Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold

I have read very little scifi, so a lot of things about Shards of Honor really stood out to me. I liked the story’s world building, specifically the strange creatures on the first planet. It sets up a whole set of new rules for society. By placing together an unlikely couple from different planets, Bujold not only raises the romance stakes but it provides an opportunity to explain those rules of the world to an audience.

It was also way more politically driven than most books I read. Aral Vorkosigan was very deeply entrenched in the political conspiracy, which Cordelia Naismith thought it was just the backwardness of the Barrayaran people. However, she returns home after the war and finds herself being manipulated by political powers. I have problems with authority already, so as soon as they asked her to make a speech on their behalf I was urging her to run. Then, the true events had been so twisted to serve the current regime’s strategy. I’m certain this is how all of politics works and I wish there were a way to just keep out of it. I was also deeply disturbed by Cordelia’s encounters with the psychologist. She was told, "Captain Naismith, I remind you that we are not civilians. I am not in the ordinary legal physician-patient relationship with you; we are both under military discipline, pursuing, I have reason to believe, a military—never mind. Suffice it to say, you did not hire me and you can't fire me. Tomorrow, then." This type of imprisonment is right up there with wrongful conviction. Even having dealt with it on small academic scales, I could identify with how earth shattering that lack of control is.

Some of the medical science aspects were really cool. The neurological implants that the pilots had to better command the ships, especially the bit about going through wormholes. It was crazy that the pilots process took hours, but only seemed like seconds to the rest of the ship. The scope of Koudelka’s limb replacement was really impressive. The memory removal is an interesting tool that was used with unnerving frequency. I didn’t like the controversy of the way the uterine replicators were being used. However, the science of it was amazing and could certainly have positive uses under different circumstances.

After Vorkosigan revealed the greater political conspiracy behind the way to Cordelia, I liked that her response was “I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you."

It took me a while to figure out what the purpose was of the Afterward, but the humanization of what all the destruction of war means was really effective. I liked that bit about the Barrayaran officer’s charm: “One of the objects in his pockets was a little locket. It held a tiny glass bubble filled with a clear liquid. The inside of its gold cover was densely engraved with the elaborate curlicues of the Barrayaran alphabet. […] It hung with a companion piece, a curl of hair embedded in a plastic pendant.” And I totally cried at the revelation of Ensign Sylva Boni, age twenty, as the medical technicians daughter. That really sucked. I kind of wish Bujold had suck that into the story somewhere, so I could have finished the book on a high note with hope for Cordelia and Vorkosigan’s love.

Week 8- American Gods

I was reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman for a couple weeks and got about 56% though. I was mostly listening to it or reading on my kindle so I can’t quite tell how long the book actually is but it seemed to go on forever. The short stories about the gods that were told separate from Shadow’s story were fun, but I found myself disengaging from the story as a whole. One of the first of these in the book was the goddess who ate the man through her vagina. Wow. I was thought, “what on earth kind of book did I pick?” However, it was pretty entertaining.

It was really interesting how he explained traditional gods in different ways. Gaiman keeps their essential mythology intact but makes them relevant to the time in which we see them. My favorites were Mr. Ibis and Mr. Jaquel, who like their original Egyptian names, Thoth and Anubis, were responsible for the dead. I liked that Jaquel, specifically was responsible for autopsies and embalming. I was already familiar with Anubis, but had not heard of Thoth before.

Perhaps given how far I got, I never understood who Shadow was meant to be and what his role was, or at least his significance in name or in the story. I’m disappointed that I never understood, however for the time being I’m not interested enough to attempt finishing the book.

Week 7 Night Circus

I have previously tried to read The Magicians and found it too slow to finish. The way Alexander conducted interviews in The Night Circus reminded me of the auditioning the students in Magicians. I think maybe if I had been reading Circus rather than listening to it on audio book I might have felt the same way.

The set-up of establishing the rules of the way magic works in a modern recognizable setting seems to take quite a bit a time. Also, scattering between time and location in Circus makes it harder to connect with the rising action. However, it was still fun anyway. I liked the circus setting than the academic setting in Magicians. Like they said several times in the book I do think it upped the stakes by making it so public. I also liked the idea of them being able to travel all over the world.

There was also the separation of Celia and what we believed to be the antagonist for a large part of the book. It wasn’t until Celia and Marco met in Prague that I really felt the story was gaining energy. However, the initial rise of conflict happened for me when Celia first collaborated with Mr. Baris on the carousel, and her father, Prospero the Enchanter, objected.

I think this is the essential moral issue of the story: the choice to trust others and befriend them rather than treating them all as suspects or enemies. Celia befriends Herr Friedrich Thiessen, Tsukiko, Isabel, and the rest of the circus family. She takes this sentiment to the extreme by falling in love with her competitor. And, together, Celia and Marco make sacrifices to do everything in their power to allow the circus to continue apart from their dangerous game, because it meant so much to so many other people.

