[Review] Prince of Fools by Mark Lawrence

Thursday, June 26, 2014 K.Z. Freeman 0 Comments
Again with the "on par" thing... god dammit, this is better! I swear it on my left testicle. Actually, I'm so confident that this is better I swear it on all my future offspring (both testicles).

 While this tome obviously doesn't sport the intricacies of Martin's crazy POV-hopping, it has it's own deliciousness wrapped up in it - out of which you simply get more enjoyment. Yes, simply.

 That being said, I met the pages of this book with too much of a fanboy glee to give it an unbiased review. But I'll try.

 The next couple of paragraphs is me trying.
Mark Lawrence is a bastard. And not the kind who gets born to a king's lusty ways either. He knows he can write about people getting knee-slammed in the testicles and get away with it, so he does it. And, admittedly, many other things. He can get away with it because the characters are walking around in your head, talking. That's always a good thing.

 On the other hand, this book is, beside the voice (which I thought was actually very similar to the one used in the Broken Empire series), a very different book. It has similarities but is still quite a different kind of monster. Namely because Jorg, the quite-but-not-quite-a-psychopath, was so unlike our newly found friend, Jalan, who makes a good contrast to Snorri, who remains the Singularly Awesome One. And a Viking. And he reminded me of Makin, did Snorri. Which is also a good thing.

 Known characters make their appearances and a few new ones, of course, while Jalan struggles to tackle them. Mostly in ways that are pretty funny.

 I could do what I did in my previous reviews of Mark Lawrence's books and put in a few quotes from the book. I was going to, but then decided against it because there were too many to choose from.

 All in all, to finish this rather short review, let me add this picture which may at first seem unrelated:



My version is this:
There are two types of people in this world: People who will admit that there is much of Jorg and Jalan in them, and dirty fucking liars.

9/10 

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What the Actual Heck

Saturday, June 21, 2014 K.Z. Freeman 0 Comments

It is generally realized that I have a natural aptitude for psychotropic substances of questionable origin. Particularly those that may or may not cause one to question his own mental stability. Or instability.

Knowing this about yourself is sort of comforting. Only not very.

My friend and I call them wondrous molecular compositions. Stuff that can make you lose the ability to can. Although the phenomena of "losing one's ability to can" can be sort of scary, it's why people say “I can’t even,” in the first place.

Jolly good, then.

I lie to myself by telling myself that this aptitude is due to a particularly cunning morphic resonance cascading down (or up) through the dimensional fields until the matter in my brain-meat is stimulated to the point of "Yeah, why not, let's see where this takes me."

This sort of thinking usually does not end well. At least that's what others would like me to think. But I regret nothing. Not yet.

I was not high up on a mountain this time. Not physically, in any case.
No.
All that happened happened quite suddenly and without warning. Which is how things usually happen anyway. Unless you're a turtle.

So there I was, minding my own business (slacking), when suddenly a wild molecule called DMT appeared.

The dosage I used would make the wise frown with disapproval, so it was good that none of them were strutting about. 
I inhaled and, for a while I felt very, "Myes, Quite, Indeed," until my mind went mad.

Okay, madder.

The universe sang to me. Literally. All right, not literally, but I did hear an odd hum of synchronous rhythm resonating at a pitch I had not encountered before. The odd thing about it though, is that it came accompanied by a distinct sense that, while the sound was indeed within Myself, it was also out there, in the void, as it were.

It was the void.

Not as a normal sound is, but so deeply embedded into intrinsic reality that it goes by unnoticed while the mind is looking and I had, by inhaling, managed to coax it out of its little hole. Although that hole is actually infinitely big. 

 I stopped looking and it in turn looked at me.

 I would have been scared if it wasn’t for the fact that I was not. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?

In these instances it is funny how one’s mind conjures up all sorts of stupid ideas about what is happening.

While the explanation that the sound I am hearing is nothing more than a change in my natural ear pressure and the resulting hum is fine and all, it is not as fantastic as the thought that I had heard the sound of creation. Or the sound of background radiation. Or the hum of a cosmic TV tuned to a dead channel and finding out it's not actually dead. Or the sound of space expanding. Or even the Great Om. For all I know all of these are actually one and the same thing. Anyway, it (the sound) kept pulling me towards something. Something both an infinite distance away and at the same time right here, now, everywhere.

Perhaps my lotus position made me see what I saw next, or at least put the idea of it in my head.

I saw Me.

And I was laughing at me.

Here is how it happened.

From the kaleidoscopic pattern of shifting, concave circles, a red-blue Me appeared sitting in the same position I was sitting, pulsing and looking at me since the beginning of all things and mind-casting that he will be sitting there until I get a grip and realize I don't have a grip. And even then I/Him/Me shall still be sitting there for some obscure reason. A reason that was probably not so terribly important. Or the most important. Probably both.

I resisted the sound’s pull because that's what dumb apes do. I resisted until all of a sudden there was no more point to it.

I stayed right there yet was somewhere else.

But that's not the weirdest part. After the universe had ceased its song, a new one appeared. I say appeared because sound seemed to enjoy being a visual menace. It didn't hurt, it was just that sound itself decided it will act all weird for a bit. Probably to freak me out. 

 It worked.

 Fortunately only for a second, because a shape which looked remarkably (and by remarkably a mean exactly) like Shiva, appeared before me. HeShe stood on one leg with the other bent as though sitting, and began to do this weird dance. It made me smile.
The above GIF looks exactly what the dude was doing.

His motions created all that was me and all that will ever be. And all of that was also me. And I thought to myself, "Hmm, that's rather odd, that. But in the best way possible."

The whole thing felt profoundly fantastic.

After it was over I was somewhat disappointed. Not because of the fact that I did it, but because despite all greatness, I couldn't help but feel that I have experienced profoundly more subtle feelings of bliss and wonder while in meditation – not high at all. At least not propelled to such height by any substance I had taken. I loved the experience even more because of this fact.

In its own way it showed me how we already have the best things inside us already, we simply need to learn how to access them. Work at them. Being able to do it only on occasion somehow adds an extra thrill to existence. It makes you strive. 

 It adds a certain subtle element of danger. 

 Short cuts to insights that most of us are looking for simply don't exist. At least not in a truly meaningful sense. You begin to rely on drugs to bring you to that place again, forgetting it is always there.
Because sadly, drugs will always lie to you. You are easy to lie to yourself. They can give you a false sense that answers lie out there. Somewhere. They hide this truth because they wrap it in their own self. They forge you into a lie that is searching for truth.
But answers are already here. Within. We fear to look because the lie can be more comforting. A comforting tale. But still only a tale.

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[Review] Blood Song by Anthony Ryan

Wednesday, June 18, 2014 K.Z. Freeman 0 Comments



Mixed feelings. 

They happened when I heard this book put in the same boat as The Name of the Wind. They happened again when I actually read the damn thing. They happened hard. 

The problem with the boat analogy, however, is that in my opinion, The Name of the Wind scrubs the deck so that better books may walk it and tell the poor deck-scrubber to get out of the sodden way. 

 This is not that "other book". But neither is it a bad book. 

 I was swept away by the wind just as I was with Blood Song, and I will be checking out the sequel, Tower Lord. Yet there's just something missing...

What is missing, to be very honest, is imagination.

While the book tells a story well and puts forth character development over everything else, it is not unique or spectacular in any shape or form. Sorry, it's just not.
Just like when I began reading The Wind (and the slightly worse Wise Man's Fear), I was really hoping for something phenomenal in terms of what actually happens in the book. But contrary to popular thinking, seeing is not believing, seeing is where belief stops because there's no more need to it. When I read this book I stopped believing that "coming of age" stories are something I should put my fate it. Or even read at all.

The prose is so rudimentary it (at times) almost felt as though I was reading 50 Shades in fantasy form. Sometimes this is great, while here it just comes off as lacking. That feels like a pretty bad insult, but god dammit that's how it felt! Come on! Do at least one complex sentence. We're not bloody children that can't paint an image in their heads unless the sentence gets slightly less simplistic!

