David Gaider is a Virgin: a review of Dragon Age: The Calling

I do not usually make predictions as I read – I have no inclination to do so and hardly believe that anybody who reads for pleasure does – but I knew immediately what I expected to happen at some point in Dragon Age: The Calling when Fiona, the elf mage, gets into an argument with King Maric of Ferelden. She accuses him of being a poor father. He gets angry and tells her that she doesn’t know the first thing about him.

And all I could think was: “Oh no. He’s going to fuck her.”

Dragon Age: The Calling is the sequel to David Gaider’s debut novel, Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne, which was awful. The Calling opens with King Maric, who successfully expelled the Orlaisian occupation and regained his kingdom in the first novel, holding court with the Grey Wardens, an order of warriors dedicated to fighting the darkspawn, considered irrelevant by the major political bodies as the darkspawn are quarantined in the underground ruins of the Dwarven civilization.

Maric agrees, with the flimsiest of reasoning, to accompany the Grey Wardens on an aimless quest into the Deep Roads based on the questionable visions of their new leader. And off they set, meeting with mages, fighting with darkspawn, slaying dragons, and making stilted conversation. If The Stolen Throne used fantasy plot #5, The Calling is written according to fantasy plot #1: the dungeon crawl. This plot is the bread-and-butter of licensed fantasy fiction, a travelogue through a particular location often interrupted by interminable battles and sex scenes written by people who do not seem to have ever been in a fight or a woman.

As readers of The Stolen Throne will recall, the Deep Roads were already the location for the most boring portion of David Gaider’s first novel. They are the setting for the majority of this novel. It is safe to say that plot is not Gaider’s strong suit, and he attempts to make up for it here by narrating incidents. The plot itself is just substantial enough to fill a two-hundred page paperback. The Calling is just a bit shorter than my hardback copy of Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardour.

At 440 pages, the narrative structure of The Calling shakes under the weight of all the incidents Gaider packs onto it, especially when so much of the narration is on the order of “he thrust his sword into the darkspawn.” I could easily forgive the contrivance of Maric accompanying the Grey Wardens on their quest in the Deep Roads if those incidents were not so similarly contrived, described in such beige prose.

I previously praised Gaider for having moved on from his reliance on adverbs. It seems I spoke too soon, as we get such descriptions as: “The water was littered with bits of flotsam that pooled at the edges, lapping wetly against the stone…” How else would water lap? Particularly grating is the statement that “Fiona was glad to be getting out of there finally.” Say that out loud; every time I do, it comes out as “thud.” And it follows – somewhat less gracefully and grammatically – the same formula as nearly every sentence from The Stolen Throne. X does Y, Zly.

The childish humor also makes a return. When talking about dreams and visions, Maric, King of Ferelden, confides in the Grey Wardens: “I once dreamed Loghain brought me a barrel of cheese. I opened it up, and there were mice inside. Made of Cheese.” When faced with an insurmountable horde of opponents, one of the Grey Wardens mentions that he has very few arrows, to which another replies “I’m running out of clean smallclothes.” I cannot roll my eyes enough.

Probably the worst of the extraneous bits is the encounter with the demon, which traps Maric and the Grey Wardens in dreams tailored to their deepest wants. Maric realizes first that he is trapped in an illusion, breaks free, and travels across the Fade (Gaider’s term for the world of dreams to which the consciousness travels when asleep) to help the others. Only Fiona, the elf-mage Maric will so obviously boff at some point, has a bad dream. Maric and company find her tied up, her back whipped raw by the demon’s avatar, a handsome gentlemen from Fiona’s memory. The sexual tone of this scene is patently obvious, and it sets up what I can only refer to as the fantasy maiden’s mating call.

The fantasy maiden’s mating call is when the fantasy novel's masturbatory object signals to the protagonist that she is ready for him to fuck her by telling him about some sort of horrific abuse she survived as a child. It could be sexual, physical, or supernatural, but the telling of it always ends on the tip of the protagonist’s erection. Fantasy authors (and writers in other genres, to be fair) mistake this as good characterization; the characters share important details about their pasts which lead to mutual affection. Unfortunately, its not only a cliché, but somewhat creepy.

Fiona, who has just physically and mentally relived the sexual torture she tells Maric that she experienced from the time she was seven until she was fourteen years old, informs Maric of her past. He tells her about his – he saw his mother killed in front of him. Granted, he eventually avenged her, regained his kingdom, and now rightfully presides over it, but both he and the narrative seem to think that this is a rough equivalent to the torture that Fiona underwent. And it puts her in the mood. They do it only a few feet from where their fellow spelunkers sleep.

Now, as a straight male, I am not one to speak about women’s issues. It is not my place. But even then, I find this scene offensive; not even so much for its subtext, but for its utter contrivance. It rings spectacularly false, from the moment it starts until the actual sex ends in (thankfully) abbreviated fashion.

The fetishization of the elf mage becomes even more blatant when Maric, knocked unconscious during a battle, looks up at Fiona, who is cradling him in her arms. “He looked up at Fiona’s face and thought only how beautiful she was. Those dark eyes had seen so much suffering.” So she’s covered in “black ichor” as Gaider redundantly puts it, bruised all over, and has confided in Maric a past fraught with horrific abuse, and Maric, thinking he will soon die, leaving his very young son in charge of a kingdom, can only think of how hawt Fiona looks, that he wants to comfort her, and tell her that things will be okay.

I cannot continue to read or write this review; I cannot see. My eyes are so permanently rolled.

My review of The Stolen Throne received numerous comments to the effect that I set my standards too high for a fantasy novel, particularly a licensed one. Putting aside the ability of supposed fans of the genre to denigrate it as a whole with their low expectations, I have to point out that I am only judging Gaider’s writing according to his own metric. In a recent interview at the New York Comic Con, Gaider said about Dragon Age as a whole: “It's also character-driven, and thus concerned more about the human condition than it is about being epic.”

That statement is utterly gob-smacking when juxtaposed to The Calling, which is the very definition of plot-driven and ham-fistedly characterized. It is the apotheosis of tie-in literature, the quintessence of all those malignant aspects I previously enumerated. The Calling, and its author, have nothing to say about the human condition. They trade in only the worst kind of fantasy; neither entertaining nor escapist, but dull and imprisoning in its rote plot and tortured prose. It is the sort of fantasy writing that does not evoke the imagination; it does not challenge the reader. It is not fantastic in any sense. The Calling panders.

A little bit of humility would behoove a writer who is fairly new to prose fiction, but it occurs to me that David Gaider is not, and likely never will be a writer a prose fiction, nor humble about his position. He is a pretentious writer of game books. The Calling is a Fighting Fantasy book or a D&D campaign in which the player makes no choices, builds no characters, and participates in no adventure. We only read Gaider’s fantasies as told to himself, relevant only to those who share them.

The Eleventh Son by Gu Long

If you want to read professionally translated wuxia fiction besides the work of Jin Yong and are not Chinese literate, you have two options: the almost laughably verbose Blades from the Willows by Huanzhulouzhu, or Gu Long’s The Eleventh Son, which is written almost entirely in short hand. Gu Long was a contemporary of Jin Yong, and while Jin Yong adaptations ruled the wuxia film and television offerings of the nineties, Hong Kong and Taiwanese film makers of the seventies and early eighties adapted Gu Long with wild abandon. Shaw Brothers studio director Chu Yuan set off the Gu Long spree with successful adaptations like The Magic Blade, Killer Clans, and Swordsman and Enchantress. The last is an adaptation of the subject of this book review.

The plot centers around Xiao Shiyi Lang (literally “The Eleventh Son” of the title), who gets mixed up in a plot to steal the “Deer Carver” saber, an extraordinary blade in the care of the “Six Ideal Gentlemen.” But the real meat of the story revolves around the love triangle built between Xiao, unfairly referred to as the “Great Bandit,” Lian Chengbi, the leader of the Ideal Gentlemen who have it in for Xiao Shiyi Lang, and his beautiful wife, Shen Bijun. Xiao absconds from the search for the blade before it is recovered, and in the process ends up saving Shen Bijun from the villainous “Little Mister,” who not only stole the blade, but killed one of the ideal gentlemen and burned down Shen’s ancestral home, framing Xiao for the whole mess.

After saving her life multiple times, Shen finds herself caught between her duty as the wife of the cultured and respected Lian Chengbi and her sense of justice. Lian and his associates intend to kill Xiao Shiyi Lang regardless of his innocence or his efforts to save Shen’s life. Her growing feelings for Xiao, his barely concealed feelings for her, and the quickly revealed corruption of the leaders in the “martial order” complicate Shen’s situation further.

Gu’s themes are drawn rather broadly and he has no problem interjecting himself in expository passages. The story makes Xiao into a sort of martyred free spirit, a noble vagrant victimized by the hypocrisy of an upper-class in the martial order who seek to control everything through duty, coercion, or simple lies that nobody bothers to question. We witness Shen Bijun caught in her duty to her husband, who is as close to true gentleman that anybody described in the novel seems to get, and her love for Xiao Shiyi Lang, to whom she owes a degree of loyalty and not just because she loves him. Lian is not a horrible person, but he is neglectful and a part of the unjust confederacy of martial artists that wants to do away with the righteous Xiao because he is powerful enough to endanger their schemes. But Shen’s own sense of righteousness will not allow her to be unfaithful to her husband or to abandon Xiao.

And besides the personal drama, Gu draws a martial order controlled by a sub- Nietzschean puppet master who fancies himself beyond not only conventional morality, but humanity. He claims to be a god, and the novel spends an extended interlude illustrating one of his ludicrous methods of controlling people and conditioning their behavior. There’s a sort of free will versus determinism argument happening in these chapters, which reflect a similar conflict happening in the rest of the plot: the conflict between Xioa’s free-spirited wandering and the duty of the martial world, between Shen Bijun’s duty and her feelings.

It’s a shame that Gu’s characterization falters after the first act. Xiao, who Gu casts very well as a lovable rogue in the early portions of the story, is a sad-sack drunk for much of the rest of the novel, and is thoroughly unlikable. Shen is much too fragile and helpless, which, when contrasted against the other female characters in the novel, is presented as something of a virtue. Xiao seems to enjoy her neediness; it’s almost seems to be what he loves about her. I’d consider that a character flaw, but Gu sentimentalizes helplessness and victimization -- alcoholism too.

Gu Long was famously alcoholic. Drank himself to death, in fact. He also had notorious affairs and two illegitimate children. I find it difficult not to read Xiao as a stand-in for the author, a handsome, impossibly stoic, unusually intelligent, superbly masculine, painfully misunderstood stand-in. The author is tied up in knots of self-pity regarding women and duty and alcohol. It seems we’re reading his wish-fulfillment fantasies. This leaves something of a bad aftertaste, as it becomes increasingly clear that it is the author, rather than his protagonist and narrator, who is tied up in knots about women and sentimental about his addictions.

The plotting gets a bit unclear as well. As soon as Xiao abandons the search for the Deer Carver, the narration does too, although a careful reader will realize that the plot-line is actually wrapped up once the villain and his motives are revealed.

But for all that, The Eleventh Son is fantastic entertainment, owing much to Gu’s idiosyncratic style. I mentioned the film adaptations of Gu’s work, and it seems to me that his writing style lends itself well to cinema.

Watching Chu Yuan’s adaptations, and the Taiwanese films of directors like Cheung Paang-Yee, I thought there would be a touch of Mervyn Peake in Gu’s writing. Chu Yuan makes the martial world a sort of urban-wonderland, thanks to the artifice of Shaw set design and studio shooting, in which ancient China seems like a giant urban sprawl beset by occult martial clans and mad schemes concocted by conniving mad geniuses hiding behind the scenes. Of course, there’s also the films of Li Chia, in which Gu’s martial world is one driven by interpersonal drama loosely hanging on the machinations of conniving mad geniuses, set in a quaint, bucolic Chinese countryside.

Both are actually valid interpretations, as Gu draws everything in short-hand. His setting is a barely defined ancient China, of which era I couldn’t rightly tell you. There are no sprawling descriptions of scenery or internal monologues. The narration takes place in short paragraphs of equally short declamatory sentences. A typical example:

"Shen was so outraged that her fingertips went cold. She couldn’t keep from lifting her head—

She had been too embarrassed to look at Xiao, but when she looked up, she naturally turned her eyes to his face.

She found his face ghostly pale, his eyes full of pain, and the corners of his eyes twitching uncontrollably.

Xiao was clearly enduring serious anguish.

He wasn’t a man who would reveal his pain easily."

If it seems like this is a “see spot run” style of writing, take my word that it belies a pretty sophisticated sense of pacing. The style makes for a very quick read, and the short-hand also works when characterizing minor characters, with which Gu demonstrates a real flair. I don’t know what it would look like in the context of the setting, but when Gu describes a character as “dressed like new money,” it gets the point across.

Less impressive are authorial intrusions which offer “insights” into human nature. “Dying is a painful thing for most people,” Gu informs us. Well yeah. Most examples are about on this order. Very often Gu uses the authorial position to extol the virtues of drinking, about which I think I’ve already rendered my opinion.

If I sound like I’m down on this novel, I assure you that it’s actually very entertaining. The best aspects are the good bits of characterization, the wacky prose style that works in spite of itself, and the bizarre plot points that tie themselves up in a round-about manner. And if there is something pitiable in the nature of the melodrama, it is equally heartfelt, and therefore compelling, so long as the reader can muster his or her sympathy. The Eleventh Son is an odd thing. It clearly fits into a generic category, but it is also a very personal and idiosyncratic. I have a feeling that “idiosyncratic” is the best available word for Gu Long, his style, and his work.

Sadly, this is still the only Gu Long novel available in English from a mainstream publisher (there is a self-published translation of Gu Long’s The Flower Guarding Bells, available from Lulu). I’d really like to read more of Gu’s work, as I don’t get the impression that all of it is so transparently masturbatory. Rebecca Tai’s translation is actually very good compared to the amateur work available on the internet, and I have heard from those who have read Gu Long in Chinese that she very well captures his style. I’d love to read the sequel to The Eleventh Son, as this volume ends abruptly, and right when the characters start to become interesting again.

Of all the wuxia that I have read (admittedly not a lot) this is easily the most personal and the most uniquely expressed vision of the martial world. And that curries a lot of favor, in spite of my misgivings. I devoured it in two sittings.

Blades from the Willows by Huanzhulouzhu

I write a lot of reviews for Chinese, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese wuxia movies, but the wuxia tradition actually began as literature sorely underrepresented in translation. Even after the financial success of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Wang Dulu’s "Iron Crane pentology" languished in obscurity as Simon and Schuster sat on the license (the books remain untranslated more than ten years after the fact). It seems the only modern Chinese author of heroic tales of martial arts and adventure to receive due attention from English speakers is Jin Yong, and those who want to plumb the depths of the genre must do without or find fan translations over at wuxiasociety.org, wuxiapedia.com, and spcnet.tv.

Some count classical novels like The Water Margin, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants as examples of wuxia, and these at least have readily available English translations. But they hardly count in my book, as the term “wuxia” came into the Chinese lexicon only recently, through unusual circumstances as recounted by Stephen Teo in his book on the history of the cinematic portion of the genre, Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. I want to read the genres earliest exponents from the early Republican period, written by authors who knew that their tales were “wuxia,” rather than books grand-fathered under the label. And only one such example exists for the enjoyment of those of us unfortunately illiterate in the Chinese language. Thankfully, it comes from a capable translator and an author whose other works inspired, however loosely, Tsui Hark’s Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain.

Huanzhulouzhu wrote prolifically throughout the 1930’s and 40’s, and Blades from the Willows (Liu Hu Xia Yin) is the first in a long series of interlocking volumes, and thus the first to be translated. It tells the story of three martial artists from a secluded village in the middle of a wilderness, founded by Song dynasty loyalists fleeing from the pursuit of the Mongolians who would eventually form the Yuan dynasty. These three men, Zhao Lin, Zhu Man-Tiger, and Wang Jin, serve missions outside of the village, The Willow Lake haven, usually gathering resources unavailable in the pristine environment of their settlement. On one such mission, they encounter a powerful martial artist dressed in green, who invites them to visit him at the Mountain of Verdant Spots.

When they arrive, they find themselves caught between a battle of poison breathing, flying monsters, and under the care of powerful Daoist scholars who cultivate inner strength in search of immortality. Zhu Man-Tiger, a pernicious man of more-than-healthy libido, also attracts the unwanted attentions of a couple of Miao sorceresses, the nominal friends of the Daoists living on the mountain.

In certain ways, the conflicts between the differing social customs of the Chinese characters and the Miao provide the novel’s actual plot. The Miao women, Moon-Maid and Cunning-Maid, also come from a secluded clan that studies esoteric knowledge -- in their case, the control of vicious, mutant animals that do their often violent biddings. Their clan, the Dragon Clan, expects that when men marry their women, they should retreat to the Dragon Mountain villa to live there forever. Zhu, slightly addled after an encounter with the venomous Emerald Distentor, makes some lewd suggestions to the Miao girls, which they take at face value. They expect that Zhu will make good on his suggestions post-marriage.

Zhu already has a wife, however, as well as a child and an important political position at Willow Lake, and Zhao and Wang want to cultivate the Dao and learn the powerful martial arts and magic of the Wanderer in Green and their other benefactors at the Mountain of Verdant Spots. So they try to escape from the Miao ladies, which leads to a great deal of situational comedy that would seem not out of place in the works of Li Yu.

While the conflict between Cunning-Maid and Moon-Maid and the three adventurers from Willow Lake is the main of the narrative thrust, Blades from the Willows packs so many digressions, so many characters, and so many dangling plot threads that it the reader can only hope to keep up. The amount of content rivals that of any door-stopping, shelf-filling fantasy series out there, typical of fiction written for serial publication.

