wednesday media
My new phone arrived today! (This is relevant, because I read ebooks on my phone...) I splashed out for the Pixel 4XL, since my 3-year-old Pixel has a battery life measured in minutes, these days, and have been spending much of the afternoon transferring and configuring stuff. Oog this is complicated. And yes, I got the orange one. Actually the back is orange and the bezel and sides are black, so it (appropriately!) looks like Halloween! Anyway:
What I've recently finished reading:
Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell, which was a Tor free e-book earlier this year; I'd had it on my phone for a while, but somebody on my flist recently posted about reading it (who? was it YOU?) and the description sounded a lot more entertaining than what I, for some reason, was expecting. (I don't know, I was thinking of "Witches of Eastwick"-like suburbia?)
Anyway, I liked it. The new vicar of Lychford (who reminded me a bit of Anna Volovodov from the Expanse series, with her earnest determination to do the right thing), her estranged formerly-best friend who runs a magic shop but weirdly doesn't believe in magic, and the local batty old crone team up, sort of, in the face of a big-box store's plans which, in the manner of the diabolical motorway in Good Omens, will disrupt the town's secret defenses against supernatural forces. I didn't expect that this was only a novella (or perhaps short novel?) so I was a bit surprised to notice I was over halfway through when I put the book down after an evening of reading. And sure enough, things wrapped up fairly quickly. I feel as though much more detail could have made it a richer, longer story; in particular quite a bit of the climax seemed to happen off-screen, and Judith's and Autumn's actions seemed only sketched in and a bit confusing - I would have loved to have read the longer, slower version of this, with more backstory and more action.
What I'm reading next:
Possibly the next book in the Saxon Stories series, though I'm also tempted by a number of Yuletide books.
What I've recently watched:
Он - дракон | I Am Dragon (2015), a Russian movie which is basically the Beauty and the Beast story with extra cheese. And by cheese I mean that I got flashbacks to the 1980 Brooke Shields movie The Blue Lagoon, which, okay, I never actually watched. But there's a lot of pretentious artsy mostly-naked shots, and OH THE WONDER of teenage princess and angsty dragonman discovering new things in the world, and dialogue that I'm told is even more ridiculous in Russian. Every once in a while, though, Mira (the princess) says or does something that punctures the drama balloon, and that's just delightful. Also, I have to say, the costumes in the old Russian village scenes are gorgeous, and the dragon's island is pretty amazing, though I had to roll my eyes at the lush and gorgeous waterfall coming down off of...basically nothing. So I liked it overall despite the occasional eye-rolling.
There are also some great supporting characters, including the princess's betrothed (who is very good-looking, but an ass), and the princess's older sister (who I am going to request fic about at Yuletide). I mean, cheesy, but I enjoyed it. And actually the reason I watched it was that I'm a wrangler for Game of Thrones, and a few crossovers with I Am Dragon popped up, and since there was no wrangler for that fandom I made the proper tags and then went in and cleaned things up, and decided I might as well babysit the fandom in case any other works were posted for it. And then a work got posted with some tags I couldn't figure out, and so I figured I'd better watch it (it's available on Amazon Prime and, I think, on Netflix) and what do you know, I guess I'll keep wrangling it.
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth
What I've recently finished reading:
Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell, which was a Tor free e-book earlier this year; I'd had it on my phone for a while, but somebody on my flist recently posted about reading it (who? was it YOU?) and the description sounded a lot more entertaining than what I, for some reason, was expecting. (I don't know, I was thinking of "Witches of Eastwick"-like suburbia?)
Anyway, I liked it. The new vicar of Lychford (who reminded me a bit of Anna Volovodov from the Expanse series, with her earnest determination to do the right thing), her estranged formerly-best friend who runs a magic shop but weirdly doesn't believe in magic, and the local batty old crone team up, sort of, in the face of a big-box store's plans which, in the manner of the diabolical motorway in Good Omens, will disrupt the town's secret defenses against supernatural forces. I didn't expect that this was only a novella (or perhaps short novel?) so I was a bit surprised to notice I was over halfway through when I put the book down after an evening of reading. And sure enough, things wrapped up fairly quickly. I feel as though much more detail could have made it a richer, longer story; in particular quite a bit of the climax seemed to happen off-screen, and Judith's and Autumn's actions seemed only sketched in and a bit confusing - I would have loved to have read the longer, slower version of this, with more backstory and more action.
What I'm reading next:
Possibly the next book in the Saxon Stories series, though I'm also tempted by a number of Yuletide books.
What I've recently watched:
Он - дракон | I Am Dragon (2015), a Russian movie which is basically the Beauty and the Beast story with extra cheese. And by cheese I mean that I got flashbacks to the 1980 Brooke Shields movie The Blue Lagoon, which, okay, I never actually watched. But there's a lot of pretentious artsy mostly-naked shots, and OH THE WONDER of teenage princess and angsty dragonman discovering new things in the world, and dialogue that I'm told is even more ridiculous in Russian. Every once in a while, though, Mira (the princess) says or does something that punctures the drama balloon, and that's just delightful. Also, I have to say, the costumes in the old Russian village scenes are gorgeous, and the dragon's island is pretty amazing, though I had to roll my eyes at the lush and gorgeous waterfall coming down off of...basically nothing. So I liked it overall despite the occasional eye-rolling.
There are also some great supporting characters, including the princess's betrothed (who is very good-looking, but an ass), and the princess's older sister (who I am going to request fic about at Yuletide). I mean, cheesy, but I enjoyed it. And actually the reason I watched it was that I'm a wrangler for Game of Thrones, and a few crossovers with I Am Dragon popped up, and since there was no wrangler for that fandom I made the proper tags and then went in and cleaned things up, and decided I might as well babysit the fandom in case any other works were posted for it. And then a work got posted with some tags I couldn't figure out, and so I figured I'd better watch it (it's available on Amazon Prime and, I think, on Netflix) and what do you know, I guess I'll keep wrangling it.
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth