need a cheez

Another quick check-in: I finished Secondhand Souls, and it was good!

This is a straight sequel to A Dirty Job, which was published eight years earlier but I read only a few weeks previously. Like most of Moore’s sequels, it’s very well-constructed, delivering more of the best elements of the previous book while adding in some fresh surprises and zaniness. Given the San Francisco setting of A Dirty Job, I was really eager to drop back in for more.

MINI SPOILERS

San Francisco continues to be amazing. This entry felt a tad less grounded than A Dirty Job, which soaked in the atmosphere of the Mission and the northeast neighborhoods. This one technically is set in many of the old locations, but mostly in interior areas and private lives, and doesn’t soak up the street-level atmosphere quite as much. There are new marquee locations, like Fort Point and the Golden Gate Bridge, that are handled really well and with a great understanding for local flavor and mechanics. (One great detail: the taxi driver who double-checks whether a passenger wants to actually be dropped off ON the Golden Gate Bridge, warning that it will require a U-Turn in Marin and a surcharge, and the subsequent frustration at actually getting to the bridge from the visitor’s area.)

Almost every character from the earlier book puts in another appearance here, although many roles shrink and fade. The Emperor was already pretty minor in the first book, but his appearance is purely tokenary this time around, and the dogs don’t get any action. Jane was a fantastically vibrant character in A Dirty Job; she’s still funny and periodically filthy here, but doesn’t shine as brightly in her newly domestic role.

Fortunately, there are new characters who help bring up the energy. My favorite may have been the banshee; she doesn’t get all that much to do, but was hilarious any time she popped up. Wiggly Charlie was great as well, and unexpectedly tender at times.

I winced a little at some of the jive-talking of Minty Fresh and Lemon Fresh. It’s lampshaded fairly well within the text - Minty gives Charlie the cold shoulder any time he tries to show how hip he is by indulging in ebonic slang, and I read this as Moore poking fun at himself.

MEGA SPOILERS

For all the buildup of the story, the actual climax comes and goes surprisingly quickly, but still felt satisfying. It’s kind of an interesting combination of hitting the reset button (forces of darkness defeated, heroes out of danger) and turning the page (a new order of souls, no more soul merchants). That suits me just fine. It leaves tons of opportunity for a potential third book, while also ensuring that it will add a unique turn on the series’ ongoing concern about death and spirituality.

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This is definitely worth a pick-up for a fan of Moore, though only after reading A Dirty Job. It confirms the enjoyable elements from the earlier novel while telling an engaging new story.

Someone’s Got To Do It

I almost forgot about Christopher Moore! I stumbled across his new Death book at the library, then realized that I hadn’t read the previous Death book and picked it up. It’s really good!

MINI SPOILERS

One feature that makes it especially easy to like is its setting in San Francisco. As with his vampire novels (You Suck et al), Moore absolutely nails the city in its modern incarnation, down to the mundane elements that locals know but do not think about. The other books famously feature the Marina Safeway; here, we get to see small bookshops in the Mission, live produce on Stockton, boring houses in the Sunset, and similar locales. It isn’t flashy, and definitely doesn’t require preexisting knowledge of the city, but helps it feel nicely grounded without ever feeling like “Oooh, look at us, this city is so cool and important!”

I was delighted to see that he also brought back the Emperor and his troops. Norton is always fun, in any medium or story. He has a small role here, just popping up as an observer from time to time. His insanity allows him to see things that most residents of the city cannot, and his good cheer connects him with the protagonists as they carry out their more deadly missions.

One interesting feature of the book is how much time elapses; I think we get something like five years between the opening and the climax. It isn’t from one or two jumps, either: you get the sensation of time gradually passing, Sophie growing from an infant to a toddler to a child, Charlie processing his grief, Jane sorta maturing and settling down, everyone else getting a little bit older. I guess this is a little like Lamb, which famously covers the time period between Jesus’s childhood and ministry. Most of Moore’s other books, from what I can remember, are more conventionally written, covering the events of a relatively short period of time. Showing time passing like this seems like a bigger challenge, particularly when a baby changes so drastically, and I think Moore did a great job pulling it off.

MEGA SPOILERS

I was a little disappointed by the cover art for the book; at least in my edition, it features a skull baby in a baby carriage. That made it really obvious from too early on that Sophie really was Death/Luminatus, diminishing much of the potential surprise. I think it’s revealed pretty well within the book, with ample evidence given along the way, so it’s a shame that it’s presented so clearly before you start reading.

That said - I’m pretty sure that there were a few times early on when Charlie seemingly killed someone WITHOUT Sophie being present, and I’m not sure if that’s ever explained within the book. This gets more confusing in the epilogue, where Charlie is addressed as Death, making it seem like they are two different entities after all. Fortunately, I’ve already picked up the latest book, and may be able to soon resolve the mystery for myself!

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This was a really good read. I think the vampire books were a little more fun, and his more recent books like Blue and Fool are more effective at plumbing dark topics, but I enjoyed this more than, say, Lamb or Fluke. It could also serve as a great entry point for someone who hasn’t previously read Moore: it does a great job at showcasing his comedic gifts and his effectiveness at crafting smart, tight horror.

Shawarma

Yeesh! I don't have any excuse for why Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal took me longer to read than Ulysses, The Baroque Cycle, 2666, or any of the other massive tomes I've read throughout the years. It's a bit on the long side, but like most of Chris Moore's work, it's an easy and generally fun read. I think I've just been getting too distracted by video games and television shows and browsing the Internet to actually sit down and finish the thing.

It's a good, fun book. I didn't love it as much as I'd hoped, but that might be because of my choppy reading habits. On an intellectual level, I appreciated what it was doing; however, it ended up being a bit like Fluke in that many specific elements of the story ended up annoying me.

As you might expect from the title, this work occupies territory similar to that of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, or, more applicably, Monty Python's The Life of Brian. It's well-researched, drawing on both the biblical and independent historical records, but is primarily a work of entertainment, telling its own story that's inspired by but not limited to the Gospels. In Moore's case, he was mostly curious about one question: what happened during the eighteen years between Jesus's childhood and the start of his ministry at the age of 30?

MINI SPOILERS

The shortest and best answer that Moore gives is that Christ learned kung-fu. Joshua (the name always used in the book) and the narrator Biff (a terrifically-written asshole) spend the bulk of the book on a pilgrimage visiting each of the three wise men who attended Joshua's birth. Each is an expert in a separate Eastern spiritual tradition, and each spends several years training the pair (but mainly Joshua) in the philosophy and practice of their specialty. In each case, Joshua ends up surpassing the master, but realizing that he still does not have the answer, and moving on. The phrase "divine spark" is frequently invoked to establish the bridge between Eastern and Western thought.

This is a fairly common gloss given to Christ-centric Christianity: that it's essentially a variation on the same core truths revealed in Eastern mysticism, re-interpreted in the West. Key principals such as the Golden Rule, the eternal spirit, equality of humans, the emptiness of human possessions, etc., appear across a range of different religions.

One of the things I liked best about this book, and that kind of surprised me, is that Moore doesn't completely make this argument. His Joshua isn't a good man with good teachings. He really is the Son of God, really does perform miracles, and offers the sole path to salvation. He gives the Sermon on the Mount, and also declares that no one may come to the Father except through him. There are different aspects of the Bible that liberals and conservatives like to focus on, and I appreciated that Moore doesn't just present one side, but the full range of his teachings.

