The Good Wife "The Deconstruction"

I like The Good Wife.  I've followed it since the first season, and have long had my own idea about how it would end.


I watched Alicia gradually fall into the world of the big law firm, and in so doing lose sight of her original goals and some of her moral convictions and certainties.  I was convinced that the end would involve Alicia, having drifted so far over her own moral line that she had forgotten where she started, suddenly finding herself at the centre of a scandal indicting her own moral turpitude, without even realizing how she ended up there, and her husband standing beside her and convincing her that she could turn things around and rehabilitate herself as well.


Since in some ways that happened last night, I suppose I should feel a sense of satisfaction, and I think the episode itself indicated it was deconstructing everything to push the reset button.


It didn't happen quite how I pictured though.  I thought Alicia and Peter would reconcile after his prison stint, and she would be the breadwinner for the family, at the same time realizing how difficult it is to maintain the moral high ground given the nature of her practice.


Instead, most of this season has abandoned the case of the week style that I so enjoyed, and focused exclusively on the character interactions and the politics, turning each week into political issue of the week.  Where once I accepted most of the law presented on The Good Wife as unusual but potentially valid, I've lost most of my ability to accept as real the types of legal decisions being made.  Leaving aside the re-count issue, that her lawyer would turn on her like that would be a gross violation of privilege.  The idea that Geneva Pine would see some benefit in getting a lawyer or law firm employee to turn state's evidence against a client completely ignores the concept of privilege, and the show didn't even bother to try to justify it.  The idea that a lawyer could be guilty or disbarred for presenting erroneous evidence when the lawyer had no knowledge, nor any reason to believe it was fabricated also seems highly suspect.


Kalinda ends the episode having been prepared to leave a child fatherless, renege on her word to Bishop, and set up an innocent man to be killed, just to get out from under a questionable legal charge against Diane, as well as abandoning Cary without a word of goodbye.


Diane has been almost entirely co-opted by this conservative group of her husband's, and while she feels she's making change from within, she's happily helping support a legal position which is inimical to her beliefs.  Arguably it's what lawyers should be able to do, but it's an area where Diane has consistently held her own moral line in this series, and now her professionalism is being impugned over the fabricated evidence at the same time she's abandoning the values that got her to the position of named partner of her own law firm.


Cary seems mostly okay.  Maybe he'll be broken up over Kalinda's departure, but he's the named partner in the law firm, which was his dream from the time he was a first year associate.  I would have liked him to have been so enamoured of his role at the State Attorney's office (particularly being deputy to Peter) that he decided to stay there, and that private practice wasn't really all it was cracked up to be, since being on the side of justice and doing the right thing meant more than billable hours and Brioni suits in private practice.  Unfortunately that character arc wasn't really pursued once Diane decided she needed Cary back at the firm.


I had hoped Peter would be rehabilitated in prison, and it would be like a teeter-totter (or scales of justice!) with his moral certainty rising as Alicia's fell.  But he largely abandoned his interest in religion and dove right back into politics, taking pleasure in using the moral suasion and undue influence that got him where he started in the series.


In the opening scene, we had the scene I had expected would be the conclusion from early on in the series.  Alicia acknowledging the vote rigging scandal, making a weak non-denial, exiting the State Attorney's office in disgrace while her husband stood beside her to offer moral support.


So, whether my predictions for character arcs were correct or not, it seems all of the major characters have gone through their respective arcs in full.  And at the end of the arcs, I'm left without a moral centre for the show, and without much hope of a redemptive arc for any character on the show, but a feeling that a complete story has been told.


So while I've really enjoyed the series up to this season, I've found myself liking the characters a lot less over the course of the season, and I'm not sure I need to see where any of the character arcs are going to go from this point forward.  It seems like a logical stopping point for me, and I think I'd like to leave it there and enjoy what I see as the full story the show was aiming to tell from the beginning.

Night Prey by John Sandford and the transition from womanizer to married man

I find John Sandford novels a reasonably quick read, and I quite like the Virgil Flowers novels.  I find him an interesting protagonist, and I like his investigative style.  The Lucas Davenport novels I don't tend to pick up as often.


Night Prey is one of Mr. Sandford's novels featuring Lucas Davenport.  Most of (and I think perhaps all of) the novels featuring Davenport have the word "Prey" in the title, and apart from that (in my experience) little to indicate what the novel is about.  The backs of the editions I get are taken up mostly with Mr. Sandford's picture, so the description is usually a little sparse, and the cover consists almost exclusively of the author's name and "whatever Prey".  As a result, I treat the acquisition of a "Prey" novel a bit like a game of chance, and I never know before I'm a couple of chapters in whether it's one I've read before or not.  So that's the reason I don't tend to pick up the Davenport novels as frequently, though I also enjoy them.


