Book review – The Magician’s Guild by Trudi Canavan

I saw the Magicians Guild in a charity shop for £2 and so I thought, why not? The story is part of a trilogy titled The Black Magician. 

Summary

In the city of Imardin, located in the Kingdom of Kyralia lies the high-brow Magician’s Guild. The King employs them in an annual “cleansing” of the city called the purge, whereby the poor and downtrodden, perceived as nothing but criminals and thieves, are either killed or driven out of the city.

Cover via Amazon

Among the struggling families is Sonea, a young girl who lives with her uncle and aunt. But just as they scrape themselves out of the slums, Sonea runs into an old gang…a daring gang who plan an attack on the city guard and the magicians. Now of course, they do this every year, and as always the magicians effortlessly create a magical shield to protect themselves from the thrown rocks and rotten vegetables. Among all of this, Sonea is encouraged by her best friend, Cery, to take part. And so, she grabs a rock, and glancing at the magicians she transfers all of her hate into the thing in her hand and throws it…

And it penetrates the shield, knocking one of the magicians unconscious. She runs away, and continues to run for months as the magicians try to track her down. Some don’t like her because she is one of the slum dwellers, others see potential, but all know that if she is not caught and trained then her power will consume her and the city around her…

Review

My first impressions were that it was an “okay” story. After reading books such as the Game of Thrones I am used to the grit of a dark world, and I had the impression that this world would probably be very “tame”. But I was kind of wrong. There are assassins, brothels, professional thieves and dubious royal Houses (although they aren’t spoken about too much detail in this book). Besides that, other Kingdoms besides Kyralia, as well as a history are all mentioned which provides a good level of depth and complexity to this book.

Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised as I carried on reading. The groups of people and their prejudices is very realistic, and that is very important when it comes to the lower classes and their view of the Magician’s Guild as an elitist and merciless society. Or how the Thieves, as a group, fear the Magician’s Guild. But these prejudices are slowly and surely knocked down. It is a genuinely good example of how we can overcome our prejudices. I know it sounds absurd that we take this from a fictional world with fictional people, but the principle of spending time among “the other”, and seeing a human face is very much there.

I am hoping that the powerful Houses and the King of Kyralia are explored more in the following books. However, I tend not to read sequels which is a weakness that I hope to overcome! Don’t get me wrong, the book really does make you want to know what happens next, and if you feel like going into a different world of adventure then read it now. It flowed well, and was easy to read.

A book review – SM Peters’ Whitechapel Gods

Summary

Whitechapel Gods is best described to me as a dark blend of fantasy and science fiction set in Victorian London.

In an area of London known as Whitechapel, two mechanical Gods arise; Grand Father Clock of cold logic and Mama Engine of creativity and emotion. Whitechapel becomes a walled off place that is not loyal to the Queen or London. Lifeless killer robots called boiler men who are almost unbeatable patrol these walls and the streets, carrying out the will of Grand Father Clock while the black cloaks serve Mama Engine.

Cover of Whitechapel Gods

On top of all of that a mysterious disease goes through Whitechapel, slowly ripping apart the flesh of the victims and slowly turning them into lifeless mechanical beings. As Grand Father Clock aims to complete full order and Mama Engine does her Great Work, people are sent to the Chimney where they are tortured but kept alive by machines and not allowed to die.

Meanwhile, in the literal and metaphorical underground world, the Queen’s agents are aiming to topple these Gods, and they face many challenges and losses ahead. On top of that there are other Gods waiting to arise…

Review 

On a personal level, the book starts off in a mass of confusion for me and I found it hard throughout to fully imagine what the author was trying to convey. Nevertheless, he was very successful in creating a sense of darkness and despair in Whitechapel, completely transforming it from the Whitechapel that I have seen.

The characters are truly loveable and believable. Oliver, a former rebel who is troubled by his past and his failures which resulted in the death of many innocents. Missy who was a former prostitute drugged into submission by her madame, Gisella, whose voice still haunts her. Bailey is a British patriot and leader of the current resistance. Bergen Keuper, a mysterious German explorer who appears to be cold, fearless and calculating. John Scared, an old but cunning man with his own little game, notorious for forcing children and urchins to watch his brutal torture methods. These are just some of the characters that I can list of the top of my head and they all interrelate realistically and very nicely.

