Tag Reviews

Review — The Mandalorian

Kasey-Rayn Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve actually reviewed something, and since I watched the whole first (and for now only) season of The Mandalorian in one sitting while staying home sick from work, I thought now would be a great time to talk about it, since it’s still fresh.

Since it is relatively new, though, this review will be completely spoiler-free. I was intending to add a spoiler-section at the bottom as I normally do, but my typical commentary went on long enough, and I didn’t feel I had much to add that required spoiling. So if you’d like to chat, feel free to comment and I’ll add spoiler tags if necessary.

My understanding is that everybody loves this show. It’s got everything from Space John Wick to Baby Yoda, what’s not to love? Well, I’ll tell you something contentious (to incentivize your reading): I thought the show was okay at best.

The biggest problem I had can be tied in a nice little bow, too. Every character the show told me to root for felt… edgy. The Mandolorian is the resident Batman/John Wick/whatever of Star Wars. So cool he never even takes off his helmet. He gets a pass because this is long-established Mandalorian lore, but I believe it is still worth mentioning. You have Cara Dune. Ex soldier and so awesome she can mop the floor with several guys at once ’cause she has a huge gun. You can tell she’s competent because our resident Batman likes her and wants to team up. You have Kuiil, who is so wise and obviously always right that you’ll be facepalming every single time the other characters don’t listen to what he has to say. And of course, you have Baby Yoda, who is so adorable that even when he’s being stupid you can’t help but ugly cry every time he’s on screen. And so on. I’m exaggerating, of course, but you get the idea.

Tied to the concept of edgy characters, this show had a serious problem with presenting and solving problems to the character. Often, these problems would arise without warning, or worse, would be solved out of nowhere, or both!

It felt like everyone was cool stereotypes that had X amount of their #cool scenes, and only failed when the plot felt it was necessary for them to be less competent. Successes and sudden salvations felt unearned because the show taught me that success and failure alike cannot be predicted.

For example, in the very beginning, when Mando (which is a stupid abbreviation, given “Lando” is already a character) is fighting the blurrgs, he is suddenly attacked. He does not hear footsteps and has no inclination that danger is near. Interesting that a master bounty hunter failed to notice a huge primal beast. Then, in the same fight, he is saved, again without warning, by Kuiil. This is more forgivable, as Mando is a little preoccupied with possible death to notice a tiny man coming to his rescue (even if he is on another blurrg). The stakes feel weird in this scene because danger was both presented to and taken away from our hero without his input in the situation at all. He was just… there. If the actor had been replaced with a punching bag, the entire scene could have played out exactly the same way (given that blurrgs are a punching bag’s natural predator, of course). This scenario happened multiple times throughout the show, but this is the best example of it because it shows both problem and answer being solved suddenly, and in the same scene to boot.

How do you solve this? Easy. You present the characters, and the audience, with a problem that seems like there is no way out. Then, when the character makes a clever use of the resources they have available to win the day, that success feels earned. If the character notices a crumbling wall earlier that day and later uses that crumbling wall to get away from the bad guy, it turns into foreshadowing and makes our hero look more competent. When salvation comes out of nowhere, the opposite happens.

The show, as a whole, also does a poor job making me care. The Mandalorian protects the asset in a way that is—as the show tells us—uncharacteristic of somebody like him. This is fine, I have no problem with that concept, but it fails to tell me why I should believe he would do such a thing. Spoilers I won’t mention aside, character choices like this are important enough to at least hint at their root. Also, the Mandalorian has a very strange gauge for who he can and can’t trust. He implicitly trusts some strangers with the most valuable baby in the galaxy while he goes off to kill people, then doesn’t trust a droid who was practically designed to protect him. Now I know what you’re going to say. “But the plot! But the plot!” And I get it. The reason he doesn’t trust droids makes sense. My point is more that he trusts random people for no reason. Also, he doesn’t trust that protector droid, but in a previous episode he leaves the baby alone on his ship with a droid he knows even less.

