Suprises Lie Abound
So I was taking care of my grandmother today, and I happened to wander by the television where Bill (my cousin) was watching Curious George for some reason (This was after I had my usual talk with him trying to convince him God doesn't exist and all). And to say the least, I was bored so I sat down and watched too. And yes, I did watch Curious George.
Besides being the first cartoon I've watched in a very long time, it had a basic plotline of where two siblings (I think they were siblings, at least) got in an arguement over some game, had a competition to see who could play the game, and then resolved their differences. George came in as the helpful sidekick/narrator. What amused me though was the resolution of the conflict: both of the siblings were basically ready to fess up and say 'No, I'm the one who was wrong here' and 'No, no, I screwed up here'. Otherwise, they were gluttons for punishment by the end of it. It's like I told
magic_7_words: we're all masochists at heart, and the only reason we fight wars, besides the whole innate destructiveness and all that good stuff, is because it's our way of screaming and begging for death. We all want to be the martyr marched down the street, staked and hung and burned. Maybe I'm just being cynical, but it's about time Lord Cynic paid a visit.
I have a hobby. Besides reading, doodling and all the assumed whatnot, my new hobby is people watching. Cynical people watching, to be exact.
Now, onto books. Or rather, shall we say, a bookfest!
The Lies of Locke Lamora. In a jist, it's basically Kell before the Lord Ruler ever caught up with him. A sort of younger, rougher Kell without so much morality, to say the least. As a book, it was good, though I wasn't sure if they had to curse every other page. It just sort of lost its impact after a while, and the random itilcized words were randomly irksome. The writing was decent, but not as good as Mistborn; more mainstream fantasy style, I guess you could say, thought it got remarkably better after the start. Or maybe I just got used to it. Slow start, but better paced around the middling to the end. There were also interspaced interludes that charted Locke's growth, but at other times, the interludes just seemed to fill in useless information that I still don't see much a point with. Decent read, though. All about the life of a thief, and his lies, and gods, does that guy lie a lot.
Oh, and apparently, there's a movie due soon.
Spoilery!
Well, for starters, I'm convinced in my entirety that Locke is a kleptomaniac, and a pathological liar. He just steals, steals and keeps on stealing: like the Thiefmaker said, he steals too much. I had a vastly hard time trying to underpin his motivations, as well. I mean, he stole from merchants and etc. in an attempt to keep an honest pay, and to keep the Capa off his back. That, I think, was my main problem with Locke: he had no reasoning for the actions he did, other than the fact it was a show of his cleverness and a tribute to his ego and pride. Although, I guess you could say that it was also a method of paying off the death offerings he owed, since he never specified if he had paid it off. But what I did really like in the book was how much import Locke had on his Gentleman Bastards: particularly Jean, who I'll get to in short notice. He basically set out to kill Capa Raza (I can't spell or remember his real name for my life), foil all of Raza's plans, sink about forty thousand plus into a bay, all for the three dead Gentleman Bastards. He wasn't nearly as charismatic or sheerly awesome as Kell was, but he was likeable enough.
Now Jean. If there was ever an example of a best friend, Jean most certainly fits the bill. He was pretty awesome, in his own way. The whole manner of how Locke and Jean interacted was likely my favorite part of the book. So, to sum it up: I just have to hold you till Jean gets here.
Dragon Weather. Pretty good book, if I say so myself. The writing style is pretty crisp, without an excess of anything. Basically, it's about a guy named Arlian, and his various travels and his quest for vengeance. Arlian was a tad hard to relate to, since he's pretty much single minded in his quest for revenge, but he has enough random side quests that humanize him and make him likeable enough. And of course, as with all tales of vengeance, things become grey, grey and greyer.
Spoilers(ish).
Well, mostly spoilers on the ending. Arlian actually kind of bored me at the start, to be frank. He was kind of flat, boring, and not too interesting. Course, he broke out of the mine, hid with some whores and met Lord Dragon. Now, THAT was when he got real interesting. He was basically willing to condone acts of violence, theft and etc. in his quest of revenge, and his idea of ‘justice’. I mean, the guy is actually convinced that what he’s doing is right. Or he is, at the start. He seems to be somewhat doubtful around the end, and his black and white world is breaking down around him with the ironic revelation that the means he has to exercise his vengeance will produce, in the end, the very thing he wanted to defeat. Which leaves us on a very, very grey note as to where he could end up in the next two books.
Dune. The first one, not one of the bazillion other sequels that came after. I guess it was finally a good thing to get to reading the actual start of the series, instead of starting off with the 4th book of the series. Running over the general things: for a science fiction book, it was good. Which is saying a lot, given how many sci-fi books I’ve seen that generally fall into the category of ‘AvoidLikeThePlague’; the writing was a bit dry, sort of detached and mechanical, almost. That’s how I thought it was, at least. The plot isn’t terribly hard to understand nor is it too complicated, and there was a surprising lack of plot twists. Still, a good book.
Spoilert
I have to say, actually reading the first book lets you draw a lot of parallels to Paul Atreides and Leto Atreides II: both were prophesized individuals of some greater future, and both committed some pretty bad acts in the name of the greater good. And if God Emperor wasn’t any indication, then it seems Paul gets to do a whole lot more bad things before he abdicates. But whereas Leto was willing to go to whatever lengths to ensure the survival of humanity, Paul wasn’t, and balked at the idea of losing his humanity and of creating a stagnant culture. A hard place and a stone to choose from, I daresay.