Tag: SF

Haphead

  By

★½
“Virtually worthless.haphead“

A good idea goes entirely to waste in this woefully-executed cyberpunk webseries, with the episodes now combined back into something more or less feature-length. The heroine is Maisie (White), who gets an entry-level job working in an electronics factory belonging to the murky Asteri*k corporation. They’re making “haptic” cables which allow computers to interface directly with the brain; the potential in this idea is massive, but here, it’s explored only in a few scenes of Maisie playing a VR game in which she controls a rabbit with ninja skills. There’s some kind of rumblings that the skills learned stick in your brain, so as you become good at fighting in the virtual world, you become good in the real world. Except, this doesn’t go anywhere either – although this is probably wise, considering White’s fighting abilities, charitably described as wobbly. Instead, the film diverts in its second half into her investigation of the mysterious death of her father (Strauss), a security guard who took an unwanted promotion so she wouldn’t have to work in the factory, only to be killed by a “haphead”. Maisie investigates this, and soon discovers things are not quite what they seemed.

The problems here mostly stem from the script which comes up with any number of initially interesting concepts, including the positive and negative uses of technology, through corrupt practices of big business… and then discards them without doing anything significantly more than bringing them up (never mind even scratching the surface), instead scurrying on to the next one. The end result is less a frothy cybernetic souffle, and more a leaden lump of undercooked plot elements strapped together with old USB cables, like the parkour which shows up for no apparent reason, other than someone thought it would be cool. Or, equally likely, the film-makers’ mates wanted to be in the film.

You don’t even need big-budgets or incredible effects to do something like this justice. The makers could, and should, have learned a great deal from something like David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, which covered a fair amount of the same ground, but did so with a script which truly explored the possibilities of virtual reality – and saved a lot of money, because the VR world was very, very similar to our own one. Of course, no doubt it helped to have Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Willem Dafoe, etc. However, a low budget is no excuse for a bad script: indeed, the reverse is true, if your means are limited, you’d better be damn sure your script is engaging and well-written. Throwing a bunch of semi-“edgy” cyberpunk elements on top of a story painfully ill-suited to handle them, is not an acceptable substitute.

Dir: Tate Young
Star: Elysia White, David Strauss, Joanne Jansen, Kwame Kyei-Boateng

Son of the Morning, by Linda Howard

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

sonofthemorningTime travel! A smart, strong-inside heroine who learns to kick some butt! Secrets buried in long-lost documents! Medieval knights, and a castle in the Highlands! Action! Danger! Romance (sort of)! What more could one want for a great read? Well –quite a bit, actually, as my literary rating indicates. (To be fair, though, the book has genuine positive points, and my wife –we read it together as our “car book”– has stated that she’d give it four stars.)

The most obvious positive feature is main character Grace St. John. An intellectual, gentle, slightly overweight woman of about 30, who’s never been exposed to violence or significant hardship, in the first chapter she witnesses the sudden, brutal murders of both her husband and her brother, who are her only family and the center of her world. Framed for their killings and forced to flee for her life, with no warning and nothing but the clothes on her back and her laptop, she’s forced to learn to survive on the street, and off the grid. Driven by a determination to avenge her loved ones, take down the killer, and translate the documents that contain the mystery he’s willing to kill for, and needing to stay alive to do that, over time she believably transforms into a street-smart woman who can take care of herself, fight and use a gun if she has to. (And on a couple of occasions she does have to.) She’s a very well-drawn, admirable character that the reader readily likes and roots for.

All of the other major characters are also vivid and well-developed, including a really hateful villain. The plot is nicely constructed, in the main; some aspects are broadly predictable, but it also included a couple of major surprises I did not see coming. Howard writes well, for the most part; there are a lot of finely-turned phrases, touches of wry humor that balance the serious tone, and effective construction of scenes and evocation of atmosphere. (One reviewer complains about the time devoted to Grace’s paralyzing terror, right after the trauma of the killings, over crossing a street to use an ATM machine, and to her problem in finding a place to relieve herself; but to me this was a way of showing the situation she started from, in all its extreme difficulty, and gets us right inside of her head in the midst of it, with no sugarcoating.)

For me, though, the negatives were significant. A major one is the treatment of the Templar angle. Since the 1950s (beginning with a now-discredited hoax which any number of pundits and writers still pass on as fact) a pop-culture mythology has grown up around the Templars as guardians of Deep Dark Secrets that supposedly discredit Christianity. The classical version is that Christ didn’t die on the cross, but rather lived on to marry Mary Magdalene and sire the line that became the Merovingian royal family of France. Howard leaves out the Mary Magdalene-Merovingian scenario, but she creates her own wrinkles on the theme. Regardless of their beliefs about religion, readers with any grounding in serious historical or biblical studies will recognize this as the kind of thing that you might read in a supermarket tabloid. It’s not helped here by the fact that, even taking the book on its own terms, the Templars’ interpretation of the physical evidence that leads them to their supposed theological discoveries is so logically flawed and implausible as to be ludicrous. But this whole motif isn’t introduced until the penultimate chapter. (And on the other hand, Howard does take the existence of God seriously, and has a relatively high Christology; and Grace, in the same chapter, offers an excellent simple explanation of theodicy in terms of free will. So while many Christians will have problems with the book, it won’t please hardcore religion-phobic readers either.)

Howard’s writing background and credentials are rooted in the romance genre; and though the cover of this edition and the cover copy don’t clearly identify this book as a romance, it does embody some of the genre conventions. One of these is explicit sex –of course, not all romance novels feature this, but this one does, to a considerable degree. Except where crucial dialogue is embedded in these scenes, they can usually be skipped over by readers who don’t appreciate that sort of thing (so if you want detailed evaluation of those parts, you’re reading the wrong review!). But the problematic elements here go deeper; for a “romance” genre novelist, Howard can be singularly tone-deaf to what makes for real romance.

It’s no spoiler that Grace and medieval Templar knight Black Niall will be a couple, since the cover copy tells us so. Grace and Niall, during the course of the book, experience a cross-time psychological connection (at first, just in dreams) that allows them, at times, to experience each other’s voice and presence. This is never explained, and doesn’t really come across as credible. But it focuses strictly on intense sexual attraction; there’s very little if any element of getting to know each other as anything but sex objects. That continues when they meet in person. Given that Grace is portrayed as a person who takes sex seriously and has never been with any man but her husband, this comes across, as even she recognizes, as out of character. It isn’t really plausible either, and rather than making the relationship come across as a “love for all time,” as the cover copy bills it, it seems more like a heat period. I didn’t feel any kind of personal emotional connection between hero and heroine for most of the book. And while I respect Grace for her past scruples, the juxtaposition with Niall’s background of womanizing, and the unspoken implication that this somehow verifies his virility and desirability as a partner, tends IMO to reinforce a really unhealthy double standard for males and females.

A couple more quibbles are worth mentioning. Howard has done some historical research, shown by the array of apparently accurate factoids she can muster here and there. But it’s apparent that her research consisted of mining for factual snippets in areas where she realizes that she’s ignorant. She does not have a general warp-and-woof knowledge of the medieval world, and that allows her to make a few noticeable (to me, at least) errors. I was also frustrated with the plot device of a character being secretive without any good reason to be, simply to artificially exacerbate the conflict. So on balance, I did like the book; but it wasn’t the four or five-star read it could have been with different handling.

Note: There is some bad language here, including a number of f-words, which come mostly from the villain(s); but even some of the good characters cuss some.

Author: Linda Howard
Publisher: Pocket Books, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

On Basilisk Station, by David Weber

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Literary rating: ★★★★½
Kick-butt quotient: Depends on how you define it…

onbaskiliskThis series opener is one that was been on my radar for a long time, so I was delighted to finally read it last year! Although I’m a science fiction fan, I’m not generally attracted to military SF, which of course this is. But that’s mostly because my impression is that much of that sub-genre concentrates heavily on futuristic military hardware, to the neglect of the human element (and I think the human element is what good literature is all about). But that’s not a problem here. To be sure, there’s futuristic military hardware, and techno-babble (see below). But the human element, and a rousing tale of human adventure, is the core of the book.

Ever since junior high school, I’ve appreciated historical fiction about the British Navy in the age of sail; I like the ambiance, the ethos, and the action of the storylines. Weber’s a kindred spirit in this respect, and particularly a fan of C. S. Forester (to whom he dedicates this novel). The latter’s Horatio Hornblower series provides the inspiration for Weber’s series, and the identity of the initials of the respective protagonists is no coincidence. This has led some Hornblower fans to cry “Foul!” and “Rip-off!” I’m not joining in those cries, however. Yes, Weber has definitely brought something of the flavor of the earlier novels, set in the life of an ocean-going navy in the Napoleonic Wars, to this tale of a space-faring navy in the far future. Honor’s Manticore is a kingdom with an aristocracy and a political system reminiscent of Regency England (the author actually provides a plausible historical explanation for this!), while its rival, Haven, has affinities to revolutionary France. And Honor has heroic qualities in common with Hornblower, as well as her initials. But that’s where the parallels end. She’s her own person, not a Hornblower clone, and I did not see the plot as duplicating anything from the earlier series; it’s original. (Granted, I’ve only read one Hornblower novel.) What we have here, IMO, is an SF homage to Forester’s canon, not a plagiarized rip-off.

