Review: Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dream Land

Poor Rachel Griffin. She's spent the last six weeks going through a lot of trauma. She's been sent to the infirmary so much, she's bucking for a record. She holds secret that could destroy the universe. Friends have died. She's been shot at more than most veteran police officers. We won't even touch on the dragons, the death cults, the demons, the angels, the elves, gods or monsters. The weight of whole worlds is on her tiny, 13-year-old shoulders....

This isn't even counting school work.

Welcome to round three of the Rachel Griffin novels, Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland.

To be fair, the plot is described as follows.

It’s Halloween at the Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts, and Rachel Griffin is stirring up the dead!

All her life, Rachel has wanted to visit Beaumont Castle in the kingdom of Transylvania, the last known location of her hero, librarian-adventurer “Daring” Northwest. Only falling out of the land of dreams onto her face was not how she had expected to arrive. 

Now, the castle is right there, looming over her. Only her best friend, the Princess of Magical Australia does not want to go in, so as to avoid an international incident. But what if the castle holds some clue as to her hero’s final fate?

And who was that mysterious figure hanging by the neck she glimpsed in the dreamlands, just before she fell. Could the Dead Men’s Ball, where the spooks and ghosts of the Hudson Highland gather once a year on Halloween to dance to the music of some very unexpected musicians, be the key to discovering the hanged man’s identity?

Where do we start?

Let's start with some SPOILERS FOR BOOKS ONE AND TWO....Yes, you'd think after my The Raven the Elf and Rachel review, that would have been spoilery. It seriously, seriously isn't.

So, Rachel has defeated the demon Azrael, fought off a death cult -- twice -- including a dragon. Surely the cult out to destroy the world is no longer a problem, right?

Oh. Wrong. So very, very wrong.

Due to a magical experiment gone wrong, Rachel goes from New York and ends up in Transylvania, and the children of the night are restless. Due to circumstances beyond their control, a demon is unleashed, Morax .... servant of Moloch.  If you don't know what Moloch is, then read through the book, and expect it to go dark. And by dark, I mean "When did early Peter Jackson start directing this film?"  Let's just say that, during the climax of the novel, there is a scene that Ray Harryhausen and Sam Raimi would have loved, because there's going to be an army of darkness, with no Bruce Campbell. And no, I was looking for a chainsaw.

And dang, the references. I wish I could tell you all of the references. From comic books to Norse and Greek mythology, to Biblical in-jokes about the Temple of the Unnamed god (for you biblical type folks who read it, think Saint Paul in Athens). We won't even go into the lion the size of a plushy doll. I'm trying to figure out if Jagi is amazingly subtle, or hitting readers over the head with a brick. I guess it depends on if you're an information sponge, like me.

Now, I'm not going to say there's a shootout every 25 pages .... but there's at least a shootout every 50 or so. Though this one also places an emphasis on emotional conflict, internally and externally. The Magical Princess of Magical Australia is magically annoying at times, and is getting into problems with Sigfried, who is one part Dickens Character, and one part Parker from Leverage. ANd, of course, Rachel has do deal with all of the various and sundry crap she never dealt with from the first two novels -- ie: she's dealt with none of the trauma she's already gone through. That'll make for a mentally healthy 13 year old.

I do so enjoy these books. There is no question of Rachel just happening along as she trips over the solutions to problems. Rachel is a highly active character. She knows there is an enemy, and is doing everything in her power to stop it. It's highly refreshing after certain other YA novels spend most of their time overhearing just the right conversation to get some detail, and have some Hermione look up the data for them.

It's also nice to see that, in all three of these novels, the adults aren't completely useless. In fact, they're doing something odd -- like THEIR JOBS. The adults have a learning curve. Like "Gee, maybe we should listen to the children here." Or even better: "Hey! Maybe we should give our kid a fast-acting wand to shoot spells against the bad guys who seem to be actively out to kill them." The adults here are at least smart enough to conclude that, yes, the kids really are in danger, they really do know that something is going on, and the next time something like this happens -- because it's obvious even to the characters in universe that something is going on -- that the kids should be allowed to defend themselves...

