The worst writing I have ever read.

(And I write that as someone who has suffered through multiple readings of the Eye of Argon.)

A sample:

Her hair had the sheen of the sea beneath an eclipsed moon. It was the color of a leopard’s tongue, of oiled mahogany. It was terra cotta, bay and chestnut. Her hair was a helmet, a hood, the cowl of the monk, magician or cobra.

Her face had the fragrance of a gibbous moon. The scent of fresh snow. Her eyes were dark birds in fresh snow. They were the birds’ shadows, they were mirrors; they were the legends on old charts. They were antique armor and the tears of dragons. Her brows were a raptor’s sharp, anxious wings. They were a pair of scythes. Her ears were a puzzle carved in ivory. Her teeth were her only bracelet; she carried them within the red velvet purse of her lips.

You really have to read it out loud to appreciate just how mind-numbingly awful it is. I found, when reading it to myself, that my subconscious brain just started skimming over things. It was only when I started reading it out loud that the Cthulhuian mind-rending began.

This is taken, by the way, from a published novel: Silk and Steel by Ron Miller.

I’m also fairly enamored of this pictorial rendition of the subject of the passage (although you really need to click through and read the full thing to appreciate it fully).

This has been making the rounds for a couple of months now, so I’m probably not the first person to note the similarity between this misbegotten narrative excess and the Song of Solomon. I suspect this is not merely an accidental resemblance: One of the characters, you’ll note, is named Spikenard. While many reading the passage dismiss this as merely some horrible fantasy name, Spikenard is actually the name of a flower which is mentioned twice in the Song of Solomon.

By pure synchronicity, a couple of days after reading this for the first time, I was reading 3:16 – Bible Text Illuminated by Donald E. Knuth, which expanded insightfully on the topic while discussing the Song of Solomon (pg. 96):

These songlets are examples of an ancient type of love poem called a wa?f, in which a beloved’s body is praised part by part, often making use of extravagant and far-fetched metaphors. For example, an Egyptian papyrus from about 1250 B.C. contains a fragment of a wa?f that says, “my sister’s mouth is a lotus; her breasts are mandrakes”. Wa?f songs appear several times in the Thousand and One Nights, and they are still popular in modern Arab poetry. A 19th-century wa?f includes the line: “Her bosom is like polished marble tablets, as ships bring them to Sidon; like pomegranates topped with piles of glittering jewels.”

So there is clearly a very specific effect that Ron Miller is going for. Does this make it better? Not really. I’d even argue it makes it worse. Miller has clearly put a lot of thought and care into rendering something that, in its actual execution, ends up being a mockery of the very thing it sought to create.

Understanding what Miller was attempting to create helps us to understand where it all went horribly, horribly wrong. But the skidmarks don’t negate the car crash.

I came to this novel by way of Gary Gygax by way of Appendix N of the 1st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide by way of James Maliszewski at Grognardia.

I think it’s safe to say that, if not for that rather remarkable (and lengthy) chain of recommendations, I would probably have never read this slim volume — which, as far as I know, was published in 1963 and never seen again.

Sign of the Labrys is a post-apocalyptic tale of the sort commonly found in mid-20th century science fiction. What sets it apart is that it is also, although it doesn’t strictly look like it at first, science fantasy. (This becomes clear fairly quickly, but the exact reasons for its fantastical nature constitute a spoiler so drastic that I won’t even hint at it here.)

The ways in which Sign of the Labrys inspired Gygax’s dungeoncraft become both rapidly and intriguingly apparent: Sam Sewell, the protagonist of the tale, lives in a vast underground complex of modified caverns that was built as a refuge before the collapse of civilization. The apocalypse thinned out the population (killing nine in ten) and eradicated central authority, leaving behind vast catacombs of uninhabited space which small, spontaneous societies have repurposed in a variety of ways.

In short, Sign of the Labrys reads like a strange hybrid of Dungeons & Dragons and Metamorphosis Alpha. Here we find a clear predecessor of Castle Greyhawk: A multi-cultural, subterranean menagerie laid out in a pattern of levels and sub-levels connected by both the well-known thoroughfares and a plentitude of secret passages and hidden ladders.

This, by itself, would have made Sign of the Labrys a fascinating and worthwhile novel for a D&D afficionado like myself. But I also found the novel to be very entertaining in its own right. Addictive, in fact. It’s got a page-turning, pulpy pace mixed together with some nigh-poetic language and a strange, enigmatic mystery that leaves you yearning to know the answer.

Stylistically Sign of the Labrys reminds me quite favorably of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore. It possesses the strange, otherworldly, and fantastical approach to matters of science fiction which characterizes the best of their work. Particularly Moore’s. Like Moore’s classic Jirel of Joiry stories, Sign of the Labrys reminds me of Alice in Wonderland smashed through the broken mirror of another genre’s conceits and set pieces. If I were to say that Sign of the Labrys periodically reads as if the author had taken a tab of LSD before sitting down at her typewriter it would not be wholly inaccurate. (It would, however, be rather less than charitable, as St. Clair’s writing is not merely a drug-induced rambling. In fact, it works consistently towards a larger stylistic and revelatory purpose.)

In the end, I found Sign of the Labrys to be delightfully entertaining. And since, like me, you are unlikely to encounter it by chance, I shall pass on the same recommendation that was given to me: From Gygax to AD&D to Grognardia to me to the Alexandrian and thus to you…

Find a copy if you can.

GRADE: B-

Margaret St. Clair
Published: 1963
Publisher: Bantam Books
Cover Price: $0.60
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Wow. That was really bad.

I just got back from watching X-Men Origins: Wolverine and I feel absolutely compelled to warn others from wasting their money on a cinematic travesty. What’s particularly remarkable about this disastrous failure is that the first half of the film is actually quite good. It’s not a cinematic triumph by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a solid, entertaining popcorn film.

But then, a little over halfway through the movie, a switch is flipped. Something incredibly stupid happens, and from that point forward the entire film becomes nearly unwatchable: The plot, the characters, and even the editing all become insultingly idiotic.

It’s as if the two halves of the film were made by completely different creative teams.

You probably won’t believe me. I’d certainly seen people giving the thumbs-down to this movie in various places around the ‘net before deciding to go and see it anyway. But consider this: I actually left the theater thinking X-Men 3 wasn’t a complete disaster. (It was a huge disappointment and completely wasted the opportunity created by the first two films. But it was passable.)

And I’m telling you that X-Men Origins: Wolverine is an unwatchable travesty.

From this point forward we’ll have SPOILERS so that I can rant a bit.

(1) First, allow me to reiterate that I thought the first half of the film was actually quite good for a popcorn action flick. The opening sequence with the young brothers; the montage sequence over the opening credits; and Hugh Jackman’s performance through the next section all made the film very entertaining.

(2) First Warning Sign: The scene where Logan is getting injected with the adamantine skeleton.

Stryker: “By the way, here are your dog-tags. Because even though you’re completely naked, laying in a tub of water, and about to be injected with molten metal, I think you should be wearing these.”

Logan: “I want new ones.”

Stryker: “What do you want them to say?”

Logan: “Wolverine.”

Stryker: “Really? Okay. Well, damn. Okay, everybody hold on. Logan, you just stay laying right there. Everybody else just hang out. I’m going to go have completely new dog-tags made.”

And they do…!

(3) Second Warning Sign: Agent Zero has just been killed trying to kill Wolverine.

Nameless Dude: “Agent Zero had no chance. You would need a gun with adamantine bullets. Like this one right here. That we have had all along. And could have easily given him.”

Stryker: “Wasn’t Agent Zero’s mutant power his ability to shoot guns really, really well?”

Nameless Dude: “Don’t forget his ability to leap around like a jackrabbit.”

Stryker: “Right. I see we’re theming these mutant powers well. But since he could shoot really well, wouldn’t it have made more sense to give him this gun?”

Nameless Dude: “… dude. You could have said something like an hour ago.”

(4) The Stupid of No Return: The first time Gambit attacked Wolverine, it made perfect sense. The second time Gambit attacked Wolverine? That was stupid. Really, really, really stupid.

(For those who haven’t seen the film: Gambit hates Sabretooth and wants him dead. He sees Wolverine with his blades to Sabretooth’s throat and hears him say, “I’m going to kill you.” So what does Gambit do? He attacks Wolverine and stops him from killing Sabretooth. Thirty seconds later after Sabretooth has escaped? Gambit is asking Wolverine to help him kill Sabretooth.)

