If you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard anything about this book or its subsequent film, I’ll briefly summarize it for you. The Martian is the story of Mark Watney, an astronaut on the Ares 3 which is part of a series of manned missions to Mars. Due to an unfortunate series of events, Mark is left stranded on Mars when is crew believes he is dead. The ensuing novel is Mark’s efforts to stay alive until he can be rescued. Mark is […]
The characters and story were fine. The editing? Not so much.
Now that Bunnybean is tearing her way through the Lunar Chronicles books, I figured I might as well try and finish up the last book (I don’t count the new book of “related short stories” that just came out), Winter. I wasn’t all that excited about reading it, to be honest. I loved Cinder and Scarlet, and really liked Cress. And then I read Fairest. And I despised it. It really almost ruined the entire series for me. It was so heavy-handed and annoying, I […]
Genre Mix and Match
This is one of those books that defies categorization. It’s the messed-up, weirdo love child of sci-fi, fantasy, romance, and dystopian fiction. There’s no way around it; This book is weird. But in a good way. Mostly. And you should know in advance that there’s no way I can summarize it that will do it justice. The story follows two people, Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead, from childhood to adulthood. Their lives intertwine in interesting and important ways even though they’re the yang to each […]
The future is dystopian and full of idiots
Pajiban’s might have seen the trailer for the new Tom Hiddleston/Jeremy Irons movie based on this book which looks pretty great. It’s full of gorgeously brutalist architecture and stylised sets and cinematography that hint at the original time period of the book (the mid 70’s). My advice, maybe just watch the movie and skip the book? First up, I’m going to tell you that a bunch of dogs get killed and/or eaten in this book. That is a total deal breaker for me and if I’d […]
Trashy romance, but good
Last year I tore through half a dozen of Courtney Milan’s books, finding them easy to read and with enjoyably modern, independent women, with similarly anachronistic men. After a fairly stressful Christmas/New Year, I turned to Ms. Milan for some comfort reading (and take advantage of the fact that my local library had gotten a new stack of her books). Enter: the Turner series. Turner #1 (Unveiled) is the story of Ash Turner (real name: And ye shall tread down the wicked, for they shall be ashes under […]
Kickstarter kickstart: when fandom and real life collide
Disclaimer: I love fanfic. A lot. Disclaimer the second: I am Australian. Hopefully my spelling and vocab make sense. Many years ago, I watched an episode of Buffy and thought, “I wonder what other people thought about this?” From a simple Yahoo search (this was pre-Google) I found forums, then it was a quick descent (or ascent, depending on the showrunner) into fanfic. So imagine my joy when some big names in fandom announced they were starting up their own publishing company with the express purpose of promoting […]