Review: Transformers: Exodus by Alex Irvine

Transformers: Exodus: The Official History of the War for Cybertron claims on its dust jacket to be "everything fans ever wanted to know about one of the fiercest rivalries of all time". In truth, Alex Irvine goes the route of Kevin J. Anderson in his novel Last Days of Krypton, creating a new history of Cybertron that combines some of the best elements that various writers have created over the years. While the book has a few flaws that make it tricky for someone new to the Transformers mythology to pick up and enjoy, fans of any of the series' many incarnations will find it a worthwhile read.

The book begins with Orion Pax, the future Optimus Prime, operating as a simple data collector for the Cybertronian archives. As part of his duties, he collects and becomes interested in a gladiator named Megatron, who agitates against Cybertron's rigid caste system and insists on the right of self-determination for all Cybertronians. Orion Pax is inspired to join Megatron's cause, quickly rising to become a leader in his own right, as schisms in the two robots' beliefs threaten to bring them into conflict. Fans of the series can guess where things go from there.

Transformers: Exodus doesn't take place, so far as I can tell, in any established Transformers continuity, although it might fit in with the recently released War for Cybertron video game. Many of Cybertron's historical elements are taken from the live-action movies, but there are plenty of concepts borrowed from the comic books and cartoons as well. Fans trying to fit the book into any existing series are going to end up with a headache, so it's best to just shrug and consider this another entry in the Transformers multiverse.

Happily, all of the concepts are used thoughtfully, so there shouldn't be too much for fans to gripe about. Cybertron in the novel is a stagnant world, long since settled into a pattern of decline. The legendary artifacts are history are mostly forgotten, or at best regarded as myths. Every Cybertronian is assigned a role at birth (which we finally get to learn something about) by the leaders of Cybertron's castes, and carry out that role for their entire existence.

In this sort of background, it's easy to identify with a revolutionary, as Orion Pax quickly discovers. The first part of the book takes a fascinating look at the alliance between Pax and Megatron, both of whom have similar goals, but vastly different ideas about how to achieve them. If there's any disappointment here, it's that we only get a cursory look at Megatron's motivations, and he comes off as a too-obvious villain. The reader knows that's where he's headed, obviously, but I would have liked the chance to identify with him more than I did.

The second part of the book is a longish interlude in which a Cybertronian historian describes the main thrust of the civil war between the newly-created Autobots and Decepticons. While it would have been nice to see the war from the perspective of the robots fighting it, there's simply too much conflict to handle in a reasonably-sized book. You do get an idea of the level of destruction being committed, and the interlude sets the stage nicely for the final part of the book, which chronicles the war's closing days.

By this point there's no real hope for peace between the two factions, and the last part of the book focuses on the discoveries of various hidden artifacts by both sides. One of the few truly new additions to the Transformers mythology is introduced here, in the form of a new power source that poses devastating consequences for the planet Cybertron. While interesting, it's hard to build up any real sense of concern about the threat this new power brings, simply because the reader knows the gist of what's going to happen in advance. One of the brilliant touches in Last Days of Krypton was Anderson's ability to make the reader believe, or at least hope, that events would play out differently then the reader knew they would have to. Here, the final result of the civil war is pretty much a foregone conclusion, and there's nothing to suggest any other possibility.

The characters are all fleshed out well enough to fit in with what fans already know about them, but generally not deeply enough to incite any strong feelings for them. Given the size of the cast, this isn't really a surprise; and to the book's credit, a lot of fan-favorites turn up, with none of them being handled badly. Orion Pax is probably the book's strongest character: his journey from data clerk to leader of a planetary-scale army is fascinating, and carries through the entire book. Among the villains, Starscream is the big winner, portrayed as his usual treacherous, scheming self, but with enough competence to make him a valid threat.

A weakness of the book, but one I'm not sure any author could have avoided, is that the physical descriptions of Cybertron and the Transformers rarely amount to anything more than bare sketches. You might get a flash of one robot's color scheme, or a weapon they use, but unless you are already a Transformers fan you're going to have a very hard time imagining what these machines actually look like. Illustrations, even in black and white, might have been a very big help to the new Transformers reader.

Overall, if you've never been a fan of the Transformers before, this probably isn't the best place to start. At the very least, you should see the first live-action movie before you pick up the book. Transformers fans, on the other hand, will find this an interesting read. You might get angry at a few perceived violations of canon, but if you're willing to sit back and enjoy a new take on the subject, this history of the war for Cybertron is well worth reading.

--David

Something about writing coming soon, I promise.

Sarku Japan

Do you like sushi? If you don't, well, go away now. There is something wrong with you, and I hope for your sake it's a seafood allergy.

