Category: Reviews

Kindle awesomeness

I am a reluctant ebook reader.  I knew they were the wave of the future, but I was still determined to resist them for as long as possible.  But when I got my iPhone last summer, I spent some time messing around with the Kindle app and I had to grudgingly admit that ebooks can be pretty spiffy.  While I still prefer paper books, there is something to be said for being able to download an interesting book at 3 am while you’re in your pajamas.

Although reading on the iPhone isn’t horrible, I knew that I wanted to upgrade to something with a bigger screen.  I narrowed my options down to two: the iPad and the Kindle.  At first glance, the iPad seemed like the best choice since it can do so much more than the Kindle.  Plus, everyone I know who owns an iPad is madly in love with it.

Try as I might, I was never able to fall in love with the iPad.  It’s a slick machine, to be sure, but I couldn’t escape the fact that I just didn’t need all the extra bells and whistles that it offers.  I already own two laptops, so my portable computing needs are pretty much taken care of.  Also, I just couldn’t see myself curling up with the iPad, which is kind of an issue since I do most of my reading lying down.

So far, I’m really impressed with the Kindle.  It’s the perfect size for reading in bed and the screen is a lot easier on the eyes than a computer screen.  I also like the fact that it syncs your progress in a book across all platforms, so I can start reading a book on the Kindle and then pick it up on the iPhone without having to hunt around for my place.

At first, I was a bit put off by the the flash you see when you turn the page.  From what I can tell, it’s just a side effect of the eInk technology, so all eInk-based readers are going to be have it to some degree.  I got used to it quite quickly though, and I can’t really say that it bothers me.

The only real complaint I have is that I don’t really like the built-in keyboard, but it’s not a big deal since I don’t see myself typing up a storm on this thing.  For the occasional search, it’s just fine.

Now I just need to decide what to read on it first.  I’m torn between Mechanique and The Man with the Golden Torc.  I think I may have to flip a coin on this one…

Review of The Broken Kingdoms

Today I finished reading The Broken Kingdoms, the second book in N. K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy.  You can read my review of the first book in the series here.

Rather than simply pick up where The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms left off, Broken Kingdoms jumps ten years into the future to tell the story of Oree Shoth, a young blind woman living in the city of Shadow beneath the World Tree.  Freed from their servitude, godlings cavort around the city.  But when Oree finds a silent godling in her muckbin one day, she gets pulled into a dangerous conspiracy that threatens not only her life but the very fabric of the universe itself.

As I mentioned in my earlier review, one of the great things about Jemisin’s work is the rich mythology that underlies it.  Broken Kingdoms does an excellent job of elaborating on what we already know.  In particular, we learn a lot more about Itempas, a full god who was seen briefly at the end of Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.  Jemisin does a great job of humanizing her deities so that they actually have distinct personalities instead of just being insanely powerful cardboard cutouts.

Jemisin also continues to take risks with her writing and it continues to pay off.  Rather than play it safe and write a direct sequel, she chose to give top billing to a new set of characters (though some familiar faces do appear as ‘guest stars’).  In doing so, she emphasizes that her world doesn’t just revolve around one small group of people, which makes it seem that much more realistic.  And even though I’m not really a fan of first-person narrators, I have to admit that Jemisin is able to pull it off.   She’s also quite adept at the short scene: some of her scenes are only a paragraph long but she manages to pack a lot of power into a few lines of text.

The only thing that I didn’t like about Broken Kingdoms was the sex scenes.  The breast fondling and lady-part stroking veered a bit too close to romance novel territory for my tastes, but your mileage may vary.

The final book in the trilogy, The Kingdom of Gods, is due to come out later this year.

Scott Pilgrim vs The Mediocre Movie

Yesterday, I went to see Scott Pilgrim vs The World with The Physicist.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve read the comic books on which the movie is based and found them to be amusing, so I was interested to see how they would survive the transition to the big screen.

The plot of the movie is the same as that of the comic.  Canadian slacker Scott Pilgrim meets space ninja delivery girl Ramona Flowers and, in order to date her, he must defeat her seven evil exes.  Dorkiness ensues.

First, the good points.  Not being a rabid Scott Pilgrim fanboy, I didn’t find the movie as uproariously funny as others did, but there were a number of witty lines that made me smile.  Also, the casting director did a great job of finding actors who resemble their comic counterparts and the special effects were very impressive.  I also admire the director’s ability to make each fight scene unique and interesting.  I was worried that the ex battles would all run together, but each one of them ended up being distinct.  Matthew Patel’s song-and-dance attack was especially cool, though in the comic Scott and his friends returned fire in kind, and it’s a shame that part didn’t make it into the movie.

