Adam's Books

C. S. Forester, "The Young Hornblower"

2007-05-08 14:10; in Adam's Books, Hornblower; 137 words

An anthology of the first three Hornblower books: "Mr. Midshipman Hornblower", which is itself a collection of short stories, "Lieutenant Hornblower" and "Hornblower and the Hotspur". (That is, the first three chronologically; they were written as backstory long after Hornblower's ascent to Lord.)

These are roughly contemporary with the first couple of Aubrey-Maturin books, which I've also read recently, so I had a nagging feeling of familiarity throughout -- confirmed by "Hotspur" which ends with the same naval battle as "Post Captain". I suppose there are only so many battles you can write about in a Napoleonic naval saga, although in this case Forester certainly did it first! (I assume the crossover possibilities have already been adequately explored in fan fiction...)

Recommended for fans of the genre; Forester's reputation is well-deserved.

ISBN 0140119396. Buy this book at Amazon.

Walter M. Miller, "A Canticle For Leibowitz"

2007-05-02 15:44; in Adam's Books; 143 words

Many, many years after the third world war -- which evidently happened some time in the late 1950s -- the Albertian Order of Leibowitz, a Catholic monastery, guards the remains of human knowledge in the American desert against a new Dark Age.

The book's structured in three parts, set hundreds of years apart, with rather jolting transitions between parts. The overall effect is rather self-consciously arty. It's easy to find reviews that rave about this book, but I'm rather less convinced; the world the author has built is interesting, but he doesn't stay in one place long enough for the reader to get a coherent picture of what's going on -- and by the time we've started to care about the characters, they're all dead and we're reading about someone else.

Nice idea; shame about the execution, I think.

ISBN 1857230140. Buy this book at Amazon.

Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Complete Stories"

2007-04-22 22:56; in Adam's Books, Lord Peter Wimsey; 156 words

A cheap-and-cheerful collection of all of Sayers' short mysteries -- which includes a lot of Lord Peter Wimsey stories, rather fewer Montague Egg stories (he's a travelling salesman who -- no great surprise -- solves mysteries), and a handful of standalone mysteries. The only thing it's missing is "The Wimsey Papers", which aren't really stories as such.

This collection really makes Sayers' skill at inventing mysteries obvious -- nearly all of the Wimsey stories could have been worked up to book length. (Indeed, one was; "The Unsolved Puzzle of the Man with No Face" is clearly an earlier version of "Have His Carcase", albeit with a different resolution.) Many of the stories here are rather more light-hearted than the usual Wimsey fare, though, which may not be entirely to the reader's taste.

Recommended for those who've enjoyed Sayers' full-length mysteries and are looking for a collection of ten-minutes diversions along the same lines.

ISBN 0060084618. Buy this book at Amazon.

Jill Paton Walsh and Dorothy L. Sayers, "A Presumption of Death"

2007-04-06 12:12; in Adam's Books, Lord Peter Wimsey; 212 words

The second Jill Paton Walsh-completed Lord Peter Wimsey book. In this case Walsh has had rather more of a hand in the plotting than she did in "Thrones, Dominations": this is based on "The Wimsey Papers", a collection of letters between characters in the Wimsey stories that Sayers wrote for "The Spectator" during the Second World War. (They aren't in the collection of Sayers short stories I've got, but you can find them online fairly easily.)

Since the letters weren't originally intended as a novel, the rest of this -- including the all-important murder mystery -- has been fabricated entirely by Walsh. It's very much a Harriet book rather than a Peter one, and there's a lot more background and character development than actual mystery-solving; I feel this is for the best, since the original Sayers material consists entirely of background! The overall effect is pleasing; it kept me interested all the way through, and I completely failed to predict the ending -- as usual.

The one detail that bugged me was the throwaway reference to Bletchley Park; it's perfectly accurate, but there's no way that Sayers could have written it at the time!

Recommended. I wish Walsh would write more, but that seems a bit unlikely now...

ISBN 0340820675. Buy this book at Amazon.

Robin Hobb, "Forest Mage"

2007-04-01 22:49; in Adam's Books, Soldier Son; 104 words

The second book in the Soldier Son series. I can't really describe the plot without giving away much of the surprise, but suffice it to say this is an excellent instalment of a series which I would unreservedly recommend; I continue to be impressed by Hobb's talents for description, plotting and, above all, character invention. And now I have to wait until July for the third book -- hrmph!

(My only complaint? The paperback edition is the same size as the hardback, much larger than the paperback version of the first book, so I can't shelve them together...)

ISBN 0007196164. Buy this book at Amazon.

Jimmy Webb, "Tunesmith"

2007-03-30 20:43; in Adam's Books; 242 words

A guide to songwriting by Jimmy Webb, who wrote "Wichita Lineman", "Up, Up and Away", "MacArthur Park" and dozens of other successful songs, and has produced, arranged and written for many other artists.

The book starts off as you'd expect -- how to come up with ideas for songs, writing rough lyrics, arranging chords and melodies to fit, and improving a song once you've got a rough version of it. It concludes with a lengthy section about getting along in the music business, which is rather neatly interleaved with Webb's musical autobiography.

I thought the section on developing chord progressions was particularly interesting; it's something Webb's very good at, and he explains the process he uses (essentially, finding notes to pivot around) in such a way that I could immediately see how to apply it to my own music. On the other hand, he freely admits that he doesn't have much of an idea how he comes up with melodies, so that section's rather unexciting.

This is Webb's own writing without too much polish by his editor; it's messy, informal, opinionated, wide-ranging and entertaining, with contributions from many of Webb's friends and colleagues in the business. I'd recommend it if you're at all interested in songwriting.

There's a CD that he released around the same time called "Ten Easy Pieces", containing his own arrangements of some of his more popular songs; it's well worth a listen.

ISBN 0786884886. Buy this book at Amazon.

Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh, "Thrones, Dominations"

2007-03-30 20:43; in Adam's Books, Lord Peter Wimsey; 214 words

I read all the Lord Peter Wimsey books in my early teens -- I have fond memories of borrowing Sevenoaks library's large-print editions, because the others were usually on loan, and reading them at arm's length. More recently I'd listened to some of the BBC radio adaptations of the books (which are mostly very good indeed), and I was surprised to discover that two more books had been written by Jill Paton Walsh in the late 90s.

This one's based on an outline and some fragments of a book that Sayers was planning to write but abandoned; it's set in 1936, some years after the last instalment of the story, and the authors therefore spend several chapters setting the scene before anybody dies. The mystery itself is standard Sayers fare, with an unusually dramatic (but reasonable) ending.

The obvious question here is how Walsh fares when writing a Sayers book. Well, I can't find anything to complain about; she nails Sayers' style very effectively, and develops the characters in an interesting and believable way. I'm now curious to read more of Walsh's work to see what her writing's like when she's not trying to imitate someone else; if it's half as good as this I'll be happy. Recommended.

ISBN 0340684569. Buy this book at Amazon.

Giles Milton, "Edward Trencom's Nose"

2007-03-18 17:26; in Adam's Books; 71 words

A rather silly conspiracy novel about a family of cheese merchants by the author of the (excellent) "Nathaniel's Nutmeg". It's mostly light, fluffy, entertaining stuff poking fun at the genre with hilariously overextended cheese-based metaphors -- there should be at least a couple of bits that'll make you laugh out loud at the sheer wrongness. Nothing special, but entertaining enough if you find a copy.

ISBN 1405090804. Buy this book at Amazon.

"The Radio Amateur's Handbook", 1977 edition

2007-03-13 12:02; in Adam's Books; 194 words

Published yearly since the 1920s by the American Radio Relay League, this is a reference to the theory and practice of amateur radio. My copy's the 1977 edition. I'm not an radio ham, but I've got a keen interest in electronics from an audio and computing perspective, and there's plenty here that'll be of interest if you're into wireless network, for example.

I was particularly impressed by the thorough introduction to electronics and radio theory; much like Horowitz and Hill, it's written clearly enough that it works as an introduction, but structured such that it can also be used as a quick reference. The book has clearly been drawn together from the work of multiple authors, and is therefore a bit variable in style, but the quality is generally high, and it does a good job of covering all the bases.

The modern equivalent of this book appears to be "The ARRL Handbook", so that's what the ISBN below is for; older editions are easy to find cheaply second-hand, though, and if you're just after the electronics and RF theory then I'd hunt down a 1990s edition.

ISBN 0872599760. Buy this book at Amazon.

"Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney" and "Phoenix Wright: Justice for All"

2007-03-09 11:54; in Adam's Books; 1381 words

Yes, these aren't books -- they're games for the Nintendo DS. However, they fall squarely into the interactive fiction genre, so I feel reasonably justified in including them here.

You play Phoenix Wright, a defence attorney in a near-future world where the legal system has been radically simplified: the trial for each case may take no longer than three days. Your job is to prove your clients innocent. The game alternates between investigation -- where you wander around the crime scene searching for evidence and talking to witnesses -- and court sessions, where you get to cross-examine witnesses and spot holes in their testimony, which must be revealed to the court by asking appropriate questions or presenting evidence.

While the concept's pretty interesting in itself, it takes good writing to make an IF game work, and Phoenix Wright doesn't disappoint. The cases are entertainingly complicated and replete with clichés of the detective genre (no fewer than three of the cases feature the victim writing down the killer's name before they die, for example). Sometimes you can't be certain what's going on until the final clue pulls everything together; sometimes you'll be dead sure but unable to prove it to the judge. You'll also encounter plenty of red herrings while searching for evidence -- and you'll need to be prepared to bluff your way through the trial when you don't have the evidence you need.

