The Mini Companion Cube™ Instruction Manual

Thank you for buying the Aperture Science Mini Companion Cube™ 

Please read the following pages to familiarise yourself with all aspects of your Mini Companion Cube™.

The benefits of owning Mini Companion Cube™ 

-Heavy enough to hold down a whole piece of paper
-More portable than the average sized weighted companion cube
-Will soak up all the love and affection you desire to give it.*
- Mini Companion Cube™ can absorb radiation and it is advised to use your Mini Companion Cube™ in the event of nuclear fallout. If death occurs, please return faulty Mini Companion Cube™ to the Apeture Science laboratories for testing along with your receipt.

*Apeture Science is not responsible for the Mini Companion Cube™ in any way and cannot be held accountable if the Mini Companion Cube™ does not return your affections.

Care of your new Mini Companion Cube™
Apeture Science recommends the following products to keep your Mini Companion Cube™ happy and healthy for life:
- Specifically designed to release a citrus smell when squeezed, the Aperture Science HappyLemon™ will entertain and please your Mini Companion Cube™ and keep its coat looking shiny. (HappyLemon™ - for when life gives you too many ****ing lemons)
- Apeture Science Cake, available exclusively from Apeture Science laboratories. Please submit yourself for testing and we will provide you with enough cake to feed your Mini Companion Cube™ for a month. (Nothing says love like a piece of cake made with science!)

Do not place your Mini Companion Cube™ in direct sunlight.
If Mini Companion Cube™ gets dirty, gently wash with acid.
Do not feed you Mini Companion Cube™ meat, baked beans or full fat milk.
Do not allow your Mini Companion Cube™ to wear hats, shoes with laces or necklaces.

CAUTION While your Mini Companion Cube™ can be used to wedge open doors, distract feral animals and as a stepping stone when traversing lava, Aperture Science does not recommend:

- Using your Mini Companion Cube™ in space. The Mini Companion Cube™ is allergic to several species of creature common in space. In the event of your Mini Companion Cube™ coming into contact with tribbles or wookies, please wash your Mini Companion Cube™ thoroughly before putting it in a quarantine vacuum for a period of 30 days.
- Allowing small mammals or children near the Mini Companion Cube™. This may cause the Mini Companion Cube™ to become depressed and/or suicidal. It is recommended to keep your Mini Companion Cube™ out of reach, preferably in a high place. For access to high places use the new HandyPortal™, your very own portal gun for use around house and home, available from your local Aperture Science megastore.
- Damaging your Mini Companion Cube™. This includes damage by knife attack, bombs, fire, water, decapitation, blunt force (including sledgehammers and car crushers), silver, stakes and garlic.
- Allowing any robots near your Mini Companion Cube™. All types of Companion Cube will suffer at the hands of robots so it is advised not to allow any robots to play, speak or maim your Mini Companion Cube™. Apeture Science cannot be held responsible for misuse of the Mini Companion Cube™ but any data collected from accidents, along with relevant corpses, documentation and Mini Companion Cubes™ can be used to offset doctor or funeral fees.

Elder Sign

A lot of games I’ve been playing recently have been somewhat depressing. I’ve killed a lot of random monsters, battled zombies and run around demon-infested dimensions. With that in mind, I decided to buy something more light-hearted and uplifting. So Elder Sign was, of course, my first choice, as it’s full of fluffy bunnies and rainbows. It bills itself as a ‘game of suspense and supernatural investigation’ by which I assume it means ‘like Cluedo with hysterical and/or maniacal laughter’. It’s not, but more on that later.

It comes with over three hundred pieces (including cards, various counters and tokens) and the rulebook is almost twenty pages long so it’s not exactly the most simplistic of games. But if you can deal with spending some time to learn the game play, it’s remarkably straightforward. Most turns will consist of similar actions as you attempt to defeat the various monsters, ghouls and fluffy bunnies that pop up so you’ll find you learn the core game play quite quickly. What’s more tricky is keeping track of the other things in play that will affect what you can and can’t do.
The game revolves around one of the ancient evils from the Cthulhu mythos preparing a visit to his, hers or, in most cases, its favourite local museum. This impending visit is so exciting that lots of other terrifying creatures make haste to the museum and proceed to make a bit of a mess. The players, as people investigating the mess, must attempt not only to glue the priceless ming vase back together but stop the visiting ancient evil from getting past the front door (not that they need to – all ancient evils are bigger than the average elephant and are likely to get stuck in the turnstyle on the way in). And thus begins a fight against time as, at the stroke of midnight, each night, the ancient evil gets closer. The players need to collect ‘elder signs’ which, like a preserved shark to any sane human being, makes the ancient evil think twice about visiting. They do this by fulfilling tasks around the museum, which are randomly selected from a deck of cards. The harder the tasks, the bigger the reward if you complete it and the penalties if you fail. After each turn, the play advances the time by three hours, which changes certain cards and refreshes player abilities. Various instances advance the coming of the ancient evil. In my first game, these instances mainly came in the form of complete and utter failure coupled with a certain amount of pig-headedness that I was going to going to conquer the task, regardless of how long it took me and how many characters I killed in the process. Because death is not particularly a problem. I mean, ok, it’s a bit of a set back as you lose everything your previous character had. But you do get to come back with a new face, ability and items so I was quite happy to dive into a fight I couldn’t possibly win. Sometimes I’d come back as someone with a hat, which is always a plus in these situations.
Unfortunately, on my first play through, I did fail to win. Yig waltzed through the door, killed me before I had time to scream inarticulately and set about rearranging the world to his specifications, i.e. on fire.

But I still enjoyed myself immensely and I’m definitely going to bothering other people into playing it.
That said, I don’t actually have to. Elder Sign is quite flexible, as it can be played on your own or with seven other minions…I mean friends. That and everyone wins or everyone loses – it’s a co-operative game, all of you against the lumbering horror stuck in the turnstyle. It does eliminate the chance of people getting annoyed at each other for backstabbing so you can focus on getting annoyed because someone failed a roll and allowed the ancient evil to send the entire world insane. But at least you can be annoyed co-operatively.
One last point to make is that the game is absolutely beautiful. Out of all the games I own, this is definitely the nicest. There haven’t been any corners cut and it makes it a real pleasure to play.

Anyway, Elder Sign is brilliant and definitely worth the investment. Go, get.

John Carter

I am nothing if not punctual.
Or, you know, the other thing. Late.
Really really late.
On an entirely different note, I watched John Carter yesterday. It was…well it was terrible. And that’s a real shame because it could have been seriously good.
At first glance, it looks like the sort of film made in the first half of the 1900s, with added spaceships and some aliens that are half ant, half human.
After that, you’ll notice the hammy script, which also seems to be nicked from the early days of film. There are a lot of inconsistencies. Johnny boy contradicts himself notably several times and people’s personalities seem to skid madly from believable to cliché. The woman of the film, Dejah Thoris, is a fighter and some sort of sciencey person. But the science bit doesn’t come up all that much, aside from at the beginning to serve the plot line. And she occasionally turns into a damsel into distress and forgets how to use a sword. Also, her accent waddles around from Middle Eastern to the actress’s more native American.
John Carter himself is as boring as no-fat cheese. It looks like cheese and it slices like cheese but there’s nothing to it but dullness and disappointment. He’s not funny and he’s not loveable and he’s not wise. He’s a bloke, who gets transported to Mars and fights a lot. Often, he is sporting a Hercules fancy dress costume. Oh, and he has a back-story, which will seem oddly familiar to anyone whose watched, glimpsed or heard about Gladiator. Except it’s not done anywhere near as well. There are, for instance, no fields of golden crops, blowing in the wind. Mr Carter also doesn’t appear to age, which considering he is ten years older at the start of film (before we go back to the start of the actual story, per se), is…an interesting choice.
It’s really no wonder that it was a total flop. There is so much potential, so much that could have gone right but they tried to make it so big, they were left with an outer shell and nothing in the middle. Visually, it’s a stunningly beautiful film. And the story is, well, perhaps a little rough around the edges. But with a war between a moving city and another, stationary one and the ant people looking on, mysterious men who call themselves messengers of the gods and one bloke from an entirely different planet, it could have been something truly special. There are some characters who should have got a lot more screen time and there are some genuinely funny moments. The aforementioned spaceships are nicely done, although exactly how they work is glossed over as is Carter’s ability to leap vast distances. But it takes itself just that little bit too seriously, as can be witnessed whenever there’s a salute from Carter’s direction. It tried to be an epic.
Even Star Wars, didn’t attempt to be an epic and look at the fan base that created. It would be nice to see someone try to re-make it (John Carter, not Star Wars. You can keep your mitts off that.), with James Purefoy playing the lead role. He gets very little screen time considering how great his character is and if someone could transplant Kantos Kan’s personality onto Carter’s, that’d add more fat to the cheese than is probably healthy.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

I bought Divergent as one of my ‘stab in the dark’ choices. I barely looked at the back cover, glancing briefly to make sure it wasn’t a Twilight knockoff before adding it to the large pile of books I wanted to buy.
As a result, it’s been sitting in my ‘to read’ pile for a while, looking at me forlornly. I’m generally less optimistic about books I don’t know anything about. But I decided to pick it up for a spot of lunchtime reading. Sometime later, I put it down again, having finished, and realised it was dark outside. All in all, with a few breaks, it took me just over six hours to read Divergent and that is a test to its quality, not its length.
It’s a tasty mix of The Hunger Games, Inside Out and Harry Potter. There’s a good deal of violence, a love story and a very well built world. It, like the aforementioned Hunger Games, manages to have a fantasy feel without ever going beyond the bounds of what a human can do. There’s desperation, decisions not entirely thought through and something going on at the top that isn’t quite kosher. You won’t find dragons, magic or gods here. Just people.
Divergent is set in a world that could be ours if you add in a massive war and a serious change in politics. The people are split into five group depending on what they think would heal the world: selflessness, happiness, knowledge, truth or courage. That’s the bit that reminds me most of Harry Potter - them gryffindors are all about the courage. Anyway, our heroine and family belongs to the selfless faction, but when she reaches the age of sixteen she gets to choose her faction. If she chooses any other faction than her own, she’ll be cutting most ties with her family. People who change faction are not well liked.
Annnnd that’s all I’m going to say about the plot. Because if I said anything more, it would ruin the book. The blurb is equally evasive and I can’t help but applaud that decision. You really should know as little about this book before you dive in. Because even our heroine’s choice in faction is not certain.
That said, some of the reveals are easy to see coming but it didn’t ruin my enjoyment one iota. They weren’t big plot points, just bits about characters that I guessed sometime in advance of the reveal. The main reveal was pretty well camouflaged.
My only real complaint would be that the build up to the ending was very short and not particularly large. That said I’m eagerly awaiting the second book, out on the first of May.

By Light Alone by Adam Roberts

It hate it when something I'm really looking forward to manages to dissapoint me so completely.

The premise of 'By Light Alone' is so intriguing, so well thought out that I had to buy it. It sounded like a novel I could really enjoy. The basic premise: a science, wherein people can grow hair that synthesises food from the sun, rendering hunger a thing of the past, has been implemented some time in the past. Food is scarce but the rich still eat real food because they can. In the midst of this, a rich man’s daughter is kidnapped and, for a year, lives as one of the poor, with long photosynthising hair.

All of that you can learn from the blurb. Sound interesting? You bet! What changes has this wrought upon the girl, how does this effect the world in which she lives in?
Not a lot. Without going into too much detail, Robert’s book is not one for people who like fast paced, page turners. It’s a satire of our society today and rumbles along at the speed of a slug. Just to give some indication, it takes over a hundred pages for the text of the blurb to be played out, in which time, I’ve learnt more about the vacuous space that is the main character than I ever wanted to.

For a book so rich in its premise, there is a very meagre amount of actual plot. What there is, is padded out with drivel about the main character’s day, accompanied by mind-numbing passages of intensely dull philosophical thoughts about love or joy or despair or whatever emotion the character experiencing.

I understand why the information is presented like this. The world the character has grown up in is very different from ours and that is simply how he thinks. Never the less, I find myself skipping entire passages so I can move on with the story. While the thoughts add depth to character, they leech any enjoyment out of the book.
Which brings me around to my main point. Why, with such a blisteringly good idea for a world and plot, did Roberts choose the most boring man to be the main character? Why not the daughter, whose life would be infinitely more interesting to follow? Why not one of the poor, into whose village the young girl is taken? George, the father, has nothing to say, nothing to contribute and doesn’t drag the plot with him as much as flounder after it. Because of his background, brought up in a self-serving privileged society, he is completely unlikeable. I cannot relate to him.

I should point out that if you look up By Light Alone on Google, the reviews that pop up first are full up of praise. And I will admit, I’m not exactly the brightest spark. But a pondering book where most of the action is happening off screen just isn’t for me, not matter how shiny the cover.

If you manage to make it past those first 150 pages, what you’ll find is that Robert somehow manages to make all his characters as dull and vacuous as George. We do get to see the world from the perspective of George’s daughter and the wife. And I dislike all of them. Still, despite the changes of perspective, very little happens. Since the daughter got back from her kidnapping, her parents have split up and the daughter broke the fridge. Annnnnd that’s about it.

I’m just not interested in the emotional side of these people, especially as they’re meant to be horribly selfish. If I’m not supposed to like these people – and indeed I can’t – why should I read this book? I don’t care about them, I can’t see much plot on the horizon, why bother?

And yet, I have kept reading, possible due to the sheer horror than so boring a book could ever be published.

The last chunk of story is through the eyes of Issa who – spoilers, if you care – is actually the daughter, having be given a new name or possibly forgotten her old one. And this is about the only vaguely interesting bit of the book and even then, I’d never rate it more than one out of five. Issa travels from a village – it’s never really explained where she is to begin with - with little to no sense of purpose and occasionally something happens. And yes, we do see the world of the longhairs and how civilisation has changed for them. But Issa’s lack of motivation, her somewhat hazy personality and Roberts’s brain meltingly boring prose makes it the same turgid brown as the rest of the book. There’s no struggle within Issa, within George or his family to do anything, they just sort of wallow from one event to the next, never really reacting much, never making a difference.

