Kathryn Troy's Blog, page 7

Thrilling, if a Bit Unsatisfying: Snowblind

I like my crime thrillers in all shapes, sizes, and especially locales. That being said I'm always a fan of tight spaces - like ocean liners - or in this case, a town completely enveloped in snow at the edge of the world.

The world-building and mood to Snowblind  was good, and the development of each of the distinct characters in this little coastal village was compelling. But regarding the criminal investigation/mystery aspects of the plot, there was a little something wanting.

The focus of the story falls squarely on Ari Thor, an outsider from the big city who takes a police job in a small town and quickly becomes embroiled in a murder investigation. However, a large amount of time is taken up by the character himself, rather than the crime and the characters most intimately connected to it. For example, the narrative centers around his strained relationship with his girlfriend and navigating around his boss's authority. It's not so much about learning about the other villagers and trying to determine who might have shoved an old man down the stairs. It is about that, but it never really feels central. And the fact that a rookie cop is technically on the correct scent from the get-go feels a bit contrived, and didn't really allow for me to engage with the potential suspects or the nature of the crime on its own terms. Not enough time and attention was dedicated to those elements of the story, which you would think are the story, with the personal details of Ari Thor playing second fiddle.

The conclusion of the story was not satisfying in any sense of the word. There aren't any dramatic twists and turns, and even when everyone's on the same page about who did what, the response from the community/police force amounts to a shrug. Call me stupid, but that's not how we deal with murderers.

Without that sense of compulsion or urgency, it's hard to see how I could be compelled to read about (I suppose) another murder in another installment if not much is going to be done about it. It's a bleak outlook, which perhaps is what the author was going for, but it just didn't hit the right notes for me, even if the characters were interesting.

K. Rating: 2/5

I Love Haunted Forests, But...: Uprooted

Uprooted was a great addition to stories about haunted forests. I especially liked that this forest was alive in a very literal sense, and became one of the major actors of the plot. It was as malign as a wicked forest should be, and the imagery associated with the forest and what happens to people who get lost within in was really well executed.

However, there were other elements of this story that didn't really add up for me, and left me feeling that the book was imbalanced. Firstly, I didn't care for the sudden expansion of the scope, going from a small village on the edge of the wood to the center of court politics. It was just one trope ontop of another in terms of setting, and it took away from the setting being on the brink of disaster. I also felt that the characters that were introduced as a result of this shift didn't really project the story forward, and because it happened very late in the narrative, I never really cared about any of those characters either, not the way you care about what happens to Nieshka and the Dragon.

Their chemistry was also something that ran awry for me in the middle of the book. Though the setup was all well and good, how their relationship as captor/ward, mentor/mentee, and then something more progressed did not feel realistic, and I couldn't sympathize. It makes no sense, and is blatantly tropey, when a girl who doesn't know she's a witch is more powerful than the most powerful wizard in the land, nor does it make sense for a virgin to magically gain some kind of sexual maturity while in said captivity, or for the smug, narrow-minded bastard that is the dragon to not shed those less desirable traits as they build romantic chemistry. In typical Beauty and the Beast stories, the gimmick is that the Beast turns out not to be as beastly as first imagined. Novik seems to have skipped that step.

I also really, really don't like when my books turn suddenly preachy at the end, which is what this one did. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be a moral lesson to fantasy, but it shouldn't be so blatantly obvious as to hit me over the head with it from left field. If I wanted to watch Fern Gully, then I would.

All in all though, the darkness of her fantasy world was very good- good enough for me to try again with Spinning Silver and hope that the other foundational elements (setting, character) are better in the next book. But fool me once...

K. Rating: 3.5/5

Don't kid yourself - you know that's a heart tree.
This one is special because Tim Curry is trapped inside :P

Good Start, Hopeful for More: Omens

I still haven't finished Kelley Armstrong's straightforward fantasy series Age of Legends , but that didn't stop me from picking up the beginning to another one of her series (the woman is prolific!), the Cainsville series starting with Omens .

The back copy says that the discovery that her parents were heinous serial killers is what brings Olivia to a small, inclusive town to hide from the scandal and perhaps discover who she really is (a person with supernatural abilities).

Which sounds great - who doesn't love a little Twin Peaks in their small town vibe? But even though this is only the first installment, I felt this story took a bit too long to get started. There was a much heavier emphasis on the question of whether or not Olivia's parents were in fact serial killers than the back-copy would lead you to believe. That meant that a majority of the story was taken up by a legal investigation into old murders, which was interesting just not what I was expecting.

The part I was expecting - the supernatural elements of the town and of Olivia herself- didn't feel as substantial to me. There was an indication of some vaguely superstitious lore, and the suggestion that not all the inhabitants of Cainsville are precisely human, but none of that felt integral to the plot of this story or tied together in any way to the main thrust of the narrative. For Olivia herself, the kinds of "knowledge" that she knows without knowing why didn't amount to much more than psychic storefront hokum - no dramatic premonitions that came to pass - and could be brushed off as coincidence. Olivia certainly did, not truly undergoing a sense of revelation about herself or her new town (or, hometown, if you like).

The interaction between the characters was all well and fine, but the plot is the thing, and that needs to get pulled together more tightly. There's a hint that the legal question of her parents' murdering tendencies hangs over the second volume as well, which I'm willing to try, but the pressure will be on for that book to deliver its promise on the supernatural front.

K. Rating: 3/5

The Apocalypse that Wouldn't End: Wanderers

I'm so so sooo picky with my sci-fi books. And when I saw the size of it, I did hesitate a bit. But I like sleepwalkers, so I cracked Chuck Wendig's Wanderers  open.

It started off really strong. The strong phenomenon of mass sleepwalking, all to some unseen destination, was told through the eyes of a former CDC agent. I liked the investigative aspects of that. I also liked the introduction of Black Swan, the predictive AI that seems to know something is coming, but not quite what.

I don't really know what happened to that very cohesive premise. The book went on for ages, mostly about stuff that you might read in a more pretentious literary novel about not much at all. In laymen's terms, TMI about the mundane stuff that the characters deal with that is not germane to the plot or to understanding their motivations as characters. And a few hundred pages in, when you are told what's going on, it doesn't make a goodly amount of sense. Then the story became about too many things all and once, and they didn't necessarily go well together - it was weird diseases and psychological disorders and zoonotic jumps and the risks of artificial intelligence and, randomly, the ultimate horrors of white nationalism.

Though it makes sense to explore the social fallout for a strange phenomenon like the walkers, it took up some a large portion of the book that it made me question what the central theme of the book was supposed to be. Add to that that it had some of the most violent (and therefore resonant) scenes, and it muddled the message and purpose of the book even more.

The ending was the size of a normal-sized book, and it dragged on and on and on, in very predictable ways. From about the halfway point on, reading had become a chore. What does that tell you?

K. Rating: 2/5

Artistic Triumph, But Still Lacking Something: The Lighthouse

I was so enamored with The Witch that I didn't ask a whole lot of questions before going swiftly to see The Lighthouse  - it's important to me to support artists and directors with a vision I can really get behind.

But that being said, I was not blown away by this film. Don't get me wrong - it's a tremendous artistic effort, and there are lots of techical/filmmaking qualities to this movie that are flawless. To shoot in black and white is a bold choice, one that might suggest someone trying too hard, but combined with the sharp lighting, I can't imagine that the film would have held the same intensity if it had been in color. The light and shadow is so important to this film, and that was absolutely spot on. As was the sound/editing and the acting. Those are the things that really keep you watching.

So Robert Eggers is a master of his craft, in a literal sense. But the storytelling is where this failed for me. The premise of weird happenings in seaside isolation is well and good, but the story went too bizarro for me, and while I did have a visceral reaction to the film as I watched it, I can't say that the narrative was compelling. And the weaving of reality/unreality in this film did not have the same strong cohesion and restraint that The Witch  had, and even though I'm sure this is exactly what the director intended, the result was something that felt more scattershot. When I give up trying to understand what I'm seeing, then you've lost a bit of my attention, and that's unfortunately what happened here as the story unraveled.

Not every film can be perfectly perfect, and this won't put me off Eggers altogether. It's just a bit disappointing, is all.

