Remembering – Darrell K. Sweet, 1934-2011

From the time I first started reading on my own, it has seemed like eighty percent of the books I read had covers by Michael Whelan, Keith Parkinson, a small handful of others – and Darrell K. Sweet.  I counted – there are over 50 books on my shelves boasting covers by DKS (see below).  Hopefully I’m not wrong on any of these: I didn’t double-check myself.  But I don’t think so – DKS is distinctive.  No one else’s work looks like his, and his people are clearly his.  His work was always bright, vivid – not the deepest or most profound art in the world – but the energy and life in these paintings suit many of the books they grace: Excitement!  Danger!  Magic!  You have a pretty good idea what you’re getting in a DKS-covered book.

He passed away on Monday, at the age of 77, without completing the cover for the final Wheel of Time novel.  I hope someone does the same service for that painting as Brandon Sanderson has for <i>A Memory of Light</i> – it would be sad to have a WoT book without Darrell K. Sweet, and it would be so appropriate in so many ways.

Rest in peace with thanks, sir.

Related articles

• Bluesun 2600: Brandon Sanderson Blog: Darrell Sweet (brandonsanderson.com)

 

False Impressions – Thomas Hoving

Cover of False Impressions

There is something about the world of crime as it intersects with art that is just fascinating.  The cleverness – sometimes brilliance – applied to creating forgeries, cheek by jowl with sometimes massive stupidities that either reveal them or blind suckers who believe in them; the pervasiveness of copies through time and space; the age-old question of why a forgery is worth less than an original when experts can’t tell which is which (Mr. Hoving makes his opinion on this topic very clear).  In his long career in and around the art world, Hoving collected more stories than, it seems, any other six people combined, and happily among his many gifts was a gossipy, intelligent, conversational writing style which sets those stories down in some terrific pot-boilers of books.

My only regret about False Impressions is the sparseness of illustrations.  There are quite a few black-and-white photos inserted, of a few of the works of art discussed as well as people and events along the way, but there are so very many works examined which aren’t included, for some of which Goodsearch and Google come up lemons.  Ideally, of course, I would have loved to have seen all of the forgeries – and, where applicable, their originals.  There is one example of both side by side, challenging the reader to pick which was which, and yes, I did pick correctly, therefore finding it to be a great idea.  For the rest, I spent quite a bit of time combing the internet, with decidedly mixed results; some of the forgeries that were discovered have been relegated to storage deep in the bowels of the Met, and will never be seen again by the ordinary public.

On a very personal level, this book had an impact.  Hoving talks here, as in Making the Mummies Dance, about handling the old and beautiful and unique, and that inevitably rouses deep jealousy in me.  But he was well aware of the privilege and responsibility and honor of being able to do so, which keeps me from feeling full-blown hate-you envy; he never lost his admiration and adoration of art, never became jaded about the Monets and Vermeers and medieval altarpieces and ancient Greek statues, was as excited by the last wonderful piece he handled as he was by the first – which all is one of the reasons I love to read his books.

Another unexpected effect of reading False Impressions was a completely unforeseen closure for me.  I went to art school.  I did pretty well, and I loved it.  I loved painting, and drawing, and the atmosphere; I loved the smell of oil paint and turpentine in Building 3, and I loved my hands being covered in charcoal dust.  But, obviously, it came to nothing in the end, and that has never been easy for me.  I’ve explored the bitterness in past blog posts, kicking against Charles de Lint’s aversion to office work and Russell T. Davies’s chips, and I’ve never been entirely able to let the dream die: really, I can take classes at the local arts workshop and maybe in a few years … Well, Thomas Hoving went to art school, too (albeit a much ritzier and more society-career-oriented school than Paier College of Art).  He did well.  He enjoyed it.  But it didn’t take him long to realize that he would never make a career of painting.  And that’s where the breakthrough for me comes in.  He confronted the fact that he was a copyist.  He could produce an excellent copy of another’s work – one of the assets on his side when it came to detecting forgeries – but when it came to creating completely original work, he fell short.  Which is, in large part, his answer to “why isn’t a really good forgery as worthy as an original?”  There’s a spark of life missing in most forgeries, as the vitality that makes a masterpiece a masterpiece is flattened out with the need to control every speck of paint added or every crumb of marble removed.  The vitality, the independent life of a great work, was something that never caught in his own art.  He realized it; he accepted it; he moved on.

Reading this set off not just light bulbs over my head but great huge neon signs: that’s me.  I can copy all day long, and do it pretty well (or I could).  I can’t sit down and create something that will live forever, at least not with a brush or drawing pad.

And that’s okay.

Thank you, Mr. Hoving.  For everything.

 

Angel Comics Omnibus – Netgalley eBook

This was a free loaner from Netgalley – thanks to them.  It’s an eBook of an omnibus of the Angel comic book which debuted in 2001 (September 12, I think they said).

Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed in this.  My understanding was that Joss Whedon was involved, and my expectation was that there would be some of the humor and intelligence the tv series showed.  For the most part, that isn’t the case.  Most of this omnibus is painfully unfunny.  There was a story arc for the first several issues in the collection, which does not excuse the silly repetitiveness.

The introduction talks about the problems with continuity – the comic featured Doyle, and by the time the second issue hit the stands they’d killed Doyle off.  After a while the comic caught up and illustrated a grieving Angel and Cordy – but then a few pages later the omnibus jumps back in time and brings him back.  That was not fun.  The struggle to try to keep up with the developments on the show kept the comic from developing its own continuity – this volume contains a randomized series of leftovers and crumbs.  Scraps.

And, also unfortunately, most of the artwork was dreadful.  I used to love comics – I got a box from Westfield Comics once a month.  I can be very forgiving of an occasional awkwardness, or ugly hands (hands are hard), or of course exaggerated superhero physiques.  I don’t expect every frame of a comic to be frameable.  I do, however, expect the majority of what I’m looking at not to hurt my eyes. Most of the issues were purely ugly.  Some responsibility for that belongs to the need to at least attempt to make the characters recognizable, which was only intermittently successful.  If it had been even a little better … But it wasn’t.

The only exception, in terms of humor and writing and artwork, was the arc of “Long Night’s Journey”.  That wasn’t bad, not bad at all – it looked miles better.  But – and this is a spoiler, sorry – there was one massive flaw: the idea that the gypsies had some other motive than what was given in Buffy.  I can’t imagine why they would do this; it’s not a minor part of the canon.  It was a shame – the artwork was so much better quality, the writing actually got a chuckle or two out of me … and then there was that.  Pity.

(From Shakespeare to comics – sorry ’bout that!)

 

Making the Mummies Dance

I’ve read this a couple of times, and enjoyed the blazes out of it both times.  Thomas Hoving – the late Thomas Hoving – was the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (one of my favorite places in the world) from 1967 to 1977, and was responsible for turning the place upside down.  Almost literally.  He brought in some of the great works the Museum now boasts, including the Temple of Dendur and – bless his name forever – Velázquez’s “Juan de Pareja”, one of my favorite paintings.

There is never a dull moment in this book.  No spade not called a spade, no opinion unexpressed.  I’m a little surprised that he wasn’t sued, repeatedly, for some of the opinions and allegations … One thing I will certainly say for Hoving, though, is that he isn’t any more afraid to discuss his own foibles and shortcomings and outright failures than he is everyone else’s.  That’s part of what makes his writing appealing.  When his own horn deserves tooting, it certainly gets tooted (and, again, he is fair – others’ horns toot all over the place as well), but he doesn’t ignore his errors, at all.

I’m still stunned by the sheer underhandedness that went into the acquisition of many, if not most, of the works in the museum, and the veins of hatred and enmity and cronyism throughout the art and antiquities community.  Maybe it’s just as well I never went that route (it was a passing dream I never took any action on) … No, not maybe: I would have been eaten alive.

I was able to visit the Museum in October, and it only added to the deep pleasure the place gives me to know about the ructions and upheavals in its past, the birthing pangs and colic of the early days.  Hoving charmingly, smilingly, pleasantly used any means necessary to obtain some of the treasures in those halls – and, selfishly, avariciously, a visit to the place makes me feel it was all well and truly justified.

Image via Wikipedia

 

Moon Called graphic novel: Volume I

Not how I pictured her, but well done

Thanks to NetGalley and Dynamite Entertainment for providing me with this ARC.  I was a little excited about a Mercy Thompson comic series.  I love the medium, at its best, and I love Patricia Briggs and Mercy.  It could have been a match made in somewhere really great.  But.

The positive: I think the story was pared down very well.  It’s a massive challenge, to take a 288-page novel and morph it into a series of – what, 40-odd-page issues?  The whole picture-is-worth-1000-words trope doesn’t necessarily mean that the thousand words a picture is worth are useful to storytelling in an adaptation.  The script for this series – the first four issues, at least – did a very nice job of conveying just about everything that needed conveying.

Why is he green?

It’s the artwork I have a massive problem with.  Some of it was very well done, but it’s individual frames.  Overall, I was deeply disappointed.  I don’t mean that Mercy doesn’t look right, or Zee, or what-have-you.  I can adapt to others’ visions of characters I love: I adapted to Elijah Wood.  I mean that nothing looks right.  The coyote looks silly.  Hell, the wolves look silly, often – paws don’t quite sit on the ground properly, faces look strange – there is nothing of the beauty or fierceness or fearsomeness even ordinary wolves project, much less weres.  There are a huge number of canids in this story; I only wish someone with a better feel for them had drawn this book – although the human anatomy isn’t done much better in many cases.  And while I’m sure it’s not easy to illustrate the in-between stages of a were’s change, there has to be a less foolish-looking way than was used here.  Also, the book deserves better than classic Batman-style printed sound effects: “GRRRRRRR” and “BLAM” and such are probably hard to work around, but I wish they’d tried.  All of the artwork just seems to rely too heavily on cliché.

