Skyward Sword in retrospect

I realize I’m four months late, if my goal was a prompt review of Nintendo’s newest installment in the Legend of Zelda series, the Wii-exclusive Skyward Sword.

However, a break between playing and reviewing seemed necessary to me. Whether I gave myself the pause in the hopes that my opinion of said title might moderate with time, or whether I just needed to blot the game out of my mind for a while, I’m not sure I’ll ever know.

You have likely already picked up on the fact that I really didn’t like Skyward Sword.

So, this probably is not the time to mention that I didn’t finish the game.

I did put in 30 hours, which is a solid chunk of any video game. It gives me some reviewing cred, right? Also: I have been a huge fan of the Zelda series since I can remember. Wind Waker and Majora’s Mask both make my Favorite Games Ever list. Believe me when I say I would not hate on a Zelda game unless I thought the game a monstrous betrayal to its franchise.

Okay. I’m getting the vibe that I should, at this point, list five things I liked about the game in a vague sort of attempt to establish that I’m really an objective reviewer. Honest.

Five Wonderful Things about Skyward Sword

A Study Undertaken by Wol

1.      Zelda. She’s actually a person. For, you know, the first hour of the game. But, that’s an improvement on her not being a person at all. Granted, she did way more as Tetra in Wind Waker or, even, as Sheik in Ocarina of Time, but at least the Zelda Team tried to make her a person in Skyward Sword.

Well, yes, so Zelda wasn’t exactly a wonderful thing about Skyward, but what about point 2:

2.      Skyward Sword is cinematic. It has cut scenes. And dream sequences. Link has facial expressions. And romantic feelings. I mean, he still doesn’t have a personality or a voice, because he’s some sort of channel for the gamer’s self. But, who really cares about outmoded storytelling elements like personalities these days?

…And then I got beyond passive aggressive. Maybe I should just start my list of five bad things about Skyward Sword? We all know that’s where my mind is already:

Five God-Awful Things about Skyward Sword

A Study Undertaken by Wol

1.      The Overworld. Hyrule at its best is large and lovely and full of random people, villages, shooting galleries, and potion shops. Skyward Sword has: one town, one pub, one Isle of Songs, 30+ chunks of floating rock, and three Mario-style themed stages. The world is big but devoid of content, linear, and unpeopled. Wind Waker was too sparse already, but Skyward Sword makes it look positively packed with content. We were not amused.

2.      Motion Controls. On any other console besides Wii, sloppy controls are not tolerated. We can all think of that game which had that awkward camera or controller lag, and it simply ruined our experience. Maybe the story was great, or the action was thrilling, but we just couldn’t get immersed in it. Skyward Sword’s controls did not immerse. They just sucked. There’s no nice way to say it.

3.      Length. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and there is certainly such a thing as too much of horrible thing. Let’s talk repetition. I nearly threw my Wiimote against the wall when I had to replay the Imprisoned boss, which had been my least favorite part of the game so far. Let’s talk fetch quests, shall we? … Actually, no. That’s still a little too close. Let’s talk

4.      Graphics. I get that the graphics were supposed to be all oil-painty and artistic, and they looked intriguing on Youtube with 720p, but they just looked muddy and blah in-game. The graphics were just a very unhappy compromise between Twilight Princess and Wind Waker. Art direction should not be about compromises in the first place, anyway. Which, brings us to

5.      The game. As a whole. That can be a thing I didn’t like about Skyward Sword, yes?

*          *          *

I wanted to like Skyward Sword. Really. I pre-ordered it and everything. I hoped Twilight Princess had just been a hiccup in the system and the Zelda Team would deliver something like Wind Waker or Majora’s Mask again. But, no. No.

Let’s just say, I still own Twilight Princess, but I traded Skyward Sword back a week after I bought it.

The grass is greener

I’ve had Joe Abercrombie’s Heroes on my shelf for more than a week now, and yet I’ve not broken page 30.

Believe it or not, I’ve passed over Curnden Craw and Prince Calder for King Edward VII.

I’m not a non-fiction person, I swear. (Goodreads confirms that 86 of the last 99 books I’ve read were fiction.) I don’t even follow half the politics discussed in Roy Hattersley’s The Edwardians.

