Review of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

So we've finally got to the end of Peter Jackson's epic reimagining of Tolkien — unless, of course, he gets the film rights to The Silmarillion, but that seems unlikely. It's been a varied experience. I generally loved the three Lord of the Rings films, although some of the omissions and changes niggled a bit. I felt the same about the first of the Hobbit films, but the second felt too much of a change for no very good reason. I was very unsure what to expect, going to see the final instalment.

There's a lot of good, in fact.  Overall, it sticks somewhat closer to the book than the second film, even though several episodes are vastly inflated from the largely summarised accounts in the original. Smaug's attack on Lake-town (with a too-short reappearance by the great dragon and Benedict Cumberbatch as his voice), the gathering of the refugees and the elves before the Mountain, and very much the battle itself were all filled out.

There's also the attack on Dol Guldur, the climax of the White Council thread. Tolkien never gave a detailed account of what actually happens, though it wasn't at all how I imagined it. Still, it works well, and gives us another glimpse of the mighty Galadriel who was briefly unleashed when Frodo offered her the Ring.

As might be expected, there's plenty of foreshadowing of LOTR, from Saruman's suave assurance that the others should "leave Sauron to me" to Bilbo's growing obsession with the Ring.

This is the stage of the plot where Bilbo really comes of age morally, and Martin Freeman handles his inner struggles excellently, both over the Ring and the Arkenstone (which, like Bard's black arrow, has a lot more significance than in the book). This is contrasted with a thorough exploration of Thorin's descent into near-madness and his return, which is equally well portrayed by Richard Armitage.

The Battle of the Five Armies is the film's centrepiece, as it should be, but arguably it was overdone, as most of the action set-pieces have tended to be. It's perfectly reasonable, of course, that we should see the action itself, and what's happening to people we care about in the midst of it, but I feel it goes on for a little too long.

Possibly the highlight of the battle is the arrival of Dain, Dwarf-Lord of the Iron Hills. Most of the dwarves have Scottish accents, which fits, but it was a joy to hear Dain's greeting in broad Glaswegian and realise it was Billy Connolly. This was no noble, questing dwarf, but a brawler from the Gorbals.

Eventually, though, the whole focus shifts to a personal showdown with the orc-lord Azog and his "spawn" Bolg (the book simply calls Bolg Azog's son) featuring Thorin, Fili, Kili, Dwalin and Bilbo, with Legolas and Tauriel pitching in (giving Orlando Bloom plenty of opportunity for acrobatics). I do think this goes on too long, though its culmination is moving.

And then home to Bag End, shown much as in the book (with a brief cameo of Lobelia Sackville-Baggins) and a final scene with the old Bilbo (ignoring the fact that he shouldn't have grown old) welcoming Gandalf before the Party. And a final nice touch — the song over the credits is sung by Billy Boyd, aka Pippin.

Altogether, I don't find the Hobbit trilogy as successful as Lord of the Rings. The action scenes are overblown throughout, and some changes seem to have been made for change's sake. Perhaps Tauriel irks me most. Not that there's anything wrong with either her character as it stands or Evangeline Lilly's performance, but the romance between her and Kili just doesn't convince me. Why should a dwarf find an elf-woman attractive (she doesn't even have a beard, after all)?

More than that, though, is that she's introduced specifically for a romantic subplot. I can perfectly well understand why Jackson wanted a strong female character in the films (besides Galadriel's brief appearances) but it seems rather tokenistic that the one female character should be introduced purely as love interest, however kick-ass she might be. On the plus side, her presence helps Legolas's development and turns Thranduil into a genuine character, but that could have been done in a less stereotyped way.

Still, there's a lot to like, and I can see myself rewatching the films often enough on DVD. Perhaps I'll even watch the entire hexalogy straight through — if I ever have the odd eighteen hours to spare.

I've also reviewed The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug on this blog.

Review of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Generally speaking, I hate it when stories I love are treated as optional extras in film versions bearing their name.  From a kid who loved Kipling's The Jungle Book and confronted with what Disney had done with it to an adult seeing one of the world's greatest classic stories trashed in Troy, I try my best to avoid such rewritings.  Of course, I accept that these may be great films in their own right for anyone who doesn't know and love the original, but in a way that's the point.  Generations are going to believe these are the actual stories.

In view of that, it's maybe strange that I never had too much problem with the wholesale changes Peter Jackson made to my absolute favourite book ever.  I do have issues with the Lord of the Rings films (I still think the Scouring of the Shire should have been included, for instance) but I tend to think of them not so much as adaptations of the books but a different way of retelling the legends of the War of the Ring.  A film about King Arthur, for instance, might draw heavily on Malory, but would be free to take slightly different routes from A to B.

In general, I felt the same about the first instalment of The Hobbit (reviewed last year) but I have to say that the second stretches my tolerance a good deal further.  I think it's probably fair to say that parts of the fight with the giant spiders, of Thorin's defiance of Thranduil, and of Bilbo's encounter with Smaug are the only bits of the book to make it into this film.

It isn't all bad.  It makes complete sense, for instance, for Legolas to be present in his father's halls, and I suspect that, if Tolkien had ever done a thorough rewrite of The Hobbit in light of Lord of the Rings, he'd have included an appearance.  It also makes sense to give Bard the Bowman more of a story.  I always felt it was a weakness of the book that he pops up from nowhere just in time to save the day, and the narrative backstory given in the book certainly wouldn't work in a film.

Also, as in the first film, it makes sense to use the growing conflict with the power of Dol Guldur as a parallel plotline.  We don't see as much of Radagast this time, but his couple of scenes are enjoyable, and Gandalf's eventual confrontation with the vast, numinous figure of Sauron is stunning.

Similarly, the complexities of Lake-town politics, only hinted at in the book, are presented effectively, if at length, with Stephen Fry excellent as the corrupt Master, and the town itself is wonderfully visualised.  Bard has a role that foreshadows what happens later, although the whole nature and significance of his black arrow has been completely changed.

Beorn and the spiders of Mirkwood, too, are visually arresting, but the film's highlight is, as it should be, the dragon.  Forget the dragons of past films — even the wonderful Draco from Dragonheart — Smaug is everything a dragon should be.  He's visually captivating, and Benedict Cumberbatch (who also supplies Sauron's voice) extracts every nuance of character shown in the book.