Night Prey, as it happens, I have not previously read.  Night Prey appears to be set while Davenport is still with the Minneapolis police, before he joined the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (which is where Virgil Flowers works).  But, based on my read, I suspect Lucas will soon be moving to the state agency, and in Night Prey works with an investigator from the BCA who is on the track of a serial killer. 


The serial killer is quite well drawn, not a criminal mastermind, but a deconstructing mess who doesn't quite realize he's not the invincible mastermind he is in his own head.  The ending I thought was a bit of a cop out on the question Mr. Sandford posed in his author's note about how (or if) you prevent a killing by prosecuting a less serious charge, but the tension was built up nicely and resolved to my satisfaction.


The fascinating part about Night Prey to me, and the part that was subtly, but I think very well done, was the transformation of Lucas Davenport. In the early novels, Davenport is most frequently described with a seven letter expletive.  He's macho, almost superpowered, independently wealthy, a clothes horse and a guy who attracts women like flies to honey for reasons that are not particularly obvious when reading his dialogue (a one-line pick-up involving an expletive about brains being too tight sticks in my recollection for some reason).  The women are somewhat typical of the old private investigator novels, appear for one novel (or more often with Davenport, a couple of chapters) then disappear.


It's not uncommon in detective novels to have a lone detective, in the nature of a chivalrous knight (or perhaps not so chivalrous) wed to his mission and unable to place commitment to a person or family above the mission.  Frequently, these detectives have the one-book stands with the woman in peril or the femme fatale, then move on to the next. 


In the later Prey novels, Davenport is either wed to or living with Dr. Weather Karkinen, a dark, Finnish, slightly built hand surgeon.  Davenport is no longer a womanizer, but a one-woman man, whose cases often seem to involve Weather or their daughter being in danger.  I've been less interested in those novels, partly because I don't like personal danger/vendettas driving the mystery, and partly because I have had a hard time understanding (and thereby accepting as valid in book) the relationship between Lucas and Weather.


It's also not uncommon in detective novels to have the detective with a family, whose family seems to be placed in danger due to the rigors of the job. 

But how does an author transition the lone wolf detective to the family man detective?  I think Night Prey shows that transformation.  I missed (I think, or don't recall) the novel in which Weather saves Lucas' life, and presumably there's an attraction that develops from that feeling of being in the trenches together.  But for me that's not enough to fully justify the type of relationship they seem to have later, with a family and a deep devotion.  Mr. Sandford does about as good a job as it's possible to do with that I think.  He shows some of what Weather sees in Lucas, some of what he sees in her, and why Lucas places such value on Weather's skills as a surgeon.  I've always felt about the later novels that it doesn't really ring true that this cop who deals with life and death in each novel should place such a high value on cosmetic surgery to hands.  But Night Prey has Lucas observe Weather performing surgery, and I think we can see why and how he internalizes the importance of Weather's profession.


It's also subtle, but as Lucas meets with (and still flirts with) other women in Night Prey, he thinks of them in terms that remind him of, or are similar to, the terms in which he thinks of Weather.  So it seems quite natural that he's falling in love with Weather in a way that will lead to his committed relationship, when he starts to see in other women images of beauty that remind him of Weather.  He also (in this book as in later books) doesn't seem to spend much waking time with her, given their respective lifestyles (she's early to bed, early to rise; he's the reverse and they're both workaholics) but begins to feel that with her, he's home, where before he was just wherever he parked his stuff.


I really like it because it's not overdone, it fits very nicely with the one-book, one-killer approach to the series, but explains the character of Davenport and the overarching story arc in a way that I haven't previously appreciated in the Davenport novels.  It's enough to make me want to read more of (or perhaps re-read) the post-Weather Prey books... if only I can create some sort of system to track which of them I've read so I don't keep picking up the same ones again and again.

Bloodline TV series S. 1 Ep. 1-6

I had read some really good reviews about Bloodline, and I really liked Kyle Chandler when he was Coach Taylor on Friday Night Lights.  So I thought I would try Bloodline. 


I like watching the actors involved in the show.  There's Kyle Chandler, Linda Cardellini, Sissy Spacek and Ben Mendelsohn, in addition to Steven Pasquale (John from the Good Wife).  All of them feel recognizable, but also like real people.  They feel charismatic and fascinating to watch.


