Tag: fiction

Book: Robert E. Howard “The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane”

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Today, there are probably few people who are unfamiliar with the character of Conan the Barbarian. Even if they haven’t read a single book about him, they are likely to remember the iconic image of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger portraying the character. However, in the Soviet Union, the author of the Conan series (and many other works), Robert E. Howard, was virtually unknown until 1989. Although Howard himself didn’t write a large number of works, several of his characters became cult figures, Conan being the foremost among them. The series about this hero, which many other authors have continued, now includes not just dozens but hundreds of stories.

Personally, I first encountered Robert E. Howard’s work back in the distant year of 1990, when the Minsk publishing house Eridan released a collection of the author’s works titled The Hour of the Dragon.

A year earlier, in Krasnoyarsk, a thin booklet of just 52 pages had been published, containing two of Howard’s short stories translated by Alexander Bushkov under one cover. Eridan, in its full-length book, used both of these stories in the same translation. The Eridan collection included works about various characters, including the titular novel about Conan the Barbarian. However, one of the stories translated by Bushkov was Wings in the Night, featuring a protagonist named Solomon Kane. At the time, this character didn’t leave much of an impression on me. The story was the only one about him in the collection, and for a 13-year-old, his image clearly paled in comparison to the ruthless, muscular barbarian Conan. It was read and forgotten, in short. Two years later, the same Eridan began publishing a four-volume collection of Robert E. Howard’s works, but even in this, Solomon Kane appeared in only two stories—Wings in the Night and Red Shadows. You’ll agree, that’s hardly enough to develop any strong feelings for the character.

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Book: Olga Gromyko “Year of the Rat”

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Although I became acquainted with Olga Gromyko’s work even before her very first book was published and have since followed her writing closely, it so happened that one particular series slipped past me. As I kept reading Olga’s new works, I never found the time to go back to the Year of the Rat duology. This was partly due to several opinions I came across that were rather critical of the series compared to her other works.

However, the time finally came to fill this gap and form my own opinion by reading both parts consecutively. First of all, I must say that this series is best read as a single piece—both volumes together. It’s essentially one story split into two parts, with the second book (Wanderer) released about a year after the first (Seer). The first book ends quite abruptly, right in the middle of the story. Secondly, I must admit that my opinion of the series was mixed, both during and after reading it. I can understand some of the critics, but let’s try to delve deeper into the details.

Year of the Rat was published in 2009 and 2010, and it can, in a way, be considered a transitional work between the Belorian series (which made Olga Gromyko a well-known writer) and the subsequent space epic As*troheads. Yes, there was also the novel A Plus for a Minus, co-written with Andrey Ulanov, which explored an almost contemporary world. But stylistically, Year of the Rat is closer to the Belorian series. The action takes place in a pseudo-medieval setting where magic exists and is generally acknowledged by the populace. The protagonist is, once again, a young woman, although she is now accompanied by two companions. In the next series, Olga would depart from this approach, but here it seems she was still experimenting with new creative directions. Of course, this is just my speculation.

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Book: Victor Hugo “Les Misérables”

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Almost everyone from my generation is familiar with Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables in one way or another, even if they don’t realize it. How is that possible, you ask? Easily! During my childhood, there were a few heroes every Soviet schoolchild was expected to look up to. Off the top of my head: Malchish-Kibalchish, Arkady Gaidar himself (legend has it that he commanded a regiment as a teenager), Pavlik Morozov (whose heroism is now questioned, but back then he was unequivocally a hero who suffered for the revolution), and—Gavroche. The boy who was shot by cruel soldiers at the French barricades while trying to gather bullets for the rebels.

We all knew about Gavroche because the episode of his death was included in the school curriculum for foreign literature. It was even explicitly noted that this was an excerpt from Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables. However, I doubt many paid much attention to that detail back then. Moreover, the way literature was taught in schools was such that few students were inspired to revisit or explore the works of these authors in depth later on.

So, I knew about the novel, I fully understood that it was a classic of world literature, and I could even point out exactly where it sat on the bookshelf at home 😉 But I never really felt inclined to read it. Then, in 2012, Hollywood released a film adaptation of the musical based on the book. Since I enjoy musicals, I watched it with great pleasure—without having the faintest idea what it was about. I loved Hugh Jackman’s performance (I like him in everything, really) and Russell Crowe’s as well. And a couple of scenes with Sacha Baron Cohen as Thénardier were pure burlesque! Several songs made their way into my playlist, and the story itself seemed intriguing, even though the musical presented it in a very superficial way, often leaving questions about what was left out. That’s when I decided—it was finally time to read the book.

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Book Adaptations (Akunin and Beyond)

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Today, I would like not just to make a post but to invite a discussion on the topic of book adaptations. However, I will focus only on the adaptations of one specific series: The Adventures of Erast Fandorin by Boris Akunin.

Boris Akunin is one of my favorite authors. I have not read all of his works, nor do I enjoy all of them equally. However, the Erast Fandorin series is, in my humble opinion, the best he has written. Today, I will not discuss which novels I like more or less. Instead, I will share my thoughts on the three existing adaptations.

It all began with the film (and later mini-series) Azazel, an adaptation of the very first novel in the series. In fact, I watched the film before I started reading Akunin’s books. At the time, everyone around me was talking about this new and trendy writer, Boris Akunin, and I dislike following trends just because they are popular. But I really enjoyed the film, and almost immediately after watching it, I read the book and became completely immersed in the series, devouring one novel after another.

The series currently consists of 15 books, plus an additional one about Masa, a Japanese servant and partner of Erast Fandorin. Adaptations have been made of the first novel (Azazel, or The Winter Queen in English translation), the second (Turkish Gambit), and, somewhat surprisingly, the sixth (The State Counsellor).

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Book: Dmitry Glukhovsky “Metro 2035”

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In September, I wrote in this blog about the game Metro: Exodus—the latest part in the trilogy about Artyom. I also briefly covered the original source material, Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Metro series. The first game followed the plot of the first book quite closely, but after that, the games and books began to diverge, though they clearly influenced each other, especially since Dmitry Glukhovsky was heavily involved in the development of the games.

I really liked the first book in the series back in the day, despite some critiques of its writing style. However, it was easy to forgive the author because the concept was so intriguing. The plot itself wasn’t new: yet another “messiah” traveling from point A to point B to bring happiness to everyone. But the setting of a post-apocalyptic world, where only a few survivors now have to live underground—this was captivating. Glukhovsky added mysticism and science fiction elements, and, unexpectedly, the book became a hit, turning Dmitry Glukhovsky into a mega-star. His books have been translated into numerous languages, Metro inspired a highly successful video game, and his relatively new novel Text was adapted into a film in Russia featuring top Russian actors. But I covered all of this in my last post, so I won’t repeat myself.

After the first book, I quickly read the second, but it featured different characters and lacked both the originality and emotional impact of the first. However, when Glukhovsky released the third book in the series in 2015, I bought it immediately and started reading right away. I managed to get through at most 100 pages before putting it down in frustration and even wrote a brief, emotional post on Facebook. I simply couldn’t keep reading—I disliked the book that much.

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Book: Boris Akunin “Peace and War”

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Boris Akunin’s fictional supplement to his series on the history of the Russian Empire runs in parallel, telling the story of one family. Like the History series itself, the narrative is quite uneven. As a standalone series, I find it relatively weak, if it weren’t meant as a supplement. However, I love both history and Akunin as a storyteller.

The series began with short novellas about specific historical periods, but with the latest volumes, each period is accompanied by a full novel. The previous book, The Fortunate Adventures and Reflections of Lucius Catin, portrayed not so much Russia itself but rather the European trends that influenced Russia in various ways. Though I didn’t rate it highly, it still had some interesting moments.

The new novel, Mir i Voyna (Peace and War), shows us Lucius’s family many years later. Even with its title, the author seems to be saying, “Now I’ll show you Tolstoy, but from a different angle.” I wouldn’t call myself a big fan of Count Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but at least Tolstoy’s novel has grandeur, epic scope. In contrast, Akunin’s story is limited to a few months and a single village with serfs near Moscow.

But here, Akunin at least tried to play with the detective genre, one of his favorites. However, it falls far short of his best Fandorin novels. It even seems that the detective storyline doesn’t really interest the author and was added to the book simply as a framework.

