Book Trilogy Review: The First Law by Joe Abercrombie

And after all the efforts, all the sacrifices, all the scheming, and plotting, and killing... All that pain, for what? --Before They Are Hanged, by Joe Abercrombie

Long-time readers know how this works: long rambling preamble interwoven with personal history, a summary of the book (or trilogy, in this case), my immediate opinion,and a brief (or "brief," in this case) discussion of wider issues. As always, spoilers abound, so reader beware.

I've read fantasy literature for a long time. As a child, I read and re-read my parents' boxed sets of The Chronicles of Narnia and Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles so many times the books literally fell apart. I've read all fourteen of the L. Frank Baum-penned Wizard of Oz, and let me tell you, even finding all fourteen is no mean feat. For better or for worse, these books have had an effect on me, and an effect on the person I've become. To a certain extent, these fantasies defined the terms of my childhood.

But the first "adult" fantasy writer that I cut my teeth on came a little later. Specifically, in 1994, when I started reading David Edding's Castle of Wizardry, the fourth book in the Belgariad series. It's a hell of a book to start a series on. The first third is about an escape from a crumbling tower, the second is about a quick gathering of forces in safe territory and a general reunification of friends, and the last third is a charge into full scale war. I had no idea whose tower was crumbling, whose friends were regathering, or whose war was being fought. I had no context, no frame of reference, and no sense of the larger story. I loved it.

Or at least, I liked it well enough to go on to the next book in the series. And the next series entirely, the Malloreon. And back to the Belgariad for the rest of the stories. And then on to the author's other fictional universe, first with the Elenium trilogy, then with the Tamuli. And back again to the Belgariad for the 2 massive prequels, Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress. Throughout my teenage years, I would ceaselessly read through the entire 19 book corpus. As soon as I reached the end, I'd start over again.
...In my defense, we had a rather limited public library.

But somewhere around the end of the Tamuli, the second Sparhawk trilogy, I started to feel disillusioned. This sense continued and intensified with the stand-alone book, The Redemption of Althalus. By the time The Dreamers series came around, I read the first book, was decidedly underwhelmed, and decided that I was done. I wasn't done with the genre, by any means; in fact, I started reading Terry Pratchett shortly after that, and that particular obsession this blog has documented well enough. It was these particular books and the author that I had given up on. My problem with the books was simple: the protagonists were, by and by large, a bunch of smug bastards.

The big difference between Eddings' style of writing and Tolkien's (and I HATED Tolkien's writing as a kid; I still find it overly ponderous) is that Eddings was more willing to indulge in colloquial banter--at least, among the protagonists. But he was also prone to black and white morality stories, and making his good guys ridiculously overpowered. It worked well enough in a series such as the Belgariad, (and that's the series that will most likely stand the test of time as a quality Young Adult book) which was equally a coming-of-age story where the protagonist discovered his own power as a good vs. evil tale, but by the time the end of the Tamuli rolled around, the characters were vastly overpowered without the redeeming aspects of youth to temper them. The constant quipping felt like the mean-spirited taunts of a schoolyard bully. In part, it's a simple issue of balance, but there's also an element of a larger problem with the fantasy genre of the time: the endless focus on the battle between good and evil tended towards a fundamentalist view of the world, and, as it was presented here, I didn't find that view appealing anymore.

Fast forward a decade or so. If I had gotten tired of reading one-sided good vs. evil fights, then I'd like a book that's willing to cast its protagonists in more realistic lights? Something that's willing to explore the shades of grey? Well, if the shades are the ones coming from Abercombie's The First Law series, then the answer is no, no I would not.

The First Law trilogy consists of three books: The Blade Itself, Before They are Hanged, and Last Argument of Kings. To demonstrate how poorly I manage my time and how obsessive I can be, I read all three books, approximately 1600 pages, in under two weeks. As such, my evaluation of them is less on their individual merits, and more on how the series works as a whole. And as a whole, the books could be loosely described as Game of Thrones lite--there's the same use of "gritty" fantasy, multiple characters and plotlines, and an intricate overarching world, but the number of characters and plotlines are much fewer, which is frankly a point in the series' favor.

