Frustration, Part 5

As a Christian who believes that the life is in the blood and believes in the Power of the Blood of Jesus Christ, I thought it was rather interesting that in the midst of all this written darkness, and believe me it was, would be a pinpoint of light. Here is a character that has been prophesied to be the downfall of evil incarnate who discovers a powerful weapon in his blood. I don’t believe in coincidence. And I don’t believe that Mr. Stackpole even knew what he stumbled upon and then promptly forgot. Because Will never used this new found ability again, nor did he or his comrades explore what other capabilities he might have come back from the brink with.

After this conflict they arrive at Sayce’s country and capital city, and begin to pitch in to resist the Evil Chytrine.

Now remember, the book is skipping all around to multiple characters that I have varying degree’s of care for: from intriguing to pointless. And also remember that, at the heart of the story, there is this crown that has been broken into many pieces.

At Sayce’s city it is discovered that one of the side characters has a piece of the Dragon Crown. I of course know this already as I have been forced to follow along in order to get back to Will. So Will and some of his comrades set out to intercept the side character, which leads to the second of only three scenes in the entire one thousand three hundred pages that I even care about.

Unfortunately, again, Stackpole failed to optimize on it.

In the scene, the rag tag band of men who have assemble around Will have all taken to wearing black masks. All but Crow, who, for his failures twenty-five years earlier, doesn’t feel that he is worthy to wear a mask. Finally, Crow’s formerly estranged brother, another character that was thankfully not granted his own perspective, and Will convince Crow to don the ubiquitous Dread Pirate Roberts mask (sorry, I couldn’t help myself.) Will, who is Crow’s rightful Lord, lays his hand on his shoulder and gives him a new name. Saying something to the effect that Tarrant Hawkings, Crow’s real name, is dead and that Keyden’s Crow is now alive and ennobled.

And then Will should have turned and, viewing the entire band of men that surround him and their various liveries and their unanimous black masks, said, "From this day on, we shall no more be many different soldiers from different countries. But we shall be one people, we shall be known as Keyden’s Raiders!" To which Crow would promptly interject before anyone else could huzzah "No My Lord. We shall be Norrington’s Marauders!" (because that was Will’s last name) to which the entire group would have burst into cacophonous huzzahs. But none of that happened.

And of course, I understand, it’s not my story. I’m just saying.

To make this long story short, so that I can get on to the last book of the three and to the point of my frustration, Will and his group meet up with the above mentioned additional character, another Prince, who is carrying a piece of the desired crown. And at this point a dragon comes onto the scene and begins to eat them for lunch. Literally. The good guys get thinned down, but in the process, one of Will’s companions, a character that was always with Will but I had to be reminded existed, who is an amnesiac, turns out to be a dragon. Apparently taking human form for the first time was so traumatic that it caused him to lose his memory and took getting roasted like an apple by another dragon to wake him from his amnesia. This character was so unnoticed that I had to look back to figure out who it was. "Who? What? What just happened?"

This Companion Dragon beats the bad dragon and the bad guys that have been hounding the good guys and then takes Will and his closest companions, and the piece of the vaunted dragon crown to the hall of the dragons. A very, very, hot, lava filled cave. It is a sort of bazaar, preternatural sauna.

In the dragon’s pad, all of the original companions are reunited. And Will discovers that he has Dragon blood flowing in his veins. For the first time since he was almost killed, he is warm.
The dragon’s hold a congress. And like all good congresses, nothing is decided. Not only is nothing decided, but one of Evil Chytrine’s Lieutenants is given a seat at the table. The individual dragon’s are left to make up their own minds about who they will fight for. While, as a whole, the dragon’s remain neutral.

The companions also learn that the stones set in the dragon crown are actually the true, physical essence of a dragon, their souls if you will. And if they are destroyed, then the dragon that they belong to will also die.

So the bad guy gets one of these dragon true stones and throws the stone into the lava. Or at least attempts too. But Will, without thinking, leaps after it, nimble thief that he is, grabs it and flings it to one of his companions, before promptly bursting into flaming ash.

Again I was scratching my head (my scalp was very tender after this read) because I remembered that the amnesiac dragon, of just a few pages before, while in human form, was encased in lava and that was what "woke him up." But throwing their "true stones" into lava would kill them? Huh? It seems to me that that would be the safest place for them: at the bottom of a lake of lava where no-one could ever get them.

And

Yes, that’s right. Will Norrington, the Scourge of Evil, the Bane of Wickedness Incarnate dies after nine hundred pages of adventuring.

And that is the end of book two. Will dies, leaving his companions dumb struck.

The End.

Or rather "Next book coming soon; I know, I know, Write faster"

To be continued . . .

URGENT! URGENT! URGENT!

Friends! Bloggers! Compatriots! Lend me your eyes!

Today is the return of Earth Hour. We have been admonished, encouraged, Nay I say, Ordered to "Vote Earth" tonight at 8:30 local time, wherever we are, by turning off all of our lights and electrical components for an hour, to reduce the drain upon great Gaia's loving bosom

Stand fast with me my fellow lovers of freedom! My fellow lovers of man and lovers of the mandate to "be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth"!

Draw your swords with me, my brothers, my sisters! Link your shields in mine! Let the spears of righteous truth be set at array! Let us push back against the onslaught of fascist liberal tyranny!

Tonight, at 8 p.m. local time, turn every light you own on. Activate every electric device you posses. And do not stop in your resistance of stupidity until 10 p.m.

In this fashion we shall show the world, the enemy that here, they shall find no sheep, but men! Hold the line, my brothers, my sisters! Like the mighty Spartans and their faithful servants, we too can hold back the millions of public stupidity!

Vote for man! Vote against the promulgators of violence! Vote for the stewardly dominion of the wild and unruly earth!

Frustration, Part 4

So, I ran quickly to said library and plucked the sequel off of the shelf and dove in.
When Dragons Rage was pretty much more of the same.

Stackpole created another character for us to view the world through: the heir of the Evil Chytrine, Isuara, or something like that.

The first third of the book involves the trial of Crow and the contrivances to set him at liberty. And while Stackpole’s solution to this dilemma was not unimaginative, if felt forced. Like an easy out. I felt the solutions where decent, but I couldn’t help but think that there must have been a better, cleaner way. It was like a puzzle worth two dollars being sold for ten cents.

Basically, the afore mentioned Golden Wolf, a princess in her own right, with the help of her friends, fakes a marriage with Crow, a man who held her in his arms when she was a baby. This "marriage" elevates Crow from vassal to noble and therefore warrants him another trial, as he had been tried and convicted in abstention. At this point I scratched my head: "This is a medieval-esque world and they try their accused in abstention?" But that’s beside the point. Now, I don’t particularly have a problem with age gap relationships but this solution, as I said above, felt contrived. It was like Stackpole needed a way to get Crow off the hook quickly and pair his Affirmative Action character up with someone.

During the trial, Will is poisoned by a bad guy; one of Evil Chytrine’s lieutenants. But he is then saved by Evil Chytrine’s heir and a dragon in human form (not Evil Chytrine’s heir). The Heir wasn’t really responsible for her actions nor did she know that Will was her mother’s nemesis, and we don’t find out about the dragon until the end of the book.

So Will comes back from the brink; only different. He finds that he is perpetually cold. And something else. And then the trial comes to an end. And just as Crow is being set at liberty, a new character enters. Only this one is (in hind sight) refreshingly different: we never get to see the world through her eyes. Thank goodness. This new character has come for Will, so that he and his comrades can liberate her country from the Scourge From the North, the Evil Chytrine.

A couple chapters after Stackpole created Isaura I began to see that she and Will would be paired up. Or at least, I thought that they should be. But then entered Sayce, the previously mentioned new character. She was described as a red headed beauty. So Isaura, who Will never really met, did not stand a chance.

So the comrades set off to liberate Sayce’s country. Along the way they encounter the enemy and that something-else-different-about-Will is exposed. It seems that he has developed the incredible ability to make commands that must be obeyed.

In the only moving part of the entire thriteen hundred page story, Sayce is knocked down in a fight and Will, who has been injured and is bleeding all over the place, leaps to her defense. He stands over her unconscious body and shouts to the enemy:

BY MY BLOOD, YOU WILL NOT PASS! Lo and behold, anywhere that Will’s blood has fallen, the enemy cannot get through. So he starts splattering his blood all over the place, effectively, temporarily holding off the assault. Long enough to gather up the fallen damsel and beat a hasty retreat so that his comrades can regroup and set about the annihilation of their enemies.