In fact, Blades from the Willows' greatest problems come from its author’s overly fertile imagination. The situation caused by Zhu with the Miao women would make for a tight, funny narrative by itself, but the Daoists have all sorts of odd interpersonal drama and what seems to be the main villain, the Barbarian Monk in Red, is mentioned in the second chapter but does not figure into the story until the very end of the first volume. All of this never fails to interest, but it also never completely gels. And the protagonists, except for Zhu, seem rather lacking in personality compared to the freaks that surround them.

We see most of the action from Zhao Lin’s perspective, and his character sometimes contradicts itself. When dealing with Moon-Maid, who takes a creepy interest in him and tries to win his affection often and unsuccessfully, the author tells us that Zhao lacks any interest in relations with the opposite sex. But earlier in the novel, Zhao has this amusing exchange with Soaring Cloud, the beautiful young lady who saves Zhao and his companions from the Emerald Distentor:

“Perhaps I could go visit your Willow Lake sometime, do you suppose?”

Zhao Lin’s response was automatic: “Yes indeed!” The girl, seeing that his thoughts were elsewhere, did not press him further.

Aside from the gently humorous narration in this section (shortly after his meeting with Soaring Cloud, Zhao bumbles and accidently drinks a powerful elixir) Zhao’s character never ceases to be impossibly virtuous and heroic, which, particularly in scenes where Moon-Maid throws herself at him, rings very, very false.

Another odd facet of Blades from the Willows is its obsessive detail. Again, its origin as a serial written for newspapers makes itself evident. The first chapter starts out:

A large lake feeds the lower reaches of the coiling river in souther Yunnan Province. One end is enfolded in the plunging gorges of the Grief-at-Toil Mountains, forming fjords fed by mountain streams, and the other drains into the Coiling river far away. In between spreads a wide sheet of water, where endless waves lap over crystal depths. Because of the live current flowing from one end to the other, the lake bed is deep, and the water level steady…

And blah, blah, blah. The second paragraph:

The climate of the region is mild. Amid a perpetual spring, flowers bloom over wide forests and green meadows throughout the year. Blossoming plums, peaches, willows, and cinnamon thrive everywhere about the lake, and among them grow a profusion of rare herbs and wildflowers. During the spring and autumn…

Is when you’ll finish reading the descriptions should you start in winter or summer, respectively. Translator Robert Chard notes in his introduction that the financial interests of both writer and publisher account for the deficiencies in style. He actually planned to make a particularly long digression the second volume in his English translation; I could only thank him, but for it never seeing publication.

But do not mistake my ambivalence about the first chapter as representative of my opinion of the work as a whole. When things actually happen (second chapter) the writing hooks the reader like a flying claw. Fans of classic martial arts movies might not expect mutant beasts like the Linked Culmen or the Emerald Distentor, their appearance in the films imported into the west rare and unusual(War of the Wizards is one of the few dubbed films of this type that comes to mind). But this sort of fiction provided inspiration for the oldest wuxia films, and for the Cantonese language productions also long due for reappraisal and attention from genre fans.

If its status as the only translated work of its genre and vintage were its only point of recommendation, if its relationship to a particular brand of cult cinema were its only distinguishing factor, it would be enough to make it worth reading. But boy is it genuinely fun, filled with bizarre, well-realized characters (not Zhao Lin) and humorous situations.

Sadly, the second volume never saw publication. In fact, I know of no other books from publisher Wellsweep press, with their website perpetually under construction. (Their printing is a bit strange as well, as it includes some ugly digital illustrations packed in an odd place that fits neither the tone nor the structure of the book) Robert Chard deserves no small praise for giving us this enormously enjoyable glimpse into the real beginnings of an underappreciated genre. I’d rather read more Huanzhulouzhu than anything by Robert Jordan or Terry Goodkind. Neither do ersatz-Chinese fictions written by western authors compare to the unfettered imagination contained in this dangling volume.

Although I have to wonder what Chinese word translates to “verdant.” It seems to be a favorite of Chinese authors.

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

I don’t write as much about fiction on this blog as I would like, which is my own fault; I built this blog on reviews of outrageously weird and, very often, poorly made movies. But I like good movies too, and good fiction even more. I review Gene Wolfe’s novels in hopes that people will read my gushing praise and want to read them. But I don’t review books by Nabokov (whom I love, inordinately) and other respectable, "mainstream" authors for a number of reasons, one of them being that enough people, many smarter than I, have already written reams on their work to which little can honestly be added.

A few weeks ago, though, an acquaintance began to discuss his reading habits, which he admitted veer mostly towards “trash” (he reads an obscene amount of Robert Jordan and David Eddings, neither of which I would really call “trash”), but he sometimes reads more serious fiction, like, y'know, Fight Club and Choke. When discussing Flannery O’Connor, he admitted that he found her too depressing to read for pleasure. I asked how then he could read so much Chuck Palahniuk, and his response was along the lines of “because I never get the impression that he really means it.” I resisted the urge to tell him that that was what made Palahniuk trash in comparison to the earnest and unpretentious, if generic fantasists that he enjoys.

Wise Blood was O’Connor’s first novel, obsequiously categorized as “Southern Gothic,” as though the term ever meant anything. Hazel Motes, a recently discharged soldier and the last of a family of preachers boards a train to Taulkinham, where, inspired by blind preacher Asa Hawkes, he preaches the Church without Christ from the hood of a broken down car that seems to continue running on little more than faith. Hazel Motes wants to rid himself of Christ, who haunts him “from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark." He meets an assortment of those characters that only O’Connor could get away with imagining -- the simple but nasty Enoch Emery, whose “wise blood” acts as a sort of warped prophetic (not the Miss Cleo sort of prophetic) mystical impulse, and failed blind street preacher/conman Asa Hawkes and his debauched daughter.

What my friend didn’t grasp, and what I think many no longer have the tools to understand, is how hysterically funny all of the nastiness -- and believe me, O'Connor pulls few punches when describing vile and bizarre behavior -- in Wise Blood really is and was intended to be. O’Connor flexes her satirical wit throughout the novel, though never so thoroughly as when Hawkes’s daughter, Sabbath, writes to an advice columnist: “Dear Mary, I am a bastard and a bastard shall not enter the kingdom of heaven as we all know, but I have this personality that makes boys follow me. Do you think I should neck or not?" The response: "Light necking is acceptable, but I think your real problem is one of adjustment to the modern world. Perhaps you ought to re-examine your religious values to see if they meet your needs in Life."

As one might guess from that exchange, there is an uneasy marriage of theological concern with humor, and O’Connor never relegates religion to subtext. The theme of the novel is intentionally perplexing, and the humor is a major reason why. Motes is a preacher and cannot escape that. When he visits a prostitute who mistakes him for a preacher, he insists that he is not. She responds with “That’s okay. Mama don’t mind if you ain’t no preacher.” Hilarious, yes, but the statement also sets up the horrific battle between Motes’ will and the pervasive notion of predestination that continues to burden Christianity in America.

I find it difficult to picture a Catholic like O’Connor agreeing with John Calvin, and she doesn’t, really. One of the worst misreadings of Wise Blood holds that Motes’ seeks penance out of grace; in reality, Motes resists grace by trying to atone for his sins. Even in his penance, he seeks to escape from the blood of Christ. But there is another thread at the end of the novel, a flickering light of hope from behind his dark eyes, which suggests that grace works through Hazel Motes even if he flees from the invitation it presents him.

It’s a testament to O’Connor’s skill that Wise Blood is rather easy reading, filled with paradox and mystery and bizarre characterization. The grotesque is unpleasantly real, and unlike the fabricated weirdness of many contemporary writers. I'm pretty sure I've been to Taulkinham; in fact, I'm pretty sure I live there. It’s probably the most brutal fable ever told, part of trend in literature that has fallen almost entirely out of practice but for the likes of McCarthy and Wolfe.

Finding Peace with Wolfe

Upon finishing my second reading of Peace, I attempted to envision how I might write a review that encompassed all of the Wolfean brilliance that, I believe, finds its fullest, richest expression in this single volume, in which Alden Dennis Weer recounts his life in overlapping, elliptical narratives. I thought about how I might trace themes of memory and unrequited love and the echoes of allusive imagery that sound throughout history, the occidental canon, the human unconscious, and the Wolfe oeuvre. If it is not completely clear, based on the turgid writing of this opening paragraph or the superficiality of my other reviews of Wolfe’s work, I am entirely unprepared to do so.

I am perfectly prepared to gush about Gene Wolfe, Fantasy/Science Fiction writer of immense nuance and skill, the fascinating interviewee, the prose stylist. I can offer pithy, vapid assertions masquerading as observations, such as: Peace would be on many required Lit Analysis 1101 reading lists had it only been written in Spanish (I am still bitter over all of the Marquez I was forced to read as an undergrad). And while it is tricky business to assume that any character’s words stand in for those of the author, I could pinpoint quite a few from Peace that I might appropriate for myself. (“Mosquitoes are all Baptists anyways.”) And I’m plenty willing to drop scary names with whom Wolfe ought to be mentioned, and to do so in a tone that’s all but combative. Faulkner, Borges, Nabokov, Proust!

