***/***** (3/5)
I caught Francis Lawrence's big-screen rendition of Richard Matheson's highly-acclaimed 1997 novel I AM LEGEND and I have to say I was entertained. If you're fan of zombie movies and Will Smith like I am, this is definitely one to check out. It contains the requisite slow-quiet-but-suddenly-loud-fast moments which prompt the jumpy jolts from girlfriends or wives clutching for your arm. Will Smith plays Col. Robert Neville, the highest-ranking doctor in the army, and his performance conveyed a palpable mix of insanity, desperation and genius. It seemed like Will Smith bulked up for this one, I haven't seen him so ripped before. There's a couple other actors, but the zombie action/horror and Will Smith's character Neville take center stage. As much as I liked the movie for its jumpy-jerky moments, I can't say the movie proved any more entertaining than some other zombie movies I've seen in the past, namely 28 DAYS LATER. I AM LEGEND definitely featured a hodge-podge of scenes from weird and slow-developing to tense and thrilling. From the time the movie spent portraying Neville's humanity in the face death and chaos, it also appeared to followed Matheson's book fairly well (though I haven't read the book). Watching I AM LEGEND, I thought: Charlie Huston's slick vampire/zombie book ALREADY DEAD (***) deserves a Hollywood version!
The Premise.
In 2009, a virus originally created by mankind to completely cure cancer has mutated, going airborne and wiping out 588 million people worldwide. In 2012, the virus has reached epidemic proportions with a very small percentage of people completely resistant to the virus. Most of those totally resistant to the virus fall prey to those infected by the virus. Those infected by the virus exhibit preternaturally aggressive behavior with all of their body functions tremendously accelerated including their respiratory systems. These "zombies" have lost all humanity and feel the simple need to feed, feed, feed. They're susceptible, however, to ultraviolet radiation and consequently cannot abide sunlight. For the first half the movie, we see our protagonist Robert Neville cope with catastrophic and horrific conditions in a desolate New York City interspersed by flashbacks chronicling how he got there and what happened to his family. Neville, as far as we can tell, is the last man on Earth completely resistant to the virus. Both a military colonel and a doctor, Neville possesses the conditioning, knowledge and wisdom to combat both the virus and its infected hosts.
Neville operates a laboratory in the basement of his NYC apartment for research, desperately trying to find a cure. His only companion is his beloved dog Sam and we can sense what being alone has done to Robert Neville. He's on the brink of insanity: talking to mannequins, his dog Sam and to himself. Real meat is scarce as Sam-the-dog and Neville subsist on a high-protein diet. At night, he shutters his apartment with reinforced steel and tries to forget the noises and horrors that lie outside when the zombies come out to play. When an infected test rat (subject #9 or was it #6?) shows signs towards curing, Neville is ready to test on an infected human, or zombie. Things go terribly awry when a trap he sets to catch one of the zombies sets the same trap for him the next day.
The movie is intense, slow-and-jumpy, horrifying and thrilling. I enjoyed it.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End [1]
*/***** (1/5)
1. Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (5/5)
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2/5)
3. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (1/5)
In the age of trilogies and series, Gore Verbinski's final installment to the Pirates trilogy AT WORLD'S END continues to showcase Johnny Depp as the incomparable Captain Jack Sparrow. Sly and knavish, Jack Sparrow dangles circumstances and people on strings of his own making. Although things don't turn out exactly the way Jack Sparrow divines, he nonetheless qualifies as the prime mover and shaker in the story. You have to love characters like Jack Sparrow that never seem to be on anyone's side and always scheme and plot, leaving their options open. Although I thoroughly enjoyed Jack's scheming and plotting in CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL (*****), more of the same here gets annoying. Everyone seems to unwittingly oblige Jack Sparrow's scheming in AT WORLD'S END. Played by Orlando Bloom, Will Turner's ineptitude glaringly takes center stage and he does nothing here. In fact, Will manages to get caught quite a bit. Keira Knightley stars as Elizabeth Swann and she seems to scream, rant and rave a lot while rising as a captain and "Pirate King." I cringed at her "freedom" speech at the end so reminiscent of Mel Gibson in BRAVEHEART. Orlando Bloom's acting was pretty atrocious in LORD OF THE RINGS and his characteristic intonations plague this one. Keira Knightley isn't much better. Tom Hollander's villainous Lord Cutler Beckett was the standout performance of this movie.
Possible SPOILERS ahead.
Bigger, louder, and more doesn't always equate to good or better and this final installment demonstrates the point. Consisting of alternate dimensions, sea goddesses, people coming back from the dead, and convoluted plotting, this movie accentuates the eccentric, magical, and eldritch hundredfold. A large cast and big names highlight this final installment: Johnny Depp (Jack Sparrow), Keira Knightley (Elizabeth Swann), Orlando Bloom (Will Turner), Geoffrey Rush (Captain Barbossa), British actor Bill Nighy (Davy Jones), Stellan Skarsgard ('Bootstrap' Bill Turner), and Chow Yun-Fat (Captain Sao Feng). As opposed to CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, the humor in AT WORLD'S END dulls instead of entertaining. The movie drags quite a bit at the end as the Black Pearl and Dutchman do battle around a whirlpool maelstrom. Other pirate ships and the villain Lord Beckett's armada simply watch the protracted affair where Jack, Barbossa, Elizabeth, Will, and Davy Jones spar. After the good guys win, the other pirate ships cheer and rejoice as though they did anything. The on-board marriage while the two ships are locked in battle was cornball cheesy to the extreme. I'm not sure I understood the convoluted Calypso plot where nine pieces of eight binds the powerful Calypso.
The basic premise.
From DEAD MAN'S CHEST, we know Captain Barbossa returns from the dead while Elizabeth leaves Jack Sparrow for the dead. We also know Lord Beckett commands the Armada and holds Davy Jones' heart. Davy Jones and his ship the Flying Dutchman terrorize the seas in a dark alliance with Beckett. In an effort to subdue Jones, the Dutchman and Beckett's armada, the witch Tia Dalma guides the pirate lords to call a brethren gathering and submit each of their "pieces." This will consequently free the powerful sea goddess Calypso, compelling her to aid them against the Dutchman. Since Sparrow possesses one of the 9 pieces, Barbossa, Will and Elizabeth must first venture to world's end to rescue Jack Sparrow first. Everything comes to a head as the Flying Dutchman captained by Davy Jones and the Black Pearl captained by Barbossa square off in a maelstrom. It's all very convoluted and very dumb. This trilogy's marquee humor declines considerably in this final installment. The performances and acting made me cringe a lot.
I was begging for someone to stay dead by the time the movie finally ends.
1. Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (5/5)
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2/5)
3. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (1/5)
In the age of trilogies and series, Gore Verbinski's final installment to the Pirates trilogy AT WORLD'S END continues to showcase Johnny Depp as the incomparable Captain Jack Sparrow. Sly and knavish, Jack Sparrow dangles circumstances and people on strings of his own making. Although things don't turn out exactly the way Jack Sparrow divines, he nonetheless qualifies as the prime mover and shaker in the story. You have to love characters like Jack Sparrow that never seem to be on anyone's side and always scheme and plot, leaving their options open. Although I thoroughly enjoyed Jack's scheming and plotting in CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL (*****), more of the same here gets annoying. Everyone seems to unwittingly oblige Jack Sparrow's scheming in AT WORLD'S END. Played by Orlando Bloom, Will Turner's ineptitude glaringly takes center stage and he does nothing here. In fact, Will manages to get caught quite a bit. Keira Knightley stars as Elizabeth Swann and she seems to scream, rant and rave a lot while rising as a captain and "Pirate King." I cringed at her "freedom" speech at the end so reminiscent of Mel Gibson in BRAVEHEART. Orlando Bloom's acting was pretty atrocious in LORD OF THE RINGS and his characteristic intonations plague this one. Keira Knightley isn't much better. Tom Hollander's villainous Lord Cutler Beckett was the standout performance of this movie.
Possible SPOILERS ahead.
Bigger, louder, and more doesn't always equate to good or better and this final installment demonstrates the point. Consisting of alternate dimensions, sea goddesses, people coming back from the dead, and convoluted plotting, this movie accentuates the eccentric, magical, and eldritch hundredfold. A large cast and big names highlight this final installment: Johnny Depp (Jack Sparrow), Keira Knightley (Elizabeth Swann), Orlando Bloom (Will Turner), Geoffrey Rush (Captain Barbossa), British actor Bill Nighy (Davy Jones), Stellan Skarsgard ('Bootstrap' Bill Turner), and Chow Yun-Fat (Captain Sao Feng). As opposed to CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, the humor in AT WORLD'S END dulls instead of entertaining. The movie drags quite a bit at the end as the Black Pearl and Dutchman do battle around a whirlpool maelstrom. Other pirate ships and the villain Lord Beckett's armada simply watch the protracted affair where Jack, Barbossa, Elizabeth, Will, and Davy Jones spar. After the good guys win, the other pirate ships cheer and rejoice as though they did anything. The on-board marriage while the two ships are locked in battle was cornball cheesy to the extreme. I'm not sure I understood the convoluted Calypso plot where nine pieces of eight binds the powerful Calypso.
The basic premise.
From DEAD MAN'S CHEST, we know Captain Barbossa returns from the dead while Elizabeth leaves Jack Sparrow for the dead. We also know Lord Beckett commands the Armada and holds Davy Jones' heart. Davy Jones and his ship the Flying Dutchman terrorize the seas in a dark alliance with Beckett. In an effort to subdue Jones, the Dutchman and Beckett's armada, the witch Tia Dalma guides the pirate lords to call a brethren gathering and submit each of their "pieces." This will consequently free the powerful sea goddess Calypso, compelling her to aid them against the Dutchman. Since Sparrow possesses one of the 9 pieces, Barbossa, Will and Elizabeth must first venture to world's end to rescue Jack Sparrow first. Everything comes to a head as the Flying Dutchman captained by Davy Jones and the Black Pearl captained by Barbossa square off in a maelstrom. It's all very convoluted and very dumb. This trilogy's marquee humor declines considerably in this final installment. The performances and acting made me cringe a lot.
I was begging for someone to stay dead by the time the movie finally ends.
Monday, December 3, 2007
The Marsh King's Daughter, by Elizabeth Chadwick [1]
*/***** (1/5)
I would not wish Elizabeth Chadwick's 13th-century English medieval THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER on my worst enemy, let alone a friend. I enjoy challenging, engrossing reads and although THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER certainly is that, it offers no payoff for the torture and suffering the book inflicts on its main character Mirial, and, by extension, its readers for close to 300 pages of this 406-page hardcover. Although this book produces a "happy" ending in the last 3-4 pages, I much prefer Chadwick's LORDS OF THE WHITE CASTLE's dolorous conclusion to this book's relentless torture. Like LORDS OF THE WHITE CASTLE (***), Chadwick here shines at transporting the reader to another time and place. Chadwick's medieval English settings are immaculate, her look into the 13th-century mercantile trade thorough, and her writing and prose exquisite. Also like LORDS OF THE WHITE CASTLE, I could not put down THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER hoping beyond hope that the book would reward me somewhere for such an agonizing reading experience. Alas, not to be. In the middle of an extramarital affair with her lover (and the book's "hero") Nicholas, Mirial thinks, "There was a price to be paid and she had a nagging premonition that it would beggar them in the end." (p. 251) My reaction: hell, I'm already paying a steep price on behalf of these characters for reading this much, you mean I'll have to suffer even more? Plangently, the book responded with a thunderous, "YES!" Even after faithfully finishing this torturous novel, I'm not sure from where the book derives its title from because Mirial isn't a marsh king's daughter. Maybe it refers to the crown Mirial covets, a crown that once belonged to Empress Mathilda. But I still don't see the connection to a marsh king.
THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER mostly drums out an evil man's medieval possession of our main character Mirial. Mirial's willing marital consent to an apparently good, handsome man (Robert Willoughby) quickly dissolves to years of despair and pain. Robert asserts his ruthlessly possessive nature, and, frightfully for Mirial, painfully claims his marital rights as a husband. Although not exactly rape, it's the best word to describe the way Mirial recoils in fear and horror to a coupling with her husband, and then submits her unwilling body to Robert's callous abuse time and time again. Over the years of her second marriage, the book mostly showcases Mirial's fear and pain at the thought of her husband Robert claiming his marital rights during the nights and mornings. When he's not around, she often thanks circumstance for not having to submit to his marital rights. I like challenging books, rich plotting, and eruditely historical reads; but this isn't challenging, it doesn't contain nearly the intricate plotting as LORDS OF THE WHITE CASTLE, and the history doesn't measure up either. There has to be payoff somewhere for this kind of torturous read... but no.
I also didn't enjoy the adulterous affair between Mirial and her "hero" Nicholas. Most of the novel parades Robert's brutal coupling with Mirial or the dreadful anticipation of it. The guilt-ridden adulterous affair Mirial shares with Nicholas represents the only times in the entire novel Mirial enjoys a fulfilled lovemaking. At the time they initiate the affair, Mirial knows nothing of her husband Robert's diabolic malevolence. I was hoping she'd abstain from an adulterous liaison with her hero strife with guilt until she learned the full impact of her husband's perfidy and leaves him. She's basically sleeping with two men at the same time here: times when her husband Robert forces her and the adulterous moments of pleasure with Nicholas. The whole time I'm thinking: who's the father if she becomes pregnant? She thinks she's barren and throws Nicholas' caution out the door when he's careful at first not to spill his seed inside her. When the shock of an impending pregnancy finally looms, Robert informs her she is not the barren one, but he is (Robert has never fathered a child with two previous wives and mistresses in between). Robert proceeds to imprison her after uncovering her faithlessness and surreptitiously arranges Nicholas's demise. Even when she's pregnant with another man's child, the book brutally portrays Robert affirming his marital rights as Mirial's husband. Mirial accepts Robert's sexual brutality because she feels she's wronged Robert, and the contrived plotting which prevents her from learning the full extent of Robert's treachery (until the very end) also checks her from fleeing Robert. When she finally does learn of Robert's treachery, she doesn't kill him when she has the chance! Then she laments over her fate after she's captured by Robert! What did you think he'd do after ruthlessly killing so many people, Mirial? Sit around? The book tortures readers and extends Robert's devious and incessant plotting until page 399 of this 406-page hardcover! Are you kidding me?! Neither Mirial nor Nicholas take proactive steps to at least thwart Robert, in essence allowing him one last gasp after another!
I also didn't understand another thing: why would the Mother Hillary (the Abbess) at St. Catherine's go to so much trouble to notify Muriel's husband (Robert) of a rumored lover when Mirial fled the abbey? The Mother Abbess racks her brain to remember the rumored lover's name and goes insofar to await Robert before his departure just to tell him the name after she remembers . Mother Hillary professes to care for Mirial but how come she doesn't think twice divulging all of the dirty rumors of a past lover to Mirial's current husband, Robert? For a cunning Mother Abbess, she has no discretion?
Although I liked Mirial's fiery spirit, there's too many things I disliked about her too. She just accepts Robert's callous sexual abuse, reasoning she went into the marriage willing. And then she fails to kill him after his true, wicked character surfaces. I was actually hoping for some respite from Mirial's incessant suffering and rooting for Magdalene and Nicholas. A prostitute like Magdalene finally finding some love with Nicholas was the best part of a novel entirely about someone else: Mirial.
The "hero" (I place this in quotes because he fails to do anything and sparingly appears in the novel) Nicholas's honor prevents him from doing anything ruthless, even if it means helping someone in trouble. Stephen Trabe is right, honor is for fools and "honorable" fools like Nicholas de Caen really deserve death for clinging to their superior notions of morality. He has no qualms about filching royal treasure (because he feels King John owes him), but won't take ruthless steps to protect Mirial from Robert. Nicholas shuns doing anything outside of honor because of the underhanded way King John killed his family He doesn't want to become like King John, he reasons. He's simply too naive and too dumb to understand that taking ruthless actions to secure the safety of those you love from a villain who will never relent doesn't make you into a villain! After the pirate who holds Nicholas in captivity (le Pecheur) frees Nicholas (because Nicholas can't do anything by himself), Nicholas runs into his assassins again. The assassins corner him and again he needs rescuing, this time by a factual historical figure, Stephen Trabe. After he returns home, Nicholas thinks he will not resort to murdering Robert like Robert hired assassins to kill Nicholas and numerous others before him. First Nicholas wants to rescue Mirial, then worry about Robert, never really understanding that the two are intimately linked! Nicholas actually wants to honorably bring Robert to trial! Like when has that ever worked in a novel? He fails to understand that Mirial's safety depends on dealing with Robert first! All of it plays out melodramatically in the last 10-12 pages as Nicholas and Mirial run from Robert since Nicholas failed to deal with Robert first. Earlier when Nicholas witnesses the murder of one of Robert's competitors in the merchant business, he fails to investigate the blatant clues linking Robert to the death of Robert's competitor! Nicholas often waits around in a reactionary, "honorable" role (translation, foolhardy).
The Story, possible SPOILERS.
I found the premise of the novel very promising but in spite of Chadwick's superior writing and settings, this book was like punishment. I don't look to literature as an avenue for pain and torture, I really don't!
THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER is about the trials, tribulations and hardships of Mirial, born as Mirial Weaver, then Mirial Woolman, and finally (and most calamitously) Mirial Willoughby. Similar to Madeline Hunter's BY DESIGN (***), this book takes a very comprehensive look at the mercantile class in 13th-century England. We first see a spirited Mirial at home in her wealthy grandfather's stone house. Her grandfather was a reputed weaver and loved Mirial while her mother and stepfather wish to send her off in a convent due to her unruly behavior. She's described a kindred spirit, all defiance and pride. We see her stepfather beat her for her defiance and then ship her off to St. Catherine's. As a novice oblate at St. Catherine's, a wicked Sister further causes Mirial problems and Mirial dreams of escape. Meanwhile, Nicholas de Caen travels as a prisoner in King John's baggage train over the coasts of England. After the tide decimates the baggage train, Nicholas barely manages to escape with a treasure chest. After concealing the treasure chest, Nicholas collapses near St. Catherines. Mirial finds him and nurses him back to health. As Nicholas prepares to leave the abbey, Mirial hitches a ride with him and discovers of the treasure. She salivates at a crown originally belonging to Empress Mathilda. Before Nicholas and Mirial prepare to part ways, Mirial absconds with a significant minority of the treasure and the priceless crown in the middle of the night. Nicholas tries to find her but the "hero" that he is, fails.
Seasons pass. In the town of Nottingham, Mirial builds a fortune for herself from the portion of the treasure she took. She excels in the weaving trade, something she loves. Also in Nottingham, she meets ~60 year-old Gerbert Woolman and ~40 year-old Robert Willoughby, Gerbert's heir. Grisly old Gerbert lusts after Mirial and after discovering Mirial's escape from the convent forces her into marriage. But old Gerbert is pretty harmless and Mirial learns to appease him without consummating the marriage. More seasons pass. Mirial's stepfather soon attempts to sabotage his competition in Nottingham after Mirial's business takes off. Gerbert dies, and soon the handsome and vigorous Robert begins courting Mirial. Mirial accepts his heartfelt marriage proposal. After marriage with Robert, Mirial's hell begins as Robert abuses her body in bed. Since Mirial willingly agreed to the marriage and Robert is very caring otherwise, she learns to endure Robert's rights as a husband in the bed.
Mirial's fear, anxiety and pain from the anticipation of coupling with Robert and/or from the actual coupling comprise the bulk of the book's content. Unknown to Mirial for most of the novel, Robert ruthlessly eliminates his competition in his vast businesses and we as readers soon learn that it was Robert who eliminated Mirial's first husband Gerbert to obtain Mirial and her thriving weaving business.
