The “Sword of Truth” is a series of fantasy novels made up of 11 books by Terry Goodkind. Thats quite a lot of books and as you would expect it makes for quite an in-depth story. I just finished it in about 3 months so I thought I would right about it. It recently got made into a TV series (Legend of the Seeker) that started off well but descended into dully formulaic in the second series. Still it does have these lovely ladies as main characters so it is pretty easy to forgive it for that:

It is quite sad that after the first book the story goes down a path the TV series cannot follow. The TV series is fine with the whole plucky band of heroes out to defeat the evil empire. When it gets into the stories where the main character is leading an empire and the scenes move from pretty New Zealand countryside to vast palaces and fantasy cities it can’t keep up. As they don’t have the budget for either the sets, special effects and the volume of characters required they don’t even bother and just deviate from the books plot almost completely. Instead it becomes too much of a modern version of Xena Warrior Princess. Which considering who produces the show is to be expected. Also Craig Horner has way too many abs for my liking, damn him.

But this meant to be about the books not the TV series! Even if the TV series is prettier to look at.  Read the rest of this entry »

I’m 60 pages into Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” and I don’t think I can read any more of this rubbish. No I have not grown tired of Dan Brown’s average writing ability or his Claremont-esque dialogue I just can’t take anymore of the pure idiocy that passes for science in this book. It is not the first Dan Brown book I have stopped reading because of this. I put Digital Fortress back on the shelf after getting fed up of his complete lack of understanding of computers and encryption. Just half an hour of that made me want to beat my own brains out. I put it down to being to close to home and I enjoyed his other books despite their absurdity. Even the silly god particle stuff from ‘Angels & Demons’. So why have I stopped reading this one? Because apparently according Dan Brown the scientists in his world have been able to show that prayer can influence random number generators, that after 9/11 these same random generators stopped being so random because of all the grief/compassion/horror/dust. Another idea it offers up is that sending lovey-dovey feelings to freezing water causes the ice crystals to form in nice ordered patterns while being mean to the water makes the ice grow chaotically. I kid you not. The premise being that mind can win out over matter and that ancient man knew the secrets of the universe and our ‘science’ takes us away from this truth. Other gems include the quantum events can be effected by the consciousness of the observer and that new particles appear because scientists want them to. I put this down to the fundamental mistake a lot of people make about what is meant by observer when reading layman’s books about Quantum physics. Lots and lots of what is called Noetic Science. Which is no different to plane old new age mumbo-jumbo with a more ‘scientific’ sounding name. It is the hippy’s equivalent of creation science. In other words it is total horse shit.

For pities sake stop referencing 1984 whenever a government does or is reported to do anything you don’t like. Especially if it has anything to do with cameras. It is so damned cliched now it no longer marks you (if it ever did) as a intelligent and witty individual opposing government tyranny. Quite the opposite in fact because when you do it you just look like a pseudo-intellectual douche-bag. Why because 1984 has quite a specific setting that we are nowhere near replicating. Why? Because in 1984 it is the minority middle classes that are subjugated by the upper classes to prevent revolution. It works on the premise that revolution is always started by the Bourgeoisie. The working class masses are pretty much left to their own devices. In modern Britain half the damned country is now middle class and it is the middle classes who actually run the damned country. Whenever anyone comes up with a hair-brained scheme involving CCTV it is always to protect the middle class from the criminal elements of the evil, chavy working  (I use the term loosely as not all of them actually work) classes. That is not the situation in 1984! We are no more close to the situation in 1984 than we are to that in ‘Brave New World’. Which in my opinion is the better damned book.

Read the rest of this entry »