The Amarna Period: Out of the Black Land, by Kerry Greenwood (2011)

ltpatridge's avatar February 6, 2014

One of my problems is that I am an essentially kind person. Or, to put it more baldly, I am a complete creampuff. I have found many more novels and short fictions of the Amarna period than I can bear to review. They are generally self-published and redolent of Dark Intrigue and romance and so forth. I don’t like to punch down. There seems little point in informing the world that a terrible self-published historical novel is in fact terrible. Most of everything is terrible. The world is awash in godawful books. A review that pans a book should at least have a reason for panning that book. The reader should require warning against the book for some reason – the book is overly publicized, perhaps, or the author is pushing forth a series of ideas that only seem to stand up.

Why do we write historical novels? Why do we read them? People want to see the past as it truly was – or rather, they want to see it as they believe it was, which is generally through a quartz-thick lens of their own historical perspective, from their own point in time. What fascinates me about reading and reviewing historical fiction is the possibility of finding an author who uses their own historical perspective transposed skillfully onto an extrapolation of the past. Mary Renault, for example, used a certain bitter British toughness to bring the ancient world to life in this way.

Out of the Black Land has an extremely promising beginning, with a sweet, well-drawn gay romance that will center the rest of the book. The gay romance does in fact have a basis in what we know of Egyptian society. What doesn’t is most of Greenwood’s other ideas. She rewrites the Amarna period to feature a female-only cult of the Phoenix, led by Nefertiti. In the book, the Atenist religion is otherwise misogynist, and Akhetaten was a terrible place to be a woman. Of all the strange conjectures I’ve read about the period, this seems the least likely. The book furthermore suffers from that odd slipperiness of characterization that appears when an author posits that people can just go right on ahead and have sex with people they like, of any gender or status, and be happy to forget about it later. It does not measure up.

This is the sort of ridiculous book that is a delight to read, easy to eat up, and for that reason alone I might recommend it. It certainly got me to try Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher detective series, which was fun right up until I got sick of the Honourable Mary Sue running rings around all the policemen in Australia. Again, we cannot best history. We can only do our best to see it as well as our perspective allows us.

Watching the Creation Debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye

ltpatridge's avatar February 4, 2014

Both sides will claim victory.  The one certain positive effect will be this.

Somewhere, in this audience, is a kid — more than one kid — who was dragooned into going by his family.  This child probably believes.  He wants to be good.  He does not react to Nye’s bowtie jokes.  He wants to show that he knows better than to laugh with the devil.  But Nye’s mild and genial voice, the facts, the pure clarity and wonder of what he has to say, is flowing over him.  Later, this kid will pray; he will beg God to drive away the ideas he is beginning to have.  For a while, this will work.  But the more he prays, the less it will work, the less help he will have in driving away his doubts, his awe, his curiosity about what Bill Nye had to say.  And someday, months or years from now, that child’s mind will flower.

The Amarna Period: Pillar of Fire, by Judith Tarr (1995)

ltpatridge's avatar January 31, 2014

Here is the comforting thing about a Judith Tarr novel.  You can be certain that at some point the heroine will meet a man with olive skin, an aquiline nose, snapping black eyes and dark curly hair, and that he will be exactly the witty and confident yet tender and respectful lover she requires.  In this book, none of the figures of the Amarna period are supposed to be that guy.  Instead, he is a Hebrew, and he wins the heart of the rebellious captive girl Nofret, who is a body-servant to the embattled Princess Ankhesenpaaten.  That’s comfortably sorted out in the first few chapters.  And what are the Hebrews doing in Akhetaten?

This is a novel of Akhenaten as Moses.  The theory that Moses and Akhenaten were an influence on each other, or even in fact the same man, attracted some philosophical and literary interest in the mid-twentieth century.  Sigmund Freud initially proposed the theory of influence, and Ahmed Osman is the chief expositor of the theory that they are the same man.  Tarr’s afterword does not suggest that she actually believes any of this, but she has created a well-crafted alternate history around the theory nonetheless.

Personally, I never saw the fascination of the idea, even when I was younger and had a soft heart for nonsense.  Why should Moses and Akhenaten have to have anything to do with each other?  Why does it make sense to decide that the Bronze Age was only allowed one (1) monotheistic preacher?  Nonetheless, Tarr is a professional, and provides a depth and dignity to the idea, as a fiction, that it does not possess as mere pseudohistory.  What results is a solid historical fantasy novel, well worth a read.

i identify as an ally spirit.

ltpatridge's avatar January 30, 2014

Generate a Tumblr Social Justice Warrior Blog.

Is it punching down to think this is hilarious? I have read these blogs.

The animated gif retort is the best part. I try not to be a linguistic prescriptivist – kids are going to communicate in their own way, and the amount of irritation that the older generation feels is of no consequence to language. But the animated gif, used by itself and constantly, cannot be good for young minds. I am certain that I, as a teenager, would have loved the option of expressing my boundless contempt for the world in sneering gifs of my favorite cartoon characters. In fact I would have done nothing else. I would have therefore have learned to do nothing else. This constant Darmok-and-Jalad-at-Tanagra* business cannot be good for The Children.

