So, over Tuesday evening, the H and I finished up Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. Having watched both animes, and read the manga, I thought it would be fun to post some thoughts on the various versions. Insofar as I can remember, the FMA:B anime follows the manga pretty closely (if there are divergences I haven’t spotted, feel free to yell at me in the comments).
(spoilers below the cut. You have been warned)
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Been a while since I’ve done that, but since Christmas I’ve read Let The Right One In (the book of the movie), which was awesome, a very neat take on a vampire in modern days.

Currently deep in K.J. Parker’s Scavenger trilogy (just started book 2), which is… intriguing, to say the least. The main character is Poldarn, an amnesiac who wakes up on a battlefield, and who may or may not be a god, may or may not be the most evil man on the continent–and may or may not bring the Apocalypse with him. The books so far feel like an extended puzzle box: there are bits and pieces with vivid images, and as the story progresses they get slotted into places. We learn more about Poldarn and his past, about the history of the world (which is some kind of pseudo-Roman Empire)–and through it all, there’s this definite sense of something very bad about to happen. Quite curious to see how it all ends.

So, now that we’ve finally finished watching it…

(warning: spoilers below for all seasons)
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Some Servant of the Underworld mentions (sorry for the long list, I kind of haven’t updated in a long while on this):
-Windrose Meanderings (loved it)
-You Fight Like Anne Rice (didn’t care so much for the style or the main character)
-Solar Bridge (thought the milieu tended to overwhelm the novel)
-Jonathan McCalmont at the Zone (to say that he didn’t like it is an understatement. It’s the review with claws I was referring to earlier. I’ve skimmed through it but not really read it–I can deal with this kind of deconstruction, but only after book 3 is completed).
-Violin in the Void (thought the setting was great, but was worried some people might think the pace was laggy, and that Neutemoc was a pain)
-Miranda Suri (in a more general post about other mindsets, why we should write them and what are the pitfalls. In which I get mentioned next to Lord of Light, one of my all-time fave SF books. Wow).
-starlady38 (really liked it, thought Mihmatini was awesome)
-trollsmyth (thinks it would make an awesome tabletop RPG. I’d tend to agree–it would be extra fun to dump PC into Tenochtitlan. I’d GM that kind of thing myself, if GMing didn’t interfere with my creative processes).

Books read recently:
-Unseen Academicals: the latest Terry Pratchett about the wizards of UU playing football. A lot of the pleasures of the Pratchett books currently is the reccurrence of the main players such as Lady Margoletta, Sam Vimes, Rincewind and the witches, and this one is mostly the same. There’s a couple of hilarious set pieces (the chicken-powered computer is awesome), and the new characters are nice, though not all are memorable (I loved Glenda, wasn’t such a big fan of Juliet, who’s too good to be true, though I got it was the point).
-The Sea Thy Mistress: Elizabeth Bear was kind enough to provide me with an ARC of this one, and I leapt at the chance. The Edda of Burdens is one of my absolute favourite series out there: All the Windwracked Stars had this awesome meld of technology, magic and post-apocalypse, and By the Mountain Bound has all the gravitas and sense of impending doom of the Norse epics. The prose is always a pleasure to read, and there’s a couple of really strong characters (the wolf Mingan, and Muire, the least of the waelcyrge, who learns that she can grow and come into her own). Short, non-spoilery version: the book is made of awesome, and you should go read it and its predecessors. It’s available for pre-orders now; I think it’s not out until Jan 2011.
(more spoilery discussion under the cut)
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Just watched the first episode of Eleventh Hour with Rufus Sewell. Er, wow. Admittedly, biology isn’t one of my strong tracts, but the science in this, for once, held up pretty well. OK, it still wasn’t 100 % OK, but at least it didn’t have me screaming at the TV (as I did for pretty much every science fiction show I ever watched). Special points for NOT attempting defibrillation when the heart monitor flatlines, but instead doing what doctors actually do, ie CPR. Sure, there was nothing earth-shatteringly out of this world as regards the science (people trying to clone humans[1]), but it felt particularly realistic precisely for that reason.

Also, bonus points for actually having a scientist with a strong sense of ethics, which is a welcome change from all the people without scruples you see in TV shows–and for having him actually specialised in biology rather than being McGyver (I’m looking at you, Samantha Carter).

