book review
Oct. 18th, 2007 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llywelaPicked up my copy of the Supernatural Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons and Ghouls from the post office sorting depot yesterday. You know, because of that thing where my postman never comes before midday, when I'm always in work, so I inevitably just get little notes asking me to go and collect...*sigh
The Good
It's very readable, with a highly accessible narrative style and visually pleasing layout. The handwriting font used for the enclosures supposedly from John's journal were the only parts I had trouble reading (also? There is no way under the sun that John's journal notes are that narrative in style!)
It's very informative. Seriously. I now know a lot about American and other urban legend of which that I had no clue previously, and the book ties it in neatly with a lot of stuff that I did already know about, namely European pagan mythology.
It adds a neat layer of authenticity to the show's take on urban legends that anecdotes from the show are woven in around the narration of actual urban legends.
And it's fun. I enjoyed reading it.
The Bad
The author's knowledge of the show that his book ties in with is seriously lacking, and that's a disappointment. Like I said, anecdotes from the show are woven into the fabric of the narration of actual urban legends, and that's great, but the detail of those anecdotes is patchy at best and downright flawed at worst. Seriously, there's a canon mistake on the very first page, when Dean is referred to as being five when Mary died. The show has made it very clear that Dean was four at the time, and that fact has been made explicit on numerous occasions. It's right there in the Pilot for anyone who can count - 22 from 26 isn't that hard, surely!
An easy mistake to make? Maybe. But there are more. In Bugs, an old Native American man talks to the boys about the curse on Oasis Plains. In the book, this old man is specifically referred to as female! So, one outright error like that, fair enough, but when they begin to mount up, you start to get worried.
Those are the biggest errors, but far too often the anecdotes from the show read as if the author asked someone else to summarise the plot for him and then used his imagination to fill in the gaps, rather than watching the episodes and paying attention himself. You know? Like...it's almost right, but not quite, so you end up with a distinctly puzzled sense of 'that's not how it happened!' I was left with the impression that the author wanted to write a book about urban legends, and simply used the show as a hook into a ready-made audience, rather than really being interested in the show at all.
Professionally speaking, though, I'd have thought that if you were being paid to write a book that ties into a TV show and in which you refer specifically to the events of certain episodes of that show, you would watch those episodes and make sure you got your details spot on! Because I found myself thinking along the lines that if the author was getting details from the show wrong, which I notice because I know the show well, how can I be sure that he isn't getting his urban legends completely wrong as well? I've got no way of knowing, and the errors in the one part of the book shake my faith in the other.
The narrative style is also problematic, not of itself so much - writing the book as a narrative makes it acessible and easy to read, as I said earlier - but in the sense of Point of View: it is written from the joint point of view of the Winchester brothers. This is problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, because Sam and Dean would not be making the kind of mistakes the author makes about events they lived through. Second, it doesn't really sound like either of their voices. And third: first person POV is tricky enough without making it a joint POV. Readers like to know who is speaking, and that is impossible when there are, apparently, two narrators, each of whom therefore has to refer to himself in the third person numerous times throughout the text. It's an untidy way of writing.
The references throughout to 'Winchester and Sons' bug me immensely, because never once on-screen is the family 'business' referred to in such jovial and specific terms. They just don't think that way.
And...looking back, I seem to have ranted far more than I praised. I did enjoy reading the book, and would recommend it. I just feel that the author could and should have done better.
Pushing Daisies is a seriously trippy show. Seriously. We're up to episode three now, and I have to say that I enjoyed episodes two and three more than the first.
That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the first episode, because I did. It was just that the pilot episode felt more like a mini-film than the launchpad for a new series. It established the concept and universe, but was immensely self-contained, right up to the quirky 'happily ever after'-style ending. It could have just stopped there, and no one would have queried it.
The second episode is the one that really sets the scene for the season of TV still to come, setting in place all the character dynamics and conflicts to be played out over the course of that season. It is seriously wacked out and trippy stuff, but enormous fun, like a modern day fairytale.
I still can't get over Anna Friel's American accent, though. Or the fact that she doesn't really look any different than she did when she first made her name (in the UK) almost...must be almost 15 years ago now, as the girl who murdered her abusive dad on Brookside! Not that the cute-as-a-button Chuck bears any resemblance to Beth Jordache other than appearance.
Still can't quite get over Michelle Ryan from Eastenders headlining on Bionic Woman, come to that. I'd only just got used to Hugh Laurie as House! Makes me wonder if Pushing Daisies and Bionic Woman will be given the kind of rapturous reception over here that House tends to get, just because of the British actors.
Looking forward now to enjoying the rest of the season.
The Good
It's very readable, with a highly accessible narrative style and visually pleasing layout. The handwriting font used for the enclosures supposedly from John's journal were the only parts I had trouble reading (also? There is no way under the sun that John's journal notes are that narrative in style!)
It's very informative. Seriously. I now know a lot about American and other urban legend of which that I had no clue previously, and the book ties it in neatly with a lot of stuff that I did already know about, namely European pagan mythology.
It adds a neat layer of authenticity to the show's take on urban legends that anecdotes from the show are woven in around the narration of actual urban legends.
And it's fun. I enjoyed reading it.
The Bad
The author's knowledge of the show that his book ties in with is seriously lacking, and that's a disappointment. Like I said, anecdotes from the show are woven into the fabric of the narration of actual urban legends, and that's great, but the detail of those anecdotes is patchy at best and downright flawed at worst. Seriously, there's a canon mistake on the very first page, when Dean is referred to as being five when Mary died. The show has made it very clear that Dean was four at the time, and that fact has been made explicit on numerous occasions. It's right there in the Pilot for anyone who can count - 22 from 26 isn't that hard, surely!
An easy mistake to make? Maybe. But there are more. In Bugs, an old Native American man talks to the boys about the curse on Oasis Plains. In the book, this old man is specifically referred to as female! So, one outright error like that, fair enough, but when they begin to mount up, you start to get worried.
Those are the biggest errors, but far too often the anecdotes from the show read as if the author asked someone else to summarise the plot for him and then used his imagination to fill in the gaps, rather than watching the episodes and paying attention himself. You know? Like...it's almost right, but not quite, so you end up with a distinctly puzzled sense of 'that's not how it happened!' I was left with the impression that the author wanted to write a book about urban legends, and simply used the show as a hook into a ready-made audience, rather than really being interested in the show at all.
Professionally speaking, though, I'd have thought that if you were being paid to write a book that ties into a TV show and in which you refer specifically to the events of certain episodes of that show, you would watch those episodes and make sure you got your details spot on! Because I found myself thinking along the lines that if the author was getting details from the show wrong, which I notice because I know the show well, how can I be sure that he isn't getting his urban legends completely wrong as well? I've got no way of knowing, and the errors in the one part of the book shake my faith in the other.
The narrative style is also problematic, not of itself so much - writing the book as a narrative makes it acessible and easy to read, as I said earlier - but in the sense of Point of View: it is written from the joint point of view of the Winchester brothers. This is problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, because Sam and Dean would not be making the kind of mistakes the author makes about events they lived through. Second, it doesn't really sound like either of their voices. And third: first person POV is tricky enough without making it a joint POV. Readers like to know who is speaking, and that is impossible when there are, apparently, two narrators, each of whom therefore has to refer to himself in the third person numerous times throughout the text. It's an untidy way of writing.
The references throughout to 'Winchester and Sons' bug me immensely, because never once on-screen is the family 'business' referred to in such jovial and specific terms. They just don't think that way.
And...looking back, I seem to have ranted far more than I praised. I did enjoy reading the book, and would recommend it. I just feel that the author could and should have done better.
Pushing Daisies is a seriously trippy show. Seriously. We're up to episode three now, and I have to say that I enjoyed episodes two and three more than the first.
That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the first episode, because I did. It was just that the pilot episode felt more like a mini-film than the launchpad for a new series. It established the concept and universe, but was immensely self-contained, right up to the quirky 'happily ever after'-style ending. It could have just stopped there, and no one would have queried it.
The second episode is the one that really sets the scene for the season of TV still to come, setting in place all the character dynamics and conflicts to be played out over the course of that season. It is seriously wacked out and trippy stuff, but enormous fun, like a modern day fairytale.
I still can't get over Anna Friel's American accent, though. Or the fact that she doesn't really look any different than she did when she first made her name (in the UK) almost...must be almost 15 years ago now, as the girl who murdered her abusive dad on Brookside! Not that the cute-as-a-button Chuck bears any resemblance to Beth Jordache other than appearance.
Still can't quite get over Michelle Ryan from Eastenders headlining on Bionic Woman, come to that. I'd only just got used to Hugh Laurie as House! Makes me wonder if Pushing Daisies and Bionic Woman will be given the kind of rapturous reception over here that House tends to get, just because of the British actors.
Looking forward now to enjoying the rest of the season.
