Book Review: War for the Oaks

I've done all these recent reviews for modern fantasy novels, so I'm surprised that I haven't mentioned Emma Bull's War for the Oaks yet. I read it before these others (Bad Magic, The Last Hot Time, and The Arcanum), and I consider it to be the best of the bunch. The novel centers around Eddi McCandry, a rock-and-roller who leaves her no-good boyfriend and his crappy band to start her own. Along the way, she gets mixed up with the Fey, including a phouka who is sometimes a man, sometimes a dog, but always very charming and strange.

The plot is familiar, but not necessarily in a bad way. The Fey need Eddi in their fight between the Seelie and Unseelie courts. Though she is recruited by the Seelie court, the Unseelie court has plans for her as well. Along the way, the story of her band's creation and rise in the local music scene is paralleled with the war between the Fey, and elements from each feed into the other in interesting ways.

Emma Bull's strength lies in her ability to incorporate "fairy" and "real" elements together so that there is no clear delineation between them. There are moments in the novel where Eddi's "normal" life suddenly has something decidedly non-normal intrude upon it, but the thing that works for me about War for the Oaks is the feeling that, even in the seemingly "normal" moments, something magical, exciting, and dangerous is out there, and probably closer than you think.

Not everything about the novel works. There is a twist that everyone sees coming, and the fascination with describing every street and Minneapolis can leave those who have never visited that city feeling left out. The main characters rather predictably form a band, and each of their concerts consists of doing covers of famous rock songs they all know. Unfortunately, I knew a grand total of perhaps one of those songs, so again I felt somewhat un-hip and excluded. Finally, there are times when I wished the narrator described things a little bit more thoroughly, especially the faerie scenes, but I do think that under-describing is better than over-describing, as it leaves things to the reader's imagination rather than going through several pages of exactly what every single type of faerie looks like.

I think this book has rightly earned its reputation as a classic of the modern fantasy genre. It can be a little bit uneven, as is often the case with first novels, but that somehow adds to the charm, as the novel isn't over-polished.

I recommend this novel to fans of Neil Gaiman and fantasy.

Book Review: The Arcanum

The Arcanum, by Thomas Wheeler, is about Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, H.P. Lovecraft, and Marie Laveau (sort of) as a paranormal task force called the Arcanum, taking on an evil sorcerer to try to protect one of the world's last great hidden secrets. That's about it. If you think that sounds like fun, you may want to give it a shot. Otherwise, please steer clear.

The novel is very cinematic, which makes sense since the author is primarily a screenwriter. I don't feel I have to worry too much about spoilers, since just about everything in this novel is a well-established trope. It even ends with a train chase... well, before the "twist" ending where a character who totally wasn't a villain before turns out to have totally been a villain the whole time!

What irked me was that the characters were so nondescript that they really didn't need to be based on historical figures. Doyle could have been any stout Englishman with an eye for detail, Houdini could have been anyone with good balance, and Marie Laveau could have been any woman with generic nature-based sorcerous powers. H.P. Lovecraft didn't even act like H.P. Lovecraft: he was described as a demonologist several times, and I highly doubt that the cripplingly antisocial Lovecraft would ever have considered himself one. Worse, he seems completely okay with palling around with a black woman wielding voodoo powers, when ancient, "savage" magic is one of the primary vehicles of evil in the Cthulhu Mythos.

Speaking of the Mythos, the book refers to supernatural creatures as "of the Mythos." That really bugged me.

The book suddenly shifts in pace about halfway through. Where it starts off relatively realistically, with attempts to create plausible explanations for every supernatural-type occurrence, suddenly we have demons swishing through the air and Lovecraft starts waving around improbably-described steampunk gadgets. He even wears a steampunk gauntlet at one point, and gauntlets are second only to goggles as overused steampunk accessories.

Like I said in my review of The Last Hot Time: if you want to read an inventive modern fantasy, try Bad Magic instead. Still, if you have the opportunity and the inclination, The Arcanum is worth a skim. Just don't take anything about it too seriously.

I Got Married

I feel like I should post something about getting married, but the whole thing is far too amazing and complex to sum up in a blog post. So suffice it to say that I married the most amazing woman I have ever met and I am looking forward to spending the rest of my life with her.