Not all of the changes are quite as successful, though.  The film introduces an entirely new character, the elf Tauriel, who has a highly improbable romantic subplot with the dwarf Kili.  I found this not only a very long distraction from the main story but very unconvincing.  Granted that Kili bears very little resemblance to a dwarf (like Thorin, he has the appearance more of a dashing human) it would still be an unthinkable step to take, and somewhat reduces the impact of Legolas and Gimli's later unprecedented friendship.

Another problem is the apparent obsession with turning almost every single scene into action.  This is perhaps most clear in the escape by barrel from Thranduil's halls.  Granted that there's little visual in the original sequence, it seems unnecessary to add an orc-attack and a three-way running battle between dwarves, elves and orcs (not to mention more romance between Kili and Tauriel) to what is already a tense and exciting episode.

Not that the way the escape is presented really makes any sense.  In the book, the dwarves are hidden inside sealed barrels while floating downstream, but here the barrels are open and upright.  Which would be fine if they weren't regularly submerged and tossed around going over waterfalls, without apparently shipping any water at all.

Another somewhat pointless action scene is the battle within Erebor between Smaug and the dwarves, although at least this has the advantage of letting us see more of the dragon.  It's presumably there so that the film can finish in a blaze of action, but it rather undermines Bilbo's role as the party's thief to have the dwarves instantly springing into action.  The sequence is beautifully made and exciting, but I'm not convinced it's good storytelling.

Regardless of the choices about the story, the performances are all excellent.  Evangeline Lilly plays Tauriel well, whether or not the character belongs in the film, and Luke Evans as Bard seems to be somewhat channelling Viggo Mortensen, which is fair enough.  The people carried over from the first film remain strong — Thorin is a commanding presence, and Ian McKellan — well, he's Gandalf, and always will be.

Martin Freeman as Bilbo has less centre stage than in the first film, but he continues to handle the transition from home-loving hobbit to courageous adventurer with total conviction.  His confrontation with Smaug (his Sherlock co-star, of course) is delightful.

The film ends with Smaug flying off to attack Lake-town, and I'm sure we're in for plenty more action in the third film, what with the dragon-slaying, the attack on Dol Guldur and the Battle of the Five Armies.  And, presumably, a lot more of Kili and Tauriel.  I just hope there's a bit more of the book present than in this film.

Review of Love & Sleep by John Crowley

Some time back, I wrote areview of The Solitudes, the first part of John Crowley's Ӕgypt Cycle.  Last year, I read the second, Love & Sleep, and I thought I'd update the review.

Love & Sleep is in most ways a continuation of a single work, and therefore possesses much the same qualities: the blend of rural life, intense academia and historical drama, as historian Pierce Moffatt seeks to show that the world not only changes at crucial stages of history, but changes retrospectively, so that what was once true no longer is.

However, this book doesn't simply pick up where the last broke off.  For about the first third (this, like The Solitudes, is divided into sections corresponding to three of the twelve Houses of the Moon) Crowley examines Pierce's childhood, which was only hinted at in the first book.  We see him growing up with his cousins, reading arcane works of mythology and mysticism, and developing his obsession with Ӕgypt (not to be confused with Egypt) and the Invisible College.  This was a name given to the Rosicrucians, but Pierce forms a gang of the name with his cousins, dedicated to the concept that they're the last survivors of the lost, ancient world.

We also see his relationship with a wild mountain girl called, of all things, Bobby Shaftoe ("And the girl had some sort of nursery rhyme name...") with whom Pierce experiences his first, child's stirrings of sexual desire.  We also, though, see something of Bobby's grandfather, who appears to have mystical, out-of-body experiences (unless, of course, they're just vivid dreams) which tie in with some of the occult themes of the sixteenth century episodes.

These continue the stories of John Dee (left) and Giordano Bruno (below), historical scientists and magicians, though concentrating this time rather more on Dee, taking them from Oxford to Prague, where Dee is commissioned by the Emperor Rudolph to turn lead into gold.  Crowley makes it clear that this much-misunderstood alchemical ideal was not primarily, if at all, for avarice, but meant to aid the mystical aim of creating "philosophical gold".

Dee and his assistant Kelley (pictured togethered below left) are guided by a spirit called Madimi, an intriguing figure who — if not actually a figment of their imagination — may be an angel or something more sinister.  Growing in the course of the book from apparently a seven-year-old girl into apparently a woman, Madimi guides their steps, promising the dawn of a new age.

Meanwhile, the book also explores further Pierce's new life in the Faraway Mountains, in particular his relationships with Rosie Rasmussen and Rose Ryder — two women he originally confused.  We discover a lot more about Rosie through her own POV, almost equal to Pierce's in these sections, and something more about Rose through Pierce's POV, though she remains an enigma for now.  It can hardly be a coincidence that both names reflect the rose at the centre of the symbolism of the Rosicrucians — or the Invisible College.

In among this, Pierce pursues his studies, seeking to understand his mystical theory of history and therefore prepare for the change which, he's convinced, is already underway.  He seeks for the one thing — hidden in plain sight, he believes — which has survived from the former age in which different laws of nature held sway, and magic works.  And, by the end of the book, he's convinced he's found it.  But you'll have to read the book to find out what it is.

The book ends (preparing for its transition into the third volume and the seventh House) with a vast wind storming through both the sixteenth century and the twentieth, perhaps heralding the coming of the new age in both.  And winds blow throughout the book.  In a passage which clearly expresses Pierce's idiosyncratic view of history, there's a discussion of the strange phenomenon of the wind that scattered the Spanish Armada — a wind for which, Crowley claims, there were no reports whatsoever at the time:

Perhaps there was a wind, and it somehow left no trace in the primary records of the time...Or perhaps there really was no wind — until the awesome fortunate power which commentators attributed to it belatedly conjures it up.  Only when the myth of the big wind...settles firmly on the humps of historian's {sic} pens does it begin to blow backward from the later time to the earlier, where kings, popes, and ambassadors can feel it, though sailors and ships do not.

