Children's Fantasy, the Bartimaeus Trilogy

The Bartimaeus trilogy, by Jonathan Stroud, is children’s fantasy. Much like Harry Potter, however, it holds significant appeal for adults as well as children.
Unlike the earlier Harry Potter books, though , it is probably unsuitable for youngins, as its more gritty in its early stages.
The trilogy is set in an alternate British Empire. Magicians exist, and thus history is altered accordingly. Magicians, (the ruling class, much like the English nobility,) derive their power by summoning entities from another dimension, which because of the magic the magicians have mastered, are forced to do their bidding.
The magicians oppress a class of people called the commoners, but this underclass is growing increasingly discontent with its enforced servility, and a resistance is brewing.
The first book, (the Amulet of Simarkand,) opens with Bartimaeus, a mid level Genie or Jin, being summoned by a young boy named Nathaniel. He is charged with stealing a magical artifact for the boy, and due to the nature of the summons, is forced to obey.
Right away, the reader is thrust into a moral world where almost no one, with the possible exception of Bartimaeus, is a good person. Shades of muddy brown predominate.
The Amulet of Simarkand, and the next two books in the series, do not fulfill any of the arcatipal fantasy tropes. Most magicians, who draw their power by enslaving Demons like Bartimaeus are evil. Nathaniel, the boy who summoned Bartimius, is well on the way towards being evil, and, as his plans for the Amulet spiral out of control, leading to several deaths, he discovers, along with the reader that he’s not as cunning as he thinks he is.
Bartimaeus, who narrates half of the book with snarky snide first person narration, keeps the reader amused, despite the rather grim plot. Nathaniel, while evil, is still a likable enough character, acting in the best interest of his government. The amulet which he stole is stolen from him in turn, and Nathaniel, with the reluctant help of Bartimaeus, must get it back before it is used to destroy the Government.
A subplot involves the growing “resistance” a commoner organization determined to oust the magicians from power. Nathaniel, a magician, is disdainful of the resistance, and commoners in general, an attitude which never wavers during the Amulet of Simarkand. This is a good thing. An easy trope would have had Nathaniel soften towards the underclass, it would have him realize that they are just as good as he is. It’s a compliment to John Stroud that this in no way happens.
In the second book, The Gollum’s Eye, Nathaniel, (now rechristened with the magical name of John Mandrake,) is working for the British government as a mid-level employee of the Department of internal affairs, the equivalent of homeland security. He has become like the other magicians, arrogant and unfeeling. Only a ghost of his boyhood. . . idealism is almost but not quite too strong of a word remains. He summons Bartimaeus again, and uses him to try and ferret out the resistance, and to solve a mystery having to do with a golem.
In addition to Bartimaeus’s narration, chapters alternate between John and the leader of the resistance, Kitty Jones, introducing us to the only other person who can make a claim to decency in the series.
The third book sees john now in a high level government position, with Bartimaeus at his side again. John has taxed Bartimaeus to his limits, so that he’s virtually powerless, and this couldn’t have come at a worse time, for John needs Bartimaeus’s help to stay in power, and alive.
Kitty plays a prominent role in this novel as well.
The novels plot is interesting, and relatively unpredictable, especially if you go in expecting a conventional type of fantasy, boy comes of age, does most things right, and is a honorable descent person throughout, but the real interest lies in two things. Nathaniel and John’s moral journey from young boy to arrogant young man hungry for power and back again, and the narration of Bartimius.
Bartimius is constantly sarcastic, disinterested in the events around him, sardonically observing Nathaniel/John. All three books are peppered with footnotes, sometimes elaborating on a quip bartimius has made, (these quips keep the reader amused even in the darkest sections of the trilogy,) and sometimes elaborating on things bartimius did before the book began.
John’s struggle is the key joy of the books, and turns the trilogy into a quest for redemption. It’s no surprise that he finds this redemption, but watching it happen is a riveting experience, and makes all three books worth reading.
The book’s are gritty affairs. For one thing, Bartimaeus, and the spirits like him, are slaves. Stroud doesn’t dodge around this issue at all, and so even moderately likable magicians, (and there are few of those,) are still, with two notable exceptions, slave drivers.
The trilogy is still intended for children, so there is no hint of sex, no really extreme violence, but a grim Orwellian atmosphere pervades the second two books in particular.
In short, if you like your fantasy grim yet still moderately amusing at the same time, your characters complicated, read these books.

