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Film Review: “Tangled”

For as long as my daughter has been alive, I’ve pledged not to be one of those parents — you know, the ones who bring kids to inappropriate films*, or bring kids with inappropriate behavior to films.

Well, we managed for four years. But when my daughter’s best friend’s mom suggested we all get together and see “Tangled”, I couldn’t very well say no. And off we went.

“Tangled” is your standard modern-day-Disney riff on the old “Rapunzel” story. In this version, however, Rapunzel’s parents are the king and queen, and they didn’t need an enchantress to help conceive her. Instead, the enchantress has been hiding a magical flower which bestows eternal youth and health. But when the queen falls ill late in her pregnancy, her soldiers find the flower and she drinks a potion made of it. Her illness is cured, and when Rapunzel is born, the baby’s magical hair can cure anyone who knows the secret song. At first the enchantress just wants to steal a lock of Rapunzel’s hair, but when she finds out it only works if the magic is freely given, she steals the baby.

Fast-forward 18 or so years, to Rapunzel’s 18th birthday. She’s been locked in a tower all this time, thinking the enchantress (Mother Gothel) is her real mother. But the tower isn’t a terrible place; other than no human contact with anyone other than Mother Gothel, Rapunzel is free to read, dance, paint, sing, cook, play music, or do anything else that suits her. However, for her birthday all she wants is to see the floating lights — a huge flock of floating lanterns released on the birthday of the lost princess. Mother Gothel says no, and Rapunzel resigns herself to her fate.

And then Flynn Rider, a thief, shows up. He, along with some henchmen, stole the lost princess’s crown, but when the palace guards get too close, he escapes and stumbles upon the tower. Rapunzel promptly hits him with a cast-iron frying pan, makes a deal with him — “you guide me to see the lights, and I’ll give you back your satchel, which you seem so very intent on retrieving” — and off they go on a madcap adventure full of singing, amusing animals, derring-do, and, because it’s Disney, love between the rascally-yet-kindhearted male character and the naive-yet-courageous princess just on the cusp of legal adulthood.

The animation in “Tangled” definitely lives up to the Disney name — the lighting, color, art, and movement are gorgeously-done. However, I was less than impressed with some of the voice synching — there were areas I definitely noted that didn’t look quite right. The music was also very good, for what it was — audio wallpaper, except for the singing parts — but it isn’t a soundtrack I want to buy instantly (compared to, let’s say, “Stardust”, where I actually paused the DVD to go on iTunes and buy the soundtrack right away). The songs didn’t blow me away either, except for the first two numbers — Rapunzel’s song about her day, and Mother Gothel’s “Mother Knows Best”. I feel kind of bad saying that because I’m actually related to the lyricist (he’s my cousin) and if you don’t go see the movie or buy the soundtrack that probably has some impact on how much he gets paid, but I’m not going to lie to you. The duet between Rapunzel and Flynn wasn’t all that inspired, and the song about the henchmen and their dreams wasn’t all that different from any other song like it in any other princess-centered animated film. Fortunately, there aren’t that many songs in the film.

The cast for the film was rather small — in fact, the king and queen don’t have any lines at all. Mandy Moore plays Rapunzel, and she’s quite good. Zachary Levi (Chuck from “Chuck”) is Flynn, and you can just hear him playing half the lines as Charles Carmichael***. Donna Murphy (Picard’s love interest in “Star Trek: Insurrection”) is Mother Gothel, and she’s clearly having a good time doing the role. Ron Perlman, Jeffrey Tambor, and Brad Garrett also appear. The best acting, however, comes from the obligatory Disney animal characters. First is Pascal, Rapunzel’s pet chameleon, who conveys a wide range of emotion with only his eyes and tail, and gets to stick his tongue into… well, you’ll just have to see it. And second is Maximus, the horse of the captain of the guard. He really steals the show. “Played” as more of a large dog than a horse, he has some of the best moments in the film. I mean, it is a Disney film; one thing they know how to do is animal characters. His duel with Flynn is one of the most hilarious things I’ve seen this year.

