It’s been a few years since I read Fated, the first novel in Benedict Jacka’s Alex Verus series. I thoroughly enjoyed that book so I was eager to read his second novel in the series. It took me a bit of time to refamiliarize myself with the characters and the story world created, but Jacka does a great job of bringing readers up to speed like me who had taken some time off before reading the second novel or even for those who did not read the first book in the series. Even in that case, it wouldn’t be too hard to read this and pick up what was going on.
There are a few different storylines going on in this book, and they all converge, even though at the time I was reading them, it didn’t seem as if they would. First, was the discord between Alex and his apprentice, Luna, as they couldn’t seem to develop a good working relationship. The second being Luna’s sort of new boyfriend getting ahold of a Monkey’s Paw, despite Alex warning him against it. The third was an enchantress showing up at Verus’s store while being attacked by a golem, and Alex having to fight off the golem. The story lines converged on different groups of mages developing a method to extract magical abilities by draining them from magical creatures, something that Alex is desperate to stop, given his close relationships with some of these creatures.
It’s been a while since I read the third book in the Destroyermen series, so much of the book for me was trying to remember who all of the characters were and what all of the situations were with the battles that took place and the political wranglings. That made reading this book more challenging than it would otherwise be. Because of that I felt lost half of the time. Setting that aside, this book had a lot of what I like about this series. The characters are well developed and likeable. The quality of the writing is quite high and the battle scenes are well done.
Besides not being up to speed on everything going on, the only real negative is that this is a long novel where not a whole lot happens in the first two thirds of the novel. Most of the intrigue and action happens in the final third of the book. It’s okay to set the table and then deliver later, but the bigger problem was that the novel is both very long and there was little happening for most of the book. The pace should have been quicker and parts of the novel should have been trimmed to make this a tighter read. Overall, this was a fun and enjoyable novel and I look forward to reading the next book in the series without waiting so long.
Episode 13 centers around a reality television crew that goes into a house in Virginia where in the Seventies, a group of paranormal researchers disappeared. The novel uses a unique approach in the narrative style of this novel, by presenting it as a found footage novel, using video footage analysis, journals by members of the crew, and email and text conversation to tell the story. The found footage format is something that has been successfully done in some horror movies, but I have never read anything like this in book form. I applaud the author for taking a chance in this type of innovative approach. And while I applaud the author for innovation, I think this format holds it back in many ways.
Generally I found this novel to be entertaining and as I mentioned I liked the approach. But the biggest downfall is that there is a general lack of tension in the novel. I just didn’t feel the strong emotion that I would expect with this sort of subject material. I also felt that characterization suffered a bit as a result. I also felt the ending didn’t quite deliver in the way that I would have liked. So, in the end, this novel was entertaining and cool, but it lacks a little to make it a really strong novel.
It’s hard to get horror comedy right. There have only ever been a handful of horror comedies that I have seen in my life that I have actually enjoyed. The Monkey falls squarely in the category of a failed attempt at this subgenre.
I actually thought the movie started off good and had some promise. The first part of the movie was a long flashback of these twins who find this toy monkey that their father once had. When the monkey is wound up and starts banging its drum, a horrible death follows. That isn’t the problem with the movie. I thought there were some funny moments early that got a chuckle out of me.
The movie falls apart in the second half where they go to present time. The first problem with the movies is that the characterization is really weak. There are no likeable characters that you would want to root for. The second is that the plot is completely illogical. It makes no sense that the one brother would so desperately want to kill the other brother that he would use the monkey to do it, since the monkey doesn’t work that way. You can’t target someone’s death with it. If he really wanted his brother dead, there would be easier ways to do it. The movie just wallowed in its own stupidity and goes down as yet another terrible adaptation of a Stephen King story.
The Substance is a tale of two movies. It starts off with a really cool premise. An aging Hollywood star is given a chance to create a younger version of herself, but the process has many strings attached. Each body has to be used for exactly a week without fail and each body must be fed a fluid weekly. And then the process is only supposed to happen one time. Deviating from these rules has dire consequences as we find out later.
Besides the cool concept, the execution was pretty good. It was still an odd, quirky movie, but there was a certain logic to it as well as tension being created between the old version of Elisabeth Sparkle, played by Demi Moore, and the new version of her who is becoming a star as the new Elisabeth.
About two thirds of the way through the movie, everything falls apart. Saying that it went off the rails is not strong enough. This movie turned out to be a complete trainwreck. It was just an utter mess of nonsense and illogical actions by the characters. Also, the makers of the Substance repeatedly stated that both the new and old versions are the same person, but this wasn’t true at all. They acted as separate entities with no shared memories. The actions at the end with what the new version of Elisabeth does to the original Elisabeth was completely illogical. The culminating scene was just idiotic. The ending absolutely kills the movie. Like most Oscar nominated movies, this is not worth watching.
