Month: September 2011

Dies iræ! Dies illa solvet sæclum in favilla

Math class was about to begin when our teacher ran into the room. “A plane has hit the World Trade Center,” she said as she switched on the television set that stood in the corner of every classroom. We were supposed to have a quiz that day, but it was swiftly forgotten as we spent the next forty-eight minutes watching the unthinkable unfold before us on the television screen. When the bell rang, we quietly rose from our desks and trudged to our next class, but by that point every television in the school was tuned to the news. The horror of the situation seemed to increase exponentially with each passing moment as the Twin Towers finally collapsed, the Pentagon burned, and rumors abounded of car bombs exploding throughout the capital.  By the time I returned home, it was clear that thousands had died and life would never be the same again.

Looking back now, I think a whole era died on September 11. When I was a kid, there seemed to be a pervasive sense of optimism. Life seemed to be getting better all the time. The Cold War was a rapidly fading memory, and the booming economy brought prosperity to many. But that terrible Tuesday morning ushered in a new era, an era where the comfortable certainties of the past seemed like mere ghosts. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have proven polarizing, both at home and abroad, and our victories there could still prove to be hollow ones. The economy is now more of a cause for worry than celebration, and unemployment remains stubbornly high. Our country faces a looming debt crisis, yet our politicians seem incapable of the sort of rational behavior necessary to confront it. With all this, it it any wonder that surveys show such pessimism? I think my generation is going to have a case of nerves that persists long after the economy recovers and the troops come home.

The “Dies irae” has been running through my mind all day as I remember the thousands who died. Its final words make a fitting coda for this post:

Pie Iesu Domine, dona eis requiem. Amen.

A disappointing read

Few things are more frustrating than picking up a book by one of your favorite authors only to realize that it’s nowhere near as good as you were expecting. I experienced that very feeling when I finished House of Illusions by Pauline Gedge.

I’ve been a fan of Gedge ever since I read her Scroll of Saqqara, which is basically a retelling of the story of Prince Khaemwaset and the Book of Thoth. Her blend of history and fantasy made a huge impression on me, and it inspired me to write Evil in Thebes.

Unlike the Scroll of Saqqara, House of Illusions is a more traditional piece of historical fiction that is largely devoid of fantastic elements. Set during the reign of Ramesses III, it’s told from the perspective of three POV characters: Kamen, a young military officer; Kaha, a scribe who works for Kamen’s father; and Thu, a disgraced concubine living in exile.

Therein lies my biggest complaint about the book. As my regular readers know, I’m not a fan of multiple-POV characters to begin with, but the way it was handled here was particularly vexing. Even though the stories of Kamen, Kaha, and Thu do overlap, they seemed oddly isolated, despite the fact that they’re telling the same story. For example, in Kamen’s chapters, there’s a very interesting subplot wherein he starts to develop actual romantic feelings for Takhuru, the young lady to whom his father has betrothed him. She starts out as a spoiled little bitch, but she becomes much more sympathetic and interesting as the book proceeds. Unfortunately, once the narration switches to Kaha, she more or less vanishes from the story (though she continues to be mentioned in passing). The same thing happens to Kaha once it’s Thu’s turn to put on the narrator’s hat. I think it would have been a lot more satisfying if the reader had a chance to hear from each narrator throughout the course of the story instead of confining each one to a particular set of chapters.

The pacing also left something to be desired. There’s danger for the first 200 pages or so, but then it peters out and the last 200 pages are devoted to a long, drawn out resolution that’s more or less devoid of serious conflict. I also found that some of the ceremonial scenes dragged on and on, which is saying something since I usually have a high tolerance for such things!

Gedge excels, however, at bringing ancient Egypt to life. She does a great job of providing enough details to set the scene without deluging the reader with extraneous information. Even though Gedge uses first-person narrators, she manages to avoid having them give anachronistic descriptions of things that they wouldn’t have thought twice about in real life. For the most part, her depiction of Egypt is an accurate one, and she gets bonus points for using accurate names (though she does refer to the king by his modern name of ‘Ramesses the Third,’ which is slightly annoying). The only major research fail I saw was that she repeatedly mentions fountains. As far as I know, there’s no evidence for fountains of any kind in pharaonic Egypt.

Despite my disappointment, I’m still a fan of Pauline Gedge, and I’m still willing to read her other books. I just hope they’re more like Scroll of Saqqara!

Diablo 3 beta observations

The friends-and-family component of the Diablo 3 beta test is now underway, and, in the absence of an NDA, there’s plenty of information swirling around. Of particular interest are the YouTube videos showing actual gameplay footage. They only show the very first areas of the game (the entire beta only encompasses the first third of Act 1), but, from what I’ve seen so far, it looks awesome.  The atmosphere is very dark and brooding, with nary a unicorn or rainbow in sight. The graphics aren’t exactly cutting-edge, but they’re still a treat to see. I’m really glad that Blizzard abandoned the pure randomness of the first two games in favor of hand-designed layouts. It makes for a much more realistic world.

The designers also appear to have done a nice job of scattering lore throughout the game. In the first two Diablos, most of the lore came from your conversations with townsfolk, but in D3 it looks like you find material while adventuring. For example, in one video, the player was treated to a neat little voiceover from Deckard Cain explaining the lore behind the ‘Wretched Mother’ monster. In another video, the player discovered a scrap of a journal that provided a new perspective on Diablo 1’s backstory. This too was relayed as a voiceover, so it didn’t take you out of the action.

The only slightly disappointing aspect of the game so far is the music. The initial theme when you enter the game is quite nice and very reminiscent of the original Tristram theme, but once you start adventuring into the wilderness, the music becomes what might be called “dark ambient.” It’s all very low-key, and it stands in marked contrast with Matt Uelmen’s score for Diablo 2. Uelmen’s work on D2 and D2X is some of the finest music I’ve ever heard in a video game, and I’ve included a number of his songs in my writing music playlists. That being said, I’m not really in a position to pass final judgment on D3’s music since I’ve only heard a handful of songs in isolation. Perhaps they’re much more effective when heard within the game itself.