Vijeo Gamez

While researching for a paper I had to write for my Shakespeare class I came upon a realization: nearly every single person on the planet who has gone through high school has strong feelings about Shakespeare.  Many love him, but most hate him.  Even more interesting is the fact that the great majority of those who hate his works have not read them, but simply SparkNotes'd (yes, I made that a verb.  What now, sucka!?!) their way through an English test.

Why does our generation have such strong feelings about things which we do not know?  And I'm the worst of us all.  For the longest time I refused to participate in activities simply because of what a friend of a friend said about them.  I just recently began playing some tabletop games (yeah, I'm that big of a nerd), and I absolutely love them.  It's nice to sit down with a few friends and play a game during which we have actual, meaningful conversation.  For so long I just played video games with my friends, and the depth of conversation was "Dude, you just got pwned!"

I have been an admitted social troglodyte, happily minding my own business and expecting the same.  I had no idea what I was missing.  I home-schooled for much of my life, and I still feel somewhat socially awkward at times (though I can fake it with the best of them).  However, once I made a conscious decision to step out of my comfort zone and reach out to people around me I find them not to be the strange individuals I had once thought, but kind, caring, enjoyable people.

This may sound Sunday School-ish, but I would encourage anyone who reads this to find someone you know but don't know, some acquaintance yet not-friend and be a friend to them.  You may hit a wall (like those who reached out to me for so long), but you may make a great new friend, with wonderful new opportunities.

Ok, I've waxed optimistic for long enough.

Latah.

Y

John Scalzi - Old Man's War

Another wonderful debut novel is John Scalzi's Old Man's War.  In this tale of intergalactic warfare, Mr. Scalzi goes beyond the normal Heinlein-esque cliches of most recent Sci-fi novels.  Not that I have anything aginst Robert Heinlein, because I love the great majority of his works (although The Cat Who Walks Through Walls leaves much to be desired), but apparently many sci-fi writers subscribe to the "if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing" mantra.  While Scalzi obviously got a great deal of inspiration from Heinlein, he goes above and beyond with the depth of his characters.  As beloved as Juan Rico is to me, John Perry has taken his throne.  While Rico was a great character who made the struggles of his life easily understandable, he was somewhat two-dimensional and unchanging, a trait not shared by Scalzi's protagonist.

The premise of Old Man's War is that, instead of recruiting armies from the young and inexperienced due to their physical prowess, a breakthrough technology that allows the transferring of one's consciousness into another body makes it possible to recruit the extremely old: just put them in new bodies.  These new bodies are cloned using their DNA, but are heavily modified to make them better warriors, such as increased strength and agility, more efficient blood (SmartBlood), etc.  The most important aspect is the BrainPal, a computer that is integrated directly into each recruit's brain, allowing them all sorts of abilities: storing information, communicating instantly among other BrainPal users, etc.  Basically, if you had an automated, intelligent Google in your head that actually answered your questions instead of giving you thinly-veiled porn links.

These new recruits go through boot camp and travel throughout the universe defending Earth's colonies from alien attack, as well as attacking hostile aliens and trying to take their colonies.  However, as the novel progresses, Perry's worldview (or universeview, I guess) begins to change as he confronts the reality they live in: everyone is constantly fighting everyone else, killing instead of finding diplomatic solutions.

I won't give away any more than I already have.  This is another book I highly recommend.  There are a few sequels that are also very good, especially The Last Colony.

9.5/10 - wonderful

Facebook Friends

Have you ever been on Facebook, looking at what's going on with your friends, when you come across some random person whom you have never met, yet is somehow your "friend"?  I only get on once a week or so, but nearly every time I do there is some complete stranger posting some inane crap about going to the store, or how no one understands her, or, my personal favorite, some obscure song lyrics.  "By posting these song lyrics I can show everyone how cultured I am, as well as letting them see how deep my innermost thoughts are, because I found a song that relates to my current situation."  Vomit.

Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind

Mr. Rothfuss's debut novel is, in a word, brilliant.  This book is one of the finest pieces of literature I have ever had the privilege to read.  I heard about it from Gabe at penny-arcade.com, and bought it mostly because I had few other prospects.  The fates had clearly conspired in my favor.

Mr. Rothfuss has set his story in a light-fantasy world.  This means that there are many fantasy elements (magic, dragons, etc.) but all the characters are humans; no orcs, trolls, goblins, dwarves, elves, etc.  This setting works very well for the epic scale of the story, but even if you don't care for fantasy works I highly suggest you give this one a try.  It is much about character development and interaction than rescuing princesses (even though the back cover begins, "I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings."

This book is a framed story, meaning it is a story within a story.  It begins in a small town, where we meet an innkeeper named Kote, who entertains a man named Chronicler, who was a scribe/historian who wants to record the history of a man named Kvothe, a well-known warrior, sympathist (read: wizard), and musician.  We quickly learn that the innkeeper is actually Kvothe, hiding from an unnamed enemy.  The true story of The Name of the Wind is the story Kvothe tells Chronicler about his childhood and teen years, and the adventures therein, from living on the streets of Tarbean to studying sympathy at the University to burning down the town of Trebon.

The true majesty of this book, however, is not in the story.  Don't get me wrong, it's a fine story.  It's got a likeable hero, a beautiful maiden, a dragon, and even a stuck-up pretty boy antagonist.  The true power, the beauty, the glory of this book is twofold: the characters and the imagery.

Rothfuss filled the work with wonderful characters, each unique yet familiar, as if he were describing your uncle, or that lady you saw at the grocery store, or your second-grade teacher.  The protagonist, Kvothe, is an extremely complex individual with Shakespearean depth.  Rothfuss manages to make us feel we know Kvothe like a brother, yet rarely says a descriptive word about him.  We simply see Kvothe live his life and love him, warts and all.

The other amazing element to this book is its beautiful imagery, which I am somewhat embarrassed to say moved me to tears several times (even on my 5th read through.  Yes, it's that good).  For instance, Kvothe is an extremely accomplished musician, and one section describes his attempt to make some money in a contest of sorts, but one of the strings on his lute is sabotaged and breaks just before the climax of the song.  However, he is able to continue on six strings instead of seven and finish it:

"It was not perfect.  No song as complex as 'Sir Savien' can be played perfectly on six strings instead of seven.  But it was whole, and as I played the audience sighed, stirred, and slowly fell back under the spell that I had made for them.

I hardly knew they were there, and after a minute I forgot them entirely.  My hands danced, then ran, then blurred across the strings as I fought to keep the lute's two voices singing with my own.  Then, even as I watched them, I forgot them.  I forgot everything except finishing the song.

...And then it was done.  Raising my head to look at the room was like breaking the surface of the water for air.  I came back into myself, found my hand bleeding and my body covered in sweat.  Then the ending of the song struck me like a fist in my chest, as it always does, no matter where or when I listen to it.

I buried my face in my hands and wept.  Not for a broken lute string and the chance of failure.  Not for blood shed and a wounded hand.  I did not even cry for the boy who had learned to play a lute with six strings in the forest years ago.  I cried for Sir Savien and Aloine, for love lost and found and lost again, at cruel fate and man's folly.  And so, for a while, I was lost in grief and knew nothing."

There is nothing more I can say to express my feelings for this book, full of passages such as this.

I can only come up with two minor shortcomings about The Name of the Wind.  First, it is a long book, spanning over 700 pages, but even this cannot be a negative thing when, by the time you finish, you wish it went for 700 more.  The other minor flaw is Kvothe's somewhat omniscience; the fact that he just happens to have some secret knowledge about nearly everything he comes into contact with.  This minor inconsistency can easily be forgiven, however, when taken together with the grandeur that is The Name of the Wind.


10/10 - exquisite!