(5) The Rest of the Stupid: I’d try to list it, but there’s really no point. After the Stupid of No Return, virtually every single second of the movie is stupid. So I’ll just highlight one particularly egregrious bit of stupid…

(6) Professor X is a Dick: Remember in the first X-Men movie when Professor X knows nothing about Wolverine? Turns out, he’s a dick. Not only is he telepathically monitoring the entire finale of the movie (and thus probably knows exactly who Wolverine is), but even if he somehow missed Wolverine’s presence telepathically it turns out his first twenty students (including Cyclops!) were all rescued by Wolverine himself!

The fact that the Cyclops himself doesn’t recognize Wolverine makes sense (because they’re actually quite careful about making sure he’s blind and never even hears Wolverine speak). But Professor X? He’s a dick.

Unless they get Bryan Singer back, this is probably the last X-Men movie they’ll be conning me into seeing for awhile.

With this novel, Brust seems to have lost the unique voice of Vlad Taltos. Instead of the clever wittiness of previous volumes, the Vlad of this book is merely sardonic and shrill. There’s also an oddly anachronistic tone in a patter drawn with distinctly 20th century rhthyms and tone.

This loss may have something to do with the fact that Brust is, once again, jumping back to a much earlier time in Vlad’s life. He handled this back-and-forth movement of the meta-narrative adroitly in the past, but the Vlad that we had last seen in Orca had been deeply transformed. Brust wouldn’t be the first author to demonstrate that, sometimes, you just can’t go home again.

The other failings of the book are less understandable, perhaps, but might ultimately have the same origin: If Brust was struggling to find young Vlad’s voice, that inauthentic note can very easily spread to other aspects of the work.

Notably there’s a narrative bloat coupled with a lack of focus. There’s lots of stuff on the page here that doesn’t seem to serve any real purpose and a lot of it is authorial meandering of the worst type. (“I’m going to talk about my inability to cook a particular type of bread because I’ve got a word count to hit by Friday and I don’t know what else to write just now.”)

Even the non-traditional narrative structure doesn’t work. It’s not actually being used to accomplish any specific effect (unlike the similar structure used in Taltos). So it just comes off as gimmicky and trite. In fact, the novel probably would have been better without this cheap trick. (In Taltos the same technique improved the novel because the structure reinforced the themes of the book and gave wider context to the individual events.)

In the case of Dragon, Brust tries to blatantly tell you that he’s giving you wider context. But, in actual practice, he just deflates the entire plot: The fact that you know what’s going to happen long before it happens just adds an even larger sense of bloat to the mild bloat which is already dragging the novel down.

It should also be noted that things generally improve as the novel continues, feeling almost as if Brust was warming up to his subject. In the end, however, I found this to be the weakest of the Taltos novels.

GRADE: C+

Steven Brust
Published: 1998
Publisher: Ace
Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0812589165
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Reading Orca is a somewhat surreal experience right now. Written in 1996, it nevertheless feels as if it should have a “RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES OF TODAY!” blurb blazoned across its cover.

In my reaction to Jhereg, I described the novel as: “A pulp detective novel by Raymond Chandler, except that the main character is an assassin instead of a private detective and his seedy office is in a world of high fantasy instead of the 1940s.”

Orca, on the other hand, is just a flat-out pulp detective novel. It feels like Chinatown played out across the financial headlines of today in a world of high fantasy.

And, much like Jhereg, that’s pretty much as cool as it sounds.

Orca also continues Athyra‘s approach of using non-Vlad points of view to tell the story. I have two thoughts on this:

First, Brust makes this approach work in Orca for reasons completely different than what made it work in Athyra. In Orca the technique is used to show us Vlad from the angle of one who knows him not at all.l In Athyra, Brust uses the technique to show us Vlad from the angle of one who knows him very well… and in the process reveals a lot about both Vlad and the narrator.

Second, there is a very deliberate effect being created in choosing to tell the story of this portion of Vlad’s life through the eyes of others. There is, in fact, a layering of narratives: The story is being told to a very specific character (Cawti) by another character (Kiera); and as she narrates to Cawti, Kiera also re-tells parts of the tale which were only told to her by Vlad.

So while some portions are, at first glance, still being narrated by Vlad in a traditional fashion, even that narrative is being filtered through a second point of view.

Unreliable narrators are often used for cheap effect. But there’s nothing cheap — or simple — about what Brust is accomplishing here.

GRADE: B+

Steven Brust
Published: 1996
Publisher: Ace
Cover Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0441001963
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