Book Review: Sword-Maker by Jennifer Roberson

Another good tale by Ms. Roberson.  As I mentioned before in a previous review, the Sword-Dancer books are character books, and Sword-Maker is no different and no less satisfying.  In this adventure, Tiger and Del, now used to each other, are able to grow as a result of the actions and ideals of the other.

Sword-Maker picks up after the cliff hanger of Sword-Singer, and Tiger and Del finally journey back to the South so Del can find Ajani with some stop offs to meet a legendary, and dangerous, northern sorcerer.  Tiger has a new sword too.  One with a very bad attitude.  One made only worse when Tiger ends up requenching his sword in the dangerous sorcerer.  Oops.

There are a lot of great things about this book, again all going back to the fantastic connection between Tiger and Del that has been established in the first two books of the series.  Because we love them, we love Tiger’s voice, and we love the love and companionship between Tiger and Del, we root for that companionship, that connection versus the plot as a whole.  And it is because of that connection that, in Sword-Maker, we see a lot of character growth.

It’s a push-pull sort of relationship. Because of one of the characters, the other character grows, in contrast to character growth due to outer stimuli.  For example, Tiger won’t let Del forget her actions at Staal-Ysta.  Not until she realizes she was wrong or at least realize what her sacrifices have done to her humanity.  As a result, Del is forced to admit and realize some painful truths about herself and finally is able to overcome some personal hurdles.  And, as a result, while she is still Del, she becomes more human. Ms. Roberson, however, realizes how difficult this can be and so doesn’t write it as something easy.  In fact, a lot of tension is derived from the strain on Tiger and Del’s relationship due to Del’s stubbornness and the readers desire for them to come together.

Tiger, while always confident in one way or another, brings a new kind of confidence with him.  A confidence in himself as a person rather than as simply a sword dancer.  This sort of confidence is derived from finally standing up to Del and having a real person to care about, along with all their struggles.  Tiger also begins to think about his birth and his own kin—a minor theme running through the books—which allows the reader to get to see an even more personal side of the sand tiger.

As we learn a bit more about Tiger’s past, we can also see him as a minor foil to Del.  Tiger was once driven by the desire for hate and revenge, just as Del is, but Tiger’s path was different due to the choices he made regarding revenge.  As a result, we, as the readers, can see even more how not only Del handled the revenge, but how it affected her character and her life.  And more importantly how she has changed since she started understanding compassion.

Although the story and focus is on Tiger and Del’s relationship, there is still a plot, although it is a bit disjointed.  It feels as if there are almost two books in one, and a book should have ended after requenching the sword and heading south.  In other words, the first part of the book wasn’t directly related to the second, but, since we’re following our two adventurers as they travel it can easily be overlooked.  There is still plenty of action within the plot, so the reader won’t get bored, although Roberson sometimes has the tendency to over explain a plot point, or explain it more than once.

Overall, a wonderful, satisfying, fun fantasy read.  It didn’t end with the cliff hanger of Sword-Singer, but I am dying to see what is next in store for Tiger and Del.

Would I recommend it?  Yes!  Good 80s fantasy with strong characters.  A satisfying continuation to a satisfying series.

And We're Back!

Back in civilization that is.  I've spent the past couple days helping a friend with dolphin research aka video taping dolphins as they strand themselves on beaches to feed on fish.  We were also trying to mark birds with exploding paint landmines but the egrets were just not getting with the program!

Stupid egrets.

Anyways, what does any of this have to do with writing and literature?  Not much, except I did a lot of driving.  Driving and listening to The Hobbit (again).  And after listening to it again I came to this conclusion:

Never travel with dwarfs.  They're complete morons.

The Luckiest Ones

I am lucky.

We are lucky.

I can’t speak for everyone on the internet, but I can speak for myself in the U.S.  This isn’t any sort of patriotic post, but more a statement of fact.

We are lucky to be writers here.

During the time when East and West Germany existed, my old German art history professor would sneak books back and forth across the border.

The study abroad from my undergraduate university has had a Munich program going for years and when Dieter would teach for the group, he would be able to travel with us across the wall.  If he didn’t go with us, he would have had to pay a lot of money for the books he purchased and questioned as he tried to cross the border.

Where did you buy these?  How were they bought?  Let’s see your receipt.

However, they wanted to make a good impression on foreigners and never questioned them or searched their bags, and so he went with our college group and bought all the books he wanted.

