Book Review: The Poetic Edda: The Heroic Poems

The Poetic Edda: The Heroic Poems by Anonymous
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While Norse mythology has seen an increase of interest in the past half century, not so it’s heroic sagas though as seen in this book there is a reason for that. The Poetic Edda: The Heroic Poems is half of a collection of anonymously written poems from across the Norse world and translated in the early 20th Century by Henry Adam Bellows.

The heroic poems are divided into three lays or cycles: Helgi, Niflung, and Jormunrekkr. The first three poems feature the early Danish hero, Helgi, through all of them cover some of the same events. The overwhelming number of poems are a part of the Niflung cycle which is a Norse rendition of the German heroic epics connected with Siegfried—of Wagner operatic fame. The final two poems are about the revenge against Jormunrekkr by two brothers of the wife he killed as incited by their mother Guthrun from the Niflung cycle.

While some individual poems are good, “Atlamol en Gronlenzku” being one example, many more are pieced together and or cover the same events though written by different writers. Once you have read several poems in a row about the same events or one explicit event, all the poems are lessened in quality. After a while, one is looking to see how different writers create different ways to cover the same thing but grow quickly unimpressed especially when Bellows explains in introductions or footnotes that some lines are probably from a different poem.

Overall, this is a very well translated collection of poems, some of which are very good, however do to the fact many of the cover the same things over and over the overall collection because burdensome to read.

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Book Review: Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler

Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dangers from the ancient past and the 20th Centuries come together to bring humanity on the verge of doomsday. Atlantis Found is the fifteenth book of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series that finds Dirk and his friends and associates at NUMA stumbling upon a 60-year old plan inspired by hatred and an ancient catastrophe just months from challenging the world.

In 7120 BC, a comet hit North America, abruptly ending an advanced civilization. In AD 1858, a whaling vessel discovers a 1770s merchant ship frozen in Antarctic ice; included on this ship is a polished obsidian skull. In the present (2001), a group of U.S. scientists discover a mysterious underground chamber in a Colorado mine, including a polished obsidian skull. They are attacked with a deliberate avalanche and cave-in resulting in the mine flooding, but Dirk Pitt arrives from diving in another mine as part of an emergency rescue though the group is almost killed again by the saboteurs. Pitt obtains the Antarctic skull from a descendant of the whaling ship’s captain along with a copy of the merchant’s logbook. The information amassed and analyzed by NUMA leads Pitt to Antarctica to look for the merchant ship in the ice while Al Giordino and Rudi Gunn head to a remote island where the merchant ship found the skull. Both expeditions succeed—Giordino and Gunn finding a chamber and well-preserved mummies—only for each to be attacked by the same group that attacked the scientists in Colorado as Pitt’s group narrowly escapes being destroyed by a German U-boat missing since 1945 while Al and Rudi take out a commando team. Diving into the U-boat, Pitt finds a female officer and brings her to the surface. Upon Pitt’s return to Washington D.C., he stumbles upon a report from Admiral Sandecker’s office and is able to apprehend the woman who appears to be identical to the sub officer Pitt recovered, but is later genetically proven to be a cousin though modified and mostly inbred though known as members of the Nazi escapee Wolf family that owns the Argentinean corporation, Destiny Enterprises a legal front for the Fourth Empire Holdings from Nazi Germany. After examining the skulls, inscriptions from them and the chambers which they work to translate, and various artifacts that show a different geographical look to the Earth the NUMA results are startling. The chambers turn out to be the work of a civilization calling themselves the Amenes, a nation of seafarers and wise men who discovered and traded with most of the world. The comet from the beginning of the book caused a worldwide disaster that wiped out most of their civilization. It also had a twin, which returned to space. The few Amenes that survived built the chambers to pass on information of the twin comets return and the catastrophe. This information is given to an observatory to be checked but it turns out to be incorrect but the Wolfs appear to either be planning it or took inspiration from the catastrophe to bring about a re-creating of civilization in the Nazi image. Pitt and Giordino infiltrate a Destiny Enterprises facility that harbors four superships not only to scout but rescue one of the scientists from Colorado. They then meet Destiny CEO Karl Wolf who implies that the disaster will happen in days, which makes NUMA and the military scramble to figure out how when they realize that Destiny has a sea mining facility in Antarctica next to the Ross Ice Shelf that uses nanotechnology. Computer projections show that if the Shelf breaks off it will unbalance the planet—as the comet did—wiping out nearly all of humanity that is unprepared. The U.S. military task force of special forces from all branches attack the facility, but it’s Pitt and Giordino’s unplanned intervention that is able to turn the tide in battle resulting in the holding off of doomsday and the deaths of Karl and his relatives.

