Predictions for “Deathly Hallows”, aka, Yes, I’m a Dork

With the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a mere ten days away, I thought I’d take a moment to post up my predictions of what will happen and how things will shake out.

You’ll find them after the jump.

A word of warning…predictions could contain spoilers if you haven’t read the other books…

On the Shelf

I’ve been in a bit of a lull since finishing 1634: The Baltic War. I’ve had my eye on Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, but with the next – and final – Harry Potter just around the corner, I’ve been hesitant to crack open anything so hefty.

Seeking a quick diversion, I took a chance and picked up Max Brooks’ World War Z, and am I ever glad I did.

The book is about a global zombie war that takes place in the near future. As crazy as it sounds, the story is presented as a series of interviews with various witnesses and survivors, in a similar vein to the works of Stephen E. Ambrose. I’m finding it a fascinating format, as it allows Brooks to introduce dozens of wildly different characters, each filling in the larger story with their own, personal experiences.

Well worth the read.

Transformers: The Novelization

Being between novels and with some time to kill (and because I grew up in the 80’s and am a geek), I decided to pick up the Transformers novelization ahead of the movie’s release.  So far it has been…interesting.

The Good

- The story, at least as far as I’ve read, is actually pretty good.  It’s no Count of Monte Cristo, mind you, but for a big-budget summer blockbuster based on a line of toys, it works.

- I’ve found myself enjoying a lot of the little details.  A few "more than meets the eye" lines.  Sure, they’re groaners, but whatever.  It’s Transformers.  And when Sam (Shia Lebouf’s character) is first introduced to Optimus Prime and the rest of the Autobots, one of his first questions is why they’ve come because it’s "surely not to play at transforming yourselves from vehicles into robots and back again and again", which is genius!

- Bumblebee’s "voice". 

- Optimus Prime.  The soul of the character (yes, he has a soul, damnit!) is essentially unchanged from the G1 cartoon series.  Speaking of which.  Our intern was asking me who my favorite Transformer was today, and I nodded to the Optimus action figure on my bookshelf, and he asked "which one is that?".  I mean, come on!  It’s not like we’re talking one of the obscure Transformers here, much less a Go-Bot or something!

The Bad & The Ugly

- Alan Dean Foster’s writing.  Good God is it bad.  Laughably bad.  As in – and I’m paraphrasing here, but you get the drift – "The robot’s name was Blackout, but nobody could have known that, and the robot was not inclined to disclose it".  Now, I realize that something as visual as Transformers is probably a challenge to put to paper, but come on!  This is some of the worst descriptive writing I’ve ever encountered.

The Historian

After receiving several strong recommendations from friends and family, I finally broke down and purchased Elizabeth Kostova’s debut novel a few weeks back.

I wish I hadn’t.

I hate to come down against a book that has come so highly recommended, but I can’t help it.  The Historian not only left me cold, but frustrated as well.

I won’t get into the plot here.  You can head to the Amazon page linked above if you want specifics.  For the purposes of this post, you need only know that the novel is something of a literary thriller that has to do with a certain 15th-century Carpathian noble known as Vlad Tepes – a.k.a. Dracula.

Sounds interesting, right?  Fascinating, even?  I mean, come on, a thriller about Dracula.  Well, the term "thriller" is obviously being employed loosely these days, as what followed was six hundred and more pages of travelogue interspersed with a dragging story.

Most annoying, however, is Kostova’s employment of a number of very techniques I have labored (and likely failed) to avoid in my own writings, such as…

Over-Description – The taking of a page or more to describe the appearance of a person, building, landscape, et cetera.  Yes, some description is necessary, but I’ve always preferred a sparser style that relies on the reader’s imagination to complete the image.  Granted, Kostova is nowhere near the offender that, say, Colleen McCullough is (I mean really, who needs a three page description of how to don a toga?), but her penchant toward over-description is nevertheless noticeable.

Amazing Connections – A succession of chance meetings which blow right past the bounds of credulity.  The number and sheer implausibility of the fortuitous encounters in Kostova’s novel manage to put even Dan Brown to shame.  An example – traveling to Istanbul on the trail of a missing professor who may or may not have been abducted by Dracula, only to end up dining beside and striking up a conversation with a Turkish professor whose side hobby happens to be – get this – all things Dracula.  I hesitate to say all, but many of the novel’s developments rely upon amazing and highly improbable connections such as these.

Info-Dumps – Long, drawn-out conversations used to deliver background information.  While I am prepared to accept these as necessary in novels such as this, there is no need for them to be so repetitive, nor so long and drawn-out.

Imperium

A few years back, Robert Harris, the author of Fatherland and Enigma, turned his attention to the ancient world with Pompeii (guess what it is about…).  Being the sucker for historical fiction that I am, I snagged a copy and tore into it.

Now…I won’t say that Pompeii was bad…indeed, when dealing with the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius it was in fact quite good.  But the excuse of a story that Harris tacked on…execrable.

It was in light of this experience that I regarded Harris’ new book, Imperium, with mixed feelings.  On the one hand, he can be a brilliant writer, and the career of Cicero is certainly fertile ground from which to draw a story.  On the other hand…I couldn’t quite bring myself to overlook the Dan Brown-esque story that dragged Pompeii down.

I probably would’ve avoided it altogether had my iPod adapter not gone on the fritz only a few days before I was supposed to be driving to Dallas.  Dreading the thought of picking through radio stations for the drive there and back, I headed to Barnes & Noble to grab an audiobook.  And, lo and behold, there sat Imperium.  Figuring it looked more appealing than the other new arrivals, I decided to take the risk.  And am I glad I did.

Harris may have botched the story in Pompeii, but he nails it in Imperium, which covers Cicero’s career up through his election to consul in 63 B.C., as narrated by his secretary, Tiro.  The story is sharp, witty, engrossing, and remarkably accurate to the real events.  It is also – at least to my mind – quite acccessible.  But then again, I always tend to overestimate the average reader’s ability to juggle more than three names ending in "-us".

If you are looking for a grand epic of war and violence, however, I would advise you to look elsewhere.  Cicero was not one for conflict and conquest, and most of the novel’s action takes place in the Forum, the Senate, and the various houses of leading citizens.  Nevertheless, it is filled with plenty of legal and political drama and adventurism the likes of which would make John Grisham curl up in a ball and whimper.

All in all, I was very pleased, and when the inevitable sequel comes out in a few years, I will definitely be buying it.

Three Books…

There’s been quite a lot going on in Austin over the past month or so but, frustratingly, none of it has struck me as being particularly blog-worthy.  I can’t talk about work,  won’t talk about my writing (all you need to know is that it is progressing), and don’t want to bore with any more car-related posts.  As a result, whenever I’ve had the time to sit down and write a post, I’ve ended up staring at the monitor with no idea what to write about.

Well…today I want to offer up my thoughts on three recent reads.  All three are new hardcovers from some of my favorite authors, those fortunate few whose offerings I will pick up without question.  Ultimately, I found one a disappointment, one a frustration, and the other an absolute delight.

The Afghan Campaign – Steven Pressfield

Let me begin by saying that I love Steven Pressfield.  His Gates of Fire and Tides of War, about the Battle of Thermopylae and the Peloponnesian War, respectively, are brilliant, gritty, involving epics.  They bring the world of Ancient Greece alive and given an urgent energy that has to be read to be understood.  If you have not read them, do so.

His book on writing, The War of Art, is imbued with that same gritty, urgent energy.  It makes you want to stand up and do something.  In my case, that something was buckling down and giving the novel writing thing a serious go.  For that, I will be forever in the man’s debt.

And then came Virtues of War, Pressfield’s take on Alexander the Great.  I’ve posted about it before, but suffice to say, I found it a rather unsatisfying work that, frankly, left a sour taste in my mouth. 

With The Afghan Campaign, however, I was willing to give Pressfield another chance.  Though he was revisiting Alexander’s campaigns (guess which one…), he was returning to his roots and telling the story through the perspective of a relative nobody, a random soldier in the Macedonian army.

What follows is a tale of guerilla warfare and the Macedonians’ repeated attempts to adapt and fight an enemy that vanishes before they can mobilize and that blends in among the people.  An enemy that, history tells us, delayed Alexander for three years.  It should be intriguing stuff, especially considering our current situation in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it left me cold.  Gates of Fire gloried in its triumphant tragedy, and in the sacrifice of the three hundred Spartans who died to buy the rest of Greece just a little more time.  Tides of War made the epic, generation-long Peloponnesian War accessible, all while exploring some of the more deplorable attributes of human nature.  But The Afghan Campaign?  Its theme, if any, is of disillusionment and futility.

It was not a bad book, not by any means, and it was certainly better than the maddening Virtues of War.  But it fails, in my opinion, to live up to his earlier works.

Knights of the Black and White – Jack Whyte

Jack Whyte’s Arthurian saga, the Camulod Chronicles, has been one of the most interesting takes on the legendary king that I have ever read.  Grounded in the realities of 5th century Britain, the epic series begins several generations before Arthur’s birth, explaining the founding of Camulod, the forging of Excalibur, and the relationships between the central characters of the legend in ways that, while extraordinary, at least seem plausible.

Now, however, the Camulod saga has been completed, and Whyte has turned his attention to the topical Knights Templar.  The Knights of the Black and White, the first volume of what will eventually be a trilogy, seeks to explain the origins of the Templars.  And explain them it does, in a quite interesting fashion.  As Whyte tells it, the Templars are founded as a cover for an ancient secret society.  This society, the Order of the Rebirth of Sion, knows the truth behind Christ’s crucifixion and the founding of the Church, and establishes the Templars as a way to excavate the Temple Mount in Jerusalem without arousing suspicions.

When Whyte is dealing with the Order and the establishment of the Templars, the book is fascinating.  But when it turns its attention to the surrounding story, to the intrigues of the Jerusalem nobility, and to the inner battles of a young Templar, it loses all sense of urgency and becomes flat-out boring and tedious.

A Meeting at Corvallis – S.M. Stirling

The third and final book, A Meeting at Corvallis, is S.M. Stirling’s conclusion to the trilogy he began with Dies the Fire back in 2004.  In the first book, an inexplicable event referred to as "the Change" rendered electronics, internal combustion engines, and firearms useless and cast humanity back into the Dark Ages.  Chaos followed as most of the world’s population succumbed to hunger, disease, violence, and even cannibalism.

Ten years on, the survivors of the global die-off have adapted to their new world and coalesced into a number of developing societies, and the tensions that have been building since the Change finally come to a head when the Portland Protective Association, a feudal society led by a former history professor, invades its smaller neighbors, including the warrior monks of Mt. Angel, the kilt-wearing wiccans of Clan MacKenzie, and former marine Mike Havel’s Bearkillers.

This final novel in the trilogy is thrilling not just for its story, but for Stirling’s research (for some indication of the depth of his research and planning, check out his detailed account of Britain post-Change, a fascinating read in itself), for the throwaway pop culture and historical references, and for the exploration of the development of societies and the origins of myths and legends.

With A Meeting at Corvallis, Stirling caps a haunting, thrilling, and wildly imaginative trilogy.  Read it.  You won’t be disappointed.

I Have a Book Idea

Okay.  Get this.

The American Revolution…but with dragons.

Oh, wait.  It’s already been done.

Maybe I’ll have to fall back on the Civil War and unicorns…

The Thing That Happened to Me at Borders

For our upcoming vacation, I’ve decided to forego my usual practice of toting along multiple books.  Space is going to be at a premium, so I will instead be bringing along just one.  My thinking is that, if I bring along a book long enough, it should take me most, if not all, of the vacation to work my way through it.

That book?  Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.  It’s okay.  Roll your eyes.  Snicker.  Shudder.  Everyone else has.  Fact is, though, I’m looking forward to it.  War and Peace is regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written and, considering how much I loved The Count of Monte Cristo, I’m eager to see how another voluminous 19th century novel stacks up.

So today, as I was running errands, I stopped by Borders to pick up the hefty tome.  Barnes & Noble did not have the Modern Library paperback I was looking for, but it’s fellow "B"-named rival did.  Finding what I was looking for, I made straight for the registers without bothering to browse.  I have something like two dozen books on my "to read" shelf.  Or in my "to read" box, more precisely.

Arriving at the checkout, I enduring the look of awe and pity the cashier gave me as she realized what I was purchasing.  She scans it, tells me the total, and I hand her my card.  At which point she says:

"Can I see your driver’s license?"

