Category Archives: Books

A Candle in the Darkest Age: Worlds of Arthur by Guy Halsall

Posted on by

Oxford University Press,  384 pages, Publication date:  April 4, 2013

King Arthur is by far the most popular and most written-about king of England. Legends of Arthur have multiplied not only in the British Isles, but in France, in other European countries and more recently, in North America. Tales of Arthur began appearing in the early ninth century and continued to appear through Victorian times to the present day. In fable and books, around medieval campfires and flickering on the silver screen and TV sets of the 21st century, King Arthur and his Knights of the Round table are ever with us. On the literary scene, recent years have produced a virtually continuous flow of books about Arthur,  each “scholarly tome” claiming to have unlocked the truth about the “once and future king.” We apparently have an insatiable appetite for these stories.

The author of Worlds of Arthur is Professor Guy Halsall. Halsall joined the History Department at the University of York (UK) in January 2003. His doctoral research — carried out at York — was on the archaeology and history of the Merovingian region of Metz (north-eastern France and southern Germany), c.350-c.750. It was perhaps inevitable that his researches and the putative world of King Arthur would collide. And so they have. Worlds of Arthur is the result.

Guy Halsall makes a valiant and largely successful attempt to sort through the evidence — reality and myth — as it pertains to the Arthurian legends. He bravely takes on both the “historical” Arthur — the man waging a glorious but doomed struggle to save civilization from the incoming Anglo-Saxon tide — and the mythical King accompanied by his legendary retinue: Lancelot, Guinevere, Galahad and Gawain, Merlin, Excalibur, the Lady in the Lake, the Sword in the Stone, Camelot, and the Round Table.

Knowing in advance that no one wants their favorite stories debunked, he starts with a cold splash of reality. In all likelihood, ”King Arthur” never existed. In the unlikely event he did exist on some level somewhere — even as a prototype — we know zilch about him and thus no one, including the author, is going to reveal any exciting new evidence of Arthur’s existence. There is no evidence to reveal. This position is driven home repeatedly, so if you are waiting for an Arthurian revelation, you are bound to be disappointed.

Arthur is a literary and mythological figure, not a real one. Not even loosely based on an historical person(s). Halsall states up front any book claiming to know the real Arthur is bunk. Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere, Arthur and all his knights did not exist. Guy Halsall makes it absolutely clear and repeats his position over and over: There is no evidence supporting an historical Arthur.

“The Death of King Arthur”

Having put up front, Dr. Halsall sets himself a rather difficult literary task. How can you keep a reader’s interest for the remainder of the book? Before you have gotten a quarter of the way through, he has declared his position, debunked what is currently the only “evidence” on the “proof” side of the Arthurian equation. What is left?

Halsall writes with humor and wit. Academic though this book is, he tries hard to be understandable by those who are not Ph.D. levels in archeology. In this, he is modestly successful. I’m fascinated by archeology and have read a great deal of archeological stuff over the years. I understood most (not all) of the technical terminology. I’ve explored ruins and attended lectures, but this is dense material. No matter how light-hearted and humorously approached, there is no avoiding the essentially academic nature of the book. It’s not for everyone. You need a background in archeology to understand the author as well as significant personal interest in the subject to stay with the book.

If you have the interest, there is much to learn. Worlds of Arthur is a thorough examination of the evidence and more to the point, a thorough dismemberment of what has been called evidence by other authors. Ironically, one of the unintended results of reading this book was it piqued my interest in reading the books the author is debunking, not because I think they contain “real evidence” but because they sound intriguing as fiction.

If you are passionate about Camelot, Arthur and the gang, this is a thoroughly researched, well-written book that picks apart all previous writings on the subject with minute care. It belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who claims to be a fancier of medieval British archeology. It’s not a riveting tale with lot of surprises. There is no question about where the author is heading since he lays out it all out in the introduction.  The author is a better writer than most academics and makes the going easier with a light touch and a sense of humor. But in the end, this is an academic treatise.

