House of Mystery by Matthew Sturges & Luca Rossi (and others)

I originally picked up the second volume of House of Mystery on a whim, attracted by the title, cover art and some of the names ringing a bell (Bill Willingham in particular). I quickly got round to tracking down the first volume and have been waiting impatiently for each trade paperback release after that (resisting buying the monthlies for money and space considerations). I've just finished reading volume five, "Under New Management", which seems like a good time for a review.

The eponymous House is Cain's abode in the Dreaming - until it disappears from there (much to his annoyance) and turns takes up residence at a crossroads between worlds. It becomes an unconventional tavern where patrons pay with stories, staffed by those who find they cannot leave. Architecture student Fig Keeler is one of those trapped there, and the arc plot follows her discoveries about her life (which turns out to be far from ordinary) and her pursuit by a mysterious pair called The Conception, who want her for unspecified reasons. The latest volume introduces yet another twist into Fig's increasingly strange life with the re-emergence of a brother she'd forgotten she had.

Scattered amidst the ongoing story are all the tales told by customers and staff; shorts featuring guest artists and writers telling every sort of story you can think of - poignant, romantic, scary and often funny. They showcase the rich diversity of the situation - as the characters can come from any conceivable setting, there is a whole host of fantasy worlds that we just get snippets of. Short stories in just about any format (prose, graphic, film) are one of my favourite things due to the efficiency needed and the density of invention that can be crammed into a few minutes or pages, thus this anthology-eqsue series was bound to be one of my favourites. That it also touches on and expands the setting of the Dreaming (from Gaiman's Sandman comics) is just a bonus.

Bitesize Reviews

Been meaning to write a whole host of reviews of things I've seen or read and not got very far at all. So I'll try a shorter approach. Mostly spoiler-free thoughts on The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson, Locke & Key, Despicable Me, The Event, The 4400 and Misfits follow.

The Infernal City by Greg Keyes

I don't expect much from a video game tie-in novel, let alone one I happened to win in an online competition. Which is just as well, as, honestly, The Infernal City doesn't offer much.

This is not to say it isn't a reasonably entertaining read, but probably only if you're familiar with The Elder Scrolls games. Most of the fun comes in recognising the setting, being able to visualise well the locations and spotting the various references to the games: Vivec city and the Ministry of Truth are mentioned, the eruption of Red Mounatin is referenced, the sword Umbra is a key plot point and even the Huntsman Hircine make an appearance. Aside from this, the floating city of Umbriel is a fascinating creation and vividly evoked: its alien nature is described well and you get a feel for the social dynamics without too much exposition. The potential of it as a location makes me wish Bethseda would release a game set there - maybe another expansion for Oblivion?

The plot is fairly basic: floating city appears, killing people it passes over. Various heroic types set out to try and stop it. Presumably being only the first in a series, they don't get very far, and the ending seems a little rushed. Also, there are far too many characters for so short a book, and some have distinctly less to do than others. Indeed, the subplot involving the spy/government agent Colin could have been dropped completely - I assume it will be continued in further books but here just seemed an unnecessary addition. He only appears about three times, and his investigation doesn't uncover much that isn't at least implied during Prince Attrebus' storyline.

Overall, its just a bit too pedestrian and predictable. I probably won't go out of my way to read any follow-ups, but if I see them in the library (or happen to win them in another competition) I'll probably pick them up. I admit to being slightly curious to see how Umbriel will be stopped and the protagonists stuck there escape.

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds' House of Suns tells the story of Campion and Purslane - two clones or "shatterlings" of the Gentian Line whose sole purpose is to explore the vast reaches of the human-colonized galaxy, experience as much possible and share those memories with their fellow shatterlings. An unexpected and horrific act of violence upends their world and while they attempt to solve the mystery of who was behind it, further betrayals lead to a desperate chase and fight for survival.

Reynolds certainly write very well, and specifically writes space operas very well. A human race spread across the galaxy and remnants of a vanished super-advanced race might well be age-old tropes of the genre but still feel fresh in his hands. Fans of his Revelation Space series will recognise his distinctly realistic approach to the physics of the setting including believable space battles, mind-boggling lifespans due to relativistic speeds and ingenious weaponry that only an astrophysicist could think up. The book has its fair share of intrigue as well as spaceship porn, and raises a lot of questions about identity and how important memories are to making us who we are. Add to that a carefully weaved plot that manages to both reward reader expectations and subvert them without it feeling like a cheap trick and you've got a pretty good read.

A not necessarily major criticism however is that, towards the end of the book, the protagonists' actions can seem meaningless and futile as they are trapped by events beyond their control and at the mercy of smarter, more capable and almost god-like beings. Their failure to achieve their goals can be a little depressing, and the ending is...odd, as if they've accidentally completed someone else's pilgrimage and you're not entirely sure how you or they are meant to feel about that. But nevertheless, it is still a book I would and will read again - not least to reread the flashbacks to Abigail Gentian's early life with the benefit of hindsight to see how it ties in with the main plotline.

