01.13.07
From Bed To Hearse
So, Crest of the Stars 2. It’s difficult for me to put into words exactly what I liked about the novel– or, perhaps, fragment of novel that the book presents. Maybe I really ought to address that element, first and foremost. The Crest of the Stars books– collectively known as Seikai– are an on-going run of books in Japan. The first three make up a single tale, while the remainder tell of an ongoing struggle between two vast interstellar nations. The most obvious thing that I could complain about is that the individual volumes themselves are extremely short. Both of the English-language books that have been released so far took me on the order of about four hours to read each (which is tempered, of course, by the fact that I tend to read very quickly). That said, the story is only about two-thirds of the way through, and so far both ‘endings’ have been extremely abrupt. The one major caveat I would offer to anyone looking to read the books would be to wait until late May, when all three will have been released. Less frustration that way.
I suppose complaining about the somewhat limited vocabulary used and the occasional typographic error (which belie the translator’s attempts to ’spice up’ the narrative; a character yells, “Shut your tmouth,” with the unintentional “t” indicating to me that some draft along the way meant for the dialogue to read “Shut your trap”) is a little silly for me to do, as I haven’t actually read the original Japanese (though, once I do finally get around to learning the language, I welcome the challenge that the books provide). However, they’re legitimate concerns, even if ultimately they don’t detract too much from an otherwise enthralling story.
That’s what it boils down to, for me, anyway. Morioka has taken a somewhat cliched premise– ordinary guy is assimilated into a massive, overpowered space empire in a somewhat transparent wish-fulfillment scenario– and infused it with a particularly voracious enthusiasm. It’s hard to fault him for the somewhat “done that” nature of the plot, especially considering that later stories move towards a more Clancy-esque military-political yarn (as evidenced by the anime adaptations of the remaining books); this is just the setup, the appetizer before the real meal. What Morioka’s initial premise lacks in plot is more than made up for in the detail with which he paints his view of the universe. Everything has a place, everything has a purpose. Nothing is extraneous or there simply for the sake of being there, to fill some unspecified or falsely-obligatory quota. It’s actually quite fascinating.
I suppose that the case could be made– what with the synthetic language and the elvenesque appearance of many of the protagonists– that Morioka is trying almost too hard to be another Tolkien. The thing is, whereas the story of the hobbits is a pretty straightforward good versus evil scenario, it’s hard to pigeonhole one side or another as being genuinely evil within the Crest universe. Both the Abh Empire and the United Mankind have good and bad traits in almost equal parts. Crest 2 paints this picture pretty clearly. On the one hand, you have the four ambassadors who genuinely don’t want open war, but simply pushed the Abh harder than they expected they’d move. On the other hand, you have the MP Captain Kyte, a man who in the parlance of modern Earth politics could reasonably be called a ‘true believer’ in the states causes of the United Mankind. Morioka actually offers the best description of Kyte (through another character): ‘actively good’; Kyte isn’t content with only doing good in his own actions, he believes that other people can be ‘fixed’ to do good or to better themselves, and that it’s his responsibility to do this fixing. The Abh, too, have their sins and salvations. Their bloody and violent past is undeniable, and unwritten simply because there is no need for it to be written; their xenophobia and ultranationalism brought them to a horrible decision which backfired severely. Thus given wisdom, they now seek to unite humanity, both natural and Abh, by providing protection and liberty.
Any novel with a significant amount of politics in its pages is difficult to read without attempting to make analogies to the modern state of the world. And, realistically, perhaps Morioka had something to say in the mid-1990s about the state of the world. It’s not my place to judge the author’s intention. All I can offer is the belief that I know a good book when I read it, and that Crest of the Stars is a good tale, but partly told. I’m looking forward to the final act. Once that’s done, I’ll gladly go into a little detail as to how the story held up in relation to the anime adaptation.
(Oh, the title of this post? Just a little pun on one of the closing events of this particular volume.)
Ismail Saeed said,
01.13.07 at 10:36 am
Only one precaution.
I really don’t recommend waiting till book 3 to buy all 3 books.
I guarantee that will make them can their translation of the series.
Each of these books needs to see immediate returns on them, or Tokyopop will be (censors himself) again.
Trust me, it happened to me. Even if you save reading them for when all 3 have come out, buy them as they come.
Ismail Saeed said,
01.13.07 at 12:20 pm
Speaking of closing events… is this a reference to the thing Lafiel and Jinto rode to escape the planet?
Once again I’m wondering if the end of the anime was rushed or if it cut out events wholesale, considering I can’t imagine a whole BOOK’s worth of material left in Crest of the Stars after that.
I’m pretty sure these three were more novellas than novels, by the way… as he was getting started and the publishing company was giving him that first chance. I don’t think he published anything prior to the first book.
Rob Browning said,
01.13.07 at 5:41 pm
Why is it that every time I hear about a Japanese work of fiction that involves two rival superpowers, one always sounds like the United States and the other always sounds like Japan? (Hell, sometimes they are the US and Japan. Code Geass is the current anime du jour example of this.) And usually the people representing Japan are the good guys and, well, you know.
Seriously, dudes, it was 60 years ago.
Rob
John said,
01.13.07 at 10:35 pm
In order, then:
Yes, well, the first two are already out, and they’ve received an excellent response so far. I don’t honestly think my blog has enough pull to single-handedly axe the last volume, but ah well. Maybe it would be better to look at it more akin to the “chap-book” experiment that Stephen King did with The Green Mile.
