felis_ultharus

Dear Mr. Pullman,

If you want me to believe that the race of witches in your novel has never even heard of angels, don't name their leader - and the one asking about the angels - Serafina. Thank you.

-- felis_ultharus

So montrealais is off in Europe for a couple of months. Even though I said goodbye to him yesterday -- and even though his mother called this morning -- I still kept turning down the sound on the computer's speaker, as if I was worried I'd wake him up.

I finished version six of my novel on Sunday, exactly on deadline. Still not perfect -- the last page continues to give me trouble, and there's moments throughout that give me trouble. But I think the change in tone was the last huge altered. Plot-wise, much less is different since last version.

I'm determined not to even look at it for a month. I've made that promise before, and failed, but I'm starting to draft something completely different. Medieval fantasy specifically. I've done so much research into the middle ages -- and how fantasy novels get the middle ages wrong -- that I might as well use it for something besides D&D games and historical research.

I'm also thoroughly addicted to Full Metal Alchemist, which has now replaced Evangelion as my all-time favourite anime. Thanks to the miracle fan-scanned translations, I have now read every issue of the manga out in Japan, and thanks to streaming video, I've seen all nine episodes for the second series out in Japan.

If anyone wants to compare the two anime series, the gory, horrific scene where the boys try (and fail) to bring their dead mother back to life is a good benchmark.

The scene in the first anime has good atmosphere, but is overplayed. The same scene in the second series (which starts seven minutes in, and includes unskippable commercials) is closer to the manga.

But it's interesting -- like comparing two different theatre companies doing Hamlet. Only with more bleeding children. And magic circles. Though it might be interesting to see a version of Hamlet where he brings Gertrude back from the dead and winds up with a cybernetic arm and leg. I'd pay to see that.

So I finally finished The Dark is Rising series, one of those Harry Potter precursors that have been returning to the limelight in the reflected glory of its famous progeny.

(I read one book of it when I was a kid, and enjoyed that. My sister and infinitecomplex got me the whole series for my birthday.)

It's a good series overall, and generally got better. The first entry is a bit lacklustre, but her writing improves throughout.

( Review continues )

Right now, I'm reading a book called Reinventing the Sacred, which is one biologist's attempt to refute reductionism and recuperate concepts like free will in scientific terms. It's rather disappointing so far, I'm afraid.

However, it is impossible to hate a book that includes the sentence, "I will try to show that a tiger is both epistemologically and ontologically emergent with respect to physics."

I felt really good this last week, better than I have in a decade, with no real reason for it. Maybe it's just that the novel's going well -- I think most people are giving up on me ever finishing the thing, but it's so much better in this version than any of the others I've shown to people that I think the progress exceeds all previous progress combined.

It's been quiet, lately -- just writing and reading mostly. I really think that one day archaeologists are going to unearth Anglo-Saxon slash fanfic around Beowulf and Wiglaf from some Sutton-Hoo-esque barrow.

I did get my gift my jc2004 and infinitecomplex, which would be the complete Dark Is Rising sequence. Thank you -- I hadn't read the rest of the series yet ^_^

Still getting gradually caught up on friends-list reading. I'm not all the way there yet.

I woke up with that usual, post-finished-version sinking feeling of thinking it was going to be terrible and I'll never be a writer. I'm so manic-depressive just after finishing one of these things.

I did finish Tombs of Atuan, too, yesterday. Great, but not quite as brilliant as Wizard of Earthsea. Very little happens in Atuan -- it's more a psychological portrait of a priestess and a wizard -- which is okay for a change, but I don't know if I'd want to read a whole series like that.

A quiet day in the office. As always when I work on Saturdays, I'm listening to CBC, and contemplating campaigning for a memorial statue dedicated to the victims of Brent Bambury's Go.

I'm reading Children of Húrin right now. You have to admire J.R.R. Tolkien -- I hope I have the stamina to keep writing thirty-four years after my death.

As a fantasy novel overall, it's okay so far, but the racism has really astonished me. Not that it's there -- anyone who's read Lord of the Rings as an adult can't miss it -- but as the book was ghostwritten by his son in 2007 from his father's manuscripts, you'd think someone would've pointed out during the editing process that parts of it read like British National Party propaganda.

It's not even just a moral issue but also an artistic one -- it really detracts from the unfolding of a story to predict how good a person is going to be by how pale they are (dark skin = evil, dark hair but white = imperfect or unstable, blond = good).

On the other hand, the way some of the scenes are written, I have to wonder if Christopher Tolkien is playing to a slash-writing audience. I may post some of these another day.