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Count_Zero
Really fun story, which moves at a brisk pace, and presents a mystery that does not cheat. Should Scalzi write another story in this world, I'd definitely check it out, and should it get optioned for a film, I'd certainly see it in theaters.
which is also available for free from Audible this month, giving all the more reason to check it out now.
This is an excellent book, and the reader is fantastic. However, the audiobook omits the “To be Continued in Agatha H. and the Siege of Mechanicsburg” chunk that comes after the cliffhanger, which is rather frustrating.
Also, this book ends on a cliffhanger, and Agatha H and the Siege of Mechanicsburg isn't out yet, so keep that under consideration - though considering that arc of the comics also ends on a cliffhanger, you may even want to wait until the 5th novel, and then binge on the three of them. That way you're on a good stopping place while you wait for “Agatha H. and the Master of Paris.” or whatever book 6 will be titled.
The PlotLuke, Leia, C-3P0 and R2-D2 are en-route to meet up with a conclave of resistance movements in order to try to get them to join the Rebel Alliance. En Route Leia's Y-Wing runs into mechanical problems and is forced to set-down on a believed uninhabited planet, Minban, that turns out to be a covert mining colony run by the Empire. I'm not exactly sure why the Empire would need to run a mining colony “covertly”. In the course of trying to find parts or transport, Leia and Luke encounter a strange old woman named Hettie, who has a shard of a crystal called the “Kaiburr Crystal”, which has the ability to focus the perception of the force in those who can perceive it. Luke touches this shard and his perception is heightened, Leia senses nothing. Luke suspects that this “spike” in his awareness in the force could be perceived by other force sensitive people, at some distance, possibly even by The Emperor.Luke & Leia, when roughhousing playfully (as part of their romantic tension), end up getting the attention of the local garrison and are arrested. Leia has her PTSD (caused by her torture on the Death Star) triggered at the mention of the Imperial Governor, and they're thrown in a cell with two large furry creatures called Yuzzum, which are basically Wookies - who are currently nursing really terrible hangovers. Hettie helps break out Luke & Leia, with Luke and Hettie pooling their force abilities to levitate a food tray to trigger the motion sensors for the door (not very secure), before they escape. The Yuzzum kill some troopers in very gruesome fashions (up to and including beating troopers to death with their own limbs, and the limbs of their comrades).After travelling across country, they end up encountering some local wildlife, and end up with some of the natives who haven't gotten hooked on booze and drugs by the Empire to keep them docile. Luke succeeds in a trial by combat, just in time for some stormtroopers (and Darth Vader - who also triggers Leia's PTSD), show up and attack. They are pushed back, and our Heroes commandeer an Imperial Transport to reach the temple where the crystal is (with the Yuzzum again literally ripping troopers to shreds). Luke & Leia arrive, but as they're investigating the temple, Vader shows up at the transport and kills the Yuzzum. He arrives in the chamber with the crystal, right after Luke's party does. Leia ends up in a lightsaber duel with Vader, which she loses at, but she is not killed. Luke Force Pulls his lightsaber to him, and manages (with some force assistance by Obi-Wan) to knock Vader into a pit. This does not kill Vader, but he won't be getting out for quite some time - enough time for Leia and Hettie to grab the Kaiburr Crystal and our heroes to escape.Character DevelopmentLuke Skywalker: Is force sensitive, and has learned a new ability - Force Pull! Is also romantically interested in Princess LeiaPrincess Leia Organa: Is not force sensitive. Has really bad PTSD from her time on the Death Star, caused by her torture (not by seeing her home world destroyed), and is triggered by mention of Imperial Governors, and by Darth Vader himself.C3-P0 & R2-D2: Darth Vader knows the authentication codes to shut them down automatically.The Emperor: Is Force Sensitive.Darth Vader: Likes to play with his opponents before killing them - which allows him to be defeated by Luke. Is actively sadistic - gloating about spending a longer time torturing Leia this time. This is the first time we see him kill a subordinate who failed him (he was stopped in A New Hope)World Building The Empire has rules about the treatment of indigenous populations - rules that are ignored in the case of Minban, the planet in this book. The Rebel Alliance is recruiting various