The Bodhisattva

Just kind of an all purpose post.

First, over at FBS Brian just announced a new contest for fans of mystery and this one apparently is on the humor tip* as well, written by Troy Cook and entitled 47 Rules of Highly Effective Bank Robbers, he also recently announced the winner of a previous contest to win Duane Swierczynsk’s The Blonde. So at the moment we have two active contests running with the China Mieville Un Lun Dun autographed contest I announced a couple days ago.

As to what I’m reading at the moment, I recently finished the aforementioned Un Lun Dun and I just started writing a review, which will go up shortly after my review of Catherynne M. Valente’s kick ass Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden. I also recently read Darth Bane: Path of Destruction by Drew Karpyshyn and while it isn’t exactly one of those books that dwells in the gutter of Star Wars Eu tradition I couldn’t help but be disappointed. This book basically tells the origin of Darth Bane, a rather significant character in the mythos in terms of creating - or more aptly reestablishing - the Sith in the mold you will see brought into fruition by Palpatine (a former Bodhisattva Acolyte). It was a good thing as well, as the Sith, instead of being the rather suave Michael Corleone-with hocus pocus cats we admire and indeed should want our children to emulate, were looking kind of lame like their Jedi counterparts historically have (pre-Jacen Solo). I think some readers will buy into what is really a false success in finding yourself at times rooting for Bane in his quest for Dark Side mastery. This is an absurd observation - it’s no trick getting people into buying into such a character, the anti-villain or villain is the easiest character to get people to find compelling. I just found the book to be a bit of a repetitive exercise in that Bane’s trials and turmoil could have just as effectively been told in half the pages. In a book like this, where we (Star Wars fans familiar with the mythos) know the ending, the power has to come from the story, the story cannot just be uneventful and contrived excuse to reach a known end. This - in turn - is not an easy accomplishment as for instance none of the Star Wars prequel adaptations were able to accomplish this, excluding Stover’s Revenge of Sith which I actually thought was an incredible piece of storytelling.

What I’m reading right now is the The Steam Magnate by Dana Copithorne which I was going to review at Fantasybookspot.com, but it looks like it will be a review I do here, as Justin recently reviewed it for FBS. I’m only a few dozen pages in, but there is a real quaint quality to the book that makes it charming instead of being bothersome in its interesting POV changes. At this point I’m really enjoying it and I already admire Copithorne’s voice. Not being too far into it, I’m still wagering what breaks that do exist in the novel’s flow is a purposeful haze.

On a comic book note, I just got a small lot of G.I. Joe comics from the 80’s (Marvel) and as I go through them to see if any of them represent upgrades to my existing run, I’m going to do a daily - short - comment on them as I will read one issue a day every morning - this feature will be called A Cup of Joe.

_{* Yes I talk like an early 90’s Hip Hop Head - the official language of the Bodhisattva}