A Descent into Dullness

the Girl With All the Gifts:  I imagine the scene at the start with all the kids in restraints would be extra freaky for someone coming at this movie cold.

the Tick s.1:  Not as zany funny as the cartoon, but much action-y than the previous live-action version.  I did like the expansion to Dot's character.  And the rest of the cast, main and supporting all do good work.  A little bit irritated at the whole release 1/2 a season and then the rest sometime next year thing.
Little Witch Academia s.2:  Basically the same as season 1, cute and amusing if slight.  Expected stories push Power of Friendship and the Real Magic is Believing in Yourself and so forth.
Arrow s.3: Early part of the season meanders a bit before focusing in on Ra's and the League of Assassins as the main foe.  And Amanda Waller (outside of when written by a very few writers) has motivations that just remain baffling, making the flashback portions weaker than previously.  But strong character work and some very strong episodes in the back-half.

Bad Words: Jason Bateman's movie about an adult who uses a loophole to get into the National Spelling Bee competition for reasons.  Which  wobbles all over the place between treating its characters as sociopaths or woobies in need of a hug.  Some funny scenes but honestly adult who plays cruel head games with children doesn't work for me...

Only Lovers Left Alive: Jim Jarmusch directs Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton as melancholy vampires was a very easy sell.  Slow-paced but clever.  Doesn't try to reinvent the cinematic vampire concept and doesn't need to...

Detention of the Dead: On the other hand this last movie probably could have done with ditching of its sub-genres cliches.  Or at least done a better job of lampshading them...

Time to get the final list for '13 done.  Starting with the free range short fiction.  John Scalzi gives a tale of obsession and science with Muse of Fire.  Mari Ness' In the Greenwood gives a new slant on the Sherwood myth.  Hope's End and the Girl of Hrusch Avenue are a pair of "Gunpowder Magic" stories by Brian McClellan (read to wait for the arrival of the 2nd book in that series).  The Christmas Show by Pat Cadigan is probably the most upbeat of the seasonal short stories, despite the ghosts and unexpected death.  Though for a "Laundry Files" story Charles Stross' Overtime manages a bit of cheer amidst the forebodings of world destroying doom.  Jim Hines gives a bloody and grim follow up to all those Rankin-Bass specials with Crimson Frost.  Then Sean McGuire's Velveteen vs. Hypothermia checks in with her titular super-hero as she begins her time paying back the Holidays for their help.  And finally a non-seasonal piece from Neil Gaiman gives an almost whimsical Cthulu mythos tale with I, Cthulu...

Started the month by finally getting to Brian McClellan's Promise of Blood the first of his "Gunpowder Magic" novels.  A grim look at overthrowing monarchies and ignoring old prophecies.  But gripping and I'm impatiently awaiting the next book's release...

Then got around to catching up on C.E. Murphy's "Urban Shaman" series.  Spirit Dance has mechanic-turned cop-turned shaman Walker gets a magical night out seeing a dance troupe that gets weird even by her standards.  And then involves murder and a possible werewolf.  Then in Raven Calls its back to Ireland and her dead mom plus time travel and the Celtic pantheon.  No Dominion is a short story collection, concentrating on various side characters throughout the series.  And then the latest, Mountain Echoes, with Walker going back to her "home" on the Rez to help in the search for missing father, ex-boyfriend and the son she gave up as a teenager...

Janet Evanovich's latest "Stephanie Plum" book, Takedown Twenty, is a stronger entry than the previous in this sereis, though its still one of the weaker books.  Even with a giraffe running around in it...

Exodus Towers and the Plague Forge complete Jason M. Hough's "Dire Earth Cycle" trilogy.  With several game changing alien mysteries, regime changes, Immune raiders and final reveal of Why for the alien motivations that makes a certain amount of sense and draws things to a close while leaving a window open for follow up stories...

Two more "Oz" stories by Baum and adapted by Shanowar and Young with Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz and the Road to Oz.  The first has Dorothy reuniting with the Wizard to take a journey thru neighboring fairy lands to return to Oz thanks to an earthquake during a trip to California. The latter has Dorothy and Toto making another return trip, this time alongside magical hobo the Shaggy Man...