I enjoyed it. Having read many books of this type over the years, I knew what to expect and was prepared to do some mental calisthenics. Give my brain a bit of exercise. There are no revelations in the book. From a broad perspective, I knew at the end of the book what I knew at the start —  that there never was a real King Arthur or Round Table or any other of the well-loved mythical characters. Since I never believed the characters were real in the first place, it was no shock. There is nothing shocking in Worlds of Arthur. It allows no wiggle room to find a real Arthur somewhere in archeological or historical data. But if you are genuinely interested in the early medieval period in England, there’s a lot of well-presented information to digest about a time about which little is known and less has been written. The Dark Ages are dark. Worlds of Arthur: Facts & Fictions of the Dark Ages lights a candle in that darkness.

The book is available on Kindle and hardcover. There are illustrations that might benefit from viewing on paper rather than the smaller format of a Kindle, but the Kindle version does include them so the choice is yours. If you’re an armchair archeologist or medievalist … or just fascinated with the world of Arthur, give this a read. It’s worth your effort.

- – -

Related articles

From Earth to the Moon and Far Beyond: Encounter With Tiber

Posted on by

Encounter with Tiber by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes

Open Road Media
Publication Date May 28 2013

Originally published in July 1996, Encounter With Tiber was rereleased on Kindle on May 28th. I’m a lifelong fan of science fiction and of space exploration. I watched the moon landing in 1969 — the glory days of NASA — and dreamed I’d live to see space flight become accessible to everyone, even me. I was doubtful I would see space, but if someone offered me a lift, I’d have taken it in a heartbeat.

I jumped into reading this with enthusiasm. Buzz Aldrin’s fingerprints are all over the first section of the book. Not only does it give you an up-close and highly personal look at the inner workings of NASA, but it gives you an uncomfortably intimate view of the politics of America’s space program.

From this, I gleaned an enormous amount of information about what happened to the U.S. space program and how come, more than 40 years after landing men on the moon, our space program is moribund, mired in budgetary insufficiency, the dreams of venturing into space essentially dead on the launch pad. The 16 years since the publication of the book have dealt unkindly with NASA. It’s hard to see what it would take to revive the program.

Buzz Aldrin salutes the U.S. flag on Mare Tran...

Buzz Aldrin salutes the U.S. flag on Mare Tranquillitatis during Apollo 11 in 1969.

This first part of the book is a beautiful presentation of our space technology, why it worked, why it stopped working. For the first time ever, I actually understand the workings — and failures — of our technology.  Aldrin uses diagrams to explain all kinds of stuff that I had heard about and never understood. I know it is supposed to be fiction, but it felt very real.

Then the book switches authors. Rarely in a co-authored book has it been so obvious to me when one author stopped writing and the other picked up. The style goes from scientific and precise, to … something else. Aldrin writes like the scientist he is. Barnes writes like a novelist for whom detail is optional.

Aldrin poses on the Moon, allowing Armstrong t...

Aldrin poses on the Moon, allowing Armstrong to photograph both of them using the visor’s reflection.

The change in “voice” is abrupt and a bit jarring. Both authors write well but quite differently. This is an ambitious book of almost 600 pages. It covers the development and fizzling of our space program then takes off into the stars with a crew composed of different races leaving from other planets in another star system. The stories tie together.

I was somewhat put off by the sudden switch from Aldrin’s precision to Barnes lack thereof. Aldrin explains everything and can’t go 10 pages without a diagram. You don’t spend a lot of time saying “huh?” Barnes doesn’t bother to define terms like “day” and “week” when changing to a planet whose rotation and orbit is entirely different from Earth so that common terms like “day” and “week” are meaningless. Vague and belated attempts to rectify the initial omission are more annoying than satisfying. Eventually, I just rearranged my brain and enjoyed the journey.

The characters — human and otherwise — are interesting, though the aliens weren’t sufficiently alien for me to feel their alienness. They seemed more like humans in furry costumes. The aliens weren’t very.

English: Footprint of Buzz Aldrin on the Moon

Footprint of Buzz Aldrin on the Moon

It’s worth the read though I think you’ll need to be patient as you travel on this journey. Encounter With Tiber is a long, complicated book, multi-faceted and thought-provoking.