The plot: The nation of Angland is at the center of a two-front war. The Northmen are amassing at the northern border and the Gorkish gather in the south. At the same time, the Gorkish forces are driven by a man who seeks to use them as pawns to further a grudge match between two wizards spanning millenia (the grudge match spans millenia, not the wizards. Although I guess they do as well). Through these basic plots run our narrating characters. There's Logen The Bloody-Nine, a Northman with a grudge against their current leader, with an unfortunate tendency to succumb to a homicidal split personality. And Jezel dan Luthar, an aspiring young fencer and all-around asshole, though he, more than anyone, develops into a better person by the trilogy's end. There's Sand dan Glokta, a former commander turned torturer after his own body was tortured beyond all recovery by the Gurkish. (He's the clear breakout character--although it's just as clear that a good portion of his appeal comes from his similarity to Tyrion for the Game of Thrones series, who is similarly sardonic, dark, and possesses a physical disability.)

Beyond the main three, there are a few other significant viewpoint characters: Major West, Jezel's friend and a voice of reason in the army; Dogman, part of Logen's former battle comrades (and before that, his battle enemies); and Ferro, a former Gurkish slave who lives solely to see more Gurkish dead. Also worth mentioning is Bayaz, the wizard that the aforementioned Gurkish wizard has such a grudge against. You could fill a small stable with the other tertiary characters, but those are the main, more or less.

The first book, The Blade Itself, is mainly about setting up the characters and the world itself. Logen escapes near death, and casts his lot with Bayaz. Jezel prepares for Angland's annual duel tournament, as the crowd's favorite. Glokta, at the command of his master in the Inquisition, tortures, blackmails, and schemes his way through the destruction of the Angland merchants guild. West prepares for deployment, Dogman and his group try to stay a step in front of the Northland king, and Ferro is recruited by a third wizard to join Bayaz's quest.
The second book follows through with these plotlines. Dogman joins up with West's group, and they stage combined attacks on the Northland king after he invades the south. Glokta defends the southernmost Angland city against Gurkish attack. At the same time, Bayaz leads a small group--including Jezel, Logen, and Ferro--to the ends of the earth in search of a magical mcguffin to eventually fight the opponent wizard. And, in a sort of impressive subversion of the usual fantasy tropes, the quest fails.

The third book takes these plot points to their conclusion. Logen rejoins the northern forces, and helps defeat the Northern king with Dogman and West. Then everyone is back in Angland as the Gurkish invade the capital. The heroes win--but it's the most Pyrrhic victory imaginable. (And here's where the spoilers become heavy.) Logen's former troop of allies are whittled off one by one, some by Logen himself in his homicidal state, until he is left king of the north, but surrounded by former allies that want him dead. His choices are essentially to either give in to his homicidal alter-ego, or rule a constant stream of merciless oppression. Ferro, having found and used Bayaz's mcguffin, is more vengance-crazed than ever, but now literally crazy as well, tormented by demons from another dimension that want her to keep using the device to free them. West is rapidly dying, poisoned by radioactive magical fallout of the device. Glotka, already in a pretty gray moral position, realizes that his life will always be a series of endless tortures, in the service of one master or the other. Jezel is left king of Angland, but with a wife who absolutely despises him, and a puppet for Bayaz. And Bayaz... Well, he was always presented as an ambiguous character. But after all is said and done in over 1600 pages, it's ultimately revealed that it was Bayaz who started the war of the Magi, after he treacherously turned on his master, attempted to murder his lover, and turned on his order. He's a monster who manipulated all the events in the novel, and it's strongly implied that his wizard opposite number is exactly like him. The novel ends with him leaving Angland in Jezel and Glotka's hands, while he goes off to scheme against his enemies again.

