Movie of the Week: Assassin's Creed

With plot holes you could drive a bus through this game-to-movie outing featuring Michael Fassbender in a 'shirt-off' role is what it is. I don't play the game (or any games) so whether it will suit game players who already know this world remains to be seen, but as a one-off cinematic event the action fairly rips along. There is - as you would imagine - a lot of posing on rooftops, hand to hand fighting and a plot with Jeremy Irons (always worth watching) as the villain of the piece. There's a cameo by Charlotte Rampling, and I'm always reminded that someone once famed for her looks has matured to be a fearsome older woman. Of course she does only get cameo roles now, but she acts her socks off in them. Worth watching? Yes if relentless action is your thing.

Movie of the Week: La La Land

Honestly, if you want to see a 'good old Hollywood musical like they used to make, skip La La Land and buy a video of Singing in the rain instead. I'm not sure how LLL got all the hype - well, actually I am. Hollywood loves a self-referential movie. My cinebuddy H and I took a friend to cheer her up. Unfortunately I had to wake her up halfway through this as she was starting to snore. That's how riveting La La Land is. The singing is lacklustre, the songs both tiresomely repetitive and intantly forgettable at the same time. The story... well there isn't one really. Aspiring actress meets aspiring jazz musician. The ending? Somewhat downbeat, I thought. And it's about 30 minutes too long. Altogether it hasn't got much going for it. Kudos to Ryan Gosling's piano playing. They claim that the onscreen fingers are really his and that he learned jazz piano especially for the movie.

Book Log 2/2017 - George Mann: Dr Who-Engines of War

Featuring a battle-weary Doctor as depicted by John Hurt, i.e. the War Doctor, who only had a very brief outing on TV in Day of the Doctor. I expected more from this because the blurb promises: ‘Searching for answers the Doctor meets 'Cinder', a young Dalek hunter. Their struggles to discover the Dalek plan take them from the ruins of Moldox to the halls of Gallifrey, and set in motion a chain of events that will change everything. And everyone.’ Like many spin off books it has to leave the main character more or less reset for the next book, so there's action, but no insight into the War Doctor's final act, which was what I thought I was going to get. This reminds me why I tend not to read franchise books. The authors don't get free rein to go where (if it were an independent book) the characters need to go. Well written as far as it goes.

Book Log 3/2017 - Carrie Vaughan: Martians Abroad

Book blurb reads: Polly Newton has one single-minded dream, to be a starship pilot and travel the galaxy. Her mother, the director of the Mars Colony, derails Polly's plans when she sends Polly and her genius twin brother, Charles, to Galileo Academy on Earth—the one planet Polly has no desire to visit. Ever.

This is a traditional school story (YA) with a difference. Raised on Mars in low gravity the Newtons have immense trouble adapting to Earth gravity, and since they have spent their lives in a closed environment, just stepping put under an open sky without protective clothing and a breather mask is scary in the extreme. The school they are sent to thinks itself to be super-elite where all the kids of 'people who are somebody' are sent, so their classmates are snobby and elitist, looking down on the non-earthers, because - hey - there has to be someone to look down on if you want to feel superior. Polly doesn't fit in, and doesn't have much desire to fit in, while Charles - too clever for his own good - seems to manage just fine.

But then a series of accidents involving high profile kids starts to happen. Polly, Charles and a few of their trusted classmates try to get to the bottom of it. Charles is the brain, but Polly is the heart.

Book Log 4/2017 - Rob Dircks: Where the Hell is Tesla?

Chip is a bit of a slacker, working as a security guard on the night shift, but when he demands a desk for his empty room and discovers the lost notebook of Nikola Tesla in a locked drawer everything changes. Chip and his friend Pete decide to test out the Interdimensional Transfer Apparatus that Tesla set up in the hotel room where he lived. Having figured out the portal into the multiverse – they forget to mark the way back home and the adventure begins. Humour is so subjective and I suspect I’d find this funnier if I were a leftpondian. It’s not laugh out loud, but it’s quirky in a ‘Hey, dude, where’s my flying car?’ kind of way. There are times when Chip’s voice gets a bit wearing and the comedy is a bit thin, but Tesla saves the day in more ways than one. If you’re a Bill and Ted fan, you’ll like this.

Book Log 5/2017 - Brent Weeks: The Black Prism – Lightbringer #1

Having adored Weeks' Night Angel series I was surprised that it took me a while to get into this. I put it on one side, almost stopped reading, and then came back to it after a couple of months. Reasons for putting it aside included not being able to feel much empathy for the main characters... but that changed as the book progressed. .

OK, from the beginning. This is a world of magic and the magic system is complex and well thought out. Drafters use light to draft coloured luxin that can have different properties, temporary or permanent. Most drafters can handle one colour, some can handle two, but Gavin Guile is the Prism, who can handle all the colours at once, which makes him tremendously powerful. He's nominally the 'emperor' figure, but not quite as grand as he eschews sitting in his ivory tower for being a hands-on prism, sorting out problems in the satrapies. The Chromeria - the governing guild which rules the drafters from training to their 'freeing' - is presided over by 'The White' and between them the White and the Prism are the head honchos of the magical fraternity. Unfortunately the more a drafter drafts, the closer he or she gets to going bonkers and turning into a colour wight. Before they get to that stage drafters are expected to volunteer to be 'freed'.

We pick up the story some fifteen years after a war between Gavin and his brother Dazen (the False Prism's War) which laid waste to a fair amount of real estate (and people), but Gavin is trying to put things right and turn things around. He doesn't have much time left. A prism doesn't usually last more than 21 years and he's had 16 already. He has goals for his final years (but we aren't party to them).

It turns out that in the heat of battle (well, maybe not during the battle, but you get what i mean) Gavin fathered a son and is now introduced to his 15 year old bastard, Kip, a potential drafter. There's something slightly awry (but we don't find out what until later in the book and no spoilers) however Gavin duly accepts Kip and sends him to be trained at the Chromeria as his... nephew.

It's a sprawling plot involving an uprising and a battle. There's tension between Gavin and Karris (his ex fiancee) who is also a super-soldier. Kip's point of view is on the point of being amusing as we get insights from his fifteen year old viewpoint. There's a reveal part way through the book that suddenly makes Gavin's character much more complex.

Book Log 6/2017 - Paul Cornell: The Lost Child of Lychford - Lychford #2

The three witches of Lychford are challenged once again when a ghost child finds its way into Lizzie’s church. What does it want? When Lizzie realises that it’s the ghost of a child still happily living in Lychford she enlists the help of her two witchy friends, Judith Mawson and Autumn, the local witchcraft shop owner, to track down the significance of the apparition. They’re on a deadline. Christmas is coming and unless they can do something about a magical incursion it may never arrive. Each one of them faces a personal challenge. This is the second of Paul Cornell’s Lychford novellas and the characters continue to develop. Lovely.