Robert A. Heinlein's Expanded Universe

While we're on the subject of the Cold War, let's talk about Robert A. Heinlein's Expanded Universe!

Expanded Universe is a collection of essays and short stories by one of the greatest (and my personal favourite) classic sci-fi/speculative fiction authors to ever grace America. The brunt of them were written either during or within a decade after World War II, and almost unanimously deal with the subject of nuclear war. Though this subject matter makes the stories dated, that's what got me to read it in the first place - I find first-hand reactions to events rather interesting. That's probably the only appeal to this book, since we know so much more now than we did then (and since the U.S. didn't suffer a nuclear attack by the 1980's, which Heinlein was very certain it would, and which accounts for the majority of the stories).

There are also some unrelated tales, like the third one in the book. It's interesting because it's not very good. Heinlein prefaced each story, and the explanation for this one is, briefly, "this is what happens when you don't tell a publisher/client 'no', and churn out some crap just to fill space." Both the warning and the story are an excellent cautionary tale, especially for an artist like myself.

The only really wierd thing about the book, which seems to contradict even the information of the day, is that Heinlein had no concept of fallout zones. He was convinced that, if you lived a mere fifty to one hundred miles outside of a bombed city, all you'd have to worry about in the event of a nuclear holocaust is catching food and being able to build your own shelter and tools. Maybe I'm misinformed, but I thought there was an understanding of the severity of fallout zones by the end of the fifties, at least. Not wierd, but the kind of arrogance only an artist can do, is his preface to a decent story he tried to sell uncensored in the fifties that's a noir about a strip-club murder and features some rather graphic sexual imagery and dialogue. What, you were expecting that this should be perfectly PG?

Anyways, the stories are mostly solid, I've always loved the tone and flavour of Heinlein's work, and it's an interesting historical document. Not your everyday fiction. I'm satisfied.

The Iron Giant

The Iron Giant is a first-rate animated sci-fi/comedy/drama/early-Cold War story that's appropriate for children, the first feature film made by writer/director Brad Bird (The Incredibles). I've seen it a bunch of times over the past few years, but am remembering it now because my nephew was over today and I put it on for him when I had to stop playing and go talk business with his pop.

Set in small-town Maine in the good ol' days of "duck and cover", The Iron Giant follows a young boy named Hogarth as he stumbles upon a several hundred feet tall metal behemoth while exploring the local woods. Hogarth is somewhat lonely, having neither a father nor friends, and because he's a little boy his reaction to the giant is not fear, but the impressed delight that comes from a child aquiring something that's beyond cool. As he teaches it rudimentary English, and, more importantly, how to play with him, the lonely giant and the lonely boy forge an odd and wonderful friendship.

Of course, a metal giant can't go unnoticed for long. Enter special agent Kent Manley, come to investigate the rumours and determine the extent of what is obviously a Russian threat. Manley is a reasonable enough stereotype of the spook: invasive, gung-ho, easily prone to overreaction; yet one of the many things that makes Bird a good writer is the fact that while Manley quickly becomes the villain of the story - on top of all his other failings, he starts making advances on Hogarth's mother, much to the boy's understandable anger - it is always clear that he and the misinformation he feeds are villainous, not the military itself, nor how it responds to what it rightly assumes is honest intel.

Hogarth's main ally in all this is a beatnik artiste named Dean (smoooooth Harry Connick Jr.) who owns a scrapyard and "sculpts" metal. Dean's laid-back, um, beatnikness, coupled with the fact that he can hide the giant when necessary by claiming it as artwork, make him the perfect companion to believe in the giant's goodness and innocence. Bird always fills his movies with little touches that pull everything together - in the scene when Dean wakes up to find a giant in his scrap heap, watch out for what's printed on the back of his bathrobe as he walks away. Dean is a really great character - far from the stereotypical father figure, and quite easygoing, at the same time he's hardly irresponsible or irrational. He's a lot of fun. And he's Harry Connick Jr. Oh yeah.

