The Coldfire Trilogy

Another one of those authors who feels the need to keep their first and middle names shrouded in mystery on the covers of books, C.S. Friedman is better known for writing science fiction novels such as "This Alien Shore" and "In Conquest Born" than for fantasy. In the early nineties Friedman wrote a set of novels rooted in science fiction but expressed through fantasy called The Coldfire Trilogy. The premise of the series was based on the familiar science fiction concept of humanity sending a massive ship from Earth out into the unknown reaches of deep space to find a new planet to colonize. Once the ship landed, the colonists of course were confronted with a veritable deluge of issues that they could not have foreseen or been prepared for.

The planet the colonists landed on, Erna, has a very strange quality not present on earth. Erna has some sort of energy referred to as the Fae which seems to emanate from below the planet's surface. This force, entirely alien and unknown to humanity, reacts to the emotions of humans and causes spontaneous changes that shouldn't be scientifically possible. The stronger and more prevalent the emotion, the more likely a change is to occur. The collective fear of a people could spawn whole species of monstrous creatures. Early on in the colony's history one of the most prominent colonists decides to completely destroy their space traveling vessel, stranding all of the people on Erna to contend on their own with the Fae and leaving them no ability to communicate with their home world.

These science fiction concepts are mostly kept firmly in the background of the story, which is most decidedly a fantasy tale. Many years after the destruction of the colony's space ship humanity has spread across the continent and built themselves into a standard fantasy quasi-medieval society with only a few vestiges of the technology that they once mastered. Humans have found ways to mold and shape the Fae to their liking in a method not at all dissimilar to the tales of the past of wizards who could work magic. Some few blessed people are even born Adepts, with a natural talent to see and work the Fae that others can only dream of. The main character is Damien Vryce, a priest of the Church of Human Unification. He hails from a sect of the church that is more tolerant of sorcerers than the rest of the organization. Damien finds himself repeatedly at odds with one of the leaders of his church, who seeks to eradicate the Fae entirely, or at the very least render humans unable to use it.

One of the most compelling aspects of the series is Damien's internal struggle as he comes into conflict with his Church and his beliefs. He eventually meets with the Church's founder and discovers that his entire system of beliefs was originally created for reasons that are entirely at odds with how those beliefs are taught in the present time. He is forced to work with individuals he would normally kill outright for the good of his Church and the people it is sworn to protect, even though his Church may brand him a heretic for it.

The other reason these books are of note is their overall idea. In a world where reality can be changed based on the number of people who believe something, nearly anything can be possible. The Church of Human Unification is based on church beliefs and practices from the long ago time of Earth, and the highest leaders of the church are working to have enough people follow their practices so that the deity they believe in will actually come into existence, if that deity doesn't exist already. The idea of men creating a God based on the strength of their belief is a highly intriguing one that can spawn many a nights pondering.

Rai-Kirah Trilogy

Carol Berg is a name that has been picking up steam lately in the fantasy genre. For those unfamiliar with her books, she writes almost exclusively in the first person perspective, and has a habit of making the main character either in extreme emotional duress or otherwise conflicted somehow. This method of writing is intended to make the character's plight hit closer to home and have a deeper impact on the reader, and it's a bit hit or miss with Carol Berg. Her first novel, "Song of the Beast" (actually published as her fourth book), suffered from a similar problem as the games based novels discussed in the last posting. Because the book is such a short read, it's hard to sympathize with the main character or his problems, even if it they are expressed in the first person. It seems like Berg did not yet have a full grasp of how to write about extreme tragedy in an effective manner yet.

