Hemlock Grove, Season 3, Episode 2: Souls on Ice

Time for random gruesomeness – two people embalming a body and the boss is pretty harsh with her assistant who she promptly fires. The poor guy’s partner (and carrying his child) is Most Unimpressed (apparently this isn’t the first job he was fired from. This is not his day).

He goes back to his boss to beg to be taken back –only to find her brutally murdered corpse. Well there goes job security.

Roman wakes up the next day and Annie is still hanging around. After she brushes off the monster from last episode he asks her about feeding – all the more important when she says she doesn’t kill people. She realises he’s never been taught how to be an Upir. He asks her for an education – and she says most Upir work in jobs with blood available (she’s an ER nurse).

Peter arrives and they brainstorm what monster attacked Roman without any answers. Roman also tells Peter that Annie’s an Upir since Peter is all for him dumping Annie in a taxi (he assumes that Annie is another of Roman’s hook ups). He, wisely, doesn’t think Annie being an Upir makes her especially more trustworthy either. She did save Roman’s life though and he needs her so Peter goes with it.

Annie seems curiously reluctant to accept Roman’s attacker was a monster and Destiny arrives for some psychic woo-woo. It’s the same aura-sensing monster we saw last episode. Whatever it was terrified her – and she knows the creature went to the morturary.

Roman, Destiny and Annie check the mortuary with more psychic investigation. While they’re there they also find a vat of corpse blood which apparently mortuaries have (I don’t know, I don’t want to know, I’m quite happy to be ignorant in this matter). They find it odd that the blood is refrigerated and one of the corpses has been deliberately drained – Annie realises the owner of the mortuary was also upir. Apparently upir morticians are common – and the beastie that attack Roman is targeting upir.

It does attack them and Destiny kills it with a mortuary tool of organ squishing… but the attack sends Roman into a seizure.

Annie also decides to reminisce about her lost, dead family before she became an upir. Angst interrupted by Destiny telling them that the beastie is still about

Olivia re-wraps Shelly’s always-bandaged hands, this time wrapping the bandages (we see blackened, shrivelled fingers) so she has fingers not mittens. Shelly’s reluctant to take her pills because they deaden all her emotions.

Once Upon a Time: Season 2, Episode 12: In the Name of the Brother

Gloomy Black and White Frankenstein Land: Past

We see Frankenstein’s past – not in Fairyland but in a monochrome dreary land where we learn that his father was not best supportive of Frankenstein’s work and was tired of funding it; he was much more impressed with Frankenstein’s brother who gets the shiny family watch.

Frankenstein is approached by Rumplestiltskin, looking very colourful in the black and white world, expressing interest in his bringing back the dead science. And he offers money - lots of money – actually more money than he could have fit in the bag which rather surprises Frankenstein in his magicless land. Rumple disappears and Frankenstein gets back to his newly funded work.

Cut to him digging up a body – and being found by his most disapproving brother who supported his work, but not grave robbing. They’re also caught by a guard who puts a bullet in said brother.

That does give him the body he needs for his experiments – which end up frying his brother’s body’s heart. His father finds out and dramatically disowns him. Rumple comes in to check on progress and hearing the burning heart is causing problems, he arranges to set him up with Regina for a super heart.

Using that heart he raises his brother (though he rejects that it is magic – it’s science he claims) and shows him proudly to his father who is ecstatic at the idea. Until he meets Gerhardt and finds him bemused, confused and lashing out. He turns to berate Victor Frankenstein for creating a monster  Gerhardt rushes to Victor Frankenstein’s defence, beating their father while Frankenstein watches, until he says enough (after taking his sweet time).  Their father is dead – hearing this, Gerhardt runs off.

Victor goes to see him and finds him confused and upset – he even attacks Victor before he recognises him, then cowers in a corner, scared by his sewn together hands (guy was shot in the stomach, why are his hands covered in stitches?). Victor draws a gun but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger, even when Gerhardt grabs the gun and pushes it against his own head.

Storybrooke, Present

Following the dramatic events at the end of the last episode, an amnesiac, injured Belle is very confused at the border and she only becomes more confused when Rumple heals her with magic.

