Tag: fantasy

Akame ga kill

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★★★
“Game of Thrones meets Japanese anime humour”

“Akame ga kill” can be translated as “Akame kills by slashing” and yes, she and her comrades do that and much more! Though, strangely enough Akame is not really the main character of the series, but young teen boy Tatsumi. Honestly, I wonder why the title character is not at the center of a show. But who cares as long as the show is good? And there is certainly no shortage of action heroines to be found therein.

Let’s start with the plot of this fantasy anime series from 2014. Young Tatsumi (Saitô) comes into the capital of the Empire. Hoping to work his way up the  ranks in the army, and send earnings back to his poor village, he’s quickly disillusioned when he’s tricked out of his money. A wealthy girl and her family offers him shelter, but in the night the infamous rebel group “Night Raid” attacks and kills all of the inhabitants of the house. They give Tatsumi a choice: join them, or die! Tatsumi is hesitant, until they show him that the two friends with whom he started out from his village, were tortured and slain by rich perverts for pleasure.

The truth of the country is then revealed. The young king is manipulated by an evil advisor, and the government is corrupt and consists of a rich elite who exploit the poor by taxes or by torturing them. Night Raid is a group of people, mostly unknown to the authorities, who want to overthrow the government. The advantage the group have is possession of so-called “Imperial Arms”, magical weapons that can do wonders. Each has its own special ability, and can typically be used only by a carrier to whom it responds emotionally. Unfortunately, their opponents also have these kind of weaponry. They are a newly formed group of the Empire called the “Jaegers” (“Jäger” is the German word for “hunter(s)”), under the leadership of the gruesome General Esdeath.

Let battle commence! For Akame ga kill is essentially a Battle Royale-esque anime version of Game of Thrones – though with every one of the main characters carrying Imperial Arms, all parties have an equal chance. And in common with Thrones, there are a lot of strong female characters on both sides, to the extent that they largely overshadow the male characters.

On the side of the rebels, you’ll find the thief Leone (Asakawa) who can turn into a feline beast with incredible regeneration abilities; the pink-haired Mine who wields a very big gun, triggered by the power of her own emotions; the socially awkward Sheele who uses giant scissors (it’s not as ridiculous as it sounds); and a restrained assassin, the title-giving Akame (Amamiya), as well as two male characters. All of them guided by Najenda, a former general of the empire, with a mechanical arm and an eye patch. Later on, they are joined by Chelsea, a saucy girl who is able to turn into anyone from a little cat to a two-metre man thanks to her magical make-up. Don’t ask, just go with it…

The other side responds, among the male characters, with fanatic guard Seryu Ubiquitous, who plays judge and hang(wo)man in one, and is probably the least likable character of the show. She owns a little magical dog that can become a giant beast, eat opponents and turn her body members into weapons. Then there’s Kurome, the little sister of Akame, who can command up to six dead people to do her bidding. And all of them are led by the sadistic General Esdeath. Imagine Elsa from Frozen having grown up to become a Nazi with very big… ahem… eyes… In the last quarter, also introduced are the so-called Rakshasa demons who have no magical weapons, but are specially trained assassins, although they don’t get any backstory.

There are a lot of fights between the characters on these two sides. The series follows the GoT model of killing off main characters one by one, be they good or bad; you start wondering if any one will still be alive for the final fights. But rest assured, there will be some, Surprisingly – attention: spoiler – Tatsumi is not the big winner in the end, despite being the center of the story. Obviously the writers of the show eventually remembered that the show’s title had Akame in it, so the big final duel is fought between Akame and General Esdeath.

Though… young Tatsumi is really favoured by the ladies, it has to be said: While feline Leone hardly made any effort to conceal that she had the hots for him, also Mine fell in love with him, clumsy Sheele connected with him, Akame seems to be touched by him, Najenda liked him and even the otherwise cold-hearted General Esdeath decided, after just having a glimpse, that she was in love with him. Cut to her half-naked with him in her bedroom!

