Wednesday 27 June 2018

Drowning in Nineties Anime, Pt. 37

This time around, a couple of nice surprises meet with a couple of sizable disappointments - and certainly the release I got most joy from was the one I'd have least expected even to like if you'd asked me beforehand.  Possibly there's a moral here about prejudging catastrophically odd fantasy hentai that literally uses the bombing of Hiroshima as a trivial plot point?

Or maybe the moral is that I have dreadful taste and a really warped sense of humour.  At any rate!  This time through, we've got: RG Veda, City Hunter: .357 Magnum, Urusei Yatsura: Inaba the Dreammaker, and Adventure Duo...

RG Veda, 1992, dir's: Hiroyuki Ebata, Takamasa Ikegami

Let's be fair: it can't be easy deciding what, or how much, of a longstanding Manga series to adapt into an OVA of limited running time.  After all, unlike most of their Western counterparts, Manga can tell a single story for years and even decades, and are frequently adapted midway through their runs.  Yup, difficult decisions to be made indeed, and I'm sure the pressure was considerable when it came to RG Veda, the debut of acclaimed studio Clamp, who we've seen around these parts often already and come to be rather fond of.

Nevertheless, the choices made here were still awfully dumb.  And I don't know, maybe there was supposed to be more to come, but that doesn't excuse beginning so deep into a narrative, with so little introduction to characters that mostly start and end as tepid cyphers.  Nor does it excuse the fact that, with two forty-five minute episodes to work with, the decision was made to open with a side story and only engage with the main plot after the midway mark.  Although, since the first episode is marginally more interesting, and the plot episode goes nowhere - indeed, makes quite a show of going nowhere, until its closing minutes and a revelation that might have been a big deal were it not also the end - it's easy to suppose that ignoring the grand good-versus-evil narrative would have been the wiser call.

After all, it's not like it's a very interesting good-versus-evil narrative!  It's not like it isn't something we've seen a thousand times before, within anime and without, and it's certainly not like it's a patch on the sort of complex, twisted tales that Clamp would go on to produce.  Despite a name lifted from the Sanskrit Vedas, this is stale stuff, and only the occasional notion or scene - a magical attack swan, a swarm of demonic butterflies - hints at later imaginative accomplishments.  Nor is the material up to anything very exciting on the level of animation; neither director brings much character, the animation is stilted and constantly off in small but obvious ways, and - astonishingly for a Clamp adaptation - the character designs are mostly on the bland side.  Heck, even the music never rises beyond pleasant.  Taken altogether, RG Veda is a heck of a disappointment: a thuddingly standard fantasy title with just enough spice to occasionally remind you of how much better it could be.

City Hunter: .357 Magnum, 1989, dir: Kenji Kodama

City Hunter is another one of those megafranchises that were so prevalent in anime in the early nineties, so perhaps it's odd that my only encounter with it so far has been the bizarrely-Jackie-Chan-starring live action movie, which must have made very little impression, since I can't recall a thing about it.  But I discovered recently that there was an animated movie, too, and while I failed to track down a reasonably priced copy of that, I did stumble across a couple of cheapy straight-to-DVD releases, of which .357 Magnum is the earliest.

So what was this City Hunter lark that inspired not only countless episodes, but multiple TV movies and a Jackie Chan film of all things?  Well, based on what I've seen - eighty minutes worth of .357 Magnum, plus a random episode provided as a DVD extra, in a pleasing touch for what's normally such a mercenary corner of the industry - I'd say that it's a lot like any number of other eighties detective shows, with one important twist.  Our hero, Ryo Saeba, is a total letch.

Imagine The Equalizer, if Robert McCall was replaced by Urusei Yatsura's Ataru Moroboshi and you'll be most of the way there.  What differentiates Ryo Saeba from other anime creeps is that, when he's not being a sex pest toward distressed female clients, he's actually really damn competent.  And this allows City Hunter to take a fair stab at having its cake and eating it.  There's plenty of goofy comedy, as Ryo behaves like an utter pervert and is repeatedly, violently punished for it by his assistant Kaori (who secretly has a thing for him, presumably because she hates life and herself.)  There's also tons of action, which is played pretty much straight, including an over-the-top finale worthy of any dumb action movie you can care to name.

