Movie Review: The Dark Tower

So let's begin with the fact that I'm a pretty big fan of The Dark Tower series.

1) I referred to the series in one of my very first posts on this blog
2) I've read my way through the series and its connected books twice
3) I've led my wife, my kids, and my sci-fi loving best friend to read their own ways through the series
4) I read my way through Peter David's excellent adaptation for Marvel Comics and get overly excited every time the Dark Tower is referred to in any of Stephen King's other books.
5) Even though the first book was basically a modified Western and I hated westerns as a kid (because my Mom liked them - read more here) I could not stop reading it and HAD to see what happened in the sequel.

So yeah, I think it's fair to say I was looking forward to the movie every time I head it was going to be made and especially this year when it finally got a release date.

I saw the film yesterday with my wife and kids and here are my first impressions:

1) Why did they make this film version a YA adaptation of the source material?
2) Why is one of the secondary characters now the main character?
3) Why did they have to front load a ton of exposition for a story that really needs to build slowly?
4) Why have you taken two talented actors and given them such a muddled script to work with?
5) Why, having given up on the idea of a faithful adaptation, did you have to slip in the first line of the first book both in the middle of the film and with no connection in any way to the narrative?
6) a;ds lkfj;aldf (sorry, I just face-planted into my keyboard)...

Okay - I liked the performances by both leads, the production values was pretty great and the Easter Eggs were a fun diversion, but in the end - why? Why did they take such an interesting story and turn it into a 95 minute shoot-em-up which ignored almost every aspect of the first three books in the series?

In conclusion the film doesn't make me less of a fan of The Dark Tower series, but will likely make it much harder for me to sell others on this great book series in future.

Things I've noticed: It's time to start hunting for new comics

When it comes to comic books I’m mostly a trade paperback kind of guy, where a collection of 4-10 issues are bound together, sometimes have a nice introduction written and often include notes by the author after the final issue.  But I’ve got to admit there is something nice about a continuing monthly story.

For the last few years I’ve been collecting one or two comic book series issue-by-issue: The Dark Tower, and The Stand, both published through Marvel comics, both adaptations of Stephen King novels I love.  With the adaptation of the The Stand wrapping up a few months back, and The Dark Tower series, catching up to the stories I’ve read in the original novels, I’m feeling it’s time for me to start looking for a new series to follow, issue-by-issue.

Right now I don’t really know where to start – my youngest daughter likes Batman, so if I get those I’ll probably get two readings out of each issue I purchase, but at the same time there are a heck of a lot of Batman and Batman-related titles out there.

Anyway, I don’t really have an idea of which series I’ll be going for, but I’m going to make sure to list whatever ends up gracing my (very small) single-issue comic book space at home.  For the record, the last time I went mainstream was back in 2000 when I collected Brian K. Vaughn’s run on Swamp Thing, featuring the original swamp things daughter, Tefe Holland. (who, come to think of it, would be a great Genre Character of the Week), so I’ve set the bar pretty high for myself there.

Book Review: The Wind Through the Keyhole

Long-time readers of my blog will know I've got a soft spot for Stephen King, and specifically for this Dark Tower series, which happens to be one of my favourite fantasy series of all time (actually I suppose it might be my favourite Fantasy/Horror/Science Fiction series of all time, but I reserve the right to change that as I go along).  So when the book The Wind Through the Keyhole came out a few months back, I was cautious, but excited.


Cautious because the book is one of those "in-between" novels, which would fit between books four and five of the main series, and those are always a bit of a harder sell for me - I mean, I already know how everything worked out, why exactly do I care about an event that happened between the books I read five and six books back (the series overlaps with almost eighteen other books by the author, so to read the entire story you are looking at about a 22-book commitment).


Excited because these are some of my favourite characters in genre fiction and I was really excited to revisit them.


So in a nutshell - the book is great - it tells a story within a story within a story, and then brings you out again, sort of like Cloud Atlas, but with much more Dark Tower-y goodness.


The story is packed with action, thrills and enough robotics that I think my BFF Mike would like it (I got him to read the whole Dark Tower series, tie-ins and all a few years back and he liked that too!), and if you are a fan you should totally check it out.


If you haven't read any Dark Tower stories yet, go back to The Gunslinger.  It's totally worth your time and leads to an amazing series.

