The Time of the Dark opens with a woman dreaming of events taking place in another world.  By the second page this book, published in 1982, has already described something as “cyclopean”.  I, having read that description, was busy being depressed about the story, fearing that Hambly was aspiring to some Lovecraft-styled tale.  (This would be a problem because most such imitations are bad ones.)  Fortunately (so to speak), it’s merely a run-of-the-mill fantasy story from the early ’80s.

The book does carry a fairly obvious Lovecraft influence, mostly in the descriptions of ancient architecture and of the Dark, a not-terribly-nice race which is encountered early in the book.  There was one particular description of some ancient ruins where I was enjoying some nice echoes of Lovecraft’s style until she actually used the adjective “Lovecraftian”.  Oh, well.

So the descriptive writing wasn’t too bad.  The plot was, unfortunately, pretty standard stuff.  People (a man and a woman) are transported from this world into another one where magic is possible and some great danger threatens.  These two become instrumental in saving people from the danger.  I was somewhat pleased to note that it wasn’t completely textbook—the two did not fall in love with each other.  On the other hand, the woman, a medieval scholar, discovers an innate talent for sword-based combat, while the man, a sometimes-biker and itinerant artist, finds that he can work magic and falls mutually in love with the widowed queen.

This is the first book in a series.  I want enough to know what will happen that I’d read the next books, but if they’re similar to this one, I’ll probably be sighing at the clichéd fantasy conventions as I come to them.

Another element of the teeming horde that comprises Terry Pratchett’s Diskworld novels, The Truth would probably be grouped with the subset featuring Ankh-Morpork’s City Watch.  That’s not entirely accurate, because the story really revolves around William de Worde’s newspaper, but the Watch is involved to a large degree.

I’m not entirely sure what to think about this book.  The whole thing is very Pratchett, with plenty of sections that left me literally laughing out loud (sometimes to the concern of those around me).  On the other hand, there were parts that I didn’t feel really worked, such as Mr. Tulip’s manner of cursing (“Too —ing right”).  I’d say that, on the whole, the book’s satirical bent tended to interfere with the storytelling.  It was good in pieces, but not necessarily in large chunks.  Still, it’s quite funny.  Go ahead and give it a read.

Sometimes, it seems that everyone except me had to read The Diary of Anne Frank in school.  (The fact that I probably got more out of the book because I didn’t is a piece for another day.)  While I was reading, I learned from a friend of mine that I was reading an edited version.  Though it is not indicated anywhere in the copy I have, it was edited by Anne’s father before publication.  (This despite the declaration “unabridged” on the title page.)  I am told Anne’s father removed much about Anne that was specifically Jewish or related to her burgeoning sexuality.  (The former because he wanted her to be a more religion-neutral hero, the latter presumably because he didn’t want people reading that about his daughter.)  So I suppose I’ll have to read the fuller version at some point.  Regardless, this one is quite good.

Anne Frank was a talented writer.  She does a good job of expressing what her life was like during the two years of her family’s hiding from the Germans.  At times, I did feel that I was an interloper in someone else’s thoughts, especially during the time when she was exploring her feelings for Peter, but that lends to the feel of the book.  It tells the tale of a young girl thrust into a situation where she has little control over her life and how she manages to live with that.

I’m not sure what I think of the translation.  Anne originally wrote in Dutch, which doesn’t work well for a sadly monolingual American such as myself.  The translation is very much one for a British audience—in addition to things like footnotes translating guilders into shillings and pence, much of Anne’s translated language usage involved very British phrases like, “had a jolly good row with so-and-so.” For the most part this was relatively unnoticeable, since the phrasing flowed very smoothly through my understanding, but occasionally I was struck by the contrast inherent in a Dutch girl being given a British voice.  I understand the reasons for the mode of the translation, but I do wonder what exactly Anne really wrote.  (For a real answer, I’d have to learn Dutch, and for a real answer, I’d probably have to grow up in Holland.)

What strikes me most is Anne’s generally unflagging optimism throughout the whole book.  In one of her final entries, she waxes very introspective, examining her thoughts and behaviors carefully.  Near the end of that entry, she writes, “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out.  Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.  I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death.”

Excel Saga 03 continues along the path set by volumes one and two: weird situations, not-so-smart Excel, not-so-healthy Hyatt, not-so-successful Il Palazzo, some satire, some plain funny stories, and so on.  The excellent footnotes make their return, with comments about The Prisoner, Astro Boy, Blaise Pascal, and many other wonderful things.

Now I have to wait for volume four to be translated and published.

So, yeah.  Being the giant Tolkien fanboy I am, I went to see the third Lord of the Rings movie at 12:01 am on opening night.  Despite some setbacks, I did manage to see the whole movie.

It rocked.

In my eyes, at least, Peter Jackson has redeemed himself for all the changes he made to The Two Towers.  (I’d link to my thoughts on that movie, but they got deleted by accident and no one had a cache of them.)  The plot details were all right and beautifully executed.  Almost all of the stuff I wanted to see was in there: the Balttle of the Pelennor Fields, the Paths of the Dead, Shelob, Mount Doom (duh), and so on.

I’ll discuss some details below the spoiler barrier.

Spoilers

I did really want to see Jackson’s treatment of the fall of Isengard, but I’ll have to wait for the DVD release to see it.  And, as with Bombadil, I can’t really fault Jackson for excising it.  Likewise for the Scouring of the Shire.  I would have liked to see it, but I didn’t see any good way to work that in and still keep the pace of a movie.

In addition to the big things, there were lots of little things that I liked.  The struggle between Gollum and Frodo on Mount Doom could easily have come out very silly looking.  It didn’t.  A neat little touch was the fact that while the writing in the Red Book was in English (<cough> Westron), its vowels had the appropriate Tengwar diacritics.

No, not really much to this post.  I didn’t have any complaints about the movie, and it would take too long for me to list all of the things I liked individually.  Suffice it to say that the whole thing was really, really excellent.