It’s worrying because the failure of our space program could, if you accept the book’s premise, ultimately doom us to extinction. Not tomorrow, but eventually. A basic tenet of the book is that in the end, everything dies. All planets, all stars have a life span. Worlds get old. If a sentient species has no way to escape its dying planet, it will die with the planet. It’s enough to give one pause. If you never thought about it before, Encounter With Tiber will get you thinking in new directions, perhaps worrying in new directions.

Think of this as two separate book fused together, related, but not the same. It will make more sense and be easier to read. Essentially, that’s what it is. Two books. Two authors. Related, but not the same. Everything you never wanted to know about NASA and then a trip through the stars in an alien ship looking for a new planet to call home.

- – -

Related articles:

Too much of a good thing? Richelle Mead’s Storm Born

Posted on by

Richelle Mead

Eugenie Markham — AKA Odile Dark Swan — fights creatures from the Otherworld for a living. She a shaman and she’s at the top of her game. It’s one Hell of a game she plays. Even so, she find it slightly disturbing to discover her name has become public knowledge in the Otherworld. Her true name, the one by which she can be summoned. It becomes even more disturbing when she realizes every bizarre creature she meets wants to mate her or rape her. Except for those who would rather just kill her. Not that she’s unused to danger, but this is a bit much.

When she meets an incredibly handsome, sexy veterinarian and falls into bed with him — not normally her style at all — then realizes that he’s not entirely human … well, that’s one unpleasant surprise over the line.

The shocks keep coming. Eugenie learns that she is not who she thought she was. In fact, hardly anyone or anything is what she thought it was and she has a lot of readjusting to do. Her most fundamental beliefs about good and evil, right and wrong are up for grabs. What she has to learn is overwhelming, but what she needs to unlearn is even harder.

This is a sexy, fun romp through the land of the Fae, or as they like to call themselves, “The Shining Ones.” There are Kings and Queens, battles, shape-shifters and plenty of sex. As in most fantasy books, all the guys are incredibly handsome. The women are astoundingly beautiful.

Sex makes the world explode. Magic is everywhere. There were times when the story reminded me more of something by Terry Pratchett than Richelle Mead. There’s a hint of wackiness in the story that made it sometimes extremely funny, clearly intentionally.

Storm Born is the first of a series that also includes The Thorn Queen,  Shadow Heir and Iron Crowned. All are available  as paperbacks and on Kindle, and as audiobooks from Audible.com.

I listened to this as well as reading it. Although I got through it, I did not at all like the narrator who was stiff and rather stilted and seemed miscast. I was disappointed in the audiobook and suggest that you might be happier reading this on Kindle or paper.

- – -

Related articles

Racism and Revisionist History — Three Bad Men: John Ford, John Wayne, Ward Bond

Posted on by

Three Bad Men: John Ford, John Wayne, Ward Bond by Scott Allen Nollen

As big a fan of these three men as I am, there is a level of revisionist history that is impossible to simply accept.

I actually had to stop reading the book, at least for a while. It’s a temporary interruption I’m sure, but I needed to back off from Three Bad Men. I needed to take a few deep breaths and calm down before continuing.

This book chronicles the lives and friendships of John Ford, John Wayne and Ward Bond. Two great actors and one extraordinary director. It’s an interesting read. I have been reading, as is my habit, slowly, savoring. I was enjoying it.

Until I got to the section in which the author claims Ford used Stepin Fetchit and other minorities to “slyly mock America‘s racism“.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.jpg

That’s just not true. What I see — and have always seen — is the perpetuation of racism by Pappy. As much as I love John Ford’s westerns, there’s no escaping the racism in his films. They were still calling Woody Strode “boy” as late as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Even considering his belated attempt to make some reparations with Cheyenne Autumn, it was much too little and way too late.

I’ll get back to the book in a while, when I have calmed down a bit. Right now, I’m sorry. I simply can’t continue reading it.

- – -

Related articles

Gameboard of the Gods, Richelle Mead

Posted on by

Gameboard of the Gods by Richelle Mead

PENGUIN GROUP, Dutton Adult

Publication Date : June 4, 2013

Every once in a while, a book takes you by surprise in a good way. This was one of those times.

English: American author Richelle Mead (born N...

Author Richelle Mead

June 4th marks the introduction of Richelle Mead’s new “Age of X” series. Gameboard of the Gods is a science fiction urban fantasy cum mystery that’s got all the stuff we want in the genre in the right quantities to make it yummy and leave you wanting more.

In a future world nearly destroyed by strife resulting from religious extremism, Justin March lives in exile. His crime? Reporting the truth of what he saw … an inexplicable, possibly supernatural phenomenon. He could have done as others had done before and simply deny what he’d seen, ascribe it to something easily explained by trickery and special effects, but Justin has been touched by something he can’t understand, but which has a power he cannot ignore.  Justin’s job was to disprove the existence of anything supernatural, investigate religious groups, void their claims, and disband any group that presents even a hint of threat to the establishment. He failed to do it, and for his failure, was exiled to the backwater of Panama, where laws are loosely enforced and civilization has a thinner veneer than in North America.

To his surprise, Justin gets a second chance. Justin’s special investigative skills uniquely qualify him to investigate a series of ritualistic murders that have defied all previous attempts to solve them. A delegation from RUNA (Republic of United North America) is sent to get him and praetorian Mae Koskinen — a member of RUNA’s military’s elite — is assigned to protect him. Mae has personal issues of her own and believes that she herself is a breath away from disgrace, proving that what you believe can be more important than facts.

Justin is given only a month to solve the crimes.  Considered a genius by many, a dangerous madman and a charming fraud by many others,, Justin March is determined to beat do it. With the deadline breathing down his neck, a hostile partner (Mae is not exactly thrilled by her assignment as Justin’s protector), he begins to unravel the complex cases. There seem to be no threads to tie the crimes together or any solid evidence to go on. Justin eventually realizes he and Mae not just investigators, but are at the heart of the mystery. Nothing is simple or clearcut. The truth will put their lives in jeopardy and if they survive, it just might prove their professional undoing. The personal and professional choices Mae and Justin must make as they battle dark forces and their attraction to each other is more perilous than either imagined possible.

There’s nothing in this book that you haven’t read in other urban fantasy novels, but it’s written very well. It’s hot, exciting. It kept me glued to the story from start to finish. I was instantly ready to read any number of sequels, but alas … the sequels aren’t written yet. I am forced to patiently wait for new installments. Rats. I’m not kidding when I say I can hardly wait.

Mae, as an “enhanced” soldier with semi-super powers of endurance and strength, and Justin, as a profiler-cum-genius detective of the supposedly supernatural are a wonderful team. They have a powerful attraction to each other and powerfully good reasons to not satisfy their attraction. The push-pull of the relationship is just abrasive enough to make the relationship interesting, sexy enough to keep you flipping pages, but not so focused on sex that you feel like you’re reading soft porn dressed in science fiction clothing.

This is a fun book and a promising beginning to what I hope will be a long series. If you like the genre, absolutely give Gameboard of the Gods a read. You will not be sorry. The book is available for preorder from Amazon and other outlets in hardcover, Kindle and audiobook.

- – -

Related articles

Raise Your Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters...

Posted on by

Reblogged from RT Gomer Productions:

Hey, you sass that hoopy RT Gomer? Now there’s a frood who really knows where his towel is! There. Now if our glorious leader happens to be a Hitchhikers Guide fan, that should score me… I dunno, my own podcast or something. If not, however, it’s still a passable (?) segway into wishing one and all a Happy Towel Day!

Read more… 829 more words

Happy Towel Day. Douglas Adams, we still miss you!

Ender’s World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender’s Game

Posted on by

Edited by Orson Scott Card

Publication Date: April 2, 2013
- – -

I started reading Ender’s World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender’s Game with high hopes. I love the Ender’s Game series. I thought it was one of the more original science fiction series of the last couple of decades. I like the characters. I especially like that Orson Scott Card didn’t baby his readers. When times got hard, his characters suffered. They grew, they learned to deal with the fallout from their wrong decisions, society’s wrong-headedness and other peoples’ bad choices. They dealt with unfairness, misjudgment by themselves and others.

They felt the pain of love that is not returned, of exile that is undeserved. Bad people transformed into much better people over time. Good people lost their edge. I read every book in the series including books that were not directly in the same timeline but concerned characters who formed the original groups at Battle School.

Ender’s Game and the books that follow are thought-provoking and on many levels disturbing. It questions our fundamental views on children, right and wrong. Our beliefs that “our species first” and by inference, “our country first” is the moral choice.

I consider myself an intelligent reader and I have a strong interest in philosophy and ethics. What’s more, I believe that the science fiction reading audience is probably as a group, the smartest, best educated, eclectic group of readers you will ever find. So when offered the opportunity to read Ender’s World, a book that isn’t part of the actual Ender’s Game series but is an analysis of the series and the issues it raises, I jumped at the chance. Oops.

By the time I was half way through the book, I wished I’d never started. I felt like I was back in high school or college lit class, over analyzing Moby Dick until I didn’t know a whale from a guppy … or care. Nothing spoils a good story for me faster than picking at its carcass.

Ender's_Game_Chronology-2

This is a book that takes a great science fiction series and with the best of intentions, squeezes the fun out of it. It removes any sense of wonder you might have remaining, eliminates any potential surprises. It makes you feel your own thoughts are uneducated and insufficiently intellectual.

To say I didn’t enjoy the book doesn’t go quite far enough. I am certain somewhere out there in the big world of books there are those who enjoy this sort of thing. I am not one of them. Minute analyses of fictional material is a kind of dying of the light for me.

Read Ender’s Game. Read the sequels. When you are finished, if you really and truly have nothing else on your plate and want to hear what a bunch of dry academics can do to a great story and characters, read this. Otherwise, skip it.

The ultimate question about this series and every other book or series I read is twofold: did it entertain me? Did it leave me thinking about it and wanting more? If so, the book has done it’s job and fulfilled its purpose.

It’s one thing to talk about a book you love with people who love it too. It’s another thing to pick it apart until you no longer recognize it.

–

Related articles

Riding With the Dalton Gang — Desperadoes: A Novel, by Ron Hansen

Posted on by

Desperadoes: A Novel, by Ron Hansen

Open Road Media Iconic Ebooks
Ebook release date: May 28 2013

Kindle Version available for pre-order on Amazon.com

This is not a new book. It is being released for the first time as an Ebook (Kindle) on May 28, 2013. Desperadoes has been available in soft or hardcover (currently, only soft) since 1997.

I love western movies and have since I was a kid. I’ve read a lot of “western” novels too over the years, enjoyed some, didn’t much like others. Over all, I prefer this genre as cinema rather than on the printed page. Nonetheless, I was drawn to this book after I realized I know very little about the personal lives and motivations of these notorious bandit gangs of the  turn of the century wild west.

Bob Dalton

Bob Dalton (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Until this book, I hadn’t realized the James boys, the Youngers, Coles and the Daltons were all related. Cousins, it turns out.  This led me to interesting speculations about relative importance of DNA versus environment in character formation. The familial relationships certainly present some intriguing possibilities. Perhaps the cousins were all copying each other’s “feats.” The story hints that there was at least some jealousy by the Daltons of cousin Jesse’s fame.

Desperadoes is well-written and feels authentic, so much so that I found myself asking how much of this was “made up” and how much was historical.

Emmett Dalton, of the Dalton Gang

Emmett Dalton

The answer is that although a lot of it is fact, a lot of it isn’t. Fiction and fact are beautifully woven throughout the story until it is difficult to teaze them apart. Nonetheless, this is a novel, so if you are want history, this isn’t it. On the other hand, if you are more interested in the psychological profile of these characters and the feeling of being transported to another time and place, this might be exactly the right book. Sometimes fiction contains more truth than “only the facts” can convey.

Whether you enjoy the book will depend on if you can find a way to emotionally connect with any of the characters. All of the Daltons and their close associates lack a moral compass as well as a fundamental understanding of right and wrong. Even granting that they came from backgrounds of extreme deprivation and their role models were as depraved as they themselves became, it’s hard to understand the characters’ rapid — virtual overnight — transformation from relatively decent people and officers of the law into rustlers, bank robbers and sadistic thrill killers.