If you do like sushi, and you live in Annapolis, then you'll want to visit the newest addition to the Westfield Annapolis mall food court. Yes, the Food Court.

Sarku Japan is a sushi bar located just next to the Chik-Fil-A. It opened just a few weeks ago, and seems to be doing great business. The bar has a nice, clear appearance, with a bar space where you can sit and watch two sushi chefs prepare your meal fresh. No refrigerated or prepackaged sushi here.

The menu isn't as large as a sushi restaurant, but there's a good amount of variety regardless. Salmon, tuna, shrimp, crab, and eel are all available, along with the ubiquitous California roll. For vegetarians, seaweed salad, edamame, vegetable rolls, and avocado/cucumber rolls are all available.

If you want my recommendation, you'll get a rainbow roll, which is a California roll laid on its side and topped with several kinds of fish; a shrimp tempura roll, which is tempura-fried shrimp, cucumber and avocado wrapped in rice; and a spicy tuna roll, which is tuna and a spicy sauce in rice. You'll get a fine meal out of that for about $20.

The service is very good. You order at the register, then get a number and wait for your order to come up. On my first visit (on opening week), I would get pieces of my order at a time, rather than the whole thing in one go. That's fine if you're eating at the bar, but I didn't care for it; fortunately the staff seem to have learned to avoid that, as it hasn't happened again.

The prices are comparable with any other sushi restaurant, and generally cheaper than most. They easily beat the price of prepackaged grocery store sushi, and taste a lot better. I also haven't found anything to complain about with regards to sanitation or food quality (important when you're dealing with raw fish).

Overall I'd recommend Sarku Japan to anyone who's looking for a quick, tasty sushi meal. You won't get the fanciest of sushi, but you'll get good stuff for a good price.

--David

Next up: The author writes about something relevent! He hopes...

Muse in the News: Guatemalan Sinkhole

Here's something to know about writing: Ideas are easy. You can get them anywhere. Look at this picture: It's an aerial shot of the sinkhole that's trying to eat Guatemala. Tell me you're not thinking about some crazy science fiction story, or a terrorism thriller, or an apocalyptic epic of some sort. You'd be in good company.

If you ever need an idea for something to write about, you could do worse than looking in your local paper, or browsing to your favorite news website. Here's a few starters I pulled off of CNN in about five minutes:

• Sources: Bat used to kill Peru woman - The actual story involves a baseball bat, but the headline makes me think of a murder mystery involving a rabid bat slipped in through a window.


• Cops follow 9-mile trail of blood, tissue - Oh God, the horror stories you could get out of this one. What sort of monster can create a 9-mile trail of blood? Is it squamous or rugose?


• Belief blog: Has market become God? - What sort of market would we have if we thought that all the ups and downs were caused by a higher power, independent of companies' actual performance? Or, what if churches traded on stock exchanges? Or, what if there was a church dedicated to the market's power?


• Man found four days after car crash - Alive, as it turns out from the article. So what was he doing for those four days? Who'd he meet? Was he running from somebody?


• Wallet returned after 70 years - I think Letters to Juliet covered this sort of thing, and Sarah assures me that was a good movie. With a wallet, of course, it doesn't have to be a romance. Maybe a cursed wallet gets passed from owner to owner? Or maybe it's something that was found in a dead man's effects.

You could get a few quick stories out of any one of these, easy. All you'd have to do is come up with some characters to get into these weird situations. And, of course, an interesting series of events that happen before, during and after. And an appropriate setting, and some good prose, and interesting dialogue...

Which is, I guess, where the real work comes in...

--David

Top Ten Things That Are Out To Get My Word Count

In no particular order:

• Work: A lazy day at the office can be a fine time for an author to sneak a few words in on the side (but only if you're on lunch break and/or have finished your immediate tasks and are waiting for vital input you can't proceed without, naturally). A day at the office where you've got deadlines breathing down your neck and coworkers screaming for some vital piece of data you've forgotten about, not so much.


• Pets: Nothing stops a good burst of creativity like having a Corgi jump in your lap and throw her head down on the keyboard.


• Writing Groups: My group of choice, www.internetwritingworkshop.org, requires at least two critiques per month for each list you join if you want to stay active (for me that's four crits per month). This sounds trivial, and it is, right up until the end of the month rolls around and you haven't critiqued anything. And your email account has been blacklisted by the list's spam filter.


• Chores: Do the dishes. Do the laundry. Mow the lawn. Take out the trash. Drag the dog outside for a walk. Repeat ad nauseum.


• Commuting: I drive an hour each way to get to work, five days a week. That's ten hours per week of prime writing time I'm losing to the stinking Beltway! I've tried dictating material while I'm driving, but transcription is just as much of a time sink, and a pain in the butt besides. (If anyone knows of some affordable transcription software, pipe up.)


