All posts by Lars Walker

Reading, Writing

Swiveling the street signs

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Photo credit: Ernesto Brillo. Unsplash license.

I was reading this particular book, one of those free ones I pick up in promotions. The book had numerous flaws (such as you routinely find in self-published works), but it also showed signs of promise. Not enough research had been done on the historical period in which it was set, but the author seemed to do a good job establishing atmosphere. And I was interested in what would happen to the characters.

But I could not finish the book. I tried. I held out for about a third of its length, and then I had to give it up.

The main problem was punctuation. The author got punctuation wrong in various ways, but particularly in the area of quotation marks. Let me remind you of the rules:

“The rules for quotation marks in dialogue,” said the lecturer, “are as follows. First of all, you start all direct quotations with the aforementioned marks. If the speech involves more than one paragraph, the first paragraph will end with a simple period. The lack of ‘close quotes’ here signals to the reader that more of the same speech is coming up.

“Then you start the next paragraph, once again, with opening quotation marks,” he went on. “And when the speech is done, you finish with ‘close quotes’ to signal that fact.”

The author of this book did not understand these rules. In fact, he got them precisely backwards. It was like driving in a town where some trickster has turned all the street signs 90 degrees. In every patch of dialogue, I had to stop and figure out who was talking now. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to give up reading, even though the story interested me. The author was trying to make me do his work for him.

I don’t entirely blame him. No doubt he’s young and publicly educated, which means he’s been taught little about English. I salute the perseverance with which he must have struggled to do a job (writing a book) for which school had not prepared him in any way.

But it isn’t fair to the reader.

Punctuation has a bad reputation nowadays. It takes work to learn the rules. And rules are unpopular in their own right.

But like Chesterton’s Fence, rules exist for a reason. This author’s inability to deploy quotation marks in a useful way lost him, in my case, both a reader and a review.

This brings semicolons to mind. Semicolons aren’t as vital to comprehension as quotation marks, but they have their proper uses. They too are unpopular today. Many writers have sworn off them. They say that semicolons don’t do anything you can’t do with a period.

But that’s not true. As a reader with a history of reading aloud, radio announcing, and acting, I can tell you that a semicolon serves a subtle but useful purpose. A semicolon indicates a brief pause – perhaps a slight intake of breath — before the speaker goes on to a further – but related – thought.

A period indicates a full stop (indeed, they call them full stops in England). The speaker’s voice tone drops in a way that sounds final. A full breath may be taken.

For a writer, such distinctions can be very useful. I treasure my semicolons; you’ll have to pry them from my cold, dead hands.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Past Transgressions,’ by Dave Sinclair

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A thriller writer’s vocation, when it comes down to it, is simply to write exciting books. All the better if he can write a decent sentence. Any level of wit in the narrative is a definite plus.

So if I wasn’t entirely happy with Dave Sinclair’s Past Transgressions, you can mark it down to personal prejudice on my part. It says nothing about the quality of the work.

Mason Nash, our hero, is a former MI6 assassin who has retired to teach history in a small English town. He believes he has put his past behind him. He’s changed his name and adopted a low profile. He’s even become a Buddhist and sworn off all violence.

But a team of assassins shows up with guns (apparently) to kill him in the pub one evening, and he doesn’t know why. He has no choice but to drop his new life altogether and go on the run. His old habits reassert themselves quickly – and he discovers to his surprise that he’s enjoying it more than he cares to admit.

Past Transgressions soon takes us to South America, to a luxury yacht and to a secret mountain fortress. Nash learns that people from his past are hunting for him for a surprising reason, and he gets drawn into a high-level conspiracy.

As I mentioned above, Past Transgressions is a well-written novel, generally speaking. The prose and dialogue are good, and the characters are well-drawn, and there’s quiet humor here and there.

The plot is somewhat outlandish, in the way of thriller novels, but the action isn’t as over the top you see in many such books, so full marks for restraint there.

My petty personal objections were 1) that I found the hero’s persistent efforts to survive in a bullet-rich environment without killing anybody somewhat annoying. In that world, refusing to kill an attacker is unjust to one’s partners – you could easily get them killed themselves.

2) We have the requisite Girl Boss in the mix here – a gorgeous, deadlier-than-the-male female agent actually named “Eva Destruction.”

3) There’s a veiled political dig at one point, and I think I know where it’s directed. I suppose I should be grateful it wasn’t more explicit.

But mostly I think it was the pacifism that annoyed me. I’m probably prejudiced against Buddhists.

