I guess you’d do it. I mean, I have prequel shaped wounds that time will never heal, but I still wouldn’t turn down getting George Lucas a glass of water if he asked for it. I mean, I might get a second glass to dump over his head while screaming “Han shot first!” But I would still make sure he wasn’t parched first. But being commanded by one of your idols to do something maybe isn’t the best way to get the creative juices flowing. […]
Addams and Eves against mankind?
The second book in Atwood’s Madd Addam trilogy traces members of a group called God’s Gardeners both before and after “The Great Waterless Flood,” i.e., the pandemic that destroyed mankind. The chapters bounce around to the different characters, years before the pandemic, and show their previous lives leading up to the destruction. The first novel followed Jimmy in his life in the compound, but these characters are the other half, the less privileged from the pleeblands. But as time goes on, connections between these two […]
I see where we were going with this one, it just didn’t get me there.
I really WANTED to fall in love with Nimona. It seemed like such an obvious pairing: Nimona the impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy and Lord Ballister Blackheart, a villain with a vendetta. These two setting off to prove the heroes aren’t always heroic? Done. But… I only liked this one and caught myself more than once skipping ahead to “get on with the story”. What were my problems? Inconsistent backstory and inconsistent characterizations. From the beginning we learn that while students at […]
Eowyn is So Metal
This is my third review of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy. You can find my review of Fellowship of the Ring here and The Two Towers here. The Hobbit is here. This review is semi-spoilery in terms of tone of the conclusion of the series, but vague. As previously mentioned in the Two Towers review, one of my favorite things about Tolkien’s series is that stakes are high for everyone involved. The bad guys are bad and a lot of them die, but the […]
“The burned hand teaches best.”
This is is my second review of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. You can find my review of The Fellowship of the Ring here. But so our path is laid.’ ‘Yes, that’s so,’ said Sam. ‘And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things […]
1001 nights of hidden meanings.
I don’t know a whole lot about The Arabian Nights (or 1001 Nights), but I do know the general premise, thanks to popular culture—Scheherazade spins a web for 1001 nights to save her life from the whims of a capricious ruler and so captivates him with her storytelling that he allows her to live at the very end. The stories are populated with thieves, the poor, the rich, rulers, and djinn. It is this fabric against which Salman Rushdie sets his Two Years Eight Months […]