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Another Friday Cat Blogging post! And this time, in our study of Fang Shui, the Feng Shui for Felines composed by the ancient sage, Catfucious, we deal with napping:
Talk about combining all of one’s geek and scholarly credentials into one! We know that Shakespeare’s writings are among the most translated work in the world, but now it’s going positively galactic. How the Washington Shakespeare Company came to offer Shakespeare in Klingon Yes, you read correctly. On September 25th, the Washington Shakespeare Company in Arlington plans to do an evening of Shakespeare — in Klingon! — for their annual benefit performance. According to the above linked article in the Washington Post, the chairman of the board of the theater company is Marc Okrand. The significance of this is that he is the man who invented the Klingon language used in the Star Trek films. And it’s not like this company hasn’t done unusual performances before. (Apparently they have also done Macbeth completely in the nude.) So it sounds like this sort of thing is simply made for them. For those who don’t know Klingon (Which would include me, since I have a Klingon Dictionary but haven’t really studied it. Yet.), the actors will be saying their lines in both English and Klingon. And both of them in iambic pentameter. I am so envious of those who get to go! And I love the mixing of cultures and sensibilities. For those Shakespeare purists who think their hero’s work shouldn’t be sullied by this sort of treatment by the Trekkie hoipolloi, I should mention that I spent many (many!) years hanging about the SF&F crowd, even working for eight years on the organizing committee of a city-wide SF&F convention. And those crowds had the highest percentage of Shakespeare-lovers of any groups I’ve ever encountered. These people know their Shakespeare, and aren’t “sullying” it at all. Just having a little fun. I wish I could go! Or maybe someday they’ll bring their work to Toronto. Hm… For a new take on Friday Cat Blogging, we will be taking some entries from Fang Shui, the book of Feng Shui for Felines, by Catfucious. (Published by Peter Pauper Press, Inc., in White Plains, NY, in 2002) Today’s entry deals with Nature:
He runs into these mysteries partly on his own, but most of them are drawn to him by an Aussie-American teenaged assistant, a girl named Joyce McQuinnie, who has sort of been thrust on him as an intern. She speaks a thoroughly modern teenaged dialect, while Wong barely speaks English, and the moments when they actually understand each other are rare. Yet they plow on, Joyce discovering clues somewhat by accident, and Wong trying fervently to shut his eyes to information and bad feng shui that could threaten either his life or the big paycheck he dreams of. In this first novel of what has turned out to be a series, Nury Vittachi combines some of the wisdom of the east with the “Duh!” practicality of western teendom, and creates a very entertaining team. Wong and Joyce go from solving the mystery of a ghost apparently groaning in a dentist’s office, to how an engaged girl disappeared as soon as she chose a suitor to please her family, to the big mystery of how to save a Chinese girl’s life when all the psychic signs and stars (not to mention her fiance) point to her imminent and certain death a few days from now. They also end up going from the streets of Singapore to Sydney, Australia where, it appears, the famous opera house has very bad feng shui indeed. Vittachi was already a well-known writer in certain circles when this novel first appeared in Hong Kong in 2000. He has been a journalist in England, wrote hard-hitting but humourous columns in Hong Kong about cross-cultural clashes, and still writes columns that discuss cultural and other human differences. He has founded or helped to found several literary reviews and book prizes, and as well as his Feng Shui Detective novels, he also writes children’s books. While not earth-shattering, this Feng Shui novel was very entertaining. The concept and characters, not to mention the story line, were so interesting that I’ll now be looking for the four subsequent books to see how Mr. Vittachi develops their further adventures. I love that there is someone who actually searches out things like this. Remember when most covers of science fiction and fantasy novels seemed to feature scantily clothed women (or “better” still, women in clothing that had been torn until it was now scanty), and men with inhumanly bulging muscles and long, suggestive swords? Orbit Books has had one of their interns look over all the fantasy covers from 2009, to compare them to the covers of 2008, and to note the motifs that appear most often. The result is The Chart of Fantasy Art, 2009.  Fantasy Trends 2008/2009 The stalwarts are still there; you’re not going to get rid of swords that easily. Though it’s really interesting that castles and citadels have diminished steeply in just one year. Those have kind of been staples of the genre. And the damsels are still there, but many of them are not “in distress,” which is a new trend that pleases me to no end. Meanwhile, unicorns are pretty much a non-presence, but I always figured they wouldn’t last. The only trends from last year that haven’t gone down are the dragons — ah yes, one needs dragons in fantasy; I’ve got a fantasy novel of my own with a dragon in it — and guns. A trend that has increased, and which I don’t like at all. Still, what I do like is that there are people who look at these things and make charts. Fun things to know.
