The 100, Season 2, Episode 14: Bodyguard of Lies

Jaha and his happy pilgrimage towards a mythical city end up in the middle of a mine field. This is not the paradise they were looking for. Tragically, only extras are killed.

They decide to wait in the mine field all night until daylight shows them their footprints and a way out – but when dawn comes the sand has blown and moved, erasing their prints. But the sun does have a nice light display – they’ve found the city of light. This prompts Jaha to go all messianic on them – calling the mines a “test of faith”.

Uh-huh

Messiah Jaha leads them out of the wasteland. Next week he parts oceans and gets really pissy over cow statues.

But when they reach the top of the rise, they see light reflecting off the ground – no shiny city. But the light is reflecting on solar panels. Murphy has a fit of pique and breaks one and they’re surprised by a drone flying up from the panel array. Lead by Jaha, they follow it, watched by the drone’s camera

The drone flies over a lake, with a convenient boat left for them. Rather than shoddily convenient writing, Jaha calls this destiny.

Over to Mount Weather with evil president Cage looking the remnants of the 100 (or the 44 as they are now). Realising that they’re managing to hide because of sympathises, they decide to spread the knowledge that the 44 irradiated a level of the mountain and killed 10 soldiers. Cage isn’t worried about the army outside Mount Weather, confident the base’s defences will keep them safe behind the death fog

With that army, Clarke is fretting about their battle plans, waiting is letting her doubt a lot. Lexa advises against all the second guessing as it just wastes energy and she is an efficient robot. Clarke is especially worried about Bellamy while Lexa tells her hard truths about what it means to be a leader during a way, especially an inspiring one.

Clarke goes wandering and ends up talking to Octavia who knows there was something fishy about Clarke and Lexa surviving the missile hit. Clarke doesn’t deny anything and Octavia realises Clarke let all those people die – and was willing to let her die. Octavia isn’t impressed with Clarke deciding who is disposable and says “you would have fit right in on the council” which is both painful and accurate – and nicely runs on from Kane and Abbie’s realisations last episode. But Octavia will keep it secret

Urban Fantasy Award Voting! Part 2

The nominations are in for the Urban Fantasy Awards! These are the contenders for the GOLDEN FANGS awards - and the the DREAD FANPOODLE condemnation

Now it's time to place your votes! Who deserves our praise - or scorn?

The Dread Fanpoodles

Urban Fantasy Award Voting!

The nominations are in for the Urban Fantasy Awards! These are the contenders for the GOLDEN FANGS awards - and the the DREAD FANPOODLE condemnation

Now it's time to place your votes! Who deserves our praise - or scorn?

Golden Fangs!

Legacy (Require: Cookie Short) by Grace McDermott

Novellas are always tricky, especially for pre-established worlds, which is why I generally don’t like them. I often find it’s hard to make them pointful, it’s difficult to put something in such a short book that actually adds something meaningful to the overall world.

This is even more true for complicated world settings because you have so much to remind the reader of, so much relevant information to refresh, and little space in which to do it.

The Require: Cookie series seemed to be a particularly tall order. The world is huge, complicated, nuanced and requires a lot of concentration. I was dubious, I admit.

But it worked – it worked by not covering all the vastness of the world but by covering one, gritty, grim corner of it. It alludes to the hugeness of the System and the various supernatural beings out there, but all the reader need know is they exist, not the specific details of them. By resisting the urge to explain the fundamentals of the world it works. And it works because it’s a very personal story. This isn’t a story of the world, the setting, how anything works – this is the story of Rhys. We don’t need the details of the bigger picture – just that there is a bigger picture and that Rhys doesn’t fit in it.

Because Rhys‘s story is also a nice snap shot into the history of the world. If you’ve read the original story, we know about Agents, the enforcers, police and general facilitators of the System who generally make things works. But the Agents in that book are very modern in their outlook and feel; this is a nice insight into what came before and how the System updates itself and how it needs different agents/employees/enforcers as the world changes

If you haven’t read that book, it still works as we look at the updating of agents of the powers that be, as bewinged angels give way to dark and gritty Duskers who in turn fall back to the precise and robotic Agents. It works as a concept even without the excellent back story.

Forever, Season 1, Episode 16: Memories of Murder

We have a woman setting up to meet someone, putting in lots of effort – when her phone rings. She’s hidden it and quickly snatches it up and argues with the person on the other end who apparently keeps calling her. The door opens and she drops the phone and apologises to the person joining her

And we cut to a crime scene in a dump by the river and her murdered body. Jo and Hanson snark (her crime scenes are always in nice places, his always dumps). Jo notes the woman’s clothes and hair are very 70s. Hanson and Joe continue to snark – they should snark more often.

Over to Henry and Abraham and Abraham digging up a lot of sentimental stuff from his attic which he doesn’t value very much (like bronzed child booties) and, much more poignantly, Abigail’s cookbook; Abraham quickly pulls back his “junk” comments. This brings us to this week’s theme and Henry’s voice over – nostalgia, remembering or forgetting the past

To the morgue and examining 70s lady’s body and Henry gets all Henry-ish about her perfectly period she is – not only looking 70s but using genuine 70s products, some of which are discontinued or banned. He concludes, with the photographs, that she’s the object of someone’s obsessive fantasy

Jo fills in Reece so we can have a bit more snark (more snark!) and then Henry and Jo go off to interview the dead woman’s, Sarah, room mate. Jennifer mentions how Sarah had changed, becoming secretive and obsessed with one class, dropping the rest

To that course where there’s a lecture of sexual fantasies – led by Iona, Molly, professor Dawes; the dominatrix. Henry is full on I’m-going-to-be-professionaly-while-being-transparently-into-you.

They talk to her about Sarah and Molly tells them Sarah asked some advice about being in an unconventional roleplay relationship.

Lucas and Hanson examine the crime scene (and are actually kind of fun together) and get an address from some mail – so off Henry and Jo go and find a flat that’s a 70s time capsule. Complete with blood stain. There’s also an old polaroid, one actually from the 70s, of a woman who looks a lot like Sarah even wearing the same dress.

Time for some more Henry and Abraham moments – Abraham teasing Henry about his love life and a flashback to Henry and Abigail – but long after the war, when Abigail was no longer a young woman and Henry still looked young. Abigail was very self-conscious about what people would think seeing them together.

Back to the investigation and they find a video – an audition video – from Sarah to whoever was fantasising over her. Henry keeps pushing to have Molly involved which is kind of cute, especially with Jo being all knowing and indulgent over it. So consulting and flirting time and making the not particularly surprising conclusion that the fantasy is about recreating a memory – which has them analysing more details in the audition video and Henry’s mega-memory and experience suggesting a date and time.

Cover Review

Vision in Silver (The Others #3) by Anne Bishop

Sadly, I don’t like this on any level. If I didn’t know the book, it’s too uninformative - it’s just Meg’s face, it tells me nothing about the book, it’s topics, themes, or even genre.

And as someone who has read the books, this is probably how someone would paint Meg if they heard her physically described, but not if they read the book. Meg died her hair red in a clumsy botched attempt at a disguise - she didn’t got to a salon. I can’t imagine her wearing that much make up - and her expression, direct, confident and almost sexual seems very un-Megy. What is that expression anyway? It’s Meg physically but nothing like the character we’ve grown to know and love

Free Agent (Grimm Agency #1) by J.C. Nelson

Hip thrust! Wind blown hair! Casually held weapon! Jeans tight enough to be uncomfortable! Leather! Random swirly stuff in the background. It’s like a paint-by-the-numbers-Urban Fantasy cover!

Dead but Not Forgotten

Nobody's Business by Rachel Caine
Tyger, Tyger by Christopher Golden
The Real Santa Claus by Leigh Perry
Taproot by Jeffrey J. Mariotte
Knit a Sweater Out of Sky by Seanan McGuire
Love Story by Jeanne C. Stein
The Million-Dollar Hunt by Jonathan Maberry 
Borderline Dead by Nicole Peeler
Extreme Makeover Vamp Edition by Leigh Evans
Don't Be Cruel by Bill Crider
What a Dream I Had by Nancy Holder
Another Dead Fairy by Miranda James
The Bat-Signal by Suzanne McLeod
The Sun, The Moon, and The Stars by Dana Cameron
Widower's Walk by MaryJanice Davidson

The whole concept of this anthology is an unusual one – this is a book of short stories set in Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse World written by other authors – a kind of licensed fanfiction. I have to say I was very very sceptical about the concept after the debacle of After Dead and I feared another cynical, exploitative money grab aimed at squeezing every last drop out of this series and its fans.

