Popcorn: A Review of Revolution

At some point in your life you will luckily reach this paradox:  the realization that you aren't as smart as you think, and by knowing that you are actually smarter than you thought. There was a good decade (stupid 20's) at which I spent days, weeks, years worrying about what you thought, they thought, or anyone thought. I lived less in the moment and more in the ever-worrying future of what ifs. My reading life took a toll, Dune aside, I spent the decade not indulging in SF simply because it did not align with what I thought I should be perceived to be reading. The oddity of it all, my 20's was my Dune decade. I was on a Dune loop annually revisiting the series of 6 which eventually cumulated with my inane, I would argue awesome ability to quote massive components of the books. 

We all have a book that impacts us the most, my number one obviously is Dune (just in case you missed the million references) closely followed by War and Peace with the entire yellow-bound Nancy Drew collection (insert sheepish grin) rounding out my top three. I was 8, Nancy had a lot to offer me at the time. While the obscurity of this top three is hurting parts of my brain, it highlights the best aspect to reading. It really allows us to be ourselves, even at times, discover who we are. If my grade 10 English teacher had not the gumption to assign Herbert's epic book as part of the curriculum I may not be the person I am today or the fortitude to admit I like really crappy SF.  It is one thing to expound on how Foundation altered one's perception of the 21st century, it is another to gleefully walk around with a hard-cover edition of Revolution  at the nearby play-park with a gaggle of moms goggling your choice of fiction. 

Look at it!

Okay, maybe classifying Revolution, book three in the  Secret World Chronicle penned this time around by Mercedes Lackey, Cody Martin, Dennis and Veronica Giguere as crappy is harsh, but this book is not going to win any awards. At best, this is a collection of pod casts written by mad-crazed fans of the on-line game City of Hereos who are having the time of their lives, publishing world be dammed. And you know what I love it, I love it all and I don't care what you think.

Sometimes you just want popcorn for dinner, Revolution is my summer popcorn read. Really a comic book that has exploded in your brains, Revolution continues the saga of Echo, and the Soviet meta-humans who are in a tragic battle to save the world as we know it. The bad guys are exactly what you want, bad, with an over-the-top Nazi, alien bad to them. Just have a gander at the cover art. That is a bad looking dude, and one extremely embarrassing book to tote around, let me reiterate. Why can't book covers be a little more restrained in SF? No one takes me seriously toting this around, let me tell you, no one. Of course, even without this book in hand, I somehow lose half my audience. It might, might have to do with my tendency to quote Star Wars a little too much, peppering my argument with Flintstone references to grind my point home. For some reason, my point never seems to be ground in quite the way I meant it to be.  

Yes, so Revolution, crap or popcorn-inspired cartoon fiction, either way it is awesome, rocks on rocks awesome.

Busy Busy

Within the blogging community there are some frequently used words and phrases that pop up in most blogs.  Thanks to the endless repetive nature of them, I have come to abhor the word rambling and would like to put anyone who types the saying "I can't believe it is has been so long since my last post..." into a full nelson.  Yes, that is right, a FULL NELSON.  As a result, it is with great personal loathing that I feel the need to type the next sentence.

I can't believe it's been so long since my last  posting.  Gad, I hate myself.  Cruising blogs has become a perverse past-time of mine.  There is some straight up weird crap out there with some weird ideas of what is worthy to put out into the world wide webby.  I don't know how much time I have wasted sifting through a stranger's family blog.  You know what I speak of.  Those blogs where the parent (usually mother, okay, always the mother) posts daily updates of her five adorable kids doing various mundane things with sprinklings of straight laced Christian sayings so we all know she and her family are proper Americans.  I cannot pull away from this type of blog.  It is like watching a car crash of the American Dream. I always leave feeling a little better knowing that my son calls his Grandma "Darth Vadar", that my husband and I do not own matching anything and that I adore SF.

So let's get to it, shall we.  I have been a very busy busy reader this past month and have some ramblings to share. ( Excuse me while I go run myself over with a bus.)

As you know, having read my review of The Witches of Karres, the witches' story does not end with this book.  Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint and Dave Freer collaboratively wrote The Wizard of Karres.  It boggles my mind how three people can work together to create a book but they did and they did it well.  In fact, the writing style mirrors James H. Schmitz perfectly making it very difficult to find fault with this book.  Like the original, The Wizard of Karres and even The Sorceress of Karres are not going to win a Pulitzer.  But I don't read books just for the pure pleasure of watching my brain grow. I read for the fun of it and these books are straight up fun.   Now I must admit that by book three, written by Eric Flint and Dave Freer the story drags on a little.  And with Mercedes absence the ability to mirror Schmitz's style is lost.  Like the new Dune books, The Sorceress of Karres tends to rely on repetition to fill the plot.  Rather annoying but if you need some books for your beach bag and do not want to stretch your grey cells in any way, these three books are for you.

Sprinkled in amongst the witches I read Triggers by Robert J. Sawyer.  Now before I even get into what this book is about let me just congratulate my mother, who does not read SF for reading this book.  Way to go Mom, you have come to the dark side at last.  Now go out and pick up Black Out/All Clear by Connie Willis please.  Triggers is a great summer read.  It is basically one long continuous conversation with a group of people who happen-stance to be at the wrong hospital at the wrong time (or right...!).  Here is a snippet of the plot:  The president (of America, it is always America isn't it) is shot,rushed to the hospital and during his heart surgery something happens that results in a group of people being linked.  That is all I am going to say. I  hate reviews in which the book's content is unceremoniously undressed.  This is a quick, easy SF book to read.  It takes place in "normal" time with "normal" people who happen to have something abnormal happen to them.