As a Christian who believes that the life is in the blood and believes in the Power of the Blood of Jesus Christ, I thought it was rather interesting that in the midst of all this written darkness, and believe me it was, would be a pinpoint of light. Here is a character that has been prophesied to be the downfall of evil incarnate who discovers a powerful weapon in his blood. I don’t believe in coincidence. And I don’t believe that Mr. Stackpole even knew what he stumbled upon and then promptly forgot. Because Will never used this new found ability again, nor did he or his comrades explore what other capabilities he might have come back from the brink with.

To be continued . . .

Frustration, Part 3

But it didn't stop there. More characters were created and given their own chapters, their own perspectives. So that Will, the character that had drawn me in, lost even more storytelling time. At the back of my mind, while I am reading about so-and-so, I was wondering "When are we going to get back to the story?" It was like commercials interrupting my favorite show.

Stackpole’s constant shifting of perspective, chapter after chapter, got to the point where I would skip ahead until I found the chapter that picked up where the last one left off. One time it was five or six chapters. Of course I did go back after that current conflict was resolved to my satisfaction.

I have never been the type of person who starts a book by reading the last chapter first. Therefore I did not know that Fortress Draconis was only Book One of Three until about seven-eighths of the way through, when it became obvious that there was no way that Stackpole could wrap everything up satisfactorily.

My philosophy is that there is as much joy in the journey, as in the destination. Sometimes even more. (Like a road-trip with good buddies to a lackluster beach with no reef and flat waves.) Unfortunately, stories are not exactly, dirrectly comparable to real life experiances. That’s why we have them. To satisfy some vicarious desire that we have. The ending of a story can either ruin the journey, or redeem it.

So Will travels through out the realm, slowly maturing as he goes. Rallying together some of the other main characters that I have mentioned above. He meets the Azure Spider and finds out that the thief is nothing to be idolized. He travels, towards the end of the story, to Fortress Draconis, for which the book is named, only to leave it promptly before it gets blown to little bits. And the book ends with Keyden’s Crow, who has become a father figure to Will, being arrested and led away for being a traitor to his home country. A grisly death awaits him. Or does it? We don’t know. Why? Because he left us hanging!

The end.

Or rather, Stackpole saying something like "Next book coming soon; I know, I know, Write faster." Literally.

Thank goodness that this series was published 01-03. Or my current opinion would be even lower. I hate cliffhanger endings in books and movies. Cliffhanger endings are a dishonest, cheap, and unethical means to fleecing "fans." Entertainments that employ this gimmick are created for the sole purpose of making money and should not be patronized, and in fact, are worthy of a silent boycott. I think that cliffhangers belong at the end of chapters to keep you turning and at the end of TV episodes to get you to tune in next week. But not when you have to wait an entire year and then spend seven to twenty-five bucks to get strung along for another two hours or four hundred and fifty pages.

That said, thank goodness for libraries.

So, I ran quickly to said library and plucked the sequel off of the shelf and dove in.
When Dragons Rage was pretty much more of the same.

To be continued . . .

Frustration, Part 2

Continued from Frustration, Part 1

Even as I write, some part of me hesitates in being perfectly frank. Perhaps it's my conscience protesting my participation in "bad literature" or I am embarrased of what my very good friend's mom will think about me. But the truth is, I am not ashamed of having read the story. I actually learned something productive.

My motivation for picking up this particular series stems from a recent interested in the "big name authors." I am curious to see what makes them so popular. And so far, I have been unanimously disappointed with the big name authors.

But we are discussing Stackpole. And specifically the last three books of the DragonCrown War Cycle. (Say that three times fast.) As the title describes, the story is ultimately about a crown that has been created, and subsequently broken into pieces, to control dragons and the quest of the main antagonist to gather the dispersed pieces and reassemble them so that she can burn the world off and free the original adversaries of the dragons. [The dragons are depicted as sentient, extremely long lived (think millennia) creatures. And actually have very little time in the series.]

But I am getting ahead of myself.

The first book [actually the second in the cycle but the first that I read ( I didn't, nor do I plan on reading the first)] opens with the introduction of the main protagonist, Will. A fifteen year old thief who is pulling the biggest heist of his life on the toughest thug in the Dims, the main slum of what could be described as the America of Stackpole's created world. His entire life's ambition is to become the greatest thief ever, better than even the most notorious thief of them all, the Azure Spider.

However, his heist goes South and he is discovered by said thug and subsequently pursued through the slums. Ultimately he is cornered and as the thug is demanding the return of his stolen goods, young Will is rescued by a man and an elf with an odd name. Not what you think. It's Resolute. But is he really rescued? Will is beginning to think not.