Later googled stuff, and found this article on IO9 about how the show gives science a bad name. Er, ok, I’m not sure why the strong reaction here. Without being over-alarmist, science does have good and bad sides, and I don’t see why the show shouldn’t be able to focus on the excesses of science applied blindly and without morals (there’s plenty of books and movies that present science like some kind of miracle, and this is no more realistic than the alarmist approach of Eleventh Hour ). And Jacob Hood not being in a lab? Given the guy’s sense of practical (trying to write down the plate number of a car by standing in front of it…), I’m thinking he has a PhD in theoretical science, and that if you give this guy a lab (ie one with dangerous products), he’d blow it up in no time.

Also, Rufus Sewell… totally yummy :=)

Please tell me it stays that good. Pretty please. I like the bit when I watch a science-y show and don’t scream at the TV. I really do.

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[1] The episode has the surrogate mothers of the clones dying of complications. And, yeah, I know that based on what we’ve done on animals and for IVF, we can suspect that the biggest problem with human cloning is going to get viable embryos rather than worrying about mothers dying in childbirth. But since we haven’t actually tried the whole thing on humans, I’m ready to buy that the cloning process could be less straightforward than we think. In any systems, there’s always some weird interactions, and I’ve seen weirder things than an egg with a reconstituted nucleus messing up the delicate balance of a pregnancy.

Well, I’m pretty sure I had a weekend, except it seems to have disappeared…

Aside from wedding stuff, we went to see Wild Target, a dark comedy about an ageing hitman who finds himself dealing with a young, awkward apprentice, and a con artist/kleptomaniac, both of whom he has to protect from the goons sent after them. Hilarious, well worth several watches (interestingly, learnt afterwards it was a remake of a French farce, Cible Emouvante. Might track the original down…).

Did one blog post for a guest blog, and am still working on another one. Also decided I’d had enough of not doing any actual writing (I did revisions and synopses, but I miss my first drafts), and started thinking on a new story, aka “Chinese dynasty on space station”.

-The Masks of Wielstadt, by Pierre Pevel (French): Pierre Pevel is more known to Anglophone readers as the man who wrote The Cardinal’s Blades (aka a mix of fantasy and adventures à la Dumas). This is a much earlier work, first published in 2002 and the second book of a trilogy (the first book appears to be out of print, sadly). It is 1623, and the Thirty Years War is spreading throughout the Holy Roman Empire, forcing everyone from the burghers to the knights templar to choose their sides. The city of Wielstadt, protected by its dragon, has so far avoided the worst of the conflicts. But no more–for a demon in human guise has come to Wielstadt, determined to put the city upside down for its own nefarious purposes. It falls to Sir Kranz–a man who has already died once–to foil its plans.

It reads very much like Dumas, transposed to the Holy Roman Empire and with a side dash of magic. The tale actually follows several characters in addition to Kranz–his aged friend who owns a bookshop, a ruffian in the service of a few too many people, and a few more besides. It moves at a good clip with the requisite number of fights, murders, dashes across the countryside, and so on. But the universe is really well depicted, with a bite I all too often find lacking in a lot of fantasy; and it’s really refreshing to have a devout man like Kranz as a main character: for him, religion is an integral part of his worldview, and he makes the appropriate space for it in his life. Again, not something I often see in fantasy. And there are lots of cool ideas in there–the sacred blade that can only be drawn by those that have died once, the demon assassins with pitted metal masks, and the interplay between the various societies, from the Knights Templars to the beggars. All in all, a pretty good read, and I’m curious to track down the other books.

And I have to say it’s only in a French book that you’d have lengthy footnotes about historical accuracy; and whole chapters of exposition on various subjects (Renaissance cryptography, history of secret societies). Kind of refreshing, actually, if a little surprising.

-Acquaintance: the first episode in the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, mixing elements from A Study in Scarlet and The Speckled Band. This was much more fun to watch with the BF by my side: he couldn’t understand more than snatches of the Russian, but he was quick to point out to me all the places where the movie either made fun of foreigners or fell into propaganda (a scene in particular, barely changed from its original in A Study in Scarlet, has become a scathing indictment of Sherlock Holmes as a capitalist materialist–as opposed to the stalwart and dreamy Watson). Again, pretty interesting, albeit I guess not in the way the original makers intended it.

Meanwhile, in writers’ land, crits are coming in for Harbinger. Some stuff looks to be broken, and some not. I’ll have to draw a battle plan for how to revise the book, but right now I’m soaking it all in (and working simultaneously on non-fiction and two short stories).

