[Review] DEFENDERS by Will McIntosh

Thursday, July 24, 2014 K.Z. Freeman 0 Comments
There are books which I have reviewed so far for which I "argue" that nothing happens. I wish to explain again as I did in those reviews, that things do in fact happen, but are not even remotely close to what I would like to happen in a book that is over 400 pages long. I don't want to read about someone going to a university and doing exams at said university. (I still ended up reading about it, but shut up, okay?)

 In this book, things happen. And then some other things happen which are not expected. Then others which are slightly more expected, but still very spacious (?) in the oh shit that just happened department.

 [Here ends the part of the review where I try to use the word happen as many times as possible for no particular reason.]

 This is without doubt an existentially rich book examining some of the most profoundly disturbing yet singularly realistic questions. The questions aren't actually in the book, which is how good scifi does things anyway, instead the questions appear by themselves in the heads of those who tend to contemplate the nature of things and stuff. The answers you get in this book are sort of nihilistic in a way and kind of lame when you think about them. Yet not lame because the author is lame or managed to represent the answers in a lame way (although the Lutyen are some of the most meh aliens purely by aspect of countenance), but because, well, the answers themselves are quite lame. But also true.

 One answer is simply this: Humans are and will for the foreseeable future remain a bunch of unremitting idiots.

 The second answer a bit comforting. Only not very. And it is that we can't really help it. Unless we try really really hard.

 You cannot help but be pissed at times at the pure idiocrity of the people in this book. And by extension - when you realize the book is pretty legit when it comes to accurately describing real-world situations (albeit in a warped and situationaly different manner) - you kind of become frustrated with humans in general. But then again, you should be a tad frustrated with us if you managed to look outside your window in the last couple of centuries, or within yourself. I mean really look. 

 If you pause to think (and you should, god dammit) that what is happening in this book is something that may very well occur, and actually has already numerous times - just not with aliens from outer space (or has it) - you may come to the startling conclusions you were already aware of, but tried not to consider because they can bring you to fucking tears. 

 "Suppress that shit," seems to be the consensus upon which we frivolously operate in our current global society.

 But what if you can't? Well I suppose then you damn well try harder.

 The science in this book is never actually explained and the book itself remains one of the least detailed books I have read in a while. The details are in other places, centered around characters and things that actually matter.

 Which is good.
The only problem was I couldn't for the life of me imagine a starfish-shaped alien that didn't appear positively goofy in my mind's eye... And I tried.
9/10

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Ego and Writing

Wednesday, July 23, 2014 K.Z. Freeman 0 Comments
Recently I have been wondering how much of writing, or the want to be a writer, is actually purely ego-driven. There is a kind of Latin phrase spelled 'Cacoethes Scribendi' which is basically a pretentious way of saying you have a very strong desire to write at that very instant. But how many take the time to actually - at that very point - ask themselves why?

 You may find that when you do this, and try to understand on the level of Mind just what it is that drives this need to scribble, almost asking the need itself if this is a way for the ego to prove itself, the answer will almost immediately be No. 
You will try to convince yourself that the reason you write is because You wish to write, like you may wish to play the guitar or a video game. Or run. For fun. But why then, is this fun also coiled inside a need for other people to experience this writing you have scribbled. Just like, for instance, it is imperative for your Facebook friends to know that you are, or will be writing at that particular time, or that you have been running a hour earlier. Why is it, if this is not ego driven behaviour, important or even relevant at all for any other individual to know you inner happenings? Even if you tell this in a non-direct way. Surely if Writing wasn't in its basis for most extremely ego driven, they would simply not need to have any acknowledgement whatsoever. They would be perfectly happy to write and leave their writings in an attic, never to be seen by anyone.

 But that almost never happens.

 It is true, being paid is nice. You need to get paid and investing hours into a short story, let alone days in a novel, may seem like a terrible waste of time if you need to pay the bills. But what if you didn't need to pay the bills? How many would still be writing instead of painting, for instance? Or laying around in hammock with their last thought being about that one story they were churning around in their heads?

