Mirror Sight by Kristen Britain (2014) [A5]

I made some good progress in continuing The Green Rider series this summer by actually getting two done! I posted about Blackveil already about a month ago, but I had actually read them back-to-back, because as I stated in that post, there was a CONFUSING cliffhanger ending.

I am going to preface the rest of this post about Mirror Sight with the note that I did NOT like this book in the series. I absolutely get the point of it and why it happened, but it really took away from what I have loved about this series. Ok, now moving on.

There were a few things I did like, such as some of the new characters weren't too bad, the explanation of the history was interesting and I got to find out what happened to Karigan at the end of the last book. She - SPOILER - time-travelled! I really cannot write anymore about this book without massive spoilers, so if you do not want to know, stop reading now or continue at your own risk!

One of the things that took the longest to be revealed in this installment of the series is what the hell was going on with Lord Amberhill. I wasn't a huge fan of his character in the first place and what I learned about him in the book made me like him even less. Granted, I do have to concede that everything that happens is not wholly his fault, but his lust of money and power did not help the situation. Additionally, what you find out in this book has repercussions for when Karigan travels back to the past of her own time. The whole thing is getting out of hand, I tell ya!

The time travel takes place into the future. Not distant future, but future enough for things to change quite a bit. The two most important being machines and fire arms. I particularly liked how the author dealt with Karigan encountering guns because they're quite overpowered for the benefit they would bring to her own timeline. So, to counteract Karigan's interactions with them, she can't actually see them clearly, her mind goes fuzzy and she absolutely cannot wield them. I thought was very clever because it was always clear that Karigan would do anything to get back to her own time to stop what happens in the future.

As I mentioned, some of the new future characters were not to bad. The Professor and Cade were among the alright ones, some were heinous and others were obviously there to provide context. I usually like most of the characters, but so many of these ones were just disposable because of the future timeline. There were some interesting guest appearances that I didn't see coming either. Those were quite fun. They really tied the history of what happened together.

There were some 'present day' -- as in Karigan's previous timeline present day -- glimpses and how some of the things Karigan was doing in the future actually echoed back through time. Especially occurrences that were linked to her being a Rider.

Again, the ending of this one was a bit weird and something happens to Karigan that I'm not sure how it will effect the story in the next books. My friend that got me on to this series says the next one, Firebrand, is her favourite. I have time slated after I am finished my class this semester to power through the next two books and the collection of short stories that cam out between books 6 & 7. I need to know what happens!

Book Club 2.0 - - - Horns by Joe Hill

Welcome! We're back to our regular scheduled programming with Book Club! This means its back to choosing a new book every month and seeing where that take us! To start off our new round we did Horns by Joe Hill, son of the famed Stephen King (if you didn't already know).

The plot follows Ig Parrish after he wakes up from a bender on the one-year anniversary of his girlfriend's death to horns growing out of his head. Everyone around him starts confessing their sins to him so he decides to use his new found power to try and find her killer.

I honestly don't even know where to start with this book. The ratings of it were mixed. Valid points were made for and against the book. I personally was kind of okay with it. It definitely kept me engaged and I wanted to keep reading. However, some parts of it were hard to get through and other parts made NO sense at all -- 'tree house of the mind' anyone?

None of the characters were likable, and the two that had any redeeming qualities - Terry and Glenda - they still weren't that great. It was nice at the end of the novel that these two had decently wrapped up and happy endings, because no one else in the novel did. It was a crazy mess from start to finish with the amount of bizarre and ridiculous stuff that went down. Like I said, I really don't know where to go with this book.

We did agree, when discussing the book, that the flashback parts to when the characters are teenagers were the most real and best written parts. However, there were some really problems with the story as well... it is homophobic, racist and every female character is a given a Madonna-whore complex. In fact, the representation of every single female in the book is really, really bad. We talked about this aspect at length. It also didn't help that none of the characters had any growth throughout the novel either.

"Horror is genre of literature, film, and television that is meant to scare, startle, shock, and even repulse audiences. The key focus of a horror novel, horror film, or horror TV show is to elicit a sense of dread in the reader through frightening images, themes and situations" (www.masterclass.com). I mostly thought this book was just shocking. If you've read it, do you think it fits the horror genre?

Anyway, Janean did find a really funny Goodreads review of it in the form of a drinking game. It was quite the crack up: find it here. We agreed that we could get quite drunk following the rules of the game.

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Of course I watched the 2013 adaptation of the book starring good ol' Dan Rad. And... I have no words. Like I was completely stunned the whole time...

The people confessing their sins parts were so awkward and uncomfortably hilarious. It was jarring to go between the serious parts of Ig trying to deal with his situation and the bizarre parts of the horrible CGI snakes and cring-y confessions. The made Terry so damaged in the film that I didn't not like his character at all. Just so many questionable decisions on what was going in this film.

And then there was the ending! Like... What the actual fuck?! I can't.. I just can't... I'm done. Wow.

Audiobooks, The Second Coming: The Ravenor Trilogy (Yes, its more Warhammer.)

We actually finished this trilogy over the course of the end of 2020 and the first part of 2021. The Ravenor books are the sequel trilogy to the Eisenhorn novels that were my first delve into full-length audiobooks. This set of stories follow Eisenhorn's protégé, Gideon Ravenor, and his quest to take down a heretic from the elite Cognitae group. 

As per usual, Dan Abnett is a fantastic writer for the world of Warhammer 40K. And, again, Toby Longworth is a fantastic narrator for these audio versions. My husband also got a hold of the short-story collection: The Definitive Casebook of Gregor Eisenhorn, which includes the novella The Magos and has by far one of my favourite characters in it: the magos biologis Valentin Drusher. The Casebook is a bunch of background stories that feed into the Eisenhorn books and the Ravenor trilogy.

Where do I even start? I guess, first big change between them is that the Ravenor trilogy takes place over a shorter time frame than the other. Eisenhorn's novels span decades to come to a resolution, whereas the Ravenor storyline is only just a year, maybe slightly more. Second, Eisenhorn's novels were more memoir and detective novel-ish, whereas the Ravenor ones are more like a crime/police novel... I'm not sure how to quite explain it, but they've got a different feel to them for sure.

I really like that some the characters from Eisenhorn's band of followers switch over to Ravenor's retinue after the events in Hereticus. It definitely helped me get more engaged right off the hop to have familiar names and personalities present. Ravenor is by no means an easy protagonist to connect with due to his mental and bodily state after the catastrophic events on Thracian Primaris in the previous trilogy. His mental powers could come off as invasive to some, but it is how he operates to get his job done. And unless the reader is able to picture spectral forms on a mental astral plane by just the written word, then some of the descriptions in the book could be difficult to grasp as well.

The Ravenor books also have a lot more to do with chaos demons than Eisenhorn's trilogy. The whole main plot revolves around the sale of a 'drug' called flects that allow the user to look into the realm of chaos and experience a type of high, albeit it with a really nasty downward spiral side effect. The drug is what wraps Ravenor up in the desperate hunt for the leader of a cell of Cognitae members. This of course gets Ravenor and his band into perilous danger again and again.

I enjoyed that there was a sub-plot of a love story in these ones, and it didn't involve the main character. And it was actually two love stories. Not really something to expect from a 40K novel. However, I will say that neither of them took away from the main story and they did add a little bit of levity without being overdone or in your face. It helped me sympathize with some of the characters more and made the ending of the trilogy more heart-wrenching too. I liked it. Give me a bit of tragedy with my joy.

EDIT: I totally forgot to include the hilarious parts about Wystan Frauka. Wystan is Ravenor's 'untouchable', a person with with psychic abilities do not work on or around. Untouchables make the people around them very uncomfortable and frightened because they are blank. Anyway, Wystan loves pornographic novels and chain-smoking. Almost every scene he is in is hilarious because he is ALWAYS reading the smutty novels on his data-slate and even takes to reading them to their comatose teammate Zael to keep him "entertained".

While I liked the Ravenor trilogy, I still like the Eisenhorn ones better. It was nice to catch up and carry on with some of the characters stories, but after journeying with Gregor, you can tell some of them are starting to feel a little worn out by the time they join Ravenor. That's all well and good, and everyone is entitled to feel haggard after a life of aiding an Inquisitor, but it shows in the way the books end. Which is why I will always like the first trilogy better. Sorry, Ravenor fans.

We did listen to The Magos after we finished Ravenor's books and it was fun. Very different from the other novels in this storyline. We also plan to listen to the Bequin trilogy as well sometime. The first and second novels are out -- the second one having been published only just this year. The third one is forthcoming, so we might wait to binge all three in a row. They take place MUCH later in the overall timeline, so I'm curious to see how that goes.

The Jane Aust-a-thon: Sanditon

Book Club wrapped up the Jane Aust-a-thon in August, but since I started grad school I haven't had a lot of time to catch up on my blogging. Plus, I absolutely wanted to watch the 8-part adapted mini series of Sanditon (2019) before I wrote about the book.

Sanditon is Austen's final novel, but it is incomplete. There have been plenty of continuations to the story written by other authors, even one attempt by Austen's niece that ended after she reached 113 pages. It was really interesting to read an unfinished book and discuss our speculations on where Austen may have been headed with it.

We talked a lot about how many of the characters in Sanditon seemed to combinations or full circles of previous characters she had written; like Sir Edward and Willoughby, or Charlotte Heywood and Catherine Morland. The ensemble of characters also seemed more caricature-ish than in her previous works. Also noted was that Charlotte is the main protagonist, but she is not written that way. She doesn't have as much of a main character presence as Austen's other heroines.

Other notable topics of discussion were the unpolished quality of it. Obviously it was unfinished, but it still seemed less mature than Persuasion. There was also the comedy of some of the characters, especially the 'toasting bread' scene with Arthur Parker.

With an unfinished novel, it was difficult to discuss more in-depth on themes and such. So, this is where I will move into my evaluation and review of the mini-series!

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First of all, the cast for this adaptation was pretty great. Anne Reid as Lady Denham took the cake. She was brusque, rude and entitled; everything I expected from the character as on the page. Rose Williams as Charlotte was just the right combination of classic Austen heroine and naive country girl. She stood well against the ridiculousness of the other characters. Theo James as the long-expected Sidney Parker was an interesting choice, but as he has NO development on the page, the adaptation did take some entertaining turns with his character.

The series was created by Andrew Davies of countless previous period drama adaptations fame. He did 1995's Pride and Prejudice, 2016's War & Peace and Bridget Jone's Diary. With him at the helm, the series had a bit more intrigue and impropriety than would normally be expected of an Austen adaptation, but that's what I liked about it. There was heat, unrest, and financial liability in amongst the outrageous escapades of the ensemble cast. All of the character development present in the book takes place in show's first episode. From there Davies was able to go a little over the top with the story, while also keeping it (mostly) in line with what is expected of an Austen adaptation.

However, unlike your typical Austen, 2019's Sanditon adaptation does not have a happy ending. It actually ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger. (I don't think this is a spoiler? Sorry if it is!) I think the anticipation was there would be a season two, but then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and things in the entertainment industry took a big hit. Luckily, as of July 2021, a second season was announced, but along with it came the departure of Theo James from the show. Guess it will be interesting to see what Davies does with the story going forward?