The front cover of Harry Connolly's Child of Fire has a recommendation by Jim Butcher and superficially it does read a bit like Butcher's Dresden files crossed with a Dean Koontz small town (not weird enough for one of Stephen King's Maine townships) and with a bit of F Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack thrown in for good measure.
I'd say describing that way perhaps does it a disservice, but I'd consider that a pretty decent mix - and rather than being a pale imitation of those writers, Connolly manages to put together a nicely crafted tale that, despite the comparisons, definitely feels like its own entity. Combining the urban fantasy genre with the small-town-America-horror genre gives Child of Fire a fairly unique flavour.
In terms of where it sits on the scale of urban fantasy, it's not up to the standards of Butcher - but I'd say there's little that is. It is better than most of the rest of the market though and considering it's a first novel, that's no mean feat. I've already recommended without reservation to one friend and have no hesitation in doing so again. I'm also looking forward to the follow-up novel and hope that we're going to get more of a glimpse into the world that's being set up in CoF as so far there's only been a fairly limited introduction to it - but what has been shown is certainly enough to peak my interest.
Definitely a series worth watching.
Sunday, 18 October 2009
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
Exploring Story Worlds
I recently read Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (turned into a film with Brendan Frazer), which has a great hook of people who can read characters out of books and into the real world.
There's so much potential with that story - you can just imagine the possibilities: famous fictional characters, fantastic creations entering the real world, maybe the heroes even reading themselves into a book and seeing what life is like on the other side of the pages.
Unfortunately we don't get any of that. Instead the fictional characters in the story belong to a book made up specially for the novel. The novel within the novel that they're from is also called Inkheart and it's a fantasy story depicting a world where all sorts of fantastic creatures exist.
But we don't really get any of those - instead we have a juggler who's very good at playing with fire, a villain who's main goal in life is to make the people with the ability to read things into the real world to read him lots of gold and a few of his henchmen.
We do get a couple of characters from 'real' fiction who have a fantasy twinge to them. There's Tinkerbell, who doesn't have much to do at all. We have the Brave Tin Soldier from the Hans Christian Anderson, who gets to come out of a book and then be read back into it (albeit with a happier ending) - and then there's a kid from the Arabian Nights stories who seems to have been in the Ali Baba tale, but is a non-entity in terms of the story (and may have just been made up by Cornelia Funke).
At the climax of the book we do get a few more fantastical creatures, but they're very much there as an afterthought. The rest of it is filled with fairly mundane villainy.
Now there are another two stories in the trilogy, so there may be more of an exploration of this world of people who can read fiction to life, but the first in the trilogy in no way fulfills the potential for the created world. This seems to be a problem that keeps cropping up again and again in novels and films - a good idea poorly mined.
It's very easy to point to stories that manage to mine the potential of their worlds - they're usually the ones that people like a lot. The Harry Potter series of books - love them or loathe them you'd be lying if you said that they don't get stuck into the universe that Rowling has created. The world is practically dripping with magic.
Pirates of the Caribbean - opening with a ship at sea in the fog and the telling of a ghost story and then throwing pretty much every possible piratey thing at the screen rarely misses out on a trick when it delves into its story world.
Star Wars - again a universe that feels well-lived in - it's not the regular world with a few science fiction things bolted on.
Steven Gould's Jumper novel (NOT the film). This is the regular world, so no cramming every corner with some weird and wonderful thing, but he takes the initial concept of a teenager who can teleport and runs with it, fully exploring the idea and what it means.
Those four examples were stories that I thoroughly enjoyed, that I've recommended to friends and that I'd happily go back for more with (and in all those cases I've gone and read or watched the sequel(s). Inkheart I'm not so sure - I was left feeling fairly unsatisfied after finishing reading it and thought I could have come up with better ideas than the author - largely because she hardly seemed to come up with any at all.
Still, it's a fairly popular novel series - so what do I know?
There's so much potential with that story - you can just imagine the possibilities: famous fictional characters, fantastic creations entering the real world, maybe the heroes even reading themselves into a book and seeing what life is like on the other side of the pages.
Unfortunately we don't get any of that. Instead the fictional characters in the story belong to a book made up specially for the novel. The novel within the novel that they're from is also called Inkheart and it's a fantasy story depicting a world where all sorts of fantastic creatures exist.
But we don't really get any of those - instead we have a juggler who's very good at playing with fire, a villain who's main goal in life is to make the people with the ability to read things into the real world to read him lots of gold and a few of his henchmen.
We do get a couple of characters from 'real' fiction who have a fantasy twinge to them. There's Tinkerbell, who doesn't have much to do at all. We have the Brave Tin Soldier from the Hans Christian Anderson, who gets to come out of a book and then be read back into it (albeit with a happier ending) - and then there's a kid from the Arabian Nights stories who seems to have been in the Ali Baba tale, but is a non-entity in terms of the story (and may have just been made up by Cornelia Funke).
