Author: jasonloch

Sometimes research drives me batty…

While working on my WIP yesterday, I had to ask myself whether or not an ancient Egyptian would have known anything about sharks.

After spending hours scouring both my library and the Interwebz, the answer still remained elusive. The Egyptians weren’t all that keen on sea travel, so they didn’t spend much time discussing marine life (though Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple contains some interesting depictions of creatures found encountered in the Red Sea during the journey to Punt).

Eventually, I decided to make an educated guess and assume that an Egyptian might have heard stories about great predatory fish that lived in the sea and occasionally took bites out of swimmers. The historian in me hates making guesses like that, but he’s rapidly learning to swallow his pedantic outrage. But it’s stuff like this that tempts me to switch gears and write about a world of my own creation. 🙂

In praise of Macs

As many of you know, I use a great program called Scrivener to write my fiction. Historically, it’s only been available for Macs, but they just came out with a Windows version after an interminably-long Beta test. I was tempted to buy it until I realized that I’d have to fork over $40. It seemed silly to spend that money when I still have a MacBook that can run the version I already own.

Last night, I dusted off my old MacBook, which had been relegated to auxiliary use since I purchased my gaming laptop last year. In doing so, I kind of fell in love with Macs all over again. Despite being several years old and suffering all kinds of abuse, it still runs great. It’s certainly less temperamental than the PC I bought less than two years ago. As I downloaded a bunch of long-neglected software updates, I was impressed at how hassle-free the Mac update process is. Unlike Windows 7, which seems intent on making the update process as painful and awkward as possible.

My only complaint about the Mac line is the price. A decent gaming Mac is still about twice as expensive as a comparable PC. But when it comes time to replace my current gaming laptop, I might just bite the bullet and spend the extra money. My trusty white MacBook has shown that Apple makes damn good computers, and it would be great to escape from the bloated, buggy, and byzantine mess that is Windows.

 

 

 

BOOK REVIEW: The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan

I had been meaning to read this for a long time, but it wasn’t until an Amazon promotion let me purchase it for $1 that I finally downloaded it onto my Kindle. Many of you may already know Rick Riordan because of his hugely successful Percy Jackson series. I’ve never read any of those books; Greek mythology just isn’t my thing. But when I discovered that Riordan also has a series incorporating Egyptian mythology, I decided to give it a try.

The Red Pyramid is told from the perspective of siblings Carter and Sadie Kane. They are the children of Dr. Julius Kane, a famous Egyptologist. After their mother died in a mysterious accident, Carter traveled the world with his father while Sadie lived in England with her fusty grandparents. The two siblings didn’t spend much time together, so when their father suddenly brings them together at the start of the book, they’re practically strangers.

Unfortunately, the family reunion goes awry when Dr. Kane attempts a mysterious ritual in the British Museum. He shatters the Rosetta Stone, unleashing a terrifying supernatural entity. He vanishes in the process, leaving his frightened children to try to figure out what happened to him. With the help of their Uncle Amos, Carter and Sadie soon discover that, not only was their father part of a secret society of Egyptian magicians, but the Egyptian gods are real and one of their number is plotting to plunge the world into chaos. The siblings also learn that they have the potential to become quite powerful. But the other magicians don’t trust them, forcing them to puzzle out their powers while simultaneously running for their lives and trying to stop the impending apocalypse.

All in all, Red Pyramid is an entertaining read. It’s breezy in a way that reminds me of the first Harry Potter book. Both Carter and Sadie share narrator duties, but the fact that the book is ostensibly a transcript of an audio-recording that they produced makes it easier to accept the first-person narration.

But where the book really shines is in its treatment of Egyptian magic. As many of you know, I get annoyed when Egypt is used as a garnish, but Riordan does a nice job of remaining true to history. For example, his Egyptian magicians frequently use various types of animated figurines, some of which are taken directly from Egyptian mythology (such as a wax crocodile and litter-bearers that want to drag you off and beat you). Riordan also incorporates a large number of Egyptian myths into the story, ranging from the fairly well-known account of Isis and Osiris to the less familiar story of Sekhmet’s bloody rampage.

Riordan also gets brownie points for his portrayal of Set. In a lot of modern works, Set is portrayed as an evil being similar to Satan in Christianity. But that is an oversimplification. For much of Egyptian history, Set was a respected member of the pantheon (in fact, the Ramessides felt a special connection to him). True, he killed his brother and attempted to usurp the throne from his nephew, but he was also the sun god’s primary defender against Apophis. It isn’t until the Late Period that Set starts to be seen as a purely evil deity. Therefore, I was glad to see that Riordan chose to go with a much more ambivalent portrayal of Set.

I only have two real complaints about Red Pyramid. First, sometimes it gets a bit too cute. I could have done without the basketball-playing baboon, or the cat-goddess who eats Friskies. Second, the romantic elements seemed a bit hamfisted at times. But these are very minor gripes, and overall I really, really liked it.

Palin’ around with the Paladin

Recently, I decided to dust off my copy of Diablo II and start the fight against the Burning Hells anew. At first, I played as an Assassin. I’ve never played as one for any significant length of time, and I thought she might be a good warm-up for the Diablo III Monk. Alas, I soon remembered why I never played her: I just don’t find her fun. I then tried rolling a Javazon, but I didn’t enjoy her either.

Finally, I decided to revisit the Paladin. That was actually the first class I ever played in D2, but I made a whole bunch of newbie mistakes that crippled my character. I was so eager to experiment that I spread my skill points too thinly. I was able to kill Diablo, but when the expansion pack came out and I took my Paladin into Act V, the poor guy couldn’t walk five feet without dying.

Thankfully for my new Paladin, I’ve learned quite a bit in the intervening decade. This time around, I’m restricting my skills to a select few. I’m planning to make a Holy Shock Zealot. I’m only at Level 15, so I haven’t gotten Holy Shock yet, but Zeal is awesome. My guy is cruising through Act I, kicking ass and taking names. His biggest problem is that he occasionally runs out of mana, but I’ve managed to solve that by using a Spiked Club of the Bat that gives him mana leech.

I’m also much better at using gems this time around. My first Paladin didn’t appreciate the power of topazes, but my current one has a nice socketed skullcap that gives him +18% chance to find magic items. Consequently, he’s getting better loot, including a nice rare shield that’s held him in good stead.

What about you? Have you played the Paladin in D2? If so, which build did you use?

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.