Beckism.com

I just finished the best pair of fantasy books that I have read since I polished off Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimeus Trilogy or Megan Whalen Turner’s The King of Attolia. They were called Dragon Bones and Dragon Blood by Patricia Briggs, and I am astonished that a fantasy author of this caliber has escaped my notice for so long.

Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles: from the classic list, the two books of the “Hurog duology” score an astonishing 10/10 (well, maybe 9/10; it isn’t fencing so much as swordplay). Add to that strong women characters (often sorely lacking in this Tolkien-inspired world), homosexual/bisexual relationships that are portrayed with the same depth of feeling as heterosexual relationships (although admittedly vilified slightly by the “young boys” predatory stereotype), and a world of realistic battles and fantastic heroics living side by side and you’ve got a winning formula if ever I’ve met one. I strongly recommend both Dragon Bones and Dragon Blood, and will be eagerly seeking out Patricia Briggs’ other novels.

Dragon Bones introduces us to a world of dragons long-dead, magic waning, and a problematic feudal system. After reading the blurb online and on the back cover, the story sounded pretty borderline, but Briggs successfully takes a plot that in other hands might have come across forced and hackneyed and deftly weaves it into a fascinating tale filled with memorably enjoyable characters. For whatever reason, I tend to enjoy children’s and young adult fantasy the most, and Dragon Bones successfully melds the pace and interest of young adult fantasy with some slightly more adult themes for an overall experience that should be appealing across a broad age span.

Dragon Blood is a bit darker than Dragon Bones (featuring, as it does, torture and political corruption), but every bit as good and leads the story in a more mature direction (appropriate, considering the aging of the characters). I found Dragon Bones more fun, while Dragon Blood was more gripping.

A big reason I enjoyed Dragon Bones and Blood is because Briggs successfully melds fantasy standbys in theme, plot, and setting with realistic-feeling world dynamics and characters. The heroics and magic are certainly larger than life, but they take place within the context of a world where violence is brutal and actions have consequences. It’s always a pleasant surprise for me to find an author who can write a complex fantasy world that utilizes fantasy tropes even as it moves beyond them, and Briggs does a good job of this.

Perhaps, though, the highest praise I can offer is this: when I laid down Dragon Blood, grinning like an idiot because I enjoyed it so much, the thought I came away with was “I want to write like this.”

Not only that, but she has a decent website, which is a pleasant change from some of my other favorite authors.

Rented I Am Legend tonight from iTunes, and I was very pleasantly surprised. From what I’d heard when it opened in theaters, I was expecting a pretty terrible movie, but it was actually really good. Definitely an interesting twist on the typical zombie virus story.

Then again, I hear that about the only thing it shares with the book is the premise, so perhaps that’s why people were disappointed. The ending is, granted, a bit of deus ex machina and the “dark seeker” CGI was at times rather over-the-top, but what the hell. Last movie I rented was Beowulf; I can handle some CGI oddness and slightly wonked out storytelling.

If you like horror/zombie movies, I’d recommend I Am Legend. It is, at the very least, worth a rental.

For a movie made by a lot of people I respect, Beowulf is pretty spectacularly bad. I rented it via iTunes last night and watched it with my girlfriend, and about halfway through I turned to her and commented that I hoped whoever wrote the screenplay was never allowed to write again. Imagine my surprise when we reached the end and I discovered the screenplay was written (at least in part) by Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors. Party foul, Neil. Major party foul.

Even worse, they decided to do the entire movie in CGI. While I enjoy a CGI movie as much as the next guy, the director and producers apparently decided to pour all of their budget into kickass water, cloth, and hair. Apparently no one thought to remind them that little things like facial expressions are actually way more important than long flowing locks. As a result, the dialogue sequences are like watching wax dolls who are half-asleep. Add that to the terrible script, and you’ve got a recipe for hilarity, but not in a good way.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a movie you can mock the whole way through, or some mindless fantasy violence, then Beowulf might be for you. Just don’t expect the normally high caliber of the actors and writers to mean anything.

Judging by number of books owned, C.J. Cherryh is my favorite science fiction author. Although I had an early love affair with Orson Scott Card, he’s not consistent. Cherryh’s novels are consistently excellent and no one can build an alien culture the way she can.