I hand it over, thinking the same thought I’m sure everyone things when they are asked to do so.  Who the hell would steal a credit card and use it to buy [insert inane product here]?

At which point, the cashier to my left, a very cynical looking man of about thirty, turns to his colleague.

"What are you checking his ID for?" he asks.  "Like anybody’s going to steal a credit card and use it to come in here and buy War and Peace."

Cynical Borders cashier, you are my new hero.

The Sanctity of Books

If you haven’t noticed, our world is going digital.  This blog is proof of that.  Granted, we’re not there yet.  We’re making progress, but we still have a ways to go.

Americans are spending as much time online as they are watching television (and even television is being digitized – HDTV, digital cable, video on demand, and in a few years IPTV).  Online everything, from shopping to banking to dating, is taking off.  Consumers are abandoning film cameras altogether.  Digital cameras have become a way of life.  DVDs have replaced VHS tapes.  Digital music has become one of the fastest-growing phenomena of the last fifty years.  And, in a few years, we’ll be buying movies online just like we do music from iTunes.  Instead of buying the latest DVD, we will download it. 

In all the frenzy of digitization, however, there is one medium that has remained immune.  The book.

Why?  I have a theory.

A book, the experience of curling up on a comfortable chair and flipping the pages, it can’t be recreated digitally.  Movies?  Yes.  Music?  Yes.  Pictures, sure.  Hell, I read all my newspapers online now.  Personally, I think they are more manageable that way.

But the book…its not just the words on the page, its the very act of reading that is sacrosanct.

Dies the Fire

One day, out of nowhere, you are overwhelmed by this blinding white flash. It sears into your retinas, and seems to burn into your very bones. And then suddenly its over. The flash is gone. The pain is gone. Blinking in confusion, you look around.

You could be in a bar, or at work, out walking your dog or driving your car. It make take an instant to hit you, or an hour. Nothing is working. Cars are dead, so are phones, flashlights, TVs, you name it. Anything that is powered. Thousands of feet up, planes begin to fall out of the sky. They slam into cities, carving up swaths of destruction. The fires spread, and firefighters are powerless. Their engines don’t work.

EMP? Perhaps, but would EMP change the chemical properties of gunpowder and render it useless?

For a time, people remain calm, if confused. A terrible power failure, certainly, someone will come rescure them. No one does. The whole world – the U.S. at least – has just been cast into the dark ages. Those realizing quickly enough escape the cities, to begin anew and fight for their survival in the countryside. The food runs out. Hundreds of millions begin dying, their bodies littering the country’s cities and highways.

For those that survive, the world becomes a much larger place, lit only by fire. Survival is a daily battle, against hunger, diseases like the black plague, rampaging animals, and fellow survivors. Bands of humans draw together. turning what skills they have into nebulous societies. They must face not only the specter of hunger and the toil of the harvest, but diseases, roving bands of cannibals, and those bent upon conquest. Together they struggle to made workable weapons and armor, including swords made from the leaf springs of now-useless automobiles.

Now, I love historical fiction, but I have a weak spot in my heart for apocalyptic epics as well. There’s the one where the microbe eats every petroleum-based thing on the planet. Or the one where the comet hits the earth. S.M. Stirlings Dies the Fire, however, has just become my hands down favorite of the genre. Its premise may not be logical as say, a comet slamming into us, and in fact is so bizarre that he doesn’t even explain it. His characters remain baffled at why exactly all their technology, from internal combustion engines to electricity to gunpowder stopped working. They chalk it up to aliens, or perhaps some deity smacking humanity down a notch to keep them from destroying Earth.

That said, it deals with the aftereffects better than any of the other novels I’ve read. Stirling does an admirable job of shifting the reader into the new world as his characters adjust to it. The confusion that turns into panic as everyone realizes their power is not coming back, and no one is coming for them. The horror of the die off. The struggle to merely survive, and then to reach safety and plant crops. To fashion weapons and then to learn how to use them. It is the first in this genre of books that deals with the inevitable decline in literacy that would occur after a generation or two. And it deals with the birth of legends and myths.

I really, really cannot recommend this book enough. Its haunting, but at the same time a great story and a wonderful epic. If you get the chance, pick it up.