Journal Entry Number Eight

I don't know why, but I haven't felt like blogging lately. More for the record than anything else, let's see. What's been new.

Have been reading the Achewood archives again. The characterization is excellent: he even keeps up blogs for nine or so characters! Hmm, some of the strips I liked the best, in no particular order: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. It's actually hard to choose, since a lot of the appeal comes from having gotten to know the characters, from previous strips (and blog entries!). I don't know, I don't seem to be describing it well, but check it out for yourself. I recommend starting with the archives - even though the earliest ones are a bit rough, it's worth it to sort of build up your appreciation.

What else. Uh, recently my sister sent me her old PDA, since she got a new Blackberry PDA/phone. I've only had it for a few days, will see if it helps me become sort of organized or something.

Oh, there was a dinner with the Aboys at Raj's house last weekend. Great food, some drinks. The Aboys' group dynamic doesn't seem to have changed appreciably, with people falling into familiar roles. It's only been a few years, I suppose.

And before this dinner, we had an exam in the morning, and in the afternoon Jeanne and I visited the huge Fully Booked branch in the Fort. It was big, yeah. Too big, even. I was too tired from walking around and looking at all the books to actually buy anything, haha. There was even a Starbucks inside!

And it's located in an area that's, oddly enough, both upscale and undeveloped, or, well, in the process of development. Posh restaurants, ugly new apartment blocks, the works. The restrooms at Serendra even have an attendant each, who stand around inside and greet you when you enter and leave. Weirdness.

Oh, and, well, an unfortunate carbuncle problem. I'll spare you the details.

Uhh. Now that I have a PDA to scribble in, I suppose I can leave the journal-type (i.e., mundane records) out of this blog. Farewell, and celebrations.

Battle of Corrin

More of the same, or, well, actually, worse. Bleh. Having read the first two books of the trilogy, I sort of felt obligated to read this last one, if only to bring it to an end. And, well, to see how they managed to put the pieces of the prequel puzzle together.

Answer: horribly. Paper-thin characterization (with no realistic character changes of any sort to speak of), parallel plots that also fail to hold together enough (take the entire Arrakis series and the Ginaz swordmasters arc, for instance), and a poor handling of the prequel premise. Why do all of the important events in history and the founding of the influential social groups and institutions (the Guild, House Corrino, the Bene Gesserit, the Swordmasters of Ginaz, the Fremen, the Suk doctors, and so on) happen within a span of a hundred years?

I could go on and on. Plot holes abound. You do not actually get to care about any single character, except maybe Erasmus, a bit, but even then not really. Horrible writing (I feel like I could've done better, even, although of course it's harder to write well than it is to recognize bad writing, those are different things entirely).

Brian Herbert should be ashamed of this clumsy attempt at imagining the history of his father's wonderful Dune universe. Or, rather, I should be ashamed of having been fooled not once, not twice, but thrice!

On a positive note, it is done! Time to go for better reads. Really looking forward to re-reading the original series.