The first of Debra Doyle and James McDonald's "MageWorld" books, the Price of the Stars, read kind of like an adaptation of Star Wars if someone had only gotten a synopsis of the original poster art after being translated thru several languages.  Luckily that ends up being pretty great space opera and hopefully the rest of the series is as enjoyable...

The Kerrie L. Hughes edited Hex in the CIty is part of the "Fiction River" e-anthology line.  With an InCryptid tale from Seanan McGuire, as well as Jay Lake, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Nancy Holder and others...

C.M. Priest finishes up her "Clockwork Century" series with Fiddlehead.  Where a ramshackle A.I's predictions may lead to peace between the Union and Confederacy if it isn't derailed by war profiteers.  And if it isn't all too late in the growing menace of the shambling undead...

And I finished the month with the disappointing Pines by Blake Crouch.  A bit Twin Peaks, a bit of the Prisoner and maybe even some Bioshock.  Which may be the perfect mash-up for someone else.  Me I found the science dumb, the reveal aggravating and the epilogue frustrating.  My Crouch book, Run, was good enough that I'm going to try one of his other series a chance.  But I'm done with this one...

Total books: 15

Whelp, that was a passable Brad Pitt vs. monsters action movie.  What it isn't in any but the most superficial way is an adaptation of the book.  They've still got a brief bit about Israel's 10th Man.  And people living on boats.  And while there is a Nova Scotian refugee camp there is no mention of people have to resort to cannibalism.  I wouldn't go so far as to actually recommend spending money on it, but its an ok way to pass just under two hours...

The best description I can think of for this is..surprisingly cute. The movie version cuts out the odd zombie society/culture stuff. And downplays the whole zombies must feed on the living aspect a bit. And much of the humor comes from the incogruity of R's inner monologue vs. the external situation. But yeah, a cute and charming ZomRomCom...

Lets squeeze the August list in just under the wire. Again. Starting with Ben Aaronovitch's newest "Rivers of London" book Whispers Underground. I do so enjoy this sereies with its mix of humour, police procedural and urban fantasy. This time around the copper/wizards are investigating the murder of a U.S. Senator's son in the London Underground...

The second scifi book by Michael McCloskey, Trilisk AI, is still pretty good. Though not without some annoying flaws. He uses the "characters training for a mission in VR" a bit too much. And what should be a major part of the end climax happens basically off-screen...

Three Jim Hines books in August. First a collection of his short stories, Kitemaster & Other Stories. The titular story, with pseudo-Chinese air elemental wizards with kite familiars was especially good. Then one of his earliest books, Goldfish Dreams which draws from Hines work with teens, is a non-fantasy story about a college freshman dealing with the sexual abuse she suffered from her older brother as a child. Along with the regular life-changes of living away from home for the first time. And finally Libriomancer, Hines' new urban fantasy about wizards who withdraw pretty much anything from books...

After the roommate introduced me to Ilona Andrews and their "Kate Daniels" books I then ended up grabbing the three books from their "Edge" series; On the Edge, Bayou Moon and Fate's Edge. Where the setting has the mundane world, the magic world and a mixed-world between the two. After the first book, each books seems to have a secondary male character from the previous book acting as joint protagonist and romantic interest for a new female protagonist. A little bit formulaic, but still fun and I'm interested to see if the basic trend continues with the next book drops in November. Also from the Andrews' in August was the most recent "Kate Daniels" Gunmetal Magic. Though its actually about Kate's best friend and partner Andrea Nash, werehyena gun-bunny. She and her ex-boyfriend have to work together investigating multiple murders at a reclamation site that leads to a war between ancient gods...

Courier Ryb by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, is a pair of short stories for their Liaden scifi setting. Though the second short adds more to the setting, I'd say I liked the titular first story a bit more...

I forget whose short story was the reason I picked up Westward Weird, edited by Martin Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes, but its a good collection. With various Western steampunk/fantasy/zombie mash-ups...

Noah Chinn is a long-time internet friend, from way back in time to my Kenzerco Forum days. So I was more than willing to grab his two e-books just for that. And happily both are pretty darn good. Trooper #4 is what seems to be an actual original twist on the zombie apocalypse sub-genre. And Bleedig Heart Yard manages that perfect balancing act for an urban fantasy between horror and humour...