Unfortunately, neither element is particularly engaging here.  Even if this particular brand of comedy hadn't dated hideously, there aren't a great many laughs to be had, and the thriller plot, which starts out threatening to be convoluted before ending up very simple indeed, is more diverting than exciting.  As for the production values, they're resolutely in keeping with the TV series itself, which looked fine for a long-running eighties show but was nowhere near what you'd expect from a theatrical release.  The result is mildly diverting, and amusing in places, but certainly not a great introduction to the franchise or any real insight into why it lasted for so long.

Urusei Yatsura: Inaba the Dreammaker, 1987, dir: Satoshi Dezaki

Speak of the devil!  Or in this case, of Ataru Moroboshi, appearing in the second of Urusei Yatsura's two OVAs that are long enough to warrant the effort of reviewing.  The first turned out to be a clip show, and a pretty incoherent one at that, but fortunately that's not the case with Inaba the Dreammaker.  In fact, with a running time barely shy of an hour, it's up there with plenty of anime that passes itself off as feature length.  And sure enough, while it's not quite on a par with any of the six movies, this one proves itself a more than worthy addition to the franchise.

The plot largely revolves around side character Shinobu, who seems destined to a life of spinsterhood due to her tendency toward punching any men who approach her into orbit.  However, an encounter with a strange young fellow in a rabbit costume who announces himself as Inaba proves fateful: Lum happens to notice that his trip through the sky ends with his disappearing into some sort of portal, and since he's left a suspicious key behind, what is there to do but investigate?  Soon it transpires that Inaba is one of a bunch of inter-dimensional caretakers who are responsible for all possible futures (the rest of them appear to be actual giant rabbits, which begs questions the show never seems remotely interested in answering) and the result is that Shinobu, Lum, and Moroboshi witness a vision of what might lie in store for them, before deciding they'd rather make some changes, much to the consternation of those leporine supervisors.  All the while, Inaba is developing a colossal crush on Shinobu, while the fact that not a single future finds them married to each other begs obvious questions about Lum and Moroboshi's hideous train wreck of a relationship.

That's a weird, busy old plot, right?  And it's certainly nice to see that Dark City wasn't the only American movie to lift from Urusei Yatsura*; yeah, I'm looking at you, Donnie Darko.  This being Urusei Yatsura, it largely devolves into a lot of running (or flying) about and goofy comedy, but that's fine as it turns out: some of these OVAs went too far in that direction, but Inaba the Dreammaker gets the ratio right, perhaps because it has a bit of heft behind its silliness.  Inaba and Shinobu play off each other nicely, and we get some surprisingly meaningful insights into the show's central relationship, indeed more so that many of the films managed.  And while we're obviously looking at a TV show budget, it's one the creators knew how to make look respectable by this point.  The same goes for the music, which is mostly reused pieces, but enjoyable ones.  I'd go so far as to say that Inaba the Dreammaker is about as good as you could hope for something of this ilk: an amusing, charming, ingenious bit of fantasy that finds a significant story to tell in a universe that could easily feel tapped out this late in the game.  It's probably not good enough to warrant tracking down on its own, given how rare it is, but it's inclusion makes the frequently great collection of all eleven OVAs something of a must buy.

Adventure Duo: Yôjû Sensen, 1993, dir: Hideki Takayama

Adventure Duo (or Adventure Kids as it was disturbingly known in the US) is goddamn bewildering.  And that's not solely because it's a blend of horror, fantasy, science-fiction, and hentai, though goodness knows that's certainly a factor.  And before we go further, I have to state categorically that I'm not going to start reviewing hentai here on the blog, either from the nineties or otherwise, because that's something I have no desire to get into.  But I have a certain weakness for Kiseki Films, you see, whose incredibly hard-to-find releases have a tacky charm I seem unable to resist.  Well, except for their most famous release, Legend of the Overfiend, I can resist that just fine - and wouldn't you know it, Adventure Duo proudly declares itself to be from the creators of that selfsame "classic".  Which makes it all the more bizarre that I thought it would be a good idea to sit myself through this madness.