So, wherefore Asia? Good question! Honestly, this was the part of the book that dragged on the most for me. This seems to be where Moore indulges the most in some of the more questionable stuff in the book. Biff is obsessed with sex, which is funny and relatable in Galilee; but it turns into a weird sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy in the middle section, with long passages recounting all of the different kinds of sex Biff has with many exotic women. This is tangentially related to the plot, specifically Joshua's necessary virginity, and is one of the best ways to reinforce the "Biff is an asshole" storyline, but it gets old pretty fast.

For the most part, Moore avoids cliched orientalism; but when it does crop up, it's very distracting. The section that struck me most was a long scene about the Cult of Kali, where barbaric Hindus kidnap and slaughter children while copulating to honor their goddess. In the text, this provides Joshua with the motivation to take direct action, and reinforces his idea that all lives have equal value. That said, it felt really gratuitous, and muddled the message a bit... it's hard to convey that all humans are equal when you have a huge anonymous population of absolute villains. (Moore does specifically address this scene in his afterward, noting that all of the details were drawn from historical sources and not exaggerated for the book. It's arguably justified, but felt like yet another side-story that padded out the middle section for little benefit.)

Oh, and the puns! So many puns. Moore is right up there with Pratchett in his mastery of them, making me giggle with rage. The most egregious is probably when the two are learning martial arts at a mountain monastery. Biff is a quick student of the brisk, fast-paced fighting style; but Joshua is reluctant to cause harm to his opponents. Instead, he develops his own style, using his opponents' strengths against them while avoiding harm himself. The impressed monks name this new technique jew-do in honor of Joshua's heritage. I nearly set the book on fire with my impressed glare.

Apart from the Eastern section, though, I really enjoyed the story. The framing device for the story is set in the present day: Raziel (the stupidest angel, who appears in several other Moore books) resurrects Biff, then takes him to a hotel room where they watch daytime soap operas while Biff writes his own account of the Gospels. Those were some of my favorite parts of the book. There's a bit of the expected fish-out-of-water experience as Biff comes to terms with the 2000 years of progress between his time and ours; the joke, though, is that Biff quickly figures out how the new world works, while Raziel is as dumb as ever.

The bigger issue is the difference between the canonical Gospels and Biff's own. This, too, is interesting: Biff's criticism isn't that the gospels get stuff wrong or invent things, but that they omit from the story. He's a little shaken by this, but mostly upset, and the narration is always fun to read. Unfortunately, the present-day stuff disappears around the time we need it most, only returning at the end.

Overall, the book is extremely well-researched. Many events from the gospels appear here, including famous scenes like turning water into wine and raising Lazarus. However, they often have interesting twists that add another angle to these familiar stories. For example, when Joshua is baptized by his cousin John, he's underwater when God speaks and says "This is my son," so he doesn't actually hear it even though everyone else does. Stuff like that provides good fodder for comedy, and also makes Joshua human and interesting. He knows what he has to do, but is sometimes frustrated at the task ahead of him and the intermittent support of his father.

And also the stupidity of his followers! While a lot of this book is sacrilegious or worse, there is more than sufficient evidence for Joshua being annoyed at how thick-headed his disciples were. We see him trying, over and over, to come up with different parables in the hope that one of them will finally sink in to them. As usual, Biff is the ice-breaker here, basically saying, "Hey, if people still don't get it, then maybe these analogies aren't very good."

Biff is a terrific foil for Joshua, both narratively and as a collaborator. He'll sometimes prod Joshua into action, or present him with a problem to solve. They have very different temperaments, and while Joshua is clearly the superior of the two, Biff does contribute to Joshua's effectiveness. There's a great scene where they are writing the outline for the Sermon on the Mount, running through all of the Beatitudes, trying to figure out who gets what. Some of their ideas, uh, don't make the final cut. It's really fun to see them struggle to build something together, with us knowing the final outcome but seeing all of the effort it takes to get there.

The rest of the cast is much more sketchily drawn. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joshua get a lot of development, but we mostly see them through the lens of Biff's carnal desires.  The nature of the story makes it difficult to do much more: when you're introducing twelve disciples, you can't spend all that much time establishing unique personalities for each of them, so each person gets one thing that defines them and is referenced whenever they show up. This typically isn't what you would expect! You would think, for example, that Thomas would be the skeptic of the group; instead, his whole deal is that he has an imaginary twin brother, Thomas Two, who only he can see. Peter is a bit more traditional of a portrayal - he's unimaginative but loyal. The disciple John is gay; I actually kind of like this idea, but unfortunately it's just done to line up a gay-panic joke. Judas gets a fairly accurate portrayal that's also more or less in line with his most common contemporary interpretation in works like Jesus Christ Superstar: he is a Zealot, most committed out of all of the disciples to the idea of a Messiah and salvation from the Romans, who is horrified as Joshua's waste of money and seeming neglect of his people and the necessary instrument of God's ultimate plan.

MEGA SPOILERS, I GUESS??

The book ends on a very abrupt note, with an out-of-nowhere chase scene as Biff pursues Judas after the crucifixion, then both dying. It's odd in a couple of ways. Unlike much of the rest of the book, it directly contradicts the New Testament; then again, the scriptures are a little unclear themselves. (One account has Judas paying back the silver and hanging himself, the other has him buying a field and disemboweling himself). This may be a subtle and implicit reference to a long-running idea in this novel, that the other disciples were jealous of how close Biff was to Joshua, and were upset that he left them by committing suicide in his grief, and so systematically erased him from their stories. If they couldn't say what really happened to Judas without invoking Biff, they may have created new stories instead.

We get a nice little coda after that, finally back in the modern timeline and with Biff reunited at last with his longstanding love Maggie. Which I honestly wasn't expecting - an earlier scene in which Biff eavesdrops on Raziel had me think that the angel was planning on killing Biff after his task was done. In retrospect, Raziel might have just been taking the long view - from the perspective of an immortal angel, dying after forty years would still seem like a death sentence. Especially to an angel as unpunctual and easily distracted as Raziel.

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It's been way too long since the last Moore book I read, and hopefully I won't need to wait as long to read my next one. He may end up becoming my replacement Pratchett, releasing a great new book every year or two, plus a backlog that I haven't yet exhausted. I doubt that there will be too many other books like Lamb in his oeuvre - most secular creators get a maximum of one shot at a twist on the Bible - but it's an impressive accomplishment alongside his more purely lighthearted fare.

Comix

Fairly quickie review on two graphic novels:

"Kill Shakespeare" grabbed my attention when I saw it in the library. With a title like that, how could it not? I hadn't heard of any of the artists or authors before, but I loved the concept (all of Shakespeare's characters are inhabiting the same land and fighting or supporting one another, while they are all ruled over by a distant, possibly mythical figure called the wizard Will Shakespeare).

I was... a bit disappointed. The concept was awesome, and was SO awesome that I felt like they should have done a better job with it. The comic grabs a bunch of the most famous characters from Shakespeare, and pretty much has them play out their personalities like you would suspect: Hamlet is an indecisive and tortured soul, Richard III and Iago are brilliant manipulators, Lady Macbeth is power-hungry, Falstaff is jovial, and so on. Hamlet is the newcomer to the world, and we're learning of everything through his eyes. It may get better later on, but so far it just isn't doing much for me. I think my biggest complaint is the language, which flits between modern and Shakespearean speech, without ever being too impressive. There are a few cringe-worthy sentences like "Now thy face the wrath of the bearded whore!" Um... guys, "thy" is a possessive adjective, not a nominative personal pronoun. They also tend to lift several famous phrases from Shakespeare and either use them outright or slightly adjust them to the action; but, they don't seem to serve any real purpose other than knowing winks to the reader. I guess it might make people feel smart when they recognize them, but again, I wish that they would do more with such great source material.

On the whole, it's a bit of a waste. I suspect that the writers wanted to do something along the lines of "Fables," and I can't fault them for that (though I have my own separate issues with that series), but it just feels like a dumbed-down, gore-and-boobs plot that happens to be using characters from Shakespeare.

On the plus side: the art is really excellent. The character designs aren't hugely inspired (I had some trouble telling Hamlet and Iago apart), but they're well-drawn. Panel layouts are well designed with some interesting techniques, particularly in the battle scenes. The coloring was vivid and evocative; I was particularly impressed by the nighttime scenes.

It looks like Kill Shakespeare (which, I must still admit, is a phenomenal title) will be an ongoing thing, so I may check back in a few years to see if it has improved. The other graphic novel I recently read, The Griff, is a fascinating project from Chris Moore and... some other guy whose name I forget. (Sorry!) Unlike Kill Shakespeare, it's a self-contained stand-alone book, and it's great.

The Griff started life as a movie screenplay, and it kind of shows in the finished product. The style and pace of the plot really seems movie-like: you have an epic conflict that has shook the world, and then most of the story follows two small groups of people who are slowly moving towards one another. There's a total of about five major characters, two female and three male, who are young and mostly photogenic. The one who isn't handsome looks like he may have been written with Billy Bob Thornton in mind. Oh, yeah: and it also feels like a movie because there's a pleasingly high quantity of one-liners in the script. Er, I mean the comic.

The movie will never be made - as Moore writes in his introduction, because the world is filled with horrible people who tell you lies - so we can enjoy this comic. It's faster-paced than a typical Moore book (which, granted, isn't exactly slow to begin with), and filled with great action, suspense, humor, and a few mysteries along the way. I kind of doubt that we'll see more Moore in the comics world, and I'm glad that this entry was so strong.

Lapis Lazuli

I've had an incredibly pleasant experience reading Chris Moore's "Sacre Bleu." Most of it was spent on vacation, either in a cozy cabin in the redwoods, or sitting on a beach near the California coast. That doesn't exactly match up with the setting of the book - the majority of it takes place in urban Paris, far from the ocean - but it did coincide nicely in two ways with the book. First, I was reading "en plein air", which is where the French impressionist heroes of the book have taken their artistic revolution; and I was surrounded by blue, blue sky and blue water (including that particular shade that I call "Big Sur blue" and love so dearly), and so I regularly had samples to see when I wanted to cross-reference the way Moore was describing the many shades employed by his artists.

Sacre Bleu is kind of a one-off for Moore; as far as I can tell, it doesn't overlap with any characters from his other books, and it's thematically quite different from any of his other books I've read. That said, the style is unquestionably and hilariously Moore's. Some already-funny lines are made even funnier just because they're being uttered by 19th-century Frenchmen. As Moore explained at his appearance and in his author's note, he started with an ambition to write a novel about the color blue. The way he did that is very impressive, and I'll go into it a bit more in the spoilers section below, but it is accomplished on multiple levels: the color itself, and the physical properties behind the color, and its social, economic, and religious heritage, and many characters whose lives are affected in a surprising way by blue.

The book itself looks stunning. I'm a bit dense, so I didn't realize until around page 50 that the ink used in the book is, yes, blue; well, there's a light-colored blue for the page numbers that I spotted earlier, but the body text is a very dark blue that can initially scan as black. The book also has many shockingly good reproductions of Impressionist masterpieces, accompanied by humorous quotations from the text.

MINI SPOILERS

During the Q&A session, someone had asked Moore if he had a favorite character from the book, and without hesitating, he said it was Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. It perfectly shows in the book. Officially, the protagonist is Lucien Lessard, a baker and aspiring painter, but Moore gives nearly all the best lines to Henri, and the story gets incredibly fun whenever he's on the scene. Henri is a bon vivant, a cheerful drunk and whoremonger, not to mention a person of very short stature and a count and a talented artist. In my mind's eye, he's played by a particularly flamboyant Peter Dinklage.

Lucien isn't quite as amusing, but he's a very sweet lad; not terribly bright, but good-hearted. The rest of the Lessard clan are given smaller but memorable roles. Pere Lessard is the patron of all the Impressionists on Montmartre, who literally saved many of them from starvation thanks to his prodigious baking skills. The mom and sisters are classic Chris Moore characters: hilarious and edgy. Lucien grows up surrounded by virtually all the talented painters in Paris. I think Moore invented the Lessards, but almost every other character in the book is a historic figure, and he tried to capture their personalities based on what we know of them.

MEGA SPOILERS

I still haven't read any reviews from the book, but I'm a bit curious what aspect of the plot the reviewers are all giving away. Is it the time-slowing power of the sacred blue, or the real identities of Blue and the Colorman, or fact that Blue can switch between bodies at will? All of those were nicely surprising revelations. Actually, not even "revelations"... Moore did a great job at slowly revealing what was going on, so I could generally piece it together shortly before it was explicitly stated.

In a way, the Moore book this reminded me the most of was Fluke, just in terms of the balls-out craziness of the plot. I liked this one much more, but in both cases I would never have expected from the outset where the story would end up.

Blue was a great character; she's not a good person, but I couldn't help liking her. She gets particularly endearing after she drops the charade and gets drunk with Lucien and Henri. In terms of morality, she's pretty comparable to Jody from the "Bloodsucking Fiends" series... in an absolute sense, what she's doing is bad, but she's paired with another guy who's way worse than her, so she seems more acceptable in comparison. She's also in interesting manifestation of the sentiment, which I think was explicitly stated early in this book and that I first encountered in "The Last Temptation of Christ," that there's only one woman, with many faces. I liked the way that sentiment was unpacked in this book, though: it isn't an excuse to philander, it means that once you've found the one woman, you can stop looking.

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While the setting and storyline of Sacre Bleu are big departures for Chris Moore, it has the same wit and quality that I love about his books. If you're a fan, pick it up; if you haven't read him before, this would be a fine place to start.

Roundup

It's been a REALLY long time since I've done one of these, but... here's an even-more-random-than-usual post about things that I think are cool!

First, on a time-sensitive note: WOO-HOO, Shadowrun just passed the $1.5 million mark! That's really incredible; they're on track to raise quadruple their original budget. I think they're being very smart about how they approach this windfall. After some early speculation about significantly expanding the scope of the project (adding multiplayer, etc.), they decided to stick with a game that's achievable within the timeframe they've declared, and just making that game as awesome as possible. "We" have already gotten great music (they're bringing in the composers from the SNES and Genesis games!!!!), a lot more content (including an initially-backer-exclusive mission that ties together Jake's and Harlequin's stories), a better mission editor, etc. Any more money they raise will translate into more and better content.