On the side we're privy to brief glimpses of Nicholas's happenings. Nicholas too builds a fortune from the chest Mirial leaves him and realizes his dream in sailing and shipping. He soon owns four ships. The heart of the novel was definitely Nicholas' mistress Magdalene. A prostitute by profession, Magdalene soon comes to love and care deeply for Nicholas. Predictably, Nicholas and Mirial soon reunite under the worst of circumstances: Nicholas with Magdalene, and Mirial as Robert's wife. Nicholas is bitter about Mirial absconding with a portion of the treasure like a thief in the night and they affect a mutual hatred for one another. Nicholas and Mirial share passion though and for the first time in her life, Mirial enjoys sensual pleasure in an adulterous affair with Nicholas. A lot of grief and guilt ensue on both their parts (especially Mirial's). Nicholas asks her to leave her husband, and she rejects his proposal. Nicholas then marries Magdalene when he deduces she's pregnant (Magdalene genuinely didn't want to entrap him). Magdalene loves Nicholas dearly and knows of his affair with Mirial. After Mirial rejects running away with Nicholas, Nicholas comes to return Magdalene's love and devotion in matrimony. Again, I loved Magdalene and Nicholas's union, and it resonated so much more than Mirial and Nicholas. Nicholas is oblivious to Mirial's condition and Mirial's husband Robert discovers Mirial's adultery with Nicholas. Since Robert knows he's barren, he surmises the real father of the child Mirial carries. Again we're treated to more fear, anxiety and pain as Mirial (who feels horrible about her affair Nicholas) allows Robert to abuse her body sexually while she's increasing.
Truly, the adage, "You've made your bed, now you must lie in it," tortuously reverberates with Mirial's character.
The book comes to a very unsatisfying conclusion as Robert treacherously plots and schemes to eliminate Nicholas and sexually abuses Mirial's body. I hated that the book killed off Magdalene just to fabricate a "happy" ending for Nicholas and Mirial. Between Mirial and Magdalene and their babies, Robert kills off Mirial's baby, Mirial survives while Magdalene's baby survives but Magdalene dies. All so Nicholas and Mirial (really barren now after they kill her baby) could be together.
If you're into self-inflicted torture, this book is for you!
I would not wish Elizabeth Chadwick's 13th-century English medieval THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER on my worst enemy, let alone a friend. I enjoy challenging, engrossing reads and although THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER certainly is that, it offers no payoff for the torture and suffering the book inflicts on its main character Mirial, and, by extension, its readers for close to 300 pages of this 406-page hardcover. Although this book produces a "happy" ending in the last 3-4 pages, I much prefer Chadwick's LORDS OF THE WHITE CASTLE's dolorous conclusion to this book's relentless torture. Like LORDS OF THE WHITE CASTLE (***), Chadwick here shines at transporting the reader to another time and place. Chadwick's medieval English settings are immaculate, her look into the 13th-century mercantile trade thorough, and her writing and prose exquisite. Also like LORDS OF THE WHITE CASTLE, I could not put down THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER hoping beyond hope that the book would reward me somewhere for such an agonizing reading experience. Alas, not to be. In the middle of an extramarital affair with her lover (and the book's "hero") Nicholas, Mirial thinks, "There was a price to be paid and she had a nagging premonition that it would beggar them in the end." (p. 251) My reaction: hell, I'm already paying a steep price on behalf of these characters for reading this much, you mean I'll have to suffer even more? Plangently, the book responded with a thunderous, "YES!" Even after faithfully finishing this torturous novel, I'm not sure from where the book derives its title from because Mirial isn't a marsh king's daughter. Maybe it refers to the crown Mirial covets, a crown that once belonged to Empress Mathilda. But I still don't see the connection to a marsh king.
THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER mostly drums out an evil man's medieval possession of our main character Mirial. Mirial's willing marital consent to an apparently good, handsome man (Robert Willoughby) quickly dissolves to years of despair and pain. Robert asserts his ruthlessly possessive nature, and, frightfully for Mirial, painfully claims his marital rights as a husband. Although not exactly rape, it's the best word to describe the way Mirial recoils in fear and horror to a coupling with her husband, and then submits her unwilling body to Robert's callous abuse time and time again. Over the years of her second marriage, the book mostly showcases Mirial's fear and pain at the thought of her husband Robert claiming his marital rights during the nights and mornings. When he's not around, she often thanks circumstance for not having to submit to his marital rights. I like challenging books, rich plotting, and eruditely historical reads; but this isn't challenging, it doesn't contain nearly the intricate plotting as LORDS OF THE WHITE CASTLE, and the history doesn't measure up either. There has to be payoff somewhere for this kind of torturous read... but no.
I also didn't enjoy the adulterous affair between Mirial and her "hero" Nicholas. Most of the novel parades Robert's brutal coupling with Mirial or the dreadful anticipation of it. The guilt-ridden adulterous affair Mirial shares with Nicholas represents the only times in the entire novel Mirial enjoys a fulfilled lovemaking. At the time they initiate the affair, Mirial knows nothing of her husband Robert's diabolic malevolence. I was hoping she'd abstain from an adulterous liaison with her hero strife with guilt until she learned the full impact of her husband's perfidy and leaves him. She's basically sleeping with two men at the same time here: times when her husband Robert forces her and the adulterous moments of pleasure with Nicholas. The whole time I'm thinking: who's the father if she becomes pregnant? She thinks she's barren and throws Nicholas' caution out the door when he's careful at first not to spill his seed inside her. When the shock of an impending pregnancy finally looms, Robert informs her she is not the barren one, but he is (Robert has never fathered a child with two previous wives and mistresses in between). Robert proceeds to imprison her after uncovering her faithlessness and surreptitiously arranges Nicholas's demise. Even when she's pregnant with another man's child, the book brutally portrays Robert affirming his marital rights as Mirial's husband. Mirial accepts Robert's sexual brutality because she feels she's wronged Robert, and the contrived plotting which prevents her from learning the full extent of Robert's treachery (until the very end) also checks her from fleeing Robert. When she finally does learn of Robert's treachery, she doesn't kill him when she has the chance! Then she laments over her fate after she's captured by Robert! What did you think he'd do after ruthlessly killing so many people, Mirial? Sit around? The book tortures readers and extends Robert's devious and incessant plotting until page 399 of this 406-page hardcover! Are you kidding me?! Neither Mirial nor Nicholas take proactive steps to at least thwart Robert, in essence allowing him one last gasp after another!
I also didn't understand another thing: why would the Mother Hillary (the Abbess) at St. Catherine's go to so much trouble to notify Muriel's husband (Robert) of a rumored lover when Mirial fled the abbey? The Mother Abbess racks her brain to remember the rumored lover's name and goes insofar to await Robert before his departure just to tell him the name after she remembers . Mother Hillary professes to care for Mirial but how come she doesn't think twice divulging all of the dirty rumors of a past lover to Mirial's current husband, Robert? For a cunning Mother Abbess, she has no discretion?
Although I liked Mirial's fiery spirit, there's too many things I disliked about her too. She just accepts Robert's callous sexual abuse, reasoning she went into the marriage willing. And then she fails to kill him after his true, wicked character surfaces. I was actually hoping for some respite from Mirial's incessant suffering and rooting for Magdalene and Nicholas. A prostitute like Magdalene finally finding some love with Nicholas was the best part of a novel entirely about someone else: Mirial.
The "hero" (I place this in quotes because he fails to do anything and sparingly appears in the novel) Nicholas's honor prevents him from doing anything ruthless, even if it means helping someone in trouble. Stephen Trabe is right, honor is for fools and "honorable" fools like Nicholas de Caen really deserve death for clinging to their superior notions of morality. He has no qualms about filching royal treasure (because he feels King John owes him), but won't take ruthless steps to protect Mirial from Robert. Nicholas shuns doing anything outside of honor because of the underhanded way King John killed his family He doesn't want to become like King John, he reasons. He's simply too naive and too dumb to understand that taking ruthless actions to secure the safety of those you love from a villain who will never relent doesn't make you into a villain! After the pirate who holds Nicholas in captivity (le Pecheur) frees Nicholas (because Nicholas can't do anything by himself), Nicholas runs into his assassins again. The assassins corner him and again he needs rescuing, this time by a factual historical figure, Stephen Trabe. After he returns home, Nicholas thinks he will not resort to murdering Robert like Robert hired assassins to kill Nicholas and numerous others before him. First Nicholas wants to rescue Mirial, then worry about Robert, never really understanding that the two are intimately linked! Nicholas actually wants to honorably bring Robert to trial! Like when has that ever worked in a novel? He fails to understand that Mirial's safety depends on dealing with Robert first! All of it plays out melodramatically in the last 10-12 pages as Nicholas and Mirial run from Robert since Nicholas failed to deal with Robert first. Earlier when Nicholas witnesses the murder of one of Robert's competitors in the merchant business, he fails to investigate the blatant clues linking Robert to the death of Robert's competitor! Nicholas often waits around in a reactionary, "honorable" role (translation, foolhardy).
The Story, possible SPOILERS.
I found the premise of the novel very promising but in spite of Chadwick's superior writing and settings, this book was like punishment. I don't look to literature as an avenue for pain and torture, I really don't!
THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER is about the trials, tribulations and hardships of Mirial, born as Mirial Weaver, then Mirial Woolman, and finally (and most calamitously) Mirial Willoughby. Similar to Madeline Hunter's BY DESIGN (***), this book takes a very comprehensive look at the mercantile class in 13th-century England. We first see a spirited Mirial at home in her wealthy grandfather's stone house. Her grandfather was a reputed weaver and loved Mirial while her mother and stepfather wish to send her off in a convent due to her unruly behavior. She's described a kindred spirit, all defiance and pride. We see her stepfather beat her for her defiance and then ship her off to St. Catherine's. As a novice oblate at St. Catherine's, a wicked Sister further causes Mirial problems and Mirial dreams of escape. Meanwhile, Nicholas de Caen travels as a prisoner in King John's baggage train over the coasts of England. After the tide decimates the baggage train, Nicholas barely manages to escape with a treasure chest. After concealing the treasure chest, Nicholas collapses near St. Catherines. Mirial finds him and nurses him back to health. As Nicholas prepares to leave the abbey, Mirial hitches a ride with him and discovers of the treasure. She salivates at a crown originally belonging to Empress Mathilda. Before Nicholas and Mirial prepare to part ways, Mirial absconds with a significant minority of the treasure and the priceless crown in the middle of the night. Nicholas tries to find her but the "hero" that he is, fails.
Seasons pass. In the town of Nottingham, Mirial builds a fortune for herself from the portion of the treasure she took. She excels in the weaving trade, something she loves. Also in Nottingham, she meets ~60 year-old Gerbert Woolman and ~40 year-old Robert Willoughby, Gerbert's heir. Grisly old Gerbert lusts after Mirial and after discovering Mirial's escape from the convent forces her into marriage. But old Gerbert is pretty harmless and Mirial learns to appease him without consummating the marriage. More seasons pass. Mirial's stepfather soon attempts to sabotage his competition in Nottingham after Mirial's business takes off. Gerbert dies, and soon the handsome and vigorous Robert begins courting Mirial. Mirial accepts his heartfelt marriage proposal. After marriage with Robert, Mirial's hell begins as Robert abuses her body in bed. Since Mirial willingly agreed to the marriage and Robert is very caring otherwise, she learns to endure Robert's rights as a husband in the bed.
Mirial's fear, anxiety and pain from the anticipation of coupling with Robert and/or from the actual coupling comprise the bulk of the book's content. Unknown to Mirial for most of the novel, Robert ruthlessly eliminates his competition in his vast businesses and we as readers soon learn that it was Robert who eliminated Mirial's first husband Gerbert to obtain Mirial and her thriving weaving business.
On the side we're privy to brief glimpses of Nicholas's happenings. Nicholas too builds a fortune from the chest Mirial leaves him and realizes his dream in sailing and shipping. He soon owns four ships. The heart of the novel was definitely Nicholas' mistress Magdalene. A prostitute by profession, Magdalene soon comes to love and care deeply for Nicholas. Predictably, Nicholas and Mirial soon reunite under the worst of circumstances: Nicholas with Magdalene, and Mirial as Robert's wife. Nicholas is bitter about Mirial absconding with a portion of the treasure like a thief in the night and they affect a mutual hatred for one another. Nicholas and Mirial share passion though and for the first time in her life, Mirial enjoys sensual pleasure in an adulterous affair with Nicholas. A lot of grief and guilt ensue on both their parts (especially Mirial's). Nicholas asks her to leave her husband, and she rejects his proposal. Nicholas then marries Magdalene when he deduces she's pregnant (Magdalene genuinely didn't want to entrap him). Magdalene loves Nicholas dearly and knows of his affair with Mirial. After Mirial rejects running away with Nicholas, Nicholas comes to return Magdalene's love and devotion in matrimony. Again, I loved Magdalene and Nicholas's union, and it resonated so much more than Mirial and Nicholas. Nicholas is oblivious to Mirial's condition and Mirial's husband Robert discovers Mirial's adultery with Nicholas. Since Robert knows he's barren, he surmises the real father of the child Mirial carries. Again we're treated to more fear, anxiety and pain as Mirial (who feels horrible about her affair Nicholas) allows Robert to abuse her body sexually while she's increasing.
Truly, the adage, "You've made your bed, now you must lie in it," tortuously reverberates with Mirial's character.
The book comes to a very unsatisfying conclusion as Robert treacherously plots and schemes to eliminate Nicholas and sexually abuses Mirial's body. I hated that the book killed off Magdalene just to fabricate a "happy" ending for Nicholas and Mirial. Between Mirial and Magdalene and their babies, Robert kills off Mirial's baby, Mirial survives while Magdalene's baby survives but Magdalene dies. All so Nicholas and Mirial (really barren now after they kill her baby) could be together.
If you're into self-inflicted torture, this book is for you!
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Dust to Dust, by Tami Hoag [2]
**/***** (2/5)
As opposed to Michael Connely's ECHO PARK ** (the last murder mystery I read), Tami Hoag's DUST TO DUST exhibits the writing of a woman's human touch. Hoag fleshes out her protagonists' personal lives (Kovac and Liska), the history and lives of those characters involved with the crimes all interconnect (Savard, Wyatt, Andy & Mike Fallon, Thorne), and an element of love factors into the crimes. Hoag demonstrates a knack for setting the scene in Minnesota surpassing Connelly's ECHO PARK and her prose also seems to follow at a higher level. Although Hoag seems comfortable writing 44 year-old Detective Sam Kovac and he bears many similarities to Connelly's Harry Bosch (married to the job, old, lonely, bulldog-like after a mystery), I liked Connelly's Bosch much better. Connelly spares us the repeated reminders of his protagonist's loneliness -- quit whining and do something about it already if you want someone in your life, Kovac! I can't say I enjoyed DUST TO DUST as the human element here stunts the mystery and suspense (Connely built the suspense and mystery much better). With the exception of bailing out Kovac in near-death situations more than once, Liska's character and angle in this book with the Curtis case seemed extraneous. Kovac's partner 32 year-old single mom Nikki "Tinks" Liska resembled the token kick-butt chick archetype who simply doesn't need anyone's help like Kovac needs her constant help. Liska even disposes of an iron-pumped 200-pound-plus baddie at the end mostly by herself. The final chapter shifts between Kovac and Liska in short passages and it was a little melodramatic, trying to inappropriately add tension and action to a book mostly about tortured characters disbelievingly all interconnected by circumstance and tragedy. The book never really grips until we read a tortured Amanda Savard's perspective more than 120 pages into this 354-page hardcover. And then of course we don't really hear much from Savard afterwards as the book prepares for a very sad denouement. Although I have to admire Hoag for the markedly sad ending, I don't have to like it. The lack of an engaging suspense and mystery confounds my problems with the novel.
Hoag lingers on her characters' loneliness quite a bit, and I found it tiring. A humor which clearly aims to shroud hidden vulnerabilities -- especially tough-chick humor from Liska -- didn't help the reading experience. Thirty-two year-old single mom Nikki Liska obviously finds herself still attracted to her cheating ex-husband. Despite her tough-chick demeanor, ASHES TO ASHES repeatedly mentions Liska's vulnerability and of course she dons an insensate exterior around her gorgeous ex-husband Speed to discourage him. The book reminds us again and again that Liska's 44 year-old partner Sam Kovac is lonely, only having an estranged daughter to show for his two failed marriages. An older, retired cop's desolate solitude (Mike Fallon) magnifies Kovac's loneliness and he sees himself in the bitter, lonely Mike Fallon down the line: alone at home, sitting in front of a tv and eating a tv dinner. Kovac wallows in self-pity and loneliness quite a bit, even after his involvement with Savard. Okay we get it, they're lonely, even though both Liska and Kovac are more than capable of doing something about their lonely condition, they mope around about it tirelessly. Even though Hiaasen's Mick Stranahan in SKIN TIGHT (**) was divorced 5 times, he's content living out in a stilt house off the coasts of South Florida by himself. That was much more believable than Sam Kovac's feminine moping around.
The Premise, possible SPOILERS.
The suspense behind DUST TO DUST's murder mystery actually overlaps four different cases. You have the apparent suicide hanging of police cop Andy Fallon, part of the notorious Internal Affairs division. Then there's the subsequent suicide of his decrepit father, retired cop Mike Fallon. Two cases from the past also come into play: the Thorne and Curtis murders, two cases Andy Fallon was investigating. There's quite a few balls in the air, and Hoag contrives to weave them all together. All of it stems from an element of love and tragedy from the Thorne murder years ago which turns Captain Ace Wyatt into a hero and ruins Mike Fallon's police career. Similar to Connelly's ECHO PARK, Kovac and Liska stage a scene to acquire a taped confession twice in DUST TO DUST. Also like ECHO PARK, killers will be killers and things never go according to plan. As I mentioned before, Liska's investigation into the Curtis murder seemed terribly extraneous. I suppose we need to have a girl kicking some butt?
Anyhow, Hoag fails to build the suspense and I lost my interest numerous times during the novel (beginning 100 pages and the final 250 pages or so). The constant reminders of Kovac's loneliness crowned by the sad ending really clinched my overall dissatisfaction with the novel. I really didn't care who was the killer 100 pages into the novel!
As opposed to Michael Connely's ECHO PARK ** (the last murder mystery I read), Tami Hoag's DUST TO DUST exhibits the writing of a woman's human touch. Hoag fleshes out her protagonists' personal lives (Kovac and Liska), the history and lives of those characters involved with the crimes all interconnect (Savard, Wyatt, Andy & Mike Fallon, Thorne), and an element of love factors into the crimes. Hoag demonstrates a knack for setting the scene in Minnesota surpassing Connelly's ECHO PARK and her prose also seems to follow at a higher level. Although Hoag seems comfortable writing 44 year-old Detective Sam Kovac and he bears many similarities to Connelly's Harry Bosch (married to the job, old, lonely, bulldog-like after a mystery), I liked Connelly's Bosch much better. Connelly spares us the repeated reminders of his protagonist's loneliness -- quit whining and do something about it already if you want someone in your life, Kovac! I can't say I enjoyed DUST TO DUST as the human element here stunts the mystery and suspense (Connely built the suspense and mystery much better). With the exception of bailing out Kovac in near-death situations more than once, Liska's character and angle in this book with the Curtis case seemed extraneous. Kovac's partner 32 year-old single mom Nikki "Tinks" Liska resembled the token kick-butt chick archetype who simply doesn't need anyone's help like Kovac needs her constant help. Liska even disposes of an iron-pumped 200-pound-plus baddie at the end mostly by herself. The final chapter shifts between Kovac and Liska in short passages and it was a little melodramatic, trying to inappropriately add tension and action to a book mostly about tortured characters disbelievingly all interconnected by circumstance and tragedy. The book never really grips until we read a tortured Amanda Savard's perspective more than 120 pages into this 354-page hardcover. And then of course we don't really hear much from Savard afterwards as the book prepares for a very sad denouement. Although I have to admire Hoag for the markedly sad ending, I don't have to like it. The lack of an engaging suspense and mystery confounds my problems with the novel.
Hoag lingers on her characters' loneliness quite a bit, and I found it tiring. A humor which clearly aims to shroud hidden vulnerabilities -- especially tough-chick humor from Liska -- didn't help the reading experience. Thirty-two year-old single mom Nikki Liska obviously finds herself still attracted to her cheating ex-husband. Despite her tough-chick demeanor, ASHES TO ASHES repeatedly mentions Liska's vulnerability and of course she dons an insensate exterior around her gorgeous ex-husband Speed to discourage him. The book reminds us again and again that Liska's 44 year-old partner Sam Kovac is lonely, only having an estranged daughter to show for his two failed marriages. An older, retired cop's desolate solitude (Mike Fallon) magnifies Kovac's loneliness and he sees himself in the bitter, lonely Mike Fallon down the line: alone at home, sitting in front of a tv and eating a tv dinner. Kovac wallows in self-pity and loneliness quite a bit, even after his involvement with Savard. Okay we get it, they're lonely, even though both Liska and Kovac are more than capable of doing something about their lonely condition, they mope around about it tirelessly. Even though Hiaasen's Mick Stranahan in SKIN TIGHT (**) was divorced 5 times, he's content living out in a stilt house off the coasts of South Florida by himself. That was much more believable than Sam Kovac's feminine moping around.
The Premise, possible SPOILERS.
The suspense behind DUST TO DUST's murder mystery actually overlaps four different cases. You have the apparent suicide hanging of police cop Andy Fallon, part of the notorious Internal Affairs division. Then there's the subsequent suicide of his decrepit father, retired cop Mike Fallon. Two cases from the past also come into play: the Thorne and Curtis murders, two cases Andy Fallon was investigating. There's quite a few balls in the air, and Hoag contrives to weave them all together. All of it stems from an element of love and tragedy from the Thorne murder years ago which turns Captain Ace Wyatt into a hero and ruins Mike Fallon's police career. Similar to Connelly's ECHO PARK, Kovac and Liska stage a scene to acquire a taped confession twice in DUST TO DUST. Also like ECHO PARK, killers will be killers and things never go according to plan. As I mentioned before, Liska's investigation into the Curtis murder seemed terribly extraneous. I suppose we need to have a girl kicking some butt?
Anyhow, Hoag fails to build the suspense and I lost my interest numerous times during the novel (beginning 100 pages and the final 250 pages or so). The constant reminders of Kovac's loneliness crowned by the sad ending really clinched my overall dissatisfaction with the novel. I really didn't care who was the killer 100 pages into the novel!
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Spiderman 3 [2]
**/***** (2/5)
1. Spiderman (4/5)
2. Spiderman 2 (4/5)
3. Spiderman 3 (2/5)
Possible SPOILERS ahead.
Sam Raimi's Spiderman movies captures the Marvel comics in an entertaining manner and its final installment -- SPIDERMAN 3 -- is no different. Unlike other people, I didn't mind the extra dose of villains here while Raimi continues to excel at imbuing a personal touch to his movies. Unfortunately, I felt some of the plotting in SPIDERMAN 3 seemed far-fetched, even for a superhero movie. For example, you have Harry Osborn / New Goblin conveniently lose his short-term memory early on, and then later, when it becomes important to the story, conveniently reacquire it. After Harry recalls who he believes killed his father (Peter Parker / Spiderman), he impels Mary Jane to dump Peter. Mary Jane dumping Peter in turn makes Peter revert to his darker side with the Venom suit. I thought Mary Jane should have dumped Peter without Harry's interference. Brock/Venom and Sandman magically running into each other on the street to join forces against Spiderman also seemed out of place. I found Sandman/Marko 's angle as it relates to Peter's uncle's death back in SPIDERMAN also contrived. You could just have Marko doing what he does because of his daughter, no need to connect it to Peter's uncle back in SPIDERMAN and fuel Peter's revenge further. I thought the lure of power and Mary Jane's rejection should provide enough reasons for Peter's darker side instead of forcing a connection between Marko and his uncle's death. Too many of the characters seem to die in SPIDERMAN 3 only to miraculously reappear later on. Twice with Harry/New Goblin, and then Sandman seems to perish only to miraculously return later. Although Harry and Peter teaming up during the climax may also seem contrived, I actually enjoyed that bit. SPIDERMAN 3 enjoyably wraps up Harry's story arc and his friendship with Peter.
Tobey Maguire plays Spiderman / Peter Parker as he now deals with inner demons and a growing cast of villains in SPIDERMAN 3. Recall from SPIDERMAN 2 that both his love interest Mary Jane and his friend Harry Osborn discover the truth of Spiderman's identity. Mary Jane played by Kirsten Dunst is accepting ("Go get'em tiger!" -- a quote from the comics), while Harry desires vengeance for his father and to kill Spiderman/Peter. James Franco plays Harry as the character transforms himself to the new Goblin and relentlessly pursues Peter. Peter furthers his relationship with Mary Jane though things decline between the two here. Negative reviews of Mary Jane's performance prove detrimental to her acting/singing career and watching Spiderman kiss a classmate (Gwen Stacy) upsets Mary Jane. The city basks in Spiderman's glory and Peter becomes a little egocentric. Meanwhile, criminal Flint Marko breaks out of jail and needs money for his ailing daughter. He enters a radioactive facility and the experiments accidentally disintegrate him. Flint Marko becomes Sandman -- able to manipulate dirt and sand -- as he now finds the power to acquire money for his sick daughter. You also have a dangerous, symbiotic substance ("Venom") which finds refuge at Peter's decrepit apartment. "Venom" is a symbiont and requires an organism to magnify its power. Finally, there's Eddie Brock played by Topher Grace, the photographer who challenges Peter's exclusive pictures of Spiderman at the Daily Bugle. After a darker Peter destroys Brock's career by uncovering forged pictures, Brock lusts for revenge against Peter.
The climax once again sets up Mary Jane as the damsel in distress. Villains from all three Spiderman movies capture poor Mary Jane to stage the climactic fight. Although SPIDERMAN 3 was enjoyable and the special/visual effects good, too many nonsensical plot devices drained some of my appreciation of the movie itself. I did like Harry and Peter teaming up at the end though.
1. Spiderman (4/5)
2. Spiderman 2 (4/5)
3. Spiderman 3 (2/5)
Possible SPOILERS ahead.
Sam Raimi's Spiderman movies captures the Marvel comics in an entertaining manner and its final installment -- SPIDERMAN 3 -- is no different. Unlike other people, I didn't mind the extra dose of villains here while Raimi continues to excel at imbuing a personal touch to his movies. Unfortunately, I felt some of the plotting in SPIDERMAN 3 seemed far-fetched, even for a superhero movie. For example, you have Harry Osborn / New Goblin conveniently lose his short-term memory early on, and then later, when it becomes important to the story, conveniently reacquire it. After Harry recalls who he believes killed his father (Peter Parker / Spiderman), he impels Mary Jane to dump Peter. Mary Jane dumping Peter in turn makes Peter revert to his darker side with the Venom suit. I thought Mary Jane should have dumped Peter without Harry's interference. Brock/Venom and Sandman magically running into each other on the street to join forces against Spiderman also seemed out of place. I found Sandman/Marko 's angle as it relates to Peter's uncle's death back in SPIDERMAN also contrived. You could just have Marko doing what he does because of his daughter, no need to connect it to Peter's uncle back in SPIDERMAN and fuel Peter's revenge further. I thought the lure of power and Mary Jane's rejection should provide enough reasons for Peter's darker side instead of forcing a connection between Marko and his uncle's death. Too many of the characters seem to die in SPIDERMAN 3 only to miraculously reappear later on. Twice with Harry/New Goblin, and then Sandman seems to perish only to miraculously return later. Although Harry and Peter teaming up during the climax may also seem contrived, I actually enjoyed that bit. SPIDERMAN 3 enjoyably wraps up Harry's story arc and his friendship with Peter.
Tobey Maguire plays Spiderman / Peter Parker as he now deals with inner demons and a growing cast of villains in SPIDERMAN 3. Recall from SPIDERMAN 2 that both his love interest Mary Jane and his friend Harry Osborn discover the truth of Spiderman's identity. Mary Jane played by Kirsten Dunst is accepting ("Go get'em tiger!" -- a quote from the comics), while Harry desires vengeance for his father and to kill Spiderman/Peter. James Franco plays Harry as the character transforms himself to the new Goblin and relentlessly pursues Peter. Peter furthers his relationship with Mary Jane though things decline between the two here. Negative reviews of Mary Jane's performance prove detrimental to her acting/singing career and watching Spiderman kiss a classmate (Gwen Stacy) upsets Mary Jane. The city basks in Spiderman's glory and Peter becomes a little egocentric. Meanwhile, criminal Flint Marko breaks out of jail and needs money for his ailing daughter. He enters a radioactive facility and the experiments accidentally disintegrate him. Flint Marko becomes Sandman -- able to manipulate dirt and sand -- as he now finds the power to acquire money for his sick daughter. You also have a dangerous, symbiotic substance ("Venom") which finds refuge at Peter's decrepit apartment. "Venom" is a symbiont and requires an organism to magnify its power. Finally, there's Eddie Brock played by Topher Grace, the photographer who challenges Peter's exclusive pictures of Spiderman at the Daily Bugle. After a darker Peter destroys Brock's career by uncovering forged pictures, Brock lusts for revenge against Peter.
The climax once again sets up Mary Jane as the damsel in distress. Villains from all three Spiderman movies capture poor Mary Jane to stage the climactic fight. Although SPIDERMAN 3 was enjoyable and the special/visual effects good, too many nonsensical plot devices drained some of my appreciation of the movie itself. I did like Harry and Peter teaming up at the end though.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Updated '07 Movies Watch List
- Spiderman 3 (**)
- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (*)
- Knocked Up (***)
- Transformers (***)
- Stardust (*****)
- Superbad
- 3:10 to Yuma (**)
- Beowulf
- Enchanted
- Life Free or Die Hard
- The Bourne Ultimatum (****)
- 300 (****) Seen it, enjoyed the spectacle, but haven't reviewed it
- I Am Legend (***)
I'm always curious about the movie box office broken down in various ways. This is a nice site for it: Box Office Mojo. For comprehensive, nationwide reviews: Rotten Tomatoes.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (*)
- Knocked Up (***)
- Transformers (***)
- Stardust (*****)
- Superbad
- 3:10 to Yuma (**)
- Beowulf
- Enchanted
- Life Free or Die Hard
- The Bourne Ultimatum (****)
- 300 (****) Seen it, enjoyed the spectacle, but haven't reviewed it
- I Am Legend (***)
I'm always curious about the movie box office broken down in various ways. This is a nice site for it: Box Office Mojo. For comprehensive, nationwide reviews: Rotten Tomatoes.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Stardust [5]
*****/***** (5/5)
Directed by Matthew Vaughn, screenwriters Vaughn and Jane Goldman bring acclaimed British author Neil Gaiman's novel to the big screen in a very enjoyable STARDUST (2007). Often characterized by a fun-hearted parody, STARDUST pokes fun at many cliches inherent in the science fiction and fantasy (SFF) genre. For instance, our hero Tristan Thorn's innocent clumsiness and the 90+ year-old guard sparring with skill and finesse. Like most stories in the fantasy genre, our hero hails from humble roots (a shop boy) and isn't the older, richer and powerful hero of the romance genre. Also like most fantasy stories, there's a coming-of-age here as Tristan learns of swordfighting and his true heart under an older man's guidance (Captain Shakespeare played by Robert De Niro). There's plenty of magic, air pirates maintaining a gruff exterior to hide a cultured, sensitive inside, a throne contested by scheming brothers, evil witches coveting youth and beauty, and a quest for the star, our heroine. The movie handles all of it with humor, satire, and warmth. Although I haven't read Gaiman's novel, I'm sure it was more entertaining than Gaiman's NEVERWHERE. I read Neil Gaiman's NEVERWHERE a long time ago and despite Gaiman's marquee humor, the impotence of NEVERWHERE's protagonist frustrated me while I found the reading experience fairly dry overall. Comedy, fantasy, action, adventure, and romance all render STARDUST as a decidedly enjoyable albeit lightly predictable fare.
STARDUST stars Claire Danes as our falling star Yvaine, Charlie Cox as our politically-incorrect Prince Charming Tristan Thorn, Michelle Pfeiffer as the old witch Lamia coveting youth and beauty, Robert De Niro as the gruff, sensitive pirate Captain Shakespeare, and Mark Strong as one of the princes in line for the throne of the magical realm of Stormhold. I'm sure there's botox and plenty of makeup involved, but can I just say that Michelle Pfeiffer looks even more striking in her late 40s than she did when she was younger! It's ironic that her character here craves youth and beauty. The performances were all solid, but I'd single out Michelle Pfeiffer's portrayal of the evil witch especially, it's deliciously sadistic. I thought the scheming brothers in ghost form applauding, cheering and bantering amongst themselves was hilarious!
The Premise.
Set in England, eighteen year-old shop boy Tristan Thorn pines for the most beautiful girl: Victoria played by Sienna Miller. Victoria manipulates Tristan's lovesick attentions for goods at the shop. No smooth operator by any stretch of the imagination, Victoria laughs when Tristan soulfully articulates the lengths he would go to win Victoria's hand in marriage. When a shooting star falls in the magical realm of Stormhold across the Wall forbidden to all, Tristan promises to return the fallen star for Victoria in exchange for her hand in marriage. Tristan's pledge to return with the star from across the Wall (where no one ventures) moves Victoria enough to give him a week until her birthday, else she'll marry the taller more adept Humphrey.
In the magical realm of Stormhold, its aged king played by Peter O'Toole lies in his deathbed. He sends off his magical jewel to the heavens to bring down the shooting star Tristan and Victoria spy earlier, a jewel which responds only to royal blood. Before the king dies, he bequeaths the kingship to the person of royal blood who retrieves the jewel. The surviving princes watch as the jewel flies off into the sky and brings down the star. Meanwhile, the evil witch Lamia also sees the shooting star. Lamia and her two sisters covet stars because of their powerful magic to revitalize. They've already killed and exhausted the magic from the last fallen star.
So the stage is set, you have: Tristan, the conniving princes and Lamia, all after the star for their own reasons. Tristan arrives at the scene first and finds a girl, Yvaine, instead (in fact the star). Tristan possesses a magical babylon candle for rapidly transporting people. In exchange for this candle to return back to the heavens, Yvaine agrees to accompany Tristan back across the Wall to England and help him win Victoria's hand in marriage. Along the way, the scheming princes, air-faring pirates, Lamia and true love pose obstacles for Tristan and Yvaine. Tristan completes his quest of course, but with different results. The ending stretched quite a bit, but it was still fun and unique in its own way.
Humorous, satiric, adventurous, and fun, I was charmed by STARDUST.
Directed by Matthew Vaughn, screenwriters Vaughn and Jane Goldman bring acclaimed British author Neil Gaiman's novel to the big screen in a very enjoyable STARDUST (2007). Often characterized by a fun-hearted parody, STARDUST pokes fun at many cliches inherent in the science fiction and fantasy (SFF) genre. For instance, our hero Tristan Thorn's innocent clumsiness and the 90+ year-old guard sparring with skill and finesse. Like most stories in the fantasy genre, our hero hails from humble roots (a shop boy) and isn't the older, richer and powerful hero of the romance genre. Also like most fantasy stories, there's a coming-of-age here as Tristan learns of swordfighting and his true heart under an older man's guidance (Captain Shakespeare played by Robert De Niro). There's plenty of magic, air pirates maintaining a gruff exterior to hide a cultured, sensitive inside, a throne contested by scheming brothers, evil witches coveting youth and beauty, and a quest for the star, our heroine. The movie handles all of it with humor, satire, and warmth. Although I haven't read Gaiman's novel, I'm sure it was more entertaining than Gaiman's NEVERWHERE. I read Neil Gaiman's NEVERWHERE a long time ago and despite Gaiman's marquee humor, the impotence of NEVERWHERE's protagonist frustrated me while I found the reading experience fairly dry overall. Comedy, fantasy, action, adventure, and romance all render STARDUST as a decidedly enjoyable albeit lightly predictable fare.
STARDUST stars Claire Danes as our falling star Yvaine, Charlie Cox as our politically-incorrect Prince Charming Tristan Thorn, Michelle Pfeiffer as the old witch Lamia coveting youth and beauty, Robert De Niro as the gruff, sensitive pirate Captain Shakespeare, and Mark Strong as one of the princes in line for the throne of the magical realm of Stormhold. I'm sure there's botox and plenty of makeup involved, but can I just say that Michelle Pfeiffer looks even more striking in her late 40s than she did when she was younger! It's ironic that her character here craves youth and beauty. The performances were all solid, but I'd single out Michelle Pfeiffer's portrayal of the evil witch especially, it's deliciously sadistic. I thought the scheming brothers in ghost form applauding, cheering and bantering amongst themselves was hilarious!
The Premise.
Set in England, eighteen year-old shop boy Tristan Thorn pines for the most beautiful girl: Victoria played by Sienna Miller. Victoria manipulates Tristan's lovesick attentions for goods at the shop. No smooth operator by any stretch of the imagination, Victoria laughs when Tristan soulfully articulates the lengths he would go to win Victoria's hand in marriage. When a shooting star falls in the magical realm of Stormhold across the Wall forbidden to all, Tristan promises to return the fallen star for Victoria in exchange for her hand in marriage. Tristan's pledge to return with the star from across the Wall (where no one ventures) moves Victoria enough to give him a week until her birthday, else she'll marry the taller more adept Humphrey.
In the magical realm of Stormhold, its aged king played by Peter O'Toole lies in his deathbed. He sends off his magical jewel to the heavens to bring down the shooting star Tristan and Victoria spy earlier, a jewel which responds only to royal blood. Before the king dies, he bequeaths the kingship to the person of royal blood who retrieves the jewel. The surviving princes watch as the jewel flies off into the sky and brings down the star. Meanwhile, the evil witch Lamia also sees the shooting star. Lamia and her two sisters covet stars because of their powerful magic to revitalize. They've already killed and exhausted the magic from the last fallen star.
So the stage is set, you have: Tristan, the conniving princes and Lamia, all after the star for their own reasons. Tristan arrives at the scene first and finds a girl, Yvaine, instead (in fact the star). Tristan possesses a magical babylon candle for rapidly transporting people. In exchange for this candle to return back to the heavens, Yvaine agrees to accompany Tristan back across the Wall to England and help him win Victoria's hand in marriage. Along the way, the scheming princes, air-faring pirates, Lamia and true love pose obstacles for Tristan and Yvaine. Tristan completes his quest of course, but with different results. The ending stretched quite a bit, but it was still fun and unique in its own way.
Humorous, satiric, adventurous, and fun, I was charmed by STARDUST.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen [4]
****/***** (4/5)
I found Sara Gruen's WATER FOR ELEPHANTS thoroughly enchanting in a very engrossing tale of the 1930s traveling circus Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Part wonder, part adventure, part tragedy and turmoil, and part romance, my first Gruen novel conveys a novel artistry in the settings, characters, prose and storytelling that resonated. Similar to Cornwell's rendition on Arthur, I find here a popular style of writing many authors choosing as of late: a first-person narration that shifts from a flashback when he's 23 years old and to the present tense when he's 90... or 93. The flashback comprises the bulk of the book's content over the span of 3 to 4 months when 23 year-old Jacob lands in a shady traveling circus amidst the historical backdrop of the Great Depression and the prohibition of alcohol. Normally, first-person flashbacks tend to affect a doleful disposition. Not so here. Remarkably, I found the present happenings of our senile 90-or-93 year-old Jacob in a nursing home refreshingly funny and instructively captivating as we laugh and empathize with Jacob. I'll never look at my grandmother the same way again. In fact the book derives its title from a grumpy Jacob grousing over another old man claiming to bring water for elephants in his younger days.
Bathing is...embarrassing, because I have to strip...Now, there are some things that never die, so even though I'm in my nineties my sap sometimes rises...[The nurses] always pretend not to notice...It means they consider me nothing more than a harmless old man sporting a harmless old penis that still gets uppity once in a while. Although if one of them took it seriously and tried to do something about it, the shock would probably kill me.
