le_bebna_kamni (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
le_bebna_kamni) wrote2007-08-17 10:49 am
le_bebna_kamni) wrote2007-08-17 10:49 am
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Back in the Groove?
Parents coming to visit can be so disruptive. And tiring. I think it's taken me a week to recover, and I'm still feeling the after-compulsion to make sure everything is obsessively-compulsively neat. I find myself bending over to pick up a speck of lint that has fallen onto the carpet.
Unfortunately, my reading has fallen dangerously behind, and the summer is waning very quickly. My calendar says that this is the the 33rd week of the year, so I foresee that I will not be making the 50 book goal...but one can always hang on and hope and pray for the winter holidays to make a last-minute comeback.
Book #24: Storm Front, by Jim Butcher
**Due to carelessness and thoughtless writing on my part, I have rewritten the review of this book. I don't recommend seeking out the original review, but the text has been moved to one of the comments for people who want to reference it.
I recently started watching the television series "The Dresden Files", and when I found out it was based on a series of novels, I thought I would check them out. For those not familiar with the show, it's about a real-life wizard who lives in the mundane world and solves magically-based crimes.
Storm Front is the first in the series of Dresden Files. Harry Dresden is drawn into investigating a series of black-magic murders, and ends up being accused of them himself. Harry has to race to find the real killer and clear his name before the wizarding law force executes him for using forbidden black magic.
For those of you who only want a recap of the TV show, there are similarities, but not enough to warrant reading the books. The Dresden Files are much better suited to real fantasy lovers, and not just prime-time watchers who wouldn't normally peruse the sci-fi/fantasy section of the bookstore. If you enjoy reading Anita Blake novels, Jim Butcher has much the same tone and quality of writing. He has a lot of violence, some racy sex (although not as graphic as Laurell K. Hamilton), and tons of magic and supernaturalism. I will definitely give kudos to Butcher, though: he seems to know his magical lore better than the Anita Blake series, at least the flavor I'm familiar with. I'm a bit curious whether his knowledge came from a background in any spiritual/religious practices, or whether he's just a good researcher.
Occasionally you run across a book that digs up unexpected memories and gets you reminiscing, and Storm Front was one of those books. For most of high school I dated a very interesting guy who introduced me to the wonders of geekdom. I had always been a sci-fi/fantasy reader, but he introduced me to things like computer games, Jolt cola (a kind of Holy Grail, because we had to drive 2-5 hours to buy any), anime, and of course role-playing games.
My boyfriend was a great storyteller, and I ate up his campaigns like candy. He had unique ideas and knew how to draw people in so that you were waiting on the edge of your seat for the next thing to happen. And it didn't help that I liked looking at him while he talked. While I've been told my tastes in men run geekier than most, his long, dark hair was gorgeous to me in a hick town full of crew cuts. He was leanly athletic and amazingly graceful from several years of martial arts training -- he could pull moves on a dance floor that would confound your average geek.
Most non-geeks don't realize how many geeks take up some form of hand-to-hand or melee weapon skill, but from my own acquaintances I'm convinced it's pretty common. When we geeks put together our character sheets and start playing epic heroes that kick ass, are adored by women (or men) and/or admired by the average joe, sooner or later we want to *be* those heroes in real life. Either that, or stop being beaten up on the playground. ;P I know that my boyfriend and many of his friends felt that way (at least about the former idea), and he certainly convinced me it was *cool* to do it. Even today -- especially with swords -- if someone says they've fought or studied a combat skill, a certain amount of geekly respect wells within me.
About six months after we started dating, my boyfriend expressed a desire to be a professional writer. He started showing me his work, in part because I was his girlfriend and he wanted to impress me, but also because I was an English tutor and got good marks on my school-required stories and compositions. And it made sense that he would be a writer: after all, he was a great GM with fantastic storytelling abilities, and many fantasy writers say they get story ideas from their campaigns. Soon my boyfriend's friends were coming to me to check over their stories, and consequently I got a lot of exposure to teenage geek fantasy writing.
One thing I learned very quickly was this: the two skills of writing and GMing are very different, even if they seem like they should be similar. What sounds stunning when proclaimed boldly in a manly warrior voice becomes cheesy and lame when lying inert in Times New Roman font. Campaigns rarely scratch below the surface of the characters who play, and even then gamers have to think on their feet to act out a person who isn't necessarily themselves. What you often end up with is a mish-mash of stereotype and the player's real personality -- a bad combination if the gamer is playing a personality vastly dissimilar to their own. Gaming characters are rarely as rich, complex, or realistic as well-thought-out fictional characters, which is why character development is probably the weakest point in a teenage geek writer's repertoire (action sequences follow a close second).
