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newmoonstarWell, I must be a masochist, because I once again ventured to read yet another pastiche novel, this time Sherlock Holmes: The Missing Years by Jamyang Norbu. This time I'm just disappointed rather than horrified, since the first half of the book was really good, almost worthy of the canon, and then it went off on this weird tangent that didn't fit at all into the realms of anything Holmesian. Just whan I thought I'd finally found one that was good, or at least plausible, my hopes are cruelly dashed by levitating swords.
But it didn't truly lose me until Moriarty became 'the Dark One' and Sherlock Holmes was revealed to be not Sherlock Holmes at all, but a Tibetan lama whose conciousness had been transferred to Sherlock Holmes' body when Moriarty killed him 18 years before. Which not only raises questions as far as plausibility goes, because that would be to infer that the Sherlock Holmes we know was never Sherlock Holmes AT ALL, but ethics, too, since it seems pretty evil to usurp someone else's body so that you can plant your guy's consciousness into it without their permission. These must be some pretty renegade-ass Buddhists to be doing that! I don't know whether the author meant to imply that Sherlock Holmes own conciousness had been replaced by that of the lama, or that it had just been submerged beneath that of lama, but either way, for all intents and purposes it's killing him, and it seems a pretty evil thing to do to the real Sherlock, and I don't think any real Buddhists would ever even contemplate doing something like that.
And I don't even think I need to go into all the reasons why all this is totally ridiculous anyway, because the Sherlock we know DOES NOT have the temperament to be a Buddhist lama. By ANY stretch of the imagination. Buddhist lamas generally aren't cocaine using, self-centered, vain, nasty, slightly insane drama-queen assholes, as dear Sherlock is known to be from time to time. (Which is not to detract from his good qualities, or to imply that we love him any less for it!)
One happy benefit of reading the book, however, was being enlightened on some of the details of Thuggee, which was extremely useful to me in my game of persona letters, because I was trying to decide how exactly my heroine's father ought to be murdered, and after reading that I decided confidently that he ought to be strangled by Thugs. I'd considered it before, but decided to have him shot instead because I didn't know enough about Thuggee, but now I've decided to go for it, because it provides local color. There will always be other chances for character to be shot, but seeing as I don't forsee writing anything else partially set in India, I won't have another chance to have a character die in such a colorful way as being strangled by thugs. ;-D
But it didn't truly lose me until Moriarty became 'the Dark One' and Sherlock Holmes was revealed to be not Sherlock Holmes at all, but a Tibetan lama whose conciousness had been transferred to Sherlock Holmes' body when Moriarty killed him 18 years before. Which not only raises questions as far as plausibility goes, because that would be to infer that the Sherlock Holmes we know was never Sherlock Holmes AT ALL, but ethics, too, since it seems pretty evil to usurp someone else's body so that you can plant your guy's consciousness into it without their permission. These must be some pretty renegade-ass Buddhists to be doing that! I don't know whether the author meant to imply that Sherlock Holmes own conciousness had been replaced by that of the lama, or that it had just been submerged beneath that of lama, but either way, for all intents and purposes it's killing him, and it seems a pretty evil thing to do to the real Sherlock, and I don't think any real Buddhists would ever even contemplate doing something like that.
And I don't even think I need to go into all the reasons why all this is totally ridiculous anyway, because the Sherlock we know DOES NOT have the temperament to be a Buddhist lama. By ANY stretch of the imagination. Buddhist lamas generally aren't cocaine using, self-centered, vain, nasty, slightly insane drama-queen assholes, as dear Sherlock is known to be from time to time. (Which is not to detract from his good qualities, or to imply that we love him any less for it!)
One happy benefit of reading the book, however, was being enlightened on some of the details of Thuggee, which was extremely useful to me in my game of persona letters, because I was trying to decide how exactly my heroine's father ought to be murdered, and after reading that I decided confidently that he ought to be strangled by Thugs. I'd considered it before, but decided to have him shot instead because I didn't know enough about Thuggee, but now I've decided to go for it, because it provides local color. There will always be other chances for character to be shot, but seeing as I don't forsee writing anything else partially set in India, I won't have another chance to have a character die in such a colorful way as being strangled by thugs. ;-D