Perhaps...  Crowley constantly teases the reader as whether or not there actually is any magic in the book.  Perhaps Bobby's grandfather just had vivid dreams.  Perhaps Dr Dee's angel was really a trick by his assistant.  Perhaps all Pierce's discoveries are really just an overactive imagination fed by a yearning for the mystical.  And perhaps, Crowley seems to imply, it doesn't greatly matter.  A principle of Renaissance magic was that there's a parallel between the macrocosm (the universe) and the microcosm (the human), and if Pierce's quest is merely one of self-discovery, that doesn't invalidate it.

Like the first book, Love & Sleep is an absorbing but not easy read.  The prose is often dense and the vocabulary send me many times to the dictionary (the word semhamaphore defeated even the uncut Oxford English Dictionary) and Crowley breaks grammatical rules with gay abandon, though only for carefully calculated effect.  Though I suspect the example in the quote above is an honest-to-goodness typo.

Nevertheless, it's a book well worth sticking with, and I'm looking forward to reading the third book, Dӕmonomania.  After a suitable rest.

Review of Ilario: The Lion's Eye by Mary Gentle

We are so often a disappointment to the parents who abandon us.

A male voice interrupted my thoughts, speaking the language of Carthage. 'Papers, freeman—'

The man broke off as I turned to face him, as people sporadically do.

For a moment he stood staring at me in the flaring naphtha lights of the harbour hall.

'—freewoman?' he speculated.

The opening five paragraphs of Mary Gentle's Ilario: The Lion's Eye lay two of the novels central themes squarely on the table: parent-child relationships and the uncertainties of gender identity.  There are many others — political manoeuvring, the nature of history, the ideals of Renaissance art — but these two take us straight to the heart of the book.

Ilario is an alternative history novel set in the same "First History" as the earlier Ash: A Secret History, but about half a century earlier (necessarily earlier, though the reason for that necessity is a massive spoiler for Ash).  This is a version of the 15th century in which much is the same as the history we know, but much very different.  Unlike Ash, though, which includes both SF and fantasy elements, this contains only one or two aspects that set it aside from straight history, if not entirely the history we're familiar with. 

The book's written in first person which, as we quickly discover, is a practical necessity as well as narratively appropriate.  Ilario, a former privileged slave, is a pure hermaphrodite, who not only has the physical aspects of both genders in equal measure but also has a personal identity in which they are equally balanced.  Just imagine writing 663 pages while trying to skirt around the issue of whether the central character should be called he or she.

The illegitimate child of a nobleman's wife and a soldier, Ilario has been the King's Freak to an Iberian kingdom (though not exactly one of the Iberian kingdoms we know) and freed just before the start of the novel.  All s/he (it'll have to do) wants is to be a painter in the new style that's challenging traditional mediaeval art, but life isn't that simple, and s/he unwittingly becomes the centre of a political crisis that envelopes much of the Mediterranean world.

The Mediterranean world of the First History, that is.  Ash began with a Europe that seemed normal enough — just odd hints that all is not quite what it seems — before confronting us with an invasion from the Visigothic kingdom of Carthage, which most certainly doesn't belong in any history we know.  Ilario, as we've seen, opens in Carthage, and quickly introduces us to many other differences in this version of history.  Rome is now a crumbling backwater, and Constantinople is the centre of an Egyptian empire in exile — though still threatened by the Turks.  There's no sign of either an Arabic empire or of Islam at all, while Christianity has a very different form and background, seeming to have been European in origin.

Gentle introduces a number of historical figures into this world, including Johannes Gutenberg, the pioneer of printing, though in many cases they're slightly displaced in time.  For the most part, though, it's populated by exotic figures like Ammianus, King-Caliph of Carthage, or Ty-ameny, Queen of Alexandria-in-Exile.  Not to mention the lost fleet of Zheng He from the strange land of Chin — presumably this history had no Marco Polo to bring back word from the great civilisations of the east.

Like all alternative history, Ilario is to some extent commenting on history as we know it by showing how it could have been different.  Fascinating as this is, the story is fundamentally about the characters, and they're a varied and engaging crowd.  Besides Ilario, the most important are Rekhmire' — the Egyptian eunuch, book-buyer and spy — Ilario's father Honorius and mother Rosamunda, and Rosamunda's husband Videric.  The cast ranges, though, from Honorius's mercenaries (Gentle has always done soldiers well) to the fascinating Queen Ty-ameny.

Not to mention Onorata, the baby Ilario improbably manages to produce.  Although the baby's main contribution to the action is to scream and yell, it's most of all in Ilario's relationship with Onorata that both the gender and parent-child issues come to their head.  Is Ilario the child's mother or father?  S/he feels s/he should be the mother, but only knows how to be the baby's father, and that imperfectly.

On the other hand, just as Ilario has an improbable number of parents (five, counting step and foster) Onorata has "fathers" on all sides, most of whom seem better at it than Ilario.  Ilario has been rejected by his/her mother, who has made a number of attempts to kill the "monster" she's produced, and consequently has no model of parenthood to create a relationship with Onorata — or thinks s/he doesn't, while actually not making a bad job of it.

The other main theme of the novel is the coming of the Renaissance — in the First History, just as in ours — in all its forms.  Ilario's training as an artist focuses on the revolutionary concept of painting what you see, not what you know is there, and this concept informs all aspects of the story, from Ilario's unique gender to the politics.

Especially the politics.  The Renaissance produced not only Leonardo and Erasmus, but also Machiavelli (pictured left), and the realpolitik he described is alive and well in Ilario.  Even the more sympathetic politicians, such as Ty-ameny, are unsentimental and realistic, exploiting the difference between what's actually there and what people "know" to be there.

Ilario isn't for readers who look for breakneck action.  It certainly has action, excitement and terror (the attack of the stone golem, one of the book's few fantasy elements, has all these) but it also has long sections of reflection and discussion: the final five chapters, for instance, are essentially a single conversation.  Personally, most of these passages held me spellbound in their complexity and the ideas they throw out, but probably wouldn't interest all readers.

Occasionally (very occasionally) there's too much of this even for my tastes.  In the final scene, for instance, the gender politics that have been subtly shown and implied throughout become perhaps overstated, though only by a little, though the relationships being explored at the same time certainly prevent any loss of interest.