Jesse, on the right: Was her hair supposed to be crazy?

Incredibly awkward pose

And I have to say it: Mercy doesn’t look right.  She’s too shallowly pretty, too dark-haired-Barbie-doll.  And she’s the one I have the least issue with, I think.   Adam … I really, really hate what they did to Adam.  Adam Hauptman is supposed to be beautiful, and I see where they were trying for that.  They missed, and hit waxy-effeminate-faery-no-one’s-taking-THAT-seriously instead.  And Jesse … She looks like a china doll – one of those scary china dolls whose huge blue eyes open and close on their own, and which gets up in the middle of the night and kills you in your bed.  Overall, the humans are too smooth, and the wolves too rough.

Chevalier’s Lady and the Unicorn (recycled review)

Tracy Chevalier’s Lady and the Unicorn centers around the weaving of the famous Unicorn Tapestries much as Girl with a Pearl Earring centered around Vermeer painting that work.  I like the way Chevalier works; I like the way a work of art is used as a focus and a catalyst.  I don’t like most of her characters, which makes the books rather chilly reads; there’s a distance kept between the reader and the inhabitants of the book which isn’t unlike that between a viewer and the inhabitants of a painting.  Even when you’re inside the head of one of the more sympathetic characters at a very intense moment there’s still a certain detachment.  The chapters rotate POV among a selection of the major characters; it’s almost like an exercise in writing.  I’m an art geek, so I love all the details about working in the 1400′s here, and the tiny bit of weaving I did in school made this accessible.  If nothing else, it’s a very pretty hardcover, and now I desperately want a) to go stand in the middle of the room hung with these tapestries and b) tapestries of my own.  Recommended, but not with a whole lot of warmth.

 

The Return of the Dapper Men: Jim McCann

Return of the Dapper Men – written by Jim McCann, illustrated by Janet Lee – accessed through Netgalley.

This is a hard book to review.  First, while it’s obvious that the artwork is beautiful, it was hard to appreciate it fully when every page of the digital preview copy I received through Netgalley was imprinted with an extremely obtrusive watermark.  I understand the desire to prevent piracy, but this huge, very obvious image distracted and detracted.

But that aside, I love the look of it.  It’s classic picture book wonder with a splash of comic book visual language, and solid underpinnings of fine art.  In short, it’s beautiful to look at.  Into a world in which the clocks no longer tock, and thence stopped ticking, and thence time stopped; where children 11 and under play amongst the gears below ground while machines work above, and there is no one else; where a clockwork angel watches over them all from the harbor while one of the machines, in love with her, works very hard to reach her – into the stasis, on the echoes of the first bell chimes in forever, come 314 dapper men, flying in on open umbrellas.  All are silent identical redheads who wear green bowlers and uniform frowns – except for one, who is cheerful and engaging and zooms in on the two most unusual folk of the land: a boy named Ayden and his best friend, a machine named Zoe.  They are friends where for the most part children and machines do not mingle.

And everything changes.

With the advent – the return – of the dapper men, time has started up again, and the sun begins to set for the first time anyone remembers, and Ayden and Zoe begin to find their destinies.

It’s a dreamlike story, with a steampunk edge, but with all it has going for it it is oddly unsatisfying.  Without details of the climax I can say that the reasons for it completely escaped me.  With details:  Why did the angel abruptly fall into the sea?  Did time catch up with her?  Why her and no one and nothing else?  How was Zoe her replacement, when she stood not quite as tall as the clockwork angel’s head?  Why did 41 die – and, more, why did he kill himself?  There was no apparent point to it, and nothing gained.  Why did the Dapper Men come back right then, and where have they been, and why did time begin again with their return – and, most annoying to me, why did it stop in the first place and where is everyone over the age of 11?   I’m fine with mystery and unresolved questions – but not when I’m promised answers and they never come.

It’s distinctly possible that the answers I’d like to have are hidden somewhere in the text; Tim Gunn says in his introduction that there are puzzles and anagrams throughout the book.  I dislike being made to feel stupid by what I read, and … well, the closest thing I found to the kind of wordplay he talks about is the place name Anorev, which is Verona backwards, and Zoe is shown standing on a pile of books including Romeo and Juliet.  There are layers of reference there (though a bit facile, in a way: this is no Romeo and Juliet story).  Otherwise … “Zoe” means “life”.  Ayden/Aiden means “little fire”.  41 is one less than Douglas Adams’s 42.  And so either I missed a whole level of the story, or, to quote Nicholas Stuart Gray, “It ducked”.