... I didn't realize this while reading it, but looking over that paragraph makes me think this novel has a Second Amendment commercial in there somewhere.

Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland also expands the world. We know more of the culture of Australia and Transylvania, and even hints at Bavaria.  More importantly, we get more and more glimpses at what the "World of the Unwary" looks like, from cops to how historical events are handled.

Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland wraps up many of the plot points in a neat little bow. The main plots of the book are neatly cleaned up. But that never stopped Rachel from getting into trouble, usually on the same exact day the last book ended. And there are still enough dangling threads that show some of where book 4 is going to go: more interpersonal complications to wrap up, psychological damage to at least two of our main characters to fix, as well as the hole in the world that needs to be dealt with. Heck, we've barely touched on a violent episode that happened back in book 1, but was revealed in book 2, and only barely mentioned later on....Right now, I don't know if I approve, or disapprove of how it's being handled, or not handled, as the case may be. I'll bring it up in a later review, should they focus on it some more.

All in all, I am enjoying the heck out of this series. Keep in mind, I typically hate YA novels. You have to be Timothy Zahn or David Weber to make me read it. But, like Narnia, this series really is too good for children.

Anyway, go, buy Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland, and please consider it for the Dragon Awards. Enjoy.

The Dragon Awards are open and ready for nominations, and I have a list of suggestions you might want to take a look at. If you already  have a good idea of what you want, just click here to go and vote for them. The instructions are right there.

Or: sign up for my mailing list in order to get free stuff.

The Love at First Bite series. 

    

Review: The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin

L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright once described her Rachel Griffin books as Fringe meets Narnia in Hogwarts. I don't see the Fringe, but the Harry Potter is easier to see.

And now, I've finally gotten to book one, The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin


The plot is ....

Rachel Griffin wants to know everything. As a freshman at Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts, she has been granted to opportunity to study both mundane and magical subjects. But even her perfect recollection of every book she has ever read does not help her when she finds a strange statue in the forest-a statue of a woman with wings. Nowhere-neither in the arcane tomes of the Wise, nor in the dictionary and encyclopedia of the non-magic-using Unwary-can she find mention of such a creature. What could it be? And why are the statue's wings missing when she returns?

When someone tries to kill a fellow student, Rachel soon realizes that, in the same way her World of the Wise hides from mundane folk, there is another, more secret world hiding from everyone-which her perfect recall allows her to remember. Her need to know everything drives her to investigate. Rushing forward where others fear to tread, Rachel finds herself beset by wraiths, magical pranks, homework, a Raven said to bring the doom of worlds, love's first blush, and at least one fire-breathing teacher. Curiosity might kill a cat, but nothing stops Rachel Griffin!

Imagine end of Harry Potter -- you know, where the school is under full assault, things are blowing up, students are fighting, and great beasts are tramping around? -- only as the prologue. There's a dragon, and possession, and hordes of the possessed out to slaughter the school. There's even an evil math tutor (Moriarty, anyone?). I was expecting a few lines from Maleficent, but not this time.

Rachel Griffen is 13 years old, in Roanoke Academy for magic, in New York, English royalty in a new world, with classmates from all over the world. This alone puts it had and shoulders above the next nearest competitor, which treated America as a nonexistent land in the world of magic.

Chief among her new acquaintances is Sigfried Smith, who comes with a background of a Dickens character, and all the psychology that should come with it. (Oliver Twist is less fiction and more fantasy, orphans in the system aren't that cute.) Siggy is an acquired taste. But he grows on you. Then there's the magical princess of magical Australia.

And then we're off to the races.

The easiest way to review this is to compare it to Harry Potter. It's not fair ... to Harry Potter. Don't get me wrong, while I did enjoy the books, the world of Harry Potter was so narrow and confined, you never really got the sense of the larger world. What did it look like? what would it look like?

The nice thing about this is that we get the perspective of someone who lives in the world of magic, excluding the Stranger in a Strange Land effect.

That's right, unlike Rowling, who relied on the tried and true "Alice in Wonderland" variety of dropping an outsider into a new world, make them the primary narrator, and explain it to the narrator and the audience, Jagi has managed to make a complete world, encompassing every question one might have about how things work. We haven't gotten to the economic system yet, but I suspect that that's next.