Mary Gentle's world-making and her philosophical subtexts are among her great strengths, but (as should be the case in fiction) her greatest is her ability to create characters capable of fascinating the reader.  Ilario, in particular, is someone who attracts and exasperates in equal measure: idealistic, reckless, intelligent, conflicted, occasionally clueless, with an explosive temper.  S/he sees everything and everyone in utterly visual terms, as an artist.  Even (especially) at moments of greatest tension, when s/he expresses the tension by defining exactly what colours would be needed to paint the scene.

Gentle has something of a habit of creating odd couples (Valentine and Casaubon, Rochefort and Dariole) and Ilario and Rekhmire' make an excellent addition.  The hermaphrodite and the eunuch, they seem opposites but fit together perfectly.  And at least they have similar tempers.

Ilario: The Lion's Eye isn't quite my favourite Mary Gentle book (that's still the incomparable Rats & Gargoyles) but it's certainly helped maintain her as my favourite living author (formerly jointly with Iain Banks, who alas no longer qualifies).  I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who appreciates wonderful characters, epic sweeps of history and the challenge to think as you read.

 

Note: The UK paperback edition of this, with the cover shown, is a single-volume edition, but in the US and on Kindle it's published in two volumes as Ilario: The Lion's Eye and Ilario: The Stone Golem.  However, these are in no way separate books, merely a novel published in two parts.  And, if you have the full edition, don't allow yourself to be seduced into buying the "continuation", since you'll have already read it.

Review of Star Trek Into Darkness

Having been a fan of Star Trek, in all its formats, for many years, I was looking forward to seeing Star Trek Into Darkness, and I recently managed to get to the cinema to see it.  In general, I enjoyed the film, but I have some reservations about the way the reboot is proceeding.

Following on from its predecessor, the film presents us with young versions of Kirk, Spock and the rest getting used to each other and to the Enterprise.  We start with the tail-end of a separate adventure, in the course of which Kirk manages to break just about every Star Fleet rule, and probably a few they haven't thought of yet.  This is, of course, a time-honoured way of starting an action film (including pretty much every Bond film) and offers a way of opening with a bang without skimping on the set-up for the main story.  This section is fun, and could quite easily be the end of an episode from the TV show.

We're then introduced to the villain, splendidly played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who blackmails a grieving father into starting a campaign of terror that has an ulterior motive.  Without giving away too many spoilers, both he and another character in the film have strong connections with a past Star Trek film, while a scene fairly late on is also an obvious reference to the same film.

The Enterprise is sent on a secret mission to find Cumberbatch's character — known initially as John Harrison — in hiding on Kronos, the Klingon planet.  All is not as it seems, though, and Kirk has to negotiate his way between enemies on all sides, inside Star Fleet as well as outside, but to survive and to do the right thing.

For the most part, the principals seem well cast.  Chris Pine combines both the raw energy and mild obnoxiousness William Shatner brought to Kirk with the bumptiousness of youth, and Zachary Quinto is uncannily like a young Leonard Nimoy.  Karl Urban as McCoy is somewhat sidelined, although he does get the occasional Dammit, Jim, whereas Simon Pegg's Scotty has a lot more action than was usual in the show, and he generally handles it well.  Zoe Saldana is good as Uhura, but I can't say I see a lot of the mature Uhura in her, and I was surprised to find her and Spock an item.  There is a scene in The Original Series that could be taken as a reference back to that, but I think Uhura was simply teasing Spock then.

Perhaps the biggest reality gap is that a ship as important as Enterprise would be crewed with a bunch of youngsters as its senior officers and someone barely out of the Academy as its captain.  In the first film, of course, it was an emergency, but, instead of rewarding the young people with commendations and promotions, Star Fleet has apparently turned over one of its proudest ships to them.  It takes enough suspension of disbelief to build a bridge out of — but, then again, there'd be no film if that hadn't happened.

With so large a "regular" cast, there aren't many other significant characters, besides Harrison and a guest female science officer, but the few who are more than bit-parts work well.  Harrison's blackmail victim is played by Noel Clarke, Mickey from Doctor Who, making him one of a select group of actors who've appeared in both franchises.  I'd like to have seen more of his character.

There are a few retcons, though probably no more than between TOS and the later versions.  In particular, the Klingons have had a makeover, but nothing as radical as the update in the 80s (which, of course, they don't like to discuss) — they still look essentially Klingon.

I think my principal doubt about the reboot as a whole is a matter of feel.  A lot changed in Star Trek between The Cage in 1965 and These Are the Voyages... in 2005, but it had an unmistakable feel throughout all its many incarnations.  I'm not entirely sure the new version shares that — there seems to be less of the strategy and negotiation that was key to so many stories, and more big explosions.

That isn't unique to this film, of course: it seems to be getting more difficult to have anything that balances action and thoughtfulness.  They've got state-of-the-at special effects, and they're gonna use them.  Now, I like breakneck action and explosions as much as most, but not at the expense of intelligence and thoughtfulness.  I'm not saying Star Trek Into Darkness is without these, but I do get the feeling that it's been dumbed down a little to fit in with current trends, and I find that a pity.

On the other hand, perhaps I'm being a bit churlish.  If I were coming to this with no preconceptions, I'd probably find it highly enjoyable — and, in fact, I did find it enjoyable.  Rebooting a franchise is a delicate balance wherein it's impossible to please everyone, as the makers of Doctor Who have found.  I'm certainly happy to stick with this new version of Star Trek and see what they do next.

Review of The Painted/Warded Man by Peter V. Brett

All right, I'll start with the title.  This book is called The Painted Man in the UK and The Warded Man in the US.  Since I knew Brett is American, I was all ready to say this is just as stupid and pointless a title change as many American versions of British books and films (the first Harry Potter, for instance).

However, it appears the book was actually published first in the UK, followed by a US edition the next year.  I've no idea if The Warded Man was a change by the publishers or reverting to Brett's original choice; but whatever, it's a far superior title, in my opinion.  The concept of wards and warding is absolutely central to the book, whereas painted isn't even accurate ― he's actually tattooed.