In short, I won’t be reading more books in this series, but I must concede that the author did a good job in terms of his own objectives.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Athelstan,’ by Tom Holland

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By the time of Athelstan’s consecration, the Thames estuary, no longer churned by the oars of Viking dragon ships, had become a scene of prosperity and peace. Boats crammed the wharfs built by Alfred within the ancient walls of London; fields stretched unburnt down to the banks of the river as it snaked inland; Kingston, set amid the colours of ripening harvest, provided a fit stage for the awesome ritual about to unfold.

King Athelstan (called “Athelstan the Mighty” in the sagas), is an interesting and enigmatic Anglo-Saxon king. I remember an entry about Alfred the Great in a kids’ encyclopedia from my childhood. It said that Alfred was the only Anglo-Saxon king remembered as “the Great.” But Athelstan certainly might have shared the cognomen – he was the first king to rule a united realm called “England,” embracing all the English speaking sub-kingdoms. And he won a victory over the Vikings (and the Scots) at Brunanburh which equaled or surpassed Alfred’s triumph at Ethandun.

Tom Holland’s Athelstan is part of the Penguin Monarchs series. It’s a short, brisk book for the non-specialist, but the author brings to it scholarship, literary skill, and psychological insight. The big problem with Athelstan’s story is that (although he was as keen on learning and record-keeping as his grandfather Alfred) relatively little documentary evidence remains to us from his reign. Historical focus changed after the Norman conquest, and much was lost.

So historians have to do what they can with the sparse surviving records, supplemented by outside reports (including, with caution, the Icelandic sagas), archaeology, and informed speculation. Tom Holland provides an excellent introduction here.

Athelstan was a highly readable book, and I enjoyed it. It increased my admiration for this undeservedly obscure historical figure.

Reviews

Old film review: ‘A Study In Terror’

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It was back in the 1970s, when it was still a fairly recent film, that I first saw “A Study In Terror” – on a small, black and white TV, I believe.

I was very happy with it at the time. I very much liked John Neville (a top rank English stage actor who never quite made the A list in the movies) as Holmes. I was delighted when Robert Morley showed up as Holmes’ brother Mycroft (Mycroft’s first appearance ever on screen). And I relished a fight scene where Holmes snapped a spring-loaded blade from his walking stick and fenced with his attackers (“Nothing like cold steel, eh, Holmes?” says Watson).

I watched it again on YouTube the other day. I didn’t like it quite as much this time (my tastes have matured, I think) but it deserves more attention than it’s gotten.

This 1965 movie was produced in collaboration with Sir Nigel films, a company controlled by the Conan Doyle estate. However, it’s not based on any Doyle adventure, but is rather an original story in which Holmes investigates the Jack the Ripper killings. The story flirts with the slasher/horror genre, within the bounds of what you could get away with in theaters in those days. The blood and gore is mostly just suggested. Which is fine with me.

I was somewhat disappointed by the look of the film. This was “Mod” 1960s, and the costuming is unnecessarily bright for Victorian tastes. I also regretted Donald Houston’s performance as Watson. He’s closer to Nigel Bruce than to Edward Hardwick – though not quite as cartoonish as Bruce.

If you’re fond of Hammer Films’ “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” “A Study In Terror” is very much in the same vein, and John Neville was every bit as good a Holmes as Peter Cushing (whom I revere) was. In some ways, I think, he anticipated Jeremy Brett’s approach. I wish Neville had had a chance to play the role again.

Fiction, Reviews

‘With a Mind to Kill,’ by Anthony Horowitz

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The nights are never kind to Moscow. With nowhere to go, the traffic disappears and the streets seem to parade themselves, mile upon mile of empty concrete glinting uselessly in the flare of the sodium lights. The great monuments and buildings, no matter how proud of themselves in the day, stand there like old men in the darkness, their windows black, their doors bolted fast. No lovers meet. No revellers make their way home from jazz clubs or restaurants. The best you will hope to see are clusters of soldiers or policemen, muttering to themselves as they make their presence known because the population needs to be watched and guarded even when everyone is asleep. Otherwise, nothing moves. The entire city takes on the psychopathy of the graveyard; pleased with itself because it will be there for ever, unaware that it is actually already dead.

This guy Anthony Horowitz is a first-class writer; I’m ashamed I’d never heard of him till recently. Aside from writing early seasons of Midsomer Murders, he’s written a series of young adult thrillers, the Hawthorne and Horowitz mystery series, and three authorized James Bond novels. I’ve reviewed the first already, and I picked up this final one the other day on a deal. I’ll have to catch the middle book at some point. As I mentioned previously, I don’t much care for Ian Fleming’s James Bond books, but I like the way Horowitz does them.

With a Mind to Kill fits into the chronology just after The Man With the Golden Gun. James Bond is in Jamaica, still recuperating from brainwashing by the Russians, and having been shot in the last book. But he’s called back to London by his superiors, who have a daunting assignment for him. They want him to return to Soviet Russia, pretending to still be under the Communists’ control. He’s to present himself to his former captors, who will either kill him or put him to work on some very secretive project they’ve got going, one British Intelligence wants very much to learn more about. Bond can expect to be tortured when he returns, but the experts believe he’s back in control of himself.

Bond wants very much to get revenge on the people who nearly erased his personality and turned him into a traitorous living weapon. He expects the beatings, the tortures, and the mind games they’ll subject him to. He does not expect the woman who’ll find her way into his heart, one whom he’ll never be sure he can trust…

In Horowitz’s hands, James Bond (I think) takes on greater depth than we’re used to. This James Bond is feeling his age and his many wounds, and is pondering retirement once this job is finished – if he survives.

I thoroughly enjoyed With a Mind to Kill. It’s expertly written. Recommended.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

The Viking road to Brainerd

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Tomorrow (Saturday, Aug. 10) I plan to be (God willing) among the Vikings at the Crow Wing Viking Festival in Brainerd, Minnesota. More information here.

I will have books to sell, and may be persuaded to sign them for you if you ask nicely.

Silver, livestock and thralls will be accepted in payment.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Pathways of Magic,’ by Robert Arrington

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I must have enjoyed The Ethics of Magic, the first book in Robert Arrington’s “Haunted Law Firm” series. Because I bought the second book, The Pathways of Magic, and read it in one day.

Our hero (though, oddly, he’s not part of the law firm), college instructor Mitch McCaffrey, has a surprise visit from a strange woman – a very strange woman – at his office. She wears a shirt of mesh mail and is carrying a short sword, which they use together to dispatch a werewolf that’s following her. Then the woman makes the werewolf disappear.

Her name is Alyssa McCormick, and, like Mitch, she has magical skills. She is in fact the niece of Mitch’s magical mentor, and she’d like to look at the books of magic her uncle left to Mitch. He’s happy to show them to her. It turns out they’re very rare and valuable.

In fact, they’re so valuable that both the FBI and the CIA (who employ magic in their investigations) want to get their hands on them, and are willing to break all the rules to secure them. Which only gets Mitch’s and Alyssa’s backs up, and they fight back, both with spells and lawyers (this is where the Haunted Law Firm comes in). The stakes get even higher when Monica Gilbert, Mitch’s old Woke enemy from the first book, shows up as an FBI consultant.

The story moves right along, alternating legal give-and-take with scenes of action and spell-casting. The prose remains unremarkable (with an annoying number of typos), but the storytelling worked. And the values are conservative.

I liked The Pathways of Magic.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Ethics of Magic,’ by Robert Arrington

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Here’s a light, fun novel, aimed primarily at conservatives and Christians. And it works pretty well.

Mitch McCaffrey, hero of The Ethics of Magic, teaches at a community college in rural North Carolina. He enjoys his work and is dating a woman he hopes to marry.

But he has an enemy. Monica Gilbert, the Compliance Officer at the college, has it in for him. He’s a white male, in the first place, and he teaches the classics in his courses. She suspects him of holding the “wrong” opinions, something she feels must not be tolerated in higher education.

But her motivations go deeper. First of all, she once made a pass at him and he turned her down. Nobody does that. Worse, his girlfriend is a woman she knew as a girl, and hated.

But worst of all, Mitch is a magic practitioner. Monica can tell because she is one herself. She’s eager for a showdown, to awe him with her power.

When a few students make a complaint about Mitch, he’s soon facing a hearing to determine whether he’ll be dismissed. That’s when he retains the services of lawyer Kathryn Turner. All this begins the first adventure in Robert Arrington’s “Haunted Law Firm” series.

I had some quibbles with The Ethics of Magic. The prose was adequate, but there were frequent misspellings and typos. I thought the villains were painted a little broadly – they reveled in evil too much. Most people – even the Woke – honestly believe they’re doing the right thing.

And, although most of our good characters here are Christians, and attend church, Mitch and his girlfriend are sleeping together outside marriage. I suppose that sort of thing flies in some churches nowadays.

But outside of those things, I must say I enjoyed reading The Ethics of Magic very much. It was a lot of fun, sort of John Grisham meets Harry Potter.

Reviews, Writing

Netflix review and writing update: ‘The Last Kingdom’

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Harry Gilby as Aethelstan in ‘The Last Kingdom’

Okay, I’ve capped my superhuman achievement of watching the Vikings series all the way through, by watching all 5 seasons – plus the final 2-hour movie – of the Netflix series, The Last Kingdom.

As I opined in a previous post, The Last Kingdom benefits from a previous viewing of Vikings, because it looks better by that comparison. But, as is the way of this world, things deteriorated as they went on.

The first two seasons followed Bernard Cornwell’s original novels fairly well – or so I’m told. (I haven’t read the books myself.)

Starting with Season 3, one seems to discern the influence of the Vikings series. One imagines studio executives gathering the writers in a shadowy dungeon, threatening them with racks, iron maidens, and thumbscrews, and telling them, “Make it more like Vikings. Which means more like Game of Thrones. Give us more treachery. More betrayal. The shortest distance between any two points ought to be through a knife wound in the back.”

Thus (aside from the obvious – such as the hero Uhtred’s adoption of Ragnar Lothbrok’s ahistorical rooster’s comb haircut), we see characters changing their personalities abruptly, for no particular reason. They make unreasonable demands, tell lies for the fun of it, and choose suicidal policies guaranteed to make enemies out of friends. The point is not realism, but the maximum possible treachery. I said that it’s Uhtred’s idiotic life choices that propel the plot in the early seasons. Later on, Uhtred becomes the voice of reason, restraining a succession of kings from one disastrous, counterintuitive caprice after another.

I was particularly disappointed, in the later seasons and the final movie, of the treatment of King Athelstan, one of my personal favorites. I’m fond of Athelstan because he raised Norway’s King Haakon the Good at his court, and made him a Christian.

[Spoiler alert] In the final movie, Seven Kings Must Die, Athelstan, who’s been a decent fellow up to now, suddenly murders his brother treacherously (something that absolutely did not happen in real life), and is also portrayed as a homosexual.

Yeah, I should have seen that coming. Athelstan never married or fathered a child, so obviously he must have been homosexual. As you can probably understand, I take that canard personally.

Interestingly, Paul Anderson, in his novel, Mother of Kings, makes Athelstan’s foster son, Haakon, a homosexual.

Fictioneers have treated this admirable pair very shabbily.

And it occurred to me then that somebody ought to write a good novel about Haakon’s life, emphasizing his education (there’s a good chance he might even have been literate) at Athelstan’s court.

Eric Schumacher has written a series of books on Haakon, but I read the first one and didn’t like his treatment.

And then I thought of a Bridge Character for a Haakon story. Which means I’ll have to write the book now.

I’ve mentioned more than once that I attribute the success of my Erling books (success as literary works, not financial success, obviously) to the insertion of Father Ailill as a bridge character. A bridge character is a character with a relatable enough personality that he can explain a very alien, antique culture to modern readers. (Hobbits are the classic bridge characters in Tolkien, which is why The Lord of the Rings is so much more accessible than the Silmarillion.)

This bridge character came to me almost in a moment. He won’t be anything like Father Ailill. In fact, he’ll be a Viking himself.

How can a Viking be a bridge character to the Viking Age?

This will not be your ordinary Viking.

Watch this space for the next couple years, for more information.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Mystery of L’inconnu,’ by Dan Grylles

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As the first installment in a series of mysteries starring Miami police detective Remy Ferguson, Mystery of L’inconnu introduces us to the detective and his team. For this reader, it wasn’t a very impressive debut.

“L’inconnu” (French for Unknown) is a very large, state of the art luxury yacht owned by a yacht manufacturing company. As a sales inducement, the company periodically offers free cruises to small groups of the super-rich, so they can enjoy the service, food, and amenities. But this voyage goes very, very bad.

The first part of the book concentrates on the story of the voyage, in which we gradually learn that one of the crew has made a deal with smugglers to take drugs on board at sea, to be delivered in Miami. Then the deal goes very, very wrong, and soon there are cartel gunmen rampaging through the vessel while the crew and passengers try to devise ways to either hide or defend themselves. They do surprisingly well, and the reader is rooting for them.

(Spoiler coming up.)

Then we switch to the investigation, led by our hero, Detective Remy Ferguson. And we are abruptly informed that pretty much all these people we’d been rooting for are dead. Remy’s investigation is subjected to pressure by his superiors, who are being pestered by the (very influential) yacht company to wrap the case up.

Then we get a final section, where we are presented with a Big Plot Twist (admittedly not a bad one), and a perilous situation from which our hero escapes only through a deus ex machina.

In my opinion, this is a very poor way to tell a story.

On top of that, the prose was weak. The author often misuses words, confusing “Cavalry” with “Calvary,” “flare gun” with “flair gun,” and other such errors. He appeared (I wasn’t quite sure because the prose was confusing) to confuse a rifle with a shotgun. He thinks Multiple Personality Disorder is the same as schizophrenia. And he delivers clumsy lines like, “’Whatever works,’ Brewer mumbled his simplistic estimation.”

Mystery of L’inconnu was a disappointing novel. I did finish it, though, so I suppose it wasn’t a total narrative failure.