Personal wants and simple plot devices prevented a perfect 5-star rating on my part. I'm impressed by Gruen's research into the time period and traveling circuses, and admittedly, Gruen's hypnotizing writing style, symmetric storytelling and gritty characterizations far surpasses many of my 4 and 5-star books. I read a 553-page large print edition of WATER FOR ELEPHANTS containing black-and-white photos of 1930s circuses and for the first 100 to 200 pages, I was enthralled. The wonder and the adventure of it had me smiling and on the edge of my seat. The book then settles down with the August Rosenbluth character who factors in more and more prominently. Much of the plotting deals with August, his wife Marlena and our protagonist Jacob as the third wheel at a private dinner or outing. August's violent schizophrenia took center stage and the August character and his prominence choked much of my enthusiasm. Instead of August, I was hoping for more wonders of the circus, more Camel, Walter, and more plots with the animals of the menagerie. When circumstances finally unite our star-crossed lovers, we then have the Circus manager Uncle Al episodically fomenting trouble. The caste-like, hierarchal circus society consisting of performers, workers and rubes was very interesting, but Jacob's helplessness within that hierarchy, although gritty and realistic, proved altogether exasperating. I was hoping to see Jacob doing more, whether helping the elephant or protecting Marlena (both from August). I also found the ending a bit disappointing and anticlimactic, I wanted to see at least one more chapter of closure in the flashback rather than relaying the aftermath in the present tense.
At its heart, the book expresses Jacob's story of love -- an impossible love for his wife, a love for animals and the elephant, and of course, a love for the wondrous circus. Unlike so many potboiler romance novels, here's a love between a man and woman that isn't so trite: we have a sexually-inexperienced, red-haired 23 year-old college boy and the compassionate star of the circus who dares to love him, and in return, warrants his affection, caring, loyalty and love. Even though their first love scene isn't ideal by romance standards, it nevertheless reverberates with passion and we witness Jacob's joy for giving as she guides him. Granted, it's written entirely from Jacob's perspective and even though the first lovemaking wasn't scientifically precise (again, by romance standards), the book captures how each gives their heart for the other. Everything isn't initiated by Jacob and that in itself was noteworthy. For myself, love is about mutual giving, and I always hope to see some semblance of that. WATER FOR ELEPHANTS doesn't disappoint.
...she lies nestled against me, her hair tickling my face. I stroke her lightly, memorizing her body. I want her to melt into me, like butter on toast. I want to absorb her and walk around for the rest of my days with her encased in my skin...I lie motionless, savoring the feeling of her body against mine. I'm afraid to breathe in case I break the spell.
I'm astonished to read a very believable and resonating account of a male character written by a woman. In spite of Jacob's frustrating helplessness at times, I loved how realistic, how passionate and how intense he was about the animals, friends and love he cares for. I appreciated Jacob's passion and intensity minus the inane, repetitious introspection so common to the romance genre. No, guys don't think and muse about things for endless pages, and Gruen thankfully discarded that element of the romance. Things are happening anyway, so Gruen need not fill the pages with cheap introspection.
The Premise.
The story actually begins with the ending. It was actually deftly done, and Gruen fills in the details when we encounter the prologue at the very end of the book again. Ironically, this adds a measure of suspense to the novel.
We then transition to a present-day nursing home where ninety (or ninety-three) year-old Jacob Jankowski reminisces about his past with a circus. Although this may sound very melancholy, Gruen enriches the dour present with anecdotal humor. The story shifts between a presently old Jacob and a 23 year-old Jacob's adventures with a traveling circus in the 1930s (I don't think it's clear exactly what year). During the last year of Jacob's veterinary degree at Cornell right before exams, Jacob's parents perish in a car accident. It's the Great Depression, times are bad and the bank consequently confiscates his parents' home and his father's veterinary practice. Jacob grieves all the more when he discovers his father mortgaged everything to help pay for his Cornell tuition. Without a dime to his name, without a home and having walked out of final exams, Jacob hops on a train in the middle of the night. He discovers later the train belongs to a traveling circus: Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.
We eventually find out that many traveling circuses are disintegrating during this time and the Benzini Brothers don't actually run this circus. Uncle Al ruthlessly manages this circus and he's described as a "buzzard, a vulture, an eater of carrion." Essentially, Al keeps his ears open to failing circuses and ensures he's around to absorb some of their prizes. More than anything else, Uncle Al covets freaks. Uncle Al's equestrian director and superintendent of animals is schizophrenic August Rosenbluth, and eventually Jacob works for August. August is the common flavor of tall, dark and handsome: charming, affable and inviting -- when he wants to be. Twelve years his junior, August's wife is the pretty and acrobatic Marlena, the star of the equestrian act and really the star of the circus.
The circus travels from city to city and Uncle Al makes an impromptu detour for a failed circus to absorb some of its spoils. Uncle Al especially desires a man with a twin protruding from his chest. Ringling picks up the freak but Uncle Al lands Rosie the Elephant instead. They even acquire the train car to house Rosie. On one charming night that turns awry later, the audience erupts in appreciation of Marlena and Rosie's incomparable act.
As I mentioned before, I thought the book limps to its conclusion. I would have appreciated another chapter in the flashback depicting our protagonists in a new act with another circus. Still, I found the reading experience a captivating novelty to say the least.
I found Sara Gruen's WATER FOR ELEPHANTS thoroughly enchanting in a very engrossing tale of the 1930s traveling circus Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Part wonder, part adventure, part tragedy and turmoil, and part romance, my first Gruen novel conveys a novel artistry in the settings, characters, prose and storytelling that resonated. Similar to Cornwell's rendition on Arthur, I find here a popular style of writing many authors choosing as of late: a first-person narration that shifts from a flashback when he's 23 years old and to the present tense when he's 90... or 93. The flashback comprises the bulk of the book's content over the span of 3 to 4 months when 23 year-old Jacob lands in a shady traveling circus amidst the historical backdrop of the Great Depression and the prohibition of alcohol. Normally, first-person flashbacks tend to affect a doleful disposition. Not so here. Remarkably, I found the present happenings of our senile 90-or-93 year-old Jacob in a nursing home refreshingly funny and instructively captivating as we laugh and empathize with Jacob. I'll never look at my grandmother the same way again. In fact the book derives its title from a grumpy Jacob grousing over another old man claiming to bring water for elephants in his younger days.
Bathing is...embarrassing, because I have to strip...Now, there are some things that never die, so even though I'm in my nineties my sap sometimes rises...[The nurses] always pretend not to notice...It means they consider me nothing more than a harmless old man sporting a harmless old penis that still gets uppity once in a while. Although if one of them took it seriously and tried to do something about it, the shock would probably kill me.
Personal wants and simple plot devices prevented a perfect 5-star rating on my part. I'm impressed by Gruen's research into the time period and traveling circuses, and admittedly, Gruen's hypnotizing writing style, symmetric storytelling and gritty characterizations far surpasses many of my 4 and 5-star books. I read a 553-page large print edition of WATER FOR ELEPHANTS containing black-and-white photos of 1930s circuses and for the first 100 to 200 pages, I was enthralled. The wonder and the adventure of it had me smiling and on the edge of my seat. The book then settles down with the August Rosenbluth character who factors in more and more prominently. Much of the plotting deals with August, his wife Marlena and our protagonist Jacob as the third wheel at a private dinner or outing. August's violent schizophrenia took center stage and the August character and his prominence choked much of my enthusiasm. Instead of August, I was hoping for more wonders of the circus, more Camel, Walter, and more plots with the animals of the menagerie. When circumstances finally unite our star-crossed lovers, we then have the Circus manager Uncle Al episodically fomenting trouble. The caste-like, hierarchal circus society consisting of performers, workers and rubes was very interesting, but Jacob's helplessness within that hierarchy, although gritty and realistic, proved altogether exasperating. I was hoping to see Jacob doing more, whether helping the elephant or protecting Marlena (both from August). I also found the ending a bit disappointing and anticlimactic, I wanted to see at least one more chapter of closure in the flashback rather than relaying the aftermath in the present tense.
At its heart, the book expresses Jacob's story of love -- an impossible love for his wife, a love for animals and the elephant, and of course, a love for the wondrous circus. Unlike so many potboiler romance novels, here's a love between a man and woman that isn't so trite: we have a sexually-inexperienced, red-haired 23 year-old college boy and the compassionate star of the circus who dares to love him, and in return, warrants his affection, caring, loyalty and love. Even though their first love scene isn't ideal by romance standards, it nevertheless reverberates with passion and we witness Jacob's joy for giving as she guides him. Granted, it's written entirely from Jacob's perspective and even though the first lovemaking wasn't scientifically precise (again, by romance standards), the book captures how each gives their heart for the other. Everything isn't initiated by Jacob and that in itself was noteworthy. For myself, love is about mutual giving, and I always hope to see some semblance of that. WATER FOR ELEPHANTS doesn't disappoint.
...she lies nestled against me, her hair tickling my face. I stroke her lightly, memorizing her body. I want her to melt into me, like butter on toast. I want to absorb her and walk around for the rest of my days with her encased in my skin...I lie motionless, savoring the feeling of her body against mine. I'm afraid to breathe in case I break the spell.
I'm astonished to read a very believable and resonating account of a male character written by a woman. In spite of Jacob's frustrating helplessness at times, I loved how realistic, how passionate and how intense he was about the animals, friends and love he cares for. I appreciated Jacob's passion and intensity minus the inane, repetitious introspection so common to the romance genre. No, guys don't think and muse about things for endless pages, and Gruen thankfully discarded that element of the romance. Things are happening anyway, so Gruen need not fill the pages with cheap introspection.
The Premise.
The story actually begins with the ending. It was actually deftly done, and Gruen fills in the details when we encounter the prologue at the very end of the book again. Ironically, this adds a measure of suspense to the novel.
We then transition to a present-day nursing home where ninety (or ninety-three) year-old Jacob Jankowski reminisces about his past with a circus. Although this may sound very melancholy, Gruen enriches the dour present with anecdotal humor. The story shifts between a presently old Jacob and a 23 year-old Jacob's adventures with a traveling circus in the 1930s (I don't think it's clear exactly what year). During the last year of Jacob's veterinary degree at Cornell right before exams, Jacob's parents perish in a car accident. It's the Great Depression, times are bad and the bank consequently confiscates his parents' home and his father's veterinary practice. Jacob grieves all the more when he discovers his father mortgaged everything to help pay for his Cornell tuition. Without a dime to his name, without a home and having walked out of final exams, Jacob hops on a train in the middle of the night. He discovers later the train belongs to a traveling circus: Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.
We eventually find out that many traveling circuses are disintegrating during this time and the Benzini Brothers don't actually run this circus. Uncle Al ruthlessly manages this circus and he's described as a "buzzard, a vulture, an eater of carrion." Essentially, Al keeps his ears open to failing circuses and ensures he's around to absorb some of their prizes. More than anything else, Uncle Al covets freaks. Uncle Al's equestrian director and superintendent of animals is schizophrenic August Rosenbluth, and eventually Jacob works for August. August is the common flavor of tall, dark and handsome: charming, affable and inviting -- when he wants to be. Twelve years his junior, August's wife is the pretty and acrobatic Marlena, the star of the equestrian act and really the star of the circus.
The circus travels from city to city and Uncle Al makes an impromptu detour for a failed circus to absorb some of its spoils. Uncle Al especially desires a man with a twin protruding from his chest. Ringling picks up the freak but Uncle Al lands Rosie the Elephant instead. They even acquire the train car to house Rosie. On one charming night that turns awry later, the audience erupts in appreciation of Marlena and Rosie's incomparable act.
As I mentioned before, I thought the book limps to its conclusion. I would have appreciated another chapter in the flashback depicting our protagonists in a new act with another circus. Still, I found the reading experience a captivating novelty to say the least.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Echo Park, by Michael Connelly [2]
**/*****
Michael Connelly's 2006 mystery ECHO PARK perpetuates many of the genre's themes though it still manages to intrigue and keep readers in suspense. You know a mystery novel will throw many curve balls at you, and you know oftentimes, the culprit is the last person you'd expect. In spite of all this, ECHO PARK still imparts interesting suspense. Michael Connelly writes a series of mystery novels on Police Detective Harry Bosch, and this is my first Connelly novel. It isn't bad, and very readable. Not a page-turner by any means, slow and steady best describes the pacing of this novel. The prose is average and the settings of Los Angeles and Echo Park fairly tame, relying on the names of real streets, neighborhoods and establishments to build the scene. The suspense keeps you interested but it isn't on-the-edge-of-your-seat kind of suspense. Like most mystery novels, I found the ending protracted and anticlimactic. There's a lot of politics in the novel as the book takes place during the fall election season. Two spots up for election directly affect our protagonist Harry: the position of District Attorney and a city council seat. Much of the politics was good as it posed and postured intriguing scenarios, making the read far from cut-and-dry. I liked that the villain here isn't all bad but definitely demented. Our villain Reynard Waits accurately characterizes Harry Bosch as an "eye-for-an-eye guy." Our protagonist Harry exhibits a cold, ruthless streak and I liked that as well.
The Premise.
In 1993, Detective Harry Bosch investigates the disappearance of Marie Gesto. After discovering her car in the exterior garage of High Tower apartments where many fledgling actors live, Harry has a bad feeling about the case. They find neatly folded clothes and groceries in her Honda Accord inside the garage, but they're never able to find the body or nail down any suspects. Harry's prime suspect is Anthony Garland, the ex-boyfriend of the girl who lived in the corresponding apartment. The girl now lives in Texas and bears a resemblance to the missing Marie Gesto. Without any solid leads, evidence or a body, the department catalogues the case under unsolved.
Thirteen years later, police cops pull over Reynard Waits in his window-cleaning van late at night driving through Echo Park, a burgeoning location in LA County near Dodger stadium and Hollywood. The police accidentally discover the severed body parts of two prostitutes in bags and immediately arrest Waits. Eventually the prosecuting attorney running for election Rick O'Shea involves Harry and his Gesto case from thirteen years before. In order to avoid execution, Waits' lawyer brokers a deal in which Waits admits to murdering 9 people including Marie Gesto. In exchange for Waits' confession to the 9 murders, the state agrees to offer him life in prison instead of execution.
Harry is part of the Open-Unsolved Unit and won't give up his Gesto case without seeing it through. He's obsessed over it for some time now. O'Shea agrees to bring Harry on board, and they question Waits about the details of Gesto's murder. Waits answers all of Harry's questions adequately. A handcuffed Waits leads his lawyer and the prosecution team to Gesto's body on a field trip as the final confirmation before the prosecution team will accept Waits' confessions in exchange for life in prison. Harry is against offering Waits anything less than the needle but goes along to see his case through.
This is a mystery novel where the killer is revealed right away: 20 pages into the novel, in fact. There's more to the story obviously as politics within the police department and the upcoming election come into play. Lawyers and rich people always spin and skew public opinion, further confounding and frustrating Harry's efforts. The action is light while Harry slowly but steadily works through the clues and leads. A refreshing read in the midst of so many romances actually.
Michael Connelly's 2006 mystery ECHO PARK perpetuates many of the genre's themes though it still manages to intrigue and keep readers in suspense. You know a mystery novel will throw many curve balls at you, and you know oftentimes, the culprit is the last person you'd expect. In spite of all this, ECHO PARK still imparts interesting suspense. Michael Connelly writes a series of mystery novels on Police Detective Harry Bosch, and this is my first Connelly novel. It isn't bad, and very readable. Not a page-turner by any means, slow and steady best describes the pacing of this novel. The prose is average and the settings of Los Angeles and Echo Park fairly tame, relying on the names of real streets, neighborhoods and establishments to build the scene. The suspense keeps you interested but it isn't on-the-edge-of-your-seat kind of suspense. Like most mystery novels, I found the ending protracted and anticlimactic. There's a lot of politics in the novel as the book takes place during the fall election season. Two spots up for election directly affect our protagonist Harry: the position of District Attorney and a city council seat. Much of the politics was good as it posed and postured intriguing scenarios, making the read far from cut-and-dry. I liked that the villain here isn't all bad but definitely demented. Our villain Reynard Waits accurately characterizes Harry Bosch as an "eye-for-an-eye guy." Our protagonist Harry exhibits a cold, ruthless streak and I liked that as well.
The Premise.
In 1993, Detective Harry Bosch investigates the disappearance of Marie Gesto. After discovering her car in the exterior garage of High Tower apartments where many fledgling actors live, Harry has a bad feeling about the case. They find neatly folded clothes and groceries in her Honda Accord inside the garage, but they're never able to find the body or nail down any suspects. Harry's prime suspect is Anthony Garland, the ex-boyfriend of the girl who lived in the corresponding apartment. The girl now lives in Texas and bears a resemblance to the missing Marie Gesto. Without any solid leads, evidence or a body, the department catalogues the case under unsolved.
Thirteen years later, police cops pull over Reynard Waits in his window-cleaning van late at night driving through Echo Park, a burgeoning location in LA County near Dodger stadium and Hollywood. The police accidentally discover the severed body parts of two prostitutes in bags and immediately arrest Waits. Eventually the prosecuting attorney running for election Rick O'Shea involves Harry and his Gesto case from thirteen years before. In order to avoid execution, Waits' lawyer brokers a deal in which Waits admits to murdering 9 people including Marie Gesto. In exchange for Waits' confession to the 9 murders, the state agrees to offer him life in prison instead of execution.
Harry is part of the Open-Unsolved Unit and won't give up his Gesto case without seeing it through. He's obsessed over it for some time now. O'Shea agrees to bring Harry on board, and they question Waits about the details of Gesto's murder. Waits answers all of Harry's questions adequately. A handcuffed Waits leads his lawyer and the prosecution team to Gesto's body on a field trip as the final confirmation before the prosecution team will accept Waits' confessions in exchange for life in prison. Harry is against offering Waits anything less than the needle but goes along to see his case through.
This is a mystery novel where the killer is revealed right away: 20 pages into the novel, in fact. There's more to the story obviously as politics within the police department and the upcoming election come into play. Lawyers and rich people always spin and skew public opinion, further confounding and frustrating Harry's efforts. The action is light while Harry slowly but steadily works through the clues and leads. A refreshing read in the midst of so many romances actually.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Transformers [3]
***/***** (3/5)
"Bumblebee, stop lubricating the man." --Optimus Prime when Bumblebee "pisses" on Agent Simmons played by John Turturro
What an entertaining CGI joyride for the geek in every one of us! Michael Bay's TRANSFORMERS thrills with awe-inspiring visual/special effects and relentless action. Though empty, disjoint and hackneyed, I couldn't help but enjoy this action-packed, special-effects feast in a battle between the evil Decepticons bent on eliminating the human race and the good Autobots led by Optimus Prime. Although the movie vaguely follows 16 year-old Sam WitWicky (played by Shia LaBeouf), Captain Lennox (played by Josh Duhamel), and signals and systems specialist Maggie Madsen (played by Rachael Taylor) in three disparate plots, the movie affects a light-hearted humor all the while maintaining its jaw-dropping visual effects in the midst of a trite battle between good and evil. The movie had me laughing quite a bit and maintains a sense of humor throughout despite the gravity of the threat posed by Megatron and the Decepticons. I was impressed by actor Shia LaBeouf's performance as the boy with the "key," his portrayal of Sam was equal parts comedic and serious. The only recognizable actor in the movie? Jon Voight plays Defense Secretary John Keller though the role and the performance is nothing to scream about.
Possible SPOILERS ahead.
As with any fantastic, scifi movie containing more pulp than anything else, there's some nonsensical plot devices. For instance, Sam's glasses which hold the key to finding a cube. The evil Decepticon leader Megatron desires this cube of power to purge Earth of the human race. Stupidly trite, to be sure. At the end, much of the action was hard to follow though no less awe-inspiring. I thought it was weak and anticlimactic how Sam places the cube inside Megatron to destroy both Megatron and the cube. I found many transitions in the movie from Sam's plot to Maggie's to Captain Lennox's jarring and out of place. So many times, I'm not sure how we got from Point A to Point B.