I like the idea.  I love the artwork.  The adjuncts were charming: the introduction by the dapperest man of all, Tim Gunn; guest artwork which ranged from adorable to gorgeous; and, my favorite, a behind-the-scenes making-of featurette detailing how one page came to life.  It just felt like the idea still remains just that: an idea, not quite communicated.

 

You say you want a revolution …

My horse did not win the Kentucky Derby. I wanted General Quarters, for all the sentimental reasons – and I had a strong enough hunch that I would have put money down, if a) I’d had any and b) I’d known how. Phew. But at least I remembered to watch it – I have managed to forget the first Saturday in May for the last several years – and at least everyone, two- and four-legged, managed to walk off the track in the same condition they went on. The guy with the crutch had it when he got there… Can I please hope for a Triple Crown winner this year? Please?

I’ve been making my way through Paula Volsky’s books. A little while ago I read The Grand Ellipse, the tale of a pseudo-19th century international balloon race, which had a strong flavor of Jules Verne. It was good… ish. Didn’t love it; didn’t love the characters; thought the attempt at light Regency-esque froth was a little forced. Which may be why I didn’t read any more Paula Volsky for a little while, despite my tendency to settle on an author and stay there till I run out of books…

In any case, a couple of weeks ago I picked up The White Tribunal. Wow. Somewhere I saw a comparison to The Count of Monte Cristo – which is pretty solid, actually. In a world where magic is outlawed and feared, the White Tribunal has risen to combat practitioners of the evil art, those who consort with Malevolences. Behavior outside the norm, personal vendetta, interest in non-kosher topics: all these can put a man, or a family, under the scrutiny of the White Tribunal, and that is rarely good for one’s health. Volsky doesn’t shy away from detailing horrors, and horrors there were in plenty – there were serious overtones of the Spanish Inquisition here, and I do not mean the Monty Python variety. The general punishment, or rather execution, for run-of-the-mill transgressors consists of The Cauldron. Which is what it sounds like. Tradain liMarchborg watches his father and brothers put to death, although they were entirely innocent of any supernatural dealings; he himself is spared death because of his youth at the time, merely imprisoned in a pocket of hell. When he at last claws his way to freedom he decides that since he has already been convicted for the crime, he might as well commit it. In reviews I saw the comment that the ending was weak. I wouldn’t so much say “weak” as “huh?”… or perhaps “I think the publishers left out a few pages”. It’s a pity – it had some greatness to it, but I saw part of the ending coming (the part that, you know, ended), and while a fairy tale Happily Ever After would have been absurd, a Something Ever After would have been nice. It’s always a shame when a book’s ending undermines the whole thing.

The cover is by John Jude Palencar, about whom I can say nothing ill. Except that the cover doesn’t quite fit anything I recall about the plot… Still, it’s JJP. I’m not going to argue. Gorgeous.

I moved on to Wolf of Winter. Cover by George Bush. Well, it’s not as bad as I would think it would be if it were by Shrub (or Bush père), but it’s not good. Detail: the coat was of gray fur, not red. And it looks like it could have used a couple more hours under the brush (the cover, not the coat) - but it could be worse.

The book itself was very Russian, in setting and theme. The royal family consists of three brothers, the youngest of whom, Varis, is weak and sickly in a land that all but exposes weak and sickly children. Again, it’s a world where magic – here, necromancy – is despised, and again the main character (“hero” he ain’t) turns to the forbidden for, in part, revenge. The story reminded me a little of a movie I saw a few weeks ago – annnnd cue digression…

Some time back I bought a movie to fill out the “five used DVDs for $whatever” criteria at a video store: Perfume, with Alan Rickman and Dustin Hoffman, starring the alarming Ben Whishaw (whose Hamlet I would give a lot to have seen) (a LOT). I bought it because of Rickman and Hoffman (thinking how odd it was I’d never heard of it), and because it sounded fascinating: the story of a young man who is obsessed to the point of murder with recreating the scent of a girl. And that’s just what it was, but so much more. A baby is born in 18th century France in the deepest poverty, and manages to survive against all odds. The child, and then the man, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, emerges as peculiar, completely lacking in almost all social skills, and in the root cause of that lack: the most extraordinary sense of smell ever born into a human. Scent is his primary and overriding perception of the world; nothing else matters. And one day on his first venture into Paris he is passed by a girl whose scent captures Grenouille’s attention like nothing else ever has.

He approaches her, but between being overwhelmed with the scent and never being exactly eloquent, has no notion of how to behave. He frightens her, she runs away, he follows her – being easily able to track her by that scent – and in trying to control her he accidentally kills her. The death means nothing to him – the fact that he has committed murder, the fact that he will be hanged if he is discovered, the rights or wrongs of the situation, none of it means anything to him, literally. It is the scent that matters, and with the girl dead that fades quickly. He remembers it, though, always, and the overwhelming desire to recapture it is what leads him to go to Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman), a once-famed perfumer, to learn how to distill scent. Eventually he does learn enough of conventional perfume-making to create a method that will allow him to capture an individual’s scent… Unfortunately, this method leaves the individual dead (or, at least, he finds that it’s easier to kill them than make them cooperate) – but, again, this does not matter in the least to Grenouille. No one else exists except as scent. His obsession is pure. He kills thirteen girls to reach his desired result; he would have killed hundreds to get it, if he’d had to, or everyone on earth, and never spared it a thought. It was a bizarre, unique movie, incredibly beautiful to look at, fascinating in all of its detail, and only slightly off-putting in its morbid sense of humor. I won’t watch it again in a hurry – but I probably will watch it again eventually.

And back to the book. Varis is a lot like Grenouille, in a way. He wants what he wants, with little regard for anyone else, and what he wants is primarily the power necromancy brings him. That power can bring him other things that he decides he also wants – like the ability to become Ulor (czar, basically) even though seven people (including five children) stand in his way… However, one brother’s wife realizes what he’s doing, if not how, and spirits her son and daughter (13-year-old Cerrov and his younger sister Shalindra) away out of his reach. Shortly, of course, the son is the rightful Ulor, but too young to do anything about it, and he and his sister go deeper into hiding when the assassination attempts begin. The story divides to follow the children into hiding, and when they are separated it sticks with Shalli and Varis until their paths converge. And can I just say that this treatment of children was perfect: obviously young, without being annoying or anachronistic. Well done. It was all well done – the writing superb, the pacing gripping, the story marvelous. Loved it. And despite comeuppance where it was due, the story does not end on a HAE note: there is a disquieting hint of where one person’s future may lie. Wonderfully done.

And now I’m reading:

Illusion. The cover comes first, because that was the reason I bought the book in the first place, and it was the first of PV’s books that I read. Michael Whelan, bless his brushes, is still my hero. This is nothing short of magnificent, and I’m still proud that I had coffee with the man once. Anyway… the book echoes the French Revolution (except that the Queen isn’t exactly Marie Antoinette – hated like she was, though), and follows both Eliste – Exalted lady-in-waiting to the Queen, spoiled but clever and thoughtful when she bothers – and the leaders of what becomes the Reparation movement, the bourgeousie, the “canaille” – the commoners, the serfs and tradesfolk who are being taxed literally to death to support their betters, who are no more than property or servants in the eyes of those “betters”… When I put the book down, the Reparationists had just stormed the palace, killing anyone in their path, and had the Royals – and handmaids thereof – trapped. They’re demanding the King, and the King, being none too bright or perhaps overly optimistic, is about to go out to them. It’s been a long while since I read this, but I have a strong feeling it’s not going to be pretty. It’s a dead-on (no pun intended) depiction of just how revolution can start – in this case, almost accidentally. I’m looking forward to enjoying the rest of this long book (with the exception of the scenes of brutality I know are to come) – and I think I might just read Tale of Two Cities next. It’s been a while.

One can’t help but think about conditions here and now, and wonder about the possibilities of another revolution here and now. I mean, most weeks I can’t manage to go to the movies because I can’t afford it. I haven’t had my hair cut in months because I can’t afford it. My boss just a few months ago bought a new Jeep, and is considering buying a boat. I don’t begrudge him – or anyone – money they’ve earned by hard work, and which offsets the risks that they take. But the inequity sometimes gets thick enough to choke on. I’m not about to pick up a torch or a pitchfork… but I can see how it could happen.

In poking about looking for info on Perfume I was led into various other avenues, and I find that there’s a film called Dorian Gray coming out this year, starring Ben Barnes, and also starring Colin Firth and Ben Chaplin. Oh, that can’t be bad. Ben Barnes was Prince Caspian, and (from Wikipedia) “is set to reprise his role (this time as King Caspian) in the third film in the Narnia series, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Filming was expected to begin in January 2009 with locations in Rosarito, Mexico, Prague & Australia, with a release date of 7 May 2010. However, Disney announced that they were dropping The Voyage of the Dawn Treader because of budgetary concerns. It was then picked up by 20th Century Fox (teaming with Walden Media).” Huh. Oh, also – “In March 2009, Entertainment Weekly reports that Barnes has been casted to play as Hamlet in Ophelia.” Hamlet with a new POV? Lovely.

And more Shakespeare, adapted: “The Tempest is an upcoming 2009 American film and the 3rd on-screen adaptation of William Shakespeare’s romance of the same name. It is directed by American Julie Taymor and stars Helen Mirren [playing Prospera, in place of Prospero - I'll reserve judgement there], David Strathairn, Djimon Hounsou [Caliban - wow], Alan Cumming [Sebastian], Alfred Molina, Russell Brand, Ben Whishaw [Ariel! Wow] and Felicity Jones.” Pardon my drool. I’d rather see Patrick Stewart do on screen what he did on stage – but Helen Mirren is extraordinary. If anyone can pull it off, she can.

Another coming attraction: “Solomon Kane is a film directed by Michael J. Bassett, and based on the character created by Robert E. Howard in 1928. James Purefoy stars in the title role.” Antony! God, I loved Rome. I’ve never seen him in anything else – now I want to see this too.

Good grief, I haven’t seen a new movie, in the theatre, since – I think – Pirates of the Caribbean II… Unless, was Night at the Museum after that? Still, quite a while. And now, along with those above, and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and Star Trek (maybe) and Wolverine , I may actually be spending some money. If I have it … :)

 

Blatant fantasy

I’ve been reading Fiona Patton – The Stone Prince and now The Painter Knight. I’ve had these books for a while; I can’t imagine I actually paid real money for them with those covers, so they must have come from Books and Company or a church or library book sale. I wanted a meaty fantasy, and these were handy.  And large.

The Stone Prince was written first and takes place a hundred or so years later. Demnor is Aristok (king) of Branion (Britain, thinly veiled), and the high priest of his people’s religion, which involves an ancestor who made a pact with one of the four elements, the Living Flame, and who bequeathed the Flame to her descendants. The Aristok is always the one to whom the Flame passes; other ancestors have some gift of it of varying intensities, but the Aristok is the one who can wield it to the fullest. This particular Aristok is a loose cannon (an even looser cannon than most of a rather unbalanced family), and makes a good avatar for wildfire.  So … why is he called the Stone Prince? Unless I missed something somewhere – always possible, there was a good bit of skimming involved – I don’t remember him ever being called that.

Cosmetically … well, it’s a cover by Jody Lee. I never have liked Jody Lee’s work. Her style is very distinctive: Colorful, a little cartoonish, and in the early stuff at least not very anatomically accurate. She’s not the artist publishers use for “serious” work, but one they want to sell as Action! Adventure! I think I’d be a little peeved if I found out a book of mine was going to have a a Jody Lee cover. (Who am I kidding? If I can get a book published I won’t complain (much) if the cover is done in crayon by the editor’s pet chimp.) I have to say, the main figure here is very well done indeed – he’s beautiful.

But, sweetie? The author calls it “auburn” hair. Not vermilion. I don’t know why it’s necessary to create a gaudy cover that shrieks “fantasy” like this – it’s certainly not a book for children, and how many adults have the backbone to sit in public and read this thing? I’ll admit it – I don’t. But the thing’s too damn long to read in small snatches, and just interesting enough that I didn’t want to start another “public” book – so I used my bookmark to cover up the cover art. That Demnor deserved better. She CAN do it, that figure proves; she just doesn’t.

This, from her website, is lovely. If only she stuck with portraits…

Regardless, it wasn’t a bad book, overall. One thing that did drive me up a tree was the constant switching back and forth through time. The author made note of the time period of the section about to be read… unfortunately, the first time it happened, it turned out that I hadn’t retained the dating of the initial section, in the “present”, so the date stamp of the next section showing it was several years ago didn’t register, and so had NO idea what was going on for a page or so. It was terribly annoying.

Some other aspects of the story took a little getting used to, as well. It took a while to stop having to stop and go back and reread when someone would refer to a female character as “My Lord” or “Duke” or “Prince” – wait, wasn’t that a woman?? – but it’s not at all a bad idea when the genders are completely and unthinkingly equal. In fact, I think this is one of the better examples of a society where there is not and never has been any form of sexism: anyone can be a priest, a warrior, a Companion (concubine, basically, though the author would probably smack me for the shorthand), or anything else, no allowances made and no eyebrows raised – not by the characters within the story, and not by the narrator unable to resist pointing out what she has wrought. Well done, that.

Related, perhaps, is the role of said Companions. After some thought, it comes out as a good idea, if it’s something managed consistently throughout the environment: to try to cut down on the number of bastards running about, nobles take same-sex Companions to their beds. The main character, Demnor, is deeply in love with his Companion, Kelahnus, and it’s reciprocated even though it shouldn’t be by the rules the Companions live by. Which gets complicated when Demnor does his duty and becomes betrothed and, shortly, married. All of which is fine, though yes it took some getting used to for me … but the ease with which all of the characters slide in and out of bed with just about anyone to me pushes the envelope a little too far. No one seems to have any gender-based sexual preferences at all, and monogamy or faithfulness doesn’t seem too highly prized. Kelahnus’s main concern upon the betrothal and its logical culmination is that Demnor will be distracted from him and begin to lose interest in him in the pursuit of his duty – not a high estimation of his own worth or of Demnor’s heart, but then jealousy isn’t real logical. Whether all of this is just among the nobles or extends to anyone is unknown: the common folk are there as background, if that. Which is, in its way, a fault in the book.