Oh but I'm glad I did!  Like I said, Adventure Duo is bewildering, but in the fashion that only truly, wildly misconceived attempts at entertainment can be.  As much as I despise the concept in general, it really is so bad that it's good, or at any rate so bad that it never ceases to amaze and fascinate.  The hero has somehow managed to make his home computer interface with a world war two supercomputer, you say?  One possessed by the brain mush of a murdered scientist?  Who's brought his murderer back as a zombie monster for some reason?  But now they're all in hell, only it's a tacky fantasyland hell with sex-starved elves and shape-changing trolls?  And, wait, where's she inserting that magic key?  Oh, it's okay, they're just time traveling to Hiroshima minutes before the release of the atomic bomb, and - hold on, Adventure Duo, are you certain this is appropriate subject matter for a not-very-sexy bit of genrefied soft porn?

Yes, Adventure Duo is sure, or at any rate doesn't care.  You get the impression that no-one at any stage in the creative process hesitated for even an instant to ask those sorts of questions, or for that matter worried themselves about silly things like plot coherence or continuity or telling the same story over all three of the show's thirty minute episodes.  And the result is delirious, in a largely entertaining fashion.  There are traces of the sort of unpleasantness that made Overfiend so hard to stomach, and even with its extraordinary goofiness, there's a degree of sexualised violence that can be off-putting.  But it's at least not vicious, and it at least recognises that women are people, with actual thoughts and emotions, which already puts it head and shoulders above Overfiend in the watchability stakes.  More, it understands that sex isn't something merely done to women, and if we should never have to hold that up as a progressive viewpoint, nevertheless it kind of is by the standards of far too much nineties anime.

And here I am, talking as though anyone should actually go out and hunt this thing down, which obviously you shouldn't, because it's gibbering and terrible and at best only moderately well made, despite the box claiming against all evidence that Gainax were the production studio and despite a surprisingly solid print from the fairly disreputable Kiseki.  All I'm really saying is that, if you do have a desperate craving for a bit of fantastical nineties hentai anime, one that's not out-and-out horrid like the dingier corners of that very dingy subgenre, and you want to have an exceedingly good laugh while you're at it, Adventure Duo is the release for you.

-oOo-

I guess that if anyone was paying attention, I'd probably never live down the fact that I gave Adventure Duo a sort-of-positive review, so let's all keep quiet about that, eh?  And also bear in mind that finding something hysterically weird isn't the same as recommending it!  Which I suppose means that it's one of those posts where I don't recommend anything at all, though Inaba the Dreammaker is awfully fun if you're into that whole Urusei Yatsura business.

Next time - absolutely no hentai!  I promise!

Well, probably not, anyway.

Okay, there might be.



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* Watch the second Urusei Yatsura movie, Beautiful Dreamer, and tell me I'm wrong!

Friday 22 June 2018

Short Story News June 2018

Here's a post I've been holding off on for a while now, I guess because bad news only becomes actual bad news at the point when you share it.  Or at least because I've kept hoping that the horrendous dry spell I've been going through these last couple of years on the short fiction sales front might finally come to an end, and then I could spread a little good news instead.

To put that in perspective: since January 2017, I've literally sold more original novels than I have original short stories!  And honestly, this bites.  I mean, not the novel-selling part, that's great news.  But I know with utter conviction that I'm sending out some of the best short fiction I've written - indeed, maybe the best work I've written full stop - and the creeping certainty that some of it might never see the light of day is pretty gutting.  But what can you do?  Only give up or try that bit harder, and I'm not giving up yet.  So I've been submitting with all the energy I can muster, and more importantly, making a concerted effort to edit the remainder of the work I've got sitting about at first draft stage.  Because maybe something in that lot might fare better, right?

