Categories
Review

So Not A Hero

I actually read a book again! I’m slowly having more time for that, mostly because instead of binge-watching shows on Netflix I binge-do homework, and I’m starting to run out of homework for the semester. At which point I start reading again.
Anyhow, I just read S.J. Delos’ So Not A Hero – it’d been on my list for a while, and I finally got around to it when I realized that my Amazon Prime lets me get a free book every once in a while.
I quite enjoyed it, to be honest – there were a couple scenes of a graphic nature that I skimmed past, because I’m not really interested in that sort of thing, but other than that, I found it all enjoyable. Sure, there were one or two things that slipped past the editor,1 but it’s the first book Delos has written, and I’m certainly not going to be up in arms about one or two spelling mistakes. It happens.
Now, a bit of background on the story: it’s a Superhero Story, where people randomly become Enhanced, some sort of Mysterious Cosmic Energy2 giving them various superpowers.
The heroine of the story, an asian-american who goes by Karen,3 has just been evicted from her (rather terrible) apartment. The reason? Her landlord found out that she’s an ex-convict, out on parole at the moment. Her parole officer starts giving her a hard time about being down on her luck and is just generally an awful person.
You see bits and pieces of what she went to prison for, but the long and short of it is that she was a supervillain. “Crushette” may not be the best name, but there’s a lovely bit of tongue-in-cheek referencing to copyright law here where the book discusses a law that was passed after the first Enhanced folk started showing up, when “every city had their own Superman and Hulk.” The comic book companies leaned on Congress, and Congress made it illegal4 to use an existing superhero/villain name for yourself. Helpfully, they also established a centralized database of the names, which kept everything from getting too complicated.
And then, while waiting for the bus, Karen catches a plasma blast5 that would’ve hit the non-Enhanced people also waiting at the bus stop. She gets them to safety and helps the superhero in the fight take down a group of supervillains, some of whom she’d worked with in the past.
And he offers her a job, saying that there’s a spot open on his superhero team.
At which point she goes into a lovely little spiral of self-doubt and introspection, and the book becomes a sarcastic redemption story. Karen spent two years in a maximum-security prison: she’s not going to accept that good things can just happen to her, and she spent too long as a supervillain to not have some great banter ready for every situation.
From there, the book gets fun. The superhero team is a dysfunctional little group, the villains aren’t afraid to swear, and Karen has a running issue with the fact that, while she’s indestructible, her clothes aren’t.
Basically, it’s a villain-becomes-hero superhero story told for adults, and I quite enjoyed it. Give it a read.

  1. Or rather, weren’t edited in such a way that made me wonder if there’d been an editor at all – not egregious errors, just, like, spelling mistakes every once in a while. ↩
  2. I use capital letters to express my sarcasm ↩
  3. She changed her name to fit the ‘American standard’ to spite her family, it’s a whole plot arc. ↩
  4. Punishable by, if I’m remembering right, something like five years in prison. ↩
  5. Or something, I’m paraphrasing here – this is still the first two chapters that I’m describing, and the book is significantly longer than that. ↩
Categories
Review

Young Wizards: Lifeboats

Hey, it’s been a while since I did a book review! My whole “read every book on my Kindle” project really slowed down when school started. I wonder why?1
This one is a bit of a cheat on that project, because I just got the book a week or so ago and have been slowly reading it since then. Nonetheless, I’m going to do a review.
So, let me start this off by saying that Diane Duane is one of my favorite authors. Seriously, she’s wonderful. The Young Wizards series is one of those things that I read growing up – I got the first book, So You Want To Be A Wizard, when I was in elementary school, and I (technically) own every book in the series now.2 It’s also wonderful because it feels like the characters grew up with me: when I started that first book, they were excited kids being dropped into a world of magic and adventure, just like I was when I first opened the book. By the time of Wizards at War – my first hardback in the series, which somehow gives it more weight both literally and metaphorically – they were in high school, taking the same classes I was. (And, in their spare time, fighting in a galaxy-spanning war, which I can’t really lay claim to without getting so metaphorical that I lose track of what I’m trying to say.)
Lifeboats is part of a three-piece cycle that Duane wrote, a ‘transitional trio’ that leads from A Wizard of Mars into the upcoming new book, Games Wizards Play.3
Some bits of the afterword, read last night right before I went to bed, stuck with me. And I think they’re very true. The book4 takes advantage of something Duane does that few other authors have taken advantage of: the ability to sell directly to the reader. Her eBooks Direct store sells DRM-free versions of most5 of her (and her husband’s) books. It’s a wonderful thing, and I’ve bought quite a few books that way. It’s a nice feeling to know that 100% of your purchase is going to the author, rather than being filtered through a supply chain and a publisher or two.
More importantly to the book, though, is the fact that Lifeboats was written entirely without the intervention of her publisher(s). It was direct-to-ebook, and that afforded her more freedom than normal. Going through a publisher, a book has to be marketable. It has to be something that people will buy. Market forces stop for no man.
Lifeboats, then, wasn’t a labor of economic forces. It was a labor of love. It was free to be whatever Duane wanted it to be.
And that showed: it expanded on a few side references from earlier books6 while dropping a couple others7 that I must now desperately hope get explained somewhere along the line.
And it was able to be something other than an adventure story following the hero around.
This wasn’t a ‘save the world’ kind of adventure. This was a ‘the world is doomed, try to save what’s left’ sort of thing.
The setting is a planet, close to the galactic core, that lives in the shadow of a moon almost the same size as the planet. The moon is an oppressive presence to our Earthling heroes, weighing down on them from above and providing a constant reminder of the doom that’s already underway: that moon is disintegrating, and as it does so it’ll wrack the planet below with tidal forces, earthquakes and tsunamis, all while raining pieces of itself down from above. A thousand Chicxulub impacts a week, and eventually something that’ll look like firing a bullet through a billiard ball when the metal core of the moon falls out of orbit and hits the planet with all the force that a sextillion tons of iron pick up by being in free-fall for weeks on end.
The main characters aren’t the main characters here: they’re just a viewpoint into a massive evacuation operation, a network of worldgates8 being used to evacuate the planet’s entire population, as well as a sizable chunk of the ecosystem as a whole and as much of the civilization’s cultural artifacts as possible. From Earth alone, something like 60,000 wizards were brought in to orchestrate the operation, and tens of other planets were also tapped for their wizardly resources. The scale of the operation is mind-boggling.
And we never get to see it, because we’re watching through Kit’s eyes as he acts like a cog in a much larger machine, keeping one of the worldgate complexes running while hundreds of thousands of people walk out of one of a set of small ‘feeder’ gates and into the larger upstream gate.
The book gets to spend more time looking at the relationships between the characters, expanding on the sort of thing that gets a few pages of introspection in one of the novels, but gets nearly a third of the book here.
And, quite frankly, I think that’s wonderful. It’s an expansion of the universe in all the best ways: the characters get more time in the spotlight, there’s a heck of a lot of world building, and we get to see people just… doing their jobs. It felt like a behind-the-scenes look into a world that I love, and I enjoyed every minute of it.
My only complaint is that it didn’t make good before-bed reading, because I wound up too invested in it and stayed up too late reading. And that’s the best problem for a book to have.

