But I Digress | On What Bookish Begot

Does the world need yet another website about books?

Well, that's exactly what Bookish is: a shiny new community revolving around a recommendation engine.

But before you lose interest entirely, it's actually quite clever. I told Bookish about my thing for China Mieville; it recommended I read Jeff VanderMeer. I fed it Tigana; Bookish responded with Tad Williams and Steven Erikson.

(Also Robin Hobb. Which makes me wonder if I should really be reading Robin Hobb. Thoughts?)

And all this while the engine's still in beta!

If the truth be told, though, I'm probably not in need of new books to read, and if I were, I'd really rather follow in the footsteps of a friend, or place my trust in one of the community's more reliable reviewers. But there are those, of course, without these fantastic facilities; without peers who share their interests, or absent access to (or tolerance for) certain social media.

And for those folks, Bookish could be brilliant.

If Twitter's any indication, however, news of the new resource has been met with a resounding meh. Why? I've heard the lack of user-generated content cited as a particularly singular reason why Bookish is irrelevant, or just utter rubbish. But even at this early stage, users can submit quotes, reviews, and I don't know what else.

Why the single-minded emphasis on user-generated content anyway? I appreciate the added value such integration represents at the best of times, but the cranky old man in me can't help but wonder, when are those? Where are those? In my experience of social media, opening the doors to all comers makes for a mixed bag of good and bad.

What's the problem with old-fashioned curated content anyway? Why does everything need to be about everyone?

Basically, why the hate for Bookish?

Does every medium have to be social to survive in this day and age? Let's face it: nothing is likely to supplant Facebook at this stage, so why risk ruining a good thing trying to put in hooks for users who won't care anyway?

But let's circle back to the first question I posed in this post: does the world need yet another website about books? Well no, of course not. But what's the harm in it, exactly? Indeed, when has the internet, and social media especially, ever been about need?

Video Game Review | Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, dev. Level-5

When I blogged about the release of Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch a couple of weeks ago, I discussed the difficulties I'd had with JRPGs in recent years—a bad start—still, I swore to give the genre at least one more go before abandoning it entirely. A happy ending, then?

Well... let's not jump to conclusions.

I had a fair bit of fun with Ni No Kuni, to be sure. The fifty-odd hours I spent playing it—beating it, indeed—speak to that simple fact. Alas, I'm afraid the very best moments of the experience were behind me five or ten hours in. Things certainly pick up again at the end, but the intervening tedium—especially the text-only story sequences and the endless fetch quests—nearly ruined Ni No Kuni for me. 

So it's fitting, I figure, that the story, such as it is, is all about acceptance. At the outset, the thirteen year old player character, Oliver—who lives a quiet life in Motorville: a very Ghibli village full of 1950s kit cars and an ensemble cast of charming inhabitants—Oliver loses his mother, Alicia, in a tragic accident.

That night, as he cries, a few of Oliver's tears fall on his doll... when suddenly, wonderfully, Drippy comes to life, and introduces himself (in an adorable Welsh accent) as Lord High Lord of the Fairies. He entreats Oliver to accompany him to the world of his birth, to save a once-great kingdom from the clutches of Shadar, the Dark Djinn, not to mention his master, the titular White Witch.

At first, never mind that he's talking to a doll of all things, Oliver says he isn't interested, but when Drippy suggests that the orphaned boy might be able, somehow, to save his mother—because everyone in our world has what's called a "soul mate" in Drippy's, and if Oliver can help Alicia's, then perhaps the fate of her counterpart will altered also—there's no longer any question that he'll help.

So begins an epic adventure in a world of wonders. Here be dragons! As well as cat kings, cow queens, evil genies and a few hundred heartbroken humans, through whom we glimpse Ni No Kuno's gameplay. Your task, as your party travels from place to place, is to help heal these people, and thus this land. You'll do this by finding individuals with an overabundance of one feeling—for instance courage, or ambition—and gifting said surplus to someone in need. Someone with an item you require to progress the story, say.

There's no getting around a number of these fetch quests, but though most of them are optional, Ni No Kuni is (despite endearing appearances) a rather challenging JRPG—with not a few unforgiving fights and a difficulty curve that goes off the deep end in the last act—so the more crap you collect, the better. Unfortunately, by the time I'd filled Oliver's locket for the twentieth time, I wanted nothing more than to sell the wretched thing to a vendor.