In the GDR ‘subversive’ artists had their apartments wired, they were blacklists, or thrown into Hohenshoenhausen for their writing.  As is said in The Lives of Others, “The state office for statistics on Hans-Beimler street counts everything; knows everything.” The office of State Security did too.

In 1945 Alexander Solzhenitsyn was writing letters to his friend Nikolai Vitkevich.  In those letters he made a derogatory comment against Stalin and the police showed up at his door.  He was sentenced to eight years in a forced labor camp.

Eight years in a gulag.

What does Solzhenitsyn have in common with Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, and Bertolt Brecht?  They’re all exiles writers.  Exiles because of their crafts.

Today, where I live, I can walk out my door, get in my car, drive to another state and purchase a book.  No high fees, no deadly border crossing where they would have to examine my purchases to make sure I wasn’t bringing anything in or out that would be seen as subversive.  I can purchase any book I want.  I can write what I want.  I can have this blog online among a million others and it is ok.

Sure you can make arguments about the government tracking purchases, or writing terrorists threats but, you know, the latter is like comparing apples to oranges and the former is, well, whatever.  Whatever because I have never had a police man come to my door and ask me about where and how I purchased my books.

We are so lucky and we take it for granted

We take it for granted that we haven’t had to sneak across a border in our own country for a book and here the words, “Where did you buy that? How were they bought?  Let’s see your receipt.”

Author Spotlight on The Sharp Angle

Because I won the Writer’s Digest SF/F forum contest, Lydia Sharp honored me by giving me an ‘author spotlight’ on her blog The Sharp Angle.  Read it HERE.   Thanks Lydia for letting me invade your space :) Be sure to stick around and check out her blog!

A Travesty

Whenever I hear that one of my favorite books, or book series, is going to be made into a movie, I hold my breath.  The chances that a movie will be as good as a book are usually pretty low.  Sometimes, we get lucky.  Peter Jackson did a fantastic job with Lord of the Rings.  Yes, they had to cut Tom Bombadil, but I understand that.  There were elves at Helms Deep, but, I mean, you can over look that.  The worst infraction committed by the LOTR movies, in my opinion, was the destruction of Faramir’s character, but, considering how well the rest of the movies were, I can still say I’m happy with the book to movie transition.

Not all transitions are so easy.  We all know that lots of those movies from books are pretty cringe worthy.

I’m sure that any one of us could make a list of terrible movies that destroyed their books but there is one, I think, that stands out above all others.

Don't let the kinda neat poster fool you

Yes.  This is the most horrible creation on the face of the planet.  Even worse than Ed Hardy T-shirts.  It completely destroyed the book.  I’ve never gotten so angry at a movie in my life as I did at The Black Cauldron.  If you’ve read the book, and see the movie, you’ll want to set it on fire.  And then run it over with your car.

What did they do?  Well, for starters they completely changed the plot.

Okay.  Not completely.   They actually made a movie about a different book, The Book of Three and then tossed in a few elements from The Black Cauldron.

You see, The Black Cauldron is the second book in The Chronicles of Prydain with the first being The Book of Three.  So instead of really making a movie from one, they mashed the two together and most of the plot didn’t even come from the title book!

I mean, really?  Who does that?  They didn’t even give the movie a title like “Prydain” or “Chronicles of Prydain” or some general title that would encompass the two!

Okay so the lack of accuracy as to what the movie is about isn’t even half of what’s wrong.  Let’s look at two of our main character: Taran and Eilonwy.

Taran is awesome.  I love Taran and Eilonwy is pretty cool too.  But apparently Disney didn’t think so because they switched their personalities.

In the books, when Taran and Eilonwy first meet, Eilonwy a headstrong, resolute and stubborn.  She is far  from a typical damsel, is schooled in sorcery and can handle a sword if need be.  At the beginning of the series (since he changes as the books progress, most notably in Taran Wanderer), Taran’s a bit more cautious and foolhardy.

Apparently , something was wrong with having our female character have such a strong personality, because she became this meek, simpering kid and Taran became the strong, resolute, ‘I know what I’m doing,’ sort.  Really Disney?  Making the female character weak like that?  What’s wrong with a strong female character??  Do you know how a)insulting that is to me as a woman b) how insulting it is to me as a fan of the books that you blatantly mess up the characters so egregiously  c) insulting to the book and the characters that you completely and utterly change their personalities which is the most important part of the characters!

But just wait.  That’s not the worst of it.  The worst happened to my poor dear Fflewddur Fflam.  In the books, he is described as a tall thin man with spikey yellow hair, on the young side.  Let’s run this through the Disney translator and see what we get:

This was pretty much how my face looked when I saw this movie

What the….aodhfaehfafa?!?!

