Reviews on Roxana-Mălina Chirilă

Doctor Who – Christmas special 2013 review [spoilers]

Thu, 26 Dec 2013 19:39:04 +0000

Warning: this review contains spoilers. And it also doesn’t make any sense if you haven’t seen the episode. Or the series. If you don’t watch Doctor Who, or if you haven’t seen „The Time of the Doctor” yet, go back. I mean it.

To start this off: I am not mad at Steven Moffat. I remember all the cool episodes he wrote for Doctor Who, I remember Sherlock and Coupling and Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death and hell, even Press Gang. But sometimes I can’t help but feel that he’s bitten off a bit more than he can actually chew. Some episodes of Doctor Who are sheer brilliance and they make me jump around in excitement and shout „This! This is Doctor Who, dammit!” while others make me nearly apologize to people.

There might be something about Doctor Who and that show’s writers. They all try so damned hard, you can feel it. They know they’re making history. They don’t want to ruin it. They want it to be Epic. And sometimes Epic means ‘Bad Wolf’ with its subtle hints all over the place and that wonderful ’the drums, the never-ending drums’ (saying nothing of ‘don’t even blink’)… while at other times we get Jesus!Doctor resurrected by good thoughts from the whole of humanity or something like that.

That being said… I liked the way in which „The Time of the Doctor” started. I really did. My buddy Linda said she was really disappointed with the episode, but I couldn’t see it: Clara was having Christmas dinner with her family, the Doctor was off investigating a mystery with a Cyberman’s head by his side… Sure, all sorts of alien ships gathered around a planet had the potential for corny plots, but it wouldn’t be like that, right? Right? Wrong.

Problem number one: too many things. The Cyberman’s head. The Church of the Silence. Clara’s family. Time Lords. The answer to the crack in the universe (what’s behind it). The answer to what caused the crack in the universe. Weeping angels. Supposed nudity. Tasha. Tasha flirting with the Doctor. The fact that the Doctor is at his thirteenth incarnation. Do I go on?

Look, I don’t mind a lot of details in my stories. I’m a fan of details! But too many things thrown in at the same time make things messy. And do you know why? Because of Problem number two.

**Problem number two: **Rushing. Ruuuuuuuuuushhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing. Was I supposed to feel sad at the Cyberman’s head dying? Because I didn’t. Do you know why? Because he was introduced this episode and got five minutes of screen time, at most. I know that the Doctor spent hundreds of years with it, but… no. I can’t bring myself to care.

What about the answer to the crack in the universe? It’s just thrown in there! Seriously, I was very curious about that, but the show went all „Yeah, it’s because we tried to blow up your TARDIS so you wouldn’t get here, and the Time Lords are on the other side.” Really? It sounds like something Moffat thought up after a day of pondering how to write this episode. There’s nothing much leading up to this.

Problem number three: forgotten plot threads. We were led to believe there’s something very scary on the other side of the message. But Time Lords? What the hell, are they chanting that message in Tolkien’s orc language for ominousness? Also, the Weeping Angels. You know they’re there because they have fans. There isn’t much of a reason for them to be there otherwise. You get a scare, you think you know where all this is going… and then the Weeping Angels vanish.

The truth field is another problem of the sort: it serves very little purpose except having the Doctor tell the truth a few times. Why’s it there? In-universe, not story-wise, I mean. Story-wise it’s there to further the plot. But why the hell would the presence of the Time Lords create a truth field?

Problem number four: running gags outstaying their welcome. You know them – Doctor Who, Doctor Who? Yes, we know! It’s the bloody name of the show! Move on!

Or the thing about the Doctor snogging people. He’s doing it with everyone these days – it’s gotten to the point where if I were a random sexy woman in the Doctor’s world, my expectations of Doctor-snogs would be at about 50%.

Problem number five: cheap storytelling. The narrator’s voice is meant to be magic and stuff, but it really kind of isn’t. I suppose this might be more of a director-thing than a writer-thing, but it doesn’t work so well. We don’t really get sucked into the Doctor’s life and aging process because it’s all too fast (see problem number two). I understand 60 minutes aren’t enough to really show everything you want to show, but here’s an alternate way of doing it: no narrator’s voice. Follow Clara, follow her back home, then she puts the key in the TARDIS and flies back. When she gets there, the Doctor is old. We felt that just a minute passed, too. We can empathize with Clara much more than we can with him. Yes, we miss the part with the Doctor kicking ass with that ‘reversed polarity’ thing, but maybe that time is best spent elsewhere? Eh, whatever. There are many ways of telling a story. I’ve already gone too far with the speculation here.

Also, the Time Lords are calling to the Doctor through the time crack? As my friend Linda pointed out, we’ve kind of heard that one before, but they were doing it to the Master, with the sound of drums. Except it worked better in that episode.

To sum it up: I’m sorry to see the Time Lords show up again so fast. We didn’t get to wish for them for too long. We didn’t get any buildup. They’ve technically been there since the fifth series (or the first, if you think about it), but now they’re up and kicking as if they knew that everything was fresh for the Doctor, that he’d only just saved them and it’s time to pop back into his life.

The whole episode is rushed and it answers questions in what I feel to be unsatisfying ways. Moffat seems to want to cram the world into an episode sometimes, but it doesn’t always work. Several things seem to not be very well thought through.

The most disappointing part, to me, is that I feel that it all started in a good, fun way.

Working with the Big World Network

Sun, 24 Nov 2013 09:20:34 +0000

Flight from Hell is well into its second season by now – the fourth episode is out today and episodes 5, 6 and 7 are ready for when their time will come. 8 has been written, 9 is being written.

And the one thing I keep saying this morning is that I have awesome publishers.

First of all, the reason why I decided to get a novel published with them is that I absolutely loved the concept. I come from the wonderful world of fanfiction, where you wait for a new episode and you text your friends things like „Holy fucking shit! Beside You in Time was just updated :-O It’s alive!” Or you run around and tell people in Canada that silverkytten updated, or that Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality just got a new episode.

Literature can be a domain where you eagerly wait for more, where you can get involved, speculate, hope for more. We’ve kind of lost that in the mainstream when serial novels stopped being published – but fanfiction, where the chapter is the default posting unit, brought the excitement back. The only problem being that many, many series lie abandoned, maybe never to be finished (such as some of my own, actually… hiatuses just keep growing)

The Big World Network publishes one chapter/episode per week, though, so you’re ensured against heartbreak of looking at series that will never be finished. And I love that. It’s brilliant.

And of course, they publish audio episodes as well. Which is lovely, I adore audiobooks.

But. Part 2 of the story of my love for the Big World Network is the unseen one: what happens behind the scenes. After all, sometimes the books that are published can be lovely and so can the concept, but when you end up working with the people who make the magic happen, you can feel like crap (I’ve been in that situation before).

The truth is: I absolutely love the BWN team from this point of view. I’ve been working with them for some months now and they are awesome.

Here, let me bullet point the neat stuff you don’t see from the outside:

They’re great with planning. They take their time to come up with solutions, set deadlines which allow for unforeseen delays and think things through before they act. They know the extent of their abilities, and they know what to expect of the average author. In other words, they don’t rely on optimism and improvisation to get things done – which is a nice change from some of the artistic teams I’ve been in. „Better early than on time” is a decent standard to function by, no? And you always have time to notice whether anything needs more work that way.
They’re transparent about what they do. We get team updates regularly, in which we find out what the Big World Network is planning: site changes, convention participation, events, plans for certain events, what is going on with other parts of the Big World Network. Technically, I don’t need to know some of that (e.g. changes in the way the site looks like), but it does make me feel like I’m welcomed into their home. Which is great. I get to know who I work for and what they do.
They listen. I’m a nitpicking sort of person, and a lot of people grumbled over how evil and criticizing I am (I don’t mean it in a bad way, though). But the BWN guys don’t grumble. They check, explain, fix, improve. Is there a typo anywhere on the site? It will be fixed. A broken link, an audio glitch, anything that falls under the category of „you missed a spot”? That spot will be checked ASAP. And I’ll get replies to things like „Have you tried selling your books with X, Y or Z?”
They also dialogue. Let’s hit the full spectrum of communication here: I can discuss the merits/downfalls of an idea concerning either the novel or the site with them and some solution/compromise will be reached. And they’re polite, nice and assume you’re (trying to be) the same as well (which really helps people like myself, who can put their foot in their mouth regularly).
They try new things: today they’re at a convention, tomorrow they’re finding people on the net who will promote them, yesterday they talked to some people about promoting your work for some time to come, at some point they will do something promotional and neat God knows where.
I should’ve mentioned this above, but it’s obvious from the way the site looks: they’re very skilled at what they do. Novel covers look great – and they look different. My banner is very different from Thralldom’s banner, which in its turn is very different from the banner for Billie vs the Unseen. Perhaps some are less impressive than others, but you can see a personality in them, professionalism. The same goes for editing: Amanda and Wendy (yes, I have two editors) find typos and problems easily, fix my convoluted sentences, tell me when something is wrong and, all in all, save my ass every once in awhile. And, of course, everything runs smoother than smooth on their side.

They make you feel like you’re part of the team and, overall, they make my life a bit more cheerful than I’d expected it to be. Which is why I’m writing this post.

And it isn’t just me saying it, either.

Plug for Eliza Enea's "Small Steps"

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 07:53:13 +0000

Fairytales coming to life during your University years are often more annoying than magical.

Well, just so you know, the South Wing of the university vanished (so no classes, because that’s where they were held) and the roommate with the crossbow isn’t on goblin patrol duty because she went to a werehamster convention, or something like that.

It’s the cheerful, absurd, fantastic, fluffy style of the story that brings on the fun. It has the air that you could be attacked by soft rabbits at any point of time and will need to pet them before you move on. The plot is cute and amusing – sometimes you might think there’s no stopping the matchmaking ways of the older generation of women, except through paranormal means. I have been assured that the behavior of such middle-aged women is entirely modeled on reality and have to be Mighty Glad to have escaped a large collection of aunts trying to set me up with cute men (I’m not entirely sure I wouldn’t have liked being subjected to eye-candy whenever I visited relatives, but that’s another story).

Eliza Enea’s lovely, heart-warming series, „Small Steps” is happening over on the Big World Network, where it’s read by the authoress herself in her own clear, pleasant, talented way. Check it out!

Neil Gaiman's "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" [Book Review]

Sat, 31 Aug 2013 06:37:22 +0000

Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Author: Neil Gaiman

Rating: 5/5

Is this book for me? Yes.

It takes a certain amount of magic to make you not realize that the main character has no name until you need to write the review.

He is a man in his late forties, early fifties, driving down the lane where he used to live as a child. There was a funeral. It doesn’t say who died, because it doesn’t matter at all. If you’re like me, you’ll think it’s the father. But it doesn’t really matter.

I started by thinking that this is a story I’ve heard before – at some point, if an author gets old enough, there might come a book about remembering.

At the end of the lane, there’s a farm where Old Mrs Hempstock, Mrs Hempstock and Lettie Hempstock used to live. He walks in and asks if there’s still a pond at the back – or an ocean, because that’s what Lettie called it. Sitting by the pond, he remembers.

Except this is Neil Gaiman writing; and the story isn’t about children. Or, well, it’s about him, when he was a child, that summer when he was seven and the opal miner died and he woke up one morning choking on an old coin that had barely appeared into the world. It’s about the girl who had an ocean which was a pond and the thing which wanted to make people happy. It’s about the careless cruelty of adults and the lies they tell to themselves, and about memories and the way they change and the way you fill in the blanks.

The novel (it’s a short novel) has a sketch-like quality to it. If it were a painting, I’d say it’s one of those Eastern things, done with a bit of ink, simple lines and a lot of empty space to draw attention to what’s really important. Or maybe it’s just one of those stories where you’re supposed to scribble on the side. His point of view as a child caught only some things, not others – but his adult self leaves the unpleasant bits in so they’ll catch your eye for a moment and scratch your sense of suspicion.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane isn’t a book for children (you would probably be horrified to know they’re reading it – but, in a way, I think they’d like it). It doesn’t go deep into fantasy worlds, where we would expect some things to happen badly just because that’s how stories go. It’s just at the edge of reality, with him going between the very real reality of his old childhood home and the magic of the world beyond.

(P.S. It’s available, as usual, through Book Depository (free shipping), Amazon UK and Amazon US)

Amnesia

Wed, 28 Aug 2013 13:10:05 +0000

Amnesia is a scary game
Amnesia is a fright
I love to play, so it’s a shame
It kills my sleep at night.

Insomniac, I walk around
A glass of drink to find
When in the dark I hear a sound–
Steve might be right behind!

I dart around, a crazy girl
In an old, friendly house
I find a box, in it I curl
More quiet than a mouse.

When dawn is nigh, I crawl outside
And glance around in fear
The laptop then I open wide–
The time to play is here.

Sorana Corneanu's "Regimens of the Mind" [(Academic) Book Review]

Sun, 14 Jul 2013 09:12:51 +0000

Title: Regimens of the Mind: Boyle, Locke, and the Early Modern Cultura Animi Tradition

Author: Sorana Corneanu

Rating: 4/5

Is this book for me? Probably not. It’s an academic book of the difficult sort and far, far from an easy read. But if you’re up to a challenge, it can be pretty damned fascinating.

This review is way overdue, considering I finished reading the book awhile back. Still, this morning I was cheerfully reading an article on psychology and the scientific method which brought Regimens of the Mind back into my thoughts. So, time to discuss it.

I’ve already mentioned in another article that I believe the humanities have a horrible academic writing style. Most of the books I’ve been subjected to as an undergraduate student and afterward are highly difficult to read because of their sentence structure and their assumption that the reader has a highly specialized vocabulary and kick-ass history and culture skills. Regimens of the Mind is pretty much like that. You’ll find yourself googling terms like ‘postlapsarian condition’ (it’s the first that came to mind now. It means ’the condition of humankind after the Fall from the Garden of Eden’, yes?). Or, you know, looking up ‘regimens’. You’ll find yourself re-reading that last paragraph because you somehow failed to catch the meaning. Still, it’s a lot more readable than a lot of other academic texts out there – if you’re up to it, it’s a fun challenge.

Enough of my inner editor being a bitch. Because the humanities’ cryptic academic style is the only minus I think the book has.

You can’t tell from the title, but Regimens of the Mind is a book about the origins of the scientific method, of objectivity and reason – the way we take them for granted today. Imagine a world where people are trying to figure out what’s real and what isn’t, which arguments stand and which don’t. There’s no path that’s been laid down for it yet – sure, Aristotle went around explaining basic logic in Ancient Greece, but there’s a huge difference between theory and practice, between the simplicity of ‘if all A are B and x is an A, then x is B’ and being faced with the entirety of the material world and of the spiritual world, trying to tell when you’ve picked the right terms for your logical sentences. So people devise ways of explaining how to do that.

As an aside: you’ve got to love mankind, no? When we need something new, we create it. Whether it’s a computer, in order to decipher secret messages, or ways to further knowledge and understanding through providing clear guidelines of what to do and what not to do.

And there’s Francis Bacon, who starts discussing „idols of the mind”, false ideas which stop us from seeing the truth – because we have preconceptions and think we see more order in the universe than there really is, or because we simply like or don’t like certain things and want them to be true/not true. Or there’s John Locke, saying that sometimes we don’t see the truth because we subject to a higher authority telling us what to think – what the ’truth’ is. I’ll stop with the examples here – Sorana Corneanu presents them and their connections much more neatly than I would.

So here we are, in this interesting world where objectivity and rationality emerge. It’s a fascinating read, especially if you’ve read theories of rationality in the contemporary world and have heard of a lot of reasoning mistakes by their modern, fancy, scientific-sounding names. Because things, as Corneanu presents them, are a bit more fascinating than you’d think.

Have you looked up ‘regimens’ and ‘cultura animi’ yet?… Because they explain the fun of it: ‘regimen’ means something like work-out, therapy, training – the sort of process you go through to make yourself better. And the ‘cultura animi’ isn’t far from the intuitive translation you might come up with: a cultivation of the soul. So all this reasoning stuff?… Thinking correctly about things, seeing nature objectively, as it were?… It’s not just for science, not just a method to figure out physics or chemistry. It’s for personal development. It’s a way to grow yourself. It’s a spiritual endeavor. It’s a way of life, of religious practice. The ‘Christian Virtuoso’ seeking to better himself through educating his mind, the ‘Lover of Truth’ pursuing reality are on the move, searching, in a pilgrimage of the soul.

That’s what makes Regimens of the Mind fascinating. Corneanu looks deep into the motivations these philosophers had for seeking the truth, for devising methods to discover it and to avoid mental traps. It’s an insight into another world, into a rich spiritual tradition that basically led to science being what it is. And she stops there, where you can pick up this strong, memorable insight into the past and consider it from any number of points of view.

Amanda Meuwissen's "Real Fangs" [Book Review]

Fri, 05 Jul 2013 16:50:44 +0000

Title: Real Fangs

Author: Amanda Meuwissen

Rating: 3/5 (subjectively. I can see it get 4/5 from somebody who likes the style of the story)

Is this book for me? It’s a light, slice of life supernatural novella. Some vampires, some werewolves. No wars. No psychological drama. Not much plot, either. If you’re looking for something fun and almost fluffy, this is it. If you’re looking for something engaging or deep… not so much.

I made a mistake with this book when I started reading it. I thought it would be a traditional sort of supernatural novel, with the drama of being turned, or with bad people needing to be hunted down, or that sort of thing. It’s actually slice of life. It’s not so much about the newly-turned vampire Chris going through huge issues concerning the meaning of life or the meaning of fighting evil, but about the just out of college Chris needing to find his way in life.

After that, my vision changed. Instead of being annoyed with the book that it’s not really pushing the plot anywhere, I started taking it as a sitcom (especially since the Big World Network likens its stories to television series). Which it really works as, actually.

The story doesn’t really do it for me (not a big fan of sitcoms), but it has a few points in which it shines. The ideas about what a number of vampires and some witches do all day are quite plausible as well as amusing. And you can feel the characters. They’re real people, living in a real city and going about their real day-to-day business.

I recommend it for sheer fun.

P.S. The audio version is read by Amanda Meuwissen herself. Her accent is a bit unusual (…said the Romanian, I know), but her voice acting and narration style are quite enjoyable. I think I could rate the audio version 4/5. Her reading it makes the difference.

Amanda Meuwissen's "The Collector" [Book review]

Fri, 05 Jul 2013 16:25:12 +0000

Title: The Collector

Author: Amanda Meuwissen

Rating: 4/5

Is this book for me? It’s a light supernatural novella. It has the Devil, some hell creatures and a simple mystery plot. If you’re looking for something light and easy to read this weekend for your enjoyment, then go ahead. If you’re searching for complex plots or philosophical insights, skip it.

The link above is to Amazon, but the book can be read directly on the Big World Network website, where you gain access by paying a $3/month subscription (which also allows you access to a few dozen other books).

The Collector wasn’t really the sort of book I’d usually read – unless I was reading fanfic. It’s light, flows easily and it’s a pleasure to flip through, reading a new episode (chapter) with the ease with which you can take a new piece of chocolate. Not the sort of chocolate you buy from specialized shops which bankrupt you in three days flat, but the sort of normal, common chocolate that you can enjoy on a daily basis. It won’t blow your mind, but it will be fun during the afternoon.

Adam is the Devil’s Collector of souls. That means that the Devil makes a deal… and Adam goes off and takes the soul of the person when their time is due. All’s been good since Antiquity or so, but now somebody is starting to hound him, leaving disturbing messages to him. Things get weirder and weirder, until…

Well, I’m not going to spoil you, am I?

Cute. Fun. Not going to be on my ‘best of the year’ list of books, but I’m glad I read it.

P.S. The audio version, read by Blaise Douros is actually quite nice. I like his voice and reading style – pleasant, clear, fun.

Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman": "Preludes and Nocturnes" [Book Review]

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:56:54 +0000

Title: Preludes and Nocturnes

Series: The Sandman
Author: Neil Gaiman

Rating: 4/5

Is this book for me? It’s a graphic novel – that’s a fancy way of saying „comics”. It’s also horror. I’m not fond of the drawing style. The writing is grand, each word falling as heavy as if it were engraved in granite, sent back in the past and reverberating at you from antiquity. This book is probably not for you. You should read it anyway.

I first read Neil Gaiman’s „The Sandman” back in the first year of university, when a friend shoved it towards me. I’d seen „Stardust”, but I had such a huge stick up my ass that I couldn’t believe fantasy to be worthy of anything (nor fanfiction, but that’s another story). Now, she’s a very convincing person and she made me read some scans. I hated the drawing style.

Really not my type of art.

It was the story that got my attention, naturally. I knew next to nothing about comics and I had expected some sort of superhero running about saving the day, amidst corny lines like, „I will get you next time, Sandman!!!” and „That dastardly enemy, he killed me! I’ve been shot!” Not so. The series begins with „Wake up, sir, we’re here”. An old man gets out from what seems to be an early 20th-century car – we’re told it’s 1916. He walks to a rich mansion and delivers a mysterious tome to somebody looking very much like your standard villain. The comics cheese steps in for a second on the second page as the villain declares that „The Magdalene Grimoire was all that the order needed. We can hold the ceremony at the next full moon… and then… No one need ever die again.”

But Gaiman doesn’t detail what exactly that’s all about. He doesn’t step into the evil plan. One corny line of exposition and then we’re thrown into four panels that break our expectations – the third page and Gaiman is already working his magic. The Sandman is not about superheroes. It’s about stories. It’s about dreams and tales and the imagination, about the way each person is made of feelings and dreams and aspirations and desires and hopes – and all that comes together into a web that’s so large, so complex that by the end of the series I was standing in awe, crying with the inability to even figure out how one goes on to create a Sandman.

The panels are the real hints of what will happen. In Toronto, Canada, Ellie Marsten is listening to „Through the Looking Glass” and, despite knowing that it’s just a bedtime story, she’s terrified. Elsewhere, in Jamaica, Daniel Bustamonte sleeps despite the noise and the rustle and dreams a dream that sounds comforting. In France, Stefan Wasserman looks scared shitless on the battle front – he’s almost 14, but he lied about his age to enlist. In London, Unity Kinkaid dreams of a man with stars in his eyes.

The Sandman is a story of stories. In „Preludes and Nocturnes” it picks up its wings to fly – somewhat unskillfully, as Neil Gaiman hadn’t gathered the courage and the following that would propel him into greatness yet, but even the first flight is darkly beautiful. Whereas the rest of the series will draw from the entire world to build itself, „Preludes and Nocturnes” draws mostly from other comics and the comic genre – the Sandman, Morpheus, Oneiros, the Lord of Dreams who is in charge of dreams, the imagination and stories, first appears dressed in his battle regalia, which he actually doesn’t often wear – he has a helmet, a pouch and a ruby (all of which get taken from him). Summoned by Roderick Burgess, our villain, he remains entrapped in a magic circle for seventy years, biding his time until he can escape. In the mean time, people all over the world fall into deep slumber or remain unable to sleep.

His escape and the recovery of his artifacts are, to put it simply, not pretty. To put it simply, this IS a horror series, complete with graphic descriptions of heads rolling off, of drugged people, insanity and violent murders. The stories, episodic, read like general cautionary action/adventure plots, with descriptions of hell and Lucifer and what happens if you play with the forces of the universe. Your run-of-the-mill sort of plot – but the details shine through dialogues and inner monologues and little ironies.

One that appealed to me especially was the story of Bette Munroe („24 Hours”). Quote: „On her days off, after she’s tidied the house, Bette Munroe writes stories. She writes them in longhand on yellow legal pads. […] Most of her stories, however, are about her customers. They look at her and they just see a waitress; they don’t know she’s nursing a secret. A secret that keeps her aching calf-muscles and her coffee-scalded fingers and her weariness from dragging her down… It’s her secret. She’s never shown anyone her stories.” She pictures her success, people wondering how such an accomplished writer could know so much about being a waitress – she fancies herself gathering material, just playing her life’s part, but one day she will move on. „She isn’t small-minded; a writer can’t afford to be.” She writes lesbians into married girls, young men into success – she wants everybody to be better off, to have a good life. „All Bette’s stories have happy endings. That’s because she knows where to stop. She realized the real problem with stories – if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.”

