, and finally settling into farm life in New York. The narrative alternates between perspectives with occasionally amusing results (I enjoyed their differing accounts of their final parting with Edward) but with much repetition, since each woman experiences periods of insecurity as well as triumph in the knowledge that she can leave the other wanting her. One strange side effect was that although I disliked Sarah at the beginning of the novel, due to her remarkable lack of common sense, by the end I thought she was by far the better (and more genuine) of the two, since Patience could be deceitful in her quest to get her way.

I had expected, owing largely to the rhapsodies experienced by the leads in Annie on My Mind as they read and reread this book, that Patience & Sarah would be at least a little romantic, but really, it is not. Instead, I’d describe it as carnal. When I say that “kisses soon ensue,” I mean really soon, and with little preamble as to why these women are drawn to each other. Suddenly, it’s just instant passion. There are some parts of the novel that I liked—slice-of-life passages about chopping wood and sewing curtains, card games they play with Sarah’s mother, or the stray dog that promptly adopts them when they get to their new home—but I couldn’t care much about the characters or their relationship. Plus, all the parts that I liked are sullied by the ending, in which Patience declares that now that they have their own place they will “make the bed gallop,” which makes it seem that everything they’ve done has been with coital goals in mind.

Another thing I noticed is that nearly everyone else in the novel is made to desire the protagonists. Sarah’s sister offers to do for her whatever Patience does (eww), it’s suspected that Edward likes to imagine the two of them together, Sarah’s traveling companion tries to put the moves on her (granted, he thinks she’s a boy at the time), and one of Martha’s main objections to the relationship is that Patience is fooling around with someone “outside of the family.” I’m not sure what to make of this, honestly. With Edward and Martha it could be a case of pointing out their hypocrisy, but what of the others?

In the end, Patience & Sarah was not what I’d expected it to be. If this had been a straight romance, I might not even have finished it.

Share

More Information Than You Require (John Hodgman)

The Plot
John Hodgman continues his neverending quest to provide the world with all possible bits of information, an effort begun in his first book, Areas of My Expertise. In More Information Than You Require we learn the secrets of the presidents, the secrets of the mole-men, and the sad history of the weather in Richmond, VA.

My Thoughts
I can no longer remember precisely how John Hodgman came to my attention. I have to assume that it was during his first appearance on the Daily Show and yet I did not read his first book until September 2006, so I think it cannot have been. I do know that before I knew he was he, I had heard him on This American Life and enjoyed some of his tales.

In any case, I have been a fan for several years, though I cannot claim the distinction of having discovered him when he was not yet a Minor Television Personality.

Hodgman’s humor can be very dry at times, and some times becomes a little to surrealist for me to find it very funny. On the other hand, sometimes he’ll come out with something so freaking clever that you can’t believe it. Overall, there’s a good baseline amusement factor here, periodically interrupted by some excellent stuff.

And now, in honor of the book, the list of thoughts I compiled as I read:

  1. First, the hoboes; second, the mole-men; third, ???. I spent some time considering this important question and can only speculate as to the answer. Perhaps a race of creatures living in the air? Futuristic aliens?
  2. While I found the list of mole-men generally more interesting than the prior book’s list of hoboes (why YES I did read EVERY SINGLE ONE), there were a number of the names which confused me. I am interested to see if anyone else had the same question I did.
  3. Rap-Around. Ah, Rap-Around. If Hodgman was truly on this show, I now regret having missed it. Because, of course, I grew up in range of the Boston stations, and I remember this show well. Or, rather, I remember the ads for this show well, along with the opening. I seem to remember it coming on around noontime on a Saturday, signalling the disappointing end of morning cartoons and the beginning of an afternoon of televised sporting events. These would begin with the channel being changed from Rap-Around to Candlepin bowling.
  4. The story about him and his girlfriend in Portugal is very sweet. I’m afraid I have nothing witty to say about it, but I wanted to mention it anyway.
  5. All through the book Hodgman does a truly excellent job conveying his (I believe) genuine bemusement at his sudden celebrity. The story of his visit to the Apple store was truly priceless; I can completely picture the scene and I laugh every time I do.

In Short
Anyone who read Hodgman’s first book and enjoyed it will certainly feel the same about this one — as the page numbers indicate, it is a literal continuation and he is in good form here. For me, this one was even better than the first, because I am a nosy twit and I enjoyed the more personal sections this book contained. I’m looking forward to the third volume at which point all useful knowledge will have been recorded and we can pitch the whole reference section of the library to replace it with endless copies of these three books. That is all.

Share