Tag: fantasy

The Huntsman: Winter’s War

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★★★½
“Now with 43% fewer dwarves, and 99% less Kristin Stewart.”

I did not see Snow White And The Huntsman: my tolerance for Kristin Stewart went after Chris decided we should watch all three Twilight movies [to her credit, a decision she bitterly regretted]. So I can’t say how this compares to its predecessor. On it’s own though, it brings us a trio of kick-ass heroines, some truly awesome visuals, and Stewart at a “made in a factory than also manufactures peanut products” level. If not without its problems, I’ll take that as a foundation, every day and twice on Sundays. There are two stories here: Queens Ravenna (Theron) and Freya (Blunt), sisters who part ways after Freya’s child is killed, with the betrayed Freya heading to the frozen North to rule her empire with a will of iron. Ravenna goes on to magic mirror blah poison apple blah blah dwarves – you know that bit – before apparently being killed.

Meanwhile, Freya’s army is spearheaded by a mixed gender platoon of soldiers, trained from young children under her sole commandment: do not love. Naturally, that doesn’t work, with Eric (Hemsworth) and Sara (Chastain) falling for each other and trying to elope. They’re caught, Sara apparently killed, and Eric tossed off a cliff. He survives, going on to become Snow White’s Huntsman in the original movie. Fast forward a few years, and he’s sent to recover Ravenna’s magic mirror, which has been stolen while in transit to a place where its evil power can be contained. However, Freya is also after it, believing she can use the mirror to reclaim her sister’s kingdom and expand her own.

huntsmanWhile Chastain kicks surprising amounts of butt, the love story here is likely the least interesting aspect of the film, though it has some competition down at the bottom with the comic-relief dwarves (look, we love Nick Frost as much as the next people… but this was like watching a beloved uncle get falling-down drunk). Far more interesting is the Freya/Ravenna dynamic: both actresses go full-bore into their roles and it’s quite glorious to watch, helped by some quite incredible costumes, and use of special effects that enhance the atmosphere, rather than just being used for shock and awe. Ravenna’s entrance – technically, re-entrance – is just spectacular, and likely won’t be beaten this year. I was surprised the budget was as low as $115 million, because it looks as good as anything I’ve seen, to the point when I’m seriously considering a Blu-Ray purchase (and I’ve got maybe a dozen of those, so that’s rare indeed).

It’s a shame this wasn’t more successful. Maybe it helps I haven’t seen Frozen either, to which I’ve seen a number of reviews compare this. Admittedly, the story needs more focus, and should have decided whether to be a prequel or a sequel. Hemsworth and Chastain should not have bothered with unconvincing Scottish accents either. Yet it overcomes these issues with sheer force of will from the actresses involved. All three have some pedigree in the action genre; Theron and Chastain most obviously, but even Blunt played one of Boudica’s daughters, back in 2003. They take the material more seriously than it likely deserves (unquestionably, more seriously than Hemsworth, Frost or the other male actors), and their gravitas helps drag the viewer along with them. And even when it can’t quite pull that off, you can still admire the pretty pictures.

Dir: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
Star: Chris Hemsworth, Emily Blunt, Jessica Chastain, Charlize Theron

I am Grimalkin, by Joseph Delaney

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★★★½
“How to keep a head of the pack.”

grimalkinThis is the ninth novel in Delaney’s Wardstone Chronicles series (known as The Last Apprentice in the USA), and full confession: I haven’t read any of the others. I generally wouldn’t start reading a series so far in, but I was recommended this, on the grounds that it worked as a stand-alone piece, and certainly qualified for inclusion here, in a way the rest of the saga didn’t. Can’t argue with that assessment: while I sense you would likely get significantly more from the book if you have read its predecessors, Grimalkin makes a heck of a bad-ass.