I eventually decided to chip in at the $60 level, which is about the going price for a AAA game these days. Shadowrun Returns will NOT be a AAA game, and I imagine it will retail for around the $15 cost of the smallest reward tier, but I have a history of getting a lot of mileage out of these sorts of games. I agonized for almost a week before settling on that tier; I do love T-Shirts, and the digital exclusives and Doc Wagon card are nice bonuses. That said, I was mightily tempted by each of the next tiers. $100 puts your name in the credits, and I do like the idea of that kind of immortality (I'm one of those immortal geeks whose names are in the final credits to the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition movies). The newer $125 tier brings in an awesome-looking Deluxe Box Edition; Jordan borrowed this idea from Tim Schafer's wildly successful Doublefine Kickstarter, and I have a ton of fond memories of cracking open a box and finding goodies inside - a thick manual, a map, perhaps a Moonstone if I was lucky. The dogtags they're creating seem awesome. That said, I don't have the same box fetish for Shadowrun as I do for other series, so I could let that one slide. If I was REALLY crazy, I would have sprung the $250 for early access to the level/mission editor; I haven't really done much game modding since my Civ II days, but with this setting and this energized of a community, I could definitely get behind it.

ANYWAYS. There are about two days left in the fundraiser, so if you've been on the fence, now is a great time to contribute! Even the basic $15 pledge will, in addition to the items listed on the front page, give you access to a backer-exclusive mission. It's Shadowrun! Come on, chummers!

In other sci-fi news: I just beat Mass Effect! No, not Mass Effect 3. Mass Effect 1. I know, I know, I can hear you groaning. In my defense, I'm always way behind on the games I'm playing. Now that the series has ended, I'm finally going to go through and play the whole thing, not unlike how I experienced The Wire. And actually, that's not a horrible analogy. ME's cast of characters is much smaller, of course, and more heroic / less ensemble-ish, but it's an emphatically story-based experience that goes through many arcs and immerses you in a fully realized environment.

The story was what drew me most to ME, and I was not disappointed. ME is famous for giving a real story that has important choices with profound consequences; it isn't a story like Final Fantasy that runs on rails, or even like Baldur's Gate that tends to offer the same actions with varying motivations. You'll be deciding who lives and who dies, and those people will affect the course of this and future games.

ME also deserves massive props (heh) for its morality system. I've often railed in this blog about how much I dislike the Manichean ethics of games like Fallout and Bioshock. ME is one of the best systems I've ever encountered. Instead of the boring and reductive "good" and "evil" categories - really, how many people actually think that they're doing evil in the real world? - ME uses "Paragon" and "Renegade". These aren't intrinsic properties of your character; rather, they're how your character is perceived by the world. You might choose to execute a criminal in order to protect the lives they may threaten in the future; that's a "good" action that you're taken for noble reasons, but it will also cause people to fear you. These are two separate axes that your character can move on, fairly independently of one another. I came to think of Machiavelli, with Paragon roughly equating "Love" and Renegade standing in for "Fear". It is better to be both loved and feared, but you can choose to be only one. I tended to hew pretty closely to the Paragon path, and had maxed out those points by the end of the game, but did take the Renegade path at a few points, and really appreciated being able to do that; it made my character more nuanced, and didn't penalize my gameplay. (In contrast, for example, in SW:TOR, once you max out your Light Side, you need to be really careful to not take any Dark Side actions at all, or else it will gimp your character.)

The gameplay itself was... fine. There were a few things that I really liked; the level designs were pretty logical and fun, and only the Citadel occasionally overwhelmed because of its sprawl. I actually came to appreciate not being able to jump. It's such as common thing in first-person games, even ones that don't really need it, but you would NEVER see a team of heavily-armed soldiers bouncing up and down while on a mission. On the few occasions where vertical movement is required (like mounting a low ledge), it's simply an action your character can take. Combat was fun; I played as an Engineer, and mostly focused on my tech abilities while letting my squad shoot bad guys down, but near the end I got better at using my pistol and had fun with that.

My complaints: first and foremost, inventory management was a huge pain. You get an obscene amount of weapons and armor and equipment in the game. You'll use only a fraction of it; most gets converted to omni-gel or sold for cash. They really should have just given you that gel or cash to begin with. There's a limit to how much you can carry before you need to recycle items; that's usually just an annoyance, but on Feros I was forced to convert a bunch of equipment I would have much rather sold, since there were no shopkeepers there. It's really, really hard to figure out whether a given piece of equipment is better than another; they're ranked by numbers, but it's often the case that, say, a certain level III pistol will be better than another level V pistol. To make matters worse, when you're buying or selling equipment on your ship, you can't tell if any item is better or worse than what a squad member currently has equipped.

Also: the Mako was cool at first, but got really annoying by the end of the game. I loved doing it, but I hated spending so much time trying to climb up steep mountains. I found out too late that combat from within the Mako also gives you a 40% XP penalty, which really annoys me; if I had known that earlier, I would have reached level 50 by the end of the game, instead of my measly 49.

Anyways. I know that Bioware radically reworked ME for the second and third installments, and I'm guessing/hoping that it will improve on those aspects.

There's a bunch more I could say about ME, but I may save it for a future post that covers more of the series, maybe behind spoiler tags. In the meantime: jumping around a bit, but in between my ME sessions, I've been playing the old Shadowrun Genesis game on an emulator. It's a lot of fun; I'd never even seen this game before, and it's quite charming. It shares many of the trappings of the SNES game, but the story is completely different, and in particular the Matrix seems to be a lot more complex than I remember. The Genesis version is also way more squad-based. I'm currently playing as a Decker with a permanent Troll Samurai and an Elf Mage as fellow-runners. There's a ton of stuff to do, and a lot of interesting strategy in planning out how to upgrade my characters. Oh, and I think this game actually has one of the best economies of any game I've played recently. Money is scarce and useful, and I think carefully about each major purchase, and each purchase has a drastic impact on my effectiveness.

After I finished reading the Sandman Companion, I realized that for the first time in nearly six months, I didn't have another book immediately available to start reading. So, I went looking for another book. I must have blinked, because now I suddenly have seven books to read: an assortment from the library, plus a few from Amazon (which I often hit up to research books but rarely actually purchase from), plus a few used ones plus the new Chris Moore book from Kepler's (about which more later). I finished a quick read of a comic: the graphic novelization of "Neverwhere". It was very cool, though I kind of wish that I'd been able to get ahold of the original Neil Gaiman novel before reading the comic. Still, it was a great book: weird and dramatic and fun. I find it interesting that Gaiman does so much mythically-tinged work, and yet it all feels so different from one another; Sandman and American Gods and Marvel 1602 and Neverwhere don't have any direct overlap at all, even though each is filled to bursting with mythology, either real or created.

Oh, yeah, Moore! I'm on Kepler's email list, and always enjoy hearing about what that shop is up to, but I rarely make it all the way down to Menlo Park. That said, when I heard that Chris Moore would be coming there to promote his new book, "Sacre Bleu", I knew I had to go. Moore is incredibly funny in person; he's self-deprecating, but quite smart and knows his audience really well. He didn't read from the book, but riffed for a while on Rastafarianism, the "rent-a-friends" that escort him to book-signings, why he doesn't go to Kansas, and the wonders of medical-marijuana delivery. He talked for a while about writing the book, and the cool stuff he learned about art while doing research. Moore had an extended question-and-answer session that covered a lot of fascinating stuff; among other things, he described the painful and drawn-out, year-long battle with his publisher over the production of Sacre Bleu. If you get a chance to pick it up, I highly recommend it; as a work of art, the book is remarkable, with blue ink, gorgeous reproductions of 1800's paintings, and a striking front cover. You'd think that, in an age when publishers were panicking about e-books, they would want to support a book that made such a strong argument for the printed word, but apparently not. (He also revealed that he started work on this book four years ago; he quickly wrote "Bite Me" because he had a mortgage payment due, he claims.) I was most delighted to hear of his upcoming projects: he's currently working on a book in which Pocket (from "Fool") travels to Venice, and encounters events associated with "The Merchant of Venice" and... I think "Othello". (In the signing line, he mentioned that he wrote the invocation to the book in iambic pentameter. "At the rate I was writing, if I wrote the whole book that way, it would take twelve years to finish.") He also said that he won't be writing another vampire book... but he does want to write a sequel to A Dirty Job, and hinted that Abby Normal may find her way into that story.

