Proof, by Dick Francis
I have read all the Dick Francis novels -- he never delivers less than a good read. Proof is one of my favorites. It has an involving story, plenty of action, and a wounded hero who heals. Interesting details about the wine, liquor and catering business add to the usual horse racing milieu. The prose and structure here are among his most graceful, with parallel examples of the appearance and reality of courage. Proof makes great action story summer reading.
As a sidenote -- Dick Francis's strongest books came mostly in the eighties. Proof came out in 1985. I wonder if mysteries set around horse racing accorded better with that materialistic decade than with our own less certain time. My other favorites among his books include Straight, Hot Money, Break In, Come to Grief, Wild Horses and To the Hilt -- the last two are more contemplative and less active than the earlier books. His Odds Against and Whip Hand, I believe, were adapted as British miniseries.
Shadow Hearts and Evergrace for PS2
These represent the midpoint and low of the spectrum that Final Fantasy X tops. They are clearly of the same type -- games where you move through territory, talking and fighting and growing more powerful. They're simply not as well executed.
Shadow Hearts has several interesting game mechanisms. Every uncertain action calls up the "judgment ring". A line like a second hand sweeps around a dial marked with colored sections. Hitting x within the colored sections allows you to succeed at your task, whether you are attempting hand to hand combat or bargaining. More difficult tasks require hitting more colored sections to succeed. Other game mechanisms include sanity points which decline during battle and gathering the spirit energy of fallen foes to unlock the main character's power to transform himself into different forms.
The art is acceptable, and so is the music -- neither notably good or bad. Occasional forays into horror imagery seem undermined by longer stretches of anime cheerfulness. The judgment ring gave my thumb quite a workout. The weakness of the game is in the plotting. I play for the reward of story at least as much as for the pleasure of the process -- and this story took arbitrary turns. I was also disappointed when, after carefully working to gather the spirit energy in one section, when the next section began, I had been given a large quantity of it -- and then couldn't use it. Why set the player a goal, and then render it meaningless? I had trouble caring about characters visibly controlled by the plot's strings. I rented this, and haven't finished it.
Evergrace is simply incomprehensible. I'm watching my husband, who has more persistance than I do, and the basic method here is to explore until you have done everything so that you can move to the next area. The story gives little guidance on why you are working on any particular task. Conversations consist largely of strings of non sequitors. The music is unsettling, and the graphics are those 3-D forms that show their polygons, which makes them Evergrace's strongest point.
Characters develop themselves very little -- most progress comes through better equipment. Equipment in use needs constant infusions of palmira, the world's currency. So this game does keep you challenged with maintaining a sufficient cash flow, unlike many games where reaching other goals incidentally provides more cash than you can spend. And the fighting itself works well. But I can't see myself spending hours on "dress up Barbie goes adventuring" as Doug called it. And he wouldn't be playing it if it hadn't come bundled with the PS2 we bought on ebay.
All in all, they're worth about what we put into them -- a rental for Shadow Hearts, and nothing for Evergrace.
The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway.
Jill Ker Conway began life on a primitive sheep ranch in the undeveloped reaches of Australia, then continued to push the limits of female acheivement in academics. It is as if she had leapt from a childhood as a pioneer in the Old West to adulthood as a pioneer in the feminist career trenches of the last half of the 20th century. This first book of her autobiography covers her life from childhood to the decision to move to the United States to pursue a university career -- with striking observations of the harsh and beautiful Australian outback, the urban Australian culture still drawing its models from England, and her own careful dance of dependence and separation from a mother who had the strength to do much and was reduced to pushing her ambitions through her children. The story carries enough drama for three novels. And the book is much better written than this review!
I found her experiences and her interpretation of them as illuminating as the harsh light that dessicated their ranch in times of drought. Ms. Conway uses her own life to open a window on wider events in Australia and the world -- including the effects of drought and war on her own family, explaining the particularly Australian development of the large sheep ranches called stations, and the stoicism that served as the best response to an unpredictable climate. The Road from Coorain satisfies on many levels -- as joyfully clear and observant prose, as coming of age adventure, as Australian travelogue, and as revelation of the mind and emotions of a strong woman. If you enjoy any of these types of story, you will enjoy this book -- if you like them all, you will find the sum even better than the parts.