As we join the story in progress, she is carrying round the severed head of The Fiend [who appears, more or less, to be Satan] in a bag, having separated it from his body after he killed her child. However, she is being pursued by a host of his acolytes and the kretch, a creature spawned for the specific purpose of tracking and killing her. They are intent on retrieving the head and re-uniting it with the rest of him – which will cause all hell to break loose. Fortunately, Grimalkin is a witch herself – and not just the cauldron-y, hubble-bubble kind, but the assassin of her coven, a position obtained by killing the incumbent. Normal witches? Don’t stand a chance. Custom-created hell-spawn with a poisonous bite and armoured eyelids? Now, you’re talking.

Actually, even that would probably be a light challenge, Grimalkin’s talents being so well-honed. However, having created this Superwoman (and I’m thinking more Nietzsche than Jerry Siegel), Delaney makes the smart move of then dialing it back, weakening his protagonist early on, which brings her down to the level where she could be taken out. And, since she’s not the central character of the series – Tom Ward doesn’t even appear –  there’s a genuine sense Delaney could dispose of her; he certainly has few qualms about disposing of just about everyone who assists her, at a rate of which George R.R. Martin would approve. This story is, more or less, an extended chase sequence with occasional pauses for reflection, and flashback to learn how Grimalkin reached her position, teamed up with Thorne, her apprentice, etc. It makes for a rather breathless pace, but certainly keeps the reader’s interest.

There are times when it does become a little too “young adult”-ish for my taste – I took to rolling my eyes, every time I read another occurrence of “I am Grimalkin!” But credit Delaney for not attempting to shoehorn in any element of Twlight-esque romance. Because that would be utterly inappropriate for a character who can say, “Cowardice and courage are just labels—words invented by foolish men to bolster their egos and denigrate their enemies. In battle we should be cold, clinical, and disciplined.” While there was a movie version of the first novel (albeit one largely ignored, even by fans), this entry is probably close to unfilmable, simply because Grimalkin is pure, undiluted anti-hero, which is very difficult to make work on-screen. I’d like to see them try, yet amn’t holding my breath there. All told, I certainly enjoyed this one, yet am not sure if I’ll bother with the other, Grimalkin-free entries. It just wouldn’t be the same.

Author: Joseph Delaney
Publisher: Bodley Head, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a physical book.
a.k.a. The Last Apprentice: Grimalkin The Witch Assassin

The Circle (Cirkeln)

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cirklen

★★★
“Into every generation, half a dozen or so chosen ones are born…”

The first in an intended trilogy, based on a popular series of books, this is set in the fictional Swedish town of Engelsfors, where the high-school is rocked after a student commits suicide in the bathroom. At the same point, six female students start to experience strange events, hinting at undiscovered powers: one can move objects with her mind, another can influence people, a third becomes invisible. Turns out they – as well as the dead colleague – are proto-witches, one of whom will eventually develop into the Chosen One, who will save the world from her evil nemesis. However, said nemesis is not sitting around, waiting for thus development: that “suicide” wasn’t a suicide at all, and it becomes clear the remaining six are just as much in danger.

This starts off in highly-impressive fashion, setting up its premise with elegant style. The film looks great, makes excellent use of music, both original and adopted (the soundtrack is by Benny Andersson of ABBA fame, who is also one of the producers, and there’s a particular cool montage set to Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill), and the special effects are nicely understates: director Akin doesn’t throw them at the screen for the sake of it, he uses them to enhance the film’s atmosphere as much as for show. However, the second half feels unnecessarily stretched: this runs 144 minutes, and probably shouldn’t. Perhaps the process of adaptation from the book needed to be more ruthless; you get the sense the film is trying to juggle too many characters, simply because they were in the original source material. As a result, they all suffer since, even at its significant length, the film doesn’t have the chance to explore them in any depth: they remain not much more than stereotypes, e.g. the Goth, the slut, the bullied, the swot. Maybe they are leaving this for the subsequent entries?

However, it works well enough as a standalone movie – more Harry Potter than Lord of the Rings – and still continues to provide a sleek and shiny source of mainstream entertainment. There’s more than a hint of Buffy here, and not just in the “Chosen One” concept and high-school location, also the idea that Engelsfors is some kind of Hellmou… er, portal for evil, as well the Witches’ Council who try to run things. As yet, neither of these last two aspects have been explored much, and I sense they will likely come into play more, down the road. I also got a distinct hint of Eko Eko Azarak too. It’s probably true to say that you may get more out of this if you have read the books, which I haven’t; I suspect a remake is only a matter of time, likely bringing nothing of note to the party. Bit of a mixed blessing to see countries attempt to ape Hollywood so shamelessly: I can’t help preferring films like Let the Right One In, which do their own thing. This is perhaps just too slickly commercial for its own good.

Dir: Levan Akin
Star: Josefin Asplund, Helena Engström, Ruth Vega Fernandez, Irma von Platen

The Girl With Ghost Eyes, by M. H. Boroson

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★★★★
“A Chinatown Ghost Story.”

girl with ghost eyesDisclaimer. I first heard about this on our forum, where the author posted about it. That said, my copy of it was bought and paid for from Amazon at full price, so I’ve no commercial bias. And of the 58 customer reviews currently on Amazon, not one is less than four stars, and it’s also rated at 4.2 stars on Goodreads, so I’m comfortable my appreciation of it appears to fall in line with others, and is no way appears abnormal.

It takes place in turn of the century San Francisco, almost exclusively in the city’s Chinatown, and is told in the first person by Xian Li-lin, who is 23, already a widow, and “a Maoshan Nu Daoshi of the Second Ordination.” That’s a clause which probably makes no sense. Don’t worry, one of Boroson’s strengths is explaining a world which is about as weird as Middle-earth. She’s effectively an exorcist in training, under the watchful eye (literally!) of her stern, much more experienced father, and who has the ability – or curse, in her father’s opinion – of being able to see the many different kinds of spirits which inhabit the world alongside us. A supposedly simple ceremony, involving Li-Lin visiting the astral plane, turns into an ambush, staged with the intent of possessing her and using her to attack her father.

For his rival, Liu Qiang, has teamed up with one of Chinatown’s organized crime leaders, with a plan to use dark magic to raise the Kulou-Yianling, a nightmarish creation that will destroy all their rivals. Naturally, knowing Li-Lin’s father would stop them, the first step is to take him out. While that doesn’t quite succeed, it does enough damage to leave his daughter as the only person standing in their way. But as a mere second-level exorcist – albeit one who also has good martial-arts talent – can she stand up to, and defeat, someone far above her? Perhaps, if she can convince some of those spirits she can see to help her – though they must first put aside their concerns about helping an exorcist.

There’s a similar feel to Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away here, with quirky characters including an animated eyeball (I told you her father kept a literal eye on her…), a tiger-monk and three-eyed seagulls. There are less appealing creatures too, not least the monstrous Kulou-Yianling, which feels like it may have strayed in out of H.P. Lovecraft. Oh, and incidentally, the manner in which Li-Lin eventually handles it is elegant and simple; let’s just say that the bigger you are, the larger become your vulnerable spots. If anything, there’s perhaps too much going on, in terms of invention, with creatures blazing across the firmament of the storyline almost tangentially. At one point, Li-Lin witnesses the Night Parade, a near-endless procession of the weird, the freakish and the outlandish, and readers may feel the same way, to some extent.

However, that’s a minor quibble, when set besides the positives, such as Boroson’s handle on the kung fu. Writing a description of martial arts is hard: like editing a fight sequence, you have to balance excitement with coherence and pacing. You don’t want to spend 10 times as long describing something as it would take to watch, yet need more than “She kicked him. Repeatedly.” Boroson gets the balance right, creating passages that flow, like a good fight should, and making it easy for the reader to imagine what’s going on, in their mind’s eye. I’d love to see this turned into a film, though it would certainly not be cheap to make – and, unfortunately, Lam Ching-Ying, who would have been perfect as Li-Lin’s father in my mental cinema, died in 1997.

It’s a thoroughly engaging read, with a setting that’s new (to me) and a heroine who is well-rounded, with just enough imperfections to make her seem real. I will be eagerly looking forward to the next installment of Li-Lin’s adventures, which I’m assured is in the works.

