Mind Games by Carolyn Crane, Book 1 of the Disillusionist Trilogy

Justine is a hypochondriac in a downward spiral, her life falling apart as her anxiety and panic attacks take over. Until she meets Packard, a man who can turn her whole life around.

A highcap psychic, he can see her problems and more, he has a solution. By teaching her to zing her fears into other people, she can be free from her crushing dread and panic for the first time. While it offers her freedom and peace, it comes with a price, acting as a vigilante with her fellow disillusionists, all zinging their emotions and problems into other people’s brains – psychologically destroying them.

While their targets are untouchable criminals, Justine has to deal with her new life as a vigilante, keep what she wishes to preserve of her own life – and decide whether she even wants it any more – and come to terms with the new control Packard has over her – for without the ability to zing she would be even more vulnerable than she was before.

And then there’s a target she doesn’t agree with and things aren’t entirely what they see; against a backdrop of a spiralling crime rate as unpoliced psychics use their abilities without check – and people driven by desperation to try and bring some stability to the city.

This book surprised me from beginning to end. It’s complicated, it’s nuanced and you never reach a point where you can sit down and say “these are the good guys, these are the bad guys.” It’s never that simple and no-one is that clean. We’re hit from all sides with a barrage of questions and things to think about – the question of vigilantism? Even when it works? What about imprisonment, what about cruel imprisonment, what about when there’s no alternatives and what about when it cannot last? And dependence, even when the alternative is death – and deception that ends up with people becoming utterly helpless minions – but, again, the alternative is death and the deception itself is an act of desperation from a man in an intolerable situation. For that matter, the issues of those who know they are entering minionhood comes into it – especially when you consider the alternative is not far off death, so what choice is it? We even look at the extra toll it has on the black disillusionists who have become helpless minions of a white man. And how far does the end justify the means?

And we meet the ultimate target and he’s evil... but he’s not, the boss man’s evil, no, wait, both of them have engaged in shitty behaviour but both of them had damn good (or, at very least, idealistic reasons for doing so).

Lost Girl: Season 2, Episode 11: If a Fae Falls in the Forest

We start with Bo and Kenzi looking in envy at the uber expensive products in an exclusive shop – only to see that Ciara can afford to shop there! 

Oh… please not Dyson angst with hate and envy of Ciara. Please let us not go there. Go get kidnapped or something Bo. Or spawn some new super powers, or have a vision you then ignore. Something

And we have a fae serial killer. So much more amusing. Though Dyson writes off the prime suspect because she’s so much smaller than her male human victim – what he already established it was a fae. Surely size is irrelevent?

Instead of checking to see if the obvious obvious suspect is fae, they decide to use Bo and Kenzi to go undercover in some ritzy ritzy parties to find the murderer instead. And, of course, to get them into the parties Bo needs introduction and training with… Ciara. Oh please gods no. Can we fast forward to the kidnapping and rescuing? Please? Anyway, judging by the toga she ends up wearing, clearly Ciara loathes Bo with a fiery passion.

Ah yes, after several painful moments of not!investigating, Kenzi gets clonked on the head and we have the obligatory kidnapping. Ok it’s not BO for once, but it wouldn’t be Lost Girl without a kidnap now would it? She wakes up to find herself next to an unconscious guy and a dead guy – which quickly leads to a policeman interrogating her until Hale steps in and they both decide that a business card holder made by Leta S (a fashion designer who has “suspicious” written all over her) is suspicious. I’m not sure why. But they do and who I am to argue with random baseless hunches?

Meanwhile, Bo is getting some random stereotyped cryptic nonsense from a woman of colour. Even the fae get magical brown people to give them woo-woo it seems. Anyway, Bo also decides that Leta is also suspicious because… well because. 

So their sights are set on Leta who is after powerful rich men.  So Dyson should go undercover – oh and Bo should accompany him posing as his fiancée. That’s Ciara’s idea. Yes, Ciara who was so jealous before is now asking Bo to pose as Dyson’s fiancée. Yeah it’s not even pretending to make sense any more. Thankfully they don’t have to maintain their awful undercover for more than 2 minutes before bringing them in.

