Shannara update

This just in: Arborlorn, the aforementioned elf kingdom in Terry Brooks' The Elfstones of Shannara, is located in modern-day Oregon. Thank you, Wikipedia! And thanks to imdb.com for informing me that Elfstones is set to be made into a movie directed by Mike Newell, who directed "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."

Book Review: The Elfstones of Shannara, by Terry Brooks

The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
**Disclaimer: LOTS OF PLOT SPOILERS!!!**



The plot of Elfstones is intriguing, the characters of the book are likable and pretty, and the world of the elves is a captivating one filled with races of men and magic of a forgotten world.

If you have no problem with the previous sentence, please stop reading this review and immediately pick up Elfstones. You will find yourself in the company OF a fun fantasy novel.

If, however, you felt your eyes itch as you read "of ___" five times in one sentence, please advise - do I finish a book I am enjoying because it is sheer fun, or do I punish Terry Brooks for terrible writing and set his novel down?

I am about half-way through The Elfstones of Shannara -- too far to walk away from now -- and I do feel invested in Wil and Amberle's plight (not, however, "in the plight of Wil and Amberle." Tery Brooks, get an editor!). The elven world is threatened by an ancient evil, and as Amberle, a young elf girl/princess and her quarter-elf companion Wil attempt to keep the evil at bay, demons unleash brutal attacks upon the elf kingdom Arborlorn.

Standard LOTR-ish plot ensues: two young and naive protagonists go on trek across lands populated by trolls, dwarves, and stick-men who pick up our protagonists and carry them across the forest (ahem, Tolkien-is-scratching-his-head). The goal: submerge a magical talisman in the fire from where the magic originates in order to prevent an evil demon army from murdering the elves and taking over their kingdom (ahem, Tolkien-is-now-giving-Brooks-the-stink-eye). The old wizard Allanon, a la Gandalf, helps the two young protagonists along their journey with, among other magic, a magical staff that wards off evil dragons (ahem, Tolkien-just-shakes-his-head). In the end, old magic must be mustered by the young protagonists, each questioning his and her own strength (ahem, oh forget it!).

Arborlorn, the elf kingdom

I know a bit about the series from a friend, and am intrigued by the interesting concept that this magical world is actually the FUTURE rather than a long-ago past. A terrible war occurred thousands of years ago (i.e., around the 20th century), and the people who waged this war are the elves' ancestors. Kinda neat, no? However, Brooks handles this SO SUBTLY that I did not really catch it and I think I'm supposed to read the whole series to truly understand what happened.

Once I finish the book, I will add some final impressions. For now, I am content with my fun fantasy world, though physically pained by the (at-times) atrocious writing.

***

After finishing this book last night:

The blatant similarities between Elfstones and LOTR are most obvious in the battle scenes and demon descriptions, but after a while, I stopped caring about plagiarism and just allowed myself to enjoy the ride. Most of the action occurs in the book's last third or so, with battle scenes that were entirely too long for my taste, and a hectic, exciting, and terrifying race against time through crazy forests. The protagonists grow into a little gang that by the end includes the beautiful Elf girl Ameberle, her protector Wil, the even more beautiful Rover (kind of like "gypsy") girl Eretria, the old man Hegel, Hegel's trusty old dog, Drifter, young Perk, and Perk's trusty old giant flying bird. Whew! There is even a fuzzy, furry, friendly little half-wit elf thrown in for kicks. Guess what, he saves the day!

The writing improves in quality as the book nears its end, perhaps because there is so much action that the writing stops trying to be cutesy and just tells the story. The action itself is riveting enough to have kept me up until 1 a.m. to finish the book, and the climax is pretty damn exciting! Suspense, surprise, the whole shebang.

Lastly, pervasive Christian allegory infuses Elfstones, but not to Narnia levels. Let's give away the story some more: Magical tree in the "Garden of Life;" apostles (the "Chosen") who tend to the tree of life, which turns out to be a symbol not only of purity but also great personal sacrifice; prodigal children abound; and so on. Having recently watched the awfulest of awful summer movies, "Terminator Salvation," I am grateful to Brooks for how he handled Christian mythology in his novel: subtle and embedded in the plot, not garishly obvious and out of place like in McG's (seriously, that's his name?!?!?) terrible of terribles.