But the plot.  Ohhh.  My eyes keep rolling almost of their own accord. There's some ominous voiceover narration, and images of a storm and bodies, but it feels very much like a brief clip for a movie trailer, with little attachment to the show itself.  The tension in the first episode is over Danny bringing his new girlfriend to a family celebration and he wants her to sit at the family table.  Lots of heightened feelings about that.  I suppose it's supposed to feel "real", but it also feels like regular family gatherings where I thought we'd be watching some sort of thriller/suspense with a mystery at the front of it. 


Kyle Chandler (John Rayburn) is a sheriff, and there's a burned body that turns up.  I keep watching every week hoping for some horrific serial killer or sex slavery conspiracy, but it's not that kind of show it seems.  Instead we have one brother trying to buy a boat slip while dealing with a looming divorce.  Aging parents that need care.  How to deal with a formerly irresponsible son who now wants to help those parents.  How to deal with who will run the family business.  A lawyer taking on a new client but hasn't practiced criminal law, so worries whether she's capable while feeling energized about a new challenge.  The lawyer also has a file she hasn't followed up on for years and now worries it will come back to bite her. dum dum dum (ominous sounds). 


I guess it's real to life, but it feels very like the premise of Seinfeld, and I find myself asking why I'm watching.  And yet I am still watching.  I keep thinking there must be something more (it almost forces me to create elaborate conspiracy and plot theories just because I think there must be something!).  Roger Ebert used to quote his partner Gene Siskel in evaluating whether the show was better than watching the same actors sitting around having lunch.  Bloodline is probably not.  But I guess the state of my TV viewing is such that I'd enjoy watching them having lunch, so I'm still watching.


For the sake of justifying my time viewing it, my conspiracy theory is below (spoilers through Ep. 6):


Meg has serious mental health issues.  She's always been jealous of sister Sara, doesn't want pictures of her around or anything.  She's involved in a self destructive affair, and flips on and off, from one mood to another, often with memory breaks.  She doesn't have any clients at all to speak of, and mostly plays at being a lawyer.  Her Dad set her up in a law office, and is basically her only source of work, trying to keep her stable.  When she was young, she murdered Sara in a fit of jealousy, and her father covered it up... feeling in part responsible.  I suspect her father was sexually abusing Sara, and Meg (in a messed up way) was jealous of that.


Danny suspected his father abused Sara.  While Dad was covering up the murder (probably by staging a drowning and failed rescue) Danny wandered along and tried to save Sara, not knowing she was already dead.  Dad made Danny feel that he was responsible for being unable to save Sara, and tried to manipulate his memory into thinking it was all his fault.  He drove that home with physical abuse.


John was old enough to understand some of what was going on, but bought the story that Danny was responsible for Sara's death, and sided with his father.  Danny has finally remembered enough about the events to realize that he didn't fail Sara, but believes his Dad killed her.  He trusts Meg, and (I predict) he'll disclose his suspicions to her, she'll murder him, and John will be involved in covering it up, making it look like a drowning, and as though Danny was responsible for the illegal immigrants burned in the boat, and died himself in a similar boating explosion.  John will feel he has to do this to protect the name of his family and his Dad's memory, but will need to resign as sheriff.  Kevin will drink his life away at the boat slip.


More likely actual outcome:


Sara died by accident.  Dad hit Danny when he was mad and broke his arm.  Danny is still upset about how the family treated him, but wants to forgive, though he expects apologies in return.  Danny is involved with the illegal immigrants and/or drugs and dies in a way that implicates him.  John feels he needs to cover up for his family by hiding the body, covering up the evidence and letting everyone believe Danny just wandered away again, and must lie to his mother so she won't know.


Huh.  Both scenarios sound more exciting than actors eating lunch, but somehow the experience of viewing doesn't feel like that. 

The Case of the Love Commandos by Tarquin Hall

A couple of years ago I got onto a few authors from India writing about India, and was really enjoying reading about the culture and the country, while enjoying some very well written novels.


In my own mind, I guess I grouped them in a hierarchy of things I learned about India.  The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga was a good novel, but passionately angry about the disparity of wealth.  It focused its anger to such an extent that I recall little of the country described, and more the sense of outrage at how people treat each other.  It was a hard novel to read in some ways, but one that could stir the emotions and force the question of why this disparity is permitted.


Q & A by Vikas Swarup I really enjoyed.  It's the novel on which Slumdog Millionaire  was based, and I thought it was excellent.  It did show the poverty, but also shared the beauty and the range of experiences available throughout the country, and had a positive thread of hope running through it.  It made me want to visit India, but braced me for some of the heartbreaking poverty I might see there.