The shame of it all is underneath the weight of all this rubbish, there is a story and it is amazing. It’s unique and original. It could a diamond and sparkle like the stars. But the diamond is coated in substances best left to the imagination so you’ll never see the twinkles.

Lost Girl

If you’ve seen the trailer for Lost Girl you’ve probably not really got anything about the show other than that the main character is a succubus. Which is a shame because it’s a whole lot more than that.
In my last article, I was bemoaning (again) the fact that no series I’d watched recently had managed to make a good pilot episode. There needs to be a simple introduction of characters but with enough information on each to understand their basic traits – this girl is the one who knits the group together, that boy enjoys arguing. The characters must also be likeable, even if they’re evil. The plot of the first episode should put the main character/s into the new situation that will set up the series but not in an obvious way. Lost Girl does that quite well, adding a main and side character into the new world without turning into forty minutes of clichés.
Said world is the main bit that gets missed from that trailer. There are two mob-like groups of fae, made up of the general bag of supernatural characters. One group is called ‘the light’, the other ‘the dark’. Exactly what each side stands for isn’t explained in the pilot. I suspect it could be something akin to the state of affairs in Night Watch where one group controls the night and one the day. Or, it could be more simple than that – light equals good, dark equals bad. Anyway, entry into one of these groups is mandatory for all fae, including the succubus, Bo, who has no idea what she is until the supernatural’s doctor tells her. Since not knowing what you are is unheard of, they immediately subject her to a ‘trial’ followed by a command to choose a side – light or dark. I won’t tell you what happens, but fair to say it got my interest.
Their inclusion of the side character, Kenzi, a human kleptomaniac with a side order of kooky, is perhaps the best part. It’s a small stroke but it adds so much and her relationship with Bo is already fun to watch. Because both are outsiders, I don’t get the ‘audience surrogate’ feel. And, the fact that she’s not some ordinary shop worker who gets pulled into the mix through no fault of her own – Rose Tyler, for instance – means she’s a character who’s forging her own path, not simply trailing in the wake of Bo.
Obviously, it could all go wrong and turn out to be awful from episode two onwards but I have high hopes for Lost Girl and I’m really interested to see where they take it.

Eureka (US) /A Town Called Eureka (UK)

I found Eureka while checking out Warehouse 13 on Wikipedia. Apparently it’s not only a sister show to Warehouse 13 but started some three years before.
If, like me, you’re seen Warehouse 13 before Eureka here are the comparison notes: Eureka is less cuddly, with a significantly bigger cast list. The main character is not really ‘one of the team’ which doesn’t really help. It’s a strange cross of a small town detective and Bang Goes The Theory, with a hint of Castle in the inclusion of the main character’s daughter.
If you’d like that in a more prosaic format littered with spoilers – and let’s face it, why wouldn’t you? – a detective, Jack Carter, finds himself in Eureka after attempting to drive his runaway daughter back to her mother in LA. Eureka is a town filled with scientists who tend to break the rules of the universe and destroy bits of their town while they’re at it. Carter finds himself with a new job after the pilot episode – town sheriff – and he’s been introduced to a super secret sciency institute. Said institute is headed by Dr. Nathan Stark, who is quite closely modelled on Tony Stark – Iron Man for those who aren’t into their comics – and who has a fantastically loveable evil side to him.
Other characters of note are the local B&B owner whose subplot is bizarre and occasionally disturbing, the handyman who builds rocket engines in his spare time and Douglas Fargo, who turns up in Warehouse 13. I love Fargo the most, but I care quite a lot about the whole cast.
Which is why I’ll keep watching. The dialogue is quite hammy in places and the overall feel of Eureka is a bit…lonely. Carter isn’t part of the super secret institute so he’s always the least informed. In Warehouse 13, the main characters are generally in the know and they’re allowed access to any information they need, so the problem is being able to find the information, not simply having access. Yet despite all of that, I want to know what happens next. There’s a very subtle main plot that threads all of the episodes together so there’s always something to be resolved.
Also, talking house situated in an underground bunker. What’s not to like about that? SARAH (Self Actuated Residential Automated Habitat) is a bit like KITT but with some interesting emotions that lead it to, spoilers, trap Carter and some prominent members of the community inside the house until they resolve their differences.
Generally, if you want to describe Eureka, plump for the word ‘quirky’ like everyone else has. Even the music is quirky. The intro is very 1950s, American and small towny. People mowing their lawn with lasers and filling up their hover cards with fuel. Quirky, quirky, quirky. Unfortunately, that means the main word to describe Eureka isn’t, or instance, ‘awesome’ or ‘fantastic’. It’s a bit like someone saying your hairstyle is interesting.
Feel free to check Eureka out – I recommend starting at the beginning – but if you’re looking for a new show to get into, I’d go for Warehouse 13. Either way, enjoy Fargo being cutely clumsy.
*
I’ll be looking at Alphas next week, the newest of the sister shows, which deals with people with superpowers. Heroes remake anyone?

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

Not long ago I had half an hour to spare and, being the person I am, thought Waterstone’s was a good place to while away the time. I came across The Atrocity Archives and, having seen the cover before but not read the back, I checked out the blurb and the first page. I got the impression from that The Atrocity Archives would be another present day fantasy fiction with magic and some technology advances. The writing seemed informal, witty and the blurb had enough to hook me. I was expecting Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files meets Computers For Dummies.
There is plenty of the first. For those of you who haven’t read any of the Dresden Files, it is characterised by the main guy, Dresden, who tells the story with a lot of wit and humour. You can tell things about his character simply by the way he says things – for instance, he can joke and being quite blasé about very scary subjects which means he’s brave and possibly a bit of an idiot. And, to an extent Stross has this in Bob Howard. His charm lies in the same ‘not good with authority’ way as Dresden and, as mentioned, the wit with which the story is told. But Stross is not in Butcher’s league. Where Butcher will put in perhaps one or two references to things you might not get – TV show references from the 70s and 80s for instance –, Stross litters them across every page. I’m lost already and I’m only seventeen pages in.
For those of you who want a plot, here’s a summary of what I understand so far: Bob works in an obscure branch of the government who deal with magic and alternate dimensions – don’t expect Tinkerbell or dragons though – as a computer repair man. Then, he gets promoted and has some fun with field work. Where it all goes wrong. (Except the bit where it all goes wrong takes a long time to appear. Nothing substantial really happens for almost the first third of the book.)
I’m not a computer nerd, I’ll admit that. I know how to defragment my computer and I can write basic html but I get totally lost with Stross’s explanations of things, or lack of explanation. What, for instance, is a node when it’s at home? He mentions ‘the Turning result’ but doesn’t explain what that is for another six pages, by which I’ve entirely forgotten what the point of the conversation was when it was first mentioned. What’s worse, no-one knows what the Turning result is, because he made it up, so no-one could possibly know what the reference is to.
The worst offender by far, though, (that is, the worst offender in the seventeen pages I’ve struggled through so far) is this: ‘The theorem is a hack on a discrete number theory that simultaneously disproves Church-Turing hypothesis (wave your hand if you understood that) and worse, permits NP-complete problems to be converted into p-complete ones.’
First off, that wave comment, that’s part of the quote. And I found myself slightly upset that Stross was either talking to the few people who understood what he meant and no-one else or that he was intentionally flagging up the fact no-one’s meant to understand it, in which case, why put it in there? I felt totally alienated. (If anyone reading this does feel they could wave their hand, I’d love to know what on earth it all means.) The other problem I have is…well it’s with his problems. What is an NP-complete problem? The only thing I can think of is ‘no problem’ but that doesn’t really work. A No Problem complete problem?
((Having read a little further after writing this, I found this and felt the need to share.) ‘Most of it boils down to the application of Kaluza-Klein theory in a Linde universe constrained by an information conservation rule, or so they tell me when I ask.’ )
There’s another snag. If you haven’t read H.P. Lovecraft, you’re not going to get the references to his work, such as Shoggoth. I’ve read some Lovecraft but I’ve not heard of that one. Similarly, do you, without looking at Google, know who Knuth, Dijkstra or Al-Hazred are? I’ve never heard of them but apparently I should have because Stross uses them to suggest a person’s character by the material he’s reading.
All this is building up to one very large, very unmoveable difficulty. I cannot follow what’s happening. There’s computer jargon being thrown around, mixed in with philosophy, mathematics, an awful lots of theories and some pretty heavy ideas, none of which I understand. I get the physical things that are going on – he’s walking over there, now he’s hacking a computer – but if the ending hinges on a concept I can’t grasp, what’s the point in reading any further than page seventeen?
Perhaps I’m being unkind and judgemental. Perhaps that isn’t enough material to judge the whole book by. But still, there’s that niggling doubt that if I can’t get the basic premise, all hope is lost.
I always try to judge a book by how friendly it is to the reader. That is, in terms of how accessible it is, not how nicely it can compliment your hair. And, granted, there will be science fiction that’s out of my range. But I’m not sure how many sci-fi fans would enjoy this either. And that’s what it comes down to: an author tries to sell books, which will be difficult if he’s alienated all by a tiny slice of his readership.
Fail, Mister Stross. Fail.

Heaven's Shadow

(Minor Spoilers on the line, delays expected)

I don’t read much sci-fi, I’ll admit that right from the off. I dabble but most space-set novels put me off by their jargon, science or pseudo-science and the general size which tends to come under ‘tome’.

But I picked up Heaven’s Shadow. The blurb was quite exciting. A near-earth-object starts venting air and it quickly becomes obvious there’s a reason for it. ’But by whom – and for what purpose?

Heaven’s Shadow is written by David S. Goyer, a comic book writer, screenwriter and director and Michael Cassutt, author, TV producer and screenwriter. The fact that Goyer and Cassutt work most in visual media is obvious and perhaps Heaven’s Shadow would have made a good film.

It does not make a good book.

The story starts off at a pace that would make a glacier look speedy and while it does manage to up the pace in places, Heaven’s Shadow ruins it all by shooting at it’s feet, with bullets made of long, dull sections where nothing happens and a habit of switching characters.

Talking of characters, there are way too many and a lot of them are introduced together. It doesn’t surprise me that they feel the need to include a character list at the front and I found myself having to refer to it a lot. There are four astronauts and four cosmonauts, various family members, scientists, a large group of people who work for NASA and a girl called Amy who appears, as far as I can see, without explanation. Said girl is meant to be a friend of the main character’s daughter but why Amy is allowed to run around the NASA site with her friend, unchecked, is unclear.

This might all be fine, just, if the author’s had stuck with one name to one character. Yvonne Hall, for instance was introduced as Yvonne but is, at points, called Hall and I had to go look at the character list to who out who Hall was.
The other problem with this huge cast is that the viewpoint moves between quite a few of them. It’s a bit like sharing a bottle of vodka with seventeen people – no-one can really taste it in the coke and no-one gets tipsy. The characters feel like templates at best and the main character is one of the worst hit. There are three things I know about him – his wife is dead, he has a temperamental teenage daughter and he’s an astronaut. That is what defines him. Personality you ask? Well…um…nope, I’ve no idea. If he died horribly, screaming, on the next page I wouldn’t mind because I really couldn’t care less about this 2D, cardboard cut out of a character. A few of the more minor characters manage to rise above it slightly but only slightly and while they might possess a hint of personality, I’m still not given enough to ever care about them.

Which spawns another complication. If I don’t care who lives and who dies, or, indeed, if any live at all, where’s the excitement, the drama, the gripping fear my favourite character is going to be eaten alive?

The other strange thing about Heaven’s Shadow is it’s habit of starting the chapter with a few lines of gripping dialogue and then scrabbling to explain the context in an immediate flashback. It actually does this for the whole first part of the book. We get the excitement of being aboard the space craft before they touch down but for the next few chapters after, it bumbles around some dull, dreary back story. A few snapshot flashbacks, no more than a page long would have been sufficient. Once I’d started noticing it, I realise they do a lot. It’s fine, ooo, once or twice but when they continue it chapter after chapter, it gets on my internal organs.

My last rant point is that the dialogue has some truly botched lines that just don’t
make sense. I even re-read them and I still couldn’t work out who was talking. Again, I wonder if this is because both writers are more used to mediums with visual qualities. Where the confusion isn’t applicable because we can see who’s talking.

Can I recommend Heaven’s Shadow? Well, perhaps if you’re into space sci-fi you might be able to look past its flaws to the juicy ideas beneath. But I’d recommend putting it below some of the better examples and using it as a last resort. A ‘it’s-this-or-watching-golf’ sort of thing.

