Tag Archives: Book-Review

A Review of Ravenloft: Heir of Strahd

I was in middle school when I first encountered role playing games. My best friend at the time was into Dungeons and Dragons, and I have fond memories of imagining characters and adventures. The phase didn’t last long…we eventually transitioned into a new RPG, Star Frontiers. I actually went looking for that game a few years ago to find that it had been discontinued a long time before, which was sort of sad. 

To be fair, I spent way more time creating elaborate characters and stories set within the worlds of these RPGs than I ever did playing them. I was just beginning to spread my writing wings, and the luxury of the world-building having been done for me gave great structure to let my imagination run.

The Saturday morning cartoon of Dungeons and Dragons was one of my favorites, because it gave visuals to the world-building that sparked my imagination. The character classes were well illustrated, and let’s be honest…that series was very compelling to an early-teen audience.

That series was also the last time I really paid much attention to Dungeons and Dragons (the tragedy that was the recent film doesn’t count). I’ve seen it pop up in various things that I’ve read, but the online adventures that people play today bear little resemblance to the game I briefly enjoyed so many years ago. I have occasionally picked up a player’s book at the local Barnes & Noble to browse things like character classes, alignments, etc., because it was that structure that I always found fascinating. So, when I was about to take a trip a couple of weeks and was deciding on an audiobook for the flight, I decided spontaneously to choose a Dungeons and Dragons adventure.

Ravenloft: Heir of Strahd is billed as an official D&D adventure, and looked at least somewhat interesting. Out of the gate, we’re introduced to a mis-matched band of adventurers, consisting a barbarian dark elf, a cleric, a wizard, an artificer, and a paladin (my character back in the day was a paladin, I seem to recall), who are thrust into an untenable situation. They must confront hideous monsters in the first chapter, and are forced to somehow find a way to work together in order to survive their plight. This, as I understand it, is a classic Dungeons and Dragons story. I can almost imagine the players sitting around the table as the adventure plays out.

By chapter two, we’ve entered painfully predictable territory. The adventurers go to a castle, which is dark and haunted by monsters, to be the guest of Strahd, a peculiar host who has something evil and foreboding about him that the others can’t quite identify. Even though the reader has immediately deduced that Strahd is a vampire, somehow the adventurers don’t arrive at this conclusion for several chapters, as they work their way through a blatant and unoriginal riff on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Of course, one of the protagonists, Fielle, has fallen victim to Strahd’s charms, and of course she’s going to be turned into a vampire. How anyone can not see this is just a source of frustration rather than a mystery in the process of being solved, and that frustration drags on for chapter after chapter until the reader is nearly exhausted enough to stop reading.

I’m not familiar with how vampires play into the collection of monsters in D&D, but their ability to make someone a sort of half-vampire was a different twist. There are, of course, the familiar tropes: they can’t come in unless they’re invited, etc., that would be familiar to anyone who has ever watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The story progresses through a predictable search by the others for a way to save Fielle, that twists and turns through morbid and macabre tales of stealing corpses and hideous experiments that eventually had me rolling my eyes. Had I not the determination to finish a book I had started, I would have departed around five chapters from the end because I felt I just couldn’t take it any more, but I persevered out of sheer willpower.

In a climactic battle that is cut short on details and smacks of an editor trimming the book down with arbitrary cuts, the group seems to find a way to rescue their comrade, and we seem to have a happy ending. This progresses to where Fielle confronts her abusive parents under the ruse that she is leaving to travel with her friends, only to reveal that she is still, in fact, a vampire, and the final paragraphs are her killing her family.

That’s it. The book ends.

Really?

No redemption, a gratuitous exploration of darkness, and not even an ending to speak of. This is one of the few novels that I’m sorry to have finished, and it tarnishes any fond memory I would have had for Dungeons and Dragons. Needless to say, I don’t recommend that you waste your time reading it, and I’m tempted to not explore any more Dungeons and Dragons stories at all after this. I’m currently in the middle of the comic book adaptation of the Fallbacks. If that’s any better, perhaps I’ll change my mind, but the last page of Heir of Strahd has passed happily from my memory as nothing more than poor judgement in my choice of books, and time poorly spent.

A Review of I, Robot

My copy of I, Robot by Isaac Asimov.
My copy of I, Robot by Isaac Asimov.

