Reviews

I grabbed Battle of the Linguist Mages from the library the other day (thanks, Libby!) and it wasn’t bad. It’s enjoyable reading Ready Player One from the anarchist point of view, even if it’s a bit broad. Don’t look for well-architected laws of magic here or anything – it’s more that a bunch of stuff happens in ways that amp up the fun factor. But it’s really fun! The role of punctuation is top-notch and had me pausing midway through to do some Web searching.

Someone on the Internet recommended Elder Race the other day, and my library had the ebook available, so sure! Adrian Tchaikovsky is almost always a good read at minimum and he does a lot of work at novella length which is exactly right for a bit of reading before bed. It’s good! It’s much more of a horror story than I expected. From the blurb you’d expect an action-adventure tale with a lot of fantasy trappings disguising high tech, and there’s plenty of that, but there’s also some truly horrific notes that I won’t spoil. I also liked that it avoided turning into a romance, because not everything has to be that. ...

Movies reviewed this week: Seance on a Wet Afternoon, Girl with Green Eyes, Don’t Play Us Cheap, Slash/Back, Darling, The Knack… and How to Get It, and Incendies.

Movies reviewed this week: The Long Good Friday, Billy Liar, Picnic, The Servant, Annette, and The Hard Way.

Movies reviewed this week: Wendell & Wild, Emily the Criminal, Anna and the Apocalypse, Good Morning, Tom Jones, Interceptor, Barbarian, and Gomorrah.

Movies reviewed this week: The L-Shaped Room, M. Butterfly, The Hidden, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and A Kind of Loving.

Movies reviewed this week: Mandabi, The House, Nosferatu, Fallen Angels, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Movies reviewed this week: Ganja & Hess, Dracula, The Perfection, Carrie, Vampyr, The House of the Devil, A Taste of Honey, August 32nd on Earth, and Phenomena.

Movies reviewed this week: X, Cat People, Spider, Pandorum, Creature from Black Lake, and Village of the Damned.

Movies reviewed this week: Angel Heart, The Deadly Bees, Dead Snow, The Darjeeling Limited, Suspiria, The Penalty, The Masque of the Red Death, Seoul Station, and Where Is My Friend’s House?.