Dead Like Me, Season 1, Episode 2: Dead Girl Walking

A week after being dead, George snarkily recaps the last episode. Much as I hate recaps, I have a soft spot for snark. She sums up her less than ideal life and how she’s continuing to live in a dead guy’s awful, filthy house. Which gets worse when the dead guy’s family show up. While she’s on the toilet no less. She manages to pass herself off as his girlfriend, briefly – before they get more suspicious and things become awkward. She should never have tried to claim the TV

Of course, squatting isn’t her only worry, it seems her little sister, Reggie, has been telling the neighbours that her mother won’t let her go to the bathroom for a reason she just can’t explain to her mother who is already a little frazzled after George’s death. And, to be fair, was pretty frazzled before as well. Frazzled seems to be a default setting for her.

Roxy is busy earning her living as a traffic warden (with Mason looking on and slacking). And she gets grief for writing a ticket and chews the guy out masterfully. Standing ovation for Roxy. When things seem to be escalating she slams it down by flashing a gun and making it clear (as politely as possible) that she will fuck him up. Well that ends any objections he might have.

We get a hint of how the appointments work – Rube gets an envelope put under the door from an anonymous figure and from that he writes out the post-its of all the deaths. Which he hands out at his next breakfast meeting where we have their awesome group interactions (including excellent TMI sharing over various deaths. Seriously, Roxy and Betty could be a stand up act on their own). Rube asks for volunteers for extra work but George asks what they get – which sums up what everyone’s thinking. Also, because George did that whole intervening thing which was naughty, she has to work with Betty today.

Which leads to them hitchhiking out of town to their location because there’s no bus and George doesn’t have money for a taxi. She’s also wary of hitchhiking but Betty very politely insists she get in the damn car – designer shoes are not meant for 10 mile hikes, but it turns out the man is their target. Betty charms the man with skill George admires (admittedly George isn’t the most charming of people) before George does the soul claim – though Betty has to nudge her. George still considers it akin to being an accomplice to murder. For a brief moment she thinks Betty also wants to save the man’s life – but she watches as he dies in a car accident.

After his instructional day with Roxy, Mason tries to pick the lock of a parking meter for the money inside. That failed, he pulls out a baseball bat. It knocks it off the pole – but doesn’t do much else.

So to the café with George and Roxy where he disgustingly distracts them both by eating the gum from under the table (ew ew ew) and manages to sneak Roxy’s key off her ring. After that moment of disgusting food arrives and George ends up eating chips that Mason scrounges – Roxy tells her to get a job. Poor George, she can’t keep up with their banter either.

Back with George’s family, poor Joy (George’s mother) has to go to the school because Reggie has stolen a toilet seat. No, really.  At dinner that night she reveals that Reggie took all the toilets seats in the school and sends her to bed before telling her husband, Clancy, that she’s interviewing child psychologists. Clancy dismisses the idea.

Back in the Waffle House, George whines to Rube about how she hates her life et al and he gently and nicely tells her to, basically, suck it up and deal. And hands her a post it telling her to reap their server; after a gremlin, kids with a cherry bomb and heavy sign combine to kill the poor man. George also gets impaled with a fork – but Reapers heal awfully quickly.

Even if she does have to cough up the tines of the fork later that night. George decides she’s done – afterall, they can’t make her.

So the next morning in the Waffle House, she’s missing (and Mason pays his bills with a surprising amount of coins – and other pieces of traffic meter). After banging on George’s door, he slips the post it under it. And a mysterious wind blows it closer to George’s feet. She tries to ignore it for the day while it preys on her mind – what exactly happens when you have a date with death and death doesn’t show up? She misses the appointment – and the note gets even closer, impaled on one of the springs in her awful mattress. And a graveling visits her – she begins to worry if death gets penalised.

Star Trek Into Darkness and Khan

For months before the release of Star Trek into Darkness, there was a lot of speculation regarding whether or not Benedict Cumberbatch would be playing the role of Khan Noonien Singh. Because Star Trek into Darkness has a different name than Wrath of Khan - the second movie in the Star Trek series, it was conceivable that the character Khan would be overlooked altogether. Now that the movie has been released, there has been a resounding backlash because it has become common knowledge that Cummerbatch is indeed playing Khan.

The character Khan Noonien Singh first appeared in the original series, in the episode Space Seed and then became the antagonist in the second movie Wrath of Khan. In both instances, the character was played by the Mexican actor Ricardo Montalbán. As fans of the series know, in each instance that Khan Noonien Singh appeared, he was defeated by Captain Kirk. This is par for the course because Kirk being the captain of the USS Enterprise, inevitably makes the right decisions and always gets his crew out of any difficulties they encounter; prime directive be damned.

Having not seen Star Trek into Darkness yet, I cannot say whether or not this is a direct reboot of Wrath of Khan; however I have been following the anger online over the fact that Benedict Cumberbatch has been cast as Khan Noonien Singh. Because Khan was played by Ricardo Montalbán, many see his replacement by Benedict Cumberbatch as a direct slap in the face to people of colour, by a series which has historically prided itself on being racially progressive. When the original series first aired on September 8, 1966, there was absolutely nothing like it on television. Star Trek had an interracial cast including: a Black woman, a Japanese man and a Russian on the bridge, playing critical roles on the ship. It went on to feature one of the first inter-racial kisses on television. It is however worth noting that the kiss was forced by an alien creature and not something Kirk or Uhura wanted. Kirk slept with green women, but had to be forced into kissing a Black woman, think about that for a moment.

So how did this progressive series decide that it was appropriate to simply erase a character of colour and replace him with a White man? Well, let’s start with the fact that the character Khan was originally conceived of as being of Nordic descent. The writers and Roddenberry had no idea at first that they would be able to get an actor of Montalbán’s skill. When they did manage to cast Montalbán, the character became a sikh from Northern India. Clearly, even casting Montalbán in this role was highly problematic because he was neither sikh or Indian. It was the classic case of one brown person filling in for another, which is commonplace in the media even today. As long as the actor is Brown, they are cast as: Latino, Native American and Indian, regardless of what their true ancestry is. It’s clear that from looking at the images of Montalbán when he originally played Khan in the original series that his skin was darkened, using makeup to make him appear as the northern Indian character he was playing.

Demon Hunts by (Walker Papers #5) C.E. Murphy

Joanne and Billy are now the woo-woo team – the pair with supernatural abilities who help with those cases that are just too weird for anyone else. So when people show up dying and partially eaten but without a scrap of any kind of forensic evidence on the bodies, it’s time to call them in.

But even magic can’t work miracles and there’s a limit to what even they can sense, much to their frustration. What they do learn is that their enemy is far more dangerous than they imagined and is going to take some… unorthodox messages to track and stop

Thankfully, Joanne is pretty good at unorthodox methods – as she proves not only to the people around her but also to Coyote, her mentor, finally free from a supernatural coma. In his absence Joanne has grown considerable and they have to refind their balance with what she’s learned, how she’s grown, the path she is on – and the fact they’re both in the real world, in the flesh.

It’s another fun mystery – with a lot evolved. The progression in how the police force treats Joanne and Billy has excellently developed through the series to Morrison now overtly recognising them as his woo-woo experts. The mystery itself is interesting and, while it is quickly solved in terms of “whodunnit” the how to stop it part of the story maintains some excellent tension and questions to keep the story going. The story is really well paced without any lags or moments of boredom, confusion, or vast leaps of logic. But the star of this book has to be the characterisations

I really love the introduction of Coyote, and I really thought I wouldn’t. I expected his presence to shake his mystique and it did. But it did it extremely well because it not only humanised him but helped Joanne to grow. Coyote is a person. He’s more knowledgeable than Joanne, in many ways more capable and Joanne and has powers and skills Joanne can’t touch.

But he is a person and he isn’t god. There are areas where Joanne is better suited than him, there are areas where Joanne is more powerful than him and there are things she can do which he cannot. And him showing up didn’t turn this into a story that focuses on Coyote, Joanne is still the protagonist, she is still the one investigating, she is still the one in charge and the one who makes the decision in her city and her life. I liked that it made it really clear that they can be powerful in different ways and walk different path. That Coyote, healer, teacher, advisor has far greater strengths in those areas – but Joanne doesn’t have to follow the same way; she’s a warrior, a defender, a soldier who heals things and makes things better in her own way. I liked that he had his precious philosophy that was truly valuable to him – but at the same time it was acknowledge he could have that and not need Joanne to follow it.

To me this is especially important given how much Joanne has grown and learned over the last few books. She needs a mentor, not a boss and not a character to remind her how much she doesn’t know, how new she is and how weak she is. After what she has achieved in the series, she has proved her worth and her capability even if she has made mistakes and caused problems in the past, she has also gone on to fix them. She needs a peer, not a school teacher and it was really well written to give her that.

Another element that impressed me was the emphasis on Joanne being a healer - even while she’s a warrior and even while hunting a “monster.” There is always a willingness to be sympathetic to the enemy even while being prepared to kick its arse and stab it until it stops moving. Even while knowing it has to be stopped, Joanne can still sympathise with the pain the Wendigo feels

Also we have a Wendigo which is actually a Wendigo which has at least a nod to the actual legends of a Wendigo rather than just being a fancy werewolf you have to kill with fire as we see so much in this genre. There was some depth behind it. This is something this series does well – the creatures, the realms, the legends have had some research behind them, there’s some work to present the legends as they actually were, their beliefs as they are actually held and not just raid random cultures for any spare monsters they have around. It’s detailed, it’s deep and it’s fascinating. However, I still have a minor complaint that it’s also damn confusing at times. The writing can become very abstract, very confused and very lost especially as Joanne travels from realm to realm to realm. It’s a lot tighter than it has been in previous books and it’s a definite improvement but it is still an issue.

The Walker Papers have some of my favourite characters in the genre. Joanne herself has a lot of depth from her mixed heritage, rather than it being there of convenient woo-woo (though it is a constant source of the latter). She recognises her conflict outsider feeling with her mother’s Irish family and her father’s Native American family (it’s neatly done in one line – who she always thought of herself as deathly pale compared to her father’s family but going to her mother’s funeral she realised how much darker she was than her relatives). She has steadily grown and grown to accept both elements of her heritage and marrying them together without running from both as she had – even down to her very name; changing Siobahn Walkingstick to Joanne Walker.

Wolf Lake: Season One, Episode One: Meat the Parents

In Seattle Washington, detective John Kanin pulls up outside of a house and when he enters, he takes off his jacket and puts down his cell phone.  From the ominous music playing in the background, we get the sense that he is not alone.  Suddenly, he is attacked from behind and it turns out that it's just his girlfriend Ruby.  The two start to kiss and when John says that he is going to hop in the shower, Ruby replies that she likes him dirty.  Really? At only two minutes in, that is one of the cheesiest lines I've heard in urban fantasy. When they are done, Ruby decides to go and get takeout and tells John to stay and relax and that she loves him. When Ruby leaves, John lies in his bed and smiles.

She heads out to her car and the moment Ruby gets in, she is attacked from behind.  John hears the struggle from the apartment, grabs his gun and heads downstairs.  As Ruby is being attacked, her eyes flash yellow.  By the time that John gets to the car, it appears that Ruby is gone, but there is a bloody hand on the seat.

