While working full-time doing something that is just a little tiny bit like writing, I realized that I once again needed to bounce back into the blogosphere in order to give my creativity a renaissance. I don't want my job to kill it, even though I stare at a computer screen for most of the day making sure the grammar is correct (with the irony being I am not going to get it right most of the time here, and frankly, I don't care so much here).
In order to resurrect the space without deviating too much from the original content, I have attempted to find something new and exciting in the world. Zip. Nada. I have found nothing apocalyptic by which I might find intrigue, and pique a new interest in this jaded, old heart.
So I go back to commenting on my writing progress. Yes, yes, anyone who has read me for any amount of time realized that I am working on my own novel. I got caught up in other things, because Life, after all, Does Happen. After two revisions, I am STILL not happy with it, but I did find a writing course which has, so far, been taking it to a new level of satisfaction for me. I recommend her courses because now I can actually afford them and the methods really work to build a crane over the work and pull it out of the mire in which it sank.
I thought what swam around in my head could be a great novel, but I realized I lacked enough scenes with great conflict. Even though what I saw in front of me was prose, I resorted to reading Blake Snyder's book on screenwriting called Save the Cat! It still proves to be a good resource so far, by giving you a basic skeleton for the three-act structure (screenplays or novels) and it allows the writer to see where they are missing material. I suspect I have the same problem as a lot of people, in that I can come up with a great setup and slam my characters with a zinger of a main conflict to get them out of their comfort zone and into the thrill of the story, and I know how the story will end, and I can even see a few great scenes play out in front of my very eyes, but it is too thin.
What it doesn't do, however is offer much in the way of how to actually fix that problem. It just tells you what you needed when you were done. Seemed a lot like baking a cake without a recipe. Someone says "You mix ingredients, stick it in the oven and out comes a cake." That's true, sure, but not precise. What ingredients go in it? How much? What order do you mix? How long do you bake?
Enter the course "How to Think Sideways" by author Holly Lisle. I stared at it for many, many months. Lack of a job and accompanying pay made me balk at the price tag, but I kept staring. I finally got a full-time job, had money to drop on the course and... wham. She doesn't run it quite the same way. BUT... she did release the courses individually online for a much more affordable price. And, the courses were always on the writer's timeline, with no datelines or homework, as such.
I am loving the results, but I am not quite ready to post anything just yet. Let me say that Holly is 100% correct in that little ends up being the same when you let your muse play. I've come up with so many new things that really add the punch I looked for that I wish I had scraped up enough and taken the course way back when I wrote the first draft.
The bottom line is that I need to get back to writing, both working on my novel and writing here. If I have any readers... drop me a line and let me know if I am taking too long between posts. I need something standing behind me with a cattle prod.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Friday, November 11, 2011
Wasteland Empires revisited
So I've been playing the FB game from Crowdstar called Wasteland Empires, and so far, I have to say I'm impressed. Of course there are a few things that could be improved, but this game is a beta, so enough people giving the creators feedback on these issues can only serve to assist at this point.
To start: the people are nomads, several generations beyond the devastation which ruined a futuristic society (not unlike the premise of Fallout, although Fallout's was the "future" of the 30's and 40's while this one seems to be the future of the 70's to 80's). Your people found an oasis, literally and figuratively; there is the wreckage of a sign which belonged to the Oasis Hotel and what was presumably a well or other water source just beneath the sign, long ago serving as mere decoration but now the heart's blood of a new colony. Your people decide to settle here and call this place "home."
The tutorial is essentially the first "Chapter," telling you how and what to build, how to scavenge the rubble to simultaneously gather resources and clear space for new structures. Characters who are supposedly part of your band of nomads tell a little story with comic book-style balloons in order to further the quest chain of that chapter. What irritates me about that is that they appear to give the last few lines of dialogue every time you load the game, so if you step away from the keyboard too long and it prompts you to replay, they pop up and those dialogue scenes can be fairly lengthy.