Whatever it's called, I enjoyed this book, with only a few reservations.  It's set in a kind of post-apocalyptic world ― but not our world, and not our idea of an apocalypse.  This is a world in which demons live in the "Core" and can rise to the surface at night, slaughtering the weaker humans.  These "corelings" were defeated long ago, and the world appears to have reached a fairly advanced technological state.

Three hundred years before the book's action, though, the corelings returned suddenly, devastating an unprepared world.  The only people who survived were those able to use the ancient magic wards, by which their houses or city walls could repel the nightly demon attacks.  Now, the whole culture is built around the need for protection against corelings.

The story covers about 13 years, during which three young people grow to maturity, following the three trades that lie somewhat outside the norm.  Arlen, a boy who believes passionately that it should be possible to fight back against the demons, learns to be a Messenger, those who brave the open countryside to link together the scattered communities.  Leesha is apprenticed as a Herb Gatherer, the healers (always female) who've preserved some of the knowledge from old times.  And Rojer, orphaned as a toddler, becomes a Jongleur, the itinerant entertainers who keep the ancient stories alive.

Gradually, each finds a way, within their own discipline to fight back against the corelings, and by the last section, they've met and combined their strengths.  Will it be enough, though, against an apparently undefeatable enemy?

The three leads are each engaging people in their different ways, but perhaps the book's greatest strength is the world it shows us.  This is a culture which, in some ways, resembles the traditional European village life that's the mainstay of epic fantasy, but the differences are telling.  Perhaps the most obvious is that life is lived from sunrise to sunset.  No gathering in the village pub for the evening ― it would be death to be out after dark.

Brett follows up each of the ways in which the demon threat forces society into a unique shape, and shows us how these enter the collective psyche.  The most important single activity is maintaining the wards on the houses, and a husband carries his new bride over the wards of their house, not over its threshold.  The language itself reflects it ― the standard curse is night! and to be killed by corelings is to be cored.  Even the cure for a hangover that we'd called the hair of the dog that bit me is expressed as a claw from the demon that cored me.

It's not a perfect novel.  The balance between the three leads is often lopsided ― at one point, Leesha makes no appearance for well over a hundred pages ― and I occasionally found the omniscient POV annoying, although much of the time it's well handled.

Most of the controversy about this book has been about the desert realm of Krasia, which Arlen visits during the third of the four sections, and which the sequel, The Desert Spear, seems to concentrate on.  It's very easy to see this as a thinly disguised version of Arab culture and, though much of this is inevitable (desert cultures are bound to have certain things in common), there's some justification in this view.  Certainly, their fanaticism and their attitude to women seem to reflect the standard western concept of Arabic/Islamic culture.

On the other hand, Brett's picture is neither all negative nor as much a caricature as some similar cases (C.S. Lewis's Calormen, for instance).  The militant martyrdom ideal, which is given an exaggerated and very negative profile in western portrayal of Islam, is treated much more sympathetically here, since it's aimed exclusively against demons.

Nevertheless, it's not the most comfortable part of the story, and I'm aware that some people who've loved the first book have hated the second.  I'll make up my own mind, of course, when I read it.  A third book, The Daylight War, has just been published, and at least two more are due in the future.  Based on the first book, I'm looking forward to reading them.

Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I first read Tolkien ― Lord of the Rings first, then The Hobbit ― several decades ago, and it was one of the great turning-points in life of my imagination: an explosion of inspiration.  I approached the Lord of Rings films with a mixture of hope and trepidation, having experienced the less-than-stellar animated version in the 70s, but overall I loved them.  I have some issues with the changes Peter Jackson made with the story, but far more of it worked than didn't.

I'd heard mixed views about the first of The Hobbit films, and the fact it was being stretched out into a trilogy gave me misgivings, but I found myself loving the film.  I saw it in 3D, which I generally enjoy, and it seemed to enhance the experience, without becoming all about the 3D.

It's apparently filmed in a new format, and the technical film buffs argue about whether that works or not.  I know very little about these issues, so all I can say is I didn't notice anything different, good or bad.  It just looked great.

Of course, like its predecessors, the film largely starred the New Zealand landscape, but there was plenty else to enjoy.  Martin Freeman was perfectly cast as Bilbo, approaching his adventures with a dazed determination.  I could completely believe he was dreaming all the time about Bag End, but also that he chose not to turn back.

There were several returns from Lord of the Rings ― some a little out of context ― Ian McKellan, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Christopher Lee, Ian Holm and Elijah Wood all picked up as if they'd finished the previous films mere weeks before, and Andy Serkis (or at least his CGI version) made Gollum's one scene unforgettable, as well as doubling as 2nd Unit Director.

Still, much of the film focuses on the dwarves.  I've seen criticism that most of them don't come over sufficiently as individuals, and certainly some of them fade a little into the background, but it would be difficult to avoid that in a group of thirteen characters.  Seven of them have enough to do that they're memorable: Balin, Dwalin, Dori, Bofur, Fili, Kili, and of course Thorin, their king.  As played by Richard Armitage, he's an arresting, complex character, and has enough charisma that it's believable he can persuade the others to follow him, and his relationship with Bilbo was a welcome extra dimension.

The film has considerably more action than the equivalent part of the book.  In fact, very little happens in the book until the party reach the Misty Mountains; but, by making the conflict between dwarves and orcs more personal, Jackson has set up the possibility for chases and fights at more regular intervals, and those in the book ― the fight with the goblins in the mountains and the stand-off when the party take refuge in the tree ― have been turned up to eleven.

On the whole, the additions to the story make sense.  The film starts with the older Bilbo writing his book, in between preparing with Frodo for the Party, morphing into a flashback to Erebor, Dale and the coming of the dragon.  It's a different approach from the book, where we gradually learn with Bilbo how much the quest means to the dwarves, but I think having that up front works better in the context of a film.

As mentioned above, an extra strand has been added between the dwarves and orcs.  This takes the form of the orc-chieftain Azog, who in the book was killed long before, having been maimed by Thorin and being out for revenge.  Azog, portrayed in CGI by Manu Bennett, is a chilling figure and provides a contrast with Barry Humphries' Great Goblin, a gross, disgusting figure.

