Thursday, September 13, 2012

Harry Potter and the Supplemental Mythological Material



The Tales of Beedle the Bard
By J.K. Rowling
p. 2008


It took me an awful long time to get around to picking this book up, even after my roommate lent it to me and it sat on my dresser for months. I needn’t have put off J.K. Rowling’s supplemental addition to her famous Harry Potter series, seeing as it took me about 45 minutes to read the entire thing. I guess it could have been my way of prolonging the magic of Harry Potter by putting it off as long as possible... but more likely it’s because I had no idea what to expect from this book.

Picking up on a pretty important plot point from the final book in her series, Rowling’s small collection of witch and wizard fairy tales is a reflection of Grimm fairy tales in the human world, with the centerpiece tale being that of the three brothers, as told in The Deathly Hallows. The fable recounts an encounter that three brothers had with Death after avoiding him while crossing a river. Death coyly offers them gifts for besting him and they respectively request a wand that can win any duel (the Elder wand that appears in the series), a stone that can bring anyone back from the dead, and a cloak of invisibility which one can use to hide from Death. The first two backfire, naturally, and Death claims his victims anyway, but the third brother manages to evade Death until old age when he joins him willingly in peace. This tale, like the others in the collection, offer up not-so-foreign ideals and lessons applicable to more than just a wizard, despite its ‘target audience.’

Supposedly the collection is a new translation by our very own Hermione Granger, but following each selection is a lengthy (and a tad boastful) interpretation of the fable by none other than Albus Dumbledore (supposedly his notes were found posthumously by Headmistress McGonagall and allowed to be published alongside his pupil’s translations). The tales themselves read as fables do, but it’s the discussion material by Dumbledore that offers new insight into the world Rowling painstakingly crafted. Connections are made between ‘wizarding history’ and our history, making the whole thing feel relevant and relatable.

I found it rather refreshing and commendable that Rowling made sure to add a footnote about the difference between heroines in wizarding mythology versus "Muggle" mythology. Whereas the women in our fairy tales often need princes to save them while they lie down and allow things to happen, the women in this collection are much more active about controlling their own fates. It's been a constant disappointment growing up with so few female role models in popular legend. Even these days it's a struggle for girls to find a positive role and it will continue to be until the day when we no longer have to point out the inequality.

Unless you’re a rabid fan of fables and myths, this book is not for people who aren’t fans of Harry Potter. There’s just not enough substance there for it to be a worthy read without the context of the seven books that precede it. The best reason I saw for enjoying this little slice of world-building mythology is that it was nice to feel like the legendary Albus Dumbledore was alive and with us once more, if only for a little while.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

The League of Evil Does Some Evil Things



The Traveler
Book One of the Fourth Realm Trilogy
By John Twelve Hawks 
p. 2005
 

There is a phenomenon going around these days called collaborative fiction, wherein two or more authors collaborate on a joint novel and operate under a pseudonym. It’s not exactly a new technique, but rumor has it, it is being used to market specific types of novels to specific young demographics, in order to increase sales and promote possible book-to-movie franchises. The Lorien Legacies series, by authors Jobie Hughes and James Frey under the pseudonym Pittacus Lore, is one such series. I’m not saying The Traveler is one of these books, but I will say it’s ironic (or perhaps just reactionary) that a story that promotes themes of paranoia and Big Brother conspiracy has planted this theory in my head.

The Traveler, first in the Fourth Realm Trilogy by author John Twelve Hawks (yes, it’s a pseudonym), just feels like a collaborative novel. It’s convoluted, but I suppose no more convoluted than your average modern day sci-fi romp; it’s disjointed and slow, but I suppose no more disjointed and slow than your average first installment in a complex sci-fi trilogy, and the characters are somewhat bland and cliché, but... but actually there is no excuse for that besides sub-par writing.

I did, for the most part, enjoy The Traveler—enough to plunge through 500 pages in a few days, enough to consider seeking out the rest of the trilogy instead of just spoiling myself by reading the synopsis online, enough to contend that—okay, maybe John Twelve Hawks isn’t a boring writer, he just needs some time to set the stage. I can forgive the 500-page exposition dump, because he broke it up quite consistently with introductions, action sequences, and a few crucial [potential] deaths*.


*Note: I generally don’t trust any deaths that aren’t explicitly witnessed by loved ones in action/science fiction stories. Death is always subject to change when you don’t know all the rules.


What I can’t forgive is the glaring clichés staining every inch of this novel like red wine on beige carpet. There’s the little-girl-kicks-the-ass-of-much-larger-men, who later becomes the beautiful ice queen warrior adult, to whom men are attracted despite lacking any discernible personality traits beyond ‘focused.’ There’s the unsuspecting hero thrust into a foreign situation, family betrayal, not-so-dead-dads, but the worst offenders are the bad guys.

Villains in The Traveler talk in polysyllabic sentences, wear gloves and crisp suits, and listen to jazz in neat, sterile rooms while sipping expensive whiskey and reveling in their own wisdom about power and fear and control. They own a sprawling, scary government complex... but it is busted into via air ducts, no less. For fuck’s sake, there’s one guy who is literally found sitting in a chair in a dark room, stroking a Persian cat! There is nothing impressively original about Twelve Hawks’ story or style, but at least he could have found better ways of crafting adversaries without plucking them out of a Bond movie. Some times, authors do this on purpose, to be tongue-in-cheek, thus warranting the benefit of the doubt. But nothing else about this novel carries the tone of someone being coy or poking fun at clichés, so why start there? I can only assume their cringe-worthy villainy is just a shortcoming of the writing.