Most of the strategy I've experienced comes several flavors.
First, well placement. It's a big deal, because sources of water are the only structures that cannot be moved once placed, and require car batteries to complete, which you can only acquire by enlisting friends (so far I've needed three batteries per well, and you only get one battery per friend. The first couple of batteries are freebies, though). Since you have a limited number of batteries, you need to put them out at the edge of your oasis' coverage in order to maximize the footprint of your colony and allow the least amount of overlap.
Second, your deployment of offensive forces while in the raider colonies. You get to train 50% of your colonists as warriors, like scouts, crushers, spearmen, but whom ends up in battle is limited by your level. At my current reputation level, I get three squads of ten men to commit to battle. Most of the time I simply deploy them all in the same spot at the edge of the map where I can hit towers one-by-one without being aimed at by more than one tower, although that tends to bunch them up a bit for the scary boulder-throwers, which can knock out quite a few of my unarmored troops in one shot. But generally, if I cram enough folks onto one target, I can have it down before too many are lost. Once the towers are gone, there seems to be no more opposition to just bashing the crap out of the remaining buildings in order to scavenge supplies.
What I love: the feel of a real-time strategy in post-apocalyptic flavor. There's just enough cooperation required of nearly all the games written for Facebook, meaning that you have to invite your friends to play and they have to actually play the game (or at least log into it) in order to send the "gifts" you need to complete buildings. For instance, if I want to build out onto more territory, I have to place and complete wells. In order to complete the building of a well, I will need several batteries, and they can only be acquired when inviting friends into your gaming circle. Other items necessary for the completion of structures come directly as gifts (more cooperation), found when you attack the raiders' or other players' settlements, or when you scavenge the rubble around your colony.
What can be improved:
Get rid of the constant barrage of dialogues upon loading the game.
When placing a building, I am limited to the small window if I don't want to play full screen. Having the ability to move the screen about even when holding a building command would be fantastic.
The jumping from map to raider camp back to map then to the home colony is a bit cumbersome. Just have a function that will take you back to your own colony immediately after an attack.
There really does not seem to any sense of urgency. Even when, in the course of one quest chain, it says I was attacked, I was never attacked. Every battle at this point is offensive.
Overall, I've been entertained in a way that I have never been using a Facebook game. We'll have to see if it lasts.
To start: the people are nomads, several generations beyond the devastation which ruined a futuristic society (not unlike the premise of Fallout, although Fallout's was the "future" of the 30's and 40's while this one seems to be the future of the 70's to 80's). Your people found an oasis, literally and figuratively; there is the wreckage of a sign which belonged to the Oasis Hotel and what was presumably a well or other water source just beneath the sign, long ago serving as mere decoration but now the heart's blood of a new colony. Your people decide to settle here and call this place "home."
The tutorial is essentially the first "Chapter," telling you how and what to build, how to scavenge the rubble to simultaneously gather resources and clear space for new structures. Characters who are supposedly part of your band of nomads tell a little story with comic book-style balloons in order to further the quest chain of that chapter. What irritates me about that is that they appear to give the last few lines of dialogue every time you load the game, so if you step away from the keyboard too long and it prompts you to replay, they pop up and those dialogue scenes can be fairly lengthy.
Most of the strategy I've experienced comes several flavors.
First, well placement. It's a big deal, because sources of water are the only structures that cannot be moved once placed, and require car batteries to complete, which you can only acquire by enlisting friends (so far I've needed three batteries per well, and you only get one battery per friend. The first couple of batteries are freebies, though). Since you have a limited number of batteries, you need to put them out at the edge of your oasis' coverage in order to maximize the footprint of your colony and allow the least amount of overlap.
