The Reveals Are What We Like: Rings of Power, Finale, "Alloyed"

"Alloyed"  

     . . . . "Alloyed" was a fine episode, a satisfying finale. 

We have a new dimension to the Elven – Númenórean wars of the Second Age: Adar, a villain protagonist in the middle, between Sauron and the Elves.  Adar, “Lord-Father”, has a twisted paternal sense of care for the orcs, whom he played a significant part in their creation, forced to, perhaps, by Sauron, or forced to twist-torture them too much for his own tolerance. Adar thinks he killed Sauron it appears now, because of this.  Adar has destroyed the Southlands for humans to make a home for his orc progeny, outcast by all, where they can live without threat of the sun. This is quite a twist, and it's terrific, not only filled with interest, but also does make Rings Of Power its own ‘creation’ so to speak.

How the three elven rings are forged, with mithril and the gold and silver that come from Valinor were fine; Galadriel's Valinor dagger, which has been part of several pivotal scenes throughout the series, returns to find its own destiny. What a shop Celebrimbor has in Lindon! Those scenes, in their own way, rival in spectacle those of Khazad-dûm. Ya, we learn who is Sauron, though they did a stoopid fake out at the top, alas. Galadriel’s got a whole lot more to be guilty about – she brought Sauron to Linden, where he sussed out the why and how to make the rings in Celebrimbor’s workshop. 

Númenor’s king died, as blind Míriel returns with Elendil, where Pharazôn is waiting to make policy for a cold war by the Númenóreans on elves and their enviable 'immortality'.  Architect apprentice, Elendil's daughter, Isildur's sister, Eärien, saw something no doubt in the palantír – that was left hanging, as do many story/plot lines in Tolkien’s LotR's trilogy, as he moves us from one arc of action to another set of characters in another location for long stretches.

We also learn conclusively the Big Stranger is A Good, not a Peril.  Of course the Weirdling trio were involved – a set of magi from Rhûn, i.e. the Eastlands, i.e. Persia. This is the my personal second favorite part. The reason for this is because I have long

felt Rhûn was a Tolkien take on the ancient world empires of Babylon, Assyria and particularly Persia and Phoenicia.  Partly this is because the name "Radagast" comes up in readings about Persian Empire. The Big Stranger realizes he is a wizard.  He must go off to learn/relearn who is and what he must do, in – Rhûn. Which partly makes sense because Babylon/Persia are the homelands of a class called Magi, who have all sorts of specialist knowledge upon which the King of Kings depends. Those from other lands come to study with the Persian Magi to learn everything from astronomy to medicine to prophecy. Rhûn is where those Perils of Weirdlings are from, who thought he was Sauron. Nevertheless, since the Weirdlings were that ignorant at reading signs and portents, surely there’s nothing for Big Stranger to learn about himself in Rhûn?  Well, maybe how to read that tattered bit of star map our lamented, late Sadoc gifted him, in which he wraps the precious apple which Nori gifted him. A quite different gift of knowledge from that gifted by Sauron to Celebrimbor, hey?

But the most precious gift of all is Nori’s giving of herself as Big Stranger's companion, with her Harfoot sense to keep him straight, find them food and keep them hidden. Plus this provides the driver for the necessary Tolkien Journey There and Back Again. One does wish they had shortened Nori’s farewells several beats, as Big Stranger just hangs out on the overlooking hill under a tree, waiting, waiting, waiting for her so they can get on with his journey to the Big Apple of Knowledge. 

So much to look forward to, whenever the second season arrives.

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-- Deadline’s Inside The Ring Episode 8 | The Rings of Power | Prime Video

Nice essay on Slate  -- "One Way The Rings of Power Outdoes the Lord of the Rings Movies" hint -- female characters.  O my goodness the fanfascist bros howl at this! Just as much as they do about all the characters not being whit.

First Thoughts: Rings of Power (2022) Season 1, 1st - 2nd episodes, "A Shadow of the Past" & "Adrift"

RINGS OF POWER

NO SPOILERS

      . . . . The first two episodes went up 09/02 on Amazon Prime together. Thereafter, it's a single episode per week, for a total of 8 episodes. As the first two eps were the same night, the reactions here are out of seeing them both back-to-back., thus are rather muddled together.

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As the first episode of  a brand new series should do, "A Shadow of the Past" made me appreciate and understand the the second episode better.  This is promising for a series which the rabid Tolkien/Jackson fan base are determined to doom

The poetry that threads throughout LOTR concerning Middle Earth's distant past provided much to the reader’s sense of wonder and enchantment, the larger-than-life heroism of an age of history/legend. But the Rings of Power is the present of that Age of Legend. In this ROP present, it is not enchanted and lovely for those fighting the battles and run over by the wars, any more than is it is in the later poetry made from past battles and wars for those living and dying, and doing the fighting and surviving.

However, the first episode does provide us with the enchantment and wonder of the poetry, tales and epics composed about this age of Middle Earth via what we get to see of this truly beautiful world, presented to us living in an age in which the world’s beauty is decreasing daily by increasing destruction.  But it too is taken for granted by those for whom it is their world, just as we have taken for granted that beauty of our own world. We are not nostalgic for what is, only what is gone. And we know well, some of us even in our own time, how almost inevitable it is to craft our nostalgia into something particularly superior to our present, and always much more beautiful.

We rapidly learn of the past catastrophes issued from the Dark, and the looming threat of its imminent return. We already know the earlier wars of Sauron, in which he was ultimately defeated, left in its wake immeasurable loss, grief, suffering and death. We recall it remembered and memorialized in poetry much later, in the waning days of elves in LOTR’s Middle Earth. We are informed without being told this is an eternal cycle of re-formed, insidious corruption that inevitable overwhelms the world in a Ragnarök. That scene with Elrond trying to describe and memorialize the wars that now are over, when we already know the wars are returning tell us that – not to mention that sign of the destruction of basics for the farmers, the diseased corruption of a cow and her milk. During a different time in the Great Cycle Frodo and Sam even talk about this process while in the midst of their ordeal in Mordor – “Do you think they’re make a song of us, Mr. Frodo?” We see Bilbo and Frodo try to do much the same later after their parts concluded in the Great Cycle of \Wars Between Light and Dark.

So we are provided our knowledge via nostalgic enchantment, against a background of beautiful, fascinating spectacle to our own eyes’ currency. What I would love to know, which I never will know, is whether anyone who doesn’t know this material beforehand has this reaction?

Other reactions:

Additionally to Dwarf Princess Disa, and Prince Durin, once we got to see his face acting in second episode, instead of full body bombast of episode one, in this one I was almost as immediately won by a sort of Southlands Ranger Sylvan Elf, Arondir,  part of  the permanent elf border guard force surveilling the Southlands of men who had been corrupted by Sauron in the first War Cycle against the Dark.* As happens so often these outposts and forces are dismantled and disbanded just when they need to be enlarged. Dropping safety measures as the threat materializes … seems … familiar. That we see these humans view the elves as an occupying military force is important information because, of course they would!  So would we.

A most brief Ent sighting in confluence of a meteor landing and Galadriel's Refusal to depart Middle Earth.

The Harfoots appear to be a transhumance people, not nomads, strictly speaking. Which would explain how they eventually become hobbits and settle down. At this stage in their culture though, they seem proto/druidic, at least some of them.

What in the world are those guys who are wearing megafauna moose horns? Are they supposed to be Harfoots too, disguising themselves from being sighted by the Big People?  I waited and waited, but never found out. [Now past episode 4, I still don't know!]

I’m so sorry I didn’t get to see this first episode first.  I really appreciated what and how it accomplished so much successfully.

 *  

Arondir, the sylvan elf, who emerges quickly as one of the Heroes

Is it a coincidence that the two characters who immediately drew me in, Disa and Arondir, are non-canon?

Other coincidences?

We have the nearly simultaneous release of two screen fantasies, which are dueling categories themselves, one a grimdark fantasy challenging the light fantasy. Coincidence that both are prequels to their world famous predecessors >!<, and both are from unreliable chroniclers, historians and narrators, coming at both of them from  a variety of sources. Which emphasize different events, causes and even actions, and have their own agendas.

Fan rage, narcissism, social media meltdowns about both of them are weird to say the least. I'm not saying that adults shouldn't enjoy Star Wars or LOTR etc. But -- it's very strange to see 'adults' throwing their toys off the high chair tray like this. It is too reminiscent of history’s religious wars of all kinds, including those in the eastern Roman Empire of the iconoclasts – must destroy because I don’t believe it. Death threats were made against at least two people at World Con this yea, as well as to the actors portraying various characters in both ROP and HOTD.

I don't love much of anything any longer, not in These Times.  However. everything good that happens in These Times feels epic, IS epic, because we don't know if it will ever be able to happen again. That feels quite Tolkienish to me. For all we know there will be no more seasons of either ROP or HOT D (or much else), with Winter Coming, the cost of living, and particularly power -- even pubs unable to afford to stay open. People are already saying in Europe both Netflix and amazon are shedding subscribers because they can't afford them -- or even internet subscriptions. 

Here endeth ye sermon; defenestrate me now, rabidly self-identified fan base of the smartest people in the room. because I think this is well done, and I am intrigued.

After Show Inside The Ring Episode 1 

After Show Inside the Ring Episode 2

In these After Show shows, one falls in love with the actors' relationship as Disi and Durin as much as we fall in love with fictional characters' Disi and Durin's relationship on the screen in ROP.

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Ep 2: “Adrift”-- There sure was a lot of Harfooting in this episode. This episode had way too much swimming (unless one viewed Galadriel's nearly transparent dress even when dry as a positive point), endless action scenes and scare jumps that were not interesting (like Jackson's endless battles with orcs, trolls, are not interesting -- one wants more story, less action, so to speak).  The only part I liked was the dwarves. Gotta say I liked the dwarves much more than I thought I would.  Particularly Disa -- she lightens and brightens and vitalizes all of the ponderousity of Durin, and the stiffness (this changes as the series continues) of Elrond's character. 

Dwarf Princess Disa, WhoTruly the Smartest Person in the Room, Who the Room Is Most Fortunate to Have!

Such a screen presence has Sophia Nomvete! Must admit that Khazad-dûm was more than impressive, and it is interesting.  It is brilliantly colored, as filled with pure water and light as the elven lands, just different.

The first episode begins mostly in the bright light and day; this second one was mostly grey and dark, though there was a great richness in the variety of shades of dark and grey, laced with the glow of precious metals and gems, the shimmer and sparkle of tumbling, white waters. Who would have thought that outside of Khazad-dûm would suggest claustrophobia? Khazad-dûm is breathtaking in detail, and so gorgeous.

Watcha Lookin' At?

     . . . . The other night I was still sleepless* at 3:30 AM.  So -- Highlander (1986).

Set in the then contemporary NYC of the mid-1980's, and very early 15th century Scotland.

* Could the sleeplessness be caused by seemingly SUDDEN shock of actually doing things Outside in all sorts of venues, and SEEING people, socially and professionally, Face to Actual Face in the Real World?  It did seem as though we were continuing with pandemic life of quiet, solitude and distance and then it was like Wait! Bang!  We're back!  Sort of back anyway. We continue masking indoors and in crowded situations.  But with the warm > hot > HOT weather and out-of-town visitors and well, just wooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! We've been vaccinated for nearly two months and so have just about everyone else we know, well, it's like we finally recognized what FULLY VACCINATED means, and have believed in it. And we are BUSY.

Too, I have dear friends who are gravely ill. 

And one of my email accounts got hacked (fixed in about 3 hours thanks to el V -- what do people without an el V do when these things happen? -- among other matters that might be keeping me awake.

There is good news too. Evidently the distilled white vinegar was more than effective in ridding my computer desk of an attempted invasion by very teeny tiny brown ants.

Cuba's own vaccine is now approved.  They expect to have all of Havana fully vaccinated by the end of August.  Probably sooner in the country and the less densely populated areas!  Plus both universities that wanted Postmambo to do projects in Havana in 01/2021, have confirmed to do them in 01/2022.

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I saw this movie once before, long ago, maybe at a revival house, when we still had the vestiges of such things? This is quite an historical era artifact, as it encapsulates pop culture aspects of the mid-late 1980's, early 1990's. This is particularly clear with the choice made as to where and when the film opens, at  one of those fake, costume wrestling nights at Madison Square Garden. The days of Jesse Ventura "the Body" -- who went on in the '90's to get himself elected governor of Minnesota (which seems to have taught the voters nothing).

That this film experience is going to be more than a bit bonkers is indicated by the music choices alone: “New York, New York” lyrics sung by Frank Sinatra, as part of the soundtrack, is a Highlander running joke. 1985-6 isn't that long since the 1977 Blackout and NYC’s 1975 bankruptcy crisis, so the City’s still damned raw. We’re in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), not Scorsese’s New York, New York (1977). The mise en scéne is full out punk era, with the Big Bad Kurgen antagonist channeling the theatrics of Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious and Iggy Pop, plus the tagged background in so many of the scenes.

But for sheer delirium, we’ve got as primary sound track continuity, World Wide Wrestling’s fave, Queen, and its fusion of Freddie Mercury’s glam rock, heavy metal and loads of other sorts of rock and other musical forms too.

What this mid-1980’s New York City soundtrack pointedly does not have, is Black and Brown. There is no Salsa, no Boogaloo, no Black music, not even HipHop, about to birth a subgenre of its own, Gangsta Rap, despite 1986 being the peak year of HipHop's pop culture golden age. Despite the omnipresent tagged scenery, despite the brief appearance of a single Black immortal, whom the Kurgan takes out, naturally, Highlander’s New York City is as White as you can get.

In the movie's favor, the landscapes and crowds of the16th century scenes in Scotland were filmed live action, not cgi pretense thrown up against a blank mud blue screen.  So those scenes have that reality intense quotient now too that we miss so much in what action superhero franchise flix have devolved into.

However, none of this conceals the fact, no matter how often the first installment has been edited, this movie is deliriously bonkers. It’s astonishing actually, how this movie make no sense whatsoever, which is probably part of its appeal, particularly at age 15, when nothing makes sense anyway. Movies like this weren’t as common in 1986. By now though, mixed tone and genre are the norm . Russell Mulcahy, Highlander’s director, came out of music videos. MTV Channel had hit in 1981 (“video killed the radio star’), so again, if one was 15, there was a sensibility here that would likely be working for ya, or at least forming an imprint of expectation.

Which is the only reason that can explain why something this badly done was able to become a franchise, throwing off one after another even worse movie in this "There Can Be Only One universe."

What a thrilling experience this movie must have been for a kid in those days (those who saw it  – box office didn’t make back investment), anywhere in the range of 11 - 20 range maybe? What could compete with that opening sequence that concludes with the most prolonged, explosive, largest ejaculation ever experienced in the history of the planet -- no wonder it is called "the Quickening." 

Sidebar:

Way back, sometime after 2003 but before 2010, I watched via dvd some of the 6 seasons of the Highlander tv series (1992-98) spun off from the movie. Which naturally did not carry the same electric excitement and interest of the movie. But there was a lot more emphasis on romance in the series, which tv audiences loved. In the UK this was kids’ stuff, but in the US the audience was adults.

Influenced by: MTV (1981) – Music videos, murky lighting, fast cuts w/o continuity worries (see also, alas HBO GOT); 

every melodrama, every movie ever made with the girl screaming while men duke it out, plus, you know, King Kong -- the girl in the pitcha is there to scream; the self-conscious snark of The Terminator (1984), tying up the screamer to the logo sign of Silvercup Studios, home to NYC's largest film and tv production studio, etc.

Influences on: Outlander (1991); Buffy – the Chosen One, and via the Highlander tv series – multiple potential immortals.

 

Chronicles of Prydain -- Best Fantasy Series for the Youth? What About the Animal Heroes?

     . . . . Chronicles of Prydain -- Best Fantasy Series ever?  But is it? 

Is it the very best? -- this person passionately believes it is; at Vox News he tells us that he so much believes it true that he writes to tell us this news every year or so.  Read all about it here. 

I had all the Prydain books, but they never grabbed me.  I can hardly remember anything about them now.  Perhaps I was already too old when I encountered them in high school? I certainly don't have them on my shelves now, though Winnie-the-Pooh and many other books of fantasy and whimsy, with a sort of non-adult flavor remain. 

Also, the guy writing this is a -- guy, who lurves it that the Hero is a another young guy. That might have kept me from truly rolling with it, perhaps? though the guy-centeredness of so many other books and series never interfered with my passionate attachment to them, from The Black Stallion, his boy, Alec, to Lad, A Dog (see - Lad, another guy!), to LotR, not to mention some of my beloved Zane Greys, and many others -- even Pooh! 

Or -- maybe -- because I was living on a farm, I just knew too much about pigs to suspend my disbelief (always have had some trouble with Charlotte's Web re that).

I loved animal books -- which no longer seem to be written.  Did the Youth lose interest in animal protagonists?  Or was it just the publishing industry?  Anyway, I read every single one that came my way, many of them over and over and over, like the Black Stallion books and the Bambi Books, and Lassie Come Home. 

I received at least one of that sort of book every Christmas from each set of grandparents and from Mom and Dad.  So that was three books at least every Christmas!

I sobbed every time at the deaths of the animal protagonists in the books I re-read so avidly -- Ginger the rebel / bad slave in Black Beauty, Joe in Beautiful Joe, you name a death and I cried. Albert Payson Terhune's Lad, A Dog (1919), provoked particularly copious tears. Once it happened that I was reading his death while in school (the one-room country school house). The entire room including the teacher were aghast -- what ever could be happening to me? No one could understand how I could weep over a dog, dying, in a book!