At the climax of the book we do get a few more fantastical creatures, but they're very much there as an afterthought. The rest of it is filled with fairly mundane villainy.
Now there are another two stories in the trilogy, so there may be more of an exploration of this world of people who can read fiction to life, but the first in the trilogy in no way fulfills the potential for the created world. This seems to be a problem that keeps cropping up again and again in novels and films - a good idea poorly mined.
It's very easy to point to stories that manage to mine the potential of their worlds - they're usually the ones that people like a lot. The Harry Potter series of books - love them or loathe them you'd be lying if you said that they don't get stuck into the universe that Rowling has created. The world is practically dripping with magic.
Pirates of the Caribbean - opening with a ship at sea in the fog and the telling of a ghost story and then throwing pretty much every possible piratey thing at the screen rarely misses out on a trick when it delves into its story world.
Star Wars - again a universe that feels well-lived in - it's not the regular world with a few science fiction things bolted on.
Steven Gould's Jumper novel (NOT the film). This is the regular world, so no cramming every corner with some weird and wonderful thing, but he takes the initial concept of a teenager who can teleport and runs with it, fully exploring the idea and what it means.
Those four examples were stories that I thoroughly enjoyed, that I've recommended to friends and that I'd happily go back for more with (and in all those cases I've gone and read or watched the sequel(s). Inkheart I'm not so sure - I was left feeling fairly unsatisfied after finishing reading it and thought I could have come up with better ideas than the author - largely because she hardly seemed to come up with any at all.
Still, it's a fairly popular novel series - so what do I know?
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Saturday, 30 May 2009
Buffy without Joss
News is that there is a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie on the cards, apparently with the involvement of the original movie's producers. As of this time of writing there seems to be no involvement from Joss Whedon - which as any fan will be able to tell you is completely inconceivable.
It's just nonsense thinking anyone else could possibly play the part:
I think a letter writing campaign may be in order.
It's just nonsense thinking anyone else could possibly play the part:
I think a letter writing campaign may be in order.
Dollhouse
Two episodes in and I have to confess that I'm liking this a lot more than the critical response indicates that I should. I do find that the missions Echo is being sent on are a bit yawnsome (how many times can US TV remake The Most Dangerous Game?), although they're still watchable enough, but more importantly Helo's ... sorry, Ballard's investigation and all the background shenanigans at the Dollhouse seem to be laying down some interesting foundations. I also think some of the complaints I've read about the ickiness of the whole meat-dolls/slavery/programmed-prostitution are a bit misplaced as it's clearly meant to be A Bad Thing. But maybe I'm over-simplifying the issues people have with it.
I'm not entirely convinced that it's going to have enough steam to keep going for more than a season without dragging things on too long, unless we see some sort of format-altering twist, but so far I think this has been getting a bit of a rough ride. The news that it's been renewed for a second season gives me some hope that I'm not the only one.
I'm not entirely convinced that it's going to have enough steam to keep going for more than a season without dragging things on too long, unless we see some sort of format-altering twist, but so far I think this has been getting a bit of a rough ride. The news that it's been renewed for a second season gives me some hope that I'm not the only one.
Monday, 25 May 2009
Characters Arcs Redux
John Rogers blogging on character arcs. Very nicely made points, although he still uses the hated term. But the difference between transformation character arcs and revelatory ones is an important one - although perhaps it's not taking it quite far enough for me.
When it comes to character change, I'm a firm believer that people don't fundamentally change. I think there are core parts of our personality that will always remain set and which will affect how we normally react to a given situation. Equally though, I don't believe that this means that reaction will always be the same.
Two people could be control freaks. One of them tries to take over the whole world, the other gets all the trains to run on time. Alternatively, the person who tries to take over the world might through experience come to realise what a bad idea that is and reapply that trait in order to make the trains run on time - which is after all a much more useful endeavour.
I believe people's actions are affected by personality, by circumstance and by experience. That's what I look for in characters. If their personality changes totally then I'm not going to believe it (unless they have major brain damage or a complete memory swap). If they manage to redirect that personality though then I think that's going to be much more true to life. And if they chart exactly the same course at the end of the story as the one that they were on in the beginning then really I don't have much of a problem with that either.
I don't expect to see someone do something that is not within their makeup from the start - circumstance followed by action should reveal character, not alter it.
Even Ebenezer Scrooge, one of the most obvious choices to illustrate a character arc, does not have a character-altering encounter with his three ghosts - if you look at who Scrooge used to be, as revealled by the Ghost of Christmas Past, the story seems to be about his return to that personality, not a creation of a new one. Scrooge makes different choices as a result of the events of the story, his character does not magically transform into something completely different.
I think most writers understand this and I'm probably pointing out the obvious - but as with all the 'rules' of writing, I think people can sometimes get the wrong end of the stick and assume that all characters must transform and that a transformation is a personality change rather than a shifting of perspective/purpose based within the parameters of the character's established persona.
When it comes to character change, I'm a firm believer that people don't fundamentally change. I think there are core parts of our personality that will always remain set and which will affect how we normally react to a given situation. Equally though, I don't believe that this means that reaction will always be the same.
Two people could be control freaks. One of them tries to take over the whole world, the other gets all the trains to run on time. Alternatively, the person who tries to take over the world might through experience come to realise what a bad idea that is and reapply that trait in order to make the trains run on time - which is after all a much more useful endeavour.
I believe people's actions are affected by personality, by circumstance and by experience. That's what I look for in characters. If their personality changes totally then I'm not going to believe it (unless they have major brain damage or a complete memory swap). If they manage to redirect that personality though then I think that's going to be much more true to life. And if they chart exactly the same course at the end of the story as the one that they were on in the beginning then really I don't have much of a problem with that either.
I don't expect to see someone do something that is not within their makeup from the start - circumstance followed by action should reveal character, not alter it.
Even Ebenezer Scrooge, one of the most obvious choices to illustrate a character arc, does not have a character-altering encounter with his three ghosts - if you look at who Scrooge used to be, as revealled by the Ghost of Christmas Past, the story seems to be about his return to that personality, not a creation of a new one. Scrooge makes different choices as a result of the events of the story, his character does not magically transform into something completely different.
I think most writers understand this and I'm probably pointing out the obvious - but as with all the 'rules' of writing, I think people can sometimes get the wrong end of the stick and assume that all characters must transform and that a transformation is a personality change rather than a shifting of perspective/purpose based within the parameters of the character's established persona.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road
I don't really need to say anything nice about this book, the back cover of my copy is plastered with seven complimentary quotes from reviewers, the inside front cover has a further six the inside back cover another six and the first three pages of the book have twelve more.
I feel as if I'm being bullied into liking this book.
The thing is, I did quite enjoy the read, short as it was. There are almost more words in the reviews dedicated to the book than there are in the book itself. At a rough estimate, I'd put the word count somewhere in the region of 50-60 thousand words. That's little more than the introduction if you're looking at a Stephen King novel. Really the book should stretch to around 150 pages, except my copy runs at 300 due to an awful lot of page space being taken up by a nice large font, never mind the large stretches of minimalist dialogue that could destroy rainforests with a few conversations.
The story itself is nothing new if you've read enough science fiction books. For the literary reviewers who turn their noses up at such genre fare though, I can imagine it came as something of a revelation. It's certainly an easy to read book - incredibly bleak in outlook but a palatable walk through despair rather than being a complete wallow. It does fall into a repetitive pattern of boy and father are hungry, boy and father find a source of food, boy and father eat food until it runs out, boy and father are hungry again, punctuated by boy and father try to avoid contact with people who might want to eat them. However, it's a decently told repetition and from a human perspective it feels quite truthful.
Stylistically it's quite sparse - sentences run on and on without a pause for breath, particularly when describing the actions of the characters, creating a mundane feel to their quest for survival. The dialogue is absent speech marks and in most cases attribution, but for that is easy enough to follow. Descriptions of the bleak environment are more poetic in nature, suggesting that it is here that the author's real interest lies. The best thing about The Road is watching the scenery out of the window.
I feel as if I'm being bullied into liking this book.
The thing is, I did quite enjoy the read, short as it was. There are almost more words in the reviews dedicated to the book than there are in the book itself. At a rough estimate, I'd put the word count somewhere in the region of 50-60 thousand words. That's little more than the introduction if you're looking at a Stephen King novel. Really the book should stretch to around 150 pages, except my copy runs at 300 due to an awful lot of page space being taken up by a nice large font, never mind the large stretches of minimalist dialogue that could destroy rainforests with a few conversations.
The story itself is nothing new if you've read enough science fiction books. For the literary reviewers who turn their noses up at such genre fare though, I can imagine it came as something of a revelation. It's certainly an easy to read book - incredibly bleak in outlook but a palatable walk through despair rather than being a complete wallow. It does fall into a repetitive pattern of boy and father are hungry, boy and father find a source of food, boy and father eat food until it runs out, boy and father are hungry again, punctuated by boy and father try to avoid contact with people who might want to eat them. However, it's a decently told repetition and from a human perspective it feels quite truthful.
Stylistically it's quite sparse - sentences run on and on without a pause for breath, particularly when describing the actions of the characters, creating a mundane feel to their quest for survival. The dialogue is absent speech marks and in most cases attribution, but for that is easy enough to follow. Descriptions of the bleak environment are more poetic in nature, suggesting that it is here that the author's real interest lies. The best thing about The Road is watching the scenery out of the window.
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