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Book: Boris Akunin “Just Masa”

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The Winter Queen, the first novel by Boris Akunin about Erast Fandorin, was released in 1998 and almost immediately caused a sensation in literary circles. I usually approached widely popular books with caution, so I didn’t start reading the series about the remarkable detective until Boris Akunin had already written seven or eight books. But once I devoured the first one, I eagerly moved on to the next. And so it went until I had read them all in succession.

After that, I consistently bought each new book in the series as soon as it was released, read it right away, and waited for the next one. However, after the tenth book, The Diamond Chariot, I felt that the best days were behind. The books were still good, but they no longer sparked the same excitement as the earlier ones. The final novel, Not Saying Goodbye, where Erast Petrovich finally leaves, brought more sadness and melancholy than anything else. After fifteen novels, his story came to an end, but I still longed to revisit it, hopefully at the level of the best books.

Then, in 2020, Boris Akunin unexpectedly released the novel Just Masa. No, it’s not about Erast Petrovich, but rather about his loyal servant and companion—the Japanese Masahiro Shibata. Masa first appears in the fourth novel in the series, The Death of Achilles. As I recall, Akunin describes the first meeting between Erast Fandorin and the young yakuza from Yokohama in the tenth novel, The Diamond Chariot, where much of the story focuses on the young detective’s life in Japan.

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Book: Oleg Divov “Tech Support: Dead Zone”

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tehpodderzhka-mertvaya-zona

Last year, I wrote about Oleg Divov’s book Tech Support, and this year its sequel, Tech Support: Dead Zone, was released.

A brief summary of the events in the first book: In the not-too-distant future, the Russians decided to sell a prototype walker in Africa as a highly valuable piece of military equipment. But during the pre-sale demonstration, things didn’t go as planned, a small revolution broke out, and an ordinary marketer, Lyokha Filimonov, unexpectedly found himself in the middle of combat operations that supposedly weren’t even happening—no one actually knew what was going on. That’s why this ambiguous conflict was dubbed a “Schrödinger’s war.”

The ending of the first book was left open, clearly suggesting a sequel, so I wasn’t at all surprised when the second book came out. However, it doesn’t continue the events of the first book but presents a new story. The main character, Alexey Filimonov, remains the same, but now he’s no longer a marketer; he’s an employee of the not-so-secret Schrödinger Institute, whose headquarters are located on the alluring island of Cyprus (it’s nice to learn that the place where you live is depicted as almost a paradise in the future, attracting people even from the USA).

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Literary Games: Me in Books

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In the early 2000s, I was deeply involved in the Russian sci-fi community, writing my own stories and reviewing all the latest sci-fi releases in Russian. They say my resource on this topic was among the most popular at the time and later even inspired the name of this blog—The Notes of Glitch the Hamster.

Back then, there was a kind of game among sci-fi writers: they would insert their colleagues into their works in various ways. Maybe this tradition continues today, though I no longer follow it. Or perhaps everyone has grown up and stopped playing the game.

The most notable character was Yuri Semetsky, who became a kind of Sean Bean—not in movies, but in Russian fandom. He was “killed off” in one way or another in nearly every book, and it even became a trend. He would joke that this would ensure his long life.

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Book: Isaac Babel “Collected Works. Volume 1”

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babel_1

The way Jewish Odessans speak is something I find incredibly charming—at least, how it’s portrayed, as I’ve never been to Odessa to see for myself. So, I love what I read in jokes or see in films. Two series have stood out to me for capturing the life of Odessa’s courtyards in such a delightful way.

Liquidation, directed by Sergey Ursulyak and starring Vladimir Mashkov as David Gotsman, is an excellent post-war detective story. Even more memorable than the main character is his friend Fima, brilliantly played by Sergey Makovetsky. Lines like, “Return the stolen goods to the calloused hands! You still have to eat off them!” are unforgettable.

The second series is the lighter The Life and Adventures of Mishka Yaponchik, which also plays as a musical, featuring outstanding musical numbers inspired by the songs of the American Barry Sisters. We know that much of what we know about the legendary Odessa gangster Mishka Yaponchik comes thanks to Isaac Babel, who based his character Benya Krik, the “King,” on him. The series builds on Odessa Stories by Babel, though here Benya is called by his real-life inspiration’s name—Mishka Yaponchik.

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