I loved all the Terhune books. It wasn't only the canine principals that had me re-reading them constantly though. It was the setting. It was an exotic world, a magical one, as much as any fantasy world I might encounter later (those books weren't around anywhere when I was growing up). The Master and the Mistress, the kingdom of Sunnybank -- which I later learned was in New Jersey, He and She could drive into unknowable NYC for dog shows -- all this was as foreign and unknowable as the moon. This dimmish, but constant background kingdom of Sunnybank that cast a spell as irresistable as any of a fantasy novel. Sunnybank was ruled by Him, to whom Lad owed all his service and loyalty, and Her, who in turn ruled Him, and whom Lad adored in all humility and to whom his devotion was entire -- and that had that inexplicable thing -- servants! who even served the dogs.  Thus dogs' lives and hierarchy reflected perfectly this perfect feudal world, with impeccable class system -- a creation of the plutocratic, bloated Gilded Age. 

I was too unsophisticated and ignorant to recognize it for the class system that the Terhune books celebrated at the time. So every aspect of this strange world so far away in both time and space fascinated and enthralled me, those times that so-called 'real world' penetrated the world of the characters -- characters that could not have existed without that upper, non-understood plane of Master and Mistress / Him and Her ruling that world.

I'm not sure I'm recollecting exactly how the owners of Sunnybank were called in Lad's mind -- but it was something like that. What I do recollect clearly was how much I liked the dogs having real names, as -- to my mind -- being the significant ones -- while the human beings were -- to my child mind -- peripheral.

Too bad the world isn't really run that way, the non-human world at the center, and we hooman beans the side-bar.

Art Deco Landscape With Foxes

     . . . . Art Deco style seems to be have been designed to illustrate Tolkien . . . .

A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed. "Hobbits!" he thought. "Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There's something might queer behind this." He was quite right, but he never found out more about this. -Fellowship of the Ring

It is all magic.

Cooper Hewitt, "The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920's"

Reading Wednesday -- Harry Potter

Walking past Scholastic Inc. on Broadway this morning, it occurred to me that the windows of the Scholastic building have never been without a display of Harry Potter books and merchandise since 1998.  Not once.  Not a single day, in now, almost 20 years.

This thought had come to me before reading this story in the UK Guardian this morning about the the cultural appropriation criticism Rowling is currently receiving from U.S. Native American peoples for her first History of Magic in North America set in the history of the Potter Wizard Universe.

I took a Spanish translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, i.e. Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal, to give to a friend's young son on a prolonged stay in Havana 1999-2000.

Mapping Fairyland's Geography

"A Beautiful, Escapist Map of “Fairyland,” Published in Britain at the End of World War I . . . ."

A map which mashes up all sorts of make-believe geographies, not leaving out even "Below These Starres Lyeth the Lost Citie of Atlantis . . . ."

One can be lost in this map for hours, zooming into and enlarging its many regions.

See it here, to zoom in and out. The image above won't do for that.

The map itself is in the holdings of the Library of Congress.

The Imperious Drive

This last week Antipope's Charlie's Diary examined "Fantasy Shibbolths" here.

Earlier this month Charlie's Diary took on "Science Fiction Shibboliths" here.

In the course of both of these articles and the discussions of the subject matters that follow, empire, imperialism and colonialism were unavoidable topics.

Yet we get this silly article about SF/F in the LA Book Review here, that complains the person from part of the former UK empire is not employing the correct terms to talk about SF/F.  Both writers, the subject of the criticism and the critic, miss the really important points that writers of sf/f  such as Charlies don't.

Empire, above.

Empire, below.

Fantasizing that sf/f -- or any pop culture -- saves the world is alike to living in an imperialist theme park because the default of the field is always empire one way and another. It's impossible to argue that steampunk isn't about class and empire, though the field is to be applauded in fact on how many diversities of empire it can envision.

Which is why even an article about the #1 UK television baking show speaks of it in terms of the yearning for empire even in desserts and faux competition here (NY Times article so use one's paywall work-around of choice).

Quote:

It’s astonishing to think that not even a century ago, Britain was the largest, most effective and arguably the most brutal empire the world had ever seen — one of the fundamental political institutions that structured the entire world. This might explain why British national identity, such as it is, continues to manifest itself in signifiers left over from the days of Empire: gin, tea, cricket, flags, those wretched “Keep Calm and Carry On” posters, all of them now zombified and divorced from their material basis. Their appeal is the dream of an endless summer of Pimm’s, bowls and thwarted romantic expectations on the lawn of a great country estate, as if this lifestyle could ever be made possible without the violent exploitation of around one-third of the population of the earth. Ten years ago, adorning oneself with these signifiers might have been considered a somewhat alternative statement. Since then, though, they’ve gained a great deal of popularity, to the point where they’re firmly established in the mainstream of middle-class culture in the British Isles.

For sf/f, telling doncha think, the author's use above of "zombified?

Which brings one to another new restaurant that has opened in the neighborhood, that largely and loudly beckons the truly non-historic consciousness of the young tourists in their deluded fantasy of finding NYC's historical golden past of of a hip and happening underground -- a cultural rebellion of the above ground fortunate --proclaims itself as serving up an authentic colonial Indian food experience (owned by recent immigrants from either Pakistan* or -- India). Is this a sign of the desperate times in which the underground, the vast majority of the world live, that the formerly colonialized too feel it necessary to mine the hip hip hooray above ground colonial golden past of empire, in order to survive in a new world.  Will we be seeing the Native populations of North America open theme park restaurants celebrating the fun and delicious era of the Trail of Tears?

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*  Here it has been noticed that often restaurants owned by people of Pakistani origin bill themselves as "Indian" because this designation is understood more easily by the young and the tourists who are honestly ignorant of both history and geography.

After Christmas, Prior to Cuba and the New Year

Christmas Day's pork roast turned out very well, according to those who ate it and, I confess, to my own judgment as well. The roast is almost entirely about the stock elements around it, which were in the freezer as leftovers from previous pork entrees, and about timing, ensuring it is well cooked, but not even a little bit dry.  So it's paying attention more than physical work.

Trust me: peeling a butternut squash is hard work!

The parsnip and squash soup was more complicated and difficult for me to pull together. Unlike the roast, the soup is a lot of steps from cutting open, peeling, chopping and pre-roasting both parsnips and squash just a little bit before starting the ingredients in the stove top soup kettle. Then  must be paid a lot of attention, to keep from scorching.