  1. Probably something to do with the fact that I’m taking 130% of a regular credit-load. Whoops. ↩
  2. I say ‘technically’ because there’s a few that were loaned out to people and never returned. I’m a bit more careful about keeping track of who I loan books to, these days. ↩
  3. I have a lot of excitement for that book and I have no idea when it comes out or anything. At this point, I know I’ll enjoy it, it’s just a matter of waiting or it to be released. ↩
  4. Actually more of a novella, I think, though the distinction between the two is a bit fuzzy and tends to change depending on who you ask and what time of day it is. ↩
  5. Not all, some aren’t available due to licensing restrictions from the original publishers. ↩
  6. I love any reference to the Crossings, and thus was overjoyed by the opening sequence of Lifeboats. ↩
  7. What happened at the Kola Superdeep Borehole? ↩
  8. Or, y’know, portals, for those who like the more boring words for things. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: October 2015

I almost did this write-up last weekend before realizing there was another week of the month left. Whoops.
Anyways, hope y’all weren’t expecting anything too spooky – the only ‘themed’ stuff any of my playlists ever get is a little bit of Christmas music in November/December.
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
A Sky Full of Stars – Coldplay
All I Want – Kodaline
Kingdom Hearts – Dearly Beloved – Vitamin String Quartet1
The Fault In Our Stars (MMXIV) – Troye Sivan
Wolves Without Teeth – Of Monsters And Men
Thousand Eyes – Of Monsters And Men
Talk – Kodaline
I Of The Storm – Of Monsters And Men
Everybody Knows – RAEKO feat. Mating Ritual
Fly Away For A Summer (Achtaban Remix) = FLAUSEN feat. Ben Cocks
Indian Summer – Blood Cultures
Fast Car – Navarra2
Ghosts – BANNERS
Man of Lies (live acoustic) – Blueneck3
The Knife – Deprival
I Found – Amber Run
5AM – Amber Run
Skinny Love (VANIC Remix) – VANIC
I Love You (Quintet Version) – Woodkid
Silver Linings – Leo Kalyan
Good Morning – Amber Run
Shiver – Amber Run
Little Ghost – Amber Run
Hurricane – Amber Run
Don’t Wanna Fight – Amber Run4
Not Alone – LINKIN PARK
I Need My Girl – The National
Don’t Swallow The Cap – The National
Heavenfaced – The National
Pink Rabbits – The National5
Pools – Harrison Brome
Harbor – Tropics
You’re Beautiful – James Blunt6
Shine A Light – BANNERS
Demons – The National
Yellow (acoustic version from Jo Whiley’s Lunchtime Special) – Coldplay
Father, Sister – Blueneck
King Nine – Blueneck
Sparks – Coldplay (acoustic version)
Gravity (Time To Run) Zeke Duhon
See You Soon – Coldplay (acoustic version)
Controlled Burn – Tall Heights
Fireproof – The National
Calypso – Sarah Kirkland Snider7
Safe & Sound (feat. The Civil Wars – Taylor Swift
Downtown – Majical Cloudz
Hell and High Water – Tall Heights
Thru – Vallis Alps
The Running of the Bulls – Tall Heights
Everything – Zeke Duhon
Do Not Resuscitate – Tall Heights
Careful Where You Stand – Coldplay (acoustic version)
Bleed – Tender
Creepy – Oyster Kids8
Three Strikes (feat. Jack McManus) – Afrojack
Never Let You Down (feat. Lykke Li) – Woodkid
Iron – Woodkid9
Auto Rock – Mogwai
Man of Stone – Tall Heights
Woods – Bon Iver10
D to E – Mogwai11
My Father My King – Mogwai

And that’s October! Looking forward to putting together my November list now. And, come February, you’ll have a full year’s worth of my playlists to read through. I might have to make an infographic or something.

  1. One of my choir kids (and yes, I’m aware that habitually claiming ownership of them is a bit strange, but I’ve done it for years and I’m not going to start now) was playing this song (not the VSQ version, just the original) on the piano, and I was rather proud of myself for recognizing it. ↩
  2. I’ve noticed that this version has neatly eclipsed the original as my favorite. Hmm. ↩
  3. The rate at which my interest in Blueneck is going, I might wind up having another huge appearance of them in December. Maybe winter just makes me feel like listening to exactly this kind of ‘desolate’ music? ↩
  4. Hmm, I wonder if I like Amber Run or not. They’ve only been present in huge amounts for a couple months… \</sarcasm> ↩
  5. Big blobs of a single artist like this don’t tend to bug me, mostly because my phone has been on ‘shuffle’ since I got it a year-and-change ago. ↩
  6. This is the explicit version. My roommate got mortally offended by the simple existence of the censored version. ↩
  7. That’s the composer, not the actual performer(s), but I don’t know who performed it and I do know who composed it. I pulled this from her website. ↩
  8. Okay, this song and the one before it are slightly in tune with Halloween, but whatever. ↩
  9. I had a fun and confusing conversation about this song when it started playing and the other person in the room went “wait, you listen to Kendrick?” and I went “who?”
    Long story short, Kendrick Lamar sampled this song for one of his songs. ↩
  10. I was really confused as to how this wound up in my iTunes library before I realized that it was from the “rainy days” mixtape that my friend made for me. I’m still waiting for a good sitting-indoors-reading rainy day to listen to the whole thing. Today was supposed to be rainy, but mostly it’s just clouds and wind. C’mon, weather, step it up. ↩
  11. Even if I didn’t like this song I’d probably have it in this playlist just because we’ve been talking about modulations a lot lately in my music theory classes. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: September 2015