Do I think this was another cynical money grab? Honestly, yes – but despite that, there are some quality authors here who managed to pull out some interesting elements and tell some decent stories despite that which made it a far better book than the preceding debacle.

The stories I liked where ones that took regularly occurring characters who were present enough in the series to be identifiable characters and whose little vignette added more to them or the world. So I really liked Nobody’s Business by Rachel Caine which followed Kenya and Kevin, the two under-used police officers who grew to love each other as they pursue crime as normal humans in a supernatural haunted world. It was cute, impressive and fun with Kevin’s admiration and respect for Kenya really shining through even while also conveying the prejudice against interracial couples that overshadow them. Equally I liked The Bat Signal by Suzanne McLeod for taking Luna, an interesting werebat we met only briefly, and expanding her role in trying to be more involved in helping her fellow shapeshifters even if they don’t respect what a bat can do for them, instead favouring the larger predators

Similarly, I liked Tyger Tyger by Christopher Golden which followed weretiger Quinn and touched on a lot of issues with wereanimals being revealed and why it was more shocking than vampires (blood drinking night walkers are inherently separate from humanity – while shapeshifters could, by definition, be absolutely anyone making them a more immediate threat) as well as touching on inevitable military exploitation of wereanimals and issues like senility and elder care for a secretive community like weretigers. It covered a lot in a short space and was a very satisfying story when it ended.

I quite liked The Real Santa Clause by Leigh Perry and Knit a Sweater Out of Sky by Seanan McGuire not because I was especially interested in Amelia or Diantha (or in Sookie’s domestic bliss) but because it did a lot to flesh out the concept of witches and magic which I think the series always left so very neglected. Magic was there, occasionally it got used when it was useful but we didn’t get as much into the full effects of it – like how devastatingly it could be used against a business, or the mindset of witches that was so well displayed from Amelia’s point of view.

Sleepy Hollow, Season 2, Episode 18: Tempus Fugit

So time travel… this could be so messy

And we open with a fight, Ichabod fighting in the Revolutionary war, doing lots of killing and leading his men and looking for magical Hessians when he gets a report that the imprisoned Abbie wants to speak to him. She’s been smart enough to seed her demand with some clues on his mission so he would know it’s important.

Awkward meeting time in which Abbie confuses Crane with slang and tries to convince him she’s right (see, a little time travel doesn’t change that much!) She wants to get out, he quotes the law at him to which she snaps back that she’s been held without any legal principles because, at this time, she has no legal rights. Crane starts to leave so Abbie adds that the Horseman has an ally – and predicts a note that he was just handed

Meanwhile evil Katrina is in the infirmary looking for Ichabod – when she hears that Abbie has called him away from the battle.

Ichabod takes Abbie to the aftermath where Abbie continues to tell him all about the obvious signs of the horseman (in between handing out some basic medical knowledge). She continues to slam him with knowledge and then hits him with the time travel whammy and realising that, by taking Ichabod from the battlefield and his confrontation with the horseman, she’s just changed history.

Of course, Ichabod can’t just abandon the battlefield on his own whim and is duly dressed down for it. Ichabod wonders what will happen to Abbie and is told to “buy” her, Abbie’s expressive eyes speak volumes. Ichabod suggests he can interrogate her, inferring she’s an enemy agent - but his commanding officer wants to throw her in an encampment for runaway slaves and has Ichabod escort her. Ichabod also gets a warning that he’ll be shot next time he deserts. I don’t think his commander likes him much

To the carriage (which Abbie does not approve of) and Abbie thanking Ichabod for going out on a limb for her with wants-to-shoot-him commander. Time for Ichabod to ask questions and see if Abbie can prove she’s from 2015, alas she tells the story of Ichabod and Katrina. Bah. She finally decides she needs back up of people who know more about the infernal forces – the founding fathers. The only one nearby is Franklin. Ichabod has never liked Franklin

Over to evil Katrina finding the not-yet-headless horseman who is looking for Ichabod to slice and dice. She wants to recruit him in her quest to kill Ichabod and Abbie, yes she’s gone full on evil. I do hope Abbie kills her. She kills a random soldier with magic to ensure they’re not overheard. Yes she has competent magic while evil too; if she were still good that much power would make her faint and Abbie eye-roll at least once.