Overall, though. It’s a great series and has some awesome moments. The scene where he gets trapped behind a door (and the way he gets out) is incredibly well done, and did a great job at making the Mandalorian feel awesome in ways other scenes failed. The Mandalorian Armorer very much feels like a “rest zone” in a video game where you come back to upgrade your gear, and while the armorer herself is pretty one-dimensional like the other characters, I couldn’t help but enjoy every minute of screen time she had. Maybe she was my edgy OC whereas the other characters simply didn’t vibe with me.

P.S. I thought the way they ended the season was weird, as they revealed a thing that seemed too important to throw into an “after credits” style scene, but after talking to my brother about it, he made a good point. You need something to tease the next season with, and revealing it earlier in the episode/season would have left nothing to be excited for for later.

Review — War Crimes

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Of the many novels written in the Warcraft universe, I’ve actually read a scarce few of them. To be honest, this is only my second. However, having played WoW off an on for the majority of my life, and having many brothers and friends that are well versed in Blizzard and Warcraft lore, I’m quite familiar with the characters and events, generally speaking. I won’t give spoilers here, though, for as familiar as you may be with the story before and after this book, the novel itself does contain some pretty neat, self-contained things.

War Crimes is a somewhat recent addition to what surprised me to be a collection of over twenty canon books, and chronologically it was the latest addition to the universe until Before the Storm published last month. It takes place between the Mists of Pandaria expansion and the Warlords of Draenor expansion, serving as a segway from one to the other. It explores the trial of Garrosh Hellscream, the former Warchief of the Horde after he basically killed thousands of people and was, to put it mildly, a jerk to everyone, even the people who should have been his friends.

I’ll be honest—I didn’t expect much of this book. The main plot is a trial, and I hated Garrosh’s character simply because he’s boring. In fact, if I were to buy a Warcraft book, it probably would have been one of my last choices for those reasons. When I’m reading a story like this, it’s generally because I want to dig deeper into a universe I’m already familiar with, and not only does this book basically not have that, but it doesn’t have very much action in it, either. It is, as you might expect, almost entirely placed in the Temple of Xu’en, where the trial takes place.

But the book is fair. To call it a bad read or a waste of my time would be out of line. It does the characters justice while also showing different sides of them. It explores the morality and virtues of many of the main characters in Warcraft lore, and you see different sides of them you might not otherwise notice. Flashbacks are used as evidence in the trial (via magic, of course), so we also get to see some interactions between characters outside this moment in time, and that can be really interesting when you didn’t realize those characters knew each other at X point.

I’d say one of the best things about this book is that it’s a balancing act of two parts, and it does a great job. Writing a book (or any piece of media) based on a game where the player has a direct impact on the environment or story of that game is hard. You have to either pretend the player doesn’t exist, which makes any player made choices seem inconsequential, or you make the player a main character, which only works if they don’t get to make their character. The second part is writing a part of the story that isn’t important enough to be essential to the gameplay, but is interesting enough to not waste the reader’s time.

War Crimes does a great job on both of these fronts. The players are the ones that managed to defeat Garrosh and put him in “prison”, but they aren’t necessary for the trial. Players want combat, and this part of the story has very little of it. You wouldn’t want a trial scene to be in your video game anyway, unless you’re playing Ace Attorney, in which case what is a bloodthirsty orc doing there? As far as being interesting but not essential, the story does a good job of that, too, exploring nuances of characters, as I’ve already explained. The ending of the story is a bit obvious if you’ve played the beginning of Warlords of Draenor, or have seen even the trailer of it, but nonetheless it’s a good read.

Overall, this book is a good read if and only if you are interested in understanding the personalities, flaws, or beliefs of the major characters in the Warcraft universe. You really get to know the characters as people in this book, not as the walking stereotypes they can sometimes fall under. If you want to read action scenes, understand the lore of Azeroth (or Draenor etc.), or read about the major events of the world, you’re better of picking up pretty much any other book in the universe.

As a side note, it dawned on me reading this book how little opinion Warcraft players probably have based on the characters in the lore. Basically any player will tell you that Cairne Bloodhoof, or Vol’jin, or Jaina Proudmoore are basically cool people. (Or at least they were, given various points of the story.) For as divisive as Warcraft tries to be—splitting the players into Alliance or Horde—I’ll bet 90% of the playerbase will be able to tell you which are the honorable, good characters from both factions, because while the lore tries to paint in broad strokes of “good and evil”, it does a great job at putting both of those extremes in either side.