That's all cleared up with her next three books, collectively referred to as the "Rai-Kirah" trilogy and composed of the titles "Transformation", "Revelation", and "Restoration". These books know how to hit the readers where it hurts, and make them thoroughly enjoy every moment of it. The story revolves around a man named Seyonne who has been a slave so long that he no longer even bothers to contemplate suicide; he's so far in the depths of despair that even the thought of the release of death gives him no joy. The horror of his slavery extends beyond simply being owned and abused by another human being. In the culture that he comes from, warriors who are taken captive are considered dead to their people, so even should he ever be freed or find some way to escape, all of his family and friends would ignore his existence. He could shout in their faces, punch them, or even burn down their homes and they would not acknowledge his presence. Expanding the book into a trilogy gave enough time to flesh out the cast and have some decent character development. During the course of the series Seyonne changes as his circumstances change around him.

Berg's writing is not perfect, though. There are some missteps that might put off readers. Some arcs of the story veer wildly off into strangely unnecessary tangents that don't seem to have any real relevance with the overall world, and there are the occasional fantasy clichés that can be seen from a mile away. Overall these complaints are minor and can be overlooked when compared to the compelling storyline and amazing first person execution.

Games Based Novels

Like many people I originally started reading fantasy as a kid because of novels based on video games and role playing games. These are a great launching pad for the younger crowd to get introduced to the genre because these books tend to be relatively short, usually around three hundred pages or less, have simplistic story lines that are resolved in a single novel, and generally have themes and lessons that are easy to digest. Unfortunately they tend to lose their appeal as the reader moves on to bigger authors and more serious fantasy series. The previously positive attributes turn to negatives as the mandatory low page counts imposed by the manufacturers of the games mean that characters are not given enough time to be fully fleshed out, leading to ambivalence on the part of the readers. Who cares if a character I've known for a measly hundred pages meets his final demise? I haven't gotten in that character's head enough to know whether I care about them or not. The simple themes and obvious good versus evil dichotomy become monotonous as book after book rehash the same ideas with new names and places.

Despite these problems there are still a few games based novels which manage to hold my attention and hold their own against more mature fantasy books. One such book is "The Gathering Dark" by Jeff Grubb, which is based on the Magic: The Gathering card game. Set long before the main storyline of the game when the world of Dominaria was gripped by a harsh ice age, it features heroes that are consistently fun to read about, villains that are multi-faceted, and writing that is more compelling than the average game based book. While all of these reasons on their own might be enough to give the book a shot, it's the social commentary that really sets The Gathering Dark apart from all the other books in the Magic series. It might be hard to believe that a book based on a fantasy card game could have anything even resembling thought provoking ideas about our society, but Jeff Grubb manages to pull it off by making parallels between several groups in the novel and prominent organizations in the real world, and he does it without being too heavy handed to boot.

Seattle Attractions Part III

On to day three of the Seattle trip! The third day was the time to cram in everything we hadn't had a chance to get to before, so it was a hectic and attraction filled day. The first order of business was to get to the Seattle Zoo. Since we weren't driving and it was several miles from our hotel we tried out the bus system, which is surprisingly well put together mass transit system. Besides the one problem of the first bus expecting us to pay before we boarded and the second bus driver yelling at me because I was supposed to pay after the ride was down and I was leaving, everything was pretty smooth. We weren't familiar with the layout of the city and didn't have a bus map, but a helpful local told us where to get off the bus. Most of the buses in Seattle are two bus lengths long, with a bendable middle section. We sat in the middle, which was a crazy experience because every turn made the walls of the section expand and contract.

The Seattle Zoo is large enough to spend an entire day there, so our stay was full of running and finding the best sites. We stopped first at the food court and got smoothies, which are served in cups that look like plastic but are actually made out of corn so they are not only earth friendly, but they also can't harm the animals if someone drops them in an exhibit. The large elephant exhibit was our main reason for going, but for some reason none of the elephants could be seen, which was a bit of a letdown. We did get a good view of the apes, giraffes, and hippos, though.