I mentionned the giant's goodness, which could have been implausible and mawkish, seeing as how he's a war machine. No time is wasted on creating a backstory for the giant; all we know about him is learned from paying attention. We don't know what made the giant crashed on earth, but we do know from the huge dent in his huge head that his memory is badly damaged. What triggers his memory - and his reactions to that trigger - make good sense in this framework. Also, it is considered by many that the one- and two-word lines of the giant are Vin Diesel's best work. :D

The Iron Giant is loaded with great dialogue, strong pacing, nice ol' 2D watercolour animation, and attention to detail. An animated, not-so-spoofed "duck and cover" sequence is hilarious, and the film is full of tributes to that other great Maine-based Cold War comedy, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!. It also has what may or may not be an intentional nod to the ending of Alex Ross's DC Comics masterwork, Kingdom Come. Either way, it's a great film whether you have a kid or not. I don't think Brad Bird views children's films as a separate genre, and there are lots of good arguments for that which I think are all self-evident in his work. He just makes good movies, period. The fact that they're also ones you can watch with your younger relatives is just icing on the cake.

Ka-Pow! Enter the Chris!

My respect for famed interviewer/pundit Larry King is about as strong as my respect for anyone who favours willfull ignorance for the sake of sensationalism - in other words, I can't stand the guy. While trolling the U.S. election coverage on CNN.com, I came across a transcript of his recent interview with the most astute racial commentator of our time, Chris Rock. And I laughed, and I laughed, and I laughed.

KING: You must be ... proud that at this stage in our history a black man is running for president on a major ticket.

ROCK: Um, you know what? I'm proud Barack Obama's running for president. You know? If it was Flavor Flav, would I be proud? No. I don't support Barack Obama because he's black.

POW!

(Though if you just had to go google Flavor Flav, I guess this isn't really funny at all.)

C'est lui! A Pompeii! Docteur...Qui?

While I await all of series 4 delivered right into my hands by the single biggest Doctor Who fan I've ever met (hi Ian!), I'll just watch it every Friday on CBC like the rest of you. And so, last night, I set the kitchen timer to make sure I didn't miss it, and was well rewarded.

Last night had the Doctor and Donna attempting to visit ancient Rome, but miscalculating/getting pulled to (? this wasn't clear) Pompeii instead, twenty-four hours before its historically scheduled destruction. This was exactly the kind of bold move I've come to expect from David Tennant's run. Why bold? For one thing, because the Doctor doesn't put himself in fixed events that his interference could harm. Because this time, the Doctor had to stop an invasive alien race so that thousands of humans could die - his care for the human race required him to sacrifice people in order to preserve our history and timeline. For reasons that you can go watch yourself, the presence of the aliens came to negate the volcano. And so it began. Of course, it was also full of brilliant running jokes like the Doctor defeating fire-based aliens with one of those ubiquitous little clear fluorescent water pistols.

Only thing I didn't like was how the writer dealt with Donna's response to this necessity. Donna is rare amongst the Doctor's companions in that she isn't a contrast - their personalities and characters are very much alike, which has opened up a new door of interest, and jives with the Doctor's desire to have a companion with whom he can just be friends. I have big hopes for this friendship. Last night, though, as they made their escape after ensuring Pompeii's destruction, Donna freaked out and kept railing about how horrible it was and couldn't they just save one person and was this really necessary, while the Doctor continued about his work suffering silently. I realise there have only been two episodes and the Christmas special featuring Donna, but it still seemed to contradict her given set-up. A true kindred spirit to the Doctor would accept that he was in fact suffering greatly by being forced to play a part in this destruction - last night, I was hoping for some good exposition interaction time at this point in the show instead of the same rote reaction of every single other companion he's ever had.

That being said, the afore-mentionned Ian - who has seen every single episode of Doctor Who (no, literally, every), owns a sonic screwdriver laser-tage game, pays an exorbitant amount for the U.K. published fan mag, and watched all of series 4 as soon as it aired on the BBC, has promised me that the last four episodes of the season encompass one story arc, and are the best Doctor Who ever made. I think I'll trust his judgment on this one.

Crazy aside: according to Ian, David Tennant's run as the Doctor is the single-most watched program in British history, and Tennant has been offered 20 million pounds to return for series 5. Yes, you read that right. Pounds. Twenty million of them.

Well, he is extraordinary.

The Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd, starring Matt Damon and featuring Jon Turturro, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, Lee Pace, and Robert DeNiro, is not at all the film that I was expecting. Advertised as a film about the birth of the CIA, I was expecting it to be pretty typical.

It was not.

This devastating film opens with archival footage of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the failed op that really catapulted the Agency into the public eye. Be warned: director DeNiro expects that you didn't just go to watch Damon and Jolie make out; in other words, that you actually know something about one of the most famous events of the last hundred years, because he's not going to explain it to you. At a CIA shack on a beach within range of the Bay, we meet Edward Wilson (Damon), as he begins his long journey to learn why it all went wrong. But the film isn't particularly interested in what happened at the Bay of Pigs - it's interested in Wilson, and the story of the birth of the CIA is told in the story of the man who, tragically, became its heart and soul. The character is based on James Jesus Angleton, who founded the Agency's counterintelligence division, but the film's title isn't really related to his middle name. More on that later.

Through flashbacks, always returning to Wilson and his men working to identify the agent in a photo and on a recording who blew the Bay of Pigs, we learn about his father's suicide, his time at Yale, his subsequent initiation into Skull and Bones, and from there the story fully takes on the conviction that this society has spawned basically every influential politician, businessman, and soldier in the United States. This is where Edward makes the connections that topple him into the as yet undeveloped and unnamed world of counterintelligence, and the rest of the film - and his life - is consumed by his journey through this strange, terrifying new land. The more knowledge Edward acquires, the more mocking the CIA's use of John 8:32 as its motto becomes. This world is not one in which the truth sets him free, but instead binds and weighs on him ever more firmly as he learns just how much is at stake - and how few people have the knowledge and means to protect the rest.

That being said, the film is about as far from melodramatic as a story can get. Penned by Eric Roth (Munich), it is profound, tragic, and slightly minimalist. It doesn't waste its running time. Seeing Damon get dolled up as a woman and sing Gilbert and Sullivan is funny, sure, but it has the underlying importance of suggesting that there was a time when Edward did have a measure of happiness and freedom. As the film progresses, the significance of its title - a name Jesus called himself when he said that "the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep" - becomes clear. Edward has had thrust upon himself, while also taking it willingly, the responsibility to protect America. And he does, though not physically, lose his life in the process.

Like Munich, there is far more to the story that I can tell you. Suffice it to say that it is in every way excellent, and well worth your time. DeNiro has propelled himself to the upper echelons of the actor-turned-director field - think Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone or Clint Eastwood, that kind of caliber.

Like the twice-mentioned Munich, or No Country for Old Men, it is a film that is the opposite of entertainment, and yet I would like to watch it again, because it was so very, very good.

I Was Right! Ha!

Now that I have a job, and spend most of my days doing data entry, not to mention a minimum of two hours in transit, I find my physical desire to blog in the evenings has greatly diminished. In other words, I just want to get home, hope to have supper by 7, and crash on some pillows while playing Knights of the Old Republic II. But the problem is, I like to blog. And I'm really behind on some happy and interesting things.

First up: last time I visited my dear friend Amy, she introduced me (not literally) to a young man named Rob Parovian, who is in college, and a classically trained cellist, and who hates Pachelbel's canon. He hates it so much he wrote a musical comedy act about how much he hates it (see below). I too am a classically trained musician (flute), and specialise in Baroque music, and so feel particularly qualified to hate Pachelbel's canon - which I do. Deeply. For years, I have been alone, trying to avoid fights with dear friends, gritting my teeth through wedding processionals, and now, finally, I have a kindred spirit. Someone who recognises Canon in D for the lame, lazy, astonishingly long-lasting one-hit wonder that it it. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Feels good.

How hard you'll laugh at this will probably depend on how sensitive you are about the Canon. I laughed pretty hard as Parovian related his frustration with having to play the song, and at his growing dread that it's infected nearly every aspect of popular music culture, from other one-hit wonders like Vitamin C to such venerable institutions as The Beatles.

We'll get you, Pachelbel. And your little canon, too.

C'est lui! Dans la nuit! Docteur.......Qui?

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


HE'S BACK!


Who, you ask, is back?
Well, if you spoke french, and/or have ever seen Bill Bailey's Belgian jazz sketch, you'd know just who I'm talking about.

For the rest of you - particularly, you boring folks who did not in fact immediately search "Bill Bailey Dr. Who" on YouTube and enjoy the show - I speak of the one, the only, DOCTOR WHO.

Yes, friends, CBC is now airing series 4, and, more importantly, mister David "Best Doctor Ever" Tennant is back in his tennis shoes fighting despair, saving lives, and breaking hearts as much with his grief and messianic overtones as with his utterly irresistible charm and humour and mildly roguish good looks. I've never seen someone so fiercely love their role. Seriously, even people old enough to remember the Doctors before the formerly incomparable Tom Baker - and I remember Tom Baker, a.k.a. the one with the red scarf - say that he's the best in the show's 30 or so year run. Series 3 should have been more than enough to erase any doubt of that - remember the episode with the pocket watch? You know what I'm talking about. You're nodding your head. You're so very excited that he's back.

Here in Alberta, Dr. Who is airing Friday nights at 9. May you all be so fortunate! So don't call between 9 and 10 Alberta time, because I won't pick up, and I'll be miffed at you for talking on the answering machine and making it so that I can't hear the Doctor.

Scarlet

The next step in Stephen R. Lawhead's King Raven trilogy, Scarlet is a wonderful, unique writing exercise - and a well-told, intriguing story to boot.

As the title suggests, this part of the story is told through the eyes of Robin Hood regular Will Scarlet (whose proper English name, Scatlocke, is unpronounceable to the Welsh, like Friar Tuck's true moniker). It opens in the first person, as an injured Will is languishing in Count de Braose's dungeon, postponing his inevitable hanging in exchange for giving an account of his experience with King Raven's band to a scribing monk, it being the Count's and Abbot's hope that he will unwittingly give them useful information regarding the location and identity of the already-legendary phantom who's wreaked so much humiliation in his quest to provide for his people while stealing enough silver to ransom Elfael for the price demanded by William Rufus (though this purpose has remained hidden to the Ffreinc thus far). As Will tells his scribe, Brother Odo, of how a Brit suffered as the Welsh under the Ffreinc rule and came to join the freedom fighters and eventually wind up in the Count's dungeon, the narrative takes turns between his story and a third-person account of what is currently happening in the larger tale, and if someone had told me prior to reading that this would be the format, I wouldn't have expected it to work. As it stands, Lawhead's command of the first person is why this book succeeds. So few authors understand that the first person is not the third person with "I" substituted for "he". Lawhead does, and, as such, the parts narrated by Will Scarlet have a distinct voice and character that create a person and bear no resemblance to the omnipotent narrative sections - resulting in one very engaging read. The closest thing in my frame of reference to compare it to is Jack Whyte's historical series about Arthur Pendragon, entirely told in the first person but with different narrators. They're not bad books, but they definitely suffer from each narrator seeming the exact same character as the one before - Publius Varrus sounds the same as Caius Brittanicus, who sounds the same as his son, who sounds the same as his son, Merlyn...as I said, not a bad read, especially in its interesting take on birthing Camelot out of the fall of the Roman Empire, but it gets really boring after six or so books when you realize that there weren't any actual distinct characters. Scarlet is its polar opposite.

As in Hood, this book stands out by how brilliantly Lawhead makes old things new - the challenge of any storyteller, and one that is (un)surprisingly hard to rise to. The single most striking change he makes here is turning the famous archery contest on its head. Instead of being a trite tale of Robin Hood risking his life and that of his people for the sake of humiliating the Sherrif and showing off his skills, in Lawhead's hands this contest is given a profound purpose that takes a highly emotional journey to its weak-kneed-with-relief end. It's beautiful and fantastic, and is a capsule summary of Lawhead's skill as a writer, storyteller, and artist.

Tuck is slated for release this winter, sometime after New Year's, but the note in the back of the book states that Lawhead recently came off of a serious illness, so I'm not certain this release estimate still stands...but I sure hope so.

Artists who are actually interested in life: Part 1 in a series (I hope)

Now that we're settled in and online, I'm back to trolling all my old haunts: CNN, Entertainment Weekly...Christianity Today...

CT surpasses most Christian issue-and-media sites by being willing to talk about stuff, and not just stuff that all nice Christians agree on. It also surpasses most mainstream media outlets (and a lot of indies) by having four excellent film critics (and a few I feel are there mostly for their alternate viewpoints) on staff. As a result, CT's film reviews are, 9 times out of 10, strong, insightful, knowledgeable about the industry and its history, and, most of all, useful. Even if you only like to go to Christian websites to flame the message boards and fume and laugh at how stupid and intolerant you think everyone there is, as long as you're interested in movies I think you'd still appreciate the CT reviews page. They do everything from PG to R to NR, American and otherwise, fiction and non. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned them in this space before.

I mention them now because of a new indie film by Chad Allen, Save Me, a fiction that follows a gay drug addict (Allen) who hits rock-bottom (and the hospital) and is sent (enrolled? admitted?) by his brother to a group home that is a Christian ministry devoted to helping gay men become heterosexual. "Ex-gay" ministries, as they're known, are not something made up by Allen, but organizations that are increasingly common, and highly controversial in both the gay community and the church, and if you know any gay men, you probably know someone who's had contact with such groups.

What makes this film - which I haven't seen yet; it's not playing locally - interesting to me is not its controversial premise, but the interview Chad Allen gave to CT Movies. Allen was cast a few years ago to play a famous contemporary martyr, and when the production learned of his sexuality, they chose to defy stereotype and honour his contract, recognizing him as the best actor for the role, and accepted the subsequent backlash from many in the Christian community. In a win-win situation, the film retained a good actor, and Allen, immersed in a sea of Christians for 10+ hours a day over the course of the shoot, experienced the truth about Christians and Christianity. Stereotypes and misconceptions crumbled, discussions began, and the result was Save Me. Allen speaks in the interview of how it would have been easy to "play to the choir by making a film that said it was going to treat the subject fairly, and then not do that." The stated purpose of the film isn't to say that ex-gay ministries are bad and evil - quite the opposite, according to the interview, in spite of the fact that Allen doesn't believe in or agree with the idea of "gay-straight conversion". Artists of any stream and philosophy who are interested in true exploration and understanding are hard to come by, one of the many reasons I'm eagerly awaiting the chance to see this film.

If you have the opportunity to watch Save Me before I do, I hope you'll come here and tell me all about it. I certainly plan to watch it and revisit this post, whenever that may happen.

Thug...Brigand...Hood?

I find there are few things as enjoyable as a fresh look at an old tale. Stephen R. Lawhead's Hood is an exercise in following the Robin Hood legend to its historical roots and then some.

(Didn't know Robin Hood has a historical basis? According to the historical notes in the back of the book, folks were singing songs of him - as a highwayman and antihero - as early as the mid-11th century. Wild! Britain may be small, but they keep first-source records like no one else.)

Hood makes a perfectly reasonable case for making Robin - or, in this case, Rhi Bran, meaning "King Bran" or "King Raven" - a Welshman, and bumping him back to the 11th century. As the story opens, William the Conqueror has died, and the war for succession between sons Robert and William has ended with William the Red emerging as victor and eager to continue annexing Britain (of which he has most) and Wales, a rough, unexplored country. The most significance consequence of this invasion was that Normans began aggressively scrapping the centuries-old Saxon organizations of ownership, lords and serfs, and fealty in favour of their own, more brutal system, throwing England and Wales on their heads and creating a situation wherein the people could only be kept in line by terror and force. Later in the book, we witness the enactment of the Forest Law that effectively makes all lands the king's and considers all peasants who hunt in the forest to be poachers and traitors. In the midst of this, teenaged Bran is the lazy, selfish, passionate, skirt-chasing son of a Welsh king (who were really a sort of souped-up mayor, presiding only over a town or canton) who is off trying to seduce fellow child of nobility Merian when his father rides to Lundein to pledge fealty to William in exchange for being able to keep his land. When Bran realizes what day it is, he rides out to catch up with the war party and discovers that they've been ambushed and massacred by the Ffreinc (French, or Norman) Count de Braose, who, unbeknownst to the king and people, has been given the land by William, and has no plans to own it merely as a liege lord. Bran finds himself, as heir to the throne of Elfael, on the run for his life with the sole survivor of the massacre, his father's champion, Iwan, as his companion. His people have fled too, fearing their new and brutal Freinc lord, and disappeared into the forest. After Bran's visit to Lundein to bring the crime of a murdered king before William ends in extortion and failure, and his return to Elfael to confront Count de Braose ends with him again fleeing for his life, his subsequent deus ex salvation results in the return to his people...and the beginning of his fight for justice and the return of his land that will eventually grow into a full-fledge guerilla war against the occupying Normans.

These are, of course, the barest bones of Lawhead's tale. A Brit, it stands to reason that his skill at historical fiction is significant, to understate. But what really makes Hood stand out from the pack - and at the top of the "historical basis for legend" genre - is the characterization. Bran's immaturity and underdeveloped sense of justice, combined with his intense passion and lack of restraint, make who he grows into and what he does next make sense, in terms of both this story and the Robin Hood legend. Fat Brother Aethelfrith, dubbed Friar Tuck by welshman Iwan who can't pronounce the English name, gets a fascinating though brief backstory and is delivered from comic relief to something much better (though still with a sense of humour), becomes a behind-the-scenes cornerstone. Merian, the daughter of another Welsh king, behaves not like some sort of plucky proto-feminist, but like the daughter of a minor noble that she is whose only goal and role has been to learn courtesies and seek to marry up - when Bran comes to her for help and a horse to escape de Braose's soldiers hot on his tail, she waffles about how mad her father would be and winds up doing nothing but stealing a weapon from her brother to give him.