Tillich, as part of his thoughts on theology and art, said that artists are the prophets of their day. I think of this sometimes when I read or recall literary works that have proven prescient to our present time. I wonder, even, if we would have made some of the mistakes we’ve made in our recent history were we a culture that is more well-read.

The obvious example that everyone immediately reaches for, of course, is Orwell’s 1984, having provided stark warnings regarding our current age of surveillance capitalism. The examples, though, are not necessarily always dystopian. When writers and creators imagined new worlds such as Star Trek, they inspired a generation of people, some of whom are technical geniuses, to build the fantastic technology that they saw and wanted to experience. Viewed through that lens, its no wonder that humanity has achieved some of the things that we have in the last two decades or so.

This sprang to mind for me recently when one of our kiddos asked me when the first robot was built. I recently read I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, and, while I read it during an insanely busy time in life and have not yet even managed to transfer it to my bookshelf as of when I write this, I found myself thinking about just how well this novel predicted the last few years, in spirit if not in fact. 

What’s interesting about reading Asimov is that you’ll find his popular works have not translated well to the screen. The film adaptation of I, Robot and recent Foundation series are so far removed from the source material as to only share a name. You see, I also grew up watching Star Trek and dreaming about those possibilities, as well as reading Asimov and Henlein. To follow Tillich’s argument, Asimov is particularly prophetic in his predictions among this group. Reading his work, you’ll find he had difficulty imagining some things that are commonplace today, and he certainly got some things wrong. Characters in his novels tend to still read print newspapers, even when space travel is involved, and he imagines a world powered exclusively by nuclear energy. It’s easy to shrug off his work as that of a dreamer, especially if reading a story such as Foundation that covers such a huge swath of time.

I, Robot also covers a significant sweep of history. Asimov imagines the introduction of robots to humanity, and the development of the technology from its nascent, primitive stages into a critical lynchpin of society that humanity eventually cannot imagine functioning without. My initial inclination as I read this was to think that we’re currently in these nascent stages. Certainly, robots assemble things in factories, provide surgeons with more precise tooling, and vacuum our floors. Robots performing autonomous tasks still seem a long, long way off as I watch the last device on that list try to navigate my living room, however, and, were that the extent of where we are in Asimov’s imagined history, I think that his assertions would seem laughable.

Only in our very recent memory, though, have we shifted our aspirations to being digital. When Asimov wrote this novel, these amazing technologies were imagined as complex electronics, focusing on the hardware and how the “positronic brains” of the robots could function. Now, we think of what we can achieve with code, and how that code drives the hardware. While the black swan event of the Internet was not in Asimov’s story, the blending of the digital and physical…the software and hardware…was very present, even though he couldn’t really articulate how that would work.

This book, of course, is famous for the Three Laws of Robotics, and much of the novel centers around how robots, becoming sentient, navigate these pre-programmed laws and, ultimately, work around them. As humans make robots responsible for the day-to-day operations of society, the laws, which center around obeying and never harming humans, become more loosely defined as the machines coldly calculate the good of the many over the good of the few.

As we are now at the beginning of the use of artificial intelligence in our daily lives, and are already beginning to offload a disturbing amount of decision making to this opaque and inhuman engine, I realize that we’re seeing what Asimov foresaw in a blurry dream arrive in an abrupt and distinctly sharp focus. Our AI’s are developed by corporations for profit. There is no concept of Asimov’s three laws (honestly, I might feel less reticent about AI if there were), and, if we’ve learned anything about technological advances, it is that they are certain to be weaponized. I, Robot ends on a sinister note, as the creator of much of modern robotics is left wondering if a new leader of the global world order is, in fact, a robot. Imagine a single individual leading the entire world, and our not being able to disprove that this person is actually an AI in an incredibly realistic robotic body. That concept is, or should be, terrifying. 

Another theme that is developed is, can human beings create a life form which can become sentient? If we can, what are the rights of that sentient life form? We are already hearing discussions around this, pondering if AI will have rights. Asimov saw a Frankenstein realized, a thinking, feeling digital creation that could take control of all of us while we tried to simply grasp the extent of what exactly it is that we’ve managed to create.

As we encounter the extinction-level event that is artificial intelligence, I, Robot gives us a startlingly clear portrait..or prediction…of the direction we are traveling, quickly, blindly, and with reckless surrender. While some details differ from what Asimov pictured, the results, I fear, will ultimately be the same.

A Review of “Babel”

A photo of the cover of my copy of Babel by R.F. Kuang.
A photo of my copy of Babel.

Last year, I was looking for a fantasy read. I’m steeped in science fiction most of the time, but I’ve been toying with some fantasy world-building of late, and so I wanted to switch genres for a bit. I first saw Babel in a marketing email from Barnes & Noble and, while I almost always opt out of any and all marketing emails, I’m glad that one specifically escaped my opt-out attention because this novel was a fascinating read.

Part of what made it fascinating is the background of the author. Kuang is a scholar as well as a best-selling novelist, and her writing carries the weight of academic rigor that one might expect with that background. I’ll also admit that I was living vicariously somewhat, because I miss the days of being a student and writing, although none of my published work ever became best-selling.

That’s the sort of the nostalgia that the dark academia subgenre dives into, though…a wish for the simplicity and exercise of the mind that comes with the life of the university student. Books, libraries, close friends and late nights studying or writing papers…these were experiences that I, and many others, ached to reclaim once we graduated and entered this dreadful thing known as the “real world.” Mix in some magic and alternative history, and already one has a compelling world in which to base a novel. That’s only the beginning, though…Kuang gives us so much more in Babel.

Part of what is so engaging in this story is that the academic life that the reader may remember so fondly is critiqued so heavily here. Kuang gives no quarter in her critique of an ivory tower elite refusing to engage in the lives of the rest of the world at a meaningful level. If anything, the real world in which most academics find themselves upon graduation is the more meaningful reality for Kuang, as, in Babel, the academic elites shape that world for their own gain, and at the expense of those who live and work there. Read into this a critique of capitalism if you wish…one easily could…or simply sit with the encapsulating phrase from the book jacket’s summary that “knowledge obeys power,” and you begin to look back and question not only so much of your own education, but also ponder what is happening in the halls of academia today.

What is admirable is that Kuang doesn’t approach this from a condemning viewpoint, or at least not at first (it is fair to say she becomes a bit heavy-handed later). After all, we’re experiencing a higher education through the eyes of students, albeit students who arrived at Oxford through less than conventional means. Our protagonist, Robin Swift, is raised by a mysterious professor after being seemingly rescued from certain death in his homeland of China. As we progress through the first half of the novel, we discover that this rescue does not make him unique, nor did it occur with benevolent intent.

This part of the book moves slowly, perhaps too slowly at times. I’ll confess that I began reading the book in earnest over summer vacation, and ended it just in time for the new year to begin, after putting it down several times in between. This may be seen as a weakness, but its also a symptom of its strength. Kuang delivers not only an engaging fantasy story here, but also an academic treatise on translation as a discipline. This is complete with footnotes throughout the novel, which I’ll admit were a bit jarring to me in a work of fiction, but succeeded as a structural device in returning me to my grad school days of citing sources. The exploration of language here is beyond fascinating, both at a micro-level (I journaled multiple insights as to etymology as I read), but also at a broader, philosophical level. People and cultures are to be experienced through their languages here, and the impossibility of knowing someone deeply without engaging their language is made evident in a way that I had not previously considered.

A through-line of the novel, for good or bad, is violence. Every translation is seen as a betrayal, an act of violence against the original language (and yes, that is a concept that I had to sit with for a while). As the pace picks up dramatically in the last third of the book with Kuang unpacking a thesis of colonialism, our characters ultimately arrive at the conclusion that change to a corrupt power structure can only occur by means of violence. This is not accomplished in a one-dimensional sense. The characters involved in the final struggle wrestle deeply with this idea, and we walk through their thought processes with them in ways that make a reader question themselves, regardless of which side of the debate one might hold. Not every character arrives at the same conclusion, and this is part of what makes Babel a remarkable piece of fiction. Where I fault the novel is in its ending, for it is the final conclusion, and indeed the final act, in which violence is deemed as necessary, and enacted. Initially my reaction is one of deeply held pacifism…this doesn’t solve the problem! my mind screams in protest as the final chapters progress. I think, though, that this reaction is the point. As I’ve unpacked Babel over the subsequent days, I think that the goal is to present a tragic story of people desperate for change who are unable to see any other way. As their gifts of language are discovered to be turned against them, I’m reminded of a quote about the connection between language and conflict:

“War is what happens when language fails.”

– Margaret Atwood

Ultimately, we are meant to grieve at the end of Babel, not celebrate. There is no cause for celebration…a victory for our characters is no victory overall, but rather a loss for everyone. For all of their gifts and knowledge, their languages have failed them, because they were forced to weaponize what was meant to only ever be good.

