Dec 30 2014

Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski

Blood of Elves is billed as “a novel of the witcher” and this same witcher, Geralt of Rivia, is blurbed as the inspiration “for the critically acclaimed video game The Witcher,” which tells me some interesting things right away. First, that one way to get fantasy translated into English, it helps to have a popular video game behind it. That’s different from how I understood much of the book-game relationship to work. I had thought that recognizable books spawned games as offshoots, often after the book or series had been adapted into a movie or television production. The way things flow through pop culture keeps changing.

Next, it’s “a novel,” not first in a trilogy or “the novel” or something else. Geralt’s story is likely to be open-ended in some form or fashion. The Last Wish seems to precede in the character’s chronology, although both begin in media res. Blood of Elves is the first in a longer narrative about impending war between the various small kingdoms and countries where Geralt has wandered and had adventures and a larger power to the north. In the book it’s called Nilfgaard, but consonant with the author’s Polish background, could well be called Muscovy or Russia. It is an existential threat to the kingdoms, led by a ruthless autocrat.

As in The Last Wish, the author’s background gives the setting and the story a different cast from someone steeped in Anglo-American fantasy. For example, the pacing is simply different from what I expected in a fantasy novel. There’s not the kind of orderly progression of events or obstacles; there’s not a climax to mark the end of the first book; the action does not even follow the series’ titular character for much of the book. Indeed, Blood of Elves is as much about other characters — the minstrel Dandilion, the enchantress Triss, and above all the possible child of prophecy Ciri — as it is about Geralt. It’s also about the settings and locations, from the witchers’ near-deserted castle to the university town with an obvious model (it’s called Oxenfurt) to the river delta where Geralt really does perform some derring-do.

Danusia Stok‘s translation has rendered Sapkowski faithfully into the English of fantasy adventure.

I liked Blood of Elves precisely because it confounded my expectations, without any self-conscious effort on the author’s part to do so. Fantasy that comes out of another tradition of storytelling is that much more fantastical, simply by being true to its origins. One of my favorite characters (the hilariously annoying adolescent Everett) is a complete walk-on, but Sapkowski’s willingness to add in the extraneous makes his world more believable and his story more enjoyable. I’m looking forward to finding out what happens in the next novels, and I expect to be surprised.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/30/blood-of-elves-by-andrzej-sapkowski/

Dec 28 2014

The Republic by Plato

Plato covers a range of subjects in this rambling work, but the chief one is the problem of what constitutes the best society. Naturally, Plato thinks that in any ideal society, the philosophers will be in charge. His Republic resembles Thomas More’s Utopia in that it would be a place where the citizens were incomparably virtuous; it would also be a pretty boring place where all fun was outlawed. He proceeds by rather implausible arguments to establish that the virtuous life is the happiest life, and therefore the virtuous society is the happiest society; I myself have serious doubts about this. He dislikes democracy as a disorderly society in which base people are allowed to indulge their whims and appetites to excess and in which the masses are easily led astray by demagogues; he has little faith that ordinary people left to themselves will accomplish anything good. Art is seen as having little value, but strangely even manual labor is disdained even though it is recognized as necessary; Plato is a true gentleman who sniffs at those who work with their hands. Finally, Plato argues that the soul is immortal and that good and evil meet their just reward in the afterlife; without this principle one might well wonder what the point of a strenuously virtuous life really is. I am afraid I do not find any of Plato’s arguments very convincing; the interlocutors which he places in Socrates’ audience are basically yes men who are far too quick to agree with all of his propositions without offering any serious criticism. Like all philosophers of his type he is too quick to assume that all serious philosophers will naturally arrive at the same conclusions that he has arrived at; he does not foresee that ten different philosophers are likely to arrive at ten different philosophies. Yet he deserves credit for taking on such an important issue and giving it serious thought, even if like Marx he recognizes the problem while proposing a solution that is even worse.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/28/the-republic-by-plato/

Dec 27 2014

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

This play was much more serious than I remembered it being. It is certainly not a play about nothing. The verbal fencing between Benedick and Beatrice is priceless, but there is much more to the play than that, and there is more dark subject matter than light comedy in it. Thankfully the evil is thwarted and the story is prevented from being another Romeo and Juliet, but the villain is allowed to escape unpunished, and tragedy is barely averted, just as it is in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Even when Shakespeare is amusing himself and playing for laughs there is something of the tragic in him that comes to the surface; he is too great an artist to forget himself in laughter for long.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/27/much-ado-about-nothing-by-william-shakespeare/

Dec 27 2014

The Epic of Gilgamesh

This is the third time I have read this story, and it never fails to amaze me with its power and its timelessness. Gilgamesh is the first legendary hero known to history, and like a true legendary hero his story is tragic. He achieves great things, but loses his best friend, and is haunted by the knowledge that he and all other men will come to the same fate. He goes on a quest to discover the secret of immortality, and when he finds it he resolves to bring it back to his people and share it with them, but at the last moment he is cheated of his prize, and in the end he perishes as all men must. The universality of a story like this cannot be overstated. Man constantly struggles to overcome obstacles and create lasting works, but in the end the dust claims him and all his achievements. The gods are portrayed as they always are, rulers of man’s fate who are indifferent when they are not downright cruel, and hardly worthy of the devotion they demand of their human subjects. There is religion in this myth, but not any kind of religion that inspires hope. I am reminded upon reading this story that of all the heroes of history, only one has successfully triumphed over death.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/27/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/

Dec 26 2014

Bad Machinery Vol I: The Case Of The Team Spirit by John Allison

For Christmas, Jay bought me a physical copy of Bad Machinery’s first two volumes and ZOMG, I didn’t even know how much I wanted these till I had them! Oni Press has done an amazing job of translating the web comic to an oversized, glossy paperback that is luxe to the touch and weighty in the hand, reminding me all too vividly of what I lose in reading electronic versions of books, and particularly of graphic novels. Such a splendid tome, and one I’m anxious to share with those I love.

I wrote a more detailed review of the contents when it was first published, based on an electronic copy, but I must say that the physical product is breathtakingly superior. You can find that other review here.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/26/bad-machinery-vol-i-the-case-of-the-team-spirit-by-john-allison/

Dec 25 2014

The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power by Robert Caro

This is a fascinating story, in a way that only a true story can be. It is the story of a young man for whom ambition was the guiding force in his life from earliest boyhood. To hear Caro tell it, Johnson was planning to be president when he was just a boy growing up in the impoverished Texas Hill Country, and this guiding star drove him hard all his life. His parents were idealists and dreamers, but Lyndon Baines Johnson saw the way they turned out and was determined to follow a different path. Never in his life did he allow principles or ideals to get in the way of his career trajectory. All his life he trimmed his sails, and in the process he achieved his goals. In many ways he is not a very admirable person, but his incredible will, his steely resolve, and his genius for the game of politics add up to make him one of the most remarkable men of his time, certainly a man worthy of a multi-volume biography. This book is a testimony to how a strong will can overcome any obstacle.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/25/the-years-of-lyndon-johnson-the-path-to-power-by-robert-caro/

Dec 24 2014

Dark Prayer by Natasha Mostert

So few books deserve the title “literary mystery.” Often, that phrase is given to books where ponderous writing and a quasi-mystical theme are draped over a poorly constructed plot, as if the fact that the book itself is so unenjoyable is some testament to how smart the reader must be to not only finish but like, or at least pretend to like, the damn thing. Pretentious intelligentsia are the bane of my reading existence, I tell you.

Fortunately, Dark Prayer is one of those elegant, if not overly complicated novels that fully deserves its accolades as a literary mystery. Natasha Mostert knows what she’s taking about when she discusses memory and mysticism, and the underlying murder plot is briskly and, more importantly, credibly constructed. She wasn’t afraid to mine the emotional depravity that so many other of her less accomplished cohorts think they can substitute mere sexual peccadilloes for. I thought her writing really shone, though, when she was describing the thrills of parkour. The passages of physical grace and athleticism were a terrific counterpoint to the murkiness of the mind and emotions.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/24/dark-prayer-by-natasha-mostert/

Dec 24 2014

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

I always thought this play was pretty silly, but this time around I appreciated what good fun it is. “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” The seeming randomness of the direction love’s arrows take works mayhem in a way that is all too real even with the element of magic thrown in, but since this is a comedy and not a tragedy everything is restored to its rightful place in the end, with unrequited love eventually being requited and the thwarted lovers eventually being mercifully brought together. The play within a play of Pyramus and Thisbe is laugh-out-loud funny…the “base mechanicals” provide most of the comic relief, while the plight of the lovers runs its course and in its own way provides amusement, although one cannot help but feel compassion for the devoted and jilted Helena. I always wondered why this was one of Shakespeare’s more popular plays, since it seems so obviously devoid of any serious significance…question answered.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/24/a-midsummer-nights-dream-by-william-shakespeare/

Dec 23 2014

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

This book seriously freaked me out. It is a reminder, as only a science fiction novel can be, of what a tenuous thing subjective reality is. I have never done acid, but based on the testimony of others I would say that this book resembles an acid trip in that it is both mind-altering and perhaps even permanently life-altering. It is also a reminder of what Einstein said, that science without religion is lame. Aside from that, it strikes me that most science fiction writers in the 1970’s had very dystopian visions of the future; the problems that were coming into public consciousness in those days…pollution, overpopulation, resource depletion, social disintegration…now seem slightly overblown, but they clearly weighed heavily on the minds of most thoughtful people. Yet the theme of this novel seems to be that such massive problems are not necessarily amenable to rational solution, and that trying to reorder the world on a grand scale proves disastrous. A real mind-bender.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/23/the-lathe-of-heaven-by-ursula-k-le-guin/

Dec 23 2014

Poland: A History by Adam Zamoyski

Adam Zamoyski began Poland: A History as an update and revision to his 1987 book, The Polish Way. He found that history had gotten in the way, and that just revising the older work would not be enough.

In the early modern period, the Poles failed spectacularly to build an efficient centralised state structure and they paid the price, being swallowed up by their more successful neighbours. The history of Poland has therefore, up to now, been written as that of a failed state. Like some distorting lens or filter, that failure coloured and deformed the historian’s view of the whole of Polish history.
He is now no longer, as he was only a couple of decades ago, writing the history of an enslaved and to all intents and purposes non-existent country. There is a great difference between writing up a bankrupt business and writing up one that has been through hard times and turned the corner. He is no longer writing the history of a state that failed, but of a society that created a social and political civilisation of its own, one which was occluded by the success of a rival model (now utterly discredited) but whose ideals are close to those the world values today. p. xxi-xxii

Not that writing Polish history has ever been easy. Poland is, famously or notoriously, a “nation on wheels.” The title of the most comprehensive English-language history of Poland is God’s Playground. Zamoyski summarizes the difficulties, “How was the historian to approach a country whose territory had expanded and contracted, shifted and vanished so dramatically, which currently existed as an almost random compromise resulting from the Second World War, and which [in 1987] lay within the imperial frontiers of another power? How was he to treat a people which, from ethnic, cultural and religious diversity had been purged by genocide and ethnic cleansing into a homogeneous society? How to represent a culture which had been largely obliterated, whose remains survived only underground or in exile?” p. xvii
Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/23/poland-a-history-by-adam-zamoyski/