The Norman villains of the story are equally developed and interesting. The afore-mentioned Falkes de Braose spends half of the book as a pathetic object of pity before becoming all-out evil. And in an interesting twist, it is not the young and evil count but his father, the less systematically evil and not especially pathetic Baron, who turns his eye on Merian. The count's abbot, Hugo, is the very picture of the blasphemously cruel, unrighteous, and hypocritical churchman, and Lawhead, a Christian, does not turn his head from or make any excuses for this very unfortunately real character (though he is contrasted by Tuck and the former Bishop of Elfael, amongst others). Sir Guy of Guysburne and Sherrif Richard de Glanville are late players to the story who garner larger roles in the next book of the trilogy. Most importantly, though most of these villains are fools, none of them are stupid. They are all aware of their situations and surroundings, and worthy adversaries for our heroes. This, I find, is the key part of just about any hero vs. villain story.

Overall, Hood is an excellent and satisfying read that puts other "legend as history" tales to shame - though I've never read Lawhead's take on Arthur Pendragon, which I hear is also excellent. On a side note, for I didn't know how to place this comment but feel its an important one, Hood also bears witness to Lawhead's respect for his audience. For example, early in the book a food bag is referred to as a tuck bag, and not all readers would know that tuck is a sort of slang for food - and, when Iwan dubs the rotund Aethelfrithe "Friar Tuck" out of his frustration at not being able to pronounce the name, there is absolutely no reminder or nudge-nudge-wink-wink - and Lawhead still refers to him as Aethelfrithe in the narration. Lawhead doesn't expect all of his audience to know everything, but he does expect them to remember what they've read but a few hours ago - as I said, he respects us.

Book 2, Scarlet, will be reviewed shortly as I just finished it ten minutes ago; book 3, Tuck, is slated for release in early 2009. I eagerly await.

Phew. And a Good Book!

Well, well, well. We made it. Since Labour Day, I've seen Edmonton for the first time, played so much with my nephew that he now recognizes me as someone good to play with, landed a job, met my niece for the first time as she was born but two days ago, and read two and a half rather good books. As much as I like talking about the littlest people in my life (that being Nevin and Nora, aka nephew and niece), this is a media blog, so let's talk about Shadowplay.

Shadowplay is the midsection of Tad (The Dragonbone Chair) Williams' newest high fantasy trilogy, and I feel quite confident in saying that there is no English-language author, at least in this genre, who understands the trilogy better than he. With Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn more than a decade behind him, he's done something far better than bring us a new tale: he's brought us a new tale, and done it even better than he did before. With a knack for plots-within-plots so smooth you don't realize they're upon you, and a very apt hand at characterization, Shadowplay is an immensely satisfying read, and, I think, stronger than its predecessor. The politics are stronger yet still readable, the fantastical is both more and less plausible, and characters who didn't get much of a shake in Shadowmarch come out to play in a nicely well-fleshed manner. Particularly, guard captain Vansen, who has clearly emerged as Williams' favourite character in this tale. I can't say I mind. Ferras Vansen is his universe's version of Babylon 5's Marcus Cole, and who didn't love Marcus? Didn't he almost completely steal seasons 3 and 4 from G'Kar and Londo? Yes, he did!

What really struck me about this book, though, is the challenge Williams seems to have set before himself. It's quite common for artists, especially ones who have known success, to begin to doubt their abilities, or seek to challenge themselves, or both, and I get a strong sense that's what's happened here. What started out as a fairly standard (though superbly executed) man-vs.-fairy war in Shadowmarch has grown into a full-blown war of the gods...and what makes me feel that Williams has set himself a challenge is the fact that, in a story that begs for and fully justifies copious use of deus ex machina, it is only used twice, and in ways that make full sense in the context of the genre and this particular tale.

I'm going to harp on this again: I haven't read anyone with a better grasp of how to write a three-part story since the first time I picked up The Lord of the Rings thirteen years ago. I'm perfectly itchy for the end of the story, and kind of hoping it takes a turn like the absolutely brilliant (and rather darkly funny) refutation of fantasy tropes regarding heroes and prophecy that came at the end of To Green Angel Tower.

Go on...take that trip to the bookstore...no, not the library, the bookstore. You should own this one.