Book Review: The Gunslinger

For one of my book clubs this week we chose The Gunslinger, by Stephen King. Friends of mine from Junior High (when I went through my first Stephen King mania) will remember me going on and on about how cool this book was, even though it was sort of a western. Friends from five years ago (when I read The Dark Tower series as well as all connected books over the course of a year) will recall me going on and on about the mythic feel of the book and the impressive structure of the story - for instance the fact that the first part of the first story in The Gunslinger is actually told backwards; While chasing the man in black across the desert, Roland recalls his last meeting with another person, and while there he discussed his actions in his last town, etc.

But today I'm just going to talk about how much I love this book.

First of all - until I saw Firefly years later, this was the first time I can remember a cross-genre book wherein one of the genres was a western.

Secondly, the mythic and dream-like qualities of the book are pretty amazing, the world inhabited by the gunslinger has modern day (well, 1981) references, high tech machinery (and robots if you read the 2003 revision), as well as a connection to King Arthur and Merlin.

Finally, This bizarre fantasy/Horror/SF/Western series is so good I got my SF loving BFF Mike to read it and he really liked it!

Bookmonkey's Top 5 Current Comic Series

I'm one of those people who likes to wait until a comic, novel, or television series are finished before I start buying them. I want to see where the story ends before I decide that it needs to be on my shelf, but certain comics are so good I can't wait. Although I love reading super hero comics, they make up a pretty small part of my overall collection.

Here are my top five currently published comic series that I'm snapping up as they come out (in graphic novel format).

5. The Dark Tower

Okay, this is the one I actually buy issue by issue but the reasons are pretty simple. The Dark Tower series of novels by Stephen King is possibly my favourite genre series of all time (Sorry LOTR, but you come a very close second). The series is written by Peter David and illustrated by Jae Lee. It works to fill in the gaps between the novel series and although I've had a problem with Lee's art in the past - it fits this series so well I am consistently blown away by it. If your a fan of the novels, check out the comics, they are simply that good.

4. Fables

You have to read this series. Bill Willingham is simply an amazing storyteller. Take all of your common knowledge of nursery rhymes, fairy tales, fantasy books and myths, then turn it into a series that is by turns violent, wonderful, epic, sensual, urban, hilarious, and a war story and you begin to get the idea of how good this series is. In addition, the spin-off series Jack of Fables, is also incredible. I'm not even sure why you are still reading my recommendation, go and read this now.

3. The Walking Dead

Last week I talked about how the protagonist of this series is one of my favourites in horror fiction. The series does exactly what I want to know after every zombie film - What next? Where does this go? What happens six months later. This series is pretty grim, what with all the zombies, but there is also a lot of hope in it, and for me hope is a pretty big part of what I like in any story. I just read that the series is being made into a TV show for AMC next year, and as I'm a fan of both of their other big shows (Mad Men and Breaking Bad), I am really jazzed about how they will adapt this amazing series.

2. Hellboy / BPRD

In a way, part of why I like these series is the same as why I'm a fan of Fables - they take classic folklore and give it a modern twist. Hellboy is simply an incredible character. I think I decided on loving this series when I read the two-page story, Pancakes, which shows a defining moment in the characters life, when he chose good over evil. The stories are incredible, the artwork is amazing (although BPRD's takes a little getting used to), and the graphic novels are actually decently priced (thanks Dark Horse!). The movie adaptations are great, but the original material is fan-freaking-tastic.

1. Scott Pilgrim

All right, I'll admit it, a huge part of why I love this series is because I'm Canadian. It takes a basic story (young man growing into adulthood and finding his first love) and then adds in the fact that in this world, if you date a girl you must battle each of her evil ex-boyfriends - in seriously awesome, martial arts battles. The series owes a lot to manga for its style and is incredibly funny. Scott's world is so well developed you end up caring for all of his friends and their stories too. Simply put, this is my current favourite comic book.

Bookmonkey's top 5 SF books for Kids

I got hooked on Science Fiction (SF) as a kid back in the '80s, so the majority of this list will reflect the fact that MY SF is better than YOUR SF, and now that we have established my obvious bias, let's go:

My 5 sure-fire books that will get your kids hooked on SF are:

5. The Time Machine

First published in 1895, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells introduces kids to time travel, giant lobsters, Morlocks, Eloi, and most importantly a really wonderful sense of "What if..." Also the book is very short - so reluctant readers are more likely to give it a shot.

