Strange Weather

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I really don’t know what it is with me and Stephen King. Despite having spent thousands of words trashing the guy’s work over the years, I’m still occasionally seized by an irresistible urge to drop everything else I’m reading and crack open a King novel or short story collection. I have a Kindle full of unread sale purchases and a wishlist from here to the moon, but roughly three times a year the neurons in my brain align in a specific configuration, and then it’s King time.

For this December’s January’s edition of the Stephen King Power Hour I decided to branch out and check out something from King’s son, Joe Hill. My prior sampling of Hill’s work gave me the impression that as a writer he’s nearly identical to his father save for one exception, which is that Stephen King occasionally writes good material. Will the novellas collected in Strange Weather change my mind about that?

No, not really.

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The Big Bioshock Repost

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With rumours and leaks about the fourth Bioshock game swirling, I was going to repost the long Bioshock ramble I wrote for my old blog back in 2015. Then I read through it and realized that I both don’t agree with some of it anymore (especially on the heels of a recent replay of Bioshock Infinite) and have more to say than I originally put down.

So here’s a remastered, expanded and partially re-written review of all three Bioshock games.

Remember Bioshock? It’s back, in blog form.

(Full spoilers ahead)

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The Grace Of Kings

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Note: Going to take December off blogging, and possibly some of January as well, whilmst I work on some longer blog posts

My search for the Good Fantasy Series continues with Ken Liu’s The Grace Of Kings, book one of the Dandelion Dynasty series. I’ve previously enjoyed Liu’s editorial efforts in Broken Stars, but how’s his original fantasy? Let’s find out.

The Grace Of Kings is about the island land of Dara, long been divided into constantly-warring Tiro states but as of the beginning of the story is united under the reign of Emperor Mapidere following the conquest of the rest of the continent by the kingdom of Xana. The people of the former Tiro kingdoms appear to have made peace with their subjugation (or are smart enough to pretend that they have), but the desire for rebellion still smoulders beneath the surface, as demonstrated by an audacious attempt on the emperor’s life in the book’s opening chapter.

When the aging emperor enters a terminal decline, the carefully-maintained order of Xana’s authority quickly unravels and all of Dara is soon in open rebellion. Among the figures that rise to prominence in the next few years, two stand out: Kuni Garu, a shiftless gangster turned unlikely populist rebel leader, and Mata Zyndu, last scion of a distinguished clan and a near-superhuman warrior. The two start out fighting together to support the rebellion, but as Xana’s fall draws nearer, it becomes apparent that Kuni and Mata’s wildly divergent ideas about what the post-rebellion world should look like will lead them into inevitable conflict.

The Grace Of Kings is a bit different from the standard template of western political fantasy bricks that you might be familiar with. Written more like a semi-mythologized work of history than a novel, the story takes in a panoramic view of the events unfolding in Dara, freely bouncing around between viewpoints and skimming over mundane events to get to the important moments. This is kind of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it means the book cuts out all the boring shit that usually clogs up fantasy novels: events that in other stories could easily take up an entire novel are dispensed with in a single chapter, while a chapter’s worth of material often goes by in a single paragraph. You’re not going to find any long travel sequences or interminable battles here.

On the other hand, the book’s pacing can sometimes get a little bit too fast, feeling as though it’s speeding through an abridged summary of its own story. Kuni Garu becoming the leader of a bandit group literally happens in a few sentences; towards the middle of the book, huge reversals in the fortunes of entire nations get even less than that. Characters rise to positions of power or lose everything between chapters, often with very little description. On balance I prefer this approach to wading through multiple volumes of side-plots that don’t have anything to do with the main story, or pages upon pages of pointless worldbuilding, but at times it can make the whole book feel a little sparse.

Speaking of worldbuilding, I liked the relatively low-fantasy setting of the book. Apart from the usually-oblique intervention of Dara’s gods and the occasional prophetic dream, there really isn’t any magic here to speak of, certainly not the kind that an army commander can reliably call on to turn the tide of a battle. Even Mata’s superhuman strength and double-pupilled eyes are unusual, but treated like a natural occurrence that just happens from time to time.

(This was going to be longer but migraines, bottom line book pretty good, would check out sequels)







Malignant

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I’ve written before about how I’m not the biggest fan of James Wan’s movies. For some reason a lot of people in the horror movie fandom insisted on holding contrary views, but now, with the release of Malignant, even the hardcore Wanheads are coming around to the correct opinion. What about this movie caused such a shift in mindset? Let’s put on a backwards trenchcoat and scurry through some holes to find out.

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Enter The Bhuguuliverse Part 2: Sinister Bhuguulaloo

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Last time on blog, we thoroughly dissected Sinister. Now it’s time to look at the sequel, Sinister II.

The 2010s was a decade when snappily-titled horror franchises were all the rage. You had your Conjurings, your Insidiouses, and of course your Paranormal Activities. Cheap to make compared to the big-budget superhero fare, studios could slap a new installment in cinemas every Halloween with little risk. So why did the budding Sinister franchise stop with the second entry?

Probably because it sucks prodigiously.

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V/H/S/94

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I’m a pretty big fan of the first V/H/S movie. Horror anthologies have really taken off in the last ten years, and I think V/H/S is one of the best. Unfortunately the two sequels rapidly went downhill; in fact, V/H/S Viral got such poor reviews that I didn’t even bother watching it.

But now along comes Shudder, releasing a revival in the form of V/H/S/94 in order to tap even more heavily into that pre-millenial nostalgia that we all crave. Can this collection rekindle the magic of the original, or is it a movie that only 90s kids will love?

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Internet Horror: Marble Hornets

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In the small but crowded realm of Youtube horror projects, nothing compares to Marble Hornets.

