Devices and Desires is the first book of the Engineer trilogy, which follows the life of an engineer exiled from his relatively modern and industrial city.  The reason for the exile is obvious enough at first glance; the engineer has committed the crime of building a device that does not follow the appropriate Specification, an act which the ruling guilds consider an abomination, punishable by death.  Yet even as the engineer struggles to escape from his fate, he conceives of a great engine that he can construct, an Engine which could set the world back on its rightful course... but to do so may require destroying everything he treasured. The writing is engrossing enough, and the characters who become involved in the story are fascinating and realistic.  They are not necessarily sympathetic, however.  Everyone has their own interests and acts accordingly. There were a number of areas where my suspension of disbelief suffering, mostly to do with the setting.  Could an industrial city of the type described here actually thrive in a medieval environment?  I suspect not; the gap between the industrial city and medieval surroundings .  But these concerns do not overly interfere with the enjoyment of the work. Overall, it's a good read and capable of holding the attention, but it won't win prizes for deep thought or careful worldbuilding.  The strength is in the characters.

Yesterday, I went to see Fearless, Jet Li's recent martial arts epic.  It was pretty good, but also pretty much exactly what I expected.  While there, I saw that the theater had allocated one of its screens to a flick called The Illusionist, a movie I had never heard of or seen previews or promos for.  Based on the little title strip with showtimes, it looked interesting, and a few minutes wirelessly checking the reviews on Rotten Tomatos suggested it wasn't awful. 

So I made it a two-movie night and watched.

I was NOT disappointed.  In fact, I was blown away.  I highly recommend this movie.  I won't spoil any of the plot, but the main characters are a stage magician with peasant roots, the daughter of the local nobility, and the crown prince of the Hungarian (I think) Empire.  You can probably see where the plot outline is going, but it doesn't matter; the whole thing is carried off really, really well, and the interesting part is exactly how. 

By way of encouragement, a few things that this movie isn't:

• It's not a mindless halloween horror movie;
• It's not a special effects gee-whiz showpiece;
• It's not a sappy love story;
• It's not a sword-and-sorcery epic;
• It's not a comedy.

I cannot be complementary enough about the acting, the script, the directing... it is a flawless cinematic masterpiece that achieves everything it sets out to do.

The final installment of the Catechist trilogy isn't much different from the previous volumes, other than a few twists at the end. Etjole, Simna, Hunkapa, and Alitah cross an ocean and a salt plain, do battle with a townful of demons and a forestful of undead, and make an agonizingly easy entrance into Hymneth the Possessed's stronghold. Aside from not having read the Evil Overlord List, Hymneth actually does have some character depth, though this is not really explored.

If you got through the second book and are still interested, read on - the ending is satisfying, though it remains fast and light like the rest of the writing.

Having crossed the Sea of Aboqua, Etjole Ehomba and his companions must find passage west across the Semordria Ocean somewhere in the Thinking Kingdoms. Though these kingdoms are supposed to be (and in some ways are) bastions of civilization, they harbor their own unique man-made hazards. Surmounting obstacle after obstacle, the story remains fresh only in the strangeness of the situations; Etjole's seeming invulnerability lends a faery tale quality to the writing that some might term 'shallow'. Sadly, there is no real character development, despite ample opportunity for such, including the addition of another member to the party. In the opening chapter we are treated to our first glimpse of the villain, who is frighteningly cliched. Beyond this diversion, there is little to distinguish this volume from the first in the trilogy. One or two of the trouble spots in which the party finds itself gets resolved in some mysterious way other than Etjole pulling something out of his pack. If you enjoyed the lighthearted playfulness of the first book, by all means continue. The writing doesn't get any heavier, but there is always something weird just around the corner, and for some people that's reason enough to keep turning pages.

