Links and some fiction reviews
Kamikazeremix is open!
Manic Pixie Dream Dissidents: on Pussy Riot.
Getting our quotations right, from Historians.org: "And if you are of a mind to check 'legislation cannot make mores,' please note that if you do it through Google Books you are likely to be asked whether you really mean 'legislation cannot make smores.'"
Peer to peer ideology and markets as corporate creatures.
This Political Animals star says she wants to work on Alphas: hire her!
I don’t know who diver Tom Daley is, but I agree that these bars over his speedo simply increase the suggestiveness of the pictures.
Mike Carey, Vicious Circle: I liked this Felix Castor, exorcist/gumshoe, novel better than the first one-it is pretty much exactly down the center of “hardboiled detective story set in world like ours except the supernatural is real and publicly acknowledged” and the story kept me engaged, as Castor took precisely the wrong jobs for the right reasons and dealt with various personal and professional complications, including trouble with the demon he’d accidentally bound to his close friend’s body a few years ago. Some of the descriptions really worked for me-I liked the image of a girl with eyes bigger than her face-and there were real consequences for Castor’s choices, including harm to people he cared about.
Garth Nix, A Confusion of Princes: Khemri is an arrogant young Prince of a star-spanning empire, biologically altered and psionically enhanced for superiority. And it turns out he’s been selected for special treatment even among Princes, if he can survive his training. His superpowers are supposedly limited in various ways, though I didn’t often have a sense of genuine risk. The narrative framing-wisdom recalling the actions and emotions of callow youth-draws the sting of some of the awful stuff he does, but there are still the mind-enslaved courtesans (and other servants) who make up the Princes’ staff. At the end he realizes that love is better, but “better” isn’t what was wrong with the mind-enslaved courtesans, and I didn’t feel that “whew, I’m glad I’m out of there” was exactly the reaction I wanted from my heroes.
Terry Goodkind, Wizard’s First Rule: I enjoyed Legend of the Seeker, all two gorgeous seasons of it. But I couldn’t get through this brick, even though there were sparks of real intelligence in some of the characters and plotting: despite his ridiculous name and ridiculous plan, the villain Darken Rahl did come across as a guy who thought he was the hero of the story, and other people seemed like people-and then there’d be a lot of narration and running around, and I just couldn’t wait it out. At least there’s always the DVDs.
Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux, Cut and Run: Two FBI agents, thrown together because they’re both trouble, work to find a serial killer with an obscure methodology and an apparent deep connection to the FBI. But will their animosity or their raw sexual attraction to each other kill them first? I wanted to like this-hot guys, FBI, it’s kind of in my wheelhouse-but I couldn’t for the life of me tell which guy was which (they were both surly, one was former military or maybe both, they were both damaged, one had a dead wife and a substance abuse problem, they both said mean things to each other). My difficulties were not helped by the POV shifts between Hottie #1 and Hottie #2 within many scenes.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Manic Pixie Dream Dissidents: on Pussy Riot.
Getting our quotations right, from Historians.org: "And if you are of a mind to check 'legislation cannot make mores,' please note that if you do it through Google Books you are likely to be asked whether you really mean 'legislation cannot make smores.'"
Peer to peer ideology and markets as corporate creatures.
This Political Animals star says she wants to work on Alphas: hire her!
I don’t know who diver Tom Daley is, but I agree that these bars over his speedo simply increase the suggestiveness of the pictures.
Mike Carey, Vicious Circle: I liked this Felix Castor, exorcist/gumshoe, novel better than the first one-it is pretty much exactly down the center of “hardboiled detective story set in world like ours except the supernatural is real and publicly acknowledged” and the story kept me engaged, as Castor took precisely the wrong jobs for the right reasons and dealt with various personal and professional complications, including trouble with the demon he’d accidentally bound to his close friend’s body a few years ago. Some of the descriptions really worked for me-I liked the image of a girl with eyes bigger than her face-and there were real consequences for Castor’s choices, including harm to people he cared about.
Garth Nix, A Confusion of Princes: Khemri is an arrogant young Prince of a star-spanning empire, biologically altered and psionically enhanced for superiority. And it turns out he’s been selected for special treatment even among Princes, if he can survive his training. His superpowers are supposedly limited in various ways, though I didn’t often have a sense of genuine risk. The narrative framing-wisdom recalling the actions and emotions of callow youth-draws the sting of some of the awful stuff he does, but there are still the mind-enslaved courtesans (and other servants) who make up the Princes’ staff. At the end he realizes that love is better, but “better” isn’t what was wrong with the mind-enslaved courtesans, and I didn’t feel that “whew, I’m glad I’m out of there” was exactly the reaction I wanted from my heroes.
Terry Goodkind, Wizard’s First Rule: I enjoyed Legend of the Seeker, all two gorgeous seasons of it. But I couldn’t get through this brick, even though there were sparks of real intelligence in some of the characters and plotting: despite his ridiculous name and ridiculous plan, the villain Darken Rahl did come across as a guy who thought he was the hero of the story, and other people seemed like people-and then there’d be a lot of narration and running around, and I just couldn’t wait it out. At least there’s always the DVDs.
Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux, Cut and Run: Two FBI agents, thrown together because they’re both trouble, work to find a serial killer with an obscure methodology and an apparent deep connection to the FBI. But will their animosity or their raw sexual attraction to each other kill them first? I wanted to like this-hot guys, FBI, it’s kind of in my wheelhouse-but I couldn’t for the life of me tell which guy was which (they were both surly, one was former military or maybe both, they were both damaged, one had a dead wife and a substance abuse problem, they both said mean things to each other). My difficulties were not helped by the POV shifts between Hottie #1 and Hottie #2 within many scenes.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.