The major flaw of the movie is that the love story at its heart just isn’t compelling.  Michael Cera plays Scott Pilgrim like every other character Michael Cera has ever played.  In other words, he’s bland and affable, which doesn’t make for a particularly inspiring lead character.  His love interest, Ramona Flowers, drifts through the movie with all the enthusiasm of a Dell customer service agent, so it’s hard to see why Scott is willing to fight seven evil exes for her.  It takes a lot of zingers and special effects to make up for ho-hum leads and, in the end, Scott Pilgrim can’t overcome them.

Scott Pilgrim also doesn’t know when to stop when it comes to its own cleverness.  The old-school video game references are a case in point.  They’re cute the first couple of times, but when they are repeated ad nauseam and they swiftly lose their oomph.

The final issue I have with the movie concerns the portrayal of Scott’s gay roommate, Wallace Wells.  In both the comic and the movie, he’s your stereotypical catty, bedhopping gay with a penchant for quips and multiple partners.   The catty slut stereotype has been done to death and it’s high time Hollywood buried it in the graveyard.

FINAL GRADE: C+

StarCraft II

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that today witnessed the release of StarCraft II, which is probably the most anticipated computer game of the year.  Game stores across the country stayed open late to start selling the game at 12:01 am.  I, on the other hand, downloaded the game from Blizzard.  It took forever, but it was nice not having to rush out to the store.  I did have to wait to get my activation key, but that wasn’t a problem for me.

My initial impression is that SC2 is a very well-put together game.  The graphics are quite well done with lots of little details that make the world seem very realistic.  The single-player campaign is also nicely executed.  The usual static mission briefing has been replaced with something a lot more interactive, which makes the campaign a lot more interesting.  For example, Raynor (the main Terran character) gets money for completing successful missions which he can then use to purchase various upgrades during the time in-between missions.

The gameplay itself is very, very similar to the original StarCraft.  Most of the units are the same, though there are a few new additions.  And while many strategy games have moved away from the old ‘send a bunch of workers to harvest resources’ model, SC2 clings to it with a vengeance.  The end result is that, despite the improved graphics, SC2 has a decided old-school vibe.  I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising.  Given how popular the original was, Blizzard was probably right to not mess with a good thing.

I suppose my biggest complaint with SC2 is that the Zerg and the Protoss are not playable in the single-player campaign.  You can, however, play them in skirmishes against the AI or against other people on Battle.net.  The campaign is focused exclusively on the Terrans who are, quite frankly, my least favorite civilization.  I suspect it’s largely because they all sound like a bunch of outcasts from Hee Haw.  But the campaign is interesting enough to make me tolerate the space rednecks.  For now at least.

SC2 is an eminently playable, well-put together game that’s sure to please fans of the original.  It’s not going to become my favorite game, but that’s largely because of my antipathy toward sci-fi in general rather than any defect in SC2.  If you’re a fan of the original, or a fan of military sci-fi in general, you should probably get this game ASAP.

The Cabinet of Curiosities

As regular readers of my blog know, I’m a fan of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s novels featuring Special Agent Pendergast.  When I got my new iPhone, I decided to test out iBooks by downloading the next book in the series, The Cabinet of Curiosities.

Like Relic and Reliquary, Cabinet is set in New York City, though the Museum of Natural History plays a somewhat reduced role in the story.  While demolishing an old building to make way for a new skyscraper, workers discover a grisly collection of dismembered corpses dating from the 19th century.  The find suggests the work of a serial killer and the crime becomes even more revolting when it seems to inspire the work of a modern copycat who stalks Pendergast and his friends Dr. Nora Kelly and William Smithback.

Although Cabinet was an enjoyable read overall, I didn’t like it as much as Relic or Reliquary.  At times it seemed like the authors were relying too much on the grossout factor of vivid surgical descriptions and the ending of the book was rather unsatisfying.  (SPOILER ALERT: The villain dies almost by accident after handling weapons that were coated in poison.  This poison manages to transform him into a horror film monster with bloody sores, rotting flesh, and a withered eyeball within a matter of minutes.)

Also, William Smithback seemed Too Stupid To Live at some points.  He knows that his girlfriend, Nora Kelly, is in hot water with her bosses at the museum, but his efforts to help her through his journalism only antagonize them even more.  After Relic and Reliquary, Smithback really should have learned that his attempts to help people out through the papers usually don’t work out.  Later on in the book, Smithback finds himself trapped in the killer’s house, largely because he didn’t believe Pendergast’s theory about who committed the crimes.  Granted, the theory was outlandish, but given what Smithback saw in the other books, you’d think he might be a bit less skeptical.