Oh, yeah, public service announcement: I haven't finished the book yet, but Chris said (justifiably annoyed) that almost every single review of the book that he's seen has given away a crucial piece of the story in the very first paragraph. Sometimes in the very first sentence. So, if you want to be surprised, be like me and avoid all reviews until you're done. (Feel free to peek at the star ratings or letter grades if you like, just don't read the prose.)

I hung around afterwards for the book-signing. Moore was very gracious and cool, and engaged with everyone who came through; that meant that the line moved slowly, but nobody seemed to mind. I've gotten better at these things, and actually try to think a little about what I might want to say (not because I want to take up time, just to make things less awkward). I eventually decided that I could mention that I had lived in Kansas and 100% agreed with his assessment; however, I overheard him chatting with the ladies in front of me about iambic pentameter, so my brain went "Oooh! Shakespeare!" and so I asked him about that instead.

Fun fact: Moore says that his readership is about 70% female. I wouldn't have expected that, but from looking around the room, that seemed totally accurate. In fact, I think I may have been one of the only males my age there; I saw a few older gentlemen, but not many younger. Which seems a bit odd; I think pretty much all of his books that I've read feature males in their 20s or 30s as protagonists. Plus I tend to assume that males are more into horror books than females; then again, I guess women tend to enjoy vampires more, so maybe that's where that disparity comes from. Eh. Anyways, I thought it was interesting.

Phew! I think that's it from me for now. I'm heading out very soon for the lovely environs of Big Sur (not to be confused with Pine Cove), where, for the third year in a row, I'll be walking down Highway 1 for the gorgeous 21-Miler portion of the Big Sur Marathon. For the first time, I'll be doing it in the company of a group of friends. The weather looks to be gorgeous, the company should be fine. I will see you all on the flip side!

Coven

I enjoyed my return to Christopher Moore so much that I immediately followed it with another one, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove. That's always a risk, and I think I'll give myself a bit of a breather before I try another - it may not be a coincidence that the one Moore book I didn't absolutely love, Fluke, was one that I read in close succession to several other of his books. Still, this time it paid off: Lust Lizard was absolutely hilarious, and had Moore's signature combination of wit, style, and surprise. Oh, and without getting too spoilery, I'd like to point out that the title is a bit of a misnomer. It isn't actually called "Melancholy Cove."

MINI SPOILERS

Nope, this book sees us returning to Pine Cove. I think that Pine Cove was technically the setting of Moore's first book, Practical Demonkeeping, but I don't recall a whole lot of overlap between that book and the latter ones. Perhaps Mavis was in both. There's much more overlap between Lust Lizard and The Stupidest Angel; the latter book combines a whole bunch of characters from disparate Moore novels, and it's fun to get introduced to those characters after having seen them in latter form.

As usual, it's hard to decide whether the plots or the characters are the better feature. The plot is really fun: it nominally starts off as a bit of a mystery/whodunit investigation, with Constable Theo Crowe looking at a somewhat suspicious suicide. From the early pages, though, that storyline runs up against an eldritch horror story, very clearly indebted to H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. These two stories are joined and somewhat resolved through a mash of small-town California zaniness, including a lackadaisical psychiatrist messing with peoples' meds, illegal drug operations, disjointed economies based on seasonal tourism, and so on. Things don't proceed as you would expect, and though the tone can veer wildly from scene to scene, that's part of the fun.

The characters are great as well. I initially kind of linked Theo to Tucker, in that both are male protagonists who are marginally more sane than the people surrounding them, but they're pretty different people. I like Theo a bit more... in my mind, he has an earnest, hangdog, buzzed-out look to him; he's fundamentally a really good guy who is beyond the end of his rope and doesn't even pretend to be competent at what he does. I also absolutely loved the relationship between Theo and Molly, which totally inverts the stereotypical male/female roles in this kind of book; instead of Theo the strong, brave constable being the man who saves Molly from the ancient creeping horror, it's the insane buff female action hero who saves the soft-spoken and vulnerable constable on multiple occasions. I also totally loved Gabe the biologist and Skinner his dog; we got to see both of them in The Stupidest Angel, but they get more page-time here, and both are hilarious: Gabe in a somewhat stereotypical absent-minded nerd way (he never thinks about his clothes or appearance, and while being a generally amiable decent person he totally obsesses on whatever problem he's currently working on), and Skinner is just awesome. We're treated to a few passages told from Skinner's perspective, and so we learn of his loyalty and admiration for the Food Guy, his protective fondness for the Tall Guy, his secret desire to ride in the Big Red Car, and other doggy dreams. Let's see... the Black bluesman feels like a character who belongs in another novel, but he's still a fun character, the only one with any dialect, and the one who provides the most exposition in the book. We only catch a glimpse of H. P., but it's a great one that kind of consummates the whole Cthulhu thrust of the book. The sheriff makes a great villain. The most mysterious character for me was Val; early on it felt like she was being set up as the villain of the book, and she definitely bears a lot of the blame, but I couldn't possibly stay mad at someone willing to date Gabe; even though she's... not the most admirable person in the book, she's still on the side of the good guys at the end.

END SPOILERS

Once again, I need to set Moore aside to make sure I don't overdose (and to make sure that more remain when I finish reading my next Big Book). I'm really glad to have these two titles to carry me through, though.

The plane, boss! The plane!

I'm increasingly coming to appreciate Christopher Moore as a literary palate-cleanser. I almost always enjoy his books, they're quick reads, and their content tends to surprise me even while the quality remains high. It now kind of fills the spot in my rotation that Terry Pratchett used to fill before I finished reading all his books... something reliable and lighter to enjoy between the heavier stuff. It's also nice to jump into something like this after wrapping up a more epic book... I'll admit to feeling a bit of an ego boost when I breezed through "Island of the Sequined Love Nun" in three days after fiddling with The Savage Detectives for two and a half months. "That's right, I'm not a slow reader! I just take a long time when I'm reading Great Literature!"

As you could probably guess even if you weren't familiar with Moore, Island of the Sequined Love Nun is a comedic book. I'm reading these things out of order, so I had previously met a few of the characters (Tucker and Roberto) in a later book, the phenomenal work The Stupidest Angel. This is chronologically the first place where they were introduced, so there's a bit more background on the two (especially Tucker; Roberto still remains a bit of an enigma). The two stories definitely stand on their own, though.

MINI SPOILERS

The plot of the book takes the form of a romp through exotic locales. It starts off with the glamorous (well, at least exciting) life of the private pilot for a cosmetics magnate; after a comically painful accident, a series of events land him on a tiny Micronesian island under the sway of a cargo cult.

I've heard the term "Cargo cult" before, but had always mentally equated it with thuggee cults. They're actually totally different, and totally awesome. Apparently, back in World War II, while the Japanese and Americans were fighting over Pacific islands, many primitive island societies had their first contact with the developed world when an airplane would land on a beach, field, or other open stretch of land. The pilot would give modern gifts to the natives, perhaps get them to do some work (build an airstrip, etc.), and then fly away. Enraptured, the islanders would turn to religious devotion in the hopes that the magical god from the sky would return one day giving them more gifts. They would keep the airfield clean so it would be welcoming to him, would sing the songs they'd heard over his radio, and so on. After the war, Catholic missionaries and others would come to these islands, and found the cults incredibly resilient. Why should they worship Jesus, they would ask, when the airmen had actually given them stuff? Isn't a god who's present on Earth better than one who's far away? Sometimes, they would accept the new faith, but adapt it to their own; for example, they would start to wear crucifixes, but would attach propellers to the top end.

In this book, a cargo cult is going strong on the island of Alualu. Instead of straight devotion, though, a hierarchy has been imposed on them. A missionary doctor became frustrated when his efforts to convert them failed, and he and his lovely assistant (a nurse/stripper turned high priestess) set themselves up as the true representatives of Vincent, the pilot who saved them with cases of SPAM after their men had been killed by the Japanese. There's a whole set of rituals that the Shaman and the Sky Priestess carry out: Broadway show tunes, an airplane, "chosen" villagers... a whole bunch of trappings that come close to elevating the Vincent cult into a religion. This is a bad thing, of course... the two in charge do not have their flock's best interests at heart.

As is often the case in Moore's book, it's a bit of a toss-up as to what's the best feature of the book: its plot or its characters. Both shine here. The plot is fun, fast-paced, and takes some unexpected turns. The characters are hilarious. There are some really good ones we only see for a little while - Vincent only makes a few appearances, but kills each time; Roberto is just so bizarre that I love him; the Mary-Kay equivalent (I forget her name) was a hoot. The main characters have a bit more depth, and are also great. Tucker's "nerdy hunk" character is really unique, and Moore gets a lot of mileage out of the combination of a great-looking and incredibly-awkward guy. The Chief is just a really great guy, not too funny but I really liked him. My favorite, though, has to be the Sky Priestess... partly because she's like four or five characters in one. That's a bit part of her personality, of course: she's able to pick and choose the persona that's most fit for the occasion. She's a consummate performer at heart, whether she's dancing nearly-naked in a scarf or packing a pistol or playing the part of a dutiful housewife.

END SPOILERS

Even though the book's an easy read, there's a surprising amount of stuff going on in here... lampooning of religion, the relationship between the first and third world, ethics, redemption, American media, and more. I can't really tell what's meant as satire and what's just funny, but it's all great.

The Stupidest Angel

I've returned for more Moore. "The Stupidest Angel" is the shortest and quickest read yet from him, and it's hilarious as always. (Well, as almost always.) It's sort of a stand-alone and very twisted Christmas story, but it's also a kind of celebration of his work up to that point, including characters from quite a few of his previously unconnected novels (some of which I haven't yet read). It's all very silly, and all highly amusing.


I keep trying to figure out the best way to describe Moore's appeal to other people. I'll start sentences like, "It's really about his characters..." or "It's really about his goofy analogies..." or "It's really about the way he makes crazy things happen in real places..." or "It's really about his plotting." The truth, of course, is the sum of all these things. He has a great gift for writing dialog; he's able to quickly establish his characters' personalities and then start playing around with them; he always has just enough plot to make things interesting without overwhelming the jokes; and he's really a very skilled writer who uses his considerable talents to amuse you.

MINI SPOILERS

The Stupidest Angel returns to Pine Cove, the scene of Moore's first book, Practical Demonkeeping. It's a fun setting; the bucolic natural surroundings and the quirky town inhabitants provide a nice backdrop to whatever action occurs. In the first two pages, Moore perfectly nails the oddities of California Christmases:  we feel the need for holiday accoutrements, like Santa and reindeer, but it's all just kind of wrong without the weather to back it up.

I don't want to give away the plot, even in a mega spoilers section... but there's a murder pretty early on in the book, and things just kind of go downhill from there. Let's just say that this ends up being a pretty classic parody of a movie genre, but that genre isn't the Christmas movie genre.

END SPOILERS

More than anything, this book makes me want to go back and read the other books before this one, to get to know the new characters that it introduced: Island of the Sequined Love Nun, the Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, and Lamb. I just want to be careful to not exhaust this trove of humor too quickly.

Doesn't Suck

Ahhhh... that's more like it!

In ordinary circumstances I would have taken more time off after my relatively-disappointing read of Fluke before returning to the Christopher Moore well. I've historically had a tendency to get addicted to authors, devour everything by them that I could get my hands on, and rapidly experience the law of diminishing returns. Because of that, I tend to make a conscious effort to space out my approaches to authors I enjoy, and I'm extra-careful to back off when I feel like I may be getting too accustomed to them and thus not enjoying their work as much as I otherwise might.

Here, though, I'm glad that I moved straight from Fluke to You Suck, which made me realize that I still do enjoy Moore's work, just not that one book (as much).

You Suck is a sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends, and a sequel done well: it carries forward the best aspects of the first book, including the terrific characters, unusual plot, and super-sharp writing, and adds some fresh ingredients of its own. I had certain expectations going in, and they were soundly met.

MINI SPOILERS

So: vampires. The book picks up right after BF left off: Thomas has become a vampire. He's changed by this, of course, but he remains the thoroughly likeable exuberant freed-Midwesterner doofus of the first book: he acts like an especially energetic puppy when exploring his newfound powers, whines when he tries to get his way, enthusiastically tries to solve the problems thrown his way.

Pretty much all of the characters from the first book return. The surviving Animals have been to Vegas and back, losing their ill-gotten gains with astonishing speed. The cops are keeping things low. The original vampire eventually escapes from his prison and continues his odd test, leaving corpses behind to frighten the populace. And the Emperor sticks around too; he has less to do in this book, but provides his regal presence and assurance to some crucial scenes.

The book adds a bunch of new characters, a few of whom are minor but several which are more important. Probably my favorite is Abby Normal, a high school sophomore goth chick who Thomas recruits as their new minion. (She calls him "Lord Flood," and for most of the book has the mistaken impression that he was friends with Byron.) She's pretty fun in general, but my favorite part is her chapters, which Moore writes as entries from her diary. Unlike the rest of the book, which is done in Moore's comic third-person voice, these chapters are done in first-person, just-after-the-fact, and man, Moore has lots of fun with it. Lots of dialect, slang, stream of consciousness. And most of the dialog is of the form: "So I was like, 'Yo, dude, wherefore art thou giving me such a hard time, sir?' And he was all, 'Duh, der, look at me, I'm a stupid fat cop.'" This is how people sound when they're recounting dialog to other people: summarizing it, coloring it, reinterpreting history to make yourself seem more clever. It has a great effect here; knowing Abby as we do, we can sort of de-crypt her recounting of events and come up with a reasonable approximation of what actually occurred.

Let's see, what else... there's Chet, another homeless guy who's way less cool than the Emperor but who still achieves comic greatness, mostly due to his huge cat. Blue is kind of the main villain of the book: the Animals picked her up in Vegas, where she bled their money dry. She now terrorizes and leads them. Jerrod is kind of a bummer of a character; he's more of a whiney brat than anything. Jerrod and Abby's families provide some good color to these determinedly moody characters, but aren't intended to be fully fleshed out. Finally, towards the end we see three mysterious other vampire characters. They get almost no narrative time at all, but seem likely to figure into the sequel.