The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall was much more light, a bit quirky, a bit funny, but didn't seem overly interested in dwelling on the poverty aspects, having more fun with its lead character Vish Puri.  It showed a bit of India, though a more modern flavor, and a sense of the people and the culture viewed through a fairly humourous lens.


The Case of the Love Commandos is the second Tarquin Hall novel I've read.  It starts out with a "vigilante" style group that helps young lovers escape the caste system to wed across castes. I liked the novel, I had fun with the mystery, and I liked that it was prepared to engage a little more in the examination of some of the poverty issues than I saw in The Case of the Missing Servant (or perhaps it was too subtle for me to pick up on after The White Tiger).  The Case of the Love Commandos takes a bit of a look at the caste system in a way that helps explain both its supporters and detractors to an outsider.


That being said, I have a difficult time adjusting to the tone of the novel.  I'm not entirely sure whether I should be laughing or feeling horrified.  Whether these are things that people from India would laugh at and enjoy or if I'm finding humour in broad stereotypes that are purely offensive.  I guess that's part of the fun, but it creates a level of discomfort too.  When Vish Puri eats scotch bonnets for breakfast, is that an exaggeration?  Is that part of the culture?  Is it ridiculous that I don't know the answer to that question?  I guess it's the third question that highlights what I like about these novels.  I don't know the answer, but it makes me want to find out (and makes me feel a little foolish for not knowing).


Another example is how Vish Puri can't be bothered to learn the names of all of his employees/servants, so just re-assigns them names based on the functions they perform (Tubelight, Handbrake, Chai e.g.).  It helps the Western reader keep them straight, and perhaps more easily than would be the case with using their given names... but is Mr. Hall highlighting Vish Puri's ridiculous sense of importance and unwillingness to take an interest in these castes or is he highlighting a Western attitude towards people in India?


The overall tone is light enough that it's not a scathing indictment or fury like I felt in The White Tiger.  Instead it's a gentle reminder that we can have fun, but it's worth investing some time learning about this culture and these people.  I like learning about other countries and cultures through light fiction, but I guess it also highlights to me that maybe I need to look up some of these things through a more authoritative source.  Mr. Hall clearly has a love for India, even as he's laughing at it (and his pompous protagonist), and wants to share that love and that fun with the reader. 


And although I haven't tried any of them out yet, Mr. Hall inserts recipes for Indian cuisine at the back of his books, and they look wonderful.  Speaking of which, I think that's going to prompt me to pick up The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken. 

Phantom Instinct by Meg Gardiner

I've read a few Meg Gardiner books before, and I think I found her because she had a good quote from Stephen King on her book jacket.  (If I'm not mistaken, I think she may have dedicated one of her books to Stephen King).


In any event, I enjoy the Jo Beckett novels, but have never been able to get into the Evan Delaney novels.  I've enjoyed each of Ms. Gardiner's stand alone novels, and I'm a little unsure whether Phantom Instinct is a stand alone novel or the beginning of a new series featuring Harper Flynn and Aiden Garrison.


The reason I like the Jo Beckett novels is that I like the profession of the protagonist, she has a hobby (rock climbing), a sense of décor and style, and comes across to me as a complete and fully formed character.  The Evan Delaney novels seem very plot driven to me, lots of action and just aren't as much to my taste.


Phantom Instinct gives us a character I enjoyed reading about, in Aiden Garrison, but who has a traumatic brain injury (I know I said I'd stop reading books about that, but this was on my pile before... it confirms my resolve
Read While Walking: Unreliable Narrator vs Subjective Narration vs Selective Narration).


In any event, the traumatic brain injury is treated mostly fairly here.  Despite how rare it is, the Fregoli syndrome is telegraphed early, and used to create the twist and character growth at the end.  Whether protagonists and antagonists would all be familiar with the nuances of an extremely rare delusion symptom is perhaps a more difficult question to answer, but as I said, I liked Aiden Garrison, thought his symptom played fair by narrative standards, and didn't object to the resolution and character growth (whether or not it's possible to overcome such a mental health issue by willpower alone).


The antagonists were very thinly drawn, and I had a great deal of difficulty accepting some of the motivations.  I think the novel is supposed to be fast paced enough to gloss over much of that, (another theme of traumatic brain injury books perhaps) and for the most part it succeeds with the timeline driven plot elements. 


