This one, I’m not sure I’m going to finish, it’s that annoying. Turning Elizabeth Bennett from a witty, cultivated, original heroine into a bloodthirsty thug doesn’t even work as a joke, which this book clearly wants to be, and could be in subtler hands. I’ll give it another chance or two as the situation warrants, but there’s a lot on my to-be-read pile I’m eager to get to.

I don’t know what it is, but while I love comics in general, superhero comics tend to leave me cold (except for Kurt Busiek’s Astro City). This is particularly strange when one considers that I enjoy superhero-themed novels (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay, Soon I Shall Be Invincible).

Playing for Keeps is set in a world where the government has developed a drug, Zupra, that activates superpowers in the babies of women who take it. The superheroes thus born are tax-supported public servants and the subject of sickening adoration.

These people are not the heroes of Mur Lafferty’s book.

Not every child born this way gets superpowers. Some get lesser powers. Some get frankly disgusting powers (an important and very sympathetic character, Ian, can shoot high-powered jets of excrement from his hands). And some get powers that seem really wimpy indeed—until someone figures out their extent and how to use them.

THESE are Lafferty’s heroes, and they are caught in an uncomfortable crossfire between superheroes (who are mostly arrogant assholes) and supervillains (who seem nice at first but are manipulative bastards).

Heroine Keepsie, from whom nothing can be stolen, and her friends are the only ones who seem even remotely concerned with staying human in this world, and human they are; even the minor “Third Wavers” are exquisitely drawn, believable and sympathetic. They fight, fall in love, endure hellish experiences, argue with each other but ultimately stick together.

Can camaraderie save the world? Mur Lafferty makes a very compelling case that it can.

As my review title might indicate, this film owes more than a little to Citizen Kane, and quite a bit to Sin City also I would guess, filmed as it was mostly before green screens, the stylized and wildly imagined backgrounds filled in later.

This is the story of a dead tycoon’s clone, raised carefully to be as much like his original as possible, then handed control at age 25 of a megacorporation. It’s a whole different world from when the tycoon was king, however, and the clone leads his company in the opposite direction from their hopes.

The old world is dead; Earth barely habitable; people live in orbital communities of some sort (with full gravity, however, but it’s a movie, we give it a pass, as always) and everything is virtual. This doesn’t satisfy Able Edwards—even though his namesake built the business empire on fantasy, cartoons, theme parks (yes, it’s sort of Walt Disney! More than sort of!). Wouldn’t real animals and real roller coasters be more fun than virtual ones?

The framing device - a probate case trying to settle Able Edwards’ Mark II’s estate - is kind of irritating in that it’s been done to death, but other than that this is a perfectly enjoyable film, mostly because it’s nifty to look at in a hyper-unreal way.

Give it a try!

This book comes with a collection of “tangible items” and metadata to complement and expand the novel’s narrative. The items have extremely high production value and are really cool to have while reading the book—but they also are, each of them, little tangent factories. I’m pretty sure Personal Effects: Dark Art is the first novel in which one can open up the physical volume and spend 45 minutes immersed in its narrative… without turning a single page. AWESOME!

The novel itself is great: fun, frightening and not without a certain charm. The narrator is extremely likeable and sympathetic, the villain/victim disturbing and moving at the same time.

I’m not quite halfway through at this point and am just seeing where author J.C. Hutchins is fixing to ramp up the horror. Up to this point it has been a perfectly fine chronicle of an art therapist struggling to help an accused murderer to help himself. Looking forward to seeing how all of this comes together!

This is a free online audiobook, delivered in 20-30 minute installments… and that’s all I can handle of Mike Bennett’s sexy yet creepy voice and intonation.

The great Old West n’er had such vivid hues
As given it by Garrie Gastonny
In Radical’s first comic. To infuse
The normal browns and greys with what must be
The brightest colors ever is but one
Of many choices I can only praise
In this, a well-morphed tale of man and gun
With the Olde English legend of the days
Of Arthur. More than simply Western drag
Clothes this retelling. Gone are noblemen
And knights and ladies fair; instead rag-tag
And outcast are the heroes in here when
Sam Sarkhar’s done with them. The choice is bold.
I long so for the sequels to unfold.