After finishing up at the Zoo we took one last trek to the Pike Place Market to get all the purchases we didn't want to carry or weren't sure of the day before. There is a cheap T-Shirt shop with thousands of shirts just outside the Market building proper where I acquired the obligatory "Seattle" shot glass and my wife bought shirts to take home as gifts. We wandered away from the market to see what else was downtown and found the Pike Brewing Co., a restaurant, bar, and brewery. They have an amazing artichoke dip that puts a new spin on an old classic by adding in crab and putting it on little bread slices instead of chips. My meal choice was the "Son of Reuben", which supposedly is half of a full Reuben sandwich. If that was half, I'm glad I didn't get the full, because what I got was bigger than any Reuben I've had at home. We also tried the Pike Sampler, which was six of the brews available in four ounce glasses served on a wooden board with a little insert that told about each beers flavor, bitterness, and alcohol content. The Pike Naughty Nellie and the Pike Kilt Lifter were our favorites, and we were fortunate enough to find the Kilt Lifter in a store when we got home. For those who prefer a darker, heavier beer, I would recommend the Pike XXXXX Stout, which is a dark reddish-black and has a slight chocolate aftertaste.

Our last major stop was down the street at the Seattle Art Museum to see the Roman art exhibits on loan from the Louvre in France. Most of the statues were in marble, and since there weren't under glass it was a challenge to not reach out and touch them (the beer sampler might have had something to do with that lack of inhibition, though!). After perusing all the Roman art we had a few minutes before the museum closed to see the regular exhibits. Some of them were very interesting and fun to look at, like the king's robe made entirely of dog tags, but others were very much stretching the boundaries of what should be considered "art", like the canvas that simply was painted half black and half white, which any 1st grade kid could have done. The Art Museum's main lobby is an exhibit all on its own, sporting full sized cars hanging from cables with dozens of long glowing rods sticking out of them.

After all that walking and exploring it was time to relax, so back to the hotel to lounge in the hot tub and enjoy the sauna!

May Musical Releases

May is shaping up to be a good month for new music, with albums coming out on the same day for two of my favorite bands. May 27th will see the release of both the new Ihsahn solo album titled "angL", and the new Tiamat album "Amanethes".

AngL was recorded and mixed by Ihsahn at Symphonique Studios, the studio owned by Ishahn's wife Heidi, in his native Norway. Asgeir Mickelson, the drummer for fellow Norwegian band Borknagar, returns to colloborate with Ihsahn again and handle drumming duties on this album. In a surprise colloboration, Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth will also be making a guest appearance on the album, providing vocals for one song. Apparently Ihsahn and Mikael have been friends since they met at an Emperor concert in the nineties and have always wanted to work together but haven't had the chance until now. Ihsahn recently did an interview with a website where he walked the interviewers through all the songs on the album and explained what they were about and why he composed them the way he did. Based on his explanations I'm expecting this to be one of the best albums of 2008!

Tiamat streamed their entire new album on their MySpace page for a few days earlier this month, so I've already got a chance to check it out before buying. I'm quite impressed with how they've meshed the sound of their earlier, heavier work with both their middle era Pink Floyd sound and their newer, more toned down and rock oriented feel. The ablum has already been released in Europe and entered the Swedish album chart at #13, a first for Tiamat.

Seattle Attractions Part II

The second day of our Seattle trip took us on a longer exploration of the famous Pike Place Market. We got coffee at the original Starbucks store, which still has the more risqué original Starbucks logo sporting a much more nude mermaid than what is seen on most of the other store logos. The open market on the ground floor is an awesome experience. Nearly every type of store is there, from fresh flowers to clothes and jewelry and all kinds of seafood and fresh vegetables. I acquired a flashy new tye dye shirt and munched on coconut covered fruit rolls while we moved on to exploring the lower floors, which have even more variety, including book stores and novelty shops. There was an out of print CD store, which I was very excited about as I was looking for an out of print CD of a band called Krux. Frederik Akesson, the person I had come to Seattle to interview at the concert, was in this band so I wanted to have the CD there for him to sign. Unfortunately the CD store was closed for some reason, so no such luck there. On the way back upstairs there were numerous street performers playing guitar and singing songs, and we saw the famous fish mart where the employees throw fish to the customers.

Later on we took the 1 hour Argosy harbor cruise of Elliot Bay, which was included with our Seattle City Pass. It was a little overcast with a light sprinkling, which was perfect weather for the hot rum cider we bought from the bar. The tour guide was funny and informative, and we got a great view of the city skyline. The cruise ship passed by a hotel right on the waterfront where they used to allow fishing from the bedroom windows, a practice which was nixed when broken windows and fish hidden under mattresses and in bath tubs became a serious problem. The guide mentioned the history of a seafood restaurant called Ivers, which supposedly started as an aquarium but switched to a restaurant when it was losing too much money so the owner decided to cook up all the fish and hope to make a profit. When we got off the tour we headed to Ivers to check it out for ourselves. Ivers is very interesting for a "fast food" style restaurant because the front half is open air, giving it a unique flavor not found in many other similar restaurants. Their crowning achievement is the clam chowder served in a bread bowl, which is highly regarded by all the locals, and the halibut and fries wasn't too bad either. They also have a connected sit down restaurant with a different menu, but because we were strapped for time we had to pass on it.

After Ivers it was time to head to our main reason for coming to Seattle - the Progressive Nation concert and my interview with Opeth. That is a post all its own, so we'll skip that and move on. We sampled the delivery fare again after the concert, and I had the first and only thing that wasn't as good in Seattle as it was at home. We ordered from a pizzeria and got calzones. I chose the Greek calzone, which was essentially a gyro but baked in a pizza crust. It was a decent enough meal, but they used beef instead of the traditional lamb, which was a bit of let down because we have a great Greek place at home that makes a much better gyro and uses the more flavorful lamb.

Seattle Attractions Part I

In my previous post I wrote about all the glorious food we ate in Seattle (and I'm going to talk about it more - there was just too much delicious stuff to fit into one rant!), so now it's time to move on to the attractions. We stayed in a hotel just a few blocks from the Space Needle and all the surrounding shops, so our first stop was the food court right next to that most famous of Seattle's sites. There was a convention of some sort going on celebrating Asian Pacific Islander heritage, so we go to see a neat show with music on the center stage while we tried to figure out which of the many mini-restaurants to snag a quick a lunch from before going exploring. The variety in the food courts is astounding! Thai, Indian, Mexican, seafood, Italian, sandwiches, burgers, Chinese, sushi, anything you can think of they have in abundance. I tried a seafood place called Steamers, which was the first food court restaurant I'd ever seen that offered glasses of wine. They had a surprisingly wide selection for their size, and their shrimp and fries were great!

We took the monorail down to the Westlake Center, which has an even larger food court with yet more varieties of food to sample. On our last day there I went to the sushi stand and got to sample octopus and raw red snapper, which are probably both acquired tastes because of their rubbery texture, but I enjoyed them, especially with a little wasabi. The monorail is a fun trip if you get a driver who likes to talk about the history of Seattle. We took the monorail many times and had wildly different experiences depending on who was working it. The original monorail car from the 1960's is the one still in use today. Some of the best sites to see downtown are within walking distance of the Westlake Center, like Pike Market, the waterfront, and a whole lot of shopping.

We each bought the Seattle City Pass, which offers entrance into a variety of attractions for around half or less of the normal price. After checking out the sites around downtown our first location to use the City Pass was the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, which happened to be right back where we'd come from, directly next to the Space Needle. While it's called the "Music" project, it's really the "Hendrix" project because about seventy percent of the place is dedicated to information about Jimi Hendrix and his music. The coolest thing about the museum was the guitar sculpture, which was a giant collection of connected musical instruments (mostly guitars) that winds all the up from the floor to the ceiling of the second floor. There is also a recording studio where people can record different instruments or vocals, and then buy a CD of their recording.