Gonna be honest, almost forgot I had to do this – that’s why I’ve got a repeating reminder set up. Without the variety of apps that remind me when I have to do stuff, I’d forget to eat.1
Anyhow, here’s September:
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
Running Up That Hill – Track & Field
A Sky Full of Stars – Coldplay
All I Want – Kodaline
Kingdom Hearts – Dearly Beloved – Vitamin String Quartet
Vetus Memoria – God Is An Astronaut
The Fault In Our Stars (MMXIV) – Troye Sivan
Wolves Without Teeth – Of Monsters And Men
Black Water – Of Monsters And Men
Thousand Eyes – Of Monsters And Men
Talk – Kodaline
We Sink [explicit] – Of Monsters And Men
I Of The Storm – Of Monsters And Men
Human – Of Monsters And Men
Crystals – Of Monsters And Men
She Is In The Air – Green River Ordinance
The Arsonist – Tyler Stenson
This Too Shall Pass – Tyler Stenson
Everybody Knows – RAEKO feat. Mating Ritual
Fly Away For A Summer (Achtabahn Mix) – FLAUSEN feat. Ben Cocks
Cheerleader – Pentatonix
Indian Summer – Blood Cultures
Fast Car – Navarra
Ghosts – BANNERS
Man of Lies (live acoustic) – Blueneck
The Knife – Deprival
I Found – Amber Run
5AM – Amber Run
Skinny Love (VANIC Remix) – VANIC
I Love You (Quintet Version) – Woodkid
Silver Linings – Leo Kalyan
Good Morning – Amber Run
Shiver – Amber Run
Little Vessels – The Lighthouse and the Whaler
In the Open – The Lighthouse and the Whaler
Say No More – Tyler Stenson
Little Ghost – Amber Run
Big Hearts (Remix) – Tyler Stenson
Hurricane – Amber Run
Don’t Wanna Fight – Amber Run
Not Alone – Linking Park
I Need My Girl – The National
Lightning Strikes (bonus) – Dawn And Hawkes
Twine – Lowland Hum
Don’t Swallow The Cap – The National
Heavenfaced – The National
Pink Rabbits – The National
Pools – Harrison Brome
Harbor – Tropics
Quietly – Dawn And Hawkes
Silly Things – Wild Child
Ten Leap Years – Dawn And Hawkes
Hard To Find – The National
White Stone – Lowland Hum
War Is Over – Lowland Hum
You’re Beautiful [explicit] – James Blunt
Trusty And True – Damien Rice
Shine A Light – BANNERS
Demons – The National
Faith And Hope – Zeke Duhon
This Is The Last Time – The National
Always Is Now – Zeke Duhon
Fireproof – The National
When The World Sleeps – Lowland Hum
Yellow (acoustic version from Jo Whiley’s Lunchtime Special) – Coldplay2
Somewhere I Believe – Tall Heights
Father, Sister – Blueneck
King Nine – Blueneck
Sparks – Coldplay3
Gravity (Time To Run) – Zeke Duhon
See You Soon – Coldplay
Controlled Burn – Tall Heights
To Be Young – Tall Heights4

Normally I write these before I start the new playlist, but I did it in the reverse order this time, so I’ve got a bit of foreknowledge when I pick the Big Winners this month, since I can just flip to the October list and see what I already put in there. Still, I’ll go for it:
The National’s I Need My Girl was the reason I got the entire album – my roommate was playing it one day, and I just said “I need this.”
My favorite song for the month is a toss-up between Amber Run’s I Found and BANNERS’ Ghosts – both of those were incredible, and the reason that I picked up Amber Run’s album and downloaded every bit of music from BANNERS that I could find.
It was a good month for the more acoustic sounding folk, Tyler Stenson, Lowland Hum, Dawn And Hawkes, etcetera, but that’s ending: October started off with a bias towards the more-produced sounds of BANNERS and Amber Run and Blueneck. It’s one of those back-and-forth motions of history, I suppose, where two influences never quite balance out. We’ll see.
Anyhow, that’s it for this month. Hope y’all find some music you enjoy from these lists, and be sure to send some love towards the artists!

  1. Originally I said ‘forget to breathe,’ which was actually a joke, but I do legitimately forget to eat sometimes. I’m very absent-minded. ↩
  2. My roommate tracked down a copy of Coldplay’s ‘Acoustic’ album and gave it to me for my birthday – it’s a bit of a rarity, since it was a limited production run and none of the songs were sold digitally, as far as I could tell. Either way, I’ve got the album now and I love it. ↩
  3. This, and the one other Coldplay song to follow, are the versions off the Acoustic album. ↩
  4. A quick note about Tall Heights: I saw them live in concert, and it was a very interesting experience – I was one of the sound techs for the event, actually, so I had the excuse to look at their setup, and let me tell you, their cellist had some fancy stuff going on. The cello was on a shoulder strap, so he could play standing up, and he had it hooked up to a full pedalboard like you see with electric guitars. He produced some incredible sounds like that, and I was honestly disappointed when the album didn’t feature more of that sort of thing. ↩
Categories
Review

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 57

Not exactly a book, but still part of my read-everything-on-my-Kindle project. For this one, I’ll only be talking about the various works of fiction that were published in the magazine – I wouldn’t even know how to go about reviewing the bits of nonfiction, interviews and whatnot, that’re included in the magazine.
Since it’s a series of short stories, I’ll break it up into pieces.

And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead

All sorts of bad language included in this one, but a rather enjoyable read. Reminded me of Neuromancer with the cyberpunk aspect of the whole thing, as well as the overall sense of grittiness.

Buffalo

This one didn’t strike me as science fiction. At all. With H.G. Wells present in it, I was hoping for something along the lines of Warehouse 13.1 What I got was something that felt like it should’ve been part of the nonfiction section, filed under ‘depressing.’

