Where a Roman Legion Finds Themselves in a Strange World

The Misplaced Legion by Harry Turtledove
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A solid portal fantasy (I think it'd be classified that way) with lots of excellent research and knowledge behind it. Four stars.

It's better than "pretty okay," which is what a 3-star book is, but it's a slightly optimistic 4 coming from me. I'm rooting for the book and series, TBH. It's not as exciting through the middle section as I would like, though it's still interesting, and it doesn't have a true ending, which I would much prefer, and those things make it a little less fun for me. It's not precisely a cliffhanger (IMO, I mean, though I admit I quibble) because the book ends at a natural break in the story, a chapter end anyway, where there's a slight pause in the action, but the next book in the series will find our heroes in a tough spot and have to start on the following day for sure. They have their backs up against a cliff, let's say, though they aren't hanging from it...

See, I quibble.

But I like the characters and the premise and the setting and I suspect the second novel will be able to get going with less throat-clearing and world-building. I hope.

The premise is that a whole Roman legion finds itself in a new world (after magic accidentally happens) and they have to learn how to survive there. It is a world that looks a lot like a later Byzantine empire does in our world, with nations that resemble Normans and Vikings and Greeks, though there's lots of magic and other elements unique to that place. The Romans are special here because they have a system of discipline that isn't matched in Videssos, though the author doesn't play that up too too much. In fact, the biggest disappointment in the novel is waiting for the Romans to be awesome, to make a big difference, and though they have a few small successes in that line, they don't kick ass the way I hoped. I think, I imagine, I expect we'll see that in different ways in the sequels.

I like Harry Turtledove and think he's very creative and skillful, so I'm hoping he comes through in the rest of the books. Swords crossed.

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Where They All Are Horrible People

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I find this so tedious. Probably my least favorite Shakespeare play.

There's just no one to like in this story. Cleopatra is horrible, the most spoiled, narcissistic, useless character since Iago. Antony is an unsympathetic, selfish fool. Lepidus is useless. Caesar is no better than the rest. I literally don't care who wins and who survives in this story.

My Roman Empire is how stories set in the Roman Empire are dry as dirt.

Everyone here is fighting for a huge empire, for riches, all while holding on to their honor and reputations, and then when they have a bunch of power and money and honors they... just spend their time sitting around, eating, arguing, being obnoxious. If they aren't fighting, they're out of ideas. Some of the richest people in the history of the world and their lives look unbearably crappy.

So I don't care about them and I don't like them and I'm glad when I get to the end.

Wait--I actually like Caesar's sister who marries Antony. Octavia. She's a good character. She didn't deserve the stuff that happened to her, and Antony's death was probably a good thing in her life.

I'd like to see a play about Octavia. Maybe she took up painting miniatures and had a happy life with her second husband, a kind man who managed an import-export business and taught their kids how to fly kites.

Anyway.

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Where My Review Doesn't Match the Stars

The Mountain Poems of Meng Hao-Jan by Meng Hao-jan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

[Please pardon my rant. I have some opinions about 1300-year-old poetry. :)]

The 4 stars are for the poems. (I wonder if it would be a 5 under different circumstances.)

3 for the translation. Barely.

I'm sure the translator is a lovely human, but I struggle to enjoy anything he's translated, at least out of the three books of his I've read so far. (Fool me three times...) One of those was an award-winning translation, so I'm likely an outlier--lots of people obviously thought it was awesome when I didn't. But I bet you money I could identify his translation of a random poem among a dozen others, and not because I love it. (I wouldn't even have to read it, tbh. A glance would serve. He always splits his 8-line poems into 4 pairs of lines. And they're almost always of near-equal length, even if he has to rearrange line breaks to do it.)

Grrr. I object.

(I am perfectly serious, though less impassioned than it might appear. It's fine. I'm fine.)

I like the tone and imagery of these poems. I like the topics. I appreciate the mountain and river locations found in them and the emotions they conjure. There are chunks of the poems here and there I love, and a couple poems work for me from start to finish.

Most don't, however, and that's what I always find with this translator. More than with any other translator of this kind of poetry, I find myself at the end of a poem, realizing I got nothing from any of the lines. I feel like I'm waiting for the verb that never arrives. ("The blue-lotus roof standing beside a pond,/ White-horse Creek tumbling through forests,// and my old friend some strange thing now." Wait what? Reread.)

I get it, the way Chinese poetry is elliptical and evocative, not necessarily grammatical or including complete thoughts. I'm used to that. But he removes most of the cues that a reader uses to parse Chinese poetry into meaningful chunks. He separates what should (IMO) be connected and connects what should (IMO) be kept separate.