With that grumble out of the way, I have to admit that things could be worse.  At least I'm still selling the odd reprint, and at least I've landed them in a couple of really exciting markets.  The nicest surprise was when I was approached by the editor of Nowa Fantastyka to see if they could buy my story Jenny's Sick for translation into Polish.  Now that it's out, I'm probably safe to admit that I'd have likely let them have it for free; my family immigrated from Poland a generation or three back and it was extremely cool to have that link to what my dad jokingly refers to as "the old country."  Plus, Nowa Fantastyka is an utterly wonderful magazine.  I mean, I can barely read a word of it, but the presentation is fantastic, and the illustration for Jenny's Sick - rather, Jenny Choruje - is one of the very nicest I've had.

But family heritage issues aside, the bigger news is surely making it into a third of Flame Tree Publishing's utterly gorgeous gothic fiction anthologies (after Science Fiction and Lost Worlds).  This one's titled Lost Souls, and the story, Casualty of Peace, is one of my personal favourites, which I'm really pleased to be getting to yet more readers after its appearance in Eric Guignard's excellent Horror Library Volume 6 collection.  It's one of those rare tales that turned out just the way I intended, after a gestation period of months or maybe even years, and I'll be thrilled to see it between lavishly engraved hardback covers.  I'm not sure of a release date on that yet, but I'd guess it'll be towards the back end of the year; in the meantime, there's a full table of contents here.

And, thank goodness, there's always Digital Fiction Publishing!  I've already had one story out with them this year - Twitcher, in the Heinous Concoction horror anthology released back in February - and I've a couple more pending.  Again on the horror front, Great Black Wave will be coming up at some point, as will another personal favourite, my science-fiction tale of well-intentioned alien oppressors Free Radical.

Last up, I guess I should admit that there are one or two other things on the horizon, and those are original pieces.  But I don't know that I'm meant to be talking about them yet, so I won't.  Still, I do sincerely hope that things turn around before this year is out, because the way it's going, it's getting increasingly untenable to keep pouring time into writing and trying to sell short fiction - and it would break my heart to give it up.  So on that front as on every other, here's to the second half of 2018 sucking less than the first has!

Monday 11 June 2018

Drowning in Nineties Anime, Pt. 36

Apparently I've been watching a lot of supernatural horror anime lately, which might seem odd on the face of it, since I'm not always that enthusiastic about the stuff.  But there's just so damn much!  How do you avoid it?  And also, in fairness, for someone who's not a massive horror fan these days, I've actually found a fair number of titles that I'm fond of.  Which makes it less surprising, I guess, that here we are with four releases that on the face of things are pretty similar and yet I've good words to say about all of them.

Plus, it's an excuse for another theme post!  This time around: Blood Reign: Curse of the Yoma, Ninja ResurrectionSpirit Warrior: Castle of Illusion and Guardian of Darkness...

Blood Reign: Curse of the Yoma, 1989, dir: Takashi Annô

Horror!  Ninjas!  Demons!  Medieval Japan!  At first glance, Blood Reign: Curse of the Yoma is nothing if not familiar.  Coming six years after the classic Ninja Scroll, the feature-length, two part OVA is definitely mining similar territory, with its shinobi protagonist tracking the childhood friend who betrayed him through a landscape infested with war, occult monstrosities, and general malaise.  Chances are, if you've seen any vintage anime, you've seen something a bit like this.

However, if Blood Reign has a most valuable player, it's certainly director Annô, who treats his none-too-fresh material with far more gravitas than it probably deserves.  He doesn't pull back from the pulpier elements: it's extraordinarily gory in places, all the more so because of the unflinchingly clinical manner in which the blood and guts are displayed.  But whenever Blood Reign isn't being flat-out horror, or action, or a meld of the two, it's up to greatly more interesting things.  For something so unrestrainedly violent, it's surprising not only how much Annô is invested in building atmosphere but how often he succeeds.  There's genuine creepiness here, and it makes the horror elements a good deal more satisfying.  You suspect that in his heart Annô was more interested in making a straight-up period drama, and one film I was frequently reminded of was Mizoguchi's masterpiece Ugetsu Monogatari.

