First Impressions | Beginning R. Scott Bakker

Around the blogosphere of late, there's been a moderate amount of excitement about the release of The White Luck Warrior, by R. Scott Bakker. Orbit kindly sent along a review copy my way a couple of weeks ago, which I duly wrote up for The BoSS before filing the poor, misbegotten thing away next to my similarly unread edition of The Judging Eye.

This I did because The White Luck Warrior is volume two, and The Judging Eye volume one, of the second of three inextricably connected trilogies. And as we all know by now, I don't tend to start such stories anywhere except the start. But some of the praise lavished upon The White Luck Warrior has been such that I simply had to give this series a shot. Shall we say anything Wert can enjoy, I can enjoy better?

Well, perhaps. But there are a few sure-fire ways to ensure any given book gets my attention, and among those, comparisons to the work of one Guy Gavriel Kay will win the day, as like as not. I can't recall now who drew the parallels aforementioned, or where, but drawn they were, and my interest was promptly piqued. So I went ahead and bought the EPUB edition of The Darkness That Comes Before from kobobooks.com, to read on my shiny new eee Pad Transformer. I stripped away the DRM - apologies to Adobe Technologies, Orbit, the author, et al, but I'm afraid I have my ideals - and imported the tiny resulting file to Aldiko, which has quickly, despite a fair few hitches, become my e-book reader of choice.

And then?

Well... then I fell a little bit in love.

Because I can see the rationale behind the Guy Gavriel Kay comparisons; I can quite understand why someone would make them, given Bakker's impeccable craftsmanship. The man, I'll say, is a writer's writer. His language is simply phenomenal: measured, evocative, and perfectly poised. Bakker ably achieves the picturesque in his prose without - as yet - having fallen victim to the purple. The text of The Darkness That Comes Before is a thing of beauty, truly.

Yet the complexity of the world of this book, this trilogy, this trilogy of trilogies, simply staggers. Confounds me, even. You'll recall I only fell a little bit in love with The Darkness That Comes Before; that would be why. I'd have gone all-in otherwise, except there's just so much to come to terms with.


And that too would be well, but for the fact Bakker seems little concerned with questions of accessibility, even in this, the first novel of series supposedly nine long volumes long. He seems dreadfully prone to digression... to lengthy musings on imagined histories and philosophies which, however informative, however pretty and pretty impressive - and they are - serve to stall the narrative before it's even begun to gain the sense of momentum I'm sorely missing.

There's a quote from a review on the Amazon.co.uk listing of The Darkness That Comes Before which quite encapsulates my feelings in this regard. So sayeth one Cynthia Ward:

"Bakker attempts to make his complex world clear to readers by filling the prologue and opening chapters with the names of characters, gods, cities, tribes, nations, religions, factions, and sorcery schools. For many readers, this approach will have the opposite effect of clarity. It's like demonstrating snowflake structure with a blizzard."

My progress with The Darkness That Comes Before has thus been slow, so far. I'm perhaps 150 pages in, merely a third of the way through, and that's after three reading sessions before bed on three consecutive nights... sessions which so often see evening turn to night and night return to morning. That hasn't happened with this one, not yet; though I can certainly see the day coming, if only Bakker would pick up the pace some. As is, The Darkness That Comes Before seems to be going nowhere fast, and I'm getting nowhere fast with it.

Yet Bakker's language is undeniably lovely; his prose so beautifully, beautifully hewn it's a real treat irrespective of what narrative it may or may not serve; and what little tale-telling there's been in this first book of The Prince of Nothing, I've been absolutely enraptured by. For instance the lengthy prologue, set a full 2000 years before the story's primary thrust (as I understand it), was phenomenal. If there's more of that, and I expect there will be, just as soon as all the foundation stones have been levered into place... well. I'll gladly cast the rest of my chips into the pot for that book, and make no mistake.


So onwards!

And with a little white luck, upwards too. Fingers firmly crossed...

What say you all on the subject of R. Scott Bakker, anyway? I understand he's a somewhat outspoken sort, and as I touched on at the outset, the excitement surrounding his latest publication has been palpable around and about the speculative aspect of the blogosphere. Yet he doesn't sell terribly well, does he?

Speaking of which, am I wrong to vaguely recall some talk of Bakker quitting the writing game entirely? I've only this little experience of his work, and already I think that'd be a desperately sad day for genre readers everywhere.

First Impressions | Game of Thrones

Winter... has come.

I'd add to that: and about bloody time, too!


Though the urge has been in overdrive since HBO began promoting the latest addition to their many-studded slate of sophisticated adult dramas, I never did get around to reading any of A Song of Ice and Fire. This despite my quite adoring Fevre Dream and those short stories I cherry-picked from the compendium of all things early George R. R. Martin that is Dreamsongs. This despite my deep-seated fondness for intelligent epic fantasy and all things grim, which I understand now - as I intuited then - the great Game of Thrones indubitably is.


So for me it's been a long road, though not half, nor even a quarter - I'd say somewhere around a sixteenth - as long a road as I'm assured it's been for all those vocal devotees who've hung on every word of every instalment of A Song of Ice and Fire so far. Well, here's hoping this series helps tide those anxious souls over some. For myself, I come to HBO's sumptuous adaptation from a perspective unaffected by any knowledge at all of what's on the horizon, but for the received wisdom that it'll be pretty awesome, probably.


On the strength of this first episode of Game of Thrones alone, then, just this one time, I might be inclined to believe the hype. Tell no-one!

Game of Thrones opens with what appears to be a Wahlberg - though appearances are in this case deceiving - riding through The Wall which divides the South of Westeros from the tortuously frosted North. He and his Night's Watch companions come upon a bleak forest clearing full of dead people, yet the dead seem to have a little life left in 'em still, for they rise up as if they'd never fallen at all and commence beheading the men. The encounter's sole survivor escapes to Winterfell, where he's declaimed as a deserter and a lunatic for his dire rantings about beings thought dead for centures, and decapitated for his trouble.


On the other end of the offending sword, we meet Ned Stark. As Sean Bean. Or perhaps it's the other way around? Let's say that. Certainly, Bean is utterly at home in the role: as the would-be hand man of the King of the Seven Kingdoms he brings grizzled gravitas and a stout-jawed resolve many will remember fondly from The Fellowship of the Ring, while as the powerful patriarch of House Stark he evinces a warmth I hadn't expected - and a coldness, too. His character seems a fascinating one, neatly encapsulated in a couple of this first episode of Game of Thrones' most memorable lines. "The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword," he tells his youngest son after insisting the boy Bran witnesses the aforementioned execution; I would imagine that a fitting mantra for Ned Stark - lifted directly from the novel, perhaps? Later, upon finding a pack of Direwolf cubs huddled around the butchered remains of their mother, he allows to his spread of sons - the bastard Jon Snow and all - the following: "You will train them yourselves, you will feed them yourselves, and if they die, your will bury them yourselves."


Indeed, Westeros feels every bit a world in which the dead - and I would wager there will be many dead when all is said and done - must either resolve to somehow bury their own bodies or be content to decay in the open air. From the chill and forbidding feel of Winterfell alone, where much of this first episode's action occurs, it is too a lavishly realised location: it and its sister continent, Essos across the narrow sea, which with its rugged golden coves and sun-bleached Mediterranean sensibilities appears the polar opposite of Westeros, one bleakly blue-white and the other orange, and earthy. But though in its first 30 seconds alone there is enough stunning fantasy imagery to secure the undying devotion of many a genre fan, Game of Thrones doesn't really seem to be about the sightseeing, for in Essos we're offered an opposing perspective on the struggle for the Iron Throne one imagines will own the day across the narrow sea. Silver-haired siblings Daenerys Targaryen and her banished brother Viserys are all that remains of Westeros' former royal family. Between them they mean to reclaim their rightful place by amassing a vast army, but Essos' forces are a barbarian horde, and the only way into their good graces seems to be by marriage. Thus, Viserys demands Daenerys give herself to Dothraki leader Khal Drogo like a prize pony, and though the prospect does not please her, what other option does she have?

All this and I haven't even mentioned House Lannister - composed of Peter Dinklage as Tyrion, a double-talking dwarf whose "greatest accomplishment" is to be the Queen's brother; the Queen herself, Cersei, to whom Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' Lena Headey brings the same pained nonchalance she seems to visit upon her every role; the King, of course; and Cersei's brother and lover Jaime, a dirty great meanie by all accounts, however little seen in the first episode of Game of Thrones.


All this and all that and there's more, I gather, and much more still to come. Yet Game of Thrones is not, at the outset, nearly so unwieldy as I'd feared. Pulling double duty as showrunners and head writers, David Benioff and Dan Weiss wisely opt to offer a throughline into this desperately complex world via the Night's Watch man, who passes along the narrative torch to Ned Stark when the latter unceremoniously beheads the former. Only when this hour-long first episode veers too far from Winterfell and the trials ahead of House Stark did I find my interest beginning to slip - and even then David and Dan have the decency to keep such seeming digressions as the incestuous manoeuvring of Cersei and Jaime as brief at this point as the source material will allow.


We're being broken in gently, then. Well thank the heavens for that!


Such restraint means we've had time to align our sympathies just so - though I don't doubt they'll change a great deal in the weeks and months to come. Such focus equates to the natural establishment of certain crucial characters and relationships that could easily have overburdened the narrative's developing momentum. The showrunners clearly have a lot of love for George R. R. Martin's series, and I found that their affection shone through, glinting like a knife in the night even during the darkest moments of this terse introduction to Westeros.

