The Originals, Season 2, Episode 14: I Love You Goodbye

Having rather awesomely used himself as a spark for the bomb, Elijah joins up with Camille and creepy-demon-baby Hope (she and the baby off Grimm are going to go to the same creepy demon crèche)

Haley has heard of the big explosion and her daughter under threat and wants to ride to the rescue before Klaus stops her; it’s her wedding day and becoming Queen (and being respected as queen) will do more for Hope’s safety than her running off

After a brief interlude with Josh being sad that he tried to eat Aiden, he’s hurried off so Davina and Kol can flirt and we’re all supposed to not consider how utterly creepy it is that this thousand year old vampire is lusting after a 17 year old. Kol offers to make Davina the magic dagger which we are sure she will use with all her demonstrated wisdom.

Hah.

Freya isn’t out of the action just yet – and uses woo-woo to resurrect Finn (so they don’t have to change actor, again, I guess).

Kol and Davina create the Dagger of Inevitably Foolishness and are all ready to celebrate by making out when Finn as a terrible headache and nose bleed (possibly caused by Freya’s shenanigans). Kol covers the curse Finn dropped on him, because enlisting the help of the (apparently) powerful witch Davina would be very sensible so there’s no way that’s going to happen on this show. He calls Rebekah, completely inexperienced (for some damn reason) witch instead

Which means Rebekah can’t go to the wedding so she gives Hayley a beautiful wedding dress instead and Hayley raises the possibility of human!Rebekah and Marcel getting together. Rebekah decides to keep that on hold until she’s sure how long she’s going to be in a human body. She also adds that Hayley will also be a Mikaelson though Hayley rather awesomely snarks about how good a thing that is.

She goes to help Kol – and fails. Kol, the reckless rogue is now afraid of death having endured it once, especially since he loves living as a human without all the blood lost and HUGELY MELODRAMATIC VAMPRE MOODS (well, he calls it “heightened emotion” but, honestly, making “melodramatic angst monster” a side-effect of vampirisim is an ideal way of explaining just about every character on this show).

Over to the wolves and Aidan and Jackson look at burning bodies of all the Alphas who died when the vampires had their little moment, thinking how best to spin it. Klaus shows up with a bag of even moooore werewolf heads – but these are werewolves who followed Finn. Jackson is still slightly put off at the idea of his slaughtered fellows being presented as a gift but they realise, in Klaus’s twisted little way, this was meant to be a kind gift. Because Klaus, basically. Klaus also offers his compound for the wedding

Armageddon Rules (Grimm Agency #2) by J.C. Nelson

Marissa has a new wonderful life. She’s Grimm’s partner, fully involved in running the agency with all its wonders and petty annoyances. Her best friend Arianna has put her princess past behind her and is settling in as an agent. And her boyfriend Liam is still with her and it’s wonderful –barring some singeing from the half-dragon

But she made enemies – and those enemies have a lot of resources and a lot of patience. When they come for her Marissa finds herself alone, her friends endangered, absent or depowered and her juggling saving them and keeping the agency going

Also, she kind of started the apocalypse…

This book is exponentially more silly than the first one. And it works

It works in a way it wouldn’t with the first book because Marissa is now Grimm’s partner, not his indentured servant. By putting her in charge, by making her an equal, the book has more scope to be fun and silly than dark and gritty and angsty. There were certainly elements of the silly in the first book, but the darker undertones pulled us away from it and stopped it going too far

The darkness has been dispersed, Marissa has moved on from her previous wishes, her laments of the life she is forced into and her general moping. She now has a career she’s embraced, power and agency, a man she loves and some very good friends. She even has a new intern to shoot. She’s happy. She’s in a good place and it really changes the entire tone of the series

So we have gnomish monster-truck death cults! We have infernal energy manifesting as plagues of murderous poodles! We have princesses blessed with so many positive attributes so there has to be balance – and they cannot drive. We have a love sick wraith of pure hatred dancing attendance on Arianna. We have a prince and true love’s kiss bearer with a phobia of physical contact. We have a zany apocalypse complete with plagues of encyclopaedia salesmen, we have the need to kill golden-egg-laying geese before they destroy the market and a weekly gig of turning frogs back into princes (finding which are which because princes are far lazier and more entitled than frogs) and dwarves digging up balrogs (“nothing says ‘you shall not pass’ like a howitzer.”)

It’s fun, it’s hilarious and it works. Sometimes you just need a book that’s fun.

The 100, Season 2, Episode 13: Resurrection

After the missile strike of last episode, we have the horror and the fire of the aftermath. And it is very very horrific – I give The 100 max points for making the atrocity as atrocious as it is.

Lexa and Clarke escaped and Lexa leads Clarke into the woods so they’re not seen among the carnage. Others run around the wreckage trying to save whoever they can, including Abbie, Octavia and Lincoln. They find Indra but she’s badly injured – barely able to do anything except snarl angrily at Lincoln (are we surprised she finds the energy to be angry). She also manages to call Octavia to action and leadership before she passes out.

But the carnage isn’t over yet, the Spotter who guided the missile is still there and sniping at the survivors. Killing more and pinning the others down in cover. While they hide, Abbie hears Kane struggling under the rubble and tries to dig down to him.

He’s trapped and bleeding under rubble which she can’t move – but she refuses to leave him even when she hears other people crying in the rubble. At any suggestion it could be Clarke, she avoids the question not wanting to admit that Clarke knew how to get to safety. When Abbie succeeds and moving the rubble she realises it’s the only thing stopping Kane from bleeding out and has to pin him again – and again he tells her to find Clarke and Abbie tells him that Clarke is safe, and why she’s safe. More rubble falls – clearly excess drama has disturbed the weakened structure.

Now Abbie is buried as well as Kane and she has a big dramatic confession on how it’s all her fault because of what Clarke did. Dramatic confession and Abbie being all tearful about how could Clarke do something so evil. Kane hits back that she did grow up on the Arc where the government (i.e. him and Abbie) constantly did evil things because they felt they had no choice. Why wouldn’t Clarke do the same thing? Abbie realises the same when she considers her own crimes (including killing her husband for the greater good). Abbie wonders if they even deserve to survive after what they’ve done

No – and rocks fall and kill them both. Alas no. But it would have been nifty.

On the surface facing the sniper, Octavia creates a smoke screen of burning booze to lead her forces to where they can dig down to help anyone buried.

In the woods Clarke dramatically declares her intention to kill the sniper while Lexa remains cool and collected. As they walk Lexa tries to give another lesson – this time about being unemotional, recognising that both sides are ruthless in their quest to survive and getting all angry about it isn’t helpful. Also that revenge doesn’t help matters. Good advice but it makes Lexa seem like an emotionless robot, Spock is more warm and fuzzy than this woman. They run into Lincoln who is also hunting the sniper.

They find him and, with Clarke’s distraction, Lincoln attacks and wins, but the sniper has one of those annoying, noisy Reaper controlling buzzers. He holds Lincoln at knife point to try and make Clarke drop her gun. Lincoln tells her to shoot him anyway to save her people and she says “you are my people” and shoots Lincoln in the upper shoulder, killing the sniper behind him.

With the sniper dead, Octavia’s team can dig more easily- and are helped further when an aid team from Camp Jaha arrives lead by Sinclair, they saw the missile and realised help would be needed. They rescue Abbie and Kane, presumably muttering “all this work for these two?!”

Everyone reunites and Lexa and Clarke make a dramatic speech about vengeance. Abbie irritatedly interrupts to call everyone to work on the rescue of everyone still buried.

Indra wakes up, not dead, and praises Octavia. She also gets over her Reaper aversion of Lincoln. Abbie and Clarke have something close to a reconciliation and Clarke tells Abbie that since the sniper wasn’t wearing a hazmat suit, they have to hurry to save the 100 before they’re all killed for their bone marrow. Abbie also asks Clarke not to forget they’re the good guys – which Clarke dodges.

In Mount Weather, the captured 100 barricade the floor they’ve taken over. They destroy cameras and security measures while Monty works some technological shenanigans with the rest. As they prepare for the attack of the Mountain Men they realise some of them aren’t wearing Hazmat suits – the bone marrow treatment from their friend’s bodies has worked and made them immune to radiation.

Dead Heat (Alpha & Omega #4) by Patricia Briggs

Anna and Charles are travelling again – but this time for a nice simple holiday to see an old friend of Charles’s before he dies. It’s a painful reunion and a harsh reminder of the cost of the werewolves’ immense longevity

It’s also a chance to buy Anna a horse from his friend’s excellent ranch. But soon after arriving the quickly find something far more dangerous going on. The fae are finished playing nice with humanity and to push negotiations in their favour they’ve released some of the darkest monsters among them

One of which preys on children and his hunting in the area – including his friend’s family. While neutral in the conflict brewing between the fae and humanity, the werewolves won’t tolerate children being targeted, especially not children connected to the pack.

I think this book was an excellent follow on and contrast to Fair Game. There our sympathies are very much with the fae – it is the fae who are being attacked, cruelly abused and not supported or helped by the human government which leads to the major event in the world setting of the Fae withdrawing to their compounds. We open with this tense moment and both the werewolves and the humans bracing for the possibility of a human vs fae war or, at very least, some very tense relations.

This book shows the other side – that the fae are not nice and are rarely the victims. After most of both this series and the Mercy Thompson series in which the fae tried to play the PR game with humanity and had it fail so dramatically in Fair Game we now see the fae basically letting their monsters loose. They tried to play nice. They tried to keep their greatest monsters hidden and constrained but if humans aren’t going to work with that then it’s time to let loose the kelpies and the child snatchers.

I love this change of direction because it adds so many shades to the whole conflict. The way the fae were treated was unacceptable, but sending out monsters that target children? Equally awful – this puts both the reader and, similarly, the werewolves in the position of team nobody. Or, rather, the position of defending whoever is being unjustly abused regardless of which “side” they’re on. It promises for a lot of interesting plot lines in the future and also adds to the greater meta-feel of Alpha & Omega compared to the much more personally focused Mercy Thompson series.

So we’ve got a nifty little murder mystery with lots of horror and surreal elements from the fae all with a backdrop of big political happening which I really like.

One potential issue I can see is this book has a lot of horse talk in it. One of the hooks to get Charles and Anna on sight is that Charles is getting Anna a horse. I have a feeling the author loves horses and is very involved and knowledgeable about them. Personally I am pretty indifferent to horses and know next to nothing about them and I didn’t find the horse talk engaging – but nor did I find it particularly dull or book breaking. Since I’m not a horsey person and it didn’t bother me I can’t see it being too much of a barrier, but your mileage may vary.

Fangs for the Fantasy Book of the Week

It's another Monday and usually time for another episode of the Fangs for the Fantasy Podcast

Sadly, because we've been hit with the dreaded moose plague, we're not up to doing the podcast this week. However, we will continue our books of the week for the Monday review ans because we do intend to talk about them when we're back on the air and the mooses (meese?) have been banished

9th February - 16th February: Vision in Silver by Anne Bishop
16th February - 23rd February: Dead Heat by Patricia Briggs
23rd February - 2nd March: Dark Debt by Chloe Neil
2nd March - 9th March: Fury’s Kiss by Karen Chance
9th March - 16th March: Ash by Malinda Lo
16th March - 23rd March: Grave Visions by Kalayna Price
23rd March - 30th March: Waistcoats and Weaponry by Gail Carriger

30th March - 6th April: The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich

If you have missed any of our previous shows, all our archives can be found here

Bitten, Season 2, Episode 3: Hell's Teeth

Time for a flashback! 1 week ago in Massachusetts

We have Paige looking after Savannah who is a young teenager with a truly wonderful attitude (suddenly kidnapping her and putting her in a cage doesn’t seem that unreasonable) when magic stuff happens – it’s not Savannah. The ceiling cracks, the eerie whispering begins and a man appears (hey, they’ve got a cute guy summoning spell. Where do I get one of those?) freezing Paige in the process. The guy introduces himself as Aleister – which briefly causes Paige to escape and more shaky house quaking before the freezing comes back.

He tells her how mean the coven his and how she’s super awesome (c’mon even the most narcissistic teenager won’t fall for this) and then gives her a sweet which she eats (candy from strangers? Savannah, really! Who accepts food from the sinister guy who teleports to your kitchen table?). He then says “I am the lock” and she replies, by rote “I am the key” which causes another mini-unfreeze for Paige.