Review — Brief Cases

Kasey-Rayn 2 Comments

Finally, a new Dresden book! …kind of. I think that I started reading The Dresden Files about five years ago, around the time Cold Days came out. By the time I was just about caught up, Skin Game was published. Up until that point, the books were being churned out practically once a year, and well, that was three years ago now. I picked the wrong time to get caught up!

Thankfully, a new short story anthology was released, and boy was it nice to get some more Dresden. I recently started listening to audiobooks at work, an with me working full time, I’m getting through them pretty fast. So I am simultaneously ecstatic and depressed that I’ve already finished.

But before I get started let me add a qualifier. The thing that sucks about this review is that it’s more pointless than most reviews. The people that know Dresden will buy it automatically and love it, because it’s the Dresden we all know and love, but the people that don’t know Dresden shouldn’t get it, because like his other short story anthology, there are lots of time skips and even more spoilers. (The last two short stories take place after Skin Game). So instead of me framing it into the vein of “is this worth reading”, I’ll speak plainly in terms of what I liked and didn’t like. That said, this review is not spoiler free. I won’t be discussing many spoilers by virtue of the fact that my opinions tend to paint broad strokes, but I don’t see much point in writing a review that’s half spoiler-free and half not. So let’s jump in.

I’ll start with what I didn’t like just to get over it. The first is that a lot of these stories have sexual contexts I don’t much care for. I mean, I’m not surprised, that’s always been a Dresden thing. But after taking a break from the series and reading so many other things, I’ve noticed how just how much Jim Butcher tends to describe women based on how insanely hot they are, and how naked they tend to get because “the world of vampires and the fey are very sexual realms”. Logical, sure, but I think it would be fair for me to say that the story could redistribute the sex into more polarizing zones. Take it out where it isn’t necessary and emphasize it where it is rather than just putting a little bit pretty much everywhere. (Side note: I am willing to concede that maybe I’m just being dramatic and prude, but at the same time I don’t think the Dresden series would lose much of anything if there was less sex-but-not-actual-sex, you know?)

My second critique is even more whiny than the first: I didn’t really get to see anything I wanted to see. None of my favorite characters, and nothing awesome really happening. Now, obviously he can’t write about important people doing important things in a short story collection—you can’t force your entire reader-base to buy something that’s supposed to be a side adventure—but still. I wanted to see more stuff that had… meaning. “Zoo Day” is probably the best example of this, and it was definitely my favorite story. We see a potentially bad news character introduced, but it was done in a way that doesn’t take away from the main plot when they inevitably return. I also wasn’t a fan of the same plot structure of “retelling a story” used in two of the twelve stories here, though Butcher isn’t much to blame, because a lot of these stories were written at various times over the years and put together, not written for this book.

But the stories in and of themselves are great. I loved everything about the Bigfoot stories, especially the fact that they all dealt with different issues while (unconsciously) foreshadowing future ones. “Zoo Day” is a masterpiece, too. A long scene told in three different perspectives dealing with three different conflicts is great, and Mouse being the narrator to a story was a lot of fun. Top notch.

I love where the series is going, especially considering the scope and the perspective strength of some of the characters, but it’s also nice to take a break and see characters deal with more mundane issues—it puts the huge ones in the main series in a better perspective.

But also I’m mad that Butcher introduced the Lovecraftian mythos in a single short story and we’re probably not going to see much else from the Old Gods for a long time, if at all.

Review — Wildcat

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I recently got through Wildcat, by JP Harker, sort of in between all the physical books I’ve been reading lately (I’m still in between books two and three of Lord of the Rings, and have been thinking about picking up a new series by Samantha Shannon). So I picked this one up and resolved to finish it before the end of the year, and I did! I’m pretty proud of myself on that front—while this is no Stormlight Archive, the book is pretty thick.

To my knowledge, this is the author’s debut novel, and I’ll admit it, it kind of reads like one. There’s a lot of choices made in the book that seemed off, and a lot of the plot can be called simple. That’s not to say the book is bad—it does have some awesome scenes that I thoroughly enjoyed—but it doesn’t knock anything out of the park.

I think a big part of the problem is the fact that really, I’m not the target audience for the book. I would have trouble pinning this one done to a genre, since some subplots get a lot of attention and the main conflict doesn’t come into the foreground until more than halfway through the book. There’s lots of action and threat of physical conflict towards the beginning and end, but it slows down a lot in the middle, and there were times where I wasn’t sure if this book was actually a romance in disguise.

The biggest problem is easy to diagnose, though: There’s just too many characters that are named. As in, 70% of the characters that this book considers “important” enough to name shouldn’t have been. It makes things really confusing for the reader when they have too many names to juggle. (I’ve found that the author often doesn’t see this because in their mind, the name is used as a label for a character they’re already familiar with. The reader doesn’t have this luxury.)

Imagine that every character name used in a story is a marble. Every time you introduce a name (even if its an alias of a familiar character), you grab a new marble, and set it on the table. Realistically, your table can see about thirty to fifty marbles (names). But eventually your table doesn’t have enough surface area to be able to lay them all flat across the table, so you have to get a bowl to hold all your marbles. Except, now you can’t see some marbles, so when you come across that name in the book, you don’t have any idea who it belongs to, because now the book assumes you remember.

I’ll use a quote from the book to show you what I mean: “The town was now heaving with people and Rhia saw that her Aunt Eleri and Uncle Aeron had arrived, along with her cousins Pryder and Merrion, and their wives Eluned and Kira. Cerridwen, their sister, was chatting with her own husband, Natan, who was looking as red-faced as Rhia felt after her climb up the hill.” Now, as both a reader and a writer, I know none of these characters are important. They’re just furniture. This paragraph of nine unique character names has eight too many, because the only one that matters is the protagonist’s. (Side note: if these characters had actually turned out to be important, and the author had expected me to memorize who was who, that would have been even worse, but thankfully that wasn’t the case.)

In all honesty, there were times where a character that was in the beginning of the book didn’t get any scenes in the middle, but became important at the end of the book, and I had no idea who they were. The name was so unfamiliar to me that I didn’t even know where their name had come up before, so I couldn’t even use the book as a resource to figure out who this character was. I’m not exaggerating when I say with full confidence that there are probably over 200, maybe 300 unique names in the book. No, I didn’t go back and count, but realistically there shouldn’t even be 100 different names, especially since scenes like the one I described only serve to confuse the audience.

That said, that’s the most glaring issue with the book. If you have a notepad and write down all the character names and a short snippet of who they are as you read the book, it’ll be much more coherent. It’s a shame, because there are some awesome moments in the book.

So, final thoughts? While the book isn’t the best, it shows promise. Having the willpower to see a book through from start to finish is no small feat, and especially with a book this long, it’s commendable. To me, that says “I’m in it for the long haul”, and I can easily see future books really starting to shine.

Review — John Cleaver Series

Kasey-Rayn 2 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve actually read through the entirety of a book series, especially one longer than a trilogy. (The only other time I’ve done that in recent years was Sanderson’s Alcatraz series.) I’m no longer used to capital-‘C’ Conclusions, because everything I finish these days is a part of a series, be it podcast, YouTube series, or book. So, as usual, no specific spoilers, though I will give away the basic premise of the series as a whole.

The weird part is, listening to this series on audiobook as they were released, I had no idea this was the last book until I was already almost done with it, and even then it was only based on the context of what was being said. I think it also has to do with the fact that, as a fantasy reader and gamer, most of the things I experience progress in scale and stakes as you get more invested into it. The last book really isn’t as climactic as one of the books before it.

But I’m going on a tangent, here. Is the book series good? Well, it’s definitely different. It’s a little strange when the protagonist is arguably less human than the demons he is trying to stop. Dan Wells did a great job making a character that toes the line between hero and villain. The series has a macabre atmosphere the whole time, but it’s interesting because it’s also a mystery novel where the protagonist has to be clever in order to deduce the situation and figure out a way to handle it. I especially liked it because it doesn’t follow the typical rules of “who is the killer”. Instead, a huge focus of the books is “How is the killer?”