Col Buchanan's Farlander is a more than competently written and put together series. And its story about a prince of an evil empire marked for death by religious assassins after killing a woman under their protection is interesting enough. But the theocratic evil empire is a bit too Chaotic Evil super-crazy and super-evil for me to buy that they would become a world conquering threat...

Another anthology, this time Tanya Huff's February Thaw. Several good stories here, including a "Victoria Nelson"/"Smoke and" tie-in tale...

Got around to the Mira Grant prequel novella Countdown. Which follows the start of her zombie "Newsflesh" series. And for the simple phrase "goggie" Sean McGuire will pay. And not because it made me cry. Which it didn't. At all. And no one can prove otherwise...

And in between all this new book reading, took a pause to reread Martin Millar's Curse of the Wolf Girl. Because I can always use some werewolf and fire elemental family drama. Plus I always want to give super-emo, super-deadly Kalix MacRinnalch a hug. A very careful hug...

the Way to Glory is David Drake's 4th "Lt. Leary" book. Good stuff for those looking for "Master & Commander" in space...

With Labyrinth, I finally get back to Kat Richardson, with 5th book in her "Greywalker" books. Lead Harper Blaine is back from London and has to scramble to protect her friends from being caught between warring vampires. With both sides looking to make use of her ghost-world influencing powers...

Mur Lafferty's Playing for Keeps isn't the best supers book. Its probably not even in my top twenty. To be fair I've been reading a LOT of prose supers lately. But her story about 2nd-rate supers banding together against crazy super-villains and corrupt "heroes" is still pretty enjoyable and her good guys are more than likeable...

Paolo Bacigalupi's fantasy novella the Alchmemist is a nice break from his usual dystopian future. Not that there isn't plenty of dystopia in his setting where using magic now accelerates the growth of a kind of poisonous, thorny kudzu plant...

I don't know what it was about Claire DeWitt & the City of the Dead by Sara Gran that made me put it down after only a half-dozen chapters. Maybe it was the overly detached and generally unpleasant lead...

On the other hand Kate Elliot's latest fantasy false-history "Spiritwalker" series is easily my new favorite thing from her. I just devoured the first two books, Cold Magic and Cold Fire and am eagerly awaiting the third sometime next year...

From that lots of supers pile, next up is James Maxey's Nobody Gets the Girl. The lead, Richard Rogers, is someone who has become nearly totally unnoticeable, after a time travel incident mostly writes him out of existence. Which makes him an ideal agent for heroic super-scientist Dr. Know...

Lee Goldberg is a television and print mystery writer with a large back list. His King City was an impulse buy from a Daily Deal offer. And its a pretty good book, about a too ethical for his own good cop who gets assigned to the city's worst section with little to no back-up after taking down his own squad for being corrupt. Though I think the end is a bit rushed as Goldberg hurries to tie up several different plot threads...

Hugh Howey's Wool is a very interesting take on a post-apocalyptic setting. With several mysteries, power-mad bad guys and even some romance...

Barbara Hambly's the Time of the Dark is a nice variant on the "real" Earth people drawn into magical world trope. While I do wonder if maybe her two "regular" heroes adapt a little fast to their new setting I did like it enough that at some point I'll grab the next book in the series...

Saladin Ahmed's Throne of the Crescent Moon is a finely-crafted, stand-alone fantasy. But one that could easily be the set-up for a larger series. Plus its always good to get a fantasy series that doesn't draw at all from a Euro-centric background...

And finally for the month Maps & Legends a collection of essays by Michael Chabon on storytelling, history and religion...

Total books: 30

A zombie movie, except they drink blood instead of eating flesh or brains and so are called vampires. But really its zombies. The movie follows an orphaned teen boy and the survivalist who rescues him as they journey across the post-apocalypse country in search of a near mythical town called New Eden. A better than average zombie Earth flick, though it does have an annoying Rule Change pop up in the third act...

Opened the month up with Discord's Apple by Carrie Vaughn, a mix of near future fall of civilization and ancient myth. And while I enjoyed Vaughn's modern paranormal werewolf call-in radio show host series, this one just didn't work for me. I don't know if it was the set up or the asshole Greek gods, but I just didn't care for it...

I was much more pleased with the second Vaughn book I read in the month, After the Golden Age, a supers book about the non-powered daughter of a super-hero couple. Not a perfect book, but enjoyable...