I think, at this point, that you can guess my reaction to the trilogy. It's left a ridiculously bitter taste in my mouth. For the last 100 pages of Last Argument of Kings, I kept a running commentary of "really?", "that's a bit much" and "Good God. Lighten up." I've seen the series described as an antidote to the "old-school" style of fantasy, a more realistic portrayal of how events play out than in the Belgariad-type of story. That, I think, is what bothers me the most. I'll give that it's an inversion of the good vs. evil form, but not that it is at all realistic. If anything, it's the equivalent of a fantasy gothic; Mr. "The Ruin of Two Houses" Heathcliff would have felt at home among the cast of The First Law. If a writer like Eddings goes overboard in the relentless depiction of saccharine do-gooders, this story is an example of going overboard in the other direction. Every character becomes utterly convinced that the world is an endless stream of unfair, unjust events and that the only things to live for are ruthless self-preservation and vengeance. That's not realism. That's fatalism, and a particularly nasty brand of it at that.

Flo Keyes, in her book The Literature of Hope in the Middle Ages and Today: Connections in Medieval Romance, Modern Fantasy, and Science Fiction argues that the speculative root of both science fiction and fantasy is hope, hope that a society can be transformed into something better. I disagree with her--in large part because her definition of science-fiction means that she also precludes the dystopia as a form of science-fiction, which seems like a misstep--but also because I don't think fantasy needs to be limited in that particular way. By the same token, though, I don't think it should be limited by despair, either.

It's worth noting that a large part of my reaction comes from the realization that this third book is meant to be the end of a trilogy. In my mind, then, I treat it as the end of a story. I know Abercrombie has set other books in this universe, and that these other books, for all I know, may respond to the negativity here. But by virtue of this being the end of a trilogy, it sits in my mind as the end of a story, and on that basis, it's a series that is severely flawed.



My negative reaction to this ending reminds me--in a much diluted form--of my reaction to Faye Weldon's The Life and Loves of a She-Devil. If you recall--or if you click here--I found the book so repellent that I couldn't even write a review of it. (And as a sidenote, looking at the length of that review--man, my book reviews have really spiraled out of control, haven't they? Might have to do something about that in the future.) As a parody of romance novel tropes like the virtuous woman and the good wife, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil delivers a satire that directly critiques common societal conventions.

If you squint a little, you could just get away with saying that Abercrombie's series is equally a parody of the fantasy genre as it is a member of the fantasy genre. It subverts fantasy genre elements like the beautiful queen, the virtuous prince, and the wise old wizard, and thus delivers a sharp critique of our own complacency with the fantasy story. On that level, I'm much more comfortable with saying that The First Law trilogy is a satirical work rather than a "realistic" or even "gritty" one. Except it doesn't quite work on that level either; first, it plays things a little too straight. More significantly, it doesn't reach the same level of satire as the Weldon book because it's too damn long. At 278 pages, Weldon's book manages to make its point in a few different ways, then concludes. 1600 pages, in comparison, is a few too many. To borrow a metaphor from our torturer friend Glotka: satire works better as a quick stab than in a long flaying.

If Abercrombie simply wanted to do a darker fantasy, that's a different issue. But in that case, it shouldn't be heralded as a breath of fresh air--Stephen Donaldson was doing the same thing (only somewhat better) in his Thomas Covenant series thirty years ago. Donaldson, in my opinion, did a much better job balancing the characters who do despicable acts without giving entirely into fatalistic angst--and considering that the main protagonist spent long stretches believing that the fantasy world he was in was a symptom of his leprosy-induced insanity, that's saying something. I'll give Abercrombie points for doing a better job with handling the witty banter and avoiding the purple prose, but when it comes to depicting real, flawed characters, Donaldson has the edge.