Like the teenage epic game, everyone in the world is beautiful and/or muscular -- except for the people you're obviously supposed to despise, in which case they're overweight, underweight, unsightly, or in some way visibly repulsive. The main character of teenage fantasy is almost always the author in idealistic form, which generally ends up being a bit cheesy and unrealistic.
My boyfriend had a penchant for dark, brooding characters -- characters who were both kick-ass (physically adept) and bad-ass (cold, hardened, don't-touch-me types), but who had a hidden soft spot that said he was really a good guy underneath it all. His characters were always chivalrous types, even if it seemed old-fashioned, and there was often a certain old-West feel to them in spite of the fantasy. The problem is, he could get the "good guy underneath it all" part right, but he was never very good with the bad-ass part -- largely because my boyfriend himself was a really nice guy who probably didn't have a true unfeeling, bad-ass bone in his body. From my writing classes I can tell you this axiom: even though the authors aren't necessarily their characters, you can't write what you don't know, or at least not well.
So when I read Storm Front and met Harry Dresden, suddenly I felt like I was reading my old boyfriend's work. All the characters, even some of the dialogue and action scenes sounded like they might have escaped from his pen and onto the pages I was reading. A read of the "about the author" section of the book, and a visit to the author's website and blog confirmed two things for me:
Of course, Jim Butcher is a lot better writer than my ex (and other teen geek writers rarely match his writing ability), but I think Butcher's work still falls prey to several of the stereotypes of gamer-geek writing listed above. The women in his books are very attractive: the female detective that Harry works with, Murphy, is beautiful and athletic, as are the reporter named Susan and obviously the vampiress Bianca. In contrast, Detective Carmichael, Murphy's annoying partner who you're obviously supposed to dislike, is of course overweight, rumpled, and spills food on his clothes.
As for Harry Dresden, he sounds a lot like a fulfillment of a gamer-geek's dreams. He was once a youngster beaten up on the school playgrounds; now he's a powerful wizard who can also use guns and fight hand-to-hand. He's dark, a loner, and can scare people off in stare-down, but he also has a hidden, kind nature that doesn't fit with his hardened exterior. Some writers can pull that contrast off well, but for Dresden it just loses credibility (I have my suspicions that it's for the same reason that my boyfriend couldn't pull it off: Jim Butcher is a really nice guy). And even though Dresden supposedly isn't good with women, beautiful women always seem to show up at his doorstep. Sounds like teenage geek masturbatory material to me. ;P
Like my ex, Butcher has a way with story-telling: the plot is good -- reasonably page-turning. But somehow I just can't get connected with his from-the-gamesheet characters, and characterization is everything for me. I'm actually more pleased with the television show's choice of characterization of Harry Dresden, which is very "average joe" who happens to have powers. Now I just have to decide if Butcher's good plots are worth checking out a second book from the library.
And now for a book I'm not going to review, because I couldn't finish reading it (but I'll let someone else review it for me):
The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death
Let me just say that if you're of any scientific inclination, this book will make you scream. The man who carried out this investigation is an accredited scientist, not your average lay-person, so I have much higher standards for the reading. All I can say is his experiments are improperly controlled, the data is subjectively scored, and the assumptions he makes are atrocious. Even if life after death exists, he's doing the wrong experiments to find evidence for it.
Grrrrrr.......
Unfortunately, my reading has fallen dangerously behind, and the summer is waning very quickly. My calendar says that this is the the 33rd week of the year, so I foresee that I will not be making the 50 book goal...but one can always hang on and hope and pray for the winter holidays to make a last-minute comeback.
Book #24: Storm Front, by Jim Butcher
**Due to carelessness and thoughtless writing on my part, I have rewritten the review of this book. I don't recommend seeking out the original review, but the text has been moved to one of the comments for people who want to reference it.
I recently started watching the television series "The Dresden Files", and when I found out it was based on a series of novels, I thought I would check them out. For those not familiar with the show, it's about a real-life wizard who lives in the mundane world and solves magically-based crimes.
Storm Front is the first in the series of Dresden Files. Harry Dresden is drawn into investigating a series of black-magic murders, and ends up being accused of them himself. Harry has to race to find the real killer and clear his name before the wizarding law force executes him for using forbidden black magic.
For those of you who only want a recap of the TV show, there are similarities, but not enough to warrant reading the books. The Dresden Files are much better suited to real fantasy lovers, and not just prime-time watchers who wouldn't normally peruse the sci-fi/fantasy section of the bookstore. If you enjoy reading Anita Blake novels, Jim Butcher has much the same tone and quality of writing. He has a lot of violence, some racy sex (although not as graphic as Laurell K. Hamilton), and tons of magic and supernaturalism. I will definitely give kudos to Butcher, though: he seems to know his magical lore better than the Anita Blake series, at least the flavor I'm familiar with. I'm a bit curious whether his knowledge came from a background in any spiritual/religious practices, or whether he's just a good researcher.
Occasionally you run across a book that digs up unexpected memories and gets you reminiscing, and Storm Front was one of those books. For most of high school I dated a very interesting guy who introduced me to the wonders of geekdom. I had always been a sci-fi/fantasy reader, but he introduced me to things like computer games, Jolt cola (a kind of Holy Grail, because we had to drive 2-5 hours to buy any), anime, and of course role-playing games.
My boyfriend was a great storyteller, and I ate up his campaigns like candy. He had unique ideas and knew how to draw people in so that you were waiting on the edge of your seat for the next thing to happen. And it didn't help that I liked looking at him while he talked. While I've been told my tastes in men run geekier than most, his long, dark hair was gorgeous to me in a hick town full of crew cuts. He was leanly athletic and amazingly graceful from several years of martial arts training -- he could pull moves on a dance floor that would confound your average geek.
Most non-geeks don't realize how many geeks take up some form of hand-to-hand or melee weapon skill, but from my own acquaintances I'm convinced it's pretty common. When we geeks put together our character sheets and start playing epic heroes that kick ass, are adored by women (or men) and/or admired by the average joe, sooner or later we want to *be* those heroes in real life. Either that, or stop being beaten up on the playground. ;P I know that my boyfriend and many of his friends felt that way (at least about the former idea), and he certainly convinced me it was *cool* to do it. Even today -- especially with swords -- if someone says they've fought or studied a combat skill, a certain amount of geekly respect wells within me.
About six months after we started dating, my boyfriend expressed a desire to be a professional writer. He started showing me his work, in part because I was his girlfriend and he wanted to impress me, but also because I was an English tutor and got good marks on my school-required stories and compositions. And it made sense that he would be a writer: after all, he was a great GM with fantastic storytelling abilities, and many fantasy writers say they get story ideas from their campaigns. Soon my boyfriend's friends were coming to me to check over their stories, and consequently I got a lot of exposure to teenage geek fantasy writing.
One thing I learned very quickly was this: the two skills of writing and GMing are very different, even if they seem like they should be similar. What sounds stunning when proclaimed boldly in a manly warrior voice becomes cheesy and lame when lying inert in Times New Roman font. Campaigns rarely scratch below the surface of the characters who play, and even then gamers have to think on their feet to act out a person who isn't necessarily themselves. What you often end up with is a mish-mash of stereotype and the player's real personality -- a bad combination if the gamer is playing a personality vastly dissimilar to their own. Gaming characters are rarely as rich, complex, or realistic as well-thought-out fictional characters, which is why character development is probably the weakest point in a teenage geek writer's repertoire (action sequences follow a close second).
Like the teenage epic game, everyone in the world is beautiful and/or muscular -- except for the people you're obviously supposed to despise, in which case they're overweight, underweight, unsightly, or in some way visibly repulsive. The main character of teenage fantasy is almost always the author in idealistic form, which generally ends up being a bit cheesy and unrealistic.
My boyfriend had a penchant for dark, brooding characters -- characters who were both kick-ass (physically adept) and bad-ass (cold, hardened, don't-touch-me types), but who had a hidden soft spot that said he was really a good guy underneath it all. His characters were always chivalrous types, even if it seemed old-fashioned, and there was often a certain old-West feel to them in spite of the fantasy. The problem is, he could get the "good guy underneath it all" part right, but he was never very good with the bad-ass part -- largely because my boyfriend himself was a really nice guy who probably didn't have a true unfeeling, bad-ass bone in his body. From my writing classes I can tell you this axiom: even though the authors aren't necessarily their characters, you can't write what you don't know, or at least not well.
