Sunday Morning Book Thread - 04-28-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading (Untap. Upkeep. Draw.). Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

Disparage no book, for it is also a part of this world.

--Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav

PIC NOTE

I was going to use this picture last week, but then the picture of the One Ring showed up in my Inbox by chance and I could not pass that up. This week's pic is just one of those random pictures of libraries you can find all over the internet. This one stood out to me because there is NO WAY that I could stand having my library look like that. Horizontally arranged books just don't work for me at all. Yes, it's easier to read the spines because you don't have to tilt your head sideways. However, it's difficult to pull books from the bottom of the stack off the shelf and it's equally difficult to return them.

THE PURPOSE OF LORE AND CANON

Carl Benjamin, aka "Sargon of Akkad," went on a tear recently on the importance of lore and canon in preserving carefully crafted worlds, especially those that span multiple media with numerous creators. The people involved in crafting those worlds often rely on the lore and canon in order to keep any additional disruptive elements to a minimum so that the overall storyline is mostly consistent over time. It's a big challenge when you are dealing with a 40-year-old franchise that is based on a tabletop miniature wargame, but also has numerous spin-offs such as novels, video games, board games, at least one movie, and an upcoming television show (that may be stuck in development hell going forward). All of that needs to work together to satisfy the fans. They WANT the creators to be thoughtful, considerate custodians of the intellectual property.

As ace, Critical Drinker, and others have pointed out, the most recent controversy is the inclusion of women in the elite personal guard of the Emperor of Mankind. Up until now, Space Marines have been exclusively MEN. This especially true of the elite-of-the-elite, the Adeptus Custodes. There are units and factions within Warhammer 40K that are dominated by females, but the Space Marines have NEVER been among them. However, according to the recently updated Warhammer 40K Wiki, "The Custodes is an elite cadre of genetically-engineered transhuman male and female warriors who are even more potent in combat than the Adeptus Astartes." [Emphasis added -- PS]

This fundamentally breaks the lore in ways that will cause backwards ripples throughout the canon, as that change now has to be ret-conned into all previous media. Why have female Custodes never been featured in books and storylines before? How are they able to survive the incredibly grueling initiation process that kills most candidates? As this YouTuber points out, there are some changes that can be added to the lore with minimal disruption, but changes that affect the culture and society almost always cause great disruption to the story. Ursula K. Leguin--an early feminist icon in fantasy--wrestled with this idea when she returned to the Earthsea stories after a long hiatus. She ultimately decided that women in Earthsea could NOT be wizards, though there are plenty of women who have magical powers of their own. They just can't be called "wizards" and they cannot fulfill the same role in society. Wizarding was exclusively the domain of men.

Some authors are not all that concerned with their own canon and lore and just write whatever they feel like. H.P. Lovecraft allowed many, many authors to contribute to his Cthulhu Mythos, even when he might not have agreed with some of those changes. For instance, August Derleth added a category of godlike beings that was much more benevolent towards humanity than most of the Mythos, even protecting us at times from the callous disregard of Great Old Ones. Raymond E. Feist doesn't re-read his own books to keep his cosmology and history consistent throughout the Riftwar Saga, leading to odd discrepancies and contradictions from series to series.

\
(*sigh* My TBR pile grew again this week...See below)

LORE BREAKING -- WHEEL OF TIME EXAMPLE

NOTE: You may want to skip down to the comments section if you are not interested in this topic, as I intend to go into excruciating detail of one instance of critical lore breaking...

The following excerpt is the opening monologue of Season 1 Episode 1 of Amazon's Wheel of Time, which was first released in Fall 2021. The show is very loosely based on Robert Jordan's epic fantasy series--to the point where only some of the names are the same. The plot and character arcs have wildly diverged in the television series from those that are presented in the books. I've added emphasis to the statements that are contradictory to the source material. This information is presented to the casual viewers as canon exposition, but it's all a pack of lies and I'll demonstrate why in a moment.

The world is broken. Many, many years ago, men who were born with great power believed they could cage Darkness itself. The arrogance. When they failed, the seas boiled, mountains were swallowed up, cities burned, and the women of the Aes Sedai were left to pick up the pieces. These women remembered one thing above all else...the man who brought the Breaking of the World. And him they named Dragon. Now this man has been born again. We don't know where or to whom. If he was reborn as a girl or a boy. The only thing we know for certain is that this child is coming of age now, and we must find them...before the Dark does. -- Moiraine Damodred

Let's unpack the highlighted portions to examine WHY these statements are incorrect.

Many, many years ago, men who were born with great power believed they could cage Darkness itself

Three thousand years before the events of the main story, the War of Shadow tore the world apart because the Dark One had been freed from his eternal prison. Note that a WOMAN initiated his release, though she had help from others who sought greater power. It was up to a coalition of male and female channelers (magic-users) to attempt to put this evil genie back into the bottle. Unfortunately, only Lews Therin Telamon had a workable plan and could only find male channelers to assist him, as everyone else thought he was mad. So yes, it was MEN that attempted to "cage Darkness," but only because none of the female channelers could be persuaded to assist.