Of course, any irrational hatred avoided within the book by removing the prejudices against sex roles and relations is made up for by internecine clashes, madness galloping through the Royal family, and – most of all – religious bigotry. On the one hand is the religion of the Royals, the Triarchy (why it’s a Triarchy when there are four elements I don’t get …) and the followers of Essus (which, hello? Bearded prophet leader of religion? Name similarity? It might not have been best wise to call the OTHER religion Tri-whatever; I persist in thinking Essus=Jesus, one-third of God in three parts, so Triarchy=followers of Essus).  They hate each other, in all ways, and it gets ugly. There’s apparently no living together, but of course neither group wants to go anywhere, and apparently pacifism is no part at all of either faith.

Which means that The Painter Knight loses something pretty vital. I’m halfway through, and I don’t have the highest hopes for the ending; no matter what, I will be looking at it in light of events a hundred years or so down the road. The story is about Simon, court artist, who is an Essusiate, lover of the Aristok and rescuer of the Aristok’s daughter when her father is assassinated. It is about his peril-fraught mission to keep the child out of the hands of her mother’s brother, who has killed her father and doesn’t intend nice things for her.

There are three directions I need to go with this … The first is the one I already began: Simon, as mentioned, is an Essusiate. He and his family and some Essusiate friends are working very hard to help the Triarchic Aristok, and it is made clear that their god, Essus himself, is watching over the girl – it’s not just a matter of Simon needing to help the daughter of his dead friend and lover. And yet, having just read the preceding book which involves much later events, I know that relations between the religions are no better in this book’s future. If anything, they’re worse. So it is with a feeling of futility that I read about all of these good and faithful followers of Essus working so hard to help the little Aristok. The idea is that the kid will be so grateful to them that they spefically and maybe they, their religion, in general will benefit. Well, the kid is only four. All I can think is that either she does grow up into a decent human being and is benevolent to the Essusiates in her lifetime, and it doesn’t last, which is sad… Or she grows up under the regency of someone who makes her forget how much she loved these folks when she was little, and nothing changes, which is even more sad. In the long run, at least, this act of mercy won’t do them a damn bit of good. So … what’s with the deific support??

Another aspect of the book I take issue with is the kid herself. I don’t generally make any secret of it: I dislike children. I worked in too many retail environments to not dislike children. My mother always says it’s the parents’ fault, and the parents are the ones to despise; my feeling is that sure, I loathe them too, but it’s the kids who are the ones being the bloody nuisances, so they’re the prime targets for my dislike. I particularly despise precocious children, like the ones they have on talk shows who at age three can name all the presidents; they are usually far too enmeshed in the knowledge of their own cleverness, and so much of what comes out of them is pure performance with the expectation of the praise to which they have become accustomed. What’s her name, the mini Aristok of PK, is a very precocious child indeed. The chapter I just finished featured four solid pages of conversation between the kid and a somewhat slow adult. Stimulating. Apparently badly written children’s dialogue is much like badly written dialectal dialogue: it grows tedious, and then annoying, and then intolerable.

And another issue: a spoilerific one, this, in part. Simon is captured not quite halfway through, and his “interrogation” includes a brick being forcibly introduced to his hand. His painting hand (not that either hand would be a good thing). He’s pretty unconscious at the moment, which is why I had to put up with four pages of charming childish conversation just now, I guess. Thing is, though, that the book opens in this story’s future: Simon is in his seventies, having arguments with the ghost of a 23-year-old man called Leary and … climbing up on a scaffold to paint. In a couple of minutes it’s revealed that Leary is the nickname for the Aristok (I’m too lazy to go look up his full name, or the kid’s) (everyone has a nickname in these books. Everyone. Nicknames, I feel, are a good thing – a touch of realism. But Everyone. Has. A. Nickname), so I knew chapters ahead of time that he was going to bite the dust (probably would have known sooner, as I think it’s on the back cover blurb, but I try to avoid those for just that reason). And I know now, reading about the worry everyone feels about the terrible damage done to Simon’s hand, that … it doesn’t matter much. As with the efforts of the Essusiates, I already know that in the end it makes little difference, if any. Triarchists (I think I change that word every time) will still hate Essuiates in 100 years’ time, and Simon will be painting in 40-odd years’ time. Whether it will be a miraculous healing by the dead Aristok (though they don’t seem to go in much for healing), or when they put his hand in some kind of cast they form it around a paintbrush (who was it I knew who did that when they broke their hand??), or simply that Simon learns to use his other hand, unless all of that at the beginning is some senile delusion (in which case I will never read anything by Fiona Patton again, because that would be offensive to my idea of storytelling), something is going to happen. The horror of an artist having his hand bashed to pieces is negated from the moment it happens; my attitude right now is “Ouch. Annoying. No worries, though.” Which tends to make me wonder why she would do it to him in the first place … just to create the setup for the defection of one character? Just to shove the brat more center stage and give her the opportunity for childish prattle? Gee. Thanks.

