Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman, Scholastic.
I don't generally read books aimed at children; I have yet to catch up with the Potter phenomenon, and while I have read a few of Pratchett's YA works, that doesn't signify anything: I would read his shopping lists if I could get my hands on them.
But I picked up Northern Lights in a charity shop, and the story had enough momentum to induce me to buy the other two, just to see how it ended. That is not remarkable: I not only finished The Da Vinci Code on the same basis, I even read Angels and Demons to the end, though morbid curiosity played a part in the latter - it was hard to absorb the idea that Brown had had to improve to write Code.
His Dark Materials is not as bad as that. It lacks the relentless stupidity. The characters are mostly believable, but the fantasy settings aren't. New fantasy elements appear without reason at regular intervals to meet the needs of the plot. There is less of a feel of a consistent, plausible universe than there is in C. S. Lewis, and nothing approaching the depth and solidity of Tolkien's world.
What the series really made me think of, more than anything, was Robert Rankin. The Amber Spyglass, in particular, feels like Armageddon, the Musical without the jokes.
I sometimes think that the book industry is about marketing and fashion more than content, even to a greater extent than the record industry. Fantasy has become acceptable reading to the mainstream, and new fantasy coming out now will be something one can be proud to read, provided it half-camouflages itself as "for the children". The previous camouflage of jokiness is right out - it must all be drenched in pretentious seriousness, even if the premise, as in this case, is as daft as that of Power Rangers.
With Pullman, of course, there is also the religion angle. I've nothing against bashing religion, but it's impossible to read much fantasy or SF without seeing it done much better than HDM. Try almost anything by Harry Harrison, for a start. Again, the religious aspect is more reminiscent of absurd comedies like those of Robert Rankin or Tom Holt
As I said, I'm happy with a book if the plot keeps moving, and I don't grudge the time I spent reading His Dark Materials. It upsets me, though, that something as mediocre as this gets awards and arts TV programmes and film adaptations, while something as exceptional as Gate of Ivrel is out of print.
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
Entering the Mandala, The Hsu-nami
I was wandering around the vicinity of Union Square on my first day visiting New York, last May, when I heard a very strange noise. Following my ears (so to speak), I stumbled upon this:
My plan to see the downtown landmarks was shelved as I listened to what was fundamentally good old-fashioned heavy metal, but with no vocals and the with the melody carried by the young man in the baseball cap playing some weird Chinese instrument.
I headed back North only when the rains seemed imminent, abandoning the show halfway through the band's interpretation of the theme from "The Godfather". Back at my hotel room, Google revealed the band to be "Hsu-nami", and the weird instrument to be an er-hu.
They have several of their songs streamable at their website, and there are quite a few clips on youtube and so on. The album due to be released in "Fall 2007" finally became available to actually buy a couple of weeks ago, and my copy arrived yesterday from CDBaby.
The 45-minute CD contains the four songs that are on the myspace page, plus the Godfather cover, a beautiful little piano solo moving from that to "Rogue Wave", and a slightly odd dance or funk type thing called "Beautiful Night". I thought that might be a cover or something, but it's not credited to anyone on the sleeve notes. There were then live versions of "The Rising of the Sun" and "Entering the Mandala", the former an unplugged version, also with some very nice piano by Adam Toth.
There are a few points to make about this band. First, the er-hu really works. Unamplified, it sounds almost like an electric guitar with feedback, and when the band really gets headbanging it screams the melody.
Second, these are superb musicians. Hsu is clearly some kind of mad musical genius, but the lead guitar and keyboard are excellent too. Brett Bergholm plays the kind of technical rock guitar that unfortunately went out of fashion about twenty years ago, and the great keyboard playing I have already talked about, because I hadn't really noticed it before listening to the CD.
The third thing is that if you like instrumental rock, you need to go straight over to myspace, confirm to yourself that I'm not talking rubbish, and then buy the album. CDBaby were able to get it to me in Britain in about a week.
There's one video clip on the internet I can't resist linking to: it's the best version of Pachelbel's canon you've ever headbanged to.
My plan to see the downtown landmarks was shelved as I listened to what was fundamentally good old-fashioned heavy metal, but with no vocals and the with the melody carried by the young man in the baseball cap playing some weird Chinese instrument.
I headed back North only when the rains seemed imminent, abandoning the show halfway through the band's interpretation of the theme from "The Godfather". Back at my hotel room, Google revealed the band to be "Hsu-nami", and the weird instrument to be an er-hu.
They have several of their songs streamable at their website, and there are quite a few clips on youtube and so on. The album due to be released in "Fall 2007" finally became available to actually buy a couple of weeks ago, and my copy arrived yesterday from CDBaby.