The biggest strand of additions, though, concern the events leading up to the White Council and its confrontation with Sauron, which here is treated as a parallel plot, rather than as background.  The party's stay at Rivendell is complicated by Saruman and Galadriel's presence and discussions with Gandalf and Elrond about the presence in Dol Guldur, which here is presented as a new development.

The best part of this strand, though, revolves around Radagast the Brown.  Ironically, Radagast's appearance in Lord of the Rings was cut from the films, whereas he's added here where he was only mentioned in passing in the book.  He's splendidly and eccentrically portrayed by Sylvester McCoy, who has the advantage of a character where there's no such thing as being too over the top, but who still manages to balance the insanity perfectly.

Not everything works perfectly.  As in Lord of the Rings, the history behind the story is simplified, and not always for the better.  For instance, the reference to the Witch King of Angmar having been killed and buried makes nonsense of the whole "no living man can kill him" that's so important in The Return of the King.

On the whole, though, I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and I look forward to the next two, although I'd still be intrigued to see how they manage to stretch it out into three long films.  Some of what's to be come has been foreshadowed ― glimpses of the halls within the Lonely Mountain and the elven king Thranduil, for instance ― but we still haven't had a good look at Smaug the dragon, who's going to be voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch.  I can't wait.

Review of Tempest by Bob Dylan

I’ve been a fan of Bob Dylan since 1965, and I’ve almost always been able to tell in advance how I’m going to rate a new album.  I remember counting down the days till I could go into the local record shop and buy Blood on the Tracks, whereas in other cases I looked at the album and decided I’d get it some time.  Although some of those have grown on me a bit, that first vibe has usually been confirmed. 

I was excited as soon as I heard about Tempest.  It’s an album that’s divided Dylan’s fans – hardly a new experience for him.  I can understand people not getting it, but I’m definitely in the “it’s a masterpiece” camp.

I’ve mostly loved Dylan’s recent output, especially Love and Theft, Modern Times and some tracks from the Tell Tale Signs collection, such as ‘Cross the Green Mountain.  The songs on Tempest seem, at the same time, a continuation of the same groove and a new departure.

As with most of his recent work, Dylan’s casting a jaundiced eye over the modern world – “the new dark age” as he once called it – attacking hypocrisy and lamenting the loss of honour and compassion, but his world-view has rarely been as bleak as this, and his voice matches it.  Dylan’s voice has always been raw and rasping, but it’s even more so now.  This is an element many people seem to dislike, but it seems to me that he’s finally achieved what he’s been trying for since he was twenty – the true rough edge of blues masters like Charley Patton or Blind Willie Johnson.  In spite of the rasp, Dylan’s in full control of what his voice is doing, and his timing, phrasing and ability to invest a word with extra meaning are unimpaired.

He’s using his touring band on this album, and it shows clearly that they’re used to playing with him.  Like all Dylan’s most successful backing combos, such as the Band and the Kooper/Bloomfield line-up of the mid-60s, they have the knack of sounding like an extension of what Dylan’s doing, without sacrificing their individual musicianship.  It’s not an easy balance to maintain through his various musical styles, and they achieve it beautifully.

For any new Dylan album, though, the most significant factor has to be the songs he’s come up with.  For the most part, as on recent albums, it ranges from Chicago blues, to country ballads to rock ‘n’ roll, but there are variations – Scarlet Town is as swampy as a six-foot alligator, while Tin Angel is a barely sung folk ballad over an ominous bass riff.

Lyrically, the earlier songs on the album are fairly direct (well, direct for Dylan, that is) and play about with his old habit of setting up clichés only to explode them in our faces.  I’m searching for phrases to sing your praises he warbles at the beginning of Soon After Midnight, but this isn’t some dumb romantic song.  His “date with the Fairy Queen” is on night-time streets full of whores, death and vengeance – Two-timing Slim, who’s ever heard of him? I’ll drag his corpse through the mud.

Dylan has said that he wanted to make a religious album, but it didn’t turn out that way, and religious imagery haunts many of these songs.  You went and lost your lovely head for a drink of wine and a crust of bread (from Narrow Way) suggests the Christian Eucharist, as does Man cannot live by bread alone, I pay in blood, but not my own (from Pay In Blood).  This is a long way, though, from the straightforward religion of the late 70s/early 80s, and the references are both uncomfortable and ambiguous.  Is the blood he pays in the blood of Christ, or the blood of other people – victims of war, perhaps?  Or both?  Maybe, in the end, that’s distinction isn’t what the song’s about, and you can take it whichever way you like.

The later songs are more oblique.  Scarlet Town begins with the opening line of the traditional ballad Barbara Allen, but then goes its own way into a nightmare vision of life in Sodom and Gomorrah where you fight your father’s foes... You fight ‘em on high and you fight ‘em down in, you fight ‘em with whiskey, morphine and gin.

Tin Angel also begins as if it’s going to be a traditional ballad (Black Jack Davey in this case) but soon veers off into what could perhaps best be described as the lovechild of Isis and The Man in the Long Black Coat, but far darker and more vicious than either.  This Tin Angel couldn’t be further from the gentle song of the same name on Joni Mitchell’s Clouds – and, since Mitchell criticised Dylan for plagiary a few years back, maybe the choice of title isn’t an accident.

 The title track is a thirteen-minute telling of the sinking of the Titanic, but not a straightforward version.  Dylan has transformed the event into a myth of a society that can’t see that it’s ship is sinking, in a way that reminds me a little of Black Diamond Bay.  An assortment of characters that would do justice to Desolation Row are intent on their own business – even Leonardo DiCaprio gets a look in back on the ship – overseen by the Watchman (Dylan himself?) who saw the Titanic was sinking and tried to tell someone.

Dylan has only ever done one song before that’s a tribute to a fellow artist – Lenny Bruce from 1981, which was uncompromisingly direct.  On the final track here, Roll On John, he gives us a version of John Lennon’s life that doesn’t allow mere facts to get in the way of a good myth – on a slave-ship, ambushed where the buffalo roam, it tells us not how Lennon’s life was, but how Dylan sees it.