 Even as a kid, if you ever read a book and thought, "I could do this. Maybe I could do it better!" If you examine that statement, you will find it is purely egotistical.

 It is not really a coincidence that the stronger ego driven gender still dominates (yes, dominates) the world of writing. Surely this isn't simply because of some discrimination, although it has to be noted that a lot of female authors had their names abbreviated by the publisher so it would not be immediately apparent that a woman had written the piece. JK Rolling is the biggest name that comes to mind.

 That writing is strongly ego driven is evident in rejections. Anyone who has gotten a rejection letter for a work submitted will know that the blow goes directly to the ego. It is only the ego's reaction that differs. Most will not admit this. Why would they? Since the ego will work hard to convince You that is not what is happening. That's what it does best, anyway.

 It takes a bit for it to recover, and the more rejection it gets, the easier it recovers and the faster it can continue to operate again. It will examine what it did wrong if you can make it work for you, or it will simply plough on until something bites.

 Consider this: you are not your ego. Consider then, without this drive, what would you write, what would you write about? Would you write what you do now, or is what you are writing now some deeply seeded way to prove yourself because you consider that type of writing to take the most skill, the most knowledge, or the most expertise?  Would you even still want to write?

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[Review] House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Wednesday, July 09, 2014 K.Z. Freeman 1 Comments

It is indeed a joyful thing that books of experimental nature still exist and remain read. They can, however, become infuriating when one tries to read the damn things.

 This is one of those books, and it pissed me off immensely.

 First off, I don't see how I can review this tome without reviewing the two parts (more or less) of which it consists, since each part acts as a POV shift (of sorts) within chapters. The voice used for each is completely different.

 The first part, which I call the good part, is written by a fictitious dead man, Zampano (although the author tries really hard to make the reader fall into the trap of thinking this whole thing is for real) and his accounting of The Navidson Record. Thus, the Zampano part is more like an in-depth accounting. This is the part that is really good. Fascinating even.  It manages to convey things in a totally and completely engrossing way and has a somewhat Lovecraftian vibe. But that vibe is only an inkling, an itch.

 The Zampano part decides early on to pry on the most basic fear of the unknown and maintain it by piling the equation of unknowns, heaping one atop the other until you get x+x×x(x+x-x)=x/x. Or something similar. Lots of X's, in any case.

 Actually, these parts are so good and perfectly written, the pacing so incredibly adequate, that I could just as easily heap paragraphs upon paragraphs explaining why these sections make Mark Z. Danielewski a boss.

 But then we come to the other part of the book, namely the travesty that is the character of Johnny Truant and his mostly idiotic babble.

 What makes these sections even worse, is the fact that the Johnny Truant narrative is found between sections that are totally great.
Props to the writer for managing to maintain a stream-of-consciousness type stile. But also Fuck Him, because my appreciation for the author's skill does absolutely nothing to alleviate the mostly pretentious and inevitably (but not always) boring as heck nature of the Johnny Truant narrative.
It successfully accomplishes what writers should avoid. It cuts through the story in such a fashion that makes you skim paragraphs instead of wanting to devour them. What ends up happening is that you read these paragraphs in a kind of fury, a hunger to get back to the good part of the book these spaces threaten and, in most cases, successfully ruin.
They would have worked extremely well (and they sometimes do (mostly at the end)), if they were shorter and managed to build up on the main story in some meaningful way. They don't. Instead Johnny almost always ends up talking about some girl he banged didn't bang, or just met or has an obsession about. Or he simply lies.

 The Idiot Johnny parts are basically footnotes. And they sometimes become pretentious as FUUUUUCK. Footnotes that span a few pages and mostly manage to tell nothing at all interesting or entertaining  (or for that matter vital to the story) and  babble on endlessly about the same crap. Half a page without a single period is not unheard of, while managing to give off a sense that you might learn something "important" if you just keep on reading. But...

 Let me give you an example.