Do you see a tall, thin, spikey yellow haired man in this?  Nope, not at all.

Why?

Because they made Fflewddur old!!  Yeah, that’s him there in the middle, probably right after he saw himself in a mirror. If there is one thing that characterizes Fflewddur, besides his giant cat and magic harp, is his spikey yellow hair, and they made it long and gray.  And on top of that they made him a complete idiot!  This goes beyond a simple change in eye color and/or hair color.  They gave the character a complete make over!  A bad one too!  What makes it terrible is that they took it to a level that it affects who the character is and how the readers identify him!

Gah!  I’m so angry I could just…I could just….

kaboom!

Robin Hood

I don’t think I’m going to like this new Robin Hood.  It looks from the previews, and the plot summary, that it takes the character too far away from what made Robin Hood, Robin Hood and the unique clever rogue that he was.

And I don’t think it will inspire Nottingham to create anymore of these lingerie stores:

 Maid Marion's Secrets

On Short Stories

We have a lot of audacity, as writers, to write a short story.  To say to someone, “Hey, I’m going to write a story with characters you care about, full of tension, description, setting, and make it a complete, stand alone story, all within a couple of pages.”  I mean that takes some literary balls.  And yet we do it.  Or at least try.

Short stories are tricksy devils.

What often happens with short stories is that we don’t get an actual story.  We get more what seems like a chapter of a longer work, something that has a relatively weak ending and only ties up one small plot thread, rather than bringing the entire story to a close.

Or, another problem, is we’ll get a story, but it’s full of plot holes and feels rather rushed because someone’s trying to fit a longer work in a shorter space.  They don’t have time to develop relationships, or establish motives, because the ones they have planned for the story are just too complex to fit into a short space.

Without knowing how to approach them, like I said, short stories can be very tricksy.

I have my own technique, and my own little trick.  I usually write to a message or a theme.  I’m not saying be preachy, but if you have a message or a theme you want to get across it will naturally keep your story compact.

Why?

1)      Messages naturally hit with a brick when they’re short and sweet.  If you drag out a story with a message too long, then it gets preachy, or you lose it.

2)      It’s a binding thread that runs from the beginning to the end of the story and keeps everything connected.  If you’re writing with a theme or a message in mind, then your characters stick close to it, your setting sticks close to it, and your story doesn’t start running loose and get longer and longer.  It’s not necessarily about your characters, or your plot, but how they all handle and portray the message or theme.  It’s hard for a message or theme to run amok.

3)      It gives the story a point, and gives it a little bit of meat. 

4)      It’s easy for people to quickly relate to themes or messages.  Thus it’s easy to relate to characters as they relate to it, and so you don’t have to spend quite so much time on character development.  For example: Love.  A very strong theme, one that people relate to in all its forms.  If you make ‘Love’ a golden thread that runs throughout the story, readers are automatically drawn to character interactions because they understand them on a personal level and you don’t have to worry about as much character development.

Do I always write with a message or theme?  No, not at all.  I’ve done several shorts without a message or theme that turned out just fine, but that was also because I made the focus of my story small.  However I like writing to a theme, because it gives me a deep emotional connection to a story and that, for me, makes a story satisfying.

Book Review: Bound in Blood by P.C. Hodgell

Absolutely amazing.  My favorite since Dark of the Gods.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have our Tyr-ridan.  Yes, we already knew we had two of them, it was sort of obvious, but now we have our third member.  It was made obvious with in the first 20 pages of the book.  Yeah.  The story got started that fast.  It was solid absorbing story from page one and I am just as in love with the characters as I have been since Godstalk.  P.C. Hodgell is truly the most underrated author out there.

Bound in Blood follows Jame's continued adventures at the Randon college, and Torisen’s slow discovery of mysteries of his house that Jame long since acknowledged.  Jame also explores the world of the Merikit again as the Earth Wife’s favorite and is finally able to ride the Rathorn she mistakenly blood bonded.  Nothing says fun than riding a carnivorous horse who grows his own natural ivory armor.  The cycle is beginning to clear up some loose ends in this book as we discover more about the sordid past of the Knorth House and clear it up to some degree.  Now, even more, we’re starting to look toward the future.