Modern Times was criticised in some circles (including by Joni Mitchell) for the way Dylan based some of the tracks on older songs, even though it was no different from what he was doing in the 60s, basing songs on Scarborough Fair, Lord Franklin, The Parting Glass and many others.  There’s been criticism of Tempest on the grounds that he uses many quotes in the lyrics, but this misses the point.  There’s an old saying that a bad poet/artist etc imitates, a good one steals.  Dylan steals, just like Homer or Shakespeare, but far from cheating, the connections the quotes evoke give a whole extra shade of meaning.  Just as they do in Elliot’s The Waste Land, which is widely considered one of the great poems of the 20th century.

There’s been speculation that there may be significance that this album has the same title as Shakespeare’s last play (well, more or less his last).  Dylan’s joked that his title is missing The, and that makes all the difference.  Whatever the significance, I can’t imagine him calling it a day before he has to.  On the form of Tempest, I hope that’s a very long time.

Two Forgotten YA Classics by David Severn

The name of children’s author David Severn is most likely now to be welcomed by a rousing “who?”, but during the 40s and 50s he was highly successful, writing three broad types of book – holiday adventures in the countryside, picture books about animals for the very young, and a series of stories “for older children” (what would now be described as Young Adult) based on fantasy, paranormal and SF themes.

David Severn, who was born in 1918 and died in 2010, was in fact the pseudonym of David Storr Unwin, son of the publisher Sir Stanley Unwin, best known as Tolkien’s publisher – he took the name Severn from an uncle, to avoid trading on a well-known publishing name.

I wasn’t especially interested in the holiday adventure stories as a child, but I found my way to two of his YA novels – I had (and still have) a copy of one, but the other I’ve only just tracked down and reread after decades.

The Future Took Us, the book I’ve had for many years, was published in 1957, and tells of two teenagers being transported in time to approximately the year 3000 AD.  They find a post-apocalyptic civilisation that mixes subsistence peasant farming with a passion for advanced mathematics.  They discover, eventually, that the only learning to survive the destruction was an elementary maths text book, and that this forms not only their main pastime, but also their religion, in which the circle is the ultimate sacred symbol.

However, this isn’t the whole story.  The boys find an autocratic police state, run by the Controller from the sinister Counting House, where mathematical experiments have reached the point of manipulating time.  Many unsuspecting victims have been plucked from their times through history – and the idea of wasting calculating time in returning them is unthinkable.  The boys must join a rebellion and bring down the regime, for their own sakes as well as that of 30th century England.

Besides being a fine adventure story, The Future Took Us has two ideas that have haunted me ever since I first read it.  One is the cataclysmic war which, the boys learn, lasted a lot longer than might be expected.  It’s explained to them that, The atom part of it must have been over very quickly.  After the Great Powers had destroyed one another, the other countries couldn’t agree and went on fighting with guns and high explosives.  As the years passed, the wars became more local and the weapons grew more and more primitive, until a century or so later, men were still fighting each other – but with clubs and pikes.

The second is an issue that most time-travel stories either ignore or shuffle round – the language of the future.  English proves to have changed as much over the next thousand years as it has over the last thousand, and the boys are unable to make head or tail of it, except for identifying individual words.  My only complaint is that Severn didn’t provide more of his future English, but he gives tantalising examples – brade for bread, drap for horse (they speculate it might derive from “quadruped”) and grancat for tiger.  Even a friend from the 22nd century, though quite comprehensible, speaks a little strangely – perhaps as it would be to hear Jane Austen speak.

If The Future Took Us is fascinating, Dream Gold (1949) is absolutely riveting.  I reread this last week for the first time since I was in my teens, and it hasn’t lost its power.  This is what would now be described as paranormal.  The main character, Peter Manning, meets a strange, disagreeable boy at school called Guy Trelawney.  Though they don’t get on much of the time, they developed what passes for a friendship, and Guy invites Peter to his home on the Cornish coast for the winter holiday.

While there, Peter and Guy begins to share a series of dreams about a deserted tropical island, in which every sensory detail is real.  Guy, who has been dreaming of the island for as long as he remembers, speculates that it’s equivalent to a stereoscopic effect, where two identical pictures, viewed through the right equipment, merged into one 3D image.  (I remember having one of them as a kid).

It doesn’t end there, though.  The island is the place where, three hundred years before, Guy’s ancestor had sailed to dig up buried treasure, which was reputedly lost in a shipwreck right by his house.  Eventually, the boys witness the arrival of the ship, and their discovery of what really happened breaks apart their already fragile friendship.

The descriptions in this book are stunning – both of the searing heat and light of the tropical island and the Cornish coast in winter, where the forbidding house, Chyradoon, broods on a rock in the sea, linked to the land only by a causeway at low tide.  The characters and relationships, too, are striking.  The strange mixture of friendship, hatred and love between Peter, Guy and Elizabeth, the young daughter of Guy’s housekeeper, is most reminiscent of Alan Garner’s The Owl Service, nearly two decades later. 

These books were far ahead of their time, helping to establish the idea of YA contemporary fantasy before anyone else was writing it.  The spectacular breakdown of Peter and Guy’s friendship in Dream Gold, still a little shocking, was utterly unlike the relationships expected in children’s books at the time, and the kind of ideas Severn was playing with wouldn’t be taken up again till the 60s and 70s.

That’s not to say the books fit seamlessly into modern YA fiction.  For one thing, they share the unconscious snobbishness of much older children’s fiction, in which the characters, as a matter of course, attend posh boarding schools, and a family chauffeur is casually mentioned.  And, of course, Severn could only go so far in the 40s and 50s.  Although Dream Gold gives the modern reader a few hints of the kind of adolescent sexual tension explored in The Owl Service (Elizabeth certainly seems to have a crush on Peter) there was no way this could be explicit in a book for children.

Nevertheless, both these books deserve to be considerably more famous than they are.  It would be good to think that, one day, an enterprising publisher might see fit to republish some of David Severn’s work.  In the meantime, second-hand copies can be tracked down on line.  If you’re interested in early YA fantasy, I’d definitely recommend you find these two.

More information about David Severn’s books can be found on the University of Worcester’s website.

