Jhegaala

3 Replies

There are two things kicking my ass about the review of Jhegaala. (Well, three, if you count reviewing a book so deep in a series, but I’m used to that.) The first is that the next two reviews will be so simple, and then I’d be caught up, if only I could get there. The second is that I was developing a wonderfully insightful theory about Vlad’s relationship with with Loiosh, only to have it disproven a few pages from the end of the book. Grrr. I may, of course, be getting ahead of myself.

So, anyway, Vlad’s an assassin, right? And for reasons explained elsewhere, he’s on the run from the mafia-esque organization for which he previously assassinated people. As a result, he has fled Adrilankha to spend a few years among his own people, maybe hook up with relatives of his mother that he never met as a child. Except, he’s Vlad Taltos, and he naturally finds himself elbow-deep into the hornet’s nest before he hears the first buzz of approaching trouble.

I loved it, of course. You will too! Inevitable (if unintentional) spoilers follow…

Continue reading →

Pineapple Express

2 Replies

Am I still way, way behind? I think you know the answer to that. The sad part is, this shouldn’t have been a hard review for me (and probably still won’t), but I never expected to be delayed by days beyond when I first sat down to type, like this. My time management is gradually getting back into the swing of things, though, and once I catch up on it all, things will be back to normal. (I would skip straight to the review, but I know you love these intricate, behind the scenes looks at how Shards of Delirium works.)

Despite my relative lack of things to say about Pineapple Express, I certainly liked it. It spent a lot of time being funny or sweet (in that slightly off-putting Seth Rogen way, sure, but maybe that contributes to the sweetness, how bad at it he is? Like a puppy who pees just off the edge of the newspaper, while staring soulfully into your eyes), and those were punctuated by chop-socky and explosions; so, like, something for everybody, right?

It’s a stoner comedy, and there haven’t been many of those in a while. But it’s also an on-the-run buddy action movie. My best comparison, which is undoubtedly flawed, is that the writers were heavily influenced by Cheech and Chong movies, but then said, “Hey, what if we throw the slightest soupçon of Boondock Saints into the mix?” Not enough for it to be actually comparable in any way, but like you’re getting occasional hints of it through the clouds of pot smoke. (I’ll have to find someone to ask, someday, if that’s a completely insane comparison or not.) Anyway, that one guy who was in the pregnant movie I never saw is a process server who accidentally witnesses a murder and then teams up with the son of the Green Goblin, AKA his pot dealer. And then, implausibly, they get completely entangled in the drug war that inspired the murder and which is the source of this awesome new weed they’ve been smoking together: pineapple express.

So, yeah: pretty funny! But you probably have to be into that type of movie to really enjoy it much?

Ultimate X-Men: Hellfire & Brimstone

Leave a reply

By the time I finished the fourth X-Men book, I’d had it split up to read parts or all of two other books, plus it’s been more than a week since I finished it. And I’ve already denigrated the previous books in the series, to greater or lesser degree. So it will likely come as no surprise that I’m having a difficult time working out what to say about Hellfire & Brimstone, all things considered.

What is surprising is that despite still being a Mark Millar title, I really kind of liked it. The plots were a largely disconnected mishmash, about the introduction of Kitty Pryde[1], about a new evil growing underneath Magneto’s old island where the Brotherhood of Mutants used to hang out, about some rich people trying to summon a demon or an Old One or something to destroy the universe in exchange for limitless power, and about the evil mutants searching for new leadership. And it’s not just that they appear to be disconnected on the surface: they’re mostly just as disconnected by the end of the volume. But I guess each story was good enough on its own, or had sufficiently cool moments, that the entire thing was elevated as a result. However it worked, I’m relieved to have caught one that ended up being pretty darn good, for a change.

[1] That seems to be her real name, not her superhero name. Which: wow. (She can move freely through solid objects, if you care.)

Ultimate Spider-Man: Legacy

Leave a reply

In fact, I started a completely different book than this, but I accidentally left it at home and then vanished for the weekend. In addition to being so far behind, I’m definitely finding that the mixing around of these books has contributed to my inability to review things at all well right now. I certainly hope this doesn’t happen again, but my work schedule being so non-conducive to internet activities is a thing that will be mostly over now. (Downside: I certainly can’t write reviews at work anymore, as I’m way too damn busy. This has both positives and negatives, one latter of which has been clearly demonstrated today.)

So, anyway, in Legacy, Spider-Man discovers that his arch-enemy, the Green Goblin, is still alive. And awesome things happen, in the realm of fightings and psychological warfare and unexpected revelations about Peter’s place in the larger world and potential romantic triangles. Thinking about it now, it feels like a set-up book that will have long-term repercussions for the development of the series, but at the time, it felt like action-filled comic mayhem. Which is to say, it did both things, and did them both well. How many books in the middle of a series can say that?

Dragons of the Highlord Skies

Leave a reply

I am four books behind right now, until I finish this review. On the bright side, that won’t take long because, on the less bright side, I’m having a really hard time to holding onto reviewable information about Dragons of the Highlord Skies. I mean, it’s another DragonLance book set concurrently with the second one from the original trilogy, in which the knights and the elf chick fight a war at the South Pole while the evil chick struggles to improve or maintain her rank within the evil armies. Both stories are pretty decent examples of what I like about the series in general: sympathetic characters, occasional comedy, good action. Mythic resonance, not so much, but that never works right when rehashing old events that have previously been mentioned off-screen.

The framing device kind of sucked, and I hope they don’t use it again for the third book. But other than that, it’s still basically recommendable for fans of old-school Weis & Hickman.

Tropic Thunder

3 Replies

A little while back, I had a brief period in which I found myself out of work. It was pretty hard. I lived out of my car for something like half the time, spent some time in theaters watching movies “for free”, hit a bar for the kind of beer-drinking that only the out-of-work can really experience. You know how it is. Eventually, I got back on my feet, slept in an actual bed, and then I had to get up ridiculously early the next morning to start my new job. (And since then, I have been way too busy to write anything, for ages without end. Which explains this two week delay, you see.)

This is the story of that movie.

So, anyway, free preview, right? I glanced at it, then decided I had to work and couldn’t go and promptly forgot about it. Except then someone besides me wanted to go and other people got involved and my last day had slightly shifted hours, such that I ultimately was able to, plus it was free, right? Yay, Studio Movie Grill! A reasonably short-lived line followed by a good long sit-around eating buffet pizza and drinking moderately buffet Shiner later, Tropic Thunder started.

The premise really fails to capture it. Three successful actors are trying to break out of their pigeonholes by making a Saving Private Ryanesque true-life story of a rescued soldier escaping from Vietnam, but problems with egos and the budget are quickly making a hash of things. So the director decides to drop them into the jungle to film the middle portion of the movie Blair Witch style, with some cameras scattered around the forest for most of the shots and the director shadowing the for the rest. Only, the part of the jungle they land in is being used to grow and process drugs, and the natives are not too happy to find “heavily-armed” intruders in their midst. Also, Tom Cruise played a role that indicates every once in a while he remembers he’s a decent actor with a sense of humor, and not just the face of Scientology. Wacky hilarity ensues!

This sounds no more than a mile north of totally dumb, I know. But in practice, I have not laughed so hard at a movie in ages. If you like things that are funny, you should go see it. In the meantime, though, something pretty awesome happened at the theater. Ryan and Laurell and I were having a discussion about gender disparities launched when a male member of the waitstaff set the first pitcher of beer down in front of her. We ultimately concluded that (in the heteronormative world), people with penises and people with vaginas are in competition for scarce resources, and that if our waitress had brought the beer instead, she would likely have (unconsciously?) given it to one of the guys instead of the girl. None of which would be all that interesting to relate, except that a woman at the table in front of us finally got fed up with all of our foul, penis-ridden language and asked us if we knew that there were children here, indicating the 14 year-old next to her. Although I personally believe that a girl of that age has likely heard the word before (and in equally conversational contexts; we were being uncouth neither in topic nor actual verbiage), it was a point well-taken about how some people don’t want to expose themselves to such topics in some contexts, and I felt a little bad; I think we all did.

That is, until we remembered and later observed that this was an R-rated movie with all manner of violent, sexually-topical, and otherwise far more inappropriate material than anything occurring in our conversation. Jack Black, in particular, made reference to a penis (though I am forced to admit that he never used the dreaded word itself) that I actually think I would be leery of having a 14 year-old hear. Our heroic parent and/or guardian, of course, took her delicate child out of the theater within five minutes of the opening reel, once she realized what a mistake she’d made. Because that would be the only logical decision after having made such a scene in the theater a mere half an hour previously. Right? RIGHT?

OH WAIT NO SHE STAYED FOR THE WHOLE MOVIE!!!

Y: The Last Man – Whys and Wherefores

Leave a reply

As promised, I’ve finished Y. Whys and Wherefores felt very much like the last volume that it was, from start to finish. Although there are certainly plot elements left to resolve (not least among them Yorick’s years-long quest to reunite with his girlfriend, Beth), the primary purpose of the book was clearly the tying up of loose ends and general denouement, which is appropriate after a series this long. It worked just as you’d expect, structurally.

What I’ve been trying to decide since I read it (and in the handful of hours I spent staring at the mostly blank screen after I wrote the first sentence this morning) is how I felt about the ending from a purely story-driven perspective. And of course, spoilers mean not being allowed to really go into details, nor even wanting to. Whatever else it was, it was a powerful finish. Which I guess answers my question pretty well all by itself. It’s also a very thoughtful finish. I’m not sure if introspective is the right word to apply to static history imprinted onto dead trees, but even if I cannot apply it to the book, it certainly applies to my mood after the fact.

Shakespeare has been on my mind all along, of course, and well on purpose. I’ll have to reread these someday as a single unit while watching for Shakespeare in general, all English-majory and analytical, but my point right now is that it has occurred to me, with surprising belatedness, that Yorick certainly qualifies for the descriptor of a fellow of infinite jest, which is good: played differently, The Last Man‘s potential for unrelenting grimness would have overwhelmed any other possible message. In retrospect, I’m starting to think that the Walking Dead series might suffer from a terminal case of the same disease.

The Ultimates 2: Gods and Monsters

Finally, something good out of the Ultimates universe again! I’m reading the four series, and Spider-Man has been great for the teen set while Fantastic Four has been okay, and X-Men feels adult even though they’re all teens too, but it’s been the not-that-good cousin to the clearly adult and clearly good Ultimates. My point in all of this, aside from the subtle recap, is to express my relief; the last few books I’ve read have been iffy.

Not so God and Monsters! I mean, it starts off all soap opera with a recap of how the various government-sponsored superheroes have been pairing off, and how the remaining unpopular heroes have been doing. (Giant-Man has been having the kinds of marriage problems that do not result in paparazzi wondering who you’re being frisky on the beach with, and the Hulk murdered a lot of people, so.) But after all the stage-setting is in place, it immediately turns into Schrödinger’s plot, wherein one of two possible things is happening. Either Thor really is the Norse god of thunder, and his brother Loki is altering reality to torment him and Midgard in general, or else Thor is a delusional Norwegian hippy who has become incredibly dangerous because of his unbalanced ratio of powerfulness to sanity, and meanwhile the Ultimates are being gradually turned into yet another military arm of the United States government. For my part, I’m honestly not sure which possibility is more dire for our heroes.

Also, there’s a downright hilarious sequence revolving around a group of second tier superheroes of the type you’d expect to start crawling out of the woodwork in this kind of world, looking to feel special without any pesky powers or skills getting in the way. And the Ultimates contain a secret traitor! Maybe! (Like I said, it has a lot of soap opera elements to it. But I am okay with that kind of thing.)

Ultimate Fantastic Four: Inhuman

4 Replies

The fourth entry in the Ultimate Fantastic Four series was mostly of the ungood. The first half of the surprisingly short book revolved around a character whose plot and disposal were both extremely predictable if you’re familiar with the Mad Thinker from the FF’s original run, but who appeared to be annoying and pointless if you aren’t. And the the second half was even more of the same, as though the only purpose of the series is to hit all the highlights from the 1960s version. And as much as I’ve complained about the Ultimate X-Men run, they’ve never once seemed blandly formulaic. On top of which, the art reminded me of someone who was not very talented trying to copy the character-style of Girls (which style you will no doubt recall I already found unsatisfactory) combined with repetitive backgrounds and heavy reliance on “characters in shadow”, as though the strain of cranking out such minimalistic-yet-bad art got to be too much, and only having to do shaded in outlines on some pages was a rest break from that.

On the bright side, none of the other books have seemed this bad, so there’s every chance that the quality will swing right back up again? (Plus, you know, the art may have unfairly lowered my overall opinion of the volume. If anything, I hope that’s true.)

Summer Knight

3 Replies

I’m rapidly running out of wonderful things to say about the Dresden Files, because there are only so many forms of praise available. It’s just, read them, right? You will be pleased by how in each and every book, Butcher’s writing improves, his one-liners get funnier, Harry feels more and more like a fully realized person of your acquaintance telling these stories to you, and all at the same time, the plots and characterizations get more subtle and pitch-perfect.

In Summer Knight, after battling demons and renegade wizards, then werewolves, and most recently vampires, Harry is forced to confront the faerie realm to solve a murder that holds the key to his own survival and possibly to things far more important.[1] Without going into the plot any further (because spoilers for previous books would abound), I am starting to notice slight discrepancies in Harry’s narration. I mean, he’s always held back, hard, about his past. But his descriptions of how useful and/or powerful his magic is versus his factual descriptions of it in use in battle[2] show either an unreasonable amount of modesty, a misperception of his own skill (possible, but unlikely, since he has so few other blind spots and is, after all, a detective), or else some amount of active deception. And if he’s an unreliable narrator[3], then I may well have to go back and read these books straight through without interruption someday, trying to ferret out the truth. This future task fills me with no small amount of glee, I should point out.

Also, though, some food for thought. Why is it that in the urban fantasy genre (okay, mostly just these and the Anita Blake books, but I have some other stuff coming up pretty soon, and I bet it also follows the pattern), events take place over such a short period? The Bones book I just read was spread out over a couple of months of police work. But Harry’s adventures rarely span a full 72 hours, and Anita’s are wrapped up before the weekend, on average. And then months go by off-screen in which various new plotlines start up while old ones drift away or reach a critical mass of interaction with the new ones, and suddenly there’s a new book spanning another handful of days in which all of the pressure is released in one huge gout of steamy awesomesauce, and it’s right back to waiting for the next one. I don’t mind per se, it just stretches believability as a genre convention, enough so to give me pause while I wonder about it. Is it just me?

[1] Even to him, which just goes to show you the quality of good guy that you’re looking at.
[2] This book certainly marks the most diverse battle magic Harry has ever wielded, which is at least as cool as it sounds.
[3] Other examples include Vlad in Brust’s Vlad Taltos series and Severian in Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, both of which are fantastic, though the latter might be a bit dense.