Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Books is Good, Mostly - Volume 3

A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin

This book was a maelstrom of awesome and ranks as one of my favorite reads in a long time. My interest in this book was slowly building to a head after seeing all of the rave reviews it (and the other books in GRRM’s epic saga known as A Song of Ice and Fire) was getting on various websites which I frequent. That little pebble snowballed when I heard it was being adapted for an HBO original series, and finally avalanched when I starting seeing some promotional ads for the show. Add all that together with a well timed and much appreciated gift from my long time cohort, pen pal and DM, and boom! I had no other option but to read this book right now.

I’ve always loved the sword and sorcery genre more in theory than I actually partook in it. My knowledge of fantasy goes only slightly beyond the extended editions of the LOTR films and the ⅚ of those books that I’ve actually read. Beyond that, I only have my four years of Dungeons-and-Dragonsing in my repertoire. Well, that and Conan the Barbarian. Looking back at my fantasy resume, it seems misguided of me for my first attempt at authoring a novel to be in this very genre. Uh, whoops.

Back to Game of Thrones, otherwise known as book one of A Song of Fire and Ice. This book has exactly what I want out of my fantasy gritty realism, intrigue and political scheming, sex, copious amounts of violence, wolves, winter and great characters. The greatest strength of this book is far and away the characters within its pages. From the too noble for his own good Eddard Stark, to the cunning Imp Tyrion Lannister and the boiling beneath the surface badass-ness of Jon Snow, every single point of view character is worth cheering for.




The manner in which the tale is told provides the greatest possible amount of insight for each character, which each chapter focusing on one character’s perspective. As a book full of rich characters, this proves to be its greatest strength and I want to say greatest weakness, but that is far from the truth. My biggest complain while I was reading was that since there were so many POV characters that it took too long to get back to my early favorites. I needed more Eddard! With sometimes up to a hundred pages until certain storylines were picked up again, I had plenty of time to get acquainted with characters that were less awesome out of the gate. By the end of the book, I needed more Arya! more Catelyn! more Daenerys!

Another thing I learned in this book is that it may be foolish to pick a favorite character, because no one is safe. A certain death left me all weepy-eyed and distraught, searching for the pages between pages that would negate what I just read.

The story is so expansive and filled with so many people and places that it was kind of hard to keep abreast of all the proper nouns. Thank goodness for the maps on the inner jacket of the book and an index of the major players involved.

While I love this book very much, it was clearly a book one. By the time I reached the end I realized that what I read was really just an extended prologue to the remainder of the saga. So many plotlines were left dangling--with one hardly even managing to intersect with the main narrative--that you can tell George R.R. Martin is just gearing us up for the long haul. I mean, the phrase “Winter is coming” pervaded the book and by the end it was hardly even autumn. I’m okay with that. More than okay actually, because I know when winter does come, it’s going to be awesome.

I’d recommend this book to just about anyone, especially those out there who think that ‘badassery’ should be added to Webster’s.




At the Mountains of Madness - H.P. Lovecraft

There was so much I liked about this story. There was so much that I disliked about this story. First up: the like. H.P. Lovecraft’s tale of researchers in the antarctic is as gripping as it is imaginative. The set up for the story is like one we’ve seen dozens of times now: team goes to unexplored place, something strange happens and communication is lost with first team, second team goes and discovers some spooky stuff. I’m not sure, but At the Mountains of Madness was probably the first to employ this trope in the icy permafrost of Antarctica. (Brief aside: as I read I couldn’t help but think how much the first Alien vs. Predator movie completely ripped off a ton of these concepts, and managed to suck arse in the process.) Lovecraft’s prose really conjures up some dreadful imagery and there are plenty of spooky moments. I love all of the mythology from the elder ones to the Shoggoths to the Necronomicon. Overall, there is a lot to like.

Now, the dislike. The story is written as a warning to any potential explorers who wish to excavate the vast and mysterious ruins left by the elder ones, which is all well and good, but the way the narrator tells the story he’s practically daring anyone with even an ounce of balls to go down there and see what’s up. I mean, if you’re an archaeologist, like Indiana Jones for instance, then do you think that a strongly worded written warning is going to stop you from going down there and discovering the shit out of some ancient alien artifacts? Hecks no you aren’t! You’re gonna get your hat and whip and get the busy! Another problem I had with the tale is that a huge chunk of it was just scientific conjecture based on images carved into walls. I don’t want to devalue the artistic qualities of the elder race, but I refuse to believe that they would record their entire freaking history on the walls in such a manner that two scientists with a lantern would be able to decipher it all down to the last detail. Not to mention that the whole thing was kind of a prick tease. The whole time the narrator keeps telling us (paraphrasing, of course): ‘there’s some scary shit there’ and ‘don’t go back to Antarctica unless you wanna crap your pants in terror’, and when we get to the part where there’s supposed to be something scary, it’s just a freaking penguin! Yes there’s a penguin, but no it’s not the final beasty, but once we do get a chance to behold Sir Beasty, it has been built up so damn much that I didn’t even poop my pants, not even a little.

“What do you mean? That spot there? No. That was there from before.”

I’m still glad I read this tale, and I definitely plan on reading more Lovecraft in the future. I guess I have to keep in mind that this is old-school horror and take it as it is. And now because I wrote the term ‘old-school’, I have to end my piece with a certain word. Word.

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