The topic of what makes a fantasy, on whether a fantasy story can be too dark or needs to be more realistic, is of particular salience at the moment, because the HBO series Game of Thrones debuts next Sunday. It's been a big focus in the blogosphere of late, and how well it does will most likely influence the course of the genre for at least the near future. George R. R. Martin's series has garnered a reputation for dark, gritty fantasy stories. But it's significantly different from Abercrombie's stories, both in that it depicts more factions in the good/evil struggle (and thus potentially more differing perspectives), and also that its characters are a little less likely to succumb to a fatalistic pragmatism, and little more optimistic--a little more like people you could, if they were real--put your trust in (well, some of them at least). And I'm willing to be a little more generous to the series because, thanks in large part to a stream of delays, it's not over yet. I'm not expecting a happy ending, but I am expecting an ending that doesn't make me feel bitter for reaching it.

Or to put it another, geekier way: Winter is coming. But that doesn't mean there will never be another spring.

Later Days.

What I Am Currently Doing

Annotating Barthes' Camera Lucida, in painstaking detail. It's slow going, and not just because Word's Autocorrect keeps turning studium into stadium.

Later Days.

Friday Quotations: Yes, there is a comparison to veal

"One of the snippets broadcast to us via BrainPal was a segment of an intercepted food program, in which one of the Rraey's most famous celebrity chefs discussed the best way to carve up a human for multiple food uses, neck bones being particularly prized for soups and consommes. In addition to sickening us, the video was anecdotal proof that the Coral Massacre was planned in enough advance that they brought along even second-rate Rraey celebrities to take part in the festivitives. Clearly, the Rraey were planning to stay."
John Scalzi, Old Man's War.

I love it when sci-fi/fantasy novels sometimes just seem to say, "You know what? Screw nuance. These guys are just straight up evil, 'k?" Granted, in this case there seems to be some level of satire going on as well, but it's still in the ballpark of a pair of orcs arguing over whether they should get to eat hobbit meat.

Later Days.

Grapes and Raisins: A Resonance of Fate Retrospective, Part 1

The special subgenre of video game known as the JRPG is suffering a decline of late. Not a decline in sales (at least, not if you include Pokemon in the category), but a decline in prestige. It's enjoyed a pretty prolonged heyday, from Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior in the States) to Final Fantasy to ... well, those are the big two franchises. Throw in the general series of Suikoden, Shin Megami Tensei, Fire Emblem, Earth Bound, etc., as you see fit, and toss in Chrono Trigger for extra value.

These games are marked by certain common traits. Stat-based experience systems that allow character customization. A battle system usually distinct from the rest of the gameplay. An epic storyline, often--in more modern incarnations--elaborate rendered cutscenes. And some not entirely definable element that makes it "Japanese," whether it's an emphasis on kawaisa (cuteness) such as the slimes in Dragon Quest or the kamikazi penguin demons in Disgaea, a focus on Japanese cuisine as in Star Ocean 2 (complete with Iron Chef parody), or a depiction of female characters that you feel embarrassed to play the game in front of other human beings (really, it applies to any game with characters that wear a battle thong, but Final Fantasy X-2 is particularly bad in this regard.)

These traits, in recent years, have become the detracting points. The experience system is time-consuming grind. The battle system is too labyrinthine to understand. The story falls under its own pretentious, ponderous weight and the cutscenes are lengthy and dull. And the cultural difference that gives it a special flavor comes only in the flavor of "creepy" and weird.

Enter Sega/Tri-Ace's Resonance of Fate, a JRPG that wears its J-Flag proud.

But before we discuss the game proper, I'd like to take a quick moment to finish the thought above. My training isn't really in cultural studies per se, but even I realize that defining a video game genre via cultural difference is an affair not to be embarked on lightly. I think it's justifiable in this case, but it also points to a general Westernization, or perhaps Americanization of the video game industry as a whole. I don't think that change means that video games will stop being made in other areas, but it does mean that they will tend to be more and more obscured, especially in Anglo-based video game study. If nothing else, JRPGs serve to remind us that the Western scholarly voice in video game studies isn't the only voice worth hearing. *steps off of soapbox.*

All right then--the game.

We'll start with story, because that's the easiest part: Essentially, I don't remember it. I can tell you the story in very broad strokes: the game takes place in a dystopic future where all of humanity resides in a tower called Basel (not to be confused with the game's Bezel point system for combat). And there's some class-based stuff going on, with the eccentric elite residing at the top of the tower, and the lower classes dwelling at its base areas. The game begins with the main character, Leanne, attempting to commit suicide, but she is saved by Zephyr and Vasheryon, and the three then embark on a career as mercenaries, because, well, why not? And after many adventures revealing that Leanne was a lab experiment, Zephyr is a mass murderer, and Vasheryon was a... knight? Or something... they travel to the upper echelons and save the world. Or extract vengeance. Maybe.

Honestly, this is the first video game I can remember where I payed zero attention to the story. It may reflect a general ennui with the Japanese RPG story telling--but then, I've been playing Radiant Historia at the same time, and found its story pretty gripping. I think it's rather that the game's plot is a fairly broad collection of cliches: corrupt clergymen, bad boys with attitude, little lost girls, tyrannical leaders, idylls that turn out to be bad... and so on. It's all very familiar, and when asked to take it seriously, I just couldn't be bothered.

Rather, the story is at its best when focusing on the random merc missions for the eclectic bunch of weirdos that make up the Basel high society. There's Cardinal Garigliano, who likes to view the world through a picture frame that he carries around with him everywhere. Cardinal Pater, a rotund, rather dim fellow who thinks that he's a superhero. And Cardinal Barbarella, who... well, I'll let the video speak for itself.


It's cutting the full picture for some reason, but I think it still conveys the main idea.
This is why JRPGs have a bad name.

At any rate, it demonstrates my point: the story is at its best when it admits it's only there to prop up the fighing system. So let's get to that--obliquely, by way of the world map.

The entirety of Besel is divided into layers of hexagons. You can't walk through a hexagon until you've unlocked it with an energy hex. Each energy hex consists of four conjoined hexagons, and it unlocks the adjoining hexagons you've placed it on. (Think of them as six-sided tetris pieces.) Energy hexes are given with quests, and dropped by humanoid enemies; different enemies drop different shapes. This is essentially a means of control--there are areas of Besel you can't get to because you can't unlock the hexagons to get there without a hex of the appropriate shape.

Where it gets more complicated is that in addition to clear hexes that unlock general walking space, there are also colored hexes, with each color also having a distinct shape. once you've laid a colored hex, the hexagons it overlays turns that color. Five colored hexes can be traded for a colored save point, which allows the game to be saved outside of the main hub. Also, you can't actually lay a colored hex down unless you're using it to unlock a locked colored dungeon or town (and just about every dungeon and town is a locked colored one), or because it adjoins a hex that is already colored, such as the colored save point. So if you want to introduce a new color to a level, then you need the appropriate save point color to do so.

The reason you want to bother with colored hexes (besides creating distant save points) is the terminals. Scattered throughout the levels are terminals (which must be unlocked with clear hexes) that impose status effects on battles--fire does double damage, enemies drop more items, and so on. Once a certain quota of colored hexes (which varies depending on terminal) is adjoined to the terminal, it activates, and its effects are mapped onto every hexagon it is attached to--most significantly, to the dungeons whose base hexagons have been rendered the same color. The effects are also accumulative across multiple terminals--but as soon as you connect the area for two terminals with the same color, then the quota for activating is accumulative as well. That is, if Terminal A requires 30 colored hexes to activate a 2x drop rate and B requires 120 hexes to activate a 2x damage, then if you join A and B, you will need 150 adjoining colored hexes to activate the effects of both terminals--and until the accumulative quota is met, neither activates. So there's an element of strategy in choosing which effects you think are worth having for a particular dungeon or level.

That amount of knowledge will get you the basic use of the hexes, colored or otherwise, and is really all you need to finish the game. But if you are intent on doing the harder difficulties (the highest of which requires completion of the 60+ hour game on both normal and hard first to unlock), then you need to go a step further. And, of course, because things are not yet complex enough, there are more complications.

First, the player travels from level to level through two primary means: core lifts and elevators. The core lifts are significant because they have same damn screen for entering the upper and lower levels of them, and about 1 out of every three times I used them, I wound up on the wrong floor--but in terms of this terrain strategy, they're irrelevant. What's more important is the elevators, because you can transfer the effect of terminals onto multiple levels if the top and bottom of the elevator have the same color, and that color connects to an activated terminal. This terminal level chaining is essential for manipulating the system in the player's favor.

The next level of complexity comes with the realization of two facts: 1) every level has its own layout, its own edges and ridges and distribution of terminals. 2) every colored hex type comes in only one shape.What that means is that some colors cannot be used to activate certain terminals because the hex shape for that color can't reach the actual terminal. Similarly, some colors can't connect to certain dungeons, elevators, and so forth. More than once, my plans for multilevel effect chains were thwarted because I forgot to check if the area on the other end of the elevator allows for a straight line hex shape.

The final level of complication is that these hexes are damn annoying to get a hold of. Each one comes from a specific enemy type. And given the way the game progresses, that means that certain color combinations will be unavailable simply because the enemy that drops them won't be showing up for another few chapters or so (which is actually a reasonable way of controlling progress), or, more annoyingly, if you want to apply that color, you'll have to backtrack to a dungeon you went through a dozen hours ago, and mindlessly battle. Accumulating enough to create a dream level of colored synchronicity requires hours of battle, a level of commitment reached solely by those suffering from OCD and MMO players. At the same time, at the higher levels of difficulty, such a level of coordination is absolutely necessary to get a slight edge in battle.

And that's the real kicker. This--all of this--is just an auxiliary to the actual battle system. Note that the description of all the intricacies of this add-on feature is actually far, far long than the description of the game's entire story. That gives you an idea of where its balance lies. Now, I'm at 1700 words, and I haven't even got to the actual combat. So I'll stop the post here, and return to the rest at a later date--although frankly, I think this is enough to convey the general sense of the game.

Later Days.

Running Man

Will this post be about a convicted man who must fight for his life on live television? Ha, you wish. No, this is, as always, about me.

Last February, I placed myself on the disabled list after I took a bad tumble during a run and could barely walk for a few days. Two weeks later, I attempted to return to form, onto to suffer a disastrous, even more limping relapse. So I took it easy for a few weeks. And then a few more weeks. At the same time, I compensated by accelerating the anaerobic side of the workout. For the first time in my life, my workout routine could be said to approach the coveted "meathead" designation.

But no more! Trepidation shaking every limb, I bounded out into April's bizarre snowfalls (seriously, what's up with the weather these days?) and performed the 3 k run from my house to the university. It was... humbling. The foot fared fine; the only ill effect was that my sides were aching by the time I reached the university, as my lung muscles weren't used to that strenuous a workout. I then proceeded to walk another 6 k, and then I was home.

And since those who have read this far about a fairly boring topic deserve some sort of reward, I also picked up "The Hoax of Romance" by Jo Loudin. It's a 1980s early third wave feminist self-help book designed to help its readers "shake off the shackles of romance." (I'm quoting verbatim here. Okay, I'm not, but that's the type of rhetoric we're dealing with.) I can barely turn a page without snickering, and I'm not sure exactly why--yes, it's ridiculously over the top about its subject matter, but essentially, I actually agree with her main thesis. I'll have to read it, and report back.

And if *you*, the reader at home want to follow along, all you have to do is go to Amazon.com and get your very own copy of the Hoax of Romance... for $157, new. Eep. It seems the Hoax of Pseudo-Intellectualism is alive and well. (See? Where is all this hostility coming from? Find out... eventually.)

