strange and random happenstance

Bloodline by Claudia Gray
Published by: Del Rey
Publication Date: August 30th, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Leia Organa has had enough of government work which takes up all her time and accomplishes nothing. When the Rebellion defeated the Empire and created the New Republic she harbored hopes of all the Galactic Senate could do. Decades later as the Senate is divided between the Populists like her, who favor individual rule, and the Centrists, who long for system wide control, the only time they can come together and accomplish anything is in celebration of the old war heroes, like her adoptive father, Bail Organa. Seeing his statue erected on Hosnian Prime Leia comes to the startling decision that she will leave the Senate. She never sees Han, and as for her son Ben and her brother Luke, she doesn't even know where they are. Han likes the idea of the two of them traveling the galaxy together, but he knows Leia too well and knows that politics and action are in her blood; she just needs a challenge. That challenge arrives when a Twi'lek Senator from Ryloth comes before the Senate begging for help against a new Nikto crime cartel. The Nikto, lead by Rinnrivin Di, are filling the void left by the collapse of the Hutt's criminal empire. The Twi'lek Senator begs for the Senate to do what they promised, stop the proliferation of crime.

Leia sees this as a worthy cause and it could be her legacy for when she announces her retirement. But then due to the opposition's suspicions of the Populists she is saddled with a young blood Centrist, Ransolm Casterfo, who seems to be an admirer of the very Empire Leia almost gave her life to defeat. But investigating Rinnrivin Di brings the two together and they realize that despite their differences, they actually have a lot in common and each has traits the other admires. But while they are bridging party lines and bonding their investigation is bringing to light startling discoveries. The Nikto cartel is being funded by a major player. Could it be the remnants of the old Empire? Or a group calling themselves the Amaxine Warriors who seem to be amassing large stores of weapons and troops in the far reaches of the galaxy? Or could the villain be far closer to home? With such unrest in the Senate and a terrifying new move to have a First Senator, a move Palpatine himself would have approved, whomever is moving against the New Republic has the perfect cover and it's up to Leia to unmask them.

Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zhan is THE BOOK that made me a reader. Hands down. It continued the most important story of my childhood, that of the original Star Wars trilogy. When Disney came in and basically redacted the entire Expanded Universe I was sad because I felt that between this radical move and the three prequels I was no longer invested in the Star Wars Universe. And let's face it, The Force Awakens didn't awaken anything in me, being nothing more than a predictable rehash of A New Hope, which is easily the weakest of the original trilogy, or should I say the only Star Wars films that count? I remember a time when just even logging into my Star Wars Galaxies account brought me joy, not to do missions or kill Rancors, which is a ticket to an early grave, but just to walk the worlds and be a part of that universe. When reading a review of Bloodline and how it was written to bridge the gap between the original trilogy and the current film I felt, for the first time, in a long time, a new hope kindling in me. Perhaps this book would address the issues I felt were glossed over in The Force Awakens. Perhaps THIS is what I had been looking for. Of course to put this much pressure on one book with all my expectations isn't wise, yet I still did it.

Bloodline isn't the book that I expected it to be. If you, like me, were looking for the book that would tell you what went wrong with Han and Leia's happily ever after and what exactly turned Ben to the dark side, you're not going to find it here. Han and Leia are still happy, though often apart. If the book could be said to have a glaring plot hole it would be this unexplained scattering of Han and Leia's family. It is inferred that Leia has to have her politics while Han has to have his freedom with his races so to stay happy they are often apart, while Ben is apparently off doing the Jedi thing with Luke. Nothing is ever said outright as to how their family unit reached this point after several decades. Leia just bemoans the fact that it has to be this way. But why? Why does it have to be this way? And right there is your plot hole. We are to just accept that this is the only way their lives could have played out are we? Why is Leia's alienation from her family necessary? And isn't it possible that this alienation is what drove Ben to the dark side? In fact with her staff and colleagues Leia forms a new surrogate family unit and I can't help but think she brought on Ben's defection because of her blithe abandonment of him. But again, this is all inferred from what was never said.

And while Bloodline isn't the book I expected I was won over in the end. We were treated to a rare and intriguing glimpse as to how the Resistance started and how the Empire went about rebuilding to become The First Order. At the beginning of The Force Awakens everything is already in place. Leia is running the Resistance, The First Order is about to make it's presence felt, and it was already a done deal. But it takes a lot to get from singing Ewoks to another war where the Jedi are once again shrouded in myth. A lot had to happen, and while that "lot" didn't happen to feature Ben or Leia and Han going their separate ways we still saw so much. The building of armaments, the funneling of money, the supposedly good senators going to the bad and wanting the days of the Empire back. At the close of this book I felt that despite not having much of what I wanted, it was what I needed. I saw how things fit together in the bigger Star Wars universe. And as this book drew to a close I felt that it was just the beginning. There was a sad inevitability of loss pervading the book, but that just brought us to the beginning of the next chapter, the next story, which happens to be The Force Awakens. For the first time since I saw it in theaters, I thought I just might want to watch it again.

For how much this book won me over I should be very clear that it won me over in THE END, not in the beginning or not even really in the middle. It took quite awhile for me to connect to this book. The reason is simple. Politics. Right now in the US and in fact all over the world politics are crazy. And I mean legitimately capable of being certified and locked away for many many years. Therefore to have this book start out so politics heavy with Leia's work in the Galactic Senate, well, if I really am trying to avoid real politics in order to preserve my own sanity, you can imagine how I feel about reading about non-existent politics. I was having horrible flashbacks to the prequels and all the senators and even freakin' E.T. in those weird pods. Despite having seen The Revenge of the Sith only once I can still remember the horribly written line of dialogue uttered by Padmé "so this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause." I actually groaned aloud at that trite line. So to be right back in the Galactic Senate, even in a "new" form, to be there with memories of cheesy dialogue and ineffectual politics where freakin' Jar Jar could sway the course of events, well, I wasn't pleased. Give me anything but politics and I'm a happy camper.

So it was interesting to see when the shift happened in me from not wanting to pick the book up to not being able to put it down. Because even if the politics bored me, every time I did pick up the book I enjoyed it. Yet it was the "human" connection that made this book work and made me want to keep reading and not needing that reminder every time that I was reading a good book. All the individual characters found places in my heart. From the complex Ransolm Casterfo, to Leia's aid, Greer Sonnel, and her mysterious illness, even to the nefarious Rinnrivin Di, they all captivated me. Once I realized that I was hypothesizing about what exactly was wrong with Greer I knew I was a goner. To care that much that you don't just want but NEED to know if a character has a legitimate health issue, then you're hooked. And right here, this connection, I think that's what I missed in The Force Awakens. I could not care less about Rey. Where she came from, who exactly she is. There's nothing there but a Keira Knightley clone with about the same level of acting skills. She doesn't interest me, and to have a principal character that you're indifferent to? It's a failure before you've even begun. Whereas to have your expectations turned on you, to not care about Ransolm Casterfo to get to a point where it pains you that he isn't around... now that is how you tell a proper story and make a memorable Star Wars story to boot.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Backlog Bonanza, Bloodline, Character, Claudia Gray, Crime, Galactic Senate, Ha Solo, Heir to the Empire, Keira Knightley, Leia, Star Wars, The Force Awakens, The Revenge of the Sith, Timothy Zhan

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes
Published by: Alfred A. Knopf
Publication Date: July 7th, 2005
Format: Hardcover, 385 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and the second greatest writer of his age after Rudyard Kipling, and George Edalji, a half-caste solicitor from Birmingham whose Parsi father became a vicar in a small Staffordshire village, would unexpectedly change English law and bring about the court of appeal in England. As Arthur rose to fame, taking his family out of the gentle poverty of Edinburgh, getting married, having children, establishing his career, George had far smaller ambitions. He wanted to be a solicitor. He kept his head down and studied, being a decent, not excellent, student. Yet his life was full of strife. His family received hateful and horrible anonymous letters. The local police did nothing, and in fact suspected George of persecuting his own family. Yet George kept his life on track, going to college and then working for a firm in Birmingham, finally setting up his practice and even publishing a guide on railway law. The persecution eventually stopped and life seemed ready to go on as normal. Until the animal rippings started. Animals were attacked so viciously that they had to be euthanized due to their wounds. The local police decided that George was behind these crimes. They had no evidence, no logic, and yet George ended up spending three years of his life in prison. All he wanted was to be pardoned and for his simple life to begin again. Yet it wouldn't. Therefore George took the only drastic measure he ever did in his whole life, he wrote to the creator of Sherlock Holmes asking for his help. Arthur had just suffered the loss of his wife while also feeling guilty that during the past ten years he had loved another and was just waiting for propriety's sake till the day he could make Jean his bride. He was at the end of his rope with waiting and here came George with something to distract him. Arthur was willing to play the detective for the first time in his life, and hopefully George would get his name cleared when they were done.

Arthur and George is one of those books that have been sitting on my shelf for ages. Every time I reorganize my books I pick it up and think that now will be the time I read it, and it inevitably gets hidden in the back behind Barrie and Baum until the next reorganization. It might have taken me a decade, but I finally got around to Arthur and George, a book that I think is better in the abstract. There's lyrical and evocative prose, there's eventually a plot you connect to, but in the end I was more than a little dissatisfied. The book starts with little vignettes of Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji growing up. Quickly cutting back and forth between the two in a way that at first is interesting but almost a hundred pages in gets on your nerves for it's gimmickry. You're reading and reading and the one thought that keeps going through your head is "when is it going to start?" Because these little glimpses, no matter how many are piled on top of each other, do not a narrative make. When we finally move into the second part of the book you have had your fill of exposition and when you realize that Arthur and George have yet to meet you start to wonder why bother? There was even a part of me thinking Julian Barnes was using Conan Doyle as a lure and it's going to be a bait and switch all over again like P.D. James and Death Comes to Pemberley. I sincerely thought about just setting aside this book because I couldn't take another story supposedly about one thing and then being forced to endure something else. Luckily the historical record proves that these two men met, so I was willing to hold onto that and push through. And meet they did, and that part was good, that part was something, that part was an all too brief 122 pages that could still have used some editing. So in here, there is a story. It's short, there's too much fluff, but that little bit might just be worth it. Maybe.

Besides this constant tease of a plot hopefully emerging the writing has another serious flaw. It might be beautiful, but it is also flat. It's like the book is on a slow and even keel on every single page. There is nothing pushing the narrative forward and nothing to elicit interest, it just is. One reason I fear is this lack of focus. Barnes is so busy showing us just little glimpses of these two men's lives that he loses the ability to know what is and isn't important. There is no drama, no crescendo. George being set to prison is about as dramatic as his daily commute to work. Barnes dwells on weird and unnecessary details instead of those points which could build the story. For example, you'd think he'd spend time on the ripping of the animals, it is after all the major crime in the book. He might talk about the fear this infuses in the community, the importance of livestock in these people's lives, or the docility of pit ponies in particular, but he doesn't. Instead we get a far more detailed description of Arthur Conan Doyle getting an erection and having premature ejaculation issues the first time he kisses the woman who is to become his second wife. So in the context of this book the heinous crime of animal ripping is second to Arthur Conan Doyle's dick. So why did you write this book Julian Barnes? Because to me it seems that a miscarriage of justice wasn't as important as dragging down the legacy of a writer second only to Kipling in his time.

This flatness carries over into the characterization of these two men making me have problems with both. Firstly there's the problem with George. George Edalji is supposed to be the victim here. The man who lost years of his life for a miscarriage of justice. We should like him. We should feel his plight. We shouldn't be hoping that they just keep him locked up because he is an annoying pretentious ass. So the problem with George is that you don't like him. You're hoping that there's some twist, that he has a split personality, that he has some animus to him that doesn't make the highlight of his life writing a book on railway law! That he's freakin' Jekyll and Hyding us all and IS a cold blooded animal killers. But no. He is a shell of a person. And not in the, he endured great tragedy and there was only a shell left. No, he isn't a full person. He does his work, he gets decent grades, he blindly goes through life as a nobody. If it wasn't for someone taking against him he would have been born and died and no one would have noticed. I can't decide if making George this nonentity was a way in which Barnes is showcasing that the crime George was charged with needed to be judged on the evidence not on the man. But we still need to have some connection to this man. We have to care about his fate, not focusing on the criminal procedures of the day, and yes I'm experiencing some P.D. James flashbacks right now. But the worst characteristic, the ONLY characteristic of George is his naivety. He doesn't think that he will be convicted because he's innocent, he doesn't think he was persecuted because he's half-caste, because people aren't like that. Where did this blind optimism come from? Gaw, you're an idiot George, and for that you paid the price.

Yet the ignoramus that is George is nothing to how Barnes portrayed Conan Doyle. So now we're onto the Arthur problem if you're keeping score. If you know a bit about Conan Doyle a lot of his life story here will be repetitive. In order to break out of this Barnes makes the odd decision that he will tear down this legend. He will make Arthur human and fallible and the butt of jokes, re the premature ejaculation mentioned above. Arthur is obsessed with his image and Jean, the woman who will become his second wife. He comes across as three things, girl crazy, sports crazy, and honor crazy. Here's the thing though, Barnes stresses the crazy. He spends hundreds and hundreds of pages stressing the crazy, which, OK, if you have some weird vendetta against Conan Doyle, I can see doing that. But then in the final section of the book he then does a 180 and builds Conan Doyle back up. That he was a great writer, humanitarian, etc. etc. I just don't know what the point of the book was I guess. If it was insight into these two men, it's a fail. If it's insight into miscarriages of justice, well, it's a fail also. Why, ugh, I just don't get it. My mind is literally rebelling wanting to know the why of it. This could have been a cute and insightful book on the author of Sherlock Holmes taking up the mantle of detective and saving a man's reputation. Instead it's an overwritten mess about the author of Sherlock Holmes misguidedly playing detective to distract himself from the fact that he can't yet marry and fuck the woman he's lusted after for a decade. Crime solving as prophylactic! I really don't think Holmes would approve.

There is so much that could be forgiven though if Barnes had been willing to tie up loose ends. In particular, the hate mail and the ripping. But instead we get 40 pages of George's shallow reflections on the death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In his brief afterward, Barnes states that there's a man never mentioned in this book who later claimed responsibility for the letters, no reason given, no analysis, nothing. Just a man years later who did this. Um, a little more please? Secondly, as for the ripping... we are given a very good idea of what could have happened with the Sharp boys, but no real answer. As George himself points out it's the same kind of circumstantial evidence that got him locked up. So yes, in life we have unresolved endings. Nothing is tied up nice and neat with a bow. But here's the thing about Arthur and George... it's FICTION! Barnes felt perfectly fine taking liberties with Arthur's dick, yet couldn't give us an ending worthy of Holmes? Instead we are left with this nebulous morass we have read that has left no real impression other then ew to the ejaculation. Was this some arty post-modern experiment to mimic the spiritualist belief of knowledge only after passing through the veil? Seriously, I could sit here all day making up reasons why this book is as it is. I could justify it, I could throw harsh vitriol on it, I could read so much into the text that it would make your head spin, because the book's narrative just lies there doing nothing that you could read whatever you want into it. But you know what? I've wasted enough time on this book and it wasn't worth it, so in the end, writing one more word...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Animals, Arthur and George, Arthur Conan Doyle, Crime, Death Comes to Pemberley, Fiction, George Edalji, Jekyll and Hyde, Julian Barnes, P.D. James, Persecution, Rudyard Kipling, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlocked