Warning: I'm having a hissy fit over "Chapter Five: I Play Pinochle with a Horse" from The Lightning Thief: Percy Jackson & the Olympians by Rick Riordan.
While I realize Rick Riordan probably had to do a lot of research into the Greek gods when writing The Lightning Thief and was probably quite bored of it by the time it got down to researching the little human details in his story, I still think if he didn't know how pinochle was played and didn't want to bother to learn, then he should have had Percy Jackson just play freaking poker instead. Which seems to be the way it was written. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find the card game was changed in edits because a twelve-year-old gambling is verbotten, but when the changes were made, there was apparently no one hanging about who knew ANYTHING WHATSOEVER about pinochle.
Okay, yes, I am being a little irrational about this, but I grew up playing this game, so it's like Rick Riordan just ripped a piece out of my childhood and stomped all over it with his big clumsy centaur hooves! That is so not okay! Curse you, Chapter Five, and the horse you rode in on!
There are maybe half a dozen references to pinochle in this chapter and more than half of them are wrong, dammit. Such a small scene and SO MANY ERRORS. So here is my idiot's guide to how not to write a pinochle scene:
1) Four player pinochle is a partner game. Bidding is about communication with your partner to establish how much meld you have combined and how many tricks you estimate the two of you will be able to pull in actual play. Bidding cannot be taught to anyone (no matter how demi-godly) in five seconds. And when the winner is declared, there would be two. Since you have a partner. Always.
2) "Oh, a royal marriage. Trick! Trick!" There are just a few problems with this bit of dialogue. A royal marriage is meld. Meld is laid down before play commences. You win the bid, call trump (which determines whether a marriage is royal), then try to make the board by combining your meld with that of your partner. A trick is in a separate part of the game entirely - the actual play. Those two phrases would never go together in one breath. And the game would be really, really slow if you tallied up points after every trick - especially because you don't get to keep your points until you've pulled 20 counters in play. Don't pull enough counters and you get nada. You might even go backwards. (Yes, it is a vicious game. If you play lousy we will take your points away.)
3) You can never win by laying down a straight (run in trump) because laying down your straight is how you make the board with meld, not how you save your points. Also, the game is played to 500. Scoring the most points on the first hand doesn't really mean much. In order to win the game on a single hand, you must pull every single counter (which, in all the years I've played pinochle, the thousands of games I've played, I have never seen happen once).
You can't just grab a random collection of pinochle words and smash them together. Pinochle isn't a bizarre mish-mash of poker and gin rummy. Anyone who has ever played the game is going to be jolted right out of your world. Demi-gods in Manhattan? No problem. But you have to get the basics of the human world right if you are going to convince me you have the first idea what you're talking about.
Unfortunately, we can't even say the gods play pinochle differently, because Dionysus tells us specifically that pinochle is a human construction. Like PacMan. So who let that slide?
I know this is a little thing, but it made me put down the book. And it made me put it down in anger. And it would have been so easy to fix. So why? Why are they doing this to me?
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4 comments:
This is probably why Elizabeth Hoyt MADE UP a card game for "Something About Emmaline." I believe she actually mentions that in her Author's Note... that she created parmiel so that her lack of research wouldn't offend anyone.
I haven't read Lightning Thief. Other than the obvious pinnochle problems, how's the book?
I actually really enjoyed it. I probably should have mentioned that somewhere in my freakout. LOL. It's sort of Harry Potter meets the Odyssey. Fun stuff, especially if you have a soft spot for the Greek pantheon like I do. :)
I've never played pinochle in my life. When I read it, I was just completely lost. I'm with you, they should have used poker. It just kind of threw off the whole chapter for me. And yet, they play it several more times in the series. Not to the extent of that chapter, but still it is brought up again.
Kendal - Maybe they thought pinochle was obscure and exotic enough for the gods? I don't know. It does seem like an odd choice. I'll keep an eye out for those other references as I read through the rest of the series.
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