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Picoreview: Okay sure, the plot’s totally predictable, although I didn’t find it nearly as weakly so as many comments had led me to believe. And holy crap, so very, very pretty, and entirely worth seeing in 3-D.
More comments behind the cut!
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It occurs to me upon reflection that I had better also address the fact that even if I didn’t care about them as a viewer while I was watching the movie, with my writer hat on, I do need to care about the various tropes that the movie deals with, and why it really would have been better if they hadn’t been there. I’m breaking this out into its own post since it covers the not-squeeful, more thoughtful reaction I have to the film.
The biggest one being, of course, what james_nicoll
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Oh my, I’m really of two minds about this book. Going into it, even aware that I’d seen some poor reviews of it before, I was hopeful about the prospect of a plot that asserted that the Scarlet Pimpernel had been real and had in fact set off a trend of flower-themed spies during his era–and that the heroine of the meta-story, graduate student Eloise, was researching the identity of the mysterious Pink Carnation. It sounded like fun and I decided to give it a shot anyway, even knowing going in about poor reviews.
And now that I’ve read the first book I won’t exactly say that the poor reviews are justified–that wouldn’t be fair. But I will say that the book wasn’t nearly as strong as I would have liked. The meta-story involving Eloise wasn’t nearly as the story she was researching; aside from a few cliched conflict scenes she has with her future love interest, she honestly doesn’t do much, and it’s kind of surprising that the author bothered to put a framing story around the more entertaining actual story at all.
As for the main story, this is where the interest is, yes. Although here, as well, there wasn’t as much strength as I’d have liked. I have three major issues with it. One, both our hero and heroine make critical errors of judgment that should have gotten them killed. Our heroine doing so is more forgiveable, as she is a young and inexperienced girl full of her own ambition, and not nearly as trained at being a spy as she thinks she is. Our hero, on the other hand, is supposedly an experienced spy and has no excuse. Two, there’s a near-sex scene about three quarters of the way through that I found jarringly out of place with the overall flavor of the novel, not to mention the time period it was set in. And three, the final confrontation scene with the bad guy was unfortunately farcical, to the degree that the bad guy was only caught because he literally tripped over a convenient dropped object rather than any real skill on the part of our heroes.
Despite these flaws, I actually enjoyed the read. The chemistry between heroine Amy and hero Richard was fun (even given the jarringly out of place scene previously mentioned). And even though both of them were being stupid in places, there were other scenes where they achieved a rhythm that actually did hearken back to the actual Pimpernel and Zorro novels. Amy has some nifty supporting characters backing her up in the persons of her cousin Jane and their chaperone Miss Gwen, the latter of whom is a force of nature.
All in all, flawed but fun, and if you go in, go in expecting lightweight fluff. Three stars.
Mirrored from annathepiper.org.
If you love you some zombies, especially in a story with a hefty helping of lulz and satire, you can’t do much better than Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament. I had great fun with this one, the story of a man who has come back to life as a zombie following the car accident that killed both him and his wife. He’s now living a miserable existence in his parents’ basement, barely surviving on the consumption of formaldehyde and his attendance at the meetings of an undead support group. But he’s growing more and more drawn to fellow zombie Rita, and more and more interested in standing up for zombie civil rights. All of which comes to a head when his support group meets Ray, who shares with them his jars of “venison”–after which they find that the death wounds they sustained are healing, that their hearts are beginning to beat again, and that…
Well. You can probably figure out what the “venison” actually is. Muahaha.
General points for not only achieving a story with zombie protagonists, but doing it in such a way as to make you totally want to root for them munching on as many of the nearest brains as possible. Mark Henry has pulled this off equally well in his Amanda Feral books, so it’s fun to see it here, too. Four stars.
Mirrored from annathepiper.org.
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