My review of Terry Pratchett’s “Monstrous Regiment ” has just gone up at Amazon.com.
“Monstrous Regiment” shouldn’t work. The mix of fantasy, humor, war novel, social commentary (especially regarding the place of women in society), tying it in to the larger overarching storylines that have developed in the Discworld novels and creating a new setting and mostly brand new cast should have been a mess.
It shouldn’t have worked, but it did.
 Borogravia is a small isolated backwater of a nation, with its only natural resources apparently being an infinitely deep well of hostility for its neighbors, flavored with the worship of a pugnacious (and increasingly strange) god and the cult of personality surrounding a ruler who has not been seen in decades and who never produced an heir.
And like all nations that can least afford a war, Borogravia is endlessly involved in them, typically as the aggressor. The nation is being steadily depopulated of men with all their limbs. Finally, Polly Perks has decided she’s had enough — her slow-witted brother has been taken off to war, and she has no idea whether he’s alive or dead, and she’s determined to find him and bring him back to the family inn. So Polly cuts her hair, disguises herself as a man (simple in a country where all women wear skirts or dresses, especially for a girl with a somewhat boyish figure) and joins the military.
Of course, it’s never quite that simple. This is war, after all, and a war that Borogravia has not just lost, but is apparently about to lose decisively, once and for all. Fortunatelly, Borogravians are both ignorant and pugnacious, and fighting for their horrible little country, because it’s THEIR horrible little country is what comes naturally. Despite overwhelming odds, including a massive coalition of foreign governments sick to the back teeth of the little country, Polly’s unit — which hides more secrets than just hers — blunders its way into history, fame and the possibility of transforming Borogravia forever.
In addition to telling a gripping adventure story of Polly’s unit roaming the wasteland that was once Borogravia, pursued by a very angry prince and his crack troops, and heading towards an impregnable castle that they have no chance to break into, let alone take, Pratchett is also making a very real examination of military life (one decidedly slanted in favor of the enlisted units, in Pratchett’s typical populist style) and, more importantly, what it means to be a woman in society and in the military. This is a lot for a little novel to be packed with, and it doesn’t always work — the Vietnam movie jokes that are tossed in are only mildly cute and probably should have been cut — and there’s probably too many interesting characters in her unit — as neat as trolls, Igors and the Discworld vampires are, we don’t need them in this novel, and certainly not both of them.
But overall, the book works, and works well, as an adventure novel, a military novel and even a novel that, in its own way, is an examination of modern female roles. In a lot of ways, its ambition helps elevate it — instead of just being a romp through the streets of Ankh-Morporkh (as fun as those may be), “Monstrous Regiment” is elevated to the level of “Small Gods” (with which it shares a bit of cosmology) and other “deeper” Discworld novels.
Strongly recommended for Discworld fans, and generally recommended for readers of military fantasy novels, including “The Black Company” and “A Song of Ice and Fire.” It’s surprising how much of a commentary “Monstrous Regiment” appears to be of those darker, more “adult” novels at times.
Go and vote for how swell a review you think it is (it really is!) as I have a pathetic need to cling to the Top 1000 Reviewers list, even as I enjoy upsetting true believers who found “Underworld” or “The Bourne Supremacy” to be great films. Yes, I have a sickness.
To begin with, imagine Harry Potter as written by Jane Austen. While that is an imprecise high concept version of “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell,” it embraces the two most important aspects of the book would-be readers need to reconcile themselves with. If you are uncomfortable with magic — not magic realism, not imagined magic, but actual magic done by the characters — the book is not for you. Likewise, if the notion of reading nearly 800 pages written by Susanna Clarke channeling Jane Austen sounds hard to bear, wait for the movie.
But for those who find either of those bearable — or, better yet, an exciting prospect — “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” is a strange and wonderful novel that you will live in for longer than you expect and shorter than you will end up wishing.
One of the first truly adult fantasy novels — which is to say, it emphasizes real emotions, subtle and conflicting motivations and genuine love over special effects, gore and sex — Clarke’s novel is full of characters who can be both repellent, attractive and pitiable, sometimes all in the space of one paragraph. The novel, even if one has given into temptation and read too many detailed reviews, is full of surprises, both of the large plot twist sort and or the small character moments sort. The ending, in particular, is a bittersweet wrench, perfectly in keeping with the rest of the novel, and yet slightly surprising and heartbreaking despite that.
With the love between Jonathan and Arabella Strange, the scholarly passions of Mr. Norrell and a host of “theoretical magicians,” the strange and eventually fascinating Childermass, the various cloying toadies, the sweet and in-over-their-head Greysteels, Clarke creates more delicately detailed and compelling characters than most novelists manage in a whole series of novels. And it is as much the love between Jonathan and Arabella that drives this novel as it is the love of magic of the two protagonists. But there is magic a-plenty, including spectacular magic wrought on the battlefield against Napoleon, whom one feels almost sorry for as Strange gets more and more comfortable in his role as Wellington’s magician.
But the plot is longer and more complex than that, and Napoleon is mostly a stepping stone for the magicians in their quest to return English magic to its rightful place, and their real enemy is subtle and devious, and more than a little insane. Their enemy is one of the most interesting antagonists in fiction, and Clarke successful makes him a mythic sort of villain. At the same time, she also manages to create a great deal of mystery around the ancient Raven King, creating a mystique around a totally made-up character that has the weight of real world myth and legend.
Despite the novel’s historical period and many ties to real world history, it’s not necessary to know anything about the British fighting Napoleon, the poetry and life of Lord Byron or anything else of the sort. Clarke provides more than enough to understand and enjoy the setting, although the more one knows about history, the more Clarke’s very low-key winks at it are revealed — Byron’s and the Shelleys’ legendary Swiss vacation that, in many ways, gave birth to the modern horror genre gets a dismissive reference from Strange at one point, who obviously does not yet know the historical significance of the house on the lake and those who stayed there, for instance.
I normally whip through a novel this size, particularly if I love it, as I did this one, in a weekend, or a week at most. Instead, I found myself putting the book down and not wanting to go further, wanting to savor and digest the book in small doses. Now that I’ve finished it, I only have a small short story by Clarke (on the official novel Web site) left to me of it.
If the initial description — Harry Potter as written by Jane Austen — sounds good to you, don’t hesitate. The sooner you enter the 19th century England of Strange and Norrell, the happier you’ll be. This is easily one of the best novels, of any genre or literary merit, I’ve ever read.
If, like many American viewers, you’re interested in “House of Flying Daggers” because you were blown away by “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” you should be aware that while the latter film blends art film and action film almost perfectly, “House of Flying Daggers” makes a definite choice as to what sort of film it is. If you’re interested in a jaw-droppingly gorgeous art film with some amazing action tossed in, great. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a beautifully filmed action film that could run in art houses, as “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” did, look elsewhere. Even the somewhat troubled “Hero” would be a better bet for that crowd.
Make no mistake, “House of Flying Daggers” is a film of staggering beauty, and the action scenes that are in the film are quite nice (although even the credulity of someone coming for a wuxia film will get strained eventually at the superhuman feats done with the titular daggers), but for the most part, the film is incredibly slow and has a plot that’s threadbare at best. It’s a framework to justify a lot of the beautiful pictures, and nothing more.
Zhang Ziyi is still beautiful and great at what she does, and there are some very neat set pieces in the film, including the echo game when the blind entertainer hits drums scattered around the room with long weighted sleeves in response to beans being tossed at them in every more complex fashion. Likewise, the treetop scene in this film outshines a comparable scene in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” on a number of levels.
This film isn’t the same sort of triumphant merger of art and action as “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” but is strongly recommended for those whose interests in the previous film run more towards the artistry of the director and cinematographer and less towards the artistry of the choreographer and performers.
There are two films here in “Anaconda,” both of them pretty awful.
Of the two, the one with all the young Hollywood types in their Gap clothes that never get dirty or even wrinkled in the Amazon is the less mildly offensive.
The other apparently stars John Voight, but what this second movie is about, it’s hard to say. Voight acts a bit like he was hoping he was taking over for Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now,” but mostly, he says all sorts of mysterious nonsense in a made-up accent and makes bug eyes.
Ironically, the titular star of the movie, the anaconda itself, is barely in this film. The filmmakers seem to have heard that the shark rarely appeared in “Jaws,” but don’t seem to understand that the unseen presence of the monster is necessary to build suspense. In the absence of said snake, viewers mostly get to watch Voight having a very good time in whatever movie he thought he was making.
Not worth a rental — catch this on free TV, preferably when you’ve got a sense of humor and two hours to kill.
It would be too harsh to say that “The Bourne Supremacy” is a bad movie, but compared to the relatively straightforward plot of the first film, this was at times difficult to follow, with some explanations only showing up in the deleted scenes.
The basics are good: Bourne is living in India, still on the run (he thinks) from Treadstone. Then a CIA operation goes bad, agents are killed, and Bourne’s fingerprint is left behind … in Berlin. At the same time, his girlfriend is shot in a bullet meant for him, which brings him roaring back to the West to settle matters once and for all, unaware that he’s been framed as a traitor who kills CIA agents.
So far, so good. Throw in a ripped-from-today’s-headlines Russian oil magnate and you’d think we’d be in good company, but neither Matt Damon nor Joan Allen (in a stellar performance) can save this. Things get confused to the point where one suspects the director wasn’t really sure what was going on. Some loose ends are wrapped up, there’s a lot of really good action and other set pieces, but the whole does not add up to the sum of its parts.
I have high hopes that the third part of this trilogy will return it to form. In the meantime, this is a rental.
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