So yesterday my friend Mike and I went to see the latest film in the Conjuring Universe The Nun, a film that works as a prequel to the series, but certainly requires viewers have seen the previous films or they will be spoiled.
The Nun is the fifth film in the series and although I wasn't quite as excited to see it as I was Annabelle Creation (mostly because I had seen other films by the director), in for a penny in for a pound as they say.
Set in 1952 the film follows Sister Irene (Taisa Farmiga) and Father Burke ( Demián Bichir) as they investigate a recent death at a convent in Romania. As can be expected in any type of horror film, there is a spooky old building, a number of jump scares and a sinister backstory for the duo to uncover.
In the end the film was a fun watch, but stand up as well as either of the main Conjuring Films or as well as Annabelle Creation (Still haven't seen the original Annabelle - maybe someday).
So if you're a fan of the series, check it out, otherwise perhaps check out some great classic Hammer films for a similar feel.
In Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland's 2017 novel The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. mixes the speculative fiction concept of time-travel with government bureaucracy and although it was a touch long for my taste, it was, in the end, a fun examination of how bureaucracies can ruin pretty much everything.
The novel follows a Linguistics doctor named Melisande Stokes, who after having a particularly disastrous run in with her academic supervisor, runs into a mysterious government officer who offers her a job.
The majority of the novel is told from Melisande's point of view, and is written as a document she has deposited in a bank from Victoria England, where she has been trapped in the past. Other characters and story elements get focus through internal memos, newspaper clippings, personal journals, etc.
The novel focuses on exactly how a government agency might go about setting itself up with a time-travel based department, and the increasingly byzantine obligations put on it as its importance raises over time.
Although it works strongest in concepts, rather than person to person interaction, in the end I found it to be quite a fun read.
Christian Cameron's God of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great (2012) is the last on my list of historical fiction set in Ancient Greece to focus on the Macedonian King during his life. Although I've still got six more books to go (and another by Cameron), this was the last to deal Alexander as a living man, rather than the legend he became.
For me, the novel had a lot of great strengths; putting the perspective character as his general Ptolemy was an excellent way to view the character from a different perspective (much as Mary Renault did in The Persian Boy) and also to slyly write a novel about the (arguably) greatest successor of Alexander, the battle scenes (as with all of Cameron's books I've read to date) were phenomenal, and the turning points in Alexander's life, where he goes from boy to man, man to king, and king to emperor, and at significant personal cost, were really striking to see from the point of view of a good childhood friend.
My biggest problem with the book was actually the length; at just under 900 pages it was fairly massive and I thought it could have either been pared down considerably or split into two novels, either way would have been fine by me, but I think that the narrative would also have moved better in either situation.
A really fun read, but perhaps not the first book I'd recommend for someone who wanted to read more about Alexander the Great.
My fifth book by Steven Pressfield, and his fifth on the list, The Afghan Campaign (2006) takes a look at a specific era in the Macedonian King's conquest of empire during 330 BCE when he attempted to subdue the Afghan kingdoms (modern day Afghanistan). The novel focuses on a recent recruit called Matthias who begins the book by running away from home to join the military, where both his older brothers have enlisted.
Following Matthias on his journey the book begins to feel like a young man coming of age story, then a love story, and then a meditation on the costs of war. Much of the novel focuses on cultural differences between the Macedonian army and those it battles, and Matthias makes a number of clear missteps throughout the book from a place of good intentions but almost total ignorance of the people he is either liberating or conquering, depending on your point of view.
When I tell people I've spent the last few years working my way through this specific list, I'm often asked what draws me to these stories of Ancient Greece, and with certain novels, like John Gardiner's The Wreckage of Agathon or this title by Pressfield, I find the answer is that much of the issues dealt with at that time are still very close to us here are the beginning of the 21st century.
A fascinating read.
John Scalzi's follow up to his 2014 book Lock In continues to follow FBI Agents Chris Shane and Leslie Vann as they examine an accidental death/potential homicide during a game of Hilketa, an especially violent professional sport specifically for Hadens (the 1% of the population locked in to their own bodies and forced to explore the world either online or through surrogate robots called Threeps).
The novel works as a fairly fun action mystery and speaking as someone who is not particularly interested in professional sports, I still found it to be a really fun read read and one that continued to expand and eplore the world that Scalzi created in the first novel.
Well worth a look, although I'd strongly recommend you read the first novel before digging into this one.
Back in 2002 I read my way through the works of Elmore Leonard, who began his writing career with westerns and ended up writing some of most interesting crime novels I've ever come across. His dialogue was snappy, his characters intriguing, and I was never sure when I started one of his books whether the good guys would win or not.
At the time I read all of his works from his first novel, The Bounty Hunters (1953), up to his kids book A Coyote's in the House (2004). I was clearly reading at a much faster pace than my current "one book a month" style. At the point I caught up with him, I moved on to my next author and figured I would keep up as new books came out.
Turns out I didn't, and when the author passed in 2011 I still had six books to go, At the time I was working through Robert R. McCammon's books, and afterwards I switched to Richard Matheson and then Charles de Lint, so it was only now I've managed to begin catching up.
The Hot Kid is a prohibition-era crime story following a U.S. Marshall named Carl Webster as he tracks down a number of bank robbers. He plays on the bank robber's need for attention and tries very hard to bring them in alive. The novel follows both Carl's story and that of the villain, Jack Belmont, the son of a rich man who desperately wants to become a John Dillenger-level criminal.
The novel is fast-paced, fun, and feels like a fun throwback to his western novels. Well worth the read.
Reading Charles de Lint's latest novel, The Wind in His Heart, I was struck by how much of the story involved people feeling trapped in their own lives, and the things they do to change.
The book focuses on a number of main characters: Thomas Corn Eyes, a young man who feels shoe-horned into becoming a shaman for his people, Steve, a hermit who thinks he has long escaped his past, Sadie, a teenager abandoned by her foster father in the middle of a desert, and Leah, a journalist who thinks she may have just found the biggest story of her career.
As compared to his Newford novels (which do get a shout out here) and his more recent Wilding YA series (which also have a blink-and-you'll-miss-it note), The Wind in His Heart has de Lint masterfully balancing multiple characters and storylines against an amazing background of life on an American reservation as well as journeying into a strange otherworld.
What I've always loved best about de Lint's work is the way he matches regular folk with the fantastic and examines how they deal with finding out their world is now much bigger than they had ever imagined. The mix of real-world concerns with issues involving spirits, witches, shapecahngers and others bring both into sharp contrast.
The Wind in His Heart marks my last de Lint novel for now, I've been reading his his books at the rate of one a month since March of 2014 and have thoroughly enjoyed every one of them. Now, like all the other de Lint fans out there, I've just got to sit and wait until he releases his next story.