I’ve recently been reading some of Cherryh’s older books, and as a result picked up Alliance Space which contains the novels Merchanter’s Luck and Forty Thousand in Gehenna.

Merchanter’s Luck is reason enough to buy the book. It’s a classic Cherryh novel (tense action from a close third person perspective in space), and has a nice dash of romance which isn’t something I usually expect from Cherryh. I highly recommend it.

Forty Thousand in Gehenna is unlike any other book that I’ve read. It takes place over 200 years, and in some ways almost feels like an exercise in world building and backstory rather than a traditional novel. It’s fascinating, but is unlikely to appeal to everyone (I’m not sure if I’ll reread it any time in the near future, either). It’s a shame that Cherryh hasn’t published anything using the unique culture that she builds in Gehenna; the two-page epilogue cried out for a sequel.

In any case, Alliance Space is an interesting collection, and certainly worth a read if you enjoy Cherryh (if you’ve never experienced Cherryh before then the Foreigner series might be a better place to start).

Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword for the Nintendo DS is a fantastic game, and is the best action game I’ve played recently. The graphics are beautiful (astonishingly good, considering the DS’s capabilities), but what’s really brilliant is the fact that the lightning fast movement from Ninja Gaiden Black has made the jump to the DS flawlessly. Combined with the incredibly intuitive and easy-to-learn touch screen controls, Dragon Sword makes you feel like a true ninja as soon as you put stylus to screen.

One of Ninja Gaiden Black’s surprising good points was its punishing difficulty level. It somehow managed to walk the fine line between being too frustrating to play and just difficult enough to become a major challenge that would eat away hours of your life. Dragon Sword is nowhere near as difficult (particularly when it comes to boss battles), but is still just as fun (disclaimer: I’ve also only played through on the normal difficulty as of yet; the higher difficulty levels will likely be more challenging). I think the main reason the DS version is so much easier is that the controls are far simpler. Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox required a lot of button pressing to get the same actions you can get in Dragon Sword simply by swiping the stylus across the screen a couple times.

I was particularly surprised by Dragon Sword’s story, which is cohesive and easy to understand. I’m still not 100% certain what happened in Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox, but Dragon Sword’s plot made perfect sense. Although Dragon Sword doesn’t tread much new ground (almost every enemy and locale is straight out of Ninja Gaiden Black), its new story combined with the nostalgia factor and constant action made me not mind the recycled aspect of most of the game’s enemies and so forth.

If you enjoy action games and own a DS, then Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword is a must-have. Team Ninja’s attention to detail and craftsmanship shines through every aspect of the game, and although it only took me five and a half hours to beat, I’ll easily get triple that (or more) playing through the harder difficulty levels and unlocking the in-game extras.

Now if only Ninja Gaiden 2 would come out a little sooner life would be perfect.

This is why Omni Group is great. Less than a month after they release a full-version paid upgrade for OmniGraffle, they unveil a beta for the previous version to fix some Leopard bugs.

Omni Group may be the classiest software company I know. Kudos to them.

Here, in a nutshell, is why I hate Adobe:

Photoshop: Window→Workspace→Keyboard Shortcuts & Menus…

Illustrator: Edit→Keyboard Shortcuts…

Do the Photoshop and Illustrator teams not have one another’s phone numbers or email addresses? Do they work on opposite sides of the country? Why the hell would you have an inconsistency like this? Small things like this needlessly increases the learning curve for two similar and interdependent programs (published by the same company!). This is just one minor inconsistency, too. Illustrator and Photoshop have some features that seem at first glance to be identical, but with just enough inconsistency (particularly in keyboard shortcuts) to make switching from one program to the other ridiculously frustrating for a new user.

And by the way, the reason I dug these menu items out was because Photoshop and Illustrator both by default use command-H for something other than hiding the program. Classy, Adobe. Real classy.

Of course there’d be a giant outcry if Adobe did go through Photoshop and Illustrator to tighten them up and make transitioning between the two easier since the professional design community has long since learned to use the two programs despite their different quirks. I just have to wonder why Adobe didn’t keep these programs in sync all along; they’ve controlled both programs from their earliest roots, so it’s not like they didn’t have a chance to keep them congruent.