And instead of three primary characters, excluding almost all others (let's face it, Neville Longbottom was a punching bag until he became a sword swinging badass out of nowhere), there are friends and acquaintances all over the place. There are mean girls, certainly, but nothing fits into the nice, neat little boxes that Rowling jammed her characters into. There is no one house of "obviously villainy" here.

Sure, there are plenty of ominous characters. There's a Victor von Dread, who I expect to talk in all caps about Latveria. There's a Salome Iscariot, who worried the heck out of me from the moment she was introduced. The characters are vividly drawn, and deeper than you'd expect.

The short version is that this book is awesome, and you need to buy it and read it today. Just click here. You won't regret it.

Going Solo

Once before, I've discussed the joy of having characters go something completely and totally alone. After all, it's what Jack Bauer and Harry Potter have in common: no one listens to them, so they have to do it themselves. In their respective cases, "no one" is a bureaucracy and know it all grown ups who are so busy "protecting" the poor innocent children while ignoring that they're the ones in the crossfire.

Anyway...

Somehow, I've avoiding using what I've coined as The Cassandra Effect, and replaced it with good, old fashioned paranoia.

Let's face it, in The Pius Trilogy, there's a lot of "We don't know how far the bad guys have reach, or who's on their payroll" (okay, with a touch of Sean AP Ryan saying "Screw it, I'm the ultimate badass, I don't need no stinking authorities"). There's even a bit of that in Honor at Stake (though much of that is tempered with "vampires? No one will believe us." )

In Codename: Winterborn, the majority of why Kevin Anderson rides out into battle all by himself is because .... okay, to start with, he's a little insane at the moment. He's had everyone he's close with blown up, the people at the top of his command structure are responsible, and trusting anyone in between seems like a Really Bad Idea. And he's cynical enough that he's relatively certain that leaking a covert operation, getting operatives killed, would only be worth a slap on the wrist for Senators.

I can't imagine where he would get that idea. Can you? I mean, it's not like Senators can get away with mishandling classified material and getting away with it, or commit out and out felonies and get off with just a slap on the wrist.

.... Yes. Obviously, I'm being sarcastic.

But in Kevin's case, after a while, even the bad guys in Codename Winterborn were explaining ways for Kevin to just stop killing people, and just turn over the remaining victims on his hit list, and perhaps even the media would call for their blood.  While this suggestion was never directly made to Kevin, had it been, it would have been scoffed at. Then again, I've had people dismiss the Senators in Winterborn as cardboard cutouts with no redeeming qualities. It only so happens that I've smashed together the vices of real life politicians, most of whom have actually gotten away with it. Had I only but known about Leland Yee at the time...

And what about now? What could Kevin possibly do for help in San Francisco? Who would even consider coming to his aid. This entire city looks like Thomas Hobbes on acid with a cocaine chaser. Man is a wolf to man, it's always a full moon, and there are no silver bullets. Kevin has some acquaintances: he's befriended an assassin .... the assassin has some contacts. The priests might be useful ... if they weren't under siege just by virtue of living in this town that most people forgot.

Sometimes, it helps to have the grand finale be one-on-one when everyone else in town wants nothing to do with it. "Aww, there's a serial killer in town. Is there any chance he's going to kill me? No? Then screw it, have fun, leave me alone."

Okay, so I rely heavily on paranoia and solipsistic douche bags.

Granted, this time, Kevin isn't totally alone. After all, the assassin, Kyle Elsen, will gladly step in if someone is trying to kill Anderson right in front of him.

Kevin runs into a woman in San Francisco named Nevaeh Kraft, a Eurasian woman with midnight blue eyes, and she runs a shop called Artful Krafts. You could even say she's ... magic.

And if you don't know that there's an in-joke there.... well, I suggest reading Honor at Stake. Heh.

As for Mandy, she's a subject for another time. Tomorrow, to be precise.

Jack Bauer, Harry Potter, and the Cassandra effect.

So, what do Jack Bauer and Harry Potter have in common?

No, this is not a joke.