Game Review: Gloom

I was sitting in the drafty main hall of our creaky old mansion, screwing wheels into the leg-stubs of my favorite rat, Detritus, whose legs had recently been gnawed off by our cat Wemsley, who had choked to death on them. My lady was in her darkened chamber, surrounded by cracked mirrors and brushing the spiderwebs from her hair. The door moaned open and two of our ghastly friends entered, bringing with them a game they promised would be more diverting than scraping mold from the stern portraits of dead ancestors.

My lady and I sighed and rolled our eyes. We had tried such games before, and they were always about gaining money or wild hi-jinx which only made our everyday existence that much more unbearable. Our friends assured us that this game was different. It was every bit as morbid, macabre, and morose as we were.

Sure enough, the game was Gloom, and we were soon having more fun than a bevy of bats in a magnificent mausoleum. Each player controls a family of five unlucky, unlikeable people. The purpose is to make sure that the members of your family live as miserable lives as possible, then die. How horrid. How delightful!

The real fun comes from playing with quirky people with twisted senses of humor, and fortunately, our ghoulish group fit the bill. Soon, we were weaving tales around the cards, exploring how a brain in a vat is an especially unfortunate victim for poltergeists (since he can't get away from them) and learning exactly how many vicious animals a single red-headed stepchild can accidentally aggravate on a single picnic. Also, the only thing worse than being eaten by bears is being eaten by bear-snake hybrids.

The game has impishly innovative card design. The cards are printed on translucent plastic, and players stack events on top of the characters to describe the horrendous things occurring to them. Each of these events are worth a certain number of negative points (which are best for players!), except those few things that are actually pleasant for the characters (alas!). As you play more cards on top of the characters, bonuses from the more recent cards start to cover up the bonuses of past cards, so you can play excellent events on the other players' characters to cancel out the dreary day that character has had, while simultaneously ruining the previously peachy (or at least appallingly average) day your own character had.

I would recommend this game to any gloomy, ghastly gamer who is looking for a change of pace. Just beware those manatees, don't anger any midgets, and make sure the tiger is the one in the cage...

Book Review: The Last Hot Time

The Last Hot Time, by John M. Ford, asks an interesting question: what would happen if the elves returned? According to the novel, the world wouldn't immediately turn into a magical realm of wonder and danger, and it also wouldn't remain completely bland and mundane. Instead, we would have the Elf lands and the human lands, and places in between where magic and technology exist. These in-between places, known as the Shade in the book, are often major cities, and one of those cities is Chicago, which is where the book takes place.

The Shade seems to have taken the heart of Chicago and made the city more like what it really is underneath. The book takes place in the modern day, but the Shade is full of speakeasies and casinos, with both human and Elf gangs fighting over them.

The protagonist, a paramedic named Danny Holman, gets mixed up with a kind-hearted gangster named Mr. Patrice and his bunch of oddball characters. They call him "Doc Hallownight" because nobody in the Shade goes by their real name. As Doc, he learns how to treat elf wounds with magical herbs, and he also learns something about courage, love, and terror. But enough about the cliches.

The story has quite a cast of characters all stuffed into a surprisingly sparse setting. Most of the action takes place either in Mr. Patrice's restaurant, the attached casino, or the rooms where various characters are staying. The supporting cast includes Cloudhunter, the mysterious elf, McCain, Mr. Patrice's loyal bodyguard, and Ginny, a bartender working for Mr. Patrice whom Danny falls for. Added to these are a dizzying array of secondary characters who are very difficult to keep straight.

The idea behind the novel is intriguing, and Ford explores a lot of interesting themes. I found that the tone shifted a lot through the book, going from mundane accounts of Danny's insomnia to nostalgic descriptions of people singing and dancing, to macabre scenes of terror where the bad guys torture innocent people for magic.

Naturally, there are bad guys, though the book doesn't tell us much about them. They're the bad guys because they're using people's suffering to generate magical power, and the protagonists have to stop them because they're also rival gangsters. The novel swerves suddenly into the action-filled parts and swerves back into the restaurant/casino lifestyle afterward just as quickly.