Once Upon a Time, Season 1, Episode 6: The Shepherd

David – Prince Charming – continues with his amnesia and having a great big party with all the people he doesn’t remember any more.

Of course Henry knows that it’s because the curse didn’t work on him and he has no fake memories and it’s hard for Emma to question him when it was Henry’s ideas that woke him up. Madam Mayor keeps pushing David’s wife Catherine back to him meanwhile David is clearly more interested in Mary Blanchard (Snow White) and how he loves her really. Of course, Mary is far too good (wet) to entertain the idea of seducing another woman’s wife and nobly pushes him away. Y’know, fairy tale snow white has a sword and kicks arse, Mary has, what, some wet celery and kind of crumples damply all over the place.

Mary’s coping method seems to be to clean. Thankfully Emma introduces her to the much more sensible tactic of copious amounts of booze and the sage advice that creeping on the married amnesiac is, indeed, not morally sound. Meanwhile Catherine tries to get David to come to bed with her but Davey boy’s having none of it because he looooves Mary. Madam Mayor swoops in to tell Mary to keep her distance from David, you naughty home wrecker! Mary responds to this terrible and unjust insult by… looking tearful and wet. Oh good gods, Davey, stay with Catherine until Mary develops an actual spine. But no, David decides to romantically stalk the protesting Mary instead.

Mary naturally has no way to make a decision so runs to Emma to make the decision for her. Oh dear gods, could she be any soggier? Of course, it doesn’t work out because David falls into Mr. Gold’s clutches (Rumpelstiltskin) and creates false memories for David sending him back to Catherine and away from Her Dampness. This, naturally, prompts more soppiness from Mary, at least she learns to get her drink on and make moves on the cute doctor. Maybe there is hope for her.

Meanwhile in fairy tale land, a prince engages in some of the most inept swordfighting I’ve ever had the displeasure to witness. Seriously, the man spends half his time with his back to his opponent, only avoids death because the guy with the spear seems to pause and stand still whenever Prince charming sprawls on the floor/presents his back/nearly falls off the cliff and both of them move like they’re up to their necks in treacle (now, remove the metal armour, have them rolling in treacle? Much more entertaining fight). I actually wondered for a moment if it were a really cheap way of trying to do Matrix slow-motion. Apparently this inept treacle-fencing is a test to see if he can slay… a dragon! (I’d say no, unless the dragon is elderly, wounded, has advanced leprosy and has lost all desire to live). A dragon that is plaguing the kingdom of king Midas – him of the golden touch. In return, Midas will pay them enough gold to completely destabilise their economy… errr, to make them rich. Oh and he turns his sword to gold – but it wasn’t like he knew how to use it anyway.

And after all that, he hasn’t even killed the guy, turns his back and gets himself well and truly stabbed. Very inconvenient – the poor king needs to find a dragonslayer stat or he doesn’t get the gold. In comes Rumpelstiltskin to make a deal, he pulls out the prince’s hidden twin goatherd (James – Prince Charming/David) brother for some dragonslaying and he gets to know where the fairy godmother hangs out (I remember this fairy tale J).

Said goatherd has an impoverished farm and a mother who wants to marry him off for some cash. But no, goatherd wishes to wait for true love – and in comes Rumpelstiltskin, already bought his twin brother and now looking for a 2 for 1 deal with extra dragonslaying. Well, standing outside looking heroic while the soldiers go do the actual dragonslaying. Yeah, soldiers against a dragon – we know how that ends don’t we? (At least the soldiers get better armour – full suits of chain while the prince only gets some badly boiled leather).  After the predictable char-broiling, the goatherd levels up to Big Damn Hero and makes with the dragonslaying (after the dragon conveniently forgets how to breath fire and he gains a sword with an edge even sharper than those late night knife adverts on the shopping channel).

Some more Snark Theatre on Narcissus in Chains

Another great video from Minaminokyoko who says so much that we've all thought about the sadly shark-jumping Anita Blake series.