Shadowmagic by John Lenahan

I don’t normally dislike a book for the quality of writing. Sometimes I will bemoan a particular habit or tone of voice – like King’s strange turns of phrase – but I’ve very rarely gone into a book thinking ‘I wonder if this has ever been edited?’. I’m surprised Shadowmagic has managed to get through the trials of the publishing world. I decided to look up Lenhan’s resume, sure in my impression that he’d be a young, first time writer with not much under his belt. Correct on the first timer, wrong on everything else. He’s a fifty year old illusionist and entertainer, who voiced the talking toaster in Red Dwarf. I have to wonder if he got published because of who he is and who he knows rather than because someone genuinely read the book and thought it was sterling stuff.
The story revolves around Conor, the son of a one handed man, who is randomly attacked by some strange people on horseback. He’s knocked out and when he reawakens he finds out he has a mother he never knew about, a murdering uncle and aunt and less chance of survival than a slug at a hedgehog convention. He manages to escape said murdering relatives and thus begins a journey through a magic land.
What Lenahan does get right are the ideas, which I’m not entirely sure were all original, but they were shiny enough to continue enticing me. Talking trees – mental communication before anyone starts thinking of Pocahontas – spells fuelled by gold or tree sap and a rite of passage that can create new lands.
Unfortunately, the plot is so riddled with holes, it falls apart for me. A quick list of some of the most glaring problems (few spoilers coming up here so skip if you feel the need):
1 The whole reason Conor is in trouble is a prophecy saying that he will be the ruin of the magical land. Except, if he hadn’t been kidnapped by his evil uncle in the first place, he’d have never been in a position to ruin anything. I could understand this if the uncle had come up with a reason to kidnap Conor days before he unfolded his master plan but no.
2 Without giving too much away, the prophecy sort of changes tack at the end of the book. It goes from ‘The son of the one handed man must die, in case he buggers up this land’ – I’m paraphrasing – to ‘The son of the one handed man must be sacrificed because…um’. Consistency if you’d be so kind.
3 The magic spell that transports Conor and his father into the land is never explained and one of the characters they meet very earlier on in the book could have performed the spell to send them back again – and does…at the end of the book – but there’s never any particular explanation about why they aren’t sent back immediately. This could have easily been solved by making the spell difficult to perform, or place specific or in need of a particular ingredient.
Then there are those writing quality problems I was chuntering on about before. First off, when introducing a character, it’s a good idea to show them in their natural environment. So…Doctor Who scrabbling around the Tardis or Frodo in the Shire before it all goes tits up. We never get this sort of introduction to Conor. There’s two and a bit pages where Conor helps his Dad put a shirt on and explains a few things but it’s ‘infodumping’ a lot of the time – all tell, no show. And a lot of it is about his Dad. Boring, boring and bad.
From a published book, you tend to expect a good level of literacy as well as a decent writing skill, especially from a children’s book. These are the writers of tomorrow you’re writing for! The sentence: ‘To my right the trees changed to beech but not the thin spindly trees I was used to, but spectacular white-barked beeches with girth and height of Californian Redwoods’ makes me cringe. Two ‘but’s in the same sentence? Two mentions of ‘beech’ and ‘tree’?
Perhaps I’m being too fussy. But this sort of this keeps cropping up. It feels like Lenaham hasn’t gone through enough stages of editing, because that sentence, and others, should have been picked up. There’s an opportunity to get some great description in there. That second ‘tree’? I’d change to ‘sticks. The ‘beeches’ to something like ‘colossi’ or perhaps ‘towers’. And I wonder how many teens actually know how big a Californian Redwood is?
On the front cover, it’s called ‘A Lord of the Rings for the 21st Century. Only a lot shorter. And funnier. And completely different.’ Yes, I’d agree with the shorter and certainly the completely different but funnier? I’ve read the first book of the LotR series and, I suppose, it’s not exactly a bag of laughs or, indeed, any other container of a joyous emotion. But then, neither is Shadowmagic. The blurb includes the phrase ‘it will make you laugh on nearly every page.’ I think I smiled twice throughout the whole book. Could have been an involuntary spasm. Hard to tell.
I do not recommend Shadowmagic. Ever. Do not read it.

Where Afterlife went wrong

4/5 stars
The Resident Evil films are a perfect blend of story and fight scenes, just enough of the first, heavy on the second. But that’s fine; if you’re watching them for the love story, you need to work on your choice of films.
Fourth in the series (of the live action films), Afterlife is not bringing out any new surprises on the basic format and I can see most of the plot coming from a mile away. It’s what we expect from Resident Evil films and Afterlife delivers.
Unfortunately, someone on the directing team has been watching too many Matrix films recently. Here’s a list:
Mr Smith has a new face! But it’s so similar, I actually had to look up the actor playing Albert Wesker (not the best evil guy name by some margin) to make sure it wasn’t the same guy who did Mr Smith. They share a love of wearing sunglasses indoors, moving faster than the camera can pick up and generally kicking ass. On the sunglasses note, Wesker throws his at two of the characters for no reason other than, I assume, to make use of 3D. It didn’t distract the characters in any way and he immediately puts them back on again afterwards. Resident Evil wins the Least Subtle Film Ever award.
Bullet time, now used in completely pointless places! I can get the use of bullet time when either one of two things happens: someone avoids a bullet but only just or someone gets shot, significantly. Like Trinity did. Resident Evil appears to feel the need to use bullet time just to show a zombie getting shot.
Falling out of a window while still shooting! That famous scene in The Matrix Reloaded, where Trinity goes backwards through a window and has a falling fight scene with an Agent. That one? Well, it’s copied, almost move for move. Why, Resident Evil? Can’t you come up with your own?
All this makes me want to kick Resident Evil in the shins and tell it to come up with some ideas of its own.
But I still enjoyed the film. Axeman is a severe cutie – I want to take him home – and the overall acting skill is sublime. The characters feel like real people, the kind of people you actually want to survive. At no point was there the Horror genre staple: a cheerleader-like character who I want to feed to the zombies. And, yes, predictably, most characters die. But I’d feel a bit cheated if they all survived.
Afterlife has been set up with no ending, not as such. There is a clear indication, along the lines of a big neon sign, that another film is in the making. And I really really want to see it. Right now.
I should quickly justify the four stars rating. If Afterlife had made itself out to be a serious drama that dug deep into what it is to be human, I would have asked Axeman to kill everyone ever involved in that decision. But it isn’t. You get what you pay for. Except for the expectation that Neo is going to walk across the screen, looking suitably dour.
If you like the Resident Evil films you will be neither surprised by nor disappointed in Afterlife (unless the Matrix parallels kill you inside). It’s a suitable sequel to the other three and has set up an interesting premise for the fifth.
Stupid, annoying, but loveable. Go watch it.

Hey, Stargate Universe, cheer the hell up!

3/5 stars
I’m a solid fan of the Stargate series. SG1 is as close to the perfect programme as I’ve ever seen, occasionally formulaic but otherwise a shining example of good science fiction. Stargate Atlantis is its slightly disfigured but ultimately loveable cousin.
Stargate Universe, to complete the picture, is the whiny kid in the corner that you really want to like but annoys you to hell and back.
Here’s the basic plot: people, stuck on alien ship, in an unknown galaxy and unable to get home. Survival, struggle, strife. Massive scenes where everyone laments about how bad it is and generally looks depressed.
That’s my main problem with Universe, which you may have guessed from the title. It takes itself so seriously, that the otherwise awesome characters take on this hand-to-forehead-its-so-terrible tone.
Talking of the characters, most of them are 2D and there purely to move the plot forward. I wanted to stab Chloe in the face for most of the first season and, while I understand she’s meant to be the unlucky bystander that got pulled into things she wasn’t meant to, her scenes feel like they’ve been ripped from something set in a high school.
The only characters I’m interested in are Eli Wallace, Nicholas Rush and, possibly, Everett Young. All three of them qualify for ‘actual human’ status- they manage to appear more realistic than a cardboard cut out. Eli is the most likeable, although if you peer at him long enough, you can see the faint outlines of an arrow pointed at his head saying ‘good guy, token geek’.
Rush’s sense of honour appears to be as flexible as Rolf Harris’ wobbly board but that’s fine, he clearly has an agenda and is following it realistically. Robert Carlyle is a fantastic actor and plays Rush very very well.
Young is another matter. I can’t decide whether he deserves a medal or a knuckle sandwich. Probably both. He goes from reasonable Colonel to complete idiot, has the leadership skills of a hermit and in no way deserves the description ‘handsome, capable, former SG team leader’ or indeed, ‘like the Jack O'Neill of ten years ago’. No, no he isn’t. The man doesn’t understand the word ‘humour’, which was O’Neill’s forte. That said, he does come off as human - a flawed, annoying human, but of our race none the less.
Despite all that, Universe is still bringing in big audiences. The story lines are completely new, with the possible exception of Darkness which has echoes of Atlantis’ beginning episodes. They charter new characters, worlds and generally use the series to try out unexplored avenues. It lacks SG1’s focus on the Stargate and the missions through it, instead opting for a more human angle - Universe is about the people, trapped on an alien ship in an unknown galaxy and how they deal, or fail to deal, with it. You genuinely feel for the characters, even a few of the cardboard ones. And, now in its second season, Universe has set up some pretty big questions, which I’m eager to see answered.
So, watch it and give it a chance, especially if you liked SG1 and Atlantis. But line up some comedy after watching. You’re going to need it.

Outcasts

5/5 stars
Outcasts

I have very little faith in British TV. Most of it is eye-stabbingly awful. I’m looking at you BBC3. You and your ‘Hotter Than My Daughter’.
And then there’s Outcasts.
I’ll be honest. I downloaded the first episode from iPlayer and then ignored it for a good six weeks. But when I finally got round to watching it, Outcasts was ready and waiting to surprise me.
This is what I was expecting:
A low budget, poorly scripted show with more holes than swiss cheese. There’d be some actors working their socks off but ultimately being pulled down by the rest of the cast. And the sort of special effects last seen on the old Daleks (sink plungers included). What I got was something entirely different and wonderfully surprising.
Here’s the basic premise: Something bad happened back on Earth and the human race has been shipping itself to a new planet. Ten years after the first landing, things are going alright, people are surviving. But there’s unresolved history, new arrivals and some seriously bad weather, the kind only seen in the extreme wildernesses and Wales.
Cue drama. What I love third best about Outcasts is its unwavering focus. It’s about humanity - what it is to be human and where the moral lines can or will be drawn when survival is uncertain. Outcasts isn’t too interested in going heavy with the science fiction elements either. The touches of sci-fi are delicate and while they’re occasionally plot-moving touches, they don’t retract from the humanity angle. Most of the science is glossed over but what isn’t is done convincingly and with as much realism as any science fiction show can.
My second favourite thing about Outcasts is the characters and the actors behind them. Each character has been carefully crafted and all of them have shady history, vices or bad personality traits. This, in my opinion, is essential. Evil antagonists are boring, good heroes even more so. But blur the line between the two, as Outcasts does, and you get something approaching reality, as well as interesting and diverse characters.
So far, I've grown most attached to Cass Cromwell, whose heart is in the right place even if his temper isn’t. Portrayed by Daniel Mays, of Ashes to Ashes fame, Cornwell tries to do well but like all of the best heroes in sticky situations, he has to make difficult choices and deal with the consequences.
Also making an appearance is MI5 drama Spooks’ Hermione Norris, Battlestar Galactica’s Jamie Bamber, Eric Mabius of Ugly Betty and CSI: Miami fame and Liam Cunningham who recently appeared in Clash of the Titans. Not the most impressive of films to have on your CV but he plays President Tate in Outcasts, which brings me on to my next point.
My favourite thing of the series: President Tate’s eyebrows. I get hypnotised with how pointy they are. Then he raises one and I can’t help being surprised he doesn’t slice bits off the furniture when he turns around.
So. Would I recommend Outcasts?
Yes, wholeheartedly and without reservation. Even if you’re not big on sci-fi, Outcasts may just surprise you. It’s small enough to not warrant much press but it’s an oasis in an otherwise dead and depressing desert. Give it a go.

--
Outcasts was cancelled on 14th March, due to poor ratings.

Monsters

5/5 Stars
There’s something behind you! But you don’t know where because you’re blindfolded, in a dark room and only have a post-it note for a weapon!
Relax. It’s already eaten your brain.
Monsters is the sort of horror film I like. Where you see so little of the creatures that you forget what they look like and suffer an embarrassing moment trying to remember their names.
The monsters are there, make no mistake, but you’ve no idea where. They loom over the entire plot like the huge walking octopuses they are, but they’re so big, they’ve fused with part of the background and, for most of the film, stay there.
That sounds like a criticism. It’s not. Horror movies should never be about the creature under the bed. They should focus on the quivering child, too scared to sleep. It’s humans that make a horror movie scary. If there’s no one to die, no one to loose everything they have, where’s the drama?
The real piece de la resistance, though, are the two protagonists; Andrew Kaulder, a photographer, and Sam Wynden, the daughter of Andrew’s boss. They fight to get home, travelling through territory ‘infected’ by walking octopuses. Scoot McNairy, who played Andrew and Whitney Able, depicting Sam, acted their socks off, aided by incredible dialogue. Often it’s what they don’t say that’s most poignant, and there are scenes where Andrew and Sam’s only reaction is to stare silently. I can only applaud whoever was brave enough to allow long minutes to pass without a single word. That says something of the actors, the script and the flawless direction.
If I had to have a criticism, it would be that the CGI is obvious. You can generally tell what’s been added in later. But it’s a small complaint and it didn’t hamper my enjoyment one iota.
I suppose, I might add, I wanted there to be…more. The ending is sudden but incredibly brilliant. It leaves you with a question, one that I want desperately to be answered but also one that I don’t think should be. Like Inception, it wants you to make up your own mind, it wants you to think.
And that is all good, if you ask me.

Battle Los Angeles, a film for those who dislike originality

3/5 stars
Battle Los Angeles, or BLA as I will now refer to it, has no surprises or confusing plot lines. Seriously, if you get confused, you are no longer in possession of any brain cells. If you’re looking for bog-standard aliens invade Earth movie, you could do worse than BLA.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing to be at standard level but it feels like a missed opportunity. Some of the more enterprising aliens invade movies out there – Monster, District 9 – are pushing the basic story, taking us into unfamiliar and fascinating areas. BLA, against this, is a step back.
Which is such a shame. It made me cry at one point- I don’t cry much – so it’s not all explosions and stupidity. The script slips into wince-worthy areas on occasion. Otherwise, the characters are well rounded and the dialogue snappy.
I can also praise BLA for its realism, as far as that goes in a sci-fi film. People get hurt and stay hurt: characters you care about die: the writers has spent time figuring out how the aliens might work and, most importantly, countdown timers actually work in real time- as opposed to the majority which live in the stretchy time dimension.
Aaron Eckhart plays the main character, Staff Sergeant Nantz – and you will remember the ‘Staff Sergeant’ bit, they repeat it so often. His face is amazing. He appears to be permanently on the verge of bursting into tears, which is an odd expression for a marine. That said, he’s the one who made me cry, so perhaps it’s a crafty way to make me sympathise.
Like him, the rest of the cast is well chosen. Michelle Rodriguez pops up, to absolutely no-one’s surprise, as the spunky girl ready to show the guys what she’s made of. I get the impression there’s a catalogue in every casting agency’s cupboard and under ‘Tough girls’, Rodriguez’s name is at the top of a very short list. She’s heavily type cast, but then Rodriguez plays it so well. The other women in BLA are equally useful. At no point did it feel like a character had been put in for sex appeal, which immediately bumps up BLA in my estimation. Only bad movies feel the need to go for sex appeal.
You’re probably wondering why I’ve yet to tell you the basic plot. BLA is so unoriginal, you can probably guess the major plot points. I watched ten minutes of the movie and already knew how it was going to end. This is not because of foresight, divination or because I’m clever (I’m not). Look away now if you don’t want to know what happens.
Retired/retiring cop/soldier is drafted back in against his/her will because, damn it all, them aliens are invading and said protagonist steps up to the mark, to do what needs to be done. The middle bit of the movie is fluid so insert your own dance routine/explosions. It’s not really important what happens here but a few things usually ensue. The protagonist finds out a few things about the aliens and he/she often finds out where their command base/important equipment is. This second element is always the alien’s Achilles heel and will result in them losing the battle/war.
The end goes one of two ways. The Achilles heel is stabbed and all the aliens, planet wide, are destroyed or forced to leave Earth. Or the heel is stabbed and the way in which it is stabbed is passed around the world so, they too, can cause foot injuries.
There are so many ways in which this formula could be improved, including throwing it out the window. While I personally didn’t like District 9, I can praise it for originality and for having the courage to be different. The idea of aliens in general has been used long before the first moon landings and it’s limited to imagination only. There’s so much of the iceberg left to explore and we need to start asking for something more imaginative.
Do it or Staff Sergeant Nantz will start crying, and no-one wants that.

Avatar: The Last Aizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Everything likeable about the cartoon Avatar is lost in this film. It’s like the director read the story but failed to actually watch it. Sokka’s name is pronounced wrong and he has about as much humour as a particularly grumpy corpse, Aang is the most boring child I’ve ever had the displeasure to see (his name is pronounced wierdly too) and Zuko is even more annoying than he is in the cartoon (yes, it’s possible).
Uncle Iroh is…thin and dull, if believable. Oh and they’ve done something to Appa’s face. It’s creepy. In fact, a lot of the animal’s faces are creepy.
Firelord Ozai is acted well but there is little menace to him and that renders the epic quest to defeat him…less than epic. It’s like trying to fight a damp sponge.
The bending is portrayed quite well, on the whole, though the moves which characterise it are done so quickly they remind me of nothing but bad kung-foo movies.
The story is butchered, too. Back story is flashed through, important moments are given mere seconds of screen time and the script is…monumentally awful (Sokka spends most of his lines stating the bleedin’ obvious).
The sense of fun is nowhere to be seen in Avatar and there is nothing to like about the characters. It’s not been given the time it needs to rival the cartoon or even come close to watchable. Kyoshi Island, for instance, has been squashed together with the Earth-Benders ship prison, which is now based in a mine…so it doesn’t work). There’s a particularly bad scene where Aang, Katara and Sukko decide to find teachers (it’s a strange one where the camera is so close to the actor’s faces you feel a bit indecent) and they random add to the list ‘save the world’. Sukko comes out with ‘shall we try it?’ and Aang replies ‘yes, we should.’
No. This is not good dialogue, this is moving the scenes along in the shortest possible time.
What would have been good would be six films, two to each book. Instead, it’s an awful movie with awful characters, script and acting. Safe to say, its doubtful there will be a second one.

The Adjustment Bureau

2/5 stars
(Caution, spoilers hide in tall grass.)
I like Matt Damon. He appears in good films and I like his acting style.
It’s such a shame he got involved in The Adjustment Bureau. If you’re looking for a stupid action film, this won’t quite fit the bill and it’s not Inception clever or Pirates of the Caribbean funny. It slips between all of these and the main genres as well. There’s romance and a sort of thriller tone as well as an action movie theme. Oh and there’s a sniff of fantasy or perhaps sci-fi. And this is the problem. It can’t decide what it wants to be so it becomes a jack of all trades.
The basic premise revolves around chance and the ‘Adjustment Bureau’ who tweak things to make sure the planet continues following ‘the plan’ which is devised by ‘the controller’. The employees of the bureau are sort of, sort of not angels, only they have no wings and wear hats.
The story follows David Norris who’s running for the senate. He loses and, right before his speech, he meets a girl. That is the last time he is meant to meet her. But when the Adjustment Bureau fail to tweak his day, he gets on a bus and meets her again. From there on in, chance pulls the two together as the Bureau struggle to pull them apart because it doesn’t adhere to the plan.
Let’s get the praise out of the way. The characters are very well portrayed and acted. Norris, who I continue to think is called Bourne, is very likeable, funny and easy to connect with. I particularly enjoy Damon’s fighting noises which went something like ‘mmrh erp the prph’. The girl played by Emily Blunt, is equally fun to watch. Harry Mitchell, one of the Adjustment agents, played by Anthony Mackie, has a good screen presence and was let down only slightly by the lack of good script.
Otherwise, the characters were okay but not sparkling.
Unfortunately that’s all the praise, if you can call it praise, I have for The Adjustment Bureau.
The aforementioned jack of all trades thing bugs me. It’s a mix of Borne and The Matrix, with a romantic comedy driving the plot. And it’s strange, like banana and coffee – not unpalatable but not something you’d try more than once.
Then there’s the product placement, one of America’s more annoying habits. One of Norris’s political buddies walks into the room and practically screams the line ‘Are you still watching CNN?’ My immersion disappeared completely and that annoyed me greatly. I’d like to say that good movies don’t need product placement but maybe they’re just craftier about it. Take The Matrix. Neo could be tattooed with thousands of tiny Coca Cola logos or maybe that orgasm cake is sponsored by Nestle. Who knows?
My last rant concerns the romance part of the story. Because right up until the end, I was just about running with it. The Adjustment Bureau was getting away with it. And then Norris and the girl got surrounded by armed guards and decided that their only tactic was to kiss passionately for a good fifteen seconds. Yup, that’ll save you. Annoyingly, the film then let them get away with it and the happy ending slid into view like a leery uncle, slapping a moral on for good measure. I think it went along the lines of ‘if you believe/trust in love, everything will work out’ but I’m not sure because I was too busy throwing up.
So, would I watch it again? Not if you taped me to a chair and threatened my cat.