Foods of Seattle

I recently took a trip to Seattle with my wife and Brother-in-law to see the Progressive Nation 2008 tour and interview the band Opeth. We went a day early and stayed a few days after, so we got the opportunity to sample the many culinary delights of the rainy city.

While wandering the downtown area on foot (don't drive in Seattle - seriously. I spent about an hour attempting to drive there and after realizing that it was actually the worst experience of my life I vowed to never do it again) after checking into our hotel we found ourselves in a quaint little English style pub and restaurant called Elephant and Castle, which has great atmosphere and decor. The restaurant section is setup to look like a den or reading room, complete with bookshelves and soft lighting. We indulged in Guinness straight from the tap, which is much better than from the bottle (it's all about the thick foam head!), and had traditional English pub fare. I had a chicken breast cooked in a cream sauce with Jameson whiskey, and it was delicious.

Seafood is king in Seattle, and nearly every restaurant has some sort of fresh seafood entry, if not an entire section of the menu devoted to it. Lowell's Restaurant in the famous Pike Place Market has an awesome Dungeness Crab cocktail and a pretty good calamari steak appetizer. The view from the second story lounge really rounds out the experience, as you can watch ships in the bay while munching on fish.

Pike Place Market is like a giant restaurant all it's own, not even counting the actual restaurants in it. Almost every other store has some kind of fresh produce, candy, seafood, pasta, or baked goods for sale. The "Very French Bakery", just a few stores down from the original Starbucks, has some to-die-for Brioche that's perfect for eating while exploring the Market.

Not too far from the Market is a famous sushi restaurant called Sushi Kyo. Fans of sushi should definitely try this place, as it's absolutely great! I had the Scorpion Roll, which had deep fried salmon, something that is an oddity in sushi. The rolls themselves were huge and there were plenty of them for a decent price.

Even the take out places are exceptional. Most hotels there have brochures for restaurants that deliver to as late as four in the morning for travelers getting back in late. We tried two different pizza places that also had pasta and calzones, and we were not disappointed!

A Song of Ice and Fire

After discovering that there is in fact Life After Goodkind (see the previous post), where is one to go for epic fantasy that is compelling, emotionally engaging, and original? When I was busy defending The Sword of Truth from naysayers, I always heard people sing the highest praises of George R.R. Martin's series, "A Song of Ice and Fire". Of course, people who hated Goodkind recommending a series to me just made me not want to read it, which was a serious mistake. I truly wish I had found this series much earlier, because it's everything I've ever wanted in an epic fantasy.

A Song of Ice and Fire has pretty much everything that the less satisfying massive epic fantasies (Sword of Truth, Wheel of Time, etc.) lacks. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character, so the world presented in the story is much more fleshed out. Martin doesn't shy way from putting each character's preconceived notions and misconceptions into his work, which makes the character's actions and thoughts much more realistic and believable. There are also no strict "good" heroes or "bad" villains. Every character thinks that they are good and that their enemies are bad, and that they are justified in their actions. Seeing events from multiple sides of a conflict really makes the reader ponder who is truly right and question whether their initial impression was really accurate.

Martin also writes an adult tale for an adult audience. While this statement could potentially be applied to Goodkind as well, as there was plenty of graphic violence and grown up themes in the Sword of Truth novels, Martin takes it to a whole new level. There isn't violence just for violence's sake (or just to get an emotional reaction from the reader from time to time - something that it pains me to admit Goodkind is very much guilty of). There is death, and war, and torture, but it is told to either advance the story overall or have some kind of character development. There are highly graphic and explicit descriptions of a wide variety of sexual situations, but these descriptions are accurate and consistent with how people really act. While plenty of people like to pretend that humans aren't sexual creatures with sexual desires, Martin doesn't bother with that pretense. He realizes that everyone is motivated by sex in some way and exploits that fact. The more conservative reader might find these scenes offensive, but it should be stated that sex is not used as a pornographic device to titillate the reader, it's only there when it makes sense to be there.

My favorite aspect of Martin's writing is how he ignores the genre standards entirely. The world he describes is a violent one (based loosely on the Hundred Years War), and people in his world are mortal. Unlike other epic fantasy series where heroes or villains who have been built up as the main characters can never permanently die or be removed from the equation until the very end or in a highly emotional scene, Martin lets his characters die when they get themselves into dangerous situations, and no character is spared from this rule. The inevitability of a confrontation between the ultimate good and the ultimate evil of other series is also completely removed. Where as in a more standard series a major bad guy could never be brought low by a peasant with a vendetta and a lucky stroke, a case of serious illness, an infection from a festering wound, or most deadly of all, a political miscalculation in the game of thrones, Martin will gleefully show that no one is untouchable, and no one is beyond the reach of Reaper's scythe. A similarly great aspect of the series is the realism in how the characters interact with one another. Misunderstandings, misinterpretations, people with opposing philosophical views, and lies said in anger are more potent enemies to the main characters than any army or magical beast.

If you want to leave the childish and silly staples of fantasy behind and move into more compelling adult territory, you owe it to yourself to pick up Martin's books.

The Sword of Truth

My favorite fantasy novel has always been Faith of the Fallen, the sixth novel in Terry Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" series. I stumbled on the series in high school on the recommendation of a guy who I idolized as a teen and who had some very similar life experiences as I had. This series really shaped my teen years, speaking to me on a both a philosophical level (the series is based on Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism - a line of thinking that I was very receptive to at the time), a personal level (the plight of several of the characters very closely mimicked problems in my own life - both real and incorrectly perceived through the veil of youthful naivety), and on a literary level (anyone looking for standard epic high fantasy need look no further than this series).

I didn't get much of a chance to truly expand out to other fantasy series because of my home environment, which was highly hostile to anything of a secular nature. It wasn't until living on my own that I discovered other authors and was able to discuss fantasy novels with people who didn't immediately react with condemnation. Much to my dismay, I discovered that Goodkind has a horde of not only critics, but people who outright hate his work and find his writing to be childishly cliché at best, and outright plagiarism at worst.

For a long time I was one of those people who would defend Goodkind tooth and nail, citing his willingness to take his series on a darker bent than other authors, his ability to keep a series interesting after thousands of pages, and the skillful way he blended his personal philosophical beliefs into a rousing fantasy adventure without being overly preachy or condescending. Even when the series took a sharp turn away from fantasy with a purpose and directly into straight up preaching, I continued to carry Goodkind's torch, believing there was some grand reason for this change and that eventually it would all be tied together into a satisfying conclusion.

I was very, very wrong.

The final book in the Sword of Truth series was a massive disappointment on nearly every level, and almost commits the sin of being so terrible it invalidates the glory that preceded it. Goodkind went with the most cliché, easy, predictable, unoriginal ending that he could possibly think of. There was even a point earlier in the series where I thought to myself (***Spoiler here, skip ahead if you haven't finished the series yet ***) "Wow, the Order is very clearly supposed to be a metaphor for modern Christianity, so it's a good thing Goodkind is a competent enough author to not be so heavy handed as to have this whole fantasy world be the precursor for our modern Earth, and the Order the precursor for actual Christianity." Guess what happened in the last three pages of the final book? This whole fantasy world is transformed into modern Earth, and the members of the Order go on to found Christianity. Come on! This was the most obvious turn of events, why did it have to actually happen? I mean, showcasing parallels between the two groups is all well and good to make a point, but making the two groups actually the same is taking it too far.

Oh, and the way in which Good finally triumphs over Evil? Not even worth repeating or bothering to explain why it wasn't any good. A child could have come up with a better ending.

I still hold that Faith of the Fallen is one of the best fantasy novels ever for its ability to emotionally impact the reader, and I recommend that anyone looking for new fantasy give the Sword of Truth a shot - just quit reading after Faith of the Fallen and make up your ending, because whatever you come up with in your head will be better than how it actually ends.