Siren Song (Yancey Lazarus 2.5) by James A Hunter

This is a flashback for Yancey, back to the days when he first learned he was a wizard: in the rainforests of Vietnam, surrounded by enemies, fighting for their lives and facing the sirens. And an ancient force far more deadly than even the modern battlefield.

For a time in this book I was vaguely frustrated

Not because I wasn’t enjoying this book – because I was. Not because it wasn’t well written – because it certainly was. It has a great sense of grimness, that classic Vietnam war-film feel all grim and gritty and normal people completely out of their element, fighting a nasty, terrible war far beyond their experience and what their training prepared them for.

Yancey’s extremely well portrayed, I can feel him, his anger, his sadness, his loss, his struggle. I can feel the camaraderie of his team and why that makes what the Siren’s music is doing to them extra painful and soul destroying.

The quality of the work, the writing, the style and the whole theme and feeling of the story is excellent

But I’ve read it before. I mean, one of the major elements of one of the books is Yancey confronting the sirens, arguing over what happened, demanding revenge and dramatically announcing exactly why he was so angry with the sirens

So I knew this story, especially since the parts that were added were classic Nam movie fiction that while it was all very thematic and atmospheric it wasn’t really adding anything. It was a fun read but then I asked why I was reading it, what it added to Yancey’s story

Especially since this was Yancey’s opening to magic but contained very little magic or wonder. And that makes sense, they’re in a war zone under constant threat. There’s a level of “just roll with it and keep moving” that simply has to apply here, no arguing that. But it’s another storyline that this book could have explored that would have added so much to Yancey’s past that wasn’t. I understand why it wasn’t, it wasn’t the time – but why this book

Then we got the answer with a big epic story about a Leshy and his plot to cause untold suffering and the noble and brave Gregg and Rat and Yancey willing to sacrifice everything to stop him because ultimately they may not be skilled or magical or powerful and they definitely have not the slightest clue what is really going on – but they know it’s wrong, they know people will die and they know they have to stop that

And it’s big and noble and epic. And, on the face of it, a good story – I want to say that again and again about this – it’s a good story, it’s well written, it’s atmospheric with some great characters being portrayed. And it’s a Vietnam war story without demonising the Vietnamese.

The Vampire Diaries, Season 8, Episode 10: Nostalgia's a Bitch

This episode is everything that is wrong with The Vampie Diaries (well not EVERYTHING because there’s so very very very very very very much wrong with this show).

See, Damon is all catatonic are Caroline’s mansion (everyone lives in mansions now) when Bonnie drops by (she was going to talk about Enzo and humanity cures but her issues have been shelved again). They delve into his head and find Damon is suffering endless fiery torment. She and Caroline discuss this with Sybil locked in the basement who explains that during their last show down she dipped into Damon’s head and flipped his humanity switch on. The overwhelming guilt became too much for Damon to handle and he went catatonic and suffering imaginary hellfire because he thinks he deserves it.

And everyone went home because Damon’s right he does deserve it and Sybil can rot in the basement as well.

Hah, no. They agree to let Sybil out AND get her the siren-killy bell if she will save Damon and remove their only weapon against the siren’s in the process. They agree to this.

They call Matt for him to hand over the bell. His reaction mirrors mine

The Vampire Diaries stop making me agree with Matt. It’s unpleasant. He also calls out Caroline for caring so much about Damon and Stefan’s pain but not sparing a
thought for their many many many many many many many innocent victims (he’s currently looking at Stefan’s latest murder pile)

The Vampire Diaries, Season 8, Episode 9: The Simple Intimacy of Near Touch

Stefan and Damon are still on their massacring spree, well Stefan is. Damon’s along kind of reluctantly for the ride, when Sybil calls

She still wants this sire-killing bell. The bell has three parts: The bell, the tuning fork of ancient devilness we’ve seen before (currently held by Dorian) and an iron ball that Matt used to have which Damon stole at Sybil’s insistence. He’s been carrying it around for a while. Which is why she calls him and asks him to bring it back because no-one escapes Mystic Falls! You will be back! You’ll all be back!

Damon can’t tell her no because of the tinkering in his head though it’s not as strong as it was. Stefan is happy to go along just to get rid of annoying external influences on his brother which is totally killing his murder buzz

So, to Mystic Falls, where we’re having a Mystic Falls beauty pageant

Seriously, this town – how do they get anything done? It’s a non-stop array of parties and parades and pageants. It’s a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, you’d think people would get bored of the endless formal gatherings. No-one in this town wears jeans but they’ve all got 8 tuxes or 11 parties dresses.