My biggest challenge was in accepting Harper Flynn as a protagonist and a character.  Fluent in Russian, a cryptographer, naval officer, stunt driver and full time student (not making any of that up), she's got lots of character elements, but somehow still seems to be the girl in distress for most of the book.  Her personality at the end remained a bit of a cipher for me, and Ms. Gardiner seemed to focus on making her character growth and development related to her romantic interests.  I didn't see her making any deductive breakthroughs, instead mostly filling the role of providing the love of a good woman for a damaged man.  It's not what I expect of Ms Gardiner's female protagonists, so perhaps I'm doing Harper a disservice.  That's why I thought this is potentially the start of a new series.  I'm not sure what the purpose of all those character elements are if they're not going to be used to any great effect.  That said, I'm not sure if I'd be inclined to read another of the series, though I'd still return to read another Jo Beckett novel.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Well.  As mentioned when I watched Outlander last week
Read While Walking: Outlander "The Reckoning" I saw an advertisement for the purchase of the books, two for $15.  It was a limited time offer though, so (being susceptible to things like that) I purchased the first four books of the series the next day. 


As also mentioned though, I had the firm intention not to read the books until I was certain I wouldn't be spoiled for the show.  But, surely I could read the first book right?  I had heard that this portion of the season was based on the second book.  So I sampled the first couple of chapters just to get an idea of the extent to which I'd be spoiling elements of the show if I read them.


Anyway, almost before I knew it, Claire is at Fort William and I'm caught up to where the show broke off before Christmas, and I'm only halfway through the book.  I find (like Game of Thrones the TV series) that the show follows the book quite closely.  There are details and depth that can be recognized in the show, but are sometimes only fully appreciated with the background of the book.  Together it makes a very enriching experience. 


As an example, I have a much better sense of the political intrigue within Clan MacKenzie, and why Jamie is so important to the Clan.  I think the show has diverged slightly (based on my place in the novel so far) by making Colum and Dougal have different approaches to Jaime and the Clan, where in the book they seem very unified.  But some of it, like Dougal causing Jamie to wed the Sassenach, thereby destroying the possibility he could rise to the MacKenzie, is available to a viewer of the show, it's just more likely not to be appreciated on a first (or even second) viewing.


Unusually for me however, I'm enjoying the show sufficiently that I'm hesitant about reading the books first.  In the past, where the circumstance has arisen, I've never been uncomfortable about reading the books first.  In fact, I tend to prefer it, wanting the excitement of revelations to come from my reading, not someone else's interpretation. Game of Thrones is probably a good example.  I don't think I want to watch the current season for fear it will move ahead of, and thereby hurt the experience of the books.


 So I can't really explain it with this series, but I don't want to spoil it by reading first, at least through this season.  I don't trust my willpower enough to make any promises about next season and the subsequent books of the series.  Which brings us back to Outlander, the first novel by Ms. Gabaldon.  Being halfway through, and not wanting to read ahead of the TV series, I've taken the only possible course of action available to me and asked my wife to hide the book. 

A Stark and Wormy Knight by Tad Williams

I was excited by the title A Stark and Wormy Knight.  I was expecting lighthearted, fun short stories, and I feel as though I owe Tad Williams a re-consideration.  I read Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, and though I was a bit impatient with it at the time, in retrospect it's one of the few fantasy novels set in a dark ages or low middle ages era, rather than high middle ages.  It also incorporates religion in a way that felt appropriate to a middle ages setting, on a monotheistic basis, which is also rare.  So it deserves some credit for that, and even though I only recall the broad outlines, I think perhaps it deserves a second look as well.  Nevertheless, I almost haven't wanted to re-read the series, since I think perhaps it has improved in my mind as my memory faded... though that feels like I'm being unfair.


I tried Otherland and found it somewhat distasteful.  I couldn't get past the overarching premise, so I stopped at Mountain of Black Glass.  It also had the issue I find with David Farland's Runelords series, which is that antagonists switch sides and you're supposed to cheer for them or feel sorry for them so often I just give up waiting for the next doublecross and lose interest entirely. 


I read Shadowmarch (the first novel only) and didn't continue to the end of that series either.


I can't deny that Mr. Williams has interesting ideas, but I have trouble making it through his series, so wasn't sure if it's an issue with the writing style, the worldview, the characters or whether I had just built up some kind of block.


So I thought a collection of short stories might be a way to evaluate my enjoyment of Mr. Williams as an author, and I liked the title, which had a Terry Pratchett feel to it.


