New Fantasy Novel: The Garrison Now Available!

One of my earliest fantasy novels, The Garrison, is now available to buy on Amazon and CreateSpace!

Synopsis
This short, breezy fantasy epic is all about one small castle with a small group of defenders, all struggling to hold off against massive waves of infantry and siege warfare from an invading nation.  Within the small castle is a relic - half of the mysterious Dark Stone - which the evil King Dorrel covets above all else.  After waiting for years, he launches an all-out invasion on the nation of Tennence, slaying their king and subjugating the kingdom.  One paladin - Seth Chamberlain - collaborates with the wizard Rellore and the garrison of Myriam Castle to muster a defense.  For weeks, the small garrison uses all their might, wit, magic, and strategy to ward off waves of enemies.  In the midst of the combat, Seth falls in love with a witch named Harmony, which strains the tension among the garrison even further.

This novel is briskly-paced with lots of combat and action, scenes of war, drama, romance, magic, and more.

This novel contains quite a bit of graphic violence.  Cursing is mild and there's one sex scene that doesn't go into too much detail.  I would think that teenagers and young adults can handle it, but for all intents and purposes, it's meant for mature audiences.

Background
This novel was originally drafted in 2002.  At the time, I visited Helmsley Castle in England, where they had a medieval reenactment to demonstrate how medieval life, combat, and warfare would have occurred.  This included some fighting demonstrations with daggers, swords, clubs, and bows.  Among the things I learned, it was mentioned that castle garrisons were not all that big at all:  small groups of men could fend off against huge odds using the natural defenses, strategy, terrain, weather, and resourcefulness of a castle.  Sieges could linger on for months like this, and history is full of cases where small groups of men had to fend off against attackers.

In high school, I learned about the different tactics used during siege warfare.  The objective was to force a surrender through attrition; attackers would surround a castle to block it off from the rest of the world.  They could raze all the surrounding farmlands and villages, further separating the castle from resources.  Attacking armies used to use all manner of siege weapons to take down a castle wall or gate.  Catapults and trebuchets would not only hurl stones, but could also toss filth and cadavers into a castle to spread disease.  Siege towers were built as moving towers on wheels, allowing infantry to gain access to the castle's ramparts and interior.  Siege ladders could do the same.  Battering rams could knock down gates.  However, defenders had the ability to throw anything they had at their enemies:  rocks, hot oil, etc.  Castles were often designed to deflect catapult bombardments, usually by making the towers rounded.  Gatehouses served as a highly effective killzone by trapping enemies in between gates and providing vantage points for archers to shoot down on them.  In any given battle, the weather and terrain can affect how armies approach a castle, or how effective the defenders are.

For the battle of Myriam Castle in the book, a whole plethora of these techniques are utilized, in addition to equipping the attacking army with grappling-hooks, and granting liberal use of magic among the defenders.  It took a year or two to draft this novel.  In 2004, I attempted to get the book published through an agent; it went so far as getting edited by a company called My Saint Is An Editor.  I backed out of a contract with the literary agency, after doing more research and finding that the agency didn't necessarily guarantee results.  The book remained in my files for the longest time while I kept busy with my day job and worked on various other projects; only within the past few months did I manage to put the finishing touches on the book by doing more editing passes and getting the graphics finalized.

I drew up maps on MS Paint originally, and they were always rather plain and dorky.  Last month, I posted a contest on Freelancer.com for graphic artists to take my maps and make them better.  After a number of great entries, I picked Sandra Sreckovic's entries as the winner.  Her work is featured in the first few pages of the book, showing in stylish detail how the lands of Tennence and the Realm of the Allied Kingdoms are laid out.

I published the book through Amazon and Createspace.  It took a matter of days to format the book properly, for both print and kindle.  Even though I could probably hire an artist for really good cover art, I opted to make my own cover using a photo I took a few years ago from a MacBeth play in Ripley Castle.  It was a picture of a man sitting by a tree, with a sword sticking up from the ground; I used Corel software to make it black-and-white, to blur out much of the background, and turn the photo into a type of pencil art.  Amazon's cover art software had a theme that cropped and framed the picture with black on the top and bottom of the cover.  This is probably not the best cover in the world, but I felt it was eye-catching, and I did it for free using my own files.

Inspirations
This was the first fantasy novel I attempted, but I had plenty of influences to draw upon at the time.