Same goes for the familiars you inherit as you adventure around the world. Initially, caring for the loveable little monsters which do the vast majority of your fighting for you adds an addictive Pokemon-esque element to the player's progression through Ni No Kuni, but by the time you're entrenched in the game's flat, protracted middle act, the mechanic has become so much busywork.

The various other systems in play in Level-5's latest are in the long haul markedly more engaging, but they're also par for the course in any decent contemporary JPRG. There's magic, crafting, questing and a whole lot of levelling as well—of you and your familiars. And though they can be unaccountably tough at times, most enemy encounters are as rewarding as they are demanding. Meanwhile, while the world seems kinda sorta small, exploring it is a real treat... especially considering how beautiful it looks: you really do feel Studio Ghibli's influence here, and in the cutesy, colourful character designs too.

Studio Ghibli's involvement can also be seen in Ni No Kuni's story, which sacrifices the melodramatic bombast of most JRPGs for a quieter, softer, sadder narrative. There's the makings of a fine feature-length film herein, but remember: this iteration of the tale takes fifty hours to tell, and drawn out to such an incredible extent, I'm sorry to say it seems insubstantial.

Furthermore, what little story there is is well written, evidently well translated, and well performed whenever an actual voice actor is involved... which is to say rarely, I'm afraid. Most of the story is communicated through text boxes. And there's an almighty lack of actual animation. Studio Ghibli have contributed a few minutes here and there, but most of Ni No Kuni's best moments are rendered in-engine.

Which is fine. Perfectly fine. It's an excellent engine, especially considering its modest origins. All the same, the legacy of Ni No Kuni as a handheld game conceived early in the generation that's now ending shows through in so many ways that those things the developers at least try to do differently—for which effort I applaud Level-5—are at loggerheads with the many traits this JPRG simply apes.

But you know what? I didn't dedicate fifty hours of my life to Ni No Kuni so that I could complain about its failings. Sure, it has a fair few, yet this is the first time I've finished a JRPG in years, so it has at least as many redeeming features, including but not limited to the look, the mood and the music. At the end of the day, I'm happy enough to have had this experience that, on balance, I probably would play a Ni No Kuni 2.

So the story has a happy ending, after all!

Quoth the Scotsman | Patrick Ness on the Printed Page

A couple of Quoth the Scotsmans ago, I featured an excerpt from The Explorer by James Smythe—a fine novel, no?—which revolved around the inimitable feeling of reading. I'd like to return to that idea today, if I may, via a passage from The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness... coming soon from Canongate in the UK.

The main character in The Crane Wife is an older gentleman called George, and in his spare time, George is a bit of an artist. But he doesn't paint or draw or sculpt... he cuts. Not himself! No, he makes cuttings from books he finds in bargain bins at charity shops.

That's really all you need to know to follow the following, which is taken from the first act of Ness' phenomenal new novel:

To take his blade and cut into the pages of a book felt like such a taboo, such a transgression against everything he held dear, George still half-expected them to bleed every time he did it. 

He loved physical books with the same avidity other people loved horses or wine or prog rock. He'd never really warmed to ebooks because they seemed to reduce a book to a computer file, and computer files were disposable things, things you never really owned. He had no email from ten years ago but still owned every book he bought that year. Besides, what was more perfect an object than a book? The different rags of paper, smooth or rough under your fingers. the edge of the page pressed into your thumbprint as you turned a new chapter. The way your bookmark—fancy, modest, scrap paper, candy wrapper—moved through the width of it, marking your progress, a little further each time you folded it shut. 

And how they looked on the walls! Lined up according to whatever whim. George's whim was simple—by author, chronological within name—but over the years he'd also done it by size, subject matter, types of binding. All of them there on the shelves, too many, not enough, their stories raging within regardless of a reader.  

[...] 

He had seen a story once about sand mandalas made by Tibetan Buddhist monks. Unbelievably gorgeous creations, sometimes just a metre across, sometimes big as a room. Different colours of sand, painstakingly blown in symmetrical patterns by monks using straw-like tubes, building layer upon layer, over the course of weeks, until it was finished. At which point, in keeping with Buddhist feelings about materialism, the mandala was destroyed, but George tended to ignore that part. 

What was interesting to him was that the mandala was meant to be—unless he'd vastly misunderstood, which was also possible—a reflection of the internal state of the monk. The monk's inner being, hopefully a peaceful one, laid out in beautiful, fragile form. The soul as a painting. 

The books on George's walls were his sand mandala. When they were all in their place, when he could run his hands over the spines, taking one off the shelf to read or re-read, they were the most serene reflection of his internal state. Or if perhaps not quite his internal state, then at least the internal state he would like to have had. Wheich was maybe all it was for the monks, too, come to think of it. 

And so when he made his very first incision into the pages of a book, when he cut into an old papterback he'd found lying near the rubbish bins behind the shop, it felt like a blundering step into his mandala. A blasphemy, a desecration of the divine. Or, perhaps, a releasing of it. (pp.60-61)

This is a sentiment near and dear to my heart indeed. I flatly refuse to even fold over the pages of a novel to mark my place... never mind taking a knife to one. The horror!

In any case, I'll be reviewing The Crane Wife in full on The Speculative Scotsman shortly, but it should come as no surprise to anyone who's read Patrick Ness in the past that it's simply stunning stuff.

Now, to stroke the spines of a few good books...

Book Review | Blood's Pride by Evie Manieri

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IndieBound / The Book Depository

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Rising from their sea-torn ships like vengeful, pale phantoms, the Norlanders laid waste to the Shadar under cover of darkness. They forced the once-peaceful fisher folk into slavery and forged an alliance with their former trading partners, the desert-dwelling Nomas tribe, cutting off any hope of salvation.

Now, two decades after the invasion, a rebellion gathers strength in the dark corridors of the city. A small faction of Shadari have hired the Mongrel, an infamous mercenary, to aid their fledgling uprising—but with her own shadowy ties to the region, she is a frighteningly volatile ally. Has she really come to lead a revolution, or for a more sinister purpose all her own?

***

Blood's Pride by Evie Manieri starts stronger than any first fantasy in recent memory, with the devastation of an entire civilisation, richly rendered from the perspective of an ill-fated fisherman who lingers too long on the shores of Shadar:

"As the fisherman looked at the magenta sky, he saw a black splotch like a stain on the horizon, a shadow forming over the sea which spread and grew larger and until he saw not shadows but black shapes: great flying creatures. The fisherman recognised them at once as dereshadi, the beasts that carry the souls of evildoers down into the depths of the earth after death. Phantoms swarmed from the bowels of the ships, crawling across the decks and into the landing boats and mounting their flying beasts. 

"The phantoms were giants to the Shadari. Their pale skin was the colour of death, marred by oozing purple sores; grim matted their seafoam-white hair. They had the hollowed cheeks and gangly limbs of the starving, but they held aloft great, gleaming swords. 

"These beings who appeared like walking dead, like living corpses, descended upon the Shadari like the wrath of hell, killing indiscriminately, splashing the town with red Shadari blood. They spoke not one word, made not one sound, as they moved in perfect tandem like a school of flesh-eating fish. Those Shadari who managed to inflict wounds saw their adversaries' blood flow the silver-blue of a shark's fin, but not for long, for the invaders thrust their swords into the fires and seared their wounds closed, and all the while they kept on fighting." (pp.4-5)

This arresting opening does a great deal to endear Manieri's debut to readers—in point of fact, the unadulterated horror of it alone almost enlivens a flat first act—but at a certain stage, one wonders whether Blood's Pride has much more to offer beyond the near extinction event with which it begins... and I dare say the meandering melodrama which follows does little to discourage that doubt.

After the Norlanders' surprise attack, and the subsequent suicide of Shadari's magical ashas en masse, "sleepy Shadar, with its crooked rows and circles of gold-tinged white houses" (p.2) is no more. Almost immediately, the occupying people—colloquially known as Dead Ones because of their translucent skin and absolute aversion to sunlight—press the Shadari survivors into slavery. Some are put to work in the mines, extracting from the earth an element the Norlanders need; others are made to wait on the new, nocturnal nobles and their supporting force.

Coming of age amongst that misbegotten latter lot a full generation later, in a time when rebellion is on the tip of everyone's tongues, Daryan, aka Daimon: a young Shadari who may hold the key to the emancipation of his people. Firstly, he has fostered a friendship with Eofar, a powerful Norlander who could finally tip the balance in favour of the slaves... however Daryan has also gone and fallen for Eofar's little sister.

Isa is a princess of sorts in bitter competition with her wicked sibling over the almighty maguffin Manieri has named her first novel for, but however much the apple of Daryan's eye hungers after the family sword, cold, calculating Frea is first in line to inherit it—and there is no love lost between the two. Blood, one senses, will be spilled before this matter can be concluded. And we all know what comes before a fall.

Meanwhile, deep in the desert surrounding Shadar, the Nomas roam: a fascinating race of traders whose women sail the distant oceans while their men make camp in the sand. Foremost amongst the Nomas, the trader Jachad, who makes a deal with Eofar at the outset, and the Mongrel: a mysterious mercenary who swears to aid the Shadari in their quest to unseat the monstrous Norlanders... albeit at a cost that she refuses to clarify until the battle forthcoming is ultimately won.

If all of the above seems like a lot to handle, that's because it is: getting to grips with Manieri's vast cast of characters is a challenging task, made doubly difficult by some frankly forgettable naming conventions and a dire lack of differentiation at the outset of the text. Later on, a few start to stand out from the crowd—Isa's adversarial relationship with her sister is a specific saving grace—and by the end of Blood's Pride, most have developed to a certain extent.

Most... but not all. Notably, though the Mongrel plays a pivotal role in the plot—indeed, this debut is at its best when she's about—we hear from her so rarely that her enigmatic nature becomes an annoyance rather than a draw.

On the whole, then, I found Manieri's characterisation rather lacking, and at times the array of peripheral perspectives the author opts to offer drove me to distraction.

And this isn't the only impediment to a real appreciation of Blood's Pride, considering that the pace proves problematic, and the plot, too, is confused. But never mind, for the moment, the politics; the unending intrigue; the accumulation of little white lies and deep, dark deceits. And don't be terribly troubled by the talking heads determined to debate all and sundry subjects at cross purposes. Let's put these aspects of the entire behind us, because in truth they all improve over the course of Manieri's first fantasy.

Complexity, however, is one thing—necessary, even, in a series such as The Shattered Kingdoms—but when every single plot thread is subject to frequent upheaval, the ground beneath one's feet begins to feel fleeting. Thus, there will be those who find traversing this slippery slope treacherous, and with no notion of what lies beyond it, why bother?

But bring the right equipment—I want to call it the Ice Pick of +1 Perseverance—and you'll find solid footing soon, because Blood's Pride gets better in almost every respect after a disappointing first third. Characters solidify before our eyes, whilst the story finally hits its stride... and even at its least appealing, the quasi-Medieval Mediterranean setting of Blood's Pride struck me as superb. Indeed, Manieri's worldbuilding is so very well implemented that I would gladly spend a little longer in the Shattered Kingdoms, despite this debut's other issues.

Beyond a powerful prologue, I'm sorry to say Blood's Pride does not put its best foot forward. I only wish Evie Manieri had gotten to the characters that matter and the more interesting plot points significantly quicker that she does, because once the by-the-numbers introductions are done, hers proves a promising and distinctive debut. Simultaneously sweeping and small-scale, and equal parts tragic romance and slow-burn insurgency, Blood's Pride lacks that vital spark for long enough that I can't recommend it wholeheartedly... all the same, bring on Fortune's Blight!

***

Blood's Pride

by Evie Manieri

UK Publication: September 2012, Jo Fletcher Books

US Publication: February 2013, Tor

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository

Or get the Kindle edition

Recommended and Related Reading

But I Digress | Super Kindle 64

So the PlayStation 4 exists.

Who would have thunk it?

Well, everyone, obviously. Its existence was the worst kept secret in the gaming industry since... actually, I'm struggling to come up with an apposite example. This isn't an industry known for its grace or patience, after all; like a squabble in the schoolyard, if there's something going on, potential spectators are alerted as if by osmosis, or some telepathic process. Hence all the NDAs. And the elaborately coordinated PR campaigns.

But that's not what I want to talk about today. Rather than the announcement of the PS4 itself—which, for what it's worth, I'll buy if or else when the price is right—I want to use the immediate reaction to the would-be huge news as a jumping off point for discussion. Because the sentiment I heard, overwhelmingly, before, during and after Sony's shindig, was... so what?

Let me be clear: I disagree. I believe there's a real need for updated hardware. Try playing Far Cry 3 on a modern PC and you'll see what I mean. It's hard to go back, so I'm all for forward. But let's not kid around: there has never been a less significant jump between one generation and the next, nor a longer period between revisions than this one. What are we to understand from that if not the fact that the console cycle, as we know it, is coming to a close?

If you're wondering what all this could have to do with the publishing industry, simply consider the e-book reader, or the tablet that serves as such. Kindles and iPads are platforms built on technology too. And each time their hardware is revised, these devices grow ever closer to the endpoint the PS4 arguably represents. 

To make matters worse, there are new e-book readers every year—at least—so we're approaching the zenith of technology far quicker than the gaming industry did.

There will come a time, I put to you, when there will be no point in upgrading your Kindle or iPad. When our e-book readers will do everything we want them to do, and more, as well as we might like, and better. Beyond that, the only improvements will be superficial.

And I want to know what that device looks like. What's the ultimate feature set for e-book readers? And how very different could reading e-books possibly be from the experience we can have today?

Even then, what could possibly be better than the tactile pleasure of a physical edition, or the satisfaction of filing it away in your library?

Give me a foldable, flexible OLED screen that can read books to me out loud, with some sort of dynamic Last Time On the thing I've been reading functionality—for when I forget what's going on—and subscription-based access to a collaborative library of literature that isn't fragmented or just fucked in the way certain services are today. Maybe then I'll be moved to buy your device.

I don't ask for a lot, do I? :)

Book Review | The Emperor of All Things by Paul Witcover

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Amazon.co.uk / The Book Depository

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England is embroiled in a globe-spanning conflict that stretches from her North American colonies to Europe and beyond. Across the Channel, the French prepare for an invasion - an invasion rumored to be led by none other than Bonnie Prince Charlie. It seems the map of Europe is about to be redrawn. Yet behind these dramatic scenes, another war is raging - a war that will determine not just the fate of nations but of humanity itself...

Daniel Quare is a journeyman in an ancient guild, The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers. He is also a Regulator, part of an elite network within the guild devoted to searching out and claiming for England's exclusive use any horological innovation that could give them an upperhand, whether in business or in war.

Just such a mission has brought Quare to the London townhouse of eccentric collector, Lord Wichcote. He seeks a pocket watch rumoured to possess seemingly impossible properties that are more to do with magic than with any science familiar to Quare or to his superiors. And the strange timepiece has attracted the attention of others as well: the mysterious masked thief known only as Grimalkin, and a deadly French spy who stop at nothing to bring the prize back to his masters.

Soon Quare finds himself on a dangerous trail of intrigue and murder that leads far from the world he knows into an otherwhere of dragons and demigods, in which nothing is as it seems... least of all time.

***

It is the year 1758, and England and her allies are at war with France and its confederates in a conflict that could go either way at any moment, so when evidence emerges of a weapon that could affect the course of this most mortal combat, patriots on either side of the divide are enlisted to track the device down, and claim it in the name of their nations.

But the hunter, for so it is known, is no ordinary weapon: it is a clock, of a sort - an impossible watch with dragon hands which measure something utterly other than the hour - and it will be won, if it will be won at all, by no ordinary agent. Enter Daniel Quare, recently installed regulator for a certain secret society:

"By royal decree, the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers was the sole arbiter of the techniques and tools that horologists throughout Britain, whether members of the guild or amateurs, were permitted to employ in the manufacture of timepieces. All journeymen of the Worshipful Company had the duty of protecting its patents and interests. Any timepiece that utilized an already forbidden technology was destroyed, its maker reported to the local authorities, while those clocks evidencing new technologies and methods were confiscated and sent to London for study. The prosperity and safety of the nation depended upon superiority in business as well as in battle, and nothing was a surer guarantee of dominance in both realms than the ability to measure the passage of time more accurately than one's adversaries. Whether coordinating the shipment and delivery of merchandise over land and sea or troop movements upon a battlefield, the advantage belonged to the side with the best timepieces." (p.23)

To that end, then, our man is charged with the recovery of a unique timepiece belonging to one Lord Wichcote - an incidental character who becomes markedly more prominent as Paul Witcover's novel goes on - and indeed, he succeeds... if only because Daniel arrives at the target's townhouse in the immediate aftermath of a pitched battle between the Lord and a little-seen legend, "the mysterious Grimalkin — the grey shadow whose identity is known to no man. [Who may be] no man at all, but a devil sworn to the service of Lucifer." (p.7)

Whether by accident or some more malign design, Daniel manages to disarm Grimalkin after the infamous thief of thieves has herself acquired the hunter. Then, as surprised by his success as anyone else, the retiring regulator returns to the Worshipful Company's base of operations, the better to investigate his perplexing prize alongside his master, a humpbacked old man called Magnus, or Mephistopheles by his many enemies.

Daniel and Magnus have hardly begun to understand the strange technologies powering this awesome watch when, all of a sudden, the day is done. The pair arrange to resume their studies the following morning, but the meeting is not to be. Later that night, you see, Daniel is stabbed through the heart by a French spy... yet it is Magnus, rather than The Emperor of All Things' reluctant hero, who dies.

Here we hit upon one of the first of the manifold mysteries hidden within this nested doll of a novel. Nothing is ever quite what you think in The Emperor of All Things - though you'll have an inkling, just to keep things interesting - and Paul Witcover doubles down on that aspect of his meandering narrative in its surprising middle section, which does not feature Daniel at all.

It does, on the other hand, have dragons, so there's that. And in the erstwhile it serves to introduce readers to a world - our world - where "all the old myths and legends were true. A world that floated, like a bubble of time, on a vast sea of unbeing: the Otherwhere. And in which time itself was... what? A disease? A drug? An imperfection introduced into a perfect creation, a flaw in that glittering jewel, the original original sin?" (p.348)

This is The Emperor of All Things at is most fantastical by far, yet even in this section there is room for rumination. Room for extended metaphysical digressions, chapter-long dialogues about philosophy, screeds of science, history and religion — or so the author supposes. Would that Witcover had reined in his rambling! Would, while we're at it, that he had made Daniel a more dynamic character. As it stands, the story seems always on the back foot, with something else to explain or detail or for its cast to converse about endlessly, and its main narrator has distressingly little agency at every stage of the tale... though late in the last act, Witcover does at least make a plot point of Daniel's indecisiveness:

"He was in over his head. That much was plain. Had been for some time now. But this was a whole different order of drowning. He was used to the idea that he could not trust anyone else. But now it seemed he could no longer trust himself." (p.356)

Nor, given his dithering disposition, can readers truly trust him, therefore there will be those who have trouble engaging in any meaningful way with The Emperor of All Things' tiresome protagonist. Relative to Daniel, supporting characters such as Lord Wichcote, Master Magnus and Grimalkin appear unduly alluring, though the narrative marginalises all three to differing degrees.

Thus, The Emperor of All Things is master of almost none, but excepting the exact examples aforementioned, it's very good at nearly everything else it attempts. Witcover's prose is playful, yet persuasive; even the novel's more self-serious scenes are enlivened by a winning sense of whimsy; and unconstrained by the conventions of any one genre, it reinvents itself with refreshing regularity, seguing  seamlessly from wonder, whimsy and conspiracy to intrigue, espionage and action. And that's just for starters.

I would not say that The Emperor of All Things is undone by its monolithic ambitions, but perhaps it is momentarily overmatched. There can be no question that Witcover's would have been a better book had he left a few of its multifarious flourishes for the sequel he's working on currently, and focused more closely on developing those that remained. Despite this, though, The Emperor of All Things makes for a thorough, yet thrilling beginning to a series in which anything you can imagine could and should come true.

***

The Emperor of All Things
by Paul Witcover

UK Publication: February 2013, Bantam Press

Buy this book from
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Or get the Kindle Edition

Recommended and Related Reading