Immortals After Dark

OK, I'm hooked on the Immortals After Dark series by Kresley Cole. The overall story arc revolves around the coming Accession, occurring naturally every 500 years, in which various factions of immortals kill each other off (essentially controlling the immortal population). However, we can tell that this Accession is going to be a doozy. Nix, the prognosticating Valkyrie, works in the background throughout the books to align the Valkyrie, werewolves, certain vampires, witches, various demonarchies, and others against the bad guys (yes, those were the good guys). Nucking Futs Nix, as she is not-so-affectionately known by most characters, is a minor character, but if she's working this hard she obviously sees a real possibility of the bad guys winning this time around. If you're looking for a UF/PNR series with hot vampires and werewolves you might want to check this one out.

Extraordinary Measures

Based on a true story, Extraordinary Measures starring Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser is about a father's quest to help his children born with a rare genetic defect. Fraser plays the father who quits his job when he finds a scientist (Ford) who has a plausible theory on which to formulate a drug that could save his children's lives.

The movie isn't bad, but it's drippy and predictable. It's sweetened up in all the right spots so it can get maximum leverage from pulling on your heartstrings. I wouldn't recommend it, but if you're dying to see it you can wait to rent it.

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

Shades of Grey, the first book in a new series by Jasper Fforde, takes place in an alternate reality some time in the future after the "Something That Happened." People now live in an over-simplified world where strict adherence to the Rules are required (no matter how silly or harsh they are) and people can only see one color. The social hierarchy, the Colortocracy, is based on what color you see; greys are the very bottom, reds just above the greys, and purples at the top.

Our main character, Eddie Russet, is a young man who is sent to East Carmine to take a chair census because he needs to learn humility for the egregious offense of trying to improve the system in which people stand in line. He ends up learning humility, but from the secret subculture of the greys where he discovers there's much more going on in the world than he ever realized. He comes to learn that the Rules are meant to keep people ignorant and subservient, and that people sent to Reboot for breaking the Rules aren't rehabilitated like everyone is meant to believe.

This is a less playful book than the ones he wrote for his Thursday Next and Nursery Crime series' but it's just as clever and thoughtful. I continue to be amazed at the ideas Fforde comes up with. I'm interested in seeing how he unfolds the story in future books. I definitely recommend this one, but if you've never picked up one of his books before I suggest you start with The Eyre Affair, the first book in his Thursday Next series.

Movie Review for Daybreakers

I just went to see Daybreakers and was pleasantly surprised. The movie critics beat it up, but they're just movie snobs who would rather die than give a vampire movie any respect. The plot was original: in the not-too-distant future the world is mostly populated by vampires, and humans are on their way to becoming extinct. What does the vampire world do to feed? Where do they draw the lines of morality? What if someone found a way to turn vampires human again?

In addition to the interesting plot, it had more gore than I was expecting which was fine with me because I haven't watched a good gory movie in a long time. Sam Neill plays a great bad guy, and Willem Defoe and Ethan Hawke are really good in their roles. The ending had a few little twists that I didn't see coming, which I always enjoy. I hate movies where the entire plot is predictable and therefore boring (like Avatar).

I definitely recommend this movie. If you don't get a chance to see it in the theaters put it in your rental queue.

God, I love True Blood!

Book Review for the Glory St. Clair Series

I just finished the the Glory St. Clair series by Gerry Bartlett, which includes Real Vampires Have Curves, Real Vampires Live Large, Real Vampires Get Lucky, and Real Vampires Don't Diet. I really enjoyed reading this series. Glory is a full-figured vampire who moves to Austin after working a Las Vegas showgirl and fighting off a gambling addiction. She opens a vintage clothing store (why not, she's got a stockpile of clothes, shoes, and handbags from living over 400 years) so she can make a success of her life on her own. Her on-again-off-again lover, Jeremy Blade, is also her over-protective sire who tries to keep her safe from a high-tech billionaire vampire hunter. She also has a guard dog, Valdez, (who is much more than what he seems) and many other zany vampire friends. It's a light, fun, and very humorous series. The next book comes out on February 2nd, Real Vampires Hate Their Thighs. I'm definitely going to read it, and I recommend that you do too.

Reviews for An Echo in the Bone and Avatar

An Echo in the Bone, the latest in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, is my favorite in the series since the first book. It was nonstop action from start to finish. She has a lot of characters all over the place (and all over time) but she does a great job at keeping all of them engaged in the story, which somehow remains quite cohesive.

In previous books she didn't leave us with cliffhanger endings, but she certainly did in this one! Most of the story lines left us dangling; some because of the arc of the plot, and some because things happen that you never would have thought would ever happen. I'm not dangling on that cliff, I went way over and I'm in a free fall while I wait for the next (possibly last?) installment in this series.

Avatar. *sigh* I liked it, but I didn't love it like everyone else seems to. The animation was spectacular. I especially liked the little floating puffy things that looked like jellyfish. I wish they would have put as much effort into the script as they did in the animation. The plot was trite and completely predictable. It was a half-assed Dances With Wolves wannabe that lacked any subtlety.

My main issue with the plot was that I know it didn't have to be that bad; someone was just lazy to care about it. I would like to point to Up and Wall-E as examples of how high tech movies ought to be. The animation in these two were spectacular, of course. But beyond that, they had me captivated in a riveting story with characters I really care about. In my mind I was trying to justify Avatar's plot by telling myself that they were aiming for a broad audience that encompassed kids (unlike Dances With Wolves which was clearly for adults only). But that argument just doesn't hold. Up and Wall-E were aimed directly at children but bewitched and enchanted people of all ages.

So I know it can be done: there can be a successful marriage between CGI technology and meaningful scripts. It's just up to the producers to care enough about making a quality movie and not just a flashy one.

Book & Movie Reviews

I have a lot to cover so these will be brief. I'll start with book reviews. Under the Dome by Stephen King was, of course, fabulous. A mysterious force field appears over a small town in Maine (I'm never going to Maine - bad stuff always happens to those poor people) and no existing technology or weapons can remove it. This creates the perfect environment for the shady people trapped under the dome to create chaos and take control. This isn't the first time King's told us story of what bad things can happen to a microcosm of people, but the point of this book is very clear: together we are responsible for horrible atrocities and it's only when we're alone and thinking independently that we put an end to these things. He's not even talking about taking pity on someone much less showing kindness; he's talking about tapping into the base humanity we all have to stop what we know it wrong. It's over 1,000 pages but well worth the read.

The Dude Abides by Cathleen Falsani explores the gospel of the Cohen brothers by analyzing each of their movies. This is a very interesting book for anyone who's a fan of their movies.

I really loved On the Edge by Ilona Andrews. Between the world we know and the magical world is a place called The Edge where people have very individualized magical ability. Rose and her two young brothers live here. Their parents are gone and Rose is trying to keep the family going by herself when a mysterious man shows up one day and demands that Rose become his bride. Around the same time a large group of vicious hounds invade The Edge and try to destroy everything in it, leaving Rose no choice but to join forces with the stranger. This complex plot kept me turning the pages as fast as I could. I definitely recommend this to anyone interested in urban fantasy.

Now for the movies. Pirate Radio is a great movie that was fun to watch, and when you left the theater you were whistling the tunes. Definitely rent this one when it comes out on DVD.

Sherlock Holmes was a fun movie and I enjoyed watching it, but it could have used about 20 minutes of editing in the middle of the movie. I would have liked to have seen more of Holmes' deductive powers of reasoning in action throughout the movie instead of saving it all up for the end. But I definitely recommend it.

Up in the Air starring George Clooney is about a man who lives most of his life traveling the country for his work. He avoids getting close with anyone, including his family, until he meets a woman who lives the same kind of lifestyle. It's a great movie that explores why we need to have connections with people to give our lives meaning. Definitely see this one as soon as you can.