Just about the whole gang can turn up to this teenaged beauty pageant – Caroline because she’s organising it (of course she is) and everyone else because absolutely no-one in this town bats an eye at all these adults gate crashing a celebration for teenaged beauty queens despite they’re not being related to any of them. Because creepiness like this is the least of Mystic Fall’s problems

Actually, aside, given how many of these events have ended in massacres, why does the town keep having these? In fact, after all the many many massacres and an event that forced them to evacuate the entire town for months, why is this town even still here?! At this point surely some authority somewhere has decided the best thing to do would be to carpet bomb the whole place and then salt the earth?

Anyway, Damon and Stefan join Sybil and Damon tells her no. She tries to get into his head only to be painfully ejected – Damon isn’t playing her game any more. She’s more than a little shocked by this but Stefan points out her mistake: bringing Damon back to Mystic Falls during the Pageant – the Pageant Elena won and was the first time Damon fell in love with her – was pretty much peak Elena. Sybil only buried Elena in his mind but, as every watcher of this show knows, Elena never, ever, ever goes away. Like herpes.

The Vampire Diaries, Season 8, Episode 8: We Have History Together

Damon and Stefan are now working for Cade, which means finding truly bad terrible people and killing them so their souls go to hell. And having a lot of evil fun while doing so

Their definitions of really terrible, evil people is very… lapse though. Compelling someone to admit they’d rather 6 people die so they can live? I mean, sure, it’s not the sign of moral rectitude, but “not a saint” or “not a martyr” seems like a super low bar for evil here. And, of course, it doesn’t bode well for the people they’re killing

Also perturbing Damon is Stefan’s feeding on human blood from the vein. Stefan has a terrible history of ripper-ness where he just goes completely off the rails and massacres people over and over. Stefan’s confident he can test his self control, Damon not so much.

Stefan is definitely having fun and he decides to focus on a doctor. A wonderful kind woman, who is definitely not evil – and he promptly arranges an incredibly elaborate scheme to tempt her to evil: basically to convince her that Damon is the man who killed her parents, put him in her care and then continually prod and poke her to kill him. Not good? Certainly. Worst of the worst? Maybe I just have a low opinion of humanity but I think Stefan’s pushing people into murder this strongly isn’t quite killing the worst of the worst: Damon’s certainly uncomfortable with it. Looks like Cade was right about how much fun Stefan would have as his Ripper.

Of course, the doctor has been chosen for a reason, she resembles Elena, her history is reminiscent of Elena – and she’s all designed to poke Damon’s humanity. He’s been walking around with Elena’s necklace and Stefan is convinced his conscience is poking through: his humanity switch it inching to “on.” To prove otherwise Damon throws away the necklace and kills the doctor

But afterwards goes looking for the necklace still.

I think it says everything about this show that we can totally skip over the killing of a young doctor dedicated so much to helping others, but finding a necklace is the emotional path-to-redemption moment

Oh, and Stefan succumbs to ripperdom and slaughters a hospital: this is like his 9^th massacre and I’m sure we’ll forgive him this one as well.

Over to Caroline who is happily recapping everything for us and now working as a journalist (apparently; not bad for someone who never ever attended school). And she has a job to go report on Mystic Fall high school preparation for Founders day

AAAAAARGH, the horrible flashbacks to early seasons where all these characters ever did was prepare for one founders’ celebration or another?! And my gods how little news can a town have where a story about a high school preparing for a parade makes the paper? C’mon this is a town where every supernatural thing in the world regularly massacres people and this is the news they have?

The Vampire Diaries, Season 8, Episode 7: The Next Time Hurt Someone It Could be You

Time for the obligatory holiday episode and, honestly, it’s just so pointlessly awful. Really really awfully pointless.

Caroline has decided she wants to have this big grand holiday party with a lot of food and booze. So much booze. All the booze. More booze. This is the Vampire Diaries people they can’t get up in the morning without a double of jack.

