Platypus of Truth

Look at Wil, now back to Ander, now back at Wil, now back at Ander.  Wil doesn't look like Ander, but he could smell like him...  Ok, so now we're ramping up the pace as the novel heads towards its climax.  That means switching back and forth between the two narratives every chapter or two to raise the tension.  We'll start with the elves and demons. Elves and Demons.  Brooks sets us up for that great fantasy cliche "the siege."  Ever since Tolkien gave us the battle of Helm's Deep and the siege of Minas Tirith, the epic battle for the bastion of the forces of light has become the sin qua non of fantasy writing.  Brooks has worked up to this moment with the battles of the passes and the Sarandanon.  Even though there are three battles in this book, they are wisely deployed.  Each battle has some novel element that separates it from the others and thus keeps the the story from becoming repetitive.  After all, three battles in two-hundre...

Once we get into the battle scenes, Brooks is completely on top of his game.  At the battles of the Halys Cut and Baen Draw the story had me compulsively turning pages and feeling some genuine emotion.  Allanon's confrontation with the dragon was particularly intense.  Beyond that, Stee Jans quickly achieves the weight necessary for him to be a staunch supporting character and even Pindanon moves up a notch right when the author needs him to for dramatic effect (in other words, right before killing him off).  Even in the midst of the action, Brooks carves out room for real character development as we watch Ander take his father's throne and learn that Allanon's magic is slowly killing him (a reason that he's so empathetic and patient with Amberle?).  As with the Pykon, then, these chapters represent some of the best writing in the book thus far.  My only regret is that Arion never really emerges as a three-dimensional character before he dies.  That ta...

As Wil and Amberle prepare to enter the Wilderun, they encounter a genuine piece of fantasy creation: the Wing Riders.  Whether they correspond more to the world of Pern or Middle Earth, I'll let you decide, but they aren't directly lifted from either.  So far in the world of the Four Lands, the fantastic creatures we've seen have been mostly evil (several kinds of demons and a bog monster).  Good has the Elcrys and the King of the Silver River.  Yup.  Brooks is probably at his strongest imagining all kinds of creepy antagonists for his heroes to fight; the heroes themselves are rather prosaic.  Adding the Wing Riders and their Rocs helps even things out a bit.  It also provides him with an opportunity to describe a "first flight;" a touchstone that most of us can remember in this age of mass air travel (no doom blimps... sad).  Perk is also one of those plucky little NPCs that you know the GM created purely for the satisfaction of having the vill...

Summer is my new video game season.  When I was a kid, it was year round.  Dennis and I puzzled our way through more games on an all-nighter than I care to count.   My brother and sister and I co-oped on quite a few as well.  After Freshman year of college, things slowed down quite a bit and almost disappeared in grad school.  I remember trying to play a bit of the Game Cube Legend of Zelda and realizing just how rusty I'd gotten.  The first couple years of marriage continued the trend until I got sick and my wife and I discovered Peasant's Quest.  Suddenly we realized this stuff could be fun.  Now the wife and I devote a little time each summer to working our way through one of the Myst games and I pick something to work through on my own as well.  Back in the saddle.  Ye-haw. This year, my wife surprised me with Starcraft II at Christmas so I got started a little early.  I bit that off in little 30 minute segments on Saturdays...

Nota bene: Elven hunters do really exist to heighten the narrative tension via being butchered in nasty ways by various monsters.  Giving them names almost humanizes them.  It's like those red-shirted ensigns on Star Trek away teams that show up merely to illustrate what a dangerous situation the crew has found themselves in.  Crispin, at least, is starting to flesh out a bit as a character.  I don't know why he lets Wil go investigate the Drey Wood when he already thinks that there's danger.  Must be all that rain on the pate.  Chinese water torture or something.  I note also, long after the fact, that Wil forgets in his horror to use the Elfstones.  Good job slipping that one by us Mr. Brooks! In other news: Amberle is still very much a teenager, but now that she is on a first name basis with Wil and falling asleep on his shoulder she has earned three more character points (I suggest that she put them into cuddle, summon animal companion, and ...

With Wil, Amberle, and Allanon now safely in Arborlon, Brooks now has two difficult scenes to manage.  First, he must depict the elven council and its decision to accept or reject Amberle.  Second, Amberle will have to speak with the Ellcrys.  We'll take them in order. The problem Brooks faces in the elven council scene is keeping it from either seeming perfunctory or allowing it to swell into a full "council of Elrond" mega-chapter.  Since Brooks' world is a "thin" world without the depth and sweep of Middle Earth and since he's already given us all the back story we need to understand the quest for the Bloodfire it makes sense that he errs on the side of the perfunctory.  Allanon and Amberle are the only "deep" characters in the scene (Wil just sits there).  We get to see a little more of Eventine, Ander, and Arion; at least enough to confirm their characters.  Of the three, only Eventine will get enough screen time in the next couple cha...

Ending off the Rover episode- The appearance of the monster that attacks the camp is carefully handled.  Brooks does a good job of building up our sense of foreboding with the rumors about a demon and then the "coughs" in the dark leading up to the attack.  The creature he describes kept reminding me of the slug beast in Doug TenNapel's "Creature Tech," but maybe that's because I'm reading through it right now.  Once again, Terry Brooks is an adept at narrating action sequences.  Every time there's a fight or a chase, I know exactly what's going on without having to pause or reread.  Wil's use of the Elfstones feels a bit perfunctory, but if we've read "The Sword of Shannara," we know that these things work and will respond to Wil in his hour of need.  Cephelo's reaction to the whole incident is spot-on as is Amberle's.  Eretria's flirty insistence on throwing herself at Wil's head baffles me.  She should be ru...

Thoughts come pouring in so fast sometimes that they're almost impossible to gather.  In the interest, then,of capturing some of them before they depart and are lost forever, I've decided to blog on Terry Brooks' "The Elfstones of Shannara" as I read.  Currently, I'm on page 156 out of 564.  Let me back up a little, however and explain a bit more about my relationship to the world of Shannara. I haven't read the Shannara series since I was thirteen or fourteen.  I had finished all of Tolkien I could get my hands on and found myself hungry for more.  At that time, once people heard you were reading Tolkien, they always asked if you had read the Shannara books.  I picked up the series and devoured it being too young to notice or care that "The Sword of Shannara" is point for point rip-off of "The Lord of the Rings."  I read straight through to "The Talismans of Shannara" and then re-read again and again in a short span of tim...

Check out Herch's "Ode to the Theater" here .  I think he hits the nail on the head.  Be sure to check out the comments as well.

This category of posts began in 2007.  At that point, for reasons no longer remembered, I decided to try my hand at reviewing books.  The reviews began with a simple list of my three all-time favorites: "The Lord of the Rings," "The Idylls of the King," and "The Oresteia."  From there, it mushroomed out to include everything under the sun.  In all, I've reviewed about forty-seven books in genres ranging from science fiction to philosophy , comics to classics .  In short, whatever has caught my fancy.  After all that effort, it seems like it would be worth while to sit down and put into words what I've learned.  Cliche, I know, but here we go: 1. Read Broadly   There are a lot of books in the world.  You can't read them all.  Most of us are merely content to visit one a favorite genre or two and read from a few favorite authors.  This may be pleasant, but it stunts the mind and constricts literary taste.  In order to grow ...

It's now been eleven years since Ang Lee's masterpiece "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" took American theater-goers by storm.  I remember being in the theater and thinking "I've never seen anything like this."  Even "The Matrix" didn't come close."  The sword fight in the bamboo forest, in particular, is a great moment in Film.  Everything about the movie is excellent: the costumes, the sets, the nuanced acting, the lighting and cinematography.  It's truly a feast for the eyes and opened up the American mainstream (for a time at least) for other pieces like "Hero" or "The House of Flying Daggers."  These subsequent films, however, didn't make as much of a splash and American interest in Hong Kong period dramas has waned. Granted, "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" was exceptional, why the loss of mainstream interest in the genre (there will always be geeks and hipsters who go in for foreign film)? ...

It took fifteen years to get from Starcraft to Starcraft II.  To say the wait was worth it would be cliched.  Would I have liked this game to have come out a lot sooner?  Sure.  Did I still love it when it came out?  You bet. I've already discussed my reaction to the map editor for Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty over here .  As far as the game mechanics are concerned, they're the same easy-to-use-hard-to-master interface; just perfect for an old fossil like me.  The Diablo-esque tech-trees were easy to navigate even for someone who has never played any of the Diablo games or their imitators.  The three divergent plot trees were minimal and underdeveloped but still fun.  I appreciated the way they stressed that choices have human consequences.  In fact, that might be the whole point of the game.   *mild spoilers ahead* Now on to what really interests me: Story.  Unlike the first Starcraft and its expansion Broodwar, Wing...