 There is a section where Zampano writes down something in German, to which Johnny Fucking Truant writes a 3 page footnote. 
In this particular section he scribbles down how his friend, the-never-pussyless-one, Lude, introduces him to a woman that knows German. Johnny Truant then proceeds to describe how he flirts with her and gets man-handled by her boyfriend. Then, skip 5 months or something, he gets to meet up with her again. This time he is a hour late to the party because he was scared shitless [as usual]. He then ventures with said lady in her car where they proceed to take ecstasy. She speeds the said car, being some kind of adrenaline junkie or some other nonsense, until they eventually fornicate in the car, or Johnny just licks her or whatever, I can't even remember because it's so damn irrelevant. Then she cries because her boyfriend who had previously smacked Johnny doesn't pay attention to her and doesn't even want to touch her. Johnny then promptly decides to remind us that, lo and behold, he forgot to ask her what the German phrase (for which he had made this rambling footnote in the first place) even means...

 Well fuck you, sir.

 Mind you, these can be very well written, I cannot deny that, but it's still very well written irrelevancy. It does sort of all makes sense in the end, however, but can still be a pain to read. And despite the fact that it all comes "together in the end" (albeit in a very disjointed and rambling way), it still remains irrelevant to the main story.

 This goes on. It's is not an isolated case and you soon lose interest in reading these "footnotes" in their entirety, despite the fact that they can be interesting but ultimately, 60+% of the time, utterly pointless.

 It's not all bad though. It's not bad because they do manage to convey something else, a simple essence of writing.
You want to write? Here is you and here is the page. You are one. Try it. Look at it. Examine it and listen to it. Sing to it if you must. Smell it. Gut it. Gut yourself and smear those guts all over it. Now read your soul from the viscera and blood and make sense of it before you die.

 While this may result in some killer writing, sections of the book sometimes end up reading like some pointless blog and/or male wish-fulfilment.

 Johnny basically manages to fuck everything because, well I don't know why, I guess he looks good or something... Which would be fine if it weren't so boring to read and mostly pointless. He is apparently living in some kind of fantasy world where women randomly ask him to cum on their tits. The problem is, he really is not as fascinating as the author thinks he is. Johnny manages to grab your attention at first, because you think he will say something relevant. Then usually begins to drone on about some random crap that tries very hard not to be random. Or the randomness of it has some deeper meaning that I have missed completely.

 Not to mention that somehow all the women in this book are freakishly good looking because hey, an old man living in an extremely smelly apartment is just a magnet for chicks. They were fascinated by Zampano. Of course they were, yes yes. Why wouldn't they be?
And then Johnny tracks down some of them in order to find out just what the hell is going on (even though that tracking almost always turns into a farce). And they are all hot.

 Which really brings me to the issue of characters. None of them are really interesting. They are there, they are in the story, but it is the house, the tale that is interesting, not the characters. They may do interesting things to push the story forward, true, but they are in themselves not interesting characters. Reading about them outside the story, or unless they have something to say about the house in the strange "interviews", yields no satisfaction and you want those parts to be over quick and get back to the story sooner rather than later.

 That may not sound fair at all, and in this case that's actually fine, since the story still manages some awesome moments with character interaction.

 The important part, however, is well embedded in this book. The part that you will want to explore. You will be interested, you will be hooked, even if while reading the book you may end up hating it.
Zempano Part 11/10 (yes, an eleven)

 Johnny Part 5/10
8/10 


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Free Elder Scrolls Online Guide

Tuesday, July 01, 2014 K.Z. Freeman 0 Comments
I've been writing guides for killerguides.net for a while now.

And it just so happens that they will be offering their guide for The Elder Scrolls Online for Free on Independence Day. I guess they're American, so yeah, makes sense. 

 If you want it, you'll be able to download it for free. Fact. The Dragonknight guide is the one I penned and I know it contains all you'll need to destroy stuff in PVE and PVP.

 I'm trying to spread the word on this since the guide is very in-depth with plenty of hidden secrets and overpowered builds. So if you find yourself kind of sucking at the game, you should consider having a look. I probably mentioned that's free, yeh?

 Here's the link.

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