Eragon: an essay on what it means to be cliche

Although it obviously didn't leave much of an impression, I did watch the movie Eragon shortly after it came out on DVD. What I do remember was that I didn't really like it, though I can't remember why. But I do recall the many reviews that state that the movie is a cliched ripp-off of classics like the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.

With that in mind, let's just say that I never felt a burning desire to read the book.

Then, a couple of weeks ago I chanced upon two separate versions of the book in my favourite place to shop for books: the bargain books section of Mcnally Robinson. One edition was a large white paperback with a picture of a dragon's eye for $3.99 and the other was a large, slightly scuffed up movie tie-in paperback for $2.99. For that price I couldn't resist although I still had doubts that the book would be worth it. So I chose the movie tie in edition.

I'm glad I bought it. In my opinion it wasn't overly cliched or poorly written. At 15, Paolini already had a better vocabulary than I have now, yet I never found the usage to be poor. Some critics have invoked the dreaded term purple prose (dreaded only because no one has ever actually heard of it before outside of a college literary lecture) in regard to Paolini's writing. I must admit, I just don't see it. At no point did the language seem overwrought to me, nor was the 'flow' of the narrative interrupted. And this from a reviewer who has, in the past, abandoned the reading of some books for just that reason.

To cite an example from the second book of the cycle, Eldest, Paolini at one point describes drops of water on a leaf as 'cabochons'. Cabochons are rounded, highly polished gemstones (as opposed to facet cut gems). I think the descriptor is both relevant and appropriate within the narrative, but others apparently do not.

And what does it mean to be cliche by the way. Sure we've seen dragons and dragon riders in fantasy before but these are more good old stand-bys of Fantasy than cliche. A Fantasy novel does not require dragons or dragonriders, yet if we were to suddenly say, "Enough, don't write anymore books with dragon's or dragonriders in them!" wouldn't the genre be missing something? And where would the madness end?

"No one can use swords. Take out all the wizards. Horses are for cowboys, not fantasy heroes. . ."

Would it even be Fantasy anymore?

Now that's not to say that there can't be innovation within the genre. Naomi Novik found a new twist on that theme by setting her Temeraire series during the Napoleonic era rather than a fictional psuedo medieval world. But Eragon is no less 'good' because of the slightly more traditional setting. In fact, the world of Eragon, a magical continent called Alagaësia on an unnamed world, has been fully conceptualized and developed, including a very nice map drawn by the author himself. It isn't even strictly eurocentric as the author based the landscape on his native state of Montana. The government is highly centralized and hardly feudal in the traditional sense. (one nitpick here for Mr. Paolini, should he ever read this blog: The leader of an empire is an emperor, not a king!)

Okay, so I'm fairly forgiving when the fun factor outweighs the trite factor. But let's face it, there's nothing new under the sun. Shakespeare was stealing from existing sources when he wrote his plays. Even Star Wars is based on the structure of the "hero's journey", a pseudo outline supposedly distilled from various classic tales. In fact, it's even been claimed that there are really only seven stories, everything else is just details.

I tried reading a snarky review of Eragon that used terms like 'Gary Stu' and 'gormless'. Unfortunately I think the reviewer was more concerned with being snarky than in giving an honest review. In her defense, she was simultaneously reviewing the movie and the book. Yet she seemed to miss the point far too often. For instance, she claimed that Paolini was lax in his research because Eragon's poor, starving family had a multi-room, wood floored house with a stove, yet real medieval peasants would have a small, one room shack with a dirt floor. I might have agreed with her if this had been a story about real medieval peasants. . .

And finally, lets not forget that it has been 10 years since Eragon was published. Paolini started writting the story when he was 15. It has been reported that he didn't intended for the book to be published, writing, instead, for his own personal pleasure and drawing heavily on his favorite stories by other authors. No wonder it ended up the way it did.

Conclusion: Perfect? No. Completely original and innovative? No. Entertaining and compelling? Yes.

Rating ****/5

Relevant links:

www.alagaesia.com
shurtugal.com
wiki: Criticism_of_the_Inheritance_Cycle (shurtugal.com)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eragon

Quick Update

Wow, no reviews since Friday the 13th, and the first one at that! Both my readers must have assumed something happened to me ;)

I have been working on a few reviews, but I have had other projects on the go. I still haven't thought of anything to say about Lady of Mazes that is worthy of Schroeder's work. . .