other Resistance groups, particularly following their loss of manpower in the wake of the destruction of the Death Star. Governors are responsible for whole systems, not just planets. The senate being dissolved circa A New Hope has upped the bureaucratic headache of running a system (and the planets therein). Presumably the Death Star would not have included the ability to cut through red tape, so this still would have been a problem.Other NotesThe book has a foreword by [a:George Lucas 3231 George Lucas https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1458677946p2/3231.jpg]George Lucas saying that he's at that time writing the story for the second film (which will be Empire Strikes Back, and he's planned to do 9 films total in the series. Also, both Luke andVader are using Blue lightsabers. I'm assuming that when this book was written, the re-release of the films, with the “Episode IV” in the opening crawl and the re-rotoscoped lightsaber blades hadn't been released yet.My ThoughtsAs stilted as the dialog is in A New Hope, Splinter of The Mind's Eye is soooo much worse. Several of the characters have straight up Silver Age Comics levels of verbosity. This isn't helped by the fact that this, basically, is the second Star Wars work at the time of publication (with the exception of the Marvel comics), so nobody really has anyone else's voice yet. That said, Vader in particular feels somewhat jarringly out of character. Yes, he has a flair for the dramatic, and he's certainly evil. However, his sense of cruelty here is so much more vicious. You know those characters in anime and manga who demonstrate their cruelty by licking the blood from the blade of their sword or knife? Vader, in this book, would be that, if he didn't need his helmet and you could safely lick a lightsaber.It bears mentioning that this book is also considerably more graphically violent than the films, with considerably more gore. Dismemberments abound, with more than a few people being beaten into unrecognizability as humanoids by the Yuzzum. While Dark Horse did not have to deal with the Comics Code Authority, this still probably would not have flown in much of their books.
This is a decent enough book, but I don't buy into the Children of the Light. Not that I don't believe a group like that couldn't exist. Indeed, they're clearly modeled after the Spanish Inquisition. However, what allowed the Inquisition to get away with what they did is that they were attached to the larger power structure of the Roman Catholic Church, with all the power and influence that entailed, not only within the inquisitor's countries, but between nations.
Even then, the Inquisition had its limits - if the Inquisition tried to foment a popular revolt against a monarch, no one would tolerate it. The monarch wouldn't stand for it, as it's literally a direct threat to their power, and for that matter neither would rival nations who might be inclined to side with the church otherwise, because someone else could be overthrown by a church sponsored populist revolt, then so could they. Yet, the Children of the Light, which as written in this book has no backing from any organization with the scope and influence (benevolent and malevolent) of the Roman Catholic Church, is shown clearly attempting to start a populist uprising against a monarch, and the monarch is doing nothing about them. I don't buy it. If other monarchs found out about this, lots of members of the Children of the Light would end up being publicly executed for treason (or other convenient offences which might have been ignored otherwise).
While this book was published this year, it was originally published in Japan decades ago, and it shows. I still enjoyed the book, but it suffers from some pacing problems. It definitely avoids the “rah-rah military over sheeple civilians” problem some mil-SF runs into, though the best works of Japanese mil-sf tends not to have that problem.
It's kind of weird listening to this book as an audiobook. Going from the sort of “Literary agent” structure that the Lord of the Rings was born from (J.R.R. Tolkien translating a book that he found in some archive somewhere), the Silmarillion feels like it should be structured in the form of something like Beowulf or the Odyssey - a legend originally told orally, transcribed into a more written form. Thus, this should be something that would be perfect for an audiobook.
However, rather than using any of the meters or rhyming verses that those earlier works (which clearly inspired Tolkien) used, instead the book is structured in a form that's probably closer to the Bible, particularly the King James version, with a mix of events told in the abstract, combined with individual moments told with more specific details, in a very floral style.
