Critical Myth-Interpretations

I have a love/hate relationship with most action/adventure games.  I love how smooth the gameplay can be, and when it’s well-designed, most of the inherent frustrations don’t matter so much.  But I hate the games that are so hard and demanding that it’s remarkably easy to “die”, thus forcing you to re-start the game and, if lucky, start at some point that was about two hours earlier in your life.

The trick to the new “Prince of Persia” is not ridiculous difficulty or even the most compelling of stories.  It’s how well the creators of the game managed to turn the experience of failure into a fluid return to the game.  When you make a wrong move, misread a situation, or let an enemy get the better of you, your ever-present partner Elika uses her magic to save you and deposit you on the most recent patch of solid ground.  As a result, you can try the same sequence of moves as many times as necessary to achieve your goal.

For some, that sounds like a cheat.  In effect, however, it makes the game incredibly immersive, because you start to love that gorgeous batch of pixels saving your butt on a regular basis.  It also means that the game becomes addictive very quickly, because there’s no unwelcome “end screen” and restart sequence to remind you that it’s been several hours since you started playing.  I literally beat the game at the end of a six hour marathon.

It also helps that the visual style is stunning.  Instead of pushing for photo-realism, the creators went for something out of a fairytale.  Combined with a stirring musical score, the visual style pulls you into the setting incredibly well.  The fact that the game is less about button-mashing and more about rhythm and pacing only adds to the serenity of the gameplay.

There are some battles to be fought, and they can get annoying, but almost all of them are an exercise in patience, rhythm, and flow.  Miss the flow and the battle becomes endless and frustrating.  Find the flow and the battles are simplicity itself, and just as visually appealing as the rest of the game.

I wouldn’t call this a particular difficult game; I finished it in around 10 hours, and I was taking my time.  Experienced gamers will likely find it easy and therefore a bit disappointing, especially the aspects that seem to hold your hand.  But for me, it was more than worth the time.  Some games are meant to be fun and played for relaxation, and this is one of them.

Rating: 9/10

This was the final novel to be published under the original book contract, and it is by far the shining jewel of the collection.  In a very real sense, this book presages the kind of tight continuity that marks the trilogies that followed.  The story of what happened to Sinclair between his arrival on Minbar and his eventual return to Babylon 5 in “War Without End”, this is a gift to any dedicated Babylon 5 and Jeffrey Sinclair fan.

The author spends a great deal of time reconciling some apparent contradictions within the series proper: specifically, the political changes in Minbari society and the rise of the Rangers, a force consisting of Humans and Minbari.  Why would a Grey Council, dominated by an isolationist warrior caste, agree to fund and foster a group of warrior-priests with a Human leader?  This book makes the case fairly well, and explores Sinclair’s personal development in the process.

Two other topics are explored along the way: the personal history of Marcus Cole and the fate of Catherine Sakai.  It’s always been odd to imagine that Marcus could undergo such strenuous training, substantial enough to make him an effective fighter and teach him so much else, when it had to happen in less than a year!  It’s still a stretch of the imagination, but this novel does make a bit more sense of the notion.

Seasoned “Babylon 5” fans know that Catherine Sakai was originally meant to fulfill the role that Anna Sheridan ultimately held, had Sinclair remained the central character of the series.  This book adjusts the overall story to give Catherine’s later absence a reasonable explanation, and even alludes to her ultimate fate.

The author was given the daunting task of repairing some of the damage done when the original plans for the series were altered after the first season by network intervention and the realities of syndicated television.  The only complaint one might have is that the novel simply isn’t long enough or detailed enough.  The reader is left wanting more.  Is there any better compliment that can be made?

Rating: 10/10

This is the second book in the soon-to-be-completed “Wheel of Time” saga, as most fantasy fans are aware.  It’s been several months since I read the first book in the series, and I was a bit concerned that the second book would be hard to crack without full memory of the details.  Thankfully, this book eased into its plot slowly enough that I was rarely lost or confused.  In fact, if anything, I was quickly reminded that Jordan’s writing style makes it rather easy to find out what’s happening, because not a moment passes that isn’t explored in endless detail.

That probably sounds like a bad thing, but I’m already aware that the books can bog down in sections that appear to go nowhere.  Forewarned is forearmed, and while this is still one of the earlier novels (and thus more quickly paced than some of the later novels, as I’ve been given to understand), I was ready for the long setup process.

