Tag: fantasy

Gate of Ivrel, by C.J. Cherryh

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Literary rating: ★★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆½

Once upon an unspecified time, somewhere in the cosmos, a human-like, space-faring race called the qhal (or Qujal, in a later dialect) stumbled upon, and subsequently greatly extended, a system of high-tech Gates, a relic of a vanished civilization, which permitted instantaneous travel to other planets and other times. Fearing that travel into the past would prove dangerous, the qhal forbade it; but they used the Gates to travel extensively in space and future time, building up an empire that oppressed and exploited the various despised other races they encountered. This gave them much wealth and power (and universal detestation from others) –until somebody eventually tried past time-travel. The resulting cataclysm (only dimly surmised in the theories of the subsequent scientists) reached as far as the Gates themselves reached, and proved to be an apocalyptic warping of space-time that destroyed civilizations and worlds in its path. But the Gates themselves survived. We learn all of this from an omniscient narrator in the first part of the Prologue.

The other parts of the Prologue are excerpts of various (fictional) documents. In the Journal of the “Union Science Bureau,” we learn of the formation of a team charged with traveling through the Gates, for the sole purpose of closing or destroying them permanently on the far side, to prevent a repeat catastrophe. (Since nobody knows how many Gates there are, this may be a multi-generational task until the last one is reached; and it’s surely going to be a lethally dangerous mission.) Written on a low-tech, medieval-like world, a short text in the Book of Embry tells us that on “the height of Ivrel” still stand ill-regarded, rune-marked “Staines” [stones] of Qujalish origin and still imbued with their “sorceries,” which if touched produce “sich fires of witcherie as taken soul and bodie withal.” This place and others such are sought by those with Qujal blood, recognizable by gray eyes and tall stature, who are thought to lack souls, but “by sorceries liven faire and younge more yeares than Men.”

Finally, a longer passage from the Annals of Baien-an recounts how, “In the year 1431 of the Common Reckoning,” five strangers supposedly from the distant south came to the northern realms, one of them a tall, light-colored young woman named Morgaine (who was thought to be Oujal). They persuaded the northern kings to make war on “…the witch-lord Thiye… lord of Ivrel of the Fires;” but near Ivrel, the great northern army of 10,000 men was unaccountably nearly annihilated, and the five were blamed for the disaster. All of them but Morgaine vanished without trace; pursued, she fled south and supposedly died at another place of Qujalish “Stones,” afterwards called Morgaine’s Tomb. “Here it is said she sleeps, waiting until the great Curse be broken and free her.”

Our story proper begins about 98 years after the disaster at Ivrel, when we meet young (about 20, from later clues) Nhi Vanye –the first name is the clan name, the second the personal one. He’s the out-of-wedlock son of a clan chief, grudgingly taken into the latter’s citadel because his mother, a lady from a hostile clan taken in a raid, died giving birth to him; but (as we learn later) he’s been persecuted and bullied by his two half-brothers from childhood on. By the second page, he’s in serious hot water with his father after a sword-practice bout turned deadly, leaving one half-brother dead and the other badly injured. Outlawed, disowned, dishonored and cast out, he no longer has a clan or a livelihood. His one hope is to try to work his way southward (through the territory of his half-brothers’ mother’s clan, whose members will want to kill him on sight) to an area where he has kin.

We skip over the details of that slow trip, but by the second winter of his outlawhood, surviving by hunting (and stealing what he has to) he’s close to the border –but also close to the unchancey vicinity of Morgaine’s Tomb. And when he wounds a deer, and the fleeing animal blunders through the Gate, it opens on the other side. A century before, Morgaine desperately rode into the Gate, and horse and rider have been held in suspended animation, but now, as she rides out from legend into Vanye’s reality, for her it’s as if she’s been gone just for a moment. And (being, as we can guess, part of the Union Science Bureau’s afore-mentioned team) she still has the same goal on her mind. By the following morning (long story, but sex doesn’t play any part in it; there’s no sexual content in the book), due to the complicated mores of his people, Vanye finds himself oath-bound to service as her vassal for a year. (The old kings had given her “lord-right.”) So this is to be a “quest narrative,” and hers is to close however many Gates there are, starting with taking out the Gate of Ivrel. (On this world, that’s the main Gate; the other two depend on it, and can’t survive without it.) The latter goal is now, perforce, Vanye’s as well. And Morgaine’s grimly committed to seeing it through, if it kills them both (which it very well may).

This is a tale of action and adventure, hardship and danger in a rugged land, with escapes, betrayals and subterfuge. Vanye’s a trained warrior, and Morgaine packs some high-tech weapons that she knows very well how to use; that’s fortunate, because there will be plenty of enemies in their path. Thiye’s still alive, and still ruling in the Ivrel area (and with power and domains greatly increased since the debacle a century ago). But there’s also the problem of clan chieftains who hate and fear Morgaine, or who would like to get their own hands on Qujal “magic” (or both); and a surprise enemy waits in the shadows…. It’s also a powerful tale of complex, nuanced characters, facing very high-stakes moral choices as they struggle with conflicting values, obligations and emotions. While Vanye is our viewpoint character and maker of the most significant choices, and it’s his head we’re inside, it’s Morgaine who’s the center of the tale, and her determination that drives it. (We can fairly say that she’s the protagonist; and she makes decisions too, or bears the pain of decisions made.) Cherryh’s world-building is superb, her plotting impeccable, her prose deft and evocative, and she delivers an emotional impact that’s almost breath-taking. I wasn’t even remotely prepared for how rich and rewarding this novel is!

Though this is the opener of a four-book series, there’s no cliff-hanger; the immediate situation here is brought to closure. But though I intended at first to read this as a stand-alone, I’m now in it for the long haul.

Note: Andre Norton’s two-page Introduction to this DAW printing is spoiler-free, and basically just an eloquent appreciation of the author’s literary achievement here. But though the accompanying map was made by Cherryh herself, it’s crudely-drawn, with hard-to-read place names, and hard to refer to due to its small size. And while Michael Whelan is a leading cover artist in the field of speculative fiction, his work here doesn’t reflect any actual scene in the book, and gives the wrong idea about Morgaine’s character; she doesn’t dress at all revealingly under her fur cloak, and doesn’t act like a sex object!

Author: C.J. Cherryh
Publisher: DAW, available through Amazon, only as a paperback. There is an e-book available of the whole series. 
Book 1 of 4 in The Morgaine Cycle.

The Beta Project

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★
“Beta, in the other sense of the word.”

I usually strive to find something nice to say about most low-budget action heroine films. Maybe the soundtrack is cool. Or there’s one performance which stands out. But for this one, I’m really struggling. The good here more or less begins and ends with the synopsis, which is also why it’s here: “Four women are recruited into an organization that hunts the supernatural.” Mauser does appear to be on board with our field, and we’ve covered a couple of his films before, most recently the fairly decent Lady Lawman. While flawed, you could overlook the shortcomings if you squinted somewhat. This, however, is a clear step back, and was a real struggle to get through. 

In the scenario that unfolds here, there is indeed an unnamed organization, run by Rose (Nash). The supernatural in question is… Well, it’s basically vampires, and in particular the legendary Lilith (co-director Berkshire). She is supposed to have died centuries ago, but the group discover this is not the case. The decision is made to recruit four women to take on Lilith (who is not the hairy dude shown on the poster). Why does it have to be women, you may be asking. Good question. Pity it’s one the film is completely uninterested in answering. Not that it matters, because the group never really ends up getting recruited either. Instead, there’s just smuggler AJ (Rodriguez), who gets paired with the organization’s accountant (!) and… Well, not very much, either. They go rescue one of AJ’s pals. That’s just about it.

What we have here feels like it could, and should, have been taken care of inside the first ten minutes, instead of playing out at feature length, like a pilot movie for a TV series that nobody wants to watch. It’s full of interminable scenes which deserve to have died a death on the cutting-room floor, like the introduction of AJ and pals, sitting around a restaurant. Or the training scene where AJ and accountant get whacked with sticks a couple of times. The latter is actually pointed out by the characters as useless, in a way that I can only presume was intended to be funny. Guess what? It isn’t, in the slightest. 