My little pun was actually not specifically related to Jinto and Lafiel’s final conveyance from Clasbul, but rather about a specific bit when Lafiel met the crew who would eventually get them into that vehicle. If anything I’d say the end of Book 2 is roughly Episode 8 or so. No pacing problems here.
And yeah, it does seem to be an extremely thinly-veiled jab at the US, but then again, why is it that in American fiction involving a superpowered nation and sub-rosa guerillas, the nation always sounds like the US and the clandestines are always Arabs? Like they say, you write what you know.
Ismail Saeed said,
01.14.07 at 12:10 am
It should be noted in this case that I think there was an indicator that many of the people that left Earth, at least of those who went on to form the Abh, seem to have been from Japan.
Which technically isn’t a positive statement about them, given what the Abh felt about them and did to them…
Oh, and what John references… let’s just say I’m privately rather sick of stuff “like that.” And uh, in episode 8 they had just seen the Baron Febdash, so something has to be wonky here.
Ismail Saeed said,
01.14.07 at 12:30 am
Oh, and on the sales: Of course your blog alone wouldn’t do it… but do you know from hard numbers that they’re selling great? Slayers was being widely discussed and fanned over, and they canned that in a really, really shitty way.
I don’t know if you’ve heard this story or not, but… the Slayers book series is a 15-book series (they’re not long books, I would read one within an hour and a half to two hours). Tokyopop said they’d do the whole 15-book series. In fact, their info page about the series and their releases talked about how it was a 15 book series, adding (!!) in parantheses after the number to emphasize that they would go whole hog on the whole project… and mentioning how OLD the books all were.
Much like now or in manga cases, when books were coming out you had street dates (of a few months later) on the next volume. I remember around volume 3 or 4 seeing that they’d gone so far as volume 6 in their database so far. I understood that you didn’t want to put ALL 15 books in the database yet… regardless of commitments, you didn’t want a confusing # of “not available yet” items in the database and you wanted to see how things were going by volume 6 before you charged ahead (or at least wait until volume 6’s release was coming close).
However, despite ALL their admissions to the length of the series, despite historical information about the release timeframe of all 15 books and compendiums of information on the Slayers world that culled from all 15 of those books and the other materials that existed besides, etc. etc. etc. etc., and despite of course fan translations that clearly must’ve existed in some form or another, after volume 6 came close they still had no “volume 7″ slated.
I wrote them and asked if they would be moving forward with the series, and if so when volume 7 onwards would come… that I at least had bought all 6 volumes so far. (I did this to indicate that they at least could count me among the buying figures so far)
What was the reply they sent me? A rep, in all seriousness (note: by this I mean concealing what he actually knows), told me that they were really excited to be releasing the books and that they were just waiting “for the author to finish writing book 7.”
Yeah, not going to pass that one by me. As I said, discussions of the contents of all 15 books already exist online, and books 1-6 of course matched the previously existing online material about them.
I wrote back making it clear that I was not ignorant on this matter and was just personally hoping that they WOULD elect to go forward with volume 7 onwards, and that they had a buyer here.
No further reply. :)
Also, I noticed that book 6’s release was done in a way to conceal this matter.
Even though ALL the books had afterwords (including mention of the next volume), they didn’t even translate book 6’s afterword (it did have one) to veil away the fact that there WAS more to the series. And the press material they put on the back of the book and out in the press release announcing it (and thus in the online description of it) was that it was the EXCITING CONCLUSION of the Slayers novel series. There’s nothing that concludes here… it pauses at a good spot in the middle of a developing story.
See, if they had just said that sales were not as hoped and that they were suspending release of further volumes following 6 (whether permanently or indefinitely) that would’ve been honest. But they needlessly confused plenty of people by trying to act like it was the end of the story (heck, there’s information the anime culls from later in the book series in season 3 even though season 3 isn’t based on book events) just to “hide” saying that it was being canned.
Whether that properly makes them look blameless to any of the ignorant purchasers or not, I considered it a bastardly move (especially since in my ORIGINAL letter to their reps I clearly indicated that I knew of more in the series than the 6 books I’d already bought)… not just canning the series because it wasn’t selling well, but spinning a confusing fiction out of its fate.
Honestly, when Tokyopop announced Crest of the Stars, it was bittersweet. I was glad to see a translation might come, but not convinced they would go through with it.
I hope they don’t dick around CLEARLY more knowledgeable fans *again*. However, they might have a hard time with this one, since the anime adaptations all clearly note that they’re based on pre-existing novels and not invented by the anime producers, as does the manga.
I’m so burned because I was really starting to get a feel for reading novels out of them when I’d previously been a bit doubtful about it.
I was very angry when the whole Slayers thing went done. I guess I’m communing some of that time back into this post.
Rob Browning said,
01.15.07 at 3:13 am
And yeah, it does seem to be an extremely thinly-veiled jab at the US, but then again, why is it that in American fiction involving a superpowered nation and sub-rosa guerillas, the nation always sounds like the US and the clandestines are always Arabs?
Well, yeah, but there are actually a lot of Arab terrorists who want to kill us. I’m pretty sure the US hasn’t harbored any martial aggression towards Japan for at least a few decades.
Rob