But none of this says anything of substance about the author or his remarkable novel. And I’m not sure that anything I write actually could. A synopsis might read something like: Alden Dennis Weer -- child, juice concentrate magnate, old man, treasure hunter, possible murderer, ghost -- ponders the events of his life, written in vignettes, from within a house of seeming infinite rooms modeled after those he lived in throughout his life. And (here comes another of those pithy non-observations) Citizen Kane is about William Randolph Hearst and Moby Dick is about a bunch of guys chasing a whale.

It must be quite obvious that this is not a review in the traditional sense. It is a recommendation. Wolfe is one of those authors whose writing speaks for itself, and doesn’t need me to explain or defend it. But I do want more people to read Wolfe’s books. I badgered at least a couple of friends for months (over a year, in one case) into reading stories or novels that I knew they would like. I don’t know which of my closer friends would like Peace; it’s a mélange of southern gothic elements and Proustian ruminations on the nature of stories and memory set in a bucolic mid-west that’s both eerie and ethereal. Most of my friends (and myself, I admit) tend towards books about dudes who hit dragons, wizards and each other with sharp things.

Neil Gaiman said that his second reading of Peace obliterated his first reading’s interpretations. My second reading was less dramatically different, but I still found myself sitting agape at details that I missed before. It’s like looking at a Norman Rockwell painting while images pop out at you, “Magic Eye” style, of murders and deceptions and other unromantic though terribly human behaviors. Peace is a beautifully written, scary, nuanced, insightful book. And since I have once again devolved into gushing about its author, I will leave this not-a-review here, with a recommendation for those who don’t venture far from mainstream, generic fantasy, and those who judge fantasy only by its mainstream, generic exponents: you really ought to read Peace.

"Scarlet Emeralds" and "Faucets" of a Teenaged Mind

As he mentions in his Ogre Battle 64 review, Lightwing23 and I decided a few months ago to challenge each other to review various things, with an explicit agreement that we would not suggest things solely for the purpose of watching each other rage with the righteous anger of a nerd-Achilles. I reviewed Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce (which I actually liked) and Gamer Grub (which I’m rather iffy about) at his request, while he’s written about Ogre Battle 64 and Disgaea at mine. I know he loves both games, which means he better get ready; I’ma try to make him rage.

He decided to dub his contributions “Filling Goldenpigsy’s Trough,” which I can only hope was not intentionally, uh... homoerotic. I considered naming my own articles on this theme with something about “light wings” and “absorbency,” but that’s really too juvenile, even by the standards at this blog (please don’t be surprised by the fact that I have standards). And I really couldn’t come up with anything that made sense anyways.

Lightwing wanted me to write a review of Brotherhood of the Wolf (Christophe Gans, 2001), one of the movies I probably forced him to watch when we were in school together. When I finally got around to looking for my DVD, I couldn’t find it. It’s not on my shelves and I’m wondering if I lent it to somebody who never bothered giving it back. So in its stead, I will review Jim Theis’s abominable The Eye of Argon, which I actually convinced Lightwing23 to read (he gave me his copy of the Wildside Press edition). Sorry, dude.

The Eye of Argon is 7,000 word novelette originally published (as a joke) by OSFAN, an Ozark area science fiction/fantasy fanzine, in 1970. The author, Jim Theis, wrote it at the ripe age of sixteen, which is all too obvious when reading it. Through a somewhat convoluted series of events, a Xerox of the story made its way among genre authors, editors, and aficionados, who read it out loud at conventions. The goal, as I understand it, is to read as much as one can with a straight face. It sounds mean, but according to Lee Weinstein’s introduction to the print edition, Mr. Theis actually attended the readings. Good sport, that guy.

The Eye of Argon is basically Conan fanfic, only somehow more generic than the progenitor of the swords-and-sorcery genre. Grignr, the protagonist, is a barbarian adventurer chafing against the decadence of society. Sound familiar? The story contains all the requisite elements and sequences: A scene in a tavern in which “The barbarian seated himself upon a stool at the wenches side, exposing his body, naked save for a loin cloth brandishing a long steel broad sword ...” (one wonders how the his loincloth brandished anything, unless one opts for the obvious Freudian interpretation), a scene in which the barbarian is captured and imprisoned, a vicious cult, and a Lovecraftian monster which Grignr battles.

I’m guessing from the jail scene that Theis was very fond of Robert E. Howard’s “The Scarlet Citadel,” a personal favorite of mine as well, because this part of The Eye of Argon reads as though it were written with a copy of Howard’s story right beside it. I think it’s also fair to assume that poor Jim wrote at least a few passages one-handed, if the following indicates anything (Wildside Press kept the grammatical/editing errors intact -- I quote as is):

“’Thou hast need to occupy your time, barbarian’, questioned the female?
‘Only if something worth offering is within my reach.’ Stated Grignr,as his hands crept to embrace the tempting female, who welcomed them with open willingness.
‘From where do you come, barbarian, and by what are you called?’ Gasped the complying wench, as Grignr smothered her lips with the blazing touch of his flaming mouth.
The engrossed titan ignored the queries of the inquisitive female, pulling her towards him and crushing her sagging nipples to his yearning chest. Without struggle she gave in, winding her soft arms around the harshly bronzedhide of Grignr corded shoulder blades, as his calloused hands caressed her firm protruding busts.
‘You make love well wench,’ Admitted Grignr...”

One can also assume from this passage that Jim Theis had not yet experienced the joy of touching a woman (though he clearly fantasized about it).

Detailing every laughable passage in The Eye of Argon would actually reproduce the story in its entirety, especially the latter chapters -- and half chapters, this being the only published work I’ve ever encountered that denominated chapters 3 1/2 and 7 1/2 -- in which the prose becomes so dense with nonsensical adjectives and laborious description that I found it impossible to understand unless read out loud (preferably in a funny voice). It is best, for sake of brevity, to merely isolate some of the funniest examples of language butchery.

“He dickered with the notion...”

“Glaring directly down towards her was the stoney, cycloptic face of the bloated diety. Gaping from its single obling socket was scintillating, many fauceted scarlet emerald ...”

"’What are you called by female?’
"’Carthena, daughter of Minkardos, Duke of Barwego, whose lands border along the northwestern fringes of Gorzom. I was paid as homage to Agaphim upon his thirty-eighth year,’ husked the femme!”

"’Your sirenity, resplendent in noble grandeur, we have brought this yokel before you (the soldier gestured toward Grignr) for the redress or your all knowing wisdon in judgement regarding his fate.’"

“The slut should have picked his qurray more carefully.”

And so on. Twain wrote of Fenimoore Cooper that he broke 114 of the 115 major literary rules, as well as several minor ones. Among the lesser, Cooper failed “Use the right word, not its second cousin.” As seen from the above passages, Theis uses the wrong word’s second cousin incorrectly.

When Pilgrim, Lightwing23 (and Mrs. Lighwing23), RockManXZ24 and I used to hang out together, we had a great time of reading Tara Gilesbie’s infamous Harry Potter fanfic, “My Immortal,” out loud, usually headed up by yours truly. The Eye of Argon is actually funnier, if only because its author is so completely earnest, rather than a possible (though amazingly thorough) internet prank. It might be a horrendous assault on the English language brimming with teenage hormones and wish fulfillment and a blatant pastiche of narrative devices and characterization from the old guard, but The Eye of Argon at least flows from beginning to middle to end -- one mark out of 115. I guess that puts Theis over Gilesbie and on the same level as Cooper.

The Devil Wives of Li Fong by E. Hoffman Price

It is almost always a pleasure to read a novel by a fellow Sinophile, particularly one as peculiar as E. Hoffman Price, a contemporary of pulp staples like Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft and C. L. Moore. One might uncharitably describe his fiction from that era as racist due to his trading in stereotypes common to the time in which he wrote (much has already been made of Howard and Lovecraft’s portrayals of non-whites as dangerous “others”). Yet, his bio, printed at the end of the 1979 paperback for The Devil Wives of Li Fong tells us Price received the title of “Tao Fa” from the “Venerable Yen Pei of Singapore,” the name by which he was known in San Francisco’s Chinatown where he worked as a gourmet who specialized in Chinese dishes, specifically shark fin soup and tea smoked duck.

Also peculiar is that The Devil Wives of Li Fong is a retelling of the Madame White Snake legend, also the basis for Tsui Hark’s 1993 film, Green Snake, which is one of my favorite movies. Price changes certain elements of the original tale -- the names have all been changed, for example -- but the basics are the same. A failed scholar meets two immensely desirable women, who happen to be snake spirits attempting to take a short-cut on the wheel of life, whom he takes as his wives. Buddhist monks and Taoist priests, not trusting spirits who attempt humanness without the benefit of reincarnation, attempt to tear them apart.

Price, clearly proud of his studies in East Asian culture, somehow pulls off the tricky business of writing a light read brimming with idiomatic dialogue and descriptions of Chinese magical and religious practices that thankfully fall just short of laborious. And the shocking part, if one were to judge the book by its tawdry cover, is how accurately it renders Chinese idioms, magical practices and religious beliefs from that period. It’s among the best examples of a fantasy that actually manages an authenticity of sorts, in the sense that it grounds its fantasy in Song dynasty China rather than a hodge-podge pan-Asian fantasy world where discrepancies can be dismissed as intentional anachronism. (It doesn’t hurt that Price is adapting a legend set in historical China) Even more unusual: actual historical events, like the conflict of Taoists and Buddhists in the imperial court, figure into the plot.

Aside from Price’s meticulously rendered setting, The Devil Wives of Li Fong is really a fantastic, light summer read. The dialogue, even when heavy with philosophical and religious underpinnings, is frequently hilarious, displaying a level of muted passive-aggressiveness not typically seen in the genre outside of, for example, Jack Vance’s work. The characters are endearing, perhaps even more so given how tremendously un-politically correct their situation is (Sworn sisters/Snake Women Mei Ling and Meilan share Li Fong as a lover). Price also writes one of the least embarrassing sex scenes I’ve read in a paperback with embarrassing cover art.

There are flaws, though I would rather not dwell on them, as I consider them nearly inconsequential. Instead, I’ll note that there is some unusual thematic weight to The Devil Wives of Li Fong. One of the interesting things about the various adaptations of the Madame White Snake story is how often they treat themes of identity. Identity consistently plays a part in Price’s narrative, the most obvious instance being Mei Ling and Meilan’s attempts to bypass reincarnation and simply become human. They seek to achieve humanity by taking on its form and fulfilling the duties of human women (again, Price is either oblivious to or unconcerned with being politically correct). But Li Fong also chooses a new self. In different instances he wears the role of a learned healer rather than an absconding senior apprentice, of a learned man rather than a failed scholar.

By performing these roles, Li Fong comes to fit them. By acting as humans, Mei Ling and Meilan hope to live themselves into that reality. There is constant conflict between what these characters are by nature and birthright and what they are by inclination, or circumstance, or choice -- a theme that one might think fitting for the decorated American soldier, Edgar Hoffman Trooper Price, a pulp writer who became the dharma Tao Fa, known amongst people with whom he had no real relation besides that he chose to relate to them.

Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson is one of those giants in the SF/F field whose work I have not sampled at length and did not really intend to until I was told that this was an influence on Gene Wolfe’s Wizard Knight series. Three Hearts and Three Lions was actually more of an influence on Gary Gygax and “Dungeons and Dragons” than Wolfe. But it isn’t just an inspiration for Gygax; Anderson also inspired the law vs. chaos themes in Michael Moorecock’s Eternal Champion stories. Three Hearts and Three Lions was first published in serialized form in 1953, making it officially fantasy before the Rings.

It is also a prime example of fantasy as wish-fulfillment. The hero, Holger Carlson, goes to his native Denmark to fight the Nazis during WWII after a successful career as an engineer in the United States, where he also proves himself a great football player who could have his pick of the local women were he not so shy. During a botched mission to transport a British spy out of Denmark, Holger is knocked unconscious, finding himself no longer in the midst of battle upon awakening, but lying naked in a forest with a powerful steed and knightly gear specially fitted for his robust physique awaiting him. Taking what he fears are not his own possessions, Holger sets off to find his way back home, finding himself in unusually good command of medieval arms and making friends with magical creatures, like Hugi, a well-humored dwarf who speaks in questionable Scottish brogue, and Alianora, a pretty young girl who can magically transmogriphy into a swan and speaks in a yet more questionable Scottish brogue.

If one guesses that Hoger will become a hero of renown -- that he will kill powerful foes and outwit monsters and have some really awesome sex -- he would be mostly correct. Holger receives special dispensation, one assumes, from God, although he is not the only character so blessed. He is both an ideal paladin and an engineer, divining the laws that govern the seeming magic of the world in which he finds himself as well as utilizing his knowledge of physics for practical means against a pursuing dragon and a seductive nixie. He is every bit the everyman hero, except that women throw themselves at him. Alianora, the spunky, cute young girl who turns into a swan, fights over his affections with prim, mature, curvaceous Morgan La Fey. So, yeah: wish fulfillment at its most 1950’s.

Only, it isn’t just about male wish-fulfillment. I get the impression that Anderson is too knowing to write anything so blunt. In fact, much of Holger’s internal narration is rather pointed. When Alianora, whose tiny, feathered dress is what allows her to morph into a swan, seems to warm up to a fellow traveler after he recites some corny poetry and compliments her beauty, Holger storms off to have a hissy fit. “Doesn’t that hillbilly swan wench know what she’s doing to me, parading around half naked? Satan take all women, anyway. They’ve only got exactly one purpose in this world.” I’ve done this. Admit it, guys, we’ve all done this. Only we’re lucky in that water sprites are not then given the opportunity to eat our livers as we drown.

And there is the other part of what makes Three Hearts and Three Lions more than much of what it inspired. The world created by Anderson is a recreation of that described by the medieval romances, a worldview in which the medieval writers unquestionably believed. Christianity exists, juxtaposed to the wild realm of Faerie, to provide law to a world that would otherwise fall into entropy, spurred by the whims of magical creatures for whom such a world would be tolerable, if not enjoyable to live in indefinitely. Anderson does not seek to show chaos as wholly savage, evil, or meretricious. Chaos in Three Hearts and Three Lions defines itself by the modern thaumaturgist’s governing principle, “do what thou wilt,” and it is in this sense that Anderson sees chaos in the regimented, fetishistic organization of the Third Reich, which ignores all reasonable morality and ethics in pursuit of its goals. “Kant be not proud,” and all, but there are some things that simply ain’t right.

Three Hearts and Three Lions is not vicarious ego wank, per se. In fact, Anderson surely intended what Tolkien and Wolfe intended with their fantasies: a challenge to his readers to see themselves as an heir to Western civilization, a defender of law against a world where nobody questions that might makes right. The reader should see Holger as an analogue for him or herself, but in no way that resembles narcissistic escapism.

Anderson is also a lovely writer. Broad characterization and quick pacing make for a fast read; Anderson’s world builds itself in the margins of description and dialogue rather than in large bulks of text. There are certainly imaginative sequences, particularly a fight against a regenerating troll which will be familiar to D&D fans. Three Hearts and Three Lions is never less than humorous, warm, and good natured. If certain fantasy authors had as much wit and imagination as Poul Anderson, the genre would be far less embarrassing and comprised of much shorter books.

I think I’m going to adopt “big women have no business acting kittenish” into my cache of quotable locutions.

Parsival or a Knight's Tale by Richard Monaco

I don’t know whether it is fair to say Parsival or a Knight’s Tale is Richard Monaco’s best known work or not. Quite unlike authors like Michael Moorecock or Gene Wolfe, introduced to me by fellow nerds, I picked up Monaco on an aimless trip to Half Priced Books. The cover art caught my eye and the idea of Parsival as modern fantasy in modern prose sounded amusing. But Parsival or a Knight’s Tale is not a modern fantasy novel in the post-Tolkien sense of the term.

Parsival is a less known figure in Arthurian legend, usually the subject of literary works not studied in school (unless you’re taking a class in Arthurian literature) and not prominently featured in mainstream films. In the Medieval telling, Parsival is an innocent of such purity that he sets eyes on the grail but is too naïve to inquire after it. His innocence is something that can exist in the world of chivalry according to the romances. Monaco writes Parsival from what John Clute calls a “disenchanted, modern perspective” (The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, 653) in which irony and cynicism obliterate innocence.

Parsival or a Knight’s Tale starts with an achingly poetic description of the Red Knight’s attack on a castle before setting into the narrative of Parsival, the prince whose mother shields him from the world to such a degree that when he kills a fish, he is mystified at its death. Parsival’s naivety, his growing physical strength and a chance encounter with Knights cause his mother to send him out to become a knight of Camelot, and broken-hearted by his leaving, she gives up, dying upright on her throne, unmoved since the moment he left. Two of her subjects, Broaditch and Waleis go to fetch him back. His mother needs to be buried, and he is technically a king. These characters are one of Monaco’s injections to the story.

The narrative follows the story of Parsival as laid out by Wolfram Von Eschenbach and Chretien de Troyes, filtered through the author’s disillusioned, although often lyrical prose. Broaditch’s cynicism, Gawain’s opportunism and Waleis’ whining make these characters the most relatable to the contemporary audience, which might have been an unforeseen consequence of updating the telling of this story. Parsival, ostensibly the protagonist and the hero, is very difficult to understand in his innocence. In fact, the episode with Jeschute is utterly revolting in spite of the fact that Parsival does not understand the relatively difficult concept of interpersonal relations, especially so given Monaco’s writing of the scene. It is only after he loses his innocence, when he has experienced violence and women that Parsival becomes a character that in any way resembles human beings as we know them.

But Parsival’s innocence does not mollify the wrongness of his actions. There is a deeply set irony to Monaco’s world that isn’t always funny. Innocence causes Parsival to do some very, very wrong things, and his disillusionment causes more pain and death still. Parsival or a Knight’s Tale is a story in which the protagonist is basically an accidental rapist.

But underneath the pessimism is a grail quest -- a quest for grace and mercy. It seems to this reader that Richard Monaco did not update the Arthurian myths themselves; he merely restated them with the word “fuck” inserted countless times in the text. The most basic story of Parsival is of an innocent whose purity leads him to the Grail but inadvertently away from it, and from a life of embittered worldliness seeks to find his way back again. Readers observant of history will note that the world described by Monaco is one of anachronism not unlike that of the medieval poets who wrote of Arthur, Perceval, and Camelot. Those same readers might also notice instances of structured alliteration in passages that resemble prosody in all but format. Monaco might have used modern vocabulary -- and his cynicism is clearly a product of the 20th century -- but his story is very much a traditional Arthurian narrative.

And so it pains me to say that I just didn’t like it all that much. The novel has an infuriating quality of pulling the reader in only to bore him or her. Scant pages after a thrilling description of the Fisher King from Parsival’s memory, the author plops a dull proleptic passage of a character telling the story of Parsival telling the story to Gawain. Monaco employs this trick often enough that it calls attention to itself. Also, while poetry is clearly among the author’s gifts, he employs it to a point that it verges on needlessly expository.

Parsival or a Knight’s Tale frustrated more than it enthralled me, but those moments that captured my attention did so completely. I already own the sequel, The Grail War, which I purchased after reading a thrilling sequence in which Broaditch has a revelatory experience in a slave mine. Shortly after, I was bored with Monaco’s prose again. I will read The Grail War, because in theory, Monaco wrote something that could not possibly be more in line with my interests. I fear it will turn out similarly.

The Sorcerer's House by Gene Wolfe

Do I really need to tell you that I liked The Sorcerer’s House? Probably I should mention that I like it better than An Evil Guest, but that might send the wrong message. I like An Evil Guest, too; I just like Mr. Wolfe’s new novel better. I think it was around the point in An Evil Guest when Cassie headed off to the South Seas that I came to a bifold conclusion. Firstly, I don’t really want to read Gene Wolfe just to guess at what he’s hiding in the margins of his narrative. Secondly, I love guessing at what’s going on in the margins of his narratives. These statements imply no paradox (at least that’s not the intent); I mean that I want to enjoy reading Wolfe’s novels as much as figuring them out.

As it usually does, a plot synopsis -- ex-con Baxter Dunn squats in a haunted house and mysteriously receives the deed to the property -- reduces the content to banality. What the reader should expect coming into The Sorcerer’s House is what he or she ought to expect from Gene Wolfe: a mash-up of myth and convention seen through the eyes of an unreliable narrator. Wolfe utilizes an epistolary format which was once a popular novelistic form, probably most familiar to contemporary readers from The Screwtape Letters. This plays to the author’s strength with unreliable first person accounts. Most of the letters (and hence the narrative) comes from Bax to his brother or his brother’s wife. As in actual letters, Bax summarizes and explains and writes in anecdotes, making it a quick read as well.

Of course, summary and quick pacing probably make some of the narrative hard to digest (in fact, the characters who receive Bax’s letters write back to tell him so). People who aren’t already familiar or fans of Wolfe will probably bristle at how easy Bax reports things like finding himself with a talking pet fox or how his butler’s dog calls his cell phone to report intruders. Personally, I think that I would’ve found this funny even had I not been familiar with the Wolfe oeuvre. In fact, much of this book strikes me as subtly humorous. At one point, Bax writes a letter to his brother, who has been incarcerated, hesitating to describe the dinner he enjoys because he remembers the awfulness of prison food. He then spends the next two pages talking about his amazing meal.

All of Wolfe’s work operates on more than one level. Part of what makes him challenging is that even the literal parts of the story can be mystifying. There’s probably a half dozen theories about what’s going on in the time between The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator, and probably half of those are actually compelling. But Wolfe’s novels also operate on tropological and anagogical levels. This is as true with The Sorcerer’s House as it is for his other novels, in spite of the relatively easy literal narrative. I almost fear that I like this novel because those levels of interpretation seem so much easier to arrive at than they did in Wolfe’s previous.

There are things that might be considered flaws (the twist ending was telegraphed) but they don’t really detract from the fun. I think that’s the best way to describe The Sorcerer’s House, but then, I’m the sort of person who notices that Winker is a fox-spirit, a kitsune, and that fox spirits are frequently benefactors or predators of the down-on-his-luck scholar in Chinese (at least more so than Japanese) literature. Wolfe knows this; Baxter Dunn has two PhDs. That’s the sort of thing that other people don’t notice, or maybe roll their eyes at. It just makes me go, “Ohhhhh, Gene, you literary rascal.”

An Evil Guest by Gene Wolfe

I’m not impartial when it comes to Gene Wolfe. He’s my favorite author, and I admit this. I’m one of those people who really like Castleview, about which I’d heard little but bad things. Even so, what seemed like an overwhelmingly negative reaction to An Evil Guest concerned me enough that I put off reading it until somebody eventually gave it to me as a gift. So I start reading it, expecting a 1920’s pulp pastiche, which is what everybody said it was, while finding something that’s treading the line between that and a parody of itself until the final act which becomes something akin to a men’s magazine adventure story and Lovecraftian horror tale in one. Somehow, it still reads entirely like Gene Wolfe.

The novel opens with The President of the United States of America and his counsel attempting to hire philosophy professor-wizard-private eye-problem solver Gideon Chase to track down Bill Reis, the former emissary to the alien planet Woldercan who is now interfering with United States interests. Chase sorta-agrees to do so for a price. He finds a thirty-something red-headed actress named Cassie Casey and enlists her to help him trap Bill Reis. In return, Chase is to make Cassie into a star, which he does... with magic!

The narrative follows Cassie from this point, as she closes one show and is immediately scouted for a new one, the (one assumes) farcical “Dating the Volcano God.” The producer of this show happens to be Bill Reis, hiding behind the name Wally Rosenquist. He immediately tries to take up with Cassie, who remains in limited contact with Gideon Chase who has also fallen in love with her. In spite of this, when Reis wants to whisk Cassie off to a South Seas island to rule as a queen, Chase advises that she should probably go. Chase is a wizard, but, you see, Reis might be too. He’s certainly scary and creepy as shit, according to Gideon Chase and the United States government. And he can make gold out of base elements and disappear at will.

Up to this point, Wolfe has been playing off the style of pulp thrillers. The dialogue is plodding, though appropriate to his stylistic purpose. There are ethnic stereotypes which fit what Wolfe is going for -- a Japanese character says “arso” enough to have made some readers uncomfortable and British dialect comes through as hilarious, nearly incomprehensible “pip pip, cheerio” silliness -- but they are among the elements that raise suspicions of the whole exercise being a self-effacing joke. The setting that seems to be a future trapped in the land of the fictional nineteen-twenties (Lamont Cranston gets a mention as a real person) is actually stranger than the fantastical elements, but not as strange as the number of government agencies working against each other with questionable tactics.

The novel shifts in tone and style when Cassie actually goes to the South Seas Island Reis promises her. The inhabitants of said island also come right out of the big book of potentially offensive stereotypes. The first two acts were a pulp thriller; the finale is an island adventure with Lovecraftian horror. Cthulu makes an appearance in the margins.

All of the government agency backbiting, wizardry, Cthulu gods, and casual misogyny really baffled critics when they reviewed An Evil Guest back in 2008. There are things that annoyed me about how the men in the novel treat Cassie, including the ones that claimed to love her. Both Reis and Chase are awfully condescending towards her. And again, it is part of the whole aesthetic thing, but it’s not like there’s any real set of rules that Wolfe is obligated to follow. After all, I don’t recall Philip Marlowe driving a spaceship car or doing magic.

But I think some critics treated Cassie unfairly. Adam Roberts claimed that “Casey is not a strong woman. She is a conservative's notion of a strong woman…permitted to explore to the very edge of her pedestal but not to step down from it.” No. Cassie is Adam Roberts’s assumption of what Adam Roberts’s idea of a conservative would consider a strong woman. I don’t say that to obfuscate, I say that because I don’t think that Gene Wolfe intended her to be read that way. Idnn in The Wizard Knight is probably closer to his idea of a “strong woman” (if we must use the quotes) or perhaps Ann Schindler from Castleview, to a lesser degree. I don’t think either of those women would let a man tell them that he was planning to destroy them just to make a point but would rather do the nasty with them instead. Cassie isn’t strong. She tries to be brave, and she’s rather charming in a ditzy way. But she’s nobody’s idea of strong.

It’s also not fair to read a pulp pastiche and then criticize it for actually being a fairly accurate pulp pastiche. Wolfe’s colossal reputation as a writer of depth probably skews expectations of An Evil Guest, which seems to lurch between segments that fit into the reader’s expectations and something spectacularly silly. To paraphrase a friend's reaction after my failed attempts to explain the plot to her, it’s difficult to tell in this novel when the author is going to be serious and when he’s just writing stuff for shits and giggles. Either the aesthetic isn’t living up to what Wolfe wants to say, or Wolfe can’t help but write his novels, even the silly ones, as a reflection of the way he apparently sees everything: a mosaic made out of fragmented classical myths, literary conventions, historicity and the broken, inadequate memories of his own characters -- all arranged in a way that evokes the icons of his intense Catholicism.

Wolfe’s novels draw only the negative space of what he’s really describing. It’s a labyrinth that he wants his readers to navigate and then see with benefit of distance, but reading him on a first try is like being lost in a maze. Re-reading helps. But while An Evil Guest was interesting and even fun at times, I can’t say that I want to go back to it any time soon. Part of that is because I can only see the fuzziest of pictures coming out of the way Wolfe has arranged his fragments this time. It’s worth reading for the same reasons as any of his other novels and stories. This one just didn’t work for me.

But I really want a hopper. In fact, I want Gideon Chase’s spaceship-car.

David Gaider Is Made of Cheese -- A Review of Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne

I’d like to share with you the following statement by youtube user hyrulehistorian, posted on Bioware’s youtube page for their new game, Dragon Age: Origins.

“this is legit, im reading the prequel novel right now, and im getting the feeling in my gut that we are seeing the birth of what will become one of the all time great fantasy universes.”

Do I seem hung up on what other people like? If I am, it’s because of statements like that.

As a preface to my review of David Gaider’s Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne, I must say something of my stance on franchise novels. Franchise novels allow the terminally uncreative the pleasure of saying that they read without actually requiring much beyond functional literacy. Rather than asking the reader to stick with the author as he or she tells a story, the tie-in novel asks for the player to read up on a familiar setting, characters, or events out of brand loyalty, or to satisfy the inherently nerdy obsession with (entirely made up) minutia and trivia. The plots cannot interfere with each other, or an excuse must be made for why person x is still around when person x previously left/died/inter-dimensionally relocated in one of the previous novels/games/comic books. These products exist solely to market the video games on which they’re based, with the hope that the video games will hook people into buying the novels to learn more about the setting, and the made up lore, or the political/religious/historical conflicts that might be only obliquely mentioned in the game.

Here’s a quote from Game Informer’s (Issue 175, pg 151) review of Mass Effect, which I think illustrates the mindset of somebody who reads tie-in novels, and likely nothing but tie-in novels:

“[Mass Effect] is an amazing work of fiction, a visual work of art, and a property that is so fully realized and so rich in its backstory that its content could fill countless games, books, and movies. This is the next big franchise for science fiction junkies to latch onto, and a huge step forward for video games.”

What does this tell us, besides that editor Andrew Reiner is a giant rube? Think about the idea that the “backstory” could “fill countless games, books, and movies.” That’s pretty much the greatest virtue that anything could have for the sort of audience that reads Game Informer. Despite all of the breathless superlatives Reiner ascribes to Mass Effect as fiction, the one element that he actually delineates is the milieu and the world-building that accompanies it, because that’s all that matters to him. It’s something for the people he thinks are “science fiction junkies” to escape in and over which they can argue, until the next novel or game comes out and provides a conclusive answer. Essentially, it’s there to answer all the questions, raise just enough new ones to keep its audience interested in the next product, and prevent them from thinking too hard.

Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne fits well in this line of thinking.
It opens with Maric being chased down by the underlings of traitorous banns (apparently, the word bann substitutes for the word baron in David Gaider’s D&D campaign) who just killed his mother, the rightful queen of Ferelden. Maric escapes capture only to find himself in the company of Loghain, whose father leads a large band of outlaws. The outlaws were once good citizens, until the unfair taxes of the newly appointed King Meghren of Orlais forced them to willingly break the law. Maric doesn’t tell them that he is the prince and that his mother, the rebel queen, has died, or that Meghren’s troops will be looking for him. Consequently, the camp of outlaws is raided, and Loghain’s father demands his son help restore Maric to the rebel army. Of course, Loghain’s father dies, giving Loghain a reason to be emo for a while, and Maric a chance to win him over as a friend who will do all of Maric’s dirty work.

Eventually, Loghain manages to put Maric back into contact with the army. Loghain falls in love with Rowan, Maric’s betrothed, while Maric falls in love with an elf named Katriel as they campaign against the Orlaisian usurper. Then the army suffers a major loss, and Maric, Loghain, Katriel and Rowan have to travel through the Deep Roads (i.e. Mines of Moira) where they encounter giant spiders, darkspawn (orcs), and Dwarves who agree to help Maric regain the thrown. But even after making it safely back to the surface, Maric must face treachery and the difficult reality of a king’s duty.

Does it all sound like generic fantasy plot #5? It is generic fantasy plot #5, and Gaider doesn’t do much to make it worth reading. The pacing in the first half janks about due to it being primarily about Maric’s military campaign, and settles into a rote dungeon crawling sequence for much of the final act. But one might forgive the plotting were it not for the characterization, which reeks of cliché. Maric is blonde, handsome, and noble; he loves his subjects and cares for people to a fault. He’s naïve. He’s unsure of himself and incompetent as a strategist. Yet all the women love him, and he inspires hope among every warrior he meets with what Gaider calls “infectious charm,” and I call grating attempts at sophomoric wit, always ready with some flaccid quip when the tone gets too serious. He’s the self-portrait a lot of nerds paint when they’re being dishonest. He’s destined to not suck.

Loghain is an equally lazy stock character, an angsty, brooding fellow with “piercing blue eyes.” Rowan is too. She’s an Amazonian lady-warrior who wants Marric to see her as a woman, not just a warrior. Meghran is a debauched, violent pussy who has no redeeming qualities or even a personality. Severan, his right hand man and sorcerer, is an equally violent, though much more effective pussy, and has no redeeming qualities or even a personality. Dwarves build tunnels and hit things with warhammers. Elves shoot bows, and… uh, are pretty, I guess. Ugh.
Even Gaider’s writing is leaden and expository, frequently juvenile in the worst places and in the worst ways. Among the more embarrassing aspects of the prose is Gaider’s commitment to adverbs, particularly in certain paragraphs where every sentence contains at least one. For example:

“Maric dug into his stew ravenously. Katriel picked at hers gingerly, sipping on some of the broth. The dwarf all but gulped his down greedily, finishing it long before the others were even half done, and then belching loudly. He wiped his beard with the back of his hand.

‘Not as Hungry as you thought?’ he asked, watching their progress.

‘No it’s fine,’ Maric quickly commented…”

That whole passage is just infuriating. It’s like filling out a list: this person does this, this way. This person does this, this way. This person does this, this way, then does this, this way. That’s not to even mention the context of this scene, in which Maric and Katriel have just walked for miles, injured and without much food or water, and Katriel is picking at her food rather than just eating it. It’s terribly lazy writing, acceptable in a first draft but damning in published work from somebody who claims writing as his profession.

Another gem:

“Maric stared at her in disbelief. He wasn’t quite sure she could have said anything else that would have been less surprising. Well perhaps a confession that she was actually made of cheese.”

Frankly, I’d be less than surprised were the admission Mr. Gaider’s.

In defense of Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne, there are moments when it isn’t horrible to read. I liked when Maric confronted the banns who killed his mother. I liked that David Gaider at least tried to develop a theme of the unpleasant, even morally reprehensible things that must be done in order to effectively govern, and the guilt that accompanies them. The battle descriptions plod, but Gaider, in his mercy, spares his readers a similar treatment of sex (and rape). I appreciate that the obligatory dragon scene doesn’t involve telepathic communication.

But these moments are few, and they don’t mitigate flawed nature of the narrative, the writing, and the prose, even the setting. The world feels Tolkeinesque -- Dwarves, elves, etc. -- with some French and some fabricated titles. Knights are called chevaliers, for reasons I don’t really care to ponder, although I suppose that Orlais could be some sort of caricatured French empire. Various characters of high rank have titles like arl (earl), bann (baron?), and Teyrn (I’m flummoxed). Worse, Gaider doesn’t seem familiar enough with Medieval custom and manner to know that “your highness,” “your grace,” “your majesty,” and “my lord” all relate specifically to people of different ranks. The portrayal of magic is right out of a video game. All that’s missing is “Magic Missile!” or maybe “Blizzara!” Is all this nit-picky? I don’t care. It annoyed me.

Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne also speaks the veracity of that old truism, “write what you know.” Let me amend that: If you don’t know anything, don’t write. Or, if you don’t know anything, write for a video game. Or a video game franchise novel.

David Gaider is the lead writer for Bioware’s video game, Dragon Age: Origins, of which I’ve heard good things. I disliked, immensely, the marketing for that game, and I dislike this novel, which is part of said marketing. There are those who excuse this kind of writing as being purely escapist, not worthy of any praise, but also not deserving of a thorough critique. To this, I say that there is a great deal of escapist fantasy that’s actually engaging, intelligent, and well written. Franchise novels, by and large, aren’t. They’re books designed for people who don’t read, to ensure that they won’t read as much as they watch movies, play video games, and buy enormous card collections and rule books.