Got the final Beka Cooper book by Tamora Pierce, Mastiff early in the month as well. A bit more morose in tone than the previous ones, but overall a fine ending to the trilogy with Beka and her law dog partners being brought in to track down a kidnapped prince by a very ruthless and arrogant cabal...

After that I ended up buying a whole mess more of David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series. Flag in Exile, Honor Among Enemies, In Enemy Hands, Echoes of Honor, Ashes of Victory and War of Honor. So books five thru nine in series. I do enjoy Weber, but he's got a some noticeable writing tics. As I mentioned last month, he's got a tendency to do huge info-dumps of expository dialogue or just description. Which I'll admit on a few occasions led to some "don't care, don't care skim skim skim" during bits of world building or tech description. Especially the later. Really I'm more space opera than hard scifi so I don't really care most of the time how the widget works. I'm fine with a bit of Trek techno-babble to hand wave things. Still, I don't doubt there are plenty out there who love getting the details. And another quirk of Weber's is related to that. He can give a seemingly unneeded amount of back-story to minor characters. Many of whom end up very, very dead within pages. Still, I'm within a couple books of being caught up on the main series and I'm tracking down both various side-books, collaborations and anthologies AND dipping into some of his other series so its not like its a huge turn off for me...

And while skimming thru Baen's e-book selection (specifically the free section) I came across the Baen 2011 Free Short Story anthology. A nice collection, including two scifi writers I hadn't heard of before, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller's "Liaden Universe" and Michael Z. Williamson's "Freehold", whose stories intrigued me enough that I'll be checking them out in more detail at some point...

Sadly the same isn't true of Dani & Eyton Kollin's the Unincorporated Man. Borrowed that one from the roommate's collection and its story about a future where every person in a publicly trade corporation and what happens to that society when an unincorporated cryogenic revival is dropped into it didn't work for me. Which means I'll be giving the other two books in the series a pass...

Happily though, my next book was a new "Shadows of the Apt" book by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Heirs of the Blade follows several of the characters in the Dragonfly Commonweal lands. Very enjoyable, though a bit of a bridging book setting things up for the renewal of the threat of the Wasp Empire...

Also got a new Grantville Gazette in November, the 38th. Which reminds me, I really need to get around to transferring all the Baen e-books I bought that month to my computer so I can transfer them to my Kindle...

The roommate also pushed Jim Butcher's Spider-Man novel, the Darkest Hours, on me and I was more than pleasantly surprised by it. Its set sometime during the J.M.S. run on the comic but before Spidey joins up with the Avengers. Though his use of both M.J. and the marriage, as well as a partial face turn by the Rhino, makes me even more annoyed with "One More Day" and parts of "The Gauntlet" all over again. But for Spider-Man fans who have avoiding the comics out of disgust, this is an excellent way to get a Spidey fix...

Finally got around to picking up a copy of the Lois McMaster Bujold novel, Falling Free. Which is an early book by her that serves as something of a prequel to the Vorkosigan books. A bit rough in spots, but nice...

Got the second of Larry Correia's "Grimnoir" series, Spellbound. Which are about magically powered super-humans in the 1920s. Very pulpy and fun, though Correia is a bit of a gun fetishest. Not as much here as in his "Monster Hunter" series, but there is still some of it...

Also on the always meant to get around to reading list is Jane Lindskold's Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls. If only because I love that title. Which made me think this would be a fantasy book. But its actually a dystopian near future one with a bit of psychic powers thrown into the mix...

Then it was Mira Grant's second zombies vs. bloggers "Newsflesh" books, Deadline. Which follows up on the conspiracy exposed in Feed and takes things to a whole new level of Oh Fuck Me. I'm pretty sparing with getting into zombie stuff, because it honestly gives me screwed up dreams, but Grant is a definite keeper...

And then I finished up the month with an early fantasy book by Patricia Briggs, Masque and the sequel to it she wrote much later, Wolfesbane. Even with some re-editing for a new release the first book is very much a first novel. Not a bad book about mercenary/spy/mage girl versus the Giant Evil Wizard, but definitely full of some well-used fantasy tropes and rough first-book-out-of-college edges...

Total books: 20