One thing I do want to talk about before I close is death. This film contains three direct references to death — two characters actually die, and you also see a hangman’s noose as one character is led off to be executed. I saw this film with a four-and-a-half-year-old and a three-year-and-eleven-month-old. The latter child I think handled it better because she’s seen a lot of Disney films, but my daughter hasn’t really been exposed to death beyond the passing of one of our cats a year or so ago. It was hard to explain to her what the hangman’s noose was and why the character was so afraid to see it, and it was even harder to make sure she understood why the other two characters died. One of their deaths was the classic Disney “cursed by their own hubris”, but the other was… well, I’m not going to mince words: someone got stabbed. The film is rated PG for “brief mild violence”, so I guess someone being stabbed to death qualifies as mild these days, but I really didn’t expect it. My daughter wasn’t traumatized or anything, and the story does have a happy ending (it is a Disney animated film), but it’s something to think about if you’re bringing a young child.

Also, make sure your child understands the concept of being kidnapped as a baby and raised by an evil enchantress who only seems like a nice person, or else you’ll be answering questions throughout the entire film. As I said before, Mother Gothel isn’t really evil… at least, not until Rapunzel defies her and leaves the tower.

And finally, not that it really matters, but there’s a huge plot hole in the film: what exactly is Mother Gothel doing with her eternal youth and good health? Just… living forever? Seems kind of silly to me. What’s the point of having those things if you don’t use them? It’s never addressed, and as an adult, it bothers me. Kids won’t mind, though.

Overall I enjoyed the film, although I’m kind of miffed that I paid $26.50 for it (two adults at $9.50 and one child at $7.50). I give it 2.5 stars if you’re an adult, and 3.5 if you’re a kid — this is the kind of stuff kids love these days, apparently, and I can’t imagine any kids going and not enjoying themselves. Still, it’s PG for a reason, so make sure your child understands the Disney interpretations of kidnapping and death before plunking them down. It’s 100 minutes long, too, which makes me happy — I hate paying theaters for anything under 90.

* When I saw 28 Days Later, there was a woman there with a child who couldn’t have been more than six. And as you know if you’ve seen it, the film is full of violent images and, in the very first scene, Cillian Murphy’s penis**.

** I really hope that phrase doesn’t screw up Escape Pod’s Google ranking.

*** Does he still do that character? I haven’t watched Chuck since the end of Season 2.

The Speculative Literature Foundation 2011 Older Writers Grant

The Speculative Literature Foundation (SLF) is pleased to announce that it is accepting applications for the 2011 Older Writers Grant. The grant of $750 is available to any writer of speculative literature of 50 years or older at the time of application who is just beginning to work professionally in the field. There are no restrictions on the use of the grant money.

The grant will be awarded by a committee of SLF staff members on the basis of interest and merit. Applicants are asked to submit a brief autobiographical statement, a writing sample, and a bibliography. For full details on how to apply for the grant, please see the SLF web site: http://www.speculativeliterature.org/Grants/SLFOlderWriters.php, or email olderwriters@speculativeliterature.org. Applications must be received by March 31st 2011. The successful applicant will be announced on June 1st 2011.

We live in the future

My science-fiction-loving friends have often heard me claim that, if Robert Heinlein was alive today, he would be very upset with us for not having colonized the moon or other planets. I’m still pretty upset about it myself. Only a few hundred living humans have ever been in space, and the American media still looks disdainfully upon anyone willing to spend the time and money to go up with another country’s space shuttle.

Even the term itself is un-futuristic. “Space shuttle.” It sounds like a fancy name for the tram that takes you to the different parking lots at Disney.

But this week, I realized that we really do live in the future.

I personally live in the greater Atlanta, Ga., area, and we recently were held in the icy grip of a winter storm that cancelled school for a full week, left thousands stuck on their couches and not at work, and generally made people ecstatic for one day and morose for the next four.

Welcome to HothLanta

I happen to work for a company that provided me with a brand-new Macbook (as of November) and a way to access all the programs I need to do my job from literally anywhere with an internet connection. So, while thousands of my co-workers were stuck at home doing nothing, I got work done all week. I worked in my kitchen, I worked in my basement, I worked in my living room with my feet up. I stayed in contact with co-workers via instant messages, I took conference calls at my house, and I fulfilled dozens of work orders.