The 45-minute CD contains the four songs that are on the myspace page, plus the Godfather cover, a beautiful little piano solo moving from that to "Rogue Wave", and a slightly odd dance or funk type thing called "Beautiful Night". I thought that might be a cover or something, but it's not credited to anyone on the sleeve notes. There were then live versions of "The Rising of the Sun" and "Entering the Mandala", the former an unplugged version, also with some very nice piano by Adam Toth.
There are a few points to make about this band. First, the er-hu really works. Unamplified, it sounds almost like an electric guitar with feedback, and when the band really gets headbanging it screams the melody.
Second, these are superb musicians. Hsu is clearly some kind of mad musical genius, but the lead guitar and keyboard are excellent too. Brett Bergholm plays the kind of technical rock guitar that unfortunately went out of fashion about twenty years ago, and the great keyboard playing I have already talked about, because I hadn't really noticed it before listening to the CD.
The third thing is that if you like instrumental rock, you need to go straight over to myspace, confirm to yourself that I'm not talking rubbish, and then buy the album. CDBaby were able to get it to me in Britain in about a week.
There's one video clip on the internet I can't resist linking to: it's the best version of Pachelbel's canon you've ever headbanged to.
Sunday, 21 October 2007
Iron Maiden Live At Donnington 1992
Here was a classic picked up in a 2 for £10 sale at HMV last weekend.
I was slightly apprehensive that this "enhanced" CD would be made useless to me by copy protection, but sound juicer on debian Etch ripped it without a hitch.
Though Maiden are still around, by 1992 they were already old-timers -- which possibly accounts for the lack of power in Bruce Dickinson's voice. Or maybe he just had an off day.
If I buy a concert album, it's not for the crowd singalongs or the "let me hear you say yeah!" inanity, but because these traditionally allow for the musicians to add more to the songs. I wasn't necessarily expecting the 20+ minute instrumentals of, say, Deep Purple's "Made in Europe", but the solos here never really got going.
That is a great shame, because the twin-lead-guitar format makes for such good instrumentals. From Wishbone Ash and The Eagles to Judas Priest, it produces something impossible to duplicate with a single guitarist, even in the studio (though Tony Iommi occasionally came close).
So this is basically a best-of album with a poor vocal track. Since I don't have an Iron Maiden compilation, and I never set much store by rock vocals anyway, I actually find it very enjoyable -- certainly worth a fiver. The guitar solos are fast and unpredictable (I like Murray's on "Afraid to shoot strangers"), and the very melodic guitar lines are a startling change from modern heavy rock music.
There are quicktime videos on the CDs too (that's the "enhanced" part). They're low quality but enough to give a feel of the event. They have the usual rock-video "feature" that during the guitar solos they always close-up on the bassist. I've never understood that: I wonder if it's related to the phenomenon of BBC Snooker producers who don't like snooker and therefore fill up the programming with musical interludes, competitions, and interviews of the players' horses, even while the matches are actually going on. Are heavy metal videos edited by people who hate rock music and don't know the difference between a bass guitar and a normal six-string?
I was slightly apprehensive that this "enhanced" CD would be made useless to me by copy protection, but sound juicer on debian Etch ripped it without a hitch.
Though Maiden are still around, by 1992 they were already old-timers -- which possibly accounts for the lack of power in Bruce Dickinson's voice. Or maybe he just had an off day.
If I buy a concert album, it's not for the crowd singalongs or the "let me hear you say yeah!" inanity, but because these traditionally allow for the musicians to add more to the songs. I wasn't necessarily expecting the 20+ minute instrumentals of, say, Deep Purple's "Made in Europe", but the solos here never really got going.
That is a great shame, because the twin-lead-guitar format makes for such good instrumentals. From Wishbone Ash and The Eagles to Judas Priest, it produces something impossible to duplicate with a single guitarist, even in the studio (though Tony Iommi occasionally came close).
So this is basically a best-of album with a poor vocal track. Since I don't have an Iron Maiden compilation, and I never set much store by rock vocals anyway, I actually find it very enjoyable -- certainly worth a fiver. The guitar solos are fast and unpredictable (I like Murray's on "Afraid to shoot strangers"), and the very melodic guitar lines are a startling change from modern heavy rock music.
There are quicktime videos on the CDs too (that's the "enhanced" part). They're low quality but enough to give a feel of the event. They have the usual rock-video "feature" that during the guitar solos they always close-up on the bassist. I've never understood that: I wonder if it's related to the phenomenon of BBC Snooker producers who don't like snooker and therefore fill up the programming with musical interludes, competitions, and interviews of the players' horses, even while the matches are actually going on. Are heavy metal videos edited by people who hate rock music and don't know the difference between a bass guitar and a normal six-string?