Jack Bauer, the hero of 24, is the key agent on the Counter Terrorism Unit.  He will torture (mostly just interrogation with yelling and threats), kill, fight his superiors, and lop off heads in order to save the day. He developed a drug addiction to go undercover with a cartel, stopped LA from being nuked about three times, saved the President of the United States at least a dozen times, and will occasionally go on revenge-fueld rampages. He is also the winner of going-the-longest-without-sleep-while-still-kicking-ass award.  He's mostly a lone wolf, because everyone who helps him eventually dies.

Harry Potter is essentially experiencing the worst high school experience since Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Instead of being born with martial arts skills and preternatural strength, all he has are the wits of a ten-year-old (to start with) and inborn magical ability that he's still learning to control.  His biggest assets are his friends-- one of whom is smarter than he is. And he's got a death sentence on him since he was born, all because of some Saruman wannabe who has his own Manson family.

So, what do the two of them have in common?

The Cassandra effect.

No, really.

Going through both series, you'll notice that no one actually listens to either Jack Bauer or Harry Potter.  If people listened to Jack Bauer in several seasons, the show would be called 12, not 24.  Every time Harry Potter falls head first into a plot, like some sort of magical Jessica Fletcher, no one over the age of 18 listens to him.  They are both Cassandra, knowing something will happen for certain, only no one will listen to them, especially when they're right. Leaving it up to our heroes to act on their own to save the day, despite the stupidity of others.

Now, granted, it's a plot device specifically designed so it can end with the hero standing alone against all odds, with maybe some cavalry coming over the hill at the last minute. One might say it's a very American concept -- rugged individualism, cowboy duels in the street, the Lone Ranger, every superhero, every Clint Eastwood western-- except that there is still the basic mythology of Odysseus, or Bellerophon, and other folks of yore who have special powers and abilities that make them the only ones to face demons and monsters.  It's the same concept, only we need different reasons for the lone hero to be lone anything.

In the case of comic books, that's easy-- most superheroes have superpowers that enable them to go toe-to-toe with the bad guy and walk away. Even Batman and Iron Man have special toys, special training, and a wealth of experience on their side.

But what happens outside of that? When everyone has the same training? The same knowledge base?

Enter the Cassandra effect.  In both cases, it stems from Finn's Law of Committees: to get the IQ of a committee, you take the total IQ of the individual committee members, and then divide it by TWICE the number of members on said committee.  Why? Because people are dumber in groups.

In either case, this holds.  In the Hogwarts School model, the faculty obviously know more than this pissant little child, so how could he possibly have the answer to anything in particular?  In the case of Jack Bauer, the CTU bureaucracy looks something like the bureaucracy of the damned, filled with political operatives who know nothing about kicking ass and taking names, and everything about kissing ass and shuffling papers.  And, in both cases, our heroes can only appeal to an individual --Harry Potter's Dumbledore, or Bauer's President Palmer -- and that person can cut through the red tape that has made everything so very, very screwed up.

If you don't have that, you don't have a plot in either case.

"Oh, Harry? People are going to try and steal this valuable stone we have in the forbidden wing? We'll triple the guard on it. Thank you."

Or...

"Jack, you've got information that says that there were other people behind the terrorist threat? Sure, we'll have an air strike on them in the next five minutes."

Sounds boring, doesn't it?

At the end of the day, individuals who will fight the good fight are always more appealing to us than a massive, faceless bureaucracy. We trust individuals to get things done, but not the byzantine structure of bureaucracies, who will seemingly let anyone in. It doesn't matter if it's the IRS, the State Department, the NSA, CTU, or Hogwarts.  But good fiction uses this plot device well, exaggerating the natural ineptitude of bureaucracies into a plot point -- and sometimes, you don't need that much exaggeration.

Even when you have something like the Magnificent Seven, or the Avengers, it's very much the same concept. It's the individuals coming together to take on a threat that none of them could deal with alone.

Now, one could counter with military fiction... except in that case, fiction makes certain to focus on the officers and high-ranking foot soldiers -- people who have already been promoted because they have special abilities and knowledge that put them at the head of the back. Just look at 300-- we focus on, possibly, six of three hundred Spartans. It's hard to make us emotionally invested in 300 individual soldiers in the time and space allotted, but making us invested in a select few allows us to be invested in all of them.

