Time To Get Burned

Incase you missed the announcement on Twitter and Facebook last night, that new project I was talking about in my last post went live. I am the new TV columnist over at InveterateMediaJunkies.com. So I welcome you to SCREEN BURN!

Click to go to my intro post

My first column will go up Wednesday night, so keep a look out for it. And it will be a monthly column, with a few weekly posts during Fall and Winter premiere season. So come by, leave a comment and check out the other posts. There is a lot of great discussions going there about a myriad of subjects.

Stars In Their Eyes

This post started out as a response of sorts from a Twitter reply I got from author Chris Bohjalian. Earlier that day I rated his newest novel, The Night Strangers, on Goodreads two stars. He was very polite and apologized for me not liking the book. As soon as I saw that, I had to reply back to say he had nothing to apologize for, because I knew many that enjoyed that book.

I mean, what kind of world do we live in when a writer feels he or she has to apologize to a reader that doesn’t completely enjoy a book and rates it on a murky spectrum of subjectivity and objectivity on a website?

Then, this morning, I read this article about a blow up turned flame war that engulfed writers, reviewers, agents, and worst, publishers and spread from Goodreads to Twitter and other social networks. It reminds me a lot about an incident I peripherally involved in a few years back involving the Twitter chat #Romfail and author Ray Garton, where I wrote a series of posts on the over all professionalism that such incidents lack.

If you wish to read them, they are the Calliope Wept: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

While the Goodreads blow up and Chris Bojalian’s response to my rating are very different, they both still stem from a problem with in writing: A unhealthy obession with ratings and reviews.

Yes, they are helpful–to an extent. Case in point: At Anthocon, during the MFA Programs panel, the topic of epublishing and “gatekeepers” came up, myself and Kevin Lucia agreed the lack of gatekeepers in the e-publishing world. At the end of the panel when we were open to questions, a man mentioned that the gatekeepers for epublished works were the customer ratings and reviews. The good books will get good ratings and the bad will get bad. And I called bullshit.

Yes, they can be helpful, especially in tough economic times, to help choose what book to buy. But, even the less perceptive people in the world can see that many of those 1 and 5 star ratings are shames. As I told the man, “If see simply, ‘This book rocks!’ or ‘This book sucks!’ or similar one sentence reviews, they don’t count in my mind.” I will expand on that in saying that those kinds of reviews are typically written by 1.) Friends or family trying to help get a good word out about the book or assholes being asshole or 2.) People with no real practiced skill at reviewing that they are going on base Pleasure Principle reactions which are the most subjective, thus invalid, methods of of ranking objective quality of a thing. It is those reviews that are at least a paragraph long that you always look for, because you know there is a better chance that the person who wrote it took the time look at it in an objective way and will use that toolset give to us all in 4th grade: Compare and Contrast.

But somehow, anyone who just decides to write anything, from the insipid to the intellectual, are seen to be endowed with a world altering power to decide the fates of books. I’m calling bullshit, again. I know the only book I can influence is the one I write, promote, and sell. I can use tools like ratings and reviews to help speed things along, but if all book blogs and site shut down, I can still build an audience and a fan base.

I think we, as a society, like to rate things a in the extremes. We want black and white, because the shades of gray get depressing and boring after a while. I had a friend in college that would go on those “Hot or Not” sites and only rate 1 or 10. She said, “If you aren’t gorgeous and decide to put you pic on here, you better be ready for harsh critics.” It the same thing here. So I wanted to share how I rate things. It’s not perfect, and that’s because it is still subject to my personal tastes. But I try to be as objective as I can.

1 Star – This is the ones where I wonder how they even got published. It the home of the books I add to my First Chapter Fail Club. There are intrinsic problems in the book that are apparent from the beginning would be hard to rectify by the middle of the book.

2 Stars – This is low end of most books. Now, this is not to say it is a bad book. Just that within the story, there were recurring elements that I thought were either weak, unnecessary, or one of the few pet peeves of mine. And those elements were enough to throw me out of the story. Not bad books, just not up to par.

3 Stars – This is where every published book is that gets the job done. Have good characters, interesting story, keeps the action moving, with a satisfying ending. If you are published by any kind of press with an editor, you should be here at the very least.

4 Stars – This high end of most books. They do everything the 3 Stars due, but crank it up a notch. So by the time I finish reading I am glad I read it and I know I’ll go back to it again in my lifetime.

5 Stars – These are the elite of my books. Either from a objective point of view, like Ulysses, that is just a literary masterpiece; or a subjective one, like The Hellbound Heart, that affected me both as a writer and reader and resonated with me and my own writing.

See, even I can’t keep the 1 and 5 stars from being heavily influenced subjectively. And there, in a way, I think is the fault of any kind of rating system: It can never be objective if left to the whim of humanity.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

Note: I apologize for the length of this post

Since Assassin’s Creed 2 came out, fans of the series have been wondering how the story of Ezio Auditore da Firenze will come to a conclusion. Many thought it would be in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Fans also wanted to have more of the original assassin that started it all, Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad. Plus, there was a big cliffhanger of the true protagonist of the series, Desmond Miles, whose genetic memories are being accessed and we re-live the past through. Like many a good series, there is a lot to work with and a lot to resolve by the end, or supposed end, or possible end, or what ever this game seemed to have been.