It makes more sense when you read it yourself.

It really does it’s job as a mystery series, though it does kind of cheat because of the supernatural element that the reader can’t predict ahead of time (because the clues can sometimes translate to strange conclusions).

My biggest critique for the book series as a whole is that there are remarkably few neat characters in it. In the entirety of the six books, I could count on one hand the number of characters that had enough depth and intrigue to interest me beyond their place in the plot. For example (not really a spoiler), his mom is a very typical mom, and doesn’t really have any qualities that make her stand out. And there aren’t many characters in the series that do. In fact, one of the ones I really liked died really suddenly, which made me upset because I wanted to know more about them! (Also not a spoiler because of course people die in this series!) It’s sort of funny how I like the series because of how unique the main character is, and yet I think its biggest flaw is how unique all the other characters aren’t. I suppose he just spent all his character building energy on the protagonist, which makes perfect sense to me.

As far as the ending goes, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s the sort of ending that is both impossible to predict and blatantly obvious in hindsight. It’s that sweetspot authors have a hard time finding, but I think Dan Wells really nailed it. To be honest, I didn’t like the ending at first, because it seemed too easy. But after giving it more thought, I couldn’t think of any ways to close the series that would be more satisfying, so I’ve concluded that this is the correct one. Plus, giving it that much thought made me appreciate it all the more, because it wraps up and “answers” the theme of the series as a whole very well. Bravo.

Dan Wells has certainly earned his place on my shelf. None of his novels have disappointed me, and it’s a little peculiar that he isn’t even a fantasy author, which is usually my niche. I hope one day he fills that gap, but only if he can deliver on the standards I’m going to hold him up to, given everything else he’s published!

Life — March ’17 Update

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Lots of stuff on the horizon, and let me tell you I have a great feeling about the things to come. So, in the order I’m going to adapt for these monthly updates, let me talk about everything that’s new (or not) with me: Blog changes, writing plans, video games, and school.

I’m actually really excited for the blog changes I’m making today. First, I’m doing away with the “About Me” and “Life” posts. They will now be considered one thing. It’s always been a struggle talking exclusively about myself in one category and then exclusively advice in another. There’s always been a lot of crossover. So rather than have two different categories for it, it’ll be easier for everyone if it’s the same thing. So, in the future, Mondays will be “Life” posts and will be about me, advice, or anything in between. (As a side note, I don’t know how I’m going to deal with changing the sidebar in this regard, since I’m combining categories. I’ll sweep this issue under the rug for now.)

In addition to combining those two, I’m moving the Review section to Friday. Why, you ask? Because Wednesdays will be a second fiction day. The entire end goal for this blog is to get me to write more fiction, and I think I’m finally ready to challenge myself to write even more. I needed it in the Wednesday slot because I wanted the two fiction posts to be far apart in the week. As far as the content this will be, my current intention is to make the Sunday fiction focused towards my more important stuff, like the Nacre Then novelettes, Lisa Stenton, and the Spark novelette. Wednesday posts will be anything at all, perhaps random stories whose writing prompts I snag from Reddit. It’ll be my “unwind” day, and for Wednesdays I won’t stress over publishing a story that’s only five hundred words (whereas Sunday posts are typically well over a thousand).

Speaking of the things I’m writing, the third novelette, Windcaller, is well underway. In fact by the time this publishes I expect to be over halfway done. I am a little worried/excited, though. Part of me says there’s no way I can squeeze all the story I want to tell into the conventional ten thousand words these novelettes are targeted to be. I’m okay with this story going over that, but I don’t want it to get too long lest I run into the possibility of me getting bored with the story before I finish (which has been my biggest roadblock in writing novel length works in the past). It occurs to me that the best way to do this may be to cut Delanden’s story into two full novelettes, but that fuddles the entire structure of my anthology, and I don’t know how I’d handle that. I plan on jumping into Lisa Stenton immediately after Windcaller finishes, and then Spark after that, but we’ll see how it goes.

