The Alchemist - "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy."

So the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is my latest foray into the non-speculative end of the novel pool.

This is a book about a boy from Spain who has a dream that there's treasure near the pyramids and goes on a journey to look for said treasure. He makes a trip through North Africa to go look for it and along the way he goes on a sort of spiritual journey too. Along the way he meets some nice people, gets robbed a few times and finds a girl that he likes. Oh and there's also an Alchemist guy.

It's very short and there really isn't much story to it. The writing is flowery and the story is punctuated by philosophical mutterings about religion and God and 'The Soul of the World'. Indeed, the whole story is more of a platform for Coelho's vague ideas about how God loves all His children. At no point does the Alchemist offend and it isn't really boring or anything, but it's ultimately a book about nothing.

So as I said, a fair chunk of the short-book is dedicated to a sort of spiritual awakening on the part of 'the boy' (the main character does not have a name). This read basically like any scene from any book where some form of mystical power is bestowed upon the protagonist. By listening to his heart the boy can speak to the wind and then to the sun and then look unto the Hand of God, which in turn let's him realize that all things are part of the Soul of the World and that the Soul of the World is in turn an aspect of God and thus he can perform miracles and turn himself into the wind.

Use the Force, Luke.

The difference between the Alchemist and a good story though is that there is no conflict in the Alchemist. He isn't going to use his Soul of the World powers to do anything besides steal money from a church (that's where the treasure ends up being) and then live out his days being happy. The story is simplistic and unambitious. There are only really three characters in the book. There's the boy, who is Pursuing His Dreams. Then there are the helper type guys who appears throughout the book dispensing philosophy and encouragement, who might have different names but who are really just one person with different titles. And then there's the one named character, Fatima, who is a girl he likes.

My point: there isn't any actual story in this story. It's a religious philosophy text dressed in a layer of fiction.

The actual philosophy is perfectly inoffensive. It's standard Christian Jesus-loves-everyone feel-goodism translated into a form that attempts to make it have universal application through a Soul of the World, which I guess is also an analogy for the Holy Spirit (whatever that is). It really doesn't go any further than that, as there are no evil characters in the book, so I thus feel comfortable dismissing it as being utterly shallow.

The other message is 'follow your heart' which is, of course, tripe.

But the shallow philosophy is not the problem. Fiction has been used as a platform for philosophical and political insights for a very long time. I don't have a problem with book with a message. But the difference between this and your 1984s or whatnot is that those books have actual stories! If you ignore all of Orwell's political commentary, you still are left with a boldy imaginative and engrossing story. If you ignore Coelho's philosophical dung, you're left with blank pages.

And that just isn't how a novel should be. There's more ...

I Am Legend - "Come out, Neville!"

I Am Legend really surprised me.

I actually thought it was a zombie novel involving a guy going around with a shotgun shooting said zombies in the head. This assumption might have something to do with the fact that there is a movie version starring Will Smith. But what it turned out to be was a masterfully written piece of high science fiction with a really strong psychological element. It tells the story of Robert Neville, the very last human being on Earth following a vampiric epidemic. He seals his house with garlic, which is besieged by mocking vampires that try to goad him outside so that they can eat him. Then, when the sun comes out, he goes outside and kills as many as he can find.

It's very short, clocking in at 170 pages, but it's incredibly engaging. Neville is perhaps the loneliest man ever conceived, living in a hellish world without anyone to speak to and nothing to do but brood upon the death of his wife and futilely research the causes of the plague. It's an incredibly layered and sad story that I would recommend to more or less anyone.

Plot discussion after the jump...


So when I was about fifty pages into the book, I messaged Andres on MSN and said that I would just kill myself if I were in Neville's situation. It's pretty telling that he didn't object at all, but instead just asked how I would do it (I would use fire to deny my blood to the vampires, while he would just hurl himself off a building).

I'm not a big fan of the idea of suicide, but the situation Neville is in just more than any one person could be expected to bear. Matheson has him kill his own wife, resort to alcoholism and go on frenzied vampire killing rampages. At one point, Neville tries to befriend a stray dog (the only living thing he can find), slowly offering it food and cultivating a friendship only to have it die in his arms. The intense loneliness is just too much to bear and it really made me wonder about what kind of mental state the author was in when he wrote this. It was so immersive that I even found even myself feeling terribly alone and isolated, with a lurking feeling of despair ever at the edges.

Yet somehow, Neville lives on in these conditions, in a sort of state of emotional detachment and numbness. And you never really get to understand why that is, beyond his sort of Darwinian need for self-preservation. He's not religious at all and he doesn't seem to have any serious hopes of ever finding a cure to the plague or even of finding any other survivors. He just sort of exists and Matheson does a fantastic job of showing the horrible weight on the man's shoulders.

A fair portion of the book is dedicated to Matheson's scientific investigation into the vampiric plague and this is where the book shows its age. The plague is a bacterial parasite, which is spread through spores carried in the wind and which feeds on human blood while turning its victims into bulletproof undead monstrocities that are allergic to garlic. I... I don't think bacteria, no matter how supercharged by a nuclear war, can really do all that. But oh well, I guess that was as good a way to make 'scientific' vampires as any back in the 1950s, so I don't fault Matheson for it. The way he presents these facts certainly shows that he put a lot of thought into them.

The big twist of the book is that some of the vampires get their minds back and set about rebuilding society and that all the Vampires Neville has been slaughtering have actually been 'people' in the new society. This I didn't really like... Neville's realization that he had become a predator or 'legend' to these Vampires that he was killing by daylight struck me as a bit fainthearted... a surrender to the plague, if you will.

But then I got thinking that perhaps all he was looking for throughout the novel was an excuse to die. He didn't want to just off himself and give in to despair, but he had no will to live and would readily embrace the first semi-dignified death he could find. Being executed as a murderer in a society of vampires was the first opportunity that came his way and he jumped at it.

An incredibly nuanced portrayal of human psychology, most certainly... the means really do matter just as much as the ends, don't they? But, needless to say, it's also an incredibly sad one.
There's more ...

The Shadow of the Wind - "Madrid you wondrous city..."

I don't think many people that read this blog would be very interested in the Shadow of the Wind.

It's a historical fiction drama set in Franco Spain circa about 1945 by an author of the name of Carlos Ruiz Zafon. The plot is a kid is trying to research the biography of his favourite author, Julian Carax, who disappeared some years previous. It's a very sentimental sort of novel with intense romances, a layer of melodrama and a lot of subtle commentary on fascism and life in a police state. It also could be considered to be something of a mystery novel, what with the happenings that seem to surround Carax.

It's not dull. It's the kind of book that certainly keeps the pages turning... it's got likeable characters and the writing is smooth and occasionally powerful. But it pushes no limits and the plot is terribly predictable. If you're into this sort of non-speculative fiction, then by all means pick this up, but if you aren't don't bother.

That concludes the recommendation bit. I'm going to spend the rest of this post talking about the plot and what makes it so predictable and why Mr. Zafon's craft is of an inferior quality. Click on if you're interested in that.

So the Philadelphia Enquirer says on the inside cover that this book has 'a mystery that the author teases with mastery'. So let's take a look at this mastery, shall we?

As mentioned, Daniel (the teenaged protagonist) wants to find the biography of his favourite author Julian Carax. He discovers a book called 'the Shadow of the Wind' by Carax in a hidden library and finds out that Carax was apparently murdered in a Mysterious Fashion. Moreover, he also finds out that there's a scarred man with a lighter who wants to find and burn every single copy of Carax's work so as to erase them from existence once and for all. This man approaches him in a sinister manner, names himself after the devil from one of Carax's books and demands to have Daniel's copy of the book so that he can use it as firewood.

I honestly felt a little embarassed for Mr. Zafon when I read these scenes. The entire chapter was clearly aimed at making the reader think 'ohhh who is this strange masked man?' and he's not a bad writer, so he certainly got the mysterious feel right. But see, the 'master' here decided to be pretentious while he was at it and throw in a relatively obscure literary reference.

For those not in the know: Virgil and Kafka both ordered their manuscripts burned when they came to the end of their lives. The story goes that neither were completely satisfied with their works, so they decided that, since they couldn't do any more copy editing, fire was the only solution. A bit overdramatic of course, particularly in Kafka's case as he lived in an era where he could have just ripped the things up and tossed them in a dumpster. But hey, all authors have a bit of drama queen in them.

So gee whiz, I wonder who the devilish masked man who wants to burn Julian Carax's books is! Oh wow, could it be the brother of his childhood love? His old sadistic enemy who is now an evil fascist policeman? HMMM I WONDER! I'm not sure if you need to know the literary reference to really figure it out right away, but what me reading that told me was everything I needed to know about this author. Mainly: he's the spirtual sort that thinks it's okay to sacrifice his drama in exchange for a literary tip of the hat at his favourite authors.

From there, I pretty much puzzled out his plot points two hundred pages in advance.

"Why is Julian burning his own books?"
Because of standard issue Artistic Self-Hate born from a Personal Tragedy, involving a Girl.

"Julian suddenly had to leave Barcelona and went to Paris?"
Girl.

"Julian's biological father is an unknown person. Who could it be?"
The benevolent rich banker that gives him an opportunity to go to school.

Every time the book tried to make the reader ask a question (which it does frequently) I had the answer. Zafon's simplistic psychology and silly sentimentality was in hand and so he really couldn't surprise me. Even beyond just individual plot points, the overall structure was just in plain sight.

At one point in the book, Daniel (it's told in past-tense third person narration) says "I had seven days left to live". I just rolled my eyes when I read that and actually said aloud: "Yeah right! The structure of the book has you living a parallel of Carax's life except minus the tragedy. You're going to live happily ever fucking after." And so it was.

There's more to the book than the grand mystery, of course.

There's the high romance with both Daniel pursuing a girl called Bea who he loves very much and Julian (in the past) pursuing a girl he loves very much but who is also his half-sister. The problem with it is that the girls are about as dull as a post. No depth to them and not much personality to begin with... they're just Girls that the male characters happen to like.

There the Franco Spain aspect, with a comically evil Inspector guy that wants to torture everyone. But the politics are just a backdrop and nothing really useful comes from it. It could have been set in the Soviet Union, Germany in the 1930s or Italy without much of a difference besides the names and places. I assume it's set in Spain because the author is a Spaniard. He even included a bunch of pictures of Spain at the back of the book.

There are a few didactic statements about how television is the worse thing ever and novels are better, which struck me as a bit passe.

But the main point of the story is the mystery and the mystery just completely falls apart on itself when exposed to the tiniest bit of light. Carlos Ruiz Zafon is not an unskilled author. The problem is that his priorities are completely messed up. He wants to tell a story, but he also wants to inject this vague spiritual dimension while also presenting the corrupting influence of fascism on an inheriently good Spanish society. He has good characters, but he pollutes his work with empty sentiment and literary references. If he were a good enough writer, he could have weaved all this together into one coherent strand.

But he's not. And so he didn't. There's more ...

Prince of Persia - "Evil gods, crazy women... what's the difference?"

The Prince of Persia series has gone down a bit of a rocky road over the years. Sands of Time was their best performance, by far. It had fun platforming, slick combat and a pretty good story with likeable characters. Warrior Within removed most of the second and replaced the third with a lot of game-breaking bugs that made it so that I couldn’t even finish it. Two Thrones I heard was a slight improvement, but I could never find the Wii version so I never got around to playing it.

Still, my memories of Sands of Time were positive enough to put down 30 bucks for the new Prince of Persia, which is a reset of the story with a brand new Prince in a brand new world. And honestly, if not for a few things, this would be a glowing review. But alas, Ubi once again demonstrated their capacity to ruin a perfectly good product with bugs and a few retarded ideas that should never have made it off the drawing board, not to mention the biggest shafting of the PC consumer they could think of.

So the plot of the game is that you’re a thief (‘Prince’ is his ironic nickname) who wanders into some lost city that has an evil god trapped under it. There you meet Elika…

Let me take a moment to talk about Elika’s character design. Considering Prince of Persia’s pseudo-Middle Eastern theme, I think that a Bollywood temptress is about as good a female lead as you can hope for from one of these games. Certainly beats Farah’s harem girl look or that girl in the steel thong in Warrior Within. But honestly, how much better would she look if her shirt weren’t torn in strategic locations? They really didn’t need to show off that much skin to make her sexy and exotic.

In any case, as you might have guessed, the evil god wakes up and sends his four minions to four sections of the world to corrupt the land and break him out of his jail. The Prince, always a sucker for a pretty face, agrees to help Elika heal the land and stop the evil god guy. Most of the game consists of running across walls and ceilings, jumping over pits, flying and swinging off pillars until you reach the fertile ground, where you will kill a pathetically easy boss and then restore the land.

The first thing you notice while going through this is that the game is stunningly beautiful.

Like really, it is.