Later Days.

Friday Quotations: Call a Spade a Spade

(This one's been heavily paraphrased, for reasons of space. The gist still comes through, I think.)

"Here's what happened to him. Going to lunch he passed an office-building that was being put up--kust the skeleton. A beam or something fell eight or ten stories down and smacked the sidewalk alongside him. ... He was scared stiff of course, he said, but he was more shocked than really frightened. He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him really look at the works.

"The life he knew was a clearn orderly sane responsible affair. Now a falling beam had shown him that life was fundamentally none of these things. He, the good citizen-husband-father, could be wiped out between office and restaurant by the accident of a falling beam.

"It was not, primarily, the injustice of it that disturbed him: he accepted that after the first shock. What disturbed him was the discovery that in sensibly ordering his affairs he had got out of step, and not into step, with life. ... Life could be ended for him at random by a falling beam: he would change his life at random by simply going away. He loved his family, he said, as much as he supposed was usual, but he knew he was leaving them adequately provided for, and his love for them was not of the sort that would make absence painful.

"[He] settled in Spoke and got married. His second wife didn't look like the first, but they were more alike than they were different. You know, the kind of women that play fair games of golf and bridge and like new salad recipes. He wasn't sorry for what he had done. It seemed reasonable enough to him. I don't think he even knew he had settled back naturally into the same groove he had jumped out of in Tacoma. But that's the part of it I always liked. He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling."

--The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett

Goodplays? Goodgames? GoodTimeSink?

I'm nearing the "end" of the videogame Resonance of Fate (quotation marks in place to note that between Achievements, New Game +, downloadable content and bonus dungeons, the "end" of a videogame has become a more tenuous concept in modern time). Since I have always been one to not just count my chickens before they hatch but also buy my BBQ sauce for chicken wings before I bother to buy my eggs (Yes, I'm a vegetarian. It's a metaphor. A bad metaphor.), I've already started mentally composing my retrospective.

One of the game's detracting points is that it lacks a gripping story, which is usually one of the attractions of its subgenre, the distinctly Japanese roleplaying game (JRPG). Musing on that line of thought brought me to think about JRPGs that DID have good stories. And as I tried to dig through the ethers of gaming's yesteryear, I came to a surprising realization (and the actual main point of today's post):

There's no videogame equivalent of Goodreads.

Goodreads, for those uninitiated, is one of many such internet services dedicated towards archiving book lists. You enter the the name of the book, give it a rating and optional review, and add it to "your ever expanding list." You can browse the reviews of others, compare books with your friends, and keep track of your own literary endeavors. Considering I'm a person who kept a database of the books he read long before he even had internet access, I have found the feature extremely useful for cataloguing, preserving, and generating general bragging rights.

(Incidentally, in case this application sounds useful to anyone, send me a message and I'll hook you up. While I have a built-in disdain for Facebook's "pleeeeease add me" mentality, I'm way too much of a book geek to allow that to get in the way of a good ol' book list sharing.)

Now, what I would like to see (and I'm a little surprised that preliminary Google searches didn't turn up anything) is the exact same thing, but for videogames. Make it happen, somebody.

To tie this to a more scholarly discussion, in Lev Manovich's The Language of New Media, (one of the seminal works in the discipline) he makes a lot out of his binary opposition of narrative and database. Essentially, he says, we're shifting from a narrative-focus to a database-focus, and our use of new media reflects this shift. Goodreads makes an interesting case, as a site devoted to creating archival lists out of narratives. But in general, I have to disagree. The main difference between a database and a narrative, in my mind, is that the latter has a subjective scope. But any access of a database, and any creation of an database, is ultimately a selection, and any time a person makes a selection, any time they choose something and disregard something else, some sort of narrative activity has taken place.

I've got more thoughts on this subject, but I think that's enough for now. Again: Goodreads for videogames. Make it so.

Later Days.