Red Planet

Pretty good, and reminded me of the WWW trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer, though from the other side – the WWW books are pervaded by a sense of wonder at what’s possible, and a distinctive dint of the ‘blind people are broken’ ideology that pervades society on some level or another, whereas “Red Planet” focused on the benefits of being blind and why someone might choose to stay that way. Interesting.

Veil of Ignorance

Confusing and a bit hard to follow, but that was done on purpose. Definitely an interesting read, and done in something that reminded me of a space opera way, where the actual sci-fi aspects of things are glossed over entirely, accepted as normal.

Cerile and the Journeyer2

A sad little story, but an enjoyable one. Not a whole lot to say about it.

Things You Can Buy for a Penny

This one was interesting to read just because of the way that it was built in layers – pieces of story hiding behind one another. I quite enjoyed the overall aesthetic of it, a sort of folk tale with a light brush of horror, and definitely that genie-you-got-what-you-wished-for plot twist to each of the little pieces.

In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns

This was the novella included in the magazine, and I loved it. Futuristic murder-mystery aside, the setting for the whole story was a truly wonderful bit of speculative fiction. They took the current global warming crisis and ran with it, expanding biotechnology and the ever-spreading Internet of Things while highlighting the growing cost of traveling long distance and the energy scarcity that we’re creating for ourselves.
For being such a short story, there was certainly a lot of material in this one.
My final opinion is “this novella made the entire magazine worth the purchase.” If there had been nothing else of value in there,3 In the House of Aryaman would’ve made it entirely worth it.

  1. I wasn’t hoping for anything as awesome as Helena Wells, of course, but she’s rather hard to beat. ↩
  2. If you’re following along in the magazine, you’ll have noticed that I just skipped a couple things. You’d be right – I don’t write reviews of things I don’t finish reading, and I wasn’t able to make it through those two bits of fantasy. ↩
  3. And this was not the case, several of them were worthwhile reads, as I’ve mentioned above. ↩
Categories
Review

Bleeding Violet

I’m still working on reading every book on my Kindle, it’s just slowed down a lot thanks to all that pesky school.
Bleeding Violet was next on my list, and it easily passed my “20% test”1 – I was almost halfway through the book in my first sitting, and only noticed when my roommate got back and asked why I was still awake.
Of course, I woke up the next morning, having gone to sleep right after putting the book down, frightened by some strange2 nightmares. The book is creepy, for a few different reasons. First off, it’s set in a town where things like ‘milkworms’ (they eat calcium, starting with milk and ending with ripping the bones out of your body), giant flying leech things (I don’t think the official name of these was ever said, or if it was I’ve forgotten), and ‘breeders’ (every ‘the bug laid its eggs in me’ horror story ever, crossed with hints of a vampire from Twilight). The first monster we get a good look at is a blob of color that lives in the windows of the high school3 and sucks the color out of people, leaving them as glass statues. So that all creates a nice scare factor in the book.
The part that’s really creepy, though, is the workings of the protagonist’s mind. She’s got a suite of medication for a suite of conditions, currently taking lithium to try to manage manic-depressive disorder, if I’m remembering properly. And by ‘taking’ I mean ‘only taking when someone bothers her about it.’ Her first conversation is with the hallucinated ghost of her father, and the suicidal urges she has are dealt with by the direct intervention of a wooden carving of a swan. She’s been institutionalized in the past, and a little ways into the first chapter you realize she’s covered in blood from (possibly) bludgeoning her aunt (and legal guardian) to death.
The story is told from her perspective, so we get to occupy her mind throughout, and it’s strange. Everything makes perfect sense to her, and you can almost follow along… until you realize exactly how strange a situation she’s in, what exactly she’s doing. Best example I can come up with? Trying to earn her mother’s love by offering to burn down her childhood home. It makes perfect sense at the time… right up until your brain goes, wait, what?
The creepiness, though, makes the book interesting, and it fits nicely with a space filled with unanswered questions. What is the Mayor? Why do people still live in a town filled with horrible monsters? What in god’s name is going on around here?
Of course, those aren’t the interesting questions, but I’m trying to avoid giving away too many spoilers. Go read the book, it’s fascinatingly dark.

  1. I decided, arbitrarily, that if a book hasn’t captured my interest by the time I’m 20% of the way through it, it isn’t worth my time to read the rest of it. Those books that I give up on I don’t write a review of, so you may not have heard of this before. ↩
  2. And most nonsensical ↩
  3. The main character being, of course, a high school student. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: August 2015

I’m writing this one up on August 30th, a little bit early, but classes start on Monday and I don’t want to assume I’ll have a lot of free time. Here goes:
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
Dream – Imagine Dragons
Running Up That Hill – Track & Field
A Sky Full of Stars – Coldplay
England Skies – Shake Shake Go
Like a River – Will Young
All I Want – Kodaline
Love Like This – Kodaline
The Soul Serene – Villagers
All Comes Down – Kodaline
Work for Me – Pfarmers
Make Peace – Howie Day
Kingdom Hearts – Dearly Beloved – Vitamin String Quartet
Vetus Memoria – God Is An Astronaut
no – Gordon’s Tsunami Weekend
The Fault In Our Stars (MMXIV) – Troye Sivan
Slow Life – Of Monsters And Men
Wolves Without Teeth – Of Monsters And Men
Black Water – Of Monsters And Men
Third Eye – Florence + The Machine
Thousand Eyes – Of Monsters And Men
Backyard – Of Monsters And Men
Talk – Kodaline
I Don’t Want To Change You – Damien Rice
Which Witch (Demo) – Florence + The Machine
Winter Sound – Of Monsters And Men
Tonight – Magic Man
Princess of China (Acoustic) – Coldplay & Rihanna
We Sink1 – Of Monsters And Men
I Of The Storm – Of Monsters And Men
Human – Of Monsters And Men
Crystals – Of Monsters And Men
Honeymoon – Lana Del Rey
As the Crow Flies – Tyler Stenson
She Is In The Air – Green River Ordinance
The Arsonist – Tyler Stenson
This Too Shall Pass – Tyler Stenson
Everybody Knows – RAEKO feat. Mating Ritual
Mind Over Mater (RAEKO Remix) – RAEKO2
The Purge – Explosions In The Sky
A Strange World – Explosions In The Sky
Hold Me Together (b-side) – Green River Ordinance
Ain’t Afraid Of Dying – Green River Ordinance3
Cheerleader – Pentatonix
Indian Summer – Blood Cultures
Fast Car – Navarra4
Fool For You – Green River Ordinance
Original Script – Derrival
In Motion – The Lighthouse and the Whaler
Go – Down Time
Cannery River – Green River Ordinance
Romanticized – Derrival
Ghosts – BANNERS
Man of Lies (live acoustic) – Blueneck
The Knife – Derrival
Best Laid Plans – Tyler Stenson
I Found – Amber Run
5AM – Amber Run
Canvas – Derrival
Skinny Love (VANIC Remix) – VANIC5
Just My Soul Responding – Amber Run
Kites – Amber Run
Heaven – Amber Run
Noah – Amber Run
Brothers – The Lighthouse and the Whaler
Silver Linings – Leo Kalyan
I Love You (Quintet Version) – Woodkid
Shoes Grow Smaller – Derrival