Having the book read as an audiobook does make it less dry, and easier to get through. However, there are moments where, as a reader, I have to basically stop the book after the book summarizes a big moment (such as an epic battle between two armies), and picture that battle in my mind's eye, before continuing with the book, whereas in the more specific moments, the story in the narration plays out at about the same pace that it does in my imagination.
I am glad I've finally read the Silmarillion, but it's not something I'm going to re-read again for a while, and even then, I'll probably stick to specific passages.
The main problem with the Phantom Blood arc, or at least this chunk of it, is that Hirohiko Araki really doesn't know how to write non-Japanese people, especially ones from before the 20th century - but he knows how to draw pre-20th century England. It's like if you had someone write a story set in the same time period as Downton Abbey, and for research had them watch Downton Abbey - except with all the dialog replaced with the trombones from the Charlie Brown cartoons.
I can't say if that's better or worse than Mad Bull 34's “American Law Enforcement Through The Lens Of Someone Whose Only Knowledge of America And Americans Is Bad Knockoffs Of The Dirty Harry Films.”
I really like how Yasuhiko-san put together in the manga how Newtype communication works - something trippy and consciousness expanding, freaky and wonderful all at the same time. It also really shows just how much Lalah and Amuro have bonded - making the ultimate fate of their relationship all the more tragic.
This felt a lot like the manga equivalent of an exploitation film. We practically get the shots of characters on 42nd street, in front of the array of various grindhouse movie theaters. However, unlike exploitation films, this manga has a production valume you can see on the page. Akimi Yoshida has an art style that reminds me, a lot of Katsuhiro Otomo, from the way she draws faces, to the detail in her background.
If I was to lay one complaint at her work, it's that she doesn't draw black people very well. It's not that the characters are drawn like Black Sambo (like some artists have a bad habit of doing - lookin' at you, Akira Toriyama). The character of “Skip” is supposed to be a black kid in his mid-teens - but his lips are drawn just a little too big. It's not so much that it's a caricature, but it's enough to stand out and be jarring.
We get so many great meetings this volume - another meeting between Char and Sayla (or rather Artesia and Casval) - the first meeting between Char and and Amuro, and the meeting between Amuro and Lalah Sune. These moments are all just so wonderfully done, made even better by what is saved for the color splash pages - By having Amuro and Lalah's first meeting be in color, the impression that she leaves with Amuro is made so clear. The same way, the first face-to-face meeting between Char and Amuro is so wonderfully done - both knowing that they're on opposing sides of the war, but only Amuro recognizing Char as his arch enemy, and the mud on their knees as free Amuro's car from the ditch making so clear that both have their hands dirty, but with something other than mud.
It's a wonderfully done volume, with some especially done action scenes as well, which also shows just how far Amuro has come as a mobile suit pilot.
Satoshi Kon's manga Opus is a brilliant work of fiction. Probably the only work of fiction I've encountered that really gets across the interaction between a writer and their characters in the same approachable way that Opus does is the film Stranger Than Fiction. However, I think that Opus does it better.
In Stranger than Fiction, Spoilerthe lead of the story discovers he's a fictional character, and after eventually meeting his creator, and reading the work that will result in his death, decides to accept his fate.
In Opus, by comparison, mangaka Chikara Nagai ends up being confronted by the story's protagonist, Lin, over Nagai's planned ending, where Lin will sacrifice himself to defeat the story's antagonist - Masque. Lin steals the story's conclusion, forcing Nagai and one of the supporting characters from the story, Satoko, to find Lin, and to allow the story to conclude in a fashion that prevents the villain from abusing the fourth wall as well.
Ironically, the story of Opus is also incomplete. The magazine that Opus was serialized in was canceled before Kon could finish the story, and Kon was working on a final chapter for the story for a graphic novel release, but was delayed while working in the anime industry... and was unable to put the finishing touches on that chapter before his death of pancreatic cancer. This makes the final chapter, where Nagai confronts Kon himself over leaving a work half-complete both darkly comic and tragic, as this series ultimately lacks an ending for reasons very much outside of Kon's control.
Anyway, this is a fantastic work of manga, and one that is definitely worth picking up for fans of the medium, of Kon's work, and of literature alike.