Which isn't to say Game of Thrones is in any way without its share of drawbacks. Headey's lazy imitation worries me already, and though Emilia Clarke does a terrific dazed and confused as Daenerys, there seems precious little dimension to her performance. But perhaps it'll come. I hope so, for hers is a character I am fascinated by already - what with the way she wilfully scalds herself in too hot a bath. The only personage who interests me more is Michelle Fairley's Catelyn Stark, who I dearly hope has more to do in future, for she positively smoulders with tempered frustration in some of her scenes with Sean Bean, while near every other cast member is content to either smirk or sneer.


Then there's the score, which seems dreadfully overbearing during certain key scenes - a relentless racket of dramatic drums that quite ruined a few moments for me - though the theme itself is solid, I'll say that. And oh: and I could do without the contrived cliffhangers in future, thank you very much. The first such - Bran's "fall" from the walls of Winterfell - already strikes me as a cheap way to elevate stakes in no need of elevation.


But we're talking small potatoes, because assuredly Game of Thrones does a great deal with what I'm sure is very little in the grand scheme of things. I was won over in moments - not quite despite myself, for I had been looking forward to this series, but there were no guarantees of quality going in, and coming out, I find myself struggling to restrain my excitement for all that's to come. We'll be looking at a fantasy for the ages here if Game of Thrones continues anything approaching as impressive as it's begun.


Truly, Gods be good that it does.

First Impressions | The Borgias

When it came time for me to pick what subjects I wanted to study in my last years at high school, I plumped for Geography over History. History in my experience had amounted to an interminable series of dates and family trees to memorise, and the hell with that, I thought: I'll learn about glaciation. Something good and practical, you know?

I have a great many regrets in life - don't we all? - and that decision, I'll say, is a way from uppermost amongst them. However I have, in the years since, had cause to wish I'd had the opportunity to study both, because I really do adore a good historical drama, whether in one medium or another, and my education, alas, has left me practically clueless as to the veracity of such narratives.

That's the glass half empty perspective. The glass half full point of view is that I can forgive a vast amount of historical inaccuracy, thanks to my ignorance. I simply don't know any better! And that can come in handy.

To wit: all I knew about The Borgias, before the feature-length pilot episode of Showtime's new series of the same name, was that in last year's Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood I, as Ezio Auditore, stabbed one Juan Borgia in the ugly face and dropped another - namely Cesare - off the battlements of a crumbling castle.

I know a little more now, though I've little doubt what The Borgias has taught me about  the infamous Italian family fathered by Pope Alexander VI - played here by Academy Award-winner Jeremy Irons with arched eyebrows and aplomb - is any more accurate a reflection of true events as the Templar conspiracy theory played out in the last Assassin's Creed. The pay cable station which gave us Dexter and The Tudors are in their infinite wisdom positioning The Borgias as Spartacus meets The Sopranos, and in fairness it's easy to see why: going from the first hour and a half, the presumably much-embellished tale of the rise and fall of "the original crime family" seems equal parts guilty pleasure and storytelling masterstroke. Creator, writer and director Neil Jordan - he of The Crying Game, and of late the lovely Ondine - brings to The Borgias an elegance and a clarity very far from the blood and balls of Spartacus, yet you can sense the potential for sleaze and salaciousness in every narrative margin. Be sure, there will be blood - there has already been blood - not to mention sex, secrets, and all the rest of it.

The pilot episode of The Borgias is essentially a showcase of the series' biggest get in terms of talent, the aforementioned Jeremy Irons. It is his journey in microcosm: from corrupt patriarch to Pope and back again, via a beautiful woman - the lovely Lotte Verbeek as Giulia Farnese - who comes to the Vatican to confess her grave sins, and an attempted poisoning, courtesy of Cadfael himself, Derek Jacobi as Orsino Orsini. Irons, for his part, chews the ornate mise en scene of every tableau he's a part of. One can only hope he continues as central a character to The Borgias as he begins, for daddy Borgia's support is rather less convincing thus far: Joanne Whaley as his suffering wife is no Edie Falco, though I suppose there's time for her yet, and David Oakes - last seen as the villain of The Pillars of the Earth - makes immodest every scene he's in. Meanwhile the jury's still out on newcomer Francois Arnaud as Cesare Borgia. There's certainly potential for the French Canadian to grow into this pivotal role; what he makes of it, or indeed doesn't, remains to be seen.

At that, there's a lot about The Borgias it would be fair to apply the same caveat to. It could very well devolve into a romp, or else ascend to the heights of Rome, if not David Chase's modern mafia masterpiece. All one can speak to at this early stage is the promise of this feature-length first episode, and one imagines - with no small amount of trepidation - that showrunner Neil Jordan is likely to be rather less hands-on going forward. Nevertheless, he gets The Borgias off to a sterling start.