Sunday, 14 October 2007
"Snowblind", PJ Tracy
The latest book I bought was "Snowblind" by PJ Tracy (£4.00, Tesco), on Tuesday. The two earlier books by the author that I have, "Want to Play?" and "Dead Run" were good thrillers. This one is more of a police procedural, as it follows an investigation where the main characters themselves are not in any obvious danger. The urgency in the earlier books made them considerably more exciting than this one.
There's also a slight imbalance in the characters: the main characters are the two Minneapolis detectives from the earlier books, plus the newly-elected rural sheriff who is the real protagonist of this one. However, the Monkeewrench team from the earlier books are still hanging around, despite not really having an important role in the story.
I suppose, as a programmer, I have to comment on the technical aspect of the books (Monkeewrench is a small software house producing games and data-mining applications). Let's face it, it's crap. To be fair, I've read a lot worse. The jargon is in the right place, but the authors have no conception of what processes are involved in breaking into secured systems, or in creating games software, or of the lack of any very close connection between the two. But really, it's fantasy, and if that doesn't hurt my enjoyment of the stories, it shouldn't hurt yours. My rule of thumb is that if it's less stupid than the regular CSI trick of enlarging a photograph to the level where you can recognise a face or a document reflected in the subject's eyeball, then I let it pass. And that's very, very stupid -- nothing here comes close.
There's a general social point to the book, but to my mind it stops short of being irritatingly preachy. The way in which the detectives' dilemma is resolved in the end is, however, a bit of an anticlimax.
There's also a slight imbalance in the characters: the main characters are the two Minneapolis detectives from the earlier books, plus the newly-elected rural sheriff who is the real protagonist of this one. However, the Monkeewrench team from the earlier books are still hanging around, despite not really having an important role in the story.
I suppose, as a programmer, I have to comment on the technical aspect of the books (Monkeewrench is a small software house producing games and data-mining applications). Let's face it, it's crap. To be fair, I've read a lot worse. The jargon is in the right place, but the authors have no conception of what processes are involved in breaking into secured systems, or in creating games software, or of the lack of any very close connection between the two. But really, it's fantasy, and if that doesn't hurt my enjoyment of the stories, it shouldn't hurt yours. My rule of thumb is that if it's less stupid than the regular CSI trick of enlarging a photograph to the level where you can recognise a face or a document reflected in the subject's eyeball, then I let it pass. And that's very, very stupid -- nothing here comes close.
There's a general social point to the book, but to my mind it stops short of being irritatingly preachy. The way in which the detectives' dilemma is resolved in the end is, however, a bit of an anticlimax.
General Reviews
I call myself amcguinn, and I write a mostly-political blog Anomaly UK. My possibly delusional belief is that I have truly original and insightful ideas to contribute to many matters of controversy.
However, like so many people, I also want to tell everyone what I liked on television yesterday, what crime thrillers are better than other crime thrillers, and other such trivia. Being unable to delude myself that drivel of that sort has any originality or insight at all, I don't want to dilute the purity of Anomaly UK with it. So I am creating this side-blog Anomaly Reviews, which is badly misnamed because my tastes are no more anomalous or unusual than they are cultivated or cultured. But it's all about the brand, you see.
So unless you are stalking me or are unhealthily obsessed with detective novels, 1980's heavy metal and pound-shop tat, you probably don't want to subscribe to this blog's feed. But it's food for search engines and I may occasionally drop a link to something here if I think it has wider significance.
I would also like to assure you that I'm not attempting to pull a Tim Worstall and milk my site's page rank for a few advertising bucks. If searches that land here end up driving a few hits to Anomaly UK, I'll take that, but this is an exercise in narcissism unsullied by any ulterior motive. I get about a hundredth of the traffic necessary to make any noticeable revenue anyway.
However, like so many people, I also want to tell everyone what I liked on television yesterday, what crime thrillers are better than other crime thrillers, and other such trivia. Being unable to delude myself that drivel of that sort has any originality or insight at all, I don't want to dilute the purity of Anomaly UK with it. So I am creating this side-blog Anomaly Reviews, which is badly misnamed because my tastes are no more anomalous or unusual than they are cultivated or cultured. But it's all about the brand, you see.
So unless you are stalking me or are unhealthily obsessed with detective novels, 1980's heavy metal and pound-shop tat, you probably don't want to subscribe to this blog's feed. But it's food for search engines and I may occasionally drop a link to something here if I think it has wider significance.
I would also like to assure you that I'm not attempting to pull a Tim Worstall and milk my site's page rank for a few advertising bucks. If searches that land here end up driving a few hits to Anomaly UK, I'll take that, but this is an exercise in narcissism unsullied by any ulterior motive. I get about a hundredth of the traffic necessary to make any noticeable revenue anyway.
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