The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is composed of  Lord Foul's Bane, The Illearth War, and The Power That Preserves. Thomas Covenant finds his world turned upside down when he contracts leprosy and his wife divorces him, taking their son with her.  Having managed to survive this experience, but never really recover emotionally beyond it, Covenant is universally ostracized by his community.  One day he inexplicably finds himself transported to another world, a dream world that is somehow so full of life that his leprosy starts to fade. But there is a shadow that drains the vitality of this place, and he is called the Despiser, who summoned Covenant to the Land for the purpose of delivering a message of doom to its people.  Thinking this to be the cruelist of all dreams, Covenant can hardly wait for it to end.  But he finds himself drawn further and further into the Land, and regarded as a hero come again by its inhabitants - for he bears a wedding ring of white gold, a substance containing the power to stay the Despiser's hand that can only be wielded by Covenant himself. But the Land cannot be real, and Covenant is overwhelmed by the raw need to survive in the face of beauty so profound that he fears he will be carried away and lose himself in it. For accepting the Land as real and believing his leprosy has been healed is to forget his own world, rendering himself powerless in the face of harsh reality where even the smallest injury can kill him.  The Land needs him, but to save it Covenant must doom himself. So he is forced to watch the death of beauty and the destruction of happiness, knowing he could stop it, if he was only free to act.  The reader aches for Covenant to reach out and touch the vitality that courses through the Land, for Covenant to allow himself to feel something good, to feel awe and wonder.  Donaldson's writing is so rich, so heady... I drink up the words as if I were starved and I am left breathless afterwards. A note of caution - while some love this story, the Chronicles do not sit well with others.  Many of them find Covenant's character to be so offensive that even the vibrant beauty of the Land will not keep them turning pages.  I have a theory on why the reactions are so polarized - what Covenant is going through is very similar to a bout of major depression, and if you've never experienced that personally, it could be very difficult to empathize with the character.  For those of us who have walked that path, Covenant is an intense combination of cathexis and catharsis.  It re-creates the war in head and heart of wanting to embrace something vital and beautiful, something that will destroy us if it is lost again.

Etjole Ehomba is just a herder of sheep and cattle among the small tribe of the Naumkib.  When strange-looking foreigners wash up mostly dead on the beach near their village, Etjole is suddenly propelled on a journey of unknown (but presumably high) difficulty by the dying charge of one of the light-skinned strangers.  Taking up a quest to rescue a woman he has never met from an evil that has already claimed dozens, if not hundreds of lives of those who have already tried, Etjole seems completely outmatched.  He is, after all, only a herdsman. But a person may be one thing and other things besides, and we quickly find out that Etjole is a man of amazing resources.  As we follow his long journey north through numerous perils, we are taken on a tour of one of the more bizarre fantasy worlds in the realm of speculative fiction.  Carnivores pulls off being whimsical, inventive, and alien without letting that weirdness get in the way of the tale itself; rather, the strangeness is woven deftly together with plot and characters, and rarely fails to delight the reader.  The utterly fantastic situations in which Etjole and his new companions find themselves never seem formulaic, and don't quite come across as 'yet another obstacle on the quest' - at least not in the first volume. Carnivores is the first book in a trilogy, and I would recommend it to anyone with a strong imagination - it is certainly light reading, and doesn't evoke strong emotions, but it is an enjoyable tale if you appreciate the mythical.

Valentine Michael Smith was the first human born on Mars, and shortly thereafter the crew of the first exploration vessel to Mars died, leaving the infant in the hands of Martians.  As a young adult, Michael is discovered, 'rescued', and brought back to earth - where he unknowingly causes a storm of political turmoil by being the only living heir of a huge corporation - and the potential 'owner' of Mars itself. Totally devoid of human culture, Michael narrowly escapes death at the hands of a government faction via the wits of a sympathetic nurse, and then escapes having his fortune stripped from him due to the sympathy of a famous writer and lawyer. His immediate future no longer of concern, Michael sets about trying to 'grok' humans with the help of his benefactors.  Along the way we learn that Mike has some unusual powers, gained not from some sort of biological meddling by his Martian parents, but simply from a different way of thinking.  Seeing that the 'discipline' gained by Martian thoughtforms can only help humankind, Mike decides to teach it to the masses, cloaked as a religion. Stranger didn't blow me away, but it was a solid piece of work, if you can get past Heinlein's tendancy to relentlessly and repeatedly promote his philosophies.  He's not as bad as Ann Rand was in Atlas Shrugged, but it's still apparent.  Stranger was written before the brain-eater got Heinlein - none of his female characters are bisexual.  This actually comes across as a little unrealistic, though, given that the primary suite of characters engage in full-blown polyamory; the exploration and appreciation of sexuality being one of the themes of the book. This book is highly variable - it changes pacing frequently; whether or not you care about what's happening on any given page tends to shift.  The characters can seem at one moment hackneyed; in another, all too real.  Many people have said that readers end up either loving or hating this book, but I'll just settle for calling it 'interesting'.  It's becoming a permanent resident on my bookshelf because it's the only speculative fiction work of which I know that directly addresses a particular truth:  if you show people that they can save themselves, that the power of change lays within them - or perhaps in them thinking outside of themselves - they'll either hate you or ignore you.

I have spoken before in this forum on my declining respect for, and interest in, the Anita Blake series.  Nonetheless I have consistently picked up the latest book when it was released, hoping for something of a turnaround or change in direction.  So far I have been disappointed, though not enough to make a firm committment to refuse the next installment.  Danse Macabre may well be bad enough to break that barrier.  Why do I say that?  Simple enough.  My major complaint has been that the sexual and romantic liasons of the main character have taken over the series.  Recent books have almost no plot that does not revolve around Anita's personal life, and supernatural murders are thrown in almost as an afterthought.  Danse Macabre does not even maintain the thin pretext.  Every supernatural threat represents little more than an excuse for Anita to have more sex.  The supposedly non-threatening parts of the plot revolve around Anita choosing someone to have more sex with.  The major plot shocker is whether or not Anita will face the consequences of having unprotected sex with lots of people all the time. And it's just not interesting anymore. Count me out of the next one, unless I can pick it up in a bookstore and open it to random pages without finding mostly sex.

Dzur is Brust's long-awaited followup to Issola in the Vlad Taltos series.  It's an interesting mix of new material and old standbys of the Vlad series.  In terms of series revelations and introductions, I counted at least five or six events of a similar stature to the Lesser Revelation of Orca.  And it's worth noting that the Greater Revelation of that novel is not directly revealed but gets enough in-jokes that it becomes tiresome. In terms of actual plot movement, however, the book is a light one.  Although the book is somewhat heavy on new characters, they don't advance the plot a great deal, and in many ways the book more closely resembles the early Vlad novels than the more recent ones.  Forced by circumstances to confront the Jhereg (both the Right and Left Hand thereof), Vlad finds himself resorting to older methods and haunting his older territories.  In that respect the book was more familiar and somewhat more disappointing.  I felt it could easily have taken place earlier in the life of the character and the series, and were it not for the Greater Spoiler of Issola, should have.  There's a certain episodic quality since little of long-range import was resolved.  It's hard to say whether this piece of the series is disappointing or just surprising.  That's going to depend on how the new elements in the series are used in future novels.  This is definitely a wait-and-see-before-judging book.  It was, however, a fun read for a longstanding fan of the series.  The problem is that Dzur both tastes great and is less filling, and only one of those things is a compliment.

I have never read the novel by Phillip K. Dick.  I will at some point, because the film seemed more a character study of drug addicts than anything else.  It was a visual feast of rotoscoped character study, but still a character study.  Beyond the lovely plot twist at the end, Scanner doesn't have much to recommend it.  This is a movie about how addictive drugs mess up people's lives.  It's not preachy about it, and it's funny at times, but the basic subject matter is rather depressing. 

Despite what the previews may have lead you to believe, had you not already read the book, Scanner doesn't fit much in the sci-fi genre.  Aside from the blur suits the agents wear to protect their identities while in the office, technology takes a back seat in this one.  Even the police-espionage aspect of it is very, very muted.

I'd recommend Trainspotting over Scanner on the subject of drugs, but you won't find a review of it here, as it is not speculative fiction.

Nine years after Dies the Fire, an unsteady truce reigns over western Oregon.  Mike Havel's Bearkillers and Juniper Mackenzie's Wiccan clans, along with some other loose federations, are strong enough to have prevented the despot Norman Arminger from overruning them - so far.  Occupying the rich farmlands south of Portland, these groups have quickly adapted to life after the Change, and have thriving societies with bustling economies. Their cultures are starting to take root, too - the younger generations know nothing of gunpowder, electricity, or gasoline beyond stories from the adults.  Most members of the Mackenzies have converted to the Wiccan religion, even though tolerance is still upheld as valuable anywhere outside of the Protector's territory.  The Bearkillers are finding more and more of  J.R.R. Tolkein's fictional traditions woven into their lives, even the elven language itself, thanks to a couple of young die-hard fans. The Bearkillers and Mackenzies have their share of minor problems, both internal and external, but they're worried about the threat from Portland, because Arminger will never leave them in peace.  To spice things up, a ship from Tasmania lands near Portland bearing some new characters.  This book is not aptly named, as it covers events that are leading up to the showdown that will be the conclusion of the series, but not the war itself. Stirling's descriptive writing of the Oregon countryside and the beautific settlements the main characters have created within it are nice, but sometimes painfully slow.  I appreciate an author taking the time to describe the setting in detail, but something needs to be happening during those descriptions.  I found myself skimming over them to get to the meat of the story.  Passages about the technological developments spark interest, and of course the conflicts between the primary forces in the book are always fascinating. The Wiccansim and Tolkeinism gets laid on a little thickly - it comes across as somewhat cheesy at times (imagine a 25-year-old woman pointing to a hang glider she has just sighted and calling out, "Nazgul!" as a warning).  Flaws aside, this is an entertaining read, and the sheer speculation involved in a drastically Changed world will keep you turning pages.