CROSS-POSTED FROM MY BLOG http://suppertimesonnets.blogspot.com

My heart is breaking as I’m reading this,
Mat Johnson’s tale of black passing as white
In rural Mississippi’s raw abyss
Of racism, of murder and of spite.
Our hero, Zane, has made a pseudonym
Of naming names and calling crimes as crimes :
His skin is light and he’s no fool. His grim
Crusade brings him right up against his times,
Confronting hate, betrayal, murder and
His own role as the Incognegro, which
He’s proud to have until what he has planned
Goes off the rails when his friend gets the itch
To come along. I’d say this work compares
To Spiegelman’s and Sacco’s startling wares.

CROSS-POSTED FROM MY WEBSITE http://suppertimesonnets.blogspot.com

A Lewis Carroll world is Jer’my Shipp’s:
Its denizens are fiercer, though, and drag
Protagonists along on fearsome trips
Through their own minds and fears. Jeremy’s bag
Of tricks is subtler than just monster tales.
A missing twin like dear old Phillip Dick’s,
A revolution in the making, bales
Of unknown drugs and cultures, Meek and Tics
In endless war (the Third Word and the First)
Fog up this mirror world. Into this, toss
A hapless teacher, living out his worst
And dearest dreams at once. And while his loss
On this Vacation seems at first severe,
The affirmation he gains made me cheer.

CROSS-POSTED FROM MY WEBSITE http://suppertimesonnets.blogspot.com

As was also true of its predecessor, this would have been a much better movie without all the pop psychological redemption crap. Last time Atilla the Hun really just needed a hug; this time George Armstrong Custer needs to be convinced he’s not a complete dipshit—and these are just two examples of the eyeball-rolling awfulness. It’s fine that everyone wanted to make this a feel-good film, but in general, being genuinely entertained makes this viewer feel better than does bludgeoning her on the head every five minutes with a club and yelling “feel good, dammit” at her.

What saves the film from being complete crap are two people: Hank Azaria and Steve Coogan, both of whom are obviously absolutely conscious that they’re being asked to play ridiculous roles and have just chucked it all and gone for it. Miniature Roman general versus a squirrel? Sure. Wannabe Pharoah who can’t take criticism on his attire (“It’s not a dress, it’s a tunic” he keeps complaining to Ivan the Terrible – without ever commenting on how Ivan himself, in the traditional Boyar kaftan, is pretty much also wearing a dress)? Why not.

It is also, and I say this without shame, tremendously satisfying to see Ben Stiller get repeatedly and resoundingly slapped.

HOUSE OF SUNS proves that Alastair Reynolds is still very much on his game. It’s not everyone who can write a novel that takes place over millions of years - about the same few characters - without its indulging in silly conceits. Isaac Asimov’s FOUNDATION series didn’t even try; it coped with these kinds of time-scales but in bite-sized pieces, ebbs and flows of civilizations, individual lens-views through normal human lives.

There are still people living that way in HOUSE OF SUNS – there is frequent talk of “turn-over” civilizations, regarded as human may-fly colonies by the protagonists. These protagonists, all cloned “shatterlings” of a common fore-mother, travel the galaxy at relativistic speeds, their lives prolonged by periods in abeyance (kind of like the Ultranauts in his REVELATION SPACE series, without the dreadlocks and extreme body modification and overall gothiness), are feeling their way toward solving a troubling mystery: why the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy seems to have disappeared.

The answer is surprising; the ending not, perhaps 100% satisfying but I forgive this because the trip on the way to that ending is worth it.

The characters are more sympathetic than usual for Reynolds; clearly he is only getting better at this. Campion and Purslane, the two point-of-view shatterlings, are utterly believable and true; Hesperus, the Machine Person who is swept up into their story, even more so. I found myself loving him most of all.

I took this in slowly because I didn’t want it to end, and was genuinely sad when it did. More please!