Here, in a poem about oranges:

Clambering into branches, she plucks
treasures, opening hidden depths to view,

and touched at how they grow in pairs,
reflections, we feel this mind we share.

I feel like he could have helped us out a little more. I put a pause at the end of the line, after "she plucks." Oops. Nope. "She plucks *treasures*." Okay. Then she is touched... no. Who is touched? "We" are? Isn't that a dangling modifier? And what is "reflections" doing there, stuck in the middle? She's reflecting? She sees reflections? The poet is reflecting? Or is it more concrete than that? It's a noun all on its own. I don't get it.

There are a few notes in the back for some of the poems, and they help, but not too much.

For those who like their poetry to be like puzzles to work out, little riddles, this is probably a good choice. For those (me, I'm talking about) who like to read poetry and connect with the poet's thoughts without the language fighting back, this is a frustrating collection.

Don't rat me out to the author.

Finish on the positive

I still love many of the lines and several of the poems, and the paperback edition is actually very nice, very beautiful. Maybe I'll reread this in a year or two and take back all my ranting.

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Where Beowulf Gets a MG Makeover

Beowulf: Dragon Slayer by Rosemary Sutcliff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Rosemary Sutcliff is known for her historical novels and retellings aimed mostly at young readers (we would probably call most of them MG, but you could argue YA for them, too). And she was very successful at this. Here is the retelling of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, and I thought it was excellent. Not perfect, IMO, but definitely well done and very entertaining.

This is still a slim book--she hasn't made Beowulf into a long novel. More like a novelette, actually, and with the fine drawings it reads very fast. She has embellished the story somewhat, adding sensory details and some exposition that wasn't in the original, and I love it all. The land around Heorot seems like a place people live instead of a fairytale village. The hall itself is finally kind of visible to me. The battle with Grendel seems more plausible and real. And there are a lot of such details, none of which do damage (as always, IMO) to the original story.

She has removed a couple of digressions, and I think that's wise. They don't really work for a modern audience, especially young readers, and they only slow down the narrative. Otherwise, the whole story is here. The only thing I felt it lacked was a bit more added in; every ounce of world-building she includes improves the story, and I feel there was room for about twice as much as she did. In fact, the story rolls along almost too fast (here and in the original) and could have used a little more breathing space. It could have been 20% or 30% longer without doing the pacing any harm at all.

But what she did really works. The language is still stately and feels old fashioned, but it's nicely comprehensible for average to good readers of a young age. I found it entertaining as an old man who already knows the story, so I'm pretty sure this would work with a lot of kids.

Of course, the only reason I even know of this 1962 book is because it was put on the discard rack at the school where I taught and I picked it up. I think most of the other copies of this book have met a similar fate. Like so many books, I suspect a new edition with a modern cover could be successful again, but there's little chance of that.

Alas.

Recommended for MG (especially) or YA readers who like historical adventures with a touch of supernatural. Or for readers of any age, honestly. I liked it.

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Where Mordaunt Faces the Pirate

The Works Of Sir Walter Scott, Bart: The Pirate by Walter Scott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't really give half-stars, but this was right between a 4 and a 5 for me. I'd rather give it 4.5.

I liked it quite a bit, and found it hugely informative. I expected it to be more tropical, with a lot more time on ship, and was disappointed at first that almost the whole novel takes place on the main island in Shetland, but that ended up being a really cool setting for the novel. (I think it's meant to be set in the 1700s, probably 1720s, but it could be later.) I've never read anything set there, or in the neighboring islands of the Orkneys, and it was an education. Now I can picture them as they were--their stark beauty, the independent inhabitants, their way of life, the history of the people (both Norse and Scots), and more of that sort. I liked how the setting was a kind of character in the novel.

It's also an interesting and entertaining story. Scott often tells excellent adventure stories, and this is partly in that mold, but it's also about half "novel of manners," taking place largely in a few upper-class homes. Much of it takes place during a long celebration at the home of the wealthiest landowner, the father of the two most sought-after young women, and it has the feel of something you might find in Austen or Eliot.