And that is my main problem with Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, I didn’t know what this was supposed to be as I played it or even when I finished it.

It wasn’t bad, but it was not what I had grown to expect from the AC series. Each game there were evolutions and refinement of what worked in the previous game. In Revelations, the refinements felt lackluster. The innovations felt rushed and underdeveloped. And all those story expectations? Well, they weren’t anti-climatic, nor were they climatic:

• Eagle Sense: What was once Eagle Vision, has always been one of those parts of the series that in concept is great, but in execution just never quite seemed that important, though it did have some cool easter eggs or hints if you did use. In my experience, you could figure everything out in the previous games for the main story and many side missions without ever needing to use it. The only time you did was when you were looking for the Truth symbols or Subject 16 symbols in AC2 and Brotherhood. It added a bit of a “hide and seek” mini game and you were rewarded with a challenging puzzle that was the real goal. In Revelations, they really made it mandatory that you use it for missions. They do this by instead of giving you a target to trail, they leave a invisible path that you have to follow. Or by giving you a number of objects or targets that are colored gold in Eagle Sense and you have to go one by one and “stare” at it till you “figure out” if it is the thing or person you are looking for. I know what they are trying to do, but when it comes to game play, it is tedious and after a few missions, or if you played the other games, you know how these missions and target placements are designed, so you know what they are without using the Eagle Sense. And what of the purpose that many people liked using it for? What of those symbols that lead to challenging puzzle. Gone are the puzzles and in come books that you have to do more of the staring to find that actual location of said books from a high point in the city. And then nothing really came of the books, then again I didn’t collect all of them yet because I got bored real quick.
• Bombs: This were kind of pointless. There was exactly one mission that you had to use it, and that is if you wanted to do it perfectly. Other than that, you never needed to use it. At this point in the game series, I’m seeing seeing what I like to call the Harry Potter effect. That is characters in a story that almost have to do nothing but be there for events, attack, and run away while everyone else really does the work for them. I mean by adding bombs that can kill, distract, or impede guards to the Assassin recruits, Arrow Storm, Mercenaries, Thieves, and Romani/Courtesans, you almost never have to sneak past guards anymore.
• Romani: There is a huge contradiction in the execution of the Romani in this game. On one hand, the game writers use this platform to talk about the actual truth of the Romani and expose the persecution they’ve dealt with for centuries under the moniker of Gypsies. On the other, their use in the game is that of the purpose the Courtesans in the last two games who danced and flirted with the guards. Somehow, I’m not sure the moralistic intentions of the first really mash up with the “same old, same old” perception of the latter.
• Story Elements: I need to split this up into parts cause each of them has flaws
• Ezio: This is the main story, the problem I had was that there wasn’t a whole lot to it. It felt very short. The first few sets of missions were solely derived around going through what’s new or changed from the last game. But in Brotherhood, that was dealt with very quickly and you dove right into the story. Now I don’t know if there was just more missions to each set, or they were longer, or a bit of both, but all I know, there was not the same amount of game time to the main story in Revelations as there was in the previous games. I know a part of it was to give time to the Desmond and Altaïr sections, but even adding them in, this was a very short game. We breeze through Ezio’s closing chapters, none it nearly as dramatic as any part of the other games. And you kinda get a felling of, “That’s it? That’s how we end Ezio’s story?”
• Altaïr: People have clamored to get back in the shoes of this assassin. I think when we got word that we would in this game, a lot of people thought it would be two storylines where we go between Ezio and Altaïr. Well, we do, in a way. Altaïr’s story is broken up to mini memories where you have to be blindfolded and playing with your feet to have a hard time doing. More than one is just you walking. Yeas, we see blimps of his life from before the first Assassin’s Creed to his death, but we wanted to be Altaïr. Not just watch him. To be honest, I think it was a cop out to placate fans and they didn’t have the desire to really integrate him into the story, creating a very lame side story.
• Desmond: Now, while you play most of the game as Ezio, the true main character is is Desmond. THe purpose of the Ezio and Altaïr stories are to help Desmond separate himself from the Animus before he dies in a coma and is trapped inside the machine and erased forever. Apparently, since they took out the puzzles in the Ezio part of the game, they decided that the whole Desmond part should be the puzzle section of the game. We get a cliff notes version of his life during a series of first-person puzzle-shooter mini-missions where you have two shapes–a platform and an ascending ramp–that you can spawn around and under you and you have to navigate through large swaths of empty space with occasional obstacles. This was challenging, just frustrating and tedious. And the worst part, the contrived situation that makes seem like you need to do this doesn’t have an effect on the game. At least the Altaïr missions tie to the story. You can completely skip these missions, which makes the whole “fight for your existence by separating your memories from your ancestor’s” angle moot, there by making the whole premise of the games story moot.
• Mulitplayer: In Brotherhood, they added a multiplayer section of the game. It was a great addition and it was a multiplayer experience for those that love the single player experience. It comes back in Revelation, only this time they add a storyline element to it. A great idea, especially to draw in people that may not play multiplayer, but horrible execution. First off, to get the full story, you have to play to level 50, which is a long time, and I’m willing to bet is longer than it would take to play the main story. Yes you get access to the Templar files that goes a bit deeper into everything the Templars have been doing over the centuries, but is no more than little text files you used to get when you solved the Eagle Vision puzzles in the last two game. Yeah you get little videos every 5 levels to make you feel like you are becoming a big, bad Templar, but those get old fast. This could have been a great way to get people playing and explore the antagonists, but the developers used it to get people to play multiplayer longer. As a guy that is not a fan of multiplayer, after a while it becomes less important to find all that out when there are Wiki sites that will write it all for me to read.