Still, the book is OK. I know the above paragraphs don't make it seem so, but it has its charms. Namely that it's a terrific timesink.


7/10

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The Satori Generation

Wednesday, June 11, 2014 K.Z. Freeman 0 Comments
There exists a mistaken belief that a growing  human phenomena, the awareness of which is now blooming in Japan, is only centred in Japan. Japan may very well be its epicentre (but even that is doubtful), yet it has been happening since the birth of people from the middle 1980. In Japan they are referred to as satori sendai, The Satori Generation - kids that are now entering their twenties, or are in their twenties.
"They don’t want cars or brand name handbags or luxury boots. To many of them, travel beyond the known and local is expensive and potentially dangerous. They work part-time jobs—because that is what they’ve been offered—and live at home long after they graduate. They’re not getting married or having kids. They’re not even sure if they want to be in romantic relationships. Why? Too much hassle. Oh, and too expensive."

 This seems to be the general description. One that is also quite mistaken, since it says nothing as to why this is the case and what other drive these kids truly possess, if any.

 Instead of why they do not care about possessing cars or luxury, ask instead why they should? Why should anyone?
It has more to do with the fact that they care not about outer possessions due to either consciously or unconsciously realizing these bring only momentary satisfaction in a society where value comes from things that have none besides the value given by society.
Slowly and most predominately for those of the middle class (where such a thing still exists) any expense tends to bring for most a worry that, with the expense, the necessary survivalistic things that are actually needed for survival could, because of said expense, as a result not be bought in the very near future.

 As such, a growing thought-pattern is emerging, suggesting a slow but collective realization of impermanence, a realization that such things can only ever bring momentary satisfaction. The generation in Japan is not referred to as satori, enlightened, for no reason.

 When asked by elders of age 50+, "Don't you want a nice car when you get older?"
Their answer usually consist of, "Not really, no."
Or the simultaneously more and less expressive, "Meh."

 At first sight such an individual may seem very resigned, without ideals or hopes. Critics of this generation say that it is a lazy generation, without willpower and drive. My favourite two-word description being: "decreased potency".
But a potency to achieve what, exactly? Self-reliance, certainly, but there's more to it today than 20 years ago. Today the failings of the system seem even more obvious to teenagers and young adults, because they are more immersed in its failings due to an increased global connectivity. So again, a potency to achieve what?

 To aid a failing system by supplying more of those who are willing to assist in its failings?

 For most a relatively mundane participation is all they can hope for at the moment. To go with how things are instead of how things could be... Most would seem resigned because of the futility in attempting to change any of their outer surroundings in a meaningful sense. This "lesser potency" may seem obvious to those not of this generation, because of the gap that has been occurring in the collective consciousness between the young and old. Because of this gap and the resulting change in belief system, it is difficult for older individuals to comprehend that the desire for things that were desirable for them no longer exist in the younger generation.

 We were thought to be future orientated, yet what happens when that future is projected by the human mind, projected in the now, and one realizes that such a future is not something he or she wants or desires? Why work for such a future?

 Relative excess and relative comfort have created this occurrence. It is the nature of humanity to want more, desire more - to expand in all aspects of consciousness. And that is actually not what is happening. We have become a material-expansive society. Where to can one expand when the subconscious feels all that it could ever want, has been given to it in a material sense? Food. Clothing. Kids that never had an excess of these but only a relative access predominated by necessity, tend to develop a mental pattern or conditioning where they no longer feel any need to have an excess. However this non-need manifests into a desperate need in another sense. Namely a more spiritual sense.

 "You have all you ever need, yet you are still depressed?" It is not the unpossession that is the problem, it is the slow realization of the unimportance of possessing anything at all while everyone around you seems to be striving towards possessing more, always more.

 When you have all you need and something is still lacking, when you can access more information you would ever need or be able to utilize via the internet, yet still feel a lacking of the most VITAL information, you begin to look elsewhere. Or are left with a feeling of lacking while not conscious enough to realize what it is that is lacking.

 Outwardly, this state may even seem as depression, a lack of wanting in a world where you are bombarded by wanting people. It may indeed make some feel as though there is something vital which is missing within the generation, to not want what others say you should want, should have.
Perhaps that want, the desire to possess things, even shows up every once in a while, but does not last.

 What is looked over is that this generation wants something very much different than what the previous generations wanted. This conflict between ideals results in mistaken interpretation of the state of these kids.

 But what is it that they want, then?

 The answer is simple, and as it usually is with these things, much too simple to be immediately apparent. They want Enlightenment. It is what they have always wanted, what we (humans) have always wanted, most not even realizing it. This wish for enlightenment often expresses itself in an intense desire for inner freedom. Freedom from one's Self in the sense that you are no longer barraged by what you consider to be outer influences and pressures. It is another reason why satori sendai are considered a low-risk populace. Low risk means low pressure. Often times this pressure comes from intrinsicaly knowing, realizing these are all in fact inner pressures and inner resistances to what is, and not knowing how to transcend, or transmute knowing it into living it.

 In any regard, I do not think a generation of failed mystics is what we shall be seeing in the near future, but a paradigm shift more apparent than any we have seen since.

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Psychonaut: The Nexus (SAMPLE CHAPTER)

Friday, June 06, 2014 K.Z. Freeman 0 Comments
CHAPTER 14


Dreams are ever a place where your fears find you.
A man can hide from many things. He can hide from other men and from the world. But fears are a part of him, they are him, and there is no hiding from oneself. But my dreams are like some great leveler. I suppose all men feel like this – that their dreams are something that can shatter them – I don’t know. All I know is this: dreams don’t care who you are or what you are. They care only about what you did, what you do, and what you intend to do. They use what you thought and what you think and know you better than you know yourself. They show you the true intentions behind your actions. And unlike men who want to see you hurt, dreams don’t spit in your face and leave you beaten in the dirt, gasping for air through broken lungs. Dreams speak to you through faces that you recognize but grow to hate for the foulness of their words. They know exactly what to say and say that which hurts most. They toss you into a pit and, in the darkness, show you why the darkness should be feared. Their ways are subtle.

But this day, my dreams are different. I dream of the sky. There is something out there, further even than the sky and immeasurably big. It floats towards the planet on currents of unknown technology. I blink and the scene shifts. I find myself upon a slab. I want to wake up. A pain like my spine being pulled apart shoots through me. I am bound. I am alone, but not myself. For I cannot be myself and be this afraid, can I? Can any man feel this much pain and still draw breath? The lower part of my body is gone. I observe them. I watch men in wide-brimmed hats that look more like heads that aren’t heads floating from the darkness and whispering secrets to me. My blood runs cold. Their breath is hot upon my ears as they tell me of the end. My end. Tell me how the one thing I love will fade and die. I see it happen and I scream. I scream and in this state of screaming, I awake.

They’ve heard me. How could they have not? Calyx has me by the shoulders, shaking me.
“Wake the fuck up, you bastard,” I hear her. Yet even her voice sounds weak and I tether on the edge of waking. I feel like I’ve been a part of something. As though my dream was not only a dream. I remember the words of the man, the ghost, “Dreams are never mere dreams.” I feel as if someone is collecting names, my names, all of them. From my true name to my dream-name to the name I’m known for and all the names I had been whispered in the dark. Lovers have given me names too, although there have not been many, and even fewer who didn’t try to kill me. My eyes adjust and I fully awake with a sense that,  should find my real name, my father-given name, they will have me – come for me.
“We have to go back to the man in the box,” I tell her.
“What man? What box?” Ty asks.
Face to face with Calyx, I see for the first time how sad her face is. She has that look as though smiling is not something she does often. Perhaps my face looks the same, perhaps even worse, I’m not sure. The last time I saw my face was two years ago. I saw it in a broken mirror after I had killed a man who stabbed me in the arm. He had crashed into that mirror and painted its fragments red. In retrospect, he should have gone for something more vital than my limb. I spent a week recovering from what could have cost me my left appendage, with the memory of those alien eyes looking at me. I spent that week wandering the wastes, the sky yellow and indifferent above me. All I truly remember is me shaking. 
In my wanderings, I forgot those eyes, remembered them only when the heat in me was at its most vicious and that gaze came to haunt me. I see those very eyes now, reflected in Calyx, and it feels like some old friend long dead had come back to haunt and taunt me.
I get up and walk outside. The night weights heavy on me and I realize I had not slept at all. The two follow me to the old man’s house.


