What I'm Reading: The Courts of Chaos

The Courts of Chaos is the fifth book in Roger Zelazny's Amber series of fantasy novels (see here, here and here for write-ups on previous novels in the series). I've previously described these as grown-up fantasy without the usual cliches, and that continues to hold true for this volume.

This is the final of Zelazny's original five novels and wraps up the story of Prince Corwin, who in volume three found himself unexpectedly ruling in Amber, the one true kingdom whose throne he had been fighting his siblings for, and who, in volume four, found ruling wasn't all it was cracked up to be. In The Courts of Chaos he travels to, well, the courts of chaos, where the final battle is taking place between the heirs of Amber and the Lords of Chaos, the two primeval realms of existence of which all the other worlds (including Earth) are but shadows.

I won't give away the ending except to say that it is wholly satisfying and yet, as usual with Zelazny, does not follow the expected fantasy path. In fact, Corwin's role in the battle is rather small though he has many other important tasks to take care of which bring him in contact with a variety of humorous and dangerous characters. Also as in previous volumes, though there is no lack of physical conflict, opponents are really just as likely to use trickery, seduction, wit, or even philosophic argument to achieve their ends.

I highly recommend this book to any fans of fantasy, or for those who think they might like fantasy but aren't interested in elves. I'll probably take a break from Amber for a while, as the next five books (all contained in my giant "Great Book of Amber" tome) form a separate story, started some years after Zelazny finished the first five.

Ranking the Summer 2015 Marvel Movies

So far I've ranked the Batman movies, the Superman movies, the other DC movies, the Avengers movies, the X-Men movies, and the non-Marvel and non-DC comic movies.  There's only one major franchise of super-hero movies I haven't ranked yet, and that is the Spider-Man franchise.  But I'll continue to put that off for a while, while I rank this summer's comic book movies.

As ever, my ranking system is
Green=excellent  Blue=pretty good  Black=Okay  Red=avoid

Avengers 2: Age of Ultron--Not nearly as good as the first one. Too bombastic, too long, a few interesting character moments but not enough of them. We learned a lot about Hawkeye, who it turns out differs significantly from his comic book version. He has a wife and children tucked away in some safe place in the Midwest, and the moments we saw of his household were among the best in the movie. The new characters Quiksilver and the Scarlet Witch didn't really resonate. This wasn't terrible, but it felt like a time-filler, and what a lot of time it filled.

Ant-Man--Just saw this today. A lot of fun, if a little trifling. Because Ant-Man can't rely on his strength to get by, he has to rely on cleverness, so that's a nice change of pace from most other comic book movies. For the nerds, the Ant-Man in the movie is Scott Lang, with Dr. Hank Pym as his mentor. Hews pretty closely to Scott Lang's comic backstory, although Dr. Pym had lots of changes, which makes sense as his is a character that was damaged by some really bad story-writing choices decades ago (depicting him as a wife-beater, for instance). Funny and fast-moving.

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Here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:

Crumb
American Splendor
Iron Man
Heavy Metal (1981)
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
Ant-Man
The Dark Knight (2008)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine
Sin City (2005)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men
Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
Swamp Thing (1982)
Iron Man 2
Watchmen (2009)
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Mystery Men
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Fritz the Cat (1972)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV

Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Constantine (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)
Hellboy (Haven't seen)
Judge Dredd (Haven't seen)
Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) (Haven't seen)
V for Vendetta (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)

What I'm Reading: Roundup

Hitlers letzte Tage or in English, the Last Days of Hitler, a truly classic account of the last months of the Nazi regime by H.R. Trevor-Roper. It's been a long while since I've read a book in German, and this is probably not the one I should have started back in with, as it's written in a very elevated, intellectual style. Getting through this is one reason I haven't been posting much here lately--this has monopolized my reading for much of the last few months. Endlessly fascinating, about how the last days of the war and the turning of the tide against Germany affected all the members of Hitler's inner circle. I've actually only gotten through about two-thirds of the book, but I'm going to put it aside for awhile.

Little Town on the Prairie I've been reading the Little House books to my six-year-old daughter for her bedtime stories over the past 18 months or so, and we're up to LTOTP, covering Laura Ingalls Wilder's life as she turns fifteen. This one is less interesting to me than some of the earlier ones, as it follows Laura's budding social life with the other girls her age in the small town of De Smet, North Dakota. Simply harder for me to get into the birthday parties and "sociables" that make up her evenings and weekends than the accounts of setting up a homestead in the wilderness in the earlier books. Still, even this one is packed full of details of interest to a modern reader--how the town celebrated American Independence Day (with lemonade and horse races), or what the new telegraph office looked like, or what jobs were available in a small town in 1881. My favorite remains Little House on the Prairie, with the Banks of Plum Creek a close second.

Silver Surfer I've recently filled in the couple issues I'm missing from the first dozen issues of the Silver Surfer's 1987 series, written by Steve Englehart and drawn exquisitely by Marshall Rogers, and am re-reading them now that I have the missing pieces. This was after a long period when the Silver Surfer had been exiled to Earth after betraying his former master, Galactus, which frankly made his earlier comics fairly boring. In the first issue of this series, though, he manages to escape the Earth's atmosphere, setting in motion the sort of galactic space adventures he should have been having all along. In these issues, he gets involved in a war between the galaxy-spanning empires of the Kree and the Skrulls, he tangles with a race of ancient space gods known as the Elders, and he acquires a girlfriend of sorts in Mantis, a half-plant half-human woman who can communicate with plant-life on any world she travels to with the Surfer. Highly entertaining and beautiful art. I don't think this is quite in the very highest tier of Marvel comics ever published, but it's certainly at the top of the second rank.

What I'm Reading: Five Dialogues

Plato's Five Dialogues is comprised of five short dialogues, each about 20-40 pages, and which all star Plato's teacher Socrates as the main speaker. The dialogues have to do with the trial and execution of Socrates by the city of Athens in 399 BC on the spurious charges of corrupting the youth of the city.

A person I know saw me reading this book one day said something like, "Plato? You read that for fun?" I think he had the idea that Plato is a hard read or a slog to get through, but nothing could be further from the truth. The dialogues are short and easy to read, and Socrates and the people he banters with are witty and clever. Socrates at times comes off as even a bit of a smart-ass. I think a thoughtful high-schooler would not find this book intellectually out of reach.

The first dialogue is called Euthyphro, and is a dialogue between Socrates and his friend Euthyphro outside the court building in Athens, where Socrates is about to be charged. Yet, Socrates is not interested in talking about that, he wants to know why Euthyphro is there. Euthyphro explains he is suing his father, who killed a slave who had himself killed a man. Euthyphro's relatives think he's crazy to sue his own father, but Euthyphro thinks it is the pious thing to do. Socrates digs a little deeper, hoping Euthyphro can explain to him what piety is, since he's so sure of himself as to sue his father in its name. Euthyphro cannot explain it adequately, even with Socrates's prodding, and the dialogue ends inconclusively with Socrates due at his trial.

The second dialogue is the famous Apology, when Socrates defends himself before the 500 assembled men of Athens on the charges that he has corrupted the city's youth. There is some debate among scholars about how much of Plato's works are truly the words of Socrates, and how much are Plato's own ideas that he put in Socrates's mouth. But there is little doubt here that this is a very close account of Socrates's actual speech in his defense, as Plato claims to have been there and this was apparently written soon after the trial took place. Despite a moving and powerful speech in defense of the philosopher's life, and that he had done nothing but help the youth of Athens seek wisdom, he is found guilty and sentenced to death.

The third dialogue is Crito, and is between Socrates and his old friend Crito, who has bribed the jailer and found a place for Socrates to live in Thebes, if he'll flee with him. Socrates however refuses to leave his cell, and walks Crito through a neat little philosophical argument, at the end of which Crito sees that Socrates could not possibly escape if he really meant all the fine words he said at the trial, for he had said that even if found guilty he would face death bravely because he knew he had always pursued the truth.

The fourth dialogue, Meno, seems to be something as an outlier since it takes place some unspecified time before the trial, when Socrates is speaking with Meno, a young man from a wealthy family in Thessaly who is visiting Athens. But it turns out to be necessary to understand the final dialogue, for here Socrates convinces Meno that the soul is eternal and people do not really learn, but only recall things that the soul already knew. He quite cleverly walks one of Meno's slaves through a geometry problem, with only an occasional suggestion helping the slave to find the right answer, as a demonstration of his theory.

The final dialogue is Phaedo, when Phaedo, who was at Socrates's side on this last day in prison before his execution, recounts the events of that day to a group of philosophically-minded men. That is something of a framing story, as the bulk of the dialogue is taken up with Socrates's own words describing his view to his friends that the soul is immortal, and that one who has lived an ethical, philosophical life may look forward to an afterlife in the company of the greatest of heroes and thinkers who have passed on before, In typical Socratic fashion he convinces them with beautiful arguments, calmly and rationally addressing all their objections, and ends with a moving description of his view of the world beyond. At the very end, he takes the poisoned chalice offered by the executioner with utmost serenity and drinks it without complaint, even chiding his companions for weeping when he himself is happy to see what comes after death.

What I'm Reading: Roundup

Some of my recent reading:

The Little Prince  My son read this book in his fourth-grade class this year for a class project, and since the book was lying around I picked it up. I probably haven't read it since I was his age! If you're not familiar with it, it's a child's fantasy book written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a Frenchman, and has a definite French flavor to it. It concerns the Little Prince, a boy who is visiting Earth on a visit from his own planet, a very small asteroid, and the man he encounters here, an airman who has crash landed in the Sahara desert. The boy is confused by the strange ideas of the man and some other adults he encounters, who busy themselves with figures, or drink, or ruling over others, when in his view the important things in life are flowers, sunsets, and friends. Quite a charming book and with a good message communicated to the reader in a subtle way. I had forgotten the ending is so sad!