Of course, it’s an updated homage, most noticeably in that the all-male world of Hornblower’s navy has finally met the world of women’s liberation. Not only do we have a female protagonist; women in Manticore (which currently happens to have a ruling Queen) enjoy full role equality with men, can occupy positions of power, and serve in the space navy on an equal footing with males. Being an (equalitarian) feminist myself, that’s music to my ears! Moreover, I’m a long-standing admirer of strong, take-charge, combat-capable heroines, and that definitely describes Honor. She’s got the smarts, guts, determination and decisiveness to captain a warship; but more than that, she’s a person of integrity, ethics, loyalty, and moral courage. (Honor isn’t just her name; it’s a quality that defines her.) No, she’s not perfect (she’s got a temper, that she sometimes has to fight to control!); but she’s a woman you can respect and admire. Her “kick-butt quotient” above is ambiguous only because she doesn’t engage in direct or one-on-one combat here (although she’s a strong, solidly-built woman, and back in her naval academy days once defended herself against a would-be rapist, thrashing him soundly). But she does command a starship, with cool-headed resolution and skill, in lethal ship-to-ship combat.

Weber’s supporting cast is life-like as well. His plotting is good, carefully developed and well-paced, with real suspense that rises to nail-biting intensity at the climax. Likewise, his world-building is capable and vivid. Spot-on political commentary with real contemporary relevance is embedded naturally in the storyline; and in the tradition of heroic action adventure, the moral message here is one that’s supportive of virtue, duty, patriotism, and loyalty.

That’s not to say it’s an unflawed debut. As other reviewers have noted, Weber’s partial to the info-dump technique. There are a couple of long ones here. The first one explains Manticore’s political system, and at least has the merit of being interesting in its own right. The second attempts to explain the mechanics of FTL space travel and hyper-space currents, as they work in the author’s imaginary view of the galaxy, in such a way as to provide a veneer of hard science. How valid any of this is (even by the standards of modern quantum theory, which I don’t understand or necessarily even fully accept!) I don’t know, and don’t care; and the excursion through it left me slightly glassy-eyed. I don’t have to have a solid basis in known science for my SF, so I’d have been happy with much less explanation –just a basic indication of what the spaceships can or can’t do. (If he wanted to include all this techno-babble, IMO, Weber would have been better off to put it in an appendix, as he does with his extensive discussion of Manticorean chronology –though my copy is missing a page of this. I didn’t miss it!)

There’s also a significant amount of profanity and obscenity here (though not from Honor); mostly from villains or military types under severe stress. (Readers who dislike extremely grisly violence should be warned that they’ll find some of that here, too!) But despite these factors, this was easily a four-and-a-half star read for me!

Author: David Weber
Publisher: Baen Books, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book. But the first two volumes, this and Honor of the Queen, are actually for free from the publisher, in electronic formats.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Mutant World

  By

★½
“Well, it’s no Sharknado 2. It’s not even Sharknado 3.”

mutantworldThis SyFy original movie takes place mostly after an “Earth killer”-sized meteor has struck the Eastern seaboard of the United States. A group of Doomsday preppers, with slightly more warning than most, are able to take shelter inside their refuge, a former missile silo, and settle down to wait out the apocalypse going on above ground. 10 years later, they’re forced to send a small group back up to the surface as the result of damage to their solar panels. Leading that patrol is Melissa King (Deveaux), whose father Marcus (Kim Coates, whom you will recognize if you’re a Sons of Anarchy fan) was the leader of the group, but was trapped outside their sanctuary when the meteor hit. The patrol discovers that the radiation resulting from the impact has wiped out most of humanity – but the survivors have been mutated by it, and turned into thoroughly unpleasant monsters. Exploring further, they find what appears to be sanctuary, populated by other survivors, only to discover that when the sun goes down, they too are no longer human. Fortunately for them, assistance is at hand in the former of the Preacher (Ashanti), a motorcycle riding, warrior-priestess, who appears to be in contact with the actual remnants of mankind.

Oh, dear. The potential is here, but is buried deeper than a nuclear fallout shelter, because there is hardly any aspect that is not badly botched, right from the start: Coates, the only real “name” in the cast, is barely in the film, the kind of bait-and-switch which is rarely a good sign. The script is just terrible: what’s supposed to be a quick mission up top to fix the power, somehow spirals off into a jolly road-trip, with no apparent regard for the people back in the bunker. While the mutants’ glowing green eyes are kinda cool, that is about as far as both the imagination and the budget goes; there’s no explanation provided either, for why some people are totally mutated, some are only mutated at night (!), and others, like the Preacher, are apparently entirely untroubled by mutantism, despite wearing no more protection than a long trench-coat. And don’t even get me started on Ashanti’s performance, which is about as unconvincing as you’d expect from a singer-slash-dancer-slash-whatever.

