A Couple of Reviews

Cloverfield

We saw Cloverfield this weekend. The audience wasn't the best and we were treated to repeated farting noises as the movie started, a laser pointer light show repeated occasionally through the film, and several people yelling "That sucked!" and "What a waste of money!" at the end of the film. Sad and annoying as that was, we still loved the movie (and none of us got motion sick).

I can't believe people griped that you didn't see the monster enough. In fact, I would have been just as happy without the longer, clearer shots of it toward the end. A sufficiently developed imagination can create a scarier creature than any CGI shop and fear of the unknown and unseen (in fiction at least) is scarier than fear of the known and seen. In fact, the most tense scenes of the movie, to me, were the scenes where you knew the monster was near, but for whatever reason the camera wasn't pointed at it (either Hud was running or he was concentrating on what he was doing, like crossing the roof). The sound effects and sound editing were amazing in those scenes as well.

As for not explaining what the monster was or where it came from, which seemed to annoy many members of the audience, that worked well for me. I'm a sucker for monster movies, particularly giant, city-destroying monster movies, but they never get past my sense of disbelief. Either you have to accept that they are supernatural in origin, or that radiation mutated iguanas can grow to Godzilla size, or that giant apes are prowling around uncharted islands somewhere. No matter how good, or at least fun, the monsters are, you never "buy" the explanation for them. I'm not saying that I believe the Cloverfield monster is possible, but you are not given an explanation to disbelieve, so the mystery is, in this case, more interesting than any possible explanation.

Even with the crappy audience, I'm glad I saw it in a theater. I expect that since the audience reaction was so polarized, the hype that made it #1 at the box office will drop off quickly as negative word of mouth spreads. Some of my friends said they weren't terribly interested in seeing it based on the trailers and I told them it was exactly what you should expect from the trailers, but better than I expected.

The Soldier Son Trilogy, by Robin Hobb

I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, but I don't consider myself a big fan of fantasy fiction because so much of it is dreadful. It takes some pretty strong recommendations and reviews from people I trust before I will start a fantasy book, much less a trilogy or series of books. Two authors that I do respect, Orson Scott Card and George R. R. Martin, both highly recommended books by Robin Hobb. Frankly, without their recommendations, I would have put them back on the shelf after reading the back covers. There is nothing in their descriptions that would lead you to believe that they were anything more than your standard sword-and-sorcery, rags to riches, mythic quest rehashes. In fact, even the names of her characters are off-putting. In the first series of her books, The Farseer Trilogy, the main character is the illegitimate son of a prince of the Farseer family and a common naming convention in their kingdom is to name children based on desirable character traits and illegitimate children have the name or prefix Fitz attached to the name of the father (if known), so the protagonist's name is FitzChivalry Farseer. Eek.

The second trilogy, the Liveship Traders, seemed even more stupid. Yes, it's about sentient sailing ships and the covers of all three look like bodice-ripping romance novels mixed with Dungeons and Dragons tie-ins. They were even better than the first series.

Once you get past the names and the marketing, you will find that Robin Hobb is an amazingly good writer. Her books are unpredictable (to the extreme), unique (she isn't just rehashing common fantasy themes), emotional, and, above all, meaningful. They aren't just escapism, but are ways of setting up complex moral, ethical, social, political, and even environmental dilemmas in a setting that is different enough from the "real world" to make you think of them in objective ways, but realistic enough to make you emotionally connected to them.

One other warning: another characteristic of her books is to completely and utterly torture her main characters, leading them through increasingly bleak circumstances, bad decisions, life altering tricks of fate, misunderstandings, separation from loved ones, treason, and more to the point where you are positive that their lives are ruined and there is no way the books can resolve anything in any happy or satisfying way. Then she resolves everything in a happy (or at least bittersweetly happy) and immensely satisfying way. As entertaining and well written as they are, they aren't always a "fun" read. Two and half books into any of the trilogies and you will be wallowing in despair and misery along with the characters.

Sorry for the digression, but I wanted to cover the background before recommending her latest trilogy of books which I just finished. The Soldier Son Trilogy consists of Shaman's Crossing, Forest Mage, and Renegade's Magic. I was even surer when I saw Shaman's Crossing that I would not like this series. It is set in a frontier society where a vaguely British colonial society is expanding across the plains and deserts into the mountains and confronting native tribal societies - obviously America's westward expansion and treatment of Native Americans with the names changed. To make it worse, the magical beliefs of the native tribes are real: they do have magical powers. The book's main character is Nevarre Burrelle, the son of a moderately wealthy landowner who in the first book is trained as a boy by a "civilized" native then is sent off to a military academy to become a soldier. Of course, since these are Robin Hobb books, his life is soon turned upside down as becomes alternately a pawn of the native magic, a victim of plague, an enemy of the native tribes, obscenely fat, a traitor to his own people, an outcast of his family, cursed by a god, a criminal, a shaman, and potentially a tree.

I was expecting the books to be about how evil white men destroyed the peaceful native tribal societies and despoiled nature. Instead, the books were incredibly well balanced and were about conflicts between differing cultures and the good and evil that all people can do when they are trying to do what they believe is right, or just trying to get by. Once again, by the middle of the third book, I both hated and felt deeply for Nevarre and was convinced that there was no way the book could resolve itself in even a slightly satisfying way. I was wrong. I e-mailed a friend of mine who is also a big Hobb fan when I finished it and said, "Holy crap. She did it again."

The Farseer Trilogy

• Assassin's Apprentice
• Royal Assassin
• Assassin's Quest

The Liveship Traders Trilogy

• Ship of Magic
• Mad Ship
• Ship of Destiny

The Tawny Man Trilogy

• Fool's Errand
• Golden Fool
• Fool's Fate

The Soldier Boy Trilogy

• Shaman's Crossing
• Forest Mage
• Renegade's Magic