A Descent into Dullness

So thats what Johnny Depp is like when he isn't overacting. Its been so long I'd forgotten. Good movie, nice mystery twists, not the best score, but excellent acting all around. Even Josh Gad!

Filth: There is a line that an anti-hero protaganist needs to balance on.  And James McAvoy long jumps way over it with his racist, corrupt, homophobic, rapist, asshole cop.  Still, that did mean I felt the ending was a happy one...

The Rover: A low-key Australian dystopia.  With Guy Pearce on a single-minded mission to get back his car no matter the cost in blood.  Plus Robert Pattison as his sort of sidekick...

Veronica Mars: I have owned this movie (which is excellent and a lovely coda to the series) for awhile, since I was a Kickstarter backer.  But I didn't actually watch it until it came on cable.  Because Paramount only let it be released to backer's on their stupid and pointless Ultraviolet thing...

Didn't get too many free-range short stories last month.  Just Forsworn by Brian McCellan, another prequel story to his "Powder Mage" series. And the Price of Doing Business by D.B. Jackson, also a prequel story, for his "Thief-taker" series.  I think the second of Jackson's books might be out and I should check on that.  Though the first book for both writer's fantasy series are worth getting...

The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu about the secret war throughout history between two alien factions was pretty good.  The aliens have to live in a symbiotic relationship with a human host and the set-up has that most major historical figures were hosts.  Given that, its a little disappointing how the setting world is basically identical to ours.  Still if the roommate were to get the sequel I'd more than likely read it...

Broken Homes is the latest "Rivers of London" urban fantasy/police procedural from Ben Aaronovitch.  These books are soooo good.  And the character swerve at the end is a total gut puncher...

Finally, FINALLY, finished up the Vance-tribute Songs of the Dying Earth anthology, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.  This took me months, not because it wasn't full of talented authors writing in the Vancian style.  But because that style just started to wear down on me every three or four stories...

Harry Connelly's the Overlook was the last of a small pile of mystery & noir writers I was testing out.  Not a terrible book, though it takes a bit to really get moving.  Still I doubt I'll be binge buying on Connelly anytime soon...

Also in the been sitting at the bottom of the literal physical pile was the Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson.  I have no idea what prompted me to pick this up.  I got it it YEARS ago thru the BOMC and I cannot think what about it originally made me choose it.  The story involving someone severely maimed from a car crash and the love he finds with a mentally challenged artist and how maybe time travel or past lives or some combination of the two might be happening.  Yeah.  Nothing in that grabbed and I just skimmed thru entire chapters of characters that didn't hook me...

Deep Six by Ian Thomas Healy is another from their "Just Cause" supers series of e-books.  This one focuses on a super-villain prison and of course a break out.  I really liked the depth of the prison guards, many of whom were minor talent supers themselves.  Plus a pretty bad-ass and chilling main villain...

Joey Comeau & Jess Fink's We Are Become Pals is an illustrated story about the friendship between two girls.  It was originally a series of blog/journal posts by the pair, now collected and expanded in a physical book.  Very sweet and funny...

Another from the back log of unread, this time off the Kindle, in Flora's Fury by Ysabeau Wilce.  The third book in her YA alt-history fantasy set in California.  Its listed as the "Flora Trilogy" but the ending doesn't feel like a final ending.  Hopefully she's doing multiple trilogies maybe?

Like a Mighty Army is the latest "Safehold" book from David Weber.  And all the criticisms you can find are true.  Weber does a ton of info dump expositioning.  And the series is more than a bit bloated.  And the original plotline is getting partially side-lined by the details of the current conflict.  Still, I enjoyed it more than a little.  I'm a sucker for Weber's Honorverse and Safehold books no question...

Starpilot's Grave is the middle book of Debra Doyle & James McDonald's original "MageWorlds" trilogy.  Which still has that sort-of but not-really Star Wars homage to it.  Again, like someone writing fanfic for the series having never actually seen it, only having it described second or third hand.  But its an enjoyable bit of space opera on its own merits...

Roadside Picnic by Russian brothers Arkady & Boris Strugatsky is an older scifi novel.  With attempts by humans to explore, study and/or exploit bits of alien detritus left behind by a sort-of First Contact with some very unknowable aliens...

And finally Cecil Castellucci's YA scifi Tin Star.  The young lead here has to struggle to survive aboard a space station in the intergalatic boonies after she's beaten and left behind for dead by the corrupt leader of her colony group.  Pretty tight start for a series and always good to see some YA that isn't urban fantasy or post-apocalyptic at this point...

Total books: 13

I always expect to read a lot more on my birthday vacation, and yet I don't.  *shrug*

Started out the month with another of Mike Shephard's "Kris Longknife" books, Intrepid.  Later on I finished the remaining three, Undaunted, Redoubtable and Daring.  Sadly by book nine I had grown weary of Kris, her band of snarky sidekicks and the yo-yoing level of "science" available...

Got the latest "Liaden" book from Sharon Lee and Steven Miller, Necessity's Child.  This entry mostly pushes the regular character's into the background while focusing on one of the younger House Korval members.  As well as a far future version of what seems to be Roma...

During the vacation I did get to the stack of "Walt Longmire" by Craig Johnson books the roommate got me at Christmas.  I read the 1st one a  while back after getting an e-version on sale, so this was the next three.  The books, Kindness Goes Unpunished, Another Man's Moccasins, and Death Without Company, are a step above the tv adaptation (which isn't too shabby on its own) though Henry Standing Bear's voice is very much that of Lou Diamond Phillips during the reading...

I'd had Isaac Marion's zomromcom Warm Bodies for awhile, but I didn't really get inspired to finish it off until catching the movie version.  The zombies in the book have more of a weird culture than the movies.  With the skeletal skinless zombies being a kind of priest/teacher caste.  Plus the zombies eat people a bit longer than they do in the movie...

Jasper Fforde starts up yet another series with the Last Dragonslayer.  Though this modern fantasy is aimed at a YA audience.  And could work as a one-off.  But I wouldn't seeing more of his wizardry run by bureaucracy again...

Also finally got to the next two books of Alan Dean Foster's "Tipping Point" cyberpunk trilogy.  While the final bad reveal was a bit of a let-down, it was more than made up for by watching the super-assassin chasing the heroes get an ass-kicking from a giant ground sloth in the second book, Body, Inc.  And the deadly engineered family of meerkats in the Sum of Her Parts...

Peter Brett's latest "Demon Cycle" book, the Daylight War, dropped in February as well.  Which in addition large sections devoted to one character's back-story (which served to make them a great deal more sympathetic) has the confrontation between the Warded Man and the Spear of the Desert...

After sitting thru much of the recent movie version, decided to get around to Jules Verne's Mysterious Island.  Which needed more giant animals.  And I kind of felt the survivor group went from almost zero resources to being able to make flintlock weapons a bit too easily...

I mostly picked up the Myth Interpretations collection by the late Robert Asprin to get a copy of his "Cold Cash War".  Though it also has some amusing Skeeve and company stories...

And finally was a new-ish Steve Hamiltion "Alex McKnight" book, Misery Bay.  With Alex agreeing to look into the suicide of U.S. Marshall's son.  Which leads to a revenge-based cinema verte killer...

Total Books: 16

October is somewhat unusual in that I don't see a single reread on the relatively short list. Even Harry Harrison's The Works of Harry Harrison didn't include anything I'd already read. Not even the Stainless Steel Rat story which serves to introduce Jim deGriz' nemesis and future wife. Of the remainder, really only "Deathworld" truly stands out for me still...

Four new supers stories for October. Though Marion G. Harmon's Bite Me: Big Easy Nights is more an urban fantasy about a vampire character who previously appeared in a regular supers setting. Though I think any supers New Orleans ends up being the urban fantasy corner of that world. Also I'm not sure which I have more of, vampire-themed fiction titled "Bite Me" or "Life Sucks"...

Of the other three, Adam Christopher's 7 Wonders was a bit a dissapointing mess, though I did like some of the background character concepts that show up late in the book. Blake M. Petit's Other People's Heroes has the whole hero vs. villain thing having evolved into something faker than pro-wrestling, but it still manages to build a big heroic climax. And Mathew Hughes' the Damned Busters is worth a read if only for the lead. Who seems to be autisic, though somewhere on the high-function end. And it seems to help in his using an "accidental" demonic summoning to become a super-hero...

Two new "Honor-verse" books from Weber in October. First Shadow of Freedom was an eArc and part of the Talbott Cluster side-series. Enjoyable, but it feels like it cuts off nearer the middle of the story then the climax. Second, is the next YA "Stephanie Harrington" prequel Fire Season, co-written with Jane Lindskold. Manages to create a sense of danger using secondary characters, since fans of the setting already know its too soon for the leads to be under a real threat of dying...

With Downpour, I'm almost caught up with Kat Richardson's "Greywalker" series. I was happy that this one stepped away from the vampire related stuff to concentrate back on a more ghost/spirit-centric story...

Got to the newest of Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" books, the Woman Who Died a Lot. Very little BookWorld this go, with the story being centered around Thursday getting a new job, the consequences of time travel no longer being possible, an escaped memory-altering psycopath, illegal cloning and plotting by the Goliath Corp. Oh and the threat of God smiting the entire town...

I'd picked up the 2nd and 3rd "Nikki Heat" books, Naked Heat and Heat Rising on the cheap for my Kindle and finally got around to them. And then went and grabbed Frozen Heat. Enjoyable, if light-weight, mystery/police procedural stories. Much like the tv series they're sort of inspired by. I do still wonder who they tapped to ghost them...

Patrick Weekes' the Palace Job is a wonderfully fun "Ocean's 11" style caper story. With sword fighting and martial art masters and ancient artifacts and virgin-obsessed unicorns and more. All part of an attempt to break into an unbreakable vault on a floating island city...

I'm not even sure how I even found Rebecca Gable's Settlers of Catan novelization. But curiousty over the concept led to me getting a pretty darn good historical fiction story with a large group of Viking's working to colonize an out of the way and mostly undiscovered island...

And finished out October with a pair of David Drake's "Lt. Leary" books, Some Golden Harbor and When the Tide Rises. The first has newly made Commander Leary and Warrant Officer Adele Mundy tasked with stopping a planetary invasion with only the most limited of resources. The second has Leary, Mundy and their shipmates sent stiffen a rebellion of a group of worlds against their Alliance enemies. But the rebel leaders seem to be even more half-hearted in their drive to secede then was initially believed...

Total books: 16