The big problem I have with this series is that it is morally very dubious. Both sides kill with a similar lack of mercy, and don’t really care if you are just a normal guy without their powers. If you are on the wrong side, you basically deserve to die. It reminds me of something my chemistry teacher once jokingly said: “I cannot see any difference between right- and left-wing radicals because they don’t show any difference in the way they react!” [Jim: Ah, GirlsWithGuns.org. Come for the girls with guns, stay for the chemistry jokes!]

In my judgement, “Night Raid” don’t come off as better than the “Jaegers”. Everyone seems just too eager to kill the other side. Even sisters Akame and Kurome think it’s necessary to kill the other despite their family love. General Esdeath commands their squad, if they should come across Tatsume, to capture him alive – as long as it is possible, because the mission comes first. Their motivations – justice (or what Seryu thinks justice is), revenge, loyalty to the empire – may differ but their methods do not. And I have to say, I couldn’t avoid the impression that the series enjoyed showing the graphic violence happening to all the characters, a little bit too much.

Honestly, I do have a big problem identifying with any of the dramatis personae. Their morality is up for grabs; even Tatsumi is too ready to kill those he doesn’t know to “free the people”. Actually, I don’t see the average Joe or Jane suffering very much from the “evil” regime. The normal people in the cities or at the market seem mainly to go about their business; I don’t hear them complaining about supression or the excessive taxes.

In the end, I was left with the impression we witnessed a feud between two powerful groups. who just fight for power. Equally distracting, the “evil guys” are depicted with some sympathy; in Wave, the Jaegers have a character that’s essentially their Tatsumi. Good or bad, the survivors always mourn the friends and comrades they lose in battle, and some on the “wrong” side even survive to build a better world. I guess my issue is, none of the characters ever question what they are doing. Yes, they may regret losing people and admit that they are killers. But they always seem to think that the purpose justifies the means – an attitude with which I have a basic philosophical problem.

Also, the combination of Game of Thrones grimdark and goriness with awkward Japanese anime humour does not really go well together IMHO. It’s really up to you if you can live with quirky character behaviour, in the midst of a dark and serious fantasy setting. The ending must rank among the most down-beat endings of any anime series. The reason may be due to another parallel with Game of Thrones: the studio ran out of the manga to turn into anime episodes, and had to invent its own ending.

So, a fan of the story can decide between two different ones.  Spoilers. The manga eventually had Tatsumi marrying Mine with whom he was – to quote Shakespeare – in “a merry war” and had two babies with her. The anime ends with him dying in battle, in the arms of Akame. She fights Esdeath, who then encloses herself, to die with her beloved Tatsumi in an ice block that she shatters. The choice is yours. But after the final end title, is a little postscript to shows Akame will continue her assassin work among the lawless, quite probably the last survivor of “Night Raid” and this story.

Dir: Tomoki Kobayashi
Star (voice): Sora Amamiya. Sôma Saitô, Yu Asakawa, Risa Mizuno

Raya and the Last Dragon

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★★
“Pretty, but pretty problematic.”

It had been close to five years since I saw my last Disney animated feature (Finding Dory, should you be interested). But the trailer for Raya got me intrigued. This seemed a genuinely kick-ass heroine, something absent from their output since Brave. Sadly, while I have to say the action is impressive and it looks good, these elements aren’t enough to overcome weaknesses, most obviously in the story department. It felt very much like it was written by a committee that had been handed a set of required talking points. And, lo, the end credits reveal the story was by eight different people, with four directors. I’m just glad I did not pay the House of Mouse’s $29.99 fee, or my disappointment would probably turn into annoyance. 

It’s set in the fictional country of Kumandra, a world inspired by various Southeast Asian cultures. [This hasn’t stopped Disney from being the target of PC critics, e.g. for casting voice actors outside that region… yeah, as inhabitants of a fictional country. When you start feeding  the woke monster, never expect its appetite to be satisfied] Aided by dragons, Kumandra had lived in peace until attacked by the Drune, evil spirits that turn their victims to stone. They are eventually defeated, but at the cost of the dragons, and the land fractures into five separate countries. 500 years later, the bickering territories fight for control of the orb containing the dragons’ magic. It’s broken in the struggle and the Drune return. It’s up to orb guardian, Raya (Tran) to reassemble the pieces, with the help of final surviving dragon, Sisu (Awkwafina).

A straightforward quest would have been perfectly fine, the heroine facing an escalating series of exciting challenges as she retrieves each fragment. But the film instead dumps so much extra on top, that this actual core becomes almost irrelevant. In many cases, recovering a fragment is super easy, barely an inconvenience, because the film has to hurry back to all the other things on its to-do list. For example, it’s considerably more interested in promoting a “one world” ethos, in which the countries must be made to unite. There’s no room here for alternative opinions, such as the possibility that, after five centuries of independence, they have their own cultural identities and might not necessarily be best served by forced amalgamation, at the point of a dragon. 

It also has to handle too many supporting characters. Things are fine early on, when it’s just Raya and Sisu. They have a relationship that’s fun to watch, even if it’s derivative of the Mulan/Mushu one. But the film throws in sidekick after sidekick. Boun, their 10-year-old boat captain (guess Disney has no issues with child labour…). Little Noi and her gang of monkeys. Tong, a Warrior from the Spine land. It’s all too much. On the other hand, there’s no real antagonist. Disney has had some great villains in the past, from Cruella de Vil to Scar. But here the Drune don’t work at all, being nothing more than smokelike entities. You might as well try to make COVID-19 your bad guy.

Some may argue a case for Namaari (Chan), a princess from the Fang tribe, whose deceit of Raya leads to the shattering of the orb. However, it seemed painfully obvious. almost from the get-go, that there was eventually going to be a face turn in her future. That became particularly clear after she started questioning her mother (Sandra Oh). However, I think it was fairly apparent, simply by her character design. From the haircut to her clothes, Namaari  could not have been more LGBTQIA+ friendly if they’d given her Birkenstocks and a box-set of The L Word. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but Woke Disney is never going to have a genuine villain who looks so utterly gay.

Positives? As mentioned, there’s a rich visual style, and the animation is incredibly fluid. The action scenes are particularly well-done, not least the battles between Namaari and Raya. Animated fights often lack impact; that certainly isn’t the case here. In particular, the artists take advantage of the ability to make things quicker than humans could possibly be, without it ever seeming like the film has been sped-up. Some of the jokes work well, with Awkwafina’s comic timing particularly good. There were moments when Sisu reminded me of Dory, in her scatterbrained nature, and there are few higher compliments I can offer than that.

Yet the impact diminished the longer it went on, with every moral lecture and additional character thrown into the mix. The ending is clearly intended to be some kind of stirring emotional climax, yet left me entirely cold, perhaps because there’s no real threat. We’re told at the start that when the Drune were defeated, the people they petrified return to life. So even seeing Raya turn to stone seems, again, barely a temporary inconvenience. Still, at least there were no crappy songs until the end credits. I guess that’s something for which I should be grateful.

Dir: Don Hall, Carlos López Estrada, Paul Briggs, John Ripa 
Star (voice): Kelly Marie Tran, Awkwafina, Gemma Chan, Izaac Wang

Monster Hunter

  By

★★★
“Incoming annoyed video-game geeks in 3…”

To be 100% clear, I have never played the video-game on which this movie is based. I honestly could not tell you anything about it. I suspect – and I am going out on a limb here – that it probably involves hunting monsters. That’s all I’ve got. This is probably both a benefit and a detriment to my appreciation of this film. I have absolutely nothing against which to compare it, and so went in with no expectations of how this “should” look or behave. On the other hand, I was left feeling as if some prior knowledge might have helped me get a better idea of what’s going on. Because beyond the broadest of broad strokes, I couldn’t tell you. Fortunately, I do not feel this significantly impacted the entertainment value it provided.

Basically, we have Captain Natalie Artemis (Jovovich) and the rest of her UN patrol, out in the middle of the desert, looking for a previously lost platoon. A massive sandstorm engulfs them, spitting them out into another world, populated largely by large, extremely carnivorous critters. Before you can say “No time to mourn,” Artemis is the sole survivor, and is rescued by Hunter (Jaa), who has managed to survive in the inhospitable terrain, since falling off a ship or something. Despite a lack of common language, the pair team up with the aim being to get Artemis back to the gateway through which she entered this parallel universe. The Admiral (Perlman), leader of a group of other hunters, also shows up, because….

Yeah, I suspect I am supposed to know who there people, monsters and things are – if you don’t, do not expect the script to provide much help. That said, this is absolutely the kind of film I can see myself clicking into whenever it’s on cable, on the basis of there being something cool and/or spectacular happening every five minutes, like clockwork. The sheer scale is where this is at its most effective, with the camera pulled back a really long way, showing the audience just how gigantic the monsters here are, and with the humans reduced to tiny specks – typically high-tailing it in the opposite direction. As a glorious rush of spectacle, it’s very impressive.

As a vehicle for Mrs. Anderson, it’s a bit less successful, simply because she is too often reduced to the edge of the frame. [She does, however, fare a bit better than Jaa, whom you would not know is one of the world’s best cinematic martial artists, between the editing and the staging.] As in the Resident Evil films, her character was created wholesale for the movie, and I imagine that will no doubt trigger the gamers. For obvious reasons, I’m entirely unconcerned, and an quite happy to continue endorsing the Anderson family’s efforts. Please continue to make big, dumb SF/horror flicks in which the missus gets to run around and beat things up, while becoming increasingly smudged.

Dir: Paul W. S. Anderson
Star: Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa, Ron Perlman, Tip Harris

Valhalla Online by Kevin McLaughlin

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

I could have sworn this isn’t the first entry in the LitRPG genre I’d reviewed, but I’m damned if I can find the previous one. So, just to be safe, I’m going to explain what LitRPG is: apologies if this is unnecessary! Basically, it takes the structure of role-playing games (RPGs) – things like character levels, ability scores, etc – and applies them onto a story structure. Obviously, the overlap between RPGs and books has been a long one: Dungeons & Dragons is heavily influenced by the work of Tolkein. But it has been mostly one-way traffic. The LitRPG genre sends things back the other way, producing novels that adopt the practices of the games.

Quite how this is managed, is up to the author. Here, the heroine is Samantha, a military police officer who wakes to find herself part of Valhalla Online. This is a fantasy-based online RPG, which was intended to act as a virtual repository for the personalities of the deceased, granting them eternal life. Which comes as a shock to Sam, because she never signed up for this very expensive process. However, for good reason, the “virtual dead” are extremely limited in their ability to communicate with the outside world. Only those who complete the entire game are allowed to do so. This means Sam will first have to figure out how to rack up a high score, in order to begin finding out how she got here and what’s going on. Her army training might help. But even West Point didn’t prepare her for dealing with magic spells and storming castles.

It’s a quick and light read, one which contains few surprises at all. We don’t learn much about Sam’s life before Valhalla Online, and I’m not even sure we even discover what she looked like in the real world. All we’re told is that in-game, “Her hair seemed to be about the same color. Her skin tone looked familiar to her.” The cover tells you more than the entire novel. It would probably help to be loosely familiar with at least the concept of RPGs, though McLaughlin does a decent job of explaining the game mechanics, without getting bogged down in it.

The main issue is that death literally has no sting here. If Sam suffers a mortal wound, she just gets sent back to a set location. She may lose some of her equipment, and suffer a bit of psychic shock, but that’s about it, despite the author’s efforts to put over some mental trauma. It’s accurate enough as a computer game goes, but shows that what works there doesn’t necessarily transfer to other media. This lacking of a sense of mortality may partly be why Roger Ebert said in 2010 that computer games can never be art. But that aside, this keeps moving forward at a brisk pace, and for obvious reasons, the reader learns about Valhalla alongside Sam, which makes for a smoothly entertaining experience. It’s more or less standard hack and slash, though towards the end, she subverts things nicely by recruiting a pack of enemy kobolds (think: mini-orcs) to her side. Pretty sure that wasn’t in the tutorial…

The ending is little more than a save point, though it does come after a neat bit of loot sniping. Again, the lack of mortality applies as much to Sam’s enemies as to her; there’s little sense of triumph when the villain will simply re-spawn tomorrow. I finished the first volume having been pleasantly entertained, just not much more. I feel I probably don’t need to buy the remaining entries, because I suspect I can largely figure out how things are going to progress in them. There’s just not enough replay value to be found here.

Author: Kevin McLaughlin
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 4 in the Valhalla Online series.

Touch of Iron, by Timandra Whitecastle

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

Owen and Noraya Smith are twins, in a world where such siblings are looked upon as cursed. Brought up as charcoal burners, they leave their village so Nora can avoid an arranged and unwanted marriage, and have the forture – whether good- or ill- remains to be decided – quickly to encounter the party of Prince Basham. He is scouring the country in search of a magical artifact called the Living Blade, which will grants its wielder great power. Assisting him is the half-wight Telen Diaz, a pilgrim/fighter. Owen joins the party, hoping to become a pilgrim himself; Nora decides to return home, but that option is removed from her as the village has been taken over by bandits. Fortunately, Diaz has followed her and is able to lend assistance when necessary. Nora eventually becomes his student in the fighting arts, and they all head to the temple/brothel of Shinar where the immortal seer Suranna can provide insight to the blade’s location. But the cost of her information is perilously high, since she has plans for both Nora and Diaz.

I believe this is what’s called “grimdark” fantasy fiction, which is basically as it sounds: in its simplest terms, think Game of Thrones rather than Lord of the Rings. I’ve no problem with the resulting “mature” content. Much of it here does seem necessary to the plot, though the concept of a vast, hidden city in the middle of nowhere that’s a gigantic, all-encompassing pleasure palace does pose certain logistical queries. There was also something slightly creepy about teenage Nora increasingly crushing hard on eighty-seven-year old Diaz – even if half-wights, like half-elves, age very well. I have a couple of other nitpicks. An almost entirely untrained Nora is capable of going all ninja and taking out an entire platoon of brigands. And there’s an assault on the city that comes out of nowhere, and whose purpose and participants both seem ill-defined.

With the negatives out of the way, on the positive side, I really liked Nora. She has a very sharp character arc over the course of the novel, but always seems to have been a bit of a bad-ass, even as a charcoal burner. It’s clear there’s a very significant future in front of her, and I sense she and Suranna will end up facing off down the road. I appreciated the way the heroine largely doesn’t care about the Living Blade; such apathy is pleasantly refreshing, though I suspect that opinion is going to change before long. Whitecastle has a good eye for world-building as well, giving the reader enough of an impression, without getting bogged down in too many details. It appears future volumes may concentrate more on Diaz. As I found him about the least interesting of the major characters, that will stop me shelling out for more. Still, as a one-off this made for an entertaining enough read, though I felt the first half, before they arrived at Shinar, was stronger and more interesting.

Author: Timandra Whitecastle
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 3 in the Living Blade series.

Crossfire, by Andrea Domanski

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

This is less a book than a hodge-podge of elements cobbled together from other sources. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Wonder Woman are the most obvious influences, but you can also throw in some X Men and Greek mythology. Hell, the bad guy even uses the Force choke, as popularized by Mr. D. Vader. What’s missing is mostly originality. Though that’s not all.

Mirissa Colson has always been unusual, blessed with remarkable physical abilities – her “respiratory and vascular systems are extraordinarily efficient.” Even though her mother left their family over a decade ago, she has been lovingly nurtured by her ex-military father, Steve, and trained in martial arts, shooting, and other skills On her eighteenth birthday, a package arrives from her mother and Mirissa discovers her true legacy and destiny. She’s an Amazon, who are the usual bunch of warrior women from history. However, an ancient victory over worshippers of Ares peeved the god. He got the ruler of the underworld, Hades, to create the Kakodaemons as enemies who’d fight the Amazons. They’re basically vampires, and the two sides have been at war ever since. It’s time for Mirissa to join her ancestors in that fight, under the tutelage of her watcher, Giles – sorry: I mean guardian, Greco.

