Gone Home

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header_292x136Although I have not touched a game on PC since probably 2006 at the latest, I still have a Steam account from back when that was a reasonable place to play the various Half-Life sequels. This is relevant because, some months ago, a friend gifted me a first-person (rather than text) interactive fiction game called Gone Home. I took a week or so getting the Steam client to work with my laptop (since I’m not going to put a game on a desktop and the Steambox still shimmers hazily in my future), and then I played about 45 minutes of the game and set it aside.

Which is not to say anything bad about it, I just have a habit of not completing games, which is why even one that lasts about two hours took me two or three months to actually finish, and honestly I’m a little surprised it happened all the same. So, what’s the deal? It’s 1995, and you the player have just returned home from backpacking in Europe. Only, nobody answered the phone, nobody picked you up at the airport, and the house is dark, silent, and (thanks to an ominous storm, pervasive minor key mood music, and the implausibility of every family member being away) kind of menacing. Still, it’s IF, so the only thing to do is wander from room to room, reading the notes and computer screens and various detritus of daily life that your family has left scattered around, trying to figure out what has happened here.

At two hours, “what happened here?” is pretty much the whole game, so I won’t say anything to spoil it, but I appreciated that every resident has a story waiting to be discovered, and I also appreciated that each story was opaque to the other residents, wrapped up in their own lives and troubles, only discoverable by the player because you are coming in with a fresh eye after having been gone from home for like nine months.Exciting high adventure, it’s not, but it sets a hell of an atmosphere, at turns creepy, depressing, or nostalgic. I’m not sure I’d pay the $20 Steam has it listed at as of press time, but as a gifted diversion, it definitely hits the spot.

Ultimate Spider-Man: Venom Wars

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51ekb2WP7OL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_The cover blurb for Venom Wars talks about the measure of a hero being the quality of his enemies, and I do not disagree that Venom is one badass of an enemy. But it did make me realize that Bendis owes Miles Morales some new enemies of his own. Okay, the Prowler kind of counts, but I want to see enemies that have never existed in the Marvel universe before, just like Miles didn’t a few short years ago. Mind you, that has nothing to do with the matter at hand, it’s just a thing I’m thinking.

That said, there’s not a whole lot more to add here that wouldn’t be a spoiler. (And believe me, there are a few big spoilers available in this book.) Venom? Check. Lots of public and personal fallout from ace reporter Betty Brant’s determination to learn the identity of the new Spider-Man? Check. Continued respect for J. Jonah Jameson? Yep, although I kind of feel like he should drop back to the periphery unless he gets somehow directly involved in Miles’ life. Sudden turns of fate and plot hooks for the future and random hilarities? It’s a Spider-Man comic, so there’d better be!

Yep, that’s all I’ve got, basically.

Red Seas under Red Skies revisited

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sl_redseasuBefore I consider further my feelings upon my reread of Red Seas under Red Skies, first, an excerpt from my original review, in May of 2008: “[T]he third book […] is due out in January. I am now sad.” So, yeah, that estimate was off by nearly five years. Whee! (True story: I have indeed remained sad over that period of time.)

The downside of such a long gap is that my overflowing excitement for the series has definitely died back a little. It’s hard to unreservedly recommend a series, or maintain a high level of excitement, after a surprise six year absence. The upside of the delay is that I “had” to read the books again, and they really are so good. By and large, I stand by my assessment after all. These really are the most fun pair of books I’ve read. They may fall apart soon after (I really hope not and will find out by sometime in Februaryish), they may not be the strongest on the literary scale or the political scale or the sweeping history of humanity scale, but they are hilarious and heart-breaking and absolutely clever as can be, and I’m glad a third one came out, five years late or not.

As for the specific book? I am struck more and more by the religion. A secret 13th god, watching over thieves and pirates, who most people consider to be a heresy? Okay, that’s not the part I’m struck by, that’s just cool. What I’m struck by is how religious Locke is. Sure, he loses his path sometimes, and he questions, but he’s sincere in his beliefs and in his unwillingness to trample anyone else’s in pursuit of his goals. He’s an absolutely good man, which is an odd thing to say of a thief and murderer. Part of it is that it’s a dark world, and basically everyone is a thief and murderer (legitimized, perhaps, but nonetheless) or else a victim. Makes it a lot easier to judge a man by the content of his character without getting all wrapped up in his pesky actions. Another part of it is that the Bondsmagi of Karthain are just so horrible of a shadow across, well, everyone, that it would be pretty much impossible to look bad by comparison.

The next thing, being massively spoilery, is behind the cut. But it’s just speculation chatter, so if you haven’t read the book, there’s nothing else down there to miss. Also: you should read the book. …after you read the first book, of course.

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

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MV5BMjIyMjMwNDU3OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMzYxODU5OA@@._V1__SX640_SY720_Cutting right to the chase, the cinematic adaptation of Catching Fire was superior in every way to the first film, and more than that, it told a better story than its source material did. So there’s quite a lot of good here.

See, the really quite spectacular Jennifer Lawrence[1] has been given much better material this time around, and what looked in the book like a girl stumbling blindly into the role of hero of the rebellion looks here like a game of cat and mouse between Katniss Everdeen and President Snow. (In case I’m pretending you already know what’s going on in the sequel of an adaptation of a trilogy of books, I am. In case that bothers you: there’s this girl who not only won an annual deathmatch designed to keep the common folk down on bended knee before Snow’s Capitol, she beat the system and won for her boyfriend(?) as well, which nobody has ever done before. She made Snow look symbolically weak, and people have become inspired by her, and this entire movie is basically a reaction to that premise. Also, there’s another deathmatch, since those are annual like I said.)

Whereas in the book, I contemplated that Katniss’ transformation into a symbol of the rebellion was certainly implausible but possibly not meant to seem that way, it is played note perfect here. She’s only trying to be a good person, but everything she does exposes the hollowness behind Snow’s power, so it’s easy to see why people would be inspired by her, despite her own doubts, anger, and insecurities. And it still doesn’t hurt that you can’t see inside her head, as she is growing more likable along the film trajectory instead of less so along the one that played out in the novels.

I’m still not convinced that the mess of a third novel can be rescued, but if the same writing/directing team tackle that adaptation, I will find myself hopeful all the same.

[1] I have got to see Winter’s Bone. Probably also the movie last year she got the Oscar for?

Ultimates: Reconstruction

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So there was this big Civil War that happened in the Ultimate universe. I mean, not between superheroes, they just did that in mainstream, and boy howdy have I no idea when I’ll get there to see it. No, this was straight up a bunch of warring American factions as the country fell apart. Also, Hydra. (They’re a (let’s say) terrorist organization on American soil, fighting against, or for… something, I guess? At least in the ’60s, it was just plain old world domination. I have no clue what new Hydra actually wants, though. I don’t even know if that’s bad writing (probably[1]) or a clue about something I may learn someday.)

Anyway, there was a civil war. Thus, the next step, Reconstruction. Which basically consists of Captain America, in his new position, moving from crisis to crisis as Hydra, California, and other collections of basically terrible people try to take advantage of the still fragile situation for their own various, nefarious purposes. Other boxes being ticked off: the West Coast Avengers Ultimates, and Vision. You may think, no no, they already did the Vision, right? Someone disagreed that it was done on enough of a 1:1 correlation, is all I can say in answer. Well, unless I want to get impolite and say that someone thought it hadn’t been done derivatively enough? But that would make it sound like I hated this book, and I didn’t. I’m just very aware of its limitations.

Good news: the really bad idea of a job that Cap took? I think they’ve reset it back to status quo, so I’m hoping that fixes the rest of the problems by the time I read Volume Oh Good, We’re Back to 2 Again.

[1] In that they may just exist so someone can check off the “Did we use Hydra yet?” tickbox, and that someone failed to consider what specific goals / desires new Hydra should have. This book gives them a goal, but it is a reaction to something that happened after they were formed, so their original goal? Completely unknown to me.

Fables: The Dark Ages

71y77SjvsBLDespite how far behind I am, I probably would not have read this yet, except I realized about three issues in that I had it backwards with the Jack of Fables I just finished, regarding publication order. So I went ahead and fixed that, as you’ve seen, but then: already three issues in, may as well read the rest. And so here we are, at the end of the twelfth volume in the Fables series, The Dark Ages.

Which, okay, that title doesn’t make much sense when you consider that they just won the war against the Adversary (whose name I should probably stop inching around, to be honest) and Fabletown is no longer in imminent danger, right? Sure, the Empire is still out there, mostly holding all the old lands through numbers and inertia, but it’s a headless snake now, and any heads that develop will at least be smaller and less dangerous. Right?

Let’s just say that any fears I may have expressed about the story’s ability to soldier on in the absence of its initiating premise have been laid to rest, and in rather dramatic and literal fashion at that.

Jack of Fables: Turning Pages

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71BC8eESweLIt turns out that if your cyclical reading schedule for graphic novels comes into conflict with your desire to reread the great fantasy series of your lifetime, you can end up going a year and a half between one book and the next. Which explains why I had almost no idea what was going on in the fifth Jack of Fables book. I mean yes, he’s still the self-absorbed, money-, sex- and fame-obsessed character who climbed a beanstalk that one time. I haven’t forgotten everything. But as to his specific circumstances? Let’s just say it’s a good thing I have a long-running review blog.

Good news for me is that this was an incremental book. That is, the first half of the story was a conflict between Jack and Bigby Wolf in 1883, a follow-up I suppose to some previous historical Jack tales about his time in the Civil War[1]. So it was easy to follow, and then I only had to deal with three issues advancing the main plot, which was just enough time to a) get me caught up and ready for the next book, y’know, months from now when I read it, and b) make me fully aware that there’s some high-level familial machinations going on here that I probably need to be paying much closer attention to, to understand them.