However, like I said, it was confusing, and so one has to be patient until the pieces start falling into place. What kept me reading was the genre and the concept of Mechanical Gods that could possibly fall, but I imagine that those who aren’t initially interested might not get very far. The reason that the Gods fascinated me was because it provoked thought of how one can really define a God, and their apparent mortality lies close to Nordic and Greek mythology, which is far different from the world religions of today.

Despite all of this, it was a truly inspiring book even if it was fictional. It is a story of incredible resilience against almost impossible odds, and packed with action. It is not childish as people will swear and curse and that helps with the real gritty feeling of the story. But my favourite parts are when the author describes each of the Mechanical Gods, their inner workings, their minds and how they affect and break human beings. It is a tough job to do this convincingly, but the author does it well and makes it look easy.

Do you want a physical, spiritual adventure set in a dark London with an exquisite blend of science fiction and fantasy? Then please read this book!

“…because it is work that makes sense!”

Like every Saturday I stood at the stall with a friend of mine while the world went by. Oxford was flooding with tourists, from Spain to Japan and even the USA on this fine summer afternoon. Even the breeze was calm so that it didn’t blow the papers away. The Palestinian flag would blow gently, occasionally slapping someone in the face as if trying to grab their attention; sometimes it worked at other times it didn’t, but it sure was funny to watch.

My mind had been preoccupied with thoughts about life and the meaning of it all, because that is what happens when I get a lot of free time. But then I turned to my friend, a grey haired matured man who worked as a software engineer, I remembered how he talked about planting vegetables in his allotment and I asked him.

“You know, I think I want to get into gardening” I realize how strange that sounds for a twenty year old so I correct my self “…what I mean is, I want to know how to grow vegetables”, that still sounded weird but what the hey!

And so he told me all about it. How he tried and failed the first time, how potatoes are the easiest (and probably most useful thing) to grow, how you have to get personal with the soil as you dig it up and weed it out. How the soil itself is a living thing and that you are working with it. He told me about farmers cooperatives that he saw in the USA when he lived there and the ones that he sees in the village of Abingdon where he lives now. He told me a lot, but then I asked him.

“Why does it feel…right, that I should work and labour to produce something for myself?”

Because that is what it feels like to me. All this talk of “selling yourself” to corporations at University, of “developing skills” which are just vague made me realize that the real world is rushing towards me fast, and I didn’t like it. Because when I look at us, the human species, as animals it all seems so strange and so disconnected. We do not forage or hunt any more, we just do these jobs that give us money and then we go to a big building full of food, it is there that we exchange this money for the food that we need to survive. It just seems so strange. But my good old friend hit the nail right on the head, he simply said.

“Because it is work that makes sense! You produce something for yourself and you aren’t working for anyone else.”

And I remembered what that thing at the back of my head was, and it formed into the phrase “having control of the means of production” as said by a famous fellow called Karl Marx.

Maybe that explains why I felt more alive and awake when I weeded the garden out. Even a simple and menial task like that felt good to do for me.

…or I am just a freak. And that is why the world is an interesting place.

 

Once again I am sorry, and I will apologize in the future again…

My blog, my little writing space, has been neglected. I have been spending my time writing for a gaming magazine, writing a short story, looking for work experience and most of all engrossing myself and losing myself in video games.

I am a day dreamer and so video games can be like dopamine to me, I think a lot but I don’t do enough. Well that is what I want to change, and I want to make writing my craft. Over the next few days I will try and put some life back into my blog. Maybe I will put up a short story here, a political piece there but there is also something else on my mind.

Whenever I see a person who slightly stands out from the crowd; whether they are playing music in the street or just seem to be having a particularly bad day I can’t help but wonder just what got them to that stage in life. Some people are fascinated by the cosmos, others by animals and yet more by celebrities. What fascinates me is humans, purely and simply, humans. To sit down with a street performer and ask them “tell me the story of your life” is something that I enjoy…

But I am shy, or at least timid. I plan to fight that, and over the next few days I hope to see my blog grow once more (that is if it has grown before).

M9 – Spiritual scrolls – the rapid imagery technique

So I found a new UK hip-hop group to listen to, one friend recommended them a long time ago but I have not really checked them out properly until now.

