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Archive for the ‘Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews’ Category
NOOK Book Review: Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo
January 3rd, 2012 | Added to Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews | 5 Comments »
Sometimes you watch a clip on the morning news that sticks in your head. A while back (I think it was before Christmas 2010) I saw an interview on FOX & Friends with Todd Burpo and his young son, Colton Burpo. The gist of the teases leading up to the interview were that the young kid claimed to have gone to Heaven and had details on what Heaven is actually like. After hearing those teases as I was getting ready for work I thought, “Okay. I’m sold. Let’s hear this kid’s story.”
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I don’t really remember much about the interview other than I couldn’t get an immediate read on whether or not the kid was telling the truth. Sometimes you watch these young kids on television and you can sense that they are coerced into saying certain things by their parents. Other times you watch these kids and just get a bad feeling about the entire story. It’s hard to explain, but if you’ve ever watched a person tell a lie or bend the truth to the point of nearly breaking it in half, then you know what I’m talking about.
I didn’t get that sense from Colton’s story, but I didn’t give it much thought.
The reason the interview was taking place was because the kid’s father wrote a book about his son’s experience. Over the next few months I would pick up the Burpo book at my local Barnes & Noble, flip through it a little bit, and then put it back on the shelf and move on to the next story. Quick side note – even though I own a NOOK Color I still head over to the local Barnes & Noble store to flip through some books to see whether or not I’d want to buy them and also whether or not it would be better to buy the NOOK book version or the paper version. Plus, I like spending a few minutes in the Barnes & Noble – it’s nice and quiet (most of the time).
Anyway, I didn’t consider reading the book until last week when I got my hands on an electronic copy on the NOOK. And, since the book is a relatively short read, I buzzed through over the last few days. I have a few thoughts about the book which are in no particular order below.
- The first half of the book. No offense to the Burpo family or the writing of this book, but the first half of the book is a bore. Sure, I understand that the first half of the book is written to give a base for the second half of the book and the stories about Colton’s experiences, but if you’re picking up this book to read about Colton’s accounts of Heaven and his experiences with Jesus Christ, then you can skip the entire first half of the book. The family stories, the stories of Todd’s physical trials and pains, the ups and downs of the family – all of that tells a certain story and it’s not the one that I wanted to read when I picked up this book. I’m a spiritual guy, I believe in Jesus Christ and the scriptures, I’m already into all of that. I didn’t need to read about the Burpo family’s seemingly consistent pains and their life in the great wide open of middle America to have the point hammered home that these are regular, everyday Christian people. The entire first half of the book could have been summed up in 2 – 3 pages, which would have allowed this reader (and any other number of readers out there) to get to the real heart of the story.
- Weird Parental Reactions. This is definitely a regional perspective, but I was shocked at some of the reactions that Todd and his wife Sonja had to Colton’s comments. For example, when Colton tells his father that he sat in Jesus’ lap and that Jesus talked to him and angels sang to him when he was in the hospital, my mind immediately went to a place that wanted to know what the father was going to do about people approaching his son while he was in the hospital. In other words, my immediate reaction to some of what is written in this book is a reaction borne out of living in the northeast United States for all of my life. Almost subconsciously, people in this part of the world process and assess what they hear and come to an immediate, negative conclusion. You might say we judge a book by its cover. The point here is that Todd and Sonja responded to Colton’s experience in a different way than, say, Sonny and Maria would have responded if little Vinny was telling them about people visiting him in his hospital bed in New York City.