I think the thing that bothered me most about The Last Hot Time was that the author often left things unsaid, and I wasn't sure what he meant. I don't know if I was missing clues, or if the author meant for readers to fill in those parts for themselves. I'm not saying that everything has to be spelled out for the reader, but it's nice when we eventually figure out what's going on.

The novel was good, and I would recommend it, but if you're looking for an offbeat account of modern magic, check out Bad Magic by Stephan Zielinski first. Then, if you're still hungry for more, head over to The Last Hot Time. This review focuses on the negative, which is always easier to do than to talk about the positive, but I'll leave you with this quote from the novel that, to me, sums it up: "'Sides, didn't you always wanted to shoot a Tommy gun?"

Movie Review - Watson

My lady and I saw Sir Guy of Ritchie's newest movie, "Watson," and we found it wonderfully entertaining. It has little to do with the source material by the esteemed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of course, but that is not the point. The movie does not try to emulate Sir Arthur's style, but instead uses the source material as a rough skeleton for telling its own tale full of delightful costumes and sets.

The lead character is played by the talented Jude Law. His character has three motivations: to marry his lovely fiance (a commendable notion to be sure), to look dashing in Victorian-era clothing, and to get away from his sidekick, Sherlock Holmes, played by Robert Downey, Jr.

Downey, Jr.'s Holmes is a frumpy man with amusing facial expressions and permanently tousled hair. Holmes's neurotic genius serves as a good counterpoint to Watson's steely cool. I fear that Sir Guy's love of macho fighting may have caused him to devote too much of the movie to the Holmes character, though this fortunately does not take the focus away from his lead.

Rachel McAdams plays Holmes's love interest, Irene Adler, whose only purpose in this movie is to pout and be American. She pouts a lot and is very American. I suspect she gets her spy gear from Wal-Mart. In any case, I am glad they chose to have this character be a romantic interest for the sidekick, as this allows Watson to have the much more interesting Mary Morstan, played by the (fortunately British) Kelly Reilly.

The villain is Lord Blackwood, played by Mark Strong. Unlike in many mysteries, there is never any doubt as to his identity. His villainy is over-the-top, and in some ways encapsulates what this movie is about: it is theatrical, unreserved, and shamelessly entertaining. There is a moment at the start of the movie between him and Watson that made me gasp aloud.

I would not think it is necessary to see this movie in theaters to enjoy it, but if you do, be sure to keep an eye on the sets. Sometimes it is nice to simply look around and see Sir Guy's version of turn-of-the-century London.

In conclusion, "Watson" is an entertaining, if not particularly deep, bit of cinema, and I recommend it to anyone who likes gaslights, top hats, and explosions.

Graphic Novel Review: Old Man Logan

I have long searched for a Wolverine comic that doesn't bother with the tiresome backstory, the silly costumes, the countless characters that Wolverine has befriended, fought, and/or married, or the traumas his body has gone through.

This isn't that comic.

It's pretty close, though.

The story takes place fifty years in the future, after a cataclysm wiped out all the superheroes and left the world ruled by supervillains. The landscape looks like something out of Mad Max. Wolverine is a pacifist, emotionally scarred by the cataclysm from fifty years ago. He's married, with two kids, and he seems to have found peace scratching out a meager existence farming the land.

Unfortunately, his landlords are Bruce Banner's ornery, inbred grandchildren, and they demand rent money Wolverine--excuse me, Logan--hasn't got. Then, his old friend Hawkeye arrives and offers Logan $500 to drive across the country with him. Hawkeye is now a blind old man, but that doesn't stop him from taking the wheel and making Logan the navigator.

Logan goes along, on one condition: that he won't do any fighting.

Well, good luck with that.

Also, this comic has a T-rex that bonds with the Venom symbiote:


Read it already.

(I would like to add that the scene with Emma Frost was completely unnecessary. She's one of my least favorite Marvel characters, and her appearance adds absolutely nothing to the story. Also, the last fight is somewhat anticlimactic, but still cool... and I still wish the Venom T-rex would have played a larger part in the story.)