Harrow County  Emmy just turned 18 and lives on a farm with her father. She has never traveled far from her homestead and has little idea about the world beyond a handful of distant neighbors, but she is intimately familiar with the woods and marshes around her farm. Now that she's of age, mysterious men start visiting the house and talking in hushed tones with her dad. She's seen people hanging out by the big scary old tree she's supposed to avoid out on the edge of their property, too. And her dreams the past months have become vivid and frightening, full of witches and dead children. Out on a walk in the woods one day, she follows a path she's never seen before and discovers a "haint"-- something like a ghost. She's scared at first but when she realizes it's only the lost spirit of a little boy, she picks it up and takes it home. Harrow County is a new comic series written by Cullen Bunn and beautifully, and so, so creepily, drawn/watercolored by Tyler Crook.

What I'm Reading: The Hand of Oberon

I recently finished The Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny, the fourth in the series of Amber novels (see here and here for write-ups on previous novels in the series). Last month I also read the third book in the series, Sign of the Unicorn, but did not write it up. Alas, I've been extremely busy lately and have neglected this blog!

In SotU and THoO Corwin has finally achieved his goal of becoming ruler of Amber, though he has not had himself crowned. At the beginning of SotU he finds his brother, Caine, murdered and realizes he was set up to find the body so it would look like he committed the murder himself. And as designed, his other siblings do suspect him of the murder, despite his protestations, with only his youngest brother Random firmly on his side. This is very bad for him as he has so recently taken control of the realm, only for court intrigue to switch into a high gear. To figure out who did it, he decides to contact long missing brother Brand, who Random believes is still alive but imprisoned in some distant shadow realm. But when they do locate Brand and bring him back to Amber, his story brings up more questions than they answer.

Like the first two books, this plays out much more like a mystery than like a typical fantasy novel, as Corwin tries to figure out how committed the murder, framed him, and what their motives are. His memories now are fully recovered, yet because he was out of commission for so long he still has too little information on the histories and intentions of his siblings. His search for clues and information provide the narrative thrust.

Yet, the setting is firmly fantasy, as his search takes him to places like the the Courts of Chaos and involves artifacts like the Jewel of Judgment. This hybrid is masterfully carried out by Zelazny, resulting in suspenseful novels that are truly unpredictable and fresh writing. I would recommend this to any fantasy fan, and mystery fans may enjoy these slim, fast-paced volumes as well.

What I'm Reading: Roundup

Here are a couple things I've been reading lately:

First Book of Samuel  This was part of my Lenten reading this year. It's been a few years since I've caught up again with Samuel, Saul, Jonathan, and David, and upon rereading this remains one of my favorite Bible books. (I've discussed it before, here.)

I had forgotten that David doesn't even appear until halfway through--the book is really about the obedient prophet Samuel, who comes across as the most respected man in Israel, even to the point that the people go to him when they decide they want a king. Of course he warns them off, but they insist, and the Lord leads him to Saul. But when Saul is disobedient, the Lord ends his reign and chooses the boy who will grow to lead the nation: David. I get chills in the great scene when Samuel visits Jesse, knowing that one of his sons will be the one the Lord picks, yet surprised to find it is the youngest, a boy ruddy and beautiful.

There are plenty of other great scenes too, and lots of action, and emotion, and even humor. Never mind its religious aspects, this book truly is a prime example of world literature.

The Guns of Avalon The second novel in the Amber series by Roger Zelazny. (I discussed the first book, Nine Princes in Amber, here.) This book continues the tale of Prince Corwin, one of the heirs of the fractious ruling family of the kingdom of Amber. I made a mistake of reading a review of this book--now that other review dominates my thinking, making it harder to form my own view. So, I may as well recycle one of that review's opinions--the critic pointed out that Amber is high fantasy, but that Zelazny totally discarded the previous rulebook about how to approach fantasy, giving the Amber books a freshness rarely found in fantasy novels. I think that opinion is about right.

As a writer, I'm also struck by how loose the plotting is, and I'm sure Zelazny just started writing with only a vague idea where the story was going. I'm not a writer who likes to plan things out ahead of time, so I can recognize when others are doing it. At its best, this approach leads to surprise and unpredictability, as the writer goes where his characters want to, letting the story develop as it will. At its worst, the approach leads to a lot of loose ends and meandering plot threads. Well, Zelazny is a master and The Guns of Avalon is completely unpredictable, yet comes together perfectly in the final pages. (It's been long enough since I've read these--twenty years of more--that I can't remember the twists anymore.) I'm definitely looking forward to the third book in the series.