Asides from purely appreciating the lyricism and effort an artist or artists put into a track, one can also pick up on techniques that have been used. In the case of Melanin 9′s (Or M9′s) work, the track Spiritual Scrolls  (video below):

Now for those who read a lot, you most likely came across a passage written by an author which is made up of short and abrupt sentences. If each sentence is descriptive then it will produce the effect of time moving fast or of a collage of images inside your head which relate to one theme.

This track features something similar. If you go to 35 seconds in, these lyrics follow:
Gods locked in the morgues
Glocks to your jaws
Coppers watching from their choppersSitting in the cockpit door
The clock hits four when feds lick the locksmith’s door

The rest has after has been a little hard to catch (I am trying though). But these short lines describe a dark, dystopian reality of the underworld. To say “Gods locked in the morgues”, I think, is a poetic way of simply saying that morality is collapsing, a place where people do anything just to get what they want; selfish materialism that blinds the soul.

If I happen to write lyrics once again, then this is a technique that I will definitely consider using, but it remains to be seen whether I will be good enough.

Flash games review – Disaster will strike

Disaster will strike is basically Angry Birds, but with a fairly interesting twist…

Gameplay – 7/10

Okay, so imagine angry birds. Replace the green pigs with evil looking dinosaur eggs, and replace the angry birds with…natural disasters, that’s right, natural disasters; earth quakes, wind, meteor strikes and even landslides.

In a sense, it takes away the fun element of Angry Birds in calculating the angle at which you want to launch your bird. In this game, you get a selection of disasters, each with a limited around. You click and point, so your aim is pretty much precise, it becomes more about doing things in the right order; it is more puzzle than action to an extent.

Evil egg is smug…

That said, each disaster (you can see them at the top left of this screen cap) has its own style. The earthquake makes an entire block shake and any ice with anything on top of it will shatter and break, while the landslide makes a small part of it disappear making everything above it fall through. The meteor is pretty cool, because as you click on it it comes down and patrols the sky until you click on a point for it to fly at and blow whatever up.

Yep, took care of him

This style of gameplay can sort of make things feel a bit restricted. You have to do things in a certain order which takes away the flexibility, it feels like you can’t approach things in different ways. They could have also added more disasters and levels. It does have a creative twist though, and it makes an interesting game.

Graphics/Presentation – 8/10

The animation and physics is pretty smooth. One cool part is that if an egg is being subject to disaster they have a funny worried expression before they break and release their yolk quite violently.

Bee attack!!

Overall score – 7.5/10

Credits go to:

Developer – Anton Koshechken

Music – http://www.shockwave-sound.com

Physics engine – box2d

Go and play it! 

Flash game review – Convergence

Start

Story – 9/10

Convergence is a game about life and life choices. You are an average human being who goes through three stages, within each stage the decisions you make will affect the next. It is thought provoking and a really well done piece of art. Yes the graphics are basically a bunch of pixels, but this game focuses on the realities of life rather than just giving us a good show.

Game play – 7/10

The three stages mentioned are of your life as a baby, adolescent life and then adult life. The most fun of all was playing as a baby, where you had to race against a rather evil sibling (who locks you in the attic by the way) to collect all the toys. The other two stages are just walking around and hitting the action key which can get a little boring.

Make your choice...

With that said, each stage is not too long and fairly simple so that you are encouraged to go through the multiple possible routes. While the first stage was the most fun game play wise, the second stage I found very thought provoking.

I have always had a personal fear of becoming an over worked office drone, and the faceless characters, each sitting at their desks, really made me think about that. The music in the background was ambient and suited the middle stage very well. The bar at the bottom shows how much you care about work or love, and the initial starting point on the meter is determined by your choice in the first stage…I will leave that to find out for yourself.

The third stage is just a conclusive stage with not much going on, it just shows you where your choices got you in the end. I guess the reason that the life story of this character is so “average” is because the “average person” will be playing such a game, but I think a lot more could have been done in terms of the story itself and the endings (although one ending was quite saddening). But it is thought provoking in the end and it carries out what the developers intended it to carry out.

Achievement room!

Graphics/presentation – 9/10

The monotony and simplicity of the game’s graphics help us to focus more on how the game affects us emotionally. The music is great, especially in the second stage as I have mentioned before, and it also has a similar simplicity. Funnily enough, I just couldn’t imagine a game like this with “better” graphics.

