The Vampire Diaries, Season 6, Episode 2: Yellow Ledbetter

Time to tell Damon and Bonnie’s story (this can’t last – Elena isn’t here) so back to four months ago when the Other Side sucked them into whatever it sucked them into. They’re in some version of Mystic Falls and Damon is still vampirey (he did a fang check). The place is deserted (it could be worse. Elena could be there).

As they explore they find that they’re back in Mystic Falls in 1994 – well a deserted Mystic Falls in 1994. During an eclipse. Bonnie thinks it’s all done to some woo-woo her grandma did which Damon got caught up in. In theory magic could get them out – but Bonnie’s magic is still down

They discover the various things they had in 1994 – soft toys and booze – and Bonnie finds her grandmother’s grimoire with which bonnie hopes to re-teach herself withcraft (Damon isn’t supportive which Bonnie gives him grief for – but her reasoning makes no sense. She LEARNED about magic from the grimoire – which she now knows, hence her testing with a spell. Using an instruction book to fix her magic at this point would be like teaching someone how to write when they complain they don’t have a pen).

Added bonus – they keep repeating the same day over and over again. Because this trope clearly has not been used enough. C’mon guys, stop beating this horse, it’s an extra on the Walking Dead.

This goes on for 2 months – same breakfast, same crossword (wow they’re really bad at that crossword). They’re also getting on each other’s nerves – it’s not like they actually liked each other at the best of times.

But then – creepiness – someone unknown finishes the crossword.

Alas we can’t stay with them and have to deal with everyone else. Matt is angry at Jeremy for being mopey and having lots of sex, this time with visiting-snack-food, Sarah who Elena bit and Caroline compelled last week. Trip, the leader of Matt’s odd military neighbourhood watch who is definitely suspicious is also curious about Sarah. He checked out her car – apparently it’s stolen so Sarah is involved in nefarious activity and he wants Matt to tell him if she returns. Uh… or you could contact actual law enforcement.

And Elena is mopey. She talks to Jeremy about her planned memory erasure and he, at last, points out that she’s not thinking of erasing Bonnie (and her complete lack of grief). She says missing Damon makes her dangerous – nooooo… taking magical hallucinogens makes you dangerous Elena. Lack of decent grief counselling may make you dangerous. A supreme self-absorption definitely makes you dangerous. On that note, she now requires everyone in her entire life to edit history and continue play acting in front of her so she can pull off the memory trick, rather than, y’know, dealing with her grief like some kind of adult.

She puts her plan in action and goes to Alaric. Alas, unlike Klaus, Alaric can’t just say “forget Damon” and make it so – it takes a long montage of past events so we can focus on Elena (brief interval to call Caroline who isn’t 100% behind it simply because she’s focused on bringing Damon and Bonnie back).

The Younger Gods by Michael R Underwood

Jacob was home schooled, quiet, well educated and is now away for college, doing all the right things, following the rules and living frugally. And desperately avoiding his evil family and their pledge to the dark ones with which they one day intend to destroy the world

It was an unconventional upbringing.

Getting used to New York City after such a beginning would be difficult – but when his sister arrives in town fully intending to kick start the apocalypse, it’s all Jacob can do to rally what defences he can to save the city and save the world.

It’s hard not to love the concept of this – Jacob, a meticulously nice if rather boring boy is escaping his family cult. Except his family cult is literally empowered with cthulu-esque monsters from the Deeps who are trying to end the world. And can do it. That’s a twist on the cult story.

The whole story is set in New York City where Jacob has to fight off his sister Esther using every ally the city has to offer – and it has a lot to offer. The world setting here is incredibly rich with several kinds of gods and pantheons, multiple supernatural creatures, a deep and varied magic system (I love the whole using of stones to channel and shape magic) and a wide selection of mythologies all concentrated into this extremely diverse city. It was huge and it managed not to be confusing because it constantly suggested depth and detail without us having to delve deeply into each one. We get the shape of, say, Antoinette’s voodoo or Dorothea’s knight powers or Carter being a child of the Hindu gods without having to use a vast amount of detail to explain it – but still including enough to get a sense of depth and creation there. The backstory’s there, we’re just not going to bog down seeing it all yet.