There’s this guy Revise who I’ve mentioned before, who wants to make everyone forget all the Fables, because… I wonder if I’ve ever known why? And there’s this guy Bookburner who hates Revise, but seems to destroy Fables, and I guess that’s worse than draining them and the world of magic through forgetfulness, but all in all, I don’t understand why these people are opposed to each other. Except that there’s a lot of family drama, all of which involves other characters with literary tropes as names and powers, and frankly the literary-trope-as-plot works so much better in The Unwritten, which to be fair I had not yet read any of last time I read one of these. So that’s unfortunate.

It’s not like the book’s bad. I really like Jack[2] and I like the hot librarian sisters and the bizarrely Proustian miniature blue ox and quite a few other things that are going on, but the plot? Either I’m lost, or I don’t get it, or it’s kind of dumb.

[1] I sure don’t remember which book anymore, so no link for you.
[2] Well, no, but I really like to read about Jack.

The Lies of Locke Lamora revisited

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91Lq5qpHKxL._SL1500_A really cool thing happened a couple of months ago, which was that a new Locke Lamora book was released. Since I rather liked the first one a lot[1], this was naturally exciting to me. But then, I realized that it had been five years since I last read one of these books, and, well, I didn’t exactly remember what had happened. Broad strokes yes (and mostly accurately, as it happens), but fine character and plot details, not so much.

I won’t drag this out, both because I’ve already been here before and because I have plenty of things I’d like to be reading right now. First: yes, I still like this book a very great deal. With a five year veil, everything I didn’t remember took on the sheen of awesomeness, amusement, sick horror, and exhilaration that I’m sure it had the first time through. The one thing I did pick up on that I certainly missed before was Locke’s overwhelming pride in the first third of the book. It really stands out in sharp relief when you know just how hard the left turn is about to be.

Anyway, really cool story, stands alone, well worth the read. And I’ve been told that you don’t actually have to reread these to prepare for the new book in the series. While I’m sure that’s true and while I regret that I haven’t read the new one yet myself, I regret it in the way I regret the other dozen or so books that I want to read right this instant. In no way do I regret the reread.

[1] And also the second, but all in due time.

The Boys: Self-Preservation Society

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boys6My research indicates that, having finished Volume 6 of  Ennis’ The Boys series, I am halfway done. (Also, that all of them are published, so that’s nice.) This particular volume is pretty much just going through the motions, with no real plot development to speak of.

Which, okay, it’s not an especially fair claim, but I can’t help being disappointed in a book which, when all is said and done, provides no real movement. Sure, the author has ticked off his “I’d better parody the Avengers” checklist, including the spectacularly over-the-top inclusion of a Nazi super-soldier as their leader.[1] And yes, it’s nice to get origin stories on the three supporting members of our titular band of ne’er-do-wells. (Except for how I found the Frenchie’s origin to be actively annoying. But I could be biased.) But that’s just not enough.

It’s strange to realize, I guess, that the most interesting story and character development occurred among the bad guys this time, is all.

[1] Probably I’d be less irritated if it hadn’t felt exactly like a tickbox instead of an actual event. Also, if it hadn’t seemed so nakedly steeped in shock-value. Also, if there had been consequences.

Thor: The Dark World

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THURS_003B_G_ENG-GB_70x100.inddFirst things first, to get it out of the way. Yeah, I really liked this movie. There were disappointingly obvious problems with Newtonian physics, and there was, as far as I can recall, no more than one plot turn I didn’t see coming. Nevertheless? Loved it. I mean, to start with, I’ll watch an entire 120 minutes’ worth of Darcy reaction quips and consider it money well spent.

But aside from hammer gags, cool explosions, and Kat Dennings, there are solid reasons to like Thor: The Dark World. Probably the precipitating plot, in which Christopher Eccleston is more or less wasted behind too much makeup as an inexplicably albino Dark Elf who wants to return the universe to eternal darkness and who nearly kicked Odin’s father’s ass several thousand years ago during his first attempt, is not one of them? I’m not saying I dislike comic book plots, because I don’t, but it’s impossible to deny that this one is towards the fringier end of the form.

The broad, vague answer is that I liked the acting. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve been immersed in 1960s Thor comics for the past few months, but it was cool to watch Odin interacting with his two sons. Far more than that, though, this movie gave me something I didn’t realize I’d been missing in the annals of Marveldom[1]. I finally have a solid, bone-deep belief that Thor and Loki really are brothers. That’s going to help me later, when I’m still reading 1960s Thor comics and Loki is still a cartoonishly annoying villain instead of nuanced and clever.

Also, Natalie Portman was in it, I guess? In retrospect, I should probably have more to say about someone who got so much screen time.

[1] Except maybe the Loki book I read years ago now, before I’d barely gotten started on my in-depth project here? Who can remember what happened in 2007, though?