Now, Blood Reign ain't that.  But in its better moments, it's at least exploring similar territory.  And though the animation isn't top-notch, with a noticeable reliance on stills, its above par on a frequent basis, rising to the challenges of its material; likewise, the artwork is generally superb, and the intricate backgrounds are a big part of that above-mentioned creepiness.  There's a real sense of a world gone fundamentally wrong that seeps into every crack and corner, and Annô's stubborn insistence that this is all terribly important pushes elements that could be campy close to being genuinely nightmarish in places.  Really, the only production element that wildly drops the ball is the score, which is every bit as incongruous as you'd expect eighties synthesisers to be.  That said, though it could hardly be a worse fit, I did kind of adore the ending theme.

Blood Reign was released as part of ADV's Essential Anime series, and they were fibbing: it's by no means essential.  But it's not that far off; I just wish there was a little more meat on its bones.  Annô's flourishes and certain elements of the narrative, including some disorientating time skips and the presence of two characters who appear to be the same person despite the fact that they can't possibly be, hint at a deeper narrative than the straightforward tale of good versus evil on offer.  Nonetheless, let's not get too sniffy.  A mediocre story told well - sometimes exceptionally well - is still better than being kicked in the head by a giant aquatic demon horse.

Because, oh right, that's a thing that happens in Blood Reign.

Ninja Resurrection, 1997, dir: Yasunori Urata

There's a lot of hatred out there for Ninja Resurrection, for what at first glance seems a highly unfair reason: essentially, the established logic is that publisher ADV purposefully misled fans into believing this was a sequel to Ninja Scroll, by giving it a title with the word Ninja in and not taking sufficient care to establish that the protagonist isn't precisely the same as the one in the earlier work (though that Jubei was in fact a deliberate reference to the historical figure presented here.)  Am I the only person who finds this tenuous?  I mean, I don't doubt that ADV - or for that matter, the original creators - were eager to emphasise similarities with a film that had proved to be one of the biggest breakthrough anime in the West, but I've seen vastly more shameful attempts to cash-in.

None of which is to say that there aren't reasons to hate on Ninja Resurrection.  And the biggest is one we've seen around these parts far too often before: it doesn't end.  I mean, there isn't the faintest shadow of closure, and the second of the two OVA episodes presented here is effectively all setup, with no hint of the self-contained narrative that the first manages to offer.  And this I found more annoying than usual because I really quite liked what there is.

Heck, by the end of that first part, I was willing to go further.  It's an appealingly grotesque slice of warped history, centered around the real-life Shimabara rebellion, which saw peasants and ronin turning against the Tokugawa government in resistance to tax hikes and religious persecution of the local Catholic population.  The latter is the focus here, though as with a lot of anime, Christianity ends up being portrayed in a manner bound to rub a few Western viewers up the wrong way.  Personally I was entirely down with its bewildering central conceit, whereby Jesus returns in seventeenth-century Japan, with the caveat that if his plans go awry he's doomed to turn into the Antichrist instead.  I don't know if I was just in the right mood, but the fact that this story was presented with some genuinely outrageous gore didn't bother me either.  It helped that the character designs are appealingly different, with a style that put me in mind of Mike (Hellboy) Mignola's work.  Really, it felt less like a rip-off of Ninja Scroll and more like a sleazy Italian-style bit of eighties Grand Guignol, à la Demons or The Church, only with Mignola's art style and a truly outrageous ninja battle climax.  Again, maybe I was in the right mindset for such madness, but that sat fine with me.

However, the second part is more of a mixed proposition.  For a start, the character designs get very weird indeed, with a more traditional, big-eyed anime aesthetic rubbing up against the stark angularity of what's been established.  Moreover, in two set piece sequences, the violence is directed at women in a fashion that recalls some of anime's nastier corners.  In fairness, the second of those scenes, while gobsmackingly unpleasant, is a genuinely inspired bit of horror; but the first is unnecessary and crass on practically a Legend of the Overfiend level.  And as I said, there's no real narrative, only odds and sods of story clearly setting up a larger plot.  It's fine, and the gore is effective if that's your bag, but it lacks the impact of part one.