The Sight by David Clement-Davies is a bit of a let-down. I had picked it up at the same time I bought Fire Bringer, and while the plot and idea behind The Sight are interesting (who doesn’t like prescient wolves?), the quality of writing hasn’t improved any since Fire Bringer. Clement-Davies has a really bad habit of using exposition to describe every stupid thing in the book. If a wolf mentions a mystical city, then Clement-Davies instantly goes off into a tangent about how actually the Romans built it back in blah de blah de blah, which pretty much kills the momentum of the story. I like it when authors research their topics, but not when they beat me over the head with their findings.

Add to that the fact that he constantly tells about emotion rather than showing it, and you’ve got a book that feels much longer than it should. I was hoping that these tendencies in Fire Bringer were part of the first book syndrome, but I’m beginning to think that Clement-Davies is simply a mediocre writer. To add insult to injury, every dang myth in the book is a rip-off of some human myth, religion, or story (Little Red Riding-Hood as one of the earliest wolf stories? Shoot me now), making the whole wolf culture feel forced.

If you like anthropomorphic animal stories, then I recommend reading The Sight rather than Fire Bringer (evil psychic wolves are a bit more believable than fascist Hitler deer), but overall Clement-Davies’ work has left me feeling more frustrated than anything else. His creative approach to animal stories has a lot of potential that isn’t quite realized thanks to the quality of the storytelling.

Feast of Love should really have been called “Sex and Sadness”. My girlfriend rented it from iTunes and told me it was like Love Actually but more realistic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Love Actually, but the cover of Feast of Love made it look like a romantic comedy and after a weekend otherwise filled with realistic, tactical shooter violence I was in the mood for a light comedy or romance so I grabbed my girlfriend’s computer and watched it.

Oops. Now I am sad and shall need to eat ice cream. Feast of Love is a bit of a downer, even if it overall has a happy message. If you like montage-style movies that are very true to real life, then you’ll probably enjoy it. It doesn’t really have anything earth-shattering to say about the human condition, but it is a surprisingly realistic portrayal of life for something with big-name actors in it. Overall feeling: meh. Not a bad movie, but not great. And like I said, now I’m sad. Watch it if you’re feeling bittersweet; I recommend renting over buying.

I’m not usually a big fan of the realistic anti-terrorist shooters, but Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for the Xbox 360 (and other systems) is growing on me. My cousin has always been really into the Rainbow Six series, and he convinced me to buy Vegas 2 this week and attend an Xbox party with him and a bunch of his Xbox Live friends on Saturday.

It was a blast. Xbox Live already has voice communication going for it, but it’s so much more fun to actually be in the same room with the people you’re playing with. There were a bunch of people at the party (about 14-15 playing Vegas 2 at any given time, and a few others doing their own thing for whatever reason). Definitely more fun than hooking up to matches with total strangers who all too often turn out to be idiots (or twelve years old).

As for the game, Vegas 2 seems like a pretty standard entry into the tactical shooter genre. It only takes a few shots to kill you, taking cover behind walls, boxes, and so forth and peering out as you wait for an enemy is a standard tactic, and half the time when you get killed you have no idea where it came from (thanks to said hiding and peeking around corners). Normally I find these kind of games really frustrating; I was introduced to shooters (specifically online multiplayer shooters) playing Aliens vs. Predator which was filled with claustrophobic maps where your best survival tactic was to simply never stand still, so retraining myself to approach the map one room at a time is difficult.

The controls for Vegas 2 also threw me off. They’re quite different from most shooters I’ve played, and vastly different from Call of Duty 4 (which I’ve been playing recently).

Where Vegas 2 stands out is the variety of multiplayer options available. The entire campaign can be played through cooperatively, either via Live or split screen, and the various multiplayer gametypes are quite fun. Particularly appealing is the fact that if you can’t find enough people to pull off a good team deathmatch, you can do a “terrorist hunt” which allows you and up to three friends to fight bots on the multiplayer maps. I really enjoy coop games and the occasional bot fight, so the variety of options available in Vegas 2 is great.

I’d definitely recommend Vegas 2 if you’re looking for a good tactical shooter with great multiplayer options. It might not be anything special in the sub-genre of realistic anti-terrorist shooters (I wouldn’t know), but it’s the first one that I’ve been able to get into, and is a lot of fun to play with friends.