Second, your deployment of offensive forces while in the raider colonies. You get to train 50% of your colonists as warriors, like scouts, crushers, spearmen, but whom ends up in battle is limited by your level. At my current reputation level, I get three squads of ten men to commit to battle. Most of the time I simply deploy them all in the same spot at the edge of the map where I can hit towers one-by-one without being aimed at by more than one tower, although that tends to bunch them up a bit for the scary boulder-throwers, which can knock out quite a few of my unarmored troops in one shot. But generally, if I cram enough folks onto one target, I can have it down before too many are lost. Once the towers are gone, there seems to be no more opposition to just bashing the crap out of the remaining buildings in order to scavenge supplies.
What I love: the feel of a real-time strategy in post-apocalyptic flavor. There's just enough cooperation required of nearly all the games written for Facebook, meaning that you have to invite your friends to play and they have to actually play the game (or at least log into it) in order to send the "gifts" you need to complete buildings. For instance, if I want to build out onto more territory, I have to place and complete wells. In order to complete the building of a well, I will need several batteries, and they can only be acquired when inviting friends into your gaming circle. Other items necessary for the completion of structures come directly as gifts (more cooperation), found when you attack the raiders' or other players' settlements, or when you scavenge the rubble around your colony.
What can be improved:
Get rid of the constant barrage of dialogues upon loading the game.
When placing a building, I am limited to the small window if I don't want to play full screen. Having the ability to move the screen about even when holding a building command would be fantastic.
The jumping from map to raider camp back to map then to the home colony is a bit cumbersome. Just have a function that will take you back to your own colony immediately after an attack.
There really does not seem to any sense of urgency. Even when, in the course of one quest chain, it says I was attacked, I was never attacked. Every battle at this point is offensive.
Overall, I've been entertained in a way that I have never been using a Facebook game. We'll have to see if it lasts.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Jumping on the RTS Bandwagon
So I'm tooling around on Facebook today to check out something my friends sent me, and I see this add for "Wasteland Empires." Anyone who know me knows that I get that "deer-in-the-headlights" look when anything remotely apocalyptic crosses my vision.* So naturally, I click.
What I found was a somewhat interesting beta for a real-time-strategy (RTS) game. Being a big fan of Starcraft and Warcraft (gotta love those orc Peons!) I decided I would give it a shot. So far, I've been pleasantly surprised. It doesn't play much differently in that the player is required to gather resources, build defenses and buildings which allow the next level on the technology tree to be built.
A short cut scene plays at the beginning to get you into the feel of the game, not dissimilar to the Fallout series of games. They find "Oasis," call it home and start building from there. The resources are in the rubble around the initial spot, and sending your colonists out to scavenge not only nabs you the materials you need to build but also the space in which to expand as well.
The sounds effects and soundtrack are great for a game built into a Facebook app. I'd even go so far as to compare them to the original Fallout as far as dreariness and appropriate feel for the game. Certainly better than the drek Inon Zur cranked out for FO3.
The drawings are comic-book style, alright but not spectacular. Some of the icons used for the resources don't fit the gritty and grimy feel of the rest of the "world" but this game is a beta so I'm being lenient. I would be happier to see the people wearing real items in lieu of armor instead of the ridiculous fallbacks to oversized skulls on their shoulders. Otherwise, decent effort for the concept art.
At the end of the day, what the makers of the game really want me to do is to give it Five Stars as-is, but I wouldn't. Not yet. Would I recommend it to my friends, however? Sure. A great little app is a great little app to pass the time while chatting on an otherwise boring social networking page.
*There was a time when I was sitting down to watch television and I saw ads for "Friday Night Lights." Not being the closest thing to a sports fan, I missed the few sports references and was a little bit thrilled with the creepo, wastelandish look. I bet you can imagine my disappointment.
What I found was a somewhat interesting beta for a real-time-strategy (RTS) game. Being a big fan of Starcraft and Warcraft (gotta love those orc Peons!) I decided I would give it a shot. So far, I've been pleasantly surprised. It doesn't play much differently in that the player is required to gather resources, build defenses and buildings which allow the next level on the technology tree to be built.
