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The Imperial Radch Series
It's hard to review these books as the trilogy they were marketed as because the difference in substance, quality and story from one to the next is confusingly drastic.
Ancillary Justice was a winner through and through. Ann Leckie burst onto the sci-fi scene with an intensely engaging, powerful and refreshingly creative space opera that follows the remaining fragment of a warship called Justice of Toren, embodied by its one surviving "ancillary," who is on the run and going by the name of Breq.
In Leckie's bleak vision of the future, the Radch empire considers itself the pinnacle of civilization and makes a habit of spreading its so-called sophistication far and wide by "annexing" (a.k.a. invading, slaughtering, enslaving and assimilating) lesser cultures. A shocking number of their unfortunate victims are converted to ancillaries, which means they're physically killed and implanted with Radchaai technology that links their bodies and minds to the will of warships' artificial intelligence. In essence, they're brutally converted into zombie super soldiers that act as humanoid extensions of the spaceship, and Leckie's description of it all is both intriguing as hell and immensely disturbing.
Cal Leandros
The first half of this dark urban fantasy series by Rob Thurman is fantastic. It's extremely creative and just gets better and better over the course of five books. I enjoyed them so much that I created a plethora of artwork for the series, and plan to do more in the future.
True, the rest of the books were a bitter disappointment, but that certainly shouldn't stop you from tearing through (and re-reading often) five highly addictive novels before you go.
My mother sent me Nightlife, the first book, as a birthday present several years ago, knowing how much I love dark dramas, snarky humor and the supernatural...all of which are in abundance when it comes to the Leandros brothers. I was hooked from the first page.
These characters are NOT heroes, and that's part of their charm. To have leads who are such an absolute mess, but presented with a sense of humor that mixes perfectly with the dark, intense drama behind it, is refreshing. Be aware, though, you have to love Cal. If you can't embrace his bitchy and often punch-worthy personality early on, this series definitely isn't for you.
Percy Jackson and Rick Riordan's Modern Mythology
I could rave about this author for days. I could write a lengthy, in-depth review of each and every individual book, but that would be a waste of time. Just go read them. Go read them all.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians is one of the best book series out there. Sure, my being a lifelong ancient mythology buff enhances the experience, but even if you know nothing about the source material, his modernization of classic tales and figures is thoroughly engaging.
Kiss the Girls
I absolutely love books of this genre, particularly those that get inside the killer's head, so I was really looking forward to reading this. Unfortunately, I wrote a better thriller when I was twelve. The style of writing in this book is unbelievably childlike. I've never seen such an abuse of italics and exclamation points, and the stupidity of the characters is so extreme that suspension of disbelief becomes impossible.
The hero and heroine of the story, as well as their supporting cast, are blundering buffoons who display nothing but incompetence every step of the way. The main madman is a one-dimensional stereotype with absolutely nothing to make him interesting. Patterson writes him to be "super clever," giving him a style of speech and narration that's not at all realistic. It's like the character was yanked out of an old 1800s novel; the way he speaks comes off as a failed attempt to make him sound highly intelligent and ends up sounding fake and silly. The story itself drags on with too many side plots and more holes than the Titanic, to the point where you end up wanting to smack everyone involved.
Additionally, I have no problem with scenes of sexual violence. Lisa Gardner's Say Goodbye is a beautiful example of how to write graphic, disturbing scenes that don't feel gratuitous and are actually true to life as well as integral to the plot. In contrast, the violence in Kiss the Girls is purely gratuitous, written in a way that makes me wonder if Patterson was simply drawing from online fantasy forums.
Do yourself a favor...if you want exciting, captivating, disturbing books about serial killers, stick with authors like Lisa Gardner, Brian Freeman and Tess Gerritsen, who have large collections of well-written genre novels, and skip this ludicrous attempt at a thriller. Hell, go watch the movie. It's not great but it's leaps and bounds more enjoyable than this literary disaster and at least it has Morgan Freeman.
Merlin
For the most part, there's just something about this show that puts a smile on my face. The interactions between the characters and the chemistry of the cast are so wonderful, you can't help but adore them. Fantasy often has it the worst in regards to cheese factor, melodramatic dialogue, bad acting and more, especially when it comes to television, but on the whole, Merlin manages to breathe new life into the genre with its lighthearted, joyful and humorous retelling of a classic.
That's not to say that the show is without its flaws. In fact, the end of the series inarguably goes down as one of the worst letdowns in TV history, and let's not forget the fiasco of the first half of Season 3. In spite of that, though, Merlin remains one of my most enjoyed and rewatched series. The writing is clever, the direction and visuals are lovely, the costumes and set design are beautiful and the performances are great overall.
So...what made this show so very wonderful at its best, and what caused it to tank so very hard at its worst? Let's take a look:
Star Trek Remastered
As someone who is generally against modernizations, remakes, etc., I naturally found the idea of remastering (i.e. meddling with) the original Star Trek series to be an abominable idea. Why? Well, aside from making more money for the company, what purpose could such a project possibly serve? The series - most of which I grew up watching over and over, to the point where I knew most episodes by heart - was absolute perfection just as it was, no "fixups" necessary! I thought the idea was as idiotic as Spielberg replacing guns with walkie-talkies in E.T.
However, I recently bought the remastered version of Season 3 without knowing it and can happily admit to being completely wrong. I watched through my new DVDs of Seasons 1 and 2 (because, yes, I still had the whole series on VHS up until last year), and when I reached Season 3, my first thought was..."didn't the budget go down for the last season and not up? Why does everything look so good?" Only when I double checked the box and found that I'd somehow gotten my hands on the remastered release did I realize just how awesome the updates actually are. Contrary to common fears, they didn't try to make it look like a modern show at all. They simply enhanced, in most cases quite subtly, what was already there. The colors are brighter, the picture quality is sharper with better contrast and the sound is just a bit clearer, all without taking away the feel of the old school visuals and audio. Instead of a plastic toy flying around indistinct glowing globes, a slightly sleeker digital Enterprise floats across orbital views of definable planets. The phaser fire looks a bit less clunky and they even added some extra effects to scenes like the agony booth in Mirror, Mirror...but it blended in so well with the original footage that I didn't even remember it not being there before.
Not a single change in the remastered editions feels out of place and I must say, it's AMAZING. Of course, the original releases have a certain nostalgic charm that can never be replaced for those of us who grew up on the show, but if I could choose just one to have, the new verions are a bit more visually pleasing and only add to my love of the episodes rather than taking away from them. So at this point, I would probably stick with those!