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Jan. 14th, 2011 03:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ariadA few days ago, Cecilia and I started reading Deltora Quest, by Emily Rodda. It was a first for her, but I had loved the books in elementary school and continued to love the story even as I grew older and the books became too easy for me. We were reading it aloud, so our progress was slow, and we didn't even finish the prologue before Cecilia left.
The books, a series of eight with two three-book sequels, were written for children, and that fact comes out in the simplistic writing style and the riddles that stump the characters but can be easily solved by the readers. But the story is excellent, thrilling, and full of twists and turns, especially at the end. It's one of those stories that lie to you, almost from the very beginning, so that when you hit the last book and everything is revealed, it's fucking amazing.
I bring this up because my desire to reread the books and my hesitation to do so without Cecilia reminded me that some years back, an anime was made of the series. At the time, I was very skeptical about it because it looked so happy. Deltora Quest is not a happy series. It's an adventure story that celebrates friendship, but it's also chock full of deceit, betrayal, despair, and political commentary (which makes nobody happy). Also, the covers all like beautiful but creepy, like this:
I found the first episode of YouTube, however, and it's better than I expected. For one thing, it's very accurate. The prologue was omitted, and they skimp on the explanations, making Lief's parents just seem like bad parents, but I suspect it was because they wanted Lief to get on his way before the end of the first episode, and it really does take a while for the books to get there. (Also, including the prologue would have created other problems having to do with the fact that the story was clearly designed for prose.) Lief also seems more obnoxiously heroic than I remember; he starts his story by helping the hungry and tackling Grey Guards instead of breaking curfew and stealing apples for himself. But I don't hold it against them. It's a shounen anime; what can you do? That is also why I am excusing the way that everything GLOWS! and SHINES! even more than they already do in the books. I'm impressed with everything else, though. They included a lot of minor details that I remember from the books, and the characters' appearances are pretty true to their book descriptions. Jasmine looked much more wild in my head—I think she was described as having bird nest hair—but her redesign is admittedly better suited for anime. Apparently, there had been film offers for the series in the past, but this studio was the only one that promised to stay true to the story.
I probably won't keep watching, though. It's pretty much the same thing as the books but necessarily worse. I want to reread all the books, plus the second sequel, Dragons of Deltora, which I never did read. My childhood! Oh, how I love thee. If you love fantasy adventures and don't mind reading children's books, I recommend them. (Especially the last two—fucking fuck whyyyyy can't they just be happy—but you have to read the first six to gain the emotional attachment that causes them to rip you apart.)
While I'm at it, I may as well recommend:
-The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom. Still one of my favorite books. It is "a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun." Having lived most of his eighty-some years in the place where he grew up, a place he had always tried to escape, Eddie dies feeling unfulfilled and unaccomplished. He continues on to heaven, where five people, who were connected to him in ways he never realized, explain his life to him. The writing style is a little preachy, but I don't mind because the story is brilliant and meaningful, and it's trying to teach you "that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one."
-Havemercy, by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett. Follows four characters: a gay magician who is exiled for sleeping with the prince of a neighboring country that is not okay about that sort of thing, his sister-in-law's distant cousin who is charged with caring for him during his exile, a vulgar military airman who flies a magical mechanical dragon and supposes even disagreeable people can come together over a nice pair of breasts, and the university student whose job it is to civilize the airmen and make them realize they can't go around trying to pay diplomats' wives after having sex with them. I've posted about it here with some very vague spoilers about the ending. Skip #5 and you should be okay.
-Sh*t My Dad Says, by Justin Halpern, who runs the popular Twitter of the same but uncensored name. I knew that the book, which recounts Halpern growing up with his wise but blunt and profane father Sam, would be hilarious, but I was not expecting it to be so inspiring. Sam Halpern may be rude and may say things like, "He's a politician. It's like being a hooker. You can't be one unless you can pretend to like people while you're fucking them." But he's a good person, and one has to admire how he battles for what he believes is right. Part of me wants to be like him when I'm older (but without the profanity because I don't believe in making people feel uncomfortable if I don't stand to gain much by it).
I also reread The Castle in the Attic, by Elizabeth Winthrop, recently, but I don't recommend it. It's a decent children's book, but I think so grand an adventure story ought to have been longer. Everything was too easy to be believable, and I felt at the end like all this trouble was taken to teach a ten year old boy 1) how to have self-confidence and 2) not to make people do things that they don't want to do or else he'll have to go on a quest to defeat and evil wizard in order to fix his mistakes and make those people not disappointed in him anymore.