The film is clearly trying to establish Melissa’s credentials as some kind of a bad-ass, judging by the poorly-choreographed fight she has with the shelter leader, before heading up top [also worth noting: no-one appears to have aged or been changed in the slightest by the passage of a decade, whether underground or on the surface]. Outside of very intermittent moments, it doesn’t work, though in comparison to Ashanti, Coates is positively an Oscar-winner. I did somewhat appreciate the element of role-reversal found here, with the most bad-ass roles given to the actresses. However, good intentions are never enough to overcome execution as horribly flawed as we see here. By the end, I was hoping for another meteor strike, to put both the characters and the viewers out of our mutual misery.

Dir: David Winning
Star: Holly Deveaux, Ashanti, Amber Marshall, Jason Cermak

Magic Bites, by Ilona Andrews

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

magicbites“Ilona Andrews” is the pen name of a husband-and-wife author team; her first name really is Ilona. (There’s some confusion about his; “About the Authors” in the edition I read gives it as Andrew, but a comment in the extra material uses Gordon, as does the author page on Goodreads. Possibly Andrew Gordon?) They’ve attained considerable success with their urban fantasy Kate Daniels series. Since I’m a fan of both supernatural fiction and strong, kick-butt heroines, it isn’t surprising that the series had been on my radar for a long time before I read this opening volume, as a buddy read with a friend. It didn’t disappoint!

Our female co-author here is Russian-born, a fact reflected in our fictional heroine’s upbringing. An orphan, Kate was raised by a now-deceased Russian foster father, who named her (Kate is short for Ekaterina, and he made up “Daniels”). Ilona probably provides the authorial pair’s knowledge of Russian folklore, which figures prominently in both this novel and the bonus story. (That’s a plus for me, as it’s an area of folklore I know little about, and enjoy learning more; the authors also draw on a wide range of mythologies in developing the series.) Our setting here is Atlanta, and though the writers currently live in Austin, TX, their handling of Atlanta geography seems assured enough to suggest first-hand knowledge or very good research. (Though I might be easy to fool on that score, since I’ve never been to Atlanta myself!)

To be sure, this isn’t the early 21st-century Atlanta we know. The 24-year-old Kate lives in the mid-21st-century, and grew up in a world that for decades has been transformed by a phenomenon called the Shift. Unpredictable, periodic surges of magic flare through the world, temporarily knocking high technology out of service and bringing to life spells, wards, ley lines, and other assorted magical phenomena. A weakness of this book is that it doesn’t do much to explore the obvious intellectual, social and cultural changes this upheaval would have caused; they’re only hinted at. Another weakness is that the premise itself, although it’s certainly one of the most original in literature, isn’t entirely convincing (Kate’s suggested explanation isn’t plausible, IMO, but she only says it’s the prevailing theory, not that it’s a fact). But neither of these areas are central to the authors’ purpose. They simply want to set up a highly novel, ultra-dangerous and somewhat Balkanized world in which there’s plenty of scope for adventure for a mercenary like Kate. In that respect, they succeed admirably.

Kate’s something of a mystery woman; she’s close-mouthed about her heritage, but it includes some significant inborn magical ability. It’s not, however, anything that gives her invincible superhuman powers; she’s mortal, hurts and bleeds, and has to rely on her wits and physical conditioning in a fight, the same as any other human would. (She also has a magic sword, Slayer; but while it will do more damage to magic-imbued flesh than an ordinary sword would, it doesn’t wield itself –her actual sword skills are her own.) In a series, the key ingredient is a character(s) the reader likes enough to want to spend continuing time with. For me, Kate fits that bill. To be sure, she’s a rough-edged woman, something of a loner with authority issues and a tendency to be smart-mouthed; and while she’s not coarse, her vocabulary includes some pretty bad language at times. But for all that, she’s an intensely ethical person with a rock solid code of honor; if she needed to lay down her life to save a friend, or innocent people she doesn’t even know, she’d do it in a heartbeat, without whining or batting an eye (and she demonstrates that willingness here more than once). Though she doesn’t wear it on her sleeve, she also has a very real spirituality that might surprise some readers, and she’s not into casual sex. Like all of us, she’s a work under construction (and she grows some here).

Kate’s not the only well-drawn character here; the supporting cast, including a radically evil villain, are also vividly realized, with both virtues and foibles. (Were-lion Curran, Atlanta’s Beast Lord of the shapeshifters, for instance, is unquestionably a brave man and one with a deep sense of duty and responsibility to his Pack –but he’s also arrogant, and misguidedly convinced that he’s Nature’s gift to women.) The authors’ originality doesn’t end with the Shift; the factional landscape of their richly-drawn world includes a number of unique and intriguing features, like an unusual take on vampires –here, they’re mindless automatons, mentally dominated by a faction of mysterious and sinister necromancers.

In some ways, the plot is reminiscent of the old pulp noir detective novels, with magic instead of tommy guns and supernatural creatures instead of rival Mafia mobs, and a protagonist who could give Sam Spade as good as she got in wisecracks (but who’s got better morals and a kinder heart than he did) and has about the same philosophy of investigation: “Annoy the people involved until the guilty party tries to make you go away.” But it’s an exciting plot, with developments I genuinely didn’t expect. (One or two points don’t stand examination in hindsight very well, but the narrative flow is strong enough to mask that.) There’s also a very strong, well-done conflict of good vs. evil theme here.

In places, this book can have a deeply dark tone, in that no punches are pulled in describing the horrible cruelty that evil minds can inflict on their fellow beings; some of this can be graphic. It’s also a very violent tale, and some of the violence can be gory (one character, for instance, dies with her torso split open and her heart crushed in her opponent’s fist) but it’s not gratuitous and the authors don’t wallow in it. In its darker elements, the novel reflects the real world. But it also takes seriously the light that really exists in the darkness.

More than one male character is sexually interested in Kate; and precisely because she’s not free with her favors, those who see their masculinity as depending on sexual conquests clearly view her as a challenge in that area. But that’s just a realistically-depicted aspect of gender relations in a toxic culture; there isn’t any development of a relationship here (let alone a focus on it) that would put this tale in the area of ” paranormal romance.” (Though I understand that in the later books, Kate will find a love interest.) Readers should be aware that there’s a significant amount of bad language in the book, including a number of uses of the f-word. But although there are some occasional off-color wisecracks, there’s no sex here.

Finally, the edition I read has some special added features: FAQs, character profiles of Kate and a few others, and a description of the various “factions” in her Atlanta, all of which I read; a couple of scenes written from Curran’s viewpoint, which I skimmed, and which would be of most interest to die-hard series junkies; a “Factions Quiz” that I skipped, and an excellent prequel story, “A Questionable Client.” (One of the more unique characters in the novel is Saiman, and we’re told that Kate met him some time before when she took a gig as his bodyguard, and saved him from a murder attempt; here, we get to experience that particular episode.)

Author: Ilona Andrews
Publisher: Penguin Group, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Danger Dolls

  By

★★★
“Fringe with fringes”

dangerdollsAn interesting alternate universe here, diverging at the end of World War II, where the horrific results of Hiroshima and Nagasaki triggered the world into abandoning, first, nuclear weapons and then eventually, all guns as well. In the present day, crime still exists, but it largely consists of people holding up banks with swords, for example. However, trouble lurks in this gun-free paradise, in the form of a parallel universe, which appears to have designs on ours, and is sending people through a wormhole, and replacing the ones on this side with the aim of establishing a bridgehead. Countering this threat are the titular quartet, led by Arisa (Hanai), who have the martial-arts skills to counter these “filthy invaders”, and can also see the blue glow which identifies natives from another dimension.

After successfully destroying five political figures who had taken the place of their counterparts on this side, things get more complex, with the next mission being to infiltrate a country retreat belonging to that political party, a venue recently visited by all five dimensional visitors. It’s decided by their boss that the girls will go under cover as an all-girl group of pop stars – the i.Dolls – using a tour as disguise for their activities, on the basis no-one will pay attention to a bunch of idol singers. Yeah. Not perhaps the soundest decision making ever, that. Exploring the ground, they find what looks like the innocent gateway to a Shinto shrine, only to discover it is actually cover for the wormhole. Confusing matters further, the parallel version of Arisa comes through from the other side where it turns out that she and the other three – hey, what are the odds? – actually are members of an all-girl group. This Arisa discovers that things are not quite as cut and dried as they seem, and that even their own origins may be other than they believe.