• Exercise: You cannot write while you are on a treadmill, unless you are a much steadier hand than I am. This one gets a pass, since you also can't write while you're in a hospital bed recovering from a quadruple bypass.


• The Internet: A fountain of information, blind rage, and massive time-wasters. There's no shame in admitting that you need to unplug your Ethernet cable for awhile.


• Video Games: I'm pretty sure I was a gamer long before I was a writer, although to be fair, I was a reader long before I was a gamer. Regardless, I have an XBox 360 that literally sucks my free time into its plastic black casing.


• Television: As much of a time sink as video games, but it's possible to ignore this one and get on with the work. (Not recommended, but possible.) Unless of course, you're expected to be paying attention because you're watching with...


• Family and Friends: Who also get a well-deserved pass, because they're the ones keeping me out of the lunatic asylum most of the time. They also provide love and encouragement and a sympathetic ear and patient tolerance. That last one's especially important when I get snippy over the time I've lost to the other nine things on this list.

Runners up included reading, sleeping and eating - one of which I'm going to go do right now. Good night all.

--David

Starcraft II Beta Boogaloo

I blame Facebook for everything.

The kind folks at Blizzard decided some weeks back that they'd be handing out beta keys for Starcraft II on their Facebook page. This meant that at predetermined times, they'd post an image with about 20 keys on it, and everyone following would scramble to type one in correctly before anyone else did. Hundreds, if not thousands of people were jamming keys into a little text bar with every image posted. And for about two weeks I was one of them.

Then I came to my freaking senses and preordered the game at Gamestop, which is the sane way to get in on the beta. (Was? Still is, I think.)

So I run home and I register my beta key, and I start downloading the beta with Blizzard's patented P2P downloading service. What, you thought peer-to-peer was only used by disgusting criminals trying to steal money from Justin Bieber? Well, so does Comcast, which meant it took me about twenty hours to actually download the damn game (including patches).

You are now familiar with the first day of my beta experience.

Now, we have two computers in my household. My personal computer is used for writing, web browsing, email, and playing... older games. It's a fairly ancient... oh wow, I just realized my computer is over ten years old. Granted, I think I've replaced every component in the thing excepting the motherboard, but still. Damn. Anyway, on a lark I try installing Starcraft II on this machine, which can theoretically play the game. And this, as it turns out, is factually accurate. But it plays the game - I'm sorry, it plays the title screen at about one frame per second, and I wanted something more. Something playable.

The second computer is my wife's computer, which is considerably newer and understands terms like "dual-core processing". I install the game on her computer (by copying the install files from my computer - no thank you P2P), and up comes the title screen, giving me a beautiful view of a starship orbiting a planet. "Sweet!" says I, and I make a profile and log in.

And I wait.

The main menu screen comes up. I click on the button to find a game to play.

And I wait.

The game selection screen comes up. I pick out what kind of game I want to play, and the game lets me know that it needs to download some maps. And it downloads about 6% of the first map, has a grand mal seizure and crashes.

You are now familiar with the first two weeks of my beta experience.

I'm still not 100% sure on why I couldn't download any of the maps for this game, nor do I intend to detail the dark and bloody pacts I made to overcome this difficulty. Suffice it to say that after a lot of crash reports, disappointment and shady downloads, I finally got a working set of maps and signed into my first game.

Which played at one frame per second. Before crashing.

My consolation for all of this mess is that my wife seems quite pleased with the 2GB RAM upgrade she got out of it.

The Actual Game

The Starcraft II beta is multiplayer-only, which is understandable, but still a shame, since I was always been more enamored with the single-player storyline in the original game. Still, no sense spoiling the plot before the real game's up for sale, I suppose.

There are still three races that are playable: Terran (humans), Zerg (bug aliens), and Protoss (psychic lizard aliens). The armies have changed enough from the first game that you have to relearn the units, but their basic play styles remain about the same.

I've played ten multiplayer games so far, and have been stomped in every game where my opponent didn't have network problems. The beta testers are a hardened, dangerous lot who've perfected rush tactics to an insane degree. Zerg rushes, Marine rushes, spider-robot-thing rushes, they're all here and perfectly deadly. I'm looking forward to getting killed by some of the larger units eventually, but that will probably have to wait for the full game.

On the positive side, the graphics are gorgeous, the maps are fun to play, and there's a nice social networking setup to help you find regular opponents and friends from real life. The single-player campaign looks to be long and involved, and there should be two more campaigns coming out later as add-ons, which means lots of tasty sci-fi story in between bouts of machine gunning the hell out of vile alien lifeforms.

And in the end, it's Starcraft II. You'll buy it or you won't, and your mind was probably made up years ago. But if you do buy it, make sure you know where to find RAM in a hurry.

--David