The books, a series of eight with two three-book sequels, were written for children, and that fact comes out in the simplistic writing style and the riddles that stump the characters but can be easily solved by the readers. But the story is excellent, thrilling, and full of twists and turns, especially at the end. It's one of those stories that lie to you, almost from the very beginning, so that when you hit the last book and everything is revealed, it's fucking amazing.
I bring this up because my desire to reread the books and my hesitation to do so without Cecilia reminded me that some years back, an anime was made of the series. At the time, I was very skeptical about it because it looked so happy. Deltora Quest is not a happy series. It's an adventure story that celebrates friendship, but it's also chock full of deceit, betrayal, despair, and political commentary (which makes nobody happy). Also, the covers all like beautiful but creepy, like this:
I found the first episode of YouTube, however, and it's better than I expected. For one thing, it's very accurate. The prologue was omitted, and they skimp on the explanations, making Lief's parents just seem like bad parents, but I suspect it was because they wanted Lief to get on his way before the end of the first episode, and it really does take a while for the books to get there. (Also, including the prologue would have created other problems having to do with the fact that the story was clearly designed for prose.) Lief also seems more obnoxiously heroic than I remember; he starts his story by helping the hungry and tackling Grey Guards instead of breaking curfew and stealing apples for himself. But I don't hold it against them. It's a shounen anime; what can you do? That is also why I am excusing the way that everything GLOWS! and SHINES! even more than they already do in the books. I'm impressed with everything else, though. They included a lot of minor details that I remember from the books, and the characters' appearances are pretty true to their book descriptions. Jasmine looked much more wild in my head—I think she was described as having bird nest hair—but her redesign is admittedly better suited for anime. Apparently, there had been film offers for the series in the past, but this studio was the only one that promised to stay true to the story.
I probably won't keep watching, though. It's pretty much the same thing as the books but necessarily worse. I want to reread all the books, plus the second sequel, Dragons of Deltora, which I never did read. My childhood! Oh, how I love thee. If you love fantasy adventures and don't mind reading children's books, I recommend them. (Especially the last two—fucking fuck whyyyyy can't they just be happy—but you have to read the first six to gain the emotional attachment that causes them to rip you apart.)
While I'm at it, I may as well recommend:
-The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom. Still one of my favorite books. It is "a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun." Having lived most of his eighty-some years in the place where he grew up, a place he had always tried to escape, Eddie dies feeling unfulfilled and unaccomplished. He continues on to heaven, where five people, who were connected to him in ways he never realized, explain his life to him. The writing style is a little preachy, but I don't mind because the story is brilliant and meaningful, and it's trying to teach you "that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one."
-Havemercy, by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett. Follows four characters: a gay magician who is exiled for sleeping with the prince of a neighboring country that is not okay about that sort of thing, his sister-in-law's distant cousin who is charged with caring for him during his exile, a vulgar military airman who flies a magical mechanical dragon and supposes even disagreeable people can come together over a nice pair of breasts, and the university student whose job it is to civilize the airmen and make them realize they can't go around trying to pay diplomats' wives after having sex with them. I've posted about it here with some very vague spoilers about the ending. Skip #5 and you should be okay.
-Sh*t My Dad Says, by Justin Halpern, who runs the popular Twitter of the same but uncensored name. I knew that the book, which recounts Halpern growing up with his wise but blunt and profane father Sam, would be hilarious, but I was not expecting it to be so inspiring. Sam Halpern may be rude and may say things like, "He's a politician. It's like being a hooker. You can't be one unless you can pretend to like people while you're fucking them." But he's a good person, and one has to admire how he battles for what he believes is right. Part of me wants to be like him when I'm older (but without the profanity because I don't believe in making people feel uncomfortable if I don't stand to gain much by it).
I also reread The Castle in the Attic, by Elizabeth Winthrop, recently, but I don't recommend it. It's a decent children's book, but I think so grand an adventure story ought to have been longer. Everything was too easy to be believable, and I felt at the end like all this trouble was taken to teach a ten year old boy 1) how to have self-confidence and 2) not to make people do things that they don't want to do or else he'll have to go on a quest to defeat and evil wizard in order to fix his mistakes and make those people not disappointed in him anymore.
