Race to the Sun - Jan 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It is tedious. So’s family. So are you, and it is up to you, and you alone, to do something about it. Sometimes you even succeed, and that makes all the difference. 

Now let us escape into the world of books – in this particular instance, it is Ms. Rebecca Roanhorse’s YA novel, ‘Race to the Sun’. Once more it is a YA novel associated with Rick Riordan of Percy Jackson fame, but this time it has something different, and no, it isn’t the fact that it is a self-contained, one-shot novel, but its’ intro – it is more open and expanded than before. This is important, because ‘Race to Sun’ is a much slimmer novel than, say, the previous installment – i.e. ‘Tristan Strong’, (remember him?), meaning… what?

First, what kind of a novel ‘Race to the Sun’ is? It is a straightforward imitation of Riordan’s own novels with none of the development or the effort that Mr. Riordan had put into his own novels. Ms. Roanhorse did an admirable attempt at this YA novel, yet somehow it feels perfunctory, empty, and pointless – kind of like popcorn for brain, put otherwise. When you are reading ‘Tristan Strong’, you really resonate with the novel’s titular character/narrator and the rest of the characters on their quest/journey; in ‘Race to the Sun’ – not so much.

…As a matter of fact, the issue of scope is another difference between the two novels: in ‘Tristan Strong’, the stakes are saving an entire world; in ‘Race to the Sun’ – not so much. Oh, sure, stakes are high and personal for ‘NIZHONI BEGAY’, her family and friends, but somehow, ‘Tristan Strong’ manages to do the same thing better, and it is a much thicker book too – 482 pages vs 298 for ‘Race’. Okay, and-?

And now we’re back to the prologue, where Riordan waxes much more poetically than how he normally does, talking about the Native American mythologies while being pointedly politically correct, and astute, and whatever else. For that matter, so’s the author, Ms. Roanhorse herself – in ‘Race’ she does her best for her novel and especially its’ main narrator to hit all the right notes while imitating Mr. Riordan’s novels to the best of her ability, with the supposedly added real life factor – ecology and pipelines. Pause.

…I know it’s weird, but Ms. Roanhorse, (and the rest of team Riordan), is beginning to remind me of another author – Ms. Ali Smith, and her latest novels: ‘Autumn’ (2016), ‘Winter’ (2017), ‘Spring’ (2019), and the upcoming ‘Summer’ (2020) are also fiction that is trying to facture in real life, including ‘the president of the United States’, who might be the Donald in Ms. Roanhorse’s ‘Race’ and who is the Donald in Ms. Smith’s series. Remember when we discussed the ‘Like a Boss’ movie earlier this January? How it tried to cruise easily by utilizing its’ politically progressive, (and also correct), race card? ‘Like a Boss’ ended-up failing as a movie; Ms. Smith’s novels moved from coherent and traditional in ‘Autumn’ to anything but in ‘Spring’, and while ‘Autumn’ was apparently ‘shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize’, she didn’t win – a George Saunders did, and neither ‘Winter’ nor ‘Spring’ came anywhere near the more traditional ‘Autumn’ too. Put otherwise, Ms. Smith’s latest novel series started strong but grew weak, and so are the novels that ‘RICK RIORDAN PRESENTS’ – they started strong with Ms. Chokshi’s and Ms. Cervantes’ novels, relatively speaking, and then there was Mr. Lee’s YA novel of space opera, ‘Dragon Pearl’, and then Riordan’s own YA novels of demigods and monsters began to flounder and are no longer as politically progressive and correct as they once were, and now we got ‘Race’, where on one hand we have Mr. Riordan’s own kiss-up of a foreword, and on the other – the novel itself, which feels like a pale version of ‘Percy Jackson’ and co., with the ecological angle tackled on it… not unlike how it went down in ‘Frozen 2’, remember?

In ‘Frozen 2’, team Disney tried to present an ecological as well as a socio-racial utopia, in the best dreams of Greta Thunberg, until she made a verbal slip, that all those politicians who disagree with climate change, should be ‘put to the wall’ (and given a final smoke before they’re shot), and then she went home on a train and nothing has been heard of her ever since – this sort of speech must’ve sounded too Russian revolutionary for Greta’s grown-up supporters, and that’s the end of her as climate & social media darling, eh?

…Essentially, this is the problem with the West’s attempts to ‘revolutionize’ its’ youth slash the next generation: they want change, but they want to play it safe while playing at radicals. You cannot. Either you have radical change, but it will not be safe, or you will have it safe, but the change will only be cosmetic at most, or even less than that. Disney, Paramount Pictures, and etc. can churn any sort of utopic/propaganda/etc. films, but unless they are ready to put up and suffer where it hurts – in the wallet – it will not work. Instead, in reality, as soon as Disney/SW began to suffer financially post the SW8 film, their SW9 film aimed to rewind and erase most of the SW8 film’s impact on the SW-verse. It did not really work, and people are just as unhappy with the SW9 film as they were with the SW8 film, albeit for different reasons – but we digress.

Now, ‘Like a Boss’ didn’t try to pull anything as ‘Frozen 2’ did – it just tried to coast on political correctness and that’s it. Ms. Smith’s novels tried to do the same thing – to utilize real world issues in lieu of the novels’ shortcomings, (whatever they are), including the world’s hatred of the Donald. Marvel comics tried to do something similar in their ‘Defenders’ mini-arc and it didn’t appear to have worked in regards to their sales either, and so that comic series ended with a panorama of all the ‘Defenders of NYC’ instead. Frankly, I sometimes wonder if there is any other city in the Marvel world that comes even close to NYC – at least in DC you got several cities, (Metropolis and Gotham at least), so it somehow balances out – in Marvel, not so much.

And where does ‘Race’ fit in here? Why, right next to ‘Like a Boss’, and Ms. Smith’s novels and the like. Ms. Roanhorse tries to have it all while doing minimum, and as a result, her YA novel feels perfunctory and hollow: when you have read it, you do not want to re-read it, as you do with ‘Tristan Strong’ or even ‘Dragon Pearl’ for example. Those novels you want to re-read, YA audience or not. ‘Race to the Sun’ – not so much… but you still should try it, because real life sucks, and reading novels – YA, grown-up, etc. – helps you escape it, period. Anything else?

Well, yes, there’s a lot of other things to talk about, including the ‘Doolittle-2020’ movie that got released today too, but for now let’s just acknowledge that Mr. Riordan and his book franchise is suffering and degrading; from the truly memorable YA novels it had devolved into not-memorable instead; like so much of American youth culture lately, ‘Race’ wants to inspire, but it doesn’t want to offend, and you cannot have one without the other, as so ‘Race’ doesn’t offend anyone, but neither it will inspire anyone either. Ah well, I’m sure that Ms. Roanhorse got her commission or what else have you, Mr. Riordan got another (one shot) YA novel associated with him, and everyone is happy. Or not, but it is unknown what Mr. Riordan will do this time – the last time he was unhappy after the initial two Percy Jackson movies, and he spoke his mind, and that was the end of that. No more adaptations of his novels, (save for comics, but that is the same thing, really). No one wants to mess with the Riordan-man. No one wants to have anything with the Riordan-man. Take your pick, (and the fact that those movies were just plain bad does not the affairs help either). How will Mr. Riordan get out of this mess, will he be able to get out of this mess, we will not know, especially not immediately, but hopefully we will.

…This is it for now – see you all soon!

Tristan Strong - Oct 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and no matter how hard you try to fix it, it just doesn’t get any better, you don’t know what do, where to go, and how to change it. The anticipation is often the worst, the future poisons the present, you have no idea as to how to escape it, or rather – to prevent it, and you feel your hatred chewing you from the inside out.

…Or you can do what the Kurds in Syria did: once POTUS the Donald sold them to Erdogan’s Turkey, they quickly did damage control by re-allying themselves with the Assad regime, which is backed by Putin’s Russia. Therefore, now they have new allies that got their backs, (because the RF and Turkey have different ideas regarding Syria and the Assad regime), Putin’s critics had to zip it again about his external policies, Erdogan and his proxies have lost the advantage again, and U.S. has shit and cineole to show for all that.

Listen, this isn’t surprising – all too often, even during the Cold War period, the U.S. just tried to pick-up any loose ends, and when it came into proper opposition, as in Vietnam, let alone North Korea, it faltered. Still, it usually faltered militarily, rather than diplomatically, as it did now, and that makes it worse for the U.S. For the governments of the other countries, in either Middle East or elsewhere, it is business as usual, live with it.

Throughout my youth, in the 1990s and especially the early 2000s, the Western governments liked to talk about the concept of a ‘global village’ where people of every race (use whatever noun you want here) are equal. Aside from the fact that the communists’ concept of internationalism was basically the same thing just wrapped in a different package, the truth is that something like this was being worked out by people – primarily westerners – pre WWI…though largely at the expense of the rest of the world, at least in theory. Then the WWI happened and the world changed completely, in fact, it changed several times throughout the 20^th century, until the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, when the USA won and the U.S.S.R. was no more. It was Pax Americana… and the U.S. blew it, but they also sold their concept of the ‘global village’ – see above. Only now that they are no longer in charge of the world officially – Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Turkey, and so on are showing to everyone that that is so – they no longer want a ‘global village’ and are trying to stop it. The result is pretty much the same as it was with the Kurds: the Yankees do a power play/temper tantrum and move out, expecting for everything to collapse and/or for everyone to come running back to them, begging the U.S. to come back. Once, this would have been the case. Now, there are other options on the table, and while they still may not be as attractive as the U.S., they are much more attainable and realistic, and once they’re realized, U.S. finds itself facing failure instead.

That said, there is an exception for every rule, and in this case, it might be the Brexit. Supposedly, on October 17, 2019, the U.K. and the EU made some sort of a preliminary arrangement… or at least a rough draft of one… yay? Not exactly, because not too long before that, Her Majesty the queen Elizabeth the II kind of tipped her hand by giving away that the royal family might be the main reason as to why the Brexit is happening in the first place, and not because of the public opinion or anything like this. So far it is being ignored and overlooked, Her Majesty made sure that the Royal Family stays well away from the Brexit mess per se…until her recent speech, when she gave away her pro-Brexit status clearly enough. Again, everyone is ignoring/overlooking it, but once the Brexit begins for real, it is anyone’s guess as to how the game will go. What next?

…Well, unlike Russians, who received shock treatments/therapy from their governments since the days before the yoke of the Golden Horde and got used to them and consider it a part of their daily lives, especially when it comes to politics, the Westerners have not. They do not like it, and because the U.K. in particular is a constitutional monarchy these days, it means that their kings, queens and dynasties can get executed and/or exiled, the divine right of kings be damned. Seriously, look at the English history, especially in the 17^th-18^th centuries… or, conversely, look at the biography of a man named Oliver Cromwell, the one and only Lord Protector of Britain, a symbol of a very particular time in that country’s history – the time when that land had no king…

The punchline is that Cromwell and his uncle, (or father, I do not remember), wanted to immigrate to the proto-U.S. at one point, but was unable to do so because of some royal law or another. Talk about karma! – but where does it leave us?

…With Mr. Kwame Mbalia’s novel, ‘Tristan Strong punches a hole in the sky’, published as part of Rick Riordan’s series of various authors who publish books set in the manner of RR’s novels… or at least they were supposed to. First, there was ‘Dragon Pearl’ written by Mr. Y.H. Lee, and now – the novel of Mr. Mbalia. The two novels do not have much in common with each other, but both break out of the mold set by RR. In his novels, the characters have to beat the clock, everything is structured around certain dates when various goals have to be reached, or else the characters’ world is doomed. Ms. Chokshi’s novels follow this structure, as do Ms. Cervantes’, and even Mr. Hernandez’ ‘Sal and Gabi’ do – sort of. However, Mr. Lee’s DP novel did not – it is fundamentally a Korean mythology meets Star Trek kind of a universe, when the titular character decided to clear-up her brother’s name, making her quest a much more personal issue than in case of the other novels, and also she is a kitsune, aka a completely non-human supernatural entity. In some cases, for example, in a Pathfinder™ RPG session, there’s no problem with a kitsune character, but apparently RR and his superiors at Disney™ thought differently regarding Mr. Lee’s DP novel, since he was the only author in those series who wasn’t making a sequel – until now. Mr. Mbalia’s novel ‘Tristan Strong’ is very different from DP, but again, it is not built as the RR novels are either.

RR novels are linear, with the characters running around in a metaphorical straight line, all but checking off various check boxes on their sheets: we have been there, there, and there, that, that, and that is done, only this, this, and this is left. DP also did something similar, but much more weakly, at a more leisurely pace. ‘Tristan Strong…’ doesn’t do that either, rather it’s more a dungeon crawl, as the titular hero and his team travel around Alke, an imaginary world, built around Afro-American and African mythologies, fighting, well, a semi-metaphorical depiction of slavery.

Now, let us be absolutely clear – of all the social inventions of humanity, slavery is one of the worst, period. Yet none of RR novels really deals with it, either. His novels depict a fairly glamorous and people-friendly version of the U.S., and neither do any novels of his current entourage. By dealing with such a real-life issue, Mr. Mbalia’s novel certainly has broken the series’ mold and changed something, but-

But here is when we return to the real world, again, and according to its’ data, Mr. Mbalia’s ‘Tristan Strong’, as well-written as it is, (and it really is, especially for a children’s/YA novel), should’ve come out next year, January 2020 or so, not now, October 2019, when a different novel from the series, one based on Navajo/Native American mythology, should’ve been released. Instead we go ‘Tristan Strong…’ and from what I’ve seen, his arrival to the book stores such as Chapters™ has been accompanied by far less fanfare than RR’s latest ‘Apollo’ novel (TTT), or Ms. Cervantes’ second novel, (‘Fire Keeper’) have. Why?

…Because there is something going on in the background of RR & Disney partnership. The first two novels of the ‘Apollo’ series were very progressive, especially in regards to LGBQ+ community, the third novel – ‘The Burning Maze’ – had none of those elements at all – and the latest work, ‘The Tyrant’s Tomb’, had a homosexual secondary character – Lavinia Asimov – whose homosexuality was mentioned but never seen, and often felt about as tacked-on as the secondary plotline in Ms. Cervantes’ first novel – ‘Storm Runner’ – did. And now we got Mr. Mbalia’ very impressive and well-written novel which is notably downplayed, and we get a break in the original progression of the novels, when each of them arrives on bookshelves. Again, there is probably a very reasonable and justified explanation for this change in strategy, but given that real life sucks, I would not bet on it. Ah well, best of luck to RR and his comrades in team Disney, they will probably need it. Anything else?

Well, the ‘Absolute Carnage’ mega-plot in Marvel’s comic books is ending, and it was much ado about nothing – not much is changing in the Marvel comics’ world, though I think that we are going to see Venom fighting a dark god named Knull at some future point, but that is neither here nor there.

Instead, this is it for now. See you all soon!