The Gunslinger Pt. 2

Around a month ago, I write a review of The Gunslinger. To sum up my initial reaction, The Gunslinger left me confused and alienated by colloquialisms and a lack of information. I promised I’d read to the end.
In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t. As I progressed through The Gunslinger, the points I’d made in my article kept coming back to me. Time and time again, I found myself actually noting down phrases that had put me off. I wasn’t really reading it for fun anymore, just sheer bloody mindedness and as an example of ‘how not to do it’.
There’s one quote that leaves me spluttering with rage. Maybe that’s over the top but King seems to be able to bring out my worst emotions. It’s towards the end of the book, but don’t worry. I could stick whole chapters in this review and it wouldn’t count as a spoiler.

‘The Stranger is a minion of the tower? Like yourself?’
‘Yar. He darkles. He tincts. He is in all times. Yet there is one greater than he.’

Darkles. What the hell does that mean? I had to look it up. Darkles: ‘To appear darkly or indistinctly, to grow dark, to become gloomy.’ And tincts? Dictionary.com was unsure. I went on about a colour or tint but that doesn’t really make sense in the context. Who knows? Maybe it means ‘to turn into a rainbow’.
My point, I think, is that this is really obscure wording which I had to go online to find out the meaning to. I used to have to do that when I was ten and I was reading my first adult book. Since then, not so much. I get the sense that King either read the dictionary as a child or overuses his thesaurus. Possibly both.
My other major problem was the lack of information King was prepared to give me, in terms of what is going on. And, having started that way, King continues this throughout the entire book. Two hundred and thirty ages pages and I am as clueless as I was on page one. Something is going on and there’s been a journey but I’m buggered if I know what any of it means.
We get some back story on the gunslinger’s character, which is nice, in some ways. But I’d actually have preferred not to know about that – mystery is always more interesting in characters – and would much rather have had some information on why the gunslinger is chasing the man in black and how he knows where the man is. It’s never explained. It almost feels like King tried to think of something, couldn’t and decided to offer something vague about the gunslinger knowing the right way regardless.
Having read the whole thing, my last complaint is that the ending chapters are pants. Completely and utterly unwashed pants. They make little to no sense and simply set up the next book, like those films that everybody hates where the director couldn’t help but put in a shot of the monster’s toe twitching. It screams ‘COME BACK AND SPEND MORE MONEY TO SEE HOW IT ENDS! PLEASE, WE NEED THE MONEYS.’
[Spoiler alert, skip the next paragraph if you want to read The Gunslinger.]
The man in black is set up as the villain of the piece. And all that happens when the gunslinger catches him, is they sit across a campfire and discuss ‘the tower’ and some random people who haven’t been mentioned until now, the man in black does a tarot reading then buggers off. That’s it. I was at least expecting the gunslinger to try and shoot the damn man. It was all so boring.
Luckily, the end chapters are short, which is about the only thing in their favour. The last chunk of my book was taken up with a chapter from the next book. I’m not even slightly tempted to read it.
I’m really glad I read books in between reading this. Devoting a week of my life slogging through The Gunslinger would have been torture. And that is my recommendation. If you really really want to read some King, have a few other books waiting for when you get bored. Alternatively, read some of his horror. It might be a bit better.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I’m away from home for six days and I brought The Hunger Games along with me, presuming I’d be busy and therefore not have to time to read it quickly. My first night away and I’d already dived in. The next morning, I’d finished it. I didn’t even realise I’d read through the night until the sunlight was streaming through the windows. My immersion was ruined once throughout the entire book and I’m pretty sure that was because I’d been up for so long.
It’s difficult to find fault with The Hunger Games. It’s a truly vivid story, full of loss, hope and betrayal. And more loss. Actually, if the title hasn’t tipped you off to the amount of misery contained in these 454 pages, then listen well when I say, there’s a lot. And yet, despite that, there is always hope. Collins weaves a sturdy tale but it’s her protagonist, a mix of strong nerves and humanity, who really steals the show. If you fail to engage with sixteen-year-old Katniss, there is something wrong with you.
Here’s the basic premise. It’s sometime in the future, America. There’s one huge city, called Capitol, and twelve other smaller cities that circle it. The smaller cities, known as districts, rebel against Capitol, but they lose. Their punishment is the Hunger Games. Two children from each district, from the age of twelve to eighteen are chosen at random and have to enter an arena, to fight to the death. The last child standing gains their life and extra supplies for their district for the year.
I can’t really tell you any more than that without ruining some of the plot. (If you really want to avoid all spoilers, don’t read the blurb. It gives one of the first events away.) But the premise interested me and Collins’ writing delivers what that premise promises.
I suppose if I had to come up with something about it that I didn’t like, it was that I immediately wanted to go out and buy the next one. I can’t. I’m not close enough to a book shop and it’s half six in the morning.
It’s not often that I read a book I enjoy so much, I cannot find a single thing I thought could have been done better (other than, y'know, sellotaping the second book to it). And I view that as a good thing or these reviews would be incredibly difficult to write.
So, not only do I recommend you read The Hunger Games, I think you should read it right now. Yes, this very second. Go on.

Gunslinger (The first book of King’s Dark Tower series)

I’ve never read the Dark Tower series. I’m not sure why, it’s just one of those thing I had on my ‘to do…eventually’ list. So when it turned up in a discount bookshop I was interested, but not overly. But a friend wanted to know what it was like so I forked out a few quid and decided to give it a go.
I’ve read only one piece of writing of King’s before this and let’s just say, I wasn’t impressed. Check it out if you like. The Man in the Black Suit. Oddly, Gunslinger has a ‘man in black’. Anyway, I found it, at best, boring. The idea had merit but it wasn’t given enough time to develop its full potential in the short story format.
So, I read Gunslinger expecting a mediocre book at best. Aaaaaand that’s pretty much what I got. Perhaps, as a King newbie, I simply don’t get his style and if I persevered, I might grow to like him. But I think a book should be accessible to fans and newcomers alike and I just don’t get this from Gunslinger. He uses a lot of colloquialisms that go right over my head and, because I don’t understand them, I get confused and that completely ruins my immersion.
This is my main problem with King’s writing. At no point did I not know I was reading, which is unusual for me. Every time I hit one of King’s odd words or turns of phrase, I had to stop and re-read the sentence to understand what the word might be referring to. Which would be acceptable if they weren’t on every page.
My other main problem with Gunslinger is the lack of information King gives me. He’s quite happy to tell me that ‘the sky was the yellow color of old cheese’ – and to be honest, that doesn’t really tell me much because I’m not sure how old cheese differs from fresh…and what sort of cheese? Gorgonzola, roule, chedder? – but not, for instance, what the sodding hell is going on, who’s involved or even what time period it’s set in. Hey Jude makes an appearance and there’s mention of ‘coaches’, ‘a café’ and ‘New York’ but so far the only settings that have been mentioned are rocky deserts and a town out of a Wild West film. I can’t picture this world King’s set up and I’m forty pages in.
I will read to the end and I’ll post an addition to this review once I have, but my initial reaction is thus: too difficult to get into and, so far, not worth the effort.