In previous reviews of Pendergast books, I’ve commented that, at times, Pendergast can be something of a Mary Sue.  Preston and Child have made efforts to fix that and the Pendergast of Cabinet isn’t as unbelievably perfect as he was in previous books.

I also find myself coming to dislike Preston and Child’s habit of endlessly shifting the point of view.  Murder victims, policemen, and even the villain himself join the three main characters in sharing their POV with the reader.  It’s just too much and the reader is often left scratching his head wondering why the story is suddenly being told from the point of view of some random cop who will never reappear.

I wouldn’t say that the Pendergast series has jumped the shark yet, but I find myself losing more and more enthusiasm with each passing  book.

OVERALL GRADE: B

The Last Airbender

I’m going to cut to the chase: The Last Airbender is a terrible, terrible movie.  M. Night Shyamalan has taken one of my favorite TV shows of all time and turned it into a plodding, humorless piece of crap that still haunts me more than a week after leaving the theater.

I confess that The Physicist and I did not enter the theater with high expectations.  Almost from the moment we heard about the movie, we had cause to worry.  M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t exactly have a track record of recent box office successes, and we were a bit worried by his decision to condense an entire season’s worth of material into a two hour movie.  Right before we actually saw the movie, we were bombarded with a string of negative reviews. Now I’m not one to pay much attention to the critics, but the sheer unanimity of their condemnation gave me pause.  Now that I’ve seen the movie, I can safely say that the critics were absolutely right.

For starters, unless you’ve already seen the TV show, the plot is going to be pretty much nonsensical.  Actually, I think I’m being generous by using the word ‘plot.’  It’s really more of a series of random vignettes strung together by awkward expository dialog.  I suspect that M. Night Shyamalan had good intentions: he probably wanted to remain as true as possible to the TV series. But, in his quest to shoehorn in as many facts as possible, he resorts to an irritating amount of bland narration, making one wonder if they are watching a movie or listening to a really bad audiobook.

In fairness, the narration isn’t much worse than the rest of the acting.  I don’t know what kind of direction Shyamalan gave the actors, but it seems as if he told everyone to read their lines as if they’d been heavily sedated.  The result is that Aang, who should be a happy-go-lucky kid, seems clinically depressed.  And Sokka, who should be the sarcastic comic relief, spends the whole movie being furrowed and angsty.

The only character whose behavior resembled that of their cartoon counterpart was Prince Zuko.  Dev Patel did a nice job of capturing the character’s testiness without resorting to scenery-chewing.

Even worse, the actors managed to mispronounce characters’ names on a number of occasions.  If you’re a loyal viewer of the series, the result is akin to nails on a chalkboard.

In defense of the actors, even Sir Laurence Olivier would’ve had trouble turning in a decent performance with the sort of insipid dialog that abounds in The Last Airbender. In addition to the bland narration, there are a number of lines that make you laugh for all the wrong reasons (“We need to make them believe that we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in theirs.”).

But perhaps the biggest travesty of The Last Airbender is that none of the humor that made the series so enjoyable shows up on the silver screen.  It’s like the whole movie is one big Very Special Episode.

The Last Airbender is the first part of a trilogy.  Sadly, Shyamalan is currently on track to write and direct the other two films.  If Nickelodeon has any sense, they’ll replace him.  Otherwise, he’ll have singlehandedly ruined one of their greatest franchises.

FINAL GRADE: F

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Recently, I finished reading N. K. Jemisin’s debut fantasy novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.  This was a bit of a change for me since I don’t usually read fantasy books set wholly in other realms (I’m more of a contemporary fantasy guy).  But I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone and picked up Kingdoms.

Here’s the blurbage from the back of the book:

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky, seat of the ruling Arameri family. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with a pair of cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother’s death and her family’s bloody history.

With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Yeine will learn how perilous it can be when love and hate — and gods and mortals — are bound inseparably.

For me, one of the best parts of the book was the rich mythology that underlies it.  Jemisin has managed to come up with something vaguely reminiscent of real-world mythology without a]resorting to pastiche.  Her gods are striking too because of their humanity: they fight, make up, and have sex with each other just like mortals (according to the story, humans were literally made in the gods’ image, so mortals are basically the gods writ small).  Jemisin also makes her divinities memorable by turning them into slaves.  Bound in human form by another god, they are forced to serve the ruling Arameri family much like demons serve human magicians in Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Trilogy.  It’s an unusual approach and it ends up making the gods more believable since they’re forced to interact with other characters more often than your standard fantasy gods.