Jumping around a world like this is fun for the most part, if only because it let's you take in the wonderful scenery. There's combat too, but it's not really focused upon and there are only like a grand total of six different types of bad guys to fight in the game anyhow (and five of them are almost exactly the same).


The game's storyline is told via dialogue. Any time in the game you can also hit L to talk to Elika, sometimes about the story but often about nothing. In most reviews I’ve read of this game, the reviewer will either hate Elika and like the Prince or hate the Prince and like Elika. I though consider myself pretty neutral to both. The Prince is a lame Lawrence of Arabia type that comes across as being way too American, but still comes up with fairly clever and funny quips now and again. Elika on the other hand is bland and passionless most of the time, though when she does try to crack a joke at the Prince she can often be almost charming.

The net effect is that I don’t have a problem with either of them, but I could still care less about both. But I guess that's better than open hostility. And again, the pretty scenery really makes up for a lot of their flaws.

But anyway, those are the basics, so let's get to the sins of the game.

Sin #1: Bugs

I was expecting this game to crash a lot after Warrior Within, so I was actually surprised to see that it ran at a 100% consistent framerate with no crashes or bullshit. But alas, stability isn’t everything.

At any time in the game you can press a button to get Elika to send a little ball of light out to guide you along your way. It’s an open and complicated world, so this was pretty helpful for getting around. Unless, of course, the light were to do something crazy like take you around in a giant circle and waste five minutes of your time.

Which it did.

Very often.

Honestly, isn’t that the kind of thing that gets caught in testing Ubi? Making sure the glowing light doesn’t go in a big circle? That doesn’t sound so hard to me.

Sin #2: This guy

His name is the Warrior and he’s the boss of one of the areas. Each boss in the game has to be fought a total of five times (four stages per area + a final boss area). Normally, the way you beat a boss is by hitting him with your sword or throwing him around using your power klaw. But with this guy, Ubi decided to mix things up and make it so that he can’t be hurt but you have to use ‘the environment’ to get him. What that means is you have to stand around the edge of a cliff until he comes at you and then you have to knock him back into it.

But then after you knock him back, you have to do a quick time event where you overpower him by pressing the attack button over and over. If you fail, you have to start the whole thing process over again.

Fuck you Ubisoft.

I eventually got through this by getting to the quicktime event, pausing the game, going into the controls section and changing my attack button from my controller to ‘F’ (the F stands for ‘Fuck you’). I can hit F much faster than I can hit a button on my PSX controller, so while the frustration didn’t stop, I at least got through it. But the fact that it was there at all is unforgivable.

Sin #3: Combat in general

As I said, most of the game is platforming and I respect that. But quite frankly, with the exception of Mr. Fucking Stupid above, every boss could be killed in the following way: Circle, X, Triangle, X, Circle, Square. That one combo completely decimates everything it touches. Every boss (except Fuckface) and every enemy takes it in the same way. It made it so that combat was just a mildly irritating event that was thrown in between jumping sequences.

Something as simple as making each boss require a slightly different strategy would have helped stop the monotony a bit.

Sin #4: Leap of faith gameplay

This isn't actually so bad, but I consider it sloppy. Often when doing a jump, you'll come to a point where you don't know what the hell is next... you'll run down a wall and come to the end of it and the choice will be between just falling and jumping and hoping that there's something on the other side. Which is usually okay, as there most often IS something on the other side, but it makes it feel as though you're just running through the game's paces. It's not really timing or strategy on your part... you just press jump when the game wants you to.

Not that bad, but a flaw for sure.

Sin #5: The Ending

I liked where the game's story left off actually, but there's a three hour DLC pack that's coming out that continues the story. And, since it's not coming to PC, I will never get to see or play it.

Yeah, um... fuck you Ubisoft?

Honestly, I bought the game as an expression of pure goodwill towards this company. Sure they have a spotty history, but Sands of Time is great and Beyond Good and Evil was fantastic. The fact that this pack exists at all is part of a fucking bad trend in console gaming where companies try to nickle and dime their consumers by not finishing their fucking game and then releasing the rest of it afterward as a download pack. But randomly fucking over PC gamers (since when is the fucking PC harder to patch than a fucking console game) is just unacceptable.

So in conclusion, Ubisoft should go fucking die in a ditch. There's more ...

Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder - "But if I keep them and she marries him... then he probably won't want me dating her."

I'm a long time Futurama fan. It's the sort of thing that seems to have been designed explicitly for the use of me or people like me. In no other place can you find jokes about Star Trek, scifi cliches and Nixon in the same place. Not to mention that on average it's got a really great cast and an incredibly compelling romance plot in the background. The fifth season of Futurama is I think one of the finest mixes of sci-fi romance comedies that shall ever be forged.

The last two Futurama movies have, however, been complete disappointments. Bender's Big Score was okay, even if it was a bit redundant storywise with the fifth season... but The Beast With a Billion Backs' arbitrary break-up of Fry and Leela and shitty octopus plot really brought Futurama into a nosedive. Bender's Game was a bit better, but I was still thinking by the end of it I was thinking that the magic was gone and Futurama's glory days were over.

Into The Wild Green Yonder proves that I was wrong and it does so by quietly pretending that the last two movies didn't happen.




I've been saying ever since these movies started airing that the Futurama writers fear Fry and Leela's relationship. They're really good at writing Fry as the lovable nerd pursuing and idolizing Leela, who is a pretty ordinary person. One of my favourite scenes in Futurama is probably from the last episode of season 5, where Fry tells Hedonism Bot that he's going to make his opera and then it cuts to Leela on the other side of the room eating what appears to be a giant severed cockroach leg saying " *gasp* Me?!". It's just brilliant stuff. But the fear the Futurama writers possess is really of what comes after that... whenever Fry and Leela have had a moment that makes you think 'oh they're together now', it's often completely forgotten a few moments afterward.

I think the reason for this is a desire on the part of the writers not to interfere with the character dynamic. Futurama stems from the Simpsons and if there was ever a series that tries to maintain the status quo, it's the Simpsons. But for whatever the reason, the writers kept the two in a sort of pre-dating stasis field for the longest time... until, that is, now.

Into The Wild Green Yonder is not a Fry and Leela movie. The plot doesn't have much to do with their relationship and it's only in the background. But here's the thing: they have one. After so much bullshit about Fry suddenly dating someone else and Leela going back to being completely disinterested, they finally did a Futurama story where the two of them appear to already be together. And guess what? It doesn't actually change much! The character dynamics are more or less the same, except that I'd say that both Fry and Leela are greatly improved. They aren't mushy at all... Fry will still be as tasteless and dumb around her as always, while Leela still has a healthy amount of contempt for him. It's actually a bit sudden, considering that nothing happened between them last movie, but again that's why I'm saying they're pretending the last two movies did not happen. And in any case, what you get as a result is a nice breath of fresh air.


Amazing what happens when you let your characters develop rather than futilely clinging to an outdated status quo. One wonders why they didn't do it earlier.


Besides that, the rest of the movie was really nice. The first three movies often resorted to rehashed jokes. You know what I mean... having Mom do various Mom things that she's done before or just throwing the Hypnotoad out there. But this movie decided to do something controversial, mainly: tell new jokes. Fry's bits about how to be dramatic, the protesting feminists, Bender's bit with the Robot Don and pretty much everything Nixon said and did were just hilarious. For the first time, it felt like the Futurama writers were really having some fun.


What's more, I'd say this is the first actual movie out of the set. The other three had the problem of being a bit like three or four episodes of Futurama with a vaguely overarching plot gluing it all together. This one though had a beginning, middle and end. The major plot twist actually managed to be a bit surprising and it all wraps up nicely.



I've heard it said that this may be the last bit of Futurama ever made. If so, then I'm glad they went out on a note like this. It certainly wasn't the best bit of Futurama ever made, but it was quite well done. There's more ...

Safehold Series - "Charis expects that every man shall do his duty."

Let me start this post with an aside... the way Canadian bookstores handle their books is ridiculous. You have a situation where half the time you pick a promising title off the bookshelf, it'll end up being Book 2 of the Such-and-Such series or Book 3 of the Awesomeness Trilogy. And then you'll look at the bookshelves and find that the first book isn't there.

Such was the case with a book I saw called 'By Schism Rent Asunder' by David Weber, which is the second book in the 'Safehold' series. Fortunately I was able to remember his name and acquire both books. Unfortunately, they weren't particularly good.

Whenever an author writes anything, it's natural to get attached to your characters. As you walk down the dark, cold and lonely path that is authorship, your characters become not just your friends but rather a part of you. There is a danger in this, however... because if an author gets too attached to a character, he or she will become hesitant to do anything bad to them or portray them in a bad light.

This is the pit that Weber falls into, but he doesn't just do it for one or two characters. He does it with an entire country.



So very quickly:
The premise of the book is that a human space colony has reverted to a 15th century technology and is dominated by an anti-technology Church. The plot revolves around a nation that rebels against said Church with the help of an ancient robot girl wizard man. This results in a holy war. There's a lot more to it than that (the Church was made by some asshole colonial administrators and the rest of humanity is wiped out), but that's the gist of it.

The Kingdom of Charis is the country that's in rebellion. At first, you get the idea that what's going on is that the robot lady man is trying to subtly guide the people there back to the path of technology, but as the story goes on it becomes apparent that what Charis is actually just the sort of place that Weber thinks he would like, filled with the sort of people Weber wouldn't mind hanging out with. With very few exceptions, everyone in Charis is a paragon of virtue who values Human Rights above all else. Meanwhile, most people from the Church are either corrupt/evil or going through some sort of moral dilemma that boils down to 'Oh no, I love Mother Church, but Charis is just so right!'

Honestly, it's ridiculous. This is probably the most unrealistic book about a Holy War that anyone could ever write. At one point, the Church's Inquisition massacres a bunch of innocent Charisian merchants and their families (including women and children!) for being heretics... when news gets back to Charis, there's a scene in a bar with common sailors and soldiers talking over drinks that goes something like this:

"How dare they massacre our merchants! I say we go over there right now and burn their whole city down, women and children and all!"
"Oy! I didn't hear about no women and children attacking our ships!"
"Yeah! We can't sink to their level! I'm as upset as you are, but vengeance only begets more vengeance! We must respond in a measured and proportionate fashion"
"My apologies for my hasty words, friends. I spoke out of passion."
"Don't worry, we all make mistakes. Care for another drink?"

Honestly, it's ridiculous. Common sailors and soldiers reacting to a massacre of their fellows with restraint and reason in the midst of a religious war. Yeah that's incredibly realistic, Weber!

Charis also can do no wrong in the books. It's really a nation of overpowered Mary Sues. Weber spends hundreds of pages building up to epic sea battles, which Charis proceeds to effortlessly win. One major Charisian character has died in two books and his death was preluded by pages upon pages of 'HEY SYMBOLIC DEATH COMING UP'. At one point, it looked like one of the major characters was going to be assassinated, but that got Deus Ex Machina'd. The assassins were killed and said character went on to give a long speech about how Vengeance Is Wrong while still drenched in their blood.

To make matters worse, there were a few other characters that were against Charis that I actually liked, but they end up seeing the light and joining Charis, which pretty much leaves only the "Grrr we are the Evil Church" people on the other side.

I honestly would put it down to cowardice. Weber created this nation of Charis that he thought from the get go will be a place where people he likes will live and make didactic speeches about relgion and tolerance and being a good sort of person. Because Weber likes Charis so damn much, he sabatoges his own writing and makes the whole 'war' so damn one-sided that it's just ridiculous.

Good writers are willing to let bad things happen to good people. Not just that, but good writers have to be willing to let a good person appear in a negative light now and then. That's what keeps a story interesting and engaging. But alas, David Weber is not a good writer.

I'm probably being too hard on him. I mean, the books were page turners and I'll probably read the third one whenever it comes out (though not right away). But alas, until Weber learns to step back from his characters and learn to write what is best for the story he's telling rather than what's best for the characters he's writing he will forever remain in the pits of mediocrity. There's more ...

Spice and Wolf - "To our profits!"

Spice and Wolf is quite unusual.

It's set in a European-style fantasy world... Society is at a sort of pre-modern phase where harvests have come to be stable, traveling merchants go from city to city and there's a church that insists on religious orthodoxy. In previous days, the peoples of the world used to pay fealty to pagan gods and spirits of the harvest, but that of course died out with the advent of the church.

Sounds like a not-too-unusual brand of fantasy at first, but here's the catch: There's no swordplay to speak of and, with the exception of Ms. Wolf Sage Spirit, there is no magic. Most of the anime is dedicated to haggling, forging business partnerships and just turning out a profit. There really is hardly any action at all.

It is, in other words, something that has absolutely no business being as great as it was.

The premise of the story is that a traveling merchant meets one of these pagan ex-deities along the road, who calls herself a wolf sage spirit. She asks him to bring her north, to her birthplace, for reasons she keeps to herself. The merchant agrees and they begin to travel.

I've found that in any story where you're going to be experimental and try something new, the first thing you need are intensely likable characters. You can't make a show about mercantilism with the Gundam 00 crew and expect success, after all. So let's start with the two mains...


This is Craft Lawerence, the Spice side of the equation.

The first thing most people would notice about Lawrence here is that he's voiced by Jun Fukuyama, aka Lelouch. This is the first time I've really heard Jun outside of his Lelouch role and it took a few moments for me to get my head around the fact that the guy isn't out to viciously take over the world using any and all means.

He's really not what you usually expect from a merchant character. He isn't really all that greedy and he never cheats anyone. He certainly keeps careful track of his money and wants to get rich, but his ambitions are thoroughly wholesome (i.e. he wants to make enough money to settle down, get married and open a shop). It seems that his ideal deal is one where all parties involve profit handsomely and part on amiable terms, with the understanding that further business may be conducted in the future, which gets him into trouble. There's a certain intangible quality to the guy that just makes him thoroughly likeable. His thoughtful mannerisms as he considers a deal and his understated emotions with Horo just make him into the sort of guy you yourself would like to know. It's a rare thing for a character to hit a perfect note, but when one does you always remember them.


This is Horo. As mentioned, she's a Wolf Spirit (which is why she has Wolf ears) who was worshipped by a village for a few generations as a harvest deity, though she herself doesn't make any claims to divinity. She portrays herself as a spirit who just used her powers to help some humans out for a while, until technology progressed to such a level that she was no longer required. She isn't really bitter about this and is in fact pretty cheerful and mischievous throughout the show, but there's a certain unstated sadness to Horo that comes with the knowledge that her time has passed.

She's a bit of a counterpoint to Lawerence (or perhaps Lawerence is the counterpoint to her), in that she is pretty self-indulgent, a bit suspicious and extremely shrewd. Oh, and Geass fans will notice she's voiced by Kallen.


It's really when the two get put together that they really become magnificent. They're rather openly attached to each other, but their relationship is like an incredibly elaborate dance where each is trying to playfully outwit or outdo the other with misdirection and jokes. This isn't the typical anime affair where both parties are just too shy to actually say or do anything about it, but rather that they both seem to have more fun that way. They take a peculiar sort of joy out of making each other jealous and defying each other's expectations ("Why do you want me to stay with you?" "Because you owe me money").

It's a fun thing to see unfold as it goes along. If the show were nothing but these two, I would still highly recommend it.


Where things get even more interesting is in the money aspect. Lawerence sells furs in one town, buys pepper and moves on to the next. Horo helps him out with her sage wisdom (and, very occasionally, wolf magic) and the two are a money-making team. The world they're in is mercantilistic and he has to do things like deal with tariffs, fluctuating currencies, guild regulations and avoid church interference. The show is lovingly researched and structured, but it never gets so obtuse with the financial bits that you lose track of what the hell is going on and the characters make it engaging enough to be pretty dramatic. I never thought I'd be able to cheer for a guy to find a decent price to sell his pepper at, but they somehow pull it off.

There's an old addage that money corrupts that often pervades fiction. It's a literary tradition that reaches back to Shakespeare's Timons of Athens and beyond, so I expected the other merchants to be a pack of jackals... and so I was quite surprised when Lawerence said that he'd testify in a court of law against a company, the immediate response was not 'okay, time to kill you'. It actually took me a moment to realize that maybe the guy just didn't want to profit off of violence and death. Everyone cares about their bottom lines and profit margins, but even when hired thugs are sent out to slit Lawerence's throat in the dark they feel awfully guilty about it. It's a weird portrayal of old world spiritualism and morality combining with modern concepts of self-interest. The Spice with the Wolf, in other words... and I found that really intriguing.

(I feel compelled to mention, since I think I may in fact be one of the few people in the world who is equipped to properly notice this: the scene where Lawerence goes door to door asking friends and business partners for money is, in fact, taken directly from Timons of Athens. I would write a bit about the underlying meaning of that, but I'm already such a nerdy guy so...)

I will be the first to acknowledge that the enjoyment of Spice and Wolf does take a few rather obscure tastes, or at the very least a willingness to give a fantasy concerned primarily with high romance and the tides of commerce a chance. But if you're willing to broaden out your horizons just a little bit, I think you will be well rewarded. There's more ...