It’s likely a case where less plot would be more – and fewer Danger Dolls would probably be a better idea too. For as is, beyond Arisa and Ray (Takeda), there’s precious little characterization to be found for Miki and Mari, whose sole purpose for existing seems to be to justify the idol singer thing, because a singing duo would seem a bit crap. The action sequences are spottily impressive. It’s clear Takeda is head and shoulders above the others in terms of ability, though Hanai has her moments, and there are some nice moves. The most spectacular of these are apparently inspired by lucha libre, leaving me suitably impressed, and the lack of doubling and wire-work was also quite laudable. However, the need to slice up the screen time between four protagonists does leave the battles feeling choppy, and it’s only once the herd is thinned at the end – I’ll say no more – that proceedings achieve the necessary fluidity. There’s no doubt Takeda still has star potential; as with her earlier movies, however, this vehicle for her talent falls short of its main ingredient.

Dir: Shûsuke Kaneko
Star: Rumi Hanai, Rina Takeda, Kayano Masuyama, Nana Seino

Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins

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

Mockingjay-Suzanne-CollinsGoing into this book, I was very much aware that reader opinion about it was deeply divided, and had picked up bits and pieces of partial “spoilers,” though not enough for me to predict exactly how events would turn out. Having now read it and made my own call, I have to agree with those reviewers who feel that Collins did drop the ball, big time. But my reason for this conclusion consists of eight lines in the penultimate chapter, in which Katniss does something completely out of left field and completely foreign to her character. Granted, they’re extremely crucial lines, that color my impression of the entire book. Everything before and after that could have made the book a five-star read. If I rated those eight lines by themselves, I’d give them negative stars if it was possible. I adopted three stars as an overall rating to reflect my disappointment, but also the fact that, for most of the time I was reading, I was really liking the book.

On the plus side, the book is a definite page-turner. I relished my reading time, hated to put it down, and was eager to take it up again. The prose is vivid and smooth-flowing (I’m completely used to Katniss’ present-tense narrative voice); the author evokes powerful emotions; the plotting throws us frequent surprises I did not expect, even after, as I said, picking up partial spoilers here and there; there are thought-provoking moral dilemmas that are usually resolved appropriately (with one lulu of an exception!), and action scenes are handled well. For the most part, the characterization is life-like (again, with one exxception). To be sure, this is a very dark read. Characters the reader deeply likes die, often horribly. The painful cost of war, even necessary war that’s waged to eradicate great evil, isn’t glossed over and minimized. But that isn’t necessarily a flaw in the book.

I would, having read the book, defend it against some of the criticisms I’ve met with. Although my own daughter thinks it preaches a message of ultimate despair and negation, I honestly did not take that from it; I found it much more positive and hopeful than that. (In that respect, I was actually pleasantly surprised, having expected much worse.) Through most of the book, I found Katniss’ character pretty consistent with the one we met in the first two books. Frankly, I did not find her selfish, self-absorbed, or immature here, allowing for the fact that for large portions of the book she’s traumatized (with good reason) and heavily drugged. There are plenty of instances throughout the book where she acts with enough selflessness and sacrificial concern for others (and more maturity than some of the adults) to absolve her from these charges, IMO. All but one of her actions in the book are, in my estimation, either justified –even if they’re gut-wrenching– or excusable and understandable. Some readers have criticized Collins’ plotting decisions in places, but I find all but one defensible and justified, including the crucial one of how much of the action Katniss is privy to. And while the author makes the point that even justified revolutions can have some leaders who are only motivated by desire for their own power, and who would willingly betray the revolution once they get a chance (historically, that’s happened frequently!), I did not see any message that armed resistance to tyranny is always automatically wrong and futile.

I’m not sorry I finished reading the series and made my own judgment of it. I’m just sorry that Collins didn’t respect her main character (and her readers!) enough to let Katniss consistently be who she’s been shown to be through hundreds of pages and virtually an entire immersive reading experience.

Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic Press, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Serena and the Ratts

  By

★★
“Look what the RATTs dragged in…”

serenaA somewhat jumbled mix, this sounds like a film about a punk-rock band but certainly isn’t. It actually starts off playing as a WW2 version of The Terminator, then morphs in the middle to become a mongrel crossbreed of Leon and Nikita, more or less abandoning the whole time-travel aspect entirely. The reasons for this do eventually become clear, yet still leave you feeling like the first third of the film was an entire waste of effort. To begin in the middle, Serena (Marie, who as you can see from the left, even looks like early Anne Parillaud) is a young woman, plucked off the streets by the Boss (Thomson) and raised in his image to become an assassin. She and her boyfriend, Leonard (Neal) are given a very strange mission. A group of scientists have discovered how to manipulate the space-time continuum, allowing them to travel in time, and they have sent someone back to kill Hitler as a child. A counter-group, the RATTs – Researchers Against Time Travel – believe this will just make things worse i.e. allowing someone else, more competent, to rise instead, so through Boss, hire Serena and Leonard to kill the assassin. So how do you stop someone, when those behind them have the ability to control time itself, and counter every move?

