The Control Point Diaries Part 5: Good and Bad

Hi again and first of all sorry for another delay – I somehow fell asleep yesterday before I could even open my laptop.
However, let’s talk about Control Point again, which makes us think about even more metaphysical questions. This time it’s the everlasting question about good and bad.
We already noticed that Oscar is in some kind of inner conflict and actually, while reading, you start to ask yourself similar questions. How much good needs to be done to outwage the bad? Can you redeem yourself from your own mistakes by trying to do good? How should you think about a, for example, governemnt institution, that does horrible things to mankind and other creatures in the name of law and science in order to offer its citizens peace and safety? Is the good intention behind it enough to outrule the bad nature of some experiments? Is there anything good or okay about taking a life or taking away someone’s freedom?
Where does good start and where does bad end? In war, both sides are usually fighting for ‘the good side’ – in their own opinion that looks quite contrary to the other side of the battlefield.
So when can we say something is truly good? We might not be aware of negative side effects and neither do we know what possible future outcome something we do now might have.
That’s what you start thinking about when you read Control Point not only as a distraction when you’re in the subway but when you take a very very close look of what is inbetween the lines.
Myke Cole did a great thing there. He tells us an amazing fantasy story that makes us forget our world for the time we spend reading and at the same moment he gives us the chance to actually think about the very world we live in and the way we actually want to live our own lives.

I have about 100 pages left and to be honest I am hesistant to read on – it’s one of those books you don’t want to end because you know you waiting for the second book will be pure torture as there is nothing comparable to read in the meantime…. 🙂

The Control Point Diaries Part 4: The Human Mind

Let’s talk about a more methaphysicla aspect of things now, in the 4th entry of the Control Point diaries.
(First of all sorry for the delay, I wanted to post yesterday but as I am currently stationed in the middle of nowhere and the temperatures are fecking cold internet was being a big douchebag and didn’t work…)
I’ve noticed that Control Point not only makes you a reading addict but also makes you think about certain topics.
When I was reading Chapters 13 to 20 I mostly wondered what’s actually going on inside a human mind.
There is this innerst craving of freedom we all have – that we want to be able to make our own decisions, to go where we want when we want, to live our lives in our own way. And yet we all live inside a social system – a loose one at some parts and a system with more strict regulations on others, like for example in the army.
So what we wish for and how we live are two different cups of tea, not really correspondating well with each other.
But then again we are away that, in order to be able to live within a group, certain rules must be stated.
So we’re in conflict all the time, wanting to be utterly free and get seeing the reason in following rules.
So what happens if the bit of freedom you still have, like in deciding what you wear, what you work and how you talk is taken away from you?
You’re pissed off and you’re in the mood to work against the system, wanting to escape its ways of putting a chain on you.
But what happens when at the same time you notice that maybe not everything that system offers is bad? And that you might actually be enjoying some parts of let’s say, the education, because it makes you stronger and lets you control your abilities in a more efficient way? What if you actually come to like the people you’re working with?
Maybe it’s like an animal in a zoo. You’re imprisoned and yet you love being pampered from the outside.
That’s one of the thoughts that came to me during the last chapters I was reading, inspired by the main character Oscar Britton, a teenage recruit and a witch who’d even kill for her own freedom.

What would you do?
I’d recommend you first of all get yourself a copy of Control Point and start reading yourself. 🙂 It will kidnap you into an adventure AND make you think about life itself. What more can you ask for???

The Control Point Diaries Part 3: Magic

Hello to Part 3 of the Control Point diaries. I’ve reached chapter 13 and I thought we should have a closer look at the magic of the book today. (Without spoiling the plot…it’s gonna be tough but I am trying nevertheless.) While reading the book you – in case you are a little nerd yourself- definitely know that the description of Myke Cole at the end of the book is sooooooooooo true. Especially the part about Dungeons and Dragons. I don’t know who of you have already played role playing games – either the videogame version or the good old pen and paper games – but you usually find most parts of the magic featured in the Shadow Ops series there, too. When you find you party in the games you usually combine warriors, thieves and magicians – healers, elemental wizards, black mages etc. They’ve got different names in the book, featuring the Latin/Greek forms, but if you’re a role player you definitely recognize members of magical schools you’d totally want to recruit for your own team. (for the videogame fans here: Somehow Control Point reminds me on a Final Fantasy 8 for the generation 30+ – soldiers who kick ass and have magical abilities.)
I remember one of my first pen and paper adventures. I was playing an orphaned elf black mage, level two and not the most charming person in the party. But the most clumsy one, mind you. So my black mage tried a summoning which was only supposed spy on a village but turned out to be a level 19 demon that I had no control of whatsoever. (the clumsiness!) Yes, I did manage to wipe out my entire party before the adventure could really start.
And that is where we come back to the book. Here,too, the characters first of all have to learn how to even use and control their magic before they accidently make something go kawoom or everyone gets killed in action. So the reader gets a live in-view into the world of magic, its development and its connection to the person carrying it which brings us closer to each character. Shall we bet that at the end of the book we’ll see some great magical firework? 😉
So yeah, the idea of magic might be an old one – after all you find the stories and sagas about magic in every culture on this planet, every country has their own stories about ghosts, mages, gods and magical items, but its set into a new context. While D&D is set in more medieval world and most fantasy roleplay games are set in a world hardly comparable to the one we live in right now (they are usually on another planet or at least somewhere in the past or the idea of a future), Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops series plays in world we can very well relate to. We see the news each day – countries fighting or threating each other, people not going with the system, people easily stereotyped. The thing that divides the book from our world is the featured magic. And that’s one of the reasons why you MUST read it. It’s not only a first hand experience of a soldier’s life (which the author can tell you a lot about!), it’s the perfect combination of the world we know with a world we love to imagine in movies, games and stories, the magical realm.
On a sidenote: Oscar Britton (see entry 2) really kicks ass!I like how you are allowed to know what he feels and thinks and how he stands in for others because he hasn’t switched off his brains and decides for himself what is right and what is wrong, even if there is a system that tries to put a collar around his neck.

The Control Point Diaries Part 2: Meeting Oscar Britton

Alright, yesterday we talked about the author of the Shadow Ops series…now let’s have a look at the main character, Oscar Britton. I’ve started reading last night and are about to start chapter seven, so I already got an impression of the protagonist. (well, at least about who he is in the beginning of the story…) We meet him and his team right in the moment when they are doing their job and carrying out a mission. A mission however, that gives the team and also the reader some kind of moral trouble. We find ourselves on earth, the planet that we know, but at the same time it’s extremly different to what we are used to. Magic has found its way to our world and people are coming out with different magical talents – pyromancy, necromancy and so on. But it’s not like everybody’s happy about that. Magic is used for military reasons and people with ‘good’ magic are to be recruited. Others however… well let’s say they don’t really have the time of their life. The thing is that it isn’t up to you if your own magic is ‘good’. It doesn’t matter what kind of person you are…if you have some sort of prohibited magic you are fucked. Doesn’t sound quite fair to you? Well, then you can relate to Oscar Britton, who, usually a faithful servant of the system, begins to doubt if they are doing the right thing. He’s someone who’d give you a chance to explain and calm down, who’d actually look behind the official name of the magic you are carrying to see what kind of man you are. Sounds like a cool guy, huh? Well, the world he lives in has a different few on that. Especially when it gets obvious that the soldier Oscarr Britton has quite some magical talent, too. A talent that scares him and makes him the target of the service he has been working for all his life. As a reader you get the full experience of the mental rollercoaster he is forced to ride and you have to make this journey with him. You know he isn’t a bad guy but at the same time his life is totally out of control.
He’s a man who deeply cares for his teammates and who respects them deeply. A man who always did his duty and whose priority is saving lives rather than shooting blindly only because you got the order to.
A soldier with a mind of his own? Yeah, it’s a good question if that can work out when the law system has to be followed very strictly but at the same time we cheer for Oscar because we can understand his trail of thoughts so very well.
I am very curious as to how his story will continue and how much it will actually make me think about ourselves and our way of thinking and considering things.

Before I am ending this second entry I want to say something about the style,too.
To be honest, it took me quite some pages to get into Myke’s way of writing, mostly because I am not used to the vocab he uses (that’s the hard thing when you are female and usually don’t deal with military terms other than the rank and order system on Star Trek’s Enterprise….), but once you get used to it (and have read the glossary at the end of the book) you totally get into the flow of reading. You all know I read a lot and the people close to me know how much I’ve been complaining lately that most authors don’t use a nicely developped sentence structure anymore. “She noticed he was a vampire. She was scared.” Those short sentences, even if they make it very simple to read a book in no time, are driving me insane. I love literature and language itself and a sentence can be as beautiful as a nicely arranged flower bouquet in the eyes of a book lover. Reading Control point gives you that experience of language used with intelligence and with a certain touch of art. Well…you might not want to compare a military fantasy novel with a flower bouquet but I hope you know what I mean. 🙂

So see you soon, I need to go back reading the book!!!!