I did not enjoy A Stark and Wormy Knight at all.  Not just for the stories themselves, which have a very negative, nihilistic tone and do not (even in the title story) achieve the lightness the title suggests.  But primarily for the lazy way in which it was assembled.  The collection is an obvious collection of trunk novels, thrown together with little thought, little editing and a great amount of apathy.  Mr. Williams appears to have dug through his desk, picked out a bunch of stuff he couldn't finish or which died off hallway through, blew the dust off and sent them in to be sold to fans of his work without so much as a cursory review.


I don't like making such strong statements about a book.  I try to read books that I plan to enjoy, but the lack of interest on the part of the author makes me feel that Mr. Williams is taking advantage of his fan base to make a quick sale.  Each story which was "original to this collection" was very sloppy.  The other stories, gathered from previous publications were for the most part weak, not consistent in tone, nor showing an interesting variation or progression of tone.  They were what I expect to find in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (which, by the way, I often enjoy for what it is, though second in my mind to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine), but were not what I expect from a bestselling author putting together short stories for my enjoyment.


Many of the stories were written for theme collections (Hellboy, Twilight Zone, Jack Vance) and it shows.  They don't have a lot of "Tad Williams" feel to them, and instead feel like middling quality knock-offs.


The best stories were And Ministers of Grace, which I had originally read when it appeared in Warriors, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, and which was okay in that collection.  It kind of begins in the middle, and is not particularly successful at conveying a true subjective perspective of a religious fanatic, which seems to have been the intent.  The Stranger's Hands is kind of neat, but overdoes the explanation at the end instead of letting the reader reach their own conclusion.  It also appeared in a collection edited by Gardner Dozois, so perhaps Mr. Williams benefits from a strong editor.


The balance of the stories seem to strive for a clever twist, which tends to be telegraphed and belaboured.  Most of the stories would be right at home in a magazine for aspiring creative writers... and probably not as the premiere story.


The two that I found weakest (and most offensive) were the two original to this novel.  Bad Guy Factory is apparently a script for a comic book.  Again, it starts in the middle, ends in the middle and has no significant story arc.  Mr. Williams has helpfully left number signs as fillers for the artist to refer to other panels, as though to show us that he couldn't be bothered to polish up this story and make it ready for publication, so we shouldn't be too hard on him in our evaluation.  I've read comic book scripts by Alan Moore, and this isn't even close.  It has virtually no artistic detail nor interest in the flow and structure of the panels.  Maybe it's an unfair comparison, but just because Mr. Williams puts some words in ALL CAPS doesn't make it effective writing for a comic book.  The story ends with a series of panels supposed to represent an in-comic website.  If I may quote:


"Page 22 (This is going to be a page representing the PLUSDOTCOM website:  It should LOOK like an ENTERTAINMENT SITE--LOTS OF PICTURES, POINTLESS GRAPHICS, Etc. I'm rewriting it because the original was written with DC references, characters, etc. It will have a tie-in to the story, and we'll probably have one page each issue.  Here's the first article, just as an example.)"


That was one of the allegedly re-written panels, and it's about as detailed as panel art instruction gets.  Another panel reads "PANEL TWO:  TALKING and WORKING around the COSTUMING TABLE while THROWBACK stands on a LOW STOOL".


I might have been more forgiving if there weren't all the nods of acknowledgment in-story indicating that this is unfinished, never published and shouldn't be evaluated as a final product.  Except it's being sold as a final product and I find that offensive.


Black Sunshine is just as weak and sloppy.  It's supposed to be written as a TV movie or something, because for Mr. Williams it was just so vivid with the soundtrack.  It confuses references to years (sometimes 1974, sometimes 1976), and for a guy who hears the soundtrack so vividly in his head, screenplay instructions such as "Something contemporary begins to fill the car as we CUT TO:" doesn't seem to bear that out.  These songs he hears so vividly aren't (for the most part) songs I'm familiar with.  Those I do recognize don't add anything to the story for me.  Screenplay background is sparse, characters are blankly drawn, dialogue is poor.  Twist ending doesn't carry any weight since we weren't invested in the characters to begin with.  Again, it's not an example of a good writer at his best by any stretch of the imagination.  (The plot is kind of like a poor take on a teleplay for Dreamcatcher by Stephen King.  A good example of how dreck for a good author is still miles ahead of most of the stuff churned out by weaker authors).


So A Stark and Wormy Knight, instead of giving me a reason to give Mr. Williams' novels another chance, has instead cemented in my mind the idea that this is an author who cares little for his readers or the quality of his work.  I don't think I'll be picking up another Tad Williams novel, and I'll leave Memory, Sorrow and Thorn in my memory, since I doubt I'm going to find any improvement if I look at it again.