When they failed, the seas boiled, mountains were swallowed up, cities burned, and the women of the Aes Sedai were left to pick up the pieces<

Lews Therin Telamon didn't fail. He and his Hundred Companions (give or take) *succeeded* in sealing the Dark One back in his prison and used potent magical seals to patch over the breach in the Dark One's prison. Unfortunately, because only the male half of the True Source was used, this made the patch weaker than it should have been. The weakening of imperfect seals is the source of the conflict in the current Age. The Dark One was able to exact one last retaliatory strike before he was imprisoned again. The backlash from sealing the Bore tainted the entire male half of the True Source, causing all male channelers to go irrevocably insane. With their great power, they reshaped the world, causing the seas to boil and tearing down mountains over here while erecting even larger mountains over there. (Dragonmount is the site of Lews Therin's death, where he drilled a hole to the center of the planet with the One Power causing an enormous volcano to spew forth from the earth.) It wasn't their fault. Even Lews Therin succumbed to madness, killing everyone in his family--including his beloved wife and children--and earning the appellation "Kinslayer." Because the female channelers had not participated in the attempt to seal the Bore, their half of the True Source was untouched by the Dark One's taint. So yes, they were the only magic users sane enough to rebuild society.

And him they named Dragon

Lews Therin Telamon, the worldwide leader of all of the Aes Sedai (magic users), was already known as the Dragon during the War of Shadow. His banner was a serpentine, Oriental-style dragon on a field of white. Entire armies clashed with the armies of the Shadow under that banner. Because he was the most powerful channeler in the entire world and led the strike on the Dark One's stronghold at Shayol Ghul, his name was remembered well into the following Age, as he saved the world and broke it at the same time.

If he was reborn as a girl or a boy

This right here breaks the lore at a fundamental level. The world of the Wheel of Time is a strictly binary one when it comes to genders. There are men. There are women. Souls only come in those two flavors. Nothing in between. A certain percentage of female souls have the ability to wield the female half of the True Source. A certain percentage of male souls have the ability to wield the male half of the True Source. It *is* possible for a male soul to be implanted in a female body and vice versa, but that takes the intervention of the Dark One and very specific circumstances around one's death in order for that to happen. It becomes a plot point later in the books when the Dark One infiltrates the Aes Sedai with one of his remade Forsaken who can channel the male half of the True Source while wearing a female body (female channelers have a hard time detecting a man's channeling ability). The Dragon--in EVERY Age--is a man and will ALWAYS be a man, because he is the most powerful channeler of either gender in the entire world, in all the Ages that were and all the Ages that will be (time is circular in this series). It's simply not possible for the Dragon to be born as a girl. Period. The Creator would never allow it.

and we must find them...before the Dark does

Note the use of the word "them" in this context. Moiraine is using a gender-neutral pronoun to refer to the "child" in the previous sentence because in THIS bastardized lore, the Dragon can be either gender (contrary to the actual lore). Also note the use of the word "Dark" here. In the books, there is no such thing as "the Dark." Instead, the main antagonist is usually referred to as "the Dark One"--the most common appellation though he has a lot of other colorful names depending on one's culture, ethnicity, and species. If evil is referred to in more general terms, it's usually referred to as "the Shadow" in contrast to "the Light." This is somewhat of an interesting word choice, as a shadow relies on a light source in order to be cast, while darkness is the complete absence of light. It's implied in the story that the Creator (the Light) created the Dark One, and therefore could be the source of "the Shadow." The Creator (i.e., God) is also supposed to have sealed the Dark One in his prison at the beginning up time, and thus is more powerful than the Dark One. By referring to him as "Dark," then that implies equal or greater status with "Light."

As we can see in these examples, the television show just shat all over the source material in favor of its own nonsensical and inconsistent narrative. I counted a minimum of FIVE lore/canon breaks within just one paragraph of text that is spoken in less than two minutes. Even FJB would be hard-pressed to pack that many lies in that much time. The show does NOT get any better from there. And now the showrunners have to somehow find a way to finish their story in maybe one more season if they are lucky. (SPOILER: It will be a complete disaster, rivaling the finale of Game of Thrones in how much it disappoints its audience).

This desire by certain elements to *replace* existing lore instead of creating *new* lore is a direct manifestation of the evil that surrounds us. Both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were adamant that evil cannot create. It can only mutilate, pervert, corrupt, and destroy what the Creator (i.e., God) has made.

Moral of the story: Lore and canon MATTER, people! Violate it at your own risk.