***


The walls echo as our footfall passes.
“This place reeks,” Ty spits. We had looked around, but all the corridors of the four-story building and all the doors look the same. I open one. It has a look of familiarity. But what meets us on the other side is something quite different than what I had expected. A swirling vortex made of grey mist and electricity fades in and out of focus, as though not fully in phase with this dimension. It twists like a heart of time out of which all reality is emanating from. Tearing like fabric, the air about it seems to stretch and contract with each pulse of the thing.
“Merde,” Ty mumbles. “Right, I think we shouldn’t go in there.”
“Calyx?” I say as I see her moving towards it.
“Father?” she whispers, looking intently into the swirling maw.
“Cal?” says Ty.
“Calyx!” I yell, seeing her walk closer.
You might consider someone a rational, intelligent person, yet when that note of emotion is struck within such an individual, rational thinking is a thing forgotten. What remains is a babbling and incoherent idiot who once again reminds you people are stupid. We believe what we want to believe and the greatest lies we tell are those we tell to ourselves. And the most intelligent people craft for themselves the most ingenious lies. In times like these, I know that, truly, the greatest enemy of mankind is man. Calyx extends a hand towards whatever she sees and whatever image of her father the vortex has conjured up in her mind. I can see the need in her eyes.
“I’m here, father. How did you get here?” I jump to her, but her hand is already within. It swirls and twists, thin as hair. She too begins to bend and extend. I grab her and extend with her. Ty grabs me and extends with us both. There is no pain as we are sucked inside, only a sense of the universe coming to an end. I scream a silent shriek and realize pain would be a thing more welcome.
We find the man standing there, middle-aged. He tells us what we see, his words creating landscapes. He waits looking at a horizon in flames.
“I was young,” he began. “That day I was young for the last time. The sky was dark, but not the type of dark of the night, this was the kind of dark you could smell. The kind of dark that bites your lungs and fills your nostrils shut. Snow had fallen that day. It had fallen and kept falling for a thousand years. I knew that day we had killed it. Killed the one thing we should never have killed. We killed humanity. We killed the world. I walked alone that evening. The ash-covered streets were empty. To expect anything else would be pretty rediculous. My footprints faded behind me just like I knew the memories of a better world will fade along with me. But I was determined, you see. I had predicted this, saw it happen, felt it happening. But the stasis chamber I had built needed to be improved upon, and I had little time left. When the evening faded and night fell, the distant booming of destruction at my heels, I realized this was the end. I didn’t want to accept it. I fought it until I could fight no more. I built my own coffin and buried myself from the world.”
“How did you do this?” I ask as we begin to walk ahead. Visibility is high and I can see far into the distance. Almost as if someone fashioned my view so I could see it all. There’s an explosion out there, building a twisting red and yellow spire into the sky.
“Nomad?” Ty says, his voice uncertain, afraid. Ash falls from a layer above us the color of night, from clouds that are thick and thundering. A heat reaches us and I can smell it, like a thousand dead bodies. We stand in the light of it and all I see of the others is their black silhouettes surrounded by white. I look at Calyx, I gaze at Ty. They are silent, caught in a state like me, between marvel and utter terror. Our skin begins to burn. The pain is total, all-encamping. But it soon fades. What remains is light. And in that light, I am them, they are me, we are one. I see their black bones in the light but those too are wiped away like shapes in sand.

We come back to it beside the black box as the body – a shrivelled corpse – spills out from its confines. Fluid drips from the floating coffin, over the body and down on the floor. The corpse doesn’t move, its eyes are dead, although I imagine they had been dead for a long while. The smell makes my head spin.
“What the hell happened?” Ty asks.
“I must have asked the right question,” I answer.




READ THE WHOLE THING HERE ;)

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