By coincidence, I watched this the same week as Predestination, and that film demonstrates how time-travel, altering past effects and the resulting paradoxes, should be handled. Here, the film never gets a firm grasp on it, and nor does the budget allow for anything approaching the credible depiction of a previous era that is necessary. The performances are all over the place too, mostly under-emoted and flat, though there’s also the worst apparent attempt at a British accent I’ve heard in years: Dick Van Dyke snorts derisively from the corner. [Look, I know we make great villains and all, but if you don’t have someone who can do it properly, and the Britishness isn’t necessary to the plot, I have to wonder: why bother?] As noted, there’s a sudden switch in focus, and it’s quite jarring, although I suppose it kinda makes sense for a story (nominally) about time-travel to have a fractured structure. Here again though, it doesn’t add anything to the plot, and a more linear retelling might perhaps have allowed the makers to build more empathy with Serena.

It wouldn’t have impacted the plot much, since it’s only at the end, when the Boss does the whole “let me tell you the entire plan for no good reason” thing – a staple of movie characters since early Bond flicks – that it makes sense. However, please note the sharp distinction between “sense” and “compelling viewing”, since the latter is never even approached here. Technically sound, with some interesting camerawork and a decent soundtrack, this remains just marginally passable as entertainment, mostly thanks to a script in need of at least two more rewrites.

Dir: Kevin James Barry
Star: Evalena Marie, Jonathan Thomson, Dave Neal, Marek Tarlowski

Dakiti, by E. J. Fisch

  By

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

dakitiThis series opener is a rousing science-fiction action adventure yarn, far better crafted than today’s average first novel. (I’m guessing that Transcendence Publishing is a real small press, not simply a printing service for self-publishing authors; but in either case, Fisch has taken her craft seriously and given readers a polished work.) The premise appealed to my liking for action-oriented heroines, so I took the opportunity to try out the series by downloading this novel when it was offered free for a day. (I’ll definitely be buying a print copy!)

We have here a tale of interplanetary intrigue, set in a far-future galaxy widely colonized by humans, whose far-flung settlement has brought them into contact with various alien races. Our main series characters belong to one of these, the humanoid Haphezians. They’re not really “super-human,” but they are taller and more muscular than Earth humans, with strength and endurance to match; and with two stomachs, they only need to eat every few days. (Otherwise, they’re physically much like humans, except for more vividness and variation in eye and hair color.) In this novel, we also meet another alien race, the reptilian Sardons. Characters from all three races will interact here, in a galaxy that’s riven by tensions, and sometimes open warfare.

Much of human space is ruled by a powerful Federation. But some fringe human planets like Tantal maintain their independence; and as in the Star Wars universe, the Federation faces resistance from a guerrilla insurgency that has elite fighters, the Nosti, who have special telekinetic powers (unlike the Jedi, theirs are derived from injections every ten years with an illegal psi-enhancing drug). The Haphezian monarchy faces a terrorist insurgency of its own, called Solaris; and some years ago fought a war with the Sardons, who sought to end the Haphezian monopoly on the caura extract trade. Ziva and Aroska serve the Haphezian Crown as agents of the HSP, Haphezian Special Police; and Haphezians are much in demand from other, less combat-capable, peoples as allies or as mercenary soldiers. That’s what’s brought hereditary Tantali governor Enrike Saiffe and his son Jayden on a diplomatic mission to Haphez near the novel’s beginning. Meanwhile, there’s a plot afoot that Ziva and her team will have to discover, and it’s a nasty one.

All of this political background is quickly sketched here in the process of narrating swiftly-moving events, without noticeable info-dumps (I expect it to be developed more in the succeeding books). Haphezian culture is suggested a bit more fully than that of the other two races involved here, but detailed world building isn’t the author’s strong point. Rather, her strong points are tight plotting, smooth and direct prose style that does what she wants it to, well-written action scenes (and a lot of them!), a conflict against a foe whose aims and methods are definitely evil, though that doesn’t mean that we think the Haphezian regime necessarily resembles goodness incarnate; and above all, character development and interrelationships between characters. (We’re not talking about romantic relationships here, but human relationships –and Haphezians are as “human” as you and I in those respects, regardless of how many stomachs they have.) Fisch throws some twists and turns into her plot (one of these I saw coming –but the satisfaction of guessing rightly is part of the fun!) and the last chapters especially are suspenseful right up to the end (reading these, I was glued to the screen!).