The quality snark here tempts me to read the series again for the snark alone. Almost

it also covers just how problematic the consent issues are in this series - no, no euthemism, the outright RAPE in this scene

The Fades, Season 1, Episode 6: Season Finale

So, the people have left town in fear, Paul has super powers an refuses to walk in Neil’s increasingly more extreme footsteps while Neil has jumped off the deep end and kidnapped Mac to make Paul obey

Starting with the Evil Fades, with everyone leaving town they’re having a problem with food supply – no fresh humans to snack on. But John, leader of the Fades is focused on Paul whose super shiny powers remain the only way to kill them. John’s unwilling to move on until Paul is dead, butchered and his body parts scattered

Meanwhile Paul is still having his apocalyptic ash dreams – that now include his own death by stabbing. Only this time he has some more information – the ashy death dream is today. Paul and his angelic side-kick Alice are running through the empty streets, dodging past the Fades looking for them. Random body parts and corpses scatter the deserted streets. It has an almost Walking Dead feel to it – and the same amount of menace and tension without the oozy make up.

Unfortunately Alice still has bad amounts of Neil disease – forget the little people, don’t be distracted, the family don’t matter etc etc. The Angelics really need to deal with that. But an encounter with the Fades and Paul’s unwillingness to blast them into itty bitty pieces results in them discovering the blast ray is actually multi-purpose and also can open the Ascension point.

For those who haven’t kept up – Ascension is what the Fades should be doing rather than hanging around, getting all icky then eating people but it was sadly broken (the theory is by World War 2) and needs fixing to get the Fades where they belong

Meanwhile Paul’s mum and sister Anna and girlfriend Jay haven’t left and are still hanging around waiting for Paul. Not the wisest of moves, especially with the Fades surrounding the house. Anna keeps trying to get them away while heir mum keeps insisting she can’t abandon her son. Again, I’m glad to see Anna speaking up, pointing out that she’s her daughter as well.

Mac and Neil are continuing the kidnap tour – and Mac is keeping up his usual skilful level of amusing and witty babble and banter including drawing Neil into a discussion as to who is more like Jesus Christ. It’s slowly driving Neil up the wall (which is extremely amusing to see) while he tries to contact Paul.  Neil goes well and truly off the deep end and kidnaps them all – holding Jay at gunpoint to try and force Paul to go around killing the Fades. He doesn’t listen, is completely lost to reason – and shoots Jay

Ok, sigh moment. This is the second time Jay has been kidnapped to get at Paul. I really dislike this trope of female love interests having no role except to be victimised in order to get at their men. That is the only role Jay has served in this series – in 6 episodes she has beenvictimised twice both to get at Paul. 

Neil now has an ultimatum to Paul – kill John or he will kill Paul’s family. Leaving Alice to beg him not to, to fix ascension (harking back to the “family isn’t important now” speech she had earlier)

Speaking of the family – Mac’s father Detective Armstrong finds Paul’s mum tied up and she tells him about Neil. While Mac and Anna, in a storage container, have a beautiful scene together… only to be found by Fades (Paul’s old therapist)

And on to the distraction characters, we also drop in on Ghost!Sarah (who, as you recall, has a new diet plan of human flesh, nomnom) and her husband Mark who really needs to find some point in this story C’mon, it’s the last episode. Anyway they have sex but Ghost!Sarah has a problem – she wants to eat him (no, not a euphemism) which naturally causes some consternation.  I’m not sure what role they’re supposed to serve – a humanising element? But the villains and protagonists in this series are very human already

Rather upset that she nearly snacked on her dearly beloved, Sarah goes to confront John, the Fade leader, asking him what she is and what he’s done to which John replies with the charming Biblical story of Sodom and how he’s creating a new nation which requires a little unfortunate bloodshed – this is the evil villain self-justification clause.

Of course, with Sarah on his side John gets the benefit of her own special kind of fluffy positive thinking – it doesn’t matter, everything’s dead, everything’s ash, there’s no hope. Cheerful sort. In her fatalism, Sarah, for some reason feels compelled to protect John, albeit rather ineffectually

Paul and Neil find John  and have a gun fight and limerick match. There then follows several rhetoric battles – Sarah vs Alice, Neil vs John – debate time! Moral viewpoints! Philosophies and tragic stories – go! Actually that sounds kind of dull and though I’m vaguely amused at the dramatic show down being an exchange of impassioned speeches, it’s pretty tense, a good way to finish off the world and fill in any gaps – and have an epic battle – even if it is with words

Review of Unclean Spirits by M.L.N. Hanover: Book 1 of The Black Sun's Daughter

 

When I finished reading  Unclean Spirits, I found myself staring at the cursor on my computer screen, not sure about what to say about this series.  I certainly am not overwhelmed by the story, but the book sorts of leaves you with a blank feeling.  

It begins with Eric Alexander Heller, sitting in a dive bar attempting to hire a few low lives to do a job.  He seems to have a sort of special sight that allows him to determine if someone is really human or, nosferatu or loupine. Apparently, these creatures implant themselves in human bodies, and the owner of the body is forcibly removed or exterminated. Yep, a sort of new take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He agrees to go with the men to another location, but quickly realizes that they are not who they originally appeared to be, and ends up dead.

Eric's niece Jayne, pronounced zha-nay (a point of which we are reminded about ad nauseum) arrives in Denver to settle his estate. She is met at the airport by Aubrey, who is a friend of her uncle.  We learn that Eric was never close to her parents, but that he always took time to be there for Jayne.  Out of the blue, Jayne says to Aubrey, "I just want you to know, "it's okay with me that he was gay."  Aubrey is shocked and tells her that he did not know that, and Jayne rethinks her assumptions.  It seems that she believed that Eric was gay because he did not get along with her religiously conservative parents. For a major part of this story, almost every time Jayne brings up Eric it is to inform the listener that he is gay.  It's like being hit over the head with a battering ram at times.

When Jayne meets with Eric's lawyers she learns that he is rich, which of course surprised her again because he was gay.  Can't think of how to respond that you have inherited millions of dollars, claim a gay uncle. When Jayne decides to visit one of Eric's apartments in the city she meets, Midian, a vampire with a penchant for cooking.  He spends most of his time worrying about what kind of food he is going to serve Jayne, Aubre, Ex, and Chogyi Jake; all of which are associates of Eric.  While in the apartment, some riders break into the apartment and attempt to kill Jayne (yeah the name does not get less irritating, and someone should tell Hanover that it's not a French name)  She of course goes all ninja, though she has never thrown a punch in her life. 

Back at Eric's Jayne determines that she has to kill Coin, the entity responsible for killing Eric.  Keep in mind that as a team she only has Aubrey, Ex, Midian, Chogyi Jake, whom she has known for a few days. This is spunky agency at its finest.  She is surrounded by strangers and has no skills but hey, it's off to kill the bad guys.

But before she can go off to kill the bad guy, of course she has to find to go out on a date and have some sex.   Having found Aubrey attractive since meeting Jayne decides to ask him out on a date which ends with the two of them having sex, because worrying that you might die soon does that to people.  When she wakes in the middle of the night she ends up going through his things and discovers that Aubrey is married and so of course she feels betrayed.  And what do you do when you're betrayed and someone is trying to kill you, you disappear for hours, telling no one where you are.

Twilight Breaking Dawn, Part 1

Breaking Dawn Part I is the fourth movie in the Twilight juggernaut. This film was much anticipated due to the wedding of Bella and Edward and of course the honeymoon night.  For many twi fans, these scenes were the culmination of a romance.  Just as with any other wedding there was discussion about the dress and plenty of hype.  I believe that the directors felt that this hype was enough to carry the story however, this assumption proved to be incorrect as far as I am concerned.  Rather than advancing the plot, this movie was two hours of fan service.  

Like with every other Twilight film we had the savage native represented by the werewolves, and the every so whitesome and delightsome vampires, represented by the Cullens.  The other prominent messages were of course one must marry, even if said marriage is ill advised for various reasons, a pregnancy is gift no matter the risk to the mother and of course the ever popular imprinting as a cover for pedophilia.

Rosalie’s transformation in the books from dedicated hater of Bella for giving up her mortality to utter devoted servant to the fertile one was pretty unpleasant - and it was no more palatable in the film.. See, I think Roaslie’s dislike kind of had a point - it is fairly reasonable to be vexed by someone deciding to make a vast life decision at the age of 18, especially when that life decision involves nothing more than “I got me a maaaan, I don’t need anything else”. But with Bella’s pregnancy and Rosalie’s conversion to Bella fandom, it’s clear that all those life decisions and missed opportunities are meaningless in the face of the White saviour baby. This means that Rosalies dislike of Bella was really about “you haven’t had a baby and are giving up your fertility!” rather than giving up her life and mortality. So an 18 year old’s lost potential and choices basically comes down to fertility; her value and opportunity boils down to having a child. Blessed be the womb.

Of course, Rosalie has all her anti-choice card’s marked with her constant chanting “it’s a baby! Call it a baby!” The one vague bright spot (kind of like a rose on a midden heap) there was Alice resolutely refusing to accede to that and continue to call a foetus a foetus. In some ways, this is presented as Bella’s choice - but it’s all about Bella’s sacrifice; especially when we consider how extreme the situation is. The foetus is breaking Bella’s bones and starving her to death and there is literally no way she can survive giving birth without a desperate attempt to become a vampire, which they’re not even sure will work. Her survival is secondary to the foetus, the loss of her life, even as a near certainty, is considered less important and she is expendable. I think this is even more problematic when we consider how much time Bella spends devaluing herself, how low her self-esteem is, and how Rosalie  reduces all of Bella’s potential down to childbirth. Throughout these books and films, Bella’s existence is defined in relation to other people - she lives to be Edward’s girlfriend (she almost literally stops existing when he leaves) and to be Reneseme’s mother; she herself is unimportant and discardable.

Review of Being Human U.K Season One, Episode Two

 

This episode opens with the most amazing description of what happens to George's body when he transitions into a werewolf.

He should be dead within thirty seconds. The werewolf heart is about two times the size of a humans, but in order to shrink, first it has to stop.  In other words, he has a heart attack.  All of the internal organs are smaller so while he's having his heart attack, he's having liver and kidney failure to. If he stops screaming, it's not because the pain has dulled. His throat, gullet and vocal chords are tearing and reforming.  He literally can't make a sound.  By now the pituitary gland should be working over time, flooding his body with endorphins to ease some of the pain but that too has shut down. Anyone else should have died with shock long ago but it won't kill him.  That's the thing I find most remarkable. It keeps him alive and even conscious to endure every second. An impossible curse spread by tooth and claw, victim begets victim. It's so cruel, it's perfect.

When said that way, just wow.   George wakes up in the morning to find himself naked in the forest.  A man is squatted down asking, "how the hell do you get home? You've got no clothes, you've got no transport. I suppose you ring someone, but God only knows where you keep the change for the phone".  When he gets up to runaway, the man calls out, "George I know what you are".  George asks, "why would you say something like that?"The man says, "cause I'm one too".  He tries to engage George, but George tells him that he doesn't want anything to do with him.

When George gets home, he finds that Mitchell has invited the neighbours in.  It seems that Mitchell believes that they aren't really participating, if they don't interact with people.  He suggests that they hide in plain sight, and that interacting with people and having them in the house, gives them a non threatening appearance.  When Mitchell leaves the room, Annie pops in. George tells Annie, "He doesn't understand, these people are British. You're not allowed to talk to your neighbours, until you have nodded at them for fifteen years."  Okay, I lost it laughing at that one. When George looks out into the living room, he finds the werewolf who had attempted to talk to him earlier.  George drags him out of the house in a panic

Once outside, George tells him, "I like to keep things separate. I transformed here last month and it does not belong here".  The werewolf responds, "let me teach you how to manage the condition. I can make it safer for you, and not just for you, for everyone". After the neighbors leave, they have him inside and he explains that he has been sleeping rough while searching for George. He tells that sometimes he is is own worst enemy, "Tully is as Tully does."  Tully then proceeds to charm Annie saying that she is more like an angel than a ghost.  He then turns to Mitchel and says "a mirror reflects a mans face, but his friends reflect who he really is".  Being completely charmed, Mitchell offers to let Tully sleep on the couch for a few days.  George is clearly unimpressed by this suggestion.

In the kitchen, George tries to convince Mitchell to change his mind aboutTully stay there.  He says the house is his way of closing that door, "and if I want to close that door, then I'm allowed to close that door".  Mitchell does not understand why George is resistant saying, "if someone could teach me to control who I am, I would jump at the chance."