Review - The Alchemyst

The Alchemyst (Michael Scott)

I remember rereading some of Michael Scott's earlier novels last summer and feeling disappointed. They just didn't hold the magic I'd seen in them when I was younger. I don't know if these books would or not, if I was younger, but my first comment on The Alchemyst was "I'm so far unimpressed", and I could close the book with the same feeling, too. I don't really care enough to hunt down the next book, not while I have so much else to read.

It could be interesting. I quite like mash-ups of tonnes of different mythology. This just left me cold, though. The Morrigan likes ebay and is addicted to online strategy games. Hecate lives in a copy of Yggdrasil. Scathach is a vampire (of sorts) and prefers to be called Scatty. Etc. I don't mind mythology meeting modern technology, either, but this... Every couple of paragraphs it had to mention laptops or email or ipods.

You could sort of call this book "fast-paced", if by that you mean "one never-ending fight scene, with lots of special effects".

It completely lacks subtlety. Exposition is ladled on thickly, and not a chapter can go by without a reference to how much the twins love each other. The kids aren't just the son and daughter of an archaeologist, no, they know loads of stuff about mythology and the names of craters of the moon (and yet still don't know what Yggdrasil or Hecate or anything is). They're not just special, they're super special, with solid gold and silver auras. Etc.

Not for me, I think.

Review - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a la Armitage

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (trans. Simon Armitage)

Simon Armitage's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is certainly a very modern one. I think it's important to remember, when reading anything in translation, that nothing is immune to the translator's own views and intentions. This is especially apparent in translations like Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, and this translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but it's always the case. Even when it's a group of undergrads doing awkward prose translations -- I always use the example of Wulf and Eadwacer. There is no way you can translate that poem without personal interpretation. Even if you consciously translate the poem in order to keep all the ambiguities in place, that's an interpretation. Knowing this, and having read the introduction to this translation, it was easy for me to settle down and just enjoy Simon Armitage's translation. It's not literal, and it's colloquial, and it's contemporary, and it will probably quickly become dated. I don't think it's suitable for commenting on the poem in an academic context, unless you're actually commenting on the different translations, because it's very much an interpretation and in "plain English" and doesn't hold all the richness of the original.

It's also very readable, and rich in its own way. If you want to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and you're daunted by the idea of the "Old English"*, this translation is great -- lively and, I think, playful. I enjoyed the language a lot, not least because of how very Yorkshire it is (I grew up in Yorkshire). Armitage makes a good attempt at using the alliterative metre, and the poem practically begs to be read aloud and savoured.

The story itself has become less and less important to me as I've read the poem in various different translations (Armitage's, Brian Stone's, a prose translation, the original...) and instead I've found myself focusing on the tone of the poem (is the narrator being ironic?) and details like the missing day (count 'em up carefully), and the use of adjectives ("good Gawain", etc). Still, there's an interesting story there, too -- the testing of Sir Gawain, a tension between courtly manners and Christianity, etc, etc.

*It's actually in Middle English, and all of the translations will be Modern English.

I am not obsessed with this poem. I swear. *crosses fingers behind back*