Apart from the lame, disappointing offerings from Evil’s side, I liked a few of the characters in The Traveler. The hero and heroine are nice enough, if a bit dull. Their allies are easy to root for too, since nearly everyone in this book can kick a little ass. Unfortunately my favorite character, and the one with the most potential, is allegedly killed before the end. What’s worse is that the death is actually described in a throwaway line on the back cover of the book! No names were mentioned, of course, but it just felt like a disservice to the character, even though it wasn’t the author’s fault. What should have been a moving death comes off almost like a bullet point.

Furthering my theory that this book is a gimmick is the mystery shrouding its origins. There is virtually nothing about the author, who has no other works under his name. His pseudonym’s origin story is pretty groan-inducing, and the official website for the series—coded and uninformative—plays off like you’re really taking part in the conspiracy. The whole business feels suspiciously like I’m being targeted—not by a shadowy secret society hellbent on controlling my civil liberties and enslaving me with fear... but by a clever marketing company hellbent on crafting the newest sensation by manipulating young readers.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Getting Paid to Write Fanfiction is Awesome...



A Touch of Fever
(A Warehouse 13 novel)
by Greg Cox
p 2012
  

I don’t usually offer this piece of information about myself so readily, but if you know me well then you well know my love of fanfiction. I’ve been a casual writer of it for over a decade and a reader even longer than that. I lead with this only because I think my familiarity with this aspect of fandom often guides how I regard novelizations of movies and TV shows. As it goes, I don’t read too many of them because, to put it bluntly, they’re mostly overlong, timid, boring fanfiction. And why would I pay $6.99 for something I can get a thousand other versions of for free on the Internet?

A Touch of Fever, the first sanctioned novel for SyFy’s original show, “Warehouse 13,” is one such novel. The show chronicles the capers of a team of secret service agents turned really secret agents, tasked with capturing the world’s mystical artifacts that release chaos into the world when they fall into the wrong hands. 

The show is usually quirky-fun, with the occasional apocalypse-heavy moment, all tied up in a nice steampunk package. The characters are delightful and personable, definitely a group you’d want to know in real life, and I’m pleased to say that the author, Greg Cox, does a respectable job of recreating them for this romp.

I won’t go into too much detail about the show, and thankfully the novel doesn’t either. Having to read the entire history of the Warehouse as it has already been detailed on the show would be helpful to new readers but tiresome to fans (and really, who would pick up this book if not a longtime fan?). As it was, I think the book already referenced too many random episodes with no plausible context leading up to the reference. It was almost as if Cox was trying really hard to prove that he was a fan and reacted by inserting as much canon material as he could. Or perhaps this was a way to entice new fans to catch up on the show? Either way, it took me out of the action and made this book a lot longer than it needed to be.

And speaking of things that dragged on, let’s take a minute to discuss the ridiculously long, ridiculously inconsequential B-story smack dab in the middle of the book. The A-story in A Touch of Fever centered on retrieving Clara Barton’s gloves, one of which healed while the other caused mass outbreaks of typhoid fever. People drop like flies in the wake of the villain with the infectious glove, and the stakes are upped when Pete becomes infected. Except, directly following this advancement, the story inexplicably indulges in a 100-page side adventure about Claudia tending to a wily artifact that causes a Rube-Goldberg chain reaction of chaos, completely unconnected to and bearing no impact on the A-story. As much as I love me some Claudia and Artie banter, I could have done without this entire B-story. I’d have much rather seen them both out in the field, helping their dying teammate. I suppose Cox wanted them planted in the Warehouse so it could be a character in this novelization. There’s no doubt the Warehouse itself carries a strong presence in the show. Still, there are other ways to do that than to take away from the main action.

That said, I do think Cox captured the essence of these characters well. They certainly feel like old friends and I was able to picture most of the dialogue in my head as spoken by the characters, but this points to the dilemma official novelizations always present: there is no boldness in the storytelling. Firstly, the authors commissioned to do novelizations do this for a living—that is, they write these types of stories for a wide variety of TV shows, which probably means they are not the biggest fans ever of this particularly fandom, they are just the first writer to agree to take it on because it is a paying job. Secondly, since novelizations must exist within canon but not be dramatic enough to change the canon, the author is severely limited to the range of emotions they can access. You can’t have your characters fall in love or leave or get themselves killed because they are not your characters. You’re just borrowing them. Fanfiction writers can get away with whatever they want because no one is paying them to follow the story and everyone knows it has no bearing on the show. For this, the writer can take chances and alter the characters ‘forever’ if they so choose.

You just don’t get that option in official novelizations. You can craft a crazy adventure, but you must make sure everything is back to normal by the end and that no one will ever need to reference it in the future, because probably 95% of show viewers will never pick this book up. And if no one changes and nothing big happens... then why invest time and money in reading 300 pages of it?

I don’t know... perhaps I shouldn’t knock novelizations. I still own a nice collection of them myself, if only on impulse (and the sheer curiosity of knowing what it is people who own the rights are willing to allow to be published under their show’s name) Furthermore, if ever there was a profession I’d be well-suited for it’s probably writing about TV shows. I love manipulating my favorite fictional characters and I am familiar with a disturbingly large variety of fictional universes... I’d love this job, but I would always feel like I would never had the freedom to be a true writer unless it was with a world entirely of my creation.