Mixed media

Over the course of my time away the last few days, I managed to sock away four books and one movie. Some quick reviews:

The Last Legion, by Chris Bunch (1999)
Bunch was one of the writing pair (with Alan Cole) who wrote the Sten series. Reading this book, the first of a series, gives me a good idea of who was responsible for what: Bunch handled the battle scenes, the tech, and the sex; Cole wrote the actual story.

The title refers to a Confederation military unit, posted to a distant world, and having to deal (very rapidly) with both the Confederation collapsing behind it, and threats from local insurrections, alien warriors, and a neighboring warlord. Bunch trots out bits of ancient Rome and recent Guatemala and Columbia, but it’s Viet Nam that takes center stage, as the (sometimes inept, but ultimately heroic) Confederation (Americans) helps defend the (corrupt) rulers of the Cumbre System (South Viet Nam) from the local insurgents (the Viet Cong, with a bit of Islamist fanaticism thrown in).

When Bunch is writing military scenes, it works pretty well. But the apparent main protagonists — some not-so-raw recruits who find themselves on the last ship to Cumbre — never really stand out, especially amidst a cast of zillions, many of whom tended to blur together before they were wiped out at the climax. And outside of battle, things turn into stereotypes of hard-boozing, sex-starved soldiery all too quickly, and unsatisfyingly.

This book was Sten without the main players on stage, and without much of the fun, or imagination. If you’re a fan of the space war genre, it’s just tolerable. Otherwise, borrow it or skip it.

Friday, by Robert Heinlein (1983)
One of Heinlein’s later, less known books, it’s one of my favorites. While Friday’s easy to dismiss as simply another Heinlein Trademark Highly Competent and Highly Sexed Woman, her inadvertent quest to find meaning and value in her own existence and nature is meaningful and well-executed. Unlike most of Heinlein’s later works, the setting borrows very little from earlier canon (indeed, only a trivia expert would spot any cross-over), and sports a setting that lets the author play with his various social and political prejudices ni an entertaining fashion. Friday is comfortable fun, and an annual re-read for me. If you haven’t read it, get it.

Widow’s Walk, by Robert Parker (2002)
The latest Spenser mystery to hit paperback. While at times the story wanders a bit, there’s still some honest-to-gosh whodunnit going on here, as Spenser tries to figure out whether a wealthy banker was actually killed by his dumber-than-dirt younger wife. Everyone has a secret or three, and it’s not until the end that things actually click together.

In the meantime, of course, we get the normal byplay between Spenser and Susan, between Spenser and Hawk, and between Spenser and the local police. It all fits like a well-worn loafer, and is often just as exciting.

One interesting sidelight is how Parker is dealing with time passage in the Spenser series. He acknowledges it in some ways — Spenser mentions a couple of times that he and Susan have been “going steady” for about 25 years now, and Pearl the Wonder Dog is not, I fear, long for this world, grey and deaf and already being mourned by Spenser and Susan. On the other hand, Spenser himself (let alone Susan and Hawk) seems little aged by time, and he engages the same sort of brawling and action that he always has — a bit less, perhaps, and it feels at times even a bit gratuitous, as if we haven’t had our obligatory shoot-out in the rain yet. Spenser doesn’t mention fighting in Korea any more, but there’s still an odd sense of time standing still for him, even as it progresses around him.

The most dismaying part of the book was that in the endless “this book is great” pages at the beginning, one of the reviewers mentions, it’s a great book for a weekend. I managed to plow through it (thanks to a shopping trip by Margie) in about three-and-a-half hours, which makes it a pretty short weekend, and (given the price of paperbacks these days), not-inexpensive entertainment. Borrow it, unless you’re a Spenser completist.

Death in Paradise, by Robert Parker (2001)
Coincidentally, one of Parker’s other series, the Jesse Stone/Paradise one, also has a new installment in paperback. If Spenser’s tale seems laid-back, this one is positively moribund, as small-town police chief Stone deals with the death of a local girl. Even moving half the “action” down to Boston, and encountering there some familiar Spenser bad guys, does almost nothing to keep this one afloat. Jesse deals lackadaisically with his various romances and his love of baseball, but also (and it’s only here that any real tension surfaces) his drinking.

If Parker were really trying, or had an editor willing to lengthen his production cycle, this one could be boiled down into about three or four chapters of a real novel. Borrow it only if you’re a completist in this series, too. Another one like this, though, and I won’t be.

Chicago (2003)
Everyone’s ranting about it! Everyone’s raving about it! Everyone’s showering it with awards!

Well, I guess so. I mean, the music was fun, the staging was great, the whole thing was sultry and exciting and a heck of a production.

But … I kept finding myself being distracted by wondering what cynical point they were going to wrap up with. Would everyone get screwed by the system, or just some folks — and would they be the most deserving ones? Living happily ever after seemed out of the question, of course, especially if it were actual, justified happiness. That clearly wasn’t the message of the story, which seemed to be that everyone takes advantage of everyone else, or at least should — and that, of course, the public loves it.

Yeah, that really makes it the Feel-Good Movie of the Year.

Still, good music, good dance, and some very tricks to convert a stage musical into something that plays well on the screen. I don’t expect I’ll go and see it again, or even get the video, but I’m glad I (finally) saw it, so I know what folks are talking about all the time.