A brief history lesson: once upon a time there was a thread on the Something Awful forums that gave rise to internet creepypasta sensation Slenderman (maybe you’ve heard of him). For a while old slendie positively gripped the internet, and then the whole thing got played out and two girls stabbed their friend as part of a Slenderman-inspired delusion, signalling the final death knell of the phenomenon.

Of the many Slenderman creative projects that popped up during his reign of terror, Marble Hornets is probably the most famous. It set the standard and the tone for the initial wave of Slenderman creations, codified several long-standing tropes and ideas regarding how the character operates and interacts with his victims, and arguably did more to propel the whole thing into the mainstream than Slenderman’s actual creator.

Marble Hornets was created by a trio of young friends, whose creative endeavours fell apart in 2016 amidst hilarious drama. But before that they put out three seasons of the show on Youtube, bringing the story to a definitive conclusion--something of a rarity among Slenderman projects, which overwhelmingly tended to fizzle out as its college-aged creators graduated and got too busy to maintain them.

But how good is it, really? And does it still hold up in a post-Slenderman world? Let’s find out.

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Books I Didn't Finish: Empire In Black And Gold

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Recently I have, for some reason, been thinking that it would be fun to get into a huge multi-volume fantasy series. I’m not entirely sure why; for most of my life I’ve had this idea that I should enjoy these kinds of books, even though I never actually have.

Anyway, I eschewed your Games Of Thrones and your Wheels Of Times and instead settled on Empire In Black And Gold, the first volume of incredibly prolific SF/F author Adrian Tchaikovscky’s 10-book(!) Shadows Of The Apt series. I made it more than halfway before giving up. Let’s see what went wrong.

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Books I Really Didn't Finish: The Witchwood Crown

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We’re navigating new frontiers of not finishing books with this one. Soon I’ll be writing posts about not reading books at all, and then my blog will spontaneously merge with r/books.

As an experiment, I recently walked into my local library and picked out the chunkiest, heftiest fantasy tome that I could find, without bothering to look at the synopsis or even the title. That book turned out to be Tad Williams’ The Witchwood Crown.

This was an inauspicious choice for a few reasons. Firstly, my only previous exposure to Tad Williams is The War Of The Flowers, which is to this day one of the dullest books I’ve ever tried to read. Second, The Witchwood Crown is actually the first book in a sequel trilogy to Williams' Memory, Sorrow And Thorn series from way back in the 80s, although the author forward states that it was intended to stand alone so I didn’t let that stop me.

I girded my loins, cleared my busy social calendar, opened the book...and made it four chapters in before I gave up and swapped it out for something more interesting.

I just...I can’t. I can’t even, with this shit.

The first chapter opens with a woman named Tanahaya, part of a race called the Zida’ya, musing to herself about how humans are as mayflies compared to her people, who live for centuries in their serene forest homes and they’re elves, they’re just Tolkien elves with a different name and a vaguely Japanese cultural aesthetic for some reason, Jesus Christ what is it with the fucking elves

I honestly don’t understand how people can write this stuff without falling into a coma. Reading it is excruciating enough, God knows what it would be like to have to live with Shan’anda’landa’land’alar, First Zephyr of the Elv’en people or whatever in your head for several years. 

Granted, this is a sequel to a fantasy trilogy that started in 1988; maybe these tropes didn’t feel quite as played-out 33 years ago as they do now. Maybe, after years of gritty grimdark fantasy, people are hungry for wispy elves giving thanks to Mother Sun and riding horses named Spider-Silk. I guess it’s possible.

After the elf chapter we get a wise kingly king and his rambunctious princely prince son, and this is the stuff that made me drop the book. The elf shit is at least entertainingly bad, but sombre kings being all wise and sombre and kingly is perhaps the least interesting subject in the world to me. I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to see eye to eye with the epic fantasy genre until it gets over its fawning attitude towards monarchy, and there’s absolutely no sign of that happening any time soon.

For all that I mock grimdark fantasy (like I did two paragraphs ago), it at least tends to be a lot richer and more interesting than this hokey nonsense.





Books I Didn't Finish: Mordew

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When it comes to books, I’m extremely basic. I have bought many books based solely on their nice cover designs, and I will likely continue to do this until the moment of my death. I wouldn’t say the actual contents of the book are completely irrelevant, but there’s a lot of leeway.

Mordew by Alex Pheby seemed like the best of both worlds: style and substance. Firstly, it’s got a really nice cover illustration, and it’s one of those ones that goes all the way to the edge of the cover, which I like. The book itself is pleasingly chunky and yet also compact, with a great hand-feel. A+ so far.

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Books I Didn't Finish: Agency

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Here’s a very quick Books I Didn’t Finish post, explaining why I stopped reading something a few chapters in. I guess “Books I Barely Started” would be a more appropriate title.

I have read precisely one (1) William Gibson novel in my time, which is Neuromancer. Maybe it’s because I don’t really like the “punk” part of cyberpunk all that much, or maybe I just came to it too late, but it didn’t do anything for me at all and I pretty much didn’t think of old Willie Gibbs again for years, until I saw Agency on the shelves of my local library and was reminded that he’s still alive.

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Trash TV: Hospital Edition

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Recently, while hospitalized for ten days, I decided to check out some thematically-appropriate medical dramas. This is a stratum of TV junk food that I don’t have a lot of familiarity with. While I have been known to watch a police procedural, hospital shows are outside my usual interest zone.

As we all know, the best way to tackle unfamiliar genres is to pick two completely random examples from the various streaming platforms. In that vein, here are reviews of the first episode of Night Shift and the first season of The Resident (guess which one I liked more).

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