An Opinion on Michael Palmer's Second Opinion

After reading Look Me in The Eye a few weeks ago, I became interested in Asperger’s Syndrome. More spisificly, I became interested in fictional depictions of people with Asperger’s. I wondered how they matched up to Robison’s excellent description of himself.
That is why I read the Second Opinion, by Michael Palmer. The book jacket wasn’t very promising. Doctor with Asperger’s. Can you say House rip-off? Because I sure can.
The book was marginally better than I thought it would be.
Palmer is a slightly above average writer, whose strength isn’t the development of believable characters, but is instead the development of a plot that moves along in such a way as to keep my interest moderately sustained, enough to get me to finish the book, just to see how it turned out.
Thea Sperelakis, an Asperger, who is a moderately famous medical doctor is summoned back to Boston when her father is the victim of a hit and run accident. Only, and this is shocking, Thea begins to discover that her father’s accidental meeting with a car might not be an accident at all, and she egins to stumble, and this is also shocking, onto a wider conspiracy at the hospital in which her father worked.
With her father able to blink one eye, allowing Thea to communicate with him in short, criptic conversations, Thhea must figure out what’s going on in time to bring the victims of her father’s maiming to justice.
Spoiler, she does.
The book moves along at a good steady clip, rarely pausing for introspection, or for anything else. The conspiracy is sort of interesting. The books resolution is just satisfying enough to not leave me feeling too cheated, although it is slightly implausible. It’s either too obvious, or not obvious enough, who ends up being behind the conspiracy, depending on which way you look at it.
The Asperger’s is photogenic, as well. No weird rant’s on a mate with paws, unlike in Robison’s autobiography. It’s more of a quirky Temperance Brenin type of autism, for good or ill.
In short, if you like thriller’s this isn’t bad, and if you don’t like thrillers, and you’re stuck with this, it’ll get you through several hours.

How to Lose Friend's and Alienate People

I just watched How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, about a writer trying to make it as a celebrity reporter, and it's the best comedy I've seen in the last year. Its just slapstick humor, awkward situations, piled atop one another. I thought I was going to die laughing.
The main lead's struggle to get coke, his being kicked in his hurt leg by his romantic coestar, the meeting with his father, the landlord, all just so damn funny, and the jokes, most of them anyway, come at you at such an obleaque angle, I was laughing out loud.
Plus, the serious aspects, obvious in a hollywood film, work well. If I gave stars, I'd give this one four, or five, or whatever a perfect score is. Great film.

swine flu and the Times

So the times has got a new columnist, who apparently is going to be a Republican Morene doud, as far as I can tell from his first column. His name is Charles Blow. The column isn't bad.
If republicans were all like Susan Collins, or the previously republican Spector, I'd be republican. Watching the insane right wing of the party shit all over itself is kind of fun, but also horrifying, because I agree with Blow that we need an oposition party.
Also, Swine Flu, as I thought,, is apparently not that big of a deal. We always get these crazy disease panics, (Sars, anyone?) which never ammount to anything. I don't want us to have to suffer through another 1918, but the hype always feels like somewhat of a let down.
Just so I don't let down all my readers the article I'm talking about is this one