Read it. You won't be disappointed.

You may have noticed that I've changed the book listed under 'Currently Reading' without changing the 'Just Finished' listing. Well, that's because I have pretty much given up on The Elysium Commission by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

This is also the first time I've listed two books that I'm currently reading, although that more realistically portrays my habits. I should also point out, in case you were wondering, I do read quite slowly.

And yes, I'm reading The Sword of Truth books because I've seen The Legend of the Seeker. It's a decent show.

Judging a Book. . .

Yes, that old adage; "Don't judge a book by its cover." Yet I find myself falling into that trap quite often when browsing for 'something' new. This is especially true of my favourite place to shop, the bargain books section of McNally Robinson.

Which leads me to today's slightly off topic review, the book covers of Stephan Martiniere. It turns out that for years he has been covertly manipulating me into buying books that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Sometimes they're good, sometimes, not so much. I believe the first book I bought with one of his covers (although another may have slipped through unnoticed before then) was The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld. An excellent book that was followed by a rather dissapointing sequel, The Killing of Worlds, which also sported the artwork of Mr. Martiniere. Actually Westerfeld wrote them as one book (hardcover) before his publisher got greedy and split it into two pocket sized paperbacks each for the price of a full book. (They probably claim it would have been too big for the paperback binding.)

I was actually suprised at the number of book covers I own that were created by Martiniere. Some are more impressive than others. For instance, I don't think I would have ever connected the cover for the book, Heavy Planet by Hal Clement, to Stephan Martiniere before seeing it on his website. The book was an interesting read. It collects that author's stories that set on the jovian planet Mesklin which has a gravity up to 700 times heavier than earth.

I think a classic example of Martiniere's style can be found on the cover of Building Harlequin's Moon by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper. The novel was a pleasant diversion, though not really all that memorable. Great cover though.

As a book, Newton's Wake by Ken MacCloud was slightly more interesting. The cover is pretty good too, although the spaceship is the wrong shape.

Of course, the best book by far that is contained by Martiniere's artwork is Karl Schroeder's Lady of Mazes. I won't say anything about it now because I am working on a full review for this book. Thank you, Martiniere, for introducing me to the works of this fine author.

I've also picked up Ringworld's Children by Larry Niven, but I've read the other books in the series so probably can't blame the cover on that one. I haven't read it yet.



Here are some of my favorite Martiniere covers:

Cover for Mainspring by Jay Lake

Cover for Escapement by Jay Lake

Cover for Infoquake by David Louis Edelman

Cover for MultiReal by David Louis Edelman

Cover for The Price of Spring by Daniel Abraham

Cover for An Autumn War by Daniel Abraham

Cover for The New Space Opera by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan

Cover for Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross

Cover for Queen of Candesce by Karl Schroeder

Cover for Skinner by Neal Asher (French edition)

Cover for The Peace War by Vernor Vinge

Cover for Marooned in Real Time by Vernor Vinge

Cover for The Dragons of Babel by Michael Swanwick

Cover for Terraforming Earth by Jack Williamson

Cover for The Silver Ship and the Sea by Brenda Cooper

Cover for Elom by William H. Drinkard

Cover for A World Too Near by Kay Kenyon

Cover (reworked) for Writers of the Future Volume 24?

Bazil Broketail Series

And now for the F of SF & F:

A few years ago I was browsing in the SF & F section of my local McNally Robinson and stumbled across A Dragon at World's End by Christopher Rowley. I bought it on Impulse because I liked the sword pictured on the cover. I mean, A dragon with a sword? Awesome! Otherwise it was the first fantasy novel I'd bought since my dissapointment with the fantasy paperback pulp mill back when I was in high school.

Yikes, I don't think I can count the number of times I've bought a book only to find out it's the third or fourth in a series. Fortunately the books of the Bazil Broketail series are quite readable as standalone novels. Recently I was able to pick up the rest of the books in the series from a combination of used bookstores and AbeBooks.

Although the series is named for him, Bazil the broketail dragon is the companion of the protagonist of the novels, the dragonboy Relkin, although the point of view is not limited to him. The narrative usually follows the boy but often switches to one of the witches or their allies and sometimes to the bad guys. Seldom does it follow a non-human. Further, while the POV is mostly third-person limited, it sometimes switches to omniscient.