Author: M. H. Boroson
Publisher: Available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

The Big Bad

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★½
“What big eyes you have…”

bigbad1Few things are more irritating than a film where the characters clearly know what’s going on, they just refuse to let the audience in on it, jabbering away to each other in cryptic dialogue that obscures more than it reveals. Not that a movie’s script has to lay everything out from the start, or can’t be subtle. But if you are going to go for an understated approach, this has to be tempered with sufficient well-handled exposition, that the viewer can understand who the players are, and care about them and their role in proceedings as they unfold. It’s here where this falls down, repeatedly. There’s one conversation which ends with the heroine, Frankie Ducane (Gotta), being banged on the head and shoved into the trunk of a car. Who did this? Why? Where is he taking her? None of these questions are ever adequately answered, and I reached the end of the film, with only a vague idea of who Frankie was, or her situation.

As the title hints, and her fondness for swigging shots of liquid silver emphasizes, this is a werewolf movie, with Frankie on the bloody trail of Fenton Bailey (Reynolds), the man responsible for her current situation. There’s an apparent clock running – at one point, we see a notebook with “3 DAYS LEFT” written in important-sized letters, but like so many elements here, its significance is never explained, and there no sense of any particular impetus to the plot resulting from it. Mind you, this is a film which is happy to spend quite a bit of time with Frankie chatting to a girl in a bar – apparently populated entirely through a casting call at the local roller derby bout – in an effort to discover what she knows about Fenton. This probably goes on far longer than necessary, but you have to respect a film which is prepared to let things unfold at their own pace, even if the audience might be tapping pointedly on their wrists and making hurry-up sounds.

What does work, better than the plot, is the atmosphere, feeling like a modern-day version of a Grimm Fairy Tale, with Gotta making a decent enough Red Riding Hood – one more interested in vengeance, than visiting Grandma with a basket of goodies. Frankie’s dagger proves quite an effective equalizer, and proves much needed when she wakes up from her trip in the trunk, to find someone has an eye on her eyes, as it were. This sequence was probably the most effective, in terms of being a modernized legend, even though its relevance is dubious. It’s an infuriating failure as a whole, feeling too much like a short film needlessly stretched to feature length (though at 78 minutes, barely so), without enough thought given to whether it possesses sufficient meat to sustain its running-time.

Dir: Bryan Enk
Star: Jessi Gotta, Jessica Savage, Timothy McCown Reynolds, Alan Rowe Kelly

Willow, by Wayland Drew

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

willowTheoretically, this book by Canadian author Wayland Drew is the novelization of the 1988 movie Willow. However, it’s not based directly on the movie itself, but on Bob Dolman’s screenplay (which was itself developed from a guiding storyline written by George Lucas). Much of this screenplay was omitted –and some of it apparently changed, usually to condense and simplify the dialogue and action– in filming the actual movie, and one of the stars (Val Kilmer) ad-libbed most of his dialogue. So the movie actually differs significantly from the book; the latter is much richer in world-building and character development and has a number of significant events that aren’t in the former, and that help to explain some character’s attitudes and choices that are only weakly explained in the film. This means that the relationship of the two is more like that of a movie adapted from a book than that of a typical novelization. It also means it’s harder to identify Drew’s individual modifications and contributions than it would be with most novelizations.

Regardless of the prehistory of the book’s text, though, the finished novel is a fine work of epic fantasy, with well-developed characters, a stirring plot that doesn’t have logical holes, and vivid prose. In general conception, it owes something to Tolkien’s monumental Lord of the Rings series –but few works of post-Tolkien epic fantasy do not, and it has its own distinct premise, plot, characteristics and flavor; any literary influence is simply that, not slavish dependence. Like Sauron, Bavmorda is a power-freak magic-wielder hungry for world domination; but where Sauron is an impersonal, off-stage evil force, Bavmorda is a fully human character we see up close and personal, in all her ugly glory. Drew’s short-statured Nelwyn race has some general similarities to hobbits, and perhaps more to dwarves; but in the final analysis, they’re neither, a race and culture all their own. (And the basic structure of a quest narrative in fantasy goes back long before Tolkien, as do other archetypes that appear here.) But like the LOTR saga, it has a very clear conflict of good and evil, and a recurring theme of the necessity and important consequences of the moral choices we’re called to make and the responsibilities we’re called to shoulder, whether we see ourselves as well-qualified heroic types or not.