Still, in spite of all the negatives, it's hard not to root for our good-hearted Autobots in their battle against the viciously ruthless Decepticons. It was great to see so many of the transformer favorites we grew up with including Bumblebee and Optimus Prime. In the cartoon, Bumblebee was small and used more like a spy in reconnaissance whereas here in the movie, they've upgraded his car model quite a bit! I'd love to see a sequel and I'd love to see one of my favorite childhood transformer toys in it: Sideswipe!
"Bumblebee, stop lubricating the man." --Optimus Prime when Bumblebee "pisses" on Agent Simmons played by John Turturro
What an entertaining CGI joyride for the geek in every one of us! Michael Bay's TRANSFORMERS thrills with awe-inspiring visual/special effects and relentless action. Though empty, disjoint and hackneyed, I couldn't help but enjoy this action-packed, special-effects feast in a battle between the evil Decepticons bent on eliminating the human race and the good Autobots led by Optimus Prime. Although the movie vaguely follows 16 year-old Sam WitWicky (played by Shia LaBeouf), Captain Lennox (played by Josh Duhamel), and signals and systems specialist Maggie Madsen (played by Rachael Taylor) in three disparate plots, the movie affects a light-hearted humor all the while maintaining its jaw-dropping visual effects in the midst of a trite battle between good and evil. The movie had me laughing quite a bit and maintains a sense of humor throughout despite the gravity of the threat posed by Megatron and the Decepticons. I was impressed by actor Shia LaBeouf's performance as the boy with the "key," his portrayal of Sam was equal parts comedic and serious. The only recognizable actor in the movie? Jon Voight plays Defense Secretary John Keller though the role and the performance is nothing to scream about.
Possible SPOILERS ahead.
As with any fantastic, scifi movie containing more pulp than anything else, there's some nonsensical plot devices. For instance, Sam's glasses which hold the key to finding a cube. The evil Decepticon leader Megatron desires this cube of power to purge Earth of the human race. Stupidly trite, to be sure. At the end, much of the action was hard to follow though no less awe-inspiring. I thought it was weak and anticlimactic how Sam places the cube inside Megatron to destroy both Megatron and the cube. I found many transitions in the movie from Sam's plot to Maggie's to Captain Lennox's jarring and out of place. So many times, I'm not sure how we got from Point A to Point B.
Still, in spite of all the negatives, it's hard not to root for our good-hearted Autobots in their battle against the viciously ruthless Decepticons. It was great to see so many of the transformer favorites we grew up with including Bumblebee and Optimus Prime. In the cartoon, Bumblebee was small and used more like a spy in reconnaissance whereas here in the movie, they've upgraded his car model quite a bit! I'd love to see a sequel and I'd love to see one of my favorite childhood transformer toys in it: Sideswipe!
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Love and War, by John Jakes [1]
*/***** (1/5)
Jakes' American Civil War trilogy
1. North and South (***)
2. Love and War (*)
3. Heaven and Hell (skip, LOVE AND WAR hammered the nail in the coffin on this series)
George Hazard: "Lincoln and the cabinet and Congress all pushed [General] McDowell [towards the loss at the first Bull Run]. They forced him to send poorly trained amateurs into battle. The volunteers failed to behave like regulars, and McDowell's been punished for it -- by Lincoln and the cabinet and Congress."
"Ah," [Constance] murmured. "The first girl on the President's card proved clumsy, so he's changing partners."
"Changing partners. That says it very well...I wonder how many times he'll do it before the ball is over?" {George comparing the shifting of Union generals-in-chief in the Civil War to girls on President Lincoln's card in a ball}
Although I enjoyed the scant references to Sam Grant in this novel and flimsy glimpses of battle warfare and strategy of the American Civil War (almost nonexistent), I absolutely hated the overwhelming focus on Charles Main and disliked the prodigious exhibition of northern corruption and northern barbarity. Yes we get it, northerners are just as bad as southerners if not more in terms of their attitude towards people of color during this time period. Northerners' collective and indiscriminate zealotry towards all white southerners and colored people makes them worse. As the end of the war nears, the book singles out strained northern white/black relations marked by racism while highlighting improved southern white/black relations (the Mont Royal overseer Philemon Meek and Andy, for example). All of the characters' thoughts (especially George, Orry, Billy and Brett) spew repetitious, preachy drivel as if we didn't get enough of that in NORTH AND SOUTH (***). Don't get me started on Yankee-killing Machine Charles Main, I hated him towards the end of NORTH AND SOUTH (***) and it doesn't get any better here. Despite Charles' losses in this novel, he sure lives a charmed life always flying to everyone's rescue and charging in and out of forays with nary a wound or scrape to show for it. Unfortunately, Billy and Brett's plots here (the only two characters that seemed 'real' to me) involved plenty of preachy moralizing about slavery and racism. The two characters that least needed moral lessons on racism -- Billy and Brett -- received it incessantly. And Charles flying to a worthless Billy's rescue again and again and again and again was ... too much. Want to show off Charles' indestructible talents? Oh let's just have Billy get captured (again) or his love interest in trouble so Charles can save them (again). Billy gets tortured and beat up and wounded while Charles Main rides around like a godlike cowboy killing Yankees, killing villains (Cuffey) and beating everyone up without a scratch to show for it. Mont Royal, Cooper and his family in danger? No problem, here comes Charles to the rescue!
What a horrible book. Detailed? Sure. Wearisomely melodramatic? Absolutely. Although settings were stronger in this novel (compared to NORTH AND SOUTH), I can't say I liked the foggy prose in this one. I'm reading and reading and reading and it just seems like very little happens other than endless preachy moralizing and Charles-to-the-rescue histrionics. Conveniently, all of the antagonists (Ashton, Virgilia, Bent) survive for the next book. I hear HEAVEN AND HELL centers even more on Charles Main. Uhm ya, thanks but no thanks. Let's just say I only read this for references to factual events and people during the war (especially Sam Grant). I also enjoyed the technology noted by the novel: the repeating gun Spencer capable of firing many rounds in a short amount of time, and steam engines.
"Our keen-minded Southern journalists scorn [Sam Grant] for being round-shouldered and slovenly. Really important considerations, eh? ... Three years ago, Ewell said there was an obscure West Point man somewhere in Missouri whom he hoped the Yankees would never discover. He said he feared him more than all the others put together."
Clearly a prelude to LOVE AND WAR, the disproportionate focus on Charles Main in NORTH AND SOUTH adumbrates the unmistakable hero of this entire Civil War trilogy including this particular 1,078-page paperback. All well and good if you like the Charles-Main character but I found the imbalanced emphasis on Charles Main and his invulnerability in this bloated book unbearable. Especially since I savored every token passage on Billy and Brett while hoping for more. Billy and Brett seemed like the only realistic characters to me, and all the other fictional characters were larger-than-life and/or way over-the-top. I actually preferred Ashton and Bent's treacherously episodic scheming to the adventures of godlike, indestructible Charles Main. Long, protracted pages from Charles Main's perspective embodies the love and war in this novel while Billy and Brett receive forgettable treatment. Billy writes in his journal mostly about racial issues while Brett learns compassion and affection for colored people. Even when there is plotting with Billy, it's usually interspersed with Charles' goings-on and/or includes Charles in a significant, life-saving manner. The battle at Shiloh is sort of brushed off from Bent's perspective even though it's recognized as one of Grant's ingenious saves while Jakes assiduously details Lee's genius at the battle at Antietam (Sharpsburg) from a day-to-day basis completely from Charles' perspective. I was wondering what Billy was doing during the battle at Sharpsburg the entire time Jakes glorifies Lee, Stonewall Jackson and our fictional hero Charles Main. Following a 20-page account of Antietam exclusively from Charles' perspective we have Billy's 2-page postmortem. Just to fill up space and unable to find any storyline for Billy, the book makes Billy think of Charles "often" (p.426). Similar to Antietam, we have Gettysburg entirely from Charles' perspective which again left me wondering why Jakes couldn't give Billy some meaningful storyline.
I thought Jakes should have stationed Billy out on the western theater closer to Grant. With Shiloh, Vicksburg and the Third Battle of Chattanooga, Grant was phenomenal over there. The Third Battle of Chattanooga actually showcased Grant's chief engineer William F. "Baldy" Smith in a key strategic move known as the "Cracker Line." And Billy was an engineer! Very poor creativity from Jakes on Billy's entire storyline in this novel. A novel which serves one purpose and one purpose alone: glorifying Charles Main.
Apparently, the only storyline suitable for Billy in this book: getting tortured at Libby Prison in Richmond after he's captured and then bumming around for Charles Main to fly to his rescue again (like towards the end of NORTH AND SOUTH). At the end of the ordeal, Billy records the lesson he learned in an improvised journal. "I at last understand how the enslaved negro feels. I have dwelt a while in the soul of a shackled black man and take a little of it into my own forever." Not only is the lesson completely unnecessary after all the sermonizing introspection (from so many characters) and various discussions over the issue of slavery, but the recipient of this particular torturous lesson (Billy) was already sympathetic towards slaves and already against the institution of slavery. So what's the point of all these pages showing Billy beat up and tortured? I guess I missed the boat on that one other than to underscore more of the same, invulnerable Charles-to-the-rescue antics. I also don't understand why Orry needs Charles to do anything about Billy's imprisonment. Orry waits for weeks for Charles to help him rescue Billy. It's like no one can get anything done in this series unless Charles Main is the one to do it. The book tries to show a "friendship" between Charles Main and Billy Hazard, but it's handled extremely poorly because of the attention this series bestows on the character of Charles Main. There's no equal ground in this "friendship" it's all Charles, he's smarter, stronger, taller, tougher, faster, he's in a world of his own.
After Billy returns to service, the book uses him in a episodic plot device: a potential candidate for the death of a major character. Unlike Charles Main, we're constantly afraid for the life of the weak and inept Billy Hazard. Constance's premonition about the war leaving a widow amongst Brett, Madeline and herself, and then Brett's attraction for the handsome negro Scipio Brown all appear to foreshadow Billy's death. Billy is the perfect worthless character for this anecdotal plot device.
Never did I believe Charles would die, and of course I was right. Charles is too wishy-washy: he's itching for a fight one minute, he's disillusioned by war the next (yet he still wants to fight); he's gentlemanly, oh wait, no he's not; he's in love with Augusta Barclay, but he doesn't want to start something in the middle of a war (goes back and forth on the love with "Gus" a few times). And of course, our Yankee-killing Machine escapes everything unscathed while oftentimes rescuing his inept friends like Billy Hazard (just like in NORTH AND SOUTH). It was a little ludicrous that a confrontation between Yankees having the new rapid-fire Spencer gun against Charles' group resulted in 4 Yankee deaths and yet Charles and his entire group escaped without a scratch. What the hell was the gun shooting at?! It seemed like Jakes took the best parts of George and Orry and fused them into Charles's character: George's easy ways with the women, George's competence at soldiering and fighting, Orry's tall, aristocratic and handsome countenance, Orry's desire to fight and be a soldier. And of course we also have both Orry & George's disillusionment with war imbued hundred-fold in Charles' protracted musings. And yet even following these melancholy soliloquies about the brutal realities of war, Charles always exalts in war and fighting. For example, he loses his friend O'Dell in Texas from the last novel and more than once the book noted how he no longer considers war all that glorious. And yet, we have him itching for a fight later. Here, after he loses his friend Ambrose and he's separated from his love interest Gus, it's just endless pages of wishy-washy introspection. I understand the complexities of human nature especially during a time of war, but I just couldn't abide the resounding and protracted fictional plots dealing with Charles which more or less symbolized the love and war in LOVE AND WAR. Even the finale featured more Charles-Main melodramatic nonsense as he rushes to catch a train and hurdling every possible obstacle Jakes can throw his way. Finally, he just pulls a gun on the train's conductor.
Since we know which side ends up winning the war and we understand the grave crimes the country perpetuated for so long in retrospect (slavery), Jakes compensates for this by delineating the north's perfidious rancor and the south's refined kindness. After checking in on Charles, we immediately turn to the crooked Col. Bent and the corrupt Secretary of War Simon Cameron. From Billy Hazard's consternation that a colored man wouldn't step aside to let him pass on a sidewalk, we're privy to northern hypocrisy as well: they want to free slaves, yet still considered blacks beneath them. When Billy's southern wife Brett travels out to Lehigh Station, Pennsylvania, for thread in a store, she's harassed for simply being a southerner. Later, when Brett visits Billy in Washington, they discuss how northerners aren't really fighting for the blacks or to free them, but rather for crushing the upstart traitors who defected. This idea that the north is for the war against the south, but against blacks, surfaces again when Constance attempts to build a shelter for black children in Lehigh Station, Pennsylvania. "The North was no pristine fount of morality," Constance thinks.
Even all the characters on both sides of the army compel the reader to sympathize and cheer the south while hating northerners. For example, most of the southern army around Charles Main are good men, even aristocrats like Ambrose (Jakes only shows the foreign southern officer von Helm in a negative light). On the other hand, Jakes meticulously shows northern officers who rub the wrong way: the early generals-in-chief (McDowell, McLellan, Burnside), Ripley, and the gaudy Lt. Custer with Billy's army. Let's not forget the ext Following Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, we should have guessed the book would turn its attentions to the resentful Union soldiers (p.427). Furthermore, the book notes how bigoted white northerners beat "contraband" blacks and blacks in the army following the emancipation proclamation. By contrast, Madeline symbolizes compassionate white southerners educating their slaves (through Jane). Though Jakes accurately portrays the north's hypocrisy, I thought the entire notion was drummed out too much in too many different ways. When we finally do shift our attentions down south, it's to highlight how cruel some of the slaves treat each other (Cuffey) and how kind slave owners like Orry Main sponsor a slave's personal growth (Andy). While Virgilia dreams of indiscriminately obliterating good southern whites, we constantly see evidence of righteous vengeance visited on the north (Charles killing another two crooked Yanks when he conveniently arrives just in time to save Gus and escape with nary a scratch!). Out of the blue, the Mains' old overseer Salem Jones shows up amongst a mob in New York City rioting and indifferently killing (burning) colored people following a federal conscription fiat. Down south, we see the honorable southern officer John Mosby saving Billy. From a reader's standpoint, the book never misses a chance to denigrate all northern whites while exalting southerners like Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson. Poor Billy, he's a weakling good for little else in this novel other than writing in his journal and getting captured.
This series' bottom line? North = corrupt, bigoted and inept, South = honorable, empathic and brilliant.
Jakes depicts an abrasively bilious anti-southern attitude pervading the north and overshadowing the Yankee animosity and slave cruelty from the south. From Orry's trips to George's home in Lehigh Station, Pennsylvania, through northern states in NORTH AND SOUTH, it's clear there's a generalized hatred for the south and all its white folk regardless of whether they own slaves or treat them poorly. When Billy ventures out to the city of Charleston, South Carolina, in NORTH AND SOUTH, he encounters some thugs and assumes they hate all northerners. But not so, Ashton and her husband Huntoon specifically hired those ruffians to eliminate Billy. The Hazards don't encounter nearly the blind prejudice against them in the south as the Mains deal with in the North.
A lot of preachy moralizing and Charles-Main-to-the-rescue theatrics comprises the bulk of this hefty 1,078-page paperback LOVE AND WAR. If you're down with that, dig in!
Jakes' American Civil War trilogy
1. North and South (***)
2. Love and War (*)
3. Heaven and Hell (skip, LOVE AND WAR hammered the nail in the coffin on this series)
George Hazard: "Lincoln and the cabinet and Congress all pushed [General] McDowell [towards the loss at the first Bull Run]. They forced him to send poorly trained amateurs into battle. The volunteers failed to behave like regulars, and McDowell's been punished for it -- by Lincoln and the cabinet and Congress."
"Ah," [Constance] murmured. "The first girl on the President's card proved clumsy, so he's changing partners."
"Changing partners. That says it very well...I wonder how many times he'll do it before the ball is over?" {George comparing the shifting of Union generals-in-chief in the Civil War to girls on President Lincoln's card in a ball}
Although I enjoyed the scant references to Sam Grant in this novel and flimsy glimpses of battle warfare and strategy of the American Civil War (almost nonexistent), I absolutely hated the overwhelming focus on Charles Main and disliked the prodigious exhibition of northern corruption and northern barbarity. Yes we get it, northerners are just as bad as southerners if not more in terms of their attitude towards people of color during this time period. Northerners' collective and indiscriminate zealotry towards all white southerners and colored people makes them worse. As the end of the war nears, the book singles out strained northern white/black relations marked by racism while highlighting improved southern white/black relations (the Mont Royal overseer Philemon Meek and Andy, for example). All of the characters' thoughts (especially George, Orry, Billy and Brett) spew repetitious, preachy drivel as if we didn't get enough of that in NORTH AND SOUTH (***). Don't get me started on Yankee-killing Machine Charles Main, I hated him towards the end of NORTH AND SOUTH (***) and it doesn't get any better here. Despite Charles' losses in this novel, he sure lives a charmed life always flying to everyone's rescue and charging in and out of forays with nary a wound or scrape to show for it. Unfortunately, Billy and Brett's plots here (the only two characters that seemed 'real' to me) involved plenty of preachy moralizing about slavery and racism. The two characters that least needed moral lessons on racism -- Billy and Brett -- received it incessantly. And Charles flying to a worthless Billy's rescue again and again and again and again was ... too much. Want to show off Charles' indestructible talents? Oh let's just have Billy get captured (again) or his love interest in trouble so Charles can save them (again). Billy gets tortured and beat up and wounded while Charles Main rides around like a godlike cowboy killing Yankees, killing villains (Cuffey) and beating everyone up without a scratch to show for it. Mont Royal, Cooper and his family in danger? No problem, here comes Charles to the rescue!
What a horrible book. Detailed? Sure. Wearisomely melodramatic? Absolutely. Although settings were stronger in this novel (compared to NORTH AND SOUTH), I can't say I liked the foggy prose in this one. I'm reading and reading and reading and it just seems like very little happens other than endless preachy moralizing and Charles-to-the-rescue histrionics. Conveniently, all of the antagonists (Ashton, Virgilia, Bent) survive for the next book. I hear HEAVEN AND HELL centers even more on Charles Main. Uhm ya, thanks but no thanks. Let's just say I only read this for references to factual events and people during the war (especially Sam Grant). I also enjoyed the technology noted by the novel: the repeating gun Spencer capable of firing many rounds in a short amount of time, and steam engines.
"Our keen-minded Southern journalists scorn [Sam Grant] for being round-shouldered and slovenly. Really important considerations, eh? ... Three years ago, Ewell said there was an obscure West Point man somewhere in Missouri whom he hoped the Yankees would never discover. He said he feared him more than all the others put together."
Clearly a prelude to LOVE AND WAR, the disproportionate focus on Charles Main in NORTH AND SOUTH adumbrates the unmistakable hero of this entire Civil War trilogy including this particular 1,078-page paperback. All well and good if you like the Charles-Main character but I found the imbalanced emphasis on Charles Main and his invulnerability in this bloated book unbearable. Especially since I savored every token passage on Billy and Brett while hoping for more. Billy and Brett seemed like the only realistic characters to me, and all the other fictional characters were larger-than-life and/or way over-the-top. I actually preferred Ashton and Bent's treacherously episodic scheming to the adventures of godlike, indestructible Charles Main. Long, protracted pages from Charles Main's perspective embodies the love and war in this novel while Billy and Brett receive forgettable treatment. Billy writes in his journal mostly about racial issues while Brett learns compassion and affection for colored people. Even when there is plotting with Billy, it's usually interspersed with Charles' goings-on and/or includes Charles in a significant, life-saving manner. The battle at Shiloh is sort of brushed off from Bent's perspective even though it's recognized as one of Grant's ingenious saves while Jakes assiduously details Lee's genius at the battle at Antietam (Sharpsburg) from a day-to-day basis completely from Charles' perspective. I was wondering what Billy was doing during the battle at Sharpsburg the entire time Jakes glorifies Lee, Stonewall Jackson and our fictional hero Charles Main. Following a 20-page account of Antietam exclusively from Charles' perspective we have Billy's 2-page postmortem. Just to fill up space and unable to find any storyline for Billy, the book makes Billy think of Charles "often" (p.426). Similar to Antietam, we have Gettysburg entirely from Charles' perspective which again left me wondering why Jakes couldn't give Billy some meaningful storyline.
I thought Jakes should have stationed Billy out on the western theater closer to Grant. With Shiloh, Vicksburg and the Third Battle of Chattanooga, Grant was phenomenal over there. The Third Battle of Chattanooga actually showcased Grant's chief engineer William F. "Baldy" Smith in a key strategic move known as the "Cracker Line." And Billy was an engineer! Very poor creativity from Jakes on Billy's entire storyline in this novel. A novel which serves one purpose and one purpose alone: glorifying Charles Main.
Apparently, the only storyline suitable for Billy in this book: getting tortured at Libby Prison in Richmond after he's captured and then bumming around for Charles Main to fly to his rescue again (like towards the end of NORTH AND SOUTH). At the end of the ordeal, Billy records the lesson he learned in an improvised journal. "I at last understand how the enslaved negro feels. I have dwelt a while in the soul of a shackled black man and take a little of it into my own forever." Not only is the lesson completely unnecessary after all the sermonizing introspection (from so many characters) and various discussions over the issue of slavery, but the recipient of this particular torturous lesson (Billy) was already sympathetic towards slaves and already against the institution of slavery. So what's the point of all these pages showing Billy beat up and tortured? I guess I missed the boat on that one other than to underscore more of the same, invulnerable Charles-to-the-rescue antics. I also don't understand why Orry needs Charles to do anything about Billy's imprisonment. Orry waits for weeks for Charles to help him rescue Billy. It's like no one can get anything done in this series unless Charles Main is the one to do it. The book tries to show a "friendship" between Charles Main and Billy Hazard, but it's handled extremely poorly because of the attention this series bestows on the character of Charles Main. There's no equal ground in this "friendship" it's all Charles, he's smarter, stronger, taller, tougher, faster, he's in a world of his own.
After Billy returns to service, the book uses him in a episodic plot device: a potential candidate for the death of a major character. Unlike Charles Main, we're constantly afraid for the life of the weak and inept Billy Hazard. Constance's premonition about the war leaving a widow amongst Brett, Madeline and herself, and then Brett's attraction for the handsome negro Scipio Brown all appear to foreshadow Billy's death. Billy is the perfect worthless character for this anecdotal plot device.
Never did I believe Charles would die, and of course I was right. Charles is too wishy-washy: he's itching for a fight one minute, he's disillusioned by war the next (yet he still wants to fight); he's gentlemanly, oh wait, no he's not; he's in love with Augusta Barclay, but he doesn't want to start something in the middle of a war (goes back and forth on the love with "Gus" a few times). And of course, our Yankee-killing Machine escapes everything unscathed while oftentimes rescuing his inept friends like Billy Hazard (just like in NORTH AND SOUTH). It was a little ludicrous that a confrontation between Yankees having the new rapid-fire Spencer gun against Charles' group resulted in 4 Yankee deaths and yet Charles and his entire group escaped without a scratch. What the hell was the gun shooting at?! It seemed like Jakes took the best parts of George and Orry and fused them into Charles's character: George's easy ways with the women, George's competence at soldiering and fighting, Orry's tall, aristocratic and handsome countenance, Orry's desire to fight and be a soldier. And of course we also have both Orry & George's disillusionment with war imbued hundred-fold in Charles' protracted musings. And yet even following these melancholy soliloquies about the brutal realities of war, Charles always exalts in war and fighting. For example, he loses his friend O'Dell in Texas from the last novel and more than once the book noted how he no longer considers war all that glorious. And yet, we have him itching for a fight later. Here, after he loses his friend Ambrose and he's separated from his love interest Gus, it's just endless pages of wishy-washy introspection. I understand the complexities of human nature especially during a time of war, but I just couldn't abide the resounding and protracted fictional plots dealing with Charles which more or less symbolized the love and war in LOVE AND WAR. Even the finale featured more Charles-Main melodramatic nonsense as he rushes to catch a train and hurdling every possible obstacle Jakes can throw his way. Finally, he just pulls a gun on the train's conductor.
Since we know which side ends up winning the war and we understand the grave crimes the country perpetuated for so long in retrospect (slavery), Jakes compensates for this by delineating the north's perfidious rancor and the south's refined kindness. After checking in on Charles, we immediately turn to the crooked Col. Bent and the corrupt Secretary of War Simon Cameron. From Billy Hazard's consternation that a colored man wouldn't step aside to let him pass on a sidewalk, we're privy to northern hypocrisy as well: they want to free slaves, yet still considered blacks beneath them. When Billy's southern wife Brett travels out to Lehigh Station, Pennsylvania, for thread in a store, she's harassed for simply being a southerner. Later, when Brett visits Billy in Washington, they discuss how northerners aren't really fighting for the blacks or to free them, but rather for crushing the upstart traitors who defected. This idea that the north is for the war against the south, but against blacks, surfaces again when Constance attempts to build a shelter for black children in Lehigh Station, Pennsylvania. "The North was no pristine fount of morality," Constance thinks.
Even all the characters on both sides of the army compel the reader to sympathize and cheer the south while hating northerners. For example, most of the southern army around Charles Main are good men, even aristocrats like Ambrose (Jakes only shows the foreign southern officer von Helm in a negative light). On the other hand, Jakes meticulously shows northern officers who rub the wrong way: the early generals-in-chief (McDowell, McLellan, Burnside), Ripley, and the gaudy Lt. Custer with Billy's army. Let's not forget the ext Following Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, we should have guessed the book would turn its attentions to the resentful Union soldiers (p.427). Furthermore, the book notes how bigoted white northerners beat "contraband" blacks and blacks in the army following the emancipation proclamation. By contrast, Madeline symbolizes compassionate white southerners educating their slaves (through Jane). Though Jakes accurately portrays the north's hypocrisy, I thought the entire notion was drummed out too much in too many different ways. When we finally do shift our attentions down south, it's to highlight how cruel some of the slaves treat each other (Cuffey) and how kind slave owners like Orry Main sponsor a slave's personal growth (Andy). While Virgilia dreams of indiscriminately obliterating good southern whites, we constantly see evidence of righteous vengeance visited on the north (Charles killing another two crooked Yanks when he conveniently arrives just in time to save Gus and escape with nary a scratch!). Out of the blue, the Mains' old overseer Salem Jones shows up amongst a mob in New York City rioting and indifferently killing (burning) colored people following a federal conscription fiat. Down south, we see the honorable southern officer John Mosby saving Billy. From a reader's standpoint, the book never misses a chance to denigrate all northern whites while exalting southerners like Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson. Poor Billy, he's a weakling good for little else in this novel other than writing in his journal and getting captured.
This series' bottom line? North = corrupt, bigoted and inept, South = honorable, empathic and brilliant.
Jakes depicts an abrasively bilious anti-southern attitude pervading the north and overshadowing the Yankee animosity and slave cruelty from the south. From Orry's trips to George's home in Lehigh Station, Pennsylvania, through northern states in NORTH AND SOUTH, it's clear there's a generalized hatred for the south and all its white folk regardless of whether they own slaves or treat them poorly. When Billy ventures out to the city of Charleston, South Carolina, in NORTH AND SOUTH, he encounters some thugs and assumes they hate all northerners. But not so, Ashton and her husband Huntoon specifically hired those ruffians to eliminate Billy. The Hazards don't encounter nearly the blind prejudice against them in the south as the Mains deal with in the North.
A lot of preachy moralizing and Charles-Main-to-the-rescue theatrics comprises the bulk of this hefty 1,078-page paperback LOVE AND WAR. If you're down with that, dig in!
Friday, October 26, 2007
North and South, by John Jakes [3]
***/***** (3/5)
John Jakes' American Civil War trilogy
1. North and South (3/5)
2. Love and War
3. Heaven and Hell
Here we confront another great lure of the subject: its fascinating and tragic paradox. The schism should not have happened, and [yet] it had to happen (speaking of the American Civil War). But that is my interpretation; as one historian has said, "Every man creates his own Civil War." --John Jakes in his Afterword of NORTH AND SOUTH
I frantically devoured John Jakes' opening salvo on the American Civil War, a behemoth 735-page hardcover entitled NORTH AND SOUTH (published in 1982). Its sequel, LOVE AND WAR, clocks in at 1,078 pages and I've already started it. Not since Elizabeth Chadwick's LORDS OF THE WHITE CASTLE have I found a book so unputdownable as Jakes' NORTH AND SOUTH. Deftly weaving factual events and people in American History with fictional characters and storylines, this astutely impartial novel sets the stage for the Civil War (1861-1865). Our tale here begins on June 1842 when two youngsters from opposing regions and contrasting opulent families (one family from the industrial north, the other from the plantation south) commence their turbulent friendship at West Point, and climaxes on April 12, 1861 when Confederate soldiers led by Brigadier General Beauregard opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, marking the onset of a bloody American Civil War which claimed over 620,000 lives (more than all the wars in American history combined).
John Jakes balances factual events and people, fictional families, friendships, poignant characterizations, love, lust, extremist fanaticism, and politics all under the shadow of slavery and racism which ripple even to this day. This book's primary intent? Entertainment. Although factually bloodier and darker than Bernard Cornwell's Arthurian Warlord trilogy, a glibly melodramatic fictional plotting characterizes Jakes' NORTH AND SOUTH, and this book definitely seemed lighter (than Cornwell's Warlord trilogy). Although consisting of some tense episodic plotting, all of our fictitious protagonists survive in this opening installment, albeit with some wear and tear. I actually wanted Charles Main to die. I didn't necessarily like the decidedly Southern focus of the novel, or some of the soap-opera-ish, melodramatic fictional plotting which just prompted questions of idiocy towards some of the characters. Half the time, I felt like I was reading a more intense version of the 80s TV serials Dallas or Falcon Crest about rich families. You remember those, don't you?
"Which way will you go, sir? North or South?"
[General Robert E. Lee's] face looked haggard in the rain. "I'm certain of one thing only. No matter how each man or woman answers the question you asked, I think there will be but one result from what we've allowed the extremists to do to us. Heartbreak. Good-bye, Lieutenant."
I thought NORTH AND SOUTH skillfully portrayed the factual events, politics and fervid extremist views on both sides which embroil this conflict. Jakes convincingly illustrates how a sectional storm of extremist malevolence could wipe away reason and good intentions. Personal ambitions and desires drive much of the extremist views. Anti-slavery, antagonistic northern views seems to put the South on the defensive, and Jakes magnificently captures how even reasonable men from the south against slavery fight for the South because of prevalently generalized anti-southern sentiments. The book conveys many factual legislation, people, politics, writers and authors during this time period, all of which widens the sectional schism and races the country to an unnecessary yet imperative conflict (the paradox that Jakes speaks of in his afterword). Jakes deftly realizes West Point, its cadets and its curriculum, an Academy which produces most if not all the brilliant Civil War officers on both sides. The book adeptly highlights the contrasting economies between the industrial North and the agricultural South, an economic contrast symbolized by the very appearance of our fictional families: the stocky, blue-collar ironmasters the Hazards from Pennsylvania, and the tall, aristocratic rice plantation owners the Mains from South Carolina.
Cooper Main: "This is the age of the machine, and we [the South] refuse to acknowledge it. We cling to agriculture and our past, while we fall farther and farther out of step. Once the South practically ran this country. No more. Every year we lose respect and influence at the national level. And with reason. We aren't attuned to the times." He stopped short of citing the familiar proof -- the peculiar institution to which the South's prosperity had become shackled as firmly as the slaves themselves were bound to their owners.
Cooper had concluded that the significant difference between the economic systems of the North and South was not in industry versus agriculture but in motivation. The free Yankee worked to better himself. The Southern slave worked to keep from being punished. That difference was slowly rotting the South from the inside...
Cooper Main: "We're content to be what we've been for a hundred and fifty years -- farmers whose crops depend on the sweat of black bondsmen. We ignore men like George's father, even though they're becoming legion up North. George's father manufactures iron with free labor. That iron goes into machines. Machines are creating the future. The Yankees understand what this century's all about, but we only understand the last one..."
George Hazard: "This piece [of meteor fragment] may have traveled millions and millions of miles before it crashed here. My father says the iron trade has had more influence on the course of history than all the politicians and generals since the beginning of time" -- he held up the meteorite -- "and this is the reason. Iron can destroy anything: families, fortunes, governments, whole countries. It's the most powerful stuff in the universe."
"Oh? You really think it's more powerful than a big army?" [asked Orry Main].
"Without weapons -- without this -- there are no big armies."
The book intermingles much history into the fiction: we hear about Robert E. Lee's military brilliance early in this novel and often, we hear about all the legislation which attempted to balance interests over slavery from the Missouri Compromise to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 (allowed residents to decide over the slavery issue). We're intimately involved in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) caused by a dispute over Texas' southern borders from the eyes and ears of our main characters Orry Main and George Hazard. Several incendiary historical figures conflagrate the delicate balance between the North and South: former Vice President and South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun and South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks to revolutionary abolutionist John Brown. The book also notes the Nullification Crisis over the Tariff of 1828 which hit South Carolina particularly hard and triggers the debate over power at the state versus federal level. The book further has many of its fictional characters read popular literary works during the time including Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Late in the novel, we even meet Confederate President Jefferson Davis, seen as a sharp and astute leader by northerner George Hazard. Later in 1861 we met Abraham Lincoln at the onset of the Civil War, when many northern politicians view Lincoln as a weak leader while southerners see him as an ape.
Why were three adults so upset about one man's escape? ... At last George [Hazard] began to understand something of the Southern dilemma. He began to understand the stranglehold that slavery had on those who practiced it. Not one slave could be allowed to escape, for if one succeeded, thousands might try. The Mains and all others like them were prisoners of the very system by which they profited. And they were prisoners of fear.
There's quite a bit of love and romance in this novel. We have the emotionally-charged, angst-filled and impossible romance between Orry Main and Madeline LaMotte lasting the entire novel. There's the rushed romance between George Hazard and Constance receiving very superficial treatment. There's the romance between Cooper Main and Judith, and that was a sweet one actually. Finally, and my favorite, we have the romance between Billy Hazard and Brett Main sealing the connection between the two families, and representing the potential for love between North and South during a time of turmoil and conflict.
[Billy Hazard] studied [Brett Main's] eyes. How pretty they were. How free of guile. She wasn't as flamboyantly attractive as Ashton, and she never would be. Yet she did possess beauty, he thought; beauty of a simpler, more substantial sort, compounded in part of the shy gentleness of her gaze and the kindness of her smile. It was a beauty that time could never erode, as it could her sister's. It ran like a rich, pure vein, all the way to the center of Brett's being.
Or so his romantic eye told him.
I found the titles of the prologue and the four parts of the novel very chilling and the writing/content therein often adds to the title's ominous tones. The prologue, entitled Two Fortunes, sets up the two prominent families as early as 1686 from the first-generation immigrants that traveled to the British colonies. More than 6 generations later, second sons Orry Main and George Hazard meet and form close bonds in the first part called Answer to the Drum. This first part also has Orry and George in the Mexican-American War after graduating from West Point. The second part Friends and Enemies establishes civil strife between and within families while Charles Main and Billy Hazard follow in Orry & George's footsteps at West Point. More of a soap opera feeling dominates Friends and Enemies. The third part gives me goosebumps every time and all the more because it's a quote a by real historical figure: "The Cords that Bind are Breaking One by One." South Carolina is the first to secede from the Union in this third and pivotal part and we're privy to the orgasmic celebrating in Charleston after South Carolina's secession. The fourth and final part March Into Darkness marks the commencement of the Civil War as Confederate troops open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. There's also long and contrived plotting dealing with our fictional characters during this time (albeit entirely addictive). The end here stretches quite a bit as Orry Main travels up to Union territory during this time of war. All in all, the book spans from 1842 to 1861 discounting the prologue which sets up the first-generation immigrants in 1686 over 6 generations earlier.
You might think a novel about the American Civil War would focus more on the North, right? Not so in this opening installment, I thought Jakes skews the bulk of the perspective from the South and the Southern family Mains. The Mains are a lot more fleshed out: Tillet Main the father, both his sons Cooper and Orry, and both his daughters Ashton and Brett. I'd be remiss not to mention Tillet's nephew and Orry's cousin the reckless, yet incredibly handsome Charles Main whose adventures and character development probably outshine that of any other character in terms of sheer page count (his early reckless brawling and whoring ways, his development into a gentleman when he prepares for a duel with a Smith, and finally his leadership as a soldier after he's stationed at Texas). By contrast, the northern Pennsylvania industrialists the Hazards receive, at best, a perfunctory treatment: the patriarch William Hazard perishes in the first part of the novel, Stanley the eldest son isn't nearly as interesting as Cooper Main, and consequently, doesn't receive nearly as much attention. Orry's perspective and love story easily overshadows George Hazard's (Orry and George are the two second sons who meet and become friends at West Point in 1842, remember). Cousin Charles Main's character development and adventures eclipses Billy Hazard's, the youngest Hazard brother, and for that matter, eclipses that of every other character as well. And of course Ashton and Brett Main are far more evident than the irksome, fanatic Hazard daughter, Virgilia. Furthermore, Orry's love interest Madeline LaMotte is a lot more fleshed out than George Hazard's love interest Constance.
Madeline LaMotte thinking: Something in the young cadet's eyes, in [Orry Main's] courtly bearing and his shy demeanor, called out to her, spoke to her on a deep and primitive level.
Slavery and issues from the South (particularly South Carolina which is the first state to secede in 1861) could explain the pronounced Southern focus and the emphasis on all the Mains (the American version of British aristocracy in the 18th and 19th-century fueled by slavery). Regardless of the reasons for this decided focus on the Mains, I found myself wanting more perspectives from the North and from Billy Hazard (the youngest Hazard son) in particular to offset a lopsided emphasis on Charles Main. Unfortunately, there's more plotting focusing exclusively on Orry and Charles Main than on George and Billy Hazard. For example, during a leave from West Point after George and Orry's second year, the novel shifts its attention emphatically on Orry Main and Mont Royal, South Carolina, also setting up Madeline LaMotte and the other Mains in the process. During Madeline's marriage reception to Justin LaMotte, Charles Main (Orry's cousin) shines as a young rogue brawler. Nothing whatsoever about what George Hazard did back home in Pennsylvania and nothing about his family in any interesting or involved fashion. Cooper Main visits his younger brother Orry at West Point earlier as well. Following the Mexican-American War, we finally find more of an account on the Hazards as George feuds with his inept older brother Stanley and wrests control of Hazard Iron away from him after their father's death. Still, we find much more extensive plots dealing with Orry, Ashton, Brett, Cooper, Charles and Madeline LaMotte down in South Carolina as Orry copes with one arm and grooms his cousin Charles. Twice, Orry visits his friend George Hazard up north at Lehigh Station, Pennsylvania, and the book painstakingly chronicles the entire journey up north from Orry's perspective (once with his sister Brett and later towards the very end making the journey by himself).
Although I enjoyed Charles' characterization in the very beginning as a reckless 7 year-old boy, I really disliked him the more he grew and the more the book focused on him. For instance, NORTH AND SOUTH spent a seemingly pointless 7 chapters (over 60 pages!) exclusively on Charles' adventures in Texas with the pernicious Captain Bent. I found the entire ordeal with Charles and Bent in Texas pointless and exhausting. Even portions at the end seemingly about Billy Hazard and Brett involved Charles as he flies to the rescue at a rigged duel between Billy Hazard and Forbes LaMotte.
