Reviews

Set in a richly realized world roughly analogous to the 1930s, Hard Magic diverges from known history with the discovery of many forms of magic accessible to relatively ordinary humans. The main character is known as a “Heavy”, someone with the capability to alter gravity and mass. Heavies are stereotyped as slow and stupid, if physically capable – but despite the book’s opening scenes in a prison for the supernaturally inclined, it rapidly becomes obvious that appearance isn’t everything and we’re dealing with a very smart cookie indeed.

Lackey states in the afterword that she based her Arthurian tale on Welsh legends of not one, but three, queens named Gwenhwyfar. This theory does tend to clear up some of the conflicting tales of Arthur’s queen. In her novel, Lackey focuses on the third queen. This is a pleasant read. Which seems to be the norm for Lackey’s novels lately. There is none of the emotional depth of her early novels.

Dave Duncan is an author I am familiar with from mainly from his King’s Blades series, a straightforward and competently written set of mostly-independent tales of supernaturally bound bodyguards. The Alchemist’s Apprentice takes a step closer to the real world, being set in a version of Venice where magic is somewhat more effective than in ours. The alchemist of the title is Nostrademeus, and the apprentice one Alfeo Zeno, the latter being a character more reminiscent of a Dumas musketeer than anything else.

Blindsight is a first contact story that turns out to be more about the humans than the aliens, something that was more than a little disconcerting. The narrator explicitly functions as an “interpreter” between pre-Singularity humans and a variety of post-Singularity humans, the types of which include functional multiple-personalities, cybernetic human-machine interfaces, a vampire, and an AI. None of the post-humans seem particularly incomprehensible in their thoughts and behavior, which makes me question the need for a translator – or perhaps serves to point out how effective he is at translating.

Yesterday, I went to see Fearless, Jet Li’s recent martial arts epic. It was pretty good, but also pretty much exactly what I expected. While there, I saw that the theater had allocated one of its screens to a flick called The Illusionist, a movie I had never heard of or seen previews or promos for. Based on the little title strip with showtimes, it looked interesting, and a few minutes wirelessly checking the reviews on Rotten Tomatos suggested it wasn’t awful.

I picked this up hoping for a mildly interesting tale of intrigue, and what I got was the renaissance through the eyes of a feminist who really, really wishes she could grow up to be a swordswoman. The Privilege of the Sword is not a bad book exactly; it’s an unrealistic premise handled reasonably well with a light dose of intrigue and humor on top. Interesting, particularly for the attention to detail given to the fencing, but not very meaningful.

Dzur is Brust’s long-awaited followup to Issola in the Vlad Taltos series. It’s an interesting mix of new material and old standbys of the Vlad series. In terms of series revelations and introductions, I counted at least five or six events of a similar stature to the Lesser Revelation of Orca. And it’s worth noting that the Greater Revelation of that novel is not directly revealed but gets enough in-jokes that it becomes tiresome.

Micah didn’t really do much for me. About equal parts sex, relationship angst, and supernatural spook. Nothing really to recommend it especially, though the sex didn’t grate nearly so badly as in the last full-length novel.

I have spoken before in this forum on my declining respect for, and interest in, the Anita Blake series. Nonetheless I have consistently picked up the latest book when it was released, hoping for something of a turnaround or change in direction. So far I have been disappointed, though not enough to make a firm commitment to refuse the next installment. Danse Macabre may well be bad enough to break that barrier.

So there’s a new vampire movie out, and I really need a few hours to sit and take in someone else’s vision of impossibility with the hope of seeing something cool. These factors combined to put me in a theater seat watching Ultraviolet, despite having nothing more than the posters and the previews to go on. I’ll give you the short version: it’s bad. Really bad. So bad I’m surprised I sat through the whole thing (which probably had a lot to do with the fact that if I didn’t, I would have to start thinking again – something that I was trying to avoid in the few hours between work and more work that I had).