Transition by Iain Banks reviewed

The first interesting thing about Iain Banks’s 2009 novel Transition is the name on the title page.  Banks famously publishes mainstream fiction as Iain Banks and SF under the cunning disguise of Iain M. Banks, and Transition might very easily have had an M, dealing as it does with alternative realities.  Probably: it’s just possible it’s all the psychotic delusions of a patient in a mental hospital, just as the exotic settings in The Bridge were the dream-life of a man in a coma.

Transition is a bizarre book, and sets out its stall from the start.  The novel (described as based on a false story) begins with the announcement Apparently I am what is known as an Unreliable Narrator, though of course if you believe everything you’re told you deserve whatever you get.  It proceeds with point-of-view sections from a number of characters, varying between first and third person, and between past and present tense. 

The premise is, initially, a familiar one: there exists an almost infinite number of alternative realities of the Earth, some more like our own than others.  An organisation, variously called the Concern or l’Expédience, has developed a way of transitioning (or flitting) between these realities by taking over a body in the target world.  It uses this ability to adjust events to their liking on the basis of how they’ve seen similar events play out in other realities, a little like a non-time-travel version of Asimov’s The End of Eternity.

Out of the many POVs, “the Transitionary” is perhaps the most central character, a man usually, though not always, called Temudjin Oh.  An operative of the Concern, he nudges, encourages and assassinates those he’s told to, but is caught between the ruthless ambition of Madame d’Ortolan, the leading figure of the organisation, and the schemes of the mysterious rebel, Mrs Mulverhill.

As the conflict proceeds, other characters gradually find their places – the Philosopher, a torturer by taste and profession, and Adrian Cubbish, an obnoxious drug dealer turned hedge fund dealer, as well as the most colourful character of the lot, Bisquitine.

The whole set-up is very dubious ethically, and even the “good guys” like Temudjin treat the bodies they flit into and out of with utter disregard, often leaving the host either dying or caught red-handed for murder.  Nevertheless, an author whose debut drew us into the viewpoint of a psychopathic killer has little trouble making the reader feel attracted to certain people, while never ignoring the moral issues.

The story is told across many worlds and in the series of nested flashbacks and flashforwards characteristic of Banks, and at least half the book has gone by before it’s possible to get much idea of what’s going on.  It hardly matters, though: as in all Banks’s novels, it’s an exhilarating ride as we’re buffeted between vivid characters and fascinating ideas, ranging from an examination of the economics of greed to the notion that, if aliens are going to visit our planet, it’s most likely to be as tourists to view our unique solar eclipses.

Like many writers in total control of what they’re doing, Banks breaks “rules” of good writing left, right and centre, with total success.  One of the most notable cases is Bisquitine, a character introduced briefly in the prologue and then utterly ignored until about three quarters of the way through, after which she comes into her own.  She’s an absolute tour de force, a character who must have been as much of a delight to write as she is to read, but Banks’s instinct is right: enough is enough.  To have her as a main character throughout the book would be a bit like making the whole of Waiting For Godot centre around Lucky.

Oh yes, and that Unreliable Narrator.  Part of the story is about a mental patient who claims to be in hiding from the Concern, but may actually be making the whole thing up.  The ending suggests not, but inconclusively, and it’s interesting that Banks leaves one glaring inconsistency in the novel, which just might be a deliberate clue.  I’ll leave each reader to spot it – let’s say that it comes when the story’s at its peak.

Transition isn’t an easy book, and I’m not sure it’ll displace my favourites by Banks (currently a photo finish between The Crow Road and Whit) but it’s a fascinating read and well worth persisting through any initial difficulty.  I’d definitely recommend it to hardened readers of Banks, though perhaps not as an introduction – for which my recommendation would be The Crow Road for mainstream and The Player of Games for SF.

Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens by Jonathan Pinnock reviewed

Now, this is curious.  In general, I’m not the biggest fan of comedy novels.  I love Adams and Pratchett in small doses, but even the masters can get a bit much for me.  But I’m doing my second consecutive review of a comic fantasy (or should that be fantastic comedy?) novel which I absolutely loved.

I’d been looking forward to reading Jonathan Pinnock’s Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens (especially having a signed copy complete with an elaborate tentacle) and I wasn’t disappointed.  As the title suggests, it’s a science fiction sequel to Pride & Prejudice, and it probably works best if you know something of the original – I do, although I’m not particularly a Jane Austen reader – but I think it would work too even for a reader who doesn’t.  The humour takes in a wide range of targets, literary and contemporary, as well as references to the better-known adaptations of the book.  Elizabeth’s favourite horse is called Keira, while there’s a reference (of course) to Darcy and a wet shirt.

Essentially, Regency Britain is threatened by tentacle-covered aliens – there’s no obvious reasons for the tentacles, but they’re aliens, after all – and the focus of their schemes appears to be Elizabeth Darcy, née Bennett.  Her sister Lydia has vanished; her husband is acting strangely; the odious clergyman Mr Collins is running a mission in London for fallen women who are never seen again.

Elizabeth’s only ally is Wickham, the villain of Pride & Prejudice, whose caddishness is revealed as a cover for his role as a kind of Regency James Bond, complete with a delightful arsenal of steampunk gadgets.  Together, they have to face not only the aliens, but zombie wannabes in Bath (a sly dig at another Pride & Prejudice parody), shockingly unconventional artist-types in the quiet village of Glastonbury, assorted ghosts and, most fearsome of all, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

In the spirit of the original, this is all punctuated by increasingly desperate letters from Elizabeth’s sister, Jane, who, with her husband Bingley, seems to be falling for every con ever conceived by the human mind.  Some might sound rather familiar.

I won’t spoil the jokes by quoting anything, but suffice it to say that numerous times I laughed loud enough to be glad I was on my own.  (Hint – perhaps the loudest was about Mr and Mrs Hurst and their son.)  The scenes where the aliens are speaking to one another are hilarious.

The odd quibble might be made about the sense of one or two elements, such as tying in Jack the Ripper (if the victims were all from the Regency period, how were their names known in the 1880s?) but it’s really not the kind of book where such quibbles matter.  Just go with it and enjoy the laughs.

All I can say is Ek-ek-ek-ek, which means “very highly recommended” – or possibly something about meerkats.