I can't really explain why I like this series so much. Certainly these books have flaws. I guess it really just boils down to the fact that they are just plain fun. The world is vividly realized and has every detail fits within the internal logic of that universe.

The dragons in this universe deserve a word or two of description. First of all, most of the dragons in the books cannot fly. These are the so called wyverns of the Argonath. Now if you look up the classical definition of wyverns in our world you'll probably find a description like "a small dragon with two legs and bat-like wings". In Bazil's world, however, wyverns are a branch of the dragon family that originally lived along ocean coasts both in the water and out. They have no wings but many can walk on just two of their four legs. Only the large four ton brasshides go about on all fours. Wyverns can talk and are dexterous enough to manipulate tools such as shovels, axes, and swords.

Long ago the wyverns pledged to fight for the humans of the Argonath. In return they are kept well fed and are served by dragonboys who trim their nails and such. While they prefer fish or meat, they will eat the much more readily available noodles and bread - so long as there is plenty of akh to put on it. The ingredients of akh vary, but the best is made from hot peppers and fish sauce. It is said to be too strong for humans.

There are wild dragons that normally live in the frozen north but sometimes range down and harass humans. These wild dragons can fly but neither they nor the wyverns can beathe fire. Only the legendary ancestors of the modern dragon had this ability.

Amongst the flaws of the series, one of the worst is the the relative power magic has in this universe yet it is underutilized. For instance, In the last novel the new main antagonist attacks by creating huge tentacled swamp worms that batter down all defenses and seem impervious to most attacks. However, he only sends one wave of one worm per fort. Why wouldn't he continue sending worm after worm? From what I can tell using magic doesn't seem to be that taxing to him. His bag of magic tricks all seem to be based on making a big fire and throwing someone in. In return, many soldiers of the Argonath were killed by the worms, including dragons.

To me, however, the most annoying flaw is that Mr. Rowley often skips parts of narrative. For instance, in the first portion of the eponymous first novel Bazil and Relkin spend quite a bit of time trying to get into the army. Yet once they do get conscripted the story immediately shifts to a campaign against the Master's of Padmassa, jumping over the intervening campain against the Teetol people. Now I understand that the lesser campaign doesn't have much to do with the series' main plot against the evil wizards but it sure would have added alot to the story of Bazil and Relkin.

In fact, the novels mostly seem to fit into a pattern whereby the first half follows the adventures of Bazil and Relkin, often meaning little to the rest of the plot, then there is a massive battle against the bad guys, then everything gets wrapped up in a few pages. There are, of course, several exceptions to this pattern, but still. . .

Judging from the uniform size of each novel I'm guessing he had a contract for about 500 pages a book.

Series rating:
****/5

Merry Christmas!

We couldn't locate our copy of the Alastair Sims version of Dickens' Christmas Carol to watch last night so I attempted to read the original work. Thanks to Project Gutenberg, the online compendium of past literature that has entered the public domain, I found a scan of the first edition book. But my eyes were really dry and irritated so I only made it to the appearance of the first Spirit. I'll probably get to it later today so no review on Christmas day this year. But I still highly recommend it!

Peter F. Hamilton's Paradox

I've been reading quite a bit of British SF recently. I'm still not sure that I like it.

Peter F. Hamilton never fails to weave a compelling tale. So far I've read his Novel Fallen Dragon, the Commonwealth Saga, and a third of his Night's Dawn Trilogy. All are in the Space Opera genre.

From these books I have concluded that his greatest talent lies as a world builder. Unfortunately this leads to his greatest flaw, excessive bloat in his novels. What is bloat? Basically it's the fluff inserted in what should be a 300 page novel that makes it into a 700 page novel. So many times when reading these books I had to fight the urge to just skip a few pages. For instance, every transition in narrative is lead by a description of the planet, region, city, neighbourhood, or any of those in combination, no matter if he has previously introduced the area. Such a description can range from the cultural to the economic, the political to the personal, or the geographic to the biological.

Fine, that at least can add to the atmosphere. What really gets me are the long segments where politics and economics are discussed. It's kinda like watching CSPAN or asking an accountant how his day went.