Two-state solution

So I was reading the Times today, and happened across this article about the Israelie Palestinian conflict. A two state solution, obviously, means that Israel would give some land back to Palestine, remove its troops from Palestinian territory, ect, ect.
Seriously, fuck that. A two-state solution might look good for the United States, and I'm sure, Palistine, suffering under a one state solution right now would welcome it, but Israel has no good reason to give in to this idiotic demand. It won the land it has now in the 1967 war, a war, I should point out, it didn't start, and should keep that land. If I were israel, I'd finish the job, and obliterate palistine. I mean, every two weeks, some anti-simitic Palestinian throws a rock at an Israely, or bombs some dangerous, culpible target like a sidewalk Cafe or a shopping center, and then Israel launches a rade, the international comunitty bitch's, Palestine cries persicution, and then, in anger, some Palestinian throws a rock, and we start all over again.
Due to the foolishness of Israel's initial land grant by the allied powers, their stuck in an untenible situation. They should crush their enemies, if given any trouble, and we should just shut up about it. Two-state solution. Hey, why don't we give Texas back to Mexico, and we'll give England back to the Irish, and rome should find the people that make up itally, and undo the conquests of the Romen Empire. Oh, yeah, and everyone in Austraila should get the fuck out, go back to England, and give it back to its original population.

Review of Band of Brothers

Band of Brothers, by Stephen A. Ambrose, is a brief book summarizing the role E Company, first platoon, played in World War II. Ambrose compiles his information from interviews with the survivors of the company, and from the historical record, and presents the information in an organized chronology, from basic training up until the surrender of Germany. Band of Brothers was a rather enjoyable book. Ambrose does a good job of summarizing E Company's activities throughout World War II, and those soldiers he takes extra care to focus on, he illuminates well. Winters, Webster, and Sobel, for example, are written about in such a way that it's almost like the reader knows them personally.
Other soldiers fair less well. Many of the enlisted men, for example, are mentioned, but only because of telling event, humorous or serious, that illustrates enlisted life, (the man who won 6000 dollars in a craps game,) or the man who got drunk and then did something foolish, but then are not mentioned for another sixty or seventy pages, leaving me with no idea who they were.
This matters, because when Ambrose tells you so and so got killed, you have no idea who he's talking about, unless you go back to a previous section and find the person's name.
This flaw, however, isn't Ambrose’s fault. There were 2000 soldiers in E. company, about 150 in the first platoon, and to keep track of them all would have required a book of what I assume would have been five or six full volumes, and this book isn't that, obviously.
Ambrose excels, or the subject matter allows him to excel, in showing war on a small scale. Things that other military historians summarize in one sentence, "the fighting on Utah beach was fierce,) Ambrose takes fifty pages to explain, and this is all to the good. He conveys the sense of battle, of struggle, and shows how what have now become historical battles were awful things to those who had to live through them, and often weren't seen in the larger context by those men.
The chronology of the company’s exploits, from basic training, to jump school, and the actual fighting they did in the war, is done well, and with a sense of continuity.
If you imagine that the Company is the novel’s main character, which I suppose it is, then Ambrose’s neglect of individual enlisted men, which I’ve already mentioned as being unavoidable, is much less irksome.
Ambrose does a good job showing why E company did such a good job during the war, and what the aggregate mental state of the Company was during a given engagement.
If you’re a fan of military history, World War II, or good nonfiction in general, I recommend Band of Brothers. It’s not exactly a page turner, due to the density of information, but it’s a worthwhile read in the end.

responding to the times

Something, that if this blog doesn't lie down and die soon, that I'll be doing often is responding to the Times.

The NY times is probably the best paper in the world, as far as presentation of news go, I always trust its national section, but its editorial bored, and some of its coverage is just too fucking bleeding heart for my taste. Since my letters to the editor go unpublished and unanswered, I feel that in this blog, I can correct some of the idiotic emotionalism that they display from time to time, no pun intended.

Spisificly, I'm talking about this article is an example of a socialistic practice that is morally defensable, but economicly dangerous.
The article claims that insurers apply higher insurance rates to women then they do to men, because women go to the doctors more, and have children. Fair enough. These companies exist to make money, not to coddle American's. If you want lower rates, get your overies removed, then, you won't be able to have kids, and then, of course, you should be charged a lower rate.

I'm serious. It doesn't matter if it looks to be unfair on the surface. This is different from equal pay for equal work, job oprotunity, and discrimination. Women cost insurers more money as a gender, so they should be charged more as a gender.