Admittedly, Hattersley has a bit of an edge (just a little one): He is a former deputy leader of the British Labor Party and former Cabinet minister.

Yet, I’m fascinated by Edwardians. Most of the political fantasy novels I’ve read have a manageable number of politicians, obviously. But, Hattersley doesn’t shy from mentioning the dozens of MPs and ministers and whatever-you-call-them that influenced Edwardian England. I’m intrigued by the seeming triviality of the scandals that blackened King Edward’s name. I’m excited to move beyond the political aristocracy and learn how the middle/lower classes lived and what they did and how they did it.

I picked up Edwardians because I got this new idea for a historical fantasy fiction book. I’ve been typing away at my current project since November and have given myself a June deadline for the manuscript, and my enthusiasm is starting to show wear. I catch myself outlining for the new book, amassing characters and their foibles.

It is all very concerning.

The novel I was writing last summer died prematurely after I started daydreaming about my current project. Ideas For Novels are too alluring. They grow so fast — the first situation or character trait or snatch of dialogue sets off a hundred other ideas. One of my favorite things is that characters and plots feel so free and malleable before I’ve attached them to real prose.

Anyway. I keep on telling myself (and that copy of Heroes on my shelf) that I should get a feel for Edwardian times as soon as possible, if I’m to start this new manuscript in June.

Right?

Illness, Auditions, Girls

Nothing like a bad cold to get you back to the writing-desk.

My prolonged absence from the blogosphere has been due mainly to my impending auditions, and the horrendous amount of practice I need to do before I play before a half-dozen pianist-gods. (No pressure!)

So, during my cold, I was at my sister’s house reading Andre Agassi’s Open, and I find myself wanting to read a fantasy novel in that vein—life story, magic (tennis?) duels, endless dysfunctions, etc. In the meantime, my ambitions of going on a classic-fantasy spree have completely gone out the window—A Wizard of Earthsea still moulders on my dresser, despite my reading the first 10 pages at a friend’s house and enjoying it immensely.

That said, I’d like to move on to how much you can tell about a relationship before it even starts... by sampling Her Books.

The present crisis is over which of the following girls to ask out—the one who suggests C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, or the one who showed me Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle.

To give a little history, I should probably mention my earlier savage crush on a girl who had me read all of the Twilight Saga (I got burned, bad) or the girl who was all into “hardcore” Christian punk rock (we never went anywhere, let alone out) or the very earnest girl who preferred the Brontë sisters to Jane Austen (???). All fine girls, but all of whom would be deeply unhappy in a relationship with a flamboyant mystic-pianist like myself.

So, while I’ve found the first half of Till We Have Faces quite mesmerizing, it looks like a pretty ominous forecast! I’ve never really been into ancient Greek myths, and TWHF is pretty much a Greek myth, however lovely the retelling. I used to read massive amounts of Lewis when I was younger, but I hadn’t read much of his fiction since That Hideous Strength. (That book was quite a ride, but uncomfortably misogynist for me.)

On the other hand, I adored Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle. It was the film I always wanted to see as a kid, but didn’t get the chance because it wasn’t made until I was in my late teens. It tapped into all my flying obsessions and had a pretty sweet steampunk flair. I’ve been informed that it’s one of Miyazaki’s worst films, but that only makes me want to watch everything else.

Well, now I’ve got two more things to do after auditions: watch everything by Miyzaki and ask out that girl.

REVIEW: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

[Fair Warning: I spoil plot points like it’s going out of style.]

The Epic Fantasy Series is not my cup of tea: For instance, I burned out on book four of the Wheel of Time. But, I really liked Brandon Sanderson’s Final Empire and Warbreaker, so I approached the 1001-page Way of Kings—book one of a projected ten-book series—with excitement, fear, and trembling.

Kings starts slowly. Or, more precisely, the book begins with an over-abundance of slop in the main storyline of suicidal but up-and-coming-storm-savior-man Kaladin. Shallan’s narrative—one of three-ish major threads—starts with five to seven reminders that she is exceedingly witty and a description of a city.