- Colton’s Description of Jesus Christ. All in all, I’m still not sure whether I believe this kid’s experience or not. In truth, I actually believe more of the story than I think could be made up (see next point). Aside from Colton’s knowledge of things that he was never told (like his miscarried sister and his great grandfather Pops), the biggest draw for me to believe his story is his consistently noting that the current vision of Jesus Christ that we have is wrong. I don’t mean that we have the wrong impression of him as our Lord and Savior. I mean his physical appearance is a bit off. Frankly, Jesus Christ was born to a young Palestinian woman (Mary) in the Middle East and yet we show him to be of Anglo-Saxon descent. Something doesn’t seem right in that to me… Colton says that this picture is the best representation of what Jesus Christ actually looks like:
I don’t know about you, but I see that picture and I think, “Now that’s a better representation of Jesus Christ!” The picture above looks more like a guy who could have been born in the Middle East, right? Plus, that portrait just happened to be painted by a young girl who claims to have also visited Heaven and whose account nearly matches Colton’s account…
- The swords in Heaven. This was the one part of the book that I thought didn’t flow correctly and, for some reason, made me think that something might be up with the whole thing. It’s all of Chapter 25 that really made me think twice about this story. In short, Burpo tells how he and his family watched The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (an openly Christian-themed fantasy story that became a major motion picture a few years ago) and how Colton positively responded to the White Witch being taken down by Aslan. After some discussion, Colton tells his parents that there are swords in Heaven because Satan isn’t in hell yet. The swords are for the battle that has yet to come (Armageddon) and how Jesus told Colton that he couldn’t have sword because he’d be too dangerous. The parents ask Colton if he saw Satan and he responds that he had seen him. When they ask what he looked like, Colton didn’t respond. When the parents continued to ask Colton about Satan after that night, he still didn’t respond.
For some reason, that didn’t sit right with me. I understand that this is a young kid and that the thought of Satan, much less the sight of him, must have frightened the kid. Okay, I get that completely. But here is a young kid who is telling wonderful, amazing stories about Jesus Christ and Heaven and then he totally freezes up when the topic of Satan comes up? I don’t know about that – just seems odd.
- The story just sort of ends. There’s no happy conclusion to Colton’s stories about Jesus Christ and Heaven. They just sort of end. The book is brought to a nice conclusion by Burpo and we even get an epilogue to read through, but that’s it. There’s no summation of salient points and no final dictum from Colton about Heaven or his experiences with Jesus Christ (other than that Jesus really loves children and there’s no way to possibly describe God’s overpowering love for us). The book just kind of… ends.
- No heavy issues. This one seems obvious, but you’re not going to find discussion of any heavy issues in this book. As a happy Roman Catholic, the big theological issues in my Church revolve around whether or not women should be priests, whether or not priests should be allowed to marry, whether or not homosexuality is acceptable, when abortion is acceptable (if ever), etc. Obviously, a book about a kid who sees Heaven isn’t going to cover those issues. So, if you’re thinking about picking up this book to understand what Heaven thinks about these major issues, don’t bother reading the book.
Those are some of the bigger points that I have about this book. With respect to a recommendation, I’m not against anyone reading this book. In fact, if you can get it at a good price, then I recommend reading it just because the insights that Colton gives about Jesus Christ and Heaven are fun theological points to ponder. Of course there is the big question…
Do I believe Colton’s account of visiting Heaven and spending time with Jesus Christ?
The answer is… more yes than no. That story about the swords in Heaven and the battle yet to come was really improperly placed in the book and is where my doubt (if you can even call it doubt) rests. Let’s be honest – a young kid who just watched the final battle of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (an epic battle between good and evil) is probably more likely to substitute those images for a heavenly battle that will happen at some point in the future. The chapter didn’t sit right with me.
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What did sit right with me was the image of Jesus Christ above that Colton confirmed is what our Savior really looks like in person. The fact that the image was drawn by a young girl who was eight years old when she drew it and also had visions of Heaven and Jesus Christ when she was four years old helps to add some credibility to the story.
In the end, as a happy Roman Catholic who tries his damnedest to practice his life the way that Jesus tells us to in the Bible, I stick with my comment above. I believe more of Colton’s story than I disbelieve.
NOOK Book Review: Assholes Finish First by Tucker Max
December 31st, 2011 | Added to Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews | No Comments »
A few years ago I wrote a book review for I Hope They Serve Been in Hell by Tucker Max. Before, during, and after reading that book I learned that Max has an amazing online following because he writes down the incredible stories of his escapades involving everything from having sex with random girls that he meets to drinking way too much alcohol to generally acting anyway he wants to act with little to no series consequences. The fame and success that he realized from his website and from publishing I Hope They Serve Been in Hell are what led him to eventually make a movie off of the stories in that book (and some others).
The movie was a major bomb, but the notoriety continued for Max and that brought us his second book – Assholes Finish First. If you read Max’s first book then Assholes Finish First will be very familiar for you. It’s essentially the same style of writing and the same type of stories, just more of them and with different perspectives offered from time to time. The different perspectives are what provide the additional interest in reading this book.
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For example, whereas in the first book Max would write a story about having drunken sex with some girl and make it seem like it was the most incredible, crazy night in the history of drinking and/or sexual exploits, the scattered rebuttals and different perspectives in Assholes Finish First bring a much-needed splash of reality to Max’s outstanding form of male satire. If you’re not a literary person then you may not know that Max writes in a genre that has unfortunately come to be known as “fratire.” This is a shame because most modern day fraternity men don’t live their lives in the extreme as described in Max’s stories and Max isn’t even in a fraternity! That’s why I prefer the more direct and more suitable “male satire” phrase to describe this genre of writing.
And that’s the key to begin able to understand and really enjoy the stories in Assholes Finish First. I know that many of the folks who read Max’s website and his books think that every single word of what he writes is 100% real and that they are reading the words of someone who is an Alpha Male turned up and on steroids. Those folks can continue to read his website and stories that way, but the true brilliance of what Max does is to take his Alpha Male personality and blow it up into a near fictional type of persona that embodies what every guy wishes they could be and how they could act. In other words, if you read the stories that Max writes from a stance where you believe the stories really did occur, but just not in as outrageous a manner as described in the book, then you’ll really enjoy reading what he has to write.
But if you’re one of the folks who reads any of the stories currently being offered in the male satire genre and reads them as totally true, completely nonfiction retellings of events that actually occurred, then you’re deluding yourself. If you’re a guy who has ever gone to college, partied with college girls, or partied with crazy girls in general then you know that they do crazy things and many of the fundamentals of Max’s stories are believable. Max is a good writer because he’s able to take a typical “crazy” story with a girl and transform it into a mythical event. Successful male satirists are smart because they take events that most normal guys have experienced (dating a girl, going out on a weird date, crazy stories from parties, etc) and morph them into out of this world experiences.
And that’s what Max does in Assholes Finish First. For some thoughts on the stories in the book itself: I enjoyed reading the story about the bullhorn in tent city and Duke University. I also enjoyed reading the stories about the legitimately crazy women that Max had been with over the years. Unfortunately, I think all guys out there have run across one or two of these very damaged, very in-need-of-medical-help women from time to time. It’s scary and I think that Max does a good job of telling those stories while maintaining the funny aspect of his stories and still respecting the fact that these women had serious mental conditions. And, again, I really enjoyed reading the alternate perspectives provided by some of the girls that Max had been with as well as some of the other guys that experienced the stories in Assholes Finish First.
If you’re a fan of Tucker Max, then you probably already read Assholes Finish First and hate the fact that this review dares to note that his stories are exaggerated versions of reality. If you’re a fan of male satire, then you probably know of Max and his books and website. If you’re a fan of traditional literature, then you’d hate this book. And that’s my scale of recommendations for who should read this book – fans of Max and those who are interested in male satire. If you don’t fit into either one of those categories, then Assholes Finish First isn’t for you.
Me? I’m more interested in male satire than Max in particular, but I admit that I’ll probably read his third book a few months or so after it comes out. But watching the movie named after his first book? No thanks.
NOOK Book Review: Stone of Tears by Terry Goodkind
December 28th, 2011 | Added to Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews | No Comments »
Back in November I wrote a NOOK book review for Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind. Wizard’s First Rule is the first in a series of books called The Sword of Truth series. The second book in that series is called Stone of Tears (also by Goodkind) and that’s the book that I’m focusing on in this NOOK Book review.
