Book Review: Batman: The Widening Gyre by Kevin Smith

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Batman: The Widening Gyre by Kevin SmithBoy, do I feel like a fool. There I am prais­ing Cacophony and say­ing how I look for­ward to read­ing what Kevin Smith did next, and then I get this. I praised Cacophony for its light­ness of tone; Widening Gyre is too light. I praised Cacophony for hav­ing an actual end­ing; Widening Gyre stops with an immense cliff­hanger and, three years later, there’s been no resolution.

But these prob­lems are two heads of the same beast. The light­ness is there to give a sense of secur­ity, before the twist comes along and blows everything wide open. And that twist is really what the book has going for it. [con­tinue]

Book Review: Shada by Gareth Roberts

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Shada by Gareth RobertsI’ve men­tioned before how Doctor Who spin-off media (books, audio, etc) suf­fers from the fact that it has to some­what cosy up to main con­tinu­ity. It can’t intro­duce any­thing too grand, for fear of it being swept aside. Shada, hav­ing its begin­nings as an unaired TV story, doesn’t quite suf­fer from this problem.

I watched the patched together TV ver­sion of Shada before read­ing this, and I wouldn’t recom­mend it. Largely, what went unfilmed were the more dif­fi­cult shots. Instead of excit­ing action sequences and dar­ing feats of genius from the Doctor, you’re left with a few sen­tences of explan­a­tion from Tom Baker’s nar­ra­tion. [con­tinue]

Uummannaq Song

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Why do I keep writ­ing in the first per­son? It’s almost becom­ing a disease.

Maybe it’s because I give myself so little time and space. There’s no room for any­thing to grow. So the only option I’m left with is a char­ac­ter already fully developed.

Yes, I was talk­ing about myself. Don’t laugh.

And what does this even help, any­way? I know I can write. I don’t need prac­tice at that. Spurting out these short little things won’t help my story­craft. It won’t help to come up with enough ideas to fill out an entire novel. It won’t help me to cre­ate some­thing someone else might want to read. [con­tinue]

There Goes a Tenner

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“You didn’t turn it off?”

“I thought you were going to …” Dan gave me one of his looks. He did that a lot. I’m pretty sure he prac­ticed them in the mir­ror while I was out. I knew full well how proud he was of what he could do. “What does it mat­ter, any­way? We’re still doing fine.”

“Well, for a start, it’s mak­ing this a hell of a lot more dif­fi­cult than it should be. But regard­less of that, it’s the fact that — once again — you haven’t done some­thing I’ve asked of you.”

“You really think now is the time to go into this?”

Dan shif­ted pos­i­tion, all the bet­ter to glare at me, it seemed. [con­tinue]

Book Review: Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger

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Etiquette & Espionage by Gail carrigerI will admit that I wasn’t anti­cip­at­ing this as much as the first Parasol Protectorate Abroad book (which is sadly still a long way off). Mainly because of the latter’s closer ties to Gail’s pre­vi­ous series. But I really shouldn’t have doubted that Gail would deliver some­thing else great.

The Finishing School series is set in the same uni­verse as the Parasol Protectorate books, but about thirty years earlier. It’s also a Young Adult book (but what does that mat­ter?). What this com­bin­a­tion gives us is a focus on younger char­ac­ters (includ­ing some younger ver­sions of cer­tain PP char­ac­ters) and a glimpse of the roots of Gail’s steam­punk world. [con­tinue]

Bee Trail

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It’s a little weird to watch someone sleep, isn’t it? No mat­ter how involved you are with them and how intim­ate you have been, it will always be weird. They’re lying uncon­scious and you’re just watch­ing them. Almost the defin­i­tion of creepy.

But she looked like an angel. It dis­gusts me to say that, but it’s true. She looked prac­tic­ally divine. Laying there, her chest mov­ing slowly. I don’t know how long I watched for. I could have lost hours.

But the phone call snapped me out of it. It was lucky that I’d set it to vibrate, but the buzz­ing still seemed so loud in the quiet of her bed­room. [con­tinue]

The People’s Prince

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Names are dif­fi­cult. I still don’t have a reli­able pro­cess for gen­er­at­ing them. Sometimes they just appear, fully formed, but mostly they don’t. Mostly it’s sleep­less nights and rack­ing of brains.

Though maybe that’s a slight exag­ger­a­tion. It’s a bother, that’s all.

And what’s in a name, any­way? Do they really have to mean some­thing? Do they have to mat­ter? They are the first port of call. Short but all-encompassing. They must be everything at once. Somehow.

They are para­doxes. Difficult and easy at the same time. Murder up until that moment. That moment where it all comes together and it all starts to look so simple in hind­sight. [con­tinue]

To Whom It May Concern

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Sometimes your stu­pid­ity astounds me. Your sheer inab­il­ity to remem­ber simple instruc­tions, let alone fol­low them. I truly believe that, if your ineptitude could be made gaseous, it could eas­ily be weapon­ised with dev­ast­at­ing effect.

You are a black hole for sense. Your mis­un­der­stand­ing of con­cepts drags down oth­ers. You not only suck the fun out of things, but the effi­ciency, com­pet­ence, and clar­ity. You are a leech for know­ledge, except you don’t feed. It merely runs through you and into the void that you would call a mind if you could some­how be led down such a path.

That bit­ter taste in your mouth is not from the end­less tea you con­sume, but fail­ure. [con­tinue]

Book Review: Marvel Boy by Grant Morrison

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Marvel Boy by Grant MorrisonAnother ran­dom grab from the lib­rary (I’m really run­ning out of stuff to read from there that isn’t a ran­dom part of  a series). Thanks to fol­low­ing Jamie McKelvie on Twitter, I’m quite inter­ested in grabbing the cur­rent run of Young Avengers when a col­lec­tion comes out. So, as he’s a fea­ture of the new team, I thought I’d check out Marvel Boy’s origins.

This book is a mixed bag. While it cer­tainly springs forth from the same well of genius as some of Morrison’s best work, it stumbles. Not least because it doesn’t feel like Morrison’s con­cepts and ideas are given enough room to grow. [con­tinue]

This is How We Measure Success

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I looked at the thing I held in my hands and I was dis­gus­ted with it. All the time and effort I had put into it seemed so wasted. The end product was bor­der­ing on hor­rendous. It was just so utterly point­less. What had I been thinking?

But I’d done it, hadn’t I? I had knuckled down and put the damn effort in, and I had some­thing to show at the end of it all. So what if I didn’t like what that res­ult was? So what if it wasn’t as good as I had ima­gined it would be? So what if it hadn’t lived up to its poten­tial? [con­tinue]