I couldn’t have done this ten years ago. But now, I live in the future.

For days, meteorologists used computer models to warn me the storm was coming. I got information from television, radio, and the internet. I was able to entertain my child using video games, movies, recorded television, and her very own computer (my four-year-old daughter has a laptop with a Linux install; that amazes me from time to time). I kept up on what other people were doing using Twitter and Facebook, and even got on board with the hashtag #hothlanta, creating a community amid a paralyzing storm system.

A century ago, if a storm had hit, I might not have known about it until it was too late, and I certainly wouldn’t have kept as busy as I did. But now, I live in the future.

Despite being trapped in my house, a prisoner to unsafe driving conditions, I still managed to cook and eat meals, stay in contact with my extended family, keep up with the latest news, complete my assigned work tasks, and even watch three full seasons of “The IT Crowd”.

When Hurricane Andrew hit south Florida (I lived there at the time), the only information we got was from the radio. After it passed, we had no idea when the power would be back on or if it was safe to leave our neighborhood. But this week I found out all those things before even putting on my jacket. Because I live in the future.

What really sealed it for me was this: on Thursday, I was working in my kitchen and wanted to listen to some music. Normally I’d put on last.fm or iTunes radio, but I only have a limited amount of bandwidth in the house. So I took out my iPad, activated the Remote app, and started playing music from my personal library. Without getting up off my ass, I controlled my personal laptop in the next room, told it what music to play and how loud, and within moments was enjoying, among other things, the London Symphony Orchestra performing the soundtrack to “Superman: the Movie”.

I live in the future. And as much as I complain, I kind of like it here.

I wonder what I’m going to do tomorrow.

Review: “Monster Hunter International” by Larry Correia

Monster Hunter InternationalI had a warm spot in my heart for Larry Correia after reading his HK rant. (“Because you suck. And we hate you.”) Unfortunately, I decided to read his novel, Monster Hunter International. This book was originally self-published, and owes its success to Mr. Correia’s marketing instincts. I don’t have space to cover all the flaws in this book, so I’ll just hit the highlights. Because it was self-published and only later picked up by Baen, Monster Hunter International shows no sign of an editor’s pen. The characters are flat. The prose is stale and repetitive. The plot reads like something intended for a weekend of tabletop gaming, complete with prophetic visions from the storyteller to keep the protagonists on track.

The company called Monster Hunter International was founded when a group of good Southern boys got a lynch mob together in order to drive some unsavory elements (read: vampires) out of their town. I wish I was kidding. In the years since, Monster Hunter has made its founder’s family rich by collecting government-sponsored bounties on supernatural creatures like werewolves, zombies, and vampires. These days, the only thing they fear is the EPA (and Fish and Wildlife, and OSHA, and…).

Our hero, Owen Pitt (brother of the heavy metal artist Mosh Pitt — not kidding about that one, either), gets involved in the monster hunting business when he defeats his evil-boss-turned-werewolf in single combat. Afterwards, he is visited at his home by Monster Hunter International’s recruitment team, including one Julie Shackleford, who tells him that not only is he the first man in history to kill a werewolf with his bare hands, but that his scores in various firearm competitions are even better than hers! Also, his college degree proves that he is a genius. Owen decides that he is in love (though whether with her or her handguns is sometimes an open question). He expresses his love by staring at her a lot, and when that doesn’t work, by pretending to be her friend.

I decided to read this book based on the strength of its action scenes, but to my dismay I found that the narrative is dominated by lectures. The hundred pages or so that pass between the werewolf fight and the first vampire fight are filled with Owen’s monster hunter training. We are introduced to some more monster hunters, whom the reader might be tempted to worry about if Mr. Correia had the fortitude to kill his characters. In training, Owen proves that he is the best at every possible thing (except running), earning the admiration of all the instructors. Multi-page monologues leave the reader with only one questions: Who will be beating our hero with the exposition bat this time?