Cover of "Desperadoes"

Cover of Desperadoes

Despite occasional actions that could be interpreted as “gallant” or at least decent, their primary goal was attention. Fame. They wanted to be feared and recognized. Towards that end, they also stole money but money was never a primary motivator. To achieve this end, there were no lines they would not cross, no rules they would not break. At no point is there any feeling that it mattered a whit to any of them how many people’s lives they ruined or ended. They were sociopaths (maybe psychopaths — I’ve never been entirely clear on the difference), utterly lacking in empathy except for one another … and there were limits to that, too.

The story is told in the first person by Emmett Dalton, the one brother who survived. He went out to Hollywood where they were happy (apparently) to pay him big bucks to “advise” and provide authenticity to the making of movies.  Of all the bandits — all his brothers and cousins — only he remained alive to “cash in” on the notoriety.

Ironically, they started out as lawmen. While still functioning in that capacity, they began rustling horses. They didn’t think there was anything particularly wrong with it. It wasn’t that they didn’t know it was illegal, but the whole “right” and “wrong” thing seems to have been a rather hazy concept to them. Moreover, working as a sheriff or deputy sheriff was so poorly paid that they actually couldn’t live on that money, so they initially considered horse-stealing to be a way to supplement their incomes. When they eventually were caught — really, only big brother Gratton (Grat) who was probably mildly retarded was actually arrested for rustling and although he spent a bit of time in jail, he was ultimately released. A trial would have been a serious embarrassment to the judge who had employed the Daltons as lawmen, making it known his employees were horse thieves. Except that everyone did know. It just wasn’t official and never became official.

The Dalton boys’ decision to become an outlaw gang was exactly that: a choice. They were not forced into a life of crime. They genuinely enjoyed being outlaws and criminals. They liked beating people up, breaking their body parts and killing them, sometimes just because they felt like it. No sense of remorse is forthcoming through the voice of the narrator.

Emmett, as the first-person narrator, supposedly was privy to every moment of the life of his brothers. This is a bit hard to swallow unless the other gang members spent all of their free time telling Emmett everything they had done since they’d last talked. But you have to suspend your credibility or there’s no way to get into the book.

Of the Dalton lads (there were 15 bothers and sisters and you never learn what happened to most of the others) Bob is the true glory hound. Grat is a big dumb guy who seemed to not have any thoughts about much of anything. Emmett, two years younger than Bob, is his older brother’s passionate admirer. His adulation of his Bob Dalton was unlimited, though to Emmett’s credit (?), he did occasionally think up an interesting crime to commit, so he was not without a degree of personal creativity. He also appeared to be, of the gang, the only one with any capacity for love — in a severely circumscribed way.

Memento Mori of the Dalton Gang. Left to right...

Left to right: Bill Power; Bob Dalton; Grat Dalton, Dick Broadwell (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Then there’s Bob’s psychopathic girlfriend, Eugenia Moore who was the real brains of the outfit, though perhaps brains is too strong a word.

As you can probably tell, I didn’t like the characters. There is a high probability that the author has captured the essence of these people accurately, but accuracy alone wasn’t enough to make me enjoy being in their company. Ultimately, if I can’t relate to at least one character in a book, it’s difficult for me to enjoy the story. I spent the first half of this book looking for a redeeming feature in someone. I spent the rest of the book wishing I’d never started reading it in the first place.

This was Ron Hansen’s first novel. He has written a dozen or so since then and he is highly regarded. I have no argument with his skill as a writer and perhaps I would like his later novels and non-fiction better than Desperadoes.

English: Grave of Bob Dalton, Grat Dalton and ...

Grave of Bob Dalton, Grat Dalton and Bill Power in Elmwood Cemetery at Coffeyville, Kansas. The headstone was installed by Emmett Dalton after his pardon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I didn’t hate the book, but I didn’t enjoy it. Perhaps the nature of the material fore-ordained my response. Sadistic, vicious sociopathic killers are not romantic — in my opinion. They make my skin crawl. But other people obviously did like the book and it has received some excellent reviews on Amazon. If you can read it as a case study of a bunch of old-timey criminals, you might like it better than I did. It is well-written and thoroughly unpleasant at the same time. I guess that’s what you get when you write about outlaw gangs, even when you write really well.