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three books and a movie
Jun. 17th, 2014 12:13 amThe movie: How To Train Your Dragon 2. Less magical than the first one, which I loved, but I thought they made some good choices with what they did with it (although suspect I would have enjoyed the animation more without the 3D). It was the kids first 3D movie, and I think Junie thought it was cool; Q does not really have the attention span yet for movies and when he wandered over to me about 2/3 of the way through he did not have his glasses and was busy climbing up and down on me and the seats next to me, so I'm not sure how much he saw. He claims to have liked it though. Anyways, highly recommended if you like flying or dragons, there's some really good stuff in it.
A Tale of Two Castles, by Gail Carson Levine, was a perfectly fine but uninteresting middle-grade "Puss in Boots" retelling, much less compelling than I had thought it might be from the sample chapter I had read in the back of one of her other books awhile ago. (Basically the chapter one problems got solved too quickly and easily and traded for a different set of problems that interested me less.) I liked the character of the dragon, though (who really wants to be a detective but is mostly appreciated by the townsfolk for ITs flame, and whose gender is a secret, so it uses pronouns based on IT and the honorific "Masteress", which could be a nice introduction to alternate pronouns for young people whose minds might be totally blown by "ve" or "xe").
The Girl of Fire and Thorns, Rae Carson. YA fantasy about a chosen one, but a fresh, invigorating handling of that tired trope, to blurb it. I really liked this and am eager to read the rest of the trilogy. Great main character, Elisa, interesting supporting cast with some non-obvious relationships, well-paced with some good action sequences, some nice world details (Spanish-medieval, in a way that felt much more detailed and realized than the standard generic-medieval blandness). Recommended if you like YA fantasy, especially Tamora Pierce.
Afterparty, Daryl Gregory. A 2014 SF novel. I am really interested in SF stories about neuropharmacology getting specific enough to affect things like spiritual beliefs, as in certain Greg Egan stories, or the third Beggars book by Nancy Kress. So I was keen to read Afterparty, a near-future novel about a drug whose users believe they have found God. Unfortunately the "zing" of this book is a little more in the thriller department than I wanted, when I would have preferred either a deeper focus on the personal experience and effects of the drug, or a broader look at what it does to society once the drug spreads. (By "zing" I mean like the source of tension in the book, what's driving the plot, what sort of climax and resolution it's building towards.) I'm not anti-thriller and there's still some really neat stuff here (good characters, there is some fine lesbian Together-They-Fight-Crime, some good twists on organized-crime tropes, and I wish the teeny bison were real); I just wanted a little more, well, Greg Egan or Nancy Kress, rather than Dean Koontz (which sounds more critical than I mean - I have very fond memories of reading Watchers and Twilight Eyes and Cold Fire as a teenager). Definitely worth reading if you want an intelligent, well-written thriller though.
A Tale of Two Castles, by Gail Carson Levine, was a perfectly fine but uninteresting middle-grade "Puss in Boots" retelling, much less compelling than I had thought it might be from the sample chapter I had read in the back of one of her other books awhile ago. (Basically the chapter one problems got solved too quickly and easily and traded for a different set of problems that interested me less.) I liked the character of the dragon, though (who really wants to be a detective but is mostly appreciated by the townsfolk for ITs flame, and whose gender is a secret, so it uses pronouns based on IT and the honorific "Masteress", which could be a nice introduction to alternate pronouns for young people whose minds might be totally blown by "ve" or "xe").
The Girl of Fire and Thorns, Rae Carson. YA fantasy about a chosen one, but a fresh, invigorating handling of that tired trope, to blurb it. I really liked this and am eager to read the rest of the trilogy. Great main character, Elisa, interesting supporting cast with some non-obvious relationships, well-paced with some good action sequences, some nice world details (Spanish-medieval, in a way that felt much more detailed and realized than the standard generic-medieval blandness). Recommended if you like YA fantasy, especially Tamora Pierce.
Afterparty, Daryl Gregory. A 2014 SF novel. I am really interested in SF stories about neuropharmacology getting specific enough to affect things like spiritual beliefs, as in certain Greg Egan stories, or the third Beggars book by Nancy Kress. So I was keen to read Afterparty, a near-future novel about a drug whose users believe they have found God. Unfortunately the "zing" of this book is a little more in the thriller department than I wanted, when I would have preferred either a deeper focus on the personal experience and effects of the drug, or a broader look at what it does to society once the drug spreads. (By "zing" I mean like the source of tension in the book, what's driving the plot, what sort of climax and resolution it's building towards.) I'm not anti-thriller and there's still some really neat stuff here (good characters, there is some fine lesbian Together-They-Fight-Crime, some good twists on organized-crime tropes, and I wish the teeny bison were real); I just wanted a little more, well, Greg Egan or Nancy Kress, rather than Dean Koontz (which sounds more critical than I mean - I have very fond memories of reading Watchers and Twilight Eyes and Cold Fire as a teenager). Definitely worth reading if you want an intelligent, well-written thriller though.
