It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...
It was indeed the best of times. The teenage years were largely fun and relatively carefree. It seemed like the worst of times because there were a lot things that tasted like canal water and ashes--speaking purely figuratively of typical teenage experience regarding the things society and future productivity as an adult required. Of course it was the age of wisdom; teenagers knew everything (and still think they do). It was the age of foolishness because nobody would pay attention to the simple solutions which they knew to be supremely true that would fix everything.
Adolescence is a bridge of ignorant confidence--with rickety guardrails at best--to the suspicious shore of hesitant adulthood. In some cases, that bridge extends well past the shore into the 30s and 40s before the hard knocks, slaps, kicks, and punches of reality sufficiently illuminate the territory to dispel both the ignorance and the confidence.
There is more to be said about this, but I'm not going to say it.
First, I'm nearing the 30,000 word mark in the new novel and am writing in the sixth chapter. I'm rather enjoying this particular journey.
Second, Justice Resurgent will go live before the end of the year--maybe before the end of November.
Book Review
I finished reading The Elven by Bernhard Hennen.
General Thoughts: EDITED: -- The review below was written after finishing the book and I was bitter at having spent so much time on a book that did not satisfy me. I think the author is a fine writer. I have no issue with his skills or story telling ability. The tale simply didn't please me--and that's more a matter of taste than anything else. So this review should be taken with that thought in mind. I know others who absolutely loved this book.
The book aspires to be Tolkienesque. It re-imagines elves and the elven world in a way loosely based on Norse mythology. I read the Kindle version which I got for free through Prime. The hard copy is 765 pages long, but it seemed like a mere few thousand pages while reading it.
Story in a nutshell: Two elves love the same elven woman, Noroelle. She has been unable to choose between them for over 20 years. There's some boring courtship. In short, there's nothing that makes the reader at all interested in any of these three. A human is pursued by a supernatural beast into the elven realm. Some elves, including the two lovesick friends, help the human defeat the beast. They have some degree of success, or maybe not. Noroelle gets banished. The rest of the book is the quest to find Noroelle by the two elves and the human. The story takes hundreds of years--both for the characters as well as actual reading time.
Do I recommend it? No. The book isn't horrible; that may be the best I can say for it. I contemplated abandoning the book every time I read it through nearly the first 50% of the book. The writing wasn't terrible, neither was the story. It was a quick read in the same way that the Indy 500 is a drag race. Of all the characters, only the human character had any depth, and he was a viking in the classic stereotype (although, I have my doubts as to whether the vikings had any stereos--the word never even came into use until 1823, according to Meriam-Websters). The story wandered as if it were being made-up on the fly. Even after the long, long adventure (did I mention that it's extremely long) and spending oodles of time with these characters, I never liked them; I never liked the elves in general or any of them in particular. When the end reached the inevitable conclusion (although there were some unexpected twists along the way), I really didn't care. The conclusion dragged on, and on, and on. I rate it: A Massive Feast of Sawdust--the table is loaded to overflowing; one can eat and eat and eat and never enjoy a bite.
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