When the book finally gets back to the action, it’s a mess of vampires on a cargo ship. Owen saves everyone from the cowardly French vampire, and is left for dead by Julie’s asshole boyfriend (and who didn’t see that one coming?). We learn the first rule of monster hunting: Any problem can be solved by getting a bigger gun. In Owen’s case, it’s a fully automatic cut-down combat shotgun with a spring-loaded bayonet and optional grenade launcher. (“How many gun laws does this break?” “All of them.”) The action scenes are precise and well-scripted, but I was willing to put this book down at any time up to the last fifty pages. The final battle is the most interesting one in the book, but suffers from overuse of the passive voice (see: the perils of self-publishing). Finally, it turns out that women are the source of all evil.

Owen is not the kind of character who thinks his way out of problems. Despite being introduced as a genius, he isn’t particularly bright. He has a magical dead Jew in his head who does his thinking for him (still not kidding). Instead of figuring out the bad guy’s plans, the magical Jew dumps Owen directly into the bad guy’s head and lets him see through his eyes, removing all suspense from their later encounters. People who learn things tend to go insane, like Julie’s father.

Monster Hunter International did not have to be seven hundred pages long. Its sequel, which I am told did benefit from the attentions of an editor, is much shorter. Not that it really matters, since I’m not going to spend any more time struggling through yet another lecture set to the sound of an entire Viking army’s worth of political axes grinding. Monster Hunter International is not a book for people who enjoy well-crafted prose or fast-paced action. It is not for people who don’t care about the difference between a Government .45 and a Glock. Larry Correia is writing for a specific audience, and it is clear that I am not one of them.

Closed to Flash Submissions

Due to an overabundance of flash submissions, we’ll be closed to them while we sort out a release schedule. Please do not send us stories under 2000 words until you read otherwise on this site. (Or until we have another contest!)

Review: For the Win by Cory Doctorow

I don’t play MMORPGs. I never have. They’re just too big for me. If I’m going to play a RPG, it’s going to be something I can play by myself, with lots of cut-scenes and a hint book — because, in my opinion, the best part about RPGs isn’t figuring out that you need to combine the Widget of Destiny with the Wilted Flower to create a Magical Key of Awesomeness. It’s playing the game like an interactive movie with battle sequences.

Which is why I love Final Fantasy VII and X so very much.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t also thoroughly enjoy Cory Doctorow’s latest novel, For the Win.

For the Win, ostensibly a YA novel (I’d say “mature YA”), contains some pretty heavy concepts, most of them dealing with economics, gaming, labor, employee rights, and the way totalitarian governments deal with lawbreakers. But fortunately, that’s not all it’s about.

For the Win follows a few major characters and spans the entire near-future Earth (much in the same way that Doctorow’s Little Brother was just around the corner in terms of its timeline). In California, Leonard Goldberg dreams of going to China to meet his guildmates in Svart… Svartal… Some-Long-Viking-Word Warriors. In Atlanta, Connor Prikkel works to protect Coca-Cola’s games division from people who game the system. In India, Mala forms an army to take on gold farmers at the behest of the games companies themselves. In China, Matthew Fong uses his savant-like strategies to get the best stuff from games. Also in China, we have Jiandi, a radio host very popular with the downtrodden factory girls — the young women who make a huge amount of stuff Westerners take for granted. And then, I believe in Indonesia or Malaysia, we find the trio of Big Sister Nor, Justbob, and The Mighty Krang, who just want gold farmers to have the same rights as everyone else.

Far more complicated than Little Brother, For the Win requires readers to keep all these characters and their motivations straight in their heads, while also keeping track of the different game worlds in which they all play. S-Word Warriors, Mushroom Kingdom, and Zombie Mecha are the three main ones, but Doctorow also gives us glimpses into others, such as Magic of Hogwarts, which I for one would really like to play. But like Little Brother, For the Win educates as well as entertains. Most gamers have at least heard of gold farmers, of boys and young men in China playing games to make money and get big items that can be sold to people who don’t have eight hours a day, every day, to level their characters up. What For the Win does is reminds us that these gold farmers, while they do get to play games all day, are still doing work, and if they’re in one of the many countries where workers don’t have rights… well, things can get ugly. Especially if they demand what even the most slacker teen working at Taco Bell has here in the U.S. (and much of the West).