I give Terry Brooks' Elfstones of Shannara three enthusiastic stars for effort, but am retracting one star for poor writing and occasional blatant plagiarism.


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Muddy High

I have a little secret. The Mud Run on Saturday was... great fun!

The three muddy buddies after coming out of the final mud pit, but before crossing the finish line

The day started early; actually, it started on Friday, with a flight into Burbank. We tried to go to bed at a reasonable hour, because come Saturday morning, we were up at 4 (or was it 4:30)? M's sister and her daughter came over, and together with M's mom, we piled into the minivan all sleepy-like. Los Angeles freeways are probably best experienced at 5 a.m. on Saturdays, but who really wants to do that? Anyways, the drive toward San Diego was great, smooth riding all the way. I had a couple cereal bars - Nature Valley yogurt bars beat out the Odwalla bar in the taste test - and slathered my feet in anti-blister gel. We were making fantastic time, and were two exists from Camp Pendelton with plenty of time to spare, when we decided to take a pee break at the rest stop off the freeway rather than wait until we got to the race, figuring the port-a-potties would be both crowded and gross. Well, the quick pit stop turned into a 45-minute detour, and by the time we got back on the freeway to go one more exit, the line to get off was about a mile long. We crawled on the freeway, crawled through the base entrance, crawled through the base, and crawled into a parking spot. Finally, we had arrived! We were late as all hell now, but we had arrived! We parked too close to bus it, so we walked to the entrance, which was good, as it gave us a bit of a warm-up. We got our t-shirts (yay!), checked in our bags, peed one more time in a totally disgusting port-a-potty, and finally made it to the staging area. Wow! Talk about a crowd! I knew that there were 4000 people running this race, but all of a sudden I realized, There are 4000 people running this race! We literally got in line a minute before the starting time at 9:00, just in time to sing the "Star Spangled Banner," and then we were off!!!

My number

We ran for what seemed like a quarter mile, maybe, and got hosed down by (hot) marines (this "hot marines" theme will be a recurring one, so pay attention). Now, previous to the race, I had not been excited at the thought of being soaking wet and cold and running in slushy shoes. But, wouldn't you know? It is great fun! The water wasn't as icy cold as I had expected, and with the San Diego mugginess, and the hotness of 4000 people around, it felt actually refreshing. Did we scream bloody murder? Of course! We were being hosed down by (hot) marines, for goodness' sake!

The order of the obstacles is rather fuzzy to me now, but I remember there was sad (not so fun, but not so bad), a little river crossing, another hosing down by (hot) marines, and hills. There were definitely hills on this run. "Suicide Hill" is a two-mile long incline, and I had been really nervous about it, but I've had a good coach the last few months, who encouraged me to run the hills behind Stanford with urgency, and it paid off. I was tired, and it was hard, but nothing unmanageable.

Now, the mud. Oh, the mud... it is exactly what I imagined. Sticky, thick, stenchy, wet... Kind of like cow manure in smell, and swampy mulch in texture. But the mud pits are not long enough to become truly nauseating, and the only really difficult thing about them is trying not to twist your ankles when going in and out of the pits, as you can't see where you're placing your feet, and the mud is all bumpy and slippery.

The obstacle I had been most concerned about was the reservoir crossing, but it actually turned out to be my favorite! Basically, you have to cross a football field-length water reservoir, with water about nose-height for me (blessed are the tall!). I thought it would be awful, and as I'm not a strong swimmer, I'd had visions of me drowning and having all the (hot) marines laughing at my pansiness. But I held one hand on M's shoulder, and by kinda of moon-walking and holding on, I managed to get all the way across. The only hard part was getting out. We all wanted to stay in that cool, clean, calming water. But, no, we got out and immediately started running.

Now, a word about running wet. It's not so bad, definitely not as bad as I had anticipated. Yes, your shoes squeak, but that's really all. I had on really tight clothing, so I didn't feel any wet-clothes discomfort. The only really hard part is the pebbles in the shoes, especially as they dry. While all the sand and pebbles that get in are still wet, it just feels a little rough. But once they are dry, it's like... well it's like what you'd imagine running with a shoe full of rubble would feel like. However, I discovered that it is much easier to run with many rocks in your shoe, than with just one little one. If I'm running and there's one pebble in there, I have to stop and get it out. But magically, multiply that pebble by a hundred, make my shoes wet and give me some mud in my eyes, and I can run no problem.

On our race, there were no tires or hay bales obstacles, which I have heard occasionally show up. Maybe because it was the first Mud Run of the season, or maybe there were too many people, but they weren't there. There was a pipe-like tunnel thing, which I did not crawl through but rather walked through, all scrunched in. This is where I was very thankful for the squats I have been doing!!

The very worst part of the race for me were the walls - they are very tall, slippery, and once you jump over them, you land in bumpy, slippery, mud. This is where M's sister got hurt - the first wall. She messed up her ankle, and I felt so bad for her because it was relatively early on in the race. But she was a super-trooper, and completed the rest of the race beautifully. Still, those damn walls -- if I do this next year, I'm definitely beefing up my arms and growing about 7 inches, because these f*****s are tall! The second one I jumped was a "double" wall, meaning twice as thick, so I couldn't even hook my hands around it. M's sis propped me up, and M helped me come down on the other side. Without them, I know I would have had to get a (hot) marine to help me, or just flounder around in the mud until someone took mercy on me and let me walk around the damn things. They are awful!

Lastly, there is the final mud pit, which is super wet and stinky. There are plastic flags strewn across every few feet, and you can't get higher than those flags -- basically you have to cross on the mud pit on your hands and knees. The worst part of it by far is just that your knees get all scratched up and the mud makes it kinda of sting, but even that is not so bad.

When we got out of the mud pit, we saw M's mom on the sidelines, and stopped to take a couple of pictures, which makes for good photos, but for slower time! We then sprinted to the official finish line, with a finishing time of 1 hour, 52 minutes, and 58 seconds. MUCH slower than M's time last year of 1 hour, 30 minutes. However, this is where I put in my time disclaimer -- since we got to the starting line so late, there weer literally thousands of people ahead of us, which led to extreme bottlenecking at several parts along the course. I think we could have easily shaved 10 minutes off of our time just by taking out all the time we spent waiting around to get through narrow parts of the trails. Overall, though, I can't be upset about the time - we weren't really doing it with a time goal in mind, though if I do it again next year, my goal is to beat 1 hour 30.

(If you look carefully in the picture, you see us three running towards the finish line)

I couldn't believe when we were finished that it had all gone by. I mean, it was seriously fun! It is true that you feel a great sense of pride in yourself - you just did this hard thing, and survived, and enjoyed it! A few months ago I couldn't run half a block, and now I ran six miles and jumped walls and crossed reservoirs, and got high-fives from (hot) marines along the way!!

I forgot to mention that occasionally, marines would be on the side of the trails with water guns spraying us down, or handing out water and Gatorade, and cheering us on. That was great fun, and it was nice to feel like they were proud of us, and in turn we are all proud of them for what they do. It was all very squishy-lovey-dovey, in a muddy-runny-mess kind of way.


After the race, we met up with M's mom and niece, and took photos, and bought souvenir shirts, and got a celebratory beer. I had wanted to shower, but there were only about 3500 people in line waiting to shower, so I decided to just change while M held a towel around me. Mmm, nothing like putting fresh clothes on over caked mud! Actually - it was kind of fun. M and I kind of wandered around and took it all in, and again felt all squishy-lovey-dovey.

Then, we headed back to L.A. and while we made a fruitless detour trying to go to In-N-Out, we still got to L.A. in an hour and a half! Awesome time! We dropped off M's mom, sis, and niece, and M and I went and got a celebratory Bacon Western burger and fries (and a taco) from the best burger place in all of Los Angeles, Pete's. We did split the burger, as we were having bbq later that night, but man! That was the best burger I've ever had! I was S-T-A-R-V-I-N-G at that point - about 2:30 p.m., and we wolfed that bad boy down!

Thus, our Mud Run adventure drew to a close. It was a successful adventure in every sense: I got in better shape, learned to semi-like running, bonded with M's sister who inspired me all this time to keep training, and achieved something that even a year ago when I spectated at the Mud Run I thought I would never be able to do.

I guess the marines have reminded me of a lesson we all should remember, which is that if we do set our minds to something and work hard toward that goal, there are very few things in life that we can't achieve. All the little things that I tried to use as excuses turned out to be just that, excuses. "I don't have enough time," but I made time. "My feet hurt," but I got new shoes and insoles, and my feet were just fine. "I can't breathe!" (This was a big one at the beginning), but I learned that if I kept training, my heart and lungs started getting stronger, and soon I could run and talk at the same time.

Now, the goal on the horizon running-wise is the Wharf to Wharf in Santa Cruz/Capitola at the end of July. Thank goodness I signed up for it, otherwise I might be very tempted to stop running for a while. As for next year's Mud Run, I'm almost positive that I will do it again, even if to prove to myself that I can beat M's time from last year ;-)

Mud Run this Saturday!!

Where have the last six months gone? It feels like just yesterday I was lounging on a chaise on a cruise ship, sipping champagne, waiting for the ship to sail out onto the Pacific. This is exactly what I was doing when M's sister called to tell him that indeed, the three of us had been signed up for the Camp Pendleton Mud Run on June 6. Now, it is June 4, and I feel compelled to both run with arms wide open towards this crazy race, as well as run screaming in any direction other than San Diego. Overall though, I am truly psyched and happy to be doing this, and I can't wait for Sunday morning to roll around when I can wake up and have this be behind me!

One thing that truly inspired me on this last stretch is a comment that I received today from a fellow blogger. Sue Ann Jaffarian is also doing the Mud Run this Saturday, and she must have somehow come across one of my entries about the Mud Run, and left me a great comment telling me a bit about her own journey toward Camp Pendleton. I highly recommend giving her blog, Babble 'n Blog, a read.

To catch up briefly on this month's training:

We took it slowly, and sure enough, by last Sunday, I was able to do a six-mile run, complete with hills. We started out a few weeks ago doing two miles, then pushed it up to two and a half, then three... then suddenly I found myself running and running and Gosh-durn, still running, during our six mile trek a few days ago. Needless to say, I'm a bit over running by now, but at the same time I am excited that I have gotten a really good base down, so I can concentrate on running being "fun" rather than "excruciating." This is imperative, as we're doing the Wharf to Wharf at the end of July, and I must be in good enough shape to actually enjoy all the bands and entertainers and supporters along that route.

In preparation for the Mud Run, I even bought myself some really cute - and totally expensive - triathlon shorts, which I bought partially with the intention that they will encourage me to train for the Disneyland Duathlon next year.

Lastly, I must touch upon my lame foot. My lame foot is seriously a pain in my behind (odd phrase, ain't it??) and after much procrastination, I actually went to a real foot doctor. He informed me that I over-pronate in my right foot, a fancy word meaning I don't have enough arch support, which leads to the tibial nerve being overly stressed (perhaps it needs a margarita? I know I do!). Any-this-is-probably-boring, the podiatrist gave me these super nerdy-looking food pad things to add on TOP of my already geeky insoles. I cannot wear them for the Mud Run, as they are made of felt, which shockingly is no friend to mud, but I shall definitely start wearing them as soon as the Mud Run is over. Hopefully, this should improve my foot-falling-asleep issue, and make me a happier and better runner.

Next time you hear from me, I will hopefully have good news to report. If there are no posts by early next week, send out a search party to sift through the mud :)

In other news, great speech by President Obama in Cairo! NYT has the full text, though I'm not sure how well the link will work.

"The Holy Koran tells us, 'O mankind! We have created you male and female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.' The Talmud tells us: 'The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.' The Holy Bible tells us, 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.' The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you." (End of Obama's speech).

P.S. Happy Belated to Anderson Cooper, who turned 42 yesterday :)