Lucas’ influence is evident in a few places, where the Mystery of magic is presented in terms vaguely reminiscent of the Force in his Star Wars saga (the kind of thing Francis Schaeffer referred to as “contentless mysticism”), but this is a minor note that has no real significance for the storyline. A more prominent (and more positive) theme is the strong affection for the natural world that’s evident, with the idea that good people care about the latter, while evil results in defilement and destruction of nature. (This is brought out much more in the book than in the movie.) The book is also grittier and more violent than the movie in places, but it has no bad language (Madmartigan’s h-words in the film resulted from Kilmer’s ad-libbing) and no real sexual content, beyond the implication of womanizing by Madmartigan with an innkeeper’s wife at one point. (That aspect of his character isn’t glorified, and is explained as a reaction to an earlier event in his past.)

The action-heroine aspect of the book is embodied in the character of Sorsha (played in the movie by Joanne Whalley), the most important female character in the tale. She’s Bavmorda’s daughter, raised not to question her mother –but there’s another side to her heritage, too. Her moral journey, and the choice before her, will be one of those most central to the book. She’s also definitely raised as a warrior, really comfortable only in battle, in the camp or on the march, or in the hunt for dangerous game, thoroughly accustomed to handling weapons (she sleeps with a dagger under her pillow), and as tough as nails; we hardly ever see her out of her armor. For fans of the action-female motif, the one complaint here is that she doesn’t have much in the way of actual fighting scenes –just a couple in the entire book, although she acquits herself bravely and capably in both of them. It’s arguably a pity that the plot here didn’t allow more scope for the display of her butt-kicking abilities.

In a fantasy genre that’s overrun by bloated series, this one also has the advantage of being a stand-alone book with a contained storyline and a clear-cut resolution. Lucas actually intended to make sequels to the film, but never did; instead, he wrote a series of follow-up books, the Chronicles of the Shadow War. But these are set after the events here, and aren’t directly related to them, or at least that’s my impression –I’ve never read them. (That’s why Goodreads labeled the book “Chronicles of the Shadow War 0,” rather than giving it a number as an actual part of the sequence.) So this would be a great choice for fantasy readers who don’t want to commit to a multi-volume series! But it’s a solid, rewarding read for any epic fantasy fan.

Author: Wayland Drew
Publisher: Ballantine Books, available through Amazon, currently only as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Operation Chaos, by Poul Anderson

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

operationchaosPoul Anderson (d. 2001) was one of the leading lights of speculative fiction in the latter half of the 20th century. He’s perhaps best known for his science fiction; but this excellent novel is a sample of his fantasy.

We’re in an alternate mid-20th-century U.S. here, in a world where magic, though dormant since the Bronze Age, somehow reasserted itself around the turn of the 20th century, and became the major force (rather than technology –although here technology adapts to and works with it) that revolutionized modern society, industry and daily life. (For instance, rather than using cars, people travel by broomstick or magic carpet.) The magical system is normally incantational, manipulating impersonal and morally neutral paranatural forces in the world (but the villains may also invoke demonic powers). It’s also a world where science has demonstrated and accepted the reality of Deity, the afterlife, atonement, moral law, and the angelic and the demonic, without establishing (or denying) the truth of any particular theistic creed. That represents our hero/heroine’s take on the spiritual (and apparently Anderson’s as well) –and it’s a theme taken seriously here.

Steve and Ginny, the aforementioned H/h, are, respectively, a werewolf (Anderson’s werewolves, like Anthony Boucher’s, are simply people who can shapeshift into wolves –that doesn’t make them vicious or madly homicidal) and a white witch. When we first meet them, they’re Army officers serving in World War II –but in this reality, the Allies’ main adversary is a restored, brutal Islamic Caliphate (considered heretical by some other Muslims) that’s out to conquer the world and impose its version of theocracy. (This book was published in 1971; it’s interesting to see how subsequent history has developed in the Middle East, with ISIS, etc.) And of course this is a war in which magic is the principal weapon employed by both sides. At the book’s outset, our co-protagonists are tasked with a probably suicidal mission that’s vital to the war effort, and from there the action and the jeopardies continue thick and fast. But their real battle is much bigger than the war, and the real Adversary isn’t the Caliphate. Who is he? Well… he’s our Adversary, too.

Steve serves as our narrator; Anderson uses the conceit that he’s in a trance state, communicating across the ether between alternate realities to share the benefit of his experiences with any receptive inhabitants, who share a common cosmic struggle and destiny. IMO, that device works well. The author’s prose style is conversational, but erudite, with a rich substratum of dry, dead-pan humor in the way things are phrased and the matter-of-fact acceptance of how magic permeates daily life. But this is also a serious book, with lethal violence and life-and-death (or worse) danger, defining moral choices, real psychological depth in places, and underlying spiritual and social messages that are as serious as a heart attack. Anderson’s solid knowledge of worldwide mythology and occult lore enriches the tale, as does his accurate understanding of Gnosticism and its significance. Steve and Ginny are characters readers can readily like, admire and root for. Bad language here is limited to an occasional h- or d-word, and there’s no inappropriate sexual content.

Ginny is a strong, capable woman with a cool head in a crisis, iron nerves and will, quick reflexes and an ability to handle physical challenges thrown at her by demons and elementals. She acquits herself well in combat situations; though she’s mostly up against non-human foes. During the war, though, she proved herself a lethal fighter against enemy soldiers as well (although we don’t actually get to see her most deadly exploit directly –Steve just finds the bodies after the fact!).

All in all, I found this a great read, from a master writer at the top of his game. My wife greatly liked the book, too, as well as another of the author’s novels we’ve read together years ago, The High Crusade. The main female character there, Lady Catherine, isn’t really an action heroine as such for most of the book –but when the chips are down, she can come through, and that book can also appeal to fans of strong heroines.

Author: Poul Anderson
Publisher: Baen Books, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Mythica: The Darkspore

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★★½
“Dungeons and Dragons. This time with a dungeon. And a dragon.”

mythicaThe original movie sat in my “pending” pile for so long, that the sequel showed up about a week after finally reviewing it. So I thought I might as well fast-track that one, and see how it compares. The answer is likely, not quite as well, much though it goes over the same, well-worn fantasy/D&D tropes. Our four adventurers from the first movie are still about, though haughty cleric Teela (Posener) now has a dead sister, which she blames Marek (Stone), the rapidly XP-gaining magic-user.  is warned by her mentor, Gojun Pye (Kevin Sorbo, in much the same kind of cameo are last time), that evil necromancer Szorlok is watching her, seeing the darkness which lurks within her soul.

Szorlok and sidekick Kishkumen are searching to reassemble the titular artefact, which was cracked to four pieces in a previous age. Cutting to the chase rather faster than the script here does, they capture our hereoes, along with newcomer Hairgel the dark elf [ok, not his actual name, but you’ll understand why I call him that when you see him] and hold Teela as a hostage, using her as leverage so her friends will retrieve the stone.

The film seems to have forgotten that it was the characters, and the interplay between them, which was its predecessor’s strongest suit. When we get that, it still shines, yet you’re well into the second half of the movie before the party is reassembled and gets going on anything resembling an actual adventure. Up until then, you get a rather boring set of navel-gazing, mostly based around Marek agonizing about whether she is being turned to the dark side, with a side-helping of angst from Teela.

The script also decides to inject romantic elements this time, with Teela falling for the group’s fighter, Thane (Johnson), and if you don’t like that one, why not try Marek and Hairgel’s blossoming relationship. It wasn’t just the 12-year-old boy in me who was wrinkling his nose up at all this sissy stuff. Things do perk up a bit more in the second half, when there is actually a quest to be competed, with the poison infecting Teela adding a useful “ticking clock” to proceedings. However, the battles were underwhelming, both against a pretty mediocre CGI dragon, and facing Kishkumen and his forces, whose main tactic appears to be to form a circle around their target, then attack one at a time. If you’ve seen a seventies martial-arts film, you’ll know the technique.

Not to say it’s worthless, with Marek’s character and powers developing nicely; she’s clearly more adept than she was first time out, when a puff of smoke was a challenge. With great power, as we all know, comes great responsibility, and I just wish the makers would put more effort into that aspect. Because if the planned five films come to pass. they’re going to need the balance to tilt away from tedious romance and whiny soul-searching, and back toward thrilling adventure.

Dir: Anne K. Black
Star: Melanie Stone, Adam Johnson, Jake Stormoen, Nicola Posener

Mythica: A Quest for Heroes

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★★★
“Dungeons & Dragons. Without dungeons. Or dragons.”

mythicaI could virtually hear the d20s rolling for chunks of this one. Not to say that is a bad thing as such; it quite took me back to my college days, when I spent far more time than I should, lurking in the corners of the student union, trying to nurse my ferociously-toasted paladin through another death-trap! The heroine here is Marek (Stone), a slave with a club foot who has higher aspirations, dabbles in magic, and runs away from her master to seek her fame and fortune. She talks her way into a mission no other adventurer will accept, rescuing the sister of haughty high priestess Teela (Posener), who has been kidnapped by orcs, and adds a gruff fighter, Thane (Johnson), and sly thief Dagen (Stormoen) to complete the parade of obvious stereotypes, er, sorry, I meant to write “party of adventurers”. They head off to follow the orcs, only to find Teela’s sister is not there, and is apparently with a far bigger, more unpleasant monster, possessing a lot more hit points and higher armour-class.

All my cynicism (which you may just have been able to detect in the above) aside, I actually didn’t hate this, despite its horribly derivative nature and failure to deliver any kind of ending [it being the first in an intended three-part saga coughHobbitcough]. Far from it, actually: if painfully obvious, the characters are still fun to be around, and the actors embrace them with gusto, which help bring them to life. Marek, in particular, has the potential to have a good character arc, since she appears to possess occult talents, which are only scratched here, coming out in dire emergencies – conveniently for the story! She is disabled, but not defined by it. Save a couple of scenes, such as the one where she begs Teela’s to heal her,  it’s easy to forget her impediment, and there’s no doubting her courage, wits and loyalty, which make for a winning combination in a fantasy lead.

About the only name you’ll recognize here is Kevin Sorbo, who has basically one scene as Marek’s magical mentor, though I get the feeling he will be back in subsequent parts. Still, if you rent this expecting more based on the promotional material, you’ll be disappointed. Fortunately, I had no such preconceptions, and was able to enjoy what is, in many way, a throwback to the eighties and nineties when, it seems, there was a new one of these out every other time I went to the video-store. [Usually made in Argentina. For Roger Corman] If I can’t say I am anticipating future installments with breathless excitement, I can’t say I will actively avoid them either; mild anticipation is likely about the mark. Coming from someone who has sat through his share of bad genre entries, that’s no mean feat.

Dir: Anne K. Black
Star: Melanie Stone, Adam Johnson, Jake Stormoen, Nicola Posener

Moon Called, by Patricia Briggs

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

mooncalledUrban fantasy is a sub-genre I still haven’t explored much; but I’d heard a lot of good things about Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series. When a generous Goodreads friend offered me her copy of the series opener when she finished reading it, rather than let it gather dust on her shelf, I grabbed it up, and as my rating indicates, I’m glad I did.

Mercy’s a were-coyote, living in an alternate U.S. much like ours, except that here the “lesser fae” (brownies, kelpies, etc.) are public knowledge –but other types of supernatural or magic-practicing beings are not. She’s is the out-of-wedlock daughter of a Blackfoot Indian shape-shifter, who died in an accident before she was born, and a white mother who had a werewolf relative in her family three generations back. When she found Mercy in coyote form in her crib, she arranged to have her fostered in a small, werewolf-dominated community in the wilds of Montana. Hence, Mercy’s quite knowledgeable about werewolves and their ways. Vampires and a gremlin are also parts of her social world, though werewolves play the biggest role.

Both the urban fantasy novels with female protagonists that I read earlier were actually written later than this one, so didn’t influence it; the most germinal influence on all three was probably the early Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton. What they take in common from that influence is the idea of a strong young (or young-appearing) heroine with supernatural traits, in a modern urban setting, interacting with supernatural beings of various types, and capable of handling herself in physical combat situations if she has to. Within that concept, though, there’s room for considerable individuality and uniqueness in the way it’s developed. As a writer, Briggs is very much her own person, and her heroine and fictional vision aren’t clones of any other.

At the core of this novel, of course, and the main ingredient in its appeal, is the well-drawn, round-character figure of Mercy herself. She’s a kindhearted person who genuinely cares about others and their needs, and who attracts friendship by being a friend. Her shape-shifting is a part of who she is that she’s come to accept; but she still feels isolated because of it, even from her human family (more her problem than theirs) and lonely as the only one of her kind that she knows. Though no plaster saint, she’s a practicing Christian. No gun/sword for hire, she’s chosen a peaceful, though male-dominated, trade as a auto mechanic, and when our story opens, hasn’t been involved in violence before. But she’s well aware that she lives in a violent, dangerous world. A purple belt in karate, she’s a concealed carry permit holder who owns at least three guns (and makes her own silver bullets), physically strong, smart and possessing an inner core of resolution that’s prepared to do what needs doing in a crisis. So she’s prepared to face trouble and danger –and that’s just as well, because it’s about to find her, and people that she’s befriended and cares about. (The violence in the book isn’t gratuitous or graphic, however.)

The arrival of a strange werewolf teen starts the novel off with a note of mystery, which quickly escalates into a gripping plot built around a shadowy conspiracy, that keeps you guessing right down to the denouement. All of the other major characters, and even most of the secondary ones, are well developed and vivid; the author’s prose flows easily, and she incorporates just the right amount of description. While the action isn’t non-stop, the action scenes are effective. A strong point of the novel is the development of the werewolf subculture, which feels real enough to suspend disbelief. Briggs’ werewolves are more like Anthony Boucher’s than like the traditional, moon-crazed psychopaths out to kill anything that moves (I greatly prefer the former, so that’s a plus); they’re not innately evil just because they’re lycanthropes, and they can have some really good personal qualities. (They also take true wolf form, though larger and with more varied coloring, not a man-wolf hybrid form, and have some wolf behavioral characteristics even in their human form.) But they do have a predatory animal nature they need to control, and believable dominance issues.

The Tri-Cities metropolitan area of southeastern Washington state, where Mercy lives, is a real place (population in the 270,000 range), and apparently accurately described; the map that Briggs includes is a helpful feature. Although Mercy had a teenage attraction to one of the werewolf characters (and they still have some feelings for each other), and there’s also some attraction between her and another male character, with a kiss at one point, I would not characterize the book as “paranormal romance.” That element is a decidedly minor thread in the plotting, and Mercy’s feelings aren’t focused on one object.

There are a couple of places where the author uses Mercy as a mouthpiece for a comment or sermon pushing “politically correct” sentiments, in a way that comes across as preachy and judgmental. This was irritating, and detracted from my rapport with the character. At one point, Briggs has Mercy holster a revolver she’s already put in her pack, and which, as noted a couple of pages later, she doesn’t even have a holster for; and she refers to semi-automatic pistols as “automatic” (a common enough mistake –at least she refers to magazines as magazines, not “clips”). But those are relatively nit-picking quibbles. Briggs has made a worthwhile contribution to the urban fantasy field, and to supernatural fiction in general, with this series debut. Its deserved popularity rests on a solid base of literary quality.

Note: While there’s no obscenity and little bad language of any kind in the book (the point is made that Mercy doesn’t appreciate profane use of God’s name), and no sexual activity of any kind, Briggs does devote a lot of attention to homosexual werewolf Warren’s relationship with his human lover

Author: Patricia Briggs
Publisher: Ace Books, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.