K. Rating: 3.5/5

A Race to the Finish: The Last Hunt

I did it. It took over twenty years, but I finally finished reading Bruce Coville's The Unicorn Chronicles.

On the whole, the series is not super balanced. It wouldn't be, given that the 20+ years is what it took to be written (no offense, Coville). However the fourth and last installment does dovetail nicely with the third book, Dark Whispers, which leads into the final confrontation between the unicorns of Luster and their arch-enemy Beloved.

While I consumed Dark Whispers voraciously, I can't say the same about The Last Hunt . The narrative jumped all over the place - necessarily, because now there were so many different characters and minor storylines to keep track of. That's true for a large segment of epic fantasy, but here the segments were so short that I came away from each one thinking not that much had progressed in each individual plot before moving on to the next thing and repeating the experience. So on the whole, the pace felt much too slow for this book, considering that Beloved was already in Luster and planning her final attacks. I didn't feel that sense of chaos or pandemonium that I expected.

The new characters that were introduced at this point in time were not entirely interesting or useful. Honestly, at the endgame you want a cohesive conclusion to the stories of the characters you've been tracking since Book One. Clearly they are still part of the story, but they didn't shine as narrative leads, and that made the whole thing feel watered down. And the introduction of other pseudo-celestial beings as an explanation for the impending doom of the world just felt too separated and far afield from the familiarity of this world to make sense within in.

Without spoiling anything, some of the characters undergo major transformations, in a literal sense, that I just wasn't too keen on. And nowadays messaging about body image, especially in what's ostensibly children's literature, is something not to be taken lightly.

So, not as magical as the series began. It would have been quite a different tale, I think, if the installments of the series had been written more closely together, But hey, we're all human, and if nothing else I can congratulate Coville on finishing the series at all. He didn't have to, after so much time had passed. And imperfect as it was, it felt like a promise fulfilled.

K Rating: 2.5/5

Positively Terrifying: Marianne

Long-time readers of this blog know I'm a Francophile, but that has nothing to do with why I love Marianne so much.

First and foremost is Marianne herself. The imagery used to depict her is sometimes constant but also in flux, and it leaves you in a perpetual state of destabilization, which is exactly the mood you need to be in for horror to be effective. And each of the iterations of Marianne - the blinded one, the crazy spooky face, the face in the shadows, and the supremely perfect Madame Daugeron are all creepy in the best possible way. The kind that makes you want to look away, because you might actually be scared for real. I never second-guess myself when I'm in the shower unless my mind turns to The Woman in Black, but now Marianne resides there too. That lingering sense of her hauntedness is a testament to how well this show is executed.

Part of the success of Marianne on screen rests on the judicious use of her. In the first episodes, I was especially captivated by the split scenes that inserted her as her name was mentioned - it was like a subliminal message, in that you couldn't truly see her unless you stopped the frame, but it occurred just long enough for you to know that something else had appeared. Again, the effect that the show and its superlative editing have on people brave enough to watch in the dark is a triumph in a time of cheap scares.

Everything about this show is well thought-out and well-plotted, feeling intimately tied to France's history with witchcraft but also feeling fresh at the same time, digging deeper to bring new imagery and framing to the fore.

Come on. How is she not scary? I sincerely hope there's more to come from this creative team. This story is finished at the end of the first season, but it makes me excited to think of what else may be in store. I'll just have to buy dry shampoo-it's fine.

K. Rating: 5/5

A Sharp Crime Series - Babylon Berlin

I've reviewed the show Babylon Berlin on this blog before. The short version is: I loved it. I loved it so much as a crime series set in the Weimar Republic that I picked up the first book in the Gereon Rath book series.

I wasn't disappointed by the sharp writing and the fast pacing. However, I was at a disadvantage, since I knew who the bad guys were, and knew all the major plot points of this first book, since that's what the show has covered up to this point. There were some changes, such as the relationship between Gereon and Charlotte, as well as some other elements of Charlotte's character that I won't divulge, and I found myself preferring her on-screen representation.

The same was true for Gereon in some instances. In the book, they make it clear that while he had been a soldier during World War I, he had been lucky enough to never see combat. In the show, his shell shock is a major component of his character, and helps sets the tone for his interactions with other people as well as the overall atmosphere of the show. It adds a nuanced layer to the paranoia and anticipation that comes from suspecting one of his fellow officers is responsible for the death of another.

So as much as I love the storytelling, I'm thinking that if I do prefer the vision of the showrunners to some of the decisions in the books, then I might be better off sticking to the show. But that's almost never how I respond to adaptations. So I'm a bit torn here. I'll be keeping up with Rath - only time will tell in how many formats.

K. Rating: 4/5

Decent Installment: Terminator: Dark Fate

I don't know what everyone's complaining about. Considering that the last three Terminator movies were largely terrible, Dark Fate is pretty good! It's not a perfect film, but there's a lot to like and I think most people who enjoyed the first two Terminators will appreciate it.

A lot of my criticisms of the film go hand-in-hand with the things that I liked, oddly enough. For example, I liked the new storyline, and I particularly liked Grace and incorporating the concept of enhanced humans into this world of malevolent AI, but I questioned the switching of the plot (if we take past films seriously) of removing John Connor from this story (not telling how), and renaming SkyNet to Legion. That felt a bit arbitrary, although it's clear that the filmmakers wanted to make this a more female-forward movie, as seen in the predominantly female cast. It felt a bit like what was happening in the latest installment of Halloween, but I'm not sure if it felt integral to the plot to do that here. In both, you have the anchor of the female lead from the original franchise, and moving forward from that point beyond their roles in previous films.

That said, I loved seeing Linda Hamilton as Sarah again. Sarah Connor was one of my idols growing up, along with Xena Warrior Princess. But she wasn't given a whole lot to do. The majority of her scenes were humorous ones alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger. Don't get me wrong - those bits were funny - but I wanted to see them both carry some more weight too, and the script didn't really allow for it. The most powerful scene might be the first one - which is to say, a scene from another film. Which is kind of a problem.

Regarding the technological aspects, that felt more grounded in sci-fi both of the present and the future. Incorporating automation in manufacturing was clever, but it didn't necessarily have the secretive military feel of something like SkyNet, the sinister computer lurking in the background. I was missing that.

What this all boils down to is I think that while the filmmakers may have succeeded in giving us a better Terminator than what we've had in a while, they didn't necessarily measure up to the very high standard of action film that is set in the here and now by the Marvel Universe. The action scenes were serviceable, but the laws of physics were stretched too much in some cases, and it didn't feel as polished on that front. It delivered on humor, but didn't balance that well with the very intense climate of the original Terminators. That kind of perfect package is something that Disney/Marvel has...well...perfected in the last decade, and comparatively this title can't compete. But if you take it on its own merits, both as a Terminator film and as an action/sci-fi film, it gets high marks from me.

K. Rating: 4/5

It Picks Up: Hell House

Yes, another review of another found footage film. And another haunted attraction. Rather than a good start that fizzles out, which was the case with The Houses that October Built, Hell House LLC starts slow, slow enough that I stopped for the night and wasn't sure I'd start it back up again. The first half hour or so was taken up by faux interviews that were more telling than showing, which put me off because they felt forced, rather than letting me see and feel the tension of the story for myself.

But once you're in the thick of it, inside the attraction as it's being developed by a bunch of people, then the film really begins. The scares are mostly cheap but extremely effective, as some of the props in the rooms come alive. There's also tension within the group as they replay footage to see what exactly is going on, some freaking out enough to leave, and others convinced that nothing should stop them from opening the haunt.

When that climax comes, however, bringing us back to where we began with an opening night gone deadly wrong, then we're back to not being shown as much as we might want. Not everything, of course, but the amount necessary to feel the suspense of this moment as being more chilling than what's come before during the building stages. And unfortunately we don't get that.

The movie could have ended there, but it chose to create yet another layer, another group of dumb-dumbs who try to investigate the haunt after the worst has happened. By this point, the results are predictable, and the film could have easily done without that entire final segment and been the stronger for it.

Not a perfect film, but definitely some perfectly scary moments. Enough of them for me to recommend this.

K. Rating: 3/5