At the end of the day, we the audience become invested in individuals.  The Cassandra effect -- or the committee effect -- gives writers the excuse to focus on a select few in a modern age where great big monolithic installations are supposed to take care of everything.

Month in Review: September, 2011

Ah, another month shot to Hell.

So, where are we?  Ah, yes, it's been a very strange little month.  Since I've cut back on the daily ... and weekly ... output, it's been interesting.  I don't even though I've gotten around to posting a music blog in a while.

So start with, we opened the month with a new concept from August: Characters answering Surveys.  In this case, I used Scott Murphy.

Then I looked into how terror can also be a form of communication: sometimes, the most intimidating characters are the ones you least expect. And, sometimes, they're just in your face.

Then there was how to torture characters: with some JMS, and some Jim Butcher.  Muwhahahahaha!!!!!

Yes, I've been having too much fun around here.

Can you tell?

Speaking of which, there was also my Impossible Odds blog, focusing on million to one odds.

Anyway, there was also another Self Defense review.  In this case, I covered how I spent my 9-11; mostly it was learning how to save a life.... no, I'm not joking.  How to save someone from chokes, and guns, and knives.  I also covered the latest in bulletproof clothing, and how to spot a concealed weapon, and such ...

Oh, and I also looked back on September 11, 2001.

Also: DC Comics rebooted their universe, and I'm not that happy about it. Though I'm told I'm dead wrong.

I did a review of The Expendables..... The Pain! The Pain!

And, there was Talk like a Pirate Day, where I got to be lazy ... in other words, I had nothing for that day, and I was saved by the realization it was September 19th.

And, finally, we had the return of Karina Fabian, discussing her new book Mind Over Mind. She gave us Ten Reasons to Love Science Fiction, an interview, and my review of the novel.

Anyway, I thought this was a good, fun little month.

And I've already started on the blogs for October.

Enjoy, all.

Talk like a pirate day ... Or, how to be a lazy blogger

Today is talk like a pirate day!  Which means what, exactly?

Which means that it's a great excuse for me to be completely lazy, and post pirate stuff.

And use a lot of R's.

How cheat?  Well, you all remember the APM story of The Pirate King, right?  Well, if you don't, you might want to check out how I would deal with pirates of the Caribbean .... okay, Somali pirates, but what the heck.  It's one of the complete stories of A Pius Man, constantly updated for your amusement.

We also have flashbacks to the Wiki Pirates, Harry Potter and the Pirate Queen, and, of course, explaining what the heck Talk like a Pirate Day actually is.

Like I said, lazy blogging 101.

Enjoy, all.

Week-In-Review 7-23-11

Well, this week has been interesting.

Monday
The week started with Killing Captain America ... again! Those bastards.  Let's just say that I expect a movie tie-in is at work.

The music blog was all about flying cars and Babylon 5.  You'll see.

I also did a nice little article over at Examiner.com about martial arts and childhood obesity.  I'm told it's quite good.

Tuesday

This was the day I learned the good Muslims can't be good Americans ... well, if you believe one army private. I don't, but what can you do?

It also came the same day that Hollywood once again has proven to me that if I ever do a film on A Pius Man, I'm going to take the money and run very, very far.

And music blog for the day was Harry Potter, Pirates, and Mass Effect. Long story.

Wednesday

The music of the day was taken from the soundtrack of Mass Effect.  Enjoy  It's really rather neat.

Thursday

The day that, once again, all my irritation of politics is justified, as someone at Salon.com tries to examine the Politics of Captain America.

A note o n this one: The author of the article tripped over my blog post, and insists that the whole "fiscal policy of Captain America was all tongue-in-cheek."  Read it yourself. See what you think.

Music blog: Tom Smith Does Harry Potter, Mass Effect 2

Apparently, JK Rowling made the birthday for one of her characters the same day as "Talk like a pirate day."

Guess which one it is.

And, as you've probably noticed, I have a great respect for Video Games lately, especially with voice acting, and particularly music. 

So, Mass Effect 2 makes it on today.