Outlander "The Reckoning"

The TV series Outlander returned last night after a lengthy hiatus.  Although I objected to the hiatus at the time (because I was really enjoying the show and did not want to have to take a break), I have to acknowledge that I appreciated the separation between episodes, and think it worked to create a break between what came before and the new approach.


"The Reckoning" introduces Jamie Fraser as the narrator.  To this point, all episodes have been narrated by Claire.  It made for a slightly different perspective on events, and gave a window into some of the political clan intrigue not otherwise available from Claire's perspective.  I hope we get to stick with Jamie's point of view for a bit, to get a different take not only on the world and its politics, but also on Claire herself.


One of the things I'm really looking forward to is whether there are any indications of what Frank Randall is doing to locate Claire.  If it's a true perspective from Jamie's point of view, then there should be no indications of what's happening to Frank (since as far as Jamie knows, he's deceased).  And if that's the case, then it probably means that all of the interludes we've seen of Frank searching for Claire have been purely her imagination of what he must be doing and going through.  That is, there is not an objective narrative standpoint from which we view Frank, but rather Claire's reconstruction of what he must have been doing up to the point he called to her through the stones.  Which I think is kind of fascinating and will make the first batch of episodes worth re-watching.


I was also quite intrigued with how the show treated Jamie's perspective of Claire, custom and the relationship between spouses.  It didn't shy away from domestic violence (or discipline, as it seemed to Jamie's mind) but presented it in a way that felt historically viable and showed some of the challenges in a relationship separated by two hundred years of history and progress.  I also liked Jamie interpreting the relationship as Claire wanting to be the "lord and master" in the feudal sense of the word, and being prepared to pledge her fealty to move past the rift in their relationship.  I also really liked how Claire handled it, (not dissimilar to Jamie handling the Mackenzie's demand for fealty earlier in the season) by neither denying the pledge nor accepting it, yet nevertheless making sure that Jamie understood the sense of power imbalance his attempt at discipline created, and that physical correction would no longer be part of their relationship from either side.


Finally, I really liked the advertisements offering a package deal on the books available (2 for $15 I think).  I especially appreciated the explicit tie-in of the show to the books, since I think there would be a lot of viewers who would be intrigued to try out the books.  I still think I'm going to wait on the books though, until I'm sure I'm past the spoiler point.  I'm just enjoying the show too much.

A Secret Rage by Charlaine Harris

A Secret Rage was published in 1984, well before Ms. Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels.  However, my edition only has blurbs and quotes about the Sookie Stackhouse novels, and none for A Secret Rage.  In addition to the Sookie Stackhouse novels, I've read the Harper Connelly series and the Midnight, Texas series.


I really enjoy Ms. Harris' ability to reflect life in small towns in a way that rings true.  Her observations of human nature in a small town setting resonate with broader application, even as supernatural events are occurring around the characters.  I also find Ms. Harris' female characters fascinating.  They are indisputably strong, but in a way which is not very similar at all to the customary "strong female character" archetype, yet doesn't feel like Ms. Harris is just trying to subvert the tropes either.  Again, her characters feel like real people that Ms. Harris has observed, thought about and done an excellent job reflecting on the page in a manner that shows some different aspects of how women can be strong.


A Secret Rage is, as it turns out, largely non-supernatural.  It deals with a small college town which is in the midst of a series of attacks by a serial rapist.  It doesn't turn into a police procedural however, and unlike many similar novels, doesn't revel in the cleverness of the crime.  Instead it places all of its focus on those who suffer from the crime (one of which is the protagonist, and it doesn't seem right to call her a victim; she has much more agency than that).  It deals with the aftermath of the crime and the way other people deal with the survivor with a level of depth and empathy I don't often see in serial crime novels.


That's not to say it's a grueling examination of the consequences of rape.  It's a crime novel, tending toward the cozy style, but with a much more grotesque crime.  It just observes the consequences and effects of the crime much more than the usual token nod to atmosphere of a town in fear, and isn't afraid to look directly at those who suffered the crime and how it changes their lives.


The science is dated (understandably so, since it was presumably written in the early 80s or before) but it's still a satisfying suspense and mystery story.  And for those of us who yearned, all through the novel, for the protagonist to turn into some supernatural creature to take bloody vengeance on the evildoer... well there's just enough of a wink in that direction to satisfy me.

Unreliable Narrator vs Subjective Narration vs Selective Narration

To my mind, an unreliable narrator is where the narration is being told from a particular perspective (whether first person or third person), and the subjective interpretations and biases of the narrator colour the objective facts being observed.  In this case, the observations made in the mind of the narrator serve the dual purpose of showing us the events of the plot while revealing the character of the narrator.


I think of Robert Browning as providing an excellent example of how this can be used.  When the Duke in My Last Duchess is describing events, you can fully accept his interpretation of events or you can correct for his biases and develop your own idea of the objective nature of the events and/or you can learn about his character through his subjective description. 


Subjective narration is where the narrator is not omniscient, but instead sees only that which the character sees.  This narrator only knows their own thoughts, not the thoughts of others.  A plain example would be first person narration.  In a first person narrative, if the narrator says "that girl felt sad", the narrator must mean that the expression on the girl's face indicated she was sad, as a subjective narrator would have no way of telling whether the girl is actually sad or not.  I find this a bit of a common error, made more frequent when subjective third person narration is being used, and it always bounces me a bit out of the story, to have to think "but how would the narrator know that?"... or to have to go back and see if in fact the narrator is omniscient and providing clues or insights to other characters that I had previously thought were purely subjective.


Where the lines blur a bit (particularly in third person subjective narration) is where the author wants to do foreshadowing. "Little did he know that he would never be back that way again."  That can be effective, and potentially fair... but only if the perspective of the narrator is that of a person relating past events, not contemporaneous events.  One way this can be used while maintaining the immediacy of the narrative is to have a "present day" event, usually an action sequence or an injury, followed by a flashback of where the day or the case started.  Richard S. Prather uses this frequently in his Shell Scott novels, as does Zoe Sharp in her Charlie Fox novels.


But it can lead to some temporal confusion if you have to ask "but how does the narrator know he will never be back again?", which can lead to clues about which characters survive and have a future beyond that point.  Again, it can be used effectively, but can also frequently be a way in which my enjoyment of the story is interrupted if I can't satisfactorily explain to myself how the narrator knows that.


Finally, selective narration is used all the time, almost by definition.  I recall Douglas Adams addressing that in So Long and Thanks for All the Fish.  Not every story follows the protagonist as they use the washroom, forget to wash their hands, return to wash their hands, etc.  It's the way in which an instant can be covered in a hundred pages or a hundred years can be covered in a sentence.  All narratives, whether objective or subjective, are inherently selective.  No narrative can say everything about everything.


But when it comes to subjective narration, selective narration can be justified or can be merely an excuse to draw out suspense and advance the text.  Some of those techniques are accepted practice.  Even in a first person narration, when the detective finds clues and pieces them together, the reader never gets to know whodunit until the detective reveals it to a third party.  Of necessity, the detective must have recognized significance of clues, and had a chain of thought that lead to the conclusion but until it's time for the conclusion, the reader accepts that such portion of the narrator's thoughts will be undisclosed.  To prevent readers from feeling this is too unfair, the technique is usually that the reader is given access to the detective's observations, but none of the detective's analytical processes throughout the novel.  So the detective may observe that it is raining out, and then grab her umbrella, but the narrative will not usually have the thought "I saw it was raining, so figured I should grab my umbrella".


In any event, I can accept that selective omission of thought processes when it seems to be treated fairly and consistently.  I don't like it when selective thoughts by a subjective narrator create suspense of an arbitrary nature where there shouldn't be any. If a chapter ends with  "I recognized him as soon as he came through the door. I'd have known him anywhere" (a James Patterson style chapter ending), I think it's reasonable to expect that the next chapter featuring that narrator should address who the person was.  To carry on with "I knew I had to run now that I was found" without at any point addressing who found the narrator strikes me as arbitrary suspense.  The narrator is not in suspense.  The character is not in suspense.  The only suspense being generated is for the reader, by a narrator who has made a choice not to alleviate the suspense. I view that as artificial rather than organic suspense.


I see that type of artificial suspense more in stories that play with time and memory.  Sometimes I guess it's fair... the amnesia victim who can't remember the face of his assailant, but sometimes it's pretty convenient amnesia that remembers just enough at just the right times as to seem artificial.  As a result, I'm temporarily a bit tired of stories where I feel I haven't been given fair disclosure.  I suppose I'm giving this commentary as a way of apology if I'm not sufficiently enthusiastic about amnesia based stories of late.  After Crash & Burn
Read While Walking: Crash & Burn by Lisa Gardner
I have decided I will take a bit of a break from stories where suspense is generated from an incomplete memory.