As you often see in a Scott work, the most striking feature of the novel is its characters: the blunt but generous nobleman, Magnus Troil; the witch-like Norna; the reclusive stranger, Mr. Mertoun; his athletic and well-liked son, Mordaunt; the shipwrecked stranger Mordaunt saved from drowning, Cleveland, who is the eponymous pirate; the beautiful and romantic Minna and her practical sister Brenda; the tiresome poet, Claud Halcro; the Scottish reformer, Triptolemus; and many more memorable characters. Though the style is ornate and the tone is romantic and adventurous, I found these characters surprisingly round and dynamic, especially for the time. Even when the mood turns Gothic, there was plenty of realism shining through, and the characters continued to seem largely plausible and real.

We do, by the end, find real pirates on a real ship, with actual cannons getting run out, and townsmen gathering their weapons to defend themselves, and there's some excellent pirate action. But despite this, and despite the name, it's more about eerie Norna's machinations and the strange way fate works itself out. And I was actually surprised at the ending, though it was very satisfying.

There is a plot, btw. Mordaunt loves one of the young women, and he was well received in her father's home, but Cleveland spreads lies that Magnus Troil is too ready to believe, putting him on the outs. Mordaunt and Cleveland become rivals and then enemies, even though they each saved the other from drowning at different times. Romantic Minna dreams of Viking times and loves Cleveland despite (and partly because of) his violent past, though many around her want to save her from a rogue like him. And Mordaunt actually loves the younger sister, though Norna insists it's his fate to marry the elder.

It's good.

Recommended for readers of 19th century adventure novels. This is one of Scott's better books, too, IMO.

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Where Beowulf Gets Poetic

Beowulf by Seamus Heaney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

(I am reviewing the translation, not the original.)

I thought this was awesome, an excellent, modern version of a very old poem.

Seamus Heaney attempted to give the reader a true translation of Beowulf, providing the modern reader a poem as nearly comparable to the original as possible. It is rendered in natural English though still in verse, nearly line-for-line translating from Anglo-Saxon. (The original Anglo-Saxon is given on the left, the modern version on the right. I read the right.) He uses appropriate poetic language, too, and explains in the introduction the work he did to find the right vocabulary so as to give the modern reader a taste of the original while still being comprehensible. I think he did that very well.

He also gave us an approximation of the Anglo-Saxon meter, with each line (usually) breaking into two parts (where you might pause briefly), with an instance of alliteration on either side. For example:

"Then this roaming killer came in a fury
and slaughtered him in Heorot. Where she is hiding,
glutting on the corpse and glowing in her escape..."

We find "killer" on the left and "came" on the right; "him" and "Heorot" on the left, "hiding" on the right; and "glutting" on the left and "glowing" on the right.

He manages to keep this Anglo-Saxon alliteration rule in mind in almost every line, though not completely. You can find a few without it. But he didn't want to twist the language too much, so I approve of his balance.

The language here, as I said, is decently poetic, though it leans toward comprehension overall. Older versions may sound more elaborately poetic, but I found this very comprehensible while still sounding like poetry. I think it's a good mix.

Recommended for those who want to see if they might like Beowulf more than they did back in school. I think you will like it better.

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Where Beowulf Gets Modernized

No Fear Beowulf by Unknown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I generally enjoy and approve of the "No Fear Shakespeare" books, and though this one is not Shakespeare it's just as well done. If someone is reading Beowulf and needs resources, I would absolutely recommend this book.

Unlike the other books in the series, the "original" text here is actually a translation. I can't find who did it or when, but it's technically still modern English although it is archaic sounding. The original Anglo-Saxon is not presented here. This is what the older translation sounds like:

But here in Heorot a hand hath slain him
of wandering death-sprite. I wot not whither,
proud of the prey, her path she took,
fain of her fill. The feud she avenged
that yesternight, unyieldingly,
Grendel in grimmest grasp thou killedst,--
seeing how long these liegemen mine
he ruined and ravaged...

The (even more) modern version, the "no fear" part, is like this:

"A wandering demon has taken him, and who knows where she is now, eating his flesh. She has come to avenge Grendel..."

To be fair, the modern version cuts out quite a bit--it's always about half as long as the original. But I think it does all it needs to in order for a modern reader to clarify what's happening when the older version is a bit dense. Leaving out the poetic bits shortens it a lot.

Though it isn't the point of the book, I still really like the old version, or at least I do when I'm understanding it correctly. Its use of alliteration is very catchy ("proud of her prey, her path she took" and "Grendel in grimmest grasp," etc.) and does a lot of what the Anglo-Saxon original did. There are tons of versions of Beowulf, and the version here does it justice, IMO. If you want poetry, this is poetry. And if it's a comprehension aid you want, the modern translation part is perfectly adequate--which is all it needs to be.

Recommended, especially for students of the text.

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