But, I settled into the story by page 150. Sure, Kaladin’s life as the lowest of the low in a cutthroat army isn’t enrapturing, and Shallan, while still exceedingly witty, pursues a hopelessly impractical and convoluted plan to save her family house. But, I was enjoying it—and continued to do so for 850 pages.

 

I am not saying I loved Kings.

There is The Glaring Error: that Sanderson says his prose is “utilitarian,” and yet Kings is twice as long as it should be. He indulges in repetitive descriptions of fantasy culture and fashion (Thaylen eyebrows, anyone? Safehand gloves?). His characters have the same conversations, and he trips up perfectly good dialogue with parallel inner-talk and too much tagging. His Cool Magic Fight Scenes are really long. There are only so many ways you can describe death-by-Shardblade.

Still, style and prose play sideshow to the story, right?

Except the story and characters didn’t do it for me either. For example, the characters in Dalinar's storyline felt stock and unsurprising: Dalinar is the good but conscience-stricken warrior who "copes" with society; his nephew, Elhokar, is the young, inept king; Sadeas is the attractive but honey-tongued politician. Kaladin’s flashbacks are (I think) written out to make it believable that Kaladin would give up a Shardblade and Plate (magical super weapons), but Young Kaladin feels flat and unsympathetic, and I still found the Shardblade-give-up unbelievable.

In fact, a lot of Kaladin’s plot bothered me. I liked that his arc is often psychological as he wavers between depression and determination; this felt real, because people in low places are often emotionally unstable. But, I didn’t like that, after 900 pages as an army rat, he has only managed to—

a)      Make some friends.

b)      Learn he has magic.

c)      Save the life of the king’s uncle and get a raise.

This is where I don’t get on with the Epic Fantasy Series. I understand that EFS is about the hero overcoming all obstacles and coming to terms with who he is. But, Kings seems painfully slow and unrewarding, especially because Kaladin is the central-hero-man who saves the world and, therefore, can’t die or lose or quit. True crisis and resolution become tricky, no?

(Though, on the topic of rewarding, Sanderson should receive many, many kudos for getting Dalinar and Navani together by the end of book one. Best Sanderson couple yet. … Moment of silence for Lightsong and Brushweaver.)

I think I would’ve had more patience with the book if it had felt fresh, new.

(This is your cue to say) Wait.

What about the Twenty New Magic Systems? What about Roshar, the well-developed, lobster-infested, spren-spewing world?

And, what about Kaladin, whose personality and character arc are eerily similar to Raodin’s from Elantris. What of Shallan, who is eerily similar to Sarene? What of the Lashings magic, which is Allomantic Pushing and Pulling? What of something as random as Dalinar’s inspiring blue uniform, which is Elend’s inspiring white uniform? The Parshmen are Terrismen. The Almighty is dead; Preservation is dead.

I am profoundly impressed that Sanderson wrote three nearly 1000-page epics in the last two years. And, I appreciate that he wants to get WoT out as fast as possible without losing hold of his own career and books and fans.

But, I believe fans will thank him if he takes time with his art. Lets things simmer before serving. Gets refreshed and refocused between books.

Or, at least, I’ll thank him. I really liked Final Empire. Lightsong is one of my favorite fantasy characters. Please don’t lower the bar, Sanderson.

Escape

I’ve been ruminating on Col Buchanan’s essay on escapism in fantasy, a topic that perennially interests me. I found his ending quotation from J. Double-R Tolkien especially intriguing, as my reading of Tolkien’s “On Fairie-Stories” inspired an opposite sentiment in me.

Or rather, I can’t tell if our sentiments are opposite. I think it’s more like Buchanan and I both went to the same gallery and then wrote home about different exhibits, so to speak.

First, Papa Tolkien shalt speak in his own words, though. From “On Fairie-Stories”:

Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining—regaining of a clear view. … We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness. Of all faces those of our familiars are the ones both most difficult to play fantastic tricks with, and most difficult really to see with fresh attention, perceiving their likeness and unlikeness: that they are faces, and yet unique faces. ...

Mooreeffoc is a fantastic word, but it could be seen written up in every town in this land. It is Coffee-room, viewed from the inside through a glass door, as it was seen by Dickens on a dark London day; and it was used by [G.K.] Chesterton to denote the queerness of things that have become trite, when they are seen suddenly from a new angle. ...

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which ‘Escape’ is now so often used. … But there are also other and more profound “escapisms” that have always appeared in fairy-tale and legend. There are other things more grim and terrible to fly from than the noise, stench, ruthlessness, and extravagance of the internal-combustion engine. There are hunger, thirst, poverty, pain, sorrow, injustice, death. And even when men are not facing hard things such as these, there are ancient limitations from which fairy-stories offer a sort of escape, and old ambitions and desires (touching the very roots of fantasy) to which they offer a kind of satisfaction and consolation.

I have a love-hate relationship with escapism. I get as good a high as the next guy does from losing myself in other worlds, lives, relationships. My particular weakness is historical British mini-series. I may or may not have consumed BBC’s eleven-hour “Brideshead Revisited” three times in rapid succession, and each time I watched the Venetian vacations, the Oxford luncheons, the hunting parties with the same vicarious pleasure.

But, I can’t stand escapism hang-overs. You know, when you stumble into Monday the next morning and wonder where all of the Baroque mansions and cocktail parties went? You wonder why you have to go to work or, in my case, don’t have work. After all, shouldn’t most people be independently wealthy?

And, so, when I read “On Fairie-Stories,” I came away with a decided focus on Recovery. Fantasy would not be its, well, fantastic self without the other worlds, the magic, the exploration. But, I’d like to see a happy marriage of Escapism and Recovery in my own fantasy, at least. I’d love to write fantasy books with spell-binding worlds and characters and plots, but I’d also love to write books that helped readers become clear-eyed and ready to live their own lives better.

Everyone can have their own dreams, right?

REVIEW: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

(Warning: I spoil plot points like it's going out of style.)

I had been avoiding The Hunger Games for quite some time. I’m not a big science fiction reader to begin with, and, oddly enough, the premise wasn’t enticing me. I mean, nationally televised child game shows to the death are awesome and all, but perhaps stomach turning as well, no?

Thus, I dipped a tentative toe into the black pool of Hunger, which promised a myriad of deadly creatures under the serene surface of Katniss Everdeen describing her chipper kid sister, her ugly cat, a goat cheese. I read thirty pages that afternoon, enjoying the setup outlined by the jacket copy: The Hunger Games happen every year; government officials randomly select twenty-four contestants from all over the dystopia; Katniss pledges to participate in the place of her kid sister.

Then Sunday rolled around, and it was all over. I gobbled pages down greedily, sitting on a couch in a heated house in the middle of January, watching Katniss fight for her life and forage for tubers in wantonly cruel environments.

Not that the book is all bloodbath and stony faces. Suzanne Collins develops likeable, compassionate characters with real friendships, and the Hunger Games TV show boils down into more general/relatable hardships: Who can you trust? How can you use what you’ve already got? How can you recognize genuine affection?

Hunger is a well-written book with a fast heart rate and sharp edge. The world-building felt somewhat derivative/contrived, but the book even manages a little romance amid all the blood.

Blood. This is where Hunger bothers me.

The book started out simple and bold. Panem was a thoroughbred dystopia, a mockery of its own name (Bread): Katniss and her neighbors are always near starvation. The Capitol (also simply named) is the distant center of the world where everyone eats bonbons for breakfast and enjoys Science Fiction Technology. The Hunger Games is a nationally enjoyed horror, reminiscent of Roman coliseum fighting.

And, we all know how the Roman Empire ended, don’t we?

But, once Katniss begins the Hunger Games, the dystopia fades behind the urgent question of whether she will suddenly get impaled with a spear or die of dehydration.

Readers have more insight into Katniss’s thinking than the Panem viewers, but the readers’ experience becomes eerily similar to theirs. We’re watching the Games, watching Katniss survive and kill and, yes, mourn the deaths.

And, Collins has become one of the Gamemakers, who keep the Hunger Games entertaining for the citizens of Panem with surprise forest fires and droughts. Collins keeps her readers on the edges of their seats with Close Encounters and brutal killings and mutant hornets whose stings cause hallucinations.

As Katniss is forced to pretend her romantic interest in Peeta for the citizens of Panem, so she pretends the same for us, allowing the violent, science fiction Hunger to get its romantic subplot after all.

I finished Hunger with a mixture of horror and fascination. Panem is obviously some mutant, futuristic America, from which I disassociated myself at first. “Society isn’t that bad, yet. Not during my lifetime.” And yet, Collins proved her point: Everyday readers sit transfixed by the bloody Games.

But, the seeming brilliance of Collins’s meta-narrative or dual-narrative felt belied by Hunger’s subtlety. Collins nowhere points out Hunger’s awkward role as violent entertainment denouncing violent entertainment. More confusingly, the Romantic Subplot dominates the ending: Katniss and Peeta have sort of fallen in love and are just happy to be the victors of the Hunger Games and done with it all.

The book that began with the starving empire Panem with its capitol called Capitol has become muddy and weary. Did Collins mean to lose her focus—emphasize life's complications? Is she just happy to capitalize on this darker side of entertainment?

While my brain tells me Collins must have been conscious of her meta-narrative, I have my doubts as a reader. I saw no clear signs, and promises made at the beginning of Hunger were broken.

(Hunger is the first book in a trilogy, but my perusal of Wikipedia indicates that the next books only muddy the waters more.)

All to say, I’m still not sure what to make of it.

Why am I blogging, again?

Call me odd, but my desire to write fantasy long pre-dated my desire to read fantasy.

Correction: I’m still working on said desire to read fantasy.

It’s not that I don’t like reading. Sure, there are those books like Robinson Crusoe and The Scarlet Letter, which feel like that trip to the dentist when he shoved a needle into the roof of my mouth and scrapped the pulp out of my front tooth.

But, under the right circumstances, I’ll happily spend a Sunday slouched on the sofa, turning pages at the same rate that ADHD-inflicted children flip channels. (The right circs., by the bye, could include Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair or N.K. Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.)

The dampener for me is the Fantasy Books Out There. Most of them just aren’t what I want out of fantasy.

Part of my problem is an ancient bit of history—that I grew up reading and re-reading fantasy stories written by my brother, Renaissance. They are, in retrospect, rough pieces, the narrator often stuttering over his own account of uninteresting events and one-dimensional characters. Renaissance, however, had an uncanny literary optimism, an uncultivated playfulness that reflected a spectrum of possibilities.

The second part of my problem is that I graduated from Renaissance’s stories about the time I started college and sunk my unclenching (werewolf) teeth into a fantasy manuscript written by my sister, Press. Press’s writing is engaging and stylistically popular, although it inevitably suggests her background (master’s degree in English literature) and assumptions (art as exploration of life). Her take on fantasy combined neatly with my somewhat-analytical-but-mostly-whole-hearted adoption of my professors’ professorial ideas about literature.

All of this to say, most fantasy books I’ve read don’t have that playful spark that first drew me to the wide-open horizon of fantasy, neither do most of them have that mark of personal reality or contemplation I’ve come to associate with Great Books like The Sun Also Rises.

Time is a limited thing, so my first solution to this Seeming Problem With Fantasy Books was to read only Great Books and not fantasy.

But, that didn’t stop me from writing fantasy. In fact, nothing has stopped me from writing fantasy and fantasizing about publishing fantasy.

And, the reality—which has finally slapped me in the face—is that I love writing fantasy, and I should know what other fantasy writers are writing. After all, I’ve enjoyed most of the fantasy books I’ve read, even when they aren’t the sort of thing I want to write.

Thus, I have come back to the answer of my titular question.

I am blogging because I want to read a lot of fantasy and because blogs are scary. They have deadlines. Real people read them. I Feel Obliged To Keep Up.

And, of course, I’m blogging because I have Awesome Effete Opinions With Which The World Would Be Better.

I mean, seriously: Haven’t you ever wanted to apply post-colonial criticism to Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings?

…

That’s what I thought.