Warehouse 13, Season 5, Episode 6: Endless

London, 1889 and Helena (H.G. Wells) being the awesome Warehouse 12 agent she was and taking down Jack the Ripper. (Kipling is also a Warehouse agent, I am most amused). Her mentor tells her all about the Warehouse but also puts a little puncture in her idea that the Warehouse is inherently linked to the British empire – though she does think there will never be a Warehouse 13.

The current team are watching this on the Round Table (and also learning that Helena has broken up with her current guy and is now dating a woman which finally sets in stone the often referenced bisexuality of Helena). The Table stores the memories of agents defining moments with the Warehouse and she wants them to add to it. Which means Warehouse 13 is reaching the end of its life. And if the Warehouse moves to a new country, the new country provides new agents.

Pete is highly stressed by this and demands Mrs. Frederick stop it, accusing her of failing as a Caretaker – but this is not a crisis to solve, it’s what the Warehouse does. So Claudia decides to give everyone time to calm down by sharing her first memory

Which involves showgirls and Pete and Myka tap dancing because of an Artefact Pete played with. The whole gang tries to battle showgirls while tap dancing – and Claudia has to put on a major performance (thankfully tap dancing) to charge another Artefact to fix it all.

It’s whacky, silly and immensely fun after which everyone announces “best job ever.” It was also the day when Claudia realised she didn’t want to be a Caretaker because she loves being an agent so much. Which leads to Pete freaking out about not being an agent any more. While he storms off, the gang talk to Claudia about whether she wants to be Caretaker and how she shouldn’t feel forced to become one.

On that subject, Artie’s turn to share a memory: a memory Mrs. Frederick thinks will backfire on him.  Artie and a past agent investigate a time bubble from the 1940s with someone using an Artefact to make a party last forever and avoid going to war; it’s a bubble that can only be entered once a year, the date of the party. They have 25 minutes to investigate and Artie’s junior Agent, Scott, is pretty good. Scott’s insight helps them solve it though Scott is briefly emotional at the woman with the Artefact’s plea – worried that her baby will grow up without a dad. Which Artie feels guilty about – because Scott is his son.

Intermission while Claudia demands an explanation. Artie never knew Scott existed for years; and Artie fought the Regents for the right of a “one”, the right Regents have to have one person who knows about the Warehouse. He meant this as a lesson that you have to fight for your happiness, but Claudia is still reeling and she walks off.

Artie follows her and after talking Artie reveals that Scott is still alive but not an agent, he has a normal life. He didn’t introduced Claudia because she would have wanted him to be an Agent – which defeats the whole point of the One – someone in the normal world to keep balance. The lesson is sometimes you have to be a little selfish to be happy – and that “do as I say not as I do” is totally the prerogative of a father figure. And a lovely bonding parent moment.

Mountain Echoes (Walker Papers #8) by C.E. Murphy

Joanne has barely had time to process what happened in Ireland when she receives news her father is missing. She quickly returns to North Carolina, to a place she hasn’t been since a child, to discover not only is her father missing, but so is the man who fathered her child.

He Master is there, seeking to tap into the devastating pain and loss suffered by the Native Americans to power evil beyond imagining; unless they can stop it.

But also there are the people Joanne long left behind, not all of whom are that willing to welcome her back, even if she has finally embraced her legacy of a shaman. There’s also Aida, the son she gave up at birth and a powerful shaman in his own right – and a source of both emotional and mystical turmoil.

Joanne has, in many ways, completely her journey of development in this book and the last book. Last book she confronted so many of the issues she had with her mother – and this book she does the same with her father and with Aidan, the son she gave up for adoption. It’s not easy, there’s some heavy emotional content there, but it’s handled in a very reasonable and mature level – no dramatic angst, not seething rage, no losing their sense of priorities or avoiding the actual plot and disaster they are facing. It also reflects Joanne’s personal growth – she has finally decided to put away her desire for an instruction manual – because she has been doing this for some time now and she’s been managing and achieving great things. Joanne acknowledges her own skill – her own mastery. When her dad does things differently, she accepts that they do things differently, not better or worse. When she does something her dad says is impossible, she doesn’t think she’s doing something wrong, she just knows she does something different from her dad.

Joanne has reached an excellent point where she is willing to learn from others, but not feel inferior for it and not feel like she has to do anything their way – while still being confident in her skills and her achievements and finally settling on the idea that she is strong, she can do things others cannot and there’s no problem with her doing just that. Even if it is unwise at times. It’s a wonderful development after books of denial, books of panic, books of her messing things up epicly through ignorance and confusion and now her finally reaching the end of that path. I love her growth

Not just with magic – but relationships as well, recognising her old problems, her old grudges, when she was often unfair or unthinking or how her perception was skewed. Through a more mature, wiser eye, Joanne looks back at herself and her old home and a fair whack of complex feelings about it

Penny Dreadful, Season 1, Episode 2: Seance

In a dark, terrifying and foggy night, a sex worker takes a lunch break, nervous and afraid with the news of a body ripped up from last episode – when the lamp lighter disappears and something attacks her. Blood spatters

Ethan wakes up, somewhat worse for wear, under a pier. There appear to be cuts and blood on his hand. He staggers to an inn to order a hair of the dog. Where’s joined by a fun Irish woman called Brona who happily drinks some of his whiskey. She came over to London to look for work – and saw more and more jobs taken over by the machines of the Industrial Revolution. She’s a sex worker, thanks him for the breakfast and is off to do work machines can’t do – yet.

Frankenstein teaches his new creation to eat, marvelling over him and randomly selecting a name for him from Shakespeare – Proteus. But he has to go out and make money – convincing Proteus to stay and wait; leaving him scared and alone.

He’s calling on Sir Malcolm and Vanessa – Vanessa carefully locks away her writing when Malcolm calls her. He also tells her to unbutton the top of her dress – instructions that don’t phase her. (And Frankenstein’s eyes do blink down to her exposed… neck. Well it is a very high necked Victorian dress).

They take him down to the basement where the vampire lurks, stripped of all flesh, hieroglyphic covered exoskeleton exposed. While Frankenstein studies the body, he talks about his (unsurprising) fascination with Egyptian religion and Vanessa is surprised to discover he has Romantic Poetry in his bag. For all his obsession with science, it is the “ephemeral” that makes life worth living. Vanessa seizes upon it, reciting a poem about man transforming nature. Because she’s cunning like that and later tells Malcolm the doctor has a secret.

Sir Malcolm and Sembene go to see the police about the gruesome murder, and after a token effort to keep the investigation private, he reveals everything. Body parts and organs are missing, but they were not drained of blood – he rules out the Ripper since the Ripper targeted sex workers and neither mother nor her 7 year old daughter were. Malcolm insists on being called into the next crime scene – and he’s sure there will be one.

Brona goes to a very very expensive address to meet with a Dorian Gray. For the purpose of taking risqué pictures – and he seems even more interested in proceedings when he discovers she has consumption and is coughing blood. She warns him against kissing her, for fear he may catch it, and he licks her lip. They have sex while the photographer takes pictures and Dorian gets a special thrill from having sex with a “dying creature”. Which is the least sexy pillow talk, ever.

Ethan gets a message from home – his dad instructs him to return to America since his legal problems have been “taken care of”. This apparently includes paying a federal marshal.

Game of Thrones, Season 4, Episode 7: Mocking Bird

Kings Landing: The Usual nest of vipers

Jaime is very very annoyed with his brother for ungratefully throwing his life away. Tyrion, being much more astute, doesn’t see any reason to be grateful for being sent to the wall for a crime he didn’t commit – and yes, the whole farce is a joke. Tyrion also throws some hard truth at Jaime – Tyrion is always going to be disposable to Tywin. More, Tywin wants to dispose of him; Jaime protests that Tywin would sacrifice any of them and Tyrion calls bullshit – Jaime could (quite literally) “kill a king, lose your hand, fuck your sister” and still be the golden son.

Jaime can’t fight for Tyrion in his trial by combat – without his hand he isn’t ready yet (though the idea of Tyrion and Tywin both dying because of the trial is faintly amusing to Tyrion). Tyrion asks Jaime to find Bronn.

And Cersei chooses her champion – Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain. Who is happily butchering some prisoners for funsies.

Unfortunate for Tyrion, Bronn has been nobbled. He has been married off to a wealthy lady through Cersei’s influence giving him much more luxury and a considerable lack of need to be chopped into itty bitty pieces by the Mountain. It’s Bronn’s turn to lay on some hard truths, Tyrion no longer has wealth to offer him and while he is Tyrion’s friend, that doesn’t extend to risking his life for Tyrion – after all, Tyrion has never done the same. They part as friends.

Tyrion gets a visit from Oberyn who, in between making it clear he knew Cersei was trying to turn him against Tyrion and he tells of his first visit to Castlery rock when Tyrion was a newborn baby and how rumour had painted him as so monstrous. But when a young Oberyn was so eager to see this monstrous baby, he was surprised when Cersei showed him Tyrion – a pretty normal baby without any of the claws and tails Oberyn had pictured. But Cersei hated him and blamed him for the death of their mother.

And Oberyn wants revenge on the killers of his sister – the Mountain, Gregor Clegane, who raped and killed his sister and killed her children. Being Tyrion’s champion gives him that chance. I feel this scene would have been far more powerful without Oberyn mentioning cocks every 5 seconds.

The Riverlands: Arya and the Hound

They find a man, injured from an attack, a wound in his stomach killing him slowly. The Hound and Arya both wonder why he doesn’t commit suicide since he is suffering and cannot possibly heal from the wound. He thinks nothing – death - could be worse but Arya creepily refutes: nothing can be neither better, nor worse. It’s nothing. The Hound gives him a last drink before finishing him off, showing Arya a heart blow

And some fool attacks the Hound by biting him. He gets his neck broken – but that leaves his companion free to tell them there’s a price on the Hound’s head and that Joffrey is dead. Arya recognises the man as a prisoner heading to the wall who threatened her. The Hound asks if he’s on Arya’s death list but alas it cannot be – she doesn’t know his name. So The Hound asks, the bounty hunter rather foolishly tells them – and Arya stabs him through the heart. Even the Hound is a little impressed.

Fangs for the Fantasy Podcast

Unfortunately, we seem to be suffering some difficulties. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to vanquish weremoose - or the mess they leave behind afterwards! See, at least Moospires turn to dust when you stake them with a maple branch.

Alas, this means we're not able to do the podcast today folks, we will try to be back next week, once all the supernatural moose scourages have been cleared from our path. And possibly after a drink

Or three.

Deep Blue (Waterfire Saga #1) by Jennifer Donnelly

Serfina is a mermaid, the heir to the throne of one of the 6 merfolk nations and ready to complete her coming of age ceremony and meet her new husband

Until all out war breaks out in the middle of it. With her life, her city and her nation in ruins, hunted by barely understood, relentless enemies, Serfina flees with her best friend relying on very dubious and worrisome allies.

In the end, they have one hope – chasing an answer that spoke to them in a dream, speaking of 6 mermaids who have to come together to fight the threat.

The world setting for this book is really rich and deep setting. We have a long, detailed history, an origin story and a wide, varied political landscape that creates a very large, rich and diverse feeling society. This world is one of those worlds where a lot of effort has gone into the full creation, making it very plausible and very internally consistent. There are also a lot of hints that all of this world is going to be called upon and be relevant in the story – including the history and the politics – and it’s not just exposition for exposition’s sake. I think it may be the best underwater world I’ve ever seen in the genre – from the magic setting to the different political entities, it’s very promising.

Of course, while all this history and politics is fascinating and rich and well designed and mostly pertinent to the story, it is a lot of information that is expositioned at us a lot. I didn’t find it boring, but a lot of it I found excessive and unnecessary – especially in the first part of the book; lots of info-dump, little reason for it.

The story remembers it’s underwater most of the time – but not all the time – we still get moments where merfolk pour drinks from teapots and the like underwater (which I can only imagine would be messy – really, if your creatures are aquatic you can skip the whole drinking thing) or sweat, or things pouring or falling which probably shouldn’t happen.

The main character, Serafina, also breaks a lot of moulds. She’s a princess and knows to act it and is very aware of her responsibilities – even though she’s 16 and often feels overwhelmed. It’s also interesting how she works with other women. When the book began, she had a rival at court that was an almost classic Mean Girl and I rolled my eyes because we’d seen this play out so many times – and even a princess and heir to the throne has to be the unpopular bullied one… but this elements of the story was quickly left behind (which made me think it was rather unnecessary to be honest) and we got to the meat.

And in the meat she’s one of 6 young women working together all with their own talents and skills. 6 young women who respect and like one another, regard each other as peers and work well as a team – yes there’s conflict between Serafina and another but it has a strong basis in the story and even then she tries to work through it. Is she special? Yes, but they all are – each in their own way. It’s even emphasised that she’s not the most powerful of them – in fact “most powerful” doesn’t even apply in any logical sense since each of them have powers and abilities and talents that are very different from each other. And if Serafina may, possibly, be the most specialist of them all, it’s a slim claim – and it pales next to the true strength of the 6 is how they work together. This is a really strong emphasis on them being much much stronger together than apart and that co-operation is the key to victor. Each mermaid also has a chance to shine, a moment when they are the hero, when they save the others – just as each mermaid is equally in need of the help and support of the others. This isn’t the story of one mermaid and her sidekicks, nor 6 women who are fighting and snarling and competing with each other.

If anything, the lack of conflict between them is poorly done because these 6 women meet, understand and bond almost ridiculously quickly. They go from complete strangers to knowing each other incredibly well astonishingly quickly with little development or depth.

Da Vinci's Demons, Season 2, Episode 9: The Enemies of Man

Leo and Riario are on the ship back to Italy, Leo still obsessed and Riario thinking they need to pack it all in – he even intends to throw himself on the pope’s mercy. Good luck with that. They also acknowledge that while they’ve liked working together the whole alliance thing is now other

In Florence, Leo notices something amiss – the streets are empty. He and Nico return to his old workshop where Verrocchio meets them and warns them Florence is no longer home, shortly before the guards arrive. A new guard captain drags them to the palace which is full of men and bare breasted women (some seemingly enjoying proceedings, others definitely abused). The palace is in a shambles – and Clarice is chained on a throne wearing very scanty clothing. All of this is forced by Duke Federico of Urbino – who took the city by force at the Pope’s urging. Both Clarice and Leo cling to the hope that Lorenzo will return.

In Naples, the Pope is trying to make Lorenzo tell him where the vast sums of Medici gold got to, since neither he nor Urbino can find them, in exchange for exile for Lorenzo and his family. He reveals that Florence has fallen – and Lorenzo punches him. How many Hail Marys for punching a pope? The Pope calls him no matter than usurers, heathens or jews, which pretty much sums up a fair chunk of the Pope’s prejudice. Lorenzo does promise to give up all of the money - to king Ferrante of Naples if he can free Florence. The pope smugly points out he and Naples are allies, this isn’t a negotiation – Ferrante, considering the vast sum of money would beg to differ – it is a negotiation now.

Lorenzo and Ipolita flirt and kiss and are seen by the pope.

Back in Florence, after a brief reunion with Vanessa, Leo is taken for some special torture (with some side references to him being a “sodomite” so he might enjoy the torture. Da Vinci’s Demons you’re on far too thin ice to pull this shit). He’s fastened in stocks opposite Carlo, also in stocks; but at least Carlo is eager to meet Leo. The torturers arrive (with background scenes of rape) and knock out the guards – it’s Zoroaster and Amerigo in disguise.

They take Leo and Carlo to a tavern where the loyalists are hiding (including Captain Dragonetti) – while Frederico’s men attack random men in the street. Of course Leo intends to take the palace back and with Carlo’s knowledge of the palace he comes up with a plan.

Which is foiled when Dragonetti et al are captured obtaining supplies, interrupting Leo and Carlo bonding over being bastards and Cosimo’s obsession with the Book of Leaves. Instead they take a riskier route into the palace, past the furnace

Inside the palace, a guard tries to take Vanessa to be raped by Nico stands in his way. In response to Nico’s defiance, the other prisoners stand as well. Faced with all the prisoners ready to attack him, he backs out.

Fangs for the Fantasy Podcast

We are battle against the weremoose continues - watch this space to see if Fangs for the Fantasy podcast is back on tonight. If it is it'll be on at 7:00pm EST

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12th May - 19th May: Deep Blue by Jennifer Donnelly

19th May - 26th May: Banishing the Dark by Jenn Bennet

26th May - 2nd June: City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare

2nd June - 9th June: The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice

9th June - 16th June: Hunting Ground by Patricia Briggs

16th June - 23rd June: Shattered by Kevin Hearne

23rd June - 30th June: Ocean at the End of Lane by Neil Gaiman