The characters, as usual, are completely fantastic.  Jame is getting more secure with her place in the world, especially as she ferrets out more secrets and understand her role as the face of ‘That-Which-Destroys.’  It is increasingly obvious how both she, and Kindrie, will need to support Torisen as he is going to have to face some very uncomfortable truths, and some very uncomfortable pasts before he can make steps toward his future.  He’s getting better, more aware to take the fingers out of his ears and become more accepting of not only his sister, but his relationship with her, in that he doesn’t want to hate her.  We can see Torisen making steps, albeit small ones, but he’s going to need a push to go over the edge.

Which of course will have to come when they go to the Southern Wastes and Urakarn.  There’s some very clear foreshadowing in the book.  And the author mentions it in her blog .

The literary techniques in this are brilliant, sometimes subtle, but brilliant none the less.  These include some definite nods to events in Dark of the Gods.  The first time we ever meet Torisen, he is examining a watch-weirdling on Merikit borders.  A chapter in Bound in Blood begins the same way, only with Jame and the watch-weirdling.  In Dark, Jame was mistaken for Tori on the battlefield, and in Bound in Blood Tori is repeatedly (and hilariously) mistaken for Jame.

Beautiful framing.  Absolutely beautiful.  It began with the death banners in the the halls at Gothregar and where Tieri’s death banner comes to ‘life’ as it were, and it comes to an end with the burning of Greshans death banner, found  in his own coat, after it came to ‘life,’ and then the last section takes place once again in the halls at Gothregar, burning the death banners.  Ah-mazing.

If you haven’t picked up this author yet…DO SO.  RIGHT NOW.  You deserve to know this world and its characters and its peoples. And since Baen is reprinting the earlier ones, they’re easier to find and you won’t have to hunt out the old school ones like the ones my mother passed down to me.

Why I sometimes hate Word 2007

No, I don't want to be politically correct, thank you very much.

If Only I Could...

A good friend of mine and I were talking the other day about books and literature and specifically about different worlds.  The question came up of, if you could live in one of your favorite books for a week or a month or even a lifetime, what would it be and why.

Now I thought about this for a little bit and realized that if I lived in many of my favorite books my chances of dying are pretty high.  Think about it.  Most fantasy worlds are in some state of turmoil and the chances of me popping in for a week and becoming a hero and being generally awesome are pretty low.  I mean I could try to be a hero all I wanted, but I’d probably hurt myself if I tried to swing a sword.

Anyways, I thought for a bit and decided that I would love to visit the Wheel of Time universe for a week.  Odd I know.  But while this world is in complete turmoil, and my chance of dying is extremely high, I would still go.  However, I would go for one reason, and one reason only: 

To find Rand al’Thor and punch him in the face. 

If there is one character who could use a good solid punch to the face, its him.

Rand al’Thor you are not Fabio.  Close your shirt.

 STOP WHINING! UGH WE GET IT ALREADY!  “Waaah I have to be hard.  Hard as iron.  Waaah!”

Okay, the sad thing about Rand is that he was pretty cool in the beginning.  I loved the first, say, five, books of the Wheel of Time series, but then they went downhill, as did most of the characters.  In particular Rand. (We won’t mention the horror that happened to Perrin once Faile was introduced).

We get the point that you feel like you have to be emotionless, but to reiterate this point by whining about for three to four books?  Three to four long books?  This is not what we call character growth.  This is character stagnation and it gets old really really fast.  When this is the only facet of your character for so long, the readers get tired of it and they get tired of him.

Now, what makes it worse is that I’ve heard, because I completely stopped reading Wheel of Time after Crossroads of Twilight (I should have given up earlier), that he finally gets out of his ‘I have to be hard’ funk.  Now since it was such a big deal to him for so long, you’d think that what finally pushed him out of it, what finally served as a catalyst was something big, something drastic, something important.  But no.  All he does is talk with his father.  Something he could have done at any point in time.  In fact, he’s had conversations with his father before and people have tried to talk him out of this funk.   Worst.  Catalyist.  Ever.

No, I take that back.  That’s not a catalyist, that’s an excuse.  That’s an easy way out when you realize, oops, I need to get my character out of his too deep funk, so NOW I’ll make him listen to other people.

Rand also gets annoying, not only from his incessant whining and ‘life’s so hard for me,’ over the span of three-four books, but also for this three wives nonsense.  Really, why is having three wives necessary to the plot?  Other than to possibly play out a man’s fantasy?  I’m sorry, there is no way Rand pulls off this pimp nonsense.

Whining, no character growth, and pimping over the course of several books is, at least in my mind, justification for a good solid punch to face.