The story, the second novel among four so far, features Tom Kirk, a world famous art-thief-turned-straight, and his quest to unravel a series of clues that may lead to the hiding place of one of the most heinous art heists committed by the Nazi regime at the end of World War II. Kirk is onlyreluctantly involved, preferring to concentrate on developing his legitimate antique business. But some of the clues suggest that his former mentor and betrayer, Henry Renwick (known as Cassius, the most vicious and cruel art thief in the world) is somehow involved. And if for no other reason than that, Kirk and his two partners agree to cooperate with a British agent in tracking down the clues. But as they go from London to a secret bank in Switzerland, to Germany, to Russia, with murder and danger nipping at their heels, Tom and his partners, Archie and Dominique, begin to discover that there are two separate hunts going on for the same lost treasure. And it’s hard to know who is on whose side, especially as the FBI and the Russian underworld get added to the mix. By the time the hunt draws to a close, they suspect that what everyone is after is far more important — and dangerous — than simply some lost art work. The Black Sun, a symbol of the most secret inner initiates in the SS, may have a more literal meaning than anyone thinks. The plot, constantly leading the reader from one fascinating location and intrigue to another across Europe, is exciting enough to carry the book. There are a few flaws, though, that perhaps Mr. Twining addresses in the two novels he’s done since this one. One issue I had with the book was the writing style. There’s a little too much “telling” rather than showing. For example, Tom might do something “with a sad expression on his face.” We don’t actually see him being sad, but are told that he is. Kirk also doesn’t seem, to me, to be the sort of dashing, confident ex-art thief he’s described as being. Much of the time he seems like a rather mild, bemused person who is kind of bewildered by where all the clues are leading. He doesn’t really carry the tinge of danger I would have expected from someone in his field. And again, as he and others contemplate some of the tragedies that apparently haunt him from the past, the reader has to be told that he’s haunted, because it doesn’t really come out in how he behaves. As with other thrillers I’ve read, this could once again be part of the idea that in such books, the plot is more important than the characterization. And none of this is so blatant that it really spoils the storyline. The hunt through all the clues really does grab you, and it’s this which makes you keep turning the pages, eager to find out where the next clue will lead them. So despite what I consider a few stylistic flaws, I still recommend The Black Sun for a good read, and a bit of interesting education about the Nazi obsessions with art. * * * * * And of course, as is my wont, I came in in the middle of a series. The first book was The Double Eagle, and there are now two other books, The Gilded Seal and The Geneva Deception. Check out the links to order any of these through Powell’s.
It’s about two friends, Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson, who drove around the U.S. for a little over two months, correcting typos on commercial signs whenever the owners would let them. For anyone — like me — who has always wanted to do this, the trip sounds like a dream come true. I want to do this! Two facts really interested me: 1) There were no parts of the country where there was a higher proportion of errors than any other; and 2) The errors tended to predominate on signs that did not come from corporations. The latter fact, I’m sure, stems from another fact: that corporations view their communication materials like professionals, and pay to have them done right, with proper editing. Other companies and establishments think, “Oh, it doesn’t matter that much,” don’t bother having their materials edited, and their signs and other documents end up looking like crap. Tsk tsk! Editing is one of the most important elements of a good marketing and communications strategy! And yes, that is a plug for Shiny Ideas Editing and Writing Services. Ahem. Anyway, this is yet another book I yearn for with a deep yearning.
That element is there, and strongly influences the plot, but it’s not actually the main story. I don’t mind stories about that clash of cultures, but this clash would have been less appropriate as the centrepiece here. Instead, Kate Burkholder, the ex-Amish police chief, wrestles with her own inexperience as well as her personal need to keep her past out of the murder investigation. She makes some mistakes along the way, but her personal drive eventually helps her to overcome them and finally solve the mystery and reveal the killer. From the first scene onwards, you know this isn’t going to be just another “bonnet romance,” as books with Amish themes are currently being described. The prologue features the pretty grim killing of one of the serial killer’s victims – from the victim’s point of view. There is no sugar coating of any of the murders throughout the story. This is a real, intriguing murder mystery, in which the “sweet innocence” that permeates so many other stories with Amish elements plays little part. One thing I still haven’t decided about, though, relates to the style rather than the plot. Readers of this blog will recall how much I loathe books written in present tense. And almost everything in this book, whatever is written from Kate’s point of view, at least, is in present tense. But everything that is seen through someone else’s eyes is written in past tense. I imagine the aim of this is to make Kate’s own story completely immediate, to bring it right into the reader’s consciousness. Everyone else’s story is twice removed, and is meant as a support to hers. I’m not entirely convinced it works, though. It’s a bit distracting and, as I say…present tense. Though the way Castillo did it here, it made me grind my teeth a lot less than usual. That may indicate that for someone who doesn’t hate present tense quite as much as I do, the device could work quite well. I also didn’t think Kate’s burgeoning relationship with John Tomasetti, the field agent sent to help with the case, has enough time to develop into something as strong as it is by the end. This may relate to what I’ve mentioned before, about having been told that mysteries and thrillers are more about the plot than character development. But given that a large part of the engine of the story is character development, I just think it’s a slight weakness. For all I know, Castillo’s editor had her cut out a huge chunk of relationship-developing material right in the middle. These things – the present-tense business and the need for a bit more connection between Kate and John – are relatively minor, however. The story is very good, the mystery really is a mystery, and the ending is dramatic and satisfactory. I’m glad I finally read this book, and now can’t wait to dig in to the just-released second book, Pray for Silence.
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