Pirates and Hallows

Saw Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest the other night.

It's been getting mixed reviews all around, but overall I liked it. The story starts briskly, jams for about 20 minutes in stupid slapstick (Thus leading to the many complaints about pacing), then gets moving very well, with some very nice moments of characters turning out not so nice, twists, turns, and torments. wicked_wish has a pretty good analysis of the actual plot, and how it falls out, once things get underway, here, to which I have very little to add. I do disagree with her about how good it is, but I like her analysis of the character interactions. What I want to talk about isn't the plot, though, or the big set-up it makes for movie three. It's the big gaping non-plot stretch toward the beginning, the removal of which would turn the movie I saw into the movie she saw.

( Spoiler of a sort. Not much plot is really spoiled, which is my point, but I discuss a set piece at length and in detail. )

Summary - Worth seeing, but go get popcorn during the cannibals.

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Someone I otherwise respect dismissed The Hallowed Hunt as "good the first tiem she wrote it, with the Curse of Chalion".

THat person was wrong, this isn't a rehash by any stretch. In fact, I'm having a hard time seeing how it could be interpreted so. Yes, the way her gods deal with individuals and countries do lend a linking thread to the story, but no more so than Paladin of Souls. The "Creature inside the man" is not a dissimilar image to the "Demon in the belly", but it is neither made by nor into the same form of magic, nor is it used to the same ends. It's a very different country from that in the past two gods books, moreso than one might first notice, when one realises that yes, indeed, all the coutnries in her world do indeed worship the same gods, if in different ways (If the deities appear on a regular basis all over the place, well, of course the whole world should worship the same beings, whatever else their culture does. It's a scarily logical extrapolation of the "active and interfering god" trope, and one I'm astonished isn't more common -- I have a rationale for why it isn't so in mine, but I did find a while ago that I had to figure out that "Why not?")

And yes, the character begins damaged, but he begins so in very different ways, and for different reasons; notr does he end the same. Cazaril almost seems too healed over the book; Ingrey still feels damaged, to me, just differently, and now in ways he can see and live with.

I thought damaged characters tended to be rather like bad families, all different, where whole characters, like good families, are much alike. If damage makes characters alike, I'm truly living in a different world from everyone else.

I'm reminded of nothing more than my mom's concern that someone, reading my description of the dream I had a while ago (that I might turn into a story someday), would use it as a start to their own story. I just can't take that as a threat, or a danger to my version. What this ostensible idea thief did with such a thing wouldn't match at all what I would do. Bujold writes two books, in a similar theme, with a not too dissimilar starting point, and veers of widely in where they go.

______________________________

But both of these are stories feeding into the wrong story of mine; it's the feral looks, the feral actions, people not quite human, the moral knots and the fact that the good characters still aren't necessarily the nice characters, as well as the wild woods and the undead -- both those acting demon-like and those dragging history into the present. I'm having to beat that one back with a stick to get any progress on Raising the Storm. Yarrgh!

Pirates and Hallows

Saw Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest the other night.

It's been getting mixed reviews all around, but overall I liked it. The story starts briskly, jams for about 20 minutes in stupid slapstick (Thus leading to the many complaints about pacing), then gets moving very well, with some very nice moments of characters turning out not so nice, twists, turns, and torments. wicked_wish has a pretty good analysis of the actual plot, and how it falls out, once things get underway, here, to which I have very little to add. I do disagree with her about how good it is, but I like her analysis of the character interactions. What I want to talk about isn't the plot, though, or the big set-up it makes for movie three. It's the big gaping non-plot stretch toward the beginning, the removal of which would turn the movie I saw into the movie she saw.

( Spoiler of a sort. Not much plot is really spoiled, which is my point, but I discuss a set piece at length and in detail. )

Summary - Worth seeing, but go get popcorn during the cannibals.

____________________________________

Someone I otherwise respect dismissed The Hallowed Hunt as "good the first tiem she wrote it, with the Curse of Chalion".

THat person was wrong, this isn't a rehash by any stretch. In fact, I'm having a hard time seeing how it could be interpreted so. Yes, the way her gods deal with individuals and countries do lend a linking thread to the story, but no more so than Paladin of Souls. The "Creature inside the man" is not a dissimilar image to the "Demon in the belly", but it is neither made by nor into the same form of magic, nor is it used to the same ends. It's a very different country from that in the past two gods books, moreso than one might first notice, when one realises that yes, indeed, all the coutnries in her world do indeed worship the same gods, if in different ways (If the deities appear on a regular basis all over the place, well, of course the whole world should worship the same beings, whatever else their culture does. It's a scarily logical extrapolation of the "active and interfering god" trope, and one I'm astonished isn't more common -- I have a rationale for why it isn't so in mine, but I did find a while ago that I had to figure out that "Why not?")

And yes, the character begins damaged, but he begins so in very different ways, and for different reasons; notr does he end the same. Cazaril almost seems too healed over the book; Ingrey still feels damaged, to me, just differently, and now in ways he can see and live with.

I thought damaged characters tended to be rather like bad families, all different, where whole characters, like good families, are much alike. If damage makes characters alike, I'm truly living in a different world from everyone else.

I'm reminded of nothing more than my mom's concern that someone, reading my description of the dream I had a while ago (that I might turn into a story someday), would use it as a start to their own story. I just can't take that as a threat, or a danger to my version. What this ostensible idea thief did with such a thing wouldn't match at all what I would do. Bujold writes two books, in a similar theme, with a not too dissimilar starting point, and veers of widely in where they go.

______________________________

But both of these are stories feeding into the wrong story of mine; it's the feral looks, the feral actions, people not quite human, the moral knots and the fact that the good characters still aren't necessarily the nice characters, as well as the wild woods and the undead -- both those acting demon-like and those dragging history into the present. I'm having to beat that one back with a stick to get any progress on Raising the Storm. Yarrgh!