• The Night Watch, by Sergei Lukyanenko: part of the book swag my sister gave me for my birthday (belatedly, since she isn’t in Paris currently. Russia is underpinned by another world, that of the Twilight, and its children, the Others. Wizards, sorceresses, vampires and were-tigers stalk the streets of Moscow, divided into two sides, the Dark and the Light. Those sides once fought each other, but have now signed a truce in the interest of survival. The truce preserves neutrality: every act of magic by an agent of the Dark gives an agent of the Light the right to perfom an act of similar intensity. The Night Watch is the Light entity which watches over the Dark to make sure that it doesn’t break the rules, and the Day Watch, made up of Dark field agents, does the reverse.
  Anton is an agent of the Night Watch, a minor magician recently assigned to field work in order to catch rogue vampires. But when he meets Egor, a young, unaligned Other on the verge of change, and Sveltana, a young woman under a powerful curse, he has no idea his life is about to change…
  The Night Watch is made up of three semi-independent stories, each focusing on Anton, his relationship with his powerful boss, Boris Ignatievich, and his growing awareness of how both sides manipulate their own pawns for their gain. It’s urban fantasy, Russian-style, but very refreshing both in its setting and in its attitude: Anton isn’t a kickass hero (and, indeed, his kindness and human judgments end up much more useful than his magical abilities), just a man trying to make sense of what is around him and gradually coming to question his role in the organisation. Though there are clear sides, you can’t really say that one is better than the other, since they both have a tendency for ruthlessness. Both sides will cooperate to chase rogues, which makes for interesting scenes when they’re all bickering together. The characters are great, each pretty well-drawn, from Anton to were-tigress Tiger Cub, to young mage Yulia. Pretty strongly recommended. I’m definitely going to check out the other books in the series.
• All the Windwracked Stars by Elizabeth Bear. Thousands of years ago, Ragnarok occurred, leaving only three survivors: Muire, the last of the waelcyrge (Valkyries), the war-steed Kasimir, reborn into a thing of metal and hydraulics, and the Grey Wolf, the betrayer, the one who swallowed the sun. Now the city of Eiledon is all that is left of the human world, dying more slowly than the rest of the poisoned land. But the Grey Wolf has come hunting again, to bring about the second end of the world…
  An awesome mix of postapocalyptic SF, Norse myths and steampunk. I love Bear’s writing style, and this book did not disappoint. It also had a very cool plot and a cast of interesting, flawed characters I rooted for easily (the Grey Wolf is made of awesome, but Bear has always been good at doing mysterious and dangerous, like Whiskey in Blood and Iron). Again, I’m looking forward to picking up the sequels.

Been a while since I last updated this:

• Winter Song by Colin Harvey. The planet of Isheimur was terraformed centuries ago, at the height of humanity’s resources and ambitions. But everything was lost in the subsequent intergalactic war, and Isheimur has been slowly sinking into decay, recycling every year the bases of its survival–knowing that each piece of technology that breaks down can never be replaced. Into this dying world stumbles Karl, a human marooned after the destruction of his ship. Karl is desperate to get home; but the atrophied subsistence society of Isheimur might not be ready for the radical shock of his presence…
  A very cool read. There are no earth-shattering ideas, but the characters are very well-drawn, believable and sympathetic without being sappy. The slowly dying society is terrifically depicted, and while I know some people might disagree, I absolutely loved the ending. I love that there are no compromises or shying away from brutal truths.
• Blindsight, Peter Watts. I picked this one up mainly on the recommendation of the BF, who heard Peter Watts speak in Montreal and was apparently very impressed by what he had to say. Earth becomes aware of an alien presence when thousands of miniature objects survey the planet. A mission is hastily put together to see what the aliens could possibly want: headed by a genetically engineered vampire, Theseus aims to achieve first contact. Its other members are a pacifist soldier, a heavily-robotised biologist, a linguist with multiple personalities, and the narrator, a ex-epileptic with half his brain removed, and who acts as a detached observer to report back to Earth. But his detachment may be the one thing that ends up dooming him…
  Wow. This was full of terrific ideas about cognition, consciousness and sentience. As a bonus, it was also an awesome first contact story, with none of the plausibility problems I usually have with those stories. There are a fair amount of explanations about biology, but always done in a fascinating fashion; and it’s got the Chinese Room experiment playing a huge part (yes, I’m a geek) . It played a lot like a tremendously intelligent horror story in space, for all the SF trappings (the vampire is a huge clue, but not the only motif that’s been taken from horror).
  Word of warning: it’s also very, very dense. My report to the BF was basically that he had to read it, but that French would probably be easier on him than English…