END SPOILERS

There is a sequel, of course. Apparently this set of books is one of Moore's most popular, and his fans keep clamoring for more. I can't blame them. The satire is sharp, the characters are hilarious, the plot is wild (without veering into Fluke-ish nonsense), and everything moves along at a nice pace. I'm now back at the other extreme, deliberately holding off on reading my next Moore book because I want to keep around something good for me to read when I need it.

Use the force, Fluke

My merry romp through Christopher Moore (er, I mean Moore's work) continues unabated. My most recent entry: Fluke. I was going to say that it's the first of Moore's works that I've read to be set outside of Northern California, but then I realized that England is also outside Northern California, so never mind.

Fluke is... a weird book. A really, really weird book. Even for Moore (again, based on what I've read from him before). The first 50 or so pages left me utterly unprepared for where the book ended up, and I'd be shocked if any other readers could predict where things end up.

Obviously, all this implies abundant spoilers, so I'll try to treat the little that I can before dropping into that tag.

The book remains very funny, of course. Some of the humor is implicit within Moore's writing style and authorial asides; some of it is explicit within the characters' speech; and some is metaphysical at the overall shape of the plot. There were a few times when Moore seemed to be trying just a little too hard... I generally love his absurd metaphors, but a few of these just didn't parse. Still, overall it was really funny.

From a technical standpoint, I think this was the worst-edited of Moore's books that I've read so far. It wasn't awful (not "Crossroads of Twilight" awful), but I was kind of surprised by how many technical errors ended up in here. Nothing totally horrible, but several instances of dropped closing quotation marks, missing words, and other ephemera. (I read the hardcover; I suppose, and hope, that these might have gotten cleaned up in the paperback.)

Uh... I guess that's about all I can say without dropping into

MINI SPOILERS

The Hawaii setting was really pleasant. I've never been, and the book furthers my vague desire to one day go there.

The science stuff was pretty interesting. At the end of the book Moore has a note that summarizes what parts he made up and which were genuine. Almost everything I know about humpback whales and their songs comes from Star Trek IV, so it was pretty cool to learn more about what scientists currently think about this. I also thought a lot about Moby Dick, especially in the discussions of different types of whales and their hunting. (And also of last week's episode of Archer, which features a hilarious exchange between Archer and Lana that includes the phrase "Clean-burning whale oil.")

The background characters were fun, too. It's kind of surprising that there aren't more books about scientists, and it was a lot of fun to get all that drama (backstabbing, poaching, public relations, public embarrassment, fights over funding, maintaining reputations, etc.) in a small, well-understandable community. Moore says that he made all of that stuff up, but as someone who has worked in a variety of corporate environments, it feels awfully believable to me.

The primary characters: good, but weird. Really weird. Nate and Clay are very likeable, and also a bit two-dimenstional for the role they have to play. Kona is just far out there; he may be the funniest character altogether, but almost all of his laughs are too easy (white guy smoking ganja and talking about Bob Marley). Amy is way too much of everything: way too perky, way too pretty, way too affectionate. I had a really hard time early in the book understanding why Amy was not only putting up with these people, but actually flirting with them. That kinda became less of an issue later on, but only by exchanging a small bit of oddness with a huge wormhole of strangeness.

MEGA SPOILERS

Man... where to begin? Whale ships? Pirates? Kinda-aliens-but-actually-alternately-evolved-oh-wait-they-did-not-really-evolve-but-were-created-but-it-is-still-science creatures? The Goo?

I was flummoxed from the moment Nate got swallowed, and I still don't know what to make of it. It reads like a shaggy dog story. The distinct feeling I got throughout the last 2/3 of the book was that Moore was just making it up as he went along, pulling the craziest thing that he could think of out of his rear. That's cool, I'm all for inventive and wild storytelling, but... man, I don't know. I guess it felt like he wrote the whole book as a sort of creative-thinking exercise, and then didn't go back and re-write with the ending in mind. There are a lot of weird little digressions that go nowhere, plot points that seem important but end up meaningless, general narratorical meandering. And, again, I'm not necessarily opposed to any of that, but I guess that this felt sloppy in a way I'm unaccustomed to.

That said, the core idea of the Goo was really interesting. I immediately connected it with Robert Anton Wilson's idea of the Leviathan, from the eponymous third book of the Illuminatus! trilogy. Both area incredibly ancient sea-based life forms that represent a different evolutionary path that began back in the primordial ooze.

I also found myself thinking of Guu, from Jungle wa Hale Itsumo nochi Guu. Both Guus are incredibly powerful, sneaky, capable of swallowing things up and creating other things. Other than that, um, little resemblance, so forget I said anything.

END SPOILERS

Altogether, I have to concede that Fluke is probably my least favorite so far of Moore's books. That doesn't mean that it's bad, far from it, but it hasn't blown me away like his others.

Part of this might just be that I'm spoiled, coming off the hilarious, tightly-plotted, and resonant Bloodsucking Fiends. I would ordinarily suggest taking a little break before diving back in, except that I've already started in on You Suck. Which, so far, is awesome, so I'm hoping that Fluke was, well, a fluke.

Best Fiends

After an aborted start at You Suck, I backtracked and read Bloodsucking Fiends. This is the third Christopher Moore book that I've read; I think it's something around the third or so book that he wrote chronologically, and kinda the first in this particular series, although there is a loose tie back to Practical Demonkeeping, his debut novel.

Ahem.

It's a thoroughly enjoyable book. Moore is a breeze to read, witty, and has great subject matter for his books. For example, while PD was focused around the awesome Big Sur coastline, BF takes place entirely within the City of San Francisco. Its protagonist is a transplant from the Midwest. While I can hardly claim to identify with Tommy, I did really appreciate his, "gee, whiz!" reaction to the splendors of the West Coast.


MINI SPOILERS

My favorite element of this book is something that Moore stole outright: The Emperor. That's right, Norton's legend lives on! He's never named here, but Moore borrows everything else about the man: his title (Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico), his dogs (Bummer and Lazarus, each of whom is remarkably well fleshed out, and Bummer in particular ending up as one of my favorite supporting characters), his attitude of benign lordship over the City, and so on. I think that "Safety first!" is Moore's own invention. Norton adapts remarkably well to the 20th century setting, integrates beautifully with the plot, and provides great character.

A close second: The Animals. This wild group of late-night stockboys at the Marina Safeway provide pure, unbridled id that makes everyone else seem straight-laced in comparison. Because there are so many of them, the individuals aren't too thoroughly sketched, but the collective impact is one of outright mayhem.

Tommy himself is thoroughly likeable: a dreamer, an innocent, but someone who isn't at all self-righteous. His worldview is constantly getting challenged, and his habitual reaction is, "Wow, that's neat!"

Jody is also fun, more for her situation than for her actual personality. Moore pulls off an impressive feat in making vampirism seem important without being too melodramatic, and funny without seeming trivial. I liked Jody's gradual dawning apprehension of what's going on. There's a growing eagerness within her to embrace these changes; simultaneously, she recognizes that eagerness, and mulls over whether or not to indulge it.

Finally, Rivera and Caruso are intentionally stock figures, but do a good job of moving the plot along. I'm pretty sure that at least one of them (maybe Rivera?) was a minor character in Practical Demonkeeping; at one point in this book, he makes an offhand statement about seeing an event from that previous book. Which is cool. I did authors who create cohesive mythologies, and if they're set in the "real world," so much the better.