At the police station, the cops say that their best guess is that the hand belongs to a White male in his 30's but they have no idea how it got separated from the body. John is sitting in an office when his partner Frank and the Lieutenant enter to ask John to tell them again what happened when Ruby disappeared. They ask if Ruby was into anything and how long her knew her.  John says 8-9 months and questions why they are asking.  His partner reveals that there is no record of a Ruby Wilder in the national database. This means no DMV or social security number.  The Lieutenant then asks if he is sure Ruby is her real name and John grabs the files and says that he is sure. John then asks if Frank checked the college and learns that there is no student record for Ruby.  John insists that she is studying dance and that he picks her up there twice a week. Franks says that Ruby might be studying there but is not registered under Ruby Wilder.  The Lieutenant adds that Ruby has no bank account, credit history and that social services has no record of her. Frank says that this is either some kind of mistake, or Ruby is a ghost.

Frank returns home and finds an earring belonging to Ruby on his bed.  Six months later, John's answering machine asks for a message to be left and directs the caller to page him immediately if the call is regarding Ruby Wilder.  Around his office, there are missing posters of Ruby and a map with locations marked off. It's Frank and he says that John should pick up because he knows he is there.  In desperation, Frank points out that he is forcing him into a life with Harry until they can catch a case. John's pager goes off and he answers believing that it's Frank but it turns out that it is a man named Earl, claiming to have seen John's poster of Ruby at a gas station on the highway.  Earl says that he thinks he gave Ruby a ride in March and that he dropped her off at the Wolf Lake exit.  When John asks for the callers name again, he hangs up the phone.

With a bag packed, John hops on his motorcycle and with visions of Ruby dancing through his mind, he drives through the day and late into the night, until he is forced to stop when a young girl runs into the road.  She immediately tries to get away from him and John tells her that he is a police officer and asks what she is running from.  What John does not realise is that he is being watched from the woods. The girl hops on John's bike and tells him that if her father finds out that she is gone that he is going to go totally berserko on her. John hands her his helmet then starts the bike up, as he unknowingly continues to be watched.  Something is following them making growling noises but on his bike, John quickly out paces it.  When John is in the distance, we see a naked man with glowing yellow eyes in the bushes.

John pulls into town and the girl hops off thanking him. She  asks about Tommy Rule, who shot a bunch of people at a mall. When John says that he doesn't know him, the girl admits that they play chess together over the internet and asks if it's twisted.  John says that it depends and when she leaves, he turns and sees a statue of a wolf.  John the heads to a hotel, which has an absolutely sumptuous interior. He heads to the cafe inside and meets Sherman Blackstone, who immediately does a magic trick with an egg. Sherman tells John not to encourage him because he could go on all night.  John asks about a waitress and Sherman doesn't answer and instead wants to know what kind of gun John has strapped to his ankle.  Sherman than introduces himself and asks what brings John to their little paradise in the pines because it can't be official business, due to the fact that John arrived on a bike. John quips that Sherman doesn't miss a thing and Sherman says that in a past life, he must have been a scout for Custer or somebody, then contradicts himself to add that they don't believe in past lives because that's a Buddhist thing.  John asks about the service and Sherman tells him that after midnight, everyone is on the honour system, so he should just himself to the kitchen. Sherman adds that there is a money jar in the fridge and warns him to watch out for Rusty.

When John opens the door he finds Rusty on the floor, and when he turns around Sherman is gone.  At the front desk, John is handed some sheets and when he walks outside to go to his room, there are numerous wolves howling at the moon.  Inside, he gets on his laptop and looks at the missing poster of Ruby.  He falls asleep and wakes to the sound of the still howling wolves.  When he gets up and opens his window, he sees Ruby standing a distance away staring at him. It turns out that this was only a dream and when he approaches the window in reality, what he sees his a White wolf with blue eyes staring at him.

At the jail, Sheriff Matthew Donner is playing his keyboard, while a prisoner is singing, when John walks in and flashes his badge. Donner leaves the cell and learns that John is tracking a missing person.  When Donner looks at the photo, he says that Ruby is not from around there and that they don't get many strangers passing through.  When Donner attempts to hand the flyer back, John asks him to take another look and says that she might have dyed her hair, cut it, or could be using a different name.  Donner again says that he has not seen Ruby, so John says that he would like to continue making inquiries within the limits of jurisdictional compliance and asks for permission to put a few of the photos around town.  Donner says yes and then when he looks at the photo, he asks Holly his deputy if the picture could be of Deena Rose, the checker at the market. Holly replies that she is house sitting for the Bricklane triplets and adds that Deena Rose did come to town about six months ago. John says thanks and leaves, as Donner and Holly exchange a look.

John heads to see Mrs. Bricklane and learns that Deena quit and took a job over at a farm. John says that he doesn't know how she does it and Mrs. Bricklane says it's nothing because Rosemary gave birth to quintuplets last Tuesday. 

John then heads over to the farm and is immediately given directions to leave because Vernon believes that John is looking for the reservation. Vernon then adds that he can never tell the difference between two tribes of Indigenous People.  John asks him if he knows a Deena Rose and flashes his badge.  He is taken out back, where there are sheets hanging on a line and from behind Deena looks just like Ruby.  When Deena turns around he sees that she is very pregnant Deena Rose.

Matthew Donner  is talking with Sophia, his daughter, and it turns out that Sophia is the same girl who John gave a ride to last night.  Matthew asks if she was out by the lake last night and Sophia asks if she is grounded now.  Matthew says that they all know what goes down at the lake and now there's drugs and that if she gets into trouble that there is no turning back and her whole life will be done. Matthew is clearly concerned that a mistake will mean that Sophia will be trapped there the rest of her life.  Matthew then says that he thought that they were together on that and Sophia says that she is 16 and is of course going to question. Sophia says that she is has to go back to work and Matthew warns his daughter that they are watching her and that they are testing her.  Sophia tells her dad that they can't make her do anything she doesn't want to do. Matthew tells her that she won't find what she thinks she is looking for and Sophia points out that her mother found him before walking away. 

John sits down next to Matthew and tells him that his last tip was a bust. John tells him that he is a type A makes him crazy and wonder if the sheriff is jerking him around. Matthew replies that he is wondering the same thing about John.  When John replies that they are going to keep an eye on each other, Matthew says that he has been doing that since last night and then gets up and leaves.

Sophia come out of the kitchen and sees\ John, so immediately turns around and leaves.  Three menacing young men enter the dinner as John leaves when he gets a phone call.  It's Frank who says that they traced the call from the trucker and that it originated in Wolf Lake.  John asks for an address.

The three menacing young men who entered the dinner are driving in a pick up truck. The one who is driving asserts that they are never to deal X to the kids on the hill and that he is disappointed.  He adds that he it cannot happen anymore and that it never should have happened.  The driver pulls over and tells Fletch to take a nice long walk home and to find a way to be better at his job.

Sherman is hitting golf balls into the lake, as the driver tells his buddy to relax and give Fletch a fighting chance.  Fletch starts to run frantically through the woods until he is grabbed by the legs and dragged away.  Sherman hears the scream and pauses hitting golf balls to look around.

John is hops the fence at Wolf  Lake highschool and heads straight to the payphone where he matches up the number on the phone, with the number that Frank gave him. Satisfied with the match, he starts to walk away, until he glimpses a photo of Ruby in the display case.  John bashes in the case using a fire extinguisher and grabs the photo.

The Walking Dead Volume 1: Days Gone Bye

While The Walking Dead TV series is on hiatus, we’re going to work our way through the huge backlog of Walking Dead comics - both to tell the often surprisingly different story that is there and compare and contrast how the threads are handled differently

And because they’re awesome and we love them

In Volume 1 (the first 6 comics), Rick wakes up in the hospital, meets Morgan and Duane in his old neighbourhood; visits zombie-infested Atlanta, being saved by Glenn and arriving at the camp. There he rejoins Lori, Karl and Shane, as well as meeting Andrea, Amy, Dale, Jim, Carol, Sophia, Allen, Donna and their twins.

The comics open extremely atmospherically and there are very close parallels between the comics and the TV series. I think the main difference between the two is that the the TV lends itself more to depicting horror and fear, especially of Rick’s first moments in the hospital, than the stark black and white drawings of the comics.

Surprisingly for a horror series, the beginning theme isn’t fear or even horror per se. This introduction doesn’t dwell so much on the menace they face from the Walkers, so much as it concentrates on what they have lost. Even dodging the hordes of zombies in Atlanta, Rick is focused entirely on reuniting with Lori and Karl - or dealing with their loss. Around the camp fires the whole gang talks about their losses - Dale discusses his wife, Carol discusses her dead husband, Sophia misses her dead father, Andrea and Amy miss their old lives, Jim talks about losing his entire family in front of him. Even Allen and Donna talk about the life they left behind and Glenn talks about being estranged from his parents and the life he was leading. This is the defining theme of these first comics: loss.

And from that loss there’s also a secondary theme of coming to terms with it. There’s Morgan who is worried about squatting in someone’s house and the problem with stealing and looting from the police station - he continues to have this idea that things will return to normal, that the old rules still apply. Even Rick assumes that people will come back - he tells Morgan he will have to return the police car, that he can stay in the house but he better not fight to keep it when his neighbours return. There’s still that almost naive expectation that things will return to how they should be

One of the main conflicts of the comic is between Shane and Rick (beyond the foreshadowings of the romantic tension with the Shane/Lori/Rick love triangle) with Shane wanting to stay close to Atlanta because, when government help arrives, this is where they will come and how they will find them. Shane’s plans - or lack of them - are based on this increasingly foolish looking hope for order to be restored. It’s a really well maintained theme because we know, it’s already clear, that there is no hope of this happening but they cling to it desperately as a way of dealing with their loss.

One thing that has to be noted in comparison to the TV series is that, at this early stage, the racial diversity of the group is very small. Glenn is the only POC; the Martinez family, Jacqui and T-Dog in the TV series never existed in the comics (nor did the Dixons or Carol’s abusive husband). This leaves the cast much whiter. Add in the fact that we’re already seeing Glenn risking his life for supplies - and not even essential supplies, just for chocolate, detergent and toilet paper. And Lori is, selfishly, more than willing to risk Glenn’s life for the guns - but not Rick’s. Glenn is considered more disposable.

Revolution Season 1, Episode 19: Children of Men

Big standoff with Rachel staring at Monroe, holding a grenade without the pin. Monroe’s guard points a gun at her, because that’ll help.

She releases it.

The guard jumps on Monroe hauling him to the floor to cover him. Another leaps on Rachel, wrestling with her. She doesn’t hold onto it very well and the guard manages to take it from her and throw it outside the tent where it explodes. Monroe is unharmed. Rachel is unharmed. But Aaron sees the explosion through a pair of binoculars.

Y’know rather than dramatically stand there with a grenade in your hand, Rachel, you could have stood outside his tent, pulled the pin and rolled the grenade inside, there’d be a good chance they wouldn’t have even noticed it.

The dream team lands their helicopter, Charlie randomly thanking Jason; Jason and Neville have a bonding moment over “women” (or Neville tries to anyway) and Miles checks on Nora (apparently ready). To the camp

Aaron continues to watch the camp and sees Rachel and Monroe are still alive, probably concluding that Rachel is officially the most inept suicide bomber ever. Rachel is being lead to the entrance to the tower where they use her hand print to open the door.

Yes, Rachel not only failed to kill Monroe, but handed him the key he was looking for. I hereby grant her the Catelyn Stark Award for Sabotaging One’s Own Side.

Into the Tower, which is most certainly working and powered up and full of shiny toys. Rachel chews out Randall for bringing Monroe but he claims it’s for self-preservation – which doesn’t explain why the man went to Monroe in the first place anyway. Someone else looking for a Catelyn Stark Award. Anyway, it seems Rachel doesn’t have security clearance so shouldn’t have been able to get the door open – so Randall assumes Grace has been fiddling with things

And the door shuts behind them – apparently prompted by a new man watching through the monitors.  He tells the room full of people with him that it’s time to go say “hello”. Why do I think a more appropriate greeting would be “let the games begin!” Certainly since “hello” involves the big big guns.

Outside, the dream team watches the tower, Neville pokes Miles for having a crush on Rachel and they find Aaron whose stealth skills don’t expand to “don’t use lights to read during the night.”

Rendall shows Monroe some of the shinies in the Tower, including the satellites which are still operational and showing scenes from cities around the world – including the ruins of London and Paris. It apparently also comes with the tech to spy on and kill anyone in the world – so long as you reach level 12 in the tower. Rachel protests which helps confirm what Randall’s saying is true. She’s really working that Catelyn Award.

Except the tower has other ideas and the lift stop at floor 11. Then the explosions and the gunfire start, slaughtering Mornoe’s guards pretty easily especially the big impressive guns. Monroe ducks to cover and Rachel ducks into a side door. Monroe managing to force his way in behind her. She tries to stab him with a pair of scissors but he takes them off her.

Back outside and everyone plays catch up including Miles blaming Aaron for letting Rachel play inept suicide bomber – though Aaron points out that Miles isn’t exactly good at stopping Rachel doing whatever the hell she wants either. Neville cuts through Miles’s whining about Rachel to demand if Aaron can get them in – with the book her can (Neville calls Aaron “chubs” so Aaron responds by calling him a dick. Such happy togetherness).

They infiltrate the camp and Neville and Nate, working together, blow up the amplifier (which apparently is quite explosive). Nora takes out the guards at the tower with throwing knives and she, Miles, Aaron and Charlie head for the door. Aaron enters the 62 character override code into the door while Miles holes off the militia. Once the door is open they run inside – but Neville and Nate are both pinned and Miles tells Aaron to shut the door. (Miles has to hold back Charlie and Neville has to hold back Nate. I had to hold back rolling my eyes).

In their little hiding place (which seems to be a prudential bunker), Monroe has many many questions for Rachel who only has “I don’t know” as a response in that utterly calm voice that convinces me she’s managed to find some happy pills in the dystopian future. He angrily declares she needs to work with him if they both want to live. Since she’s the woman who was willing to blow herself up to kill him, it’s pretty clear that them both dying is quite acceptable to her. He dismisses this because all suicides regret it really and she wants to live – and asks if she knows how to open the gun cabinet

Revolution Season 1, Episode 18: Clue

Nora, a prisoner of Monroe’s, is dressed up in a pretty dress and taken to meet him. he tries playing nice but she’s under no illusions. He throws in some extremely creepy “flirting” and refers to their past together – referring to Nora as a “bounty hunter”, a past she rejects. Nora won’t tell him where Miles is and tries to bash his head in with a booze bottle, which fails

Nora is tortured repeatedly over a month, beaten, water boarded and injected with an agonising substance. The doctor becoming more and more uncomfortable over dosing her. Nora breaks and tells them that Miles is in Atlanta (or was a month ago – this question stopped being relevant a long time ago), that Neville was with the rebels – and that Rachel is going to the Tower in Colorado

Monroe asks Randall what the Tower is and he tries to deny it’s important. But the minion he brought with him has already spilled to Monroe that the Tower can be used to turn the power back on and with Rachel going there, Monroe risks losing his only advantage in the war against the better funded Georgia.  Randall back tracks rapidly and even starts creeping and protesting his loyalty – Monroe shouts at him and has his men take him away. Randall starts squeaking and begging – telling Monroe about other shinies in the Tower – a place where the DoD kept all kinds of experimental and advanced technology - he can give Monroe but his subordinate, Sandborn, cannot.

They get in a helicopter to head to the Tower – Randall now in shackles and chains.

When they’re gone Sandborn, who was also Nora’s torturer doctor, goes to Nora saying he’s going to “put her down” (much to the guard’s disappointment since she’s a “fine piece of tail”). He goes in an injects Nora in the neck.

Rachel and Aaron have reached Colorado. In Atlanta, Miles and Hudson discuss strategy against the Monroe Militia and their drones and generally come up with “we’re well and truly screwed.” They still know nothing about Nora. Atlanta itself is evacuating, with the army collapsing against Monroe and Jason tries to get Charlie to join the exodus, she comments on how worried he is about her and they kiss. Relationship official it seems? But someone catches Jason’s eye that disturbs him and he gets rid of Charlie to go meet them.

And using a car with an amplifier and pendant, Sandborn drives into town with Nora in the backseat, She’s taken hurriedly to hospital. Miles rushes to her bedside and Nora desperately and weakly tells him she’s sorry – but she told Monroe about the Tower. Miles questions Sandborn – suspecting him of being a spy or a plant using Nora to get in, but he says he can’t stand what he’s being asked to do, his conscience is cracking. He warns them again about the Tower – and that he knows where it is and can take them there.

As they leave, Miles tries to convince Hudson to go home to his wife – the tower is their last chance and it’s a long shit, since Hudson has someone to go home to he should take it. Hudson is Not Amused, especially since his wife is hellaciously pissed at him because Miles swooped into town, blew his cover and dragged him into the war in the first placed. Yeah that kind of deserves a slap. Also coming is Neville since the President wants him along. Jason and Charlie are also tagging along as is Ramsay one of the militia leaders and, of course, Sandborn. Nora also joins while Miles objects – but she says she has to because it’s her fault.

Mornoe leads his forces to the Tower into the Plains Nation – he’s warned by one of his flunkies that the Plains Nation Tribes will be hella pissed at him. Monroe makes a crack about infected blankets that ranks up there with holocaust cracks in terms of jokes that will never ever be funny. Is this supposed to remind us he’s the bad guy or are we supposed to find that funny?

Randall is still been lead around in chains and Monroe asks about the Tower – which isn’t a Tower. It looks like rather a small bunker, a door into a hill. Randall tells him it goes down half a mile – it’s a tower downwards. And he keeps on creeping, calling Monroe “sir”. Unfortunately for Randall – his fingerprints no longer open the door. Oops. Over the CCTV his crawling to Monroe is watched by a whole crowd of people.

Meanwhile the dream team’s helicopter is flying, Jason and Charlie engage in some not subtle eye contact and Jason flashbacks to talking to his friend in Atlanta – who has a militia brand: he has a job for Jason.

Blood Moon on the Rise by Lauren Smith

Tamara is a Hunter and member of an organisation of hunters that watches and polices the supernatural – and kills those that step too far out of line. She works alongside her Tracker, Nicholas, his magical ability leading him to their targets.

Unfortunately, there’s far more than magic between them – there’s an awful lot of unrequited love and lust between them too. Unfortunately, their organisations rules expressly forbids such fraternisation

Worse, a lover of one of their targets seeks revenge – and has the magic to make it happen.

There were some  elements of this book I loved – mainly the concept. Pairs of Hunters and Trackers working together in cells to police the supernatural sounds like an extremely fun concept.

But there were problems with it. And I think most of those stem from the fact that the book is very very short – but it has enough material to fill a much bigger book or even a series. It has a long history, these characters have a long history, it was a wide world, it has a lot that it doesn’t necessarily need to explain to tell the story – but it is a lot that it wants to explain. But without a long story to convey all that world building, what we get is info dump.

A lot of info dumps. And they’re not even close to naturally integrated into the story. The Nicholas and Tamara simply sit down and think. We have these epicly long internal monologues where they review their history, they review their past attraction, they review the very point of the Brotherhood, they review the Brotherhood’s history, they think about the nature of Trackers and Hunters and they have a dream sequence where it describes the Brotherhood’s headquarters – a building they never actually go to.