The downside is that the story is entirely linear; there's generally exactly one way to do each of the things that must be done, and goals must almost always be achieved in a specific order. This is particularly awkward during the investigation segments, where (unless you're much better at second-guessing the authors than I am) you'll often find yourself showing every piece of evidence in your inventory to everybody you can find in the hopes of provoking a bit of dialogue that'll unlock the next bit of the plot. I also found that a couple of times I had guessed correctly what was going on, but needed to present the wrong piece of evidence first and have Phoenix go through a different theory in order for the right one to occur to him.

In general, I get the impression that the authors hadn't played much IF, and certainly hadn't played much good, modern IF, since they fall into a number of the standard traps. Text is presented slowly, a character at a time; you can usually tap the screen to get it to make the whole text appear, but this doesn't always work, and sometimes you'll miss an important line by accidentally tapping twice (and there's often no way to go back). Only one saved game is allowed, you can't save while selecting evidence or during some cut-scenes, and you can't restore without turning the console off and back on. The connections between locations are inconsistent, and in some bits of the story you spend a lot of time bouncing between different locations, which gets tedious when you have to remember how to get there.

In the cases where you do get a choice about what order to talk to people, the game will often assume you're doing it in a particular order, so (for example) your sidekick will often suggest you talk to someone you've already spoken to. Since you search for evidence by moving a cursor around a picture of the room, you'll generally need to use the standard graphical IF tactic of sweeping the entire screen for hotspots. There are separate but similar interfaces for browsing evidence and presenting evidence, so you'll sometimes enter one when you meant the other. The second game has a number of spelling and grammar errors in the text. And so on; these don't make the game unplayable, but they've been pretty effectively stamped out of modern IF, and a bit of extra work would have rendered the game much more polished.

Actually, I think I would have preferred the game as an early-90s-style text adventure with sidebar graphics; the ability to read text in large chunks and look back up at the history would be very useful, and I'd rather type commands than fiddle with the DS touchscreen. Perhaps a project for a fan remake (or fanfic) at some point?

The game was originally written for the GBA, and the fifth case in the first game was a bonus one added for the DS version. It takes about twice as long to complete as the others, the writing is of a significantly lower standard, it's not consistent with the continuity of the other cases, you gain a new (and more annoying) sidekick, and the authors added a number of irritating new game mechanics -- for example, you have to put the pieces of a broken vase back together. It's still fun to play, but I would have preferred it if they'd done a flashback to an earlier case instead, as they did in the later games in the series.

Anyway, I'm making it sound like I didn't enjoy the games, which definitely wasn't the case -- back to stuff I liked!

I think most players would agree that it's the characters who really make the game. Phoenix himself is joined by assistant and medium-in-training Maya, her older sister and fellow ace attorney Mia, equally ace prosecutors Edgeworth and von Karma (two thereof), hard-bitten detective Dick Gumshoe, the world's most easily-manipulable judge, and a host of other regulars. Each character has a distinctive "voice" and backstory, and you'll grow to care about all of them during the games. Phoenix's friends do seem to get into a surprising amount of legal trouble, but this is hardly a problem unique to the game, and it does provide for plenty of interesting character development.

The artwork is brilliant: nicely-realised manga-style characters with lots of variation and some entertaining animations; detailed and clear backgrounds for each location; and evidence including documents, objects and photographs. The characters are frequently very cute (if you don't feel guilty the first time you provoke the "sad Pearl" animation then there's probably something wrong with you). The game takes advantage of the DS's dual screens to present a full-screen illustration separately from the evidence browser, and occasionally splits a picture across the screens for more area -- good use of the hardware.

The music and sound effects are likewise excellent; there's enough different music that you shouldn't get bored of it during the game (and it's good enough to be worth listening to on headphones rather than through the DS's speakers), and the courtroom scenes are adequately provided with dramatic desk slams and shouts of "Objection!" and "Hold it!". (Since the DS has a microphone, you can in fact shout "Objection!" and "Hold it!" back at the game as an alternative to pressing buttons if you prefer.)

The game is full of wordplay and pop culture references; nearly every character name is a pun of some sort. The writing quality is generally very high. This is particularly impressive given that the game is a translation -- the original was in Japanese, and equally full of jokes, most of which have been transferred (or seamlessly replaced) in the English translation.

One interesting thing about the translation is that it's also a transculturation. The original game ("Gyakuten Saiban" -- "Turnabout Trial") was set in Japan; the translation is set in America. This feels a bit awkward in the first game, since many of the character archetypes and situations are very much idiomatic to Japanese fiction, and gets downright weird in the second game where one case involves visiting a traditional Japanese village. A number of changes to the plot and character backstories have been made to accommodate this, and as a result the continuities of the two translations are significantly at odds with each other. I'm not normally a fan of transculturation, but I can understand why they did it (if nothing else, it makes the jokey names a bit more believable), and they seem to have done a thorough and consistent job of it.

I thoroughly enjoyed these two games, and I'd strongly recommend them. Thanks to Jon for lending me the games, and Ian for lending a DS to play them on.

Buy Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney at Amazon.

Buy Phoenix Wright: Justice for All at Amazon.