—–

* Itself an old-person reference by now.

“Carthaginians sacrificed own children, archaeologists say”

ltpatridge's avatar January 29, 2014

New article on the subject, which has been a live issue.

I studied the Phoenicians in a seminar in college.  Then, the going theory was that child sacrifice was probably Roman propaganda, but in any case could not be proven from the remains at hand.  Now it seems the pendulum has swung the other way.
The lecturer quoted in the article notes: “This was not a common event, and it must have been among an elite because cremation was very expensive, and so was the ritual of burial. It may even have been seen as a philanthropic act for the good of the whole community.”  
Imagine going all in for the sacrifice of a child, for the sake of the town.  We only do this in slow motion nowadays, in small high-school-football-centric towns in the Midwest and South, where the boys are sacrificed to sport by CTE and the girls are sacrificed to the boys.  To be fair, it’s much more civilized than the flame-pit with the bronze ramp.
(Note: comparing things you don’t like to Carthaginian child sacrifice is a very old trope and I should be ashamed.)

My review for KBR of Jacqueline Garlick’s Lumiere (Book One, the Illumination Paradox Series) (2013)

ltpatridge's avatar January 27, 2014

NOTE: The Kindle Book Review received a free copy of this book for an independent, fair, and honest review. We are not associated with the author or Amazon.

In this steampunk YA fantasy, Eyelet Emiline Elsworth, the heroine, is the teenaged daughter of a scientist who disappeared after losing his capstone invention, the Great Illuminator, to betrayal and theft. In a dystopian past-future where daylight has vanished and the lower classes are kept hemmed in and separated by rolling poisonous fogs called Vapours, Eyelet must flee persecution and find the Great Illuminator before her father’s enemies find it first.

The grim setting is drawn with a beautiful cinematic skill, with an Oz-like blend of whimsy and horror that would lend itself well to a filmed adaptation. I also appreciated the sharp, funny details, such as the Ladybird, a flying Twitter analogue that can carry tiny tin scrolls stamped with messages of 140 characters or less. Eyelet, who is also the first-person narrator, is strong and skillful, and the narrative is packed full of action. The plot, which never stops moving, turns on a innovative use of radiation, reflecting the early 20th-century fad for the healing use of “rays” of various types.

It is somewhat distracting to have a heroine named Eyelet and a villain, Professor Smrt, whose name lacks all vowels. Nevertheless, younger readers are less likely to notice this than I am, so let it pass. I was also awfully fond of Eyelet’s friend Urlick, even though that was his name, because he was so delightfully twisted as a love interest. The characters generally needed more depth, more complexity of motivation, and the immense spunkiness of Eyelet was grating until it became indispensable to the situation. Again, this will not affect the enjoyment of younger readers, for whom this will be a wonderful ride. I would give it 3.5 stars, if Amazon would permit it.

The Kindle Book Review

ltpatridge's avatar January 27, 2014

The proliferation of self-published ebooks hides a secret – many of them are in fact quite good. I am always looking for another Hugh Howey’s Wool to provide me with a joyful surprise among the stacks of cheap Kindle novels available at Amazon. The quality, of course, is a crapshoot, which is why it’s important that we get out there and learn about what’s good, and tell others in turn. I have signed up with the Kindle Book Review to read and review new ebooks.

Vangelis, Theme from Cosmos

ltpatridge's avatar January 25, 2014

A slow, sad, gentle song for a slow, sad, gentle day.

Recently, I tried to buy iTunes episodes of Cosmos or at least to watch it on Hulu.  Come to find out, Fox or some other power that be has yanked its online availability, no doubt for reasons related to the release of the upcoming reboot.  It’s hard to figure why this is supposed to make them more money, but there you are.

I write all day. So why is it I don’t post more?

ltpatridge's avatar January 25, 2014

I have been struggling with my health this month. Today, on top of that, I have your basic head cold. I feel stuffed with Kleenex, largely because I can’t take a common OTC remedy due to inevitable conflict with the rest of my meds. Consequently, I am not up to much more than boiling a pot of beans and rice for dinner and playing a bunch of Sid Meier’s Pirates. But that, in itself, is just today. When I am feeling less full of death, why is it, in general, that I do not post more?

When I first started blogging, and on Livejournal no less, it was late 2001. Voices mattered – every voice, every link, every stutter, every yelp. We did not have your Facetube and your Twittergram and your Gawkchat. The noise of the internet was already great, but not deafening, the way it is today. Consequently, the editorial authority I asserted in the voice of my first blog is just nauseating. I shared news and links and photos as if I could be certain I was the first aggregator to bring them to my readers’ attention, and sometimes I was.

No one needs that now. No one needs my opinion on the latest anger-making thing to course through the intertubes. No one needs me to show them the cutest or weirdest or most controversial of things. What is it that they – that you – do need from me, the blogger? What can I offer to you?

When I know the answer, I post it. When I don’t, I am silent. What is more precious, in this world we have made, than silence?