I also found much of the fictional plotting involving these two families ridiculous, convoluted and too soapy. It just seemed like these characters were stupid letting the antagonists repeatedly foment conflict and tension. For example, consider Virgilia Hazard's singular purpose in the novel: disrupt the delicate friendship between the Mains and Hazards. Repeatedly, Virgilia causes problems between the two families and yet idiotically, George Hazard seems to allow it every time. For example, Virgilia Hazard shows up every time Orry Main is visiting the Hazard home in Lehigh Station, Pennsylvania, to provoke and antagonize. And George just allows it every time without taking any steps to at least isolate Virgilia when Orry is visiting. Earlier, George agrees to allow Virgilia to accompany the Hazards down south to the Main home despite knowing Virgilia's inflammatory and antagonistic disposition condemning all white Southerners and despite knowing her desire to indiscriminately eradicate every single one of them. Dumb, on George's part. Later, when marriage to Billy seems finally possible, Brett Main rushes to share the news with her older, prettier sister Ashton Main first despite knowing from a very early age Ashton's avariciously ambitious nature. Why would you do that, Brett, when you're aware of Ashton's sick and twisted mind? At the end, I was frustrated by Orry's anemic response to Ashton's treachery. Orry simply gives Ashton a slap on the wrist and banishes her for from Mont Royal for a grievous offense which warranted a harsher comeuppance.
George & Orry's turbulent friendship represents a microcosm of the entire conflict over slavery and the events leading to the Civil War itself. When George asks Orry to allow a slave on the run to escape a likely death sentence, Orry seethes and reminds George -- a Northerner -- to stay out of the South's affairs.
Orry Main: "Once before, I tried to explain the nature of things in the South. I told you we understand our own problems, our own needs, better than outsiders do. I told you we'd eventually solve those problems -- so long as outsiders didn't interfere...if you want us to continue to be friends, don't ever ask me to do something like that again."
[George] hoped Orry was right about the South's eventually solving its own problems. If the South did not, the rest of the nation would surely take action.
John Jakes' American Civil War trilogy
1. North and South (3/5)
2. Love and War
3. Heaven and Hell
Here we confront another great lure of the subject: its fascinating and tragic paradox. The schism should not have happened, and [yet] it had to happen (speaking of the American Civil War). But that is my interpretation; as one historian has said, "Every man creates his own Civil War." --John Jakes in his Afterword of NORTH AND SOUTH
I frantically devoured John Jakes' opening salvo on the American Civil War, a behemoth 735-page hardcover entitled NORTH AND SOUTH (published in 1982). Its sequel, LOVE AND WAR, clocks in at 1,078 pages and I've already started it. Not since Elizabeth Chadwick's LORDS OF THE WHITE CASTLE have I found a book so unputdownable as Jakes' NORTH AND SOUTH. Deftly weaving factual events and people in American History with fictional characters and storylines, this astutely impartial novel sets the stage for the Civil War (1861-1865). Our tale here begins on June 1842 when two youngsters from opposing regions and contrasting opulent families (one family from the industrial north, the other from the plantation south) commence their turbulent friendship at West Point, and climaxes on April 12, 1861 when Confederate soldiers led by Brigadier General Beauregard opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, marking the onset of a bloody American Civil War which claimed over 620,000 lives (more than all the wars in American history combined).
John Jakes balances factual events and people, fictional families, friendships, poignant characterizations, love, lust, extremist fanaticism, and politics all under the shadow of slavery and racism which ripple even to this day. This book's primary intent? Entertainment. Although factually bloodier and darker than Bernard Cornwell's Arthurian Warlord trilogy, a glibly melodramatic fictional plotting characterizes Jakes' NORTH AND SOUTH, and this book definitely seemed lighter (than Cornwell's Warlord trilogy). Although consisting of some tense episodic plotting, all of our fictitious protagonists survive in this opening installment, albeit with some wear and tear. I actually wanted Charles Main to die. I didn't necessarily like the decidedly Southern focus of the novel, or some of the soap-opera-ish, melodramatic fictional plotting which just prompted questions of idiocy towards some of the characters. Half the time, I felt like I was reading a more intense version of the 80s TV serials Dallas or Falcon Crest about rich families. You remember those, don't you?
"Which way will you go, sir? North or South?"
[General Robert E. Lee's] face looked haggard in the rain. "I'm certain of one thing only. No matter how each man or woman answers the question you asked, I think there will be but one result from what we've allowed the extremists to do to us. Heartbreak. Good-bye, Lieutenant."
I thought NORTH AND SOUTH skillfully portrayed the factual events, politics and fervid extremist views on both sides which embroil this conflict. Jakes convincingly illustrates how a sectional storm of extremist malevolence could wipe away reason and good intentions. Personal ambitions and desires drive much of the extremist views. Anti-slavery, antagonistic northern views seems to put the South on the defensive, and Jakes magnificently captures how even reasonable men from the south against slavery fight for the South because of prevalently generalized anti-southern sentiments. The book conveys many factual legislation, people, politics, writers and authors during this time period, all of which widens the sectional schism and races the country to an unnecessary yet imperative conflict (the paradox that Jakes speaks of in his afterword). Jakes deftly realizes West Point, its cadets and its curriculum, an Academy which produces most if not all the brilliant Civil War officers on both sides. The book adeptly highlights the contrasting economies between the industrial North and the agricultural South, an economic contrast symbolized by the very appearance of our fictional families: the stocky, blue-collar ironmasters the Hazards from Pennsylvania, and the tall, aristocratic rice plantation owners the Mains from South Carolina.
Cooper Main: "This is the age of the machine, and we [the South] refuse to acknowledge it. We cling to agriculture and our past, while we fall farther and farther out of step. Once the South practically ran this country. No more. Every year we lose respect and influence at the national level. And with reason. We aren't attuned to the times." He stopped short of citing the familiar proof -- the peculiar institution to which the South's prosperity had become shackled as firmly as the slaves themselves were bound to their owners.
Cooper had concluded that the significant difference between the economic systems of the North and South was not in industry versus agriculture but in motivation. The free Yankee worked to better himself. The Southern slave worked to keep from being punished. That difference was slowly rotting the South from the inside...
Cooper Main: "We're content to be what we've been for a hundred and fifty years -- farmers whose crops depend on the sweat of black bondsmen. We ignore men like George's father, even though they're becoming legion up North. George's father manufactures iron with free labor. That iron goes into machines. Machines are creating the future. The Yankees understand what this century's all about, but we only understand the last one..."
George Hazard: "This piece [of meteor fragment] may have traveled millions and millions of miles before it crashed here. My father says the iron trade has had more influence on the course of history than all the politicians and generals since the beginning of time" -- he held up the meteorite -- "and this is the reason. Iron can destroy anything: families, fortunes, governments, whole countries. It's the most powerful stuff in the universe."
"Oh? You really think it's more powerful than a big army?" [asked Orry Main].
"Without weapons -- without this -- there are no big armies."
The book intermingles much history into the fiction: we hear about Robert E. Lee's military brilliance early in this novel and often, we hear about all the legislation which attempted to balance interests over slavery from the Missouri Compromise to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 (allowed residents to decide over the slavery issue). We're intimately involved in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) caused by a dispute over Texas' southern borders from the eyes and ears of our main characters Orry Main and George Hazard. Several incendiary historical figures conflagrate the delicate balance between the North and South: former Vice President and South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun and South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks to revolutionary abolutionist John Brown. The book also notes the Nullification Crisis over the Tariff of 1828 which hit South Carolina particularly hard and triggers the debate over power at the state versus federal level. The book further has many of its fictional characters read popular literary works during the time including Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Late in the novel, we even meet Confederate President Jefferson Davis, seen as a sharp and astute leader by northerner George Hazard. Later in 1861 we met Abraham Lincoln at the onset of the Civil War, when many northern politicians view Lincoln as a weak leader while southerners see him as an ape.
Why were three adults so upset about one man's escape? ... At last George [Hazard] began to understand something of the Southern dilemma. He began to understand the stranglehold that slavery had on those who practiced it. Not one slave could be allowed to escape, for if one succeeded, thousands might try. The Mains and all others like them were prisoners of the very system by which they profited. And they were prisoners of fear.
There's quite a bit of love and romance in this novel. We have the emotionally-charged, angst-filled and impossible romance between Orry Main and Madeline LaMotte lasting the entire novel. There's the rushed romance between George Hazard and Constance receiving very superficial treatment. There's the romance between Cooper Main and Judith, and that was a sweet one actually. Finally, and my favorite, we have the romance between Billy Hazard and Brett Main sealing the connection between the two families, and representing the potential for love between North and South during a time of turmoil and conflict.
[Billy Hazard] studied [Brett Main's] eyes. How pretty they were. How free of guile. She wasn't as flamboyantly attractive as Ashton, and she never would be. Yet she did possess beauty, he thought; beauty of a simpler, more substantial sort, compounded in part of the shy gentleness of her gaze and the kindness of her smile. It was a beauty that time could never erode, as it could her sister's. It ran like a rich, pure vein, all the way to the center of Brett's being.
Or so his romantic eye told him.
I found the titles of the prologue and the four parts of the novel very chilling and the writing/content therein often adds to the title's ominous tones. The prologue, entitled Two Fortunes, sets up the two prominent families as early as 1686 from the first-generation immigrants that traveled to the British colonies. More than 6 generations later, second sons Orry Main and George Hazard meet and form close bonds in the first part called Answer to the Drum. This first part also has Orry and George in the Mexican-American War after graduating from West Point. The second part Friends and Enemies establishes civil strife between and within families while Charles Main and Billy Hazard follow in Orry & George's footsteps at West Point. More of a soap opera feeling dominates Friends and Enemies. The third part gives me goosebumps every time and all the more because it's a quote a by real historical figure: "The Cords that Bind are Breaking One by One." South Carolina is the first to secede from the Union in this third and pivotal part and we're privy to the orgasmic celebrating in Charleston after South Carolina's secession. The fourth and final part March Into Darkness marks the commencement of the Civil War as Confederate troops open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. There's also long and contrived plotting dealing with our fictional characters during this time (albeit entirely addictive). The end here stretches quite a bit as Orry Main travels up to Union territory during this time of war. All in all, the book spans from 1842 to 1861 discounting the prologue which sets up the first-generation immigrants in 1686 over 6 generations earlier.
You might think a novel about the American Civil War would focus more on the North, right? Not so in this opening installment, I thought Jakes skews the bulk of the perspective from the South and the Southern family Mains. The Mains are a lot more fleshed out: Tillet Main the father, both his sons Cooper and Orry, and both his daughters Ashton and Brett. I'd be remiss not to mention Tillet's nephew and Orry's cousin the reckless, yet incredibly handsome Charles Main whose adventures and character development probably outshine that of any other character in terms of sheer page count (his early reckless brawling and whoring ways, his development into a gentleman when he prepares for a duel with a Smith, and finally his leadership as a soldier after he's stationed at Texas). By contrast, the northern Pennsylvania industrialists the Hazards receive, at best, a perfunctory treatment: the patriarch William Hazard perishes in the first part of the novel, Stanley the eldest son isn't nearly as interesting as Cooper Main, and consequently, doesn't receive nearly as much attention. Orry's perspective and love story easily overshadows George Hazard's (Orry and George are the two second sons who meet and become friends at West Point in 1842, remember). Cousin Charles Main's character development and adventures eclipses Billy Hazard's, the youngest Hazard brother, and for that matter, eclipses that of every other character as well. And of course Ashton and Brett Main are far more evident than the irksome, fanatic Hazard daughter, Virgilia. Furthermore, Orry's love interest Madeline LaMotte is a lot more fleshed out than George Hazard's love interest Constance.
Madeline LaMotte thinking: Something in the young cadet's eyes, in [Orry Main's] courtly bearing and his shy demeanor, called out to her, spoke to her on a deep and primitive level.
Slavery and issues from the South (particularly South Carolina which is the first state to secede in 1861) could explain the pronounced Southern focus and the emphasis on all the Mains (the American version of British aristocracy in the 18th and 19th-century fueled by slavery). Regardless of the reasons for this decided focus on the Mains, I found myself wanting more perspectives from the North and from Billy Hazard (the youngest Hazard son) in particular to offset a lopsided emphasis on Charles Main. Unfortunately, there's more plotting focusing exclusively on Orry and Charles Main than on George and Billy Hazard. For example, during a leave from West Point after George and Orry's second year, the novel shifts its attention emphatically on Orry Main and Mont Royal, South Carolina, also setting up Madeline LaMotte and the other Mains in the process. During Madeline's marriage reception to Justin LaMotte, Charles Main (Orry's cousin) shines as a young rogue brawler. Nothing whatsoever about what George Hazard did back home in Pennsylvania and nothing about his family in any interesting or involved fashion. Cooper Main visits his younger brother Orry at West Point earlier as well. Following the Mexican-American War, we finally find more of an account on the Hazards as George feuds with his inept older brother Stanley and wrests control of Hazard Iron away from him after their father's death. Still, we find much more extensive plots dealing with Orry, Ashton, Brett, Cooper, Charles and Madeline LaMotte down in South Carolina as Orry copes with one arm and grooms his cousin Charles. Twice, Orry visits his friend George Hazard up north at Lehigh Station, Pennsylvania, and the book painstakingly chronicles the entire journey up north from Orry's perspective (once with his sister Brett and later towards the very end making the journey by himself).
Although I enjoyed Charles' characterization in the very beginning as a reckless 7 year-old boy, I really disliked him the more he grew and the more the book focused on him. For instance, NORTH AND SOUTH spent a seemingly pointless 7 chapters (over 60 pages!) exclusively on Charles' adventures in Texas with the pernicious Captain Bent. I found the entire ordeal with Charles and Bent in Texas pointless and exhausting. Even portions at the end seemingly about Billy Hazard and Brett involved Charles as he flies to the rescue at a rigged duel between Billy Hazard and Forbes LaMotte.
I also found much of the fictional plotting involving these two families ridiculous, convoluted and too soapy. It just seemed like these characters were stupid letting the antagonists repeatedly foment conflict and tension. For example, consider Virgilia Hazard's singular purpose in the novel: disrupt the delicate friendship between the Mains and Hazards. Repeatedly, Virgilia causes problems between the two families and yet idiotically, George Hazard seems to allow it every time. For example, Virgilia Hazard shows up every time Orry Main is visiting the Hazard home in Lehigh Station, Pennsylvania, to provoke and antagonize. And George just allows it every time without taking any steps to at least isolate Virgilia when Orry is visiting. Earlier, George agrees to allow Virgilia to accompany the Hazards down south to the Main home despite knowing Virgilia's inflammatory and antagonistic disposition condemning all white Southerners and despite knowing her desire to indiscriminately eradicate every single one of them. Dumb, on George's part. Later, when marriage to Billy seems finally possible, Brett Main rushes to share the news with her older, prettier sister Ashton Main first despite knowing from a very early age Ashton's avariciously ambitious nature. Why would you do that, Brett, when you're aware of Ashton's sick and twisted mind? At the end, I was frustrated by Orry's anemic response to Ashton's treachery. Orry simply gives Ashton a slap on the wrist and banishes her for from Mont Royal for a grievous offense which warranted a harsher comeuppance.
George & Orry's turbulent friendship represents a microcosm of the entire conflict over slavery and the events leading to the Civil War itself. When George asks Orry to allow a slave on the run to escape a likely death sentence, Orry seethes and reminds George -- a Northerner -- to stay out of the South's affairs.
Orry Main: "Once before, I tried to explain the nature of things in the South. I told you we understand our own problems, our own needs, better than outsiders do. I told you we'd eventually solve those problems -- so long as outsiders didn't interfere...if you want us to continue to be friends, don't ever ask me to do something like that again."
[George] hoped Orry was right about the South's eventually solving its own problems. If the South did not, the rest of the nation would surely take action.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Excalibur, by Bernard Cornwell [2]
**/***** (2/5)
Warlord Chronicles, a tale of Arthur
1. The Winter King (***)
2. Enemy of God (***)
3. Excalibur (**)
Arthur was probably no king, he may not have lived at all, but despite all the efforts of historians to deny his every existence, he is still, to millions of folk about the world, what a copyist called him in the fourteenth century, Arturus Rex Quondam, Rexque Futurus: Arthur, our Once and Future King. --Bernard Cornwell, Historical Note in EXCALIBUR
Cornwell's EXCALIBUR marks the crowning jewel of a fulsomely callous portrayal of women in 5th-century Britain, at least any woman of note (with the lone exception of Ceinwyn). Maybe it's unfair and provincial of me to view ruthlessness and calculated ambition potentially admirable in men but singularly unbecoming in women. Regardless, Guinevere's promiscuous ambition for power, glory and fame while Nimue's cold, religious fanaticism to sacrifice women and children for her pagan religion both distinguished Cornwell's final Arthurian installment EXCALIBUR. Although some may see EXCALIBUR as Guinevere's road to redemption, I can't say I really saw it that way. Admittedly, EXCALIBUR belongs to Guinevere, but I couldn't get over Guinevere betraying Arthur with Lancelot and then ready to betray him again with the druid twins back in ENEMY OF GOD, and all for power and glory. The humble first-person narration in a flashback makes for an inviting reading experience though the portentously gloomy tones tends to drown some of the enthusiasm. Cornwell's settings, historical backdrop and prose are all solid.
EXCALIBUR highlights the monumental battle in Arthur's lifetime which repels the Saxon conquest of Britain for an entire generation: the battle at Mynydd Baddon, or simply, Mount Badon. Of the three books in this Arthurian rendition, magic plays the biggest role here, and I can't say it was for the better. In the first part, The Fires of Mai Dun, Merlin and Nimue attempt to bring the old gods back. I found myself most engaged in the second part Mynydd Baddon in which we're treated to the warlord in Arthur at his best: battling against insurmountable odds. The final two parts, Nimue's Curse and The Last Enchantment concludes with Nimue's pagan fanaticism.
Mount Baddon. In time the poets would make that name ring through all of Britain. It would be sung in a thousand halls and fire the blood of children yet unborn, but for now it meant nothing to me. It was just a convenient hill, a grass-walled fort, and the place where, all unwillingly, I had planted my two banners in the turf. One showed Ceinwyn's star, while the other, which we had found and rescued from Argante's wagons, flaunted Arthur's banner of the bear.
So in the morning light, where they flapped in the drying wind, the bear and the star defied the Saxons.
On Mynydd Baddon.
As opposed to the madness of Christianity in ENEMY OF GOD, EXCALIBUR now turns its attentions to painting the pagan religion of 5th-century Britain in a very gruesome light via Nimue's fanatically insane group of followers. Again, you have to admire Cornwell's decided aversion to black-and-white storytelling. Where ENEMY OF GOD describes a mad and violent Christian movement, EXCALIBUR now concludes with a fanatically cruel pagan depiction with child sacrifices. Past friends and lovers now become cruel enemies (Nimue), allies plot and scheme (King of Gwent Meurig, Mordred), traitors repent and expiate (Guinevere), while apparent enemies exhibit valor and heart (Derfel's Saxon father, King Aelle). Readers will find merit in evil and cruelty in apparent good. All of it adds to Cornwell's well-researched and captivating tale of Arthur.
...[Arthur] had loved the practice of war. He tried to deny that love, but he was good at battle and quick in thought and that made him a deadly soldier. It was soldiering that had made him famous, and had let him unite the Britons and defeat the Saxons, but then his shyness about power, and his perverse belief in the innate goodness of man, and his fervent adherence to the sanctity of oaths, had let lesser men undo his work...
By the end of ENEMY OF GOD, I thought Guinevere's betrayal would teach Arthur something of ruthlessness and cold retribution. Unfortunately, Arthur's downfall rested on his most noble quality: his persistence to forgive and believe in the goodness of people and the sanctity of oaths. In the end, he wanted gratitude, but both the Christians and the pagans hate him by EXCALIBUR and he finally relinquishes his power in EXCALIBUR. Our narrator Derfel loves Arthur dearly and vehemently defends him here:
'I still think Arthur let us down [by relinquishing his power after Mynydd Baddon],' Dafydd said...How many times have I been forced to listen to that same condemnation of Arthur? If only Arthur had stayed in power, men say, then the Saxons would still be paying us tribute and Britain would stretch from sea to sea, but when Britain did have Arthur it just grumbled about him. When he gave folk what they wanted, they complained because it was not enough. The Christians attacked him for favoring the pagans, the pagans attacked him for tolerating the Christians, and the Kings, all except Cuneglas and Oengus mac Airem, were jealous of him. Oengus's support counted for little, but when Cuneglas died Arthur lost his most valuable royal supporter. Besides, Arthur did not let anyone down. Britain let itself down. Britain let the Saxons creep back, Britain squabbled amongst itself and then Britain whined that it was all Arthur's fault. Arthur, who had given them victory!