Big winners this month: Of Monsters And Men, Green River Ordinance, Tyler Stenson, Amber Run. OMM to such a degree that, since we also moved into a new town this month, I’ll probably associate their new album with the new town for a long time.
Anyhow, until next time. Go listen to some good music.

  1. In iTunes, this is actually called “We Sink [explicit]” because it’s explicit, something I need to know for when I hook my phone up to the sound system at work, and because iTunes won’t let you add the little red ‘E’ to stuff manually. ↩
  2. Original song by Young the Giant. ↩
  3. Every time I type this name, it comes out as ‘ORdinance’ for some reason. ↩
  4. Original song by Tracy Chapman. ↩
  5. Using the Birdie cover of the song by Bon Iver. ↩
Categories
Review

The Astronaut Wives Club

Apparently I’m adding television shows to the things I review on here from time to time? What the heck, it’s still summer break, I’ve got time for it.
Anyhow, I just finished up the first season of The Astronaut Wives Club.1 The style kinda reminded me of Manhattan, with the following of a major historic event from a more personal standpoint, but Astronaut Wives captured my interest much better than Manhattan ever did. I really couldn’t say why, although it might have something to do with my slight obsession with the Cold War, rather than World War II.2
It’s a little bit hard to keep track of all the characters, at first – it starts off with the seven Mercury wives (and, to a lesser degree, their husbands) – and then adds the Gemini wives at some point. By the time Apollo rolls around, they aren’t really bothering to introduce the new set of astronauts and wives, they’re just accepting that it’s too many people.
That aside, though, the show is quite enjoyable. It’s historically accurate to a degree that I feel comfortable filing in moments of history that I learned from the show with the rest of my knowledge about the world, though I wouldn’t recommend it as a way to study for a test.3
The show is definitely predictable if you’re a history buff, but that is something that I am distinctly not, and the few specifics about the space program that I actually did remember, I managed to block out long enough that everything could be a surprise. That made a couple moments – one of which was one hell of a sucker-punch at the end of an episode – incredibly effective storytelling, and very emotionally charged at that.
Tl;dr: I enjoyed the show, and it’s worth taking the time to watch it once it pops up on Netflix.

  1. And I just now looked it up and saw that it was cancelled after one season, so apparently that should say ‘only season.’ Oh well. ↩
  2. What can I say, I’ve got a favorite historical period. ↩
  3. More because you won’t be getting tested on things like “who was cheating on who, and which wife was known for her baking prowess?” ↩
Categories
Review

War of the Fae, Book 1: The Changelings

I think this one was a ‘free on Amazon’ book that I picked up, and let me tell you, as a marketing effort, that worked. The book ends on a one-sentence plot-twist that acts as an incredibly effective cliffhanger, so props to the author for that.
As to the content, it’s a general fit in the young-adult-fantasy-adventure genre: kid runs away from home (though, admittedly, the reasoning for that is more ‘young adult’ than ‘young adult,’ a slight change that helped to hold my interest), gets involved in a weird situation, finds out magic is real, yadda yadda saves the day. There’s a bit of a ‘hunger games’ vibe to the weird situation, and the ‘magic’ bits are more hinted-at than outright-confirmed for a while.1
The book gets bonus points for a female protagonist, and since I’m now staring at the end-of-book about the author page and just now finding out that the author is a female2 it makes sense how well she was able to portray the female mind. As a dude, I am eternally doomed to be unable to understand the inner workings of the other gender, and I’ve come to terms with that.
On the other hand, it gets docked a few points for two issues: first, the occasional Mary Sue moments with the protagonist – there are three main male supporting characters, and between the three of them at least two are very clearly in love with her.3 More points were docked for the fact that the closest the book has to LGBTQ representation is comparing the motions of a vampire, actively killing someone, to “a gay teacher [the protagonist] had in tenth grade.” Look, I get that every Disney villain ever has been a hodgepodge of stereotypically-gay traits,4 but I’m still going to be disappointed when anyone else gives in to the trope.
Other than that, the only issue I had was a single recurring spelling error,5 and overall I enjoyed the book. It’s easily worth what I paid for it, and the fact that that was ‘nothing’ is how I’m going to justify buying the next book in the series.

  1. Although, being a total mythology-and-legends nerd I picked up on it earlier than the average reader could really be expected to. I have a mental filter for these sorts of things, so it doesn’t interfere with my enjoyment of a book too much. ↩
  2. I think the ‘read every book on my Kindle’ thing I’m doing is going by author-alphabetical order, but I’m not actually looking at the names, so… ↩
  3. I’m not docking many points for that, though, because she’s the only girl in the group for most of the story, and I have a low opinion of the average man. ↩
  4. Hades, anyone? ↩
  5. ‘Break’: to separate. ‘Brake’: to stop. I don’t think the word ‘break’ is used anywhere in the book, but ‘brake’ shows up multiple times, and it’s spelled wrong each time. C’mon. ↩
Categories
Review