As far as video games go, I’m still playing the same old things. Mostly, this has meant Hearthstone and Overwatch, but lately I’ve also been playing Heroes of the Storm, and I don’t really know why. It certainly isn’t my favorite game, and it can be way more frustrating than the other games I usually play, but I’ve wanted to lately. Maybe it’s because I can listen to audiobooks and music while playing it, whereas Overwatch makes that a bit more difficult.

My semester is in full swing, including my late start classes, now. I have an astronomy class that meets for four hours at a time, which is as awful as it sounds, but luckily I’m learning a lot of interesting things that I knew nothing about prior. (Have you ever heard of Fraunhofer lines?) None of my classes are particularly difficult or time consuming, but this semester I haven’t managed to snag a class I’m excited about going to, either. I guess I can’t be lucky every time.

Lastly, in other news, I submitted some applications for some scholarships, towards my college and elsewhere. I don’t actually expect to win any, because I took a huge gamble this time around, but this was more of a bonus. We’ll see what comes of it.

That’s all for now, but let me tell you March is, inexplicably, one of my favorite months. I’m really excited.

 

Me — January ’17 Update

Kasey-Rayn 4 Comments

The holidays are over, and that means the Spring semester. That’s probably the biggest news I’ve got, which is pretty sad. But, as a monthly tradition I seem to have inadvertently started back in November, here’s an update on all the things I’m doing. What games I’m playing, what my future writing plans are, and how my life is going in general.

In December I finished the second novelette, now titled “Change in the Winds”, in the Nacre Then anthology. I also recorded an audio version of it, and you can listen to it on YouTube here. The third novelette will take place in Zephira, a nation of monks that live amidst the clouds. While I already know what the main conflict is going to be, I’m not planning on jumping right in any time soon. I seem to have been having a harder time getting into “writing mode” lately, so I want to try to sort that out and take a breather before I take on another larger project.

As a side note to this, from now on, every Monday I will be releasing another audio short story on YouTube. Today’s reading is the first two Lisa Stenton stories: “Spiritwalkers” and “Suicide Note”. The two stories are about eighteen minutes total, and you can listen to them here! That being said, I do want to write another Lisa Stenton short story soon, but no promises.

I’m also excited to write quite a few Review posts! I recently saw Rogue One, and I’m starting to get into Path of Exile. On top of that, Diablo’s twentieth anniversary is coming up, and I’ve also been playing the original on the Playstation recently. All of these are prime candidates for reviews, so it’s a little frustrating to suddenly have too many things to talk about on that front! I plan on writing these reviews in the order in which I mentioned them, so stay tuned.

While I’ve been playing a lot of Path of Exile, I’ve also recently putting a little extra effort into hitting Platinum rank in Overwatch. I’m inching there ever so slightly, but it’s pretty hard when you play alone on a laggy computer, and your main character is somebody that requires a lot of team coordination! I consider myself a very positive person when playing video games in general (getting mad only makes victory harder), but it can really be hard to remain optimistic in such playing conditions. That’s why it’s taking so long!

As far as reading goes, I’m about halfway through The Wise Man’s Fear, the second book of the Kingkiller Chronicle. So far this one hasn’t sucked me in the same way as the first, but it’s still quite well written in every regard. After I finish it, I plan on actually reading Hero with a Thousand Faces (I’ve read the first quarter of the book twice now.) Perhaps after that I’ll give Wheel of Time another chance, but I’m not sure I’m willing to give it one just yet.

Last, but certainly not least, the next semester begins on Tuesday for me. I’ve registered for five classes, but I don’t know if I’m going to be taking all of them. I got an email from one professor and he sounds like a real piece of work, despite his good reviews. (He doesn’t even allow used versions of the newest edition of the mandatory textbook.) So I’m a little tentative about the classes for this semester. In general it’s been kind of messy, but we’ll see.

I hope you’ve had a great head start to the new year. I’m pretty optimistic about where I’m headed, personally. I can’t wait to see what the months to come bring. If you feel like you’ve already fallen behind, don’t sweat it. Sometimes plans don’t go the way you want them to, but a good opportunity is never far ahead if you keep putting one foot in front of the other.