The story is action packed and extremely tense. Jacob’s fight with few resources against the seeming impossible power of his sister – backed by her completely moral-less pursuit of power. He has to struggle to get people to take her seriously and as the battle continues it gets more and more desperate as each ace they pull up, each master plan they prepare frays and falls in the face of Esther’s power. There’s an amazingly well maintained sense of tension here and a real sense of the threat Esther represents. This is one of the few books where, several time over, it really felt like the story was in the balance and the protagonist could – and probably would – lose.

And I loved the ending – I can’t say any more than that without a terrible, unforgiveable spoiler.

Jacob is a fascinating character full of levels. He feels a level of guilt for his family’s legacy and actions but isn’t willing to wallow in it. He understands why people are suspicious and wary of him and doesn’t blame them for it, but nor is he going to spend a lot of unproductive time apologising for what his family has done (and it’s a nice combination of both not feeling good about his family’s legacy but not exactly being willing to accept the blame for it either). He’s immensely practical in his thinking, but at the same time very overwhelmed by the situation he’s in – he’s very much a fish out of water and it pretty much shows by how conscientious and careful and meticulous he is – but that also reflects his upbringing (after all, if you’re imprecise and careless when summoning dangerous monsters of the netherworld then bad things happen). He also really shows his combination of being extremely well educated, even classically educated, but at the same time very much isolated and raised in a very rural, unsophisticated area – it’s a really hard combination to pull off and it’s done excellently. On top of all that he has a vast amount of confidence because he has been raised to think how powerful they are (and he does have mastery of an extremely powerful form of magic) while being full of doubt because he is so out of place in New York.

American Horror Story: Season 4, Episode 1: Monsters Among Us

After an ominous yet vague voice over beginning we have a title card telling us we’re in the small town of Jupiter in Florida and it’s 1952. And an unlucky milk man finds the body of a murdered woman. Armed with a rolling pin he goes upstairs in the house to investigate (this is where you call the cops, get the hell out and let the professionals deal. Or at least find something more lethal in a kitchen than the pastry section). Whatever he finds makes him scream

Cut to a hospital where a patient is rushed into surgery – whatever’s wrong with them, it causes a nurse to lose her lunch. And it takes a lot to make a nurse throw up. What seems to be getting everyone in a major tizzy are conjoined twins.

By the nurses’ gossip afterwards, it seems the twins were hidden away by their mother (the murdered woman) and the nurses (and newspapers) dramatically exclaim how hideous and deformed they find the twins. Into this hospital steps Frauleine Elsa who runs her “cabinet of curiosities” and is very interested in the twins – and arranges to visit as a candystriper. There is a huge amount of ominous build up to our first look at the twins which feels awfully gratuitous and unnecessary when Better and Dot are revealed.

Elsa talks to them, not believing they’re not intelligent and coaxes one sister to speak (the sisters seem to speak to each other telepathically – Bette is very open and friendly, naïve while Dot is much more wary). Elsa talks a lot about their anatomy – and asks some really inappropriate sexual questions including whether they’re virgins and their masturbation habits – which leads to Dot chasing her out of the room

From there to a couple having a picnic – well, about to have sex on a picnic blanket anyway right before being attacked by a really terrifying clown (for a second I was about to praise the show for having a woman who is unashamedly sexual especially set in the 50s, but then the sexy woman was serial killered. She even does the Fleeing Damsel Trip).

Back to Elsa in a diner and engaging in film criticism when she sees a man, Jimmy, across the room wearing large gloves. She knows him and she chews him out for leaving the show- which he thinks isn’t going to do so well anyway.

This seems to be reinforced by their landlord only refusing to evict them when Elsa seduces an extra month out of him. Elsa tries to get Jimmy in line by referencing his “deformities” and his mother ending up in an asylum. He thinks them all being locked up is inevitable. They leave – Elsa with gall and class doing so without paying.

Wolf Interval (Senyaza #3) by Chrysoula Tzavelas

AT is stuck with her father – it’s where she belongs and no matter how much she hates him, where else would she go? She already ruined her one chance to escape and betrayed where she truly belonged

Until the demon Tia pulls her into a new quest – the Wild Hunt is free and hunting souls. Long since corrupted from its original goal, the hunt will not hunt and destroy any free soul it finds – and with the breaking of the chains that held the fae captive, the hunt is also free to roam – or will be after Hallowe’en

AT has a short time and a few allies she daren’t let herself trust to try and remove the hunt before it’s too late. This is something she can’t do alone – but can she bring herself to work with others?ss

The world of this series has always been fantastical. The other world quite literally a realm of imagination and dreams where anything goes; this always creates this wonderful surreal feeling that has really made the whole series to date. The non-humans aren’t just people with fangs or claws or magic – they’re truly alien and strange beings, they don’t think like us, they don’t resemble us in any fundamental fashion, they can be anything we can imagine and more. I don’t think I’ve come across many books that have carried off this sense of the alien nearly half so well

And for most of the series – certainly for the past two books – it has really worked. And it works in this one as well… but the characters also spend the majority of their time in the Otherworld in this book with nearly everyone being something completely alien to any real reference points. AT with her hounds, her shadow and her parentage, Brynn with the shadows on her arm and Yejuen with his alien, unknown magic that confuses even them are all outside of any frame of reference I have – throw in the completely unknown Cat, the odd Jen and the truly alien and unexplained Fiddler all combine to throw in a lot of alien and a lot of confusing. Even Tia, Alastor and Hunter confuse me because I’m not sure where the distinctions lie between them, what this distinctions are and what they mean

In previous books we looked at the alien or focused on part of the alien. Here we’re plunged into the middle of many many kinds of alien and I felt a little lost. I fell through the Looking Glass and didn’t even have a Cheshire Cat as a guide so I was left with a truly powerful sense of the surreal that has permeate this series, more than ever before, but I was also more last than I care to be. I wanted some explanatory notes or for my surreal, mystical confusion to be rationed to a smaller quota.

Witches of East End, Season 2, Episode 13: For Whom the Spell Tolls

 

Ingrid is Nikolaus’s prisoner and he’s apparently just finished torturing her in the name of punishing her to make her obedient. This is something he’s done a lot with Frederick in the past (which explains a little of Frederick’s general desperate actions). He now tries to play good guy to Ingrid. As a bonus point he reveals that Ingrid is pregnant – with Dash’s baby or the Mandragora’s?

Like any good villain he monologues his evil scheme – to steal the powers of his offspring. He’s already stolen Ingrid’s. Like any good villain monologue, this is overheard by Frederick. He tries to stab Nikolaus and ends up stabbing himself instead. He’s never the most effective guy around.

Tarkoff still has Joanna prisoner and drugged – but he’s not in the present, he’s just created a duplicate of her room back in the 1840s. He talks about his plan to rape her. While drugging her constantly he eventually runs out and has to restock the opium from a random stereotypical Chinese extra and, in doing so, is spotted by Freya (she and Wendy have been fluttering around panicking about being stuck in the past and not achieving much but eating up episode minutes). Wendy follows him in cat form and smacks him over the head (he can’t read the thoughts of a cat is the excuse for his telepathy not warning him). They drug Tarkoff and escape.

While they’re doing that, Freya and Edgillian have some romance angst. Of course.

In the present, Raven the FBI detective has some input from her colleague – the body of the man Dash killed has similar gunk on him as she found in Fairhaven. Dash, missing his evil grimoire, invites her over. She arrives and he accuses her of taking his journals – which she denies. He aims for hyper creepy sexual threats. Except she’s not playing any more, she has a warrant and 5 federal agents

Anyway Ingrid and Frederick (who Nikolaus has just left behind) hurry to Fairhaven to join Dash – (the FBI have apparently been and gone - it should take them DAYS to search a house of that size – and Dash promises Ingrid to keep her out of the murder investigation), looking for his books. Which he doesn’t have. He does say he read them all which means Frederick and Ingrid can read them out of his mind.

Frederick reads Dash’s mind and chants an odd language that Ingrid translates as they figure out which spell they need (as an aside, I wish they’d decide which language the witches use – the Beauchamp family seems to alternate between at least 3).

Just as she finds the right spell they also get a message from a witch – he passes on a letter written by Wendy and Freya to pass on over 100 years in the future (yet again we see long lived witches, yet again no explanation of Dash and Killian) so Ingrid can help them all get back.

In the past everyone runs to the time door, chased by Tarkoff – WHY IS HE NOT DEAD?! You had him helpless right there?! Or kill him now – there are three of you?! Ingrid opens the time door but Tarkoff manages to destroy the box before they escape.

Seriously. That damn box was the whole point of this whole time travelling adventure and you break it because Joanna can’t hold onto it or kill her enemies? AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

Frederick again pledges his loyalty and you can totally trust him this time. Nikolaus then magically kidnaps Wendy, planning to strip the powers of them and kill them one by one. Meanwhile Ingrid reveals their convenient plan B from the grimoires – a spell that needs the 4 Beauchamp women to kill Nikolaus. Frederick doesn’t have the necessary special powers (because a grimoire in Dash’s house has a spell designed for these four because REASONS) – he does have puppy dog eyes though and he uses them.

Thankfully for the gang, Nikolaus has fallen into exposition taunting of Wendy rather than actually getting on with the power stripping. He tries to taunt Wendy with what a terrible mother she’d be – she’s not impressed. She doesn’t need to be a mother to know she cares deeply and passionately for the people she loves. She definitely wins the banter round.

The Beauchamps go to confront Nikolaus and assault him with chanting from every side. Ingrid’s power begins to return. A few more lines and he collapses to the floor. Wendy goes to the body but Tommy is dead (um… can we make sure? Decapitation? Burning? Please?)

Random distraction – Raven arrests Dash for murder.

Killian is still dying so Ingrid and Freya go check on him. He’s dead… why do I think this isn’t permanent? She kisses him and glowing… aww come on, when did I enter a Once Upon a Time episode? Yes he lives, they kiss and begin humping on his death bed.

And Frederick is dead – some woman (I bet Raven) killed him and scrawled “death to witches” in his blood.

Witches of East End, Season 2, Episode 12: Box to the Future

Killian takes his Romeo & Juliet potion (note he’s actually just taken something from people he has no reason to trust and they even told him it was poison. Oh this show and the decision making) which comes with bad skull CGI effects. It also comes with a dream of Freya telling him she’s alive and gives him a big, hellaciously ugly flower and tells him to call Ingrid. He wakes up and staggers to his phone

Ingrid’s still pretending to her granddad and brother Frederick that she’s totally on their side, honest when she gets the call from Killian that a) he’s poisoned himself and b) a red flower with long roots and a REALLY vague description may be useful for saving him. Ingrid is a better person than I since she agrees to rush over to help rather than arrange his funeral.

Thankfully Ingrid knows exactly what flower they meant though it only delays the inevitable. He has to keep taking it and he drops the bottle. You had one job!

Evil granddad is having trouble maintaining the body he’s possessing and making it look like him. Frederick is also pretty sure that Ingrid has “doubts” with all the time she’s spending with “Bastien” (apparently Dash in a former life). Granddad resolves to do something, probably evil.

He goes to visit a confused Dash and ties him to a chair (I’m impressed that his kidnapping spell has such elaborate knotwork). Evil King Nikolaus rants on about how Bastien was all ruthless and evil when it came to getting what he wanted – and he was loyal to the king; he wants him to be loyal again and leave Ingrid alone.

When he leaves Ingrid arrives and Dash tells her all bout the evil King’s ultimatum and she plans to use some deep dark magic by unburning Dash’s dark magic journals. Yes, unburning. Which they do. She leaves the evil books in Dash’s hands – which is such a bad idea.

When Ingrid goes home Nikolaus confronts her – pins her to a wall then makes her disappear so Frederick can’t see. Because Frederick thinks his grandfather is good. Because Frederick isn’t the brightest spark.