This is in part because there’s no real difference between the stick-whacking and the “genuine” action scenes, which are utterly limp and unconvincing. When killed, the vampires “explode” in a shower of sparks, in a way done considerably better by the Buffy TV show, approaching thirty years ago. The performances are generally unconvincing too: Berkshire comes out okay, which may explain why she ends up also playing another recruit, Joy, in addition to the villainess. I kept expecting them to be sisters or something, but… Nope. Like so much else here, it was thoroughly pointless. All the goodwill Mauser picked up for the “can do” attitude of his previous films has been wasted; he’s now on my “approach with caution” list. 

Dir: Brett William Mauser and Dane Berkshire
Star: Cristina Cruz Rodríguez, Dane Berkshire, Katrina Nash, Brett Mauser

Cloak Games: Thief Trap, by Jonathan Moeller

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

I previously reviewed Moeller’s Ghost in the Cowl, which comes from a different series, and enjoyed this every bit as much. Indeed, I think the premise here is better, rather than the fairly generic (if well-executed) fantasy of Cowl. However, in terms of action, the heroine here is second banana, and just as with Cowl, this consequently falls fractionally short of Seal of Approval. In this case, Earth has been conquered by a race of elves, whose High Queen has taken over and now rules with an iron fist. They had been booted off their home world, and traveled the Shadowlands, the path between the worlds, before breaking the seal to Earth.

Doing so allowed magic to come with them, though elves are largely the only ones allowed to practice it. The human race is now effectively indentured servants or worse. Which brings us to our heroine, Nadia Moran. To save her little brother Russell from a lethal disease, she agreed to work for an archmage called Morvilind. But now, she’s his slave, constrained both by him being the only one keeping Russell alive, and his magical skills which can kill her at any time. He trained her in certain areas, in order to become his personal thief, liberating magic artifacts, antiquities, art, etc. This included spells, of use in these jobs. But she’s not happy about it, wanting freedom for her and Russell.

Her latest task is particularly tricky, stealing an Assyrian tablet from a human industrialist. She’s not given the whole truth about either the object or its current owner, and it becomes apparent someone else is interested in him too. The someone else is Corvus, a sorta-human (it’s complicated…) who has abilities of his own, and handles the action elements here. They eventually agree to team up to help each other’s overlapping goals, but will face threats both temporal and almost indescribably Lovecraftian, emanating out of the Shadowlands. It makes for highly entertaining reading, and at only 180 pages, I raced through it very quickly. For ninety-nine cents, it’s fine, but I would hope further installments offer a little more bang for your $3.99. 

There were a couple of bits of world building which didn’t quite gel. The conquest happened in 2013, and we’re now three centuries past it. But it feels like technology is unchanged: Nadia still drives a sedan, for example. If you consider how radically different life was three centuries ago, it’s odd: maybe the High Queen dislikes innovation? It’s a minor, albeit niggling, glitch in what’s otherwise a fun scenario, with a well-constructed heroine who offers plenty of room for development. And with eleven books to come, that’s certainly necessary! By the end of this one, she has an ally in Corvus, some additional talents of which Morvilind is unaware, and appears slightly closer to achieving her eventual goal of freedom. I’m looking forward to that journey. 

Author: Jonathan Moeller
Publisher: CreateSpace, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 12 in the Cloak Games series.

Calixta: The Vanquishers of Alhambra, by Omayra Vélez

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

Subtitled “A grimdark fantasy,” if you are expecting this to be packed full of sex and violence, as a result… Well, you might be a little disappointed. While the lead character, Calixta Harlow Carlyle, is an “Exotic” – a highly-trained prostitute – she doesn’t seem to do all that much… um, prostiuting. We’re about half-way through before she goes to bed with anyone. The violence isn’t particularly brutal or copious either. It is, I guess, somewhat dark, and certainly not a young adult book. But anyone who watched (or read) Game of Thrones will not exactly require the services of a fainting couch to get through this.

Calixta ends up dying, trying to protect one of the girls in the brothel she runs. However, that’s just the start, because the powers that be in the afterlife inform our heroine she’s actually a Vanqusher. These are people with magical talents who act as guardians against the forces of evil, currently massing as they prepare to take over the world. Vanquishers are supposed to have guides from birth, who train them. But Calixta never had that benefit, instead being sold into slavery and trained as an Exotic. She’s sent back to life – much to the shock of her employees – and told to find the other three Vanquishers. But the evil Jadro wants to ensure Calixtra dies permanently, before she can come into her true abilities, and stand against him.

She’s forced into going on the run, with three friends who are even less suited to survival. This involves an escape through the sewers which is about the nastiest sequence in the book (straying uncomfortably close to fetish for my tastes), although they are then rescued by Dreyden, another Vanquisher. Together, they go on a quest to awaken another of their kind, Calixta learning how to control the battle-mage skills she has been given, which allow her to summon and manipulate the element of fire, both offensively and for protection. This talent is very much a work in progress, hence the lower score for action – Dreyden likely does more of the heavy lifting in that department. I suspect she may improve in future installments.

There are several points where the writing does come off as somewhat clunky, and points at which it feels like characters are saying things which are more needed for the plot than anything else. It did also feel that things were unfolding at a leisurely pace: this is approaching four hundred page long, and by the end, we’re not particularly far on from where we were. There’s a lot of travel. However, it is an interesting pantheon, with virtues like Justice, Wisdom and Hope taking human form under a deity they call “Father”. It has occasional moments of genuine emotion too, such as in regard to Calixta’s unborn child, which proved surprisingly poignant. I suspect it’ll end up being fairly straightforward good vs. evil, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Author: Omayra Vélez
Publisher: Self-published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Vanquishers of Alhambra series.

Helsing: Demon Slayer, by Liane Zane

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆½

Full disclosure at the outset: the author kindly donated me a paperback copy of this book in return for an honest review.

In the climactic novel of the author’s Elioud Legacy trilogy, The Draka and the Giant, former U.S. Army Ranger Ryan Helsing, a decorated and physically formidable veteran of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, was introduced as a relatively minor character (I didn’t remember him until I read this book; it’s been a couple of years since I finished reading the trilogy). And as I recall from the prequel series, Unsanctioned Guardians, it was mentioned in the first book there, The Covert Guardian, that title character (and major figure in both series) Olivia Markham had a younger sister. These two people serve as co-protagonists of this new novel, intended as the opening volume of The Dragon’s Paladins, a projected spin-off series from the original trilogy.

As reader’s of the latter know, Zane’s premise is that, from antediluvian times on down to the present, there have been some sub rosa matings between angels (mostly fallen ones, but occasionally celestial ones as well) and humans, and that the children of these unions walk among us, sometimes aware of their heritage, sometimes not. These Elioud have (latent, or more developed) super-human abilities from their angelic genes; and in the ongoing cosmic strife between God and Satan, they may be knowingly enlisted on one side or the other, or just imagine that they can ignore spiritual realities and be neutral. (This premise is taken for granted in the present novel, which should definitely be read after at least the original trilogy, if not necessarily the prequel; the reader needs that to fully understand the situation and to really know some of the important characters.)

Our main setting is the Balkans, in the very near future, about six months after the final events of the Draka and the Giant. Dianne Markham is now a 29-year-old “social media marketing consultant” (and yes, that’s an actual job). Secular-minded and not very close to her sister, in the past she’s been something of a playgirl type, and cultivated a loose lifestyle along that line; but more recently, she’s been aware of her biological clock ticking, and been feeling (and even acting on) some impulses towards a more serious and mature outlook and more responsible behavior. She has no clue about her family’s bloodlines, or that Olivia and her husband, Mihail Kastrioti, are two of the Archangel Michael’s top warriors and commanders.

But they are; and Olivia, warned of danger by her “spidey sense” (which we’ve come to recognize as Divine prompting) is taking measures to gather her birth family into the relatively greater safety of the Kastrioti fortress compound in the Albanian mountains. When we first meet Dianne, she’s on an Adriatic cruise, now winding down, with a bevy of her shallow “friends” (though Germaine Grimes is one she reckons as an actual friend). However, Olivia has sent our title character to secretly watch over her sister on the voyage, and to bring her to Olivia as soon as they dock in the Croatian port city of Split. That may be a long and dangerous trip (especially after the registering of the largest EMP phenomenon in history), and their interpersonal dynamics may get interesting….

In its stylistic and other qualities, this book has a lot of the same trademark characteristics the author displays in her six preceding books. Narration is in third-person, past tense; the H/h alternate as viewpoint characters, with occasional scenes from other viewpoints as needed. While this is definitely in the supernatural fiction genre, centering on combat between demons and demi-angels and their human pawns or allies, much of it also reads like descriptive fiction action-adventure or an espionage thriller (and Zane’s prequel trilogy actually is in the latter genre). This entails a lot of physical action and use of high-tech weaponry and communications. The development of nanotechnology here, and its tie-ins with “harmonics,” the energy frequencies underlying all reality and all living things, including people, which angels and their descendants can perceive but ordinary humans usually can’t, is in the realm of the science-fictional (and probably already was in at least the last two books of the first trilogy, though my knowledge of nanotechnology isn’t great enough that I could tell that on my first reading).

Zane sets a very brisk narrative pace, with a gripping intensity that makes this a real page-turner (I read it in less than two weeks, despite the 353-page length, which is fairly quick for me; and I always hated to put it down when I had to.) As in all of her work, she displays a detailed grasp of the settings and real-life locations, derived partly from Internet research and partly from her own travels. Given the cover art, it’s no surprise that Ryan Helsing is a highly capable action-hero; Dianne (who’s depicted on the back cover, but just with her face) doesn’t start out combat-trained, but she’s got guts and determination, and grows naturally into an action-heroine role. Both characters are developed well, in three-dimensional fashion. Their romance (that’s not a spoiler –Zane’s imprint is Zephon Romance, after all!) develops very quickly, but being thrown together closely and continuously under mortally dangerous and stressful conditions that demand constructive responses will bring out people’s mettle very quickly, and make it both easy and natural to assess and appreciate personal worth in a comrade-in-arms. Romance enhances the story and is a big part of it, but doesn’t swallow it whole.

Demonic possession of humans is taken seriously in the New Testament as an actual reality (borne out in other nonfiction literature on the subject), but the biblical writers don’t present us with a detailed theology of it. It’s a major plot element here; but here (as in some of the other books), how it works is a bit murky, and that’s probably my major quibble here. It’s sometimes suggested, plausibly, that the possessed are usually willing vessels of evil, or that all those outside the actual protection of Christ through faith are under some risk for it (and there are New Testament texts that could indicate that). But we also have a case of apparent possession of a human who doesn’t fall in those categories; and just as the St. Michael medals worn by some good characters here and in the other books have protective qualities, the demonically-cursed physical talismans here worn by some characters exert a malevolent spiritual influence.

Related to this, although like all of the author’s books, this one has a strong good vs. evil orientation which is explicitly understood in Christian terms of God vs. Satan, there’s not a strong note of necessary personal decision to repent of self-will and turn to Christ in salvation. (Granted, Christian conversion is typically a gradual process of internal changes in response to moral and spiritual influence; but there does come a distinct tipping point in which personal loyalty flips Christ’s way. We don’t get a real sense of that here; Dianne starts out as essentially a heathen, albeit one who’s having a bit of a moral awakening; but insofar as she changes spiritually, the change appears to be more about her relationship to Ryan than to Christ.)

Some of this is probably influenced by the author’s Roman Catholic faith, though none of her books harp on denominational distinctives; Catholic (and Orthodox) sacramental theology attributes real spiritual influence to physical objects or actions, where other Christian believers wouldn’t go that far, and the former traditions place less stress on an actual, real-time decision for Christian conversion. (Many Christians, myself included, also wouldn’t consider the whole idea of modern-day demi-angels fighting physical battles against demons as really plausible; but it has to be recognized that the author isn’t necessarily claiming that it is. We should just regard the premise here as a fictional literary conceit that serves metaphorical functions, or allows the author to spin an imaginative story, not as a serious theological treatise.) It could also be argued that the climactic resolution of the conflict is too easy, though I didn’t consider that a serious flaw.

Even though both Ryan and Dianne use a certain amount of bad language (realistically, given their backgrounds) there’s no profane abuse of divine names nor actual f-word use here, and there’s also no explicit nor implied sex. (There’s no doubt that our H and h are strongly attracted to each other physically, but there’s also a sense that the attraction is also, and more importantly, to each other’s qualities of character.) Like the original trilogy, this can be recommended to readers who like clean romance (if they don’t mind what movie reviewers –and this would make a great movie!– would call “some sensuality”) and those who like action adventure, both male and female. It can also appeal to supernatural fiction readers who like the angels vs. demons theme, but the appeal wouldn’t be confined to Catholic (or general Christian) readers; I think many secular readers could enjoy it as well.

Author: Liane Zane
Publisher: Zephon Romance, available from Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Sri Asih: The Warrior

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★★★
“No Marvel: and that’s okay.”

Turns out that Marvel and DC are not the only ones creating “cinematic universes” based on comic book. Another example can be found, perhaps surprisingly, in Indonesia. This film is part of the Bumilangit Cinematic Universe, and is a follow-up to 2019’s Gundala. I haven’t seen that, but I’m 99% sure that the scene in the end-credits is a direct cross-over to that, featuring its hero, given the apparent prediction late on of a team up to come between him and Sri Asih. Otherwise, though, this stands on its own, and you don’t need to have seen Gundala, or be familiar with the comic-book series about Sri Asih, created by R.A. Kosasih, and first published all the way back in 1954.

This is the third incarnation of the character, which was also first seen on the screen in 1954, in a now lost Indonesian movie of the same title. In this version, we begin with the birth of Alana during a volcanic eruption, in which her father is killed. Brought up by her mother, Alana is highly talented in martial arts, but has problems controlling her temper. After she fails to throw a fight as arranged against rich playboy and serial abuser Mateo Adinegara, he sends his men to beat up Alana’s mother, and the situation then escalates. Someone kills Mateo and his father, industrialist Prayogo Adinegara (Saputra) vows revenge. The result ends up triggering Alana’s transformation into her final form, the reincarnation of fire goddess Sri Asih.

Which is convenient, because someone is trying to carry out a ritual to obtain ultimate power, a process which require the sacrifice of a thousand souls. With the help of cop Jatmiko (Rahadian), who teeters between honesty and corruption, and childhood friend Tangguh (Nichol), now a journalist, Sri Asih has to figure out what’s going on, and stop the ritual. It’s all earnestly naive in an adorable kind of way. There’s a touching faith in journalistic integrity, and also lines like, “If you are unable to learn how to defeat your anger, it’s only a matter of time before it defeats you.” Occasionally this does topple over into clunkiness, such as when someone late on literally says, “I just remembered <key plot point about the thousand soul sacrifice>” Really?

However, if you can buy into the tone and go along with it, you’ll have a good amount of fun. It certainly does not feel like 134 minutes, which is more than can be said for some Marvel or DC product, though this is somewhat less highly polished. I do wish the fight scenes had been less CGI heavy: the impact is considerably more when Sri Asih and her opponents are knocking chunks out of concrete pillars than when she’s flying unconvincingly through the air. The best thing about Indonesian martial arts is the hard-hitting aspect, and that only intermittently comes through. It does have a cheerful “can do” attitude that’s endearing, and I’d not mind checking out further installments. 

Dir: Upi Avianto
Star: Pevita Pearce, Reza Rahadian, Surya Saputra, Jefri Nichol

Fairest of Them All

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★★½
“Princesses are doin’ it for themselves.”

There’s a recent trend for horror films based on public domain characters. The most infamous is likely Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, but traditional fairy tales have also been exploited to the same end. This is a sequel of sorts to the same studio’s Cinderella’s Curse (which I have not seen), but basically hurls every princess of legend into the mix. The excuse is Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter (Santer), who in this incarnation is a Joker-like psycho, who has kidnapped Alice (Desmond) and made her his slave, courtesy of his magic. He now wants a bride, and to this end abducts a selection of princesses and others e.g. Tinker Bell, as potential candidates. They will fight to the death. Last one alive becomes Mrs. Hatter.

Likely out of necessity, to differentiate the various princesses, the results play fast and loose with traditional folklore. For example, Belle from Beauty and the Beast, turns out to be a shape-shifter. Or there’s Snow White, who is driven by her cannibalistic impulses. It’s also notable that some of them are enthusiastically on-board with the Hatter’s plan. It therefore takes a while before any cohesion takes place between the kidnap victims, forming the necessary alliance to be able to fight back. This is quite an interesting concept, yet somehow still feels somewhat longer than its brief running-time of seventy-seven minutes. We are here to see regal catfights; instead, there’s rather too much sitting around and talking about things.

It also seems occasionally to veer into near-darkness, leaving it hard to tell exactly what’s happening. But I did like most of the characters, and a lot of the performances are enthusiastic enough to pass muster. Many of those involved seem to be actively “in on the joke”, being aware of the general ridiculous nature of the concept. Santer in particular sets the tone, and everyone else is at their best when they follow suit. The production values were surprisingly decent too, with an interesting, decrepit location, which seems to mirror the broken-down nature of Hatter’s sanity. It feels like there has been some effort put into the costumes, hair and make-up – again, reflecting the personalities of the princesses.

On the other hand, it’s clear none of the actresses have been chosen for their martial arts abilities, despite pronouncements from the director that, “This is a blood bath with epic fight sequences. Gore hounds are in for a treat.” It really is not, the fights are well short of epic, and I do not feel particularly treated either. I was hoping for a fairy-tale version of Raze. Instead, what I got was closer to after hours in the locker-room at Disneyland, following the consumption of one too many margaritas. Sure, it may be adequately entertaining to watch, but it’s probably not going to be the proudest moment of anyone involved. Better than most public-domain knockoffs though. I’m looking at you, The Mouse Trap…

Dir: Kunahan Thampi
Star: Lewis Santer, Alina Desmond, Kelly Rian Sanson, Natasha Tosini

KPop Demon Hunters

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★★★
“Pop go the demons.”

The appeal of K-Pop in the West baffles me. I mean, I have a fairly low tolerance for pop in general. So the appeal of a foreign version, born from a culture to which you have no connection… Yeah. Fortunately, you need no knowledge to be entertained by this Netflix animated movie. It’s also tongue in cheek enough to work for non-fans, poking self-deprecating fun at the obsessive nature of K-Pop fandom. The title alone is so direct as to indicate the attitude. It’s accurate though. Pop trio Huntr/x are also demon hunters. They are the latest generation, tasked with keeping the forces of darkness and their ruler Gwi-Ma, out of our world through a barrier called the Honmoon.

Gwi-ma’s latest plan to dismantle the Honmoon involves creating an idol group of his own, the demonic Saja Boys. Their sudden popularity represents a growing threat to Huntr/x, who need to best them in the annual Idol Awards to stop the Honmoon from collapse. Things are complicated by the part-demon nature of Huntr/x lead singer Rumi (Cho), which she has kept secret from fellow members Mira (Hong) and Zoey (Yoo). They believe all demons are inherently evil, making her status a tad awkward. On the other side, Rumi gets to know Jinu, a member of the Saja Boys, who is wracked by guilt over his demonic nature. Naturally, it all ends in a potentially apocalyptic performance by the Saja Boys. 

I was surprised it was Chris who actually asked to watch this: she’s not a K-Pop stan either. This did turn out to be better than expected. Admittedly, said expectations were low. But it’s nicely animated, and the previously mentioned willingness not to take itself seriously goes a long way. For example, when the heroines’ efforts to go down a slide are stymied by their battle catsuits, one remarks sardonically, @@@@. Or there’s the member of Saja Boys whose fringe is so long, it covers most of his face. It’s quite dry humour, something I like. Even the songs are… tolerable, in a Eurovision Song Contest kind of way (an event for which I have a soft spot).

Of course, the way it unfolds is never less than predictable, with the power of friendship and heroic sacrifice, being the order of the day. It’s also relentlessly PG-rated, meaning that no matter how many demons are slain – and there are a lot – do not expect to see so much as a single drop of blood. These elements were in line with what I expected, and I would certainly not mind a live-action version aimed at a more grown-up audience. However, was I not adequately entertained? Yes – yes, I was. It’s a frothy concoction, that gives a glimpse into a world beyond the one I know. In fact, two worlds: both the demonic realm and the K-Pop one. Your choice as to which is weirder. 

Dir: Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans
Star (voice): Arden Cho, Ahn Hyo-seop, May Hong, Ji-young Yoo

The Old Guard 2

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★★
“Old and tired.”

I was considerably less impressed with The Old Guard than some folk. I suspect it benefited from coming out during the COVID lockdown, when people were desperate for entertainment, and would obsess over any crap (see: Tiger King). Truth be told, it was really rather mid. Hard to believe it has been five years since then. With hindsight, we should probably have rewatched the original. Might have saved us having to look up the plot on Wikipedia, because the sequel assumes we remember everything about the first film, as if it were yesterday. We do not. It’s still basically about these immortals (or thereabout), who have been helping humanity through the ages. This seems initially to mean working with the CIA, which is certainly a choice.

As well as Andy (Theron), who has lost her immortality because reasons, there’s Nile (Layne). On the other side, we have Quỳnh (Ngô), who spent centuries at the bottom of the ocean, perpetually drowning, and is consequently slightly peeved. No, really: you’d expect full on psychosis, but she’s not much more than somewhat annoyed, and gets over it impressively quickly. There’s also Discord (Thurman), the first immortal, who has a scheme of her own to… Well, it’s complex, but it turns out that not only can immortality be lost, it can also be transferred between people. Death, where is thy sting? It all smacks of lazy, even desperate writing, inevitably leading to a scene borrowed from Star Trek II.

The film feels full of these missteps, lumbering clumsily from one chunk of exposition to the next. This builds to an assault on a Chinese nuclear facility, but there’s no sense of resolution. Because the film is more interested in acting as a bridge to The Old Guard 3, consequently ending in an ending which isn’t an ending. A third part is not something in which I have interest: any review of it here is likely to be out of genre obligation, rather than genuine interest. The only potential plus is that perhaps we might see more of Discord there, because in this installment, Thurman’s presence is wasted to a degree that is almost impressive. Though if it’s another five years before part 3, she’ll then be aged more or less sixty. 

On the other hand, Theron looks eerily like she did in Aeon Flux, almost twenty years ago. And the action in general isn’t bad in quality, with both her and Ngô having their moments. It is technically sound, occasionally slick, and there are some cool car moments at the beginning. But if you compare it to something like Ballerina, both the quantity and impact of the fight sequences are clearly short of the mark. If that hadn’t been the case, I’d have been willing to forgive the clunky exposition and generally uninteresting nature of the plot. But I wouldn’t say “somewhat alright” fights come close to justifying anyone’s monthly Netflix subscription.

Dir: Victoria Mahoney
Star: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Veronica Ngô, Uma Thurman

Nite Fire: Flash Point by C.L. Schneider

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

Dallas Nite is a dragon. Well, some of the time. For dragons are actually shape-shifters, capable of changing form, and that’s how she is able to pass for a human here. On her home planet, she had been an assassin for Queen Naalish, until she balked at carrying out one hit. Condemned to death, she fled through one of the interplanetary portals, ending up on Earth. Effectively immortal, Dallas has been in exile here for ninety-seven years since, making sure no other unauthorized creatures come through the portals – part of an uneasy truce between her and the aristocracy. Part of her job also involves ensuring any trace of dragon activity is covered up, these being explained instead as “spontaneous human combustion.” But after a whole family is slaughtered in fiery fashion in their home, it becomes increasingly difficult for her to keep a lid on things, and her past comes back with a vengeance too.

As urban fantasy goes, this is solid, rather than spectacular. There’s some nice world-building, with the idea of the portals well-explained, and offering plenty of scope for a variety of adventures (the epilogue does a particularly good job of pointing the way forward). I also appreciated how Dallas is employed as an investigator of “suspicious fires” by the local police department in Sentinel City which, given the obvious dragonish nature of her talents, is a good fit. Additionally, she has the ability to sense and re-experience people’s traumas. While the talent comes with baggage of its own, this is particularly useful for the case in question. It does feel like you’re joining the story in progress, almost a century having passed since Dallas’s arrival on Earth. I would be very interested in hearing, for example, what she got up to during World War II. A were-dragon would seem to offer certain advantages as a secret agent.

While the more relevant gaps of her past are filled in eventually, it is a bit of a cheat, with knowledge being withheld from the audience, that Dallas and the other characters clearly possess. We probably needed additional background on the dragon hierarchy too. There were some characters whose roles and significance remained a little too obscure. For example, Reech is one who only shows up at the half-way point, and I am still not sure exactly how he fits into things. What ends up as the central conflict, between Dallas and former apprentice Brynne, delivers some impressive battles (I said effectively immortal above, for a reason…), and focusing more directly on that could have paid dividends. At almost four hundred pages in length, there were times where getting through this did feel a bit of slog. However, a turn of the page would then bring me into something cool, and it provided enough of those moments to cross over the finish line without too much trouble. 

Author: C.L. Schneider
Publisher: CreateSpace Indepenedent Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in the Nite Fire series.