Despite devoting his life to bringing back the old gods, Merlin in the end sacrificed that endeavor for the love he bears for Arthur, a man he loved above all men. Merlin returns to his crudely droll ways, and his advise to look to ourselves for guidance and salvation (instead of any god or gods) rings true in EXCALIBUR.
'[Guinevere]'ll be out of [her prison] in two years! One, probably. If Arthur wanted her gone from his life he'd have put her to the flames, which is what he should have done. There's nothing like a good burning for improving a woman's behavior, but it's no use telling Arthur that. The halfwit's in love with her! And he is a halfwit. Think about it! Lancelot alive, Mordred alive, Cerdic alive and Guinevere alive! If a soul wants to live for ever in this world it seems like a very good idea to become an enemy of Arthur...'
'Most of [Pliny's] notions are arrant nonsense, of course. All that rubbish about Druids cutting mistletoe on the sixth day of a new moon! I'd never do that, never! The fifth day, yes, and sometimes the seventh, but the sixth? Never! And he also recommends, as I recall, wrapping a woman's breast band about the skull to cure an aching head, but the remedy doesn't work. How could it? The magic is in the breasts, not in the band, so it is clearly far more efficacious to bury the aching head in the breasts themselves. The remedy has never failed me, that's for sure...'
We received a hint of a woman's cold viciousness when Guinevere betrays Arthur in ENEMY OF GOD, but here, all of the female characterizations exacerbate, all of them ruthlessly ambitious in their own goals/devices: Guinevere, Nimue and Arthur's second wife Argante. Argante puts on a sanguinary display to her goddess Nantosuelta. Men such as Cerdic and Lamelot can be cruel and ambitious, but neither of them demonstrate the ostentatious histrionics of callous truculence all the notable women characters in this novel sponsor (again, with the lone exception of Ceinwyn). Surprisingly, Arthur's sister, pagan-priestess-turned-devout-Christian Morgan, saves the day for Derfel.
I didn't find the book's attempts to redeem Guinevere very convincing. In EXCALIBUR, Guinevere admits to sleeping with the old Powys King and later, sleeping with a Powys chieftain for the sake of power. Guinevere wants to be a man, and failing that, covets being a Caesar's wife, an empress surrounded by power, beauty and glory. Arthur dreams of a much simpler life, the very thought of which suffocates and repulses Guinevere. Guinevere sets her ambitions aside to be what Arthur wants in this novel though, but I thought her words and the attempt were half-hearted because Arthur's rustic dreams strip Guinevere of who she really is: an ambitiously "clever" woman (though manipulative would be a better word). She consents to Arthur's wish of a simple life bereft of power and glory out of some obligation: "I do owe [Arthur] some happiness, do I not?" At another point in this novel, Guinevere asks Bors, Lancelot's champion who defects, whether he too grew bored of Lancelot. Cornwell's Guinevere continues to exhibit a savagery far surpassing men.
'[Christians] all worship motherhood, but they're all as dry as husks...[motherhood is] such a waste of life!' [Guinevere] was bitterly angry now. 'Cows make good mothers and sheep suckle perfectly adequately, so what merit lies in motherhood? Any stupid girl can become a mother! It's all that most of them are fit for! Motherhood isn't an achievement, it's an inevitability! But it was all Arthur wanted me to be! A suckling cow!' --Guinevere
Guinevere finally reveals to Derfel why she wanted Lancelot to be king. In ENEMY OF GOD, Derfel thinks Guinevere may love Lancelot, but the truth is actually worse (in my mind). Guinevere sleeps with Lancelot so she'll have him wrapped around her finger, something she couldn't do with Arthur. "I wanted [Lancelot] to be King because he's a weak man and a woman can only rule in this world through such a feeble man..." Since she was saying all this to Derfel so passionately, was it by her command or acquiescence that sent men to slaughter Derfel's wife and children back in ENEMY OF GOD? Since she can control such a weak man so easily, I couldn't help but wonder if she somehow plotted to have Lancelot rape Derfel's wife and kill his daughters back in ENEMY OF GOD. Is she that naively dumb to believe she'll "control" all the whims of such a weak man once he sits a throne? And if she did agree or command to kill Derfel's family because she so deftly controlled Lancelot then she's worst than Lancelot. Conveniently, it seems Derfel doesn't recall Guinevere's possible involvement in Lancelot's perfidious plans for Derfel's family back in ENEMY OF GOD. Derfel and his men are too enamored (manipulated) by Guinevere here in EXCALIBUR.
Derfel's conversations with Igraine before the beginning of Part One, The Fires of Mai Dun, proved interesting. A very interesting look at love, fidelity and Arthur.
'[Arthur] wanted a free Britain and the Saxons defeated, but in his soul he wanted Guinevere's constant reassurance that he was a good man. And when she slept with Lancelot it proved to Arthur that he was the lesser man. It wasn't true, of course, but it hurt him. How it hurt. I have never seen a man so hurt. Guinevere tore his heart.'
...
'Were you ever unfaithful to Ceinwyn?'
'No,' I answered truthfully.
'Did you ever want to be?'
'Oh, yes. Lust does not vanish with happiness, Lady. Besides, what merit is there in fidelity if it is never tested?'
'You think there is merit in fidelity?' [Igraine] asked...
I smiled. 'We want fidelity in our lovers, Lady, so is it not obvious that they want it in us? Fidelity is a gift we offer to those we love. Arthur gave it to Guinevere, but she cold not return it. She wanted something different.'
'Which was?'
'Glory, and he was ever averse to glory. He achieved it, but he would not revel in it. She wanted an escort of a thousand horsemen, bright banners to fly above her and the whole island of Britain prostrate beneath her. And all he ever wanted was justice and good harvests...' And a free Britain and the Saxons defeated.
Later, Sagramor shares rumors about Arthur remaining faithful to Guinevere even after he renounces her and marries the young Irish princess Argante. Tragic, that he should remain loyal to Guinevere to the last while that fidelity and loyalty wasn't returned.
I found this comment by Culhwch funny:
Nimue screamed as the boy fell, then she leapt at Arthur again with her hands hooked like claws, but Arthur simply backhanded her hard and fast across the head with the flat of his sword blade so that she spun away dazed. The force of the blow could easily be heard above the crackling of flames. Nimue staggered, slack-jawed and with her one eye unfocused, and she dropped.
'Should have done that to Guinevere,' Culhwch growled at me.
More than once, EXCALIBUR (and the other two books as well) describes the feeling in battle, and I thought it was an apt description. The warring doesn't necessarily strip the soul as so many romances would have us believe, it just is. For many men during this time period, it was a way of life.
A terrible hate wells up in battle, a hatred that comes from the dark soul to fill a man with fierce and bloody anger. Enjoyment, too ... Ours was a world where swords gave rank, and to shirk the sword was to lose honor, and so I ran ahead, madness filling my soul and exultation giving me a terrible power as I picked my victims. They were two young men, both smaller than me, both nervous, both with skimpy beards, and both were shrinking away even before I hit them. They saw a British warlord in splendor, and I saw two dead Saxons.
It is the beguiling glory of war, the sheer exhilaration...I watched Arthur, a man as kind as any I have known, and saw nothing but joy in his eyes. Galahad, who prayed each day that he could obey Christ's commandment to love all men, was now killing them with a terrible efficiency. Culhwch was roaring insults. he had discarded his shield so that he could use both hands on his heavy spear. Gwydre was grinning behind his cheekpieces, while Taliesin was singing as he killed the enemy wounded left behind by our advancing shield wall. You do not win the fight of the shield wall by being sensible and moderate, but by a Godlike rush of howling madness.
Warlord Chronicles, a tale of Arthur
1. The Winter King (***)
2. Enemy of God (***)
3. Excalibur (**)
Arthur was probably no king, he may not have lived at all, but despite all the efforts of historians to deny his every existence, he is still, to millions of folk about the world, what a copyist called him in the fourteenth century, Arturus Rex Quondam, Rexque Futurus: Arthur, our Once and Future King. --Bernard Cornwell, Historical Note in EXCALIBUR
Cornwell's EXCALIBUR marks the crowning jewel of a fulsomely callous portrayal of women in 5th-century Britain, at least any woman of note (with the lone exception of Ceinwyn). Maybe it's unfair and provincial of me to view ruthlessness and calculated ambition potentially admirable in men but singularly unbecoming in women. Regardless, Guinevere's promiscuous ambition for power, glory and fame while Nimue's cold, religious fanaticism to sacrifice women and children for her pagan religion both distinguished Cornwell's final Arthurian installment EXCALIBUR. Although some may see EXCALIBUR as Guinevere's road to redemption, I can't say I really saw it that way. Admittedly, EXCALIBUR belongs to Guinevere, but I couldn't get over Guinevere betraying Arthur with Lancelot and then ready to betray him again with the druid twins back in ENEMY OF GOD, and all for power and glory. The humble first-person narration in a flashback makes for an inviting reading experience though the portentously gloomy tones tends to drown some of the enthusiasm. Cornwell's settings, historical backdrop and prose are all solid.
EXCALIBUR highlights the monumental battle in Arthur's lifetime which repels the Saxon conquest of Britain for an entire generation: the battle at Mynydd Baddon, or simply, Mount Badon. Of the three books in this Arthurian rendition, magic plays the biggest role here, and I can't say it was for the better. In the first part, The Fires of Mai Dun, Merlin and Nimue attempt to bring the old gods back. I found myself most engaged in the second part Mynydd Baddon in which we're treated to the warlord in Arthur at his best: battling against insurmountable odds. The final two parts, Nimue's Curse and The Last Enchantment concludes with Nimue's pagan fanaticism.
Mount Baddon. In time the poets would make that name ring through all of Britain. It would be sung in a thousand halls and fire the blood of children yet unborn, but for now it meant nothing to me. It was just a convenient hill, a grass-walled fort, and the place where, all unwillingly, I had planted my two banners in the turf. One showed Ceinwyn's star, while the other, which we had found and rescued from Argante's wagons, flaunted Arthur's banner of the bear.
So in the morning light, where they flapped in the drying wind, the bear and the star defied the Saxons.
On Mynydd Baddon.
As opposed to the madness of Christianity in ENEMY OF GOD, EXCALIBUR now turns its attentions to painting the pagan religion of 5th-century Britain in a very gruesome light via Nimue's fanatically insane group of followers. Again, you have to admire Cornwell's decided aversion to black-and-white storytelling. Where ENEMY OF GOD describes a mad and violent Christian movement, EXCALIBUR now concludes with a fanatically cruel pagan depiction with child sacrifices. Past friends and lovers now become cruel enemies (Nimue), allies plot and scheme (King of Gwent Meurig, Mordred), traitors repent and expiate (Guinevere), while apparent enemies exhibit valor and heart (Derfel's Saxon father, King Aelle). Readers will find merit in evil and cruelty in apparent good. All of it adds to Cornwell's well-researched and captivating tale of Arthur.
...[Arthur] had loved the practice of war. He tried to deny that love, but he was good at battle and quick in thought and that made him a deadly soldier. It was soldiering that had made him famous, and had let him unite the Britons and defeat the Saxons, but then his shyness about power, and his perverse belief in the innate goodness of man, and his fervent adherence to the sanctity of oaths, had let lesser men undo his work...
By the end of ENEMY OF GOD, I thought Guinevere's betrayal would teach Arthur something of ruthlessness and cold retribution. Unfortunately, Arthur's downfall rested on his most noble quality: his persistence to forgive and believe in the goodness of people and the sanctity of oaths. In the end, he wanted gratitude, but both the Christians and the pagans hate him by EXCALIBUR and he finally relinquishes his power in EXCALIBUR. Our narrator Derfel loves Arthur dearly and vehemently defends him here:
'I still think Arthur let us down [by relinquishing his power after Mynydd Baddon],' Dafydd said...How many times have I been forced to listen to that same condemnation of Arthur? If only Arthur had stayed in power, men say, then the Saxons would still be paying us tribute and Britain would stretch from sea to sea, but when Britain did have Arthur it just grumbled about him. When he gave folk what they wanted, they complained because it was not enough. The Christians attacked him for favoring the pagans, the pagans attacked him for tolerating the Christians, and the Kings, all except Cuneglas and Oengus mac Airem, were jealous of him. Oengus's support counted for little, but when Cuneglas died Arthur lost his most valuable royal supporter. Besides, Arthur did not let anyone down. Britain let itself down. Britain let the Saxons creep back, Britain squabbled amongst itself and then Britain whined that it was all Arthur's fault. Arthur, who had given them victory!
Despite devoting his life to bringing back the old gods, Merlin in the end sacrificed that endeavor for the love he bears for Arthur, a man he loved above all men. Merlin returns to his crudely droll ways, and his advise to look to ourselves for guidance and salvation (instead of any god or gods) rings true in EXCALIBUR.
'[Guinevere]'ll be out of [her prison] in two years! One, probably. If Arthur wanted her gone from his life he'd have put her to the flames, which is what he should have done. There's nothing like a good burning for improving a woman's behavior, but it's no use telling Arthur that. The halfwit's in love with her! And he is a halfwit. Think about it! Lancelot alive, Mordred alive, Cerdic alive and Guinevere alive! If a soul wants to live for ever in this world it seems like a very good idea to become an enemy of Arthur...'
'Most of [Pliny's] notions are arrant nonsense, of course. All that rubbish about Druids cutting mistletoe on the sixth day of a new moon! I'd never do that, never! The fifth day, yes, and sometimes the seventh, but the sixth? Never! And he also recommends, as I recall, wrapping a woman's breast band about the skull to cure an aching head, but the remedy doesn't work. How could it? The magic is in the breasts, not in the band, so it is clearly far more efficacious to bury the aching head in the breasts themselves. The remedy has never failed me, that's for sure...'
We received a hint of a woman's cold viciousness when Guinevere betrays Arthur in ENEMY OF GOD, but here, all of the female characterizations exacerbate, all of them ruthlessly ambitious in their own goals/devices: Guinevere, Nimue and Arthur's second wife Argante. Argante puts on a sanguinary display to her goddess Nantosuelta. Men such as Cerdic and Lamelot can be cruel and ambitious, but neither of them demonstrate the ostentatious histrionics of callous truculence all the notable women characters in this novel sponsor (again, with the lone exception of Ceinwyn). Surprisingly, Arthur's sister, pagan-priestess-turned-devout-Christian Morgan, saves the day for Derfel.
I didn't find the book's attempts to redeem Guinevere very convincing. In EXCALIBUR, Guinevere admits to sleeping with the old Powys King and later, sleeping with a Powys chieftain for the sake of power. Guinevere wants to be a man, and failing that, covets being a Caesar's wife, an empress surrounded by power, beauty and glory. Arthur dreams of a much simpler life, the very thought of which suffocates and repulses Guinevere. Guinevere sets her ambitions aside to be what Arthur wants in this novel though, but I thought her words and the attempt were half-hearted because Arthur's rustic dreams strip Guinevere of who she really is: an ambitiously "clever" woman (though manipulative would be a better word). She consents to Arthur's wish of a simple life bereft of power and glory out of some obligation: "I do owe [Arthur] some happiness, do I not?" At another point in this novel, Guinevere asks Bors, Lancelot's champion who defects, whether he too grew bored of Lancelot. Cornwell's Guinevere continues to exhibit a savagery far surpassing men.
'[Christians] all worship motherhood, but they're all as dry as husks...[motherhood is] such a waste of life!' [Guinevere] was bitterly angry now. 'Cows make good mothers and sheep suckle perfectly adequately, so what merit lies in motherhood? Any stupid girl can become a mother! It's all that most of them are fit for! Motherhood isn't an achievement, it's an inevitability! But it was all Arthur wanted me to be! A suckling cow!' --Guinevere
Guinevere finally reveals to Derfel why she wanted Lancelot to be king. In ENEMY OF GOD, Derfel thinks Guinevere may love Lancelot, but the truth is actually worse (in my mind). Guinevere sleeps with Lancelot so she'll have him wrapped around her finger, something she couldn't do with Arthur. "I wanted [Lancelot] to be King because he's a weak man and a woman can only rule in this world through such a feeble man..." Since she was saying all this to Derfel so passionately, was it by her command or acquiescence that sent men to slaughter Derfel's wife and children back in ENEMY OF GOD? Since she can control such a weak man so easily, I couldn't help but wonder if she somehow plotted to have Lancelot rape Derfel's wife and kill his daughters back in ENEMY OF GOD. Is she that naively dumb to believe she'll "control" all the whims of such a weak man once he sits a throne? And if she did agree or command to kill Derfel's family because she so deftly controlled Lancelot then she's worst than Lancelot. Conveniently, it seems Derfel doesn't recall Guinevere's possible involvement in Lancelot's perfidious plans for Derfel's family back in ENEMY OF GOD. Derfel and his men are too enamored (manipulated) by Guinevere here in EXCALIBUR.
Derfel's conversations with Igraine before the beginning of Part One, The Fires of Mai Dun, proved interesting. A very interesting look at love, fidelity and Arthur.
'[Arthur] wanted a free Britain and the Saxons defeated, but in his soul he wanted Guinevere's constant reassurance that he was a good man. And when she slept with Lancelot it proved to Arthur that he was the lesser man. It wasn't true, of course, but it hurt him. How it hurt. I have never seen a man so hurt. Guinevere tore his heart.'
...
'Were you ever unfaithful to Ceinwyn?'
'No,' I answered truthfully.
'Did you ever want to be?'
'Oh, yes. Lust does not vanish with happiness, Lady. Besides, what merit is there in fidelity if it is never tested?'
'You think there is merit in fidelity?' [Igraine] asked...
I smiled. 'We want fidelity in our lovers, Lady, so is it not obvious that they want it in us? Fidelity is a gift we offer to those we love. Arthur gave it to Guinevere, but she cold not return it. She wanted something different.'
'Which was?'
'Glory, and he was ever averse to glory. He achieved it, but he would not revel in it. She wanted an escort of a thousand horsemen, bright banners to fly above her and the whole island of Britain prostrate beneath her. And all he ever wanted was justice and good harvests...' And a free Britain and the Saxons defeated.
Later, Sagramor shares rumors about Arthur remaining faithful to Guinevere even after he renounces her and marries the young Irish princess Argante. Tragic, that he should remain loyal to Guinevere to the last while that fidelity and loyalty wasn't returned.
I found this comment by Culhwch funny:
Nimue screamed as the boy fell, then she leapt at Arthur again with her hands hooked like claws, but Arthur simply backhanded her hard and fast across the head with the flat of his sword blade so that she spun away dazed. The force of the blow could easily be heard above the crackling of flames. Nimue staggered, slack-jawed and with her one eye unfocused, and she dropped.
'Should have done that to Guinevere,' Culhwch growled at me.
More than once, EXCALIBUR (and the other two books as well) describes the feeling in battle, and I thought it was an apt description. The warring doesn't necessarily strip the soul as so many romances would have us believe, it just is. For many men during this time period, it was a way of life.
A terrible hate wells up in battle, a hatred that comes from the dark soul to fill a man with fierce and bloody anger. Enjoyment, too ... Ours was a world where swords gave rank, and to shirk the sword was to lose honor, and so I ran ahead, madness filling my soul and exultation giving me a terrible power as I picked my victims. They were two young men, both smaller than me, both nervous, both with skimpy beards, and both were shrinking away even before I hit them. They saw a British warlord in splendor, and I saw two dead Saxons.
It is the beguiling glory of war, the sheer exhilaration...I watched Arthur, a man as kind as any I have known, and saw nothing but joy in his eyes. Galahad, who prayed each day that he could obey Christ's commandment to love all men, was now killing them with a terrible efficiency. Culhwch was roaring insults. he had discarded his shield so that he could use both hands on his heavy spear. Gwydre was grinning behind his cheekpieces, while Taliesin was singing as he killed the enemy wounded left behind by our advancing shield wall. You do not win the fight of the shield wall by being sensible and moderate, but by a Godlike rush of howling madness.
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