But, wait! There’s more! Specifically, a demigod named Daedric, who has brought all the creatures of darkness together and is preparing to unleash his final solution against humanity. Meanwhile, the “Omega Group” has been formed to rally all those on the side of light. And unfortunately for Daedric, there’s a prophecy: “The Queen of the Amazons has a daughter that is destined to disrupt your plan. Her powers will be great, and if you don’t stop her, she will stop you.” No prizes for guessing who that is, and it’s why Mom vanished, to stop Mirissa from being discovered. Now, everything is coming into place, and it’s up to Mirissa to master her almost endless list of powers (including but not limited to: telekinesis, sensory expansion, the ability to control the elements and, by the end, teleportation) in order to take on Daedric.

Except, she never really does. She’s supposed to have all these talents, yet spends most of the story wrapped in bubble-wrap, being protected from danger. It’s an awkward contradiction to her being the all-powerful child of prophecy, and to be frank, Daedric comes over as more than a bit crap. He’s capable of being held and rendered harmless by a force-field projected by one of the Omega Group’s minions – the same force-field Marissa can tear through like it was tissue paper. The structure is also needlessly confusing. For example, the first seven chapters take place at three different points in time, beginning by bouncing between Marissa’s 19th birthday and a year previously, and then goes back to 12 years previously, when her mother was still around.

The main problem though, is a complete failure to establish Mirissa as a character. I finished the book less than 24 hours ago, and I’m damned if I can remember a single defining aspect of her personality. She feels less like a person, than a piece that gets moved around the board between various plot points. There’s little or nothing here, in story or persona, to make me want to go any further.

Author: Andrea Domanski
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 6 in the Omega Group series.

Alice, by Joseph Delaney

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

I previously reviewed the ninth volume in the Wardstone Chronicles series, I am Grimalkin, and site contributor Dieter was kind enough to send me a copy of this, the 12th installment. It’s obviously a bit odd to be so selective about reading and reviewing a series, but neither Grimalkin nor Alice are the main character, and by all accounts, the other volumes don’t qualify. I probably should read all the others, to be completely fair in my assessment here… But then I look at my pile of unread books, which even though it’s largely virtual, is threatening to declare independence and become its own country. So, file that under “some day”.

Things have moved on a bit since my last encounter. The Fiend – basically, the Devil – is still separated from his head, and the heroes and heroines are seeking for the necessary artifacts that will allow him to be disposed of permanently. In particular, they have two of the three weapons necessary. However, the third, the Dolorous Blade, is not on Earth. To find it, someone will need to descend into the realm of the dead knows as the Dark, journey across its many territories to the Fiend’s domain, where the relic is hidden under his throne. That someone is powerful witch, Alice Deane. But there are a lot of the deceased in the Dark who are very keen to reacquaint themselves with her, because Alice is responsible for them being there…

Despite my intermittent knowledge of the series, I didn’t find that was a problem at all. The book does a good job of bringing the reader up to speed with recent events, and Grimalkin provided sufficient background on the world and situation, that I didn’t feel lost. A fair bit of the book is also told in flashback, to Alice’s time as an apprentice, somewhat unwillingly, to the witch Bony Lizzie, telling the story of how she broke free and discovered her true potential. These are intercut with her progression through the Dark, which is an evocatively unpleasant place, both in decor and inhabitants. Fortunately, she has help there, in the shape of Grimalkin’s apprentice assassin, Thorne, though her loyalties are uncertain.

While an enjoyable and fast-paced read, one issue I had was the lack of any real escalation. When they finally arrive in the throne-room, what they face hardly feels like the final boss it should be. But my main complaint came at the end, when it appears – pending the 13th and final volume – that the entire exercise proved unnecessary. Alice seems to have risked her life and soul for no real purpose. If I’d been her, I would have been more than a bit miffed at getting what’s not much more than a “Thanks, but we’re going in another direction” for her efforts. On that basis, this is probably a book where you should probably enjoy a gruesome and chilling journey, instead of the rather underwhelming final destination.

Author: Joseph Delaney
Publisher: Greenwillow Books, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
a.k.a. The Last Apprentice: I Am Alice
12 of 13 in the Wardstone Chronicles series.

Warrior Nun

  By

★★
“Nun-descript.”

There’s probably a decent movie in here. An interesting premise, occupying the nexus where religion and science cross, and some very effective hand-to-hand action sequences, would potentially have made for a decent 90 minutes of fun. The problem is, this actually runs for 10 x forty-minute episodes, and the result is stuffed so full of padding, that it could be used as a sofa. The nuns of the title are members of the Order of the Cruciform Sword, a group which has been fighting demonic entities for centuries. Chief among them is the bearer of the Halo, a divine relic which bestows its owner with great powers, including rapid healing and the ability to phase through solid objects.

When the current bearer of the Halo is killed in battle, it is embedded into another host. This is the corpse of Ava (Silva), a quadriplegic orphan who just happens to be in the wrong (or right, depending on your point of view) place at the wrong (or right, again) time. The Halo resurrects Ava and fixes her up, physically; but she’s certainly not mentally or spiritually prepared initially to become a nun and join the sisters of the OCS. However, her wants and needs are secondary to those of the Catholic Church, and there’s also high-tech company ARQ-Tech. Its CEO, Jillian Salvius. has built a trans-dimensional portal, using “divinium”, a mystical substance that can also be used to create weapons and armour for use by the OCS.

The above isn’t the problem. The issue is all the other stuff which gets added to it. For example, after her resurrection, Ava ends up becoming part of some kind of upper-class squatters’ movement, who jet-set around Europe, staying in unoccupied houses. I have no clue what the purpose of this was supposed to be. And, worse, neither does the show. The young, homeless hipsters basically vanish without trace in the second half, as if the writers realized it was a bad idea to begin with. Similarly, there’s an entire episode in which Ava and OCS colleague Shotgun Mary faff around the Spanish countryside for the duration. Really, after episode 1, you could skip the next five, while we go through the whole “reluctant heroine” thing we’ve seen all too often before.

We could have done with much less of all that, and more… Oh, I dunno: fighting demons, maybe? The action aspects generally seem underplayed, until a final mission where Ava and a small team break into the vaults beneath the Vatican, seeking a relic that… Well, let’s just say, doesn’t turn out to be quite what they expected. But until this gets under way, you might as well have it on in the background, and only pay attention when you hear the sound of fighting [here’s an example of the impressive quality I mean there]. And do not expect anything like a tidy ending either, the show instead delivering the most brutally abrupt of cliffhangers. But it probably says a lot that my reaction to it was mostly apathy.

Creator: Simon Barry
Star:  Alba Baptista, Toya Turner, Thekla Reuten, Lorena Andrea

Curiouser and Curiouser by Melanie Karsak

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

If you thought “Alice in Wonderland was okay, but it really needed more air-ships,” then this book is for you. It’s a steampunk take on Lewis Carroll’s classic tale, set in an alternate universe version of Victorian London. Specifically, 1851, when the renowned Great Exhibition took place in Hyde Park. Though it doesn’t actually feel particularly “alternate”;  this angle lives mostly in its trappings, such as people using air-ships to get around, or clockwork cats, rather than in elements necessary to the plot. But that’s okay, because at its core, the story is strong enough to stand on its own.

The heroine is Alice Lewis, an orphan who, along with her sister Bess, was rescued from the workhouse and brought up by the Jabberwocky, one of the leaders of London’s underworld. She fell in love with William, another of the Jabberwocky’s employees, but Alice walked away from both the criminal life and William, after being morally unable to handle the actions it required from her. But several years later, she gets dragged back in, and has to re-unite with William on a job to steal the famous (and cursed) diamond, the Koh-i-Noor, which belongs to Queen Victoria, from the Great Exhibition. It’s the only way William can pay off a debt to the occultist known as the “Queen of Hearts,” who intends to use the Koh-i-Noor in a ritual to make her immortal. And that’s far from the creepiest thing about the Queen, since her role-model is Countess Bathory.

Karsak does particularly well with her world-building, to the extent that this feels like an established universe. The timeline bounces back and forth, between the present and the various incidents which brought Alice to where she is. It’s an approach which could easily be disruptive, but I felt this was admirably pulled off, and balanced nicely. I was, however, a bit disappointed that much of the book seems to be directed towards a final-act heist, to which I was quite looking forward. Only, the plot makes a left-turn in the later stages, which renders the heist superfluous. This sends the book onto somewhat thin ice in terms of believability on a couple of aspects, and an alternate method of resolution might have worked better.

All told though, this is a fun insight into a world that is both familiar and strange, with both heroine and villainess being strongly characterized and memorable. You probably need to be at least somewhat aware of the works of Lewis Carroll – otherwise some of the terms might seem more like unpleasant STDs (“I caught a bad dose of Bandersnatch”). But Alice in Wonderland is deeply enough ingrained into the collective unconscious that this isn’t likely a major issue for most potential readers. I look forward to the Guillermo del Toro adaptation in due course. Well, we can dream, can’t we?

Author: Melanie Karsak
Publisher: Clockpunk Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 4 in the Steampunk Fairy Tales series.

Paradise Hills

  By

★★★½
“A small-scale beauty.”

And there I was, thinking Maleficent: Mistress of Evil would be the prettiest picture I saw in all of 2020. There’s a new champion, and whoever assembled the look of this one should have been honoured at the Oscars. Shot in Barcelona and the Canary Islands, it beats Maleficent by almost entirely avoiding CGI, in lieu of stunning locations such as the former residence of sculptor Xavier Corberó: “a mazelike estate constructed from cement that features nine connected structures and 300 arches.” That quote comes from a feature in Architecture Digest, which is not something every film gets, shall we say. And it deserves one, for the entirety of this is a 95-minute coffee-table book. Even when the plot stumbles, you can wallow in a remarkable visual style, achieved for the relative pittance of $10 million.

That plot concerns Uma (Roberts), who has just refused the hand in marriage of the young man chosen by her family. She is sent off to the titular establishment, on a remote island, to be “re-educated” into a more pliable form, under the guidance of The Duchess (Jovovich). Uma meets others going through the same treatment for various reasons, but plots to escape, with the help of the one she truly loves. Only for this to be derailed when the true nature of the “re-education” is revealed, explaining why Paradise Hills has a 100% success rate with its patients, despite a very low-key approach, mostly consisting of yoga. Yet, it turns out to be an method which can perhaps be leveraged against those who seek to control Uma.

As a modern-day fairy-tale, it works quite nicely, driven particularly by the visual style which feels like the dream of a mad interior designer. However, it’s not as clever as it thinks it is, and occasionally descends into the painfully obvious, such as The Duchess clipping thorns off roses. ‘Cos the roses represent the young women, being shorn of their individuality and essence, y’see? Yeah, I rolled my eyes a bit at that. You also wonder why they bother with flashy stuff like cranking Uma up to the roof on a carousel pony, in order to show her holograms of her intended. It seems entirely unnecessary, given the… considerably more physical, shall we say, nature of Paradise Hills’ true solution.

But it’s fun to watch Jovovich in a role which doesn’t require her to kick ass – except, perhaps of the psychological kind. For she still exudes menace, even when being extremely polite, or perhaps due to this. Managing to make “You’re just a prickly little pear” into a dire threat is no small feat. While Roberts is decent enough, the rest of the supporting cast of inmates (González, Macdonald and the ever-clunkily named Awkwafina) seem largely redundant. We’re never given much reason to care about their characters, and I found the film achieved greater impact when it stayed focused on Uma. But given the beauty on display, I’m largely prepared to forgive its other flaws.

Dir: Alice Waddington
Star: Emma Roberts, Milla Jovovich, Eiza González, Danielle Macdonald