Reviews

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

I just saw this last night and my thoughts on it are, in a word: Yes.

Not YES. Not yes.  But Yes.

The movie is based off a pretty successful comic book series by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Canadian.  In a nutshell: it’s a pretty hysterical, very attention-grabbing serving of geek candy that really turns out to be something special while also espousing the importance of indieship (that is, the act of wearing tight jeans, ironic clothing and not enjoying making money) and following your heart.

The plot, as some of you might know, revolves around the titular character, Scott Pilgrim (played by Michael Cera), as he courts the enigmatic hipster chick Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and subsequently fights for her affections against her Seven Evil Exes.  It is a pretty straightforward plot and it summarizes this movie’s greatest strength: the sheer surreality of it all.

Scott Pilgrim lives in Ontario, a place that is decidedly pretty normal and, indeed, for the first few moments of the movie, it’s portrayed as pretty normal.  If you knew nothing about the plot or had never watched the trailers, you’d be justified in thinking this might be yet another passive aggressive indie film.  It’s pretty clear once the movie settles into its own groove, however, that the film is part-superhero flick, part-comedy, part-love story and entirely awesome to watch.

The fights are completely over the top and littered with video game references.  Health bars appear and disappear, combo scores count up off to the side of the screen, a gloriously 16-bit soundtrack plays in the background.  Scott’s enemies explode into coins upon death, which he gleefully collects.  It’s a pretty shameless grab for the nerdcore crowd, but it’s done so well that I found I didn’t mind it at all, sort of like how a very sappy love poem can still be considered pretty sweet, despite the fact that one stanza contains the word “throbbing” seven times.

A movie cannot stand on cultural references alone, though, as we have seen from every lame “_____ Movie” parody ever, and if Scott Pilgrim vs. The World tried to do that, I’d be pretty pissed off.  Fortunately, the video game references are just the delicious geek icing on what is a very funny, very cool cake.

And this is where I want to stress the comedy and the surreality of it all.  A lot of the humor is carried by the fact that no one seems at all surprised that any of this is happening.  They watch the fantastically hyperactive fights with awe, but never does anyone stop think “wait, what?”  And this is a good thing, because if they did, the effect would be ruined.  Instead, the movie is carried very well by the fact that everything is taken at face value.

For example, at one point in the film, Scott is preparing to fight Todd Ingram (played by Brandon Routh), ex-boyfriend of Ramona and current boyfriend to Scott’s ex-girlfriend.  He flies at Todd and is promptly suspended in mid-air by Todd’s telekinetic powers and hurled away.  His ex looks on with a smug smirk and says: “Didn’t you know?  Todd’s a vegan.”

And that’s it.

It’s elaborated on a little later and not by much, but it’s never questioned.  Veganism just gives you psychic powers and everyone accepts this.  It’s done with such a straight face by the rest of the cast that it’s just hysterical.  If you can appreciate the surreality of that situation, you can appreciate everything about this movie and, when taken as what it is, it’s almost flawless.

That’s my chief criticism with it, though: taken as what it is, it’s impressive, but not really classic.  The humor is great, the action is fantastic, but it sort of lacks that same character-driven humor that makes a truly classical comedy film.  The overall message of the movie, however, is that they probably don’t really care about that and just want to have a good time.  It does that in spades.

If I could have any further grievance, it would be with Michael Cera.  I like him.  I’ve liked him since Arrested Development. But he’s just never changed since then.  In absolutely every film he’s ever been in, he’s always some awkward, passive, unstoppably indie kid.  Sometimes it works (Arrested Development), sometimes it doesn’t (Year One), but I’m sort of waiting for something new to happen.  Granted, it does work in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, because he’s energetic, active and…still pretty awkward.  I like him as an actor and as a person a lot, which is why I kind of hope he evolves at some point and is able to do more stuff.

All told: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a very funny, very cool movie and well worth the price of admission.  If you’re the kind of person that reads this blog and enjoys it, I’d definitely check it out.

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James Enge: The Tension between Invention & Realism

Michael A. Ventrella has conducted a wonderful interview with James Enge, talking about his background, his influences, his thoughts on fantasy literature and classic myth, and, of course, his novels Blood of Ambrose and This Crooked Way. Here’s a taste:

VENTRELLA: Creating a fantasy world is never easy, because it must be rooted in believability. What have you done to make your world both fantastic and believable? Have you found it difficult?

ENGE: I try to maintain a certain tension between free invention and concrete realism. My favorite bits in my own writing are physical descriptions which are probably invisible to everyone else. In my first story, the hero has occasion to peer through “a dark shoe-shaped patch of nothingness”. It makes perfect sense in the world of the story, but it’s not something that you’re likely to see on the street on your way to work.