In other words, I HATE time jumps and flashbacks and flashforwards, unless they’re absolutely necessary or very well done indeed.

One more annoyance. (So far.) This book and Stone Prince both focus on the royal family of Branion. Like many royal families, names are reused throughout history. Am I the only one who likes to keep reading the same writer if possible? And am I the only one to be really thrown off by meeting up with a Kassandra and a Mareselus (that’s it! I think. Leary. I think) and a whole slew of other characters whose names belonged to very different people in the last book? Also, it took chapters to stop being startled when the heir to the throne (can’t remember the title of the dukedom, and amn’t checking) behaved in an evil manner, rather than the simply bonkers way of the heir in SP. Maybe I’ve never read a series that jumped times like this within one group of people (after all, one can’t say I’ve read mine, since 99% of it isn’t written yet), but I don’t remember ever having this much trouble adapting.

Did I say SP was gaudy? Pshaw.

PK, in all its glowing tangerine glory (you could practically read by this thing, it’s so bright) with its children’s book dragons and its pouty crimson-haired child and its adams-appley Alan Rickman lookalike hero (I sincerely doubt that even so dedicated an artist as Simon is that he toted a palette around at any point in his rescue mission), makes SP look like the most sedate of Serious Literature. And really? Big blue eyes on the dragons? Part of the expression looks angry – which is grossly undermined by the pink tongue and Big Blue Eyes. This was why I hated most of her Valdemar covers for Misty Lackey: the great huge eyes just automatically throw the thing into the realm of Kiddie Lit. The Companions (WHOLE other kind of Companion there) were described as having blue eyes, and maybe she was just trying to keep them from looking like albinos, but … blech. They’re not the regal, insanely beautiful equines described in the books. They’re pretty horsies.

It’s all such a shame. Her Demnor and the little snippets of landscape visible beyond the dragon’s annoying wings make it clear that these two could have been really beautiful paintings. The landscape is stylized, but attractive. Whether it’s her direction, her preferences, or the author’s, they’re ridiculous. (Seriously, was it a conscious decision for Simon to look like Alan Rickman? I’d love to know.)

The books aren’t bad, despite what all of the above sounds like; I’d say (and probably will say on LibraryThing) 3 or 3.5 out of 5. The characters are a little over-the-top, maybe a little pigeonholed in some ways, but they’re pretty well done on the whole. Except for the kid. There’s a little more bloodthirstiness than I enjoy; everyone wants to go to war. The plot is predictable – except where it really isn’t. I’ve never liked the gods getting directly involved in the action, so that induced a little eye-rolling in me, but she made it work fairly well. My main niggle – as opposed to my Issues – was more with SP than PK: the editor was shockingly slack, but seems to have improved in PK. There were commas misused and missing (along the lines of “She knew that Carolin, her midwife was concerned” – argh), typos, and all sorts and kinds of awkwardnesses that I can’t believe weren’t ironed out at some stage. I always wonder about that sort of thing. There’s personal style – dammit, if I want to spell something the British way I bloody well will, and I won’t have it “fixed” – but the comma mistakes, for example, are just poor writing, and change the meaning of the sentences they’re in. And bring reading to a slamming halt. There are chunks that read like a high school creative writing assignment, in style if not in content. (No high school student had BETTER turn in some anything like some bits. !)

Oh wow. I’ve found another reason not to like Jody Lee. She has no modesty, apparently. Under an at-best-mediocre painting for a Misty Lackey novel, she discusses her motivations and great talent (emphasis and comments mine):

This wonderful painting, done for Book One of the Mage Storm Trilogy, shows Karal … Karal holds a heavy magical tome to symbolize his research on the origins of the storm (She likes the symbolic objects)…

This is such an interesting, beautiful piece, the only painting I did for a Mercedes Lackey novel in oils. I haven’t done another because the amount of fine detail involved was hard to control with a media so naturally messy as oil. (I loved working in oils. Messy?! She can’t manage detail in oils?? She needs to talk to some of my old art teachers: Zappalorti and Davies. I’m gobsmacked.) … My Valdemar covers began with inspiration from Gustav Klimt (Mother of God – if I were Klimt I’d so haunt her…) and this painting definitely carries on that tradition…

I was so hoping when I first saw all of the self-praise that either someone else painted the thing or someone else in the mood to suck up committed the write-up. Nope. Wow. Well. It’s good to be so confident in one’s abilities. Hey! This all ties in to the post title: Blatant Fantasy.

One more picture (I hope these are working) to get the taste out of my mouth: one of my favorite cover images, by Gerard Gauci, from the Canadian edition of A Song for Arbonne, one of my favorite books: