Dead Ever After (not spoiler free)

      The thirteenth and final book in the Southern Vampire Series, aka Sookie Stackhouse novels, has come out and reaction has not been great. Charlaine Harris has gotten death threats over her ending according to the CBC and several newspapers. It is a disappointing end to the saga but not unexpected.
When Sookie used her cluviel dor to save Sam rather than Eric, we all knew which way it was going to go.
     She said she was not ever going to do a Twilight and make Sookie a vampire and Eric was never going to be unmade as a vampire so eventually the relationship would have to end. It is her story to tell and I am fine with that except.....
     There is so little chemistry between Sam and Sookie. Sam is more of a comfortable older brother where Eric was always the exciting bad boy who was tameable and loyal. Of course making Eric stay in at nights and watch Survivor with Sookie would have caused him lose the qualities that made him so attractive to Sookie and Charlaine Harris. Harris is a much older woman who has seen something of life and who knows Sam is a sensible choice but she does not appear to find him as stimulating as Eric. Even the sex scene between Sam and Sookie lacks a certain intensity. In spite of that, she did the sensible thing and had Sookie settle down to a relationship with a nice guy who is likely to marry her.
      Other than that, the series had to come to an end. How many times can people and supernatural beings try to kill you before someone succeeds? Sookie had more lives than a cat. This story begins with a tale of revenge but the act for which vengeance is wanted seems a stretch. There is a twist at the end in which the real culprit is shown not to be the person one is lead to believe is the guilty party at the beginning of the book. The identity is revealed much like one pulls a rabbit out of a hat, with a bang and a flash.
     It reminded me of the final Harry Potter novel in that Harris seemed to have brought back everyone who was still alive for one last look. It is not 'literature' but Harris managed to keep it as fresh as she can with a story that she had wanted to end three books ago. If you can get past the change in Sookie's relationships with men, it is an enjoyable read.

The Boston Bombing and Christopher Marlowe

      Everything is interconnected. The bombing of the Boston Marathon is connected to Christopher Marlowe in a surprising way: the name of one of the bombers, Tamerlan. It is also the name of a 14th century conqueror from Central Asia who aspired to be like Genghis Khan and called himself the Scourge of God like Attila the Hun. I myself was surprised to see Edgar Allen Poe connected to the name as well.
     The conqueror was Timur the Lame but his name has also been spelled Tamburlaine, Tamerlaine, Tamerlane (as Poe spelled it in a poem published in a book that was ironically not credited with Poe's name but "A Bostonian".) and Tamerlan (like the bomber in the Boston Marathon). Timur was a regional chief who eventually acquired an empire larger than Alexander's. He did what Alexander could not do: conquer Delhi. He accomplished this by sending flaming camels against the elephants. He was ruthless, i.e. he killed people, lots of them, age and gender did not matter, and was often very cruel in his methods of killing people, as anybody who calls himself the Scourge of God is likely to do. He seems to have been a devout Muslim but he preyed upon other Muslims as much as he preyed upon other people. He did declare jihad against Delhi and in his seventies against the infidel Chinese, mainly to raise the unwilling armies necessary for such a distant trek. He was born in the same part of the world as the bomber but on the other side of the Caspian Sea in modern day Uzbekistan.
      Christopher Marlowe wrote a play about Timur the Lame called "Tamburlaine the Great" in which he made the conqueror a shepherd who rose up to become master of his part of the world. Marlowe was probably making a statement against religion. He had Tamburlaine begin life as a shepherd, a veiled allusion to the role priests are supposed to take, and, in the attack on Babylon, has him burn the Koran as well as claim to be greater than God. The writing of this play got Marlowe killed.
      There was some political unrest in London at the time and some heretical and subversive bills posted about town, especially on the doors of Dutch Protestant churches, signed "Tamburlaine" which drew the attention of the crown. Then Walsingham and Queen Elizabeth wanted to know more about the play and suspected Marlowe of being behind the bills and an atheist. His room mate was tortured, with the usual confessions, and Marlowe was later stabbed in the head in a "bar fight". It was claimed that the man, who was a government spy, acted in self defence and that Marlowe had not been executed.
      I wonder if that part of the world has made a historical hero out of a man who was brutal murderer and did not deserve it. There are certain names one does not name one's children: Adolf springs to mind, Attila, is another, although odds are it was the guy's grandfather's name. It is a strange little name to have. While people are googling the bomber's name, surely links to the 14th century conqueror come up but nobody has commented in the news. 

More Isidore

I am not going to do a literal translation but the next 'chapter' states that

"Nature has enriched Spain as a reward with lots of things that grow. Rich fruit trees, full of vigor, happy harvests, innumerable olive trees, great show of life. You have flowering fields, leafy mountains, shores full of fishes. You have been placed on the most blessed region on earth. You do not burn with the flame of the summer heat, nor do you decline with strong blasts of ice, but you are encircled with a sky of moderate airs, western breezes will nourish the happy ones. The fields are so fertile, the land full of precious metals and beauty of living things and good pastures. Nor are the rivers to be neglected, which render famous the bright fame of the handsome flocks."

In short, Spain is the land of milk and honey according to Isidore. I don't know if the trouble is the Latin Library copy of the latin. More likely it is Isidore's latin. I have no footnotes so I am not sure how to take some of the parts that don't make sense which is why I am winging it.

History of the Kingdom of the Goths, Vandals and Suevi

      Isidore of Seville, bishop and saint, wrote a book called Etymologiae in which he tried to sum up all the 'knowledge' of the time, quoting extensively from many Roman authors. He also wrote a history of the Germanic tribes that conquered his part of Europe, Spain (whatever size or shape Spain was at the time). The Visigothic kingdom of Alaric (who conquered Rome in 410 a.d.) was still going strong although it was converting to Catholicism from Arianism. It had also been defeated by Clovis and had its capital looted of its Roman treasures.  Isidore does not seem to be a popular writer. His history has only been translated into English in the mid 1960's and googling some of the latin terms he used yielded nothing. Although he wrote a book called Etymologiae, his latin was not the best and is challenging to decipher but I feel like giving it a shot.

      Since I used up a bit of space taking about Isidore, I will do only the first chapter of the Prologue today. Isidore loved Spain since he starts off with this little bit:

 Of all the lands, which are from the west all the way to India, you are the most beautiful. O  holy, and always happy mother of the best of peoples, Hispania. I swear (though the form jure doesn't support a first person singular interpretation) you are the queen of all provinces, from which not even light of the setting sun or the rising sun can alter. You are the glory and the jewel of the earth, the brighter part of earth: in which many of the people of the Goths rejoice and what's more flourish for the most part  in glorious abundance.

Since Canada was not a country yet, I won't pause now to point out his error.