Meanwhile, C.S.E. Cooney has posted a great review of This Crooked Way. 

In this book, the monsters are satisfyingly juicy and crunchable. The villains are terrifying – hardly less so when they’re desperate and likable than when they’re cackling and self-assured. The heroes are… wonderful. They bleed on everything. And Morlock’s main nemesis (why spoil it?) is utterly charming and wholly horrible and occasionally sympathetic. Egad, I liked this book.

What’s even better is she starts out saying the “episodic novel” might not be the form for her, and ends up loving the book. Nice.

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Let’s Talk Video Games

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It’s probably not too hard to believe that a lot of authors are also avid video gamers. Why, Richard Morgan has recently been hired to write plots for video games with (I think) EA? Someday, I, too, may ascend to such a lofty position. For the moment, though, I must be content to merely play them and talk about them.

I suspect, too, that if you’re interested in my book, you might also be a fan of video games. To that end, you might find this post, detailing the best of 2009 and the most anticipated of 2010 to be handy.

Without further ado…

God of War Collection

I’m using Amazon for this because I can’t find a homepage. Anyway, it may come as a less than shocking confirmation or a horrific surprise that I am a colossal God of War fan. I played both obsessively on the PS2 and, on the PS3, my lust for blood and quicktime events has been rekindled (largely because my PS2 died ages ago).

The gist of the game(s) is as follows: Kratos is a man who is not nice. He sold his soul to Ares, the ancient Greek god of war, in exchange for power. When he decided that this was too much to pay, he went on a rampage across Greece, slaughtering minotaurs, gorgons, skeletons and basically everything out of Clash of the Titans. In God of War 2, he decided that it wasn’t the best idea to stop with Ares and swiftly declared war on the rest of the Pantheon.

What I really love about this game, beyond the fact that you can headbutt a minotaur, drive a pair of blades in his open mouth and rip his jaws apart, is the sheer lack of apology and bravado with which Kratos is depicted as a warrior. Yes, he rips off heads. Yes, he rips the eyeballs out of cyclopes. Yes, he impales giant hydra. But that’s just what he does.

Did you never play God of War? You might wonder if you are a bad person for not doing so. It’s not up to me to pass judgment (but yes, you are awful, play it now).

Dragon Age: Origins

Bioware is a company renowned for awesome RPGs, most of which involving wizards, goblins and the occasional cameo by a Forgotten Realms character. If you played Mass Effect, you’re probably aware that they’ve moved onto somewhat more original and independent project. DA:O is their second project, returning to traditional fantasy roots.

It’s labeled a “dark fantasy,” and the most I can guess is that this means “there is a lot of blood and some of your group members are a-holes.” There’s a lot of the old fantasy tropes: elves, mages, dwarves, orcs. But they’re done in a very interesting way: elves are second-rate citizens or angry xenophobes, mages are dangerous thrill-seekers, dwarves are underground Hindus, orcs are called something else entirely are born FROM A FOUR-BREASTED ABOMINATION WITH TENTACLES.

It’s quite fun, all in all. The story is a little predictable (tell me if you can’t spot the treasons coming), but that’s not a bad thing, necessarily. The writing and dialogue is top-notch and the combat is very fun, being both great for those who enjoy a seat-of-the-pants playstyle and those who prefer a more tactical approach.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

This is easily my choice for Game of the Year. I can’t say enough good things about this game (and this is coming from a man who knows next to nothing about the Batman universe).

The best thing I can say about it is that this is the only game I’ve seen in awhile that actually invents and brings together an entirely new style of gameplay, namely, predatory. Stealth games aren’t new at all, it’s true, but to call AA a stealth gameplay would be an understatement that would probably make me deck you. The sheer variety of tools, techniques and abilities with which you have to hunt and take down your enemies is mind-boggling. You have a lot of great methods, it’s true, but none are so powerful that they overrule the use of others or make the situations any less tense. The fast, fluid combat is just a bonus on top of that.

Probably my favorite part, though, is the incredible atmosphere. I used to think of Batman’s villains as being largely cartoonish caricatures of criminals. It took this game to drive home the fact that the Joker, Scarecrow and Poison Ivy are dangerous psychopaths who would kill you for reasons you can’t even fathom. Add to this a decaying, overrun insane asylum with the same kind of tense, macabre wonderland feel that I felt in Bioshock and this game is tops.

I really can’t recommend it enough. It is basically the only game I’ve ever played that made me sad to finish. You’re doing yourself a huge disservice if you’re not at least trying this game.

