Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Review: Night Watch

Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko is a fun read, fast paced and written in a style that makes you want to keep reading. I liked it quite a lot. In the world of this story, there is an enternal battle occuring between the forces of Light and Darkness. However, some time before the story opened, the two sides realized that their struggle would never end, and so drew up a treaty between them. This treaty created a balance between the two sides, with two police forces to ensure the balance is maintained. The Night Watch are Light Others who police the darkness, while the Day Watch are Dark Others who police the light. To perform acts of either light or darkness requires licenses from the opposing side, so vampires for instance require licenses from the Night Watch to hunt humans.

THe hero of Night Watch is Anton Gorodetsky, a mid-level Night Watch member who as the novel is opening is being transferred from analysis to field work. In the first story in the book (the novel is made up of three interconnected novellas), Anton has been given the assignment to track down and detain two vampires that have been killing without a license. While traveling through the subway system he encounters a woman with a black vortex over her head, meaning that someone has cursed her. What is surprising is that her black vortex is much bigger than it should be, and when her curse kills her, it could quite possibly kill everyone in Moscow as well. However, Anton cannot do anything about it, and continues to pursue the vampires, stopping them from killing a boy named Egor and killing one of them. The rest of the novella deals with hunting down the other vampire, protecting Egor (who is an Other who has not yet picked a side) and dealing with Svetlana, the woman with the curse over her head.

The second section deals with a Light Other who has not been initiated into the Light named Maxim. Despite knowing nothing about either the Light or the Darkness, he has discovered his own powers and uses them to kill low level Dark Ones he encounters. Unfortunately this causes trouble for the Night Watch and more specifically for Anton, as the Day Watch seems to be attempting to frame him for the killings. This section seems to undercut reader's assumptions about the struggle between the Light and the Darkness, for instance by demonstrating why killing random Dark Ones can cause more evil than good.

The third section deals with a dangerous gambit by the Night Watch to turn humanity towards the Light. However, Anton opposes it, reflecting back on other attempts to turn humanity towards good that were corrupted by the Dark Ones into great forces for evil-including communism and Nazism. The story ends on an ambiguous note.

I quite liked the characters in the book, particularly the Night Watch. The weird rivalry between Semyon and Ilya, Anton's no-nonsense partner Olga (who spends quite a lot of the first section as an owl), Anton's boss Gesar who has plans within plans, and Anton himself, who is eternally attempting to figure out what's going on. They seem like an odd sort of family, connected together by their love for each other. The Dark Ones are also interesting, although we only really get to meet three in this book, the Day Watch witch Alisa, the head of the Day Watch Zabulon, and Anton's neighbor Kostya, who's a vampire. With Kostya we are introduced to one of the themes of the novel: that there is not that much inherent difference between the Light Ones and the Dark Ones. The main difference is that the Dark Ones are mainly concerned with themselves, while the Light Ones are concerned with others. This however leads to troubling issues, as for instance the plots of the Light can easily sacrifice pawns in order to save greater numbers of people.

The plots of the three stories in Night Watch are a little confusing, particularly the second and third parts. In the second part the reader is led to believe one thing, but at the end there is a twist which reveals that in fact something else has been going on. The problem is that this twist is revealed in the very last line of the second section, and in the third section Lukyanenko neglects to provide much in the way of any more information to make that twist make sense. The ending to the third section is a little better, but we are still shown acts without properly being told what they mean. One side wins at the end of the third section, but I don't know how or why. It also bothered me a bit that it seems that the Light and the Darkness are rather unfairly balanced: it seems that the Darkness is rather heavily favored. Apparently humanity tends more towards the Darkness, and the Dark Ones throughly abuse this. Light Ones are also handicapped by the fact that to use their power risks it being corrupted to serve the darkness: killing a Dark One can lead to anguish that overwhelms any good from keeping them from doing evil, and to gather power to do something good Light Ones apparently have to take happiness from humanity. This is a rather dark way of looking at the world, and also makes it harder to understand why Light and Darkness are at a stalemate if Light is inhibited and Darkness is not. Perhaps when I read the sequel, Dark Watch, it will make more sense.

All in all this was a good and fun book, and I recommend reading it. I'm definitely going to read the next books in the series as soon as I can.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Review: The Magus

SO I'm back in Christchurch. Was a pretty uneventful flight, and I saw a good movie called Dean Spanley that I highly recommend.

But the main purpose of this post is to write about the most recent book I read, The Magus by John Fowles. This is the story of an Englishman named Nicholas Urfe who is hired to teach English at a private boarding school on an Greek Island. There he meets a mysterious Greek millionare named Conchis, who invites Nicholas to his house every weekend in order to first recount his life story, and later to mess with Nicolas' head, apparently merely for kicks. Things get more complicated as Nicholas descends further and further into Conchis' world, encounters several characters whose roles and identities constantly shift and attempts his best to figure out what's going on and why. About 3/4 of the way through the book, things finally come to a breaking point, Nicholas is kidnapped by Conchis and his allies, and is put on trial for being....I'm not even sure what. Anyways, he apparently fails his trial, and is summarily thrown off the island and spends the last quarter of the book trying to figure out what was the meaning of everything that happened.

This was an interesting book, in that it is very clear that John Fowles is a very good writer, and I loved his prose. However, the plot of the book is incredibly unsatisfying, and I had a general dislike of most of the characters as well.

The pacing of the plot is very odd. The first quarter or so of the book doesn't even take place in Greece and deals mostly with Nicholas' relationship with an Australian flight attendant named Alison, which later turns out to be important, but still seems like an entirely different book from the rest of the story. The last quarter of the book is about Nicholas attempting madly to figure out what the hell was going on in the previous sections of the book, and trying to find some sort of closure, which never happens. Essentially, Fowles needed here to say definitively to say whether Conchis and the various characters who assisted him were right or wrong in what they did, and this never happens. What we essentially get is Nicholas attempting to figure out what Conchis and his allies want from him so that he can get an explanation of why they did what they did, and being constantly rebuffed. When he eventually finds someone who'll actually talk to him, they still refuse to explain anything, and basically maintain that Nicholas does not deserve any sort of explanation. The entire story ends inconclusively.

Another thing that bothered me were the characters. Nicholas is essentially the protagonist by default, as he's a bit of a cad, somewhat emotionally immature, and a tad too self-justifying to make him sympathetic. Pretty much the only thing that makes him sympathetic is that he, like the reader, has no idea what's going on and that, in the last quarter of the book, is the injured party. Almost all of the other characters turn out to be agents of Conchis, and to a person they are all self-righteous, hypocritical, and unsympathetic monsters. At various times it is implied that they did what they did to either force enlightenment upon Nicholas or force him to become a more emotionally mature person, but that's essentially hooey. They hold over Nicholas that they know what's going on, and what principles we get of their philosophy (essentially, being emotionally honest with others) are hard to swallow given that they don't follow them with regards to Nicholas: they lie to him over and over again, emotionally manipulate him with casual cruelty, and treat Nicholas as essentially a test subject in an experiment. It is possible that Fowles was intending for them to turn out to be right, but as the story is they seem to do what they do for kicks, not for any higher purpose they might profess.


In summary, this was a frustrating novel that had weird pacing, no plot resolution, unsympathetic characters, and a weird sense of self-righteousness that was merely irritating. There were good parts about it (the writing, as mentioned above, and Nicholas' relationships with his socialist landlady Kemp and a young Scottish girl named Jojo, which were beautifully done and come way to late into the novel to redeem it), but all in all it was not a good book.


Next up is Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, which I'm almost done with and which I'm really liking.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Last day in Rarotonga

Back to good ol' NZ tonight really late at night.

So the night of the Cross-Island walk we went to this Progressive Dinner, where we ate at one family's house for appetizers, then another for the main course, and a final family's house for dessert. All of the food was good and tasty and I quite enjoyed it. The guy at the first house showed us his garden, which had all kinds of fruit and vegetables, including starfruit, papayas, hot peppers (I tried one and it nearly burnt my mouth. I feel sory and impressed by the guy who ate a whole one), and pinapples (which apparently grow out of the ground). All in all, a good evening.

The next morning, we had a lecture on the Cook Islands economy. It's not doing well, because there are so few people, so many people just leave for New Zealand, and there's so little land. The country survives entirely on tourism, which is also not doing so well, because it's mostly New Zealanders, who are apparently a lot more frugal than Americans.

After that we went to a nearby school. The kids danced for us, and then we were split up into groups. I don't know what the girls did, but us guys were taught by the kids how to play their drums. It took me awhile to pick up the rhythym, but it was fun. after that were visits to the classrooms and a light lunch. one of the teachers then asked the group if we wanted to play with the 1st years. I jumped at the chance. We played duck duck goose, which the kids seemed to really enjoy. When one of the kids picked me as the goose, he (I suppose expecting that I would be a lot faster than him) took off, running offaround one of the school buildngs. My group eneded up playing a lot of different games, most of which were quickly discarded as the kids got more rambunctious.

Then we went on a tour of the small plantations around the island. and small is the key word here: most of the places we saw were probably less than an acre. We saw noni (a fruit which smells and tastes like bleu cheese, and which is added to some health drinks), coconuts, bananas, papayas, and rock melons. I even got to help plant a new banana tree! Except for the part where I fell in a hidden hole over by the rock melon patch, it all went well.

THat night we went back to our hotel and had a talk with Nan Hauser, who's an American/Swiss/Bahamanian whale researcher who lives here. She showed us some of the footage she'd gotten from her studies of humpback whales, including times when whales almost destroyed her boats and interesting whale songs. She really was a cool lady. Many of my fellow IESers want to come back here to be her research assistants.

We went with Nan to this cool restaurant called Cafe Ariki. I ended up sitting with a good mix of people, and we talked all night about all kinds of geeky stuff. I was a little disappointed in my chicken snitzel, but all in all it was a good night. We closed it out with coconut ice cream that Eunice had bought for us.

Today we went to another school. We helped the kids clean up garbage and overturn possible mosquito breeding grounds, as well as remove some plants. It was actually kind of fun, although tiring. Then the kids had snack time (we didn't, which made me sad), then playtime. after playtime we had harder work, where we split up into two groups. Unfortunately I arrived and went with the wrong group, the one that was clearing the beach of weeds and rocks, as opposed to the one that was organizing raffle tickets inside in the shade.It was even harder work, but we accomplished a lot. After that the principal showed us how to hook coconuts out of a tree and we got to try our hand at husking them. I didn't get to go for very long, but i ended up being better than I expected.

Now it's free time. I think I shall meander about town and then go back to the hotel to rest and pack my stuff. I'll update my blog again when I get back to New Zealand.

Monday, April 20, 2009

the Cross-Island Walk

This was probably my least favorite part of the trip so far. I was expecting a hike on relatively flat and well-defined trail; and what I got was a path that was almost vertical both ways and lots of slippery tree roots on an extremely narrow and ill-defined path with long drops really close by. Evety time the trail got worse, I got angrier. Really, I was feeling a kind of existential rage that no one else seemed phased by this ordeal. To them it was just a walk in the woods. Right now I'm feeling better but while I was doing it I was completely miserable. I didn't even really get to appreciate the jungle around me because I was too worried about falling and too busy hoping and wishing that we'd get to the end already. At the end everyone got into this big pool and swum around. I got in about to my waist (in my clothes too), but found it too cold to continue. After that we went to the prison on the island, which is apparently the cheapest place on the island to buy ukeleles (I don't know why). When we gopt back to our hotel there were cookies for us. I survived the ordeal, and in retrospect it wasn't that terrible, but this hasn't been a fun day so far.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Market fun