I know all of this makes seem like Revelations is not worth it. And I can’t say yes or no to that for everyone. All I know is that I was very disappointed. I’m a guy that goes for the story of a game above anything else, and that was really the most lacking thing about it. Some games can get away with that if the things they bring to the game are cool and engaging enough for the player to not see it. But even there, Ubisoft missed the mark and they even altered things in odd, contrived ways that were the best parts of the last few games. I hope it is just  the fact that they were greedy and tried to get one more Ezio game out and that they can sort of start fresh when Assassin’s Creed 3 comes out with a new assassin ancestor. But if this is a vision of future titles, this could be a death knell for the series.

LibraryThing Early Review: Hell and Gone by Duane Swierczynski

Title: Hell and Gone
Author: Duane Swierczynski
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9780316133296

I have a good reason not to start in the middle of book series. Most of them today have books that aren’t able to stand alone and be a part of a larger series. Hell and Gone was a pleasant exception to that rule.

We start the story, with an event in he past. When I first read it I wasn’t sure how it was going to fit since there was no relation to the main character, Charlie Hardie. To be honest, I almost forgot about it until it was finally tied into the plot later in the book. From there, we go right into the main story and we learn about Charlie Hardie and idea of went on in the first book. What a lot of books do wrong is that the have long recaps of event in the series. Swierczynski gets it right with a number of tactics. First, he sets the start of the main story very close to the end of the last book. That gives any recaps the ability to seem natural. Also, he intersperses them through out the story, giving them the feel of natural thought process of the character and not just a pause for the reader. Or, he the events were recounted in discussions and actions. So we are seeing the effect of the causes in the first story.

But the way the story is written is only a part of what makes this a successful book. It is also a fun read and a page turner. Charlie Hardie, a.k.a. Unkillable Chuck, is now having to deal with the consequences of his actions. Instead of being killed, he his nursed back to health only to be the warden of a secret prison. But even the moment he gets there, he knows there is a game being played and he doesn’t know the rules.

It is an intriguing story of psychology, good intentions, secret organizations, and the horrors that can be birthed when those things are combined. All the characters play their parts well. Charlie Hardie is a great character. A refreshing change when everyone is trying to have anti-heroes, he is a hero who just doesn’t win the way he wants to. Which is almost a little more realistic.

Definitely worth picking up, especially before the last book comes out.

The Average American Male by Chad Kultgen

Title: The Average American Male
Author: Chad Kultgen
Publisher: HarperPerennial

I picked this up when the iBookstore had it for $0.99. Had I paid anymore, I think I would have regretted buying The Average American Male. It’s apparently a book that is categorized as “Fratire” that includes such literary masterpieces like The Alphabet of Manliness. Granted, I didn’t know any of that when I got the book, Mostly I just saw reviews about how raunchy it was. For $.99 I thought, “What the heck.”

Now, I could go on and on about the satirical aspect of the book, but for the most part, I think over analysis of satire is almost as self-defeating just as much as none. Satire will work differently for everyone, so my reaction is not going to be useful to you. But there were problems with the book itself, story and structure-wise.

Through-out the book, there are chapters that are titled “Some Chapter” instead of giving it a chapter number. They are other moments in the life of the unnamed protagonist’s life that has nothing to do with the story, never are referenced again. They were a good thing as well as a bad thing for me. Bad in that I don’t think they were needed except to pad a novelette into a novel. Good in that I think they were the funnier and stronger parts of the book. But even that good point is a bad one because I just admitted I would rather read “sketch literature,” for lack of a better term, than the actual story this book was meant to present to me.

With the vagueness of the title comes an overall vagueness of character. Granted, I can see where this was purposeful. I think it was poorly executed. I don’t see what meaning is gained by its use and not just give the character a name and a specific job. For me, it just gives me a sense of selfish pretentiousness of both the author and the story.

Character development was basically stagnant. The worst Adam Sandler movies have more over all character growth than this book. And it is a shame, because every time you think it will happen, an apparent need to not change at all overcomes the character and disappointment settles in the reader.

If you can find it cheap, want something that is everything from funny to morally vacant in different ways to different people, I would say it’s a quick read and will stay with you. But I think it is a book geared, despite being touted as satire, the guys that think they, too, can be pro wrestlers or UFC fighters.