It’s a big concept, and not something that every YA reader will be able to wrap his or her head around. Doctorow does a great job of breaking down the economics and the labor issues into understandable chunks, but I don’t think a tenth-grade teacher could give this book to an average English class and expect all the students to grasp everything as well as, say, a college freshman or early-30s writer could do. Not the author’s fault; like I said, these are big concepts, much bigger than Little Brother‘s relatively-simple “freedom to do what we want, without being spied upon, so long as we’re not harming anyone” message.

This book is also pretty violent. Kids are hurt, and even killed; there’s one scene where a murder takes you completely by surprise because you’re expecting something different to happen. The police beat and jail young teens and adults alike. There’s riots, narrow escapes, unjust imprisonments, and a disproportionate number of kicks or punches to the groin area — for a book as short as For the Win, I really did notice it. I guess that’s intentional — not every YA reader has been beaten up by the police, but I’m going to bet that most boys, by the age of 18, have taken at least one shot to the nads and can therefore identify with the pain the characters are going through.

I realize now that this review has been fairly dark so far, which isn’t fair to the tone of the book — Doctorow’s writing is quick and witty, full of contemporary phrases that the intended audience will totally grok. And there’s lots of hopeful moments, such as when Leonard realizes his dream only to find out that what his parents were putting him through was nothing compared to the lives his friends in China have to deal with, and then watching him rise to the occasion. Plus the irrepressible good humor of Jiandi, Ashok’s insistence that everything is going to be all right if only people listen to him, and of course the ending. I can’t tell you much about it, because it would be spoiler-y, but if you’ve ever read a YA novel where kids are the heroes and adults are the villains, you’ve probably got a pretty good idea what happens.

I really enjoyed For the Win, and I enjoyed it even more because Doctorow makes all his books available for free on his website. I read this as a PDF on my iPad — the first electronic book I’ve read for pleasure* — and if you have a device that can read PDFs, you can just download it. But that’s not to say there’s anything wrong with picking it up in the store. I’m fairly certain that most people have done so (or at least bought a Kindle/Nook version).

I wouldn’t recommend this book to someone just picking up Doctorow for the first time (although it is pretty accessible). However, if there’s a gamer in your life that you want to start reading books instead of killing orcs, this is definitely one to buy. Technically-minded people will also appreciate the level of detail and research in the novel, and genre readers will see all of this happening just around the corner.

For the Win. Full of win.

* I had to read Wealth of Nations on a website for one of my seminar courses in college. White Courier font on a black background. My eyes hurt. A lot.

Sauropod Dinosaurs Had Weird Feet

As a science fiction writer, one of my hobbies is comparative anatomy. It is important for me to know how various organisms on Earth have solved the problems of moving, eating, seeing, and so on in order to build plausible aliens (or modifications for human beings). Evolution is constantly throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, and that churn produces some really interesting solutions to mundane-seeming problems.

Take walking, for example. Most of our familiar walking creatures (except bugs) are based on the tetrapod body plan. Four limbs, two on a pelvis and two up near a head. As evolutionary pressures drive a species to be bigger and bigger, their limbs become more robust to support the extra weight. Evolution is not an intelligent process, and so every solution is quick and dirty, thrown together from preexisting parts and driven as much by chance as by natural selection. Thus, animals with superficially similar body plans may, on closer examination, have wildly different anatomies.

Everyone’s favorite cuddly megafauna, the elephant, walks on its toes. Its weight is carried on an enormous shock absorber made of fat and connective tissue that sits behind its toes. This system works so well for the elephant that they can move almost silently. From a human point of view, elephant feet look right. They bend in the right places, and the idea of walking along on one’s splayed fingertips isn’t too alien.

It’s easy to assume that elephantine dinosaurs had feet like elephants, especially when they are so often illustrated that way. The first clue that this isn’t the case is in the tracks: some sauropods leave crescent-shaped tracks. Next, there’s the skeleton. Except for the thumb, the toes of Eusauropoda are blunt, clawless nubs. These multi-ton dinosaurs walked on the ends of their metacarpal bones — the bones which, in humans, form the back of the hand.

How strange this must have looked! As a writer, imagining the motion of such an animal and then translating that movement onto the page is a glorious challenge. I can look at reconstructions, or I can press my hands into odd shapes and imagine what it would be like to walk on a column of hand-bones. Where the animal’s wrist would be, and how it would bend… All the things I must keep in mind if I write such a creature into a story.

For more detailed information and pictures, see the Tetrapod Zoologist. I highly recommend that blog as a resource for cool animal facts and analysis.

For further examples of strange creatures that have lived on our planet at one time or another, see Mark Witton’s Flickr gallery.

Review: Souls in the Great Machine by Sean McMullen

Every now and then, a sci-fi or fantasy novel or series comes along that completely redefines your definition of “the best sci-fi book I’ve read”. Which is not to say it’s the best book ever, or that everyone who reads it will love it.

However, in the case of author Sean McMullen’s Souls in the Great Machine, I feel comfortable saying “you’re going to like this book”.

SOTM, released in 1999 as a single-book version of McMullen’s Voices in the Light (1994) and Mirrorsun Rising (1995), takes place in Australia, in the future, after a worldwide event called Greatwinter led to the end of modern technology as we know it. No cars, only trains — many powered by wind or by passengers doing the pedaling. No phones, only beamflash — long-distance semaphore similar to the Clacks. And no computers.

Until a young woman named Zarvora Cybeline decides to build a computer.

The thing is, she can’t do it with electronic machines, because the Wanderers — satellites left in orbit from the technological age — will blow electronic and fuel-powered machines out of existence the moment they sense them.

What’s a girl to do? Well, if you’re Zarvora, you take over the most powerful entity in Australia — Libris, the library system — and conscript criminals and numerate individuals to sit in a huge room and do calculations for you. Occasionally you’ll have to duel someone — with flintlock firearms — or take over the government, but when you want to prevent the end of the world (again), sometimes a girl’s got to get her hands dirty.

Into this world, we bring a cast of characters that you’ll enjoy the hell out of, including such rogues as:

  • Lemorel: an extremely intelligent librarian who you should never, ever wrong. Because she’ll kill you.
  • Glasken: a chemistry student with a taste for fine wine and fine women. Guess who he ends up with.
  • Theresla: an abbess from a far-off region who, it’s said, eats grilled mice on toast. When she can find toast.
  • Ilyire: a driven, dangerous man who you’d be glad to have at your back. Just make sure he’s on your side first.
  • Dolorian: a beautiful junior librarian who knows exactly how many buttons of her blouse should be undone at any time.

These characters, and all the other inhabitants of Australia, are subject to a strange force — the Call — which sweeps across the land, forcing those caught unawares to walk south, to some unimaginable fate. No one knows where the Call comes from, and only a few can predict it, and no one can resist it. Precautions are taken — belt anchors, mercy walls, and the like — but if you’re caught, you’re gone.

Lest you think nothing actually happens in the book, I assure you there’s murder, mischief, sex, love, war, technology, and a whole lot of humor. In fact, McMullen is one of the most consistently humorous writers I’ve encountered who isn’t specifically writing a humorous tale.

The book itself is massive — a small-print mass-market paperback version is almost 600 pages — but into those pages you’ll find a world unlike many others, a world of intelligence and honor, chivalry and technology, science and religion, and much, much more. Oh, and for some reason, lots of talk about breasts — I’m going to be honest here: one thing McMullen does in both the Greatwinter and Moonworlds sagas is show his characters’ appreciation for that part of the female anatomy. It’s not like there’s a Hooters in Rochester (the Australian city around which much of this book takes place), but trust me. You’ll notice it.

And if you really like the book, don’t fret — there’s volumes two and three, The Miocene Arrow and Eyes of the Calculor. I personally think Souls is the best of them, and it does stand alone; you don’t have to read the other two.