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

Loren D. Estleman's Vamp: A Valentino Mystery is a fun accompaniment to our own MP4's Theda Bara tales. Val is a modern-day L.A. movie palace owner/restorer who, in this outing, in addition to helping a friend restore a drive-in, is also trying to save a long-lost print of the 1917 epic Cleopatra.

It has a ton of great one-liners: "L.A. has no landmarks, only placeholders for the next Tim Horton's."

Posted by: All Hail Eris at April 21, 2024 09:17 AM (3e3hy)

Comment: If you want a good snapshot of what life was like in Hollywood over a hundred years ago, Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing's Theda Bara stories are an excellent example. Interesting characters, lively dialog, and just nice slice-of-life prose to make you feel immersed in that time. Sounds like Estelman's story takes a similar approach, but uses a modern setting in addition to the older Hollywood.

A cousin gifted me with Athenry by Cahal Dunne, mainly because he met the author at a pub in Pittsburgh, but also because the novel is well written and tells the true story behind the Great Famine. The story is an homage to a song called "The Fields of Athenry," which tells the tale of a young Irishman who is sentenced to the Australian penal colony for stealing a bag of grain to feed his starving family. Set in 1840s Ireland, the novel instructs the reader on the English penal code that enforced the English conquest of Ireland. Catholics were prohibited from practicing their religion, owning or leasing property, entering a profession, owning weapons, voting, living in a town, all in an attempt to render the Irish to the level of slaves. The story is gripping and the level of brutality of the English toward the Irish was stunning to me. (My knowledge of Irish history is not detailed.) The odyssey of Liam O'Donoghue as told in the novel is entertaining and I found it difficult to put the book down. Morality trumps inhumanity, and the love of family sustains Liam through his travails. The book has haunted me from the first page and I want to read it again later.

Posted by: Legally Sufficient at April 21, 2024 09:49 AM (U3L4U)

Comment: "The Fields of Athenry" (song) was written in 1979 by Pete St. John and recorded by Danny Doyle. It seemed to capture the spirit of Ireland at the time remaining on the Irish charts for 72 weeks, though never reaching #1. Numerous artists have covered this song over the decades since, such as The Dubliners, The Dropkick Murphys, and Michael freakin' Jackson. I listened to a few of the covers on iTunes, but I think I like the Dropkick Murphys the best. It has a nice tempo to it compared to most.

Since I'm watching Streets of Laredo, the six-hour miniseries based on that novel by Larry McMurtry, I picked up the book at the library to re-read. Since McMurtry co-wrote the teleplay, it follows the novel very closely, down to individual lines of dialogue. On this one I'm not noticing his quirk of shifting viewpoint from one character to another in the same scene, sometimes even in the same paragraph.

What LMcM does better than anybody I've read in the Western genre is to create (or use actual historical) villains. Serial killers, not to put too fine a point on it: savage creatures like Blue Duck the Comanche, Mox Mox the "man-burner," Ahumado the vicious Mexican who traps people in pits and cages, and Joey Garza the merciless, blond, blue-eyed Mexican gunman. His heroes are classics like Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, too, but his antagonists are pure evil and very memorable . . . as if Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb, and Francis Dolarhyde were transported to 1870s Texas.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at April 21, 2024 10:18 AM (omVj0)

Comment: It's good that the original author of the work apparently had enough creative control to keep the showrunners in line. We need more of that, I think, as so many adaptations are run off the rails by writers who have no clue what they are doing and deliberately disrespect the source material for their own political ideology. There's also an art to writing a good villain, one that is dangerous and menacing, but not so much that he becomes a caricature or a cartoonish super-villain. Drawing upon real-world examples for inspiration is a great way to add that villainous verisimilitude to your characters.

More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (1000+ Moron-recommended books!)

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

After reviewing some of OregonMuse's old Book Threads, I thought I'd try something a bit different. Instead of just listing WHAT I'm reading, I'll include commentary as well. Unless otherwise specified, you can interpret this as an implied recommendation, though as always your mileage may vary.

Decipher by Stel Pavlou

Write down every conspiracy theory and nutty physics idea you can think of on slips of paper. Then put those slips of paper into a basket. Draw out anywhere between a dozen and a score of those slips of paper. Then craft a story around that. That's a good summary of the plot of Decipher, which is a veritable cornucopia of crazy conspiracy theories all jumbled up and mixed together in an entertaining Michael Crichton-esque tale that draws upon almost every Hollywood global disaster movie ever made. Here is just a sampling of what can be found in Decipher:

• Corrupt corporation seeking to exploit a newly found resource for fun and profit? Check.
• Equally corrupt CEO of said corporation attempting to grab the main phlebotinum in the story for profit? Check.
• Corrupt Vatican suppressing historical documented evidence about the upcoming end of the world? Check.
• Mysterious ruins created by an ancient race all linked together in a global network for an equally mysterious purpose? Check.
• Smart, sassy, sexy female scientist? Check.
• Cynical, world-weary anti-theist linguist who's only mission in life seems to be to disprove Christianity? Check.
• Somewhat optimistic physicist who knows a lot more than he's letting on? (Also directly inspired by Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park--Pavlou even plagiarizes a speech from him) Check.
• Unexplained solar storms that threaten the planet? Check.
• Jewish mysticism confirmed by the existence of golems? Check.
• Buckyball (Carbon-60) technology that can do whatever the plot demands? Check.
• Brink of war between the United States and another major power (in this case, China)? Check.
• The lost city of Atlantis rising again? Check.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. Although it's not a great book by any means (quite a bit of formulaic writing in many places), it does hit all the right notes and somehow makes all of these conspiracy theories work together. Some of them are presented solely through exposition as the characters work out the details of the global apocalyptic threat they face. I won't spoil the ending, but it's quite inventive and creative. You *know* (more or less) how the end of the story will play out, but the final resolution throws in a couple of cool twists that are foreshadowed earlier in the book, but don't quite register until the characters have their "AHA!" moment at the end. Entertaining and fast-paced.

Shadow of the Leviathan Book 1 - The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

In typical Robert Jackson Bennett fashion, he drops you into the middle of a strange and bizarre world with little explanation (at first) about what is going on. Over the course of the first few chapters, he interleaves the strange worldbuilding in with the actual events of the story. In this case, he's created a Holmes and Watson mystery-solving duo, but also drawing upon Nero Wolfe to create the lead investigator. A man has been murdered in the most gruesome manner under seemingly impossible circumstances, with equally inscrutable motives. Figuring out what happened and who administered the fatal blow prove to be relatively simple. Now Ana and Din have determine the real culprit who hired the assassin and the true motives behind the murder. I think I've figured out why I enjoy Robert Jackson Bennett's stories so much. They are very similar to Brandon Sanderson's form of storytelling in many ways (with a lot more profanity). Bennett always has an exciting and satisfying conclusion, as well.

The Abyss Beyond Dreams by Peter F. Hamilton

This novel takes place within Hamilton's future history Commonwealth stories. It starts out a couple of hundred years before the events of the Void Trilogy (even though it was written several years later). Humans attempting to escape the galaxy to found a new extra-galactic colony are instead captured by the Void at the center of the Milky Way, where they have to learn to adapt to the strange new rules within the Void. Mental powers rule here instead of technology. They also have to defend themselves against a violent, shapeshifting race that seeks to dominate and replace the humans in the Void.

Three thousand Void years later, an infiltrator from the Commonwealth must unravel the secrets of the alien Fallers who are attempting to dominate the humans on Bienvenidos, as they may be they key to destroying the Void that threatens to overtake the external galaxy. To do that, he'll need to orchestrate a revolution to overthrow the current power structure.

WHAT I'VE ACQUIRED THIS PAST WEEK:

• The Essential Life by author unknown -- This is a bit of a mystery. This book showed up on my doorstep this week, completely out of the blue. It did include a packing slip/invoice showing that it was sent to me by a man in Michigan unknown to me via eBay. It's quite a lovely book, actually, with a lot of excellent pictures and jam-packed with information about essential oils. Any Morons in Michigan want to 'fess up? I don't mind the gift. It was quite thoughtful.

The library in which I work (but do not work for) had their annual book sale this week. Naturally, I could not resist. I walked away with the following selections for the low, low price of $7 total.

• A Passion for Books: A Book Lover's Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Lore, and Lists on Collecting, Reading, Borrowing, Lending, Caring For, and Appreciating Books edited by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan with a foreword by Ray Bradbury. -- This is exactly what it says on the cover: a book BY bibliophiles FOR bibliophiles.
• The Last American Vampire by Seth Grahame-Smith -- This is the sequel to his novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and follows the adventures of vampire Henry Sturges across the first part of the twentieth century through JFK's assassination.
• Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe -- For $1, why not have a selection of his classic stories? Poe was very influential in both the mystery and horror genres.
• Darwin's Children by Greg Bear -- I've only read a handful of Greg Bear's stories, but I've enjoyed the ones I've read. So I decided to add a few more to my collection. This one features super-advanced children that may be conspiring to eliminate the "old" human race.
• Vitals by Greg Bear -- Ah, the quest for immortality...It seldom works out well.
• Psychlone by Greg Bear -- What happens when radical climate events develop a mind of their own? Or something to that effect...The blurb on the back of this book is quite vague.

PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 04-21-24 (NOTE: Do NOT comment on old threads!)

Disclaimer: No Morons were harmed in the making of this Sunday Morning Book Thread. Don't drink the Amontillado!

posted by Open Blogger at 09:00 AM

| Access Comments