Dark academia, indeed.

Babel is a heavy read, coming in at around 500 pages. While the pacing is a bit slow in the beginning, this makes way for meticulous world-building that creates a brilliant backdrop for the story. Rarely do I say that a novel is unlike anything I’ve read in the past, but I can truly say this about Babel. While the ending leaves me torn and unsettled (which I believe is the point), I would find it difficult to not recommend this novel. Babel should find a place on your bookshelf.

A Review of “Redshirts”

Image of the cover for Redshirts. Used under fair use for review purposes.
The cover for Redshirts. Used under fair use for review purposes.

The first book by John Scalzi that I read was The President’s Brain is Missing, which was a great novella and, I think, a great introduction to Scalzi’s writing style. His science fiction in quirky, imaginative, and tends to not be the sort of thing to read in a quiet place unless you are really good at keeping yourself from bursting out into laughter. There is a wry and often hysterical sense of humor that’s present in everything I’ve read by Scalzi.

I read that novella back in the Before Times, and I’ve dipped into his work occasionally ever since, most recently his Dispatcher and Lock In series (which are great as audiobooks). I picked up Redshirts at our local library recently because it piqued my interest a bit, although I likely wouldn’t have had it not been for already knowing the author’s work. I’m glad that I did.

Scalzi has a way of exploring some really deep questions about our human condition in his work without the reader actually realizing that he is doing so…philosophy with a backward wave, if you will. This is difficult to describe without reading his work, but when you do, I imagine you’ll have an experience like mine in which this heavy realization hits you hours after you’ve put the book down that your mind has been churning on this really deep concept and you don’t know where it came from. That said, Redshirts is a bit more overt with what it’s trying to say, although the vehicle that it uses for exploration is no less imaginative.

This novel is, at its surface, a deconstruction of Star Trek and other popular sci-fi series, taking its name from from the expendable, nameless characters on Star Trek away missions (always in a red uniform) that have a habit of dying for dramatic effect. In Redshirts, these characters (who are functioning in a remarkably Star Trek-like universe) begin to realize that the fatality rate among their number is exponentially high, while the senior officers always make it out of any near-death experience without issue. They begin to ask why, and hilarity…and philosophy…ensue, as they discover that 20th century Hollywood writers are writing characters that mirror them in scripts for a (you guessed it) popular television program. Whatever happens to their characters, happens to them.

If we peel back a layer of the onion here, I think that one of the things Scalzi is doing in this multiversal sort of adventure is to drag into the light the lack of quality writing in a lot of American television, specifically in science fiction. The fun that is poked at a lot of Hollywood culture is difficult to miss, but it feels good-natured in the sense that someone who has lived in that culture gets to be the one that makes fun of it.

When we peel back another layer, things get heavier, because this novel is fundamentally grappling with fate vs. free will, or, in more theological terms, predestination vs. moral free agency. As our characters begin to plan how to stop these events from taking place (and thus extend their remarkably short lifespans), they also ask questions about whether or not they can stop these events. If one is destined to a certain fate, after all, can that be changed? From a broader perspective, do we have any control at all over our own lives? What if God is simply permitting our deaths…or worse, causing them…in a completely nonsensical way? Is there, in fact, any meaning at all to our lives, or are some of us merely supporting or incidental characters in a cosmic drama?

Something that I particularly appreciated about Redshirts is that, as these questions are asked, our protagonist, Andrew Dahl, who has attended an alien seminary before joining the Universal Union (read: Starfleet), pushes back on the nihilism that is the result of these questions spinning out of control. He responds (my paraphrase) that no coherent belief system has a god that would act in such a manner.

I also appreciate the gift that Scalzi has, and the space that this book makes, for the deeper implications of these sorts of questions. One of the characters has lost his wife in one of these nonsensical deaths, and the grief that we walk through with this character is real and lasting. We also are taken into the other side of that grief, in which every day is suddenly so extremely valuable because we know that love and purpose…perhaps even a Divine purpose?…are pervasive and worth experiencing for however long we are privileged to do so.

I often associate Scalzi’s work with humor and lightness. Redshirts pushes back on that framing of the author. This novel will be particularly entertaining if you, like me, grew up in a household that watched Star Trek every week. Even if you didn’t, though, it’s worth the read, but buckle in and get ready. What seems like a routine reading mission will leave you wanting to take evasive maneuvers, because you won’t be ready for the questions that it makes you ask.

It will, however, be worth the adventure.

A Review of “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art”

Cover of Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Fair use for review purposes.
Cover of Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Fair use for review purposes.

My very first comic book was an issue of X-Men. I grew up in a town with no comic shop, but one of the larger grocery stores had a healthy magazine rack and included a weekly stock of comics. I was hooked in a way that is difficult to describe. Much to my parents financial chagrin, I accompanied my mom on the weekend grocery shopping excursions faithfully, and I couldn’t wait to get to that store and to the comics. There was always something that I wanted to read.

Now, I think that comics is like any other artistic medium: whether or not you are drawn to it is a matter of taste. In a similar way that film, sculpture, or poetry may or may not be something that particularly engages you, comics sort of is or isn’t. And that’s fine. Inherent in that idea, though, is the supposition that comics is an art form in its own right, a medium deserving of the same respect as any other form of art or literature. And, as with other mediums, even if it isn’t to your taste, learning an appreciation for the art form is culturally important.

I, like many readers at their first exposure, just naturally grasped the way in which the stories and artwork flowed. I was far too young to articulate any sort of theory about usage of line, color, or pacing, but it worked. The stories captivated me, enchanting my imagination with a concept of good vs. evil that would later inform not only my entertainment choices, but my theology and worldview at a very practical level. Comics, especially superheroes, are something about which I’ve been passionate ever since.

That’s why I’m sort of surprised that I didn’t know that this book existed until recently. Understanding Comics was written as I graduated high school. Certainly, there are parts of the book that feel dated now. However, this is an absolutely essential read for putting into serious language why this art form works so well for so many of us. Central to this is that McCloud insists from page 1 that comics is to be taken seriously as an artistic medium. There is no room to conclude otherwise in his thesis, which is as it should be. He argues strongly for comics’ recognition as art, not just as pulp or “the funnies” as some see it, and does a great job of backing his assertions.

The beauty of this book is that it is written in the medium upon which it seeks to expound. That is, it’s essentially a nonfiction graphic novel, which I find to be ingenious for a couple of reasons. First, it immerses the reader into the art form. I don’t know of another art criticism text that does that (perhaps because other mediums can’t do it…?). Secondly, it uses the medium to illustrate the points. The beauty of comics, after all, is that literature and art intertwine, and the author’s choice here is a very practical application of that flexibility.

McCloud begins by defining a vocabulary for comics, and moves into discussions about the use of line, color, and how the artwork interacts with the language. This is a deceptively academic treatment of the subject, as he spends a significant amount of time working through a language development theory, with the written word as an ultimate abstraction of iconography. This works by example to prove the author’s point on legitimacy of the art form, as well: the very language used is painting the picture…quite literally…for us, drawing the reader in to inhabit the points being presented. That’s what makes comics such a powerful medium, in my opinion…and in the author’s…the direct interaction with the reader on so many different levels, an interaction that I would consider unparalleled in any medium other than theatre.

McCloud spends a chapter discussing how line enhances the mood of the story, replete with examples of lines illustrating anger, peace, anxiety. He walks through a fascinating history of how line work has developed through the history of art in general, and specifically in comics from artists in different geographical areas and cultures.

My favorite chapter, I think, is devoted to the gutter. The gutter is unique to comics: the space between panels in the layout of the page. Things happen in the gutter that require the reader to fill in with their imagination. Time passes in the gutter. McCloud argues that the physical space of the gutter is used in the same way as time is used in film. Examples of how panel layouts further stories are presented in fascinating detail.

I think that my one criticism of the book is that McCloud’s definition of art is far too expansive for my taste. He spends time unpacking a theory of what makes art, but backs himself into a trap composed of overly broad brush-strokes. Essentially, anyone doing anything for a purpose of understanding something is doing art. He also defines a process through which art is made that succumbs to the fault of many academic texts on the arts: a rigid definition of process for a creative instinct that defies process almost by definition.

Nobody is perfect.

Recent film successes and a pandemic have drawn new fans to comics. People are discovering the medium in earnest who have never been interested before. Those who are engaging comics for the first time will be curious, and will benefit a great deal from McCloud’s work. Those of who have loved comics for most of our lives will also…I have already found myself drawing greater understanding and appreciation from my weekly pulls having finished his work, and am re-reading some classics through a new lens.

In short, if comics interests you at all, I strongly recommend Understanding Comics as a read that will be well worth your time.