Overall score – 8.3/10

Go and play this game now! – I am going to look for more thought provoking stuff!

Credits go to:

Streetlight Studios - Ray Chan, Mike Hadley Sean Li

Music by Kevin MacLeod

Flash game review – Awesome Planes

I like the name, so I am going to type it again…AWESOME PLANES (also link to it).

I will not really include a story rating because there isn’t one, and not all flash games need any semblance of stories, besides, it is all about having fun!

Game play – 7/10

Upside down towers and lasers: PEW! PEW!

So you control a plane with your mouse inside a futuristic city area fighting aircraft, tanks, towers and upside down towers too (the wonders of the future, eh?). There are also random stationary buildings you have to destroy like radars…and buildings. The first thing I noticed was something that kind of annoyed me at first. You don’t have the option between firing your main weapon (minigun, rockets, plasma or laser beam) or dropping bombs. When you click both of  the weapons fire at the same time, end of story, deal with it.

Controlling the plane with the mouse is a bit hard, but I really like it. As you panic and do twists and turns it really becomes chaotic and colourful (by “colourful” I mean explosions), which really suits the pumped up music of the game.

Did I mention upgrades?

Weapons, armour, afterburners (boost thingy) and cluster bombs are all upgradeable by collecting money from destroying enemies. There are also achievements at the bottom, but not many of them and they don’t tell you what they mean. That said, it is quite easy to collect enough money for all the upgrades you need. At first, I found the laser to be quite over powered but when playing survival mode it can be very useful, and oh yeah…

There are only 15 levels in the game but when you complete them, you can play that survival mode after that (think of it as a training course). Survival is basically fighting wave after wave of infinite enemies until you are defeated. The levels don’t vary, you just destroy things, but this is what this game is about. This is the kind of game where you unwind while blowing things up and flying around. I like the gradually increasing difficulty and the survival option after completing the levels.

Graphics/presentation – 9/10 

If a game has explosions, there is one thing that I look out for; the screen shaking ever so subtly when it happens. It just adds that nice level of detail which gives the explosions extra power and it can easily win me over. The rest of the game is smooth, colourful and the music is very suitable.

Overall score – 8/10

Here is the link once again (so you don’t have to scroll up).

Credits for the game go to…

Programming - Alexander Gette 

Art - Jurij Krivonos

Awesome music - Christian M. Krogsvold

A book review – Mark Haddon’s “A spot of bother”

Before I launch into “A spot of bother”, I think having the blurb at the back will be useful:

At fifty-seven, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels, listening to a bit of light jazz. Then Katie, his unpredictable daughter, announces that she is getting remarried, to Ray. Her family is not pleased – as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has ‘strangler’s hands’. Katie can’t decide if she loves Ray, or loves the way he cared for her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put by the way the wedding planning gets in the way of her affair with one of her husband’s former colleagues. And the tidy, pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials. 

Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind

Well I can safely start by saying that these sorts of books are not usually my thing, and  I have almost finished it, but I feel like I want to write about it now. I like sci-fi, fantasy, mystery and an element of discovery. This book just seemed like a story about chaos unfolding within a family.

But I felt that it was a journey of discovery in its own right. The relationship between George, his wife Jean and her lover, David provides an insight into the relationships of the elderly that I haven’t had before. The self reflectiveness of Katie (George’s daughter), her concern for her son, Jacob and the relationship with soon-to-be-husband, Ray, is also interesting. But what I love most is how there are character clashes. For example George, as a middle class retired man, and Ray as a “working” class man from up north, a typical “bloke” who is big and all; one of my favourite passages in expressing their relationship is:

“[...]Ray had run his finger along the rack of CDs above the television and said, ‘So you’re a jazz fan, Mr Hall [meaning George]‘, and George had felt as if Ray unearthed a stack of pornographic magazines.”

I found it an amusing read, giving me a chuckle here and there, but as it progressed the mood slowly got darker and I felt a genuine pity, for George in particular, when he does to seemingly begin losing his mind.

But the most interesting journey of discovery when it comes to relationships is that of Jamie and his homosexuality. How the relationship plays out between himself and his lover, Tony, is intriguing because we always assign roles and stereotypes to males and females in relationships. But in a homosexual relationship, there is an element of mystery, especially if you had not experienced them yourself. I know that the homosexual community have romantic, sexual and even platonic relationships, just like the heterosexual community, but I never really had a close friend who was gay who would tell me about what it was like. I never really talked about it in detail to anyone, and I don’t think it was taboo for me, it was just that I, as a curious person, never had the opportunity.