Ziva Payvan is a complex, round and dynamic character, embodying more than physical strength, good aim with a gun, and quick reflexes –though she’s got all of those, in enough measure to make her a VERY formidable fighter in any combat situation; you definitely don’t ever want her as an opponent! She’s an intelligent, layered person with a capacity for strong feelings, an inner moral code, and a lot of loyalty; but she’s not necessarily likeable. A product of a rough childhood and adolescence and of a dysfunctional family, she harbors some secrets and has made some bad choices, one of them really dark. And her government has trained her, and used her, as a professional assassin for State-sanctioned killings, with attendant toll on her softer feelings. She’s also abrasive, arrogant, and hot-tempered. But Fisch manages to make her a person you care about.

Aroska Tarbic is also a well-developed character, a strong, tough male well able to handle himself in combat, and with no problems about fighting shoulder-to-shoulder alongside of a woman. (Commendably, Fisch shows both male and female characters routinely taking fighting responsibility, and handling it well.) Indeed, all of the important characters here come to life in the author’s words. Many of the situations and scenes here are powerfully emotionally evocative.

One aspect of the premise here is problematical: Haphez is a highly-developed, tech-savvy planet with a culture that undoubtedly boasts centuries of development. It seems implausible that they wouldn’t have developed a more efficient judicial system, and a more efficient way of carrying out capital punishment, than they apparently have here. We can say the same for a few key details of the plotting that don’t stand strenuous examination too well. And hard-SF buffs will quibble about the impossibility of real-time interplanetary radio communication between planets that are light-years apart, given the relatively slow speed of sound waves. (In Ursula LeGuin’s fictional Hainish universe, an invention called the “ansible” eliminates this problem –we’re not told how, it just does!– but as far as we know, Haphez doesn’t have the ansible.) None of these factors kept me from really liking the book, though! I absolutely plan to continue with the series.

Note: Bad language here (strictly of the d- and h-word sort) is minimal, and there’s no sex, explicit or implied. Very romance-phobic readers can approach this tale without fear.

Author: E. J. Fisch
Publisher: Transcendence Publishing, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Perfect: Android Rising

  By

★★
“Future imperfect.”

androidFeeling mostly like a fan-film located somewhere between the universes of Robocop and Terminator, this starts with a military project to create a soldier-android, which goes wrong and ends with the creation killing the wife of its creator, Dr. Peter Hess (Lombardi): it’s then abducted from a storage facility, and vanishes. Fast-forward a few years, and Hess tries again, this time creating Lia (Talbott), in the image of his wife: the military, led by General Arken (Zahn)  remain interested, because America has collapsed into internal strife and civil war, with group of rebels taking on the larger forces of the government. As a test, Lia is sent out to exterminate one of their nests, but with the help of an EMP gun, the rebels’ leader, Kass (Williams) captures the attacker. Can she be re-programmed from a mindless killing machine into something bearing a closer resemblance to a human? And what will Lia do if Kass succeeds?

Having enjoyed Notarile’s previous GWG film, Stand Off, this one was somewhat disappointing. The sci-fi oriented theme attempted here requires a little more in the way of production values, than the urban crime one of Stand Off, even if it’s simply to give the impression Lia is stronger, faster or more powerful than a human. That doesn’t happen, and she simply appears bulletproof, so you wonder why they bother. The other main problem is the dialogue. You know how some films sound like people speaking, and in others, it sound like characters saying lines from a script? This definitely falls in the latter department, with too many lines that seem necessary to the plot, rather than flowing naturally from the situation. The re-wiring of Lia is also way too easy: this is supposed to be bleeding-edge military technology, unseen in the civilian world, but I’ve installed browser plugins with more difficulty. Delete one file, tell her, “Hey, you shouldn’t be killing us,” and she goes, “Well, I’m convinced”, then changes sides. And the Genesis subplot is abandoned entirely in the middle, before showing up again at the very end, for no apparent reason beyond foreshadowing a sequel.

This isn’t to say it’s totally without merits. Talbott is rather better as Lia than as Mrs. Hess, capturing the emotionless android well, and the lack of wire-fu or other artificially-enhanced action sometimes does work for the movie. Notarile captures the blasted post-industrial landscape well, getting good bang for his (relatively few) bucks. But unlike Stand Off, this never escapes its low-budget origins. If you’re into fan films, this is respectable enough, and I remain interested in see further work from his Blinky Productions studio – Assassinista looks particularly interesting. However, you need to set your expectations appropriately, and if you’re looking for something reaching the level of a fully-professional feature, you’re going to be disappointed.

Dir: Chris R. Notarile
Star: Roberto Lombardi, Samantha Talbott, Kasey Williams, Rick Zahn