Week 6 The Hobbit, Joseph Campbell, and adaptation

I am disappointed I haven’t gotten a chance to reread The Hobbit yet. I haven’t read it since middle school. I mostly remember the scene with the trolls that try to cook Bilbo and the Dwarves for dinner, and Bilbo playing the riddle game with Golum in the cave. I think I remember both of these because of the application of Bilbo’s quick wit. Even when I rewatched the movies this summer I was anticipating the answers to the riddles and what story Bilbo concocted to delay the trolls until the sun came up.

I enjoyed the class discussion on Joseph Campbell because we studied him a couple years ago for cinematic storytelling. However, rather than it being taught as a starting point for our own idea, it and a couple other structuralist forms were taught as the only way to write a movie. Anything that didn’t follow the rules and hit certain plot points was wrong. I prefer the looser approach.

We also talked in class about straying from the text in adaptations. While I definitely understand purist who want the film to exactly match the book, I understand the reasons it often can’t be done. Length of the product and resources are the biggest considerations. Often the best adaptations result in miniseries. I think the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth is quite good.

Another of the biggest challenges is adapting books that rely heavily on writing in first person. Twilight was very interesting for this. I’m not a huge fan. Read the series and watched the films only once, but they are an appropriate example. The books were really focused on her emotions moment by moment. The reader was open to the same emotional journey that Bella went on. It was especially effective in the second book when she was super depressed about Edward leaving. The movies couldn’t allow the audience to experience that in the same way. They had to convey it as an outside witness.

On the topic of adaptions and related to the first person narrator concept, I recently watched the Outlander series based on the books by Diana Gabaldon. I noticed they chose to have the main character, Claire, often narrate in voice over. I find that voice over narration needs to be used very carefully. The practice is often used by novice filmmakers who find it easier to tell the story in voice over rather than show it visually, which defeats the purpose of the medium. In this case I approve, because it doesn’t compete with the story it enriches it.

However, in the last or second to last episode Claire gets married to the very, very handsome Jamie Fraser. Unfortunately, the edit shows the wedding intercut through the characters discussion of it after the fact. I’m not a fan. Flashbacks and discontinuous story telling are okay if like voice over narration it really does something to enhance the story. They did cut away to it to indicate the passage of time in the present and show the characters gradually warming up to one another. So, they had good reason. It was a very motivated artistic choice. But with film and in this particular case, I’d rather be engaged in the present moment rather than jumping around. 

Week 5 Witches

I missed class this week so I looked up stereotype and archetype. This is a bit of what I found…Stereotype characters are stock and could be interchanged from one story to another without any major impact on plot. Archetypes will use the template as a starting place, and stereotype uses it as the end point.

This week I read the third book in the Discovery of Witches trilogy, Book of Life. I had read the others as they came out, but missed notification of this release this summer. The main character, Diana Bishop, is a witch in a modern world with vampires and daemons, as well. The other witches she is in contact with are her aunt, a coven of female witches in London, two female witches on the “congregation” (the non-human governing council), and a male witch who killed her other aunt in the second book and her parents when she was a child.

The books aren’t about a cohesive group of women like most witch books. They are more about bringing together the species. Her husband, Matthew Clermont, is a vampire and the three non-human species are forbidden by the Congregation to associate with one another even in non-romantic relationships. Even among the witches Diana is by large an outsider for her association with Matthew and his family. However, she has incredible magical power and changes the Congregation’s laws.

Unfortunately, she does seem to be a bit a of a stereotype she is a strong woman loyal to family and friends. Her uniqueness is in her gifts not her personality, and the gifts are always increasing. As a reader, each time she gains a new ability it seems more of a deus ex machina than something justified. Yes, its fantasy magic, but when her constantly increasing gifts solve each problem as it appears, it is too convenient. When both her weaver’s cords and the book of life are separately, spontaneously absorbed in her body, it was too much. I think I liked the first and second books better.

This week I also watched the first season of Witches of East End. It was fun when the family matriarch, Joanna Beauchamps, encounters a shifter in her likeness she gets to experience that moment of the uncanny we discussed in class.

I really enjoy the series. Each of the characters has their surface stereotype, but are actually more, and quickly you see that each character is deeper and simply follows an archetype.

Joanna is the matriarch, single mom who loves her two girls more than anything in the world. However, she keeps a lot of secrets from them that come back to haunt her, including the fact that the girls are genetic witches.

Her sister, Wendy, comes to live with them because she read the tarot cards and saw severe dark trouble heading for them. Wendy seems like a typical flighty, wild party girl grown older, but she has been hurt by love and fights fiercely for her family, even if it means going behind her sister’s back.

The older daughter, Ingrid, even fights the stereotypes her family gives her. They say she is the anchor. She is a very intelligent young librarian, who learns quick and can create her own spells. She also has a dark past and even in this life is often willing to break the rules for those she loves.

As the stereotype Freya would be the gold digging selfish popular girl, but she is actually quite grounded. She struggles to develop her gifts and her heart is divided by complicated love.