So yesterday we got up really early in order to go to market. That said, a lot of us took a while to actually get there. It was pretty cool: there were dancers and music there, and lots of vendors. I got myself some t-shirts (I had forgotten to bring enough wioth me thru a brain fart), as well as a gift for Elana for her birthday which I think I'll end up posting from New Zealand, and a souvenier of Rarotonga for myself. This happened to be a small carving of the local god, Tangaroa, who is a bit lewd (he has no pants and is rather...well-endowed). Lewdness and idolatry aside, it is a uniquely Rarotongan piece of art, and I think it's a cool souvenier.

I also bought myself some chicken curry for lunch. Unfortunately, I had to wait to eat it, as we had another activity happening: this happened to be going to a taro patch to plant taro. It turned oput it was only a tiny part of the patch, but it was still muddy work. First we had to turn over the soil and make sure there weren't any holes for weeds to grow up in, then some people hadf to wade out into the bog around the patch to stake down a tarp to further prevent weeds from sprouting (this was the muddiest part of the activity,and one I did not participate in), then coconut palm leaves were put over the tarp (again, this kep weeds from sprouting). Finally, we got this huge heavy pounder thing to punch holes in the tarp and dirt to put the taro shoots in. There was also a coconut husking competition. Apparently some of the people that did it were hitting their coconuts in the wrong place, as one of the shapr sticks that you use to husk got blunted so it couldn't be used. The taro farmer who was showing us what to do also demonstrated that yes, you can in fact husk a coconut with your teeth.

The next activity was an arts and crafts one. First of all we made tie dye (fold fold dye, as nothing was actually tied) sarongs that all, miraculously, turned out beautifully. I rather liked mine, which I took pictures of and shall post when I get back to NZ. The next activity was weaving coconut palms into plates. I understood the fundamentals, but a small girl basically redid my plate after I did it. The girls then made headresses out of banana leaves, while us guys made these warrior streamers that one puts over one's shoulders. Then the girls and the guys were taught different hakas. I was kinda shy, but retrospectively I enjoyed learning the haka and how to dance like a Cook Islander, altho I still haven't mastered it (you need to both wiggle your knees and move your legs at the same time, while also moving your hands. It was TOUGH, and I kept getting embarrased.)

The next activity was easier and more pleasant. We went out to the beach, put our sarongs in the salt water (this would fix the colors apparently) and then played in the water. A lot of people did canoe paddling, but I wasn;t interested in that (althoough apparently they found some octopuses and played with them, and I regret missing that). The lagoon we were in had a serious current and I had to paddle to stay in one place. Although I missed out on the octopuses, I did get to play with sea cucumbers, so that was fun. At the end of the time a bucnhof us made a really elaborate and cool sand castle. Eunice accidentally gave us a lot of volunteers when she said that everyone that wasn't doing the sandcastle had to help put up the boats, and suddenly we had more volunteers than we could use.

That night we had a dinner prepared by the people who had showed us the arts and crafts. We used the plates we had made, watched the Cook Islanders show off their dances, and then we showed them our dances. Then there was a dance competition where the best girl and guy in the IES group got a CD. I, inevitably didn't win. It was still fun to watch tho.

Today we went to the Sunday service at the local Cook Island Christian Church. It was nice to see all the colorful hats and shirts that the churchgoers were wearing, but it was hot, the entire service was in Cook Island Maori, and I wasn't Christian, so I spent most of it kinda bored.

This afternoon we have free time. A lot of people are biking around the island, but I think I'll just walk through town and then vback. I think I'll try to get a picture of Parliament.

Tomorrow we go on the Cross Island Walk, and hopefully I'll be able to get away during our free time aftert that to update the blog on that. Hopefully it'll be exciting.

Anyways, hope all my readers are well, and hopefully more tomorrow.

Friday, April 17, 2009

The Cook ISlands G-String

so here I am in the Cook ISlands at an internet cafe. I hope I'll be able to do more in the comng days butr right now we're pretty busy dfoing stuff. Anyways,m here's what's happened over the past two days here

The flight from Christchurch to Auckland and from Auckland to Rarotonga were uneventful. I did accidentally cause a minor panic when I speculated whether or not OSU Federal was ging to remember that I had said I was going to be in the Cook Islands, and everyone else re3alized they hadn't even done that. But I think that all will work out, and hopefully I will be able to live on the money I gpot out of an ATYM in New Zealand. On the flight to Rarotonga I saw Quantum of Solace, a movie that was merely OK. I actyually had a hard time figuirng out what was going on.

Customs in Rarotonga went pretty smoothly, except for when one of the cops walked up to Ryan and asked him to put somnething in his pocket for a sniffer dog to rfind, for training. The first attempt didn'ty work beczause everyone around Ryan took theior cameras out, cluing the dog in, but attempt n. 2 worked well. After that we went to our hotel, settled in, and then went back out for dinner. This turned out to be at a seaside pub run by a white Hawaiian and a white New Zealander, where we had really tasty barbeque food. Thew teriyaki steak was especially good. That night a bunch of us ended up watching the Mr. Bean movie in the lounge, which was fun. I do prefer Blackadder for Rowan Atkinson roles.

First thing today we had a lecture on the history and politics of the Cook Islands by a former Minister of Justice and MP. Apparently all the Cook Islands has a smaller population than Corvallis, and a lot of MP's constiuencies are very small and made up of big families. Because of that, folks have to be careful what they do or else they can be voted out by a tiny amount of votes!

Then we went on a cruise! We wnet out in this little glass bottom boats to near a reef, where we did snorkeling. I ws initially wary, and also flet that i wouldn't be able to see anything given that the goggles on the snorkles were non-corrective, but I eventually di it and it ws a lot of fun. I saw a lot of fish and enjoyed myself, even though I had to get out to wipe my eyes a few times. As snorkle time was ending, some pople swam under the boat and did flips and stuff. I took pictures and winced in admiration.

Lunch was, again, grilled food, which was quite tasty. The most delicvious iten this time was some girlled bananas. After that was a show where the boat crew showed us how to shuck coconuts, as well as how to put on women's and men's sarongs. I was picked for the men;s part, wherew thye gave me what they called "The Cook Island G-String." They tyhen tied a rock to the bottom of my sarong thing, and, along with the other guy they'd picked, I was in structed to do a throughly lewd dance. I felt very shy but I got through it.

After that, we came back to the hotel and got a lecture on migration and ancient seafaring techniques. It was interesting, but i kept (to my embarrasment) falling asleep (I don;t know why). After that we went to these people's house, where they fed us a feast. Apparently these guys are going to teach us how to paddle canoes later on this week. Again, delicious (altho I didn't really like the coconut drink that was an option), and eaten in traditional Raro style ie with the fingers. I liked the curry chicked and the taro, which i dipped in the curry sauce.

So tomorrow we're going to market where I think I'll buy souveniers. Hopefully also I'll be able to get on another computer (I think we've got some spare time) and update my blog again. On Sunday we got to Church and Monday we walk across the island. This is fun and exciting and strange, and I'm quite enjoying it.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Seder/Nelson

So the seder went well. I bought some Schweppes Sparkling Duet for it, bu forgot it, but aside from that it was OK. Tonny is a vegetarian, so for instance the matzah ball soup had no shmlatz in it (I was surprised how much I missed chicken fat), which was unfortunate, but th matzah meal oancakes were delicious. I also like how Tonny had a little plastic sheep for a lambbone on her seder plate, and that we each had our own haggadha,and tried our bestto weave together a coherent service. There was this olderEnglish guy who used to live in Puyallup, so he asked me a lot about Temple Beth El (The Tacoma Reform synagogue), which I didn't know very well.

So Thursday I came across and up the South Island to get to Nelson. I took the TranzAlpine, which goes across the Southern Alps to Greymouth, and is incredibly scenic. Then I took a bus up to Nelson, which was going fine (we went thru Punakaiki and stopped for about an hour, long enouhg for me to see the pancake rocks and get some lunch), bu I ended up getting motion ick thanks to the very windy roads and the speed with which the author drove. but it all ended up alright. Jim and Meredith were more than nice to me, setting me up with dinner and a computer and offering me a plce to clean up my stuff. Friday (when a lot of stuff was closed) Meredith and I (as well as their daughter Madeline) went arounf town seeing the sights of Nelson, of which there weren't a lot. Meredith took pis in front of the local chip shop (whch had exploded yesterday), as well as on the beach and in front of an ice cream truck. We went to the local art musuem which has two collections: vintage car and wearble art (clothes that are artistic designs). It was neat and I'm glad someone could show me around Nelson. Today Jim and I went to the local market, where there were all sorts of arts and crafts stuff available. I bought some souveniers there, as well as cheap books. I ha to goet home in ordr to participate in my parent's seder back home via skype, which woorked rather well. I did the 4 questions, and then they let me go to do my own things. Later in the afternoon I went with Jm and Madeline up to the top of a hill that's apparently the official, center of New Sealand, which was quite a refereshing hike. Againl ot of grweat picstures.

Tomorrow I go back to Christchurch. Not sure what I'm gonna do for the week, but hopefully I'll think f something cool. Inform y'all if I do!

David Lev

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Windy Welly

So yesterday I went to Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand. This is a huge museum of 6 floors with a whole lot of cool stuff. There was a visiting exhibition of Impressionist art, but you had to pay to get in (everywhere else was free) plus there was a long line. I ended up skipping it. I did see a lot of other stuff though: they had a preserved collosal Squid (apparently the biggest squid on record or that they had the body of), which was only about as big as I am ( I would have thought a big squid would have been bigger), and a whole lot of Maori stuff (including a waka, or canoe), an exhibition on the Treaty of Waitangi (which I was able to understand quite well I thought, this weird video show of NZ pop culture for the past 50 years, an exhibit designed to look like a shipping container full of hidden pests that you had to find (although I found the maggots hiding in the peaches a bit much), and a video calling Operation kakapo copulation, about efforts to help kakapos (a kind of native parrot) breed, which was oddly funny. I also bought from the gift store some chocolates infused with wine for Phillipe and Sandra

After 2 and a half hours in the museum I left and walked around Wellington. I went to the Beehive (NZ's parliament building) and took pictures, then turned around and walked towards Cuba Street, which had a lot of cool shops. On the way I stopped for some noodles, which were quite cheap for what I got. Later on I bought Phillipe and Sandra some Oregon wine, which I thought was kinda cool. At Cuba street I went and picked up some repaired shoes for Sandra, and gazed through the shops myself. I was tempted to get some comics, but ended up not getting them. I did buy some books from a used book store though (I know, I'm weak). Another used book store was called "Ferret Books," so I had to check it out. I didn't get anything there though. After i was done I walked over towards the Embassy Theater (where the world premiere of ROTK was) and got some clear shots of it (not obscured by a van window) of it and the statue of the film camera that Weta built. Finally I walked over to Phillipe's office, where he kindly let me use his laptop.

Today was kinda boring. I had to get up early to take the ferry, which was nice and big. I saw an episode of the WotWots, which is a NZ toddler's show produced by Weta, and read a lot. In Picton I waited around for the train and bought my tickets for my trip to Nelson on Thursday. The train itself was a little crowded, but quite scenic with a car in the back without windows so that you could snap pics if you wanted to. One of the other people at my table on the train spent about 2/3 of the trip out there. I myself went out a few times and snapped some cool pics myself. I also noticed that the handles on some of the doors were oddly placed really low to the ground so I had to bend down to open them. It was weird and I don't know why they did it that way.

Tomorrow I'm going to Tonny's seder (hopefully I can find her house again) and Thursday I got out to visit the Cornelius' out in Nelson.

See you later,

David Lev

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Greetings from Windy Wellington!

So my flight yesterday from Christchurch to Wellington went very smoothly (except for a bit of turbulence on the way in) and Phillipe picked me up with no problem. He then showed me around Miramar, the suburb around the airport, and coincidentally the place where Weta Workshops is. I went to the Weta Cave (the Weta Workshop store/mini museum), snapped some pics and went inside to ask about LOTR tours. They gave me a brochure for this one tour, but it later turned out the guy couldn't do a tour this weekend, so I ended up with another tour today.

Anyways, after that we went around Wellington, seeing a lot of the various suburbs and neighborhoods (and Peter Jackson's house!) and getting sandwiches at Subway (I had the Roast Lamb, which I think is a NZ exclusive). Then we went back home where I met Phillipe's wife Sandra. We chatted, I planned my LOTR tour for today,a nd in the evening Phillipe and I went out for burgers. On the way we went up to Mount Victoria, where I took a lot of pictures. The burgers we go were big and tasty, and I quite liked them. Then Phillipe, Sandra, and I watched "The Kite Runner," although I fell asleep in the middle of it.

Todasy I got up bright and early in order to get to my tour. Phillipe was more than kind to drive me into central Wellington. It was a nice tour, in a van that went around the Wellington area. Besides outr guide, we had an English girl, two Australian women, a Japanese woman, a German girl, a Scottish man, another American guy, and me. We went to Mt. Victoria (Outer Shire, "Shortcut to Mushrooms," "Get off the road," Dunharrow, Woodelves viewing point, and the race to the ferry), the cafe where the cast often went to eat (where I got an afghan, a kind of cookie I'd never seen before), the Weta Cave (where i bought a little plastic weta and a comic that Weta designed, and saw a film on Weta's history and what they do), the Hutt River (one of several rivers to stand in for the Anduin), a regional park which I forget the name of (Rivendell), and Harcourt Park (Isengard gardens, or "The Isengardens," as our guide called them). There were a couple of other places we drove past but didn't get out of the van for too (for instance the quarry where Helm's Deep was). Except for the fact that my camera ran out of power around Rivendell, and i forgot to bring my batteries on the tour (I left them at Phillipe's house), it was an excellent tour.

So tomorrow I plan to meander about central Wellington, seeing the national museum and the Beehive (the house of Parliament), as well as hopefully some other cool stuff. I'll report back then.

Sincerely,

David

Friday, April 3, 2009

Review: The Bromeliad Trilogy

I should have done this post a week ago, when I actually finished Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad Trilogy. but I put it off, so I'm doing it now. The Bromeliad Trilogy is three books where Pratchett messes around with the "little people' subgenre of children's fantasy. In this case, the nomes are tiny people who live their lives about 10 times the rate that humans do. This makes them think of humans as being slow and stupid. The first book, "Truckers," opens with a band of nomes who've been living outside since they can remember hitching a ride on a truck to a nearby department store, as where they were living before (a hole in the ground) was getting too dangerous and they needed to find somewhere safer and with more food. Where they end up is a department store which is inhabited by thousands of nomes, none of whom have been outside in their lives and many of whom believe the store was built for them by a godlike figure named Arnold Bros, est 1905. When they get to the Store, the nomes from the outside also get a surprise: the Thing, a black cube they've been carrying since always, wakes up in the presence of electricity and begins to give them adivice. It also informs them they are aliens, and the Thing is the computer of the space shuttle they crash landed in millenia ago. There's still the space ship they came to explore on somewhere in space, however. And there's the immediate problem of the fact that the Store is closing soon.

This first book does a good job of introducing us to the various characters and their conflicts--the no-nonsense leader Masklin, the atheistic curious technophile Angalo, the conflicted priest Gurder, the independant woman Grimma, and the level-minded and experimental engineer Dorcas. Each of these characters represents a different viewpoint of how the world either does work or should, and Pratchett allows each to deliver their points. This book doesn't really get into the conflicts (does Arnold Bros exist? Is it better to believe he does or he doesn't?), but it introduces them for later. We also get some of Terry Pratchett's dislike for religion. Although no religious types are truly villanous (that's saved for the next book), the Stationeri (the Store tribe that are essentially the Catholic Church) are rather repressive and the first real scene with them, where the Abbot of the Stationeri refuses to acknoledge that the Outsiders even exist, is painfully pointed. The Store nomes' belief in Arnold Bros., and their literal minded interpretation of signs (they are puzzled why humans carry neither dogs nor strollers on an escalator when a sign cleary says "All Dogs and Strollers must be carried", for instance) are rather sharp critiques of religious or supernatural belief, as to the audience of the story it is blatantly clear how horribly wrong the nomes' interpretation of the human world is.

The final section of the book, which deals with the nomes' attempts to steal a truck to get them all somewhere safe away from the store is nailbiting suspense. The nomes are not ideal drivers, and the scene becoems a chase when the truck they steal gets tailed by the cops. It's a cool way to end the story where a huge amount of action comes after many chapters of setup, which comes as a great release.

The next book, "Diggers," picks up a few months after the previous book ended. The nomes have settled into an abandoned quarry, with the Store nomes generally thriving, although being thrown by such things as open sky and cold temperature. This book does something weird, as three of the main characters, Masklin, Angalo, and Gurder, leave the story to go to Florida, both to try to find the grandson of the man who founded the Store and to try to put the Thing on a space shuttle so that it can call the nomes' ship to come pick them up. This is kind of a weird thing to do, and although Grimma and Dorcas can carry the book by themselves, the story is intentionally written so as to call to attention the fact that these characters are missing. There are hints of what's going on in the other story (which is the story of "Wings," the third book), which work rather well, but when the three come back at the end of the story in such a way as to be a blatant deus ex machina.

The central conflict of this story comes about when the nomes discover the humans want to reopen the quarry. What to do is argued about between Dorcas and Grimma, who want to fight to drive the humans away, and an unpleasant priest named Nisodemus, who preaches that the reason they got into this mess lis lack of faith in Arnold Bros. In Nisodemus Pratchett truly shows his dislike for religion, as there is very little of redeeming value about him.

It is in the second book that we are introduced to the central metaphor of the trilogy: the story of tree frogs who live in bromeliads in trees in rainforests , for whom their flower is their world. To the nomes, living in the outside world allows them to expand beyound their bromeliad flowers. It actually is a beautiful metaphor, and I quite liked it myself.

The third book, "Wings," happens at the same time as "Diggers," but has a remarkably different tone. While "Diggers" at times can have a remarkably grim plot, "Wings": is much more of a picaresque adventure, with the three nomes and the Thing experiencing the wonderful world of the Concorde airplane and also the mysterious land of Florida, where the space shuttle they need to get the Thing on is situated. Altho there is some darkness to the story (particularly Gurder's being troubled at his preconceptions of the world constantly being shattered), but it was a breezy interesting book. Perhaps because we already know the other half of this story (i.e. whats happening in the quarry), this book seems less distracted than the second book. The book also expands on the bromeliad metaphor, with occasional breaks from the main story to tell of the exploits of a band of tree frogs who leave their world of a bromeliad flower to the exciting new existence of another bromeliad as a symbol of the nomes' leaving of one world for another. The ending left a little to be desired (I wanted to know what would happen next, and how they would solve the problem introduced partway through the story: i.e. how to find all the nomes that the nomes of the story don't know about), but all in all it was a good series. Although these books weren't as rich as Pratchett's Discworld books or as off the wall as his Johnny Maxwell books, they're solid texts that accomplish what they set out to achieve.

So tomorrow I go to Wellington. I'll write about my adventures then.