Books of the Moment: Betancourt's Amber Prequels
Well, where I had hope following the faster paced denoument of The Dawn of Amber, I was pretty much entirely disappointed by the two following books which never seemed to live up to the possibilities promised by the last few chapters of the first and never really build any sort of depth to the characterizations, the politics, or particularly the first person narrator (a particularly loathsome offense in my not so humble opinion). Where the first half of Dawn felt like unneccessary retread the first half of Chaos and Amber felt like filler meant to pad the book to the page quota. Nothing really happens except perhaps a subtler rehash of the retread that was the first half of Dawn with the addition of bad attempts to prose-ify something of a description of the realms of Chaos. I'm not sure if this is just a sign of late in the process rewrites and reorganizations or if the author really was struggling that much to "start" the second book.
Tied to those same complaints are probably my biggest concerns with the novel. In this age of spell check automatons there is rarely a typo in sight, but it sometimes seems like it makes Editors all the more lax and miss more of the editing mistakes that actually matter (which is rather close to the same complaints Mark Twain made about the prevalence of dictionaries in the world of literature). I hate to mock the editing work when the editor is listed in the dedication to To Rule in Amber, but in the end the trilogy stands out as a superlative example of when books need editors. If the editor did in fact do enough work to warrant the dedication then I have to worry that the original drafts must have ...
Lebowski Fest Hits Seattle
While I was in Redmond I wore my Lebowski Fest "Achiever" shirt several times and got a wide variety of responses. Lo and behold the next Lebowski Fest in the West Coast will be Lebowski Fest Seattle. Maybe a few of the people I mentioned it to might even attend. (Coincidence enough the pre-bowling concert will be in The Showbox which was the last venue I visited before I left the Seattle area in the Fall.)