And that is my busy busy month.  I am knee deep in summer reading, get ready for all things Star Wars in the  next couple of posts.

Toes in the sand: A Review of World Divided, Mercedes Lackey

I am back.  To be truthful it has taken me over a week to fully tap back into my life.   My daily struggle was mentally removing myself from the warm salty seas that I was blissfully floating in so I could complete the most mundane tasks. As I sit here with the weekend before me, I am fully back and ready to read, and support the genre I love so much.  And on that note, let's get to the matter at hand.

Have you been dying to know what book I took on vacation? Let me put the rumours to rest, I took probably the oddest book ever to bring to a tropical haven, World Divided, Mercedes Lackey.  That is right.  I am insane.  Not only was the darn thing in hard cover, making it next to impossible to squeeze into my purse for quick reader access but it wasn't exactly chalked full of beachy feelings.  When you have white sand between your toes you don't automatically think "If only I had an apocalyptic battle involving super humans vs. aliens to read right about now."   Oops, spoiler alert.   I highly doubt I have ruined things for you.  For example,  I can't imagine my Mom ever  going out to buy the first two books in the Secret World Chronicles, even though I am her daughter and she should really expand her reading viewpoint.  I doubt she is sitting at home in the desert storming out of the computer room because I let slip that not only do these books have super heroes, super villains, witches, angels, robotic armoured super Nazis, but aliens as well.   Wouldn't it be awesome if she did though?  

World Divided is the second in a new series from Mercedes Lackey.  Once again Mercedes  co-authors the book with a list of people who live and die by the City of Heroes world.  As you all remember, City of Heroes in an online interactive game that swallows you whole.  At least this is my interpretation to the huge fan base around this game.  Single, looking for love? Don't play City of Heroes or you will end up alone at 50 with 10 cats living in a dank basement rental happily munching on popcorn at 4 a.m. while you kick some type of super villains ass in cyberspace.   As I typed this sentence out I realized that spending one's time this way sounds pretty awesome.  (The hours spent playing Lego Batman on the Wii brings tears to my eyes.)  Note to self, kick tenant out of basement so I can play some vids.  

My suggestion is to take my review with a grain of salt; more specifically with a grain of salt from the side of my margarita glass.  Now that I am back home amongst the concrete sidewalks, traffic noise and obstructed sunrises from neighbouring houses  I am enjoying the book.  A week ago, not so much.  That being said, the writing just isn't at the level that the first book in the series is.  And that is saying something because these books are not full of  Frank Herbert level of prose.    Don't get me wrong I like to read a well thought out super fight but the first 100 pages of the book lacked the detail that the first book had.  It reminded me of Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom.  The authors decided to go with monkey brain lunches and heart ripping out paragraphs rather than character driven action.  If you have no idea what I am referring to  then you have some serious movie watching ahead of you tonight or we just cannot be friends.   

As you can see I have a lot of parameters around friendship.  I never said that reading my blog would be a piece of cake.  

Meta-human: A Review of Invasion, Mercedes Lackey & Company

Meta-humans:  think on that for awhile; what in heaven's name are you talking about Dune Girl! We are talking superheroes people, superheroes with flaws. Now take those so called super people, chuck them into present day U. S. of A. and have their assess handed to them by a technically enhanced robot/armoured Nazi army.  

Okay, maybe Invasion by Mercedes Lackey isn't the most appropriate book to start my blog review with, especially since my intent is trying to convince the non-sci-fi reader out there to pick up one of these books.  But come on, if you are going to go for it you might as well jump right into an easy read that makes you feel like a comic strip has exploded in your brains.  How can you resist?  I can actually hear eye balls rolling. I see I have my work cut out for me.

Invasion is a collaborative piece of work with many other authors (who most likely are big deals in the genre but new to me)working with Mercedes(famous fantasy writer) to create this world. The seed idea stems from a video game of all things. Great, I just lost the rest of my readership.  Don't click away!  I promise to be entertaining.  So, yes the seed idea is from the land of gaming.


Once I got over the fact that the writing wasn't going to be this book's saving grace, I realized that the goldmine is character development. The book is big on characters while managing not to muddle up the plot. You are left wanting more, wishing you could pry into the lives of these people faster, answering questions quicker than the author wants us to.  We all know why of course:  cash cow called "series".  I ordered the next instalment (in hard cover no less!) even before I got through half of the book.  


As for plot, here is what you are in for.  Think present day America, with it's jobless rate and Big Gulps.  Then add to that 30% of the world population who were born or suddenly acquired super human traits. For example, one dude is called Tomb, Tomb Stone for short. Guess you cannot in a million years guess what his powers are. He is dead, a dead guy, think of the possibilities.


Okay, still not convinced? Time to chuck in the big guns, angels, and mages, that's right, magic. We follow the life of Vickie:  a cloistered, panic attack, burn victim who once worked for the FBI as techno-witch. If anything, you have got to admire the creativity. I just spent last night gorging on a full out magic battle involving voodoo priests and the demons they summon. Some people watch the Oscars, I read about a walking, talking kill machine named John who has a Seraphim intrigued yet terrified of him because his future (futures) are closed to her. Yes, I did type Seraphim   
  
But Dune Girl, where does the techno-enhanced robotic armoured Nazi army come in? Don't know, still reading about the after effects of the epic Blitzkrieg that opens the novel. But I can tell you something, it's going to be good.