Perhaps a meal of left-overs, just enough for el V and me.  :)

This paying attention part -- I'm rather astonished I pulled that off, considering the consequences of Christmas Eve included not getting home and into bed until nearly 5 AM.

Christmas Eve dinner was outstanding. It included venison and wild boar sausages and duck breasts, both grilled outside. That's what many on our coast have done this year because it's been so unseasonably warm. With no need or desire to further heat up the house, many traditional winter foods were jettisoned for the feast and instead of baking a ham, grilling out in the garden is the thing. K & C's courtyard / patio was just lovely. Except we were certain that mosquitoes were about . . . .

Among the terrific company was this year's winner of the Man Booker Award for Fiction,  He managed to get a flight in from Minneapolis. In fact we first met years ago at another holiday dinner, Thanksgiving, also hosted by K & C -- the n'er to be forgotten Thanksgiving when the dining room table's additional leaves parted company with each other, and everything on the table slow-moed into the ever-widening, snowy-lined table cloth crevasse. And, then the disaster after that, while K was fare welling the guests on the long steep brownstone steps, he slipped on a bit of ice that hadn't gotten the salt, fell and broke his ankle. This was back when the huge economic depression was just starting, and when people like us, artists, freelancers etc., were hit, and hit very hard, almost a year before there was official recognition that the economy, thanks to the banks, was crashing and burning.

BTW,Booker winner plans, he says, some big Fantasy fiction set in a fantasy Africa, drawing on African myths and history.  El V and I just happen to have some fairly serious knowledge of these matters . . . and as well there are two big West African projects he's doing himself in 2017, which will involve going back to the African Atlantic coastal countries for some serious time.

It was a terrific Christmas Eve.  We had no idea it was so late because the time just whizzed by in great conversation, food, drink and friends. At midnight I looked out of the great bay window of K's second floor study The perfectly round winter moon was nested in a web of bare black tree branches, wreathed with bits of fog. If this had been a film and I looking out that great bay window at midnight, I would have exclaimed, "Oooooo, look everyone!  It's snowing!" And have seen Santa's sleigh and reindeer gliding through the fog above Madame Jumel's mansion.

But it did not snow and  I did not see a sleigh and reindeer crossing the moon.

Instead, we embarked on a dancing salsathon to K's magnificent vinyl record collection of Puerto Rican and Cuban salsa stars.

Today's much colder than the previous days of this week.  But it's still grey -- can't remember the last time there was a sunny day.  Rain is to begin, yet again, and keep up until Tuesday.  This is going to interfere with the getting of these things one must have before flying to Havana.  Among them disposable champagne glasses* for 30 +, to drink to 2015 at our last U.S. meal before taking off for Cuba.

--------------------------------

*

My special gift this year: a set of indescribably beautiful -- and fragile -- champagne flutes.  They are staying home.  But we used them last night, specifically, to drink a toast to the confounding of rethuggianism, those who made so much money out of our economic miseries.

Among other things though, I received Mary Beard's SPQR!  And the print version of Isabella: Warrior Queen, which is one of my year's best / most important reading round-up -- but I actually listened to an audio download.  Now I have the author's footnotes and bibliography, thank goodness.

Faerie Magazine

Reminds one of ye olde Fantasy Magazine, doesn't it?

Faerie Magazine is a lifestyle magazine, for people who love fairies.  It ranks #19 among the 157 lifestyle magazines sold at B&Noble.

Magazines as material creations have mostly fallen off my radar, other than Downbeat, the Lincoln Center Theater Review, Bomb and some others that el V writes for on occasions, and which send him their issues every month or quarterly, depending on what the pub schedule is. So Faerie Magazine is all news to me.  It was established in 2005, pointed toward the Renaissance Faire goers and vendors' market.

Faerie Magazine is published on a quarterly schedule.  One may sign up for a weekly newsletter, filled with offers of diaphanous products and other otherworldly objects.  I am dazzled and enchanted, at least for an ephemeral, crepuscular moment.

Reading Wednesday - Traitor's Blade by Sebastien De Castell

Traitor's Blade (2014) is the first installment of a fantasy series with the serial title, Greatcoats, that is inspired to a degree by Dumas's famous Musketeers.  Nor does one need Dave Duncan's blurb to know that fine Canadian author is also an influence. The second volume, Knight's Shadow, appeared earlier this year.

Traitor's Blade reads like what it is, a first novel.  As a first effort any intelligent reader -- particularly any reader who has also published -- will give the poor proofreading (such as "waste" for "waist") a pass, since genre publishing doesn't usually shell out for professional proofreaders -- or even copy editors.

A good copy editor or line editor though, would have helped Traitor's Blade become the better book that it is trying to be. An editor would have helped the author to smooth out his uneven tone which lurches between what so many mistake as Dumas-style wit and banter, and meaningful yet clumsy metaphysical speculation on the nature of being and nothingness. A good editor would have recognized the author loads too many fight scenes at the front, abruptly introduces magic, then disappears it again for most of the book until suddenly -- magical creatures! An editor would have informed the author that his big reveal is buried. Though Falcio seems to know what this all about, there's so little time provided to the reveal of the big reveal the reader is left scratching her head as to what actually happened and what it means.

The narrative does move quickly, but necessary transitions have been omitted, which screws with pacing and rhythm.

Another way of putting it is that Traitor's Blade needed another revision.

Some of these problems are inevitable with a first person narrator, who emotes like someone who has read the addresses of Vlad Taltos often and uncritically, yet who is admirably attempting to hit those notes of tension, high stakes, peril, courage and justice that combine so pitch perfectly in BBC / America's   

The Musketeers (season 1, 2014; season 2, 2015 -- the very best adventure television ever! with the best coats! horses! leather! and steel!). The voice of the narrator hasn't yet been fine tuned to the story being told, or the voices of the other characters.  Voice is hard!

Doing the Dumas affect effectively in English is also difficult.  The French language tends to lend itself to that affect of effortless ballon that English doesn't -- which perhaps

explains why the language of ballet remains French. English language genre writers often seem to equate the tone of cynicism and sarcasm with the light-footed repartee and wit in which a Dumas veils his concerns with justice, loyalty, honor and courage.

Justice, loyalty, honor and courage are what Traitor's Blade is about.  So much so that Falcio, our narrator and protagonist, informs the reader early on that the great difference between his kind -- the King's Greatcoats (read musketeeers) and knights (read the Red Guards) is that he and the Greatcoats are about justice, which is for all, no matter what class and station, while knights are about honor, which is about themselves. This is the primary reason I am looking to find De Castell's second novel, since its title, Knight's Shadow, suggests in this book the author may be exploring that conflict more deeply. That's interesting, and not something we've seen much of lately in fantasy fiction.

The voice may not be quite as fresh as it will be, and it is not yet trained, but the mind behind the creation isn't going to be satisfied to writing to formulae.

Or so it seems to this reader.

P.S. The jacket copy bio's tone doesn't well serve Sebastien De Castell, who it seems to this reader, is on the brink of having a fine writing career.  Yah, it's a genre thing but really, he is an adult.  His book, which wrestles with adult matters -- and so few do these days --  proves it.

Charoite in rough state.

Charoite polishes up into lovely jewelry and other pretty items.

P.P.S.  The author's choice, to name Greatcoat's quest, the King's Charoites, is a happy one. In New Age parlance, chariotes' energies can promote physical and emotional healing, help overcome obsessions / addictions and channel other positive transformations when worn on the body. Their shades of violet are lovely.

Death of Tolkien's Smaug Inspired By Longfellow's "Hiawatha"

From the UK Guardian, in the Books section:

Hiawatha faces Megissogwon, manito (spirit) of wealth, who is impervious in his shirt of wampum, the hard shell beads once used as currency. After a day-long battle, Hiawatha has only three arrows left. Victory appears impossible until --

Suddenly from the boughs above him

Sang the Mama, the woodpecker:

‘Aim your arrows, Hiawatha,

At the head of Megissogwon,

Strike the tuft of hair upon it,

At their roots the long black tresses;

There alone can he be wounded!’

And so, thanks to a bird’s revelation of his fatal vulnerability, another monstrous symbol of material wealth is brought down by a bowman almost at the end of his arrows.

Huh.

There is much more background to this, and how it was discovered, here. The discussion in the article of the relationships among Hiawatha, the Kalevala and Tolkien's epic are illuminating.

The Guttenberg "Hiawatha" here.

See Jeff Thompson's National Geographic illustrations of Hiawatha and Megissogwon here.

I love this convergence of the Eddas, The Kalavala, Hiawatha and The Hobbit's Smaug so much -- particularly, as the article's author notes, that both Longfellow and Tolkien were language professors.

Reign Season 2 Episode 5 -- "Blood for Blood"

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, is one of history's Big Losers.  She was from a country that was too poor and too small to be a player, unless by chance someone took out her cousin, Queen Elizabeth.  For all her facility with languages she wasn't all that brilliant an intellect (unlike Elizabeth) and had the poverty of political instinct to match (while Elizabeth's political instinct bit all her rivals and enemies with the snap of a trap.  Worst of all, she was Catholic in a northern European milieu that had tipped Protestant.

Thus this preposterous series purportedly about her, is one of television Big Losers.

Preposterous, but not in a good way.

I suppose I'm going to be spending the rest of my life correcting the Young Who Don't Actually, You Know, Read History (or anything for that matter) who will insist otherwise because "I saw it on Reign" that King Francis did not lurve the protestants in his Kingdom of France. For that matter, neither did his wife, nor his mother. Francis and his mom began a long war of attrition upon the protestants that lasted through several reigns, including that of Louis XIV.

Kings of the day did not believe in religious tolerance -- see: King James Stuart I (a/k/a King James VI before he became king of both Scotland and England); he even persecuted protestants who were not his sort of protestant. Thus we got Plymouth Rock and, finally, Boston.  And the First Thanksgiving for one of our first founding myths.  History, slippery stuff.

Dresses are so much more interesting than that pesky history stuff!

What to wear when reading smut -- hey that's the word the writers wrote for the actors to spoke!

Authentic 16th century French wedding gown!

Who is taking odds on whether Reign's King Francis II lives to see another season?  He only reigned a year, historically speaking.  For that matter who is taking odds on whether Reign makes a season 3?

Though -- it could be mildly entertaining to watch how the writers attempt to deal with Louis, Prince of Condé, whom so far the audience can't figure why he's all over the Court and all up in everybody's biz and being confidential best bf to Queen Mary, and the Huguenot uprising.  They've already played so loose with the history that they're backed into a lot of corners, particularly via the religious situation.  Last season the Big Bad Supernatural Pagan Something-or-Other in the Woods -- and the hidden / lost daughter rather stood in for the protestants -- they even called the pagans heretics, which is ridiculous within the Church's categories.  This season they've brought in the dreaded word, "protestant," though, so far, not Huguenot.

Or if "Huguenot" has been uttered, I missed it, because, you know, it's all about the dresses!

Belle

Every fact as presented by the film is not only false, but deliberately twisted and manufactured to be something else than what little we've got of the story of these people who lived in the England of the 18th century, when England was the center of the globe's African slave trade. This is a fantasy that ignores the historical facts that are the story of Dido Elizabeth Bell - and her cousin Elizabeth, so far as the record kept track of them.

It's a phony story too, about  the Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield.  The case he sat on that helped abolition was Somerset v Stewart (1772) 98 ER 499,  not that of the slave ship  Zong. The manner in which he settled the Zong case, ruled in favor of the insurance company, which excused them from paying compensation for slaves deliberately murdered to get an insurance payout on loss of property.  It did nothing about saying that slavery was wrong, that the chattel was free, or anything like that. What the Lord Chief Justice's private opinion on these matter were are not a matter of record, nor did speak them in public. The film claims that the Zong case advanced aboliton, but it did not -- he actually reversed the lower courts' cases that tried to say killing slaves was illegal:

In reaching these conclusions, Krikler comments that Mansfield ignored the ruling of his predecessor,Matthew Hale, that the killing of innocents in the name of self-preservation was unlawful. This ruling was to prove important a century later in R v Dudley and Stephens, which also concerned the justifiability of acts of murder at sea.[43] Mansfield also did not acknowledge another important legal principle—that no insurance claim can be legal if it arose from an illegal act.[67]

Mansfield ruled on Somerset. over ten years before he ruled on the Zong case. It's because of his ruling on the Somersett case that Dido could be called free in England. She was the daughter of a slave, and English slave law is that the child takes the status of the mother, thus not a free woman. However, the movie never mentions the Somerset case at all, which makes no sense, within the many scenes devoted to discussing the Zong case and that Masefield would be ruling on it.