As I wrote in my last review, reading Wizard’s First Rule made me realize that there is more to the fantasy genre of writing than just the masterpieces created by J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s a good feeling to know that there is more quality books for you to read in a genre that you enjoy and it’s good to know that there are series of books that follow a particular story through the years. That was one of the many factors that initially attracted me to Wizard’s First Rule and one of the many factors that made reading Stone of Tears so enjoyable. In other words, unlike a movie that ends after two hours and leaves you contemplating what might happen next for each of the characters, Stone of Tears gives the reader a very detailed accounting of what happens to each of the main characters in Wizard’s First Rule and – most importantly – begins the next phase of Richard Rahl’s journey.
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The book starts innocuously enough with life reawakening after the defeat of Darken Rahl at the People’s Palace in D’Hara. However, with one of the Boxes of Orden (magic boxes that if the right one is opened up, the person who opens it can rule the world) still open, Zedd and Chase are unsure what to do. In a matter of a few pages, the action begins again as something called a screeling pops out of the box and begins attacking Zedd (an extremely powerful, good wizard) and Chase (a big, hulking warrior type). Zedd ultimately figures out that to defeat this screeling (a beast from the underworld that laughs whenever it’s attacked or injured) one needs to freeze it in water and then hack it to pieces.
Pleasant.
And the action continues from there as the story progresses with Richard and Kahlan Amnell (a woman with the power to make people tell the truth simply by touching them) leave the People’s Palace before the attack takes place and go straight to the Mud People (an independent, tribal group of people who live unburdened by the laws of the land). It is at the land of the Mud People where the real story of Stone of Tears begins to take shape.
Richard is a wizard, but doesn’t want to admit it to himself. Part of the magic “gift” is being struck down by headaches from time to time. Richard gets hurt by these headaches because he doesn’t know how to control the magic within him. During his stay with the Mud People, three women called Sisters of the Light visit him and offer him help to control the painful headaches. There’s a catch, though. The catch is that he’d have to wear a collar to control the headaches. Given some of the torture that Richard endured in Wizard’s First Rule while he was collared, the reader believes that it is unlikely that he will ever commit to wearing a collar again.
And that’s how the story progresses. The headaches get worse, the sisters come back and offer their help, Richard refuses, and the headaches continue. However, remember that there are only three sisters that are visiting him. One of the rules of the game that the sisters are playing is that each time one of them is rejecting by Richard, they must forfeit their lives. So after the second rejection there is just one sister left.
While Richard is rejecting help from these sisters, he begins dabbing in the spirit world again and unintentionally summons up the spirit of his now-dead biological father – Darken Rahl. Darken Rahl, while no longer having a physical form to occupy, tells Richard the same thing that he told Zedd in the first book – that he is an agent of The Keeper. Oh, and if I haven’t explained it already, The Keeper is the term that is used for the entity that is, essentially, the devil in this series. The Creater is the term used for God.
Another spirit eventually visits the world of the living as the woman who tortured Richard in the first book (but was eventually forgiven) tells Kahlan (who Richard is madly in love with and on the verge of marrying) that she must force Richard to wear the collar to control his magic or he’ll die. Seems like a pretty tough situation for Kahlan, huh? Either you support the person that you love and his phobia of wearing a collar that will remove his control of his life or you lead that person to do something that he is deathly afraid of and, in the process, likely push him away from you for good while saving his life. What’s the Mother Confessor (Kahlan’s formal title) to do?
Well, she ultimately forces Richard to put on the collar and it does save his life by removing the headaches. It also rips Richard from her and begins the fraying of the stories of the cast of characters in Stone of Tears. By fraying of the stories I mean that there are a variety of different tracks that begin around this time in Stone of Tears and it would be hard to cover each of them. So I’m only going to comment on one or two more items about this novel and then move on.
The first thing that I liked about this novel is that it expands the world of the Sword of Truth series. We are introduced to the Old World which is separate from the three lands that are covered in the first novel. Along with the Old World, the reader is also introduced to a little bit of history of the land by learning about a major wizards’ war that took place three thousand years ago. Those additions to the series really make this book worth picking up and reading.
Related to this first point is the deepening of each of the characters. Take Kahlan for example – she spends most of her time in the first novel as a stoic woman who is nearly unshakeable until the end of the novel where she begins to fall in love with Richard. In the second book, the reader learns of Kahlan’s devotion to her people when she finds a band of 5,000 young soldiers who are trying to seek revenge against an armed host of 50,000 men devoted to something called the Imperial Order (more on that in the book). Though Kahlan rails against these young men for thinking that they can successfully attack and halt the Imperial Order troops, Goodkind goes to great lengths to explain how Kahlan feels for them. He then goes to an equally great length to describe how she trains these men to become skilled killers and warriors. We find out later in the novel that the young men are successful in defeating every last one of the 50,000 troops, though they lose some 80% of their own force over the course of the fight.
And that’s just the deepening development of one character!
The second thing that I liked about Stone of Tears is that Goodkind doesn’t mind providing some good social commentary within the story. Namely, towards the latter half of the novel Goodkind directly attacks socialism and communism as a failed way to lead any group of people. More specifically, Goodkind uses a 1,000 year old wizard (oddly enough, he’s related to Richard) to explain what is known as the wizard’s second rule: The greatest harm can result from the best intentions. Goodkind then weaves that rule into a commentary about the people who live in a city called Aydindril and, to a larger degree, through the Midlands (a land ruled by Kahlan). He notes that the people believe the lies of the Imperial Order because they promise the people a share of the money found in Aydindril (i.e. income redistribution in today’s political terms). Ultimately, the people of the Midlands choose to have Kahlan decapitated (although she’s not really killed and, instead, escapes) because of their greed and lust to have a share of the treasury (which they never get anyway).
I liked that social commentary and Goodkind does a much better job of describing it than I did in the paragraph above!
If you’re a reader of science fiction or fantasy novels, then I think you’ll enjoy Stone of Tears. I hesitate to say that you can easily read this novel even if you haven’t already read Wizard’s First Rule, though. While Goodkind does provide some very brief summations of each character in the early parts of Stone of Tears, as a reader you won’t really be able to get a firm grasp on what’s going on in this fantasy world unless you read the first book.
On a final note – this series is beginning to get very complex and a bit large to cover in these rather simple NOOK book reviews. Due to that fact, I don’t think that I’ll be providing many more NOOK book reviews for the Sword of Truth series. In all likelihood, I’ll probably provide a tweet here and there on my twitter feed (@JerseySmarts) each time I finish a book or have some additional commentary about the series. So, if you haven’t already please be sure to follow me at @JerseySmarts to get the latest updates on my thoughts surrounding the Sword of Truth series. Oh, and for what it’s worth I’ve already completed the third book in this series and started reading the fourth book so I’ll definitely have some additional commentary in the coming days and weeks!
I found Stone of Tears to be a very enjoyable read and a journey of self-discovery for Richard, Kahlan, and all of the Midlands. The introduction of the Sisters of the Light and the Sisters of the Dark bring an interesting plot development to the story and create an incredible amount of “what if” scenarios for the reader to ponder. In the end, I think that Stone of Tears does justice to Wizard’s First Rule and joins the first book in setting a firm base for the future of the Sword of Truth series. I recommend going out and getting a copy or downloading a copy of Stone of Tears on your NOOK. Enjoy!
NOOK Book Review: Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind
November 26th, 2011 | Added to Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews | 7 Comments »
For those of you who read my last book review it should come as no surprise that I was totally and utterly let down by the popular-at-the-moment fantasy series – A Song of Ice and Fire (more commonly referred to by the name of the first book, A Game of Thrones). George R. R. Martin’s miserably written and poorly paced A Song of Ice and Fire series left me wanting much, much more out of everything that this genre has to offer… but I wanted absolutely nothing more from Martin. The first book and a half that I read was boring, excruciatingly drawn out, bland, and (because I inadvertently read some spoilers for future plot points in future books) ultimately totally useless to the reader or the storyline. The first book and a half in the A Song of Ice and Fire series left me annoyed, unhappy, and wanting a real fantasy and/or science fiction series to indulge in.
The A Song of Ice and Fire series failed in every way possible from basic storytelling to failure to generate a compelling plot to an inability to provide a riveting action/adventure storyline. The series failed in making characters that the reader could emotionally invest in and actually care about (which, again, doesn’t really matter since I know now that everything in the hundreds and hundreds of pages in the first few books is useless). The A Song of Ice and Fire series failed to make this avid reader want to read more from the series or this writer.
And yet, those are all of the areas where Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule excelled.
Wizard’s First Rule is the first book in Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth series – and it’s awesome! I’ve always heard of Goodkind as a popular fantasy author, but I never really gave him the time of day. As a J. R. R. Tolkien fanatic, I tend to group every fantasy writer from the last fifty or sixty years into a “wannabe” group. Admittedly, that’s a bad point of view to have regarding contemporary fantasy writers, but that’s what makes me a fanatic for Tolkien. So when I first read positive reviews of Goodkind’s work a few years ago I immediately wrote him off as another Tolkien wannabe.
Now, after having read Wizard’s First Rule, I know that it was a bad decision on my part to assume that Goodkind’s work wasn’t worth the time. This book was great!
In a weird way, I’m actually glad that my disgust for Martin led me to Goodkind. Since I wanted to see what Goodkind had to offer, I decided to download Wizard’s First Rule, which happens to be the first book that he ever wrote. After some research I learned that this book is the first book in a ten book series (the aforementioned The Sword of Truth series) that follows the adventures of the main character – Richard Cypher – and his companions Kahlan Amnell and Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander. In Wizard’s First Rule, Richard fights against a powerful wizard named Darken Rahl. The story follows Richard from his beginnings as a woods guide (someone who helps you traverse a landscape by showing you how to navigate through the forest) through his progression to what is known as the “Seeker.”
As the Seeker, Richard is tasked with finding and defending the truth. It’s a task that is somewhat shared by Kahlan, who holds the position of Mother Confessor. The Mother Confessor is the most powerful of the confessors – people who can use their power (magic) to make people tell them the truth. There’s a lot more to the whole confessor thing than just that, but you can read all of the details in the book.
There are a lot of twists and turns in this book, but one thing that stands out to me after having finished the book a few weeks ago is that I can remember a whole heck of a lot of the story. I remember Richard and Kahlan interacting with the Mud People, I remember the stories of Chase and Adie (among other characters) and the descriptions provided for the different locations around the landscape. Goodkind’s writing does that – it grips your interest and creates a really powerful image for you to latch on to and, essentially, feel the story.
However, I do have a bit of criticism for Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule. Now don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed Goodkind’s writing style. However, it appeared that some of the emotion-based writing was hyperbolic to the extreme. In other words, it seemed like every time Richard encountered a new emotional experience it was the most extreme feeling of that experience that he had ever felt or would ever feel again. For example, his interactions with Denna the Mord Sith (a woman whose job was to bring days, weeks, months of endless pain to her captives) brought him the most physical pain ever while the thought of losing Kahlan makes him feel the greatest feeling of despair that he could ever feel. Hopefully, that style of exaggeration diminishes in the future novels in The Sword of Truth series because if it doesn’t, then that would be the worst thing ever!
If you don’t understand what hyperbole means in literature, then the really lame literary joke that I made in the last sentence probably didn’t make any sense. No worries. Moving along now!
Granted, even though I’m a Tolkien maniac I did notice the influence that certain elements of the Lord of the Rings had on Wizard’s First Rule. For example, in the Lord of the Rings series you have the deformed former hobbit Gollum who is twisted and deranged by the power of Sauron’s one ring. Well, in Wizard’s First Rule you have Samuel – a former man who was the Seeker and wielded the fabled Sword of Truth that Richard now holds. His lust for the Sword of Truth deforms him into a very Gollum-like creature who is constantly saying that sword belongs to him. Gollum and Samuel are very, very similar and I hope that Samuel being modeled off of Gollum is more or less a tribute to Tolkien and not something that the author would argue was organically created in this story.
Before I wrap this up I thought I’d provide another comparison. A Game of Thrones was 733 NOOK book pages while Wizard’s First Rule was 681 NOOK book pages. The difference between the two isn’t just the 52 additional NOOK book pages. The difference is that those 681 pages of Wizard’s First Rule are packed with storytelling, drama, intrigue, mystery, exciting people and lands, treachery, despair, triumph, etc. Meanwhile, those 733 pages in A Game of Thrones is packed with – well, ultimately useless words – lots of words that evoke little-to-no emotion and tell little-to-no lasting, meaningful story. It’s 733 pages of wasted time.
Reading Wizard’s First Rule sold me on two things:
First and probably most importantly, I’ve become a fan of Terry Goodkind. The man can write a fantasy novel! Here’s hoping that the intelligent fun and excitement of Wizard’s First Rule carries through to the rest of the series. Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve already completed the second book in the Sword of Truth series though I plan to delay diving too far into the third book as I finish up some Bible readings that I started a few months ago.
Second, as a reader who is reluctant to change I’m beginning to understand that there is a vast fantasy and science fiction world out there besides the master of the genre, J. R. R. Tolkien. And that may not be as immediately important of a learning point as becoming a fan of Goodkind, but if I can manage to put my Tolkien mania aside again (after finishing the Sword of Truth series, that is), then the sky really is the limit in how many books in this genre that I might find interesting.
In short, if you’re looking for a good fantasy book to read, then I suggest picking up (or downloading onto your NOOK) a copy of Wizard’s First Rule. This is what a fantasy book should be!
NOOK Book Review: A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
September 9th, 2011 | Added to Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews, Entertainment | 3 Comments »
Wow. I don’t even know where to start this NOOK Book review so I’m just going to begin at the beginning and take you through my experience with A Game of Thrones. Like most folks, I heard about A Game of Thrones because it’s a big hit on HBO and has a pretty large fan base with respect to readers of the novels. I’m the type of person who at least likes to be aware of what’s going on in pop culture and when A Game of Thrones hit the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list, I thought that I should probably give the story a shot. Plus, I’ve been looking (not that hard) for a good fantasy series to read since I’ve pretty much read and re-read everything that the master of the genre – J.R.R. Tolkien – published.
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So with the thought in my mind that this was a New York Times bestseller, a hit series on HBO, and a fantasy story that was gaining momentum in pop culture I got myself the NOOK Book version of A Game of Thrones. For reference, the NOOK Book version of the novel has 753 pages, some 733 of which are the actual story versus the final 20 NOOK Book pages which are an appendix listing the relationships of the different characters in the story.
I’m not sure how deep into detail I want to get with respect to the story itself, but there are a few major, overarching points that I want to make about this book.
First, A Game of Thrones does not read like a fantasy or science fiction story except in certain places. Other than the opening prologue, the reader has to wait hundreds (literally, hundreds) of pages before any event occurs that is actually supernatural in its nature. Further, the reader isn’t treated to a second supernatural, fantastical event until the very last page or two of the book. And even at that, after the reader gets through 733 pages of this “fantasy” novel the fantastical event at the end of the novel is good, but not enough in this reader’s mind.
Second, this is a long book. A really long book. As a reader, I enjoy long books because they give me a chance to get wrapped up in a story and really try to understand the perspectives of the characters, why they do what they do, what larger issues are being commented on by the story/author, etc. I didn’t get much of that from A Game of Thrones and, frankly, the lack of both character depth and progressive character development for the majority of these 733 pages is alarming. Based just upon the character depth and development alone, I’m shocked that A Game of Thrones made its way to the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Shocked.
Third, while I eventually began to accept what A Game of Thrones had to offer, I can’t really say that I enjoyed reading the book. Don’t misunderstand – I didn’t loathe reading the book. If I hated A Game of Thrones I would have just stopped reading it and went on to the next book in my unread stack. There’s something in this story… there’s something there that made me – as a fan of fantasy and science fiction writing – want to see the superiority and depth of this story and its characters. But I just couldn’t get myself into it that deeply.
The story of the Stark family ruling at Winterfell, being split up, and ultimately having the head of the family decimated in King’s Landing after King Robert dies is certainly a good story. But the reasons behind the various actions that lead to the end of the novel are not that deep. Look, the Lannisters are scumbags and they do whatever they want to do without regarding for right or wrong. They put an inbred young king on the throne who doesn’t even know that his father is actually his uncle and I guess that there is supposed to be more of a gripping story than appears to the naked eye there, but I didn’t see it. However, a more compelling story for this reader was that of Dany and her brother Viserys and their interactions with the Dothraki. And yet even in that story, Martin (seemingly randomly) chooses to kill off one of the most interesting characters in the novel, Khal Drogo, to reach the storyline progression that is achieved at the end of A Game of Thrones. It just seemed to me that in terms of storytelling, Drogo could have made it a little bit further in the story.
There are a variety of lesser stories interwoven throughout the novel that also have potential, such as the stories regarding the Mormont family, the different characters and their interactions in the Night’s Watch, the Others beyond the Wall, etc. But Martin doesn’t really get into those stories too much. One would think that with 733 pages of story, he could dive into one of those sub-stories and really give it some color. The again, if he chose not to give a depth of color to the main characters, I guess it would seem silly to do that with the minor ones instead.
I know this NOOK Book review seems more like I’m complaining than anything else, but I just can’t figure out what my exact gripe is with A Game of Thrones. My gripe is not that the story is mostly sluggish or mostly boring – I can imagine many folks enjoying this read. And my gripe also doesn’t have to do with the extremely repetitive words and phrases that Martin uses throughout the novel (if I read that a character ate something “to break his/her fast” again or that a warrior was robed in armor that looked like “a lobster,” I’m going to punch someone).
In general, I think my problem with A Game of Thrones is that it really does take hundreds of pages for Martin to reveal a plot point that any astute reader had probably already discovered and processed the moment that the plot point was hinted at… hundreds of pages earlier. In addition, while Martin’s writing style isn’t necessarily bad, his narration style leaves a lot to be desired. A Game of Thrones does not benefit by the way Martin jumps from one part of the story to the next (very similar to the way the Lord of the Rings movies follows the progression of the story). Aside from being distracting to the discerning reader, jumping from one scene to a completely different one reveals another one of my gripes with this story – it seems to have almost been written in a format that would make it easily adaptable to television.
After 733 pages of NOOK Book reading, I can’t quite put my finger on the element of the book that makes A Game of Thrones a hit show on HBO. However, there is little doubt in my mind that this story was written – at least in part – from a desire to see the characters come to life on film or television and that is what is at the core of what bothers me. When you read a book like Tarzan or a book like The Hobbit or a series like The Lord of The Rings, you aren’t reading about characters who were created to eventually be placed on the big screen. Go back and read a book like Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe and tell me if you think that the characters in those books were written with the express purpose of eventually making a video game or television series based off of the characters. The answer is clearly no (and not just because those mediums of entertainment didn’t exist when the books were published). These books were written to tell a compelling story and let’s be honest – content is king.
The reason why The Lord of the Rings has stood the test of time is because J.R.R. Tolkien created a story with characters that are so deep and with such a rich back story that a fan of fantasy novels can get lost in his legendarium and never cease to be amazed at a new discovery that informs the core story of good versus evil. It’s that content that made Tolkien a master of his craft. And in truth, it’s that lack of content – the lack of any compelling, overarching reason as to why events are happening – that brings down A Game of Thrones for this reader. I understand that there are other books in this series. However, I have to ask the question – if a deeper, compelling story isn’t revealed after 733 NOOK Book pages of reading, then what else is there? Could Martin have made the next books in this series any less substantive, any less dramatic, any more unnecessarily graphic, or any more frustrating to read than A Game of Thrones? I have access to the next book in this series, but I’m unsure if I’m going to read it yet. I might give the first chapter a try just to see what’s doing.
For those of you out there who are looking for something different to read – A Game of Thrones is definitely different. However, if you’re looking for a good science fiction series or a fantasy series with a deep, compelling story to get into, then I don’t think that A Game of Thrones is for you. The story isn’t quite science fiction nor is it quite fantasy except in very few, very brief instances in its 733 pages. And for a science fiction or fantasy fan, that’s just not enough. The book is long – that’s for sure. But length aside, A Game of Thrones is a case where quantity does not equal quality.
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