To the Beauchamps in the past and Wendy and Joanna have an excellent sister moment, reflecting on the past and considering killing their father – Joanna has an excellent line on revenge not actually bringing them peace – killing their dad is all about protecting themselves form what he will do next.

Anyway Joanna runs off to collect the Spirit box which is why they went to the past in the first place and Wendy has lost the key to the time door. Which is very very bad. While looking at the key, Freya runs into Edgar Allen Poe (Killian in a past life) and she sees him as Killian even though Wendy clearly doesn’t. They then have to get the key off past Wendy because she sticks it in her bra – why? Is this a habit she has, stuffing random objects in her bodice?

Supernatural, Season 10, Episode 1: Black

A new season of Supernatural! Y’know, no matter how dubious some seasons are (the Leviathans ugh the Leviathans) or how many times it fails (ye gods the fails) few shows inspire as much anticipation as Supernatural

It also has the best sound track.

Last season after many shenanigans with the Mark of Cain and the First Blade, Dean ended up with demon-black eyes. And now we have a woman – a demon – chained up and sliced talking about a Winchester falling from grace: Sam, not Dean. He wants to find Crowley and Dean and is willing to torture demons to find them. Sam reduces the demon to a weeping mess

Then we skip forward 4 weeks and Sam still desperately continuing to search through every means he can. He does find, on Dean’s pillow, a note: “Sammy, let me go”. He doesn’t and continues searching until he finds a clue about a murder of a Drew Neely – he calls Castiel. Oh Castiel isn’t looking so good… the murder looks like the end of a possession but as he talks Castiel coughs and sounds generally awful and Sam changes his mind about bringing the angel in on the plan. They both worry about what they’ll find if they even find Dean.

And then the show ruins my previous point about the sound track. Dean and karaoke. Do not do not do not want. Then Dean sleeping with the barmaid in Crowley’s bed (Crowley’s not impressed) then playing table football. Dean and Crowley playing table football. Yes, this makes up for all the karaoke. Crowley worries about Dean sliding back into his old ways – and it looks like he is when he becomes all protective of the barmaid when a guy hassles her. Then he beats that guy pretty badly in the name of keeping him away from her. There’s someone following Dean as well – beyond Crowley

Sam follows up his lead but the cops don’t think Drew was murdered per se – they think it was self-defence. They watch cctv showing Drew attacking Dean – and dying as Dean kills him with the blade. The police still don’t know whether Dean is even a criminal since it was (rather excessive) self-defence. Sam, examining the CCTV footage, sees Dean’s eyes flare demon-black from edge to edge.

Over to Dean and the guy following him is one of Abaddon’s “groupies” (as Dean puts it – as was the demon possessing Drew) who keep popping up trying to kill Dean for killing her. In both cases Dean easily kills his opponents with the First Blade, the demons had no chance.

A man interrupts his morning routine with his family because he gets a fax – with a picture of Dean on it. He packs a large arsenal.

Sam follows up the investigation and finds the dead man’s phone, using it he manages to contact Crowley. Sam thinks Dean is dead and Crowley has someone wearing his body; Crowley offers the comforting thought that the only soul inside Dean is his own – albeit twisted beyond all recognition. Sam makes big dramatic threats and Crowley isn’t impressed and hits back at Sam being jealous because Dean is now Crowley’s best friend and they’re running around having immense fun.

This Week in Book Covers 29th September - 2nd October

Insurgent (Divergent #2) by Veronica Roth

It keeps the theme established by the first book’s cover, and at least it avoids looking like the Eye of Sauron being revamped - but it’s a tree. It’s a pretty tree and, yes, it’s the Amity symbol but you kind of have to have read the book to know what the cover means which feels a little contrary.  

Unless we're supposed to think the book is about hurricane season in an orchard?

Shifting Shadows (Mercy Thompson #8.5 - short stories) by Patricia Briggs

Is it just me, or is she looking down with a “what the hell happened to my breasts?!” expression on her face? Is that just in case we miss the cleavage? Better make the cover model look down so the eyes are drawn to the appropriate boobies?