So when I read Storm Front and met Harry Dresden, suddenly I felt like I was reading my old boyfriend's work. All the characters, even some of the dialogue and action scenes sounded like they might have escaped from his pen and onto the pages I was reading. A read of the "about the author" section of the book, and a visit to the author's website and blog confirmed two things for me:
1) the auther was not my ex.The author even looked a lot like my ex-boyfriend, down to the quirky smile and raised eyebrow on his "About Jim" page.
2) the author sounded a lot like my ex in so many ways it was funny, from his interests to a few of the comments he made on this blog.
Of course, Jim Butcher is a lot better writer than my ex (and other teen geek writers rarely match his writing ability), but I think Butcher's work still falls prey to several of the stereotypes of gamer-geek writing listed above. The women in his books are very attractive: the female detective that Harry works with, Murphy, is beautiful and athletic, as are the reporter named Susan and obviously the vampiress Bianca. In contrast, Detective Carmichael, Murphy's annoying partner who you're obviously supposed to dislike, is of course overweight, rumpled, and spills food on his clothes.
As for Harry Dresden, he sounds a lot like a fulfillment of a gamer-geek's dreams. He was once a youngster beaten up on the school playgrounds; now he's a powerful wizard who can also use guns and fight hand-to-hand. He's dark, a loner, and can scare people off in stare-down, but he also has a hidden, kind nature that doesn't fit with his hardened exterior. Some writers can pull that contrast off well, but for Dresden it just loses credibility (I have my suspicions that it's for the same reason that my boyfriend couldn't pull it off: Jim Butcher is a really nice guy). And even though Dresden supposedly isn't good with women, beautiful women always seem to show up at his doorstep. Sounds like teenage geek masturbatory material to me. ;P
Like my ex, Butcher has a way with story-telling: the plot is good -- reasonably page-turning. But somehow I just can't get connected with his from-the-gamesheet characters, and characterization is everything for me. I'm actually more pleased with the television show's choice of characterization of Harry Dresden, which is very "average joe" who happens to have powers. Now I just have to decide if Butcher's good plots are worth checking out a second book from the library.
And now for a book I'm not going to review, because I couldn't finish reading it (but I'll let someone else review it for me):
The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death
Let me just say that if you're of any scientific inclination, this book will make you scream. The man who carried out this investigation is an accredited scientist, not your average lay-person, so I have much higher standards for the reading. All I can say is his experiments are improperly controlled, the data is subjectively scored, and the assumptions he makes are atrocious. Even if life after death exists, he's doing the wrong experiments to find evidence for it.
Grrrrrr.......
Dresden Files
It's a shame that Sci-Fi Channel, in another bone-headed decision, canceled the series right after the box set came out. Do they want to drive away their viewers?
As for the 50-book challenge, I gave up on that a while ago. I got sidetracked by a huge pile of zines and manga. Plus, as you've stated in a reply to one of my posts, I don't post very often :)
Re: Dresden Files
Re: Dresden Files
Hey Thank You!
Gosh, some of the female characters are prettier than average. I'll bet that every single person who writes like that probably has the exact same deep seated insecurity issues as me! My god, is there any chance that you're in the field of psychological counseling? Because there's evidently a bloody FORTUNE to be made on writers.
Harry carries a gun. And, as part of carrying a gun, he's made himself familiar enough with the weapon to make sure that he points the end the bullet comes out at whoever it is he wants to be dead. I can see now that it's been a total breech of author-reader contract for me not to have had Delta Force snap Dresden up ages ago for his marksmanship skills.
I could go on, but instead, allow me to pay my compliments on your outstanding evaluation of me personally based upon reading Storm Front.
Like all authors, I do so love it when someone starts nods wisely and starts making sweeping statements about me, personally, based upon a piece of fiction I wrote.
(You /are/ aware that it's fiction, yeah? Fiction is when it /isn't/ real.)
I actually had a pretty enjoyable high school career. Lettered in a couple of sports, a couple of arts, had girlfriends, friends, did a lot of horseback riding, worked a lot of food service jobs, sang a lot, did some theater and generally had fun like a lot of kids. Met and started dating my wife, too. Made some friends I'm still friends with today. Good times.
As for ass kickery, after years of training and a couple of actual situations, I eventually came to the realization that the ability to remorselessly beat the hell out of someone just isn't all that useful on a day-to-day basis. I just haven't needed to smash any boards or gouge out anyone's eyeballs in the checkout line at the grocery store.
Look, if you want to say "the book reads like masturbatory teen wannabe fantasy" that's fine, no problem. If you want to say "the characters were mostly wooden and two dimensional," that's not only acceptable, it also has the virtue of being arguably true.
(Mozart might have written Magnum Opus level material when he was 25, but I'm still on a pretty steep learning curve.)
Tear my material up all you want.
Taking shots at an author /personally/, though? Especially when you've read a tiny fraction of their work, and don't know them from Adam, and evidently haven't bothered to learn anything about them beyond "looks like ex boyfriend"--that's almost as annoying and malicious as your conclusions are inaccurate.
I don't know much about you, other than that you seem to feel free to shoot your mouth off about whatever you want, as long as their aren't any consequences you have to face for it--according to your own profile. At least you acknowledge that it's true, and I can respect that.
But I have to disagree with you on "such is the nature of internet culture." The nature of internet culture is that if you start ripping on someone, there's every chance that someone else might point it out to them, and they might show up to rip back.
Having the courage to sound off only when you're safely anonymous isn't the nature of internet culture. It's the nature of a complete lack of personal integrity.
What, you think that just because you don't have to be there to see it, the stuff you're saying doesn't /hurt/?
I would appreciate it if, in the future, you would take the time to come and talk to me in email, or read some of my posts at my web site, or otherwise take three or four minutes to learn something about me worth insulting, and THEN start badmouthing me ACCURATELY.
Jesus, it's not like there isn't plenty of material to work with.
Jim Butcher
Re: Hey Thank You!
Re: Hey Thank You!
Re: Hey Thank You!
Re: Hey Thank You!
Old Review -- multiple parts
Storm Front is the first in the series of Dresden Files. Harry Dresden is drawn into investigating a series of black-magic murders, and ends up being accused of them himself. Harry has to race to find the real killer and clear his name before the wizarding law force executes him for using forbidden black magic.
For those of you that like the TV series, there are similarities, but not enough to warrant reading the books. However, if you like reading Anita Blake novels, Jim Butcher has much the same tone and quality of writing. He has a lot of violence, some racy sex (although not as graphic as Laurell K. Hamilton), and tons of magic and supernaturalism. I will definitely give kudos to Butcher, though: he knows his magical lore very well. I'm a bit curious what his religious/spiritual beliefs are.
Jim Butcher reminds me a great deal of a guy I dated for most of high school: a gamer-geek, who probably studies martial arts because he wants to be an all-powerful kick-ass, loved by women and admired by many, in real life and not just on his character sheet. Funny thing is, Butcher even looks a lot like my ex. My boyfriend also wanted to be a writer, and his desires to be "kick-ass" always came out in his attempts at novel-writing, particularly his characterizations.
For the teenage geek writer, everyone in the world is beautiful and/or muscular -- except for the people you're obviously supposed to despise, in which case they're overweight, underweight, unsightly, or in some way visibly repulsive. The main character is almost always the author themselves in idealistic form, which generally ends up being a bit cheesy and unrealistic. While I would definitely say that Butcher is a better writer than my ex (or most teenage geek writers, for that matter), I think Butcher suffers from some of the same problems.
The female detective that Harry works with, Murphy, is beautiful and athletic, as are the reporter named Susan and obviously the vampiress Bianca. Detective Carmichael, Murphy's annoying partner, is of course overweight, rumpled, and spills food on his clothes. As for Harry Dresden, he was once a youngster beaten up on the school playgrounds; now he's a powerful wizard who can also use guns and fight hand-to-hand (sounds like a lot of geeks' fantasies to me). He's dark, a loner, and can scare people off in stare-down, but he also has a hidden, kind nature that doesn't fit with his hardened exterior. Some writers can pull that contrast off well, but for Dresden it just loses credibility (I suspect Butcher doesn't have a true bad-ass bone in his body). And even though Dresden supposedly isn't good with women, beautiful women always seem to show up at his doorstep. Sounds like teenage geek masturbatory material to me. ;P
The story is good -- reasonably page-turning -- but as I mentioned the characters are lacking. I'm actually pleased with the television show's choice of characterization of Harry Dresden, which is much more "average joe" who happens to have powers. Now I just have to decide if Butcher's plots are worth checking out a second book from the library.
Re: Old Review -- multiple parts
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