Another major annoyance I have found with Peter Hamilton's novels is the constant shifting of POV (point of view) between a large number of characters. In the larger novels there can be so many characters that when the narrative shifts I'm often left wondering, "Who is this?"

Potential readers should also be warned that Hamilton's work is rife with violence and fairly graphic sex.

So now let me get to the point implicit in the title of this post:

My favourite Hamilton work so far is Fallen Dragon. It's gritty and often quite dark, yet I found it compelling and the characters easy to relate to. Also, it has a unique set up regarding space travel in that while FTL (Faster than Light) travel is available, it's too expensive. Furthermore they don't have artificial gravity so travellers must cope with the effects of zero gravity. However, the plot of revolves around one huge chronological paradox.

(Major spoiler alert!)

Okay, here's a quick rundown of the sequence of events that lead to the paradox (please, if you haven't read the book, don't read any further):

A rich teenager finds out that his dad hired a girl to be his girlfriend (remind me again why he hates his dad) so he runs away. To get off planet a friend of his gives him some very powerful hacking software. A violent military career follows until he travels to a planet where he finds out that the hacking software came from alien technology. More plot ensues, he learns about an alien time portal which he uses to go back in time to before he left his home planet. Using technology gained from the aliens he makes himself young again but changes his identity and becomes the friend that gave himself the alien software to begin with.

So how does that work? He's only able to leave his home planet in the first place because he's given the alien technology. But his future-self wouldn't get the technology unless he left his home planet. So how does the cycle begin? Furthermore, he wouldn't be aware of or be able to infilitrate the base of the humans using the technology without having the technology himself.

Rating for Fallen Dragon:
****/5

Steven Gould's 'Shade'

Wow, a first review is kinda intimidating. But, this particular story really hit a nerve so I've gotta say something. So here goes: Shade by Steven Gould

This short story is freely available on TOR.com, Mr. Gould's publisher.

Some of you may be familiar with Doug Liman's stinker of a movie, Jumper, which came out earlier this year (the DVD is already $9.99 up here in Canada). Well, that horrible piece of SF cinema was based on one of my favorite novels of all time, Jumper by Steven Gould. Mr. Liman's trashing of this story will be the subject of a future post; this post is about a story set in Mr. Gould's original Jumper universe (believe me, this universe thing has gotten complicated since Steven Gould has also published a prequel to the movie that has nothing to do with the original novel).

Spoiler alert!

Shade is the third story set in the original Jumper universe following the eponymous novel and it's sequel, Reflex. In this short story we find Davy and Millie branching out and trying their hand at humanitarian aid work. The story actually is told from the view point of a young African boy living in a refugee camp.

Okay, so this plot is a broad departure from the format of the novels. But Mr. Gould did lay the ground work for the Rice's 'bleeding heart' philosophy and there is an opportunity for some 'Jump' based warfare in the later half of the story. To be precise, some rebels come to shoot at the refugees and, after taking a gun from one of the men, Davy decides not to shoot at the bad guys. Instead he uses a nifty jumping trick that he learned in Reflex to flood out the rebels with a lake's worth of water from Canada.

Come off it! Your high horse that is, Mr. Gould. How long do we have to put up with this 'don't shoot back at the bad guys' crap and it's equally facile corollary, 'or you'll be as bad as them'. Where does that come from anyway? Dear readers, go out and rent Dark Knight and see how stupid this philosophy is. Think of how many lives could have been saved if Bruce had simply killed the Joker first opportunity he got. Not satisfied with a fictional example? Okay imagine Hitler being assassinated before the final solution of the Jews was thought up.

What's more, Davy's water powered attack on the rebels, if it ever occurred in the real world, would be a crime against nature. Okay, yes, I'm Canadian, but that's not why I object to the theft of Canadian water. Rather, it's because I think Humans have messed with the ecosystem too much already. What right do we have to breed like rabbits till we choke the earth and fill it with our poisons until nothing can live on the planet. Okay, that's harsh. But the reality of the situation is that while Canada probably could spare the water (or so many Americans would like to believe), its sudden introduction to an African desert would be catastrophic for the local (and undoubtedly unique) flora and fauna. The arrogance to believe we have the right to support ourselves at the cost of all else is what has led us to our current state of ecological disaster.

I'm sorry, but this story simply doesn't work for me.

Rating:
**/5