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-18 10:25 am (UTC)The narrative style is weird, isn't it? I can't quite get my head around them supposedly referring to themselves in the third person. Wouldn't it have been easier to pick either Sam, or Dean, and sticking with one POV? They're together 99% of the time, and usually fill each other in about the other 1%, so it wouldn't have made it much more difficult!
Still, as you said, the extra info about urban legends and stories is good, and the full latin texts of the exorcism rituals and things are particularly interesting for fanfic writers... *G* Some more pictures of the boys or of the actual scenes/monsters from the show would have been nicer instead of the pen illustrations, though... I'm definitely looking forward to the release of the Season One Companion more, if they wouldn't keep putting the release date back every five minutes!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-18 10:34 am (UTC)I'm definitely looking forward to the release of the Season One Companion more, if they wouldn't keep putting the release date back every five minutes!
Yes! Especially since I know that
no subject
Date: 2007-10-18 12:48 pm (UTC)Ah well, at least there's a new episode tonight we can indulge in tomorrow... :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-10-18 01:11 pm (UTC)And this spoiler-free malarkey is wonderful!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-18 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-18 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-18 01:42 pm (UTC)A lot of things we probably already knew, if we were paying attention, but some good behind-the-scenes details and it goes into more detail about the writing, the music, etc. Well worth it!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-18 02:18 pm (UTC)I like to think I pay pretty close attention to what happens on-screen. *G* But even so I can watch an episode for about the 20th time and still spot something new. So I'm looking forward immensely to this darn book finally arriving!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-18 01:41 pm (UTC)When I first got it and flipped through, I instantly rolled my eyes at the POV. It's a no-brainer that they'd do it that way, but come on. It's cheesetastic.
The other thing I didn't really like (from a scholastic standpoint) is that with the "immersion" into the SPN-verse, there's no *references* apart from the citations given within the text (c.f., "Our Dad found this in Paracelsus"). I really would like to know how much is "real" legend and how much is Kripke and the writing team and how much is Alex Irvine. Apart from the things I actually *did* know, before cracking the book, that is. (For example, I knew what a Wendigo was before I ever saw an episode of SPN.)
More problematically, probably because Irvine is drawing from both "real-world" and SPN-inspired sources, the "boys" seem to recommend stuff that they would never endorse in the context of the show. It's canon that Dean considers the possibility of bilocation and out-of-body experience when he's walking around in "In My Time of Dying," but it's *also* canon that he disdains the use of crystals and the more neo-pagan practises, based on his conversation with "Tessa." But the book would have you believe that they put stock in the use of crystals and shamanic herbs and stuff for the purposes of going out-of-body. So I'm not sure what to think. (It doesn't address any neo-pagan approaches, either, which I find singularly annoying.)
One *good* thing about it, I think, is that it makes it very clear that the Christian traditions (and ways to deal with demons) are not a one-size-fits-all remedy. The book talks at length about how certain creatures are immune to Christian ritual, because they're not *based* within the realm that is influenced by that religion. So I'm holding out hope that the demon arc will not reveal God or bring the boys to the conclusion that there is a single Divine Plan for everyone....
Then again, it's just a tie-in.
Oh, another quibble - when I first got the book, I skimmed the demons section and *thought* I saw the text that they actually use for the exorcism. But reading through the Latin in detail...it's not. Nowhere do the words that come out of Dean's, Sam's, and Bobby's mouth (all the same, by the way, on different occasions) match the incantations in the book.
That's a serious "Boo" in my estimation.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-18 02:00 pm (UTC)After the first couple of really huge errors I stopped making note of them because I wanted to write something brief, rather than a full essay length rant! It's a really interesting book to read, and refers to a lot of urban legend stuff that I didn't know, urban legends not being my thing. But there's no way of knowing, from the book, how much of that is genuine urban legend and how much an elaborate work of fiction. (The difference between genuine myth/legend and works of fiction is the reason I try not to get into debate with died-in-the-wool Arthurians, for eg, because the distinction tends to be lost on them.)
I scanned the lengthy Latin passages in vain for anything that looked like what we hear on screen whenever exorcisms take place. The only Latin I recognised was the incantation Sam/Meg used to destroy the devil's trap in BUABS!
Canon errors aside, it's the POV I have the most trouble with. Not just because, as you say, it's a highly cheesetastic narrative tool, but more especially because not for a single moment do I believe that either Dean or Sam would say/write anything like what we read in the book! It just doesn't sound like either of them. Almost any other narrative technique would have improved it for me.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-18 01:44 pm (UTC)It's a flaw in the concept, because the one book, IMO, can't do all the things it's trying to do. It's going to fail in one direction or the other.