A short cut scene plays at the beginning to get you into the feel of the game, not dissimilar to the Fallout series of games. They find "Oasis," call it home and start building from there. The resources are in the rubble around the initial spot, and sending your colonists out to scavenge not only nabs you the materials you need to build but also the space in which to expand as well.
The sounds effects and soundtrack are great for a game built into a Facebook app. I'd even go so far as to compare them to the original Fallout as far as dreariness and appropriate feel for the game. Certainly better than the drek Inon Zur cranked out for FO3.
The drawings are comic-book style, alright but not spectacular. Some of the icons used for the resources don't fit the gritty and grimy feel of the rest of the "world" but this game is a beta so I'm being lenient. I would be happier to see the people wearing real items in lieu of armor instead of the ridiculous fallbacks to oversized skulls on their shoulders. Otherwise, decent effort for the concept art.
At the end of the day, what the makers of the game really want me to do is to give it Five Stars as-is, but I wouldn't. Not yet. Would I recommend it to my friends, however? Sure. A great little app is a great little app to pass the time while chatting on an otherwise boring social networking page.
*There was a time when I was sitting down to watch television and I saw ads for "Friday Night Lights." Not being the closest thing to a sports fan, I missed the few sports references and was a little bit thrilled with the creepo, wastelandish look. I bet you can imagine my disappointment.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Back in Black (Holes)
Only for a bit. The novel is still on track, and I've got an expert reader going over my second revision, pointing out any huge, nasty, gaping, sucking wound in the prose. We caught a big one, and I'm churning out what I hope is NOT filler to make the points richer and more salient.
The truth is the book is becoming more of a murder/mystery set in the post-apoc world. Not what I intended to write from the beginning, but it just began to morph into one. Through the course of the first draft I had the characters moving all around the Circuit, but the central focus of the second revision is keeping everyone in town. This works well with me creating the world, as I can spend more time establishing the locations to make them more "real" and also to make them more integral to the story instead of just backdrop.
Of course, that also means I'll have to get them out of town eventually, so another few books are entirely possible, and I've got ideas for them already. (Publishers just LOVE to hear that the book, although a good stand alone, can lead to other stories. They see dollar signs for successful authors, since the sequels are almost guaranteed to sell).
So that's it. The characters haven't changed appreciably, and the plot hasn't either, but the format in which it is told has matured. I hope you'll still stick around, even if mysteries aren't your thing. It will still be (I pray) post-apoc goodness.
On another note: I'm really looking forward to Fallout:New Vegas, if only to see what the oldies music selections are going to be (and it comes out two days after my birthday, yay!). My parents had some of this music come out during their child/teen years. They actually saw the Inkspots perform live! ("Maybe" is playing. Mom: Hm, that sounds like the Inkspots. You know, your dad and I saw them when we were young. Me: jealous, sheepish grin). Its great to have the GNR station switched on, singing along with the cheery, sunny music while splattering a raider's head against the back wall with a well-placed .308 round from 100 yards away. Its even better when my parents pop in for a visit and realize what kind of game I'm playing while said music is played.
As for the other music: has anyone else turned off the background music in Fallout 3? Post-apocalyptic settings shouldn't have a background soundtrack. Silence is more effective. And Inon Zur's compositions are lukewarm at best. His music failed hardcore with Fallout:Tactics (which wasn't all that great a game, and didn't mesh with the FO canon as far as I'm concerned). If they wanted quality thematic sound, Bethesda should have called Mark Morgan and had him recreate the moods from FO1 and 2.
I swear, the music for the Glow location in the first Fallout is still the creepiest piece of music I've ever heard.
The truth is the book is becoming more of a murder/mystery set in the post-apoc world. Not what I intended to write from the beginning, but it just began to morph into one. Through the course of the first draft I had the characters moving all around the Circuit, but the central focus of the second revision is keeping everyone in town. This works well with me creating the world, as I can spend more time establishing the locations to make them more "real" and also to make them more integral to the story instead of just backdrop.
Of course, that also means I'll have to get them out of town eventually, so another few books are entirely possible, and I've got ideas for them already. (Publishers just LOVE to hear that the book, although a good stand alone, can lead to other stories. They see dollar signs for successful authors, since the sequels are almost guaranteed to sell).
So that's it. The characters haven't changed appreciably, and the plot hasn't either, but the format in which it is told has matured. I hope you'll still stick around, even if mysteries aren't your thing. It will still be (I pray) post-apoc goodness.
On another note: I'm really looking forward to Fallout:New Vegas, if only to see what the oldies music selections are going to be (and it comes out two days after my birthday, yay!). My parents had some of this music come out during their child/teen years. They actually saw the Inkspots perform live! ("Maybe" is playing. Mom: Hm, that sounds like the Inkspots. You know, your dad and I saw them when we were young. Me: jealous, sheepish grin). Its great to have the GNR station switched on, singing along with the cheery, sunny music while splattering a raider's head against the back wall with a well-placed .308 round from 100 yards away. Its even better when my parents pop in for a visit and realize what kind of game I'm playing while said music is played.
As for the other music: has anyone else turned off the background music in Fallout 3? Post-apocalyptic settings shouldn't have a background soundtrack. Silence is more effective. And Inon Zur's compositions are lukewarm at best. His music failed hardcore with Fallout:Tactics (which wasn't all that great a game, and didn't mesh with the FO canon as far as I'm concerned). If they wanted quality thematic sound, Bethesda should have called Mark Morgan and had him recreate the moods from FO1 and 2.
I swear, the music for the Glow location in the first Fallout is still the creepiest piece of music I've ever heard.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
From the Vault:
Not THAT Vault. And certainly not the Disney vaults. These are two reviews I did for Amazon on PA Books, which are two that I have at the bottom of the Fiction list marked with an X. Generally, when it comes to reviewing books on a major site like Amazon, if the book is good, I give it 5 stars and be done with it. I want to let people know that its good but discover their own reasons for liking or even loving the work. When a book is very bad, however, I like to state why I thought so, instead of being a simple-minded naysayer, and warn people away from truly horrible work. To that end, the reviews I leave behind tend to paint me as little more of a naysayer, which is entirely not the case. Here are the reviews:
DIES THE FIRE, by S.M. Stirling (Reviewed January 12, 2007)
I tend to agree with more of the negative commentary regarding this book. To reiterate the major points for consideration:
1) Why are all military-background protaganists in fiction from one of the elite groups? I served my country and I vouch wholeheartedly for the capability of the "normal" forces. Any Marine would be more than capable of possessing the needed survival skills, and could even instill discipline and order in civilians. There's no need, on this scale, to revert to the "Special Forces fallacy" that authors tend to lazily embrace to make their characters "special" or "exotic." Let's try "real" next time.
2) Related to the previous comment... I strongly suspect Mr. Stirling has had shallow or no experience with real Marines, elite forces or not. So much of Mike's character doesn't ring true to me and personally, I find him insulting and difficult to like as a protaganist. I could identify more easily with the character of Thomas Covenant in another novel...
3) Juniper is simply annoying. A good-hearted wiccan in the midst of evil Christians spouting Gaelic and spewing gooey songs. (Heavy-handedness will become my favorite phrase in this review; this time I think it was to impress some woman in Mr. Stirling's circle of real life friends). I see Julia Roberts in this role, using the "prostitute with the heart of gold" approach, such as in Pretty Woman. Another character who is difficult to like.
4) The author's prejudices seeped into the work, and the heavy-handedness shows. There is a difference between using it as a character flaw and an extreme pervasiveness throughout the work. Did someone comment that this was the political/theological antithesis of Left Behind? I would vote that as accurate, especially on the positive coincidence aspect (see comment 6).
5) This book has science on the order of Star Trek: "We use what works and what doesn't, we change the laws of physics to make it fit." Simple machines and solutions are ignored, or receive horrible treatment because letting them creep into his post-Change world would tip the balance of his authoring capability of actually having to research and deal with it. Another example of heavy-handedness.
6) So much coincidence! I am a Jane-of-all-Trades, and possess many and varied skills that would be useful for surviving this kind of aftermath. However, for as many years as I have or had been involved in Renaissance Faires and the SCA, I have yet to encounter as few people who comprise the vast majority of skillsets a mere handful of these folks cover. Heavy-handed, anyone?
7) Overall, I got the impression this was either A) written with the intention that it would be a TV Series or B) snippets of ideas badly stitched together. There were a lot of unnecessary TV-show filler interludes (like the inanely placed "love" scenes that do little or nothing for character development and are too demure to titillate readers who must have their erotica wedged in otherwise decent fiction). Too much chronological jumping also. Time tags can be overused in fiction, but here they would have worked throughout instead of at the beginning.
8) I WILL give Mr. Stirling kudos for the concept of a new way of turning society upside down. Personally, my favorite genre is "ye olde post-nuclear-attack" world, but I do enjoy something new, and I give it the two stars for that at the very least. (Edit, I changed my mind. Down to one star).
I'm done ranting. Where's my tea?
Edit: I'm revisiting this review two years later, and I wonder why I even gave it two stars? Maybe because I hoped somewhere along the way someone would come along and be inspired enough by Stirling's drivel to say to themselves "I can do better than that" and write another sci-fi novel in this same vein with plausible characters and rationale for the startling loss during this SHTF type scenario. I won't lie; it inspired me to start writing a PA novel. If this excrement can get published, then I have a more than decent chance of getting my own work printed and on the shelves.
THROUGH DARKEST AMERICA, by Neal Barrett (Reviewed 21 JAN 2004)
This novel began to flesh out a "real world" of a post-apocalyptic nature, but so much is left dangling that I have to wonder if a series of novels was intended. Even if one feels a little pity for the protaganist in the beginning, in the end there was no genuine justification for the reasons and the methods he used to get even with the murderers. The ending was more of a punchline to one long and horrific joke -if you read the first few chapters and the last few pages, that's all that is really necessary for understanding the world Barrett created.
I added a comment to this review that I found out later there was indeed a sequel, but a story needs to be self-contained in a single volume with very few threads left dangling, otherwise the intention of it becoming an obvious "buy the next book to find out what happens" publishing scam. Even comic books, while they may have a single unifying story arc throughout the series, contains a complete story in an issue or two. It is inexcusable in a novel.
DIES THE FIRE, by S.M. Stirling (Reviewed January 12, 2007)
I tend to agree with more of the negative commentary regarding this book. To reiterate the major points for consideration:
1) Why are all military-background protaganists in fiction from one of the elite groups? I served my country and I vouch wholeheartedly for the capability of the "normal" forces. Any Marine would be more than capable of possessing the needed survival skills, and could even instill discipline and order in civilians. There's no need, on this scale, to revert to the "Special Forces fallacy" that authors tend to lazily embrace to make their characters "special" or "exotic." Let's try "real" next time.
2) Related to the previous comment... I strongly suspect Mr. Stirling has had shallow or no experience with real Marines, elite forces or not. So much of Mike's character doesn't ring true to me and personally, I find him insulting and difficult to like as a protaganist. I could identify more easily with the character of Thomas Covenant in another novel...
3) Juniper is simply annoying. A good-hearted wiccan in the midst of evil Christians spouting Gaelic and spewing gooey songs. (Heavy-handedness will become my favorite phrase in this review; this time I think it was to impress some woman in Mr. Stirling's circle of real life friends). I see Julia Roberts in this role, using the "prostitute with the heart of gold" approach, such as in Pretty Woman. Another character who is difficult to like.
4) The author's prejudices seeped into the work, and the heavy-handedness shows. There is a difference between using it as a character flaw and an extreme pervasiveness throughout the work. Did someone comment that this was the political/theological antithesis of Left Behind? I would vote that as accurate, especially on the positive coincidence aspect (see comment 6).
5) This book has science on the order of Star Trek: "We use what works and what doesn't, we change the laws of physics to make it fit." Simple machines and solutions are ignored, or receive horrible treatment because letting them creep into his post-Change world would tip the balance of his authoring capability of actually having to research and deal with it. Another example of heavy-handedness.
6) So much coincidence! I am a Jane-of-all-Trades, and possess many and varied skills that would be useful for surviving this kind of aftermath. However, for as many years as I have or had been involved in Renaissance Faires and the SCA, I have yet to encounter as few people who comprise the vast majority of skillsets a mere handful of these folks cover. Heavy-handed, anyone?
7) Overall, I got the impression this was either A) written with the intention that it would be a TV Series or B) snippets of ideas badly stitched together. There were a lot of unnecessary TV-show filler interludes (like the inanely placed "love" scenes that do little or nothing for character development and are too demure to titillate readers who must have their erotica wedged in otherwise decent fiction). Too much chronological jumping also. Time tags can be overused in fiction, but here they would have worked throughout instead of at the beginning.
8) I WILL give Mr. Stirling kudos for the concept of a new way of turning society upside down. Personally, my favorite genre is "ye olde post-nuclear-attack" world, but I do enjoy something new, and I give it the two stars for that at the very least. (Edit, I changed my mind. Down to one star).
I'm done ranting. Where's my tea?
Edit: I'm revisiting this review two years later, and I wonder why I even gave it two stars? Maybe because I hoped somewhere along the way someone would come along and be inspired enough by Stirling's drivel to say to themselves "I can do better than that" and write another sci-fi novel in this same vein with plausible characters and rationale for the startling loss during this SHTF type scenario. I won't lie; it inspired me to start writing a PA novel. If this excrement can get published, then I have a more than decent chance of getting my own work printed and on the shelves.
THROUGH DARKEST AMERICA, by Neal Barrett (Reviewed 21 JAN 2004)
This novel began to flesh out a "real world" of a post-apocalyptic nature, but so much is left dangling that I have to wonder if a series of novels was intended. Even if one feels a little pity for the protaganist in the beginning, in the end there was no genuine justification for the reasons and the methods he used to get even with the murderers. The ending was more of a punchline to one long and horrific joke -if you read the first few chapters and the last few pages, that's all that is really necessary for understanding the world Barrett created.
I added a comment to this review that I found out later there was indeed a sequel, but a story needs to be self-contained in a single volume with very few threads left dangling, otherwise the intention of it becoming an obvious "buy the next book to find out what happens" publishing scam. Even comic books, while they may have a single unifying story arc throughout the series, contains a complete story in an issue or two. It is inexcusable in a novel.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
I'll Be Back
...Actually, I am already back. Let's just say the hiatus I've been taking is due to a project of my own. Namely, a post-apocalyptic novel of my own. I've gotten it written, and am into the revision process, which is much more time consuming than the writing itself. I have a deadline of submission to an agent or publisher by 15 APR 2010. That's right folks, Tax Day.
In the meantime, a lot has come to pass which I mentioned in earlier blogs, especially the release of many movies. I went to see 9 and I loved it. No specific critique here, as I hope to get some time to review it in the near future. I have not gone to see The Road or The Book of Eli. I am waiting to see them for the first time with my boyfriend when he returns, because I'm quirky/romantic/nostalgic like that. So shoot me. If you can get close enough before I take out your miserable existence with a headshot from my Reservist's Rifle. (I really miss the targeted eye shots from FO1/2!) When I see those films, I will include those in my reviews as well.
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