The Poison Eaters and Other Stories

Sometimes I like anthologies, and other times I don’t. My theory is that it depends on whether or not one story catches my attention more than the others – if there’s just the one, I want an entire book of that and the inclusion of the rest just strikes me as a sad second.
This was that other case, where all of them catch my attention almost equally, and I enjoy myself the whole way through.
There were a few short stories that I liked more than the others, but again, nothing that stood out too much.
A Reversal of Fortune was surprisingly hopeful, for the kind of tale it was.
The Night Market was a lot sweeter than I was expecting, and I’d read more of this sort of thing.
I took a bit of issue with The Dog King, but I think that was mostly because it reminded me of Teen Wolf for no good reason.
In Vodka Veritas was a wonderful little story, and I think I’d read a sequel, though I get the feeling the sequel wouldn’t be quite as happy as the work itself. An impressive amount of ‘coming of age’ story crammed into a small amount of space.
The Coat of Stars was my favorite of the anthology, though not easily. It fit nicely in with my knowledge of the fair folk, and the sort of sad-turned-happy story that catches nicely in the mind. I wound up wanting to write, not my own continuation of the story, but my own version of it- a different cast of characters, but a similar situation. It was lovely.
The Land of Heart’s Desire was my second favorite, though by a thin margin. I actually put down the book while I was reading this one and texted my friend1 that he needed to add the anthology to his list of books to read. It was sad and sweet, and it felt like there was a lot of backstory that I’m missing out on, to the point that when I’ve got internet again I’m going to look up Holly Black and see if she’s written more in that world.

And now? On to the next book. I’m working my way through the list, collecting a lot of sun while I read this weekend. I must say, a stack of books and a sunny beach is a great way to wrap up summer vacation- I highly recommend it.

  1. More laborious than it sounds, because as I’m writing this I’ve got cell service in the ‘I had to stand on top of a car to make a phone call’ range. ↩
Categories
Review

Eastern Standard Tribe

I finished reading Cory Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribe during my weekend camping trip – out in the desert, the river is great for swimming in once it warms up, but it takes until pretty deep into the day for it to be anything other than ‘borderline arctic’ temperatures, so I had plenty of time to read.
Anyhow, Eastern Standard Tribe. My favorite thing about Doctorow’s writing is how clearly he understands modern technology – there’s some nods to IRC in the book, and a lot of what I know about common cryptography I learned from his books.
EST has two plotlines going on at once, though both follow the same character, just at different times in his life. They’re separated by a few months, and the one in the ‘past’ runs faster than the ‘current’ one, catching up to where the one started by the end of the book.
I’m pretty happy with the plot of the book, actually – I still find the concept of the Tribes weird, but it got explained in a way that makes a lot of sense to me, so at least it didn’t stay confusing the whole time. The inclusion of all the user experience stuff was really interesting, and I quite enjoyed the MassPike music thing that wound up being a significant chunk of the plot.
It’s warming up enough that I’m going to get ready to head down to the water, so I’ll finish this up with yet another call to action: go read something Doctorow wrote. I don’t care if it’s Eastern Standard Tribe or not, but he’s a wonderful author, and everything he’s written is available for free on his website, craphound.com

Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: December 2014

Prepare yourselves for some Christmas music, folks, I’m writing up one of my older playlists.1 Without further ado, December 2014:
The Fault In Our Stars (MMXIV) – Troye Sivan
A Sky Full of Stars – Coldplay
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
Fast Car – Tracy Chapman
Your Hand In Mine – Explosions In The Sky
Running Up That Hill – Track & Field
Ignition – Casa Murilo
Ritual – Tunturia
Mary, Did You Know?2 – Pentatonix
Let It Go – Pentatonix
Final Masquerade – LINKIN PARK
Giving Up – HAERTS3
Safe & Sound (feat. The Civil Wars) – Taylor Swift4
Atlas – Coldplay
I Don’t Want To Change You – Damien Rice
Long Long Way – Damien Rice
The One Moment – OK Go
It Takes A Lot To Know A Man – Damien Rice
I’m Not Through – OK Go
Congratulations – Blue October/Imogen Heap
Look After You – The Fray
Abraham’s Daughter – Arcade Fire
Set The Fire To The Third Bar – Snow Patrol
Animal – XOV
Father, Sister – Blueneck
Scream My Name – Tove Lo
Kingdom (feat. Simon Le Bon) – Charli XCX
The Leap – Tinashé
Ladder Song – Lorde
Shut Up and Dance – WALK THE MOON
Man Of Lies – Blueneck
Oceans (Live At E-Werk, Cologne) – Coldplay
The Box – Damien Rice
Lost Souls – Raury
Flicker (Kanye West Rework) – Lorde
Let It Go – Saint Saviour
King Nine – Blueneck
Sirens – Blueneck5
Lesser Oceans – Fences
Yellow Flicker Beat – Lorde
All My Love (feat. Ariana Grande) – Major Lazer
Dead Air – CHVRCHES
O (Live At Royce Hall, Los Angeles) – Coldplay
Be the One – HAERTS
White Winter Hymnal – Pentatonix
Silent Night – Pentatonix6
Re-Remurdered (Blanck Mass Remix) – Mogwai
First Began – Beta Radio
Pyres of Varanasi – THIRTY SECONDS TO MARS
Hurricane – 30 Seconds to Mars7
Night of the Hunter – 30 Seconds to Mars
Vox Populi – 30 Seconds to Mars
Lake Song – The Decemberists8
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen – Linfield College Concert Choir
Running Off The Gods9 – Fences
Adrift – Tarwater
Trusty And True – Damien Rice
Strong Hand – CHVRCHES
Unfair – The Neighbourhood
Under the Tide [Single Version] – CHVRCHES
Torn Apart, Pt II (Bastille Vs. Grades Vs. Lizzo)(Crossfaded Version) – Bastille
Silver – The Neighbourhood
Recover [KDA Remix] – CHVRCHES10
Cavalry Captain – The Decemberists
Another’s Arms (Live At the Beacon Theatre, New York) – Coldplay
Mutatis – Blueneck
Sunburns – Fences
The Days – Avicii
The Singer Addresses His Audience11 – The Decemberists
The Driver (Crossfaded Version) – Bastille
I Am Mine – Beta Radio
Teenage Exorcists12 – Mogwai
Bad_News (Bastille Vs. Mnek) (Crossfaded Version) – Bastille
Counting Out – Blueneck
The Lake – Fences
True Love (Live At the Enmore Theatre, Sydney) – Coldplay
The Lord is Out of Control (Nils Frahm Remix) – Mogwai
Axe To Grind (Bastille Vs. Tyde Vs. Rationale) (Crossfaded Version) – Bastille
Carolina Low – The Decemberists
Pretty Tough – Little Boots
Coconut Signal – Tarwater
Fall Into Your Arms (Bastille Vs. The Gemma Sharples Quartet) (Crossfaded Version) – Bastille
The Nights – Avicii
HMP Shaun William Ryder – Mogwai
Better Not Wake the Baby – The Decemberists
No Medicine For Regret (Pye Corner Audio Mix) – Mogwai
Baby, It’s Cold Outside – Linfield College Concert Choir
My Mountain Is Cold – Fences
What Child is This? – Linfield College Concert Choir
Miracles – Coldplay
Driving Home for Christmas – Blueneck13
Eric Colson – Totorro
White Christmas – Blueneck
2013 – Daniel Kim14
Plastic Covered Furniture – Have Mercy
Broken Fingers – Blueneck