It isn’t actually that much fun to rip something like Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne on the internet. But such novels developed a huge market, allowing kids and tasteless adults like hyrulehistorian the undue (mostly imagined) honor of being a “reader” -- the fun of feigning literacy on their youtube and facebook profiles. Consider this a referendum on all video game, card game, board game, and Star Wars/Star Trek/whatever novels. When I go to my local book store and there’s no longer a full three rows devoted to this crap, I’ll take this review down, and replace it with my assurances that David Gaider’s probably a swell Canadian fellow IRL.

 
Be sure to read my review of David Gaider's follow up to The Stolen Throne, Dragon Age: The Calling. It sucks too.

Castleview by Gene Wolfe

I don’t know who originally said it, but one professor used to tell my class that you don’t read Gene Wolfe; you reread him.

That’s probably the truest thing that ever came out of that particular professor’s mouth. (For your reference, he described himself as a “Zen Lutheran”) It’s also advice I followed with several of Wolfe’s novels and stories. Castleview probably needs a reread because I’m less sure about what Wolfe is getting at than usual. And it was a pretty quick read... for something written by Gene Wolfe.

The novel is named after its setting, a fictional small Illinois town named Castleview, which is named after its local phenomenon: a castle that appears in the horizon. The inhabitants of Castleview include such ordinary people as the Howards. Tom Howard manages some sort of plant or factory, and is selling the family home to relocate with a better job. We learn of his death in the prologue. His wife, Sally, is a homemaker. His son, Seth, is a starter on the high school football team. His father in law, Robert Roberts, is a car salesman, and getting a bit too old for his job. Recently arriving are Will Shields and Ann Schindler, and their chubby (at least in her own mind) teenage daughter, Mercedes Schindler-Shields. Will bought the car lot, and is Robert’s boss. Ann wants to buy the Howard home. Mercedes likes Seth. Seth at least likes Mercedes enough to make out with her.

But others live in Castleview too, like a giant man who rides an eight legged war horse, and according to legend, kills with his eye. There are unseen trouble-makers who terrorize Lisa and Wrangler, the owners of the girl’s camp Meadow Grass. A strange man named Mr. Fee seems to disappear and reappear at will, and professes a non-Christian religion whose church he would like to build on the Howard family’s property. The long-dead Long Jim consorts with the inhumanly beautiful Viviane Morgan, who might well be a fairy, and hates her brother even more than she loves him. There are sightings of a Sasquatch. And vampires.

Wolfe’s stated purpose for this madness is to show that the contemporary world has not changed so much from the immediate post-antiquity ages as we think, and that the people of what we broadly refer to as the Dark Ages pondered much of what we who consider ourselves sophisticated and urban also find ourselves thinking. He practically slaps the reader with these themes in certain passages, but just because this novel seems more thematically direct than his others doesn’t mean it actually is.

The events of the novel, starting with the appearance of a specter reminiscent of the king of Norse gods, are weird enough. When the illusory castle of the skyline apparently exists, if not as a shared hallucination, than as physical space, what are we as readers supposed to make of it? Is the author telling us that such things as ghosts and fairies actually exist, or that elements of contemporary are analogous to such things? Does Dr. Van Madadh speak for Wolfe in that regard? (Supposing Wolfe speaks vicariously through the mouth of any character is a dangerous move) It gets stranger with Mr. Fee, a character described in bizarre terms and even more bizarre scenarios, who seems to exist solely to cause trouble, both in the narrative and for the reader. What is the book that Mercedes finds with the sword? Preferring the sword, Mercedes forgets the book immediately and so does the narrative. Is Will Shields really the descendant of Arthur?

Nobody ever really clarifies the plans of the fairy people, or what they really hope to accomplish. The appearance of the Green Man at the end of the battle between the citizens of Castleview and the fey folk might be a clue, but if followed to (one of) its more reasonable conclusions, using this moment as a key to understanding the whole narrative makes Wolfe’s purpose for this book far more complicated than it would otherwise be. Castleview contains some of Wolfe’s most direct prose, and it’s still frustratingly obtuse.

But as a fantasy and a horror story, Castleview delivers on its promises. Assuming that you like ghost stories or contemporary fantasy, Castleview is worth reading simply because it’s about as well crafted as such things come. Be aware, though, that in its final chapters, the novel really demands that the reader know what the author knows about its various mythological subjects. Wolfe isn't frustrating because he thinks his reader stupid; he's frustrating because he apparently presumes that we're smart enough to figure him out.

And he's an acquired taste. As far as the Wolfe oeuvre goes, this is probably the deep end of the pool; I admit it is over my head. The Wizard Knight explores similar themes and contains a similar mix of Norse mythology and medieval romance, and is generally considered accessible, even inviting. But for those who fancy themselves Gene Wolfe’s followers, Castleview is worth a read. And a reread too.

Tomoe Gozen by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Every blogger with even a smidgen of taste bashes generic fantasy. It’s one of those things that you can pretty much expect from nerds that are trying much too hard to pretend that they have taste. I don’t want to seem like another in the digital mob of self-consciously snarky voices that decry the same things, in the same manner, for the same reasons. It gets tiresome reading yet another essay about how Christopher Paolini sucks (he does) or how much Christian allegory kills otherwise enjoyable fantasy novels. (I’m not sold on that one)

But it is a shame that some people are in print when I have to hunt to find books written by more deserving authors, and I acknowledge that wholeheartedly. I learned about Jessica Amanda Salmonson from her web page of movie reviews, Weird Wild Realm, which I eventually stumbled upon while looking for information on the Japanese film, The Lefty Fencer, a female version of the venerable one-armed, one-eyed Tange Sazen character. Salmonson won a world fantasy award for a collection titled Amazons, and in her review of the Roger Corman produced sword and sorcery film of the same name, related some anecdotes about talking to Corman on the phone and her personal interaction with Charles Saunders, whose story, “Agwebe’s Sword,” was the basis for that terrible/entertaining movie. Sufficiently amused and intrigued by her web site, I felt certain that I wanted to read one of her novels.

Tomoe Gozen is the first in a trilogy that follows the journeys of Tomoe as she quests to regain her honor after the manipulations of an interloping sorcerer leave her a disfavored hero. This first book collects the story of Tomoe’s fall from favor and a couple tales of her wanderings across the land of Naipon, a fantasy of old Japan, where Japanese gods and monsters exist in an otherwise accurate recreation of feudal Nippon. While each part of the book could work well enough as a stand alone story, they were clearly written with a chronology in mind and there are overarching plot threads regarding Tomoe’s former comrades and the general state of Naipon and the intrigues of its upper castes of nobles and warrior elites.

I was not surprised that I ended up liking Tomoe Gozen, but the loveliness of Salmonson’s writing, which retains a consistently engaging style. With the recent popularity of Asian culture and martial arts, it really seems like these would be ripe for a reissue, or at least that they would have something of a following. Perhaps there’s a fantastic orientalist lesbian fiction book club where these books are highly regarded and discussed, but I haven’t seen any evidence of it. And that’s too bad, as Salmonson’s blend of a credible vision of historical Japan with bakemono, kappa, sea dragons, and magic wielding ninjas seems like the sort of milieu that would appeal to an audience that regularly consumes anime and movies that self-consciously imitate Asian action film techniques, like Kill Bill. Even the most generic fantasy novels have been more commercially successful lately than they probably deserve to be. Why wouldn’t Tomoe Gozen receive any new attention?

There are a few particular things that make Tome Gozen less than appealing to certain readers. Tomoe herself is of ambiguous sexuality, attracted to both men and women; her honor -- the social currency of warriors in a feudal society – motivates her in every situation and decision, rather than the innate moral code or romantic feelings that often drive the protagonists of some popular examples of heroic fantasy. From a prurient author, an honor bound warrior woman who loves women would equate to a formula for fetishistic writing that these days tends to get published on the internet rather than in magazines or story collections -- a blood bath interrupted by pornography. This isn’t that.

That the narrative contains numerous sequences of violent battles, ninja attacks and decapitations -- and that among the characters are at least a few lusty tribades -- is largely incidental. It’s the stylish, dreamy prose that stands out in Salmonson’s fantasy, perfectly capturing both the otherworldliness of the setting while describing some truly strange and bizarre sequences. (In a particularly trippy passage, Tomoe births herself out of her own head, more or less) The characterization is lovely, particularly in the second part, in which a clash between Buddhism and Shintoism perfectly captures the personality of their exponents, poking fun, in a sweet natured way, at the silliness of religious debates between people already convinced of their own beliefs.

All of that quality is precisely what makes Tomoe Gozen not commercial. It’s not prurient enough to capture the attention of thirteen year old boys and people who like awful stuff like Gor. Its sexual content makes it unsuitable as teenage girl empowerment. The lush prose would probably seem too demanding or too obtuse (the term "yoni-light," for example) to those whose only experience with fantastic fiction is video games, novels adapted from video games and R. A. Salvatore. The readers who will appreciate Jessica Salmonson’s writing are probably those most willing to seek it out, a fact comforts that part of me that finds it a great injustice that she doesn’t seem to receive the attention she deserves. This fantasy is unique, and therefore to be valued.