Gears of War: Aspho Fields
So I decided to pick up one of the Gears of War books to see if Karen Traviss is as bad as I've been lead to believe. And, well.
Um.
Yeah.
Where to begin? I'm not even done with it, but this has to be some of the most ill-conceived backstories I've ever read. The sheer amount of... serendipity snaps suspension of disbelief cleanly in half. Marcus not only knew of Anya during the Pendulum Wars, he was under her mom's command. And the story wastes no time in setting up a love-at-first-sight instacrush that turns into the relationship revealed in the end of GoW2. Dom worked with then-Major Hoffman, and Cole was a rookie thrashball player.
Marcus, Dom, and Dom's late brother Carlos are shown to be boys who grow up dreaming of becoming a Gear and a trio of seemingly unlikely fast friends-come-brothers. They grow up, become Gears, and realize all their dreams come true.
No, really. I'm only halfway through and Carlos hasn't bought the farm in the backstory portions yet, but don't know if Traviss is trying to set up their pre-Emergence Day (or at least pre-Aspho Fields) military careers as being the obligatory idyllic life before the epic tragedy thing, but God.
This book takes every positive cliche about what military life does for you- gives you a sense of purpose, family, fulfilled duty, comraderie, et cetera and just magnifies it to nauseatingly cheesy proportions. This isn't even the sort of nonsense you get from a peacetime vet looking back on his career with nostalgia. This is the sort of thing every military recruit desperately hopes will happen and in their most realistic moments know that the best they can hope for is a handful of the above. Then a few years later they know that they probably got any two out of the list. Or they might even get all of the above, but they're like nice little nuggets that come and go, and the rest of the time is a lot of tedium, and nuggets of outright suck.
Then again, maybe that's just my offended warrior spirit talking.
The narrative itself isn't so bad. I just can't get past the fact that it seems that every character in the games already knows each other (and characters original to the book) and has known each other since the Pendulum Wars. And that someone from the same reason as Tai talks like a Cockney.
Oh, and the Stranded.
Christ, the Stranded.
Any time they come up, the book turns into a screed against individualism and self-reliance. COG's all about rallying together under one banner and all that good shit to a degree that Karl Marx would find overly optimistic. They're shown to be a bunch of selfish losers who choose to live in squalor and starvation conditions just because they don't like the idea of the COG. Even Baird, who in the games is shown to have no patience whatsoever for anything stupid, never hesitates to take the Party line. Maybe it's just favoritism on my part, but I always figured he had a better reason for disliking Stranded than "They won't join our glorious warrior collective." He's also characterized far more of an obnoxious whiner rather than a realist who can be obnoxious from time to time.
Yes, there is a difference. Shut up. He's also the resident butt monkey.
Although I did like the backstory behind Marcus' do-rag. (It's in regs!)
Knowing that Karen Traviss is the lead writer for Gears of War 3 is not heartening news. Although one thing did occur to me with the terrible story in GoW2:
When you're making a trilogy, you can't start with a first episode that is light on story and then decide to dump a ton in the middle one. You can handle it a bit better than they did in GoW2, but not much. Why? Well, you basically wind up with GoW2: You have to introduce a whole lot of elements as though they've always been there, which can be jarring but is acceptable, and then you have to resolve some of them.
Resolution doesn't really happen much in bridge episodes because you don't want to write yourself into a corner in the third one. But you should at least resolve some elements to all this story you're introducing. Gears of War 2 introduced a shitload of plot-starters and resolved absolutely nothing. It's like the literary equivalent of a severe case of blue balls.
In the hands of an excellent author, though, GoW3 could redeem the middle child's awkwardness. But it's in the hands of a somewhat competent one.
Um.
Yeah.
Where to begin? I'm not even done with it, but this has to be some of the most ill-conceived backstories I've ever read. The sheer amount of... serendipity snaps suspension of disbelief cleanly in half. Marcus not only knew of Anya during the Pendulum Wars, he was under her mom's command. And the story wastes no time in setting up a love-at-first-sight instacrush that turns into the relationship revealed in the end of GoW2. Dom worked with then-Major Hoffman, and Cole was a rookie thrashball player.
Marcus, Dom, and Dom's late brother Carlos are shown to be boys who grow up dreaming of becoming a Gear and a trio of seemingly unlikely fast friends-come-brothers. They grow up, become Gears, and realize all their dreams come true.
No, really. I'm only halfway through and Carlos hasn't bought the farm in the backstory portions yet, but don't know if Traviss is trying to set up their pre-Emergence Day (or at least pre-Aspho Fields) military careers as being the obligatory idyllic life before the epic tragedy thing, but God.
This book takes every positive cliche about what military life does for you- gives you a sense of purpose, family, fulfilled duty, comraderie, et cetera and just magnifies it to nauseatingly cheesy proportions. This isn't even the sort of nonsense you get from a peacetime vet looking back on his career with nostalgia. This is the sort of thing every military recruit desperately hopes will happen and in their most realistic moments know that the best they can hope for is a handful of the above. Then a few years later they know that they probably got any two out of the list. Or they might even get all of the above, but they're like nice little nuggets that come and go, and the rest of the time is a lot of tedium, and nuggets of outright suck.
Then again, maybe that's just my offended warrior spirit talking.
The narrative itself isn't so bad. I just can't get past the fact that it seems that every character in the games already knows each other (and characters original to the book) and has known each other since the Pendulum Wars. And that someone from the same reason as Tai talks like a Cockney.
Oh, and the Stranded.
Christ, the Stranded.
Any time they come up, the book turns into a screed against individualism and self-reliance. COG's all about rallying together under one banner and all that good shit to a degree that Karl Marx would find overly optimistic. They're shown to be a bunch of selfish losers who choose to live in squalor and starvation conditions just because they don't like the idea of the COG. Even Baird, who in the games is shown to have no patience whatsoever for anything stupid, never hesitates to take the Party line. Maybe it's just favoritism on my part, but I always figured he had a better reason for disliking Stranded than "They won't join our glorious warrior collective." He's also characterized far more of an obnoxious whiner rather than a realist who can be obnoxious from time to time.
Yes, there is a difference. Shut up. He's also the resident butt monkey.
Although I did like the backstory behind Marcus' do-rag. (It's in regs!)
Knowing that Karen Traviss is the lead writer for Gears of War 3 is not heartening news. Although one thing did occur to me with the terrible story in GoW2:
When you're making a trilogy, you can't start with a first episode that is light on story and then decide to dump a ton in the middle one. You can handle it a bit better than they did in GoW2, but not much. Why? Well, you basically wind up with GoW2: You have to introduce a whole lot of elements as though they've always been there, which can be jarring but is acceptable, and then you have to resolve some of them.
Resolution doesn't really happen much in bridge episodes because you don't want to write yourself into a corner in the third one. But you should at least resolve some elements to all this story you're introducing. Gears of War 2 introduced a shitload of plot-starters and resolved absolutely nothing. It's like the literary equivalent of a severe case of blue balls.
In the hands of an excellent author, though, GoW3 could redeem the middle child's awkwardness. But it's in the hands of a somewhat competent one.