And we’re done! Enjoy this oddly-depressing Christmas playlist!
I am bad at holidays.

  1. It’s an effort to build up a backlog of posts so that when I go on vacation somewhere without internet (presumably happening as you’re reading this post) this blog’ll still be updating. ↩
  2. One of my favorite Christmas songs, and one of my default songs for when I want something to sing. Throughout the year. I annoy my coworkers a lot. ↩
  3. Two ALL CAPS groups in a row! I like the all-lowercase crew from the internet better – facebook, twitter, tumblr, etc. ↩
  4. This song is my only concession to T-Swift’s unending fame. ↩
  5. Y’know, I distinctly remember playing some Blueneck on Family Christmas Day – held within a week of the actual Christmas Day – and being amused by the contrast between the downright dystopian sound of the music and the cheer going on around me. ↩
  6. All of the Pentatonix christmas music is incredible. ↩
  7. I choose to believe that the ’30 Seconds to Mars/THIRTY SECONDS TO MARS’ difference is just the least effective rebranding ever. ↩
  8. Don’t mind me, I’m just giggling about listening to The Decemberists in December. ↩
  9. I keep reading this as ‘running of the gods’ and imagining Zeus running around in Spain, occasionally turning into a bull just to confuse people. ↩
  10. For once I didn’t have to undo the autocorrect to CHURCHES ↩
  11. This song is delightfully meta. ↩
  12. … so, the Scooby-Doo gang? ↩
  13. This album makes for the most delightfully dejected-sounding Christmas music ever and I love it. ↩
  14. Pop Danthologies are wonderful, and all free on YouTube. ↩
Categories
Review

Mad Tinker's Daughter

I’m still going strong on the book-binge project, guys. It’s an excuse to sit around doing nothing but reading, how could I resist?1
Anyhow, today’s book was Mad Tinker’s Daughter, which I think was also one of those indie-book-bundle pickups.
Long story short, I loved it. The core concept is a little bit odd at first, but pretty easy to follow once you get into it: the twinborn. The story takes place across two worlds, and there are the occasional people who’re ‘twinborn’- born in both worlds, sharing the same appearance2 and a common mind. Some can occupy both bodies at once, others switch back and forth, running one body while the other sleeps.
The main character is the titular Mad Tinker’s Daughter, and a fierce tinker in her own right, inventing a magic-powered coilgun that she uses, within the first few pages, to crash something equivalent to a subway train. Full of police officers.
So, yes, she is a criminal, but in a system that’s hardly fair: the police officers are all a different species, the ruling caste of that world. Humankind occupy the same space that the african-american occupied prior to the Civil War: occasionally a freeman, but usually someone’s property.
It’s a mad romp through two different worlds, all of which are full of a lovely steampunk-adjacent aesthetic and enough of those lovely hints of ancient magic to keep me happy throughout. Sure, it’s the first book in the second trilogy set in these paired worlds, but I had fun trying to figure out what exactly was going on the whole time.
Anyhow, I’d recommend the book to anyone who’s got some spare time for reading. It definitely ends on a higher note than the last book I reviewed, though that’s all I’ll say for fear of giving away too many spoilers.
Go, read, enjoy! Literacy is never a bad thing, folks.

  1. I hope y’all don’t mind that my taste in books is almost entirely the action-adventure-fantasy-scifi blok; if you’re looking for more of the literature style, check out my friend’s blog. ↩
  2. And, presumably, parents. ↩
Categories
Review

The Brotherhood of Delinquents

I’m currently engaged in a project of binge-reading: it started when I found my Kindle1 in one of the innumerable boxes and started scrolling through it trying to pick a book to read. I realized that, much like my Steam library,2 it’s full of stuff that I’ve never even opened.
So I went through it, put every unread book in a new to-do list,3 and got down to reading.
Sunday morning, I finished reading The Brotherhood of Delinquents by Jefferson Smith. To be honest, I have no idea how this book wound up on my Kindle – according to the app on my phone, it’s a Document rather than a Book, so I suppose it was from an Indie Book Bundle kind of thing? I’m at a loss.
Anyhow, I enjoyed the book quite a lot. It’s the sort of book I used to read a lot as a kid – the protagonist is quite young, an apprentice, and it’s got the whole “uncovering something amazing” vibe that I adore.
But that wasn’t my favorite part of the book. No, that honor went easily to the amount of world-building that clearly went into this book. From the fantasy-standard slightly-off-norm names for things (‘Reeve’ as a sort of governor/elected-military-leader position, for example) to the amount of historical references present,4 an impressive amount of thought went into the background of the book.
There’s a specific part of world-building that the book pulled off masterfully, though: the ‘ancient magics/construction’ archetype. The entire book takes place in a single town, a massive Keep built to an exacting standard to defend a kingdom that wasn’t often described. It’s a leftover of an ancient war, one that was ended with colossal magic to the tune of “the wastelands start within sight of the Keep walls, and continue for god-alone-knows-how-far.” Clearly, things have just gone downhill since the days of yore, because there’s no mention of anyone creating new magic, and there are frequent descriptions of people moving away from the Keep, and the decrepit war-machines still sitting around.
To be honest, I can’t quite pin down why I thought this so resolutely throughout the book, but I was stuck on one concept: this whole thing is in the future. I have no idea if that’s what the author was going for, but every bit of magic present struck me as something that could be easily pulled off with sufficiently-advanced technology. Every time some magic was used, I started picking apart how I’d do it in a science-fiction environment, and it all made sense. The ancient mage was a technological wizard, my mind decided.
And that sort of thing makes me love a book. In the fifth5 Septimus Heap book, there’s a vague reference to some ‘ancient drawings’ that portray… the Apollo missions. It’s a moment where you go “oh, holy crap, that all makes sense,” and I just adore those moments. If ever I write some fantasy, you can just go ahead and assume it’s set in a distant future where someone got good enough with technology that they said “screw it” and turned the control interfaces into a system of magic.

Anyhow, I’m going off-course. I’m too easily distracted to be a book reviewer.
Final say: I enjoyed the book, and I’m hoping there’s a sequel out there.6 Go read it.

  1. It’d been missing for a while. Moving is fun! ↩
  2. Currently featuring in the area of 100 games that I’ve never played ↩
  3. Quick shoutout to Things, the task-management app I prefer on both my MacBook and iPhone. ↩
  4. I can’t tell if I enjoyed or was annoyed by the amount of references to a single mythical hero. Like, it was nice that it kept going back to a single name, it created a bit of recognition, but it got a little bit overplayed. Though, that could be my raised-in-the-TV-age sensibilities – the myths of my childhood are far more numerous than any medieval society would’ve had access to. ↩
  5. I think, it could be earlier or later in the series, I’ve got no idea. ↩
  6. We still don’t have internet at the new house, so I’m sitting here writing this in Ulysses, and I’ll upload it next time I’ve got WiFi. Hopefully I’ll remember to check for a sequel when I do that, but I definitely won’t remember to go back and update this post. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: July 2015

Alright, first time actually doing one of these when it’s timely, rather than catching up.
Airplanes And Airwaves – Aftermath
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
Cough Syrup – Young the Giant
Dream – Imagine Dragons
Hold My Hand – The Fray
Piss Crowns Are Trebled – Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Running Up That Hill – Track & Field
Sacrifice – Zella Day
Should Have Known Better – Sufjan Stevens
A Sky Full of Stars – Coldplay
Smoke And Mirrors – Imagine Dragons
All of You – Hinkstep
The Weight of Living – Logan Mays
England Skies – Shake Shake Go
Lanterns – Howie Day
Like a River – Will Young
All I Want – Kodaline
Everything’s A Ceiling – Death Cab for Cutie
A Heartbreak (Active Child Remix) – Angus & Julia Stone
St Jude – Florence + The Machine
Out of Mind – Magic Man
One Day – Kodaline
Fade – Logan Mays
Paris – Magic Man
Love Like This – Kodaline
The Soul Serene – Villagers
All Comes Down – Kodaline
Work for Me – Pfarmers
Chicagoland – Magic Man
Make Peace – Howie Day
Transatlanticism – Death Cab for Cutie
Soul Meets Body – Death Cab for Cutie
Little Wanderer – Death Cab for Cutie
It All Starts Here – Magic Man
Kingdom Hearts – Dearly Beloved1 – Vitamin String Quartet
Which Witch (Demo)2 – Florence + The Machine
High Hopes – Kodaline
Vetus Memoria – God Is An Astronaut
Make Up Your Mind – Florence + The Machine
no – Gordon’s Tsunami Week
The Game – Priest
Lets Meet In Our Dreams Tonight – The Best Pessimist
Close to Heaven – Breaking Benjamin
Pig Powder3 – God Is An Astronaut
The Fault In Our Stars (MMXIV) – Troye Sivan
Happy Little Pill – Troye Sivan
Fun – Troye Sivan
Slow Life – Of Monsters and Men4
Honey – Magic Man
What Kind Of Man – Florence + The Machine
Wolves Without Teeth5 – Of Monsters and Men
Black Water6 – Of Monsters and Men
Dark – Breaking Benjamin
Finem Solis – God Is An Astronaut
Third Eye – Florence + The Machine
particular7 – Gordon’s Tsunami Week
Dawn – Breaking Benjamin
Catherine – Magic Man
Thousand Eyes8 – Of Monsters and Men
Backyard – Of Monsters and Men
Talk – Kodaline
Texas – Magic Man
Pray – Kodaline
After The Fall – Kodaline
Apollo – Magic Man
Obscura Somnia9 – God Is An Astronaut
Thunderhearts – Cold War Kids
I Don’t Want To Change You – Damien Rice
The Lord is Out of Control (Nils Frahm Remix) – Mogwai
Shadow and a Dancer – The Fray
Same As You – The Fray

There we go folks, July all done. I’ve already started on my August list, don’t even worry.
Big winners this month – Florence + The Machine, Of Monsters and Men, Kodaline, and the genre of post-rock10 in general.
I’m hoping people enjoy some of the music off of these – ideally, someone finds some song that they really love by reading one of these lists, that’s basically my goal here.

  1. I just love the violin part in this, it’s so… sweet, I suppose? I don’t even know what exactly about it I love, it’s just wonderful. ↩
  2. The line “who’s a heretic now?” made me love this song. ↩
  3. One of two songs on this album with a name in English, and it’s… this. Post-Rock, man. ↩
  4. Of Monsters and Men is one of those bands that I discovered because one of my choir friends sang a song by them and I loved it. There’s at least two other bands like that on this list that I can think of – Coldplay and Kodaline. Oh, three: Death Cab for Cutie. ↩
  5. One of my top two songs off the new album. ↩
  6. There’s two versions of this song in the list and Shuffle keeps playing them back-to-back, but I don’t really notice and just think the song is, like, ten minutes long. ↩
  7. There was probably something clever with the order of songs and their one-word names, but iTunes just kinda threw the album in there in whatever order, so I didn’t get the joke. Welp. ↩
  8. My other ‘top 2’ song off the album. ↩
  9. My Latin (and my literary knowledge) isn’t quite good enough for me to say for sure that it’s ironic that this song is in my ‘sleep’ mix, but I think it might be. ↩
  10. I flip back and forth between ‘post-rock’ and ‘post rock’ in how I prefer this spelled, and every time I switch I go into my iTunes library and change every song I’ve got in the genre to my currently-preferred spelling. ↩