A short scene occurring early in the books.

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The first scene.

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Can there be a third season after these last two books?

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We continue with more Saiunkoku.

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BTW, according to some Japanese bloggers, “kohaku” can take on the meaning of “ripe/matured plum,” therefore an obvious allusion. Anyway, onto the summary.
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Keep in mind that I CANNOT personally confirm any of this information, as I do not have the book yet. ALL information below in this post (which will be continually updated, until I can get the novel myself and write my own summary) is at your own risk, and the blogger assumes no responsibility for any liability which might occur.
EDIT: I now have the book, and am reading it. So far all of the spoilers seem to be generally correct. I will try to write a summary soon.
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Part 2

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I’ve been reading YugiOh in the original Japanese to keep up my knowledge, but… honestly, I recently read Reborn and was pretty harsh on it, but in many ways, YugiOh is much worse, with bad pacing, less pretty art, and the way the reader keeps being subjected to long explanations of things that are rarely repeated in the storyline. What I especially don’t like is how someone suddenly pulls out a card that we’ve never seen before, and it has this amazing new ability, blah blah. It’s at moments like these that I suddenly wish I was reading a semi-realist manga instead of a fantasy fighting shounen one.

Shounen is a very vague broad category, but of late I’ve become irritated with some of the frequent problems of the genre. I’ll make a random list, in no particular order.

*the mangaka seems to start the series with no idea of what s/he is doing, or no idea of what the plot is going to be. A premise is introduced, but frequently the manga circles around before a big tournament arc finally begins. In essence, this is a problem of pacing and planning.

*the hero is often the least interesting character. Come on. The hero/protagonist doesn’t have to be a pure reader stand-in. Do you really always need to have the most ‘important’ character in a story be the protagonist? Conversely, must the protagonist always be the ‘central’ character of the story?

*poor foreshadowing

*poor development of worldbuilding, making it look like the author is pulling spells/moves/mcGuffins out of his/her ass. This is a big problem. I have no problem with there being a really complex fighting system, but I do have a problem with it appearing arbitrary and only there for the convenience of the author.

*too long: people say that Jojo is long, but what it really is is several manga series, set in the same world, which are about fifteen volumes long, on average. Compare that to series where ten volumes in, the first story arc is barely getting under way.

*having many, many characters instead of deeper characters. Obviously the two are not mutually exclusive, but sometimes series have uselessly large casts.

*creating characters who do not develop or are mostly static, thus making them less interesting

EDIT: Title of the new Saiunkoku book is Reimei ni Kohaku wa Kirameku (Rough translation: In the Dawn Amber Sparkles）.

(supposed) Title in Japanese: 黎明に琥珀はきらめく

The rei part of remei is the same rei which is in Reishin. So we can make some guesses there. (黎=dark, black) The second kanji in kohaku is the haku in Hakumei. So maybe Hakumei will finally do something important in the storyline (hopes)? Pure speculation. Anyway, Seiga is trying to get Kouyuu fired. (No idea how he’s doing this). Shuurei wants to save Kouyuu and speak for him.

Further speculation: So perhaps we shall see the judicial department? So far they’ve been entirely absent from the story.

Just finished A Canticle for Leibowitz, for the Bibliophages comm. Truly a powerful work. Shall have more to say when discussion week comes. I kind of feel like I should read another book, especially because this time there are so few participants.

Am also reading more Kindaichi Shounen Jikenbo (The Case Files of the Young Kindaichi), which is a mystery manga. I’ve read the first ten or so volumes in English, but the translations started to get really slow. Anyhow, it’s fairly simple to read in Japanese, except for the discussions of the mechanics of the case (to be honest, I like mysteries more for the psychology than for the puzzles. So I read for characterization and suspense, and sometimes I kind of uh… (don’t tell anyone) skim over the details, especially if a timetable is involved, or a cipher), where I sometimes have to look up vocab. Kindaichi is especially good if you like super angst and melodrama, because in every crime, it’s an elaborate plot conceived to take REVENGE for an even earlier crime by the now-victims. And so therefore the villains always have a semi-sympathetic sob story, and like most of the time, they commit suicide or die dramatically. Well, except for the recurring villain, who is an unrepentant psychopath. Anyhow, reading Kindaichi, although because of the nature of the plot (Kindaichi goes somewhere, and then there is KILLING, or Kindaichi is called in to investigate some mysterious case, or Kindaichi goes to a fun mystery event and then it suddenly turns into KILLING) is kind of repetitive, is pretty fun.

Does anyone have any recommendations for non-LJ interesting blogs focused on things that I’m interested in? (all/any of them) I’m not that interested in blogs that are purely recapping or commenting on the latest anime, because in case you haven’t noticed, I don’t spend much time watching anime anymore.

Cordwainer Smith was a Golden Age sci fi writer with a fascinating biography. Smith’s works are not warm and fuzzy, by any means. They sort of remind me of the modernist inspired futuristic landscapes and interiors of spaceships from fifties; I imagine metallic things, instrument panels, pure, sterile white interiors. The first story, “Scanners Live in Vain,” Smith’s first and perhaps one of his most famous, concerns a guild of scanners, men (I say men because they really are all men. These are uh, stories with the attitude towards women typical of the era, although women can also become rulers in the Instrumentality, and there are many important female characters and protagonists) who have voluntarily become “habermen,” who are threatened by a scientific discovery which may put an end to their monopoly. Smith’s short stories tend to start in media res worldbuilding-wise, in which we come across a scene in which we have no idea what the background of the setting is, the specialized vocabulary, or the political/social context. The reader must construct this later.

The author’s prose tends to be fairly transparent, his made-up words seemingly familiar, yet enigmatic. The stories mainly take place within one universe, over a vast scale in time, with characters rarely repeating, and the story being about an incident of significance in galactic history. In this, they remind me slightly of Iain Banks’s Culture series (which you really should read); vast time scale, about a culture and ethos in total, rather than the saga of an individual (although both Banks and Smith are fairly good at creating interesting characters). Smith’s Instrumentality of Mankind rules in an ultra-technocratic, secretive way over a populace largely living in a boring happiness (until the Rediscovery of Mankind, in which disease and danger are introduced because without them people are less human). The sinister side of the Instrumentality is far more pronounced than the Culture’s, however (the attitude towards the Culture is far more positive, I think, within the books), and not only does the Instrumentality act totally without mercy towards their enemies, but treats the underpeople (animals given the shape and minds of humans, a la Island of Dr. Moreau) like trash (forming the theme of one Smith’s best known stories, the Dead Lady of Clown Town, in which a dog-girl named D’Joan is martyred trying to give her message of universal love.) The theme of spiritual ennui within a utopia without scarcity and extended life (made possible by stroon, a substance produced by the planet of Nostralia) also reminds me of some of Michael Moorcock’s novels about a utopia (dystopia?) at the end of time. This makes me want to try some of Smith’s longer works, to see how he develops these themes on a larger and less fragmentary scale.

I decided to take a one-week vacation from LJ just for the hell of it. Not reading it, not making comments. Why? Not because I have any illusion that my absence will influence LJ in any way. Some people are planning a one day boycott, which to my mind is a rather ineffective solution. People have complained about LJ a lot, and LJ has corrected some of the inadvertent errors they’ve made, but very rarely rescinded policy decisions. In any event, in the future, it is clear, there will be more of the same. People should just ask themselves whether they can deal with more of that or not.

What it comes down to, is that most of the things that really annoy people about LJ are not about the most vital things. If LJ fucks up in certain areas, people will not have to organize a boycott or denounce LJ with cat macros or whatever: people will just leave immediately because the terms are no longer acceptable to them. The fact that people are complaining while not leaving shows that they have simply not gotten uncomfortable enough. LJ knows this full well. In fact, it would make much more sense if the people complaining stopped protesting to LJ (because LJ doesn’t listen) and started to lobby their friends to at least read them on other sites. If one’s friends leave LJ, it doesn’t matter what LJ does, because you’re not there anymore, in other words. Also, it is more effective to lobby one’s friends because there is much more of a chance that one will persuade them, really.

My reason is more personal; I want to just be without LJ a week, and see what it’s like. I doubt my absence will be really noted by the people on my flist, because it’s not exactly unusual for someone to go a week without posting if they’re busy.

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler is a deeply metafictional work. [See first few pages here or the wikipedia entry here] At first, the narrator seems to be addressing “you” personally, as “you” begin to read the titular work, which seems to be some spy novel. However, the novel is less told, rather than the process of reading the novel is. In other words, throughout the this opening (and the many later openings of abortive, unfinished novels throughout the text), the narration is heavily reflective upon itself. (We hear such things as “the sentences suggest” etc) However, unfortunately for the Reader (who is not exactly us, especially given that I am personally female, and the Reader is male, although later there is a chapter where the second Reader, Ludmilla, is addressed), there is a problem with the book and the rest of the pages are blank, so the Reader goes back to the bookstore to find another book, where he is unfortunately interrupted again, and is unable to complete his reading. A strange tale, interrupted by various beginnings of books, ensues, in which Ludmilla (the ideal reader?), whom the Reader falls in love with, her ideologue sister Lotaria, the blocked writer Silas Flannery, who may or may not be collaborating with Ermes Marana, the spurned ex of Ludmilla, who attempts to make the enterprise of fiction reading a sham by orchestrating various conspiracies to create apocryphal, misattributed, or forged novels, weave in and out of the book. In any case, unlike many experimental novels, which are alienating, and much worse, unentertaining, this book succeeds at holding one’s attention through the interrupted narrative(s).

[Yes, this is the first extended work in which the author has used the second person present throughout the work. It works here because there's a clear justification, in addressing a reader, in a conversation between the construct of the Reader, to differentiate it from the narrated world of the books, which are generally narrated fairly conventionally. Too often I see people trying narrative tricks in works that are simply too conventional for such things to be grounded well. ]

Quotes which I liked:

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In other news, I did finish doing most of the translation of Otogibanashi no Hajimari, but I need to revise those parts that I had trouble with by finding people online who can help me. If by any chance there is someone who is well-versed in the Japanese language out there reading this blog, I’d welcome any help.

Otherwise, I’ve been watching more anime, Code Geass, and Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni. Of the two, I think I’d recommend Higurashi, because while CG has its moments, I still am dubious about whether they will pull through in the end and resolve everything. I think there are too many characters and too many subplots, and it would work better if they reduced things and focused on a few main themes.

Higurashi, on the other hand, I strongly endorse if you like horror. It looks like generic moe, but that’s just a trap. It’s some awesome mindbending horror/action/mystery/supernatural/conspiracy stuff. XD It’s like every arc they decide to start on a new genre. I’m just about to start on the last arc, and am looking forward to it.

Have also been reading Pluto, a Naoki Urasawa (who is awesome, same guy who did Monster and 20th Century Boys) manga, which I also highly recommend, especially if you love talking robots.

Am also plotting a reread of Ravages of Time, and perhaps even finally getting a page on it together! We in the English RoT fandom are so few… I feel a need to publicize it more. Indeed, if you’re interested in checking it out, look here. It’s a manhua (Chinese comic) based on the story of the Three Kingdoms, but puts a decidedly different twist on the story from the famous novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The art is extremely awesome, as are the action scenes, and even better, it’s filled with plotting and strategy.