(a book review of Outlander by Diana Gabaldon)
The Short Version
Diana Gabaldon's ambitious tale Outlander tells the story of a 1940s British woman who time travels to 1740s Scotland by an ancient stone circle. Soon she finds herself torn between two worlds, two times, and two different loves. The tale combines historical fiction and romance with just a hint of fantasy or science fiction (via the mysterious stone circle).
The worlds and people of the story are all realized with great detail, making much of it believable. All of this makes for an intriguing start, but unfortunately the plot arch becomes disjointed early on, and Gabaldon often overshares the results of her historical research. Overall, the plot is bogged down by this excessive detail and by a meandering event path that never picks up steam, much less builds up to a story climax. This was all a bit disappointing for me, as I love a well built story.
I still enjoyed some aspects, including the steamy love scenes, the scenery of Scotland, the encounters with characters, and all the excessive tidbits pertaining to herbalism. The fact still remains that any plot that is weighed down with superfluous detail and extends over 800 pages is a trial for any reader's stamina.
The "Gradebook" Version
Overall Score of 23/34 (aka 67%, aka D+)
Breakdown of points:
1. Realization of the story's world (5/5)
2. Development of characters (4/5)
3. Plot (1/8)
-pacing (0/2)
-all parts build to a major turning point (0/2)
-believability (1/2)
-arcs satisfyingly (0/2)
4. Style (4/6)
-consistent (2/2)
-cleanly written, both in wording & scenes (0/2)
-balance of high and low moments (2/2)
5. Originality: the story isn't directly "lifted" from other stories. Any similarities are due to genre, to interesting recycling of popular plots or characters, or exploring an alternate route within a story or story type, especially for humor or resonance (5/5)
6. Follow Through: the story upholds the implied writer-reader contract which is set up via story style, foreshadowing, and marketing (4/5)
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Friday, September 16, 2016
Another Face of King Arthur
(a review of King Arthur by Norma Lorre Goodrich)
Legendary King Arthur has been a favorite in stories of the western world for over a thousand years. In our era, he is beloved by filmmakers and novelists and researchers. Because the facts surrounding him are so debatable, none can really be accused of not following those facts. In a way, Arthur is a canvas on which storytellers can paint their message in gloriously epic hues.
There are many recent "faces" of King Arthur, and two of them display very different images of him. In the TV show Merlin (2008-2012), Arthur is a pampered medieval jock growing up under his father's lofty expectations. He's surrounded by a beautiful castle, jewels and crowns, jousting and feasts and steel plate armor. The lovely Guinevere is a castle servant and Lancelot is a peasant dreaming of being a knight (traditionally both are of noble blood).
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the 2004 film King Arthur depicts him as a Roman general, leading a specialized team of Sarmation riders on a final mission through Roman-occupied Britain. He's surrounded by images of Roman wealth and hubris, legionnaire armor and helmets with red bristles, Hadrian's wall in full glory, and druidic Merlin in the forest, blue paint swirled across his face. Guinevere in this telling is a Pictish warrior queen rescued from Roman torture and confinement by Arthur and his gang. Lancelot is on the Sarmation riders and Arthur's right-hand man.
On one hand we have the Romantic King Arthur, told through the lenses of the Medieval French Court writers and therefore surrounded by the items and scenery of their world. On the other hand, we have a more historical Roman-British King Arthur, and Norma Lorre Goodrich echoes similar details in her compilation of research, King Arthur (1986).
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the 2004 film King Arthur depicts him as a Roman general, leading a specialized team of Sarmation riders on a final mission through Roman-occupied Britain. He's surrounded by images of Roman wealth and hubris, legionnaire armor and helmets with red bristles, Hadrian's wall in full glory, and druidic Merlin in the forest, blue paint swirled across his face. Guinevere in this telling is a Pictish warrior queen rescued from Roman torture and confinement by Arthur and his gang. Lancelot is on the Sarmation riders and Arthur's right-hand man.
On one hand we have the Romantic King Arthur, told through the lenses of the Medieval French Court writers and therefore surrounded by the items and scenery of their world. On the other hand, we have a more historical Roman-British King Arthur, and Norma Lorre Goodrich echoes similar details in her compilation of research, King Arthur (1986).
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| Medieval Court Arthur |
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| Roman Legionary Arthur |
There's three points of interest to relate concerning Goodrich's volume: her writing style, the defense of her main historical source, and last but not least, highlights of the fascinating conclusions of her research. If I recommend this book to you, it is for the conclusions alone.
Writing Style
Goodrich's writing leaves much to be desired. Her style is assumptive, circular, labored, and at times inconclusive. She assumes the reader has a great understanding of all the documents and research concerning King Arthur as well as a deep understanding of British geography. Her paragraphs often express several points of information which she then fails to connect to each other or to the other paragraphs. Goodrich's descriptions of how she arrived at her conclusions are consistently labored. She provides lengthy information with bulky details within awkwardly written sentences. This is compounded by the fact that she offers no structure (other than chapter heads) to organize this information. In short, the reading itself is not a joy. If you read this, read it for the information, because the writing has nothing to offer you.
There's three points of interest to relate concerning Goodrich's volume: her writing style, the defense of her main historical source, and last but not least, highlights of the fascinating conclusions of her research. If I recommend this book to you, it is for the conclusions alone.
Writing Style
Goodrich's writing leaves much to be desired. Her style is assumptive, circular, labored, and at times inconclusive. She assumes the reader has a great understanding of all the documents and research concerning King Arthur as well as a deep understanding of British geography. Her paragraphs often express several points of information which she then fails to connect to each other or to the other paragraphs. Goodrich's descriptions of how she arrived at her conclusions are consistently labored. She provides lengthy information with bulky details within awkwardly written sentences. This is compounded by the fact that she offers no structure (other than chapter heads) to organize this information. In short, the reading itself is not a joy. If you read this, read it for the information, because the writing has nothing to offer you.
Defense of the Source
Goodrich's main source of information about King Arthur is "The History of the Kings of Britain" by the scholar Geoffrey of Monmouth, who lived in the early 1100s and claimed to have a wonderful and unnamed source of his own. Apparently he and his work are a bit of a controversy in the Anglophile scholastic community. Some have written entire works discrediting him and his work as complete touristy garbage, attempts to draw crowds to certain cities that were funding his work, etc. Others defend him vehemently, and Goodrich is among them. She says that his place names make no sense because he mistranslated or misread the original source or that he misunderstood them due to his limited geographical knowledge. She then works to unscramble his misnamed cities and correct them according to what facts point to concerning Arthur's life and times (it is believed he was born about 475 A.D. and his kingdom was the Border Country between Scotland and England).
I'm certain some scholars would manage to produce arguments, real or fallacious, to blow her theories out of the water, but would it be from a search for truth or a search to destroy genius of which they are envious? I'm willing to play along with her theories and marvel at their fascinating conclusions until convinced otherwise. In the meantime, I've already purchased Geoffrey's History so I can see this controversial evidence for myself.
The Good Part: Fascinating Conclusions
The face of King Arthur and his world that rises from Goodrich's research is a wild and tumultuous one. Instead of stone castles, there are hill forts. The Roman roads are still intact and in constant use. Arthur is the son of a British queen and a Roman noble, and he was raised training as a Roman soldier. His armor is that of a legionaire, rather than the steel plate armor we see in romantic versions of his story. His first major victory as a commander is when he leads in battle at age sixteen. Guinevere is a British warrior queen from a long matriarchal line. She carries the severed heads of her defeated foes on her belt, pausing occasionally to gaze at their faces in grim victory. Lancelot is not a dreamy French nobleman, but rather a Pictish berserker and king of a large portion of what is today Scotland. The idea of Guin and Lance running off together is not even a thought (the French court romantic writers came up with that to fit "courtly love" and the scandal that was so desired by their culture). The Round Table is not necessarily a table, and is in fact a possession of Guinevere, part of her estate shared with Arthur upon their marriage. Arthur and Lancelot are both required to marry well within the British Matriarchy in order to secure lands and titles for themselves, as British Matriarchy does not allow men to possess property. The fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages is in process during this time, and Arthur-Guin-Lance & Company are key to maintaining some semblance of sanity in the power vacuum after Rome abandons Britain.
Most of our modern tellings of King Arthur are told through the many layers of cultures that retold his tale before us, namely the French court romantic writers, with their castles, patriarchy, finery, knights, and courtly love. When those layers are peeled away, we see the Romantic King Arthur World turned almost completely on its head, leaving a world of Picts, British War Queens, Romans, and Druids. It's "face" of King Arthur that's even more mystical and wild than the other "faces" we encounter in modern retellings.
Encountering this world and highlights of its facets is probably what makes me recommend Goodrich's King Arthur in spite of its unstructured, deeply flawed writing style. If you can survive the method of the telling, the story itself manages to unfold like mist unveiling a distant world, piece by treasured piece.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Robin Hood (2010)
This movie may have six years of dust resting on it, but it's one that keeps haunting my thoughts about stories and all they should be.
This version of Robin Hood starts out as a more realistic telling, complete with gray morality and human characters. Richard the Lionhearted is corrupt and power-hungry rather than gloriously noble. Robin is a soldier deserting the army rather than the usual green-clad superman chortling at his enemies. Maid Marian is pragmatic and opinionated rather than a helpless and bauble-eyed damsel in distress.
The grey-shaded characters are softened by sweeping British scenery, amusing sexual tension in Robin and Marian's faux marriage, as well as humorous moments that make the middle ages accessible to modern viewers. One example of this is when Little John and the merry men go to the village party and dance with the locals, drink hearty, and do a little carousing. When they meet Marian the following morning, she grins and asks them if they had an "epic night," to which they hurrah in affirmation of that fact. It is just one of many moments when the medieval world leaps from the screen and seems to belong in our own. Those people could be people we know, having a good time on the weekend at the local bar.
The single moment that first engulfed me in the world of the film was early on, the scene in which the real Robin of Locksley is dying on the forest floor and Robin Hood is listening to his last request. There's a camera shot of Hood from the view of Locksley, and the trees can be seen above him, rustling. The sound of the wind in the trees is dubbed into the film, giving the scene a sensation of realism and of heralding Hood's destiny as it is handed to him by Locksley. It was that epic moment that officially submerged me in the reality set forth by the film makers. I handed over my imagination, ready to experience this version of Robin Hood's world.
The road from there included a desperately intense bluff made to Prince John, the introduction of Maid Marian and her father, the wild party in the village, and Robin recalling repressed memories of his father. There's also tough-as-nails Marian killing in self-defense, timing the stabbing of her would-be rapist just so. The last "worth-it" moment in the film is Prince John declaring that it's his first battle. He declares that he'll lead the charge, saying so in his childish voice before galloping off to the scene of the fight. The battle itself marks the beginning of disappointing divergences from the reality and the character which the filmmakers spent so much time creating.
It was such a marked change that I wondered if they switched writers or directors for the battle scene.
Problems:
1. Marian, who never witnessed her father's murder or met his murderer, somehow gallops onto the battle scene chaos and instantly recognizes the culprit and pursues him for revenge.
2. Marian, who has been wise and pragmatic until now, gallops her fully armored self straight into the ocean, falls off her horse, and begins to drown.
3. Robin Hood, who should be busy trying to not get killed, somehow notices her fall and fights his way to where she is spluttering.
4. Once Marian is rescued, the realism of the story completely falls away and takes a leap into Fairy Tale. Instead of getting out of the water, getting to safety, and helping their comrades, they sit in the water and have a sloppy make-out session.
These examples all take place in the span of about 10 minutes and manage to completely destroy the reality the filmmakers had built.
Epic rescues and romantic scenes mid-battle work fine in films like "Pirates of the Carribean," which operate in a world that is consistently unreal. However, when the filmmakers set up the world of the film as realistic and then wait until the third act to depart into fantasy, they only undermine the effectiveness of their tale and break their unwritten promise to the viewer.
The makers of 2010 Robin Hood made this exact mistake. They set up an epic tale tamed by realism, delivered it for the first two-thirds, and then took the easy way out through Fairy Tale Hollywood gimmicks. As it stands, they poked so many holes in their story that its only practical use now is for rinsing vegetables.
This version of Robin Hood starts out as a more realistic telling, complete with gray morality and human characters. Richard the Lionhearted is corrupt and power-hungry rather than gloriously noble. Robin is a soldier deserting the army rather than the usual green-clad superman chortling at his enemies. Maid Marian is pragmatic and opinionated rather than a helpless and bauble-eyed damsel in distress.
The grey-shaded characters are softened by sweeping British scenery, amusing sexual tension in Robin and Marian's faux marriage, as well as humorous moments that make the middle ages accessible to modern viewers. One example of this is when Little John and the merry men go to the village party and dance with the locals, drink hearty, and do a little carousing. When they meet Marian the following morning, she grins and asks them if they had an "epic night," to which they hurrah in affirmation of that fact. It is just one of many moments when the medieval world leaps from the screen and seems to belong in our own. Those people could be people we know, having a good time on the weekend at the local bar.
The single moment that first engulfed me in the world of the film was early on, the scene in which the real Robin of Locksley is dying on the forest floor and Robin Hood is listening to his last request. There's a camera shot of Hood from the view of Locksley, and the trees can be seen above him, rustling. The sound of the wind in the trees is dubbed into the film, giving the scene a sensation of realism and of heralding Hood's destiny as it is handed to him by Locksley. It was that epic moment that officially submerged me in the reality set forth by the film makers. I handed over my imagination, ready to experience this version of Robin Hood's world.
The road from there included a desperately intense bluff made to Prince John, the introduction of Maid Marian and her father, the wild party in the village, and Robin recalling repressed memories of his father. There's also tough-as-nails Marian killing in self-defense, timing the stabbing of her would-be rapist just so. The last "worth-it" moment in the film is Prince John declaring that it's his first battle. He declares that he'll lead the charge, saying so in his childish voice before galloping off to the scene of the fight. The battle itself marks the beginning of disappointing divergences from the reality and the character which the filmmakers spent so much time creating.
It was such a marked change that I wondered if they switched writers or directors for the battle scene.
Problems:
1. Marian, who never witnessed her father's murder or met his murderer, somehow gallops onto the battle scene chaos and instantly recognizes the culprit and pursues him for revenge.
2. Marian, who has been wise and pragmatic until now, gallops her fully armored self straight into the ocean, falls off her horse, and begins to drown.
3. Robin Hood, who should be busy trying to not get killed, somehow notices her fall and fights his way to where she is spluttering.
4. Once Marian is rescued, the realism of the story completely falls away and takes a leap into Fairy Tale. Instead of getting out of the water, getting to safety, and helping their comrades, they sit in the water and have a sloppy make-out session.
These examples all take place in the span of about 10 minutes and manage to completely destroy the reality the filmmakers had built.
Epic rescues and romantic scenes mid-battle work fine in films like "Pirates of the Carribean," which operate in a world that is consistently unreal. However, when the filmmakers set up the world of the film as realistic and then wait until the third act to depart into fantasy, they only undermine the effectiveness of their tale and break their unwritten promise to the viewer.
The makers of 2010 Robin Hood made this exact mistake. They set up an epic tale tamed by realism, delivered it for the first two-thirds, and then took the easy way out through Fairy Tale Hollywood gimmicks. As it stands, they poked so many holes in their story that its only practical use now is for rinsing vegetables.
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