Sunday, December 14, 2014

Review of STATION ELEVEN by Emily St. John Mandel

On the night a famous Hollywood actor dies on stage while performing Shakespeare's King Lear and in a moment that none of the world expects, a new strain of flu begins to rapidly spread across the globe, wiping out 99% of the population of the world in just a few weeks. Twenty years later, a band of survivors who call themselves The Traveling Symphony wanders from town to town in the broken down landscape of their post-apocalyptic world, performing Shakespeare for those who can still appreciate art from a distant time. One of their number is a girl named Kirsten who was there the night the actor died. She was eight. And she tries to make something of the life she’s been given, striving to find the world they’d once left behind, just like a character named Dr. Eleven tries to do in a series of graphic novels she’s carried around since before the collapse of civilization.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is a beautifully written novel that follows several well-developed characters back and forth in time. The book features a nonlinear plot at its finest as Mandel weaves the narrative from the time before the collapse to several years after and back again.

The writing of the story reminded me a lot of reading the first two books in Justin Cronin’s The Passage trilogy, with it’s beautifully detailed descriptions and thoughtful character development. The book follows the actor Arthur Leander, his wife-then-ex-wife Miranda, a photographer turned paramedic named Jeevan Chaudhary, Arthur’s oldest friend Clark Thompson, and Kirsten Raymonde. The primary story is centered on Kirsten, and what I liked about her character is her curiosity and fascination with art and creativity. She carries around a series of graphic novels about a space station filled with people that await the day they can return to an inhabitable earth. The space station is called Station Eleven, which is where the story gets its name. There are a lot of interesting parallels between the narrative of Mandel’s story and the story of Dr. Eleven and the inhabitants of Station Eleven. The origin of the Dr. Eleven graphic novels is interesting.

Though this story follows several characters back and forth in time, Mandel carefully weaves all of their stories together because this really is one story she is telling. Some of the most interesting aspects of the story are the prophet and his origin story and the airport where civilization seems to stop. Mandel also fuels reader interest by providing several elements of mystery throughout the story that promise answers later on in the story.

I picked up Station Eleven because so many people had been saying how good it was. They were all right. Out of all the novels I’ve read this year, this one definitely goes down as the best one I’ve read. Emily St. John Mandel has created such a vividly real world that I’d love for her to continue the story in another book.

Review copy provided by Knopf

Friday, December 12, 2014

Review of VIDEO GAME STORYTELLING by Evan Skolnick

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is one of the latest video games that combines interactive gameplay with a compelling story. Many gamers have been into story-based games for some time. Personally, I've always enjoyed the stories that I got to experience through the Final Fantasy series of games. Though I don't get to play games as much as I used to, I still find the story lines of popular games intriguing. Storytelling in games gives gamers a unique opportunity to be immersed not only in the gaming world but the experiences of the characters in the games themselves. Because I'm a storyteller and I've always found storytelling in games intriguing, I've always wanted to create a game story like Final Fantasy.

Evan Skolnick's new book VIDEO GAME STORYTELLING is a welcome introduction to the concept of writing stories for video games. The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, Skolnick covers the basics of storytelling, which includes three-act structure, the hero's journey, writing and believability, and the narrative force of conflict, among many other important concepts in the world of storytelling. These are the things that are true of stories, regardless of the medium. Part 2 looks more closely at how the storytelling elements are applied specifically to games. It's interesting that there really aren't many big names associated with video game stories. As Skolnick shows, it's because the video game narrative isn't the job of one person. Video game design is the work of a team of people, working together to create the best gamer experience possible. Part 2 takes you into the video game development process and the many people that are a part of it. Learn about gaming environments, missions, and character design.

VIDEO GAME STORYTELLING is an insightful introduction to the world of video game design from a storytelling perspective. It's a great book for storytellers in general, but specifically for those who want to create their own video game stories.

Review copy provided by Blogging for Books

Monday, December 8, 2014

Review of THE SKELETONS IN GOD'S CLOSET by Joshua Ryan Butler

People who struggle believing in God the most often struggle with some common questions, and it's understandable why they do. These questions center around hell, judgment, and the actions of God in the Old Testament. The way these concepts have traditionally been presented creates a picture of God that is almost monstrous. Some Christians want to just ignore these parts of Scripture and pretend they aren't there. They like to treat them as skeletons in God's closet, deeply buried away in our conversations with people.

Joshua Ryan Butler, in his new book THE SKELETONS IN GOD'S CLOSET, chooses not to run from these questions, but to face them head-on, and he does so thoughtfully and with a heart toward understanding God for who he truly is. I've often wrestled with the concept of hell until I discovered much of what Butler conveys in this book. Though I don't agree with the idea that he seems to present that hell is created by humans, I do agree that the condition humans end up in begins in the human heart. Salvation is an interruption to the natural progression of the human heart toward more and more evil. It's a rescue from the worst in us to love God and love others. It's a restoration to who we were designed to be. Hell, however, is what happens when we definitively reject God's rescue of us. We become worse and worse as we are separated from the true source of life.

Butler presents God as truly loving in what he does, even when it seems harsh. He shows how God's love requires judgment; it requires a desire to eliminate the evil infection in human beings. While this isn't a deep theology book, it is a very thought-provoking book that genuinely wrestles with the questions. The only complaint I would have toward this book is that I wish Butler would have dealt in more detail with the verse that describes hell as a place created for the devil and his angels. This verse doesn't necessarily undo what he teaches in his section about hell, but I think it's an important verse to wrestle with.

Butler presents God as truly more beautiful than we could imagine. God communicates in a way that requires thought, but he can be understood. Unfortunately, he's often been misunderstood. I didn't expect this book to be that great, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Review copy provided by BookLook Bloggers