Emma, Snow and Charming arrives, Emma tells Hook he has broken ribs and Rumple walks up to break some more bones which Emma and Charming object to (“you can’t do that!” “I can if you let me go.” Rumple remains awesome). Emma tries to invoke Belle being a witness and eventually the whole “what would Belle do” gets through to him. Emma sends the EMTs to treat the stranger in the car – the man from DUM DUM DUM OUTSIDE!

To the hospital where healthcare in Storybrooke is rather lacking due to Dr. Whale/Frankenstein’s drinking. It has to be said, Dr. Frankenstein isn’t going to fill many people with confidence anyway. He’s also indulging in maudlin flashbacks. I’m quite sure that drunkenness and a penchant for maudlin flashbacks are not the best traits in a doctor.

Still he manages to pull it together and get everyone in various beds, even if we have another flashback where his angst and brother’s comfort is witnessed by Rumple. In the hospital Rumple stands at Belle’s bed and she panics and screams – not recognising him.

Hook, meanwhile, has been handcuffed to his bed. And not for any kind of fun reasons.  But Emma does play with Hook’s sore places until he admits that he doesn’t know where Cora is. He’s also smug about hurting Rumple by hurting Belle. Emma’s not impressed by this and points out that Hook’s chained down while Rumple is “on his feet, immortal, has magic and you hurt his girl.” She decides this makes Hook Dead Guy of the Year. I disagree – death is going to be kind compared to the horrible things in store for Hook.

Outside the fairy tale contingent are trying to hack the stranger’s phone and displaying a collective ignorance of technology until Emma arrives. Looking through she concludes that the man, Greg, is just a perfectly ordinary person who just stumbled in and whatever magic stopped random people coming to Storybrooke is now gone. They begin a rather random panic about outsiders discovering all these strange, different people at a time when the wronged Regina has gone underground and Cora is out and about doing who knows what.

Review: Soul Sisters by Janiera Eldridge - and sneak peak of the second book in the series!

 

Dana is human who has built a normal human life. As much as you can when she was born in 1912. After making a deal with an ancient vampire shortly after her marriage, she gave part of her soul to create a vampire – her soul sister, Ani. After a long journey over the years, the two now live together, best friends and greatest confidants, the siblings are enjoying their eternal lives in their own ways.

Except Ani’s reckless behaviour draws more attention from the powers that be. Until her passionate defence of Dana against an attacker leads to more public deaths the vampire leader refuses to ignore. He demands their deaths and can find them anywhere

This launches a battle to find allies, to find a place to hide which, inevitably, leads to its own revolution as the siblings are forced to take the battle to the enemy.

This book has an extremely unique twist on the traditional vampire tale. In this world vampires are created by taking part of the soul of a human and creating a vampire “twin”. They look very alike and they depend on each other to survive. If one dies the other dies – resulting in a vampire and an immortal human. While it’s clear that not every vampire/human twin has a close bond, Ani and Dana definitely do.

The book also focuses on Dana, the human of the pair, and her journey into this life. Her life as a human in 1912, her life with her family and then her husband – followed by how she first made the decision to give up her soul and create Ani, and how her life developed with her new sister. Her past is rich and really well built with a full sense of what set her on the path. So much so that I think I would have liked to see more of Dana’s past in between the present and the loss of her husband, just to see the character develop more.

It’s also pretty rare to see a book that focuses so much on a sibling relationship. That mutual affection, care and worry for each other still spaced with that very common frustration at the others actions. It’s a very natural relationship for the most part and underpins the book.

For a long time though, the book does seem to be spinning it’s wheels. We’re introduced to these characters but they don’t seem to be overly involved in anything except developing them. Even when the path is set, they then spend a lot of detailed time training all interspaced with odd little conflicts as one of the characters gets angry over something – which then disappears or fades away. The end of the book does pick up very well though, racing with plot and intensity towards the conclusion.

Unfortunately, while the book had wonderful things going for it, it was then badly let down by the writing. Firstly, it needed an editor. I understand this is a later edition and considerably improved on previous versions but there are still grammar and word issues that need correcting.

Beyond that, the book just didn’t flow for me, I found the language and, especially, the dialogue extremely stilted and unnatural, often bogged down with unnecessary explanation and exposition, too much telling rather than showing and an almost repetitive need to drive every point home. I think the best way to show this is with a quote: