Book Review: The Girl Who Sees

Sasha Urban is an illusionist—a stage magician. After doing her card tricks in restaurants, she finally gets her break to do her act on a TV talk show. Although nervous, Sasha manages to guess the card the host is thinking of, and a sealed envelope reveals her prediction of the day’s headline. All this is normal stage magician stuff. After all, Sasha knows the supernatural does not exist.

Then a zombie attacks her onstage—an actual zombie. The security people tear it apart as if they do this all the time. After being stared into a trance, Sasha is carried back to her apartment. She has a dream of another couple of zombies getting sicced on her. When this comes true, a friendly neighbor named Vlad destroys those two. Vlad doesn’t need to eat, and he doesn’t seem to age, so he’s a …

The Girl Who Sees by Dima Zales is a fun novel. Sasha keeps seeing impossible things, but because she gets put into a trance, and the people around her downplay what she sees, it’s a while before she knows for sure that the supernatural is real. As a stage magician who knows that magic is not real, this rocks her worldview.

This is written in first person, which is common enough for urban fantasy. But it’s also written in present tense, which I didn’t notice while I was reading it. First person present tense is best for a character who does not know what is going on, and that fits Sasha.

We also get an insight into how certain stage magic tricks are done. For me, this doesn’t ruin those performances—it shows the immense preparation that goes into them. And Sasha uses her mentalist abilities to try to get some clue as to what is happening around her.

Also, it is peppered with pop culture references--everything from The Matrix to Batman to Alice in Wonderland. And okay, Sasha Urban is a marketing kind of name for a character. But it works. Fellow writers should not be jealous.

Inception - Sources of the Movie

Inception - Sources of the Movie

(Originally posted 8/14/10.)

Alice: I should sue for royalties. Too bad I'm not real.

The movie Inception is very pretty, but very boring, so while I was watching the movie I took the time to crack the code on where the characters came from.

Come on, you should know this. The characters are: A madman, a prim young woman, an authoritative person who hacks a lot, a nervous person who leads others on a chase, someone who smiles and changes appearances, an odd person who seems a little druggy, and a minor character who gets hauled off to punishment. As a hint, these characters are going down into a strange

realm where our laws of reality do not apply.

Let's start with the main character, Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. He's constantly at the point of going mad over his children and his dead wife, his hair is one big cowlick, and he has this wild idea of delving into different levels of dreams, with time running differently on each level

.

Yes, he's derived from The Mad Hatter. It might seem somewhat comical to compare Cobb's hair to the hat, but the resemblance is there. And The Hatter spoke in riddles about time, and said that time could be sped up or made to stay at the same point indefinitely. What can throw the viewing audience off is that it's some equivalent of The Hatter who is the main character, rather than --

Ariadne (played by Ellen Page). She is a comparatively proper young woman, who disapproves of the madness she sees around her. As the naive character, she needs things explained to her. Also, she uses a pawn chess piece as her link to reality.

She is obviously Alice, the young woman who constantly reproves the odd people she sees in Wonderland. And, of course, the odd characters she meets explain themselves and the surroundings to her, often in nonsensical terms. When she goes Through the Looking Glass, she starts out as a pawn and eventually becomes queen on a chessboard. And when you think of someone like Alice, you think of someone like --

Arthur, a very nervous character who warns Cobb his plans might not work. In a show-stopping part of the movie, he leads some characters in "a merry chase" through a rather claustrophobic hallway, then helps his friends in an elevator shaft.

This is none other than the White Rabbit. He is constantly nervous and tends to be a dis approving sort. He, of course, is famous for leading Alice down the rabbit hole.

The other characters in the movie have their tell-tale roles. Saito is the arrogant, high-ranking Japanese businessman who constantly hacks and coughs after being shot. He corresponds to the Duchess, who is very arrogant, and who sneezes a lot. Eames is the character with the smug smile who changes appearances. He's derived from the Cheshire cat, known for his smile and his ability to disappear and appear. Yusuf is the druggy-looking guy who fixes them up with the chemicals that allow them to descend to different levels. He's obviously the Caterpillar, who smokes a hookah and who tells Alice how to use a mushroom to increase or decrease her size. And the minor character of Nash who sells out Cobb and gets hauled off is the Knave of Hearts, who stole some tarts, and who is brought to trial.

What neatly ties this together is that Ariadne falls through some structures in the climactic scene of Inception as if they were a pack of cards, which is part of the jolt that kicks her team back to reality. And Alice in Wonderland ends with Alice upsetting the jury box and causing the card characters to fly through the air at her, at which point she wakes up.

(It's possible that Mal, the dead wife, is the Queen of Hearts, since Mal enjoys killing people off. And Fischer, the young heir they are trying to swindle, and who is so fond of a childhood picture of himself, may correspond to the real life Lewis Carroll. His real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and besides writing the Alice tales, he gained some fame for himself by taking childrens' photos. But these last two match-ups are more tenuous.)

Having said all that, I'm not maintaining that Inception is simply a retelling of Alice in Wonderland. Inception certainly is a different story. I'm saying that the characters were derived from Alice.

My work here is done.