I've always been a fan of films like Braveheart, which may have subtly influenced my imagination to begin with.  The Lord of the Rings:  The Two Towers was newly-released at the time, so watching the Battle of Helms Deep was quite the inspiration for writing a book based entirely on a siege.  The film The Craft gave me the idea to include four witches in The Garrison, with each one representing a different natural element.  I tried to replicate the events of the novel using the level editor for the video game Warcraft III, but I could never get the scripts to work all that well.  I got to admit that King Dorrel may have been inspired by Arthas in the Warcraft series.

While writing, a few pop songs (primarily Seal's "Kiss From a Rose" and Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful") and a lot of orchestral music provided some ample inspiration (especially the film scores for The Lord of the Rings and Requiem For a Dream).  For some odd reason, Enya's brief track "Epona" is one of the tracks I attribute the most to the project; I think it's a very lovely melody and sound that matches up well with the book's setting.  You can listen to select tracks that inspired me on 8tracks.com.

That's just about all there is to the novel.  It's not the biggest or best thing I ever wrote, but I think it came out well and it is something I'm proud of.  I hope you'll give it a chance and enjoy it.

Book Review: Divergent (Veronica Roth)

"I am Divergent.  And I can't be controlled." - Veronica Roth

This book presents a future where society has been split up among several different factions, and at some point everybody has go through a simulation that determines which faction they should chose to join and live out the rest of their lives.  Those who can't be conclusively categorized to a faction is considered Divergent.  When the main character, Beatrice, is found to be Divergent, she is warned that the word is equivalent to danger.

This can be a little off-putting at first, because the book jumps right into the story, and it's hard to fully grasp some of the concepts without much exposition.  Reading the first so-many pages, I can't help but to wonder more about what kind of world this is, why people in the Abnegation faction were so stiff, why everybody in Dauntless were so mean, and why being Divergent is so dangerous.  Just when I was beginning to think that the plot was bland and the characters were being too unreasonable, the book does dish up some good reasoning for its depictions, and after a while, I grew more and more immersed in the book's settings and ideas.  Before long, I found myself whipping through the pages.  It is a very easy read - the book is not very wordy at all, it is very sparing with the details, and the narrative is breezy.  What keeps it consistently engrossing are the relentless amounts of conflict, both external and internal.  It can be an addicting read, to see what will happen next to the characters, or to see what secrets they uncover.

If it all seems familiar, the book does follow some of the tropes of standard YA fiction - this is another tale of a young woman who has to train hard, learn lessons, grow into a fearless heroine, all before confronting a greater conflict (much like The Hunger Games in a way).  However, Divergent differentiates itself well, thanks to its settings, situations, and characters.  This is actually a fairly brutal book; with the characters initiated in the toughest faction around, nearly every chapter sees Beatrice getting punched, kicked, humiliated, put into a really scary fear simulation, or ultimately losing a whole bunch of loved ones.  The world of the Dauntless came off as an unreasonably mean faction (although it turned out that there may be a reason for that).  It got to the point where I wanted to see the character be triumphant, and the book generally did not disappoint.  It was always refreshing to see her overcome all these adversities, and it kept me engaged all the way to its cliffhanger ending.  In spite of all this, I would say that the character development is decent, and the plotting is not bad at all.

The book is written with a spartan style; it shows its strength the best through the dialogue and characterization, but the text can be rather skimpy with the finer details.  It is admirable that the book leaves things open to the readers' imaginations, but I personally would have appreciated a little more description, especially in the book's opening chapters, to become better oriented in the settings.

Even if it doesn't seem like more of the same and doesn't have terribly sophisticated writing, the book is a thrilling and easy read, and it successfully kept me invested enough to keep wanting more.  It's worth a look.

4/5 (Entertainment:  Perfect | Story:  Pretty Good | Book:  Pretty Good)

Book Review: The Melancholy of Mechagirl (Catherynne M Valente)

This short book caught my eye, with the promise of offering a collection of sci-fi that focuses on robots, artificial intelligence, and the human consciousness, with the exotic backdrop of Japan and the surreal tropes of the cyberpunk genre.  The stories definitely offer all of that and more, but it becomes clear very fast that the author's heart and soul is firmly rooted in Japan, and every page is imbued with traces of Japanese culture, myth, and style.  Actual sci-fi storytelling is diminished in favor of the art of pure expressionism.

In spite of this, I found the stories to be utterly convoluted, dense, and bizarre - easily some of the most confusing and frustrating prose I've read since William Gibson's Neuromancer, or William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch.  Like these other texts, Mrs. Valente's work shows a uniquely masterful manipulation of words and sentence syntax, to give each story its own unique texture and feeling.  These aspects make her stories stand out artistically, but like Gibson and Burroughs, the content is so surreal and abstract that it defies the standard conventions of literary narratives.  Thus, the most of the stories went over my head without much resonance.

To be fair, there are bursts of the text that I found engaging.  The opening story, Melancholy of Mechagirl, is a kind of poem told in the perspective of robot with a female consciousness, and I thought it was cool.  Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time is a very interesting 13-part tale that entwines the life of a sci-fi writer with different variants of creation myths (I wonder how much of this story is based on Valente's own life and thoughts).  These chapters include very bizarre but thought-provoking combinations of classical myth with scientific terminology.  Killswitch is an interesting short story (or maybe I found it interesting because it's about a video game; I kinda wish it was a real one).

Unfortunately, I found everything else to be a little too far-out for my tastes.  This includes the very meaty stories of Ink, Water, Milk, Fade to White, and Silently and Very Fast.  They drone on for many pages, but never really engaged me on any level; I found no characters I could really care about, and no conflicts that kept me invested.  Ghosts of Gunkanjima started off well, but I quickly lost interest.  Same for Story No. 6.  I hardly even remember how the other stories - Fifteen Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku and the Jotai, One Break One Stroke, Emperor of Tsukayama Park, Memoirs of a Girl Who Failed to be Born From a Peach, and The Girl With Two Skins - they all failed to captivate me personally.

All that being said, I can't deny that Valente's craftsmanship is unique, vivid, and worth a look on its own merits.  Chances are that there are readers who will love her work and find it more engaging than I.  It is an interesting blend of all things fantastic, futuristic, and real, drawing upon inspirations from her own life, her surroundings, and her imagination.

This book is brimming with art in its purest form.  It's not art that I can personally appreciate, except in short bursts, but the more high-brow readers may find it engaging.  I would recommend giving Valente's stories a look.

3/5 (Entertainment:  Poor | Stories:  Mixed | Book:  Very Good)

Film Review: Rocky

There are those with a lot of brains and those with a lot of brawn; both paths offer their share of opportunities and temptations. For those with more muscle than smarts, the world of professional boxing may offer a viable true calling, but a shot at the title is a rare privilege. Rocky is the story of a man who's given that rare privilege, and rises to the challenge to prove that he's more than just a bum off the streets.

If nothing else, Rocky Balboa is one of the most iconic characters in cinema, and his training scenes are among some of the most iconic scenes in film history. The film's biggest action occurs at the beginning and end, with the dramatic and intense boxing matches; in between, the film focuses less on boxing and more on the drama surrounding the character. It is a compelling drama, filled with violent outbursts and pathological struggles that really help define the characters and make the story relevant. However, the film does lose its momentum in the middle, and the plot becomes a bit random before Rocky shapes up and finally fights Apollo Creed.

Despite some drag, the film does have a compelling story. Most of the film's power resides in the main character, who is a perfectly lovable good guy with a good heart, but is constantly forced to hurt people to make ends meet; when he isn't in the ring, he uses his brawn on the street. However, much of the film is about Rocky rising out of the gutter and becoming something more than what he is; on a fundamental level, the film embodies an inspirational power and thematic depth that could apply to anybody in the world. It ultimately amounts to a full manifestation of the American dream: the story of a man who defies all odds and all adversities to rise out of the lower class and fight on the same level as a heavyweight champion. It doesn't even matter if Rocky wins or loses; he proves definitively that there's more than one way to win in life.

This film is as rough and gritty as they come. The photography is solid and steady, but with some very drab and grainy color schemes. Sylvester Stallone has never had much elegance in his roles, but as Rocky, he works within his limitations and takes full advantage to give his character decent depth and nuance. I always found Burt Young's character totally unlikable, but Talia Shire is cute. Carl Weathers is not bad as Apollo Creed, and Burgess Meredith is awesome. Writing is pretty good overall. This production uses some very real-looking sets, props, and costumes. The locales are especially interesting, because they look so scuzzy most of the time, it paints a pretty grim world around Rocky, which help give his struggles more weight. Bill Conti's music score is quite iconic and uplifting.

The history of the film is pretty interesting as well, given that Stallone's own life mirrors Rocky's to a point. Much like the boxer he portrays, Stallone started off poor and obscure, but took a chance on a script that seemed like it'd be a long shot. That script turned into this movie; this movie turned into a franchise, and Stallone is still successful to this day.

Although there are parts of this film I find a bit slow, it is a compelling story that's well worth watching. It has a depth and spirit that anybody can draw inspiration from; if you have a dream that seems impossible, you can achieve it if you exercise your talents and go the distance.

Recommended!

4/5 (Entertainment: Pretty Good | Story: Very Good | Film: Good)