The creative exercise in this book is the cheap and easy creation of human 'dittos', copies of one's mind complete with a body, albiet one that only lasts 24 hours.  Once the life of a ditto is nearly over, its creator can inload its memories, effectively allowing people to experience multiple lifespans.  Even the poorest people can create at least one ditto a day to earn a wage as an unskilled laborer.  Others do more interesting things with their copies, anything from selling them as specialized courteseans, to experiencing thrills much too risky for a real body, to creating a team of hyper-focused detectives. The latter is the MO of Albert Morris, whose various selves independently stumble onto some disturbing happenings that seem to be unrelated at first - but when the creator of the primary dittoing technology, his chief scientist, and the scientist's daughter are all involved, things get interesting quickly. Like Brin's other works, Kiln People starts at a reasonably fast pace and maintains it for the entirety of the story.  This is especially impressive since his four first-person points of view are of Albert and his three dittos, and the entire book only spans a handful of days.  The book is also nice and long, the paperback weighs in at a meaty 567 pages.  Brin continually delights with little details of how dittotech has impacted society, though his prose is nothing special and I was not particularly attached to any of the characters.  All in all, a good solid speculative work of science fiction.

The blurb on the back cover by the San Francisco Chronicle describes this stand-alone novel as "Michael Chrichton meets Robert Ludlum, with a big scoop of The Manchurian Candidate thrown in for good measure.... [it] will keep you guessing."  Well, it certainly kept me guessing - among other things, I still can't figure out why Bear switched his first-person point of view midway through the book to a different character, after 196 pages (paperback) of solid writing with the primary character.  It may have been the only way to tell that particular part of the story, but it felt incredibly awkward, and the quality of the story went nowhere but downhill after this point.  The viewpoint switches a few more times throughout the book. If Michael Chrichton ever met Robert Ludlum, it would be in a dark alley, and Ludlum would clock Chrichton upside the head for not being able to write decent endings, among other things.  Vitals does have some of the weird science aspects of Chrichton, but it also shares Chrichton's annoying tendancy to write himself into a corner towards the end.  Vitals does not, in any way, shape, or form, compare even remotely to Ludlum's mastery of espionage.  In the first half of the book we are tantalized with the possibility of the main character getting trained to avoid assasination, but it falls through.  The rest of the book is like this - possibilities of interesting things just around the corner, but the author never takes us there. Vitals certainly has its creepy moments, and the first 196 pages are excellent.  But overall, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone other than a die-hard sci-fi fan, and even then only if they were stuck in an airport for five hours with nothing else to read.  It will pass the time.  There is certainly a lot more sci-fi out there that is drastically worse; I can't complain about Bear's prose, though it also has nothing outstanding about it either.  But there is certainly a lot more sci-fi out there that is obviously better.

So there's a new vampire movie out, and I really need a few hours to sit and take in someone else's vision of impossibility with the hope of seeing something cool.  These factors combined to put me in a theater seat watching Ultraviolet, despite having nothing more than the posters and the previews to go on.

I'll give you the short version: it's bad.  Really bad.  So bad I'm surprised I sat through the whole thing (which probably had a lot to do with the fact that if I didn't, I would have to start thinking again -- something that I was trying to avoid in the few hours between work and more work that I had).

For starters, imagine a science fiction world where a disease has separated the world into "hemophages" (pseudo-vampires who have fangs but are never pictured sucking blood) and normal humans.  These vampires have become terrorists because the rest of the world is afraid of getting infected and treats them with prejudice and discrimination.  Then realize that all the special effects are CGI-based -- really, really, really bad CGI.  The actress is a dead ringer for the vampiress in Razor Blade Smile (and in fact her character is very similar as well), and might even be the same person -- it's hard to tell, because Razor Blade Smile is fairly old and one of the CGI effects is applied to blur and whiten the main character's face in closeups.  I can only presume that they are too cheap to buy makeup.