"You know I don't like recipes"

After far too long of not getting round to reading it, and having never managed to see the film either, my wonderful SO gave me a copy of Coraline for my birthday. (The original novella, not the graphic novel.) And it is, as everyone said it was, marvelous.

If you don't know the basic plot I can only assume you were living under a rock when the movie was made or really really dislike spoilers. If the latter, stop reading now. It's the story of slightly neglected, bright young girl who discovers a passageway to another world just like her new house but better and more interesting: a world occupied by her "other mother" who wants spend time with her and cook her favourite foods and make her life fun and full and wonderful. And to stop Coraline going back, the "other mother" steals her parents. Of course, Coraline isn't going to put up with that and goes about rescuing her parents and the other mother's previous victims, and it all works out happily in the end, although not quite as easily as Coraline first hopes.

The story is beautifully and simply written, as one expects coming from Neil Gaiman. Coraline is an absolute gem of a protagonist and a realistically crafted child of indeterminate age whose attitude and voice seem "right" from my not-too-grown-up perspective. The "real world" supporting characters are colourful enough to start with (while still being believable) to make their fairytale "other" versions all the more frightening. The plot plays out at just the right pace, gripping while not seeming rushed, and the (often grotesque) details bring the other world to life in its delightfully creepy entirety. It is, frankly, as brilliant as everyone said it is, and I can't wait to read it to the Terror because I'm sure he'll love it too.

Although the risk of him developing koumpounophobia (fear of buttons) is something to consider first.

Shadows over Lovecraft

Locke & Key is the best comic series out there. You should be reading it.


I must've raved about this before, shirley? I'm sure I've been telling people to buy it for months now. At least, I've been thinking it pretty loudly.

Roughly speaking, it's the story of three children coping with their father's brutal murder and discovering the weird secrets of their new home, the aptly named "Keyhouse". Only, that doesn't really do it justice. I'm not sure any summary can, because half the pleasure is in the wonderful art of Gabriel Rodriguez (gorgeously coloured by Jay Fotos) and the other half is in the sheer....madness. The weirdness quotient just builds and builds: most of the way through the third miniseries and I thought nothing could surprise me any more, but no, there was another brain-melting moment in the last few pages of the latest issue (Crown of Shadows #4). Perhaps if I took some time to step back and reread the whole series more carefully, I'd be able to offer a more constructive review, rather than just gushing with praise, but that's for later. Right now I'm enjoying the ride.

The writer, Joe Hill, first came to my attention when I entered a book review competition a few years back purely to get my hands on a new book before it went to print. The book I was given was Heart Shaped Box and, not being much of a horror fan, I was pleasantly surprised. I wrote my review and didn't win, but I did get an honorable mention, which is what I keep clinging onto whenever I get the crazy idea to start writing reviews again. (If I ever find the review, I'll post it or something. If I haven't already.) So I saw Hill had brought out a new comic miniseries that came highly recommended by the usually reliable SFX, I thought I'd pick up the first copy to see what it's like.

It's now the only comic I buy as it comes out, and the wait between issues is excruciating.

The first miniseries, Welcome to Lovecraft, introduces us to Tyler, Kinsey and Bode Locke, who move, with their mother, to the family estate in Lovecraft, Mass. following the death of their father. There, the youngest, Bode, discovers a door that separates body and spirit when you try to go through it, and meets, and later frees, a supernatural being that was probably trapped on purpose for a good readon. Their father's killer escapes prison, with help of said supernatural being, and goes after the family again. Ok, I know that sounds a little predictable, but trust me, it's a good story, and a good-looking one too. It's now available in paperback, and as well as acting as a prologue to the rest of the series, is probably the most self-contained, so really you have no excuse not to give it a go. Go buy it. Now. If you read it and hate it, you need never listen to any of my recommendations again.

If you love it, though, you can move on Head Games (which will be out in paperback). This is where things start to get really strange. We get hints of things in the Locke family past, and Bode finds another key. If I have one criticism, it's that it just ends too soon and asks far too many questions while answering very few. But again, the art is beautiful, the characters alive and believable, and the world rich and deep enough for me to want to explore much more. (A friend said it's a very game-able setting - I'd love to see what he'd do if he got the licence for a L&K RPG.....) Fortunately, I didn't have to wait too long before the most recent miniseries started: Crown of Shadows. Just read #4 of 6, and so far we've discovered more about the past, realised how awesome and bad-ass Kinsey actually is and had everything go badly for the kids as the bad guy(s) went on the attack. Oh yeah, and another key. Unless you want to scrounge around for back issues, you'll probably want to wait for the collection, but I'll probably be raving about the last two issues before then, if not here, then on twitter. Maybe there'll be proper spoilers at some point. Just warning you.