With all of that said, and even with the severe lack of a conclusion, I'm inclined to call out those contemporary reviews for their bad practice - review what something is, not what you thought it might be, dumbass! - and suggest that, if you want some nineties horror anime and have a strong stomach, you could do worse than Ninja Resurrection.  It pulls no punches, it has style to spare, and at one point a guy transforms into an armoured missile to try and take down a giant stone dragon summoned by Christ, which I'll warrant you're not likely to see anywhere else.  Sure, it's not Ninja Scroll, and if I'm honest it's not a patch on that seminal work, but you can grab it cheaply and there's nothing else quite like it.

Spirit Warrior: Castle of Illusion, 1988, dir: Ichirô Itano

Having been underwhelmed by the first of these Spirit Warrior releases, Festival of Ogres' Revival, I decided to give the franchise - which spans a further three volumes after this one - a last try before condemning it to the lowest ranks of the slew of supernatural horror anime that came out of Japan in the eighties and nineties.  The good news is, I'm glad I did.  The bad news is, I now really want to track down the remainder, which are absurdly hard to find.

Still, Spirit Warrior: Castle of Illusion (which has nothing to do with the Mickey Mouse game of the same name, that I can tell!) is satisfying enough in its own right.  It's more or less the same thing as the first release, with heroic Buddhists teaming up to fire off what amount to magic spells in an action-heavy quest to quell an ancient evil, which this time turns out to be Oda Nobunaga, who's popped up in so much damn anime by this point that I envy him his agent.  Only, every element works better this time through.  The plot is busier, the action is more exciting, and the horror is a good deal freakier.  One monster in particular, apparently designed by special effects genius Screaming Mad George, is legitimately fantastic, and gets the best of some frequently strong animation.  The titular castle is another standout, a horror of organic architecture that we first see rising from a lake of blood and never stops being weird and wrong.  Even the running time is a touch longer, scraping past the mark where it feels like a proper film with a real beginning, middle, and end.

Needless to say, it's not perfect.  The U. S. Manga Corps release has a tendency to look like crap in the talky sequences, which may or may not be a fault with the original print, but in any case is hard to ignore.  And there's next to none of the sorts of thing you'd generally expect from a film, even a dumb one that basically wants to showcase monks fighting icky monsters: seek for meaningful characterization or plot development and you'll come away empty-handed.  Still, within its narrow niche, Spirit Warrior: Castle of Illusion manages a solid hour of entertainment, with enough excellent scenes and genuine bizarreness to stand out from the crowded pack.  It's a keeper and it turned me around on the whole series, so I guess that's a definite recommendation.

Guardian of Darkness, 1990, dir: Osamu Yamasaki

Guardian of Darkness is full of surprises.  Which is not to say it's full of originality.  Its visible influences are many and obvious, and at times it feels like a patchwork quilt of popular Japanese properties and subgenres.  There's a bit of Ultraman, a hefty dollop of The Guyver, for a while it looks like it plans to be a high school drama, and all of that's built upon a spine of horror-tinged dark fantasy that recalls a whole heck of a lot of shows from the nineties in which events out of history or mythology threaten the present.  There's nothing truly novel in a story that finds two teens possessed into fighting on opposite sides of an ancient conflict, with on the one hand shy, bullied Terumi being empowered by wrathful dragons and on the other the boy she has a huge crush on, Koichi, learning that he possesses the power and cool, size-changing bio-mechanical armour to stop them.

All of this rattles along merrily for the first of three lengthy episodes, but the first sign that something more interesting might be going on comes when those forty-five minutes wrap up a good chunk of what looked as if it was going to be the plot.  Sure enough, by part two we have a radically changed status quo and a renewed focus on character over action, as well as a widening cast and scope.  The elements remain familiar, but none are used in quite the fashion you might expect.  And as the show progresses, the more apparent it becomes that it's at least trying to carve out a distinctive corner for itself, even if it's not mustering any brand-new ingredients.