Most Anticipated for 2010

God of War 3

In fact, it is possible for God of War to be even better! You have to add the ability to ride a maimed cyclops through a horde of enemies and the pure fun of grabbing a guy by his guts and using him like a battering ram to bowl over your foes, but it can be done. Look for it in March.

Dante’s Inferno

This game has proven quite controversial. No, not because of Visceral’s attempts to generate publicity by staging fake protests by Christian groups. Rather, it’s the fact that they’ve made a video game of the Divine Comedy in which the poetic observer is replaced by a blood-crazed, morally curious crusader with a giant scythe and a fireball crucifix and are expecting to be taken seriously. I just finished the demo and, for all respects, the gameplay is exactly like God of War. But the style is completely slick (I have a great passion for Renaissance depictions of hell) and God of War had shit hot gameplay, so I’ll be giving this one a gander in February.

Darksiders

To be honest, I was severely on the fence about this. The style doesn’t entirely jive with me (fire and brimstone demons are a bit passe, as far as I’m concerned) and there’s only so much God of War-esque gameplay I can take. Recent developments have suggested it’s more akin to a darker, apocalyptic Legend of Zelda than anything else, though. Given that I love the Zelda games and I also love ripping zombies apart, I think this January release will be worth a look or two.

That’s that! I hope you find these suggestions useful!

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the pleasure of an intelligent, skillful writer amusing himself and us.

William Mingin’s review, just posted on Strange Horizons, of James Enge’s Blood of Ambrose,is one of the most elegant and articulate reviews I’ve read in a long time. He manages a fairly detailed analysis of the text, while avoiding major spoilers (or any reveals of the suprises that occur regularly from the midpoint of the text on), while at the same time engaging the novel in a way that let’s the reader understand clearly what works for him, what doesn’t, and what puzzles (sometimes in a good way.) I really enjoyed reading the review for its own sake. That it is also positive is a bonus. He writes:

…the salient characteristic of this book, and of all Enge’s Morlock stories—which is almost all his published writing to date—is the sheer pleasure of reading it. The difficulty for the critic is in pinning down exactly whence that arises.

Reading is intellectual but also sensuous, partly because, as brain research now seems to show, it sets up a sort of alternate reality experience in the mind, partly because it’s constructed of language. The pleasures of language, in sound, structure, and story, resonate deeply—as do those of invention and wonder.

There’s a kind of literately sensuous pleasure in Enge’s writing—not so much sentence by sentence, of the sort found in Shakespeare, Mervyn Peake, and Raymond Chandler—to pick a wide range—but in his storytelling, including his writing per se, his sense of humor, his cleverness, and his power of invention. It’s a very taking kind of pleasure that kept me reading gratefully, and would have kept me if he had gone on longer than he did (this book is much shorter than the usual doorstop fantasy)—the pleasure of an intelligent, skillful writer amusing himself and us.

Meanwhile, to answer some of Mr Mingin’s questions: We left off a map in the first book because the story centers around and largely remains in one city (with a few excursions). However the second book, This Crooked Way,sees Morlock visiting a lot more locales, and so we have a map in it (and, drawn by Chuck Lukacs, it’s a thing of beauty. Sort of Led Zeppelin meets Tolkien). There is also some explanation of how this world connects to our own in that book’s appendices. As to the chronology, Enge has worked out Morlock’s life across quite a few centuries. Some of the stories you reference take place immediately following Blood of Ambrose, while others take place many centuries later (and one or two before). But yes, that’s the same “magical book in the palindromic script of ancient Ontil.”

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Blood of Ambrose – an excellently crafted tale

Monsters & Critics on James Enge’s Blood of Ambrose:

“This excellently crafted tale tells a familiar story in a world filled with magic and all emotional turmoil of a terrified youngster struggling to gain acceptance. Divided into five main chapters, the world building is topnotch while centering on the four main characters. The emotions have a genuine feel and Lathmar’s angst draws sympathy without being overdone.”

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Blood of Ambrose @ Joe Mallozzi’s Book Club Discussion

This week kicks of a discussion of James Enge’s Blood of Ambroseat Joseph Mallozzi’s Weblog.Joe kicks it off with his thoughts on the book.

“Enge’s prose is tight and efficient, devoid of the rambling, oft-unendurable meandering descriptive passages that typify the high-fantasy genre. The setting is rich in detail, a masterful creation of world building, while the magic system that runs through the narrative proves ferociously imaginative yet impressive in its consistency. The characters are interesting – particularly Ambrosia and Morlock – yet miss the depth that would have made them truly memorable….Still, a unique and entertaining read with plenty to recommend it in terms of the myriad of inspired elements on hand to facilitate and complicate: flesh golems, mechanical spiders, the living dead, inelegant leaping horses, sorcerers, and mazelike castle passageways to make Mervyn Peake envious. An impressive fantasy debut.”

Joe ends the post by soliciting questions for the forthcoming Q&A with James.

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Ian McDonald’s brilliant Mars book, DESOLATION ROAD, finally back in print

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Wonderful praise from Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing for Ian McDonald’s Desolation Road. Doctorow calls it “one of my most personally influential novel” and compares the book to Kim Stanley Robinson’s famous Mars trilogy, adding, “the two are very good companions, in that McDonald captures almost everything Robinson got (in a third of the number of pages), and adds the poetry and spirituality of Mars in the bargain.”

He goes on to say that Desolation Road, “pays homage to David Byrne’s Catherine Wheel, to Ray Bradbury’s entire canon and to Jack Vance, blending all these disparate creators in a way that surprises, delights, then surprises and delights again. Spanning centuries, the book includes transcendent math, alternate realities, corporate dystopias, travelling carnivals, post-singularity godlike AIs, geoengineering, and mechanical hobos, each integral to the plot.”

Yup.

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Got Enge?

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some thoughts worth sharing:

“James Enge writes Blood of Ambrosewith a subtle elegance that disguises his extraordinary narrative skill. The humor is natural and unforced. The characterization rings true, even under the revelation of shocking realities. The horror is never glorified, and it is all the more horrific for it. And the plot grows with organic grace. You won’t find any quests here, nor the usual clichés or trappings of epic fantasy. No, these pages drip the unexpected, and they will make you laugh and scream and cry and thirst for more…Simply put, Blood of Ambrose is a powerful and fun stand-alone novel. No cliffhangers. No commitment to three or five or twelve book arcs. Savor it. Read it slowly, and prepare your table for This Crooked Way.”

-Adventures in SciFi Publishing blog, June 12, 2009

“When, less than a week after picking up the book, David Eddings died, I was shocked by the coincidence, but comforted that I had found such a worthy successor for my time…The standalone novel is such a rarity in the fantasy isle that walking readers through a character’s adolescent in one volume, never mind doing it convincingly, is a feat worthy of recognition in and of itself. But Enge does tell the story convincingly. At its heart, Blood of Ambrose is a coming of age tale that follows the Lathmar the seventh from the tender age of twelve to manhood. In that, this novel succeeds beautifully. The combination of brevity, rapid pacing, and convincing character development mark Enge out as an author to watch and Blood of Ambrose as a future classic of the Young Adult fantasy section.”

-The Great Geek Manual blog, June 7, 2009

“I’ve long loved Enge’s Morlock stories in Black Gate, and this offers a heaping helping of the Ambrosii and their complicated family dynamic. In a way, this is a coming-of-age story, but it’s also a study of family relationships, and it’s a darn fine sword and sorcery epic as well. I love the sly asides and vivid imagery, but those never overpower the human elements of the story. I’m hanging onto this one–I bet it’ll repay a reread down the road.”

– Electronic Leaves blog, June 10, 2009

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Fabio Fernandes on Fast Forward 2

Over on Fantasy Book Critic, Fabio Fernandes has posted his review of Fast Forward 2.He describes it as being, “an above average anthology” of “strength and quality.” Fabio reviews all the stories individually, almost overwhelmingly positively, and then concludes, “The reason I took so long to review this anthology is that I wanted to read it at least twice so I could review all of their stories the way they deserved to be reviewed. Lou Anders has outdone himself as an editor, and all that I have to say is that I´m looking forward to FF 3.”

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Valdemar Font in Age of Misrule

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The Scriptorium is a great site for interesting fonts, but I didn’t expect it would be a great site for a book review! But they spotted our use of their most excellent, most unusual font, Valdemar, on the cover of Mark Chadbourn’s World’s End (Age of Misrule Book One).And, thankfully, they approve of the use we put their font to:

The overall result is excellent, and it’s just the kind of book Valdemar was designed for. I also quite like the cover art by John Picacio, which is surprisingly conceptually reminiscent of the cover Howard David Johnson did for my Ysgarth RPG.

As to the book itself, I’m happy they think it lives up to its cover:

World’s End is quite an engaging read. It’s well written and fast-moving, thematically reminiscent of some of the work of Robert Holdstock or Neil Gaiman, but much more commerically written for broad audience appeal.

Thanks guys! That’s a great quote! Keep up the good work that makes our work good! As you says, “A good read with a great font as part of a really appealing cover design. What more could you ask for?”

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