Damon, to the surprise of no-one, has got over his little stabbing episode and decides to join the party. Caroline and Stefan act like this is totally ok and Caroline, bizarrely, spends the entire episode pretty much trying to turn all these murderous people who hate each other into a merely AWKWARD dinner and why can’t everyone just try to get along and play nice and drop awkward questions like who ordered who and who has made terribad awful deals with the devil forever more, mmmm ‘kay

It’s weird. And it’s weird because we’ve seen Caroline do this before so many times when it fit her character. She was the organiser of parties, of social events, throughout their school life. This is what she lived to do – to host and organise and order and make all her friends unite and work together – but that was years ago. She isn’t that person now and this isn’t a school ball.

Anyways, in response to being murdered last episode Damon decides to murder Stefan with a Christmas ornament

Seriously, this vampire family has a giant wooden Christmas ornament with spiky bits that are reinforced enough to stab someone in the heart. Who has this?! Why?

This sends Stefan to the spirit world to have a little 1:2:1 time with Cade his new devil boss and pretty much covers the only relevant part of the episode while everyone else sits down to the Most Awkward dinner with Damon threatening to kill everyone, Pointless Matt and his even more pointless dad showing up for reasons and Caroline trying to get everyone to play nice

The Vampire Diaries, Season 8, Episode 6: Detour on Some Random Backwoods Path to Hell

Last week Selene the siren kidnapped the twins for their arcane plot. She meets up with Sybil and Damon and everything starts to get a little less ideal for Seline

Firstly she’s had to accelerate her plans, she didn’t intend to run off with the kids while they were still kids, and certainly not with an Amber Alert to navigate: or to have her sister in tow snarking away and making it clear she’s really really really not over Seline being free for a century and not doing anything to rescue her. It’s not a happy family reunion

Seline’s master plan is basically to trade the twins to Cade in exchange for her and Sybil’s own service. They would get to run off, with a get-out-of-hell-free card and the twins would take their place. Something they have to do of their own free will – which would have been easier with a few more years of brainwashing the kiddies.

Damon starts playing his own game because she’s just given him light – after all, he had embraced this nihilism service to Sybil on the grounds that he was inevitably going to hell and there was absolutely no choice but to go to hell unless he served Sybil. Well, now here’s Seline talking about making a deal and finding a way out. Damon’s all about short cuts and easy options.

Everyone else is also chasing them – firstly we have Sybil further sabotaging them by tormenting Enzo’s brain meats because he dared to leave her, how very dare he. This allows Bonnie to wring her hands and do very little and Stefan to play around in Enzo’s brain to get clues to Selene and Sybil’s location.

Caroline and Alaric are focused ultimately on getting their kids back, to such a degree that Caroline puts her engagement to Stefan on hold because she can’t be distracted (especially if she has to kill Damon to get to the children) by Stefan’s angst and issues. While Alaric completely goes into full rage, openly frightening Seline over the phone with his threats, smashing things and planning to get his daughters away from all things supernatural. He even denies the children are Caroline’s children when she objects to this.

Eventually Seline leads her group to a motel where she plans to make the deal with Cade – but Damon and Sybil have out manouvered her. They lure Stefan in, alone (because he’s a damn noble fool. Beware the Stupid Good alignment) and force him to fight a motel full of angry humans who have been siren’d to kill him

Apparently Stefan lost his super speed and strength somewhere along the way? Did he drop it? Because these humans should have been a brief annoyance. Vampires literally move faster than the human eye can track. We’ve seen these multiple times. This is not a threatening experience for Stefan. And then to have the big show down be a big dude? A big dude. Stefan’s a vampire. I don’t care if he’s fighting the Mountain that Rides, any human relying on pure strength to win a fight will not end well.

Stefan kills the man and is duly angsty. Because this one man troubles him unlike the eleven gajillion people he’s already killed. But it’s ok Damon has an opt out. A get out of hell for free card

Vampire Diaries, Season 8, Episode 5: Coming Home Was a Mistake

Oh look. Sad music is sad

This entire episode revolves around big heavy emotions around characters I don’t care about, relationships I don’t care about or don’t buy or otherwise don’t invest in. It’s painful, more than a little dull and relies waaaay too much on us all caring about the extras and hangers on.

A lot of this involves lots and lots of grief around Tyler, everyone pretending he’s been an integral part of this show rather than a completely absent extra for several seasons. Everyone is sad. We have a funeral in a fair ground with everyone playing nice and everyone still managing to drag Elena into it.

It’s actually almost painful to hear everyone act like this is the worst ever when we consider how many many many many many many people have died.

Meanwhile Damon is having the same ongoing conflict because he think he’s totally killed everyone’s love and affection for him and broken all ties, woooo. Of course this is ridiculous because Damon has killed an enormous number of people and absolutely no-one has cared. Yep, Tyler’s not even cold yet and Stefan is already playing “oh poor Damon how do we bring him back”. Damon continues to be an arsehole but there’s absolutely no way that anyone is going to make him responsible for his actions (hah, you expected otherwise, this is Vampire Diaries!) and everyone decides he’s still mind controlled

Like most of the audience and at least 60% of the writers, Damon also has no idea why he’s doing what he’s doing so goes to see Sybil in her completely unguarded prison (because of course) to accuse her of still being in his mind. Sybil is not happy because Damon still isn’t 100% hers because his humanity switch isn’t alllll the way off: hence the reason he’s all mopey about how everyone will hate him (they don’t) over killing Tyler (no-one cares). She insists he go full non-human so he will then be hers forever

The Vampire Diaries, Season 8, Episode 4: An Eternity of Misery

This is an episode full of stories and exposition – so let’s get that all passed right now so we can finally get some history to all this even if the motivations are still complete mysteries.

Way back in 750BC we had the super psychic Arcadius who tried to use his powers for good and to help people. But people are awful and instead decided to brutally kill him

Fast forward a little and the same Mediterranean culture has decided to keep banishing psychics because humanity is awful. This includes the girl Sybil banished to a barren island where previously banished psychic is already there. She has survived by using her psychic gifts to pull sailors to the island where there ships are destroyed so their supplies can be claimed.

Sybil finds this morally unacceptable and instead insists they either live off what the island can provide or starve. So her sister goes…. Hunting and brings back wild boar meat.

Except she’s just pulling in more sailors. And this time she’s butchering them and bringing back the meat for them both to eat. Her sister turned Sybil into a cannibal against her will

This becomes the theme of Sybil being questioned by Stefan and even when running around Stefan’s mind showing him this story. She wants to know whether Stefan is redeemable. She wants to know if he’s the brother who forced the other into vampirism, or the brother who didn’t choose this life but was forced into this murderous lifestyle

Of course, while Sybil wants to find parallels to her own story, the Salvatore brothers are just a bit more complicated and a bit more evil than all that. Sure, Stefan was the one who turned Damon into the life of a murdering vampire (and, as Sybil points out, no Damon is not over that), but equally Stefan has been the one who has tried to find a more moral way of being a vampire only to be derailed by Damon. Basically they’re both terrible and both doomed to hell.

Back to that Hell and the story – hell isn’t a divine thing of judgement et al. We go back to ancient psychic Arcadius, brutally killed by his friends and neighbours is exposed to the utter evil as humanity. With his dying breath he uses his vast Psychic powers to banish them all to a terrible realm of judgement and punishment

Basically, he created hell and made himself the devil.

Vampire Diaries, Season 8, Episode 3: You Decided That I Was Worth Saving

Caroline is now engaged to Stefan and all buzzing about the engagement, a buzz she shares with Bonnie. It’s a little awkward when just last week Bonnie and Caroline realised how much Caroline was waving her happiness in Bonnie’s face when Bonnie’s love and life was in ruins. This kind of exacerbates all that but at least Caroline seems to recognise that and make a pledge about Bonnie and Enzo and continually checks whether Bonnie is ok.

Meanwhile Sybil is obsessing more and more over making sure both Enzo and Damon are completely devoted to her. Why she doesn’t just write them off and pick two new guys for whatever nefarious plan she has, I don’t know. This means wandering around in Damon’s skull trying to get rid of his feelings for Bonnie and continued poking of Enzo to try and get him to turn off his humanity

Step one is to try and get Damon to kill Bonnie, hoping that will solve everything but Caroline and Bonnie both derail this

Can I say again how much I’m not happy about Bonnie losing her magic? Because I hate that she has been so depowered. Yet at the same time one advantage of this is she isn’t being used as a tool or resource- and is even being treated as someone valuable to protect. I hate her being so weakened but for the first time there’s a level of caring about Bonnie rather than as a useful tool. Is this what it takes to finally treat Bonnie as a person rather than a disposable tool.

Eventually, frustrated she decides to visit Bonnie and ask just why both Enzo and Damon are so completely obsessed with her, especially Damon since their relationship is platonic.