This book ended up taking me by surprise with its own little journey of discovery, it was something that I thought would be mediocre for me but it turned out to be an excellent read and I can almost imagine it being played out like a film. The structure of the chapters, which simply represent scenes, really helps in achieving this and makes it much more enjoyable. But if you do plan to read chapter by chapter, then that does not really work, as some “scenes” are quite short (from less than a page to about three to four pages). The simple descriptions of what the characters do as they think, whether they put the kettle on or make some toast, is a really nice and subtle detail, not too overdone. I think I may have learned a thing or two about writing from reading this particular one. I definitely recommend it.

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to go back and finish it off!

A walk in Hebron

I went to Palestine about three years ago (2009), and one of the cities I had a pleasure of visiting there was Hebron. I don’t know why I am writing about this now out of all these times, but here it is:

It was a Friday, the equivalent of a Sunday in the 80s back in Britain, it was dead. I and a couple of friends who were locals were showing me around. The centre and hub of the city was eerie, with all the shop shutters drawn over, some with bullet holes in them that dated back from the second Intifada of 2000, at another door, I saw a crudely drawn star of David. It’s intention was not to profess the artists faith, but to show “the other” that they were there to stay. The settlers have been here, and they could come at any time.

The old cobblestoned road I and my companions walked through was the line itself. To our right were the settlers, who had taken over the top half of many of the dwellings there, and to our left were the remnant of the Palestinian population. As we got closer to the settler’s area, I noticed that above me, there was a cage roof in the open with litter strewn all across it. Before that was put up, the settlers would throw down their waste, whatever it was, at the Palestinians to drive them out, and they were succesful. It took a moment to realize that I was walking under their rubbish bin; literally:

Elsewhere, I saw a soldier standing right above me on a roof top, holding his big gun and squinting in the sunlight. A wild though crossed my mind. If a settler was to gun me down, or start stoning me like an animal, will he actually do anything?

This is the soldier that was standing guard. They are officially there to keep order, but actually there to protect the settlers. Understandable I guess...

To be frank, it was upsetting and enraging, but we carried on to our destination; the mosque of Abraham (or Ibrahimi mosque), and to the Jewish people, cave of the patriarchs. We couldn’t just walk in of course, there were Israeli military checkpoints:

The military checkpoint just outside he entrance to the mosque/cave of the patriarchs

I didn’t know what to expect, but to my luck the soldier at the first checkpoint was laid back and not much of a problem. At the time I presented my British passport since my Palestinian ID had not been made yet, and I remember him looking confused then asking me
‘What brought to this country?’
To which I smiled innocent and clueless, saying with an air of being a foreign touris
‘Holy land’

The guards at the second checkpoint, just buy the door, where not as communicative and more silent. I stood with my hands against the wall, they frisked and searched me with a metal detector then slightly tapped my backside
‘Yalla’ meaning go.
Inside, I noticed security cameras all around the prayer room, and then I remembered. Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli military doctor and a radical, stormed into these rooms and gunned down as many Arab Muslims who were praying as he could. He even through some grenades while he was at it. I had a feeling that they wanted to keep an eye in case a revenge attack is planned instead of for the protection of the Palestinian Arabs there. And in a room just next door, was the Jewish section of the building; glancing through a heavy glass window and metal bars, I saw a Rabbi give a lecture to students. People who would probably want to pick a fight or kill me.

The feeling of powerlessness is overwhelming, not just in Hebron but all of Palestine. When I and my companions where about to go round a roundabout, a settlers car went zooming past, almost crashing with little guard (we recognized it because number plates are colour coded). The driver, ‘Alaa, was of course angry, but his friend, Yousef, said that we can’t actually do anything.
‘He is a settler!’ he said, ‘he can do what he want’.
The thing was, Yousef was part Slovakian. His golden goatee and bright blue eyes are not very Arabian characteristics. But he is a resident. He too has an ID, he too gets searched at checkpoints. He talks perfect Arabic, walks like a Palestinian, he is a local, he lived here all his life.

And the feeling of powerlessness seeped back into mind, and it is seeping back in now.