So that's my not-quite-review of Locke & Key. The one for Heart Shaped Box was probably better.

In which I watch....stuff [Part Two]

This is the second part of my "hey, let's review stuff I've watched recently" shenanigans. I'll be covering my three "must-watches" of the moment: Being Human, Glee, and Veronica Mars. Inevitably, there will be spoilers. I'm also not sure how much sense this will make if you haven't seen the shows, I'm not great at coherence at the best of times and my head is still full of snot.

I heard about Being Human through my obsessive reading of SFX and cursed my lack of digital TV until they thankfully repeated the first series on BBC Two. Even then I managed to miss a few episodes by forgetting about it. Now it's back, we have a digital TV so I can watch it as it goes out for first time on Sundays on BBC Three. Fan reaction appears to be mixed, with the usual cries of "Not as good as the first series!" but a third series has already been commissioned. It follows the adventures of three housemates: vampire Mitchell, werewolf George and ghost Annie. The first series showed George trying to learn how best to "manage" his condition, Mitchell taking on the local vampire king and Annie discovering the truth about her death and deciding not to move on through The Door. This series has perhaps been a little disjointed: Mitchell's arc about becoming the reluctant leader of the vamps has been the most coherent. George losing Nina because she can't cope with what she's become and then rapidly getting into another relationship and moving in with her has seemed too rushed even for a rebound, whereas Annie's stories have, if anything, been over too fast - I really hoped we'd get to see more of "the Gatekeepers". While I originally watched for the delectable Russell Tovey as much as the story (and George still gets all the best lines), it's been Annie's encounters with doors and her way of coping with becoming "invisible" again that have provided the best drama for me. And the latest episode (the sixth of series two), where she gets to talk to her mother again via a psychic and tell her to get on with her life, was one of the most emotional. Kudos to Jacquetta May, playing Annie's mother, for her heart-felt speech about how it feels to lose a child. I admit the vampire plots tend to interest me least, I could get the same sort of thing reading an account of someone's Vampire: the Requiem game, but "least" certainly doesn't mean "not at all". The explosive end to "Episode 6" is certainly a game-changer and I expect the housemates will discover and take on CENSSA, hopefully rescuing Nina before their attempts to find a cure kill her. Of course, the best shows pull the rug from under our feet and I may be way off base....

Glee was another programme that we heard good things about before it started showing over here and despite being described by some as "High School Musical for adults", we gave it a try. And we fell in love. Ok, it helps that my better half is a sucker for musicals and I like many of the songs featured in the first few episodes and Jayma Mays is awesome in everything she does, but I really do think Glee is worth a try even if the words "high school comedy drama" normally make you retch. Yes, some of the cliches aren't undercut enough and some of the "minority" characters don't get as much screen time as the others (it helps to be black or gay, rather than Asian or disabled) and the plotting is both predictable and American-soap-opera at its most absurd (main character's wife is faking a pregnancy and manages to bribe doctor to falsify an ultrasound for her husband, hmm......) but....there are little wry touches that are laugh-out-loud awesome (such as the leaflets in the guidance counsellors office, including "Divorce: Why Your Parents Stopped Loving You") and outrageous one-liners courtesy of Sue Sylvester (the marvelous Jane Lynch). I admit it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and only time will tell whether I love it as much all through the first season, but at the moment I'm hooked.

Finally, Veronica Mars is another show I heard great things about but missed entirely as it wasn't shown over here on any station I could get. Sometime before Christmas I discovered it was on every weekday morning (and afternoon) on E4 and it quickly became the fixed point around which the rest of my day was organised. It's about a high school student who works for her private investigator dad and seasons one and two at least fall into a pattern of "case of the week" mixed in with an ongoing story arc in which Veronica finds the true murderer of her best friend Lilly and discovers the culprit behind a horrific bus crash respectively. I started watching mid way through season two and have now nearly looped round, but missed chunks over Christmas and with vivas and things meaning I haven't seen much of season three and still haven't seen the finale of season one either. I'll get there in time. As with Glee, I would have thought the high-school-i-ness of it would put me off as I can hardly relate (my experience of secondary school certainly wasn't like that) and the "outsider" status is often overplayed for me, but Buffy taught me the tropes well and I suppose I learned some tolerance from that. Veronica is smart, sassy but not infallible and ultimately like-able, and the relationship with her father is fun and believable. The cases often throw unexpected twists and the whole thing has that glossy look and feel that makes American dramas so watchable. Enough exposition is given in the voice-over to make catching up with current state of the ongoing investigations easy if you've missed a few episodes, and I'm finding the whole thing very addictive. Soon I'll find out whether it stands up to rewatches as well. If so, I might need to splurge on the DVDs - allegedly region-free despite what the packaging might say (and there's always the computer).

So, that's what I've been watching (beside QI, duh, and far too many cartoons)

In which I watch....stuff [Part One]

Specifically, Moon, Being Human, Ponyo and Glee. Heck, maybe I'll even throw in Veronica Mars. Spoilers ahoy!

Came down with a cold a few days ago and so haven't done much over last few days other than watch...stuff. Because I've been struggling all day to get this damn thing finished, I've decided to split it into two posts. Later, I'll attempt to review the TV series I'm currently watching. Today, I'll look at the two films I'm seen recently.

First, we finally got round to watching my Christmas present: Moon on DVD. Having heard nothing but praise for it, I was really looking forward to it, and boy does it not disappoint. Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, the lone worker at Lunar Industries base on the moon, harvesting helium-3 to be sent back to Earth for use in the fusion plants which provide most of the planet's energy. He is nearing the end of his three year contract and looking forward to returning to his wife and daughter. His only company has been the base's AI GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) and he's going a bit stir crazy....

The film is beautifully atmospheric (yeah, yeah, ironic etc. ha ha); the slightly creepy incidental music, slow pace, lack of dialogue and Spacey's emotionless AI voice all add up to give it that 2001 vibe early on. The model work gives it a timeless feel too - CGI dates movies more than anything else and I'm sure this one will look just as good in ten, twenty years time. Having been spoiled on the clone issue, I was surprised at how early that was revealed but then I feel one of the strengths of this film is that way it supersedes expectations. A set-up of a lone person on a deserted base often leads to a horror/thriller style film, for instance. One might have expected more conflict between the two clones, but they start to work together quite quickly once they realise their position. And it was wonderfully refreshing that GERTY turned out not to be evil or mad after all, but resolved its conflict of interest by siding with the clones it was programmed to help. And yet that still didn't rob the ending of any tension as I desperately hoped that Sam would get away before the arrival of the "rescue" team. Another strength would be the lack of explanations - leaving things to the audience to work out both makes them feel clever and leaves open the possibility of a theory that is better and more water-tight than your own. So very little is revealed about the science behind both the helium-3 harvesting and the cloning/memory-implanting, which is great because then nothing in the film is objectively wrong. It's never explicitly stated that the clones have a three-year life span, just heavily implied. If you choose to believe that this is nothing inherent but is instead due to radiation poisoning and new-Sam will live a full and healthy life on Earth, then fair enough. It makes an already quite upbeat ending all the happier. And while it's fairly obvious that simulating moon-strength gravity for the entire film would have been technically difficult and unfeasibly expensive, no attempt to shoehorn a mention of artificial gravity into the script was made, leaving the viewer to make up their own mind as to whether it all "actually" took place in low gravity or not. (At least, that's one way you can think of it. I'd vote "no" as the treadmill and skipping wouldn't work too well in low g.) The only confusion that came from not having things spelled out for us in our household was that we weren't sure whether Eve's dad was meant to be the original Sam Bell or not: the one sentence he spoke wasn't enough for me to recognise the voice and Sam had admitted Tess had been leaving him, but then Eve also confirmed it was "the Bell residence" so maybe that should have been enough of a clue. Overall, I think it's a wonderful, thoughtful film and the disgraceful lack of Oscar nominations belies the idea that they reward merit rather than popularity.

Yesterday we made a family trip out to the cinema. It was fairly packed (being half-term) but we still got our pick of seats to see Ponyo - Miyazaki's latest about a young boy who befriends a magical fish-girl. Despite being "rescued" by her father, the fish-girl Ponyo wants to become a human and escapes to find her friend Sosuke again. Her transformation throws the world into imbalance however, and floods the island Sosuke lives on. After travelling to find his mother, Sosuke affirms his love for Ponyo as a human or a fish, and she agrees to give up magic to become a human child.

Definitely aimed towards the younger portion of their usual family audience, it's more a Totoro sort of film than Spirited Away say, with a simple story and much of the delight coming from the astonishingly accurate portrayal of young children. The visuals are as rich and luscious as ever, the characters are all like-able and Sosuke's relationship with his mother in particular warmed my heart (hmm....I wonder why?). Miyazaki's recurring theme of the damage humans do to the environment is revisited, and while the portion of their journey where they identify extinct fish now magically brought back to life may seem a little too pedagogical it is exquisitely drawn and captures the childlike wonder that is appropriate for such a scene. You do have to remember to switch off your adult brain as the story doesn't particularly hold up to real world scrutiny (what sane mother would leave two five-year-old children alone in a house while a storm hits?) and the ending might seem a little anti-climactic with no real peril (compared to a heart-stopping moment or two earlier). Once you do, you realise it has the same sense of magic, adventure and wish-fulfillment that young children put into their own stories (albeit with a more coherent narrative), and for that, it is the perfect children's film. And I suspect like many other Studio Ghibli films, it will be one we watch time and time again.