The plot is fun, well-edited, and moves along at a good clip while mainly serving the primary goal of letting these great characters interact. It starts with Jody turning into a vampire, and the rest of the novel revolves around her struggles to deal with that transformation, and the actions of others who she affects. There's a parallel story about a series of murders. I hesitate to call this a "mystery," since it's really clear from the very beginning what's going on there, but it still bears all the hallmarks of a mystery: the investigations, the clues, the dogged detectives, the informants, and so on.


END SPOILERS

Oh, but as with all great books set here, The City is a character in its own right. I wasn't living here in the early 90's when this book was written, but I think Moore nailed it. He gets the faux trendiness of loft space in "scenic" SOMA; the nightclub scene (striving to seem like a mix of folks, but inevitably skewing towards yuppie scum as the inevitable effect of expensive drinks); the gotta-always-be-on-your-watch minor terrors of the Tenderloin; the relative refuge of Cow Hollow; the stark barrenness of the Financial District after 5pm; the overwhelming cacaphony of Stockton Street in Chinatown; the crushing worlds of commerce and history in North Beach; and on and on. I think it's awesome that someone can "get" The City after a relatively short time here, and yet still have enough explorations to fill a lifetime.

BF is fun and colorful. It would be well worth reading for The Emperor alone, but the Emperor has plenty of company that elevates the book still more. Moore brings things to a clever conclusion, and while the book ends on a satisfying resolution, I'm also not at all surprised that he brought out sequels to it. I'm looking forward to seeing how the story continues.

Practical Beginnings

Having enjoyed my one and only Christopher Moore book, the excellent "Fool," I decided to start investigating the rest of the canon.  I was at least partially motivated by Scott's observation that many of his books take place in the Bay Area.  I like the Bay Area, and I like fiction, so combining the two can be a real winner.

"Practical Demonkeeping" actually takes place near Big Sur, which may be even cooler than the Bay Area.  Berkeley and other local cities get their props as well, and much of the book is steeped in a quintessentially Northern Californian attitude.


MINI SPOILERS

This was Moore's first book, and it kind of shows.  Reading this felt a little like reading The Big U: both are fascinating snapshots of a writer with a lot of raw talent who is working his way towards the great writer he will become.  In this case, Moore already had a great sense of humor, a good ear for dialog, and an interesting plot.  His main weakness here is actually the same as Stephenson's weakness in The Big U: it feels like he has trouble with his characters.  Some are much more developed than others, some feel kind of inessential, and a few seem inconsistent.

That isn't a real criticism, though.  The book as a whole definitely works, I just like complaining about things.

The plot was pretty good.  I think I'm spoiled by Gaiman; any other author who integrates mythology and/or religion into a contemporary work has some seriously stiff competition.  The demonic aspect was rather Miltonic - interesting, but nothing that hasn't been done before.  The djinn aspect felt a little tacked-on... maybe it's just my Western prejudices, but I have a hard time comparing the power of a genie to the power of a devil. 

But, anyways: the actual storyline, and the whole bit with Catch being bound by rules but still basically free to do what he wanted, was done well. 

I got a real kick out of reading an early-90's contemporary novel.  There were so many things in here that would have seemed totally natural at the time but feel like anachronisms now.  Like smoking in restaurants, and aerobics programs, and BBS's.


END SPOILERS

"Practical Demonkeeping" wasn't as good as Fool, but it was still good enough to keep me interested in Moore.  I'm looking forward to retracing his progression.  Ahh... it feels so good to finally get another author whose work I can devour without waiting in agony for another book to come out.

Poor Tom's A-Cold

Shakespeare wrote four Great Tragedies.  Two of them are very widely performed and known in the popular culture: Hamlet and Macbeth.  A third, Othello, isn't quite as widespread, and carries a particular set of baggage, but still gets quite a bit more exposure than the average Shakespeare play.  The final one, King Lear, falls far behind the others.  It gets performed, to be sure, but it doesn't get anywhere near the number of, say, Hollywood adaptations as Hamlet and Macbeth have.

There's a good reason for that: Lear is an incredibly bleak play.  Of course, we all expect bleakness from the Great Tragedies, but there's a particular viciousness and sadism in Lear that limits its appeal in this age of uplifting endings.

All the more reason for "Fool"!  I haven't read any of Christopher Moore's other books, but this is one great novel, and he pulls off the incredibly challenging job of writing a comic novel adaptation of Lear.  It isn't pure comedy - you can't keep Gloucester's torture in a totally happy book - but it is biting, and witty, and overall is surprisingly enjoyable.

Fool is narrated by the hero, who in this telling is Lear's Fool.  Fools are in many of the Bard's plays, but Lear's Fool is probably the most well-known and sympathetic.  When people talk about how Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are modern-day jesters who speaks truth to power, they're thinking about this character's archetype.  The Fool is the only person who really sees what's happening, and who can warn the King about his mistakes without being punished for it.

There are a LOT of differences between the play and the novel, and one of the biggest is that here the Fool isn't just a commentator, but an actual actor in the play's events.  He is downright Machiavellian, a far better schemer than Regan or Edmund, and his actions set mind-bogglingly-large events into motion.  He's also granted a backstory and a personal journey of sorts, fleshing him out to a three-dimensional character instead of an archetype.

I really dig making the Fool a schemer.  I'm a bit more ambivalent on the backstory.  It's cool, and it works, but... I dunno.  I can't claim that it isn't epic, but it isn't timeless in the way that Lear itself is.  It's more like a really clever plot that hangs together well but doesn't illuminate anything outside itself.  Which is totally fine - this is a comic novel, after all, and I wouldn't expect to receive eternal truths from it.

Oh, and the wordplay!  Amazing!  Virtually all the dialog is in modern English, although I suspect that some of the lines are lifted or adapted from the play's text.  It's every bit as bawdy as the Bard, but using modern R-rated language instead of archaic swearing from Elizabethan England.  I suspect that our reaction to this language is closer to the original audience's reaction to the original words.  It's funny and shocking and clever.  Moore is at his very best when the Fool is verbally bantering with someone.  Actually, "Banter" isn't the right word, since the Fool totally dominates such exchanges; only Cordelia and Regan can come close to matching his wits.

There's a cool afterword to the book in which Moore talks about writing it.  It's fascinating to get insight into making a book like this.  He points out that the timeline of the original play is really hard to pin down; the historic King Leir probably lived around 600 BC, long before any of the cities in the play (Gloucester, Kent, etc.) were founded; there's a weird mixture of Roman and Celtic and Christian components to the tale.  At one point in the original play, Moore writes, Shakespeare himself acknowledges how screwed up the timeline is when a character says something like, "This is the prophecy written by Merlin, even though he will be born after I die."  It's as though Shakespeare is throwing up his hands and saying, "I don't know when the play is set, either!  Wheeee!"  Moore took that as his license to do what he wanted to, and he keeps the same sort of mixed-up timeline as the original without worrying about whether it makes sense.  This almost entirely works, except for one really bizarre two-page digression on the two popes - rather than the historic Pope and Antipope, this is a conflict between the Discount Pope and the Retail Pope.  It's pretty confusing, and while I like the idea of dueling Popes, it has nothing in the slightest to do with anything else and totally breaks the rhythm of the chapter.  That's an anomaly, though... for the most part, Moore takes license with the timeframe in the service of doing other interesting stuff or establishing atmosphere.

This is the first book of Moore's that I've read, and it sounds like it might be pretty different from his other stuff.... I'm sure I'll check out something else from him at some point, though I'm not in an enormous rush to do so.  In the meantime, blow, wind!  Rage, rain!  Get-Ready!  The World is Coming to an End!