4. The Time Machine Series

This series of books is almost identical to the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series, with one big difference - not only did you travel back in time and fight dinosaurs, samurai, knights and cowboys, but you also went into the future and kicked alien butt. One of my favourite parts of this series was reading all the ways you (the reader) could die by flipping through the book - and trust me, lots of them were pretty darn disgusting.

3. Interworld

The only book in this list I did not read as a child, Interworld, by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves was originally a TV show concept that ended up as a Young Adult book. Imaging a war straddling across dimensions, where all of the heroes and villains fight for the sides of Chaos or Order and every single one of them is an alternate version of you. Simply an incredible book.

2. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Before I read this book I had seen the 1981 Television series, so I thought I knew what I was getting into, but nothing could have prepared me for this incredible story - starting at the end (literally - the world is destroyed right at the beginning of the book), we follow a main character who is probably the least prepared traveller in existence as he makes his way through the galaxy with a friend, an extremely helpful book, and a towel. This book also receives massive kudos due to the fact that it is the first book I ever read out loud from cover to cover.

1. The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger

I read this book in Junior High - probably grade seven, so that puts it somewhere between 1988 and '89. Even though this book isn't meant for kids, and looks kind of like a Fantasy-Western, it has dimensional travel, robots, mutants, Hey Jude by the Beatles, and mention of a company called North Central Positronics. The book is terrifying, brutally violent, and told in a reverse narrative (it starts at the end and moves backwards). This book started me on all sorts of freaky stuff, perfectly mixing all three of my favourite Genres (Fantasy, Horror, and SF), and started with possibly the coolest first line of a novel I have ever had the pleasure to have read.

So there you have it, my picks for the books most likely to get kids hooked on SF; I know my list is different than my wife's, my friend Mike's, or even my kids - but the list of best SF I want to know about is your - so tell me, what do you think the best SF books for kids are?

You owe it to yourself #4: Author Reccomendations

In the summer of 1991 I was almost 15 years old, huge into horror movies, and loving the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Junior High was behind me and High school was just a few weeks away. I was down to the last 10 pages of King's book The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands - and for those of you who haven't read it, this book has one of the biggest cliff-hangers I have ever come across, we're talking life or death, impending crashes on a massive scale and a riddle contest so thrilling it brings back echoes of Bilbo and Gollum under the Misty Mountains. It was at this point that I realized there were no more Stephen King books - I had literally read them all, and I had no idea what I was going to read next.

Everyone has a favourite author, and if you're anything like me you can probably relate to the unfortunate experience of catching up to them - that is, reading everything they have published up-to-date. At that point you can feel lost and don't really know where to get your next book from.

My suggestion - look to the authors themselves. Lots of authors mention other books inside their own fiction, and usually have one of their characters say something positive about them.

2 quick examples:

On page 1 of Robert A. Heinlein's "Have Space-Suit, Will Travel" the protagonist's father is reading a book called "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome, a book so beloved by the character that he knows it by heart. (BTW - after reading "Three Men in a Boat" I can honestly say that this may be the funniest book I've read in the english language, I'm serious, don't read this book anywhere where laughing uncontrollably would be frowned upon.)

In Stephen King's book Lisey's Story, the protagonist's husband (A Science Fiction writer) raises a toast, "This ones for Alfie Bester, and if you haven't read him you should be ashamed!" King later states that the character's favourite novel is Besters "The Stars, My Destination." (This book currently sits in my top 10 SF novels of all time.)

We can all agree that authors are voracious readers. Therefore, it follows that just like anyone else who has read a good book, they like to recommend good books to their friends. Keep that in mind the next time you come across a book title in whatever book you are reading - the author didn't put that title in randomly.

If you don't want to go through all the trouble of keeping track of which books your authors mention in their own works, let the Internet do the heavy lifting for you and go to the website Fantastic Fiction. Enter your favourite author in the "Search Authors" box and when you get to their page, scroll down to the [Your Author] Recommends section to get a list of at least 10 books they have said good things about.

Your authors' almost all want to share their favourite books with you, and if you like their stuff, you will probably like what they recommend. Give it a try, after all, if you're really a fan, you owe it to yourself.