I’d love to tell you everything about my favorite scenes — Denkar meeting Black Alpha’s true face, learning about resistance to the Call and how exactly that works, Glasken’s time with Theresla as well as his escape from the most dangerous fighting monks in the land, and the final duel between the villain and… well, I can’t tell you that. I don’t want to spoil the book for you — especially when, as I said, this is the book that, to me, redefined my personal definition of “best” when it comes to SF novels. It has everything I like — full characters, a sweeping story, great worldbuilding, and enough action to keep me interested without taking away from the science and technology*.

Buy this book. Read it. It’s worth it. Trust me.

* And breasts. Hey, I’m a lech, but at least I’m a charming one. Right? Anyone?

Online Science Fiction Whip-Round from November

Every month more and more quality fiction is available online.  This month I limited my search to science fiction and I still found more than twenty stories from markets that are paying their authors.  If you know of any quality science fiction short stories that were published online in November that I have not listed here, please add them in the comments.

We also had two new online publications provided us with fiction in November:

The online fiction community has always been active and it is great to see authors being remunerated for their efforts at an increasing number of online venues.  We can help support this trend by dropping by these online magazines and reading their excellent stories.  These stories are free, like the heat from the distant stars that warm all those habitable planets that are out there, waiting for us.

Review: The Habitation of the Blessed by Catherynne Valente

The Habitation of the Blessed, being the first volume of A Dirge for Prester John, is the newest addition to the long and honorable tradition of fan fiction dedicated to a 12th-century forgery. The original letter described a kingdom in the generically exotic and conveniently distant “east,” where a Christian priest ruled a nation of improbable creatures, and oh-by-the-way also the Fountain of Youth. The letter went viral, spawning argument, analysis, fan fiction, and ill-fated military expeditions whose commanders though Prester John would show up with his griffins and his lions to help with the Crusades. It stayed popular for the next five hundred years, until Europeans got far enough east to realize that Prester John had never existed.

More information about the historical Letter of Prester John can be found at the handy Prester John website.

Catherynne Valente’s book takes on the myth from a science fiction point of view, asking the practical questions of — How did a random Christian guy end up king of all these incredible people? How does a society made of so many radically different people, from the talking griffons to the headless Blemmyes, actually work? And what is life like for people who drink from the Fountain of Youth?

The world she builds on this foundation is like nothing I have seen before. If I had to, I suppose I could compare it to the way I remember Narnia, before someone pointed out all the Christian symbolism and I grew old enough to wonder where the tea and sugar came from. Catherynne Valente does a remarkable thing in a book with one foot in a medieval bestiary: Not one of her characters is a symbol. Each of them, even the ones we only meet briefly, feels as real as any of the people I see every day. At one point our heroes meet a man who is digging endless tunnels through the mixture of air and sea that has smothered his city. He has the head of a goat, and his circumstances are strange even by local standards, but in a crisis he puts his head down and gets to work, trusting everyone else to do the same.

The superbly-drawn characters make the framing narrative and structure easy to follow. The Habitation of the Blessed has at least four major narrative tracks — the story of Hagia, fierce and beautiful, who forces Prester John to see her as a person and not just as an upsetting body, the story of Imtithal and the queen’s children, Prester John’s own story, and the story of the monks who followed him.

Prester John himself has the potential to be just another Christian man who arrives in a foreign country, fails to understand or even acknowledge the beliefs of the locals, and decides that God wants him to be in charge (why they never seem to use the premises that 1-their God is supposed to be omnipotent and 2-the locals are getting along fine to deduce that 3-God is ok with the status quo… is a topic for another time.) Like the rest of the characters, though, he isn’t a just symbol or a message, and it’s hard not to feel for him as he tries to make sense of the bizarre world in which he finds himself, as the people he meets challenge and overturn his most deeply held beliefs, just by existing.

I didn’t want to put The Habitation of the Blessed down and read something else, but I ran out of pages. It comes to a conclusion of sorts, though there is clearly more story left to tell. My only consolation is the promise of a sequel.

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