Dido did not marry a gentleman, not even one so made because her uncle sponsored him to study in the Inns of Court, as the film says.  She married a steward's son. Mansfield gave her 500 pounds.  In the meantime her father portrayed as a true lover of her mother (a woman who was still a slave when she died?), but a philandering sort, who had other slave women and children by them (who were not brought to his uncle to be made free), as well as a couple of wives (who died), who gave him more children who were legitimate.

Dido was not an heiress, but her cousin Elizabeth, portrayed in Belle as a pauper, was one. Twisting the facts out of shape leaves huge plot holes.  For instance, since the Lord Chief Justice and his wife had no children, and his fortune was made by himself, there is no entail -- and his fortune is so great he can live in that mansion and possess more than one carriage, and they love their niece Elizabeth -- so why were he and his wife not giving Elizabeth a fortune?  Not even considered.

They even change the famous painting, that supposedly inspired the movie to be written, to leave out the feather and the turban. Why?

Not to mention the pure Mammy figure, stout in body, head wrapped, being all mammy-like to the young lady mulatta who gives her orders and pouts at her. There's so much in this film that doesn't make any sense in terms of class of the period -- or a coherent story.

In truth this he film is kinda of a mess, and it's a mess because of twisting the facts into what didn't exist.

But nevermind, the dresses are pretty, so are the actresses, and the square piano they play is period correct, along with all the other period detail that has nothing to do with how the characters on screen behave or the story being told.  That's all that matters, right?

The writer and director could have told this story by making it all up instead of pretending to the tell the story of something that happened.  Except then, she'd have had to leave out the Lord Chief Justice, and that would be bad, because ... well, I for one don't know why that would be bad.  It would have been pure historical romance then, and we wouldn't have to feel that the historical Dido Elizabeth Belle had been cheated and disrespected.

It would also have spared me from the rest of my life having to futilely attempt to explain all this to those who will cite this film as the facts of what happened -- and racism and slavery weren't that bad.

While I still futilely convincing people even now that what happened in 12 Years a Slave really did happen, and that Solomon Northup actually existed, and was really kidnapped into slavery, and yes, being a slave was really that bad, and in fact for millions, it was even worse than that.  And there was no actual fairy tale Jane Austen ending of his story.  He suffered so much from PTSD from his kidnapping, sales, what he saw and experienced in slavery, that he descended into drink and lost his family, and died not that long after, alone. All of which is documented.

GOT Honest Trailer

"Winter is coming, with a little bit of honesty."

Very funny!

Reading Wednesday, Mostly Dragons, Some Africa

A fantasy series* set within a secondary world much modeled on Victorian England and Europe, featuring a lady explorer-natural philosopher, recently had its second installment published. Having read the first volume in the series with mild enjoyment, I rather looked forward to volume two, as often, once an author has established her character(s) and world is a large improvement over the first book.

The second novel wasn't as well-written as the first one though.  It's flatly written in a self-conscious attempt to ape what the author believes is a Victorian lady's style of writing. The narrative is a dull mash-up of African cultures rendered in the single-dimension cliches of Africa and Africans, despite the author's claiming to having qualified as an anthropologist.

Despite what the author seems to think, what she mashed up are not dead museum cultures and places, nor are they quaint museum spiritual practices. These are people, families and communities who still have their cultures and languages, and still believe in their spiritual practices, despite the very well-funded fundies of several outside religions actively demonizing them.

Then the actively missing music ....  When reading anything that is taking place in Africa, whether fiction or non, and there is no music, that is a sure sign the author never got a toehold into what was / is going on. O wait -- this is fantasy, so how do I know this is Africa?  After all, the word is never used.  But a whole of words that come from some particular African languages are used -- though not always correctly.

For a novel, though, worse than mashed up geographies and vocabulary challenges, is that the narrative is static and the plot is unsurprising from start to finish. The characters, including the narrator and first person point of view, are equally flat and predictable.

With no reason to finish this book, I did not do so.

Think the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik; however, instead of a Napoleonic era secondary world, this is Victorian. There is authentic passion contained the early Temeraire volumes, as the dragon Temeraire and his beloved Captain William Laurence discover each other, and, together, the Whole Wide World. With Temeraire, Lawrence, other dragons and characters, the readers feel how enormous are the stakes of their choices: personal, military, political and social. Perhaps this is a large part of the problem with the Victorian series, that it is too much an imitation -- and an imitation of materials that the author doesn't understand herself well enough to spark and fizz a reader's sense of shock and awe?

 This one follows the well-patented arc of feisty lady against her social strictures, presented in a single voice flat as the notes in a creaky piano whose strings have been tuned one too many times. The perils are expected perils while the reader knows, via the First Person Herself that more books are coming, thus Our Heroine is not in peril. Then there is the problem that despite what we expect, Our Heroine is dull, or at least her voice is.

 Perhaps the ur fault is Author's choice to plagiarize emulate Mary Kingsley's mode -- and even trajectory -- in her novel?

The opening paragraph to Kingsley's

PREFACE TO THE ABRIDGED EDITION OF TRAVELS IN WEST AFRICA.
   When on my return to England from my second sojourn in West Africa, I discovered, to my alarm, that I was, by a freak of fate, the sea-serpent of the season, I published, in order to escape from this reputation, a very condensed, much abridged version of my experiences in Lower Guinea; and I thought that I need never explain about myself or Lower Guinea again. This was one of my errors. I have been explaining ever since; and, though not reconciled to so doing, I am more or less resigned to it, because it gives me pleasure to see that English people can take an interest in that land they have neglected. Nevertheless, it was a shock to me when the publishers said more explanation was required. I am thankful to say the explanation they required was merely on what plan the abridgment of my first account had been made. I can manage that explanation easily. It has been done by removing from it certain sections whole, and leaving the rest very much as it first stood. Of course it would have been better if I had totally reformed and rewritten the book in pellucid English; but that is beyond me, and I feel at any rate this book must be better than it was, for there is less of it; and I dimly hope critics will now see that there is a saving grace in disconnectedness, for owing to that disconnectedness whole chapters have come out without leaving holes.

 Almost word-for-word ....

Think the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik; however, instead of a Napoleonic era secondary world, this is Victorian. There is authentic passion contained the early Temeraire volumes, as the dragon Temeraire and his beloved Captain William Laurence discover each other, and, together, the Whole Wide World. With Temeraire, Lawrence, other dragons and characters, the readers feel how enormous are the stakes of their choices: personal, military, political and social.

This other series follows the well-patented arc of feisty lady against her social strictures, presented in a single voice flat as the notes in a creaky piano whose strings have been tuned one too many times. The perils are expected perils while the reader knows, via the First Person Herself that more books are coming, thus Our Heroine is not in peril. Then there is the problem that despite what we expect, Our Heroine is dull, or at least her voice is.

Perhaps this is a large part of the problem with the Victorian series, that it is too much an imitation -- and partly an imitation of materials that the author doesn't understand herself well enough to spark and fizz a reader's sense of shock and awe?

The Temeraire series itself is a secondary world fantasy inspired by Patrick O'Brien's Captain Aubrey - Stephen Maturin novels of the Napoleonic era -- Maturin a noted biologist. It has been much commented upon that the O'Brian series was an inspired Napoleonic era modeled upon the Jane Austen regency mode.

Perhaps there are so many layers of inspirations and influences upon this Author's mashup that the consequence is by the second volume already her literary efforts have been mashed flatter than an alluvial plain?

Instead, I picked up a collection of papers from 1978 by and also edited by Brit historians, P. Hair and Anthony J. Barker on the African slave trade, when all the scholarship in the field was starting new approaches, partially sparked by what had been going on in the USA with the Civil Rights Movement.  It was an exciting collection of papers; the historians' excitement came through their academic structures, and that they were aware they were just crossing a threshold not previously gone over.

Additionally, it was exciting to compare and contrast that collection of papers with another collection on the same subject: Liverpool and  Transatlantic Slavery (2010) a collection of papers presented at a recent conference in Liverpool.  How far we've come since 1976!

-------------------

*  Title / author deliberately omitted because my response to the work is negative and thus, for Author's sake, do not wish it to influence others doing a casual web search.

Turning the Mini-Series Inside Out

This is an examination of the 80's American television mini-series tropes, within the context of the premiere of a parody television series of same, Spoils of Babylon.

In the NY Times television section here.  "Turning the Mini-Series Inside Out."

Spoils is all for laughs and so is this little piece of writing.  Nevertheless it provides a brief run-down of what we expect from these epic-as-television-min-series.

I have blogged here fairly extensively about this mini-series  (and here too) as well as other 80's series, but while typing is considered therapy right now, mousing, and all that isn't -- hurts!  But I am going without the sling today as advised.

I have enjoyed these 80's mini-series very much via dvd -- never saw them when they were broadcast as that happened in the largest part of my life, lived without television.

As I have various significant Life Before and After phases, such as Before El V After El V,  Before Cuba After Cuba, there are other less important one such as Before DVD on Computer and After DVD on Computer -- via which I caught up on all the television I wanted to catch up on within a few years.  Though, as I watched most of this long after their 'time' so to speak, my responses to these generally are different than the contemporary responses when they were broadcast -- for me they are entertaining, but filled with a particular sort of historical data, that dramatizes literally how this nation saw itself and how it wished itself to be seen -- sometimes unconsciously so revealing what it might not like to know about itself.

At this stage when it comes to entertainment, particularly any sort of fiction, it's how the content employs history that most interests me.

What I gleaned from this little piece linked to above is how much the tropes that are necessary to 80's American television mini-series are the same necessary expectations of Big or Fairly Big or Aspiration to Big Fantasy Fiction.  And that is most intriguing to think about.

The Book of Life - Deborah Harkness Concludes the All Souls Trilogy

Viking will release the conclusion to Deborah Harkness's All Souls Trilogy this summer, July 15, 2014, The Book of Life.

The Book of Life, the conclusion to Harkness's All Souls Trilogy will be available from Viking, July 15, 2014

An exclusive teaser excerpt has been put up online by Lindsay Deutsch.  It is available to be read here.

I am assuming that the book of the title is a physical book, the living properties of which were beginning to be explored by the principal characters, witch Diana Bishop and her vampire husband, Matthew Clairmont, as Shadow of Night concluded.

Like the previous novels' other many readers are doing, more or less patiently, I am greatly looking forward to the publication of The Book of Life. I'm particularly interested in which historical eras they will explore in The Book of Life. As an historian who has also written adult historical fantasy (though sexual attraction, romance and marriage -- and wine -- are very important in Harkness's novels, they are neither Romances nor Young Adult books), the historical geographies and cultures of the books are intensely appealing.

Beyond enjoyment in the historical and adventure aspects, I'm impatient for more of the philosophical and genetic mysteries of time and life that our characters are puzzling over, which for them are literally matters of life and death. Even better, it appears The Book of Life will be the conclusion of all these matters -- the whole story told in three volumes, an actual trilogy, as opposed to an open-ended series.

A Discovery of Witches (2011)

An extensive post discussing A Discovery of Witches can be read here. (Fair Warning: depending on taste for reading content on screen, this could be classified by those who don't have the taste to do so as TL;DR.)

Shadow of Night (2012)

Neda Ulaby, NPR's reporter on arts, entertainment and culture, did a feature on Shadow of Night in the summer of 2012.  I had the privilege of contributing a few words.  You can hear or read the piece here.

Deborah Harkness

The publications of Harkness, professor of history at the University of Southern California, include two non-fiction studies in the history of science:

 - John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. 1999.

- The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. 2007