"DOWN!"

“DOWN!”

          Foray had no idea who shouted, but long years of combat training took over and it mattered not.  His own weight, supplemented by the massive metal plates, took him quickly to the dirt, slamming both knees with numbing force.   Trusting his momentum, he rolled to the left, elbow spikes digging into the hardpack.  He backhanded his sword arm over the top of the roll, adding deadly power to its bloodied edge; it bit into the middle of the threatening kobkin, shearing one arm and slicing halfway through its torso.  The final arc of the roll pulled the blade free, allowing Foray to end the maneuver on his hands and knees, sword hand still fisted around the familiar hilt. 

          A brief aural review told him the skirmish was over, and he quickly scanned the field for Viper.  The barbarian stood some twenty feet distant, empty hands leaning on both knees in exhaustion.  A glint of pride stirred in Foray’s gut, despite the teachings of Cassock; He, Foray, had held his weapon through the awkward tumble.  Pride fails the prideful, his father would have said.

          As if in response, Viper’s exhalations gained voice.  At first, Foray failed to recognize the derision in each booming guffaw.  Of course, he nearly whispered, Viper would never drop that monstrosity in battle.  Watching the barbarian through the narrowing slit in his massive helm, Foray rose to his feet, slow and purposeful.  He knew the great helm would hide the rage in his face, but he was careful to control his body language, less he feed the barbarian’s glee with his reaction.  

REVIEW - Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

I was first drawn to this book based on Entertainment Weekly’s review, and Stephen King’s recommendation.  I got into it quickly, sped through the first 200 pages or so, then slowed, but picked up the pace again in the last 100 pages.  It was certainly the quickest I’ve read a 500 page book in quite some time.

That being said, I was ultimately disappointed.  The opening scene (“Fur Sie”) held such promise, when combined with the device of the whole, but it never panned out.  There are wonderful vignettes, and many of the characters are fully realized, even in their reiterations, but the story doesn’t GO anywhere; the protagonist doesn’t DO anything.  In that sense, it was unfulfilling. 

It IS well written: I enjoyed the narrative, the setting, and the themes.  The disparate scenes are fully realized at various junctures, only touched upon at others.  The history seems well researched and authentic, especially the bits of foreign dialog and the peccadillos of the British people.  

Ursula becomes a little bit of everything; untouched by her tragedies yet molded by them.  This inherent constraint limits her growth as a character, mitigates the impact of her travails, and ultimately deadens the chronicle of her lives.

REVIEW: After the fall, before the fall, during the fall

After the fall, before the fall, during the fall
July 26, 2012

The title is cumbersome, and rather detached from the interestingly sparse narrative. The author knows a lot more words than the characters do, or should, however, and the balance between the actuality of their existence and the telling of the tale is not achieved.

The text reads fairly quickly, but the plot device makes it diffuse.  The three intertwining plots make each other less clear, and ultimately loosen the narrative.  Readers might expect more of a twist, such as the time travel causing the Tsunami, but the ending is quite ambiguous.  Were the Tesslies even real? 

This book doesn’t feel like it’s the right length.  If it were shorter, it could have been tighter.  On the other hand, it could have been longer, to develop characters more, especially the unseen Tesslies.

Kress is a respected and prolific author, but this is not her best work.

21 years ago....

That Face!

I saw it briefly, just a hint,

     then I made to follow it.

I walked the halls of some strange school,

     coming nearer to the stair;

amidst a throng of phantom-students,

     with see-through skin and opaque hair.

She turned a corner just as I

     trod first the bottom step;

Hastening to follow her,

     I quickly reached the top.

I glimpsed her up another flight,

     and so maintained the chase;

She left my line of sight again,

     so I increased my pace.

Gaining the top of the final flight

     as I set foot upon it,

she stopped there at the corner hall

     and found a place to sit.

Amongst her haunting nightmare friends,

     all visions of my past,

she watched me mount the final step;

     Indeed, it was the last.

But wait!  I could not look at her!

     Something held me back.

It was that shy teenage demeanor

     that always held me back.

I stared around me vacantly,

     like I'd have done back then;

I lost her vision in my dream

     as I had lost her way back when.

          Steven Mayo

          August 1991 

REVIEW: The Hunger Games trilogy

I’m trying to give up comic books.

Not cold turkey, but in the pursuit of literary productivity it’s one of the guilty pleasures I feel I must forego.  I returned a number of Marvel collections to the library, but I will admit a relapse while I was in the middle of the 3^rd book of the Hunger Games trilogy.  I breezed through the first one, reading the physical book and reading FAST.  The pacing was simply fantastic.  The second book was a bit larger, but flowed pretty well.  By the middle of the 3^rd, however, I had lost some level of interest - not entirely given up, but it didn’t hold me the same as the first book had.  So, I picked up the X-Necrosha graphic novel before finishing Mockingjay.  The X-Necrosha story involves the return of many deceased x-men and x-enemies.  Even with the comic book convention of labeling characters and their abilities (and in this case, their status as ‘deceased’) at the start of each issue, it was difficult to keep track of the many characters in this collection.  There were a lot of personalities to keep track of in Mockingjay, and some of them were as lost as I was.  What brought me back was the twist ending promised by other readers, including my wife.  Unfortunately, I was disappointed in two ways – the twist wasn’t severe enough, and the ending was otherwise pale.  It was a Stephen King-like Deus ex-machina, only the god in these works was a cruel god, to the reader and to the protagonist. 

Katniss was an authentic character.  I felt that her decisions and actions were genuine and real to her character as it was fashioned in the first book.  I liked how the romance played out through the books.  It wasn’t the main focus, but it drove Katniss in different directions, just as it would a ‘normal’ 16 year old girl.  My initial thought was that there was too little reaction to the many deaths in the series.   Early on, I justified this with the characters’ living conditions-they had watched the Hunger Games growing up, and life in the Districts was hard.  Later, however, as the deaths mounted, Katniss felt them hard, but other characters more or less brushed it off.  Perhaps this was because it was Katniss’s point of view, perhaps it was idle writing. What I did find fallacious was the entire premise of the Hunger Games themselves.  How could this oppressive government convince EVERYONE in Panem to sacrifice two children EVERY YEAR, for some 70 years?!  I just don’t buy that.  One of my first thoughts from that world’s perspective was REVOLUTION!, even before I was halfway through the first book.

There are many themes at play here, but none of them take the forefront, in my opinion.  Extreme poverty, government control, power, and corruption vie for the reader’s eyes, but it’s always Katniss and her limited perspective that the reader gets.  It’s the nature of the beast, but I wonder if a different point of view would have served the emotions of the story better, especially in the latter books.  What make the first story so likable are the raw emotions that Katniss goes through; the reader witnesses her struggle first hand.  The contiguous plot of the first story is missing in the 2^nd two books, especially the last, and the myriad themes get cluttered in the discursive narrative.

What I liked about the first book of the Hunger Games trilogy is what I like about comic books; direct plotting, uncomplicated narrative, and raw emotion.  What I found lacking in the third book is why I am trying to give up comic books; scattered narrative, too many characters, and disingenuous characterization. 

Wow, only 2 posts in 2011.  Guess I gotta do some more 'writing.'

A new Odd Combination

Some time ago, I posted about one of the odd phrases that stick to my tongue when I wake from a late bout of REM.

 Another one came to me recently:

 "Some last minute Mommy-Doritos"


 Sure, not as keen as the first, but equally quirky!