To some extent, that's Guardian of Darkness all over.  It does nothing amazingly well, nor is there any aspect that lets it down significantly.  The characters are interesting, even if Koichi threatens to be the sort of overly moody teenage male that populates so much of anime; Terumi gets to grow considerably and in satisfying ways, taking over the story in a manner I wouldn't have dared hope for based on her early scenes.  The design work and animation is solid without being great, though there are some lovely backgrounds and Yamasaki uses his budget to good effect.  Seikou Nagaoka's score has some terrifically minimalistic pieces for the slower, more atmospheric scenes, but grows generic when the action kicks off.  The only real letdown is another dire print from U. S. Manga Corps, which is so dark and muddy that it's often an active effort to keep track of what's going on.  Nevertheless, Guardian of Darkness gets a solid thumbs up: it may not be original or terribly outstanding, but it hits enough unexpected notes, develops in intriguing enough ways, and combines its elements differently enough that it ends up feeling unexpectedly fresh.

-oOo-

I guess the standout here was Blood Reign, which perhaps was the only release not getting props for being better than I expected; it's genuinely a bit special, if frustratingly imperfect, and I'm still listening to that awesome, utterly inappropriate closing track.  As for the rest, it's well worth keeping an eye out for and diving on a reasonably priced copy - or in the case of Ninja Resurrection, grabbing for a pound or two and watching the first episode when there's nothing that takes your fancy on Netflix.

Next time, perhaps we'll get the post that Blogger decided to delete and autosave over, if I can bring myself to rewrite it!  Or if not, one of the seven or so others I seem to have on the go!  Honestly, this whole thing has got a bit out of hand, he says, about three years too late...



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Saturday 2 June 2018

The Black River Chronicles Book 3: May Progress Report

I swear I'm not going to get into monthly reports on the new Black River Chronicles book or anything
like that.  But now that we're out of May, I did want to share some good news while there's good news to be shared.  I'm considerably past the halfway point with the second draft now, and things are going well, despite my concerns around turning in a way-too-long first draft.  However many books you have under your belt, it's a little scary trying to wrangle a bloated novel into shape: there are all those words, and many of them are the wrong ones, and they're going to need carving out or else replacing with ones that work.  Plus, with all that dead wood, it's hard to see what shape the trees are in.

But two thirds of the way through and the trees are looking pretty respectable.  Eye of the Observer is a very different book to either Level One or The Ursvaal Exchange, for a whole variety of reasons.  It kicks off with a bang, both literal and metaphorical, and a great deal of what follows is spent picking up the pieces of what's gone badly wrong, though of course our intrepid gang don't necessarily realise that's what they're doing.  From their perspective, they're mostly just muddling through, and even more so than usual, Durren tends to be oblivious to the bigger questions.  That leaves the sort of narrative where it's tough to see the exact shape of what's been going on until after it's happened ... which, frankly, isn't easy to get right!  There's no neat three act structure here, but there's a lot ticking away in the background.

That flabby first draft made it difficult to judge whether crucial character beats and plot points and those sneaky bits of foreshadowing were falling in the right places.  Now, having already hacked away the equivalent of a couple of chapters, what remains is a good deal more reassuring.  The underlying story is definitely the one I set out to tell back at the end of last year, and that's a story I'm still really excited for.  In particular, I love where this book takes Arein, who, between you and me, has always been sort of my favourite character.  And isn't your job as a writer to put your favourite characters through the wringer without mercy?  I think it is.  So while I feel bad about what our resident wizard has to endure, I don't regret it for an instant.

Of course, I've still got the better part of a hundred pages to go, and the easier stretch is behind me.  There's definitely some significant re-writing ahead.  But there again, I'm feeling confident: I know where I've gone wrong and what needs changing.  In particular, I know what needs fixing for the big climax - and it's a huge big multiple-chapter-spanning climax this time! - to really come together.  So while the next month isn't likely to be easy, I'm not so nervous anymore.  There's a long way to go before our end-of-the-year release date, but I'm confident that come December, Eye of the Observer will be the book I've always hoped it would be.