Unlike Flood Tide, the whole treasure story arc and main story arc were intertwined throughout the book allowing both to be settled in the final pages instead at two different points. Yet, it felt that Cussler was mixing and matching previous plot elements from earlier installments in creating this particular book with a family running a underground criminal empire with tentacles in governments around the world (Treasure and Inca Gold) being the most prominent. One of the biggest narrative miscues was the sole reliance of a special forces assault in Antarctica to stop the Wolf’s designs when an airstrike against the four superships should have been done as well—regardless of the risk to women and children due to the fact that Wolf wanted to kill 7 billion people that included women and children—thus forcing the Wolfs into a zero-sum game. Dirk was a little less superhuman in this book unlike the previous installment and while interested in the main female lead this book, got stunned in the end when she suddenly hooked up with Al out of nowhere but somewhat forced Dirk to consider once against marriage to his on-and-off girlfriend Loren Smith. The inclusion of the comet strike and the catastrophic tectonic plate shifts as the result are among the first “fringe” theories that Cussler would include in his book, although the comet/asteroid strike theory in Canada during the last Ice Age now does have more evidence backing it up in reality it had the opposite affect of prolonging the Ice Age instead of ending it like in the book while the global tectonic plate shift as a result of the comet and or the Ross Ice Shelf unbalancing the Earth are too farfetched for even some daring geologists to accept.

Atlantis Found is a good book narratively that has some unfortunately underwhelming supporting features that downgrades its quality. While one of the better books of the series, some of the choices Clive Cussler are a bit worrying for future installments.

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Book Review: William Shakespeare's The Merry Rise of Skywalker by Ian Doescher

William Shakespeare's The Merry Rise of Skywalker: Star Wars Part the Ninth by Ian Doescher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The First Order appears triumphant and the Resistance on it’s last legs when sudden the voice of a dead man echoes across the stars sending everyone to the Unknown Regions to either inaugurated or stop the execution of the Final Order. Ian Doescher’s William Shakespeare’s The Merry Rise of Skywalker concludes his adaptation of the Star Wars franchise the style of the Bard while dealing with the complete catastrophe that is the sequel trilogy.

After the difficult task of adapting Jedi the Last into a coherent play, Doescher had the less difficult though challenging task of adapting the official retconning of sections of the previous film into a Shakespearean play. With better written characters and somewhat better dialogue to adapt—though that’s not saying much—Doescher was able to stick with iambic pentameter throughout the play except for those special characters like Yoda whose speech patterns are different throughout the entire franchise. To challenge himself, Doescher once again infused the play with easter eggs and secret messages (Rey’s soliloquys) along with adding special dialogues for characters that didn’t have lines in the film but were portrayed by long-time contributors to the franchise. And the illustrations of characters in Elizabethan stage attire is a delightful addition to Doescher’s words.

The Merry Rise of Skywalker is based on a film that had to repair the damage of its predecessor and Ian Doescher was able to make a very good stage adaptation with what he was given though not as difficult as before. The rating of his book is based not on the original material, but Doescher’s hard work in adapting the films for the Elizabethan stage.

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Book Review: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The balance between tradition and reform, of the long influence of French culture and simmering Russian nationalism through the course of the Napoleonic Wars is seen through the eyes of numerous noble Russians from 1805 to the end of the French invasion in 1812. War and Peace is considered Leo Tolstoy’s greatest work as it follows the lives of youthful and idealistic Russian nobles as they attempt to find their way in society and the world during times that would be defined by one man who spanned across Europe to their doorsteps.

The saga begins in the Russian Empire in 1805. When Pierre Bezuknov, Natasha Rostov, and Andrei Bolkonsky are first introduced with all their youthful ambition, despite their privileged circumstances, is to find meaning in their lives. Kind-hearted but awkward Pierre, the illegitimate son of Russia's richest man, wants to change the world for the better. The spirited Natasha is searching for true love, while handsome and gallant Andrei, frustrated with the superficiality of society, seeks a higher purpose. At the same time, the French army under Napoleon edges ever closer to Russia's borders. Natasha's older brother Nikolai joins the Imperial Russian Army immediately and matures during the war against Napoleon. Like Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei, he also experiences romantic vicissitudes: despite his childhood love for his cousin Sonya, his impoverished parents insist he marry a rich bride like the superficial Julie Karagina or the religious Marya Bolkonskaya. Having begun with Napoleon's military campaign against Russia and Austria in 1805, the story concludes in 1812 after Napoleon's invasion of Russia has failed and he has retreated and withdrawn from Russian territory. The families at the center of the saga have undergone major changes and lost members, but those remaining have experienced a transformation and a new life, with new growth and new families started.

The sprawling narrative that Tolstoy constructs around his characters and locations varying from Moscow, St. Petersburg, various Russian estates, and battlefields spanning Austria, Poland, and Russia is wonderful. Unfortunately it is marred by Tolstoy’s decision to lecture the reader on his view of history as opposed to other interpretations not only took me out of the book—even though half my reading is history—but allowed me to think about the characters and the narrative he was having them go through resulting me quickly finding them fools and idiots who essentially deserve all the bad things that happen to them, except Sonya who is Tolstoy’s emotional whipping horse. The introduction by Pat Conroy and the afterword by John Hockenberry in the Signet Classics edition are completely worthless and if you get this edition ignore them.

War and Peace is a great book if not for Tolstoy’s narrative disrupting historical lecturing that takes your attention away from large tapestry that he created thus exposing foolishness of his characters.

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