This talk is really all about setting up another nefarious and overly complicated scheme. Seriously, I second Caroline – why in the name of common sense isn’t Sybil doing something with her immortal, newly freed existence other than hang around in rural Virginia doing weird things with hot vampire minds

So her nefarious scheme involves having Damon and Enzo fight to kill each other unless Bonnie picks one to die and the other to live on as Sybil’s slave. Also continuing the Hell theme, of course the one to die will live in eternal torment

Of course no-one’s happy with this – and Damon has recruited Stefan not to help rescue him but to help kill Enzo so Damon can live

The Vampire Diaries, Season 8, Episode 1: Hello Brother

So begins the last season of The Vampire Diaries (before we have a much more awesome Bonnie spin-off. Hey I can hope, right?)

Damon and Enzo were captured by whatever it was The Armoury had decided to stash in the basement and then they went off on a killing spree

This was apparently a bad killing spree rather than, y’know, their regularly scheduled weekend killing spree that happens all the time and we tend to ignore it because protagonist!

When we catch up with them they’re luring people to a serial killing warehouse, targeting evil people (this means their killing spree under the control of the Vault Monster Enzo and Damon are actually more moral in their killing for the Vault Monster than they are when they have their usual fun slaughter fest). The evil people are then put on meat hooks lowered into a pool with the nasty looking monster and promptly eaten. Their remains then left to decorate the ceiling, as one does. Just because you’re mind controlled by a watery serial killer with some kind of conscience doesn’t men you can neglect the interior decorating

Enzo despairs and is angry and sad and generally not happy but this state of affairs

While Damon is almost indifferent – because he’s pretty much broken. He’s turned off his humanity switch to deal with what he’s being forced to do, he’s lost all hope and generally despaired of anything getting better ever. He’s even reduced to reading Fifty Shades of Grey

Bonnie and Stefan are still looking for Damon and Enzo and Bonnie is succumbing to utterly bleak despair, clinging to the memories of Enzo and her to try and convince us that this relationship wasn’t made up with no basis after one of the writers got into the hard drugs and everyone was still desperately trying to find an excuse to keep Enzo around because he was too hot to dispose of.

Stefan can Caroline are now a thing in their on again off again on again off again on again off again romance. Caroline and Alaric still co-parent their (kinda) little girls and have new nanny Selene to help patch things up.

I have to say Caroline and her desperate attempt to organise everything and her constant worrying and fretting to be the only character I’m still invested in. I mean, I like Bonnie, but I honestly just want her to leave Mystic Falls so far behind her that she’ll forget everything about this place.

Forsaken (Fallen Siren Series #2.5) by S. J. Harper

Emma and Zack’s relationship is fraught – Demeter’s interference has left Emma reeling and Zack angry with a terrible case of magical amnesia

But all of that has to be put aside when a multi-billionaire’s son is kidnapped and his babysitter murdered possibly due to an extreme act of revenge or just simple greed? Answers that can only be found by being professional, putting their issues aside – and going undercover in a sex club

As a book reviewer, there’s a repeat problem I have when reviewing a series I like. How do you say “I love this book for all the reason I loved all the previous books in the series” without sounding repetitive or lacklustre? It’s hard to make it clear that the elements that you love about a series are still making these books ones you really love to read without sounding like it’s stalled or run out of ideas

This is a short story in the Fallen Siren Series and, yes, it contains many of the elements that have made this one of my favourites:

We have a police investigation that is interesting, tense, exciting and relies as much and more on actual investigative skills as it does on magic (now I do love magic heavy series but I also prefer my investigative protagonists to actually have skill rather than deus ex machinae powers that are so often used as an easy way to solve the mystery without a coherent plot).

We have characters who have a romance – but put it aside. Again, in a genre where all too often characters have sex at inappropriate times, especially a character whose woo-woo is sex based, it is refreshing to see characters that have such a good sense of priorities. In this story there could be no alternative - you cannot have people in charge of finding kidnapped children be distracted by sexy times. But this also reflects not just in the romance but also the other character developments between them.

Over the course of the books, Zach and Emma have had a fraught history. Her curse, her justifiable fear of love and the constant threat of Demeter has made their relationship difficult and have left them with a lot of issues and rifts between them. And, as professionals, as capable dedicated adults, they are quite capable of putting aside all this emotional drama to focus on the essential task at hand. I really appreciate that.