My enjoyment of Kingdoms was almost curtailed by the sex scene that appears toward the end of the book.  I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a fan of sex scenes in literature.  More often than not, they tend to be poorly written.  But the scene in Kingdoms is both brief and relevant to the plot.  It’s also notable for being one of the few sex scenes I’ve read where the writer calls a penis a ‘penis’ rather than resorting to one of the many flowery euphemisms that abound.  Although it might seem overly clinical to some, I think Jemisin’s word chocie had the effect of making the sex scene seem less like a low-grade attempt at smut and more like basic narration.

I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone, but I’ll conclude by saying that Jemisin manages to produce a twist ending that doesn’t leave the reader feeling gypped.

Kingdoms is the first book in a trilogy.  According to Jemisin’s website, the second book will be coming out this Fall.

OVERALL GRADE: A

Scott Pilgrim

A friend of mine recently told me about the Scott Pilgrim series and, although comic books aren’t usually my thing, I decided to check it out.  The story follows the eponymous hero, a 23-year old slacker from Toronto, and his quest to date beautiful American delivery ninja Ramona Flowers.  But, as Shakespeare said, the course of true lover never did run smoothly and Scott must defeat Ramona’s seven evil exes before she can officially become his girlfriend.

If you’re looking for a believable plot, Scott Pilgrim isn’t for you.  The series is unabashedly over the top and it isn’t afraid to deploy the occasional deus ex machina.  But it’s also wickedly funny, crammed with pop culture references and nerdy gamer humor.

If you’re looking for something funny to read that won’t take forever, I highly recommend Scott Pilgrim.  This August, you can also see it on the big screen.

Unnatural History

When I heard that Cartoon Network had a series set in a natural history museum, I had to check it out.  Unnatural History is a new live-action series starring Kevin G. Schmidt, Jordan Gavaris, and Italia Ricci.  Schmidt plays Henry Griffin, the son of anthropologists who has traveled to all kinds of exotic locations with his parents.  To give him more stability, his parents have sent him to live with his uncle and cousin Jasper (played by Gavaris) in Washington, DC.  Rounding out the gang is their Strong Female Friend (TM) Maggie, played by Ricci.  The three of them attend a high school located in the fictional National Museum Complex (which is clearly modeled on the Smithsonian).

The episode I saw involved Jasper curating an exhibit in the museum (apparently, the museum lets one do this every year).  His exhibit is about the Pony Express and his cousin Henry is eager to help him make it a success.  Eventually, they go off on a search for some missing silver from a mine in Nevada that turns out to be contaminated with some nasty bacteria.  Poor Jasper gets sick, and it’s up to Henry to save the day.

Overall, I thought the show was decent.  The plot is outlandish, but fun.  I know next to nothing about the Wild West, so I can’t comment on the accuracy of the underlying history, but I have to give props to the writers for basing the mystery around something other than a mummy or a supposedly cursed jewel.  I also like the fact that, although Jasper is portrayed as an excellent student, the writers resisted the temptation to turn him into a pencil-necked geek with Coke-bottle glasses and a pocket protector.

The show’s major downside is that Henry is in danger of becoming a Mary Sue. Because Henry has traveled the world with his parents, he’s acquired a very diverse skill set and, when he’s forced to use one of his skills, the audience is treated to a little flashback to illustrate how he acquired it.  In moderation, it’s a cool device, but the writers need to be very careful that they don’t rely on it too much, lest Henry become a perfect cardboard cutout rather than a believable character.

Cold Stone Creamery’s PB & C shake

Men’s Health recently described Cold Stone Creamery’s PB & C shake as the unhealthiest drink in America.  Being a huge fan of chocolate/peanut butter combinations, I naturally had to try it out for myself.

Not being suicidal, I ordered the shake in the smallest possible size.  That proved to be a wise choice because the PB & C is incredibly rich.  It’s so rich in fact that you have to drink it slowly, lest its leaden mass overwhelm your stomach.  Even then, it sits in your gut, giving you an unpleasant reminder of just how many calories you’ve ingested.

You would think that, for all those calories, the PB & C would at least be sinfully delicious, but that’s not the case.  It’s really too rich for its own good, which makes it a chore to drink.

If you’re looking for a chocolate/peanut butter treat, I suggest you skip Cold Stone and go to Jamba Juice and get the Peanut Butter Moo’d instead.  You’ll save a couple hundred calories and you won’t feel like you drank lead afterward.