Sound interesting? That's why I picked it up and allowed it to suck me in.

It turns out that Keyden's Crow, the man, and Resolute are basically kidnapping young Will. But no worries; Will is the orphaned son of a dead prostitute who has been raised by Fagan. No, that's not the man's name but that is obviously who Stackpole patterned the character after. I don't remember what the name is but he takes in orphans and teaches them to steal, among other things, and when they get too old to control, he "sends them away." And we all know what that means. Though we never actually meet "Fagan" and it is never expressly said, we get the impression that Will is soon to be "sent away" and Will, on some level knows this, as he is planning his big heist to please "Fagan" with his haul.

Again, no worries, because, remember, Will is being kidnapped.

The man and the elf turn out to be battle hardened warriors engaged in a two man campaign against the Evil Northern Empire Aurolan, or something like that, seeking the Chosen, Prophesied One who will defeat the Evil Chytrine. And they think that Will might just be that person.

My biggest disappointment came when several chapters in, Stackpole changed the view of the narrative from that of Will to a, at the time, seemingly secondary character. The previous chapter ended with Will and his kidnappers-lately-turned-mentors escaping into the wilds. The whole point of a chapter ending with a cliff hanger is to keep you hooked, keep you turning pages. I turned the page and discovered, not a gentle fan to keep the fire of my interest alive, but a cold wall of water. I was confronted with the perspective of the Golden Wolf. And I was left wondering, "Who is this woman and why should I care about her?" And the truth is, I never came to care about her. She was this Wonder Woman of a character who issued nonsensical orders and seemed to be created solely for the purpose of fulfilling some affirmative action requirement. Her adoptive sister, who hardly got any time in the entire series, captured my attention much more than the chapters and chapters of the Golden Wolf. I could have cared less if Stackpole had killed her off.

But it didn't stop there. More characters were created and given their own chapters, their own perspectives. So that Will, the character that had drawn me in, lost even more storytelling time. At the back of my mind, while I am reading about so-and-so, I was wondering "When are we going to get back to the story?" It was like commercials interrupting my favorite show.

To be continued . . .

Frustration, Part 1

I am beginning to understand how James Fennimore Cooper and C.S. Lewis and the Inklings felt.

The first is reported to have thrown a book across the room in disgust, exclaiming to his wife that he could write a better novel than the one that he had just finished. She, of course, as all good little wives do, challenged him to do it then. Which he did. And apparently he wasn't wrong, because he became one of the greatest novelists of his time. Perhaps you've heard of The Last of the Mohicans? I read many of his books as a teenager, and loved them, despite the fact that you can skip entire chapters and not miss a thing. He is rather verbose. And loves expounding upon the glories of a single blade of grass.

C.S. Lewis and his associates where disappointed in the lack of modern literature that they could enjoy. So they decided that, if nothing else, they could wright what they liked and pass it around among themselves. One of the funniest stories that I have heard about their meetings was when Tolkein began to read some of his completed work in his deep, monotone voice, another associate said " . . . No! Not more elves!"

What has brought me to this current point of frustration? I'm glad you asked.

I can count on one hand how much Fantasy I have read in twenty-five years, and on two fingers how much High Fantasy. My current disposition comes after 1300 pages of wasted time spent on a Stackpole trilogy.

It started out Innocent enough: with a good cover, and an intriguing title: Fortress Draconis.

Now, I knew Stackpole was a fantasy writer and as a rule, I don't read Fantasy or encourage the reading of Fantasy. Much less High Fantasy. There's that whole, "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" thing. The realization and conviction that I have about witchcraft is that its practice is diametrically apposed to Christ and his teachings.

Never-the-less, I was curious. (I know, I know, "what killed the cat?") So I grabbed the book and began reading right there in the library isle. And it intrigued me. I did not encounter any foul language and as I skimmed through the book I didn't encounter any, shall we say, unbecoming behavior, or sorcery. So I took it home. And the story itself drew me in.

It wasn't long, however, before I encountered what my casual inspection had missed: the demons, and then the witches.

Even as I write, some part of me hesitates in being perfectly frank. Perhaps it's my conscience protesting my participation in "bad literature" or I am embarrassed of what my very good friends mom will think about me. But the truth is, I am not ashamed of having read the story. I actually learned something productive.

to be continued . . .