Book Review: Tiger Eye by Marjorie M. Liu

Tiger Eye by Marjorie M. Liu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a Nook Free Fridays offering.

During a visit to China, Dela finds herself in possession of a mysterious puzzle box, which turns out to hold a shape-shifting warrior. Hari expects her to be like every other master he's ever had--greedy, selfish, lustful, and destructive. They soon forge a tight bond, but the Magus who created Hari's curse and prison wants him back and will stop at nothing to get him. At the same time, Dela finds herself entangled in mob intrigue, as one of the weapons she forged is used in the murder of a child and the child's family comes looking for vengeance.

I've mentioned in my reviews before that romance isn't usually my genre, but this one wasn't bad. The plot was a bit dense and disconnected, sagging a bit in the middle of the book, but at least it kept the story from being too one-track-linear.

The only maybe-problem I had was with the almost-bestiality that occurs when Dela and Hari consummate their relationship; he shape-shifts into a tiger, and they spend some time with him either in tiger form or halfway between tiger and man. While he's still a person even in tiger form, the idea of them having sex with him as a tiger bothered me.

Generally, however, this was a nice story with a great cast of characters and a lovely sense of humor that I'm sure leads into a great series of novels.

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A Note on My Rating System

Book Review: Shadow of a Dead Star by Michael Shean

Shadow of a Dead Star by Michael Shean
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Curiosity Quills Press provided me with a free copy of this book for review purposes.

Shadow of a Dead Star was my first foray into cyberpunk, which may be part of the reason I found the book so inaccessible. I think the larger issue, however, was the editing and writing. The editing was weak, showing massive issues with commas which frequently led to difficulty parsing a sentence and the necessity of rereading the sentence, sometimes several times, to understand what Shean was trying to say. Also, the descriptions of things were almost purple, occasionally sliding into wording that reminded me of Stephenie Meyer (such as the voice he describes as "rough yet bright, like silver gravel").

I tried to let the story speak for itself and ignore the writing and editing issues, but ultimately I couldn't plow through the issues anymore. I made it through about four and a half chapters before I put the book down and moved on to something else.

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How Nichey is THIS?!

My dissertation director sent me this today. Since chunks of my dissertation deal with the (neo)medievalism of ASOIAF, I understandably nearly wet myself. I suspect my next meeting with her will consist of "yeah, here's that half-chapter you wanted and it's crap. What should I write for this CFP?"

Getting a paper published in a collection like this would look SO AWESOME on my CV.

Opening Week Review: The River

Six months ago, renowned nature show host and explorer Emmet Cole went missing in the Amazon.  Now his beacon has been reactivated and his family is going looking for him--bankrolled by a production company that wants to make the whole thing into a documentary.  But Cole wasn't just interested in nature; he was also searching for magic.  And he may just have found it.

The two-hour premiere of The River was actually two episodes back-to-back, but it didn't lose much impact because of that.  Overall, the show is creepy, contains a myriad of jump-scares and monsters/legends that American audiences don't usually run across, and the director of photography really knows what he's doing.  On the other hand, there were several places where things plain didn't make sense or tiny errors or "misses" in acting made me giggle instead of shriek.

I will definitely be watching the next 6 episodes of this show.  The pilot and second episode were both very strong overall, which bodes well for the rest of the show.  Once it really gets its feet under it, The River should take off running.

And now, for your reading pleasure, the chat my sister (PS) and I (SW) had while watching this together.  Warning: it's full of gratuitous caps-lock, swearing, and completely contextless spoilers.  On the other hand, I did take out all the asides about our cats and getting the videos to sync up so we were watching the same thing at the same time. Enjoy!

Movie Review: In Time

Human beings have been genetically engineered to stop aging at 25, at which point they have only a year to live--unless they earn more time.  Time is the new currency, and when you run out, you die.  Keeping up with inflation is next to impossible, and in the ghetto, people die young, frequently, and in the middle of the street.

When a man with over a century on his clock appears in the ghetto, Will (Justin Timberlake) saves his life from thugs who would "clean his clock."  But it turns out the man really wants to die, and he gives all his time to Will, effectively killing himself.

When Will is too late to save his mother from timing out, he begins a crusade against the uber-rich.  Joined by daughter of millionare-tycoon Phillipe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser), Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), Will embarks on a bank-robbing spree in an attempt to save the people of the ghetto.  But the system is far more complicated than he knows, and it will take a heist of immense proportions to accomplish what he's trying to do.

I like this film.  It had an interesting blend of motifs--Occupy Wall Street, Bonnie and Clyde, Robin Hood--that blended to make a searingly accurate commentary on our current social and financial issues.  When time is literally money, keeping the poor in poverty literally kills them, and the super rich care no more than the super rich care about our poor.

There's also an interesting metacommentary, which I'm not sure was intentional, about Hollywood and perceptions of age.  In this world, everyone physically stops aging at 25.  However, nearly all the actors cast to play these 25-year-olds are in their 30s.  It says something about the expectation that actors cease aging at around 25, that they never look old, that time and biology are arrested or else they can't find work anymore.

I've heard complaints that Timberlake and Seyfried had no chemistry, and I have to call baloney on that. The actors were adorable in the way they played off each other, and if the characters were a bit stiff, it was because Sylvia was raised in a world where no-one ever takes chances, and Will is just learning about social injustice and attempting to do something about it.

By far the best performance in the film was Cillian Murphy as the Timekeeper, this world's version of a cop.  The self-control and self-deception in the character were evident every time Murphy was on screen.

If the film has any flaw, it's that the social commentary does get a bit heavy-handed.  I've seen much, much worse (*cough*Land of the Dead*cough*), but the filmmakers clearly didn't want the audience to miss their message.

3.5/5