{"id":716,"date":"2008-12-18T12:58:50","date_gmt":"2008-12-18T18:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=716"},"modified":"2008-12-18T12:58:50","modified_gmt":"2008-12-18T18:58:50","slug":"ex-machina-smoke-smoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/ex-machina-smoke-smoke\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex Machina: Smoke, Smoke"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ex Machina series has settled into a predictable pattern wherein three things happen in every volume: 1) Mayor Hundred tackles some kind of political firestorm, usually of his own creation that 2) is reminiscent of an adventure that his superhero alter-ego The Great Machine partook in before Mitchell Hundred ran for mayor, while 3) events transpire around him over which he has little control, such as a crime spree that may or may not relate to the (alien?) oddities surrounding his powers and those of his one-time nemesis or perhaps a behind-the-scenes conspiracy arrayed against him and getting closer step by incremental step.<\/p>\n

And if it was not for the fact that the writing is pretty decent and I really enjoy the little drops of information about what’s behind it all, I think the predictability would get me to start losing my interest, by and large. Especially in books like Smoke, Smoke<\/a> where our hero isn’t even particularly all that likable. But then again, I trust the author by now, too, so that helps me maintain momentum.<\/p>\n

In case you were wondering, thing 1 relates to marijuana, thing 2 relates to a vigilante drug bust, and thing 3 mostly involves a firefighter on a crime spree that is, unfortunately, played far more for shocks than for story arc relevance. But there’s some pretty cool stuff going on too, most especially in the stand-alone final issue contained in the book. So don’t believe it’s as dire as I seem to be letting on. But I will want to like the protagonist again by the next book; that’s pretty important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ex Machina series has settled into a predictable pattern wherein three things happen in every volume: 1) Mayor Hundred tackles some kind of political firestorm, usually of his own creation that 2) is reminiscent of an adventure that his superhero alter-ego The Great Machine partook in before Mitchell Hundred ran for mayor, while 3) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}