As it happens, Bette has less than 24 hours left to live before she dies gruesomely. Her killer has much longer. But the diamond of Gaiman’s style shines from within the roughness.

If horror is far from your thing, however, another option is to simply skip most of „Preludes and Nocturnes”, although you’ll be missing a lot. The last issue in the volume, „The Sound of Her Wings”, has Dream/Morpheus/The Sandman hanging out with his sister, Death, at the end of his quest for the artifacts. And it’s where Neil Gaiman starts revolutionizing the world of comics. By turning something that was horror/adventure into a huge story about stories, life and everything in between.

Dream, Death and the old man

The Sandman is available on Amazon UK and Amazon US (click the pictures to get there):

[][1]

Amazon UK version

[][2]

Amazon US version

Jim Butcher's "Storm Front" [Book Review]

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:53:20 +0000

Title: Storm Front

Series: The Dresden Files
Author: Jim Butcher

Rating: 4/5

Is this book for me? It’s an urban fantasy set in Chicago. It features a number of magical creatures, a plot best described as ‘detective mystery’, humor and, occasionally, profanity. If that sounds appealing, then the book is for you. If you’re looking for Deep Meaning, philosophical inquiry, Tolkien-like worlds, romance or Quotable Wisdom, then probably not.

One of the things I like about the Dresden Files is the down-to-earth, often funny, very human tone, with a strong component of realism. Well, realism as far as descriptions and psychology go, anyway. Seeing that this is fantasy, you can hardly expect the world to be plausible.

Harry Dresden is an honest-to-God real wizard trying to make a living out of his talent in a world that is very similar to our own (except the part where it secretly and stealthily contains magic). He collaborates with the Special Investigations Unit of the Chicago Police Department, where director Karrin Murphy was generous enough to believe him to be the real thing and offer him a collaboration contract which pays most of his bills. He also freelances and advertises himself in the newspaper – which works as you could expect it to work in the real world. Prank calls and people looking for lost husbands via psychics.

I first doubted Dresden’s abilities as a wizard. I mean, what sort of a poor sod is so bad at the magic business that he’s perpetually starving, like a magic copy of Henry Miller? (Henry Miller’s „Tropic of Cancer” is often mistakenly believed to be porn, but it’s actually hunger and philosophy) After Harry Potter and the Wands That Achieved Anything With the Right Wave and Words, Dresden seemed to be woefully underpowered and tragically unprepared for life. However, my respect for him grew in time – Dresden’s strength lies not in his ability to blast holes in things, or to summon fairies (although he can certainly do that), but in his vast magical knowledge, quick wit, preparation and ability to think on his feet, back, knees, belly and however else he needs to think.

The novel, as fast paced as your usual action-packed mystery, starts with Dresden getting two cases at the same time: a police-related one via Murphy, concerning magical murders, and a civil one via the worried Monica Sells, concerning her missing husband Victor Sells. As if that weren’t enough, Dresden is under suspicion of breaking the magical law and placed under the „Doom of Damocles”, which means he has somebody prepared to kill him shadowing his every foot and looking for any minor transgression that would warrant his killing – and also under suspicion of being behind the magical murders that Murphy is investigating.

Yes, you can bet 10 pounds/dollars that everything comes together into a single plot. But Jim Butcher manages to keep you guessing and to make you jump to the edge of your seat in excitement every time something bad happens. And he does it with a charm and ingenuity that are just maliciously, gleefully, horribly entertaining.

One of my favorite scenes has Harry Dresden fighting a magical construct while pretty much naked, with a lusty woman trying to jump his bones while doors and elevators are ruined around them. And it all makes sense at the time.

Lovely writing, edge-of-your-seat sort of thing, also good for a laugh or a few smirks (Dresden’s style of telling the story is simply delicious). I am definitely recommending it – 4 stars out of 5 because I know that the series gets better and I need gradation.

Available via Amazon UK:

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