After reading this novel, I had a much better understanding of the Aes Sedai and their structure, and that part of the series continues to be my favorite aspect.  The trials of Egwene and Nynaeve shed light on how magic works in this particular universe.  This stands in stark contrast to Rand’s own channeling and his battle at the end of the book, which I found somewhat confusing.

One thing that has struck me, both in this novel and the previous one, is the invocation of themes from Arthurian legend, Christian dogma, and European myth.  Certainly there are parallels to Tolkien’s work, but there are aspects that seem very similar to “Dune” as well.  In particular, having just re-read “Dune” again, I saw parallels between the Aes Sedai and the Bene Gesserit.  Thankfully, these connections, while fairly blatant, are never cloying enough to undermine my enjoyment of the novel.

Two additional things came to mind in the course of reading the novel.  First, Jordan appears to have a massive story to tell, and while he’s taking his time, there does appear to be a game plan.  Second, I can only hope that all of the parallels and connections are intentional and tie together into a point to the entire story.  Because this doesn’t simply feel like a massive story meant to be told well; it has the unmistakable feeling of a story meant to hold Meaning.

It’s more than I could say for a number of popular fantasy sagas currently on the shelves.

Rating: 8/10

I’ve read “Dune” so many times in my life that the binding of my hardcover copy has long since been broken.  There’s really no need to discuss how wonderful the book is, or how much it changed my perception of the world, science fiction, and how it all tied together.  To call “Dune” a tour de force of imagination is practically a cliché.

Instead, this time around, I was looking at the novel in light of the recently published prequels.  A great many things stood out in the prequels as inconsistent with my memory of the original novels, and having tackled the “Legends” and “House” trilogies, it seemed like a good idea to refresh on the classic novels.

Considering how many basic facts were contradicted (such as Paul’s birthplace), it’s stunning how many of the broad plot elements in the trilogies were right there in the original text.  It wasn’t hard at all to understand why the new authors went in the direction they did on certain topics, particularly in terms of the “Legends” trilogy.  Oddly, most of the discrepancies and tonal disharmonies take place between the “House” trilogy and the classics.

It’s also interesting how the saga as a whole has created such a mystique around the novel that it always feels like something is missing on every new re-read.  “Dune” is actually the most straightforward of the classic novels, despite the depth of the universe, and it’s almost as if the words themselves only scratch the surface.  That quality only serves to reinforce the primary weakness of the Herbert/Anderson novels; the new novels may be detailed and might cover a dozen plot threads, but they lack the substance of Herbert’s original creation.

Rating: 10/10

It’s been quite some time since I read a book in the Ender series.  Quite frankly, I never expected Card to return to the saga after he seemingly closed things out in “Shadow of the Giant”.  Sure, there were a few loose ends, but I was satisfied that the story had been told.  Apparently that was not the case, as this novel attempts to take care of those dangling threads and reconcile a few continuity discrepancies.

I often enjoy novels that exist for the sole purpose of repairing continuity inconsistencies, because those are the things that nag at me incessantly.  Of course, that’s usually something that’s reserved for media tie-in properties, where authors will take it upon themselves to take care of gaps and plot threads from the parent series.  Some authors in the “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” franchise, for instance, produce some of the best novels in that fashion.

When it comes to science fiction literature outside of the media tie-ins, however, it’s a risky business.  The “Second Foundation Trilogy”, for example, was a noble failure at an attempt to resolve the loose ends of Isaac Asimov’s classic saga.  Many of the new “Dune” books create more continuity problems than they’ve resolved.  At least, in this case, the author himself is attempting to make all the Ender novels, short stories, and comics and pull them together into one cohesive whole.

The end result, however, feels generally unnecessary.  Having never read the short stories or the comics, I never recognized the apparent continuity problems and never yearned for a novel to make it all work together.  Like most of Card’s more recent novels, there’s a bizarre need to insert political and social statements that don’t always mesh well with the circumstances (a problem seen more often in the “Shadow” series).

That said, it was good to see Peter receive a better treatment as the Hegemon than he received in the “Shadow” series.  Peter’s rise to power was a lot more disappointing once it was explained; it was an example of something that could have remained in the background, left to the readers’ imaginations.  The same, of course, could be said for this book.

Rating: 6/10