That said, and similar again to Razor Blade Smile, the movie has a few moments of coolness; a duel with flaming swords in pitch dark, a high-speed motorcycle chase aided by an antigravity generator, electrostatic costume changes... but they aren't worth it, I promise.  Unless you're really bored.

According to Amazon, there's a new Anita Blake novel due out Febuary 28th, titled simply Micah (named for one of the prominent characters in the last three novels). There's an interesting twist. Amazon is listing it as a paperback. I presume that means that Ms. Hamilton has been downgraded from the hardcover list due to lackluster sales of her last Blake novel, Incubus Dreams, or the intervening Meredith Gentry novels. I actually think that's a good thing; the Gentry novels were unashamed soft-core pornography and the recent Blake novels weren't much better. I'm much more interested in magic, vampires, werewolves, and murder mysteries than I am in reading a thousand pages of nonstop sexual orgy. Perhaps the declining sales will deliver the point to the publishers and the author in a way that online commentary may not necessarily accomplish. In paperback, I'll buy it, and I'll have a review here soon after. UPDATE: Careful reading of the Amazon review indicates that the situation is a little more complex. Micah is a shorter novel (288 pages) intended as an entry point for new readers, another indication of potentially flagging sales -- the publisher is trying to get new readers hooked because the existing reader base isn't buying as much as they would like. It will be followed, in June, with a full-length novel: Danse Macabre. UPDATE: Micah is out in my local Barnes and Noble. Reporting wirelessly from the scene... UPDATE: Micah didn't really do much for me.  About equal parts sex, relationship angst, and supernatural spook.  Nothing really to recommend it especially, though the sex didn't grate nearly so badly as in the last full-length novel.

In Dies the Fire, author SM Stirling explores the consequences of an event that alters the fundamental principles of the universe such that modern technology -- particularly firearms, engines, and electricity -- no longer function.  In the time between the onset of the event and the first harvest, the characters must face the physical challenge of survival in a changed world, while devising new social and moral structures better adapted to that world.  Unsurprisingly, survival without modern technology demands a basically feudal structure -- and not every would-be king has the best interests of his people at heart.  The Protector's War picks up the thread about 8 years later.  The chaos and starvation immediately following the event have subsided, and a variety of stable social structures have been formed.  The British Isles have reverted to monarchy;  America has a number of independent domains in a loose alliance, and a would-be emperor who believes his knowledge of medieval history amounts to manifest destiny.  Conflict is inevitable; but can the remnants of modern America learn fast enough to prevail, without losing their souls in the process? In some ways, this novel is misnamed.  The Protector's War does not cover the war itself.  Instead, it provides the prelude to an inevitable war between the feudal armies of the Protector (also a misnomer!) and the loose alliance of the free peoples.   An anticipated third volume will presumably complete the saga.  That said, there's little room for disappointment.  The hints of how the rest of the world has handled the situation are welcome, and provide an interesting perspective to the experiences of the familiar characters.  With the immediate threat of starvation averted, and years of time elapsed, there is an opportunity to explore a more mature social response to the changed world, and Stirling takes full advantage of it, depicting how his chosen characters mold the original loose associations they founded into mature and lasting societies capable of responding to external threats.  I highly recommend this series as a thoughtful exploration of the interaction between technology and society.  Although there is more than enough material for the traditional fantasy epic, Stirling has consistently avoided the direct appeals to emotion and individual heroism that are the hallmark of such tales.  Instead, he keeps his distance and allows the characters to find their own ways to survive and thrive in a relatively non-judgemental fashion.  The reader is invited to make judgements, of course, as do the characters themselves; but the author's perspective remains fairly neutral.  The focus is clearly on the evolution (or de-evolution) of social structures, including their response to a threatening neighbor, rather than a simple adventure story.  And that, ultimately, is what keeps it interesting.

It seems that there's an effort underway to build support for season 2 of Firefly.  If you'd be interested in such a thing, sign up, because the networks have already demonstrated that they won't support anything as libertarian as this.

The original Underworld could best be described as a movie made according to the rules of the World of Darkness roleplaying universe from White Wolf, postulating a supernatural underside to our familiar world where vampires and werewolves battle endlessly, with a plot based on cliches filtered through the rules of Hollywood scriptwriting.  Despite that, it actually worked pretty well.  The key, as with many such movies, is to ignore the plot holes, physics errors, and lack of characterization, instead focusing on shiny things that go bang, fanged cool factor, and Kate Beckinsale in a shiny skintight corset-enabled piece of tactical eveningwear.

The sequel, Evolution, has all the advantages of its predecessor, and fewer disadvantages.  The script is better, though still definitely an action movie script; the action scenes lack the awkward moments that occasionally showed up in the first.  The romantic interest of the two main characters is inevitable, but having been established in the first movie now takes up much less exposition time -- which is instead spent on mild plot twists.  The special effects are similar in feel, but improved significantly.  Fight choreography is smoother, and more realistic, although not always cinematic due to realistic fighting being less flashy.  Bonus points for ammunition management; characters actually reloaded multiple times and ran out of ammunition eventually.

Definitely no deep meaning to this one, but I enjoyed it.

A couple years ago, I started to have an idea for a novel.  It wasn't the first such idea; I have several kicking their way around my head.  I don't have time to write more than a chapter or two in brief spurts, but I let the ideas percolate and refine.  Eventually, I will have that time, and hopefully the ideas will be timeless by then.  Or something. But at least one of those ideas is now out of the running, thanks to S. M. Stirling's Dies the Fire; he has simply done it, and done it well enough that I doubt I will follow down that particular path.  What was the idea?  Simple: take the modern world as it is today, or close to it, and postulate some Event that prevents much of modern technology from functioning.  It doesn't matter exactly how it works; what matters is how humanity copes with the results, which will effectively revert the world to the middle ages.  The important things that make up modern civilization, for this purpose, are: electricity (computers, power delivery), explosives (including gunpowder and gasoline), and steam engines.  My idea was primarily concerned with firearms, and the effects of their removal: without them, the human race is back in direct competition with animals and each other by strength and speed.   By removing firearms from the equation, which act as a remarkable equilizer in allowing smaller, weaker, and relatively untrained human beings to defend themselves on an equal footing with large trained soldiers, the world is forced to revert to feudalism.  This has the obvious consequences on the civil rights of women, racial minorities, and those who simply aren't good at personal violence. Stirling explores the idea very well, with a number of distinct and interesting characters he follows from the first moments after the Change through the formation of new social structures and the first season's harvest.  Psychologists, anthropologists, fantasy readers, survivalists, SCA members, even wiccans will all find something interesting in this book.  Kudo's to the author for telling it first, and possibly better.  There's a sequel out, The Protector's War.  It's sitting on my to-read shelf right now. UPDATE: The Smallest Minority also reviews this book briefly.

So I went to see the first movie in the Narnia sequence last week.  I was hopeful; the trailers presented an image of a movie in the tradition of Jackson's Middle Earth, based around a classic fantasy series from the same period and sticking faithfully to the work of the original author.  It should have worked out well, with the ground already broken, assuming the people involved were competent; instead, the result was disappointing.

Don't get me wrong -- The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was not by any means a bad movie.  In fact, if you put aside Jackson's trilogy, it's the best adaptation of a fantasy novel in a long time, and probably the best fantasy movie for the same period.  (At any rate, nothing aside from Jackson is coming to mind that could compete -- I should note here that I am not a Potter fan and have not seen those movies).  It's definitely a well done movie, and if it doesn't quite reach epic quality, they still have quite a few books to go. 

However.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe tried very hard to match Jackson's feat with The Lord of the Rings, and unfortunately failed.  The movie was ambitious, reaching high er than they could manage to support.  The basics were done right, and done well; but they put in a lot of effort to reach higher than just a basic fantasy adaptation, and when they failed to reach the heights, the failure brings down the rest of the work.

So what exactly was wrong with it?  Emphatically NOT the source material.  The adaptation was relatively faithful to the source, as adaptations go.  Most of the scenes were taken directly from the book.  Unfortunately, simply taking scenes directly doesn't work well; to fit into a visual medium the scenes need to have connecting material, so that they avoid becoming a visual storyboard.  The written language provides for transitions, and those transitions were notably lacking, giving the latter half of the movie a very incoherent and disconnected feeling.

The special effects were ambitious, as well, and unfortunately failed to convince.  The characters of Mr. Tummnus and the badgers were done very, very well, but once the scale opened up a bit the quality of the effects suffered. 

The one character who didn't need any special effects for her person, the Witch, was also subtly wrong; partially her costume, which was intended to evoke frozen material and was thus overly stiff and almost cardboardish, but also her acting.  Perhaps best described as "almost, but not quite".  The actress picked up very well on many of the subtle cues that the Witch should present, allowing the audience to realize her true nature while concealing it from Edmund, but then emphasized those cues to the point of no longer being subtle at all.

Finally, the movie demonstrated what appears to be near-complete ignorance of the movie's allegorical nature.  It's a Christian tale at heart, Lewis's retelling of Eden, and while it is supposed to be subtle, it's almost not there at all in the movie.  I don't consider this necessarily to be a flaw, since there's no reason to think that they would have gotten it right had they tried to include it, but remaking the whole Chronicles of Narnia without that as a foundation is likely to fail.

On the whole, it's not worth raving about, but it is worth seeing if you were a fan of Narnia.  It won't do any major damage to the books.  But it doesn't meet the standard set by Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, so don't go in hoping for that.

In my earlier review of Coyote, I described it as a fairly normal interstellar colonization story with a hint of politics in the background.  Coyote Rising, the sequel, makes those politics somewhat more explicit, but they are still far short of actually driving the story in a manner similar to, for example, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.  That's not a good thing when the point of the story is supposed to be the politics. The original colonists on Coyote were rebels, political dissidents who stole their spacecraft from the dictatorial tyrrany that built it.  They had years to settle into life on their new world, but the government on Earth (no longer the same one they had fled, though it's replacement is similarly collectivist) has used those years to build more colonization craft.  When those craft begin to arrive, they bring with them a corrosive ideology and the soldiers to enforce it.  The original colonists are forced to flee their homes and live in hiding, scratching out a living from the harsh and unfamilar planet while looking for a way to reclaim their planet from the new arrivals.  It's a perfect settling for a retelling of the American Revolution, and the author makes a good attempt.  But the traditional weaknesses of science fiction writing are poor characterization and difficult in telling an emotionally moving story, and this book suffers from those flaws in spades.  That said, it's by no means a failure.  It's just not a smashing success.  If you enjoyed Coyote you'll enjoy it's sequel, and it's easy to pass a few hours in the reading without regretting them.

Imagine a socialist paradise that bankrupts itself to develop a single interstellar spacecraft, the USS Alabama, designed to escape the solar system and colonize a new world, called Coyote.  Imagine that the colonists for this new world have been carefully selected by the government, emphasizing political loyalty as much as scientific knowledge.  Imagine that in this dystopian society, dissidents who remember the dream of Liberty are regularly rooted out, arrested, and shipped to reeducation camps in cattle cars.  And, finally, imagine that the captain of the USS Alabama, one Robert E Lee, is just such a dissident -- as yet undetected, and leader of a conspiracy to seize the Alabama, replacing her crew on the eve of launch with a new set of colonists.  Colonists who remember freedom. If you can imagine that without straining your suspension of disbelief, you'll do just fine with this novel, which presents a fairly normal interstellar colonization story with a hint of politics in the background.  It's not a story that will make a vast emotional impact; in fact, many of the events which might be expected to have such an impact are downplayed.  Don't come into this story hoping for a rousing tale of freedom versus oppression; it will not deliver that, and does not try.  (That attempt appears to be reserved for the sequel, Coyote Rising).  While the book will hold your interest, it does not rate special notice.  Colonization junkies will be disappointed by the lack of detailed challenges to be overcome related to the new world, and political junkies will be disappointed by the lack of rhetoric or emotional impact.  If the book has a strong point, it would be interpersonal relations, and even that aspect is too weak to carry the whole story. The only reason I can see to read this novel is to set up the sequel.

I was first introduced to CS Friedman's work with the Coldfire Trilogy, an excellent exploration of the consequences of introducing humans into a world where magic is shaped by belief -- and thus gives life to our worst nightmares.  I quickly located her other extant works, The Madness Season (with which I was similarly delighted) and In Conquest Born...  which was a story with potential, but which ultimately disappointed me.  The Wilding is a follow-up to In Conquest Born, and the results are similar.  The known universe for both books includes two warring empires, the Braxins and the Azeans, both human-based races with substantial changes to the base.  The Braxins focused on physical prowess, producing warriors of great strength, great skill, and greater ruthlessness; the Azeans produced telepaths.  In Conquest Born pitted the greatest of both races against one another, with unexpected results; The Wilding picks up centuries later, with the consequences.  Unfortunately, the tale fails to compel.  In the first novel, it could be argued that the two empires were an elaborate storytelling device designed to represent the tension between the sexes that results in such powerful emotions as love... and hate.  Even though the novel failed to clearly make that case, and ended up without anything useful to say, The Wilding completely abandons it; instead relying on a simple adventure tale to carry the story.  That, too, falls short, but not disastrously -- except in that the elements of the plot rely for their greater meaning almost entirely on the events of the first.  Unfortunately I cannot recommend either novel.  But if you liked In Conquest Born, and have some emotional investment in the results, it might be worth reading the followup.  If not, don't bother.

The latest and long-awaited book in George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, A Feast For Crows, was released on November 8.  The book's delivery represents the end of a long wait for fans of the series, although -- prodded most likely by the degeneration of Jordan's Wheel of Time series -- most fans seem to prefer to wait long enough for Martin to get it right rather than demanding a quick release; and in the face of continuing difficulty with the scope of the work, Martin eventually split the book he had planned into two, publishing what he was done with and leaving the remainder of what he had planned for the next book.  The result is a clear triumph, and vindicates that decision.  So what made it in, and what was left out?  Well, it's simplest to tell you what isn't here.  The Queen of Dragons, Daenarys, is not in the book, except in the form of persistent rumors and a preview chapter to the sequel.  Events in the North, particularly on the Wall, are not covered, although we hear of some by rumor or recollection after the fact.  We do see events in Dorne, Kings Landing, Braavos, Oldtown, and other areas, mostly in the south.  The author has described A Feast for Crows as a transition book; he's setting up the characters, many of whom began the series as children, to spend time growing up a little.  Some of the most obvious candidates for this are Arya, Bran, and Tommen; while Tommen is pretty much confined to the Iron Throne, and Bran is off-camera, there are some very promising hints about what Arya is busy doing and what Sam will end up doing, along with Tommen beginning to show a bit of personality.  However, they are all definitely setup, rather than the passage of years. In some ways this book is calmer than the first three in the series.  There are no devasting revelations, though there is no shortage of minor ones.  The characters mostly proceed along their expected paths, adding more detail to what had been previously only speculation, and seeking to secure their positions, however high or humble, as the chaos of warfare recedes.  But do not be discouraged -- a fair amount of this effect is due to the release of multiple sample chapters, each one setting the course of one of the main viewpoint characters in the book.  While the book lacks the dramatic action and conflict of earlier books, it provides a different sort of pleasure -- watching Martin set up his characters to take the stage again, and both predicting and anticipating how the arrangements being made will result.  Prophecy plays a somewhat larger role in this volume than in prior works.  One of the main characters (I won't say which) recalls a prophecy they were given some time ago, and that prophecy goes a long ways towards explaining some of that character's actions.  The appropriate use of prophecy is minimal; in the prior volumes Martin kept close to that standard, with hints of prophecy in the background that never quite took center stage.  The more central use of prophecy to this character as a motivator for their actions is interesting, and potentially beneficial to the story, but also presents a risk of overdoing it.  Hopefully Martin will keep this new prominence limited mainly to a single character.

The Family Trade is probably best described as a unusual take on the usual sort of crossover story.  The heroine, a trade journalist who has just uncovered the details of a massive money laundering scheme, finds herself at loose ends when her magazine's ownership turns out to be involved.  As if avoiding the goodfellas and finding a new job wasn't enough to worry about, her adoptive parents finally reveal the details of her birth family, along with her mother's personal effects and newspaper articles suggesting she was murdered, with a sword, in the middle of a 20th century city. Something doesn't quite add up, and the key may be the strange silver locket left around her mother's neck, a locket that just might represent a gate between worlds; a gate that only Miram's family can use.  But there's more to families than just parents, and the rest of Miram's relatives won't welcome interference in their enterprise. Unlike the vast majority of crossover novels, this one has some serious meat to it.  Rather than dumping the heros from one world into another and forcing them to quest for a portal back, in this world going back and forth is easy enough.  In fact, it's the basis of a thriving import/export business.  The implications of individuals capable of moving between worlds at will are well and truly explored, making this novel more of a science fiction exploration of ideas than a fantasy escape.  While written smoothly and without glaring flaws in the plotting, it does have the usual problems for a science fiction novel: minor characters are not especially well defined, and the book serves mainly as an introduction to the mileu which will be explored in sequels.  Supposedly the sequels will attempt to apply the economic principles of capitalism to a medieval economy based on the trade of ideas and goods between the worlds.  It's an interesting idea and I'll probably pick it up (the sequel is already out).  But don't expect this volume to be more than a novel-length teaser.