The freeze ends and Paige is alone, Savannah and Aleister are gone.

To the present and the pack realising they’ve lost Malcolm and his trail and that witches are behind it. This is a problem since the Alpha council will be coming back and demanding Malcolm’s head and, without the explanation of treachery, they also have a dead Alpha on the floor after Jeremy killed Roderigo. They have a body to hide

The ring Ruth hid in Jeremy’s nuts (not an innuendo) decides to slide around the place, attracting attention. Jeremy follows it and its pull to the front door where Ruth and Paige are waiting. He refuses to hand it over without them giving back Malcolm. Paige magically forces him to release the ring.

Ruth tries to apologise before she marvels over Elena (and Paige insults her, of course). The whole pack gathers and they don’t decide to kill one witch and torture the other (would be my plan) but talk (how tiresomely civilised). Ruth finally decides to tell them about Aleister kidnapping Savannah and how dangerous it is for her. Jeremy agrees to work with them. Ruth’s plan is to use Malcolm as a lure and afterwards Malcolm can return with the pack.

More drama – members of the Spanish pack show up looking for their alpha (there’s two of them – kill them both and put them in the body pit. Job done). Jeremy talks to them with lots of posturing while Elena and Clay get on that whole body hiding thing. By the time they give the wolves a tour, the evidence is sufficiently covered (especially since the recent Mutt attack left blood and gore and then cleaning products everywhere, covering the smell).

Elena and Clay are nastily thorough about body disposal (snipping off fingertips) and Clay has a bad moment imagining his mother’s death. He tells Elena about what Malcolm did and now he and Elena are both on the horribly murder Malcolm train.

12 Monkeys, Season 1, Episode 6: The Red Forest

We begin exactly where we left off – with Cole and Jennifer chasing after Cassie who is kidnapped by the 12 Monkey people and a gun pointed at her head. And Cole vanishes

2043

Cole arrives back in the future – but there’s ominous dripping stains on the time machine and no-one around. Someone has hung laundry about the time machine room. He finds people in one of the side rooms – and the symbol of West 7 painted on the wall. Looking back in the time machine room it briefly flashes to the reality he’s used to before fading out again. His old membership with West 7, and their mark on his arm, convinces the people there he’s one of them. He asks after Jones who they call “Repair Hag”.

They take her to Jones, who doesn’t recognise him. She tells him that the West 7 attacked and took over 2 years ago. She also says her time machine failed – and Cole was never sent back in it. Showing the marks on his body from her experiments and repeating her old words back he tries to convince her even as he gets confused by new memories/hallucinations/visions. She checks his blood and concludes it’s freaky and only her injections could have made it like that. They realise he changed the past

They compare notes – and find that in this reality the plague was released in 2015 in Chechnya by an intelligence agency as part of something called Operation Troy. Jones has never heard of Cassie or Leyland Goynes or the message she left that indicated Cole was the time traveller.

They do some research and find that Cassie was shot in 2015. His death caused the time split. Jones also explains that Cole’s brain scramble is being caused by two sets of memories – from his time and the new timeline and that the conflict will probably kill him.

He wants to use the time machine but to do that they have to convince the head of West 7 and Ridley takes them to him – the boss of West 7 in this reality is Ramses. He’s a bit shocked to see Cole alive. After some quick speaking where he convinces Ramses he’s real we learn about Cole’s death. Ramse and Cole found the time machine base, but this time Jones didn’t speak up to save Cole since she hadn’t received Cassie’s message through time. Cole died and Ramse returned to West 7 and killed Deacon, the old/current leader before taking over the base.

The problem is that to fire up the machine would drain the power left in the base, dooming the West 7 people that Ramse leads. Ridley is very against this idea and he pulls a gun when Ramse decides to doom them all because the ghost of his dead friend asked him to. He shoots Jones, non-lethally, and Ramses breaks Ridley’s neck. Before Cole leaves in the time machine Jones tells him to ask the other version about “sacrifice being the only way.”

2015

Cole arrives back in 2015

And we switch to Aaron (Cassie’s sort-of ex, remember him?) who works for Senator and they’re both very concerned about a guy called Adam Wrexler who appears to be a hacker determined to go all wikileaks on America’s secrets. The senator asks pointed questions about why Aaron was interested in Leland Goynes – and they get a fax about Operation Troy (the government operation that releases the virus in Chechnya).

Cole decides to apply his usual subtle problem solving skills – and kidnaps Aaron. Aaron tries to escape. He’s very bad at it.

Helix, Season 2, Episode 6: M Domestica

It’s jarring interposed images time – at, what I assume is an Ilaria boardroom, some guy tells his fellows that Hitake is all bad bad wrong but they have a new strain of Narvik which is awesome (with a video of zombies reminding us that zombies are actually the goal of Narvik – with the nice words of “making the planet sustainable) intercut with Julia and Sergio having sex before she decides to stop. They get a call finally learning about the board meeting that they weren’t told about

Julia arrives to the meeting and is snarked at for being late, she throws side-eye at the guy giving the speech for not telling her it had been moved and snarky lady joins her in giving the evil eye to the guy. This would be easier with names. The guy continues his speech basically about culling humanity because we’re ruining the planet; he plans to use Narvik to destroy 75% of humanity within 3 months. Julia isn’t a fan of genocide as she’d been assured she would have chance to find a non-lethal way of stopping people destroying everything. Julia openly calls it genocide which everyone considers so very uncouth and she’s demeaned for being so very young among that room full of silver-eyed immortals with added lectures about the persecution the immortals have faced in the past.

The board votes in favour of genocide, Julia being the only dissenting voice.

Flashback over, it’s time for          Day 6

Michael sadly tells his little fiction of how Agnes died to Anne who confirms Agnes was her mother (why do I think Michael is the biological father not just metaphorical father of Agnes, Anne and Amy?). He also calls Anne his favourite daughter which is exactly what he called Agnes.

Anne tells Amy and she doesn’t believe their father that Agnes died of a stroke, especially since she saw Agnes go to accuse Michael of lying about being the only Silver Eyed in the world. Anne won’t question, she’s a loyal servant and demands Amy do something on her upcoming 20^th birthday; something that Anne and Agnes and her mother did before. Amy confirms that all of the women over the generations are his daughters and his lovers (Julia’s only half-silver-eye and she became immortal – I would have thought over the generations of nasty incestuous inbreeding Amy would be an immortal herself). Anne thinks it’s all wonderful and really wants Amy to have a daughter by her father/grandfather/great-grandfather/great-great grandfather. Amy wants no part of it.

Alone she tearfully tells Landrey what’s going to happen to her and he’s all confused with his hero worship of Michael and devotion to Amy. He refuses to even let her talk of her father raping her. She reveals how desperate she was for everything to get worse since it would give her a chance to escape – and resorts to seducing Landrey to help her

Alan has been handcuffed by Kyle after his attack last week, which is when Sarah returns and it’s revealed that Kyle was here undercover to hunt Alan. But he is a doctor and while everyone distrusts everyone else, he tries to get them focused on the source of the plague – where the bees picked up the new zombie plague. That would involve matching the pollen to every plant on the island but Alan already knows the truth because Special (and it gives him more chance to snarl at Kyle) and points out it is an apple tree (they use the latin name so they can further snark at Kyle).

Peter is still stuck in the Oubliette and Michael has questions – is Peter an Immortal, is he part of Ilaria etc. Peter plays ignorant so Michael dumps in a crate of rats to encourage Peter to talk. Who even has a crate of rats? It’s not like he even dispatched his followers to hunt them down because he says they haven’t eaten in 2 days. He just keeps a box of hungry rats around in case they’re useful.

At Agnes’s funeral (the other dead people didn’t get funerals it seems), Michael leads the eulogy talking about a blackberry Agnes had created as testament to her skills. That blackberry is handed out in bowls to everyone attending, but before the service Landrey covered them in infected honey.

Kyle comes back from collecting apple pollen to find a huge outbreak of fungus-zombies running amok. Kyle quickly tells Anne to round up all the new zombies and lock them up, by force if necessary.